Chapter Text
In the four years he'd worked at Balis and Connery, Tristan had run out of fingers and toes to count how many times he'd overheard some guy in a suit screaming in the elevator.
Usually, it was at him. The folks upstairs constantly barked orders and made him fetch things, even though he wasn't one of the interns anymore. Probably because he wasn't one of the interns anymore. Tristan tended to make other alphas nervous. He suspected it had something to do with being tall enough to hit his head on doorframes.
On this rainy Wednesday evening, it was a phone call. Tristan leaned against the wall of the elevator, doing his best to be as unobtrusive as possible as a short omega ducked through the doors midway through berating his earpiece.
"No," he snapped. "I do not want to tour the Hegelsies through the garden house! That place is way under my fucking pay grade and you know it!" As he spoke, he unbuttoned his blazer and started fanning his chest with the lapel. Odd—it wasn't that warm in here.
Tristan shifted from foot to foot, listening with half an ear to the storm outside. It was getting bad, now, to be audible even from inside the elevator. The elevator dinged once, and started to drop.
"Don't bullshit me. I've seen you give better listings to idiots fresh out of Kalemny!" The man glared at Tristan out of the corner of his eye.
Right. There it was.
Tristan tried to relax. The storm helped a bit—he'd always been the type to find thunder soothing. The shouting man beside him faded into white noise. There was a low rumble... and then a sharp crack so loud that the building shook.
The lights went out. The voice on the other end of the man's call went dead. The elevator stopped moving.
"What the fuck?"
"Power went out," said Tristan.
"I can see that." The man pounded an open hand on the doors. "Where's the emergency exit? I am not sitting in an elevator until someone fixes this."
Tristan fiddled with the panel of buttons and grimaced. "Doesn't look like there is one. It's an old building."
"Fuck!" The man jabbed angrily at his phone. "Service is down."
Heaving a sigh, Tristan seated himself on the floor of the elevator and settled in to wait.
"What are you doing?" The man waved his arms emphatically at Tristan, then grimaced and started shrugging out of his blazer. "We need to get out of here!"
"They should get it fixed soon."
"That's not good enough!" He was starting to sweat, and paced sharply back and forth across the floor. A strange, sweet smell pricked at Tristan's nose.
"You need to calm down."
The man's scowl turned so fierce that for a moment Tristan thought he might try and hit him. It was startling, really. Most of the alphas he knew were less aggressive than this tiny omega. "Talk to me like that again and you won't be getting into any more dick-measuring contests."
Tristan blinked. "Are you afraid of elevators or something?" It would make sense. He was sweating, so badly that his smell was growing more prominent by the second. It was a nice smell, though. Vaguely flowery.
"No." He turned around sharply, his shaking hands giving the lie away.
"Alright." Tristan pushed himself to his feet with another sigh. "Fine. I'll try to break us out, but I'm not sure how much I can actually do by brute force."
He didn't dare pull on the control panel, in case he accidentally broke some wires and made it harder for whatever electrician the company called to rescue them. Instead he attacked the doors, the ceiling, the walls—anywhere he could find a seam. By the end he was panting and dripping sweat.
"Come on!" snapped the omega. "Can't you hurry up?"
Tristan shook his head. "It can't be done. Not without tools, anyway. We're going to have to wait."
"No! Absolutely not!"
"Do you have a better idea?" Tristan demanded, now thoroughly fed up. He was overheated and frustrated, and the omega's smell was making him dizzy. "This isn't exactly how I wanted to spend my evening either."
For a second, it looked like the omega was going to scream at him. Then—horribly—his expression crumpled. He turned away, clutching his head in his hands. "Fuck. Fuck!"
"Try to breathe," Tristan advised him. "That should make it easier."
"What, you mean when you finally get bored of waiting?"
The words came out so venomously that Tristan took a step back. "Huh?"
"Don't play dumb. You must have noticed by now."
"Noticed what?"
The omega stared at him. He looked just as overheated as Tristan—worse, even though he hadn't been the one trying to tear open an elevator with his bare hands. His face was flushed.
"Oh," said Tristan, feeling very stupid.
