He could... owe that alpha favors. He could even suck O’Neil’s cock. Just to see what it’d be like. Just to taste him, and—gods, just to see him come apart.
Gage swallowed, pulling up outside the house. It was getting late. He’d had dinner out, just so he wouldn’t try and cook for O’Neil and end up springing another erection. Especially if they were going to watch a movie together.
When he stepped through the front door, he found the living room lights dimmed, O’Neil already on one side of the couch, his body faintly lit by the TV’s blue glow.
“I have a bowl for the popcorn,” O’Neil said, nudging the huge mixing bowl sitting in the middle of the couch.
Yeah, good idea to leave some space between them. Gage shut the door, kicking his shoes off. “I’ll get the popcorn started. Have you eaten?”
O’Neil nodded. “Have you?”
“Yeah.” Gage thought about lingering, maybe chatting with O’Neil about his day. He headed into the kitchen, stuck a bag of popcorn into the microwave, and wandered back out. “We’re really watching your horror movie, huh?”
O’Neil looked curious. “You don’t want to?”
Gage tried not to wince. “It’s not my thing.”
“What movies do you like to watch, then?”
“What I tell everyone? The superhero action movies.”
O’Neil studied him. “What don’t you tell everyone? The movies that are your guilty pleasure.”
That was a secret that only Gage and his siblings knew. He pursed his lips. “Why should I tell you?”
But O’Neil just grinned. “I guessed it! You have secret kinks you don’t tell anyone.”
“It’s not a kink! Just my taste in movies!”
“What kind of taste is it?” O’Neil raised his eyebrows.
Gage flopped down on the other end of the couch; the bowl bounced between them. “Not telling. You’ll laugh.”
O’Neil sobered. “I don’t laugh at people.”
“Of course you do.”
“No.”
He sounded so serious that Gage stared. “Why not?”
O’Neil examined the floor, silent for a long time. “I was laughed at my whole life. For being fat.”
Shit. Gage stopped breathing. He should’ve known, but... Part of him wanted to hold back and brush it off, treat it like it wasn’t a big deal so this wouldn’t become an involved friendship.
But deep down, he remembered being humiliated, too. He remembered the shame, he remembered feeling so awkward that he wanted to crawl under the floorboards and hide somewhere. He remembered wanting everyone to forget he existed.
Had O’Neil felt that way his whole life?
Gage felt bad for him, suddenly. He knew that feeling of being alone. And he didn’t want O’Neil to keep on feeling it.
“There was once, a long time ago.” Gage tried to find the words for a memory so terribly repressed. Maybe O’Neil would laugh at him anyway. “During high school prom. I had a schoolmate who was damn jealous of my looks.”
O’Neil looked up, his forehead furrowed. He didn’t say anything, so Gage continued, “Actually, I should start from the beginning. Ramsey used to be my best friend. We went to elementary school together, we sat with each other in middle school. I used to think, if one of us presented as alpha, and the other as omega, we’d get married and... whatever.”
That sickened him to think about now. “Thing was, we both presented as alpha. We were still best friends and all that. Did projects together, pooled our money together and bought games. Except when we got to high school, he fell in love with an omega. And that omega fell in love with me.”
O’Neil winced. “What happened next?”
Gage remembered the fights, he remembered Ramsey spitting poisonous words at him. And the arguments—so many of them. “We had a huge falling out. I didn’t want the omega. He said I should hook him up with her. I tried pushing her toward Ramsey, but she wasn’t interested. Ramsey thought I was telling her shit about him, so he started trying to backstab me.
“He spread rumors about me in school. He told the teachers I cheated on tests. He told our friends I slept with every fucking omega in our class.”
O’Neil looked horrified. “Did you do anything about it?”
“Yeah. I pulled rank and told him to fuck off.” Gage huffed mirthlessly. “These looks get me some power, you know. I got most of them to believe me. ‘Course, Ramsey was furious. Every lie he told, I tried to fix. The teachers loved me. Then he stopped being a twit, and I thought maybe we could be friends again.”
Probably the stupidest thing Gage had done.
O’Neil looked wary, sympathetic, like he wanted to reach out and hold Gage’s hand. “Except prom night happened.”
“Yeah.” Gage blew out a deep breath. “That.”
Gage had worked a couple of part time jobs, trying to save some money so he could rent a nice suit for prom. Everyone had told him he’d be picked as Prom Alpha, and Gage didn’t doubt them. He’d been close to the stage, Ramsey with him, when they’d called him up to receive his crown.
“Anyway, I got Ramsey to hold my drink. Then I went up on stage, and the next thing I knew, Ramsey yelled. And he climbed up onto the stage and threw my drink in my face. In front of the entire school.”
O’Neil looked horrified.
“That wasn’t even the worst part,” Gage said, his heart heavy. “He’d pulled on a mask. And he’d pulled a jar of stuff out from somewhere—I didn’t even know what it was. Until he emptied it all over my head and I realized it was piss. And it was still warm.”
“That’s awful.” O’Neil grimaced.
Gage didn’t look at him. He wasn’t proud of that moment in his life. “He’d gotten some other friends of his to come up on stage. And they broke my nose and beat me up. In front of the whole school. I tried to fight back, but honestly, there were too many of them.”
Those guys had punched Gage in the gut, they’d choked him and pulled off his pants and poured more piss on him, and at the
