Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The Scotiabank Arena buzzed with a kind of electric anticipation that only the All-Star Skills Competition could bring—forty thousand fans packed into seats that cost more than most people's monthly rent, cameras sweeping across the ice in slow, cinematic pans, and every player on the roster sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the long bench that curved along the boards, dressed in their division jerseys and waiting.

Leon leaned back, legs spread, stick balanced across his thighs. The first event had wrapped—fastest skater, won predictably by McDavid, who sat beside him now looking annoyingly unbothered about it—and the ice was being prepped for the one-timers. Standard fare. They'd been briefed on the format the night before: two guest passers, identity undisclosed, feeding pucks to shooters from the left and right circles respectively.

"Two passers this year," Connor murmured beside him, pulling at his gloves. "They're being weird about it."

Leon shrugged. "Probably some celebrity thing again."

The PA system crackled. The arena lights shifted—dramatic, theatrical, the league milking every second of entertainment value they could squeeze from the weekend. A deep voice rolled through the speakers.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your guest passers for tonight's one-timer competition..."

A pause. The crowd noise swelled in anticipation.

"First—making his All-Star Weekend debut—the first overall pick of the 2023 NHL entry draft number 98 for the Chicago Blackhawks... Connor Bedard!"

The roar was immediate and warm. Bedard skated out from the tunnel looking equal parts thrilled and terrified, the kid barely eighteen, helmet slightly too big for his head, grinning with every tooth he had. Leon clapped along with everyone else. Good kid. Deserved the spotlight.

The PA held again. Another beat of silence that stretched just a half-second too long, and Leon felt something shift in the arena—a collective intake of breath, as though forty thousand people had simultaneously leaned forward in their seats.

"And your second guest passer—playing in his sixth NHL All Star game, the captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins... Sidney Crosby!"

The noise that erupted was unlike anything Leon had heard at an All-Star event. It wasn't just cheering. It was reverence. It was the sound a building makes when it recognizes that it's witnessing something worth remembering. Crosby emerged from the same tunnel Bedard had, skating with that unhurried, efficient stride that hadn't changed in twenty years, and the arena rose. Standing ovation. Every section, every seat, every body vertical.

On the bench, players were hitting their sticks against the boards in appreciation. Leon watched Pettersson's eyebrows shoot up. Watched Makar whisper something to Fox. Watched Bedard—sweet, starstruck kid—turn to look at Crosby skating toward him with an expression that could only be described as religious.

Of course the league had done this. The oldest and the youngest. Twenty years of Crosby's dominance bookended by the kid who was supposed to carry the torch after him. They'd been pairing the two at every available opportunity since Bedard was drafted—photo ops, promotional material, that infamous clip of Crosby at the draft shaking Bedard's hand while the kid looked like he might faint. It was harmless, affectionate, the kind of marketing that wrote itself. Sid, to his infinite credit, had never been anything other than gracious about the age jokes. The man simply did not take offense at things that weren't worth his energy, and the league loved him for it. You didn't disrespect Sidney Crosby. That was understood at every level of the sport—from the front offices to the locker rooms to the beer league rinks—as a fact of existence, fundamental as gravity.

But what caught Leon now, what snagged in his chest and pulled, wasn't the crowd reaction or the league's orchestration. It was the realization—sharp and sudden—that he'd be taking passes from Sidney Crosby. He was a lefty. Lefties went to Crosby. Which meant Crosby would be standing ten feet away from him, feeding him pucks, and Leon would be expected to perform under those conditions like a functional human being.

Twenty years in the league and still dominating at a level that made everyone else look like they were playing a slower, clumsier version of the same sport. That was something no statistic could fully quantify, something that lived beyond the highlight reels and trophy cases. And maintaining all of that while being the only omega in an alpha-dominated sport—the sheer, staggering force of will that required—was a thing Leon had never been able to think about for too long without feeling humbled by it.

Crosby circled the far end, gathering pucks with his stick, corralling them into a neat pile near the left circle. He moved with a quiet economy of motion, deliberate and practiced. Nothing wasted. Leon tracked him without meaning to, gaze snagging on the way Crosby’s jersey hung loose on his frame, the focused dip of his head, the dark hair at his temples threaded with a few strands of silver—subtle, hard-won, and somehow only sharpening the kind of beauty that didn’t fade, just deepened.

And then the wind shifted—or someone opened a door somewhere—or maybe the ventilation cycled—and it hit him.

Leon's entire body went rigid.

It was subtle at first. A whisper beneath the overwhelming cocktail of arena smells—sweat, rubber, ice, the sharp synthetic tang of fresh jerseys. But once he caught it, it bloomed, expanding in his lungs like something alive, and Leon's fingers tightened around his stick so hard the composite creaked.

Omega.

Sweet, warm, layered. Like dark honey over something woodsy and green—a depth that made the back of his skull tingle and his jaw ache. It wasn't the faint, muted echo he was used to catching from Crosby's direction during league events. That had always been Crosby's scent filtered through the heavy mask of an alpha bond—first Malkin's sharp, almost metallic signature, and later MacKinnon's clean, aggressive pine. Leon had never given Crosby's actual scent much thought because there'd never been anything to think about. It had always been buried. Dampened. Claimed.

This was different.

This was him. Unmasked. Uncovered. And it hit Leon's hindbrain like a truck.

He breathed through his mouth. Forced his grip to loosen. Stared straight ahead at the Jumbotron and absolutely did not look at the omega currently skating lazy loops near center ice.

Around him, he could sense the other alphas on the bench reacting in their own ways—small shifts, stiffened postures, a few too-casual throat clearings. They were all getting it. Every alpha in that building was catching the edge of Crosby's natural scent for what was probably the first time in their careers, and the collective effort to remain civilized about it was almost palpable.

Because Sidney Crosby's relationship with alphas had always been... complicated. Managed. Carefully arranged behind closed doors in a way that the league facilitated and the media knew better than to question. Malkin had been the first—Crosby's rookie year, both of them young, the arrangement born from necessity more than romance. An omega in a locker room full of alphas needed a primary partner to scent him, to keep him stable through the season, to share his heats so they didn't derail his performance. Malkin had done it loyally for years, their bond a private, practical thing that the Penguins organization protected fiercely.

Then Malkin got married. Anna. Beautiful ceremony in Russia. And Sid transitioned into MacKinnon's care.

That one had been different. Everyone could see it. Where Malkin and Crosby had been companionable—functional, warm but boundaried—MacKinnon and Crosby had burned. The way Nate looked at Sid across a rink. The way Sid softened, almost imperceptibly, whenever MacKinnon was nearby. Their pheromones had blended so seamlessly that for years, people joked that they might as well have been mated. The bond wasn't official—never bitten, never claimed—but it was close enough that no other alpha in the league had even considered approaching Crosby.

Nate's signature had been all over him. Pine and winter air and possessiveness, soaked into Crosby's skin so deeply that his natural scent was functionally erased.

Until January.

Leon remembered watching the broadcast. Penguins versus Capitals. A Tuesday night game he'd had no particular reason to pay attention to except that it was on and he'd been icing his knee on the couch. The game had been strange from the drop—the Capitals playing distracted, their defense making uncharacteristic errors, Ovechkin skating with a tension in his shoulders that had nothing to do with the scoreboard. Even through a screen, something had felt off. The Penguins, meanwhile, had closed ranks around Crosby in a way Leon hadn't seen since the man's concussion years. Every shift, at least two of his linemates within arm's reach. Letang practically glued to his side. The bench visibly coiled.

The announcers hadn't mentioned it—they wouldn't, not during a live broadcast—but the post-game league statement had made it clear enough. A formal notification regarding Sidney Crosby's unmated status, effective immediately, accompanied by a strongly worded reminder about conduct expectations toward unbonded omegas during league activities, with specific emphasis on pheromone-related harassment carrying automatic suspension.

The arrangement was over. Crosby was alone.

Leon hadn't known what to make of it at the time. He'd read the statement, frowned at his phone, and moved on. But now—sitting here with Crosby's bare, unfiltered scent threading through his bloodstream like warm liquor—the implications of it landed differently.

No one in the league knew what had actually happened between MacKinnon and Crosby. The details were private, guarded by both camps with the kind of silence that only comes from genuine pain. But the speculation was loud enough. MacKinnon had been engaged to Charlotte for over a year, the wedding perpetually postponed, the date shifting every few months in a way that everyone pretended not to notice. It was an open secret that MacKinnon had been delaying. That Charlotte's patience was wearing thin. That MacKinnon's family—old money, traditional, obsessed with dynasty—had been applying pressure for years for him to formalize his bond with a "suitable" partner, which in their eyes meant a beta woman from a good family who could give them legitimate heirs and a Christmas card photo, not the most famous omega in professional sports whose mere presence in MacKinnon's life was, to them, an inconvenient complication.

And anyone who'd spent more than five minutes watching Nate and Sid together could see the truth of it. The way Nate's hand would find the small of Sid's back. The way Sid's scent would sweeten—unconsciously, helplessly—whenever Nate entered a room. They were in love. Deeply, obviously, achingly in love, the kind that made everyone around them either wistful or uncomfortable.

But love, apparently, wasn't enough when your last name came with expectations.

Leon glanced to his right. And there he was—MacKinnon, three seats down, sitting perfectly still with his hands clasped between his knees. He wasn't watching the ice prep or the Jumbotron or the crowd.

He was watching Sid.

The longing on his face was so raw it bordered on indecent. His jaw was set, his shoulders rigid, his entire body angled toward Crosby like he was pulled there on a string he couldn’t cut. But there was something else beneath the longing—frustration, maybe. Guilt. The particular brand of anguish that belonged to someone who'd made a choice they couldn't undo and had to sit in the wreckage of it.

Sid hadn't attended the All-Star player draft last night. His role as guest passer didn't require it, and Leon suspected the real reason was simpler—he didn't want to be in the same room as Nate. Today was the first time they'd been in the same space since... since whatever had happened. And Nate clearly wasn't handling it well. His alpha pheromones were spiking—sharp, agitated, barely contained—and Leon could feel the other alphas nearby shifting away from him instinctively.

Leon scoffed under his breath, quiet enough that no one heard.

He almost felt sorry for MacKinnon. Almost. The man was sitting there looking like someone had carved his chest open, pining across twenty feet of ice at the omega he'd let go, and yeah, it was sad. Objectively.

But if Nate had cared about Sid enough—truly, fundamentally enough—he wouldn't have let his parents dictate the terms of his life. He wouldn't have strung Sid along for years, sharing his heats, scenting him, building something that looked and felt and smelled like a real bond, only to fold when his family pushed hard enough. He wouldn't have left the only omega in professional hockey—a thirty-eight-year-old omega past his biological prime, aging out of the narrow window where heats were manageable without a partner—alone.

Leon's gaze shifted back to Crosby. Sid was crouched near the left circle now, adjusting his gloves, waiting for Pettersson to skate into position for the first set of one-timers. His head was down. Focused. Quiet, as he always was—keeping to himself in that particular way he had, the one that read as shyness to people who didn't know better and as self-preservation to people who did.

