“Melody-”

“Stop.” That one little word boomed and thundered across Corey’s entire being. His jaw shut, tightened. His eyes, half-closed at first, jolted fully open, fixating upon the deliverer of that powerfully delivered syllable, her face hovering hundreds of feet away. Not out of fear – never that, never of her. Nor did that voice seek to ignite any such feeling within him – it had delivered its word emphatically, not harshly, with just enough strength to halt his words, and nothing more.

Anything beyond that had been a simple coincidence of scale.

“Before you start, I just want you to know that…I’m not angry with you, Corey, or…or anything like that. Not at all. I just want you to know that.”

Corey knew. Even before she had given voice to the fact. There had been no anger upon her beautiful visage, not when she had discovered his deceitfulness. Nor through the time that had proceeded it, as the work day had finished and the two had headed to her home. Even the silence that had overtaken them – by his own request, admittedly, as he had not wanted to discuss the matter where listening ears might catch on – had been devoid of any such feeling.

“And I know that you must have reasons for doing what you did. I can even…make some guesses about them, and maybe they’d be accurate. But I’m not going to force them out of you. I would never, ever do that. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s…that’s fine. We don’t have to. But I would really, truly love it if we did.”

“We can,” Corey answered immediately, earnestly. Enough so of the former that his girlfriend actually seemed a bit taken aback by it, and he could practically see the gears turning in her head, asking if she had gone too far with that last comment…if maybe he now felt that he did have to talk about it. It wasn’t an entirely inaccurate thought on her part: He did have to talk about it. But he had reached that conclusion almost immediately upon seeing her face, when she had found his tampering. Found that he had abused his interface privileges with her computer to reset his bath times to the default. That he had done so with deliberate calculation, knowing full well that such a time coincided perfectly with the shower she would take upon returning home so as to neatly avoid any trouble. It had not been an angry one, no, but that did not mean it had been a face without emotion.

It didn’t mean that his actions hadn’t hurt her. And for that reason alone, Corey felt a complete lowness about himself that had rarely been matched in his life. All that considered…sharing his thoughts felt like the best possible apology he could give.

“Want to move over to the bed, then?” Melody asked quietly, a hand lifting over the edge of the dresser his own bed currently rested on. An action of habit.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

To that, Melody graced him with a smile as soft as her voice, and in no time his metallic shell of a bed found itself parted from the dresser, pinched with care between two opposing cliff faces. A short journey followed the shorter lift, and the mattress of Melody’s bed soon creaked as she lay her weight upon it, and her mountainous form stretched along its length. He, too, came to rest once more, his bed being softly deposited upon the back of her opposing hand, to be held before her beautiful amber eyes as the Omega propped her back up against the headboard.  Silence surrounded them for a time, with Corey not quite certain where to start. How to start.

When Melody broke the silence herself, he was more than a little bit thankful.

“So at the very least, I’m guessing you don’t want to go to the party tonight?”

“No,” he responded after a small, exasperated snort, “no, no I don’t.”

“When did you…decide on that? You seemed excited about it at first. Or were you…I mean…”

“Last night was when I really decided on it,” Corey interrupted, causing Melody’s shifting eyes to settle once more. “And I was excited about it. I honestly was. Then I…wasn’t.”

“What changed?” Melody inquired softly, voice more like a breath. Uneasy. Fully cognizant, Corey noted, that those two words would give way to the real issue at hand.

“I started thinking,” he continued, wetting his lips, shifting his eyes just a little as he found the words, “about things. A lot of things. Some that have been bothering me for a while.”

“Like what?” the Omega asked, and it was no trouble at all for the little Beta to notice her eyes widen in slight alarm that something was bothering him, as well as with a desire to know what.

“There’s…well, there’s going to be a lot of people there. I’ve seen the list, I recognize a lot of them…I know several. Kyle and his parents, Jenna and hers, you and yours. Angela, Mr. Hart…you get the point. A lot of people.”

“A lot of people that care about you,” Melody added quickly, and how immediately that had been offered brought a small smile, however sad it was, to his lips. It was an offer of solace and calm that he appreciated.

“I know,” he continued, swallowing deeply in preparation as he continued to search for the words he needed. “Believe me, I know. But...but that’s half the problem, Mel. These are folks that I like a lot, that like me, too and…God, how to put this…I’ve known them for a long time. Some of them since I was a toddler. And I remember talking with them, having conversations with them. And that hasn’t been the case since I was put into this stupid thing. They all walk on eggshells around me now, like I can’t handle real talking, real interaction. Even Claire, ever since she scared me by accident the first day back. It’s...Melody, I haven’t had an actual conversation with anyone besides you in a month. And I know why they do it, that they just want me to feel safe and feel comfortable. But every time they even look at me, I can see it; in their eyes, their faces, their mannerisms. The pity. How sorry they feel for me.”

“And I can’t handle that, Mel. I can’t handle being completely surrounded by that. I can tolerate it when it’s just a couple of people, but all at once…I just don’t think I can do it.”

