by Aiden Bates
“Don’t finish that,” Roman said quietly, seriously, with a lethal sort of tension he seemed struggling to control. He opened his eyes and stared at me. They were full of torture. “You’re right to ask me not to finish what I was going to say but don’t finish what you were going to say.”
I immediately regretted what I’d said, and I crossed the kitchen in two quick strides, reaching out for him. “Ro, I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me late—”
“Don’t,” Roman said in the same steady, taut tone of voice. As I went to curl my hand around his bicep he drew back and held himself perfectly still.
“Okay,” I said more softly, relenting and letting my hand drop back down to my side. “Okay, I’m sorry.”
For a second, it looked like Roman was going to push me backward. Instead he ever so delicately raised both of his hands, curled them around my shoulders and gently guided me out of his way, leaving him a clear exit from the kitchen.
“I need some air,” he said, his voice strangled as he brushed past me. “Excuse me.”
I let him go, unsure of what I could have said even if I had tried to stop him. I felt terrible for what I’d said earlier. I was still shocked I could summon up the ability to be that callous to Roman. How could I do that to the man I love?
Roman didn’t have any reason to consider anything I had to say, and I didn’t have a right to subject him to more justifications, so I just stayed silent and rooted in place until I heard the door close softly behind me.
I wished, not for the first time since starting work on my project, that life worked like heuristics; like simple, brute, binary math.
I wished life weren’t so stochastic, so random. I wished I could predict the future like my silly program was supposed to help me do.
I wished I knew—I wished any of us ever knew—what I was supposed to do.
23
Roman
I walked. I brooded. I deliberated. And walked and walked and walked. I didn’t have any sort of destination in mind, but just like earlier when I’d gone to the hospital, I was headed toward what I needed. The Veteran’s Memorial Park was near the VA Hospital and was almost guaranteed to be quiet and deserted this time of night. I’d never been here, even after they put in Jason’s headstone. I didn’t really see the point. Jason had always been bigger than life, so it didn’t feel right to stare at a little marble marker and associate it with the person I’d known. It wasn’t really my thing, but at this point, I was desperate. I’d shared everything with Jason, and it felt wrong not to share this, too. I missed him a lot of the time, but now, I really wished he could be here. He’d probably have punched me in the mouth for knocking up his baby brother and then taken me out for drinks afterward to celebrate.
I thought I’d have trouble finding the exact spot, but Garret had told me it was close to the big oak tree, so I’d walked in that direction. When I got close though, I was surprised to find a figure standing beneath the tree with their back to me. I looked for a second before realizing it was Logan, looking at his son’s headstone. Shit. Maybe now wasn’t a good time. The last thing I wanted to do was interrupt the man if he was actually in the process of feeling something. I turned to leave. I could always come back later, even though I knew down in my bones I wouldn’t.
“Roman?” Logan hadn’t been a drill sergeant for years to no benefit. His booming voice broke the quiet of the graveyard, and he knew there was no way I hadn’t heard him. I froze before turning around to see him waving a big hand, gesturing for me to come over.
I joined him at Jason’s marker. It felt strange. It looked like all the others around it. All of them had the same stark, white marble, the same engraving, the same United States flag. Still, this place felt different for me. And I realized, for someone out there, each one of these markers felt that way for them, too.
“Didn’t expect to see you here,” Logan said. “You come here much?”
I shook my head. “No, no, sir. It looks…nice. The headstone, I mean.”
Logan spat onto the ground. “Suppose so. It was Roland’s idea.”
“Roland?”
“My ex.”
I didn’t know what to say to any of that, so I kept my mouth shut. There was a breeze that fluttered through the leaves of the trees. Logan looked like he was struggling to find words.
“What use are they? Memorial headstones? They’re just chunks of rock to come and talk to. But Roland had insisted even though Jason is interred in Virginia with the other war heroes. He wanted a marker here to commemorate him. Not as if Roland ever comes here. Near about got into a screaming match with me about it. That’s an omega for you.”
“I don’t think that, sir. Teddy isn’t really like that,” I said before I could stop myself. “As far as I know.” Shit. I looked over at Logan, but his gaze was still fixed on the marker with his son’s name.
“No, I know. Jason was like Roland. But Teddy has always taken after me more than his brother did. And, well, after Roland left… I guess you can say I’m not exactly the best model for an omega, but you do what you have to do, right?”
I was quiet for a moment, my mind racing through all the things I could say. ‘I’m going to be a dad? What’s it like?’ ‘Teddy’s pregnant and the baby is mine.’ ‘I miss him too, you know. He was my best friend.’ It all got louder and louder in my head until finally, I landed on just what I wanted. Nothing was more important than my family.
“Sir, I appreciate the offer to transfer, but I don’t think I can accept it, sir.”
Master Sarge laughed, didn’t say anything at first, just laughed, the sound shocking in such a somber place.
“It wasn’t an offer, Sergeant Carpenter. It’s orders.”
“Well, is there anything you can do about it?” I asked.
Logan turned to face me now. He squinted at me, and suddenly I could see every bit of the family resemblance between him and Teddy.
