Chapter Text
Dennis’ first heat came in the middle of the night. Quietly, like a sickness he thought he could just pray away.
He woke up drenched in sweat, sheets twisted around his legs with his white comforter sprawled on the floor next to his bed. His chest was tight with a sort of panic he did not yet have words for. At first he thought he was dying, because if not that then what else was this unfamiliar feeling? His skin burned and ached all over, stomach cramping low and sharp. There was this strange heaviness that settled into his bones, making it hard to move, to breathe.
Every sound in the house seemed louder than it should have been. The ticking of the clock on his wall. The wind brushing the side of the farmhouse. His own breathing, ragged and uneven.
He pressed his face into the pillow and whispered prayers through clenched teeth.
Please. Please. Please.
Dennis had been raised on prayer the way the other children were raised on lullabies. Prayer before meals, before bed. Prayer when the crops failed and prayer when they succeeded. Prayer when his father was angry and prayer when he could hear his mother cry quietly in the kitchen. Prayer was supposed to be the answer to everything. It was supposed to be enough.
His body did not care.
By morning, the scent had betrayed him.
He did not know what it smelt like for others, he only knew that the air had shifted when his father had stepped into the hallway outside of his room. The way his mother froze at the kitchen table, fingers tightening around the handle of her mug. The way Samuels voice went quiet and the way John muttered something under his breath. The only one who had seemed unaffected was his younger brother, Zacharias, who had yet presented his secondary gender.
Dennis stood in the doorway of his bedroom, shaking, arms wrapped around himself like that might hold him together.
“What is wrong with you?” His father had demanded. Disgust laced in his voice.
Dennis tried to speak. His throat seemed to close up in defiance instead.
“Answer me.”
“I don’t feel good,” Dennis finally managed out, his voice small and thin. “I think I’m sick.”
His fathers nostrils flared.
“You stink.”
The words landed hard, making Dennis flinch in return.
His mother stood abruptly out of the corner of his eye, “he’s burning up,” she said, hastily reaching for him, “let me check on him. Please.”
His father stepped between them.
“No,” His father deemed, “I know what this is.”
Dennis felt the room tilt. His fathers eyes were sharp, calculating. Furious in which Dennis had never seen targeted at him before. Not the anger that came from disobedience or mistakes. This was something beyond that.
“An omega,” the words came out of his fathers mouth as if they were a curse.
The words echoed in Dennis’s head. Omega. He had heard it whispered before. In town sermans that spoke of order and purpose and the dangers of deviation. He had never thought it would belong to him.
“No,” Dennis whispered, “Thats not.. I’m not..”
His father struck him.
It was fast. A sharp crack across his face that sent him stumbling into a wall. Dennis tasted blood immediately. His ears rang, his vision blurring.
“Do not lie in my house.”
Dennis slid down the wall and his butt hit the floor, hands shaking violently as he pressed them to his mouth. He did not cry. He couldn’t afford it. Crying only made things worse.
“Sinful..” His father muttered underneath his breath, then came louder, “unholy. You’ve invited corruption into this family.”
His brothers stood frozen. Samuel looked sick despite his own status, seeing his brother on the floor like that would never sit well. John only looked angry, but as usual his lips stayed pressed together. Zacharias looked afraid.
His mother made a small sound, like a sob cut halfway.
“You will not spread this,” his father bent his chin down to look at Dennis’s pitiful state, “You will not shame this family. You will pray, you will repent, and God willing, this will pass.”
It did not pass.
From that point on Dennis learned how to make himself smaller.
His father however, did not allow weakness to exist unchallenged. The morning after Dennis’s heat broke, he was woken before dawn and sent outside without breakfast. The air was cold enough to sting. His body still felt wrong, heavy and sore in places he didn’t know how to explain.
“You will work,” his father said, “labor purifies the soul.”
Dennis could only nod, following him into the fields.
The farm had always been demanding, but now it had become a punishment. Dennis was assigned the heaviest tasks. Lifting feed sacks that would bruise his shoulders. Hauling water until his arms shook. Mucking stalls until his back screamed. His father would stand there, watching him closely. He would correct his posture, his pace, his breathing.
