Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.

***

Chapter Text

Over the next few months, Evan's life shifts in degrees. He finds a place that subsidizes rent for omegas, and given the pregnancy he's moved quickly up on the waiting list. He feels bad for that, knowing he took someone else's spot, but after a month of living in the Jeep his back is killing him.

He has his first truly private shower — first shower outside of the YMCA and rest stops — in four weeks and all he can feel is gratitude.

He finds a job within the first week; shift work at a local family restaurant. The clientele is eclectic and diverse enough that he doesn't get too much hassle once they smell unmated pregnant omega on him, and though the paycheck itself is pretty dismal, the pity tips more than make up for it. After his first shift, he buys fruit, nuts, pasteurized cheese, any vegetables he can stomach without cooking them first and stashes them in the staff refrigerator, bags tied tightly with his name scrawled across them. He needs protein and fresh foods to supplement the one free meal he gets after his shifts.

Once he moves into his little one-bedroom apartment, he stocks up on what he can. He buys the stuff that's nearing expiration, half-off just so they can get it out of the store, to stretch out his spending money.

And then he books an appointment with an OB.

He doesn't have anything like insurance, but there are clinics for omegas and even betas who don't have the money to see a doctor any other way, so at least it won't cost him a whole month's rent.

A week later, he comes home with a grainy photo — black with a gray blob in the middle, curled along the edge of the frame with almost indiscernible limbs and little divots on the head where the eyes will form. Evan puts it on his fridge, touches it whenever he walks by.

The baby is the size of an apple, now.

He's showing — really showing so that other people can tell even if they don't smell it on him. His clothes don't fit the way they used to and he's almost always uncomfortable, especially after a long day on his feet.

Everyone is friendly enough, but Evan doesn't make any real friends. No one wants to get close to someone like him. The ones who aren't omegas aren't interested in tangling themselves up in his situation, and the omegas stare at him with pity. He's not sure which is worse, honestly.

Evan turns 19 on a dismal Tuesday, his feet swollen in the oversized shoes he has to wear to get through his shift.

The baby is the size of a mango — 21 weeks as of today — when he realizes he needs to decide if this is where he wants to give birth. If Virginia Beach is where he wants to be for the foreseeable future. It's hard enough to move around on his own, but it'll be nearly impossible with a baby.

Evan knows he doesn't want to stay. He's been lucky with everything he's found, here — a job, a place to sleep, and he's managed to save some money over the last almost-three months.

But there's nothing for him here. If people don't judge him, they avoid him, and he's afraid it won't be any different if he moves somewhere else in the States. It was the same in Hershey, in Boston, and now here. There has to be somewhere out there where he can just exist. Without the knowing looks or the pity or the scorn. Somewhere that doesn't look down on him just because he's expected to have a mate and doesn't.

So he does something a little crazy. Okay, maybe a lot crazy.

He sells everything he owns, and he gets on a plane to South America.

***

After deep diving on the most omega-friendly countries in South America, Evan settles on Chile. It has a large ex-pat population, but it also has a lot of protections and legal recognition that so many countries — the US included — lack.

Evan is in Santiago for a few hours when he tracks down an omega home. By that night, he's given a bed in a small room and an invitation to join everyone else in the home for dinner. He uses the translation app on his phone for most of the night, but quite a few of them speak some English and he muddles his way through a few conversations with the other omegas staying here. Some are pregnant like he is, but most are not. Everyone smiles at him and offers him suggestions on where to go for prenatal care, where he can look for a job, where he can find free language classes.

Evan settles in his small room that night, and feels hope for the first time that he might be able to figure all of this out.

***

Of course, then he approaches ninety days in the country and his time to get a work or study visa so he can stay is running out. He asks around at all of the local restaurants and bars for work, but none of them are interested in sponsoring him, though he takes a little solace that it's not his rapidly expanding belly that's putting them off so much as paperwork and having to deal with the US Embassy in Santiago.

And he has to do something — he's fast approaching the cutoff for even being able to fly, and he doesn't want to be deported with a newborn.

He's resigned himself to having to return to the States with what little remains in his savings account when Louisa, the omega who runs the center that took him in, the omega home where they've given him a room and food for almost three months now, offers him a job. It's in the kitchens, and the other cooks quickly take him under their wing and explain to him in halting English and the occasional rapid-fire Spanish how to properly season choripan or how to fold the empanadas so the filling doesn't fall out.

They give him a stool, so he's mostly off of his feet, and he doesn't know what he's ever done to deserve this.

***

Evan gives birth in Hospital Doctor Luis Tisné Brousse six weeks later, in the last few days of September. When asked, he enthusiastically takes whatever drugs the doctors will give him, and it takes him a very long time to shake off the strange sensation of the not-painful but overly intense pressure of pushing a baby out. Just before the baby emerges, it's as if his body is no longer his own, his mind floaty and weightless, and he can't imagine ever wanting to do this again on purpose. How people have more than one kid, he doesn't know.

It's worth it in the end, though, because in the end he has his baby.

His baby. His baby.

He's mostly out of it for the next few hours, but he remembers the first time they lay his daughter — his daughter, his — on his chest. He nuzzles his nose against her little red face as she squirms against him and his chest feels fuller than he knew was possible. They give him a few minutes with her before they take her away to make sure she's healthy, and he's wheeled back to his room, where he quickly passes out.

The next few days pass in a blur filled with pain in places he didn't know could be painful, and embarrasing trips to the bathroom.

He doesn't name her until his last night there. Most of his body has healed quickly — the benefits of being young, according to Louisa — and he's all packed to be shuttled back to the omega home in the morning.

For now, though, he's curled up in his hospital bed with his daughter nursing from him, and he can't look away. She's so little, so beautiful and precious, and he doesn't know what he'll do with her once they get out of here, but the fear feels very far away right now.

Evan stares at her pitch-black hair, her squinted-shut eyes and red face, and the only name he can think of is Ava. He hadn't really prepared any names; something about it felt like he'd be jinxing the both of them, but he thinks perhaps he'd just known he couldn't name her until he held her himself.

Ava. It's close to his own, and yet nothing like it at all. Just as he can see some of his own features in her, including a strawberry birthmark on her shoulder. Their complexions are the same, as well, though his hair is much lighter. His parents told him he had darker hair when he was born, in one of their rare moments of reminiscing about the past, and he can't but wonder whether her hair will lighten like his.

"Hi, Ava," he murmurs to her. She scrunches her little face up, done eating for now, and he breathes out a wondrous breath and tightens his careful hold on her where she's resting against his chest. They're doing skin-to-skin, and her body is warm against him, light but present in a way he's never experienced before. "Hey, little one." He brushes his lips against the downy hair on top of her head and breathes her in.

Evan never imagined he could ever feel like this: his heart expanding to fit this new person, equal parts awestruck and terrified, and filled with so much love that the doesn't know what to do with it.

His eyes fill with tears, a long-familiar and yet completely unexpected longing for Maddie making his heart hurt. She should be here with him. With them. He wonders whether, if he were to send her a message, she could come to him. If not now, then some day.

***

He doesn't sleep much, in the months that follow. All of the other omegas offer him advice, endless advice, very little of which is actually helpful, though he know they mean well.

Nap while the baby is napping. Well, sure, except that's his only chance to get anything else done, and he's never been much of a napper, no matter how tired he is.

