Chapter Text
“I’m not talking about this with you.”
Shane feels his face flush and bends down to tie his skates, hoping Hayden won’t see.
“Honestly,” Pike says, pushing his locker door shut. “I have no idea why you’re so uptight about it.”
“Because it’s... private,” Shane replies. “Embarrassing.”
“It’s normal,” Hayden returns as they step out onto the ice, glide away from the perimeter. “And I’m your best friend, if you can’t talk to me about it, who can you talk to?”
Shane takes off to do laps, ignoring that question. He lets the chill of the rink calm the chatter of his brain, focus narrowing down to just this moment, just this scratch of his blades as the outside world starts to blur along with the rest of the rink around him.
He’s made it about five circuits of the ice before the memory of this morning bursts back in technicolour in his mind, tightening the line of his shoulders before he can stop it.
“Then I’d suggest an alpha assist,” Shah had told him, handing across some pamphlet with a company logo on, “It’s the safest option.”
She’d said it like it was commonplace, normal. Maybe it was, for other people.
“Can’t I just... wait it out, like I normally do?”
Shah had sighed at that, her cool, medical professionalism being tested by the limits of Shane’s stubbornness. “You train, right? You do macrobiotic with high protein? This is the same thing – keeping your body in peak physical condition.”
If he admits it, Shane thinks maybe that might be true. An MD he’d once seen coming up through the ranks in high school not long after he’d presented had told him spending one, two, three heats alone would be painful but harmless in the long run. However, after that the statistics showed that denial of the body’s natural processes could stunt performance over time, impacting muscle strength and tone along with dampening reflexes, possibly impacting his game.
It was just a practical thing, really. Biology.
So why was it so fucking hard to sit with?
Shane lets himself skate into the boards, the satisfying sound of his skates on the wood acting as a reminder he’s still here, still an advocate of his own choices in some way.
By the time he’s turned around to look back out at the ice, Hayden has joined him.
“I’m sure this troubled, brooding thing would go down a storm with the Hollander fangirls,” Pike says, “But it’s not so great for training.”
Shane glances at him sideways, face stoney. “Ok, so what do you suggest I do?”
Hayden shrugs, like it’s casual. “Go with the alpha assist thing, take whoever the medic suggests, see out your heat with them. People do it literally every day, you just have a stick up your ass about it.”
If there was anyone else in a 5 mile radius to hear this conversation, Shane would tell him to keep his voice the fuck down. “Easy for you to say.”
“What, as the pathetic little beta?” Hayden asks. “Thanks.”
“No, I didn’t mean - “
Pike smirks at Shane’s horror. “It’s ok, I know you didn’t. And yeah, you’re right – I don’t fully get it. But I’ve been with Jackie since she presented, I do have some idea how this works, you know.”
Shane considers the ice, if only to avoid looking Hayden in the face. “It’s just...”
“What?”
“Well, I’ve never...”
Hayden knocks his arm. “Hang on, I thought you said – that girl, just after high school - “
Shane cuts him off before he can speak that particularly embarrassing memory back into existence again. “I did, and we did, but it wasn’t exactly helpful, it was more...” Hayden waits for him, far more patient that Shane thinks he probably deserves. “Awkward.”
“Should I ask how, or...”
When he glances up, Shane realises Hayden is moving his hands around as though he’s trying to literally spin the story out of Shane and into the air. Oddly, it calms him. “Look, it just didn’t work – I hated being... out of control. With someone there. And I could never look her in the eye again – after - which sort of ruined things, long term.”
Shane doesn’t admit that there were a hundred other things that ruined that relationship too, either to Hayden or to himself.
“Well, that’s just sort of you, isn’t it?” Pike asks. “Not liking being out of control – all the better if it’s some random alpha then, surely? Never have to see them again, never have to deal with the unbearable and crippling act of physical intimacy?”
Shane catches the smirk that follows those words, aware he’s being teased but far too uncomfortable to play along.
“And then this person just... knows about me? Goes to the press?”
Hayden swats him with his stick. “Fucking hell, you think this person will just ignore medical confidentiality? It’s not worth their reputation, man – whoever it is is being signed off by the chief medic of the Montreal Metros, they’re not just some hook up in a club.”
And of course Shane knows this, knows that alpha assists are bound by rules, oaths, just like any other medical professional but...
