Chapter Text
Chest heaving, limbs shaking, Youngwoo flips the lock on the toilet cubicle door, pausing for a moment with her hands pressed against it, head dropped forward as she pants hard.
Half the reason for her shortness of breath is the fact that she had just sprinted from the courtroom into the ladies restroom as fast as she could, and the other is the snowballing sense of utter panic within her at the situation she’s found herself in.
How could this be happening!?
Her heat wasn’t due for another seventeen days, and Youngwoo was always regular down to being able to pinpoint the start of her heats to the hour. She’d never been even a day early or late. Seventeen days early!? This couldn’t be normal. What was wrong with her?
“Attorney Woo? Attorney Woo, are you in there?”
Her stomach flips at the voice from outside, and she staggers back from the door in the small space, nostrils flaring.
He knew she was in here - he must know because she could smell his potent alpha scent across the courtroom, now he was inside the restroom with her and directly outside the cubical she was in, it was nearly choking her.
“Lee Junho ssi - this is the ladies toilets!” She squeaks out.
“I don’t care, I’ve gotta - I gotta get you home. Now. I think you know why.”
Youngwoo closes her eyes, another cramp twisting in a knot in her belly as she feels herself pulse between her legs. She hears Junho inhale on the other side of the door, and tries not to whimper. More slick trickles out of her, and she turns and grabs off a handful of loo roll, yanking her skirt up and damp underwear down and shoving it between her legs. She’s already soaked.
“I don’t… think that’s a good idea,” she says through the door, voice small.
“Attorney Woo,” she hears him sigh, hears a thud that she thinks is his forehead pressing to the door. “You can trust me, I promise.”
“You’re an alpha,” she almost whispers. “And I’m -”
“You’re an omega already so far in heat it’s a wonder the whole damn courthouse hasn’t scented you. This place is crawling with alphas - the only way for you to get out safely is with another one.”
He had a point. Still. Sweat trickles down the back of her neck, and her body gives another shudder throb, everything within her telling her to fling open the door and throw herself into his arms.
“I just took blockers,” he tells her. “I - I can get you home safely, I promise you.”
“… You did?”
“Yeah.”
She swallows, letting out a shaky breath.
“I’ll show you the empty packet if you want.”
Oh. It hadn’t occurred to her that he would lie about it - and she realsies with a twinge of ice in her belly that some alphas would . But not Junho.
“I believe you. Although if you take them regularly adding an extra blocker in out of routine can cause nausea, fatigue and can even make you skip a rut which isn’t good for your body and often leads to mood swings and depression.” She takes a breath after blurting all that information out, and there’s a brief pause.
“Right. Well I’m sure it will be fine - and I didn’t really have much choice, you smell so damn good it was making me -” He cuts himself off abruptly and Youngwoo gasps softly. Her pussy flutters, more slick leaks out of her, and she presses her thighs together, trying not to whimper.
“I’m sorry - forgive me, Attorney Woo. Will you let me take you home? Please.”
“I…”
What choice did she have, really? The only other option was to call her appa, and by the time he closed his shop and got all the way here who knows what kind of state she would be in - not to mention she’d have to take a taxi home with him, and there was no way she wanted to get into an enclosed space with a stranger in her current state.
“Okay,” she says quietly. “G-give me a moment.”
She hears Junho move away from the door, and expects him to wait outside, but he only goes to the other side of the restroom, hovering near the exit.
Grabbing another wad of toilet roll and flushing the soaked through one, Youngwoo stuffs it inside her underwear and pulls it up, smoothing her skirt down before slowly, she slides the lock on the door, letting it swing open. She walks to the sink, washing her hands and splashing cold water on her face, trying to breathe deeply through the cramps in her belly.
“Attorney Woo?”
She realises she’d been bent over the sink, eyes closed with the tap running, and shuts it off, quickly standing straight. She takes the paper towel Junho hands her and dabs at her face. Her eyes search the floor. “It hurts,” she whispers.
“I know,” he says soothingly. “I'm sorry.”
“It’s… it’s early,” she doesn’t know why she feels like she has to explain herself to him, but something is spurring her to do it. “It wasn’t due for seventeen days; I wouldn’t have come to court today if I knew.”
“Seventeen? That - that’s a lot…”
“Yes.”
“Has… this happened before?”
“No.”
Her gaze continues to dart around the restroom, hands twisting the paper towel.
“Is there an omega near by?” A loud, deep voice suddenly sounds from outside in the hallway, and Youngwoo’s eyes widen. “ Christ it smells like she’s in heat -”
“Restroom’s closed,” Suyeon’s voice suddenly sounds out.
“Come on, let me just -”
“And this is the ladies anyway - get out of here before I call security!”
Youngwoo stares at Junho with wide eyes and a pounding heart as they listen to the alpha grumbling before footsteps move away.
“Does Suyeon know?” Youngwoo whispers to him.