Breastfeeding is best; don't feed her formula if your milk is still coming in. Well, okay, except that no one mentioned how important it is to teach her how to take a bottle, even if it's filled with milk and not formula. Two months in, and he finds out that he's the only one who can feed her; no amount of cajoling or coaxing can convince his daughter to drink out of a bottle so he can take a moment to rest.

He realizes after conducting his own research — after the hazy first months have passed and he has the capacity to do so — that the breastfeeding versus formula debate is mostly bullshit anyway. If only he'd known, he could have saved himself from a few bites once her first tooth grew in.

Their new routine at the omega home is hectic, but comforting all the same. Evan has no shortage of people willing to watch his daughter for him while he works, though he trusts very few to do so. Just Louisa, really, in the rare times she isn't working herself, or he'll let some of the omegas who have been here as long as he has hold her where he can watch them. Otherwise, he carries Ava around with him in a sling, and the other cooks allow him to help with anything except watching the stove unless she's in her little bassinet.

Months pass this way. He slowly gets used to breastfeeding — which is strange and he's not sure he really enjoys it that much, except as an opportunity to hold Ava close, but his chest feels kind of wrong and he'll secretly be really glad when he switches her to formula, or to cow's milk if he manages to hold out for a year — and how to properly swaddle her, and to place her in her sling. He celebrates and brags to anyone who will listen when she lifts her head on her own, when she rolls over, when she laughs and it's not just gas. Everyone indulges him, especially the others in the kitchen, agreeing when he tells them he has the smartest baby in the world.

Evan sends Maddie postcards. No photos of Ava, he doesn't even really mention her because part of him wants to press on that little bit of leverage, force Maddie to come to him if she wants to see her. But he finds quirky postcards that have Santiago's skyline with the mountains behind it, both hand-drawn and photographed, and chatters about places he's visited, people he's met. He sends them to the hospital in hopes that Doug won't intercept them, and includes the omega home's address in case she wants to write back.

She never does.

That strange disconnect when he'd given birth has faded; the discomfort with labor seems like a distant memory and he can imagine doing this again. It's all biology, he realizes. His mind has dimmed his memories of giving birth so he'll be willing to do it again. And yet, even knowing this, he knows he would.

Not that he has any real plans to. One is enough; he doesn't need to be outnumbered.

Ava has just started eating solids — he'd taken a picture of her sitting on a piece of blue paper with 6 months! scrawled across just last week, his cheeks hurting from smiling so hard — when Louisa pulls him into her office. Ava is asleep in her sling against his chest, and Evan reaches a hand in to check on her. He stills long enough to feel the soft puff of her breath against his fingers and then smiles as he moves further into her office.

"Evancito," Louisa greets, waving a hand for Evan to sit. "I'm afraid I have some bad news." Her lightly accented English is heavy with something today; regret, maybe, or sadness.

Evan hesitantly lowers himself into the chair across from her desk, his heart flipping over in his chest even as he starts to bounce his leg. "Bad news?"

Louisa studies them for a long moment, her eyes lingering on the soft lump of his daughter hidden by the sling, before she meets his eyes again and sighs. "The government has cut our funding. We have to make, eh, cuts," she enunciates, as if searching for the word. Her mouth twists. "I am sorry."

Evan gulps, fighting against the urge to argue, to beg, to ask if there's anything he can do to make it worth it for her to keep him. His jittering leg makes Ava jostle in her sling and she makes a little discontented noise. He makes himself stop, but the resulting anxiety from holding still right now is nearly overwhelming.

He knows Louisa would keep him, if she could. The people at the omega house, Louisa in particular, care so much about those they take in. They wouldn't turn anyone out if they had another option.

"We have to g-go?" he asks shakily. "How, uh, how soon?"

"I am not forcing you to leave," Louisa says regretfully, "but I cannot pay you any more."

Evan nods, understanding what she's really telling him. She can't pay him, and so he'll lose his visa. And without his visa, he won't be here legally anymore. He can't take the risk of being deported; of being on any kind of list or having his daughter taken from him, even temporarily.

They'll have to go.

"A-are you — is there anything I can do?"

The words come without conscious thought. He has to ask. He has to try. Evan has never had this type of security, of safety before. The thought of losing it is too painful to really think about.

But Louisa shakes her head, and Evan looks down at the top of Ava's head so he doesn't have to meet her eyes anymore. His jaw works as he holds back his tears.

***

And so, he finds himself heading back to the States.

When booking himself a ticket out of Santiago, he's not sure where to go. Not Pennsylvania, and not Boston. Not Virginia Beach, either, though his memories there aren't necessarily unpleasant.

No, they need a fresh start, preferably in a city that offers more freedom for omegas than the places he's been before. Boston wasn't bad, in the brief time he was there, but the thought of going back there makes him sick to his stomach.

Somewhere similar then, in policies if not in geographical region. Or weather, if he can help it. He's had enough snow to last a lifetime.

He needs a plan. He can't just step off a plane with his six month old daughter with no home, no job, no anything and expect to come out on top. He doesn't have any transferrable skills, he's not smart enough to wing any kind of desk job, and any job he does manage to get will come with the accompanying issue of childcare.

So, he applies everywhere. He goes to job boards and recruitment websites and anywhere he can think of and sends out the resume he spent six hours pouring over the night before. There's not much on it — a few part-time jobs he had in high school, and the position at the omega home. Louisa is more than willing to be a reference, though anyone who wants to call her will have to dial international.

Still, it's something, right? That he managed to make it work in another country where he didn't know the language? His Spanish skills are passable now, of course; he can hold a conversation and no longer has to look up every other word in his pocket dictionary, but when he arrived a few months ago all he could do was introduce himself.

Louisa tells him he probably has a month before people start asking around and checking on visas, but to avoid the marketplace and other public areas so he's not stopped and questioned. The furthest he goes is the internet cafe half a block away, and even then it's just long enough to type out the resume he'd written down and send off as many applications as he can.

Evan hears back two weeks later from an unlikely source; a job application he'd sent off on a whim, not really expecting to get a response. A horse farm in Montana that houses its employees, and even has a nursery since most everyone has to put in work during the day and most of them have their whole families living on the farm.

Evan prints out the email and reads it in bed after settling Ava down for the night. He's never worked with horses — only ever seen one once, and that was at some rich kid's farm-themed birthday party when he was 10 — but it sounds like they'd mostly have him working in the kitchens, anyway.

While not the norm, our farm has employed single omegas in the past, and provided childcare during working hours. The cost of childcare will be taken out of your pay at the rate of …

So I won't be the first, he thinks, rubbing his thumb along his bottom lip as he reads each line carefully. Ava shifts in her crib and he glances up at her, but she settles back down again, her thumb tucked securely in her mouth.

Evan places the printed email on his bed and stands, moving closer to hover over his daughter's crib. She's still so young, but this has been the only home she's ever known. And while this job might work for them, might be the only chance for them at this point, it's not something he can see doing forever.

But what choice does he have?

Evan glances his fingers over his daughter's brow and sighs, already drafting the email he'll write first thing tomorrow.

So much for no more snow.

***

Evan steps off the plane with Ava bundled in her sling across his chest, where she's been since the plane touched down. She'd mostly slept during the flight after he'd nursed her during takeoff.

