Chapter Text
Cormoran hates these heat-matching apps. He misses the days of just going to the right clubs and standing there, soaked in pheromones, until the right Omega comes up to you and takes you home for the next three days.
Alas he lives in the future now, and if he wants to find an Omega in heat, this is the best way to do it. So much has changed in the years he’s been with Charlotte.
His profile is simple, bare, photos of him recent enough to show that he’s not lying about his age, a hint of stubble, his heavyset frame. No point trying to trick a girl into being with him; that’s not how their biology works. He’s an Alpha. That’s all it really takes, in the end. He does not, however, mention the leg in his profile. That comes later.
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Robin bites her lip, hesitating on whether to hit “post” for what feels like an hour. She has never done this before, but she needs— she shakes her head, scans it over one more time, and hits “post.”
Nothing to be done for it now, she thinks. Her Heat is coming soon, and she’s not planning on doing it alone. She reaches for one of her button-up shirts, pairing it with crisp slacks. She might be near her lowest point in London, but she doesn’t have to dress like it.
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He only has one client in his docket, and he’s already got what she’s asked him for. Cormoran knows he could go into a full rut whenever he stops taking his suppressants; his body has told him in no unquestionable words that it is ready and more than willing.
He spends the morning flicking through postings, staring at the women and few men who are looking for a no-strings-attached Alpha for their next heat. He by-passes many of them simply because he can’t tell enough about them from their profile or photos; he’s been burnt by not enough information too many times to trust it.
Too small, too aggressive, too young— he flips past photos, occasionally pausing. He sends messages, sometimes, when the posting is still active, but hears nothing back.
Elliee_Sweetiee seems high-strung by her carefully-posed photos, but she’s in his chosen age range, and she’s got hotel-only and casual-only both checked, so he sends a message into the void. She probably won’t reply, so he keeps scrolling, messages chillygirl1979 and Kirsty_Kitten and hollydaze3469 in turn.
He is about to give it up for the day— he can always check back tomorrow— when a new posting pops up; it is less than ten minutes old, and the girl in the photo gives his heart a jolt.
She’s young, but not too young, reddish-gold hair, pale skinned and rosy cheeked; she is smiling off to the side of the camera, and her eyes are hidden by a pair of sunglasses— smart girl— but he thinks she must be beautiful behind them. What is a girl like this doing looking for a random Alpha online?
He scans her profile quickly— Venetia84, male-only, hotel-preferred, casual-only. She has only the one photo and her profile reveals nothing more, but he allows himself to send a message. It won’t matter. The profile was probably fake, anyway.
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Robin leaves her phone off as she rides the Tube to her job interview, trying not to worry herself into a lather. There’s no point; she will do this interview, and the next, and the next, until she finds a job that doesn’t involve some disgusting old man thinking that just because she’s young and pretty and an Omega that he can lay hands on her.
Too many of her temp jobs had been of that sort, and she thinks the pinch-mouthed middle-aged Beta might have been sending her off to those types of jobs on purpose. She had been rude to Robin from the moment she’d glimpsed Robin’s scent glands peeking out from her shirt collar. Since then, Robin has been careful to only wear high-necked tops that obscure the most obvious indication of her designation.
Discrimination based on designation is illegal, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less prevalent or any easier to prove. Robin grits her teeth and takes deep breaths. She has enough saved up to handle the next few weeks. By then she’ll have found a position, she’s sure of it.
Don’t forget about your Heat, whispers the pesky voice in her head. You don’t have the first idea what you’re going to do about that.
She shakes her head, focusing on the answers to job interview questions. Oh, I’m very much a people-person…
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Cormoran sighs. Maybe he should think about redesigning his website? Not that he knows the first goddamn thing about web design, but how hard could it be really, and he has all the time in the world…
He gives up after staring at the html for ten minutes and grabs his coat. Time for a drink. And who knows, maybe he’ll meet an Omega at the pub, the old fashioned way.
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Robin sits on a bench in a tiny park, feeling like— like—
She’s tired, and lonely, and very, very angry with her biology.
The interview had been fine, but she doesn’t have high hopes for it. The interviewer, a nondescript Beta man, had been distracted the whole time, and she thinks he probably already has a candidate for the position lined up. She’s just a formality, a box to check off. She didn’t even want this job, really, she just needs something…
And her body is stirring, because there’s an Alpha around somewhere, close enough to scent, and she’s close enough to her Heat that any Alpha sounds like a good idea. She clamps her legs together and grits her teeth, looking at her phone for something to do.
She has an absolute deluge of messages in her heating app inbox, and it’s awful. Most of them are disgusting, hey baby let me lick your slick and if u need a big knot i got wht u need lets talk and a shocking number of dick pics and knot shots that she deletes one at a time. The horrible animal Omega voice in her head is taking eager notice, but none of these men meets even the barest of standards, and Robin can’t imagine meeting any of them, letting them touch her—
Well. Her body is on board with the idea of any of the owners of these bulging penises and pectorals touching her. But she, Robin, the owner of this body, is not at all interested, thanks kindly.
She leaves the ones with decent spelling and grammar, of which there are… six. Three, if she’s picky about usernames containing euphemisms for sexual acts and/or body parts, which she decides to be for the first round of replies. She marks her post “fulfilled” — ha, she thinks, we’ll see about that — and re-reads the message from her top contender thus far.
CStrikeRun: Hello, I’m available if you’re still looking for someone to help you with your heat. I promise I’m as normal an Alpha as you’re likely to find on one of these things.
