Chapter Text
Yuta isn’t expecting it when they come.
He’d lived so long in fear of another shoe dropping and a fist landing in his face that he just assumed his guard was still up. He didn’t realize it had dropped until they’re at the door.
Rei is nine weeks old and nestled in Yuta’s arms. He doesn’t feel the revulsion he felt with Jiyeon, maybe because Rei’s birth was one of hope despite his gender. Even so, Yuta wouldn’t say he loves Rei. Pities him, definitely. Doesn’t let any of his needs go unaddressed, even if that means Doyoung, Taeyong, Ten, Mark, and even Johnny help him care for the baby. But love?
He’s not sure he’s capable of it. He’s still trying to believe that he’s receiving it, but he has no counter for the way his friends treat him and his kids, for all they’ve gone through for him. They love him. He just can’t understand.
But, at least he’s not fighting it. Anymore.
Yuta stands in the kitchen, soothing Rei, who has finished a crying spell and is falling asleep with his apple-sized baby head against Yuta’s shoulder, cupped in Yuta’s palm. Doyoung washes one of the bottles in the sink. Yuta’s hair is combed back into a bun at the back of his head, neat and shiny. His belly hasn’t quite returned to its pre-Rei size, but it’s on its way, and he feels healthy for the first time since he was first outed at school.
Mark sits at the kitchen table, Jiyeon in his lap. She’s trying to put blocks together, ones cut into funny shapes like stars and triangles. They all stack together. But she can’t get the littlest triangle in.
Yuta didn’t even hear the doorbell ring. Or a knock. It could have been a knock.
“Mark?” comes Johnny’s voice as footsteps echo, coming closer. “Omega?”
It’s that word that drops a fist into Yuta’s stomach. He cowers almost instantly. Doyoung switches the water off. Mark stiffens, and Jiyeon whimpers as her star fails to slot in again.
Rei stirs. Yuta shushes him. As if they are hiding, when they’re not. His eyes sting.
Is this it? Are they going to take him away? Is this the last moment he’ll see his friends? Was he ever really safe? Do they know?
Johnny strides into the kitchen with a lifted chin and confidence Yuta knows is feigned. It helps, at least. If he can fake it, then there’s nothing to prove they aren’t mated. They watched Johnny fuck him.
A neat man Yuta doesn’t recognize follows Johnny. Johnny moves over to Yuta, planting a hand on Yuta’s free shoulder and anchoring him in place. Yuta tenses.
“That the newest pup?” the man coos, crouching a bit as if to see Rei’s face. “Oh, he’s so cute .”
Yuta wants to turn Rei away, protect him from this man.
“He’s a fertile male omega,” Johnny says.
The wide eyes and pink cheeks vanish into slits and white bone. The man stands up and turns to Jiyeon. “Well, at least you have an alpha. And genetic tests are improving all the time. You should check before the next one so you don’t get saddled with another one of these.”
Yuta lowers his chin. Johnny’s grip on his shoulder tightens.
“He looks like he’s doing well,” the man continues. “Still plump from birth. After each one, it’s harder for them to snap back, you know, but if it’s too fast it can lead to problems with breeding.”
Yuta’s face burns. He wants to vanish. Must this man slime him in humiliation in front of these friends?
“Excuse me, who are you?” asks Doyoung.
“I’m a social worker,” the man says. “Sent to check in on criminal omegas. You are…”
“Our friend,” says Johnny. Shit. “My friend.”
“My boyfriend,” Mark puts in. “We both live here. Saves on cost. You know, housing prices and all. We also have two betas living here.”
Oh God. Oh no. Oh—
“Is that so?” The social worker doesn’t stiffen or narrow his eyes or show any suspicion. “I imagine that’s helpful with his heats.”
Rei whimpers again. Yuta shushes him.
“Speaking of, when was his last heat?”
He hasn’t—
“Since back when Jaehyun was fucking him,” Johnny says brusquely. “He was pregnant and hasn’t had one since giving birth. The little omega’s only about nine weeks.”
“That’s the plan, though,” Mark puts in helpfully.
“That makes sense,” the social worker says. “Well, I can smell it on him. You’ll get the chance to try him out soon.”
He can? Yuta blinks. He feels a little achy, sure, but it’s hard for him to know. He’s only had a few heats in his life since Jaehyun knocked him up so quickly both times, and he’s still postpartum. The exhaustion, the aches, the burning simmering in his groin and abdomen—all of that is fairly standard for someone who just pushed a second kid out.
He hadn’t realized it was coming up, and Yuta feels stupid that he had to be told by a social worker whose aim is making sure Yuta is a compliant omega.
“That we will,” Mark agrees. His eyes are hard, like he wants to stab the social worker.
“You plan to mate him during his heat?” the social worker asks Johnny. “There could be some complications with his having been previously mated. I’d advise you to consult with a physician…”
The man drones on and on, but he leaves. He leaves, and Yuta should be able to breathe again, but he can’t. His legs are shaking so badly Doyoung has to help him to the couch, and when Jiyeon snuggles up next to him, he wants to shove her away.
“Is your heat really coming on?” Doyoung asks.
Yuta just looks at him.
“I’ve been smelling him a bit more lately,” Mark says. “But I didn’t—I mean, I don’t really have a baseline for these things, so.”
“It’s gonna be okay,” Doyoung assures Yuta, squeezing his knee.
A horrifying possibility occurs to Yuta. “What if—what if my body wants him during it? What if—”
“No,” said Johnny. “I’m putting—my clothes in your room. Or Mark’s.”
