Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Mpreg | Male Pregnancy, Abortion, Discussions of pregnancy as somewhat akin to body horror, i want to be clear we are pro choice in this household shane doesnt keep the baby, shane hollander you are a victim of misogyny, Scenting, Getting Together, Knotting, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mating Bites

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-01 Completed: 2026-01-02 Words: 10,478 Chapters: 2/2

a clear view

Summary

Shane made a decision a long time ago: he wants hockey, needs it, and he wants it for as long as he can get it. He's going to play till he can’t anymore, and he’s going to do all the right things so no one can ever argue otherwise.

But also: he knows his body well, and he’s worried about an emerging pattern.

 

Or: the Shane abortion fic

Notes

hello. altho i deeply love and understand everyone who wants shane barefoot and pregnant, i am also profoundly compelled by hockey players who love the sport to the point of obsession. and also. im realising. i love to make a/b/o about misogyny.

this fic exists in a sort of vaguely canon adjacent world, except that their relationship has progressed faster in some ways and is stalled out longer in others bc the barriers which keep them apart are fundamentally different. i think u will probably b able to figure it out, but also dont think too hard

ive never had an abortion and i hope to never need one, so i cannot vouch for the accuracy of this, but i did some research and fundamentally. this is abt one character making the right decision for himself. so. i hope u enjoy

title is from adrienne lenker's dragon eyes, with the full lyric as follows: Stars bloom on a warm summer night / They have a clear view without the bedroom light / I just want a place with you, I just want a place

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

Shane is a man of routine, of careful maintenance; he lives and dies by deliberate attentiveness to the mechanics of his body. He knows just how far to stretch, just how many reps will leave him ready instead of tired. It is a careful cataloguing of twinges, monitoring for even the mildest form of injury so it can be corrected.

So he notices when things start to feel off. A few weeks after they play in Boston, he starts to feel tired. He wonders at first if it’s just the stress of the season. He's careful about his eight hours, about slowly easing himself out of his circadian rhythm with a sunrise lamp, about avoiding screens an hour before bed. But maybe the season is wearing on him differently. It was a long postseason last year and a short summer, and the same the year before that, and Shane would never trade those cups for more energy, but maybe the lost days in the gym are getting to him.

So he tweaks his protein intake to support muscle mass and starts incorporating naps into non-game days. He cuts some of his off ice workout. He naps on the plane.

Then his chest gets tender. He notices first the way the chest pads feel rough against his nipples, even with the compression shirt between them.

His heat shouldn’t come till summer, it’s timed carefully with suppressants and pheromone patches, but he had to push it a few weeks later at the last second this summer in the midst of cup celebrations and media obligations. Maybe the impact of those high dose emergency suppressants is raising its head now with a false preheat or incoming flash heat.

They’re on the road so Shane buys stronger scent cream for the bench and benadryl to help him sleep through it if a flash heat is on its way. He warns Hayden of the impending possibility, and Hayden just shrugs, easygoing, scent-blind beta that he is.

But Shane keeps feeling the tenderness. He takes a clean check in a game against Washington and winces at the contact against his chest.

In the bathroom that night, Shane stands in front of the mirror and kneads his pecs gently, the way Ilya likes to. It fucking hurts.

This is when Shane starts to worry.

He gets obsessive. He tracks his water intake and how often he pees. He writes down every instance of dizziness or nausea — he’s prone to both when he feels overwhelmed, but this is out of the ordinary.

He counts back the days to when he last saw Ilya, when Ilya made him come three times on his knot and then ate him out till he cried. It had been great sex. Really fucking great.

They’d used a condom. They always did. Shane wasn’t stupid.

But things could happen, especially when you knotted. And the timing fit.

Fuck. Shane had only let Ilya knot him for the first time at the All-Star Game last year. It had been a long wait, but Shane had wanted to be sure.

(That’s when he’d gone from Rozanov to Ilya in Shane’s head, even if they’ve been connected for a long time before that.)

There aren’t a lot of omegas in the league. He’s not the first and he’s not the only, but there aren’t many. None of them last long. There’s an unspoken understanding that omegas get bonded and pregnant and retire sooner rather than later, and leave the hockey to the big boys. Not one has played past thirty.

Shane knows that the media has started his countdown. It’s his seventh season, he’s won two cups, what more could an omega ask for? He even wears an A. It should be enough to satisfy a little love of hockey, enough to tide him over till he’s mated and barefoot and pregnant.

Fuck.

Shane has never been convenient for wanting more.

He thinks Ilya understands. That Shane can’t go there, that it can’t be more than just casual sex. He’s tried to make it clear from day one, showing up with his scent gland covered in menthol scent blocker and never nuzzling up against Ilya’s. They don’t scent, they don’t bite.

It’s not— god. It’s not that it’s Ilya. People would understand that, or they would understand a version of the story. Of course the little omega couldn’t help himself from going belly up for a star of an alpha like Ilya, with his swagger and soft hands and big shoulders. A real hockey stud. They’d have such nice pups.

It’s that the second Shane lets on that someone has any kind of claim to him, they’ll be ushering him out of the league without so much as a thank you.

Shane is used to walking this tightrope of perfection: be good at the hockey but never proud of it, support and lead your team but don’t ever presume to tell them what to do, defer to alphas but don’t let them take advantage, don’t challenge, don’t fight, don’t bear your neck the second someone growls at you. Don’t let your scent get out of control, don’t be affected by the alphas. Stick with your beta teammates. Help the alphas feel calm. 

It’s all contradiction, and that’s not even considering the delicate balance of being not entirely white, the way they ask him to stand up and smile when they need a face of diversity, and otherwise pretend he’s just like everyone else.

Somehow, that’s why it’s easy with Ilya. Ilya doesn’t expect Shane to be anything. Yeah, he can fold Shane like a lawn chair and get him wetter than Shane knew was even possible, but he also grins when Shane pushes him down, when he gets snippy, when he’s competitive.

But it doesn’t matter. Shane knows what he can’t have. It’s an ever-growing list unfurling in the back of his mind like a fucking medieval scroll.

Shane made a decision a long time ago: he wants hockey, needs it, and he wants it for as long as he can get it. He's going to play till he can’t anymore, and he’s going to do all the right things so no one can ever argue otherwise.

But also: he knows his body well, and he’s worried about an emerging pattern.

Shane has been up to his gills in scent blocker since he presented at fifteen. Don't distract, don’t tip your hand, let them all forget that you’re not just one of the betas.

But once a month, he scrubs himself raw with unscented soap and then meditates for half an hour. It's a trick he learned from Joe a year after they both presented, when the scouting was getting really serious and Shane felt like even he wasn’t allowed to get to know his own smell.

“You have to sit in it sometimes,” Joe explained when he found Shane in the omega locker room dissociating two hours after practice ended. Joe’s was starting in five minutes, but he took the time to talk Shane down anyway. “Let yourself smell it, feel it. Your body knows how it’s feeling better than your brain does. You have to let it speak to you in the ways it knows how.”

