Archive of Our Own ^beta

With Kang Jisang gone for a full month on supposed business, Isaac expects it to go like any other month. Yohan will slowly, but surely, open up more; he’ll smile more, he’ll spend more time out of his room. If Isaac is lucky, Yohan will let himself be pulled into sports and games and Yohan will laugh.

It usually takes a day or two, when Kang Jisang leaves, for Yohan to ease out of his comfort, so it’s not entirely unusual for the house to remain quiet in the absence of the patriarch. It’s when they reach the end of the first week, and Isaac still has yet to see Yohan inching out of his room more often, that worry begins to settle in like an ache in his bones. He goes searching for Yohan.

It’s like clockwork, searching the places he’s grown used to finding Yohan hiding. The study, the library, out on the grounds, down by the beach on the property, his bedroom. He can’t find Yohan. The worry exasperates into panic and Isaac chews on his bottom lip when he stops, an unfamiliar scent hitting him as he hurries down a hall. Berries, vanilla, nearly sweet enough to be sickly so, and Isaac understands instantly. He takes a deep breath and leans against the wall. “Figures,” he mutters to himself, before turning on his heel to the door. The door. Down the stairs to Yohan’s old room, to where Yohan returns rarely, when he’s scared, when he’s unsure.

The steps creak under Isaac’s weight, and with each step the air gets thicker, sweeter. Yohan is curled in a ball, miserable, on the bed. Sweat glistens against his forehead, his hair pushed back and damp, and an occasional shiver wracks his body. “Yohan-ah,” Isaac murmurs and pretends he doesn’t hear the pitiful noise Yohan makes in response. He presses his hand gently to Yohan’s forehead and watches the way Yohan arches up into the touch, practically sobbing.

“It’s a good thing he’s not home,” Isaac says softly. Yohan manages to open his eyes enough to outright pout, and Isaac can’t help but smile, soothing Yohan’s hair back again.

“Hurts,” Yohan mumbles. Isaac coos at him and, with very little effort, picks Yohan up, moving them on the bed until he can lay down, pulling Yohan to his chest. The touch of an alpha seems to soothe him, and Yohan relaxes into him almost immediately. Isaac pretends not to see Yohan’s cheeks, tinted pink, the tips of his ears red, doubling down on wrapping Yohan in his arms and humming softly.

“Let’s get some sleep. It’ll be over soon, Yohan-ah,” he murmurs. Yohan’s noise of disagreement is quiet but he settles in with his face pressed to Isaac’s neck and dozes off restlessly.

When they wake some hours later, Yohan is calmer, more alert. Isaac soothes his hair back and smiles softly at him. “Okay?” he asks. Yohan nods. Slowly, they untangle from the bed and Isaac helps Yohan change the sheets and air the room out; Isaac can barely crank the single window open and the chill from the outdoor breeze makes Yohan shiver.

The calm in the air for the next week is dangerous, lingering. There will be trouble when Kang Jisang returns, and they both know it, but it’s easier to pretend the danger doesn’t exist, at least at first. Yohan is uncertain of himself, and Isaac watches with sad eyes as Yohan tries to figure himself out.

Isaac can’t blame him. They had both thought Yohan would take after him. If anything, Yohan was better suited to be an alpha that Isaac; he wasn’t tall, but he was strong. He was quiet, stoic, reserved. Isaac’s presentation had been as much a surprise, though not an unhappy one for their father. Isaac, gentle and warm and mothering. Yohan’s uncertainty with himself is exhausting to watch, and as much as Isaac wants to reassure him that nothing has changed, he knows it’s not true. They both know it’s not true, and false platitudes will only sink Yohan deeper into his uncertain footing on the ground.

Yohan retreats into himself. He spends most of his time out of the house, and he only barely flinches when Isaac offers him the gift of a scent blocker. It will, at the very least, allow him to escape the worst of Kang Jisang’s wrath for as long as he needs to figure it out.

Because Isaac knows, and Yohan knows, that Kang Jisang won’t hesitate to kick Yohan out onto the street the second he realises that Yohan is an omega.

It’s why Isaac isn’t surprised to see Yohan’s bags packed by one of the side doors the week before Kang Jisang is meant to return home. It’s why he isn’t surprised to see Yohan considering the car keys more than once, as if wondering which he could get away with stealing. Isaac makes the decision for him.

“Yohan-ah, wake up,” Isaac flicks the lights to his room and watches with thinly veiled amusement as Yohan whines under his breath and rolls over, sticking his face under his pillow. It’s before sunrise, still, and when Isaac leaves the lights on and tugs the pillow from over Yohan’s head, he can’t help but laugh at the pout that Yohan throws at him from the comfort of his bed. “Come on, get up. Get dressed.”