“It probably has to be you, John,” Mark says softly.
Johnny cringes. “Okay, fine. I’ll put mine in, and I—”
“You should bite me,” Yuta says. Doyoung takes Rei. Jiyeon presses her face into his shoulder in her brother’s stead. “For assurance.”
He’s scared. He’s so scared. But if they’re mated, then he has hope. Some assurance that they won’t take him.
“I will,” Johnny says. “Without sex. Neither of us want that.”
That much is true. Yuta nods.
Ten and Taeyong burst into the house at the same time. Doyoung tells them what happened, and they both look pissed, and worried. Taeyong takes Jiyeon away to play and Ten tries to get a list of Yuta’s favorite foods to comfort him with. But most of them are Japanese.
“I can cook,” Ten snaps.
Sure he can. But— “They hurt,” Yuta whispers. “The heats. They hurt.” He remembers the shame of writhing in that cell, masturbating when he had no recourse, only to be laughed at by the guards and threatened by the other inmates. Or Jaehyun mocking him, having sex with him up to six times a day because of the extra lubrication, trying to set Yuta off because Yuta would be prone to cry or snap back and then he would have an excuse to beat him. Not that he ever needed an excuse, not really.
Ten swallows hard, clicking his phone off and setting it aside. He grabs Yuta and pulls him into a hug, and Yuta sags against him.
They both know what the only thing that would make it stop hurting is, and they both know that that’s not an option.
Taeyong does buy him toys, though. They show up in his dresser drawer the next afternoon, because they all know Yuta would have told him to shove them up his ass if he offered them to him. Yuta is irritated and grateful at the same time. A mess of tightening emotions.
An omega about to go into heat.
He looks at his tiny baby and he thinks about Rei having to go through this one day, and he cries himself to sleep.
Yuta’s heat starts five days after the social worker’s visit. He wakes up in the middle of the night itchy and insatiable, and as much as he wants to lock the door and keep everyone out, keep them from seeing him like a leaking mess, he can’t.
He texts Johnny. And then he crawls into the shower and turns it on, at least allowing the warm water to wash away his smell and slick.
“Yuta?” calls Taeyong’s voice soon after.
He honestly hadn’t expected any of them to notice before morning. Yuta turns the shower off and slips into loose sweatpants.
Taeyong’s there with ointment. Doyoung, too. “Mark has the kids.”
Good.
Doyoung and Taeyong both help Yuta settle on his bed, seated upright. Ten enters with Johnny, who almost instantly gets a boner visible through his jeans at the smell of Yuta. He grimaces, trying to control himself.
“Here.” Taeyong pulls Yuta’s head into the crease between his neck and shoulder and exposing Yuta’s neck and scent gland. Doyoung settles behind Yuta, helping him stay upright, brushing his hair out of the way.
“I’m sorry,” Johnny whispers.
“Don’t be,” Yuta grinds out. “Thank you.”
Ten holds Johnny’s hand as he leans in. Yuta squeezes his eyes shut.
This isn’t dominance, Yuta reminds himself. It’s keeping him safe. He just—
Poor Johnny.
He can feel Johnny’s breath against his skin, wet and hot, and if he doesn’t just get it over with, Yuta is going to lose it. Still, he’s not in any place to make demands.
“I trust you, Johnny,” Yuta says finally. “Okay?”
Johnny inhales. And then there’s a sharp pain as he bites into Yuta’s scent gland, bites over Jaehyun’s mark and makes Yuta his .
“It’s okay,” Taeyong keeps saying.
“You’re okay,” Doyoung says.
“Good job,” Ten says softly.
Johnny pulls back, eyes glazed. Ten pulls him out of the room. Taeyong fusses with the wound, putting antiseptic and ointment on it. Doyoung bunches up the pile of Johnny’s clothes on Yuta’s bed. He’ll be needing those.
They finally leave Yuta alone upon his request, but he doesn’t sleep much. Soon he’s moaning and writhing, and by the next afternoon, he finally brings himself to open the drawer and use those fucking toys. Not that he’ll admit it. He bites his lips, Johnny’s clothes, the blankets to keep himself quiet. He doesn’t want the others to know.
He hears them, though. An omega in heat turns on both Mark and Johnny, and they fuck rabidly, sometimes with Ten there too. Doyoung and Taeyong as well. Meanwhile Yuta’s upstairs with plastic toys.
Ten, Doyoung, and Taeyong bring him his food (Ten can, in fact, make decent Japanese food), and soothe him, but he doesn’t want them to stick around long. He doesn’t want them to see him as a true omega at his lowest state, desperate for a fucking, unable to keep his fluids to himself, shoving plastic inside him for relief.
When his heat finally ends and he heads downstairs for food, Jiyeon shrieks in joy at the sight of him.
The social worker doesn’t come back, or if they do, Yuta doesn’t know about it. Insomnia returns, but that’s a blessing compared to the nightmares, so he takes over caring for his kids during the night. When he leaves the house, people look at his mating mark and whisper, and he hates it. It keeps him safe, and it humiliates him at the same time.
Mark finds him and Rei up at three in the morning a few weeks later. Rei’s almost asleep, finally, but Yuta isn’t. He’s seated on the couch, scrolling his phone and torturing himself.
Mark’s gaze latches onto the mark, and Yuta flinches. His free hand rises to cover it.
“Ach, Yuta,” Mark says softly, running his hand through his mussed hair. He flops onto the couch next to him. “It doesn’t bother me. You know that, right?”
