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No one knows what Jeongguk is really like.
The other members, their team and crew, the endless parade of producers and trainers and dietitians and doctors.
Their fans.
They all see some version of a young kid, hardworking, the one who shows up at least on time if not early to help out then stays the latest to practice even though he’s the last to need it. He picks up everything on the first try, either it’s vocals or dance or direction for photoshoots. He’s approachable and likable in that young affable way because he’s quiet for an alpha, doesn’t push, can play well with others.
But they have no idea.
They don’t feel the lingering presence at all times, the way he stares from across the room. Sometimes the room is expansive, there could be dozens of others between them. A crowd of fans at a meet or a jury of their peers at a music event. Sometimes, the room is just the two of them, seated not even far from each other, close enough that Seokjin hears every exhale perfectly. Either way, it feels the same.
Heavy.
Dare he say, oppressive.
Someone like Namjoon wears his interest, love, desire, infatuation, whatever people dare to call it, mostly behind Taehyung’s back, an interesting development for any watching just how earnestly the feelings now develop.
Jeongguk wears it all on his sleeve, never once bothering to hide or disguise it. It’s always been like that, before Seokjin knew of the arrangement, and despite their maknae’s supposed surprise at its news on that fateful day and the first heat he had after debut, Seokjin wonders.
Is it possible he knew?
One thing Seokjin has come to believe, anything is possible when it comes to Jeon Jeongguk.
It isn’t his wisest decision, but sometimes, if Seokjin thinks he can manage evadement, he watches their youngest member from the safety of shadow or crowd. He watches from the other side of the door into a practice room where Jeongguk dances with Jimin, the two of them locked in a modern routine that includes a lift of the beta over Jeongguk’s head. It’s beautiful to watch.
Seokjin hates it.
He hates that Jeongguk is as good as everyone says he is. He hates that his team excels in dance in a way he cannot. He hates how naturally Jimin fits in with everyone, how natural he appears in Jeongguk’s arms. Jeongguk could just have that if he let himself. They’d make sense. In fact, they’d make perfect sense, even if every instinct inside him howls so furiously that Seokjin feels sick, too sick to eat the measly portion procured for him by their manager thinking about it.
Chicken and rice. It’s always unseasoned chicken breast with plain rice. Jeongguk drops some of the sweet potato he’s allowed on top of Seokjin’s bowl and he sighs, excusing himself from the table that holds four of the seven of them.
Before his scheduled extra practice, Seokjin peers through the dance studio door.
Jeongguk stumbles back with a bright smile on his face when Jimin kicks at his chest after a messy descent. They look so at ease with each other, nothing between them, and yet -
Jeongguk’s gaze moves across the room towards the door.
Seokjin turns away from the window quickly, head ducked down as he walks towards the stairs before anyone might follow him.
The alpha somehow always knows.
“Your scent gives you away,” Jimin comments later, the two of them tucked in between Namjoon and Yoongi before the start of a meeting. Namjoon’s ear turns ever so slightly, always tuned into the radio static ready for a change in frequency. Their leader. Looks to solve problems before they begin everywhere but in his own relationship, a thing happening in his own bed that he can’t see when he needs to and feels only when he thinks is safe.
Across from them, Taehyung enters the room in one of Namjoon’s shirts and sweatshirt over it. Seokjin would not be surprised if he dons a pair of Namjoon’s boxers over his preferred underwear, but he isn’t sure the alpha is aware of that level of laundry sabotage yet. Namjoon. So brilliant, so scatterbrained. He does not seem to realize the amount of things he’s misplaced now collected in a box tucked under the mattress of Taehyung’s bed not feet from his nose while he looks on hands and knees.
“I wear depressors,” Seokjin replies, rolling his eyes as if the mere mention of Jeongguk scenting him out hasn’t raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He’d love to say he speaks at full volume, but Jimin matches him, whisper to whisper.
Seokjin doesn’t need to turn his head to place where Jeongguk is in the room with them.
Jimin rolls his eyes. “There’s nothing in the world that would be strong enough to hide your scent from him, hyung. Remember that.”
It isn’t enough that Seokjin himself remains plagued by the alpha’s -
Seokjin stops where he is.
The maknae, he corrects himself.
The maknae’s scent. It isn’t enough that Seokjin himself remains plagued by the maknae’s scent.
Seokjin swallows.
