Chapter Text
“You know,” Steve said with the kind of forced casualness that only happens when an uncomfortable topic had been touched upon. “I never thought I’d live to see the day they let omegas in the military.”
Sam laughed shortly. “You still haven’t.”
Steve, who was kind of adorable and Sam hated him for it, did a fantastic impression of a fish out of water. Sam considered explaining, putting him out of his clearly confused misery, but then Steve was suggesting they grab something to eat and Sam was never one to turn down food. Besides, food was safe and didn’t involve talking about how Steve had no idea what made him happy.
Sam knew that sometimes not talking about things was more important than talking about them and he was fine with that.
They ended up at his place and sex was had. A lot of it, or as much as you could cram into 5 or so hours. Sam learned about super solider stamina and it was incredibly enlightening. There was no knotting but Sam didn’t think it was that strange; he as an omega and Steve was an alpha (thought his scent was faint but lots of people had faint scents. Supposedly the stronger it was the more fertile. Sam’s omega scent was light, so light he was mistaken for a beta on occasion, so he wasn’t going to criticize) but he wasn’t in heat. He hadn’t gone into heat in about 18 months, not since Riley had died, and he lacked the sweet scent of fertility and whatever else it was that got alphas to pop their knots.
It was better that way because Sam already felt like a whole pile of shit screwing around with someone who wasn’t Riley so he didn’t need to add heats or knots or god forbid biting onto the whole thing.
Steve left and went back to his place that night and left Sam to think deep thoughts. He wasn’t sure what to make of the fact he’d just fucked some guy he’d met twice. Oh sure, Steve was Captain America and Sam was as much a fan as anyone, so he knew plenty about the guy but he didn’t really know the guy. And even if he had it wasn’t like he’d ever been the kind of guy to just randomly go home with any good looking alpha who showed interest.
Or anyone, really. His sex drive had pretty much been in the gutter for the past year and a half and before that...well before that was Riley.
There had always been Riley, actually. Puberty had been all about hoping they had complementary dynamics because he hadn’t been able to see anything but Riley most of his life. He’d been so wrapped up in Riley that he’d never thought anything else would do it for him.
But, nope, there he was lying in bed, an absolute mess of lube, slick, cum and whatever else because of someone who was very much not Riley. Steve had without a doubt done it for him (and, the part of his brain that was 12 giggled, to him and let Sam do it to him in return.)
There weren’t a lot of people who could say they’d seen a person hit with an RPG. Not a vehicle or a building but one lone man in the sky, suddenly blotted out by fire and smoke and reduced to...nothing but debris.
There were even less people who could say they’d seen it happen their mate.
He knew some people expected him to just curl up and die without Riley. That was what omegas were supposed to do when bonds were traumatically severed, wasn't it? He’d entertained the thought, had sat down with a gun in his hand a few times and gone so far as to put it into his mouth. He'd tasted metal and gunpowder, felt cool metal on his tongue, but he hadn’t done it. Not for any worthwhile reasons like leaving his family behind or it not being what Riley would have wanted or because of finding some inner strength.
He was just really afraid to die. He didn't know if that meant the bond with Riley hadn't been 'deep enough' or 'real enough' or maybe all that shit people said about profound bonds and losing your mate being a fate worse than death were full of shit. He'd found that when it came to secondary genders a lot of people were full of it. There wasn't much magic to be found in his life and he'd ended up bonded to his best friend, the people who knew him best and accepted him utterly unconditionally.
So he wasn’t looking for a new mate. Wasn’t looking for some magic healing alpha cock to fix him right up, balance out all the hormones, banish his nightmares and depression and all the other shit his therapist had suggested might happen. He was fine with depression and nightmares and whacked out hormones, honestly, welcomed them even because they kept Riley fresh in his mind, kept the pain from dulling.
He was afraid of a world where he stopped waking up and reaching for Riley.
All his life it had been SamandRiley, RileyandSam; they’d gone from a shared playpen to puppy piles to awkward boners to mating to the military together. Riley’s mom had started planning the wedding before they’d even presented (and oh what a happy day it had been in their homes when Riley presented alpha and he presented omega).
He didn’t know how to be with anyone else and shouldn’t have wanted to be with anyone else, shouldn’t be moving on.
