by Aiden Bates
Oliver closed his eyes. He couldn't look at Sam. Of course, with the element of sight removed, all that remained was scent. That was no help to him. Sam's scent was warm, alluring, and all but pulled him to his feet. He wanted to give in so very badly, but there was nothing to give in to. "Sam," he said. He gripped the arms of his chair. "Sam," he said again, "I'm not sure why you're here. I mean, you've come to try and 'explain,' or whatever, before, and it hasn't gone well. I don't know what you want or what. It hurts. I've told you that before. I need to just make a clean break."
Sam made a choked off sound, like a kicked dog, and Oliver turned his head away again. He couldn't let himself feel bad for Sam here. He had to protect himself.
Tessaro cleared his throat and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "What if you didn't have to do that?" He folded his hands together. "What if you didn't have to back away? What if there was an option that let you keep your baby, and be with the man I'm pretty sure you want to be with?"
Sam held his breath, and Oliver glowered at both of them. "I'm pretty sure it would have come up by now, don't you think?" He bit down on the inside of his cheek. "I mean, I might not be perfect. Sure, I slept with him before a claim, but you know what? Thousands of omegas do that and they don't suffer. I didn't even ask him for one. I just… I put his needs first, and this is what I got for it." He bit down on the first knuckle of his thumb.
"I know you did." Sam stood up from the couch. "And that's on me. I was wrapped up in my own stuff and I convinced myself that I was doing right by you. I wouldn't listen to anyone else when they told me I was wrong. Until now. Oliver, I was wrong."
Oliver stopped biting on his skin. His heart quivered in his chest, unsure how to respond. "What are you trying to say here?"
Sam stepped closer. "Oliver, I'm sorry. I was pushing you away because I was afraid of success. I want to be with you. I'm still afraid of claiming you, because of the age difference, but I want to be with you. We can work out the other issues—the claim, or not—later. If you're willing. But I want you to be with someone who loves you, and who loves you with his whole heart. I want you to have the family you deserve—a child you love, or even more than one, and a partner who will support you and give you what you need to make it work. I want to be all of those things for you."
Oliver couldn't move. All he could do was stop and stare at his alpha. "This isn't real," he decided after a long moment. "This is a hallucination; someone at the office dosed me or something."
Tessaro frowned. "Does that happen often?"
"No. But it's more plausible than Sam suddenly deciding that he wants to be a father again after putting me through all of this." Oliver buried his face in his hands and tried to fight off his tears.
Sam stroked Oliver's hand with a finger. "Oliver. I'm so, so sorry that I've done this to you, that I've made you lose this much faith in me. Please let me try again. Let me be your alpha. Let me show you the alpha I've wanted to be for these three years and counting, Oliver."
Oliver pulled his hands away from his face. "How do I know that you're not just going to flake out again in the morning? Or an hour from now?" The question was mostly rhetorical. Oliver's body might be completely on board with everything that Sam was saying, but his head and his heart knew better.
"Look." Sam reached into his pocket. Oliver's eyes were glued to his hands. "I couldn't claim you right now anyway. We can talk about that a little bit later, maybe. But there's a solution that doesn't put you in danger for now." He pulled out a small box, and with a shaking hand he offered it to Oliver.
Oliver couldn't move.
Sam handed the box to Oliver. "Here. It's a ring." He opened the box.
Sam swallowed. "I want to be with you, for the rest of my life. I want to raise our child together. I don't want to lose that chance, Oliver. I don't. I love you. I love that baby, even though it's really not more than a bunch of cells that looks kind of like a bean right now. I want to be yours, if you'll still have me."
Oliver's hands were shaking too much to pick the ring up. It wasn't some kind of ostentatious thing, but a simple gold band with a few small diamonds set into the band. It was clearly designed for a man, a man like Oliver. "I'm scared," he admitted, once he found his voice again. "I don't know what to think. I'm afraid. I want to say yes, but it's such a risk. It's not just me that I'm risking here."
"I know it's not." Sam took the ring and slipped it onto Oliver's finger. "But I have people watching my back. They're not going to let me let you down. They care about you too. Ryan Tran, Tessaro, Jake and Joey—they're all going to hold my feet to the fire and keep me doing the right thing by you, even when I get scared."
Oliver looked up into Sam's eyes and saw desperation, and honesty, and love. He knew that he should pay attention to the lessons that he'd learned. He also knew that he couldn't turn his back now. He reached out and touched Sam's face, letting the light catch the small diamonds in the ring. "Sam," he whispered.
Tessaro bolted for the door. "That's my cue." He grimaced. "I'll be at the bar if anyone needs me."
Sam helped Oliver to his feet. Oliver needed the help; he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so unsteady. His alpha's strong hands held him up and let him get safely to the bedroom. Sam even paused to make sure that the door was locked as they passed it.
When they got to the bedroom, Sam undressed Oliver slowly and carefully. Oliver felt like a present being unwrapped, and that was enough to make him giddy. Sam's care in peeling off Oliver's shirt made Oliver's breath catch in his chest. The softness, the gentleness with which Sam took off Oliver's sweatpants brought a surge of heat to Oliver's entire body.
