The prompt was: Joe/Nicky are a bonded alpha/omega pair (alpha!Joe and omega!Nicky)
Back when they bonded, male omegas weren't common, but they weren't rare, either, so no one thought anything of Joe and Nicky being together and of Nicky being a male omega.
Jump to today, and male omegas are *rare*. It not unheard of for people to go their entire lives without ever meeting one. It means that, for some alphas, having a male omega is seen as the ultimate status symbol.
Nicky got fed up of how people treated him as a male omega, so started suppressing, and now people think he's a beta.
When they're in Merrick's lab, his suppressants wear off, and Merrick realises that Nicky is an omega.
Merrick thinks about keeping Nicky for himself, because he wants the status of walking into parties with a male omega on his arm, but decides that he'd rather have the huge amount of money he can get from selling Nicky to the highest bidder.
When Nile comes for the team, she gets the rest of them out, but Nicky's already been sold and is on his way to whoever bought him.
Cue the team trying to track down who has him, while the alpha that bought him is trying to break Nicky down into being the perfect, docile omega.
~~~
Nicky has an implant in his arm. Slipped skilfully between layers of epidermis, so that his body does not reject it as a foreign body causing injury, it steadily releases hormones into his bloodstream. It is only in the last decade or so that this kind of medical technology has been available to him; before, if he had wanted to pass as anything other than omega, it had been him popping pills every hour or so, or spraying scent cancelling liquids that itched at his skin and irritated Joe’s nose. Before that, herbs with terrible side effects, and even worse taste and smells. So for all the inconveniences of modern technology, he’s glad for this innovation.
It’s not that he is ashamed of his secondary gender, or that he truly wants to be a beta. Male omegas had been a dime a dozen when he had been born, now, people can go a lifetime without ever meeting one. He had grown tired of the stares, and of the aggressive Alphas challenging Joe for a chance at a novelty. Now, he happily passes as a beta, and only has the mild inconvenience of changing out his implant every few months. And every now and then, between missions, he and Joe head back to Malta, to their little house by the ocean, and he takes the implant out.
~~~
And then, the ambush in their safehouse in France happens. Nicky and Joe are taken together, as they always are, while Booker is left in pieces. They don’t make it easy for their captors; they show the childish men in the back van they are not to be taken lightly even with their wrists bound, and in the jet they kill two more men and break another’s arm before their captors learn and bind them more securely. But even then they do not worry; they are confident that Booker and Andy and Nile will find them, or they will break themselves out. They always have. They can endure the torture; they have before. All they need to do is wait, wait for rescue, or for the right moment. In the meantime, they have each other, and that’s all they’ve ever needed.
~~~
It’s when Nicky is wheeled out of the lab without Joe that they begin to worry. Nicky cranes his neck looking backwards at his mate as Joe fights against his restraints, sharp white fangs bared as he asks and then yells and then roars to be told where they are taking Nicky.
“I will be fine,” Nicky calls out, in Genoese. “Maybe they are taking me to a tea party.”
Joe croaks a laugh, calmed immediately by Nicky’s words, and his beautiful dark eyes lock with Nicky’s.
“I will be waiting,” he replies in the same language, his accent flawless, “tell me how the tea is when you return, my heart.”
And then, their eyeline to each other is broken, and Nicky lets his chin fall and he sighs, staring up at the concrete ceiling as he’s wheeled away. He hopes whatever they are taking him away for won’t be long.
~~~
Dr Kozak taps her pen idly against the desk as she watches the scan begin to take shape on the computer screen in front of her. The machine hums as it passes slowly over the prone body strapped to the gurney beside her. So far, from all her tissue samples, it looks like these immortals are as human as the rest of them. A male Alpha and a male beta, bonded, the tie physically represented by the matching bite marks on their necks. She ponders how if every wound on their bodies heals instantaneously, the scars of their mating marks have persevered. She will find out.
The machine does one last sweep of the beta. She clicks through the completed scans, and pauses. The first anomaly she sees is what looks like a small metal implant in the beta’s left arm, near his bicep. Being an omega herself, and a doctor, she immediately realises what it is. Quickly, she scrolls through the scans to images of his middle section, hardly believing it, and drops her pen when she finds what she’s been looking for.
