Chapter Text
John Egan had always known he was an Omega. He was born into the world with it haunting him like a brand, a stain that he could never scrub clean, could never wash away– no matter how hard he tried.
His father liked to remind him of it when he could and always when he had the bottle. In that way they were more alike than he liked to believe. ‘Finally got my boy and he’s a fucking Omega’ he would spit, after one too many, when the shame of his son swirled in his head like an insult.
He never hit him, never dared with the beast of a woman that was his mother right around the corner, but John never felt like he loved him. Not really.
Maybe that’s why he sought out the army. Maybe that’s why he damn near killed himself getting some of the best results in his county. For some misguided desire for love, for a pack where he would be needed, valued.
Where he could be more than an Alpha’s pretty plaything.
“I said it’s a pity, you’d have more if you flew your missions at night.” The alpha speaks slowly, like John is too thick or too slow to understand him.
“Now why would you say something like that?” John manages to keep a lid on his anger, on the fury that burns hot and bright just beneath his skin. It’s right there, ready to be ignited at a moment’s notice, god knows he wants to. It was a bad day, a bad week.
Thirty men dead. Three of them from John’s pack. Addams. Petrich. Schmalenbach. Three men gone, snuffed out in one go. Three bonds broken, and not just for him. They were all feeling it, all of them nursing the raw fraying edges within them that reached out to connect with a person that was no longer there.
So yeah, he wants to blow. What he really wants to do is jump the table and bounce RAF’s pointed face against the table till he bleeds. Soft, pretty Omega. The voice inside of him croons. Pretty little thing wants blood.
But he doesn’t. Because he has Curt on Buck’s other side who he has to keep an eye on and Brady who’s wandering about somewhere, most likely getting into trouble. He has enough pack around him that if he starts a fight they’ll follow it, and finish it, and he’s already in enough trouble with the brass as it is. He doesn’t need to add anymore to that.
And he doesn’t.
Because Buck presses their ankles together and taps the toe of his boot against his.
It's subtle. Not like some Alpha’s, who don’t need an excuse to embarrass their Omega counterparts publically. It’s intimate, just for the two of them. A grounding touch and a reminder to keep his head amongst the rising tempers and the fraying nerves.
From anyone else it would be an insult. An insinuation of his inability to self regulate and in turn regulate his pack. But from Buck it’s just concern. Nothing more and nothing less. Just two friends mourning and worried for one another.
Mourning. Mourning. Mourning. They’re always fucking mourning now-a-days. They don’t need some toff pointing it out to them either. They know their losses, they don’t need it broadcasted or shoved under their noses.
“Well perhaps I was just getting bored of all the heavy petting going on at your end of the table.”
The RAF pilot sneers as he says it and rakes an accusatory gaze up and down John’s form like his presence at the table is an insult. For him it probably is. John has grown accustomed to the English type and the pilots they promote. If America was backwards then Britain was downright archaic.
To them, he not only doesn’t deserve a seat at the table, he doesn’t deserve one in the goddamn bar full stop.
To them his designation is an insult to the rank and uniform he wears.
To his credit though, John doesn’t bristle, used to the suggestive looks by now, but he does curl his lip, does show a little bit of teeth as he sits up straighter, stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray with a tad more aggression than necessary.
The boys respond to it like a fucking siren call and the mood of the table immediately sours.
John isn’t an idiot. Of course he knows what he means. It’s no secret that him and Buck are close, closer than any normal non-bonded pair are. But it’s also something they don’t speak about, it’s something they ignore. Just like how John ignores how his heart races when he has the Alpha near, how his head gets pleasantly fuzzy when he’s close enough to catch a whiff of his scent.
It’s on those occasions that John is grateful to be in a different fort to Buck. Never mind the logistics of it, the risk of losing your lead omega and your lead alpha in the same crash, John doesn’t think he could fly straight with Buck in the pilot seat beside him. Not with his scent caught in the cockpit and marinating like a dangerous cocktail.
It would be funny if it wasn’t all so pathetic. John Egan, crushing on an Alpha. His dear old dad would be turning in his grave.
