Chapter Text
If Shane had to choose only one word to describe his life up to this point, it would be careful.
In a sense, he has been this way for as long as he can remember, even when he was a child — he’s always had big goals, and every intention of achieving them. Shane can remember being eight years old, receiving an invitation to a classmate’s birthday party, and turning it down without a second thought because attending would mean missing hockey practice. Winners don’t miss practice, and Shane took great pride in being a winner.
But if Shane were hard-pressed to think of a moment where a cautious personality turned full-tilt into a completely careful way of living, it would have to be when he presented. He doesn’t like to think much about it, but if he tries he can remember it clear as day. He was fourteen years old and had learned just a couple months ago that he would be entered into the CHL draft for the following year, a whole year earlier than most kids got the opportunity. Things had been going precisely according to plan.
That was, until he woke up one morning in August, just a week before school would be back in session for the fall, with an indescribable ache in his body. Most days he was out of bed by seven to go for his morning run, all a part of his carefully constructed training regimen, but on this particular morning he couldn’t bear to drag himself out of bed when his alarm sounded.
His limbs were sore in a way he had never felt before, like the ache was coming from his bones and radiating up through his muscles. His stomach was cramping, but not like it did after a challenging core workout; it was low in his stomach and like there was something pulling at him from inside. It was uncomfortable, and alarming, but Shane is an athlete, aches and pains are familiar territory.
What was not familiar was how hot he felt.
Shane had felt a fever, but he had never felt anything quite like this. It’s not just that he was hot; it felt like he was burning, like there was something beneath his skin trying to claw its way out, and there was no helping it. He writhed around on his bed, torn between curling in around his stomach and stretching his limbs to try and alleviate the burn. He was sweating and shaking and he was nearly at the point of tears when he heard his mom knocking gently at his door, no doubt curious what was taking him so long to make his way out of bed.
“Shane, honey,” her voice came through the door. “If you want to get your run in before we have to get ready for practice, you’ll need to go now.”
Shane had a lot that he wanted to say to that, like how he really would have liked to go for his run and how he had every intention of making it to practice, but also how his body was in the throws of a total revolt, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to make any of that happen. All he managed to croak out in the moment, though, was, “Mom.”
His voice sounded pathetic to his own ears, and he felt even more pathetic as he curled in on himself further, listening as his mom let herself into the room.
“Shane, wha— oh.”
Shane peeked up at her. He had been expecting his mom to tell him to get up and walk it off, remind him that some exercise would do him good and that he would feel better once he was on the ice. However, when he looked at her, all he saw was that her face had gone a bit soft, understanding and sad.
It really freaked him out.
He gathered as much of his strength as he could and started to heave himself upright, his body resisting the entire way. “I’m gonna make it to practice,” he assured her. “I might need some Tylenol first, though.”
Something about this sentiment seemed to alarm Yuna, and she made her way over to sit on the bed, just as Shane managed to lean himself back against the headboard.
“Honey,” she said, trying to meet Shane’s eyes. “You, um, you’re not going to practice today.”
Shane’s eyes had gone wide at that, and he started shaking his head in disbelief. “What?” He asked. “No, I have to go to practice. I’m fine!”
He was far from fine, but that didn’t mean he could just not go to practice. Had his mom lost her mind?
Shane could see that she was preparing herself to reply, but he didn’t give her a chance before continuing, “I’ve gone to practice with the flu before, I probably just need to sweat it out.”
Her face did something very funny, her eyebrows bunching together in the center of her face. She took a breath and put her hand on his knee. “I don’t think you have the flu, Shane,” she said softly, like she was breaking bad news.
That didn’t help his confusion and panic any, and it unnerved him that his mom, ever the straight-shooter, wouldn’t just say what she was thinking. “Then what…” he started to ask.
“In health class, at school,” she started, “do you remember going over…presentation?”
Oh.
Things quickly started slotting into place in Shane’s mind.
“So you think that I’m in…” he said, lowering his voice to an embarrassed whisper, “…rut?”
Yuna pressed her lips together before saying, “No. I don’t think that.”
She caught Shane’s eyes, looking at him in hope that he had understood her this time.
