Chapter Text
Shane and Ilya turned their heads to look at each other in sync. The look they shared revealed in each case a facial expression which neither had ever witnessed on the other before, yet which could be instantly translated, in both cases, directly, as “what the fuck”.
From the far distant outside, we can witness two people in a moment of cosmic realignment. The sort you had as a kid, where the world became suddenly magical or mundane at the drop of an adult’s loose sentence. Where the boundaries of what you felt to be possible metaphysically possible… changed. The two hockey players didn’t necessarily believe what they’d been told, and they certainly didn’t understand it, but they were fundamentally shaken.
And the man with the stupid red sweater just kept talking.
A library towered tall around them. It seemed cavernous. A vast interior filled with rows and stacks of old books stretching impossibly high, under an impossibly much higher stone-carved ceiling that Ilya thought, with a tinge of hysteria, evoked the Alhambra Palace in southern Spain. He had only known Shane for a couple years at that point– at the end of the first summer where he’d had professional-hockey-player money Ilya had taken a weeklong trip with some of the Boston guys. The vacation had mostly been rich-straight-people style partying, and pretty fun for that, but somewhere between drinking binges Ilya had gone to see the Alhambra and experienced the only true moment of awe he’d felt since the season had ended. Since he’d last seen Shane on the ice.
“Are you listening to me?” said the man in the red sweater.
Ilya snapped his gaze down from the ceiling. Absolutely he had not been. He was pretty stuck on the whole “an aisle in this apparently tiny bookstore he and Shane had been browsing to escape a rainstorm in fucking Mississauga had lead to some kind of interdimensional-rift library which was too physically big for the building’s exterior and reminded him of the fucking Alhambra” thing. Also, his sense of smell was overwhelmed by the musk of books around him and a sweet-thick scent he couldn’t place which kept pulling away his focus. The library man had claimed this was because something called “dimensional sliding” had landed Shane and Ilya in a dimension where humans had better sniffers, or something. So yeah, forgive Ilya for being a bit preoccupied!
“Buddy,” Shane said angrily. “We have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re saying nonsense.” He sounded deeply freaked out.
The man sighed with his whole body. The sequins on his sweater shook and caught the light as his large stomach shifted with the motion. It was a very stupid sweater. “I know this is a lot to take in, but we’ve barely touched on specifics about the dimension that you swapped with, so I’m gonna need you to stay with me here.”
“Are we still hockey players in this dimension?” asked Ilya.
“Yes,” the man replied like it was obvious. “Like I said, this kind of dimensional exchange only happens when your counterparts in this universe have an extremely similar relationship to yours. Remember I talked about the uniting constant principle?”
How different could this universe be if they were still in the same life situation? They’d play hockey. It’d be fine. Also, this guy was almost certainly yanking their chain… right?
“So there’s no problem,” said Ilya. “If I am still world’s best hockey player, I don’t care.”
Revealing how freaked out he was, Hollander ignored his claim and addressed the silly man instead. “How similar is similar, though? I mean, we could have ended up in a similar… relationship,” Shane tripped over the word, “even if we hadn’t been hockey players. Seriously, how do you expect us to know what is and isn’t the same in this world?”
Rozanov thought to himself– my boyfriend has definitely followed more of this guy’s explanation than I have. But then he thought–
“Would we have had similar relation without hockey?” he asked Shane, genuinely curious. Shane thought about that for a second. Their relationship had been molded by the pressures of being in and having to hide from the public eye. It could have been similar with a different sport… but even then, the culture of hockey was so specific, and so specifically hetero, that it was hard to imagine an equivalent.
“Hmm. Maybe not,” said Shane.
“Would you guys like to learn anything about the world you’re about to step into?” said the librarian, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Or would you prefer to go in blind?”
Shane and Ilya exchanged a look. Now that the earlier shocks were starting to fade, it was becoming increasingly hard to remain convinced by this man’s outlandish proclamations. Clearly something going on, because it didn’t make sense that a minor earthquake would result in them both having increased olfactory perception, or that a room this size could fit in a one-story strip-mall bookstore in Mississauga, Ontario. And why, after the earthquake had settled, had they both suddenly been wearing neck warmers?
Something was definitely up. Really, there was no reason not to believe what the librarian had told them, except for that it was really hard to believe.
Were they actually about to step out of this building and be in a completely different reality? A reality so other to their own that basic biology like sense of smell worked differently? And they’d be expected to blend in as if native to this dimension, or else come across as crazy? If Shane let himself believe that he would shut down completely. It sounded insane. His brain wouldn’t let him believe it. The urge to turn tale and run hadn’t entirely faded away since the instant the shelves grew tall around them, but it swelled up stronger now again.
Ilya must have been on the same wavelength.
“You have twelve seconds,” Ilya told the man. He grabbed Shane’s sleeve, looking ready to get the hell out of there. “Give us big picture, and we listen”
“What? You can’t–”
“Eleven,” said Ilya.
“Okay! Okay so there are– there are three, uh, classes of people? They’re called subgenders. Like, the genders you’re used to still exist but on top of that everyone is also either an Alpha, Beta, or Omega. Or like, almost-everyone, there’s some exceptions, y’know, some people blur the the lines. And, the subgenders determine, um, well it’s a lot to go into–”
The man looked imploringly at Ilya. Twelve seconds had definitely passed. Ilya rolled his eyes and gestured impatiently for him to continue.
