Author's Notes: Unexpectedly 100% Ike's POV.
P.S. Reviews are such a treat; thank you, Earth, Asheris, and Sasufan11!
Warnings: Looks like 2008 in here. Possible side effects may include disorientation and "Mechanism" déjà vu. :P
Pairing(s): IkeMarth, but who am I to deny your imagination? (:
Disclaimer: I don't own Super Smash Brothers.
Summary: He was sixteen when he presented as an omega. Ike, on the other hand, didn't present at all. [ABO AU] -Yaoi, slash: Ike/Marth-
Delta
9. (I) Iota: Inclusion Map
By SSBBSwords
He woke up to the sensation of sheets unusually twisted about his lower body. Lifting his face from where it had been mashed into the pillow, he squinted at the clock.
12:41 PM.
Oh dear god. He dropped his head back onto the pillow and attempted to asphyxiate the creeping guilt of, yet again, fucking up his sleep schedule and the ever unfeasible goal of waking up naturally in time for his 8 AM discussion section on Fridays.
Thankfully it was Saturday, but still. He gripped the pillow tighter and squeezed his eyes shut like he could return to dreamless sleep, despite the late hour. He had to get up. He had things to do. Namely… right, he had scheduled a help-me-before-I-cry study session with Roy at the library for this afternoon at 3 PM (because as much of a train wreck as he was with everything else in his life, he wasn't unrealistic about his academic capabilities).
Sitting up, he wasn't surprised to find himself in his bed alone, but he was disappointed all the same. It wasn't that he wanted to wake up to the sight of Marth in his bed after settling down beside the omega in the midnight hours of the night prior, but maybe it was. Of course, he didn't want the other to be inconvenienced and behave in a manner codependent to whatever bond maintenance they were muddling through, so he really wasn't that bothered to wake up alone, but he could still feel hues of loneliness tinting his thoughts, thus driving him to accept the inevitable: waking the hell up entirely.
As he did, he noticed why he felt so odd, in addition to the baseline thrum of missing Marth's presence. When he had exited his bathroom last night, he found the older man tucked into his sheets like a fox in a den. Not wanting to disturb the cocooned omega, he had settled on top of the covers, disregarding the cooling autumn temperatures with the rationale that he ran warmer than most. With his back to the bundle that was Marth, he felt plenty toasty. Whether that was due to actual heat absorption or simply his instincts fired up by the physical contact, he wasn't completely sure. Upon leaving the room earlier, the omega must have rearranged the hoarded bedding back on his body, thus achieving something of a taco effect, since he had been lying on top of the layers to begin with.
Now that his body was gearing up for the day, all this material wrapped around him was growing stiflingly warm. While he could appreciate the sentiment, how the hell did Marth sleep under all this? He peeled himself out of the careful packaging, making a beeline for the bathroom to start acting like a functioning member of society.
When he exited his room, he found the older man reading on the couch (and no, his heart didn't just try to jump off a cliff at the other's reading glasses, not at all). "Mornin'," he croaked, relishing Marth's languid diversion of attention to him by means of sliding the satin ribbon marker between pages to keep place.
"Yes, isn't it?" the other said, coupling the rhetorical lilt with a teasing smile, eyes bright and posture relaxed. Setting the book and glasses on the coffee table, Marth stood and approached him. "How are you?"
A bit thrown from both the change in proximity and the question, he stuttered, "F-fine." Before he could maybe inquire about what might be concerning the older man, he felt his instincts flare with something akin to indignation. Before he could stop himself, he blurted out, "You showered?"
He blinked at his own words, pausing in awe at how sensitive he was to shifts in the omega's scent, even when he hadn't consciously analyzed Marth's state of being. Maybe it was a bond thing, where he would forever reflexively keep tabs on the minutiae of his link with the omega.
The older man's eyebrow lifted a subtle millimeter. "I went for a run."
"Oh." He staved off a blush, embarrassed of his initial suspicion-filled reaction—that maybe the omega woke up bothered by their mixed scent and washed it off. "Uhm, sorry," he added meekly, wanting to slap his instincts for being such insecure fools. Come on. Be confident and not a gross misogynist. Marth deserved better.
The omega's expression softened, and Marth closed the distance between their bodies, pressing into his personal space like a puzzle piece finding its niche. Reaching up, the older man looped one arm around his shoulder and snaked the other hand through his closer shorn hair at the base of his skull. "Scent me," Marth whispered, head tilting slightly while gently nudging his head down. As if manners were only an afterthought, the omega added belatedly, "Please."
