Chapter Text
2004 - Ottawa
The doctor’s office is overly-bright and smells like alpha and those cheap sprays that swear they’ll remove all scents from a room but in Shane’s opinion just make everything smell worse. Like a combination of artificial lemon and body odour and pheromones. He tries to breathe through his mouth, but he doesn’t like how it dries out his lips or how the air feels on his tongue, so he switches back to his nose with a grimace.
He’s been noticing these smells more often, lately. Since he presented a few weeks ago.
He had thought he was getting sick. There had been an unusual cramping in his gut while nausea had played about in his throat. He had felt weak and tired and grumpy. He had snapped at his parents, then felt bad about it.
Then the blood had appeared in the toilet bowl. Shane’s ears burned with embarrassment just thinking of how he had needed to go to his mother to tell her, and the flurry of tests that had taken place afterwards.
Now he’s sitting on an exam table. He holds himself still, like he has been taught. He doesn’t like how the paper gown he was asked to wear feels against his skin. He likes it even less with his parents sitting in the chairs beside the table, all three of them quiet as they wait for the doctor to arrive, his parents' attempts at conversation having tapered off. They all know why they’re here. To confirm that the worst thing possible has happened to Shane.
Shane looks down at where his feet hang against the side of the table. He’s short for his age. His dad says his growth spurt will be here any day now, and Shane fervently hopes so. He’s still the best player on his team, but it’s a definite disadvantage to be half a foot shorter than the boys he’s playing against.
There is a gentle knock on the door before it opens, and a beta woman enters. Dr. Wendley is tall, with curly brown hair and glasses that hang from a chain around her neck. She smiles when she enters the room, and takes a seat on the small stool by the computer.
“Thank you for coming in today,” she says. “The blood tests are back.”
“And?” Yuna asks. Her voice is calm but her knuckles are white as she clutches her purse. David lays a hand over hers.
“And your son is an omega,” Dr. Wendley says.
Later, when Shane reflects back on this moment, he will feel like the pause that followed the doctor’s words lasted for a lifetime. He will remember feeling like he had been punched in the chest. Like he had been pulled underwater and had no chance of coming up for air. But in reality probably only a second passed, or maybe two, before his mother was speaking again.
“Omega?” she asks. She sounds unsure, like she’s saying the word for the first time. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” says Dr. Wendley. “The results are very clear.”
She has a collection of papers with her, and puts on her glasses before she pulls one out. It’s covered in charts and words that Shane cannot even begin to comprehend. Dr. Wendley’s voice fades away as she points at various parts of the pages, probably explaining how all those little numbers add up to one thing. That Shane’s life is fucking ruined.
He’s brought back to reality by the sound of his name.
“Shane,” his mother says, and from the tone she’s using, this isn’t the first time she’s said it. He realizes he’s closed his eyes, and opens them to find all three adults staring at him. He squints, and once again wished the room just wasn't so fucking bright.
“What?” he says, and Yuna purses her lips, exasperated by Shane’s lack of manners even as his life is crumbling before his very eyes, before it can even begin.
Dr. Wendley continues, her clinical tone suddenly a few degrees softer. “As I was saying, we all know male omegas are… unusual. Statistics say about four point six percent of omegas worldwide are male. But even with those limited numbers, there are options out there for you.”
Shane’s gut, which had been steadily roiling at the discussion of how he was now even more of a fucking anomaly amongst his peers, settles slightly.
“Options?” he asks.
“Suppressants are available for male omegas,” Dr. Wendley says. “They would curtail the many aspects of your omega designation. The release of pheromones.” Her voice takes on a more delicate cadence. “As well as the sexual aspects of the designation, such as heats or the production of lubrication for intercourse.”
Shane feels like he might burst into flames. Lubrication for intercourse. Slick. He doesn’t want to think about it. His parents didn’t look much better.
“So I could still play hockey?” he asks, desperate to change the topic.
“Yes,” says Dr. Wendley, surprised. “But you could play hockey without suppressants, also.”
“Not professionally,” Shane says.
“There has never been an omega in the NHL,” Yuna says at Dr. Wendley’s confused expression. “Shane is already being scouted. They’re already coming to his games. We thought – we think – he has a very good chance of making it all the way.”
Dr. Wendley nods before she turns back to Shane with new understanding in her eyes. Shane looks over her shoulder, at her ear. He has found this is often close enough to eye contact that people won’t call him out on it.
“There are considerations, to keep in mind, if you decide to go down this route,” she says.
“Like what?” Shane asks.
Dr. Wendley pulls a leaflet out of her pile of papers. “Taking suppressants will also reduce your ability to…” She seems to struggle to find the words. “Act like an omega,” she finally lands on. “You will be much more like a beta. The pills dampen the… let’s call it the social senses. The ability to read designation. To follow scents. It makes the world quieter, in a way.”
