Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Most of the population presented overnight; they went to bed a child and woke up as an alpha, beta, or omega, and for most, it was a surprise. Reliable genetic testing for subgenders entered the marketplace for general use more than a decade ago, but most families chose not to pay the expensive fees for it unless there was a need. A potential health concern or for strangely particular purposes, such as idol training.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Namjoon already knew by the time he was scouted. The company didn’t even have to pay for his test the way they do with all other recruits.

He found out he would be an alpha in between math class and PE when he was only nine because his mother came to school to put it in his file, and because Namjoon was nine and the first in his class to know his presentation, he immediately became both the most popular and least popular kid in his grade. At nine, all Namjoon knew about alphas were knots; he obviously checked for one every night for the next six months before he gave it a rest. It was strange having a childhood with the knowledge looming over him while the rest of his friends still had casual conversation about the what ifs in their life. For Namjoon, it was already a done deal, there was just nothing to enjoy about it yet.

When he’s initially scouted by different agents, Namjoon is all of sixteen and still technically unpresented. By the time he signs at seventeen, he pops his first knot and has to disclose that information to the management. Surprisingly, he doesn’t have his first rut until eighteen, and they give him some industrial strength suppressants to curb the worst of it and a single for the weekend to work it off.

Yoongi grimaces when he tells him; Yoongi is a year older but far cooler and has had more than a handful of ruts already, something extremely uncommon for his age, even if alphas go through ruts more often than omegas heat. His last one hadn’t been on suppressants even. “Your partner wasn’t ready, I guess,” he says to Namjoon after he comes back from his first.

“Or they don’t have a match for me yet.”

It was increasingly the norm in the music industry for groups to be formed not for musical compatibility, but subgender compatibility. There were some homogeneous groups around still, often all omega groups, but increasingly mixed genders were being put together to foster what companies thought of as healthier, longer lasting groups.

All because for every alpha, there was an omega, and to level the playing field, usually a beta or two.

At this point, the trainees still in consideration for their group have dwindled, and by process of elimination there are only a few omegas that Namjoon could be partnered with. It’s not meant to be anything other than creature comfort during their contracted time spent together; a reliable partner for heats and ruts, someone whose scent you always have. Some groups openly disclose the relationships within it as a marketing tactic while others do not; there is success on both sides of it, but in BigHit things are still undecided.

For Yoongi, his last rut was easy; he had a partner. He had his permanent partner, for as long as this all lasts, it seemed - Jung Hoseok, their third rapper. While the vocal line fluxed still, their rap trio was set. They would be it, and Hoseok would be it for Yoongi for as long as the group performed. Even if one of them met or dated someone else outside of the group, it was an expected part of their contract to spend their cycles together, although Namjoon personally can’t imagine it. The thought of sharing something that intense with multiple people sounds terrifying, but he’s also never shared a rut with a partner, and he’s certainly never seen a heat before.

When Namjoon asks Yoongi about the heat he spent with Hoseok, both barely of age and able to participate in this part of their contract, his hyung just shakes his head. “Intense,” is all he says. “It was intense.”

What’s weirdest about it is that the three of them share a room, so Namjoon is left alone for several days and when the alpha-omega duo return, it’s with blushing cheeks and a strangely quiet Hoseok.

“Did you fuck him dumb or what, dude?” a recruit from a different department asks. He’s freshly presented as alpha and feeling himself, apparently.

Yoongi is not. “The fuck did you say?”

Hoseok is there behind them, looking small, shoulders hunching in. He was unlucky in that as soon as he presented he had a heat, so there’s still a level of adjustment for him, even if he got all his paperwork back about his subgender probably a year ago.

Omega rappers were hardly new, but they still lacked the popularity alpha rappers had. “He’s gonna out move and out spit you every day, asshole!” Yoongi growls at this alpha, this alpha they don’t really know and who doesn’t matter.

“Hyung, it’s okay.” Hoseok gently takes Yoongi’s elbow. He’s sweat through all of his blockers, and he has zero control over his scent in general, so it’s doing that soft and sweet thing omegas do to calm alphas. All three alphas are immediately affected, shoulders drooping and eyes blinking. Truly, they look like the dumb ones.

As is, Hoseok is the one who helps them all the most. After hours, in the brief interludes they are given free time to sleep, Namjoon and Yoongi are just a couple of trainees who request additional help in picking up choreo.

Yoongi finds them a smaller room (mostly, a closet) for just the three of them to practice, away from the other alphas.

“Can’t believe how much fucking dancing I do now,” Yoongi grumbles to himself, collapsed on the floor in a pile of sweat and sweaty shirt. Hoseok gingerly sits down next to him and only puts a hand through his hair, and the intimacy of it forces Namjoon to look away.

“They said we’re almost set,” Hoseok says to them both, a different day but in the same position - passed out on the floor in front of mirrors. There are some others shuffling about in the background, either running through something on their own or finishing homework for school in a corner.

“With our line up?” Namjoon asks, mouth stuffed full of sucker. He’s found a simple sucker can abate hunger for hours. “Naw.”

Hoseok shrugs. “That’s what I heard from Sunghoon.” Sunghoon is one of their producers. Shit.

But - PD never said shit to him? Isn’t Namjoon supposed to be the leader of whatever group they make? “Park Jimin’s definitely in,” Yoongi says, but it’s a guess. They don’t know that for sure, even if Park Jimin dances like a god and has been next to Hoseok in every version of every dance they’ve tried over the past six months.

Jimin seems like a sure thing, especially because he’s a beta, and if they debut as a mixed group which has always been the plan, they’ll need at least one beta.

“Who are - who is the omega?” Namjoon asks, because there has to be at least one more omega included, even if their group stands still at five instead of the seven or eight they proposed.

Hoseok hums. “Pretty sure there will be two more, and that it will be seven. Do you know Kim Seokjin well?”

They all know him - he’s been in and out of their line up for awhile now, but out of all the trainees, he is newer still. Supposedly scouted for visuals, already done with a couple years of undergrad.

“And they think it will be what’s his name - V, for another omega.”

Kim Taehyung, already going by the moniker of V despite pre-debut status, is another omega picked up more for visual than anything else. Namjoon doesn’t know either of them well, but out of the two of them, at least he’s spoken with Seokjin. He even laughed at a lame joke Namjoon stole from a knothead down the hall from him.

“Aw man, does that mean it’s my baby Jeonggukie for the missing alpha?” Yoongi asks, actually lighting up. To others, it’s a tiny smile. To Namjoon, his roommate of already three years, it looks like a meteor shower. He bristles in jealousy - it was this year that the two of them really hit their stride and can have what others would call civil disagreements. Before that, the two of them had all out shouting matches, but to be honest - Namjoon misses the days. It was so much quicker to get to the bottom of things.

Hoseok laughs. “Looks it.” They’re all fond of the doe eyed baby alpha, but none so much as Yoongi.

“That means - ” Namjoon doesn’t say it. He doesn’t need to say it.

He watches the next time that the whole group is assembled - all seven of them, plus a couple of other floating trainees that technically could still be in consideration, but according to Hoseok are not. Kim Seokjin is beautiful by no stretch of anyone’s imagination. He’s got the voice of an angel and can cook. He’s soft spoken and exactly the kind of omega that Namjoon was lovingly described by his own omega parent as perfect. He dresses in pressed slacks and button downs at all times, no matter what they’re doing. He overhears someone comment that it's because he isn’t talented enough to pick up demo tracks or choreo on the first, second, or third runthrough, so he needs to present himself as useful, but Namjoon can’t do any of those things on the first try either.

Seokjin is clearly meant to be his omega match for the group. His copartner, for whatever needs they have over the next several years while under contract. It makes sense - he’s older, but he’s also presented and ready to assist someone like Namjoon, and ready for the rapper to assist him when needed.

It makes talking to him extremely difficult. Any time they’re close together, Namjoon feels the pressure heat up the back of his neck. He and Seokjin both shuffle their feet around each other, clearing their throat and asking about what’s next on their individual schedule.

Namjoon might swoon if he could swoon.

“Earth to Joon,” Yoongi grouses from where he’s pinned under all of Jeongguk’s enthusiastic wrestling. Jimin reclines on his back right next to them, the three of them almost one pile of bodies.

“Hmmm. What?” He whips around. Seokjin’s exited the room.

Yoongi rolls his eyes, smiling only when Jeongguk growls, trying to push him into a submissive pose. Playing alpha when he knows nothing of it, but still so cute. “Out of all the alphas, we end up with this pup?” he asks, but he’s laughing when he manages to grab Jeongguk’s arms and cross them.

“Is it an alpha thing to have endless energy?” Jimin asks.

“As if you can talk,” Hoseok complains as he massages his legs.

“I don’t have that kind of energy outside of dance,” Jimin replies. Actually, he doesn’t have much energy at that time because he’s in the midst of his own presentation, but presentations for betas vary. While often longer, it is milder in symptoms, and something like general fatigue, a lack of appetite, or headaches are most common - but they are also most common for most illnesses.

Jeongguk curls up behind Jimin to sniff his ear, as if he’d be able to smell anything. While they know he’ll be an alpha, they’re also all assuming he’s got a year before he presents, which is fine, because Taehyung, the final omega, is also unpresented and similar enough in age that they might not have to go through a cycle without each other.

Taehyung is the potential member Namjoon knows least about. He joined the agency not long ago, although by his dance and vocal skills no one would know it. He isn’t even from a performing arts school. He just - looks like that and can pick it up. He gains something of a reputation right away, which is often true for visuals, but in particular no one needs to guess what Kim Taehyung will present as, even before his test is concluded. Kim Taehyung broadcasts it for everyone in the mini skirts he chooses to wear and the thin, satiny blouses he adorns to sing in.

“You know omegas haven’t been asked to dress like that for two decades, right?” another trainee remarks to Taehyung in the cafeteria. Taehyung shrugs; today he wears a deeply cut v-neck sweater with something underneath it that Namjoon tries not to pay attention to.

“I like pretty things,” he says. His plate is empty, but he pretends to delicately pick something up off it with his chopsticks and chew it. The trainee who addressed him makes a face, stands up, and moves to another table.

Jimin, a same age peer as Taehyung, shoots the other beta a look before scooching his chair closer to Taehyung. Jimin who likes to wear baggy tanks and pants, closer to alpha fashion than anything else.

Yoongi pulls at Namjoon’s hair, pulling his attention from the scene and the potentially lace undergarment. “This perm,” he says, snorting.

“Hey!”

“I like him,” Hoseok whispers, the three rappers holed up again alone. “Taehyung. He seems so unbothered by everything. He and Jimin get along so well already. Jimin will be heartbroken if he isn’t with us.”

“The question is - what does Jeongguk think of him?” Namjoon says, two of three notebooks open looking for lyrics he knows he wrote down somewhere.

Yoongi makes a face. “I can’t really imagine them matched together. Gggukie and him get along fine from what I can tell, but…”

“No one’s getting married. This is all business.” Namjoon feels bad as soon as he says it; Hoseok shrinks up a little, and Yoongi eyes him wearily. He tells himself that if he’s going to be a leader, he’ll need to remind his friends, even his best friends, that this is all an arrangement, but when it’s all new and you’re staring down the face of years together in some romantic sense, even if it isn’t meant to be romantic, the urge to get caught up is readily available.

That’s what makes it hard to look at Seokjin now.

“What do you mean?” Hoseok asks.

Yoongi shrugs. “He may seem unbothered, but both of them are so unsure of themselves. I know they’re young, but I don’t know if I see that match being an easy one for either one of them.”

“Well, that’s what Jimin is for. And if he’s close with both of them…” Hoseok trails off. Betas are designated to assist in cycles as needed or wanted, and if the maknae line feels unstable ever between Jeongguk and Taehyung, then Jimin could potentially function as a permanent third partner for them, or just as an occasional third as needed, same for Hoseok and Yoongi, or -

Namjoon and Seokjin.

Namjoon sees it easily. He watches the three youngest during practice, at break time. At a dinner that they’re all invited out to and given more than just scraps. The producers and their managers shove food at the alphas, but the omegas and Jimin are offered less. Scowling, Yoongi takes food off his plate to add to Hoseok’s. Namjoon quickly does the same for Seokjin with a sheepish smile, but the omega kindly smiles to shake his head and put it back.

By the end of the week, the seven of them get moved into a shoebox together, but it’s just them. The announcement is forthcoming, they know it, so Namjoon decides to ask Seokjin if he wants to sneak out for a late night snack just the two of them. How does one ask to get to know another person when they both understand full well that they’ll be fucking within a matter of time and it’s all guaranteed without any of the work or romance?

Namjoon sweats through his shirt and jacket in the middle of a cold November night while Seokjin shivers and he can’t even offer his jacket because it’s disgusting now. Their so-called date already feels stilted and weird because neither of them actually buy any of the food from the street vendors that they idly meander their way past. After midnight, they split a bottle of soju next to the river where it’s even colder but Namjoon can’t stop sweating, wondering how many heats Seokjin had and if he shared any of those with someone. Namjoon’s barely even kissed anyone before, and he’s only touched others in a mostly innocent schoolyard type of way where he and his friends would sometimes try and guess subgenders by having a feel.

If he acts a little more tipsy than he probably is, Seokjin graciously allows him to lean against him on the walk back to their dorm. Inside, it’s quiet, the five others already in their beds and asleep by the sound of it. It’s awkward for the two of them to do something so intimate as get ready for bed together, despite future connotations on the line, so Namjoon lets Seokjin have the bathroom first while he lies down and fights off sleep before he can brush his teeth.

In the bed above him, Jimin sleeps peacefully, curled on his side away towards the wall. Jeongguk and Taehyung also occupy top bunks, both unmoving in the dark, and crammed into one single sized bunk bed sleep Yoongi and Hoseok, the alpha spooning Hoseok with his nose buried in his hair.

Their match is going so well Namjoon worries it goes a little too well. “I know it seems like a done deal, but until they publicize everything in writing, maybe cut it out. Just a little.”

The three of them stand in the corner, arms crossed, looking at each other. Hoseok’s mad because he and Jimin are neck-in-neck for role as lead dancer, once considered Hoseok’s by default, and Yoongi is no doubt angry because he can’t keep his eyes from lingering too long while Hoseok dances and Namjoon is there to call him on it.

Namjoon just wants to debut and have the contracts in writing. That’s all. If they go on to fall in love after that, it’ll be their management’s problem. (Actually, it would still very much be his problem.)

Yoongi and Hoseok agree to keep their distance outside of the dorm. Inside the dorm, Jeongguk loves to tease them and call them the it couple, but his entire face gets so red anytime he waits on the shower and the both of them emerge together. His sense of smell for pheromones may be next to none until presented, but even he knows what a hickey looks like and certainly has an imagination.

“Min Yoongi!” Namjoon growls when he sees it, pulling at the collar of Hoseok’s shirt until Yoongi removes his hand. “You can’t act like a possessive alpha courting him! That’s not why we’re here!”

“I can’t wait to see your thick skull try and suppress urges when it’s your turn,” Yoongi hisses back. Namjoon wants to tear his hair out, because they’d been so good around others, but now their makeup artists will see when they have their shoot in a couple of days.

But it happens.

It happens.

Their names come out in the papers, ridiculed and mocked for lack of real representation. He is now only addressed in the halls by his chosen name, Rapmon everywhere he goes. They all sign their legal names to debut on live television shortly after, not only the first of their label to debut but one of only a handful of mixed-gendered groups that year. Immediately, press wants to know about their arrangements. All of them.

PD hasn’t told Namjoon if they will disclose them or keep them privately traded. Even if it isn’t disclosed for fans, investors get to know. Anyone inside the company or contracted out that signs the NDAs will know. For those that work with them, it’s considered pertinent information, and if it’s never disclosed to fans, said fans will spend a lot of time and attention to figure it out.

The group is forced to play coy and smile and even flirt their way around the questions. The younger members are protected for the most part from more probed questions, but the reporters do not go easy on Seokjin or Yoongi, who as the oldest and omega and alpha, immediately face speculation as a pair.

Sites that exclusively cover young groups do write-ups on Seokjin, offering up interviews with supposed past alpha and beta lovers, even one salacious omega lover. “Oh, Jin hyung, I didn’t know you had a thing for tattooed and pierced alphas!” Jimin teases him, showing him one such gossip report with a blurry faced photo of a flexing alpha who claims to have bedded the omega for his first heat.

Seokjin rolls his eyes. He makes no comment on any of the claims. Why would he? These are all obviously false, but Namjoon still wonders about what kind of experience the omega singer may or may not have. The two of them still tiptoe around each other, but so far rely on each other only for extra help when it comes to dance practice. From the group, they are the two that always need more time, and so is born a small thing between them, shared late at night when they rehearse steps until they can barely feel their feet anymore, then Namjoon will jokingly offer to give Seokjin a piggyback ride back to the dorm, and every time Seokjin will loudly squawk and turn red.

Namjoon thinks they’ll be okay. The two of them fit together well enough to make it work, and if anything he hopes they work well enough but not so well it’s distracting. He doesn’t want what Yoongi and Hoseok seem to have - immediate affection that can be dangerous. He agreed to an idol group, but he knows what he wants long term. He knows he has what it takes to launch a solo career one day out of an idol career, and that plan can’t include taking an omega bandmate with him.

The truth doesn’t come out until a few months later when Seokjin’s face is pinker than usual, his movements a little slower. They’re at a dance practice, all of them watching their eldest because they’re waiting on him to nail one transition before they work on the next, when Seokjin suddenly sits down, the choreographer screaming in his face to get back up.

Seokjin looks close to tears at this point, panting heavily with wide eyes as he looks at this alpha raining down spit on him. Namjoon hovers close behind Seokjin, but he rationally knows he cannot protest and even if he wanted to. There are repercussions for him too.

Instead of tears, there’s a short whimper before Seokjin crumples face first to the floor, clutching his stomach, and Namjoon, some leader he is, first worries that it’s their diet that’s led to the omega crying out in pain.

Hoseok is the one who pushes the choreographer back to put a hand on Seokjin’s cheek. “He’s preheat,” he announces quietly. “Namjoon, please call Sejin and have him arrange for heat leave.”

Hoseok and Jimin help Seokjin stand, Taehyung hovering behind them like it should be him, but the four of them watch while the three disappear.

Namjoon is alone in the hall when he makes the call; fifteen neat minutes later, their manager Sejin arrives with a bag from the pharmacy that he hands to Seokjin, slouched over on a couch in one of the break rooms with the rest of their group pacing around while awaiting further instruction. Namjoon mentally makes a list of what he needs from their dorm room.

Sejin slides Seokjin a hotel keycard with the address written on a piece of paper wrapped around it. “I can escort you there if you prefer, or you have the option of taking yourself,” Sejin says.

“But-” Seokjin looks over at Namjoon, hand with card in it frozen mid air.

“Under different circumstances we would send Jimin with you, but.”

Jimin was eighteen. Still underage by modern law, even if some areas of the country still observed adulthood at the moment of presentation. In an idol group at a fledgling company, they do not have the option. Partners must be of legal age and presented, not one or the other.

“But Namjoon? He’s -” Seokjin’s eyebrows knit together.

So do Sejin’s. “Namjoon isn’t a match for you. You’ll carry heats alone until your partner is of age.”

“But that means-” Hoseok whirs around to spot Jeongguk, doe eyes larger than usual as he stares at Seokjin, the omega whose bed he innocently loves to crawl into at night. The two of them already have a bond, but it’s Seokjin fussing over their youngest eating enough, or finding the proper moisturizer for his skin.

Seokjin stands, wincing only momentarily but dropping the hotel key to the floor. “Namjoon is my match. He’s my heat partner. Why can’t he come with me?”

Sejin shakes his head. “No, I’m sorry. You’re mistaken. Jeon Jeongguk is your match for the terms of the contract, once the alpha is of age. I know it adds hardship on you until then, but we’ve put in your package suppressants to dull the effects. You know the drill. You’ve gone through heats alone before. I know you have.”

Seokjin’s face, neck, and hands are red. Every bit of skin that is visible. “No. That’s not - what game are you playing at? Namjoon is the alpha. He was - he was always my match-”

“Seokjin-ssi, please calm down. You were picked specifically for this group based in part on your compatibility with Jeongguk. I know it’s unfortunate that you’re not both presented and of age, but you will be before you know it. This is about longevity. This is about the group. Please don’t let your personal feelings get in the way.”

“My personal feelings?” Seokjin’s voice rises. “Jeongguk is a child. I made him breakfast this morning. How can you - he’s too young for me!”

“At present, but five years isn’t much of a gap once he’s of age. Give him a couple of years. The testing doesn’t lie. Your compatibility is extremely high.”

Seokjin’s entire body shudders, then shakes. “This is ridiculous. There is an alpha who meets all the criteria who can already assist me. Let me have Namjoon. Jeongguk can be with - with Taehyung. That’s what we all thought.”

“Well,” Sejin shrugs his shoulders, looking around at them. Namjoon lets himself fade into the background. “You assumed incorrectly. You are matched with Jeongguk.”

“So-” Namjoon clears his throat. “So, I’m with…”

Taehyung stands in between Jimin and Yoongi, looking up at him from under his bangs. He looks - hopeful, a tiny smile on his lips where he bites at them. He wears sweatpants to dance in but a floral print button down over them.

“No, that’s not - that’s not right. Seokjin and I-”

Taehyung looks down at the floor, lips smoothing out in neutrality. The room is a confusing blend of scents, everyone sweating through their scent deodorizers.

“Hey, I don’t need to remind you all this is business only. You have to remove your personal feelings from the arrangement. This group debuted only because of compatibility scores. We aren’t messing with them now. If you have a problem with that, then you can take your contract and see PD.”

Everyone wilts - losing a member right after debut will kill the group no matter what replacement they find, and even if one of them did want out, to buy out of their contract would bankrupt not only them, but their family.

“Seokjin-ssi.” Sejin bends down to grab the keycard. “Please arrive safely.”

Seokjin trembles - in fear or anger - looking down at his hand.

First, he picks up the pharmacy bag, then finally, he accepts the key. Without a word or glance at anyone, Seokjin walks past them to open and shut the door behind him.

“I don’t understand,” Jimin murmurs. “Are you sure? Are you sure I can’t go with him? In the country, I would be allowed-”

“We’re not in the country, Jimin-ah,” Yoongi cuts him off. “Next year. If Seokjin has a heat next year, you can help until Jeongguk will.”

Jeongguk drops like a bag of rocks into an empty chair. “Me and hyung?”

Why does he look like he’s about to cry? Namjoon just lost what footing he thought he had in this group, and then he remembers -

He looks over at Taehyung, half hidden by Yoongi’s shoulders. He’s just - looking down at the floor, expression more stoic than Namjoon’s ever seen. He looks neither upset or happy. He just looks.

“Did you know?” Namjoon asks, eyes staring him down. Jimin jerks at the tone in his voice, stepping closer to his friend. “Did you?”

“Hey, hyung, I know it’s a surprise, but you don’t need to sound like that-”

“I knew,” Taehyung very quietly says. Namjoon wouldn’t have heard it if he weren't already hearing it in his head.

“Tae!”

“Why didn’t you-” Namjoon licks his lips, his throat so sore, as if he’s never had a sip of water or spare lick of sense. “Why didn’t you say? Or - just hint at all? We all - Seokjin and I both thought -

Taehyung hiccups; Namjoon can’t see his face. Yoongi stands upright where he is so Taehyung can hide his face behind him, but it sounds wet. The tears are obvious. “Of course you wanted him. It makes sense,” Taehyung moans out miserably.

Jimin glares at Namjoon as he pulls at Taehyung, the two of them stumbling with Taehyung’s refusal to move, until the omega-to-be gives up and follows the beta out of the room.

“So.” Sejin nods. “Looks like I have some good feedback to implement for future groups.”

He claps Namjoon on the back, as if they’re both in on this, but Namjoon can’t believe - he can’t believe Seokjin rides alone in a taxi to spend a potentially painful heat on his own when Namjoon could be helping, has spent the past six months dreaming of helping, and now Namjoon knows he’ll be on his own for at least another year, and Taehyung?

Namjoon doesn’t know Taehyung. Even the fact that he’s going to be omega is barely known to him, only in the simplest of mathematical equations. He balances them out, but his numerical value meant nothing to Namjoon before.

He turns to look at Jeongguk, also someone who he’s thought exceptionally little about, other than how he’s been called the golden maknae. Namjoon knows numerous companies wanted him, and here he is. Namjoon should feel grateful for him, instead he just feels burning envy.

He’s just a kid. Namjoon is sure he’s never even been kissed. What is he going to offer their hyung? What’s he going to expect from Seokjin when he returns, reeking of heat with new knowledge that it’s all for him in a couple of years?

Namjoon wants to punch in the wall.

Guess he has to forgive Yoongi some of his instincts.

The group has to go back to practice sans Seokjin. It makes no sense to even pretend, but heats drag on for days and they’re not allowed such luxury.

Namjoon doesn’t speak to Jeongguk. Or Jimin or Taehyung. He barely speaks to Yoongi, but then Yoongi gets too frustrated to speak with him. Namjoon would rather sleep somewhere in the company building, but facilities workers kick him out, so he has to go to the dorm and wallow in silence with everyone else.

The worst is Taehyung, of course.

He doesn’t try to speak or even look in his direction, but Namjoon feels eyes on him and knows it’s for Taehyung. Suddenly, he’s their leader in everything except respect. Hoseok and Yoongi sleep together in their own bed, and Jimin curls up around Taehyung so Namjoon won’t even see him in the omega’s bed.

‘S fine. Better that way.

Seokjin’s heat breaks after a whopping seven days. Five is average. With a compatible alpha, it usually takes only three. When he steps through the door to their dorm room, he looks physically altered. In a week, the nonexistent last shred of fat is scrapped from his body. He sways on his feet, pale with lips chapped.

When Jeongguk lingers outside the omega’s bed, tearfully looking in, Seokjin does not falter. He keeps his back to him. He won’t even acknowledge the existence of a single one of them, long past the night and morning when he might normally make them all breakfast.

He doesn’t say a single thing until the seven of them trudge into the studio together the next day, complete, but more fractured than Namjoon ever imagined seven virtual strangers could be.

Chapter Text

The ice doesn’t really melt.

Even Yoongi keeps his guard up around Namjoon, and that hurts most. Seokjin, who doesn’t spare any of them a single glance, will at least tolerate his physical presence. During a short break in dance rehearsal - so many dance rehearsals - Namjoon collapses next to Seokjin along a back wall in a dark hallway.

“Your omega has been moping,” he says to him, after too much silence for too long. Namjoon doesn’t think Seokjin fills it for him, but what does he know? He thought he knew Yoongi, but even his best friend is less his these days.

The great joy of debuting.

Namjoon scoffs. “What omega? I don’t have an omega. He isn’t an omega.”

Seokjin shrugs. It makes Namjoon wince, because all of them are looking thin and worn these days, but perhaps no one shows it more than their eldest, still enrolled for in-person college classes while spending the majority of his waking hours at the company.

“Do you want me to start calling Jeongguk your alpha?” Namjoon quips right back.

He expects verbal protest. Instead, he gets more silence.

“Hey, let’s go. They’ll be looking for us soon.” Namjoon offers him a hand up. Seokjin gives it the flattest look, only to stand on his own.

As the appointed leader of the group, Namjoon should be spending time with each member. He should be getting to know them, learn what they need in order to do their best and keep going in the face of ridicule from the outside industry and shockingly low fan interest thus far, even for a new company. As is, he can barely stand to be in a room with them.

It’s easier when they’re lined up in solidarity for their dance instructor to yell at them, or at the makeup and hair consultants to criticize them. It’s the moments in between, all the waiting, where no one can look each other in the eye anymore, save Yoongi and Hoseok, and the way they look at each other in the eye is a problem for everyone else.

One night they walk in together, hand in hand like they’re any other fucking couple in the world and not an arrangement for a music group with an entire company riding on it, and Seokjin takes one look at them. One long, blistering look, then he stands and takes Hoseok’s hand out of Yoongi’s and pulls the younger omega back out the door with him.

This is after they’ve all swapped short but painful stories of waiting long periods of time for the bathroom at home, only for the two of them to emerge flushed and smelly, or the one time Jimin yelped when he walked in on Yoongi on his knees in front of the omega in the studio, Namjoon plowing into him from behind because he didn’t stop in time.

The two omegas don’t come back for over an hour, and Namjoon knows because he has to stop Yoongi from following them for every single minute that they’re gone. It’s as much cardio as dance rehearsals - as soon as Yoongi pretends to relax, he darts for the door, and Namjoon has to lunge to grab him. When he’s had enough, Namjoon growls at him, and his friend growls right back, showing his teeth.

“Don’t you dare! I’m still the oldest alpha in the pack!” he says, shoving at Namjoon’s chest.

Namjoon laughs, because he barely feels it. “But I’m the leader of this group. Stand down!”

The maknaes watch nervously from around the bedroom door frame. In particular, if Namjoon were to spare more than a perfunctory glance, he would see how Taehyung cowers in Jimin’s arms who in turn leans against Jungkook, barely any bigger than their beta.

“You’re scaring the kids!” he yells at Yoongi. “Calm down.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, especially not when it has to do with my omega!”

“He isn’t your omega! Yoongi, for fuck’s sake!”

The coffee table breaks so easily under his back. Namjoon still doesn’t feel a thing, but he feels it when he pushes Yoongi up against the wall.

“Stop! Both of you!” Jeongguk screams, barreling in between them.

“Stay out of this, kid!” Yoongi snarls, and Jeongguk shrinks back, just enough that Namjoon sees the hurt on his face. Jeongguk absolutely idolizes Yoongi - there is no doubt that he is his safe place, especially after Seokjin icing him out. “You don’t have the fucking teeth to even know or comment!”

And Jeongguk looks - Jeongguk goes from looking like a kicked puppy to furious. “I’m an alpha too, and don’t you ever forget,” he hisses, then reaches for Jimin and Taehyung. “I’ll be a better alpha than either of you.”

The three of them exit the dorm, and Namjoon should stop them - it’s one thing for Seokjin and Hoseok to leave, it’s another for the three youngest to depart by themselves. It makes something in him go a little feral thinking about them out there on their own, even if out there is just the convenience mart on the corner that they all frequent enough to be known by their names by every employee that works there.

When Hoseok and Seokjin return, they’re quiet. Neither smell upset, but Hoseok’s eyes widen as they open the front door. “What happened? Why does it smell like that in here?”

“What happened to the furniture?” Seokjin asks, stooping over the coffee table that Namjoon attempts to piece and put together with crazy glue and rubber bands. They won’t have another if they let this one go.

Yoongi growls. Namjoon stiffens, and the omegas look at each other. “Where are the babies?” Hoseok inquires next, head ducked into the bedroom.

“They’re probably at the corner store,” Namjoon replies. “Would you-”

Seokjin enters the bathroom and closes the door. Well. He wants to handle omega business with Hoseok, but he won’t go near the maknae unit with Jeongguk there. Alright then.

“I’ll collect them,” Yoongi says, after he tries to reach for Hoseok but their lead dancer ducks away. “That is, if I’m allowed to leave.”

Namjoon flashes his teeth at him.

They put their dorm room back together. Literally. Then Yoongi herds the youngest back, and instead of sorrow there is an anger radiating off of them. Well, off Jeongguk and Jimin. Namjoon still can’t quite read Taehyung.

Most nights, Jimin crawls into bed after their youngest omega-to-be. He tries to cover him with his slight body as if he can protect Taehyung from the sight of Namjoon, or keep Namjoon from looking at Taehyung, but Namjoon isn’t looking.

Even if they’re arranged into something - whatever they want to call their professional meets non-romantic relationship - what does it matter when Jimin covets Taehyung like that?

On a later night: “We could just do it, you know,” Seokjin says, the two of them drunk off more than one bottle of soju this time. Seokjin had a heinous day, and Namjoon can tell by the way he stuffed his face with greasy food that is strictly off limits for both of them, not just omegas, and Seokjin isn’t the kind to tempt the wrath of management usually.

Namjoon sputters. “Do what, exactly?” His face is so hot. Christ, will Seokjin remember what he looks like, red as a lobster and sweating through his shirt again? It’s a different kind of look from the exhaustion from dance, this kind of look.

“Switch. You and me, then Jeongguk with Taehyung. It will be our business. Jimin will, will probably need to know but. Just the seven of us!” He shouts, waving the empty bottle. “We’ll switch, and management will never know the difference!”

Namjoon deflates. They will absolutely know the difference. Especially once everyone is presented and schedules are arranged precisely for them. There will be no sneaking around. There will only be chaperoning, and Namjoon - for all that he wants it to be Seokjin - can’t even pretend. Not even this drunk.

“Hyung,” he pants, sloppy. “Hyung, we can’t, but, uh.” He licks his lips. Oh shit. Can he really do this?

Seokjin sways a little side to side when he looks over at Namjoon.

Oh shit.

He’s gonna do it.

Namjoon lunges forward; their lips collide, and despite how sloppy they both are, the kiss is unpleasantly dry. Seokjin tenses; Namjoon feels it even though they aren’t touching anywhere but their lips. Then he pushes him off.

“Namjoon!” he gasps, sounding scandalized despite their previous topic of conversation including the idea of the two of them fucking.

“Sorry, hyung, sorry.” Namjoon puts his hands up and bows his head down in deference. “I, ugh.”

“Was that your first kiss?” Seokjin asks. He sounds shocked, or maybe disgusted. Hard to say at this moment.

“No!” Namjoon insists.

“Namjoon-ah.” It is the softest Seokjin’s voice has ever been. Softer than the ballads they have him singing for practice. “Namjoon-ah. Look at hyung.”

He absolutely will not.

“It’s okay, we’re fine, but -” Seokjin cuts himself off, as if remembering the absurdity of their situation. He even laughs, a short humorless thing. “Well. I guess we can’t. We definitely can’t do that.”

Is Seokjin the kind to let someone fuck him without kissing him ever?

Namjoon can’t really imagine.

“You can, however, finish this bottle if you want,” he offers, as if swapping spit that way counts for something. Seokjin sighs, heavily. “I wouldn’t have joined, if I knew…”

Namjoon frowns, wobbly even while sitting. “That’s not true. I don’t, uh, I don’t know you that well, but I know you well enough. ‘S not true.”

Seokjin rolls his head to look at him. His eyes are glazed over in that way that only a stimulant can produce, and weirdly enough - Namjoon hates it on him. Suddenly, he regrets agreeing to the drink.

“Maybe you’re right,” he says softly. “I hate to think that he might not be here. I know how much it means to him.” He chews his lip, eyes more and more focused, and for a moment, Namjoon almost asks who? But he knows - Jeongguk. Their golden maknae already, talented at everything despite his young age.

If Seokjin didn’t sign, then they might not have let Jeongguk sign.

It sits like a pit in his stomach all night that he might not be here without Taehyung, but - they formed the group around him, didn't they?

When they stumble back into the dorm, it’s late enough that even Jeongguk and Yoongi are asleep in their beds. Seokjin stumbles his way to the bathroom, loud enough that people toss and turn in their beds.

Namjoon thinks he dives into his own bed when there is a protesting grunt. Two big eyes emerge from under a blanket to blink at him. “Oh,” Taehyung breathes out quietly. “You smell just like him.”

The second part is said with - with - anguish, is the word Namjoon’s drunk and dramatic brain supplies. Namjoon tries to scuttle backwards out of, out of Taehyung’s bed, but all he manages is to thunk his head hard enough that Jimin lets out a sleepy what.

It’s when Seokjin comes back that he takes in Namjoon’s flailing limbs and stops to help him up and into his own bed, Taehyung staring silently the entire time. Somehow, Seokjin manages to make it into his bed just fine, Jimin’s freshly bleached blonde head sticking up for a moment then collapsing back down.

Everything settles. Namjoon settles with the knowledge that will be his first, last, and only kiss with Kim Seokjin.

The next day, he’s miserably sick and no one feels especially bad for him, not even Seokjin, who winces at every noise but otherwise keeps a collected face in front of everyone. It’s their “day off,” which means time for everyone to get caught up in homework and call home if they’re lucky. Namjoon feels so ill he curls up in one of the company rooms not in use for the day and sleeps. It’s the quietest place he’ll find outside the library, and his favorite librarian already kicked him out for sleeping a few weeks ago.

He would drop out of his degree if he didn’t have a reputation as a bookworm to maintain.

“How do you do it?” he asks Seokjin, who still attends all of his classes in person, managing because his degree offers night courses whereas most of what Namjoon wants to take only operates in daylight hours, apparently. He knows the omega works his ass off - he’s always studying in a corner when time allows.

“I don’t make time to feel sorry for myself, that’s how,” he replies, flipping a page.

Namjoon rolls his eyes. Thank god Seokjin doesn’t see. “What was last night then?”

“Two stupid kids who need to grow up,” he says. “We can’t have what we want. Time to accept it and do our best regardless.”

Namjoon slumps face forward on his stack of paper. He photocopied his textbook and honestly - he isn’t sure if this is the one he needs for - whatever he finds the strength to work on next.

“Namjoon.” Seokjin snaps his fingers in front of his face. If he did that to Seokjin, Namjoon has no doubt his ears would be red from the verbal lashing. “Wake up. Come on.” He whistles obnoxiously in his ear.

Namjoon groans. It sucks. Everything sucks. He actually gets along with Seokjin. Christ. How is it possible that Jeongguk matches higher with the omega? Jeongguk is so young he doesn’t even know who he is yet.

“Want to make a friendly wager?” Seokjin asks, and Namjoon snorts.

“Aren’t you supposed to set an example for us as the eldest? And you want to gamble, hyung?” Namjoon chuckles.

Seokjin looks over his face so seriously. Too seriously for Namjoon whose insides and brain all feel like mush still. “We’ll see who breaks first.”

…What?

“You mean - with our, uh, assigned partner?” he asks. “What do you mean?”

Seokjin sighs, moving back to his book. “Nevermind. Ignore me, Namjoon-ah.”

“You want to be - what? Accountability partners so we don’t use the resources specifically given to us?” Namjoon doesn’t love the way things happened, but. Shit. He’s their leader. He’ll make it on his own, but he doesn’t want Seokjin to suffer. He doesn’t know Taehyung, but Taehyung doesn’t need to spend painful heats alone. They should all make something, whatever work.

“Nothing, nevermind. Forget I said anything.”

Namjoon hasn’t spent the time to analyze his feelings about Kim Taehyung and the disappointment he felt when the truth became known; there’s nothing wrong with Taehyung, exactly. He was just so sure it was Seokjin for him, and Seokjin was the picture perfect omega. Namjoon couldn’t believe it. And then to be told he was passed over for an unpresented pup? It stung.

But there’s nothing wrong with Taehyung. He’s cute. Pretty, even - that’s why they snagged him from the audition circuit. In a few years, after presentation, Namjoon wonders if Taehyung will be just as pretty as Kim Seokjin. Not that - not that his looks are all that matter, but Taehyung barely speaks to him so how would Namjoon know if he gets along well with him? He can at least kick back with Seokjin.

It doesn’t matter. Not for him. Right now, Taehyung remains unpresented, and even once he presents - he will clearly prefer Jimin’s company. Namjoon will get by on his own for ruts. It’s not a problem. His first was livable on his own. They might get worse with time without an omega there, but it’s not for forever. When their contracts expire, things will be different.

Besides, isn’t it like - almost a power imbalance for him, their supposed leader, to really have a relationship with any of them that can’t be shared between all of them?

He feels for Seokjin though. Jeongguk is so young - Namjoon feels young and foolish next to Seokjin. Jeongguk must feel like a foreign entity, lightyears away from him. Namjoon doesn’t have the same kind of gap between him and his requested partner, but he can imagine how he would feel if it was anything more.

It would give him no peace of mind to think about. If he thought about it.

“Jeongguk’s a good kid,” he says. Why does he say it? He doesn’t know. It doesn’t mean anything to Seokjin.

Seokjin jolts next to him, blinking rapidly at his book until he slams it shut, stands up, and exits the room. He leaves everything behind, so when Namjoon begrudgingly decides he can’t hide any longer, he gathers up everything and stuffs it in his bag.

At home - and how strange it is to think of it as such - Yoongi and Hoseok pitter around the kitchen together. Hoseok is kind enough to ask if Namjoon is hungry; they’ve made enough for everyone. He feels too nauseous still to eat after his attempted late breakfast, so Namjoon shuffles into the bedroom, ready to drop.

He finds his bed. It’s the same bed he’s used since they moved in - but it’s foreign to him in this moment. He lifts the comforter, freshly laundered and by whom, to find a new set of sheets underneath. In the middle of the mattress, draped right under his pillow, is a silky top that could only belong to one person, known to him immediately on sight, but when Namjoon picks it up, it most certainly reeks of Taehyung to confirm it.

And Taehyung is unpresented, so to get something to smell this much like him?

What was he doing?

He turns to yell out for Taehyung, who he saw sitting in their so-called living room - the tiny space pushing into the kitchen - but he rubs his fingers at the shirt and something in his brain relaxes. It’s so soft. Not real silk, of course - none of them could ever afford it, but it’s the kind of thing that Taehyung loves to wear.

Namjoon crawls into bed and decides that if the omega left it there on purpose, he should do whatever he wants with it now. Even if he didn’t leave it there on purpose - maybe it wrestled into the linen laundry, but how it looked so neat under the cover would be suspect if that was the case. Either way. He isn’t giving it back. What would he say to Taehyung even?

Namjoon puts the top on his pillow and rubs his cheek into it. It’s nice. It’s cool. Smells - good, honestly.

He drifts off to sleep, even over the dinner time shouting.

It takes many weeks spent in utter exhaustion, but some of the walls come crumbling down. Seokjin warms back up to everyone, taking over cooking duty from Hoseok who could only try his best, and he even lets Jeongguk fall asleep on his shoulder late at night while he studies and the maknae plays the video game Seokjin brought from home. He steadfastly will not, however, let Jeongguk crawl into bed with him anymore.

And Namjoon knows because they have all tripped over the maknae sleeping on the floor right next to Seokjin’s bed. Jeongguk sulks and whines about it when they lecture him to sleep in his own bunk, until Seokjin gives him a pointed stare. He will acquiesce for the moment, but often, come morning, he slumbers on the floor, tucked up next to the side of Seokjin’s bed.

