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“Do it again.” Vox’s sharp, slightly electronic voice demands, not looking up from his dozens of screens.
Pentious rocks back on his tail. He wrings his hat nervously in his hands. He’s a relatively new employee at VoxTek; he’d only gotten the job because his ex-partner Baxter had apparently been complaining about him, and whatever that overconfident beta had said caught the attention of the only Omega Overlord.
This was a dream come true, serving under one of the most renowned Overlords in all of Hell, and another omega too. Vox was everything Pentious wanted to be: powerful, in control, confident.
Pentious is intimidated. He clawed his way up from the gutter with his cannons to a semi-stable job under his idol.
“But sssir,” Sir Pentious hisses, his tongue flickering out to taste the air. The other omega’s scent is flat and focused; it tastes staticky with a touch of salt on his tongue. It does nothing to soothe his nerves.
“Did I stt-stt-stutter?” Vox mocks, spinning in his chair and finally looking at him with narrowed eyes. The snake omega shakes his head, lowering his gaze from the Overlord in front of him. An exercise in submission.
He learned his role well. An omega should be seen, not heard—agreeable but chaste. Pentious meekly shakes his head.
Vox waives a claw at him. A simple gesture of dismissal. Slowly, Pentious begins to slither his way to the door, trying to be as quiet as possible. He’s just opened the door when he hears Vox clear his throat.
“Oh, and Pentious, I want these from scratch. The electrical draw is way too high to make it profitable.” Internally, Pentious cringes, that would take days, but in front of his boss, all he can do is bob his head in agreement as he turns around and clumsily retrieves his four blueprints from where he placed them on Vox’s desk for inspection. Only one is even unrolled. The rest lie sealed. He hadn’t even looked at them.
Pentious hasn’t felt so small since he was alive.
It’s not easy to do as Vox asked. The longer he stares at the blueprints, the more they swim in front of his eyes. He adds a different type of wire, a new microchip, and tweaks the exterior metals. Anything, everything. He’s redoing, undoing, and spiraling. The calculations swirl in his mind's eye as he adjusts and adjusts and adjusts.
It must be perfect—he can't disappoint Vox again. He'll prove himself, do everything right, and maybe one day Vox will see him as an equal.
Sparks fly. Days turn into nights in Hell, and Pentious doesn’t leave his workshop. Not until there are four new perfect blueprints signed and sealed, waiting for Vox, alongside the four functional mini-laser prototypes.
Pentious smiles. It’s finally done, he shakily slides to his tail and reaches for them. His fingers barely touch the edge of the paper before he’s falling forward, darkness swimming into his vision as he collapses. His last thought is that he hopes his dead body doesn’t knock over the prototypes.
Pentious wakes in his nest, eggbois cuddled around him. How many days has he been here since he last slept here? He sits, spine cracking and shuddering down his tail.
He leans back with a sigh, tugging a blanket over him. He feels boneless and lets out a small purr as he coils around one of his eggbois.
That’s when the smell hits him. It’s pleasant, almost like a day at the beach. He flicks his forked tongue out, tasting the air.
There!
He looks down, stunned. Vox’s blue striped jacket is draped over him, still strongly scented. Pentious clutches it closer, breathes in the ocean scent, blushes, and quickly pulls it away.
Could it be a courting gift?
He blushes furiously at the thought! It was his boss, but well, he'd never seen Vox bring Baxter back to their nest when they were still together, and he’d passed out while working on VoxTek projects. Pentious can’t help the excited trill at the implication. Vox must have seen him collapse and brought him back, and then the Overlord had given him an item of clothing for his nest.
He breathes in Vox’s scent and purrs. He certainly wouldn’t mind being courted by an omega like Vox.