--
Sam didn’t remember meeting Riley or a time without Riley because really there was no time without him.
They were both military brats and their sires worked as MP’s on the same base in North Carolina. Riley was the only child of an alpha male and beta woman (Richard and Sharon) and Sam was the youngest of four children born to an alpha female and an omega female (Paula and Darlene). Sam’s mother didn’t work, like most omegas, and so she became Riley’s babysitter while his parents were gone.
They’d shared cribs and playpens and toys and food. They were best friends before they knew what best friends were. They started school together and while they had other friends they remained inseparable.
Riley’s mother would coo over them and say weird things about imprinting and perfect mates and ‘make my words, they’ll present together and it will work out just right’. Which Sam thought was pretty gross once he was old enough to understand it because anything dealing with secondary genders and mating and babies was pretty gross to him.
All he cared about was Riley and growing up to join the military. His sire was third generation army and he’d always figured he and his older sisters would follow along with that path. He never considered that maybe they’d end up as omegas and be barred from the military even though considering they’d had an omega mother it was something that was very possible.
When he was 10 the last of his older sisters presented, putting the breakdown at 2 betas and an alpha. Something shifted after that.
--
A hand touched the top of his head and he was surrounded by the scent of syrup. He tilted his head back and smiled at his mother. They were having a Presentation party for Ashley but he’d gotten bored after the first hour and his Sire had let him leave. Riley had been bored too but he’d had to stay. Riley had whined, loudly, but his mother had scolded him and said that these sorts of things were important for alphas and it was good for Riley to get used to it now.
Sam had considered staying because Riley had to stay but Riley’s mother had just smiled at him and told him to go ahead and that no one expected him to be interested.
He’d ended up in the kitchen with his mother, watching as she iced the cake, stirred things on the stove, and arranged food to look pretty. She smiled at him often, brushing her wrist against his neck and explaining things as she went. She seemed to think he was interested in what she was doing and he wasn’t but he liked to humor her when he could, especially since she was in the kitchen all by herself.
“Why don’t you go take Riley some cake?” She smiled back at him then indicated the plate of cake she’d set on the counter next to him. He shrugged then slide off of his stool. She handed the paper plate to him then picked up the rest of the plate and started towards the door that lead to the living room.
It was still full of people, family and Ashley’s friends and it sounded like they were talking about his sister Caroline, the alpha, joining the navy while his sire protested loudly that no daughter of her’s would do any such thing.The talk stopped abruptly when his mother breezed in, all smiles and soft syrup scent. She walked the cake to the card table that had been set up in the corner of the room and was full of wrapped gifts and other desserts.
Sam started to follow her but she shook her head sharply then pointed at Riley who was sitting on the floor between his parent’s chairs and looking like he wanted to be anywhere else. He changed his course to bring the cake to Riley who perked up considerably at the sight. His fright managed a ‘thank you’ before trying to inhale the cake in one go.
As he followed his mother back into the kitchen, once she’d handed cake to his sire and Caroline, he heard his uncle Sean laughing.
“You’re starting a little Sam early aren’t you? What if he’s not an omega?”
“Oh no!” Riley’s mother said, tone sharp and serious. “He is. You can just tell when they’re together. Their scents blend perfectly.”
His sire hummed quietly. “Darlene is worried about him. She wants him focused on being a good mate for Riley, not listening to his sister’s talk, and she’d the expert on omegas.”
His mother put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him into the kitchen and back towards his seat by the counter. The door swished shut behind them, blocking off the voices of the others. She squeezed his shoulder then pushed him towards the pantry door gently.
“Sammy, grab a drink for Riley. You know what he likes, don’t you?.” She smiled again, a small gentle thing that made him feel strangely sad. “These are important things for you to know, okay?”
He nodded.
---
He stopped talking about joining the military. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to or forgot about it, how could he with Caroline joining the Navy and leaving the house, with his sire coming home in her uniform every day, and living so close to base. He went to school on base as well, surrounded by other military kids, saw their parents come to pick them up every day.
It was just that no listened anymore. No one smiled at him when he talked about what he wanted to do when he grew up. They didn’t laugh or look happy like they did when Riley (who’d gone from soldier to fireman to astronaut back to solider in under a year) talked about what he was going to do.