“Jeon Jeongguk!” Seokjin wails, and from a dead sleep Jeongguk bolts off the ground and out of the room.

“Wow, hyung.” Yoongi chuckles. “You’re way more efficient than an alarm clock.”

Seokjin throws his pillow at the alpha, and the alpha playfully throws it back. Jimin smacks a crusted eye Hoseok in the back of the head gently with his own, and the squawk of protest makes Jeongguk peek one eye around the door. The quiet laughter turns to all out laughter, and even Namjoon feels lighter as he watches Yoongi scruff a wide eyed Jeongguk at the door and toss him at the bottom of a growing dogpile.

“Hyung.”

Namjoon startles, fingers poised over the laptop he has joint custody of with Yoongi for rough mixes.

He always forgets how deep Taehyung’s voice is. It’s a wonderful singing voice - his lower range is impressive for an omega, and no matter what he sings, it sounds like honey somehow. Rich. Luxurious, unlike someone like him or Yoongi who can only really convey anger on heavy beats.

Taehyung emotes a lot.

“Can I sleep in your bed?” he asks, hands balled up in the bottom of his long, baggy shirt. Is that Jeongguk’s shirt? Namjoon squints.

“No. Why?”

Taehyung deflates, lip popping free of his front teeth. He looks around the otherwise empty room, and they’re probably both thinking the same thing - of Yoongi and Hoseok who share a bed every night, and of Jeongguk who used to sleep in Seokjin’s before he got kicked to the floor, but even now Namjoon woke up to catch Seokjin easing a pillow under Jeongguk’s head or sleeping with a hand dangling over the side of the bed, unknowingly reaching for him.

“It would be inappropriate,” Namjoon adds. But would it?

It doesn’t matter, because it’s only a week later that Taehyung tries it anyway. Namjoon is one of the first in bed for once, tired and sore and cranky enough that he thought he better hit it before he said something he might regret, and much later, when all the lights inside their apartment are off, the room filled with soft snores, Namjoon feels the mattress dip.

It’s more than startling - it’s actually alarming. Hoseok and Jimin are the ones who give physical affection; no one comes to him for a cuddle, so why the fuck is someone trying to crawl into bed with him? He flings himself over onto his other side, clearly scaring the person who moves so gingerly into the bed.

Taehyung freezes, big eyes widening and soft breath stilling. They look at each other, and of course it’s Taehyung. It makes Namjoon angry - they just talked about this.

“Taehyung. What are you doing?” He doesn’t even need to whisper. His voice is just that low, but it makes Taehyung shiver.

“I -”

He cuts himself off, looking down. Looking down in this case involves him looking over most of Namjoon’s nude body, because it’s hot in their shoebox and Namjoon sleeps in his underwear like most of them, save Taehyung and Seokjin who prefer their formal little pajama sets.

Namjoon pulls the cover out of Taehyung’s hands to hug it close to his chest.

“I said no,” Namjoon growls. He hears shuffling somewhere in the room and he wonders who overhears this little moment. “Or do you think you’re entitled to it for some reason?”

They both know why Taehyung might feel that way.

It’s literally in their contracts. Somewhere in Kim Namjoon’s contract, it specifies that Kim Taehyung is the recipient of his physical distributions.

He’s supposed to offer comfort when Taehyung needs it. Scenting, or whatever Taehyung wants to do in his bed, is not only a part of the package deal, but it’s the lowest on the list of physical actions they are meant to take. People scent like they breathe, and in a job as stressful as theirs, idol groups formed in this capacity create time and space for partners to regularly scent each other before performances, shows, whatever it may be.

It’s supposed to be this. It’s supposed to be offering your body and scent to your partner when they need it.

Namjoon knows all that, but he does not let Taehyung tug the cover out from his hands to crawl under with him. There are tears in his eyes - of course there are - but Namjoon clenches his jaw until Taehyung audibly whimpers, scampering out of the bed and across the room into Jimin’s. Immediately, the beta can be heard shushing him - guess he was already awake.

The guilt, borderline shame, sinking in his stomach makes Namjoon roll his eyes defensively. Taehyung hasn’t even presented yet. He doesn’t need to be scented. He’s fine. Namjoon rolls back over and jams his pillow over his head to block out the voices in the room.

In the morning, even Seokjin looks a little pissy with him.

The maknaes keep their distance from the rest of them, Jimin in particular going out of his way to bag up some things and usher Taehyung out the door before Namjoon gets his turn for the shower. Jeongguk wearily watches him, and when Seokjin steps out of the bedroom he dashes behind Jimin.

“Did you - did you two fight?” Namjoon asks, frowning.

Seokjin gives him the flattest look imaginable, the kind that he knows means the eldest is past annoyance. “No, we did not. He’s scared that I will yell at him though because you yelled at Taehyung.”

Namjoon shrugs.

“Thought you’d be on my side,” he says. “You don’t let Gguk in your bed any more.”

Seokjin looks away, then after a short pause, walks away.

“You gotta get it the fuck together,” Yoongi says later, shoving at him. Hard enough he budges this time.

Of the three omegas, Namjoon has spent the most time with Hoseok and yet thinks of him least as omega, perhaps because he was never a viable option for him. From the very beginning, from nearly day one of his introduction, it was somehow made so clear by everyone that he would be with Yoongi.

They just fit.

Currently, he is nowhere to be seen. It is just him and Yoongi in a break room, shitty cup ramen and the not-good kind of chips lining the wall. They purposely stock the kinds they know people like least. It’s all a game anyway - there are cameras in there like there are cameras everywhere, and management knows when anyone takes anything. If the person is lucky, if it’s just once in a great while, they might not say anything, but eat too much junk food where they can see it and that trainee or idol is sure to end up in some kind of trouble.

Namjoon likes to test out his alpha posturing for future use by seeing if he can get whatever trainees might be gathered in such a break room to scatter with his mere presence. Today he was particularly hopeful to send some kids running, but there was no one in there when he arrived.

“Why’s everyone acting like I’m a dick for maintaining boundaries?” Namjoon literally throws his hands up.

“Because they aren’t boundaries and you are being a dick!”

Yoongi growls, but Namjoon’s are louder.

“What are you doing? This group is still new, and you’re at the center of it. You’re supposed to be the pillar, but instead you’re stirring up the stuff that’s meant to be settled!”

“It was a mistake!” Namjoon yells loud enough that he’s sure someone will hear and come check on them.

No one touches the door.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? You are the one who keeps saying it’s all meant to be professional, no one gets to be in love, so why are you protesting your part of the job? It’s your fucking job, Namjoon! Let the kid have some peace, christ, he’s so fucking homesick, he’s really struggling.”

Homesick? They’re all homesick, and just sick. Sick and tired and sick. The whole industry is a disease, but it’s one they signed up for.

“Look, I’ll deal with it when he’s older. Presented.”

Yoongi shakes his head. “You’re chasing him into Jimin’s arms now, but what the fuck are you going to do for your ruts?”

He shrugs. “That’s what suppressants are for.”

Yoongi gapes at him, open mouthed. “Suppress- Kim Namjoon, you aren’t dumb, so don’t act like it! If we could all just take suppressants and be fine, there wouldn’t be arrangements like this!”

“I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it.”

Yoongi slaps him.

Namjoon can’t believe it.

“What the fuck?” he yells. “Are you an alpha or not? Fuck you!” Namjoon launches himself at Yoongi.

It’s later, when there is a hole shaped as wide as Yoongi’s shoulders in the plaster and a smashed microwave on the floor, crushed up bits of dry ramen noodles on the floor that crinkle under the footsteps of people finally coming to see what the commotion is, that Namjoon looks over at Yoongi with his busted lip and remembers: this is his best friend. His cohort, his second in command, his closest confidant in music.

He wonders not for the first time if it’s possible for two alphas to be as close as they pretended to be.

The company doesn’t have the money for an on-call medic, so the producer that finds them gives them the choice to go to a hospital or doctor’s office with their own money, or make themselves an ice bag and walk it off. Yoongi’s bruised up and looks worse off than Namjoon, but Namjoon has to limp the rest of the week from where the other rapper swiped his feet out from under him and he twisted his ankle trying to catch himself.

“Are you sure it isn’t broken, hyung?” Jimin asks, crouched down by his feet during rehearsals. Namjoon is most definitely holding everyone back, and if the injury were acquired any other way, their instructor might have let him mime along in time, but as is he’s being punished by running full choreo with them.

“It might be, after this,” he mumbles under his breath.

When they’re done for the day, he hauls Yoongi to his side. “You, me, a drink, then let’s forget about this, alright?”

Yoongi grinds his jaw back and forth, looking up at him. It usually makes him feel better that Yoongi has to look up, but today he shrinks down. “We’re fine, Joon-ah. You’ve got other wounds to lick, I think.”

Yoongi brushes him off to herd Hoseok out the door. He would be concerned if not for the fact that both Seokjin and Jimin are with them, whenever the lot of them head to. Probably a dinner he wasn’t invited to.

Wherever Jeongguk and Taehyung are, it’s none of his business.

It’s what he tells himself while he paces at home, dorm room uncharacteristically empty, save him. It was late when rehearsals adjourned for the day, so where is everyone?

Huffing, Namjoon looks around, notices some of the stuffed animals and decorations on his bandmates’ beds. Hoseok has the most decorated bed, but after that Seokjin has quite a few things, including fairy lights woven around the posts. Is it an omega thing?

Namjoon inspects Taehyung’s bed. It’s not as neat or decorated as the older omegas, but it’s nicer than Namjoon’s. Smells way nicer. Namjoon tucks his nose up in his sweatshirt that he threw on in lieu of a jacket on the walk home - it doesn’t reek, but it has a smell.

He hesitates.

Taehyung wanted his scent, right?

And would it make everyone forgive him if he gave him something?

There’s a high pitched echo down the hall, Seokjin’s pitchy laugh if ever Namjoon could identify anything. Their group must be back, finally. Before he can talk himself out of it or get caught in the act, Namjoon whips off the sweatshirt and flings it under the covers in Taehyung’s bed.

There.

It’s something.

He hustles into the bathroom so he can get a shower in before anyone else claims it.

Later, when he’s sitting on the couch in between Hoseok and Yoongi, Jeongguk and Taehyung quietly enter and walk straight past their group into the bedroom. He can hear their voices speaking with Jimin, so it’s later when he goes to bed that he sees Taehyung sitting up on his bunk and writing in a notebook.

He wears Namjoon’s sweatshirt, and it’s only then that he realizes it’s his favorite sweatshirt. It’s a knockoff, but everyone has seen him wear it for months.

They’ll all know he gave it to Taehyung. It certainly isn’t the kind of thing Taehyung would have ever purchased for himself.

Namjoon ignores Yoongi’s look when he crawls into bed.

The next morning, Hoseok smiles so brightly at him again, like it’s the first day they met, that it’s almost worth the embarrassment of the long glances. They aren’t confined to just the dorm, but Taehyung wears the sweatshirt to vocal coaching the next day so that everyone in the company sees. Namjoon wants to hide his face, but the remarkable normalcy of the day eventually wears him down. Outside of the group, no one seems to understand the significance. That’s really what puts him at ease - it must mean that outside the members and immediate management circle, no one really knew how much they struggled.

It wasn’t that bad, he tells himself. Jimin snuggles inbetween Hoseok and Yoongi against the mirrors in group dance, and even Seokjin quickly offers Jeongguk some of his lunch to try since they’re in a break room at the same time. And Taehyung? Taehyung looks the happiest out of everyone all week long, living in Namjoon’s sweatshirt, even over his pretty skirts.

After asking for it for weeks, some press coverage is arranged, including a formal fan meet although from what Namjoon can tell, management is worried about a low turnout. He tries to keep any stray ears from hearing it, and judging by the generally high spirits as they’re rounded up into a nondescript white van for it, he has succeeded. They’re dressed in matching outfits, so it’s strange to see Taehyung out of his sweatshirt as he sits close to him in the backseat, bouncing up and down as the driver goes a little too fast over the shitty backroads.

He looks a little green.

“You okay?” Namjoon asks. Taehyung grimaces, clutching at the seat rest in front of him where Yoongi wearily glances back at them.

“I get car sick easily,” Taehyung mumbles. He sounds legitimately miserable, and Namjoon, who doesn’t get motion sick, gets it, because really - this driver isn’t exactly gentle - and the lack of his comfort item for the past week probably doesn’t help.

“Here.” Namjoon offers up his wrist, as if that’s a thing people do. It’s not - it’s a stupid image out of a harlequin novel where the heroine omega might latch onto a suitor’s wrist to seek out the scent comfort there.

Before he can retract his hand, Taehyung latches.

He holds Namjoon’s wrist in both of his hands, nose pressed up to his skin. From an outside point-of-view, it might look as if the omega was trying to eat his hand.

Well.

There’s no taking it back now, and everyone watches out of the corner of their eye, except Seokjin who pointedly turns all the way around to watch. His expression is neutral, but Namjoon knows better.

Nothing could be more awkward than holding his arm out in the air like this, so he draws it back and Taehyung follows. Before he can say anything, and really, what is he going to say, Taehyung lets go of the wrist to tuck his face into Namjoon’s neck. Judging by the way his body easily rolls and sways to the rocking motion of the car versus his stiff posture of minutes ago, Taehyung must feel better.

Now it’s Namjoon who feels a little ill. He squirms under Taehyung until he notices Jeongguk’s abrupt look, face jerking towards him.

All day at the event, Taehyung stays close to him. Always on his left. Yoongi usually stays at his right hand side, and next to him, Hoseok. They’ve centered so much of this group around their rap line that he should be grateful, but on a day like today, it’s Taehyung and Seokjin who steal the show.

The press wears them down with the innocent questions first, then come the innuendos and backhanded weaseling inquires about their arrangements. They’re mostly aimed at Seokjin, occasionally at Namjoon as the professed leader of the group, but then they abruptly address all questions towards the youngest members, in particular Jeongguk and Taehyung. Perhaps they assume they will be the ones most likely to let something slide in their youth, but Jeongguk exudes easy charisma that makes Namjoon envious, effortlessly alpha in the new and popular way that he isn’t sure he can pull off, and Taehyung keeps his answers short, almost to the point of curt, but he bats his eyelashes and smiles in a way that disarms cameramen in front.

All of a sudden, the camera flashes go off in a hurry, blurring together in a way that makes Namjoon actually ill. They’ve all been trained not to squint, sat through mock interviews and paparazzi ambushes even, but he’s unprepared for how hot and overwhelming it gets, and he isn’t sure why all of a sudden they’re going crazy.

With a jolt, he realizes that Taehyung leans into his side. Too close.

Shit, he thinks. This kid is blowing their cover!

But then -

Two bodies rush in front of their table, and Namjoon realizes that someone is already in front of it, and it’s Yoongi, pushing Hoseok behind him.

It isn’t him and Taehyung the cameras are focused on at all. It’s Yoongi and Hoseok.

Quickly, he jerks away from Taehyung to round the table and ask if they’re both alright. Yoongi’s jaw is clenched and Hoseok isn’t smiling, which is enough to tell him something is up, but Namjoon doesn’t know what. It isn’t until later, when they’re all sat in front of one of their managers, a new one because the last one already quit, that Hoseok stutters through some of the things that a reporter hissed at him, either because he sat on the end and was easy to single out or because he’s an omega rapper.

They aren’t good things, but. “It was completely inappropriate to react like that,” Yaejoon gripes at them, arms crossed.

Yoongi still vibrates with anger; Namjoon knows he’ll be up all night, most likely he will disappear on his own as soon as they’re dismissed and no one will be able to get ahold of him until their next scheduled group activity. Namjoon himself is ready to berate them both, because they’ve already been talked to by more than him or Yaejoon, just one in line of many passing faces.

“No one’s gonna say that kind of thing to anyone on the team!” Yoongi shouts. “We shouldn’t let those fuckfaces get away with it!”

“Unfortunately, we need those fuckfaces, as you so eloquently put it.” Yaejoon sighs, perhaps already thinking of where his next job might be. Namjoon cuts him off before he says anything else.

“I’ll deal with it,” he says, a low growl in his voice. No doubt, Yaejoon thinks it’s a warning to his bandmates.

When he leaves, his shoulders go down. He turns to face the group, Hoseok in particular shrinking behind Yoongi, but even Yoongi looks deflated. “I don’t have to say anything more, do I?”

It’s quiet, but Yoongi shakes his head.

“We all gave up a lot to be here. Let’s - at least try and make it worth it, alright?” Namjoon adds. Perhaps for Yoongi, even if things don’t work out, it will be all worth it for Hoseok.

Everyone looks tired, defeated. It’s the first press event gone poorly, but it won’t be the last, and they all know it.

“Won’t it be better if we push to let the arrangements be known?” Jimin asks. “We can deny it all we want, but people will be suspicious of Yoongi and Hoseokie hyung now for sure.”

“Some groups purposely cultivate alpha and omega skinship between non-paired bandmates,” Yoongi says. “They can think it all they want, but until management announces it, they don’t get to know shit. Not for sure.”

Jimin shrugs. “I still think it would be for the best. Easier on everyone.”

“They won’t let us disclose because of me,” Jeongguk says, voice quiet, mournful. “I’m sure hyung doesn’t want anyone to know I’m his alpha when I’m - this.”

He shrinks up smaller than Hoseok, still hiding, although secured to Yoongi’s side now. Seokjin’s mouth opens, then snaps shut, maybe because he realizes he can’t exactly refute it. Nothing inside their arrangements is out of the ordinary. Sometimes proposed future relations are orchestrated when one or all of the people involved were underage. Companies always make sure that everyone is taken care of until everyone is of age, but Namjoon can empathize, definitely. Taehyung is nice, but he’s unpresented and underage by law. It’s different for him, even, because they’re at least still close in age. But for Seokjin - five years is more. It’s more when Jeongguk is still so young.

Seokjin looks irate.

If it’s true that is the reason why the company doesn’t want to disclose, then Namjoon hasn’t been told that, but he hasn’t been told lots of things, it seems.

“Regardless. Everyone is on the same page, right? Whatever goes on between us behind closed company doors is our business, but we have to make the effort in public. Right, hyung? Seok?”

They all nod, one by one, slowly. Oddly, everyone looks close to tears too, including Yoongi. Including Seokjin.

The somber mood that accompanies them everywhere lasts for a while, but at least Namjoon doesn’t think he has anything to do with it. Directly.

It doesn’t feel like anything has changed. Of course, they spend most of their time together as seven locked in the safety of company surroundings, so if Hoseok waits too long for Yoongi to emerge from his solo coaching sessions or if Yoongi wraps Hoseok up too tenderly in a coat for the average person to watch, well. Mostly it’s okay.

Next public appearance, Namjoon plans to keep himself between the two anyway.

Someone else he knows he can rely upon to assist?

Seokjin.

Their omega hyung fits into a leadership role that feels the opposite side of the same coin, perhaps. Whereas Namjoon second guesses everything, Seokjin steps in with a sure hand to back him up on most things. Namjoon wonders what kind of family he comes from. Must be traditional. Out of all of them, Seokjin works perhaps hardest, not just at idol things, but also school. Yoongi and Hoseok opted for online degrees when the company encouraged them to pursue higher degrees, and Jeongguk and Taehyung both plan to enroll in a similar program. Jimin takes classes in a non-degree program at present. They’re all hardworking, but they all multitask differently.

Yoongi retreats into producing at every opportunity he gets. Hoseok has his side dance show. Seokjin pursues more traditional academic coursework while Jimin does a lot of volunteer work and has mentioned doing social services in the future. Jeongguk goes through rigorous athletic training, enough that he could probably compete with Olympic athletics outside of their chosen sport.

Namjoon watches Taehyung come and go from practice, just as busy as the rest of them, but it’s Jeongguk who explains to him that the omega is involved in politics. “He does a lot for omega rights,” their final alpha says. “I mean - Taehyung is involved in rights for everyone, but he has his own rights on the line, I guess.”

It surprises Namjoon to hear about the protest Taehyung attended the month before. How did he have time to do it? It must have been one of their school work days. For how progressive his politics are, Taehyung gives a good impression of company omega. He does all the right things, says the right things. The skirts?

And then there’s this, a catered meal for all trainees and idols of the company to mingle at. It should be a nice break to branch out and revisit some of the trainees they all came up with, but instead the seven of them find each other clustered together. Namjoon isn’t so sentimental as to say it’s because they mutually prefer each other’s company so much as they feel awkward for being the group that debuted first.

Because they’re all hovering, Namjoon doesn’t really mind Taehyung at his elbow. He seems to feel most comfortable there, watching trainees of all ages, or maybe he’s seeking out Namjoon’s scent again. It annoys him, but not enough to say anything, especially not now in front of others outside the group. And even Namjoon acknowledges - he gave Taehyung a scent gift and his literal dangling wrist just weeks ago. He can’t afford to be so hot and cold, not him, the leader.

Taehyung sighs heavily as a tall beta walks past with a plate of food. She sits down with a few other young girls, all alphas and betas, in a row of excited voices. Something about it tickles Namjoon’s thought process; does Taehyung long for a female alpha? He can still have one, Namjoon thinks. Namjoon will even play wingman for him if needed.

But then he hears a murmured hungry under Taehyung’s breath. Ah, of course - makes sense. “What me to get you something?” he asks the omega, without really thinking about it. Taehyung’s shocked face looking up at him is the most prolonged eye contact they’ve yet had, and it makes Namjoon red everywhere all over his body.

Ducking his head, he adds: “No one will pay attention to me grabbing food.”

They will if Taehyung or any of the omegas do.

Taehyung nods quickly enough that it looks painful. Namjoon laughs; he doesn’t mean to, he just does, but Taehyung smiles back so he knows he isn’t offended. “Any requests?”

“Anything. I like anything,” Taehyung replies quietly, eyes shiny. Nodding, Namjoon excuses himself to make his way through the catered options. When he returns, he pushes the plate into Taehyung’s sluggish hands.

“Anything, right?” he double-checks, because Taehyung seems reluctant to grab it. Their singer blinks heavily, looking at the food, or maybe looking at Namjoon’s hands. He feels the way a couple of Taehyung’s fingers curl over top of his.

He finally accepts the plate. “Yes. Thank you.” When Namjoon looks up, the rest of the group watches. Seokjin blinks in that way that he does when he’s thinking over something, chewing it up.

“Hyung, I’ll get you something to eat, too,” Namjoon says, but before he can move a single muscle, Jeongguk sharply pivots and walks over to the buffet line. They hear the clink of a serving utensil against a plate from where they stand, over the music filtered in.

Jeongguk marches back over to present the food to Seokjin, and Namjoon is so sure he’s going to decline. He’s ready for the bite, the bark, the something - after all, Jeongguk wasn’t exactly subtle in the way he marched there and back in front of everyone. Namjoon at least tried to pretend the plate was his. Jeongguk did not.

But.

Seokjin accepts the plate.

Jeongguk meets Namjoon’s eyes as the omega does so.

Shaking his head, Namjoon turns his back to them. Seokjin must be really hungry, too. In front of him, Taehyung holds his food in one hand and chopsticks in the other, poised in the air with nothing between them. It’s a practiced move, one he often does, clicking the utensils in time with a song he hums because he has nothing left to eat and they can’t always be caught sneaking the omegas extra portions. Tonight, there is plenty of food left when he says, “Oh. I lost my appetite.”

Everything begins to tilt, food narrowly avoiding the floor by a quick reflexed Hoseok, diving for the plate before Taehyung can drop it.

Without another word or sparing any of them a glance, Taehyung exits the room.

“Uh.” Namjoon looks around their faces, Seokjin’s cheeks full of dumplings. “Maybe I should go, uh, follow him. Check up on him?”

Jimin starts to follow, but Jeongguk lunges for his hand.

“Hyung.” Jimin’s eyes shift from furious to soft when he looks at Jeongguk. Namjoon associates them all with those large, almost mournful looks. Jeongguk looks over Jimin’s head at him, and when Jimin turns to look at Namjoon too, he sighs.

Before he even tracks Taehyung down, sitting in the stairwell that they’re all required to use rather than the elevator, Namjoon already knows what to do. For once. “Hey. Tae-ah.”

Taehyung reacts with his whole body at the way he addresses him. Namjoon smiles. He may not have wanted it to be this way, but nothing makes him feel better than being in control, and at least he knows he can have this effect on Taehyung. That makes him feel in control. He knows what Taehyung wants from him, even if he doesn’t want to give it to him. For that, Namjoon can be thankful for Kim Taehyung.

“Come on. Let’s go.”

Just the shocked face of Taehyung looking up at him makes Namjoon feel oddly light, almost giddy as he pulls him down the stairs and out into the fresh air. It’s chillier out than it should be, so it’s easy for him to offer Taehyung his jacket. Even Namjoon knows to do that.

The burger spot he takes Taehyung to requires a bus or metro ride, really, but they hoof it all the way there, mostly in silence, although Taehyung doesn’t seem to mind as long as they’re holding hands. When Namjoon tried to take his back is when the omega-to-be opened his mouth to protest, and rather than hear it, Namjoon just let him have it.

He absolutely isn’t talking about this. If Taehyung tries, Namjoon will literally run as fast as possible in the other direction.

“Oh.” Taehyung smiles much larger. The largest the alphas has yet seen, larger than when they all signed their contracts. “You remembered how much I’ve been wanting a burger.”

In fact, Namjoon had not, but he doesn’t correct him. He just knows it’s the kind of thing that omegas are never allowed to eat - Namjoon isn’t really allowed to eat it either, but omegas and even betas require more delicate food items.

Honestly, it’s entertaining to watch Taehyung shovel down the fries first, one by one, until they’re gone, then he moves on to the burger stacked bigger than his hands can hold. His lips are greasy as he licks them, taking it all in as if he isn’t sure where to approach, how to attack. Namjoon laughs, and when Taehyung looks up at him, he laughs too.

Always so shockingly deep.

He really does have a lovely singing voice.

“If you finish all of that, you can have some of mine, too,” Namjoon says. If Taehyung finishes all of his plate, he’ll probably be ill, Namjoon thinks, but everyone should be allowed to make some mistakes, especially such innocent ones.

Taehyung can’t (or won’t) walk home, miserable with an upset stomach less than an hour later. Namjoon doesn’t mean to sound cruel when he laughs at him. It’s certainly not his fault he’s unused to such food any more. “Up. Hyung will carry you.”

He crouches down to offer his back, and Taehyung just kind of splays himself there, is of no help actually getting up off the pavement. They careen over to one side as Namjoon stands to right them. Taehyung’s laughter is not audible, but Namjoon feels it against the side of his neck. It is the most intimate laughter he’s yet heard.

Namjoon walks them all the way back home. Taehyung hangs on either quietly or hums a low tune under his breath.

“Does your stomach still hurt?” Namjoon asks after fifteen or so minutes of carrying him.

Taehyung then says, “Hurts so bad, hyung.”

Namjoon stops to bounce him up higher on his back, and Taehyung squeals in what could only be delight, arms tightening around his neck. “I bet,” Namjoom grouses, although it’s fake this time and even Taehyung can tell. He kicks his feet back and forward around his hips.

He carries him all the way home. At their front door, he gently eases him down. Taehyung had grown more and more silent the closer they got, but now he quietly thanks Namjoon, pulling gently at the collar of Namjoon’s only button down until he leans over close enough that Taehyung easily kisses his cheek, except it’s less on his cheek and more at the corner of his lips.

Then he slips through the door without him.

Namjoon almost expects a repeat of Taehyung crawling into bed with him, but when Namjoon dives into his bunk that night, Taehyung sleeps curled up on his side in his own bed, wearing the alpha’s sweatshirt again.

“He feels like a real omega now,” Jimin explains to Namjoon a few days later, when it’s just the two of them. They’re all required to learn how to vocalize with one another, and today it’s their turn when vocal coaching overlaps and part of their time is spent together. Jimin’s voice is unlike anything Namjoon’s ever heard before, so he wouldn’t mind staying to listen to him sing longer.

“Any time you give him attention, he says it feels real to him.” Jimin wears something of Yoongi’s today. Perhaps to gather up his confidence in the studio. Other people wouldn’t recognize it as the rapper’s, but Namjoon certainly does. “He’s known, like you, for a long time what his subgender will be, so he’s been brought up in it, but he never got to really do anything about it until he auditioned.”

“He got early tested?” Namjoon asks. He doesn’t know much of Taehyung’s family or history, but he knows they are farmers. Fairly humble ones, he got the impression.

“Just. Be careful with him. I know you - I know you weren’t expecting it to be him, and I know you weren’t exactly happy about it either, but. He deserves a lot of care.”

“Jimin-ah.” Namjoon should put a hand on his shoulder. Or something. “We all deserve that. Even I know.”

Over the next several weeks, Namjoon and Taehyung dance around each other. At first, the group watches confused, but with time, some amusement. Taehyung, on days when he feels bold, hovers so close to Namjoon that he will step on him if he makes too abrupt a motion. Namjoon moves in waves of embarrassment, annoyance, or even ire when in the company of others, in particular anyone outside of their group of seven, but he also can’t deny that pleasant thrum it gives him to know he’s not just wanted, but wanted in a very particular kind of way.

“Why were you early tested?” Namjoon asks Taehyung, the two of them sharing the couch during a short break. It’s cool and quiet in this room, enough that it makes it a popular napping location.

Taehyung keeps his voice low when he answers, for the benefit of Hoseok dozing off and on, curled up on the floor.

“It was a condition of my grandfather’s will,” he says, then shrugs at Namjoon’s confused look. “I know, right? What good does it do for a farmer?”

Birthdays come and go. First, Jeongguk and Namjoon’s, both celebrated marginally in their group with a joint cake and balloons on the first of September, but on Namjoon’s actual day a week and a half later, he gets an elaborate homemade breakfast from Seokjin and a lunchbox for later. They all agreed not to worry about any potential gift giving otherwise - none of them can afford it, and it’s more mental stress than any of them want, figuring out what they could afford.

“Happy birthday, Joon hyung,” Taehyung whispers to him when he slips into the bathroom, the steam of Namjoon’s shower and Yoongi’s before him curling his hair up around his ears.

“You’re the only one who calls me that. Everyone else calls me Rapmon.”

Taehyung shrugs. “But it’s your name.”

Taehyung stands in the doorway. The only way out.

Namjoon shifts his weight back and forth, crossing his arms over his bare chest because he only brought a fresh pair of underwear with him. Taehyung can be quiet and even skittish about some things, but nudity, his and others, is not something he’s ever been shy about despite the full length pajamas every night. His eyes break away from Namjoon’s face to trace a drop of water - sweat? - down Namjoon’s neck and chest.

“Tae. I need to, uh, finish getting ready. I have a morning class.”

Taehyung nods, but he isn’t looking at his face. Namjoon flushes, and he can’t let Taehyung see that, so he physically moves him to the side to slip past.

“Namjoon-ah,” Taehyung calls after him, and he’s never called him that before. Not yet. “I didn’t give you your birthday present.”

“No presents, remember?”

Then Taehyung pouts. Namjoon glimpses it over his shoulder before he disappears into the bedroom.

He then closes the door. To their shared bedroom. Because that wasn’t just a pout. It was a pout - a puckering of lips.

No one is there to see how red he is, or ask why he keeps scratching at the back of his head while he stands there and contemplates the same clothes he’s always had since he arrived, the same black jeans and baggy black tees.

He’s quick to scuttle out before anyone else can joke about a gift.

It’s after Jimin’s birthday that tension rises in their midst, and it’s not hard to pinpoint why. Jimin is now presented and of age by modern law. He is a complete and fully functioning member of their group in a way that Jeongguk and Taehyung are not. Namjoon didn’t expect for such a stark difference between the maknae line though; the three of them were quick to stick to each other for comfort during early days, even before their group was cemented. Jimin and Taehyung were friends, and Jimin and Jeongguk were friendly.

Now Jeongguk keeps to himself, often up and out the door before anyone else, arriving at practice sullen and closed off to everyone, including Seokjin, the one person they all assume might have the most sway in comforting him. Namjoon doesn’t even have to ask him - the omega takes to their youngest as he walks in the door, late at night, dripping wet from the storm outside.

“Ggukie,” he says so softly. It sounds like a lullaby even as he just speaks. When he reaches for Jeongguk’s hand, their maknae allows it, and the two disappear quietly in the bathroom where Namjoon eventually hears running water.

Taehyung stares down the hallway most of the night before he falls asleep on the couch. Jimin made sure to go to bed early, which has been normal for the past couple of weeks. When Seokjin emerges alone, he crosses his arms and sighs heavily, gazing up at the watermarked ceiling. “I dealt with mine. You deal with yours,” he says, as gentle as a whisper.

Namjoon looks over at Taehyung, his head flung back on the backseat of the couch at an angle that makes him wince. His mouth is open, but even in an unnatural position like this, he sleeps silently, something the alpha is intensely jealous of after being told so many times by everyone in his life that’s ever shared a room with him that he snores.

Namjoon carries Taehyung to bed, and before he pulls up the covers over him, he drapes his once own sweatshirt over Taehyung’s figure under the comforter, because he knows that’s how he sleeps at night if not wearing it.

Seokjin watches from his own bunk. The light is already off, but Namjoon sees Jeongguk’s red face from the hall light when he pushes the door open. Seokjin’s eyes are now suddenly closed, but Namjoon wonders if he hears the pause in Jeongguk’s footsteps, if he can guess that their youngest alpha stands over his bed and looks down at him.

Jeongguk crawls into his bed alone.

Dance rehearsals are the worst, tensions already high because everyone learns at a different pace, all of them struggling with some aspect, even Hoseok and Jimin who have the natural talent to pick it up easily but are given more and more challenging acrobatics that go beyond natural rhythm. The two of them have long since dropped their competitive nature over lead dancer, and the bond that Namjoon witnesses unfurling between them is obvious even to him.

He stands in the back and watches as Hoseok drops to the ground like a puppet cut from its strings while Jimin spins and leaps over him in a twirl.

Namjoon wouldn’t trust him to do that. He wouldn’t trust any of them, just because his limbs are so long and gangly, and his timing often off. He wouldn’t want to get hurt, but he wouldn’t want any of them to get hurt especially.

Things feel like they’re coming together. Almost. Watching something as amazing as Jimin and Hoseok dancing together makes it feel so.

Namjoon has his own identity crisis over Taehyung’s upcoming birthday and the fact he too will be of age, even though he doesn’t need to really worry about anything until he presents, but should he get him a gift? He knows Taehyung won’t expect it, but they’ve mended their initial first impressions of each other enough that he knows how happy it would make him, and Namjoon should strive to make sure they’re all happy, he’s the leader, and maybe because of their start and their arrangement he should put in the extra effort?

Namjoon spirals. Just a little.

But first, Seokjin has a birthday. Early December, and it’s cold. It’s been cold in their apartment, often colder inside than it is outside somehow. Their space heater works better than the centralized heat but they’re not supposed to have one in their old shitty building. They offer skinship in a way they haven’t really before by necessity - even Namjoon won’t crawl away when Jimin curls into his side, Taehyung often planted already on his other. Sometimes it’s Hoseok when Yoongi stays too late in the studio, and when the older alpha comes home he’ll stretch out across both of them, much to Hosoek’s delighted giggling. It makes Namjoon feel warm in a whole new way, like he’s done something so very right to have an alpha friend who might lie in such a defenseless position on him, and with his omega in between them too.

But, things happen when you let your guard down.

Namjoon feels a little too comfortable when Seokjin shares a blanket with him, both of them zipped up in their outdoor coats while they sit at their tiny table, cramped for two people, but they regularly squeeze four or five of them there at once. They’re eating with polite but stilted conversation when Jeongguk walks out from the bedroom, sees them, and Seokjin jerks under his glaze.

The noise is faint at first, like a rumble of a passing train. Namjoon doesn’t recognize the growl at first, but Jeongguk growls. What’s more, Seokjin moves away from Namjoon, and that shocks him more, because Seokjin of mere months ago would have snapped at their youngest to mind his manners and gone about whatever he was doing.

Now, when Seokjin utters Jeongguk’s name, it’s with a twinge of - what, regret? Remorse? Jeongguk slams a fist into the wall as he walks by. Inside their bedroom, Yoongi’s gruff voice can be heard.

When the maknae exits the dorm, Namjoon mutters, “We weren’t doing anything.” Is it to comfort Seokjin? He is genuinely confused. Taehyung was in the kitchen earlier, boiling water for his tea and didn’t look that upset at the two of them huddled together while they ate. He looked them over when he walked in, but he just as dreamily exited back into the bathroom because he reserved time for a bath.

“Jeongguk is-” Seokjin lets out a long breath, eyebrows furrowed together. “Young. He’s just young, is all.”

It isn’t all though.

All it takes is for one friendly laugh shared between Seokjin and Jimin in the halls of the company building, the beta whining cutely as he clings to their hyung’s arm, but he makes big eyes peering up into Seokjin’s face, and yes, they’re close, their faces are very close, enough so that it makes Namjoon pause, but because they look so joyous together, mostly. It’s nice. It’s a nice moment.

He doesn’t see Jeongguk approach, and no doubt - neither does Jimin, but he goes flying backwards until his feet catch and he falls on his side.

“Jeongguk!” Seokjin yells, hands trailing after Jimin from where the beta tugged him forward as he went down. Jeongguk, growling, snaps his teeth at him and Seokjin immediately takes a step back from him and Jimin.

Namjoon steps up behind Seokjin. “Jeongguk, what do you think you’re doing?” He lets a little growl slip into his voice, because he’s the leader and he’s an older alpha, essentially a pack alpha for all intents and purposes.

Jeongguk whirls around to square off with him. “Don’t fucking touch me, and do not touch him either!”

“Jeongguk!” Seokjin cries again, but Namjoon pushes him behind his back. Jeongguk would never intentionally hurt Seokjin, but he also didn’t think he’d shove Jimin halfway down the hall.

The dancer slowly picks himself up. “Jimin, are you alright?” Namjoon calls out over Jeongguk’s head.

“Fine, hyung.” He sounds a little shaken, but Namjoon immediately sees the way he stands with weight on both feet, arms holding himself. He doesn’t look injured.

“Jeongguk, apologize. Jimin is your friend, or at the very least, a bandmate.”

Jeongguk snarls. There is no other way to describe it. Namjoon’s instincts tell him to remain crouched down, lower, knees bent to move when he needs to.

“Namjoon.”

Jeongguk whips his head back and forward. It takes a moment to realize he’s spit at his feet.

Namjoon bristles, shoulders rising. It feels like a tide within him rising.

“What, you’re willing to push Yoongi around for alpha hierarchy, but not me? Did you forget who I am?” Jeongguk growls. He’s vibrating, shaking with anger, and Namjoon can’t help but feel the heavy threat and respond to it. “Hyung is mine! You can’t get over it, but he doesn’t love you back!”

“Jeongguk!” This time, it’s Jimin who cries out for him.

Namjoon is ready to grab the runt and take it outside, but Seokjin’s clipped tone makes him pause. “Kim Namjoon, listen to me. Listen.”

Seokjin steps out around him, hands held slightly aloft. Not for him, but for Jeongguk. “He’s presenting,” he says, so calmly. “Our maknae is presenting.”

Jimin takes one step back, then another. Quietly, he briskly pivots to walk away, an easy escape with Jeongguk’s back to him.

“Now, no one’s at their best when they present. It’s rough, right, Namjoon? He will apologize to Jimin, and you, later, but right now I’m going to take him into Yoongi’s studio, because I know it’s empty.”

“Hyung.”

“Go and get Sejin. Or Yaejoon. Whoever you can find. They’ll need to take him somewhere.”

What a cruel mockery that they’re here in the same situation, for the same fated pair, but they can’t do anything. Jeongguk is still underage by law, even if he’s now an alpha. Namjoon kicks his head back to get a whiff of him; it’s still faint, but he thinks he can get some of the notes. The aggression does make sense, the territorial nature, although some of that seems to just be personality. Namjoon didn’t experience it quite the same way, but it’s stereotypical of alpha presentation for a reason.

Seokjin slowly reaches for Jeongguk’s shoulder, the alpha’s eyes still on Namjoon. “Jeongguk-ah,” he croons softly. “Let’s have a sit. Just us two. Hyung will feed you a snack, you’re probably hungry.”

Jeongguk does not blink.

“Hyung, are sure that’s a good idea-”

‘Namjoon, just go,” he bites out. Seokjin slides his hand from the shoulder to Jeongguk’s neck, cupping it and forcing him to look at him. “Hi there, Ggukie. Yeah, look at me. Come here. You want to make hyung happy right? There we are.”

Jeongguk’s growls go silent suddenly, and the resulting whimper is nothing short of pathetic. Christ, did he sound like that when he presented? He remembers - it wasn’t great. That’s all Namjoon remembers.

Seokjin leads a stumbling and shaky Jeongguk down the hall to their studio, which is mostly Yoongi’s studio.

When he leaves and returns with Yaejoon fifteen minutes later, they unlock the door to find Seokjin pushed to the floor with Jeongguk covering him. “I’ll take it from here, Namjoon-ssi. Please expect Seokjin to join you shortly at home.”

There is no room for him to argue, even if Namjoon is appalled to leave him there. Leave both of them there like that. As soon as the door opened, Jeongguk’s growls would deafen anyone in the room with them, but Seokjin lays there so still. So calm. Namjoon wonders, has to wonder, for a moment -

Did he hurt him?

“We’re gonna need security,” Sejin says to Yaejoon.

“We’re gonna need a fucking tranq,” Yaejoon replies dryly. He won’t step foot in the door, but Sejin will.

“Hyung, hyung are you-”

All he was going to do is ask if he was alright, but Jeongguk whips his head up and around like it’s some sort of demonic possession. Sejin yells at Namjoon to just go home, and Yaejoon actually gives him a little shove away from the door so Jeongguk won’t see him.

It’s not the growls, or Seokjin’s neutral expression that Namjoon fixates on; it’s the whimpering. Jeongguk whimpering. When they opened that door to the studio, it was high pitched and frantic, and with the lights off, Namjoon could only just make out the desperate snuffling of a young kid trying to scent someone for the first time when it meant something. He could see Jeongguk’s hunched form, his face desperately rubbing at the base of Seokjin’s throat, and when Seokjin’s neck rolled over to face him -

He still looked calm. In control. He had his hands lying at his side in a way that did not broadcast distress, but his eyes? His eyes were dilated. They were completely black.

