Chapter Text
Three years before...
Dan wandered around his house, dusting shelves, mopping floors and feeling confident that his very own house was going to be clean and neat. He felt confident because he could do this, he could clean his own house, arrange his own things and keep his house clean. He felt so damn happy and confident, because this was his house, and his house was clean.
The confidence wore after about an hour of scrubbing and cleaning and accidentally sticking his hand in some disgusting, weird mouldy food he’d left under his bed for too long. He took note to never leave food under the bed again, he’d hate to clean that up again.
After another hour the house was finished, clean and sparkly. Ready to decorate and finally add some character. He confidence was renewed and he felt amazing. He, a small 14 year old omega, had his very own house, on a street in the city and where no family could get to him. He felt so free.
~
Dan walked into his house, without a bounce in his step or a sparkle in his eye. It was eleven at night and he’d just worked nine hours and gone to school for six. He was drained, but he was used to the feeling. He was omega living alone, and as empowering as it felt, he still had to earn his money and attend school, leaving him tired and emotionally drained. He just want to sleep for sixteen hours and wake up at twelve and order takeaway for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He didn’t want to have to work for nine hours everyday and study for exams and still barely have enough money to eat. But most of all, he wanted an alpha, he wanted to love someone, he wanted someone to love him, provide money for him and look after him, but Dan would never admit that. He was an omega living alone, a strong omega, a powerful omega, an independent omega, he didn’t want to rely on an alpha for anything.
Dan dropped his bag and crashed onto the couch, puffed from walking so far, (he didn’t own a car,) He struggled to keep his eyes open, but he also struggled to fall asleep, as his tummy was grumbling, wanting food. Dan dragged himself over to his cheap fridge and opened it, he saw the cheapest variety of two minute noodles. He grabbed a packet and was far too tired to actually heat up the noodles, so naturally he ate it dry watching some stupid reality TV show. A process he’d been through many times before as he’s done this almost every night for the past three years.
About ten minutes later, Dan was almost falling asleep, even with the last bites of the noodles in his mouth. He lay down, pressing his head against the TV remote and and accidentally changing the channel with his head to the news. Stupid news. Dan casually listened to the boring news reported as he gently fell asleep. He was abruptly woken up by a different news reporter loudly repeating the words that a new Omega Rights Law had been reversed.
“A law was put in place four years ago that any omega could live alone at any age, regardless of marital status. This law has been taken out and replaced with law fifty three of the Anti Omega Rights movement, ‘All omegas must currently be living under supervision of an alpha.’”
~
Four years before...
“Dan, we’ve told you again and again, you can’t live alone. You’re an omega, not an alpha. People will make fun of you if you don’t act like one. Do you know how important the family reputation is? If you live alone and start acting like an alpha the whole family will take a hit. You can’t bring the family down.” Dan’s mother told him, speaking softly as to not upset him.
“All you care about is the family, the family’s reputation and my reputation as an alpha’s child. That’s all you care about, you don’t care about how I feel!” Dan shouted back. His mother looked genuinely concerned for him. She looked deeply into his eyes and just as she was about to speak-
“It’s probably just his first heat coming up, making him act up. It’s nothing, he’ll soon realise an alpha’s importance once he’s locked up in his room in a couple days.” Dan’s mother looked defeated and broken as she nodded her head in approval to her alpha’s words.
“But we do care about you sweetheart. We always will, you’re our child, you are so so important to us. You just don’t realise it yet.” Dan loved his mother, he loved her soft voice and how much she cared, but he’d love to live alone more. He needed independence. He hated living with his family, with his alpha father. His father didn’t love him anyways, he stopped loving him the day he found out he was having an omega baby boy. Omega males were very rare, and the least respected. People hated the idea of a male surrendering to someone like that. And it definitely didn’t help that Dan was gay.
“I’m not important to Dad,” Dan said, and he knew it broke his mother's heart, and to get to his Dad, he had to break mum first. Dan first looked at his mother and then at his Dad who was still sitting on the other couch head looking at his laptop. His parents said nothing at first, just silently feeling guilty.
“Maybe you would be better off alone,” Dad finally said. His mother gasped but kept quiet, she had to listen to her alpha. Why did she marry such a man? Why would anyone in their right mind ever marry and bow down to an alpha? Dan hated alphas. He decided right then and there he’d never love an alpha, alphas were stupid and horrible and mean.
“Maybe I should, it’s not like you care!” Dan riled up, his heart rate and need to live alone increasing.
“I care about my family, and only my family. I do not care for people who don’t want to be or aren’t in my family. From the way you’re acting, it’s clear you don’t want to be apart of my family. I don’t want you in it either,” his father spoke firmly and roughly. Dan looked over at his mother sitting next to him and watched as tears streamed down her face. Dan leaned against her and wrapped his arms around her. This action seemed to insult Dan’s father even more. “Get your filthy hands off my wife! You don’t belong in this family, get your hands off of her,” he yelled, standing up and making his way over to the pair. He quickly slapped Dan before Dan scrambled away.
