Shifter Omegaverse AU (Because Canon Sucks #6)

Rowan

He turned his head to look for the source of the voice, only to be smacked in the arm by a backpack.

His inner alpha red-tailed hawk bobbed his head. Up until now, he had been observing quietly, which was more often than not all he did. Sometimes, though, he would appear in Rowan’s mind’s eye and flap about, shrieking and making a racket when he wasn’t pleased with something that was happening.

Like, for example, being smacked around by a scrawny shifter’s backpack.

If it had only been one time, Rowan probably wouldn’t have said anything. He would have just turned back to stare at the criminally overpriced menu. However, as he watched, the person seemed to realize they had hit Rowan and swung back around, once again whacking him on the arm.

“Ugh,” the person grunted, as if it was somehow Rowan’s fault for having his arm obstructing the path of the backpack.

They turned around again, but this time Rowan locked his elbow, so that when the backpack hit him, it stopped moving. The shifter, carried by the ridiculous momentum they had somehow created, toppled forward, sans backpack.

“Oh my gods. What was that for?” they asked, staring up at Rowan with huge, gray eyes.

Most alphas had a strong enough sense of smell to detect what hormones another shifter was giving off.

Bird shifters weren’t known for their keen sense of smell, but he could usually tell whether someone was an alpha, beta, or omega.

The shifter in front of him had the typical beta smell, sort of floral, like the beginning of spring.

They were wearing a bright pink chevron print dress over shockingly orange leggings and pink heeled boots, so he didn’t want to assume anything about their primary gender.

Despite what most people thought of him, he wasn’t an asshole; he was just quiet and liked to be left—

“You hit me with your backpack,” Rowan found himself growling, completely negating every one of his mental assertions. “Three times. Who even brings a backpack to the movies?”

Rowan’s hawk let out a loud kee-aww in his head, as if to accentuate the point.

The platinum blonde shifter, who was still spread out on the floor, cocked their head and looked at the backpack like they’d never seen it before.

“I’m meeting my Great-Aunt Anabelle’s roommate, Ethel, to watch a movie.

I had to bring supplies for her, but the shuttle she takes from the retirement home is running late because Leonard took a shit so big he thought he’d died—at least, that’s what her text said. ”

Rowan should just return the backpack and walk away. He could text Ruben on the way out of the theater and say that he was tired of waiting and getting beaten up by bags. Ruben would understand.

At least, he had better understand. He’d ditched Rowan on countless occasions.

Unfortunately, before Rowan could pry his fingers loose from the faded pink fabric, the shifter began frantically patting the pocket-less front of their dress.

“Speaking of…where did I put my phone?” they mumbled, scrambling up onto their knees to pat their similarly pocket-less sides.

Before Rowan could make his escape, the shifter snapped their head up, staring unblinkingly at their backpack. “Hey, Rowan, could I have my bag back?”

A small child, possibly the one who had thrown up, began to cry and Rowan blinked at the strange shifter like he was an owl, not a hawk.

Undeterred, the shifter jumped up and pulled the bag out of Rowan’s hands. They ran their hands all over the outside of the bag, as if they would somehow find their phone stuck to the surface.

“How…do you know my name?” Rowan choked out.

“Rowan, he/him, Chief Financial Officer. Nice to meet you,” the blonde said, nodding at Rowan’s chest.

Rowan jerked his chin down to find he was still wearing his company badge. He’d come straight from a meeting with Troy, his brother-in-law and business partner, and had completely forgotten to take it off. He’d been in such a rush to be on time…

And look how that had turned out.

“Oh,” Rowan mumbled, grabbing his badge and shoving it, along with his hand, into his pocket. As subtly as he could, he tried to rub away the feeling of the foreign fabric still imprinted on his fingers. He didn’t like touching…well, anything, really, but especially not strangers or their things.

“I’m Milo, by the way,” Milo said, not that Rowan had asked.

Rowan waited the customary beat, expecting Milo to offer their pronouns, but when none came, Rowan sighed internally. “Are there pronouns you prefer?

Milo blinked up at him, the gray seeming to shimmer under the glaring fluorescent lights. “You know, no one’s asked me that in a while. Most people use he/him, and you can do the same if you prefer.”

