by Willa Okati
Darian had to move faster. Had to. Had to grind down harder too, fully ready to come in his pants like he was a teenager again and to hell with pride. He could feel it coming already. Adrenaline, pride, whatever -- and love --
He stuttered to a halt, shocked still. Fucking hell. He’d thought something like that just a minute ago, but it hadn’t sunk in then. It sure as balls did now.
Was he in love with the guy? Did -- did Coby love him too?
Coby hesitated beneath him. “What?”
Darian shook his head and went back for another kiss, as fierce as Coby this time. He yanked until he had Coby’s jeans down past his hips, his own too, far enough for skin to meet skin, and shoved Coby’s shirt up until he could press his mouth hard and hot to Coby’s stomach. Didn’t know why, only that he was hungry to all of a sudden. He caught a tiny fold of skin over Coby’s abs between his teeth and bit down, wanting to feel the jerk he always gave and the keen he always made when Darian did that.
Which he didn’t get. Coby went still as if he’d been carved from marble out of that quarry below them, then gave Darian a shove that nearly sent him over the railing and down after all. Before Darian could recover and ask what in the ever-loving fuck, Coby’d twisted onto his side so his head stuck over the edge -- and there went that lightly-digested granola bar, splatter-splash. Gross as hell and also, what. The. Fuck.
Darian’s cock throbbed, indignant at being denied what it wanted -- blue balls were a bitch -- but he ignored them like he’d tried to ignore Coby’s scent that first night in their quarters. He leaned over Coby, holding him steady as he gagged and choked on bile, then shuddered when there was nothing at all left to come up, but his guts kept trying to turn themselves into out.
“That’s it,” he said, hand on Coby’s back. “I’m taking you to an urgent care, and you can argue if you want but I’m not arguing back.”
“For once in your life,” Coby muttered. He spat over the edge and let Darian turn him over in a mimicry of what they’d been doing though he’d gone limp as a rag doll except for the tension that held him rigid as a steel bar. He winced, probably sore as hell from that impressive round of hurling, and stared helplessly up at Darian, visible in bursts of the fireworks ahead. “Don’t. Please don’t.”
“If I have to toss you over my shoulder like a fireman, I fucking will.”
“Oh. That’s what the skinned knees thing was about,” Coby said, confusing Darian until Darian remembered mentioning that. “You’re strong enough.” He reached up to brush Darian’s face with his fingertips, still looking so much like one of Peter Pan’s lost boys that it made Darian’s heart ache. “You always know what you want, and you never change your mind, not ever.”
Darian stared right back at him. “You’ve got me scared shitless right now.”
Coby’s mouth twisted. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Darian took Coby’s chin and lifted it, making sure of his undivided attention. “You remember that whole talking about things bit you were so set on? How about you tell me why you don’t want to go to a doctor? If it’s good enough, I’ll listen. No promises that I won’t haul you there if I have to, but I’ll listen.”
For a second Darian didn’t think he’d answer. Then Coby shivered, visibly gathering his strength. He didn’t reach up to caress Darian the way he usually would, instead lying still with his hands at his sides. It should have been a weird look on such a big man, but it only made him look almost smaller than Darian, instead. Almost fragile.
Nuh-uh. Darian lifted Coby’s chin a fraction higher, pulling out a little of the Alpha dominance he didn’t like to use with Coby -- but wasn’t against playing now. “Tell me, right now. I’m not kidding. What’s going on with you?”
“Darian,” Coby said helplessly. He shook his head, but he did open his eyes. “Darian. You remember that night when I learned my new trick?”
Huh? “Not like I could forget,” Darian said, trying to puzzle out the non sequitur. “You want to try that again?”
“No. Listen to me. You asked, I’m talking.” Another deep breath, his hands shaking. “That got hot. Hotter than I’d thought it would.”
“Not telling me anything I don’t know.” Darian didn’t get it. “What are you working up to?”
Frustration looked at least a little better on Coby than unhappiness, and he finally reached up to Darian, even if it was only to shake him. “Darian. You remember that night. I know it. You remember everything about it.” He licked his lips. “But do you remember using a condom that night? I don’t.”