“Alpha,” his mother gasped. Dan got up and ran to his bedroom, putting a chair under the handle and flopping onto his bed. Minutes later he heard a pair footsteps coming up to his bedroom. He saw his door handle jiggle around before hearing his Dad curse on the other side. “Sweetie, please come out. We need to talk to you,” his mother said.
“Talk some sense into you,” his dad added.
“Mark,” Dan’s mother scolded him. “You’re not helping. If you still want a son by the end of this, I suggest you go away… I know that alpha’s are leaders but you don’t know everything about raising a child. Isn’t this what I’m here for?”
“You better talk some sense into that little cunt, he has to know who’s in charge around here,” Dan’s father said before walking off. As soon as Dan knew his father was gone he took away the chair and slowly opened the door.
“Hey,” Dan greeted as his mother looked at him.
“Darling,” his mother cried as she hugged him. “C’mon, let’s talk.” The pair sat on Dan’s bed, no one saying anything for a few moments. “I’m sorry your father said those things. He doesn’t really mean them, he just doesn’t want to lose you. Also, he’s stressed about work, if word does get out that you don’t want to be with your family, everyone will blame him.”
“Why are you defending him?” Dan asked. “He slapped me, he called me a cunt, he said he didn’t want me to be apart of this family. And you still think he hasn’t done anything wrong?”
“Of course he’s done things that are wrong, and he regrets them, but we need to forgive him. He’s just under a lot of stress.”
“You love me, don’t you?” Dan asked.
“Sweetheart, of course I do, I love you more than anything.”
“Then what if Dad made me leave, and you’d never see me again? Could you forgive him then?” Dan tested her.
“I’d have to. I’m only twenty nine, I only have three children. I’m meant to have ten. At this age I’ll never find another alpha, he is my alpha and he still has to impregnate me. He’s my alpha, I need him. If I don’t forgive him I’ll never be truly happy.”
“You aren’t truly happy now. He doesn’t love what you love most. He ignores what you love most.”
“He loves you. He needs you. He just doesn’t show it like I do. If you leave he’ll break. He’d feel awful if you ran away.”
“Good. I’m just a trophy to him, a thing to show off. He least favourite trophy, ‘world’s best dad at making gay omega sons’. He much prefers Lillith and Felix. The pretty pair, an omega girl and an alpha male. Then the reject, gay male omega.”
“It’s no secret that you’re unconventional. You’re different, Dan. People just aren’t used to it. But you’ll have to accept that, and if you do, it shows you just how strong you are. And maybe once they realise how strong you are, they’ll accept you too.”
“People will only respect me if they think I can have a big happy family, and everyone thinks that a child needs a mother. I can never be a mother, nor can I marry one.”
“Then you’ll have to prove that you can look after a child just as well as anyone else, won’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well if we’ve got that sorted, why do you want to live alone?”
~
Dan is woken from his daydream to hear loud knocking at his door. It was nine thirty in the morning on a Saturday, why would anyone visit him? Dan got up off the couch, opened the door and was met with a very familiar face and a small group of children with her.
“Mum?” Dan whispered in disbelief. Dan’s mother invited herself in and instantly brought him into a big hug.
“Dan. My Dan. It’s time to come home,” she said, a broad smile on her face.
“What?” Dan gasped, not processing the situation. “Home?”
“Home! You’re coming home, didn’t you hear? You can’t live alone! You’re coming home. We set up your room and everything! You’ll move back in with us!”
“I can’t come home. This is my home.”
“The government said, you can’t live alone.” Memories of last night flooded back, when he was half asleep and a stupid news reporter was informing him of the news. “Come home. With Felix, he has children now! Lillith moved out, and you’ll come home with the new batch! Meet Ella, she’s three years old, and Andrew, he’s four years old, and these are the twins, Thea and Lola,” Dan’s mother excitedly said, pointing to two girls in dresses and two babies in a pram. “They’re only eight months old! Lillith just turned eighteen, Felix is turning twenty in a couple weeks,” she rushed her words, trying to fill Dan in on everything. “Oh! And I’m pregnant with another set of twins!” Dan’s mother grinned. Dan’s heartbeat was through the roof as he processed everything. “We’ve had renovations done as well, the house is twice as big!”
“I can’t move in,” Dan told her.
“What?! Dan, please. We can rekindle our family again, have everything back to normal.”
“I don’t want to,” Dan blunty said.
“Dan! You do,” she told him.
“No. I left, I intend to never come back. You have six children, with two on the way, you don’t need me,” Dan told her again. There was no way he was going back or talking to his Dad. He hadn’t seen any of his family in three years. He’ll just have to go to a omega home. “I’ll just go to a omega home.”
“Why on earth do you want to be in a filthy care home when you can with your family, with three alpha’s in the house! Why would you still want to live alone?”
“I don’t want to be dependent on anyone, especially Mark.”
“You’ve stopped calling him your father,” Caroline brokenly said.
“That’s because he isn’t my father,” Dan informed her. “I’m going to a care home, that’s it.”