They get back from a roadie on a Thursday afternoon and Shane knows what he has to do.

He’s meticulous in the shower, scrubbing himself down twice over so he won’t miss even the faintest change. He lays a hot washcloth over his scent gland to help his blood flow, then dries the rest of his body with his softest, fluffiest towel that he keeps just for days like this. He dresses in a soft shirt and boxers, then goes to his home gym. It smells like him here, just him, from sweat and hard work.

Being surrounded by how things are supposed to be helps pick out what might be wrong.

So, Shane settles down on his yoga mat, legs crossed, closes his eyes and just breathes.

It’s always comforting to find himself again: the nearly-burnt sugar that feels like childhood, the candied ginger that reminds him of winter at his grandmother’s house, the sharp fruity green of the red currants that grow near his parent’s cottage.

There’s a bitter note of anxiety threading its way through his scent, but it begins to fade as Shane breathes, slow and deep, the way his mother taught him. She knew how to breathe for different reasons—alphas run hot and need to know how to bring it down. But what calms anger calms anxiety too, and when she saw her son losing his breath, Yuna Hollander knew what to do.

Shane sinks deeper into it, and there’s Ilya, ever faint but always clinging just slightly, like Shane himself can’t bear to let the smell of spruce forests and warm clove leave him entirely, even when it’s been weeks since they’ve seen each other. They never scent. But Shane has tasted the sweat off Ilya’s chest and the spit in his mouth. His own body can’t forget it.

That’s the other reason for his religious use of scent blocker.

So: Shane’s own nostalgic scent. A hint of anxiety. The aftertaste of Ilya. Laundry detergent. All-purpose gym equipment cleaner. And—

And a whisper of something else, something turning his own burnt sugar softer, almost cloying. A blush of honeysuckle that he gets sometimes right before his heat, but stronger now. And something faintly like wet forest floor, lush and ripe and verdant. Fertile.

Shane rests a hand over his stomach, then tears it away just as quickly, his eyes blinking open. Fuck. Fuck.

Well, he knows now. Or, suspects.

(Knows.)

He’s on his feet before he’s thought about it, tearing through his bedroom to pull on sweatpants and a hoodie and slather scent block cream across his neck, and then he’s out of his apartment and into the elevator to the parkade.

There’s a 24-hour Pharmaprix not far from him.

His mind keeps racing ahead, plotting out what he needs to end this fucking complication, except what the hell is he going to tell the team doctor? Just dump a positive pregnancy test on his desk and tell him to fix it?

But what if he doesn’t? What if this is the weapon they finally use to bring Shane to heel. Thanks for the Cup, sweetheart, now stop making us think so hard about locker room dynamics.

All his life, Shane’s been convinced that all it’ll take is an excuse. Why else has no omega lasted?

So. Maybe a clinic. What’s another secret? But he needs something to bring beyond his own scent shifting slightly.

Shane pulls up his hood as he stumbles out of the car. The fluorescents inside the drug store feel like they’re threatening to expose him. He can already hear it. Why’s the only omega who regularly appears at NHL All-Star games standing in the fucking family planning aisle past 11 pm?

Usually, Shane doesn’t even risk buying condoms in person.

He stops in front of the shampoo first and grabs a bottle at random, just for something to hold. He swings by first aid and stocks up on advil, because you can never have too much. He looks at greeting cards for a full minute and a half, but no one he knows has a birthday coming up. Every extra second spent in this Pharmaprix is another second someone might recognize him.

He breezes through the family planning aisle like it’s a drive by, snatching the most expensive pregnancy tests marked for omegas off the top shelf and hiding them in his arms behind the bottle of shampoo. Expensive means effective, right? He should’ve done his research before he got here. Doesn’t matter.

Shane already knows the result.

He whips through the self-checkout. He doesn’t scan his loyalty card, like somehow Galen fucking Weston might investigate Shane Hollander’s purchase history himself.

The drive home is impossibly long, which is to say about fifteen minutes.

The wait in the bathroom once he’s peed on the pregnancy test is only three minutes, but that feels like a million years too.

Shane knew what it was going to say. The confirmation doesn’t make it better.

Shane lets himself hyperventilate in the bathroom only briefly. Then he straightens up, closes his eyes, and breathes deeply the way his mother taught him till his heartbeat slows.

Then he makes a plan.

Shane calls the clinic Friday. The Metros play Saturday and Sunday, but no games Monday or Tuesday. The clinic has a free time slot on Monday morning, an hour after Shane gets out of practice. 

It’s not ideal. He probably won’t be able to hide that something was wrong after the fact, but as long as they can’t stop him, it shouldn’t matter.

He tries not to think about the fact that the Raiders will be in Montreal the week following. It’s not like he was going to tell Ilya anyway.

He goes to practice. He works hard like normal, dresses and showers like normal, laughs with Hayden and tolerates the others’ ribbing like normal. Shane is cool, Shane is collected, Shane Hollander has nothing exceptional going on in his life.

(He keeps getting out of breath faster than usual. He’s still tired, no matter how much he naps.)

They play Vancouver on Saturday, a punchy all-Canadian matchup that the Canadian broadcasters love. They win, because the Metros are the defending champs and Vancouver are good but desperately young.

Shane goes on the after show in his under armour with a towel slung round his neck, a picture of poise, like he didn’t spend the morning staring in the mirror terrified that a bump was appearing to give it all away at the last second.

“You’ve achieved a lot in the last six years, Shane. Have you given any thought to your future?” the host says near the end of the interview. He has that leading tone that Shane’s heard more times than he can count.

He smiles anyway. “Well, I always figure there’s more to come on a team like this. Lots of good hockey left in me, you know?”

“Of course, and we look forward to it, as well as whatever comes after,” says the host with a paternal indulgence. He, Shane, and the audience at home all know what he meant. It’s a shame. Shane had sort of liked him.

It doesn’t matter. Monday can’t come soon enough.

Sunday, they play St. Louis, which is one of those games no one gives a fuck about.

Late in the third period, when they’re four goals ahead and just trying to close out the game, Shane takes a big hit against the boards from one of St. Louis’s defensemen. It’s an awkward hit because he sees it coming and nearly gets out of the way instead of fully squaring up for it, and the defenseman’s elbow goes hard into Shane’s stomach above where his padded pants start. It leaves Shane winded, bent over and eyes teary.

He lets himself have a second, like always, and then hauls himself upright and keeps skating. Like always.

He can already tell it’s going to bruise.

As Shane skates to the bench, a thought intrudes into his steady mantra to just keep breathing. What if something happened to the baby?

Shane stumbles but catches himself before he goes down. Jesus. First, he thinks furiously, it’s not a fucking baby. It’s a parasite that’s going first thing tomorrow.

It would be sort of inconvenient, though. Like, not that this complication would be over. Shane’s counting down the hours for that. But… fuck, how would he explain the blood? They’d find out, the team doctors would figure it out, and then they’d all know he was bouncing on alpha knot during the season.

Shane spends the rest of the game shifting uncomfortably on the bench and glancing behind himself on the ice, feeling and looking for blood.

