by Aiden Bates
Now, I just wanted to get the hell out of there and hopefully hide out in my room until the new meds kicked in. I was in the middle of imagining a hot bath and my most comfortable sweatpants when a voice interrupted my cozy fantasy, bringing me back to the drug store parking lot.
“Excuse me, sir. Sir!” I turned around to see a dark-haired man in a leather jacket jogging up to me.
“Um, can I help you?” I asked, manners overriding any frustration.
“I hope so. I’m Joshua King. I’m a reporter for Carolina Frontline. Do you mind talking with me about what’s happening with the heat suppressants?”
What was this guy talking about? I mean, sure, it was inconvenient for the omegas in Fort Greene, but I could hardly see how this was news for a statewide paper.
“This is big news,” he said.
“A bad batch of heat suppressants?” I asked, incredulous. “How is this news?”
“This isn’t just happening here in Fort Greene. It’s happening all over the Southeast,” he explained. “So, interested, now?”
I agreed to talk, and I told him some of the things I had heard from the other omegas in the store and what the pharmacist had told me. He took some notes on a little pad as I talked, and at the end, when he’d put it back in the pocket of his jacket, I couldn’t help but ask some questions of my own.
There was something on my mind, something obvious, but until this point I hadn’t wanted to give voice to it. But when else was I going to get the opportunity to question someone in the know.
“So, the other places where this has happened… Have there been any pregnancies reported?” I asked. I was hoping he was going to say no.
The anxiety must have bled into my voice because King looked away before nodding his head slowly. “Yeah. A lot of them. Some of them with twins and triplets.”
Oh, fuck.
12
Pedro
I’d showered.
I really, really needed a shower after all that. And I got dressed. And then I just hung out in my room, occasionally going into the living room for something or out to the kitchen for lunch. But mostly I stayed in my room for the few hours between when I’d gotten ready and when it was time for me to leave for PT. I wasn’t hiding or anything. I just didn’t want to be in Charlie’s way. It felt like the spell had broken, somehow. Like, whatever had come over us—actually, I knew what had come over us—had kind of faded away, and now it had faded, Charlie might suddenly not want to be around me. Like, he might have thought about what we had done and might come back with a decision that he didn’t want to live together anymore.
So, I kept myself busy until Marcos picked me up to run me to physical therapy.
“What’s with you? Why are you limping?” he asked after he’d watched me walk down the stairs and slowly climb into his truck.
“Nothing? What do you mean why am I limping? Isn’t that the reason I’m going to PT in the first place? What else would be wrong with me?”
“Nada!” he said, wide-eyed and taken aback. “Sorry I asked.”
We rode in silence the rest of the way, which was weird for both me and Marcos. I was kind of preoccupied, though, playing out all the ways that Charlie might react when I eventually had to come home from PT. For his part, Marcos seemed kind of preoccupied himself. Normally, he was talking about all kinds of things on the way, like what I should be careful to do or not do or about whether I was keeping up with the take-home exercises on my own. But this time, other than just coordinating when he was coming back for me and where we were going next, we hardly said ten words to each other.
I checked in with the front desk for my appointment, halfway limped over to the waiting area, and turned my eyes up to the TV that was just playing the news without anyone to watch it.
“The Food and Drug Administration has announced a massive recall on several widely prescribed heat suppressors today. Paxium, EnGuardia, and Serenia are just some of the brands of omegalase-inhibitors targeted by the recall, which, the FDA says, has been triggered by large-scale reporting of adverse side effects. Coming to you now is—”
I suddenly focused my attention in on the TV rather than just blankly staring at it. Side effects. Side effects from the pill. Is that what that was earlier with Charlie? A side effect somehow?
Huh.
The anchor on the TV was framed by two commentators who started debating profit margins and FDA approvals and fast-tracking drugs onto the marketplace without proper testing… Then one of the debaters got up and pointed his finger at the other.
