Chapter Text
Visit Summary
Patient: Hollander, S.
DOB: 1991-05-10
Dr. Miriam Kessler, MD – Endocrinology
Chief Complaint: is routine endocrine management follow-up. Patient requests continued estral suppression and expresses concern regarding breakthrough scenting during high-stress competition play.
History of Present Illness: 23-year-old omega professional athlete on long-term pheromonal suppression therapy.
Patient’s Current Regimen:
Betalith XR (luteproxadine acetate ER) 50mg PO daily
Estravault Depot (gonadorelin-suppressant injectable) 200mg IM monthly
The patient currently reports no full estral cycles since initiating combined therapy, as well as no breakthrough heats in >5 years. Patient reports occasional thermoregulatory instability under intense physical exertion as well as heightened states of anxiety regarding scent detection in locker room environments. Patient continues strict adherence to oral dosing and monthly injection schedule.
Last Estravault Depot injection administered today in clinic.
Physical Exam Results:
Vitals: Stable
Hormonal panel: Maintained within Beta-range parameters
LH/FSH: Fully suppressed
Pheromonal output: Undetectable
Cortisol: Mildly elevated (stress-associated)
Injection tolerated without complication.
Clinical Assessment: Omega phenotype with complete estral suppression maintained via dual therapy (oral + depot injection).
Patient demonstrates strong compliance but exhibits ongoing anxiety related to concealment of omega status within a professional athletic setting.
Medical Plan:
Continue Betalith XR 50mg daily.
Continue Estravault Depot 200mg IM every 28 days.
Notes: Discussed potential risk of acute heat onset if depot injection is delayed >7 days, patient declined counseling referral
“Oh shit.”
Marleau’s voice cuts through the low murmur of conversation in the Raiders’ locker room. Usually an exclamation that mild wouldn’t catch anyone’s attention without follow-up, but something in his cadence—something like genuine shock—makes Ilya look up from where he’s lacing his second skate. The locker room is loud, chaotic, voices and scents layering on top of each other in a way that Ilya loves, the way it only feels before a game. Without saying anything, he can tell his team is ready to play.
“Seriously, Roz, you gotta look at this,” Marleau continues. He glances up and realizes he already has the captain’s attention, then tilts his phone so Rozanov can see the headline that pulls the expletive from him.
Ilya reads it once. Then again.
Not because he doesn’t understand the English. No, he knows every word on the screen. He just doesn’t understand them in this order.
Metro’s Captain Shane Hollander Scratched from Upcoming Boston Face-Off.
A low, instinctive rumble builds in his chest before he can stop it, quiet enough it’s barely audible, but enough that the nearest lockers go still until Ilya shakes his head and they look away. He takes the phone despite Marleau’s protests and waves him off with an absent flick of his wrist, the dismissal pure reflex. Ilya scrolls through the article, then swipes it away and opens Cliff’s Twitter page, where the ESPN post echoes the headline:
ESPN Hockey (@espnhockey)
Metros Captain F Shane Hollander is expected to miss the next four games with a non-hockey related injury, per sources. No further details provided.
Beneath it, retweets stack on retweets—panic, confusion, celebration—varying in direct correlation to the team featured in each commenter’s bio.
Ilya scrolls past them with a low growl and flips back to the original article, still impossibly short and maddeningly vague. He scans the words as if he can force them to reveal something more concrete.
The Montreal Metros will play their next game without captain and center forward Shane Hollander (Beta), who is officially listed as out ahead of tomorrow’s matchup due to what the organization describes as “non-hockey related injuries.”
The team offered no additional details regarding the nature of the issue or a projected timeline for Hollander’s return. Coaching staff emphasized the decision was made out of an abundance of caution and in consultation with medical personnel.
Hollander’s absence marks an unusual lineup change for the Metros, who rely heavily on their captain’s presence in even-strength play and leadership situations. While the organization downplayed concerns, the lack of clarity prompts immediate questions about how long they expect to be without one of their most consistent players.
Ilya reads it twice.
It gives him nothing new on the second pass. He reads it a third time anyway.
