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Breathing in the Upside Down was like swallowing splinters of a silence that had been rotting for centuries. Every step in that twisted forest was an affront to the senses, a monochrome nightmare where even the whispers of the wind seemed laden with malevolence. After the desperate flight from the dry lake bed, the stillness that followed the demobats' attack was almost worse than their deafening screeches—a void broken only by the ragged gasps of four figures trudging painfully through the gnarled roots.
Steve walked at the front, or at least he tried to. His bare torso, once tanned and firm, was now a landscape of torn flesh. The bats had set upon him with incomprehensible ferocity, ripping chunks of skin and muscle from his sides. The blood, an almost black red under the sickly light of that place, flowed ceaselessly, forming sticky rivulets that mingled with the surrounding filth. But he kept his head high, his jaw clenched in a grimace of determination that bordered on stubbornness.
"It was nothing," he repeated for the third time, his voice aiming for steady, but coming across as dangerously fragile. "Just... scratches."
Nancy walked a few steps behind, never taking her eyes off him. Her mind had already catalogued the wounds: deep, multiple, with tissue loss. They weren't scratches. They were serious bites. She watched how Steve's torso contracted with every breath, how sweat beaded his pale forehead, how his steps grew increasingly unsteady. Denial was armor Steve had always worn, a tough-guy facade that was cracking in plain sight.
Robin, beside her, pressed her lips together until they turned white. She knew Steve better than almost anyone, and deciphering his lies was as easy as reading a book. She saw the almost imperceptible tremor in his knees, the way his arms hung limp as if any extra movement would drain an energy he no longer had. Her best friend was bleeding out right in front of her, and the feeling of helplessness was like a cold needle driving into her chest.
Eddie, the furthest behind, scrambled over rocks covered in a blackish, slimy moss. With his eyes wide open, he scanned the horizon of skeletal trees, searching for more winged silhouettes in the reddish haze. His breathing was ragged, not only because of the tangible fear electrifying the air, but from the emotional chaos roaring inside him. He wasn't a hero. He ran, he hid. But now he was here, in the mouth of hell, with three people he barely knew but with whom he already shared an absurd and terrifying fate.
And then Steve stumbled.
It wasn't a dramatic trip over a root, but a total failure of his equilibrium, a collapse that sent his body lurching violently to one side. Robin lunged to catch him, but it was Nancy who got there first, wrapping her arms firmly around his waist just before his knees hit the ash-covered ground.
"Steve!" Nancy's voice came out sharper than she intended, betraying the panic she had been holding back.
"I'm fine, I'm fine, Nance," he muttered, though his eyes took an extra second to focus on her face. His skin was cold and clammy to the touch. "Just... need a minute."
"You're not fine. You're losing a lot of blood," Nancy stated, leaving no room for argument. With a strength born of urgency, she guided him to a nearby rock formation—stones covered in dry lichen that offered precarious support. She helped him lean back, his bare back against the rough, cold surface. Steve let out a muffled groan at the contact, a sound he tried to swallow but that escaped through his clenched teeth.
Nancy knelt beside him, seeing with terrifying clarity the extent of the wounds. On his right side, the flesh was torn open like an irregular crater, the edges frayed and blackened. Blood welled up steadily, a dark flow that chilled the blood in her own veins. She tried to apply pressure with strips torn from her own shirt, but the fabric soaked through in a matter of seconds. The blood slipped between her fingers, hot and thick, and a cold despair began to crawl up her spine.
"It won't stop... I need bandages, gauze, anything..." she murmured, her mind racing. Her frantic gaze swept the surroundings: rocks, dead branches, ash. Nothing useful. Absolutely nothing. Robin had gone pale, her usual nervous chatter completely absent.
In her desperation, Nancy's eyes traveled to the figure perched on a rock. Eddie Munson. His silhouette cut against the nightmare sky, his long, curly hair falling over his shoulders, the denim vest with its patches and chains hanging from his belt. He had his back to them, completely oblivious to the crisis unfolding at his feet. But Nancy no longer saw the frightened boy who had jumped through the lake portal.