He hadn't looked toward their section of the bench. Not once. Not even a flicker.

Leon's chest tightened at the thought of it—what it must be like for Sid now. The heats. Spending them alone, locked in some room somewhere, riding out wave after wave of biological need without an alpha to ease it. The cramping. The fever. The ache that no amount of suppressants or toys could fully address because an omega's body was fundamentally designed to be held through it.

MacKinnon had apparently not considered any of that when he'd chosen Charlotte.

Leon felt his jaw clench. His molars ground together, a low pressure that radiated up through his temple. And it confused him—the intensity of his own anger. He and Sid weren't close. They'd spoken maybe six or seven times over the course of overlapping careers, brief exchanges at All-Star events and international tournaments, always professional, always cordial, always born from obligation rather than genuine connection. Leon respected him. Everyone respected him. But this visceral, snarling protectiveness clawing at the inside of his ribs was something else entirely, and he didn't know what to do with it.

He shook himself. Frowned. Turned his attention back to the ice, where Pettersson was lining up for his first one-timer.

Sid fed him the pass.

It was, predictably, perfect. A flat, crisp dish, tape-to-tape, the puck sliding across the ice like it was on rails. Pettersson caught it clean and hammered it into the net. The crowd roared. Sid was already corralling the next puck, moving with that quiet, relentless efficiency, and Pettersson looked back at him with an expression of barely concealed awe before resetting.

They went through the rotation quickly—Pettersson scoring well, the crowd enthusiastic, Sid delivering pass after immaculate pass with the disinterested ease of someone who could do this in his sleep. When Pettersson finished, the arena gave him a solid ovation, and he skated back to the bench looking like he'd just had a spiritual experience.

Sid followed, gliding toward the far end of the bench and settling beside Pettersson. He sat down quietly, pulled his water bottle from between his feet, drank, replaced it. His head bowed slightly as he caught his breath—a small, private moment in the middle of forty thousand people.

MacKinnon and Bedard took the ice next. Nate, unsurprisingly, attacked the event like it had personally offended him—slamming one-timers into the net with a ferocity that made the crowd gasp, Bedard feeding him passes with wide-eyed determination, clearly thrilling at the chance to set up Nathan MacKinnon of all people. When the buzzer sounded, Nate's score flashed on the board: twenty-three. He pumped his fist—performative, tight—and skated back with Bedard trailing behind him.

Leon stood up. His turn.

He stepped onto the ice, feeling the familiar bite of cold air on his face, the smooth glide of his blades. He took a few strides toward the left circle, rolling his shoulders, adjusting his grip—

And then Sid was there.

Coming toward him. Meeting him halfway, which wasn't strictly necessary. The passer could have just stayed at the pile and waited. But Sid had gotten up, was skating over with that unhurried stride, and Leon's entire body locked up like someone had flipped a switch.

Because up close—fuck—up close, the scent was devastating. Rich and sweet and warm, layered with something that Leon's hindbrain could only interpret as mine-mine-mine, which was insane, which was absolutely deranged, but his alpha didn't care about rational thought right now. His alpha cared about the fact that Sidney Crosby was five feet away and smelled like everything Leon had never known he wanted, and every instinct in his body was screaming at him to close the distance and press his nose to the hollow behind Sid's ear and just breathe.

He locked his knees. Clenched his jaw. Didn't move.

Sid reached him and offered a small smile—polite, contained, just the slightest upturn at the corners of his mouth. Up close, his eyes were lighter than Leon had expected. Hazel, flecked with gold, framed by lashes that were frankly unreasonable on a professional hockey player. His face was flushed from the earlier skating, a warm pink spreading across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and Leon's brain short-circuited for a full second before rebooting.

"Ready?" Sid asked. His voice was quiet, as always. Calm.

Leon managed a nod. "Yeah."

Sid turned and skated back to the puck pile, and Leon followed, helplessly tracking the shift of his shoulders under the jersey, the quick cut of his edges. They crossed paths with MacKinnon and Bedard heading back to the bench—Bedard bouncing, Nate decidedly not—and Leon watched Nate's gaze lock onto Sid as they passed. A hungry, wounded stare that Sid did not acknowledge. Did not return. His eyes stayed forward, jaw set, and he glided past MacKinnon like the man was invisible.

Something warm and sharp bloomed in Leon's chest. Satisfaction. Dark, petty, probably inappropriate. He tucked it away and took his position.

The buzzer sounded. Sid fed him the first pass.

It was—God. It was like catching silk. The puck arrived on his blade so cleanly, so precisely placed, that his body responded before his brain could even process. He hammered it into the top corner. The crowd erupted.

Second pass. Same quality. Same absurd perfection. Leon buried it.

Third. Fourth. Fifth. Sid was a metronome, each dish identical in speed and placement, and Leon fell into a rhythm with him that felt less like a skills competition and more like a conversation—call and response, pass and shot, Sid's quiet precision meeting Leon's power, and for thirty glorious seconds, Leon forgot about the scent and the alpha bullshit and the complicated heartbreak sitting on the bench behind them. He just played.

The buzzer sounded. Leon looked up at the board.

Twenty-two.

One goddamn point behind MacKinnon.

He deflated visibly, shoulders dropping, and heard the crowd's sympathetic groan. One point. A single missed shot—the seventh one, slightly off-target, catching the post—separating him from the lead. He replayed it in his head and wanted to scream.

He sulked back to the bench. Dropped onto the seat with more force than necessary. Crossed his arms. Stared at the ice like it had betrayed him.

"Close," Connor offered mildly from his left.

"Shut up."

Connor raised his hands in surrender and wisely said nothing else.

And then—movement to his right. Someone sitting down beside him. Leon glanced over, ready to grunt noncommittally at whoever it was, and his heart rate tripled.

Sid. Settling onto the bench next to him, close enough that their shoulders were almost touching. Sid arranged his stick across his knees, leaned back, and watched the next shooter take the ice with quiet, focused attention.

Leon sat very still.

He could feel the warmth radiating off Sid's body. Could smell him—God, could he smell him—and this close, the scent was so dense and layered that Leon's vision actually blurred for a moment. Honey and green growing things and something underneath that was just skin, warm and clean, and Leon's alpha was doing something in his chest that felt dangerously close to purring.

He became acutely aware that Nate was sitting four seats to their right. That Nate could see exactly where Sid had chosen to sit. And that Sid's choice had not been accidental.

Leon didn't look at MacKinnon. He didn't need to. He could feel the spike of alpha aggression from four seats away, bitter and sharp like burnt coffee, and the satisfaction that curled through him was probably beneath him but he couldn't bring himself to care.

"Twenty-two's not bad," Sid said.

Leon blinked. Turned his head. Sid was still watching the ice, but there was a faint curve to his mouth—barely there, the ghost of amusement.

"It's one behind," Leon said flatly.

"Mm." That almost-smile widened a fraction. "The seventh shot was good. Just caught the inside of the post."

"You saw that?"

"I fed you the puck." Sid glanced at him, and those hazel eyes were warm with quiet humor. "I saw everything."

Leon's mouth opened. Closed. His brain, that traitorous organ, supplied absolutely nothing useful. He was a professional athlete. A top-five player in the world. He had been interviewed on national television hundreds of times. And right now, faced with Sidney Crosby's mild amusement, he had the verbal capacity of a concussed goldfish.

"Your passes were good," he managed. Cringed internally. Your passes were good. What was he, twelve?

But Sid dipped his chin, accepting the compliment with that characteristic humility. "Thanks. It's been a while since I've done this."

"Didn't look like it."

Sid shrugged one shoulder. The movement brought him fractionally closer. Leon's nostrils flared involuntarily, catching another devastating wave of his scent, and he had to physically redirect his gaze to the ice to keep from doing something catastrophically stupid.

They sat in silence for the next shooter's turn. It should have been awkward—they didn't know each other, not really, not beyond the polite professional veneer—but somehow it wasn't. Sid's quiet was a comfortable kind. Undemanding. He sat with the stillness of someone who'd long ago made peace with silence, and Leon found himself easing into it despite the havoc the man's proximity was wreaking on his endocrine system.

After the next event was announced—hardest shot—Sid shifted slightly, turning his body toward Leon by a degree or two, and said: "You changed your curve this season."

Leon looked at him, surprised.

"How did you—" He stopped himself. Recalibrated. "Yeah. Went with a slightly more open face. Better for one-timers off the rush."

Sid nodded slowly, something thoughtful moving behind his eyes. "I could feel it in the way you were receiving the passes. Your release point shifted a few inches. Quicker load."

Leon's brain stalled. Sidney Crosby had noticed—from ten feet away, while feeding pucks at competition speed—a micro-adjustment in Leon's stick curve that most of his own teammates hadn't picked up on until he'd told them directly. The man had registered a change in release point measured in inches while simultaneously executing perfect passes under arena lights in front of forty thousand people.

"That's..." Leon shook his head, a disbelieving laugh escaping him. "That's terrifying, actually."

Sid's mouth twitched. "Sorry."

"No, I—" Leon shifted on the bench, turning more toward him. The movement was unconscious, gravitational. "It's impressive. That's what I meant."

"Oh." A flicker of something—surprise, maybe, or the faint embarrassment of someone unaccustomed to being complimented on things they considered ordinary. Sid dropped his gaze to his gloves, picking at a loose thread. "I just notice things."

"You notice everything."

Sid looked up at that, and their eyes met properly for the first time—not a glance, not a polite acknowledgment, but a real, sustained look—and Leon felt something slot into place behind his sternum with an almost audible click. Like a key turning. Like a lock he hadn't known existed finding its match.

Sid's pupils dilated. Just a fraction. Just enough for Leon to notice.

The moment stretched. Around them, the arena roared at something happening on the ice—a goal, a save, Leon couldn't have told anyone what—but neither of them looked away. Sid's lips parted slightly, a soft inhale, and his scent shifted. Warmed. Deepened. A subtle bloom, like a flower opening in fast-forward, and Leon's entire nervous system lit up in response.

Fated.

The word surfaced in his mind unbidden, rising from some primal place that existed below conscious thought. He shoved it down immediately. That was insane. Fated pairs were rare—vanishingly, statistically, almost mythologically rare—and he was not going to sit here on a bench at the All-Star Skills Competition and convince himself that Sidney Crosby was his fated mate just because the man smelled good and had pretty eyes and had noticed his stick curve.

Except his alpha wasn't listening to reason. His alpha was flooding his bloodstream with bonding hormones, every cell in his body vibrating at a frequency that said him, him, him, and when Sid broke eye contact first—looking down, a faint flush climbing his neck—Leon had to grip the edge of the bench to keep himself seated.

"So," Sid said, and his voice was slightly rougher than before, a rasp at the edges that he covered with a small cough. "Edmonton. How's the season going?"