It doesn’t come. It doesn’t come during the game, or after in the showers once the alphas are through, or even later when he gets home.

Thank god, thank god, thank god.

It’s hard not to connect the relief to tomorrow’s appointment. Shane lays awake that night, hand resting low on his stomach, and lets himself wonder very briefly what would happen if he… kept it.

He’d lose hockey. Period. It always starts there. It has to.

But after that—what if he let it happen? If he let his stomach swell? 

There’s something a bit existentially horrifying about the way this blip has impacted his body already. The way it has started to shapeshift out of the machine Shane has made it with hard work and deliberate control, into something alien, something rebellious, a vessel that serves someone other than Shane. 

If a baby was wanted, this transformation might be welcomed or at least accepted. As it is, even for the little that is changed, Shane feels half a stranger to himself.

But he might want it. Some day. With the right person.

If he kept it, he’d have to tell Ilya. It’s hard to imagine how Ilya would even react.

Shane has been so closed off to him for so long. Their relationship is an intricate maze of boundaries and rules, half of them arbitrary, many of them shifting.

Shane knows that he never feels more at home than when he can smell Ilya on his bedsheets. He knows that something of Ilya has been blossoming in his scent since he was nineteen.

He knows that they’d have pretty babies, with his dark eyes and Ilya’s sharp cheek bones.

Shane wonders, sometimes, how it would feel to let Ilya pin him down and sink his canines into Shane’s neck. Shane doesn’t belong to anyone, can’t belong to anything but hockey, but something in Shane still longs to let Ilya stake his claim.

He doesn’t know if Ilya would even want to. But Shane imagines sometimes that he can smell himself on Ilya too.

None of it matters. Shane can’t have… that, any of it, and the hockey, not at the same time. Hence why he almost never lets himself think about it. But for once, one night, Shane lets himself wonder and, worse, lets himself want.

On Monday morning, Shane spends ten minutes vomiting bile into the toilet. Then he goes to the rink.

Shane drives straight to the clinic after practice. It’s on a quiet street. The day is sunny, cold and clear.

The waiting room is nearly empty, just him and a girl with scared eyes and a tear-stained face. He smiles at her weakly, the fear of being recognized fizzing into nothing. It’s hard to imagine that she wants to admit to being here any more than he does.

The doctor is a beta woman in her forties. She goes over the medication instructions, potential side effects, and signs of things gone wrong carefully. She asks a little delicately if Shane wants to talk about it, if he’s sure, if anyone’s pressuring him.

Shane tells her very firmly that he’s certain of this. He can’t have a baby right now. He doesn’t even want one, not for at least ten years.

He does want Ilya, but that’s different. He doesn’t tell her that.

In the end, it’s one pill at the clinic and another he’s supposed to take when he gets home. Simple as anything.

He takes the second pill standing in his kitchen with a glass of water. It goes down easy. He doesn’t even think. Just knows the way out, the way to keep hockey. A choice he’s made a hundred times, a choice he’ll make again.

And then it’s a waiting game.

He bleeds a lot. It hurts a lot.

But Shane has bled and hurt for hockey before. This is just another sacrifice. He’d do it again in a heartbeat.

A sacrifice of pain— not the other thing. Maybe Shane’ll want kids someday. He dreams, sometimes, of dark curly haired children, with laughing mouths and sticky hands. But not now.

Children require a kind of selflessness he’ll never be able to mesh with hockey. Hayden, god love him, is a good hockey player, but he’s a dad first. He shows up tired to practice, he leaves team hang outs early, he facetimes the kids every day on the road.

Shane needs a more singular focus than that.

From that perspective, the choice has always been very easy.

Tuesday morning, Shane wakes up bone tired, still cramping, still bleeding. Normal, according to the doctor at the clinic.

He rarely misses practice.  He’s not weak. He can’t let them think that.

But he can’t turn up like this either, or they’ll know. So he calls up the team doctor, spins some tale about undercooked chicken and a night spent vomiting, and gets told to stay home today.

“Listen to your body, Shane,” the doctor tells him in that placating voice Shane hates. They don’t talk that way to alphas, and not even to betas. Shane is something soft to be coddled, not driven to new heights.

“Sure,” Shane says. “I should be good for morning skate tomorrow.”

He’ll be there, even if he shouldn’t be.

Things start to go back to normal. Shane plays the game against Anaheim. He’s tired after, a little more dehydrated than usual. J.J. keeps pressing Gatorade into Shane’s hands on the bench and during intermissions, his alpha instincts piqued even with Shane slathered in scent blocker.

When Shane gets home, he showers with fragrance free soap and meditates for ten minutes, just to make sure everything is in place, nothing out of order.

It’s as expected, his own bouquet, the hint of Ilya that he tries not to think about. A tiredness. A coppery hint of blood that’s characteristic of illness and injury. None of the honeysuckle or lush forest.

Good and right.

His scent is a little emptier like this, maybe, but it’s familiar. Normal.

Shane goes to bed like that, without the scent blocker. He wants to be able to tell, if he wakes up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, that his body is still his.

Life resumes. Shane wears scent blockers, plays hockey, takes his daily suppressants. He works hard, he eats right, he pays attention to his body. He doesn’t snap when an alpha who works for the Montreal Gazette insinuates that maybe Shane’s presence on the penalty kill is distracting his teammates. He minds the skin-to-skin contact in cellies. He tells his teammates well done when it’s deserved.

Careful. Proper. Well-behaved.

It’s worth it when he’s racing down the ice with the puck on his stick, dodging defensemen and outthinking the goalie. It’s worth it when he sees the gap in his opponent’s defence the moment before it appears and is ready to take advantage. It’s worth it when one of Brooklyn’s alpha forwards tries to knock him off the puck and Shane holds his ground to lay a reverse hit instead.

Forget whatever the fuck they say about omegas and heat and childbearing — this is what Shane was made for.

Chapter End Notes

there is one more chapter coming because i wanted shane to actually have a conversation abt this with ilya and then it devolved past what felt, like, pertinent to this chunk of the fic. so. this is the main thrust, a sort of epilogue to follow probably tomorrow or the day after. (that's where we'll earn that mature rating)

also: this fic is profoundly inspired by the abortion episode of please like me, which i understand is a very deep pull. inspired also, as ever when i write a/b/o, by (The Smell of You) In Every Single Dream I Dream, which imprinted on me forever the importance of scent dynamics.

much love to u all.

Chapter 2: postscript

Chapter Notes

i've been calling this chapter the postscript, because i think it shifts a bit tonally from the previous chapter. the first chapter is about shane and his body and his career, this chapter is about shane and his relationship with ilya. it's an afterthought to the first, almost a softening of some of the decisive choices, as well as maybe some more context/worldbuilding.

i kind of debated whether or not to post this chapter bc i didnt want to undermine the previous, but ultimately, people get abortions for all kinds of reasons. some people don't want to have kids at all, some just get pregnant when the timing is all wrong. and shane and ilya are such a right person wrong time ship, except they're bullheaded enough to make the timing work for them anyway. so this is about that, a little bit, i guess. if they ever did have a wanted kid together, i think shane would probably still struggle with the bodily impact.

my other disclaimer is that i am a lesbian and my understanding of how various modes of birth control work is purely theoretical. so. idk do ur own research

A week after that clinic visit, Shane has a phone call follow up appointment. It’s the same doctor as the week before, and she works through a checklist of questions with a clinical blandness Shane appreciates. He doesn’t want to explain himself, especially since she must fucking know who he is, and she never asks.

