He Hid His Omega Heat, His Rival Exposed Him on Court novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Not Fine
Raven plays two possessions on a rolled ankle, then goes down; in the exam room Noah writes every "I'm fine" on the intake form as a symptom and marks a question mark in the box for secondary gender.
Raven Grandwell had never called a timeout in his life, and a rolled ankle was not going to be the first.
He ran the next two possessions on it.
On the first he hit a three, and the arena stood up and shouted his name.
On the second he came down from a rebound, felt the foot go sideways, and stayed upright until the whistle.
Then the floor came up and he sat on it.
Coach crouched over him with the whole bench behind.
"Can you stand?"
"I'm fine," Raven said, and grinned up at the lights.
"Your ankle is twice the size it was a minute ago."
"It's growing. That's a good sign."
Thompson, the team's loudest forward, leaned over the end of the bench with the rulebook rolled in his fist.
"Section 4.1 of the Alpha Athletics Code says an injured player leaves the floor," he said. "Get him off."
Coach did not look up.
"Thompson, sit down."
Thompson sat.
He took a pill from his pocket, washed it down from the orange bottle he carried everywhere, and zipped his jacket back up to his chin.
"And not the clinic," he added. "I do my own physicals. Nobody needs to see me in there."
"Nobody asked you," Coach said.
Two teammates hauled Raven off the court between them, and he waved to the crowd the whole way.
The athletes' exam room was down a short hall behind the home bench.
The team doctor was at a conference, so the person waiting was a medical assistant in a cream cable-knit sweater under an open clinic jacket.
He had honey-brown hair that fell over his forehead and thick wool socks pushed into his clinic clogs.
He was holding a clipboard.
"I'm Noah," he said. "Sit on the table, please. Leave the shoe on until I say."
"I'm fine," Raven said, and sat.
Noah looked at him, wrote something, and turned the clipboard slightly so Raven could see.
Under SYMPTOMS he had printed: I'm fine (1).
"What's that?"
"The first one."
Noah knelt and took the ankle in both hands.
His fingers were warm, and they pressed along the bone in small careful steps.
Raven watched the top of his head and stayed perfectly still.
He had been taught to stay still when it hurt, and also when anything else happened.
"Scale of one to ten?" Noah said.
"I'm fine."
Noah wrote again.
I'm fine (2).
"You can make a noise, you know," he said. "It's allowed in here."
"I'm a quiet guy."
"You scored thirty-one points, and the building heard every one of them."
Raven laughed, and Noah did not, quite.
He moved up the calf, then the knee, and laid two fingers against the inside of Raven's wrist.
He checked the pulse under his breath and frowned.
"Your pulse is a hundred and eighteen. You're sitting down."
"It was a long game."
"Any dizziness? Chills? Feeling flushed, or hot in the neck?"
"I'm fine."
Noah wrote the third one without a word and held the clipboard up.
I'm fine (3).
"I'm keeping a count," he said.
"Of what?"
"Symptoms. It's the most reliable one on the list."
He packed the ankle in ice and wrapped it firm, and he did not ask permission to touch anything else.
When it was done he stood, tilted his head, and looked at the left side of Raven's neck.
"Can I check your glands?"
"They're fine."
"That's four."
Raven bent his head, and Noah's fingers slid into the hair behind his ear.
His thumb found the edge of the flesh-coloured sticker under the hairline.
It was peeling.
"This is loose," Noah said.
"It's my lucky sticker. We've won eleven straight."
"The glue's two weeks past its date. It's not holding anything."
Noah was very close now, near enough that Raven felt breath on his skin.
He went quiet, with his head tilted to one side.
Raven stopped breathing through his nose.
"You smell like soap," Noah said, mildly. "Mostly."
He pressed a strip of medical tape over the edge of the patch and smoothed it down with his thumb.
His thumb stayed there one second too long, and neither of them moved it.
"Brand like that's stocked on the back shelf," Noah said. "The one we call the omega shelf."
"It's sold to everybody."
"Nobody on the alpha shelf buys it."
Noah took his hand away and wrote one more line on the form.
Raven took the crutches and the paper bag of ice, and thanked him, and swung out toward the door.
On the way past the desk he glanced down at the clipboard, upside down.
Beside the printed line that said SECONDARY: ALPHA (per roster), Noah had added a question mark.
He had underlined it twice.
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