He’s focused enough that he doesn’t hear Marleau return after spreading the news through the rest of the room. He doesn’t hear him demand the phone back. He doesn’t hear the snap of the forward’s fingers. Not until Marleau grabs his elbow and shakes it, snapping him back into the present.
“What?” Ilya growls, eyes flashing as he looks up. The word echoes, and he hears the edge in his own voice, and feels the way the locker room shifts closest to him, the emotions rippling out from there; his team’s voices lowering, shoulders tightening. They’re looking at him without meaning to. Waiting for the temperature of the room to be set by the strongest alpha present. Fucking biology.
He forces himself to rein it in, shaking his head once, hard, as if that could clear it. As if it could shove down the rise of disquiet slowly sinking through his bones, licking ice-cold along his nerve endings and pooling, uncomfortable, in the pit of his stomach. He forcibly pulls in his smell and watches as shoulders start to relax, just a little.
“It doesn’t make sense. Hollander played last night. He wasn’t injured. He scored three goals.”
Ilya knows this. He knows it because he watched the game on his phone while the team sat around the airport, because it was easy to excuse the action (he’s doing opposition research) and it gives him an excuse to watch Hollander play. Which, of course, is more opposition research and not at all because he likes what he sees when the other man is on the ice, playing like he was crafted for nothing else.
He hands the phone back and finishes lacing his skates with sharp, efficient tugs. Marleau shrugs, slips his phone on top of his stall, and finishes tugging on his jersey.
“Don’t know what to tell you, Rozy.”
None of this makes sense.
The information has to be wrong.
Shane Hollander isn’t injured with some stupid “non-hockey-related injury,” because Ilya would know if Shane Hollander were injured.
He would know.
He would.
…Wouldn’t he?
“Fuck this,” he snaps, pushing away from the stall and calling for his team’s attention. He doesn’t often use the Alpha Voice to get it, but he slips into it now and it makes everyone track him, heads ducked, just enough, even as they watch with rapt attention. “Game against Metros is not tonight. Without Hollander it will be easy win. We do not worry about it because it is not tonight. Tonight we destroy New York because I will not lose to Scott Hunter again! You hear me? Metros later. Tonight? The Admirals do not survive.”
As far as speeches go, it isn’t his best—but it also isn’t his worst, and it’s met by cheers and the sound of sticks thudding against the floor.
Beside him, Cliff slaps his shoulder and gives him a nod.
“Let’s play hockey.”
They do not lose. A Boston win, 3–1, and Ilya wants nothing more than to celebrate with his team. To drink and laugh and crow about the fact that he, personally, scores twice on Scott I-once-walked-with-dinosaurs Hunter. He wants to go out with his boys, get drunk, and make terrible decisions for the rest of the night.
And yet.
And yet here he is standing in the locker room in a fucking towel and scowling at his phone.
Jane
[7:37] what is bullshit tweet about
[7:37] you are not injured
[8:14 ] did you lose phone?
[8:20 ] you better have lost phone
[ 9:13 ] answer me
[10:32 ] hollander.
The texts remain unanswered. Even the use of his name, which usually at least earns Ilya a snotty ‘no real names, Asshole’, or if Mr. Perfect-at-following-rules is feeling particularly bitchy: ‘delete that immediately’. The locker room is almost completely empty (the only two left are rookie betas he likes well enough but they can’t smell the waves of annoyance rolling off him) and he’s staring at his phone and he’s not getting an answer and Ilya wants to bite something about it.
It’s not uncommon for Hollander to not text him back right away, but it’s gotten rarer that they go days without speaking, and he thinks something like this should have earned a heads up. He texted last month when he was benched for a week with bruised ribs. He gave running commentary on Hollander’s game. On the beta’s perfectly calculated lanes, his stupid hockey IQ, the way he seemed incapable of chirping. How much more fun he would be if he wasn’t so boring. Even down to his designation. Antagonizing just because he can picture the little pinched wrinkle between Hollander’s eyes when he read it.