“Why?” Yohan asks. Isaac doesn’t answer. “Where are we going?” Yohan asks as he pulls his shirt over his head. “Hyung, tell me,” Yohan demands as Isaac fixes the absolute disaster that is Yohan’s bedhead in a way reminiscent of their childhoods. Isaac doesn’t tell him anything, even as he loads Yohan’s bags, and his own, into the trunk of one of the cars. He gestures to the car and Yohan, reluctantly, slides into the passenger’s seat, arms crossed over his chest.

“I won’t buckle till you tell me.” Yohan says. In these moments, Isaac can see some of the stereotypes peek through, with Yohan’s pout directed at him in full force, the slightest bitter taste in his mouth that has started to accompany Yohan’s bad moods.

“We’re going home,” Isaac says. Yohan repeats the word, home. With the non-answer, though, he does pull his buckle down. It only seems to hit him most of the drive into the city, and Yohan turns abruptly, staring wide-eyed at Isaac.

“Hyung-”

“Hush,” Isaac says. He reaches to turn the radio up. Yohan promptly turns it back down.

“Hyung!” Yohan repeats, more insistently. Isaac glances at him and sighs. It takes a minute to find somewhere to pull over safely, but once he has, his blinkers on, Isaac turns and raises his eyebrows.

“He’ll- be upset,” Yohan says. He sounds considerably less sure of himself now that Isaac’s full attention is on him.

“Good for him.” Yohan’s eyes widen.

“But you, he-”

“He won’t write me out of his will. That would be admitting he fucked up,” Isaac says. He shakes his head and turns away, leaning his head back against the seat. “I need you to trust me. Do you trust me?”

“Of course.” The words catch in Yohan’s throat, barely audible, but when Isaac glances over at him, Yohan looks more certain than he has since Kang Jisang left the house. Isaac nods once, twice, and pulls back out onto the road.

—

Isaac has told him not to go to school, not until they figure out how things will go. Yohan is sure he knows how it will go; he’ll get his high school equivalency and then he won’t qualify for any forms of financial aid for university. He’ll find himself spiralling into the same situation he’s sure his biological mother must have been in, and he’ll be stuck depending on the pity of rich alphas for the rest of his life.

The thought is depressing. Yohan has never been one to sit back and play nice. But, then again, he had spent much of his life also thinking he would present differently. That he and Isaac would both be alphas, that Yohan would have even the slightest chance at proving himself to a man who called himself a father but was anything but. Instead, Yohan is stuck in an apartment that tries to be cosy when it is only confining.

Yohan feels bad, in some aspects, for being hard on the apartment. Given Isaac’s limited funds and limited time, he’d done well, finding them somewhere to live. It’s above a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and Isaac had befriended the owners of the restaurant and secured himself a second job, to work weekends and some evenings while he made sure their bank accounts were safely freed from Kang Jisang’s grasp.

Yohan doesn’t mean to be ungrateful. But he’s cooped up, frustrated, and irritable. He isn’t comfortable in his skin anymore. Isaac mentions, offhandedly, how Yohan smells of berries. Yohan can’t stomach most berries now. He’s jealous of Isaac’s scent, of the dirt newly rained on and something that he can’t quite pin down, a spice, something bitter until added to something new. It suits Isaac, and it suits an alpha, and Yohan is frustrated. He wants to be out doing things. He wants to be in school, or at the library, or even finding a job to help Isaac with their funds. But, as Isaac points out softly, Yohan doesn’t exist legally. They need to take it slow, to get his paperwork, to get him to see a doctor, to get him proper prescription scent blockers.

Yohan hates slow. He’s impatient, itching to be doing things. There’s only so many times he can re-read the same seven books before he wants to throw it at the wall and yell about how philosophy and politics will not help the fact that he is an omega and nothing he does about it will ever change that fact.

But there’s nothing to do but wait. And wait. Yohan paces the length of the apartment, and then the width. He counts the tiles in the bathroom and grimaces at the peeling wallpapers. And he waits.

The days pass and Yohan starts to lose track of them. He knows when Kang Jisang has returned because Isaac’s phone doesn’t stop ringing until he lets the battery die. The dead phone sits on the bed between them, like a weight on their shoulders. “You’re going to have to talk to him eventually,” Yohan points out, his knees pulled to his chest and arms wrapped around his legs.

“Like hell I will,” Isaac mutters.

“You just swore,” Yohan says immediately and then rolls to the side as Isaac grabs a pillow to swing at him. Yohan laughs, loud and brash, and Isaac’s heart softens even as he swings the pillow at Yohan’s face again.