A vivid memory flared in her mind: another wound, another moment of urgency. Her arm, months ago, a deep, dirty cut from a poorly secured beam in the Byers' shed. The sharp pain, the blood running. And then, Jonathan. Jonathan taking her arm in his hands before pushing aside the torn fabric. His tongue, warm and surprisingly rough, tracing the wound. The initial sting, followed by an impossible tingle. The bleeding stopping almost at once. The skin sealing itself in a matter of hours. The feeling of relief and, beneath it, something deeper—an instinctive connection that had shaken her to the bone.
Jonathan was an Alpha. And Alphas, as Nancy had learned that day—and as everyone theoretically knew—had a special quality: their saliva possessed healing properties. They could lick their Omegas and Betas to ease their pain, to heal their wounds, to literally repair physical damage with the touch of their tongue. It was one of those evolutionary advantages biology had granted certain individuals, a trait that in ancient times had meant the difference between life and death and which, even in the present—though rarely necessary in a world with hospitals and modern medicine—remained a latent ability, an instinct rooted deep within them.
The number of Omegas and even Betas who had been saved throughout history thanks to this quality was considerable, and Nancy, always skeptical when it came to caste dynamics, couldn't deny the evidence of what she had experienced firsthand.
Eddie was an Alpha. She knew it. She could sense it in the musky scent that emanated from him, mixed with the smell of leather, tobacco, and that metallic tang of the Upside Down. She'd known it from the first moment she'd seen him at Skull Rock, even if at that moment other smells—fear, adrenaline, uncertainty—had masked everything. But now, in the tense stillness of the forest, she perceived it clearly. An Alpha in their group, just a few meters away. The answer was as simple as it was terrifying.
"Eddie!" she called with all her might. The urgency gave it an authoritative edge, stripped of any hesitation. "Eddie, get down. I need you to come here right now."
Eddie whipped his head around, startled. His eyes blinked in confusion before focusing on the scene. His expression shifted from bewilderment to a grimace of indulgent horror as he clumsily climbed down from the rock. His boots thudded dully against the ground. He approached with slow, uncertain steps, his body language screaming reluctance.
"What's going on? Is he... is he okay?" he asked, though Steve's pallor and the blood staining Nancy's hands answered the question on their own.
Nancy didn't waste time with subtleties. Her fingers still pressed weakly against Steve's side, feeling the warmth of life seeping away with each heartbeat. She looked up at Eddie, and the intensity of her gaze made him instinctively take a half-step back.
"Eddie, I need you to lick his wounds. Now."
The words hung in the air, absurd and laced with deadly urgency. Eddie froze, his mouth falling open in total disbelief. His eyebrows shot up, nearly disappearing beneath his unruly bangs. He looked at Nancy, then at Steve—who had also opened his eyes wide despite the pain—and then back at Nancy. Robin, from the background, let out a choked sound, a gasp of surprise.
"What?" Eddie managed, a disbelieving, nervous laugh catching in his throat. He shook his head, curls bouncing. "Are you shitting me, Wheeler? No way in hell am I licking Harrington."
His tone was with the bravado typical of his role as the high school «freak», a mask he wore to keep the panic at bay. But Nancy wasn't in the mood for games.
"Alphas have healing saliva," she explained, quick, concise, without releasing the pressure on the wound. "They can heal and relieve pain just by licking a wound. I know, I've seen it. Jonathan did it to me once. If you don't do it, Steve won't make it. He's losing too much blood."
Steve, slumped against the rock, his face beaded with cold sweat, turned his head toward her. His pride as the former king of Hawkins High, his tough, invincible facade, warred with the reality his body was screaming at him with every passing second.
"I... really, it's no big deal," he insisted, though his voice sounded weak and distant even to his own ears. He tried to sit up a little, to prove he was fine, but a violent wave of dizziness knocked him back against the rock. His hand instinctively sought Nancy's arm, clinging to her tightly. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine, Steve!" Nancy's exclamation was almost a roar, fed up with all the denial. Then her voice softened, though the firmness remained, a core of steel. "Trust me. Please."