She picks up the phone on the desk and begins to dial a number.
“Please,” a soft, accented voice prevents her from pressing a number. She looks up to see grey-blue eyes staring at her imploringly. “Please,” Nicky says again, “you do not need to tell him.”
She ruthlessly squashes the twinge of empathy down into dust. “He’ll find out eventually,” she says. And then he will be furious with me.
She dials the last number.
~~~
“Are you sure?” Merrick asks, standing beside where Nicky is still strapped under the scanner.
“Completely,” Dr Kozak says, swivelling the computer screen to show him. “This here, is a womb.” She circles the organ with her mouse, and Merrick squints at it.
“He doesn’t smell like one,” Merrick says.
“He has an implant,” she explains, clicking through to the other scan that shows his left arm. “Usually implants like this are for birth control, but it looks like this one has been altered specifically to make him smell like a beta. If we remove it, his scent should begin to change within the hour.”
Merrick takes his eyes off the screen to look at Nicky. Nicky stares back impassively, nothing showing on his face.
“Do it,” Merrick commands. Dr Kozak steps up to unlock the wheels on Nicky’s gurney, but he stops her, his eyes still on Nicky’s face. “No. Do it here. I want to know as soon as possible.”
She stops, stifles a sigh, and then nods.
Nicky’s expression doesn’t change as she cuts into his flesh with a scalpel, but he’s staring up at the ceiling now, and not meeting Merrick’s eyes. The greed on the young Alpha’s face disgusts him, and is more disquieting than the sharp metal piercing his arm and then the tweezers that dig into him before the wound can heal.
It doesn’t even take half an hour. Nicky closes his eyes in resignation as his natural omega scent blooms sweet and honey-like in the cold, artificially lit room, and Merrick takes a deep, slow breath, and smiles.
~~~
An hour passes. And then two. Joe isn’t an impatient man, not even before his immortality, but he begins to tap his fingernails at the leather below him. He tries not to think about what they are doing to his Nicolo, about what tests they could be running that could not be done in the lab here. Thinks about his mate, enduring needles and scalpels and bone-drills alone, and clenches his teeth together. He knows Nicky is strong, so strong, and can weather just about anything, and is beyond capable of taking care of himself, but he knows that Nicky still feels pain even if he cannot really die, and he cannot stop himself from worrying. He is Nicky’s Alpha after all, and although he has lived almost a millenia, the instinct of needing to protect his mate still runs deep.
It is another hour before Dr Kozak returns, her face drawn and lips pressed tightly together. She is followed by her normal pack of overly steroided guards, but there is no Nicky.
“Where is my mate?” Joe demands as Dr Kozak places her tablet down on the desks beside him. “Where is he? What have you done to—”
“Merrick has found a ‘better’ use for him,” is all Dr Kozak says. She refuses to look at him.
A prickle of unease nips at the back of Joe’s neck. “What do you mean?” He growls.
She presses her lips together as she organises samples of his and Nicky’s flesh. “We needed more funding for our research,” she says at last. “I have all of the samples I need, and with you, I can replace them if need be.” She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.
“What do you mean,” Joe growls, his eyes beginning to flash red. His blood is both running hot and cold; rage, and dread.
Dr Kozak finishes fiddling with her jars and picks up the tray. She turns her back on him, and ignores his roar of rage as she leaves the lab.
When she shows no sign of coming back, he collapses back against the chair he’s bound to, still straining against the restraints. Nicolo, he thinks to himself, tears in his eyes, oh Nicolo, my love.
~~~
Booker and Andy are brought in, and Joe learns of Booker's betrayal and Andy’s new mortality. When Nile comes to rescue them, it’s only the thought of finding his mate that stops him from bashing Booker’s face in with his bare fists. Retribution can come later; first, he must find Nicky.
The fastest way to that is to find Merrick.