When Seokjin makes it home, it’s very late, the five of them sitting around the living room with the television on in the background. They’re all tired, but every hour that passed without Seokjin’s appearance made them more apprehensive if not more alert.

“They wouldn’t - they wouldn’t have actually let him go with Ggukie, would they?” Taehyung asks, looking up at Namjoon from his crouched position.

“There’s no way. Not after they put up such a fuss with me possibly helping hyung.” Jimin fumes, and Namjoon has no idea if it’s because he’s upset with Jeongguk or upset for Jeongguk.

“Where the fuck is he then?” Yoongi growls. Not a real growl, but his rasping drawl that puts Namjoon on edge almost as fast. “He hasn’t replied to anyone all day!”

“You don’t think-” Hoseok bites his lip. “You don’t think he got hurt, do you?”

They all stare into the center of their loosely formed circle to be silent.

It’s past two in the morning when they hear the door unlock, his footsteps so quiet that none of them heard him coming. “Hyung!” Taehyung cries, the first to rush to his feet and throw himself at Seokjin. Namjoon winces, and that’s before he gets a good look at him.

“Shit, you are hurt!” Namjoon cries.

Seokjin’s neck is covered with bruises.

That’s the only skin visible to them.

“I’m not, I’m fine.” Seokjin shakes his head as he cradles Taehyung to him, stroking his hair. “Just tired.”

“Where have you been?” Yoongi demands. Namjoon thinks it comes from care, but Seokjin’s hunched figure and red rimmed eyes make him look one short push away from unspooling.

“Where’s Jeongguk?”

“They took him to a specialty hotel.” Seokjin gives this - this little shrug. It looks as pathetic as all of Jeongguk’s whimpers. “He’s been alone for - for hours. Have you heard from him at all?”

He looks a little manic, the look that Yoongi sometimes gets when he hasn’t slept in a couple of days, minus the aggression. “Why would we? Hyung, he’s in a rut. It’s all part of protocol.”

“Hyung, he’s fine,” Hoseok assures him. “He’s gonna be fine.”

“But where have you been if they took him hours ago?”

“The fuck did he do to your neck? Are we sure he wasn’t turning into a vampire-” Yoongi gets cut off with a sharp smack on the thigh from Hoseok.

“Hyung, let me help you.” Hoseok stands, ushering both Seokjin and Taehyung along into the bathroom.

Namjoon and Yoongi look at each other.

Neither one of them comments on the smell, although Namjoon gives up and hooks the collar of his shirt around his nose. He does not need to know what Seokjin smells like when he’s aroused, and he doesn’t need to think about what made him smell that way.

All three of the omegas slither into the bedroom dripping wet and freshly dressed in mismatching pajamas. Taehyung wears Namjoon’s old sweatshirt, although Namjoon doesn’t need to think of it as such any longer, but it looks like he has Hoseok’s sweatpants on, and Hoseok wears a long t-shirt of Yoongi’s over his boxes. Seokjin wears -

Oh.

He’s wearing one of Jeongguk’s simple yet unmistakable black hoodies, long enough that it covers the tops of his thighs. He seems surprised that the three of them moved into the bedroom already, but he’s quick to scamper into his bed.

He isn’t fast enough though.

Seokjin doesn’t like to wear shorts. He didn’t wear them all summer. Feels self conscious of his legs, Namjoon knows.

The sight of all that pale skin would have been surprising enough, but nowhere near as surprising as the bruises on his thighs.

Two of them.

Shaped like hands.

They look like Jeongguk wouldn’t let go.

“Hyung-”

“Shhh!” Hoseok hushes Jimin, stopping by the side of his bunk to step up and kiss his cheek chastely. “It’s okay. They’re both fine.”

Namjoon goes numb.

Later, he pretends to be sleeping when Seokjin tiptoes from his bed into Jeongguk’s.

He has to force his eyes closed when Seokjin begins to roll in the scent left behind.

Chapter Text

Late December brings them the gift of a break - for the holidays, and fortunately or unfortunately for Namjoon, that gives him the excuse that he won’t be around Taehyung for his birthday, so the question of a present gets shoved to the back of his head. As is, he doesn’t have time for himself, barely gets a chance to bathe the way he needs every day, let alone to go out and get something for someone else, bandmate or family member. Mid December sees Jeongguk return to them as a full fledged alpha, and he, their golden maknae, of course fits every alpha stereotypical wet dream that includes sprouting up a head in height overnight after presentation. He’s bigger everywhere, it seems, and he isn’t shy about standing as tall as possible when in the same room as him or Yoongi. In the presence of Taehyung or Jimin, he tends to curl up, puppy-like, chuffing with laughter and boundless energy, happy to lie in a pile with them.

In order to take time for the holidays, their schedules allow for nothing other than rehearsals and a couple of appearances. Seokjin has an actual raised voice shouting match with one of their managers over sitting his exams, a visual and auditory experience that Namjoon couldn’t imagine from their oldest, and he himself faces down the possibility of academic failure so grand he contemplates for not the first time in just the past month if a degree is worth much when he has both debuted but also has to enlist yet in his twenties. Surely there is time later to finish a degree.

Jimin falls ill enough that he’s bedridden, not by his own choice, but by their manager. Namjoon’s never heard of a manager demanding a barely debuted idol stay in bed - usually they’d have to beg for a day off even if they were too ill to stand, let alone sing or dance.

“He isn’t well,” Taehyung told him the second morning of Jimin’s bedrest. Namjoon didn’t hear it for what it was - not, he isn’t feeling well, just that he isn’t well.

In the very few spare moments between obligations, Taehyung sticks close to Jimin. The rest of them keep a cautious guard, everyone donning a face mask at home. Taehyung does not, once again offering skinship in a way that Namjoon can’t imagine.

“You’ll get sick too, baby,” Hoseok says, brushing Taehyung’s hair for him, but Taehyung just shakes his head. “I won’t,” he replies, then slinks off.

Perhaps the most frail looking of them all remains Seokjin, slumped over a stack of books with such poor posture that the omega himself would scold any of them for. Jeongguk bravely sneaks close to refill his water bottle, bring him a canned coffee, leave snacks behind. Seokjin yells at him every time he catches him, but when he falls asleep against the wall with their sole window in their tiny dorm, Namjoon watches Jeongguk carefully pick the omega up and put him to bed.

He wonders if he’d be able to do that without waking Seokjin.

“I’ll miss you,” Taehyung tells him, bundled up in a ridiculous amount of hoodies and sweatshirts. Namjoon can only assume his is somewhere in the lineup, even if he can’t see it. Namjoon came out on the roof to find Yoongi, known for occasionally sneaking a smoke from time-to-time still, but stayed out for a few minutes to himself. His legs ache so much that the cold can’t hurt them.

Taehyung waddled out behind him, too shortly after for it to be coincidental. He must have been waiting for his chance to get him alone, and that makes Namjoon sweat.

Really, they’ve been good. So good. Namjoon knows he has work to do on himself to be the best leader for the group, but he’s made time to bond with everyone, or at least tries. Jeongguk has been the hardest - no surprise, not now. Since returning as a fully fledged alpha, he does what he’s told, including instruction from Namjoon, but he’s quieter about it. Prickly. What Namjoon has to sternly cajole from him Seokjin can get without a single iota of thought, so Namjoon leaves it to him.

It makes them all a little uneasy. Less than smooth sailing, but they’re on course at least. Jeongguk remains respectful, and whatever transpired between him and Seokjin the night of his presentation remains a mystery. Namjoon never sees Jeongguk lay a hand on the omega, other than occasionally carrying him to bed or after one extremely tense dance rehearsal as a shoulder to cry on, but he thinks about the hand shaped bruises on Seokjin’s thighs not infrequently.

Jeongguk doesn’t press, but he tries his luck in other ways, other places. The most obvious is the feeding; it’s not just pilfering snacks into the omega’s hand at home, but when they’re on company grounds and Seokjin is handed a plate with a third of the food that Jeongguk is offered, the alpha promptly empties his plate as much as possible onto the omega’s. Sometimes, Seokjin allows it. Sometimes, Seokjin dumps the plate right back into Jeongguk’s lap. Sometimes, he allows it only to shove it onto Taehyung’s or Hoseok’s portions.

Then, the scented items. This Namjoon has to keep an eye out for - it’s a quieter interaction that happens most often when no one is around. He spies the tail end of Seokjin hiding a pair of Jeongguk’s sweatpants at the bottom of his bed, but a few days later he catches the omega throwing something at their young alpha’s head. Potentially underwear, given the smaller size of the clothing, but Jeongguk chuckles and Seokjin’s ears might be red but there is the crooked mark of a smile.

Jeongguk leaves to take his own exams in Seokjin’s parka.

Namjoon remains unsure if Seokjin offered it up or not, but it’s hard to imagine Jeongguk testing the limits of just taking it despite everything else. In this equation of clothing, Jeongguk is a giver, not a taker.

All that and Seokjin absolutely refuses to let the alpha accompany him to the train station when he’s ready to leave for his family’s home for the break. Jeongguk watches him go from the window in their living room. All the way down the block until he’s out of sight.

So when Taehyung tells Namjoon that he’ll miss him over their scant days off for the holidays, Namjoon gruffly laughs along like he agrees when really he’s ready to be alone, just so utterly alone in his bedroom at his parents’ with a lock on the door and some blackout curtains. He plans to celebrate sleep. Sleep, and unlimited access to sweets.

“This is for you.” The crinkly box that Taehyung pushes into Namjoon’s hand is small, and it has a certain amount of give under his clumsy fingers.

“Oh. Uh. Thanks, Tae. I didn’t, uh.” Namjoon tugs at the back of his beanie. A little more and it will cover his eyes. Taehyung smiles at him, rocking on his heels and toes.

“Open it on Christmas. Message me when you do.”

And because it’s nearly Christmas, and because Namjoon most definitely got neither a gift for the holiday or Taehyung’s soon-to-be birthday, he stands absolutely still when Taehyung rocks forward on his toes, weight shifting on the grip on his arm as he gently tugs him down. His lips make contact with one side of Namjoon’s lips, so the alpha is unsure if it’s meant to be a kiss-kiss or a friendly cheek peck.

Shit.

What the fuck is he saying?

It’s absolutely a kiss kiss, no matter the locale. Taehyung isn’t interested in a strictly platonic kiss on the cheek before they part for the holidays, and even Namjoon knows that, and even if he didn’t - the look of unbridled giddiness on the to-be omega’s face is so clear. When he smiles, Namjoon tries to tell himself it’s not a big deal, he’s done a good thing, the right thing.

“Taehyung -”

“I’ll miss you.” Taehyung walks away backwards, hands behind his back as if there is something else to hide. “Goodbye!”

He fails to stop thinking about their parting all break; it’s not just the kiss, but the way Taehyung said goodbye like they were parting seas and would not see each other again until the end of a war and Namjoon a soldier.

Namjoon throws his sister’s book at the door with an angry thump and rolls over for nap two of the day. His phone might light up with notifications of incoming messages, but he ignores them in favor of being alone. It’s what he wanted, what he’s been craving.

On the bus ride back into the city, sandwiched next to a girl his age trying to paint her toenails, Namjoon unwraps Taehyung’s gift.

It’s a Kaws keychain, the kind of thing that is small enough that it can be easily dismissed and yet so tailored to him that Namjoon could never. He groans, thumping his head back against the seat and jostling the passenger next to him enough that she hisses as red smears off her pinky toe onto the seat.

When he was fifteen Namjoon suffered his first panic attack when his parents finally succumbed to his school’s pressure to have his IQ tested; since then, he had something close to one if not a proper panic attack the second night after moving into the dorm.

Today might be the third.

When he walks through that door, not only will Taehyung be there, but he’ll be of age. He’ll be riding high from his birthday and a special one at that, and he might be upset because Namjoon never messaged him like he asked, not that he promised to. Should he - christ, it’s too late to get him a gift now, and it’s not like Namjoon has anything but the spare cash his mom pressed into his hand before he got on the bus, enough to float him some meals or buy him some new clothing he desperately needs, but not enough to give Taehyung anything special.

If he’s only slightly familiar with panic attacks, he is more intimately familiar with dissociation to avoid them. No decisions are made, but he’s inside the dorm room, sitting on the edge of his bed, bag in front of him when Hoseok and Seokjin walk in.

“Huh?”

“We - didn’t say anything.” Hoseok frowns. “You okay? You look - peaky? Is that the word?”

“For the love of god, put a mask on before Hoseok leaves for the studio and never comes back,” Seokjin says, rolling his bag in and opening it with a snap. Both omegas are more particular about cleanliness and germs. Hoseok slept several nights on the hard floors in the dance studios to avoid Jimin’s cold last month.

“Is - is Taehyung back?” Namjoon asks. His bandmates pause to look at him.

“No, just us. Well - Yoongi was here, but he left to track down a deal on some equipment someone was selling in Gangnam.”

Nodding, Namjoon looks over at Hoseok’s bed, because he knows that’s where all of Yoongi’s stuff will be. His extra flat pillow and a stuffed penguin that he sometimes clutches if Hoseok isn’t there, nestled in some of Hoseok’s more vibrantly hued friends.

“Everything alright?” Seokjin asks, eyes narrowed.

“Sure, hyung. Everything alright with you?” Namjoon snips back, already on edge and he doesn’t need the tone. “Just waiting for Jeongguk, right?”

Seokjin kicks Namjoon’s bag out of his way with such a loud bump against the wall but the grace of a natural born dancer that he claims never to be. “Excuse me,” he says, polite but with iciness to cut it.

“Hey!” Hoseok snaps. “None of that! It’s getting ridiculous, and you’re supposed to be the oldest and the leader. So act like it.”

Then he stomps out.

Probably to look for Yoongi.

Groaning, Namjoon flops backwards. Seokjin silently unpacks, and when the rest of the group assembles, Jeongguk included, the two of them do nothing other than nod at each other before setting their stuff up and tumbling into a group pile in their living room.

“Hyung, did you like it?” Taehyung asks, hands reaching for Namjoon’s because he’s holding his phone and his keychain set. The figure hangs there already.

“Of course, but, ah. I didn’t get you anything, Tae.”

Taehyung just shrugs. “That’s okay. Come sit. We’re getting fried chicken!” Fried chicken, like it’s still Christmas. They eat it out of a plastic bucket with beers and soju, even for Jeongguk who they all let sip off their drinks until he giggles himself sideways, partly in Jimin’s lap and one bare foot tucked around Seokjin’s ankle.

Is it okay?

Namjoon goes to bed early to sit and lie awake and wait. When Taehyung stumbles into the room on legs like a newborn colt, Namjoon rolls over on his side to face him and flip up his cover.

An offering, even one as incessantly desired like this one, cannot be considered a gift, but Taehyung mistakes it for one.

“Will you wait for me?” he asks, paused above him and looking down at Namjoon. He looks older, somehow. More than a week apart, more than a coming of age.

Namjoon coughs, grunts. “Just - whenever.”

Taehyung nods, padding quietly out of the room and to the bathroom. When he returns, he isn’t wearing Namjoon’s old sweatshirt and pajama pants. He’s wearing silk - a silk nightgown, the kind that may or may not have lace trim around the hem. He almost scrambles right out of the bed - he didn’t offer to share a bed with that nightgown in between them!

Taehyung slips under the covers. He slips one leg in between Namjoon’s thighs. Thank god he’s dressed sensibly for a January night, sweatpants and even a thin thermal on because even he gets cold sometimes, but Taehyung wants to flounce in wearing basically nothing.

Growling, Namjoon rolls over on top of him.

Which, he did not plan to do, but a single momentary thought of Taehyung getting cold agitates him. Why did he put that on?

Taehyung sharply inhales, or gasps. Underneath his belly, Namjoon feels how Taehyung’s fingers curl against him. His instinct is to leap back, away, but his limbs actually grow heavier, drag him down into Taehyung.

He seems to be holding his breath, and Namjoon can tell because the tip of his nose skims the side of his neck.

“What’s this?” Seokjin asks, arms crossed and perfect eyebrow lifted. Namjoon jolts, but his arms wind their way around Taehyung to shuttle him further into the bed so he is next to the wall.

“Taehyung was cold,” Namjoon says. “It’s cold.”

“It’s freezing!” Hoseok moans from the doorway as he brushes past Seokjin into his own bed, dressed in fuzzy socks under fleece plaid pajamas, the kind that Namjoon wonders if the omega wore at home for the holidays, all matching with his family.

With Yoongi joining Hoseok, Namjoon is tempted to stay up and watch for anything between Jeongguk and their eldest member, but it’s Jeongguk who turns off the light and silently slides into his own bed.

“Where’s Jimin?”

Taehyung tenses, briefly straining his neck over Namjoon’s body on the outside of their bed. Namjoon puts a hand back on him - on his waist, he realizes, a sharp jut of hip in his hand - before he settles back down.

“He’s coming. He wanted a bath.”

Such a thing requires out-waiting everyone.

“Well, we’re all here. Merry Christmas, happy New Year, happy birthday, and, uh-” Yoongi grunts in the dark. Namjoon knows just the squint he’s making without the need to see it.

“Fighting?”

“Fighting!”

Then someone pretends to fake snore - if Namjoon had to guess, Seokjin, in an effort to get them all to quiet down and try to actually sleep. Hoseok giggles softly, then it’s all rustling of sheets and blankets. Quiet and homey. Loud but soft.

Homier than sitting at his parents’ home, he realizes.

Namjoon does not want to think about that though. He would rather someone stuff his mouth full of blistering hot chili peppers before admitting that he’s grown almost to like sleeping in the same room with six other boys. Burn it until there are no taste buds left.

He’s never shared a bed with someone before though.

Like, maybe on an overnight trip with his family back in the day when he was too young to really remember and his sister’s body too small to take up much space anyway. He shared the wide expanse of floors before, even just in the past year with Yoongi or Hoseok.

As a fully grown person, he’s never shared a bed with someone.

Even without touch, Namjoon remains hyper aware of Taehyung in every breath he takes, can feel even so much as the soft blinks of eyelash on cheek right next to him, a preposterous thing that Namjoon never wanted to experience in intimacy. Neither of them move a muscle other than to breathe in and out. Neither of them are falling asleep.

Namjoon turns back over onto his side facing the room away from Taehyung, shoving his arm under his head so his younger bandmate can have all of his pillow. It’s quiet for how no one sleeps yet. Namjoon can tell when they’re all still waiting awake - he may be the one who snores, but they all sound a little different when they drift off.

He hears it telltale in the sheets; Taehyung shifts in bed and then feather light fingers skim up his back from lower spine to neck. Namjoon almost moans, and he has no idea why - what an inappropriate response to something not sexual, not even so pleasureable, he’s just fucking lonely.

Something touches the back of his neck that can’t be hands, because hands come to rest around his waist. Taehyung spoons against him, nose buried at the base of his skull. Namjoon tenses, ready to push him off, but Taehyung whispers right in his ear: “Let me. Let me.”

Soft. Hypnotizing.

Namjoon relaxes. The nose in his hair stops moving.

Everything is the same kind of quiet, but it certainly feels different with someone’s arms around him. The bed is small, but it could be smaller and it wouldn’t make a difference. He doesn’t expect to be able to sleep, but it’s only the next morning that he realizes he has.

And Taehyung is gone before him.

The mood post-holidays remains lifted. Time apart from each other to recharge? “More like eomma’s home cooking,” Taehyung sighs wistfully next to Jimin. He slides out of his chair, tummy pushed out as if he has one, then slumps onto the floor.

“I skipped the gym every day,” Hoseok adds wistfully.

“I read something that wasn’t for class,” Namjoon chuckles.

Jeongguk shrugs. “I played a new video game?”

Yoongi laughs at him, enough to make Jeongguk bristle, but Seokjin inquires as to which game and then no one else may as well exist in the room. Namjoon watches Seokjin - the omega stays seated in the same perfectly upright posture, shoulders squared to the room and not Jeongguk, and his smile is small, perhaps genuine.

He gives Jeongguk more attention than previous, but Namjoon notices the same attention given to all of them, including Taehyung, in particular. As the youngest omega but also the last unpresented member of their group, the two of them are often seen leaving or arriving together through the end of winter and into spring.

Any time Jeongguk makes a playful jab at his status, Taehyung very pointedly does something that Jeongguk cannot as a minor. This leads Namjoon to a shitty bar in Itaewon that looks like it should be anywhere other than Itaewon at one in the morning to collect an inebriated Taehyung and Hoseok. Yoongi arrived before him, but one person lacks the appendages needed to wrangle a drunk Taehyung, and by himself Hoseok sways back and forth as if they are on the high sea.

“Ah, yes, our lead dancer,” Seokjin laughs gently when they make it home. Namjoon whips his head around to look for - there he is, Jeongguk. Curled up on their couch with a blanket half on his lap and the other half rucked up next to him.

Hoseok half laughs, half groans, falling into Seokjin’s arms then swaying back into Yoongi. When it comes to Taehyung, their eldest gently tucks some of his hair behind an ear. “You need a haircut, sweetheart,” he tells the dead weight in Namjoon’s arms.

“Help?” he asks. In reality, Taehyung isn’t so heavy to carry, but it’s been almost forty minutes since he collected them. Jeongguk snickers at the fish eyed look on Taehyung’s face.

“He’s gonna be so sick tomorrow.”

“Yah, Jeongguk-ah!”

Jeongguk straightens out his face.

“What do you need me for?” Seokjin asks, stepping back. “Just put him in your bed.”

Even then Namjoon feels shame for how hotly he burns with anger and humiliation. He is not gentle when he pulls Taehyung into their room and puts him in the singer’s bed, marching out just as quickly despite the bird-like cry at being jostled so heavily.

But Taehyung likes to push. Unlike Jeongguk, he silently pushes boundaries, whereas their maknae tends to keep physical distance up like a safety blanket and verbally spar. Instead Taehyung takes to pushing into Namjoon’s personal space and once more, his bed. Since that first night when Namjoon offered it as a poor gift substitute, Taehyung knows to bide his time, but occasionally when Namjoon gets in late and is too tired to fuss about it, finds him in his bed. Finds the clean clothes he wants to wear in Taehyung’s bed.

It’s enough to drive him mad, but fatigue and appearances keep him together.

When he gets back into bed later, Taehyung is there. Of course. Because of the inebriation, he’s fidgetier than normal too. Namjoon sighs, thinking of just sleeping on the couch or floor, but it’s the way he won’t stop moving when Taehyung normally plays dead in his bed to get away with it that tickles something in the back of Namjoon’s brain.

In the living room, Jeongguk, Seokjin, Jimin, and Yoongi all watch something quietly on the television while Hoseok dozes already. It’s late - they should all be asleep.

“Joon,” Taehyung whispers. He sounds strained, but Namjoon assumes it’s the alcohol. He doesn’t recognize the tears until after he’s shifted through all of the clothing dumped on the floor, then Namjoon flies upright when he hears the sniffling.

“Tae?”

In bed, under Namjoon’s comforter that he tried to wash a week ago but mysteriously came back with the same stain on it, Taehyung rolls back and forth. Almost trance-like.

Everything he does seems designed to pull him in.

“Joonie,” he whispers. Shit. No one calls him that. Namjoon doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like - “Didn’t like him.”

Namjoon makes some kind of questioning noise. He carefully kneels by the side of the bed. In the dark, Taehyung’s eyes glitter.

“There was an alpha,” he says. “At the bar.”

Namjoon grits his teeth and hisses.

“I didn’t like him.”

“Tae-ah. Honey. Did you - did he -” Namjoon can picture all sorts of scenarios, all of them horrible. It’s not hard. He’s seen it all himself and what did he do then?

The side of the bed frame gives in his hand; when Namjoon looks down, the metal, shitty as it is, is bent.

“There was an alpha I didn’t like. Touched me.”

“Fuck!” Namjoon roars, jolting upright to his feet. In bed, Taehyung tosses, turns, more delicate now than he was this morning, and what is Namjoon if not some alpha asshole who never did anything in the face of a handsy producer?

“Fuck!” Namjoon crosses the room in two strides, ripping the covers off Hoseok.

“Wha-”

“What happened?” he screams down at him, on the least level footing they could be. Hoseok scrambles upright, hair askew and looking just as glassy eyed as Taehyung.

“What?” Hoseok asks quietly. Timidly. He’s scared - of the alpha poised over him.

“What happened tonight? Who was it?” Namjoon yells, spit raining down on Hoseok’s flinching face. Behind him, several thumps. The lights overhead go on.

“What the fuck?”

A roar cuts them off, and then a hand on the back of his neck yanks. Namjoon growls and spins around to throw off Yoongi, snarling up at him in his boxers and thin tee. “Get off him!”

“Hey, let’s just calm down now-”

“Hob-yah?”

Jeongguk skitters to the omega’s side and helps him stumble out of bed and away from Yoongi and Namjoon while Jimin and Seokjin pull at the alphas. “I just want to know what happened!”

“What do you mean? Namjoon-ah!” Seokjin switches from tugging at the back of his shirt to tugging at his hair. “Nothing happened, we’re all here, it’s fine-”

“Something happened at the bar!” he roars back, all four of them careening backwards, ready to tip over to the floor at any moment.

Taehyung lets out a wounded gasp from under the cover of the blanket wrapped around his head, and Hoseok lets out a breathy little, “Oh.”

The struggling group freezes, every head whipping around to look at Hoseok. “Something did happen?” Jeongguk prompts him.

“Well - uh, there was a guy. He followed us around most of the night, but.” Hoseok ducks his head down; from the corner of his eye, Namjoon sees the muscles in Yoongi’s throat flex. “He bought us drinks, so.”

The scent in the room grows heavy in that way that a group blunder affects them all, but this isn’t a public verbal lashing from the CEO.

“So?” Yoongi prompts him this time.

“So.” Hoseok shifts, sways. “So that’s what we wanted? Not because of him - but, um, the drinks? For free?”

If this was another conversation, it would be painful to listen to Hoseok work it out, so clearly impaired in a way Namjoon has never seen, but this is a serious conversation that already strikes fear in him.

It makes total sense that they wanted to go out for a drink. It makes total sense that they’d let a stranger buy them drinks; Namjoon did the same thing once with a pretty older beta who tried to slip him a lot of cash at the end of the night. He didn’t think much of it after it happened, because he could laugh it off with about a head of height and more than thirty pounds on the beta.

“Taehyung said he touched him?”

Seokjin sucks down a wet gasp. Hoseok looks between Namjoon and Taehyung, sitting up in bed miserably, cheeks wet. Namjoon wants to move between them and cut off everyone’s sight of him.

“Um, I guess? But not, not like that. He might have touched his hip when he asked to dance?” Hoseok squints, blinking rapidly. “He didn’t - Taehyung was never alone. With him. Called Yoongi.”

“Tae? Honey?” Seokjin moves to sit down on Namjoon’s bed and it’s the first time he’s probably touched it. “Are you okay? Do we - do you need to go to the hospital?”

Taehyung shakes his head. “No. He just. Touched my waist. Wrist.”

Seokjin nods. “That can be scary.” He slowly tucks Taehyung to his chest. He’s doing that omega phenomena of scent blanketing, something Namjoon never experienced much because his parents were an alpha and beta.

“Hyung? Are you okay?” Jeongguk asks, rubbing at Hoseok’s arms until Yoongi shuffles him against the wall.

“I’m - fucking - drank too much,” Hoseok moans. He’s sweating enough that Namjoon wonders if they need to move him to the bathroom.

“What if the guy put something in their drinks?” Jeongguk asks.

“Didn’t,” Hoseok insists. “I watched. Didn’t.”

Taehyung shakes his head against Seokjin’s chest. “He didn’t. I just. Didn’t like him.”

Namjoon thinks he hears it - it wasn’t a problem of an alpha buying him a drink, but it was a problem of an alpha he didn’t like touching him, and the one he does not touching him.

Jeongguk watches him in a way that makes him think they’re hearing the same thing.

“Are you okay to try and get some sleep, hm?” Seokjin asks, already guiding Taehyung to lie back. “We can talk about it more in the morning.”

“Nothing - it wasn’t like that. Promise. I watched,” Hoseok mumbles. Yoongi shushes him.

Namjoon sleeps on the floor in the living room. He wakes up late - they’re all late - because Jeongguk and Seokjin are in the kitchen making breakfast, and above him sleeps Taehyung on the couch.

“It would be easier if you just slept in your own bed,” Jeongguk grumbles at him while eating over a bowl. Namjoon would agree that it would be easier if everyone slept in their own bed and remember this is all for music. Namjoon just wanted to make music.

Now he just doesn’t know how to feel about any of them, or himself.

“Channel it,” the producers say.

Channel it.

His confusion?

His unrelenting rage?

He’s not sure why he’s so mad, or at who. Taehyung who continues to stick close to him as if they’re actually in an arranged marriage, bolstered by the heavy looks of their cohorts, or Yoongi and Hoseok, who get caught holding hands out in public with pictures that exist on what must be their first fansite, already problematic in that it fuels the fires that they’re an arranged couple but also an arranged couple who might realistically date outside of it. Maybe he could be mad at Jimin, who is either too ill to get out of bed or dazzling everyone with his aerial dance moves, there is no inbetween and they all pick up his chores or spend their petty cash on medicine that seem to do nothing. Jeongguk, perhaps, for being so good at everything when he’s so young. Seokjin for - well. Being Seokjin. The perfect omega he was told about, halfway promised.

“You have to learn to control your temper someday, you know,” he says to Namjoon as he washes and the alpha dries.

So few moments feel like they are spent at home, always hustling, always running to the next commitment, and yet it’s always here, standing in their communal space, that Namjoon cannot escape anything.

“What do you mean - next time?”

Seokjin sighs. “There will always be handsy alphas, Kim Namjoon. What happened the other night will happen again in some variation. It could be today, or tomorrow, and it does no good to alienate a friend because you can’t control your feelings.”

Hoseok wasn’t avoiding him, but the two of them fumbled their way through tracks together for their rap line parts. “I’m so sorry,” he had said to him, the day after. “I should have been more attentive. I shouldn’t have let Taehyung go in the first place. I should have-”

“Hoseok, you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s okay.”

And even someone like Namjoon knows and genuinely supports omegas going out and doing what they want with who they want. Taehyung wanted to go out. Hoseok accompanied. No one did anything wrong.

Except some nameless prick at a bar in Itaewon. Maybe. “He really didn’t do much. I was watching. I was. I think Taehyung just-”

“He was drinking,” Namjoon cuts him off. He doesn’t know where Hoseok was going with it, and he knows the omega well enough that he doesn’t actually believe such a thing, but Namjoon won’t stand there and listen to someone dismiss an alpha who touched someone at all, even if it was just a friendly touch, even if he did back off when Taehyung got agitated.

“Would you react the same way if it happened to Hoseok? To Jimin?” Seokjin asks over the water in the sink. “To me?”

I’d rip their fucking face off is what Namjoon thinks to himself, but it isn’t true.

It isn’t true at all.

He’s an alpha who is all bark and no bite.

On sweat mopped floors of a dance studio, Taehyung rests his head on Namjoon’s thigh. The alpha’s fingers curl into his palms because Taehyung’s hair is so long and curly; so different from his close-to-the-sides faux mohawk they gave him again.

Namjoon picks up his head and shifts to the side enough that when he lies Taehyung back down, it’s on the floor. “Taehyung, you can’t do that.”

He sits up, bottom lip already jutting out a little. “What? Why?”

“You can’t sleep in my bed either. You need to get your own food, need to make sure you have what you need without accidentally leaving it behind. We aren’t dating.”

“Hoseok and Yoongi share a bed, and they aren’t dating!” Taehyung insists. The sole other person in the room, a predebut trainee, trots out.

Namjoon just stares at him. Taehyung stares back. For all the skinship that the omega-to-be foists upon him, moments of prolonged eye contact are rare. This time, Namjoon isn’t looking away.

“So they’re allowed to date?”

“They shouldn’t, but there’s nothing really I can say about it.”

“So why won’t you look at me, hm? Am I not pretty enough like Kim Seokjin? Am I not as good? Is it because I won’t have a degree, or because my family farms corn and not strawberries?” Never has there been a moment in which Namjoon felt anger from Taehyung. Sorrow, certainly - sorrow in his rejection because Namjoon became too lax, and here they are.

“Don’t.” Namjoon shakes his head, pleading with him. Words cannot be unspoken, a lesson he’s only half learned, but he doesn’t want to be the person Taehyung learns it from.

“Well? We’re more than bandmates, Namjoon-ah. We’re partners. Doesn’t your body sing for mine? Don’t you feel the compatibility?”

Compatibility doesn’t just happen, the company says, and any other entertainment company with similar contracts. Compatibility matters.

“You aren’t even an omega yet, Tae!” Namjoon says incredulously. This, he meant to say. He did not mean to say it quite like he does.

Taehyung wilts, visible in every line of him. “So I feel nothing then?”

“Of course not! I’m sure you feel everything, but it does mean that I can’t do this with you!”

Taehyung blinks, then licks his lips. Namjoon traces the movement, he’s too slow to stop himself from doing it. “But, one day. I’ll present. We’ll be together. You won’t avoid it then.”

Namjoon thinks about Seokjin post his first heat within the group, how he kept staring down something on his laptop for hours at night until Namjoon walked close enough to notice it was his contract.

Seokjin is still here.

So is Namjoon.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Taehyung’s face falls to the point of horror. Abject horror.

“Things don’t have to be this way, you know.” Namjoon shrugs to feign nonchalance.

“Don’t do that. Don’t act like this isn’t a big deal, or that I’m a kid. I’m an adult. I’m your equal,” Taehyung hisses. Namjoon imagines Taehyung at his protests, dressed in his skirts and carrying perhaps a sign. The alpha doesn’t even think of himself as equal - he’s beneath them, truely, even if he has to act like he feels differently every day to give them the chance.

“I just mean - you and Jimin are close, right? You know he’s here to help you too.”

Taehyung blinks, stunned to silence for a short moment, then his answer is in silent fury. Namjoon didn’t want to be the one to stand up and flee, and he isn’t. He lets Taehyung get up and go, door slamming shut behind him.

If he expects there to be immediate backlash from his blunt talk with Taehyung - rejection, his mind provides, it was another rejection, you fucking coward - he is surprised to find that no one acts differently around him. Things remain stilted, still so many unknowns even after the release of their album and short tour across the country. Now, they’re getting ready for international debut and Namjoon can’t tell that Taehyung told anyone else about their conversation. Not that he needed to, it’s just that Namjoon waits every day for a cold shoulder to drop.

But even Yoongi’s spirits lift with the travel schedule abroad shared. “I’ve never been out of the country, Joon-ah,” he says in that quiet and serious way. Someone else wouldn’t hear unrestrained excitement, but Namjoon does. He clasps his shoulder and they share a smile like it's nothing.

Before they leave, they all are lined up in front of board members in an impromptu meeting, the men and one female executive all taking their turns walking down the line to inspect them. Namjoon didn’t know, he really didn’t.

“So glad I got inspected like a show dog at eight o’clock in the morning,” Jimin huffs, arms crossed. The executives wrote comments down on clipboards to be taken care of by their managers, but the female beta executive made sure to comment on Jimin’s lack of masculine appeal to, what she called, offset the excess feminine beauty of the group.

Yoongi and Namjoon couldn’t help but share a look, even under the hawk eyes of their CEO.

“We’re a fucking idol group,” Yoongi growls. “That’s what they wanted. Idols, not rappers. I’m not a rapper, and you’re not a rapper!”

He makes sure that Hoseok is not included in that statement even though he’s standing right there.

The omegas are sent away for a day-long spa trip and Jimin goes with the rest of them to get fresh dye jobs and wardrobe fittings. “Are you a rapper now too, Chimmie?” Jeongguk giggles, hugging close to Jimin’s back when he comes out with more chains than Namjoon.

Namjoon isn’t sure why they’re pressing this look upon Jimin; betas tend to be more flexible in arranged groups. At least Jimin escapes the hair stylists with a style passable on the street - Namjoon emerges with half a crew cut and short, straight bangs more than halfway up his forehead.

Yoongi bursts into laughter as soon as Namjoon walks into the studio; both he and Jimin were finished first while Namjoon and Jeongguk required multiple bleaching and tonings. He stops laughing when he spies Hoseok creeping in behind him, visibly not happy with his own brightly colored hair, returned early from the omega salon they were sent to separately.

“Seok,” Yoongi calls. “Come here, pretty.” Hoseok falls in between Yoongi and Jimin’s arms, knocking the hat off Jimin’s head so he can coo at his beta.

“At least you don’t have those bangs,” Yoongi chuckles.

“Ya!” Namjoon crosses his arms, but he smiles, because even if he feels a little ridiculous, he’ll hide his hair under a cap outside of performances and in another two weeks it will be something else. Pre-debut they experimented with styles for him, the first out of anyone so he’s been exposed to it longest, and slowly but surely he’s getting used to the fact he’ll rock some looks he hates but what does it matter? They never last.

“The color suits you, hyung,” Jimin adds sweetly. Namjoon looks at Jimin wondering what it is about him that looks different - it’s not the hair. Maybe it’s just the smile? Namjoon frowns thinking about how long it’s been since he’s seen Jimin smile that big, that sincerely.

The three of them run through ideas for new segments, most of their time spent on an older idea of Hoseok’s that he feels sounds too sticky no matter how genius Namjoon thinks and assures him it is while Jimin cycles through reps of crunches and push-ups in the background, occasionally pausing to ask a question. He isn’t familiar with the equipment like the three of them are, so the evening ends with Jimin perched on Yoongi’s knees while he roughly mixes beats.

Hoseok sits on the shitty couch in the back with Namjoon. It still feels awkward, even with the more immediate feeling of doing something with the massive amount of music they’ve prepared in the past year. “They’re done at the salon,” Hoseok says, hunched over his phone. He chuckles. “Cute.”

“Really? Let me see!” Jeongguk jumps up from the floor he sprawled over, Yoongi’s guitar sliding out of his lap with a thump.

Hoseok shows him whatever selca was sent to him and him only. Jeongguk doesn’t say anything, but his cheeks pinken. He does not blink.

“Why’d they take so long?” Yoongi asks, spinning around with a hand on Jimin to secure him.

“Hyung wanted to pamper Tae a little.” Hoseok shares a look with Yoongi. “You know. As the youngest omega. Who is -”

Namjoon clenches his jaw.

“Struggling,” he finishes, lamely. “Feeling a little weird about being unpresented yet.”

“That one over there should be unpresented still too,” Yoongi grouses, gently guiding Jimin up so he can stand.

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that if you didn’t harbor a boner the size of the galaxy for hyung, your hormones would have been in check.”

Even Namjoon gapes a little at the bold comment - sure, they are all well aware of Jeongguk’s feelings (and Seokjin’s feelings about feelings), but they don’t casually converse about them. Not even for pithy inside jokes.

More than Jeongguk’s cheeks are pink now. If Namjoon thought his relationship with the young alpha was fraught post announcement of arranged partners, then whatever happened between Yoongi and Jeongguk that put them in a similar push-and-pull is beyond him. Jeongguk adored both of them as a trainee, but in particular, Yoongi. He feels a similar silence grown between them these days, perhaps just in line with the fact they are all alphas.

It’s easier, Namjoon thinks, to be the baby alpha. It’s okay if Jeongguk cries at a fan event or wants to aeygo more. He gets to do that then toughen up his image any time he wants.

“Have you ever looked at our test results? All the paperwork and background information they pulled on us?” Jeongguk asks. His delivery is smooth, even, but his eyes are focused with laser precision on Yoongi. “I bet you haven’t. You were all so eager to debut you would have done whatever they told you.”

“Jeongguk-” Hoseok crawls to his side. The way Jeongguk slides his look in between Hoseok and Yoongi is cold, dismissive.

“I did. Taehyung showed me after, because he bothered before all the contracts were signed. Did you know?” Jeongguk briefly glances at Namjoon. “Do you know who has the highest level of compatibility?”

He’s so quiet. Their young alpha. Quiet and serious in the same moments of carefree and young. “It isn’t you and Hobi hyung,” he says. Yoongi’s bristling vibrates his body, and Namjoon himself feels a little numb. “Why else do you think they’d debut an arranged partnership with a five year difference?”

Jimin floats nervously into the center of the room, in between Yoongi and Jeongguk, but there’s no doubt in Namjoon’s mind of whose side he’s really on.

“That means nothing!”

“It means everything!” Jeongguk hisses.

Surprisingly, it’s Yoongi who leaves the room. The four of them remain seated in various frozen positions.

And it’s not like - it’s not like Namjoon assumed he and Taehyung had exceptionally high levels of compatibility. He’s not sure how he feels about the ways they measure such things anyway, but regardless of how he feels about it, they’re more compatible than any random couple Namjoon would make with someone off the street.

It’s just - now hearing it out loud, maybe he did assume Yoongi and Hoseok were highest. Maybe deep down he just can’t believe that Jeongguk would score higher with anyone over him, because he’s the baby, and Seokjin is Seokjin.

“Ggukie,” Jimin says quietly. “Let’s go take a walk. I’m hungry.”

“No, you’re not.” Jeongguk stands away. “You’re never hungry.”

When it’s just him and Hoseok in the room, Namjoon pries muscles loose one by one. It’s fine. They’re fine. He isn’t sure why he feels so on edge - they’ve been circling the same feelings of rejection and acceptance for months now, and this isn’t anything new.

It’ll all be fine, Namjoon tells himself. He’ll talk to Jeongguk and Yoongi separately, check in on them, maybe suggest an actual alpha activity and not a day of mandatory grooming.

Except, they don’t have time. Not any more - time exists for others, not themselves, and two quiet days later they’re all in Japan in a backroom getting ready to perform. The room isn’t big enough to comfortably house them and their team, let alone the other groups squeezed into it with them, so they’re literally bumping more than shoulders as they get dressed and undressed.

Jimin whistles, hands on Taehyung’s hips because they’re pushed into the corner. “Aren’t you growing up well, Kim Taehyung.”

