Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

     To present as an omega is a curse

     The world is cruel and so are her children.

Sakura was asked by his gym teacher, Mr. Kito, to stay after class. He said that there was something that they needed to discuss in private.

     Sakura actually liked this teacher. He was the only one who had never picked him out and treated him like a pariah for his hair and eyes. Where other teachers would yell at him and mark down his grades (accusing him of cheating) Mr. Kito had never once raised his voice at him, always treated him gently, as if he were normal. He was the only adult in his life that ever seemed to care.

     Sakura followed him unquestioningly. Mr. Kito’s office was in the boys’ locker room. Opening the door for him, Mr. Kito beckoned him inside first. Stepping in and closing the door behind him, subtly locking it as Sakura headed on to the office space. With the door closed, Mr. Kito followed after him.

Plastering a gentle smile on his face, he laid a hand on Sakura’s shoulder, as if to hold him in place. “Sakura?” His voice was warm, kind. “I wanted to talk to you for a moment.”

     Sakura tried to shrug off the hand, he was very uncomfortably (close)in his space, but it tightened like a vice around his shoulder, trapping him as he was pulled into a tight embrace against his chest.

     “Sakura? Sakura. Sakura did you know.” Mr. Kito held him in a bruising grip. Leaning to whisper into Sakura’s ear. “You smell like a blooming cherry blossom. So sweet, so innocent. So— Omega.” He whispered breathlessly. Sakura could feel his warm breath on his neck and he tried to squirm free, blushing violently.

     “W-What are you—“

     It never occurred to Sakura until this moment, but Mr. Kito was a full grown Alpha at least three times his size. He couldn’t break free.

     “Oh! no no, Sakura~ we can’t have that.” In a swift motion, Sakura was sent crashing against the floor hitting his head against a locker corner on the way down, before he was swiftly trapped by the crushing weight of the man pinning him down.(that was going to leave a bruise tomorrow) “You’ve always been my favorite student. Play nice now sweet omega, and I’ll give you a little treat.” He cooed.

     Sakura struggled in his grip, he couldn’t understand what was happening. His ears were ringing his head was spinning, and his vision was growing spotty. But, he knew that tone of voice (silky and saccharine) was not a good one, he was pinned and he couldn’t fight back. Sakura could feel a sticky warm puddle forming under his head from where he hit it.

     Sakura continued to struggle in his grip, the sickening smell of his panic and blood filled the room underneath the heady scent emanating from his teacher.

     It was when the Alpha went for his gym shorts that he got over his shock and started thrashing. Sakura tried to throw the grown man off, kicking and screaming, but it was no use. The man wouldn’t budge.

     A hand clasped over his mouth roughly. “HUSH little omega! This will only hurt if you fight it!” Sakura roughly shook his hand free and tried to scream again, only for a gym shirt to be shoved into his mouth, gagging him. “Stay quiet!” He hissed, “Your voice is grating on my ears!”

     He couldn’t breathe. With the shirt gagging him, he couldn’t inhale. As Sakura’s struggles started to calm down, Mr. Kito pounced on the opportunity.

     It hurt.

      It hurt more than anything he had ever experienced before. More than the harsh words of his classmates, or the belting from his father. More than the scratches from his mother, or the punches and kicks from fighting.

     He cried.

     He cried and he felt humiliated.

The minutes stretched like hours in his mind. He tried to make his thoughts drift elsewhere, to convince himself that he wasn’t at school pinned down on the dirty locker room floor by the only adult in his life that ever seemed to care. That he wasn’t lying in a pool of his own blood that was rapidly growing as he sustained even more injuries. It wasn’t working. The sight, the sound, the smell, the feeling. It was impossible for him to block out for long.  His mind kept getting dragged forcibly back to his trapped body. Eventually, the pain grew to be too much and he blacked out, going limp. When it was over, Sakura was left to bleed out alone. The teacher had unlocked the door and left.

     Sakura woke up with a concerned classmate’s face in his vision.