~~~
“I’m sorry,” Nile gasps as she’s pulled from the wreckage of the car that she and Merrick had plummeted into. Her broken bones are still reaglinning as she collapses against Joe’s side. “I’m sorry, I tried—but he was going to kill Andy and I couldn’t—”
Joe cups her bloodied face for a second. Brave, lovely Nile, so worried about someone else’s mate even though they have not known each other hardly a week. He cannot blame her. “I know,” he says. “It’s okay. We will find him.”
Even with his words of reassurance she wears her guilt like a weight for her to bear alone. And every day that they do not find Nicky, it seems to grow, and even though she puts on a brave face and squares her shoulders, Joe can feel it. It almost matches his own; he knows that Nicky disappearing is not his fault, but he feels a deepening pit of guilt in his stomach as they search fruitlessly. He could not protect his mate, and it haunts him every waking second.
~~~
Nicky wakes to a hand in his hair. Without opening his eyes he knows that it is not Joe’s. From centuries together he can pick his mate out of a crowd just from the sound of his footsteps, the cadence of his breath, the way his form moves next to Nicky, his steady body heat always swaying closer. The hand in his hair is not his mate’s.
Nicky opens his eyes and sees a man sitting next to him on the bed. His head feels groggy, heavy with fading sedatives, and as he shifts minutely, he can feel the shackles around his wrists and ankles and neck.
“Good morning, Nicolai,” the man says in Russian. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Nicky replies in the same language, his voice rough. He shifts again, testing his restraints. They’re tight, and even though they are lined with what feels like velvet, they’re strong. He won’t be able to break out of these, not even if he dislocates his thumbs. When he looks up he sees his chains are joined to a sturdy metal headboard, and when he looks down his feet are chained to a metal bar. He won’t be able to break those either.
The man huffs a laugh. A finger trails down Nicky’s cheek to rest under his chin. “There’s no use fighting,” the man says. Nicky looks at him dispassionately. He smells like an Alpha, scent heavy and overpowering, like whiskey and cigar smoke. It is nothing compared to Joe’s scent; quiet, clear desert nights and warm golden sand, the smell of fresh oasis water on the air and a storm on the horizon. The scent of love, passion and devotion.
Nicky doesn’t reply to the man. He watches silently, observing. Rich clothes, a ridiculous Rolex studded with diamonds on his wrist. Fashionably stubbled, his blond hair perfectly coiffed. Broad shoulders and chest, tall and good looking. Nicky has no idea who he is, but the glint of greed in his blue eyes is so familiar as he looks over Nicky’s body. Nicky has no shame in his bared body (how could he, after every part has been praised by Joe over and over and over again), but he’s glad that he’s still clothed. He wonders how long that will last.
His gaze moves on to the room. Small, but lavishly furnished. No windows, and two doors, one that opens to what looks like a bathroom, the other closed and heavily fortified. A keypad is in the wall next to it, sleek and high-tech.
“You are beautiful,” the man says, fingers dancing across Nicky’s jaw. “You will make me a very happy Alpha, envied by everyone when they see you on my arm.”
Nicky laughs gently. “The only thing I will be doing with your arm is breaking it.”
If anything, the man’s smile grows wider. “Good. You have fire. Nothing pleases me more than breaking a strong omega to my will.”
Nicky doesn’t say anything to that. He waits as the man’s fingers move up over his chin to touch his lower lip, and then he strikes. He snaps forward with his teeth, biting deep into the man’s finger.
The Alpha roars with rage, ripping his hand free.
Nicky spits blood and flesh to the side, making a face at the taste, and then swallows a cry of pain as he’s hit across the face with a closed fist. The blow is powerful; he feels his cheekbone fracture, and his skin splits under a metal ring.
“You little bitch,” the man snarls, holding his bleeding hand to his chest. Red stains over the pristine white shirt he’s wearing. His compose is completely lost to rage.
Nicky stays silent, only watching the man stride for the door. He punches numbers into the keypad, his body blocking Nicky’s view, and then disappears through the opened door. It slams shut behind him, leaving Nicky to silence, his cheekbone quietly healing over. Nicky rests his head back against the silk sheets covering the bed, and closes his eyes.
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timeasmymeasure
to pluck a flower: Joe/Nicky, A/B/O Verse, Dark 1/?
