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You can do this, Dan lied to himself as the train slowed to a stop. He surreptitiously checked that the scent blocker patch was still firmly adhered to his skin and that the AlphaMusk body spray (Forest Spice edition) he’d put on before leaving hadn’t worn off.
This, after all, was his one chance for a fresh start. A brand new Dan Howell. Dan Howell the cool, confident alpha with a brand-new YouTube account and a love of Muse.
It was a significant improvement on Dan Howell the lame, pathetic omega everyone had tormented for years at school. But that was hours behind him now. This was Manchester, where no one would know anything about him he wasn’t prepared to divulge. As far as anyone here knew, Dan was an alpha and had always been an alpha.
He just wasn’t sure his disguise would fool Phil.
The problem was that he’d already committed to his new internet persona when he’d started messaging Phil. And everyone knew that Phil—or at least AmazingPhil—was a beta. His videos, from the casual vlogs to the comedy skits, all gave off that friendly, nonthreatening energy that anyone could relate to and he’d even said so on camera himself in one of his anecdotes.
Dan didn’t think twice about putting “alpha” prominently in his online profile when messaging Phil for the first time. What were the chances he’d ever actually hit it off with his favorite YouTuber and ever meet him in person anyway? And betas weren’t as sensitive to pheromones as alphas and omegas were so he could probably fake it if he ever got that far.
But to his surprise, Phil messaged him back! And then messaged him again. And then the messages turned to Skype calls and staying up late into the night laughing about stupid jokes and feeding off of each other’s unhinged energy. And by the time those late-night jokes turned a little flirty, Dan had already lost his mind enough to admit to kissing boys at emo scene parties, even boys who were betas or alphas. In a totally cool alpha way, of course, just exuding so much alpha energy that everyone else wanted him in dark, forbidden ways.
Of course, as an omega Dan was supposed to be attractive to and attracted by alphas. That’s what everyone kept telling him, anyway, though in the crudest and most offensive ways possible. Male omegas were rare, even more so than female alphas, but it seemed like the whole world knew what to think of them: pathetically submissive, unmanly mistakes of nature. Omega boys were somehow both expected to have the same sweet softness that everyone embraced in omega girls, and humiliated for showing any of it.
Which was fine, because there wasn’t anything soft or sweet in Dan’s soul, or whatever was left of it, anyway. He didn’t want to be a doormat stepped on by some brute of an alpha. He just wanted to be left alone.
Until he saw Phil’s videos, with his silly humor and light-hearted friendliness. Once they started talking, Phil really got Dan, got all the pessimism and sarcasm and sardonic jokes. And he was chill and fun and represented the most neutral and safe target for attraction that Dan could find. Alphas and betas getting together wasn’t exactly standard, not if both were men, but it didn’t seem like too much of a risk to dip his toe into the possibility.
He still expected Phil to back off immediately at even the thought that boys could be into an alpha, but instead Phil just laughed and said he totally saw why Dan got so much interest from alphas in the scene. And then, almost off-handedly, as if it didn’t even matter, he said something that would change Dan’s life forever.
“You know, I dated an alpha when I was at university. Only for like a couple months, he ended up cheating on me, it was a whole thing, but I don’t think secondary gender matters all that much to me! I don’t really care if someone gets heats or ruts or neither, as long as they’re the right person.”
Dan’s entire mind went blank, an error screen replacing every thought he could find as he tried to reboot enough to offer some kind of normal reaction. He ended up playing it off with a cool, “Yeah, totally, I mean same, for sure” and the only sign that Phil didn’t think he was a completely insane person was that the next day, Phil messaged him to ask if he wanted to meet up in person.
Of course Dan wanted to meet up in person. Dan had spent all night thinking about how there was finally someone he liked who wasn’t be obsessed with the idea of a submissive omega in a mindless heat, who would want him whether or not he took heat suppressants and passed himself off as an alpha. Or at least would still want to talk to him. And if he could meet Phil in person, maybe they would really hit it off, and then—
Then Dan’s mind stalled out trying to imagine any kind of happy ending. But he’d take a happy beginning at least, and maybe an okay middle. Just something to strive for in the now to give meaning to his day without thinking too much about what would happen later.
So, of course Dan said yes, without even thinking. He bought the train ticket, sent the details to Phil so he’d know to pick him up at the station, and set all his hopes on this one fantastic visit.
And then, two days before he was meant to leave, he got a new message from Phil.
AmazingPhil: this is kind of awkward, but I didn’t want you to be surprised when you came
AmazingPhil: you know how I always talk about being a beta in videos?
AmazingPhil: well
AmazingPhil: that’s a lie
AmazingPhil: I’m actually an alpha
There were more messages after that, but Dan’s heart had already dropped into his stomach and the rest of the words blurred together. What was he supposed to do now? He couldn’t back out, the trip was two days away! Could he fake a stomach bug and put it off? But he’d paid for the train ticket already and besides, Phil would just want him to come some other time and this would all go wrong again.
Because the thing was, if Phil was a beta who didn’t care about secondary gender, that made sense. Betas didn’t have the same hormonal cycles as omegas and alphas. They didn’t even pick up on the same pheromones. But it just wasn’t possible for an alpha not to care. Alphas had ruts. They had the primal instincts to be aggressive, to dominate, to put mouthy bitchy little omegas like Dan in their place. It’s what everyone said. And as soon as Phil found out what Dan really was, it would change everything.
Dan couldn’t keep up his online friendship with Phil without ever seeing him in person. Sure, he could put him off once, maybe twice, but more would be suspicious. But if he admitted to being an omega, he’d lose Phil just the same—or at least, he’d lose the friendly, safe Phil who claimed not to care about heats and ruts.
The only way out was through, with an ungodly amount of fake alpha pheromone body spray and scent blockers to keep the lie going for as long as Dan could. That okay middle he’d hoped for was starting to get out of reach, but he’d settle for a couple good days in Manchester and a retreat back into an online-only friendship that could carry him through the rest of his miserable lonely existence.
It would be fine. It would be great, even! He could totally do this.
Dan took a deep breath and stepped off the train onto the platform.
Phil didn’t mean for his entire online presence to be a lie. It just sort of happened organically. He wasn’t a very assertive alpha in the first place, not that that really meant anything. Secondary gender stereotypes were about as accurate as primary gender stereotypes, and the mixed group of friends Phil had made in uni proved that.
It just wasn’t in Phil’s nature to be loud and aggressive. He wanted to tell funny stories and entertain people with how nerdy and awkward he can be so they could relate to him. Even when meeting someone in person, he tended to make himself smaller and less threatening, tell a few self-deprecating jokes to ease the tension, and generally tried to be as pleasant and likeable as possible.
So when he saw the comments pile in on his vlogs about his “calming beta energy” he didn’t want to break the illusion! And maybe he leaned into it a bit too far when he started embellishing some of his vlog stories to make it sound like he really was a beta, but it was for the content! No one actually puts all their full life story on the internet anyway, right?
Then he met Dan. He’d noticed the comments come in and the Muse album selfie caught his eye, and suddenly they went from talking about their music obsessions and vlog editing tips to random life updates, deep conversations, and flirty banter.
And then he had a problem. Because Dan was an alpha hitting on someone he still thought was a beta. Every time Phil meant to bring it up, it just didn’t happen. The moment wasn’t right, or they were having too much fun joking around and he forgot, or he just plain chickened out. Even when they made plans to meet up and maybe film a collab together, Phil somehow couldn’t get the words out that he’d been accidentally lying their whole online friendship.
Finally it couldn’t wait any longer. Phil sent frankly too many messages with too many explanations about how he totally didn’t mean to have let this go on for so long, and how he doesn’t even really think of himself as an alpha because secondary genders just aren’t on his mind a lot, and how he totally gets it if Dan is weirded out by it or whatever.
