Chapter Text
Some disasters announce themselves with fire, and thunder, moments before hitting; that’s the good kind of disasters. Others sit across from you, in pristine suits, and a clipped expression, while your heart breaks silently in your chest at each idle glance from them.
Gao Tu wasn’t a stranger to problems. His entire life had been one clownery of disaster after another. Yet… Yet, even after ten years of constantly shattering his own heart to pieces, by his own hands, and his own accord, it baffled him how much all of it still hurt like a fresh wound.
His hands hadn’t shook when he had buried his mother’s memories, and restarted life on his own. But as he signed his part of the resignation letter, the characters were a reflection of his own true self, shaky at best, and the facade of calm-neat-pristine barely there anymore. Nausea churned in gut, less morning sickness, and more at the prospect of what he was about to do, as he sealed up the envelope containing his fate. He barely kept his breathing even, the weight of the paper in his hands settling heavier than lead.
Ten years. An entire decade of his life, of himself, of his existence– as masked as it may have been– he was about to walk away from. Still, the flutter in his chest was not fear, but only a constant sorrow, laced with longing, that he had long learnt to accept. He didn’t have it in himself to fear the man he has been in love with since their highschool years.
As bitter-tongued, and ill-tempered as Shen Wenlang was, he wasn’t a bad guy. Cruel in his words, perhaps, but never in his ways. And Gao Tu wished sometimes that it was the opposite, at least that would have made it easier to walk away had the alpha been cruel to him on purpose. And here went the omega’s heart breaking yet again, as he walked into the President’s office on the shakiest feet he had since joining HS Group.
There was Shen Wenlang sitting in his usual seat, looking as devastating as ever, and Gao Tu almost backed out of what he was about to do, almost couldn’t walk away from the alpha. But he mustered all the courage he could have against the man he loved, and threw the questions he had been biting back for a while.
He knew the answers would break him all over again, but he still asked; The usual cruel answers would make walking away easier, yet his traitorous heart hoped in its deepest corner that maybe the answers would be different. By some miracle, he’d have a reason to stay back.
Reality didn’t hit like a bucket of iced water the way Gao Tu expected it to. But then again, he was already drenched, and shivering in the coldness that was Shen Wenlang for decades, always quietly absorbing all that the venom that the alpha unintentionally spewed at him—
“You’re too ugly to be a showpiece, get to work.”
“Get that disgusting scent off of yourself before you step in to work again.”
“Filthy omega.”
Never personal, never thrown at him with the intention to cut. But if it was possible to see wounds caused by words, Gao Tu’s heart would be one mangled, battered, and bloody thing to look at. He always took the words with a quiet acceptance, a silent resignation– like he deserved those words. If only he knew that the alpha wished he wouldn’t.
So of course Shen Wenlang was caught off guard when Gao Tu talked back. His usually composed beta secretary– his closest acquaintance, or friend, or whatever you’d term the man– answering back with heat, the alpha was almost impressed. He would have been fully impressed though, had the conversation not been about an omega, and especially not the unseen, always heat ridden omega, that he has hated with a passion for years. The same omega whose scent Gao Tu carried into the office, infuriating– and absolutely killing– Wenlang every single time.
And now Gao Tu wanted to leave the company– and him– for that omega. Wenlang’s blood was boiling hotter than lava at that notion, and he, once again, said things he did not mean, to the man he hated hurting, whether or not he would admit it to himself.
Gao Tu knew the alpha would yell, would say shit he always did, and before this, the omega had never once been as affected by it as he was now– he realised he was more vulnerable now, more emotionally easy to harm. It took everything in himself to fight the instinctive urge to cover his stomach– to shield away the priceless secret he carried with himself from any possible harm’s way– and he balled his hands into tight fists at his sides, nails digging into his palm. He would not risk it, not something so precious to him. Maybe it was unfair, but he could not hand over such a fragile truth over to someone who was not, and might never be, ready to carry it safely.
And so the omega walked out of the room, no more defense. He was going to leave one way or another, anyways.