"Augh!" says a voice, and another says, "Jackson? Are you okay?" and the first voice says "I'm fine but somebody teleported into our living room and I spilled your smoothie!"

"Wow, somebody's house, okay. Sorry," he calls out, giggling a little bit from the pain. "Not planned."

He looks around curiously. What kind of house does he find himself in?

He's in the kitchen. Linoleum, white wallpaper with yellow patterning on it, not cooked-in enough to have a stand mixer, microwave left standing open, a fair amount of banana smoothie dripping off the counter while a young man with a long braid tries to clean it up with a paper towel.

Aw.

"You want me to, uh, help with that?" he asks half-heartedly. "I've still got an arm left."

Braided person looks over his shoulder. "Uh, you don't have to do that - why are you here though?"

"Fucked up some magic real bad," he shrugs. "I was trying to summon a demon and instead I got smashed into your floor at terminal velocity. Pretty standard fare."

"...I don't... think that's standard... and I went to magic school..."

"Magic school? Fancy. Some secret monastery in the Himalayas, or something? Ancient order of omega warlocks?"

"...Selene in Missouri."

The owner of the other voice appears; Jackson turns his head to smile, and his braid falls out of the way to give Xan a look at the collar on his neck. Newcomer claps Jackson on the shoulder and looks in puzzlement at Xan. "So who are you exactly?" he asks.

"Xan. I'm a witch, I broke my arm on your kitchen." He nods to Jackson. "Nice collar."

"Thanks," says Brian.

"You're a what now?" says Jackson.

"Witch. I use magic, make potions, summon demons? I guess you could call me a warlock, if you wanted. For whatever reason."

"...That's not how magic works," says Jackson confidently. "I didn't do well in school, but -"

"You don't have to have gotten straight A's in magic school to know that's not how it works," says Brian.

"...Shit, did I land in another dimension? That's hilarious. Okay, it's how my universe's magic works, I guess yours is different. Does it have anything to do with your hair?"

"What's wrong with my hair?" asks Jackson.

"Nothing, it's cool actually, it's just weirdly long? Especially for a dude. But, y'know, gender's fake, fight the power, whatever. I support you and your hair's self-expression."

"...I'm a sub?" says Jackson. "I'm a dude sub but I'm still a sub. I'm literally wearing a collar right now."

"...having some vocabulary issues here. I assume you're not talking about sandwiches or the school system, but I'm blanking on what else you could mean. I know you're wearing a collar, I assumed you were just an omega."

"A what now?"

"Is that a frat?" says Brian. "No, those have a bunch of letters... oh, I remember, there's a brand of watches."

"I'm not a watch," says Jackson.

"Omega. The role that isn't alpha or beta. They go into heat? ...Christ, do you not even have roles?"

"The roles are dom and sub!" says Jackson.

"And switch, if you count 'em separately," says Brian. "People don't go into heat, that's like, a dog thing?"

"Dom and- Dominant and submissive. Okay, that's... intuitive in retrospect. Is this some kind of pick-your-own-role thing, or is it assigned at birth? I want to know how jealous to be."

"You can't tell with kids," says Jackson. "Like, maybe with some people you have a good guess when they're eight but you don't really know till later."

"Wow. Okay. So- for reference, back home, you're either an alpha, or a beta, or an omega. Alphas are bigger on average, and more commanding, and they have a knot. Betas, they look... normal, they're a middle ground. Omegas are... smaller, and pretty, and shy." He spits these words like poison. "And you can tell. You can always tell. It's like knowing the color of somebody's eyes. You get your little label and that's it for life."

"A knot?" says Jackson in confusion.

"Well, we can't tell," says Brian, "does it matter, should we know so we talk about you right or whatever -"

"No," he says sharply. "I like it this way." To Jackson, he says: "Their dicks have an extra bit at the base. It's a thing."

He grimaces. "Also, do you guys have a first aid kit? This broken arm has ceased to be a fun time."

"Uh, we have a first aid kit but it really can't handle a broken bone," says Jackson. "Do you need to go to the hospital?"

Xan makes a face. "No, I can handle it."