Robin, until then frozen in place, took a step forward. Her face was open conflict, her loyalty to Steve clashing with logic and fear. She rubbed her hands together nervously, chewing the inside of her cheek.
"Okay, hold on, hold on..." she cut in, her voice fast and breathless, the way it always got when she was nervous. "I get the theory, all right? Alpha saliva, miraculous healing, all that." She gestured vaguely at Steve's mangled torso. "But, I don't know if you guys remember, we're in an alternate dimension right now, and those things didn't seem very... hygienic. What if he catches something? What if Alpha saliva doesn't work on wounds caused by interdimensional bats? What if Eddie gets infected himself? There are a lot of variables here, Nance. A whole lot."
Eddie pointed at Robin with both index fingers, nodding vigorously, grateful for the logical backup. His face was a poem of poorly disguised anxiety.
"Exactly! Thanks, Buckley. The voice of reason. She's goddamn right." He turned to Nancy, lifting his hands in a theatrical gesture. "I have no clue what the hell those things are carrying. Could be venom, or spores, or... I don't know, some kind of ancient curse. I'm not exactly keen on being the first Alpha to die from licking mutant bat blood."
Nancy clenched her teeth. Frustration bubbled inside her, mixed with an icy fear she couldn't allow herself to feel. Not now. She stared hard at Eddie, ignoring Robin for a moment, and in her eyes there was a cold fire, the determination of someone who had already seen too much horror to let anyone die from indecision.
"Nothing's going to happen to him, okay?" she said, pointing at Steve, who was watching the argument with eyes that had begun to lose focus. "Alpha saliva doesn't just heal, it neutralizes toxins and pathogens too. It's part of the package. I read an article article a while back, when I researched the topic more after what happened with Jonathan. Eddie won't get sick from licking Steve's wounds. But Steve will get worse, a lot worse, if Eddie doesn't start licking him right now."
Her words echoed through the dead forest. Eddie felt Nancy's gaze like a physical weight, but he also noticed something else. His eyes, unwillingly, flicked to Steve. The Omega—because he suddenly knew it with a certainty that needed no explanation—lay pale and vulnerable against the rock. His bare torso was smeared with sweat and ash, but beneath the grime, his natural scent filtered weakly through. A scent that Eddie, in the madness of the day, hadn’t had time—or desire—to process. But now, with the barrier of panic slightly cracked, he smelled it. Something warm, like toasted hazelnut and soft vanilla, laced with the metallic tang of blood and the sourness of fear. An Omega scent in distress.
And something, deep inside him, responded.
It was an awakening, an ancient, instinctive presence that stirred in the deepest part of his chest. His inner Alpha—a part of him he had always thought of as dormant or nonexistent—growled. A silent growl, a vibration that didn’t reach his throat but shook his guts. Suddenly, the sight of Steve's blood, which had previously filled him with nausea and revulsion, transformed into something else. It was still horrible, but beneath the horror, a protective, almost furious urgency began to grow.
"Goddammit..." Eddie muttered, scratching his head in frustration, his rings glinting with the flashes from the sky. He knew Nancy wouldn't give up. He knew that look—that Wheeler stubbornness Mike sometimes displayed during their campaigns. And he also knew, in some logical, terrified corner of his mind, that she was right.
Robin watched him, expectant. Nancy glared at him. And Steve... Steve let out a small, involuntary moan of pain, almost a whisper, and his hand slid weakly from Nancy's arm to his own stomach, as if he were trying to hold in the life that was seeping out of him.
That sound was the trigger. Eddie rolled his eyes toward the hellish sky, let out a huff of pure exasperation, and dropped to his knees in front of Steve with a jerky motion, raising a small cloud of black ash. The sudden closeness made both of them, Alpha and Omega, visibly tense. He could feel the heat radiating from Steve's wounded body, a feverish heat that clashed with the prevailing cold.
"I'm gonna do it, fuck. But let the record show that this is the weirdest thing I've ever done in my life, and I once had to lick beer off a public bathroom floor." His voice was a mix of sarcasm and poorly concealed nervousness, one last attempt to cling to normalcy.