While his sisters had gotten a relatively normal upbringing and were allowed to explore the instinctual sides to their secondary genders, John had not. It was bad enough that he was an Omega and his father would be damned if he acted like one too. So he spent his life pretending, spent his life trying to live up to the lie that John Sr wanted so badly to believe.
It’s safe to say it’s given him a bit of an attitude problem.
John grins, even as he can feel Buck stiffen beside him, can feel the rest of their boys around the table go still, waiting for his next move. “I don’t even know what that means.”
To his right, Bill Veal snorts, his serious nature loosened by the alcohol that they’ve been plying him with. Bill Veal, the Alpha without a pack. The drifter.
But maybe it's because of his detachment that he can quip with John. That he can snipe at the British without the risk of taking it too far. Afterall, John isn’t his Omega, he’s not his pack, so why bother?
“Do you know what that means?”
Veal shrugs. “I don’t know what that means.”
“You don’t know?”
“I dunno.”
“Let's make a bit of sport ourselves shall we?” The Major interjects, putting his elbows onto the table and leaning his body forward. “Any one of you will do.” But his eyes find John as he says it, angry and seething. He can smell it on the muggy pub air. The promise of violence.
John stands up before he’s even made the conscious decision to do so. He wants it. As much as he wants to fly, as much as he wants Buck. He wants this fight.
Buck makes a grab for his arm, latches onto the sleeve of his uniform and bodily drags him back into his seat.
He’s about to snap, to ask him what the bloody hell he’s playing at, until he sees the look on Bucks face. He wants it, wants it as much as him — if not more. He can see it in his face. The subtle twist of his features, the feathering of his jaw where it's locked around a toothpick. John can smell it too, deep and musky from where he sits next beside him.
Curt shifts uncomfortably on Buck’s other side and he peers around him to meet John’s eyes. ‘Get your boy’ he mouths oh so subtly. Not my boy, he wants to snap bitterly, but he gets the message well enough.
“I’ve got this one,” he coos to Buck. With anyone else it would be hard to do, to soften himself to such an extent, regardless of how badly he wanted it. It went against every instinct that had been drilled into him over the years. Be hard, be brighter, be better, be vicious.
None of that comes with Buck. Softness comes easy like breathing, like it had always been there, tucked away beneath the jagged edges of his exterior.
Buck eyes him warily, like he too is taken aback by the sweetness. His hand is still clenched around his sleeve and his fingers flex with the cadence of his words.
He tries for flattery. “It would be no fun watching you fight. One hit and it's over.” He taps their boots together, tries to knock him out of whatever funk he’s in. “Gotta give the men some sort of entertainment.”
There’s a brief moment where John thinks it hasn’t worked, that Buck will double down and drag him out of the bar and away from the self proclaimed danger. But maybe that is just John’s wishful thinking, hoping for the impossible. Actions would mean feelings, would mean something more than just friends, more than just packmates.
John would never be so lucky. Buck would never be so stupid.
The hand on his arm vanishes and Buck nods his head in the direction of the door. It unsettles John to think that he had been waiting for his permission, like he needed it— like he wouldn’t have forced his way into this fight, permission or not. He’d carved himself the shell of an alpha and he wielded it like a weapon.
John stands unhindered this time, and the whisper of surprise ripples through the men like the murmur of wind through the trees. He grins at the opposing alpha and it’s all teeth and no warmth. He wants blood.
“After you.” He gestures to the exit and Curt is practically giddy beside him. Giddy and grateful.
…
The cool night air sobers him somewhat, soothes the violent edge that sits behind his teeth and digs into his tongue.
The men follow him out, as do the Brits, until the street is teeming with airmen, each one of them more excited than the last.
“Sir, you don’t have to do this.” John turns to the sound of one of the Brits to his left. It’s the smaller blonde one, he wrinkles his nose and somehow manages to look down at Bucky despite him being three feet shorter than him. “Fighting an omega it’s– well, it’s beneath you.”
A growl reverberates through the small crowd that’s gathered outside, but John can’t pinpoint it, just knows that it’s coming from his men. It fills him with warmth and an appreciation that they have his back against the bullshit.
