by Aiden Bates
I was already leaking by the time Mitch started mouthing at my cock, lapping lazily at the slit like I was the best thing he’d ever tasted. “You always taste so sweet. Fuck, I would do this for days if you’d let me.”
I moaned when he took me down to the hilt all at once, his nose burying itself in my pubic hair as he swallowed around me over and over. His mouth was hot and slick, his tongue cupping the underside of my cock as he massaged it. He held me there in his mouth for a long moment before pulling back up again to run his tongue all around the head of my cock.
Mitch looked up and met my eyes, his tongue still doing filthy things to me in the process. I wanted everything all at once. I wanted to suck his cock and rim him until he cried. I wanted to hold him tenderly and make love to him until I couldn’t ever remember being with anyone other than him. I also wanted to fuck him so hard he screamed himself hoarse.
When I’d told my parents I was bisexual, they’d been…fine with it. Well, as long as I “ended up with an alpha”. If only they could see me now, with a panting omega lowering himself inch by inch onto my cock, my ring on his finger. He was my omega, and I was his.
“Fuck, baby. Mmm, you feel so good,” Mitch crooned, clenching around me. I moved my hands from his hips and instead found new positions for them; teasing his nipples with one and wrapping the other around his weeping cock as he started riding me. At first, he moved slowly, getting used to me stretching him open, and then faster and faster until he was slamming himself onto me, our skin slapping together obscenely with every downward motion. I planted my feet and took his hips again to meet his thrusts. I was pushing him back slightly each time until, finally, he gave the keening cry that told me I was nailing his prostate.
“Oliver, god. Yes. Come on. Fuck me. Fuck, yes. Just like that, baby. I’m gonna come.” That was all the warning I had before I watched him shoot all over my chest. He tightened and released around me rhythmically. It was enough to pull me over the edge and I drove upward to bury myself as deeply as I could to empty myself inside him.
Mitch slumped over me for a second, leaning into my neck and catching his breath before pulling delicately off of me, and then sprawling out over me.
“So, what’s the verdict, then?” I asked.
“Hmm?” Mitch asked drawing his fingers through his cum on my chest.
“Did I prove myself? Was that enough?”
Mitch’s eyes lit up with understanding. He brought his fingers to his kiss swollen lips and I groaned as he lapped up his release from his fingers. He reached for me, rolling us over until I was on top of him.
“Oh, sweetheart. Not nearly enough.”
7
Marcos
I was pacing in a kind of U-shape from the head of Pedro’s bed to the foot, around to the other side, and back up to the opposite side of the bed. I’d done this so often I had gotten really good at avoiding the cables and tubes that connected my brother to the machines and the monitors that surrounded him at all times. I was pivoting on the ball of my foot around a drip stand as I talked to him.
“To be completely, one hundred percent honest? I’m not convinced it’ll work in the first place, right? Mami could see it like my having a baby doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Yeah, dude, that’s because having a baby really doesn’t have anything to do with me.
“But, if we pitch it to her like ‘Oh, you know, this baby needs to meet his uncle’ then that might be what it takes for her to reconsider.”
I guess? It feels like Mami’s going to say I’m in no condition to meet anyone and that meeting me like this doesn’t count as meeting me at all, you know?
“Okay, true. She might say that. I mean, if I was going to have a baby, I wouldn’t want them to meet you like this. I would want y’all to go to the park and play ball or something. I don’t know.”
I don’t know that’s going to happen even if I do wake up. And Mami is going to think the same thing.
“But, on the other hand, what other chance do we have? And, I didn’t come up with the whole baby idea by myself. They were already wanting to have a baby and it just happens to fit with what we need.”
Nope. Leave me right the hell out of this. The world sucks and you’re going to have a baby, a whole new person who has to go to school, find a place to live, and pay taxes just to keep me alive? Alive for this month, anyway? That’s heavy, man. I don’t know.
“Yeah, me neither.”