That is not the point. The point is. They text when they’re injured. If Hollander was injured with some stupid non-hockey related injury that wasn’t critical, he should have been texting Ilya throughout the game. Calling out his missed passes. Pointing out the goal he gave up to Scott (of all people). Asking if it was fun to lose the faceoff.
Showing off all that hidden Hollander mean that only he gets to see.
He should have a phone full of snark.
He should have one single text that lets him know what the hell is going on.
Ilya doesn’t even try to stop the low growl that rumbles out of his chest at the fact that not only does he not have answers, he also doesn’t seem to have any incoming. Those stupid three dots aren’t even bouncing as Hollander does that thing he does, the typing and deleting until he completely erases what he wants to say and goes with what he thinks he should send. Betraying himself despite his best efforts when Ilya reads through it.
The two betas look up at the sound and even their stupid dulled noses and bland scents flare and they suddenly also have excuses to leave the room.
Once he’s alone, Ilya debates the next course of action for a breath, maybe two, before he slides his thumb up and presses the call button. Hollander will have to answer. He gets very annoyed when Ilya breaks the rules they’ve never said out loud and he is doing that now for sure, because it would be far too easy for someone to hear that Lily’s voice isn’t soft and sweet and Boston accented. Hollander will be so upset and he will answer and yell and Ilya will know that this stupid made up injury isn’t real and he can catch up with Marleau and the boys and celebrate with a night out in New York because he is Ilya fucking Rozanov and he is an alpha and this city hates one of those things and loves the other and it will be easy.
The call goes to voicemail. He stabs the button again because he can. Again, Hollander’s stupidly polite Canadian greeting.
It takes every bit of Ilya’s willpower to keep from throwing the phone across the room.
Annoyingly, he thinks a stupid, freckled, boring Canadian beta with the worst voicemail message would be a little proud of him for his restraint.
Fucking hell.
Ilya does not go out with his team that night.
He does not get a chance to catch up with Marleau and he does not get to drink and there are not pretty omegas throwing themselves at him and offering body shots and distracting him from a freckled face and brown doe eyes that he wants to drown in until he forgets how to breathe. He would be upset about it (he wants to be upset about it) but he’s too worried to actually get his head around anything other than the fact that Hollander still hasn’t texted him back.
It’s officially become a problem, because he has called the man four times now, and he has texted him a string of increasingly deranged messages and they’re all sitting on ‘delivered’ and not ‘read’ and he’s starting to think maybe Hollander actually is injured which sits wrong in his chest, sends a growl down his throat, something hot and possessive that he does not want to examine too closely.
His fingers tap absently against the bedside table in his hotel room, a staccato off-beat rhythm before he picks up his phone again, checking it for the thirtieth time in the past two minutes, looking for the familiar bounce of text bubbles, for the snarky reply, for the frustrated response that Shane was ‘sleeping, you asshole’ or on a plane or whatever other stupid thing he might have been doing that required him not to reply for nearly six hours after the tweet that started this whole–-thing. Whatever it is.
It doesn’t come. His phone is, as it has been, annoyingly silent.
Ilya drops the phone and groans, rubbing a wide hand over his face. The clawing feeling in his stomach is starting to feel a lot like–worry. Maybe even halfway toward panic. There’s no reason for it, because they do not do this. They do not worry about each other, they certainly do not panic about each other. They do not–
He doesn’t exactly know who he’s trying to convince because there is no one here in this damn room except himself and his mind and his alpha instincts that are bouncing around his skull like a ping pong ball. Like a ricocheted bullet, piercing every bit of him that it bounces into. They do not do things like this because if Ilya lets himself begin to cross the lines he’s drawn in the sand he does not think he can convince himself to stop. If he gives in to another boundary (because, even now, he cannot deny just how many he’s let already slip between his fingers) he is not sure he will be able to keep doing this thing they’re doing. It’s already too dangerous, already too close to the edge of the things he’s worked so hard to keep close to his chest.
