“I’m sorry, maybe I didn’t hear you right. You did WHAT?”
It’s been a bit longer than a full day since Craig snapped out of his stupor and had a flash of clarity. And, it’s been a little less than that since he loaned Tweek a set of sweats to wear once they were able to tear their bodies from each other, and approximately less time even still since he walked him to his dorm room. He spent an indeterminable amount of time alternating between staring at the ceiling and pacing nervously. There are a few blank spots in that time frame, too, so he figures he probably inadvertently fell asleep for a brief spell here and there. It’s been around half a day since he returned to the shower room, but this time he actually took a normal shower (the kind with soap and hot water and absolutely no grinding on acquaintances). After that, Craig’s first class of the day was due to begin. But like the handful of days leading up to that moment, he didn’t attend it. He wasted a bit more time fretting and procrastinating sending a handful of emails to explain his absence and instead spent his afternoon taking a bus off campus to purchase a new phone since he managed to break his old one. It’s been a few hours since he returned to the ghastly state of his single-sized dormitory apartment. He spent a while mindlessly shuffling around, collecting the tattered ruins of his life and cleaning up the various broken items and stained linens. And now, it’s been approximately 5 minutes since he gathered the courage to call his mother and disclose the sordid events of the last handful of days.
“Craig,” she states his name sternly and it resonates in an unpleasant and tinny way through the receiver, but it’s laced with the type of concern any mother might have for her only son. “Tell me I didn’t hear what I think I just heard.”
Craig groans and runs a hand down his face. He can feel his body giving out on itself so he sits down on the edge of his crappy couch. He leans forward so his elbows prop themselves on his lap.
“I didn’t stutter,” he challenges her.
It’s rude and it’s defensive, and he knows that. But he can’t bring himself to repeat what he just confessed. It’s bad enough that he had to say it once. She clucks her tongue from the other end of the line. It’s clear she’s disappointed. He shrinks in on himself. It’s a weird feeling, truthfully. It’s a little bit shameful and humiliating, but also it’s frustrating and he’s quite a bit on edge. It’s not like his mom is the one with the problem– it’s his own burden to bear in the end.
“Well,” she begins again, cautiously. “Beta or omega?”
Craig groans but manages to mutter, “Omega.”
“Craig, are you serious?! An omega. Really? You know you definitely just got that poor thing pregnant,” she wastes no time in berating him.
“Mom!” Craig yelps.
It’s fucking embarrassing to hear her announce factual things like this. He stomps his foot petulantly and tears his old, worn hat from his head just to have the satisfaction of flinging it to the ground. He really doesn’t have a defensible argument here. He knows what he did. In fact, he’s pretty much the main guy who knows what he did. Whether he felt like himself or not, he’s the very person who went into an unmitigated rut. He’s the one who went out into the world with his big stupid boner and he’s the one who went prowling. Craig himself is the one who found an unchecked omega in heat, brought him back to his room, built a nest, and then succinctly fucked him into completion. He’s the one who felt the cum leak out of that plush, slippery ass and he’s the one whose knot remained tethered until the swelling went down. She signed his school papers and knows as well as he does that he attended his sexual health and education classes. They both know that Craig knows exactly how the act of getting pregnant works. She doesn’t have to rub it in and make him feel worse about it.
“I’m putting you on speaker,” she snips.
“Mom, no-”
But it’s too late for rebuttals. She’s already shouting across the house to get his father to join in on the conversation.
“Thomas! Thomas, get in here right now!”
There’s a clamor and then Craig’s father’s voice chimes in a bit distantly. Craig can hear that he’s breathless from rushing to the scene, but he can’t quite make out the first thing he says.
“It’s your asshole son on the phone,” she says, almost dismissively but not quite.
“My asshole son?” Thomas huffs suspiciously. “What the hell did the boy do this time?! He’s only ‘my son' when he’s done something!”
Craig can very nearly see both of their angry faces in his mind’s eye.
“Tell him what you did, Craig,” his mother practically dares him. “Go on, tell him, you little shit.”
Craig can only moan like a dying animal. He wishes a hole would open in the ground and he could just vanish inside it forever.
“He had unprotected sex,” she states as a matter of fact when Craig has taken too long to incriminate himself.
