by Aiden Bates
“Thank you,” Sam stammered, clearly still in the middle of trying to stop himself from crying. Adam laid the clothes out and slipped back out into the hallway; he didn’t need to intrude on the poor Omega sobbing in the shower. He could help dry those tears when he was clothed and wrapped up in warm, soft things.
He went back into the kitchen, flipping the stovetop burner off and giving the cocoa one last stir before setting the spoon down. He pulled out two oversized mugs—his and Sam’s favorite mugs from their days in college—and set them on the counter in preparation for Sam coming out. There was a restlessness that settled in his bones, and he fought the urge to pace, knowing that if Sam came out to see that it would only serve to upset him. He breathed out a huff and raked a hand through his hair, wanting nothing more than to just know what happened. Perhaps he had been too eager to pin the blame on Dustin, his own personal feelings clouding his judgment. Maybe something else entirely had happened.
Much as he hated Dustin, part of him hoped it had nothing to do with him.
Because if it was something other than problems with his mate, Adam would be more than happy to just help him feel better until things settled down enough for Sam to go home. They’d had each other’s back since they were in elementary school, he and Sam, and it was no trouble for him to help his best friend through anything that might have come up, anything at all. Best case scenario, there was something stressful that was happening with work or family that didn’t like that he had a boyfriend, and they could just talk and laugh and play video games until Sam felt better and went home the next morning.
If it did involve his bond mate…
If it did…that could lead to some very heavy things in Sam’s not too distant future. Things that could and most likely would change his friend, and probably not for the better. Things that Adam would unconditionally support him through, but things he didn’t wish on his friend.
He wouldn’t wish that hell on anyone—not even Dustin.
He heard the shower turn off, and made a concerted effort to make himself look as laid back as possible while simultaneously looking occupied; he didn’t need to amp up Sam’s anxiety just because he was stressing about Sam’s stress, after all. He stirred the cocoa again, for lack of anything better to do, and moved to the cabinet, rummaging around for the canister of mini marshmallows that they both liked to sprinkle into their cocoa. His sensitive hearing picked up on Sam’s bare feet padding into the kitchen, audible against the wood flooring, and he craned his head back to get a look at the Omega.
Sam looked a little better, at least more like he was comfortable. There were still dark circles bruised beneath his eyes, but he at least looked a little more like he was able to face whatever it was that had brought him to Adam’s doorstep. Adam flashed him what he hoped was an easy smile as he pulled the container of marshmallows out of his pantry.
“Cocoa’s done,” he said, shaking the canister with a triumphant grin, “and I have those little marshmallows we used to fight over!” Sam let out a laugh that felt too sharp and rough for such a kind and gentle soul, and it scraped against Adam’s senses unpleasantly, knowing that his friend was still hurting and being unable to do anything about it.
“We never fought over them,” Sam argued, sticking his tongue out in a playful manner but even that looked forced. “I’d beg for them while you held them over my head and emptied them all into your mug.”
“You wound me with such accusations!” Adam gasped, clutching at his chest in mock agony. “But in the interest of fairness,” he handed him the container with a flourish worthy of the theatre. “Please, use them first, and use as much as you want!”
“So dramatic,” Sam said with a quiet laugh as Adam ladled their mugs full of the cocoa. His laugh felt a little more genuine, a little more like Sam, and Adam relished the victory, however slight it might have been.
“Marshmallows are very serious business, I’ll have you know.” Adam laughed as Sam promptly tipped the container to spill a good sum of the little marshmallows into his mug.
“Haven’t they always been?” Sam asked as he grinned wryly, handing the canister back to him. Adam kept a sidelong eye on Sam as he sprinkled his own cocoa with the confectionery sweets. Seeing the small smirk fading from Sam’s features, he watched as the Omega curled into himself, arms wrapping around his middle, and Adam began to wonder if perhaps his suspicions were a little more on the mark than he had hoped they would be. He set the canister on the counter—there were plenty of marshmallows left after all—and turned back to face his friend. The action forced Sam to rally himself back into standing upright and taking hold of his old favorite mug.
