"I am never getting married again."

With that groan, Yoru sank into his bed. He'd always known that weddings were stressful, but did every bride get calls about the wedding cake falling over the day before their wedding? The baker had been a blubbering mess, and it was only after Yoru had assured him that the news would never reach the Tsunodas that the man was able to promise that he'd stay up all night long baking another.

Then there was his health. He'd thought he was supposed to feel better after leaving the hospital. Little did he know he'd feel horrible - without morphine, he couldn't even breathe without thinking about it. After one night on the couch, the strain on his already abused back became unbearable and he had to move to his room. But the bones in his legs were bruised and walking was hard, so he had to ask Nakamura to carry him to his room.

Making matters worse was his mother, whose dissatisfaction with Kei's profession had finally boiled over. Even though his legs had been killing him, he'd had to follow Miriko around all day as she ranted on and on about Kei, Kei's family, Kei, her husband, Kei, her in-laws, Kei, and even Yoru himself; every time she tried to say something in front of Nakamura, Yoru would have to stop her. He'd lost count of the times he'd wanted to give up, sit down and cry his eyes out.

His phone rang. It was Kei. "Open your window," he demanded.

"What? Why?" Yoru asked. "Why are you calling me at this time?"

"Would you just open it?"

"My legs hurt, Kei."

"Please. It'll be worth it."

"Ugh, alright." Grumbling incoherently, Yoru hobbled to his window and opened it. "Now what?" he snapped.

"Move aside."

Yoru nearly fell out the window. Kei's voice hadn't come through the phone - it came from right next to him, where the man himself was clinging to a drainpipe.

"Are you nuts!" Yoru whisper-yelled. "What if you fall?"

"I won't if you let me come in, Yoru."

"What are you even doing here?"

"Visiting my lovely fiancee."

Yoru rubbed his face in annoyance. "It's three in the morning!"

"I know. Now would you kindly move aside?"

Yoru glared, but did as he was told. With the litheness of a cat, Kei grabbed the ledge above the window and swung himself into Yoru's bedroom, landing with a muted thump. "You are bonkers," Yoru observed. "What sort of maniac attempts this shit the night before their wedding?"

"This one." Kei took off the backpack he'd brought with him and placed it on Yoru's bed. "Nakamura told me you'd had a bad day," he said, taking out the contents of his bag one by one. "I wanted to take you out on a date to get your mind off things, but that's not possible, so I brought the date to you."

Yoru couldn't speak for a second. He eyed the things Kei had brought - mugs, plates, a thermos, a lunchbox, a takeout box from a bakery and battery-powered LED lights. "Candles would have been to cliché," Kei explained, noting Yoru's confused expression once he'd turned the lights on.

"Yeah, as if a clandestine 3 a.m. rendezvous isn't," Yoru said, but his voice shook with emotion. He clutched his hands to his warming chest. If he didn't, they'd go straight to hide his face and he'd cry.

"Alright, come here," Kei smiled, walking over to Yoru and picking him up. "Outside, we have cars. Inside, we have overbearing fiancés."

Yoru couldn't help but chuckle. It felt good to smile, silly though Kei's words were. His weariness at his mother's behavior, his pain, his anxiety about the wedding and his general depression had created a strange chill within him, and he hadn't even realized it was there until now. His facial muscles tingled as he smiled, tired as they were from constantly executing a deep frown. The emotions in his heart overflowed. "I wish I'd met you sooner," he whispered thickly.

"Really?" Kei placed Yoru gently on the bed and pulled the covers up to his waist. "If I'd asked you out, you would've agreed?"

"Knowing what I know about you now, yes," Yoru replied. "If we'd met the way we did, though? Absolutely not."

"Yeah, we were both assholes to each other when we met. That reminds me - please tell me that skunk wasn't yours, or I'll never sleep again."

"His name is Pippa, and he's sort of the bar's pet. He skulks around in the cellar to scare away drunk customers that try to help themselves."

Kei made a face. "Yeah, let's change the topic. Thinking about Pippa makes me nauseous."

