Chapter 3
He won't even be surprised if everyone else is wrong and Kingsport's loss has nothing to do with Felix's playing at all, the commentariat scapegoating the team's young star for other people's shitty choices.
Leonid is well aware of how
can happen when a game snowballs into a catastrophe.
After channel surfing, when he finally comes across some coverage of the Ironclads' loss, a clip of the post-game press conference, Leonid is in the middle of bringing a cold glass of vodka to his lips.
It nearly shatters as he finally lays eyes on his rival - Leonid sets it down just in time before it breaks to pieces in his white-knuckled grip.
Ward has the complexion of someone who spends all his time in an ice rink to begin with, but tonight all the color has been leached out of his pretty face, with the exception of dark circles around his eyes.
Leonid is seized with the impossible desire to take Ward into his arms and kiss those circles away.
He curses and regrets being an asshole solely from what he heard about Kingsport's loss from his teammates.
Guilty about the texts he's already sent, now that Leonid has seen just how
his rival looks.
Even if the omega is sleeping - and Leonid should be hoping he is, really, given how fucking
he looked more than a few hours ago - Leonid sends him another hurried text anyway, thumbs flying across his phone screen.
You ok
The glass of vodka, Leonid decides, is worth the risk of broken glass from whatever strange current is making his instincts twitch.
The alcohol will help settle his nerves - though it's a good thing he ensures the glass is drained and out of his hands as the network launches into clips from the Kingsport/Bridgewood game.
Whatever the opposite of highlights was, for Ward.
Leonid watches, notes the omega's slow reaction time, the choppy and inefficient skating.
He also seems to shy away from obvious plays that Leonid doesn't think he's ever seen his rival miss.
In one close-up, beneath the blue helmet, Leonid gets a glimpse of dark slashes of hair stark against a sweat-shiny forehead, beautiful brown eyes strangely unfocused.
It's not the kind of glassy-eyed pleasure Leonid likes to see him wear, either.
The cleansing burn of vodka in the back of his throat turns sour.
Don't play sick next time, ok?
Get some rest xoxo
His thumbs hover over the screen, more words on the verge of spilling out of him.
Texting the omega makes Leonid feel that way more and more, these days, swells of sentiment in imperfect English.
There's no point in trying to stomach any more of this, he thinks, as he turns the TV off and gets up from the bed to see if a cigarette on the balcony will taste any better instead.
Felix has often thought about blocking the alpha's number, but this is the most seriously he's considered actually doing it.
But as his thumb hovers over the 'Block' button, he can feel tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, the feeling of yawning emptiness in his chest threatening to swallow him whole.
"Fucking
hormones
." He drops his phone and lets his head fall beside it into his mattress until he's no longer on the verge of tears.
For the first time outside one of his yearly heats since he was a teenager, Felix has built a nest in the middle of his bed.
It's a pathetic excuse for a nest, the only one he's ever attempted in this specific apartment, full of only his own clothes, his own bitter, unhappy scent.
It's not like his heat nests have ever had the privilege of smelling like anyone else, nothing but Felix's neediness, his slick and the hint of plastic, toys to fill the ache.
But constructed at least in theory by Felix's instincts to entice and be bred in.
This nest just reeks like acrid misery and the salt of tears.
The only whiffs of comfort come from a couple of the t-shirts his mom washed for him the last time he was in Fairmont, still smelling like his parents' house.
(More than once, Felix has been tempted to steal something of Sorokin's after one of their hook-ups for the heat-nest he makes in his bedroom at the cottage each summer.
But he's never felt right resorting to thieving from the alpha when deep down he knows that Sorokin would give Felix something of his
if only he asked for it
- albeit with a decent amount of Sorokin's usual smack talk, rubbing Felix's nose in just how pathetic he is.
It would've been worth enduring for Felix to have something in his nest smelling like the alpha now.)
Felix's phone vibrates.
Text when you wake up
Call ok too
A phone call is absolutely out of the question - however desperate Felix might be to hear his voice, he fears the sound of it will crack something inside of him open, make him do or say something to give himself away.
But Felix knows more than anyone else just how persistent Sorokin can be, so after rubbing his eyes dry, he finally gathers the mental fortitude to compose a reply.
Think I caught something on the flight back from Solara
He can't muster any clever banter when it comes to his performance during last night's game.
On top of the fatigue and nausea keeping him sluggish, Felix found himself dazed by the flood of alpha pheromones from his fellow players that usually never bothered him, and the presence of any of them in his immediate proximity made him want to bare his teeth, hackles raised, and flee.
Despite not losing his composure entirely, it was by far the worst game of Felix's PHA career, and he'd spent almost an hour on the phone with his mom after the game, patiently lying through his teeth to her through just about all of it.
Doctor says rest, fluid, etc. Nbd.
Other than embarrassing.
And because he knows Sorokin will laugh it off, that it comes off via text like this as nothing but an offhand joke, Felix takes the opportunity to send something he
means, because in whatever silly and minuscule way, this is how he can.
Btw I HATE whoever taught you the word 'dickmatized'
Felix hated how fucking
personal
it felt, like a knife in his heart, when he read over the series of texts he'd originally received from Sorokin in the middle of the night.
Like Felix really is just some kind of omega too useless and cockdumb to do anything right, even when it comes to hockey, the one thing he's supposed to be good at.
Your mother taught me
And you are stupid to play sick
Even golden boy Felix Ward is human and can have break sometimes
Two weeks to rest up.
Then I kick your ass and give you new reason to stay in bed >-)
Alone in his bed, the anticipation building to when Felix gets to see Sorokin again, no matter how many weeks or months have passed since the last time they've been in each other's orbit - it's the sort of situation that usually has Felix getting wet and reaching down to touch himself, moving shyly though he knows no one is watching.
The desire hasn't completely dissipated, despite his current state.
He's conscious of its distant shadow, sometimes, when he imagines his nose tucked into Sorokin's neck, pressed against those big alpha muscles - the rightness of being filled by his knot.
And maybe Felix really is just some stupid omega -
dickmatized
, sure - but he's starting to think his body has the right idea to punish him for craving so badly just what he can't have, thanks to his traitorous heart.
I'll be better by Westfield.
Wouldn't miss the chance to beat you in your own backyard.
As long as he can keep contorting himself however poorly through the motions of everything everyone else expects from him, he can fake it through another text exchange if it'll please the alpha he wishes were his, too.