“Stand straighter,” he would snap, “do not slouch like such a weakling.”
Dennis would clench his jaw and adjust himself, even when it would make his muscles burn and go against his whole changed anatomy.
“You will not move like an omega,” his father told him one afternoon, voice low and furious, “I will not have it.”
Dennis did not know what that meant, only that he was constantly doing something wrong. He tried observing his brothers, trying to copy their stance, their stride. Their confidence. He would force his shoulders back even when it felt unnatural to him, swallowing the instinct to conserve energy, to curl inward and rest.
When he faltered, his father corrected him. When he collapsed, he was dragged to his feet no matter what.
“You think God made you this way so you could be idle?” His father demanded once, shoving a pitchfork back into Dennis’s hands. “Pain is correction. Endure.”
So Dennis endured.
His omega body adapted slowly, painfully. His muscles hardened in ways that they hadn’t before, changed his appearance to make him look less like the failure his father had made him out to be. His hands blistered and calloused. He learned how to pace himself, to breathe through the shakiness and how to dissociate through the beatings that God graced before him whenever his father told him he was wrong.
At night, he would soak his aching limbs in cold water. Whispering prayers into the dark. He asked God to forgive him, ask God to fix him. He asked God to make him normal.
His father began monitoring everything.
What Dennis ate. When he slept. How often he took suppressants. Whether his scent lingered too long in shared spaces. Any perceived slip was met with scripture and discipline.
“Obedience is love,” his father said often. “Submission is how you honor God.”
Dennis repeated it until it felt true.
Samuel avoided him now. Where his older brother had once helped him with chores, now he found reasons to be elsewhere. When Dennis tried to speak to him, Samuel’s answers were clipped, distant.
John was worse.
He began to mock Dennis openly. Calling him soft. Calling him slow. Knocking into him in narrow hallways and smiling when Dennis flinched.
“Careful,” John said once, voice dripping with false concern. “Wouldn’t want you breaking.”
Dennis apologized automatically.
Zacharias did not change.
At night, when the house was quiet, Zacharias crept into Dennis’s room and curled up beside him, warm and solid and breathing evenly. Dennis wrapped an arm around him and stared at the ceiling, listening for footsteps in the hall.
“I don’t want to be like you,” Zacharias whispered once, voice trembling.
Dennis swallowed hard. “You won’t be.”
It was not a lie. It was a promise he made anyway.
His mother did what she could.
She slipped extra food onto his plate when his father was distracted. She pressed a cool cloth to his forehead during the worst of the suppressant side effects. She prayed with him in whispers instead of commands.
“This is not your fault,” she told him once, gripping his hands tightly. “God does not hate you.”
Dennis wanted to believe her. He really did.
But every sermon reinforced the opposite. Every look from his father. Every correction. Every punishment framed as love.
By the time weeks turned into months, Dennis no longer thought of his body as his own. It was something to be managed. Disciplined. Controlled. He learned to ignore hunger and pain and fear alike. He learned that silence was safer than truth.
At school, he was praised for his work ethic. Teachers admired his diligence. They said he was polite, respectful, mature beyond his years. They did not see the way his hands shook when an alpha stood too close. They did not smell the suppressants clinging to his skin.
Dennis did not gossip. He did not lie. When others did, his chest tightened with a familiar, nauseating guilt. Lies were dangerous. Lies were what got you punished.
He kept his head down and did what was asked of him.
At home, the pressure never eased. His father watched him constantly, like he was waiting for something to go wrong.
“Do not forget your place,” he said. “You are not like your brothers.”
Dennis nodded.
At night, alone in his room, Dennis pressed his hands flat against his chest and tried to imagine a version of himself that was not sinful. The thought felt distant, unreal. Like imagining another person entirely.
So he stopped trying.
He focused instead on surviving the days. On waking before dawn. On working until his body learned compliance. On praying until the words lost meaning.
He did not dream of leaving.
He did not allow himself to want anything at all.