Yuta struggles to find words. He knows. He believes. He hopes, even.
So why does it still burn?
“I keep dreaming about him,” Yuta says finally.
Mark starts. “Jaehyun?”
Yuta nods. Especially when he was in heat. Dreams where it was almost a relief to open his legs and have something shoved inside him. And he would wake up and vomit, as if he was impregnated from the
He hadn’t planned on confessing to that.
Mark squints at the phone switched off in Yuta’s hand. “What’re you looking at?”
Fuck. Mark is too perceptive. Yuta wants to shrug, but he can’t wake Rei. So he just sits there, helpless, while Mark takes his phone from him and switches it on. It doesn’t even require a password.
But maybe that’s good. Maybe he wants Mark to know.
Help me.
Mark says nothing, just scrolls through Jaehyun’s old social media that Yuta had been scrolling through, reading the condolences, the elevated memorials, the mockery of his omega. Yuta waits for Mark to ask why he’s doing this to himself (he doesn’t know), whether he misses Jaehyun (not at all), whether Yuta’s really broken (probably).
“What were you looking for?” Mark asks.
Yuta opens his mouth to tell him he doesn’t know, but instead, a shard of truth breaks through. “He kept tabs on my family sometimes. Back in Japan. My mom and my sisters.”
Mark’s face pales. “Did he contact them?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you look at their profiles?”
“My mom doesn’t have one.” That’s answer enough.
Mark switches the phone off and places it face down on the cushion behind him. His eyes, round, are brimming with—
Not pity.
For some reason, Mark never gives pity. Instead, the pain on Mark’s face is as if it’s happening to him, as if he’s the omega cast out from his family, written off as dead to them.
Mark leans in and rests his head against Yuta’s shoulder, against the bite mark. Yuta rests his cheek against Mark’s temple, Rei snuggled next to them. He can feel the dampness of Mark’s tears against his skin.
Neither of them speak, but they don’t have to.
Yuta falls asleep like that, waking to find Mark next to him on the couch and Rei on his chest.
The next day, Johnny hands him a slip of paper and tells him it’s the number of his therapist, a female alpha who apparently is married to a female omega.
Yuta doesn’t call at first. But after a particularly horrible nightmare, in which he wakes up screaming and Ten races into his room half-naked, he calls.
She’s nice, his therapist. A bit elderly, and she doesn’t understand slang well. But she tells him about how she refuses to work with the legal system, and slowly, Yuta begins to tell her about his time in jail. Then his family. He doesn’t bring up Jaehyun beyond the basics, but she doesn’t press.
When he tells her about his first heat, he keeps it very clinical and detached, like recounting a news story that happened to someone else. She asks him directly if he ever masturbated before that, and he says no without embarrassment.
“You should,” she says, and that surprises him. “If you want to.”
He doesn’t agree and changes the subject. But the next time he can’t sleep, a month or so later on a night when Doyoung and Taeyong have the kids, he hears Ten, Mark, and Johnny going at it, and he wonders what it would be like to make those noises without feeling degraded, without feeling as if they were all being suctioned out of him to be used against him.
He uses a toy on his own that night. He doesn’t want to use his hands, but one of the vibrators works, and as he listens to his friends in the room across the hall and claps a pillow over his face to muffle his own sounds, he could almost imagine being with them. It’s as close as he’s likely to get to ever being with someone again.
The third heat he has after Rei’s birth is worse. Jiyeon has started to talk now, calling Yuta Chichi . He somehow suspects she said Appa first, but he wasn’t around to hear it, and one of his friends corrected her. She calls Ten Poh, Johnny Dad, Mark Papa, and Taeyong and Doyoung both Appa.
He has a nightmare that he’s pregnant again, and that his mother is taking Jiyeon away from him. Rei doesn’t exist, for dream reasons. And Jaehyun is back, and he knows Jaehyun and his mom colluded, and it finally comes out of him: exactly what he wants to say to his mom. Not even in words. Just in hate, in betrayal, in clotted blood.
He wakes up screaming so loudly that the kids wail like sirens, and Doyoung bursts into his room wielding a knife like he thought he was going to stab someone in Yuta’s room.
“Is it your heat?” Doyoung asks, and that’s when Yuta realizes that he is actually in heat. He’d known it was coming on, but the wetness between his thighs is new.
Yuta shakes his head. “Nightmare. I’m fine.” He gives Doyoung a smile. It may or may not be a real one.
“You’re shaking,” Doyoung says, and then claps his forehead. “A nightmare?”
Yuta squints at him. Sweat’s already dripping down his forehead. Part of him wants to tell Doyoung to get out, to let him fuck himself in peace, but he can’t quite bring himself to be so mean, especially because it’s not yet at that point and he needs sleep.
“You were screaming ‘you fucking bitch,’” Doyoung explains. “Were you—yelling at yourself or J—him?”
Ah shit. “Neither,” Yuta replies. “My mother.”
“I had to talk Taeyong out of becoming a troll for your sisters,” Doyoung says, and Yuta sputters. “Yeah, you’re not the only one who keeps tabs on them. And Taeyong’s family’s not much better.”
Yuta squirms. “Because of me? Or—”
“No, because they don’t like a beta son. Or me.” Doyoung shrugs.
He really should ask more about their lives too. “Or my kids?”
“Taeyong doesn’t let them see them.”