Near the end of the phone call, she says, “Now, you could try switching to birth control.”

Shane blinks. “Um, I’m on broad spectrum suppressants. I didn’t think you could mix those?”

“No,” she agrees, “You can’t. I did see that in your file. It’s just that they do different things. The suppressants target heat cycles and reduce pheromone and scent production, so the body’s only supposed to try to get pregnant once a year, but flash heats can still break through. They can be hard to notice if you’re already in the act of coitus, for example. It’s rare, but probably what happened in this case.”

“Oh.”

“Targeted birth control would let you experience more regular heat cycles,” the doctor continues, “but would render the womb inhospitable.”

“Mmn.” Shane makes a thin noise through his teeth. “I’ll stick with what I’ve got, I think, but thank you. It’s—it’s the heat cycles that are as much a problem as anything.”

“Of course. Everyone has different priorities.”

“Is–” Shane swallows. “Is there anything else I could be doing? To, you know, not…” He trails off.

“Well, condoms, of course.”

“We use those.” He trips over himself to say it, then wonders what we implies. If it suggests a regular partner. It probably doesn’t matter.

“Right. Well, there are spermicides. Foams, gel.” The doctor pauses. Shane hears the shuffling of papers. “I noticed when you were in that you use a lot of scent blocker?”

Shane makes a faintly affirmative noise.

“If you’re wearing that daily, flash heats are easier to miss. You might catch a flash heat coming before the fertile period starts with better scent awareness, or at least know when it’s set in.”

“Oh.” Shane scratches the back of his neck. The issue is that the scent blockers serve their own purpose. “How, um, far in advance would I be able to catch a flash heat?”

“Depends on the trigger. At most a couple of hours, 2-12 probably. If it’s a fast onset, less time. If you talk to your partner they might be able to smell it on you too.”

“Hm.” Shane makes another nervous noise.

“It’s— look.” The doctor sighs. “Flash heats are pretty uncommon. Enough that very few people get pregnant while on suppressants. But they can flare up when in proximity to a compatible potential bond mate. It’s an old evolutionary instinct, you know, meant to encourage bonding and reproduction. A bond mark would help stabilize your pheromone levels, instead of them spiking intermittently in response to sexual partners.”

Jesus fuck. There’s a twisted irony to that, the fact that Shane can’t bond because no omega’s ever played bonded, but he’s more vulnerable for it. Especially when the only alpha he ever takes to bed is Ilya. Who apparently he’s compatible with.

Well, he knew that already, didn’t he? He wouldn’t carry Ilya in the signature of his body if they weren’t.

“That’s good to know,” Shane manages.

Shane tries not to fixate on the messy questions about scent monitoring and Ilya and sex that live in his head. It might be easier if he had a little more time to untangle the threads before he had to make a decision about it, but Ilya will be in Montreal in three days, and Shane can’t bear the thought of not seeing him.

So instead he does the things he can control. He orders new condoms, in case his are expired, and some spermicide gel, because it’s better to be safe than sorry. Never mind that Ilya might ask about his newfound paranoia. He’ll deal with that when it comes.

Shane changes his sheets the morning of the Boston game. He’s been sleeping without scent blockers since last week, and sleeping better for it in a bed that doesn’t smell like a hotel room, but he keeps imagining Ilya surrounded by his sheets and finding his own scent there.

It would change things, for Ilya to know the way Shane wears him.

And he might find out anyway. If Shane can get his nerve up.

Playing the Raiders always stinks. Literally.

Ilya runs a proud room, a red-blooded room. Raiders alphas bare their fangs, growl in their throats, and let their scent leak all over the ice. The playing surface feels like it’s been crop-dusted by the whole Axe line, a cloud of gasoline and ash, pine and gunmetal.

It’s not personal. They play that way against every team. It’s about fraternal coherence or something. The ability to read each other on the ice.

Shane covers his throat in scent blockers and rubs menthol gel under his nose. He reaches for the smelling salts on the bench more than usual. He wears a pheromone patch over his bond spot, which he almost never does during games, to discourage his body from reacting to the alpha pheromones flying around.

(He used to wear one with Ilya, just to help keep his head when they barely knew each other. He hasn’t since last year’s All-Star Game, when Ilya knotted him the first time. Shane wonders briefly if that might help as birth control too. Probably not. The doctor would have mentioned.)

Anyway. For all the build up, Shane has never struggled to play against the Raiders. He sort of likes the challenge of it, likes the way his senses sharpen and his instincts sing, the way he can feel whenever a Raider is approaching and dance away.

Especially when it’s Ilya. But then, Shane’s always felt him on the ice, even when everyone was wearing mandated scent blocker in junior.

It’s a Raiders game like any other. Both teams hit hard, skate fast, shoot sharp. The crowd is loud. Ilya chews his mouthguard and smirks at Shane across the face off dot.

Shane wants him, for all that he knows the consequences better than ever.

The Raiders win, but at least it goes to overtime. Comeau takes a stupid penalty early in overtime, and Ilya capitalizes on it swiftly. Shane arranges his face into neutral displeasure and refrains from asking Comeau if he had a single solitary thought in his stupid alpha head when he crosschecked the Raiders goalie, for fuck’s sake.

Shane doesn’t make eye contact with Ilya as he leaves the ice. The Montreal crowd watches too closely for him to risk anything.

Ilya texts anyways, because he always does.

         Lily: Still on tonight?

         Jane: Yeah. About 11?

Shane replies while he waits for the alphas to clear out of the showers.

It’s later than he usually makes Ilya wait, but he needs a little time to be certain.

Ilya replies as Shane unlocks his car.

         Lily: sure 😎

Shane showers again at home with his scentless soap. He lays a warm washcloth over his scent gland at the base of his neck while he dries off and brushes his teeth. When he’s ready, dressed in sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, he sits in the living room and just breathes.

He almost chickens out. When Shane’s catalogued every facet of his scent profile, confident that his body is still at equilibrium, he thinks about slathering himself in scent blocker again. Thinks about hiding, dissembling, pretending.

He waits, frozen in indecision, knowing that every second of waiting is more of a decision than the last.

What is he more scared of: getting knocked up again, or Ilya realizing his attachment?

Ilya knocks before Shane can make a decision, so the answer is chosen for him. Shane opens the door and lets Ilya in, half hiding behind the door till it’s closed.

Ilya always arrives like a winter wind, the heady smell of him filling up Shane’s space and leaving Shane lightheaded. It used to scare Shane when he could feel Ilya even with scent blocker on.