Namjoon tries not to look, at least not so obviously turn to look at this very second, but he can’t help himself. They’re all dressed in their supposedly edgy clothing, less so all black than their first debut looks but still overwhelmingly dark with pops of color here or there, so Taehyung is bestowed the gift of a silky button down that is buttoned, but it hangs down far enough that Namjoon sees all of his sternum.

A dainty silver chain runs down his chest to lie in the center of it, meant to attract attention to his neck. Seokjin has a similar look - silky top included - and Hoseok, as an omega rapper, wears a playful choker necklace with heart shaped chainlinks. He’s dressed in all black like Namjoon and Yoongi, but with streaks of red down the sides to create more of a silhouette and play up his red hair.

Taehyung rolls his neck, an innocent warm up, but it tussles his freshly permed hair, so different from the long and straight style he’s mostly had. It’s darker now too - instead of brunette, a shiny black. It somehow changes so much about him. Now, his eyes look darker too.

Or maybe it’s just all the eyeliner the make-up artists put on them.

Taehyung catches his eye over Yoongi’s head. He does not smile or offer an utterance of good luck to him like he did for others, but when the time comes to hit their mark on stage, Taehyung gives him a dazzling performance.

They all do.

Despite the so-so turnout, the event managers congratulate them for a job well done while their actual managers snap their fingers at them and tell them to hurry up. The buzz of their first international show though?

“My beautiful, beautiful beta!” Hoseok squeals, rocking Jimin in his arms. “We nailed it!” The dancers giggle happily in each other’s embrace, Yoongi and Namjoon squished into car seats behind them. They must have put the stinkiest in the back - sometimes, the group subconsciously guides them like that, in the same way that they all try and beat Namjoon to bed so they can fall asleep before he starts snoring.

The alpha traits Namjoon got stuck with, he thinks demurely.

“We did good,” Yoongi says quietly to him, smiling as he watches Jimin and Hoseok, and beyond them Seokjin, Taehyung, and Jeongguk all squabble over the bag of corn chee they saved as a post performance celebration. They’ve changed, but their faces are still painted and Taehyung wears those long, dangly earrings yet. They swing back and forth, daring him to look away.

“We did good,” he affirms, knocking his head against his first confidant.

They have another performance the next day - a small daytime gig in a small Japanese town. No one told him such, but Namjoon suspects it will be inside a mall and they’ll quietly be herded around for girls and boys to fawn over as they pretend they can’t decide what flavor ice cream they want or point out foreign clothing brands in the windows.

Tonight, the management leaves them be, as long as they stay in on hotel premises. “Don’t over do it,” they warn, eyeing the bag from the convenience store down the block that Jeongguk stopped at. They assume since it was the maknae that there would be no alcohol purchased, but later Namjoon walks into Hoseok and Seokjin’s room to find several bottles of sake.

“Did he buy these?” Namjoon picks one up. Perhaps because Jeongguk is presented, pouring out those fresh alpha pheromones, they mistook him or just didn’t care if he was of age.

“I’m not sure-” Hoseok says, one hand tugging at the other. Flighty. About what? Having a drink with them?

“Seok-ah. It’s fine to indulge if you want, but no one expects you to.” Seokjin hugs him from the back briefly, then proceeds to pour seven shots into a mixture of plastic and paper cups from different rooms.

“Who wants to cheers?” he asks, sweeping a hand over them.

“You’re supposed to be the oldest,” Hoseok reminds him with a heavy sigh. Jeongguk bustles his way into the room and picks up a cup all the same.

“Only one hundred and sixty-four days until I’m of age,” he says, eyes locked on Seokjin. Seokjin sputters, already taking his shot.

He pours another, ears red. “Alright, alright, everyone who is drinking, pick it up!”

The seven of them all clink their plastic together, faces wide and open, everyone freshly washed up and “properly” dried off at the instance of a few. “Here’s to bulletproof!”

“Here’s to a night off!” Hoseok adds.

“Here’s to new places!” Jimin aggressively clicks with Yoongi and Namjoon.

“Here’s to us,” Jeongguk says. Namjoon would be willing to bet no one looks at where, or who, the maknae currently watches as he says it.

They all take their shot, most of them refilling cups and settling into the room in different places. Yoongi and Jeongguk bicker over a playlist on a phone - that’s good, Namjoon thinks. Seokjin and Hoseok fling clothing back and forth at each other with Hoseok using Namjoon to hide behind; when he gets a pair of tight red panties to the face, Namjoon growls and heaves a clucking Hoseok around his side.

He feels too weird sitting on the beds that the omegas will be sleeping in later, so Namjoon sits on the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the way Jimin plays with Taehyung’s hair while his head lies comfortably in the other’s lap. They’re talking too quietly to hear over the music playing off Jeongguk’s shitty portable speakers, but they’re smiling so gently at each other.

Namjoon sucks down another shot. It’s really only him, Yoongi, and Seokjin who are drinking, and Namjoon wonders if Hoseok would if not for the last time he allowed himself to drink as much as he wanted. He tries nudging the omega with a bottle of sake - the last one - but Hoseok shakes his head. He looks happy enough that Namjoon hopes it truly is a case of a lack of desire.

He decides to lie down on the ground, hooking an arm around Jeongguk and Yoongi’s neck to take them down with him. They all playfully growl at each other, wrestling around and flopping over one another. Only once does Namjoon sense a moment of hesitation from Jeongguk when the younger gets pinned, but the growls are all still gentle, their struggling limbs lighthanded. When Yoongi ends sitting halfways in Namjoon’s lap while he tries to snatch the last bottle from his hand, no one seems sad or angry or even remotely tired, more notable of all.

Behind them, Namjoon can hear the omegas - Seokjin and Hoseok laughing so loud that he’s sure they will get a second noise complaint for the night. Is this what their management imagined when they said they could do whatever if they stayed in their rooms? Namjoon doesn’t often feel his age, too many responsibilities in fine print, but tonight - he feels it. Every bit of twenty with every opportunity ahead.

Seokjin and Hoseok roll back and forth in their own wrestling match until they fall off the bed with such a raucous cry that someone finally bangs on a wall. Jeongguk crawls over to them and tries to grab at Hoseok, tickling their lead dancer so his lithe body arches and curves in ways that Namjoon didn’t think existed outside of comic books and video games. Graceful, always.

Next to him, Yoongi thumps onto the floor from his lap, triumphant in taking the sake from his hand only to find it empty.

He looks far more betrayed by the beauty of Jung Hoseok on display for everyone.

Or, not everyone. How long does it take Namjoon to realize that Jimin and Taehyung are no longer in the room? The bed they were on shows nothing other than a few wrinkles and a pillow slightly ajar. From where he sits, he sees no one is in the ensuite bathroom either.

“Chim? Tae?” he asks, looking at Yoongi, still open mouth gaping at Hoseok, now motionless but panting from writhing around. He doesn’t respond, and neither does Jeongguk. Seokjin shrugs, looking around for a short moment, before diving back on top of Hoseok, this time Jeongguk joining him.

Outside of Hoseok and Seokjin’s room, Namjoon pads over to the one for Jimin and Taehyung. It’s not a large hotel, but big enough that these two rooms are on one floor with the alphas stationed in one room on another.

He knocks long enough that he’s sure he has the wrong room; a grouchy man sticks his head out to yell at Namjoon. He doesn’t need to have any level of Japanese fluency to understand him. Namjoon scuttles down the hall and into the stairs - he checks in his own room, as if either of them would have a key for it, then checks his phone which he apparently left upstairs.

There is a small public lobby, and on the rooftop, a small public bath for guests to use. Namjoon checks the lobby, but really - why would they be there? - before taking the elevator all the way up. He swipes a keycard to gain access to the bath floor, from which there are technically different rooms for alphas, betas, and omegas to split up.

It’s quiet. No giggling up here. Namjoon presses his ear to the omega changing rooms and hears nothing. When he pushes it open a crack, there’s no one inside. Just a row of open cubbies along a wall for personal belongings, towels on top and a drying rack across from it.

Beyond it, some light splashing.

Namjoon pushes the door open.

He can’t smell anyone.

There isn’t a presented omega inside, not one who has freshly bathed.

But someone is inside.

Namjoon tiptoes inside, removing his sandals and feeling every bit like the creep that a high school peer called him to be. The bath is on the other side of the room, separated by a courtesy half wall. What slowly comes into view around the corner is water, more water, and then two bodies.

Jimin straddles Taehyung in the bath. These bathing pools aren’t meant to be deep, and this one is shallow enough he sees where their hands and legs are. They’re completely nude, of course, as mandated by shared bathing rules, and the way Jimin’s legs drape over Taehyung’s shortwires something in Namjoon’s brain. He freezes, mostly concealed still by the wall, and all he can look at is Jimin’s lower back and what he conceals under him, Taehyung’s hand splayed out under water next to their legs.

How close they are.

Their mouths move together, whispering directly into each other’s lips. Jimin tilts his head forward and Namjoon’s stomach leaps into his chest.

The beta knocks his head against Taehyung’s, and the omega gazes up so openly at him. He’s biting his lip, oh christ, he’s biting his lip and Namjoon might be sick, because Taehyung’s freshly darkened hair is damp and pushed back off his face so his eyes look twice as big and his mouth twice as pink in the steam.

Taehyung usually looks up at him like that.

What is Jimin doing? Why are they together in the omega bath? Their bodies are pressed together, no modesty between them at all.

“Like this?” Taehyung asks. It’s so soft, barely audible over the bubbling jets that maybe Namjoon imagines it.

“Like that,” Jimin might say.

Which one of them kisses the other?

Namjoon doesn’t stay to find out.

Chapter Text

The end to their Japan trip and thus first ever international trip abroad is with a fizzle and less of a bang. Their managers collect them with everyone looking a little worse for wear - Hoseok in particular. He and Seokjin hold each other up in between the car and security line at the airport, Jeongguk warily fluttering about behind them, hands up to which Yoongi scoffs and even Jimin giggles, but his giggles turn into grimaces.

Close to his side, Taehyung trails.

Namjoon tries not to even look at him.

Is it fair, or mature? Most certainly not, but a single short glance at his untidy perm which reads too much as bed head and the delicate double piercings in his ears makes Namjoon feel desperate enough to push Yoongi or Jeongguk in public for no other reason than they’d have to react in kind. Only once he’s on the plane does he realize he’s lost one of his earbuds so he can’t even block out Yoongi’s low voice mixing with Hoseok as the two gently twine their hands together in front of him where he can only watch through a tiny crack in the seats.

Next to him, Jimin mutely offers his own earbuds.

Namjoon accepted his assigned seat partner if only it meant that it was Jeongguk tucked up next to Taehyung on the other side of the aisle. Jeongguk successfully scared off the wandering eyes of curious other passengers while simultaneously saving his own eyes for Seokjin a couple rows in front of them with one of the vocal coaches who thought they needed to accompany.

What a mess.

“Cool it, alpha,” Jimin grouses. “You’re stinking up the plane.”

Namjoon grits his teeth so fast he catches the tip of his tongue and his entire mouth stings; it takes everything in him not to snap at Jimin, tell him he saw. He can’t stop seeing it - the way Jimin slid into Taehyung’s body first, then slid into his mouth. The wet noises, from the bath water and their connected lips. Soft and loud at the same time, the worst because it sounds so encompassing and now not even the harshest beats can drown it out of his thoughts.

After takeoff, he drums a beat into his thigh while the others try to catch enough sleep to overcome their hangover. He hits himself progressively harder and harder, ignoring the flight attendant when she asks if he needs anything, ignoring the way a manager plucks something out of Yoongi’s hand before he can even offer it to Hoseok, ignoring even the way Jeongguk slips forward to crouch in the aisle next to Seokjin and drape his open zip hoodie across him like a blanket, no doubt heavily scented now that he can so easily scent items.

A hand snatches one of his, quick as lightning. “Hey.” Jimin’s voice is low, but it isn’t quiet. “Relax. Whatever you’ve got going on, it’s going to be fine.”

“You’d fucking know, wouldn’t you?” Namjoon hisses. In front of them, Hoseok suddenly peers around at them through the crack in their seats, Yoongi’s head on his shoulder where his mouth gapes open, a little drool shared between them so easily.

Jimin does not react at all. He barely blinks. “What’s that mean, Kim Namjoon?”

He can’t help the way he growls under his breath; as a child, his parents and school teachers tried to discipline it out of him. As an adult, producers stand on their side of the booth and encourage it.

“Based on the alpha posturing, I assume it might involve Taehyung. Are we going to play that fun game where you deny how much you want him?” Jimin still doesn’t blink.

I don’t want him! I don’t want anything to do with him!

Namjoon comes close to screaming it for the entire plane to hear.

He reins it in. Barely.

Even he is not so cruel as to wish Taehyung overhearing something like that. He’s the leader. They’re bandmates, all of them, in their own way a pack, and he is responsible for Taehyung. Namjoon doesn't bother himself with overcoming every hot headed alpha stereotype, but he would never purposely go out of his way to hurt one of them.

Or maybe he would.

“Doesn’t matter if I want him or not, he’s mine, isn’t he?” he whispers, voice suddenly hoarse. He hates himself already, for once in his life knows what he’s about to say is wrong without any extra thought and yet he says it anyway. “He wants me regardless and you’ll just take whatever you can get.”

And Jimin’s face doesn’t change, but Hoseok hears. He gasps softly, standing swiftly and crawling over a grumbling Yoongi so he can pull Jimin up from his aisle seat. Not once does the beta blink or change his expression. As Hoseok drags him away to the privacy of a restroom, Jimin’s face remains locked on Namjoon, neck craning back as they go.

“Wha? Something happen?” Yoongi asks, rubbing his eyes and squinting around the corner of his seat.

“No,” Namjoon denies it, arms crossed. “Nothing.” He tugs down his beanie over his eyes to pretend to sleep, drops Jimin’s earbuds in the empty seat next to him.

When they land, it’s Hoseok sitting next to Namjoon, although if he had to guess, that was at the omega’s instance and not Jimin’s. Their beta singer never looked particularly affected, even when they returned to their seats probably twenty minutes after they disappeared together, long enough that Yoongi was not only wide awake but actively pursuing whiplash with the way he craned his neck back and forth as if there were limitless places Hoseok could be.

To his credit, Namjoon doesn’t deserve a friend like Hoseok. Hoseok ignores Namjoon’s cruel words, probably because he sincerely believes Namjoon could never mean them. In front of them, Jimin grips Yoongi’s hand because, as they’ve all just found out on this trip, Yoongi is an alpha who will happily take on anything except a flight.

A manager gave him a pill to knock him out on the way home, and he battles fatigue and disorientation the entire day.

Hoseok gave up giving Yoongi comfort to give Namjoon comfort.

Doesn’t feel like a fair trade at all.

At home in Seoul, they go back to their shitty shared dorm with the news that their successful trip overseas means they’ve been invited to a couple of different music shows with varying slots that mean something - really mean something. Their happiness and gratitude is short-lived though when their instructors won’t dismiss them for anything - not for singing class when they’re in dancing, and certainly not for outside education or responsibilities.

“We have no time to prepare, you aren’t going anywhere,” they tell the seven of them, literally cornered in the back of the ratty rented out dance studio because the only real dance room in the company building is too small for their needs and there are other trainees still waiting their turn.

Namjoon tries to hold his ground between the group and the producers. He makes sure to rustle up extra snacks, even sneaks through his least favorite dance instructor’s bag to apprehend some chips and an electrolyte drink to give to the omegas. What else can he do? He didn’t know they’d be locked in, otherwise he would have brought more provisions with him.

Yoongi’s friend who also runs deliveries late at night drops off a modest sized order that was canceled. The seven of them eat clandestinely in the back alley only because Jimin and Taehyung both turned on enough waterworks that their choreographer waved them away dismissively for a break.

It’s three in the morning and the group of them swap three pairs of chopsticks over four different takeaway containers of cold rice, noodles, and probably the driest pork Namjoon’s ever eaten, but everything tastes better when it’s forbidden.

Taehyung presses the back of his hand into Namjoon’s to wordlessly offer the chopsticks. Namjoon shakes his head, careful not to look at the omega’s face, but his neck isn’t safe to look at either. Too thin, strung tight on corded muscle. Too pale, pretty, inviting.

It doesn't feel like he can do much in these situations, but where Namjoon can put himself more bodily and emotionally is between his group and other groups at the music show. They aren’t given a room to get ready in, an obvious slight shared as giggles and whispers between other performers as they enter and exit their rooms. Instead, the omegas all go in as a group into one bathroom, and Yoongi takes Jimin to a single stall.

Namjoon and Jeongguk have to wait until curtain call to dash into a dark corner where Hoseok and Yoongi try and keep some of their modesty covered by holding up spare clothing, but what’s there to hide? Can’t they all see how much Namjoon fails already?

They perform the same routine from the week before in Japan and fans react positively enough they are immediately offered a spot for the next week, which means a different number but an equally harsh week held in close quarters. Somehow the four walls of a dance space feels more oppressive than their bunk beds pressed together in a coffin sized room.

The new song selected features rapline heavily with Jeongguk joining in at chorus. It allows Jimin, Seokjin, and Taehyung more of a break, the three of them busy catching up on homework for class or dozing off while pretending not to until one producer decides to pull Seokjin and Taehyung aside separately for additional training.

Jimin sits on the floor alone, back pressed to the mirror, and Namjoon knows he sees every precise mistake he makes.

Their manager tells them they’ll even have a fan meet after their performance that weekend, something they’ve yet to hold despite tradition. Namjoon can only guess it’s because they were worried no one would show, but if they’re allowing it now then they must be confident they have enough fans to form a line.

“You’re the leader?” a young alpha girl sneers at him during the fansign, held right after their performance which did not go as seamless as the last: not to them, not to their management, and no doubt not to their fans.

Namjoon sits there in his black clothing with his chains on and a fauxhawk today. It’s night out, even if it’s closer to morning than evening, and they handed him sunglasses to don regardless. He was grateful for them when the fans first came in, excitedly snapping pictures with and without flash. Now, he couldn’t feel more like a clown.

Seokjin and Yoongi sit on both sides of him; they purposely asked the eldest to flank him no doubt, and most likely wanted to continue to sow the seed that he was matched with Seokjin. Companies do all kinds of things with scents from idols when they debut - sometimes they mask them, sometimes they enhance them, sometimes they conceal them only to formally debut scents separately years down the line with a fragrance collection to drive up drying demand. In their case, managers gave them scent blockers for now, but Namjoon didn’t get the sense they’d completely decided what to do in the long run. It felt too hurried, too frantic the way someone had to help Jeongguk apply his a second then third time because he was the most recently presented and therefore had the strongest scent.

They tied a scarf around his neck because the skin there looked rubbed raw.

Like a ribbon on a present.

Namjoon thought their maknae might be the first to lose his cool, seated as far as possible from Seokjin, but the young alpha has been nothing but accommodating to all fans alike - the sweet ones who ask the innocent questions and the pushier ones who know he’s the youngest, potentially the weakest link. Jeongguk does nothing but smile and offer to sign their album.

Their first album.

The physical copies of which Namjoon tries not to crush in his hand when fans push them there. Good and bad. There’s a pretty enough omega doing her best to catch Namjoon’s direct eye as she shyly offers her name, but the snark of the previous comment sits heavier and heavier over his shoulders, especially since that same alpha fan who looked at him like he was nothing is now catching up Seokjin so cordially.

By the time the event is over, Namjoon’s anger dissipates and he is left with nothing. He’s so tired he has to push himself up from the table, push himself along the wall out the back door. In the car he curls up into the window and at home collapses face first into his bed with the aid of Hoseok and Yoongi. He feels them loitering there, standing behind his back and no doubt making concerned faces at each other.

Namjoon pulls his bed cover over his head and hides.

For five hours, the most he’s allowed to sleep, but it’s more than he’s had for weeks.

Everyone looks increasingly worse for wear. Tired, thin, strung out by nothing by exhaustion and -

“Ruts are coming up.”

Namjoon groans out loud in a way he doesn’t mean to. Not in public. He managed to haul his ass up, put some (slightly more) fresh clothing on, baggy pants and baggier hoodie. Even though he knows he isn’t sick with anything contagious, he throws on a face mask as a warning for others to keep their distance.

And it works.

Arms crossed, slumped over in a chair, even management looks a little weary of him.

“Yoongi is due next,” they continue, eyeing Namjoon though. “Won’t be long after that Namjoon should cycle through one, and then we have Hoseok’s heat probably.”

“Are we sure Joon hyung isn’t prerut right now?” Jeongguk asks from the safety of the other side of the table.

No one says anything, just some stifled shuffling, and Namjoon would bristle if he had the energy.

A hand gently touches his ankle, barely hanging off the chair. For some reason, Namjoon is surprised to see Seokjin’s worried face looking back at him. He doesn’t know why he feels surprise, and it makes him feel worse, emptier. Seokjin has been nothing but understanding even if he keeps his professional boundaries up.

When their meeting is over, half of their team looks dejected over the fact they don’t have another immediate music show booked while the other half looks gleeful at the idea of pushing the seven of them back into the studio to lay down new tracks. The members themselves cluster loosely around Namjoon, Seokjin stepping up to feel at his forehead, frowning.

“You don’t feel feverish,” he comments. Behind him, Jeongguk peers at Namjoon neutrally. Must be hard for him.

“It’s not rut.” Namjoon pulls away from his reach.

Taehyung watches, the furthest from all of them. Would he be happy if Namjoon went into rut? Probably not, right? Not if Jimin is the one assigned to help him through it, and whatever he’s got going on with the beta could stay between them if they want. No one else will need a partner - now that Jeongguk’s presented and will be of age soon and Seokjin not due for a heat before that. Namjoon wanted to foist Taehyung off on Jeongguk until it became abundantly clear how imprinted Jeongguk was upon Seokjin, but here’s the solution: Jimin. Jimin will take care of Taehyung and Namjoon can take care of himself.

It all worked out in the end.

“I’m just tired,” he mumbles, shuffling his way towards the studio where he assumes Yoongi will follow.

“Hey, Joon. Joonie, just rest, yeah?” Yoongi says gently, and for an alpha to sound gentle close to rut?

Guess that answers how close he is. Hoseok isn’t even in the room with them.

Still, he feels a little delirious as the closest thing to a friend he has in Seoul pushes him down in the corner to rest his eyes.

He falls asleep to the sounds of bass, and when he wakes up it’s to quiet whispers.

Jeongguk and Seokjin stand in front of him. “Shouldn’t you two be off somewhere eyefucking in denial? Or, excuse me - denial only for one of you.”

Seokjin glows red. Surprisingly, perhaps Jeongguk moreso.

“Kim Namjoon, you will not speak to any of your bandmates that way!” Seokjin hisses. Jeongguk gives him no warning when he pulls him roughly off the floor.

“We’re taking you home,” Jeongguk says. Despite how close they are, bodies smashed together, the younger alpha doesn’t look him in the eye.

Namjoon pants behind his face mask. Seokjin rips it down under his chin, peering at him momentarily before yanking the mask back up. “You need to sleep in a bed and drink some broth. Steam would be good for your lungs, but…”

But their shitty water in the dorm is never reliable for hot water. Not to mention, it’s getting too warm out for Namjoon to voluntarily take hot showers.

He must look close to death; Jeongguk voluntarily carries him down the block strung across his back. The distance from their building to their dorm isn’t much at all, but he knows Jeongguk must be pissed.

It’s quiet in their foyer/living room/kitchen space extraordinaire. Namjoon glances at the time in the kitchen - only three in the afternoon. No wonder. “Put me - put me down!” Namjoon flails, sliding off Jeongguk’s back to the floor on his ass.

Oh.

This is good. This is fine. Right here-

“Nope! Kim Namjoon, a bed, I said!” Seokjin claps his hands at him. “I’m heating something up for you, then leaving. Stay here. Be good. No working. Jeongguk-ah-”

There is a hissing, fizzing, spitting noise in his ear. Hands try to pick him up, but they’re home. He’s home. He can crawl into his bed by himself, thank you.

The hands drop him unceremoniously.

Ow. That time it hurt.

Later, he certainly wishes he had let Jeongguk help him into bed.

When he wakes up, it’s to a lot of hushed voices and shuffling all around him. It takes him a second to open one eye, crusted and sticky with sleep. When he looks up, he realizes he’s fucked up immediately, because from where he lies he has a clear view of his own bed, well across the room.

“Hyung.” Taehyung crouches from a stand before him, looking at him with such a soft look that makes him violently ill. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. I’m fine.” Namjoon aches. Maybe he is sick? Like, really sick?

“You feel fine and that’s why you’re in my bed?” Taehyung asks, eyebrow raised. Behind him, Jimin wearily watches Namjoon as he crosses the room in three strides to his bunk, heaving himself up.

Hoseok gently catches his dangling foot and holds it for a brief moment before letting go.

Taehyung is dressed in one of his favorite pj sets, meaning this group has been home for awhile and they’ve all been giggling to themselves over the fact that yes, Namjoon apparently picked out Taehyung’s bed for a nap, and he can’t even lie and say it’s the softest or the cleanest or the nicest smelling, because honestly they all know that would be Hoseok’s bed, and there’s no way on earth that Namjoon would brave crawling into that bed.

None would survive that. Innocent lives would not be spared.

“I’m - sorry.” Namjoon stumbles out of Taehyung’s bed. Christ, his bunk must be the lowest to the ground. Does he need to fix something? Fuck, he can’t fix anything, but maybe he can get someone else to fix it. Yoongi.

“It’s fine. You don’t need to apologize,” Taehyung says, but he doesn’t sound particularly happy about it. “But - can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

He asks. In front of everyone!

Namjoon glances around nervously. None of their bandmates look at them, all pretending to be asleep or in Yoongi’s case just scrolling mindlessly on his phone. “I am sorry though. You can have your bed back. I’ll wash your sheets in the morning if you want.”

Taehyung bristles, shoulders rising but Namjoon peeks under the wide collar of his top how thin his collarbones are. “I just asked if I could sleep in your bed. Do you think I care about that?”

“What? Germs?” Doesn’t everyone in this room care about germs? Namjoon always seems to be outnumbered when he asks if he can have a swig of someone’s water at practice.

“I don’t feel well myself and I would like to sleep in your bed,” Taehyung grinds out carefully, hands curled into a fist. Namjoon almost reaches for one. He needs to wake up and snap out of it.

“But why? With or without me?” Namjoon asks, genuinely confused. Someone in the room snorts.

Their final to-be omega makes a noise - almost like a growling noise? - and Namjoon’s kneejerk thought is: cute.

Namjoon wipes the dopey little grin off his face as Taehyung turns his back on him and marches over to Namjoon’s bed, diving under his cover and not emerging.

“Um…”

“Namjoon! Turn off the light!” Yoongi yells. Namjoon can hear there is no real heat to it; maybe the rapper tries to deflect attention off him by suggesting he make it dark.

Namjoon turns it off then waddles out to the kitchen to mope. After a quick snack and chugging enough water that he feels full enough, he returns to the bedroom to face a dilemma.

Then feels stupid for thinking about it as a dilemma.

He crawls into his bed, careful of all of Taehyung’s limbs, but as if expecting this outcome, Taehyung lies at the edge of the mattress, curled into the wall with plenty of space for Namjoon to join him on his side.

This is his bed.

It would look worse for him to return to Taehyung’s, he tells himself.

It isn’t until the following morning when he wakes up, halfway to feeling like a properly refreshed and well slept person again, that he recalls Taehyung saying he wasn’t well the previous evening. It’s obvious, in that during prior renditions of this rendezvous, Taehyung always tried to be out of bed before Namjoon, as if scared to break the spell.

This morning, Taehyung remains face down in the alpha’s pillow, unmoving and uncaring if Namjoon finds him still there. He must be confident that he won’t get thrown out, and he’s right - what kind of leader would throw a sick bandmate out of their bed?

“Tae. Tae-ah.” Namjoon stretches leisurely without the eyes of anyone else on him. Christ. He would be a totally different person if he got this much rest every night. He feels back to normal, and everyone’s fears about him being prerut or being ill were unfounded, as he suspected.

But Taehyung?

“Tae. Hon - honey.” Namjoon knows he slipped once before, the night two of the three omegas were out at the bar by themselves, but if Taehyung is sick enough he needs the comfort. “Tae. Baby?”

A whimper.

Namjoon tenses.

Already he understands he fucked up.

When Taehyung sits up, still curled up in Namjoon’s comforter, more than half a decade old and swiped from his childhood home although it no longer smells it, he reveals his face, full of tears.

Ah, shit! Namjoon did not sign up for tears this early in the morning! He thought there was regular illness afoot, not - emotional illness.

“Shit, what is it?” he asks, a hearty sweat already breaking out on the back of his neck. “What’s wrong?”

But Taehyung, looking both so sweet and so utterly miserable at the same time, just shakes his head. “Will you get hyung for me?” he asks, voice just as watery and thin.

“Hyung?”

“Jin hyung.”

“Right!” Anything to get out of whatever trap he’s been sleeping in.

Except - Seokjin isn’t there. He’s gone already for the day, probably attending a cram session since his degree is almost complete. “It’s okay,” Taehyung says, a lump on his mattress. Only the tip of his nose and his eyes are visible despite the quickly rising temperature in the room.

He wiggles out of bed, still wrapped up. “I’m keeping the blanket though.”

“Keep it, keep it!” Namjoon insists, hands up.

“Forever, maybe.”

“That’s fine!”

It isn’t fine when Namjoon goes to bed later that night, in his own bed, no cover and no top sheet. Taehyung rests in his own bed, granted the day off in addition to Jimin.

Namjoon can smell that Jimin laid in that bed with the omega.

“Illness is all around us,” Hoseok declares, eyes narrowed behind his face mask, cleaner in one hand and a rag in the other, furiously wiping down any and all surfaces at random.

“I’m shocked you’re still here,” Jeongguk comments, tonight’s chef since Seokjin studies on through the night.

“My babies need me,” Hoseok says bravely, disappearing into the bedroom to check on them. He comes back a few minutes later. “They aren’t hungry right now.”

“Shocker.” Jeongguk turns their single burner off.

“What’s going on?” Namjoon asks. “Am I missing something?”

The look Jeongguk gives him, and next to him, Hoseok.

Namjoon shrinks back while the omega in the room twists his hands together as if friction will chase away germs and anything else. Jeongguk looks between them, then shakes his head. “Dinner’s done. You guys eat first. I’ll be back.”

He disappears through the dark doorway, their maknae line cloistered together with a door shut between them.

Namjoon is reminded of what Jeongguk said to him almost a year ago already - a promise to be a better alpha than he could ever be.

“Do you ever doubt you understand a single thing?” Namjoon asks Hoseok. His rapper cohort removes his gloves to vigorously wash his hands.

“All the time. Come and eat. We can’t afford you getting any worse.”

“I’m fine,” Namjoon promises, but allows Hoseok to push him into a seat to receive a bowl of rice with an egg on top, chopped scallions and sesame seeds a trademark of Seokjin attempting to dress up their bland food and now adopted by Jeongguk in his absence.

Like he insisted, Namjoon is fine. He isn’t sick, he just needed rest. Seemingly, Taehyung and Jimin too fall under the same category - both barely standing one moment then leaping out of the room the next. Taehyung even smiles at them all so easily again. It feels like - feels like before Namjoon pushed him away, sitting on the dirty floor of their old dance studio that’s been upgraded for their slightly newer, slightly bigger space.

It’s strange.

They’re still all nobodies, but they’ve made it this far. Debuted. Put out their first album, a mini album in the works. Appeared on music shows in more than one country, held a fan meet where people actually came, and yet - they’re nothing.

They don’t need to feel so defeated.

It comes naturally.

Yoongi doom-spirals on the internet, looking at message boards and forums, looking for traces or the barest illusion of shade and insult that might be aimed at them. Namjoon finds him holed up in that tiny studio they reserved for him - the worst room in the entire building, a corner closet in the basement with no light and hardly any air filtration. It’s stifling hot and stifling cold in equal measure and the rooms are painted black so one can truly appreciate the feeling of being buried alive.

There is still comfort to be had there, though. Technically, the studio is for Yoongi, a budding producer, a wannabe producer as he always grumbles under his breath at dance practice, but it’s the only designated space for any of them in the company building, and that makes it all their own. Mostly, it’s Namjoon and Hoseok down there with the alpha, but vocal line passes through when they need a place to hide.

Namjoon feels helpful when Jeongguk asks him something for a sociology class he’s taking, and he gets to sit and listen to Taehyung humming something soothing in the background, half curled up under Yoongi’s desk despite the alpha’s insistence he can’t sit under his precious equipment like that. Jimin comes in, sweaty from extra dance practice, squeezing in between him and Hoseok.

Hoseok sniffs. “You could pass for an omega.”

“Are you calling the finer subgender smelly, hyung?” Taehyung asks, everything obscured in shadow except two bony knees.

“I just like the way my Jiminie smells.” Hoseok fake growls, careening into Jimin’s side and playfully nipping at his neck. Hoseok might be physically affectionate with all of them - he even tries to hold Namjoon’s hand sometimes - but something about the way Jimin smiles and turns towards the omega in return makes him pause.

Quickly, he turns to look at Taehyung, but there is nothing to see on his face. He looks up at Yoongi and again - nothing to see. Yoongi watches the omega he’s fawned over for the past year fawn over someone else and nothing. He doesn’t look happy, he just looks - nothing.

Namjoon doesn’t understand the dance they’re in, not when Taehyung crawls out from under the desk and quietly asks Namjoon if he’d help him carry some items home. Said items were mostly empty wrappers in a plastic bag, purchased by their maknae if Namjoon had to guess, based on the brands of wrappers in it. They are all of Seokjin’s favorites, but Seokjin doesn’t buy junk food, he merely accepts it in times of high stress.

Frustrated, Namjoon doesn’t speak to Taehyung at home, instead resigning to finish his last paper and submit it before going back to the company office. It isn’t until almost a week later that he understands.

“What else am I missing?” Namjoon asks aloud, to no one, even if Jeongguk and Taehyung give him sympathetic looks. What are you doing, Taehyung? he so wishes he could yell at the singer, yell at their bandmates, yell at anyone who would listen.

What he wouldn’t give to ask, because Yoongi wakes up with a fever in the middle of the night, and by morning they have to rush him out of the dorm into a manager’s private car because he is spiraling into rut so quickly. Hoseok isn’t allowed to join him until later in the day because he’s in charge of teaching a group of trainees dance basics since apparently the company can’t even afford full time instructors, but Jimin follows him almost immediately to meet the rutting alpha.

“So, he’ll be back soon?” Namjoon asks when Jeongguk explains the situation. “Once Hobi gets to the suite, Jimin will be back. Is he teaching Hobi’s dancers until they’re all back? I bet Yoongi’s rut will be done within two nights.”

Two nights is optimistic.

“No, Jimin isn’t coming back,” Jeongguk says.

“Huh?” Namjoon is already down his rapline partners - he’s about to hold the line for the next few days if he’s lucky, and he’s prepared for that, but Jimin?

Namjoon feels the way Taehyung shifts from across the break room. Despite the smaller number, they all felt weird crowding into Yoongi’s studio without the alpha there, so until they’re ready to crash for the night, they’ve made due in a room stuffed full of trainees and the occasional interloper from management.

“Jimin is staying,” Jeongguk says. Same thing, different words, but Namjoon does not compute. He looks over to Seokjin, still in the building after his vocal coaching because he was too tired to track to campus.

“Jimin won’t be back until Yoongi and Hoseok are back,” the omega says shortly, typing away frantically at his laptop.

“But-” Namjoon looks for Taehyung, currently chatting with a trainee that’s probably his age, another beta. Does Taehyung have a thing for betas? “Why? Hoseok’s handled a rut before. They don’t need Jimin-”

“What do you know about what Yoongi needs in rut?” Seokjin asks succinctly, and Namjoon succinctly shuts up.

It’s too quiet without the three of them in their dorm.

Taehyung slips out of the bedroom into the living room, Namjoon’s comforter from middle school still tucked around him like a moving cocoon.

Neither Seokjin or Jeongguk bat an eye at this.

It’s hot out.

Namjoon doesn’t understand the need for it. Already he is cursed by the sight of everyone’s pale legs as they shuffle about in their dorm halfway nude.

Then he catches Taehyung dry heaving over the toilet the next day. “Shit! Are you still sick?” he asks, automatically reaching for Taehyung’s forehead. He seemed fine the day before, and the day before that… Just what is going around that plagues people off and on like this?

“I’m fine,” Taehyung says. Namjoon can’t tell if he’s making fun of him and his bravado, but the omega stands up and exits the bathroom as if unworried about heaving again.

Jeongguk at least looks equally worried. “Do you know what’s going on with Tae?” he asks Namjoon the day after. The omega in question shuffled into practice that day wearing a new sweater he was excited about - borrowed from a stylist. He did not look ill, but Namjoon still wonders why he’s so covered in the now nearly summer months.

“I don’t know anything,” Namjoon replies.

Jeongguk scowls. “Hyung.” He fidgets, and Namjoon braces himself for a lecture from a maknae. Instead, Jeongguk asks, “Chocolate, right? For Jin hyung’s cake? It should be chocolate? Or should I get something fancier? I know he likes chocolate most, but I could always get a dark chocolate and caramel or something extra.”

“Hm?”

“For his graduation.” Jeongguk blinks at him, then narrows his eyes. “He graduates next week. Everyone should be back to normal by then. We’re celebrating.”

Right. “Do you want money for it?” Namjoon has a tiny bit of spare cash he can part with. Enough that it’s worth spending to make himself feel good.

Jeongguk doesn’t reply. About that. “Just do your job. Keep an eye out for everyone, including Tae.”

Three nights into Yoongi’s rut and they hear nothing from their three missing members. It’s eery just the four of them; Namjoon apparently got used to the feeling of packed sardines, and he misses Hoseok’s raucous laughter, Jimin’s floating presence where it’s most needed, and even Yoongi’s alpha musk. Truly. Namjoon never thought he’d miss it, although maybe he can miss it only in the presence of Jeongguk’s overwhelming baby alpha scent. He reeks. All the time.

Who doesn’t seem to mind?

Seokjin finishes his coursework. All he has to do is walk and attend his ceremony. It feels cruel to see him punished in the company building, expected to make up for every second that he missed for his exams tenfold. Namjoon exits Yoongi’s studio to see Jeongguk walking at the brisk pace of a run towards him, face furious. “Leadernim, your presence is required.”

In a recording booth, Namjoon finds a producer standing over a teary eyed Seokjin, hair limp and unwashed, posture slumped so he looks half of what he is. Next to him, Taehyung stands folded in with his arms crossed, more openly weeping, rocking a little back and forth so he is hidden by his omega hyung and hiding him in return.

“What’s going on?” Namjoon asks. The way Taehyung’s head whips towards him, hair flinging outward in a halo of relaxing curls - he looks so hopeful. He looks at Namjoon like he is still the answer. It makes Namjoon step in closer, reflexively putting himself in between the omegas and the producer.

“What’s going on?” the guy laughs. He’s an alpha too, a measly one who at his prime in his thirties probably weighs the same as Namjoon.

Behind him, Jeongguk crowds the guy from the other side. Jeongguk, who not long ago was easily shorter than him and now stands just as tall. He’s still youthfully lean, growing into his limbs which often still look puppet-like until he sets up front to take point on dance, but Namjoon has a feeling Jeongguk might surpass him in muscle mass eventually.

The producer laughs. “What’s going on is a complete lack of professionalism. I needed these demo tracks laid last week, and I don’t have time for this!”

He doesn’t even specify what the issue is, just gestures past Namjoon as if omegas are the problem just by inclusion into the group.

“It stinks in here!” Jeongguk growls out. And it does.

It stinks of fear.

“Tae-ah?” Namjoon doesn’t look at him, keeps his eyes on the guy, this producer who isn’t even on full time contract with him. Namjoon doesn’t have a lot of power, but he knows this: the company has to keep them. They don’t have to keep this producer.

The cloud of scent in the room is partially this alpha, and yes, partially Seokjin, but mostly there is something overriding it, foreign. It has to be Taehyung, scent not clearly expressed while unpresented.

A couple of fingers push into the back of his hand. A tiny weight, that of a blunt object, pushes against his shoulder. Taehyung’s head.

Good.

He doesn’t need to look at the guy’s ugly mug any longer. “They’re taking a break, and I’m calling PD.”

“What do you think daddy’s going to do for them?” The guy rolls his eyes, but crosses his arms, probably a little nervous. Even if they’re no ones in the grand scheme of things, they mean something to Bang Sihyuk.

Jeongguk ushers them out, and Seokjin lets him crowd him in Yoongi’s studio, pushing the omega into the only real chair in the room and crouching before him, idly rubbing his wrist along Seokjin’s bare ankle in a way that Namjoon can’t tell if he’s aware or not.

When he steps out in the hall to make the call, Taehyung follows, pressed close, so close it’s hard for Namjoon to wiggle his phone free of his back pocket. Namjoon lets him, because what else can he give him when he won’t even ask what happened?

“Hey.” Namjoon hears his boss, his real boss, pick up the call and wait on him. The only place Namjoon has to look are Taehyung’s eyes, the corners of his mouth. They’re pointed in the wrong direction.

PD calls his name once, twice, but Namjoon can’t remember what he needed to say. His body sways and Taehyung’s rocks.

A wall catches them.

Taehyung’s nose touches Namjoon’s nose. He has to catch Taehyung by the back of his neck.

“Kim Namjoon?” Bang PD says, more sharply this time, about to hang up the phone.

“Do we need that producer we contracted out of Osan?” Namjoon asks. Taehyung trembles under his hold, knees giving out. Cursing, Namjoon struggles to catch him and keep the phone to his ear. “Like, have to keep him?”

It’s quiet on the line. Maybe PD listens to the sounds of Namjoon touching Taehyung and Taehyung’s hands barely skimming his arms, chest. He does none of the work to keep himself standing. “No. We can let him go anytime.”

“Great. He’s gone.” Namjoon hangs up the line well aware there will be repercussions later, but he needs both hands right now. “Hey. Tae. Baby.”

The cry out of Taehyung comes from deep in his chest; Namjoon knows because they’re all required to warm up their vocal chords together, sing and groan and growl from deep in their stomach. This is a sound punched right out of it, from Taehyung’s lips to his.

