Work Text:
The beginning of the end starts when Shane enters his cottage, and everything feels just a bit… off.
The lights are too bright, but when they're off, the room seems too dim, even just standing in the entrance. He's too warm to wear socks, after kicking off his shoes, but his feet don't feel right when he's barefoot. He feels regulated temperature-wise with one foot socked and one not, but that's emotionally unbearable, and he sort of wants to cry at the mere thought, unspooling with a disastrous rumble of emotion. The air is swollen with a summer storm rolling in, the kind that makes his skin feel too tight, that makes him long for the ease of the climate-controlled rink. He can feel the touch of his shirt sticking to his skin, the damp cling of cotton against his chest, and everything is too constricting for him to handle, as he tugs at the neckline of his shirt.
He feels like a child, searching for meaning, too stupid to understand why things are the way they are.
His cottage is devoid of life, hollow of any signs of people. Water droplets drum against the glass panes facing the lake, the low, thick clouds oppressive as the sheets of rain obscure any view past the edge of his dock. It only adds to the feeling of loss, the echo of a misfit strung tight through his veins.
Inside his foyer, he can smell the fading scents of his parents, the stale air of a building that's been closed up for seasons, and the sharp, acrid scent of a loneliness that's clung under the skin since before he became an adult; one that's strong enough he's leaving traces of it behind.
It's a familiar one, a tinge that's clung underneath his normal neutral redolence of the muted tart bite of a haskap berry, oak, and the edge of winter snow that's seeped from his pores since he touched his first pair of skates. The taste of bitterness in the air that makes him grateful and angry and so fucking sad that it's been a part of his life since he was seventeen years old.
He hates it.
Well, more than that, he hates what it means, what it stands for.
Who it stands for.
The only good thing is that no one knows what it means; he's the only person who can taste the rot of loneliness, the slow ooze of a wound left unbandaged by lost hands. It's a sluggish bleed, wafting from his skin, thrumming underneath it all.
He knows what the portents of handwavy mate-science say, knows what the ebb and flow of the world demands; he knows exactly what's his to lose. It’s why he’s never let himself address it before; it's why he's still not thinking about it. The risk is—and will, most probably, always be—too damned high.
He shivers at the ghost of the thought and lets the room come back into focus, a slow bleed of sensation returning. He's been standing still at the entrance like a fucking idiot, spinning his useless, grating thoughts over in his head.
Everything somehow feels worse when he starts to get whispers of the heavy, damp air that's spilling in through his cracked windows, the one bit of help he lets his parents give every year as a welcome back gift; but, underneath the swollen roil of stormy air, his cottage, his real home, is flooded with sadness that the rain can't flush out.
And he feels like such a fucking little kid but it's true.
He is sad. He's so fucking sad.
He's supposed to be a king returned to his castle, a man returned to his true roots, an omega coming home to his most sacred nest, but instead of the warm wash of delight, all he can feel are the edges of where—fuck—where Rozanov is missing.
He'd made a deal with himself: he wasn't going to think about the alpha at all. He wasn't going to mull over the frozen note of nothingness that had soaked into his scent when they'd seen each other on set back in March. The nullifiers had whisked it away, but they hadn't been fast enough, and Shane had been unable to handle it, his scent going murky with distress, a clear call—
And he'd got to watch, as a live fucking reaction, as Rozanov dismissed him.
It had been the final straw; Shane had immediately known—he could not do the fucking duo shots of the standard alpha versus omega for goddamn Fanatics. He didn't care if the world thought that he had lost his goddamn mind, if he had to stand next to Rozanov and smell the emptiness of his usual scent, Shane was going to cry. And throw himself at Rozanov's feet. And probably do something horrifically obvious about the sheer greed and hunger in his heart, and everyone would be utterly disgusted with him, even more so than usual.
The rest of the day had blossomed into a humiliation ritual, to say nothing of the weeks of articles that dissected his every move, the sharp taunts in the locker room. His parents had been concerned, Hayden had been worried, even Jackie had gotten involved. JJ had, mercifully, been silent, but the sheer magnitude of everyone else's reaction had worn him too thin.
And now, bitterly, he's realizing that he's never been so relieved to be out within the first round of playoffs. He's never been grateful to lose, and he can't help the spike of anger that prickles at his nerves over the thought, before it's swallowed up but a wave of despair.