Date: 2020-09-10 12:23 am (UTC)Joe/Nicky are a bonded alpha/omega pair (alpha!Joe and omega!Nicky)
Back when they bonded, male omegas weren't common, but they weren't rare, either, so no one thought anything of Joe and Nicky being together and of Nicky being a male omega.
Jump to today, and male omegas are *rare*. It not unheard of for people to go their entire lives without ever meeting one. It means that, for some alphas, having a male omega is seen as the ultimate status symbol.
Nicky got fed up of how people treated him as a male omega, so started suppressing, and now people think he's a beta.
When they're in Merrick's lab, his suppressants wear off, and Merrick realises that Nicky is an omega.
Merrick thinks about keeping Nicky for himself, because he wants the status of walking into parties with a male omega on his arm, but decides that he'd rather have the huge amount of money he can get from selling Nicky to the highest bidder.
When Nile comes for the team, she gets the rest of them out, but Nicky's already been sold and is on his way to whoever bought him.
Cue the team trying to track down who has him, while the alpha that bought him is trying to break Nicky down into being the perfect, docile omega.
~~~
Nicky has an implant in his arm. Slipped skilfully between layers of epidermis, so that his body does not reject it as a foreign body causing injury, it steadily releases hormones into his bloodstream. It is only in the last decade or so that this kind of medical technology has been available to him; before, if he had wanted to pass as anything other than omega, it had been him popping pills every hour or so, or spraying scent cancelling liquids that itched at his skin and irritated Joe’s nose. Before that, herbs with terrible side effects, and even worse taste and smells. So for all the inconveniences of modern technology, he’s glad for this innovation.
It’s not that he is ashamed of his secondary gender, or that he truly wants to be a beta. Male omegas had been a dime a dozen when he had been born, now, people can go a lifetime without ever meeting one. He had grown tired of the stares, and of the aggressive Alphas challenging Joe for a chance at a novelty. Now, he happily passes as a beta, and only has the mild inconvenience of changing out his implant every few months. And every now and then, between missions, he and Joe head back to Malta, to their little house by the ocean, and he takes the implant out.
~~~
And then, the ambush in their safehouse in France happens. Nicky and Joe are taken together, as they always are, while Booker is left in pieces. They don’t make it easy for their captors; they show the childish men in the back van they are not to be taken lightly even with their wrists bound, and in the jet they kill two more men and break another’s arm before their captors learn and bind them more securely. But even then they do not worry; they are confident that Booker and Andy and Nile will find them, or they will break themselves out. They always have. They can endure the torture; they have before. All they need to do is wait, wait for rescue, or for the right moment. In the meantime, they have each other, and that’s all they’ve ever needed.
~~~
It’s when Nicky is wheeled out of the lab without Joe that they begin to worry. Nicky cranes his neck looking backwards at his mate as Joe fights against his restraints, sharp white fangs bared as he asks and then yells and then roars to be told where they are taking Nicky.
“I will be fine,” Nicky calls out, in Genoese. “Maybe they are taking me to a tea party.”
Joe croaks a laugh, calmed immediately by Nicky’s words, and his beautiful dark eyes lock with Nicky’s.
“I will be waiting,” he replies in the same language, his accent flawless, “tell me how the tea is when you return, my heart.”
And then, their eyeline to each other is broken, and Nicky lets his chin fall and he sighs, staring up at the concrete ceiling as he’s wheeled away. He hopes whatever they are taking him away for won’t be long.
~~~
Dr Kozak taps her pen idly against the desk as she watches the scan begin to take shape on the computer screen in front of her. The machine hums as it passes slowly over the prone body strapped to the gurney beside her. So far, from all her tissue samples, it looks like these immortals are as human as the rest of them. A male Alpha and a male beta, bonded, the tie physically represented by the matching bite marks on their necks. She ponders how if every wound on their bodies heals instantaneously, the scars of their mating marks have persevered. She will find out.