“Okay,” Shane says quickly. “I want that.” And he does. The world has always been too noisy, too full, and it’s getting worse by the day. At his last practice, the locker room had been almost overwhelming. Too many bodies, too many smells, too much noise. A quieter world sounded nice.
Yuna leans forward. “But what about his ability to play hockey? Will it affect his other senses? His reflexes?”
“There should be minimal to no issues,” Dr. Wendley says. “Perhaps some fatigue in the first weeks. Possibly nausea. And he will have to have at least one heat a year, but that can be done by going off the suppressants.”
“Would I have to go off them?” Shane interjects. “Couldn’t I just keep taking them?”
Dr. Wendley shakes her head. “It is very inadvisable to do so. Taking suppressants for too long can have some extremely dangerous side effects. But by taking a break you should be able to avoid that.”
Shane cringes at the thought of a heat. He doesn’t know much about omega biology, but he’s heard whispers. Of losing your mind. Of being totally lost in fog. Omegas in heat turn into fucking sluts, his teammates crowed to each other when the topic came up in the locker room. They’re fucking gagging for it.
David and Yuna exchange a look. It’s the look they’ve been exchanging more frequently over the past two weeks, ever since Shane started feeling sick. Ever since they realized a change was happening in Shane. He has a hard time reading expressions, reading faces, but he’s finally caught on to what they’re saying silently to each other. They have absolutely no idea what to do with him.
“Are we sure this is a good idea?” David asks.
“I want to do it,” Shane says. “I don’t have to think about it. I want to play.”
Yuna frowns. “Shane,” she says carefully. “You have to understand what this means. You would have to take these every day. You would have to keep it a secret for your whole career. Maybe even your whole life. From your teammates. From your coaches. From everyone. If anyone found out–”
“I know,” Shane says. “I can do it. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll take the pills.” He looks at his parents. “I’ll be a beta. Just like you. No one has to know.”
“If this is what you want, then we’ll support you.” David says slowly. “But you have to be sure, Shane. This isn’t… This isn’t a small thing.”
Shane nods. He is thirteen years old and he loves hockey. He is sure.
Dr. Wendley presses the leaflet into Shane’s hands and he looks down at it. There is a smiling, blonde-haired boy on the cover. He looks like half the boys on Shane's team. Nothing like Shane himself. He looks away.
“Go home and think about it,” Dr. Wendley says. “Talk to each other. And if you decide this is the right course of action we can order the medication.”
Dr. Wendley and his parents talk for a little bit longer – about insurance, about coverage, about keeping things quiet. Shane tunes it out. There is a solution for his problem. An easy one. All he has to do is take a little pill every day. That’s nothing. It’s like taking a vitamin. It’s like eating healthy, well-balanced meals. It's like exercising. He cant do that, easily. It’s just one little thing. Barely even a bump in the order and routine he uses to structure his life.
The rest of the appointment passes like that. Shane allows his measurements to be taken, his heart to be listened to, his weight to be noted. Then he can finally change out of that annoying paper gown and back into his own comfortable athletic clothes and they can go home.
The next day, he tells his parents over breakfast that he’s made up his mind, even though he made it up yesterday the moment he learned there was a solution to his problem.
“I want to take the pills,” he says. David and Yuna exchange a glance, but they don’t look surprised.
“Are you sure?” Yuna asks, and Shane nods.
“You can always change your mind,” David says, and Shane nods again, even though he knows he won't.
“I’ll call Dr. Wendley’s office,” Yuna says. “Now you go get ready for school.”
Shane was disappointed to learn when he came home that it would take a while for the medication to come.
“It will about a month, probably,” Yuna says. “It has to be special ordered. It's not something the pharmacy has on the shelf, apparently, on account of male omegas being so rare and all.”
(Shane doesn’t need the reminder, thank you very much.)
While they wait, Yuna buys him patches to cover his scent glands. They’re top of the line, Shane sees when he opens the box. Thin and flexible and almost exactly matched with his own skin tone.
“You need to wear them every time you leave the house,” Yuna says. “Otherwise this will be over before it even starts. And long sleeves only. And keep your showers short.”
“Mom,” Shane whines. “Nobody is looking in the shower.”
“This is a big deal, Shane.” Yuna says. “It’ll only take one person looking.” She’s right, of course. She’s always right. So each morning Shane dutifully sticks the patches on his neck and wrists and pulls on a long sleeved shirt. And each night he peels them off and throws them in the trash before investigating the newly exposed skin. It's often reddened and irritated from the patches, but he can already begin to see a difference in the texture of the skin, and a slight swelling where the gland will eventually make itself known.