“Son, why on god’s green earth would you want to turn this down? You applied for the position, went through all the paperwork and red tape of enlisting again, and you’re getting fast-tracked into a supervisory position. There’s more than a handful of people out there who would call all of that good luck. Are you having buyer’s remorse or something? Because I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that your options for backing out of this thing now are few and unpleasant. What’s up?”
Oh god. What do I do? What do I do? Do I tell him? Would that make everything all better or somehow a million times worse? If I told him, and Teddy didn’t want me to, that could be the end of us for good, and to be honest, the concept of ‘us’ was about as thin at this point as an ice rink in July. Hell, I wasn’t really even sure in this moment if there was even an ‘us’ to still be considering. But if there could be, if there was even a sliver of a chance there might be, I had to leave that door open. It was Teddy. Jesus, it’s always been Teddy, will always be Teddy, had to be Teddy. But if I didn’t explain it to Logan, I could find myself on the first plane to Montana, whether Teddy liked it or not.
“Sir. At the sake of getting too personal, how did Roland feel about you moving around so much after you enlisted?”
“Oh,” Logan said, surprised. “Alright, son, I think I understand now. The reality is, he didn’t ever get used to it. Every time I got a new assignment, I’d come home and tell Roland, and it was always a fight. He hated the lack of control. I was deployed the first six years we were together, you know.”
I whistled. I couldn’t imagine being away from Teddy for six years. Not again. It was bad enough the first time, and we weren’t even a couple for all of that time.
“Roland was elated when I got stationed here as the drill sergeant. He knew it was less likely I’d ever be in active duty again, and it was a lot more stable. We could have a normal family life.” Logan shook his head. “When is family life ever ‘normal’ in the military?”
I understood that much from watching
my own parents go through it. Military life was hard, and it wasn’t something everyone was really cut out for.
“Ask any omega and they’ll all tell you the same thing. Worst thing an alpha can do is not have all the time in the world for his omega.”
Part of me, the hurt part, wanted to agree with Logan, wanted to nod along and say, ‘Yep, that’s the problem. It ain’t me. It’s him and his expectations.’ But I knew better. Teddy wasn’t like that. Teddy could get buried so deep in his work and his ideas that I started to feel neglected, not the other way around.
“I don’t know about that,” I said.
Logan shrugged. “To be fair though, I did have the opportunity to walk away from it. After Jason was born, then Theodore. I could have, but I didn’t. I don’t regret it. Not really. Not deep down. I think, maybe, given what happened between you and Teddy before, you know a thing or two about how that is.”
I doubted Teddy had told much of that story to Logan. I doubted very seriously Teddy told much of anything personal to Logan. When I thought of the two of them at dinner or some sort of family thing, I just imagined two rocks sitting together. Neither one willing to give an inch in front of the other.
“I might,” I admitted, not wanting to give away too many of Teddy’s confidences.
“Well, then. I’m assuming you came here in your own way looking for some guidance. You probably didn’t expect me, and you sure as hell shouldn’t have asked me this sort of thing, but I do have some experience, Carpenter. Now, I don’t know whatever you’ve got going on with whoever, but if I could tell you one thing that will save you a whole lot of misery—end it. End it now. There’s no point in dragging out the misery across too many years and all across the country. Call it off until your contract is up. It’s no life for anybody.”
“The thing is, sir. I… I can’t really. You know, end it? It’s a bit too late to end things at this point.”
For a moment, I thought Logan hadn’t heard me. He just kept looking at me with this blank expression on his face I didn’t know what to do with. Then, he let out a groan, bowed his head, and scrubbed his face.
“Son, I’ve known you for years. And I have to say it. You’re not the sharpest tool in the shed are you?”
“Never said I was, to be fair,” I answered.
Logan huffed what sounded like some pretty sarcastic laughter. “That’s alright, son. God knows I’ve had my dull moments, too. Best thing you can do is convince that omega of yours to go with you and take him. It’s the only thing you can do if you’ve got any honor at all.”
I nodded once, emphatically. I wasn’t the smartest man, but I’d do my best to do right by Teddy if he’d let me, in whatever way he’d let me.
“And maybe stop making the same damn mistakes over and over again, son. You can’t throw your whole life out every time a sweet, little omega looks twice in your direction.”
“But that’s the thing, sir. What if my omega…won’t go? Or can’t go? What if he’s got attachments here he can’t give up?” I asked, not being able to help myself.
Logan again looked at me sharply. “Well,” he said, speaking slowly. “I suppose you and this omega would have to figure it out, maybe weather the distance for four years.”
The idea of waiting four years to see Teddy every day, four years of video chats watching my child grow up thousands of miles away without me sounded like torture.
“Yeah, thanks, sir.”
“Who is all this about, anyway? You never did say a name.”
I panicked. Now was so not the time. Besides, I didn’t want to get my jaw broken in a cemetery. It felt disrespectful somehow. I looked at my watch, instead.
“Would you look at that? I appreciate the talk, sir, but I’ve got to go.”