“Hyung?” echoes down the hall behind him.
He quickens out the side door, blindly stumbling into someone sneaking a smoke, just as likely to be one of their managers or business consultants as a trainee. The person huffs at them, an angry hand reaching for him and Seokjin twisting away down the alley, dodging a dumpster to make it to the street. “Hey!” he hears someone snarl - Jeongguk, it’s Jeongguk snarling - but Seokjin doesn’t stop. “Do you know who that is? Touch him and I’ll-”
Seokjin turns the corner and the wind deafens him.
He holds his hands over his ears, just in case.
It’s cold out without anything to cover his arms, and Seokjin’s now in the middle of a three day detox. He could cry at how the wind cuts him, not ready to go back in, not ready to hear their newest vocal coach berate him and Jimin over the impossible, the infeasible, all under the watchful eyes he can’t escape.
“Hyung! Wait!”
Seokjin smothers down every noise dying in the pit of his stomach.
“Here.” A jacket cocoons him. He isn’t trying, he isn’t even doing it on purpose, Seokjin reminds himself, nose stuffed full of alpha-
Of course he’s doing it on purpose. How stupid does he think he is? How stupid can Seokjin pretend to be?
Seokjin rears his arms back and dumps the jacket on the cement, briskly walking towards the main entrance of the building.
It does nothing to stop him from shoving his nose into the pink bunny plushie prototype later. It appeared, like so many things, on his bed one day, and its cheeky smile and overall cuteness saved it from the bin. At first moved to a shelf with his Marios, it made its way back onto the bed, scented between one day and the next even if relocated to its spot perfectly.
Seokjin doesn’t know what will he has left to protest when he continues to say nothing of the clothing items left in his bed, under the cover, between the sheets. Where Taehyung takes, Seokjin only gives in, and he hates himself for it.
It just -
When Seokjin stops moving, when he has a moment to himself, when he can inhale as deeply as his lungs will hold - he can feel full for the moment. It is the only time he can feel full.
They all know what each other smells like, no matter what they spray them down with for polite company. Yoongi has a bitterness to his scent, the edges of smoke when the candle’s gone out, and Namjoon smells salty, like the sea, a storm rolling in.
Jeongguk smells like many things which could be many people, and yet, Seokjin always knows it’s him.
He’s too old to be as naive about it as he was, but when Jeongguk was just introduced to the group, Seokjin mistook his lack of predominant scent note for pre-presentation hormonal fluctuation. Basely, he assumed after his first rut, it would settle, and by the time his first rut happened, Seokjin never wanted to know what it would be, because by then he understood the truth - that it was this scent that was meant to be his, to be comforting to him.
But Jeongguk’s scent never settled, never lessened.
The complexities persist, something Seokjin mistakenly read up on during a case study for one of his last classes before he graduated.
People with higher chemistry match will naturally pick up on more of each other’s scents.
Everyone has more than one note, but most people will predominately smell of one or maybe two. Seokjin smells so many from Jeongguk not because he’s young, rather he picks up on so much from him because they’re extremely compatible and his nose is attempting to lure him in.
It’s a trap.
His body betrays him, but on some nights, after days of unending rehearsals and touchy producers, pushy fans, relentless schedules and guilt and anxiety over familial relationships he can barely hang onto, Seokjin gives in. He needs rest, and the hoodie left in his bed or the extra cute pink bunny are the simplest ways to lull himself down.
When Seokjin gives in, when he allows himself to rub into Jeongguk’s scent, his thoughts descend like fog to the ground. Still there, but he can see through it. It’s pleasant, borderline peaceful in his body.
Unless he lies in it for too long.
Seokjin wakes up, slick between his thighs.
It isn’t the first time it’s happened.
It’s a biological reaction, and it doesn’t mean anything.
At least all seven of them aren’t crammed into the same room anymore. Seokjin can hobble past Yoongi if he’s actually present in their room, more often than not either in his newly appointed studio space or most likely crashed out in Hoseok’s bed. The trick is -
Jeongguk lies like a dog at the end of his bed still some nights. Seokjin stopped locking the door, not at Yoongi’s annoyed insistence, but when their youngest member got so sick he wasn’t in his right mind, it wasn’t even rut to blame, and in between Jeongguk miserably sneezing and stumbling along to Hoseok’s instructions at the studio, Seokjin went home, locked his door and ignored the quiet pleas of hyung outside it, then got an angry phone call scarcely an hour later from Hoseok and Jimin that they had to wait that entire time to get a car to come pick them up to go to the hospital because the company didn’t want Jeongguk to be out in a public taxi and Seokjin wouldn’t respond to Jeongguk’s quiet pleas.