She sleeps through waiting for her stroller by the gate, and then waiting for their bags at baggage claim. She starts to wake when he places her in her car seat for their Uber, but settles back down once they're moving. The Uber driver gives him an impatient look when Evan takes the time to make sure her car seat base is secured correctly, but he just ignores him; he's not risking Ava's safety just because his driver wants to move on to the next customer.

They're at the long drive that leads to the farm less than thirty minutes later. Evan hooks Ava's car seat handle into the crook of his arm and shoulders one bag, holding the other loosely in his other hand.

And then he walks down the drive.

***  

Chapter Text

Evan takes one of his first long weekends off at the farm to fly to Virginia, get the Jeep out of storage and then make the long drive back. It's the first time Ava has made such a long trip in a car, and he's surprised by how well she does. She doesn't walk, doesn't need to stretch her legs, but she does eat every three hours. He uses their frequent stops to walk around with her, holding her clothes and letting her scent him.

Once he has the Jeep back, they start venturing into neighboring cities, and then neighboring states, whenver he has more than one day off. That itch under skin, the one that won't let him settle, that insists that there's something more out there, something better if only he can keep looking for it, grows little by little until he can't stand the thought of just staying anymore.

And eventually, he doesn't.

Ava's first three years are spent in a semi-transient state, but Evan likes to think that, overall, she's happy. And that's the most important thing to him. Even with feeling that need to move, to try something else, to find himself, some part of him wonders each time if he's doing the right thing by taking her away from what has become familiar.

And then he figures, selfishly, that if he's going to do it, now's the time. Before school, before she can start building real friendships. Her stability is him while she's this young, and he wants more than anything to find somewhere that he can really, actually settle before the clock runs out.

But not all of the places they move are as friendly as Santiago or the farm in Montana. Sometimes Evan gets it in his head that something is a good idea and then he realizes quickly that it's most decidedly not.

Sometimes Evan realizes that the job he moved for — because that at least he's never budged on, he gets a job and then he moves, he can't risk not having any income at all — doesn't pay enough for her daycare and rent and food and—

And one day, after his boss lets him out early despite his protests and he still has three hours before he has to pick Ava up from daycare, Evan stops at the gas station on the highway halfway between work and home. He goes inside to pay with the meager tips he'd collected and then heads to the bathroom. On his way back out, his eyes flick over the window along the back wall, the one facing out into the larger area of the parking lot meant for the semis and 18-wheelers and catches movement out of the corner of his eye.

He steps closer to the window and sees a three-quarter wall off to the side, the bottom hovering twelve inches off the ground. There's someone standing with their back to the wall, only the heels of their boot visible, their body obviously pressed flush to the wood. In front of the boots, someone is kneeling.

Evan swallows as realization washes over him.

He's not naive. Some of the people he's worked with have turned tricks on the side, or taken a side gig as an escort to make ends meet. He'd been told more than once that he could make a killing doing it himself, but first he'd been pregnant, then he's had an infant. He'd hardly had the opportunity to really consider it, even if it was something he wanted to do.

Now, though.

Evan bites his lip, and heads to the daycare to pick Ava up early. It's only when he has her in his arms that the image leaves his mind: scuffed jeans stretched over someone's knees as they press them into the pavement. The gentle susurrus movements as they swayed forwards and backwards.

Evan pushes the thoughts away, presses his face into his daughter's hair.

***

He's back two days later.

He has an hour before he has to pick Ava up from daycare.

It isn't difficult to find attention. He's young, he's fit, he's been told he's pretty enough even with the birthmark, and well, he's an omega. A trucker catches his eyes and raises his eyebrows; Evan tilts his head to the side and walks away.

Two minutes later, Evan is on his knees, shoulders pressed to the side of the gas station, and his hair is being gripped so tightly he's afraid it might be ripped out.

"Oh, yeah baby, right there," the man moans. Evan forces himself not to use his teeth and tries not breathe in the musty beta smell of the guy's crotch as he sucks harder. He just wants to get this over with.

He washes his mouth out in the sink, after, and tells himself that the extra thirty dollars in his wallet is worth it.

He doesn't go every day. Tries to make their money stretch out to the end of the month, but a bout of coughing for Ava sends them to urgent care, and lands him with new bills he hadn't planned for.

When his bank account gets low enough that he hasn't eaten a proper meal in a week — all of the good stuff goes to Ava first, of course it does, but the job he had lined up fell through after two weeks when his boss decided his nephew really needed a job more than Evan — he slips up.

Let's someone fuck him for the extra fifty bucks and feels sick the whole time.

It's the first time since John fucked him in his office, and the feeling of hot breath on the back of his neck when the alpha stretches over his back and thrusts roughly into him makes his stomach twist unpleasantly. He swallows down the bile building in his throat and closes his eyes. Thinks about — no, he can't think about her here, not here where he's something dirty and unclean, something other than father, protector. He thinks about the field a half mile from his old house in Hershey. Maddie used to take him there after his parents finished yelling at him for being reckless, and they'd lie in the tall grass together talking about nothing, about anything other than the shittiness of their lives in that house.

He realizes when he's cleaning himself up in the gas station bathroom that this isn't sustainable.

Like, look — he knew that already, he's always knows that selling his body isn't something he wants to do or can even keep doing, not if he wants to keep his kid safe. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just sex, but he doesn't want to be the kind of person who has to spend the hours his daughter is in daycare getting fucked by people he doesn't even know. People who don't see him or think about him at all; people who just see a mouth, a hole, an omega.

But the decision to stop is easy. Figuring out how to is an entirely different beast.

***

Evan finds pain grounding.

Like — look, he doesn't try to get hurt anymore. He doesn't seek out adventure in the same way he used to as a kid, but even outside of the attention he got from his parents when he got hurt, a part of him also almost — liked it.

Not the extended agony of a broken bone, so much as the lingering pain of a sprain. A pull when he forgets he's not fully healed and tries to lift something with the wrist he'd landed on when he fell off his skateboard. The scrapes on his knees, and how they feel rubbing against the harsh material of his jeans.

So, as established, he can't let himself get hurt anymore.

But that just makes the need stronger.

He doesn't have the money for the number of tattoos he wants. He gets a few over the years: two bands around his arms, a black bird on his chest, some others that heal more quickly than he wants. But he can't get one every time the urge hits, because he still needs to pay his bills, feed his daughter, keep her in daycare.

He's also always been a fidgeter, and sometimes having one of his urges met is enough to stave off the other.

So he gets a lip piercing.

He has to keep the stupid stud in for a few months, but once it's healed enough he's at the piercing studio as soon as they open to switch it out for a hoop. It sits nearly flush on the left side of his bottom lip, just loose enough that he can move it back and forth with his tongue.

So the pain doesn't stick around, just like it always doesn't, but the ring stays. And it helps.

***

One night, at the end of March when Ava is two, Evan is allowing himself a small respite: he sits on his couch, trying to slough off the long day and find it in himself to relax.

And then Ava starts screaming in her room.

He rushes in and finds her standing in her crib, little face twisted in fear as she gasps for breath.

Evan's heart is in his throat as he scoops her up. There's vomit on her sheets, the first time he's even seen her throw up, her face is red and hot, her body rigid against him as she struggles to pull in a full breath.