After a harrowing few minutes waiting for a reply, his phone dinged.
danisnotonfire: ok cool lol
Great! That went so much better than Phil was expecting. There was no need to worry!
It didn’t occur to him until he was waiting at the train station for Dan to arrive that maybe Dan’s actual reaction hadn’t been as blasé as his message made it seem. And as the train pulled in, passengers getting off with Dan’s fringe nowhere to be seen, Phil was starting to panic.
Look, Phil had learned from last time. He would have to be an idiot to get catfished twice. He’d seen Dan on Skype calls and knew what his face looked like. Plus, the amount of time they’d spent talking was too much to have been fake the whole time. But that didn’t mean Dan was actually coming. Maybe that train ticket he’d posted a screenshot of was fake. Or maybe he’d meant to come and just backed out because he didn’t want to hang out with another alpha. Dan hadn’t struck Phil as the kind of posturing dick who would think that, but Phil had been wrong about people on the internet before!
Or maybe Dan had already gotten here and was waiting somewhere in the bushes, ready to post some embarrassing video of Phil standing around the train station like an idiot, ready to expose him for his online lies.
Just when Phil’s escalating thoughts were starting to reach an inflection point, he saw a familiar face above the crowd at the very back of the platform. All the tension left Phil’s body as he realized all that panic was for nothing. He had seconds to pull himself together, plaster a big smile onto his face, and wave at his friend.
“Dan, over here!” he called and was rewarded by a beaming smile in return as Dan finally noticed him.
Dan walked over quickly and then stopped two full paces away to give Phil an awkward little wave. “Uh, hi.”
“Hi! I’m glad you made it!” Phil instinctively stepped in for a hug, quickly aborting it for a shoulder pat when Dan flinched. “How was the trip up?”
“It was fine. Not too long.” Dan shrugged and looked away quickly, then looked back to peer at Phil through his fringe. “It’s good to see you. In person, I mean.”
“Yeah, kind of weird that we’re not separated by a screen, right? Like wow, I can actually see you in 3D! You’ve got a whole back of your head I’ve never seen.” Phil’s mouth just kept going without much input from his brain, and he had to put a stop to it. “Anyway, are you hungry? Do you want to grab something? There’s a Starbucks nearby.”
As they started walking side by side, Phil leaned over just a little, almost by accident, just to see if he could make out Dan’s scent. So what, he was curious! It was a little much to flat out scent someone you’ve met for the first time, but he and Dan had been talking for so long that they didn’t really feel like strangers. Phil wasn’t a possessive kind of alpha, but he was pretty tactile and he liked the idea of mixing scents like packmates would.
He didn’t have to lean very far before his nose was assaulted by the frankly overwhelming chemical spray that Dan must have doused himself with. Phil scrunched up his nose, suddenly teleported to his school gym locker room with too many overcompensating alpha boys.
Which Phil really shouldn’t judge. Lots of alphas were self-conscious about scents and pheromones! It was a little sad that Dan didn’t feel comfortable enough in himself to be authentic, but Phil was pretending to be a beta on the internet, so something about stones and glass houses, right?
Phil just concentrated on being the most normal he could be about meeting Dan and taking him at where he was at. Fortunately, after the somewhat awkward initial meeting, their conversation quickly slipped back into the easy banter from their online calls and it was like they’d known each other forever. They wandered around Manchester, stopping to post silly selfies at an Apple store, watching the sunset from a rooftop bar, and then staying up late tossing around ideas for what to film tomorrow.
Filming the collab video was even easier than Phil expected. It was just natural to goof around with Dan, even with the camera on, answering stupid questions in funny ways. Dan’s humor was darker and more biting than Phil’s, but that just made it more fun to play off of. Phil made it his goal to make Dan break character with a genuine smile and he was pretty sure he got there at least a few times.
They’d been tussling with each other through most of the shoot anyway, so when they ran out of questions and Dan looked at the camera to say, in his most sarcastically flat voice, “This was the most fun I’ve ever had,” Phil didn’t really think twice before tackling him to the ground.
It was supposed to be a half-tackle, half-hug, just another physical joke between them, but once they ended up horizontal on the carpet, Dan melted beneath him. Phil hadn’t quite gauged his strength right and wound up overshooting slightly, pressing closer into Dan than he’d intended. Suddenly his nose was buried in Dan’s neck and—there, just beneath all those nauseating chemicals was a note of something genuine, a hint of fresh acidity that Phil couldn’t quite place. Entirely on instinct, Phil took a deep breath in and tried to find more of that intoxicating scent.
Then Dan stiffened suddenly, all the relaxation gone from his body. “Uh, wait. Sorry, I’m just—my neck’s really sensitive.”
Phil had already moved back, sitting up to give Dan more space. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do any of that. I would never, without permission, it just—”
“It’s fine.” Dan’s cheeks flushed and he looked away, avoiding Phil’s gaze. “It was kind of nice, but don’t do it again.”
“Of course I won’t! I’m sorry, I should I know better, I know it’s weird for an alpha to have another alpha all up in your space and I swear it won’t happen again. I can just stay over here.”
Dan looked over at Phil shrinking back from him as far as the cramped bedroom would allow, then looked away, and then looked back again. “You said you’d done stuff with… with another alpha before.”
Phil blinked, not totally sure where this was going. “Yes? I mean, yes, I have. There’s a bit of negotiating about it to make sure boundaries are in place and no one’s instincts are getting trampled over, but it’s not actually that—”
“Doyouwanttokissme?” Dan blurted out all in one breath.
“…huh?”
Then the rest of Phil’s brain kicked in as he could see the defensive mask slide over Dan’s face. Before Dan could do something stupid like pretend it was all a joke, Phil moved forward and, very carefully telegraphing his every move, cupped Dan’s cheek with his hand.
“I’d love to,” he said softly and bent his head down, pausing once he’d gotten a little more than halfway just in case he’d somehow gotten all of this horribly wrong.
But Dan closed the rest of the distance, their lips meeting clumsily. Dan seemed intent to press in hard and aggressive and Phil, rather than risk an unfortunate tooth collision, eased back to let Dan drive the pace. It stung his instincts a little to give in so quickly but there was a lot Phil would gladly let a beautiful alpha do to him. Once they were no longer fighting for control, the kiss softened into something a little more natural, less tug-of-war and more a collaborative push-and-pull. Dan even allowed a playful nip at his bottom lip from Phil who got a little too carried away before reining himself back in to let Dan take over again.
When they finally pulled away from each other, breathless and wide-eyed, Dan looked past Phil’s shoulder and burst into laughter.
“We’re going to have to cut so much of this,” he said.
Phil turned back to see the blinking light of his camera still recording. “Oh god.” He scrambled to turn it off but felt a tug on his shoulder.
“Good thing you’re a master at video editing, right?” Dan grinned and pulled Phil back down into another kiss so deep all thoughts left Phil’s mind.
They didn’t remember to turn the camera off for hours.
It was beyond stupid to move in with Phil while still pretending to be an alpha, but Dan wasn’t really thinking through it. He was already spending more time at Phil’s apartment than his own dorm room, so he couldn’t imagine spending a day without seeing him. When Phil suggested it, it just made sense to say yes and Dan couldn’t make himself regret the decision.
So instead of backing out or ending things with Phil, Dan went out and got several months’ supply of suppressants, scent blockers, and body spray. He’d just keep up the same routine as he’d been doing, only now he’d be living with Phil 24/7. What could go wrong?
Dan had no exit strategy, no plan at all for how this was going to go. He’d just been taking it one day at a time until the days all added up into months and years and suddenly he’d been with Phil without ever discussing what it was they were doing.
Phil brought up dynamics and cycles exactly once, when his rut hit after Dan moved to Manchester. He’d been very casual about it, just giving Dan a heads-up that he’d be busy for a couple days. Then he’d added, “No pressure at all, I know it’s weird with two alphas, but if you ever wanted to spend a rut together, I’m open to that.”
