Page 39 of Night Call

He could hear Duncan pestering the medical techs back in the examination bay.

Blake grumbled as he rammed his toe into the heel of his other boot, trying to dislodge it from his foot. Gripping the side of a locker, he tried to pry the boot off, but with little success.

“It’s stuck,” he said, hopping on the spot. “Damn thing’s like a vacuum around my foot.”

Pember raised a hand, hiding a grin behind his fingers.

“Stop laughing,” Blake huffed, bending down to tug at it.

Pember snorted. “I’m not laughing, just… mildly amused.” He made a show of propping his own successfully removed boots on the shelf next to Blake’s head. “Besides, you know what they say about people with big feet.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

“Big shoes,” Blake said flatly.

“Exactly. Should’ve waited for them to bring you another pair. But now I suppose you’ll be stuck wearing off-white Wellingtons for the rest of your life.”

Sighing, Blake hobbled towards a plastic chair in the corner of the room. He held up a leg and wiggled his foot in the omega’s direction. Pember raised an eyebrow, sucking his bottom lip as a small smirk slowly tugged at the edge of his mouth. Blake wanted to bite that lip, to see how it tasted between his?—

“Are you going to help me, or not?” he snapped.

Pember crossed his arms and pouted. “Hm. On one condition.”

Letting his arms hang at his sides, Blake’s top lip slowly peeled back over his fangs. Pember’s eyes instinctually dropped to them, and the faintest of flushes began to creep up his neck.

“Y-you have to have dinner with Val… and me. Tomorrow evening. Even if something happens at work, you have to come home.”

Blake’s mouth went dry, his jaw opening and closing several times.

“And if you don’t,” Pember continued, “I’ll leave you like that forever.”

Blake tilted his head. “Deal, but with one further condition.”

Pember nodded and drifted towards him.

“You make more apple pie.”

Wrapping his hands around Blake’s ankle, Pember wrinkled his nose. “Again? What about cheesecake?”

“Anything you want,” Blake replied, voice low as he ran his tongue over his teeth. “But make it sweet.”

Pember’s nostrils flared and he yanked at the boot.

“Jesus!” Blake yelped as the omega nearly pulled him off the chair. “Are you sure you don’t want to take up rugby?”

Pember laughed and pulled again, that time leaving Blake half hanging over the floor. When Pember went to do it for a third time, Blake yanked back, but wildly underestimated the strength of Pember’s grip. The air exploded from his lungs when Pember crashed face first into his chest, cracking the heart rate monitor under his shirt.

“O-oh my God!” Pember said, touching his forehead whilst frantically patting Blake’s chest. “I’m so… I’m so… sorry!”

Blake closed a hand over Pember’s shoulder. Worry was plainly written in his green eyes, causing Blake’s alpha senses to roar at him toplacate the omega, soothe the omega, make him smile again.But the closed-off divorcee side of his brain told him to push Pember away.

Letting out a breath, he grabbed Pember’s fingers. “It’s not a pacemaker,” he said, his other hand gripping his chin. “It’s a monitor. I have atrial fibrillation.”

“Arrhythmia?”

“Yeah.”

Pember’s eyes widened, the tips of his fingers curling into Blake’s shirt. “That’s why you knew about the anxiolytic? The beta blockers?”

Blake nodded, eyes trailing to the freckle at the corner of Pember’s jaw. “Yeah. I quite literally have a broken heart.”

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