Instead they started gently suggesting that maybe children and being a good mate was what he should be more concerned about, like his mother was. By the time he was 12 he’d come to accept that the adults in his life knew something he didn’t and did as he was told.
It was also always very heavily implied that Riley was the one he’d need to be a good mate for. No one entertained the idea that something else might happen. When their other friends started presenting the ones who ended up alpha weren’t allowed over his house anymore and Riley was told to stick close to him when they were in school Just In Case.
Sam didn’t know what ‘Just in Case’ was supposed to be then but he could tell it was a bad thing and apparently had everything to do with the kids in their class who ended up alphas.
They had one friend when presented as omega when they were 11. She stopped coming to school the next year but she was allowed to come over and play with Sam sometimes, though she spent most of the time shadowing his mother and watching her reverently.
A few other classmates ended up omega and only one stayed in their school, but they spent all their time with the handful of older omega students, put into a special class on the far end of the school where their scent wouldn’t bother anyone and
When they were 12 he and Riley stopped hanging all over each other, stopped sharing the same space on the couch and porch, stopped sleeping in the same bed during sleepovers. It happened all at once, almost overnight. He didn’t like it but when he tried to say something Riley would just get this weird look on his face and told him to forget about. When he talked to his sire about it she frowned then pulled him into her lap and launched into a lecture about courting and appropriate behavior and why it was a good thing that Riley was such a good alpha who understood these kinds of things because it meant he’d never ‘Get Sam in trouble.’
Halfway through the school year Riley presented as an alpha to absolutely no one’s surprise. Sam couldn’t help but feel that everyone he knew was watching him, waiting and holding their breaths, including Riley.
He was just shy of 14 when he started dreading the inevitably of being an omega. Everyone’s scents were coming in stronger, changing as they settled into their dynamics and it’s only Sam and a few other stragglers left.
No one seemed worried. His mother had gone into her first heat when she was 15 so Sam had plenty of time, and omegas tended to present later than alphas and betas anyway. It was just another sign that everyone else had been right all along. He’d present eventually and start going into heat and that would mean he was ready to be mated, to be bred.
The idea made him nauseous.
He’d learned about heats in health class, though not as extensively as he would have if he’d been in the special omega classes. Most of what he learned he heard from the other kids in school. There was a pack of older alphas who were all too happy to sit close to Sam’s group of friends in the cafeteria and loudly talk about omegas they’d fucked, spinning filthy details and snickering. They'd look across the cafeteria or recess recess yard to where the small clump of omegas were and they’d go on about how omegas were all sex crazed when they went into heat, willing to do anything for an alpha’s knot, about how slick and tight and perfect it was.
Knotsluts. Bitches. Whores. Breeders. There were a lot of insults for omegas and Sam had heard a ton of them.
He tried not to listen, knew it was just a bunch of idiots trying to torment younger kids by being gross, but it weighed heavily on him. He didn’t think of his mother as any of the slurs he’d heard and no one treated her badly...but they treated her differently.
Sam didn’t think he wanted to be treated differently.
---
“Hey.” He looked up from the dishes he was washing to see Riley standing in the door of the kitchen, hands clasped behind his back and looking awkward. Riley always looked awkward lately and Sam figured it was for the same reasons as everyone else they went to school with.
Just about everyone he knew was obsessed with sex. His lack of a secondary gender didn’t mean Sam was unaware; the whole year had been a series of ill timed boners and furtive jerking off in the rare moments he was alone and trying to figure out if touching himself while thinking about Riley was okay or not, since everyone said they were going to end up mated anyway.
Riley wasn’t like the other alphas. There was none of the fighting or posturing or chasing after the betas and omegas when the teachers weren't around. He seemed happy to just stick close to Sam and never talk about secondary genders or mating or heats or sex and
Well. He was Riley. Same as he’s always been. He still listened when Sam talked about things he’d liked to do other than being someone’s mate and mother. He was little taller than Sam now, a little less chubby than he’d been the year before, but the same light brown hair, tanned skin, and dark brown eyes. He smelled like grass and pine and something that Sam sometimes found himself closing his eyes and trying to breathe in, chase down, and it made him lightheaded.
He knew he was close to presenting, knew what he smelled as that unique musky scent that meant ‘alpha’, knew he liked it even though he didn’t want to.
