They Can Smell Your Intentions

THEY CAN SMELL YOUR INTENTIONS
chapter seven

Nigel could think of far better ways of spending his morning than going through Mason Verger's sex tapes with Darko, the grainy VHS images curing him of any erections for the next long while. Most of the Omegas were drugged and Jeb McBain wasn't an especially picky bastard, though from what Nigel and Darko witnessed he certainly had a sadistic streak that was set to grow over the years. From what they'd gleaned from the FBI discovery in McBain's campaign trailer, where Agent Jack Crawford found a photo album of his past brutalized conquests, these home movies were the turning point for his sick fantasies. The depictions of college rape were hardly varied in scope, and their Omega victims blended into a namelessness that Nigel found increasingly disturbing.

An Omega groaned loudly and Jeb McBain urged her to 'keep giving it up' while an unknown Alpha, probably Mason Verger, giggled in the background. Feeling sick, Nigel left his chair and clumsily stepped over Darko seated beside him and headed for the coffee maker at the far corner of the room, pouring himself a cup though he didn't particularly want one. Anything to get him away from those images and give him the smallest amount of reprieve. He stretched his limbs and heard joints crack, the bruises of his healing injuries still smarting when he bent at certain angles. It was cold in the basement room, and his thin bowling shirt did little to keep him warm, even if it did have an ugly tropical print. His exposed arms were pockmarked with gooseflesh. "How many fucking hours of this shit are there?"

"Three tapes on SLP, so twenty four hours," Darko told him,yawning. The initial shock had worn off for him, and he'd seen worse over the years, if one could put this kind of thing on a sliding scale of torture and abuse. "I guess Mason didn't know about McBain's little Polaroid scrapbook. No honour amongst fucking creeps, that's for sure."

"Turn this fucking shit off, I can't watch any more."

Darko complied and he sighed as Nigel wiggled his way back in front of the TV in the tiny space they were currently occupying, the coffee held aloft in Nigel's hand along with a cigarette now placed between his forefingers. Darko sat perched beside Nigel on a milk crate, the cramped space of the small aisle between the cold case files barely enough room for one person let alone two. The cords for the TV and dusty VCR were too short to be used in the open space just beyond the boxes and the only outlet was at the back of the files. Numbers, names and dates glared at them from the neglected shelves and Nigel kept his gaze guiltily hidden from them.

"This reminds me hardcore of that weird email I got a while back, where that guy was trying to sell me a middle aged male Omega. He put the sale up on fucking ebay of all places, the fucking moron." Darko pulled out his cell phone and began thumbing through his emails, the messages flying by. "It was about eight months or so ago, I remember because it was so fucking cold this past winter. Polar vortex and all that shit."

"You saw all the tapes?" Nigel asked him, and Darko nodded, his elbow roughly hitting Nigel in the back of his head. He cursed and stood up from the crate, squeezing out of the cramped space to stand behind the TV and brace his arms on its bulky width. The TV was as ancient as the VCR, so old it practically had manual dials.

"This is it. Doesn't leave a thing to the imagination, does it?

Nigel reached up and took the cell phone Darko handed down to him from behind the TV and Nigel lit up the screen with a brush of his thumb. There he was, in his full glory, annotated anatomy and all by the eager seller, and Nigel's gut twisted into knots that were squeezed into all kinds of unpleasant shapes. "I know who this is," Nigel said, and Darko paused at this, his weasel face scrunching further into question. "This is Will Graham's Omega. This is Dr. Hannibal Lecter."

"The one accused of gender subterfuge?" Darko sneered at this, a fierce, angry finger pointing at the cell phone. "The Verger connection is pretty strong here, we got an ID on the seller just last week, his name was Dr. Cornell Doemling and he's on the Verger payroll."

"What a fucking shocker."

"No kidding. It all goes back to Verger, doesn't it? But this case, I don't get it, Mason Verger deals in fresh stock, what's he doing messing with an Omega he'd consider past the prime? I'd been in contact with an FBI agent named Jack Crawford, but he was all tied up in the Ripper case at the time, so I outreached to our Russian sister site instead. They were already in communication with the creep keeping this guy hostage. They traced the global positioning of his cell phone to Muskrat Farm, cementing the Mason Verger connection, but Doemling seemed to be operating as an independent seller."

