by TJ Cross
"I can't really contribute," Brandon said jokingly, "I was sort of occupied at the time."
"When I was at the hospital and they were rushing him around, they made it out like he was going to die or something," Zara said, her voice tinged with the sort of outrage that only comes to someone telling a tale filled with drama and exaggeration.
"Well, if you're not having a beer, then I'm having another one," Frank said, lifting himself off from the couch to walk to the fridge.
Brandon looked over to Zara. "I feel so bad, like I should call him or something. I mean, we've been talking. But on text. And he's really respected what I've been going through, which makes me feel even worse... because he's so amazing."
Zara nodded. Brandon had been invited over to do a little bitch fest with his friend, and as soon as he had gotten inside, he had pretty much blurted everything out.
The hot sex too, chronicled in full detail, which was exactly the way Zara wanted it. There was a flash of wickedness in Zara's eye that made Brandon suspect she was going to take out her jealousy on Frank's famously large cock later that night.
"What are you waiting for, though? To be struck by lightning or something, to find out that you're a perfect pair after all? You kinda walked out on him, all because of some minor misunderstanding," Zara said.
"Not a minor misunderstanding, jeez," Brandon said. On the table in front of him was the remains of his shattered cameras, refashioned by Zara as a work in progress for an art installation she intended to do. "I think him donating his blood to me and invoking the forces of draconic blood magic while I was unconscious might strike as a little bit too freaky, surely."
"Babe, I am all about consent. No, really. I was literally Miss Consent 2013 when I was over at Dartmouth, before I dropped out. I can write volumes upon volumes about consent here, especially if it was sexual consent, but the dude just saved your life. Big difference. You'd rather have an arm that didn't work for the rest of your life?"
Brandon shrugged. "That would at least seem like a normal consequence to acting like an idiot. Now I have an arm that works because this gorgeous stranger decided he wanted to save me."
"Because he had a crush on you the moment he saw you," Zara pointed out. "Dude, the way it sounds to me, he fell in love with you at first sight... while you weren't even conscious. That's a tiny bit freaky, but it's also the most romantic thing I've ever heard."
Frank came back, setting himself down in the same location right by Zara he had occupied earlier. "Girl talk, huh? I mean, shit, sorry, is that homophobic or something? Girl-and-guy talk, I mean."
"Frank, sometimes you should just shut your damn mouth," Zara said, rolling her eyes. "Guys gush about their girlfriends all the time, too."
"Nuh uh," Frank protested.
"You've never once enthusiastically told another guy about how good fucking me was?" Zara said, raising an eyebrow. "Or is it all about Helena these days, you pig?"
"Okay, okay, I might have done that, but if I did, it would be more in praise over your bomb as fuck pussy, not Helena's, promise," Frank said, with Brandon nodding along, smart enough to know not to talk about his new Croatian side situation.
"Anyway! Anyway. Where we again, babe?" Zara asked.
"The exact ethics of saving someone's life with dragon blood magic," Brandon drily answered.
"Between you and me," Frank interrupted, "I'd kinda be honored that a doctor would go out of his way to save you like that. Also, it's a hell of a lot more convenient too, isn't it? Saves him a lot of work down the road having to check and make sure if he didn't like, twist your bones in the wrong place or something. I mean, it could have been so much worse, you could have gotten steel plates in your arm!"
"Yes, yes, the 'it could have been so much worse' argument," Zara said with biting mockery. "You're such a cis white male, Frank."
"Honestly, baby girl, I have no fucking clue what that phrase even means... beyond identifying that, yes, I am a Caucasian man who likes to have sex with women," Frank shot back.
Brandon smiled. Their arguments helped remove him from the present, where he was preoccupied solely by his need for Gurney's touch. Yet something had changed inside him, and he needed to identify what that was first.
"What bout Brandon? He's a white male too," Brandon heard Frank say.
The omega immediately laughed, shaking his head. "No way, you are not using me as an example for whatever it is you're arguing, Frank. I'm getting right out of here."
Brandon stood up, walking to the bathroom. He stood in front of the toilet, unzipped and ready to pee, but he couldn't force himself to do it. It was strange. He felt like he needed to constantly, even when he didn't drink any water, but now that he was in front of the toilet, absolutely nothing came of it.
Instead, a creeping nausea began to take over him. He stumbled forward towards the sink, looking for an answer to the strange sensation. Was it something he had eaten? Or was it the ever-present smell of pot that seemed to waft from Frank in Zara's apartment?
He got on his knees and hung his head over the toilet bowl, feeling sick enough that he felt ready to vomit. He closed his eyes and heaved repeatedly -- violently sick, cold and alone, until a hand started patting his back, helping him ease the pain.