And, truthfully, he's being stupid, coming here first.
He needs to be back in Montreal before the week is even over, but the walls of his apartment had been too empty of scent, and he knows that if he had stayed in the city, he'd have ended up prowling through his hook-up apartment, searching for any hint of Rozanov in their bed. Fuck. No. That's—that's wrong. In his bed.
Even his thoughts have betrayed him, wandering down paths he's desperate to ignore.
He just—he aches with some swell of emotion, some sharp arrow of desire anchored through his breastbone, piercing the tender meat of his heart. He wants, stupidly and agonizingly, to be held in the warm arms of a man; the same arms of the man who caught scent of his need and turned away.
His stomach churns, pins and needles racing down his limbs. He's going to puke. There is something so wrong with him; that soft pit of longing turned to ash that he's still restlessly searching for any sign of hope in. He's pitiful, useless except for bedwarming, he supposes. Clearly unworthy of anything more than that.
Hurts, his hindbrain whimpers, the pulse of it curled up behind his ribs. It's an echo of the same thrum that he feels in his heats, when the need for an alpha rises. This is far worse, the lancing ache of rejection spilling down his body, soaking through every muscle. Even if he cries, he knows—no one will come. Even if he were to lift up his shaking hands and dial a number—one he stupidly has memorized—to beg, even if he were to drop to his knees and plead—
He needs to stop thinking.
Thunder rumbles in the distance, the rain picking up as it splatters across the windows, the world washed clean again. It would feel peaceful if it didn't feel like it was taking everything from him too.
Shane sinks down to his knees in the empty foyer, the bite of cool tile barely felt as he drops down.
He is so fucking stupid.
All this uselessness for an alpha that doesn't even want him. This pathetic little heap of a hockey player, laid out by the sheer depth of his idiotic wants, by his neediness, by his hunger.
He must've done something, shown some piece of himself that's unpalatable, that deserves this.
What a fucking joke.
He just—he'll be good, if he gets another chance. He won't ask for too much, or be a fucking boring loser, or whatever it was that led to the dismissal. He can be good. He thinks. He hopes. He doesn't know what else to do, when it feels like he's bleeding out at the absence.
Everyone had always said, oh, be careful with you heart growing up. People had warned against the first flush of love, about the surge of dizzying need that grew especially strong as the full force of the second gender ran free. Beta's get cautioned to not overcompensate for the flood of scents, alpha's get warned to not get too territorial, and omega's get told not to fall in love.
Shane had never worried.
Even with his girlfriends, even with the way their scents would flare—bright and sour with annoyance, the citrus and mud of longing, electric shockwaves of arousal and the bitterness of desire—none of it ever touched him. He had hockey. All he needed was hockey. He was used to the sharp acidity of scents flaring as he walked past, of the tension of want, the anger of hunger, the needling slime of jealousy. He was an omega playing a sport designed to keep him out, for all that the NHL ran with the line of pushing for gender equality. He knew how to fucking handle it.
And now look at him. Inept in the sea of his own desire. Wracked with the tremors of repudiation. Alone. Deplorable. Weak. Shipwrecked on his own need, broken down to nothing from the force of his desolation.
The worst part, he thinks, is that he didn't even know what he was looking for, until it wasn't what he got. Worse, though, because he'd thought that he had, that somehow, he had mattered. He'd thought that it wouldn't matter what he was searching for, because he was so used to Rozanov wanting to provide.
He'd thought—
It doesn't matter what he thought. He's alone now. The most alone he's ever been.
Want, his hindbrain murmurs, before falling silent, a low croon of mourning vibrating up his bones. It's nonverbal, almost unconscious as it spills across his body, shivering through his marrow.
Distantly, Shane can hear the storm surging, the thunderous slap of waves against the dock, the creak of trees, the wind tugging them away from their roots. Sheets of rain are rolling down his windows, restless and fierce, unrelenting. His floors are going to be soaked, he thinks distantly. All his careful decisions about the precise wood to use, ruined by the magnitude of his ineptness.
He's empty, though. Hollowed out of fucks to give, unable to process anything but the ache of agony that laps at him.
Lighting strikes out in the middle of the lake, splitting through the thick gray clouds with a sharp crackle of thunder, and inside his empty, miserable nest, Shane begins to cry.