Chapter Text
“Parent teacher night?” Tony speaks incredulously looking up from his tablet to the young alpha that was shoveling cereal into his mouth at an alarming rate.
“Yeah,” was spoken through the soggy mush in his mouth.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Steve scolds from where he’s reading the morning newspaper, that he’d bought from one of the vendors he passed after his morning run with Sam, flicking the edge down for the teenager sitting at the far end of the kitchen table to see the seriousness in his brow.
The teenager gives no hint that he heard, continuing with eating and talking to Tony, “Yeah, you got to go and meet my teachers and shit.”
“Harley!”
Blue eyes sparkle at that, looking over at older alpha as he teases, “Come on, Cap, it’s not even a bad word, really.”
Steve narrows his eyes at that, but Tony cuts his head alpha off before he could even open his mouth, looking at the pack’s ward, his voice stern, but the upwards tug at the corner of his lips gave way that he wasn’t upset by the situation at all, “Kid, Steve can’t take that kind of language, so knock it off and tell me actual facts about this parent teacher thing I now apparently have to attend tonight.”
“You have to be there at five and go to each of my teachers and listen to them tell you about how awesome I am.”
Tony scoffs at that, “Okay, well I’ll make sure they know just how awesome you truly are --”
“So, you’ll tell them we’re connected?” Harley grins, as he interrupts.
Tony doesn’t get a chance to answer, due to Bucky rushing into the kitchen, calling out, “Harls, let’s go we’re going to be late.”
The fourteen-year-old stands up at that, the chair scrapping across the polished concrete slab flooring, “Got to get my backpack.”
“Then get it,” Bucky states, grabbing for the teen’s dirty bowl as he passes him.
“How is it that your always running late?” Tony comments towards his mate, Steve making an agreeing noise as he continues to read his paper.
Bucky side eyes his mates at that, dropping the dish into the sink, before turning back and looking pointedly at Tony as he throws out, “Well I actually like sleep, unlike you who seem to be allergic to it,” then towards Steve, “And not everyone likes to wake up at the crack of dawn and run.”
Steve scoffs, “You two need to leave by six forty to get there for Harley to have enough time to get his books and chat for a bit before class. You act as if it’s a surprise every time it’s your turn to take him.” And Bucky took him three times out of the five school days.
Bucky shrugs his shoulders, his life was turning in his favor the last few months, he didn’t have to worry as much anymore, the burdens of the past eight decades finally behind him, Steve was healthy, the Great Depression was over, the War was over, HYDRA was gone, he’d been absolved of his crimes as the Winter Soldier after a lengthy trial, and now he could catch up on all the sleep he lost during that time.
*************
Sadie runs the damp q tip underneath her bottom lashes getting the excess mascara that always seemed to make a home there off, azure color eyes flicking over to the alpha sharing the bathroom mirror with her, when he speaks up, finished with shaving away the extra fuzz that accumulated over yesterday from his face off and leaving behind a simple goatee, “Trey wants us all to meet up at a bar and watch the NBA game tonight.”
“I have conferences again tonight, remember.”
Alex hums, “You can join us at the bar when you’re done.”
“Rather just come home, I’ll have papers to start grading tonight.”
“Okay, you think you can last till tomorrow?” he had been off yesterday and also didn’t deal with hormonal teenagers five days a week, so he tended to last longer than she could even though they both had similar spectrum ratings. Spectrum being how long an alpha or omega could go without dominating or submitting during a domming, respectively, before going into withdrawals, which in some cases could kill them if not handled promptly.
“One day won’t kill me.”
“Sadie,” drawing out the omega’s name.
“Fine, maybe something to tide me over.”
“I’ll text you what I want you to do.”
“Thanks.”
Ominously saying, “Don’t thank me yet.”
She pouts at that, bottom lip poking out as she looked up at the six-foot alpha, Alex would never do anything on her list of hard limits, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t pick the few things she hated doing, but were still well within her limits, they actually stretched her submission since she had to submit to him and do the things she disliked, and she felt amazing afterwards, but she still mumbles out with a slight whine in her voice, “I hate cleaning the bathroom,” tossing the q tip into the small trashcan that was almost full, as she does.
“Didn’t think of that one, thanks Syds.”
“Then forget about it,” seeing the expression on his face, which showed he wouldn’t, she slaps at his arm lightly.