“It wasn’t with another alpha, was it?” Thomas accuses him immediately.
“What?” Craig perks up at that, bewildered. “No? No, it was an omega!”
“Okay, good,” Thomas says as if that were genuinely his biggest concern and he’s been placated.
“Good?! Thomas, are you fucking serious? Your son just told you he had unprotected sex with an omega!”
“Oh.”
“Don’t just say ‘oh’! This is serious!”
“Well damn it, Laura! What did you expect?! He’s a big strong alpha! He’s supposed to have sex with omegas!”
“Unprotected sex, Thomas!” Laura emphasizes.
Craig wishes they would stop acting like he committed a series of heinous crimes. He knows he’s in trouble, but they’re really overreacting here. There’s a shuffle as his father grabs the cell phone to speak more clearly into it.
“Did you knot, son?” Thomas asks him sincerely. “Did you, uh, plant your seeds, so to say?”
Craig is absolutely mortified. He drops his brand new phone on his lap and grabs a couch cushion to scream into it. He’s pretty sure he’s in hell. After a moment, he picks up the phone again and it’s clear his parents have been bickering for a few moments in his brief absence from the call.
“Craig,” Laura has changed her tune and now attempts to speak to him a bit more softly. “Please tell me it’s at least someone you care about.”
Something jolts straight through Craig’s chest at those words. He sits straight up in his seat and a strange feeling washes over him. Honestly, he doesn’t have a good answer to that question. Because on the one hand, how could he possibly care about someone he hardly knows? That’s a ridiculous notion. But then again, on the other hand, there was undeniably something remarkable between them. Craig would absolutely be lying to himself if he said what he felt the other night was strictly the result of raging hormones and his instinctual biological imperative. He isn’t sure what to make of it. He is, however, sure that that encounter was notably different from his previous string of cheap, quick fucks. His palms feel a bit sweaty all of a sudden and it’s a real challenge to grip his phone. The answer won’t come easily, so he attempts to speak cautiously and keep things vague for now.
“Uh, well…” Craig steadies his voice. “I know him from a few classes we have together.”
“Him?” Laura hones in on that part of the sentence. “Craig, c’mon. Him? God damn it. I should have known. It’s always a male omega. Every time you hear one of these stories about an accidental pregnancy, it’s a male omega. I taught you better than this, Craig.”
“You’re kind of being an asshole, Mom,” Craig grouses.
“How does it feel to be a statistic, Craig?” Laura drives home her prejudiced point.
“Fine,” Craig says defiantly.
She grumbles, clearly irate that her old-world views have no real bearing on Craig. Once again, she tries a new angle.
“What’s his name,” she sighs and asks out of politeness rather than genuine questioning.
“Tweek,” Craig answers the first easy question of this horrible discussion.
“That’s an odd name,” Thomas grunts in disapproval. “And you’re sure he’s not an alpha?”
“Yes, Dad, I’m sure he’s not a fucking alpha,” Craig rolls his eyes even though neither of them can see him.
“Well,” Thomas pauses thoughtfully. “What’s he look like?”
A thousand images race through Craig’s mind. The memories flood back in alarming succession. He’s shorter than Craig, but at his height, that’s pretty much a given. He’s slim, but not scrawny. He has the well-sculpted muscles of an athlete despite the demeanor of a cornered rodent. His eyes hold a unique sadness that Craig supposes he doesn’t even realize he broadcasts to anyone who might take the time to really look into them. Maybe Craig is the only one who can see it. Maybe Craig is the only one who cares. Craig’s chest clenches involuntarily at that notion. Tweek’s lips are chapped, and Craig’s not really sure if they’re uneven or if he just twitches and chews on them so frequently it’s impossible to see them properly. He is sure, though, about their warmth and the way his body felt so right when those scratchy lips pressed hard into his own. It takes a moment, but Craig snaps back to reality. His father asked him a question and instead of responding, he started daydreaming like a weirdo.
“He’s, uh, he’s blonde?” Craig decides to give a simple answer.
“Atta boy!” Thomas practically cheers. “No Tucker can resist a blonde! Isn’t that right, Laura?”
“Thomas, this isn’t helping!” Laura scolds him. “Can you just leave and let me speak with my son?”