And, you’re not having it by yourself, either. You have the baby, you’re tied to these people for the next eighteen years at least. Do they want you to be like…a dad? Or, are you just saying you’re going to be a dad to make it look like you’re starting a family when Mami asks?
“No, I mean. If we go through with this, I’m going to be a dad, regardless, right? I don’t know about that part, either. That kind of depends on them. Do they want me to have weekends, or never talk to them again, or…shit, man, do I want to have weekends?”
Feels like you should have figured out whether you wanted to have a baby before you started thinking about having a baby.
I stopped pacing for a second and threw an exasperated look at Pedro. Yes, I knew Pedro wasn’t really saying any of it, but this habit of “talking to him” was the closest I’d come to talking to my little brother in years. Even so, that didn’t stop “him” from being a dick sometimes.
“That’s literally what I’m trying to do right now, dude,” I grumbled as I started pacing again. “Anyway, it depends on what they want. That’s a question for them. Do they want me to fuck off or no? Knowing what Mitch and Oliver are picturing will give me a better basis for what I’m supposed to be picturing and then I can decide.”
Bullshit. And then you can decide? Pedro’s voice sounded almost amused in my head. My brother was never one to let me off easily. We were brutally honest with each other and that was one of the things I missed the most.
You’ve already decided. You want to keep me alive, and you think lying to Mami will work, so you’re just talking yourself into it right now. It’s like that time you convinced yourself you should take Papi’s truck out for a spin because you needed to practice driving so you could drive Mami. You were like halfway convinced that Papi was going to be happy with you for some reason.
“He was happy. Happy I didn’t wreck it worse,” I said weakly. “Anyway, it’s not lying. Mitch would literally be having a baby.”
So… You’re going to tell Mami the whole truth? That you don’t have anything to do with this guy? Sorry, with these guys since they’re already a couple, and they’re two omegas living together, and you don’t even think you might raise this kid? That it’s literally just for me, right? You’re gonna tell her all that?
“No?”
Then, it’s a lie. You’re lying to Mami. Don’t try to twist out of it. I wouldn’t lie to Mami. First of all, it’s wrong to lie to your own mother. Second of all, you’re not that good a liar, at all. And third, you really want to be around for the fallout once she finds out you made it all up? Even if she doesn’t ever fully get what you did, she’s going to know you and Mitch aren’t together. If you leave your baby and the person she thinks is your omega, she’ll think you’re some kind of irresponsible dog like Tio Carlos. She’s gonna beat you with a broom. That’s what’s going to happen.
I nodded my admission that these were all very good points. Pedro’s general worldview was that honesty was the best policy and that whatever happened as a result didn’t matter. That was my take on how you should generally act, too. Except, this time around, the consequences of not lying to Mami about this weren’t the kind of thing you could easily write off.
If we had this baby, and Mitch and Oliver were alright with me taking an active role in the baby’s life, then we could theoretically buy Pedro another eighteen plus years if he needed them. Hopefully, he wouldn’t. Hopefully, he would wake up long before then. And that? That was too perfect, too amazing to write-off for the sake
of preserving my sense of honesty.
I pictured the kind of miraculous recovery people had on Mami’s soap operas, where the person’s eyes kind of flutter back open and immediately they swing their legs out of bed and start walking and talking. I kind of laughed to myself at the idea. Pedro would probably wake up, look around, and start telling me to pick up all my snack wrappers. In reality, when Pedro woke up, if he came back to us the same as he had been, we’d have long years of recovery ahead of us. He’d have to learn how to talk again, how to walk again. He’d have to be filled in on everything that had happened since the IED explosion. I pictured myself bullying him into doing his physical therapy, offering him an arm to help him walk only to have him bitch back that he didn’t need any help, or translating for him as he mumbled through his first conversations. I even imagined myself explaining to a little boy why he shouldn’t ask Tio Pedro to carry him. Just as soon as I pictured that I almost literally heard Pedro’s response.
