36
Simon
That night, as promised, Jayne led Simon into his room and sat him on the bed. A pack of chocolate chip cookies, the tray partially pulled from its wrapper, sat within reaching distance. Jayne buzzed around his room, stepping around Parker, who was having tummy time, and hummed to himself. Parker seemed unfazed. Simon watched him grab his round blue teether and bring it to his mouth, gumming it hungrily. It hadn’t been long ago that Parker hadn’t been able to reach for anything at all. At this age, he was discovering his world in all kinds of new and exciting ways… and at Simon’s age, he’d started to explore his world a little more thoroughly, too. It was why he was in Jayne’s room, after all, preparing for an injection he’d never had to worry about before.
“I’m not close to my heat, you know,” Simon murmured. He rubbed his arm nervously. “It’s not… it’s not bad, that I’m letting him come inside me. It’s not like I’m going to get pregnant.”
Jayne shot him a look from across the room. He carried a small tray of assorted medical items to the bedside and set them by the cookies, then snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves. “Are you even hearing yourself speak right now?”
“I… well, yes.” Simon screwed his lips to the side. “But I mean, he’s… he’s okay. We’re both okay.”
“Spread of disease aside, no, you are not okay. Shirt off.” Jayne made a vague gesture at Simon’s shirt, and Simon, wanting to do nothing more than melt through the floor, complied. Once his shirt was cast aside, Jayne disinfected a patch on his abdomen, then lifted the pre-filled syringe from the tray. “You’re forming habits right now that are going to be hard to break once youareat risk of getting pregnant. So, because of that, we’re going to keep you safe. Do you know how the injection works? It’s a little different from taking oral birth control.”
Simon sighed. Jayne was right—when his heat arrived and he was insane with need, he wasn’t going to tell Harlow to stop to use a condom. “No.”
“It’s really simple.” Jayne pointed at the syringe. “One injection takes care of one heat. That means you’re going to need two a year. You’ll go into heat like you usually do, and you’ll need to take blockers to numb its effects like usual, but if you have unprotected sex during that time, your risk of pregnancy will be less than one percent.”
Simon wanted to ask Jayne why he hadn’t given himself the shot before having heat sex with Bastian, but decided that doing so would be to declare civil war within the Biernacki family, and no matter how he spun it, that didn’t seem worth it. Instead, he nodded.
“After your next heat, I’ll give you another injection, and so on. Okay?”
“Sure.” Simon wasn’t particularly afraid of needles, and he trusted Jayne’s medical knowledge, but there was something disquieting about receiving a birth control shot in his brother’s bedroom sitting next to an open package of chocolate chip cookies. “That’s fine.”
“Alright.” Jayne set the swab down. “Deep breath in, then let it out slowly. Are you ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s go.”
Simon breathed in, filling his lungs until he thought they might burst, then let that breath out while he counted the seconds. There was a slight prick, the hint of a sting, and then a cool sensation. By the time he’d emptied his lungs, Jayne set the depleted syringe aside and thumbed a small, circular bandage over Simon’s injection site.
“Done,” Jayne announced proudly. “Go forth and have all the wild, crazy sex your heart desires… preferably, when I’m asleep or at work.”
“I like to do it best when you’re at work,” Simon replied, bolder than usual. “It’s hard to have sex in your bed while you’re asleep—you’re really kicky when you get disturbed.”
Jayne’s temple twitched, but before he could fire back, someone cleared their throat at the bedroom door. Simon jumped and turned to look.
Harlow stood there.
“Hey,” Harlow said. He looked between Simon and Jayne sheepishly. “I just got done working with Evie and Shep on training, and I thought you guys might be done in here. Looks like I interrupted. I’m sorry.”
Jayne lifted a corner of his lips. “No, not at all. Simon was just going on about how excited he is to really break out of his shell now that he’s had his shot. Have you heard of nasolingus before?”
Harlow hesitated. “… No?”
Jayne waggled his eyebrow. “Well, Simon will besureto introduce you to it later.”
Simon, who also had no idea what nasolingus was, but figured it was something embarrassing, elbowed Jayne in the side. Jayne snickered.
“Now we’re even for the bed comment,” Jayne said.
Hoping that his brother’s weirdness hadn’t just killed Harlow’s enthusiasm for conversation, Simon tried to re-engage his interest. “Jayne is just joking. I don’t even know what that means. What did you want to talk about? You’re not interrupting anything.”
Harlow smiled, the awkwardness from before melting from his face. The sight of him so jubilant made Simon forget that he’d ever been embarrassed. Simon blushed. “My friends, the Single Dads, wanted to know if you’d like to meet them. Three of them live in Aurora—there’s just one who won’t be able to make it. Since I’m in town, they’d asked if they could see me, and since you’re important to me, they asked if they could see you, too.”
“Oh.” What had started as excitement degraded into mild dread. Harlow’s friends? Three of them? Just thinking about it spiked Simon’s anxiety. One on one, he might be okay—awkward, but okay—but to think that he’d meet three new people at once, people who already had established bonds, in-jokes, and history…
It made him want to curl up somewhere dark and never come out.