“Good.” Yuta hesitates. “Doie, I’m—I should try to go back to sleep.” While he still can. If he still can. He ignores his trembling hands.
“Right.” Doyoung exhales. “When Jiyeon wakes up crying, I tell her a story. I don’t know if her dreams are bad, or—”
Is he offering to stay? Well, he’s a beta. He won’t be affected by Yuta’s pheromones. Yuta shrugs. “If you want to tell me one, make it funny.”
“I don’t think that’ll help you sleep.” Now Doyoung sounds disapproving.
“You’ll figure it out.” Yuta curls back up, trying to ignore the throbbing sensation inside him.
Doyoung actually does settle next to him, stroking his hair. It’s nice. And comforting, to at least have this level of physical contact, and to know that Doyoung wasn’t seeking anything from him.
He falls asleep. When he wakes, it’s to Doyoung getting up, and an involuntary whimper escapes him.
Shit. He hadn’t meant to do that. His abdomen is still burning with heat, and even though Doyoung’s just gone to the bathroom, the loss of contact is almost too much for him to handle. He tries not to sob, but he can’t hold it back. He’s soggy all over.
“Yuta?” Doyoung asks, coming back in. “Did you have another dream? Are you—”
“I’m fine,” he ekes out, burying his face in the pillow. “You can—go now.” Bitterness taints his voice, and he wants to kick himself. If Doyoung caught that—
No, he won’t have. He’ll think Yuta just wants to use his toys. Which he probably will, but—
“Do you want me to?” Doyoung asks softly.
Fuck.
Yuta lifts his face, hoping his eyes and nose aren’t horribly swollen.
“Stay,” Yuta requests. He’s terrified to make that request. What if Doyoung takes it the wrong way? “And—hold me?”
Doyoung nods, sliding back into the bed next to him. “Just—when you want me to go, I’ll go, okay?”
Yuta nods, rolling over so that his head is on Doyoung’s chest. It is comforting, even more so than having Johnny’s clothes scattered across the mattress.
Taeyong and Ten bring him food, watch a movie with him. Weirdly, while Yuta’s still turned on, he doesn’t feel the insatiable need to fuck right now. He’s not in agony. It seems like having physical touch helps, at least in that regard.
Maybe he won’t have to degrade himself this time.
On the third day he wakes up and realizes that is not going to be the case. His teeth chatter and he needs, needs touch, and Doyoung’s arms around him aren’t enough. If anything, it’s worse.
Yuta grits his teeth and wakes Doyoung, telling him he needs to go. But even as Doyoung nods quickly, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, Yuta can’t keep himself from whimpering at the coldness. The thought of opening that drawer, grabbing one of those silicone tools, nauseates him. But at least it wouldn’t be the flames licking him from inside. Even if it’d be a different kind of pain, the cold soaking loneliness drowning him, it wouldn’t be this .
Doyoung hesitates, distressed.
Yuta bites down on his wrist, shivering as a wave of heat grips him with sharp nails. He needs to leave. He needs—
“Do you want me to stay?” Doyoung asks.
“You can’t watch me when I—do that.” Jaehyun hadn’t done that to him, hadn’t ordered him to fuck himself while Jaehyun watched. One of the few mercies.
“Not what I meant.” Doyoung stepped back, towards the door. “Taeyong and I—have talked about it, but it’s not—” Doyoung claps his forehead. “I’m sorry, that’s not fair of me to bring on now. We’ll talk later.” He scrambles for the door.
“No!” Yuta protests. His heart pounds.
Is this him as an omega, needy and needing? Or is he actually wanting? If Taeyong and Doyoung agreed—
He hates that he doesn’t know where his biology ends and he begins. Or if there’s a difference. He knows what society says. He knows what his friends say. He knows what he has said, in the past. He knows what he wants to believe.
He wants to make a small choice.
“Not—all of it?” Yuta requests. His gaze flickers up to Doyoung’s.
Doyoung nods. He eases himself back down next to Yuta.
God, where are they going to start? How? What does he really want?
Doyoung isn’t saying anything. He’s just holding Yuta close, waiting.
You really won’t do anything unless I ask.
“Can you touch me?” Yuta manages. “Over my clothes. I—” He gulps. If this turns Doyoung on, then will he need to reciprocate? If it doesn’t, is Doyoung not actually wanting him?
(who would want him)
“Yeah,” Doyoung says, rolling them both onto their sides so that he’s facing Yuta. “I’m not—expecting you to do anything back, just to be clear. I may have to run to Taeyong after this, but I don’t want you to touch me. Not this time. Okay?”
Not this time.
Yuta nods.
Doyoung keeps their gazes locked as his hand travels down Yuta’s abdomen. He presses the heel of his hand against Yuta’s mound, providing just enough stimulation so that Yuta moans.
Doyoung doesn’t look disgusted, or smug. He just keeps checking as he works his hand and fingers around, but it’s—it’s—
Yuta orgasms, and when he comes to, it’s to Doyoung kissing his forehead, still there, not offering any backhanded compliments or teasing.
They do this a few more times. Doyoung leaves on occasion, especially when Yuta’s showering. But that night, Yuta tells him he can go under his clothes. Just his hand.
Doyoung’s fingers dip beneath his waistband, full hand palming at his folds before a finger slides between them. Of course, it’s wet. Sopping, really, but Doyoung doesn’t seem disgusted. His brow furrows a little like he’s curious as he feels around, running his index and ring finger up to his clit and then back down until he dips inside.
