Chapter Text
Medical Tent, Terror Camp
“Will I fly? Up to God?”
“Yes! You’ll see the Passage first, as you go, then. Try to call back, and let us know where it is.”
…
“I wanted to be here. When we found it.”
Flashes. Vignettes. Night terrors. The swollen knuckles, the near-sudden paralysis, as if Medusa herself had been conjured in front of poor, poor David Young. His scream. By God, his scream. It wasn’t even that. A yowl, a holler, a wailing cut short by the great equalizer, the scythe of the reaper. A warning.
Run, run, he wants us to run.
All of those darting images, true flashbacks, poisoned the slumber of Harry Goodsir until he was no longer in slumber at all. His eyes opened, giving up the façade of leaving the conscious realm, as he had been in and out of sleep for a while, by then. He half expected to see the face of the late ship boy that haunted the backs of his eyelids as he looked up at the canvas of his tent after rolling over from the side, stretching his body out of the fetal position it had been in. Though he acknowledged his own anguish, the surgeon still found a way to invalidate it, to curb it.
It is not lost on me, he thought, how my mind dwells on these things, but I am the one that is alive, and Mister Young is not. He did not get the chance to go on, as I have. I will not lose sight of that. It wasn’t a prayer, but more of a reaching out of his mind and heart into the void of the tundra, the Arctic expanse. May he be at peace, wherever he is.
Before his mind could shift to further self-deprecation — following the long-standing pattern of eating away at himself for comforting David in a way that now felt naïve, childish, ill-informed — a sensory something brought Harry back to the present. It took a moment for the surgeon to discern what exactly it was.
A scent. Musky, mineral, but floral. Rosy? There was a saltiness to it, a freshness like seafoam, but it had more complexity than that. It was, to Goodsir, delectable. Not one-note at all, but a nuanced blend of pleasurable things.
Pleasurable, in the literal and figurative sense of the word.
Oh… Oh, heavens…
Heat. A rising sense of urgency in his chest. The temptation to move, to find the source of the scent, to… Harry couldn’t bring himself to fully think it, let alone express it. And yet, he had to. So was the biology, the curse of his lot in life: the curse of the humble omega, which was normally not a problem that Goodsir had to deal with. He could not recall the last time that he had properly entered a heat, especially since setting sail on a decidedly doomed expedition. For his own sake and the crew's, he had brought upon the voyage an early form of heat suppressants, to ensure that his focus would stay true in case of times of crisis. Unfortunately, in the transition from the ships to the ice and camp, the rest of his supply had been ruined. Another sort of provision spoiled rotten, with consequences.
Throughout the progression of the crew’s misfortunes, rumblings of a heat stirred, but never fully emerged in him. This was the closest that he had gotten to it, and Goodsir feared, for his own sake just as much as others, that the timing and intensity of such a thing did not bode well. Disease rates were only rising at camp, resources only dwindling, time only running out. Harry felt the weight of their little world on the ice upon his shoulders, the poor Atlas with a surgeon’s toolset, but he knew he would be utterly useless to them all if this was not dealt with, and dealt with soon. Focus would be lost to him, and there would be no way that he could tend to a wound upon anyone, let alone carry out a procedure, should it be needed.
With that line of logic in his mind, Harry felt it was not an act of lust for him to stand, to exit his camp, and to wander in the dark, small lantern in hand. Seeking out the bearer of the smell, whatever they were — alpha or otherwise. It was pragmatism that led his way amongst the labyrinth of tents and campfires, “provisions” (if you could call them that) and boxes. Surely anyone would understand that.
Goodsir was fortunate that he did not have to walk far to find what, whose aroma was plaguing him. Fortunate because, though he was proficient at putting on a mask over his emotional and physical sensations when necessary, the utter potency of omega heat would prove his discipline to be futile. If he thought about it too much, too quickly, he could feel the slickness of his parts below the waist grow in a way that was far from gradual.
“Doctor? Doctor Goodsir?”
Second Master Henry Foster Collins was the face that Harry laid eyes upon, and he realized that Collins was it, him being the destination — the end of his reproductive system's desire-fueled roadmap. Goodsir’s mouth grew wet as the delicious smell intensified before his very eyes, and nose.
“Mister Collins.” He licked his lips. “Forgive me if I startled you…”
Henry Collins then, too, began a scent journey of his own. If given an extra moment, he would have asked what led the good doctor to be up so late, but his nostrils picked up on something, someone, and there was suddenly no need to ask. Sprigs of flowers. Lavender, perhaps. A touch of something dirtier, older — amber? And a darker, more complex rose, which Henry knew, or had been told, complemented his own musk.
A pretty perfect match-pair, one may argue. A delta and an omega, whose floral wetness floated across the ice and snow, practically opening the door for Henry, and inviting him in. Come on in and play. Breed him. Ravish him. Devour him. A prickly briar of shame scraped across Collins's mind, which inevitably only made his desire grow larger.
“I… Um. Doctor Goodsir, we…”
“I know.”
They both did. Unspoken, both out of embarrassment and disbelief, but they both knew. The pause between them was when, normally, Harry would have spun a story, found an anecdote fitting to the situation, a comforting word to ease an uncomfortable truth. But he could not think straight, which was another thing they both knew the reason for, and Henry was too in his own head and at a loss for words to do much about it. Aside from, what the men were coming to realize, was the inevitable: acting upon their primal instincts, completing the ritual, lifting the curse.
“Mister Collins,” Harry hesitated, “perhaps… Perhaps it would be best if we both returned to the medical tent.” He glanced around, unsure if anyone else would be up to overhear, and wanting to cover his bases. “I think I may have something to help with your sleeping. If you'll follow me.” The doctor stepped closer as he spoke, and gestured with his hand carrying the lantern in the direction of the tent. The movement teased out another strong sniff of his scent, and Collins tensed, shivered, instincts of his own starting to come more alive.
Henry merely nodded, and began the walk with Goodsir back across camp. Unsure what to say, but exactly sure what to do, once they were alone. Left to their own devices.
Sleeping. Right. I don’t think that we’ll be doing much of that.