Chapter Text
Note: I’m sure most of you are familiar with the whole alpha/beta/omega thing. It’s a popular enough trope these days. Please be mindful that it’s…rules and limitations are a bit loose, and I’m basically playing with it from a dystopian perspective. A/B/O dynamics (bless them) are not something I think is particularly desirable as a social construct, so be prepared for me to paint a pretty dark picture that doesn’t romanticise the notion in the slightest.
Love.
Means nothing to me,
‘Cause I don’t know what it is.
It’s almost alarming how things can change so quickly in the course of ten minutes. Clearly, he’d been having a few too many late nights at the labs. Or perhaps it was the caffeine that was the problem; too much of it could have some dangerous side effects. Or perhaps…?
Tadashi went through the scenario several times in quick succession, feet firmly cemented to the ground and head cocked, as if listening for a far-off noise only he could hear. He tried to explain it away, seeking out the different angles that could explain what had led up to this, but found himself impossibly barred at every turn.
The walk home from the corner shop yielded nothing out of the ordinary. His aunt’s café was constantly running out of things, and it was somewhat natural for him to be found wandering back this way every evening, politely deflecting her protests that she be the one to do it. It simply wasn’t safe for her; an unclaimed beta walking down the street at sundown alone.
Politely avoiding contact with those who smelt distinctly different from himself wasn’t out of character either; betas and omegas had enough problems without another alpha on the street taking the time to size them up, reciprocated interest or not.
The time of day was normal. The amount of pedestrians on the sidewalk- normal. He was 22, not ten, and hormonal balancers and Beta blockers weren’t medications that he required at this stage; so it wasn’t some odd imbalance of a mixture of beta blockers wreaking havoc in his systems.
Taking all of that into account, all the normalcy and predicted routine, there’s absolutely zero reasoning as to why he’d do something completely insane and simply dump the groceries on the sidewalk, taking off down a nearby alleyway at a dead run like he was following some sort of internal compass that had suddenly decided to point north and pull.
Absolutely none at all.
The alpha across from him is aggressive, even after the initial shock of Tadashi skidding to a halt in front of him with hackles raised; a big bear of a man, all fat and muscle. His lips bare in a snarl, and Tadashi felt his own lips parting in turn, the noise that escapes him loud and ugly and dangerous. He is not an ugly person. He’s not a dangerous person, either, nor is he stupid enough to randomly decide to tackle a man of this size on his own.
But he’s got one eye on the brute in front of him and the other on the tiny creature hiding behind his outstretched arms.
It’s pathetic and disgusting how the scent that led him here- full of fear and desperation and please, please oh god help me- belongs to a child who hasn’t even hit maturity. There’s no distinct marking scent to the boy, clearly not even old enough to have hit his first heat; his tiny frame says he’ll be a beta, at best. Tadashi can’t quite make out his face from this angle, and when the other alpha shifts, he’s reminded of the fact that there’s bigger things to worry about.
Trying not to get torn to shreds seems about right.
“Gentleman!” A sharp voice barks from the entrance of the alleyway, diffusing the situation before it can begin to escalate, and Tadashi’s relief is almost palpable. He keeps a wary eye on the other alpha as a woman marches towards them, all crisp black suit and clacking heels, flanked on either side by two men who look distinctly more capable in a fight than Tadashi feels. Alphas, all three of them, and he has no doubt that one wrong move could find him in a world of trouble- more than he’s already found himself.
“Yama, we appreciate your interest in our goods, but we have rules. You pay to play.” The alpha he’d been confronting from the start growls, and Tadashi rumbles right back as he takes a few steps back, herding the child safely away from the monster in front of him until there’s only just enough space between him and the wall for the tiny, quivering body to fit. Pay to play…
Pay. To play?
“Another outburst such as this one, and we’ll have no other choice but to ban you from future events.” She continues without preamble, hip cocked to the side with an air of utter confidence and control. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask to to leave.”
After a moment of tense silence, the one dubbed as ‘Yama ‘snorts and relaxes his posture, if only slightly. Pointing a fat finger accusingly in Tadashi’s direction, his words are as ugly as his tone, gritted out from between clenched teeth. “I will have you.”
He’s not talking to Tadashi. Lumbering back down the alleyway, the man bumps shoulders roughly with one of the three, and rather pointedly, the two males of the trio follow him down. In that moment, Tadashi looks behind him and meets a set of the biggest brown eyes he’s ever seen.
He’s so...