What are you trying to say, huh? I can’t carry my own nephew?
When I thought of things like that, it all seemed worth it. Plausible, possible, maybe even a better future than I’d ever imagined with Pedro waking up before.
So, it’s alright? Lying to Mami is alright as long as everything works out. Is that it?
“No, of course not.” I shook my head at the objection Pedro’s voice raised inside my head.
But what was my other choice? Just sit here with my arms crossed, allowing the next few weeks to pass? What happened then? Then, the month Mami had granted would be up, she would be satisfied I’d had the time I needed to say goodbye, and she would sign the papers. I imagined we’d all be here. Mami and Papi would hold each other. I would be quiet, not trusting myself to say anything just as it was about to happen. Father Miller would be here to administer Pedro’s Last Rites, and then the doctors would come in and the plug would be pulled, so to speak.
And then, nothing.
Father Miller would say “comforting words” to everyone who seemed upset. Mami and Papi would go home together. The nurses would begin clearing out the room for some other poor bastard to use.
And I’d be alone.
For the first time in my life, I would be alone. Sure, I loved my mami and papi, but things were different between Pedro and me. We didn’t just love each other because we were family. We loved each other because we were close enough in age that everything we did, we did together. Pedro and I knew to count on each other in a fight, but Pedro was also the first person to talk you down from a fight, too. Pedro knew everything about me; from the bad report cards I tried to hide from Mami to every omega who had ever turned me down for a date. Pedro gave my life a direction when we sort of talked each other into enlisting together.
He was my partner-in-crime, my best friend, the only family I was going to have when my parents passed on. We were brothers, not just because we had accidentally been born into the same family, but because we wanted to be brothers.
People confused us for twins, sometimes. We confused ourselves for twins sometimes. Maybe when he came back we’d both be so skinny and wasted that people would think we’d both been in a coma. Maybe, in a way, we were both in a coma. If felt like it. Fuck did it ever feel like it.
“How can they ask me to do that? How can I let, like…half of myself die?” I asked as I stopped in my tracks and turned to face the bed.
That’s what he’d be like once they unplugged him. He’d be laying back, quiet, still, seeming like he was peacefully asleep, just as he had been for the past three years. It wouldn’t look too different seeing him there, but it would feel like the whole world had changed for me. I walked back to the head of the bed and leaned over the railing to look into Pedro’s face. I forced myself to imagine looking at him in a casket instead of his hospital bed, to imagine gazing at him with no hope in my heart of him waking up, with nothing but bland resignation to the fact that he was gone for good, and I immediately felt my stomach drop.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine looking at him and not feeling that familiar sense that we could beat this, that he could get through this. I leaned away and stepped back from him, unwilling to imagine the scene anymore. I couldn’t handle it now and I sure as shit wasn’t going to be able to handle it then.
I would tell you not to do this. If I could. I would tell you not to lie, not to manipulate the people around you, and to not put yourself through something you’re not even sure you want.
“I know,” I whispered as I crossed my arms and hunched my shoulders, almost like I was trying to retreat from the awful mental images of Pedro’s funeral. “I know. But what else can I do? How can I let you go without at least trying?”
Thing about death, brother? For the most part, it’s not up to you to “let” or “not let” people go. It just happens, regardless of whether you’re ready to “let” it happen. What if you do this, what if you get Mami to agree, and the day afterward I get a clot, or an infection, or have a heart attack? What then? Then, it’ll all have been for nothing.
“Not for nothing!” I argued, my voice rising a decibel as though we were actually having this conversation. “Not for nothing, for you.”
Silence. No arguments followed from Pedro.
“Look, I’ll apologize to Mami when and if she finds out. I’ll apologize to you when you find out. I’ll apologize to you if you never find out and this doesn’t work anyway. Hell, I’ll apologize to Mitch, Oliver and the baby every day until I’m blue in the face. I just can’t let this happen. I can’t blow our last chance to do something.”
