Chapter Text
At the other end of the isle, near the cereals, a young man is arguing patiently with two small children and trying to reclaim a brightly coloured box from one of them, who is attempting to run away. She approaches, hoping to block the little thief’s escape and offer the man some help.
“Gotcha!” the man crows, getting an arm around the escapee and hauling him off the ground. He looks up at her, and she comes face to face with –
“Penny Benjamin” Pete Mitchell gives her an achingly familiar roguish smirk, arms still full of struggling toddler. It does nothing to diminish his charms. “It’s been far too long.”
“It’s good to see you, Pete.” She hasn’t since they were in college. It’s been longer since she’d seen that smile; when she’d brought her college roommate home for thanksgiving, and her parents had pulled her aside to warn her about associating with omegas like that, especially if she wanted to find a good alpha. She’d watched it fade off his face where he stood frozen in the doorway, just out of her mother’s line of sight. It hadn’t even come back that night in their junior year when he’d shown her everything wonderful about their designation, everything her mother was afraid of. It’s been ten years since then.
Her musings are interrupted by the squirming child Pete is holding. He has to be a nephew, she’s pretty sure Pete Mitchell wouldn’t take babysitting duty for anyone but his sister. She’d met Carole exactly once, but it was clear to anyone with eyes how much Pete adored her.
“Put me down!” the boy demands, still waving the contraband cereal like a flag.
“All right” Pete’s smile is indulgent now. He holds his free hand out for the cereal. The boy hugs it to his chest and shakes his head. Penny finds herself subjected to the surreal experience of watching Pete Mitchell – who’d sworn that he’d never settle down, that he was going to fly for the navy, who’d worked his way through half the student population on campus (and a few of the professors, if the rumours were true), twice, the wildest omega she’d ever known – act like a parent. The kind who walks their children through all the reasons why they can’t buy the sugary cereal in the bright orange box, and had clearly done it before. He wins, and the boy grumpily thrusts the box back onto the shelves, among the Cheerio’s and bran cereals displayed at adult-height. He puts the boy back on his feet, where he promptly latches onto the other child, hiding behind Pete’s legs, and staring up at Penny with big dark eyes.
He introduces her, putting a hand on top of each head, “Penny, these menaces are Jacob” the boy, “and Natasha” the girl, “Say hi to Penny, babies, she’s an old friend of mine.” The boy, noticing her for the first time, shies behind Pete, venturing only a timid half-wave. The girl comes closer, still clinging to the hem of Pete’s T-shirt. She has two little pigtails. It may be the cutest thing Penny thinks she’s ever seen. Especially with the little “Hi” and the dazzling smile she offers. Her heart squeezes.
“Hi, sweetie it’s so lovely to meet you.” Penny ventures a little wave of her own.
“You’re really pretty.” Her grip on Pete’s shirt gets tighter, and she hides her face behind her other hand. “Are you really Mama’s friend?”
She cannot help the jerk of her head, back up to Pete’s neck. The girl’s grip on his shirt has pulled the collar down just enough for a faded scar to be visible. She stares at the children. Pete’s green eyes peek out at her where Jacob is still hiding behind his mother. Natasha has his dimples. She doesn’t know how she didn’t see it before.
Pete had never wanted children.
He’d told her one night, in their tiny dorm, long after even the hardest partiers had gone to sleep, that he was afraid a mate would stop him flying, that an alpha would insist on getting him pregnant, would ground him permanently. He had done everything he could to avoid the life Penny herself had been dreaming of since she was a child.
“Your mama and I went to school together” She answers the girl’s question. She can hardly believe her voice isn’t shaking. Penny takes in a deep breath.
Pete’s scent has changed.
The unmistakeable powdery notes of motherhood, smoothing out the tart peaks of his desert-warm scent. The sharp-high gasoline topnote she used to catch, that spiked whenever he did something reckless, has been deepened with the unmistakeable smell of sea salt. He’d never smelled like the ocean before. Even soaked in seawater, after hours on the beach, it hadn’t seeped so indelibly into his scent.
“I… Pete, what? I’m – ”
“Don’t! Don’t say you’re sorry.” He cuts her off before she can make her mouth conjure up anything more coherent. “Pen. Whatever your thinking, stop. It’s not like that, I swear. Tom is, well…” Then it’s his turn to be lost for words. They stand there with their mouths open, not knowing what to say to each other.
Pete catches her falling smile, offers a soft one of his own.
“Hey Natty?” the girls tiny pigtails swing when she looks up at him, “Do you think Penny would want to come to dinner tonight? I think she’d like to meet Poppa.” He looks back up at her, eyes flicking to her neck. There’s nothing there to see. She lives with two other omegas in an apartment they can barely afford on the salaries of three secretaries. She can’t tell what he would think of that, his expressions aren’t familiar to her anymore. The girl’s face lights up, “really?” at Pete’s nod she whirls back to Penny so fast one of her pigtails smacks her in the face.
“Yes, please, please say you’ll come! Poppa’s the best! Promise!”
Penny cannot help but be charmed, and it’s not like she had plans tonight. All she had to look forward to was an empty flat after her roommates go out for the night, and the microwaved remains of last night’s pizza. So she looks Pete Mitchell’s daughter right in her pretty hazel eyes and says yes. She lets Pete scrawl an address on her list in his same old illegible chicken scratch and tell her to be there at 5:30, and no she shouldn’t bring anything. He herds the children into the next isle, and they’re gone by the time she reaches the checkout.