14. Chapter 13
Chapter 13
Rollie
My head is spinning as I try to process the emotional tilt-a-whirl I’ve been on all morning. My heart is soaring as I drive toward the zoo with Seb’s hand rubbing my thigh, squeezing my shoulder. My mate is sitting beside me, touching me like he can’t believe we’re mates either. Like it’s as much his dream come to life as mine.
Seb is my mate now. A giddy gleeful part of me just wants to shout it to the world. The best shifter I know chose me as his mate! I wish we could spend the day curled up together exploring the newly drawn boundaries of our relationship.Now I can pull him in and kiss him when he looks at me all starving to be touched and afraid to ask for more than a friendly nudge or quick pat on the head. Both of us holding back and hiding the depth of our connection for fear of crossing lines that might bring our careful status quo crashing down around us.
It’s hard to believe it was really just a few hours ago that I was sobbing in the shower and girding myself up to lose Seb once I finally found the courage to speak up and set firm boundaries. Except, by some miracle, Seb found a way to overcome the double whammy of both his avian instincts and trauma that have always held him back from showing any vulnerability, even to me.
Not that one conversation and amazing sex can solve everything that’s wrong with us, but if Seb sticks to his promises, and I stay firm in no longer enabling his cycle of self-harm, then I think we can make this mating work. If love can be enough, then we’ll be fine.
And as if Seb opening up to me and making a plan together to make our mating work wasn’t enough of a miracle, somehow, impossibly we have an appointment that might actually address the root of his depression. That’s one of a handful of reasons important enough to pry me out of our cozy den when I’m still letting the thrill of getting my dearest desire sink in enough to believe it’s real.
The creep he hasn’t ever fully gotten under control with doctors who aren’t well versed in shifter health still fuels his dysphoria. Not getting that under control and minimizing his alpha traits is what drives his need to escape from his own body and mind. It’s the biggest trigger for his trauma.
His well being is my priority here, even as Seb grins nervously over at me and repeats his spiel about the specialist who made room in his schedule to see us today. He looks so proud to be able to give us this.
Confidence looks good on my mate. It’s like having something he believes is worthy to offer the people he loves shields him from the lies he believes about himself. Someday, I want to help him believe that he’s a worthy enough offering all on his own. More than enough to make me thankful for every moment that I get to claim him as my mate. Too bad most of our loved ones already think we’re mated in every way that matters. Seb’s cousins are going to give us so much shit for finally making our mating official.
My emotions about the appointment are more complicated, clouded with bad memories of static clinics that never made room for the most important parts of me, but I don’t want him to think I don’t appreciate the sentiment behind him doing this for us. He wants to take care of me—all of me—on a deeper level than anyone else ever has.
“I can’t believe Dr. Martinez is actually seeing us! It’s so much faster than I expected. I was afraid it would be a problem that I took heat leave on my second day, you know?”
“I know.” I pat his hand, the traffic is getting heavier on 295 as we skirt around Saco and toward the zoo. Still, talking about the doctor is easier than delving into all the reasons that the meds we were on for so long suddenly had weird side effects for us both. How the heat could be a bad sign of something very wrong. How it probably touches on his medical trauma from when he first developed creep. “Thanks for taking care of me during my heat, Seb.”
Seb snorts. “As if it wasn’t entirely my pleasure. You don’t have to thank me for that. And now that we’re mates, dropping everything to take care of you during a heat is the bare minimum you should expect.”
“We both know it was a big thing to even be asked. You aren’t an alpha, asking for you during my heat doesn’t mean I see you as one. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, you made that clear.” Seb leans in to peck a kiss on my cheek. “One of the many reasons I love you, mate of mine.”
“And, when you need or want to plan your own heats, you can expect me to take care of you too, okay?”
“Yeah.” He swallows hard. I don’t make him promise, heats aren’t a guarantee for either of us and asking for anything is hard for Seb. We’ll get there.
“Exactly. So we’re on the same page. And now we’ve got a specialist who can work with us to figure out any future heats.” I pivot back to where we are headed with enough optimism for us both despite my own misgivings about what the doctor might say. The denials of huge parts of who I am and fighting for the bare minimum compromise that I’ve come to expect. “I’m glad they got us in so fast.”
Seb’s hand slides from my shoulder to massage the side of my neck, getting my scent on him. Bird wants to preen me. My silly mate can’t keep his hands to himself and it feels oh so good not to have to hide my responses from him on any level. For him, where a touch happens indicates intent more than the type of touch.