“You’re the one who called me over!”
“Thomas…” she warns him.
“Good to see he’s your son again,” his father scoffs, but the distinctive sound of his stomping feet lets Craig know he was an obedient husband and it’s just himself and his mother once again.
An uncomfortable silence between them lingers in the air for more than a few moments. Craig has no idea how to proceed with the conversation, so he holds his tongue. His mother’s presence is only confirmed by her thoughtful, measured breathing into the receiver. It feels like an eternity passes before she speaks again.
“Craig…” she starts slowly, and it’s clear she’s trying her best not to berate him any further. “What are you going to do now?”
Craig heaves a ragged sigh. He slumps back into the wall of the couch. It’s a simple question at face value. And yet, it’s the most complicated question he’s ever been asked in his entire life. There are realistically only a few options on the table. None of them are particularly palatable. His eyes dart back and forth as he mulls each one over, attempting to speed-run the possibilities and outcomes of every choice in his mind. Ultimately, he’s at a loss here. He’s the type of guy who always has some kind of logic to follow or some kind of fix for whatever problem he’s faced with. Now, that’s not the case at all.
“I have no idea,” he finally admits.
Those words aren’t easy to say. He feels small and helpless. It’s foreign and scary. It’s unsettling.
“Well,” she clucks her tongue. “In the end, I can’t tell you what to do.”
He nods in understanding, even though she can’t see him.
“Lord knows I’ve tried telling you what to do in the past, and look where that’s gotten us,” she continues, and while the words themselves have a bite there’s a bit of a tongue-in-cheek quality to them that manages to lighten the mood if only a little bit. “I don’t know Tweek. And maybe you don’t either.”
“I know him a little,” Craig injects, but it sounds flimsier than he’d hoped.
“But I know you,” she avoids his attempt to derail and presses on. “And even though you’re a little asshole, you’re my son. No matter what you do, I’ll still love you. I just hope that you’ll do the right thing.”
He’s struck by that. His eyebrows knit together and his jaw tightens. It’s supportive, but that hardly gives him any substantial guidance.
“What’s the right thing?” Craig asks, just above a whisper.
“You tell me,” she says airily, as though she’s commenting on the weather.
“What if I don’t know what the right thing is?”
“You’ll know, Craig,” Laura affirms him.
He feels simultaneously hopeless and confident. Or maybe that’s not what it is. Oddly enough, it’s starting to sink in. He feels supported. And for that much, he’s grateful.
“Okay,” he agrees in that same small voice.
“And Craig?”
“Yeah?”
“I meant it,” his mother speaks with a tenderness he’s rarely heard from her in all his life. “I’ll still love you.”
“I love you, too, Mom,” Craig slurs the words together awkwardly.
With that, she hangs up and the line goes dead. Once again, Craig sits alone in the silence with nothing but his own terrible, crushing thoughts. He still doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel. Frozen in place on the edge of the world’s most uncomfortable couch, Craig weighs his options. How is he supposed to discern right from wrong here? He knows he’s made an egregious error, but he also knows he can only be held culpable to a certain extent. But in the end, blame and guilt are largely irrelevant concepts at play. Responsibility is the next step here, but Craig is still uncertain about what that entails.
It’s a very long time before he feels able to peel himself from where he sits, but when he does, it’s a simple yet profound thought that pulls him from his pool of selfish misery. It took two people to get into this mess. Logically, he thinks, it should take those same two people to reason their way back out of it. He hasn’t spoken to Tweek since he so chivalrously walked him home after blasting him full of cum. Craig cringes at the thought. Probably the best course of action is to just talk to this guy. After all, how hard can a conversation about that night be? They did the deed, and now they should address it. Craig feels like his stomach is full of butterflies, except all the butterflies are vomiting inside him. Maybe it’s the right thing to do. Maybe his mother was right and this gross, queasy feeling is the confirmation. At the very least, he’s pretty sure talking to Tweek can’t make anything worse. He lets his fear warp into invigoration as he rises from the couch and starts the search for a matching pair of shoes. For the first time in his life, he decides not to allow his status as an alpha feel like a burden. Craig willfully and unquestionably makes the firm decision in his mind to do the right thing.