“C’mon,” Adam said in a voice that sounded almost too bright to be genuine. “Let’s grab this and bring it to the living room, yeah? I’ve got a blanket going in the dryer for us so it’ll be great to lounge in.”
“Sounds good,” Sam said with a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes, like he was forcing himself to go through the motions of their normal interactions without actually feeling any joy. Worry niggling in the back of his mind, Adam led him to the living room and set his own mug down on the coffee table. “If you want to put something on the TV, go for it.” Sam nodded again but remained where he was, hands still curled around his mug as Adam went back to the dryer to pull out the blanket. It felt almost too warm to his hands, but he knew Sam loved when things were really warm against his skin, especially when he was stressed out. He padded back into the living room, handing Sam the blanket. The Omega seemed to hesitate for a moment, unsure of what to do, so Adam sat down beside him and took the initiative. “Need to cuddle?”
Sam nodded, and the solution was found. It wasn’t unusual for the two of them to cuddle as they talked about things that were bothering them—as they had grown up together, they had shared their burdens and their joys, and usually while snuggled under a blanket together, sipping at something hot and sweet. It had been a usual thing, so usual that their circle of friends weren’t even fazed by it when they would see the two of them practically lying atop one another as they chatted about anything and nothing. And really, affection was not out of Sam’s nature anyhow—with any of Sam’s friends, he would often stroke their arm, hold their hand, or openly share his physical contact with them. It was just the person Sam was, an open and bleeding heart, from the day Adam had met him.
Draping the blanket over himself and leaning into Adam, Sam let out a shuddering sigh that seemed to rattle his whole body, as if he were holding in all his hurt and trying to let it out in short bursts rather than letting the whole thing flood out at once. The Alpha rested his arm around his friend’s back, hoping that it was a comfort rather than something that made him uneasy. Sam curled into him, leaning bodily against the Alpha with his head tucked under his chin, and for a long moment, neither of them said anything at all, and Adam was fine with that; he was just glad to be able to be close to Sam.
Whenever they were huddled close like this, Adam would normally breathe in his friend’s scent and bask in it, but Sam had used his body wash, so his normal scent seemed different—almost like how it would smell if the two of them were—‘stop it, you,’ Adam chastised himself. ‘Your friend’s having a breakdown here, he doesn’t need your crush making things more complicated,’ so he tamped down on that thought and waited for Sam to start speaking. Their silence was hardly an awkward one, but Adam felt the tension bleeding out from Sam even as he drank his cocoa.
“We, ah,” Sam spoke up softly, still looking down into his half empty mug. Adam watched him patiently. “Dustin and I…we, um, we had a fight.” Adam resisted the urge to growl but said nothing as Sam continued. “No, that’s not right…” He could hear the frown in Sam’s voice. “It was more…” He swallowed. “I had told him something he didn’t like, and then we were yelling and then…then he tried to...” He heard Sam sniff quietly, and he drew his arm tighter around him as a silent show of support. “I’m…I’m probably not making a whole
lot of sense, am I?”
“It’s a little hard to follow, but that’s okay.” Adam ran his hand up and down Sam’s arm comfortingly. “Start over from the beginning. What was it that you told Dustin that started all this?” Sam flinched bodily. “I’m not accusing you of anything, hon. I’m just trying to follow along.”
“I’m…I’m pregnant.” Sam’s voice was nearly a whisper, and Adam would have missed it had his focus not been zeroed in on him already. Huh. That was…genuinely not where Adam thought the conversation would go. But Sam was talking again, so he could put his ponderings off for later. “We had been so careful—for years, we’d been so careful—I was on the pill, and,” he sniffed again. “Well, doesn’t matter. I’m pregnant—about two months along, give or take. And I thought,” Sam hiccuped. “I thought Dustin would be happy—we used to talk about having a family someday.”