Hollander is–
Hollander is a complication. A distraction. That sweet-steady beta scent, those wide, dumb, doe eyes. Those stupid freckles like a splash of stars across his face. The way he fights so hard to be everything that everyone wants him to be; Canadian Golden Boy, Captain, face of too many brands to count with his poise and his media training and his fucking French and polite greetings. And then Ilya gets the other side of him, the one that shakes apart and falls to his knees and begs when he’s told even as that fire flickers so hot in his eyes, Ilya thinks he might burn just from touching him. Ilya gets the side of him that no one else does, spread out and eager and so sensitive it should be a crime. So perfect he doesn’t have the words in English to describe it.
Stupid man. Stupid boring Beta.
Stupid Alpha for getting in over his head.
His hands twitch for a cigarette he doesn’t have but desperately wants, and he finds himself reaching again for his phone. Nothing new. Blayt.
There’s not a specific moment when he makes the decision. He will think about it later, a week from now, a month maybe, and wonder when he chose to take the next step and he won’t be able to pinpoint it. No, he is cursing Shane Hollander in his head one moment, and the next he’s off the bed in his hotel room and shoving his clothing and toothbrush into his duffel bag and slinging it over his shoulder.
Shane’s condo is familiar for all that it isn’t. He’s gone in the back before, car dropping him off in the parking lot, but he’s not sneaking into a murderer’s stairwell now, he’s out front, looking at Hollander’s front door and realizing at some point in the past few hours he should have put some more thought into this. He doesn’t know if Hollander will even answer the door.
Actually, he doesn’t even know if Hollander is here.
This is so beyond the lines they’ve drawn, so far past the casual hook ups and exploration that always ends with one of them leaving as soon as the moment has passed. And for a moment, Ilya thinks about putting the rental car in reverse and driving himself back to the airport and booking his second last minute flight of the night. All of this can still be written off under post-game adrenaline, he’s pretty sure. A severe lapse in judgement that he can simply dismiss and lie about if it ever comes up.
"Where did you go after the New York game, Cap?’ they will say and he can just smirk, say something about a girl he knows and they will believe him. No one needs to know that he skipped out on partying with his team to take a cab to JFK and then an hour and a half flight because a particularly boring man refused to answer his phone.
Yes, the sensible thing to do now that he’s sitting outside of Shane Hollander’s condo and looking at the front door like it might bite him is to immediately leave Shane Hollander’s condo. But–
Ilya checks his phone again, hoping. If he has a message or a call he can go. It’s the deal he makes with himself–if Hollander has responded to him he will know the beta is fine and this fool’s errand will remain just that. But, of course, his phone remains blank and he is no more in the know than he was when he got off the ice. When he got in the cab. When he got off the plane.
He sighs, pushes a hand through curls that are looking far worse than they did this morning and steps out of the car. He will knock. Hollander will answer. He will give him shit about his stupid non-hockey related injury. Maybe they will kiss a little and Ilya will suck him off while making sure not to injure him any further and they will not talk about why Ilya is here and it will go back to normal. That’s what he holds on to as he makes his way to the door and rings the doorbell.
No answer. Of course.
His nose twitches , scenting the air around him because it’s instinct as much as anything else, and maybe he can tell if Hollander has been by recently, with his boring sheets-out-of-the-dryer scent. But the entryway at least doesn’t smell like anything except the plants Hollander paid someone to install and the cool Canadian air and Ilya thinks he might actually scream for the lack of information.
Frustrated, he reaches out and presses the bell again, and then again, just out of spite and then again because he can. Who’s going to stop him? Hollander isn’t even–
Somewhere above him, a light clicks on in a window. He’s only come in the back, but he thinks, maybe, that it’s Hollander’s bedroom–the location matches, the floor and the angle of the window. So if the stupid man he’s been chasing isn’t home, someone is and Ilya reaches out to press his buzzer again and then again and once more just to prove the point.
The light stays on.
The speaker crackles and then falls silent. Ilya presses the buzzer again. The speaker crackles and finally, finally Hollander’s voice comes through, rough and worn.
“Rozanov?” It’s a question, and the sound of it twists something in Ilya’s chest that’s somewhere around his heart, sending the organ to thump at double time, an overager bird fluttering against his ribs. He tries to ignore the sensation and instead tilts his head, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Yes. You are dead?” It’s drier than he means, but the nerves of the past, what, six and a half (?), seven maybe eight hours are catching up with him.