"Baby, baby, it's okay," Evan hushes her as he steps back into the living room, turning in a circle in his panic. He doesn't know what to do. "It's okay," he repeats, sitting on the couch and resting her in his lap. "Can you breathe?"

"N-n-nooo," she gasps. He feels both helpless panic and the slightest edge of relief at the sound of her voice. She can't pull in a full breath, but she can speak, even if it is between gasps.

He wishes someone else was here. Anyone else. He'd even take his mother at this point, just anyone who might have any idea what's going on, he wants to just not be alone.

"Shhh," he soothes her, taking a deep breath as he places her hand on his chest. "Just try to breathe, baby, slow, in and out, you can do it, come on."

"C-c-can't," she whines, but he just rocks her against him, trying to calm her racing heart. If he can get her calm, he can get her to breathe.

He wants Maddie.

Without thinking about it, without letting himself wonder if she'll even answer, Evan slides his phone out of his pocket and presses her name. Every phone he's gotten, every move, he's put her number in his contacts. The idea of cutting off that one form of connection, of potential, is too much for him to even think of.

She picks up on the fifth ring. "Evan?"

Ava has settled into gasping, whimpering sobs against his chest; he rubs her back, up and down in a slow pattern trying to settle her breathing. "M-Maddie."

"Evan, what's — is that —"

She doesn't even know Ava's name. Doesn't know he has a little girl, only knew he was pregnant. It's been so long. Almost three years since Boston, and she doesn't know anything about his life.

But she's the only anchor point he has right now.

"Maddie, sh-she woke up crying and she's g-gasping like she can't breathe," he says, trying to sound calm for his daughter but everything inside of him is screaming. "She threw up and she can't take in a full breath and—"

"Evan, Evan, calm down," Maddie directs, something shifting in her tone. This is her nurse voice, he knows, because it's the same voice she used on him when he was little, every time she had to bandage him up after he got hurt. "You said she can't breathe. Are her lips turning blue? Is she — is she straining to breathe? Is the skin at her collarbone and neck sinking in like she's not getting any air?"

Evan pulls Ava back just enough that he can see her, can see the pink of her lips and juttering of her stomach, but her neck and shoulders aren't pulling in alarmingly. "N-no. She's — she looks okay."

"Okay, okay," Maddie says.

"She's hot. She runs hot sometimes, her body I mean, but doesn't have a fever and the doctors don't know why. She's — but she's really hot," Evan babbles.

"It's okay, Evan. She's not in distress right now, you just need to get someone to look at her," Maddie soothes. "Can you get her in the car? Take her to the ER?"

Evan bites his lip, considering. The thought of putting her in the backseat, strapping her in and listening to her gasp for breath and sob when he can't hold her — it's impossible. He just can't. He doesn't even want her out of the apartment right now; they're not in the safest neighborhood, and a single omega and sick child are too much of a target for him to stomach. "No. I-I can't."

"Then you need to call 9-1-1," Maddie directs. "They'll send EMS to check on her. Okay? Call 9-1-1, Evan, and just stay on the line with them while you wait from them to get there."

"O-okay," Evan says. His mind is working too quickly for him to catch up, thoughts jumping from one to another. Can they help? Will they take us to the ER anyway? Should he just call a taxi? She needs a car seat, and he's never met a taxi driver who doesn't shoot him irritated looks while he's trying to strap her in correctly and he just doesn't want to deal with that right now. How much will all of this cost?

The last isn't important, except that it is. He still needs to feed her when all of this is over. But he doesn't have a choice.

"Call me back, Evan," Maddie says gently. "After they leave, call me back and let me know you're both okay."

"I will," Evan whispers. He doesn't want to hang up with her, wants to linger on the line to hold this tenuous connection with his sister, but his daughter comes first. Always.

He hangs up, and he calls 9-1-1.

***

After the paramedics leave; after a visit to Ava's pediatrician in the morning, he has a diagnosis.

Croup.

And money he's managed to put aside is gone in less than a week. The ambulance fees, the doctor visit and her medicine, and the time off work puts him in the red further than he's been since he left home. He refuses to touch the money remaning from what John gave him; he knows there'll be another time he'll need it, or he can give it to Ava, maybe, if he doesn't fuck up enough that he has to spend it.

Her first day back at daycare, he calls in sick and goes to the truck stop.

***

Evan tries to take her out on the weekends, when he's not too exhausted by the week before. She's too young, at two-almost-three to be very interested in museums, but he likes to take her to the playground and the zoo, the library and the aquarium. He packs them a lunch so they don't have to eat out, and he takes enough pictures on his phone that he has to pay a monthly cloud fee to store them.

It's the one subscription he allows himself. He can't regret a single photo of her.

Ava learns quickly that she likes to climb. Not at home, much, but on the big climbing frames at the playground, she ascends slowly but steadily to the top until she's hovering over the whole lot, not a single frightened bone in her body. He climbs right next to her, grateful they make these structures large enough for adults even if they're meant for children, holding enough fear for the both of them that she might fall.

She never does.

She also loves her magna-tiles, the little square and triangle-shaped toys that stick together on the ends; she spends hours on some days building houses and castles and barns for the little magnet animals. Sometimes he'll walk out of the kitchen to collect her for lunch and find a magnet-pathway leading all the way to her crib: a magnet highway for her toys.

She's becoming more and more of a person every day. Her hair has lightened to a sandy-blonde, curly just like his. She's potty-trained and talking, has opinions about what she wants and doesn't, likes and doesn't, and Evan is more besotted with her than he thought it possible for him to be.

None of this is what he planned for, but he doesn't want to think about his life without her.

He loves her. He loves her.

***

The biggest problem with taking her out of the house, he's found, is the alphas.

No matter what he does, Evan will always smell like unmated omega. Having his daughter with him just makes it worse. And he's not vain, not really, but he knows he's good looking, if a little tall for an omega. His height makes him more of a target sometimes, the preening alphas seeking him out as a challenge.

Evan is pretty sure he's ground his teeth down to flat nubs, with how often they're pressed together to hold his tongue.

He starts trying to make himself stand out less. Uses what little money he can spare to get a cheap bottle of hair gel and flattens out his curls; uses coffee and cocoa powder in his conditioner to darken the golden-brown highlights in his hair, especially in the summer when he's nearly blonde. Hunches his shoulders when he's in public so he's not standing taller than everyone else.

Unfortunately, there's no way to mask his smell. Not in any way he can afford, anyway.

It helps, a little. He can get through the occassional day without an alpha following him around. He goes a whole weekend without having to bare his teeth at anyone, and considers it progress. Having Ava there helps, because bystanders might let an omega get harassed, but pups are more universally cherished, and therefore protected. He hates that his daughter has to see the way he's treated; he's terrified she'll learn firsthand if she, too, is an omega.

But all he can do right now is let her know she can always fight back.

***

When she's three, Ava starts having stomachaches. Not all the time, and not so bad she can't still run around and play, but none of the doctors know what it is.

"Have there been any recent changes in her life?" one of the first doctors asks, at a pediatric urgent care outside of Boulder. "A big move, anything like that?"