Alex’s grin widens, and lets his hand fall onto her panty clad bottom in retaliation with a pop, clicking his tongue in mock reprimand.
Rolling her eyes at him, she heads back into their shared bedroom, they lived in a four-bedroom townhouse, converting the study on the third floor into a fifth bedroom, with six other people, well seven, but the seventh depended on if Kimberly’s on and off girlfriend of the last couple years was on or not. Glancing back at the alpha, she inquires, “Help me with my dress?”
“Sure.”
Grabbing the deep wine-colored dress off the bed, she pulls it on before sweeping her hair out of the way and letting Alex slide the zipper up.
*************
Harley waves goodbye to Bucky, the alpha Sergeant obscured by darkly tinted windows and a pair of sunglasses covering his steel blue eyes, before bounding up the steps of Midtown High. Rose Hill didn’t have a good high school at least not one that would challenge him and he’d begged his mom for over four months straight to let him move to New York and go to a STEM magnet school, it only took two calls for Tony to be onboard, the second one actually involving his mom’s approval of the move; of course, Tony had also spent the last three and a half years practically crying over the state of his small town’s science curriculum and the complete lack of engineering classes.
“Hey!” Peter calls out.
“Hey!” grinning over to the older teen that shared the locker next to him, “So, did you see that new Spiderman video?”
A quick “Nope,” came, before Peter focused on grabbing books for his class after homeroom.
“Dude it was awesome. I’ll send you the link.”
“Okay.”
Flash passes them by then calling out tauntingly, “Hey Penis Parker. Hey Hillbilly.”
Harley growls at that and Peter puts a surprisingly firm hand on his shoulder stopping him from going after the beta, and distracting him with saying, “So, you ready for MJ’s mock competition in decathlon?”
“Yep. I’m going to knock Flash from his almighty first alternate position.”
Peter nods, and the bell rings for students to head to their homerooms, “See you at lunch.”
“See ya,” Harley returns back, before quickly grabbing his own books for the first two periods after homeroom, along with his Spanish homework he’d yet to finish, his locker too much of a hassle to deal with when his classes were on the far side of the second story and they only had a five-minute passing period.
“Good morning, Mister Keener,” his homeroom/history teacher greets with a slight warning in her voice, when he comes into the class just as the bell to start the day goes off.
“Morning, Misses Williams.”
The teacher turns to the class at large then, greeting them all with a smile before going through the list of updates for the day before turning on the student morning news, and then releasing them all to either finish up homework individually or in groups, and letting them ask her questions, if they needed help in the last thirty minutes of homeroom.
Halfway through Harley raises up his hand for the young teacher to come over to him, and she does, the brunette omega that smelled like lavender and chocolate leaning slightly onto the desk with her hand to get a better view of his homework, as he comments out lightly, “Spanish again,” he was a genius with math and science subjects, but subjects like languages and art weren’t where he shined.
Miss Williams nods, “Sam not home,” reminding him a conversation he’d had earlier in the year that Sam was the one he usually used for help in this particular subject, as her dark blue eyes scan through his Spanish one worksheet before she asks, “So what’s your question?”
“Oh conjugation,” pointing to the second section of the two-page paper.
She immediately goes to explain, speaking fluently in the language when she switches to Spanish, dragging out certain words for him to hear the difference.
He’d been surprised the first day when she’d told the class what subjects she could easily help them with and then a shorter list of the subjects that she may or may not depending on the problem they needed help with. She had been his first omega teacher ever, and he heard through the gossip of other students that she was most of their first one since early elementary, while the few omega students that attended the school informed that they had had one for designation class when they split off into the three different designations to get a more in-depth understanding of their own biology. “Thanks.”
“No problem, let me know if you have anymore questions.”
“I will.”
*************
Sadie breathes a sigh of relief when the bell that signaled the last class of the day was over at three forty-two, saying bye to the quickly evaporating class, each one rushing to leave. Once everyone’s gone she runs her hand over the back of her neck, her stomach growling loudly for what felt like the hundredth time today, just before her lunch period, one of the still unpresented students in her class started presenting as an alpha and she skipped lunch to sit with her in the nurses office while they waited for a parent to come. The girl, who was normally painfully shy, had practically curled up into her lap seeking comfort that only an omega could give to an alpha. Presentation ruts and heats were about the presenter and their changing biology and anatomy, therefore it had been completely safe for Sadie to be in the same room as the presenting alpha, running a hand over the redhead’s back, the blouse the baby alpha wore soaked in sweat and the vest she’d had been wearing over it having been thrown to the ground when her body had started heating up into a fever, just like every presenting alpha or omega goes through when the changes start.
