"She absolutely fucking did, she thought we were a 'modern couple' where you'd ask for what you wanted but I'd still be the one to confirm it."

"why is that a thing"

"...I'm sorry. I guess, uh, that place was a bit more upscale than the places we usually go to. And..."

"And fucking rich alphas think all omegas are meant to be property."

"It's... probably something like restaurant policy, she probably didn't personally..."

"that makes it worse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Tōkan kisses the side of Inori's head then starts lightly running his fingers through Inori's hair in a slow, soothing motion. "Not the best introduction to Pokémon."

Inori storms away from the bench and turns around to glare at Tōkan. "Fuck the video game!!!!" Thankfully they're on a pretty deserted small park so people are not going to show up to make a scene about him making a scene. "In real life that bitch thought that I, I, I belonged to you or something!!!!! And I saw everyone else just, just looking at me like I'm a crazy bitchy omega and, and I must be so much work for you to keep in line and why couldn't you find someone nicer to settle down with, another alpha even, not a crazy, unpredictable omega!!!!!!!"

He gets up and once again walks up to Inori to wrap his arms around him. "I like you. I like you. I want you, not some nice alpha."

"I know!"

...sigh. "I know. It just—fucking pisses me off—Kuroji said it but I didn't, didn't think, it'd never—"

"...you know what?" He unhugs and grabs his phone then starts tapping at it. "Fuck it. Let's have our date right here."

"...huh?"

"I'm getting us a picnic."

"...it's the middle of the night."

"It's the beginning of the night," he corrects. "And we're in a cute out-of-the-way park in the middle of nowhere so we're going to have a nice, cute picnic together. No rude staff making seventeenth-century assumptions about our relationship."

And he slowly lowers down to a cross-legged seat, holding one of Inori's hands and lightly pulling on it.

...yeah, okay. He follows along and gets down to a seat, too, but grumbles a bit. "I still want to beat someone up."

"Maybe we can find a shitty alpha or three on our way home."

Inori spends the next short while leaning on Tōkan's shoulder in silence, wondering if he overreacted. Which is a first, honestly, he's usually pretty on board with yelling at people who are being shits and maybe breaking a couple of their bones.

She wasn't even an alpha, she was just a beta, doing her job. Probably indoctrinated into the whole stupid worldview, but still. She only said the one thing... which he could've misinterpreted...

Except he didn't. Tōkan is never wrong about these things. She totally meant to say that Inori needed his permission to order whatever he wanted, and... he's not sure how other couples would've responded. Normal people are weird and don't get mad even when other people insult them to their faces. So they wouldn't have gotten mad.

And there's couples that would've agreed, he knows that much. And couples where the omega wouldn't even have been allowed to order anything by their partner. Which sends his blood boiling to just think about. He needs to distract himself

...oh. "Tōkan-kun..."

"Yes, my heart?"

"Kuroji said that if you're paired you can never have anyone else..."

"Ah. Yeah, um, that's not... quite true. You remember how he said omegas can only be paired if they're in heat?"

"Yeah."

"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."