Dan shut that down immediately with some excuse about his alpha instincts being too territorial to share space with another alpha in rut, and that was the end of that. They each spent their cycles separately, Dan pretending his heat was a rut, and didn’t talk about it again.
Living in the same apartment together, the heat pheromones would be impossible to disguise. Which is what the suppressants were for. Yes, they weren’t usually recommended for long-term use, but Dan wasn’t thinking particularly long-term anyway. He just wanted to get through another year with Phil helping him hang onto whatever was left of his sanity.
They got the best apartment they could afford—small, cramped, but at least with separate bedrooms for both of them. Dan sensibly prioritized space for his desk and computer, squeezing a bed in with barely enough space to move around it. But that was fine, they had a living room couch to hang out on and Phil’s bedroom to film more collabs in and somehow sharing an apartment came as easily to them as everything else had before.
And then Phil’s rut hit. Dan hadn’t really thought about what it would be like to be there in the apartment, knowing the alpha he, well, loved—not that he would ever admit that to anyone—was right on the other side of a very thin wall and not being able to do anything about it.
Phil tried his best not to impose, spraying scent neutralizer all over all the shared spaces as soon as he realized he was in pre-rut and then locking himself away in his bedroom with a pile of snacks and water bottles. But Dan could still hear almost everything and his instincts were going haywire.
Eventually he gave up, texted Phil some excuse about needing to get some space, and took the train back to Reading to crash at his parents’ for the night. When he came back, Phil was very apologetic about driving Dan off and they agreed to plan ahead for future cycles so that the other person would have somewhere else to be for those two or three days.
Dan hated everything about it. Staying in the apartment was clearly impossible, but leaving was just as bad because he couldn’t stop thinking about Phil spending his rut alone. He was a terrible—boyfriend? They never gave it a name and Dan tried not to think about it. Whatever they were to each other, Dan knew he was ruining Phil’s life.
Phil deserved a normal omega, one that was actually willing to do his part. Not someone like Dan, running away from his responsibilities and kicking Phil out of the apartment for non-existent ruts he spent chasing his depressive moods away with computer games.
But coming clean was impossible, too. The longer they spent together, the deeper Dan’s lies got, and he could just picture Phil’s disgust as he learned just how much Dan had been keeping from him. If Phil only knew that he had an omega right there in the apartment the entire time just refusing him out of some stupid fear—it would all come crashing down, the whole house of cards Dan had built. And Dan would do anything to prevent that from happening.
It wasn’t just that he was scared of losing Phil. He was, of course, more than anything—but he’d dropped out of uni to make YouTube his full-time career and it was really taking off! Viewers loved the joint videos he and Phil did on each other’s channels, but even his own solo content was gathering a real following. He wasn’t ready for it all to end.
Instead, he threw everything he had into making more videos, more content. He and Phil got a radio show and moved to London. They each hit a million subscribers, first Dan, then Phil. With the bigger audience came bigger fame—and bigger problems. Every live steam suddenly had unhinged comments from fans begging to be Dan’s omega, asking invasive questions about his rut, and speculating if he was with Phil or not.
Dan shut all the speculation down immediately, not even thinking twice about it. “Do I look like I’m ready to settle down with a mate? Oh look, sexxydanfan451 wants to know if Phil’s my mate.” Dan barely noticed Phil get up from his seat on the floor next to him, leaving the frame entirely. “Do you not know how this works? Alphas are supposed to mate omegas. Phil’s a beta! We’re just friends, for fuck’s sake. I don’t know how many times I have to say that.”
The comments just got angrier, flying quickly on the screen. Dan gritted his teeth and searched for something new to say, a change of topic to make this all go away.
Phil returned with a bag of fruit gummies and plopped back down, offering one to Dan. “I think the watermelon flavor’s new, have you tried it?”
Dan grabbed both the gummy and the new topic of conversation and launched into a grant debate with Phil for the rest of the live stream about their individual gummy flavor rankings.
When it got late and they turned the stream off, Phil stayed on the floor, looking up at Dan with a strange expression on his face.
“Is that really what you think?” he asked quietly.
“What, that orange is superior to lemon?”
Phil shook his head, not rising to the bait for once. “That alphas are supposed to be with omegas.”
Fuck. Dan sat back down, grabbing Phil’s hands in his. “Of course not! I just needed to say something to get everyone to shut up about us.”
“Would it be so bad if they knew?”
A cold sweat broke out on Dan’s forehead. It would be so, so bad if everyone knew. Even setting aside all of their tangled lies—Phil’s alpha status, his omega status—their inevitable end loomed in front of Dan, the terrible moment when Phil would find everything out and leave him forever. And even before that, just the idea that their fans would think Dan was an alpha in a relationship with a beta man, he could just see the speculation rising already. Wasn’t Dan an alpha enough to get an omega? Or at least a female beta? Was there something wrong with him? Was he just not alpha enough? Or maybe not an alpha at all?
“You know how bad it would be!” Dan could feel his hands start to shake and tried to pull back but Phil reversed their grip, grasping onto him. “Everyone would want to know what’s happening between us, and if anyone ever found out you were an alpha it would just get worse! What are they supposed to think if they know we’re two alphas together? That’s not how it’s supposed to work!”
“I thought it was working with us,” Phil said slowly and far too calmly.
“Sure, but we’re the exception! And it’s not about how it’s actually working, it’s about what everyone else will think!”
Phil watched him for a long time, squeezing his hands tighter and tighter. He sighed finally. “I know that matters a lot to you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.”
Dan shrugged. “It’s fine.” It wasn’t, clearly, and he could see that Phil felt the same way but the stupid idiot refused to push back or make this a real fight so all Dan was left with was a deep sense of unbalance, an argument half-started but not finished.
But it was an argument there was no winning in, so maybe leaving it unfinished was for the best. Dan gave Phil a quick kiss in apology and retreated to his own bed, sleeping alone for once. This whole mess would come back to haunt them later, but for now they needed to rest before a new crazy day of video games and collab shoots.
Living with Dan was hard, far harder than Phil had anticipated. And no, not sexually—or at least, not just sexually. But they were stuck in a constant push-and-pull of their relationship, spending all their time together glued at the hip but then avoiding any discussion of what it was they were to each other and what the future might hold.
It would be enough to give Phil a complex, if he didn’t understand Dan so deeply. Of course Dan was afraid of dating another alpha! He’d never done it before. Phil was eternally grateful for the time he’d had in college to experiment and get at least a little comfortable with being an alpha attracted to men of any secondary gender.
The highs were so high, living together, having fun, shooting crazy videos and messing around like nothing else mattered. But the lows were pretty low, too. Phil tried not to take it too personally every time Dan disavowed the idea of dating him online or said something narrow-minded about the nature of alphas and omegas. After all, it wasn’t really about him.
It did feel a little about him when Dan insisted on leaving the apartment during Phil’s ruts, but Phil chose to see that as a blessing in disguise. Without Dan around, no one had to know that Phil snuck Dan’s blanket into his room just so he could have some more of that absolutely disgusting chemical scent from Dan’s body spray.
However appalling it was objectively, now that he associated the fake scent with Dan, he could lull his alpha instincts into a false sense of security that his partner was nearby, that he wasn’t abandoned for his rut, that he had a nest and a mate who was safe in the room with him.
Probably he could have just asked Dan to scent something for him for his rut, but Phil hated seeing that deer-in-headlights look on Dan’s face every time he brought up dynamics. Sometimes it felt like if he reminded Dan they were both alphas too many times, it would hit some terrible quota in Dan’s head that would make him decide this was all too much and he wanted an omega instead.
Maybe if Phil had been an omega, or at least a beta like he was still for some reason pretending to be on the internet, their relationship would stop feeling like a minefield. But it was a fun kind of minefield, one that was worth navigating, so Phil just kept going.