If it gets out that number one pick Shane Hollander is an omega, he can say goodbye to his career tomorrow. Gone are the sponsorship deals, the fans buying jerseys with 24 on the back - everything. He’s worked his entire life for this career, put up with cramming himself full of heat suppressants, wearing pheromone blockers in a row underneath the heavy weight of his kit so that no one, no matter how hard they slam into him at the boards, gets a hint of his scent. There are no omegas in hockey –ok, so there must be some somewhere but no one is outing themselves any time soon and certainly not at the top of the league. Being male and omega is fucking rare enough, never mind choosing a sport full of knotheads – Shane is aware that if anyone ever found out about him, he’d be the classic pariah before it could even hit the ESPN evening news.
“Look,” Hayden says, lowering his voice just as a few of their teammates also start to hit the ice. “It’s no big deal, right? Heat lasts what, a week at most? Just do it, get it over with. No one knows, no one finds out. Life as usual resumes, right?”
He pats Shane helpfully on the shoulder, a sympathetic smile on his face and then skates over to J.J. with his stick resting casually over his shoulder.
Of course it could be like that. An acceptance. A transaction. His body doing what it needs to do and him listening finally – for once.
But somehow, Shane doubts it.
---
“I’m willing to try it.”
Dr Priya Shah – Metros chief medic and (Shane knows) an omega herself – smiles at him with relief.
“I have to say Shane, I’m incredibly glad to hear that.”
He wants the floor to swallow him whole, he really does. “So how do we... plan this?”
Shah turns to her laptop, suddenly all business. “We schedule your heat for the off-season as you usually do, withdrawing from your suppressants fairly swiftly.”
“But won’t that cause me to - “
“Dip into a fast heat? Yes, very likely, but as you won’t be alone this will be less impactful than it would be otherwise.” Shane is aware he must visibly stutter because Shah ceases her typing and eyes him calmly. “I’m aware that the thought of this might be alarming for you, but from research we know that the first heat shared like this – not only after consistent use of suppressants but also after a significant history of starved heats – can be both deeper and longer than usual.”
“Great,” Shane mutters, aware his knee is bouncing against the desk.
“Did you think starving your heats up until this point would have no impact?”
Shane fights the desire to glare at her, clamps his mouth shut and looks down at the dark mahogany grain in front of him. He feels the muscle jump in his jaw.
“You will be able to arrange things on your terms as usual, choose your surroundings, your choice of toys – though these may be different as you have a partner with you - ” Shane grits his teeth, “and nutritional intake. You’re still in charge here.”
When he looks swiftly upwards, Shah raises her hands. She looks like she’s trying to calm a spooked horse. “Look,” she says, voice much softer. “I know how this feels, and I’m aware that this isn’t within the comfort zone of many professional athletes.” The fact that she doesn’t say ‘and control freaks’ seems like a minor relief. “But the alpha assist programme is both successful and longstanding, many omegas in professional roles through all walks of life use it – it works. If you need to think of this as purely transactional then you should do that – it’s like engaging a physio or a personal trainer.”
Shane only realises he’s dropped his forehead onto the desk in front of him once he’s done it, then speaks anyway, despite it being muffled from this position.
“Yeah, but you don’t lose it in front of your physio, do you?” He feels his face heat. “You don’t beg.”
Shah takes so long to answer that for a while Shane thinks that she must have – mercifully – not heard him, but she finally breaks the silence.
“Shane.”
He raises his head, still mortified but also exhausted now, after the longest doctor appointment in human history.
“This needs to happen. It’s part of your biology, as much as you’d prefer it wasn’t. A starved heat is not a properly sated heat, and you’ve already put your body through too many of those. You choose your alpha, we assign the date, and then you don’t think about it again until it happens, ok?”
He knows she’s taking him through this like Heat For Dummies, but Shane can’t even bring himself to feel anymore embarrassed about it than he already does. He’s already at his max.
“Ok,” he says.
---
But of course, that’s not how it goes.
Shane takes home with him a small selection of alpha profiles to choose from and rather than deal with the situation straight away he throws them in the desk drawer in the room he keeps as his office, locks it afterwards and then proceeds to think about little else for the next few days.
This person – this man, he thinks, and ignores the stubborn and unwelcome twitch of his dick – is going to see him stripped down bare, reduced to nothing but need, desire clawing out of his skin so that he’ll say anything - want anything, and not be able to stop himself from asking for it.
