Harry looked up from the book he was supposed to be reading and stared at the back of Aki’s head. All of Aki’s hair was perfectly straight apart from the little bits that dipped down his neck; there his hair curled into two clouds of fluffiness. When they were young, Aki had let Harry stroke those bits as much as he wanted. Harry could still remember how delicate and soft it was compared to Harry’s own messy tangles.

Then at some point Aki had started chopping his hair into hard straight lines. The fact that there was even a hint of fluffiness now showed how hard and focused Aki was on studying that he’d even let his regular hair cut pass. Harry grinned, glad that at least, after months of nagging, he had managed to convince Aki he could study at the desk in the lounge rather than being cramped up in his bedroom. Next he’d convince Aki to swap rooms. He couldn’t deny it'd been fun at first having a room of his own he could run about in, but somehow the excitement had worn away. It was stupid for Harry to have such a massive room all to himself when he had hardly any things.

Secretly, he’d really like to share the room with Aki. After all the overcrowded years at the orphanage, sad but true, it was kinda eerie trying to go to sleep all on his own. Luckily the walls were thin so he could hear Aki moving about and could imagine what his friend was up to almost as well as if they were in the same room. A few times when he realised Aki had fallen asleep studying, Harry risked going in and tucked him properly into bed. He expected a new rule to be added about that, but for now Aki always acted as if nothing had happened, so Harry never mentioned it either.

Harry believed he was studying hard, but in truth he was staring more at Aki, this time thinking about how Aki’s hair seemed raven black, but when the light caught it there were so many different shades within it. Some strands were pure gold. So much more beautiful than Harry’s boring all-yellow hair.

Just the elegant curve of Aki’s neck as he bent over his books was something to behold. He truly was a superior Alpha. All Harry’s friends said so. They kept trying to convince Harry to convince Aki to come out with them. They said Aki was an absolute omega-magnet and they could sweep up his leftovers. The idea made Harry feel all kinds of awkward, but so far he’d managed to cover it up with good Alpha bluffing: some rubbish about how Aki was indeed an omega-magnet and there’d be no leftovers if he hit a club with them, he’d take them all for himself. Although maybe that wasn’t good Alpha-bluffing. Maybe good Alphas wouldn’t ever be worried about competition from another Alpha because they were super confident in their own sexual amazingness? Maybe it wasn’t a bluff. Aki couldn’t be spending all his spare time in the libraries. He was out pretty late some nights. With all his ‘wear full snowday outfits every time you want to step a toe into the lounge’ rules, he’d be embarrassed having a full-on orgy at home.

‘Stop staring at me.’

The voice snapped through the images that were beginning to form in his head. Which was a very good thing. Probably.

‘I wasn’t staring at you,’ Harry snapped back in automatic Alpha mode. He was getting good at being an Alpha now. Or at least better than he was at the start of the course. ‘Don’t know what you’re up to, mate, but I’m studying hard here, not fantasising about people staring at me in any way whatsoever.’

‘Fine. Then tell me what you’re learning.’

Harry looked at the books and leaflets sprawled around him on the sofa. ‘It’s complicated. Sports stuff. For sports scholars. With lots of complicated sports words. You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Then teach me. Explaining a concept to someone who’s completely ignorant of it is a good test of how well you’ve absorbed the material.’

Aki had turned the chair around to face him now, directing the full force of his iron stare at Harry. The man was serious. Harry rubbed the back of his head.

‘I just, yaknow, don’t want to embarrass you, because you like to think you’re the smart one and it’ll ruin your whole sense of self to have to recognise I am as smart as you. Smarter. Definitely smarter. Maybe.’

‘Hnnnn. Is that so?’

‘Yes?’

‘Idiot. I’ll remind you that you are the one that insisted repeatedly that we study together in the lounge. You’re the one who said you always did your reading chilling on the sofa anyway, so you wouldn’t even notice me being here. I am the one who resisted the idea, pointed out that we’d disturb each other, and the benefits of having a desk would be far outweighed by your presence.’

Harry had no idea where this was going, but the sinking feeling in his stomach told him it was going to be a loss for him and Aki would go back to hiding himself and his fluffy neck hair back in his tiny stuffy room.

‘Urgh! Okay. Coach has been pulled up on some weird disciplinary thing, so there’s this new guy who has to supervise all the trainings and lessons. And he’s not as nice. No, he’s not nice at all. He’s mean. And he doesn’t think I’ve adapted well. He said I shouldn’t even be at university, that I was…remedial…’

‘He said what?’ Aki’s eyes flared with anger.

‘What did I pronounce it wrong?’

‘No. Just start from the beginning.’

Harry tilted his head back into the sofa and told the sad sack story of how the new coach kept making him stand at the front of the class and asking him questions Harry didn’t know the answer to. Then he’d shout at him and tell him to crawl back to the orphanage with the other uneducatable thickos where he belonged.

‘I know it’s not a thing a Alpha should ever say, but when it matters I’ve always been honest with you, Aki. If he’d been the coach from the start, I am not sure I’d have lasted the term.’

Aki’s whole face was anger, but when he came and stood in front of Harry his manner was unusually gentle. He took Harry’s hands in his own and hunkered down so their eyes were on the same level.

‘This man who’s trying to break you, he’s nothing. He’s someone who has to humiliate another person to feel better about himself. That makes him absolutely worthless. A creature like that could never stop you pursuing your dreams. Never.’ Aki squeezed Harry’s hands and then let go of them.

There was a slight flush to Aki’s cheeks. Harry couldn’t remember ever hearing his friend speak so intensely. It was making his own heart thump with a desire to be the person Aki obviously thought he was.

But he was who he was. Being this close to Aki he couldn’t pretend otherwise. He didn’t want to.

‘Akira.’ His friend’s full name sounded strange, he’d used it so rarely in the years they’d known each other. He didn’t know why he’d used it now.

Aki gave a small nod.

‘What new coach says is true though. I don’t know the most simple basic stuff. I’m not great like you are. You know how I was. It wasn’t just, yaknow, how the other kids were with me. School just made me feel itchy and twitchy. I’m not sure I learned much beyond how to spell my stupid ugly name.’ He chuckled, but his arms felt so heavy as he pulled out the material hidden inside the covers of university textbooks: kids level leaflets about alphas and omegas. ‘This is really what I am trying to learn. Not complicated sports words stuff. Just what everyone else knew when they were like five.’

Aki snatched the leaflets from Harry. ‘If this is what you need to learn, then this is what you’re going to learn. There’s no options of failure here. There won’t be any other chances.’

Harry opened his mouth to say the words he really didn’t want to say even if they were the bitter truth.

But Aki spoke first. ‘I’ll help you. On all those shows you love, two alphas working together always succeed, don’t they?’

Harry nodded, he smiled with real emotion. ‘Alpha best friends together always succeed.’

Aki looked like he was going to say something else, but instead he cleared a space next to Harry on the sofa and sat down next to him to begin their lesson.