How was he supposed to know how bad their maknae was?
Jeongguk had looked sick that afternoon, but he didn’t look that bad, and Seokjin bears the brunt of his hyperfixation so many of his waking hours. That part hadn’t felt any different.
“It’s not fair if you receive comfort from him and it’s never reciprocated,” Namjoon remarks to him quietly after the fact.
“Look who’s fucking talking.”
“Hyung.” Namjoon’s angry dimple pops out. He won’t meet his eyes, he’ll stare so deep into the toes of his shoes while they sit outside and freeze to death because Seokjin can’t bring himself to go into the building. “We all know what you have in your bed. Who you have in your bed, regardless of whether he’s bodily present or not.”
“I thought we understood each other, but let me make it perfectly clear if not: keep your nose out of my bed,” Seokjin hisses, lucky he can walk away.
He knows a large part of the reason Namjoon lets him walk away is because if he so much as touches him, Jeongguk will sniff it out immediately, and Jeongguk, good, sweet Jeongguk, because he’s so good will chide Namjoon for it.
Not at all because he’s a territorial pup.
He’ll chide Namjoon under the guise of being kind to Seokjin, respecting their hyung.
Everyone sees the good in Jeongguk. They don’t see the way he’s tied Seokjin up, inside and out. He doesn’t even recognize himself most days anymore. Seokjin hates it. He hates himself; Jeongguk has exposed the cruelest parts of himself.
Jeongguk does it to Seokjin and yet only really does it to himself.
And yet, he always forgives Seokjin for his cruelties.
Their members forgive Seokjin only just because of his own hospitalization, still a fresh wound to them all.
“Hi, hyung,” Jeongguk says, almost shyly after he wanders back into their apartment after his own brief hospital stint, trailing after Namjoon and Yoongi, no doubt at the tail end of an alpha pep talk. Hoseok fell asleep on the couch before moving into his room, and Jimin’s still out - somewhere. Taehyung flittered around the kitchen to the point Seokjin bribed his exit; their youngest omega now transforms his bedroom with some of Seokjin’s favorite fairy lights for an evening Namjoon doesn’t know about yet, because payback is a bitch and Seokjin will not be suffering alone.
Yoongi and Namjoon both ghost by, neither aware of what their evening has in store for them, and Jeongguk? Jeongguk lingers, a safe distance away, hands curled up his sleeves. Seokjin moves around the end of the kitchen counter to take them in hand and unspool them.
“Come.” He squeezes one of Jeongguk’s hands before sharply pulling him along. “Hyung made soup for you. Eat.”
Later, after Jeongguk slurps down everything he puts down in front of him with the same starry eyes as he has for their moments of achievement, and not just album sales or commercial success, the same looks just as often given when Seokjin allows the alpha to press his wrist to his during a fan meeting, knowing well that Seokjin couldn’t make a scene even if he wanted to, Seokjin might cry with bitterness and fatigue. He’s so tired of second guessing himself. He’s so tired of not taking the comfort others have, the same comfort he wants but told himself no so long ago that it’s a denial built into a fortress.
Seokjin can’t help but touch the mole under Jeongguk’s bottom lip with fondness he won’t let himself feel past this moment. The alpha, for his part, transforms into such a look of shock that his lips fall from a smile into tender caution.
They make their dues. Out of any choreographed dance, this one Seokjin has mastered, because it is the one he prepared himself.
As Namjoon says, he takes, and Jeongguk gives. In this, Seokjin leads, and the alpha follows.
“It’s so cold already,” he says, although he’s dressed in only a leather jacket that can’t be all that warm. Alphas get away with wearing that kind of stuff out and about, not even on set. Supposedly, they run warmer, but Seokjin also knows that Jeongguk’s brother came to visit with a brand new puffer coat gifted to him from their parents, and that jacket has been nowhere to be seen since.
