The first thing Eugene noticed was the sound of commotion from the room. The door was open, and he could hear the sound of people shouting and panicking, even someone calling out for a medicine box.
Did someone get hurt inside? Eugene wondered when he realized someone beside her also looked like he needed a medicine box.
Arthur suddenly grabbed his chest, wheezing, breath labored as if he had difficulty breathing. His face turned pallid, and he clenched his jaw so hard his vein bulged in his temple.
"Crowley?" Eugene reached out to hold the alpha's shoulder and support him, but Arthur let out a sound between choking and retching and bolted out of the hallway.
Widening his eyes, Eugene looked at the alpha's receding back before shifting his gaze toward the room. Two people were coming out of the room with a worried expression; thankfully, one of them was the youngest scriptwriter that Eugene was rather close with.
"Diana, what happened?"
"Eugene!" Diana gasped and threw a glance toward the room. "Umm...I'm not really sure, but someone gets triggered by something and has a panic attack. I'm going to fetch an emergency suppressant from my car."
Panic attack...
For alphas and omegas, it meant their pheromones would also come out uncontrollably. It was like during estrus, only the pheromones would smell putrid and rotten. Eugene wouldn't know, though, since he couldn't smell them.
But someone with an extra sensitive nose would have been as miserable as the person with the panic attack.
"Damn it!" Eugene muttered under his breath and briskly walked in the direction Arthur had taken earlier.
At the end of the hallway, Eugene spotted the bathroom. He could hear the sound of someone retching and throwing up on nothing even before he entered the stall. Inside, Arthur had his head above the toilet bowl, making a miserable, miserable sound.
"Crowley," Eugene frowned and approached the alpha, putting his hand on the hunched back. "Arthur Crowley, can you hear me?"
It wasn't like he wouldn't be concerned and help if it were someone else, but with his own daughter's condition, it didn't seem like someone else's problem.
Arthur groaned and looked up at Eugene's voice, eyes glistening and unfocused. From the lack of moisture in his lips, it didn't seem like anything came out of his stomach despite the big lunch he had.
That would have been painful--Eugene frowned deeper while rubbing the alpha's back. It didn't even look like the guy was lucid.
"Neutralizer!" Eugene suddenly remembered. "Where's your neutralizer?"
"...wha?" Arthur slurred between choked breaths.
Eugene cursed in his head. He recalled that the alpha said where the neutralizers were: the office, the car, and his pocket. Eugene quickly looked over Arthur's clothes and patted the man's pockets, but when he found nothing, he realized the pocket in question was in the coat Arthur had always worn.
Which was in the car.
Goddamn it!
Eugene bit his lips. There was no time to run to the car outside since they parked the furthest away, so he did the only thing he could think of.
What he would do if it were Hannah.
Eugene ripped his scent blocker patch off and grabbed the pale alpha by the neck, pressing Arthur's face to his neck. If his scent could calm Hannah, perhaps it could do the same to Arthur.
"Breathe," he told the alpha in a low, commanding voice.
Arthur, out of his mind, moved in nothing but instinct for survival. He took a deep breath, and a soft, nostalgic scent flowed inside his system. It was faint, but gentle and soothing, like a comforter wrapping him in a cocoon.
Arthur took another deep, deep breath, grasping the source of the scent like a drowned man reaching for a float. He buried his face and inhaled as if drinking water, and slowly gained his balance back. His head stopped throbbing, and his lungs no longer felt like something was pressing hard on them.
"That's it, breathe slowly."
A soft, low voice guided him through the process as a gentle hand caressed his back. Arthur closed his dazed eyes and just focused on stabilizing himself. He didn't even know who it was until some minutes later.
Belatedly, he recognized the violet and bluebell, the musk over the field of flowers. The symphony was flooding in his mind and brought him to his safe space.
"...Gin?" Arthur asked in a daze, and the arms holding him flinched slightly.
If it were anyone else, Eugene would have thought Arthur called him 'Gene'. But only his close friend called him that, and he remembered that the alpha called him 'Gin' six years ago because of his favorite liquor.
Eugene almost pushed the alpha to the other side of the bathroom, but he quickly reminded himself that overreaction was what put him in a tough spot. He was already suspicious enough as it was, so he didn't want to pile another one on top.
With this, however, he could be sure that he left a trace of scent six years ago, and Arthur still remembered it.
"Are you not sober yet?" Eugene tried to make his voice confused and concerned, tilting his head like an innocent passerby on a crime scene. "Who's Gin? Someone from the production team? Do you need me to call that person?"