Evan huffs out a breath and pulls Ava closer to him in his lap. She leans her head back against his sternum, her body heavy with fatigue. He'd been getting her ready for bed when she started crying about her tummy hurting, and he couldn't stand the thought of waiting until the next day. She's still so little, and there's barely anything he can give her over the counter, and other remedies just aren't doing anything for her, so he'd packed her up into the Jeep and brought her here just before they locked the doors.

"Yeah, uh, w-we move around a lot," Evan murmurs, ducking his head a little to avoid the doctor's eyes. He buries his nose in his daughter's hair and inhales the strawberry-coconut scent of her shampoo.

"Well," the doctor responds slowly, carefully phrasing her words, "since she's not showing any other symptoms, it's possible this is just anxiety. It's common enough in children her age. Just keep an eye on her, and bring her back in if it gets worse or she develops a fever, rash, diarrhea, anything like that, okay?"

Evan sighs, frustrated at the lack of any clear answer but unsure about how to even get one. Maybe it is just anxiety — she's three, his mind screams — and it'll get better on its own.

As he's carrying her back out to the Jeep, tucking her into her car seat and buckling up her harness, the thoughts in his head circle around his failures. Am I fucking all of this up? Am I moving her around so much that she has pain-inducing anxiety?

"Daddy," Ava murmurs quietly, her lethargy making her voice sleepy and a little whiny.

"Yeah, baby?" Evan asks, ducking down so he can hear her better. She reaches a hand out and grasps the front of his shirt, blue eyes big and wide.

"Do I get my sucker?" Her bottom lip is in pout mode, and Evan holds back a sigh, reluctantly endeared.

"I'm sorry, A, not this time," Evan answers, running a hand down her hair. It's messy and curly and somewhere between blonde and brown, just like his own, but baby-soft and long instead of coarse and clipped short. "It's already past bedtime."

She whines, her eyes filling with tears, and he knows it's just because she's tired and in pain but his heart aches at making her sad.

"How about this?" he asks quickly, trying to stave off an exhausted-crying fit. Especially when he has to drive and can't sit with her. "Tomorrow after breakfast, you can have a popsicle, okay? Would that be good?"

Ava thinks about it, little eyebrows pulled down, before she nods. "Okay," she says, voice small. Evan runs his hand over her hair again, watching her lean her head back against her toddler car seat and close her eyes. He already knows she'll be asleep by the time they make it home, and just hopes he'll be able to get her back to sleep without any fuss.

He knows the chances are slim.

Evan slips into the drivers seat and starts the drive home, mind already mapping out how the night will go. His daughter might be the coolest kid in the world, inquisitive and happy and usually pretty chill in a way he didn't know kids could be before he had one, but one thing she is not is someone who can function while tired.

On the very rare occassions that she's up past her bedtime, Ava becomes a bit of an inconsolable mess. The idea of having to put on pajamas and potty — yes, he actually uses the word potty within his own mind now, what has happened to him — and let him brush her teeth is an insurmountable obstacle for her when she's exhausted, and to this day it's the only thing that has made her sob uncontrollably with the exception of when she's very sick.

Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that he's the one that has to manipulate said toddler through her bedtime routine on these nights, he would totally get it. He hates being tired, too.

The night goes about how he expects; with tears and having to move her reluctant little limbs into her sleep clothes, hold her up while she pees, and then ask her a million times, as calmly as he can, to open her mouth so he can brush her teeth. But they get there, and within two minutes of her head hitting her pillow, his daughter is asleep in her toddler bed, breaths heavy and face peaceful at last.

Evan bites back tears as he watches her. She's the most — she's just everything to him, has been since he first laid eyes on her, and since she hit three her personality has become more and more obvious. She's no longer just a reflection of him; she has her own opinions about things, her own preferences and thoughts and he loves listening to her tangents and watching her create things he never would have thought of. His little girl is a little dark — when he made her a lopsided unicorn cake for her birthday she excitedly announced that she couldn't wait to eat its eyeballs — and very funny and he can't imagine a person more perfectly made for him.

But she needs something from him, and he doesn't know what it is. Does he need to settle down? Stop moving and find a job he likes and wants to keep doing so she can have stability? Part of him hates the thought of it; hates the idea of never moving again, losing the freedom that comes from starting over. But they can't keep doing this: packing up the Jeep and finding another apartment, leaving half of their things behind when it won't all fit, finding used furniture so they won't be sitting on the floor, sleeping on a rug. Her little bed is small enough to fit in his Jeep, but soon enough she'll need a twin-sized bed and it won't. His kid isn't camping out on a rug in the weeks it usually takes to find a decent used mattress, she shouldn't have to keep choosing which toys are the most important to her.

The tears fall at last as Evan steps out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. He needs to get his shit together. He needs to figure out what he actually wants to do with his life and do it, and then maybe his daughter can feel safe enough that she doesn't have fucking anxiety.

Evan settles on the couch with his laptop, trying not to feel like a failure.

***

A year later, the week before his 24th birthday, Evan drives them to Los Angeles.

***

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 4

Evan has a plan. He does. It's a little crazy, but he thinks that if he can pull it off, he might just be able to build something strong enough, steady enough, to give Ava the stability she needs and Evan the direction he's been missing.

After putting in his city application and completing his EMT certification, Evan finally feels like he's on the right track. That urge to change his mind, try something else, move again is for once completely absent.

So six months after they arrive in LA, Evan enrolls in the fire academy.

***

Ava has been in school now for a semester, now, and Evan thinks the switch from daycare to school has been harder on him than it has been on her. It's just Pre-K, sure, but she's going to an actual school. With a teacher and classes and a room full of kids all the same age. She's thriving, and he's equally amazed at how much she's growing up and terrified at how big she is already.

"Already, peanut," Evan says as he stops the car outside of the school. "Here we are!" He usually walks her, since the school is only a few blocks away, but he's going straight to the academy after he drops her off, and it's definitely not walking distance.

"Can I bring in my unicorn, Daddy?" Ava asks as she reaches down to unbuckle herself. She holds up her stuffed unicorn and wiggles it at him.

Evan laughs, shaking his head. "Only if you promise not to take it out unless your teacher says it's okay."

"Promise!" Ava stands in the footwell and slides over to the other side of the car to open the door. He's told her enough times not to get out on the side of traffic that he hardly has to remind her anymore.

Evan gets out and circles the car, helping her hop out and grabbing her bag from the seat. He unzips it so she can stuff her unicorn inside, closes it back up, and then stands, one hand gripping the bag and the other held out to her.

He leads her to the Pre-K drop off area, smiling down at her as she swings their hands between them.

"Daddy," Ava says, her sweet voice high with curiosity, "how long do I have school?"

"You mean, like, today?" Evan asks.

"No, for forever," Ava explains, which doesn't explain anything really but Evan's realized over the last year or so that he's gotten pretty good at deciphering kid-speak.

"Oh, you mean how many years do you have to go to school?" At Ava's uh-huh, Evan hums as he thinks. "Well, you're starting Kindergarten next year, when you're 5. And then you'll have twelve more years of school, from 1st to 12th grade. You'll finish that when you're 18."

"Ugh," Ava groans, "that's so much!"

Evan laughs as they slow down; they're approaching the drop off line now. "And then you can go to grown-up school if you want. If the job you want to do requires more school, there's more you'll have to learn, and that can take a few years, too."

Ava hums, her bottom lip sticking out in thought. "I want to be a dancer."

