Chapter Text
Growing up as an omega, Evan has never felt like his own person.
He's always belonged to somebody else. His mom and dad, even Maddie once he presented and they were outside the home together. He's property, an extension of those who own him. He's heard it's better in other parts of the world, even in other states, but Hershey is majority white, mostly conservative, especially in the neighborhood where he grew up, and he's never had an opportunity to find out for himself.
He doesn't know what his life will look like once he gets the hell out of his parents' house; whatever is waiting for him, it has to be better than where he is now.
All he knows is he wants out. Out of his parents' upper-middle-class house on a quiet street with other upper-middle-class families, meeting up at the country club once a month to talk about who is going where on their next vacation and the new car that the Johnsons bought that they obviously can't afford.
Despite being teachers — despite working with people who make hardly more than minimum wage and have to dole out their own money for classroom supplies regularly — the Buckleys, courtesy of one Margaret Buckley née Walton, come from money. They may be teachers, but they certainly don't socialize with their co-workers, and besides — there's a vast difference between those who work in public school, and the Buckleys and their ilk who work in an unaffordable-to-most private Catholic school.
Not that Evan attended that school; not for long, anyway. Even having two parents on staff can't stop an expulsion, not when the crime is climbing onto the school roof, shimmying down through the dean's office window, and posting lewd photoshopped images of the man himself on every available square inch of space.
Evan doesn't like bullies. He might not have figured out the best way to deal with them yet, but he figures public humiliation is as good a tactic as any.
So Evan doesn't know what life will have in store for him once he's figured out how to leave. How to not bend at every one of his parents' expectations. Finish high school. Go to college. Behave like a proper omega.
He fails at the last one, because he always has; never quiet enough, too loud, too talkative, too much, and yet somehow never enough.
But he scrapes by in high school; nothing for his parents to be proud of, of course, but he leaves with a diploma in hand, and then he starts community college in the next town over and stays in his parents' house because he can't do anything else. He has a part-time job but not enough to pay rent and food and everything else that comes with new-adulthood, and besides — they pay his tuition with the stipulation that he remain close by.
Why they want him close is obvious enough. It's not because they enjoy his company; they never ask him about his day or studies; they hardly talk to him at all unless circumstances demand it.
No. It all comes back to their statuses, as so many other things do. An omega child is meant to stay with their parents until they're married, and in this his parents are traditional, if only because the society in which he was raised demands it. After all, what would their friends say if he were to leave. If he were to move away on his own or worse, with roommates; potential betas and alphas who would exert their influence on him where they can't see.
They've made sure he has no way to escape. His only reprieve are the hours he spends on campus three days a week. He doesn't have friends, really; has never known how to keep them, or rather, how to make others keep him, but there are people in his classes who are friendly enough to grab a coffee with him, to share notes or study.
And then there's John.
Evan doesn't want to get his hopes up; it's easy enough to look at the two of them and think there's no way that lasts. But — John is sweet to him. Kind when they're alone together and doesn't try to catch him out in class when he hasn't done the reading, yet. He even gave Evan an extension once, and let Evan show his appreciation that evening after office hours were over. Evan hadn't been sure whether he was ready yet, but — college might be his only way out. He can't fail at this, too.
So — Evan isn't sure what his life will look like once he finally gets out of Hershey. He's daydreamed about a life; a job he loves, people he trusts, a family that might actually want him around.
In all of his fantasies, he'd never pictured this: pregnant at 18, halfway through his second semester of college.
Evan stares at the stick in his shaking hands, his thoughts unnervingly blank as his mind turns over itself clumsily. The two lines don't make any kind of sense to him, and he needs to grab the box out of the trash can to double check what it means, because there's no way it's right. He's not seeing it right, or, or — or he ate something that made that second line appear, some rare thing that causes a weird reaction, some glitch that fucked up his results, or—
Evan realizes he's not really breathing very well when spots bloom in front of his eyes.
