Page 22 of Heat Clickbait
"Fair." She paused, and I could picture her pushing her glasses up, the way she did when thinking. "For what it's worth, you looked happy in the footage. Scared as shit, but also... happy."
"How could you tell?" The convention footage had been chaos, mostly showing my obvious biological meltdown.
"Because I know you, dummy. I've seen you fake smile through a thousand sponsorship deals. That wasn't fake."
Crash chose that moment to drop into the nest with a plate of fresh fruit, his purple and neon green hair still sticking up at odd angles from sleep. He pressed a piece of mango to my lips without asking, and I ate it automatically, the gesture so casually intimate it made my chest tight.
"Listen," Zia continued, "whenever you're ready to talk, I'm here. No judgment, no pressure. And if these Alphas turn out to be assholes, I've got a baseball bat and absolutely no chill."
"They're not assholes," I said softly, watching Ghost adjust the temperature in my zone without being asked, Milo plate food with careful attention to what I'd actually eat, Nova organize my charging cables, and Blitz stretch in a way that was definitely for my benefit.
"Good. Because you deserve not-assholes." She cleared her throat. "Also, Michelle's been calling me. She seems to be handling the media storm through sheer force of will and possibly cocaine."
"Just her usual terrifying competence."
"Right. Well, I'll drop your stuff with her later. Unless you want me to bring it directly?"
The idea of Zia meeting the pack right now, when I couldn't even explain what we were to each other, made my anxiety spike. "Michelle's good for now. But Z? Thank you. For everything."
"That's what friends do, Cal. We worry, we pack bags, we threaten violence against anyone who hurts you." Her voice wentserious. "You know that hasn't changed, right? This whole thing doesn't change us?"
My throat tightened. "Promise?"
"Promise. You're still the disaster bisexual who got lost in a convention center that was literally a square. I'm still the chaos gremlin who accidentally became a vtuber because showing my face required putting on pants. Some things are constants."
The memory made me laugh. It was during one of her first streams and she forgot to turn on her avatar. She’d just had a black screen for twenty minutes while rambling about sound waves. "God, we were such disasters."
"Were?" She snorted. "Speak for yourself. I'm still a disaster, just a semi-successful one now."
"Same, apparently." I gestured vaguely at my situation, even though she couldn't see it.
"At least your disaster is hot. Mine just involves too much coffee and arguing with tech bros about audio compression."
There was a pause, comfortable and familiar, the kind only old friends could maintain over phone lines.
"I should tell you," I started, then stopped, not sure how to continue.
"That you're probably going to bond with them? That this is real?" She said it gently, without judgment. "Yeah, I figured. You don't do anything halfway, Cal. Never have."
"It's happening really fast."
"So? You decided to come out as Omega after one conversation with Kara. You practically changed your entire brand in a weekend. Fast is kind of your thing."
She was right, but this felt different. Bigger. More permanent.
"Remember freshman year?" she continued. "When you taught yourself Final Cut in forty-eight hours because you decided you wanted to edit videos?"
"I didn't sleep for two days."
"And you made the best damn video in the class. My point is, when you know something's right, you commit. Full send, no hesitation."
"This could destroy everything I built," I admitted quietly.
"Or it could make it better. Not different. Better." She paused. "Look, I watched the footage like everyone else. But I also know you. And the way you looked at them... Cal, I've never seen you look at anyone like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you were home."