My brain knows that my head and neck indicate affection. But my body still reacts to him making it feel good no matter where he touches me. Instead of squirming away to hide it, I lean into his hands. Let myself indulge in the flush of warmth coursing over my skin. It isn’t quite arousal, but it doesn’t really scream friends either. He always does this to me, keeps me teetering on the line between affectionate and amorous when he gets handsy like this. He leans in closer to scent me without being too distracting.
“Ooh. When cuddles and preening turn you on, I don’t have to stop and pretend not to notice how much you like it anymore, huh?” Seb sounds delighted at that.“It might be fun to still play coy sometimes.” I laugh. It wasn’t exactly a secret, and he’s checked in about it before. I enjoy flirting with our blurry lines as much as he does, even when the implications and potential risk to our unspoken boundaries clouded things.
“Yeah. Anyway. Like you were saying, I’m kind of shocked it happened so fast too. The health plan for us both is why I took the job. But it feels a little like everything is lining up too perfectly to trust it right now. Between the appointment and landing the most amazing mate I can imagine. But yeah, I am hoping we can get the hormone thing figured out properly. You deserve that.”
“You do too,” I reach over to bump his knee, indulging my newfound freedom to touch without overthinking where and how and what message it sends—friend or mate, that distinction no longer matters between us, if it ever did.
Seb squeezes my shoulder just this side of painfully. I pat his hand to warn him off and he switches to playing with my scruffy hair. “Sorry, I’m trying to believe that. And I’m nervous about the testing and what it might say. But if anyone can get us sorted out, it’s this guy.”
“I’m sure he will have answers for us.” I match Seb’s vagueness for now. I am certainly not bringing up how I felt him knotting me at the end of my heat when it would only make him feel more alienated from his body. Seb has to know it happened and we both know it can happen with avian omegas who have long-standing untreated creep. Better to retread comfortable ground here. We might have to share all the uncomfortable details at the appointment, but we don’t have to hash them out in the car too. “He’s the doctor Bram and Ty see for their kits, right?”
“Yep. Bram adores him, brags about all the extra pre-birth baby pictures he gets.” Seb says, his tone of fond exasperation with his clutchmate almost covers the underlying sadness that goes hand-in-hand with talking about his brother’s pregnancies. “Because of the whole interspecies thing.”
“Then I’m confident he can help us.” I flash Seb a smile, and then I have to focus on the road as we take the exit for the zoo and navigate past the employee parking to an access road marked for authorized personnel only.
Seb directs me to an employee lot next to the zoo’s health clinic. He tells me where the receptionist directed us to park and he looks proud as a peacock as he pulls out his employee ID, takes my hand and strides into the building with supreme confidence.
He glances over his shoulder at me and flashes his most gorgeous grin as he gestures gallantly for me to walk inside first. His sweetness and naked desire to take care of me makes my heart skip a beat at getting to be the one he smiles like that for, I want to make him feel as cared for and adored as he is doing for me.
“Ready?” Seb squeezes my hand smiling reassuringly at me as we approach the receptionist’s desk.
“Yeah, it’s going to be good.” I force a tight smile, wishing I could let myself get caught up in his enthusiasm. Hoping for this to work out the way he envisions is a bridge too far, but I can still at least give this plan a chance. It’s better than going back to my usual endo and giving up on getting omega HRT.
“Liar.” Seb leans down to murmur into my ear, then he kisses my cheek and loops his arm around my waist. “I can answer most of his questions if that’s easier for you.”
Oh, shit. For a wild moment it’s tempting, it’s on the tip of my tongue to agree to letting Seb shoulder the burden for me. I swallow hard and start to nod, except my stomach swoops in a wild panic at even the thought of handing over control of my medical decisions to anyone. No matter how much I love and trust Seb. I shake my head.
“I’ll tell him my medical history. But you can do the other talking as long as we make any treatment decisions together?”
“That works. Let me know any other ways I can support you. And soon we’ll both have everything sorted out so that everyone will know we’re mated omegas.” Seb flashes me a lopsided grin. I force a tight smile too, trying to trust my mate with impossible things.