In his defense, he'd spent all of his adult life in school and in the corporate world. He'd never been around an omega who actually went through their heats. Actually... "Don't you have to take suppressants to work here?"
"I do," the omega snarled. "But I'm sure that won't matter when you're telling everyone I went off them for the sheer pleasure of seducing you."
"Hey, no, I'm just... confused, that's all. Look, if you need someone to—"
In a flash, the omega was pressed against the opposite wall with a hunted look in his eyes. "Don't touch me."
Tristan had seen that look before. He hated it, hated knowing he could make an omega shake like that just by walking into the same room. Hated even more that the fear wasn't entirely unfounded. His sister always said—
"Okay." He did his best to drop his voice, and lowered himself slowly to his knees. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed. I just want to help, and if that means leaving you alone then that's what I'll do."
Cool brown eyes stayed fixed on him. The tension in the omega's shoulders never so much as wavered. He was taut as a bowstring, ready to lash out at the slightest hint of danger. He would not—could not—feel safe trapped in a tight space with Tristan. Because Tristan would not, but could hurt him.
Tristan groped for some way to reassure him. He reached down, fumbling with his belt, and realized his mistake only when the omega's phone went flying towards his head. He ducked, letting it bounce off the wall behind him.
"Sorry!" he blurted. "Sorry, fuck, I just—" He put his hands down flat on the floor and went dead still. "I was going to tie myself to the railing. Is that okay?"
For a moment the omega just watched him, eyes narrowed. Then he inched forward. "I'll do it. Don't move."
Tristan didn't let himself so much as twitch while the omega tugged off his belt and wrapped it around his wrists, winding it through the railing and pulling it as tight as it would go. As soon as he was finished he flinched away, returning to the opposite corner of the elevator and watching Tristan warily.
He flexed, testing the strength of his bonds, and grunted in satisfaction when he found he couldn't break them. "There. See? Couldn't hurt you if I wanted to."
"Don't patronize me."
Sighing, he settled in for a very long wait. "I'm Tristan, by the way."
"Hugh," the omega grunted.
"I think I've seen you around. We're both on the junior sales team, right?"
"You're on the junior sales team. I'm five years late for a promotion."
"Cocky, much?"
Even through the discomfort of his heat, Hugh managed to scowl. "No. I'm done with everyone else's shit. Common mistake, though."
Tristan grinned. He couldn't help it, even knowing it probably had something to do with the intoxicating smell still growing in intensity. "It's a good look on you." The moment he registered what he'd just said, he winced. He definitely hadn't meant to come off that flirty. But before he could even open his mouth to apologize, Hugh had already turned away and started pacing agitatedly in what little space he had.
"I'm not going to fuck you," he snapped.
"I know—"
"Do you?" Hugh whirled around, his eyes narrowed, a bead of sweat tracing his temple. "Or are you just waiting for me to realize how nice you are?" He looked down.
Ashamed, Tristan crossed his legs to hide the growing bulge in his slacks. "I'm fuzzy," he admitted. "I can't help it." In such close quarters, the air was so thick with Hugh's heat he could almost taste it. As if he'd just run his tongue along his throat and— no.
"Fuzzy." Hugh stepped closer so that he could glare down at Tristan. "You think you're fuzzy?"
"Yes! I can't fucking think through that smell!"
A cold light flickered in Hugh's eyes. He leaned closer, so that Tristan had to ball his hands into fists to keep from tugging at the belt that bound him. "You want to fuck me?"
"I—I don't—what?"
"You heard me. Do you want to shove your cock in my pussy? Hold me in your lap while you make me scream your name? Pull me down on your knot and breed me?"
Tristan couldn't speak. Couldn't even swallow.
"You can. Right here, right now. On one condition." Hugh put his mouth to Tristan's ear. "You have to let me cut your dick off after."
"What the fuck?!" He jolted backwards, slamming against the wall of the elevator and curling his knees to his chest. There was no more testing his bonds—now he strained against them, his heart hammering as he tried and failed to break loose.
Hugh jumped, but when it became clear that Tristan didn't have the leverage to get free, his cold smile returned. "Come on. It would be worth it, wouldn't it? Sure, it would ruin your life. But first you'd get to feel me wrapped around you, all tight and wet..."
