Chapter Text
Ohm wasn’t as into social media as many of his friends, so he didn’t see the news at first. Only learning about it when he woke up that morning to seventeen texts and five missed calls—two of which were from his manager, which immediately caught his attention. He shook his head, trying to wake up a bit before squinting at a few of the texts. What in the world was going on?
He assumed it must all be related, so he opted to brief himself before calling his manager back. His relief at confirming no one had died was short lived when he finally pieced together the situation.
Apparently there had been a commotion on twitter last night where rumors regarding him had started a wild fire. One of the texts even included screenshots of the offending tweets.
To sum it up, some person had outed him as an omega, and, what’s worse—Ohm felt his anger boiling up—they were saying he was somehow the cause of breaking up Bright and Win’s relationship.
What??
It was a lot to process, and Ohm felt blinded by confusion and anger. It didn’t even make sense! What did he have to do with Bright and Win’s relationship? Gmm’s alpha and omega power couple were untouchable, and, as far as he knew, still very much not broken up. Ohm was friendly with them, mostly through football and in passing through work, but they weren’t even that close. The last time he’d even seen either of them had been over three weeks ago!
He opened twitter and quickly found the threads himself, scrolling through the conversations. From what he could tell, it had started out by just deducing his gender, which he’d kept quiet up until now mostly because he was a private person and didn’t see the need to share it. Not that he was ashamed about being an omega, but it was a part of his private life that others—especially fans—didn’t need to know. Most of his friends knew of course, it wasn’t easy to hide from those who were around you all the time, but they all respected his wishes and wouldn’t have told anyone.
But the accusations of him being the cause of the breakup… He scrolled viciously. Then finally, paused on what was probably the root of it. Some tweets were saying he had somehow seduced Bright while the two of them were together away from Win.
What the fuck? When had he even been alone with Bright? He pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking. Maybe that one time a while back when Ohm had stopped by the recording studio to watch Bright do a music video. He’d been going there to do some drumming anyway and thought he’d catch his friend’s performance since he was early.
Fans were so obnoxious sometimes—always snooping into every crevice.
Some other response tweets were creeping into prejudice territory, saying things like unattached omegas were nothing but alpha hunters, driven by their instincts above all basic decency, even if it meant home wrecking.
Ohm wasn’t that kind of omega. Even if he did like someone, he would never break up a relationship over it, especially between his friends. Besides, there was really only one alpha he was interested in, and that wasn’t going to happen. So he’d shut that door a long time ago and moved on.
Ohm wasn’t nearly as upset about being outed as omega as he was about being accused of this. His gender would have become public at some point, especially if he was ever in a future relationship. But being reminded that some people still thought like this about omegas made him feel sick and angry.
He hadn’t gotten any texts from Bright or Win, but he wondered what backlash this would have on them. And as for himself, he and Nanon were still in the throes of Bad Buddy promotion and appearances. They couldn’t afford any negative press. A new wave of fury washed over him at the thought of this affecting Nanon at all. He hadn’t gotten any texts from Nanon either. Maybe he hadn’t seen it yet. Or maybe he blamed Ohm and wasn’t speaking to him now. Shit…
How was he going to handle and fix this? He took a steadying breath and called his manager.
She picked up on the first ring. “I assume you’ve seen it?” She started without preamble.
“Khab. You know it’s all bullshit, right?” Ohm sighed.
“Of course,” she said immediately, and Ohm was grateful he had a manager like her rallying for him. She continued, “This is hardly the first time rumors like this have targeted a celebrity. But we do need to address it. Now, the omega part is neither here nor there. It doesn’t matter that you’re an omega, what really matters in this particular situation is that you’re an unattached omega. What they’re really on about is the sabotage aspect, so that’s the part we need to clear up.”
Ohm didn’t like the implication that him not belonging to any alpha was a problem—hell, none of this should even be his responsibility to apologize for. But that was the dark, unfair side of fame that reared its head against everyone at one point or another. Whatever plan they came up with today, the best he could hope for is that this would all blow over quickly and the company lawyers would be working behind the scenes to find the original slanderer. In the meantime, it was up to him to protect both himself, Nanon, Bright, and Win.
