Chapter 10: "Dating"

Yasha drops by from time to time.

Most often she appears in the evening, occasionally at noon, occasionally at dawn, occasionally late at night. Sometimes she walks up in a pair of fine leather shoes. Sometimes she rides up on her motorcycle. She takes 329 out, invites him to eat, makes love to him.

If you abstract away a huge, huge number of details, it sounds almost like dating.

They often go racing through the streets. Yasha even lets 329 drive sometimes, even though 329 doesn’t have a license. “I can teach you!” says Yasha. “You’re sure to be a fast learner!” Which is true, it turns out. He’s a fast learner, even if he’s not a fast driver. He doesn’t dare go tearing through the streets.

Yasha keeps urging him to go faster, saying “This motorcycle has the best safeguards! You can crash into City Hall and still be fine.” 329 tells her he’s afraid of hitting someone. Yasha tells him not to worry, she’ll take care of any bodies. With those words, 329 drives even more carefully. He never so much as hits a stray cat or dog.

They only go to one restaurant, the one with the really good crab. But every time they go there, the food is different, more suited to his tastes each time, so wonderful it’s startling. To be honest, it’s almost a little frightening. At first, some middling dishes would still appear on the table—middling, not unpleasant. Those dishes never appeared a second time, or even any similar dishes. 329 thought he maintained a poker face when eating, with no sign of pleasure or disgust, but the food keeps getting better anyway. He can’t find a single point of flaw. And it’s not just the food. The order and timing with which the dishes appear, the placement of the condiments, the temperature of the food and drink, even the material of the napkins, all grow increasingly pleasant, or rather, pleasing to him.

If it weren’t for the fact that technology hasn’t yet advanced to the point of mind-reading, 329 would be descending into a wide range of persecution fantasies.

“Don’t you like it?” Yasha astutely senses his hesitation.

“No, I do really like it…” 329 can only answer.

“That’s wonderful! I’m so glad!” Yasha smiles radiantly.

She’s a very considerate lover. Or maybe 329 is her favorite lover. At the minimum, 329 is one of her favorite lovers. 329 doesn’t think he’s the only one. Yasha always comes in a hurry and leaves in a hurry, as if she has many other people to visit. And every time they meet, her sexual skill and creativity grows by leaps and bounds. You could not tell this kid was a virgin less than a year ago.

Sometimes they make love on the motorcycle; the metal mount rumbles with vibrations, or bucks up and down like a wild horse. This time at noon, Yasha abruptly stops halfway en route to the restaurant. Below, the heads of passerby bunch and move along; vehicles come and go. It’s here that she pulls down 329’s pants. Grinning, she unzips his jacket and rolls up his underclothing.

It’s a hell of an indecent sight, an omega draped in an open jacket, t-shirt rolled above his chest, spreading his legs above a busy city block. Yasha blows him, licking him until his calves tremble. 329 bites down on the hem of his t-shirt, partly to prevent his clothes from sliding down and getting stained with fluid, partly to prevent himself from making sounds. The clamor of traffic continues. Not far away, surveillance cameras glint. He gets a deathgrip on the motorcycle; when he comes, he nearly tips over anyway.

“You won’t fall, I promise,” Yasha laughs.

Her ride, of course, has excellent anti-fall mechanisms, and excellent optical devices that can completely conceal the hovering vehicle. This bout of seemingly open-to-the-public oral sex won’t in fact be seen by anyone. But that’s not how it feels. From 329’s perspective, looking out, there’s nothing around him to hide behind. One of the taller pedestrians could raise a hand and touch the bottom of the vehicle. The conversation of passersby is clearly audible; maybe a single stifled whine from mid-air would be enough to earn a stray glance. It’s the middle of the day in a clamorous city district. Everyone is single-minded and bustling; and even an Exile could temporarily pretend to be just another busy passerby in the crowd.

After he comes, Yasha cleans herself up. She seems to have done it on a whim, without intending to finish everything here. They go to the restaurant as usual. 329’s hand is unsteady around his fork, probably because he’d gotten too wound up earlier. He’s still feeling the aftereffects of that excessive anxiety; everything is as tasteless as wax, and he has to make himself to eat until he’s full. He forces himself to respond to Yasha’s conversation, but she notices anyway, and asks him, concerned, if the dishes today aren’t to his taste. 329 immediately shakes his head. Yasha says, “Did my earlier actions trouble you?”

She’s not that easy to fool. 329 can only say it’s not her, it’s him, he’s not feeling too well. His answer isn’t quite a lie. The sex wasn’t bad. It’s just that the location and timing gave him immense anxiety. He kept telling himself that Yasha wouldn’t suddenly turn off the optical device; if they ended up exposed under broad daylight, Yasha would have more to worry about regarding her reputation as one of the elite, compared to a nameless Exile like him. But at the same time, 329 is quite aware that if she really got the urge to put him on display, she wouldn’t even need to deactivate their stealth. All she needs to do is push him off.

The motorcycle was only six or seven feet off the ground. The fall wouldn’t kill him. He’d simply appear suddenly in the middle of the street, his chest exposed, his pants pulled down, his cock sticking out. It’s the middle of the day in a busy city district. No one would come over to hurt him. They’d just exclaim, recoil, mock, cuss, take pictures. Nothing much. An Exile should be used to it all already. If 329 trembles at the thought, it’s purely his problem.

