by Aiden Bates
Oliver must have worked his fingers to the bone on this.
Sam shook his head. A guy like Oliver was one in a million. All of their lab guys were hard workers. All of their lab guys were brilliant. Even the ones who'd been caught up in the drug scandal had been brilliant and hard-working, in their way. They'd just been dirty.
The good ones were all still brilliant and hard-working, but Oliver was head and shoulders above them. He was the kind of guy that could look at a problem and say, "Oh, I wonder if we look at the science this way, if it will show us the answer." And it just would. Sam had known that for three years; it was part of the reason that the guys in Cold Case loved working with Oliver. He didn't wait to get a request for DNA, and then wait for an analysis on a hammer, but threw everything he could at the evidence to come up with answers to questions the detectives hadn't asked yet.
Oliver was brilliant. He was sweet, too, and so loving that he could make Sam feel like he had something to offer again. Sam had never felt so right, such a sense of home, as he did when he was buried inside Oliver. What might it feel like to hold him all night long? What might it be like to watch Oliver's face as the sun rose over the lake, casting its first rays over his bronze skin?
He couldn't afford to let himself think like that. Oliver was out of reach and off limits. He was young and reckless. It was up to Sam, older and wiser, to make the right decision for both of them.
Instead of calling Oliver and thanking him for his work, he read it in greater depth. Apparently some image analyst had taken the grainy security videos from the 1992 fire, refined the images, made notes in the file, and then put everything away in a box. Of course he did; why would he do something else like tell someone to re-open the damn case? It wasn't like people were dead or anything.
He took the description that analyst had left and tried to be grateful that they at least had that much. Then he called up an old buddy who worked in Arson Investigations now, Kayode Samuel. Kayode had risen through the ranks to become the lieutenant in charge of that division. Sam wasn't even that resentful of him for it. Kayode was a good guy and a damn good cop who knew his fires.
"Kayode, it's Sam Nenci over in Cold Case, how are you?" He tapped his pencil against his desktop.
"I'm doing pretty well, Sam, all things considered. We're about to start on wildfire season, so I'm a little on edge. What's going on with you all? I hear you guys have made some pretty big collars lately. Nice one with that serial down in Lakeville."
"Thanks." Sam rubbed the back of his neck. "I won't lie; it was a while before any of us could sleep normally. That one was mostly Langer's case, but we all worked on that."
"You'd kind of have to. What's going on, Sam? You don't usually call in the middle of the day unless you've got a burning question." Kayode chuckled at his own pun.
Sam groaned. Kayode didn't have many flaws. Bad fire puns was one of them. "Well, as it happens, I'm working on a cold murder and arson. Two of them in the same place, actually. Twenty-five years apart. The second fire had security footage, so we've got a description of a possible suspect. I was wondering if you had some kind of a list or database or whatever of known arsonists who were active on the North Shore in the late eighties or early nineties who might match this guy's description."
Kayode hummed. "As a matter of fact, I could probably come up with something. Why don't you send me the description and I'll see what I can do? It could take a couple of days, just to warn you."
"Not a problem. Time is our friend over here in Cold Case." Sam cut and pasted the description and emailed it to his old buddy. "Thanks for your help, Kayode. I appreciate it."
"Hey, if you're working on an arson case, you need to get Oliver Wesson in the lab to help you out. I'm telling you, there isn't anything that boy can't do."
Sam slid down in his chair. "Yeah. Oliver's been helping on the case. He's the one who found the footage. He built this whole animation, to prove that the same person did both crimes."
"Did he now? Well, I'll have to talk to him about sharing with the class. Thanks for the tip, Sam. I'll get back to you as soon as I hear anything."
"Thanks, Kayode."
After he hung up, Sam stared at his screen for a long time. He didn't need Kayode to sit there and tell him how amazing Oliver was. Maybe they had an alpha down in Arson Investigations who was looking for an omega. That would be just perfect for Oliver.
Sam broke a pencil. It was one thing to say that Oliver would be better off with someone else. It was something else to plan for it.
He had a therapy appointment that day. He took off from work a little bit early and headed into Arlington, to Trujillo's office. She gave him a cool, professional smile when he got there, and then she looked at his hands. "You've been biting your nails, Detective."
"Have I?" Sam looked down at his nails. "Oh my Lord, I have. I've never done that before."
She nodded. "You're under a lot of stress. Anyone can see that. Why don't we have a chat about that?"
Sam squirmed on the edge of his seat. "I don't know, it's kind of embarrassing."
"If it's embarrassing, then it's probably something we should talk about. Maybe we can address the reasons you feel embarrassed and help you to accept yourself." Her lips curved, just a little bit. "Why don't you start at the beginning?"
Sam pressed his lips together, but then he forced himself to relax. This was supposed to be a safe space and he was paying to talk about this crap here.