     He doesn’t know how long he had been lying on that locker room floor, he doesn’t know if his teacher will be caught. There are no cameras in locker rooms, they have no evidence that anything happened to him. And Sakura certainly wasn’t going to come forward. He was scared, he was tired, and he was the school’s delinquent outcast. (The social Pariah) Children are cruel, and poor Sakura would be the one they blamed after all, omegas are the problem, tempting the alphas. The alphas just can’t help themselves, the omegas should behave better. He hadn’t even gotten his first heat yet, hadn’t even gotten the chance to fully present before his innocence had been forcibly ripped away from him. Leaving him with nothing but dark thoughts and an even darker outlook on life.      

     It was a couple of kids in a sports club that found him there, half unconscious. Most of them laughed at his agony, said he got what he deserved, two of them were terrified and tried to help Sakura, they hand him fresh gym clothes to put on. Sakura snaps out of his daze halfway through putting them on, he panics, and runs out of the building.

     He felt dirty

     So incredibly dirty. Like no part of his body was his own. His body aches all over, and he has a terrible headache, and he feels nauseous the whole way, but he manages to drag himself home through the frigid February weather only stopping to throw up twice.

     He stumbles his way to the bathroom and locks himself inside. Frantically, he turns on the shower and just sits in the spray (not even bothering to change the freezing temperature.) still in the gym clothes, he sits for awhile, letting the shower cover the sounds of him sobbing, before his stomach gets the better of him and he vomits again. When the world finally stops spinning, he drags himself up and strips for a proper shower. He turned the faucet to as hot as it could go and scrubs.

The water is running bright red.

And scrubs.

Scarlet drips down from his legs and swirls around his feet.

And scrubs.

The water eventually runs clear.

And scrubs.

     He scrubs until his skin is red and raw. He scrubs under the the blistering heat of the shower. He scrubs until he can no longer feel anything aside from his own scraping at his skin. He scrubs trying to make himself feel clean. He’ll never be clean again.

     His chest is constricting on him, making it difficult to breathe. His heart is racing, faster, faster, faster. And with every pounding beat of his heart comes a shuddering intake breath with it. He can’t BREATHE. The heat and humidity of the shower was suffocating. The walls are closing in on him again as his vision grows dark around the edges, tears in his eyes. He scratches at himself, trying to center himself. His arms, his legs, his stomach. Slowly, the pain brings him back into awareness. The darkening of his vision starts to fade little by little.

     Feeling somewhat back to himself, Sakura tries to slow his breathing. He has taken too long in the bathroom. His brother Tenki is at the door knocking.

     In some detached part of his brain, Sakura can hear him. “Haruka? Hey, you’ve been in there a long time… You might want to hurry up before Mom and Dad get home from work…”

     It takes Sakura a tense minute to find his voice -it sounds raw constricted- “I-I’ll be out soon, just- just give me a minute.”

     He can just barely hear his brother walk away with a hum of dismissal through the sound of the shower spray. Sakura sighs heavily and shuts off the water, leaning against the wall to keep himself from toppling over. He’s tired. He’s tired and scared.

      Sakura steps shakily from the shower and wraps himself in a towel, gathering up his wet clothes and makes the frigid treck outside to his shed. He pulls on the first thing within reach, then settles against the wall in the corner farthest from the door. Exhausted, Sakura’s panicked mind shuts down and forces him to fall into an uneasy sleep.

Chapter Text

     Sakura wakes up feeling terrible and terrified. His mind is in a fog, he tries to ignore what happened, block it out. He felt like someone had tried to jam dozens of cotton balls behind his eyes whenever he moved his head too quickly.

     The harsh light of midday is what had woken Sakura up shining directly into his eyes. It was so different from the gentle brushes of dawn that he was used to. He quickly shuts his eyes, the light through the window was blinding. Sakura has never slept in this late before (he didn’t want to provide more reasons for his parents to punish him.) He was extremely late for school…

     Slowly opening his eyes again, he tried to make sense of the situation. He turns to move, only for everything to come crashing down on him all at once with a wave of pain.

     His stomach was in knots and his mind was hazy. With each movement, his injuries protested against him agonizingly. Sitting up seemed a monumental task.