What drove him crazy was the ghost of that sweet acidity that he smelled around Dan every so often. It had to be his natural scent, but Phil could never quite place what it was. The one time he’d casually brought up scents Dan had locked up so tightly and then spent the next week dousing himself in fake sprays so much Phil couldn’t stop sneezing. So Phil was left chasing scraps and burying his nose in a stolen blanket.
Sometimes, in the throes of his rut, he swore he could smell an omega nearby. He thought it was a hallucination at first, and then traced the scent to Dan’s blanket. The smell was faint but intoxicating, probably another fake spray that Dan had bought to get him through his rut.
Phil knew some alphas preferred that to spending a rut entirely alone. You could buy artificial omega spray or, for a much heftier price, a real omega’s pheromones to calm your instincts down during a rut. The whole thing seemed so fake to Phil that it rubbed him the wrong way. He personally preferred to suffer through his rut by himself, relying only on his own hands and toys. But he couldn’t begrudge Dan wanting some comfort.
Or at least, he shouldn’t begrudge it. He tried so hard not to, even though the jealousy was eating him alive. It was irrational. Of course Dan didn’t want another alpha’s scent with him for his rut. Of course he preferred to smell an omega, artificial or not, nearby. It probably wasn’t even a real omega’s scent, no matter how enthralling it was to Phil every time he caught a sniff.
So Phil tried not to think about it. It didn’t matter if Dan was still working through some things about being an alpha with another alpha. What mattered was that Dan stayed anyway. They kept posting videos, hosting radio shows, attending awards ceremonies, and every day, life just got crazier and crazier. They wrote a book. They went on tour.
They never talked about the future. Dan couldn’t even say he loved Phil back. The first time Phil said it, it was an accident. They’d been filming a gaming channel video that spiraled out of control with their competitiveness and when Dan won the last round, it just slipped out of Phil’s mouth without thinking.
“You’re lucky I love you.”
Dan froze, then forced a laugh out. “Ha ha, very funny.”
Phil couldn’t let that stand. “It’s not a joke, I really do. I mean we don’t have to talk about it now—we’ll edit this out anyway—but I’m serious.”
“Shut up.”
Normally, Phil would let it go. Dan was already a high-strung wire of nerves, it wasn’t worth pushing his buttons further. But he also refused to lie to his partner.
“You don’t have to say it back,” Phil said. “But it’s true. I love you.”
Dan stared at him for what felt like forever but was probably not even two seconds. “Sure. Yeah. Let’s just finish the video.”
And they did. It took them a few minutes to get back to their easy banter and hit the right tone again, but by the time they were done filming Phil had almost forgot about the whole incident. It wasn’t until he was editing that he realized he could watch, over and over again, the expression on Dan’s face as the words first hit. He cut the entire conversation out for YouTube, of course, but saved the clip for some reason.
He watched it, sometimes. When he wasn’t sure if Dan would still stay. If they would last. But in that clip, beyond the fear and shock in Dan’s eyes, he could see a spark of something pleased and surprised, happy and hopeful.
He had to pull the clip out again after they started doing proper media interviews. Phil was more stressed than Dan before each one, terrified he’d say something stupid or look like a total weirdo or somehow betray what they were to each other. The last thing he wanted was to betray Dan in some way. And at this point, he agreed that he wanted the world to see them as a comedy duo, a professional partnership and not just couple vloggers.
The price to pay for keeping their personal life secret was that everyone in the entire world seemed obsessed with the idea of knowing more. Dan especially got questions about being the alpha and how he managed his instincts and what kind of mate he was looking for. Phil didn’t know what made him more jealous: that Dan had to answer those questions, or that Phil never did.
The only question he hated more than the mate question was when Dan was asked about his ideal omega. Most of the time Dan gave completely contradictory answers, flippantly listing off hair styles, eye color, height, and clothes that made no sense, showing with a sardonic smirk how unseriously he was taking the whole thing.
But sometimes, he’d get a particularly bitter expression on his face. Usually when Phil saw that expression he’d try to intervene somehow, redirect the attention back on him or take a break so he could pull Dan out of whatever black mood he’d gotten into. The few times he couldn’t manage it in time, he always regretted it, having to listen to Dan’s answers.
“My ideal omega? Well, quiet and submissive, of course. Isn’t that what everyone’s ideal omega is?” Dan’s smile twisted on his face. “Pretty, sweet, obedient—any alpha’s perfect mate.”
Phil wasn’t any of those things. He liked to think of himself as fairly easy-going but no one would ever describe him as submissive or obedient. He knew he was loud and awkward-looking, too. Dan wasn’t really serious about wanting all that, was he? Was Phil keeping him from some perfect omega he was supposed to be with?
So of course Phil turned to his clip of Dan’s “I love you” reaction that night. But instead of watching it for comfort, this time Phil watched it for any hint that Dan might have been disappointed, any evidence that he actually wanted someone else. Maybe Phil had just read too much into a widening of eyes that simply showed Dan’s surprise and nothing else.
“What are you watching?”
At Dan’s voice, Phil flailed to close out of the window and accidentally maximized it instead. “Uh, nothing—sorry, don’t—”
“Is that us?” Dan stepped closer to the computer, craning his neck over to get a better look.
Phil gave up on hiding it. “Yeah. Uh. It’s the clip that didn’t make it in the video. Because, well, you know.”
“I remember.” Dan grabbed the mouse out of Phil’s hand and rewound the clip back to the beginning. There was no audio, but Phil could still read those three words on his own lips. “It was pretty hard to forget.”
“I’m sorry, I know it was a lot, I don’t want to pressure you.” Phil knew he was scrambling for the right words to say and not finding them, but he didn’t know what else to do. “I can delete the clip, I just wanted a reminder—but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable about it.”
Dan looked at him. “But it’s important to you.”
“Well, yes, but I know it’s probably weird. I can delete it, it’s fine.” Phil moved to take the mouse back but Dan pushed it back out of reach and put himself in between it and Phil.
“Don’t.”
Phil didn’t understand. Dan’s eyes were so intently focused on him and he had no idea what Dan was thinking.
“You’re always so patient with my bullshit,” Dan continued. “You don’t have to delete something important to you just because of what I might think.”
“It’s not really that important,” Phil lied. “I mean, not in the grand scheme of things, anyway.”
“But you saved it. And you’re watching it now. Why did you—was it because of the interview? The stupid shit I said? You know I was just saying stuff to get them off my back.”
“I know, I know! It’s just, this hasn’t been easy for you and so I was thinking, maybe you would be happier if, well, if I wasn’t an alpha.”
“What the fuck are you even saying?” Dan’s voice rose to an impossible pitch. “You stupid idiot, I didn’t mean any of what I said. Can you imagine me with some mousy omega whose whole personality is pleasing me? I want you, dingbat, not anyone else.”
Phil felt his heart unclench a little. Even though he knew that Dan had chosen him—was still choosing him, every day—it was different hearing it spoken out loud.
Dan glanced back at the computer screen again and grimaced. “I know I don’t… say things. Things I should say.”
Phil couldn’t stand how unsure of himself Dan looked. “I know. You don’t have to say it just to reassure me.”
“No, I do. I love you.” Dan said it like throwing a gauntlet. “There. Maybe it’ll be easier to say when it’s not the first time.”
“I love you too,” Phil said quickly. Their eyes met and Phil gave in to a sudden inappropriate urge to laugh. “Sorry, sorry!”
But Dan was laughing too. “God, we’re just a mess, aren’t we? It’s taken me how many years to just say it? Fuck it. I love you, I love you, I love you, I—”
Phil pulled Dan down to kiss him. They got a little distracted there for a while, but when Phil finally caught his breath he realized there was one more thing he wanted to say.