He crouches on his bathroom floor, the test clattering onto the countertop, and drops his head between his knees. The spots slowly recede, but his brain doesn't start working any better. It still doesn't make sense.
He's been — okay, he knows it's possible, because when John said he didn't have a condom and didn't Evan say he was grateful, come on, he'll pull out before he comes, Evan can trust him — but Evan shouldn't be fertile enough to get pregnant until his heat, which is months away. And maybe John didn't pull out, but Evan still never even really thought it was a possibility he could get pregnant anyway. Not in the middle of his cycle when fertility is lowest, not for him, who everyone knows isn't any kind of true omega.
Not small enough; not quiet enough. Too much and not enough, and now he's supposed to be a — be a parent?
He needs to call Maddie. He needs to hear her voice, to hear her say it's going to be okay, Evan, to ask if, maybe, he can come to her, stay in some corner of her little house as far out of Doug's way as possible, because he can't stay here. Not with his parents, and maybe not in this town.
He'll die if he stays here.
***
Maddie doesn't answer. He's not sure if he ever really expected her to.
Sometimes he feels like if Maddie isn't talking to him, he's not even really here. There's only ever been one person who sees him for who he is and likes him anyway. Without her around, he's never really sure which version of himself he's going to put out into the world.
He doesn't tell his parents. Evan doesn't know what they'll do when they find out, but he expects he'll be kicked out or forced into an unwed omega home. As an omega — as property, essentially — they can still make him go, even though alphas and betas reach majority at 18. Part of him knows this isn't anything they haven't already been preparing for. Raising him has been one disappointment after another for them, so why should they be surprised now?
He's only been fucked — like that — once, so he knows how far along he is. One month and three weeks, give or take a couple of days. He gave it up behind the locked door of John's office, his deep voice begging, clammy hands clasped around Evan's hips, his hot, wet breath heaving against the back of Evan's neck.
And the strange ache he'd felt after, deep in his stomach or maybe lower, where John's release had still been leaking out.
Was it worth it? Evan thinks in the days that follow, his jaw clenched so tight against the fear and anxiety that he can hardly say anything at all. To finally be touched, even if it's not in a way you really wanted, was it worth it?
He doesn't know how to be a parent. He hasn't had the best role models, except maybe Maddie, but he's seen her twice in the last five years — once at Christmas right after she left, and the last at her wedding, which he'd flown out to alone because their parents refused to come. She hasn't been back to Hershey since, and his parents won't let him go to Boston alone, again.
His friends—if he can really call them that—don't really notice anything, except that he's no longer the first person to volunteer for a stupid, dangerous stunt after classes on Friday, when some of them spend the dark hours roaming the street in search of anything to keep them occupied. They don't press him on it, and he's not sure whether to be grateful or fucking despondent that no one really cares when he doesn't act like himself. In the end, all of his fears are confirmed in the strangest way possible.
No one cares.
He's not sure why the little voice in his head is telling him not to try to pull off reckless stunts. Shouldn't he be trying to make this pregnancy go away? Maybe a tumble out of a tree or off a one-story building is just what he needs to make this whole — problem disappear.
But just the half-formed thought is enough to make him feel sick. He's never thought about kids, not really. He's never minded them, never been around them all that much, but whenever he's met his friends' little siblings he's always liked being around them. They're innocent, sweet and carefree in a way he doesn't remember ever being himself. The idea of hurting himself just so he can put all of this behind him is just — he can't.
Part of him wants to go to the library and look up everything he can about pregnancy, to dig and dig until some of the anxiety trying to claw its way out has something to latch onto, something to help settle the raw nerves and crippling fear he's felt since the timer went off and he looked at that test. The rest of him wants to ignore it.
That's the part of him that wins, in the end. He should have expected, with his luck, that it would be this — this desperate need to pretend that everything is normal — that catches him out.
"Oh, Evan," his mother sighs when he comes down the stairs on a Monday morning, two weeks after he snuck out to the pharmacy a few blocks away to procure a pregnancy test, and his life flipped itself on its head. "Not again."