“Whoa, what is it? Tae?” Namjoon cradles Taehyung to his chest, sliding down the wall into a seated position. With the omega strung across his lap, he realizes someone entered the hall on the other end of it, saw them, then turned back around. “You’re - scaring me. Tae?”

“You care. You care.” Taehyung turns his face into the softest part of Namjoon’s stomach and nuzzles there. The alpha thinks he would have preferred a simple kiss.

“Of - of course I care, Taehyung. Did he say something? Do - something? Taehyung!” Namjoon tugs at the baggy fit of his dongsaeng’s pants. “Is he why you don’t wear skirts anymore?”

The omega wraps his arms around Namjoon’s waist and then he can’t see his face at all. Heaving a sigh, he can only wait. Wait and then wait some more. He waited for debuted and now he’s supposed to wait for Taehyung.

Jeongguk opens the door and peeks out at him. Are you okay, he mouths, and Namjoon nods. You?

Jeongguk shrugs, but Namjoon has a nose, and what he smells is decidedly different from what he stumbled into an hour ago. In his lap, Taehyung rests. Rest with or without sleeping, Namjoon isn’t sure, but with his bandmate in his lap it keeps him from doing something stupid. He only hopes that by the time he gets up, Bang PD will have called that producer, because Namjoon won’t be able to keep away. He’ll need to investigate. That’s his job. It’s his right - as leader. As alpha.

It’s not much, probably not enough, but Seokjin and Taehyung are called in the next morning to work the same track but with someone else, another alpha producer who Namjoon at least knows. He sits in the back of the booth behind the guy for part of the morning when he could be working on mixing something for Yoongi, but listening to the way Taehyung’s deeper velvet meets the chimes of Seokjin’s vocals moves something in him to stay. How will he have fans when they have this?

Even today, it’s warm outside, and despite all the air conditioning in the world, these rooms get stuffy quickly with multiple people inside them. It matters not - Taehyung stands on his side of the glass in his big overcoat, something long and loose and brown that would make most people look like a grandfather. His lightened hair isn’t as curly as it was a day ago, two days ago, certainly not three or four days ago.

It holds something in Namjoon’s chest to think about the way he could calculate the curvature of Taehyung’s curls. What a ridiculous thing to think about and notice, but he sees this person every day and after every shower. With every morning they come undone, a little looser, a little freer, and something in Namjoon coils tighter.

Some things used to be easy to ignore.

Seokjin slides down the wall to sit next to him and watch. It’s a quiet, and for once, easy feeling of ignorance between them. He knows Seokjin is tired. He radiates fatigue in a paradoxical way that seems only befitting of their eldest.

“Congratulations on finishing your course work,” Namjoon finally says. Their eyes stay on Taehyung, nodding along to the instructions his vocal coach offers, a newcomer to the company but a very sweet beta.

Taehyung gurgles out some kind of noise, tilting his head back and forth.

“If something happens to this, at least you have options,” Namjoon says, snorting softly himself. The omega doesn’t reply, but Namjoon notices he isn’t watching Taehyung at all. His eyes alternate between the coach and the producer.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Namjoon might as well be talking to the wall, alone and tucked up safely in Yoongi's studio.

The producer and coach might overhear their whispers, but right now they laugh between the two of them and Namjoon has to wonder at whose expense.

Seokjin still doesn’t say anything.

But.

At least.

No one smells fearful this morning.

Namjoon stands. “Jeongguk’s planning a surprise party for you.”

It’s that night that he gets a message from Yoongi that they’re back home at the dorm, everything done and over with. Or, as done as any rut can be until andropause. It’s early enough in the evening that everyone will be awake but late enough that their managers won’t make the three come in for anything, so Namjoon makes his excuses after a meeting is over and begs off more studio time.

In the dorm, Seokjin and Jeongguk cook in the kitchen while Hoseok and Jimin sit close by at their little coffee table. Hoseok in particular squirms, unable to sit still or get comfortable, but Jimin has more marks on him. On his neck, but also visible on his wrists and arms. Namjoon recalls the dark bruises on Seokjin after Jeongguk grabbed him prerut, and they didn’t even spend a single night together. What do the rest of their bodies look like?

Yoongi quietly enters from down the hall, rubbing his damp hair with a tiny towel that he’s pretty sure used to be Jeongguk’s and now belongs to everyone, because there is only one thing Jeon Jeongguk cares enough to be possessive over.

“Hey,” his alpha cohort doesn’t even sound the same. He looks and sounds different but Namjoon wouldn’t know what to pinpoint other than the way both Hoseok and Jimin sit up straighter as soon as he’s in their sight.

“Hey.” Something in Namjoon’s body breaks.

He knows one thing it is not.

“It’s good to have you home.” Namjoon means it. He needs Yoongi. He needs Yoongi and Hoseok and Jimin.

Jimin yells when Jeongguk throws something at his head from the kitchen, Seokjin wordlessly chastising him with a gentle hand on his which lends itself to a scene from a movie that Namjoon never wanted to watch, the baby alpha all big eyes and eager, his whole world visibly shifting to rotate right where it belongs.

And Jimin.

Jimin.

“Where’s Taehyung?” Namjoon asks. He should be here. Where?

No one answers, sparing him only a brief look before they all turn to each other. What’s happening? “Where is he?”

“Aw, Joonie.” Hoseok squirms when Yoongi sits next to him, pulling him into his lap. Namjoon feels nauseous. “Last I talked to him, he said he had a meeting.”

“Solo?” It’s not outside of possibility, but also - why would Taehyung require a meeting on his own? For what purpose?

“He said he’d be home late,” Jeongguk pipes up, free of his mortal coil when Seokjin tells him to go sit down. “Said not to wait up.”

The group of six eats together before separating. Seokjin meets up with his family coming in town for the graduation, Jeongguk leaves to go to the library with one week of class left, and the three freshly returned members sit on top of each other while they look through the notes that their managers forwarded them so they can start first thing in the morning as if they’ve missed nothing and haven’t become something else.

But where’s Taehyung?

He’s the only one unaccounted for.

He doesn't have a reason not to be here, home.

Namjoon walks out the door, down the street, and back into the company building, thankful for its proximity in a different way this evening. He did not run, but the way he breaks out into the sweat of a heavy performance perfumes his presence, a trainee startling when he swings open the door into the first dance studio, then a second breakroom, because Taehyung isn’t in any of the meeting rooms. He isn’t in a recording booth.

Yoongi’s studio is in the furthest reach of the building and Namjoon is so sure that’s where he is, but he punches in the code too quickly on the first attempt. “Tae?” he calls through the door. Second attempt, the door opens, but there’s nothing inside except the contraband bottle of half drunk tea on the floor that he meant to clear out before Yoongi came back.

“Kim Taehyung!” he yells in the corridor, unsure where to look next. Maybe Taehyung left the building. What if he missed him and Taehyung was on his way home already? At this point, it’s properly late. There are no meetings this time of night, because this time of night is precious for executives and idols alike, albeit in different ways.

A kid Namjoon has never seen before pokes their head out of a room to yell: “He was sick in the bathroom earlier.”

Namjoon points in the direction of the bathroom on this floor, but they shake their head. “Third floor.”

Third floor? There wasn’t much on the third floor for them. There was a general use room that maybe they met in, but other than that there was only the makeshift infirmary. By virtue of the building operating 24/7 for those who need or want to be there, the med room is always open. Not always staffed, but always open in case someone needs an ice pack or bandage even off hours.

That’s where Namjoon finds him, curled up asleep on the bed in the corner, lights off. “Tae?” He doesn’t think to grab a face mask when he passes them, so Namjoon yanks up the collar of his shirt over his nose and leans over.

“Taehyung, I’ve been looking for you!” Namjoon huffs, a little sick himself. Why? He’s clearly fine, right here tucked away safely in a room to himself.

A drowsy Taehyung rustles about until the thin cover on the bed. “You have?” He rubs his eyes, glancing at his phone. When the light disrupts the dark of the room, Taehyung winces. “I don’t have any messages.”

Right. It would have been easier to have called him, but Namjoon didn’t even think about it. He needed to see him in person. “How sick are you? Did they tell you to sleep here?” Namjoon scoffs. This is no place for an ill person to recover! It’s dark and honestly dank. A little depressing. There’s no one there to watch out for him, and Taehyung is his responsibility.

Taehyung shakes his head. “No. I just -” He lets out a breathy whine. It does something to the alpha’s knees. “I felt lightheaded earlier. Decided to lie down for a while.”

“Why didn’t you call?” Namjoon asks, aspirated.

“You already left.” His voice sounds tiny.

“I would have come back. C’mon. Up.” Namjoon gently takes him by the wrist, slides one arm under Taehyung’s legs. His brain planned to only drag Taehyung’s feet to the ground and help him stand, but before he realizes it, he has him in a bridal carry in both arms.

“Can you carry me all the way back like this?” Taehyung asks, face very, very close to his.

So now Namjoon has to. “Of course.” If his voice takes on a little bit of a growl he will be able to blame it on incoming illness. “Our missing three are back,” he says as they walk. Honestly, Taehyung may be slight, but he’s still heavy after a block. Thankfully, there is only one more to go.

The passenger in his arms tucks his nose into the base of his throat. Namjoon sweats. He sweats so much. “Tae. Tae-ah - your meeting this evening, was it - was it about that producer?” Namjoon knew making that phone call might backfire, but he assumed it would be on him.

The nose in his jugular shakes. “No, hyung. It wasn’t about that at all.”

“Good. That’s - good.” When Namjoon swallows, the apple of his throat touches Taehyung in what could be a kiss.

“You’ll be in rut soon, too,” Taehyung whispers. Namjoon has to stop to heave Taehyung back up in his arms even though their building is easily within sight.

“Tae, baby, are you alright? Will you be alright?” Namjoon isn’t sure he should be exposing them all like this, but he also knows whatever Taehyung has, he should be comfortable while he gets better, and surely the others agree. There’s been a lot of illness going around, but they’ve all been patient, and Namjoon needs to keep an eye on everyone.

“I’ll be fine. Just put me to bed.” He doesn’t have to specify which bed.

In their bedroom, Namjoon puts him down only after retrieving his own comforter from Taehyung’s bed and wrapping it around him under the thin sheet he’s been using. It’s a ridiculous sight. In Hoseok’s bed, it’s Jimin who sleeps with him, Yoongi surprisingly curled up in the bunk on top.

Neither Seokjin or Jeongguk are home, which on their oldest’s part isn’t surprising. He said he might spend the night with family, but if Jeongguk isn’t back soon, Namjoon will need to message him too.

Namjoon hops back and forth, unsure if he should give in and just crawl into his own bed or sleep out on the couch. He knows which Taehyung would prefer and that makes it impossible.

He lies awake waiting to hear their youngest arrive safely, and once he hears the lock on the door and the shitty handle wiggle open, he closes his eyes for good that night, tucked into an unfamiliar smell on a very familiar item in his arms.

Before he gets out of bed the next day, Namjoon has to wonder if it will be the same - Taehyung suddenly looking and acting so much better, brighter, but in the morning, while the bed is empty, their youngest omega slumps about. On the floor, on the couch. He cradles his lower stomach in such a way that goosebumps break out on the backs of his arms, the hair on his nape stands up.

“Tae-yah,” Seokjin softly croons in the bathroom with Taehyung once he’s home.

They left the door cracked out for all to hear. Why? Is Seokjin getting back at him?

“Do you think it’s time?” the older omega asks the to-be omega, and they all know. They all have wondered the same thing. Taehyung is a late presenter already.

Namjoon has nowhere to hide. Now Yoongi is back and parked in his studio and every time he’s home someone, usually Jeongguk or Seokjin, cooks a feast but it isn’t anything they want anyone to touch “until it’s time,” but Namjoon sees his favorites mixed in with what he can only assume are Taehyung’s. In the company building, Jimin somehow appears everywhere in every dance studio, in the gym at all hours, as if to corral Namjoon in the other direction but it’s Hoseok following him with a packed lunch.

“You will be home tomorrow night for Seokjin’s party?” Hoseok asks, crouched down next to Namjoon on the sweaty gym mats. If he looks at just the right angle there is definition to his biceps now. Namjoon flexes and ignores.

Hoseok reaches out to pinch, right in the swell of his arm, but there isn’t much to grab after all.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be there. I’ll play nice and everything.”

Hoseok stays quiet by his side. The door opens and shuts with the arrival of a boisterous group of omegas, younger than Taehyung or Jeongguk. They giggle and sway together, sweet smelling. They greet Hoseok, but everyone greets Hoseok easily.

Namjoon crawls to Yoongi, sitting in the dark, face mask and hat pulled down low even when he’s alone in four walls. “What was it like?” Namjoon asks.

Yoongi hums while clicking through files. “What? Having days off? Or ‘off.’”

Namjoon thunks his head against the wall. Does it again. And again. He knows he’s inexperienced in almost everything that matters to most of his peers, but this is the one room where he isn’t inexperienced. Music he knows. Music is the thing he can easily walk, run, or skip circles around everyone else.

“I mean - having two. Omega and beta. You already shared a heat with an omega, but then -” Namjoon cuts himself off. He isn’t sure what he’s asking, just knows that there are things he doesn’t.

Yoongi is quiet, but he must be listening. He stopped moving, hand on his mouse but no longer clicking manically through things that are finished and perfect and things that are unfinished and almost equally perfect.

“It was a lot.” Yoongi’s voice hums in at the same frequency as computer machine and if Namjoon closed his eyes and lost himself he would hum in harmony. It would be easy. “Intense, and I wasn’t fully conscious during most of it.”

Intense is how Yoongi described Hoseok’s heat. When it was just the two of them. “I can’t imagine.”

Yoongi turns in his swivel chair to face him, eyes quietly narrowed down at him. Maybe he smells the faint touch of Hoseok on him from earlier.

“Jimin is still here for you,” he says, and Namjoon startles.

“Wha-”

“We aren’t trying to covet him or whatever. Jimin understands he’s responsible for everyone in his own way.”

Namjoon flushes, hot on his skin and hot in his belly. “That’s not - why would you say that? He actually likes you!”

“What’s that have to do with it?” Yoongi frowns, as if he’s actually stupid. He isn’t.

“You don’t get to push him away!”

Yoongi laughs in his face. “You don’t get to talk about that.”

Namjoon bites his lip. “He wanted to spend your rut with you, even though you have Hoseok.”

Yoongi shrugs and that makes Namjoon want to laugh, because no matter what, they will always be more alike than different. “Hoseokie wasn’t in heat. It’s a lot if an omega isn’t in heat. They can handle it, sure, but.”

“That’s a load of bullshit, and you know it.” Betas are designed in groups like theirs to assist as needed, but usually if a rutting alpha has an available omega in the group, they don’t take the beta too.

“What do you want me to say? Jimin was there for Hoseok, to make sure his needs were met.”

Bullshit.

But what exactly can Namjoon make of Jimin? The way he brushes against Yoongi to curl into Hoseok, in dance, in bed, but also the way he kissed Taehyung -

Jimin didn’t just kiss Taehyung.

He taught him how to kiss.

Namjoon could save Jimin for Taehyung, but he can’t keep Jimin from Yoongi or Hoseok if they want him. He can make due with little, but he won’t let Taehyung go with so little.

“Joon-ah.” Yoongi stands, crowding into his space in the dark in a way that Namjoon can only grind down on his teeth. “They’re right, you know. You’re getting close to rut too, and you don’t need to worry. You’ll be fine. I know it’s your first -”

Namjoon growls, slapping a hand over his mouth. Yoongi only chuckles. “I know it’s your first with a partner, but he’s there for you. Let him be. It can really be that simple.”

“It was simple for you.” That doesn’t mean anything for Namjoon. “You and Hoseok knew before anyone else. You got along right away. It was simple for you.”

“You’re the one who likes to taunt that it’s just business.” Yoongi’s voice doesn’t change, doesn’t rise, not yet, but it’s close. “We’re not here to date or be anything genuine, so what is it? Are you suddenly so shy to stick your knot in someone? When it’s just business?”

Namjoon snaps a fist in the front of Yoongi’s shirt; he doesn’t flinch, both of them well aware how this dance goes. Immediately, Namjoon can let go, smooth his fingers over the wrinkles.

“What are you afraid of, Joonie?” It might sound sweetly concerned to others, but all Namjoon can hear is condescension. “You with all of your chains and baggy clothing. What are you still holding onto? I can’t tell if you want to pretend to be better than all those alphas, or if you’re afraid of how much you’re just like every one of them.”

“Don’t. Please.” Namjoon lets him go, thunking his head back. Thunk, thunk, thunk. They’ve already had this conversation. All of this - it’s deja vu, and it isn’t the interesting kind.

“There’s nothing wrong with liking the person everyone expects you to like. I know you want to be the thoughtful contrarian, but.” Yoongi shrugs.

“Easy for you,” Namjoon mumbles. “It was all so easy. You got to like Hoseok before they told you, even if it was only for a few days.”

“Aw, Joonie.” Yoongi tries to pinch a cheek. “There’s still time to nurture a schoolyard crush if that’s what you want. Things don’t end with a knot. Feelings don’t start or end there. You still have time.”

Namjoon grumbles; he wishes it sounded like a growl. “I don’t like him.”

“No, you don’t know if you like him. There’s a difference, and for you, the lack of time to develop things organically was the end-all be-all for you. But it doesn’t need to be. Like you said - it’s business. Unless.”

Unless.

Namjoon doesn’t need to prompt him any further.

Unless you want it to be more.

“So what? Are you gonna claim Hoseok one day?”

“I don’t know, but I know one thing: it isn’t just business between us.” Yoongi shrugs. “But we’re here for the long haul, same as you. I want you to hear that. We’ll do what needs to be done for the group.”

“What about Jimin?”

“What about him?”

Namjoon thinks a lot of Jimin - thinks about how he might be a better kisser than him, thinks about what else he has to teach Taehyung that Namjoon can’t. Taehyung has been more intimate with Jimin than they’ve ever been, nude and slippery and caressing.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Yoongi yanks on his shirt this time. “Your scent. Do you like Jimin?”

“No!” Namjoon doesn’t mean for it to sound the way it does, like there is anything wrong with liking their beta. Namjoon feels trapped in quicksand when he thinks about Jimin, but he knows it isn’t about Jimin. Jimin is - Jimin is amazing, truly nothing short of it, and Namjoon knows they’re lucky to have him.

He’s just.

He’s too close.

“Do you feel threatened by Jimin?” Yoongi asks, sounding incredulous, but he doesn’t know, apparently. He doesn’t know that the beta circling his relationship has his own with someone else, and Jimin clearly has loads more experience in everything. Alphas and betas.

“I don’t know what to do with him,” Namjoon replies, and most likely Yoongi thinks he speaks of Jimin.

On the way home Yoongi stops to pay for meat skewers they can eat as they walk; it’s late and already everyone else is home and in bed save for someone (Hoseok?) in the shower.

Namjoon is shocked to stillness to find his bed empty, comforter left behind although it’s unmade. On the other side of the room, Taehyung lies on his side faced away from them all. In his bed, under his cover, it smells so wrong. Nothing smells like him, but it doesn’t smell quite like Taehyung either.

Metallic.

That’s the only word Namjoon can come up with, but he knows it isn’t right.

He can’t sleep, feet restless with the need to move. He kicks his socked toes back and forth until Jeongguk peeks down over the side of the bunk, but even after that, as the breathing in the room gets quieter and quieter, lulled to sleep without the accompaniment of his snoring, Namjoon cannot rest. He has to get up, paces outside in the hall from wall to wall, the entire perimeter of their apartment.

For once, he knows what is wrong and what would fix it. He knows he is only being stubborn.

Sometime past four in the morning Namjoon gives in and crawls on his knees next to Taehyung’s bed, careful not to make a noise. He goes in nose-first, sniffling for any sign of distress or illness. It’s hard with Taehyung’s less pronounced scent, but this is instinct driven need and Namjoon surrenders to it. He just wants to know and then he can sleep, because Taehyung smells but his scent fluctuates still.

It was stupid for him to think he’d be able to sense anything. He’s a rapper living in the twenty-first century. He’s never hunted down his own meal outside of ordering on an app, and he can’t simply sniff out illness on someone close to him like all those stories love to talk about. Even if there were discernible differences to pick up, what does Namjoon know? He’s never scented Taehyung during heat when his scent would be clearest and fullest, because he can’t.

Namjoon collapses in bed for all of fifteen minutes before Jeongguk’s alarm goes off. He and Yoongi simultaneously groan, but Jeongguk springs out of bed like a trained assassin, a streak of all dark clothing dashing out the door.

Where’s he going?

“Is that a serious question?” Jimin asks, stifling his laugh later when they’re all awake and out of bed. Both Hoseok and Yoongi left for the company building while Seokjin went to the hall where his ceremony is.

Jimin made breakfast, but he didn’t eat much of it, opting to push more and more into Taehyung’s bowl. Between them, Taehyung stares at nothing, swaying slightly, clearly not fully awake, not fully well.

“Baby, open up,” Jimin instructs him, utensils pressed to Taehyung’s lips. He parts them to nibble at the egg soaked rice.

Namjoon stands. “Yoongi and Hoseok are waiting on me.”

Neither of them glance up at him when he quickly exits, shoes in hand rather than on his feet. He’s down a full flight of stairs before he stops to shove them on. A few hours later Hoseok shows Namjoon a selfie sent to him by their maknae: his face pressed up close to Seokjin’s, both smiling, but Jeongguk crouched down a little to make room for the graduation cap on the omega’s head.

“He was invited to the ceremony?” Namjoon asks.

“I’m not sure invited is the right word, but Seokjin never firmly told him no.” Hoseok closes his phone and crosses his legs. “I think hyung got four tickets though, and Jeongguk reserved the fourth one somehow.”

“I feel like I could learn some things from Jeongguk,” Yoongi laughs, tapping out a beat on the keyboard.

Hoseok shakes his head, smiling fully. “He already picked up the cake this morning and I know by the time we get back-”

“Oh no.”

“It will be a mess of pink streamers and confetti.”

“Oh no! Seokie, we need to go back. Supervise!” Yoongi looks serious about it too. Hoseok keeps him in place with a gentle hand tugging him back, arms wrapping around his waist.

“Let him decorate.” Hoseok nuzzles into the small of the alpha’s back from his seat. “It’s Seokjin’s day, but it’s also for Jeonggukie.”

He should be used to their intimacies, but every time it’s like staring into the sun, and Namjoon truly has no place to go. Not work, not home. Everywhere he turns, there are people in love or lust and maybe they can’t tell the difference but Namjoon certainly can’t either.

Dutifully, he makes sure he’s there with everyone else to shout surprise at an unsurprised Seokjin when he comes home late. The next day sees them off to another event in the south so Seokjin assured managers he would be in one place with everyone else, but Namjoon wonders if that was a lie. They don’t really care when or how they sleep, as long as they show up as a group. He watches Seokjin delicately accept the cake with lit candles from Jeongguk, the music on a touch too loud for the hour, and they all shout and cheer and an extra confetti popper goes off behind Namjoon’s head.

Seokjin’s crooked fingers rest over Jeongguk’s holding the cake.

There’s so much noise and commotion, including the thudding fist of one of their neighbors, that no one hears Taehyung. Of course, the omega wouldn’t have wanted anyone to hear, but some instincts survive.

Namjoon can’t help but turn his ears to listen for their youngest omega.

It’s loud when Hoseok and Jimin cheer for their eldest hyung. It’s loud when one of the sparkling candles on the cake pops and spits. It’s loud when Yoongi shuffles through the playlist to put something else on. It’s somehow loud when Jeongguk watches Seokjin.

But it’s not loud in the corner of their living room where the youngest omega sits. Somehow, he commands all of Namjoon’s attention.

“Tae?” he asks, slowly approaching him where he sits wedged up behind the TV. His eyes look a little wide, but mostly it’s the panting and the heaving of his chest that blare emergency sirens in the back of Namjoon’s head. His vision tunnels, it actually tunnels in on Taehyung.

Why is no one else concerned?

“Taehyung? Baby?” He’s not the only one who calls him that, but why is he the only one who notices?

He has both of Taehyung’s cheeks in his hands before the omega blinks and looks up at him. “What is it? Are you - are you sick?” He feels his cheeks, his forehead, one hand down to his neck to feel for his scent gland.

He has to shove his fingers under the high neck of his top to find it, but it’s flat. Not swollen like it would be if he is close to presentation.

But there’s something on it, covering it.

“Tae, what is this?” he asks, absentmindedly pulling at it.

“D-don’t.” Taehyung’s teeth chatter, but it’s so warm in their little living room. It’s peeling, whatever it is, peeling up and Namjoon worries it’s his actual skin coming up under his nails. Taehyung tries to pull away from him, but there’s nowhere to go and the grasp struggling against him is weak.

“Baby, what is this?” he asks again, but it’s there in the palm of his hand, edges curling up. He can see for himself what it is now.

A topical patch.

One that was placed directly over one of Taehyung’s major glands, which only means one thing.

It’s hormonal.

“Taehyung.” Namjoon crumples it in his hands. “You’ve been ill the past few weeks - and this?”

“Don’t,” but all Taehyung can do is curl against his chest.

“Are there more of these? On you or in our - our room?” It makes him furious to think that in between all of their shared possessions they might be harboring something that would hurt Taehyung.

“Hyung.” When presented with the opportunity, Taehyung presses his face into his neck, into Namjoon’s gland, because he hasn’t been trying to keep it covered for weeks under unnecessary layers. He pants harshly, trying to slow his breathing, suck him in. “I’m sorry.”

“There are more?” Namjoon roars, sitting back and up. Their other five members hover closeby, watching silently. The music has been turned off. The confetti sits lifeless on the floor. He picks the omega up and carries him into the bedroom. “Get them. Give them to me now.”

Taehyung shivers where Namjoon deposited him on the bed, weakly crawling under the canopy of the top bunk as if to hide. “Tae!”

“Namjoon.” Seokjin follows into the room, smelling less of his usual mellow scent and more floral from the bouquet that Namjoon spied in the selfie earlier and now sits in a vase in their one windowsill.

“Did you know about this?” he asks, whirling around, hand offering up the evidence, crumpled as it may be.

“What is it?” Seokjin grabs his hand to inspect it. “Is it -” He makes a face.

“Looks like a birth control patch,” Yoongi comments from the doorway.

“But it isn’t,” Seokjin says quietly, eyes focusing after several shots of soju. “Tae-ah, sweetheart, where did you get these?”

His voice switches into that surgery sweet thing that is usually reserved for their fans.

“Manager Jiyoung.”

Namjoon’s grip on the side of their bed creaks. Seokjin gently pushes past him, reaching to pull Taehyung out from where he’s burrowing. Namjoon takes him out of Seokjin’s arms as soon as they pull back. Seokjin doesn’t look deterred, and next to him Jeongguk steps up with Hoseok, both furious looking.

“He gave you hormone patches? Why?” Hoseok doesn’t often sound angry; he might look it, eyebrows pinched and mouth set, but never is it audible in their direction.

Taehyung turns his head towards Namjoon’s, hands in front of his face. Hiding. “No wonder you’ve been so sick,” Jeongguk says quietly. “Those things are poison! They’d make anyone seriously sick.”

“They can make you permanently ill. The side effects aren’t good.” Seokjin tries to remove Taehyung’s hands from his face. “Sweetheart, why did you take these? Did they force you to take them?”

Taehyung whimpers. Namjoon tightens his hold with one hand and directs his face back into his neck, away from Seokjin. Let him be.

Taehyung moves both of his hands to Namjoon’s chest. He’s the perfect size, Namjoon realizes. He can bracket all of Taehyung with himself. Hide him there.

“Tae-ah, baby.” Jimin creeps closer. “Did you ask for them?”

“Why would -”

Everyone goes quiet again. Namjoon feels the tears seep into his neck.

“Oh.”

“Namjoon’s rut should be soon,” Yoongi whispers.

“You did ask for them,” Jimin gapes.

Is this his fault? Namjoon loosens his grip.

“I’m sorry,” Taehyung whispers in Namjoon’s neck, nose stuck in alpha musk as if that’s going to do it, that will push him to present with all of the extra hormones pumped into his body. “I want it, I want it so bad, I-”

“Shhh, sh!” Namjoon turns his back to everyone else. These words are for him. They don’t need to hear them. “Baby.”

“I don’t want it to be anyone else, I want it to be me, please let me, please give me time, I can do it, I can be it, I’ll be so good, I promise, I’ll be worth the wait-”

Namjoon hushes him some more with a hand up and down the back of his head. “Get out!” he yells at the others. He knows it’s unreasonable. There is nowhere for them to go. “Give us privacy!”

Seokjin crosses his arms, but Jimin tries to lead him away with Jeongguk. “It’s what Taehyung would want,” the beta says, as if it belabors him to admit it. Namjoon grinds his teeth, rounding his back to shield more of Taehyung’s face.

They shut the door behind them.

They never shut the door.

No such thing as privacy, even now, when the five of them no doubt sit in their cramped living room and pretend not to listen.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m like this.” Taehyung sucks down heaving breaths, face damp, curly bangs pinned down to his head by sweat.

“Baby. Baby.” This is his baby. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I’m your rut partner and I haven’t even presented. I just want to present and be yours, I just-” Taehyung hiccups on hyperventilation.

“Taehyung. Baby. Listen to me.” Namjoon stops himself to think before he says the words for once.

But he says them. “You are my omega. You’ll always be my omega. No matter what.”

And he thinks, quite alarmingly, that he must mean it.

This is the person who wants to be with him, for him, and he wanted it so badly he’s made himself ill taking hormone therapy to jumpstart his presentation, just so he would be ready for Namjoon’s rut.

The meetings. All of the on-again off-again illness.

They all make sense now.

In his arms, Taehyung shakes. He whispers in the dark of the room that he’s dizzy and just wants to lie in a nest of Namjoon’s scent and never get up.

So Namjoon puts him in his bed and dumps his entire wardrobe, clean and dirty, on top of him. He helps wrap Taehyung up in items tightly because what can they do? They don’t have a place for him to nest, not really. Namjoon gives him what he has, pumping out pheromones without a thought of how uncomfortable it will make the others. This is about Taehyung now. In the morning, Namjoon has phone calls to make and a doctor’s visit to arrange.

This night, he finds the stash of patches underneath Taehyung’s mattress. He carries them all the way down to the alley and lights them on fire next to the dumpster and when he returns, ashy fingertipped, he deflates at the sight of five mournful faces clustered together, coffee table pushed to the side.

“He’ll be okay,” Namjoon says. “I’ll make it be okay.”

“Kim Namjoon,” Jimin whispers fiercely in the quiet of the room. They all know Taehyung sleeps in the bedroom, breathing finally quiet and evened out, and yet they do not move from their places. “You will not make promises you cannot keep.”

“No,” he agrees. “I will not.”

They give them the room for the night. Namjoon crawls into bed behind the lump of Taehyung under everything and growls himself to sleep.

Chapter Text

That summer everyone waits. For some things, they wait together, as a group.

“Sorry, it just isn’t doing shit on the charts,” Yaejoon says, callously, like their failure doesn’t automatically mean his failure as well. Jimin pinches their latest album by the CD case and spins it in his hand. Likewise, he does not look bothered even when Namjoon knows it to be a boldfaced lie.

“So? We’re ready for the next. We have countless tracks in varying stages of production.” Yoongi crosses his arms, for once a respectable distance from Hoseok who stays cuddled close to Taehyung in view of their closest managers.

None of their managers are happy with Taehyung for quitting his hormone therapy, and they certainly aren’t happy with Namjoon for burning what are verifiably expensive patches, but Namjoon can’t bear the thought of them taking the patches back to foist on some other trainee without feeling sick to the stomach.

In some moments, he’d rather feel sick to the stomach rather than the all consuming rage he feels for them for giving them to Taehyung, their youngest omega, their most vulnerable omega, his omega-

Namjoon shuts that thought right down.

Even if it’s sorta true.

Even if he’s admitted it aloud to the omega in question.

He expected the rest of the group to raise their eyebrows in fun jest, maybe rub elbows at his expense now that Namjoon’s let down his walls to allow Taehyung to clamber into his bed at night to his heart’s desire or “scent” him as best he can before they leave in the mornings, but rather they all nervously watch and keep quiet, save perhaps Seokjin. He does raise an eyebrow.

It speaks volumes.

Yoongi in particular positively itches to give him shit, Namjoon can tell, and either by the grace of Hoseok’s calming words or their very particular working relationship, alpha to alpha, he so far keeps his mouth shut.

“You shouldn’t growl at Yaejoon,” Taehyung says quietly, the two of them slow to follow the others because the omega has been experiencing vertigo since quitting the hormones. “You definitely shouldn’t growl at PD-nim.”

“It’s like they don’t even care! Tae-yah, you know those pills can affect you the rest of your life, right? You’re still sick even though you quit them a week ago!” Namjoon tears open his backpack, hears the material tear and gape open mouthed in his hands. He’ll never get it to zip back up again.

“You can’t stand upright for long periods of time, you get so dizzy, experiencing nausea…” Namjoon thinks of just the night before when he just so happened to be behind Taehyung when his knees buckled waiting for dinner, or how he needs to linger when the omega gets out of bed in the morning because natural fatigue combined with weak limbs has been a cardiac event inducing spectacle every morning for him.

“Not to mention potential risks for long term fertility…” Namjoon trails off when he looks at Taehyung’s crumpled face. “Tae-yah.”

Shit, How stupid can you be, Kim Namjoon?

Why did he have to say that?

“I’m messed up,” Taehyung wails. “I was messed up to begin with and now I’m more messed up!”

He sobs, and Namjoon can’t hear it. He just physically can’t stand to hear it. “Hey, hey.” He sweeps Taehyung up into his arms, a position they have found themselves in most often this week; the most the members have said to Namjoon about their situation is when one or two of them may insist Taehyung wait for Namjoon to carry him if they’re walking home from the company, or headed to, or if Taehyung hasn’t eaten in more than a couple of hours, or if they’re finished with dance rehearsal, or if he looks too sad for a fraction of a second -

Taehyung knows where and how to mold himself now.

Once he’s securely curled in his lap, Namjoon plants his chin in the omega’s hair, long used to the scent of his conditioner even before this, it’s the one he shares with Jeongguk, never thought to be jealous of the fact before, and uses both arms to wrap around and shield him from falling out of his lap. “Baby, you’re not messed up. I know you’re impatient to present, but you’re not even that late presenting yet. Two years from now and you still would be -”

“Two years? You think I might have to wait two more years?” Taehyung howls pitifully, all ten fingers clutching his forearms.

“No, that’s not what I meant, I just mean.” Namjoon takes a moment to sigh.

They made him the leader.

But he can never say the right thing.

“You don’t need to be in a rush, baby.” Gently, he kneads at the back of Taehyung’s neck like he’s seen Yoongi do for Hoseok, and bravely, pinches in to practice a scruff. The omega shudders, then relaxes. “It’ll happen when it’s supposed to.”

Taehyung’s eyes are barely open when he snuffles into Namjoon’s neck, rubbing his nose over the alpha’s scent gland there, at least more gently than he has previously. His neck carries a vague red splotch on it most days, and not even Jimin’s nicest moisturizer soothes it. The beta scowls every time he sees it, narrowing his eyes at Taehyung who bats his eyelashes heavily, not in any sort of seductive way, but like a baby chick too defenseless to be chastised.

Weirdly, anything he puts on his neck burns, like Namjoon, an alpha, is not meant to ever remove a trace of Taehyung, an omega.

But he hasn’t even presented yet. A scenting from Taehyung should not be the same as a scenting from any other presented and unmated omega. ‘

Clearly, his body thinks otherwise.

“Stop washing me away,” Taehyung pouts when Namjoon showers, because one of the most unfortunate things about alpha physique and chemistry is how much they all sweat. It takes nothing to make him sweat, so Namjoon takes morning and night showers, no matter how little time he has or how cold the water is, even in winter with little viable heating.

Fortunately, it is summer time, so they all need the cold showers.

Perhaps most of all their maknae.

“The fuck is going on with them?” Yoongi growls; he, Namjoon, and Jimin all sit waiting in one of the free use trainee rooms. The omegas operate as a subunit for the day for a photoshoot, and in what was a wildly entertaining dance to Namjoon personally, they just witnessed Seokjin walk in, dressed head to down in frilly white and blush pink, make what he can only describe as violently pointed eye contact with Jeongguk, previously seated next to him, then spin on his pointed toed heeled foot and exit just as suddenly as he arrived without saying a word or looking at anyone else.

Jeongguk blinked once, eyes the biggest Namjoon has ever seen, then fell face first to the ground from a sturdy seated position, scrambling up and out the door, mumbling something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “-his ankles, his fucking ankles-”

Yoongi woofs like a dog as soon as the door shuts behind him. “He’ll be biting at hyung’s ankles now and the rest of his life, I fear. Fuck. What’s going to happen in a few months?”

Jeongguk will turn of age in a few months.

“Are we so worried about it now that Jin hyung apparently teases him?” Jimin quips.

“Is that what that was?” Namjoon laughs. He shouldn’t - he feels for Jeongguk, a little. He feels for Seokjin too though…

But honestly his own situation takes up too much of his time and spare thought to concern himself more than he needs over whatever dance those two are doing. As leader, he’ll insert himself if things look messy, but until then he’d rather save his skin from their eldest member’s glare or kitchen abandonment lest he be on his own to feed himself again.

“Do I need to go scruff a pup?” Yoongi asks, and if it were anyone else, Namjoon would fear for them, just a little, but not for Jeongguk.

Since the thaw of the original silent treatment Seokjin gave the young alpha upon delivery of the news they were arranged partners, the two have settled into what might not be total acceptance on Seokjin’s part, but certainly a quiet acceptance of general and genuine affection. Whereas neither he nor Yoongi help much with cooking (although they do their share of clean up), often the last ones home, Jeongguk dutifully wakes up either at the same time as Seokjin or even earlier to help him make breakfast or lunches for various members, even joining him when the deep seated urge to deep clean in the middle of the night hits their eldest member.

Hardly ever does Namjoon hear them say much between them. Whatever words they have for each other, it seems they keep them in private.

Meanwhile, Jimin lies down with his head pillowed on one of Yoongi’s thighs, as bony as it is, and the alpha immediately sinks a hand into his hair. If Namjoon had walked in without giving the scene his full attention, he would have assumed it was Yoongi and Hoseok together.

“Did you hear about the new accommodations?” Jimin asks them. “We’re not doing well, but we’re doing well enough that they want to give us a little more space.”

Unlikely, Namjoon thinks. There are concerned eyes on them watching a pressure cooker with no release valve, is what he thinks.

“How big?” Yoongi asks, cupping the front of Jimin’s neck in his veiny hand.

“Multiple bedrooms,” Jimin confirms with a shrug. “It wouldn’t be a shoebox.”

Multiple bedrooms to break up certain people, Namjoon thinks, and Yoongi and Hoseok would be the focus of that, no doubt. Would they let Jimin room with one of them?

Yoongi frowns. “It’s a carrot for them to dangle. Don’t get attached to the idea. May not happen.”

Namjoon isn’t sure if he agrees though. He keeps his mouth shut and tries to imagine a reality in which the seven of them don’t sleep basically on top of each other and pretend not to. They all pretend like it means nothing that Seokjin allows Jeongguk to use his bed as a clothing hamper instead of the one in the hallway that they all share.

They all (Namjoon) pretends it means nothing when Taehyung refuses to speak to anyone if he isn’t the first to the alpha’s bed to roll in it at night before Namjoon himself gets into it. Most nights, Taehyung is likely to be home before him or at the same time as him; on rare occasion, he is kept late with the vocal line overnight and glower pouts at Hoseok and Yoongi for not personally and bodily keeping Namjoon from his bed.

They all pretend not to closely watch whatever dance Jimin weaves between them all, but most of all, Yoongi and -

“Hoba.”

Hoseok pauses at the door, his eyes nowhere near Namjoon. If he expects to see some sort of hesitation on his face, Namjoon is mistaken. Their omega rapper simply lies down in Jimin’s lap on top of Yoongi.

Huh.

Is that how that works?

He catches Yoongi’s eye, and to his disbelief, his oldest cohort blushes. Beneath him, Jimin fishes out his phone to show Hoseok something, cackling before he could properly have time to look at much. He writhes until he flips around on top of Jimin’s chest, and the beta looks down so fondly at him it is hard to watch, but.

Yoongi doesn’t look like he knows where to look, so he looks at the wall. His hyung is like that though. Displays of affection are not comfortable, even if Namjoon knows Yoongi would tear someone apart if they ever commented or even sideyed the way the beta and omega hold hands or sit on each other backstage. They make alphas like them uncomfortable, and Namjoon thinks that is unlikely to change.

“Alpha.” Taehyung lifts his right arm and ducks under it so it’s placed along his shoulders. Taehyung already smells of him - he picks up and wears Namjoon’s scent easily even if he can’t as easily scent in return.

It’s not his fault if he tenses; Namjoon never had anyone before. No pretty omegas, not even a rowdy alpha crush or even the sweet beta that he studied with most nights for months in school, the only person Namjoon in all his lack of dating wisdom can confidently say was into him, but even that he fumbled by result of lack of time and mental reserves needed to understand how to woo anyone.

Seemingly, he does not need to woo Taehyung. Taehyung, for whatever reason, simply likes him. “Isn’t that how it’s going to be?” Taehyung said to him when Namjoon asked why he liked him. “It’s supposed to be simple. It’s supposed to be chemistry.”

He said that, then frowned heavily at what he was doing, which - “What are you doing?” Namjoon asked, looking over at the range of items on the table in front of them with a blush.

“Making care packages. For recently presented omegas.” Taehyung thumbed through an assortment of items, carefully picking up one from each pile. “They go to the smaller rural areas with limited supplies.”

And Namjoon, who knows fuck all about omegas, also wondered what Taehyung knew about it as an unpresented omega, but then again - Taehyung seemed to know enough to get what he wants from his alpha.

Chemistry.

Do they have chemistry?

It’s hard not to think of Seokjin, and Seokjin with Jeongguk, when he ponders the idea of chemistry late night when he can’t sleep, a furnace any time of year but certainly in summer, and Taehyung just lies on him like his sweat should be his own personal swimming pool. He suspects it’s for the stink - Taehyung can smell so much of him that people literally follow his scent on Taehyung down the halls at work genuinely convinced they’re about to locate Namjoon, surprised to find Taehyung instead.