That awkward shared heat, the one he told Hayden about with the girl just after high school, sits like a shameful impression on Shane’s mind. He knows the things he asked for, the things he fucking begged for, and he also vaguely remembers the slightly shocked look of that sweet little beta girl who’d thought she was dating nothing more than the school hockey star. The memory is alive and truly vivid in Shane’s mind and not one he wants to repeat.
Since then he’s sat out his heats alone, strictly only allowing one a year as a compliance of the suppressant medication he religiously takes – he holes himself up in the house that used to be his Grandmother’s just outside of Ottawa, in the middle of exactly nowhere and puts himself in lockdown.
Shane has no desire to recall them, even to himself. He’s not even sensible half the time, sick to his stomach with need and achingly wet, a bone crushing emptiness the only thing he’s aware of. He doesn’t want to think about the heat of his own skin, the desperation and the need rolling up through his body, something so far beyond his control that he can barely process it. It makes him vulnerable, and he hates that.
The rest of the year, he plays hockey. He’s focussed, set on the only thing he’s ever really wanted – the Stanley Cup (or a string of Stanley Cups) - and if he ever meets someone he likes, well then he plays the beta role to a tee. No one has ever asked of course, but for a good long time people have probably assumed he’s an alpha like the majority of the men around him in one of the toughest sports there is. But he could never carry that particular acting job off long term, so he chooses beta when he meets someone that he likes.
Which happens rarely, really. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.
Sometimes Shane thinks he goes through the motions because it’s what everyone else does, and isn’t that just depressing? Just one more reason not to think about sex and relationships. But hockey? Hockey he knows, hockey he’s good at. Everything else can wait.
Apart from this upcoming heat, apparently.
Shane leaves it until two days before he has his next meeting with Shah before he dips into the stupid desk in the stupid office room and pulls out the assist programme profiles, professional and clinical with the medical company logo on, complete with some quote about ‘Caring for Professional Omegas since 1987’ which couldn’t be more patronising.
He sits on his sofa in his newly dressed and styled apartment (well, he wasn’t letting his mom do it) and glares at the paperwork.
Men. Three strong, alpha men.
Shane can’t work out if he feels intimidated, emasculated or exhilarated.
Is this the moment at which he admits he probably should have told Shah he’s never been with an alpha before? If she’d known he was entirely without experience in this particular... area maybe she’d have picked a different set of profiles for him. But if he guards his omega status with his fucking life then there’s no way he’s ever casually admitting this. God knows she’d probably send him promptly to a psych who’d immediately diagnose him as In Denial about being an omega, about all of his own control hang ups.
No. Best not to think about that.
The first profile is of friendly faced, charismatic alpha who talks at length in his profile about his charity work and philanthropic endeavours, but Shane already feels like some weird omega charity case who needs to be saved by the big, strong alpha who is so much better than him so he screws that one up after a few seconds. The second, however, seems a little more bearable.
From New York, hair neatly shaved into a subtle shadow over his handsome, dark face with eyes that probably topple omegas in any bar he walks into, is Daniel. He’s worked in alpha assist most of his adult life, enjoys outdoor sports in his spare time and apparently holds a season ticket for the New York Knicks; well, at least he’s not a huge hockey fan and thus hopefully not really aware of who Shane is. There are some carefully anonymous recommendations at the bottom of his profile with words like ‘professional’, ‘discreet’ and ‘skilled’ but Shane ignores them and instead focuses on Daniel’s photograph, aware of the thrill of interest in his stomach which he tries stoically to ignore.
For some reason it’s Daniel’s hands – strong, masculine and entirely unassuming that Shane can’t look away from. He thinks about those hands on his body, about the things they must be expert at, the things his fingers can do and Shane instantly has to look away. It takes a good few minutes of looking at the ceiling before he wills that unruly thing in his stomach to settle, the sharp tug and pull in his groin as his dick treacherously hardens in his pants.
He hasn’t been with anyone in a long time and barely even touches himself. It’s not something he needs, he thinks - doesn’t even factor.
When he’s pulled himself under control, Shane sets Daniel’s profile aside and glances at the next one.
Maybe it’s because he’s already been slightly broken by the sight of Daniel’s hands, but the photograph of the third and final alpha in the pile does something to Shane he’d really rather not name.
He swallows, looks away from the image of this fucking god and turns to the background info.
Russian, professional alpha assist for the last four years and likes to stay in shape, full time gym guy and hockey fan.
Hockey.
It’s a definite no. Much too dangerous.
