Ino
At the restaurant, Ino is feeling lucky because they managed to get here before it got too busy. The alphas that flood the establishment can be pretty intense and she’d rather not deal with them.
“Wow, this place sure is busy! Guy sensei usually takes me to places that are calmer than this.” he awes when walking in with her, “Are you sure Chouji eats here? I bet it be very slow when it’s this busy.”
She laughs at what he said, finding it to be cute how he didn’t know, “Actually, this is a great time to come! Chouji always comes here at this time because it’s not too busy. This place has the best udon and the only good curry chicken I’ve ever had in this village.”
“Wait, this place can get busier than it is now?”
“It definitely can. Trust me, we got here at a great time.”
He’s amazed to hear this, but then again, this is the sort of place his clan wouldn’t have ever let him anywhere near. The restaurant doesn’t hide it’s also a bar; there are plenty of patrons getting tipsy at tables not too far from them with various people in bright, flashy clothing dancing to the traditional music from the live band to entertain other patrons who are either watching with leery eyes or dancing alongside them.
If his parents knew he were here now, he’d be getting dragged out by his ear and backhanded with a harsh interrogation as to why he was at such a place followed by the reminder that omegas are not to be anywhere so suspicious since it will make alphas and betas of repute think less of them.
Ino was about to get a waiter’s attention when an alpha woman—clearly one who had just turned eighteen judging by how young she looks as well as how poorly she can hold her alcohol—approached them, with her eyes clearly set on her. She set her hand down on the chair beside Ino and, despite lacking some basic coordination from being a bit too tipsy, purred, “Hello beautiful, what are you doing here?”
She blinked, finding it to be odd since no alpha has ever actually said such a thing to her before because of her reputation as being an ‘alpha hater’, “…You’re talking to me, right?”
Ino was convinced she was talking to Lee, but when she didn’t move her gaze away from her, she knew she had been mistaken, “Who else here is as blonde ‘n cute as you?”
Now she’s feeling all sorts of out of place because this has just…it has never happened to her in the past!
Alphas and betas stay away from her because of her being Deidara’s little sister—the same Deidara who would try to blow up anyone who looked at her the wrong way when he lived here. The same Deidara they accuse her of being exactly like.
“…You must be mistaken. I don’t know you and we’ve never met before—”
“We met just now. Why not get to know each other better? I bet you’re nearing a heat or something to be out at a place like this… Why not share it with someone who you will never forget?”
Deidara taught her something to do whenever an alpha or beta is making her uncomfortable. Something that she feels Lee needs to see if he is to learn how to handle such situations in the future properly.
“No thank you, alpha. I’m not interested and I never will be.” was the warning sign Deidara told her to give first.
When the alpha scoffed and tried to grab her with too much force, “C’mon, beautiful, it won’t be that bad! Gimme a shot ‘n I’ll make you see stars!” she followed through with what her brother told her to.
She dodged the grab by getting out of her chair, grabbing her other wrist, she threw the young woman over her shoulder. Glaring at her as she lay on the ground, she hissed at her with a fire in her eyes, “Don’t try to grab any omega like that ever again, alpha, or else you’ll live to regret it!”
The young woman laid on the ground groaning, with a waitress rushing over to their side, “Oh no…what happened now, Ino? Did she get inappropriate with your friend?”
“No, but she did get inappropriate with me which is strange. Is she even from here? No one in their right mind would ever mess with me because of Deidara.”
The waitress grunts as she lifts the young woman up by placing her arm across her shoulder, “Don’t know, but she had to have a death wish or be pretty damn drunk to try anything on you or your friends.”
As she was moving the young woman out, Lee couldn’t stop himself from being in awe of his fellow omega, “Whoa, Ino, that was amazing! Where did you learn that from?”
“Deidara.” she responds with pride while getting back in her seat, “My brother taught me how to handle alphas and betas like that from a young age on up. He was amazing at that sort of thing.”
Lee has to ask because he is curious, “Does this sort of thing happen a lot here?”
She answers him honestly so he knows from here on out, “It can happen if you come at the wrong time. If you come when it’s lunch or dinner, this place will be packed with a lot more people and it will take forever to get any food. If you come at a time like this where there’s less people here to eat, you will run into more people coming here to drink and they can get pretty intense on the touchy-feely end of things. I’ve seen people like her hit on Shikamaru or Chouji and they always stop when Asuma sensei steps in. I’ve never had any alpha or beta talk like that to me until today, but hopefully she learned her lesson.”
She’s not sure if she will or not, but she can hope. If Sakura can start to change for the better, why not any other alpha or beta?
He hopes she did as well because that did not look like a pleasant way to learn her lesson.
“Has Neji been bothering you at all ever since the battles ended?”
She’s stunned with what she hears next, “No, not at all. He’s going to start training today for the next part of the exams.”