Evan stops short at the base of the stairs, his face carefully blank as he looks over at her. She's holding a piece of paper in her hands, a letter it looks like, a pained expression on her face. "What?" he asks. She'll just keep looking at him if he doesn't prompt her.
His mom sighs again, mouth pursed unhappily as she glances down at the letter again. Her eyes are a cold kind of searching when she looks back at him. "I received an email from the dean's office. It says you've reached the number of days you can be tardy, and they'll fail you if you're not on time for the rest of the semester." Her brow, perfectly plucked and shaped, raises in question. "I don't remember you leaving late, not in the last month. So what, exactly, have you been doing before school?"
Evan takes in a slow breath to keep himself from panicking, or worse, from letting loose the burgeoning anger in his stomach. They shouldn't be able to email his parents when he's in college, but omegas aren't granted the same dignity as everyone else, not even in this.
He doesn't know when his lack of agency will ever stop surprising him.
And unfortunately, this time he doesn't have an answer. Not answering isn't a possibility, since his parents are the ones footing the tuition bill and giving him permission to attend, which he needs to be able to go at all.
But the truth is, he's been puking his guts up in the bathroom most mornings. He read somewhere that 'morning sickness' is a misnomer, but for him, at least, it's entirely accurate. By the time he gets off the bus every morning he has to sprint to a toilet, lest he lose his breakfast on the quad. He's been arriving late for his morning classes for a couple of weeks now, which is why he took the fucking test to begin with.
His mom is still watching him steadily, jaw clenching, and Evan has to think of something to say. "I've been, uh — just — just hanging out with friends."
She sighs again, looking away and folding up the letter again with disappointment writ across her brow. Evan's stomach sinks at the familiar sight, but there's not much he can do about it. She'd be worse than disappointed if he told her the truth.
"How you haven't been expelled yet is a mystery to me," she remarks, her voice wobbling unsteadily. "You treat school as if it's a privelege, a right, which — how you came to be so entitled is beyond me, given your expulsion from Wright. You're lucky we even let you finish high school, much less let you attend that farce of a college."
Evan doesn't say anything. If he opens his mouth, he thinks he might vomit.
His mom scoffs. "At least you aren't injuring yourself every week anymore. If I have to go to another emergency room because you've decided to — to jump off a bridge simply because your friends dare you to—"
She cuts herself off suddenly, and he blinks in confusion at the inexplicably tense silence that settles over the room. To Evan's horror, his mom's eyes narrow with suspicion and she steps closer to him, her nose flaring as she inhales.
Stupid, stupid, stupid he thinks frantically as he takes a half-step back. She may be a beta, but her senses aren't completely null. And even pups know that pregnancy has a scent, something other that even passersby can pick up on, though it doesn't usually manifest strongly enough for others to pick up on until the second trimester, after the baby has developed from an embryo to a fetus, after—
But she's his mother, and even if she ignores him most days, she's known his scent since he was born.
Fuck, Evan thinks, closing his eyes against the dawning realization on her face. He starts to step away from her, needing to put space between them but her hand latches quick and harsh on his arm and holds him in place.
"Evan," she says, voice low and tight.
Evan swallows, and keeps his eyes closed.
***
"We have to send him to a home. There's no other way to deal with this, Philip!"
His mother's voice cracks down the middle, and Evan, knelt on the floor with his fingers wedged in his mouth to keep from making a noise, bites them hard enough to bleed.
His father sighs audibly enough for Evan to hear from upstairs. "Margaret—"
"No! No, we can't allow him to stay here. After everything w-we did to start over, to leave all of that — that shame behind us, we can't let him drag us down ag—"
"Sh, sh, it's alright," his father murmurs, and his mother's sobs turn muffled, as if she's pressed her face to his shirt. "I know. You're right, sweetheart. We'll do what we have to—"
Evan wrenches himself away from the wall and moves blindly down the hallway towards his room, fighting off the tears that threaten to spill. He can't know whether they're tears of fear or anger or both at this point, his feelings a great seething mass inside of him threatening to burst out.