Evan helps her put her backpack on, then smoothes her hair down, his heart swelling with so much love for her. "Well, you might have to go to school for that, I'm not sure. We can look it up together tonight, if you want?"

"Yeah!" Ava says brightly.

"Alright, it's a plan. Come on, can I have a hug goodbye?" Evan crouches down, and Ava wraps her arms around his neck to squeeze him, her little face tucked into the side of his neck. "Have a good day, pumpkin."

Ava pulls back to grin at him, touches a finger to his lip ring. "You too, Daddy. Have a good first day at school!" She smiles encouragingly, patting his shoulder.

"Thanks, baby." Evan kisses her cheek and then watches her join the rest of her classmates in line. He waves at her as her teacher leads them all into the building, keeping his eyes on her until she's far enough inside he can't see her anymore.

And then he runs to his Jeep.

***

Evan rolls up to the academy with twenty minutes to spare. He stretches his legs as he gets out of the Jeep, and takes his time walking to the building, looking this way and that at everything. He can see structures and trucks behind the main building, which he assumes they'll be using for drills.

A jittery sense of anticipation crawls up Evan's spine. Nothing has felt as right as firefighting for him; his EMT certs weren't as difficult as he'd thought they would be, probably because he actually finds it interesting enough to do deep dives on some of the techniques they learned.

There are others in the parking lot, mostly men but a couple of women as well, who reach the entrance about the same time as he does. The guy in front of him opens it and steps through, then holds a hand out to keep it from shutting, looking over his shoulder at Evan; Evan smiles gratefully and speeds up to a half-jog, reaching out to grab the door. "Thanks, man."

"No prob—" the guy starts, but cuts himself off as Evan steps into the doorway. The guy's nose wrinkling, eyes widening as his face shifts to something flat and cold. Evan freezes, uncertain, but the guy just sniffs and turns away. Evan watches him, angry at himself for being surprised; even here, it's going to be the same old bullshit.

He should have expected it, honestly.

***

They're a class of 16.

Thirteen alphas, twelve of them men; four betas, three of them men.

One omega. Him.

The two women in his group are the only ones who don't stare at him with open distrust.

Orientation takes up the entire first day.

The head instructor, Sasha Bowen, gives a quick tour of the parts of the facility they'll be using, and then they're all sitting in an auditorium to learn what their lives will be like for the next six months. Classroom instruction, practical exercises, drills, evaluations. At least two instructors for each of the technical skills they're learning. Regular check-ins with the medical team and weekly rankings that will be posted for everyone to see.

Instructor Bowen flicks quickly through a powerpoint towards the end of the day.

"The academy is committed to ensuring that the LAFD is reflective of the community it serves," she says, landing on a slide that shows one of those stock photos made up to look dramatic and meaningful: a row of firefighters and paramedics, all crossing their arms or standing in some kind of power pose and looking seriously into the camera, and each one of a different gender or sex or ethnicity. The one at the end is obviously supposed to be an omega: petite, blonde hair, big eyes. She's even holding a baby, stethoscope pressed to the infant's chest.

"New policies have recently been put in place to allow those who might have been — prohibited from applying before," Bowen continues, her eyes sliding across the room and landing unerringly on Evan, "the chance to see if they have what it takes to complete the training."

Evan feels the people around him shift in their seats; several glance at him and a few stare outright. He works his jaw in irritation but keeps his mouth shut.

He ignores the voice in his head that says this isn't going to be good.

***

Classroom instruction starts on day two.

"Hey," a voice says softly while he's lingering on the edges of the classroom, trying to figure out where to sit. Not too close to any of the alphas who outright glared at him yesterday; not towards the back, where his attention will likely wander. He glances up, meets the earnest gaze of a dark-skinned woman with long blonde hair done up in braids that reach the middle of her back. "You can sit here, if you want." She gestures to the seat next to her: two seats from the front along the row closest to the exit.

"Th-thanks," Evan says, and sits quickly.

"Sure," she says, smiling gently. "I'm Annie."

"Evan," he replies.

"You know, I met two other Evans yesterday," Annie laughs. "Might have to come up with a nickname."

Evan grins, caught at the idea of going by something else. He's always been Evan; Evan the troublemaker, Evan the omega who got pregnant at 18, Evan the single dad. But here, no one knows about Ava except the HR people who get to read his personnel file, and maybe the Chief.

He can't hide that he's an omega. Part of him still wants to; wants to take suppressants that he still won't be able to afford, even with insurance, and fool everyone into thinking he's a beta just so they'll look past him instead of judging him for everything he does.

The much smaller but mildly braver part of him doesn't want to let Ava see his shame. Wants her to know her dad is an omega and isn't afraid to go after what he wants. If she ends up an omega, too, what kind of message would that send her? Hell, no matter what her designation is, really.

So, he can't hide who he is, but maybe he can shift it a little to the left; be a better version of himself. Maybe he can build something new, here.

"I'll have to think about it," Evan says.

***

Drills are on day three. Practicals on day four. Review on five.

And it starts all over again the next week, with new skills.

It's not easy. Or, well — some parts of it are easy. Evan — or, Buck now, he supposes, since Annie helped him choose a nickname that fits better than Evan ever did — has always enjoyed moving his body, working out, and the physical tests they run him through aren't that difficult. The studying part doesn't come so easy, but not really because it's hard to learn. It's not; he might not have been an A-student but that's more because he has a hard time concentrating, or staying still. His mind wanders and it's hard to get himself back on track.

This, though. This is interesting enough that it's not so hard to make himself focus, at least for long enough to pass whatever tests they give him.

In the meantime, Buck tries to keep his head down. Honestly, it's not a natural facet of his personality. Even knowing he's an omega, and being told over and over again that there are certain expectations for how he should act, it's hard for him to temper himself. He has a lot of energy, he likes to talk, he likes to learn.

He feels stifled, trying to blend into the background just so he can push through.

But the animosity is getting to be too much.

Alphas knock their shoulders into him if they're passing in the halls; they stand too close when they're waiting in line at the cafeteria; one tried to corner him in the bathroom, though Buck managed to shove him off before he could find out what he even planned to do. Most of the time, he can't tell if they're posturing like the stupid meatheads they are to try to impress him, or if they just want him to leave. He suspects it's a combination of both.

Annie helps. She's a twenty-two year old former bodybuilder who decided to use her training and work ethic to help people; she's quick and funny, and Buck thinks she might be his only friend.

The end of the second week comes, and Buck is the first out the door once their last class lets out. Ava's afterschool program only runs until 5:30, so he has to hussle to get to her in time, then get her home and fed before bedtime.

"Daddy?" she asks, as he's tucking her in that night. "I think I wanna be a builder when I grow up."

"A builder, huh?" Buck asks, smiling as he settles in next to her and thinking of her wish only last week to be a dancer. "What do you want to build?"

"Cat forts," she mumbles against his arm, where she's curled up against him. "Like — houses for cats. I'm good at it."

Buck strokes a hand through her hair. "You are, baby. That's a great idea. You know, I heard that cats nap most of the day, like — like 16 hours or something. I bet they'd love a fort to sleep in."

"Really?" she asks sleepily. "How many hours is that?"

"Sixteen? It's like — two or three movies longer than you sleep," Buck says, trying to put it into 5-year-old perspective. "You still sleep 12 hours every night, but they sleep way more."