He leaned back against the pillows on his bed as Sam's eyes looked over his naked form. "I thought I'd never be able to have this again," Sam murmured. "To be with you again. God, Oliver. Thank you." He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off almost violently. His undershirt went next, and then his trousers and underwear. Socks and shoes were the last to go, and Oliver could drink Sam in.
Sam approached the bed and ran his hand down Oliver's chest. "So beautiful," he whispered. He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a small bottle of lube.
Oliver licked his lips as his alpha crawled into the bed with him. Just his scent was enough to make Oliver weak, but pressing their flesh together brought a moan to his lips that he couldn't contain. Was sex like this with all alphas? Oliver didn't know, and he wasn't ever going to know. Sam was it for him, and he'd known it since the day they met.
Sam's hands, and Sam's lips, ran along Oliver's skin to warm him and get him ready. Each caress and every kiss had a purpose. They pushed away the lingering sadness and soothed Oliver's fears. His issues were still a factor, of course. The lessons of the past wouldn't disappear simply because Sam said some pretty words and lay down with him again, but he could feel a change already.
This time their coupling was deliberate, purposeful. Sam took his time opening him up, drawing out the pleasure for Oliver instead of treating it as a means to an end. He rocked his way into Oliver with short, shallow thrusts that built in intensity until he finally bottomed out, and then he set up a slow, romantic rhythm that drew things out even further. Oliver's pleasure built as he rocked his hips, meeting his alpha thrust for thrust, and when he finally came it was without any touch other than his alpha's careful thrusts.
Sam lost the rhythm after that. He collapsed with his head against Oliver's shoulder and panted for a few long moments before he pulled out and got something to clean them up with.
Oliver held his breath when Sam walked away. This was usually when Sam left. Granted, a sample set of two was hardly statistically significant, but he couldn't shake the memories.
Sam pulled the covers back and slipped beneath them. He took Oliver into his arms. "Is it all right if I stay?" he asked in a small voice.
Oliver rolled over and kissed his alpha. "I want you to," he said, and rested his head on Sam's chest.
Part of
Oliver expected to wake up alone, a pillow shoved into the space where Sam had been. In the morning, though, his arms were still full of Sam. He smiled, almost giddy with relief. Maybe things could work out for them after all.
***
Sam and Oliver packed Oliver's clothes up that day and brought them to Hopkinton. They moved the rest of his things over the next few weeks, not that he had much. His apartment wasn't all that huge, so he couldn't afford to accumulate all that much.
There was some furniture, and Sam and Oliver had to discuss that furniture's fate. The furniture was new, or at least newer than the furniture in Sam's place. It was stylish and in great shape, as opposed to Sam's dated and kind of beat-up furniture. Sam liked Oliver's things better, but the older things had been chosen by Chris. He didn't want to get rid of them.
Oliver, being Oliver, had a solution. "The finished basement is empty now. Why not move the older furniture into the basement, and we can turn it into a playroom? That way we're not getting rid of the things you shared with Chris. He's still part of your life." Oliver took Sam's hand. "He's part of our life, and our baby's life. We're growing instead of replacing."
Sam's heart swelled when he heard that. The nagging suspicion that he was somehow being disloyal to Chris' memory was minor, but it hadn't left. He could only love Oliver more, knowing that Oliver was ready and willing to welcome Chris' memory into his heart. Joey came over to help move the heavy things, and that was all there was to it.
Both of Sam's sons were ecstatic about the new arrangements. Joey demanded that his old room become the new baby's nursery and helped to paint it and get it ready. Jake insisted on helping out too, and he brought Dinesh with him to lift, carry, and paint. Oliver blushed at all of the fuss, but he let the alphas do their thing and stayed in the kitchen with Jake to cook.
They got married on the Thursday after they agreed to try again. They didn't have a huge ceremony and they didn't make a fuss. They brought Jake and Joey as witnesses, as well as Ryan Tran and Pat Tessaro. They simply went to the Justice of the Peace, said their vows, and signed the right paper. It didn't take much, and they didn't need much. All that they needed was that commitment.
Their reunion and marriage didn't soothe all ruffled feathers. Ryan Tran had a few private words with Sam about treating Oliver right, and Sam didn't object. He'd earned that, and he knew it. Nina Burton had the same talk with him, which was somehow scarier. Tran might hesitate to hurt a fellow cop. Nina wouldn't.
Either way, Sam wasn't going to draw their ire. He knew that he'd screwed up badly. He was going to do better now. He was going to make Oliver feel like a king.
Of course, it wasn't easy. Sam knew that it wouldn't be easy when he went into the marriage. He was scared, and he knew that he could be overbearing sometimes. Oliver was still sometimes hesitant and he was always going to be young in Sam's eyes. They'd chosen one another, though, and Sam had made a commitment to himself. He was going to do this, and he was going to do it right.
