"And once you're paired you can only get in heat again around the alpha you paired with. Or, probably not only but a lot less often otherwise, your heats are irregular but some people do just stop having heats away from their alphas altogether.

"So you could get paired with someone else, after pairing me, but... I'd need to be there, around you, to induce heat in you to let the other alpha bite you, but I'd also get in a worse rut than I've ever had at the same time which... I don't want to say anything about me here but I'm pretty sure most alphas get really possessive and jealous. So even if you had an alpha that was willing to stay with you for however long it took for you to heat again to get your new partner to bite you, they'd probably change their mind when it happened.

"And since you're much much much less fertile while not in heat..."

Oh.

Oh wow.

Meanwhile alphas can just... never rut again and bite however many people they want.

"I hate this so much."

Tōkan catches some of what Inori's thinking because he says, "For what it's worth, alphas are also a lot less fertile if they're not around a heating omega, that's another reason why alpha pairs have so much trouble having kids. But, um, yeah, omegas got the short end of the stick there."

"Every fucking stick. There's nothing good about being an omega. Nothing."

He's not about to tell Inori the ways in which him being an omega is good for Tōkan because that's the entire fucking point and if he did Inori would rightfully break his jaw.

"...well, there's... the part where we could have kids together someday."

...

Kids with Tōkan.

That sounds terrifying he's not scared of anything.

That one Inori is fully on the "they're too young for that" bandwagon for.

"Could've been a beta girl instead," he mumbles.

"That's true. And I'd love you all the same. Because you're you."

He's really cute when he goes all blushy BSOD like that.

But a car pulls up close to where they are.

"Delivery for Kokonoe-san?"

"That's me, thank you." And they get an honest-to-god picnic basket wrapped in a blanket. He starts setting it all up, and he's included stuff Inori likes: burgers, pies, cakes, lots and lots of sushi, much more food than Tōkan would've thought two people could get through if one of them weren't Yamada Inori.

He eyes the selection for a bit but once the delivery person is properly gone he tackles his boyfriend and kisses him on the grass.

Tōkan is still a teenage alpha so he's just absolutely not going to complain at all. He's not even particularly mindful of decency, Inori isn't in heat so they aren't really in danger of crossing the line all the way to illegal.

After Inori's had enough of it that he's kind of slowed down and no longer has his hand any places it shouldn't be Tōkan pulls away for a second and asks, "What's the occasion?"

"...the occasion is that I love you."

Okay! He guesses it's his turn to tackle his boyfriend and make out until the fire dies down.

...or until he decides to stop because it's actually quite likely that the fire won't die down, he's starting to have dangerous thoughts about risk likelihood of being caught while in a wide open park right next to a road not so empty that cars haven't been showing up every now and then. Dangerous thoughts which he should leave for later when they're at his place.

"I love you too, Inori-kun," he says after he manages to finally wrestle his thoughts away from that. "Is that why you were asking about pairing?" He had an inkling, after Subaru talked to him, but he didn't want to try to pursue it very far.

"...a bit."

"...but you're having second thoughts about pairing."

"Kind of." He pulls away then notices that the food is getting cold and starts scarfing it down.

"Should I not do the 'guess what you're thinking and feeling' thing?"

Inori pauses for a moment, then says, "No. You... should do it. It... helps."

Tōkan should also be eating, he guesses. While he thinks.

"You got it," he says slowly. "Didn't you? The thing about... us being too young. The heat thing, and having kids. You hadn't thought of that?"

He hums an affirmative around his food.

"Yeah." He leans close to Inori to kiss his temple. "I love you. We don't need to pair anytime soon. Your parents didn't until one year in, right?" And Tōkan's parents never did, he doesn't say. "We can wait. And until then you're still the strongest and you can still kick the asses of any dumb rapists who thought it was a good idea to exist in public in the same city as you."

He punches the air and swallows his food. "RIGHT ON."

They don't run into any shitty alphas on their way back to Tōkan's apartment, to Inori's chagrin. Inori has barely taken his shoes off and dropped his pipe by the door before he's on his way to the master bathroom, and Tōkan follows on his heels after locking the door and leaving the picnic basket in the kitchen.