"Wow," she says, and then yawns.

Buck laughs gently, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Go to sleep, Betty Boop."

"I like Betty Boop," she says, half asleep. Buck presses his lips together.

When she's breathing steadily, deeply asleep, Buck sneaks out of the room and into the kitchen, surveying what they have in the fridge and pantry.

It's — not great. The academy pays a stipend while he's training, but it's barely enough to cover rent, much less food for two people, before and aftercare programs so he can actually get to training in time and not have to leave early, medical costs, and just — yeah, raising a kid. Kids are expensive.

Buck bites his lip, and spends the next hour drafting a meal plan for the next week, trying to make what little money they have stretch. But no matter how he looks at it, it's not enough.

Buck opens a private web browser, and starts searching.

***

He'd promised himself he was done when he left Boulder. He'd been sick to his stomach at the thought of it, of letting people use him and then coming back to his baby covered in their sweat because he never had time to swing home for a shower before picking her up.

But the gap between how much they need and how much they have is wide enough that, after a just few weeks in their new city, he lets someone fuck him again.

As much as he wants to go to a different part of the city, far away from where he works and lives, he just can't. He doesn't have the time. So he signs up for an escort service he hears some of the other recruits mentioning, but where they're talking about taking out an omega they're paying for, he applies to be one of those omegas.

It's discreet enough. And he can choose what types of clients he wants. No first reponders, and no military because occasionally they run in the same circles. Always at a hotel, and he leaves second so he knows they aren't following him.

It's a struggle to make even this work. The academy lets out a little earlier on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at 2 in the afternoon instead of 5:30, and that's when he'll meet his clients. Not on the weekends, not at night while Ava's asleep — not that he could afford a sitter, anyway. He meets them while his daughter's in Pre-K, so he doesn't have to miss any more time with her.

But even as he brings his account back out of the red, he feels like a failure. While Ava is becoming a whole little person, growing up in new ways every day, he's still here. Still doing the same shit to get by, because he was worthless as a son, and expendable as a brother, and now he's less than useless as a father.

But he can be this. Omega. He finds that the darker hair, the lip ring, don't put off alphas so desperate for an omega that they're willing to pay for it.

He wants more than anything for others to see him as more than just his designation. That's the road he's walking, the reason he's doing this in the first place outside of wanting something more for his daughter. They won't ever know that he has a daughter; not if he can help it. He gets singled out enough for being an omega; he doubts they'd take him seriously at all if they knew he was a single father as well, and not because he'd lost a partner but because he'd never been good enough to have one in the first place.

It's still tight, and it's still — it's shameful for him, that this is the only way to provide for his daughter. But it's what he has to do.

***

Time starts to pass more quickly once Buck and Ava settle into their new schedule, and then one day Buck checks his calendar and realizes he's been at the fire academy for a month.

The taunts and jeers haven't disappeared, but have died down enough that it's nearly tolerable. Buck will take what he can get.

On a Tuesday in mid-February, he's is in the gym and minding his own business when a shout rings out into the noisy room.

"Buckley!"

Buck tenses as he looks up at the approaching figure: Jones, one of the alphas who had glared at him so distrustfully his first few days, but who has mostly given him a wide berth since then. Buck doesn't think they've spoken a single word to each other, though he does sometimes feel Jones's eyes on him

"Hey," Buck grunts as he lifts the bar back up on its stand. He takes a deep breath, giving his muscles a moment to relax, and then sits up. "What's up?"

"Nothing, nothing," Jones says, strangely intent. "Can't a guy say hi to his teammate?"

Teammate is a but strong, but Buck supposes it's close enough. "Sure." Buck stands from the bench and starts to put the weights up. He feels Jones move closer to him, and can't help how his shoulders tighten.

"You need a spotter?" Jones asks, voice too loud for how close he's standing.

"Nah," Buck says, trying to sound casual. It's fine. He's in a room full of people. It's not like Jones can do anything, even if he wants to. Which — Buck isn't sure he does. He's just standing a bit close, is all. "I'm just wrapping up."

"Oh, yeah? Got plans?" When Buck turns around to grab another weight, he finds Jones's eyes fixed on him, and pushes away a shiver of unease.

"Uh. No, j-just going home." Buck turns away again, unable to stand Jones's unblinking stare.

"You live close by?" Jones presses, and Buck bristles. He turns back around again, but this time he straightens to his full height, eyes narrowed at Jones. He has a couple of inches on him, at least, though Jones's alpha ego probably makes up for the difference.

"Is there something you want?" Buck asks pointedly, crossing his arms over his chest. He's in better shape since joining the academy; not just lean and fit, but packing on muscle, as well, mostly due to the protein-rich meals they provide throughout the day and the hours of gym time they get each week.

But Jones doesn't look intimidated. If anything, he seems to take Buck's response as a challenge. "Dude, don't act like some uppity omega. I'm just trying to make conversation."

"Uh-huh," Buck says. Without thinking about it, he pulls his bottom lip into his mouth to bite back the smart retort he wants to say, but knows he needs to keep to himself.

Jones's eyes catch on Buck's mouth and he scoffs. "Dude, you still got that thing?" He gestures to Buck's lip ring, and Buck unconsciously strokes it with his tongue. "You know they're not going to let you keep it."

Buck narrows his eyes. "What's it to you?"

"I don't know, man," Jones says, tone belligerent as he squares his shoulders, angling his body towards Buck. "I mean, it's kinda distracting."

Buck works his jaw, debating with himself for a long moment. He shouldn't engage, but—

"Distracting for who?" he asks, tone flat.

"For everyone," Barnett pops up from where he's been lifting weights a few benches over. He tips his chin, upper lip pulled up in a sneer. "Maybe I'll just make you take it out."

Buck's heart starts beating faster, reluctant fear clenching his chest tight, but he presses it down. He swallows the sour taste of his panic, and raises a brow. "You can try."

Jones licks his lips, staring at Buck intently enough that he has to fight not to squirm away from him. "Maybe you like the attention."

It's Buck's turn to scoff now, and then he stands and turns his back on both of them as he starts to wipe down the bench.

"Has to be," Barnett joins in, and Buck can hear him stand too, can feel them both moving closer. Buck's shoulders tighten against his will again, tension settling along his spine. This is bad, but he fights off the instinctual omegan need to flee. "No other reason a pretty thing like you would want all the alphas in the room to stare at your mouth. You hard up, Buck?"

"No," Buck bites out. He can feel their eyes on his back and has to force himself not to turn around, not to make a run for it. But he's outnumbered, here, has been since his first day. And now he's the only omega in a room full of alphas — there's one beta, but it's not Annie, and they have their eyes averted, as well, like they won't get in trouble if they don't see what's about to happen.

A hand lands on Buck's shoulder, heavy and proprietary. He jerks, trying to shrug it away, but the grip tightens painfully, fingers pressing down hard enough to bruise. Buck starts to turn, to get some leverage so he can fight his way out, but the hand pushes him forward hard. His chest hits the wall next to the weight rack, knocking the breath out of him. He sucks in a gasp at the ache in his ribs where his chest took the brunt of the impact, and tries to wriggle out of the grasp when he feels a body press in against his back.

Buck jerks his elbow back hard and feels it impact as a crack resounds in the room.