From his position, his eyes traveled over the expanse of Steve's torso. Now, this close, the wound was even more overwhelming. The torn flesh, the jagged edges, the fresh blood still welling up, mixing with the drier blood that had already partially coagulated. Eddie's stomach lurched, and a dry heave threatened to climb up his throat. He swallowed hard. His inner Alpha, however, did not recoil. It straightened, attentive, impatient.
Steve looked at him. His eyes, clouded with pain, sought Eddie's. His face was contorted, but in his features there was a silent plea that contradicted his earlier words. His lips, cracked with dehydration, moved faintly.
"Eddie... really, you don't have to... I can hold on until..."
He didn't finish the sentence. The first brush of Eddie's tongue against his left side stole his breath. It was a brief lick, almost tentative, a warm, wet touch along the jagged edge of the nearest wound. Steve gasped, a sharp, startled sound, his whole body tensing in a spasm that combined surprise, the stabbing pain of direct contact with raw flesh, and a strange, underlying tingle. His fingers clawed into the dirt.
Eddie pulled back immediately, his face crumpled in a grimace of disgust and shock. Steve's blood had a metallic, strange taste on his tongue, a flavor that blended copper with something vaguely electric that made him shudder. He wiped his lips with his thumb, a clumsy gesture that only managed to smear the corners of his mouth a little more.
"God, this is disgusting..." he mumbled, spitting a trace of pink-tinged saliva onto the ground. His voice sounded shaky, and his gaze met Steve's, who was watching him with wide eyes, still processing what had just happened.
"One little lick isn't going to do anything, Eddie." Nancy's voice was sharp, but not devoid of a tense hope. "You have to cover the wound properly. You have to keep at it. You have to want to heal him."
Want to heal him. The phrase resonated in Eddie's skull. Want to heal Steve Harrington. The guy who in high school had reigned from a social sphere completely opposite to his own. The guy who now lay at his mercy, wounded and cursing in whispers. Want to heal him? He didn't know if he wanted to. But his Alpha did. His Alpha wanted to pounce on the wound and not pull away until it was healed, wanted to wrap that Omega in his scent, wanted to...
He drew a deep, trembling breath. He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, his expression had shifted subtly. The mocking, nervous resistance had faded, giving way to an intense, sober concentration. Without another word, he leaned over Steve's side again.
This time it was different.
The first lick of this new series was longer, firmer. It swept the wound from top to bottom, the broad, warm tongue gathering the fresh blood and depositing his saliva into the bed of open flesh. Steve let out a muffled groan, biting his lower lip so hard his teeth threatened to pierce the skin. The pain was sharp, as if the wound were being cleaned with alcohol, but beneath the burn, an insidious relief began to bloom, spreading like a warm tide.
Eddie, eyes narrowed, continued. His tongue worked along the edges of the wound, cleaning away the remnants of dirt and shredded tissue. His stomach no longer protested; his conscious mind, with all its fears and sarcasm, was beginning to fade into the background, lulled by a deeper, primal instinct. His Alpha was guiding his movements now, tilting his head, adjusting the pressure of his tongue. A low, almost inaudible growl vibrated in his chest as he licked, a soothing sound meant to calm the wounded Omega.
Nancy and Robin watched in sepulchral silence. Robin had brought a hand to her mouth, her fingers pressing against her lips in a gesture of contained anxiety. She saw her best friend squirm under the Alpha's care and didn't know if what she felt was relief, concern, or a strange discomfort at witnessing something so intimate. Nancy, on the other hand, maintained a stoic posture, her eyes analyzing every detail: the bleeding, the reaction of the flesh, Eddie's expression. As a journalist and as a friend, she needed to confirm that it was working.
And it was working.
Steve felt the change almost immediately. The steady flow of blood he could feel pumping from his sides began to slow. The heat of the hemorrhage—that wet, terrifying heat—was replaced by a different kind of heat. The heat of Eddie's tongue, yes, but also a healing warmth that radiated from the wound into the rest of his body. An electric, pleasant tingle that numbed the shredded nerves. The pain, which had been a monstrous entity latched onto his torso, began to recede, to blur, replaced by a sensation of relief so profound it nearly drew a sob from him.
