CHAPTER 01: Before Corruption
- A/B/O Dynamics. Alpha!Kageyama and M!Omega!OC. This is my first A/B/O fic.
- This story is also on Ao3 as an m!insert fic since FF dot net doesn't allow them. Furthermore, it will be the explicit version of this fic.
- There will be dub-con themes in future chapters; this has been your warning.
"We are fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance."
—a Japanese proverb
TOBIO IS FIVE when his mother first brings up the strange topic that is second-genders. But much like the other children in his neighborhood, to Tobio, second-genders were still something of an enigma. Of course, he'd caught bits and pieces concerning the subject from conversing adults, however not enough to comprehend what it was, exactly.
"Tobio-chan, do you know what second-genders are?" his mother asks as she puts away the coloring book he's scribbling all over. Then his lips purse and his eyebrows furrow in thought as she pulls him onto the couch.
"Alphas are the top dogs!" he finally exclaims after much consideration, puffing his chest and beaming like a proud parrot.
"And?"
"Alphas are cool!"
A strained smile stretches across her face. "… Are alphas the only thing you know about?"
"Yes, mama! Papa always says that I'm gonna be the best alpha in Japan."
His wholehearted enthusiasm is contagious, inevitably spreading to his mother as she pulls him into a tight hug. "Yes, they are, aren't they? I've no doubt that you'll be the best alpha in the whole wide world!"
"And the best volleyball player!"
"And the best volleyball player," his mother adds with a light chuckle. Then all too quickly, her smile drops and she holds Tobio's face with gentle hands. "But Tobio-chan, you need to listen to mama, okay? What she's about to tell you is very important."
"Yes, mama."
"Like you said, alphas are very strong. They're the bosses of everyone around them—but there are times in which they themselves can become weak too."
"Like an omega?"
She nods. "Yes, maybe even weaker. You see, sometimes an omega will have… bad days. And on those bad days, if an Alpha were to be around, things could go very wrong for the both of them, you know?"
"Does the omega beat them up?"
She almost sighs, but stops herself from doing so. Then she smiles again, and gently pulls Tobio's baby-fat cheeks. "No, baby, the omega won't beat them up. But the alpha won't be… their normal selves. They might do something to the omega that they wouldn't usually be allowed to do. Something they might want to say sorry for. You understand what mama means, right?"
"Kinda... but what does that have to do with me, mama?"
"Tobio, I've no doubt that you'll be an alpha—but just because one is an alpha, that doesn't necessarily make them better than a beta or omega. Some alphas out there are terrible, terrible people who exploit second-genders, and use their status for their own selfish gains."
"Ex… ploy?"
"Exploit. That means using something, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. And some alphas will use betas and omegas for bad reasons."
Tobio nods, and looks up at his mother with wide eyes. "Are you an omega, mama?"
"No, baby, I'm a beta, which means that I'm just a normal person," she answers, pinching his nose as she does so.
"Then if alphas are the boss and betas are normal, then what are omegas?"
The question catches her off-guard, and she gazes at her son with a dumbfounded expression. "Well… omegas are people who… they're more…" her lips purse, and she tries desperately to come up with a suitable explanation. Tobio had never been the inquisitive type, but on the rare occasion that he did have something to ask, it was always something she couldn't easily explain to someone his age. "They're people who are more… defenseless than alphas and betas, because sometimes they have bad days, and can't help themselves."
"But everybody has bad days, mama…"
"No, baby, their bad days are worse. So bad, in fact, they have to take special medicines to keep them away, so that no one around them gets hurt." She hopes the words she had carefully weaved together are enough for Tobio's simplemindedness (she blames that part of him on his father), but the scrunched expression on his face says otherwise.
"Then omegas are just weak—"
"You must not ever say that, Tobio!" cries his mother, the shrillness of her voice and the panic on her face both unfamiliar and frightening.
"W-Why? It's the truth, right..."
"No, it's not true at all, Tobio. Just because they're not as strong as alphas and betas, lots of people think that omegas are easy targets to push around and bully. Don't be like those people, okay, Tobio? Omegas lead difficult lives, but that's exactly why they deserve the most respect among the second-genders. Do you understand?"
"… Yes, mama," he murmurs, and stares at his knees. "And… I'm… very… sorry…" he adds, though under his breath. His mother dons a tired smile, and she wraps her arms around Tobio, holding him against her bosom as she strokes his hair.
"It's okay, Tobio-chan. Mama isn't angry with you. It's just that your grandma is an omega, and mama still feels very protective of her. You see, back when I was your age, grandma often told me stories—and some were very sad stories that still make mama cry when she thinks about them. Of course, there were a lot of good and funny ones that made me laugh until my stomach hurt, but…" her smile shrinks, and she strokes Tobio's cheek. "The bad ones are very hard to forget."