Nothing has made Taehyung smile so much in all the time Namjoon has known him.

For the past year, Jeongguk’s boasted more than once (although only within earshot of the alphas in the group) that he and Seokjin scored highest in compatibility tests. Now, Namjoon understands the flaws and biases involved even in science, how they might translate into any test, no matter the intentions, no matter the working aspects of it, but he does have to wonder. There’s something to the way Seokjin so fiercely whiplashed between what Namjoon thinks was borderline flirting back to staunchly turning him down, like he couldn’t help it, like something curdled his stomach at the end of the day when thinking of Namjoon. At the time, he assumed it had more to do with duty and contract, being a good hyung for everyone and making sure group dynamics worked, not messing around with the so-called leader, two years and so much inexperience between them.

Now, he isn’t so sure.

It’s all there, in the way Jeongguk gives Seokjin everything - absolutely everything - not just the clothes off his back at the end of the day for a makeshift nest, as much as any omega could nest in a single room of mixed subgenders with no privacy, but all of his time and attention, even when it’s at personal detriment. The producers, managers, the fucking board members - they all see what’s happening. Jeongguk, their golden maknae who did everything they told him to do at the start, now wanders in late occasionally, and even if he does not disclose why, all they have to do is backtrack Seokjin’s schedule. Was he in a solo lesson with a producer? Was he held back at dance?

Or the way the food meant for an alpha makes its way to Seokjin’s plate. The managers are sick of it, but Hoseok and Taehyung are quick to remind them how long their days are, Yoongi tensely poised over Hoseok or Jimin’s shoulder at their meager portions, meanwhile Taehyung pulls Namjoon by the hand late at night on the way home down back alleyways to a street vendor where he makes eyes until Namjoon buys tteokbokki or hotteok or whatever they’re at.

And the way Jeongguk watches Seokjin.

The protective way, of course. Long, lingering stares at anyone they don’t know, or sometimes, people the alpha does know, including but not limited to their only real trusted manager or, on occasion, even Namjoon feels the brunt of it, already aware of spatial relations whenever Taehyung is nearby, but he’s quick to take a step further back in a group huddle sometimes.

There is also such joy, too, though, and that is harder to look at. The pure radiance on Jeongguk’s face when he watches Seokjin preform, or when the two of them bicker about how much seasoning to use in the curry, heads bent over a simmering pot together as Seokjin whisks and Jeongguk tries to stick his finger directly into the pot, dodging Seokjin’s hand and loud protests.

It’s hard to look at someone that happy. How can Jeongguk be that happy? Their omega hyung still pushes him back, pushes him entirely away at times, but then - he also has the moments where he gives in. Allows their alpha puppy to fall asleep on the dirty floor with his head in his lap, or when Seokjin takes a misplaced step in dance, allows the alpha to give him a piggyback ride back to their dorm “just in case,” head tucked into his neck when he thinks the others are too far back to see.

Is that chemistry?

A pull so great Seokjin can’t do anything against it?

Is that what Namjoon wants? He looks over at Taehyung. Is that what he feels?

Taehyung looks up, looks back at him, dark eyelashes eye catching in the way that people told Namjoon only entire body parts could be. One eyelash hypnotizes him, a whole bouquet of them blink and he is gone, a little fuzzy in the head and a little sleepy in his limbs.

He’ll blindly do what the omega asks of him at this point.

He already does, Namjoon realizes, but he’s also their leader. Taehyung is a member under his care. Isn’t that part of it too? “Have you always had this one?” he asks when no one can hear, thumbing at a mole on the side of Taehyung’s jaw.

Eyelashes flutter. “Always.”

Namjoon’s stomach sinks in before a magnet jerks him forward.

Oh.

This would be a moment to kiss if they could.

Namjoon swallows.

Taehyung licks his lips.

“I gotta-” Namjoon clears his throat. “I gotta go. Do. Stuff.” He looks at the ground, anywhere but the omega’s face where it slides up closer to him. Don’t do that, he thinks. Don’t touch my wrist like that.

“Alpha,” Taehyung whispers, and Namjoon knows if were brave enough to look, Taehyung’s eyes would be dilated, and his would dilate too in response. All the better to see you with, my dear, Namjoon remembers, because surely, he must be the big, bad wolf.

“Can I ask you a question without getting my head bitten off for it?” he asks Seokjin, the two of them alone for the first time in -

Well.

Namjoon can’t remember. He tries not to be alone with Seokjin anymore, and it isn’t because he still harbors any kind of romantic inclination.

Seokjin eyes him skeptically, but Namjoon can be brave in the face of omegas. Sometimes.

Oh, shit. Wait. He’s holding a knife! Why is Seokjin holding a kitchen knife in a practice room? The omega narrows his eyes at him while he hovers it over kimbap. Pre-sliced kimbap.

Namjoon gulps. “Nevermind.”

Seokjin hums, waiting, squinty eyes infinitely narrowing, and how? “Namjoon-ah.”

“I just.” Namjoon dry swallows. “You know. Wondered. What do you like about, um. Jeongguk. Jeon Jeongguk?”

“Kim Namjoon!” Seokjin barks, hands up, knife included in the one. Namjoon scatters, darting away from his hyung, but the two of them are alone in a room with the lights turned off because no one needs to know they’re still there practicing, great shame as it is that they’re the worst dancers who require more than just a normal amount of additional practice.

“I’m genuinely asking! Why do we have to pretend?” Namjoon yelps, hands up, even if they both know it’s all for fun, the threatening way Seokjin waves the knife and then his (stolen) food around in the dark. He laughs, ridiculous as it is, and finally, Seokjin, cheeks stuffed full only in clandestine hours, laughs too, speckles of rice falling on his shirt.

Namjoon laughs harder.

Seokjin waves him away while he hastily finishes his meal. Did Jeongguk purchase it for him? Did he make it?

Namjoon thinks about buying ice cream for Taehyung on the way home. He has the cash for it, and it’s unlikely Jimin will be awake when he gets back, the only person who might dare to demand Taehyung share it.

They get back to practicing, but later, Namjoon stalls for time to catch his breath. “It’s easy to like him,” he says. “The golden maknae.” Even an insecure alpha like him has to admit it. Namjoon can’t puff out his chest forever, and if it takes a nearly of age alpha to make him admit it, then. Jeongguk truly must be golden.

Seokjin says nothing. He doesn’t even do that annoying placating hum of his when he wants to avoid a conversation or answer.

“It isn’t the same, and you know it,” he finally says at the door, lights already shut off and quiet in the hall, too late even for predebut trainees to crawl around. Here, he is careful to angle his body away from him. There’s something there, curdling in his scent, and Namjoon feels guilt regardless of how much he wants it to be a thing they can discuss rather than tiptoe around all their days.

“Why? Because we’re not matched?”

“No, because you’re not an omega and you don’t have to question every fucking thing you feel.” The words are icy, but the tone, for once, is clearly directed anywhere but him as Seokjin steps around Namjoon and heads for the exit alone, leaving him bristled in irritation.

Namjoon wishes he didn’t question everything.

What a ridiculous thing to think him capable of.

What can he do but watch and think and feel?

Watching Yoongi with Hoseok, it was easy. Still is, even if there is a new part of the equation, seemingly. Yoongi and Hoseok have always been good, the kind of alpha and omega yin and yang that might actually restore balance to the universe, or whatever. Like their fans purport, Hoseok really is all sunshine and ease, even in uneasy moments, he can make anything feel lighter, and Yoongi, fucking Min Yoongi who hates himself because of his recent shoulder injury, something no one knew about until they got a panicked call from Hoseok already at the hospital, who fidgets because he has “itches that can never be scratched” and still bristles when Namjoon (Taehyung) leaves his clothing too close to Yoongi’s bed -

Yoongi will become unrecognizable with Hoseok.

It’s just that - Namjoon knew him first.

Namjoon could never make Yoongi smile like that. Not for all the music in the world, not for the most precious and indescribable high when they nail the exact sound or moment they’ve struggled with for months. None of that means a thing in the presence of one omega.

And Jimin? Between them? Glows. If Hoseok is the sun, then Jimin is the water. Nurturing, penetrating spaces invisible to others. He roots between Yoongi and Hoseok in a holistic way, and Jimin sleeps better at night now, doesn’t have the same fatigue clinging to his movements. Hoseok holds his hand and speaks up for him with stylists when he knows Jimin is uncomfortable in what he’s pushed to wear, and when they don’t listen, they show up last minute swapped, Hoseok looking more the part of rapper than ever before because of Jimin’s garb.

What does Seokjin have to question?

One thing Namjoon never questions is Jeongguk’s adoration for their hyung, nor his loyalty. To any of them, really - Jeongguk would just as fiercely defend Hoseok or Taehyung from the whims of the dietitians and doctors with their suggested workouts, and he certainly backs Yoongi up despite the gruff nature of some of their exchanged recent aggressions. He gives Namjoon the space only another alpha would know and understand, and he acts as a great equalizer for Jimin, not part of a romantic connection or the famed vmin soulmate bond. The two of them exist outside of that for each other, a tether to pull each other out from tunnel vision in a way that Namjoon wishes he could do for any single one of them.

Namjoon doesn’t understand what there could be to misinterpret. Jeongguk wears it all on his sleeve, even when producers or even junior trainees mock the alpha behind his back. He isn’t afraid to be compared to a lapdog trotting after its master, but Seokjin’s glowering face is still so beautiful it stuns people to stupidity, and his sharp tongue does the rest.

“You don’t have to do that, hyung,” Jeongguk says any time Seokjin turns a pointed comment outward. “Everything they say is true.” And what they say is not flattering.

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Seokjin hisses, fingers white where he grips the strap of his bag. Silently, he takes and squeezes Jeongguk’s hand when he notices the alpha’s downcast face.

What’s there to question when an omega accepts an alpha’s hand? What’s there to question when Seokjin can’t seem to fall asleep anymore without something of said alpha stuffed in his nose? Long gone are the plushies that once adorned his bed, cast out for room of Jeongguk’s pillows or the omega’s own pillow wrapped in the shirt off Jeongguk’s back.

Namjoon may be the last to notice how pale and downright haunted their hyung looks, but it’s while they’re waiting, bunched up in a hotel lobby in Boseong while the managers get their rooms, that Hoseok and Jimin crowd too close with pinching fingers and Seokjin snaps at them. “I’m fine!”

“You’re not fine!” Hoseok snaps right back, red cheeked and agitated in his movements. Before they were all hushed, but now their little group has garnered attention from the rest of them. “You haven’t kept down any food in days and you won’t sleep! Look at you!”

Namjoon looks and sees - a willow branch. Ready to snap.

Seokjin seethes, but his breath is labored, and his body sways from exertion. It reminds him of Taehyung the past few weeks, and that makes Namjoon immediately break out in a cold sweat.

“Hyung, I thought you ate what I got you earlier. I thought I made it the way you like,” Jeongguk whispers, stepping closer, just out of reach where Jimin and Hoseok block him.

“He can’t keep it down!” Jimin replies, arms crossed, frowning. “He can’t keep anything down.”

Everyone is quiet for a moment, then Namjoon has to ask, “Hyung, when was the last time you really ate?”

“It’s not like that!” Oh shit. He has tears in his eyes. “I want to eat. I just - my stomach.” His lip wobbles, and a hand rests flat on his less than flat, more concave stomach. Namjoon frantically tries to think of the last time he saw Seokjin really digging in - despite the diets, their hyung is known as the foodie of the group and if he isn’t talking about food, is often dreaming of it in excessive detail.

“You haven’t been keeping any of it down?” Jeongguk asks, a look of such profound horror on his face. Seokjin wilts, physically twisting his body away from the alpha. Honestly, Namjoon wants to do the same, the way Jeongguk switches from shock to anger. He wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of it, even if he knows the anger isn’t placed on Seokjin.

“Hyung.” They all go quiet when he speaks, for some reason. “What can we do? What would help?”

No one says a word, heads bowed down, Seokjin’s the lowest.

“I know what would help,” Jeongguk says defiantly.

“Jeon Jeongguk, do not.”

But Jeongguk doesn’t back down this time. He pushes through Hoseok and Jimin, crowding Seokjin until he hits the wall then places both palms flat against it around him. “Hyung.”

In his arms, Seokjin says nothing, says nothing, but his body visibly trembles from where Namjoon stands. “Jeongguk…” he warns, turning half an ear for one of their managers.

“At least room with me tonight, hyung.”

“Absolutely not!” Seokjin yelps, bodily flinching, but all it does is make Jeongguk come closer, wrapping his arms all the way around his body in an embrace that Namjoon has never seen shared between the two of them.

He looks away.

“You need to be properly scented, hyung.” Jeongguk’s eyes would mortally wound any other person. “That’s all you need.”

Seokjin must not be feeling well if he allows this in front of them all, Namjoon thinks. Their hyung must be close to collapse if he’ll so publicly allow Jeongguk to help him to his room - a room shared with Hoseok and Taehyung, as mandated by their managers, steadfastly waiting to escort their youngest out of the room as soon as he sees Seokjin crawled under the covers.

Namjoon and Jimin stand outside the door of their room for the evening. Across from them, Yoongi clasps Jeongguk a little too firmly on the shoulder to usher him into theirs. “Don’t push it, kid.”

He doesn’t even growl as Jeongguk forcefully wretches his shoulder out from from under his hand; somehow, Jeongguk looks angrier for it, disappearing into the room and after a brief exchange in which Namjoon frowns and Yoongi shrugs, the alpha rapper lets the door slam shut behind them.

Jimin eyes Namjoon just as wearily. In their shared room for the night, Namjoon groans, ripping the beanie he pulled down over his eyes off. “What? What is it?”

“I don’t know. We good?” Jimin asks.

“What? Did I do something?”

Jimin halfheartedly shrugs with one shoulder.

“You’re asking if we’re good because I didn’t do anything?”

From his side of their shared bed, Jimin narrows his eyes. “I know my way around an alpha knot, you know.”

Namjoon jostles the entire bed with his abrupt take back. “What?”

“And I could just as easily rip it off as incapacitate you with pleasure.”

“What!” Namjoon scrambles out of bed only for the beta to gracefully sit on it.

“Do you know who I love more than anyone else in this world?” Jimin asks very conversationally, folding his threaded fingers over his lap, lounging back in his nightie set, that if Namjoon isn’t mistaken, belongs or belonged to Hoseok.

“Park Jimin, if you’re going to give me another shovel talk -” Namjoon looks up to where philosophers might proclaim heaven to exist. “Just. Put it in a song.”

He isn’t surprised to find the omega in question as a late night visitor a scant thirty minutes later, dressed in a rather boxy pair of sleep shorts and a long sweatshirt that Namjoon sighs heavily when he sees. “I’ve been looking for it,” he says, mostly to himself, because Taehyung has already crawled into the middle of their bed while he holds open the door.

“Baby.” Jimin violently clamps Taehyung’s cheeks between his hands to pull their faces together closely. “Why aren’t you in bed with your omega hyungs nesting?”

Taehyung’s face scrunches. “No one wants to build a nest for one night.”

“You do.”

Taehyung does not reply.

Namjoon suddenly has his bag of meager items for the two night trip in his hands. Jimin pointedly looks at him and it. Taehyung does not.

“How’s Jin hyung?” Namjoon asks. Jimin immediately shows him his teeth, but Taehyung flops over to face the empty side of bed.

Namjoon slowly shuffles over, hovering at the side until the omega reaches out and tugs on his sweats. “Why are you wearing these? It’s too hot!” Taehyung gripes, but nuzzling his face directly into Namjoon’s standing thigh before Namjoon folds, hastily dropping onto the bed before he can register the beta’s face. It’s fine, it’s all good - Taehyung just immediately rolls over on top of him thus entirely shielding him from any judgemental looks.

See? They’re good. They’re great even. Namjoon can now mention their eldest without Taehyung’s eyes swelling up twice their normal size.

His hands are pinned under him, but when Taehyung wiggles his face so he can brush it against Namjoon’s neck gland, his chest rumbles.

A purr.

Or -

Not quite a purr.

It sounds a little too much like an imitation of a purr, but if Taehyung cares enough to fake a purr, surely it means almost more than a real purr would? Namjoon rotates his wrists, palm up, to clutch at the bottom of his sweatshirt. “Tae-yah.”

A sweet, soft giggle perfectly chimes through the purr before he remembers, and Taehyung, biting his lip, hides down deeper in his neck.

“What am I witnessing?” Jimin’s sharp voice cracks, and even if he can’t see, can’t easily turn his head lest disrupt Taehyung in his arms, Namjoon thinks he sees an equally sharp pointed finger.

Is Taehyung more brazen in the company of Jimin? The omega opens his mouth and -

“Fuck!” Namjoon shouts, jolting upright in bed and only marginally dislodging his companion, clung to him like a koala.

“What? What happened?” Jimin’s face drains of color. “Kim Taehyung!”

In his arms, Taehyung snickers. Jimin darts to pinch his side, and suddenly, Namjoon’s lap is full of two people tussling and giggling. “Are you trying to suck a hickey on his neck? While I’m present?” Jimin screeches impressively higher and higher. If only their vocal coach were here to be impressed and then appalled by the strain.

“Okay, let’s not-” Namjoon grunts when someone’s knee lands in his crotch.

This is what he gets, he thinks, squirming until he can safely put them both down on the bed to wrestle.

“Sorry, hyung,” Jimin grunts, the likely culprit of the two, when he pins Taehyung’s arms above his head and Namjoon’s ludicrous thought is that he needs to lift the beta off the omega like a scruffed kitten, but Taehyung’s still smiling.

“Gotta leave a mark on my alpha somehow,” he says, and Namjoon’s ears must look like Seokjin’s any day of the week now.

“I don’t think I’m meant to hear this,” he says, then takes his ass to the bathroom to stand under the shower for a long time. When he returns, Taehyung is gone, the lights all off save one on Namjoon’s side of the bed, and Jimin sleeps or feigns sleep on his side.

The alpha crawls into bed where the indent of a body tells tales in the lines of wrinkled bedsheets.

Namjoon lies face down in the sheets.

He opens his mouth and bites.

After their brief engagement in the south of the country where both Jimin and Jeongguk bicker about the sights of home, none of which are actually that near to where they are, they make a detour before hitting the Seoul city limits.

“So.” Jimin narrows his eyes at the vague signage posted outside the trails. “What is this exactly?”

“It’s your new variety show for the channel,” Sejin explains for the first time group-wide, acting and sighing for all its worth like he’s told them a million times. Namjoon sits, arms crossed, legs bouncing in his seat in the cramped minivan. Next to him, Hoseok puts one delicate hand on top of his thigh, applies barely any pressure, and suddenly the car ceases rocking.

“It’s simple. Every episode will have a different game, and we’re starting off with something classic - paintball. Just - run around, have fun, show off the natural, er, camaraderie.” Sejin shrugs. In the back row, Yoongi and Jeongguk snap teeth at each other. Sejin blinks.

He doesn’t know them well enough to know they’re joking.

Right now.

Namjoon’s leg bounces.

“Joon!” Hoseok hisses, at the same time as Seokjin, prone to motion sickness at the mere hint of wind, protests beside him.

“Sorry!”

“What are the teams?” Jeongguk asks, already halfway out the door by launching himself from the backseat over Seokjin and Jimin’s laps. He wiggles, pulling himself out the door while Jimin loudly smacks his ass. He does, however, pause momentarily to glance at Seokjin for reaction.

Seokjin’s lips purse.

“We’re kicking it old school,” Sejin answers. “Omegas versus alphas, and Jimin will be-”

“With us,” Seokjin cuts him off, hand wrapped around Jimin’s wrist.

Hoseok nods emphatically. “It’s only fair. They have Ggukie.”

Namjoon and Yoongi nod. They have Jeongguk.

Sejin frowns. “Fans will think it’s sexist if we give the omegas an extra person, like we think you need it.”

“We do.” Seokjin and Hoseok reply in unison. Jimin laughs, a short huff, and Taehyung slinks his arms from the back around the beta’s midsection.

“Whatever. We’ll do a round with Jimin on the omega side, then a round with him with the alphas, alright?”

Jeongguk, first out the door, rounds to playfully growl at the rest of them as they more leisurely crawl out, Seokjin barking out sharply in laughter while Namjoon can only frown. “Are we - are we really supposed to aim and shoot guns at omegas?” he asks, seemingly to no one, but he turns to face Yoongi, sure that his alpha hyung will have a hard time firing a weapon at any of them save Namjoon himself, except said alpha is already playfully lunging for a giggling Jimin, prancing away from him in dancer’s delight, just as graceful and elegant as Hoseok next to him.

“Guys?”

Namjoon’s eyes naturally look for Taehyung, standing close to Seokjin where Sejin hands them red colored vests to denote their team. Even their eldest sports a fond smile, amused by Jeongguk miming that he’ll be watching him.

“You think you can catch me, pup?” he goads the baby alpha, mockingly bending over to tie his shoes tighter right in front of Jeongguk, eyes bulging, but it takes nothing for Jeongguk to double take or eyes to grow twice their size when it comes to Seokjin.

The young alpha blindly shoves a paintball gun in Namjoon’s hands. An activity like paintball or even laser tag was never really his thing. Most team sports would not have been his thing, unlike Yoongi who played basketball or even Jimin and Hoseok who competitively danced on teams. “Uh.” He holds it up to inspect it.

Jimin laughs. “You just aim and pull the trigger, big guy,” Hoseok says, patting his shoulder before meandering over to join Seokjin, Jimin, and Taehyung in a lineup across from them.

“Pew pew,” Yoongi mimes with his gun at Hoseok, who finger hearts him in response with an equally heart shaped smile behind it.

“Namjoon!” Sejin hisses at him, snapping his fingers and miming at him to pull on his own team vest. There are cameras. Why are there cameras?

“Uh.”

His hands and feet feel far too clumsy to participate, and what’s worse - they’re filming. They’re filming it all, including him awkwardly pulling the vest over his too baggy shirt and spacing out while a guy from the course explains the basic rules and how points will be calculated. Next to him, Jeongguk jogs in place and - does Seokjin smirk at him?

Growling, Jeongguk drops down into a crouch, like a sprinter at the start of a race. “Namjoon? Ready?” Yoongi asks him, both hands cradling the paintball gun in his hands.

Namjoon blinks.

He thinks he hears a soft whisper of his name, and when he turns his head, Taehyung watches him intently. A breeze ruffles his hair, longer than his, longer than anyone else’s. Some of the locks fall on places where Namjoon now knows there are freckles.

“Ready?” the paintball guy calls out, straddling the line that divides them. He fires a gun into the air - why is that necessary? - and they all scatter, everyone save Namjoon who stands there like a dud at the starting line.

Taehyung blinks at the sound of the gun, and like the others on his team, pivots and runs off into the trees while Jeongguk and Yoongi bolt after them, Jeongguk a blur the likes of which Namjoon didn’t know was possible. He hears Seokjin’s delighted laughter as Jeongguk almost immediately overtakes him, no paintball guns in their hands as the alpha grabs and wrangles Seokjin down to the ground in a heap.

He would be concerned if not for the smiles on their faces as they wrestle in the leaves and he numbly walks by.

Ahead of him, he hears Hoseok more than sees him. There is also the rattling noise of the gun going off - Jimin jumps out of a tree nearby, and Namjoon feels the soft punch in his side where he gets him. “Gotcha!” their beta shouts, delighted, and rushes past in an interesting waddle run.

“...What?” Namjoon looks around. For a moment, he stands alone in the wooded area. He knows he isn’t far from the road they drove in on, isn’t far from where they started. It’s meant to look like a large area on camera, but there are limited places to hide. A few ditches, the trees of course, but otherwise it’s all about getting within shooting range of someone.

He sees them all from afar, running in circles, three of them - Yoongi chasing Hoseok, then Jimin, then Jimin and Yoongi chasing Hoseok together, all of them bouncing up and down in a joyous union he feels even in his most emotionally stunted places. They at least pretend to play the game they’re meant to - on the other side of him, far and away, Jeongguk and Seokjin are on their feet running as well, dipping and dodging and circling each other. Seokjin kicks a pile of leaves up in Jeongguk’s face which spurs the alpha to end their little tryst for the moment, only pretending that there is a chase when it could be ended any moment, snagging him by the waist and picking him up in his arms. Bridal style.

It lasts only as long as Seokjin’s smile, slowly vanishing into self consciousness in front of encroaching cameras. Without being told, Jeongguk slowly puts him down on his feet, the two of them awkwardly in a standstill until Jeongguk jogs backwards, until Seokjin follows, and behind him suddenly Yoongi zoomies up, shooting at Seokjin’s feet until he yelps.

“Aren’t you going to chase me?” Taehyung says, calling out to him from a meager distance. He, too, sports some paint already on his top.

Is that what this is?

Is that all this is?

Alphas chasing omegas? In modern day, for the amusement of their fans, their company wants them to simulate a chase like their ancestors chased each other for mating? Is this their way of soft launching their official couplings? Should Namjoon maybe chase Hoseok instead to cast doubt?

But Taehyung toothily smiles at him, crouching down low, ready to sprint, and the mere suggestion of coiled muscles creates an instant matching reaction in Namjoon. Before he can stop himself, he lunges for the omega, and not with a hand - with his teeth.

No one would guess it based on the way Taehyung reacts though. He shrieks in excitement, running for it while Namjoon can do nothing but follow, an invisible thread certainly tugging him along like a leashed pet.

Now Namjoon understands how Jeongguk feels.

Taehyung laughs, Namjoon growls. In the background, he hears shouts of, “Don’t forget you’re paintballing!”

No one seems to be holding their gun any longer.

They blur past Hoseok pinned down by Jimin, Yoongi nowhere in sight for the moment, although Namjoon is not surprised that the two can outrun him when pressed. Neither Seokjin nor Jeongguk are anywhere he can see on the horizon either, but mostly his focus remains centered on the retreating back of one omega, dark curls bouncing up and down, the glint of a pretty fake emerald earring in one ear.

“You aren’t faster than me!” he yells after Taehyung. Namjoon has the longest legs, after all, and even though he may be clumsy, he’s taken up jogging as his approved gym activity for the majority of his cardio, and Taehyung doesn’t seem to have the stamina even if he has the will. Namjoon hears the loud panting breath and the thud, thud, thud, thud of his foot fall, as fast as his heartbeat, but so much louder.

He’s wired to listen for this, he thinks, somewhere in the back of his rattling thoughts that bounce violently between catch him, mine, omega, bite, Taehyung, omega, pretty, mine. Alphas are instinct driven just like anyone else, but specifically, when in lack of a scent, a thundering heartbeat that sounds as pretty as a voice will do. Namjoon will hear, and Namjoon will follow.

Instincts also instruct him to follow closely, but not catch. Not yet. A chase is all about anticipation. Taehyung’s having fun. He’s having fun. Namjoon wants to be closer, wants to touch - you could always touch, his brain reminds him, Taehyung wouldn’t mind - but this is how it’s meant to be. Safe. This is just Namjoon being an alpha, and Taehyung being an omega, and he can run. This is easy. This is -

Taehyung trips.

Before he meets the ground, Namjoon stretches forward, lightning fast, unusually graceful, and snags Taehyung up into his arms. “Got you,” he pants, smiling down at Taehyung’s bewildered blinking. He squirms, enough that Namjoon nearly drops him, but all he means to do is rotate enough in his hold to wrap his legs around his waist in a front hold.

“Got you,” he replies, then bites at Namjoon’s shoulder through his shirt.

It’s like a volcano erupts in his chest.

“Put him down!” Sejin yells, waving his arms across the field. “You’re meant to be paintballing!” As angry as he sounds, the two camera guys behind him give a thumbs up, probably because they understand what content their fans really want, but surely as red as a tomato, Namjoon carefully releases Taehyung.

He only settles on his feet when he’s ready to let go though.

“So.” Sejin stands, hands on hips, refusing to look at any of them. “That was a disaster.”

He says that, but the seven of them sit on the ground in higher spirits than they’ve been in for weeks. It’s easy to feel. The easy way Jeongguk and Yoongi lean on each other, teasing the other team for the amount of paint they sport on their clothing and vests, in their hair. Taehyung has a red streak that Namjoon can’t look away from. His hair sticks to the side of his jaw and cheek and he refuses to move it and what is Namjoon meant to do?

“I had a great time,” Yoongi replies, sunglasses on despite the overcast skies above him. Yoongi tends to do that though, still as bad as him even if he wants to pretend otherwise. He never wants to look too affected by anything, whether it’s an emotional session in studio or as simple as spending quality time with people he likes.

No one looks happier than Jeongguk, leaning back on his hands while Seokjin leans half into his lap, curled up small because with the sun going down, the temperature dips to almost pleasant for late summer, which means somehow their eldest hyung will be cold.

Jeongguk bravely rests one hand along the dip in Seokjin’s side where his waist is smallest.

The omega allows it.

Namjoon notices Jeongguk’s loose fingers curl inwards slowly until he grips him properly.

Seokjin doesn’t even blink.

Not even when a camera zooms in on them in an obvious way.

“I’m tired,” Taehyung wallows, feet in Namjoon’s lap and head leaning on Jimin’s shoulder. Jimin ended up the ace of every game.

Not that anyone is surprised.

He’s most certainly not surprised that he ends up carrying Taehyung back to the van where the seven of them ride home in silence, tired and sweaty and all asleep by the time they roll to a stop in front of the dorm.

“Do you think this show will be successful?” Jimin quietly asks him, arm in arm with Namjoon at the back of the pack. Jeongguk supports Taehyung this time, Seokjin and Yoongi in intense conversation about whether or not they should make a full meal before bed or if they should split the cost of ordering chicken for everyone.

Namjoon shrugs. “Well. It certainly can’t hurt.”

He breaks out in a cold sweat as soon as he says it. Could it hurt? Does it hurt if fans more openly know (speculate) about their pairings? Namjoon read a rather lengthy article about upcoming producer (not rapper or idol) Min Yoongi and his arranged relationship with pro dancer Jung Hoseok. Omegas tend to be labeled as anything but rappers, so that was expected, but what wasn’t expected is the vitriol aimed at their arrangement despite it being industry standard for the past decade.

Of course, a reunion talk show recently debuted a record breaking episode in which a second gen group disclosed the main catalyst for breaking up was none over than an unplanned pregnancy and disagreeing opinions on how to proceed with it. It added fuel to the fire for people who disliked the idea in the first place, but advocates maintain that as a group of adults with resources, it is a victorious story for choice and omegas in the workplace if not an inevitable end for an idol group.

They eat chicken, the seven of them quiet, but quiet from the good sort of fatigue, not the emotional kind, but the physical exhaustion of running. Namjoon feels not just close to Taehyung in that moment, but all of them, their legs crossed over each other as Hoseok leans forward, hand cupped under a hefty piece of prime chicken, to feed him, and Taehyung doesn’t even pout about it, too busy needling Yoongi about making him a playlist of some sort.

“Who picked melon chicken?” Yoongi complains.

“Hyung,” Jeongguk answers to Seokjin’s reddening ears.

“Yahhhhh!”

Jeongguk stuffs his protesting mouth full of chicken. “Have more, hyung,” he says quietly. They only got away with ordering this because Sejin said he’d turn a blind eye for the evening since they had to skip any meals for their schedule since six in the morning.

It’s nearly two am now.

And Seokjin seems to be eating well under Jeongguk’s careful eye.

When they’re done, everyone bloated and complaining of a skin routine no one feels like finishing, Namjoon crawls into bed right after Taehyung, and it doesn’t feel weird at all to be simultaneously getting in it for once. Namjoon reaches around him, pulls down the covers, waits for the omega to slide in, then follows suit. Like a routine. Like they do it every night together.

Across from them, Yoongi and Jimin recline on the floor in front of Hoseok’s bed where the omega soundlessly sleeps, mouth open. Must be nice not to get shoved awake immediately for snoring.

And the other two?

“Hyung is pretend sleeping!” Taehyung whispers in his ear. Namjoon can barely keep his laugh under wraps, so he knows he will be punished for it later, but really. What does Seokjin expect when he’s pretending to be asleep so Jeongguk has to pick him up and tuck him in?

He could just ask Jeongguk to sit with him a while longer if he wants a cuddle. He could ask Jeongguk for anything, or hell - he doesn’t need to ask. He could just take, do whatever his heart desires. Their maknae would never tell him no. Instead, he struggles (perhaps like some) to allow for casual affection. Namjoon wishes he could say he didn’t understand him, but unfortunately, he understands all too well.

He’s working on it.

“Talked to your old man lately?” he asks Yoongi. Yoongi’s scowl over work deepens.

“Shit, what are you asking for?”

Namjoon shrugs, as nonchalantly as he can. “We’ve been friends the longest, haven’t we?” Isn’t he allowed to ask after his friend’s family?

“Whatever’s going on in that giant head of yours,” Yoongi sighs, shoulders deflating with it. It’s just the two of them until Hoseok is due to join them within the hour. “I don’t have the energy to riddle it out. But. You’re good, Joon. You’re good.”

He briefly reaches out to hold onto his wrist, a hold that feels wrong between them, but why should it? In the low light of the studio, always dark, always cold, one of the few places that they have to escape to in the summer, they insist on still shuffling around each other as in ashamed posturing, and why?

Briefly, Namjoon flips his hand up to properly hold Yoongi’s hand.

They both stiffen.

Then laugh.

“Sorry,” Namjoon chuckles, dropping it. Yoongi shakes out his wrist.

“You know I love you, but uh. Let’s not,” he says, but he’s laughing lightheartedly in a way that could bolster Namjoon for days.

They giggle about it until Hoseok enters, looking cautiously between them before his smile lights up the entire room naturally and bounds in like a puppy, throwing himself in between them, an arm for each of them. “My alpha boys!” he croons, a kiss for each of them too.

Namjoon holds his cheek where it lands, sure he is bright red and all he can think about is Taehyung.

“You’d have teeth in your neck if Taetae was here,” Yoongi says aloud his thoughts.

“Not my omega baby!” Hoseok waves his finger in the air, as confident as anything. Yoongi snorts. “If you say so,” he says, “but I think when it comes to Joon, you might be misplacing confidence.”

Namjoon sits back in his chair and thinks about it. “Actually, who do you think is more territorial? Jeonggukie, or, um, Tae.” He didn’t mean to pose this question aloud. Shit. Why did he say that? A nervous sweat breaks out across the back of his neck, and ears? But Yoongi laughs loudly and Hoseok just tilts his head in sweet consideration.

“Actually, now that you mention it, Taehyung might be the most territorial, but you know. It is different when you’re an omega, especially one who can’t really scent yet…” Hoseok narrows his eyes in thought, looking over at Namjoon critically. He shrivels up under the attention.

“Anyway.” Namjoon flips through his notebook, and Yoongi laughs harder, until he’s halfway out of his chair but still clipping on a file on the computer.

Namjoon should have known that day was too good to be true. He should have known that the easy bonds of camaraderie were only meant to last so long, because isn’t that the problem with mixed dynamics? As soon as they all remember who they are, they aren’t meant to be so easy with each other.

Hoseok gets the phone call right before dinner that night. “Hyung is sick,” he says, green faced himself. “Let’s go, before Jeongguk finds him.”

Seokjin is in the building, on the floor in one of the company managers’ offices. “You couldn’t put him on the couch?” Namjoon barks, kneeling to the carpet when the three of them enter. In front of him, Seokjin blearily looks up at him and moans, a sound of agony, before turning his back to him on said shitty carpet.

Wonshik shrugs. “Look, I brought him in here for privacy, but now I can’t get him to move.” Wonshik sucks. He isn’t even their manager.

The omega’s back shudders and he curls in on himself, arms wrapped around his stomach. Hoseok crawls closest to him, gingerly places a hand of comfort on his shoulder. “Hyung? What is it? Your stomach?”

He smells - wrong. Like he’s ill, but not so much more than what a long week can do. Their jobs are exhausting, and it isn’t unusual for one or two or three of them to smell a little off, but there’s something else to it. Underlying.

“Don’t feel so great,” Seokjin mumbles. Hoseok leans over him with his ear.

“Hyung?”

“Let’s take him home.” Namjoon crouches, ready to pick him up and carry him, something he’s well trained for these days, but Yoongi fidgets.

“A hospital?” he says. “At least a doctor.” They look to Wonshik, useless piece of shit, who crosses his arms and tells them it’s up to them where he goes. Namjoon understands the underlying statement that the company will not be paying for any additional doctor’s visit.

“Hyung? Do you want to go home or do you want to see someone?” Hoseok asks him, slowly moving around so he faces him. Namjoon still can’t see his face.

“I want them,” Seokjin’s pants harshly, body shaking with it, face rolling into the floor further, “to leave!”

“Hyung.”

“Get out!”

“Hyung. Can I stay?”

Hoseok stays. Namjoon and Yoongi get kicked out of the office, in addition to Wonshik, only because Hoseok promises him that he’ll get Seokjin up and out sooner without him there.

“He didn’t.” Namjoon rubs at his neck, staring down at his phone. He should inform the rest of their team. “He didn’t smell like heat?”

Yoongi shakes his head, putting a hand over his phone. “He isn’t due for one for a while, but the larger issue is that we’ve got a short window of time before Jeongguk goes looking for him on a normal day. Let’s at least give hyung a chance to make his move before we tell anyone.”

They stand at the end of the hall until the door opens and Hoseok walks out supporting a slumped over Seokjin. They both don face masks. “He wants to go home and rest.” He motions at them to stay put, then slowly helps his fellow omega towards the elevator. “Try and keep the babies out as long as possible so he can get some sleep!”

Namjoon and Yoongi look at each other. “What are we supposed to do?” Surely, they’re both thinking the same thing, which is that all three of their maknaes will be less inclined to stay out for any kind of fun activity when they’re short two members, one in particular.

It’s all a moot point when an hour later they stand with Taehyung, no Jimin or Jeongguk to be found until Jimin calls and asks why their dorm room is deadbolted and they can’t get in. “Jeongguk’s ready to break down the door, but Hoseok keeps trying to tell us to leave, which is making it worse.”

Yeah. Namjoon gets that. He’d be mad if he was the one locked out but someone else was allowed in with -

Taehyung blinks up at him, confused, lips drawn long. Namjoon gently takes him by the waist and pulls him to his side, rubbing his wrist against his hip idly. “Hyung? What’s going on?”

Yoongi looks ready to tear his hair out and kick down the closest innocent door in the meantime. “Let’s go there. Let’s get them.” Namjoon agrees. If Seokjin (or Hoseok) don’t want them in the dorm, then they’ll need the two of them to drag Jeongguk out.

Shockingly, Jeongguk appears calmer than expected when they arrive, sitting on the floor with his back to the door, arms crossed, scowling, but the door remains upright and intact, so.

Jimin explains. “Hyung explained - more than once - that Seokjin wants space.”

“He won’t get better with space,” Jeongguk hisses. “He’ll get worse!”

“Apparently he barricaded the door?” Jimin continues, eyebrows pinched in worry. “Hyung won’t let Hoseok move anything.”

Yoongi hangs his head back. “We don’t have the funds for a hotel room.”

“Are you listening to me?” Jeongguk jumps upright on his feet, still so lithe and graceful in his rage. “Hyung needs me! I can help him! He’ll only get worse without me.”

Jimin shakes his head. “Jeonggukie, honey, listen to us. I think he needs to be alone without the presence of alphas right now. He’s feeling sick and extra sensitive right now.”

“It isn’t preheat?” Taehyung asks. “Are we sure?”

“Shouldn’t be. Didn’t smell like it either,” Namjoon mumbles. He has the entire company schedule for heats and ruts available to him, whereas the six of them only have each others, but he didn’t get dates confused. Seokjin shouldn’t be close. He should be close.

“So he’s just - regular sick?” Taehyung watches Jeongguk as he paces. His entire body, every inch of skin exposed, looks red. Like the youngest alpha, he sounds skeptical.

“Maybe he just didn’t want a certain someone motherhenning too much,” Yoongi says quietly, but Jeongguk doesn’t react. He’s about to start a small fire where he paces.

“None of you get it.”

“Jeongguk. Hey. Jeongguk-ah.”

He rips out of Namjoon’s ginger offer of consolation. “Don’t touch me!”

The night ends with the five of them hunkered down on a recently moped floor in one of the practice rooms. They manage to secure a few blankets and pillows stolen off couch cousins in various rooms, but no one would be comfortable under normal circumstances, and as is, Jeongguk paces even there, in front of the door, keeping Yoongi agitated as apparent self designated maknae alpha babysitter, hovering close to him at all times. Meanwhile Namjoon tries to help Taehyung be as comfortable as possible, curled up in between him and Jimin.

“I don’t think I can sleep here,” Jimin says, flat on his back.

“Poor hyung,” Taehyung whispers, tossing and turning. “He must feel really awful.” Namjoon steadies him with a hand on his hip.

“Please try,” he urges both of them. By the door, Yoongi fights sleep, head bobbing up and down as he sits propped up next to the wall. Currently, Jeongguk stands still, gaze directly out the window in the center of the practice room door used to spy on progress. Silent. Still. Lethal looking, if Namjoon is honest, and it is so far removed from the young, starry eyed kid he met a few years ago as a potential trainee that it would be frightening to meet him now, but fortunately Namjoon knows that look only comes out when some things are involved. Or, one thing is involved.

Taehyung snuffles.

“What? What is it?” Namjoon asks, one hand on the omega’s hip as he tosses and turns.

“Just - it’s uncomfortable,” Taehyung scowls. Namjoon immediately removes his shirt, even if it’s merely a t-shirt.

“Please keep your pants on,” Jimin jokes, but Namjoon frowns.

“It’s more to nest with though.”

Jimin stares at him. “I was joking.”

“You can keep them on, hyung.” Taehyung cozies up with the shirt under his nose and head pillowed on Namjoon’s arm. “Just - don’t move.” He closes his eyes, eyelashes too wonderfully long. They’re distracting, as distracting as the heavy gaze on him.

“What?” he snaps, noticing potentially yet another new mole, all of Taehyung’s constellations brighter in the dark.

“Are you okay?” Jimin asks. “You’re looking at him like he’s the last supper.”

