by Willa Okati
He hung up, leaving Darian holding the phone to his ear without a chance to say a single word.
Not that he could blame Coby. If their positions had been reversed, he’d have been there already, shouting all of that and meaning it.
Meaning it.
So, there it was. Darian did know what he wanted, and so maybe it scared the ever-loving shit out of him.
Yeah, well. That was what courage meant. What fighting was all about, anyway. He knew the right thing to do, and what his heart wanted. Had wanted for a while now, maybe since the beginning, if he was going to be honest with himself.
Okay. Darian stood, walked down the library steps, and took the left he needed. Headed for the residence halls, and as fast as he could. If he didn’t get there in time, he’d go after Coby anyway, but better to get the jump.
He left Oscar’s cigarettes behind. Didn’t need them anymore and didn’t want them.
Secondhand smoke wouldn’t be good for the baby.
* * *
Coby could go fast when he wanted to. By the time Darian got back to their room and shoved the unlocked door open, he’d almost finished packing. His side of the room, nearly bare except for the tangle of sheets still on his half of the now-separated twin bed, each one shoved back into its original corner. When he looked up, his eyes were as red and swollen as before, and he’d taken off his shirt in a defiant show of the change in his body that Darian had somehow missed so far.
A dumbass when he wanted to be, no doubt about that. There were a hundred and one different ways to be a moron, and Darian had walked across a couple dozen lines so far.
No more.
Not saying anything, because he didn’t need to answer the question Coby wasn’t asking out loud anyway -- yet -- Darian stalked across the room, caught him by the nape, went up on his toes and hauled Coby down at the same time, and put his whole answer to the question, entire and true, into the way he kissed that man. Hard and fast, then slow and smooth, then sweet as he could, then hard again, with teeth and bruises to be left behind.
Coby went still at the first press of Darian’s mouth to his, but he spoke Darian’s language too. Aside from one soft, soft, soft “Oh,” against Darian’s lips, he didn’t say anything out loud either. His arms went slowly around Darian’s waist, then clung as ferociously as Darian was kissing him.
When Darian lowered himself to flat feet, his lips were as kiss-swollen as Coby’s but he kept a hard hold on Coby’s nape. “You’re not going to do this alone,” he said in a growl. “I’m not letting you. I don’t back down. You want this? Guess what: I didn’t think I did, I didn’t know it’d changed, but it has, and I do. I want you.”
Coby stared at him, searching his face.
He needed more? Darian could give him that. He laid his hand on Coby’s stomach, possessive. “Mine. Yours. And we’ll fucking well make it work. The hell with anyone who says different. As long as you can believe me when I say I’m sorry for bolting like a chickenshit, all right?”
Coby laughed. Kinda watery, but a real laugh, and when he grabbed Darian in another hug he lifted him clean off the floor. Darian went right along with it, letting himself be whirled around in a circle. He didn’t care. He was where he belonged, and he didn’t have to fight anymore.
He would fight, of course. So would Coby. They liked a good scrap. It was just that he knew, now, they’d always be able to make up after those fights too.
And speaking of which…
Darian’s hand still rested on Coby’s stomach, but he let it drift downward to stroke Coby’s groin. Not hard, but Darian could work with that. Slow, lazy rubs started him on his way, making him draw in a sharp breath.
Coby spoke his language. His red eyes went darker, hawk-gold the way they should be, and his voice was a couple octaves deeper. “You still want me.”
“Don’t you ever doubt it again. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you, inside you.” He teased Coby’s stiffening cock with one fingertip. “But tonight… I want you. In me.”
Coby blinked at him, stunned still.
Darian had figured he would, but it didn’t stop him wanting what he wanted. He grinned up at Coby, and it felt almost as good to finally let that go as it did to hold Coby in the palm of his hand. “What? It’s not like you can knock me up.”
There was that laugh again, the one Darian liked best. Coby studied his face again, and he must have believed what he saw there because he didn’t wait a moment longer before spinning Darian around one more time and tipping them over, landing with Darian on his back in that tangle of sheets on his bed. Then, kissing him, as deep and dirty as Darian had kissed him before.
Darian surged up into the press of Coby’s arms, the sturdiness of his strange, fantastic Omega, crushing him into the mattress, and he fucking loved it.
“I don’t know how,” Coby said against his ear. “But you do. And you’ll show me.”
“Bet.”
