Chapter Text
There’s no way out other than through.
That’s what she tells herself when the days are cold. Frost on the window panes. Fire burning in the fireplace as she sits crouched in front of it, poker lifting a burning log and then putting it back in place. On the coffee table, there’s a mug of hot chocolate that’s long since cooled, the marshmallows that had once sat neatly on top now some gelatinous mess that sits like a lump on top of her drink.
Rey doesn’t think about that too much though.
She’s inside because it’s cold out; despite letting the hot chocolate go lukewarm and then ice cold, she tends the fire and even turns the thermostat up occasionally when the fire isn’t enough to keep her sufficiently warm.
Poe’s out somewhere there in the cold again with Ben. Ben, from the house next door. Ben, who’s watched her go from twee and awkward to less twee and much more awkward. Ben, who’s put bandaids on her knobby knees and gangly limbs and hefted her on his back down steep hills and back alleyways.
Ben, who presented as an alpha two years ago and has been making her life hell ever since.
Winter is a cold month meant for cold things.
Rey breathes into her cupped palms and rubs them together while watching the two boys outside in the snow. They’re cleaning off the cars and shoveling the driveway after the heavy snowfall from the night before. Both are ruddy-cheeked, breathing out heavily from the exertion, from carrying a shovel full of snow across to the large pile at the end of the driveway where the snowplow will later pass by and collect it.
“Rey—” her step-mother’s voice breaks the silence in the living room and Rey whips around, the blush that spreads across her cheeks calling out her guilt. Shame at being caught wanting, for even a moment. “Do you think you could call the boys in for lunch? Soup’s almost done.”
She nods instead of answering. If she opened her mouth now, her voice would surely fail her.
By the front door, Rey stops for a moment when her nose catches on an ever-elusive scent. Well, not so elusive; rather, it practically drips off the green wool sweater that sits in a wrinkled heap on the bench by the door. Her fingers twitch by her sides.
It’s impossible for her to resist the urge to cradle the sweater up to her face, taking a deep inhale and letting the scent lingering on the fabric permeate around her nose. Her eyes flutter closed.
Two years of this scent diffusing through their house. Two years of becoming attuned to its shades, to the variety and complexity of Ben’s scent profile; the tell-tale flickers of ember when he’s upset, the soft, almost petrichor smell that accompanies loss, the sudden tang, like a burst of citrus across her tongue when he’s about to go into rut—and oh, that makes her blush all over again and put the sweater down.
She’s timid and awkward, on the verge of her eighteenth birthday, on the verge of presenting, and still Rey finds it near impossible to open her mouth to speak.
Something’s coming. Something’s beginning to peek up from under her skin, still restless in her veins but about to make itself known.
She takes a breath in. It’s not worth thinking about. Two breaths. Holds them up high in her chest until her lungs ache and her eyes water and she’s forced to let it out, breathing in quick, shallow breaths to replenish herself.
Rey opens the door and calls out for Poe and Ben. They turn at the sound of her voice. Even from the distance, she can see their snowflake-encrusted eyelashes and the pink hue of their cheeks. Each grins brilliantly, even exhausted as they are, stomping up the walkway to the house, patting down their jackets and jeans to remove as much snow as possible.
“Wait—watch out, don’t wanna get you all wet,” Poe warns her the second before he envelopes her in a hug that leaves her screeching and clawing at his shoulders, the snow on his coat already melting into her shirt.
When he puts her down, the last lingering giggles are spiraling out of her until Ben steps into the foyer as well and shuts the door behind him. The chill has already settled into her bones. She’s fighting off shivers while standing there with them in the small enclosed foyer while they peel off their jackets and boots and scarves, hanging everything up and the smell is suddenly—
Rey takes a little sniff, but doesn’t overdo it. It almost makes her dizzy to smell him this close, even with Poe’s pungent, older-brother stink on him.
