The ABO Serum

A Keeping Quilt

On the other side of the glass, Dr. Placer and Mitch watched the scene unfold with astonishment. Dr. Blitzer was never emotional. He'd hadn't flinched when his fiancé handed his ring back. The monitors were showing their initial anxiety reactions now shifting to relief reactions. It took time, and closer proximity, but it happened.

In the meeting room, Noah stroked the doctor's head and back and hushed him until his sobs quieted down to soft hiccups and he whispered, "that was interesting."

"I-It's okay. I-I w-won't t-tell anybody," Noah promised, oblivious to the one-way glass. Alan chuckled in response. He didn't want to let go of this sweet young man. In fact, he felt relieved that his ring was back in his pocket and his fiancé out of his life before this boy walked into it. He wasn't sure what all that meant but he wanted to find out.

"Noah," he whispered, hoping they wouldn't hear in the observation room. "Will you be my friend? I have many colleagues here, but I don't have any close friends. I don't have anyone to FaceTime when I'm lonely in quarantine and don't want to talk about work. Is that...is that too much to ask?"

The slender arms around him squeezed tight. "O-okay. I-I c-can d-do t-that."

That was how their relationship started. It proceeded with frequent texts and late-night FaceTime chats. Alan complained of not sleeping well and two days later a package showed up. It contained a pillow saturated with the beta's faint pheromones. Alan slept like a log with his face buried in it. The next day he took his own useless pillow and packed it into the same box to send to Noah.

With their son out of danger, Noah's parents began to feel the pressure of finances to return home and get back to work, but Noah couldn't leave town. Alan suggested he stay in the nearby apartment he'd rented. It could use a caretaker anyway while GenLife kept him locked up.

Reluctantly, Noah agreed. The apartment was stunning. But Alan's ex left it empty. Since Alan hadn't been home, he had no way to know, though he didn't seem surprised when Noah told him. He ordered a credit card with Noah's name on it and told him to make it a home. He trusted Noah completely.

There were three bedrooms. Noah set the master bedroom up for the absent doctor, the next room for himself, and the smallest room as an office. He thought there was a good chance the doctor would let him stay as a roommate when he finally came home so he let himself make that one room his own. It was wishful thinking to imagine they'd share the big master bed someday, but they were definitely friends.

The doctor was an alpha, and alphas paired with omegas. The way he dreamed about the doctor holding him was useless. It just...it was so hard to suppress those feelings when the doctor was so thoughtful. Noah tried to be conservative when spending the doctor's money, but when he showed the doctor around the newly appointed apartment via FaceTime, he suggested things he might like to add someday. All those things showed up in Amazon boxes the next day.

With school on hiatus, Noah had to find something to do with himself. At the doctor's suggestion he applied for a job in the coffee shop in the GenLife lobby. It was only part-time work, so he still had too much time on his hands.

He picked up a sewing machine and a bunch of fabric at a thrift store and watched YouTube videos on quilting until he figured it out. Since their relationship started with a blanket, and he didn't get to return it to the doctor directly, he thought sewing him a new blanket would be special. Plus, he could kill hours of his superfluous time thinking about the doctor and how he'd smile and thank him for the gift. How he'd sleep peacefully under the quilt saturated with Noah's pheromones even more than the pillow was.

The package arrived without fanfare. Without warning even. It just showed up one day. When Alan opened it, his tears flowed again. First, because a fresh wave of pheromones wafted from the box. The pheromones in his pillow faded too quickly. Then, because of the carefully pieced quilt that he knew in the depths of his soul carried love in every stitch.

The primarily blue and black fabrics matched up awkwardly in places, and a few looped threads peeked out from the seams, but those imperfections made it even more precious. He thanked Noah profusely over their call that night, watching him turn bright red and stutter even more than usual. But he couldn't sleep under that blanket as he expected he would. There was a restlessness that bothered him all night long.

The quilt demanded an answer, and there could only be one if he wanted to sleep peacefully under it. Alan packed up his response at three in the morning, dropped it off in the outgoing mail pile, and slept like a baby.

The next day, Noah's quilt box came back to him. It wasn't the first time Alan used his box to send a return gift, but he was too generous. It embarrassed Noah who knew he would never be able to catch up with the older man no matter how hard he tried. But...it's not like society expected women to catch up to their older husbands before they could be married and happy.

Maybe that thought was sexist to begin with, but he reasoned that as the culture changed and women could certainly be the economic equals of men, that still didn't necessarily matter in relationships. And highly successful women sometimes married much younger less successful men now. So, as a relationship dynamic, maybe it was okay if the doctor wanted a college boy for a partner. Any guy would be lucky to be the doctor's trophy husband. He could even, maybe, have the doctor's babies. The thought made him tear up. Not because he could picture them happily together as a family, but because he knew he was fooling himself. He couldn't open the box right now. Another gift would just put them more out of balance.

It sat on the table all afternoon, taunting him. He knew he had to open it eventually. The doctor would ask about it. Five minutes before their scheduled call he finally got up the courage to do it. He grabbed the edge of the tape and ripped it off. But all that he saw was shredded office paper. He dug around and found more shredded office paper.

His phone started ringing and he was still coming up empty. He accepted the FaceTime call and propped the phone up against a pile of books. "S-Sorry, I-I can't f-find anything."

"Keep looking," Noah could hear the smile in the doctor's voice. "It's in there. You could just dump the box."

"A-Are you k-kidding‽ T-This would k-kill the r-Roomba!" Noah was combing his fingers carefully through the bottom now and finally found something not paper. It was a small velvet pouch with something hard in it.

Alan could see the confused expression on Noah's face as he pulled the little pouch out of the box. When he turned its contents out into his palm, he looked shocked.

"Noah," Alan began. "I've never had a friend like you before. I don't want you to just be my friend. I don't want you to wonder or be confused by all this alpha, omega, beta stuff. I want you to know that I want you to be a part of my life forever. The biggest part of my life. I don't care about some imaginary omega out there with irresistible pheromones. I can't live anymore without yours. And your voice. And when I get out of here, I want your body and every other part of you. You don't have to decide right now, but I couldn't wait any longer before telling you. I needed you to know."

Noah's words were always unreliable, so he tended to rely on actions to communicate. In this case he slipped the ring onto the third finger of his left hand as tears streamed down his cheeks.