     It’s cold, he’s in pain, and he is terrified. Sakura doesn’t want to confront what had happened yesterday and he doesn’t want to move. A pit wells in his stomach and briefly his heart felt like it froze in his chest as ice flooded his veins. he doesn’t know what to do.

     He absolutely cannot face his parents, and he can’t bring himself to go to school and risk seeing that teacher again either. (He bets that he just ruined that man’s career.) The pit in his stomach grew, why did he allow himself to trust an adult? He felt his lungs constrict at the thought. He had allowed himself to be attacked.

      His parents would throw him out for doing something so disgusting and shameful. They’d probably either kick him out, or marry him off to the teacher now that his sanctity and purity as an omega was ruined.

     “No self respecting Omega” he scoffed the word, “should ever behave so heinously.”

     He remembers hearing his father talking about similar cases with his mother as they  were eating breakfast together with his brother.

     “Without proper discipline those omegas will never learn how to conduct themselves. Spreading their legs shamelessly for anyone who walks past.” He sneers, waving his hand dismissively. “If I had to raise a thing like that— it should obviously have known not to tempt an alpha into sleeping with them. If they wanted people to treat them properly, then they should have dressed and behaved appropriately! Silent and subservient to their alphas and betas.”

     His brother didn’t seem to want to finish eating after that conversation. keeping his head down and poking at his tomagoyaki with his chopsticks—

     Sakura can’t afford to be kicked out, and he certainly never wants to be in the same room as Mr. Kito ever again.  He knows that everything that happened was his own fault. That clearly he had been asking for it. That he shouldn’t have flaunted his smell (there was no way he could’ve done anything different. He didn’t want this to happen to him. He couldn’t have known this would happen, nor could he have predicted that he would present that day.) Sakura starts to feel nauseous again. He doesn’t know what his father will do to him, and any time he allows his thoughts spiral into what happened to him yesterday. (The blood, the pain, not being able to breathe or move—)

     It was already too late to show up at school, so Sakura decides to stay holed up in the shed. If he’s lucky, he won’t have to deal with his parents barging in on him. (There’s blood on his clothing, he’ll have to do something about that when he can bring himself to move)

     Sakura curls into himself, clutching his stomach. It was too cold to move and he wanted to preserve his warm patch on the floor. The frigid air nipped at his face, as well as his fingers and toes. While the snow outside helped insulate the shed, it wasn’t enough to keep him warm, just barely enough to prevent him from getting hypothermia.

             ***

     Tenki didn’t like the nervous atmosphere at school that day. There were whispers that always seemed to stop whenever he enters a room, it puzzles him. Every time he would ask another student, they shifted uncomfortably and bluntly changed the subject).

     Tenki is disturbed by the whispered rumors he does hear flying around. Someone had raped a presenting Omega student on campus, and it had happened in the boys locker room. Tenki winced internally. To be an omega in this town was practically a death sentence, not to mention that it was incredibly rare for someone to awaken as one in the first place. (The statistics were roughly one in a thousand that anyone would awaken as anything other than a beta.)

     The only thing that Tenki managed to overhear was that the baseball team had found the victim lying in a pool of blood where they were unconscious and half naked on the cold tile floor.

     He hoped and prayed that it was just coincidence, Tenki remembered the slight strain in his little brother’s voice when he called from the bathroom. Haruka had been in the shower for almost an hour when he went to check on him. The sinking pit in his stomach and the slight ache in his heart told him that it was not, but he pushed those thoughts aside to cling to his desperate hope.

     Nobody was outright insulting the victim by name and he figured that if it was Haruka, many would be more direct with their insults even with him in the room. Unfortunately, since the attack happened in the locker room, they couldn’t prove anything to convict the culprit. The other students snickered at this tidbit of information, and Tenki felt sick. Abruptly, Tenki stood up, causing his chair to fall to the floor. The commotion caused all of the chattering to be cut off in the room.

      “Don’t-“ a friend of his warned and was promptly ignored.

     “Who are you talking about? Why would you treat a RAPE VICTIM so callously?”  the students all scoffed and returned to their conversations. Tenki picked up his chair and sat down fuming.