Shane, meanwhile, could just about feel the ground opening up beneath him. As her words sank in, he felt a pit growing in his stomach, and it wasn’t from the awful cramps. His breathing started to go ragged and he had to close his eyes and shake his head, as if doing so would wind back the clock to five minutes ago, when this conversation hadn’t happened yet and he could carry on under the impression that he was just under the weather.
“Shane?”
’No,” he said in disbelief.
“Honey, I—“
”No,” he repeated. “I just— I’m not— how do you even know, huh?” He looked at his mother with wild eyes, waiting to dispute whatever evidence she came up with.
Her thumb swept back and forth across his knee in comfort as she said, “Well, the way you’re guarding your stomach, for one. Are you cramping?”
Shane hastily moved his hands to his side, despite the fact that his stomach hurt now more than ever, anxiety swirling with the underlying pull in his abdomen. Stomach aches can happen to anyone, he wanted to argue, but his tongue suddenly felt like lead in his mouth, so he didn’t respond.
“And,” Yuna continued, “All of these things in your bed.” She gestured to the other side of the bed, where there were a couple blankets Shane had nabbed from the linen closet, even though he didn’t need them for warmth in the summer. There was also a sweatshirt he had borrowed from a teammate and never returned, an old t-shirt of his dad’s, and one of Yuna’s own knit sweaters. They all sat folded neatly on the other side of the bed, and okay, that one might be slightly harder to argue against. Even if he could justify having all of these things in his room, he has no explanation for why they are on the bed, other than that is just where they felt the most right.
“Are these all things you’ve been collecting?” Yuna asked with a smile, and, yeah, in hindsight Shane could see how this might look like a fledgling nest, but it’s still nothing definitive in his book. He could recognize, internally, that he was being defensive, but there was a panic rising swiftly in his chest and the more he had to hear his mom talk about it, the less he wanted it to be true.
”And there’s your scent,” she said, and that was really Shane’s last straw.
“Stop it, Mom!” he nearly shouted. He brought his arms back around his stomach and his knees up to this chest because he was scared and upset and his stomach just hurt so bad. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, okay? I— I need to see a doctor, okay, and they can figure out what’s really wrong with me, because it’s not, it’s not that, alright?”
Shane’s eyes filled with tears, and his breathing went ragged once more; it felt like the weight of the world was weighing down on his chest.
“Shane, sweetie,” Yuna started, jumping into crisis management mode, “this is not a bad thing. It’s—”
“Of course it’s a bad thing!” Shane exploded. “How many professional hockey players do you know that are fucking omegas?”
Yuna looked taken aback at the venom with which he had spoken that word; she and David may both be betas, but Shane knows they had always been proponents of designation equality, and it must have been alarming to hear Shane speak that way. Shane took her stunned silence as an opportunity to keep going, not letting her get a word in edgewise.
“Oh, that’s right, there are none!” he shouted. “God, I have worked so hard for this, I gave everything. I did everything right. I’m getting drafted early!”
Fat tears had started rolling down his face, and his voice started wobbling pitifully. “I did everything right,” he repeated, “and it doesn’t even matter. My whole life I worked for this, and it was all for nothing!”
That seemed to snap Yuna out of her silence.
“Hey!” she admonished in that tone that clearly indicated she meant business. She scooted closer and put her hands on Shane’s face. She used her thumbs to wipe his tears as she looked into his eyes and said, “That is quite enough of that. I know you are upset, and that is okay. But this? This sounds like quitter talk. Are you a quitter, Shane?”
Shane’s breath hitched as he inhaled, trying to find his voice again. “No, I’m not,” he said quietly.
“No, you’re not,” she agreed. “So I don’t know why you’re talking like one. And do you know what? I want you to listen when I say this. You could get hit by a bus next week, snap your femur and that’s your hockey career over.”
Shane’s lip trembled at the mere thought of that, but Yuna continued. “And if that were to happen, nothing that you have done will have been a waste. You love hockey, Shane. That’s why you play it. That’s why you work so hard at it. And if that all goes away tomorrow, you still spent twelve years playing the sport that you love. And you will still have the second best hockey knowledge in all of Ottawa,” she said with a laugh, and Shane couldn’t help but smile — it was true.