Poe’s already out the second door and jogging down the hall to grab a bowl for lunch within seconds, leaving Rey and Ben alone in the foyer. She feels her chest constrict again, hugging her arms around her while she watches Ben slip the sweater back on, tugging it in place.
The grin he flashes her with is conspiratorial, familiar. “It’s okay, squirt. Come out later and we’ll push him into the snow or something.”
He pinches her cheek as he passes, his scent trailing after him down the wall and Rey smiles until her chest feels cold again, something like loss slipping in. He doesn’t give her a glance back and then he rounds the corner, out of her sight.
It’s telling, the pain in her chest. In her mind, she comes up with more and more inventive ways to keep it all bottled up inside. Her birthday’s right around the corner, not more than a month away, and though she won’t say it, though Rey won’t so much as admit it to herself, she knows that something disastrous is on its way.
Rey sits quietly at the table with the boys, her spoonfuls deliberate. She does not slurp up the broth like Poe does, all uncouth, no-manners, college boy that he’s grown into. Even Ben ribs him about it, winking at Rey when she nods in agreement.
She stares into her soup until the outside world fades into a blur.
The snow keeps on coming.
Rey presents on a Wednesday morning, waking up fever-hot, tongue spotty like thrush, body hot and cold, chills running up and down her spine. An omega’s first heat is always like this and she presents a bit later than most—there’s a boy in Rey’s class who presented in ninth grade, missing a week’s worth of classes because the fever hit him so hard.
She’s miserable for nigh on a week. Turns and turns in bed until her cheek finds the coolest side of the pillow and sleep finally subsumes her again. She wakes up frantic sometimes, dreams of a man standing on an island that she’s swimming to until the island begins to sink beneath the waves and soon it’s only her bobbing in the water until her body grows too tired to swim anymore, and then her mother rushes into the room to hold a cold cloth to her forehead.
Rey hears Ben at their door on the third day of her heat, when her consciousness has only briefly crested over the wave of sleep.
“…okay, right?”
She hears very little of what he says. It’s a wonder that Rey can hear him at all—her room is on the second floor of the house, not quite above the stoop but a room over. Every part of her is sensitive though, acutely fine-tuned to his presence, and even from behind the closed door and a whole floor away, Rey imagines that she can almost smell the scent of ash and fire.
Poe’s voice is equally muffled. “Yeah, she’s been…sleep…another—days…”
Rey catches the faintest bits. Her eyelids are too heavy to open, her body too sore to get up and walk over to the window, eager as always for even a glimpse of dark hair curling around too big ears (he’s yet to grow into them; she finds them endearing). The longing is almost painful. If she could even pick herself up enough to crawl over to the window and peer over the ledge, it would be enough.
Ben’s voice is hoarse when she hears again. “…kay…if you need anything…tomorrow?”
The smell verges on sulfurous. In her half-dream state, his disquiet reveals something so deeply entwined in his being that for a second she mistakens it for love.
For a week, she dreams of the various angles of Ben’s face. She dreams of him between her thighs feeling the wetness that spills from her and feeding his cock into her supple body. It hurts and it burns and her voice cracks from calling out to someone who isn’t there.
It is a small comfort that she doesn’t say his name aloud. Even if her walls are well insulated, no parent should have to hear that.
Coming out of her heat week leaves her with a bone-deep ache. Rey’s lucky that her heat ends on a Friday, so she spends the weekend under the covers recuperating from the muscle spasms and contractions, drinking copious amounts of orange juice squeezed fresh from the fruit and chicken noodle soup. She musters up enough energy to do the laundry however, beyond mortified by the idea of her mom or dad or Poe (even more humiliating to consider) seeing her slick-riddled clothes and sheets.
When Monday rolls around, Rey’s not shocked when Ben joins them for supper that night; Poe and Ben have been best friends since Rey can remember, since she was just a tiny child holding her mother’s finger from her stroller while Ben and Poe played in the sandbox at the park. She is shocked, however, by the way her whole body stills and angles towards him when the first hint of his scent wafts under her nose.
