Work Text:
They didn’t bother giving Chad a bed during his ruts anymore. He melted through the first two and started a bonfire with the third. He slept on the floor now. Naked, with his hair fanned in matted knots across the concrete.
With nothing but oxygen and his energy to burn, Chad’s flames hissed and huffed. Orange flickered across the solid iron walls and on to the charred ceiling of his cell, dancing like the guardians of Hell.
Chad could imagine being a part of his fire, undulating in the dark. Eating everything until he died. It was a type of madness that scared him and called to him. He feared it more than the emptiness that yawned wide and fathomless inside him.
His blood crawled through him like molten lava; a creeping sensation that took hold of his limbs and ached deep. His rut was a different type of burning compared to his fire. He wanted to scream. He spent his first rut in prison screaming for three days straight until he was spitting blood that sizzled. It was the agony of searching and finding no one. It was the hole that swallowed him alive when he looked too long into it.
His therapist had told him he probably had “Empty Alpha Syndrome”, similar to the omega version of “Empty Nest Syndrome”. Something about his anxiety mixing with his unusually high imprinting instincts and blah, blah-whatever-the-fuck she wanted to call it.
State anti-cruelty laws in California regarding alphas in detainment facilities were surprisingly stringent compared to the federal level. Protected under the Family Nest Act, alphas had the right to private rut rooms and nesting materials provided by family members, mates, and registered pack members for the entirety of their cycle.
Unfortunately for Chad, his unchecked ruts incinerated anything flammable and rut-mates were not admitted to prisoners. His volatility mandated his isolation.
So he was left to watch the creatures dance in his flames to the music from his memories and hoped his rut would end before the demons remembered their master was weaker than they were.
He didn’t hear the iron door creak open, but he smelled her through the smoke and the cracking stone. She was sharp tequila and strawberry milkshakes. Chad’s chest curdled even as his mood brightened for the first time in days.
“You look like shit.”
Chad snorted. She was leaning against the frame of his cell door, half her body angled inside despite the scorching heat no doubt surging for the sudden flux of fresh oxygen. Chad reigned the beasts back into him, feeling the wild things roll beneath his skin where they made their home. In a few long breaths, the cell was cool and dark.
“Alice.” His voice was hoarse. He attempted a retort though his heart wasn’t in it. “Orange isn’t your color.”
Her answering grin was manic. He remembered her in flashing lights and bass that boomed loud enough to stop a heart. She used to dance with him all the time. Her long fingernails sharp against his skin. Laughter ugly and bright as a star. Seeing her was almost more painful than missing her.
He sensed an alpha and a beta move closer to his packmate on the other side of his cell wall. He bared his teeth.
“Chill, babes.” She straightened. They’d spent many of their ruts together and she had enough burns to prove it. “Some big-wig wants to talk to you.”
“I’m in rut.” Chad winced until he was sitting up. His hair fell in tangled clumps and stuck to his sweaty skin.
Alice shrugged. “That’s what I told them.”
Chad heaved towards the wall, using it as a crutch to help him get back to his feet. An orange prison jumpsuit was tossed in his direction, slapping him in his face before he could catch it. His hands were already singing the fabric black. The cheap polyester chafed.
“Why’d they let you in here?” Chad grit his teeth, slipping his limbs through the holes. Sandpaper rubbed his swollen glands raw. Pins and needles pricked his elbows and at the back of his knees.
Inside of him, Chad’s flames flared its protest. It dug its nails into his flesh. Already he could smell the polyester melt.
Alice scoffed, tossing her thick hair back with a type of flair Chad envied. “Are you serious? You’d burn anyone else if they came at you during your rut. Dramatic ass.”
She was right, of course. Chad couldn’t help his own smile. He dragged his suffering body towards the door of his cell, letting her familiarity and her light call to him. He was reaching out to her when an alpha guard dropped a shield between them. The beta yanked her away.
“What the fuck?” Alice snarled.
The guard had an Alpha's Voice of pure iron. It rattled through Chad's sensitive brain turning the world sideways. Chad wanted him to be ash. “Inmates are not to physically interact during heat and rut cycles without thorough court approval-”
Before he could stop it, Chad’s flames roared alive and leapt through the doorway like a flash fire.
They devoured. Demons crawled up the walls and ate at the wooden beams. The steel shield was molten metal, enough to melt the alpha's iron voice into fear.
Chad knew he was being yelled at, but the thing inside of him was louder. It was exhilarating and wild and dangerous. It thought he was as invincible as the flash of heat whited out the world. Here, he was a god.