And Darian did. He did like it both ways, and before he’d had Coby, during the times he hadn’t had anyone else, he’d learned how to make himself feel as good as an Alpha could on his lonesome. He showed Coby, step by step, how to lubricate his fingers with his Omega wetness -- it smelled different, now that Darian was paying attention, sweeter -- and thicker too, which worked a treat. Showed Coby how to open him the harder way, and how it was worth it. Moved beneath him in waves and undulations and wrapped his legs hard around Coby’s waist when Coby, shaking with nerves and lust, slid inch by inch inside him. God damn. Nature had made this boy a natural bottom, but nurture and being quick to learn had turned him into a fucking brilliant top.
Coby stopped when he couldn’t go any farther, touching Darian’s cheek. “You’re making noises like you never did before. Am I hurting you?”
“I like it.” Darian bared his teeth in a challenging grin. “I like to feel it.” He hesitated, licking his lips, but -- hell, there would never be another moment. He arched his neck to kiss Coby again, and said, “And I love you. So you know.”
Coby breathed out, long and rough, and pressed his forehead to Darian’s. “It took you long enough. I love you too, you dumbass. I have since the day I met you, and you loved me that day too. I know you. I know it’s true.”
“Don’t gloat about it.”
“I will too.” Coby tried a roll of his hips, one that made Darian arch and groan. “As much as I want to. Because you’re mine, Darian, and you always will be.”
He wasn’t wrong. When Darian came, he was surer of it than ever, and when Coby came with a moan that shook the bed, flooding them both, he was surest of all.
They were like this, really, and no, it wouldn’t be easy at all. But it was worth it.
Every warrior needed someone at his back.
Darian’d found his.
Epilogue
Several weeks later
“If you’re FaceTiming me in the middle of the night for any other reason than what I think, I’m gonna take the next train from my nice new city of employment back to Second Chance and kick your ass in person. I just got here yesterday but I swear I’ll do it.” Oscar flipped Darian the bird and tossed a blanket over the head of the Omega asleep on the other side of his bed. “Well?”
Darian cocked an eyebrow at the phone and held it back far enough for Oscar to see the crook of his finger. “Walk with me.”
“Jesus Christ. Coby’s a bad influence on you.”
“That’s your opinion, and by the way, it’s wrong. Also, watch your fucking language, would you?”
“This had better be the only call that’ll save you from getting beat up.”
“Wait and see for yourself.” Darian started down the short hallway from the den of the tiny apartment he and Coby shared, heading for the bedroom. He kept one eye on Oscar, who’d helped them move in and knew the apartment’s layout and noted with satisfaction his friend’s growing wakefulness and interest. But because he had to his own self be true as well as bursting his own button
s right now, he asked, “So who’s the HPOA in your bed?”
“The what now?” Oscar wrinkled his forehead. “The hoppa? The fuck is a hoppa?”
Darian made a rude noise. “H-P-O-A. Stands for Hot Piece of Ass, dumbshit. You never heard that? That’s ten years old or more.”
“None of your business,” Oscar retorted. He sat up in bed, as if he could get a better look no matter how Darian held the phone. “Hurry up, would you?”
“All things in their own time,” Darian murmured, quiet on purpose. There were sleeping bodies just behind the bedroom door he pushed open, and he’d already had his eardrums damn near ruptured a few times already that night.
Also, his hands would never be the same -- Coby might have cracked a bone or two squeezing them during all the excitement -- but honestly, Darian couldn’t have cared less.
The door opened on a dimly lit bedroom almost entirely filled with a genuine queen-sized bed, extra-long to accommodate the length of Coby’s legs when he wanted to stretch out. Good fresh sheets, clean duvet, pillows piled everywhere. Coby himself in the middle, not fully but almost drowsed off, the belly that’d frankly frightened Darian in the last two weeks gone down like a deflated balloon.
But that wasn’t the best part. Darian pulled back a corner of the duvet to give Oscar a look at the red and wrinkled, squashed little face on the equally red, raisin-crinkled body otherwise swaddled up tight as a burrito and snugged into Coby’s side. Coby sighed quietly, stirring at the movement.
“Shh,” Darian said, touching Coby’s lips with one bruised finger. “It’s over, and you’re good. Rest.”
“Holy. Fucking. Shit,” Oscar whispered. “This is the call.”
“Yeah.” Darian reached the bed and leaned over to brush wayward strands of hair out of Coby’s drowsy face. “You want to know a weird thing about Omegas his height and weight? They don’t calculate the drugs right at first, and nothing kicked in until it was all over. He’s going to be flying high for days.”