“You’re not getting it. Nobody is reporting side effects! A side effect is some kind of reaction from taking the medicine. What people are reporting is failure! As in, the drugs are not doing what they are marketed to do. That isn’t a side effect. That isn’t the kind of thing that’s fast-tracked despite not being tested. Somehow, the FDA and the companies behind these medications managed to package what is basically a sugar pill as a suppressant and nobody noticed? This is all just an accident? No, this is clearly an intentional, targeted—”
The rest of the debate, or news, or commentary, or whatever faded into white noise. In fact, the only thing I heard clearly was my own frantic heartbeat.
Failure. Not side effects. Failure.
“Mr. Acosta?” The nurse interrupted my thoughts. “Dr. Michaels is ready for you now.”
I followed the nurse back, and then climbed onto the exam table without really thinking if that was where Camden wanted me. I was in a daze, still turning over what they had said on the news. It felt pretty important given what Charlie and I had done all morning, and I had to fight down the impulse to cancel my appointment so I could continue to watch the end of that segment in Camden’s waiting room.
That couldn’t be true, right? That somebody had—switched or contaminated the suppressants? No. No way. There was no way that every omega’s pill had just been tampered with. No way. Maybe I needed to tell Charlie?
Before I could pull my phone out, Camden came into the room. He seemed…worried? Concerned? He was still tugging the top of his uniform shirt down like he had just walked in off the street five minutes before walking into the room.
“Pedro! Hi! Nice to see you today.” Camden shook my hand, and then moved on, like a whirlwind around the exam table as he tried to get himself together.
I wasn’t really paying too much attention to him, I was still trying to replay details of the news story.
“What’s up? What’s new? Any changes or…”
Camden was probably asking about any changes in how I felt or in how my left leg felt, or whether I was still grinding my back molars into a fine powder every night. I was, but, that wasn’t really what I wanted to talk about.
“Did you see about these omegas?” I asked.
“Excuse me?” Camden asked, suddenly stopping dead in his tracks and turning to look at me with a horrified look on his face.
“The omegas, dude. The news about the omegas? With the new suppressants that don’t work and stuff?”
“Oh!” Camden said, finally catching on to what I was saying. “Oh. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.” Camden chuckled a little nervously. “Yep. I’ve definitely heard.”
I didn’t know if it was a stroke of genius or what, but I had a feeling Camden’s omega might have also been affected by the substandard heat suppressants. “Listen, if you need to go or something…”
“Go? No, I’m okay.”
“Sure? You seem kind of …frazzled.”
“I overslept, is all.” He shrugged, trying to make it seem like it was no big deal, but no way oversleeping came with the amount of weirdness Camden portrayed. I pursed my lips like Mami sometimes did when she didn’t believe whatever bullshit Marcos was trying to feed her.
Camden noticed.
“I overslept because I was…” He seemed to be trying to gear himself up into finishing the rest of the story. “Well, fine. I was out at the Piggy Bank last night and, you know, I got to dri
nking and there was this omega…”
I wrinkled my face. I liked Camden but he was still my doctor, and this was a level of detail I wasn’t necessarily interested in knowing about him.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, continuing his story anyway. “Well, you asked. So, there’s this omega a few stools down from me and I could tell he was… I mean, it wasn’t crazy or anything. It didn’t feel like what they were talking about at first. I could tell he was in heat but still suppressed, you know? Like, you’d expect with everyone on their suppressants. Well, I don’t even… I can’t even remember everything that happened, but…”
“But?”
“But, before I knew it, I had him up against one of the stall walls in the bathroom, and Miss Penny was screaming at us, threatening to get a hose if we didn’t leave.”
I didn’t say anything. I just kind of stared.
“We weren’t the only ones, either. They…had to shut the whole place down last night. It was chaos. Everyone just seemed to go crazy.”
I nodded, harder than I meant to.
“You too, huh?” Camden asked, crossing his arms and looking like he enjoyed turning the interrogation table around on me.