He breathes in, then incants, "Hecate, mother of magic, grant that my will be done; I ask thee for thy favor, to mend my broken bone."

There's a clicking sound from his arm, and Xan grins. "That's better. But I am gonna need a paper towel, because my nose is about to start bleeding like crazy."

Indeed, as he says it, blood starts trickling from both nostrils.

Jackson tears off a paper towel for him. "You get nosebleeds when you do healing magic?" he asks, bewildered. "Why?"

Xan takes the paper towel gratefully and stems the flow. "Any magic if it's big enough. That's the price of magic, you get addicted to it and it does fucked-up things to your body if you don't get the right prepwork done beforehand. But I don't have any vervain, and I'm not drawing runes all over your kitchen floor, so the prepwork was kind of a non-starter. Also I'm a little bit high now. Thanks for the paper towel."

"...you're welcome," says Jackson. "That's still not how magic works at all though."

"From a different universe. I'm certain I mentioned that."

"People from different universes don't just... show up, usually," says Jackson.

"Maybe it's just that people who fuck up at magic bad enough to get shot through a portal usually just die instead?" Xan shrugs. "I did get pretty lucky, all told."

"Iiiif you say so."

"Oh, you think I'm crazy. Sorry, didn't pick up on that. I mean, believe what you want, I'm not gonna suddenly start following your laws of magic."

"I mean I'm not that kind of psion, I don't know if you're crazy, but something's weird here," says Jackson.

"That is certainly true," Xan nods. "If only someone could offer an explanation for that."

"...anyway I'm Jackson and my dom is Brian."

"Hi! Still Xan. Sorry again for, uh, falling on your house. You seem cool."

"Thanks," says Brian.

This is very awkward. Why is he even talking to these people. He should be going home now.

"I should probably-"

Xan stops. "I was going to say I should get going, but I just realized that I have nowhere to actually go. Because I'm trapped in an alternate universe. Shit."

"You don't know how to get home?" asks Jackson.

"I got here by fucking up. I don't even know how I fucked up, I could've mispronounced something or used the wrong ingredients or- I don't even know. And I don't have any of my books to look up how to get back, either. I'm trapped here until I either reinvent magic from scratch or become powerful enough to rip open the walls of the universe from a standing start."

"Uh."

Xan is not crying. Crying in front of strangers is not something he's going to do.

"I mean- maybe Leo can summon me back. Or something. It's not totally hopeless. Just kind of overwhelming."

"Is that your sub?"

Xan laughs a little. "I guess he is. He's my boyfriend. Back home. He knows more about magic than me, and he's half-demon so maybe his mom'll know something."

"Boy friend," says Jackson, mouthing the word thoughtfully. "Uh, so, when you say demon..."

"She's a shadow-creature that takes human form. There's a bunch of different kinds of demon. She's one of the nicer ones, doesn't have to eat humans, only kills when she has to."

"...uh-huh. Very nice of her."

"Given the givens. There's a lot of maneater demons out there. Plus she makes really good dulce de leche."

"That's just sweetened condensed milk in the microwave," says Brian.

"Not the way she does it!"

He feels the bloodflow trickle to a stop and carefully removes the sodden paper towel from his nose. "Is there somewhere I can burn this? Or- does your magic not have nasty things people can do to you if they have your blood?"

"...pretty sure it doesn't have that," Jackson says.

"Fair enough." He locates an appropriate trash receptacle and disposes of the paper towel.

Fortunately the workings of trash receptacles in this alternate universe are neither unfamiliar nor arcane. "People would go through your trash looking for blood?" asks Jackson.

"Not necessarily, but it's best not to tempt fate. And I'm not banking on never making any magic-using enemies, so I want to be in the habit."

"...weird," says Jackson. "I guess a mage or maybe even a psion could come up with a power that needed somebody's blood to work, I just don't know why they'd bother instead of doing something else."

"Blood makes things easier. It's got a connection to the person it came from, and you can use that to get to them, no matter what they've put up in the way." He waves a hand. "Again, this is my magic. Yours sounds very tidy, no blood required at all."