Leon almost laughed at the mundanity of it—two people having the most ordinary conversation in the world while something tectonic shifted beneath them. "Good. Frustrating sometimes. You know how it is."

"I do."

"Yours?"

Sid considered. "Different this year." A pause. Weighted. He didn't elaborate, and Leon didn't push, but the shape of what he wasn't saying was visible in the careful way he held his shoulders, the slight tightening around his eyes.

Different this year because you're alone, Leon thought. Different because the man who was supposed to love you chose someone else.

"Different can be good," Leon offered, not sure why he said it, not sure it was even true.

Sid looked at him again. Softer this time, the guardedness dialed down a notch. "Yeah," he said quietly. "Maybe."

They talked. Minutes bled into each other, the skills events cycling through around them—hardest shot, accuracy shooting, the goalie competition—and Leon registered none of it. He was dimly aware of the crowd reacting, of players getting up and sitting down, of the ice being resurfaced between events, but all of it existed on the other side of a wall. On this side, there was only Sid's voice and Sid's scent and the slow, tentative unfurling of a conversation that had started stiff and polite and was now something warmer.

Sid talked about his dogs. About a book he'd been reading—something on naval history that made Leon's eyebrows rise, because of course Sidney Crosby's recreational reading was about eighteenth-century warship tactics. About a restaurant in Pittsburgh that he liked because no one ever bothered him there. Small, careful offerings of himself, each one presented with the tentativeness of someone who'd learned to be cautious about who he let in.

Leon reciprocated. Told him about his family back in Germany, about his sister's new baby, about the truly terrible movie McDavid had made him watch on the plane. Sid laughed at that—a real laugh, quiet but genuine, his eyes crinkling—and the sound burrowed into Leon's chest and stayed there.

He didn't realize he was staring.

He didn't realize how obvious he was being until a sharp elbow jabbed his ribs and Connor's voice materialized at his left ear, low and amused: "If you stare at him any longer, Nate's going to come over here and physically remove you from that seat."

Leon blinked. Straightened. Glanced subtly to the right—past Connor, past two empty seats, to where MacKinnon sat—and his stomach clenched with something that was equal parts alarm and dark amusement.

Nate's jaw was clenched so tightly the tendons in his neck stood out in sharp relief. His fists were balled on his thighs, knuckles white, and his frown had deepened into something that went beyond displeasure into genuine, barely-restrained fury. His pheromones were leaking—acrid, possessive, the bitter-pine smell of a territorial alpha watching something he still considered his being encroached upon—and the players nearest him had subtly widened the gap on either side.

The satisfaction that curled through Leon was immediate and visceral. Warm. Almost sweet. He shouldn't enjoy this—it was petty, and he knew it was petty—but watching Nathan MacKinnon stew in the consequences of his own choices while Sid sat next to Leon instead, laughing at his stories and smelling like heaven... yeah. That felt good.

He didn't answer Connor. Just turned back toward the ice, settling deeper into his seat, and let his knee drift a centimeter closer to Sid's.

"Sid?" A production assistant appeared in front of them, headset on, clipboard in hand. "We've got you for a quick intermission interview. Two minutes, over by the broadcast desk?"

Sid nodded immediately, standing in one fluid motion. "Sure." He glanced down at Leon, and that small, quiet smile surfaced again. "Good talking to you."

"You too." Leon's voice came out steadier than he felt. "Good luck with the interview."

"Thanks." Sid followed the PA across the ice, skating toward the broadcast setup near the far boards, and Leon watched him go. Tracked the line of his back, the easy rhythm of his stride, the way his jersey caught the arena lights.

He was still watching when Sid reached the desk, when the cameras turned on, when the interviewer began asking questions that Leon couldn't hear but could see Sid answering with that trademark understated composure.

"Dude." Connor's voice again. Flatter this time. "You've got it bad."

Leon said nothing.

Sid didn't come back. After the interview, Bedard materialized at his side—the kid practically vibrating with excitement, asking Sid something that made the older player duck his head and laugh—and the two of them were absorbed into a promotional segment. Leon watched them on the Jumbotron between events: Bedard and Crosby, youngest and oldest, the league's favorite narrative, sitting side by side while a camera crew captured their interaction for a feature piece. Sid was patient with the kid. Warm. Answered his rapid-fire questions with genuine attention, ruffled his hair once in a gesture so fatherly it made something ache beneath Leon's ribs.

They were together for the rest of the competition. Leon saw them on the far side of the rink during the final event, Bedard talking animatedly while Sid listened, and he was aware—painfully, acutely aware—of the empty seat beside him where Sid's warmth and scent still lingered like an afterimage.

The skills event ended. The lights came up. Players filtered off the ice.

And Leon told himself very firmly that it was over, that it was nothing, that his alpha was just being reactive because Sid's scent was new and unmasked and his biology was doing what biology does.

He told himself that all the way to the locker room.

The locker room was controlled chaos—players in various states of undress, gear being stripped and tossed, the post-event energy cycling between exhaustion and lingering adrenaline. Leon sat in his stall, methodically removing his equipment, and tried not to think about hazel eyes or dark honey scent or the word fated.

He failed comprehensively.

The shower helped. Hot water, soap, the aggressive normality of shampooing his hair and scrubbing the sweat from his skin. By the time he stepped out and toweled off, he'd almost convinced himself he was fine. Just a weird biochemical blip. Proximity and novelty. Nothing more.

He reached into his stall for his hoodie.

It wasn't there.

Leon frowned, moving aside his bag, checking under the bench, rifling through his duffel. The hoodie—the standard-issue All-Star navy blue, 29 on the upper right chest—was gone. He'd worn it that morning from the hotel. Had changed out of it before suiting up for the event. Had draped it over the back of his stall, he was almost certain.

He glanced around. The locker room was thinning out, players heading for the exits. No one was wearing a suspiciously familiar hoodie.

"You lose something?" McDavid asked from the next stall, already dressed and ready to leave.

"My hoodie. The All-Star one."

Connor shrugged. "Probably got mixed in with someone else's stuff. They'll send it back."

"Yeah." Leon rubbed a hand over his face. "Probably."

He let it go. Pulled on the thin undershirt he'd brought—inadequate for a Toronto January, but he'd survive the walk to his car—grabbed his bag, and headed out. Most of the players were taking the main corridor to the parking garage, the one that led past the media room and the fan exit, but it was always a gauntlet of cameras and autograph seekers, and Leon didn't have the energy tonight. Not with his alpha still prowling restlessly beneath his skin, unsettled and searching.

He took the service hallway instead. The one that wound through the back of the arena past storage rooms and utility closets, quieter, dimmer, the concrete walls bare and utilitarian. His footsteps echoed. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, half of them flickering in that way that maintenance never quite got around to fixing.

He was maybe forty feet from the exit door when the scent hit him.

Leon stopped dead.

It was Sid's scent—that same honey-and-green warmth—but amplified. Magnified tenfold, a hundredfold, thick and sweet and laced with something heavier, something that made every hair on his body stand up and his pupils blow wide and his cock twitch hard in his jeans.

Omega in pre-heat.

His grip tightened on the strap, knuckles blanching as he anchored the bag harder against his shoulder. His lungs expanded without his permission, dragging in a deep breath that filled every corner of his chest with Sid, and his alpha surged forward so violently that his vision narrowed.

Only one person with that scent. Only one omega in the entire league.

Leon moved. Followed the scent down the corridor, around a corner, past a row of locked utility doors, to a narrow alcove between two storage units where the lighting was dimmest and the concrete wall recessed to form a small, shadowed space.

Sidney Crosby was on the floor.

Sitting with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around himself, breathing in short, shallow pants. His hair was damp from the shower, curling at his temples. His face was flushed—not the gentle pink from earlier but a deep, feverish red that spread down his neck and beneath the collar of—

Leon's hoodie.

Navy blue. 29 on the upper right chest. Oversized on Sid's frame, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, the hem falling to mid-thigh over his dress pants. He'd buried himself in it—the collar pulled up, his nose tucked into the fabric—and he was shaking. Full-body tremors, the kind that came from muscles fighting a losing battle against biochemistry.

His pupils were blown. Huge, dark, the hazel almost entirely eclipsed. He looked up at the sound of Leon's footsteps and made a sound—a tiny, broken, involuntary thing—that hit Leon's hindbrain like a bullet.

He thought it was Nate's. The realization formed slowly through the haze of Leon's own reaction. Same number—29. MacKinnon and Draisaitl. Sid must have grabbed it from the wrong stall, seeking comfort in what he thought was a familiar alpha's scent as his heat crept up on him, trying to manage the pre-heat symptoms the way he always had.

But it wasn't Nate's scent soaked into that fabric. It was Leon's. And now Sid was sitting in a dim service corridor, drenched in another alpha's pheromones, and his body was responding—ramping up instead of settling down, the unfamiliar scent triggering something deeper, something more primal than simple comfort—

Fated pair. The thought was louder this time. Harder to dismiss. Because an omega's heat didn't respond like this to just any alpha's scent. Acceleration, not regulation. Amplification, not calm. That only happened when—

Leon swallowed hard. His hands were shaking. He could feel his own pheromones pumping, his body responding to Sid's heat-scent with a ferocity that made his vision swim, and he took a deliberate step backward.

Phone. Call someone. His agent. The league. Medical staff. Anyone.

He pulled his phone from his pocket with trembling fingers and started scrolling for a contact—anyone, any responsible adult who could deal with this situation in a way that didn't end with Leon's career in ruins—

A whimper.

Small. Devastated. The sound of an omega registering that an alpha was leaving.

Leon's head snapped toward Sid. And his chest cracked open.

Sid was watching him. Those blown-dark eyes wide and wet, his lower lip trembling, his whole body curled tighter like he was bracing for abandonment. The whimper became a soft, hitching breath, and then tears spilled—not dramatic, not sobbing, just a quiet overflow, tracking down flushed cheeks—and the expression on his face was one of pure, helpless hurt.

He thinks I'm walking away.

Every rational thought in Leon's head disintegrated.

He crossed the distance in three strides, dropped to his knees, and gathered Sid into his arms.

Sid came to him immediately. No hesitation, no resistance—just a full-body collapse into Leon's chest, fingers clutching at his shirt, face pressing hard into the curve of his neck. Leon shifted them both, settling his back against the wall, pulling Sid onto his lap. Sid went willingly, straddling Leon's thighs, wrapping around him like he was the only solid thing in a tilting world, and the moment his nose found the skin of Leon's throat, he purred.

The sound vibrated through Leon's ribcage. Deep, involuntary, the primal omega response to a compatible alpha's scent—and hearing it, feeling it hum against his collarbone, Leon's entire body flooded with a warmth so intense it bordered on pain. His arm locked around Sid's waist. His other hand still held the phone, and through the blur of it all, some tiny, surviving fragment of his rational mind made his thumb move.

He opened his texts. Typed with one hand, sloppy and full of errors.