Yuta keens. He’s not full, but it’s—more than the toys can do. His hips roll with Doyoung’s touches, seeking his own pleasure, and Doyoung follows his lead.
Yuta does bring it up with Taeyong after his heat, but Taeyong laughs and tells him he really doesn’t mind. None of them do. They all seem pretty—fluid with each other, Yuta realizes. Ten and Mark, too. Johnny, less so, but he’s working through his own shit just like Yuta is.
“It seems like they see you as a part of them already,” his therapist tells him.
She’s not wrong. When Yuta’s next heat rolls around, both Doyoung and Taeyong tell him they’ll be there for whatever he needs.
But during his next heat, he doesn’t ask. He’s not sure why.
That heat is miserable. The nightmares return, and when he tells his therapist afterwards, she points out that he is isolating himself, acting like he’s not one of them.
“News flash,” Yuta tells her. “I’m not. I’m a male omega and a fertile one at that.”
“They know that,” she says flatly.
He can’t pull bullshit on her, can he?
He wonders if Rei will someday be in a similar situation, and why he cares.
His heat isn’t bearing down on him when he knots up the courage to knock on Doyoung and Taeyong’s door late one night when Ten has the kiddos. Both of them sit on their shared bed, waiting for him.
“I think,” Yuta begins, and then stops himself. What is he doing?
He can back out. He can say “never mind,” and go back up the stairs, and that’d be okay. They would accept that. But they might feel—
He doesn’t want to back out. “I was thinking, before my—before my heat, and without—I mean, if you are both still willing to help me, then—maybe we could try before my heat? So that I’m—more clearheaded, and—” He swallows.
Doyoung and Taeyong exchange a glance. Taeyong speaks first. “Are you asking us to have a threesome before you go into heat?”
Yuta nods.
“Well,” says Taeyong. “Yeah. Sure. I’m game. I mean, you’re hot. No pun intended.”
“Taeyong,” groans Doyoung.
“If there was a pun intended, Doie, I would have said that he’s hot every day , but I didn’t.”
“Did that not just completely turn you off?” Doyoung complains to Yuta.
Yuta laughs. “I don’t really know what turns me on.” A confession.
“Oh,” Taeyong says in surprise. “Well. I mean, we can work on that.”
“You are not—”
Yuta rolls his eyes at them.
“Are you thinking now?” Taeyong asks. “Or like, we can schedule it?”
He’s not sure.
“Why don’t we start something now,” Taeyong suggests. “But, between me and Doyoung. You can—be in the room, but if you feel uncomfortable, then you leave, okay? No questions asked.”
And so that’s how Yuta finds himself watching as Taeyong unbuckles Doyoung’s jeans and how Yuta sees his friend naked for the first time. Taeyong on his knees, deepthroating Doyoung is somehow stirring something inside Yuta, something not unlike he feels during his heat, but not as cruel either. It’s gentler, arousal tracing patterns with padded fingers instead of scratching with sharp nails. He can feel himself getting wet, but not as sticky as when he’s in heat.
Taeyong grips Doyoung’s hip, pulling him into his mouth somehow deeper as Doyoung comes. He swallows it.
Yuta gulps. He doesn’t see himself ever doing that again—Jaehyun tormented him with oral sex even more than vaginal or anal—but it was, in fact, hot to witness.
He doesn’t want to leave. When Taeyong comes closer and kisses him, tongue still tasting od Doyoung, Yuta kisses him back.
He’d never been kissed by someone he liked before.
It occurs to Yuta that, for the first time in his life, he’s about to have sex. Willingly.
Doyoung nibbles on his ears, cups his chin as Taeyong helps Yuta out of his pants, slides his underwear down, and Yuta cringes for a moment, fearing comments on his body, whether complimentary or degrading, but none come. Taeyong’s lips press against Yuta’s pussy, and then Doyoung helps Yuta lie back, head in Doyoung’s lap as Taeyong slips a condom on and Yuta opens his legs wider, for the first time not pushed.
Taeyong isn’t an alpha, so he can’t knot him. But his girth inside Yuta provides a friction he hadn’t realized he could like. Yuta meets Taeyong’s thrusts, and Doyoung kisses both of them, Yuta as Taeyong pants above him and Taeyong as Yuta whimpers beneath them. When Taeyong hits his G-spot Yuta hears himself cry out, loudly, and too late he recognizes the sensation inside him, the one Jaehyun used to try to coax out of him, but before he can warn Taeyong he’s coming, and only when he returns to himself with Taeyong laying over him, still inside, does he manage to say it. “I’m sorry. I—I squirt, sometimes, and I—”
“Huh?” Taeyong asks groggily. He shifts, sliding out and looking down. “Oh.” He shrugs. “Cool.”
They don’t care.
Yuta can’t sleep afterwards. Anxiety gnaws at him. He almost hopes Rei wakes up, doesn’t sleep through the night for once, so that he’ll have an excuse. Taeyong and Doyoung are both fast asleep, Doyoung’s arm around Yuta.
“Come on, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just what your body wants, Yuta.”
Will the sun ever rise?
He know what Taeyong and Doyoung would say in response to that. He knows Jaehyun’s a loser. He’s dead, too, while Yuta is alive and with people who love him, who respect him.
“You’re an omega. You can’t help it.”
Get out of my head, Yuta wants to scream. You don’t belong inside me! No part of him.
“It’s not about me. This is about making you feel good, making you know what you were missing. Making you know what you need.”
Yuta eases himself out of bed. Doyoung squints, though Taeyong doesn’t wake. Yuta just squeezes his shoulder. Assurance.