His Omega senses, heightened by the trauma, stirred awake. Eddie's scent, which before had seemed vaguely threatening or simply foreign—a strange Alpha, an outcast—now flooded him with a new intensity. It smelled of dark musk, of old leather from his jacket, of a bitter hint of black tobacco, and beneath all of that, something clean and wild, like the forest after a storm. It was a pure, enveloping Alpha scent, and in his vulnerable state, Steve found himself clinging to it desperately. His nostrils flared, inhaling deeply. A slight tremor ran through his body.
Eddie, oblivious to Steve's olfactory analysis, was sinking deeper and deeper into his instinct. His licks grew insistent, meticulous. His tongue no longer just traced the wound on the side; it circled it, cleaning the streaks of dried blood, exploring the healthy skin that bordered it.
A shiver ran down Steve's spine when Eddie’s tongue licked a particularly sensitive spot, just below his ribs. His right hand, which had been weakly scratching at the dirt, rose without his command and came to rest on Eddie’s head. Not forcefully, but with a light touch, his fingers tangling in the mop of brown curls, anchoring themselves there.
Eddie paused for a millisecond, startled by the contact, but his Alpha recognized the gesture. It was submission. It was trust. An Omega seeking comfort from his healer. A deeper growl, almost a purr, vibrated in his throat. He glanced up at Steve for just an instant, eyes dark and bright, completely absorbed in his task. There was no mockery in them, no fear, no sarcasm. Only an animal concentration, a primal need. Meeting that gaze, Steve felt the air leave his lungs for a reason entirely different from the hemorrhage. His cheeks, previously pale, flushed with an unexpected blush.
"The wound..." Nancy murmured, low, almost to herself.
Robin stepped one pace closer, eyes wide.
The wound on his left side, the one Eddie had been treating so diligently, had stopped bleeding completely. The torn edges were no longer open and oozing; they had knitted together into a thin line of new, pink tissue—an immature but solid scar. It looked like a wound days old, not minutes.
Eddie straightened up for a moment, his breathing slightly labored. His lips and chin were smeared with the dark red of Steve’s blood, a savage contrast against the pallor of his skin. His eyes swept over the Omega’s body and stopped at the other side, where the matching wound still gaped open, though less deep than the first. His duty was not finished. Not by a long shot.
Without a word, without a shred of his initial reluctance, Eddie leaned in again. This time his body moved with greater confidence, repositioning himself for a better angle. His left hand braced against the ground beside Steve’s hip, and his right, with a slow, almost reverent movement, came to rest on Steve’s stomach, just above the waistband of his jeans, on a patch of unharmed skin. The warm palm against the Omega’s abdomen provoked an immediate reaction.
Steve let out a gasp, this time unmistakably tinged with something other than pain. It was a sharp, startled exhalation that ended in a faint tremor of his abdominal muscles beneath Eddie’s hand. His Omega, drowsy and terrified until then, stirred inside him. It wasn’t a fight-or-flight response, but a response of recognition. Alpha. The Alpha is here. The Alpha is healing me. The sensation of Eddie’s hand, heavy and warm, was an anchor keeping him from drifting into panic.
Eddie began to lick the second wound. Just like the first, the initial contact of his tongue caused a stab of pain, but Steve was ready now. He accepted it with his teeth sunk into his lip, his fingers clutching Eddie’s curls even tighter. But the relief came faster this time, almost as if his body had already learned to receive the healing. The Alpha’s saliva worked swiftly, spreading that healing warmth, sealing the broken vessels and soothing the inflamed nerves.
But Eddie didn’t stop when the bleeding ceased.
He kept licking. His tongue, until then an instrument guided by instinct, became looser, more... exploratory. It traced the line of the new scar with a softness that was almost a caress, drawing slow circles around it. Then, as if a dam had burst, his tongue began to move toward the center of Steve’s abdomen—toward areas that weren’t wounded. Broad, unhurried licks that spread his saliva and his scent over the salty skin.