Found Crosby. Pre-heat. Service corridor behind arena. What happens if I help him through it

He sent it to his agent. Stared at the screen for half a second, then added:

What are the league consequences

The response was almost immediate, his agent clearly still awake:

Are you serious right now

Leon didn't answer. Because Sid whined against his neck—a thin, needy sound that made Leon's cock throb—and Leon pocketed the phone with a decisive motion that felt like stepping off a cliff.

Fuck consequences.

"Shh," he murmured against Sid's temple. "I'm here. Not going anywhere."

His hand found Sid's hair. Damp, thick, impossibly soft. He stroked through it, slow and rhythmic, and felt Sid shudder beneath his palm, the trembling easing fractionally, the purring deepening. Sid's breath was hot against his throat, each exhale carrying the concentrated sweetness of his heat-scent, and Leon breathed it in with a dizziness that was almost euphoric.

He was so fucked.

The league was going to suspend him. MacKinnon was going to kill him. His agent was probably already drafting a damage-control statement. And none of it—not a single consequence—felt like enough to make him move from this spot.

Sid shifted on his lap, a restless roll of his hips, and Leon felt the heat radiating from him through their clothes. Burning up. His skin, where Leon's hand brushed the back of his neck above the hoodie's collar, was scalding—the kind of fever that came in the first wave, when an omega's body was ramping up to full heat and every nerve ending was raw with need.

"How long?" Leon asked softly, still stroking his hair. "When did it start?"

Sid's response was muffled against his neck. "D-during the... the interview. Started feeling—" His breath hitched. "I thought I had more time. I'm not due for another week. It came early—"

Because of me. Leon closed his eyes. Because you were near me and your body responded. Because we're—

He didn't finish the thought.

"It's okay," he said instead. "You're okay."

Another whine. Sid's hips rocked again, an involuntary grind against Leon's thigh, and Leon felt the heat between Sid's legs even through his pants. Sid was wet—Leon could smell it, the thick, sweet slick of an omega approaching his first wave—and the knowledge of it made his alpha roar with something possessive and primal.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.

Sid's fingers dug into his shoulders, blunt nails biting through the thin fabric of Leon's undershirt. His breathing was getting worse—faster, shallower, each inhale accompanied by a small, involuntary sound, half gasp and half moan. The pre-heat was accelerating. It had been twenty minutes, maybe less, since Leon found him, and already the air around them was thick enough to taste.

"Leon—" Sid breathed, and hearing his name in that wrecked, desperate voice did something irreversible to Leon's composure. "It—it hurts—"

The sob that followed was quiet, almost swallowed, but Leon heard it like a gunshot. His arm tightened around Sid's waist, pulling him closer, and the possessive growl that escaped his own throat was so deep it startled both of them.

"I know," Leon murmured, pressing his lips to Sid's temple. "I know it hurts. I'm going to help. But I need—" He pulled back slightly, tilting Sid's face up with gentle fingers under his chin. "Hey. Look at me."

Sid blinked at him, glassy and unfocused, pupils so blown that his eyes were almost entirely black. His lips were parted, bitten red, his cheeks glistening with the tears he hadn't bothered to wipe away. He looked completely undone.

He was the most beautiful thing Leon had ever seen.

"I can't take you back to the hotel fast enough," Leon said, keeping his voice low, even, the steady cadence of an alpha grounding his omega. "Your first wave is going to hit before we get there. So we're going to take the edge off here, and then I'm going to take you somewhere safe and comfortable. Okay?"

Sid's brow creased. For a moment, something cleared behind his eyes—lucidity surfacing through the haze—and he searched Leon's face with an expression that was painfully vulnerable. Like he was looking for the catch. Like he was waiting for the part where this turned out to be conditional, where the help came with strings or a price or an expiration date.

Leon held his gaze. Didn't waver.

"Sid." He said it firmly. "I need you to tell me this is okay."

Sid's fingers tightened on his shoulders, hard enough to bruise, and when he spoke, his voice cracked on every syllable: "M-more... please—"

A shuddering inhale. Then, broken and small: "Hurts—"

Something in Leon's chest splintered. Twenty years. Twenty years this man had spent in a league full of alphas, managing his biology with quiet dignity, trusting partners who'd ultimately chosen other people over him, spending heats alone when those partners left, enduring the cramps and the fever and the aching emptiness that no toy or suppressant could fully touch—and now he was crying on the floor of a service corridor in a borrowed hoodie, begging for relief from an alpha he barely knew, because every alpha who should have been here for him had failed him.

Leon stood in one fluid motion, lifting Sid with him. Sid gasped—a startled, breathless sound—his legs wrapping instinctively around Leon's waist, arms locking around his neck.

"Shh. I got you."

Sid's face buried itself back into his neck immediately, his entire body molding against Leon's chest, and the purring resumed—louder now, almost desperate, the sound of an omega whose hindbrain had decided that this alpha was safe and was clinging to that safety with everything it had.

Leon carried him down the corridor. His eyes scanned the doors—locked, locked, another locked—until he found one with a handle that gave. A supply room. Small, windowless, lined with shelves of cleaning products and spare equipment. The fluorescent light buzzed when he flipped the switch. Not ideal. Not even remotely romantic. But it had a lock on the inside and no windows and it would do.

He kicked the door shut behind them. Locked it. Turned and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the concrete floor with Sid still wrapped around him.

Sid's face stayed buried in his neck. His breathing was ragged now, each exhale a barely-contained moan, and the heat rolling off his body was staggering. Leon could feel sweat beading along Sid's spine through the hoodie fabric—his hoodie, soaked in his scent, wrapped around his omega—and the possessive snarl that built in his chest was getting harder to suppress.

"Hey." Leon cradled the back of Sid's head, fingers threading through damp curls. "Let me see you."

Sid pulled back slowly. Reluctantly, like separating from Leon's neck cost him something. His eyes were half-lidded, glazed, the pupils enormous. His lips were swollen where he'd been biting them—worrying the lower one between his teeth even now, trying to contain the sounds his body was forcing out of him, and Leon could see the indent of his teeth pressing white crescents into the pink flesh.

Leon's thumb found Sid's lower lip. Rested against it. Gently pressed until Sid's teeth released their hold.

"Don't bite," Leon murmured.

"You're gonna make it bleed."

Sid's teeth released slowly, his lower lip springing back, flushed and swollen, and Leon was about to pull his hand away when Sid's mouth chased the contact. Soft lips parted around the pad of Leon's thumb, drawing it in—warm, wet, the gentle suction sending a jolt straight down Leon's spine—and then Sid's tongue curled against the underside, slow and deliberate, and he looked at Leon while he did it.

Those blown-dark eyes. Hazy with heat, lashes clumped and wet from crying, but the intent behind them unmistakable. Sid sucked Leon's thumb deeper, hollowing his cheeks, and rolled his hips in a slow, grinding circle against Leon's cock—which had been painfully hard since the corridor, straining against his jeans with a throbbing insistence that was becoming difficult to ignore.

"Fuck," Leon breathed.

Sid's lashes fluttered. His tongue traced a lazy figure-eight against Leon's thumbpad, his hips maintaining that maddening rhythm, and a muffled sound escaped around the digit—a soft, throaty mmnh that vibrated against Leon's skin. His eyes never left Leon's face. Watching him. Gauging his reaction with an omega's instinctive attunement, and whatever he found there made his scent bloom sweeter, thicker, filling the small room until Leon was practically breathing liquid honey.

Leon let him have it. Let Sid suck and grind and watch him with those devastating eyes, let himself feel the wet heat of Sid's mouth and imagine it elsewhere, let the pressure build in his groin until his jaw ached from clenching. Then—slowly, deliberately—he pulled his thumb free. A thin string of saliva connected them for a moment before breaking.

Sid whimpered at the loss, lips chasing, but Leon's hand was already moving. He slid his fingers into Sid's damp hair, gripped, and tilted—firm but careful, tipping Sid's head to the side, exposing the long, flushed line of his throat.

The sound Sid made was indescribable. A broken, guttural moan that started in his chest and shattered on the way out, his whole body going taut, and Leon pressed his face into the curve of Sid's neck and breathed.

The scent here was nuclear. Concentrated at the pulse point, pouring off Sid's skin like heat from asphalt, so thick and sweet that Leon's vision whited out for a full second. He dragged his nose along the tendon, from the hinge of Sid's jaw down to the hollow of his collarbone, and Sid trembled—a full-body shudder so violent that Leon felt it in his own bones. Then Sid went boneless. Every ounce of tension drained from his muscles, his body melting against Leon's chest like warm wax, pliant and soft and completely surrendered.

The purring that rolled out of him was deeper than before. Resonant. The kind of purr that came from an omega's core when every primitive receptor in their body was telling them safe, safe, this alpha is safe, you can let go.

Leon nuzzled against his pulse, letting his own scent bleed into Sid's skin, and the omega in his arms moaned—sweet, unrestrained, the sound of relief so profound it was almost grief.

"There you go," Leon murmured against his throat. "So good for me. Feeling better?"

Sid's answer was another grind—harder this time, desperate, his hips working in tight, frantic circles against Leon's cock. A high, reedy whimper escaped his lips, his fingers fisting in the back of Leon's undershirt hard enough to stretch the fabric.

"I know," Leon said. He pressed a kiss to Sid's pulse point, felt it hammering beneath his lips. "I know. Relax. I'll make it better. Yes?"

But Sid was sinking deeper into the heat-haze, his movements becoming less coordinated, more instinctive—the grinding losing its rhythm, his breath coming in short, hitching sobs against Leon's shoulder. The coherence was fading. Leon could feel it in the way Sid's body moved—less deliberate, more reactive, the higher brain functions shutting down as the heat took over.

Leon pulled back. Cupped Sid's face in both hands, tilting it up, forcing eye contact.

"Sid." Firm. Grounding. "I need you to tell me if this is okay."

Sid blinked. Once. Twice. His pupils were so dilated they swallowed the hazel entirely, and for a long, agonizing moment, Leon thought he'd lost him completely to the haze—

Then Sid's fingers found his shoulders and dug in, nails biting through the cotton, and his voice came out in a wrecked, barely-there whisper: "P-Please—"

A sob. A genuine, chest-deep sob that crumpled Sid's face and sent fresh tears tracking down his cheeks.

"Hurts—"

Leon's heart clenched so hard he couldn't breathe for a moment. All those months. Heats spent alone in whatever empty room Sid had locked himself in—no alpha's hands on him, no alpha's scent to ease the cramping, no alpha's voice to pull him through the worst of it. Just pain and need and the slow, grinding indignity of his body demanding something that no one had been willing to give him.

Leon got up.

The motion was seamless—one arm under Sid's thighs, the other around his back, standing in a single powerful motion that made Sid gasp and scramble for purchase. His arms locked around Leon's neck, legs cinching tight around his waist, and a startled squeak escaped him—so incongruously cute for the most decorated player in the sport that Leon nearly smiled despite everything.

"Shh. I got you."