It’s multiflorous. It’s intoxicating in the best possible way. Rey’s nose twitches. Her eyes water. Ben is in the middle of her kitchen helping plate dinner when she walks in.
Dinner is a torturous affair that she sits through willingly because to leave would mean distancing herself from Ben. Not possible.
Rey does scamper away by the time the plates are cleared away though, making a quick excuse about homework to avoid dessert. It’s embarrassing to sit there with her family while the gusset of her panties is damp and she’s doing everything in her power to avoid making eye contact with Ben. Twice, she imagines him studying her closely, confused about something.
The signs are everywhere. Rey doesn’t want to think about scent-pairing with Ben, but it’s all that she can think about these days. She has had years to become accustomed to his scent; the sudden potency does nothing to stave off her infatuation. If anything, it’s just growing stronger.
In her room, Rey sits and pours over her notes with little thought to reading. A few minutes go by before the door to her room cracks open and Rey looks up, eyes widening when she sees only Ben there, fingers curling around the doorframe.
“Hey squirt,” he says, stepping in but leaving the door slightly ajar behind him.
Ben kneels by her desk and the sight of him stooping to be at eye level with her makes Rey’s heart jump.
“Can I…what’s up?” she squeaks out.
He rests a hand on her desk. It creaks under his hold.
“Heard you had a tough week,” he says, eyes sympathetic. Rey’s grateful for the small amount of tact he exerts by not just coming right out and saying it—without naming why the last week was so especially hard for her—but even the faintest mention of it has her blood heating up in her veins. It takes everything in her not to squirm in her chair.
She bites her lip. “Yeah, I—I’m okay now.”
His scent is all the more powerful in the cramped space of her room. It infiltrates every nook and cranny, burrowing into the blankets on her bed and the teddy bear still stuffed between her pillows.
“Not feeling too sore?” Ben probes, leaning a little closer to her. Rey swears he takes the slightest whiff, but it’s so quick that he’s likely just breathing. “My mom used to make my dad get her these, uh, pain relief patches. We still have a box of them at home if you want any.”
It’s borderline inappropriate for him to bring her heat up like this, but Rey can’t help the thrill that lights like a fire in her. Alpha wants to know how she’s feeling, how he can help. No matter that he’s not her alpha. No matter that she presented as an omega less than a week ago. When Rey breathes in, he smells familiar and safe, soft like cottonwood or thistle. Like fresh fallen snow.
“My mom has a…a cream,” she says with a swallow. “So, I’m…I’m okay.”
“Oh. That’s good.”
“I’m alright though.” The reassurance bursts out of her like if she doesn’t speak, he’ll leave. “Thank you for—I—it was a hard week.”
“I’ve never had a heat, but, uh—” here, his cheeks go a bit pink, visible even with the dim lamp that Rey has on, “—ruts are rough. I feel like I’ve woken up in a cave once they’re over. Rubbed raw, chafed all over. Guzzling a swimming pool’s worth of water after.”
Her skin is so hot. Rey can hardly believe her crush is just kneeling there beside her desk, close enough for her to lean forward and lick the little bit of chocolate from dessert from the corner of his lip, talking to her about his ruts of all things.
Rey swallows again, averting her gaze for just a second before it’s swallowed up again in Ben’s dark eyes. “It was a bit, um—n-no one really talks about it at school.”
“There’s probably some stuff you can read online, but I’m also…if you need someone to talk to, I’m just next door. I know it’s probably too embarrassing to—well, you probably don’t want to talk about it with Poe, I bet.”
His hand slides across the desk to where hers is laid flat, the tips of his fingers just brushing her hand. A gush of slick comes out. Even she can smell the slight honeyed scent of her pussy.
His nostrils flare.
Rey’s throat constricts, goes so tight that she can’t even respond. Only nods and holds his gaze for what feels like an hour until Ben smiles—a taut, forced thing, like something straining at the edges—and finally leaves her, the door shutting softly behind him.