Seokjin hums, as if he isn’t always cold, and everyone knows that. They all leave suspicious blankets out for him if they’re hanging out at home, in the studio, or even sometimes in a conference room. He thinks Taehyung would receive them too if not for the amount of extra clothing he often dons, and Hoseok moves so fast, even when he’s sitting still, a dynamic figure that Seokjin can’t put to words, so that he never seems cold. Yoongi wears more sweaters than Hoseok, so not every alpha can be burning hot all the time.
He understands then why Jeongguk states the obvious, because their maknae cautiously takes down Seokjin’s coat from where it hangs in the closet, lifting it in front of him. Seokjin blinks, then turns. He barely moves his arms, it’s like a magic trick, the coat just as suddenly on his shoulders as it appeared in mid air.
“Thanks, Gguk.”
“You sound tired, hyung.” When Seokjin turns back around, Jeongguk’s sheepish expression would cast a chill over him if not for the heavy winter coat. The alpha picked out his heaviest coat, the one he usually reserves for January and the New Year as a reminder it can always get worse.
“We’re all tired, Jeongguk-ah.” Seokjin leans forward to butt their heads together. It works, because Jeongguk’s bunny smile comes out. “But we’ll make it.” Because his morning mantra includes treating Jeongguk the same as any other member, Seokjin briefly twists his pinky around the alpha’s, the same as if it were Jimin or Hoseok before him.
But then it’s just the two of them in the car, because they regularly have company drivers now. It isn’t a daily occurrence yet, but it’s happening. They live further away than the short walk around the corner that their initial shoebox offered, but still the facade for the need of a driver is just that, and Jeongguk sits next to him in the very back of the van with empty seats all around them to lean his head on Seokjin’s shoulder while he leans against the window.
It rains, and with the temperatures dropping, it turns to snow.
“Look!” Taehyung often accompanies him when he needs a break. The two of them, both omega, both vocalists, have always stuck together, never mind that they once thought they would be in each other’s shoes with the other’s arranged alpha. It is a fact none escaped, something that Seokjin at one point erroneously assumed he took the hardest when in fact, Taehyung suppressed and hid his emotional and territorial instincts to such a degree that he now understands how foolish he was.
Seokjin took something from Taehyung, too.
He wraps himself around the omega’s back and they look out the window on the upper floor they escaped to. “Pretty,” Seokjin says. There isn't enough snow to stick, but it’s enough that traffic will be terrible. Someone walks by with a black umbrella, and enough snow dusts the top of it that it reminds him of some painting Namjoon used for a visual inspiration for a song they were recording.
“We would know, wouldn’t we?” Taehyung laughs, a little deeper than he often sounds like in front of fans or dare he say, Namjoon.
“We were born in December.”
Seokjin knows he’s pushing it, especially these days with growing popularity, but while he’s still more human than idol, and while his hormones let him be more person than omega, Seokjin walks home at night alone. The snow is gone, but the cold lingers, and it’s so pretty in the city with fresh snow. Some of it lies ruined, tarnished to sludge by the cars and footsteps sloughing through it, but on less traveled streets, Seokjin finds some pristine white.
It’s when he can’t feel his nose or hands any longer that he approaches, an older alpha easily in his thirties or perhaps forties, robust and filled out in a way that Namjoon points to as the physique he’s training for and Yoongi laughs at. He, too, holds an umbrella, and he stretches it out so it’s over Seokjin’s head. “You don’t want to catch a cold out here,” he says warmly, and if Seokjin’s nose weren’t frozen, maybe he’d be able to pick up enough of his scent to tell if there’s anything more to it than that, but he can’t, and Seokjin is an idol.
Inclining his eyes then head, he says, “I’ll be on my way home then,” and when the alpha offers to walk him there, standing a little closer so his arm isn’t as stretched to keep Seokjin covered, he shakes his head, the weight of melting snow clinging to his scalp now.
“No, thank you though.” He inclines again. “Please have a warm and pleasant evening.” It’s so easy to remember all of his etiquette classes. If not an idol, would his parents be matchmaking right now? Seokjin would be done with school with some job, but not a job that would spare him such. No job could spare him, except this, for now.
When he steps out from under the umbrella, he notices the moon - it’s full. “Are you sure?” the alpha asks, in a way that is still polite enough Seokjin is not immediately on high alert. “I can take you somewhere else, if you prefer,” he says with a smile, as if well aware that he’s already pushing his luck.