"Gurney?" he said in an ugly, hopeful manner as he wiped the vomit off his mouth with the back of his hand. He turned around.
No, just Zara.
"Are you okay?" Zara asked, looking at him funnily. He had never been known to be sick for any reason in the entire time he had known her, so he knew behaving this way was bound to strike his friend as odd.
"I'm just..." Brandon said, trailing off as he began to search his feelings to find out what it is that he was truly experiencing.
He tried to pin his sickness on having a particularly old box of mac and cheese at home last night, but that wasn't it. That couldn't have been it.
Strangely, he seemed more attuned with his body lately, ever since the day he had ran out of Gurney's place. Perhaps it was a sense of confidence that came to him now that he had managed to end his dry streak by having sex with the alpha.
Or perhaps it was something else.
Brandon closed his eyes and a sense of serenity came down on him, immediately telling him the answer. He didn't want to say it out loud, but he knew.
"I'm pregnant, Zara," the man said, watching the disbelief wash over his friend.
"You are absolutely not, don't be ridiculous. You're a guy -- I mean, fuck, that sounds really heteronormative and transphobic," Zara said, peppering her speech with all sorts of words Brandon had no time to parse.
"I'm pregnant. I know I am. I can feel it. Jesus, I can feel the baby inside me. Goddammit, Gurney wasn't lying when he said he would make me pregnant if we... uh, never mind," Brandon said, blushing as he realized he was revealing way too much information about the most lurid details about his sex life to his friend.
"You can say it, babe, honestly," Zara said, unusually supportive.
"He said he couldn't cum inside me, or else he could make me pregnant. I knew he hadn't been with anyone for a long time, so I sort of let it slide. It was pretty ridiculous anyway, the idea that a man could make another man pregnant. Yes, yes, I know you'll tell me that's not the case," Brandon quickly added.
"No, I don't mean as in trans people or anything, babe," Zara said, frozen in place as she sat crosslegged behind Brandon. "I mean shifters can do that. I so know this. Men give birth all the time if you're a shifter. It's got to do with that dynamic of theirs, alphas and omegas."
"Oh God," Brandon said. "I'm Gurney's omega."
"You'd have to be, because you're freaking pregnant with his child," Zara pointed out redundantly.
He breathed out. Now panic and fear struck him. "No, no, no, no, no, this cannot be the case. I can't be pregnant. I'm not a shifter, Zara! I'm a normal, human guy. I don't want to be anything else. Shit, I don't even know if I want to be pregnant. Are there shifter male abortions?
Is that a thing?"
Zara embraced him, holding him to stabilize the shake in his arms. "Babe, babe, let's not get too ahead of ourselves. I'm on your side. I promise!"
There was a knock on the doorframe as Frank popped his head in. "Are you guys... okay? Why are you two on the bathroom floor?"
"Get out, Frank!" Zara screamed, making Brandon laugh. She returned her attention to the pregnant omega. "But you know this for real, right? I've had a shifter friend who, like you, just one day in the middle of something sort of like, woke up and realized she was pregnant. My friend Cassie, do you know her? Wolf, mated with a bear though."
"Err, I don't know her," Brandon said, happy to let Zara do the talking.
"Anyway, if you know... then you know. That was the gist of what she was trying to tell me. That you're struck with a concrete, absolute knowledge that you're pregnant. And that sort of softens the blow of realizing that this absolute impossibility has taken place. Wolves aren't supposed to mate with bears and get children, by the way. But sometimes it happens. Shit if I know, babe. It's all shifter magic. You've experienced all this... it's not like this is exactly new to you," Zara said.
"I felt it during sex, too. I felt it come over me, like, this pleasant magical warmth. It was like nothing I had ever experienced."
"Yeah, if I was getting fucked by a dragon I would think the same thing too," Zara grinned.
Brandon swatted at her playfully, his mind fully placed on the thought of being pregnant. "So... I'm pregnant? I don't know what that means. I'm going to have a baby grow inside me? A dragon? Is it even going to be human at all, though? Or is there some sort of a half-shifter deal, does that change things?"
"Questions, babe: one at a time. Don't overheat, jeez!"
The omega stopped to close his eyes once more, thinking about his situation. Could it be possible I wasn't pregnant, that this was just what I wanted? He thought.
But his body was telling him he was absolutely, definitely pregnant.
It filled him with happiness, too, even though the fear and shock had never left him. "Okay, okay, I guess I think I'm pregnant. Convinced, even," Brandon said, careful enough to say everything slowly. "But I'm going to need to confirm it before I decide anything."