“I remember. Some days it was all you could talk about.” It had been rather gross, when they were in high school, whenever Dustin would brag about the litter of pups that he would sire with Sam. The Omega had always flushed whenever that would happen and look uncomfortable, but it had never stopped Dustin from oversharing. Adam had suspected it was to stir up jealousy in the other Alphas that had recently presented in their friend circle—possibly even in the Omegas, too, like he was flaunting how good and nurturing of an Alpha he was. It had never sat well with Adam, but then, nothing that involved Dustin ever had.
“Then I told him, and he got so mad, Adam.” His voice began to get water logged, like he was trying to not start crying again, and the sound made the Alpha’s heart break. “He kept trying to accuse me of lying about it, but I showed him the test stick I took. Then he got even madder because he started to accuse me of cheating, and how the baby couldn’t possibly be his.” Sam looked up at Adam, staring with wide eyes as if he were silently pleading. “I never slept with anyone else—it can’t be anyone else’s baby but his, and I tried to tell him that. I tried so hard, Adam.”
He sniffled as fat tears began to trek down his face. Adam used the pad of his thumb to wipe them away as gently as he could, trying to force down the roiling anger that he felt toward Dustin because how dare he do this to someone? Especially someone like Sam.
“I know you did, hon,” Adam soothed, continuing his vigil of wiping away tears that had not ceased to fall.
“But it didn’t matter,” Sam said around a hiccup. “He didn’t care. He kept getting angrier and angrier and nothing I was saying was right, and—” he sobbed, “and he started saying that I needed to get rid of it and—” more sobs spilled from his lips. “And when I said no, he said he’d get rid of it for me and he tried to—” His words devolved into weeping but still he tried to speak. “So I ran! I ran and I didn’t know where to go but I can’t go back there and—”
“This is not your fault, Sam.” Adam said in a gently stern voice. “Do you understand? This is not your fault.”
“Okay,” Sam said in a voice that sounded like he didn’t believe it.
“Did you grab anything before you left?” Adam asked, already beginning to formulate a plan in his head as to how to help Sam.
“I have my wallet.” Sam said as he looked down sheepishly. “And my phone and my keys but that was all I had on me.” He shook his head. “I was just…I was so desperate to get out of there.”
“And your name is on the apartment, too?” Adam asked him. Sam nodded. “Okay, before you decide anything else, we need to get your stuff out of there so that there’s nothing there for you to go back to—Dustin is clearly not safe to be around. Is he going to be at work tomorrow?”
“Probably?” Sam commented, frowning as if in thought. “He usually goes in around eight.”
“Okay.” Adam nodded, already shifting to pull his phone out from his pocket. He suddenly had people to call, and a rescue to plan. “Okay, we’re gonna get this fixed, all right?”
“What,” he saw out of the corner of his eye that Sam was swallowing. “What are you talking about?” What a strange question. Adam had thought himself obvious.
“I’m talking about getting your stuff out of that hellhole, Sam.”
He began to flip through his contacts, debating on who to call. No one needed details that Sam didn’t want to share, but he was going to need more than just himself for going there and moving things. And security; they couldn’t go in the apartment without Sam, and Sam was going to need protecting. Lots of protecting. He could call a few Beta friends that they had, but Alphas would be a better shot—they would all be as big and intimidating as Dustin and himself, and Dustin would understand that shenanigans wouldn’t be tolerated while Sam was moving out.
“Adam, wait,” Sam said as he shifted, setting his mug down and lightly tugging at the front of Adam’s shirt. “Wait, wait, wait, what do you mean? I don’t have anywhere to put my stuff—”
“But you can’t go back and just live there with Dustin pulling this shit on you,” Adam growled. “Just crash here until you can get your feet under you.”
“What,” Sam breathed, blinking owlishly at him as he grew still. “What are you saying?”
Adam had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Sam was always hesitant to intrude on others, and that was fine and all, but he needed to not be in his old apartment at this point, so the answer was glaringly obvious to Adam.