“Yeah.” I take a deep breath of his scent to bolster myself. I wish I could shrug off a lifetime of experience telling me that he’s being na?ve to trust doctors and just share in his eagerness that this doctor will have good answers for us, but baby steps. It’s easier to handle my nerves with Seb holding my hand. And the promise that we are going to be there for each other no matter how it goes. Seb searches my face, to be sure I don’t have anything to add before he steps up to the counter to get us registered for the appointment.
Seb bounces on his toes as he hands over his employee ID, his proud smile impossibly even more dazzling with his full charm at full wattage as he introduces me as his mate for the first time. Warmth suffuses me at how good that sounds, the fist of anxiety squeezing my heart loosens the slightest bit.
I squeeze Seb’s hand, exchanging grins over publicly declaring each other family. The politely smiling shifter at the desk hands us clipboards to fill out our medical history for our files once we are checked into their system for the appointment.
We sit, but I can’t get my nerves to settle. I keep shooting Seb anxious glances over the paperwork, and he does the same. It’s a lot to cover. Surgeries, every diagnosis, medications. All the complicated history around my genetics and experimental therapies my parents foisted on me before I even understood the concept of consent.
I’m offering up all my old hurts to this stranger in a lab coat yet again, and for what? In the hopes that this doctor will actually listen?
I have so many doubts about whether any doctor can really help us at this point. Some of Seb’s alpha symptoms might not be reversible and that will crush him, but Seb’s hopeful smiles bolster me. I want to hope, for both our sakes, but the questions already have my mind racing through a reel of my worst experiences in similar clinics. I rush through the first few sheets, trying not to overthink it.
Beside me, Seb’s toes tap out a metronome beat. The shimmer of his pink glittery boots keeps catching my eyes when he fidgets until I hook my foot behind his ankle to nudge my toe against his instep. Seb shoots me a sheepish glance, but I just smile and run my toe along his shin.
Even in a place that makes my stomach churn with dread, there’s still something euphoric about having everything between us out in the open.
I flip to the final page. I skim my eyes over the entire page and groan internally. What should be the easiest part of this feels like the worst minefield. The form wants my demographics and next of kin. I fill that bottom bit out first. Seb—always Seb. Even if he wasn’t my mate, he’s the first one I want contacted in an emergency. He’s the family who lives up to the title at every chance.
Out of the corner of my eye I watch him twirl the cheap pen between his fingers to admire the way the fluorescent lights glitter against the clear plastic facets. Seb notices me watching and sheepishly goes back to filling out his form. He tips his page toward me, proudly showing off my name as his first contact too. Bram is the next line and I snort.
Seb rolls his eyes. “Pretty sure he still hasn’t fully forgiven me for calling you instead of him that night,” he grumbles.
Yeah, that was years ago, and it is still way too soon to even obliquely joke about that. And even if Bram was hurt by the fact that I was the one who messaged him about the attempt, he was infinitely more concerned about his brother than his own hurt feelings. But Seb does have a point about the second contact.
If my gran and gramps were still alive I’d put them down on that line. I toy with listing my alpha sister, except both of my siblings would tell my folks if they caught wind of anything happening to me and my worst nightmares involve waking up in a hospital with them looming over my medical care.
I consider listing Bram, or one of Seb’s other relatives, but Bram would be hurt if I don’t pick him. Much as I love both of Seb’s clutchmates and his folks, just considering Bram getting an emergency call makes my heart race and my throat feel like it might close. He has the best intentions, and he’s been working on his tendency to act first and ask second, assuming he knows best. His history around nosing into his siblings’ healthcare just has too many parallels to the ways my parents made my choices for me. I can’t handle that.
So I write in Harvey’s information to obviate the issue. He’s been more of a mentor and surrogate parental figure to me than a boss for years. I trust him. And I know he looks out for displaced young wolf shifters who find their way to the Four Corners pack for various reasons. He even takes them to medical appointments, so he’s done the emergency medical thing for several of them over the years.
I know Harvey counts me among their number. One of his strays, as some of the pack elders call us when they look down their noses at new arrivals to the town. We all came to Four Corners looking for a sense of community I never had growing up. Harvey and Seb gave me exactly what I was looking for when I moved here and more.
It’s like a warm hug to put Harvey’s name down and know that I have not just two people I can trust implicitly, but that narrowing down the second one actually took an effort. I’ve come so far. That gives me the courage to fill in my own demographics at the top of the page.