“You brat,” Isaac laughs. The pillow makes contact with Yohan and he falls back, laughing harder. The sound is like bells, music to Isaac’s ears; it’s taken only two weeks of being freed from that house for Yohan to blossom, to bloom. He smiles more easily, he doesn’t shy away from Isaac’s touch. Even if Yohan is obviously stuck in between bored, irritable, frustrated, and uncomfortable, he’s happier. He’s lighter. And that in itself is all Isaac needs for the warmth to spread in his chest, to see Yohan happy.

Yohan gets happier the longer they’re at the apartment. He starts to take long walks when Isaac gets his hands on over-the-counter blockers. They’re not great, but they’ll do, enough for Yohan to be able to leave the apartment without getting jumped. Not that Isaac worries that much about Yohan getting jumped—he knows exactly how well Yohan can fight, omega or not. They start exercising together and Isaac is proud to see that Yohan can still keep up with him. He runs just as far, just as quickly. He lifts weights and, when Isaac has saved enough to splurge a little so they can, Yohan still fights as well as Isaac taught him to.

It takes six months to find a doctor. Yohan swallows down every fighting word he wants to utter when it’s clear the doctor, an alpha, barely even glances at him and directs everything, every question, at Isaac. The one time Yohan thinks to angrily speak, Isaac’s hand lowers to his wrist, holding him. It’s not hard, just present; Yohan focuses on the touch, on his breathing, and bites back the anger that rises in him with every passing second. The doctor prescribes the scent blockers though, along with a few other things Yohan only half pays attention to. Isaac handles it all, pays for it all with cash, and a hand firmly resting on Yohan’s shoulder the entire time. “Thank you,” Isaac murmurs when they’re outside, not quite in the car. Yohan swallows down what he wants to say and resigns himself to a future of doing just that.

Yohan is only a year behind in school, and the school says they’ll take him back, surprisingly, but Yohan doesn’t want to go. Isaac tells him to make the decision himself. Yohan pays for his own tests, with the money he’s picked up himself from working shifts, either at the restaurant below the apartment, or from watching the owners’ young son. The boy is four and is smart. Yohan sits and reads to him from some of the philosophy books and watches in amusement when the boy starts trying to write out the letters himself. It’s hard to think that only thirteen years beforehand, Yohan himself had been there too, unable to read or write.

“Some day, the world will disappoint you,” Yohan says in a soft tone. The boy is still young enough not to entirely understand him, as Yohan tucks the blanket up over his chest and tucks the corners in, letting out a long sigh. “Some day, you’ll understand.”

The blockers he’s on mess with his cycle, he thinks. Yohan is aware of it, to some extent, when he goes a full year without anything. He stays by the restaurant owners’ home the days when Isaac kicks him out—lovingly—to deal with his rut, but Yohan has gone almost fourteen months without a heat when Isaac finally turns and looks at him, brow furrowed. “Have you had a heat since you presented?” Isaac asks. Yohan shrugs and looks back down at the book he’s been working his way through for the fourth time.

“Yohan, I’m serious,” Isaac says, a little more insistent. Yohan shrugs again.

“No? Haven’t been paying much attention,” he says, as though it would be something he might miss. He knows full well he hasn’t had one. He knows Isaac knows too. Isaac goes quiet, though, and Yohan returns his full attention to the book.

Yohan had hoped for too much, for Isaac to drop it. Isaac drags him back to the doctor and Yohan, again, tunes out most of the conversations. He vaguely registers the discussion of bloodwork and genetic diseases and numerous other things that Yohan assumes Isaac will handle for him.

Isaac does handle it for him and, when the doctors come back saying Yohan needs to be on hormones for regular cycles, Isaac takes one look at Yohan’s face and says, “We’ll consider our options. Thank you, doctor.” At least, Yohan thinks, Isaac knows that Yohan has no interest in dealing with any of that.

And life goes on. They find themselves in an easy cycle. They both work shifts at the restaurant when they can, and Isaac gifts Yohan a fully-funded university education for his birthday, with the promise that it’s Kang Jisang’s money, money that neither of them have to pull from their savings. It seems, Yohan learns, Jisang hasn’t cut either of them off, though he does simply pretend they don’t exist. It’s better for everyone that way, Isaac says, and Yohan agrees.

They move out of the cramped apartment to a bigger one, one where they can have their own spaces. Yohan starts law school and Isaac meets a pretty beta girl and falls in love and Yohan can’t help but soften every time he catches sight of Isaac’s smile as the thought of her, the mention of her. Isaac seems hesitant to make a move though, and it’s in the darkness of the apartment, Yohan sprawled on Isaac’s bed, that he realises why. “Hyung, I’ll be okay, you know,” Yohan says. Isaac grunts, from where he’s on his stomach, laying across the length of the bed next to him. Yohan props himself up.