Rowan really had no preference whatsoever, but of course, he didn’t get a chance to say that. Suddenly, Milo had that look Rowan’s eldest sister, Raina, got before launching into a three-hour explanation on subtractive sculpture theory.

“To be honest, though, it’s been ages since I’ve given this any thought.

I think that in some ways, I don’t really identify with any gender.

My aunt used to tell me that made me genderqueer, but she was much more hip with the lingo than I am.

All I know is that women’s clothing has always fit me better and made me feel happy, but the few times I tried using she/her pronouns at work, my coworkers seemed pretty put out.

On the other hand, I’ve always liked the way they/them sounds, but no one ever wants to use those for me, so I stopped asking. ”

Milo shrugged, like that wasn’t the saddest, most random thing Rowan had heard today.

“If…you prefer she/her pronouns—” Rowan began.

“Oh, no, I feel like that’s only ever been sometimes, and I’m not really sure what times, so you can really just use he/him; it’s not a problem,” Milo said, waving one hand in the air, while the other dug through the tightly packed contents of the backpack.

“My aunt was the only one who ever switched pronouns for me, and, well…she’s been gone almost two years now, so I guess that won’t be happening again. ”

Okay, Rowan had been wrong. That was the saddest thing he’d heard today.

“You said you like the way they/them sounds?”

At Milo’s quick nod, Rowan cleared his throat. He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation in front of a life-size statue of a bag of popcorn.

“If you had to choose for yourself, not based on what I or anyone else prefers, would you want to use they/them today?”

Milo pulled out a bright red apple, of all things. “You know, now that you mention it, yes.”

“Okay, then, how about I use those for you?”

The barest hint of a smile touched their lips. “Alrighty then. Apple?”

The absolute last thing Rowan wanted was an apple from a stranger who had just been scrambling around on the floor. Any one of those things would have been a deterrent, but together they made Rowan’s skin feel like it wanted to crawl off his body.

“Were you really going to bring an apple into the movie theater?” he asked. His hawk shook out his tail feathers like he couldn’t believe it either.

“I was going to bring four apples into the movie theater, but I’m hungry now, so I’ll just bring three. Unless you want one, in which case I’ll bring two. Ethel will understand. Or she won’t. She doesn’t always understand things, but she tries.”

Milo continued holding the apple out to Rowan, but he kept his hands fisted in his pockets.

They stared at each other in a clear stalemate until finally Milo shrugged and shoved the apple back into their bag. “Okay, suit yourself—oh, hey, they have a bar! Any interest in grabbing a drink? Or were you heading into a movie?”

Rowan had once been swindled out of all twenty dollars in his wallet by a fast-talking, very persuasive neighbor girl at her lemonade stand.

It had gone a little like this: rapid-fire questions that stunned Rowan into agreeing to everything she said until he was somehow left holding a tray of six lemonades for himself and his family, who unsurprisingly were not interested in lemonade in the dead of winter.

“I’m waiting for my brother. He’s running late, though, which is rather typical,” Rowan found himself saying.

Under normal circumstances, he probably wouldn’t even volunteer that he had a brother, but this entire encounter had been far from normal.

He didn’t typically get assaulted by backpacks and then have rather personal discussions about gender in a movie theater lobby.

He supposed that, all things considered, his familial strife was hardly an overshare.

“Oh, that sucks,” Milo said, closing up their backpack, without their phone or any ridiculous number of apples. “Ethel is always on time, except when she isn’t.”

Against every ounce of better judgment, Rowan found himself following Milo to the bar. His hawk cocked his head, equally confused but not putting up much of a fight. After all, he really didn’t have anywhere else to be, and at least there were no vomiting children on this side of the lobby.

The pair placed their order with the bored-looking bartender, and once they had their drinks, Milo led the way to the first high-top table in a row of empty tables. Seven PM on a Tuesday apparently wasn’t prime time for the movie theater bar, but Rowan preferred it that way.

“So, what movie are you seeing?” Milo asked.

Rowan eyed the stranger he was somehow about to share a drink with and decided he might as well answer.

“My brother Ruben bought the tickets, so it’s probably something with guns and explosions in it. I’m just going along with it because…"

Because he had promised his mom he would check in on Ruben, even though he was two years older than Rowan, a fact Ruben never let him forget.