A Tale of Two Omegas

Chapter 5: The Young Woman

Early mornings.

Gulf utterly despised them, but ironically enough, he'd opened a coffee shop of all things, which meant he had a frequent schedule of waking up every morning no later than 7 am, and that was if he was lucky. He'd previously gotten used to those early mornings, but after having taken a full two months off from his duties as shop owner and spending that entire time waking up consistently within the solid hours of afternoon, it had been taking him quite a while to readjust to waking up at a 'reasonable hour' again.

After Mew had come to stay with him, it was like the past two months had been a complete fever dream. Gulf was no longer in a state of perpetual agony and uncontrollable misery, and he'd been able to quickly return back to normal, everyday life.

Mew, on the other hand...

Well, it had been three weeks since the fallen star had ended up on Gulf's doorstep, begging for sanctuary, and all Gulf had seen him do since that night was huddle-up on the couch and stare blankly at the TV or his phone--occasionally, Gulf would catch him shedding a dispirited tear or two, but made a conscious effort to not bring any attention to it. Mew felt humiliated enough as it was.

Gulf couldn't blame Mew, and in all honesty, he hardly knew how to help him or even lift his spirits just a little bit. It was true, the general misery and depression inflicted by the Buyer's Price phenomenon had completely subsided, but he still felt all the same ache and sorrow that Mew felt.

Mew's pain was Gulf's pain.

It wasn't debilitating. Far from it. In fact, if Gulf simply occupied his mind with something, he would be able to forget about it quite easily. But Mew didn't have that luxury. For him, there was no escaping the sort of pain he was feeling. The pain of being abandoned and scorned by his family, of being slandered and treated as everything less than human by the media and vindictive celebrities and their thousands of bandwagon-hopping fans.

Of being told over and over and over again, reinforcing Mew's preconceived notion, that he was worthless and dirty based upon his secondary gender alone. Something completely out of anyone's control. And to rub even more salt in the festering wound, many popular media outlets were going as far to say that he'd be better off dead.

How fucking barbaric.

So Gulf had wracked his brain for weeks, trying desperately to figure out a way to get Mew back on his feet, or, at the very least, cheer him up a bit-- nothing. Nothing that would work anyway.

On multiple occasions, Gulf had thought to bring Mew to the coffee shop, knowing that the employees and customers would love to make the acquaintance of Mew Suppasit, even despite the crash down to Earth the famous actor had suffered. No Omega Gulf knew thought of Mew with disdain. No Omega judged him harshly for having hidden his identity. Omegas understood. Fully, and without question. So Gulf sensed that the coffee shop would be the perfect place for Mew to reconnect with people, judgement-free. The poor guy was the epitome of an extrovert, and he hadn't been able to interact with others aside from Gulf for weeks... Really, those two months in which they'd been estranged from one another had to have been lonely as hell for him, too.

Except there were far too many obstacles to consider if Gulf were to try and coax Mew out of the apartment and to the coffee shop:

Getting Mew to even agree to it in the first place.Escorting Mew through downtown Bangkok without getting him recognized and swarmed by hungry paparazzi. Gulf doubted any customers of his would start something against Mew, but there was still the minutest of possibilities of it happening.