Pulling her cell out of her desk and finally checking to see the list that Alex had texted her, chuckling when the first thing on the list was to eat dinner, breathing out she moves to go to the teachers’ lounge and grab her lunch from the fridge.
“Hey Roger,” greeting the beta computer science teacher, who was filling up his coffee cup with the free coffee that the school provided in the teacher’s lounge, everyone she’s seen drink it bemoans that it tastes like burnt dirt.
“Sadie heard you got a presenter today?” it was uncommon for them to deal with presenters, most presented in middle school; for them, they dealt mainly with baby alphas and omegas’ whose ruts and heats were still in flux, along with dealing with the rare cases of withdrawals.
Grabbing her lunch from the fridge, as she responded, “Yep, poor girl,” she, herself, had also presented in class, the youngest in her school’s history at ten.
Harrington hummed at that, but didn’t say more on the subject.
Sadie understood why, as a beta, he wouldn’t understand the pain the next few days held for the baby alpha, and the embarrassment of everyone knowing, of witnessing how they reacted to their presentation.
The beta quickly moving on, asking, once she closed the door of the fridge and started moving for the microwave, “Your master’s concentration was World War II correct?”
“Yeah.”
“You think you could join us in the Decathlon practice sometime, this competition season’s super quiz is World War II and we could use some more challenging questions.”
“Of course, happy to help.”
“Next week?”
“Sure,” nodding before seeing the other teacher moving to leave, “But quick question. Why not ask one of the other teachers?” It was only her first-year teaching at this school, her second overall teaching as a full-fledged teacher and not just a student teacher.
“It’s during your lunch break and your more approachable than Blake or Martin.”
“Gotcha.”
“Great, got to go.”
*************
“Where’s Tony?” Harley inquires without looking up, when a shadow darkens the paper, that he was using for his art homework, and the familiar scent of smoky caramel hit his nose, indicating Sam was hovering beside him.
The dark-skinned alpha teasing out, “Junior, I think that is a horrible rendition of your daddy’s suit,” looking at the penciled drawing of Iron Man.
“Well we all can’t be like Cap,” looking up at his legal guardian, from where he sat at on the bottom steps of the entry staircase leading up to the second floor of the school, and noticing that the older alpha was holding a butcher paper wrapped sub in his hand.
“No, we cannot.”
Harley hums, stuffing his drawing pad into his backpack, “That’s for me, right?”
“Hungry?”
“Always.”
Rolling his dark brown eyes, he hands the BLT sub over to the teen, “So where do I go?”
“Tony didn’t give you the info?”
“No.”
“So, where is Tony?”
“Accords meeting with Steve.”
“Oh.”
“So, where do I go?”
“Gym.”
“And where is that?”
Instead of giving directions, he’d have to show Sam around anyway, moving to stand, he mumbles out with a faux put-upon sigh, “Fine, I’ll show you.”
*************
Sam rubs at his eyes, listening to the principal, as he talked about how the school year was progressing, after watching what he could only say was the most science-minded pep rally he’d ever been to, of course, this was a school for back when he was in high school he’d have called nerds, now he could easily call them the future of mankind; he, himself had been a jock through and through, Captain of the varsity basketball team and on the football team as the running back. They were halfway through the time allotted for the speech, when he hears loud munching and it isn’t until a few parents turn to look back with disgruntled expressions at where he and Harley are holed up near the stairs in the middle area of the raised bleachers on their faces, that he glances over at the teen, the culprit, whispering out, “Put that away.”
Harley huffs, putting the chip bag back into his backpack with extreme protest on his face and mumbling a few choice words that most definitely would have got Steve telling him off.
The older alpha doesn’t respond past rolling his eyes, now wasn’t the time to lecture.
“So next is history,” directing the Air Force alpha back up the stairs.
“This one is the last one?” Sam asks hopefully, he was starving, dinner sounded amazing at this point, for the last hour he’d been wishing he’d bought a sub for himself when he had stopped at the deli to grab the fourteen-year-old one over three hours prior.
“Yep.”
“Thank goodness.”
“Hangry?”