Shane glances back to the picture, eyes pulled there quite against his will – a jawline that somehow (ridiculously) affects the composition of Shane’s breathing and a fall of neat, brownish blonde curls. Curls. Normally Shane doesn’t really notice people’s hair but... this should be illegal, really. He’s like some sort of fucking adonis, so sharply handsome that maybe this is a joke by the medical company – throw them a photo of this guy and then a Danny DeVito lookalike turns up to kill your heat before it starts.
Yeah, it must be that.
No one looks like this and lives.
Shane is resolutely ignoring the fact that he’s hard and – devastatingly – slick against the fabric of his boxer shorts. It’s not happening. He can’t feel it.
Shit, this a fucking terrible idea. Hockey fan? It’s a no brainer, way too close to home for comfort. Risky, even.
No. Daniel is the man, Daniel with his hands and his dark brown eyes and professional conduct.
Under the recommendations on... (Shane’s eyes scour the page for a name; men like this probably don’t even have regular names, just known as gods)... Ilya’s profile someone has cheekily described him as ‘Russia’s greatest love machine’.
Shane chucks the profile down.
Stupid, he thinks, this whole thing – absolutely ridiculous. Then he screws his eyes shut tight as he feels that traitorous gush of slick between his legs, the feeling he never, ever allows himself. He’s achingly hard now, no walking back from this - it’s embarrassing, this kind of want. Weak. Like some omega housewife keeping busy at the kitchen sink whilst she waits for her big, strong alpha to get home.
Shane feels something suspiciously like tears prickle at the corners of his eyes and he blinks fast to clear them, aware his scent has spiked despite the strongest patch money can buy and years of practise breathing his way through pheromone spikes, little betraying signals of his body reminding him who he is - what he is.
Fuck.
He looks back at the profiles, sitting innocent on his couch.
He knows who he’s choosing.
---
“Great!” Shah says, as though she’s a salesman in a car showroom and Shane has just announced he’s buying. “I’m so glad you’ve made a decision.”
Of course, the truth was Shane hadn’t made a decision. His body had made it, his hindbrain had chosen for him, against logic and sense. He’d leaned back into the cushions on his couch and had to wrap his fist around his own dick to stop himself from coming without being touched. His poor, sex starved body had seen a fall of ridiculous fucking curls over sharp hazel eyes and decided what it wanted, way before Shane dragged the rest of himself along with the idea. In fact it was so fucking terrible that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about sex since, a strange kind of clouded mist coming down over his mind that never usually darkened his door. And he fears it’s no coincidence that they lost their game yesterday.
“D’you think arranging this could sort of...” Shane trails off, glancing up from the profile in Shah’s hands to her face and hoping she can’t read what he’s thinking.
“Sort of what?”
“Bring on a heat... early?”
Shah frowns, neat little crinkle appearing on her forehead. “Just selecting an assist? No, I wouldn’t say so. Why? Are your blockers not working?”
Shane shakes his head, suddenly sorry he spoke. “God, no! I just... wondered.”
In the silence, Shah assesses him and Shane wonders if she ever feels like this, if it’s an omega thing rather than a repressed freak sort of thing. “I imagine the planning of this is probably raising some... instincts that you’ve probably dampened down with the suppressants and your multiple starved heat experiences,” (she says the last thing like he’s been dangerously denying himself warmth and shelter for the last few years), “but just the arranging of an assist wouldn’t override the heat protection you use, no.”
“Great,” Shane hears himself say, like now he’s the car salesman.
If she wants to question him further, Shah denies herself and starts tapping at her computer. “So, I’ll get moving with the application, see if we can secure a time which works for you and Mr...” she glances at the profile again, “Rozanov and schedule your heat. If the dates don’t match up have you decided who you’d like to use as a second?”
“A... what?” Shane tries to ignore the flutter of panic in his chest. “Second? You mean this guy might not be available?”
“Well,” Shah says, as though Shane’s ceiling hasn’t just strangely caved in. “Obviously we always try to secure an omega’s first choice selection in an assist pairing but should an alpha already be booked up for the prospective heat dates we would have to - “
“Right, yeah – sure.”
Like he didn’t just interrupt her in the most faux casual voice anyone has ever heard, Shah just nods professionally. “Should I take it from the fact only one other profile came back with you that Mr Daniel Bennerman would be your second choice?”
“Second, yeah.” Shane replies, ignoring the screaming that seems to have started up in his head. “Great. Thank you.”
How has a decision he was originally desperate not to make suddenly become the most important thing in the world?
Fuck, Shane thinks. Fuck, fuck, fuck.