She likes the sense of humor about the situation; she clicks through to his profile. His photos aren’t overly impressive, a man in his mid-thirties with a nose that looks like it’s been broken before. He looks… she bites her lip. He looks a bit worse for wear, actually, a bit battered. His hair is a curly mess, he’s a bit soft around the midsection, and he’s got a scar on his lip. But he’s got a nice smile, she thinks, and broad shoulders, and a sense of humor. She’ll take that over photos of oily naked abdominals and offers to fuck you all the way thru the matress baby any day.
She types her reply, then deletes it, then retypes it nearly the same, scans it one last time for errors, and hits “send” before she can overthink herself out of it. She’s only got a day or two to find someone, and she can’t afford to chicken out now.
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Sitting alone at his table in the cheapest pub he can stand, Cormoran’s startled by his phone buzzing with a notification. He’s doubly surprised to see it’s from the heat-matching app; he’d given up on it entirely in the intervening beers.
Venetia84 has replied to your message! :)
He unlocks his phone to see what she’s written back.
Venetia84: “One of these things?” I take it you’re as big a fan as I am of these apps.
He smiles. He likes this Venetia.
CStrikeRun: I miss the days when we all just went out to the bars and the clubs and found each other the old-fashioned way.
He taps it out gingerly, as much for the beers as for his too-big fingers. He sends it and waits, not admitting to himself that he’s hoping she’ll message him back quickly. He’s lonely here in this pub, for reasons he’d rather not think about.
And she does, his phone lighting up with another notification minutes later.
Venetia84: I think the old-fashioned way is more like matchmaking services and maiden aunts.
Venetia84: I’m glad you’re fairly normal, though. That’s reassuring to hear.
He snorts. He doesn’t think he’s imagining the dry tone to that message; he hopes he isn’t, hopes she’s got some wit in her pretty head. And he looks at her profile again, and she’s just as pretty as he remembers from earlier. Don’t fuck it up, Strike, he tells himself.
CStrikeRun: I pride myself on having the iron self control it takes to not send perfectly nice girls photographs of my genitals.
He’s never done this on this app, or on any app really. Never just had a conversation, instead of a quick exchange of facts to make sure both parties were real and clean before agreeing on a time and place. He’s never flirted over messages, actually; by the time it had become a thing, he’d had Charlotte, and they had never—
Not the time, Strike, he told himself, clutching his pint glass in his fist. He looks at Venetia84’s profile again, just because he wants to; he needs to distract himself, and she’s a perfectly good way to do it.
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Robin snorts at the message from CStrike and taps out an answer before she can think better of it.
Venetia84: This perfectly nice girl is very appreciative of your efforts. I’m sure your genitals are fine without needing photographic evidence.
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Cormoran can feel his eyebrows climbing as he reads Venetia’s response. That’s the way things lie, is it he thinks. He’ll give it a shot.
CStrikeRun: I would be happy to prove such to you at your convenience.
He stares at his screen for a moment before his liquid courage gives out and he types another message, grabbing for another topic of conversation.
CStrikeRun: Your profile says hotel preferred?
There, that’s much safer.
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Sitting on the Tube, Robin reads the messages and tries her best not to broadcast her thoughts to the other inhabitants of the car. She’s going to have her Heat in a matter of days, and it’s hard not to imagine what it might be like, to let this Alpha prove to her how fine his genitals are.
Christ, Robin, get ahold of yourself, she thinks. It’s all so unfamiliar, the onset of Heat without the cushiony barrier provided by the suppressants she can no longer afford.
She ought to reply to him. His second message gives her a topic to respond to that’s far more straightforward to think about.
Venetia84: I share a flat, and my flatmate won’t be appreciative of me having my heat there, especially with someone he’s never met.
Then, a beat later, she quickly adds,
Venetia84: He’s very nice, but he’s a gay Beta and he doesn’t really understand what Heat is like at all.
There. That way he doesn’t misunderstand what things are like between Robin and her flat-mate.
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He? is ringing in Strike’s ears until the second message pops up, and his hackles lower.
Getting possessive already, are you? he asks himself, wondering if he ought to cut himself off. She’s just a girl you’ve exchanged a few messages with, not your Bond-mate. She’s probably not even the same girl in the picture.
A girl that beautiful, with a sense of humor and a firm grasp of sentence structure and punctuation? She’d be off the market before he could say snap.
CStrikeRun: That’s fine, I understand. Let me see what I can arrange. If I can’t book a room, I have my own flat, if that’s alright?
He waits, finishing his beer, and decides not to have another.
Venetia84: I would prefer a hotel room, thanks though! xx
He’s not surprised; he’s a strange Alpha she met on an app. Honestly, I’d be less interested if she’d been fine coming to my flat with nothing more to go on than this, he thinks as he messages her back carefully.
CStrikeRun: That’s smart of you. Give me a day or so to set something up?
Her reply is instant.
Venetia84: You don’t have to do that, I can get a room.
He closes out his tab before responding.
CStrikeRun: It’s the Alpha’s job to take care of the Omega during Heat. Let me do this for you.
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Robin blushes down at her phone, standing in line at the coffeeshop. She wonders what his voice sounds like; the sentence was commanding, nudging up against primal directives. Listen to your Alpha. Let him take care of you. He’ll do whatever you need.
She’s never even met him. She has no idea what he’s like, if he’s smart, if he’s kind, if he prefers coffee or tea. But somehow, over the past hour, it’s been decided that he’s going to see her through her heat, and he wants to take care of her. It’s a bit intoxicating, really.
Venetia84: Alright. Let me know the hotel before you pay, though, please. You understand.
She orders her mocha and leans against the counter, waiting.
CStrikeRun: I do. You’re a smart girl, Venetia84. I like that about you.
I like you too, whoever you are, Robin thinks to herself. I hope that it’s not a mistake.