Sid's face burrowed into his neck, pressing so hard against Leon's skin that he could feel the outline of his lips, his nose, his eyelashes. The purring resumed instantly, Sid's body recognizing the proximity and rewarding it.

Leon crossed the small room in three steps. Laid Sid on the only viable surface—a stack of folded tarps atop a low equipment shelf, not comfortable but better than bare concrete—and Sid clung to him, whining when Leon tried to straighten up.

"I'm not leaving," Leon said, and the alpha command in his voice surprised even him. Low, resonant, vibrating with authority. Sid's grip loosened immediately—instinctive obedience, an omega responding to his alpha's directive—and Leon filed away the implications of that response for later.

He settled between Sid's thighs. Looked down at him—flushed and wrecked and tear-streaked, drowning in Leon's hoodie, the navy fabric pooling around his torso—and the sight carved itself into Leon's memory with the permanence of a brand.

"Lift your hips."

Sid obeyed. Leon hooked his fingers into the waistband of Sid's dress pants and briefs and pulled them down together, peeling the fabric over his thighs, his knees, his calves. Dropped them on the floor. Left only the hoodie—Leon's hoodie, 29 on the chest, collar dark with Sid's sweat—and Sid's socks, still bunched around his ankles.

Naked from the waist down. Thighs slick. Cock hard and flushed against his stomach, leaking a steady bead of precome that caught the fluorescent light. And between his legs, where Leon's gaze inevitably landed—wet. Glistening. Slick seeping from him in a slow, continuous flow that had already soaked the tarp beneath his hips.

Leon exhaled through his teeth. His hands were shaking—the effort of holding himself back, of not just shoving his jeans down and sinking into that wet heat, was a full-body ordeal that made every muscle in his arms tremble.

Slow. Take care of him. He deserves someone who does this right.

Leon slid his hand up the inside of Sid's thigh—soft skin, firm muscle, the contrast dizzying—and Sid's breath stuttered, his hips canting toward the touch. Leon's fingers trailed higher, through the slick coating his inner thigh, and when his fingertips grazed over Sid's entrance, Sid keened.

"Ahhh—" Sharp, pitched, his head tipping back, exposing the long line of his throat. His hands fisted in the tarp beneath him.

"Easy," Leon murmured. He pressed one finger in.

The heat was staggering. Slick and impossibly tight, Sid's body gripping his finger with a rhythmic clench that was already pulling him deeper, and the sound Sid made—a long, shuddering "ohhhhh" that cracked at the end—sent a pulse of raw arousal straight to Leon's cock.

He worked the finger slowly. In and out, letting Sid adjust, feeling the muscles flutter and gradually relax around him. Added a second. Sid's back arched, the hoodie riding up to expose his stomach—taut, trembling, a line of dark hair trailing down from his navel—and his mouth fell open in a soundless gasp.

"That's it," Leon said, his voice rougher than he intended. "You're doing so well."

Sid mewled. The praise hit him like a physical thing—Leon watched the reaction cascade through his body, the way his cock twitched against his stomach, the way his inner walls clenched, the way his pupils somehow blew even wider. Praise kink. Noted. Absolutely noted.

Leon curled his fingers. Searched.

He found it on the third stroke—a slightly raised spot that made Sid's entire body jolt like he'd been electrocuted. His eyes flew wide, his mouth opened, and the sound that tore out of him was obscene: a high, broken wail that echoed off the concrete walls and punched Leon square in the groin.

"NNGHHH—! Oh—oh God—"

Leon pressed it again. Sid's hips bucked off the tarp, his thighs snapping shut around Leon's wrist, his fingers scrabbling uselessly at the canvas beneath him.

Again.

"Hahh—! Le— Leon—"

His name. In that voice. Wrecked and sobbing and so goddamn beautiful that Leon had to close his eyes for a second to keep from losing his mind entirely.

He set a rhythm—firm, deliberate strokes against that sweet spot, each one drawing a fresh sound from Sid's throat. Whimpers and moans and broken half-words, his body arching and writhing, completely beyond his own control. His cock was drooling steadily onto his stomach now, untouched, twitching with every press of Leon's fingers.

Leon leaned down and kissed him.

Sid's response was immediate—his mouth opening, tongue seeking, and Leon gave it to him, pressing his tongue past Sid's lips and letting the omega suck on it with the same instinctive hunger he'd shown with Leon's thumb. Sid moaned into the kiss, the vibration humming between their mouths, and his arms came up around Leon's neck, pulling him closer, deeper, needing him closer—

Leon's fingers kept working. Kept pressing that spot in a steady, merciless rhythm while Sid fell apart beneath him, and the wet sounds of it—the obscene, slick squelch of fingers in an omega in heat—filled the room alongside Sid's muffled cries.

"Good boy," Leon murmured against his mouth, and felt Sid shatter.

His orgasm hit like a seizure. Sid's entire body locked up—back bowing, thighs clamping, mouth breaking from the kiss to let out a scream that he barely muffled by biting down on his own wrist. His cock pulsed against his stomach, painting white streaks across the dark fabric of the hoodie, and his inner walls clenched around Leon's fingers with a rhythmic, milking intensity that made Leon groan low in his throat.

"That's it," Leon breathed, watching him, drinking in every detail—the way his lashes fanned against his cheeks, the sheen of sweat on his collarbones, the tears leaking from the corners of his squeezed-shut eyes. "Let me take care of you."

Sid's orgasm crested and receded, leaving him boneless and gasping—but only for a moment. Because this was heat, and heat didn't stop at one, and Leon could already feel the next wave building in the way Sid's body temperature spiked again, the way his walls tightened around Leon's fingers instead of relaxing, the way his scent deepened and thickened until the air itself felt syrupy.

Leon withdrew his fingers slowly. Sid whimpered at the emptiness, his hips chasing the contact, and when Leon brought his slick-coated hand to his own jeans and fumbled the button open with trembling fingers, Sid's gaze tracked the movement with single-minded intensity.

Leon shoved his jeans and briefs down just enough to free his cock—hard, thick, the head flushed dark and already slick with precome—and Sid whined. A high, needy, desperate sound, his thighs falling open wider, his hips tilting in unmistakable invitation.

Leon settled between his legs. Gripped himself at the base and dragged the length of his cock through Sid's crease—slow, grinding, coating himself in the slick that poured from Sid's body—and the friction pulled moans from both of them. Sid's was high and reedy, Leon's a low, guttural groan that he felt in his chest.

"Please—" Sid gasped, his hands finding Leon's forearms and gripping hard enough to leave bruises. "Please, Leon, I need—please—"

Leon leaned down. Kissed Sid's jaw, the corner of his mouth, the tear track on his cheek. His lips brushed against Sid's ear as he spoke: "Gonna fuck you now, yes?"

Sid nodded—frantic, jerky, his chin bobbing, his breath coming in sharp little sobs of anticipation—and Leon lined up.

Pressed forward.

Sank in.

"NGHHHHHH—!"

Sid's scream dissolved into a choked, guttural moan that seemed to come from somewhere primal, somewhere below language. His eyes rolled back—Christ, they rolled back until only white showed, his lashes fluttering, mouth slack and open—and his arms locked around Leon's neck so tightly that Leon could feel his pulse hammering against his bicep.

Tight. Impossibly, almost painfully tight, even with the slick easing the way—Sid's body gripping him with a clenching, rhythmic heat that made Leon's vision blur. He bottomed out with a low curse, his hips flush against Sid's ass, and held there, trembling with the effort of not moving, giving Sid a moment to adjust.

But Sid didn't want a moment. His heels dug into Leon's lower back, his hips rolling, grinding down onto Leon's cock with an urgency that was all instinct—and the sound he made, a slurred, blissed-out "ahhhhnnnn..." that trailed off into a whimper, told Leon everything.

Leon pulled back. Drove forward.

The moan that ripped from Sid's chest made the hair on Leon's arms stand up. Deep, raw, resonating in the small room like music, and Leon did it again—withdrawing to the tip and slamming home—and Sid's body jolted, his fingers digging crescent moons into Leon's shoulders.

"Fuck, baby." Leon's voice had dropped an octave, rough gravel, his composure peeling away with every stroke. "That's it. Taking me so good. Feel that?"

"Yesss—" Sid hissed, the word melting into a moan, his head tipping back, baring his throat in an omega's gesture of complete submission. "Yes, God, don't—don't stop, please don't stop—"

Leon had no intention of stopping. He fucked into him with a deep, rolling rhythm—deliberate, thorough, angling his hips until he found the spot his fingers had mapped earlier. He knew the moment he hit it because Sid screamed.

"AHHHH—! There—right there, oh God, oh fuck—"

Leon locked onto the angle and gave it to him. Every thrust grinding over that swollen ridge, and Sid dissolved beneath him—head thrashing, hands scrambling for purchase on Leon's back, his inner walls spasming and clenching in a way that was dragging Leon toward his own edge at an alarming pace.

"Look at you," Leon growled against his throat, not breaking rhythm. "So fucking beautiful like this. Making all those sounds for me. Only for me."

Sid's response was a sob—wrecked, overwhelmed, his cock trapped between their stomachs and leaking steadily, every thrust generating friction against Leon's abs that had him twitching and jumping.

"Yours—" Sid gasped, and the word hit Leon like a freight train. He groaned, burying his face in Sid's neck, his hips snapping harder. "Yours, Leon, I'm—ahhhh—!"

"Yeah you are," Leon rasped. "All mine. Taking my cock like you were made for it." He nipped at the tendon in Sid's neck, felt the omega convulse around him. "So tight. So wet. You have any idea how good you feel?"

Sid was beyond words. His moans had become continuous—a breathless, rising string of ah, ah, ah, ah punctuating each thrust, his eyes unfocused and glassy, his mouth open and slack with a thin line of drool trailing from the corner. His fingers clawed red lines down Leon's back through the undershirt, and Leon hissed at the sting, driving deeper in response.

"Gonna make you come again," Leon said, shifting his weight to one arm so he could snake his hand between their bodies. His fingers wrapped around Sid's cock—hot, slick with precome, throbbing against his palm—and Sid's eyes went wide.

"Nhhh—! Too—too much, I can't, I—ahhhh—"

"You can." Leon stroked him in time with his thrusts, grip firm, thumb sweeping over the leaking head. "You can take it. Be good for me."

The praise broke him. Sid's eyes crossed—going glassy and unfocused—and his body bowed up off the tarp, every muscle locking, his mouth open in a silent scream that found its voice three seconds later as a shattered keen that cracked halfway through:

"HHHNNNN—!"

He came violently, his cock pulsing hard in Leon's fist, spurting hot over his fingers and both their stomachs. His walls clamped down with crushing, rhythmic force, and the sensation—God, the sensation—ripped a groan from Leon that came from somewhere deep and animal. Leon fucked him through it, his hand still working Sid's cock until the omega was twitching and whimpering from overstimulation, and still he didn't stop.

"One more." Leon's voice was barely recognizable to his own ears. "Give me one more, baby."