"No! Get the hell away from me!" Tristan aimed a kick at him. Hugh darted back to the other side of the elevator.
"No?" his lip curled. "I thought you couldn't help it."
"I want to have sex, not a castration!"
"If you really couldn't help it, you wouldn't be able to care. You'd be scared. You might even cry. But you wouldn't be able to stop it, either." His lip curled, as if to hide the way his hands were shaking. "You're just horny," he spat. "Get over it."
Tristan dropped his gaze to his lap. His erection had defied any possible sense of decency or self-preservation by surviving the entire conversation. He sighed. "Look," he said, much more softly now. "I know it's not... the same. As being in heat. But I still can't help, uh... responding to you. Physically." He nodded at the tenting in his pants.
Hugh glanced at it—and then for a long moment his eyes seemed to get stuck. He swallowed hard, then whirled around and went back to pacing. "Fuck," he muttered. Then, louder, "Fuck!"
"I know you don't believe me, but I swear I won't do anything! I just—I can't make you trust me, is the thing—"
"Shut up!" Hugh held up a hand. His breathing was much too fast, much too shallow. And then, without warning, he let out a wordless shout and slammed both palms against the walls of the elevator.
"Shit!" Tristan tried to get up, then subsided when he pulled at his bindings and felt a warning twinge in his shoulder. "Look, I know you have to do what you have to do, but you could really hurt yourself like that—"
"Shut. Up!"
Tristan shut up.
"I can't do this." Hugh kicked the wall, again and again until he fell against it. "I won't! I fucking won't!"
Not knowing what else to do, Tristan went limp in his bonds. Everything he said or did just seemed to make it worse. Maybe it would help Hugh if he stopped drawing attention to himself. Maybe it would help if he just lay there, like an inanimate object, an alpha shaped toy he could use however he— damn it!
Breathing heavily, Hugh strode up to where Tristan slumped against the wall. "Legs open," he snapped.
Tristan jumped to obey. There was no room in his head anymore for questioning it, for trying to figure out what he was supposed to do. If Hugh gave him an order, he'd follow it.
"Stay still."
He stopped moving. Almost stopped breathing.
Hugh lifted his foot, bracing himself against the wall for balance. Slowly, hesitantly, he rested it on the bulge between Tristan's legs. He managed to keep himself from jerking his hips against that slightest bit of friction, but a soft hiss escaped him.
"I'm not putting that thing inside me," said Hugh. His voice was shaky. Wavering.
Tristan swallowed the please that tried to slip out. Hugh pressed down, until he was nearly sobbing with the effort of not rutting against him.
"I'm not putting that thing inside me," Hugh repeated. A steely edge came into his voice, into the way he glared down at Tristan. He pressed down harder. This time Tristan's whimper was pained as much as it was needy.
"It's fucking disgusting." He leaned more and more of his weight on that foot, until Tristan couldn't help squirming beneath it. He panted through the pain, shivering despite the wave of heat that rolled from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes.
"Say it!" Hugh barked.
"It's fucking disgusting!" Tristan blurted out.
Something had to be very, very wrong with him. The moment he said it, shame settled sick and hot in the pit of his stomach—and it felt even better than the first and only time he'd ever bottomed out inside an omega.
But—but he was fuzzy. That was it. This was all just part of Hugh's heat.
And then it didn't matter, because Hugh ground his heel down and the moment was gone. Tristan cried out and tried to jerk away, but he was tied down and moving only made it hurt worse, and it was too much too fast—
"Stop!" he gasped. "Stop, please!"
Hugh recoiled from him. He pressed himself against the opposite side of the elevator, his face a mask of horror. And then, into the awful silence that followed, there was a heavy clunk. The light flicked on. Tristan jumped, and before he could process the fact that the power was back on, the elevator was already dropping the last few feet and sliding its doors open.
In an instant, Hugh had already yanked open the buckle of Tristan's belt and bolted from the elevator like it was on fire. It took a moment for Tristan to work himself loose—by the time he emerged into the first floor lobby, he was already long gone.