As Oliver's belly grew, the Cooper Block case wound its way through the court system. Very little of that had anything to do with Sam, and even less of that had to do with Oliver. They paid attention, because it was the case that had brought them together, but they didn't need to get involved until the trial itself started.
The trial started six months after Marsten had been arrested. During that time, the Marsten family laid low. They didn't want to make things worse for their paterfamilias, who had been released on his own recognizance provided that he wears a GPS monitoring anklet. Sam couldn't help but shake his head at that. The man had killed sixty people and he got to await trial in the lap of luxury.
The trial started out with interminable opening arguments. The prosecutor talked about the dead, about vendettas, about change and about hewing to old patterns. He spoke about science, about the different ways that technology made it possible to prosecute this type of crime. He spoke about justice, and about the horror of death by fire.
The defense team, led by a man that made Sam's fists itch, countered with arguments about Isaiah Marsten's devotion to his family. He spoke about prior scandals at the crime lab, and about how anything that came out of the lab had to be discounted now due to what had happened in the past. He questioned the value of cold case investigations at all, given that "the perpetrator, whomever he may be, has been quiet for over two decades. Should we waste time chasing after someone who no longer poses a threat?" He harped on his client's age and on his client's generosity.
Sam had to testify, of course. He knew what the prosecutor would ask, and he was able to answer those questions without a problem. He described the facts of the case as he knew them, and detailed the timelines of both fires and how he'd come to determine that Marsten was the culprit. The defense attorney tried to trip him up on cross-examination on the basis of his earlier statements that he hadn't thought that Marsten would be a likely suspect at all, but Sam stood firm. That only made Marsten a more solid candidate, he told the court. He hadn't had any kind of bias that might lead him toward Marsten.
Oliver was next in line, and by the time that he got to testify he was eight full months pregnant and as big as a house. He looked physically uncomfortable as he made his way up to the witness stand, and the judge himself offered Oliver a cushion for his back.
Sam couldn't be sure if the gesture would get Oliver sympathy with the jury or not.
Oliver's testimony took a full day. He had to explain the science behind his findings, and he had to give the details on how he'd created the program that re-created the fires. He then had to show the re-creation for the court, and describe both what was happening and his conclusions.
The defense attorney was vicious on his cross-examination. He tried to attack the science behind Oliver's conclusions, based on the issues that had gone on at the lab in earlier times. Oliver successfully defended all of the science behind his work, so the defense attorney attacked Oliver's personal integrity. He lashed out about Oliver's pregnancy, taking place as it did outside of a claim, and attacked his ethics for sleeping with a detective with whom he'd been working.
Sam heard the lawyer's attacks, and he clenched his fists. He rose in his seat, ready to rip the lawyer limb from limb, but Langer held him back.
Oliver on the other hand heard the lawyer out and then leaned into the microphone. "Your questions are entirely based on beliefs centered around a set of cultural values. My testimony here has been based around science. Science doesn't care what you believe. Science doesn't care who you are. Science cares about facts. If stimulus x is applied, reaction y will be the result. In this case, if kerosene is applied to the walls of a building and splashed onto the carpeting here, and ignited here, the burn pattern will always display like this, regardless of the person who is examining the evidence." He folded his hands and rested them on his belly. "That's how fire works."
Sam could not have been prouder of Oliver than he was in that moment.
The defense called a few witnesses to the stand, but no one could provide an alibi that the prosecution wasn't able to disprove. The defense tried to call some forensic witnesses, but they stated that after viewing Oliver's testimony they were unable to refute it.
The jury came back with a guilty verdict. It wasn't justice, not exactly. Isaiah Marsten had lit the match, and he'd almost certainly ordered the 1992 fire. He hadn't acted alone, and he hadn't named his accomplices. His oldest son had stepped into the headship of the family as soon as the trial began. Nothing would really change, but at least this one man would pay some kind of penalty for his crime.
Sam wasn't in court to hear the verdict. He was notified by text, while he stood at the head of Oliver's bed in the hospital and encouraged him to push.
The birth wasn't an easy one, and Sam ultimately had to leave the room because he couldn't handle seeing Oliver in pain. Once Amelia had been safely delivered, however, Sam could be re-admitted and view his daughter and his husband with the adoration they deserved.
Amelia was perfect. She was tiny, but neither Sam nor Oliver was all that large. She had a full head of wild, dark hair, and an imperious cast to her tiny face that Sam fell in love with immediately. She disliked being put into her bassinet and had a strong preference for being held by one of her fathers or brothers.
Oliver was exhausted and uncomfortable after the birth, but he was happy. He loved their daughter, and he could barely bring himself to part with her long enough to let Sam hold her.
Sam stared down at his husband and child. Maybe he would overcome his fears and claim Oliver, and maybe he wouldn't. What he knew was that he would give them the world.
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Bonus Chapter Sixteen
Oliver strapped Amelia into her car seat. She waved her little arms and let out a little squeal of delight. "Daddy!" she shouted, and stared at him with her wide gray eyes.