Some part of him knew he wasn’t. He was the same asshole who liked burning buildings more than saving them. He was born to consume.
That was the same person who saw Alice on the other side of the flames, huddled into herself and terrified. He heard her calling his name. Someone was screaming.
It was her, not the panicked shouting from the guards, nor the threat of solitary confinement, that leashed the creatures that were scuttling through the hallway. He reeled them back to himself, grudgingly, fighting at every inch until they were bound within him once more.
What was left was the acrid stench of terror and deformed steel.
Chad was so angry. He never stopped feeling angry.
Alice still reached out for him. This time the guards didn’t stop him from scooping her into his arms and burying his face into the crook of her neck. She felt small. He felt smaller.
“You idiot.” She hissed while grasping at the tattered remains of his jumpsuit. She was fine. She was cold. “You can’t be doing that shit.”
Chad nodded, taking deep long breaths of cherry vodka.
He let her terror sear the inside of his memory and fall into the growing void of him.
She held him tighter and tucked her head beneath his chin until their scents mingled as they used to. She hummed to him almost aimlessly. Her happiness embraced him so tightly, he nearly sagged into the floor.
If Chad closed his eyes he could see their old apartment thick with the scent of them and their drugs and their conquests. Almost immediately, Chad’s demons quieted to a murmur.
Alice was a lot stronger than him in a lot of ways. He didn't think he would be alive without her.
Too soon, the same alpha cleared his throat. “I have to separate you both. The warden only wanted her here to make sure you don’t… attack us.”
The beta snorted from the other side of Alice. Compared to the sharpness of the alpha, the other seemed more amused than anything. Chad stepped back to examine the damage in the hall. Other than the scorch marks along the walls and the singed fringe of his best friend’s hair, he thinks it could have be worse.
Chad clicked his tongue. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Bae,” Alice halted him with her hand on his shoulder. Prison hadn’t stopped her from keeping them neat and sharp. Again, the alpha wisely didn’t intercede. “Don’t fuck this up.”
Chad knew she didn’t only mean the mysterious meeting he was about to have. He mustered the confidence he knew was still somewhere inside him deep below the void and the agony and all of the part of him that was burning at both ends.
He propped his hand atop his hip. “This is nothing.”
She didn’t look convinced.
+++
“California takes their fires very seriously.”
Chad twitched. They'd found another ghastly cheap jumpsuit for him to wear. Sweat was already pooling at his nape despite the heavy-grade scent filters blasting cold wind through the cold, tiny, metal room. Sterile air stung the inside of his nose enough to start a headache.
With the combination of Alice’s scenting and the medically neutral room he'd been forced into, Chad's mental rut fog dissolved to brutal clarity. There were very few reasons that they would use this room for a convicted felon. He was on the precipice of something that could save him or completely destroy him.
The elderly man across from him had razor eyes despite the soft downward slope of his spine. He’d watched every move Chad had made since the moment he'd passed through the door. He’d slammed it shut behind him as if he wasn’t about to sit across the table from a guy who could put him in an urn with a thought. He could have been a very punchy beta or a grumpy old alpha, but Chad knew even without being able to smell him what he was dealing with.
The old man plopped his very official manila folder down between them and simply stared.
Chad resisted the urge to growl.
“You listening, fucker?”
Chad breathed the way his therapist had been teaching him to. Smoke billowed from his nose when he breathed out. He counted to five and bit back a few choice words he would have regretted. “Yes.”
The elderly man’s bushy eyebrows rose up his wrinkly forehead. He shook his head before he finally flipped open the file and placed alarmingly thick glasses onto his nose. He squinted at the stack he’d brought in. The paper on the top was the application Chad had mailed a month ago to SDN.
A bony finger tapped Chad’s mug-shot. It’d been stapled to the corner like an ironic punchline. “You recognize this?”
Chad nodded.
“You’ve only been here for six months out of your 20-year sentence. What makes you think we should let you out so fast?”
Clear brown eyes peered above those stupid old-man glasses. They were steady as petrified redwood. Unburnable. Chad was caught in them, thrown only for a moment by the child’s bite peeking up from beneath the knitted sweater he’d wrapped himself in despite the cold steel apparently running through his nervous system. An unbonded omega with a child's bite was interesting, but not new. It was the last thing Chad was worried about.
Noting the SDN logo embroidered on his vest, Chad admitted to himself that this man had every bearing of being a retired hero. A true one, like from the golden ages of the Brave Brigade and Ultra Line. Not like the “heroes” of today who were wet noodles and wore their unwashed underwear in public. No class. A bunch of fucking idiots on steroids.