Tiny. The threadbare hoody and the red shirt underneath aren’t a good fit for someone his size, the collar large enough to droop down over his shoulder and show off a large amount of skin; the curve of his neck and junction of his shoulder, vulnerable places that shouldn’t be out on display on such a small, fragile looking kid. Had anything happened, that would’ve gone against him.
Even Tadashi finds himself consciously considering the fact that… the first thing he’d noticed was the boy’s state of dress, rather than the fact that he’s dealing with a small child who was almost bent over against a brick wall. There’s not much else he can do but kick himself for it, hesitating long enough to lose any chance Tadashi has of asking if he’s okay.
Up close and facing the child head-on with nostrils flared, it’s obvious. Omega. Shit.
“Hiro.” The word doesn’t hold any meaning to him, but to his temporary charge, it’s enough to pull a flinch from his frame as he sneaks around Tadashi without so much as a word, obediently allowing the woman to draw him close with a heavy hand. A thin lipped smile crosses her face, and she holds a card out to Tadashi, flicking it towards him rather than waiting long enough for him to gather himself and step forwards to collect it.
“Tell them you’re the 20% off-er next round.”
It’s funny how ten minutes can be the most confusing of his life. But the true irony doesn’t hit until he picks up her card, and reads what it actually says.
Yakuza Girls: Omega Bot Fights.
When Tadashi was eleven, he saw a knot for the first time. Alphas mature at a faster rate than betas and omegas, for the first part, and it wasn’t unusual for their year to start getting sex education on just what it meant to see the base of your dick bulging out at twice the girth as the rest of you was, a distinct, unpleasant shade of purple.
His first opinion on knots was that they looked pretty angry. As for the rest of it; the more scientific way the teacher was trying to explain things to them went completely over his head. They’d smell things differently. Okay. They’d have instincts and urges they were unused to. Sure.
But there was something about the talk that unsettled him, even if he couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Looking around the room, he hadn’t understood why other students (usually the smaller ones; the frailer ones. The pacifists) were staring down at their desks. He didn’t understand why one girl had to be escorted out of the classroom in tears.
It’s amazing, what sort of things you can tell a small child and have them grow up influenced by.
And its talks like that which allow things like Omega Bot Fighting to exist.
Tadashi rubs at his face for what feels like the thousandth time that night, squinting at the computer screen. There’s a video playing, volume low but the sounds more than distinct enough to be heard. Clashes of steel and metal that grind and cut against each other, the cheers and jeering of the crowd.
Bot Fighting is illegal. But Omega Bot Fighting takes that unlawfulness and turns it up by eleven. There’s no cash prize at the end of the fight; not for the challenger. It’s a test of brazen temptation and an easy way to line the pockets of people ruthless enough to pick up young omegas and put them on show, forcing them to fight until they’re beaten. Forcing them to fight just so they won’t be taken home.
You fight your omega and you win them. Simple.
Hiro, as it turns out, is popular enough to have plenty of videos online. Always dressed provocatively; always sitting cross legged, head held high not in a show of self-confidence, but to show his challengers just what they get to sink their teeth into if they win him.
It’s both satisfying and disgusting to see how many times the boy has beaten that alpha from the alleyway.
He’s a very smart kid, that much Tadashi can see for himself. He doesn’t play the same game as the others; regardless of his status as an omega-to-be, he grins, he cat-calls, and he tears the opposition up with the ease of someone who actually knows what he’s doing. What little information Tadashi’s been able to find past the videos; in the comments, or less than desirable forums, he’s somewhere between twelve and fourteen- and the bot he’s using is hand made.
That last piece of information takes two hours to locate, amidst the rather generic and all too common posts about what most people wanted to do to him once he was bent over.
In the ring, Hiro’s cocksure. It’s a complete opposite of the tiny thing that had scented fear so strong that it had called Tadashi to him from five blocks away, and if Tadashi was going to trust anything, it was his scent. Hiro looks confident, and that’s about as far as it goes. Skin deep.
It takes two videos for Tadashi to see the fatal flaw in his bot, and that’s only because it moves so fast. If the alpha had to take a good guess...he’d say that the omega had yet to go against anyone who actually knows their way around Callaghan’s Laws of Robotics.
Someday, he would. Someday, he’d get unlucky. Either in the ring or on the streets, on a day where there’s no alpha around who picks up his scent and drops everything to keep him safe. Hiro’s a ticking time bomb of potential misery, and at 2am, it seems pretty simple to make the decision to turn that potential for disaster into something that just might save Hiro’s life.