He took a deep breath and told Trujillo about his week, starting with his brilliant decision to go and confront Oliver on Friday night. Trujillo listened to Sam's explanations. She listened to him pour his heart out. She made little notes here and there, even though she typically didn't write things down. He ended with his reaction to his own suggestion of fixing Oliver up with an alpha from Arson Investigations, and hung his head. "It's all so embarrassing. I dug a hole for myself that I can't get out of."
Trujillo just pursed her lips. "Okay. I don't know Oliver. Let's try the story again. This time, I'm going to stop you every time you say something negative, and we're going to find a way to re-frame that thought. It's going to feel incredibly cumbersome and ridiculous at first, but believe me it's going to be helpful in the long run."
Sam glowered, but he yielded. He did want to get better, and Trujillo was the expert. "Okay. So Friday night I made the brilliant decision to go over to Oliver's place and explain why I couldn't be with him."
"Sarcasm and self-directed anger. Reframe that."
Sam gaped. How the hell was he supposed to reframe it? "On Friday night I made a… I chose to go to Oliver's place to explain myself, even though I knew that this might not be the best course of action."
The corners of Trujillo's mouth twitched. "Better. We'll work on that. Go on."
Sam's story took more than twice as long to tell with all of the interruptions, and Sam got frustrated enough to shout more than once. That didn't bother Trujillo, who just sat through his ranting and kept going. "What the hell was the point in all of that anyway?" he asked her.
"A lot of our issues—such as the issues you've described—ultimately stem from what are called errors of thought. I don't really like that name for it, but that's the technical term. What they really are is destructive thought patterns, usually about ourselves. If we want to change the way that we behave, we have to change the way that we think. Instead of thinking, I'm weak because I slept with this man that I truly care about, we need to change that to, I did something that I didn't intend to do, but it doesn't reflect on me as a person. Does that make sense?"
Nenci crossed his arms across his chest. "But I am weak for sleeping with him. I'm supposed to know better."
Trujillo sighed and put her pad aside. "Sam, I'm not here to tell you what's right or wrong in terms of this omega. That's not something I'm allowed to do. I can tell you that your behavior is hurtful toward him, but you know that. That's why you came in to see me, or at least part of the reason. Yo
u want to stop hurting him. That's fine. We can work on that.
"Let's talk about what it is about Oliver that you love." She picked up her pen again.
Sam closed his eyes. He forced himself to relax. "I love his mind," he said after a long moment. "I love how agile it is. I love his scent. It makes me feel good. Safe. Protected. Protective." He opened his eyes again. "I love his trust in me, which is probably long gone."
She held up her hand. "Mind reading, Sam."
"Sorry. I love his trust in me." He bit his tongue against the rest of the sentence.
"Good. What is it that Oliver loves in you?"
"I have no clue."
Trujillo hid a laugh behind her hand. "Come on, Sam. Work with me here."
Sam bit down on the inside of his cheeks. How the hell was he supposed to know what Oliver loved about him? "Well, he trusts me. So I must make him feel safe." He opened his mouth to say that he couldn't see how, but he closed it again. It wasn't constructive, and Trujillo would yell at him for mind reading again.
"Very good." She rewarded him with a full smile. "What else?"
"My scent probably has something to do with it." Sam's cheeks warmed up. "That's just an alpha and omega thing, I mean, I can't explain that, but it's mutual."
Trujillo held up a hand. "Don't worry too much about it. I work with a lot of alphas." She put the hand down. "What else?"
Sam took a deep breath. What else made Oliver want him, as opposed to any of the more appropriate alphas? "I'm good at my job," he decided after a long moment. "I try to be empathetic toward the victims, and I try my damnedest to get justice for them. That seems to be important to him."
"Good." She made a note. "Now just think about each of those things. Hold onto them and focus on them, okay?"
Sam closed his eyes. He was damn good at his job. He was good at his job because he cared about it. He hadn't just learned to care about it after Chris died, either. He'd always cared about crime victims. He'd always wanted to help people.
"Now. All of those negative things that you talked about earlier. Do you think that Oliver sees those when he thinks about you, or talks about you?"
Sam swallowed. "I don't know. I haven't been treating him well."
"But he still keeps letting you in. He still sees you as someone he can love. It's hard to remember that, when you're in the heat of the moment or when you're in a bad mental place and down on yourself. But there is someone who can see those good sides of you, even though you're trying hard not to let him.
"That means that you do have something to offer, Sam. Now, I'm not going to tell you to pursue Oliver or not. What I am going to tell you is that if you choose not to, it's because of a choice you made, because of you, not because of any lack of something to offer. You're a good man. Don't forget that."
Sam hung his head. The ball was in his court. Why did it still feel like he couldn't touch it?
Chapter Nine
Now that Oliver knew what had really been going on with the case, and with Sam, he felt sicker than ever. He thought he'd been foolish before. Now he knew just how foolish. He hadn't just been used by the man he loved; he'd been used by that man's boss for his own entertainment.