“And no matter what, I will still be more proud of you than you could possibly know. Do you understand me?”
Shane gave a little nod, not trusting his voice to not betray him.
“Good,” Yuna said, moving her hand to the back of Shane’s head, rubbing comfortingly at his scalp. “Now, here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to go take a shower, it will help you feel better. And I am going to call Coach Rick and tell him you won’t be at practice for the next few days.”
Shane’s eyes got wide once more, and he opened his mouth to protest, but Yuna didn't give him the chance. “I’m not going to tell him why,” she assured. “But you can’t go to practice like this and he needs to know. Okay?”
“Okay,” Shane replied.
Yuna smiled at him, then, a little sad but so full of love. “Alright. You shower, and then you and I are going to have a talk about where we go from here.”
Shane looked in his mom’s eyes, and saw the determination in them. “We’re going to figure this out,” she said.
In some ways, his mom was right, and a shower did help him feel better. The warm water soothed the cramps in his stomach and helped ease the feeling that he needed to crawl out of his own skin. He still felt achy and miserable, but he would take any small comfort he could get in that moment, because though he was feeling better physically, his mind was still racing.
It was all just so much. Shane, admittedly, had not ever given much thought to what would happen once he presented. As he got out of the shower and wrapped himself in his fluffy navy blue bathrobe, he realized he had better get to thinking, because the inevitable had come to pass. If he had his way, he would have presented as a beta and gotten to continue with business as usual for the rest of forever. Being an omega is just so…complicated.
First, this meant that he’s going to have heats for the next 40 odd years of his life, and based on the short preview he’d gotten that morning, he could confidently say that he is not a fan. And that’s not even mentioning the whole sex aspect of things.
As a rule, Shane did not allow himself to think about sex. His teammates all seemed to have recently gotten to that age where it’s apparently all they are able to think about and talk about. This was not the case for Shane. He told himself that’s just one of the reasons that he was a cut above the rest; while everyone else was getting distracted by sex and girls, Shane was focusing on what was important, and placing any inconvenient thoughts about sex in a mental box where they couldn’t bother him. Keeping these thoughts in their proper place in his mind prison was about to get a whole lot harder, Shane supposed.
Those were scary thoughts, but they paled in comparison to the real elephant in the room — how was this going to affect his career? On one hand, his mom’s words rang true, Shane Hollander did not quit things, and he had no intentions of starting now. On the other hand, though, he had been right about what he had said. There were no omegas playing professional hockey, not even in the minor leagues. The idea that, through no fault of his own, his lifelong dream may have just been shattered overnight made him want to throw up.
He paced the floor of the bathroom, trying to think rationally about his options. To Shane’s mind, the best option was to be simply undeniable. Surely, he thought, that was his best route forward. If he worked even harder, made himself even better, then someone would have to take a chance on him. As it stood, he was already in the most optimal position he could be in, preparing to join the foremost development league in Canada at 15, a feat that only a few others had achieved before him. He knew there were already NHL eyes on him; if he could show up for the next four years offering nonstop perfection, then there had to be at least one team out there willing to have him.
He looked himself in the mirror and breathed a sigh of relief. It was a good plan, he thought, but as he took in his reflection, his flushed cheeks and this glow-from-within that he had never noticed on his skin before, the doubts started to creep back in. Would it even matter? he wondered. Even if he was able to sustain perfection for that long, would that even change a thing? Shane wasn’t stupid, he heard how people talk, the things that his coaches and teammates said about women and omegas. He knew what a great omega hockey player was worth to them, and it wasn’t nearly as much as a mediocre alpha.
He leaned in closer to his reflection, and studied his heat glow. He thought, for perhaps the first time in his young life, that he maybe looked beautiful. And he kinda hated it. No, if he showed his face in the hockey world looking like this, it wouldn’t matter how good he was, nobody would have him at all.