"Right," Nigel said and, put out his spent cigarette on the milk crate beside him, the butt tossed into his now empty coffee mug. He was sorely tempted to take one of his smokes out of the top left pocket of his shirt but he refrained, patting them down instead and sliding through the pictures again on Darko's cell phone with a swipe of his thumb. "This ebay creep, did he give us anything to go on?"

"Not really. He was delusional type. He sent this long, weird email that kept outlining this master plan he had where he was going to build a crop of Omegas, and grow them in his garden and then, when the time came, he would sell them out to the highest bidder as the freshest meat on the market."

"Fucking sicko piece of shit dicksap." Nigel ran his fingers along his jaw, nails scraping at the day old stubble that was growing there. "The fuck was he talking about?"

"I have no idea, he kept sending illustrations of ovaries, it was sick shit, that's all I know. In the end, the whole deal went tits up when the male Omega in question--You're saying this is Dr. Lecter?--came to and killed him. Fucking *mutilated* him. Check this out." Darko swept his finger past the images of an unconscious Dr. Lecter and revealed one of a man in a lab coat lying on the ground with a large shard of ceramic in his eye. The email it was attached to had a surprisingly bold message:

'It seems there are those who have made the mistake of underestimating my ability to save myself.  I am aware that you have been in correspondence with Dr. Doemling in an effort to stem his Omega trafficking operation and to facilitate what you believe is my rescue. I assure you, that will be unnecessary, however, you are free to use this image of his death as a future deterrent to other traffickers. Perhaps as a public service poster, I believe it will be quite effective.'

If that wasn't proof of some serious balls, Nigel didn't know what was. Darko watched Nigel's serious expression with one of his own, the dark confines of the precinct's graveyard entwining them in shadows that snaked along the length of Nigel's spine and made him shiver. "This whole scenario doesn't make sense, there's something very personal attached to this." He reluctantly picked up one of the three VHS tapes and read the label, the blue ink faded and barely legible. "Why capture an Omega male in his mid forties? That's not Mason's style, and there's no way he didn't have a specific buyer in mind. There's an answer on these fucking tapes, I'm sure of it."

Darko drummed his fingers on the black plastic surface of the old TV, its bulky shape pressed against his stomach. He winced and ran his had across his chest, as though it was paining him. "I bet there is, but I can't do any more right now, Nigel, come on, I need a fucking break."

Nigel was about to put one of the tapes into the VCR when he paused at what Darko had just said. He looked up at his friend and colleague, taking in the dark circles under his eyes that made them smaller than ever, like little black pinpricks. Nigel let the VHS tape drop back into place on top of the VCR and he leaned back, his hand instinctively reaching for the pack of smokes at his shirt pocket. Before he knew it, he had one lit and between his lips as he looked up at the misery of his friend. "What's going on?"

"Just fucking tired, man."

"I've seen you work three days straight and not drop once. What gives?"

Darko sighed, and kicked at the base of the TV stand. "My kid's been having trouble at school. Bianca's been on my case about it, and I don't know what she thinks I can do, I mean, it's not like I can just march into the classroom and demand to know why my kid doesn't say a word in class and is pretty much a mute while he's at there. He talks just fine at home, with us. We told the teachers already, he's just fucking shy, but they're calling it some kind of delay and they're saying he has an anxiety disorder and now his marks are starting to get affected." Darko closed his hands into fists on the top of the TV, his lips pressed tight as he kept his anger at the situation in. "He had to do a project where he had to stand up in front of the class and present it, you know, one of those things where you have to give a speech. He did it on gamma rays affecting marigolds, really advanced shit for a ten year old, if you ask me. He worked real hard on it, he had a binder full of notes, everything he discovered all laid out, used coloured pencils and ink, the whole thing real neat and tidy. And he had the flowers in their little pots as proof of his experiments, and you know what, gamma rays are pretty fucking weird, man. Some of those flowers bloomed like crazy, all doubled up and messy and some didn't bloom at all."

Darko rapped his knuckles on the top of the TV while Nigel carefully listened to him, his cigarette smoked between pauses. Darko's issues with his kid's selective mutism were nothing new, and Nigel already had a good idea where this conversation was going. "So he choked, right?" Nigel said, and Darko sighed and nodded in agreement.

"The teacher said he stood in front of the class, his head down and his neat little notes on the note cards in front of him, and he didn't say a word. Just stood there until the other kids started fucking laughing. The teacher had to give him a failing grade because he didn't do the major part of the project, which was the presentation. Bianca is furious, she thinks they're pushing him too hard, and I don't know, I mean, he's got to learn to speak up some time, he's got to learn there's consequences to not doing part of a job no matter how uncomfortable it is, right?"