Re: Tweek/Craig, ABO, overstimulation
“I’m sorry, maybe I didn’t hear you right. You did WHAT?”
It’s been a bit longer than a full day since Craig snapped out of his stupor and had a flash of clarity. And, it’s been a little less than that since he loaned Tweek a set of sweats to wear once they were able to tear their bodies from each other, and approximately less time even still since he walked him to his dorm room. He spent an indeterminable amount of time alternating between staring at the ceiling and pacing nervously. There are a few blank spots in that time frame, too, so he figures he probably inadvertently fell asleep for a brief spell here and there. It’s been around half a day since he returned to the shower room, but this time he actually took a normal shower (the kind with soap and hot water and absolutely no grinding on acquaintances). After that, Craig’s first class of the day was due to begin. But like the handful of days leading up to that moment, he didn’t attend it. He wasted a bit more time fretting and procrastinating sending a handful of emails to explain his absence and instead spent his afternoon taking a bus off campus to purchase a new phone since he managed to break his old one. It’s been a few hours since he returned to the ghastly state of his single-sized dormitory apartment. He spent a while mindlessly shuffling around, collecting the tattered ruins of his life and cleaning up the various broken items and stained linens. And now, it’s been approximately 5 minutes since he gathered the courage to call his mother and disclose the sordid events of the last handful of days.
“Craig,” she states his name sternly and it resonates in an unpleasant and tinny way through the receiver, but it’s laced with the type of concern any mother might have for her only son. “Tell me I didn’t hear what I think I just heard.”
Craig groans and runs a hand down his face. He can feel his body giving out on itself so he sits down on the edge of his crappy couch. He leans forward so his elbows prop themselves on his lap.
“I didn’t stutter,” he challenges her.
It’s rude and it’s defensive, and he knows that. But he can’t bring himself to repeat what he just confessed. It’s bad enough that he had to say it once. She clucks her tongue from the other end of the line. It’s clear she’s disappointed. He shrinks in on himself. It’s a weird feeling, truthfully. It’s a little bit shameful and humiliating, but also it’s frustrating and he’s quite a bit on edge. It’s not like his mom is the one with the problem– it’s his own burden to bear in the end.
“Well,” she begins again, cautiously. “Beta or omega?”
Craig groans but manages to mutter, “Omega.”
“Craig, are you serious?! An omega. Really? You know you definitely just got that poor thing pregnant,” she wastes no time in berating him.
“Mom!” Craig yelps.
It’s fucking embarrassing to hear her announce factual things like this. He stomps his foot petulantly and tears his old, worn hat from his head just to have the satisfaction of flinging it to the ground. He really doesn’t have a defensible argument here. He knows what he did. In fact, he’s pretty much the main guy who knows what he did. Whether he felt like himself or not, he’s the very person who went into an unmitigated rut. He’s the one who went out into the world with his big stupid boner and he’s the one who went prowling. Craig himself is the one who found an unchecked omega in heat, brought him back to his room, built a nest, and then succinctly fucked him into completion. He’s the one who felt the cum leak out of that plush, slippery ass and he’s the one whose knot remained tethered until the swelling went down. She signed his school papers and knows as well as he does that he attended his sexual health and education classes. They both know that Craig knows exactly how the act of getting pregnant works. She doesn’t have to rub it in and make him feel worse about it.
“I’m putting you on speaker,” she snips.
“Mom, no-”
But it’s too late for rebuttals. She’s already shouting across the house to get his father to join in on the conversation.
“Thomas! Thomas, get in here right now!”
There’s a clamor and then Craig’s father’s voice chimes in a bit distantly. Craig can hear that he’s breathless from rushing to the scene, but he can’t quite make out the first thing he says.
“It’s your asshole son on the phone,” she says, almost dismissively but not quite.
“My asshole son?” Thomas huffs suspiciously. “What the hell did the boy do this time?! He’s only ‘my son' when he’s done something!”
Craig can very nearly see both of their angry faces in his mind’s eye.
“Tell him what you did, Craig,” his mother practically dares him. “Go on, tell him, you little shit.”
Craig can only moan like a dying animal. He wishes a hole would open in the ground and he could just vanish inside it forever.
“He had unprotected sex,” she states as a matter of fact when Craig has taken too long to incriminate himself.