Oh my god. Despite the shiver of—what, anticipation? nerves? instincts on high alert?—whatever, he automatically wound his arms around the shorter man to press the omega close, letting the other guide him. While always content to follow Marth's lead, he couldn't help but now be too, too aware of what scenting like this felt like (despite not having sat still long enough for the omega to really come into contact with his neck). "Are you—" sure, he wanted to ask, before just about everything in him said, fuck it, he said please, and he slipped into a rather fuzzy state of mind, nosing at the other's scent gland to encourage the mixing of their scents.
In the most distortedly muted way, the omega murmured an acquiescent noise, a cross between a hum and moan, a vibration of satisfaction or pleasure or compliance. It was like Marth went slack in his arms and if he hadn't been holding the older man so tightly against himself, the omega might have dropped to the floor.
Curious but not enough to be deterred, he switched sides and, in a disastrously selfish decision, pressed his lips against the other's leaping pulse and wickedly decided Marth's shudder was his new favorite thing. "Are you okay?" he whispered against the omega's skin, like he was taking revenge for his own dreams that Marth was blameless for.
He felt the older man's throat work to form words, and he pulled away, all too pleased with himself, just in time for Marth to mutter, "You brat."
"What did I do?" He levied his best innocent look at the omega, fighting the urge to grin like a loon.
Apparently not deigning him worthy of a reply, the omega simply stated with a worrying level of equanimity, "Don't start something you can't finish."
After suggesting he eat lunch (that was what breakfast was called after 1 PM, right?), Marth returned to reading in the living room, having already eaten during more standard hours. Sitting at the kitchen table, he let his gaze drift to the armchair where the other had migrated to. He could see the back of the omega's head from this vantage point and it wasn't enough. His chewing turned ruminant. He usually loved scrambled eggs, but today preoccupation reigned supreme.
"Hey, what are you doing today?" he asked, breaking the silence, and blindly stabbed at his plate in order to maintain his limited view of Marth.
The older man leaned to one side in order to twist around and lock eyes with him before addressing his question. Index finger entrapped between pages, the other's book dangled from the elegant hand extended from the pivot point of the chair's arm. He suddenly really wanted to be a book. Interrupting his odd fantasy, Marth answered, "I wanted to finish this book. It's due on Monday."
His heart leapt. This was perfect. The other planned to read, and he planned to head out to the university's main library in about an hour. "Want to come to Emblem with me? I'm meeting Roy at three." Then again, even if things didn't line up perfectly, he was ready to move mountains to make less-than-perfect be as close-to-perfect as possible. Luckily for him, they were simple people.
The book swayed subtly as the omega considered his pitch. "Are you two meeting in a study room or the multipurpose reading room?"
Checking the choppy stream of text messages he had exchanged with his upperclassman in the past sixteen hours, he surmised, "Probably the common area? I'm bringing him coffee that he can't get from the kiosk in the library." He stared at the details of the request that took up half the length of the screen. "It's a monstrosity," he muttered underneath his breath, numbly grateful that his part-time gig didn't even involve half of these ingredients.
"I don't particularly enjoy listening to you two discuss stress-strain curves," Marth said, a faint smile flickering like a trick of light.
"That was last year," he shot back, tamping down the ridiculous giddiness that came with recognizing that the other paid enough attention to him to pick up some of his major's jargon. "Come with me." He paused for a second, entertaining worry—perhaps he was fast crossing into the needy territory. He didn't desperately need the omega right next to him at all times, but given their shared leisure time, he'd prefer Marth in the same building as him than miles away. "You can read in the upper levels," he suggested, knowing the various stimuli around the more social work areas of the library threw off the other's concentration. "It's so quiet up there that you can hear yourself breathe." He personally didn't care for listening to his own respiration and found the hallowed silence intimidating.
Marth broke out in a laugh. "If you meant that to sound unpleasant, I'll have you know I love Emblem's third-floor stacks."
"See? So come with me."
The other sighed, not fully convinced.
"I'll get you tea when I pick up the coffee," he wheedled, throwing out anything he could think of that might tempt the omega.
Graciously not bringing up the abundant collection of tea in their own kitchen, which would only further support a case for staying home, Marth pointed out, "No food or drink in the book stacks."
"Damn it," he muttered, having momentarily forgotten the other's affinity for rules in his reckless attempt to win over the omega.
The older man turned away, effectively ending the conversation with the breaking of eye contact. Flipping the book open again, Marth must have returned to reading for a grand total of two minutes before speaking up. "Let me know when you're leaving."
He perked up and managed to convert an inner fist pump into overjoyed words. "Okay, will do."
