Jack Eichel: Omega, and pissed off about it.

The first time Connor sees him, in person, he’s wearing a backwards hat and holding a Frappuccino. He looks eighteen and very much not like a member of the undead.

Obviously, everybody knows that there is no blessing without a curse, or a curse without a blessing. It’s the universe’s handy little trick to keep things balanced, so that nobody can ask for too much for free, so that nobody can curse their neighbor without also doing a little good. A matched set. It just that Connor’s starting to think that he really, really did not grasp this concept when he was six years old. ... Jack’s quiet for a long moment. “I’ve never seen a curse like this,” he says finally, and Connor shakes his head, blood draining from his face. “That’s because,” he says, horror settling low in his belly. “Jack, that’s because I’m the curse.”

After the combine, Jack drives herself out to a strip mall north of Boston, parks in front of the little nail salon that nobody else knows that she knows about. When she has the choice, she keeps her nails like this—long, just this side of sharp, painted a deep red. ... (She fights for what she has. She has to.)

(2019) ... Jack isn't himself. He seems so miserable that Connor wants to smooth it out of his system, somehow, as if it's a physical thing. ... “If you... wanted something.” Connor asks. “Would you ask me for it?” “I’m working on it,” Jack says, so quietly that Connor almost misses it.

The text just says, hope you’re doing well, when Jack sees it in the preview screen. That’s why he opens it. A week past his surgery, the well wishes have slowed to a trickle, but he’s still getting a sporadic few messages per day. Some of them, like this one, are from numbers he’s forgotten to save over the years. So he opens it. Only. It’s not just a text message – there’s that, the text he already saw. But also, above that... a nude.

There's more than one reason that Jack wanted to go first.