He calls Maddie. She doesn't answer.
***
He wants to run away. He wants to pack a bag of essentials — clothes, the cash he's squirreled away with his infrequent summer jobs, whatever food he can fit — but he doesn't have a car. He could grab a bus to Philadelphia, and then further away, but then what? Where is he supposed to go? An unmated, pregnant omega traveling alone is just asking for trouble. Even sheltered in Hershey, he knows that, has heard the stories enough that his heart starts beating a harsh tattoo at just the thought of it.
He stops trying to call Maddie three days after he hears his parents' conversation. They take his phone the next day, so he never knows whether she calls him back.
They don't speak to him other than to tell him he's not leaving the house, and when he hides in his room after arguing, begging, pleading to be let out, he can hear them speaking downstairs, to each other and sometimes, he thinks, on the phone, their voices droning on and on. They don't let him out, and go so far as to install additional locks on his window.
Evan lies on his bed, trying to quell the anxiety that hasn't left him for weeks, now. He can't help but think, it's not good for the baby.
But — he's not good for this baby. He doesn't know what's going to happen once his parents manage to ship him off, but whatever illusions he'd allowed himself of a future where he has a child, a family even if it is a family of two, and they live somewhere not here and they're happy and content and every other stupid thing he'd allowed himself to think—
They won't happen. They'll take his child or force him to stay there, unwed and expected to feel ashamed for it, his child raised in a home full of other bastards and made to feel less than.
He hates it. He hates it, and he hates them but he doesn't have another way out. He can't escape and they took his phone days ago.
Evan swallows the bile rising in his throat and breathes through his panic. He presses a gentle hand to his belly. He's not far enough along yet to be showing, not even to himself. But when he presses down gently, there's a — a mass, almost, a firmness unlike the familiar tautness he's always had, and he knows it's the baby. He can only feel it because he knows his own body — it's so small others wouldn't be able to tell any difference.
He wishes, not for the first time, that his parents weren't so anti-suppressants. Not just — not only because they can offer some form of protection against pregnancy, though even thinking that makes him feel ashamed, as if he's supposed to wish away the child inside him — but also because they dampen his scent. He's read about them in the quiet hours in the library downtown, where his parents can't look over his shoulder and sneer at him. They'd make him smell like a beta — let him pass by unnoticed by the alphas who turn to look at him in interest, dampen his citrus and honey scent until it loses its sweetness so it resembles, perhaps, the earthy orange tea he likes to drink when no one is watching.
But that's not who is parents are.
And so here he is.
Evan's mouth twists, and his thoughts stray as they so often do, to the other part of this equation.
John.
He honestly can't say whether John would help him if he were able to reach out to him. Evan and John aren't serious, not really, because despite Evan's hope that they might, one day, be something, John has always held himself at a distance. No dates, no acknowledgment of Evan as anything except a student unless they're alone.
Evan wishes he'd had the courage to say something in that liminal space between when he found out and when his mom caught him. He can't help but wonder, half-asleep and fanciful for the lack of self-protection against his own useless fantasies, whether John might have done something. Offered him a place to stay, or money to get away.
I guess I'll never know, he thinks morosely, his half-pleasant thoughts turning sour. Evan fights back tears as he forces himself to sit up and take stock of himself. He's been wallowing in his own grief for days, now. Grief for the life he had, boring and friendless as it was. Grief for the child inside him — likely never to know him once they're taken from him.
At that thought, a spark of anger ignites in his belly. They're going to take his child. He might get out of the omega home one day, but not before they take his child and give them to someone else to raise. They'll never know him, never know how much he loves them even as he fears them.
No.
Evan stands, breaths coming harsher as he starts to pace. His eyes roam his room, searching as a new determination takes hold. I won't let them.
