by Aiden Bates
Pete wasn't all that thrilled about bed rest, but he took it. As long as he got a healthy little girl at the end, he'd do anything.
He explained the situation to his alpha when Ozzy got home. Ozzy made a face. "Well that's not going to be much fun for you," he said. "What can I bring you?"
"Right now? Just you. Maybe my laptop before you go to work in the morning. We'll see what I can find. It's only for a little while. There are some people who have to go through this for months." Pete sighed.
"I can see if your mom or brother wants to come by. Or that wacky old bat, Aunt Isabella. I'm sure they'd all love to keep you company."
"Just what I need," Pete groaned. "They'll love to sit and look at my stretch marks."
"Hey. I love your stretch marks, every last one of them." Ozzy kissed one, just to prove a point. "Listen. I want to be here tomorrow night, but I called my parents to give them my new address and they want to talk."
Pete rubbed his hand along Ozzy's cheek. "Okay. We're in love, not chained together at the ankle."
"I know, I know." Ozzy blushed. "But I hate having to leave you alone when you're not supposed to be getting up or anything, so I asked Pretty Boy if he'd be willing to come by and help you out."
"You mean Ryan?" Pete raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah. Sorry. It's just what we call him in the department." Ozzy's blush deepened. "At first it was because of him, and it was mean and everything. Now it's mostly to bust Robles' chops. Anyway, you two seemed to get along okay. He's a good guy, and he's pregnant too so you two can talk about pregnancy stuff and what a pain alphas are."
"His might be a pain. Mine is perfect." Pete chuckled and kissed Ozzy's scarred knuckles. "I'll be fine, but it'll be good to have someone here to talk to besides Marissa. She's not the best conversationalist."
Pete wasn't under any illusions about Ozzy's family. Ozzy didn't speak about them often, but he knew that they weren't exactly accepting of him or of his presence in their eldest's life. He could accept that. He didn't need to be their favorite, as long as he was Ozzy's.
He did feel badly, though, about separating a son from his parents. He knew that Ozzy loved his parents, and that he'd made the effort to connect with them before Pete had screwed everything up. It was outside of his control, of course. He couldn't control their reactions, he couldn't control how he responded to Ozzy, and he couldn't control how Ozzy responded to him. They loved each other, and they were going to love each other forever.
What made parents think they could decide their child's love life like that? Okay, so Ozzy'd had a difficult time adjusting to civilian life when he came back from war. Lots of guys did. That didn't mean they surrendered their right to make decisions for themselves, for crying out loud.
Of course, the way that Ozzy's parents went about it wasn't all that much different from the way that Pete's mother went about it. Cynthia used different methods, because people from Cynthia's world just didn't take a hands-on approach like the Morris family did, but they each had the same goal. Both wanted "what was best" for their sons, through control of their romantic choices.
Cynthia had never known what was best for Pete. Pete was willing to bet that the Morrises had never known what was best for Ozzy. He trusted that Ozzy would stay strong in the face of his parents' resentment and hate, and keep his back when there wasn't anyone else around to do it.
He and Ozzy went to sleep that night in their nice big bed. When they woke up, Pete made extra sure to give his love a good-bye kiss. His parents might not trust him, but Pete did, and Pete wanted him to know it.
He drifted off back to sleep as his belly grew even larger.
...
Ozzy met up with his parents in Stow, which was about halfway between Sudbury and Harvard. They'd agreed to meet up at a place that billed itself as selling Asian cuisine, because of course there was only one type of food served across the entire continent of Asia and it was Crab Rangoon.
Whatever. Ozzy wasn't going to make a fuss about it. He wasn't here for fine dining. He was here to hear his parents out. He didn't expect to hear anything good, and his low expectations were met as soon as he found his parents at their booth. "Son." His father looked up at him with soulful eyes. "Glad to see that leech would let you away."
Ozzy ground his teeth together, but managed to keep his hands from clenching into fists as he took a seat next to his brother. "There aren't a lot of leeches in Sudbury. You're welcome to go try to find one." He smiled up at the waitress, who showed up as soon as he sat down to take a drink order and asked for water, then took a look at the menu.
"You know who your father means, Ozzy." Linda leaned forward and spoke in a stage whisper. "That boy. The one trying to foist a cuckoo bird on you."
"Is this 1950? Because it's starting to feel like 1950." Ozzy sat back in his seat and tried to look at the situation like a cop instead of like a family member. "Pete's not after my pension. He's not after my money. He grew up in a house that's bigger than state police headquarters. His baby girl got jewelry worth more than your house, just as a baby shower gift. Okay? Quit worrying about him being out to take something from me and start worrying about why you think that about a single pregnant omega."
Zack rolled his eyes. "Look. No one's saying that he shouldn't be allowed to keep his baby, but why do you have to get involved here? We just don't trust him. There's something about this all that's very fishy. I mean, you come on the scene and all of a sudden this guy who was supposedly perfectly okay with raising his kid alone is all gung-ho for you?"