Humming, Seokjin turns his back to walk away, ears on the weary for following footsteps, but there are none. Seokjin walks the rest of the way home safely, greeted near the entrance of the building by the sight of a black clothed body springing up from the ground when Seokjin quietly approaches, now as quickly as possible.
“Hyung!”
“Caught you.” Seokjin snags Jeongguk’s wrist in his hand and tugs him through the door. “You shouldn’t have waited outside, Gguk-ah.”
The scowl is fierce, and Seokjin’s gut reaction is to want to kiss it. Instead, he does nothing, and allows Jeongguk to brush their wrists together, back and forth. By the time they walk through their front door, slipping off their shoes, Seokjin’s hair and face is damp from the snow and the alpha looks younger than normal with his pink nose, but they reek of each other, Jeongguk clinging to his back as they waddle past Jimin with his raised eyebrows.
“It’s freezing in here!” Seokjin protests, as loudly as he dare. Taehyung is home, dozing on the couch, and beside him Hoseok looks - maybe awake. He can’t be sure. Neither of the elder alphas appear to be home. If he lets himself dwell too much on what that might mean, he’ll spiral.
“Jeonggukie will hold your ears for you until they’re warm ,” Jimin says.
“Or until they’re normal color again,” Hoseok adds, eyes shut.
“What are you doing?” Seokjin laughs, forcibly being waddled past their members on the couch and down the hall. Jeongguk herds him to his own room, a place the alpha occupies rarely. “Gguk - Gguk-ah-”
They burst through the closed door in a cacophony of giggles, door banging against the wall behind them. The excitement audible in their baby alpha’s voice stirs the hairs on the back of his neck, and it isn’t just giggles, there is a coarseness, a simmering growl under all of it, and it makes Seokjin’s skin tingle, makes the colors in the room sharpen and then all the world is Jeongguk, all he can smell, all he can see, all he can taste -
He trips, and the two of them go down in a pile. Their maknae has always been one of the most particular about laundry and clothing, everyone jokes about how Jeongguk must be saving all of his allowance for high thread count sheets or how it will be the first luxury item he buys when they get that first big check, but face down in his navy sheets now, as inexpensive as they are, offers a comfort Seokjin would die for. He inhales deeply, the warm weight across his back grounding him, settling every sense so for just as suddenly as his vision sharpened, it suddenly dampens, muted and wonderful in how soft everything feels.
It makes no difference when he closes his eyes. He can let Jeongguk breathe softly onto him, that breath creeping closer from his ear to his neck. “Jin hyung…”
A squeal behind them startles them both. When Seokjin sits up, hugging the alpha’s sheets to his front, Hoseok stands with hands covering his mouth, wide eyed. Jimin looks less surprised but sour. Why, Seokjin could not be sure. Isn’t he the one always talking about how things are where he comes from? That they’re fully adult the moment they present, and by extension, Jeongguk has always been an adult basically since they met?
“Don’t let him mount you with the door open,” Jimin says through thin lips and thinner eyes, and Jeongguk yelps out an indigent hey while heaving a pillow in their direction. Hoseok darts off, cackling, while Jimin can be heard more slowly meandering off, footsteps the lightest of them all.
Later, after Seokjin silently crawls out of Jeongguk’s bed and room, gently pushing the alpha down by the shoulders to stay put, Hoseok finds him fresh out of the shower with a face mask on. “You used to squawk and stomp your feet,” he comments, crawling into bed next to him. It must be his fate to never sleep alone and unencumbered again.
“Hm?” Seokjin is so tired that even if his eyes remain open, he wouldn’t be able to see, and as such, there isn't even an alpha to watch.
“You don’t protest when someone says something about the two of you,” Hoseok whispers. “Not anymore.”
No.
Not anymore.
They fall asleep, two sides of a parentheses, but when he wakes up, his face is pressed into the wall with a warm body tucked up behind him. He doesn’t need a nose to know who it is. Only one person is so brave to hold him like this. “Baby.” Seokjin yawns. “You need to sleep in your own bed.”
“‘m not a baby,” Jeongguk whispers, voice extra deep and rough in sleep. It makes the omega shiver.
“Aren’t you my baby?” Seokjin asks, teasing one finger down the back of Jeongguk’s hand. He feels the way his breath hitches.
“Depends on how you mean it.”