“I’m saying,” Adam insisted gently, pulling his gaze away from his phone to look at Sam seriously, “that living where you’re living isn’t viable because it puts you and your baby in danger.” He paused a moment and clarified. “And that you should probably just move in with me—at least for now.”
3
He’ll Get By, with a Little Help
“Adam,” Sam breathed as he blinked at him again, the concept of living with him again turning over and over in his mind. “I don’t,” he wanted to say, ‘I don’t want to impose upon you,’ but he knew that he had few other prospects at the moment; it was such a sudden thing that he’d had no time to even consider living arrangements, let alone what was going to happen with his bond mate—they might have just had a falling out, but Sam was still technically marked until he had formally removed it himself. He had to resist the urge to touch his mark—the familiar bite scar on the side of his neck, by his scent gland. He’d had it for years now, and though he knew that it was going to be gotten rid of—because he wanted to end things with Dustin for his own safety, as well as his baby’s—the thought of it not being there made him feel strange. It had been a part of him for the greater part of his adult life thus far, and the thought of there being a scar there, rather than a mark, made him feel a spark of white-hot shame in the pit of his gut. “I don’t want to be a burden,” he finally settled on saying.
It wasn’t outright denying the offer—he was in no position to do so—but it was still the truth; him moving in with anyone, even Adam, would have to imply that, should his prospects not get better, his roommate to be would have to be fine with the possibility of his baby living there as well after it was born. He couldn’t blame anyone for thinking that as a deal breaker—children were a weighty thing to have to potentially take care of, doubly so when they weren’t yours. Sam was reluctant to have to make anyone else shoulder that responsibility even remotely—especially Adam.
“Please,” Adam said as he smiled at him in that same solid, safe way he always had. “You and I were practically roommates in college.”
It wasn’t entirely untrue; while there had been a dorm specifically for Omegas, Sam had opted out, instead staying in the coed dorm that had men, women, Alphas, Betas, and Omegas all under one roof. It was a lesson in cohabitation, of having to live around one another without fear; it was likely they would, someday, have a neighbor in an apartment building or neighborhood that was an Alpha or an Omega, and they needed to learn how to coexist without their baser instincts kicking them in the heads and overtaking them. As such, that dorm was something of a halfway house to reality, and that was where t
he both of them had lived all throughout college.
“True,” Sam said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “But that was a little bit different. I mean,” Sam gestured to his own stomach, “I wasn’t pregnant, and there wasn’t the possibility of you having to worry about a baby that isn’t yours.”
“Implying that I’m worried about it at all.” Adam commented with a shrug. “I’m gonna accept it either way because it’s yours, all right? And besides,” he flashed a toothy grin, “this townhouse is absolutely fucking huge.” He gestured vaguely with his arm. It wasn’t an untrue statement; the townhouse had three floors, with a total of four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Neither of them would want for privacy, that much was certain. “Even if I wanted nothing to do with the baby, it’s not like I would even know it was here half the time.”
Sam couldn’t rightly argue with that statement—Adam had kept his childhood bedroom in the loft on the top floor of the town house; his parents had renovated the attic into a full fledged third floor in anticipation for their expanding family, as they had planned on having more children than just Adam. However, those dreams had gone unfulfilled as Adam’s mother had taken severely ill not long after he had been born, and pregnancies were deemed too high a risk for her to take with her declining health. So, he had practically grown up with a third of the house to himself—rather, himself and Sam, for how frequently he had been over as they grew.
“I,” he swallowed around another wave of tears that threatened to take over him, touched that Adam was still so fiercely protective of him despite not being his mate. “Thank you…” He straightened his back, suddenly needing to make his stance on the matter clear. “I promise, I’ll pay rent, and help with the groceries and the dishes and—”
“Slow down there, hon,” Adam soothed, his large hand rubbing comforting circles into his back again. “One step at a time, all right? First things first, we have to get your stuff here.”