These days, it feels like he’s finally where he’s supposed to be.

Ilya turns on Shane with his usual sultry grin, and then his nostrils flare and his expression changes to surprise and unmasked desire. He closes the distance in a second, boxing Shane against the front door.

“I can smell you,” he murmurs, trailing his nose up Shane’s jaw.

Shane swallows. “Yeah. I—um, can you tell me if it changes?”

Ilya pauses, then pulls back, eyes searching Shane’s face. “Your scent?”

Shane nods, one short jerk of his chin.

Ilya grasps Shane’s jaw, tilting it up so he can press his mouth to the underside. He’s miles from Shane’s bonding spot, but it’s closer to scenting than anything else they’ve ever done. “Why would it change?”

Shane wishes Ilya would just kiss him instead of talking about this. He’s already slicking up just from the proximity. “I, um. I’ve been having these flash heats? And I’m supposed to… monitor for those.” It feels like a lame excuse, entirely true but somehow not even the half of it.

“Okay. And a flash heat will smell different?”

“Yes,” Shane says softly, already melting as Ilya’s tongue darts out to press against his jaw.

“Then I will have to know how you smell,” Ilya says with some pleasure, and mouths his way down Shane’s throat.

“You know how I smell,” Shane says weakly. Of all people, Ilya has tasted him most of all between the thighs where his scent is headiest, though less complex.

“Not the same as your throat,” Ilya says, almost growling, and Shane goes boneless, neck bared to the onslaught.

Ilya kisses and sucks and licks across Shane’s throat and clavicle, huffing in sharp breaths with his open mouth and murmuring in Russian. Shane has only the presence of mind to slap at Ilya’s arm when he feels teeth grazing him.

“Is not your bond spot,” Ilya whines, but Shane stays stern.

“No marks.”

“Fine,” Ilya agrees, and then peels himself off Shane. He takes Shane’s jaw in his hand again, just to press his thumb hard against Shane’s lips. Shane sucks it in without thought, tongue laving over salty skin, the taste of forest and spice faint. Ilya watches attentively, pushing his thumb in further to press on Shane’s tongue.

Here’s the other thing: Shane has always hated to ask. The negotiation of their sexual relationship has relied largely on Ilya looking closely and asking, and Shane following like it was a command.

Even when he wanted Ilya to start knotting him, Shane showed his cards by showing up without a pheromone patch and let Ilya make a guess.

So maybe this—Shane, softly vulnerable and smelling like himself—looks like another question.

And maybe the first guess was teeth. Shane wonders what the next will be.

“Bed?” Ilya asks.

Shane nods to the extent that he can with Ilya holding him so tightly. “Please,” he mumbles around the thumb.

They stumble up the stairs with Ilya’s hand possessively grasping Shane’s hip. He feels lit up, the point of contact between them a live wire.

In the bedroom, Ilya pushes Shane down into the bed with a playful grin, then pauses to suck in a few short breaths, glancing around and gaze landing on the door to the bathroom.

Shane’s cleaned it since— since. But smells can linger, sometimes.

Shane tugs off his shirt. “Ilya,” he murmurs, baring his neck slightly in invitation, and Ilya’s attention snaps back to him. He’s not sure he’s ever used Ilya’s first name when they weren’t knotted together. Maybe it’s a mistake.

And then Ilya shucks his shirt and is on him, kissing him finally, their mouths and tongues and teeth finding each other.

Maybe not a mistake at all.

Shane tangles his fingers in Ilya’s curls, revelling in the way Ilya grips his hip, fingers slipping under his waistband. He wraps his legs around Ilya’s body, pulling him into the cradle of his hips, and Ilya goes. The hard line of Ilya’s cock aligns against Shane’s, and they both gasp, Shane bucking upwards.

Ilya pulls back to bite at Shane’s lower lip, then he’s trailing his mouth down again, across Shane’s jaw, his throat, the base of his neck. Ilya ventures along Shane’s clavicle slowly, and Shane knows where he’s going, the end point clearly telegraphed. Shane lets him get close, lets Ilya exhale one hot breath over Shane’s bonding spot before Shane is tugging Ilya back by the hair.

Ilya huffs out a shaky laugh as he meets Shane’s gaze again. His eyes are half-lidded and face flushed. He looks almost drunk, more gone than when his knot is locking them together.

Shane tries to smile, but somehow it’s then that it hits him, the wave of pheromones rolling through the room, him and Ilya together, smelling like they’re meant to be. Shane hasn’t felt this relaxed since Boston.

“Are you gonna fuck me?”

Ilya licks his lips. “Will you let me?”

“Of course.” Shane cups Ilya’s cheek in his palm. “Want you to.”

Ilya leans down and scrapes his teeth over Shane’s nipple. “You are hard to read, sometimes.”

“Even when you can smell me?”

Ilya bites down and Shane throws his head back with a gasp. “Yes, Hollander.”

Ilya moves down Shane’s body, trailblazing with lips and mouth and sometimes teeth. Shane shoves his shoulder each time he feels the bite, muttering, “No marks,” as Ilya laughs at him.

It’s playful and easy, the way the best times are between them. Shane likes Ilya’s intensity, but he likes it better tempered with sweetness.

When Ilya gets to Shane’s waistband, Shane raises his hips and lets Ilya pull down his sweatpants. He’s not wearing underwear, so when Ilya finishes tugging them over his ankles, Shane lets his knees fall apart and tips his hips up, exposing his glistening hole.

“Fuck, Hollander.” Ilya is on him again in a second, mouthing over the crease of Shane’s thigh, gazing lovingly at his cock and trailing fingers down lower. Shane throws one of his legs over Ilya’s shoulder and pushes lightly against his back to draw him closer. Ilya goes gladly, easily, tongue chasing up Shane’s inner thigh as he presses a finger in past the second knuckle without hesitation.

Shane sighs in relief at being touched there finally, and then again as Ilya crooks his finger up to tease Shane where he’s sensitive. Ilya presses his face into the inside of Shane’s thigh as he slides in a second finger, only to suck in an open-mouthed breath and pause.

Shane props himself up on his elbows as Ilya’s fingers slide back out of him. “What?”

“You said to say something if your smell changed.”

A rock sinks in Shane’s stomach. “Oh fuck,” he mutters, sitting up and pulling himself back so there’s space between him and Ilya. “What did it—how is it different?”

Ilya shakes his head. “Not like a heat, I think. I only noticed it between your legs. Did you—” He licks his lips. “Are you hurt? I know you missed practice this week.”

Oh. Shane lets himself drop back on the bed, covering his face with his hands. “Kind of. I’m fine now.” He parts his fingers to peek a glance at Ilya. “You keep track of when I miss practice?”

Ilya shrugs, his fingers brushing softly up and down the side of Shane’s calf. “Wanted to be sure you would be up to play against me.”

“Right.” Shane looks away, up to the ceiling.

Ilya’s hand travels further up Shane’s leg, over his knee, then back down to grasp his ankle. “So you are not hurt?”

“No.” 