Nigel shrugged at this, taking another drag of his cigarette and contemplating it before taking another. "I doubt I'm the fucking asshole you need to talk to about raising kids." Nigel could only think of Adam, and the difficult childhood he'd had and the huge efforts his father had made to pull him out of his insular shell, and even now, the lengths he'd gone to reach his goals, efforts that would seem small to others but were monumental in scope to someone who had no readable map to get there. "Maybe Bianca has a point. Throwing him into a situation like that was probably too much for him. He just needs to start building up to it, you know, maybe he could just present it to the teacher at first and then to smaller groups. I don't know, I'm not a fucking child psychologist, I'm just thinking out loud, and I don't fucking know a thing about kids or those kinds of problems. I just know your boy Micah and it seems to me if he's too scared to say a word then maybe start small and work up to it so he doesn't clam up completely." Nigel tossed his spent cigarette into the cold coffee cup to join the other one. "Traumatizing the little shit doesn't do dick but no way is he to get a fucking free pass. He'll be gun shy over doing any project now, but don't you let him get away with it, he has to fucking face his fears. He's a smart little fucker, your Micah, talks my fucking leg off every time I visit, so it's not like he doesn't know how."

Darko pressed his fingers to his brow. "That's what makes it so damned frustrating."

Nigel took in the tired stance of his friend, the slumped shoulders and rumpled appearance of his black cotton shirt which was usually pressed and spotless, his attire a reflection of the intimidation of his nickname. The VHS tapes lay in dusty wait for Nigel's perusal and he groaned to himself as he waved his friend away. "Go the fuck home, Darko, I'll finish this. Don't even try to say no to me, you've been slaving over this case for fucking weeks and I need you alert and focused so do me a fucking solid and get the fuck out. That's a fucking order you little prick."

Darko smiled at him over the edge of the TV. "Bianca wants you and Adam to come over for dinner tomorrow night. Think you could manage that? I know you're real busy these days, snuggling up to the little thing at night, and getting all warm and cozy. I gotta say, Nigel, whatever he's doing to you, it's some kind of miracle. You aren't your usual mess these days, you even look like you're getting some sleep. It's real weird, if I didn't know any better I'd say you were happy."

"Just fuck off, okay?" Nigel said, and Darko laughed.

"Thanks, man," he said, and Nigel gruffly acknowledged him.

Darko gave his friend a nod and his grateful middle finger as he left him alone in the near dark of the precinct's graveyard, the unsolved murders embracing him in the gloom as Nigel picked up one of the VHS tapes to begin his viewing of image after image of nameless, phantom suffering.

~*~

He felt nauseous, but he knew he couldn't stop, and though eight solid hours had passed, Nigel wasn't about to let up. Darko had suggested they get Adam to put his computer skills to use and put the contents of the tapes on disc, just to make sure there was no risk of them of them getting damaged in replay. It was a good idea, but there was no way in hell Nigel was going to expose Adam to this kind of monstrous evil and he much preferred his little spaceman concentrate on calculating the distance between galaxies rather the perverted actions of monsters. The young Omega on the screen in front of him moaned in drugged protest, and Nigel hit the fast forward button again, not liking that Adam had showed up in his mind while he was forced to endure this shit. It was too easy to put Adam in the Omega's place, and a deep seated hatred welled up inside of Nigel, so hot and dangerous it scared him with how much simmering violence was just itching to get a hold of Mason Verger and make his eyes take a good, long, intimate look at the tip of his fucking cigarette. The fucking creep liked to watch and Nigel comforted himself with thoughts of that being the last fucking thing that son of a bitch would see.

Of course, it was to remain in fantasy, because the facts were piling up that Mason Verger was no longer alive. Calls to Muskrat Farm went unanswered, save for a quick email from Mason Verger's sister Margot, who outlined in a very clipped, cold tone that she had no idea of her brother's whereabouts and she did not keep any tabs on him. She might live at their farm, but their lives were completely separate. He didn't doubt the validity of this, he got the impression she was distancing herself as much as possible from her brother, and he had to wonder what kind of rotten life she'd had, as an Omega herself, suffering under his maniacal influence. It didn't take much of an imagination to understand it was some level of hell similar to what he was being forced to watch right now. She was probably on one of these, he thought in disgust, and he shuddered at the incestuous implication.