Evan moves closer to the window and inspects it. The locks are on the inside of his room, which is good, though they're screwed into the frame and he doesn't have anything to loosen them with. He examines them — a plastic and metal bar, one on each side of the window, screwed tightly into the wood frame just an inch above the window itself, so if he were to open it, it would only open that far. Not nearly enough to slip through, obviously.
And even if he were to manage to climb through, he's on the second story. A drop from this height might not kill him, but it could hurt the baby.
Evan sniffs as he bites his lip in thought. He's tall enough that he could lower himself along the edge of the roof before falling. He probably won't even sprain anything.
Thinking quickly, now, Evan returns to his bed and yanks open his nightstand. He digs around until he finds what he's looking for, then returns to the window.
He flips open his pocketknife. It's no screwdriver, but it'll do in a pinch.
First, he tries to use it to actually unscrew the locks, but he slices the tip of his finger opens when the knife slips. He hisses in pain and sucks on his finger before shaking it out, and clenches his jaw. Alright, new plan.
Evan wedges the knife under the first lock and shimmies it, first a little bit and then more and more until he can pull it away from the frame enough to grab it. The screws takes a bit of the wood with them, but his parents can sue him for the damage for all he cares.
He's getting the fuck out of here.
Evan lets out a sigh of relief when the second lock comes out, and he stops himself just before he can wrench the window open. He still needs a plan. He can't just walk down the street until he hits the next town. Evan has a little cash in his room, but not enough for food, for shelter, for anything other than—
He takes in an unsteady breath. He can take the bus. He can go to campus and find John. Maybe — maybe John will care. Maybe he'll take pity on Evan and give him something to help.
He ignores the voice that whispers maybe he'll want me.
It's all he has. He has to try.
Evan spins in place and goes to his closet to grab his gym duffle. He quickly packs some clothes, his wallet, what little money he has. He has some toiletries in his bag already, from showering at the gym, and he'll try to stretch them as long as he can.
Evan hestitates for a moment, and then grabs the book on his nightstand. The Odyssey. His mom had scoffed when she'd seen it, and he'd hidden it from her ever since.
He takes one last look at his room — his childhood bedroom, where the height marks are still etched into his doorframe where Maddie had scratched them in with pencil, his JV track trophies and video games — and then turns and wrenches open the window.
He's walking down the street less than a minute later. He doesn't look back.
***
The thaw of early spring has just truly settled over the campus, and Evan's boots crunch over the grass, half-frozen from the dew and overnight cold, as he makes his way towards the building housing John's office. He knows John isn't in a class right now, and that he likes to get to campus early on Monday mornings to catch up on grading.
John has invited him in often enough in the past, gently pressing Evan under his desk to find his pleasure in Evan's mouth.
He finds him there, hunched over his desk with his eyes on the paper in front of him and pen gripped gently between his teeth. Evan's stomach clenches at the sight of him; the uncertainty of what will happen, how John will react, forms a ball of nerves that holds him there, caught at the threshold between his office and the hallway.
He watches, unseen, as John hums a quiet note and pulls the pen from his mouth to strike a red line through something on the paper. To Evan, John has always seems so much older, so much more mature and real than Evan has ever been. Evan has only ever been real around Maddie, and without her here he's struggled to find anyone else who looks at him and sees anything except the component parts of him.
"Evan," John says in quiet surprise, sitting back in his chair. His eyebrows raise as he scans Evan from head to toe, something knowing in his gaze. "I haven't seen you in class for a while."
Two weeks, Evan's mind supplies, and can't help the niggling voice that wonders how long it took John to notice. "I've been, uh — I've been busy."
John hums dubiously, and sighs. "Well, come in then. What can I do for you?"
It's his professor voice; expected, with his door still open, and yet the formality irks something deeply-rooted in Evan. A yearning to be acknowledged, to not be written off as something passing and temporary.
Evan moves in cautiously and closes the door behind him. He's not here for the reason that John expects, maybe, but they'll still need privacy for this conversation. "I, uh — s-something happened. I needed to see you."