Silence—literal and figurative silence—fell. I assumed I had nothing else to say and that I was done trying to guess what Pedro might have said about this. Nothing else, no arguments or reasoning stood up to the fact that I could still give Pedro one chance to maybe wake up.
After a moment, I sighed, thumbed through my phone’s contacts and finally landed on one.
A CNA came in just then, and so I started helping her pull the sheets off Pedro for his bath. While I worked, I cradled the phone between my shoulder and my ear.
“Hi, Oliver. It’s me,” I said almost as soon as I’d heard someone pick up.
“Marcos. What can I do for you?”
“More like what can I do for y’all. I’m ready to talk this out if you are.”
8
Mitch
God, thank fuck.
Oliver had woken me up this morning with his nose buried in my neck and his hand down the front of my boxers. He’d then proceeded to stroke me until I’d come in my underwear. It was a lovely way to wake up.
From there, the cramps and fever had started. They were less lovely.
Now, I’d finally passed that part of my heat that made me feel like microwaved garbage. The cramps were gone, and I’d scarfed enough of the ice cream Oliver had gotten for me that it had cooled the fever to something approaching an acceptable level of temperature for a human body.
“Feeling any better?” Oliver asked. Oliver’s heats were different from mine. His heats were only a few times a year, but mine were every month without fail since I was fifteen years old. Fortunately, they didn’t last long, only a few days. Whereas, Oliver was often out a week or more with his. I wasn’t sure which one I preferred. Neither if I was given a choice, but my clients liked being with an omega in heat so I’d never used suppressors, and Oliver loved being with me while I was in heat, so I certainly wasn’t going put a stop to them now.
“Yes,” I said, leaning into his chest.
Oliver indulged himself by again sniffing my nape. “God, I can’t even begin to describe how good you smell to me.”
I chuckled. “Everyone would think you were an alpha the way you paw at me.”
“Oh shut up. Like you’re any better. Remember last fall? Every time you smelled baked goods for two weeks after my heat, you’d drag me to bed.”
“Mmm, now that’s an idea. Drag me to bed,” I demanded.
“I should
call Marcos,” Oliver said.
I hesitated, looking down at my hands. “Are we sure about this?” I asked, wincing at just how vulnerable it sounded.
Oliver regarded me. “This was your idea, Mitch.”
“I know, I know. But, it’s just that, well, you know. Are we ready for it? For a family? And all the other stuff, too, of course. Are we? Don’t get me wrong. I’m on board. I am. But now, I’m nervous. Not about helping Marcos,” I said, rambling. “That I feel okay about… Mostly. It’s not like I’m not used to a bit of lying for someone else. It’s just… Do you think I’ll be a good father?”
Oliver pulled me even closer, hugging me tight. “You’ll be a great father,” he murmured into my ear. “You are a great listener and have endless patience, far more than me. Just imagine. This time next year, the baby will be here. A family, you and me and our child. We’ll do Christmases and birthdays. Bath time and play dates. Everything.” His eyes were almost glowing as he spoke, and I could hear the yearning in every word. I had no doubt in the world that Oliver would be just the best dad. I wasn’t too sure about my abilities, but I was excited for the chance to watch Oliver be a dad.
Oliver hugged me one more time before reaching for his phone to call Marcos. They’d been talking over the last few days, and Oliver told Marcos he’d call when my heat started. I didn’t want to look like one of those omegas who couldn’t wait for an alpha to turn up and fuck him, so I focused my energies on unpacking boxes. Our furniture had come quickly from the manufacturers, but we’d only gotten most of our personal things yesterday and we were still navigating a maze of boxes in nearly every room. I didn’t have a whole lot in the way of possessions, so I’d finished getting most of it unpacked yesterday, but Oliver had so much I wasn’t sure where I’d fit it all. I’d just finished hanging the very last of his clothing when I heard the doorbell ring.