CHAPTER 3

Pidge had to file the the morning she woke up in Shiro's apartment after her heat had finished as one of the most disorienting experiences of her life. Her memories of the previous days were gone, in fact she didn't even know where she was, but then they came flooding back one by one, like a series of frames in no particular order getting burned on her retinas. She found herself blushing at some of them, well most of them, since she was technically watching her Omega's memories and feelings toward those things she had been doing nearly non stop for a week with her mate… She couldn't believe just how right and good it all felt…

She tossed and turned about in the nest, trying to calm down her excited Omega by tiring her out (which was absolutely useless), until she ended on top of a sleeping beauty, Shiro, and stilled… her mind was such a bitch… why didn't it care to remind her that the Alpha had become a part of her nest instead of running scenes cut out for a porno in a continuous flow?

Groaning and blinking his eyes open he sat up, making Pidge lose her balance and tumble off the couch, ending up on the carpet with a loud thud followed by a drowsy whine. At the sound Shiro sprung up, feets apart, knees bent, hands fisted in front of his face, ready to fight. What made Katie afraid wasn't the attack in itself, she knew that just like her brother he must had been going through a lot and probably suffered from PTSD, but the sickening violet colour lighting up his prosthetic arm and the electric crackling it was producing made her pale.

"Shiro... Hey? Look at me Takashi... I'm fine... Everything's okay..." Her voice wavered but it was enough to catch the panicking Alpha's attention. She had seen this behaviour countless of times in her sweet brother and serious father, enough to know how to deal with it without causing an outrage, but never enough to get used to it and ready to face it. She watched as his golden eyes fell on her when he turned toward her before shifting to their human colour once he assessed her injuries, that, thankfully, amounted to none. The fear in Katie's eyes must have shown pretty clearly since once he lowered his arms, the mecha one now returned to his usual, innocuous, "setting", he started trembling and apologizing over and over, kneeling with each leg on other side of her waist as his thighs's muscles spasmed against his will. Pidge just hugged him around his torso and slowly bent his neck until he rested his forehead on her shoulder, breathing heavily in her embrace but slowly calming down thanks to the soft cooing and purring coming from her.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, that was all he got from hours spent sprawled over an uncomfortable divan in a psychiatrist office. The poor guy still thought he took all those medicines he had prescribed, when in fact he had stopped after not even a week because sleep might be good, but not having nightmares and attacks sure was better. He had to learn how to fight against his demons, they were just memories after all, in the year he had spent running from everything that breathed. Sometimes he still had them and the outcomes were always the same: either he got on like he never had a night terror or, when they were painful, he'd have to take a week off of work and try to survive multiple attacks one after the other. This time it was different though, he had always been alone when fighting against the worst of them, but not this time. He had had rage fits and he could get dangerous he knew he took it out on whatever was at hand (although he didn't remember), he had broken the table twice or punched a hole through the wall (and had to repair it) around six times already.

So he was rightfully afraid of hurting his mate unconsciously and scaring her away. He tried not to give into the gentle push of her hand, although her scent was one of the most alluring he had ever smelled, but failed miserably, nuzzling against her glands and bringing it out even more. Slowly he wrapped his arms around her thin and small frame, he might have been scared, but his Alpha's instinct surely didn't care. His attack slowly died down, the low humming of Katie's voice and the soft kisses along the column of his neck reconnecting him to reality. As soon as he came back the first words he uttered were an apology, his body going limp against hers as relaxation took over his muscles, the quietness of the room comforting his nerves. He tiredly met her eyes, having to crane his neck from the position he was currently in to do so.

"Do. Not. Ever. Say. That. Again." She softly spoke against his skin, although there was a tinge of anger in the words it went unnoticed by the Alpha in her arms whose mind was wandering aimlessly, he was actually considering to buy a thesaurus so as to find some other way to describe his feisty mate apart from "soft"... wait, did feisty count as a new one? Had he unlocked a new achievement?

Noticing that Shiro had spaced out, Pidge gently pecked his lips managing to call his soul back in his body, with him she had way more options that with her brother to attract his attention, she smiled and kept speaking:

"I'm serious though, it's not something you can control, so you don't have to be sorry… I should be the one apologizing right now since I was the one to trigger it." She purred soothingly against his ear making shivers run down his spine and a contented sigh escape his lips, all his previous worries seemed to vanish for an instant, hidden for a while but not forgotten. He hugged her closer tentatively and stood, seeing no reason to remain on the cold hard ground any longer. He made his way over to the kitchen for maybe the thousandth time that week and stilled on the threshold. When the fuck had his neat kitchen become such a mess?

