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When Seto was about eleven, Gozaburo took him to an omega auction. He watched the omega writhe in their chains, and Gozaburo kept a steady hand on his shoulder as if to say, that’ll be you someday if you don’t behave. If you act out. If you fail.
And Seto took his words (which weren’t words) to heart. He studied until he dreamed of numbers and history and facts and half-truths. The lines under his eyes were faint purple crescents, and his skin became so pale it was almost translucent.
Seto was not sure what drove him in those early days. Was it fear or rage? He despised losing, hated to be proved wrong. And yet, there that man was, rubbing the space between Seto’s legs, the door slightly ajar so that anyone could come in, the power this man had, it smelled faintly of mahogany.
Seto thought he might be an omega when he turned twelve. He still hadn’t experienced a rut and knew that omegas reached puberty later than alphas. He stared in the mirror and thought his body was too childish. He longed to grow up and Gozaburo must have known, must have caught him looking, because he invited Seto into his office one day, not the one at home, but the one in Kaiba Corp with its big windows that only showed the void of the sky.
“You want to grow up, boy? I’ll show you how to be an adult.”
And so Seto sat on Gozaburo’s chair and learned to be an adult.
At thirteen, his body still hadn’t matured in the way Seto wanted it to. No heats or ruts, he thought perhaps being a beta wouldn’t be so bad, but no, no no, no, no. No Kaiba was average, and so he had to prove that he was a winner. That he was prized. That he wouldn’t end up like those omega on the auction block.
Gozaburo’s private lessons were like geometry and calculus, how to move his hips at the right angle, how to slow down and speed up just the way the man wanted him to. It was the sounds the old man made, not the way he shoved himself into him, that told Seto he was close.
Sometimes the old man marked him when he came. Or tried to. It never took. Seto would feel the rivulets warm blood on his shoulder, down his back, and scream, “Father, please, Father, stop!”
And that was the only thing that seemed to get through to him. And Gozaburo would look at Seto like he was the one raping him. Like he was the one making him dirty. Like he was the one who was the omega screaming for his father to stop.
It all stopped when Seto turned 14 and had his first rut. He’d grasped onto the mahogany desk for dear life, grinding against it, the smell in his nose, the smell in his veins, and couldn’t find release.
He’d caught himself in the mirror, the darkness around his eyes, his pupils dilated into tiny blue halos, his lips in a feral grin.
He’d gone to Gozaburo then, begging for release, and the man had taken him on the desk, a replica, like the one in his office at home, the hardwood digging into Seto’s elbows, but just at the cusp, just at the point where Seto thought it would all be over, that he'd be free of this, the old man stopped. Backed out, his erection at full height.
And before Seto could register the “why” at the tip of his tongue, the man laughed, a terrible, careening cry like a hawk dropping into an abyss.
“Listen to this, Seto. You’re only a loser if you think you are. If you think you’re an omega, you’ll be fucked like one, even if you’re an alpha.”
The world seemed to sink into Seto then. The heaviness of its cruelty, its ironic humor, like an old man’s moans as he orgasmed.
At 15, Seto thinks he’s learned the depths of the world’s cruelty. He thinks he can take it for himself, compose it in the way a conductor orchestrates music, in the way breaking glass sounds like music, and a boardroom looks in silence and horror at the hole in the window that seems to lead into the empty and endless sky.
And so Seto sits in Gozaburo’s chair and learns to be an adult.