“Thank you. I did really need to hear it just once, at least. I promise I’ll stop being creepy and rewatching old videos of us, now.”
Dan raised an eyebrow. “Or, what if instead we made some new videos for you to watch.” Then his brain caught up to his mouth. “Wait, not like that! I mean maybe like that? We’ll come back to that.” He turned back to their filming set up and switched the camera on. “I, Daniel Howell, love Phil Lester a probably concerning amount. He’s beautiful, he’s the funniest person I know, he makes me feel safe, and even though I would rather spontaneously combust than say a single compliment to his face, he deserves to know this. I love you, Phil.”
When he stopped recording, Phil dragged him down into a tight hug. “I love you, too, and I’ll say it whenever you want me to.”
Dan rolled his eyes but let Phil just hold him for a while before his hands started wandering. “Okay, enough with the sappiness. Want to revisit that other kind of video?”
Dan loved being on tour. Far more than he loved making YouTube videos, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering his dwindling uploads lately. But being on tour was on a whole new level. He loved the art of creating a good show, he loved seeing fans and connecting in a real way to their audience, he even loved living in a cramped tour bus with Phil, the perfect excuse to be even more in each other’s pockets than normal without anyone questioning it.
It helped that both Dan and Phil were openly on suppressants and scent blockers during their tour. Most artists were—it was just simpler to not have to plan around cycles, and crowded fan meets were a nightmare without controlling scents and instincts. So, suddenly that was one less lie Dan was telling, one less thing to sneak around behind Phil’s back. They could just be normal together, and the relief of it was so stark that Dan was starting to consider if he should come clean to Phil after the tour.
Some days he thought he had to. It wasn’t fair to Phil to keep lying like this. It wasn’t even about what Dan wanted, it was what he owed to Phil.
But Dan wasn’t that selfless. At the end of the day, he was terrified. Maybe Phil deserved to know, but Dan was so, so afraid of losing him. Phil was his whole world. If he lost Phil, he’d lose his career, too, his fans, his everything.
So he teetered on the edge of that uncertainty. Maybe he should tell Phil. Maybe he should tell the world and just burn all his bridges down at once. Or maybe he should run away and end this whole Dan and Phil thing and never admit to a single thing.
Phil knew there was something going on with him. It was impossible to hide, but at least Dan could wave it all away under the general umbrella of Depression. They agreed to go on one last tour, one last hurrah to give the people what they want, and then take a break after for however long Dan needed.
Dan was terrified that would be forever.
But some days, on good days, he thought that maybe it didn’t have to end. The world wasn’t the same as it was in 2009. Instead of being coy about dynamics or playing into stereotypes, celebrities were loudly announcing they were omegas while defying expectations, no longer just sex symbols or innocent virgins. Lady Gaga was loud and outspoken about omega rights and her Super Bowl show drew praise rather than condemnation, despite being edgy and political and everything omegas shouldn’t be. RuPaul’s Drag Race, with all of its subversion of what alphas and omegas were meant to look like, was becoming popular and mainstream. Even in fiction, there were suddenly more nuanced portrayals of omegas being a complete mess on shows like Schitt’s Creek.
It planted the smallest seed in Dan’s head that maybe, just maybe, he could let some of his softer instincts show without having to give up who he was. That maybe there was room in the world for a black-clad, cynical-as-fuck omega.
He still hadn’t made up his mind on what to tell Phil when they came back from the tour, but he was hoping that taking a break from everything would help him figure it out on his own. He just needed space, and space was what he was going to have.
Then, the morning after they filmed their latest gaming video, Dan woke up in more pain than he could remember.
It was still dark. The sharp cramps in his abdomen woke him unnaturally early. He was in Phil’s room, in Phil’s bed—he refused to call it theirs even though he spent most nights there, afraid of a slip of the tongue in public—and Phil was loudly snoring next to him.
It didn’t even occur to Dan to wake him up. Another wave of pain and nausea swept over him and he curled up with a stifled whimper to ride it out. When he could at least think again, he carefully rolled off the bed and lowered himself to the floor. Standing was out completely. But maybe he could crawl to his room and find some painkillers for whatever it was that was happening to him.
He managed to make it there, but then came the next challenge: getting up to reach the top drawer of his dresser where he hid his meds and scent blockers. He breathed heavily through another shock of pain and told himself this was nothing. He could do it. He just had to get his feet under him and grab the edge of the dresser to pull himself up and he’d be fine.
The world swam around him, his vision doubling and tripling until he wasn’t sure which bottle to grab. His hand passed through one, then knocked over another, and just when he thought he had it—
He was on the floor, a new ache radiating from the back of his head, and the first thing he saw was Phil’s worried face hovering above him.
“Oh my god, are you okay?”
Dan made his best attempt at a smile, which was made a little easier by Phil’s familiar pine forest scent washing over him. “Yep. Fine. Just stood up—too quickly.” He couldn’t get more than a couple words out without another stab of pain in his stomach interrupting him.
Phil didn’t look convinced about any of it. “What happened? I just heard a crash.”
“I’m fine. I fell.” Dan tried to sit up but Phil pushed him back down with embarrassing ease. “I swear I’m—fine.”
“You look paler than me,” Phil said. “Did you hit your head? Maybe you have a concussion.”
Dan shook his head, which was a mistake because it made both the headache and the nausea worse. “No. I mean maybe. I just—my stomach hurts.” He screwed his eyes shut against another wave of pain. “I’m—probably?—not dying.”
Somehow, that didn’t seem to reassure Phil. “Okay. Okay. I’m going to call an ambulance. Just stay here for a moment and I’ll get my phone.”
“What? No. I don’t need—”
“Daniel.”
It was the first and only time Dan had heard Phil put so much alpha force into his voice. He felt part of himself let go. His alpha was there. He would take care of it. All Dan had to do was let him.
Phil continued in a softer tone. “You can yell at me later for this, but you’re really, really scaring me. So I’m going to call an ambulance and you’re going to stay here and not worry about anything but breathing.”
For once in his life, Dan obeyed. Concentrating on just not passing out was taking up all his energy, anyway, so he let the world just get a little fuzzy and distant, trusting Phil to take care of everything. At some point, more people arrived and Dan refocused enough to explain to the paramedics what happened.
They decided he needed to go to the hospital to get checked out, but at least they gave him some high-strength painkillers in the meantime. Dan heard Phil ask if he could ride along, but when he admitted he wasn’t family or a mate, they wouldn’t let him.
Which maybe was for the best, because once Dan was in the ambulance, the paramedics started asking more detailed questions about him and his medical history. Lying about being an omega to a medical professional was just flat-out stupid, especially if this was some omega-specific problem, and taking Phil out of the equation simplified Dan’s choices here.
Then, he had to answer all the same questions again in the hospital when he was finally seen by a doctor. She was an older woman, probably a beta, and gave off such strict head teacher vibes that Dan wanted to confess everything to her.
But Dan wasn’t Dan if he didn’t keep trying to lie.
“Are you on suppressants now? How long have you been on them?” the doctor asked.
“Well, I was just on tour for six months.” It wasn’t technically a lie.
The doctor gave him a flat look. “I’ll be level with you. Your symptoms are a classic case of suppressant sickness, but I’ve never heard of a case after less than a year’s use. I’m a medical professional. I’m here to help.”
Dan wilted under the pressure. “Seven years?” He tried to make his tone cheerful, like it was something chill and normal to admit to.
The stark horror on the doctor’s face told him that was a lost cause. “You haven’t had a natural heat in seven years?”
Dan shrugged.
“Acute suppressant sickness, then.” She marked something on his chart and took a deep breath. “Well, the good news is that you’ll be fine once the suppressants make it out of your system. The bad news is that there’s very little medically we can do beyond pain management, and once the last suppressant dose you took wears off, you will go into heat.” She kept talking, going into more and more medical detail, but Dan could barely hear past the rushing in his ears at those last words.