"When we had sex on every possible surface in it yesterday, after finishing lunch, because you went in a rut…" Katie muttered still wrapped around him, he couldn't believe how light she was, he kept forgetting her when he was carrying her, as if she was just an extension of his body. Her answer made him realize that he must have expressed his bewilderment aloud. Wait, did she say they had sex in the kitchen? THEY HAD SEX? What the hell happened in just a week?

"Stop panicking Shiro" she whispered reassuringly to him and kissed his cheek, "it's because of my heat that you don't remember what happened. My memories are hazy too. I'm fine, you're fine, we'll be okay, we didn't mate and that's what counts. We might have went too far but we didn't fuck up completely." She smiled and he couldn't do anything but smile back and calm down. He slowly lowered her to the ground and made his way toward the sink, which was an absolute mess, like the rest of the room, as if a hurricane had passed through it leaving debris in his wake.

She noticed how his body had tensed at the sight before him, she slowly made her way over and wrapped her arms around his waist leaning with her naked body against his bare back in a warm and comforting embrace, her purrs and words reverberating through the other body: "Would you like me to help you in cleaning the mess we made? If we work together it'll take half the time to clean the whole house. I could start up the washing machine, so that I can put on my own clothes, instead of yours or nothing at all, and put the sheets I used for the nest back where they came from. And clean the couch, and the bed and the table, and the floor, and the washing machine, too… We might have went a little bit overboard with experiments… Not that I complain…" She rambled on blushing profusely and getting redder for every item she added to the list she was making.

"Y-yes, thank you… and it's not a problem if you use some of my clothes, feel free to rummage through my drawers, my shirts should fit you like a short dress…" he stuttered before chuckling lightly as he threw a glance behind himself meeting Pidge's tomato-red face. He relaxed in no time thanks to the steady rhythm of Katie's caresses up and down his chest and her low humming sending vibrations through his body. He was surprised by how fast she managed to make him go nearly limp, it usually took him from one day to a whole week to feel remotely okay after an attack, but her presence was working wonders on his nerves, and he realized he could get used to this domestic atmosphere. Once he came back to his senses he found that the Omega was gone and that he had already cleaned half of the dishes that were in the sink, which meant that quite some time must have passed without him noticing at all.

"Are you back from Dreamland yet?" Pidge called out from the door, making Shiro startle and stutter an affirmative response. "Good, I already put what needed to be cleaned in the washing machine, cleaned the bathroom and the living room, too. I didn't clean your bedroom since it's yours and whatnot, but I did borrow one of your shirts. Can I swipe the floor here? Or would you like me to do something else? Like, I dunno… cleaning the counters and the table?" A groan escaped his lips, apparently a lot more time than he had anticipated had passed. Why did he always spaceport so much? Gosh, he felt so stupid…

"I'll take care of the rest, just go and relax on the couch. I'll make us something to eat. Sorry if I went to Dreamland, as you called it, for so long… I didn't mean to" Shiro apologized. A hearty giggle came from Katie and the Alpha couldn't help but look at her confusedly: "Why are you laughing?" he inquired curiously, with a smile stretching his lips and his head cocked to the side, his white bangs falling in front of his eyes.

"You are cute" she breathed out as if it was a precious secret she was confessing to him, "You had such a content expression on your face while washing the dishes that I couldn't bring myself to interrupt your wandering mind and disturb your peacefulness. Anyway, no need to apologize, again. I space out too sometimes, well… maybe more than sometimes. Hunk doesn't let me close to anything sharp in the kitchen anymore because of it… It's funny that we have something like this in common, don't you think so, too? I was thinking of a possible theory because this happens, maybe a downside of over-focusing..." she rambled before shutting her mouth in what sounded as the middle of the sentence. She shook her head, scowled, sighed, turned her back and went out the room without looking Shiro in the eyes, leaving him baffled and confused to finish his chores in the kitchen.

Pidge woke up a while later, her eyes cracking open only after burning with the sheer amount of light coming from a window. A gentle hand was caressing her cheek and keeping her unruly bangs out of her face, which made her let out a soft sigh of contentment and a smile stretch her lips. Tiredness was plaguing her mind and every attempt to rub it off without results got her annoyed, her eyesight was blurry and wasn't helping at all with making her feel any more awake then she was while napping. Slowly she managed to sit up and noticed that her glasses were missing. They were sitting atop her head, but it wasn't like she would have found them unless Shiro had nudged them down on the bridge of her nose.

She turned her eyes toward Shiro and met his shining eyes with a smile. Soon enough her attention drifted away from the man as a mouth-watering smell reached her nose. She looked down and feasted her eyes on a tray full of food, which meant they'd have to clean everything in the kitchen once again, but she couldn't care less as a sweet smell wafted to her nostrils. Her grumpy scowl became a bright smile in mere seconds just as Shiro said: "Lunch's ready".

