wip week: omega/omega willmack
I wasn't sure what I was gonna post today, and then @sofrancescasocleanclean reminded me of the existence of my willmack take on omega partners! This one is tentatively titled omega/omega partners. 😏
Mack was never supposed to be an omega. Growing up, he was big and sporty and loud, always running and screaming and crashing into other kids on the playing field. When he presented as an omega at sixteen, no one really saw it coming.
“But that doesn’t make you any less of a real omega,” his dad tells him firmly on the way to Omega Partners, just after Mack turns eighteen. It’s an exploratory visit, finding out what their options are for a bond in the next year or two. “You deserve an alpha as much as anyone.”
“Sure, Dad,” Mack says. He’s distracted by the building they’re entering. It’s fancy, like when they go visit his dad’s office downtown. Just the lobby is like three stories tall with soaring glass windows and two different coffee shops right there in the building, and when they sign in with the guards and take the elevator to the eleventh floor, it’s all sleek and plush in muted pearls and grays, with velvet-looking furniture and watercolors on the walls.
It also has the most intense omega scent Mack’s ever smelled.
It hits him the moment he gets off the elevator. His first thought is why are they doing that in the hallway, because a smell as intense as that could only be a bonding. Mack’s never smelled one before, but this is what everyone says when they talk about it: the way your whole body is turned inside out, but it’s okay, because you’ll like it.
That’s always made Mack a little nervous, hearing that description. But this scent—he can’t imagine not wanting to keep breathing this scent. It hits Mack in the back of the throat and instantly travels down to his gut, clanging insistently against the walls of his chest and stomach the whole way like it’s trying to wake everything up. And everything wants to wake up, because the scent is so good. It feels like—like being outside on a sunny day, rolling dizzily down a bright green hill until the world spins around you, laughing the whole way because nothing’s ever been as good as this.
It has to be a bonding. And if that’s what a bonding smells like—well. Maybe Mack doesn’t need to feel nervous about having one after all. “What is that?” he asks, stopping in front of the elevators. He can smell it in his eyeballs.
“What’s what, darling?” his mom asks, as she and his dad sweep into the fancy-looking office.
Mack wants to stay in this spot and keep breathing all day, but he doesn’t want to look stupid for the people of Omega Partners, so he hurries after them. The scent comes with him, getting stronger as he goes into the reception area. Which would make sense, if there’s a bonding happening deeper inside the offices—but as soon as he comes into view of the sofas, he knows where the scent is coming from.
It’s another omega, sitting on a plush velvety sofa. He’s about Mack’s age, maybe, blond, with a face like Mack’s only ever seen on movie stars. The kind who are always playing the delicate perfect omega love interest for the strapping hero to win in combat. He’s looking at Mack, too: blue eyes, a little quirk of a smile.
There are some other people with him. It’s hard for Mack to look at them—hard to look away from the blond boy. But it doesn’t seem like any of them are bonding with him. This must just be the boy’s scent, all on his own.
Shit. If this is the kind of omega who shows up at Omega Partners, Mack’s never gonna find an alpha who wants him.
The boy raises a hand in a little wave. Mack waves back without thinking. He can feel himself smiling—probably too widely for an omega, bold and big and dumb, but the other omega doesn’t seem put off. He smiles a little more, then drops his eyes demurely before looking up again under his lashes. That scent has gone warm and buttery all around them.
“Macklin,” his dad says. Mack looks over, startled. His parents are standing by the reception desk, his dad tapping a pen on a pile of forms. Right: they’re supposed to be checking in.
“Uh, sorry,” he says, going over to the desk. The receptionist is outlining the various forms they’ll need to fill out, and Mack keeps sneaking glances over at the other omega. He’s not always looking back, but he’s always paying attention, Mack’s pretty sure.
He wonders if it would be weird to go over and sit near him. Talk a little. Maybe get the guy’s name. That wouldn’t be rude or anything, right?
When Mack is just about to finish his forms, though, a woman in a stylish omega-cut suit shows up at door next to the reception desk. “Will Smith?” she says, and the other omega looks up.
He and his parents follow her into the interior of the office, and the scent goes with him. There are just traces left behind, lingering in the air.
Mack breathes them in surreptitiously while he fills out the forms. They’re pretty in-depth. What does he like to do for fun—what are his friendships like—tell them about a relationship he has with an authority figure. Mack fills them out the best he can, but he can’t help thinking that the other omega—Will—probably had way better answers.
“He seems like a nice young man,” Mack’s mom says, and Mack startles a little, feeling like she read his mind. Then he realizes she’s looking past the reception desk, where they can just see the side of Will’s face where he’s sitting in the omega lady’s office. He’s talking, his face lit up with it and his hands folded neatly in his lap.
“A well-put-together omega,” Mack’s dad agrees. And then, to Mack: “You could learn from him.”