     (Someone mentioned that they were envious of the victim. They got special treatment from a teacher and were guaranteed good grades for their ‘performance’. The Omega should be grateful that they caught anyone’s eye at all. The Omega should know better than to flirt with an alpha. The Omega was clearly asking for it. The Omega should feel grateful that they fulfilled their only purpose in life.)

     None of the teachers stopped the talk, and some actively encouraged such views in conversation.

     Tenki had to leave the classroom. He didn’t know who the victim was, but he couldn’t stand that anyone would be condemned for something that was forced on them involuntarily. Nobody would tell him who the victim was.

     It’s been almost a week, and Tenki has yet to see his brother. This is not entirely out of the ordinary for him. With the staying in the shed, having to walk to school while he gets driven, never eating meals together, and having orchestra after school. Their paths rarely cross. But Tenki was still concerned. Their parents had put them in the same grade. (they sent Sakura to school with him to minimize the amount of time they had to take care of him.) The rumors at school were getting more and more outrageous and still nobody would tell him who the victim was. With a frown, he gathered up a blanket from his bedroom to give to Sakura. It was still early February and the snow and cold were only getting worse.

     Sakura hasn’t been able to bring himself to go to school in a week. He knew that they would be calling his parents soon. And his parents would come looking for him to punish him for his lack of discipline. But, Sakura couldn’t go. He didn’t want to face his PE teacher, and he didn’t want to hear what everyone had been saying about him since he was gone. It was likely that he would receive disciplinary action for what had happened when he presented.

     It was a new day of grey skies and frigid humidity that sank into his bones with the occasional flashes of inexplicable heat and a pounding headache. His whole body felt sore and like he had been filled with lead. Weighed down and agonizing. Every time he tried to stand he grew dizzy and lightheaded, he felt too nauseated to eat and his body refused to run properly without food. (Not that he had any to begin with.) The pounding in Sakura’s head didn’t make any of these symptoms easier to deal with. Gradually, Sakura drifted off to sleep again, giving into the heavy fog that clung to his mind.

Chapter Text

     Sakura is sick, his head hurts, he can’t keep food down, the idea of even thinking of moving is a chore.

     Sakura has never felt this sick. Unable to gather the strength to sit up, much less go to school. Somehow he finds that idea relieving. With nothing better to do, he allows himself to slip back to sleep.

  Tenki stopped by to see Sakura after school. It broke his heart to see Sakura curled in the corner of the shed, shivering.

     “Haruka?” He called from the doorway. “I haven’t seen you in a week, has everything been alright?” No response.

     With a frown, Tenki stepped in, closing the door behind him. With the door closed, the whole room smelled. It smelled like a bouquet of flowers left to rot. Tenki scrunched his nose in disgust. He would have to help Sakura to clean later and give the shed a good airing out. He could hear Sakura breathing erratically in between panicked mumblings as he rolled over.

     “Haruka? Are you..?” Creeping closer, Tenki could see that he was fast asleep and in the midst of a nightmare. Tears clung to his mismatched eyelashes and his whole face was flushed a deep red. Sakura’s health had always been tenuous at best, but the cold snap that rolled in must have gotten him sick.

     Tenki was glad that Sakura was just sick, it meant that he had been home the whole time. It was like a weight had been lifted. (He didn’t want to remember that Sakura had gone to school that day, didn’t want to acknowledge that his baby brother could have been hurt. He didn’t want to even think of the possibility that he might be an omega in this town.)

     Tenki wrapped Sakura in the blanket he had brought and resolved to tell his parents that Sakura had a fever and could not go to school. Hopefully when the school calls his parents they wouldn’t get the belt out to discipline his brother.

     It took until Monday for his brother to get back to normal health. Tenki would keep an eye on him whenever he could, never entering the shed after that first day though. He couldn’t risk their parents thinking that Sakura was corrupting him somehow. His fever broke a few days later, and with it the putrid smell of rotting flowers was swept away. The new smell gave him a pause before he left. A faint hint of cherry blossoms and milk. He froze.

     It was as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on his head. His parents were going to hate Haruka even more than they already had for something beyond his control. He became the very thing that Tenki most feared for him. Haruka was an omega.