They sit together in silence for a few minutes before Tobio's mother gets up and ushers him off the couch. "Now, go play—mama needs to finish cleaning the house. Remember our talk and most importantly, treat those around you with respect!"
Tobio nods and grabs his favorite volleyball before racing out the door, no doubt forgetting all but the simple fact that there are three types of people.
There are those who are strong.
Those who are normal.
And those who are weak.
TOBIO IS SEVEN when he meets the next-door neighbor's kid. At first, he thinks they're a tomboy because they're small and scrawny like a girl. But when they peek at him from behind their mother's legs, Tobio notices that there's some fat and muscle to the kid that most girls around that age wouldn't have.
"I just moved here with my family. I'm Nakahara Mayu, and this is my son, Atsushi. He's seven, but still gets a little shy when strangers are around."
Tobio's mother smiles and ushers him towards the boy. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Nakahara-san. I'm Kageyama Haruko, and the little one here is Tobio. He's the same age as yours."
Atsushi looks at him and freezes, his hands fisted tightly around his mother's sweater. But his mother just pushes him forward as well.
Now he's standing in front of Tobio, stiff as a board. His hair is light and tousled, and his brown eyes have a honey-gold hue to them. He tries to smile at Tobio, but it's obvious that he feels just as forced into the situation; neither are capable of uttering a single word. So they stare.
And stare.
And stare—until Tobio's mom decides to take matters into her own hands. She takes Atsushi's mother by the arm and guides her inside, but not before giving her son a look that practically screams, "GO PLAY."
Then when they're gone, Tobio looks at Atsushi once more.
"… D-Do… you… like volleyball," he asks, though it's sounds more like a statement as opposed to a question. The boy's head tilts to the side, and his eyes squint like he's trying to find an answer within the floor cracks. A minute passes, then two—
"Well?! Do you or do you not like volleyball?!"
Tobio's sudden outburst nearly has Atsushi jumping out of his skin, and he instantly starts nodding. Although he may have just been lying to avoid getting yelled at again, Tobio's simpleminded-self is too gleeful at the chance of having a someone to practice volleyball with.
"Then let's go play volleyball right now!"
TOBIO IS EIGHT when he learns that the other kids don't like him very much. He learns this the hard way after asking a fellow classmate to practice receiving with him, to which the classmate replies:
"No. I don't like kids like you."
When he looks around for someone else to ask, he comes to the realization that the strange looks on everyone's faces isn't because they feel sorry for him—it's because they're all thinking the same thing.
A minute passes, then two—yet no one approaches Tobio. Then his gaze lowers, and he starts slink into the crowd—
"Uhm… I'll practice with you, Kageyama."
The black-haired boy turns around—standing behind him is Atsushi. He tosses the soccer ball in his hand to someone else and approaches Tobio with a gentle smile. "Let's play volleyball," he says as he grabs Tobio by the arm and pulls him outside.
For a while, they take turns receiving; throughout this time, Atsushi is rambling on and on about school and schoolmates. Though he's in the same class as Tobio, they don't sit anywhere near each other. They also don't have the same friends, or the same interests (aside from volleyball). Tobio has never even thought of him as an acquaintance.
They're just neighbors who occasionally play volleyball together.
"You know the other kids don't like you, right?"
The question initially catches Tobio off-guard, like a stray ball landing on his head, but he's quick to recover. "It's not like it bothers me," he replies, and it's true. Some part of him has always known that his classmates never truly liked him—today's incident just confirmed those suspicions. But it wasn't as though he was begging for their validation, neither did he need it. "I only care about volleyball, anyway."
"Dang, that's a pretty freakin' cool thing to say," Atsushi says in awe, catching Tobio off-guard again. The ball ricochets off his forearms at an odd angle and rolls off somewhere. Chasing after it, he ducks his head and hides his reddening cheeks.
"Ahahaha! I guess I was wrong—you were really lame just now!"
"Sh-Shut up!" Tobio hurls the ball at the boy, feeling not even the slightest bit of regret when the ball collides with his partner's face and sends him falling to the ground. "Besides, weren't you just calling me cool a second ago?!"
Atsushi rubs the red imprint on his forehead, his face scrunched his pain despite the continuous giggles slipping from his lips. "That's 'cause you're so good at volleyball, and even tho' you're pretty dumb at everything else, I still think that you're cooler than the other boys," he replies, "Like a Jump! character or somethin'."
And when he looks at Tobio with those honey-brown eyes that reflect nothing but honesty, the boy learns something else that day.
Atsushi isn't just some neighbor he'll occasionally play volleyball with.
He's just become Tobio's first and only friend.
TOBIO IS ALSO EIGHT when he learns that the real term for an omega's "bad day" is "heat"— when their body wants a baby so bad, they become like a caged animal: wild, and desperate to escape.
He learns this after witnessing an omega collapse near the river, their body crumpled and their cries full of a kind of misery that his young self doesn't understand yet. Atsushi, who'd been practicing volleyball with him, was there as well.