The tape finally came to an end, and out of habit Nigel absently fast forwarded through it, feeling a kind of relief at the snowy emptiness that was offered up on the screen. There was a cleansing property to it, like it was wiping off something filthy, and he absently watched it as he thought about Darlene, the Omega he had visited in the hospital yesterday. If there was an army gearing up to take down these bastards, Nigel figured it had nothing to do with him and he'd be loathe to alert anyone of their threat if that's what it came down to. His job was to find them and make sure they survived, what they did with that second lease in life was out of his influence, and if it meant they picked up a gun and started a war, well, couldn't happen against better fucks as far as he was concerned.

The emptiness of the end of the VHS tape suddenly erupted into images and sound, and Nigel was so startled he nearly fell off of the crate he was sitting on. He frowned as he took the contents of the video in, upping the volume so he didn't miss the muffled conversation happening onscreen. There was a young Mason Verger in his late teens staring back at him, along with another male Nigel didn't recognize. The third person, behind the camera, was Jeb McBain. "You got to help me out with this," he was pleading at Mason and the unknown male beside him. "This cunt whore is going to ruin everything, if word gets out it's mine there goes my career, I'll be stuck bonding with the bitch."

Mason looked uneasy as McBain trained the video on him and his friend. "Look, Jeb, he hasn't revealed anything, and chances are he won't, I mean, it's not like he'd be allowed to finish medical school if they find out he's both an Omega and pregnant, right? I mean, so what, he can't prove anything."

Jeb McBain was incensed, the camera shaking with his anger and putting Mason into jerking focus. "Are you stupid? They can do paternity tests now, DNA profiling! You don't get it, this is going to ruin me and you have to fix this! This was all your idea in the first place!"

Mason glared darkly at the camera at this and gave Jeb a smile that was significantly more sinister than friendly. "If you're trying to entrap me, Jeb, just remember you're just as much in this tangled up spider web as the rest of us. It's not my fault you like to keep audio visuals of your conquests, or that you rewatched the tape so much with this one you snapped it. That's a lot of replay, Jeb, even I'm impressed. You must have been working that hand of yours on the hour."

Nigel tried to figure out where they were, it seemed to be an attic room of some sort, with low level beams cutting across a small, open window that let in just enough daylight to make Mason and his companion visible. "This isn't a joke, Mason, this is serious."

Their third companion moved to the window and then waved at Jeb McBain to bring the camera around as he noted their target on the ground below. McBain fumbled with the camera before aiming it through the window and Nigel was struck by the fact that they were on the grounds of a hospital, the wide green space below dotted with patients and nurses and the occasional doctor. There was one sitting on a bench that McBain brought into zoomed focus. The doctor was quietly eating lunch, a simple sandwich by the look of it, alone and unaware of the cruel scrutiny imposed on him. Being as perceptive as he was, Nigel knew this was one of McBain's victims, and from the smooth flawlessness of his skin that had that certain sheen to it, he knew this Omega was pregnant.

What did shock him, however, was who the male Omega in question was.

Dr Hannibal Lecter finished his sandwich and tossed the paper it had been wrapped in into a nearby trash bin. The camera followed him as he walked, and Nigel had no trouble distinguishing the slightly uneven waddle of the Omega's gait, suggesting to him the gestation was fairly advanced. It was a real source of wonder to him that Dr. Lecter had been able to hide this from the rest of his peers, but the United Main was so hyper focused on gender they probably never thought to question that he'd be anything but Alpha and doctor's coats were good at hiding a growing gut. Nigel frowned, wondering how in the hell Dr. Lecter had managed to keep his pheromones hidden, especially since synthetic Alpha hormones would have seriously harmed the growing child.

"What do you think?" Mason said to his companion, who was hesitant when he was put on the spot. He was smaller than the other two men, and though he clearly wanted to be a part of their sick little crew, he knew he was also considered an outsider. This was part of his initiation, Nigel realized. Perverts performing ritual for their club.

"It wouldn't be too hard. Some really hard kicks to the stomach. Omega males are pretty fragile when it comes to this. I'm worried, though, I mean..." He glanced at Mason nervously before casting a similar look to the camera. "He might bleed out and die and then it would be murder."