“And you want this?” Ilya squeezes Shane’s ankle, and Shane looks back at him. 

“Yes. If I don’t— I mean, it’s not a bad smell?”

Ilya stares for a long moment, and Shane cringes away. “No.” Ilya reaches up, a big hand gripping Shane’s thigh. “No, you always smell good. Irresistible.”

Shane flushes. They don’t say things like that to each other. Shane pretends that he doesn’t look for the smell of Ilya on his clothes and through his apartment for a week afterwards. Ilya pretends that he doesn’t taste himself in Shane’s slick and sweat.

Except today he can really smell Shane. Smell the scent glands in his neck, between his thighs. Shane asked him to.

Maybe this is the step, inadvertently asked for or not.

Shane sits up. “So do you,” he says shyly.

It doesn’t quite have the intended effect. Ilya looks away, mouth flattening. The hand on Shane’s thigh retreats back below the knee. Shane wants to reach out, but he doesn’t even know where he’s mis-stepped. 

“Is something wrong?” 

Ilya holds his cold facade for a long moment, and then his shoulders drop and he looks back at Shane. “Hollander. I know why you are like this, with your scent blocker and pheromone patches. I know what you are scared of.” 

Shane’s hands fist in the bedsheets. “It’s not– I’m not stupid. I know how they force omegas out.”

“I never said you were.” Ilya squeezes Shane’s calf, then draws his hand back into his lap so they’re no longer touching. “You are not wrong to be scared of it. What I do not understand is what has changed here.” 

“What do you mean?”

“First you lose the patch and I think this is just so you open for my knot.” Shane’s cheeks go pink. Ilya continues with exasperation, “But now you show up without scent blockers.”

“I told you, I’m monitoring for flash heats–” 

“You know what you smell like, Shane.” Ilya spits out his name like it hurts to say, but there is a raw quality to his voice that makes Shane lean in. “You know you smell like me, but you do not let me near your bond spot, and I know, I know you will not ask for my bite, you cannot, and I would never make you take it. So I do not know what else you want from me like this. Why are you scared of a flash heat, unless you do not want me there for it?”

“I got pregnant.” Shane blurts it out without thinking, and then draws up his knees to his chest as if to hide behind them in the face of Ilya’s wide blue eyes.

Ilya reaches out a hand toward him but stops halfway, snatching it back as he thinks better of it. “You what?”

“I got pregnant,” Shane repeats. He swallows. “I… dealt with it. That’s the copper smell. I’m not, anymore.”

Ilya has gone cold again, perfectly still. “Was it mine?”

“Fuck you, you think I let other alphas knot me, smelling like this? No one would come near me!” Shane snaps.

Ilya recoils. “Is that a problem?”

“No.” Shane shakes his head, sighs. Tries to bring himself down, breathing like his mother taught him, because alphas don’t like omegas who snap, who get angry. Even if Ilya has never minded before, surely this must be different. “No. That’s not how I meant it.” Shane almost reaches out for Ilya, but holds himself back in the face of Ilya’s predatory stillness. “You're the only alpha who’s ever had me like that. I’ve never wanted anyone else.”

“Hollander.” Ilya sounds gutted.

“I can’t have a baby, you know that. I’d never fucking play again,” Shane says, and it’s angry again, the way he can’t let himself get in a locker room or with media. Ilya has always brought out the most in him, even the parts he tries to suppress. 

But Ilya’s soft with him, softer than Shane really has any right to expect, and it’s that softness that comes through now. “I know,” he says, shuffling forward, a hand reaching tentatively to grasp Shane’s. “I know, Hollander. This is not– I am not sad, or mad, or whatever you think I am about that. I would not ask you to give up hockey.”

“Oh.” Shane shifts, tucking a knee under himself.

Ilya takes the unspoken invitation for closeness, cupping Shane’s cheek in his palm. “Shane. You must know.”

His hand slides down Shane’s jaw, his neck, down to rest over Shane’s bonding spot.

“Ilya,” Shane warns softly, even as he leans into the touch.

“You will not let me say it?” Ilya’s brow is furrowed in anger, but his eyes are hurt. “You let me into your bed, you carry the smell of me, but you will not let me say it?”

“It’s not that.” Shane’s voice breaks. He clears his throat and continues, “I just— I can’t.” 

Ilya collapses into Shane, his forehead resting against Shane’s shoulder. “Just tell me if it is never, Shane, because I cannot do that. If it is ten years, or fifteen, or, god, twenty, Hollander, if you want, then fine. But if it is me, if it is bonding at all–”

“It’s not.” Shane can’t bear to hear the rest, the unspoken promise that he can’t make himself believe. He feels congested, eyes wet and throat tight. He threads his fingers into Ilya’s hair despite himself, leans his head to press against the side of Ilya’s. “I do want– But it’s too much to ask. It’s just so long to wait.”

Ilya turns his head to meet Shane’s eyes, his own suspiciously wet. There’s something incomprehensibly fond in them, amused somehow. “Hollander. Shane. Scent me.”

“What?”

Ilya bares his neck, offering it for Shane’s olfactory inspection. “Scent me, c’mon.”

Shane leans in, despite his trepidation, unsure what Ilya expects him to find. Ilya’s skin is warm as Shane presses into the crook of his neck, nose squished and mouth open. He drags in a deep inhale, body sagging as the alpha pheromones hit. Ilya smells wonderful. Shane’s always liked how he smells. Used to fantasize, when he was younger and didn’t realize what he meant by it, about scenting Ilya just like this, drowning in the smell of him. 

There he is, the familiar balsam and clove, green and spicy. Shane huffs deeper, seeking out the secondary notes that he’s never had the chance to identify. Petrichor, faintly, and sharp pepper. Something like anise or maybe caraway. And– and a familiar trace of red currant. A hint of warm ginger.

Oh. 

“Oh,” Shane says. He pulls back to look at Ilya. 

“Yes,” Ilya says, eyes opening slowly. He looks relaxed, boneless in a way Shane’s hardly ever seen him. “You see. I will take you however I can get you, Hollander.”

Shane kisses him before he can think, and Ilya must lean in too, because their teeth clash uncomfortably. Shane doesn’t even care, just shifts to accommodate Ilya, eager for the slide of their tongues against each other. 

How could he never have tasted it before? How did he miss it? The print of him written into Ilya’s body too, that Shane was never bold enough to look for.

When they separate for breath, Shane can’t help but pour out the rest. “The, um, the flash heats. I think I just get them around you. The doctor said that’s probably, um, how the baby happened. That I had one, last time we… But I get them because we’re compatible. Because we fit.”

Ilya smiles, smug. “You like me so much you go into heat?”

“My body does,” Shane says and flushes bright red.

Ilya laughs and kisses him again. Somehow Shane ends up on his back, Ilya’s body stretched out halfway over his, kissing languidly all the while. Eventually, Ilya pulls back and asks, “So, what is the solution? For these flash heats?” He lays a proprietary hand over Shane’s stomach for a second, then shifts over to hold his hip instead. 