Arthur, still on the floor, blinked. As his eyes regained focus, he caught the black hair and the green eyes, the combination that told him it was Eugene. He almost gasped in realization.
"Uhh..." Arthur blinked slowly. "Eugene?"
"Yeah?"
"Ah--" Arthur widened his eyes in panic when he realized whose name he was calling earlier. "N-no, it's just..."
Arthur swallowed hard. He couldn't very well say he was talking about someone else, whom he thought was Eugene's partner. Thankfully, Gin was only a nickname. If he knew Gin's real name and mistakenly called it in front of Eugene...
Ugh--he would look like a homewrecker, wouldn't he?
But he had a more important thing to be curious about. He already promised himself never ask about it again, but...
"Uhh...t-the scent..."
"Ah,"
Thankfully, Eugene had been thinking of excuses while calming down the alpha.
"It's a perfume with neutralizer property," Eugene said lightly as if it was nothing.
Arthur, still on the bathroom floor, blinked slowly as if his soul was still roaming in the air. "That's...new."
"Just spritzing a little bit on my clothes, so people usually don't realize," Eugene shrugged. "It worked on calming someone else before, so I thought it might work for you, too."
"I see..."
Does it sound like bullshit? Eugene held back from grimacing and put on a poker face, patting his clothes while standing up. Thankfully, the bathroom door opened wider, and someone looked inside at that moment.
"Oh, thank God!" Ashley wiped her sweaty forehead and slipped inside the bathroom, eyes automatically trained on the alpha on the floor. "I heard Eugene was there, so I thought you'd be too."
Immediately, Ashley rushed to the floor to help her cousin up, grasping his face and scrutinizing the man carefully. "How's your condition?" She moved Arthur's head from left to right and up and down, sighing in relief when she found color in Arthur's face. "You don't look too bad."
"Yeah, umm..." Arthur tried to speak in the midst of being smushed by his cousin. "Eugene helped me."
"Eugene!" Ashley turned to face the omega, beaming as she grasped Eugene's hands. "Thank you--thank you! Truly!"
"It's not a big deal," Eugene smiled.
No, thank you! Thank you for coming at the right time!
"Oh, it is," Ashley sighed as she glanced back at Arthur. "The last time it happened, we had to run this guy to the hospital."
"Well, sorry for being fragile..." Arthur pursed his lips.
Ashley chuckled and ruffled the fluffy, light brown hair of his cousin, messing it up even more than it already was. "You know that's not what I mean, baby boy," she said before turning toward Eugene again. "Once again, thank you, Eugene."
"Stop treating me like I'm a baby," Arthur grumbled, but he didn't shirk away from the hand on his head.
"When you stop pouting," Ashley smirked and flicked the male alpha's pursed lips.
Eugene looked at the cousins in amusement. Ashley was a big woman, even as an alpha. She wasn't dwarfed in front of Arthur, who was already tall. Arthur looked comically like a little brother with that aggressive smothering.
How envious.
He also could guess who it was that set Arthur on blind dates in the past.
Ashley patted Arthur's shoulder and sighed. "Haa...stay out of that room for now since the air purifier is still hard at work."
"'kay..."
"Eugene, if you'll please come with me?"
"Sure," Eugene nodded, sending more gratitude from the bottom of his heart to the producer.
He certainly needed time to get away from Arthur, even if he had to return with the alpha later.
"Eugene," Arthur called out, voice still hoarse from the retching. His eyes were still a little red and glassy, which only made him look more sincere as he added in a whisper. "Thank you, really."
"You're welcome," Eugene nodded with a subtle smile. He followed Ashley out, but when he looked back, he could see how frustrated Arthur was.
He probably thinks about how pathetic he was, huh? From what Eugene got this far, Arthur was mentally vulnerable about his 'flaws', and it seemed like being sensitive about smell was one of them.
He paused at the door and tapped on the frame. "Can I take those madelines home later?"
Arthur widened his eyes for three seconds before laughing heartily. "Do you want the apple pie too?"
"I won't say no to that," Eugene smirked before leaving the bathroom for real.
Arthur stared at the closing door silently, standing there without moving for a good five minutes before dropping to the floor like a puppet that lost its strings.
"Haa..."
He groaned and buried his face in his hands; his cheeks and ears were flaming red as he lamented.
"I'm screwed."
Was he really going to be a homewrecker? At this point, he didn't even know who he had a crush on anymore.