For the second time that day, his eyes welled up in tears. Shane didn’t used to be a crier, and he felt humiliated to be so at the mercy of his emotions. When he could no longer endure the shame of seeing his stupid, beautiful face in the mirror, he turned away and slid down against the wall. He wanted this all to stop. He just wanted to feel normal again.
Then, as though she had sensed the perfect moment to intervene, Yuna knocked gently on the bathroom door.
“Shane?”
He knew that he should get up, that it was time to face the music, but he didn’t feel quite ready to move, like if he stayed put right there on the bathroom floor then maybe he could delay the inevitable forever, that they would never have to have the hard conversations about the future. He knew, of course, that he couldn’t, so he settled on a compromise.
“Could you come in here, please?” he asked, just loud enough to be heard through the door.
Without a moment’s hesitation, the doorknob turned and Yuna let herself into the room. Shane watched as she took him in, and felt so pitiful under her gaze that it brought on a fresh bout of tears. Her face crumpled in sympathy and she moved to sit on the floor next to him, pulling him in for an embrace that felt equal parts embarrassing and comforting. She held him in her arms and allowed him to cry and cry and cry, occasionally kissing his forehead and rubbing his arm, but otherwise saying nothing. The hard conversations would come, but first she just let him feel.
When his sobs eventually slowed to little hiccups and sniffles, she lifted his face so that their eyes could meet. Neither of them said anything for a moment, until Shane asked quietly, “Is dad mad?”
“What? Honey, no, of course not.” It was almost reassuring how offended she looked at the suggestion. “You know that your dad and I love you no matter what. This could never change that.”
”Yeah,” Shane agreed. “‘I know. Just wanted to check.” He laid his head on her shoulder before whispering, “I don’t know what to do.”
It was a heavy admission, Shane was the know-what-to-do guy. As far back as he could remember, he has had a vision of his future, and a detailed strategy to ensure that he achieved it. Every run, every meal, every practice, every game, they all had a place in The Plan. He talked about it with his parents over the dinner table, he thought about it in class. It was his thing. Shane knew what he needed to do, always. This was perhaps the first time in his life that something was able to disrupt The Plan so catastrophically, and it was making him feel so helpless, so out of control that he could hardly stand it.
“Well then it’s a good thing you have me,” Yuna responded.
“My face is too pretty. It’s a dead giveaway,” Shane said.
Yuna had the gall to laugh at that. “Well, honey, that’s nothing to do with being an omega. Don’t tell dad, but you get that from me.”
Shane huffed out a little laugh. “They’re not going to want me like this, are they?” Shane asked, fearing the answer, but knowing that he needed to hear it.
“Look,” Yuna began. Not off to an auspicious start, as far as Shane was concerned. “I think that you have more talent in your left foot than most other kids have in their entire bodies. And I’m not saying that as your mom, but as the person with the first best hockey knowledge in Ottawa.”
Despite himself, Shane smiled and rolled his eyes.
“I think that you are a truly gifted player, and with your dedication and your grit, the sky is the limit for you in this sport, even with this…new development. And if you want to play hockey as your authentic self, then your dad and I will support you every step of the way.”
Shane could tell that she really meant that, but he’s known his mom long enough to know that the sentiment did not come without a big but attached to it.
“But,” she said, “you might have a point. We don’t know how that would go for you. It’s wrong, but it’s true. People might not want you this way.”
Even though he already knew them to be true, hearing those words from his own mom cut even deeper.
“The hockey world can be cruel to people that are different. Any kind of different. I know you know that.”
He did know that. In fact, he was already different from most of the other guys he played with; Asian hockey players were few and far between in Shane’s experience. He didn’t even want to think about what it would be like for him if he added omega on top of that.
“There is one more option,” Yuna said slowly, approaching the topic with caution.
Shane was instantly interested. He lifted his head a bit off her shoulder and said, “Tell me more.”
“Well, strictly speaking,” she began, “you don’t have to tell anyone about this.”
Now she really had his attention, but not without a healthy dose of skepticism. “Okay, but even if I don’t tell anybody, won’t they know still? How would this work?”