Seokjin laughs silently, shoulders shaking, unsure if Yoongi is in the room with them or not. “Sh, go back to sleep while you can,” he whispers, and for the first time in a long time, feels like singing without it being required of him. Seokjin could sing for no other reason than to make Jeongguk happy, and that would make him happy in return.
Later, after Jeongguk dines and dashes, late for a morning class before he has recording in the late evening, Seokjin reflects that he is the problem. He tells Jeongguk not to sleep in his bed only to encourage him to lie back down and close his eyes. No one needs to tell him that his circumstances are entirely made up of his actions, but he’s been doing better. He lets Jeongguk scent him. Lets him crawl all over him. They spend the better part of their days together mingling, sweating together, eating together, growing together, and at night, they tangle up as one as Seokjin endures the judgemental eyes of others.
He’s trying, it’s just that he realizes he rewrote parts of himself to avoid not only the inevitable, but something that is so good. Jeongguk is so good. To belittle, diminish, or destroy something so good is only asking for a lifetime of misery.
“You know we don’t think less of you or Gguk, right?” Yoongi says to him one night while their maknae chases Taehyung for stealing the heated blanket off his bed. Seokjin told him to let it go, Taehyung’s presentation still fresh and all the physical changes that come with it, but it’s always the sweetest music to his ears when he hears the ways they interact with each other. They’re more than an idol group, he has to believe. They’re a pack.
They have to believe that if they’re going to make it.
Before Seokjin can ask what Yoongi means now, halfway to annoyance because his roommate does this to him frequently, dropping a mini bombshell when the timing allows him to escape unscathed, he also says: “And we would never think less of your relationship.”
Seokjin snaps his mouth shut and walks right out of their room into Namjoon and Taehyung’s room, barely making it to the omega’s bed before he bursts through the door, Jeongguk hot on his heels and Jimin right behind, all three bounding onto the bed in a way that makes it groan and creak. Namjoon, home for once, opens and closes his mouth until something loudly pops under the weight of four bodies.
“Was that his plan all along, you think?” Hoseok whispers to Yoongi, the two of them standing in the door frame while Namjoon and Taehyung stand over the broken bed.
Only one of them looks concerned about this development.
“And everyone thinks Namjoon is the brilliant one.” Yoongi laughs, catching Seokjin’s eye for a moment only to turn away and follow Jimin down the hall. Coward, he thinks without heat, but nor does Seokjin follow him to confront the alpha.
When he steps back into his room, his heated blanket is folded neatly at the foot of the bed where Seokjin keeps it most nights.
“Hyung!” Jung Hoseok scowls loudly at him merely a day later, the two of them tucked into one half of a large puffer jacket each. “But if you could have anything for your birthday, what would it be?” he asks, rolling face first towards him so Seokjin has to rear his head back to accommodate him. Where is Jimin when he needs him?
“I don’t know.” He sighs, well aware of the ears around them. “The same thing we all want - a little time off and maybe to drown myself in an unforgivable indulgence.”
“Such as?”
“Tteokbokki?”
Hoseok laughs his big and bright normal laugh, and Seokjin relaxes into his arms. He can do this. For once, they have a rehearsal day on set before they film the music video, even if it is outdoors and their clothing says anything other than November unseasonably early chill. In every other past experience, they were all but thrown onto set with cameras rolling without time to gather proper bearings.
If Seokjin thought he had finally learned to watch what he says around Jeongguk, it is early in the morning the day before his birthday that he is reminded, but he can’t be sad about it. “Sh, hyung,” Jeongguk’s very awake and alert voice giggles. “Go back to bed,” he says in a rude parody of all the times Seokjin has told him the same.
“Jeongguk - Jeongguk-ah!” They laugh as Seokjin stretches beneath the bulk of the alpha’s body, reaching for the phone on his night stand, not quite able to grasp it before it tumbles off onto the floor. “Stop! We have to be up in -”
He was sure his alarm was about to go off, but in reality, it should have gone off forty minutes ago. “We’re late!”
“No, we aren’t.” Jeongguk coughs. It takes a moment for Seokjin to recognize how fake it sounds, a little stage production in his bed, but then he turns under Jeongguk. Chest to chest, their faces are far too close.
“You look feverish, hyung,” Jeongguk says with a twinkle in his eye.
Seokjin gapes. “You didn’t.”
“We all did.” He fake coughs again, and from the other side of the room, blissfully partitioned off by his wall of collectibles, there is a matching fake cough.