"Yes," Zara nodded.
"I need a doctor or something. But where do I go? Is there some sort of shifter fertility clinic? Or some sort of--"
He was cut off by Zara, whose eyes had widened again, shaking her head as if he was being stupid. "What?" Brandon asked, irritated.
"You've got a doctor! He's the father of your child, you dummy! You need to call him right now. Make him come here. I'll set you up in the guest bedroom, make Frank tidy up and open the windows and get that damn weed smell out of the place."
"Oh my God, he's got to know," Brandon agreed. He reached for his phone, but Zara swiped it from his hands. "I don't even know how to tell him."
"You've got a whole lot of other things to care about. Go take my laptop into the bedroom and read up on shifter male pregnancies, read up as much as you can. Let me call your gorgeous doctor man. Honestly, you're a pregnant guy, you've got way more important considerations than what you're going to say."
Zara was still shaking her head in amusement as Brandon steadied himself to leave for her guest bedroom, sitting in bed with her computer.
He was filled with another great sense of anticipation now:
Gurney's coming.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gurney
It had taken a few more days before Gurney had managed to help Brandon understand the whole situation around his pregnancy. By then they had started living together, deciding their romance had been the starting point of this strange new dynamic that existed between them -- and despite all misgivings on both Gurney and Brandon's sides, they each knew they wanted what had blossomed between them to grow.
Being in a relationship this intense had been a pleasant surprise to Gurney. It was far and away the most rewarding romantic relationship he had ever experienced, even though they had only spent a little over a week together, but he wondered if he could ever live without Brandon now.
The alpha found himself worrying about other things, too, including the potential longevity of his omega. A human like him, in his early twenties, could be counted on to live another sixty or seventy years. Meanwhile, there was no limit to how old Gurney could be.
But that's a worry for another time, the dragon decided.
Their lives had changed by a lot ever since they came to terms with the child that was coming for them. Gurney's experience with other Chosen pregnancies of two men together helped him cope faster, but even he was bewildered at the prospect of being a father.
He wanted it, though.
They had not yet agreed to have the baby together, which was a bridge they both needed to urgently cross. Ever the confident, charming alpha, Gurney understood that although it was his dragon seed that brought the magic of Brandon's miracle pregnancy to life, it was still Brandon's body... and he had the final decision.
His body, his rules.
"I'm going to be a father," Gurney murmured, washing his hands after a night at the hospital, ready to head back. He continued working his late shifts, leaving shortly after dinner with Brandon and either coming home late in the morning or pushing into the afternoons, when his loft was empty -- Brandon had gone back to taking photos, as well as showing up at his old job as a retail assistant.
Their schedules was another problem that needed to be dealt with. Yet, with all that, despite obstacle after seeming obstacle, they were happy together.
Gurney glanced at his watch, this time a simple Victorinox quartz timepiece since he had been scheduled to do a number of surgeries, including treating a bullet wound from a victim of a mugging from earlier that night. It was barely past midnight.
His schedule was largely clear for the rest of the night, but instead of sticking around, he decided to call it a night. The dragon wanted nothing more than to return to his beloved omega.
"You're home already?" Brandon said when Gurney came through the door, hugging the bedsheets to hide that he was naked underneath.
The omega had been reporting a serious temperature ever since Gurney had picked him up from Zara's place the night he realized he was pregnant. Gurney was happy to assuage his fears by telling him that it was his pregnancy -- a dragon child needed great heat, and Brandon's body was accommodating that need.
"In many ways, you're becoming part dragon yourself," Gurney said, having come to the conclusion after a lengthy talk with his colleague Dr Herrera.
Jessica had thrown herself to the books ever since she found out Gurney was going to be a father, promising she would read everything she could about dragon-human hybrids and their gestation periods. Gurney had been grateful for that, having found the process of trying to research through ancient dragon scrolls and books too frustrating to bother. Jessica, however, was a geek for things like that.
"What does that mean, exactly?" Brandon asked, leaning forward to kiss his alpha.
"It means you'll enjoy some of the powers I'm used to. Fire won't hurt you. You'll be stronger, faster, more perceptive. You won't be breathing fire anytime soon, but you might just be able to concentrate and make things burst into flames if you will yourself into action," Gurney said. He thought about all the other things dragon shifters were blessed with.
Did Brandon's newfound dragon affinity come with the promise of a dragon lifespan, too?
I hope so, Gurney thought silently. The thought of living without his omega now seemed unbearable. But he shoved that thought far in the back of his mind, remembering that it was a discussion for another time.
