by Aiden Bates
When I knocked on the door, Garret had answered, hair pushed back at all angles and a burp cloth slung over his shoulder. He took one look at my expression and turned around.
“Si, your brother is here for you.”
God bless Garret. I didn’t say a word and neither did he as he led me back to the cheery nursery. Garret understood probably better than anyone else what the consequences were for all of us when the explosion happened. Garret’s arm had been amputated as a result of the injuries he’d gotten during the same incident.
Silas was bent over the changing table, smiling at the cooing newborn, who laid there grinning and batting his little fists. Jason. They’d named him Jason. When they told me that, I had felt the sharp, stinging burn of tears behind my eyes, still could if I was honest. Jason had given his life for the rest of us. Neither Garret nor I had come back unscathed, but we were here. And because of that, so was little Jason.
“Jesus. What happened to you? You look awful,” Silas said, looking up from the baby.
“Probably not your smoothest opening,” Garret drawled. Silas wordlessly picked up the baby and passed him to Garret, helping him get the baby situated in his arm.
Silas gave Jason and Garret both a peck on the cheek before taking me into the living room.
“Come on. Jason needs to get a nap in. Well. I need Jason to get a nap in.”
I cracked the barest hint of a smile. “Things that rough?”
“Ugh, it’s a little early but Jason started teething last week, and it’s almost as bad as being back on the unit pulling night shifts,” he said, propping his feet on the coffee table. “Now, stop trying to distract me. What’s wrong?”
I sighed. “I just came back from Dr. Smith’s.”
Silas hummed, nodding. He waited for me to continue, and when I didn’t, pressed. “And, how did that go?”
“Not bad, not great?” I flopped back against the couch before continuing, trying my best not to make things seem dire. Silas had been so worried about me since I came back, and now he had Garret and little Jason to look after and fret about, too. Guilt sparked in my stomach at the thought of adding to his load. “They said that having kids might be, well, tougher now.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either, and that sat uneasy with me, but I just couldn't bring myself to say the words out loud. Silas’s eyes narrowed, focusing on me, but he said nothing as Garret came back into the room.
Silas looked surprised. “That was fast.”
Garret grunted before throwing himself into a chair across from me. “Yeah, well, what can I say? I’m a baby whisperer.”
I snorted, remembering all the times he’d given Jason hell for talking about babies. “Bullshit.”
Garret flipped me off. “Yeah, fuck you, buddy. You don’t know. Maybe I am? I’m a natural.” The words stung in a way I knew Garret had no way of knowing.
“Garret,” Silas warned. One of the funniest things about my brother marrying Garret was his ability to rein Garret in with a word. Garret looked apologetic, but I shook my head.
“No, no. It’s not like that.” Even though it was exactly like that. I tried instead to change the subject. “Well, on the plus side, Smith thinks I could probably re-enlist so long as PT keeps going good.”
Garret gave me a thumbs up. “Alright, then. That sounds promising.” Silas, for his part, made a disapproving noise, but kept quiet for now. I knew he’d been relieved when I’d taken a medical discharge a few months back, but I honestly didn’t think I was ready to leave. I still had something to give.
“Yeah. I need to do something. This admin job they’ve got me in now is killing me. It’s just so fucking boring. It’s like watching paint dry. I swear to god if I have to do that until I retire, I’m gonna be nuttier than a damn squirrel.”
“What’s so bad about it?” Silas asked.
“Ugh. It’s just running copies and taking appointments and entering data all day long. It’s like I’m a goddamn secretary.”
Garret looked to be thinking for a moment before speaking again. “I heard from a friend of a friend that there’s a new spot for a drill sergeant. You’d have to re-enlist—” At that, Silas made another, louder disapproving noise.
Garret continued, raising an eyebrow at my brother. “But, hell, with your injuries and your history? There’s no way they’d deploy you.”
I looked over at Silas as Garret spoke. Silas had been very vocal after my last tour that he wanted me to be home, telling me he couldn’t stand the idea of losing me, the way Teddy had lost his brother, Jason.
