Chapter Text
The visitation center at the Oakland Regional Juvenile Detention Center was always carefully scent treated before families could come in and see their darling little criminals. Most of the time inmates were separated by designation to avoid conflict, but industrial grade scent patches were nonetheless a required part of the uniform. True, scenting was an important tool for the development of healthy socialization for young adults, but if you landed yourself in juvie, you were long past those kinds of concerns. All that mattered was that you kept your head down and your scent and your instincts to yourself.
Visiting families had fewer restrictions but were nonetheless strongly encouraged to wear scent patches while on the premise so as to maintain the facility’s bland sterile environment. Nobody wanted someone’s overemotional parent flooding the room with their scent and setting off every criminal teenager in a 50ft radius. Regulations like this did mean that once inmates were released back into society, they tended to have mild to severely stunted social development regarding their designations. In the normal world, people learned to control their scents, to politely ignore designations, to scent others discretely behind closed doors and to avoid antiquated posturing. However, that was the price to pay for doing time. Luckily, most of Oakland Juvie’s inmates came from enough wealth that their families would pay for the best therapists on the other side.
Andrew would not have such a luxury, but stunted social development and a lack of designatory etiquette were the least of his concerns. A lifetime in foster care had taught him how to mask his scent and control his instincts even before he presented as an omega. If not for the rigorous segregation of inmates, he would have been able to pass with his designation unnoticed – with or without scent patches. The same, however, was not true of the mirror image sitting across from him in the visitation center. Despite wearing high-quality scent patches, Aaron’s omega designation was obvious.
Neither twin had spoken a word since Aaron and his uncle, Luther, had arrived. While Andrew wore his silence like a shield, an indifferent and unyielding force that dominated whatever space he was in, Aaron’s silence was suffocating. His status and socialization were obvious from the way he shrank into himself, how he obviously deferred to the older man’s presence and instinctively bared his neck every time Luther’s hand on his shoulder squeezed a little too tightly for comfort.
It was pathetic.
“Andrew, I hope you don’t intend to sit here and ignore us the whole time.” Luther pronounced, his displeasure leaking past his sloppily applied scent patch along with the stale smell of old wood polish and something distinctively alpha.
Andrew hadn’t been ignoring them; just Luther.
“Your brother has been excited to get to meet you.” The older alpha plowed on, “I know circumstances of your childhood may have been less than ideal, but your brother and I are here now to begin making things right. It would be petty and immature of you to continue to ignore us. Besides…”
He kept going, clearly accustomed to being listened to, but Andrew focused on the older man’s hand which never left Aaron’s shoulder, keeping his nephew in place and in line.
Aaron watched Andrew.
He stared at the unknown twin with a mixture of hope and fear, dark exhausted circles under his eyes paired with the poorly disguised bruises on his wrists and forearms. Andrew recognized those bruises, that exhaustion. He recognized the casual ownership Luther projected as he loomed over the seated omega by his side; the expectation of obedience and the threat that lay just below the surface. Andrew suspected he also recognized the slight glassiness in Aaron’s eyes as well – plenty of the boys came to juvie as a result of drug addictions, after all. Andrew recognized something terrible, watching his double bend and bow to alpha authority in a way Andrew had never allowed himself to. He recognized it, and anger burned hot in his gut. He was too careful to let it show on his face or in his scent, but he felt it make a new home for itself under his skin regardless.
“…isn’t that right, Aaron?” Luther asked expectantly, giving the boy’s shoulder another hard squeeze when no answer was immediately forthcoming. Aaron flinched at the pressure and tilted his head, exposing his neck to his uncle in a sign of submission, eyes locked on Andrew in a kind of devastated desperation. Ignorant to the silent conversation of glances happening between the twins, Luther sighed loudly, the scent of irritation growing stronger.
“I had hoped that meeting your long-lost brother would inspire you to speak, Aaron.” He said with pointed disapproval. “This silence of yours is childish and quite frankly pathetic. Your mother and I won’t always be around to speak for you. And this,” Luther paused to gesture with vague disdain towards Andrew, “is, I must say, disappointing. I suppose it would have been too much to hope you would be a good influence given your… circumstances.”
Andrew had already tuned out the speech, watching only as Aaron wilted further under the crushing weight of Luther’s pronouncements. Despite that, however, his eyes remained stubbornly locked on Andrew like a drowning man looking at a lighthouse. Andrew said nothing, but he didn’t look away either. Aaron couldn’t know the significance of such weighted attention, but it was the most he was willing to give away.
Some 15 minutes later, having temporarily run out of things to say, Luther left the room in a huff ‘to give the twins time to bond.’ They weren’t actually alone, of course, facility guards stationed along the walls of the room disinterestedly eyed the odd reunion. Regardless, the air felt less oppressive with the old alpha gone. Slowly, as if facing a wild animal, Aaron leaned forward. In a voice rough from disuse he whispered,
“I can’t smell you.”
It wasn’t a question, and Andrew didn’t offer an answer, merely raising one eyebrow.
“Are you… are we actually the same?”
Andrew considered his answer for only a moment before saying in a low and unaffected voice, “What do you think?”
It wasn’t an answer, not really, but Aaron took it all the same. The breath punched out of him, carrying notes of disappointment and envy. He would learn soon enough. They may share a designation, but they were nothing alike.
Andrew hadn’t bothered to respond when he was told his long-lost twin and uncle were flying out to California to meet him. He was only a few months away from being released but young enough for the state to still require legal guardianship. His options were the Spears, or South Carolina. He had been considering a third option, breaking his roommate’s arms to ensure an extended sentence, but there were downsides to that plan. The higher security would infringe upon his already minimal rights to autonomy, handsy guards would be less forgiving, and he would lose the limited privileges he had. Exy was a miserable waste of time, but he was loath to be denied the freedom of the sport’s implicit violence.
Andrew watched impassively as Luther reentered the room, taking up his position at Aaron’s shoulder again. What little agency Aaron had scrounged up in their moment alone drained out of him and Andrew watched something in his eyes retreat. The anger he kept buried under lock and key flared up, and he itched to lash out, to claw his skin off, to do something. Whatever Aaron lived with may not have been the Spears, may not have been Drake, but it was bad.
South Carolina it would be then.