“I’ll be okay. If you want to get serious with her,” Yohan says. “People basically read me as a beta anyways.” His scent, between the blockers and his hormone levels, had faded; Isaac himself had said that it was only with extended contact with Yohan, or when Yohan’s emotions spiked, that he could really smell him anymore. It meant Yohan was all that much safer on the streets. People left him alone, and that was the way he liked it.

“Are you sure?” Isaac pushes himself up to look over at Yohan. “I don’t want to leave you here alone if you’re not sure.”

“Leave me with the apartment when you move out and get married,” Yohan says. Isaac kicks him and Yohan tumbles back, laughing.

—

Her name is Cecelia, and Isaac is head over heels in love with her. It’s after barely six months of dating that Isaac proposes to her and she accepts. Yohan is happy, genuinely for the both of them. Isaac smiles more easily than he has since they first left Kang Jisang’s house, and when only two months after their wedding, he calls Yohan with the news that they’re having a baby, Yohan is entirely unsurprised by it.

He is surprised by the sudden feeling in his chest, like he’s missing something, like he’s lost something. He frowns and rubs at his chest. It takes a little too long for it to occur to Yohan that that is probably something omegas feel more often. Real omegas, not the ones with hormone imbalances, like him. The ones who are what they’re meant to be. “Yohan?” Isaac asks, tinny over the phone, and Yohan snaps back into focus.

They name her Elijah and Yohan can’t keep his eyes off of her when they bring her by the apartment. She’s so small, delicate, fragile, and Yohan has to fight with himself to let them take her back when they leave. Isaac gives him a few strange looks through the evening, but Yohan just shakes his head, and they leave it.

And then he dies. He. Kang Jisang. Yohan had almost forgotten his father’s existence. With almost ten years spent out of that house, Yohan had entirely forgotten the man was still alive. But he returns with a heavy heart and a pit in his stomach to the house that weighs heavily on his shoulders the longer he’s there. It’s empty, save for the dust, the ghosts that once existed there. Yohan doesn’t have to even look at Isaac to know Isaac, too, wants to get rid of it as soon as possible. It’s prime real estate, the whole estate, and they’ll make quite a bit of money off of it, on top of inheritance left for Isaac. Isaac, and Isaac alone, because no child of mine is an omega. Yohan just shrugs at the words. Yohan resists the urge to laugh when Isaac shrugs in kind and offers to just give the money he makes from the estate directly to Yohan. The lawyer gapes at both of them and Yohan grins toothily at the alpha in return.

Truth be told, Yohan isn’t sure why Isaac invites him to the event. Maybe because he wants to. Maybe because he feels like he has to. Elijah is just big enough to toddle around on her own, though not far from her mother or father. Yohan goes to the event, if only because it means he gets to see Elijah. He doesn’t have very many formal clothes himself, and just rolls his eyes fondly when Isaac tells him to come to their house early. He has a suit, Yohan’s size, perfectly tailored, sitting in his closet and, with a smug smile, helps Yohan dress like he’s a child again, like they’re getting ready for school in the morning again. Isaac ties his tie carefully and, with his thumb, tips Yohan’s chin up. “Smile, hm?” Isaac says. Yohan scoffs at him and sticks his tongue out, a laugh escaping him when Isaac cuffs him over the side of the head.

Yohan spends more time at the event chasing Elijah around than he does actually paying attention to whatever it is. He’s not sure when the fire starts. He’s not sure where it starts. The memories are hazy at best, but Yohan knows he comes to in the ashes of the church, Elijah held tight to his chest, and a familiar face horrifyingly twisted in a frozen pain in his line of sight. Yohan lowers his head and takes a few shaky breaths, bites back the tears and vile threatening to make an appearance, and forces himself upright.

He keeps a tight grip on Elijah even once in the ambulance, once they’re telling him it’s a miracle they’re both alive. He’s only vaguely aware of their questions as they ask him. “Name?”

“Kang Yohan,” he says. He stares down at Elijah, at her hair barely long enough to be in the double braids Cecelia had spent ages trying to perfect.

“Alpha,” one of the paramedics says to the other one when Yohan doesn’t answer their next question. Yohan tries to wipe some of the ash from Elijah’s skin. She’s mostly unharmed; Yohan isn’t sure he’d be able to live with himself if she had been hurt while under his watch. It only processes at the hospital, with the way they treat him. Doctors and nurses and the other survivors—if they can even be called that, Yohan thinks, disgusted—that they treat him as an equal, without thought. He checks his chart and sees the word staring back at him, alpha.

He doesn’t correct them.