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The darkness in his foyer felt sepulchral after the bright lights and the cheers of the home crowd, the close-sweat smell of his team-mates.
Sid thought that this was his age manifested itself. In the dark spaces. He loved that he could drop all his masks. He hated his loneliness highlighted.
Geno rang. He dropped his blazer with his bag in the entryway and walked away from the ringing phone.
Each piece of clothing that hit the ground landed with a splat. Sweat-laden despite his shower after the game. The blockers kept his scent neutral, but animal nature would out. It was time, and Sid just. Couldn’t. Anymore.
Each leaping stride towards his bedroom had his quads and adductors and glutes reacting as though he was leaping into open arms after a Cup victory.
His body knew what was ahead of him. His brain ready to be anaesthetised into uncaring.
~~~
Anna watched her man. Geno was turned away from her, but she knew every inch of him. His furious back. His raging neck.
It wasn’t just her alpha senses tracking a rival, it was also that he was hers.
His hackles were up, even higher than they had been over the last month.
Geno being back on the ice should have begun to let out some of the simmering tension. It should have, but it hadn’t.
“Nikita’s sleeping. You want to tell me now?” She asked, softly and gently. A caring tone accompanied with an acrid commanding scent.
“I’ve told you and told you. Something’s fucked. And I still fucking don’t know what”. Geno mentally ran through the list of people he had harangued over the last week. Repeatedly checking in that they were fine, that no troubles were lurking. Other than the usual money woes and office boredom and COVID fatigue and gentle jibbing, everyone seemed fine. Yet something was off-kilter.
The Pens admin and training staff were confused. He didn’t reach out. People came to him. He didn’t go to them. And he definitely didn’t harass the staff when he was on IR. That was Sid’s neurosis, not his. And yet, and yet, he couldn’t stop himself now.
Something was wrong with the Pens. They were his. His and Sid’s, but Sid was a beta. The Pens were his. And Kris’, but he outranked Kris.
Something was very wrong with something that was his and being unable to pinpoint it was driving him crazy. If he didn’t solve this soon, it was going to drive him to injury. Well, re-injury.
And bloody Sid wasn’t picking the phone! Hypocritical double standards when one considered Sid’s crazy insistence on yapping all the time trying to re-order the world.
~~~
Geno rose from the bed again. Anna stirred and stilled. Geno sneaked out the door.
"Go for a drive. Maybe a perimeter patrol will help", Anna said, her quiet voice wrapping around him, momentarily soothing him in his startlement.
He walked back and leaned against the doorframe, “Okay. I have my phone. Should be back soon."
"Don’t hurt your knee", she murmured.
"Sleep, Jerry", Geno turned away and headed out. His knee was sore. The on-ice work and the pacing were all adding up.
~~~
Geno cursed his instincts. All the alts would be mocking him, come morning. Scent marking was adolescent behaviour, but he'd indulged himself in a far corner of the PPG parking lot, in the vain hope that it would help.
If he couldn’t restrain himself at his teammates’ houses, God save him from the justified wrath of the team WAGs.
Maybe this was an early form of dementia. Maybe he’s lost his psychic balance and would need to be restrained for the safety of others.
He’ll call Anna soon, but for the moment he didn’t stop himself from turning in the direction of home.
Back towards his neighbourhood, towards the lodestone of the team. Maybe Sid’s utter blandness could negate this fever driven compulsion. He’d worked miracles with Geno in the past, pulling him out of hormonal black funks. Sid was the only beta he knew who could captain Alphas into balance. Sid was a strange kind of special.
~~~
Sid was gone. The creature that had unfolded sulkily in the endless hours of concussion IR was gone. The feral being that brooded constantly over his hockey team was gone.
There was only the body.
Sweating over a mountain of stinky laundry. Mechanically eking out pleasure. A body built for peak performance.
Peaking.
~~~
Every bit of his body hurt, but that was a distant second to the bone deep sense of home. It felt like Anna and Niki were cuddling him out of a rut. Not even the large arm cradling him or the strange scent emanating from their skin was a reason to open his eyes.
He listened to Anna’s ringtone stop. And then start again. He’d better get that. And figure out which strange omega he had inadvertently added to Anna’s home.
The whole situation was fucked, yet his mind refused to panic. Or worry. Or will his body up.
Geno listened to the phone ring out again. His eyes slipped closed.
~~~
Geno drowned in life.
This is his essence distilled.
Hockey. Power. Fire.
Alpha wife and alpha son safe and waiting his successful return.
His dark omega swooping down over him.
~~~
The next time his eyes snapped open, he wasn’t no longer being cuddled imperiously. In fact the omega wasn’t in the room at all though their shared redolence hung heavy. Anna was going to kill him.
Geno rolled over, and dispassionately noted his deep sense of stillness. Some хуй had dragged him out of his own home and into a bloody bond. This tie was going to be short-lived, if he had anything at all to say about it. Maybe he’d accept being paid off, this omega who had yanked him from his bed.
Stepping into the corridor stopped him short. He knew this home. God, had he marched into his Captain’s home and nutted one of his old Canadian mates? Geno frantically tried to recall all of Sid’s friends, but they all blurred together.
The omega scent preceded the approaching footsteps. Geno stood frozen in the doorway, waiting for the stranger he’d have to pay off and excise from his cells.
~~~
Sid rounds the corner, his media eyes ice-bland and his intensity game-ready.