He stumbles up the stairs.
“You can’t do anything right. You’re an omega. The only thing you can do is take my fucking knot.”
It’s bullshit. It’s a lie.
He doesn’t regret sleeping with them. He doesn’t. They aren’t Jaehyun. He doesn’t want to conflate them. Why, why now? He was happy .
“How many times do I have to say it for your stupid brain to get it, Omega?”
“Yuta?”
He jumps right before he reaches his closed door. Johnny emerges from the shared bathroom, rubbing his head.
Yuta realizes he forgot to put on his shirt. He’s pretty sure Taeyong left him with a hickey, too. His hair is mussed and stuck to his cheeks and the back of his neck with dried-sweat, and he probably reeks.
“Are you—”
He doesn’t want Johnny to ask that. He is. He should be. He’s just—
“I’m heading downstairs to make an early breakfast,” Johnny says. "Skipping the gym today."
“Pre-dawn?” Yuta asks.
“Yeah. I had a nightmare.” Johnny shrugs. “Want to join me? Not for the gym today, but for breakfast? Also, the gym later this week?”
They used to work out together in college, Yuta remembers. Before—everything.
He nods and follows Johnny down the stairs.
“You have one too?” Johnny asks. "A dream?"
“Not tonight.” Just a living one. In his head. He wonders if Johnny hears the jailers sometimes, and if he knows how if one day fucked him up so badly, Yuta’s been through that for hundreds and hundreds of days.
Johnny starts making ramyeon, and Yuta starts chopping the vegetables. None of them speak. He just chops. Again. Again. And then the water’s boiling, and—
“I had sex with Taeyong and Doyoung,” Yuta blurts out.
Johnny arches his brows. “Congratulations.”
“I asked them to.”
“I figured.” Johnny stirs the pot.
“If I—” He stops himself. This is probably for his therapist. But— He meets Johnny’s gaze. “When you had sex with Mark and, or, with Ten after—the time we—we were forced, did you feel guilty for enjoying it? Did you feel—worse, or—”
Johnny exhales. He nods.
It’s not a relief to know Johnny suffers too, but it is something to know he isn’t alone. Yuta reaches for his hand and clasps it, knotting their fingers and pressing their palms together.
“He wore a condom, right?” Johnny asks.
“Of course.”
“Thank God.” Johnny rolls his eyes, and then studies his shoes.
I keep hearing Jaehyun, Johnny.
He doesn’t say it. They sit and eat in silence.
Johnny’s the one who finally speaks. “Did you—enjoy it? I mean, the sex. Not the ramyeon.”
Yuta almost laughs. “I think so.”
“Then, I’m glad,” Johnny says, pushing his empty bowl away from him. “But my therapist says that just because—good memories can stir up the bad, it doesn’t mean that the good is any less—good. That it’s diluted at all.”
Yuta pulls his knees to his chest. “I liked it.” He drums his fingers on his knees, trying to figure out how to say the next part without saying Jaehyun’s name. “I just don’t want to become a pathetic, sex-crazed omega.”
“I mean, if enjoying sex your first time is sex-crazed, then we’re all hopeless,” Johnny says. “Because sex can be really great. Physically, emotionally—and that’s, I think, why it hurts so bad when it’s not—when it’s not treated like that.”
Yuta feels himself relax. “That makes sense.”
“So I guess, two kids in, you finally lost your virginity,” Johnny says.
Yuta kicks him.
It’s not a straightforward path.
Sometimes Yuta wants to be alone during his heats. Sometimes he doesn’t. At first he has to be the one to ask for someone to share his bed, and then they start asking him. Heats or not. They use condoms, and no alpha fucks him when he’s in heat. Yuta does not want another pregnancy, and he’s still too afraid to risk birth control or suppressors, and they agree.
He smiles more.
He even teaches Jiyeon and Rei Japanese. They grow, and they love each other. They play together. They run together. They laugh.
No social workers come back. One talks to Johnny once, when Rei is almost three. But they seem to have written Yuta off as rehabilitated. In reality, they’re not wrong, but he certainly isn’t rehabilitated the way they think he ought to be rehabilitated.
His therapist keeps working with him. Probably the biggest admission he ever makes is when he tells her he doesn’t love his children. But he knows Johnny, Ten, Taeyong, Mark, and Doyoung all do. And they aren’t even theirs biologically.
He should at least be able to love Rei. If Jaehyun hadn’t died, he would have had no one at all who loved him.
But he can’t.
“You’re teaching them about their culture and to be kind,” says his therapist. “You wake up with them when they have bad dreams and you feed them. How are you not loving them?”
He doesn’t know. It’s just still—nothing. He feels nothing.
It’s not even that they remind him of Jaehyun.
He doesn’t understand it.
“Does it make you feel like something’s wrong with you?” she asks.
It does.
Ten’s parents visit, and Yuta likes them. He gets to talk with Ten’s male omega mother, and the man understands him. They stay in touch.
Yuta’s not allowed to leave the country. So as much as he hates it, Jiyeon will have to start school in Korea. And he’s scared. As insulated as they’ve kept their kids, soon they will know. Know why Rei can’t go to school with the other kids. Know that the parent who birthed them is hated by society, is worth nothing, is slime for others to spit on and use.
Someday, maybe know what happened to him and Yuta doesn’t want them to ever know that. They don’t deserve that. He might not love them, but he’s not cruel.
He’s scared they’ll hate him.