Jeb McBain whirled the camera away from the open window to put the worried upstart into the sight of his lens. He zoomed in on the young man's fear, Alpha posturing with a weapon, in this case a video camera. "You want in on this McDermott, you have to play the game," McBain warned him. "You know too much already, so if you think you're going to be able to walk away from this you need to start thinking about that future you want to have. My family has strong connections along this coast, either you ride with me on my future success or you get left as something I stomp behind me on my way, do you get it?"

McDermott. Nigel frowned as he looked on the frightened young man, the doubts wiped away so easily with the promise of a threat. McDermott had become Jeb McBain's PR guru and he'd had tight ties with the Verger Corporation as well, assisting in obscuring e. coli scares in the runoff water from Muskrat Farm. It was his spin that made sure the Verger Corporation was never sued for the contamination. Mason still suffered financially, however, the Eastern and European Unions both banned all Verger pork products from entering their regions, regardless of the legal findings. It was an economical bone of contention that Mason Verger brought up in news articles and interviews in United Main society magazines.

"So you'll do it?"

McDermott shyly nodded. Yes. Mason let out a whoop of victory at this and he shook his fat hands at the camera, piggy eyes opened wide. "Turn that thing off!"

The tape descended into a rolling hiss of empty static once again and Nigel fast forwarded through it until an audible click echoed out of the VCR, signalling it had come to its end. He sighed, and hit rewind, bringing the tape back to the beginning so Darko could go over the whole thing one more time, especially the hidden section he'd just watched. The implications it left behind swirled in a miasma of strange political and murderous connections that Nigel wasn't sure he was supposed to make. McDermott had been killed on Mason's property. McBain had been assassinated. The long, unlikely protracted silence of a messy little blowhard like Mason suggested he was dead, too. And all of it was the responsibility of the Chesapeake Ripper and fuck, fuck it all, if Nigel didn't feel in his gut that he'd just found out who the damned hell that was.

It certainly explained why Dr. Lecter had been captured so late in his life, a sad, pathetic warning on Mason Verger's part and one that had surely secured his fate and all those associated with him. Nigel had to wonder about the kind of patience that sort of revenge took, and it wasn't a stretch to see it morphed into a kind of lifelong madness where every action had been enacted in order to fulfill it into its worst possible outcome. It wasn't enough that McBain, McDermott and Verger were dead, the whole system that made them had to come crashing down and damn if the demons weren't set loose to go ahead and do it.

Nigel turned off the TV, plunging the narrow aisle of cold case files into a shrouded darkness that he felt soothed by. The whispers of ghosts in the boxes near his ear seemed to find some amusement in what he'd witnessed, all their forgotten hurts wandering through the Chesapeake Ripper's poetry sculptured in human flesh.

"It's really that bad," they seemed to whisper to him. "A sick psychopathic serial killer is our saviour. And he's doing a better job at vindicating us than you, you useless fuck."

~*~

The Oltcit Club wheezed its way into the parking lot of his building, the headlights lighting up the massive wall of graffiti near the entrance, half of which had been wiped clean thanks to the building's owner, who periodically white-washed the concrete, leaving behind a fresh canvas for the gangs in the area. But this time there wasn't a multicoloured note detailing who was new to the neighbourhood or what they were selling. In a wide expanse that took up most of the wall, an oversized depiction of the photograph Adam had shown in his United Main power point presentation was spread across the concrete, the suffering eyes exaggerated, tears profoundly seeping down the male Omega's cheek to settle against the large iron chain clasped around his neck. The historical image was disturbing enough without the artist's embellishments, the bruises highlighted, a smeared darkness overtaking the background, rolling like black clouds up from an unknown abyss. In unsteady, scrawling script the message was clear: Salva fratii si surorile noastre Omega! 'Save our Omega brothers and sisters!' The local gangs had placed their messages high above it, giving the artistic graffiti on their turf an unexpected measure of respect. There was an important message here, too, sprayed in the black calligraphy of thugs, for those who regularly read this wall. 'This is too important to erase.'

Nigel parked his car and sat in its silence for a long moment, catching a needful sense of calm before heading towards the elevator that would take him back up to his apartment. He wondered how Adam's day had gone, and he smiled at this, his thoughts wandering to his precious spaceman's puttering through his day, accomplishing so much while he seemed to be standing still. He was like those stars he studied, full of wild fire and activity that nobody looking up could see. He'd had an interview with the University of Bucharest that afternoon and he hadn't texted Nigel with the results. He hoped it went well.

