WRONG SENSATIONS

At some point, Matt actually had gotten violently ill. Cifer did what he always does and hoisted him up. Dragged into the tiny, nearby bathroom stall with a fraction of a second to spare; what little left in his belly vacated the building. Not into the toilet, but there was what looked like an electronically operated… biohazard box? Made of a blackened metal, that thing caught his eye. Was it nitranium, or just stained black? No, they wouldn't keep something so infectious around. But then again, it made no sense to build such a sophisticated and expensive-looking box just to yeet it off a cliff later. Nitranium was a black, anti-supe, man made metal of extraordinary properties, so it could definitely keep an infection sealed away safely. 

If that was the case, what were they doing with—

An intense, feverish body pressed itself flush against his back, and Matt instinctively tried to shift enough to ram his shackled arms into the alpha that was currently invading his space. Worked about as well as a hamster trying to stuff a full-sized banana into its face, though. Seriously? Two massive alphas squeezed into an airplane bathroom stall with the door sliding shut behind them? Yeah, fucking right. They're stuffed in that tin can like sardines.

"Get off me!"

Surprising even himself with the newfound strength behind the slightly inhuman sounding tone. His hormones really were outta whack. Shit, with Ubiytsa this close, for the first time since they met, he might risk actually smelling him. The strength of his scent blockers was diminishing over time, and soon enough, the hulking savage could smell Matt, too. His ass would be in Narnia before that happened, though. He had no plans to stick around long enough for shit to hit the fan. 

"No."

"Fuck, why?" 

"Hold still. Let me see."

Unfathomably devoid of his senses, a monstrous hand grabbed for the millionth time and his head snapped it back at a painful angle. From where he was standing, several things occurred to him at once. Their eyes locked, and when they did, time folded in on itself. His face was visible, as was his head—whatever stealth gear he'd been wearing when he showed up to take Matt against his will have vanished. Left bear to the intensity of Matt's gaze, he drank in every notable feature he could find. There had to be some flaw in this ingenious design—something to alert him. He knew full-well who he was looking at; yet the dam withholding his festering thoughts remained closed by the skin of his teeth. 

If Matt was six foot four, the man he was afraid to call Cifer dwarfed him and made him look like a kid again. He had to be at least seven feet, maybe seven two. Height was a fairly easy genetic trait to manipulate for them, so seeing giant men and women wasn't entirely out of the ordinary. Most people had the wherewithal and self restraint not to do anything ludicrous with that kind of freedom. Not this guy's parents. Clearly, they didn't give a rat's ass about the fact that the world wouldn't exist to fit their son's needs. They just wanted a literal monster to call their own. Anyone who hadn't watched this kid find his footing during the awkward stages of his life would probably be scared shitless right now.

"… What do you want from me right now?" Matt asked.

Cifer had this look about him—dull. Dead. Glazed over. Emotionless and glassy. A far cry from the charismatic and swift to anger boy Mattias remembered.

"Looking. Shut up." Cifer replied.

What a prick. Even more irksome, with how hard pressed they were together, Matt could feel something that he desperately didn't want to flush against his lower back. Rigid beyond what was physically comfortable for his muscles to be, Matt had no choice but to tolerate the fact that his bound hands had gotten wedged dangerously close to what he hoped was just a muscle in Ubiytsa's leg. Fuck, what was he thinking about right now? His face. He needed to focus on his face. That masculine, angled jaw. His sharp, calculating eyes and high-sculpted cheekbones. This otherworldly prick looked like he was straight out of an American designer magazine, as a sample for marketing material. 

Laughter caught in his throat. Because while he wanted to hate how curated and mesmerizing this platinum blond haired, clean shaven, pale-turquoise eyed man, he just couldn't. Broad shoulders currently adorned with some kind of massive, open chest fur coat were just so extraordinarily fucking Cifer that Mattias slipped outside his own head. It was like he was seeing without seeing, existing on a separate plane of reality that was like walking through a cloud. Nothing he saw registered in his mind. Everything was curiously thick, even in his vision, as though he were merely a cloud passing through. It felt safe here. He didn't need to think.

"What's wrong with you?" Cifer asked.

That monotony really was uncanny.

Even as the two of them stood there, plastered together in silence, neither broke whatever strange trance Matt had fallen into. Not until a familiar scent finally worked its way past his weakening chemical defenses and dragged him back in, kicking and screaming. Now that his nose wasn't so messed up, he could smell things again. And, just as it had when Guise drew in close as they spent time in his cramped kitchen, Ubiytsa's scent floated into Matt's senses. 

However, this time it was far more powerful of an impact than before. He could practically see it in his head; a crackling, open campfire that was spitting brilliant orange hues into the dead of night and illuminating glittering, frosted trees. It smelled deeply of freshly felled, burning oak and the decadent marshmallow that had been roasting over it. 

Someone brought graham crackers and chocolate, too. But faintly, if not absurdly so, he could have sworn he smelled a hint of damning caramel mixed in. Decadence aside, no matter how he sliced it, the alpha in him got pissed off about how dominating that mix of pheromones smelled. Mattias hadn't noticed it until now, but it felt like Cifer—there was absolutely no denying it now—had been intentionally releasing far more than the situation called for this entire time. Sporting the same intolerance as he had when they were boys and he'd lunged at him on the beach; it sent Matt over the edge. 

Dark and festering rot that had been subdued by his willful ignorance to Cifer's presence broke out of its rancorous cage, and the dam finally burst. 

"YOU FUCKING TRAITOR!" 

Half his cry originated from deep within his throat, inside the place where his alpha voice lived. Rage-addled, Matt threw himself backwards as much as he could and used Cifer's stubbornly solid body as leverage. He swung his legs up just as Cifer deflated from being forced backward in what tiny wiggle room they actually had. He wedged his knees up against the awkwardly shaped wall, too wrought by madness to notice how the curious bumps and ridges of a slick luxury bathroom were only turning his flesh a deeper shade of purple. 