“I don’t think you’re using that right,” Namjoon immediately replies, although he doesn’t even feel the thought before he says it. He’s busy. Are Taehyung’s cheeks thinner? He thumbs at them, his omega lazily opening his eyes and craning his neck to look up at him.

“Alpha?” he asks, one hand clutching at the thin tank he has left on.

“Do you want this too?” he asks, ready to remove it, but the omega grabs the hand on top of his chest instead. Taehyung shakes his head.

“Don’t need it. Now stay still.” When he rolls over directly on top of him, Namjoon goes stiff as a board and remains that way, not because he’s uncomfortable, but rather he hopes to make a nice bed for Taehyung.

He stays that way long past Yoongi turning off the lights with a threatening growl, the five of them huddled up in a loose circle on the floor, no one exactly pleased, but none so much as Jeongguk, grating on everyone’s last nerves with the way he can’t stay still, light from his phone illuminating everyone off and on as he checks it.

“Jeongguk, please.” Yoongi groans. “He’s fine. He’s with Seok. He’s got everything he needs. Just - give it a rest.”

Jeongguk’s silence is stony, but in his arms, Taehyung’s rattling breath deepens then thins out again, on the precipice of waking, but still asleep. What did they have him doing today? Namjoon racks his brain trying to remember what was on his schedule. They clearly worked him too hard, whatever it was. Taehyung looks too tired. He looks too thin. Growling, Namjoon pulls him in close, Taehyung snuffling and rearranging himself in his arms at the movement, his head turning to face the opposite way on his chest, nose twitching until he finds the right spot to stick it.

Namjoon knows the seconds Taehyung nears waking and the ones that are far and away. He feels the breath, warm and wanting, against his skin. Without moving, he opens and closes his hands, miming them through the air as if he was touching the omega in a way that might offer comfort. Taehyung doesn’t need comfort. He needs to sleep, and he needs to sleep protected.

Namjoon can do that.

There is drifting in and out, the kind of wakefulness that is also sleep that is also constant thought. From one moment of dreaming of holding a body as tightly as he wants, to the next very coherent thought of whether or not Taehyung got to call his father the way he wanted to all week, to the vague awareness that someone else, besides the two of them, is nearby and awake. Namjoon blinks, alert as anything despite sleep only a moment ago, to count five bodies in the room.

No, wait - a sixth enters, careful to shut the door quietly behind them. Namjoon sniffs the air. Taehyung in his arms, Jimin still nearby. He smells the heavy clove of Yoongi still, and some of Jeongguk, but also -

“Seok?” Namjoon mumbles, an alarm in the back of his head as he sees Yoongi reaching for the omega.

Hoseok hushes him, one hand in Yoongi’s hair. “Hyung kicked me out too. Didn’t want any additional scents around him.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Yoongi whispers in the dark, just amongst the three of them, all maknaes apparently asleep.

Namjoon eyes Jeongguk. He lies with his back to him, so he can’t see his face, but his side evenly moves in exhales, inhales.

“Dunno. I think he really is just sick, but everything feels - you know, so much, right now. I can tell he feels bad kicking us out, but also, I don’t think he physically could stand to be anywhere else.”

“Hyung?” Taehyung lifts his head, even if his eyes remain shut.

“Shhhhh. It isn’t time yet. Go back to sleep.” It’s easy to settle Taehyung; Namjoon runs his hands through his hair and then the omega’s head thunks onto his chest like a stone in water.

They all lie there in silence with no way to escape how odd it is to sleep minus a member. Sleeping on the floor of a practice room that most of them have slept on before, but only in a quick nap, only in times of desperation, and that makes this night feel desperate too.

Namjoon’s needs rattle around his being. He has to keep an eye on Taehyung, but he also keeps both ears open for telltale sleep departure in his breathing too, and then he also wants to watch their youngest. Their youngest, with his back to him, but something about how rigid the spine and how even the breathing is looks forced.

On his chest, Taehyung purrs.

Or, he tries.

Something inside Namjoon rattles loose.

It’s that pressure valve.

It’s about to release, he thinks, and Namjoon doesn’t have any safe way to release it.

Growling, he flips them over, Taehyung pressed to the floor and Namjoon on top, nose at his nape.

Taehyung purrs louder.

“I need-” He needs to suckle. “I need-” There is so much saliva in his mouth. Namjoon will choke on it just as surely as air. He pushes his nose into Taehyung’s neck until it’s flat, until there’s nothing more to smell because he can’t even breathe. Feet scrambling, he presses down into him, down and down, heavier and heavier, and Taehyung just purrs.

Namjoon opens his mouth to ghost the tips of his teeth in Taehyung’s neck, right at the juncture of his neck meeting spine. He will not apply pressure - Taehyung won’t ever feel his teeth - but he wants to sleep with his omega in his mouth. If he could properly scruff Taehyung just once with his teeth, Namjoon thinks he could write every love song.

Fuck.

What’s happening to him?

Chapter Text

The skirt is killing him.

Namjoon’s always had a thing for short skirts - so sue him for not being the most creative when it comes to his fantasies. He’s an alpha and he’s allowed one caveman tendency, as foretold by Jimin’s graciousness, and apparently there can be nothing better to get his mind racing than a simple mini skirt.

Namjoon rumbles.

The skirt under his hand is soft, but not as soft as the smooth legs underneath it. When Namjoon smooths his hand down over the skirt and no one stops him, he continues trailing it down until he meets skin, then he reverses, sweeping back up the warm leg and taking the skirt with him. Still, no resistance. A hand doesn’t push back against his, nor is there any vocal resistance as he disappears under there.

All the same, Namjoon pauses where he rests his hand, fingers slid up higher than he’s ever had them, right in between the apex of where leg meets body. He stops because he can feel how warm it is, right there. He knows if he shifts his hand the slightest bit what his knuckles will press against, because he already feels it. Phantom warmth.

He growls, teeth grit, salivating the way he only could over a warm omega. He sniffs the air, wondering, wanting, waiting - can he - ?

There isn’t a scent.

Huffing, Namjoon descends, a hound to the trail, looking, searching, finding.

A warm, wetted gasp above his head encourages Namjoon to nudge in deeper, nostrils flaring, mouth bucking. A moan - his own? He feels the bottom of the skirt hook around the top of his head, where it’s meant to be, and Namjoon imagines if he could open his eyes, he would find dark panties with darker spots.

He could make them darker.

Nudging forward, eyes shut, Namjoon laps his tongue out and broadmouth swipes it against the warmth. It quivers back. Like a man possessed, Namjoon grabs both legs far too violently, he knows that, but he can’t stop it, pulling that cunt right down against his nose and inhaling deeply, nose pressing in and in and in -

“ - Tae!”

Someone shouts. They’re shouting whole slews of words but Namjoon only catches a couple. “Stop! Tae!”

A frustrated groan, and it isn’t even coming from him. What’s coming from him is growls, a heady amount of them, as Namjoon clamps down around the omega under him. The body under him isn’t moving, but Namjoon does, thrusting against him, hands pinning him down, one hand squeezing around a neck so a fresh waft of muted scent comes out.

Smells like - smells like -

Strawberries.

It isn’t the omega’s scent, but the scent of his shampoo. Taehyung.

“Don’t fucking encourage him!” Yoongi shouts. Namjoon’s head clears enough to recognize the alpha’s voice. A threat! Snarling, Namjoon digs in deeper, both with his grip and his cock.

Under him, Taehyung moans. Around his back, Namjoon feels the legs wrapped there tighten.

“Kim Taehyung! Let him go right now!” Is it Jimin yelling? Namjoon arches his back to pull Taehyung securely under him. It means he has to dislodge his cock from where it nudged up warm and safe between him and the omega - it means -

Namjoon collapses back on top of Taehyung and puts it exactly where it belongs, rutting against the short sleep shorts, rucked up and barely there, they’re barely an obstacle and Namjoon’s sweatpants barely hang onto his hips, he can and does easily nestle his cock against him -

Taehyung squeezes back, two hands desperately locked around the back of his neck to keep him close. “Alpha,” he whispers in his ear, so soft despite the yelling and the scuffling feet around them. “Alpha, it’s okay. Use me.”

“Shi-”

“Taehyung!”

Namjoon bites down on flesh - it jerks wildly in his hold, and behind it a new wave of cursing and screaming and crying - is someone crying?

“He’s trying to claim you, get it the fuck together and stop! You can’t encourage him!” Yoongi yells, too close, he’s too close to Namjoon’s face. When he lets go with his teeth, he follows the flash of red up and back to Yoongi.

It was Yoongi’s hand he bit, in the path between him and Taehyung’s neck.

Namjoon’s eyes follow the trail of a bead of blood running down the side of his hand and onto the floor.

The floor of the practice room they slept in last night.

Namjoon blinks in rapid succession as he looks around at the faces above him, aghast, most of all, Hoseok in tears. The only person not distraught lies below him, rosy cheeked and face titled towards his neck.

He looks - Taehyung looks -

Serene.

“Joon, fucking listen to me, okay?” Yoongi growls, Hoseok at his side desperately trying to catch and cling to the injured hand with a pale concerned look on his face. Hoseok hates blood.

A tug.

Namjoon looks down to see Jimin trying to wrestle Taehyung out of his arms. It’s hard to say who snarls the loudest, him or Taehyung. “Namjoon-ah,” Jimin says, so calmly despite the scared look on his face. “You’re prerut, or maybe full rut, I don’t know.”

“I’m taking you to a service hotel, c’mon.” Yoongi doesn’t reach for him this time, but he remains poised close to Namjoon’s shoulder, and that’s swiping distance.

Taehyung isn’t letting go, and neither is Namjoon. “Tae!” Jimin hisses, too close, he’s too close.

“Joonie,” Hoseok hoarsely whispers. “You’re hurting him, honey. Let go.”

Namjoon looks where Hoseok’s eyes linger; under his fingers, Taehyung’s skin has gone white, blanched of all color. When he lets go, it’s painful to him, and under the red splotches left behind, so vivid surrounded by white, Namjoon sees the pain he’s left on Taehyung.

He’s already starting to bruise, and they don’t exist just on his arms.

“Fuck.” Namjoon’s hands shake as he sits back, the equivalent of icy water dumped over his head as he looks at his omega bandmate. Taehyung’s eyes are huge, just as imploring as his locked hands around his neck. There are bruises. There are scratches.

There is a faintly glistening trail on one of his exposed thighs and a damp spot on the bottom of his shirt.

Taehyung seizes himself between the legs and squeezes them shut around them.

“Alpha.” He mouths it, just for Namjoon to see. He hears it, oh god, does he hear it.

“Taehyung! Let go!” All of their hands pry Taehyung loose from him and drag him away; the omega’s cries pierce Namjoon’s soul. They echo and vibrate against the floors, the walls, every fiber of his being, a dejection and slight against his alphaness. Letting go of his chest, he crawls after them in a trance as they pull Taehyung from him until Yoongi steps in between.

“Hey, Joon, hey.” He crouches in front of him, hands up. One bloody hand up. “I know it’s been a while since your last rut, but we should move quickly, okay? You don’t want to be stuck here. It’ll be miserable. C’mon.”

Yoongi doesn’t offer to help him up, and Namjoon is glad. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he touched him, if his best friend touched him. Hoseok falls to the ground in front of them, distracting them both but rushing Yoongi to his side. The truth of the matter - Taehyung’s pushed the other omega down, and lunging out of Jimin’s grip, plasters himself again to Namjoon’s front.

“It’s alright, we can manage on our own. I’ll get him there.” Taehyung purrs in that artificial way of his, and purrs heavily.

“Oh, baby.” Hoseok shifts side to side, back and forth, almost manically while reaching between Jimin and Yoongi. “Jimin will take him now.”

In his arms, Taehyung freezes. Namjoon swears he feels Taehyung physically grow colder. “Jimin will nothing!” he hisses.

“Tae, please, listen to me-” Jimin, like Yoongi, keeps his hands up while he circles them. Namjoon notices Yoongi shaking his head at him. “You’re going to stay with Hobi hyung while I-”

“No!” Taehyung jumps up on him, Namjoon forced to grab him and keep him upright. “He’s not going anywhere without me!” When Jimin’s hands remain poised a little too close to them, Namjoon instinctively twists to hold Taehyung away from him.

He knows - Namjoon knows - they’re right. He needs to leave. It’s hard to plan clearly. Fuck, he’s early. He knows he’s due for a rut soon, but it’s still early. He needs more time, Taehyung needs more time.

“Hyung! Hyung.” Taehyung kisses him.

Namjoon freezes. Did he? Did that happen, or is his brain stewing in his overheated skull? Silence echoes in his skull like a vibration, forcing out every thought that ever was or ever meant to be. Did he -

He did.

Because Taehyung kisses him again, short and chaste but a surge of such blatant want, the kind that comes from chapped lips, the kind that comes from desperation, the kind that comes from love and lust and-

“Baby.” Namjoon’s never felt like this before, everything in him sinking down below his feet. Certainly, he didn’t think he was capable of anything like this so close to rut. Feelings close to rut are limited to lust, anger, impatience.

The chill of heartbreak haunts him, and his lips? The coldest. The most haunted.

“Why did you do that?” he asks quietly, soft words because this is between them. He tucks Taehyung into a corner of the room and nuzzles his face against the omega. Like this, he feels the frantic heartbeat under Taehyung’s skin in his cheeks, in the side of his neck, anywhere but his lips.

“Namjoon,” Yoongi warns, voice close enough but Namjoon doesn’t turn to look, rocking Taehyung in his arms.

“I’m okay, hyung, we’re okay,” Namjoon promises him, cheek pressed to Taehyung’s cheek. “I’m in control.”

“For now,” Jimin quips. Namjoon closes his eyes; he can feel some of the things Taehyung wants to say dissolving into his cheek, buzzing to his ear. Of course, Taehyung’s tried to say plenty of things to Namjoon already, for months and months now. It was Namjoon who didn’t listen.

“He isn’t,” Hoseok says, and at first, Namjoon believes his rapper cohort refers to him.

It isn’t him at all.

Taehyung frantically nuzzles and scents Namjoon back. “Hyung,” he pants. If Namjoon had a spare hand, he would wrap it around the omega’s neck and hold his heart steady. Instead, he holds Taehyung’s heart in his hand. He realizes that now. “Hyung, let’s go. I’m ready. I’ll take such good care of you.”

“Tae.”

It’s unfortunate they have an audience for this.

“Baby.” Namjoon kisses the tip of his nose to Taehyung’s. “Why did you do that, hm? Why’d you kiss me like that?”

Taehyung’s lips wobble. His eyes water.

Namjoon hates it. He tucks his nose into the softest part of Taehyung’s cheek. “Why’d you do it like this? I thought you wanted our kiss to be romantic?”

“It is,” but Taehyung sounds miserable. “Anything is romantic with you.”

Namjoon leans in, pressing Taehyung flush to the wall. Behind them, he both hears and smells the nerves of the others, but for now, he controls the urge to rut and bite and give everything this omega ever wanted to him.

“Tae-yah.” There are words bubbling around the broiling consciousness he has left, words he can’t say aloud, words he isn’t even sure are true, all Namjoon knows is that in this moment, he feels so blindingly fond of this one person in particular for all the things that make him him, and make him Namjoon’s. “We have time. We’ll have our time. I’ll kiss you the way you want to be kissed.”

His past self would undoubtedly be in disbelief if he could see himself now; Namjoon feels the pressure, the mounting ticking time bomb about to go off and take him with it, but right now, he can be still, be rational, even with a willing omega in his arms. For so many years he spent dreaming of this - a rut with a partner? An omega? A dream of an omega like Taehyung?

Call it growth that he hasn’t taken him and run for it, consequences be damned.

What has Namjoon been doing all this time?

“When I get back-”

Taehyung’s gasp wounds like a gunshot.

“Let’s have a proper date, yeah?”

“What happened to this is all an arrangement?” he hears Yoongi gripe behind him. Wow, even his ears are more sensitive in rut, because he can’t believe he overheard that.

“And we can have a proper kiss then.” Namjoon does kiss his forehead. “Save it until then.”

“What are you talking about? What are any of you talking about? I’m going with you. I’m here to help! We’re - assigned partners!” Taehyung cries.

“Baby.” Namjoon tries to set him down on his feet from where he’s got him pushed up. “You haven’t presented yet, and until then-”

“Tae.” Jimin’s voice is so sharp. “It’ll seriously fuck your hormones up if you send a rut with him now.”

“What are you talking about? What’s it matter if it messes with my hormones? Who do you think cares?” Taehyung pushes at Namjoon’s chest only to fist both hands in his thin t-shirt and reel him back. “Me?” He laughs. “The company?” He laughs incredulously, a punching breath of air between them.

Namjoon wonders if those hormone patches have made their way through Seoul sewage yet.

“Ruts aren’t fun, Tae-yah,” Yoongi adds, hovering closer and closer, and Namjoon thinks, this time, it isn’t about him. “Instincts take over. Rut rage is a very real thing for some, and we literally just witnessed Joon about to lose it over you.”

The addition of over you probably doesn’t help his case. Namjoon grimaces. Fortunately, Taehyung probably can’t see it for how close they are to each other.

“He’s supposed to lose it over me,” Taehyung hisses. A long whistle from behind them, and before he speaks, Namjoon already knows it to be Jimin.

“Are we sure Taehyung isn’t the one cycling out?”

The fact he doesn’t immediately lash out and back actually hurts, because Namjoon knows that can only mean Taehyung seriously considers it, and the fact is - there’s no way he’s preheat, and thank whatever above for that. If he were presenting, if he were in preheat -

Namjoon doubts he would have been able to stop himself. He doesn’t think Yoongi would have been able to stop him either. More than a hand would have been sacrificed.

“I-” Namjoon swallows. In the moment between what he says next, Taehyung looks up at him from under all those eyelashes and that beautiful mark under one eyelid. The truth is, Namjoon’s had so few ruts he doesn’t really know what is normal for him yet. Alphas cannot exactly be reliable witnesses to their own ruts, memory during impaired and fuzzy, and the time after littered with clues only in the form of dried fluids and bruises and ripped magazines. One notable time, a laptop was the casualty.

Combined with the fact that others best characterize him as clumsy and as someone who doesn’t understand his strength, both of which he’s conceding to as he gets older, he feels some of the same worries. “I’m not sure I’ll be careful enough with you, sweetheart.”

They’re all thinking it, but as close as they are - and closer in proximity even - no one says it aloud.

Unpresented, not only will Taehyung be vulnerable, but he will not physically be able to adapt. There’s no slick, there’s not enough prep in the world that would facilitate his body to receive a knot, and Namjoon has multiple knots to give at present.

The cold sweat down the back of his neck is so immense it almost buckles Namjoon’s knees. Not that he’d for sure knot Taehyung if he could this rut! That’s not - that’s not something they’ve really discussed, and even if Taehyung clings to him so right now and even if he’s a little too interested in hovering close to the bathroom when he showers, something he’s been told is less about staring and more about underwear collection, that doesn’t mean Namjoon can assume anything…

Or, you know.

The way Taehyung currently squeezes himself to Namjoon’s front, including his raging hard on. That doesn’t mean anything! Namjoon can’t assume he wants his knot. It’d be hard not to knot him - that’s kinda what ruts are - but - they would talk about it, and maybe -

Did he imagine an undulation? Some miniscule friction? More than a squeeze, a rolling of the hips so miniscule that even Namjoon can’t tell for sure?

Absolutely not.

Because one of Taehyung’s hands, caught between them, already invisible to any outside eye, slowly reaches down and squeezes Namjoon’s half popped knot.

He moans, body swaying, sagging right into the omega. He inhales deeply - shit, right there, he can make out Taehyung’s faint notes. He knows others say his scent isn’t really there yet, but that isn’t true to Namjoon. Fuck. Namjoon digs his nose in, pushes his hips into Taehyung who squeaks but certainly doesn’t protest. He squeezes him again. Fuck. Namjoon’s gonna knot his omega’s hand like a teenager.

“Shit-”

“Hyung-”

“Grab him by the neck - yeah - fuck -”

The screech of several sets of feet across the floor bounces around his empty head with only the phantom sensation of additional hands on him; as rough as they are, Namjoon only feels the one around his knot. Snarling, he whips his head back and tries to knock off the offending assault from his competitors, the alpha he smells all over them, he’s going to fucking -

“Where the fuck is Jeongguk?” someone yells. Jeongguk? Namjoon trips over his feet. Jeongguk. Seokjin.

He blinks.

From the floor, poised over Taehyung’s panting body, he looks up at Yoongi, Hoseok, and Jimin. All three of them clamber to pull at his arms, and Namjoon lets go. They just as suddenly and surely as the ocean tide turn to Taehyung and pull at him, parting them completely.

Jeongguk.

Namjoon flares his nostrils. Missing pack member - he was here? He was here. Namjoon remembers. Where now? Seokjin. Missing omega. Namjoon growls.

“I think we know where he would have slipped off to,” Hoseok says ruefully, jumping back, hands up, when Namjoon gnashes his teeth at his fingers. Too close, they’re too close to his face and his omega.

“Someone needs to warn hyung,” Yoongi growls. His hand freely bleeds all over Namjoon. When he grips and squeezes Namjoon’s throat, the skin slides. It slides and it smells overwhelmingly - Namjoon needs to smell Taehyung. He writhes in their hands, Taehyung tucked to his chest. He just wants to smell his omega, needs to, but there is alpha blood all over him.

“You won’t separate us!” Taehyung yells, then yelps, their pack beta behind his back with his sneaking hands.

“Kim Taehyung!”

The hands around Namjoon’s neck squeeze. “Yoongi! You’ll hurt him!” Namjoon growls so hard in a vacuum of pressure that it rattles the rest of his body. He knows nothing feels right - his body and thoughts are all independent from each other, none accounted for. He doesn’t want any of this, he only wants to rut his body into the warm and willing one beneath his.

“You’ll hurt both of them!”

The scents in the room - both the scents and smells, so different as they are - swell up inside his nose, inside his brain. He can scent out distressed omega combined with the fake placating omega pheromones they’ll produce in times of stress, but they’re not right. They aren’t from Taehyung.

Namjoon forgot about the other omega in the room; Hoseok bravely sticks his wrist in front of his nose and Namjoon gags. It’s too strong – he’s too strong. Namjoon winces, rolling his head away and tucking it into the top of Taaehyung’s head, comforting strawberries and cream, sheltering his omega’s neck from any hands or teeth even if it leaves his own exposed.

“Call Sejin,” Taehyung says, muffled in his chest. “I’m of age. We’re assigned partners. I’m going with him. Wherever he wants to go. Call Sejin, or Yaejoon. They’ll only back me up, and you know it.”

“Yeah, our managers absolutely have your best interests at heart,” Yoongi scoffs, but above their bodies, balled together on the floor and frozen, Namjoon recognizes a dial tone like a tolling bell.

“He’s right. Yaejoon won’t care.” Jimin paces above them, phone in hand. “However.”

Their beta stops within reach of them. Namjoon growls.

“Tae-yah. We need to get Namjoon hyung out of here. Will you help, or not?”

From there, Namjoon doesn’t remember walking. He remembers crawling, lunging, and covering Taehyung over short spans of distance. Every time the omega writhes away, Namjoon follows. They’re in a car for a time, tucked away in a corner where Namjoon can push his nose flat to Taehyung’s neck, occasionally licking at the gland to coax the scent, then they arrive to a strange place - hotel. It’s a service hotel. Namjoon’s knees jerk at the scents at the front door, but Taehyung pulls his face back down to his neck, chest. He folds himself in half to fit there, hands on the omega’s hips, front of his pants and lower half of his top damp from his leaking, aching erection.

Namjoon smells - he smells -

“What is he doing here?” an angry voice, too close and too far at the same time, shouts. Namjoon cranes his neck to look with one eye, Taehyung safely backed into a corner, but one eye remains for him.

Jeongguk supports a red Seokjin, glistening with sweat, enough for even Namjoon to notice. His scent is - different. Noticeably so, even across a room full of confusing scents.

“Shit! Are you sure he shouldn’t be at a hospital?” Hoseok asks Sejin, followed by one of the company’s security guards and a board member. A fucking board member. He’s too close to Seokjin, too close to Jeongguk, and Jeongguk lifts the omega off his feet and swings him away from the man.

“Jeongguk, why are you handling him like that? It won’t help,” Jimin scolds, but he dares to hover close to the couple.

“I’m the only thing that will help!”

“I thought he wasn’t in heat?”

“He shouldn’t be.”

“I didn’t know he’d be here!” Jeongguk snarls.

“Does it look like he’s trying to take hyung from you!” Yoongi gets between them; Namjoon’s hackles raise at their youngest alpha’s narrowed eyes on him. A threat! A blatant challenge!

Around his neck, Taehyung’s fingers curl in.

“The kid is just here to escort Seokjin,” Yaejoon says, as if he’ll ever be able to work with them again after calling Jeongguk a kid in front of his omega in heat.

When their board member remarks, “It’s the only way he could get him out of that building,” Namjoon understands their front door is probably gone, and the obstacle of getting Seokjin out of the building without Jeongguk would be immense.

Namjoon though - Namjoon can understand.

“Well, aren’t you happy,” Yoongi says, gesturing. “It all worked out, didn’t it? Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“He can’t go any further. We’re here to escort him to another hotel while we finish the final touches on your new accommodation.” Sejin nods at Yoongi. “The rest of you may join us.”

As in, their old dorm room is out of the question.

Namjoon wonders what’s left.

“Omega check-in is on the other side of the building,” a woman tries to interject, hovering nervously close to Jeongguk and Seokjin. “I can take him.”

Jeongguk doesn’t even look at her. His hands don’t move from around Seokjin’s waist, and the omega pants harshly enough in the alpha’s neck it sounds shocking enough to sober Namjoon. They’re right. He needs to be hospitalized. He’s nowhere near his heat cycle, and he sounds like he can’t breathe, his face and hands, every part of his visible skin red.

It’s too soon for him to have another heat. It hasn’t been that long since his last.

In his arms, he clutches Jeongguk’s comforter to his chest.

“He needs me,” Jeongguk says, and Namjoon, who has heard every variation of Jeongguk’s voice, has never heard this before. Namjoon looks between him, the woman, and the security officer, larger than any of them, inching closer.

He needs me.

Haunting words, echoed in sentiment from the one in his arms. Seokjin can’t seem to keep his eyes open, grip weak where he rights to hold onto both Jeongguk and their blanket.

Namjoon eases his grip.

The scent of distressed and sick omega overpowers all of them; because of it, Namjoon can stand up straight, he can think of how wrong this all is. It’s enough to wake him up, enough to skim clarity from the top of his rutting brain.

He can also recognize how his stomach churns. The scent notes Namjoon has from Taehyung - they live in his nostrils, not fully formed. He isn’t sure he was fully aware of the extent of them before today - the floral pieces of him, they’re new, complex, and they make him want to dig with his bare hands through concrete until they hit soil. They make him want to run in traffic, run along side it, a challenge to who is faster and most dexterous, makes him think he could win, makes him think he could fuck, fuck Taehyung, and Taehyung would take it like he’s meant to, like they’re only here for one thing and that one thing should be in the omega’s womb.

Taehyung nearly falls when Namjoon takes a step back. He catches him, of course he catches him, if Namjoon understands one thing now, it’s that he will catch Taehyung time and time again, as many times as he needs to.

“Tae…”

The omega looks up at him sharply, mouth open, opening wider. Those lips, he kissed. It’s a nagging thought that shouts through his thoughts, incredulously happy - they kissed!

He didn’t realize he would feel so elated he no longer feels human.

Namjoon tucks some of his hair behind his pretty ear. No earrings today. Namjoon holds one earlobe between two fingers and smiles down at Taehyung. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

“Hyung!” he cries, betrayed, hurt, angry. The pinch of his eyebrows Namjoon wants to feel under his fingers, but he doesn’t deserve to even look upon Taehyung. “How could you say that? We’re partners! I’m yours! This is what we’re meant for!”

It’s what they’re meant for. As if, they were never idols to begin with.

Namjoon just knows he’ll never be the same again once they share a cycle. What will he do? What will Taehyung let him do? Suddenly, almost inexplicably, he feels as young as everyone tells him he is, and Namjoon hates that.

He’s supposed to be the leader. He needs to set the example. “Maybe just this once? Think about it, baby.” He knows what words to weaponize. “It’s just one cycle. There will be plenty more, and you’ll be more comfortable and prepared for them.”

“No!” Taehyung wretches Namjoon’s hand to his chest, hummingbird heart thumping the back of it, and his tears dropping a warning. Namjoon really isn’t sure how much longer he can stand here and do this - at this point, alpha need presses on oppressively. If there’s one thing he recalls from his previous ruts - the hard ons don’t go anyway, and he’s been hard since before he woke up, for who knows how long.

There’s no way of hiding it, so he tries not to be too embarrassed as he kisses Taehyung’s cheek.

“Are you going to do anything or just gawk at all of your inefficiencies?” Yoongi snipes at the small collection of company interests gathered to chaperon them.

Sejin shrugs. “If Taehyung wants to be here, he’s of age. The company will write a notice for both of them to take the days off.”

“I told you!”

“Jeongguk will need to return with us, however.” Yaejoon says it, but their security puts a hand on Jeongguk’s shoulder. Even Namjoon is frightened by the roar of pure anger, the quick motion of a young alpha lashing out. He lands a foot on top of the guard’s toes, and when he starts to double over, Jeongguk twists to plant a knee in his stomach to try to push him over. The guard swipes out his legs as he goes down, and Seokjin is left wobbling on his own two feet, blinking owlishly.

Jimin quickly rushes to his side, Hoseok on the other. “We’ll check hyung in,” Jimin says, quickly following the woman to the opposite side of the building, dragging a moaning Seokjin with him, his feet sliding across the tiled floor. They’re nearly around the corner before Seokjin weakly protests, a real omega cry piercing their ears and bouncing off the walls.

Jeongguk has the guard off him and is halfway across the room before he and Yoongi tackle him back down, their bodies landing with a crunch. “Jeongguk-ah, please!” Yoongi scrambles for his arms. “Don’t cause a scandal! Think of what hyung would say if he could, yeah?”

“Fuck you! He’s calling for me right now!”

His body aches in a way that he knows will only get worse, but Namjoon walks over to them and grabs Jeongguk by the neck. Rut rage, they say. Namjoon isn’t angry at Jeongguk really, but he knows he isn’t gentle. Extra strength? Maybe. Maybe he feels extra strong today. Maybe that’s a side effect of extra horny.

“Get off me!” their youngest yells, literally kicking and screaming between him and Yoongi. With his help, they pin his arms down and hand him to the guard; now, Seokjin is gone and out of sight. There are no more piercing omega cries, just the sniffling of ordinary omega tears from behind him.

“Jeongguk, hey, listen to me for a second, yeah?” Namjoon tries to keep all his bubbling rage and desire and extreme need underwraps. His blood feels too thick for his body; he can feel it physically moving through him, consciousness left in only marginal quantities, but he can do this for his pack.

“Fuck you too!” Jeongguk spits in his face, feet kicking uselessly against Namjoon’s shins. “You stay away from him! Stay away-”

“Pup, he isn’t here for him!” Yoongi’s hands around Jeongguk’s sides are so red but none of it is visible on the alpha’s black shirt, black pants. There’s some on Jeongguk’s chin though, and Namjoon is sure he has Yoongi’s blood smeared all over him.

“Hyung’s in heat and he’s in rut!” Jeongguk gnashes his teeth in the direction of the hands. “I fucking know he wants him! He wants to take advantage, but hyung doesn’t want him! He needs me! I’m the alpha who’s compatible! I’m the alpha who marked him!”

“Does it look like he’s chasing after him? Use the eyes in your head, Jeon Jeongguk! He didn’t even know hyung would be here!”

But Jeongguk will not hear any of it, and Namjoon knows his presence doesn’t help. “I should go.” He grunts, gesturing at the check-in counter. The burly alpha sitting behind it almost looks amused, and the (only slightly smaller) female alpha next to him cracks her neck when they lock eyes.

Namjoon’s never used a facility like this; he knows it is not only a privilege but a necessity given their housing situation. He tries to walk over - alone - but Taehyung snatches up his hand, lightning fast.

“Don’t push me away again.”

“Tae-yah.” Namjoon has no patience left; he tries not to let Taehyung hear it. He doesn’t deserve a mere whisper of anger in his voice, but he’s - “You’re making it really hard.”

Taehyung looks between his face and groin.

“Stop.” Namjoon has no laughter about the situation left.

Behind them, they hear Jeongguk as he’s dragged out the front door he came through; Namjoon wonders where they’ll all be next time he sees them, when he sees and confronts Jeongguk’s ire and hatred for him when he let go of a silly crush so long ago.

There are scuff marks on the floor from his shoes, a long trail of them all the way out.

Namjoon wipes spit off his face.

“Joonie, focus, please.”

“Baby.” Namjoon feels ill. “Can you do something for me?”

“No. I can’t leave you.” Taehyung’s eyelashes flutter something desperate as he nuzzles against Namjoon’s one cheek, second cheek, his neck and under his chin.

“Let me just - tonight, yeah? Give me the rest of today to - to adjust.” Namjoon really doesn’t want to go upstairs alone. “Give me tonight to settle in, and then - tomorrow. Tomorrow, come back.”

He tucks more of the omega’s hair behind his ear. He untucks it to tuck it. What are hands for? Grunting, he takes a half step to the side as his cock twitches. It hurts. His entire body aches, pins and needles only for muscles to feel sore then fine then sore again. There is the fever too - a rush of heat, sometimes traveling north from his toes up and sometimes traveling south from the base of his neck to his chest. It all meets in the middle.

“What difference would it make?” Taehyung pushes back. “Hyung, let me stay with you. I can - I’ll lock myself in the bathroom until first light if you need that, but let me stay close.”

Namjoon wants to laugh, but it’s increasingly uncomfortable and tight everywhere, even in his face. “Baby.” It’s a ridiculous idea, but it’s Taehyung, and that makes it cute. “Do you think I’d let a door stop me?”

Taehyung jerks his gaze back to his, throat bobbing as he swallows. “You let a lot of things stop us so far.”

Namjoon nods. He’s shared kisses with others before, a past life, all of which amounted to nothing, not even the big first, but he had hoped for Taehyung’s sake that their first kiss might mean something, not even in the grand scheme of life or career, but mean something in that Taehyung could forgive him for his past shortcomings. None of what Namjoon did was malicious, but that doesn’t mean Namjoon left Taehyung unscarred.

“Tae-yah. Baby.” He knows which the omega prefers. “I owe you a lot of apologies.”

“And proper kisses,” he thinks he hears under Taehyung’s breath. If Yoongi were here now… “I want you to kiss me back.”

“I will.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.” Namjoon would promise a lot right now if it meant he could hole himself away finally. The clothing’s gotta come off. He needs to be alone - right now. If he walks over to the check-in desk in part to finally have a wall to lean into and squeeze his knot, well.

Taehyung hovers closeby, even answers some of the basic questions for him when Namjoon grunts indiscriminately. Sejin comes back in through the front door, soon joined by Jimin. They look between him and Taehyung.

“What’s the plan?” their manager asks.

Jeongguk must be sedated.

“I’m - checked in,” Namjoon grunts.

“We’ll prepare a proper bag for you. Toiletries. A change of clothing for after.” Even Jimin looks flushed, some dampened hair at his temple. What’s more challenging? Assisting someone in their cycle or wrestling an unwilling omega?

“Where - Hoseok?” Namjoon needs to know where they all are.

“He’s going to meet Yoongi. Seokjin is in a nesting room now.” Jimin’s eyes soften. Is it because he looks terrible? Or are they for his soulmate? Always good to remind himself; whatever he is to Taehyung, he isn’t his soulmate. He grunts some more.

“I know which room is yours,” Taehyung says. Warns.

Namjoon nods. “I’ll - try to call you. Later.” The day is still technically quite young. They didn’t quite sleep through the night.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. Regardless.” Taehyung puffs out his chest only to deflate immediately.

“Thank you. I need - a second. To myself.” To prepare for whatever comes after this. Shit. They’re idols. They’re meant to - Namjoon wants to - see the world. Write poetry. Receive accolades and prove himself, and not as some beast of an alpha. He accepted the authored rules of partnership to play the game. He didn’t think he’d get played so early. What will he have after this? Because Namjoon starts to feel it with heart sinking clarity; the first love of his life won’t always be the first love of his life.

It used to be music.

Taehyung stands before him now.

What will he give to Taehyung? What will he give up for Taehyung?

Shit.

“Go and rest, now, baby. I’ll see you later.” Namjoon kisses his cheek one more time. “Make yourself pretty for me, yeah?”

Taehyung could hardly make himself any prettier than Namjoon could count the minutes between now and then. Namjoon has to give him something. Something to do, something to look forward to.

He never anticipated getting what he’s always wanted to fill him with such dread.

Chapter Text

The room is both deceptively nice and by all accounts, terrible.

Sterile, that’s for sure. Namjoon shudders to think of what they must use to sterilize the room in between customers. The scent alone sobers him for a moment, enough to take in the details of a large bed, a practical choice of a mattress on the floor. No frame to break. The sheets, too, look simple, the kind that will be thrown away without major expense versus trying to wash and save them.

He has to wonder if the omega side of the hotel has nicer things in it. Softer sheets, a raised and reinforced bed. Some omegas like to burrow. He hopes they light a handle or diffuser or something for them, or is it just the room his company selected for him is basic needs only?

There isn’t anything more to the room. No extra furnishings, no television, nothing that could be conceivably broken. The attached bathroom is small and open - a standing shower tucked into the far wall without any glass divider or even a lip, something liable to catch a foot and trip someone, especially an alpha not in their right mind. Especially a naturally clumsy alpha.

And it’s quiet.

Namjoon isn’t used to the quiet.

It hurts his ears, unsure of what to do or where to stand. All he can think about are Taehyung’s whines, as piercing as they are. Yoongi’s growls and Hoseok’s cries too. Moments ago, he was with his group. Now, he’s alone, and the silence eats away at him.

At least he can strip now.

Namjoon tears off his shirt only to realize how horrible his bottoms are, shoving them off just as quickly. Fuck, his dick looks obscene even to him, and not in a fun ego-inflating kind of way. Squeezing himself, he looks in between the bed and the door, unsure of what to do. His last rut was spent miserable and miserably alone. The privacy of shared quarters was too guilt-inducing to let go; he could see Yoongi’s headphones and Hoseok’s underwear from his bed at the time, the three of them still on their own.

Or, he was on his own. From the beginning, Yoongi and Hoseok had each other.

His first rut when he was still at home was terrible, and the one at the dorm? Namjoon remembered it the day after, and then in days following, promptly forgot, like his memory needed to protect him. He remembers thinking - what if they need something? He remembers - how do I clean up?

Pacing lets off some of his scent into the room. He rubs the rest of it into the walls and door - if omega comes -

Namjoon swallows.

If Taehyung comes, it will smell solely of him.

Thinking of Taehyung now makes his nuts drop and his knot half inflate. Groaning, he collapses face first into the mattress and rolls around, rolling to a succinct stop with one leg wrapped around the edge of the bed and the other balanced on the floor. Straddling it, he realizes how good it feels to grind there.

After that, the fog settles in.

He knows time passes. It’s measured out in bodily fluids spilled between him and the floor, the walls, the bed. He closes his eyes, knot throbbing in hand, and opens them to tacky cold junk all over him, knot deflated but hard-on waving at him.

He hasn’t fully popped yet, not once. How many times has he rubbed one out already?

Hot. It’s so hot. In the shower, the water is cool but not cold enough, and pruning, Namjoon already finds the grip around himself painful despite the extra moisture. Everything just burns, and it’s eating him up from the inside. He can’t eat - there are snacks left in a bag for him, but nausea turns his stomach over so his rut addled brain finds more pleasure in tearing apart the bags and stomping through their contents.

“Fuck!” he yells, rutting desperately against the wall in the showers. In the expanse of time in between ruts, it’s enough to forget the hell that they are. Impossibly horny is the fun way of describing it. Painfully crippling is the reality.

Coming doesn’t do anything. In his most lucid moments, he knows there’s no use in jacking it anymore, but those moments pass, and the burning chafe on his shaft matches the white knuckling extortion on his knot.

All that, and he tastes blood.

He’s bitten his tongue at some point. His lips too, he realizes, fangs fully extended. There are no mirrors in the suite, otherwise he would be tempted to look at them. Grunting, Namjoon shreds through one of the towels left out for him, one of the few room amenities allowed for alphas.

It tears too easily.

Namjoon sets his sights on the mattress, chewing it until he tastes something acrylic, so he spits it out.

Maybe the wall? Maybe it would be satisfying to take a chunk out of the wall.

It’s not.

Namjoon bites into his left shoulder while squeezing his knot as tight as possible, past the point of feeling new pain because every bit of excruciating agony inflicting him feels like it’s been going on for so long that there can no longer be new sensations. He is burning, and maybe if he could feel pain other than burning it would mean he’s going to make it.

Someone knocks at the door.

Namjoon blinks, nose flaring. Is it - ? He wretches the door open, deadbolt pulling out of the frame and leaving a piece of missing doorway while the rest of it slams into the opposite wall.

“Shit!” The beta jumps. “You would think they’d reinforce that-”

Growling, Namjoon yanks him to his front, sniffing at his neck, tasting his gland with the tip of his tongue. Scrunching his nose up, he snorts the air back out and shoves the body away from his. Wrong. It’s wrong.

“H-here!” Something is pressed into his face, and Namjoon moans, his dick twitching with pleasure for the first time in a long time. That’s it. That’s omega. Smells like - strawberries and cream, their shampoo, and the softly pear scent of their lip conditioner. Chapstick. That’s called chapstick.

He looks up at the beta in front of him - Jimin, it’s Jimin - busy applying said pear chapstick and frantically rubbing a shirt on his neck. “Mine!” Namjoon hollers, yanking the shirt from him and chewing it.

Jimin puts his hands up, kicking the door shut behind him. “Shit, please just don’t kill me, fuck.” He kicks a black duffel bag into the room. “Go get it, boy.”

Namjoon is busy. Nothing has felt as good around his cock as the silky material in his hand. Oh, it’s heaven! He drops to the floor to pursue it, fucking it furiously across the room while the tiptoeing steps around him filter in and out of the periphery.