I narrowed my eyes at him, seeing what he was trying to do, but I was too relieved to have someone to talk about it, so I caved pretty quickly.
“Same. Kind of,” I admitted. “It’s just… I knew he was in heat, and he’d taken his pill, but then the second I saw him all—”
Camden re-crossed his arms, waiting for me to continue, but I certainly didn’t want to over explain the way Charlie had looked—naked, hard, needy, his skin flushed, his eyes filled with an insatiable hunger…
“It was like, not only didn’t the suppressant work, but it had magnified the effects of my omega’s heat, making in ten times more powerful. I couldn’t really resist, no matter how many times I told myself I really should, and he… Well, he couldn’t stop himself from wanting me.” I swallowed, realizing that was exactly what it was like, but… But, if Charlie had said no, I could have walked away, definitely, I certainly wouldn’t have forced myself on him, but he’d asked me to join him in bed, and what alpha could resist that?
Camden nodded, as if agreeing with my assessment. “Anyway, everything you said about the Piggy Bank doesn’t explain why you were late. Did you take it somewhere else or something?”
He flushed a little, and then nodded again. “Since you’re admitting that we both wound up in the same situation last night, yeah, I might have spent the night at Brandon’s, and all morning. His heat… It was pretty powerful. It felt a little like this raw, crazy chemical attraction. And if what they’re saying on the news is true, then… Yeah, chemical. So, I guess Brandon and whoever you were with can’t be too mad at us? Can they?”
Camden gestured over to me, like he was asking for permission to get started already. I nodded, but as he started poking and prodding at me, I felt my mind drift again.
“Yeah,” I answered, way after the conversation had moved away from the topic of omegas or heats or attractions and after Camden had started on his old “mind-body tension” grind. “Just chemical.” But was it?
13
Charlie
When I got home, Pedro was nowhere to be found. Which was a relief. But if there was some tiny, omega part of me that was disappointed at discovering the lights all off, well, that surely was just the hormones talking in the aftermath of the pill debacle and my overactive heat.
After shedding my many layers, I went to the bathroom and pulled the packets I’d gotten from the pharmacist from my pocket. I took the replacement heat suppressor immediately, hoping it would bring some relief soon. The bad pills I’d taken last night, which had increased the symptoms of my heat and not suppressed them, would last at least twenty-four hours, so it was probably going to take a little while before that faded and I felt normal again. I wasn’t suffering the fever I’d felt earlier this morning, but I still felt shaky, a little disoriented.
I opened the second blister pack, this one containing an additional dose of birth control. I was about to tip the pill into my hand when I hesitated. It was stupid. I knew it was stupid. But I couldn’t get King’s words out of my head. Could I be pregnant right now?
I caught myself in the mirror and I couldn’t help but lift my shirt. My stomach was just as flat as it had been yesterday. Don’t be stupid, Charlie. If I was pregnant, my heat would have stopped, and there was absolutely no way to tell yet, anyway. Still, I let my hand linger there, and I winced as a million different memories of the hopes and dreams Jason and I had talked about, made steps toward, came welling up all at once.
Grief was complicated like that. Sometimes, it was like being in a small boat in the middle of the ocean. The seas are calm, the sun is out, things are fine. And then, something comes up from the depths, some disruptive monster out of nowhere before slinking back down to the bottom to wait for the next time. I could feel that, at the edges of my mind, but I shook myself out of it. I knew better. Jason wouldn’t want me spending the rest of my life living in a shoebox of memories. No one had cared about living life to the fullest more than him.
It had been one hell of a morning. I felt sticky and sore, and the shower was calling my name. I lost myself in the steam, and by the end I was feeling more human again. I felt clearer headed, which could have been the medication kicking in or just a result of being more relaxed from the hot water. I threw on some sweats and a tank top before opening the door and almost walking directly into Pedro.
“Shit, s-sorry,” he said, tan cheeks flushing. He awkwardly ran a hand through his hair.