Who else from back there in Cold Case had been in on it? He didn't want to believe that Sam had known, but he'd have put almost anything by the other alphas in that department. None of them gave Sam the respect he deserved.
He couldn't let himself dwell on it. The merest thought of what had happened left him running for the bathroom or a wastepaper basket. As the immediate misery faded, he decided that he would exonerate Sam from complicity. He didn't have any evidence, but he'd been just as much a victim as the others. The fact that he'd continued to hurt Oliver after the fact was a separate issue.
Nothing was really changed. Oliver would never trust an alpha again. Who knew what was really going on behind the scenes, or what their friends had put them up to? No, Oliver would consider himself mated to science from now on. Sure, sharing his body with another human being for the first time had torn down all of the barriers he'd built up between himself and his desires, but that was okay. He would just build them up again.
He'd done it before, after all.
The nausea was a problem, but that would fade once he distanced himself from his brief affair. How fragile was he, anyway, that he was left throwing up after a one-sided affair that had lasted for all of two nights? Honestly, the thought was ridiculous. He'd have snickered at anyone who admitted to such a thing, behind his back of course.
The dizziness and lightheadedness were another problem. Good God, Oliver was a mess. He was turning into an official Victorian Lurid Potboiler Heroine. Pretty soon he was going to faint at the sight of blood, and given that he worked with blood all day long, that was a problem.
He knew that all of these wretched side effects would pass. He might be a pathetic example of a man, and more fragile than antique porcelain, but he would ride it out until time passed. The parts of his soul that had been rubbed raw by Sam's defection would scab over, and then they would scar. He would survive, and he would be stronger for it. Eventually, he'd be grateful.
Today was not that day, but it would come. In the meantime, he would stiffen his upper lip and do his best to hide his weakness from those around him.
He finished out the workweek and helped Jake pick out furniture for his new apartment. That turned out to be a lot of fun, and he managed to forget about his own problems for a little while. They moved him in on Sunday, July 2nd, and christened it with homemade pizza and a bottle of wine. Joe came by to celebrate too, as did Dinesh. It felt downright pleasant.
He started the next week at work with a message from Lt. Samuel in Arson Investigations. He was moderately irked—miffed might have been a better term—that Oliver had developed a system to animate a fire scene for Sam but not for him. Oliver just laughed. "It's hardly favoritism, Lt. Samuel. I came up with it on the fly when I was trying to find a way to prove that a series of fires were linked, across time and jurisdictions. I'm more than happy to come down there and show you the program. I'm sure someone down there can improve on it."
He did go down to Arson Investigations, with his laptop, and demonstrate the animation program he'd created. It took him about an hour to explain how the program worked with the different variables, and then the detectives all wanted to play with it. Oliver didn't mind. He liked sitting down there in Arson, and he could have watched the animations run all day.
He'd been fine when he'd been down in Arson, but by the time he got back to his desk his nausea had come back full force. He struggled to keep it contained, but resorted to technical reviews and a lot of ginger ale for the rest of the day.
The next day brought him new samples from a fresh arson investigation to work on. This was a current case, so time was of the essence. Oliver was able to block the nausea for long enough to get his work done. He felt Jake's eyes on him, but he didn't say anything. Jake was his best friend; of course he was going to notice if Oliver was running off to the bathroom every couple of hours.
The rest of the workweek stretched on and on. Oliver's phone didn't ring, other than for work-related questions. Oliver had friends other than Jake, of course, but they mostly connected by social media and they'd scattered after college.
Sometimes he checked out their social media pages when he needed a breather. Richie Heijmans was working out in Seattle. He was strictly a toxicologist; sometimes Oliver called him to consult. For the most part, though, Richie's posts were about why you should only buy drugs from someone you could trust and about coffee. Richie had become a coffee connoisseur.
Tom Alemagna was working down in Florida. He worked for the Florida state crime lab, and his work-related stories were always great, but his social media posts were always from parties and nightclubs. Oliver had never been the nightclub or party type, but right now he couldn't help but wonder if he hadn't wasted his youth. He was lonely. He was always going to be lonely.
>
Jim Yamada had a steady alpha, down in Austin. They looked happy together. Oliver had to turn his head and click away.
He tried to exercise through his issues that weekend. The dizziness made it a little difficult at first, and he figured that mountain biking might not be in his best interest but regular cycling might not be bad. He took some nice long country rides and enjoyed the scenery. He didn't fall off the bike at all, and he only had to get off and throw up in the bushes once. He considered that a win.
He wondered what Sam was doing.
He shouldn't let himself think about it. He knew damn well that Sam wasn't thinking about him. Still, he couldn't help it. Had he found a new omega to toy with? Was he alone in that house of his that overlooked the lake, or was he entertaining someone else? Someone older? Someone younger? What was it that Oliver didn't have, that he couldn't give Sam?