He made his way up the elevator, the floor of which was sticky thanks to a spilled coffee that had dried, leaving behind a thick, brown residue beneath his shoes. He cursed at how careless people were as he left the elevator when it hit the eighth floor and he rummaged in his jacket pocket for his apartment keys. After unlocking all the bolts, he stepped in as was his habit and was momentarily surprised that Adam didn't greet him, only to remember he had told Adam he was coming home later than usual and Adam had strict routines when it came to ending his day, the little checkmarks of duties done long and convoluted and helping him wind down from processing all that activity. He was probably in the bedroom, smelling of vanilla and honey shampoo, in a Roscosmos t-shirt and a fresh pair of Nigel's pyjama pants, his face buried in either an astronomy or physics textbook or his computer, searching endlessly within God's eye for hints as to the divine nature of their existence. The physics of angels. He certainly knew how to concentrate on the really important things.

He slid off his coat (putting it to the right of the closet, as Adam preferred) and stepped out of his shoes (placing them neatly to the left of Adam's Converse sneakers, as he liked) and then slowly padded in his black socks towards the bedroom, hoping he could slide across Adam's demure and shy little body and steal more than a few kisses from his blushing lips. But Nigel was surprised to discover that Adam wasn't in the bedroom, and when he backtracked to the front foyer and then to the kitchen, he discovered he wasn't there either. Puzzled, Nigel opened the fridge, and Adam's strange neglect was evident. He hadn't made dinner. Which was weird because Adam *always* made dinner, and had a plate waiting for Nigel for when he came home on late nights, a sweet little yellow post it note on top of it labelling it as to what it was and how to reheat it and a tiny, neat happy face drawn beside the instructions alongside a heart.

Frowning, Nigel approached the doors leading into the living room, and he opened them wide and there, to his drop dead shock, was Adam. He let out a few expletives before near running to the end of the couch, standing in front of his tiny little spaceman and exclaiming in his panic, "What the fuck! What's happened?"

How was it possible he could even move in that thing? Adam was wearing the spacesuit he'd been given at Roscosmos, complete with the helmet, the opaque black glass reflecting back Nigel's abject shock. The shoulders of the suit pushed back slightly and the black glass seemed to peer up at Nigel, the clasped gloved hands of the suit primly resting on its stomach. Nigel knocked on the glass with his knuckles and a gloved hand raised up and slowly opened the opaque visor, revealing a very unhappy little spaceman inside of its fishbowl confines.

Nigel's heart broke at the red hue of Adam's usually perfectly blue gaze and the smears of still damp tears that stained his cheeks. "My poor little space angel," Nigel pouted at him. "The interview didn't go well?"

Adam's bottom lip quivered behind the glass. "N-No..." he said, but Nigel couldn't hear a thing. Though Adam tried to protest, he unfastened and pulled the helmet up and away, tucking its large, round shape beneath his arm as Adam's head was freed.

"What happened, my darling?"

Adam wouldn't meet his gaze, and kept his eyes firmly on the helmet propped on Nigel's hip. "The rector of the university said I was overqualified for the position, and I told him that I didn't mind, I simply wanted the opportunity to engage in further study about space and the logistics of space. He had no concerns about the reasons why I was fired from Roscosmos, but he said that I would not be 'optimal' for the university because a certain number of international students may take offence at my presence there." A tear escaped and Adam tried to wipe it away only for the bulky silver gloves of the spacesuit to be too cumbersome for the action. Nigel reached out and did it for him, his hand splaying wide across Adam's hot cheek, smoothing away his sorrow. He smiled at the way Adam pressed against his palm, which slid along the side of his face, fingers diving into damp curls at the back of his head and gentling his neck, which resulted in a delicious trill of purring from deep in Adam's throat. "He also said I won't be able to engage the students properly. They will find my position at the university questionable."

The memory of Darko talking about his kid hit Nigel and he felt a small sense of outrage on Adam's part, seeing as how harshly judged he was for something he couldn't help. "Goes to show what he knows, you talked to a room full of seasoned bastard cops just fine. So what if you have a bit of a different way of doing things and you are so blunt and honest? You certainly fucking know how to hold a crowd's attention."