“I think everyone who was in the courtroom knows,” he says gently, and she looks down, cheeks flushing pink. “She’s keeping watch outside. We should go.”
“How are we going to get down to the car?” She worries. “There are lots of alphas here - and - and we have to go outside and walk round the back of the courthouse to the parking lot, and there might be -”
“Hey, look - don’t worry.” Junho shrugs out of his jacket and holds it up. “Put this on, my scent will mask yours a little.”
“It won’t be enough,” she worries, as she lets him carefully reach round her to drape the coat over her shoulders. It’s heavy and warm, and smells like Junho, and Youngwoo has to resist the urge to turn her head and bury her nose in it. She swallows hard.
“You’re right…” Junho says, sounding concerned. He falls silent, thinking for a moment. “I should bite you.”
Her eyes bulge. “ What!?” She splutters.
“Not - not your gland - Christ - of course that’s not what I meant… but a visible claiming bite on your neck - it’s the only way to ensure we don’t run into trouble on our way out of here.”
Youngwoo swallows hard, tapping her fingers restlessly. He was right , she knew he was right, and yet the thought of letting him do so both terrified and excited her - terrified her because it excited her, she realises, heart pounding and stomach leaping at the thought. She already felt like she was fast loosing control - how was she supposed to keep ahold of herself with an alpha she was already desperately attracted to sucking on her neck?
“I… don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Well it’s the only one we’ve got. And we’re running out of time.”
They were. The toilet roll she’d shoved between her legs already felt impossibly wet, and not just that - the cramps were worsening, Youngwoo was sweating all over, and the longer she stood here in front of him, the more tempted she was to just beg him to take her right here and make all of it go away.
Which would be bad .
“I’ll be quick,” Junho tells her, his low voice rumbling through her, making her shiver or shake, she can’t tell the difference, burning desperately between her thighs. “Promise. And gentle.”
Swallowing hard, pussy giving another one of those pulses , she nods.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” Junho repeats, and takes a step towards her. Her breath quickens, and she clenches her hands together, heart pounding.
How the hell did she end up here?
--
Living in this world as a person with autism spectrum disorder was difficult enough. But fate had really handed Woo Youngwoo the most difficult card when, two days after her twenty-first birthday, she had presented as an omega as well.
The world was not favourable to people like her. People who saw everything a different way, to whom the societal norms and social interactions didn’t come naturally as they seemed to to everybody else. Growing up, Youngwoo had oftentimes felt like an alien in this world, for everything that seemed to be normal to everyone else made little to no sense to her. But she had adapted, learnt for the most part what to do and what not to do to help herself fit in - and she was okay. But then, just when she’d made it through her teenage years and the hell of school and was in her first year of studying law at SNU, life threw another curveball at her.
“An omega!? It can’t be!”
“Eomma, I’m telling you what she said!”
Youngwoo listened to the voices of her father and grandma through the door of the bathroom, where she sat on the cold floor, back pressed against the wood, a wad of toilet roll shoved between her legs and tears on her cheeks.
“Please, just go in and help her! I don’t know what to do!” Her father begs.
“You don’t - I don’t know what to do with her! There’s never been an omega in this family! And with the way she is already -! It’s a disaster!” Her grandmother’s shrill voice came through the wood, and Youngwoo squeezed her eyes shut, bringing her hands up to her ears as more tears spilled out. Her stomach hurt, cramps twisting her insides so intense she whimpered, a dull, aching throb between her legs that wouldn’t go away, worsening when she felt more of that warm wetness seep out. Slick, she’d heard it called, seen descriptions of it in the books on designations she’d read when she was younger.
She’d assumed herself a beta then - most of those who were going to be either an alpha or an omega presented by eighteen at the latest, with betas making up around seventy percent of the population, alphas 23.5% in the last poll, and omegas, the rarest designation, the rest. There was speculation that omegas were dying out, and that once they were gone, alphas would soon follow, until all that would be left were the betas, and everyone would finally be equal. Youngwoo knew that was what most people wanted. Knew that some who were from families that often bred omegas started taking medication at young ages to prevent presentation. She had always believed that nature should be let be the way it was intended… but then, she’d never imagined herself to be one of the unlucky ones fate decided to single out as different from the majority of the rest.
That was six years ago now, and Youngwoo had learnt to live with her designation in the same way she had her autism; by accepting that it was a part of herself and living her life as she wished. That wasn’t to say she ignored it, but she had learnt how to navigate a society not created for people like her as comfortably as she could. In the same way she put her headphones on her head before journeying to work in the morning, she rolled blocker onto the scent glands on her neck after she brushed her teeth to mask her omega scent, and took suppressants so she need only go through heats once every six months instead of every three.