"We're gung-ho for one another." Ozzy kept his tone light. "You'd recognize that if you'd ever had a relationship with someone who wasn't your own right hand."
"Ozzy!" Linda banged her hand on the table.
"I'm sorry. I forgot that Zack is left handed." Ozzy smirked. "Now look. Yes, we're moving quickly. I think you need to do some research on what it means to have the alpha or omega gene. There are hormones you can't hope to understand, senses you'll never experience. We do move quickly, for the most part, once we've acknowledged that sense of attraction to the other. It's just our way. We can't help it. Hell, I'd have claimed him already if it weren't for the baby."
Gary drew back. "Ozzy, you're in your thirties now. You're a grown man. You can't just go around making snap judgments based on hormones! You've always been impulsive, but this just takes the cake. You haven't even known this… person… for three months yet and you're moving in with him. That doesn't make sense by any sensible or rational assessment of the world. That completely lets out the fact that you haven't gotten our approval—"
"Because I don't need it."
"I'm going to have you committed." Gary gave a massive sigh. "You've left me with no other choice. You're not going about this rationally."
"Oh, get over yourself." Ozzy pushed his menu away. "This isn't 1847 anymore and you can't actually do that. I'm a grown man, and I'm not just a grown man I'm a grown man who's heading up an actual important investigation. You don't get to decide that I'm incompetent just because I'm choosing a partner you don't like."
"We don't know him to dislike him," Linda pointed out. "We don't need to. It's not about him, although the fact that he's more than willing to take a man who he barely knows when he knows he doesn't have the in-laws' approval is a little suspect, don't you think? If this were one of your little cases, what would you tell the people involved?"
Ozzy restrained a growl. "You do get that my cases are murders, right? People died, and other people couldn't solve it, and that's how they wound up on my desk. It's not… it's not a game. You have to understand this. It's not like some kind of role playing game. We're literally talking about people's lives." He glared daggers at both of his parents. "And I would tell the interfering parents—I have told the interfering parents—that when they're dealing with an adult in his thirties, they have no actual authority. If they haven't managed to imprint whatever their issue is on that kid by now, they can't force it."
"No. Because now you're putting judgments in place that aren't valid. The fact that I was impulsive in middle school, like most twelve-year-old boys, has no bearing here. The fact that I got caught more often than Zack here is only slightly more relevant." Ozzy shook his head in disgust. "What, you think you know something that my commanding officers and now my superiors on the force don't? That they were all willing to put plenty of responsibility on my shoulders but you—you know, deep in your heart of hearts, that I can't be trusted to reason my way through a dinner selection, never mind choosing a life partner?"
Linda pointed her finger at him. "Let's not forget the whole heaping helping of trauma that you served up for yourself over there, buddy boy. That does things to a man. We know. He knows." She jerked her head at her father. "Do you know how many of his parishioners he's had to counsel through PTSD?"
"And do you know how many of his parishioners he hasn't? Yeah, it was hard when I came back. I saw my entire unit die. That leaves a mark on a guy. It doesn't somehow damage my ability to make a decision, and by the way? It's super ableist, and shows your abysmal attitude toward veterans and survivors, that you think it does. Yeah, I survived something. Yeah, I've had some problems with it. That doesn't mean that I cede all control over my life to my parents, okay? I'm doing okay, and I've been doing okay. You're just upset that I'm not submitting. Stay mad." He got up and threw some money onto the table. "That's for the tip."
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going home, to my omega. Have a nice life. I love you, but I won't be in it." He left the restaurant, got into his car, and drove back to Sudbury. He shook with anger as he drove, but he kept the car on the road and moving in a straight line.
Ryan was still there—of course he was there; Ozzy hadn't been gone for very long. Ozzy sprang for a pizza for all three and explained the encounter with the parents. It did occur to him that he probably should have kept it quiet, but maybe it wasn't a bad thing to get an outside perspective on things.
Ryan frowned when Ozzy got to the end of his recitation. "Wait a minute. Hold up. I'm confused. Isn't your dad, like, a minister?"
Pete laid a head on Ozzy's shoulder. "Yeah," Ozzy said. Just inhaling Pete's scent made everything seem better. How could one person, one aspect of one person, have such a profound effect on him? "You'd think he'd be a little more Christian about things, but nah."
Pete nuzzled into Ozzy. "Hey. I'm sorry it came to this. I'm sure they're great people. They raised you."
"Yeah." Ozzy let himself sigh as the enormity of the breach crashed over him. "But it is what it is. As long as I have you, I don't need them or their interfering."
Ryan took off after dinner, saying that he'd see Ozzy tomorrow, and Pete and Ozzy retired to bed. Ozzy wouldn't have minded staying up for a little while longer and puttering around for a while, at least under normal circumstances. Tonight was different. Tonight he wanted the comfort of his mate.