Come to think of it, they hadn’t. Shit, that’d been irresponsible of him. Could have been some consequences there --
Oh.
Shit.
Wait.
Fuck!
The pieces came together like a car crash. It all made sense. The sleeping. For fuck’s sake, the puking.
Coby hardened his jaw, daring Darian to react however he thought Darian was going to. “I know you’re not stupid unless you want to be. Don’t be a dumbass now. Please. Tell me you understand what I’m trying to say.”
“What?” Darian rasped. “Coby. Coby, hell. Are you trying to say --”
“Yes.”
Darian couldn’t reply. He couldn’t even blink. His brain had exploded like the fireworks building up to their grand finale.
Coby covered Darian’s splayed fingers with his and pressed down, where even with all the not-eating, Darian could feel the faintest start of an outward curve. He said it, what Darian couldn’t, and like Darian had taught him, he didn’t apologize. Not for this.
“I’m pregnant.”
Chapter Seven
Now that he’d said it out loud, Coby’s spine straightened, and he didn’t need Darian to hold his chin up for him -- but he covered Darian’s hand lightly and rested his palm there. “I’m pregnant,” he said again. “I took a test. More than one. I’m pregnant, and it’s yours. It’s your baby in here, Darian.”
Nope. Did not compute. All Darian could do was stare down at Coby. Not breathing, not blinking, not believing what he’d heard even as his hand flexed over that so-unmistakable change in Coby’s body.
He always used a condom. Always. Except -- oh. Also, fuck. Yeah, now he remembered what’d completely blasted past him at the time. They hadn’t used a condom that night. Hadn’t thought about it once.
His hand flexed again.
“I don’t know if it was coming that many times, or if it was going to happen anyway,” Coby said, steady as the earth. “But it’s true.”
Did not compute. Could not compute. Darian pulled roughly away and stood, careless of his closeness to the edge. He couldn’t stop staring, and his palm burned and tingled where he’d laid it on Coby’s stomach over -- over his --
Oh, fuck. Over his kid. A kid that neither one of them had planned on or imagined would happen.
Coby was pregnant, and Darian had done that to him without the sense to think twice.
He’d started backing up before he realized what he was doing, and then he couldn’t seem to stop. Coby raised himself on one elbow, and somehow even worse than anything yet, he looked so fucking sad and so Goddamned stubborn that Darian’s body wanted to jerk forward.
He didn’t. Want and ability were two different things. He couldn’t fucking move while Coby was looking at him like that.
“I knew you’d be like this,” Coby said -- or at least that was what Darian thought he said. It was hard to tell with his ears ringing and buzzing from the shock. “I wanted one more good night. But I knew.”
He lay back down, looking up at the stars and the very last sparks of the fireworks. Darian looked anywhere but at them, and his feet, damn them, carried him away at a stride, then a stalk, and then a jog.
Did not compute. Except for how it did.
It did.
* * *
His brain still hadn’t stopped jolting around in his skull before he reached the quad, where the fireflies ha
d gone but one bright ember flared and dimmed under a tree. The familiar, comforting smell of smoke filled Darian’s nose, and he came to a stop so abrupt he left skid marks in the grass.
Oscar tilted his head at Darian, exhaling a thoughtful puff of smoke before holding the cigarette out in a silent offer.
Darian took it, and that was when his knees decided to give way. Went right out beneath him and planted him ass-first on the ground, head tucked hard against those useless knees, cigarette dangling dangerously close to his hair.
“If you burn yourself, I’m taking that back.”
Darian passed it over blindly without drawing on it once. His lungs were telling him they weren’t down with sprinting that far for that long anyway.
Oscar waited a minute before saying, “So. You figured it out.”
“He told me,” Darian said, muffled against his knees. “You were both right, damn it. I’m a dumbass.”
