Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

EIGHT MONTHS LATER

Yoongi woke up, and realised that he was no longer uncomfortable.

Twisting around in his bed, pushing his feet into the cooler bits of the sheets, he arched his back and then sat up, stretching his arms out wide, rolling his neck. There was a satisfying popping of his joints. His glands weren’t swollen like they had been. The only ache was where his phone was digging into him, after he’d fallen asleep listening to a particularly good sample track the company had sent over the week before; he put it on the bedside table after checking the time – just after nine in the morning, he’d slept through.

His body felt good. Calm. The gritty, achy feeling that had irritated his joints, the bloated sensation in his abdomen, all gone, and it was like the moment after a drill somewhere in the neighbourhood goes quiet, blissful absence.

In fact, he realised he felt hungry. Normally hungry, no edge of nausea, not metaphysically hungry for touch or reassurance, just like he could really, really go for some japchae and LA galbi and, yeah, maybe chicken, maybe even lobster.

“Think I’m done!” Yoongi called out.

“Hmm, yes, you smell done,” Yoongi heard the patter of feet coming over from the sofa and around the bookshelf partition. That was nice, Yoongi thought, to have been awake already and waiting for Yoongi to surface. Pleased, Yoongi allowed himself to be gently examined and smelt, tilting his head to give access to his neck.

Not something he’d ever done easily, in his life, but after past seventy-two hours or so, he was starting to get used to it. To allowing himself to be carefully, calmly investigated and checked up on, to handing over some of the responsibility of keeping him balanced between medications, cold compresses, blankets, food and drink, gentle exercise, deep breathing and sanitary products, so that he could glide through a cycle feeling no worse than if he’d had a three-day cold. The hardest part had always been keeping tabs on the timings of all those things when he was feeling so muzzy and pointy, and having someone else just… materialise with the tablets, or the milky drink to line his stomach an hour before the tablets had to be taken, or some salty snacks exactly when he needed, had been a bigger relief than he’d expected. Yes, he hadn’t been able to cut corners to progress through the hormonal plateaus with an orgasm, which sometimes he did when he was solo, but that could leave him sore and with a whole stack of laundry, so now with the low-level leakage having been controlled with the absorbent pads, and no lingering burn in his hips, he was pretty contented with the state of affairs.

“Yeah, all good now, great job,” Lee Minhyuk murmured and drew back. Then he held up his hand for a high five: “Don’t leave me hanging.”

“I should absolutely leave you hanging, hyung,” Yoongi informed him, and lasted all of about three seconds before he cracked in the face of Minhyuk’s expression and did it anyway. And honestly, Minhyuk deserved the highest of fives. Maybe even a ten. Yoongi would never have believed he could be so comfortable with anyone being around him during his cycle. Even now, Minhyuk was giving him a way to wrist-scent without actually asking for it, allowing him another chance to indulge in Minhyuk’s pineapple-grapefruit scent that now felt like safety rather than stranger.

“Breakfast,” Yoongi announced, and twisted his legs out of bed. “Coffee.”

“Hyung already made coffee,” Minhyuk said smugly, standing there with his arms folded. His hair was sleep tousled from the sofa.

“Fucking betas,” Yoongi grumbled happily, and then, “No, seriously,” when Minhyuk held up his hand again. “One’s your limit for this morning.”

Minhyuk cackled, walking away towards the kitchen area and getting out his phone. He was wearing an oversized knitted jumper that ballooned around him over tiny sleep shorts that left nothing to the imagination. He had an ease with his body that Yoongi could barely imagine. Yoongi liked to wrap up in huge, shapeless, concealing things – he’d started the cycle in multiple layers, despite being sweaty as an alpha, but as the hours and days had passed, he’d been less and less worried about Minhyuk seeing him uncovered, and less and less conscious of whether Minhyuk was. It just wasn’t relevant, and that was unbelievably relaxing.

“Hyung can also order delivery?” Minhyuk offered. “You’ll be craving protein.”

“I want to cook,” Yoongi stated, but with an incline of his head in thanks. “And I owe you for making me all those eggs the past three days.”

“It’s about the only thing I can make,” Minhyuk shrugged. “Lucky you like it.”

“I liked it,” Yoongi said softly. When Minhyuk looked up, Yoongi made himself hold his gaze and cleared his throat. “I liked it. Thank you. For all of this.”

“Glad to help.” Minhyuk smiled back. “Really. And it was no trouble. I can tell you manage your own cycles really well, I was thinking maybe you were thinking you really didn’t need me back there for a while, but it was a privilege, honestly, to be the first person to support you in a cycle.”

“And please thank Eunkwang-hyung again,” Yoongi added, going to the cupboards and reaching down ingredients. “I hope he didn’t miss you too much.”

“Well of course my husband missed me desperately,” Minhyuk grinned. “But like I told you, whenever it’s his heat he goes off to be with his omegan BFF who’s been his heat support since they were both fourteen, so it’s not like he doesn’t get it.”

“And you?” Yoongi asked, tentative because he was conscious just how many questions he’d been asking Minhyuk since they’d been introduced, but for this one too he was fascinated.

Minhyuk’s smile got a little more like a smirk. “Well, for myself I always like to get through my cycle with sex, so, uh, Eunkwang is fairly aware of the challenges of the beta cycle. Or season – we call it a season, I like that more, but you should choose whatever term suits you.”

Yoongi knew he was blushing, could feel the heat in his ears, but he managed to nod nonchalantly before getting back to rootling in the fridge, then standing back in surprise to survey its contents. “Did you get a shop delivered whilst I was sleeping some time?”

“Maybe?” Minhyuk grinned again. “Oh, come on, I’m a beta and I’m the hyung, this was the risk you took going in when you invited me.”