“There’s no way they believed you!” But Seokjin can’t stop himself from laughing, joy bubbling up from the bottom of his stomach. “Jeon Jeongguk, you are a terrible liar!”
His baby alpha pouts, ducking his head down, but it doesn’t last for long. “I’m only a bad liar to you.” His cheeks are rosy pink, and Seokjin is so fond. He cups them both in his hands, because what are hands for but to hold.
“Aish, I can’t believe you. What an example I’ve made for you if you so easily lie to the management overseeing our careers.”
“Our fearless leader did the heavy lifting,” Yoongi grouses from the other side of the room. There’s a thump and soft footsteps before he appears, bedhead forming a natural sprout on the crown of his head. “Happy early birthday, hyung.”
“Yeah.” Jeongguk sighs. “Happy early birthday, hyung. If we tried to lie and push for tomorrow-”
“There’s no way they would have let you get away with it.” Seokjin sighs. Maybe if it were for Jeonggukie himself they would have gone along with it, but not for him. “You all are the best. Thank you.”
The abruptness by which Jeongguk springs out his bed leaves Seokjin careening in the wake. His footsteps never manage to be as quiet as Yoongi’s, so Seokjin hears him run down the hall and back, appearing with a tiara to place on his head. “Happy birthday!” he says again, smiling so wide it pulls at the mole underneath. “You can do whatever you want today.”
The way he says it, eyes downcast and smile fading, just as suddenly makes Seokjin wish it weren’t his birthday at all. Jeongguk stands from the bed, playing with the cuffs on his sleeves as he turns, apparently to leave although he never leaves on his own. “Wait.”
Jeongguk turns back to him.
Seokjin lifts the covers.
They catch up on sleep, and after the omega showers and emerges to a bed full of gummies and face masks and one bag suspiciously from a brand too expansive for any of the members, Seokjin faces the enthusiastic wrath of his group in the kitchen. Jimin now dons the tiara, clapping and singing with Hoseok, while Yoongi stands over simmering seaweed soup and Jeongguk pulls out a chair for him. Namjoon looks guilty when he puts away his phone, nodding at him with early birthday wishes as if they won’t all see each other tomorrow as well.
“If anyone asks, four of the seven of us had a fever. Jin hyung, Hob-ah, Jimin, and Jeonggukie,” he says.
“Why not go for broke with all seven of us?” Yoongi asks, watching as Taehyung models a superfluous apron, apparently for Namjoon’s flustered attention.
“We’d all be put in the hospital,” Namjoon barks with a laugh, and Yoongi grins back at him with a crooked eyebrow. Their humor lasts only a short moment when a storm of a shifting scent overpowers the soup and the mingling of pack scent. Jeongguk does not temper his face before Seokjin catches it. He swallows dryly.
“Come here, Ggukie.” Seokjin draws him to his seated side, ignoring the curious but for once subdued looks of the others. “Do you remember what else I said I wanted for my birthday?”
“Tteokbokki.”
Seokjin laughs. “That’s right. Do you want to take me out for tteokbokki later?” His eyes swim in how strong Jeongguk smells; he wouldn’t have needed to apply any scent deodorizer since yesterday morning, because he prefers to go natural when he can. Seokjin won’t put thought into why that is for how obvious it feels.
“Only if you let me treat you!”
Seokjin tugs at his fingers when he says, “Yah, it wouldn’t be my birthday if I treated myself!”
He bides his time by playing a game he hasn’t opened in two months, happy that Taehyung spends his day off by curling up with him and not at all worried about the bed he broke the evening before. Seokjin hums, sniffing at his dongsaeng. “Your scent is so nice,” he says, but his stomach turns a little. Taehyung’s scent is what the alphas in his school liked to call ult drip - bursting with a certain ripeness that can’t be ignored, the most sexualized of scents, as opposed to his own softer florals. A noseful of roses was one thing, but a mouthful of flowers wasn’t the same as a sweet piece of ripe fruit.
Who would want him when they could have an omega like Taehyung?
“Hyung.”
Seokjin has to laugh.
“Hi, Jeonggukie.”
They stare at each other across the same living space they reside and see each other every day in, but right now Seokjin notes how grown Jeongguk looks under his leather jacket with predictably black jeans and boots. He (or Jimin) styled his hair so it’s slightly wavy and tucked behind one ear, and both ears have hoops all the way up them. When he shyly shuffles forward, Seokjin can remember the day they met, but when he touches their wrists together, his body shivers, and his body makes a new memory.