Chad scoffed. “Because I can be a better hero than all the bitches on your roster.”
“Not likely.” The man snorted. He brought up his fingers to count. They were thin and delicate like kindling. The LED ceiling lights blasted between the webbing of his fingers despite the dark of his skin. “We have Phenomaman, Blonde Blazer, Sweet Talker… shit I bet your ass wouldn’t even get past Big Chungus. Do you know what the problem is with you kids these days? You think just beca-”
Chad’s heart was pounding. His hair was sticking to the soaked nape of his neck. He felt cold and hot at the same time, something he would have fixed himself if he could.
His nose flared with another deep breath and he zeroed in on the man across from him just as he finally stopped talking.
“You’re an omega.”
“And what, you want a medal?” The man glared. “Is that a problem for you?”
“No.” Chad snarled. He didn’t know why he’d said that aloud other than the fact that it’s been six months since he’d last met an omega and wasn’t expecting to meet one again during the most important job interview of his life. “I don’t give a fuck that you’re an omega.”
“Is it your rut? I can barely smell you, bitch.” Old-people senses must suck. The facility filters weren’t strong enough to filter his rut. “You gonna do something about it?”
Chad could already feel the tension behind the two-way mirrors ready to spirit away his one chance. He grit his teeth, fighting the urge to leap from his chair and shatter his fist against the glass. “Don’t worry, I prefer my omegas with moisture in their skin.”
“Hey, fuck you.” The man thrust his finger out at him. “I bet I moisturized more than you had these past six months.”
Ouch.
“Whatever.” Chad threw his hands up. “So am I in or not? Don’t fucking waste my time!”
“Your dumb villain name is ‘Flambae’. Could be worse.” The old man continued, completely ignoring him. He shuffled through the file slowly, as if he was actually hoping Chad would deliver him to an early grave. “You scored unusually high on the Kim-Robertson Test.”
Chad clenched his jaw. “That’s private. How did you get that?”
“You signed the release, dipshit.” The old man flapped another paper that indeed, had Chad’s signature in big looping cursive. “Read the fine print.”
Chad scoffed. “Yeah, whatever. So what?”
Again, the old man examined him past the frames of his glasses. “Your therapist also said you are ‘highly pack-oriented and have strong imprinting instincts’.” He read the last part out with raised eyebrows. “I haven’t heard of an alpha imprinting since my best friend’s wedding. It says here you imprinted your entire family along with your pack member.”
There was an itch that was crawling down Chad’s spine. He knew he was steaming. He breathed again and hoped the flames would wait just a little longer. “What of it?”
The old man considered him for a long time. Chad wondered if torturing him was a part of the interview or the old man was just an asshole.
Eventually he shook his head and closed the file with a slap. “Next door, Blonde Blazer is interviewing your packmate to be a part of the same program you signed up for. Do you want that?”
“What?”
“Do you want your packmate to be on your team?” The old man repeated the question slowly, like Chad was stupid.
Chad’s head was spinning. “I didn’t think I had a choice.”
“You don’t. I’m asking for your opinion.” The old man’s smile was infuriating. “Despite your shit personality and bad attitude, you’re the one who signed up. Obviously, there’s something in you that doesn’t think you’re meant to be a fuck-up. Some egotistical speck inside you wants to be a hero.” The old man shrugged. “Or you just wanted a free ride out of prison. We’ll figure out which in a few months probably.”
Chad swallowed. For a fleeting moment he thought he felt something within the depths of his void. It felt something like a spark. “I want that.”
“Good.” The old man didn’t ask him to elaborate, nodding to himself. He pushed the papers into the file and stood from the chair with a creak that probably came from his bones. “You can call me Chase. I’ll be your state mandated parole-officer. Meaning, if you fuck up I can send you back here if I want… More or less.”
The door opened before Chase got to the other end of the room. The alphas that met him were staggering. The smell of them invaded Chad’s space, pressing him to submit. He hissed and gripped the bottom of his chair to remind himself not to attack the prison guards just because they were assholes. Alice needed him.
“Oh also, you start in a week. That’s enough for your rut to end, right?” Chase spoke as if the alphas weren't there. Somehow, the old man was still the most imposing thing in the room. Chad inhaled cut grass and new shoes like it was the last thing that was keeping him together.
“That’s it?” Chad didn’t mean to sound breathless.
“That’s it.” Chase smirked. “Welcome to the Phoenix Program, fucker.”