To Tend A Flame
1: There's a Fireplace?!
His first rut occurred after the superpowers kicked in, and the Super-computer wasn't set-up yet, none of the things in the Fortress of Solitude were really. He went in blind, one day he was an un-presented pup, the next he was a baby alpha to unprepared beta parents. To their understanding, there should've been pre-rut symptoms, there usually is. Instead, his temperature spiked overnight, newly acquired impenetrable skin becoming over sensitive, and screaming in pain. The sudden switch from invulnerable to vulnerable so sudden it was nauseating; almost making him vomit a few times. It was awful, he'd even been too hot to the touch, sweating more than he ever had in his life, everything stank of his own pheromones, his own breathing felt too hot, oxygen scorching in the cavity of his lungs, yet too desperate for breath to stop. Worse, he couldn't control his strength, he was frozen in place, nerves over-taxed as he held tight control over his powers. In the room with him, but unable to offer a comforting touch were his parents, watching helplessly as their son writhed in pain, whispering words of comfort. In a fit of desperation, he flew to the Arctic and covered himself in a lovely blanket of snow that finally helped him cool down. The tiny snowflakes felt too sharp, and his clothes too rough, it was unbearably lonely, but he would take it over the heat and fear.
He was there for a week, alone, melting the ice around him. Even just dunking himself in the ocean and going deep down a few times.
In the seventh day, when he opened eyes no longer clouded by misery, the landscape of snow was covered in little divots from where his burning form had melted the snow a few times. Exhausted, he flew back home to concerned parents.
Later, when he did get access to Kryptonian technology, its was unhelpful. The yellow sun radiation he grew up with affected his rut cycle. Shifting it from a stable, cyclical thing to a reactionary kind of fire. So he continued his young alpha life in a kind of peace and lack of disturbance unknown to most. While his classmates missed school to irregular ruts, tripped each other instincts, and just had the standard double awful teenage experience that plagues the AO population.
Yet like a madman, he got scanned weekly by the computer in hopes to make head or tails of his irregular cycle, never getting a different result.
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