It’s stunning simply for the fact she didn’t think Neji to be the type to leave Lee alone for any moment of the day. Hearing he is willing to do so in exchange for a chance to train is somewhat relieving. Now she doesn’t have to worry and stress over her fellow omega being harassed by the alpha this next month.
A waiter does come by to ask them what they want to drink and both omegas ask for water for now, with Lee willing to try to the curry chicken and Ino wanting the udon. Of course, they didn’t have long to enjoy this moment between friends. No, it didn’t take long before they were hearing the scolding from a familiar face, “What are you two doing here?”
They both looked to see a frowning Kurenai sensei, the omegas instantly having differing reactions: Ino’s of annoyance and Lee’s of absolute guilt.
“I took Lee here to get something to eat.” Ino answers her calmly enough yet the beta woman was not too won over by the argument, “When there’s drunken alphas and betas about? Don’t you care about his safety?”
She had to force her snarl down in order to speak to her in any semblance of civility, “Lee is not some wallflower. He can defend himself from anyone if he has to.”
“He can, but why put him in a spot where he could be leered on by perverts in the first place? After everything that happened with those alphas marking his hand, why would you put him in a situation where something worse could happen?”
The young omega girl was about to get snappy with her when Lee got out of his chair to bow, “I am so terribly sorry! If we did something wrong by coming here, then I will be sure to leave at once!”
Kurenai—gaining a look of pity to her eyes that Ino suspects is from her having an idea of what Lee’s clan is like—softens her stance on the issue to the omegas, losing her scolding tone and hands on her hips as she did so, “No, Lee, don’t apologize. You did nothing wrong by coming here, really, but I don’t believe a place full of drunk alphas and betas is the safest place for you two to be alone at. How about I sit with you two so it’s safer for you to be here? That way I don’t have to worry over your safety around these shady alphas and betas who wouldn’t be above using your instincts against you.”
Ino is willing to make the compromise only because she hadn’t thought of it from that point of view.
Lee has been marked on the hand by two different alphas so far. While she can say after talking to Kankuro, she’s not too sure whether or not Gaara was as bad as Neji for leaving a mark on his hand and not removing it immediately, she was in the wrong here for automatically assuming Lee could handle a noncombat situation with alphas and betas in a manner devoid of the sexism he grew up being taught.
She shouldn’t have been so quick to write off what she heard Lee say before the hiatus. He had been deflecting blame from Neji completely and blaming himself instead the entire time they spoke about it. She knows enough about his clan to know they were the ones most vocal about Deidara being a criminal by choice…and she should have kept this in mind when thinking about how he would handle something like sexual assault, harassment, or alphas and betas being inappropriate towards him in any way.
He wasn’t raised like her, he didn’t have a Deidara there to teach him how to spot this stuff out and what to do when it happens.
Would he know to hold his breath when alpha or beta tries to intimidate him using pheromones or would he submit to them and blame himself for falling it later?
Would he know what to do when they use their alpha or beta voice against him? Could he hold his own in that situation enough to not fall into the instinctual fear response of becoming more pliable to the threatening alpha or beta?
She knows she’s horrible for doubting her friend like this, yet she feels a bit justified in it given what she had seen from him at the exams before the hiatus as well as what she had been told about his clan by her parents when they answered her questions as to why they spoke so ill of her brother.
“I’m okay with that if you are, Lee.”
Lee didn’t hesitate to invite the beta with a warm smile, “Then it’s settled! Come, Kurenai sensei, take your seat.”
She did as he asked without laughing at his exaggerated gesture towards the free seat at their table and sat down with them, keeping a close eye on the people here as she did so.
She doesn’t know what exactly possessed these two omegas to come into a restaurant bar with alphas and betas who are clearly here to get drunk before the different meal rushes happen. She hopes it wasn’t anything nefarious, “What all inspired you two to come here?”
“Ino brought me here because Chouji said this place has really good food.” Lee smiles widely, “I cannot wait to try the curry chicken! I bet it will be very good.”
Kurenai has a feeling as to why Chouji recommends this place to eat at, “Let me guess, Ino—Asuma comes here as a special treat for your team and you decided to bring Lee here because the food actually is good but you didn’t want to deal with it being so busy.”
Ino nods, amazed she got it all so accurately, only to see her place her elbow on the table and her hand on her forehead, “You do realize Asuma does subtle scenting to keep you safe every time you come in here, right?”
“Why would he do that? I can hold my own against any alpha and beta.”
“Because it’s a safety precaution to do for an omega student in a noncombat situation. He doesn’t have to do it for Shikamaru or Chouji because an alpha or beta will be far more likely to respect them and their wishes than they would for yours.” the red eyed woman explains to them, “Look, he comes here with me quite frequently and we never have to scent each other because the creeps here won’t do anything to us. This place has enough seedy people that aren’t above trying to get a young, underage omega into their bed—that’s why he subtly scents you every time you come here with him.”