They’re silent when they depart, the apartment suspiciously quiet and empty in all the shared living spaces, even though all members are still there under the guise of being ill enough to warrant a skipped day of rehearsals. Before they hit the street, they pull on face masks after their most recent lecture about preserving their privacy when unattended, then Jeongguk tugs on Seokjin’s coat to button the top most button for him.
The fingers that slide in between his shake. “Jeongguk-ah.”
“C’mon.” Jeongguk smiles at him. “Tteokbokki waits for no one!”
The snow may be gone, but it’s just as cold, and Seokjin doesn’t dare ask the alpha if he’d like for him to drive them. He isn’t surprised at all when they wind down to the river and walk along it, eating first their rice cakes and then later, hotteok, then pajeon. “What else can hyung eat when no one is looking, hm?”
He knows he shouldn’t; cameras are never far, and tomorrow, on his birthday, even if they take an easy on them and their reported illness, whether it’s a producer, a stylist, or a manager, someone will take one look at his face and demand Seokjin slip on acupuncture slippers for immediate pain in the guise of making his face immediately slimmer, even if there is no photoshoot or behind the scenes content to be had. His cheeks will absorb all the salt content of the evening even if his ribs still poke out, and he’ll pay for it later.
Worth it.
There’s no shortage of couples of all ages around them, and Seokjin understands they blend in easily with them.
“Ah, spicy, hyung!” Jeongguk blows out hot air and steam from over a cup and toothpick. Seokjin laughs which always makes Jeongguk smile wider, even as he’s waving his cuffed hand around.
The wind blows through his hair and early holiday music plays on the street behind them. The lighting along the river is always dim to hide all sorts of things, including romance, but for once, Seokjin doesn’t want to hide who he’s with, now at the time when they’re being told most to conceal themselves, conceal their scent and their arrangements.
Seokjin feels like such a fool.
“Let hyung.” He puts both his hands around the alpha’s on the cup and blows, bringing his lips precariously close to Jeongguk’s. He looks up at him from under his eyelashes, watching as his mouth slowly opens into a tiny, perfect o-shape.
Does he understand?
He must.
Later, Jeongguk holds his hand and leads him over the pedestrian bridge with all of the closed heart shaped locks full of names. “Is there anything else hyung wants?” he asks so sweetly, eyelashes heavy as he looks at him, his lips.
“Hmmm, I don’t know. Hyung is greedy.” Seokjin runs his wrist over the length of Jeongguk’s jacket sleeve. Stupid alpha. It’s too cold for this type of jacket.
“I’d give you anything.”
Seokjin laughs. “I know.” And it makes him want to cry.
Later, much later, when more than time passes, Seokjin might think back to this moment on the bridge, because he knows what the future holds. The inevitability of it. It is not a question of if, but when.
Will he regret not kissing him right then, right there? Will he forget that he chose not to kiss Jeongguk then? Will future great fanciful wishes rewrite their history because Seokjin, without a doubt, understands this should be their first kiss?
“Maybe in time, I’ll tell you.” Seokjin rocks backwards to put distance between their faces, and Jeongguk’s expression falls. “It’s almost a new year, Jeonggukie.”
And the new year won’t save him.
He’s the one who walks away, but when Jeongguk jogs three steps to catch up with him, Seokjin accepts his arm when it's offered. “Thank you for today,” he whispers, parting not at a front door, but his bedroom door. The alpha opens his lips and sways, eyelashes fluttering, desperate for a moment, but then he takes a step back.
“I’ll wait forever,” Jeongguk says. “That’s one of my gifts for you. Happy birthday, Jin hyung.”
Because there is trust between them, something beyond rote understanding now, Seokjin stays perfectly still as Jeongguk leans in, lips puckered. He kisses Seokjin’s cheek, nothing more and nothing less.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he whispers, walking backwards with a small wave. “We’ll celebrate even more.”
What else could Jeongguk give to him?
Seokjin turns to his room, his bed, full of gifts and love.
In the morning, he wakes to a body pressed to his, a promise that he’s never alone. “I love you,” he says instead of birthday wishes. “You already know it, so I might as well say it.”
“Shhhhhh,” Seokjin whispers, wide awake. “Go back to sleep.”