“It wasn’t with another alpha, was it?” Thomas accuses him immediately.
“What?” Craig perks up at that, bewildered. “No? No, it was an omega!”
“Okay, good,” Thomas says as if that were genuinely his biggest concern and he’s been placated.
“Good?! Thomas, are you fucking serious? Your son just told you he had unprotected sex with an omega!”
“Oh.”
“Don’t just say ‘oh’! This is serious!”
“Well damn it, Laura! What did you expect?! He’s a big strong alpha! He’s supposed to have sex with omegas!”
“Unprotected sex, Thomas!” Laura emphasizes.
Craig wishes they would stop acting like he committed a series of heinous crimes. He knows he’s in trouble, but they’re really overreacting here. There’s a shuffle as his father grabs the cell phone to speak more clearly into it.
“Did you knot, son?” Thomas asks him sincerely. “Did you, uh, plant your seeds, so to say?”
Craig is absolutely mortified. He drops his brand new phone on his lap and grabs a couch cushion to scream into it. He’s pretty sure he’s in hell. After a moment, he picks up the phone again and it’s clear his parents have been bickering for a few moments in his brief absence from the call.
“Craig,” Laura has changed her tune and now attempts to speak to him a bit more softly. “Please tell me it’s at least someone you care about.”
Something jolts straight through Craig’s chest at those words. He sits straight up in his seat and a strange feeling washes over him. Honestly, he doesn’t have a good answer to that question. Because on the one hand, how could he possibly care about someone he hardly knows? That’s a ridiculous notion. But then again, on the other hand, there was undeniably something remarkable between them. Craig would absolutely be lying to himself if he said what he felt the other night was strictly the result of raging hormones and his instinctual biological imperative. He isn’t sure what to make of it. He is, however, sure that that encounter was notably different from his previous string of cheap, quick fucks. His palms feel a bit sweaty all of a sudden and it’s a real challenge to grip his phone. The answer won’t come easily, so he attempts to speak cautiously and keep things vague for now.
“Uh, well…” Craig steadies his voice. “I know him from a few classes we have together.”
“Him?” Laura hones in on that part of the sentence. “Craig, c’mon. Him? God damn it. I should have known. It’s always a male omega. Every time you hear one of these stories about an accidental pregnancy, it’s a male omega. I taught you better than this, Craig.”
“You’re kind of being an asshole, Mom,” Craig grouses.
“How does it feel to be a statistic, Craig?” Laura drives home her prejudiced point.
“Fine,” Craig says defiantly.
She grumbles, clearly irate that her old-world views have no real bearing on Craig. Once again, she tries a new angle.
“What’s his name,” she sighs and asks out of politeness rather than genuine questioning.
“Tweek,” Craig answers the first easy question of this horrible discussion.
“That’s an odd name,” Thomas grunts in disapproval. “And you’re sure he’s not an alpha?”
“Yes, Dad, I’m sure he’s not a fucking alpha,” Craig rolls his eyes even though neither of them can see him.
“Well,” Thomas pauses thoughtfully. “What’s he look like?”
A thousand images race through Craig’s mind. The memories flood back in alarming succession. He’s shorter than Craig, but at his height, that’s pretty much a given. He’s slim, but not scrawny. He has the well-sculpted muscles of an athlete despite the demeanor of a cornered rodent. His eyes hold a unique sadness that Craig supposes he doesn’t even realize he broadcasts to anyone who might take the time to really look into them. Maybe Craig is the only one who can see it. Maybe Craig is the only one who cares. Craig’s chest clenches involuntarily at that notion. Tweek’s lips are chapped, and Craig’s not really sure if they’re uneven or if he just twitches and chews on them so frequently it’s impossible to see them properly. He is sure, though, about their warmth and the way his body felt so right when those scratchy lips pressed hard into his own. It takes a moment, but Craig snaps back to reality. His father asked him a question and instead of responding, he started daydreaming like a weirdo.
“He’s, uh, he’s blonde?” Craig decides to give a simple answer.
“Atta boy!” Thomas practically cheers. “No Tucker can resist a blonde! Isn’t that right, Laura?”
“Thomas, this isn’t helping!” Laura scolds him. “Can you just leave and let me speak with my son?”