“Hungry not angry.”
“You get moody, though.”
“Everyone does.”
Harley shrugs at that.
Sam barely stops himself from whistling when he sees the history teacher, she was definitely not like his old teachers, leaning against the edge of her desk, her dark red dress highlighting her curvy waist, but still holding onto that modicum of professionalism, his dark brown eyes taking her in as she waves them inside with her right arm.
Harley addressing the teacher with “Hey, Misses Williams.”
“Harley,” she greets the teen easily, before her gaze moves fully over to him, and asks, “And you are?”
“Sam Wilson, Harley’s guardian,” extending his hand out, which she takes, and he stills, his hand firmly gripping the omega’s hand in his larger one, staring at his mark, that was on her forearm just below her inner elbow, the symbol of the Air force pararescue, an angel holding the world in her arms.
“Mister Wilson?” is asked in confusion, when he doesn’t give the hand back.
Harley nudging him is what pulls him out of the trance, dropping the teacher’s hand, “Sorry, just caught me off guard. I didn’t expect to meet my omega at a parent teacher conference of all things.”
“Excuse me?”
“What?” Harley asks at the same time.
“Soulmate, that’s my mark,” Sam announces, finger pointing at the symbol only he and Misses Williams could see on her arm.
He watches as she places her left hand over the mark, giving off a flustered, “Neither did I, I guess.”
When she doesn’t say anymore, he gently quips, “So, am I supposed to continue calling you Misses Williams? Or should I go with Wilson, now.”
“Sadie,” grinning up at him.
He smiles at that, licking his lips for a second, as he stares at her glossy full lips, he could only assume soft, then looking into her azure colored eyes and staying there, loving when she dips her head down slightly and looks up through thick lashes, his scent going towards a rich caramel and her scent shifts in tune, a sweet dark chocolate that has his mouth watering.
Harley interrupts the moment, a half-minute later, cheekily asking, “Should I leave to let you guys fuck?”
Sam drops his head down, shaking his head at the teen, “Junior, just sit your ass down.”
“It’s a valid question.”
“No, a valid question is if I’m going to tell Steve about your liberal use of cuss words you use when he’s not in earshot.”
Arms crossing over his chest, “Oh, but you can cuss.”
“I’m not the one that’s fourteen and has it as a rule,” Steve had wanted the rule for the pack as well, when they formed over two years ago, but Bucky, Tony, and him had nixed the idea, going with a lighter rendition of the no cussing rule, that they gave Harley with his mom’s permission when he joined them as their ward a few months back.
Harley grumbles at that moving for a desk, and whispering out a few token cuss words when he’s sitting down.
Sam cuts eyes over to the baby alpha, giving a warning of “Harley,” before letting his deep brown eyes go back to his newly found omega mate, “Sorry about him.”
“It’s fine, Mister, I mean Sam. We should get back to the meeting anyway, I have more parents to meet after you.”
“Right,” moving a step back and leaning on an empty desk only for it to start pitching forward, he stumbles up at that, and moves awkwardly to sit in it properly, ignoring both Harley’s laughter and the way Sadie blushes for him, despite the laugh he could see she’s holding in, arms falling back to her sides now that there’s no danger of him falling.
Sadie starts once the alpha is seated, going from omega that just met her alpha to a teacher with a job to do, keeping this part completely professional as she starts off with “Mister Wilson, as I’m sure you are well aware, Harley is a very bright student, he wouldn’t be at this school if he wasn’t. I know based on my interactions with him in both my homeroom and Global History class that the classes that are not math and sciences come a little more difficult for him, but he’s willing to learn and during the times that we do in-class discussions, he poses questions that are thought inducing, and have led the class on different ways of thinking about certain periods conflicts and laws of that time. He’s so far getting a low B in my class, that may change for the better once I start grading the essays the students turned in today, with it being the second essay of the semester, they now have a greater understanding of how I grade essays and feel more comfortable knowing what is and isn’t acceptable. That being said, he does get distracted easily and I’ve caught him a few times doing homework for other classes when I’ve been lecturing, but it’s the use of his cell, which has earned him detention. Since he likes to sit in the back corner it isn’t a distraction to many students, but it is a distraction. I have mentioned this to him privately on different occasions and the class as a whole is well aware that I do lecture on additional material not found in the text and I do include it on quizzes and exams, it would be to his great benefit to pay attention to the lecture and take notes. Overall, though he is a joy to have in the classroom.”