But unlike Tobio, who was frightened out of confusion, Atsushi was scared of something else.
Something Tobio would—and could—never truly understand.
FOLLOWING THE INCIDENT, Atsushi's parents put him on a curfew. But one night, he and Tobio had gotten carried away while playing volleyball, not returning home until it was nearly ten in the evening.
Atsushi's parents grounded him for nearly two weeks.
It was the first time Tobio saw him—the only boy he knew who took a volleyball straight to the face and laughed—cry like a baby.
TOBIO IS TEN when his homeroom teacher teaches the class what it means to possess a second-gender; things that will have a large effect on their life, such as an omega's heat-cycle and pheromones. Apparently, pheromones don't start kicking in until puberty, but Tobio still attempts to activate his own.
Of course, it's done all in vain.
After the lesson is completed, and lunch starts, he approaches Atsushi, who is in the same class.
"You know, milk doesn't actually help you grow taller, idiot," Atsushi says with a little smirk, and Tobio smacks him upside the head.
"Shut up! You're just mad 'cause I'm taller than you by five inches."
"Four-point-five, Stupidyama."
"Close enough!"
Then Atsushi goes strangely silent, and he looks out the window. The faraway gaze he wears almost disturbs Tobio, for he'd never seen such an intimidating expression cross his face before. The air around the two goes becomes deathly still, and Tobio ponders if height had become something of a sore subject to his slightly-shorter-than-average friend.
"Uhm…" he begins awkwardly, and Atsushi looks at him with a raised eyebrow. "We're not done growing yet. You'll get taller. Not taller than me, but taller than you are now."
Atsushi opens his mouth to retort, but then closes it and smiles.
"Never change, Stupidyama," he laughs. "Please."
Though Tobio is confused and a little offended, the exact depth behind those words never truly hits him until later.
Much later.
TOBIO IS ELEVEN when he and Atsushi get into their first argument. It happened during the summer before graduation as they laid together on Tobio's bed, having surrendered to the suffocating heat after thirty minutes under the blazing sun.
"I hope you're an omega," Tobio had said, out of the blue. And if the room wasn't silent then, it certainly would have been now.
"Uhm... what?"
"I said, when I present as alpha, I'd want you as my omega."
"Ha… Haah…?" Atsushi makes a noise of discomfort and noticeably shifts further away from Tobio on the bed, kicking off some of the volleyball magazines they'd been reading. Tobio makes a troubled face when they fall to the ground in a crumpled heap, but is more concerned with Atsushi's strange behavior than a couple of 100 yen magazines. "Can you even hear the words coming from your mouth…?"
"Of course I can, idiot, can you?" he scowls, "I said I want you to be my omega."
"YOU'RE THE IDIOT!"—the sudden rise in Atsushi's tone has Tobio almost flinching—"Why would you even say something so dumb?! We haven't even presented yet, so don't go assuming things!"
"Why are you yelling?!" the black-haired boy retorts, now sitting up, "And all I said was that I hope you're an omega! I never assumed anything—besides, it's not like being an omega is even a bad thing. And if we become a pair bond, then we won't even have to deal with such things as ruts and heats!"
"Tobio, you're so stupid! Do you even know anything about alphas and omegas?! Or even pair bonds, for that matter?!" Atsushi's eyes are wide and filled with panic as he grabs Tobio by the collar of his tee, "Don't act be so trivial when it comes to these things! It's not just some minor inconvenience to our life, it's a freakin' part of us!"
"W-Well don't use such big words as i-ica… inca…"
"Inconvenience!"
"That one! Otherwise, I won't ever know what you mean!" he shouts, his chest now heaving as visibly as Atsushi's own. And Tobio's not sure how long they sat across from each other, their expressions fierce enough to start a fire. But the spell is broken instantly when Atsushi jumps off the bed.
"I'm going home!"
"Fine, then!"
The brunet leaves, but not before slamming the door, his stomping shaking the house like an oni was inside, trashing everything in its path.
But long after Atsushi is gone, Tobio still feels it.
That unsettling silence that churns his stomach, and makes him wish he can go back in time so that they'd never gotten into that fight in the first place.
SUCH A POWER isn't needed, Tobio later discovers. An hour after the fight, Atsushi comes barreling back into his room, as though they'd never fought in the first place.
"LET'S PLAY VOLLEYBALL!" he exclaims, huffing through his nose excitedly. "I just watched a really cool match on Youtube, and now I wanna play!"
Of course, Tobio is simple-minded. All he needs to hear is "play" and "volleyball" in the same sentence, and that's all the amending it takes to restore their soured relationship. But despite it being Atsushi who apologizes first, it's not as though Tobio doesn't learn his lesson. Following the incident, he's careful to never bring up the subject of second-genders again.
And they don't think anything of it, either.
… At least, not for a while.