As Tadashi pulls some engineering paper towards himself and starts to design the machine he’ll use to save Hiro’s life, he can’t help but wonder just what one was supposed to wear to an illegal omega trafficking ring.
Not what he decides to wear, is the answer.
Finding the details on the next meet up is laughably easy, and Tadashi would be a little more cautious about the cops showing up if he thought they actually cared. The loud, overly boisterous crowd that spills right out of the alleyway and into the main street assures him that he needn’t care about such things.
It smells. And not just because of the press of bodies in such a small place; the people running the show know what they’re doing, right down to the scent the potential prizes are wearing. Even without the distinct chill to the air, none of them are dressed appropriately- and one, kind smile at the first omega to approach offering refreshments is enough to have them all steering clear of his person.
There’s no such thing as true kindness in an environment like this.
Pre-registration is required for the fights; and there’s only one omega Tadashi’s prepared to fight for. It means waiting around for a long while, looking at the faces of all the others who need saving, and knowing that, no matter his good intentions, he can’t save everyone.
The first omega to lose their fight is dragged off screaming. She can’t be over thirteen. He closes his eyes until the next fight is called, and the sounds of a fight begin again.
Tadashi feels utterly out of place here. It’s not his clothes; there’s plenty of others in the crowd wearing a similar set of basic jean and shirt attire, complete with caps on their heads. A few have gone to even more drastic measures and covered their faces with balaclavas, but at the end of the day, those are the ones who seem to call out the most.
Get ready to bend over, sweetheart.
Can’t wait to get that belly full.
My knot is going to tear your asshole wide open, gorgeous.
Alphas will be alphas. Like they always say.
He doesn’t belong here. And two hours of leaning up against a wall is torture, but Tadashi reminds himself of why he’s here, over and over again. Whenever any of the fights are laughably short; whenever another omega screams for help, he reminds himself why he’s here.
Just the once. Just one time, and he never has to come back to this. Neither will Hiro.
“Baymax? We got a fighter out there under Baymax?” Tadashi perks up at the call, barely heard over the constant chatter and yells about him. To the side of the ring is a rather bored, pudgy looking man, with no scent to distinguish him from the stall or wall behind him. Delta?
It’s hard to say, with the assault his nose is under, but when Tadashi approaches he makes sure to smile politely, anyway. The man raises a brow and blows a cloud of smoke into his face.
“You got the cash?”
“Uh- yeah. I was told to say that I was the 20 percent off-er? She gave me her card-” Tadashi fumbles in his pockets for a moment, until he’s waved down.
“Nah, I heard a’ you. Puppy alpha.” Puppy alpha..? Tadashi does his best not to look insulted, patiently waiting as a few notes are jotted down into a dirty book that’s seen about as many better days as the man before him. “It’s two seventy-five, with the discount. No bombs, no flares. No jumping at the omega; you try break the merchandise, you don’t play again. Got it?”
Merchandise.
“I got it.” Tadashi’s voice is clipped, which raises an uninterested brow as the man holds out his hand, palm up. Exchanging money just to fight someone over their freedom...feels tawdry. Dirty.
But he’s starting to get used to that feeling.
“There’s two contestants before you, but stay close to the ring. You aren’t ready for your round, we skip you. No retry. No refund.” He’s waved away before he even gets the chance to say thank you. At a loss for thoughts, Tadashi does as told, staring blankly at the ring until a familiar enough scent makes his head whip upwards, meeting wide, brown eyes the moment he does.
“Our next contestant; the one you’ve all been waiting to sink your teeth into, Hirooooo!”
The crowd goes wild, and Tadashi has to clench his fist to fight back the urge to snarl.
There’s two fights before him. Tadashi grits his teeth and pretends he isn’t nervous, because this is the point where everything could fall apart. There’s no guarantees that Hiro won’t lose to someone before him, though the boy’s first challenger really isn’t much of a challenge, from his scrappy bot to the unsteady way he’s holding himself. Drunk.
If concentrating on the fight is bad enough, concentrating on Hiro is worse. Everything about him caters to the alphas surrounding him. His clothes. The shampoo and products he’s used. The way he holds up his head. Even the way he sits, forced down into a cross-legged position through the rough handling of a few traffickers, almost, but not quite exposed.
Everything about him has been catered to make an alpha want him. And the worst part is that it’s working, a fact that makes Tadashi’s throat close up as he fights with an almost unnerving wave of nausea.