“Only when you want to be.” Oscar made a shrugging movement that jostled him against Darian. Darian couldn’t hear him inhale or exhale, and figured he was letting his cigarette burn down to the filter without smoking it either, just holding it steady, keeping him company. “Latex failure or fucked too stupid to think straight?”
Darian held up two fingers to indicate he’d guessed right the second time.
“The way you guys are around each other, the only mindboggling thing is that either of you are surprised.” Darian could almost hear Oscar wince. Darian glanced up to see the cherry had burned low enough to scorch his fingers. He dropped the filter between his feet to grind it out, then leaned back against the tree. All the better to study Darian from, Darian guessed. “Anyone with a grain of sense could have seen it. He’d started to glow. You too. Something in your heads knew it, even if the rest of your brains didn’t.”
That was a hell of a soliloquy from Oscar. Darian raised his head, meaning to glare, but he couldn’t find the oomph for it. “What do I do?”
“Be fucked if I know. That’s what I was about to ask you. You’ve got options.”
Darian couldn’t think of any and frowned the question at Oscar.
Who snorted at him. “You don’t do anything by halves, do you? Even when you get the shit shocked out of you, you’ve got to go full fainting goat.”
“Full what the fuck, now?”
Oscar waved that away. “It’s a goat, they faint when you startle them, not the point. Options. There’s adoption.”
Darian put his chin in his hand.
“Abortion?”
There was the glare Darian had wanted to give Oscar, right along with a flare of no fucking way and how the fuck dare you.
“Thought not,” Oscar murmured. “Only one other choice. I’m not going to say it. You already know what it is. But because you really can be a dumbass when you want to, I’m going to tell you one thing for free, my friend. You know what you want.”
He stood up, looking down at Darian. “So stop being stupid and figure out a way to make it happen.”
Darian sat still a moment longer, looked up, shook his head, and stood. He turned to walk away with his hands in his hip pockets.
“I know you just stole my smokes, jackass!” Oscar yelled after him.
Darian raised the pack in the air, using his middle finger to brace it. Seemed fitting.
Oscar got him, anyway. All that there was as good as a hug and a pat on the back. You had to learn the languages people spoke, all in their own ways.
Sometimes it wasn’t as easy as it could be. So? All that meant was he had to try harder. That’d be another thing to think about.
* * *
Good places to think on a college campus: surprisingly limited. Gym closed, track gates barred, library doors shut. They couldn’t close the steps off for business, though, and Darian tucked himself into a corner where no one would tread too closely and piss him off, lit up with the matchbook he’d stolen from Oscar too -- why have one without the other -- and set the wheels of his brain in motion.
Or at least he tried. They kept on spinning without getting anywhere. Total dead hamster on a perpetual motion machine, and that thought made Darian snort with imagining the baffled/disgusted/delighted look Coby would have given him at that.
Coby. Coby, Coby, Coby.
One cigarette burned down to ash, unsmoked, and Darian lit another without really noticing. He held this one to his lips but let the slow trickle of smoke drift up his nose instead of drawing it into his lungs.
Coby.
Coby was pregnant. Okay. He could start there. Darian went over that night one more time, and he couldn’t deny what he recalled. No condom in sight, much less wrapped around a dick, and as hard as they’d gone after learning Coby’s new party trick it was a wonder he hadn’t ended up pregnant himself from all the spunk in the air.
Coby would wrinkle his nose and shove Darian for saying something like that. Darian rubbed his arm meditatively, imagining he could feel it.
Pregnant. Carrying a baby. His baby. Darian’s child. God. Every time he thought it, it became more real, but those empty wheels still kept spinning in his head. He dropped his head into one hand and rubbed hard.
He gave himself ten seconds to do that, because he’d never run from anything before, and he’d be damned if he let himself start tonight -- for longer than he had already -- and the only way he knew to face this was head-on.
So:
Fact one. Coby was pregnant. Two weeks along, by Darian’s reckoning, and Omega pregnancies only lasted nine weeks. Everyone would see it for themselves in two more weeks, and just about sooner than you could spit, he’d give birth. Probably right after they’d graduated summer session. Judas fuck. Darian was sure down to the soles of his feet that Coby was going to keep the baby -- their baby. He’d have to walk across the commencement stage to get his certificate looking like he’d swallowed a watermelon sideways. He could either do it with his head held high or hung low in shame --
Hell no.