He’s scared they’ll turn out like Jaehyun, that it is genetic, that they can’t change it, and that Taeyong and Doyoung’s assurances that they were raised in Korean schools and turned out well won’t amount to anything because the DNA that fused with Yuta’s own has cursed them.
He’s scared Rei will hate himself.
If Jiyeon turns out like him, will they cut her off? These men who have raised her? Should they? Or will they turn on Yuta and Rei?
He hates himself for wondering.
Mark cries one day, when Jiyeon has a week left before starting school. She has her backpack and her uniforms. She’s excited. She doesn’t yet understand that Rei isn’t going with her not because he’s younger but because he can’t, and that the friends she’s excited to meet will likely hate him and make fun of Jiyeon for having him as a brother.
“I don’t understand,” Mark says. “She’s not even gone to school yet and she’ll be here in the evenings and I go to work so I won’t miss much time, but I already miss her.”
Don’t understand… it takes Yuta a moment to realize what he’s referencing.
He doesn’t either.
Most of the time, he doesn’t think about them. But when he does think of her, of his sisters, he doesn’t cry. It hurts, sometimes. And in this moment it feels like a fresh wound, the one his therapist said to expect.
Those wounds don’t heal.
They just hurt less often.
But when they do…
He doubles over, and Mark grabs him in a hug, apologizing until Yuta tells him not to. It’s at least—
She was the wrong one, wasn’t she?
She hadn’t made the natural choice.
There wasn’t only one choice.
She just didn’t choose him, and while it hurts, it’s also freeing.
Jiyeon shrieks and runs over to them from the yard. “Chichi, why are you crying? Papa—”
“We’re just emotional about you going to school,” Mark says, ruffling her hair, the hair Yuta styles for her.
“I’ll still be here,” Rei declares. He wraps an arm around Yuta’s leg, grinning up at him.
And Yuta doesn’t know what to say.
It doesn’t happen the first day.
Or the first week.
But it happens.
Jiyeon loves playing with her brother, but she has homework now. And when Rei keeps talking about coming to school next year, she finally shouts at him, “You’re not going to school! You’re not because you’re an omega!”
Then Rei bursts into tears, and she bursts into tears, and fortunately all the adults are home because even together they don’t really know how to handle it.
“Being an omega doesn’t mean I can’t learn!” Rei yells back.
“They say it does!”
“They’re wrong,” Mark says firmly. He and Johnny take Jiyeon to her room, and Yuta, Taeyong, Ten, and Doyoung take Rei, who doesn’t understand.
“It doesn’t matter that I’m an omega,” Rei weeps.
“It doesn’t,” agrees Ten, drying his cheeks. “But some people think it does.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re not very smart,” Taeyong puts in. “You’re already smarter than them.”
“Look at your Chichi,” Doyoung says. “He’s an omega. And he’s one of the smartest of all of us, which is why he’ll be helping teach you from home.”
Yuta nods.
“If it means I can be like Chichi, then that’s fine,” Rei declares, and Yuta tries not to cry.
He is appeased for now. Jiyeon crawls into her brother’s bed that night and apologizes. They fall asleep innocent in each other’s arms, and when Yuta goes to wake them in the morning, he almost can’t do it. They look so peaceful, so sweet.
Of course, it’s not that easy. Yuta and Johnny are both at home when they get a phone call that Jiyeon has been suspended for fighting. Apparently, she punched a boy beta.
“Good for her,” Johnny mutters. “I bet he deserved it.”
Yuta rolls his eyes. But a thought niggles in his mind. He remembers Jaehyun’s fists.
“Let’s go,” says Johnny, jangling the keys.
Yuta blinks at him.
“She asked for Chichi on the phone,” Johnny says. “We’re going together. It’ll be fine.”
Yuta nods. He slides into the passenger seat. Sometimes he drives, but this is too important.
When they get to the school, the principal’s nostrils flare at the sight of Yuta. Johnny keeps his hand on the small of Yuta’s back. Jiyeon shrieks at the sight of them and runs into Johnny’s arms. He scoops her up, and she bawls into his shoulder.
“What happened?” Yuta demands. Johnny pulls her back from him just to examine her face. No bruises. Her knuckles, on the other hand—those are red.
The principal scoffs. “If you let your omega speak to his betters, then it’s no wonder that—”
“Excuse me,” Johnny interrupts, using his alpha voice. “You are a beta. You don’t get to talk down to omegas. Now, what happened to our daughter?”
“I punched a boy,” Jiyeon weeps. “He said mean things about Rei. And Chichi.”
Yuta gapes. She—what? She got in a fight over that? It’s not worth it, Jiyeon!
“I know the omega rights movement is growing, but we can’t bring politics here,” the principal says. “We are a traditional—”
“He has no right to comment on her home life,” Johnny says. He and the principal argue for a few minutes, but eventually agree on the suspension, and on a warning to the boy not to insult Jiyeon. Not that he’ll listen, most likely.
Bullies are everywhere.
They bring Jiyeon home, and when she gets there she runs straight to Rei and hugs him.
Johnny tells Yuta he should tell her not to fight on his behalf, and he does. She just shrugs and looks mad. He doesn’t press.
It’s not until later when Ten comes home that there are more details. Yuta somehow knows this will be the case. Somehow, meaning mainly that Ten is the one who listens best. Yuta follows Ten and lingers outside Jiyeon’s room as she tells him what happened.
