🔞Someone to Love [Ishman One Shots]✓

🔞Two Dirty Martinis[Bottom Shubman]

[Warning: Age gap; Shubman is older than Ishan here. The chapter somehow became too long😔]

There were moments in Shubman Gill's life where he wondered if he drank too much. The Indian Premier League was going to start in a week, but he was still on his holidays in England waiting for an evening drink. The pub he was at was a mile and a half away from his new house, and he wondered if he bought that house because it was within walking distance of whiskey. 

Shubman Gill was still young—at his peak as a cricketer; he was a single Omega, and he lived alone. Boredom attributed to his number of dry whiskeys he drank a night, but he supposed he prided his liquor as a hobby. He didn't have many. So, Shubman continued to drink and had promised Hardik he'd stop when he got pregnant. The declaration always brought a sour expression to his best friend’s face. It made Shubman laugh because everyone knew it wasn't going to happen. 

He was Shubman Gill; an alpha needed to have balls of steel and eyes of glass even to touch him, but Hardik still turned his nose at the suggestion. It was a conundrum that many old-timers in cricket had faced. Hardik’s fair-weather progressiveness meant that he welcomed omegas on the team—but on his terms.

"They work harder than any alpha because they want to be here more," Hardik told the press as he explained about the pressures of omegas in cricket. All fine and dandy shit, until he added, "They have a pleasant attitude, and they follow instructions better than anyone. It's a pleasure to work with such grateful players."

And there it fucking was. Shubman  remembered snorting. He remembered mocking him in the locker room, much to the displeasure of some. Hardik didn't want omegas to be omegas. Hardik didn't like to hear things like heat talk or childbearing or any conversations that were too 'omega' for him. Hardik threw a fit when Mayank wanted to get off suppressants because he and Abhishek were considering a family. 

Hardik wanted his players to obey him while posing no interest in fields outside of cricket and the team. The fucking joke of it all was that Shubman had no problem following the latter, but he would die before he bent over for that wrinkly, chocolatey knucklehead. Fuck him, Shubman  thought. He sure as hell wasn't going to let Hardik have his cake and eat it, too.

Before Shubman could order his second drink, someone walked up to his side and told the barkeep he was spotting Shubman's next order. Shubman  snorted at the gesture. "Piss off," he told the Alpha. He didn't bother to look up. 

"What?" He heard the guy ask. His voice was distinctively deep, and Indian and it made Shubman dislike him more. Shubman had been down this route before. Many alphas saw him as an easy target—he was drinking alone, too masculine to be much of an Omega, with black bags under his eyes from the morning hangovers. They saw him and thought, "God, he must be gagging for a fuck." Sometimes, things got physical when Shubman turned them down. Shubman liked those times. He loved a good bar brawl in a foreign country where nobody gave a fuck about him.

Instead, this alpha laughed. He dragged out the stool and sat next to Shubman like the rejection was a joke. He raised two fingers, and the barkeep glanced over at Shubman, waiting for his reaction. Shubman  turned to the alpha, "Are you deaf?" He  asked before the stranger turned to him and smiled. It was a cocky smile, but it was a damn charming one.

Fuck, Shubman thought. The boy couldn't have been older than him, in his twenties at best. He had the typical look of a popular schoolboy, one who probably played cricket after class and was chased by all the Omegas in his grade and under. 

"You're making a mistake, you know," the Alpha said to Shubman.

"What?" Shubman's hackles rose; he prepared for the worst with this alpha. The standard argument about how Shubman, an omega, was making a huge mistake turning him down. "I'm a nice alpha," they'd tell Shubman, and that alone meant they deserved the consideration for even taking a chance on Shubman.