“You’d just have to get past Master Sarge O’Rourke. Well, that and ten weeks of hell at fucking Fort Jackson,” Garret said. Logan O’Rourke had been our drill sergeant back in the day. He was hard as nails and about as compassionate.
Oh, shit. Fuck the boot camp and the re-enlistment and Silas’s disappointment and all that other stuff. I glanced over at them from where I’d been studying the ceiling to see a look pass between Silas and Garret. Silas’s frown deepened, and Garret looked speculative. There wasn’t any need to explain what the hang up in all of this was.
Six years ago I’d dated Teddy O’Rourke. Dated him and broke his heart. Teddy was O’Rourke’s youngest son. Shit, shit, shit.
“That’s years ago now. I mean, fuck, Roman, you’re a former Army Ranger. You have a fucking Purple Heart, and you knew Jason like a damn brother. Surely, I mean, come on, that has to make up for it. Doesn’t it?” Garret asked, bravely trying to help while taking a page out of his husband’s optimistic book.
Silas, for his part, looked pleased Garret was trying, but I could tell from the deep line in his forehead he wasn’t fooled.
Neither was I.
It didn’t matter whether the Army deployed me or not. Taking this risk, talking to O’Rourke, felt just like walking right back into a combat zone.
2
Teddy
Drip. Drip.
I tried to focus all of my attention on my immediate surroundings. At least if I focused on what was around me, I could ignore what was going on inside of me.
I stared at myself in the mirror as I held up a towel to my head. If I’d been in my bathroom at home, then this would have been fine. Annoying, granted, but fine. At home, I could have ridden out the fever, the cramps, and general achiness with a hot water bottle on my abdomen, a cozy place to curl up, and my laptop.
I wasn’t at home though. I was in the bathroom at work.
I’d been thirsty and cotton-mouthed for a few days beforehand, but I did have a tendency to bury myself in work sometimes to the exclusion of sleeping normally, drinking normally, eating normally. Basically not taking care of myself. So, feeling weird wasn’t exactly, well, weird for me. In fact, I’d been so absorbed by work, I’d completely missed all the tell-tale signs and had chalked up the occasional headache and the fatigue to how hard I’d been pushing on this project. But, evidently, I’d missed this and hadn’t taken my heat suppressor on time. So, instead of either suppressed or at home, I was in the office bathroom waiting for it to kick in while my lower belly roiled and hot flashes made me feel like I was a human radiator.
I registered the sound of the bathroom door swinging open but was too preoccupied to really care. I did care, however, about the whistling that announced Sweeney’s entrance because it grated. Normally it wouldn’t bother me, but right now I was seriously out of sorts, and would be until the damn pill took effect.
I saw Sweeney start to throw me a backward head nod, but then he must have realized what was happening because his expression changed from something neutral to an unprofessional leer. It wouldn’t have been very professional of me to roll my eyes hard enough to strain my ocular muscles at him though, so I smiled—politely, tightly, and only because I had to. Sweeney chuckled softly under his breath. For a moment it seemed like he was going to say something, but he entered a stall and disappeared from view.
Great. That was my chance. I think the suppressor was
finally working or Sweeney had distracted me enough so it felt my symptoms were gradually improving. Either way, I had no desire whatsoever to still be out here when Sweeney emerged, just in case he did work up the courage to voice whatever he’d thought of saying.
I made my escape, determined to spend the rest of the day thinking of nothing except the test results of the artificial intelligence military project I was working on.
When I eventually made it back to my desk, the pairs of eyes firmly lodged in my back notwithstanding, I didn’t get to sit down very long. As though I weren’t already behind because of the massively unplanned and unwelcome interruption my body had suddenly dropped on me, I was interrupted by a very different kind of ache in my side.
“Teddy,” said the figure looming over my desk.