Shane bites his lip. “There’s not– there’s not a good one, really, for us. Condoms, obviously. Um, I bought some spermicide. The knotting makes it more dangerous, but I want you to knot me, so…” 

He’s pink again, and Ilya presses a wet kiss to his cheek. “Yes, I cannot leave without satisfying my omega.” 

Shane preens at the words, for all that Ilya’s tone is mostly teasing. But it stings too, the be claimed but unmarked by it.

Shane continues, “It might help if you wore scent blocker during games? To shorten my exposure window, I guess. But the only thing that would really stabilize the heats is, um, a bonding bite. So.” 

“Ah.” Ilya is serious again, eyes searching Shane’s face, and then he leans down to press his mouth to the base of Shane’s throat. It’s contact more than anything else, not pressure with the intent of bruising or sucking, just his mouth featherlight on Shane’s skin, brushing slowly outward towards Shane’s bonding spot. Shane doesn’t stop him, not as Ilya nears it, nor as he presses dry lips to it for the first time. Shane has to stifle a gasp as he lights up, fireworks in his brain and tingles down his spine. Here he is, alive, held, seen. Almost had. He’s alarmed to find his eyes teary. 

Ilya pulls back just enough to turn his head, grasping Shane’s jaw to make eye contact. “Someday, yes?” 

“Yeah,” Shane nods hurriedly. “Yes. I hope so.”

Ilya turns back into Shane’s neck and flicks his tongue over the spot. Shane’s mouth drops open in an aborted moan at the brief contact, and then Ilya licks him there in earnest, a broad wet stripe that has Shane arching his body into Ilya’s, hands scrabbling in Ilya’s curls. Ilya presses another dry kiss to the wet spot, then a kiss to the corner of Shane’s jaw, one high on his cheek, one on his nose, one on his mouth. Shane grasps at him, body trembling. 

“Someday.” Ilya rubs a thumb over Shane’s cheek bone. “Mine, yes?” 

“Yours.” 

Ilya holds his gaze, leaning their foreheads together. His eyes are searching again. Shane doesn’t know how to lay himself more bare, doesn’t know what else there is to ask for except for the things they already do. 

But Ilya knows. He always does. 

“There are other places,” Ilya says softly. “Not for full bonding, but in old tales, pagan times, yes? To make a secret promise, they used to bite here.” Ilya presses two fingers against the sensitive skin of Shane’s inner thigh, where his secondary scent glands are concentrated.

“Yeah?” Shane asks, breathless. 

“I do not know if it would help this problem,” Ilya says, stroking the skin there softly. “But it would be easier to hide, yes?” 

Shane leans up to kiss Ilya, short but hard, then drops back onto the bed. “Could I bite you too?”

Ilya kisses him now, just as bruising, like somehow he’s trying to crawl inside. Shane would let him. “Yes,” Ilya says it into Shane’s mouth, reverent, supplicant. “Yes, yes, please. You would want to?” 

Shane cups Ilya’s face in his hands. “I do.”

Ilya presses his fingers hard into the inside of Shane’s thigh, and Shane spreads his legs further, planting one foot on the bed and pushing at Ilya’s shoulder. 

Ilya begins to shuffle down Shane’s body, pausing to kiss his chest, his stomach. “Now?” 

“Please.” 

So he goes, kissing down Shane’s hip, the crease of his thigh, down to the inside of Shane’s leg. Ilya kisses there too, a big hand wrapped round the back of Shane’s thigh to hold him close. Not that Shane is going anywhere. 

“You smell good,” Ilya murmurs into Shane’s skin. Shane watches, propped up on his elbows. 

“I want you.” 

Ilya smirks. “I smell that too.” He turns his focus back to the spot high inside Shane’s thigh. He licks across tender skin and downy hairs, then grazes his teeth over the same place. 

Shane whimpers. It feels like every nerve in his body is standing at attention, singing and honed in on Ilya’s mouth. 

“You are sure?” Ilya asks. 

Shane could think about it more. Could strategize, catastrophize. But he never showers with the alphas, and the betas won’t look. He’s smelled like Ilya since he was nineteen. He’s never been in an MLH locker room without that trace of him. Even if it comes to nothing, Shane might as well wear the mark of these years of quiet devotion. “I’m sure.”

So Ilya bites. Slowly at first, his canines testing the skin, tongue wet, and then he sinks in, hard and deep. Shane doesn’t even hear the sound he makes, a strangled moan or maybe yell, just feels himself sucked under, world shrinking down to just Ilya, just the sharp pain, pounding heart and rushing blood. The way things click into place, like wanting and being wanted are suddenly the easiest things in the world. 

And then Ilya is licking over the bite mark, wiping away the pinpricks of blood and murmuring softly in Russian, stroking circles with his hand over Shane’s knee and thigh. 

“Holy fuck,” Shane murmurs, when he can finally speak, though his tongue still feels too thick in his mouth, his head still fuzzy. He tugs Ilya by the hair as he sits up, crashing their mouths together. “I love you,” he says into Ilya’s mouth. “Is that horrible to say, when we can’t be more than–?” 

Ilya bites his lower lip hard, then kisses him again to soothe. “Is perfect. This is good, this is enough. For today this is enough.” Ilya grasps Shane’s cheek. “I love you too. Will you bite me?”

Shane is nodding and scrambling down Ilya’s body without another thought. He has to tug off Ilya’s track pants and underwear, two pairs of hands pushing and pulling the fabric with such ferocity Shane’s surprised nothing tears. He finds himself kneeling on the floor between Ilya’s spread knees. 

His body feels like it’s burning, cock rock hard against his stomach, the dull pain on the inside of his thigh, and the ache of his hole, wet and wanting. But here at Ilya’s feet is one of the best places in the world to be. Shane nuzzles against Ilya’s hard cock for a moment just because he can, but Ilya tugs at his hair, and besides, there are more important things to attend to. 

Shane moves down to press his cheek to the side of Ilya’s knee and looks up through his eyelashes. “Here,” Ilya says softly, pointing out the place on his own leg. “Bite here, sweetheart.”

Shane runs his tongue over his teeth as he leans in. He’s never– well, obviously, he’s never bitten anyone before. A bonding mark is once in a lifetime, but pre-bond marks are common. Shane remembers now-bonded teammates showing up with deep red teeth marks on their chests and shoulders, a claim outlined but not yet staked. In another life, Shane thinks he and Ilya might have had their teeth on each other years ago. In this life, a bite on the thigh will have to last them a decade. 

Shane’s grateful for even this. 

Shane sinks his teeth into Ilya’s meaty thigh with ferocity, tongue slipping over the skin between his teeth, salty and thick with the smell of Ilya, his arousal, the affection he bears Shane. There’s a faint coppery tang of blood, and Shane removes his teeth from Ilya to lick it away. 

Ilya strokes his hair with gentle fingers. His eyes are glassy and half-lidded again, his lips parted. Shane’s seen Ilya look at him in amazement, in the throes of pleasure, with more fondness than Shane knew a person could hold, but never this dazed.