Mack gets a pang of shame. He’s not good at talking with his hands folded in his lap; he tries, but then he gets distracted by what he’s talking about and forgets, letting them fly all over the place. He bets Will Smith has never given an alpha a bloody nose and gotten sent home for it.
While he’s watching, Will cuts his eyes to the side and meets his, just for a moment. Mack drops his eyes to his form again, feeling his face get hot. He wishes he could hear what Will’s saying.
The forms take forever, but Mack’s doesn’t mind. He’s kind of hoping that maybe he’ll still be out here filling them out when Will and his parents come back through. Then maybe Will will smile at him again and—well, Mack doesn’t know. It would just be nice to be back in the same room with that scent again. But Will and his parents still aren’t back by the time another woman shows up for Mack, this one in a trim little pencil skirt.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she says when Mack tells her he hasn’t finished the forms. “They’re just a starting point anyway. I want to get a sense of you from our conversation.”
Great. The thing Mack is maybe worst at, at least from the perspective of talking like an omega. He follows her back to her office, in the opposite direction from Will.
The woman’s name is Olivia, and they spend the next two hours with her. By the time they’re done, Mack feels like she knows as much about him as his parents do, and also like maybe nothing he said made any sense.
“I just want to end with some reassurances,” she says, when Mack is starting to think longingly of the sandwiches for sale in the coffee shops below. “I know this process can be fraught for omegas and their families. Especially when an omega presents late, there can be a lot of fear that maybe it will take a while to find the right alpha, that an omega will be ready to leave the nest and not have a safe place to land.”
Mack’s dad takes his mom’s hand. Olivia smiles at them with bright white teeth. Mack wonders if she has veneers.
“I want to reassure you that if you follow our program and keep yourself open to the process, our success rate is very, very high. I can’t promise that the road will be smooth, but I can promise that if you work with me, we’ll get you where you want to be by the end.” She turns that smile on Mack. “Do we have a deal?”
“Uh, sure,” Mack says. He doesn’t know what she thinks he’s gonna do—drop out, or something? It’s not like he’s gonna meet an alpha who wants him any other way. And that’s if his parents would even let him drop out in the first place, which they wouldn’t. So.
They spend some time talking about next steps: the appointments they’re going to have to sample various alpha scents; the scent aids Mack should make sure to preserve from his next heat. It’s all Mack can do not to let his heel tap on the ground.
The thing is, Will is almost definitely gone by now. He went in for his appointment before Mack did, and Mack can’t imagine anyone’s appointment could take longer than his has so far. So Will is gonna be gone.
Mack tries to really make himself believe it, so that he won’t be disappointed when it happens. But he still feels his heart plummet when he comes out of Olivia’s office and the office down the hall where Will was sitting is empty.
He holds out a scrap of hope for the waiting room—but no, it’s empty, too. What did he think, Will was gonna wait for him there? Stupid. He can’t even catch his scent anymore, so probably it’s been a while. No—there it is, just a trace of it, near where they were sitting before. It would be weird if Mack wanted to go smell those chairs, right? Yeah, super weird.
He smiles at the receptionist instead, polite like his parents are always telling him to be. She smiles back. “Mack, right?”
“Uh, yeah.” They don’t need him to stay back and do more stuff, do they? Though if they do, maybe Will is still—
“Someone left a note for you.” She passes over a little envelope, square and white.
Mack takes it, adrenaline spiking. He hears his mom asking who it’s from, but he doesn’t need to wait for the answer. He knows: can tell from the scent that’s all over it. He has to fight not to put it under his nose as they walk out of the office.
He has it to himself until they reach the elevators. Then: “Well?” his mom says. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
He doesn’t really want to, not with them standing right there. But he doesn’t have any reason not to. “Uh, sure,” he says, putting his finger under the flap.
It’s nice paper, thick. He has to tear it a little to get the envelope open, which feels like a loss. Then he thinks about how it was sealed, how Will probably put his tongue on it to get it wet, and he feels all funny about it, hot and fluttery. Which is a weird way to feel. Is he being weird? Can his parents see?
They’re staring at him, waiting for him to tell them what it says. “Uh, it’s a card,” he says, fishing it out of the envelope. It’s nice, too: just a single square of heavy cardstock, thick enough not to be super bendy, with a little silver W embossed on the front of it. “It’s, uh, he said I might want to meet up and talk about bonding stuff with him. He gave me his number.”
“What a nice offer,” his mom says.
“You must have made a good impression on him,” his dad says. “Make sure you reach out. You don’t want to be impolite.”
“I will,” Mack says, and then the elevator arrives, and he can step in, the hide the burning in his cheeks in the low lighting. He tucks the card back into the envelope and curls his hand around it in his pocket: the little square of writing with the phone number on it, spidery and italic. If you ever want to meet up to talk about all this bonding stuff, shoot me a message. We can probably both use a buddy for it, and it would be nice to see you again.
It would be nice to see you again. Mack presses his finger to those words for the whole ride home.