     Another week later, and his parents got a call from the school, Haruka hadn’t gone to classes for two weeks. They were livid. Tenki was confused, he knew Sakura felt better again, why was he not going to school?

     It has been two weeks since the incident, his back ached, his stomach was constantly cramping, and he still felt too nauseous to eat much of anything. He had been in the middle of a nightmare until he was awakened by the heavy crunching of snow outside. (Even if it was his father, he was grateful for being woken up. It was easier to face his father than to face his own psyche at the moment.)

     Someone was coming to visit him in the shed, and from the sound of their footfalls it seemed likely that it was his father.

     Sakura was proven correct when his father slammed the door wide open, leaving it to swing on its hinges as the frigid February air swept all of the warmth out of the shed.

    He was glowering at Sakura from the doorway, he had the dreaded belt clutched so tightly in his hand that it shook. A single stride was all it took to cover the distance between Sakura and the door. He grabbed at the front of Sakura’s shirt, roughly lifting him up and off the ground completely. Sakura didn’t dare breathe. He couldn’t risk angering him any farther than he already had just by existing.

     “Why,” his face twisted into a snarl as he pulled Sakura closer. “Did I get a call from that school saying that you haven’t been attending?”

     Sakura refused to look him in the eye. Any sign of weakness might be capitalized on. His Alpha father growled at him then paused inhaling sharply. Suddenly, the strength of his father’s grip on him renewed. A visceral feeling of abhorrence was painted across his face.

     “I shouldn’t have ever expected that you could be normal.” His father practically spit in his face. “If you had become an Alpha, it might have been forgivable, but instead?” His father’s voice was a harsh whisper. “You became a useless Omega. You’re not even good for breeding with that hair and those eyes. Should’ve known that you were entirely defective. I wish I had gotten rid of you from the begging.”

     Sakura had long since grown numb to his parents’ insults, but this one stung. (He supposed that after someone has heard something repeated constantly that they begin to internalize it and start believing it.)

     Sakura tried not to panic at the closeness of his father, and how tightly he was being held in place. Ashamed, Sakura couldn’t meet his father’s eyes.

     Suddenly tired of holding him, his father released his grip on him, unexpectedly dropped him to the floor. With no time to get his bearings, Sakura just crumpled at his feet.

     He ducked his head, not daring to move from his place at the Alpha’s feet. Shame and guilt tugged on his heart as he waited for his punishment. Surely his father had heard about what had happened with his PE teacher and was connecting the dots. It was all his fault after all. He shouldn’t have tempted his teacher like that. His very existence was a problem for everyone around him.

     At some point during their ‘conversation’ his father had dropped the belt on the ground. His father glanced at it meaningfully. Before sweeping back toward the open door. He left it where it fell. A clear meaning.

A threat.

     “If you won’t go back to school, get out of my house. I don’t want the government to come knocking on my door for a pitiful excuse like you.” He lingers in the doorway, a hand on the knob. “Oh and? Do something about that repulsive smell of yours. I won’t tolerate smelling it all around town. It’ll give me a headache. I don’t want to see you for at least a week, maybe by then your stench will clear out” And with that Sakura was left alone, the door swung on its hinges long after his father had walked away.

     The belt was still on the floor in the middle of the shed. Sakura scooted himself as far away from it as possible. (He didn’t dare move it. Hiding it or even moving it never went over well. Usually it brought consequences that were even worse than the one that he tried to avoid.)

Chapter Text

     Sakura will say, fear is a fantastic motivator.

     It was a frigid day in late February and he doesn’t own a coat. 

     To top it all off? It started snowing, again. 

     Sakura kicks pebbles down the street under the occasional working street light. His breath creating trails of vapor in his wake. (It reminded him of his classmates smoking in the school bathrooms. He wrinkled his nose at the thought.) 

     The heavy grey clouds that were illuminated by the city lights finally gave way, releasing flurries of snow. He was in his school uniform, too thin to retain much warmth, he rubs his arms to keep warm. 

     Sakura has a long list of problems he doesn’t want to address at the moment, but thinking about the more current problem is a slightly better alternative than to let his mind wander wherever it wants. (Dragging him deep, deep down. Into places he needs to avoid.)

