#abo quest

in cherry wine, there's the littermates thing where a pregnancy results in several betas (sterile) and one alpha OR omega (the reproductive sibling) where the children of that litter marry another litter collectively when they grow up.

Touka is the alpha of her litter.

WHY is she unmarried at 27?? She'd be encouraged to have a housewife and leave the childrearing to them, so it can't be that she doesn't wanna leave the battlefield, and it can't be that she doesnt want to leave orphans (because they're at war and everybody in her clan is leaving orphans and if nobody breeds they're gonna get wiped out).

she's main house so it means extra pressure to marry! people probably marry at 17-20 in this time period! HOW is she not married!

WAS she married and they died and now she's a widow and doesnt wanna remarry. (does she already have kids actually). Is she in fact already married in secret and didn't tell the clan/her parents because there would be major opposition (how to do that one without making it treason because she's boffing an enemy tho). Does she actually have a living wife but they're sterile and the pressure is for her to take a concubine. how. how do i fix.

I can't pull the "she's gay and only likes alphas" because in this setting it would be so selfish! Her sibs want kids and she's denying them, and it's not even like she doesn't want to risk her body since she wouldn't be the one pregnant one. Their whole culture would be like "marry an omega, make children for your beta sibs to love, and have a secret lover on the side like everybody else ffs!"

-- cherry wine --

Yayoi was light upon his wrist, too light. Madara ran a gloved finger down her feathered breast and tssked. "Grouse still not good enough, hm, princess?"

His hawk did not reply with anything but a withering stare. Madara huffed quietly in amusement. 

For some reason she had decided that today she would only eat fish. Which was all well and good, except that the rice fields in which the clan kept eels and carps had suffered from Senju sabotage last year that led to much lowered water levels and they'd had to turn a great many of them into their dried or smoked versions before they could all suffocate and rot. The fish still swimming freely away were, for the moment, breeding stocks and not for eating.

Yayoi was extremely put out about that, somehow, despite her being not three years old yet and having spent more time without fish as her lunch than with it.

"The idea about taking you out was you getting your own dinner, you know," he commented lightly, and climbed over a fallen tree in the overgrown path downhill. He'd gone downstream by the river, past the sentries and the patrol routes; this far from both clans the Nakano was choked with brambles and old forest growth, surrounded by canyons on all parts and broken into rapids around sharp, tiny islands. 

So many of them were mere boulders with a single gnarled oak growing over it, if that much, that Madara might be able to cross without even touching the water, just by jumping.

Hm. Tempting, but first, a fish. 

-- OT4 --

"--oh, and then in my first job, my supervisor--"

"--no way! That's so stupid, she can't have thought--"

"--been to college too, you know! Of course I've smoked a joint before!--"

"Wow, my legs are cramping," he interrupts, and starts working to extract himself. Grimmjow plucks the glass out of his hand before he has to figure out how to stand up hands free. "Ah, thanks." Embarrassing.

He escapes to the bathroom and spends a little time sitting on the toilet, staring blindly at the closed door; then he feels stupid and forces himself out, but immediately sees the three of them still fucking nesting and... mmm, nope, he can't. 

"No sick ass panthers on your walls yet?" he asks, looking at the posters already there. So far there's a photorealistic post-apocalyptic tower buried in a jungle and an old school Legend of Zelda one, both a bit torn at the corners. 

"In the bedroom," Grimmjow throws at him, laughing, and Nel groans.

"Ohh, nice." He goes to peer inside the bedroom from the open door. Okay, yeah, he can see why she's groaning. It's a couple of sketches of what he's pretty sure eventually became Grimmjow's main tattoo, but... "It looks like they came out of a shitty office printer." 

"Yeah, my boss' tightassed accountant won't spring for a better one. We're lucky there was enough ink." 

They're even off-center on the letter-size paper sheet. "Amazing." 

His heart is finally calming down. Smiling to himself, Ichigo makes a show of peering at the rest of the room, even though there isn't much more in it than the futon and a couple of plastic crates they're using for their clothes. 

"Well, at least when you manage to get a better print and a proper frame you've got a hook all ready... Bit low, though, what was it even for?"

He glances over his shoulder at the lot of them, three points of a square with his spot still open; Nel leaning in to see him past Orihime, and Grimmjow's neck craned back, and--

And the look on Nel's face is weirdly wide-eyed. 

Startled, but. Intense. That's more of a Grimmjow look usually, what the heck. "Uh?" 

That slowly blooming smile is also fairly Grimmjow-like in some way he can't quite pinpoint. 

"It goes with the green box in the corner!" she chirps, eyes crinkling with barely restrained, expectant glee.

Ichigo, already knowing he's going to regret it, looks at the green, lid-less cardboard box.

The noise he makes as a result is in no way a yelp.

"Honey?"

"Nothing, I saw nothing and it's nothing."

Oh god. Fuck. Damn them. Fucking Nel looks so pleased with herself, and not half embarrassed enough. Grimmjow --

Grimmjow is worrying at the corner of his mouth with a canine tooth. When their eyes meet, he arches an eyebrow like a challenge for Ichigo to say anything, and then lets out a quiet little breath of a laugh and unfolds from the couch, gives him that bastard half-smirk he does when he's about to start prodding--

"Nothing? Damn, where'd the handcuffs go then, hope we didn't lose them."