Shane kisses up Ilya’s thigh towards the apex and then licks up his cock, base to tip, before swallowing it down. 

“Shane.” Ilya says it breathlessly, clutching Shane’s head in both hands, surrendering helplessly to the pleasure. Shane bobs on his length, reveling in the taste and the weight of it in his mouth. 

Shane draws back to tongue the slit, pressing his thumb into the bite mark on Ilya’s thigh at the same time. Ilya hauls Shane off after a second and wraps his own hand around the base of his cock tightly, panting. “Fuck, you will kill me.” 

Shane laughs and stands, taking Ilya’s face between his hands as he pushes him backwards on the bed and straddles his lap. “Knot me first.” 

Ilya hauls Shane down to bring their mouths together, smiling against Shane’s lips as he flips them over to lay Shane out on the bed. 

It feels like it’s been ages since his fingers were inside Shane, and Shane is eager to open his legs and welcome Ilya in. Ilya presses in two fingers right away, buried to the last knuckle in one smooth movement. Shane sighs and moans as Ilya’s fingers move, in and out, scissoring to stretch, crooking up to brush against Shane’s prostate. 

Shane lasts about a minute before he’s begging, “Ilya, Ilya, please, I’m ready–” 

Ilya snorts, face pressed into Shane’s neck. “That change you were worried about, the flash heat, I think maybe it is happening.”

Shane freezes for a minute, then exhales a laugh. Well, of course. He doesn’t know where it began, if it was already coming on when Ilya was teasing his bond spot or if that’s what prompted it, but it’s undeniable. His nerves sing, he’s dripping wet, and every touch feels like a miracle. The smell of honeysuckle is blooming in his bedroom.

It makes him nervous. Of course it does. The last few weeks have been filled with anxiety and secrecy and even pain. He doesn’t want to go through it again.

But it was a fluke. Shane knows that. He’s not going to let a long shot stop him from having Ilya the way he wants him. And he’s better prepared today anyway. 

He leans down to kiss Ilya’s nose. “We’ll figure it out.” 

It takes some fumbling, the condom and the spermicide and the fucking waiting for it to be effective, but eventually Ilya is lining up and pushing into Shane, who feels like he’s been wet and waiting for him for hours. 

The moment Ilya is buried in him, Shane’s head goes quiet. It’s not a race to the finish, just the steady lapping of waves against the shore as Ilya fucks into him with short strokes, keeping himself buried deep. 

Shane buries his face in Ilya’s neck, and Ilya does the same, each of them panting open mouthed, sucking in the smell of each other together.

Shane’s orgasm comes out of nowhere. One second he’s basking in the warm glow of pleasure, the next it’s ripping through him like a tidal wave. Shane whines and arches and clenches down, helpless against the onslaught.

“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya groans, his thrusting getting harder and faster as he gets desperate.

“Knot me, fuck, Ilya, please, I need–” Shane mewls with each thrust, the way it gets rougher as the base of Ilya’s dick begins to swell. 

For a few strokes, Ilya only fucks into him shallowly, his growing knot bumping up against the outside of Shane’s rim, and then a growl rips out of Ilya’s throat and he shoves in. Shane wails as his hole gives way to Ilya’s knot and Ilya empties himself inside. 

Ilya slows to minute movements and then stillness, mouth open and wet against Shane’s throat as he collapses into Shane’s body. “Fuck,” he breathes, grasping at Shane’s cheek. “You take it so good, sweetheart.” 

“Love you,” Shane murmurs, and leans down to kiss Ilya. He only gets the side of Ilya’s mouth, but it hardly matters as each shift of his body sends sparks up his spine. “Love having you in me.” 

“Mmph.” Ilya nuzzles his face against Shane’s. Shane feels as fucked out and ruined as Ilya sounds, so they just drift for a while, joined together. 

A slight issue makes itself known eventually, though, which is that Shane never went soft. His dick, trapped between them, is aching for some kind of concentrated relief. Shane starts shifting against Ilya to find it, who huffs at the stimulation on his own cock. 

“You are still hard?” Ilya whines.

“Flash heat, remember?” 

Ilya rolls his eyes and reaches a hand down between them to stroke Shane’s cock with soft fingers. “You have been like this every time I knot you. I think maybe you just like me.” 

“I do like you.” Shane pauses, considers the way he’s always wet and open for Ilya, the way the knot never hurts like he’s heard omegas complain about, the way he gets sucked under by it. “But I think maybe I’ve also had a flash heat every time we’ve done this.” 

Ilya pauses, then resumes his ministrations as Shane bucks against him. “Fucking hell.” 

They’re both distracted as Shane starts clenching down on Ilya’s knot, breath getting short and pleasure building. 

When Shane has come again, Ilya says, “I hoped maybe the bite would help.”

“It might have. I think biting can also trigger flash heats, so maybe next time.” Shane giggles when Ilya looks at him incredulously. “I should maybe also see about adjusting my suppressant dose.”

Ilya strokes Shane’s hair. “Yes, probably. But I like you like this also.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to have kids at all,” Shane tells Ilya later, when his knot has gone down and they’ve both showered. They’re still tangled in bed, the moment before Ilya is supposed to leave, though neither of them are eager to make that happen.

“Mm,” Ilya hums, as if to indicate to Shane that he is awake and listening though his eyes are closed, his head resting on Shane’s shoulder.

 “I might someday. I just can’t have them now, you know? There’s no reason I can’t play as long as any alpha or beta. I’m a good hockey player. I like being a good hockey player. I have just as much right to it. It just feels like everyone thinks they know what I should want.” 

“Of course,” Ilya agrees in that easygoing way of his, teasing but not patronizing or disbelieving. “You will play till you are forty and will still be better than most of the alphas in the league.” 

“I’m better than all of them!”

Ilya eases an eye open. “Everyone but me, yes,” he says and leans up to press a kiss to Shane’s cheek. “But maybe not when you are forty.”

“Maybe not,” Shane huffs. “And… I might not play till forty.”

“No? You will tap out at 39? 38? Important difference, Hollander.”

“Well, I don’t know.” Shane swallows and shifts his gaze to the ceiling, gathering courage. “But if we were gonna have kids, that year or two might make it easier.”

Ilya is quiet for a moment, and Shane worries he’s scared him off, and then Ilya turns over to press their chests together and bump his nose against Shane’s. “I would not ask,” he says softly.

“But I might want to,” Shane returns, and is surprised by how much he really thinks he means it. “If you would, anyway.”

Ilya grins and drops a kiss to Shane’s chest. “My friend Svetlana, she says… she says that a late thirties baby is very chic.”

Shane laughs. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don’t really care about chic. But I figure I can have hockey without giving up on the rest of it, you know?”

Ilya leans up to press a kiss to his mouth. “Yes, sweetheart. I know.”

Chapter End Notes

okey thats the end :) thank u for reading my pro-abortion, pro-late-thirties-baby propaganda.

mini fic playlist:
dragon eyes; adrienne lenker
smoke signals; phoebe bridgers
not a lot, just forever; adrienne lenker
you can have it all; florence + the machine