Chapter Three: Percy

I didn’t make friends. Couldn’t, really. I’d always been shit at small talk, and as much as I’d craved companionship, I hadn’t wanted to subject anyone else to my family. So that was why at first it hadn’t occurred to me that Tommy and I could ever be anything at all other than roommates. It wasn’t how I was wired. Growing up as I had, surrounded by my Dad and his friends, my brothers and theirs, there hadn’t been an opportunity to meet someone like Tommy before.

It had been my first day on campus. Flowers were popping through their beds and birds flitted from branch to leafy-green branch as our group headed toward the science building. We’d been touring campus all morning, working our way south in a gaggle of freshmen, and I’d heard a noise behind me before turning to investigate. That’s when I saw him. 

Tommy was laughing in the center of a squad of people of all shapes and sizes—though he hadn’t been Tommy to me then—just a brunette omega with a pointy chin and purple Doc Martins. His head was tossed back, his green eyes crinkled. The others flocked around him, soaking up his laughter and I just stared and stared at him. Because he was everything I would never be, walking around like he didn’t realize how lucky he was. 

Lithe, beautiful, loud, and free.

I should’ve hated him.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I found myself gravitating toward him. Like a cat basking in puddles of sunshine on a warm spring day. I soaked him up like sunbeams because I knew if I couldn’t be him, the least I could do was watch him be.

We were opposites in every way and somehow that was why we worked. I’d never been more shocked than the day I walked into my dorm room and realized Tommy was going to be my roommate. Imagine my surprise when we rarely argued. At least most of the time.

Now we were butting heads a bit.

“Look, Percy, I get that you don’t want your dad to know where you’ve been staying, but I draw the line here.”

“Where?” I stopped folding my clothes, my hands shaking a little as my shoulders drew up tight and I glared down at a pair of my holey-mis-matched socks. I chucked them to the side, my movements jerky. I hated when he got like this, all agitated. Made me wanna bare my teeth and run. I’d known this confrontation was coming, but the inevitable fight still made my hackles rise.

Tommy had been side-eyeing me for days now. The closer we got to my move in at the Alpha Beta Phi’s dorm the more tense our conversations had become. Clearly, he thought I was being stupid, though I didn’t really get why.

He was about to tell me, though.

I could taste his anger in the air.

Bitter, sharp.

“You can’t keep living like this. It would be different if he was like…I don’t know, some distant uncle or whatever, and didn’t know your designation—but fuck dude. He’s your dad. And you’re an omega. He knows you are. He’s always known. You—and he—can’t change that fact.”

He’d probably rehearsed that. It sounded rehearsed. I could feel my blood thrumming the way it always did when I was under attack, though this time I knew not to expect anything physical. That wasn’t Tommy’s way. He was a guy, but he wasn’t that kinda guy.

I didn’t know what to do with him sometimes.

The fact he was all talk, talk, talk. Like talking ever solved anything.

Newsflash it didn’t.

All it got you was black eyes and a sore jaw.

“I know it’s hard for you to accept—even though you are stubborn as fuck and won’t tell me why—but I’m not blind. I don’t need you to tell me with words that the only reason you’re leaving is because you’re terrified of what your dad will do when he finds out you disobeyed him.”

Fuck, I never should’ve drunk tequila with him last month. He wouldn’t have known shit if I hadn’t gotten weak one night after visiting home and spewed my secrets—and my insides—all over our shared bathroom floor.

I never drank, for good reason. 

It only ever led to trouble, especially for a light-weight like me. The fact that Tommy could drink me under a table despite being half my size was just another fuck you from the universe.

“It’s not that.” I was quick on my feet, dodging the question because that was what I’d always done. It was the way of things. Take a few punches to appease, then dodge when the going gets too rough and the attacker has finally tired themselves out.

“If it’s not that, then what is it?”

I didn’t have an answer for him. Truthfully, I didn’t even have one for myself. Deep down I knew Tommy was right, but I refused to admit it. It was one thing to spill secrets when your blood was pumping with tequila and something entirely else to do so stone cold sober while folding threadbare socks. My silence only incensed him, though.

