Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/12346992. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: M/M Fandom: Final_Fantasy_XIV Relationship: Cid_nan_Garlond/Nero_tol_Scaeva Character: Cid_nan_Garlond, Nero_tol_Scaeva Additional Tags: Non-Traditional_Alpha/Beta/Omega_Dynamics, Consensual_Underage_Sex, Fingerfucking, Hand_Jobs, Frottage Series: Part 1 of cidnero_but_its_abo_this_time Stats: Published: 2017-10-13 Words: 1678 ****** when in doubt... ****** by jonphaedrus Summary He remembered that heat, and how angry he’d been working on any project he could get his hands on, any at all, until he’d ended up doing half of Nero’s work for the next month. Angry that if he’d left someone else would try and get in. Angry that Nero didn’t want him. Angry that he wanted Nero at all. Notes this is for asch whom i am very proud of and also i just wanted to finish and post it before i forgot about it again See the end of the work for more notes At fourteen, Cid spent Nero's first heat feverishly working on literally anything he could find to do, refusing to leave their dorm room and the omega unattended. Not out of any Alpha pride, but because if someone came in and mounted him, Cid wouldn’t be able to get to his projects and he’d hear Nero bitch for a year about it. So he just sat, drenched in a pool of his own sweat, and listened to Nero’s wet, laboured breathing as he spent three miserable days curled up in a ball under his blankets, burning with fever and rut and heat. At the end of it, they sat together in the ensuite shower, not touching, their feet sticking out onto the tile of the bathroom floor, and talked about nothing at all, soaking in cold water, trying to get clean after days of dripping slick and tepid sweat and scent meshed into their hair and clothes. That was the first time Cid could remember wanting him, Nero’s longer legs leaving his heels fetching up almost onto the bathmat by the sink, his soaking blond curls plastered straight with water, when they had been long and had slicked down almost to his shoulders in some places, his blue eyes hazy with residual heat and the first five hairs coming in on his chin. That time when they sat there, both of them cold and fucking dejected and unhappy as wet coeurls, but at least together. At least they’d done it together. So they could do it again. He remembered that heat, and how angry he’d been working on any project he could get his hands on, any at all, until he’d ended up doing half of Nero’s work for the next month. Angry that if he’d left someone else would try and get in. Angry that Nero didn’t want him. Angry that he wanted Nero at all.     Nero didn’t have another heat until after their short summer recess. When they came back for the following school year, it hit near to the end of the fall semester, and this time, Cid couldn’t half-do Nero’s finals for him. It had been so bad that time that Nero had been shaking, his long-fingered, elegant hands trembling with the weakness he would never have allowed himself to admit. He had been crying, one of those nights, inconsolably and disconsolate with every shaking in-breath, and Cid had bitten his lip until it bled before he’d dragged himself off of his own cot and across the scant three fulms between their beds, leaned against the edge of Nero’s mattress. “Do you want...” he’d began, and Nero’s voice had broken, deep as it was, when he said, “Yes.” Cid had spent the remainder of those three days plastered to Nero’s back, his hands hot as brands on the other boy’s stomach, nose dug into the lean muscle of his shoulder, and Cid's iron-hard cock shoved against the crack of Nero's ass. It was horrible; it was awful. It was overwhelming to sit there and hold him, all their clothes in layers between them. Fifteen was too young to mess with heats, he kept trying to tell himself. Fifteen was too soon. What the fuck did they know about heat safety? What did he know about knotting an omega, pressing Nero down into his shitty sheets and biting into the back of his neck and spreading him wide and fucking him in sure strokes, until his knot filled him up. What did Cid know about the way Nero’s mouth, lush and florid with heat and rut, would taste if he kissed him? Nothing. So they lay locked in an embrace, Nero struggling through assignment after assignment, focused as best he could be, centred by Cid’s presence behind and against him, biology overcome just a little bit. Just enough that they could be stubborn and foolish and forceful and demanding of one more day before they collapsed. After that heat, when Cid had come back from the winter solstice with his father (a trip wherein he barely spoke to his father, and spent two weeks with Gaius van Baelsar instead) and found his bed covered in blueprints and nuts and bolts, he’d taken it for the hint it was meant to be. Nero had managed three full years sharing a room with him and not taken over his bed for more than an evening, and never without his permission. Even some things were sacred to the most annoying kid on the planet. Cid had fallen asleep, shoved in next to the other boy, and slept better that night than he had in years.     