Adam gave him a delicate, down turned frown at his and Nigel leaned in closer giving that quivering lip a small kiss that made Adam's eyes blink and meet his, ever so very briefly, before concentrating on the pulse of Nigel's neck. "He didn't care about my Aspergers, he has two other professors who are on the same spectrum, a Professor Harang in statistics and Professor Doel who teaches immunobiology. His problem was with my gender, he says that Omega males are not able to meet the needs of the newer influx of students from the United Main. They are Alpha and too disruptive when Omegas try to teach them."

Nigel's soft petting instantly stiffened at this, and that ugly ball of fury began welling up inside of him, the one that was just dying to march into the University of Bucharest and give its rector a good few bruises to remind him that such discrimination is still illegal in the Eastern Unions and oh, yes, he insulted his Omega, not something any red blooded Alpha would stand for.

"Don't you worry about it, darling, why don't you get out of that suit, you're overheating in it, you're like a little sweaty rag. My poor little space angel, were you sitting here like this all that time? What is his name, darling, I will be sure to stop by his office tomorrow and give him a nice, pleasant reminder of our laws. He's not permitted to deny you a job because you are an Omega, I'll make sure he's perfectly fucking aware of that fact."

Adam faltered at this reassurance, his big blue eyes widening and then fluttering as he tried to calculate his question as carefully as possible. "Nigel...I...I'm not sure that's what he meant, it's what I interpreted him as saying...I know what he seemed to suggest was illegal and I have never experienced that kind of thing here in the Eastern Unions, I have been very happy here. I don't know why he brought up the students he has from the United Main, apparently there are about fifty and he's got lots of problems with them." Adam frowned and grimaced, tears threatening to fall again. "I feel like I can't do or say anything without it being wrong. I hate being like this. It's been very difficult for me, for a very long time and I just want to study space and I had that at Roscosmos and I lost it and I still don't fully understand why."

Adam loudly sniffed as Nigel placed the helmet on the tan leather couch and began fiddling with buckles and snaps, looking to free him from his confines in the suit. "I will still talk to him," Nigel reassured Adam. If there was some kind of miscommunication, he'd make sure it was solved real damn quick. The suit slid to the floor and Adam, damp and sweet smelling with Omega sweat, eased his feet out of it and smoothed out wrinkles before carefully rearranging it back on the stand in the corner of the living room.

"I worry that the same thing is going to happen to us," Adam said, and Nigel pushed aside some errant, damp curls that were plastered against Adam's neck, liking the way he leaned back against even the softest pressure Nigel put there. "I misinterpret a lot of what people say, and then the fact I'm an Omega causes even more problems. When I was dating Beth, she found it easier to tell her parents I had Aspergers than to tell them I was an Omega. And yet those are simply two very basic facts that make me who I am, it was like she wanted me to deny an entire section of myself and that was not possible. I am both things and they cannot be separated." Nigel opened his arms and Adam gratefully sank into them, his shivery little body releasing itself of tension the more Nigel stroked the back of his head and planted small kisses into his scalp. He smelled beautiful despite having nearly sweat to fucking death in a damned creepy spacesuit. Nigel wound his arms tighter around Adam, enclosing him in a hug that the Omega sighed in pleasure into, his tense muscles easing into relaxed bonelessness.

"Beth wanted me to be something I wasn't," Adam whispered to him. "She wanted me to be someone she could take home and brag about. She liked that I talked about space and knew so many things and that I was so good with computers. She bragged I was her genius. But she didn't like listening to me when I told her things she didn't like, or when I reminded her that I was an Omega. She got really mad when I told her that her father had tried to convince me to have sex with him and that I had to be very forceful when rejecting his advances. She didn't like me telling her that at all. She broke up with me not long after, she didn't tell me why or anything, just went back home to the Coastline with her parents and never talked to me again."

Nigel continued to hold him, swaying slightly in a rocking motion that he knew Adam found comforting. "That was very selfish of her, my angel. I'm glad you tried many new things as a result of what she awoke in you, we wouldn't be having this moment otherwise. But you don't have to change yourself for me, Adam, I will not discount what you have to say because you think you are rambling, and I will never ask you to hide anything about yourself or to change it to suit me, do you understand? You are perfect as you are. Angels don't need improvement." He broke the embrace slightly, pulling Adam gently away from him so he could bend down and get a good look at those baby blues that had so much difficulty meeting his own. He smiled into them as they momentarily took in Nigel's gaze before his lids partially shut and his concentration fell to the parquet floor. Nigel framed Adam's face in his hands and kissed his forehead, the salty sweet taste of his skin dizzying him like a drug. "I take it you haven't eaten."