"No blood," agrees Jackson. "I'm on a government contract to do virtualities."

"What's a virtuality?"

"It's where new mages and psions go till they can control their magic."

"Oh. Nice."

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably. "Is there... um. Is there somewhere I can sit down? The magic high is wearing off and I'm kinda dizzy."

"Oh, yeah, this way," Jackson says, waving him into the adjacent living room.

"Need a hand?" Brian says, offering one.

"No, no, it's-" Xan stumbles a little. "-okay, yeah. Thanks."

He follows them into the living room and sits down carefully on the floor, hugging his legs in front of him.

"You can sit on the couch if you want," Brian says. Jackson is on the floor too, kneeling at Brian's knee.

Xan shrugs. "I like the floor. You guys are a cute couple," he adds.

"Thanks," says Brian, patting Jackson on the head.

"You look like a dom," says Jackson. "It's weird for doms to sit on the floor. Unless they're from Japan or something."

"What, that's sub-coded? Ugh, roles."

Xan considers whether the comfort of sitting on the floor is worth the irritation of looking less dominant. Reluctantly, he unfolds himself to sit on the couch.

"If there weren't enough space it wouldn't mean much," says Brian.

Xan shrugs.

"How'd you guys meet?" he asks.

"I was taking a walk and Brian was gardening," Jackson says, "back when I was still dating my awful ex, but I stopped anyway to look at the flowers..."

"And we got to chatting and he'd come by sometimes and I found out how awful his ex was and told him to break up with him," says Brian.

"And I said I didn't know how to do that, like, partly because I was messed up but partly because my ex was awful," says Jackson.

"So I got my sister to pick the locks - she can do that, she's a nurse, they have to get things off people sometimes," says Brian. "And mail stuff back to the awful ex, so Jackson wouldn't have to talk to him again."

"And then - sorry, you asked how we met, not how we got together," says Jackson.

"Aw, that's nice though," Xan says. "Sounds like you work with each other."

Jackson giggles. "He was - he was trying not to date because he was like, 'well, it's not reasonable to ask subs I meet for all this stuff I want, that went terribly last time' - and then I was like, no, that's all awesome, collar me yesterday, and he was like, but my therapist says I should work through all this stuff, and I was like, okay, you can do that too, but meanwhile here I am and I will totally do all that stuff. And now he has a different less dumb therapist."

"What went terribly? Just- dating in general?"

"My ex and I had incompatible needs," says Brian. "And like, that's not that weird, people have incompatible needs all the time, but the whole thing made me feel like she had reasonable needs and I had unreasonable needs and that the solution was to go to therapy till I didn't have unreasonable needs any more, since I didn't know Jackson existed, but then it turned out he did."

"Ah. That, um, makes sense. I was like that for a while, before- before I was with Leo."

"Awwwwww," coos Jackson.

Xan grits his teeth. The effort of not punching Jackson in the face audibly pops several knuckles. 

Jackson looks alarmed. Brian pats Jackson on the head, looking concernedly Xanward.

Xan breathes in.

Xan breathes out.

"Sorry. That just... came off... kind of condescending. I don't like people thinking I'm... cute."

"Sorry," says Jackson, wide-eyed.

Xan closes his eyes exhaustedly. "You had no way of knowing my issues. And I didn't want to... scare you. Or whatever's happening now."

"You had a kinda scary look on your face," Jackson says.

"Yeah, that happens when I get angry. I always look kind of angry anyway, so when I'm actually mad..." He makes a vague hand gesture. "Scary face."

"Gotcha," says Jackson. "Resting angry face."

"People tell me I look like a sloth but I don't think there's a sloth emotion," says Brian.

"There's a cardinal sin, at least. That's like an emotion. But illegal for Catholics."

"I'm a Methodist," says Brian.

"There you go, then."

"I think I have resting desperate face," says Jackson.

"I think someone said that to you three years ago and it's not true any more," says Brian, scritching his head.

"I haven't noticed anything like that," Xan agrees.

Jackson leans his cheek on Brian's knee. "Do you not wanna talk about your sub since I said 'aww'?" he asks.