"Roy has peculiar taste," Marth said as they left with the special, special order and began their trek from one corner of the university to the heart of it where the Emblem Library towered.
He glanced down, condensation dotting the plastic surface beneath the cardboard sleeve despite the chilly breeze. The order ticket contained so much text, he wouldn't be surprised if the machine that printed it ran out of letters (never mind the fact that receipts ran on thermal paper and only required heat to produce characters).
**MED salted caramel mocha blended**
*2x ice
*NO milk
*SUB coconut
*3p toffee nut
*3p mocha
*4p pumpkin
*double shot
*mocha drz IN
*caramel drz IN
*extra whipped cream
*topping pumpkin spice
He felt faint all over again just reading it. Even though he didn't make it, he still felt it deep in his minimum-wage bones.
"I think he likes seasonal items," he replied lamely, using his free hand to fiddle with a strap of his backpack, which contained his study things and, more importantly, the omega's book.
"I'm still debating whether looking at it gives me a heart attack or diabetes," Marth admitted with a wry chuckle.
"Probably both." Grinning, he tapped out a quick text to notify the redhead of his ETA.
It took about thirty seconds after he slid his phone into his pocket for an internal war to rise to an utter racket. He had convinced Marth to accompany him onto campus, only to have to part ways in too-soon of minutes. He kind of wanted to hold hands. He was also 83% sure he would blow a fuse if he tried, much less did.
But they were official now, right? This would be hand-holding in a bond-pair/couple capacity, right? If he reached for the other's hand, Marth wouldn't move away, right? Oh god, was he starting to hyperventilate—
"Watch your step," the omega interjected beside him as they reached the top of the expansive walkway and he stumbled on the shallow decline of classy brick stairs. Yeah, he might have been staring in the general vicinity of the other's shoulder closest to him. "It would be a shame if you lost that drink now that we've come so far."
"Right," he mumbled, committing to eyeing the ground beneath his sneakers as he resumed their original pace.
Which would explain why he didn't catch sight of the individual who came bounding up to them.
"Hi!"
He jerked his head up, sight coming to rest on the petite form of Pit, who looked a little like a middle-schooler with both hands gripping the shoulder straps of the beta's backpack.
"Hello," Marth greeted, taking his slow reaction into stride and responding for the both of them.
Before either of them could say more, the brunet unleashed a bright smile on the omega. "You must be Marth."
Manners probably masking surprise, the older man did not ask how Pit might have come to that conclusion and instead offered a hand to the beta. "Yes, and you are?"
"Wow, you're even prettier in person," the brunet gushed, grabbing the other's hand and giving it a jovial shake. "I'm Pit—one of Roy's suitemates. International student. Mm, doctoral student though, despite my youthful face." The beta gave an ostentatious wink before redirecting attention to the beverage in his hand. "Hey, that's for Roy, right?"
Confronted by the tidal wave of rapid-fire transitions that seemed to indicate Pit was hours into legal drug use (caffeine and sugar, probably), he held up the plastic cup. "Yeah," he replied, feeling dumb under the onslaught of the other's energy.
"Great," the beta exclaimed, beaming. "It's for me, actually. Thanks!" Taking the Frankenstein concoction from his lax hand, Pit sucked on the straw without restraint. "I've been reading journal articles for five hours now. I deserve this."
He felt Marth's gaze on him, and he glanced beside himself to catch the omega's impassive this-makes-so-much-sense expression. It was all in the other's eyes; they spoke volumes without Marth's features even moving.
Ending their two-seconds' worth of nonverbal communication, Marth turned back toward the grad student. "Pit, what program are you in?"
Releasing the entrapped piece of plastic from betwixt teeth, the petite man recited, "Health Endocrinology and Metabolism."
"That's a mouthful," the omega said with an understanding smile.
Pit gave an emphatic nod and, together, they watched the beta apply lengthy suction on the straw until the drink height decreased by 15%. How was brain freeze not happening? The grad student resurfaced long enough to start rattling off what sounded like the abstract to a scientific paper. "As you know, the endocrine system produces around thirty distinct hormones in the body. It's amazing. We're talking adrenals, pancreas, pineal, pituitary, reproductive—"
Since the grad student seemed on a roll, he snuck a peek at Marth, who looked to be more than just politely engaged in such an extensive elevator speech. Oh god, he didn't expect these two to ever meet, much less get along like a house on fire. What was it with people who enjoyed spending the bulk of their time shut away in laboratories with endless piles of printed and digital paperwork? This was also more than he ever knew about the beta's studies, and while he was grateful to have Pit in his life as the go-to person for academic inquiries about (what was the brunet currently saying?) corticosteroid hormones or androgens or whatever, there was something about the interest in the omega's expression that bothered him.