“Do you really want to live with a bunch of Alpha-holes?” No. I really didn’t. “The stench alone should dissuade you.”

I rolled my eyes.

Tommy didn’t get me. Didn’t get the way the smell was faint, but familiar. He was always going on and on about sweaty socks and man feet. When he said it like that, yeah, it was pretty gross. But it kinda smelled like home there, however weakly my nose was able to pick it up. Scent blockers made it so I couldn’t smell the distinct Alpha scents anyway, so I didn’t get why he thought it was such a big deal.

“What if you want to get off scent-blockers and suppressants?” He asked for like the millionth time. “If you’re in an alpha dorm pretending to be a beta you literally can’t. You’re committing to two or more years of ingesting literal poison.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“It is if you never fucking take breaks, Percy. I know you say you had a heat before starting college a year and a half ago, but that’s just not enough.” 

I could hear how angry he was without having to turn around and see his red face. I wondered how mad he’d be if I admitted I’d lied about that particular piece of information.

I hadn’t had a heat since I’d turned sixteen, not that I’d tell him that. Judgey-Mc-Judgerton that he was.

“You don’t want to do this, Percy,” Tommy insisted.

“I do.” It was like he wasn’t even listening. Or maybe his comments were hitting too close to home. Either way, anger tingled inside me as my hands began to shake.

“No, you don’t. You don’t. You just want to please your dad.”

Alright. Now I was officially done with the conversation.

“I’m officially done with this conversation.” I repeated out loud, shoving my laundry aside as I turned around to glare at Tommy. He was standing just like I’d thought he’d be, legs spread, his hands on his hips. His stupid purple boots that I kinda love-hated were tumbled haphazardly half under his bed.

“Percy—“

“I’m serious, Tommy. Fuck off.” I glared at him, my temper erupting as I stomped my way to our shared coat rack and tore my jacket from it. My movements were jerky and uncoordinated as I put it on and then shoved my way out into the hallway, Tommy’s words still ringing in my ears.

***

I found myself at the graveyard.

Again.

It was just as cold out as before and I idled in my car for a whole five minutes before I decided to say fuck it and head toward what I’d privately dubbed Haden’s bridge. Maybe he was the devil from the stories—maybe he wasn’t. But his memory had been haunting my dreams for weeks now and I figured the least he could do was suffer through my black mood with me.

My unfinished bond was quiet as I approached, stepping around graves out of politeness, my worn hand-me-down army boots crunching on the still dry, fallen leaves. It hadn’t snowed yet. But there was still time.

Winters in this part of the north were always full of dry wind and blistering cold, even after the first snow had fallen. It was pretty though, even if it was uncomfortable.

When I found the grasshopper grave I’d dug, I sat beside it, soaking up the darkness beneath the bridge, listening to the drip, drip of water droplets as they made their way to the cobblestones.

“Why’d you bite me?” I asked the quiet, because it was something that had been bothering me since that night. 

I’d searched my dreams for answers, but all I’d gotten were glimpses of the alpha who had left me behind. In the bath. Eating dinner. Sitting alone in the dark. Peeks at a future that didn’t exist, a world that wasn’t real, a man that didn’t want me. “Why do it, if you didn’t know what it meant?”

Maybe that wasn’t it though. Maybe he’d known. Maybe he just hadn’t cared about the very real repercussions his bite would instill upon me. “I was never gonna mate anyways.” I told the dark, my heart in my throat, “but if my dad sees he’ll—“ the words choked on the way out so I shoved them back inside me, keeping them safe in the gaping hole where my heart lay dormant.

“Whatever.” I snorted to myself, kicking at a rock, careful to rearrange the makeshift cross I’d laid across the grasshopper grave so it was upright once again. Stupid, because the grasshopper didn’t give a shit. But I had to do it anyway.

I sat there for a long time.

Long enough I had ignored at least seven of Tommy’s buzzing phone calls. Long enough the sun had set and the bitter cold had swept in once again. Finally, I rose to my feet and made my way back through the graveyard toward where I’d parked, my anger gone, Tommy forgiven.

I didn’t have any more answers.

And somehow, I knew Haden would be visiting my dreams again that night, and I didn’t know how to feel about that.