The last thing he needed was to be in heat. But there was clearly no way around it, not with how he could still feel a numb ache in his gut even through the painkillers. Dan nodded to all the medical instructions in a daze, figuring they’d be written down somewhere for him later, and waited to be discharged.
“Do you need us to call your alpha?” asked a pretty omega nurse.
“No, uh, I’ll do it.” It seemed useless to correct her, and from what Dan remembered of the doctor’s instructions they wouldn’t send him home if he didn’t have an alpha to spend his heat with.
Which was clearly ridiculous. He’d spent plenty of heats by himself. It would be easier with an alpha, sure, but Dan wasn’t going to let this ruin everything for him. He texted Phil to pick him up, adding that he was fine and just having a bad interaction coming off of suppressants after the tour.
Phil was there suspiciously quickly, far faster than Dan would’ve guessed an Uber should take from their apartment. Either that, or Dan lost track of time. He wasn’t going to question it, though, not when he had a performance to put on.
“I’m totally fine,” he told Phil after they left the hospital. “They gave me some really good painkillers and said I’d probably go into rut in an hour or so, when the suppressants completely wear off.”
“And that’s it? They’re not worried about anything else? Did they check you for a concussion? You did faint!”
“No concussion, I’ll be fine.” Dan wanted to lean into Phil so badly, but he was acutely aware of how long it had been since he’d last put on his alpha body spray and couldn’t risk it. “They said the rut will be short, so you might be good to come back by Friday.”
The doctor’s exact words were “short and brutal,” but Dan wasn’t going to tell Phil that.
“You still want me to leave?” Phil asked.
“Yep!” Dan tried to seem casual, unbothered, even as he lied through his teeth. “It’ll be just like normal.”
“But this isn’t normal! You fainted this morning. You were in so much pain—” Phil cut himself off abruptly. “Sorry. I’m being the overbearing alpha again.”
Dan smiled crookedly. “I promise, I’ll be fine. You worry too much.”
Still, no matter how many times Dan reassured him, Phil still had a note of sadness in his scent, adding burnt smoke to it. And Dan—well, Dan was a terrible omega, refusing to let his alpha help or even hold him, but it was all he knew how to do. He was in crisis mode now, and his one mission was to get Phil out of the house before all hell broke loose.
Phil spent twenty minutes gathering every snack, water bottle, and blanket in the house and piling them on the floor of Dan’s bedroom while Dan watched from his bed. He could feel the cramps rising up again and a familiar flush in his skin and knew he was out of time.
“Okay, I know you want me to leave, but—just one more thing,” Phil said and rushed out of the room. He came back not even a minute later, clutching his softest fleece sweatshirt. “I know you never ask for my things, but maybe, if it would help?”
Dan took it, very slowly and deliberately so that he wouldn’t snatch it as desperately as he wanted to. As soon as he lifted it to his nose he knew that not only had Phil been wearing it all week, but Phil had deliberately scented it recently. It was all he could do not to moan.
He hadn’t asked Phil to scent anything because he didn’t have a good excuse for why he wouldn’t scent something in return. So instead he’d been stealing stray clothes from the laundry hamper, rotating them out so Phil wouldn’t notice, and trying to ignore how sneaking around to steal them made him feel like he wasn’t worthy of his alpha’s gifts.
A freshly scented sweatshirt was everything to him. He clutched it to his chest and looked back at Phil who was smiling fondly at him.
“Thanks,” Dan said simply.
“Are you sure you don’t need anything else?” Phil winced at whatever expression Dan had made and raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, that’s it, got it. I’ll go, but please—just text me how you’re doing. I’m going to worry no matter what.”
“I will, I promise.” Promises came so easily to Dan when he didn’t even know if he could keep them, no matter if he intended to.
He waited as Phil left, burying his nose in Phil’s sweatshirt as he tried to ignore the increasing pressure in his gut and his slowly building arousal. Five minutes passed, then ten. When Dan was sure that Phil wasn’t coming back, he forced himself to get up. No matter what was going to happen or how bad it was going to get, first he had to make a nest. It would make everything a little more bearable.
And if that was just another one of Dan’s lies, well, he had no one to call him on it.
Phil was supposed to be calm and normal. It didn’t matter that he was worried, it didn’t matter that he’d had to leave his—boyfriend, partner, alpha?—Dan behind to suffer through a rut after just getting back from the hospital. He had one job and that was to do whatever Dan asked of him so that Dan could get through this.
There was no room for panic.
Which was why Phil sat down on the first bench he saw and immediately started googling suppressant sickness. He’d already spent the whole morning waiting for Dan’s update working himself into a frenzy by looking up Dan’s symptoms and coming to the conclusion that Dan was either dying or already dead. But this, surely, was different. This was productive! He was just gathering valuable information.
The first link he clicked on told him in cold, clinical terms that extreme cases of suppressant sickness could lead to organ failure and death.
The doctors looked at him and discharged him, Phil reminded himself. And then clicked on the next link.
Within the hour he learned that suppressant sickness was more common among omegas than alphas, though medical experts were torn on if there were underlying physiological reasons for that or if it was simply statics at play, since omegas were more likely to take suppressants than alphas. He also learned that it was usually linked to suppressant use of over a year, making Dan’s case a medical anomaly, but that certain allergies or intolerances could exasperate the effects, making symptoms appear earlier.
It was around there that Phil noticed that his own breathing was becoming uneven. It felt like something was squeezing his ribs, making it hard for his lungs to expand.
Dan was in trouble. Maybe the doctors missed something. Maybe Dan hadn’t told them that they had only been on tour for six months. Dan was back in their apartment, maybe dying right now, while Phil sat on this stupid bench trying to breathe like a useless idiot.
He didn’t even notice when he’d gotten up, he just blinked and was suddenly halfway back to the apartment building. He’d promised Dan that he would leave, but what did a promise matter if Dan’s life was at stake?
Phil’s heart was pounding in his ears. The whole world narrowed to a single purpose: check on Dan. He wasn’t going to go in Dan’s bedroom. He just needed to poke his head into their apartment and verify for himself that he could hear Dan alive.
That was as much as Phil had planned out when he unlocked his front door, stepped into the hallway, and caught a sharp, sour scent in the air. It was oddly familiar, but Phil couldn’t place it until he heard a sob coming from down the hall.
Without thinking, he followed it to his own bedroom door, where the scent was stronger. Now, Phil could tell it was the scent of an omega, a hint of syrupy sweetness indicating that they were in heat. But it was wrong somehow, too, the bitterness of pain and sickness overwhelming whatever the omega’s natural scent should have been.
Phil opened the door.
Curled up on Phil’s bed, in a pile of blankets and clothes that was surely intended to be a nest, was Dan.
He didn’t even look up at the sound of the door opening, just curled up tighter, burying his face in his knees, and sobbed.
Phil was at his side in an instant. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you.”
“Alpha,” Dan cried, a title and a plea in one. He reached for Phil, burying his nose in the first bit of skin he could find, Phil’s palm.
Dan was going to hate him after this. Dan had asked one thing of Phil, and Phil had made a promise. But there was an omega in his bed, sobbing for him, an omega who was his friend and his lover and his partner in everything.
Phil had to stay.
He climbed into the bed next to Dan, encircling him as much as possible, bringing Dan’s face into the crook of his neck and pressing their wrists together to cover him in as much of Phil’s scent as possible. Dan shuddered but his breathing evened out, which hopefully meant that he was in less pain now.
Phil’s mind reeled with this new information—Dan! An omega! His omega, even!—but he pushed those thoughts down. That wasn’t important right now. There would be time to figure out how he felt about it—about this life-changing secret that Dan hadn’t trusted him with—after this crisis had passed.