"C-can't—" Sid panted, his eyes wet, his entire body trembling with aftershocks. "I can't, it's too—oh—"

Leon shifted the angle. Pulled Sid's hips higher, tilting them, driving deeper on the next thrust, and Sid's protest died in a strangled moan as the new position ground directly over his prostate with every stroke.

"You can," Leon murmured. He cupped Sid's face with his free hand, slick fingers leaving a glistening trail across his cheek, and Sid turned into the touch instinctively, nuzzling Leon's palm. "One more, baby. I've got you."

Sid whimpered—high, thin, overwhelmed—but his body was already responding, his cock twitching valiantly between them, his walls fluttering with renewed intensity. The heat was pushing him, demanding more, overriding the exhaustion and the overstimulation with a biological imperative that wouldn't be satisfied until the wave was fully crested.

Leon picked up the pace. Faster now, harder, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing obscenely through the supply room, the tarp rustling beneath Sid's body. He could feel his own orgasm building—a tight, gathering heat at the base of his spine—but he held it back through sheer force of will. Sid first. Always Sid first.

"So good," Leon breathed, his forehead pressed against Sid's, their eyes locked. "So fucking good for me. Perfect. You're perfect, Sid."

And Sid was crying—not from pain, not from sadness, but from the sheer overwhelming force of being held and praised and taken care of, tears streaming freely down his temples into his hair, his mouth trembling—and each word Leon spoke landed on him like a physical touch, making him clench and gasp and arch closer.

"Please—" Sid whispered, barely audible. "Please, please, please—"

"I've got you." Leon kissed the tears from his cheeks, one side then the other, never slowing his hips. "Let go. I'm right here."

Sid shattered for the third time.

This one was different—deeper, full-bodied, a wave that rolled through him in slow, devastating pulses rather than the sharp peak of the previous two. His eyes rolled back until only white showed, his entire body going rigid and then limp, trembling violently, a long, wavering moan pouring out of him that sounded like relief and ecstasy and something painfully close to gratitude. His walls clenched around Leon in rhythmic, milking pulls, and this time Leon couldn't hold back—

He came with a guttural sound torn from his chest, buried to the hilt, his cock pulsing in long, throbbing waves inside the tight heat of Sid's body. His vision whited out. His arms shook. For a moment, the entire world narrowed to the point where their bodies connected and the devastating sweetness of Sid's scent flooding his lungs.

When he came back to himself, Sid was still trembling beneath him. Soft aftershocks, tiny whimpers, his body twitching with each fading pulse. His eyes were glazed, half-open, staring at nothing, and his breathing had finally slowed to something deep and uneven.

Leon pulled out carefully—wincing at the sensitivity, steadying Sid's hips when the omega flinched at the emptiness—and immediately gathered him up. Pulled him against his chest, shifted them both so Leon was sitting with his back against the shelf and Sid was curled in his lap, face tucked into its favored spot against Leon's throat.

The purring started immediately. Quieter now. Exhausted.

Leon stroked Sid's hair. Down his spine. Rubbing slow, grounding circles between his shoulder blades. He could feel Sid's heartbeat against his own chest—fast but slowing, evening out with each pass of Leon's hand.

"You did so well," Leon murmured against the crown of his head. "So well, Sid. You were amazing."

A tiny, contented sound against his neck. Not quite a word. Barely a sound at all, really, more vibration than voice, but it communicated everything.

Leon held him. Let the minutes pass. Listened to Sid's breathing gradually deepen and slow, felt the tension drain from his muscles by degrees until the omega was a warm, boneless weight against his chest. The heat-flush was still there—would be there for days, through the full duration of his cycle—but the first wave had crested and broken, and the lull between waves would give them time.

Time. He needed to move.

Leon's brain reassembled itself in slow, reluctant stages—like a machine powering back on after a surge, each system flickering to life individually. Practical concerns surfaced first. They were in a supply closet. In an arena that would be locked down by cleaning crews within the hour. Sid's heat would cycle again—forty minutes, maybe less, before the next wave hit—and when it did, they needed to be somewhere with a bed and a door that locked and no chance of another alpha stumbling across them.

He reached for his phone. Three missed calls from his agent. A string of texts, each more panicked than the last:

Leon

Leon answer your phone

I swear to God if you're doing what I think you're doing

Call me IMMEDIATELY

Leon typed one-handed, his other arm still wrapped around Sid's back:

He's safe. Taking him to my hotel. Will call in the morning.

He turned the phone off before the response came through.

Sid stirred against his neck, making a small, disoriented sound—the muzzy confusion of an omega surfacing from the post-wave crash. His fingers curled and uncurled against Leon's chest, grasping weakly at the fabric of his undershirt, and his breathing hitched before settling again.

"Shh." Leon pressed his lips to Sid's temple. "Just rest."

A soft exhale. Sid's body went heavy again, sinking deeper into Leon's arms, and within seconds the rhythm of his breathing told Leon he'd slipped under completely. Passed out. The first wave had wrung everything from him—every ounce of energy, every drop of tension, every defense he'd built over twenty years of managing this alone—and his body had simply surrendered.

Leon held him for a few more minutes. Let himself have that—the quiet, the warmth, the impossible intimacy of holding someone who trusted you enough to fall asleep in your arms. Sid's face in repose was younger than Leon expected. Softer. The furrow between his brows smoothed out, the careful composure replaced by something unguarded and gentle. His lips were slightly parted, still swollen, and his lashes rested in dark crescents against cheeks that were blotchy from crying and flushed from heat-fever.

Leon's chest did something complicated. Something that had nothing to do with pheromones or biology or alpha instincts and everything to do with the specific human being curled against him, vulnerable in a way that Sidney Crosby never let anyone see.

Okay. Move.

He assessed the situation with clinical efficiency. Sid was naked from the waist down. His dress pants and briefs were crumpled on the floor, both soaked through with slick—unwearable. Leon's own jeans were passable, if wrinkled. The hoodie on Sid was long enough to cover him to mid-thigh, which would have to be sufficient for the walk to the parking garage.

Leon carefully maneuvered Sid's limp body—heavier than he looked, dense with muscle, deadweight in unconsciousness—so he could tug his own jeans back up and fasten them one-handed. Then he pulled the hoodie down over Sid's hips as far as it would go, covering him. Found Sid's socks bunched near the shelf and worked them back onto his feet, one at a time, handling each ankle with a gentleness that would have embarrassed him if anyone had been watching.

He grabbed the pants. Grabbed Sid's shoes from where they'd been kicked under the shelf and shoved them into his bag, which he slung across his body. Then he scooped Sid up.

Sid made a sound—barely conscious, not quite a word—and his face found Leon's neck again with the unerring accuracy of a homing signal. His arms draped loosely around Leon's shoulders. His legs hung limp. He weighed nothing and everything.

Leon checked the corridor through a crack in the door. Empty. Silent. The fluorescent lights still buzzing their indifferent mechanical hum.

He moved fast. Long strides, Sid's weight balanced against his chest, the service corridor stretching ahead of him in a tunnel of grey concrete and flickering light. His car was in the players' section of the underground garage—maybe two hundred meters from here, through a fire door and down a ramp. If the garage was empty, they'd be fine. If it wasn't—

He'd deal with it.

The fire door opened with a metallic groan that made him wince. The garage beyond was dim, mostly cleared out, the bulk of the players having left during Leon's shower and subsequent detour. A few vehicles remained—dark shapes under the yellow sodium lights—but no people. No movement.

His rental was parked near the far wall. Black SUV, tinted windows. He'd never been more grateful for tinted windows in his life.

Getting the passenger door open while holding a hundred-and-ninety-pound unconscious omega required some creative maneuvering—he braced Sid against his hip, freed one hand, yanked the handle, and then carefully lowered him into the seat. Sid's head lolled, his body slumping sideways against the door, and Leon reached across him to recline the seat back as far as it would go, easing him into a semi-horizontal position.

He buckled the seatbelt. Pulled the hoodie down over Sid's thighs again where it had ridden up. Paused.

Sid's face was turned toward him, slack with sleep, and in the dim amber glow of the garage lights, he looked—

Leon swallowed.

He looked like something Leon hadn't known he'd been searching for.

He shut the passenger door softly. Walked around to the driver's side. Got in. Started the engine. Sat there for a moment with his hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead at the concrete wall of the parking garage, and let the full weight of what had just happened settle onto his shoulders.

He had just fucked Sidney Crosby through the first wave of his heat in a supply closet at Scotiabank Arena during All-Star Weekend.

Sidney. Crosby.

The most famous omega in professional sports. The face of the NHL for two decades. A living legend whose jersey hung in arenas across the country, whose name was spoken in the same breath as Gretzky and Lemieux, whose mere presence on the ice tonight had brought forty thousand people to their feet.

And Leon had had him on his lap in a janitor's closet, crying and begging and coming on his cock.

He exhaled slowly through his nose. Pressed his forehead against the steering wheel.

His hotel was twenty minutes away. A suite on the thirty-second floor of the Four Seasons, booked by the Oilers' travel office, private elevator access. Secure. Discreet. It would do for the duration of Sid's heat, provided Leon could get them there without being seen and could convince the front desk staff that the unconscious man in his arms wearing nothing but an oversized hoodie and socks was a totally normal and not at all suspicious situation.

He pulled out of the garage. The Toronto streets were still busy—a Friday night during All-Star Weekend, the downtown core teeming with fans and nightlife—but inside the SUV, the world contracted to the hum of the engine and the sound of Sid's breathing.

Leon glanced over at a red light.

Sid was curled on his side in the reclined seat, knees drawn up, the hoodie bunched around his torso. One hand was tucked under his cheek. His lips moved slightly—dreaming, maybe, or processing—and the flush on his cheeks had mellowed from fever-red to a warm, rosy pink. His hair, dried now, curled in loose waves around his face.

He looked small. Which was absurd—the man was a professional athlete, broad-shouldered and solidly built—but something about the way he was folded into the seat, wrapped in Leon's clothes, trusting enough to sleep while a near-stranger drove him through an unfamiliar city...

Leon's grip tightened on the wheel.

The light turned green. He drove.

His mind, now free from the haze of pheromones and proximity, began cataloguing the problems ahead with grim precision.

The league would need to be notified. An omega's heat arrangement required formal registration—medical staff, emergency contacts, confirmation of consent from both parties. Leon had skipped approximately all of that. He'd need to call the league office in the morning, which meant explaining to whatever bureaucrat answered the phone that he, Leon Draisaitl, alternate captain of the Edmonton Oilers, had entered into an unregistered heat arrangement with Sidney Crosby during a league-sanctioned event.

They would ask if Crosby had consented. Leon would say yes, and then he'd have to explain that "yes" had been delivered in the form of a heat-hazed more please and fingernails in his shoulders, which was technically valid under the league's omega welfare guidelines but would still generate approximately nine hundred pages of paperwork.

His agent would lose his mind. Quietly and professionally, because that was what agents did, but the man would be drafting media contingency plans before Leon finished his first sentence.