Logan didn’t say anything to stop me, much to my relief. I turned to make my way back down the aisles of cool, white stones, almost illuminated by the light of the moon. But with every hurried step, I could feel Logan’s eyes on me, boring holes into my back. Jesus. Why did Master Sarge have to be so damn scary all the time? Despite our exchange, I felt just as jumbled as I had in the beginning. As I made my way past the memorial and out onto the street again, I wondered to myself why anything couldn’t just work out.
24
Teddy
It had only been a few hours since the fight and Roman’s sudden departure, but I missed his presence and felt his absence keenly. I hadn’t heard from him, and I was worried.
At first, I’d paced, assuming Roman would come barging back into the apartment, either ready to continue fighting or to take me to bed and fuck me into the mattress. I knew which one I’d prefer, but as the night had gotten darker and later, I became more resigned that what I’d said during the fight, how I’d acted, would likely merit a longer cooling-down period on Roman’s part. So I changed into the rattiest pair of sweatpants I could find and folded myself onto my couch, which was where I was now, surrounded by snacks I’d sampled and then discarded.
I had no desire to touch the jar of peanut butter Roman had left uncapped on the counter, so my usual peanut butter-marshmallow waffle concoction wasn’t going to work. Eventually, the only thing I found mildly suitable was a one-to-one proportion of pickle slices and a pint of salted caramel and toffee swirl ice cream.
It was salty, and sweet, and sticky. It was probably going to tear me up from esophagus to large intestines later, and it was frankly disgusting. But it was absolutely what I needed at the moment, so I continued alternating between bites of pickles and spoonfuls of syrupy toffee cream as trash TV played before my uncaring and distracted eyes.
I wasn’t keeping track of the passage of time outside of measuring it in dollops of ice cream or in how many ‘Murdered While Married!’ episodes had started and finished since I’d sat down on the couch. It felt much later in the evening, however, when I heard a firm and precise knock on the door.
Roman!
I looked like absolute garbage and felt like it too, but if it was Roman there was no time to waste in changing out of sleep clothes. I hurriedly stowed the ice cream on the counter and then jogged to get the door.
When I flung the door open expecting to immediately begin a long apology to Roman, I instead encountered a serious expression of mild distaste towering over me.
“Dad?” I asked, bewilderedly.
“At ease,” he said as he neatly sidestepped me and invited himself into my shitty, disorganized apartment.
“Wh—what are you doing here? Sir. What are you doing here, sir?” I asked, half-convinced this was some sort of pregnancy-induced, indigestion-related hallucination.
As my father wordlessly took in the general state of my living space and the state I was in, it became too similar to every time Dad had appraised my room for cleanliness as a teenager and had found it desperately wanting. This was way too lifelike, too realistic to be a hallucination. Dad was definitely here, and he’d come completely unannounced.
Surely the world was ending then, right?
“Sir?” I asked uncertainly. My father snapped his head toward me at the squeaking sort of question I’d produced, and I cleared my throat to try again.
“Sir. Can I help you? Is everything alright?”
“You tell me, Theodore. Is everything alright? By the looks of it, this place could use a little elbow grease, and you’ve certainly seen better days yourself,” he said, taking a sweeping look at me that traveled unabashedly up and down the length of my body.
“Er, yes,” I said, agreeing without even fully processing Dad’s statement. I was still so aghast at the notion he was here. “Is today important for some reason? It’s not my birthday, is it? Is it yours? Your birthday, I mean, sir?”
My father changed his expression not an inch in response to anything I was saying.
“Oh god, is something wrong? Did someone die?” I asked, assuming perhaps only the worst sort of situation might provide an explanation of why he was here. “Oh god. Did something happen to Pap
a? Is Papa dead?”
“Christ Almighty,” Dad said almost under his breath. He raised his eyes heavenward as if praying for god to give him strength to deal with his wayward son right now. “No one is dead, Teddy. Pull yourself together.”
I resisted the urge to continue blurting out questions that were clearly doing nothing but further convincing my father I was little better than a blithering idiot. What I wanted to say was, ‘Well, what the hell explains this sudden interest in my life? Has hell frozen over or something?’ Instead I kept my mouth shut.
Of course, I could think of another major reason why my father would feel the need to make an entirely unprecedented appearance, but I suspected if my father meant to tell me he knew about Roman and I, things would have been handled very differently.
“Can’t you offer your father a glass of water?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows ever so slightly. I hurried wordlessly to the kitchen to comply. As I opened my cabinets to grab a glass, I became acutely aware that both the salted caramel toffee concoction and the pickles sat on the countertop. The ice cream was beginning to melt and nothing was going to give away the reality of my situation like those two items sitting next to each other out in the open.
I quickly side-eyed Dad who seemed once again to be taking stock of the squalor that surrounded him, and I seized my opportunity. I opened the refrigerator door, opened the freezer door, shoved the ice cream into the freezer, carefully closed the freezer, slid the pickles all the way to the very back of the refrigerator, hastily pulled out the water filter, and then closed the refrigerator door again. No big deal, I thought, impressed with my own agility under fire. Nothing to see here.
