Chapter Text
Put on the spot, it’s hard for John Price to describe the scent of a bitched alpha in heat as anything other than the smell of sheer agony. When asked, he tells people to imagine how a dying, distressed omega in heat would smell and then multiply the intensity of that scent by a six digit number of their choosing. It hurts to smell it, makes your bones ache and every part of your mind scream at you to do something, anything to help or get away. It’s worse than the scent of an omega in distress and worse than the scent of someone in serious physical pain from an illness or injury.
Price has seen a lot throughout his career working at the various heat and rut clinics run by the Laswell Institute for Sexual Health. These days, working with an omega through their regular, monthly heat is a walk in the park. With his years of experience, he mostly finds himself needed to train others for the institute or to work in the specialty clinics for patients experiencing a stress heat or those with a history of trauma or anxiety.
Stress heats could come on from a whole slew of different experiences. Anything from a particularly nasty cold to dreading an important exam to being in a car crash could be stressful enough to send an omega’s nervous system into a frenzy, reacting on pure evolutionary instinct to garner comfort and protection and to provide some mechanism by which the body could work through the flood of stress hormones.
Despite the years since, Price can vividly recall the first time he smelled the scent of an omega during a stress heat. A young omega in their 20s had been rushed to A&E after a horrible boating accident. Compound fractures to both their legs, lacerations pretty much everywhere they had skin, and their right arm cut clean off where it had been crushed between the side of one of the boats and a jagged hunk of rock. After they pulled through multiple surgeries and were safely on their way toward a full recovery, they fell into a stress heat and were transferred to the London Specialty Heat Clinic on 141st Street once cleared to leave the hospital. The onslaught of lingering hospital smells - disinfectant, pain medication, blood-soaked gauze - coupled with the distress and pain lacing the omega’s scent had Laswell establishing a mandatory 24 hour on/24 hour off shift schedule to ensure Price and the other alphas on call that month didn’t work themselves sick.
This, though, this scent doesn’t even come close. Before Price walks through the clinic doors he can smell it and it makes the alpha in him ache with the instinct to comfort. Not many people have smelled the scent of a bitched alpha in heat before. Bitching alphas thankfully isn’t common, not by a long shot, so few people will ever meet one. If they caught the scent in passing, they would probably mistake it for a distressed omega in heat accompanied by their alpha. Most people don’t actually know about bitching beyond a story they might hear about on the news or a fetish shared with them within the BDSM scene. Neither of those two scenarios comes close to preparing you for experiencing the real thing. Price happens to be one of only two alphas to have ever worked at a clinic in the UK with an alpha who had been bitched, which is why he was the only person Laswell could think to call in this situation and why he had taken the ride out in the middle of the night without a moment's hesitation.
Find the omega. Help. HELP. Hurt. Run. Hide. Hurt. Hide.
The alpha in his head screams at Price as he makes his way inside and to Laswell’s office. His instincts oscillate wildly between the desire to find whoever this is and hide them from the world and the urge to run away until the smell of their abject terror is nothing but a haunting memory. Before long, he finds himself knocking on Kate’s door. She greets him with a grim look that he imagines mirrors his own. Even though the scent has dissipated as Price strayed from the path the alpha must have been taken in, the memory of it is seared into his brain.
Kate takes a deep breath as she sits down and motions for him to do the same. "Thank you for coming on such short notice at this hour. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that I wouldn’t have called you in personally if this wasn’t an emergency."
At Price’s nod, she picks up a small stack of papers she has on the desk next to her and hands him a few sheets. “A&E called the clinic at 2:38 A.M., approximately 45 minutes after the patient was admitted, when he nearly bit out the attending’s throat and injured five others as they intervened.”
Fuck, alright then.
“Paramedics were called by a member of the public who reported one of their neighbors had collapsed in the stairwell of their apartment complex and was disoriented and unable to get up. The person calling said she knew the man from her floor, but didn’t know his name or apartment number. She thought he was having a cardiac episode.”
Kate flips to the next page and Price does the same just to mirror her. He’s still processing that first sentence.
“Notes from the EMTs say he was in a state of high anxiety upon their arrival at 1:27 A.M. and was exhibiting the following symptoms: trembling, profuse sweating, dilated pupils, and cold, clammy skin, as well as muscle ataxia and slurred speech. He was conscious and responding to verbal stimuli, but appeared to be in an altered mental state and was not oriented to date or time. They suspected some type of drug use or overdose. The patient denied taking anything apart from prescription medications, which he would not list when asked directly. He refused treatment vehemently and insisted he was fine. The neighbor and a man she identified as her mate were still there and were quite concerned. The man got close to the patient to try to convince him to go to the hospital while the woman was talking to paramedics. The patient started hyperventilating as the man was speaking to him, struggling to attempt to get up. When the man prevented him from doing so physically, the patient's panicked behavior spiked before he eventually lost consciousness. EMTs intervened. He was out for the ride to the hospital. HR 176, BP 80/54, no abnormal rhythms. The work up from the hospital found high levels of gabapentin as well as high levels of heat suppressants in his system which surprised them given that they had initially clocked him as an alpha though they do note he was absent any scent markers, likely explained by the level of heat suppressants. They pushed fluids to flush his system. Not long after he began to come around and things went tits up.”