MacKinnon.

Leon's jaw tightened. That was going to be a problem. Nate had no legal claim—he and Sid weren't bonded, weren't mated, had no formal arrangement in place—but biology didn't respect legal distinctions, and Nate's alpha had spent years treating Sid as his. The termination of their arrangement hadn't erased that conditioning. Nate was going to smell Leon on Sid the moment they were in the same building, and his reaction was going to be visceral.

Leon found, with some surprise, that he didn't particularly care.

What was MacKinnon going to do? Start a fight? File a complaint? Stand there and seethe while everyone in the room remembered that he was the one who'd walked away? That he'd chosen Charlotte and a comfortable family narrative over the omega who'd waited for him for years?

No. Leon wasn't afraid of Nathan MacKinnon's feelings. MacKinnon had forfeited the right to have feelings about Sid's heat partners the day he'd agreed to that engagement.

What Leon was afraid of—the thing gnawing at the edges of his composure, growing louder with every passing minute—was the question he'd been avoiding since the moment Sid's scent had first hit him on that bench.

Fated.

He knew the signs. Every alpha did—it was drilled into them from adolescence, the way children are taught to recognize the symptoms of illness. Accelerated heat response. Immediate physical compatibility. The lock-and-key sensation of pheromones aligning so precisely that the body interpreted contact as homecoming. The irrational, bone-deep conviction that this person—this specific person—was not just compatible but essential. Necessary. Yours.

All of it tracked. Every single marker.

Sid's heat had come a week early. It had hit within hours of sustained proximity to Leon. His body had responded to Leon's scent on the hoodie not with the calming regulation that an omega experienced with a standard-compatible alpha, but with acceleration—the heat ramping up faster, harder, more intensely, as though his biology was racing to bind them together.

And Leon. The way his alpha had responded. The possessiveness. The certainty. The absolute, nonnegotiable compulsion to protect and hold and claim that had overridden twenty-nine years of rational behavior in the space of a heartbeat.

Fated pairs were rare. One in ten thousand, if that. Most people went their entire lives without encountering theirs. The statistical probability of Leon Draisaitl—a German-born alpha playing in Edmonton—being fated to Sidney Crosby—a Canadian omega playing in Pittsburgh, eight years his senior—was so vanishingly small that it bordered on absurd.

And yet.

Another red light. Leon stopped. Looked over.

Sid had shifted in his sleep. His face was still turned toward Leon, and his hand—the one that had been tucked under his cheek—had migrated across the center console and was resting on Leon's thigh. Lightly. Barely any pressure. Just the warmth of his palm through Leon's jeans, like even unconscious, even deep in post-wave exhaustion, his body was seeking contact.

Leon covered Sid's hand with his own. Gently. Felt the fingers twitch and curl around his, holding on.

The light turned green.

He drove the rest of the way one-handed.

The Four Seasons lobby was mercifully quiet. Leon pulled into the underground valet entrance, tipped the attendant enough to buy silence, and carried Sid through the service elevator to the thirty-second floor without encountering another soul. The suite was dark and cool when he shouldered through the door—king bed, blackout curtains, the faint scent of hotel lavender that his own pheromones would overwrite within minutes.

He laid Sid on the bed. Drew the covers over him. Stood there in the dark, listening to him breathe, and felt the last of his resistance crumble like sand.

He was going to see this through. All of it. The heat, the aftermath, the league politics, the MacKinnon situation, the conversation he'd need to have with Sid when the man was lucid and clear-eyed and fully capable of deciding whether he wanted anything to do with Leon outside the haze of hormones.

And if Sid didn't—if the heat broke and Sid looked at him with regret, with discomfort, with the polite distance of someone who wanted to pretend it never happened—Leon would accept that. Would step back. Would carry the memory of tonight in a locked room inside his chest and never speak of it.

But if Sid did—

Leon sat on the edge of the bed. Pulled off his shoes. Lay down beside the sleeping omega, close enough to touch but not quite touching, and stared at the ceiling.

Sid's hand found him again in the dark. Fingers creeping across the sheets, locating Leon's arm, wrapping around his wrist. Holding on.

Leon closed his eyes.

He was so fucked.

Leon didn't remember falling asleep.

He remembered the ceiling. The soft hum of the hotel's climate system. Sid's fingers wrapped around his wrist in the dark. And then—nothing. A blackout so total it felt less like sleep and more like someone had pulled a plug.

Consciousness returned in fragments. Warmth first—a dense, encompassing warmth that blanketed his entire body, heavier on his chest, concentrated where weight pressed him into the mattress. Then texture—the brush of bare skin against his, the tickle of hair beneath his chin, the faint scratch of cotton where his own hoodie bunched between them. Then sound—a soft, rhythmic nuzzling, the whisper of skin sliding against skin, a barely audible hum vibrating against his throat.

Then the scent.

Leon's eyes snapped open.

It had changed. Deepened overnight, intensified the way a storm gathers mass—darker now, richer, the honey-sweet base layered with something heavier and more urgent. Musk and bloom and raw, desperate need, saturating the hotel room so thoroughly that the air itself felt thick. Leon's alpha roared to life before his conscious mind had fully engaged, flooding his bloodstream with hormones, his muscles tensing involuntarily, every cell in his body orienting toward the source.

Sid was draped across his chest. Both knees bracketing Leon's hips on the bed, his weight settled low, his face buried in the curve of Leon's neck. He was nuzzling—slow, instinctive passes of his nose along the tendon, scenting Leon the way an omega scented a bonded mate, breathing him in with soft, desperate little inhales that Leon felt like fingerprints on his pulse.

Leon's arms came up. One around Sid's waist, pulling him closer, securing him. The other cradled the back of his head, fingers threading into the tangle of dark curls. The motion was automatic—his body responding before his brain could form a coherent thought—and when Sid felt the arms tighten around him, the sound he made was a trembling, grateful sigh that bled warmth directly into Leon's skin.

"Hey." Leon's voice was rough with sleep, graveled. He turned his head, pressing his lips against Sid's temple. "How are you feeling? Do you need anything?"

Sid's response wasn't verbal. He whimpered—a thin, needy sound muffled against Leon's throat—and rolled his hips. A slow, grinding press downward, his body dragging against Leon's cock through the thin barrier of Leon's jeans, and the friction sent a bolt of heat through Leon's groin that made his breath catch.

Sid was already gone. The brief window of lucidity between waves had closed while Leon slept, and the omega in his arms was deep in the haze—operating on instinct, on need, his higher brain functions dimmed to a whisper beneath the roar of his biology.

Leon inhaled slowly. Steadied himself. His hand slid from Sid's waist, trailing down the curve of his spine, over the bunched fabric of the hoodie at his hips, and onto bare skin. Sid's ass was warm under his palm—smooth, firm muscle trembling faintly—and when Leon's fingers dipped between his cheeks, the slick that met them was obscene. Hot and abundant, mixed with the remnants of Leon's earlier release, coating Sid's inner thighs and smearing against Leon's jeans where Sid had been grinding.

Leon pressed two fingers in.

Sid gasped—a sharp, fractured sound punched from his lungs—his body opening easily, still loose and slick from hours ago, and Leon curled his fingers immediately, finding the spot he'd already memorized. Direct. Deliberate. No teasing.

"AH—!" Sid's head jerked up from Leon's neck, his eyes flying wide—glassy, unseeing, the pupils swallowing everything—and his mouth fell open. "There—"

Leon pressed again. Harder.

"Hahh— more, more—" Sid's voice cracked, breathy and desperate, his hips beginning to move. Rolling back onto Leon's fingers in a stuttering rhythm, chasing the pressure, each backward thrust drawing a wet, filthy sound from where Leon's fingers worked inside him. "Please—"

So sweet. Even wrecked, even lost in heat-haze with tears already gathering at the corners of his eyes, Sid asked so sweetly. Like it had been trained into him somewhere deep—the politeness, the softness, the instinct to make himself small and gentle even when his body was screaming.

Leon gave him more. Fucked his fingers deeper, grinding the pads against Sid's prostate with a merciless, steady rhythm, and watched the omega come apart above him. Sid's hands braced on Leon's chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his undershirt, his back arching, his hips finding their pace—rocking back and forth between Leon's fingers inside him and the hard line of Leon's cock beneath him, chasing both sensations with increasing desperation.

"There, there, there—" A breathless chant, barely whispered, punctuated by soft ah ah ah sounds that grew higher and tighter with each stroke.

Leon pulled his fingers free.

Sid sobbed. The emptiness hitting him like a slap, his hips stuttering, his body clenching around nothing—and the sound of it, the raw devastation, made Leon's cock throb so hard he nearly came in his jeans untouched.

"Shh, I know—hold on—" Leon's hands were already moving, shoving his jeans down his thighs one-handed, his other arm keeping Sid pinned against his chest. He freed himself—hard, aching, the head flushed and slick—and gripped Sid's hip to guide him.

"Sit on it," Leon said. Low. An alpha's command wrapped in something softer.

Sid obeyed immediately. Reached back with one trembling hand, found Leon's cock, positioned himself—and sank down in one fluid, devastating drop.

"NNGHHHhhh—" A long, broken sound torn from somewhere deep in Sid's chest, his head falling forward, his eyes rolling back until only crescents of white showed beneath fluttering lashes. His mouth hung open, slack and wet, and his body clenched around Leon with a rhythmic, milking intensity that made Leon's vision blur.

"Fuck—" Leon hissed through his teeth, his fingers digging into Sid's hips hard enough to leave marks. "Fuck, Sid—"

Sid didn't wait. Couldn't. His hips began moving immediately—rising and falling in a desperate, uncoordinated rhythm, hands braced on Leon's chest, riding Leon's cock with the single-minded urgency of an omega deep in wave. Each downstroke wrung a sound from him—uh, uh, uh—high and sweet and rhythmic, his thighs trembling with the effort, the hoodie slipping off one shoulder to expose the flushed, sweaty curve of his collarbone.

Leon let him set the pace for a minute. Watched him work for it—watched the concentration creasing his brow, the way his teeth sank into his lower lip, the tears spilling over and tracking down his flushed cheeks as his body demanded more, harder, deeper than his exhausted muscles could deliver.

Then Leon planted his feet on the mattress and thrust.

Sid's eyes blew wide. His mouth opened on a scream that came out silent—air punched from his lungs—and Leon did it again, driving up into him with a force that lifted Sid's knees off the bed. Again. Again. Setting a pace that was brutal and deep and unrelenting, his hips snapping upward while his hands held Sid's waist in place, and the sounds that tore from Sid's throat were inhuman—shattered, keening wails that cracked and broke and reformed with each impact.

"AHHH—! Oh God oh fuck oh—LEON—"

"Yeah?" Leon's voice was barely recognizable. Dark, thick, the word dragged from somewhere primal. He punctuated it with a particularly vicious thrust that made Sid's eyes cross. "That what you need?"