Steve felt the world shrink to that single point of contact. His senses were saturated with Eddie’s scent, with the warmth of his tongue, with the weight of his hand. The pain was a distant memory. What he felt now was a heady mix of relief, pleasure, and a deep sense of submission that urged him to expose more of his neck, more of his belly, to offer his entire body to this Alpha who was marking and healing him.
A purr escaped his throat—a purely Omega sound, instinctive and beyond any conscious control. His hand in Eddie’s hair was no longer a desperate clutch, but a clumsy yet affectionate caress. His other hand moved and gripped the sleeve of Eddie’s leather jacket, seeking more contact.
The Beta girls, marginalized by the intimacy of the scene, exchanged a look. Robin was gaping, her cheeks burning with a furious blush. Seeing Steve, her Steve, the one who always cracked jokes and pretended to be tougher than he was, purring like a satisfied kitten under Eddie Munson’s ministrations was an image that was going to take some processing. Nancy, always more composed, had her eyebrows raised and a slight tremor on her lips, which she couldn’t tell was from relief or the tension of witnessing such a raw and primitive moment.
Eddie, meanwhile, was lost. His world was the taste of Steve’s skin, his scent, the sounds he made. He licked Steve’s navel, following the trail of dark hair that descended toward his jeans. His tongue traced a damp line just above the waistband of the pants, and it was then that he pressed a small kiss. Not a lick, not a healing. A kiss. Small, soft, almost reverent, on the taut skin of Steve’s lower belly. Then another. And yet another. His lips, still stained with the memory of blood, pressed with a devotion that was almost frightening, scattering soft, wet kisses over the Omega’s stomach.
Steve sobbed. A low, broken sob of pure emotional relief. It was too much. Too much sensation, too much calm, too much protection after so much terror. He felt completely safe for the first time since setting foot in that hellish dimension. Warm, involuntary tears slid down his temples. His hand pulled gently at Eddie’s hair, in a useless attempt to draw him closer.
The spell was broken by the sound of a throat clearing with completely exaggerated volume.
"Ahem!" Robin coughed, with a force that bordered on comical. Her voice echoed through the dead forest like a cannon shot. "Sorry to interrupt... whatever’s going on here. But is everything okay? I mean, is Steve okay?"
The question was rhetorical. Both girls could see that the wounds had stopped bleeding. But Robin needed to burst that bubble of Alpha-Omega intimacy that had formed because she was starting to feel like she was spying on something sacred.
The effect was instant and violent. Eddie blinked, as if snapping out of a hypnotic trance. His lips pulled away from Steve’s skin with a barely audible, wet sound. He scrambled back with a clumsy movement, nearly falling flat on his ass in the ash. His eyes, unfocused a moment before, fixed on Robin, then on Nancy, and finally on Steve, who was still reclined against the rock, his chest heaving and his face streaked with dried tears and blush. Steve’s hand fell from Eddie’s hair, hanging in the air for an instant before the Omega pulled it back toward his own chest, as if he’d been burned. Confusion and shame began to filter through the haze of sated instincts.
Eddie wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, a brusque movement that only succeeded in smearing the leather and the tattoos on his arm with a pinkish residue. His tongue swept over his lips, licking them without thinking, an intimate gesture that made him shudder when he realized what he was doing. He could still taste Steve in his mouth, and that sent a lurch through his stomach that was a mix of panic and a guilty pleasure he wasn’t willing to analyze.
Nancy, resuming her role as pragmatic leader, approached and knelt beside Steve, inspecting the work. Her fingers brushed delicately over the new scars. The tissue was smooth, pink, and firm. There was no redness, no infection. It looked like magic. She glanced at Eddie, but he was avoiding her gaze, suddenly focused in brushing the ash from the knees of his jeans.
"The wounds are much better," Nancy declared, her tone calm but betraying deep relief.. "The bleeding has stopped. The skin has sealed... Steve, how do you feel?"