The Brit shrugs off his coat, unphased at the skyrocketing tension. “Well someone has to teach these bitches a lesson. Clearly their own alphas won’t.”
One of the navigators takes money from the gunners, making a betting pool in his upturned hat. John peels his jacket off, palms it off to Buck to hold and moves to enter the loose circle the men have automatically made. Buck grabs his wrist before he can get too far, clammy calloused fingers digging into the fine bone there.
“Bucky.”
The shock of bare skin on skin sends a bolt of electricity through his body and John has to try and hide the way he comes alive at the touch.
“You don’t have to do this.” Buck’s voice is low, his words only for them and not the thrumming crowd around them.
John chews on his lip thoughtfully and wonders where this is coming from, wonders if this is from a place of doubt in his abilities, or from a place of concern, or both. He squints at Buck’s face, which is ever a blank mask, only the fervent chewing of his toothpick an indication of his restlessness.
Whatever it is, John doesn’t need it.
“C’mon Buck, I thought this was the only sport you could get behind.” He doesn’t need Buck’s approval, he doesn’t, even if he wants it. “What’s that shit you always say? ‘As true a testament to a man’s will as any?’”
Buck’s eye twitches but he silently relinquishes his grip on John’s wrist. His skin tingles where his hand had been, and the sound seems to flood back into the world from where it had been muted, their bubble popped.
John feels a prick of pride when Buck steps back, arms folded stiffly over his chest. Curt leans over to crow something in his ear, probably in an attempt to soothe, but it only serves to make the alpha tense impossibly further. He trusts him, they all do– it means more than he can express.
“Getting permission from your master like a good dog?” his opponent twitters when he steps in to face him. John ignores him, readies his fists loosely in front of him, his body a liquid line of movement, ready to move at a second's notice.
“It must really rankle you that a bitch like me is a Major like you,” John coos, nonplussed.
The Brit drops into a rigid boxing stance, one probably born from professional training, not street scrapping like John and Curt do. It’s going to make this so much better when he wins.
“I bet it keeps you up at night,” he starts to slowly skirt around him. “That someone like me has probably flown more combat missions than you, definitely hit more targets than you-”
His face contorts in anger and his next swing is sloppy and aimed poorly enough that John doesn’t even need to dodge it. He sidesteps anyway and lets the other man fall into the momentum of his punch and stumble past him.
Oh, I've been waiting for this. John can’t help but think as he sees his opening. He wants to kick him when he’s unbalanced and wobbling but that’s not how he wants to do this, not tonight. Tonight, he’s proving a point. Tonight he’s clean.
He’s put up with that ugly mouth for long enough, it was time to shut him up.
John only waits for him to right himself and turn to face him again, then he’s snapping his fist forward into his nose and throwing his whole weight behind it. But maybe he puts too much in it, maybe he has had a little too much, enough that he forgets to pull his punch.
The alpha drops like a bag of bricks and the sight of him crumbling to the cobbled street is well worth any retribution that John will receive for it later. So, so worth it.
A cheer erupts from the American half of the circle and beer is spilled as they jostle each other in victory. John leans over the other pilot, brackets him beneath his legs and forces him into a position of submission. It sends a thrill down his spine.
“Who’s the bitch now?” He’s not with it, groaning and cupping his bloody nose but John doesn’t care, this is his victory and he’s reveling in it.
“Back off and give him some room,” the little alpha who had called him sir barges between them, all puffed up with anger and righteous indignation for the perceived slight to his superior’s honor.
“You cheated!” The little one points an accusing finger at him. John has the wild urge to bite it off.
“Did I?” he asks with a toothy grin. He didn’t, made sure not to, to make a point. “Maybe your man is just slow. Going a bit senile maybe? I know how you alphas get, not the smartest designation after all.”
He growls and looks like he’s going to throw himself at John. He wants him to, prays that he does so he can go two for two and have an excuse to put the little runt out of his misery. “Do it,” he hisses and leans down so that they’re face to face. “I dare you.”
Hands grab at his shoulders and pull him back and it’s Jack of all people, nudging him back with a stern look. He’s close enough that he can smell the disappointment on him, sharp and bitter. John would wince if he wasn’t so used to it, just flashes him a grin and lets himself be walked back to their men who greet him like a returning hero.