“Right, well, there’s a lot of stereotypes, like, I mean the main one I guess is people might assume alphas are going to be more physically strong and be dominant, omegas are seen as more submissive, and betas are emotionally sensitive. It’s hard to separate that from the fact that more men are alphas and more women are omegas, though. Betas are split about 50/50 male to female, but they’re a bit rare.”
Ilya was trying to follow the librarian’s rambling english but it was so hard to focus when the man’s sweater was right in front of him being stupid. Orange on red, seriously? Tassels? And the turtleneck cut? How was Ilya supposed to take this seriously?
“And people assume alphas and omegas of opposite sexes will mate, and betas will mate with each other. Again, there’s a lot of stereotypes, but your subgender doesn’t actually determine how you act, who you’re attracted to, or your personality. I mean, obviously it doesn’t, because you’re here, and you came from a world without subgenders-”
Ilya noticed how beside him, Shane’s face had shuttered. He was staring at the floor with glass eyes and subtly rocking on his heels. It was time to go.
“Are you going to tell us what actually is this thing, ‘subgender’?” snipped Rozanov. “We are literally leaving right now.”
Still holding Shane’s sleeve, he started making good on his threat, guiding the two of them backwards while making eye contact with the librarian. Ilya wanted to straight up dash but he couldn’t shake the worry that the annoying man had vital information.
“Subgenders are– uh– they determine how you have sex,” said the man frantically, sequins glittering as he walked after them, talking. “Alphas of both sexes can impregnate, both omegas can bear children, and betas are more sensitive to pheromones but they don’t go into heat or rut.”
“Thank you for getting to the goddamn point,” said Ilya, filing those sentences away for later as he and Shane finally turned tail and fled, tripping over each other to get away. They blinked as they emerged into the better-lit foyer of the original bookstore and then they were out the jingling door and into the Mississauga rain without another word.
As they stood on the sidewalk getting soaked, staring at the store (which really couldn’t have contained such a large space in it), Shane suddenly started and turned to Ilya.
“Wait. We didn’t ask him what we were.”
“What?” Ilya didn’t follow.
“Like, alpha, beta, or whatever. If he’s right about any of this, I mean.”
Ilya hesitated.
“Do you still smell–”
Shane took a long sniff in, then exhaled all at once.
“Yes,” he said.
They looked at each other, letting that sink in. Ilya could tell Shane was scared, and Ilya didn’t expect his own eyes held any reassurance. The melange of scents was a lot less overwhelming out in the rain, but the scent he’d found so distracting in the library had followed them out here. It was like nothing he’d ever experienced. Not just the scent itself, but the way it felt like it was being processed by a part of his brain that he never knew existed. Or, just maybe, a part he hadn’t possessed before. He didn’t know how to explain it to Shane, but thankfully it seemed he didn’t have to.
Then he clicked back to Shane’s first question.
“Wait. Hollander. You think are not both alphas?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Shane, defensively. “I don’t know how this works at all. Except for that, apparently, we’re now in a world where some men get pregnant.”
Ilya shuddered. “I do not want to get pregnant.”
“You always top, how are you going to get pregnant?” Shane rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I’m sure they have birth control in this world. We can both go on the pill,” he joked.
“Hollander, I really do not think I am omega!” Ilya said passionately, eyes wide and gesturing.
They both looked at Ilya’s exclamation as it hung in the air and saw it as ridiculous, and started laughing. It had been a weird afternoon.
“Let’s get out of the rain,” Shane said.
“Seriously, I think we are both alpha,” said Ilya as they walked the couple blocks to Shane’s rental car. “The dumb sweater man said most guys are alphas, ah? Probably means hockey teams are aaall alphas. Big alphas who want to swing their dicks around and knock up omega girls. But then us, we are not like that.”
Because we like each other was the unspoken end of Ilya’s thought. Shane considered this.
“That would make sense, actually. Like, if that’s how we ended up in the same situation in this universe. Maybe being gay is normal, but two alphas together is scandalous.” He looked around, belatedly double-checking no one was within earshot, but nobody else had been stupid enough to get caught out in this weather.
“Or, maybe it's both,” said Ilya. “Maybe there is problem with being gay, and with rivalry, and now also with being two alphas. Already, in our world, we can’t say our relationship, so, if there is one more reason to not say… nothing changes.”
They were almost at the car when Ilya spotted a small business card packing-taped to a lamp-post and stopped in his tracks. Surrounded by other innocuous notices, this card read:
“DOES YOUR OMEGA NEED MORE? Uncle Asham’s knot-helper tonic is safe and effective. Increases your knot’s staying power by 200% or your money back. Trusted by alphas since 1994.“ It listed a phone number. It looked perfectly at home next to a business card selling run-of-the-mill psychedelics.
Ilya looked to Shane, wanting him to see, but Shane’s gaze was stolen by a sign further down the street. Before the billboard changed, Ilya caught the words “scent blocking” and “betas”.
Okay.
Okay so, maybe this was the world they were living in now.
Maybe they should have asked a few more questions before running out on that guy.