Full legal name. I tap my pen, hating that I have to fill in the name my parents pressured me into when I transitioned. They insisted that I needed new identity documents to reflect my new primary gender. A good strong name that a static man might wear with pride, so I’d be able to pass.
Fuck. I scrawl the name I almost never need to use then painstakingly print the more obviously shifter middle name I go by in all caps and circle it for good measure before I see the clinic has a line for filling in a preferred name next to the legal name line. Oh—that hits right in the center of my chest in a good way.
Cautious hope takes root in my heart. I’m trying to trust Seb’s judgment that this place will actually help us despite a lifetime of dashed hopes that doctors will listen to me. It seems like no matter where I go, some things never change from the weird dots stippling the ceiling to the shiny linoleum and the sterile antiseptic odor that tickles my sensitive shifter nose.
All of my static human doctors seemed interchangeable too, at least in the parts that matter. They have never acknowledged all of me or asked what my priorities are for treatment. This place at least has layers of different shifter scents as an undertone to unscented cleaning chemicals.
The clinic has enough natural ambiance to make it clear that both sides of our shifter natures are welcome without being overpowering. Is it really possible that who I am as an entire being will matter more than rigidly sticking to guidelines and research that wasn’t done on or about shifters? It seems far-fetched. Let alone shifters like me and Seb with added layers of complexity on top of the ways all shifters’ primary and secondary genders intersect.
Most static humans view shifters through their own biases. They want us to fit neatly into their static gender categories; no challenging the social order. So most static humans fit us shifters into their familiar categories based on our primary gender presentation with a bit of hand waving to jam pregnant omega into a sort of woman lite box.
Sometimes that part gets messier, or outright hostile. Hence the need for shifter communities like the raccoon gaze my parents raised me in and Four Corners. And for aspirational places like this zoo to build bridges between shifters and statics.
Bram and Ty truly seem to believe their jobs help normalize our differences and all the things we have in common with statics so that their kids will grow up in a more accepting world. I want them to be right, even if I privately agree with Seb that it’s still safer to build our own communities while we work on those kinds of dreams.
Four Corners is the first place where I haven’t felt a paralytic pressure to conform to norms that don’t leave room for me. Whether as a beta with no set role to fill within my family and our wider raccoon shifter gaze, or later as an omega who lacks certain key traits most potential mates expect in a prospective omega mate.
Seb breaks me out of thinking about that when he rests his head on my shoulder. “You need help finishing the form, omega mine?”
I card my fingers through his hair, automatically giving him the preening attention he craves. “No, just bad memories. I finished the forms.” I show it to him after he sits back up.
“Cool, I’ll give these back then?” Seb takes my clipboard up to the counter after I nod.
I distract myself from the way my mind is racing ahead to how to distill my entire past into as few words as possible by savoring the way Seb looks when he’s bursting with pride. It’s justified, I know he took the zoo job entirely to help me access hormones, despite his anxieties around being seen as an alpha outside the familiarity of Four Corners and his usual hook up spots. The way he throws his shoulders back and struts up to the desk to get us checked in reminds me of the adorable raven shifter kids I’ve met and grown to love over the years.
There’s a particular phase between gap-toothed grinning school kids and angsty teens that they all seem to go through once their elders trust them to start pushing the boundaries of how far they can venture from home in their feathers. Most of the not-quite-fledglings love any chance to show off their newest bits of shiny treasure-- more often than not their prizes consist of tinsel, broken bits of jewelry, coins, or food wrapper scraps. Anything pretty that catches their eyes on the wing is fair game to puff up the feathered little rogues’ pride.
I like seeing this sweeter, self-confident side of Seb, so I grin and give him a thumbs up when he glances back at me. Seb chats with the shifter sitting there for a moment, then returns to sit beside me, head propped on my shoulder and fingers twinning with mine to calm my nerves.
I stare at Seb’s shiny pink glitter combat boots as he stretches long legs in front of himself and taps his toes. We don’t have to talk for him to comfort me with gentle touches as we wait. The doctor calls us back before I can get restless from sitting here.
Seb is still beaming and puffed up with pride when he turns to take my hand and lead me after the doctor to his office. Panic claws at my insides at the inevitable course this appointment will follow. Like every intake appointment before this. It’s always felt like my family and the doctors they took me to only saw what I lack. Missing genes that left me missing pieces and needing hormones I should be able to make on my own. I try to hide how intensely uncomfortable I am with being here.