The next morning, he headed into the office and stopped in to see Ryan. "Thanks again for coming out last night. I know it wasn't long, but it really put my mind at ease."
"Any time." Ryan grinned. "Pete's a nice guy. Smart, too. For his sake, I hope the baby comes soon. The whole bed rest thing has got to be murder. I hope it doesn't come to that with me." He shuddered. "But he told me that you thought you might have an idea as to ways that would get your conviction."
"Ah, yeah. I did." Ozzy played with the stapler on Ryan's desk. "Listen. We've noticed how Sierzant's kids aren't immune to being put to work."
"No, they aren't." Ryan hunched in on himself a little. "Wish we could do more for them."
"There might be a way. I mean, not the ones who've been put in that situation already; I'm not sure there's anything we can do for them. But we can get justice." He repeated Balsalmo's story about the dirty cops to Ryan. He knew that the whole investigation was supposed to be secret, but Ryan was trustworthy. He knew that for a fact. "If we could find a way to correlate the arresting officers with pimps for kids picked up during the time that Sierzant was a pimp, that would be a good place to start."
Ryan nodded. "That's a really good idea. And we could take it a step further by looking into kids brought in either DOA or severely injured. Their pasts really only get looked into if foul play is suspected, but we have an excuse now." He winked. "It'll give some of our rookies something to do. They won't even know they're working on anything related to Internal Affairs."
"Thanks, Ryan. I owe you one." Ozzy shook Ryan's hand and stood up. "How are things going with you and the baby, anyway? I've been so caught up in Pete's baby that I haven't asked about yours."
"Well, Pete's baby seems a little larger than life right now. I swear, the poor guy seems so uncomfortable! But yeah." He put his hand on his baby bump. "We're doing good. What I can tell you for sure is that he doesn't like court. I'm pretty sure he bruised a rib when we had a court date for the case I worked with Nick. I'm not sure if it was all the noise, or just my stress levels at being in a court room, or what the hell ever, but he doesn't like going to court."
"Sensible little guy. No one likes to go to court." Ozzy chuckled. "So you're sure it's a boy?"
"As sure as they can be without invasive procedures." He shrugged. "I mean, we'll both be happy as long as he's healthy."
"Yeah. Same." He blushed. "I keep forgetting that she's not really mine."
"I'm not in the same position you are." Ryan smiled at him and let his cheeks pinken up. "But if you're around from the beginning, and you love her, I'm pretty sure it counts. I'm around a lot of families, in a lot of different circumstances, and believe me when I tell you that it's the love that counts. The rest will come later."
The love wasn't a problem. The love could never be a problem. Ozzy knew that he would love Pete until the stars fell from the sky, and Pete would love him until those same stars cooled. What about Marissa, though? Would she someday want to know about her biological father? What would Pete tell her?
They would cross that bridge when they came to it. For now, Ozzy resolved to focus on building their loving little family.
Information poured in from different sources. Lt. Ryley in Worcester was making some headway with teasing out the older information. Apparently no one had thought it all that odd that a cohort of state troopers had decided to transfer over to become city cops, and then had all stayed on as beat cops without ever seeking to transfer into another department or get a promotion. Discussions with other officers showed that while one or two had seemed to drive personal cars that should have been beyond their reach, most of them hadn't lived visibly ostentatious lives.
Amos in the Troopers' Internal Affairs division turned up similar information, and transferring those guys to Worcester hadn't stemmed the tide. It turned out that the troopers involved had lived somewhat more ostentatious lives than the troopers who had transferred, but still no one had raised any eyebrows or done any digging.
Ozzy slapped his hand down on yet another file, this one for a trooper named Meyrick. "Look at this one. One month he's looking at foreclosure. Next month he's out of foreclosure, by the end of the year he's paid off his house, year after that he's got a damn Ferrari. No one asks a single question?"
Nenci sniggered at him. "Maybe he just found himself a sweet little sugar omega."
"Suck it, Nenci. I swear to God." Ozzy turned around to glare furiously at the elder statesman of the department, who blew him a kiss in return. "Seriously, no one asked a single question?"
"No one wants to see it." Tessaro flipped a pencil up into the air and watched it stick into the ceiling tile. "If one of us was dirty—and we're not—every single one of us would make every excuse possible to justify why he was actually a really goo
d guy and hadn't done anything, it was all a misunderstanding. We don't want to think anything is truly wrong with the people we spend our time with day in and day out. I mean Nenci over there is very clearly a tree troll, but we keep telling ourselves he's a cop because we don't want to admit that we were sharing space with a tree troll."
No one said anything for a long moment. Then Robles spoke very slowly. "Tessaro, did you get into the evidence locker again? Cause that's bush league."
"Yeah, everyone knows that Nenci's a bridge troll, not a tree troll." Langer bent his head to his work again.
"You know what I mean though," Tessaro said, laughing as Nenci flipped them all off. "Really. No one's going to ask questions, specially not when their buddy still seems to be getting his work done. You can't turn this into a witch hunt."