Fact two: Darian would be damned all over again before he’d stand for that.
Which brought him to fact three: Oscar was right. He -- they -- only had a few choices. They weren’t married, and holy hell that was a whole other crisis for another time. Didn’t mean he couldn’t sort himself out in the interim.
So: what did he feel? No lies. Darian rolled it over in his head and came to an inalienable truth that made him nod.
So: what did he want? No lies. More chewing on notions, and Darian knew the answer to that one too.
So: what was he going to do? That was a harder question. The hardest. He couldn’t really know for sure, not until he knew what Coby wanted.
Only one way to do that. Carrying his phone in his back pocket had become such an ingrained habit that Darian mostly forgot it was there, but he had Coby’s contact plugged in there from nearly the start. He slid it out, thumbed it on, and had his pointer a fraction of an inch from speed dial a literal split second before it blared out a ring that damn near made him jump five feet in the air.
“Fucking hell!” he barked into the speaker before he thought twice and slapped himself on the face. A quick look back confirmed what he’d figured, who’d called him. “Coby. Where are you?”
“You’re one to ask, but I’m back in the room,” Coby said. “I’m halfway packed.”
Simple words, but they hit like a punch to Darian’s guts. “You’re what, now?”
“Should I stay?” Coby demanded, and oh damn, he was hopping mad now. “No, don’t answer that. For once in your life, Darian, shut the fuck up and let someone else talk. You either listen to me or l hang up right now. Understand?”
Darian almost swore back at him, but some merciful force out there snapped his jaw shut and kept it there.
“I’m keeping it,” Coby said. “And I don’t give a damn if you don’t want that.”
Darian swallowed hard, loud enough for Coby to hear.
Coby growled. “You drive me crazy, Darian. You know that? Y
ou’ve got one hell of a nerve walking away, and I’d never figured you for any kind of coward, ever, but I knew you would be like this, and you know what? I know all the arguments you’re going to make too. The way our families are going to flip out, how we’d live, what we’d live on, how we barely really know each other -- that is all bullshit, okay?”
Darian couldn’t have spoken now if he’d wanted to.
Not that he thought Coby cared. He’d built up too much of a head of steam to stop and he blazed full speed ahead. “It’s bullshit, Darian,” he said. “Our careers? We’re both going to fight to be teachers of what we want for the rest of our lives. Our families? Hell, Darian, yours is probably going to deal out high fives all around. Mine? Imagine what that’s going to go down like. ‘Hey, Dad, guess what? I came to get a degree you thought I had no business going after, and while I was here I got knocked up by a short, high-velocity Alpha who spends his life looking for things to punch.’ Can’t wait. It’s going to be fantastic. And I don’t care. I learned that from you too.”
Darian closed his eyes, just breathing. He could hear the conviction in every single word, the truth blasting through Coby’s voice.
“How would we get by?” Coby went abruptly quieter, steam gone, and sad. “We could make it work if we tried. I know that. We’re smart. We could find a cheap place and stick to a budget. We could stay together. It isn’t too fast to want that with each other. It’s been five years coming and you feel that the same as I do. I’ve seen it in you.”
He wasn’t wrong. Not even a little.
Darian lit up a third smoke to let it burn away and listened. His heart had started aching again. He’d hurt Coby that way, and it made it hard to get enough air in. Fuck.
“We didn’t plan on this,” Coby said, quieter, so resigned that sorrow tangled up in with every word, and the growing heat of returning anger too. “We didn’t plan on any of this, but I want it. Especially if I can’t have you too. This is what I want, and what I’m doing. If I have to do it on my own, I will. But if you don’t want that, come back here before I finish packing and stop me.” He let out a shuddering sound. “It’s up to you, but whatever you decide, that’s it. No more second chances in Second Chance. So. Your move.”