Kate gives Price a beat to let all the information she had given him so far sink in, setting her stack of papers back on her desk and folding her hands in her lap before continuing. “Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. A quick thinking orderly stepped in when he heard things get loud and he and a couple nurses and techs managed to restrain the patient long enough to sedate him. He was out for transport here, and Kent thinks it best to keep him slightly under for the time being until we get a better read on the situation.”
Kate takes a breath, “He’s on a drip to taper him off for now and is currently shackled to the bed.”
Price's head snaps up as his thoughts come to a sudden stop.
Before he can say anything, Kate quickly elaborates, “John, the guy’s 6’4”, 300 something, and built like a tank. He broke a man’s arm, got him pinned, and nearly bit his throat out for patting him on the arm while there was still enough gabapentin in his system to knock out a horse. Short of drugging him out of his mind, like he likely had done to himself, Kent and Hellen in medical don’t see an alternative.”
The only response Price can muster is a quiet, “Fuck,” as he looks through the copies of reports and medical results in his hands.
He knows she’s right, this all is just… a lot to take in. He’s worked with Kate for just over a decade now. They’ve both seen a lot and he trusts her. He knows she knows that.
The only other time he’s worked with a bitched alpha, it had been a kid. A lanky little fifteen year old who had been abducted by a family friend when he was five only to be found miraculously by a DoorDash delivery driver who had a bad feeling about the really off scent of a severely distressed omega coming from a beat up RV in the middle of nowhere. It had been horrifying, one of the worst things he had ever witnessed another person go through, and he still wants to kill the bastard who did it. Whatever happened to this man was worse. Way worse. And Price feels completely unprepared to navigate this.
“This is a unique situation that we will navigate as a team step by step,” Kate reassures. “Kent will be personally heading his medical treatment throughout his stay and I’ve got Maria flying in from Belfast in an hour to assist. As soon as we get a name, I’ll try to find next of kin to get any information on his history. This can’t be the first time he’s experienced something like this. He gave no answer when paramedics and hospital staff asked his name and they found no ID on his person. Farah’s trying to reach the owner of the apartment complex, but since it’s the middle of the night...” she sighs as she shrugs and lets the silence speak for itself.
“We’re flying blind here for the moment, John, but I assure you if there was any alternative, I would gladly implement it. I’ve called in your team as well as Alejandro and Rudy. Gaz and Soap are on their way now; they should be here in 40 minutes tops, Roach at 8, and Ale and Rudy tomorrow at 9.”
Price can see the toll this situation has taken on Kate, can hear the strained edge in her voice. She’s as composed and professional as always, but it’s clear she’s been at this for a while and this is the first opportunity she’s getting to sit down for a second.
“How is he?” he asks.
“Conscious as of 20 minutes ago, alert… Terrified,” she sighs, leaning back in her chair and massaging her temples. “Hasn’t said a word since waking up. He’s on the priority trauma floor. Thankfully we don’t have many other patients here currently, so I’ve temporarily shut down the floor and authorized a full 24/7 staff of emergency medical personnel to remain on the floor in one of the other nearby patient suites so they can be close in case of emergency-”
Emergency, meaning I scare him so badly that he feels like he needs to attack me to keep me from- Price doesn’t let himself finish that thought.
“-tried the restraints gently. No alphas are on the floor or will be besides yourself and Ale. No betas have gone into the room, but he can likely smell them despite the seals on the doors. Two omega nurses have gone in so far to check his vitals and draw blood to check his levels. He didn’t respond to anything they’ve said or done. We have a video feed in the room for now so we can safely give him space to be alone without supervision.”
“Right,” Price says, taking a deep breath.
He guesses he’ll be doing a lot of that over the course of however long it takes to help whoever this man is get through this.
Stress heats are rough, always unpredictable and irregular. Even with people who have experienced them in the past, there is no pattern in how long they last or even in how intense they will be over the course of the heat. The only similarities they share with a typical healthy heat cycle are a handful of stereotypical heat symptoms. Some last a few days, others spike and ebb in intensity over and over for weeks or more before they are truly resolved. Price doesn't want to jinx the situation, but he’s certain this one won’t be close to over for a month at the very least given… everything.
“His suite’s set up as per usual. That,” Kate gestures to the pages in his hand, “is all we’ve got so far. As always, just reach out should you need anything at all. I'll be either onsite or in the London area for the foreseeable future barring anything more drastic from coming up.”
Price nods in thanks, knowing an open invitation from Laswell when he hears one.
As they part ways and he makes his way to the elevator, he focuses only on his breathing and lets his instincts as an alpha paired with years of training and experience take over. He knew what he was getting into when he applied for this job, and despite everything that made it not for the faint of heart - the odd hours, the stress, the emotional toll - he’s loved it since day one. Every bit of it. This case is definitely one of the most extreme cases he’ll likely ever work on if he’s lucky, but it’s still the same job, and he knows Laswell wouldn’t have kept him around if he wasn’t damn good at it. Unlike other jobs, there isn’t anyone else capable enough who can step in and take his place if he says no, at least not until 9 A.M. tomorrow. The alpha rumbling in the back of his brain at the very idea of anyone else making a mistake and hurting this man more than he already has been only furthers his resolve.