The next heat, Nero fucked himself on his fingers with Cid plastered naked to his back, panting into the curve of his shoulder, fingers digging into the other boy’s narrow thighs. He could hear it, smell it, almost taste it, the way Nero kept shuddering and shaking and moaning as he rocked back against Cid’s erection, hard and drippy against the small of his back, shuddering every time he slid three and four fingers into his slit. It took until the third day for them both to crack, and the first time Cid curled around him, let Nero grab his wrist and guide his hand, tug him forward and at just the right angle. The first time Cid slid two fingers inside him, into where he was hot and wet and clinging, into where his soft walls clenched and squeezed, he came immediately, spilling in hot spurts over the small of Nero’s back, his knot so swollen it bulged and ached, red and raw. “Ew,” Nero had laughed, trembling with need as Cid thrust against him, like he was in him even though it was just against the small of his back, and then curved his fingers and started to fumble in the way of teenagers, fucking Nero like he thought would feel good. “You’re ew,” Cid had told him, without any heat. It had taken him two more days of heat to figure out how to get Nero to come (not helped by Nero refusing to show him how) but eventually, Cid had turned his hand just right, curled his fingers up and in, got his other hand around Nero’s little cock, and he’d yelped as he came, shaking apart like Hydaelyn herself in his arms. The other students still laughed and ribbed Nero, the only unbonded omega among their number, but Cid knew better than to stand up for him, knew better than to try and fix the problem Nero had made for himself, and at each heat instead they took it further, until by the end of the year, after two more four such days spent locked in legs and arms, Nero rolled over to face him, grabbed him by his ears, and kissed him. It was like trying to kiss a wet cat, and Cid didn’t know what to do with his hands, but he ended up shoving Nero into the mattress and making him moan, and, yeah, he could work with that.     Literally the first night Cid had been back at school had been enough, and Nero had launched into heat like he’d been thrown from a magitek cannon. They’d both woken up at half-past two, sticking together in bed with sweat, and Cid had torn his shirt trying to get it off, Nero had nearly ripped his slacks. They’d kissed like men drowning, and Nero had spread his legs for him for the first time where Cid could see, and his mouth had been so dry his tongue had stuck to his palate, seeing Nero sprawled, his curls in dishabille, his blue eyes bright as stars, his thighs wide open, baring his dick hard and arched up against his stomach, his ass clenched tight and his pussy sopping, the labia hard and swollen, the inside pink and wet. That had been the first time Cid had curled his fingers and slid his hand up, and in, to the bulge of his knuckles and the implication of more, and oh, what Nero had sounded like. His head thrown back, his long neck bared, adam's apple bobbing, teeth clenched. Oh, what he’d felt like, all wet and wanting inside, and Cid had longed to reach for him, to give him what he needed, break him in half and pull him open and then push in until his knot sealed them together. “Please,” Nero had whispered, grabbed at his hips. “Please, please, please.” Cid had almost cracked that night, drowning in his scent, hand buried inside him. He had almost given in, wanting, needing. Almost.     At the start of the following semester, after another heat between them spent with biting lips to bruising and Cid's hand just barely nudging Nero open to the knuckle and threatening to fist him in lieu of a knot, Cid had woken up to Nero’s weight plastered on top of him, the other boy’s mouth on his own, hands up underneath his shirt. He felt displaced for a moment, confused, because he didn’t smell—didn’t feel—heat, didn’t have that heavy weight crushing his chest and squeezing his heart, twisting his body into a mobius strip of jealousy and want. Nero wasn’t sweat-soaked. His thighs weren’t slick. “What,” Cid managed, when they finally broke apart, sprawled boneless next to one another on the bed, staring down at the other boy above him, his heart hammering up into the back of his throat. Nero stayed poised, his eyes terrifyingly sharp, cutting through him, his lips red and damp and his expressive mouth slack. “Wait, what is this.” “You know shit all about heat,” Nero said, curling his upper lip into a sneer. “So do I. I’m not in heat; you’re not in Rut. Do you want to do this, or not? Because we are wasting our time, Garlond.” Cid stared at him. Stared down at where they were plastered together, looked back up at him— And took off his shirt. And pulled him down. And pushed home. End Notes tumblr and twitter @jonphaedrus Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!