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No one looks at Ateez and immediately knows their secondary genders, and to a degree, Hongjoong is proud of that. He hopes that by breaking some of the norms, their group can bring comfort and a sense of belonging to their fans who might not fit the mold of their secondary gender.
People see San and Wooyoung and immediately assume that San is an alpha or beta and that Wooyoung is an omega, while in actuality, San is an omega and Wooyoung is an alpha. With their tall statures and voices, people typically think Yunho and Mingi are both alphas, while Yunho is a beta and Mingi is an omega. Seonghwa is an alpha, despite his role as the group’s “mother” and his love for general homemaking, like cooking and cleaning. The only ones that somewhat fit their secondary genders are Jongho, an alpha, and Yeosang, a beta.
Which leaves Hongjoong.
He’s never outright told any of his members his secondary gender. Between having a spicier scent—black pepper and lotus, according to San—and hormone blockers, everyone has just believed that he’s a beta, or even an alpha, considering his temperament and role as leader. He’s never corrected them on that. With their busy schedules, they very rarely let up on their suppressants in order to have heats and ruts, though the week during the year that they do, Yunho, Yeosang, and Hongjoong have their work cut out for them, jumping between helping the members through their cycles and trying to keep everyone fed and hydrated. Hongjoong doesn’t stop his suppressants, though his doctor encourages him to.
And it’s not like Hongjoong hates being an omega. He’s very outspoken about all secondary genders being equal, and on the rare occasion that outsiders—whether that’s staff, interviewers, or even Atiny—make comments against omegas or steer conversations away from San and Mingi, he politely but firmly reminds them that he won’t stand for it. Granted, that’s if the alphas don’t try to beat him to it, which is a bit of a race when Wooyoung is involved in any capacity.
The problem isn’t about being equal or any of that outdated bullshit. It comes down to the fact that Hongjoong is Ateez’s leader. Omegas can lead just as well as an alpha, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. There’s hoops to jump through, and while Hongjoong would leap and dance and catapult over any obstacles for himself, he doesn’t want his secondary gender to be the reason why Ateez lags behind when they could be flying. And they are flying right now. They’re successful, mind-bogglingly so, and Hongjoong…he doesn’t want to be the reason it stops.
So he lets his members and the KQ staff all believe that he’s a beta. The CEO knows the truth, of course, and so does Eden, but other than them and his family, it’s a secret.
And now. Now he’s in a mess.
oO_Oo_oO_Oo
Splayed on the couch, Hongjoong exhales slowly as Wooyoung bounces around in the hallway, loudly announcing, “Their paperwork went through today! Yeonjun said that they’re going to do a VLive tomorrow to tell everyone.”
On the floor because supposedly he couldn’t make it to the couch, Mingi grumbles, “I can’t feel my legs. Young-ah, how are you standing?”
“I’m just excited for them!” Wooyoung answers and continues to the kitchen to make sure Seonghwa and Jongho heard.
San and Yunho are taking their turns in the showers, and Yeosang is half-asleep on the other couch. The adrenaline from a good performance doesn’t usually last longer than the ride back to their dorm, so Hongjoong doesn’t really know how Wooyoung has any energy at the moment either, but he’ll wear himself out within the hour.
“Hyung?” Mingi asks from the floor.
“Hm?”
“Have you…looked into anything?”
Brow furrowed, Hongjoong glances down at the other. “‘Anything’ like what?”
Mingi quickly looks away from him and clears his throat. “Just…wondering if you planned to make anything official…?”
“Oh,” Hongjoong replies dumbly.
Most Kpop groups become packs, but being a pack isn’t legally recognized unless paperwork is submitted. Ateez is a pack as far as anyone is concerned, but if something happened, such as an injury or other accident, the rest of the members wouldn’t be given information on their packmate unless said packmate consented first. All good and well, but that’s not always possible if there’s a surgery or something else that would impede consent. Beyond that, it’s also just nice to be legally recognized as a pack, similar to marriage.