Shiro sat himself comfortably next to her and watched on as she finished not only her plate but also his own. He was hungry but he wasn't going to complain, if anything he was actually thankful that she got to eat as much as she needed. He could only imagine how taxing the heat must have been on her body for her to need so much sustainment. Which didn't mean he was any better, as his stomach made him notice with a loud gurgling sound.

"Shiro… are you okay?" Katie asked under her breath as not to disturb the peaceful silence that had fallen upon them. The Alpha nodded, but his body begged to differ as another similar sound filled the room. As Katie turned away to hide her laughing fit her eyes fell upon the tray or more specifically on the two empty bowls sitting upon it. "Oh God! I ate your food too! Why didn't you say anything?! Do you have something else in the fridge to eat?"

He couldn't help but shrug. It wasn't like he was going to die if he ate a bit later. But then again it was true that in order to do that he was going to actually have something hidden in the cupboards… Which he didn't if he was remembering correctly.

"Shoot! We finished the last of your food. Or better, I finished it! Why didn't you say anything?!" The tiny Omega panicked. Shiro followed her with a confused look his eyes he stood up and ran toward the Alpha's room.

In less than a minute she had dressed herself as best as she could with his clothes (aka a shirt that was way too big on her and a pair of running shorts that were supposed to hug one's curves and instead needed to be held up by a belt) and ran back toward the door. As she was putting on her shoes that had mysteriously managed to fall right next to the coat-hanger, she finally turned toward Shiro and announced what she intended to do.

"I'm going to buy you some more food. And I'm going to cook, too. It's the least I can do to repay you, right?" And without letting Shiro answer, she was out the door.

After getting Shiro something to eat, Pidge could finally take some seconds to herself to think about the situations she found herself in. The walk back to the Alpha's apartment was stressful to say the least. She couldn't allow Shiro to lose that tiny bit of support he got from the Garrison after all he had gone through just to be with her. So she really needed to come up with a plan and some good excuses to get him to leave her alone, no matter how much it was going to hurt.

She may be good at engineering but that doesn't mean that she is good at following steps she knows are going to blow up in her face. So as she climbs up the steps leading to the Alpha's house, she allows her mind to go back to the happy memories she regained about the week she just spent with the man she had forever had a crush on. But once her knuckles hit the hardwood door of the apartment and Shiro opened and stepped a bit sideways to let her in, the plan got in motion.

She just went about the first half of it in total silence, while trying to work out which words could be the right ones to explain herself without making Shiro feel guilty about her own decision. She took out the ingredients she had bought from the two heavy bags she had put down on the counter and started putting away the ones she didn't need to cook.

Shiro tried to ignore the sour scent coming off of Katie in waves as she worked at his lunch. His instinct was telling him to make it up to her. But he didn't know what he had done wrong, and the fuzzy memories that had resurfaced didn't hint at anything he might have done to hurt her. He kept on trying to ignore the heavy silence, too. Even as she put a plateful of pasta with an italian sauce she had called "pesto" in front of him he couldn't help but notice that her smile was tense and her eyes looked dull.

His attention was caught by her again as she sat down as far away from him as possible. His hand moved on its own to bring the food to his mouth but his mind as completely focused on solving the mysterious mood Katie had fallen in out of the blue.

"Shiro… I… I was thinking that maybe it would be in both our interests not to let this thing…" she hesitantly started, "This thing that happened between the two of us… get out of this walls… Ever."

"Is it because of something I have done?" He inquired. He couldn't really see a reason why they needed to keep it a secret when they both had felt the connection between their inner beasts.

"Because… Because it could ruin both of our careers. And this was just an accident, wasn't it?" She said finally meeting his eyes.

"Why do you ask me that when It doesn't sound as if you are truly convinced about what you are saying in the first place?" He couldn't help but wonder as he caught the tiniest break in her voice as she pronounced the question.

"I… I don't know… I wish I was sure about this at the very least… or sure enough to fool you. But I can't really fool you, can I?" she smiled sadly. "It wouldn't be good for a teacher and a student to hang out, would it? And if we did the Garrison would kick you out as soon as it caught on, plus they would find out about my disguise and we'd both be fucked sideways. So I guess I have overstayed my welcome. I'll find a way to repay you of your kindness, professor. I need to go now… Enjoy the food." She ranted without taking the time to breathe, leaving herself heaving as she stood up and ran out of the door once again.

Shiro was left sitting stiffly at his table, his hand freezed halfway to his mouth and his heart hammering against his ribcage. Why the fuck couldn't he move a muscle and run after her?