“Our first step is to get you through this first heat in one piece,” Yuna joked, and Shane inwardly recoiled. It was the first time someone had used that word in reference to him, and it felt slimy to his ears. He knew, of course, that he was actively in the midst of one, but hearing that word out loud just felt so dirty, like there was now this nasty, disgusting thing within him that he had to hide.
Yuna, oblivious to Shane’s disgust, continued, “But after that, we can talk to the doctor about starting you on suppressants, strong ones. That way we can control when your heats will be. If we are strategic about it, then we can plan for them to fall during season breaks when you won’t be expected at practices or games. We’ll also need to make sure that whichever type of suppressant you use, it doesn’t contain any banned substances, and won’t show up on a drug test. We’ll work all of that out with your doctor, I’ll make you an appointment as soon as possible.”
Shane hadn’t even considered the possibility that he could be pushed out of pro hockey on a technicality. For a moment, he was overwhelmed with gratitude for his mom. Gratitude not only for her love and support, but gratitude for her determination, her willingness to go to whatever lengths are necessary to help Shane achieve his dreams. There are so many aspects of this that he had failed to consider, but here she was, laying them all out not as impenetrable barriers, but minor obstacles that can be worked around, that ought to be worked around, because supporting Shane is worth the trouble to her.
Once more, Shane didn’t have much time to dwell on his big feelings, because Yuna was in constant motion. ‘We’ll get you some prescription scent blockers as well,” she said. “But just to be sure, I’ll also pick you up a topical from the drugstore. Your scent is pretty unmistakable,” she said with a smile.
“Is it that bad?” Shane asked, bringing his wrist to his nose. He didn’t get a whiff of anything, his adult sense of smell not quite developed yet, though that would be changing over the next couple of days, he supposed.
Yuna laughed softly. “Not bad at all,” she said. “But it is omega through and through.”
”I can’t smell it yet,” Shane admitted. “What is it like?”
Without responding right away, Yuna gently grabbed Shane’s wrist and rubbed it against her own underdeveloped scent gland. This was the first time in Shane’s life that they had done this, and he realized that if went through with this plan, then it could very well be the last. She brought her own wrist up to her nose, breathing in deeply.
”It’s a little bit sweet, and a little bit tart, just like you,” she teased. Shane rolled his eyes but smiled all the same.
She breathed in again and got a mischievous smile on her face before she said, “I know what it is.” She poked her finger into his side, right in the spot she knew he was the most ticklish, and said “You smell like a little blueberry pie!”
”Mom!” Shane tried to sound exasperated but he really stood no chance against his own childish giggling.
“With ice cream!” Yuna added, throwing her head back and laughing.
The two of them sat giggling on the bathroom floor for a long moment, and Shane was reminded that in spite of everything, this was his mom, and she loved him so very much. It’s a good thing he has her, indeed.
“Thanks, Mom,” he said, though not specifying for what. He trusted her to know,
She pulled him into her arms for one last hug and said, “Of course, honey. We’re gonna get through this, you know.’
”Yeah, I know.”
”Good,” she said, patting his shoulder. “Now, let’s get you back to your room. You’re probably gonna feel a lot worse before you feel any better.”
Upon entering his room, Shane noticed that a few more items had been placed on the trunk at the foot of his bed: the blanket that usually lives in his parents’ room and some miscellaneous items of their clothing.
“No pressure,” Yuna said, leaning against the doorway. “It’s your nest and you can do what you want with it, but I had dad bring those up just in case.”
Shane nodded, but before he could say anything, Yuna continued, “So, Dad and I will be downstairs, you come get us if you need anything okay? I mean it. There’s water and Gatorade and Tylenol on the nightstand, and I’ll bring you up some lunch in a bit, okay? But if you’re hungry in the meantime, I also left you,” she lowered her voice and smiled mischievously, “a snickers bar.”
”Mom, you know I can’t eat that.”
”Well, you’ve had a rough day today, sweetie. I think you deserve it.”
She turned and closed the door behind her, and Shane was alone yet again. He started by folding the blanket and clothes, placing them on the bed with the rest of his nest items. Before he crawled back into bed once more to ride this awful thing out, he took the snickers bar off the nightstand and chucked it into the trash.
From now on, he was going to have to be careful.