"Stop struggling—"

Clenched teeth and strenuous activity made his nostrils flare as he tried to smother Cifer by crushing his lungs and diaphragm with his shackled arms. "Why won't you say anything?!" 

"I—" Cifer struggled in a breath, and for a half a second, Matt thought he might have gotten ahead, "don't know what you're talking about."

Matt didn't feel like switching to Russian, so he actively ignored it when Cifer had. All in favor of planting himself more firmly against the fulcrum of the wall so he could get even more force behind his efforts. 

"Bullshit! You said the same fucking thing back then. I didn't believe you in Siberia and I still don't! Why won't you just—" he strained so hard against the wall and his teeth clenched so tightly, now Matt was struggling for air, "fucking talk to me? Even your shitty excuses are better… than… nothing—"

Cifer lost whatever shredded, non-existent patience he had, because one moment, Matt was winning, the next? He could smell burning leather and fur before he felt the agonizing heat sizzling the exposed skin of his arms. His shackles got so hot, so instantaneously, Mattias cried out from the brutality of the way it burned hard lines of torment deep into his epidermis. Legs buckling off the wall and only partially catching himself, Matt desperately arched his back away from the source of the burning; but it was ultimately useless. The sickening smell of charred flesh wafted up to his nose. With no other option, Mattias bit back a scream and collapsed against the wall. 

"Off!"

Raw panic courses through his veins as the maddening torture continued. Shit, he had tears in his eyes. Part of him wondered if Cifer was still human at this point; not only had he hit Matt in the face more times than he could count, but now he was watching his arms being cooked alive. Not just watching, either. This was Cifer's ability. It was his fucking momentum that had super-heated his shackles to being with. However, as if something finally clicked and Cifer remembered he could fucking move, the bastard shuffled around behind Matt. Rustling ceased, and a beep played from somewhere near his wrists. 

Relief collided with indescribable hell as his restraints unlatched themselves and Cifer tore them off. Alpha be damned; he couldn't restrain the shout of pain that left him when the metal peeled off his arms. Seeing stars, his teeth ground so hard his jaw popped—Cifer wasn't backing off. Somewhat feverish hands gripped Matt's hips and tugged him away from the wall enough that a muscled arm could snake around his waist and turn his body to the side. Too busy breathing erratically and playing the tough guy, Matt only had the energy to let out something of a small warning growl when Cifer grabbed one of his arms. 

The other man froze, and something shifted in his scent; something foul. Sharp. Like the marshmallow had been burning. The arm that had lingered at his waist vanished in a flash; hot fingers tangled into Matt's hair, wrenching his head to the side and exposing his neck in a way Mattias Kohler had never allowed other man to do before, let alone an alpha. And least of all, Cifer. 

Sheer, raw overstimulation from every direction had his limbs hanging like expired jello out of a cup and his teeth locked together. "Fuck off!" 

It was all he could muster up. 

"Stay. Still."

Searing, ghostly bless birthed goose flesh against that precious spot on his neck where, if he were an omega, an alpha might tear into his skin with his teeth to claim him. He wanted to bring his skull back against Cifer's nose, but the mere slip of that abyssal octave of Cifer's made Matt's reality go tits up again. Everything he thought he knew about himself, how he might react were he ever in a situation like this, transmigrated into some other world and joined an actual hero. Yeah, he'd heard it that night. Cifer's alpha voice. It had frozen him in place and brought his body to a curious attention; but now? 

It was too much, too hot, too painful and altogether hideously close. The fantasy inside his head died in his throat as a sound that was suspiciously close to a hum of acknowledgement made the cracks in his pride even bigger. Cifer physically stiffened when he heard it; his breath even skipped unevenly across Matt's neck, tickling him in a way that made his heart rate skyrocket past what it already was from the raw horror that was his arms right now. Much to his dismay and unbridled confusion, Mattias noticed it shivering down his spine and settle itself deep into his core.

"God, you asshole."

"Don't be a bitch."

Cifer stopped hesitating. He tugged Matt's arms again, earning a hiss of delirious pain from between his teeth before the sound of rushing water interrupted his thoughts. Eyes ceased their tense squinting and widened, rolling into the back of his skull as precious cold water began pouring over each thick line of burns where the shackles had once lived. Matt couldn't help it; tautness melted from his muscles, leaving his body in an excessively vulnerable state as he draped back against the other Alpha's form. 

"Good boy." 

Those monotonous Russian words did nothing to help stop the growing evil that was spreading warmth and stimulation in the pit of his stomach. The hot breaths bathing his neck stuttered and increased in frequency, spreading a thicker scent over him; one that he wasn't in any state of mind to notice. Caramel. No, fuck, this hurt. It'd been decades since he experienced this kind of pain. Cifer had given it to him, too. The bastard wasn't getting an ounce of brownie points from Mattias—not today, nor ever. But, to his mounting revulsion, the blood in his tainted veins was switching directions and focusing itself south. 

Pain be damned, his length stirred against his will, pooling a taboo heat that never should have existed in the first place. "Hey, Cifer, I'm serious. Back off."

"No."

"Is that the only word you remember how to say, or what?"

Tepid tongue clicking spread more heat across his exposed neck—too much heat. Matt's legs felt even less stable than before, like his cock was stealing the last of his energy.

A bout of dizziness overtook him as that sick revelation added an extra layer of fucked up onto his already waning strength. The last thing he consciously remembered was Cifer almost tenderly running cool, liquid pain relief down his forearms. That, and the teasing, soft, fleeting touch of warm lips getting far too close for Matt's liking.