Oscar winced out loud, considered that, then whistled. “The universe has a way of returning to balance. Wait.” The man had some keen-ass eyes, and he was craning his neck. “Wait. Wait, wait. The way he’s holding that one arm. Is he holding the other the same way? You son of a bitch, he is, isn’t he? Pull that blanket back.”
“What did I say about watching your language, you comeslut?”
Coby stirred and laughed, sleepy and slurred. He mumbled something interpretable enough as, “As much cussing as they heard before, they already know all the words.” He tugged at the other side of the blanket until it came back to display a second little face and body snugged into the crook of his far arm. He drew a fingertip over that one’s fatter cheeks. “What d’you think about that?”
“I think if you knew, you kept that secret close to the chest.” Oscar looked fascinated, and, interestingly, pretty damn envious. “You really don’t do anything by halves, do you?”
Darian shrugged. “Technically. They’re identical, so it was one fertilized blob that split in two.”
“Tell me about it,” Coby mumbled. He turned his head toward Darian, and Darian knew what that meant. He bent to kiss him lightly on the corner of his mouth, then the top of each of his son’s heads. “Still blows my brain right out.”
Coby flipped him off, and that was it, he went out like a light.
“Labor bad. Drugs good,” Darian said. He settled in a rocking chair across from the bed, where he could keep an eye on his family and the other on the phone. “You know you’re the godfather. Or if you didn’t, you do now.”
Oscar said absolutely nothing. Curious, Darian turned back to the screen to find Oscar looking unsure whether he wanted to bawl like one of the babies or swear an indigo-blue streak. Perfect.
“What? I’m not letting you out of it.”
“Yeah, no.” Oscar swiped at his face. “I hate you. Now I’ve gotta buy them shit, and two of each.”
“Yup,” Darian agreed happily. “Or duplicates of what we got, because that second one surprised us just as much.”
“As big as he got, it makes sense now. No one saw it on a scan? Were they all blind?”
“Nah. Deux --”
“Don’t you fucking dare actually name the poor kid that. Judas.”
“-- Twoey liked hiding behind Numero Uno,” Darian went on, ignoring Oscar serenely. “Not that anyone got much of a chance to look. Coby skipped every Goddamn checkup unless I threatened to hogtie him and haul him in or marched him there myself. Not the most cooperative patient to start with. Then every time they got that wand thing out to do a scan he said it tickled, and he wiggled around too much on the table for anyone to get a real read.” He cocked his head thoughtfully. “‘Course, I think I’m going to have about as much trouble keeping Coby out of a pediatrician’s office now every time one of them gets a sniffle.”
“If he doesn’t, I will. Over the phone, but whatever.”
“Or you could come back to Second Chance,” Darian suggested, deliberately careless, purposefully casual.
“Don’t tempt me, you fucker.”
Darian shrugged. Oscar had been recruited by a special arts school before they even finished the summer session and gone straight from commencement stage to the train station. Hadn’t taken twenty-four hours before he and Oscar had known he hated the place.
As for himself and Coby? They’d stayed put in Second Chance where they belonged. In the last couple of weeks they’d kicked it into high gear, knowing every day was part of a countdown, but they’d made good use of their time. Found a cracker box-sized apartment to share. Touched base with a few universities who let doctoral students get a jump on their degrees by working from home. Did the paperwork for some assistance programs. Accepted a pair of suspiciously convenient offers of TA jobs at the university. Darian suspected that part of it was thanks to Nutcracker Jaw who seemed to like them both for whatever reason.
Come to think of it, with all he and Coby had doubled between them already, twins shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone.
“Come back to Second Chance,” Darian said. “It’s a good place.”
Oscar made a dubious face. “I might. I’m not promising anything. But I might.”
Which meant he would, and pretty soon. Darian grinned to himself, satisfied. Content. Pleased down to his bone.
A Snickers bar, a grin, a kiss, a lucky chance of supposedly unlucky housing, and a whole life unfolding after that. Good enough for him.
Good enough to be all he’d ever wanted, even if he’d never known it until it happened.
Some kind of a lucky son of a bitch, wasn’t he?
Will/a Okati
Willa Okati (AKA Will, AKA Daniel) is made of many things: imagination, coffee, stray cat hairs, daydreams, more coffee, kitchen experimentation, a passion for winter weather, a little more coffee, a whole lot of flowering plants and a lifelong love of storytelling. Will’s definitely one of the quiet ones you have to watch out for, though he -- not she anymore -- is a lot less quiet these days.
Will at Changeling: changelingpress.com/willa-okati-a-35