“You’re the one who called me over!”
“Thomas…” she warns him.
“Good to see he’s your son again,” his father scoffs, but the distinctive sound of his stomping feet lets Craig know he was an obedient husband and it’s just himself and his mother once again.
An uncomfortable silence between them lingers in the air for more than a few moments. Craig has no idea how to proceed with the conversation, so he holds his tongue. His mother’s presence is only confirmed by her thoughtful, measured breathing into the receiver. It feels like an eternity passes before she speaks again.
“Craig…” she starts slowly, and it’s clear she’s trying her best not to berate him any further. “What are you going to do now?”
Craig heaves a ragged sigh. He slumps back into the wall of the couch. It’s a simple question at face value. And yet, it’s the most complicated question he’s ever been asked in his entire life. There are realistically only a few options on the table. None of them are particularly palatable. His eyes dart back and forth as he mulls each one over, attempting to speed-run the possibilities and outcomes of every choice in his mind. Ultimately, he’s at a loss here. He’s the type of guy who always has some kind of logic to follow or some kind of fix for whatever problem he’s faced with. Now, that’s not the case at all.
“I have no idea,” he finally admits.
Those words aren’t easy to say. He feels small and helpless. It’s foreign and scary. It’s unsettling.
“Well,” she clucks her tongue. “In the end, I can’t tell you what to do.”
He nods in understanding, even though she can’t see him.
“Lord knows I’ve tried telling you what to do in the past, and look where that’s gotten us,” she continues, and while the words themselves have a bite there’s a bit of a tongue-in-cheek quality to them that manages to lighten the mood if only a little bit. “I don’t know Tweek. And maybe you don’t either.”
“I know him a little,” Craig injects, but it sounds flimsier than he’d hoped.
“But I know you,” she avoids his attempt to derail and presses on. “And even though you’re a little asshole, you’re my son. No matter what you do, I’ll still love you. I just hope that you’ll do the right thing.”
He’s struck by that. His eyebrows knit together and his jaw tightens. It’s supportive, but that hardly gives him any substantial guidance.
“What’s the right thing?” Craig asks, just above a whisper.
“You tell me,” she says airily, as though she’s commenting on the weather.
“What if I don’t know what the right thing is?”
“You’ll know, Craig,” Laura affirms him.
He feels simultaneously hopeless and confident. Or maybe that’s not what it is. Oddly enough, it’s starting to sink in. He feels supported. And for that much, he’s grateful.
“Okay,” he agrees in that same small voice.
“And Craig?”
“Yeah?”
“I meant it,” his mother speaks with a tenderness he’s rarely heard from her in all his life. “I’ll still love you.”
“I love you, too, Mom,” Craig slurs the words together awkwardly.
With that, she hangs up and the line goes dead. Once again, Craig sits alone in the silence with nothing but his own terrible, crushing thoughts. He still doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel. Frozen in place on the edge of the world’s most uncomfortable couch, Craig weighs his options. How is he supposed to discern right from wrong here? He knows he’s made an egregious error, but he also knows he can only be held culpable to a certain extent. But in the end, blame and guilt are largely irrelevant concepts at play. Responsibility is the next step here, but Craig is still uncertain about what that entails.
It’s a very long time before he feels able to peel himself from where he sits, but when he does, it’s a simple yet profound thought that pulls him from his pool of selfish misery. It took two people to get into this mess. Logically, he thinks, it should take those same two people to reason their way back out of it. He hasn’t spoken to Tweek since he so chivalrously walked him home after blasting him full of cum. Craig cringes at the thought. Probably the best course of action is to just talk to this guy. After all, how hard can a conversation about that night be? They did the deed, and now they should address it. Craig feels like his stomach is full of butterflies, except all the butterflies are vomiting inside him. Maybe it’s the right thing to do. Maybe his mother was right and this gross, queasy feeling is the confirmation. At the very least, he’s pretty sure talking to Tweek can’t make anything worse. He lets his fear warp into invigoration as he rises from the couch and starts the search for a matching pair of shoes. For the first time in his life, he decides not to allow his status as an alpha feel like a burden. Craig willfully and unquestionably makes the firm decision in his mind to do the right thing.