"Alright, let's focus on something more practical. What happened to coming in through the front door?"

Kei blushed and looked away. "I didn't want Nakamura to find out," he said. "He doesn't know when to stop with the teasing and I'm on a very short fuse."

"You need to work on that temper." Yoru reached for the lunchbox and opened it. "Scallops!"

"You don't like?"

"I love scallops! Barbecued, too! You were listening when I told you I like seafood!" Yoru smacked his lips greedily before picking up a scallop with his fingers and stuffing it into his mouth whole. "Amazing! Did you cook this?"

Kei nodded proudly. "I can't cook for shit, but I am the king of barbecue," he said with a grin, happy to see the misery leave Yoru's face.

"I love it! Ooo, sauce." Yoru helped himself before smiling at Kei with a touch of sadness. "Thank you," said he. "I don't care what prompted you to pick this penniless, baggage-ladden omega as a wife - I'm just glad you did. The things you do for me seem unreal at times."

Kei paused in the middle of biting into his scallop. "I'm afraid that has a selfish motive too," he admitted. "It's been eating me up for weeks."

"What is it?"

"I'm scared." Too ashamed of himself to meet Yoru's gaze, he lowered his head. "All things considered, I am mafia. And one day, you will witness me do terrible things. Once my hands are stained with blood, will you still stand by me? If we have a son and I name him the successor to my bloody throne, will you be able to forgive me? Perhaps I'm doing my level best to win your favor in the hopes that you won't leave."

"Leave you for what, Kei?" Yoru responded. "I don't have anywhere to go or anyone to go to."

"It’s not like that. I know you like that I treat you well, but there are others who can do that who aren't mafia."

Yoru chuckled humorlessly. "It works the other way around too, you know," he said. "There are others who can give you children who won't mind your criminal background."

“But I still want you. It’s not just about children. You’re one of the rare few people who can separate the oyabun and the regular guy inside me, and I desperately need that. You see, I…I wasn’t originally going to take over the group. After I graduated high school, I made the decision to succeed my father. I’m a lot like a civilian who was roped in to become a mafia boss. So, a lot of my yakuza behavior is learned, and keeping it up in front of the group gets very tiring.”

“Then I guess this the appropriate moment to tell you this…I’ve always had a feeling you’re actually a giant softie.”

Kei snorted in laughter. “That’s one way to put it,” he said. “I don’t need to keep up appearances with you, and I couldn’t have done that with just anyone. It’s only you. The fact that you don’t consider my off-work behavior as a weakness or as a sign that I’m a weak boss…it’s evident in the way you talk and look at me.”

“You just made my self-worth go up a hundred points,” Yoru said, smiling gratefully. “That I simply got lucky and that anyone could have ended up by your side was depressing. I was always afraid I was replaceable. It made me very insecure.”

“Even if everything I just pointed out about you were present in another person, there’s a million nuances that make you the one and only Kojima Yoru. You are irreplaceable, Yoru, and anyone who thinks any different isn’t worth your time.”

Yoru was shaking so much that he had to put down his scallop before he dropped it. So unaccustomed was he to such warm words that he couldn’t entirely believe they were true. All he could do was pray – pray that Kei was being honest, and that this warmth in his chest wouldn’t go away. “You,” he said, head lowered to hided the tears threatening to spill over, “are making me want to hug you.”

“Well, I’m not going to refuse. Come here.”

Kei hummed in satisfaction as Yoru leaned into his embrace with an enormous sigh. “So warm,” the omega mumbled. “This is nice.”

“In a few hours, this will become a lifetime benefit,” Kei pointed out.

"Doesn't that feel weird?" Yoru asked. "This time tomorrow, you'll be a married man. All the flirting and philandering will have to stop."

"Ah! I don't flirt and philander," Kei said, jokingly affronted. "I'll have you know, I'm hopeless at romance. Why do you think my parents had to butt in?"

"...I've never seen someone so proud of being romantically disabled."

"Better than being a philanderer, I believe." Kei paused. "But I did manage to get you in bed with me right now, so I can't be that bad."

