Chapter Text
He was out with his friends from school when he first smelled it. He didn’t have a name for the scent then, didn’t realize where it was coming from at first, the earthy, herbal smell reminiscent of his mother’s old family recipes. He thought it smelled kind of nice. He didn’t even think to conceal it.
His father was thrilled. He gave Gao Tu the finest cut of meat that night at dinner. He smiled broadly and proudly introduced him as his “omega son” to strangers in public. He didn’t beat Gao Tu’s mother for two whole weeks.
That was while he was winning. He was always nice when he was winning. That’s what made it so easy to forget.
One night, a few weeks after he presented, his father had a few friends over. They pulled out their cards, cigar smoke filling the air and bare feet propped up on Gao Tu’s mother’s grandmother’s mahogany dining table.
His father pulled him aside. “Gao Tu, I have a special task for you tonight. You’ll be serving my friends during our game.”
Gao Tu nodded solemnly. This was nothing out of the ordinary; his father had asked him to pour him whiskey hundreds of times before. He put on his best outfit, a plain white button-down and a pair of slacks, and obediently stood in the corner until he was called upon. He bustled around the kitchen, serving food and keeping the drinks flowing to avoid anyone getting upset.
He tried his best to ignore the lingering gazes of his father’s friends, the way their eyes drifted to the back of his slacks that were just a little too tight and too short since they hadn’t had the funds to buy new ones this year.
As he leaned over to refill one man’s glass, he felt a hand skirt up his leg.
“Wanna make things a little more interesting?” the man drawled out. His grin was casual. Slowly, deliberately, he squeezed the back of Gao Tu’s thigh.
Gao Tu froze. His eyes flitted over to his father, gauging his reaction, silently pleading. He should have known better. His father’s eyes had a glint, something shrewd and appraising that cut through his drunken haze.
“Hah,” his father barked out after a long few seconds. “As if you could afford him.”
As if you could afford him. Not “not for sale”. Not “get your hands off him”. In that moment, Gao Tu knew it was a matter of when, not if, someone would be able to afford him.
It was only a few weeks later that it all came to a head. A long heatwave struck that summer, the air thick and stagnant. It seemed his father’s luck had turned with the weather. He had been losing, badly. His father’s mood had darkened, his sister’s rare pheromone condition had worsened, and his mother’s skin had turned black and blue beneath the long sleeves she still wore in the unbearable heat.
The creditors came knocking, as they always did, roughing up his father and threatening to do worse if he couldn’t pay up. But this time, he had something of value to give them.
Gao Tu didn’t fight back. What would have been the point? He had nowhere else to go. He didn’t say a word as his mother wailed while the pack of leering alphasroughly shoved him into the back of a car.
He didn’t say a word when they stripped him bare in a cold, dank warehouse, when they inspected him with thick, grubby fingers to see if he really was an omega.
He still didn’t say a word when they told him they’d found a buyer who would pay handsomely to “break him in” through his first heat. He didn’t so much as shed a tear when he “lost his virginity” to five more buyers before his body stopped going into heats entirely and they couldn’t get away with that one anymore.
The scent of sage had soured until it had faded almost completely. Most alphas didn’t like an omega who smelled like hardly anything, but some preferred it. It made it easier to wipe the scent off before going back to their spouses.
He didn’t mind that it was gone. It no longer brought him any comfort. After all, he finally understood what the sweet scent truly meant: that he was something less. Something to be owned, to be taken out like a doll and played with before being put away on the shelf. Something that was never going to be able to play with his school friends, or see his sister get better, or taste his mother’s home cooking again.
Still, for some reason, the night he realized he could no longer catch the faintest whiff of sage on his skin, he cried himself to sleep.