The machine does one last sweep of the beta. She clicks through the completed scans, and pauses. The first anomaly she sees is what looks like a small metal implant in the beta’s left arm, near his bicep. Being an omega herself, and a doctor, she immediately realises what it is. Quickly, she scrolls through the scans to images of his middle section, hardly believing it, and drops her pen when she finds what she’s been looking for.
She picks up the phone on the desk and begins to dial a number.
“Please,” a soft, accented voice prevents her from pressing a number. She looks up to see grey-blue eyes staring at her imploringly. “Please,” Nicky says again, “you do not need to tell him.”
She ruthlessly squashes the twinge of empathy down into dust. “He’ll find out eventually,” she says. And then he will be furious with me.
She dials the last number.
~~~
“Are you sure?” Merrick asks, standing beside where Nicky is still strapped under the scanner.
“Completely,” Dr Kozak says, swivelling the computer screen to show him. “This here, is a womb.” She circles the organ with her mouse, and Merrick squints at it.
“He doesn’t smell like one,” Merrick says.
“He has an implant,” she explains, clicking through to the other scan that shows his left arm. “Usually implants like this are for birth control, but it looks like this one has been altered specifically to make him smell like a beta. If we remove it, his scent should begin to change within the hour.”
Merrick takes his eyes off the screen to look at Nicky. Nicky stares back impassively, nothing showing on his face.
“Do it,” Merrick commands. Dr Kozak steps up to unlock the wheels on Nicky’s gurney, but he stops her, his eyes still on Nicky’s face. “No. Do it here. I want to know as soon as possible.”
She stops, stifles a sigh, and then nods.
Nicky’s expression doesn’t change as she cuts into his flesh with a scalpel, but he’s staring up at the ceiling now, and not meeting Merrick’s eyes. The greed on the young Alpha’s face disgusts him, and is more disquieting than the sharp metal piercing his arm and then the tweezers that dig into him before the wound can heal.
It doesn’t even take half an hour. Nicky closes his eyes in resignation as his natural omega scent blooms sweet and honey-like in the cold, artificially lit room, and Merrick takes a deep, slow breath, and smiles.
~~~
An hour passes. And then two. Joe isn’t an impatient man, not even before his immortality, but he begins to tap his fingernails at the leather below him. He tries not to think about what they are doing to his Nicolo, about what tests they could be running that could not be done in the lab here. Thinks about his mate, enduring needles and scalpels and bone-drills alone, and clenches his teeth together. He knows Nicky is strong, so strong, and can weather just about anything, and is beyond capable of taking care of himself, but he knows that Nicky still feels pain even if he cannot really die, and he cannot stop himself from worrying. He is Nicky’s Alpha after all, and although he has lived almost a millenia, the instinct of needing to protect his mate still runs deep.
It is another hour before Dr Kozak returns, her face drawn and lips pressed tightly together. She is followed by her normal pack of overly steroided guards, but there is no Nicky.
“Where is my mate?” Joe demands as Dr Kozak places her tablet down on the desks beside him. “Where is he? What have you done to—”
“Merrick has found a ‘better’ use for him,” is all Dr Kozak says. She refuses to look at him.
A prickle of unease nips at the back of Joe’s neck. “What do you mean?” He growls.
She presses her lips together as she organises samples of his and Nicky’s flesh. “We needed more funding for our research,” she says at last. “I have all of the samples I need, and with you, I can replace them if need be.” She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.
“What do you mean,” Joe growls, his eyes beginning to flash red. His blood is both running hot and cold; rage, and dread.
Dr Kozak finishes fiddling with her jars and picks up the tray. She turns her back on him, and ignores his roar of rage as she leaves the lab.
When she shows no sign of coming back, he collapses back against the chair he’s bound to, still straining against the restraints. Nicolo, he thinks to himself, tears in his eyes, oh Nicolo, my love.
~~~
Booker and Andy are brought in, and Joe learns of Booker's betrayal and Andy’s new mortality. When Nile comes to rescue them, it’s only the thought of finding his mate that stops him from bashing Booker’s face in with his bare fists. Retribution can come later; first, he must find Nicky.
The fastest way to that is to find Merrick.