"I got you in my bed, and you had to climb a drainpipe at three in the morning for it."

"Gah, don't kill my buzz! There's still scallops remaining, so make your mouth busy. Go on."

As Yoru happily chewed on the remaining scallops, he felt a twinge of guilt in his heart. Here was a man who valued and respected him without even being in a relationship with him, and here he was himself, selfishly enjoying the attention without any thought of doing something in return. After over two decades of giving only to get heartbreak in return, he had grown terrified of putting his heart on the line.

He glanced at Kei, who was pouring himself coffee with one hand while the other arm remained curled around him. Maybe, returning Kei's goodness little by little wasn't impossible.

No time better than the present. "I like you as you are," Yoru blurted.

That. Came out. So. Wrong! Poor Kei nearly poured his coffee down his shirt in shock. Yoru slapped a hand to his head, winced as it hurt and winced again as the wincing hurt. "I mean," he fumbled, massaging his head as his face blazed scarlet, "I think oyabun-Kei and softie-Kei are both part of you. One doesn't cancel the other, and I accept both."

Conversation flowed smoothly once both men had recovered from Yoru's bomb. Of all the dates they'd had (and they'd managed to have eight in the past month), Yoru enjoyed this one the most. All it had taken was a little openness and he felt closer to Kei, talking was easier and being himself was less frightening. In that one night, he learnt that he and Kei were surprisingly antithetical: Kei loved kids, he didn't; Kei was sporty and energetic, he was a potato; Kei was religious, he was agnostic.

It felt nice. Eating seafood and chatting with his fiancé was a million times better than spending the night tossing and turning and fighting off negative thoughts.

"Okay," Kei said, gulping down the last of his coffee. The food had been eaten and coffee had been drunk, and the sky was starting to lighten. "One last thing before I go. How about we tell each other one secret - one deep, dark, sleep-robbing secret that we might regret concealing until after the wedding - under oath that we won't break things off?"

Yoru raised an eyebrow. "So, you tell me a deal-breaking detail about yourself and I am not allowed to break the deal," he said.

"Yes. If you cheated on me, though, don't tell me."

"That's a dangerous game you're playing."

Kei gave a nervous chuckle. "Maybe I'm trying to fool myself into believing that things will be okay."

"Fine, but we'll have some ground rules," Yoru said after a minute of thought. "Forbidden topics include cheating, law-breaking and bathroom habits."

"Bathroom habits?"

"I don't want to know whether you wipe from back to front or front to back."

"BLEGH! I wasn't ever going to tell you anyway, you pig!" Kei shuddered and dramatically leaned away from Yoru, face crumpling in mock disgust.

"I'm pulling you leg!" Yoru laughed. "Okay, okay, I'm serious now. I'll go first. Um...I used to suffer from psychotic depression. I was horribly violent during my episodes. Couldn't finish high school because of it."

Kei looked less shocked than Yoru had been expecting. "Wow," he said. "I wasn't expecting something that big. Thank you for telling me - it must have been very hard to do so."

"Not really. I recovered from the psychosis years ago, so I've made my peace with it." Many of the other symptoms - depression, insomnia, anxiety - still remained, but at least he wasn't a danger to anyone so it was okay to tell, right? "Your turn."

"Me?" Kei shifted uncomfortably and his arm tightened around Yoru, seeking support this time instead of giving it. Boldly, Yoru placed his hand on Kei's and squeezed it. "I need that," Kei whispered, squeezing back.

"Go on. I'm not going anywhere."

"I was shot in the head once, and it made me unable to detect pheromones." Kei unconsciously touched the old wound. "I cannot go into rut."
____
Since I'm a biologist, I'll be sticking to biological terms as much as I can. The child-bearers, whether male or female, will be considered to have heat cycles, while the Alphas will be considered to have rut.

In real life, males don't enter rut in response to female heat (technically, estrus), The trigger is usually environmental, like a change in day length. In this story, we will consider omega pheromones to be the trigger.