He’s desirable. He’s unbeatable; almost too perfect a toy to boost products, and Tadashi--
Can’t. He can’t leave him here.
He’s just a child.
Luckily for him, his anxieties are for naught. Hiro doesn’t just beat both alphas; he wipes the floor with them. It’s something to see firsthand, that’s for sure; cameras don’t pick up the subtler things. Like the way Hiro’s expression grows almost bored the moment the fights start, how at ease he is with it all; with the taunts, with the sexual provocations. Out of the corner of his eye, Tadashi swears he can see someone unzipping their pants, blatantly waving themselves in the boy’s direction.
He doesn’t turn to get a proper look. Sometimes, it’s better to remain unsure.
“Our next challenger; Baymax!” And then it’s his turn. He steps up to the cushion that’s been set on the ground, Hiro’s eyes burning a hole in his head as he seats himself in a similar manner to Hiro, and unlike the previous fighters, he doesn’t make an ass of himself, doesn’t make any overconfident statements. The vulgarity of the situation is left to the people around them to create, and Tadashi focuses on setting his bot out; a tiny, white blob of a thing that looks more like a walking marshmallow than a fighter bot.
Baymax’s appearance gets a few titters out of the spectators.
“The fuck is this puppy?”
“Look at him; a new’in if I ever saw one. Hiro’s going to clean up.”
He looks up at Hiro and cracks the tiniest of smiles. Causing people to raise their brows at him seems to be his gift of the night, however, and there’s no smile in return; just a slightly calculating expression as the boy looks over his bot and starts taking it apart in his head.
Lord, but he’s smart. And this is where that intelligence got him.
“Bot fighters, ready-!” The warning call breaks through his thoughts, jolting him back into the present and reminding him exactly why it is he’s here. Not to stare at a child and admire how intelligent they may seem to be, that’s for sure. Whether or not that was a genuine allure to Hiro...he had to ignore those sorts of things, right now.
Tadashi takes a deep breath, fingers resting lightly over the shock pads covering Baymax’s controls, and waits. Hiro slouches slightly, bored again, and his stomach twists.
“Fight!”
Neither of them makes a move, at first. They move, but they don’t move- Hiro’s bot skirts around the outskirts of the ring like some sort of metallic snake, and Tadashi responds by having Baymax toddle more towards the middle, constantly following the path- what was it, Megabot?- is making. It’s a dance their viewers become bored of very quickly.
“What the fuck is this shit?!”
“Just take the fucking pillow out already!”
Hiro’s lips twitch upwards, which is the indication he’s waiting to see. Megabot zigzags towards Baymax with every intention of striking, and Tadashi almost winces as he throws up Baymax’s hands, and flicks the switch.
Abruptly, two segments of Megabot fly into Baymax’s hands, trapped against the magnetic field being projected by components in his palms. The remaining section spins angrily across the floor; the abrupt shift of positive and negative fields throwing it into erratic motions that Hiro can’t control. And he’s trying. Lord, is Hiro trying.
The boy leans over his controls and starts flicking every switch known to man, but there’s no escaping this.
“I’m sorry.” Tadashi murmurs, and those big, brown eyes- those eyes, that keep staring at him like he’s some impossible machine that’s incapable of being understood, watch in horror as Baymax lowers the two pieces down to the ground, and uses his ridiculously overpowered actuators to crush them against the ground. Technically, not cheating- but not everyone has access to state of the art laboratories to create such components.
And just like that, it’s over. Hiro’s got nothing, even as Tadashi flicks the magnetic fields off. There’s howls from the audience; people lamenting their chance lost, and others crowing over the very idea of how badly Hiro’s ass would be wrecked, later on.
Tadashi doesn’t have any attention to give them. He stares across the ring at the small, tiny boy who brought him here in the first place, and his heart rips in two at the expression of utter betrayal on his face as he stares down at the broken mess that was his bot...his one, tiny vestige of safety.
Utter betrayal from the boy who is, technically, his property now.
Tadashi owns him.
“And the winner is- Baymax!”
And just like that, he’s won.
Funny; it doesn't feel like he's won anything.
So A/B/O dynamics is a trope I both love and—really, really hate. I hate that, most of the time, A/B/O comes across as quick fix to rip out the character’s humanity with ‘instincts’ and make it neither the dominant or submissive’s fault that they literally HAVE TO BANG NOW RIGHT NOW BANGING IS HAPPENING NOW. It reads in very scary ways and perpetuates some real life aspects of our culture whilst blatantly erasing some other things, so uh….I hope you enjoyed this.