“He said—” Jiyeon sniffles. “He said—omegas are like animals, and they can’t—learn, or think, or love. They just have kids. They listen to betas and alphas, real people. But Rei doesn’t listen to me. And I don’t want him to. And Chichi loves us.”
Yuta wants to drown himself.
“After I hit him,” Jiyeon says, sobbing more, her little breaths hitching. “He said, ‘well, has he ever told you he loves you?’ And Chichi hasn’t. I don’t remember.”
Yuta clasps his hand over his mouth. He wants to vomit.
“That’s because he can’t say it in words to most of us,” Ten soothes her. “He does, though. He says it in a million ways. He makes you okonomiyaki, and teaches you Japanese, and reads you stories. He teaches you to be a good person. He loves you.”
Yuta’s eyes spill over. He can’t—
“Then why doesn’t he say it?”
Good for her. She’s smart, his daughter. Yuta almost feels proud that she won’t swallow the easy answer.
“When your Chichi was younger,” Ten says, and Yuta stiffens. “Something bad happened to him. It makes him scared to say it. Sometimes, not all of us can say things, or can do things. So we have each other to help out. So Chichi loves you by cooking for you, teaching, reading. Dad tells you he loves you. Both your Appas—”
“Oh,” Jiyeon says. “That makes sense.”
Yuta’s legs buckle and he slides down against the wall, muffling his sobs.
He heads upstairs, but he waits there in the hallway to confront Ten, who has the gall to be his decent self and try to hug Yuta.
“Why did you—tell her that?” Yuta demands, shoving him away. “You told her something bad happened!”
“I didn’t give details!” Ten protests.
“She still doesn’t need to know that yet! She’s just a little girl!” Yuta grips his hair. “I don’t want her to hate herself! Her or her brother! They aren’t—ready for that. But you can’t lie to her, Ten. You can’t. If you love her, don’t lie to her.”
Haha, did you lie when you said you loved me? Growing up?
Haha, did you love me and cut me off anyways?
Haha, if you hated me, why didn’t you suffocate me at birth?
Ten scoffs. “For someone who claims he doesn’t love her, you sure do protect her a lot.”
Ten’s words sock him in the stomach. He leaves Yuta gasping for breath.
You think you know me better than I know myself? Yuta wants to hurl at Ten. You’re just like all the others, aren"t you, telling me what I really think and feel because I can’t possibly know myself!
“Or,” says Taeyong when Yuta storms downstairs and tells him what happened. “Maybe you just learned something new.”
Yuta blinks.
“Maybe your definition of love isn’t met. But for Ten’s, it is,” Taeyong says. “Because your view of reality isn’t any more right than his.”
Yuta scowls. “So are you trying to tell me I love her?”
“No,” says Taeyong. “I’m saying you get to define it however you want to define it. But, my parents never loved me, you know. Not in any sense.”
Yuta swallows. They met once. Taeyong’s parents treated his children and Yuta like trash, but they treated everyone like that. Even Taeyong.
Gender had nothing to do with it.
“Our genders are an excuse, ” Mark said after that. “ If it wasn’t that, it’d be something else. A lot of people have a lot of hurt and a lot of anger, and they look for a way to get it out of them because it feels bad keeping it inside.”
He hears Jaehyun’s voice again, and he cowers in his room, hands over his ears, but it echoes, echoes, echoes.
He can’t wait for it to stop, can he?
It may never stop.
Omega…
Need…
Knot…
He gets up anyways. His legs tremble. He stumbles down the stairs, and even though it’s ten at night, he knocks on Jiyeon’s door.
“Yeah?” she calls.
He slips inside, noticing Doyoung sticking his head out of his room and watching Yuta. He closes the door behind him. His hands are shaking. His stomach hurts.
“Chichi?” Jiyeon sits up in her bed, wearing puppy patterned pajamas. “Are you sick?”
She’s worried. She noticed.
“No,” Yuta says, exhaling. He tries to control his hands. “I had a nightmare.”
“Was it about the bad thing that happened?” Jiyeon asks, biting down on Hello Kitty’s ear. Johnny got it for her on a business trip to Tokyo.
He hesitates.
“Poh told me.”
“I know.” Yuta eases himself down next to her, bed springs squeaking. “Yes. It was about that.”
“Oh.”
“Someone—said they loved me,” Yuta says. “But they didn’t mean it. They used it to hurt me.”
Jiyeon’s eyes widen in horror. “How can that happen?”
He thinks of Jaehyun and his parents. No, Jaehyun never loved him. Yuta cannot call any of that love. It was about power for him.
But, he does wonder if the parents who have never once tried to contact their grandchildren, not even the alpha granddaughter, ever showed him love that Yuta would consider love.
If not, that’s sad. But Taeyong didn’t have that either, and he loves.
“I don’t think it matters how,” Yuta says. He puts his arm around her. “You don’t need to win a fight to be right.”
Jiyeon snorts. “But I want to.” Her eyes sparkle, and she grins, and he sees Jaehyun’s dimple in her cheek, and he doesn’t want to vomit at the sight.
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to pick you up from more suspensions.” He pokes that dimple.
She giggles.
Yuta stays with her, telling her a story about Hello Kitty and acting it out on his stomach until she falls asleep. But she’s not entirely asleep when he extricates himself from her arms, replacing his body with Hello Kitty’s. Her eyelids flutter and she whimpers.
He leans down and kisses her forehead. He does that a fair amount. He didn’t think it meant anything.
“Jiyeon, Chichi loves you,” he whispers. “You and your brother, both.”