"Fuck!" one of them howls. Buck stumbles away and flips around so no one else can grab him, so he can see. Having his back against the wall, hot heavy breath against his neck, has his heart rate skyrocketing and black edging in the corners of his eyes, but now, now he can see everyone. Even if they come at him, at least he has a fighting chance.

Panic is clawing at Buck's throat, but he tries to swallow it back. He just — he just has to get out of here, he just has to—

Jones is clutching his nose, trying to staunch the bleeding that's running over his lip and around the curve of his chin. "You little bitch!" Jones garbles.

Barnett moves around him, aiming for Buck, and Buck backs away instinctively but jerks to a stop when he realizes they have him cornered. He has to go through them to get to the exit. Stupid, stupid! Buck looks around him quickly, gaze narrowing in his fear, then picks up a 10 pound dumbbell and hefts it up to shoulder height just as Barnett reaches him—

"What the hell is going on in here?" A voice, tinged with alpha command, cuts through the room.

Everyone stills.

Barnett jerks to a stop and whips his head around. Buck freezes, breaths coming in fast and ragged and dumbbell still held over his shoulder as he looks up at the entrance of the gym, where someone has just walked in. The newcomer is an alpha, tall and dark-haired, wearing the red windbreaker of an instructor over his workout gear.

All eyes follow on him as he strides forward into the center of the floor and surveys the crowd.

Buck watches him as he fights to steady his breathing. In, out he thinks; in, out. He's settled himself back down enough from the panic-inducing fear response of an alpha against his back that it's almost easy. A few breaths and the black is creeping back out, his chest no longer rising and falling rapidly as he struggles to take in a full breath.

The new alpha is taking in the room carefully, and Buck tries to see the scene before him through his eyes: a room of twenty people, all but three minding their own business a little too deliberately. Jones, blood streaming down his face; Barnett, hand caught in mid-air where he'd been reaching for Buck before the interruption; and Buck, dumbbell in hand and lifted as if ready to strike.

The man walks closer to the tableau of Buck, Barnett, and Jones, obviously dismissing the rest as uninvolved, and Buck can't help but seethe quietly, even as he drops the dumbbell back down onto its stand. Everyone in here, all of them are worse than useless, ready to watch him be caught and dragged away by two alphas and none of them did a fucking thing, but there won't be any consequences for them. There never are.

The thing is, he gets it. At least, some part of him does. Even in LA, societal norms are hard to change and some people can never break out of that mindset that omegas are hardly more than property; vessels to carry offspring more than people of their own, and a potentially embarrassing extension of whatever family claims them.

And he's sick of being surprised by this; sick of letting himself get almost comfortable as the jibes and pranks had died down over the last week, only to have the rug pulled out from under him again. The other candidates have made it pretty fucking clear they don't think an omega should be a firefighter, but he's hardly the first one and most have laid off.

"Well?" the man asks, arms crossing over his chest as he looks first at Jones, then Barnett and Buck, still a distance away from them.

"Sir, uh — Buckley here, he hit Jones, and then he was about to attack me," Barnett says quickly. "I was trying to get him to calm him down."

"Like fuck you were," Buck hisses, and the instructor holds up a hand, silencing both of them. Buck tries to contain his sneer, and probably fails miserably.

Because the thing is, he knows how this goes. After four weeks here, Buck has become well acquainted with how the instructors operate. He assumes they've been given a directive from up top to be inclusive, to make sure their omega candidates aren't unfairly targeted.

It's all lip-service though. Oh, they give the speeches about accepting people of all designations but they do so with a little smirk on their faces, and then they turn a blind eye to the taunting, the shoving, the little comments. Buck tried once, and only once, to bring the alphas' behavior to their attention, and had been met with a blank eyed stare and a comment that he should learn how to toughen up.

So, yeah. Buck knows how this goes.

The man sighs and walks closer, eyes narrowing in sympathy at the blood still streaming down Jones's face. "You need to go to medical." He tilts his head towards the door. "Go. I'll find you later to discuss this."

"Yes, sir, uh — Firefighter Diaz, sir," Jones garbles, relief clear on his face. And honestly, why not feel relieved? He's probably not going to be reprimanded, not for antagonizing an omega.

The man, Diaz, moves closer to Buck and Barnett, and Buck tenses reflexively, knowing what's coming. "As for you two," Diaz starts, and then jerks to a stop, head cocking to the side. His nostrils flare as his eyes zero in on Buck.

Surprise flashes across his face. "You're—"

Buck's jaw clenches as the man cuts himself off, but he doesn't need to speak the rest aloud: an omega.

"Yeah, I am," Buck bites out, then has to bite at his piercing to make himself stop talking. Whether or not instructor Diaz is as worthless as all the rest, Buck can't afford to piss any of them off; to stand out even more than he already does. He can't let his justifiable anger be labeled emotional omega, because then he'll be written off and never make it out of the academy.

And he wants this job; actually wants it, like he hasn't wanted anything before, other than Ava.

"Yeah, you know how they are, sir," Barnett jumps in, eager. "Emotional, high strung. Buckley just got a little upset over nothing."

"Over nothing?" Buck says sharply, immediately forgetting his intention to stay quiet when Barnett opens his stupid fucking mouth.

"Hey," Diaz snaps, "calm down, both of you."

Calm down. Like he's some unruly omega whose emotions got the best of him; like he's a child who needs to be brought to heel.

Buck grits his teeth, anger and disappointment lodging itself in his throat.

Of course, of course, this alpha would be like all the others.

Suddenly, he can't stand the thought of another patronizing lecture from yet another sanctimonious alpha.

He has to get out of here.

Buck starts walking, brushing past Barnett and making a wide berth around Diaz. He beelines for the door.

"Hey," Diaz says, and then sharper, "hey!"

Buck stops. He closes his eyes for just a half-moment, tongue pressed against his lip ring in an attempt to calm himself down.

He turns around.

Diaz squares up to him, brow pulled down low. "I didn't say you could leave."

Buck shrugs, knowing it's a mistake as soon as he does it. But that itchy, antsy feeling that's screaming for him to escape is too loud to ignore.

Diaz's face shifts, frustration curling his lip. "Seriously? Do you want me to write you up?"

"For what? Being an omega in public?" Buck snipes back.

His brain is screaming at him, the mantra he's repeated over and over since he got here and realized no one actually wanted him to be; that no one would have his back: don't cause a fuss, don't be trouble.

Be invisible.

"Wha — no, that's not what," Diaz says, flustered, "you started a fight with another candidate, you—"

"Of course you're just going to take this knothead's word for it," Buck grits through his teeth, jerking his head at Barnett, who sneers and takes a step towards him. He stills at the quelling look Diaz shoots him. Of course you're just like the rest of them.

Diaz stares at him, anger now twisting his face. "Well, you haven't told me anything different," he says slowly. "So why don't you tell me what happened?"

And Buck can't help it — can't help his body's automatic response to being overwhelmed, attacked, automatically dismissed as he knows he'll be if he opens his mouth again. He can feel the tears burning behind his eyes, the clenching of his jaw, the taste of it in his mouth.

Buck grinds his teeth to bite it back; knows he fails when Diaz's eyes widen. "Would you believe me if I did?"

Diaz doesn't answer.

Buck leaves.

***