He pretends it doesn’t rankle him, the way that Jack looks down on him. Like he hadn’t been sobbing John’s name two days ago as he helped him through his rut like a good little omega. A bed warmer and a regulator and a tool.
Nothing else. Not a person.
Jack walks him to Buck like he’s a wayward child, like he’s being returned back to his master. John is about to snap, can feel it rising in him and mixing dangerously with the anger still churning in his gut. We’re pack. We’re equals. He wants to shout at the Air Exec’s retreating back. He’s my best friend and he treats me like a human being and that’s more than I can say for you.
He’s never taken me to bed, even when I can smell the remnants of rut on his clothes.
But then Curt loops his arm around his shoulders and shouts obscenities at the bleeding pilot; His scent like cool water on a summer's afternoon and it takes the edge off enough for him to be able to drag in a full breath without wanting to scream it back out.
“Guess who can hit their targets at night!”
The men howl his name and several of them clap him on the shoulders, shake him like a returning hero. Some hang back, watching from afar with their mouths set into harsh disapproving lines.
“Too much of that,” John joins in with the jeering. “That’s what that was!”
“I got a nickname for you and it ain’t Buck!”
His opponent staggers to his feet now, steadies himself on his friends’ shoulders and glares daggers, somehow finding John through the throng of airmen and fixing his piercing gaze on him.
It chills him, more than any fight ever did, the look of pure contempt. He spits on the floor, just to make a point and Curt growls low and furious at the disrespect, only stays where he is by the crushing grip John has on his shoulder. There’s a good chance John is going to be grounded tomorrow and they need an Omega in the air, even if that isn’t him. It can’t be Brady, he’s not ready, he wouldn’t put that kind of pressure on him. So it has to be Curt.
“John,” a soft voice murmurs to his right, calling him in.
It’s Buck. He knows without even having to look. Even so, John turns to look at him, peeling his gaze away from the disgruntled alpha and turning his back blatantly. Buck watches him with something unreadable, pupils blown wide in the poorly lit street.
He’s standing like he’s balancing on a razor blade, like any move at all could set him off. He’s the only one of them that’s sober and yet he’s the one who most looks like he’s going to lose it. John should want to get away, should want to escape from the impact zone as quickly as he can.
He doesn’t. And instead, he moves closer, drawn to him by some unknowable force. Buck’s anger is thick on the air, laying cloying and rich on his tongue like melted chocolate. It sends a small shiver down his spine, one that John tries hard to suppress but one that he thinks Buck sees anyway.
“Buck,” John says slowly, working the name over his tongue like he’s just first hearing it, drawing out the syllables. “You tryna rein me in?”
Buck tilts his head, eyes glinting in the moonlight. “Do I have to?” He looks bored and vaguely irritated.
John sighs, maybe a little dramatically, and slings an arm around the alpha’s shoulders, easily achieved with the slight height advantage he has over him. “You’re no fun.”
“You’re too much fun.”
He grins. “No such thing.”
Buck frowns. “There is and you’re it.”
It shouldn’t sting, and yet it does. The unintended rejection burning like he’d touched a hot stove. John pushes off of Buck and moves to join the others who have started off down the road. He doesn’t get far, Buck grabs his wrist after a couple of strides.
John whirls on him, teeth bared in a silent snarl and Buck backs off almost immediately. John wishes he wouldn’t, wishes he wasn’t so fucking respectful all the goddamn time, wishes he would fight for him, like he knows he can— wishes he would want him, like John wants him in return.
“John,” Buck tries, reaches out a hand again like he wants to touch. He decides against it at the last minute, pulls himself back and schools his face into a mask of calm. John hates that expression, hates what it does to his face, what it means for him when he sees it. It’s his righteous face. “I won’t be able to protect you from the CO when he hears about this.”
John rolls his eyes and continues walking. “You think I need your protection?”
“From Harding? Yes.”
“Good to know you think so little of me.”