“Mr. Wilcox,” I replied smartly, using the sort of tone living on military base after military base got you familiar with by about the second grade or so. My dad wouldn’t have ever tolerated the kind of insubordination and disrespect I constantly felt toward my boss, so I was definitely careful to not show any annoyance. Still, it always aggravated me that no matter how much I tried to emphasize ‘Mr. Wilcox’ I only ever got ‘Teddy’ in return.
“Mr. Wilcox, I’ve been meaning to update you on how the tests for this node are going. I was writing these for this module when—”
“No, no. Don’t stand up. If you need to sit, then sit, Teddy,” Mr. Wilcox said hurriedly with a note of concern, looking down his nose at me and not at all at the information on the monitor. “Well, actually. Could I see you? In my office, please?”
That didn’t sound good.
Once we’d made it across the office, past everyone’s now doubly-curious stares, and I’d closed the door behind me, Wilcox settled into his chair.
“Teddy, try to take this in the best way possible,” he said, clearing his throat. “Not that anything inappropriate is happening, and not to single you out…”
I wasn’t going to participate in whatever sentence Wilcox was trying to formulate, so I tried to stare back as placidly as possible while he got up the nerve to tell me I was being moved, fired or stuffed into a basement with some meaningless project not even half as important as what I was working on here.
“Well, it’s pretty clear that—”
“Mr. Wilcox, the tests are going better than anyone could have expected and we’re ahead of schedule to have the—”
“No! No. God, Teddy. It’s nothing like that. I’m not firing you. What gave you that idea? No, I was just trying to point out that it’s pretty clear it’s that time and—well, yeah, it’s true, it does sound like you’re ahead of the game with what you’re working on, but…”
Oh. That. I sighed. What was so difficult about me being on heat? It happened to nearly every omega the whole world over. It wasn’t some goddamned crime, and I’d taken my pill. Albeit late. I nearly allowed my impatience to prompt him, but he was the one who’d dragged me in here instead of letting me work.
Wilcox focused intensely on the paperweight he was playing with. Sometimes I appreciated not dealing exclusively with military folks, but there was still a part of me that had grown up around plain-speaking, forward-dealing guys and resented this kind of tip-toeing around me, especially about this kind of thing.
“It can be kind of distracting. You know, to some of the guys.” Wilcox finally shrugged, clearly excluding me from the group he considered ‘the guys.’
“I understand,” I said, lying. I didn’t understand, actually. I wasn’t distracted by my heat, and I was the one nursing a headache, fever, cramps, and sweats. If I’d been powering through all that today and still getting my work done, surely a group of grown alphas could wait for the suppressor to completely kick in. But, fine. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve already taken my pill. It was a little unexpected this time around, but I definitely don’t want to be a distraction, so I can go to lunch early, if you want me to. I should be completely heat free in about an hour.”
“No, you don’t have to do that,” Wilcox objected. “You could go home. Maybe take the rest of the week off. Or the day at least.”
I couldn’t help the tiny way my eyebrow quirked up. Wilcox hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with time off before. Instinctively, I turned my head over my shoulder, and through the glass walls, saw almost every alpha in the office trying to peer into the office. The characteristic keyboard clicks that usually served as background noise were also not as loud as usual.
Ah. It was that bad, then.
“As much time as you need. Really,” Wilcox said, responding to what he must have surely caught me noticing.
I didn’t need any time.
I didn’t need any time because it was my heat that had got the alpha’s noses out of joint, not me. I personally wasn’t to blame, but I was being punished for being an omega. I hated it, and taking this time off meant I was going to fall even further behind in order to avoid everyone else from falling behind. Typical, considering half of them wouldn’t even be that far ahead if it wasn’t for me in the first place. But it wasn’t like I was in a position to argue. Working on this project required me to hold onto this job, and this job had taken some pushing to get. I still didn’t feel like I was half as respected as some of the newer alphas who got by more on swagger and self-promotion than actual results. But, it was fine. This project was going to change that and get me some of the credit I deserved. And working from home also enabled me to work on some of my side projects, the ones I really cared about. Hell, I could work from home for the rest of my heat, make some real progress on my stuff, and still outpace everyone who was here.