“Well. I’m driving you. Get packing. Take what you want, we’ll keep everything else for when you move out of that awful place.” Dan ran upstairs to start packing. His mind still hadn’t really caught up with what was going on. His mother, who he hadn’t seen for three years had just appeared with her four children, telling him to move into his old house with his old family, because it was against the law for him to live in a house alone. Fuck.
“Are you ready, darling?” Dan’s mother, Caroline asked from downstairs, twenty minutes later. When she heard no response she rushed upstairs and walked into what she thought was Dan’s room and found him sitting next to a full bag of stuff, his head buried in his hands, sobbing. He felt so angry with everyone, even if they didn’t deserve it. He felt angry at his family, for thinking he’d so easily crawl back to them. He was angry at the government for taking away his rights. He was so goddamn angry, but he felt hopeless and unbelievably sad, he was surprised he still had strong emotions inside of him, he just felt numb. He felt all too much at the same time. He didn’t want his mother to see him like this, he didn’t want anyone to see him weak or broken or anything but strong and independent. He saw his mother walking towards him with a look of care and sympathy. He dodged her hug, wiped his eyes and walked out of the room, acting as if nothing had happened, because he wasn’t weak, and he certainly wasn’t crying.
The car ride was long, long, sad and awkward. His mother’s kids stared at him like he was a weird stranger, like he’d done something terribly wrong. Did his mum tell them what he did? He knew the children did not think good things of him, but he wondered how bad he was in their head. No one said anything for the forty minute drive, at one point Caroline turned on the radio to keep out the awkward silence, but it didn’t do anything.
Dan was relieved when they arrived at the home, glad he was one step closer to getting away from his family. The building didn’t look nice, it was big and covered in beige bricks and white window sills. There was a rather large garden, separating the two buildings. The garden didn’t look too bad, maybe even nice. He followed his mother and her children, (it didn’t feel like he could ever be related to them, they all looked like strangers,) into the courtyard and into a small building with ‘administrative office’ outside. They walked inside to see a small lounge with crappy blue sofas and a TV hanging in the corner with the news on, someone talking about this new law that had been put in place. Everyone took a seat while Caroline walked up to the desk on knocked on the glass that separated him and the administrators. A man opened up the glass and talked to Caroline for a while, Dan drowned them out, he didn’t want to hear what she had to say anyway.
After hours of awkwardly waiting in the office, watching people come and go, Dan was finally given a key to his room. This was it, he was going to stay here for the rest of his life. He’d never marry or move back in with his family, he was destined to stay here forever. At least he didn’t have to pay for his own food and water anymore. He quickly said goodbye to his mother and her children who looked very mad at him for making them stay at this boring old place. He relaxed once his mother left, thankful she didn’t stay any longer. He took his key out of his pocket and opened up his room. The walls were brick, white and plain. There were two beds, the room was tiny. They each had their own tiny desks and chairs. They had an old disgusting mini fridge, a couple shelves to share. He looked over at his single bed, it looked awful, stiff and old and very uncomfortable. It also had no bedsheets on it, he’d have to go buy some soon. After putting his suitcase under his bed he walked out of his room to go find everything else, exits, food, common rooms. As he opened the door, someone who was just opening it fell down into the room. The guy groaned and rolled over, looking up at Dan. The guy had scruffy light brown hair and big eyes.
“Didn’t see you there!” the guy laughed slowly getting up and walking into their room. “So you’re staying with me, huh?” Dan kept quiet and nodded. “You’re lucky then, I’m amazing,” the guy laughed again. “I’m Chris,” he smiled, holding out his hand. Dan shook it. “Dan. Um, do you know where everything is? Like bathrooms and food areas and stuff?”
“Food areas!? You buy your own, mate, and bathrooms are at the end of the hall. There’s a cool room about three doors down, kind of a common room, a lot of people hang out there, it’s got a pool tables and stuff like that. It’s pretty cool,” Chris told him. “I’m actually going to head there in about an hour, you should come.” Dan nodded his head and left the room, not bothering to say goodbye or thank you. He left the building and went out to try and find somewhere that sold bedsheets, and to buy some food and water, since apparently no one supplied that here. He thought of staying here almost like just sharing a crappy apartment with someone. He didn’t really like Chris that much though, he seemed like an in your face type of person. Actually he seemed kinda drunk. He hoped Chris wasn’t always like that.
He found a nice set somewhere fancy, it was overpriced and expensive, but it was smooth and silky and something nice in the shitty home. He got some cheap chinese food and brought it back to his room. As he opened the door he saw Chris on his bed kissing some guy, at it looked quite heated. He blushed and quickly closed the door. He stood outside his door, unsure of where to go. He clutched his food and shopping and walked down to the courtyard. He saw a few other people around, a group of girls and a couple of guys. He took a seat on a bench and unpacked his chinese food, eating some and going on his phone.
“So, you’re part of the new bunch?” someone asked Dan. Dan looked up and saw a tall guy, instantly sensing an alpha. He had broad shoulders and blue eyes and nice hair and, god, he looked nice.