By now, Corey’s eyes had lost his love’s and found instead his own chest, gaze having sunken away words ago, and the fingers of his good hand clenched the safety strap pulled over his waist to the point of aching. He could practically feel his throat beginning to dry through the mounting anxiety, and the frustration that had spawned it.

“But that’s the lesser half of it, isn’t it?”

His hand clenched tighter momentarily, amplifying the pain. His sad, bitter little smile returned. She was so good at reading him when he was like this, he thought. So good at handling him without just handling him…at engaging him. He didn’t know what he’d have done without her for the past month. Didn’t want to know.

“That’s the truth,” he admitted, sucking on his bottom lip for a moment afterwards. “The funny thing is that I figure out that’s already bad enough. I’m mad because my friends are concerned about me, of all things. How shitty is that?”

“Very,” came the unexpected answer, and it was only the gentle breeze of a voice that the comment had been delivered in that kept Corey from collapsing in on himself. Instead, his gaze simply lifted once more, likely as intended, to be met with more soft words. “But you’re not mad at them for being concerned about you. I don’t think so, anyway. You’re mad because it’s been a month and you want normalcy again. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing.”

For a moment, Corey’s smile became a genuine one. He closed his eyes, nodded, and tried to apply Melody’s explanation as an internal band-aid. It made sense, he felt. Melody always made sense in these matters. It was nice.

“What was it that really tipped you over on this, Corey?” Melody asked, keeping the conversation going. Her gentle tones continued to apply no pressure, no demand. The young woman whose hand he rested on sought only understanding so as to help, and if he gave in to a rapidly rising inclination to draw into himself and end this talk, she would respect it as his right. It was a right he truly wanted to exercise in this moment, much as he had when he had made the decision to go behind her back on this matter. And while that particular want had won out the first time, it would not do so the second. It had been an error made in a panic, and he would not make it again. Not in the presence of those eyes that told him with so much love and caring that such a thing need not exist within him when in their presence.

“Well,” he started, finally removing his clenching hand from the strap and resting it on his stomach, “it kind of goes back to that guest list, I guess. I said…I said that I recognized a lot of the names on it, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

“Yeah, well,” Corey continued on, absent-mindedly tapping his fingers against his body at a slow yet increasing rate, “yeah, I recognize a lot of them. Either seen them before or…heard about them, in some cases. And a lot of them are…how to put…I mean they’re…they’re…”

His tapping fingers halted, instead opting to grab and clench at his wetsuit, and as the anxiety began to mount once more, his eyes yet again fell.

“They’re Alphas, Melody.” And at that, Corey was pretty certain he could have heard the lump that fell down Melody’s throat from an Omega household away.

“Corey,” she breathed, pausing while at a very apparent and very painful loss of words, “you know that-“

“I’m not talking about people like your dad or Mrs. Tricia or…or anyone like that,” Corey interrupted, as he had a sense as to where that was heading. A labored exhalation, stuffed with breath mints, washed over him on the back of the Omega’s hand as her remaining words disappeared into it. “I’ve known them for a long time. They aren’t the problem. Who I’m saying this about, or…or anything. They’re great. It’s all the others, Melody. I don’t know them.” Silence arrived again, save for Melody’s breathing as she processed that and tried to work her magic. Corey didn’t dare look up at her. He didn’t want to see whatever expression was likely on her face. It was a desire that increased as she finally broke the silence once again, her voice now decidedly less sure of itself than it had been the first time.

“Corey, there’s…there’s no one going to the party that would ever be anything less than…than kind to you. They wouldn’t ever even think of hurting you.”

“I don’t know that, Mel,” Corey said, head sinking just a little bit more as dull aches began to throb around his body. “I don’t know them.”

“Corey, we’re talking about people like…like Sean. I mean, he’s dating your sister and…”

“Melody-”

“And you know what he…what he did, right? For his sister. For Sarah. A lot of the Alphas going, they’re…they’re dedicated to the work.”

“I do, yeah. And I do know of them.”

The aching of his healing bones had done nothing but amplify, throbbing harder with each word and thought spared for the topic at hand. And for the life of him, Corey wasn’t certain if it was real or imagined. If his painkillers were cycling, or if his body was just remembering the extent to which it had been savaged by three strange faces.

“And that’s just it, Melody,” he croaked, finally looking up and into her now softly distressed features to find that, without him noticing it, his vision had somehow become blurry as his mind had been occupied by the pain. “I do know of them. But I don’t know them.”

It was with that emphasis that, even through blurry eyes, he could see the issue at hand fully click with the Omega. And for the first time he could ever recall, the perfect stability and balance of Melody King faltered with a momentary tremble that shook his world before his host brought it under control.

“Oh, Corey,” Melody murmured, as silence engulfed the two again. And despite still not having wiped his eyes, Corey could see it, as if it were a light cutting through a heavy fog. He could see that for once, she had no more words to give.