If Seb and I can both get the right dose of HRT in the end, the appointment will be worth it. I can live as an omega without hurting Seb anymore. That’s the reason I don’t run for the door.
We sit in an exam room with a desk in it. The doctor introduces himself and pulls up our files and makes small talk, most of which Seb handles while I quietly panic beside him. I catalog the room for escape routes, it’s a subconscious reflex for my inner raccoon to mark out good hiding spots. Medical offices haven’t ever felt safe, and this is going to be hard.
I’m going to have to recite all the ways I’m broken in front of my mate. I’m not sure I have the strength to handle that. Even considering it reduces me to the scared kit who couldn’t stand up for himself when they talked about seeing if they could get my ovaries to develop enough to bank eggs in case I wanted children when I was older. That was when I had a period for a few cycles, but my parents opted out of egg preservation for me. Seb notices me freezing up and slides his chair closer so he can rub my back soothingly.
Dr. Martinez seems to notice too. He’s gentle with me as he pulls my entire sordid past out of me. I tell him about years of testing and endless injections with cocktails of hormones that were supposed to fix me but only made me feel more broken. barely gathering up the courage to ask if I can please have the boy hormones instead of the girl ones.
I can’t convey just how much it hurt to see the frozen look in my parents eyes, weighing having to tell everyone their daughter is a son now. In the end they shrugged. My primary gender didn’t matter to them. Regardless of boy or girl, to them I was a broken beta with no future in shifter society. They figured when I grew up and had to make my way among static society, it might be easier if the world saw me as a man.
The first part of the appointment is an overwhelming exercise in explaining my entire medical history to a stranger. It’s the sort of thing that throws me right back into that headspace of being a pre-teen. The appointment that shattered my trust in the adults I relied on to take care of me. I thought I was on the verge of puberty for years, watching my peers outgrow me. My parents knew all along that would only happen if and when my doctor approved started growth hormone injections. They told me I needed blood work to be sure, but I might just need vitamin injections to help things along.
I only learned the truth about any of it because a last minute emergency meant my pediatrician handed my appointment off to a colleague who didn’t know that no one had told me that the static doctor who attended my birth told them I was intersex and suggested genotyping to see if my secondary sex might help them decide whether to raise me as a boy or a girl.
I get through the entire history, up to getting omega HRT through Seb and whatever might have triggered my heat. Dr. Martinez listens, only interrupting to ask clarifying questions. And then he asks me something no one else in his position has.
“So, what are you looking for from me today?”
“I don’t know? I want to be on omega hormones. And I don’t want to stop taking testosterone. But I don’t know how I could have had a heat, so I’m scared that maybe my doctor was right to refuse to prescribe both at once?”
“That’s a good place to start.” He nods. “If you agree to it, we can order some blood tests today. I also want to order some scans to rule out some rare but serious reasons for the unexpected heat, but if you’ve been taking avian omega hormones, we don’t have good data on how those impact other types of omega shifter, so I suspect that’s the reason for the heat. In that case, getting you on the correct dose and formulation for your body should resolve the issue. How does that sound?”
“Um. Good? I think?”
“Good. We have a nurse on staff who can take blood and vital signs for you both once I’m done speaking with your mate. In the meantime, if you’d be more comfortable shifting until I’m done talking with your mate, I can step out and let you do that.”
I consider the tempting offer. If I take my fur I can curl up in Seb’s lap and nap until it’s time to go. But if Seb wants me to listen in, I want to be here for him. I glance at him and bite my lip, not sure what I even want to ask.
“It’s fine if you want to shift, baby, I’ve got the rest of this covered. No final decisions without you, like we agreed.”
“Okay. Yeah. I want to shift.” I nod.
The doctor shows me to the curtained off exam bed and steps out to give me privacy and I spend the rest of the appointment cozy and warm in my mate’s arms with him stroking my fur.
I have to shift back for the blood tests, but I get to take my fur for the ride home since Seb insists that he’s driving. He lets me perch on his shoulder, my tail curled around his neck to help me balance as he handles scheduling the scans for another time.
We leave with prescriptions and a plan. I’ve never left a medical clinic with this much optimism before. I’m actually beginning to trust that we might just get to the bottom of whatever fluke happened to trigger my heat and Seb’s knotting. On the off chance that it wasn’t just because Seb was giving me too much of his own prescription. It all seems a little too good to be true, but maybe we both deserve a little more good in our lives.