She drops her head right on the desk once he’s gone. Ben’s scent in her room is going to be a problem tonight.
In her daydreams, Rey wonders what she smells like to Ben. If now her scent has ripened to him, if he could pick her out from a crowd. It’s a silly daydream. It gives her hope where she once had discipline.
More snow falls.
They’ve been blessed with a relatively mild winter, only the occasional snowfall that’s cleaned up within the day, until her mother’s away on a work conference, her father’s visiting his parents across the country, and Poe’s staying with a friend on the other side of town. The snowstorm that hits that afternoon takes the entire city by storm; even the weather forecasters had only foreseen the lightest dusting of snow, but by the time Rey deigns to pull her eyes away from the television, the snow whipping outside the window tells another story.
The power flickers once, then twice, before it cuts out entirely.
“Damn it,” Rey sighs, pulling the blanket tighter around her.
When her phone rings, she already knows who’s calling.
“What do you want?” Rey grumbles, phone pressed between her shoulder and ear while she roots around in the closet for the backup flashlights and batteries.
“I’m doing just fine, thanks for asking,” Poe says, the eyeroll evident in his tone. “And you?”
“Looking for batteries,” she mumbles, then smiles when she finds the box she was looking for. “Which I just found. You know I’m just teasing. If you’re calling about the power, I should be fine for the night—probably going to need to throw out some food whenever the power comes back on.”
“Might be a day or two. I checked online and it looks like the heavy winds took down some wires near the house or something. We didn’t lose power at Finn’s, so I’m just gonna stay here until the weather clears up—I can come get you tomorrow if you want?”
“Uh, maybe. It might get kinda cold, so…um…yeah I guess so. If it’s not back on by the morning, that’d be cool—just don’t drive in the storm.”
“Obviously not, freak. Anyway, I’ll come get you as soon as the weather clears up. There’s extra blankets in my room if you need any.”
“Like I’m going to touch your nasty ass blankets.” Rey perks up. “Do you still have your Christmas chocolate in your room?”
“Yeah, it’s in my desk drawer.” He snorts when he laughs and the sound is so uniquely her brother that it warms her heart. Rey misses him fiercely all of a sudden. “Ben’s coming over, by the way.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Hmm?”
There’s a knock on the door downstairs. A couple sharp knocks in a row, in fact, like someone’s trying to get her attention. Rey groans into the phone. “Please tell me you didn’t tell him to come over. I’m fine.”
“He called me actually—wanted to know if you’d gone with dad to nana’s. Just let him in, okay, don’t be a baby about this.”
“You’re the baby. I’m hanging up.” Then she does. It’s satisfying to hear Poe squawk in disbelief on the other end before it goes silent.
Ben’s on the other side of the door when she finally answers it, big coat and scarf hastily thrown on, even his hat askew on his head. Rey gets the impression that he rushed to get ready before heading over to her house with a duffle bag filled with snacks and blankets. He’s hardly been out in the snow for a few seconds, but already his nose and cheeks are red from the cold.
Rey ushers him inside, goosebumps breaking out over her arms and neck from the sudden gust of cold air that slips in along with her oversized neighbor. With the duffel bag, they’re pretty cramped in the foyer, so she takes it from him before stepping out, leaving Ben to strip off his boots, hat, scarf, and jacket, dusting the snow off onto the carpet. Rey rushes to the bathroom for a towel, dropping the bag in the living room on her way back.
“Jesus, Ben, you didn’t have to come over—it’s just a little storm.”
He’s already towering in her living room, spreading blankets out on the couch when Rey skids to a halt by the entrance. It clicks in her mind that she’s never been this alone with him. When he looks over his shoulder to her, the whole of her chest might as well burst open. Rey clutches the towel to her chest until Ben takes a few steps towards her and pulls it from her hands.
Her arms drop to her sides.
Light coring her when it seeps in through the window. Outside, the storm rages on.