“No, no, it’s fine,” I said, taking a step past him to put some distance between us. My heat wasn’t in control like it had been this morning, in fact, I honestly think it had stopped now, but he still smelled like something I wanted to slather myself in, and damn was I tempted.
“Where did you go this morning?” Pedro asked. “Not that you have to tell me or anything, it’s not like that,” Pedro said in a rush. It was strange. He was usually so laid back, so confident. Maybe he felt a little awkward about what happened this morning?
“The pharmacist. What about you?” I asked, looking down vaguely at the floor instead of meeting his eyes.
“What?” Pedro asked, seemingly distracted.
“Where did you go?”
“Oh, I… I just met some friends,” Pedro said, shrugging.
“Mmm,” I hummed, nodding my head.
Pedro had never really lied to me before, but I got the impression he wasn’t really telling me the truth right now. But I had to remind myself it wasn’t my place to question him or know all of his movements. Anyway, if he felt awkward, I didn’t want to press it. I guess reality was setting in for both of us. What were we going to do now? How were we supposed to move forward? Suddenly, my mouth was very, very dry.
I went to the kitchen to get a drink, and Pedro padded along behind me.
“I talked to a reporter while I was at the drugstore,” I said, before chugging at least half of my water.
“Yeah?” Pedro asked from his spot leaning up against the entryway between the kitchen and the living room.
“Yep, with Carolina Frontline. He was telling me that it’s happening everywhere. It’s all over the news. They’re saying it was a bad batch of pills. Triggered an over-active heat and something with omegalase-inhibitor-inteversion-something-something. I’m not a scientist. I don’t know, a bunch of science junk I don’t really understand.” I purposefully did not include any of the information about the pregnancy rates. There was no point in scaring him like that. I had no idea how he would handle it. And besides, he had already been through enough without me freaking him out without knowing for sure there was anything to be concerned about.
He chuckled. “Yeah, I saw the news, too. Sounds like they’ve got a big problem on their hands.”
“Yeah, you should have seen it. The drugstore was full of omegas talking about all sor
ts of situations they’d gotten into. One guy just pulled some random alpha into an alley. It’s crazy just how much if affected folks.”
“So… Was it just the pill, then?” Pedro’s voice was quiet now.
“Well, of course, Pedro. They didn’t know each other beforehand.” I gave him a bewildered look. Did he not understand what a hookup was?
“No,” Pedro said, waving his hand. “I mean… I mean us. It was just the pill, then. What happened between us?”
His eyes met mine, amber bright, and searching.
Looking back at him, it was impossible not to remember this morning, those same eyes looking up at me, pupils blown wide as I rode him. He’d filled me in just the way I’d been aching for. Maybe it was because I’d suffered a four-year drought, but the sex had been explosive. No way I was going to say all of that though. No way I was going to tell him I’d noticed from the beginning how handsome he was, how at ease he made me, how he made me laugh.
“Yeah, it was just the pill. That’s all,” I said, untruthfully. It was better that way. He didn’t need to deal with all my half-formed feelings about this. When he nodded, looking a little relieved, I felt even more sure I’d made the right choice. “We don’t have to feel awkward about it. Not at all. We can’t be held responsible for crazy, hormonal, heat sex. The news said so and everything.”
“Right, right, of course. That was the theme of all the news reports I saw today,” Pedro said. “But, I mean, it was good though, right? It was fun. I mean, we were pretty good at it.” He shrugged. “A little sex between friends is…fine. Right?”
Okay, okay. I had to play this cool. I definitely didn’t want to come off like I was inexperienced in this. But the reality was that I was inexperienced. Completely inexperienced. My one partner had been Jason. We’d dated forever. Sex had been the next step in what was meant to be a lifelong thing. After Jason? Until recently, it had seemed like an impossibility, and even after I’d gotten to the point where I could imagine maybe dipping my toes back into those waters, it’d still seemed like some far-off possibility.