It’s usually two years or so before Kpop groups file to be registered packs. Stray Kids announced their pack status after two and a half years, and now TXT as well, after three and a half. The reason he knows those numbers is because of Wooyoung, who is always talking about how nice it is that his best friends are formal pack members.
Ateez is closing in on four years now since debut.
“I’ll mention it to our manager,” Hongjoong says, as he’s said countless times before.
Mingi’s scent sharpens from sweet strawberries to something sour, but before Hongjoong can say anything, Mingi mumbles something about seeing if one of the bathrooms is free and escapes down the hall.
Hongjoong sighs and presses his palms to his eyes.
Being legally recognized as a pack means paperwork. And that paperwork requires the subgender of every pack member to be disclosed.
Hongjoong eats after everyone else, steering clear of his members to take a quick shower and then hide away in his room. He thinks about going to the studio, but he knows that Seonghwa will nag him if he tries, and he really is exhausted.
Unfortunately, Seonghwa enters their room only minutes after Hongjoong, and his plan of avoiding conversation goes out the window immediately as Seonghwa says, “Mingi seemed a little upset earlier.”
While Seonghwa pulls on his favorite sleep shirt—technically Hongjoong’s that has stretched so much over the years that it hangs on his frame—Hongjoong doesn’t look away from his phone and admits, “It’s my fault. Wooyoung was talking about TXT, and Mingi was asking about our status.”
“What did you tell him?” Seonghwa asks quietly.
“That I would talk to our manager about it.”
“But you won’t.”
Hongjoong sets his phone aside and stares at the ceiling, acutely aware of Seonghwa’s eyes on him. “I just…forget usually, and—”
“Joong-ah, come on,” Seonghwa says.
Hongjoong doesn’t reply.
After a long moment, Seonghwa flips off the lights, and instead of going to his own bed, he clambers up onto the top bunk, careful to avoid bumping his head on the ceiling. The bed is small for two grown men, but they’ve made it work just fine in the past, and Seonghwa has no problem with laying halfway on top of Hongjoong. And Hongjoong will never admit it, but he likes it when Seonghwa dwarfs him like this. His inner omega likes the safety and closeness of his alpha shielding him from the outside world.
“I don’t know why you’re so against it,” Seonghwa murmurs, nose tucked into Hongjoong’s neck while his hand rubs little circles into Hongjoong’s opposite shoulder. “You can talk to us, Joongie. You can talk to me. But I think…it’s come to the point where some of them wonder if you don’t want to be a pack at all.”
Hongjoong feels like a boulder has dropped on his chest, all the oxygen in his lungs freezing in place. But it makes sense why they would think that, and…and that’s on him.
“Do you believe that?” Hongjoong whispers.
The pause, the lack of an immediate “no, of course not”, twists his heart, and before he realizes it, there are tears dripping down his cheek. Alarmed, Seonghwa jerks back, his lavender scent rushing to soothe and comfort, and it just makes Hongjoong hiccup on a sob as he mumbles, “I-I’m sorry.”
“Hongjoong—”
“We need—” Hongjoong inhales quickly to try and calm his breathing. “We need to have a pack meeting.”
“Right now?”
“Right now.” Hongjoong wipes at his eyes and sits up, and Seonghwa lets him, though he doesn’t move right away.
Doe eyes blink at him before Seonghwa hesitantly asks, “Do you want…I mean, it can wait a few minutes—”
“No. No, it can’t.” Hongjoong refuses to let any of them believe that he doesn't want to be a pack. How terrible of a leader is he to not notice until now? Did he not give them enough love and support? Of course putting this off for so long would make them doubt, but he never considered that.
And that’s how all eight of them end up in the living room. Hongjoong still looks and feels like a mess, and all his members are on edge. Seonghwa sits beside him, rubbing his back, and his calming scent is warring with Hongjoong’s bitter distress. Wooyoung, Yeosang, and San are all still blinking sleep from their eyes, despite not being asleep for long, while Jongho is sitting ramrod straight beside them, only his scent giving away his nerves, the pine sharp with anxiety. Mingi isn’t much better, cuddled up against Yunho’s side.