"Nah, I'll talk about him. He's... nice, really genuinely nice. He's got all these sisters, he's one of seven, and they're all alphas, it's crazy. We met in kindergarten, I pushed him over and he started crying so I told him to punch me so we'd be even and he never did it. He loves books, not even just magic books, his room's full of them. I dunno, it's hard to just describe someone."

Jackson visibly restrains an awwwww.

This is... acceptable. Yes.

"How does dating even work if you do three things instead of doms and subs?" Jackson asks.

"Alphas and omegas do pair off most of the time," Xan says. "And you don't see alphas with alphas or omegas with omegas a lot. But otherwise pretty much anything's kosher. Betas get along with everybody."

"But like are the alphas basically doms and the betas basically switches and the omegas basically subs...?"

"Mostly. You do get exceptions, like Leo's an alpha sub by your system, but mostly it shakes out that way."

"Most subs are girls and most doms are guys."

"We don't have anything like that. Roles crop up completely at random, there's no patterns to speak of."

"It's not that many more, it's like there's twice as many sub girls as sub guys, not like ten times."

Xan nods. "Makes sense. That's pretty much how the gender roles shake out for betas, too."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, just- since betas don't have anything biologically telling them what to do, they sometimes kind of fake it, men acting like alphas and women like omegas. Not all of them, not all the time, but it's a thing."

"If they're the majority isn't that kind of weird?"

"I guess. Maybe it's just that we're more interesting. Actually I bet that really is it, everybody grows up with these great alpha-omega love stories and they think that's the only way to be."

"Huh. Why are the stories like that, don't betas write things?"

"Yeah, but for the most part it's still about dynamics. Which is weird. They think there's something romantic about it, I think."

"I mean, there is... maybe I should just be thinking, like, betas are regular people like from here, and alphas and omegas are a fancy biology version of doms and subs where you can tell right away?"

"You're not wrong, far as I can tell. Except for where it's a false flag sometimes and people get fucked over."

"Huh?"

"I mean- sometimes there's alphas who don't want to take charge and lead people, or whatever, they just want somebody to tell them what to do and do it, but everybody thinks they should be aiming higher, think they're lazy or stupid just because they don't want to be the President or an actor or something. Leo's like that, he hates taking charge, he just wants somebody to tell him what to do. And sometimes there's omegas who don't want to be some kind of prize for whatever alpha wins their heart, who want to be strong, don't want their ambitions getting called adorable. I - it's not an infallible system, is all."

"Okay. So the biology thing gives you, like, a guess better than sixty forty, plus it does biology things, but that's all."

"Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty much it."

Jackson nods. "I'm a really subby sub and I still wasn't sure until I was like thirteen."

"I think I would've figured myself out pretty quickly," Xan snorts. "I never liked people telling me what to do. Bit people for it, back in elementary school."

"I mean, there are subs who don't want random people telling them what to do, only the right person," says Brian.

"Wasn't the kind of thing that had a right person." Xan shrugs. "I'm also partly generalizing based on the fact that it took me all of five seconds to figure it out once the system was presented to me an hour ago."

Jackson giggles. Brian pats him.

Xan yawns, obviously against his will. He looks mortified and more than a little bit panicked.

"Sorry," he mumbles.

"Oh, hey, you might be from a different time zone," says Brian. "We can make up the couch for you. Hop to, Jackson."

Jackson hops to.

That's... a lot better than expected. Fear is replaced by awkward relief and more embarrassment at the imposition.

"Thanks. Um. A lot. You didn't have to do that."

"I'm not gonna make you get a hotel on no notice with money from, like, space," says Brian, getting out of the way for Jackson to wedge a sheet around the couch cushions.

"I don't even have space money," Xan notes. "I was thinking more youth shelter than hotel. But I'm not, like... your responsibility, I guess is what I'm saying. I just kind of fell on you. So you're nice."

"He is," agrees Jackson, beaming Brianward on his way to the couch with a pillow and a quilt. Brian yanks his head down by the braid to kiss him and then lets go so he can resume his setup.