Maybe 329’s excised memories contain some kind of awful past incident, forgotten by 329 but not his body. His extremities and his stomach feel like masses of ice. If this were his own room, he might go to the bathroom and puke. But this is a high-class restaurant, and he’s not the only one here. So he stays put in his seat, slowly cutting apart his food and shoving it down his throat. 329 is very pragmatic; there’s no room in his life for picking and choosing. If he fussed too much over unimportant feelings, he wouldn’t be able to live. So it’s a problem with him. Yasha didn’t do anything wrong.

But his answer doesn’t seem to satisfy Yasha. She apologizes to him and tells him she won’t do it again. “If you don’t like it, you can tell me,” she says. Her expression is so sincere. He can’t tell if she’s disappointed.

“Okay,” 329 lies.

He won’t tell her, whether this time, next time, or one of the countless times in the future. He won’t admit his pain and ask for mercy. Yasha won’t know, so she can’t refuse. So all the pain she brings will be unintentional, unpremeditated. She’ll still be warm and affectionate, and fond of him, and even caring about his feelings. It’s just that she doesn’t know, 329 thinks, of course she doesn’t know, I’m hiding it from her. See, a person has to have some agency.

They get back pretty early. Seeing they have plenty of time today, Yasha decides to while away most of it in bed. She takes off 329’s clothes, circles her tongue on his areola, fuzzy braids rubbing against his chin, a little itchy. 329 pants underneath her; she moves steadily and rhythmically inside him. Before that, she licked 329 until he came for a second time.

Ever since she saw what 329 looked like genuinely aroused, Yasha has been enthusiastic about giving him pleasure, sometimes paying it more mind than her own. To call it “with no regard to hardship” or “without expectation of repayment” sounds kind of weird. It’s more like petting a cat, and deriving enjoyment from its contented purrs—but it’s still evidence of her warmth and affection. Outside of heat, it takes immense patience and skill to make him come. Few alphas are willing to perform oral sex on an omega. Compared to wasting so much time on foreplay, it’s a lot more convenient to inject a shot of catalyst to force a heat. The stuff is badly damaging to the body, but the scary part is, it’s not hard to get ahold of. The drugs that she could have bought with the money she’s spent on meals could send him into continuous heat until either his body or his mind broke.

Post-orgasm, his body is extremely sensitive, a bit like how it is in heat, but not as overwhelming. Her fingers are slim, her palms soft. Her hands glide across his skin, sending out ripple after ripple of warm tingling. Wherever she touches, it feels like an electric charge running through his skin, cozy and warm, astonishingly pleasant. Secretly, 329 thinks this sensation is better than orgasm. She doesn’t need to blow him. She just needs to touch him more when she’s fucking him.

“If you got pregnant, wouldn’t I be able to suck milk from here?” Yasha mumbles, looking up at him, the picture of innocent and adorable in the midst of raunchy talk. “I wish I could taste it.”

“I can’t get pregnant,” 329 reminds her.

“I know.” Yasha lifts her head from his chest, rubbing her head against his chin. “That’s fine, I don’t actually want that. It’s a great thought, you carrying my flesh and blood, but not if you give birth to a child I have to share you with. Even if I say ‘I want to fuck you until I knock you up,’ that’s just the sexual fantasy preferences brought on by an alpha’s reproductive instinct.”

“‘Sexual fantasy preferences brought on by an alpha’s reproductive instinct?’” 329 repeats. He laughs despite himself at this bit of academic analysis during sex.

“Really! It’s just that humanity has long since left behind the time of instinct accounting for all. But if it’s what your ‘sexual fantasy preferences brought on by an omega’s reproductive instinct’ need, you can pretend I’m your child.” Yasha gives a sly grin, lowers her head, and sucks again on the hard, damp nub on 329’s chest. “Mama?” she says around it.

329 freezes. His body contracts powerfully. His cock hardens again. Yasha sucks in a breath, looks down, and looks up at him again. He feels his face burning.

“You…don’t you think that’s weird?” 329 says, red-faced.

“My mother’s a female omega. It’s not like you’re anything like her.” Yasha giggles.

She leans in to kiss 329, then wraps her arms around his neck, resting herself against his chest. The girl is dainty and slight; if they were standing, she could hang off his neck without difficulty. The alpha’s sex organ is knotted inside 329’s body. Yasha nuzzles back and forth, looking for a comfortable position, nestled in his arms. She idly kisses his shoulder, and says, “I really love you.”

329’s heart skips a beat. He freezes, temporarily afraid to move. There’s no sequel to her words. Yasha continues to stick to him like glue, full of satisfaction, not at all like she said anything important. She yawns lazily, looking if her eyes are about to fall shut.

This is a newly presented alpha, standing at the dividing boundary of childhood and adulthood. It’s a child’s talk, that’s all, thinks 329. I love sunny days. I super love tomato soup. I really love you. It’s nothing. Sometimes child’s talk just sounds nicer than an alpha’s bed talk. At least when a child says what’s on their mind, they’re as honest as you can get.

But it doesn’t last. They can’t help it. Human adolescence is so brief, like nighttime dew. When you see the dewdrops sparkling in the rising sun, they’re already about to evaporate. Morning dew becomes dried water stains in the end. A girl-child will become an alpha. The lovable, terrible girl in his arms will one day grow into a mature, cruel stranger.

It’s not hard to understand. But sometimes, you can’t help but grieve anyway.