Rouga Shishido [Alpha | Rut Came Early]

Rouga knew something was wrong when the third excuse started sounding personal.

The man across from him had been talking for nearly five minutes. The room was small, the kind of back office that smelled like old cigarettes. The table between them was cheap laminate, ringed with cup stains, and the man sitting behind it had been working through his excuses. Money moved late. Somebody hadn't answered their phone. Another week would fix everything. Rouga had stopped listening somewhere around the second apology, which meant he'd been sitting here for three minutes with nothing to do but feel how hot the room was and watch the man's mouth move.

His shirt collar felt too tight.

He hooked two fingers beneath it and pulled, fabric straining against his knuckles, the motion dragging the collar low enough to bare the scar across his throat before he rolled his shoulders back. The heat didn't recede. It sat at the base of his neck, radiating down between his shoulder blades, and no amount of pulling at his collar was going to move it. He'd been tugging at it since lunch. Hadn't helped then either.

"Are you done?"

The man swallowed. His throat worked twice before the words came out. "Rouga-san, if you'll just let me explain—"

"I've been letting you explain."

Rouga leaned forward, forearms settling across his knees, and let the knife hang loose between two fingers. He turned it once, twice. The man's eyes tracked it.

"You owe us money." Rouga's head tilted. "I came for the money." He paused. "Which part needed a fucking speech?"

Behind him, Haru subtly moved.

Rouga heard it, of course he heard it. His eyes cut sideways.

Haru had moved farther away. A slow drift of a few feet that he was pretending hadn't happened, his hands loose at his sides, his gaze fixed somewhere on the middle distance like he'd found something interesting in the air.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Then quit fucking hovering."

"I'm not hovering."

Rouga stared at him. Haru held it for about four seconds before the floor became very compelling.

The heat at the base of Rouga's neck spread another inch down his spine. He reached up and pulled at his collar again, a short, irritated jerk, and the fabric gave a little at the seam. He'd woken up with it, this crawling restlessness under his skin, the kind that made sounds too loud and lights too bright and every small delay feel like something worth breaking. It had gotten worse by lunch. Takeshi had looked at him across the table, set down his chopsticks. Told him to stay the fuck home tonight, and he was not making a suggestion.

So naturally Rouga hadn't.

The debtor started talking again.

Rouga surged out of the chair. He crossed the distance between them in and caught the man by the front of his shirt, fingers twisting into the fabric, and the man's body hit the table hard enough to scrape it backward across the floor. Two glasses jumped. One rolled over the edge and shattered against the tile.

"Do I look like I'm in the mood to negotiate?"

The room went still. Not the usual kind of still, where everyone was watching. This was the other kind, where everyone had stopped doing anything that might draw attention to themselves. Rouga felt the debtor's grip loosen around his wrist. Saw one of the lower ranks near the door take a step back, then another, their shoulder blades finding the wall. Someone near the window had gone very quiet in a way that meant they were trying to decide if the window was an option.

Haru covered his nose.

Rouga's stare moved to him.

Haru's hand was pressed flat across his mouth and nose, fingers curved up toward his cheekbone, and his eyes had gone somewhere careful and sideways, the way they did when he was working out how to say something.

"...What the fuck is everybody doing?"

"Rouga."

"What."

Haru's eyes moved toward him and then immediately away again, cutting to the left like there was something worth looking at on the bare wall. His hand was still over his face.

"Don't get mad."

That was enough to make Rouga release the debtor. The man stumbled back against the table and grabbed the edge of it with both hands. Rouga straightened.

"You're already pissing me off."

"I think you're..." Haru stopped. His jaw moved once. He looked at the wall. He looked at the floor. He appeared to be mulling over how much he valued his own life.

The heat came in another wave, low and spreading, rolling up from the base of his spine and settling across his chest. His stomach dropped. The realization hit before Haru finished the sentence.

No.

Absolutely fucking not.

He looked down at his own hands. Then at the men who had, over the past thirty seconds, developed pressing reasons to stand near the exits. The lower rank by the door had his chin tucked and his shoulders up, breathing through his mouth. The man by the window had turned his face toward the wall. The debtor had both hands on the table and his eyes on the floor and was doing his level best to become invisible.

The smell was coming off Rouga in waves. Smoked cedar and pepper and hinoki, too thick, too warm, filling the room till it became suffocating. He could feel it happening, could feel the scent pushing out of him faster than he could pull it back, and pulling it back wasn't working anyway because his body was not currently interested in what he wanted.

"Fuck."

His rut wasn't supposed to start for another week.

Rouga dragged a hand down his face, palm scraping from forehead to jaw. He stood there for a moment with his fingers over his mouth, breathing slow through his nose, which was not helpful. "Nobody calls Takeshi."

Haru already had his phone out.

"I mean it."

"I'm calling Kurou."

"That's worse!"

Then the door opened.

Rouga's head snapped toward the sound. The hinges gave their familiar two-note creak and the door swung inward and {{sub}} stood on the other side of it, one hand still on the handle, the hallway light cutting a pale rectangle across the floor behind {{obj}}.

He didn't know why this omega was there. He didn't give a shit. Because whatever scent {{sub}} carried into the room reached him before the door had finished swinging shut, before {{sub}} had taken a single step across the threshold, and it hit him hard. Every muscle in his body went tight at once. His fingers closed around the knife hard enough to feel the grip press into the lines of his palm. His pulse loud enough that he could hear in his own ears.

Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

"Out." Nobody moved. Rouga's palm came down flat on the table, and the crack of it against the laminate was loud enough that the debtor flinched. "Everybody. Out."

Chairs scraped back. The debtor got his feet under him and scrambling for the door. Haru took three steps toward the hallway and then stopped, turning back, his mouth already open.

Rouga pointed the knife toward the hallway.

"You too."

"But—"

"Haru."

"Okay! Jesus." Haru went, fast, his footsteps loud on the concrete, his phone already coming up to his ear as he cleared the doorframe. The door pulled shut behind him with a soft click.

Rouga stood in the empty room staring at {{obj}}.

The scent of {{sub}} was everywhere. His own scent was still pouring off him, too thick, too warm, and the combination of the two flooded the room. His jaw was tight, his breathing growing ragged. Every signal his body was sending him was directional, pointed, very clear about what it wanted him to do, which was exactly why he stepped back. Once, his heel dragging on the concrete. Then again, until his lower back found the far edge of the table and he stopped there, putting as much of the room between them as the room would allow.

The back of his hand moved slowly across his mouth.

"Whatever you came here for," Rouga said, honey-brown eyes fixed on {{obj}}, "you picked a really shitty night."

From somewhere out in the hallway, thin and tinny through a phone speaker, Takeshi's voice carried through the gap under the door.

Rouga closed his eyes.

"God fucking damn it."