He knows from a brief, embarrassing search online that it can take a few months for them to fully develop and begin producing the oils that release pheromones, but these first signs of change frighten him, and every day when he comes home, he asks his mother if the doctor’s office has called, and each day he is greeted with a quick shake of her head.
- - - -
There is something else happening during this time, too. Slowly, Shane is realizing that the world has become a lot more interesting. The new smells, initially overwhelming and almost unbearable, are becoming more. More deeper and nuanced. More multifaceted and layered. He realizes there have been secrets hiding in plain sight. He can suddenly just tell who is omega or alpha or beta, as easy as breathing. He realizes he knows who is in the locker room before he opens the door, by scent alone. He realizes he can feel the mood of the team before a word has been spoken. And his senses are just…. different. He is more aware. The world, which had always made him feel like he was a step behind, a step off, slowly begins to align itself with him. The lights are still too bright, and he still doesn’t like to make eye contact, and he doesn’t always get the joke, but he begins to finally, perhaps for the first time, feel comfortable with how he fits in the world. With who he is.
And then he comes home and his mother greets him with a wide smile. In her hand is a small container of white pills.
“Dr. Wendley called while you were at school,” Yuna explains. “And I went to pick them up right away.”
“Thanks,” Shane says, taking the bottle from her outstretched hand and looking at it. The label has his name and some generic name for the medication inside. He supposed he’s glad it doesn’t scream ‘Omega Anti Heat, Anti Slut, Anti Fucking Life Being Ruined Pills’ or something to that effect.
“Should I take one right now?” he asks.
Yuna taps a finger to her lips. “Why don’t you start tomorrow morning,” she suggests. “You’re supposed to take them at the same time every day. Then you won't have to carry them around with you.”
So Shane dutifully waits until he wakes up the next morning to unscrew the cap and tap a small white pill into the palm of his hand.
“Here we go,” he says to himself, somewhat nonsensically, before putting the pill in his mouth and swallowing it with a swig from the water bottle he had left on his bedside table for this exact purpose.
As he had waited for the pills, Shane had begun to parse out the scents. To learn how to ignore some while paying attention to others. He had been learning how a certain flare in pheromones could mean the beginning of an argument, or hurt feelings, and act accordingly. The once-intolerable cacophony of scents and sounds and new instinctive knowing had started to become manageable. Useful even.
But now, a week into taking his pills, all the insight and understanding is gone. His teammates smell like nothing besides sweat and unwashed hockey gear. It makes him feel off-kilter again. Like the world has shifted when he wasn’t looking, putting him out of alignment once more.
He doesn’t let himself think about it too hard. He has a game to play. Scouts to impress. Expectations to live up to. Dreams to chase. It’s a lot of pressure on the shoulders of a boy who is still only thirteen years old.
Yuna and David don’t notice. They’re betas. They have always experienced the world this way. They see their son growing up, growing quiet, growing distant, and they chalk it up to teenage angst, to the pressure of hockey, to the normal difficulty of raising a child who was never quite like other kids.
“He’s always been unusual,” Yuna tells a friend over the phone, not aware that Shane can hear her in the other room. “Even as a toddler. I think… I think he’s just a private person.”
David watches Shane lace his skates one afternoon. (First the left, and then the right, always.) He watches the way he doesn’t engage with the kids around him. He thinks about his own childhood, about the easy camaraderie he had with the other kids on his team. He wonders why Shane doesn’t seem to have that. He wonders if it’s something he did wrong.
Shane takes the pill every morning without fail. It’s so small. After a few weeks he realized he can just swallow it, no water needed.
Slowly, gradually, he begins to forget that the world used to be richer. That it used to be more textured and layered and alive. After all, he has other things to focus on. Hockey and school and the crushing anxiety of never truly fitting into the space he has had to work so hard to carve out for himself. It is like losing a language you only spoke as a child, or the name of a friend you met at the park. At first, he knows that something is missing, but then time softens the memory, and the feeling fades. The pill makes the world quiet, and quiet becomes normal, and normal becomes all there is.
By the time he’s sixteen, he has practically forgotten the few weeks of his life where he knew what it felt like to understand the world. He finds social situations difficult to navigate, but hasn’t he always been that way? His memories of the strange, sharp awareness of bodies and scents and hierarchies he couldn’t name feels like a fever dream, and one he doesn't care to dwell on. Instead, he works harder to read expressions, to parse tone, to figure out what people are saying to him and what they want from him.
By the time he is eighteen, he has forgotten entirely that the pill he takes every morning makes the world a little quieter and duller and less. He forgets that he has traded something he hadn’t yet learned to name for something he already loves with every fiber of his being.
He is an omega, but he is a beta. The pills are just something he takes, like vitamins. They don’t affect him in any way other than that. Other than allowing him to play hockey.
He doesn’t know what he has lost.