“I wasn’t gonna leave you all alone in here,” he rumbles, already guiding her to the couch and getting to work wrapping her up in the multitude of blankets that he brought along with him.
“It’s not like I was going to freeze to death,” Rey murmurs, but it’s hard to be petulant wrapped up in a ton of blankets and hand fed squares of chocolate, which is the next thing Ben does.
“You’re only eighteen,” he grumbles. “Barely old enough to be home alone.”
Occasionally, his fingers brush against her lips. She chokes back the whimper every time. His eyes only darken when her tongue accidentally flicks out.
“I’m plenty old enough,” Rey whispers.
As the house grows colder, the power outage persisting even as the snowstorm tapers off a bit, only fluffy flakes of snow still falling outside, Ben’s presence becomes a welcome thing.
“I probably could’ve survived with just the few blankets,” she says into the dark.
For the first time in her life, Ben lies beside her in her bed, curled up just close enough to share the assortment of blankets piled on top of them. Rey sees the glint of his teeth when he smiles and stiffens when she feels him shuffle closer to her.
“Nah,” he teases. “You would’ve been a block of ice by morning. Poe would’ve hunted me down to avenge your death. I would’ve had to go into hiding in Mexico—I don’t even speak Spanish. All because you were too proud to ask for help.”
“First, I wouldn’t have died. Second, you could learn. Weren’t you valedictorian or something?” She says that like she doesn’t have the photo of him with his award tucked away in her closet.
“Don’t play pretend, I know Poe dragged you to hear the valedictory.”
The way his eyes fall on her makes her feel brave for once. Her heart is so wide in her chest.
“You know, you could just say—” Rey stumbles over her words because they press against her sternum and shout to not be let out, to hold it all inside. “You could just say that you…you wanted to be here with me.”
There’s a pregnant pause after her words, like he doesn’t comprehend them for a second.
“What do you mean?” Ben asks. His voice loses some of that playful quality. It makes Rey’s skin prickle unpleasantly.
“I—I meant that—” she trails off, lost.
Rey half-expects Ben to sit up and leave the bed. His expression is too serious, eyes wide like a cornered animal. He does lean up onto his elbow, putting a small amount of distance between them.
“Rey, you’re—you know it’s not like that, right? You’re a—you’re like a little sister to me,” he says. His long fingers clench into the topsheet, crumpling the fabric up in his fist. “I would never take advantage of you like that. You’re just—baby, you’re just a new omega.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Rey flushes hot, curls into herself. She’s not a baby. She doesn’t even let the pleasure wash over her at the pet name.
Ben’s hand reaches across the bed reflexively, pausing before he can actually touch her. “No, I just mean—of course I want to be here for you, Rey, but not like—it wouldn’t be right for a grown alpha to be in your bed like…you can’t do this with other alphas, okay, Rey? They’ll get the wrong idea and I—”
“You’re an alpha,” she protests.
“Yeah, but it’s not—” he cuts himself off, sighing. Draws his hand back. “…If I’ve made you feel like I…if I’ve been inappropriate with you, Rey, it’s just because I feel so close to you. I’ve known you since you were a baby.”
The space between them suddenly feels insurmountable. There is a growing, gnawing pit in her stomach opening up and swallowing up every bit of hope inside of her chest. If she could leave the bed right this instant she would, but Rey’s room is freezing and there’s a storm outside and her whole body is stuck in place.
“You haven’t done anything.” You haven’t looked at me with far-too kind eyes. You haven’t smelled like everything vital and integral to me. You haven’t touched my hand and made me feel important. “Let’s just go to sleep.”
When she squeezes her eyes shut, Rey can almost pretend like she’s asleep. If she hears Ben’s breathing grow ragged and hears the way he sighs softly under his breath, she doesn’t acknowledge it.
It’s near midnight when she opens her eyes. Sleep sloshes off in icy waves. Ben is as far away from her on the bed as possible, the heat of his body still tangible, but nowhere near as close.
Winter is a cold month meant for cold things.