Steve blinked, slowly regaining consciousness of himself and his surroundings beyond the bubble of warmth and scent that had enveloped him. The pain, indeed, was gone. Where a sharp agony had been, now there was only a dull ache, a memory of the trauma. But in its place, a strange sensation of satisfaction and calm filled his chest—an Omega satisfaction at having been cared for and healed by an Alpha. He swallowed, trying to recompose his facade.
"Yeah... yeah, good. Much better," he replied, his voice still hoarse from the restrained crying. He sat up slowly, bracing himself against the rock, and Nancy helped him straighten. His gaze met Eddie’s for a second. The Alpha immediately averted his eyes, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. The silence between them was thick, charged with everything that had happened and that neither of them knew how to process. Steve cleared his throat, searching for something to say. "Hey, Munson... Thanks. Seriously. That was... pretty incredible."
Eddie let out a short, dry chuckle, still not meeting his eyes. His tone tried to recover its habitual sarcasm, but it came out strangely soft.
"Don’t mention it, Harrington. No big deal. Just... don’t die, okay? It’d be a real shit move to have done this for nothing." He waved a hand in the air dismissively, but the tremor in his fingers betrayed his inner turmoil.
Steve, now on his feet but still weak, felt the cold air of the dimension hit his bare, damp torso. A shiver ran through him. But then, a new scent enveloped him. A clean, musky scent that didn’t come from the Alpha directly but from something he was wearing.
Eddie, watching him from the corner of his eye, seemed to notice his shiver. Without a word, he took off his denim vest—his armor of metal band patches, the most prized garment in his wardrobe—and held it out to Steve. The vest dangled from his fingers, an unmistakable offering.
"Here," he said, in a voice that allowed no argument. "You can’t walk around without a shirt. It’s... indecent. And it’s cold. And there are monsters. So put this on."
Steve stared at the vest. It wasn’t just a piece of clothing for warmth. He knew that. He knew it in the deepest recesses of his Omega instinct. Accepting that garment, that garment that smelled so intensely of Alpha, of his Alpha—because for those minutes, Eddie had been his Alpha—was a symbol. Accepting it meant accepting the care, the protection, the bond that had been forged between them in that nightmare clearing while a rough, warm tongue gave him back his life. It meant carrying his scent, proclaiming that he had been licked and healed. His Omega purred in anticipation.
His hands rose, slowly. He brushed Eddie’s fingers as he took the garment, a brief, electric touch that both of them felt like a jolt of electricity. He settled the vest over his shoulders, slipping his arms through the armholes. The fabric was rough and warm, and it fit him a little big. Yet the weight on his shoulders was like a soothing balm. Eddie’s scent, so concentrated in the fabric, wrapped him completely: musk, leather, tobacco, storm-tossed forest. He closed his eyes for an instant, allowing himself to inhale deeply. When he opened them, he met Eddie’s dark gaze fixed on him, an intense, hungry stare that was immediately replaced by a mask of practiced indifference.
Eddie turned abruptly, giving his back to everyone. His voice came out higher and shriller, the voice of always, the chaotic bard. "Well, are we gonna move or what? I don’t want those things to come back for another round."
He walked away a few steps, but not too far. He stayed out front, scanning the path, with an alert posture he hadn’t had before. A sentinel’s posture.
Robin sidled up to Steve and gave him a soft elbow in the arm, an incredulous smile on her lips.
"You’re wrapped in Munson. Literally. This is the end of times."
Steve shook his head, unable to keep a tired smile from curving the corner of his lips. He adjusted the vest across his chest, feeling the lingering heat of the fabric against his bare skin.
"Shut up, Robin," but there was no malice in his words. Just a strange and profound exhaustion, and beneath it, the warm ember of something he didn’t dare name.
The group resumed their march. The forest remained dark and menacing, the air still smelled of death. But something had changed. Amidst the horror, a silent and impossible bond had been born, sealed with saliva, blood, and a denim vest. An Alpha now walked at the front, his senses alert, protecting his makeshift pack. And an Omega walked behind, wrapped in his scent. Every so often, Steve brushed the edge of the vest with his fingertips, wondering if the true journey home wasn’t, in fact, the path toward understanding what those licks had awakened inside him.