Knew that meant he was the omega everyone had always said he’d be.
He tried not to think about it too much, tried to enjoy what he had left because he was sure he’d be pulled out of school and it would just be a waiting game after that.
“Yeah?”
Riley shifted on his feet then stepped all the way into the kitchen, letting the door shut after him. “Your birthday is tomorrow.”
“Did you think I forgot?” Sam stepped away from the sink while trying his hand on a towel. Riley flushed and shook his head then looked down at his feet. Okay. Weird. “You staying over tomorrow?”
“Um. Depends.”
“On what?” He arched an eyebrow. Even though they slept over at each other’s houses way less often they still spent their birthday’s together.
Riley didn’t say anyway. Instead he looked around then pointed at the back door. Sam hesitated for a moment, stomach fluttering, then nodded. They went out, shutting the screen door quietly and sat on the back steps. It was getting dark but it was the weekend and warm out; Sam could hear kids shouting and laughing somewhere out in the neighborhood.
Riley shifted closer, until they were pressed against each other and slipped his arm around Sam’s shoulder. They sat and it was silent and awkward and tense and Sam kept casting looks over at his best friend, wondering if he was the one who was supposed to do something.
Everyone made it sound like being forward was a bad thing; he’d gotten lectures, actual lectures, on how proper courting was supposed to work and how he was supposed to let the alpha (or beta because that could happen even if no one thought it was going to) take the lead and all the things he wasn’t supposed to do because
Well.
Whatever.
Sam moved, put a hand on Riley’s knee and leaned in. He caught the corner of Riley’s mouth and it was a dry press that ended up being mostly on the cheek but then Riley turned his head and their foreheads knocked together as lips mashed dryly. It was only a second but he felt like his heart was being squeezed and his stomach was rolling. Riley’s eyes were squeezed shut and it was actually kind of funny and a laugh bubbled out.
Riley’s eyes snapped open and he drew back, mouth settling into a frown. “Jerk.”
Sam smiled and he felt like it was too big and was showing too much teeth. “Sorry.”
“Whatever.” Riley muttered, crossing his arms over his chest. Sam’s smile stretched and it was almost painful but he couldn’t stop himself. He felt strangely warm and light. He pressed against Riley’s side, saw brown eyes slide over to look at him then flit down to his lips and back up. A flush made its way over his face, turned his tanned skin pink.
Sam leaned in again. One of them tilted their head to the side and their lips found a better fit the second time. And third time and by the fourth Sam was pretty sure they were actually getting a pretty good handle on the whole thing.
“I don’t know what this has to do with you staying over tomorrow or not.”
Riley laughed and Sam settled against his side, rested his head on his shoulder and forgot why he’d been so worried about the omega thing anyway.
It meant being with Riley and wasn’t that one of those things he’d always wanted?
--
Two months and a lot of sneaking around to kiss where no one could see them later Sam went into heat.
It was terrible and he felt furious and disgusting and embarrassed and hot and uncomfortable the entire time. His mother floated around a huge smile plastered on her face while his sire sat around bemoaning the loss of her last baby.
Sam didn’t care about them. They were stupid and ridiculous and made absolutely no sense and he hated them. He hated everyone and everything.
Preheat was full of painful cramping and vomiting and flashes of heat and leaking and the strange urge to strip all the sheets off his bed and build a little cocoon nest whatever the hell.
Which he did. He felt moderately better when he was in it, oddly soothed and safe.
When he climbed out to get food and water and use the bathroom he found himself feel cagey and strange. He paced and raged and broke things then he cried and snapped at people. His mother just patted his head and smiled at him indulgently before insisting he eat more.
His actual heat didn’t involve any puking or cramping so he was willing to consider it better than the lead up. He felt weird in his own body, like he was too big and pushing against his skin, just on the cusp of breaking out. He was itchy and everything outside of his next felt too tight, too rough, all wrong.
There was still a lot of leaking and it smelled sugary sweet and felt gross running down his legs and he concluded he hated it to.
He was lonely and sticky and horny and he was missing something and knew just what it was, which made the experience that much worse. He thought about the stories people told about sex crazed omegas who would do anything, anything, to be knotted while they were in heat and he trembled and whined and swore because he wanted it.
He hated that most of all.
Hated himself.
---