"Oh?" John asks, mild interest in his voice. He leans forward, opening his mouth to say something else, but his expression catches halfway between expectant and confused, and he freezes. His nostrils flare as Evan stands there, trepidation swooping hot and terrible in Evan's stomach.
John blinks in surprise, his face twisting. "You're — it's not mine?"
Evan's brows crease. "What? It—of course it—"
"No," John cuts him off, shaking his head as he pushes his chair away from his desk. "No, you don't know that for sure."
Evan blinks at him dumbly for a long, still moment. He feels — fragile. Like if he moves one inch in the wrong direction he could break. "John, I — you're the only one I've been with."
John scoffs, face twisted cruelly. "As if I'd believe that. Someone as — as eager as you. You think I believe that?"
A hot flush of shame burns up Evan's chest, his neck, his cheeks staining red in mortification. Eager, John says, but what he means is easy. Like because Evan fell in with him so readily, he must with others as well, but Evan hasn't, he—
The risk is too great for an omega, their safety and status so uncertain and tenuous that this is the one thing Evan has been careful about. His physical safety hasn't ever meant much to him, but in this he's tried to protect his own heart. But John has always been so careful with him; so kind.
Evan swallows harshly, trying to force the words past the lump in his throat. "It's yours." His voice is quiet, but John hears him, turns his face away and stares at the corner of his desk.
Evan waits. The silence that falls over them is heavy and thick, and he can't bring himself to break it.
"What do you want?" John finally asks, still looking anywhere but Evan.
Evan stares at him. He doesn't — he doesn't know what he wants. He wants too much, he wants — safety and love and something like a home for the baby he's creating, but he doesn't think he can have any of that. "I want — I want them to have two parents, I guess."
John shakes his head, finally looking back to Evan. "I can't give you that. I'd lose my job, Evan, if this got out. Taking up with a student; an omega no less? No. I can't."
You're not worth it, he doesn't say, but Evan hears it anyway.
He's heard it in various forms his entire life, so the sentiment doesn't surprise him. He's not sure he really expected anything else. But this time it's not just him that isn't worth it. His life isn't the only one on the line. This child deserves more. What kind of parent could he possibly be on his own? There's no way he's enough. His own parents can't stand him, and he wasn't enough for Maddie to stay, and now he's supposed to have enough, be enough to raise a child?
"I can give you some money," John continues, standing abruptly. "Evan, that's all I can do. I'm sorry. I—" He sighs, his shoulders drooping. "I didn't mean for this to happen."
Evan flattens his mouth to hold off the sneer that wants to twist his face. His anger masks his hurt, a familiar sense-memory. "You fucked me without a condom. I asked you to get a condom and you just — you told me it was gonna be fine because I wasn't in heat, you said—"
"You're a goddamn adult, Evan," John snaps. "You don't get to pin your decisions on me."
I don't feel like one, Evan thinks desperately, I don't feel like one at all. He doesn't say it. It won't make any difference. "I don't want your money."
It's a lie. He'll take anything at this point; he can't go back to his parents' house. He knows where that path will take him, and he won't let that happen to his child. But can't say that aloud; won't set his pride aside and admit that without John's help he doesn't even know how he'll get out of here.
John seems to read it on his face anyway. He shrugs his jacket on, mouth pursed in a thin line, and jerks his head towards the door. "Come on," he mutters tersely.
Despite the shame burning in his belly, Evan follows.
An hour later he's at the bus station, a few hundred dollars burning a hole in his pocket, bills still crisp after John pulled as much as he could out of the ATM at once. Evan had shoved them out of sight, heart flipping sickeningly as he thought of what lay ahead: traveling as a single, pregnant omega. The danger inherent in such a journey is something that's been impressed upon him since the moment he presented at 12.