He tried to pull back on his most possessive thoughts, too. Dan wasn’t his omega. They were together, they loved each other, but he didn’t get to claim some kind of gross ownership over Dan. Never mind that every instinct in his body looked at Dan in his bed calling for him and thought, mine, mine, mine.
He put his whirring mind to more productive thoughts. What could he do for Dan, right now? He’d never spent a heat with anyone before, and while he knew the theory, this was a very different reality. This was Dan in a dangerous, suppressant-sickness-induced heat. Phil would do anything to ease this for Dan, but he was terrified of overstepping.
Scenting seemed to be helping, as did the proximity. Dan wriggled closer into Phil’s embrace, making much happier though still unintelligible noises.
After a while, Dan pulled back just enough to be able to peer at Phil with half-lidded eyes. “Phil? Mm, what a strange dream.”
Phil’s heart broke a little. “No, I’m really here.”
Dan smiled, but his eyes looked right through Phil with little awareness. “’S nice. I’ll just… keep dreaming.” He ducked his head back into Phil’s chest and that was the last half-coherent conversation Phil managed to get out of him.
Phil wasn’t prepared for when the first proper wave hit Dan. With Dan in no state to talk about what he wanted or didn’t want—and Phil still feeling horribly guilty about breaking the one promise Dan had asked of him—there was very little Phil could do to actually help. The sex toys Phil kept in his room for his ruts were of no use here and Phil wasn’t willing to abandon Dan to go rummage in his room for something hidden away. Phil just held Dan through it, whispering whatever nonsense came into his head without thinking, while Dan writhed and moaned and managed to get himself off eventually.
In the lull between waves, Phil realized that they were also missing almost all of the carefully curated supplies he’d brought to Dan’s room for him. In fact, the only thing that Dan had brought with him to Phil’s bed was Phil’s sweatshirt, which was also the only thing that Dan was wearing. Phil found that inappropriate levels of attractive, and not just because pink was a good color on Dan.
But he had to focus. There was only so much time when Dan had drifted off into an uneasy sleep and Phil felt comfortable leaving him, if only for a minute or two. He made a quick excursion out of the room for necessities.
First, he turned the thermostat down, a trick he remembered reading about in some glossy magazine for how to avoid actually overheating when being a heat partner. Then, he grabbed the snacks and drinks kit and chugged some water himself. When Dan resurfaced from his nap, Phil pulled him up into a sitting position and fed him some crackers and gummies while trying very hard not to get too distracted by Dan constantly trying to lick his fingers.
He was kind of getting the hang of this whole heat thing!
Phil completely lost track of time as Dan’s heat ramped up in intensity, the waves coming more quickly. It was all he could do to manage to grab more food or a wet towel to wipe down Dan’s sweaty face. He slept in bursts, waking up to check on Dan intermittently even though Dan seemed to be dead to the world while sleeping himself.
The fifth or sixth time he woke up, he could tell something was different. Gone was the syrupy sweet scent of heat with that bitter twist of sickness, revealing beneath it a fresh honey lemon scent belonging to a healthy omega. It immediately threw Phil back to every time he’d chased that mysterious omega scent in their apartment, and even that first time he’d accidentally caught a sniff of it when they’d first met.
This was Dan’s scent, natural and free of suppressant sickness, and it was the most beautiful thing Phil had ever smelled.
It was like he was meeting Dan for the first time all over again. Dan, an omega. Just lying here in Phil’s arms, in Phil’s bed, where Phil could protect him from the whole world just by hugging tighter.
Phil was seized with a horrifying impulse to lick Dan’s scent glands and only just restrained himself by rubbing his nose against the nape of Dan’s neck instead, an only slightly more normal thing to do.
Dan scrunched his shoulders up in response. “Phil, stop it!” he said in between giggles, still half-asleep. “You know I’m ticklish!”
Phil drew back a little to give Dan as much space as he needed. “Dan? Are you…” He wasn’t sure how he wanted to end that sentence. Awake? Okay? Upset?
“Ugh, don’t go away. You’re warm.” Dan shimmied back into the body heat left where Phil had been. “Why’s it so cold?”
There was a long pause as Phil tried to think of what he could possibly say. Surely there was some magical perfect opener that would get Dan up to speed without making him mad, that would just fix everything.
Phil ran out of time. Dan stiffened suddenly and sat up, now finally wide awake. He turned to Phil, eyes wide.
“Oh my god. That wasn’t a dream. You know.”
It was time to face the music.
Dan woke up enveloped in a cozy autumnal forest, the woody smell of pine needles surrounding him. Safety. Phil. He didn’t want to open his eyes and let the dream escape him. He couldn’t quite remember what it was he was avoiding, but he had a vague sense that if he slipped out of this perfect escape back into reality, it would crush him.
Something brushed the back of his neck, not unpleasantly but he still squirmed. “Phil, stop it! You know I’m ticklish!” He regretted complaining almost immediately, when the comforting warmth at his back withdrew.
“Dan? Are you…”
“Ugh, don’t go away. You’re warm.” Trying to move back into Phil’s arms required more coordination than Dan could manage half-asleep and his brain was starting to come back online. “Why’s it so cold?”
His eyes flew open and he stared at a familiarly bright set of sheets. Had he fallen asleep in Phil’s bed again? The chill bedroom air made him shiver. Why wasn’t he wearing pajamas?
Then it all came crashing back. The trip to the hospital. The suppressant sickness. The heat.
Oh god. The heat.
He sat up to see if maybe he’d just been imagining things. But no, Phil was there on the bed next to him, looking just as disheveled as any alpha would after spending who knows how long with an omega in heat.
“Oh my god. That wasn’t a dream. You know.” Dan’s heart was in his throat. He briefly considered five different escape plans, but he wasn’t going to get very far with no pants.
He couldn’t look at Phil for too long, afraid to see the expression on his face. He didn’t know what would be worse, anger or disappointment.
“I’m sorry,” he said, just as Phil said the same thing.
They both stopped to stare at each other and then burst out laughing. It was so Phil of him to find something to apologize for here. The whole situation was so absurd they might as well laugh about it.
Somehow, when the humor faded, the lightness it brought remained. Dan was at least two steps further from running out of the room in a panic than he had been a minute ago. It helped that when he smiled at Phil, Phil gave him a goofy smile back. If they could laugh together like that, maybe it wasn’t all lost.
Still, Dan had to get ahead of this before it got worse. He opened his mouth before Phil could start steering the conversation.
“I should have told you,” he said.
Phil sobered. “You should have. That was so dangerous! What were you thinking?”
That made Dan bristle. Even if he owed Phil an apology, he wasn’t going to roll over and become a doormat. “I was doing fine! Just because I’m an omega doesn’t mean I can’t survive by myself!”
“You think that was surviving?”
“What else would you call it? You think I need you? I don’t! I’ve got my own channel, my own audience, I’m doing just fine!”
This was it. This was the end. This was exactly how Dan thought it would go. Now that he was an omega in Phil’s eyes, he was nothing more than a toy to be coddled. Whatever Phil thought of Dan Howell the creator, the artist, the YouTuber—that was gone now.
“What are you talking about?” Phil said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“What does my career and everything I’ve spent the last nine years building have to do with how I want to live my life?”
Phil stared at him like he was speaking gibberish. “You were maybe dying yesterday.”
The words made no sense. Dan felt suddenly akimbo, like the world had tilted under his feet. “Wait, what are you talking about?”
“You were sick,” Phil said slowly. “Remember? The whole hospital thing? I looked it up and people can actually die from suppressant sickness!”
“I’m pretty sure if it was that dire, they wouldn’t have let me leave the hospital,” Dan pointed out, more out of habit than to argue. His mind spun as he tried to catch up. “Okay, so just to be clear, that’s why you’re mad?”