Taking a deep breath, Hongjoong begins, “I’m sorry to drag you all out of bed, but Seonghwa told me…something that couldn’t wait to be addressed.” When no one says anything, he continues, “I know that you’ve all been wondering why I haven’t filed for us to be an official pack yet. And there’s something that I haven’t told you.”
That seems to get their attention more. Mingi stares down at the floor while Wooyoung sits closer to the edge of his seat.
“I…” Hongjoong didn’t realize how difficult this would be. He's not ashamed of being an omega. He's not. But he's a little ashamed that he's hidden it for so long. “The paperwork requires all of us to state our secondary genders and sign off on them before it can be sent off.”
“So? Why’s that important?” Wooyoung asks.
“Not like that’s a secret, hyung,” San adds.
However, beside him, Seonghwa’s hand stops moving, and he can see the other’s wide eyes in his periphery. On the other couch, Jongho seems to have the same realization and quietly asks, “Hongjoong-hyung…what’s your secondary gender?”
Wooyoung glances at Jongho. “What? He’s a beta, you know that.”
“No…” Yunho looks at Hongjoong, who nervously chews his lip. “Hyung never told us specifically what his subgender is. We just assumed that.”
Hongjoong closes his eyes and tries to force himself to breathe evenly, with minimal success. “I…I’m an omega.”
Silence falls.
Then San bolts up and exclaims, “You haven’t had a heat!”
That isn’t really the reaction Hongjoong expected, but before he can say anything, Mingi asks in a panic, “When was the last time you had a heat, hyung?”
“I-I—” Hongjoong looks between the two of them, not really registering the situation. “A couple years ago, I guess, but—”
“That’s dangerous,” Seonghwa says, hands gripping Hongjoong’s arm. "Joong-ah, why would you put it off so long? We would have helped—"
Disoriented by everything, Hongjoong barely processes the frazzled words of his members as they talk about whether or not they can get time off for Hongjoong to go through a heat, but suddenly, Yeosang is kneeling in front of him.
“Hyung,” Yeosang says, taking one of Hongjoong’s hands in his, “it doesn’t matter if you’re an omega.” He glances over his shoulder at Wooyoung and San, who are bickering about…something, and then back to Hongjoong. “I think we’ll all give you Hell for hiding it once the shock and worry dies down, but you don’t need to worry about it.”
Hongjoong is crying again, and while Seonghwa wipes the tears away gently, Hongjoong whispers, “I just…I-I didn’t want things to be hard on you, all of you. You’ve worked s-so hard, and having an omega as a leader, it makes everything harder.”
“You work hard, too,” Seonghwa says, kissing his shoulder. “You work so hard, and if anyone thinks less of us because our captain is an omega, that’s their own fault.”
Nodding, Yeosang adds, “You’re our Luna.”
Hongjoong sniffles. “Luna?”
“Omega equivalent of a head Alpha,” Seonghwa replies.
“I thought that was just the pack omega.”
“A pack omega is the head Alpha’s second-in-command,” Yeosang says. “A Luna is the leader. It’s not common, but common enough to have a name.”
Apparently done with their heat conversation, the rest of the members have crowded around the three. At Yeosang’s explanation, San says, “Besides, if our pack alpha is the mom, it makes sense for our Luna to be the dad, right?”
“As much as anything makes sense in our pack,” Yunho teases.
Mingi makes some sort of battle cry. “Yeah! We’re fucking interdimensional pirates! We make our own rules!”
“Damn right!” Wooyoung agrees.
And Hongjoong laughs, and they somehow end up in a cuddle pile in the middle of the living room floor, but that’s okay.
(The next day, everyone berates him for keeping his secondary gender a secret for so long, but he expected as much.)
((On their fourth debut anniversary, Ateez announces that they are legally recognized as a pack, with Hongjoong as their Luna and Seonghwa as their pack alpha.))