John had walked away without a glance back. It takes everything in Evan not to run after him; not to scream and beg for him to help, to stay and tell Evan what to do. He's never been on his own before, never been responsible for himself, let alone another person. He doesn't want John, had given up on the brief hope that John would have interest in staying with him and raising a child together the moment John had asked if it was his. Evan knows what they are, now, even if the knowledge makes him feel like the worst kind of failure. Bad enough for an unmarried omega to get pregnant; to not even be able to hold onto his alpha, to give his child another parent?
No one will ever have him now, and it's the knowledge that he'll be alone for the rest of his life that causes the most pain. He's always wanted a real family, and he's traded one for another: he'll have a family of two, so he'll never really be alone, but—
There will be companionship. No romantic love in his future, sure, but he's lived without it this long. He's always been so terrified of being alone and now he never will be.
And yet — part of him has always felt like one half of a family of two. Maddie, he thinks as he stares at the departure board. Maddie, what have I gotten myself into?
He thinks of her phone ringing out to voicemail. He thinks of the voicemails he's left, asking her to come home, or to let him visit. Of how she rarely answers, and it's always at night, her voice quiet as if the shadows will muffle her words.
He doesn't have anywhere to go, but his heart is calling him towards his sister; towards the only safety he's ever known. Evan shudders in a shallow breath and glances his fingers over his stomach. Maddie. Would you help me?
She will. She has to.
Even if she can't, he has to leave.
He'll die if he stays here. They both will.
***
A week later — six days after he steps off the bus at Boston South Station terminal and tracks Maddie down at her hospital; four days after he begs Maddie to come with him, to leave Doug and get the hell away and she agrees; three days after he comes back to the hospital to get her and is met instead with a letter and the sobering realization that he never has, in fact, been enough — Evan stops in Virginia Beach and rests his head against the steering wheel.
He's alone. Really, truly alone in a way he never has been before, when the vague assumption that if he needs her Maddie will be there had still lived in the back of his mind. Now he knows it's not true. Everything his parents have told him for all these years — that's the real truth, after all: too much, a burden, not worth it.
He'd fought those voices for years, ever since Maddie left with Doug. He'd always rather believe in Maddie; in her promises.
Without that belief, he's not sure what to do anymore.
She'd noticed his pregnancy immediately, of course.
Oh, Evan, she'd said, heartbreak cracking through the soft syllables of his name, her hand gentle on the side of his face, pinky stroking the skin of his neck right next to his scent gland. The familiarity of her, lilac and lemons, like childhood and everything he's been missing for the last eight years had lulled him into a calm he hasn't felt for—
Well. Since she left.
I know, he'd whispered, closing his eyes. He could hardly bear to look at her. All the words she'd whispered to him, in the quiet dark of the night during the brief period after he'd presented and before she'd left — you have to protect yourself, Evan, there are people out there who will take advantage of you, who will see how sweet and trusting you are and twist it to get what they want, you can't let them — they're all for naught, now. He's a failure, just like their parents always said he'd be.
It'll be alright, she'd murmured less than a week ago, leaning her forehead against his. The loud noises of the emergency room had faded into the background, voices becoming muffled, the sounds of rolling carts and the beeps of heart monitors dissolving into nothing.
It hadn't been alright. It still isn't alright. But he's gotten this far; he'd taken the jeep she'd held out like it was the answer to anything, like it'll offer any kind of freedom for him, and left.
Lifting his head off the wheel, Evan bites his lip and stares at the beach laid out before him. The sun is setting over the orange-white sand, casting its colors across the gentle sussurations of the tide. It's beautiful. It's the first time he's seen a beach, and he can't help but wish he had someone to share it with before he quashes the thought.
Evan places a hand gently on his belly. He can feel the bump, just barely. The baby is 10 weeks along now; the size of a strawberry.
He needs to think of them. His baby. He needs a job, and somewhere to stay. He needs to eat regularly and get an appointment with an OB and take prenatal vitamins and so many other things so that he doesn't fuck this up. He won't fuck this up. This is the most important thing he'll ever do, and he won't let himself fail at this.
He won't.
***