     On one hand, there’s the possibility that he runs into Mr. Kito at school. On the other hand, there’s a high probability that he will end up injured should he still be in the shed whenever his father gets back. 

     Either way, he had managed to scrounge up some money to buy scent blocking patches (any loose coin he found on the ground over the years was kept, eventually it adds up). Going to school smelling the way he does is a guarantee to get jumped, he learned that the hard way… (walking around after dark in this town wasn’t much better, but at least here he had more room to run or fight back.)

     Shaking his head to clear the looming dark fog of his thoughts, Sakura kept forcing one foot in front of the other. He was so, so tired. It’d been over a week since he had last eaten. 

His vision spun and his whole body still ached, but he had to keep moving as he stumbled into the nearest konbini. Maybe after he got the scent patches he would have enough left over for food. It had been at least a week since his last meal and his body seemed to hate him for it.

     The onigiri was ¥138 after the 930 he had to spent on the reusable scent patches. He grimaced at the outrageous pricing, but he knew the reusable ones were his best bet. The cashier looked unamused as he dumped a small mound of mostly one-yen coins in front of him and was then forced to count them all to make sure they were given exact change. The only sounds in the shop were from the heater and the clinking of coins being counted as the cashier shot Sakura the occasional glare.

     He was just exiting the shop when, on the opposite side of the street, he heard it.

    “Great, the curse is back.” The remark came from a group of women hovering outside of the small Lawson mini mart, several bags in hand. They chattered together like gossiping hens, not bothering to lower their voices when they knew that he was within earshot. As a matter of fact, Sakura would bet that they raised their voices to make sure that he could hear them.

     “An ill omen, that one. I knew it was too good to be true when I heard that it was gone for some time. It’s a blight upon the very nature of this good town.” A lady in a pink scarf snapped.

“Rumor has it,” someone new chimed in eagerly, “he’s an omega.” A small gasp circled around the group as the women processed the information.

     Omega. 

     Sakura’s feet were frozen in place. The way it was said reminded Sakura of the way his parents would curse him, like his very gender and being was a slur. He tried not to let it hurt, tried to bury it. But try as he might, deep down there was still a spark of shame. 

     “And he has the gall to be skulking around here freely? Without an escort?” The first woman gasped. “What self respecting alpha would want someone USED? Especially that disgustingly lopsided looking yariman.” The whole group gasped again at the language. A couple of them shot quick glances back at him.

     Sakura’s feet were finally thawed enough for him to move, so he starts heading somewhere, anywhere he might be safe overnight. He could still hear them talking about him even as he walked further and further away. 

     They had deliberately raised their voices to make sure he heard them talking about him, and they clearly wanted to make him feel less than (it was working) he tried to move on, ignoring them, acting like he couldn’t feel his blood boil with rage. Eventually he wanders far enough away from them that he could no longer hear their gossip, and used a fire escape to make his way to the roof. 

     He sat near the edge and pulled out his onigiri. For once he allowed himself to just sit. His mind was quieter than it had been in a week. He traced the stars and moon for hours until pale streaks of dawn gently brushed against the world in greeting. Stretching its pale fingers across the world. It was like watching a painter create a masterpiece. Softer than the touch of a feather, cool light bled across the dark sky bringing with it color. First the cool tones, blues first, then strokes of greens and purples. Gradually, the sky brightened into a stunning yellow and teal and the clouds were dyed a pale blush. Color fully returned to the world with the final brush adding red to the mix. There was something so calming, so serene, about sitting and watching the sunrise, listening as the town gradually started to wake up and people began to go about their day. 

     Sakura finally decided that it was time to move as the sun fully crested the horizon. Gathering his stuff, he applied the new patches to his scent glands hoping that they did their job, and that his classmates wouldn’t react to him too strongly. With a deep breath, he clambers back down the fire escape and towards the school. His mind and feet felt like lead the closer he got to the building. He should have slept on that roof, but he had been too lost in nothingness to do so.

     Today was a new day and maybe the news hadn’t spread across the school and its students yet. He just had to avoid the gym and the PE teacher and he would be fine. 

     With a deep breath, he stepped into the school.