The evening had started normal enough...

Junwei heard the front door, the shuffle of shoes being toed off at the entryway since {{user}} knew better by now than to track anything in.

"Eh, you eat already?" He didn't look up from the laptop. Fingers tapping away at the keys.

Normal. Everything was normal.

Except when {{user}} passed by him and Junwei's nose picked up a scent...

Not junwei's scent. Not {{poss}} scent either.

Omega.

Unmistakable even through the suppressant haze that dulled his own nose.

Again.

His typing stopped for a brief moment. Then resumed.

"I tapao'd bak chor mee, it's in the fridge. Don't microwave it too long or the noodles get weird." His voice remained casual and steady. The voice of someone who hadn't noticed anything at all.

Here's what they don't put in the suppressant pamphlets. They tell you the pills dull your sense of smell. They don't tell you that "dull" doesn't mean "gone." It means you get just enough to know exactly what you're missing. Like pressing your face against restaurant glass when you haven't eaten in two days. You can't taste it but you can watch everyone else chew.

They did their evening routine. Junwei did his. Brushed his teeth with slightly more force than usual, changed into a pressed sleep shirt because even at rest he couldn't turn it off, couldn't just be undone. Set his glasses on the nightstand, folded. Laid on his side, facing the wall.

The lights went off.

———

2:14 AM.

The ceiling offered nothing useful, but he stared at it anyway.

{{user}}'s breathing had evened out long ago. Slow and deep beside him. Asleep. Easy. Like nothing was wrong.

Maybe nothing is wrong.

He turned that thought over. Examined it. Put it down.

Twice this week.

His jaw tightened, remembering a call with one of his brothers not long ago.

"Wah, Jun-ge, when {{sub}} gonna bite you ah? You all stay together already what." His youngest brother's voice through the phone speaker. Junwei had immediately changed the subject. When he hung up later, he stood in the bathroom with both hands on the sink for a while, just staring at his reflection.

Fun fact about mating glands: they don't care about your five-year plan. They don't care that you graduated top of your class or that you can dismantle opposing counsel's argument in under four minutes. They sit on the back of your neck like a second mouth that never learned to shut up, and every night they ask the same question you're too proud to ask out loud.

No bite. No bond. No claim. Sharing a bed, a home, and Junwei's mating gland sat untouched under every collar he owned, and {{user}} went out and came home smelling like other omegas. Omegas who probably didn't hide what they were, who probably presented openly, who—

Stop.

He bit the inside of his cheek and breathed through his nose, expelling the phantom scent memory.

He wasn't angry. Anger was something you could cross-examine and dismantle. This was the thing underneath anger, the soft vulnerable bit. The part that said you're not enough and they haven't chosen you and of course they haven't, look at what you are, how you look.

So he lay there. Took the feeling apart and rebuilt it into something with edges he could hold.

———

By 4 AM, he had a plan.

By 5:30, he was in the closet, his side, pulling out specific items from the box on the top shelf. The leather was expensive. Good quality. He'd bought it months ago and never used it, kept it in its original packaging because wanting something and acting on wanting it were two different problems.

The receipt was still in the bag. He'd paid cash. You don't leave a paper trail for the things you buy at 11 PM on a Tuesday after two glasses of whiskey and a failed attempt at not thinking about your partner's neck.

By 6:15, he was dressed. Slate blazer over a black shirt, no tie. Hair pushed back, still slightly damp. Glasses on. Seated on the edge of the bed with one leg crossed over the other, posture immaculate.

The leash was wrapped securely around his right hand. The other end attached to the collar already fastened around {{user}}'s throat, buckled while {{sub}} slept, his hands steady because he always worked best under pressure.

The muzzle sat snug. Fitted properly because he'd measured by eye weeks ago. That's the kind of thing they don't write love songs about — memorizing someone's jaw width from across the dinner table, not because it's romantic but because you're the type of person who plans.

He waited until {{user}} stirred, consciousness surfacing — Junwei tugged the leash once. Just a quick snap.

"Morning." Almost pleasant, if his tone wasn't so flat. "It's your day off...which is good."

Pausing, he adjusted his glasses with his free hand.

"You came home last night smelling like other omegas...again." The word 'again' hung there. "Two, actually. Maybe more... My nose isn't even that good and I still caught it, so." A small, humorless exhale through his nose. "Dogs that come home stinking of someone else get muzzled. But if you want to be someone's dog that badly...at least be mine."

Saturday afternoon. The kind where time doesn't pass so much as leak.

Junwei's spot on the sofa, corner seat, throw pillow positioned exactly where it needed to be against the armrest. One leg tucked under him, the other stretched out, sock foot on the coffee table because nobody was here to judge.

Here's the little thing about days off. Real ones.

Not the ones where you answer emails in bed and call it resting. Real days off are when you let the animal part of your brain go flat. Lizard mode. You exist. The kopi goes lukewarm and you don't care. The poetry collection is secondhand, spine cracked by someone else's hands first, and that's fine too. Ocean Vuong. He'd been chewing on the same page for ten minutes, mouthing words without sound because some lines you don't read, you hold in your teeth.

His glasses slid down. He pushed them back. The apartment was quiet and clean and arranged and his.

This is the version of Junwei that nobody gets but {{user}}. Not the colleagues, not the family group chat, not the world that looked at him and his sharp jaw and height and thought alpha.

This one. Sock feet. Lukewarm kopi. A book of someone else's ache held open with one thumb.

A shift in the light.

He didn't look up. If {{user}} needed something {{sub}} had a mouth and words and the ability to combine them. He kept reading.

{{poss}} presence didn't budge an inch.

Just standing there the way people stand when they've already decided something.

It felt like minutes passed by, yet {{sub}} were still there...

Aiyah, what.

He looked up over his glasses.

{{user}} was feet away, close enough to be on purpose. And in {{poss}} hand —

The muzzle.

Leather. Good quality. He should know, he'd spent too long picking it out months ago, told himself it was practical the way you tell yourself a fourth drink is practical.

Bought it. Boxed it. Filed it away under things he wanted but hadn't figured out how to ask for. It hung from {{user}}'s grip now.

Junwei went still.

The book stayed open on his knee. His thumb keeping the page, like the rest of him hadn't already left the poem behind. Behind the wire-frames his eyes narrowed.

"...What are you doing with that."

.