Jean paced outside the infirmary, clenching and unclenching his fists. How had he let himself be distracted like that? He'd been following Commander Levi's lead, so intent on impressing his supervisors that he hadn't noticed Marco lagging behind. If Mikasa hadn't reacted fast enough, he could have been split in-half by that Titan's enormous teeth. Jean knew the giant scrape lining his arm and side was a mark of survival. To him, though, it was a mark of his own defeat.
He couldn't help wondering if there was something wrong with him, after all. Where had his alpha instincts been when his omega had been threatened? He saw the way Mikasa reacted if someone so much as stepped too close to Eren. Her eyes would shine, bright and alert, and her nostrils would flare as she leapt to his side or – more often than not – in front of him. Had Jean's senses been so overwhelmed that he didn't notice Marco was in danger? Or was he not a true alpha, after all?
There was really only one way for him to test his alpha status. But he had to make sure Marco was alive first.
The doors to Marco's room spread open and Jean rushed inside. Marco was sitting up in bed, his side wrapped in bandages and the slice on his arm sewn shut.
"You look terrible," Jean said, though he meant to say I'm glad you're okay.
Marco glanced down, chuckling nervously. "It could have been a lot worse."
Jean wanted to apologize, to make up for his inattentiveness, but instead he said, "Be more careful next time, all right?"
Marco nodded and Jean, unsure of what to do, came to sit beside his boyfriend. The bed creaked under his weight, causing Marco's body to shift towards him.
"I'm usually not that careless," Marco said. "It really snuck up on me." He stretched out his arm, revealing the fang-shaped stitches where the Titan had nearly clasped him in its mouth.
Jean swallowed. "I can't help thinking that I might need to be checked, too."
Marco blinked. "What do you mean? You came out unscarred."
"But you didn't," Jean said. "I'm an alpha. Technically, I'm supposed to sense danger to you. Something must be wrong with me, unless…unless I'm not the alpha I thought I was." He glanced at Marco from the corner of his eye. "Technically…we've never tested that theory out."
A blush rose to Marco's cheeks, speckled between his faint freckles. "W-what are you implying, Jean?"
"There's only one way to find out if I'm a true alpha."
The words hung in the air around them, thick as a fog at dawn. For once, Marco held the power.
"Let's try, then," Marco said.
"We don't have to," Jean insisted, rising to pace the room. "You were just injured-"
"-But that's the reason we should, right?" Marco looked up, his face burning as he met Jean's eyes. "After all, if you're not a true alpha…this could happen again, right?"
Jean glanced at the bandages wrapped around Marco's torso, concealing his lean ab muscles. It was a guise, an excuse to test the theory. But as his instincts kicked in, desire flooding through his body at the thought, that no longer seemed to matter. Marco's squirmish stance, his blush and pleading eyes – they sent hot desire running through Jean in a rush, hot and immediate and consuming.
"You can sense it, can't you?" Marco asked.
It was true. Marco's scent filled the room and Jean, open to it, was consumed by it, that omega smell. Caught up in the danger of their battle, he hadn't noticed Marco was in heat.
In a breath, Jean decided to act. "Get on the bed," he said, closing the infirmary door behind them. Marco sat back until his legs were on the sheets, his entire body stretched out and waiting for Jean. He crossed the room to join the omega, slipping on top of him without a second thought.
As their lips met, warm and desperate, Jean was reminded of times they had found themselves in a similar position before. Each time, he had left, separating himself from Marco while the omega was in heat.
But now, at last, he had no reason to deny Marco's needs. There was nothing he wanted more than to satisfy them, than to be the alpha the omega beneath him purred and whined for. He dug his teeth into Marco's neck, marking him as his own. He sucked long and hard, imagining his mark deeper than that of the Titan.
Marco twisted beneath him so his backside faced Jean. On his hands and knees he craned backwards, arching his back to raise his puckering hole. "I need you, Jean," he gasped. "I need you to take me, to mark me as your own…please, Jean, please…I need you inside me."
Jean grew long and hard and the sight of it and gripped Marco's hips, aligning himself with his hole. Marco pressed back, his asshole slurping up Jean as the omega whimpered with need. More immediate and consuming than even the bite of a Titan, Marco pulled Jean in to his hot, tight hole.
Jean, overcome by Marco's scent and his needy pleads, hammered into the omega. The need to take Marco consumed him as he saw the omega bent before him, on his hands and knees, opening himself for Jean to take. With more aggression and force than he knew he had, Jean slammed into Marco's hungry hole, gripping the omega's hips to keep him in place.
Marco clung to the sheets, gasping for breath between the shakes of quickening thrusts. "Please, do it, Jean!" he begged. "Fill me…make me yours…give me your knot."
Now was Jean's chance to prove he was an alpha after the day's mishap. He leaned over Marco, pressing deeper until he swelled and locked inside. As he came, filling the omega, he confirmed his dominance, his alpha-status.