“No. Go away.” It’s a whine for all that it’s a command, and Ilya arches an eyebrow despite himself.
The speaker cuts off and oh no, no that will not do at all. Hollander does not get to sound like he’s been raked over the coals, ignore all his calls and his texts and then just tell him to go away and expect him to do it. That is not how this evening will be going. He reaches out and starts pressing the buzzer again, waiting half a second between presses until the speaker crackles back to life again.
“Jesus Christ, Rozanov.”
He grins, wide and feral and pleased, glad that as rough as Hollander sounds, Ilya can still rile him into a standard response. He can’t be too broken if he’s yelling at his doorbell.
“Answer the door.” He argues, because obviously that’s the next step in this weird back and forth that they’re doing. “It’s very simple action. You come to door, let me in. Or you press buzzer and I come up on my own. Or even better you can give me code and then I have it for the future.”
Ilya swears he can hear the eyeroll that earns him from here, even though he can’t see it. There’s a beat. And then another. And another. And just as he’s raising his finger to press at the button again, Hollander sighs, long and heavy and put upon like he’s just been walked to the edge of a cliff and has finally decided the only way he’s getting off it is by jumping. Ilya knows he’s won.
“Come to the back. I’ll let you in.” Shane says and Ilya’s halfway into his protest of “I’m already at the front, Hollander–” when he realizes the line’s gone dead again.
Fine.
Fine.
He will walk around to the back like a badly kept secret, and he will meet Hollander at his stupid murderer door, and maybe he will make Hollander go on his knees, if whatever mystery injury he has will let him because this is ridiculous in every way. No one would even know it’s him, he’s not in his own car, and why would Ilya Rozanov who is supposed to be in New York City be standing in Montreal in the middle of the night?
The grumbling carries him around the corner and then along the alley and around another corner to the back. He reaches the door and when it isn’t already open, he raps his knuckles against the metal, wishing he’d brought his duffle bag with him.
His nose twitches again, a tendril of scent tugging at him, making him turn his head to try and find it, purely instinctual. It takes a moment, especially with the faintness of the thing, but especially with the way his chest tightens the second time he catches it, Ilya puts it together. Somewhere nearby there’s an Omega in heat. He’s got enough control of himself that it’s something he can notice and ignore, wishing the Omega an easy go of things, but he isn’t compelled to follow it like he might have been when he was younger and untested. He’s the strongest Alpha in a given room, or creepy alleyway, but that comes with control.
–until the door to Hollander’s stairwell opens and the pheromones that were a mere trickle before are suddenly slamming into him full force, all of them swirling around the man standing in the doorway in a Metros hoodie and grey sweatpants that do nothing to hide exactly how in Heat he actually is.
Ilya doesn’t realize he’s growling until he hears Hollander’s answering whine, until he sees the way the man’s eyes go glassy and wide at the rumble of it, until that scent retracts and then doubles up, pressing out with freshly-clean-laundry and woodsy smoke and warmth and fresh ice all tangled together in new layers that Ilya wants to dive into and explore. Except for how all of it is wrapped in the sick-sour-sweet scent of a Heat going wrong and Ilya’s eyes widen as all of the pieces suddenly click, hard, into place.
It’s a slapshot to the gut. A high stick to the face.
Bozhe moi. Blayt.
“Hollander.” He says, and Shane’s eyes snap up to his, flashing a dare that he hasn’t ever been able to resist. “You smell like Omega. You smell like Omega in heat.”
To his credit, Shane has enough of himself to roll his eyes.
“No shit, Rozanov.” Another motion, sharp, pleading under the anger. “Get inside!”
Ilya gets inside and as the door snaps shut behind them both, he drags in a full breath, dragging in the first (real?) taste of what he now assumes is Shane Hollander’s true scent. Oh, this man is going to be the death of him, of that he is certain. Ilya is keeping him.
“Look,” Hollander says, “I can explain.”