Nobody had believed she could do it. Being Korea’s first autistic attorney would be quite a feat - but being an autistic omega attorney seemed… unachievable. Omegas didn’t go into those kinds of jobs - it was almost unheard of to have an omega lawyer. In fact, the only other one Youngwoo had ever heard of was the daughter of the founder of Taesan law firm - and she’d got her position via her family (though it was said she was formidable in court).
But Youngwoo had done it. After six months of rejections, despite graduating at the top of her class, she was offered a position at Hanbada law firm, and now, two months into her new job, she is thriving.
It hadn’t been easy to start with - she was used to people thinking less of her because of both her autism and her designation, and one of the other attorneys on her team, a cocky alpha named Kwon Minwoo had even had the gall to scoff in her face on her first day, proclaiming that an omega would never make it as a lawyer before stalking from the room.
“He’s just threatened,” Choi Suyeon, an easygoing beta Youngwoo had known from law school assured her. “Probably knows he’d never live it down if an omega turned out to be better at this job than he is.”
Kwon Minwoo was one of three alphas she’d identified so far in the firm; there was a senior attorney she’d heard addressed as Jang whose scent had made her stomach turn when he passed her in the hall once, and… then there was Lee Junho.
Youngwoo had never really got the hype around scents that other omegas and the alphas had always raved about - some betas even claimed to be affected by them too. As an omega, she was supposed to be genetically predisposed to be drawn to the scent of alphas - she’d read about it in medical texts, and seen it in enough movies and shows - how a single whiff of an alpha’s scent should drive her wild - and scenting one in rut, or while she was in heat, was supposed to make her all but helpless to the desperate desire to be mated. Youngwoo had never experienced it. Once she’d presented, her father had always been very careful to keep her safely locked away in her room at home during her heats, but even so… she experienced all the physical sides of it - the cramps, the empty, yearning ache deep inside her core, the desperate burning between her thighs and the vast amount of wetness her body produced during those four days - but Youngwoo had never really felt compelled for the need of an alpha.
If her grandmother had had her way, she’d have been mated and married off right after that horrible first heat.
“You know what they say!” She’d heard her hissing to her father when she thought Youngwoo was asleep in the other room, “Omegas are only good for one thing once they present - all that ancient biology and hormones - she’ll never settle until she’s mated and bred now. What will you do with her anyway!? She’s enough trouble for you to take care of as it is! Give her to an alpha, let him take care of her the way it’s meant to be!”
Youngwoo had cried herself to sleep that night, but thankfully, her father wouldn’t hear of it, and had told her with a determined face a few days later that if she still intended to finish her law degree then that’s what she should do.
She’d wondered sometimes, if her indifference to scents it was something to do with her autism. She experienced the senses differently to neurotypical people - perhaps scents just weren’t tangible to her in the same way. Honestly, she was glad - the inconveniences of heats, along with the way society viewed her as an omega were enough to contend with without the willingness to jump any alpha’s bones who smelt good to her.
That wasn’t to say she couldn’t smell at all. Of course she knew that everyone had their own particular scent, and that alphas and omegas tended to smell stronger generally than betas, and this intensified when one was in heat or rut, but, apart from being occasionally strongly repelled, Youngwoo had just never found herself affected by them. She had certainly never been drawn to a scent anyhow.
That was until she’d met Lee Junho.
When a hand had stopped the revolving door she’d been trapped inside of on her first day at Hanbada and she’d stumbled out and looked up at her saviour, Youngwoo had nearly staggered right back into the doors. She inhaled once, and her whole body had flooded with something that felt like searing fire - but the kind of heat that warmed rather than burnt through. Although as she tried to take another, and then another breath she certainly felt like she was burning.
“That door is so confusing, right?” He’d said to her, and his voice was deep and soothing, making her feel the same way she did when she placed on her headphones and her whale sounds filled her ears.
Resisting the urge to cover her nose in alarm - because Youngwoo was never very good at social etiquette but she knew that that would certainly be considered rude - she’d stared up at him, unable to come up with a reply. His scent was… not even something she could put her finger on. It was almost overpowering in its intensity, but unlike when she got the scent of strong perfumes or soaps, she was startled to find she wasn’t bothered by it - quite the opposite. It made her feel a little lightheaded, made her want to step even closer to him to drink in every morsel.
The feeling only intensified the longer she spent around him. She found herself often paired with him when she had to go to visit clients out of the office, and whilst she’d mostly got used to his intoxicating scent by now, it didn’t make being around him any easier. Still - Youngwoo accepted that it was just another one of those things that were a part of her biology, and she had learnt to live with the fact that the beautiful alpha made her belly flip and mouth dry out every time she saw him. From the gifts she had spotted in his drawer once when he’d opened it to get a file for her, she wasn’t the only one he affected so anyway.
Despite her differences, she was fitting in - or, at least getting by with everyone else as best she could, and actually starting to really enjoy working as an attorney at Hanbada.
Everything was fine.
Until it wasn’t.