A lot.
Before he knew it, he had grabbed Marth's hand, successfully distracting everyone comprising this triangle, including himself. The omega's gaze slid down to their interlinked hands with a nonchalance that his heart was too crazed to replicate. Pit had stopped mid-sentence to boggle at the motion, though the beta managed to smooth over the wide-eyed look with something like barely veiled glee instead.
"Uhm," he fumbled for words now that everyone and everything prickled and vibrated around this focal point of his fingers against Marth's, "sorry to i-interrupt, uh, but, but I—I'm going to go… study?" He wasn't even sure why he needed to hold the other's hand for this. Maybe he had meant to tap the other's shoulder or something. Fuck his life. "Fuck," he ended up mumbling to himself.
He forced his feet to move toward the library entrance, convinced he was wasting Roy's precious time by standing here idly listening to probably somewhat useful health-related information with two nerds who probably worked better together than he did with the omega who he was only accidentally bonded to and—
"Oh, all right," Marth said with great aplomb, led around the beta by their clasped hands. "It was nice to meet you, Pit."
He blinked at the unbroken connection, not sure if he subconsciously hadn't let go or if the omega hadn't let him go, even with that paltry excuse of attention interference. Somewhere in his brain, buried deep, he was apologizing to the international student for his rudeness.
"Highlight of my day, meeting you, Marth," the brunet said with an angelic smile, content to watch them take leave, and brought the drink back up to hide an expression quickly turning smug.
Once the two of them entered the main foyer of the building, the omega tugged at his hand, stopping them in their tracks. "Book, please," Marth requested with luminous eyes, gazing up at him with the softest smile.
"O-okay," he stammered, sliding his backpack off one shoulder to unzip the pouch that held the other's item.
"Thank you," the omega said once he passed over the book. "Text me when you're finished."
Marth gently took his chin, studying his face like this was a moment, but then pulled away, leaving just a tickle in the wake of a brush as the other walked away toward the stairs leading up to the third floor.
For some unfathomable reason, he wanted to melt right into the floor, but instead, he tromped toward the multipurpose reading room, picking up strings of low dispersed conversation by students working together at group tables.
He spotted Roy midway among the long tables between the entrance and the closest line of study carrels. The redhead was grinning at a smartphone, amusement clearly not directed at whatever curriculum would be displayed on the adjacent laptop by the alpha's elbow.
"Hey," he said in a hushed voice, not wanting to speak louder than the muted susurruses around them, and dropped into the chair beside his upperclassman.
"Oh, young grasshopper," Roy replied, setting the phone screen-down onto the table. "Welcome."
Far too accustomed to ignoring the other's eccentric nicknaming (the older alpha once called him an overgrown German shepherd in front of the entire engineering club), he unzipped his backpack to unpack his electronics and notebooks. "Sorry, but I ran into Pit. He, uh, was leaving? He kinda stole your drink."
"Yeah, it was for him. I don't do caffeine after noon and you kindly insisted," Roy said with a shrug before giving a salacious smirk. "So I hear you got some action."
If he hadn't been firmly seated, he might have fallen over. "What?"
The redhead propped an elbow on the table and a face against knuckles. "Heard through the grapevine that you've been getting handsy."
"What are you—" Oh. Putting two and two together, what with the other's love for wordplay and penchant for panache, he deflated and asked, "Were you just texting Pit?"
"I might have been communicating with an associate." The fourth-year smiled winningly at him, eyes just about as innocent as the graduate student looked upon first impression (which was deceiving as hell). "So?" Roy prompted, glowing with excitement like an expecting mother.
"I need help reading these graphs?" he hedged weakly, pointing at the slide that had appeared on his laptop screen once the device came out of hibernation. "And figuring out this assignment?" What were the chances that this would derail the other alpha?
"We can talk about eutectic formation after you talk, so spill," Roy demanded with the firmness of an old-time schoolmarm. "What's going on? Did you 'fess up? Should I stop expecting you and your repressed feelings at my place at the ass crack of dawn?"
"What did you hear?" he hissed back, overwhelmed by the downpour of questions.