She had no idea he did that…
“How do you know for fact he does this?”
“He told me himself when I got on him for admitting he brings you guys here to celebrate whenever you succeed on a risky mission.”
She pauses then, looking around the place and then coming to a conclusion: “We should leave. There are too many drunken alphas here staring at you two, reeking of pre rut.”
They didn’t pick up on the scent until after they had gotten closer to the door where the scents became thick enough for them to smell. To Ino, the scent of pre rut smells like a muted down note of bitter, rotten peaches. To Lee, it was a bit different and he said as much when they were out of the establishment, “That scent was strange—it was so strong it felt like my nose was on fire from catching a small whiff of it!”
Kurenai nodded in understanding, admitting to him, “I felt the same way about alpha and omega scents before they hit their ruts or heats when I was your age. I bet it had to be uncomfortable to be by such a scent.”
He doesn’t comment on it which leads Ino to believe it could be something either related to his clan or possible embarrassment over being affected by such scents. Nonetheless, she does offer them, “Well, I had gone there to get something to eat, but I can take you two somewhere safer for you guys to go to.”
Lee looks to Ino, who doesn’t want to make him any more uncomfortable than he already must be, “Alright, where do you recommend going?”
She makes a suggestion Ino and Lee hadn’t heard of before until now, “There’s an omega only tea house not too far from here I can take you two to eat at, but I won’t be able to join you—they are very strict on the whole ‘no alphas or betas allowed’ thing.”
Ino immediately agrees to it since such a place sounds far more wonderful than anywhere Asuma sensei would take them to eat, “I think we should go there! How about you, Lee? Are you fine with that?”
“It would be a lot better than whatever it is I had to deal with in there.” he concedes, nodding with a rather dimmed down yet forced smile, “I’m fine with anywhere we eat, but this sounds great to me!”
“Great, I’ll take you two there then.”
They didn’t mind spending time with the beta. She was soothing to be around, her very aura enough to put their worries at bay no matter what the situation would be.
Lee didn’t mind her bringing up a touchy subject either simply because he felt somewhat safe enough to talk to her about it on their walk over to the teahouse, “Lee, your hair isn’t long. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but does your clan know you cut it?”
“No, they didn’t know until last night when I saw my parents again.”
He doesn’t want to talk about what happened between himself and his family because he knows where it will lead. He knows he should, but he doesn’t want to deal with all of the drama that would follow from telling anyone about what his mother did to him during the meeting last night.
She hums in response, commenting then, “I thought they preferred their omega offspring to have long hair.”
What is said next is a fact which leaves Ino breathless, “They do, it’s why I was never allowed to cut it until I made Genin. I never told them I did it because I knew they’d tell me I wouldn’t be as beautiful as Deidara if I ever did cut my hair, but I’m not a Deidara look alike, so keeping my hair long felt more like a constant reminder that I’m not beautiful like him.”
“So they hold Deidara—the one they despise so—up as the ideal beauty standard for you to live up to?”
“Yes, they always have. They may despise him, but they could never deny his beauty. In my clan, an omega’s greatest asset is their beauty and without it, there’s not much to compensate for them. It’s why omegas are forbidden from having short hair or wearing the wrong clothing that only alphas and betas are allowed to wear. They never saw any worth or value in me because I don’t look like Deidara and I never will.” Lee looks off to the side, musing, “I hope that if I ever do mate anyone, they never make me wear my hair long. I don’t want to deal with the bad memories having long hair gave me ever again.”
Kurenai is slowly piecing together something she said she would look into for Guy.
She couldn’t deny looking at the bruise on his face when she first saw Lee and like Guy said, it was near impossible to avoid curiosity on. He believes Lee’s parents may have hit him during the meeting at the Hyuuga home the night before, but he doesn’t have any proof. Before he left to train with Neji, he had caught her on the street and asked her to try to get information from Lee on it.
She agreed and now, it feels as though she is getting a good idea of what happened.
Lee’s clan is openly sexist due to their conservatism. Because they are so strictly conservative, they believe in the old gender roles of omegas being forbidden from having short hair and alphas and betas being free to have hair of whichever length they please.
It makes her believe Lee was struck by his parents for cutting his hair when they ban such a thing in his clan.
She has no evidence of this, to be fair. Though it doesn't her from wondering on it all the same, "I'm sure that if you ever do find a mate, they won't make you wear your hair in a way you don't like it."
At least, she hopes they wouldn't.
Then he chuckles, glancing ahead of him in a bit of resignation, "Maybe, but if they do...then who knows? Maybe I could learn to like it on me after enough time."
...She wants nothing more than to get this kid out of his horrible clan, yet she knows she can't do a thing about it.
In Konoha, tradition will always surpass the rights of the omega child in a clan. Lee is damned, not by the universe itself or life: he's damned by the sexist laws in his village that make it impossible for him to get real help.