~~~
“I’m sorry,” Nile gasps as she’s pulled from the wreckage of the car that she and Merrick had plummeted into. Her broken bones are still reaglinning as she collapses against Joe’s side. “I’m sorry, I tried—but he was going to kill Andy and I couldn’t—”
Joe cups her bloodied face for a second. Brave, lovely Nile, so worried about someone else’s mate even though they have not known each other hardly a week. He cannot blame her. “I know,” he says. “It’s okay. We will find him.”
Even with his words of reassurance she wears her guilt like a weight for her to bear alone. And every day that they do not find Nicky, it seems to grow, and even though she puts on a brave face and squares her shoulders, Joe can feel it. It almost matches his own; he knows that Nicky disappearing is not his fault, but he feels a deepening pit of guilt in his stomach as they search fruitlessly. He could not protect his mate, and it haunts him every waking second.
~~~
Nicky wakes to a hand in his hair. Without opening his eyes he knows that it is not Joe’s. From centuries together he can pick his mate out of a crowd just from the sound of his footsteps, the cadence of his breath, the way his form moves next to Nicky, his steady body heat always swaying closer. The hand in his hair is not his mate’s.
Nicky opens his eyes and sees a man sitting next to him on the bed. His head feels groggy, heavy with fading sedatives, and as he shifts minutely, he can feel the shackles around his wrists and ankles and neck.
“Good morning, Nicolai,” the man says in Russian. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Nicky replies in the same language, his voice rough. He shifts again, testing his restraints. They’re tight, and even though they are lined with what feels like velvet, they’re strong. He won’t be able to break out of these, not even if he dislocates his thumbs. When he looks up he sees his chains are joined to a sturdy metal headboard, and when he looks down his feet are chained to a metal bar. He won’t be able to break those either.
The man huffs a laugh. A finger trails down Nicky’s cheek to rest under his chin. “There’s no use fighting,” the man says. Nicky looks at him dispassionately. He smells like an Alpha, scent heavy and overpowering, like whiskey and cigar smoke. It is nothing compared to Joe’s scent; quiet, clear desert nights and warm golden sand, the smell of fresh oasis water on the air and a storm on the horizon. The scent of love, passion and devotion.
Nicky doesn’t reply to the man. He watches silently, observing. Rich clothes, a ridiculous Rolex studded with diamonds on his wrist. Fashionably stubbled, his blond hair perfectly coiffed. Broad shoulders and chest, tall and good looking. Nicky has no idea who he is, but the glint of greed in his blue eyes is so familiar as he looks over Nicky’s body. Nicky has no shame in his bared body (how could he, after every part has been praised by Joe over and over and over again), but he’s glad that he’s still clothed. He wonders how long that will last.
His gaze moves on to the room. Small, but lavishly furnished. No windows, and two doors, one that opens to what looks like a bathroom, the other closed and heavily fortified. A keypad is in the wall next to it, sleek and high-tech.
“You are beautiful,” the man says, fingers dancing across Nicky’s jaw. “You will make me a very happy Alpha, envied by everyone when they see you on my arm.”
Nicky laughs gently. “The only thing I will be doing with your arm is breaking it.”
If anything, the man’s smile grows wider. “Good. You have fire. Nothing pleases me more than breaking a strong omega to my will.”
Nicky doesn’t say anything to that. He waits as the man’s fingers move up over his chin to touch his lower lip, and then he strikes. He snaps forward with his teeth, biting deep into the man’s finger.
The Alpha roars with rage, ripping his hand free.
Nicky spits blood and flesh to the side, making a face at the taste, and then swallows a cry of pain as he’s hit across the face with a closed fist. The blow is powerful; he feels his cheekbone fracture, and his skin splits under a metal ring.
“You little bitch,” the man snarls, holding his bleeding hand to his chest. Red stains over the pristine white shirt he’s wearing. His compose is completely lost to rage.
Nicky stays silent, only watching the man stride for the door. He punches numbers into the keypad, his body blocking Nicky’s view, and then disappears through the opened door. It slams shut behind him, leaving Nicky to silence, his cheekbone quietly healing over. Nicky rests his head back against the silk sheets covering the bed, and closes his eyes.