Sam nods at the information, looking over at Harley as he did, the teen making great work of not meeting either adults’ eyes, when Sadie stopped singing his praises.
“Do you have any questions or concerns, Mister Wilson?”
“Nope.”
“Well then,” seeing that a triad and their daughter were standing outside of her classroom waiting for their turn, she says, “Have a great night, it was a pleasure to meet you Mister Wilson, and I’ll see you in the morning for homeroom, Harley.”
“See ya, tomorrow,” Harley replies back, standing up quickly.
Sam pulls out his wallet as he stands, grabbing out one of his business cards that he gave out to vets at the VA, handing it over with “Call when you’re done,” halfway through changing his tone from firm to questioning, he wasn’t about alpha his way into her schedule, he’d leave the bulldozing to his other mates, at least for the time being.
“Of course,” dipping her head in understanding, as she places the card onto her cell that sat beside her on the desk.
*************
They’d walked in silence to the car, Harley busy on his cell, not wanting the lecture for not paying attention in class, while Sam walked in a daze, turning on the car when they finally got into it, the radio blasting out R&B, which is quickly silenced, as he gives a soft “I found her,” he met his pack’s omega, he met her first, him, he always joked that he did what Steve did just slower and Steve had been the one to meet their other two mates first, and now he got to be the one to do it and it was their omega, which for an alpha was like their birthday and Christmas mixed into one and add in some fireworks.
“So, does this mean I’ll get an A in the class?” Harley queries.
Sam turns at that frowning, “No, it means you work harder.”
“That’s shit,” not really meaning it.
“Language.”
“So, dinner?”
“At home, Buck said he’d pick up Thai after his domming appointment.”
“So, are you just going to blurt out that you met your guys’ omega or is this something where you surprise them all?”
“Don’t know.” Blurting it out sounded nice, but then they would all be waiting for Sadie to come around and he knew his three other mates were impatient, Tony especially, the only beta of the pack on many occasions announced that he couldn’t wait for their omega mate just so that he could have someone to gripe with and to have a partner in crime to tease his three alpha mates with. “But I do know that you aren’t telling them.”
“Do I have to keep calling her Misses Williams?”
“No. Misses Rogers or Misses Wilson or Misses Barnes is just fine,” though the government would only know her as Misses Wilson, as Falcon he wasn’t as well known, therefore he would be the only one to put in the soulmate paperwork.
“Oh, come on.”
“Until she gives you permission to call her something else, then that’s all you’ll be calling her by.”
“Fine.”
*************
“A watched pot never boils.”
Sadie looks up at that from the kitchen table, seeing Spencer, an Asian alpha, leaning against the stairwell that headed up to the third floor, “What are you doing up?” it was approaching eleven at night and she knew he had a hospital shift that started at five in the morning.
“Wanted water.”
“Oh.”
“So, what are you doing?” moving into the kitchen.
“Deciding if I should call someone,” looking back at her cell that she’d been staring at for the better part of a half an hour.
“At this hour?” Spencer asks incredulously.
“He said to call, but its late.”
“And who is he?”
“My alpha.”
Hand stilling from grabbing one of his son’s plastic X-Men cups that were drying on a drying mat, turning back to the omega, “Wait, alpha as in your alpha?”
“Yeah.”
“You met one of your mates?”
“Yeah, he’s the guardian of one of my students.”
“Okay, speaking as an alpha, if he said call, you need to call,” grabbing the cup and going for the fridge.
Sadie hummed at that, but made no move to pick up her cell.
“This about Alex?”
“I don’t know, maybe, probably.”
“You both knew this day would come, it was a matter of time before one of you guys met your mates and moved on from each other.”
“I know, it’s just …” trailing off.
“You don’t want to be your mom.”
“Maybe.”
“First off, you aren’t anything like that woman, she didn’t just move on, she abandoned you, Becca, and Charlie to make a new family. You and Alex don’t have kids. And secondly, what you guys have is more friends with sexual domming benefits than anything else, but it definitely isn’t a marriage like your mom had.”
“I know.”
“So, call the alpha.”
“Okay,” picking up her cell and Sam’s card before she lost her nerve.
“Do you want me to sit in here with you?”
“No, you got to get up in like four hours.”
“Okay, goodnight.”
“Night.”