Buck blows out a harsh breath. When he speaks next there’s a grit to his voice. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant,” John snaps. Any joy he’d had from putting the other pilot in the dirt was quickly fading, leaving only anger and destruction in its wake. He was supposed to be riding the high for a little longer, he was supposed to be keeping the numbness at bay. “You sound like Jack.”
“Good. At least he has common sense.” Heavy footsteps bounce off the surrounding walls as Buck catches up to him. “Are you trying to get yourself grounded?”
John scoffs. “You know I'm not.”
“No,” Buck steps in front of him, makes him stop lest he walk straight into him. “I don’t.”
John bites down on another smart remark and looks past Buck to where Bill and Curt are waiting at the end of the street with a few of the others. They know well enough to not get involved when they both get like this, sniping at each other and aiming to hurt, when all John wants to do is comfort, to appease.
“I thought you knew everything?” John grits his teeth, tries and fails to keep the bitter words behind his tongue. “King Cleven, knows exactly what’s best for everyone and everything. Isn’t that how it usually goes? You know best and fuck the rest of us.” By now John has crowded into his space, audience be damned. Like this, toe to toe, their difference in height is prominent, the inches that John has over Gale staggering, a chasm between them.
Gale snorts and John can practically taste the derision in the air. “You’re impossible.”
He curls his lip angrily. “Add it to the list.”
Add it to the list of why you don’t want me, he thinks. Another rejection on the pile.
John is sure Gale must be able to smell it on him, the bitter feeling of rejection that twists through his gut and leaks into his scent, because his nose scrunches and his alpha immediately loses all of his fire, all of his anger. He reaches out a hand to John, and it should be a lifeline, should be a white flag in the war between them.
It’s not.
Instead it feels like an appeasement, a slap in the face. John turns on his heel and stalks over to where Johnny and Curt wait with a few of the men. The boys scatter when they see him coming, press in close to the walls to avoid his warpath and wrinkle their noses against his distress.
One of the Alpha’s on Veal’s fort scoffs as he passes. “If that were my Omega, I’d never let him speak to me like that.” He says it behind his hand to the man beside him, but John can hear it all the same. Curt hears it too.
“Bucky,” he says warningly, more for the private’s benefit than his own. Nothing will happen to John if he puts this runt in his place, for all that he is just an Omega. He’s a Major first and the lead omega of the 418th. He’s got pull and the higher ups have better things to worry about, like winning a war.
Any other day he would let it go, would let the comment slide off of his back like water and keep on walking. Today though, he stops. There’s a satisfying moment where the private freezes up like a gazelle that’s just spotted a lion in the bushes. He goes a little pale, a little wide eyed as John stalks over to him.
“Care to repeat that Private?” he asks and manages to keep the growl out of his voice. Just.
“N-no sir.”
“What am I,” he squints at the runt's nametag. “Davies?”
“What?” He gapes at him like it’s a trick question. It’s not.
“What. Am. I?” He asks again but slower this time.
“An… omega sir?”
“Wong,” John grins, all teeth and sharp edges. “I’m your fuckin’ Major. Your Major who is putting you on mess duty for the next two weeks.”
Davies opens and closes his mouth several times like he wants to protest but can’t think of the words to say. His face purples with growing frustration and, unbelievably, his hands start to tremble. He’s probably never had an omega talk down to him before, never had an omega ridicule him in front of his peers.
Lunge for him, the voice inside his head croons. Alphas take no disrespect.
But he’s not an alpha, no matter how much he was raised like it, no matter how much he wants to be one, no amount of posturing or aggression will ever make it so. He’ll always be this, much to his despair.
“Sir-” he looks to Veal as he walks past them.
Veal pauses for a moment, and John thinks he might step in. For all that he is a Major, this scrap of an alpha isn’t his pack, he isn’t his to boss around like he’s doing, not without Bill’s say so.
He looks between them, twitches a little under John’s unblinking stare then shrugs. “Should’ve kept your mouth shut,” he says to Davies and pushes past them without another word.
–
Johnny had never left New York before joining the army. And once he had, traveling around the United States for basic training and flight school and officer training he learned that, while some small turns of phrases and ways of preparing dishes might differ region to region, mostly people were the same. Mostly he fit in anywhere, so long as he understood where to fit in.