“I’m not mad!” Phil sounded pretty mad. “I just—it was really dangerous for you to be here alone. What if something happened? And I had no idea!” He paused, shoulders slumping. “I know I shouldn’t have come back, but I was really starting to panic about if you were dying. And you were in so much pain when I came back, I don’t know how you could’ve made it through that by yourself. So I’m sorry I broke my promise, but I’m not really sorry I came back to help.”
That was a lot to process. Dan took some deep breaths like his therapist taught him, and tried to put the rest of the pieces together.
“Okay. So you’re not mad that I was pretending to be an alpha this whole time? And acting like an alpha and not some pretty pampered princess?” Dan was almost sure what Phil’s answer would be, but he just really, really needed it to be clear.
“What?” Phil was so taken aback he actually flailed back and almost fell off the bed. “No, of course I’m not mad about that!”
“And now that you know I’m an omega, you’re not going to want me to obey you all the time or wear frilly things or stop filming my solo comedy stuff?”
“What the fuck, no!”
“Oh. Okay, cool.” Dan felt a little bad now about jumping to conclusions.
Phil shifted a little closer on the bed, putting a hand out in invitation. Dan placed his palm over it, hating that he knew it would make him feel better. Their scents mingled together, pine forest and lemonade, and everything seemed a whole lot less doomed suddenly.
“Is that why you never told me?” Phil asked quietly. “That’s how you thought I’d react?”
His soft tone, distant and a little sad, made Dan’s heart break. “No, not really. Well, there was like a one percent chance that’s how the whole world would react. So even if I knew better, I just couldn’t risk it.”
“Oh.” Phil ran his thumb over the back of Dan’s hand. “You didn’t trust anybody, then?”
Dan shook his head. “The first one would’ve been you. And I was going to tell you. I was trying to figure out how to, only it had been so long that I was afraid you’d hate me for keeping it a secret.” He swallowed down the last of his hesitation. “Do you?”
“I could never hate you,” Phil said, too quickly to have given it any real thought. But after a pause, he went on, “I wish you’d trusted me, but I can see why it was hard. And I’m not mad at you for it. Just a little hurt, but I’ll get over it.”
“I’m sorry,” Dan said, more sincerely this time now that he knew what he was actually apologizing for.
“Don’t be,” Phil replied. “You weren’t lying to be mean to me or to hurt me, you thought you had to. I don’t think you have to apologize for that.”
“Well, I still want to.”
The remaining distance between them suddenly seemed impossibly far, so Dan tugged on Phil’s hand to pull him in closer. Phil, being Phil, toppled over almost immediately, taking Dan down with him until they were both tangled together. Dan took advantage and turned it in a tussle which ended with Phil’s surrender and Dan sprawled fully on top of him. They were both laughing again and Dan thought he had a good chance of distracting Phil with some sex when Phil suddenly stopped.
“Wait, are you mad that I broke my promise?” Phil asked.
Dan sat up, still straddling Phil, and tried to think it over. “I don’t think so? Maybe I should be. But that was probably literally the best heat I’ve ever had. I don’t think I would’ve died or anything if you’d not come back, but I admit it wasn’t pleasant.”
“Oh, good.” Phil sagged back down into the mattress.
“Are we done with the apology tour?” Dan ran his hand up Phil’s chest under his shirt. “Because I’ve got some better suggestions of what we can do.”
Phil made a very satisfying squeak when Dan tugged on his nipple. “How are you still horny?” he gasped out.
“What can I say, you’re just that hot.” To be honest, Dan felt sore and sticky and desperately wanted a shower, but Phil was right there looking so delicious. What was he supposed to do? He shifted his weight a little lower to grind down and was rewarded with another squeaky gasp from Phil.
“Wait, wait!” Phil said.
“What, are you not into omegas?” Dan intended it as a joke, but it came out a little too raw. It was stupid of him to have spent so much time insisting that he didn’t want Phil to treat him like just another omega and then turn around and want Phil to find the omega Dan attractive. But he held his breath, waiting for Phil’s response.
“I’m into you, you dolt,” Phil said. “I fell for you over the internet, before we even met. I loved you as an alpha and I still love you as an omega. Nothing else matters, it’s just you.”
Dan couldn’t help himself. He had to kiss Phil after that declaration. Then he pulled away, remembering. “What did you want to wait for?”
“For you to let me take my pants off!”
Dan dissolved into giggles. They were both such idiots. But somehow, after nine crazy years, they were idiots together. And wasn’t that what love was?
Seven years later
Phil watched Dan check the camera angle one last time. He couldn’t help the swell of pride in his chest. This had been a long time coming, and while it was scary for both of them, Phil knew it wasn’t as fraught for him as it was for Dan.
It had been a turbulent seven years. Phil wished he could have made it easier on Dan, but the most he could do was be a steady force at his side. They had both owned up publicly to their true dynamics during Dan’s hiatus, and it didn’t go nearly as badly as they feared.
Phil had been the one to push for it more than Dan. He’d stopped mentioning dynamics entirely on his videos, increasingly uncomfortable with how elaborate the lie had gotten. The biggest argument against coming clean, aside from the obvious worry about fan reactions, was whether it would spur more speculation surrounding Dan.
There were always crazy conspiracies and fan theories surrounding the two of them, and a popular one was unfortunately true: that Dan was secretly an omega and Phil was secretly an alpha. There was the fair share of fans arguing for the opposite, too, though both camps spent far too much time zooming in on shadows half-hidden under their shirt collars to prove the existence of a mating bite.
If he thought about it for long enough, Phil found a lot of it quite funny, though of course it wasn’t. But Dan was so afraid of what the world would think of him as an omega that Phil didn’t want to fuel the conspiracies by revealing he’d been hiding his alpha status.
Dan dismissed that as an argument entirely and in fact insisted on posting his video first. “If you come out, I might as well. To hell with all this living in fear. At least I can tell my story the way it should be told.”
So it was Dan’s video that went up first, a long, highly-produced video essay on what it truly meant to be an omega in society, how male omegas were treated when he was growing up, and how being an internet celebrity complicated it all. Phil’s video was simpler, but caused just as much a shockwave through the community as he invited the viewers to revisit what expectations they had of alphas and whether they could be as introverted and gentle as Phil.
Dan no longer having to hide his scent came as a huge relief. Finally, Phil could be surrounded by that sugar-rush-inducing sweet lemony scent even in public. They still had to be careful not to let their scents mix too much to become too obvious, but it was much better than the nauseating chemical spray Dan used to use. (Though Phil would never admit it, he did keep a can of AlphaMusk Forest Spice edition in a drawer for nostalgia’s sake, which he was very glad to have during Dan’s solo tour away from home.)
They settled into the new normal in the eyes of the public: just an omega and alpha being roommates and making videos. Dan wrote a book and went on tour. Phil kept plugging along on his personal channel, with occasional cameos from Dan. They built a house together with the perfect gaming setup and the biggest bed for the kind of nest Dan deserved.
Neither of them expected the sheer enthusiasm with which the internet greeted the return of DanAndPhilGAMES. They learned to lean into their dynamics more comfortably on video—Dan doing a nesting material ranking, Phil speaking more frankly about struggling to manage his overprotective instincts around rut, both of them making jokes, appropriate and inappropriate, about everything from heats to mating.
The Terrible Influence Tour helped cement their new relationship with the viewers: they could be their true, authentic selves and it was still what the people wanted. But there was one last secret they’d been keeping for too long, needlessly complicating their lives to hide it.
Dan finished the last camera check and raised an eyebrow over at Phil. “Are you ready for this?”
“Ready as ever,” Phil replied with a smile.
Dan hit record. “All right, let’s get this over with.”
“Yep.”
They both plopped down on the bed, side by side to face the camera.
Dan began, providing their planned video with the gravitas it needed. “Are Dan and Phil mates?”
And for the first time, Phil was able to answer that question honestly, a public claim on each other that they never wanted to have to hide again. “Yes.”