Adam shook his head.

"Pizza?"

Adam nodded.

"No pepperoni, extra cheese, pineapple and ham?"

"Yes, that is how I like it."

Nigel chuckled softly as he pulled out his cell phone and began to dial his favourite pizza shop, located down the street. He put in the order while Adam retrieved the helmet to his suit from the edge of the tan leather couch and placed it back where it belonged, affixing the clasps holding it in place. Nigel had to fight the urge to grin at the image of Adam floating happily in space, a little blob of white and silver that was barely noticeable amongst the massive bulk of all those galaxies. His sweet little spaceman, with his thoughts so full of the great big sky and his life so complicated by how small everyone was down here on Earth. He sat on the couch and bid Adam to join him, and he snuggled his warm body close against Nigel's, all of the evil the day melting away into his shy smile that was teasing against Nigel's cheek as he snuck a kiss onto it. "I'm glad you're home," Adam whispered, and Nigel wrapped his arm around Adam's shoulders and pulled him even closer to him.

Adam's ear was pressed against Nigel's chest. "I can hear your heart beat. It has a strong and healthy rhythm, which is unexpected since you have many habits that can cause heart disease."

Nigel dove down, his lips teasing against Adam's mouth, speaking against the softness he found there and not allowing Adam to properly deliver a kiss. "It's because I'm taking the right medicine, my darling. A good dose of you cures me of all kinds of terrible things."

"Like your bad temper," Adam said, nodding at the sage observation. "And your smoking, which I know you haven't quit, but you have cut down. You sleep in a bed now, which is better for your back and you sleep much more soundly as a result. You also eat better--except for tonight, but expert nutritionists say a treat once a week is acceptable."

Nigel laughed and captured Adam's lips into a kiss, one of many he indulged in that Adam certainly returned. If the play became a little more serious and his hands started roaming a little, cupping that pert ass while his tongue dove in past gleaming, clean white teeth, what of it? Adam wasn't exactly being hands off himself, and if his fingers started straying to the buttons of Nigel's trousers, well, he wasn't going to stop him. Mm, he liked this, the taste of Adam's mouth a sugar he couldn't resist.

Fuck, he was getting so hard, the kisses becoming more urgent, Adam's mouth nipping and needful on Nigel's own, his neck crooked for Nigel to explore it, which he did, eager tastes taken breathlessly along the pulse points of his jugular. He was getting dizzy with the way Adam's hands kept moving, and his own, and he was touching all those sensitive little places that left slick moistening his fingers, Adam burying his face in the crook of Nigel's neck as he began soft mewling into it. His palm cupped Adam's erection, the tips of his fingers pressing harder, instinctively finding that little nub inside him that made him moan into Nigel's neck...

Fuck what was he doing? Nigel pulled away abruptly, noting with some shock that his hard on had escaped his open pants and there was Adam, dishevelled and breathless, shorts halfway down to his knees. "I'm sorry baby," Nigel said, putting himself back together and then easing Adam's shorts back up, urging him to redress. "I don't want to do anything we regret, if we went further I might have...I don't want to do that, not yet. I really fucking want to, make no mistake, but I don't think we're there yet, okay?"

A small, understanding smile was given to him, and Nigel wondered what was going on in his brilliant little angel's head. "Okay." Adam slid his shorts back up and gave Nigel a gentle kiss on his cheek. "I love you, Inspector Nigel Ionescu."

Oh that was just great, his heart was melting into this miserable ball of goo and dammit if he didn't *want* to take Adam, make him his and not let any fucker out there even think they could look at him or insult him or believe he was anything less than absolutely perfect. But he couldn't fuck this up, he had to move slow, had to make sure when he said, "I love you too" it had to mean so much *more*.

"It's not enough, baby," Nigel lamented as he looked at Adam's worried pout and spread his thumb across that tender bottom lip. "Me saying 'I love you'. It's just not enough, I have to fucking *prove* it."

Adam frowned at this, a tiny smile erupting over Nigel's words. "But you do that every day."

There was a loud knock at the door and both of them nearly jumped out of their skin. Pizza. He'd ordered fucking pizza. He left the couch like it was mired in hot lava. Like that even fucking mattered. He was done in anyway. "Fat chance that this one will keep going easy," his heart lambasted him. "You're fucking burnt already and you don't even know it yet, you stupid moron."