His manager plowed on. “Luckily—unlike your gender, which is speculation now but can be proven—no one can prove your relationship status one way or another, so everyone will have to take your word for it.”
“Okay… what do we do?”
“For the purpose of damage control, you need to announce that you could not have done anything to Bright because you are in fact not unattached, and you haven’t been for some time. You will say that you have been in a relationship with Nanon for over a month or so, and you two will have to perpetuate that ruse until this all dies down.”
Ohm felt his stomach drop. Her brilliant plan was fake dating with Nanon? “I would never ask him to do that!”
Even if Nanon wasn’t probably pissed at him about this whole shit show, Ohm knew his friend would never want to do anything like this. Not in a hundred years. Nanon was a phenomenal actor, but pretending to be attracted to Ohm for weeks or months would test even his abilities. Nanon wasn’t into him, like at all. He liked small omegas with long legs and long hair who wore tiny dresses and looked cute on his arm. And he didn’t even particularly enjoy pretending to be in a relationship with Ohm for their shipwork. Ohm knew him well enough to understand all this, and he’d worked so hard for so long to hide it so far away that it couldn’t hurt him.
But his manager sighed, cutting him off. “It was his idea, hon. He offered.”
-.-.-.-.-.-
In a perfect world, he could just make a statement saying he did nothing of the sort, and it wouldn’t matter whether he was single or not. Why should the public be privy to the knowledge of his personal relationship status? He sighed—of course it wasn’t like that. He knew it perfectly well. In this industry, fame was a double edged sword: you either gave the masses what they demanded or they dragged you down into destruction.
Later that day, after answering all the texts from his concerned friends, and calling both Bright and Win (they were understanding. Bright even laughed at the idea of it, which was a little insulting, if Ohm was honest. But he knew it was just because of how close those two were. Nothing was going to come between them, let alone someone like Ohm), he had one last call to make.
His thumb hovered over Nanon’s name in his contacts for a few seconds before he finally tapped it.
Ohm didn’t know what he was expecting, but it sure wasn’t Nanon answering immediately with notes of distress in his voice. “Ohm! I wanted to call you but I didn’t want to pile on. I’m sorry, man. If I’d been more open with our shipwork, this wouldn’t have happened to you.”
Ohm was so taken aback, all he could say was, “What?”
“I feel terrible," Nanon continued as if he hadn't spoken. "If I had, more people would be focused on you and I instead of gossiping about things they have no idea about.”
If he hadn’t been told that this was all Nanon’s idea, Ohm would have expected his friend to be, at best, teasing him about the whole situation, maybe laughing it off like Bright—and at worst, angry at him over the effect this will inevitably have on their success. Or, worse than that, Ohm thought—what if Nanon believed it? What if he thought Ohm was the type of slimy omega to alpha-snatch and ruin relationships? What if he’d sided with Bright and Win and refused to speak to him ever again?
But no. He was being stupid. This was Nanon. The guy who saw the best in everyone and always supported his friends no matter what. Of course he would want to help him. They were friends, even if that’s all they were.
“Non…this isn’t your fault. If anything, I feel bad you might be affected by this. Is that why you’re doing this for me?” Because you feel guilty? The last thing Ohm wanted was to guilt Nanon into dating him, even if it wasn’t real. That just made it so much worse.
“I want to help you. I should have protected you,” he stopped suddenly, catching himself at a sound from Ohm. “I mean—not because you’re an omega, just…I mean, because you’re my friend.”
There it was again: friend. Not boyfriend, not mate, not omega. Ohm thought, not for the first time, that he wouldn’t even have minded if Nanon had meant that he, as an alpha, wanted to protect Ohm as an omega. Though he’d never admit something like that aloud.
“Thank you,” he swallowed and answered softly. “So, what do we do now?”