Europe was different; clear identities between borders and rivalries that extended past the history of the country he was born with. And the O Club was a smaller, stranger microcosm of that, for all the men were Americans. Packs stuck together, claiming their same tables night after night, territory drawn out in quiet posturing and subtle scent warnings. Traveling between was fine, dropping by another table to talk to a buddy was acceptable, so long as one didn’t overstay their welcome, so long as the energy was read, all crews returned safe and no grief-stink hanging heavy over their space.
Today they’d lost nobody, and the men are mingling with the donut girls and the nurses. Bucky’s bothering the band and Buck’s watching him do it with a faint, fond smile on his lips. Curt’s holding court at the bar, the shortest head amongst a sea of taller bodies, and Johnny is sat at their table, nursing a beer and rubbing one of Meatball's fuzzy ears between thumb and forefinger. Benny’s on the other side, watching the foam spark and fizzle out on his own beer, condensation slipping down the sides in rivulets.
“It’s gonna stain the table,” Johnny says without thinking, then resists a blush through sheer force of will, “That’s ah, what my mother says.”
Benny lifts the glass, looks at the wet ring from where it sat, and then at the countless other ring stains around it. Looks back at Johnny.
“It’s what my mother says,” Johnny repeats, shrugging.
Grin hidden by the rim of his glass, Benny toasts Johnny, “Yeah? What else does your mother say, Jack?”
“Says Italians are all thieves and liars.”
“Smart woman,” Benny says, drags his tongue across his bottom lip to catch any remaining foam. Sets the glass down and resettles in his chair, posture forward now, like he had something important to say. Even through the smoke-haze of the club, the clash of scents and pheromones, Johnny can smell him clearly “Listen–”
“Ben– Benny,” his spine stiffens, “Come on.”
“I want to talk about it!”
“There’s no ‘it’.”
Benny scoffs, far too bitter and a mean of a sound to sit in the shape of his soft mouth.
Johnny glares at him, glances around. There’s no one left at their table but Jack Kidd, who was more likely to eavesdrop if he’d been deaf.
“This isn’t the time, or the place, or the fuckin– the situation. This isn’t what you want.”
“You know what I want, do you?”
“Yeah, I can goddamn smell it on you, what you want.”
It speaks to the sort of Alpha that he was, that a touch of blush rises to Benny’s cheeks, a slight expression of chagrin crossing over his face.
“Jack that’s not all–”
“I’d give you that,” Johnny doesn’t let him finish, “I’d give you that, that’s fine. It’s you wanting the rest that’s the problem. That’s the bit I can’t give you.”
Benny’s mouth shuts, his cheeks going redder, fuller with embarrassment. Johnny’s never been fucked, hardly even kissed, not with the weight of his mother and father, his sister's reputation; his own. But he thinks Benny would be a good lover, tender with just the right amount bite to him. Thorough, focused, steady just like he was behind the wheel of a fort.
If Johnny thought it could be just that, if he didn’t think it wouldn’t fuck up the entire dynamic in the Pack, on the base, he might let Benny take him to bed.
“What if I was okay with just that?”
“You’re not,” Johnny says, draining the last of his drink and standing. Benny catches his elbow, tethering him to the conversation and Johnny bristles, “You’re a shit liar, Benny. And you’re a romantic, and you want someone to pick flowers for and build a life with. You need a civilian.”
“Jesus, that’s not–”
“I am an officer,” Johnny pitches his voice low, a little hissing. Benny’s hand is heavy on his arm, warm like a brand. He smells like paper and lemongrass and makes Johnny think of sunny afternoons in the music room, the windows thrown open to let the breeze in, “By the grace of the goddamn U.S. Army. I can’t jeopardize that by letting them think I’m compromised, biased. Go bother the donut girls.”
There was more to it, layers of more. But it’s not Benny’s business, not a shame Johnny wants to share. He’s got enough failures written all over him. Too sharp for an omega, bitey and awkward. Too single-minded for many friends. Too many boys that were now ghosts in his head.
He pulls his arm from Benny’s grip, gentle. And Benny lets him go, gentler even still.
“I’m going back to the bunks,” he says, “Don’t drink too much.”