It isn’t until he hears the telltale of a zipper that Namjoon gets excited. Omega?

It’s Jimin opening the bag. “I came prepared,” he says, blowing his hair out of his eyes. “Now, big boy.” He eyes him warily, staring unabashedly at his knot. Namjoon swells larger. “You want the good old fashioned fleshlight or knot massager?”

He shakes both options in his hands, and Namjoon growls while nosing around. He smells. Jimin smells like - like omega. His hair even - it’s like his omega’s hair.

The beta swats his nose. “I did this so you wouldn’t tear me apart. Now. Come here. Have you knotted at all? Fuck, you are purple. It’s gonna fall off if you don’t knot.”

His hackles rise when this beta gets closer. Namjoon flashes his canines, but Jimin scowls. “Stop that, leader-nim. Now.” Jimin drops one item out of his hand to pick up a bottle of lube with a flourish, uncapping it and squirting it straight down into something Namjoon’s never seen before in real life.

“Come here.”

Namjoon growls some more.

The beta raises one eyebrow. When Namjoon snaps his teeth, all it takes is that hand pulling out an additional clothing item for Namjoon to whimper. Dangling off one finger, a dainty piece of panty hangs. “It’s still warm.”

It is only later that he realizes what must have happened, for Namjoon certainly can’t recall most of that night. He comes to, thrusting harshly into the silicone body with stilted pistoning, as uncanny and disorienting as it is to fuck an inanimate half body, while Jimin holds it and Namjoon pants, salivates, and chews through a pair of Taehyung’s underwear.

“Come on, tough guy,” Jimin croons, himself ruddy faced and sweating. “Really give it to your Taehyungie. Knot him good. Come on.”

But it hurts; it fucking hurts, and exhausted as he is, Namjoon finds he cannot move at all, collapsing on top of the toy and idly grinding at the beta’s insistence. “Namjoon-ah. He needs it. Don’t you know he needs your knot? Fill him up. Breed him well, alpha.”

Namjoon’s throat rumbles with the growl even though his eyes stay shut and his lips closed. The body under his jostles, shaking. He thrusts once. “Alpha.” He thrusts twice.

There isn’t a third thrust.

If he can’t knot, or even come right now, he might as well sleep. The two modes of rut - fuck and pass out. Someone doesn’t want him to though - a harsh slap jars him, and growling, he snaps out blindly with his teeth.

Hurts too much to open his eyes, caught between the need to be prostrate and humping something or curled up tightly in a ball, the only defensive position he has left. His dick has been hard for so long it somehow weaves between feeling numb and lighting bolt jolting painful, from mere second to second.

A voice talks to him. They talk to him a little too much. When a hand touches his lower back, he snaps out again, thrashing no differently than an animal to be spectated at. Words fail him. How could they fail him? It’s what he does. It’s who he is. Now he twists in agony that he can hate and love at the same time, the literal definition of a double edged sword that he’s ready to cut himself with.

It isn’t until the door opens, a waft of air blowing through the room, over his back, that Namjoon tries to focus. Leaving - ? Is someone still there?

“What the fuck?” someone curses.

Namjoon twitches.

“Hyung - Namjoon -”

This touch is different, isn’t it?

“Jagiya.”

The moan he lets out is less pleasure, more pain. The hands on his face smell like earl grey tea and there’s only one person who enjoys the scent of bergamot like that. Nose first, he lunges into the open palm, rolling his face in it.

“This is a bad idea.”

“You said it yourself - he needs me.” A thump on the floor; Namjoon realizes there is a knee close to his face, a wrist presented to his nose. He inhales deeply; apart from the smell of tea, there isn’t much, and that scent fades away as he nuzzles at it, nipping, then licking. Sucking. “There you go. I’ve got you now, hyung. I’m here.”

Singing. Words that are familiar to him, but Namjoon can’t be bothered to listen, he has things to do. Between his teeth, the scent gland there still doesn’t give him anything more.

“Tae-”

“I’ve got him. You can go now.” The wrist draws away from him, and Namjoon blindly follows it, crawling forward. His nose bumps into something warm, and rather than revolt at the additional body heat, Namjoon melts in pleasure. He smells - he smells -

“I’m not going anywhere. Look at him.”

Namjoon worms his way in, nosing and huffing. He doesn’t stop until he’s pressed flat to what could only be pussy. A gasp above him, maybe because the legs around his ears are no competition for his arms. It’s easy to hold them open. Grumbling, he finds himself unsure what to do with his mouth. Pucker? He puckers his lips there.

“I said I’ve got this!” the voice above his hisses while cradling his head, holding it there, supportive. Encouraging. Namjoon could be closer yet. He pushes his nose in until the skin there gives, then suddenly his breathing is full of things yet known.

Everything starts vibrating.

“Kim Taehyung!”

Taehyung.

It’s his Taehyung.

Finally, his arms work well enough to wrap around the waist before him. “Omega.” The blood between his ears rushes at a frequency that the singing might have been him all along. Things seem a little clearer now. Things feel better like this, the small part of his rational mind supplying the pertinent information that he lies on his belly between Taehyung’s legs wrapped around his skull while he moves his nose up and down the seam standing between him and his folds.

The vibrating of the world is the quivering in Taehyung’s legs.

“I won’t let you get hurt!” Jimin hisses. The beta. His beta. Namjoon rolls one eye to peer at him, standing too close with his arms crossed and a sour look on his face. He’s pumping out that beta magic of his, something close to a security blanket. He’ll forever think of tranquility and safety when he smells jasmine.

Namjoon nuzzles idly, slipping up towards Taehyung’s belly.

“Look at him! He’s not present enough to hold himself back, and you’d let him do whatever he wants! I can’t trust either of you.” He reaches for something, but Namjoon takes care of that, snapping at him before pushing his omega down flat to the ground. Now he can completely cover his body.

‘S better this way.

“He won’t hurt me.” Teeth bite at him now - at his clavicle, at his arm. His warm breath burns its way across his chest, but all Namjoon can do is reach between them and grab ahold of himself, lifting his body at the groin just enough to rub at Taeyhung’s lower stomach, grunting.

“He’s trying to fuck you, and you can’t get wet, Tae.”

“That’s what lube is for-”

“No amount of lube will help you with a knot!”

The raised voices prick at his skin. Roaring, Namjoon clamps down on the body under his. A sharp inhale next to his ear lights an alarm - is he hurting? Did he hurt -? “Omega.” He shuffles him underneath, and the two hands that hold him back are soft. Gentle. Not squeezing. Not in pain.

“You’re bruised already, Tae. Don’t make him hate himself when he comes out of this.”

Taehyung.

It’s a name, but also a charm. A talisman, and it carries with it enough meaning that it makes sense even when Namjoon does not have a rational thought left in his body.

It’s there for that fleeting moment, a passing thought whistling through his brain that he catches onto. He’s naked, in rut, on top of Taehyung.

He’s leaking on Taehyung.

He should be leaking in Taehyung.

The noise would be a grunt, growl, and howl all in one. It can’t be stopped, he really can’t stop, he has to pop a knot right now, and his omega is there, so he frantically sits back, hoists one leg up, and pushes himself up between Taehyung’s legs so they have to clamp down around him.

Head thrown back, he moans. Fuck. When Taehyung squeezes, oh, he squeezes. His first word he’s said all night - an eloquent fuck! - and he tosses Taehyung over onto his hands and knees to mount, one hand on his nape to force him into position.

Namjoon feverishly climbs on, jutting his aching cock where it needs to go. It slides over the valley of Taehyung and despite the pain, Namjoon smiles. All he has to do is shift his hips down and then up, the head of his cock catching. He moans, Taehyung moans, head thrown back so his face is near his. Namjoon grabs onto his earlobe with a suckling mouth, but there’s an intrusion, something tugging at him.

“Kim Namjoon!” someone shouts in his ear, someone touching him, but before he can have their hand cinched between his teeth, they are hands up and out of reach.

Triumphant, Namjoon remains mounted.

There is no questioning what is more important between mounting his omega or pursuing an annoyance.

Namjoon ducks his head down and thrusts.

Fuck.

The itch alleviates a little. Widening his hips, he repositions himself a little higher on top of his omega’s back, so close to what he wants, what he needs.

“Stop right there!” omega shouts, but not at him. Namjoon keeps up his work, his most important work, he’s gonna pup them right now.

It fucking hurts, but what hurts more is the thought of no puppy.

“Just let him come like this,” his omega hisses. Yes, yes, yes - he’s gonna come in him.

“As long as he keeps it between your thighs.”

Growling, Namjoon feels it in his balls, but needs to readjust again. Licking his lips, he pulls them up on their knees and reaches around the front and feels his cock poking his hand where he thumbs the omega. Frustrated, he shoves his hand down the front of Taehyung’s pants to audible delight and maneuvers his cock around. Panting, aching, fuck, he just needs - he needs -

“He won’t come like this,” Taehyung grunts, tightening his legs up so Namjoon shivers at the squeeze. “He needs to knot.”

“No shit,” their interloper says. When omega falls forward again onto hands and knees, he takes to it with renewed vigor.

Until he can’t any longer.

The burning isn’t even the same any more. It’s both internal and external burning, it hurts to touch and it hurts to not be touching it. Chafed. His skin feels ready to bleed or is bleeding.

He collapses, pushing them to the ground, his chest covering his omega’s back. Omega grunts. “He’s fucking hard as a rock and pulsing so hard it feels like a vibrator between my legs.”

Namjoon hears things - wet things. Oh. Omega gets wet for him. He only has a little energy to growl, humping once to let him know he can still do it. He’ll still breed him.

“We’re gonna need to try this.” Rustling, a lot of rustling around. It isn’t until the body under his moves that Namjoon cares. “Ease up, big boy.”

It hurts to growl even. Namjoon lacks the strength to make a show of it, so rather than search around with his fangs, he settles himself more firmly over omega to protect him.

“Can you-”

“He’s heavy.”

“No shit, and his dick probably doubles his body weight with how much junk he’s holding onto.”

Namjoon shivers at the touch on his back.

“Shit, that’s not a good sign. C’mon, Tae, we gotta milk him-”

“Just leave, I can handle this!”

Omega keeps moving, wiggling. Namjoon rolls his cheek across his back but when he tries to use his arms to push himself up to get his arms under both of them, he finds that he can’t really feel them.

“Keep him up, like that, and I’ll put this-”

“Give it to me.”

Omega wriggles out from under him, so Namjoon has to come up with the strength to follow him, loose limbed, tingling. Free on its own, his cock twitches and all the feeling renews there. He moans, not in pleasure.

“C’mon.” Someone touches his back again, and when Namjoon opens his eyes, his omega is there, looking back, laid out before him, propped up on his elbows as he tilts his neck in clear invitation.

“Alpha,” he keens, voice a little higher, needier. Namjoon jerks forward. He has to get to him, he has to claim him, but every movement feels like crawling through quicksand. This time when a hand takes him in, he doesn’t fight it. He’s guided in where it’s wet, so wet, the suction squeezing at the tip so good that his eyes roll down in his head.

The suction moves down his shaft and this time the moan is from pleasure. Aw, fuck. Namjoon shudders, shivers, his face needs to go somewhere. Omega is there, his neck is there for him. Namjoon blindly searches with his tongue until he finds it, but it’s not enough. He sucks as hard as possible, and the moan in his ear isn’t his own this time.

If he sucks enough, maybe he’ll suck the gland out the way it’s supposed to be, raised and prominent enough to bite.

“Fuck me, jagiya.” The voice in his ear is the only thing he wants to hear. It’s gorgeous, gorgeous just as a breath, the panting in his ear melodious. Namjoon hears the history of the world in just one intake, and on exhale, he hears the future. “I want you to. I want you to knot me.”

Namjoon thrusts and this time, it feels slick and tight and different. Between Taehyung’s legs. His tight legs. His tight pussy. Namjoon growls. Fuck. He’s perfect. Perfect omega. Renewed with vigor, he sits back and picks up his omega, but flailing, Taehyung’s legs splay open around his thighs. He squirms on top of him, a picture Namjoon can’t complete. What’s wrong? Taehyung leans forward, chest to chest on top of him, and kisses him fiercely.

The kiss is wet.

His knot is wet.

Namjoon thrusts.

He’s so close, he isn’t really aware of the motions anymore. His body, completely detached from his mind, does what it needs to do and Namjoon holds onto omega in a haze. Hips in his hands. If he wanted to be gentler, he isn’t sure he could. He swears everything about his body is different, and if ever he felt like a monster, it must be now, between his legs, he is a monster.

“He’s close - Tae, pump it-”

“I’m trying!”

Suddenly, the grip around his cock is no longer pleasurable. More than pain, it is body and mind shattering agony, like a glass explosion in his groin. He shouts, body revolting, a sensation traveling up his spine then back down. Everything feels tight, too tight, like he’ll never get away from this moment. Panic overtakes him, nothing has ever felt like this before, and from a precision point, something washes over him, a new explosion, a raging fire, and it takes with it the burn and replaces it with relief so intense, like a bucket of cold water dumped over an inferno.

Fleeting, and so good, Namjoon wants more.

He blinks.

Everything comes back to him.

First, the noise - the panting, the whirling air conditioning, rustling of the smallest movement. Then, the sensations - the pulsating from his dick, the dampness dripping down his knot and around his balls, the breathing of someone else in his hands. The scent of sex, of skin and sweat. The taste of his own stale breath. Finally, color.

Color bleeds in, and a picture becomes known.

He’s in the hotel room - rut room. Taehyung is there - Taehyung remains perched on his lap, and in between them, his knot.

Namjoon’s knot is stuck in a rudimentary fleshlight, the kind that is just one long transparent tube with a flare at the bottom. At this point, it would stay on its own, but Taehyung grips it, white knuckled, as Namjoon fills it with cum.

It alternates between spurting and sluggishly oozing, but it runs down the sides and collects in a pool around his knot. Holding it in. Doing it’s job.

It’s just - a lot.

It’s filling up the tube.

The three of them, their chaperone included, cannot look away.

“Uh.” The clarity mortifies. Namjoon’s ready for this next round of rut fever - please god that doesn’t exist. He can’t even hide it. It’s stuck to him, and judging by the looks on their faces, they wouldn’t let him hide it.

Taehyung lets go of it like it’s burning him, two hands up by his head as he slides off Namjoon’s lap and gets face level with it.

Someone kill him now.

Taehyung leans in close, touching the base of it with one finger so delicately, and yet Namjoon swears he can feel it through the plastic. “Wow,” he says, in that dulcet register of his. “There’s so much.”

“And just think - that could all be going in you,” Jimin wryly comments, face as flushed as theirs, shaking sweaty hair out of his eyes.

Taehyung pouts. Namjoon covers his face with his arm. “I mean - one day it will!” Jimin quickly amends.

“I could put it in me now.” The omega, biting his lip, rocks up onto his knees, and Namjoon, in his right mind for the present, sees how damp he is between the legs over his loose bottoms, mortified anew to realize that’s all him. Maybe some lube, but mostly him.

Namjoon makes a noise - one he would never be able to recreate - and Jimin shouts no! Taehyung pulls at the fleshlight, and Namjoon wheezes, glad it’s stuck to him and thereby everything inside unattainable at present.

“I’m on birth control anyway.” Taehyung licks his lips.

Fuck.

Namjoon’s pretty sure the tiny part of his knot that deflated just reinflated. The thought of birth control does something to him. Why does it do something to him? It’s clinical. Why is Taehyung on it? He can’t have a heat. Did Namjoon miss something in sex ed?

Shit.

His pre is all over Taehyung.

Namjoon blinks.

It’s getting harder to think.

It’s probably fine, right? If Taehyung wants it - fuck. He’d really smell like him. He’d smell like Namjoon first before he ever smelled like himself, whatever his scent is meant to be. He falls forward, face first, into Taehyung’s neck and pushes him down, and his omega, his dear, sweet omega, sighs so dreamily.

“I can’t trust you two on your own.” Somehow when their beta sighs, it doesn’t sound as content. “You’ll end up as the first idols to get knocked up without any penetration. The scandal!”

“It’d be romantic.” Under him, Taehyung noses at the column of his neck, up and down, scratching the bottom of his teeth along it.

“Kim Taehyung!”

Growling, Namjoon humps blindly with his knot stuck in something between them. Omega wants to be pupped. He can do that. He can -

A sharp pain on his neck, too close to his gland, sets both him and his omega off. They growl in unison at the intruder, a familiar intruder, but intruder. “He’s going down fast again, and we haven’t even gotten this thing off him.”

“Don’t touch him!”

When his omega growls, it is humorous. Namjoon smiles.

“Out of all the things I’ll bleach my eyes for.”

“Just leave!”

Why are there two voices shouting? Namjoon’s head pounds. He just needs one, one voice. Nothing feels tangible anymore, or maybe the skin under his is too tangible. It smells like him. Omega smells like him, but it could be more.

His body doesn’t react the way he wants; he wants to fuck his omega, but omega’s hands in his hair make him drowsy. When fingers push at his lips, he opens them to suck on a straw. The voices are back, arguing, he thinks.

Namjoon puts his ear over his omega’s heart and listens carefully. Strong. Steady. His eyes must be closed, and now the only audible thing is the scratching at the base of his skull, just as strong, just as steady.

Hypnotizing.

Everything about him.

Hypnotizing.

From the calming shores of a heartbeat to the fires of his groin, Namjoon becomes aware of the world melting out of his ears. Panting, chest heaving, he realizes he’s reclined back onto a wall, and the omega before him grips his freed shaft more firmly than Namjoon himself ever had the confidence to. It’s dark in the room, but his eyes pick up random details.

The spikiness of the omega’s hair where it becomes damp at his neck. The lint on the carpet close to them. The darker outline of what's behind the cracked door nearby.

A person sitting in the corner by themself.

He growls, kicking his nose up for scent, but all he smells is himself.

A particular pointed movement up his shaft has Namjoon shuddering. Omega, tongue out, pushes one finger up and down the underside of it, second hand massaging the head. The sensation of it - oh god - but he can only watch in rapt focus on his face.

Taehyung.

That’s his pretty omega.

So pretty he knocks the sense out of his head when he’s in his right mind, and when he can’t be in his right mind, knocks it right back in. He’s too important not to be wholly aware of. Too beautiful. Too enrapturing. The peek of tongue between his lips is enough to bring clarity because Namjoon would very much like to pontificate about it, but his dick is his dick and he’s rutting, so instead he just drools a little.

When he moans, Taehyung blinks, peering up at his face, craning in to see it better. “Hyung?” Taehyung keeps leaning until his lips brush his. Desperately, Namjoon needs the kiss, but just as desperately, he wishes he could save it for another time. Any other time. “Does it hurt?”

He nods.

His entire body hurts, but what hurts the most is his nonexistent ego.

In the corner, Jimin leans against the wall, arms crossed from what he can tell, but back to them, as if that could offer them any privacy.

“Tae…”

Taehyung hushes him with a kiss to his temple so sweet that he feels tears in his eyes. He neither deserves it nor can comprehend it. “I’ll help.” His finger digs in again, wrist rotating on the pull up. Namjoon hisses, foot kicking out, but Taehyung takes it as an invitation to sit there, straddling his upper thigh.

It shouldn’t be this way, he wants to tell him. Their first experience shouldn’t be this, but Namjoon doesn’t say anything, because he can’t. What good would it do? It would only hurt Taehyung more. It would only strain them more. If by being selfish he gives Taehyung exactly what he wants, what can he do? Was he ever the good guy he tried to be?

Cursing, he thumps his head back against the wall. He can feel Taehyung squirming, riding his thigh in unison as his hands. When he pulls up at his cock, his hips lift up, and when they come down, he comes down on the high. Hard. Wearily, Namjoon looks at Jimin, but the beta, for how still he is, might be asleep, or steadfastly refusing to acknowledge them while apparently refusing to leave.

Namjoon doesn’t want to look but can’t look away. He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve help from someone he never meant to hurt but was perhaps the most cruel to. Fuck. He’s so fucking hot. He lets go of Namjoon, one hand remaining to weakly pump while using the other to brace himself and ride harder.

This is sex.

They’re fucking, regardless of penetration, and they’ve barely kissed before now.

“You want to come, baby?” he asks, voice unrecognizable. Taehyung keens, hand pumping while his hips rock, biting his lip harder. “I want you to. It’d help me.”

“It would?”

Namjoon chuckles. “Yeah, it really would.” While he has his wits about him, he firmly takes a hold of Taehyung’s hips and guides him to rock harder. Grind down. The way he can feel where the crotch of his pants catches and pulls and then releases, because Taehyung wants something inside him.

“Can I-?”

“Yeah, baby, you can.”

Had Namjoon understood what he was asking for, perhaps he would not have been as hasty to say yes. Abruptly, Taehyung stands, legs wobbling in a way that makes Namjoon break down into the tiniest of noise, and the way his dick throbs at the loss of his body heat, even as hot as it is.

Then Taehyung removes his bottoms, leaving him in a long white top, long enough to cover him to the upper thigh. Namjoon sees a momentary flash of red panties, hips jumping at the sight, so that when Taehyung hesitates before him, lips almost as red, bitten, and eyes melting into softness, he cannot look away fast enough if he tried, nor would he want to.

Taehyung quickly rids himself of those well, delicately stepping out of them, shirt long enough to cover him, and sleeves hanging over his shy hands as they curl up. Quickly, he drops down, straddling Namjoon over the same spot on his thigh.

Oh, shit.

He is wet.

Not proper wet, not omega wet, the kind he should be in response to an alpha in rut, but Namjoon feels it. Sticky. Head ducked down, Taehyung tentatively rocks forward slowly. “Can - can I?” Namjoon asks, very slowly touching his hips so he can press his thumbs together at Taehyung’s belly button. He can hold all of his stomach so easily, and that’s not right, for multiple reasons, and the thought of a big, round, pupped belly punches at the base of his dick until it rattles its way up.

“Yeah, yeah, yes - whatever you want!” Taehyung gasps, legs quaking around his thigh while Namjoon, with the most care he’s used for anything in the world, reaches between his legs.

The moan they let out in unison causes Jimin to turn, narrowed eyes searching them in the dark. It could look like anything from where he is. “Keep that knot where I can see it.”

“Don’t worry,” Namjoon replies, more calmly than he feels, even though what he says next he cannot be sure of. “I’m in control.” His rational words would hopefully be proof enough of something. How magical is Taehyung that his needs supersede Namjoon’s own in a rut?

It would be frightening to think about what that means.

Instead, Namjoon concentrates on how it feels to pet him.

The way Taehyung’s breath quickens, higher pitched, the tendons in his slender arms jumping as he braces himself before bearing down on Namjoon’s hand, tucked between his thigh and Taehyung’s slickness. He crooks his fingers up into a small point, Taehyung working and catching himself on the tip of his finger.

Namjoon moans louder than Taehyung, and this time Jimin stands.

His warning isn’t for the alpha though. “Tae baby - please.”

“I’m being good.” Taehyung hangs his head back, long neck exposed to him, and his eyelids flutter while Namjoon feels him spasm around his fingers. “We can fuck if we want.”

Jimin might curse in unison with Namjoon at that.

“Baby, I won’t fuck you like this,” he says, beating Jimin to any punch line. He can’t look at him. There’s no way to face the fact the beta is there, seeing him like this, and Taehyung, who doesn’t look like he much cares as long as he gets what he wants. Now, he has to beat Taehyung to the punch before he has a sulky omega on his hands. “I promise, I will give you everything you want, just - not my knot. Not like this.”

He nods towards their chaperone as he says it.

Namjoon has no doubt Taehyung would happily present if he allowed him.

What’s it like to be so unselfconscious? He’ll never know, even if he’s the one with his dick out.

“Soon,” said with a pout.

“Soon.” Whatever he has to promise. Whatever he possesses that could be promised. Maybe all that amounts to is his knot. What does it matter? It’s for Taehyung now. “Not when I - when I’m -” Sweat rolls from his temple down his neck and chest.

“In and out of your mind?” Jimin suggests, but he’s turned back around, pretending to look at his nails. Namjoon barks.

“Yeah. Something.” He kisses Taehyung gently.

What a novelty.

It’s just one sobering part of the rut. That he could have so many will never be lost on him.

“I want to remember all of it. Won’t you give me that?” He understands how Taehyung works a little, he thinks. Tensing his thigh, he redirects him now. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t give you something now.”

Between the two of them, it’s hard to know what is Taehyung and what is the alarming amount of sweat pouring off his every body part. He pants from minimal effort, slack mouthed as Taehyung ruts against him where he can’t see, the long shirt hanging between them, but oh, can he feel him there.

Without the extra lubrication, Taehyung squelches against him until he’s had enough. Seizing Namjoon’s wrist between them, he lifts up minusculely to come back down - on the tips of his two fingers until they push inside. “Ah.” They both freeze. Taehyung squints. “Uh.” He rocks a little, and it isn’t until he sinks down that Namjoon really feels him.

Perhaps it is expected, but cum squirts out succinctly from his dick, even though he can’t feel any sort of orgasm. Rut is constantly being on the brink and oozing everything out everywhere, he supposes.

Taehyung though - he stares, transfixed, jerking to sudden motion while licking his lips. “You gonna come for me while watching my cock, baby?”

In the corner, Jimin shoves headphones on. Yoongi’s noise cancelling ones. They look just like his and they confuse them all the time. Namjoon hopes Jimin has the right ones now.

“I-” Taehyung’s canines rake his bottom lip. Namjoon follows the precision points, the white of the skin and how it blossoms red under the point. “It’s.” He groans, rocking forward head down.

Namjoon uses his free hand to apply light pressure around the omega’s neck. “You ever seen one like it before?” It’s a question for the sake of riling him up; Namjoon knows the answer.

“N-no.”

Namjoon curls his fingers, knuckling one digit in and clumsy stroking outside with his thumb. When the omega’s neck cranes towards the abandoned fleshlight, still within arm’s reach, the flush that blooms across his chest is visible, even to him, even in this moment.

“Are you thinking about all that stuffed inside you, sweetheart?”

Taehyung howls, curling up in pleasure, and it isn’t about touching him, or - it isn’t just about that. What do they say? Alphas watch porn. Omegas read it. They want the words, the verbiage, and Namjoon used to freestyle, didn’t he?

“You think you could take all of it?” Namjoon circles his thumb, moving from light and slow to a steadier tempo. Taehyung clamps his legs around his wrist tighter. “Where you gonna put it, hm? You think you could handle it?”

“I’d, uh, take it!”

As sweet as the words are, they’re also extraordinarily painful. He’s felt at war with his body before, but not like this. Before it was fatigue and adrenaline driving him to go on, ashamed he couldn’t keep up in choreo or at the gym. Now, his body craves the willingness of the omega in his arms, but he reminds himself: this is why Jimin is there. He won’t let Namjoon go too far.

Namjoon heaves Taehyung up higher into his lap suddenly so his reach is better, but Taehyung gasps, fingernails dipping into the skin on his shoulders. “J-Joon. Hyung.” Desperately, he pulls Namjoon’s face close to his. “Kiss me?”

While technically not their first kiss, Namjoon thinks it might be the kiss he wants to remember as their first, situation not ideal as it is. Will he be able to remember it? Will he remember the first time he feels the omega’s lips part around his, at first just a breath, and then a tentative brush of tongue to the sealed seam of lips? Namjoon opens his mouth and lets Taehyung take the lead, exploring with light pressure from the tip of his tongue.

The fingers around his face slip down, ghosting away. Uncertain?

Namjoon wraps his arms tighter around Taehyung and kisses him now.

Taehyung moans when he swipes his tongue under his teeth and curls it around his. His knees draw up, and with it, the front of the top, barely hanging on one shoulder. If he looked down - if he looked -

Namjoon keeps his eyes closed, because he knows Taehyung’s are. His hand, crushed between their bodies, gets roughly yanked out of the way, and then after a strange moment that Namjoon does not understand for what it is, he feels when Taehyung cants his hips upwards a little and they meet in the middle. They hold each other silently for that moment, and in the barest of ways, Namjoon feels nothing at all and then everything all at once.

Sex to sex.

“Alpha,” he whispers, just once in his ear.

Seeing red isn’t just about anger.

Namjoon sees red, feels red, but amazingly - for how violent he feels, not for the violence of hurting, but in the violence of taking - he remains still. It may be the strongest he’s ever felt. The most alpha he’s ever felt.

It is Taehyung who pushes until Namjoon lies flat on his back, and the omega, eyes completely dilated to black, splays both hands over his chest, bites his lip, and with the slowest slide of all time, moves himself so his bare pussy is pressed to Namjoon’s rock hard dick.

Namjoon growls. “Tae.”

“Please.” For how quickly he grabs the bottom of the shirt, he is slow to rack it up over his head. He tosses it behind them, nothing between them any longer. Namjoon thrusts up, he can’t help it, and Taehyung sweetly giggles before his face slackens, deadly serious as he looks down at him, emotions coming and going so swiftly neither of them can hold on.

It’s dark in the room, and yet, Namjoon feels the spotlight over Taehyung all the same. His hair curls at damp end from sweat, and his lashes look thicker when clumped from tears. No makeup, his moles, one of his sweetest features, stand out. Somehow, they match his nipples, dark and small under the raging air conditioning, though it is no match for his body heat.

Between his legs, he is flushed red. Namjoon parts the omega’s arms so he may see.

“Please, just let me use it,” Taehyung whispers. Namjoon knows all of his voice, may he know this voice too.

He doesn’t comprehend until the omega moves, rocking against the stiffness of his rut induced member. Moaning, his head rolls back while he wills himself to lie perfectly still. Taehyung rocks harder and harder against him, hard and wet in his own way, until he’s sliding from base to tip, up and down, over and over again.

The sounds are filthy.

Wet. Squelching, slurping. When he looks down, it is in time to see the way Taehyung’s cunt parts over his shaft and, in particular, envelop the head when Taehyung reaches it. “Fuck!” he shouts, too loud, or maybe only to his own ears.

“Tae-”

“Let me.” He bounces a little on top of him, hair flopping, chest heaving. What’s he doing? “I don’t want to just look. I want to feel.” He slides up and down over him, but Namjoon steadily leaks precum and cum because that’s all he is at this point, and it’s on Taehyung. Conceivably, it’s in him too.

They’re basically fucking. Isn’t that what this is? Just because he’s not inside Taehyung. He can’t knot him - he can’t.

Namjoon grits his teeth, then notices the glistening on his hand, so he sticks as much of it as possible in his mouth, tongue naturally fitting in between the v of two fingers, as deep as he can push it.

“Do I taste good? Do you like it?” his omega asks, furiously rocking back and forth in upper body only; his sex now remains perched over one point, hugging him. Namjoon can’t see his cock, it’s trapped under Taehyung’s body, the tip trapped so that the next time Taehyung’s body quivers, his insides suckle at it, suck it right inside and neither of them is going to stop it.

There is what feels like a very intentional squeeze, Taehyung’s mouth opening silently as he scratches down Namjoon’s chest, legs squeezing tight while the rest of him freezes up.

Then it’s quiet other than their panting. He’s positive that outside of everything else slick between them, Namjoon feels something trickle out down his shaft.

He blinks.

Taehyung just came.

Namjoon is inside him.

Growling, Namjoon flips them so Taehyung lies pressed on his back, relaxing, unfurling, eyes still closed and so blissful looking that Namjoon can’t stand it. Between them, his cock throbs up against him. “That’s right, alpha.” His eyelashes flutter. Somehow he opens himself up further, like a butterfly unfurling its wings. As he does, Namjoon gets knocked over in a new sensation.

A scent.

A brand new scent.

It isn’t strawberries and cream anymore - that was washed away in body fluid long ago. What he smells now is bursting peaches, over ripe, dripping and sticky, the kind begging to be bitten into, and Namjoon can only oblige.

It’s like watching a movie, something he can’t recall allowing himself to do, but it’s his hand between Taehyung’s legs parting him until everything is revealed to him. Between the inner and outer folds, there is more than just a frothed milkiness, there is also translucent and saplike fluid oozing out sluggishly. His thumb moves through it, collecting it. With a grunt, he sucks at his thumb.

Ripe.

He tastes ripe.

Jumping to his knees, he pulls the omega’s hips up with him, and with one hand, guides himself through the slick, back and forth, up and down, until his cock is coated. There’s more and more of it. Good. Good omega.

“Wha-”

Omega’s skin feels like molten lava slipping through his arms. He blinks heavily up at him, cupping his breasts and arching his back. “Is it-”

“Taste.” Namjoon drops his hips and thrusts himself to omega’s lips.

“Stop!”

A blow to the side of his head couldn’t stop him.

“Taste,” he says, and he feeds his omega, perched there waiting like a bird, lips pursing, curious tongue to meet his tip. For how shy the mouth looks, it’s greedy.

It sucks him right in.

Namjoon groans, and Taehyung moans around him, the vibrations of which set him off, desperate, aching. He pushes forward, a choking sound not enough to deter him when he mounts his face.

“Kim Namjoon!” Two hands throttle him by the neck, but they aren’t enough. They aren’t strong enough. “Leadernim! Please! Stop!”

A light pinch at his knot from his omega - he knows it’s for him from his omega because he snaps his fingers at him after, and Namjoon eases up, pulling out of his mouth until he coughs.

“Shit, Tae, are you okay?”

A hand tries to come between them, but Namjoon easily shoves it out of their way. When they come rebounding back, omega rasps out to stay back, stay away from them, his hands reaching for only him, only his alpha. At the corner of his mouth, Namjoon licks at the pearly dew drop left there, wondering if it’s him or if it’s the omega.

He smacks his lips.

It’s from him.

Grunting, Namjoon tugs at himself, and a hand joins his. Omega has him in hand, and he guides him inside.

“Taehyung!” This time, the beta goes for his omega’s neck, and roaring, Namjoon covers him completely. If a beta thinks he can scruff an omega - his omega -

Omega cradles his head to his neck with a steel like grip; Namjoon rumbles, impressed, nipping there at the gland. It worked. He sucked hard enough it’s enlarged.

“Oh, shit.”

“I’m in heat now,” omega says, then laughs. Namjoon nuzzles his face hard enough that he must hold his face still. “I knew this was all it would take.”

“Tae, you can’t.”

Namjoon lifts up to flip him over onto all fours. He doesn’t need to push him to present, omega does it all on his own.

“Oh no you don’t!” This time, the shove is harder, enough to throw him off balance, cock missing its target, but it’s easy to get back into position. Nothing will stop him. His omega is ripe to be pupped.

Namjoon’s gonna pup him.

“He’ll rip you apart!”

Omega arches his back to push his hips to his. Namjoon grabs him, jerking them flush to his. Nothing has ever felt more natural. “I stretched myself before I came.” He grunts when Namjoon pushes in.

“I’m -” omega laughs. “I’ve never been wetter in my life.”

Namjoon pushes in slow; he knows he needs to go slow. Won’t hurt omega, but when they’re flush together, he can scent him. He can fuck him, scent him, and knot him. He can make him his.

The long drawn out moan is close to a cry.

The world is tight, and wet. A little further and it will drip down his balls and Namjoon needs that. He needs it.

“I’m sorry, Chim.” A whisper that means nothing to him. “You can leave now. He’ll take care of me.”

His thighs hit the back of omega’s thighs. He’s in now, fully sheathed. The walls around him constrict long past the point of pain, but if he can’t have this pain, Namjoon will never have anything. He needs it. He needs him.

He fucks him.

He tries to be slow. At first. It’s hard - no, impossible. Omega wants his knot, he’s gonna get his knot. He drips onto his omega’s back and the omega drips on the floor. Slippery - everything slides. He didn’t know skin could feel like this - the glide between his hand and omega’s chest - smoother than silk. But the silkiest? Between his legs.

Namjoon reaches around his waist and dives in between his legs, and his omega howls on all fours the way he should. “Like that?” he grunts, and the way the other pants, knees slipping wider open so they slowly descend to the floor.

The little hands are back, this time darting in and out of his vision without touching him. What’s it matter? He’s wet from tip to knot now. Oh, he feels it. His knot hangs less heavy now, partially inflated. His omega makes a noise - of discontent - so when Namjoon changes the direction of petting, stroking him on the outside while stroking him inside, omega shudders, collapsing all the way to the floor.

Namjoon pushes in.

All the way in.

The jolt of electricity passes from him to omega, a jolt that he feels through every part of the body pinned beneath his. All it took was squeezing it into place and the knot took, popped out and locked together, and now Namjoon sees nothing but color. Brand new colors never seen before, a kaleidoscope described to him that he never thought he would see.

The colors pulse, and they take shape. Despite coming from a literal knot, he feels untethered, adrift in a new time and space. There are sounds - noises. If it was one voice, he thinks he could understand, but what he hears causes nothing but confusion.

It’s hard to smell anything but peach. Why would he need to? But it’s the scent that gets him first.

Alpha.

There is another alpha there.

“It’s gonna be fine, Min.”

Namjoon would have been successful in his lunge if not for the knot holding him down and back. Omega whimpers, and all attention is redirected. Namjoon picks him up, holding him to his chest, nuzzling for apology.

There’s something around omega’s neck, he realizes.

Namjoon bites at it.

“See? The bite guard is in place. They’re on birth control-”

“Thank fuck!”

“-and the company will side with leaving them to it.” A heavy sigh. “We know that.”

Namjoon huffs. There’s more people, too many people. No nest, but too many people. He growls as loud as he can, holding his mate as close as possible to his body, their link tucked inside between them. No one will see, and no one will see him, turning them towards a corner to shelter his most precious.

It’s a war within himself - protect his omega, or go to war for omega.

The knot decides for him.

The intruders will be spared.

“This isn’t what Tae would want…”

“Oh, sweetie.” These noises are gentler now, and further away, he thinks. Good. That’s it. “I don’t know if you’re right about that.”

Namjoon gives his omega exactly what he wants. He thrusts up sharply, and a guttural moan tightens the pit of his stomach, and loins. Wiggling, the omega plants his hands, then arms, against the wall and pushes back against him.

Smart omega.

His knot is down enough that they have room to thrust again. This time when he hoists him higher, he spears him directly down onto his cock hard enough he bounces off his knot. Omega wails, and for a short second, his brain trembles through recognition. Was it pain or pleasure? But then he stands abruptly, knot stretching to cling to him before releasing, and rivers of slick glistening like pearls run down his thighs, the most tantalizing of sights.

Before he can feast, Namjoon is pushed backwards, and his omega drops on top of him.

Like a magic trick.

Now, his omega fucks him, bouncing on top, head rolling watonly as he moans then whines, then moans, fingers scrambling across his chest, thighs jerking, his entire body straining desperately, and it’s like magic because he can take all of him. He can make his need disappear.

“...See? They’re fine.”

“Alpha!” he shouts, panting with such exaggerated force that it shouldn’t make him throb the way he does. “Alpha!” This time, a screech.

So Namjoon gives it to him.

Like that, on the floor, with his omega on top of him. Up against the wall, two spindly legs held over his arms as he takes his turn to bounce him up and down. Next is on all fours once more, this time on the bed, the corner of the mattress held in omega’s teeth. Namjoon bites at his neck every chance he has - but the rough sensation that meets his fangs makes his stomach churn.

Giggling, his omega might try to run from him, but he never even makes it to the door before Namjoon catches him, shoving back into him hard enough that his little butterfly is pinned to the very spot.

“Where you going? Huh?” There are placeholders for his hands, a blueprint left behind on the omega’s hips. Well, they’re purple, not blue. “You think I’ll let you go?” he snarls, then grunts when his knot catches, popping suddenly and on its own. Sometimes, they don’t need to be doing anything for it to happen. His omega was lying on top of him in a moment close to slumber when he reached down to cradle his stomach, and Namjoon’s deflated skin popped so suddenly that they both startled.

“Think you caught my puppies?” he asks, bracketing the other’s body in the shower. The water shut itself off at some point and they smell no differently than when they got in it.

He hopes to smell the burn of overripe peach in his nostrils for the rest of his days.

Omega hangs rather limply in his hold, other than his fingers, clutching hard enough at Namjoon’s arm to leave his own blueprints. “At least - ah,” he shudders, “-ten.”

“Ten? You’ll really give me ten?”

“A dozen.” He hangs his head, and Namjoon digs in with his teeth again, until he feels the wrong texture under tongue. Spitting it out, he goes for the shoulder.

For the cacophony of cries he learns, Namjoon also learns that every time his omega comes, his parted mouth is actually silent. Instead, it’s told through the way he shudders, from the top of his body down, sealed with a final clench of his velvety walls caressing him.

This is what he was meant to do, Namjoon thinks. He’s an alpha. He’s with his omega. They were meant to fuck and mate and have their puppies, and now, nothing’s gonna stop them.

Except when lucidity hits, Namjoon’s chewing on leather, and he’s almost chewed right through it.

It’s funny, how there is a magical number of knots which varies from alpha to alpha, and Namjoon doesn’t know his, still wouldn’t know his, because he’s never had a lucid partner observe the amount it requires, however, in between one knot and the next, his body resets, so that when it inflates and he’s waiting in the afterglow, the fever comes off.

Namjoon is such a fool.

His first thoughts aren’t about anything important, not the way they should be. He isn’t thinking about the other person in this, a person he’d only begun to feel the depth of emotion for and admit it. He isn’t even thinking about himself in the situation, or them, or what could happen even after taking every precaution and what it would mean for their future.

No, he’s thinking of a song.

Is he such a cliche that he sees a nude omega in bed and all he can think about are lyrics? He has no doubt if there were pen and paper or phone readily available to him, he would give into temptation.

As is, he spits out the bite guard wrapped around Taehyung’s neck. Maybe with one or two more knots, he would have bitten clean through. Maybe with one or two more knots, things would have been so much clearer because there would be no other choice.

Choices are meant to be freeing.

Instead, Namjoon almost wishes for life to be so different.

“I won’t be sad it happened this way,” Taehyung says, eyes wide open in the dark. “It was everything I wanted.”

Shame will eat him alive. Surely Taehyung must know - he must realize - Namjoon would have at least tried to give Taehyung everything he deserved.

Taehyung sits up, collar barely hanging on, body mottled in bruising. He sounds like himself for the first time in days, so Namjoon hears the desperation when he says, “You would have never caught up to me otherwise.”