"YES—" Sid screamed it. Actually screamed, the hotel walls catching the sound and holding it. "Yes yes yes yes—"

Leon fucked him harder. Angled his hips the way he'd learned earlier—the precise tilt that ground the head of his cock directly over Sid's sweet spot on every stroke—and the effect was immediate. Sid's rhythm shattered. His body went rigid, his cock jerking untouched against his stomach, and the sounds pouring from his mouth dissolved from words into something raw and prelingual—broken gasps and hiccupping moans and a wavering, rising keen that climbed higher with every thrust.

"So good for me." Leon pulled Sid down against his chest—close, closer, needing to feel his weight, his heartbeat, the frantic flutter of his pulse—and fucked up into him without breaking pace. "Listen to you. Those pretty sounds. All for me, aren't they?"

Sid couldn't answer. He was beyond it—face pressed against Leon's collarbone, tears soaking into the fabric of Leon's shirt, his body a trembling, clenching, responsive instrument playing every note Leon drew from it.

"Come on, baby." Leon rolled them. Pinned Sid beneath him in a single, fluid motion that made Sid gasp—his back hitting the mattress, Leon settling between his thighs, never pulling out—and the new angle punched a groan from both of them. Leon planted his forearms beside Sid's head and drove into him with the full power of his hips, the bed frame jolting against the wall with each thrust.

Sid wailed. His legs wrapped around Leon's waist, heels digging into the small of his back, his fingers clawing at Leon's shoulders. His eyes were rolled back, his mouth open, tears streaming from the corners, and every thrust punched another broken ahfrom his chest like a hiccup he couldn't control.

"Look at you." Leon was mesmerized. Couldn't look away. The sight of Sidney Crosby beneath him—utterly undone, crying, incoherent, his body arching and clenching and begging for more—was something Leon wanted seared into his retinas. "Crying for my cock. So pretty when you cry, Sid."

"Hnnnh—!" A desperate, shattered whine, Sid's head turning to the side, exposing his throat, tears dripping across the bridge of his nose.

Leon leaned down and licked the tears from his cheek. Slow. Deliberate. Tasting salt, feeling the hot wetness against his tongue, and Sid shuddered so violently beneath him that the bedframe rattled. Leon kissed his closed eyelid—gently, impossibly gently for how hard his hips were working—then the other, tasting tears and lashes and the feverish heat of Sid's skin.

"More—" Sid begged, his voice ragged, destroyed. "Leon, more, please, please—"

"Greedy." Leon murmured it against Sid's mouth like an endearment. "Already stuffed full and still begging."

"Please—"

Leon pulled almost entirely out. Paused. Felt Sid's body clutch at him desperately, trying to drag him back in.

Slammed home.

"AHHH—!"

Again. And again. Deep, punishing thrusts that made Sid's whole body jolt up the mattress, his cock bouncing against his stomach with each impact, precome stringing from the slit in glistening threads. Leon watched Sid's face—the way his brow furrowed, the way his mouth trembled, the way his eyes kept rolling back and then fighting to focus on Leon's face like an anchor—and felt something vast and terrifying expanding in his chest.

Sid came screaming. His back bowed off the bed, his entire body locking up, his walls clenching so hard around Leon that it bordered on painful—and the sound he made was Leon's name, shredded beyond recognition, three syllables breaking into a hundred. His cock pulsed untouched between them, painting his stomach, the hoodie, Leon's chest, and his eyes rolled back completely, his body seizing in long, shuddering waves.

Leon followed him over. Buried himself deep and came with a groan that tore through his chest, his hips grinding against Sid in small, involuntary pulses, filling him, marking him—and the possessive satisfaction of it was so intense it was almost violent.

They lay tangled for a long time afterward. Breathing. Twitching. Leon's weight braced on his forearms to keep from crushing Sid completely, Sid's legs still locked around his waist, trembling.

Eventually, Sid's grip loosened. His legs fell to the mattress. His eyes closed, lashes still wet, and a soft, exhausted sigh escaped him—the sound of a body temporarily sated, the wave receded, the brief reprieve before the next one built.

Leon kissed his forehead. Pulled the covers over both of them. Stayed close.

10:17 PM.

The buzzing started while Leon was drifting in the hazy space between sleep and consciousness, Sid's warmth pressed against his side, the room dark and thick with their mingled scents. A persistent, mechanical vibration against the hardwood surface of the nightstand—bzzz... bzzz... bzzz—cutting through the quiet with irritating precision.

Leon's eyes opened. He turned his head.

Sid's phone. The screen lit up, casting a blue-white glow across the nightstand, and the name on the display was exactly who Leon expected.

Nathan MacKinnon - Incoming Call

The call rang out. Went to voicemail. Three seconds of silence.

Then another call. Same name. Same insistent buzzing.

Beside him, Sid stirred. A small, disoriented sound—the phone's vibration penetrating even the deep fog of his heat-haze—and his hand moved, reaching clumsily toward the nightstand with the uncoordinated fumble of someone half-conscious and fully drugged on hormones. His fingers grazed the edge of the phone, trying to locate it, drawn by the buzzing.

Leon caught his hand.

Gently. Wrapping his fingers around Sid's wrist, drawing it away from the nightstand and back toward his chest. Sid made a confused sound—a small, questioning whine—and Leon answered it the only way that mattered.

He kissed him.

Soft at first. A press of lips that asked nothing, offered everything. And Sid melted—instantaneous, complete, his body going lax, his mouth opening under Leon's with a sigh that tasted like surrender. Leon deepened it, his tongue sliding against Sid's, and rolled them gently so Sid was pressed into the mattress, Leon's weight settling over him like a blanket. Sid's arms came up around his neck, pulling him closer, a soft mmnn humming between their lips, his hips arching up instinctively to find friction.

The phone buzzed again. Leon reached for it without breaking the kiss—his hand finding the device by touch, fingers closing around it—and brought it close enough to feel for the power button.

He held it down for three seconds. Felt the vibration die. Set the phone face-down on the nightstand and returned his hand to Sid's hair, cradling his head, tilting him for a better angle.

Sid kissed him like he was drowning and Leon was air. Deep, clinging, desperate, his fingers tangling in the hair at Leon's nape, his legs parting to let Leon settle between them, and when Leon finally pulled back—just far enough to breathe—Sid chased his mouth with a whimper that made Leon's chest ache.

"I'm here," Leon murmured against his lips. "Right here."

Sid's eyes were barely open. Glazed, unfocused, trusting. He blinked up at Leon through wet lashes, and whatever he saw there made him sigh—a bone-deep, full-body exhale—and turn his face into Leon's palm, nuzzling.

Leon kissed his forehead. His temple. The bridge of his nose.

The phone stayed off.

Sid's heat lasted two more days.

Two days of waves cresting and breaking. Two days of Sid coming apart in Leon's arms—on his back, on his knees, in Leon's lap, pressed against the shower wall when they managed to stumble that far. Two days of learning the language of Sid's body—which sounds meant more and which meant too much, where to press to make him arch and where to hold to make him still, the exact cadence of praise that turned him liquid.

Leon ordered room service between waves and fed Sid with his fingers—fruit, bread, water pressed to his lips, Sid pliant and drowsy and accepting each offering with the unquestioning trust of an omega deep in the grip of a heat spent with a compatible alpha. Leon changed the sheets when they became unsalvageable. Drew baths. Wrapped Sid in clean towels and held him on the bathroom floor when a wave hit too fast and the bed was too far away.

He learned things. Small, devastating things that no one outside this room would ever know. That Sid talked in his sleep between waves—mumbled, incoherent fragments that occasionally resolved into something intelligible, names and places and once, heartbreakingly, a whispered sorry. That his body ran cold in the lulls between waves and he'd burrow against Leon's side seeking warmth. That he purred loudest when Leon's hand was in his hair. That he had a scar on his left hip, silvery and old, shaped like a crescent. That he smelled sweetest just before sleep—the honey mellowing into something softer, warmer, like sun on cotton.

Leon memorized all of it. Filed each detail in a place behind his ribs where he was building something that he didn't have a name for yet.

On the third morning, Leon woke to cold sheets.

His hand reached across the mattress before his eyes opened—an instinctive sweep, searching for warmth, for the body that had been pressed against his for two straight days—and found nothing. Cool cotton. Empty space. The indent where Sid had been, still faintly warm, already fading.

Leon's eyes opened.

The room was grey with early morning light, the blackout curtains parted a few inches where someone had pushed them aside. The bathroom door was open, the light off. The hoodie—his hoodie, the one Sid had barely taken off for three days—was folded neatly on the pillow beside him.

Leon sat up slowly. His gaze swept the room. Sid's shoes were gone from beside the door. His phone was gone from the nightstand.

A piece of hotel stationery sat propped against the desk lamp, folded once. Leon stared at it for a long moment before getting up, crossing the room, and picking it up.

Two words. Neat, careful handwriting, the pen pressed firm enough to leave an indent on the paper.

Thank you.

Nothing else.

Leon stood there in the grey light, holding the note, wearing nothing but boxers, and felt the silence of the room close around him like water.

He walked back to the bed. Sat on the edge. Then fell backward, sprawling across the ruined sheets, the note still held between his thumb and forefinger above his face. He stared at the ceiling—white, featureless, offering absolutely no guidance on any of the seventeen things he was feeling simultaneously.

"Fuck."

He said it to the empty room. To the indent on the pillow. To the hoodie that Sid had folded with the same meticulous care he probably applied to every aspect of his life—neat, considerate, leaving no trace, imposing on no one.

He rubbed his free hand down his face. Pressed his palms against his eyes until he saw stars.

The thing was—he wasn't angry. That was what got him. He should be. He should feel used, or dismissed, or at least mildly insulted by the Irish goodbye following three days of the most intense physical and emotional experience of his life. But the anger wouldn't come. Couldn't, maybe, because he understood.

He understood that Sid had spent twenty years protecting himself in a world that wasn't built for him. That every vulnerability was a calculated risk, every trust a potential wound, and that the last alpha Sid had trusted enough to let in had chosen someone else. He understood that waking up in a hotel room with a man you barely knew, the heat-haze lifted, the clarity of your own choices rushing back in—that was terrifying. That leaving was easier than staying to find out if the tenderness had been real or hormonal.

Leon understood all of that.

And it didn't help at all.

Because he could still smell him. On the pillow, in the sheets, on his own skin—that honey-and-woodsy scent woven into every fiber of the room, into Leon's pores, into some deep place behind his sternum that was already aching with the absence. Three days of Sid's scent soaking into him had fundamentally altered Leon's baseline chemistry, and he knew—with the grim certainty of a man staring down a long road—that the scent would fade from the sheets within days, from his skin within a week, and that the wanting wouldn't.

He heard himself chuckle. A single huff of breath, wry and defeated, his arm dropping to the mattress beside him.

He turned his head and looked at the folded hoodie on the pillow. Picked it up. Pressed it to his face.

Sid.

He really was so fucked.