It’s fine, I repeated, fighting down the angry and embarrassed blush that threatened to creep up my throat and to my face.
“I understand completely,” I said, swallowing a lump of indignation and forcing myself to nod.
“Good. That’s good. Well, go home and relax. You certainly deserve it.” Wilcox stood and ushered me of his office as if he couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.
The same sets of gazes I’d been subjected to on my way to Wilcox’s office fixed on me once again. I ducked my head between my shoulders as much as I could, ignoring their scrutiny and definitely ignoring the disgusting sniffs I could hear.
This wouldn’t happen to an alpha. An alpha would never be in his boss’s office discussing his bodily functions, and an alpha wouldn’t be openly ogled on his way back out the door. An alpha would have been in charge of a whole team and would have had this project neatly tied up weeks ago.
Not an omega though. Not me.
God, I hated being an omega.
Once I was outside I stopped to lean against the brick wall of the building and collect myself. I was sweating and feeling too hot for comfort again, though whether it was because of my heat or because of how frustrated I was at being sent home was impossible to tell. Either way, I made myself take some deep breaths. Best to just get over it, Jason would have said. Honestly, he’d have been right.
Times like these made me hear my big brother’s voice in my head. Ever since we were in school, whenever I’d gotten picked on, passed over, underestimated or disrespected, Jason would always be there to make me breathe and to promise me that, once I’d changed the world, once I’d risen above all of this, then all of these people and their petty opinions weren’t going to matter. He always seemed so sure that was going to happen for me that it was hard to stay mad at the world around him.
My big brother, Jason. The only alpha I’d ever known who’d try to empathize with the sorts of things omegas went through. The only alpha who had ever treated me as a person, as just me, Teddy instead of as an omega first and only then as an individual as a remote second. I credited him with being the first person to truly believe there were more options in the world for an omega beyond those that strictly had to do with my gender.
I tried to picture how he would have reacted if I’d been able to meet him at Dad’s and if I’d been able t
o tell him how today at work had gone. I imagined him laughing off how stupid the alphas had acted and how awkward Wilcox had been. Dad would have probably stewed and then muttered something about toughening up and acting more serious around the alphas, so they knew not to mess with me. I sometimes found Dad overbearing and a little too willing to pin alphas’ behavior on my not being forceful enough around them, but even then, levelheaded Jason was always there to remind me to interpret Dad’s gruffness as his form of caring even if I didn’t usually see it that way.
It was fine, I repeated once again, becoming a little more convinced of it now it was Jason’s voice in the back of my brain and not just mine. After this project, it was going to be fine.
I looked down at my watch and realized I’d only been standing there for a few minutes. It was still basically lunch time, and I suddenly had a lot of day left without a lot to fill it. Thinking of Jason even briefly had given me a vaguely nostalgic feeling for those kitchen-table conversations we used to have and now would never have again. Those might be a permanently missing fixture of my life now, but the truth is, I still had Dad. For all of Dad’s impenetrability, I could definitely see the appeal of being around at least one person who wasn’t at all interested in my cycle, my heat or anything to do with me as an omega. At the moment, getting lectured harshly over something I’d done as ‘Teddy’ sounded very appealing compared to being coddled and babied as an ‘omega.’
Yeah, I could do lunch. Maybe Dad could do lunch. Maybe we could have lunch as a family or what was left of one, anyway.
With that in mind I headed for my car, and the moment I got behind the wheel and started the engine I rang my dad via my car’s Bluetooth.
“Teddy.”
“Dad, hi. I’m off work and—”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
Ever to the point. “Nothing. It’s that I’m on heat and they’ve given me time off work.”
“Did you ask for time off?”
“No, sir. Wilcox suggested it.” Dad’s silence was characteristic but whether he was judging me for having days off work like a civilian, was annoyed at Wilcox for treating me differently or was silently disapproving of the unplanned disruption to his routine, I couldn’t have said.