His upperclassman leveled an unequivocally dubious look at him and retorted, "Uh, do you always hold hands with your crush platonically? Is that why you smell like you rolled in an omega's bed?" Like a lightbulb had gone off, the redhead brightened, posture subsequently straightening. "Oh! Have you been rolling around in—"
"Oh my god, shut up," he interrupted in a mad rush to cut off the completion of more sentences that made him want to die. This was the hallmark snippet of conversation picked up in passing that ended up spread rampantly on internet forums dedicated to incredibly private topics. "It—it's not that, holy shit. Stop," he managed, very certain that no industrial HVAC system powering this building could cool the blush off his face. "I-I just grabbed his hand earlier, okay?"
"And he let you," Roy inferred—he couldn't tell if the other meant the statement as an exclamation or a question.
"He would've let me before," he said before his mind finished processing the many different ways this conversation could pan out (and which versions he might actively want to avoid). He paused at his own response; it was true, no doubt, but therein was the (a?) problem, right?
Nothing escaped the redhead, and before he could further examine the burgeoning confusion within himself, the other alpha prompted, "Before? So something happened. Dude, just tell me before I use the lever rule on your face."
"What does that even mean?" Bewildered by his inner turmoil, the introduction of recent class material only compounded the confusion.
Roy heaved an exasperated sigh. "I'll explain it later. Now can you please just—"
"Is Pit single?"
The words had left his mouth before he even realized his upperclassman hadn't finished speaking. They stared at each other, mirror images of bafflement. Why on earth would he—he said that, he really did, but why?
Gaze sharpening with honed analysis, the fourth-year replied, slow, like patterns were still being drawn from data, "Probably not—not in the sense you may be worried about." Jaw muscles tensing, the other alpha asked, "Was that—did you," and frowned with a head tilt, unable to find the correct inquiry, "did you get jealous because of Pit?"
No. "Yes," he mumbled, noticing too late that his inner and outer monologue should have been switched. Shit. "Fuck." Oops. Again.
"Tell me you're bonded."
Dumbfounded, he found himself pinned by the other alpha's stare. The state of the bond was probably what Roy was trying to get at this entire time, but the redhead had finally tossed all teasing and conjecture and dramatics aside for hard evidence and truth and confirmation.
"What? Why?" He meant to ask how the upperclassman had come to that conclusion, but words were hard to find and they were particularly elusive now.
"Peace of mind," Roy stated, teeth gritted, and he couldn't understand why his subconscious actions would put the other on edge so much. "Tell me you smell bonded this time because you are. Tell me you grabbed Marth's hand and he held on because the two of you are a formal bond pair." The fourth-year held his gaze like raked coals in danger of igniting.
"Yeah," he choked out, as tense as the other's posture. He had no idea why Roy was so invested in confirming his relationship status. "Uhm, yeah, we're a bond pair." He shifted, uneasy under the scrutiny, but admitted nonetheless, "Actually, apparently, we kinda were bonded earlier than we thought, so that happened too."
Like an intermittent rain shower, the other alpha's gloom dissipated and Roy perked up. "See? Was that so hard? Congrats, man."
Blinking hard and letting the accumulated dread trickle out of his system, he stammered in return, "Th-thanks?" Did he just get played? He wasn't sure.
"Give me two seconds," Roy requested, holding up two fingers and looking as victorious as the symbol doubled as. "Totally texting Pit about this and then you can ask me about these super-sexy phase diagrams."
By the time he felt caught up on the material after a three-day absence, evening had descended and the density of students in the spacious reading room had dwindled to a fourth of its afternoon quantity. His upperclassman had left him to his own devices after about two hours of irreplaceable TA-style instruction (because let's be real, the professors weren't known for their ability to teach as much as their ability to publish research in the name of the illustrious university). He felt comfortable enough with the assignment that he could probably finish it given a few more hours, but he was growing antsy, sitting alone with his belongings spread around him like a border of boredom. A bore-der. He snorted in amusement to himself.
He wanted to see Marth. He alternated between chewing on the end of his mechanical pencil and hovering it over the computation pad of green tint graph paper. He could finish this tomorrow. He had a midterm and lab report due next week too, but the prospect of working on the laundry list of school-related things was growing unpalatable the longer he sat in his lonesome. It was like his instincts were arguing that if he was to suffer, the omega's presence would mitigate the worst of it.
Maybe he could argue for an accommodation of letting Marth sit in with him while he took his exams. Doctor's note and everything. Exam security would be compromised, the professors would argue. He's my emotional support, uh, person, he would explain—and then be smacked silly because there was no way the older man would appreciate being used as a good-luck token, sitting beside him and holding his hand as he scribbled his best guestimates for answers.
Yeah, he was not getting anything done if he stayed here. Sighing, he packed up his things, giving the table one last sweep to make sure he hadn't left anything behind, and headed for the third floor.
-tbc-