Yoongi laughed. It was nice to be able to laugh about this all, now. “Well, I’m also a beta, so I’m cooking us both breakfast with, apparently, every meat known to man.” It felt so good just saying it, just… saying it, like that, with someone who would understand at once. He reached for the chicken.

-

“And since it ended today, you’ll be able to go to your party tomorrow,” Minhyuk pointed out, once they’d both eaten and were sitting on the floor around the little table, the television in the background playing a documentary about dolphins. The floor around the sofa was still strewn with various of Yoongi’s nesting materials, things he’d moved to and from the bed as he’d wandered around getting comfortable, and he realised abruptly now that he’d forgotten to even worry about Minhyuk judging it. Throughout, Minhyuk had just kept on saying whatever makes you comfortable is the best thing for you like he actually meant it, and at some point Yoongi had started believing him.

Now Yoongi nodded. “That is good. Sorry again for the confusion with the start date. My cycles usually arrive exactly the day the app predicts.”

“It happens.” Minhyuk shrugged, still smiling. “I’m just glad your cycle didn’t last longer than usual as well as being late – I was worried me being here might stress your body into a prolonged response, it does happen. I wouldn’t want you to miss this – one hundred days celebration, did you say it was?”

“Yeah.” Yoongi sipped his drink. “If there’s a celebration this baby can have, Korean, Western, ancient or modern, she’s having it – makes the calendar full.”

“You’re complaining but you’re smiling. I bet you bought a present.”

“Nothing big.” Yoongi said, truthfully. But he kind of thought Hoseok and Seokjin would love the little dress with the rainbows on. Obviously Junhee wouldn’t really notice yet, which was why he’d also got her a fish shaped teething ring that had been just too cute to resist; her favourite activity was biting, especially if the thing squeaked.

Thinking of them, he picked up his phone again. And yes, there was the morning’s check-in text from Seokjin, who had met Minhyuk and liked him but still apparently needed reassurance every eight to twelve hours that Yoongi was OK, and a photo of Junhee in her cot from Hoseok, which came to the same thing.

Jimin had been sending him motivational stickers from day one. Yoongi answered with a grumpy cat, and immediately got back a huge chain of emojis which seemed to express approval.

Yoongi sighed, and put his phone back down. He had a couple of email notifications from the record company wanting his opinion on the sample tracks – well, he knew which ones he preferred for sure, hadn’t stopped listening to them, so that would be easy enough, but he’d made a promise to Hoseok and Jimin not to work at all this cycle, and today probably still ought to count towards that. He’d deal with it all tomorrow.

“I think I should stick around tonight,” Minhyuk was saying carefully. Yoongi looked up. “And then tomorrow if you go to your party, I can drop by later in the evening just to check in, and I can stay over if you need it then, or if we’re both feeling OK, I can go home – we’ll play it by ear. I expect you feel an instinct to get your own space back, but I would also expect some scent withdrawal if we part too quickly after the cycle, and that’s no fun for anyone.”

“No,” Yoongi agreed. He bit his lip.

It was true, he was still feeling good about Minhyuk being there, didn’t actively want him to leave, and yet the idea of him leaving was… fine. They were undoubtedly scent bonded, it happened, it was normal. So he’d been expecting it, waiting to feel it, feel that tug again – and that would show himself clearly that all those feelings were just hormones. And yet if there was a tug now it was like being tied by paper streamers, light, insubstantial. Nothing hooked into his heart.

He looked up and out of his window at the sliver of blue sky you could only see if you were sitting on the floor.

On the windowsill, the bonsai still sat, still alive, still green.

-

Even though Hoseok and Junhee still officially lived in Hoseok’s modest apartment in Yoongi’s neighbourhood, they spent enough time at Seokjin’s as well that his apartment had also been completely transformed in the past months. And although Junhee wasn’t even crawling yet, every single corner had a soft rubber shield on it already, usually in the shape of a KaKao Friends character – though frankly Yoongi could believe Seokjin would have welcomed that as an aesthetic choice, baby or no baby. The floor was covered with a sort of jigsaw of soft, brightly coloured foam and there was always something somewhere playing a tinkly tune.

When Yoongi opened the door on the day of the Baek-il party, moving into the sweet sugar-fudge-baby blend of scents that the apartment now provided, he found Hoseok jiggling his daughter on his hip, singing to her as she cried, whilst Seokjin moved between finishing up laying finger food out on the table for the buffet lunch, unboxing fancy rice cakes for the formal altar table, and trying to make faces at Junhee over Hoseok’s shoulder.

“I thought you were Jimin,” was Hoseok’s greeting to him, with the sound of hopes dashed.

“I’m sure the baby whisperer will be with us soon,” Yoongi consoled him, putting down his present bag on a spare bit of table that looked to have been set aside for the purpose.

“Well, could you have a try?” Hoseok asked him, holding Junhee out. She wriggled to the side in his arms, taking another breath, face red.

“Uh. Fine.” Yoongi took her, feeling the heat of her little body through her babygrow, the dense, squirmy weight in his scrawny arms. “OK.”

“I thought I’d carefully readjusted the naptime schedule so she’d be ready for today,” Hoseok chewed his lip. “And she shouldn’t still be hungry, and she doesn’t need changing, so I just don’t know.”

Yoongi started gently shifting her up and down, and then when that didn’t work gave in and tried beat-boxing into the side of her abdomen. It wasn’t always successful but today he was lucky, and she trailed off the crying, then chuckled, deep and throaty, and sighed before laughing again. Any pre-pubescent child was fairly scentless, smelling only of the adults around them, but small babies had that indefinable milky-soft tone that triggered protective instincts as fast as wide eyes, and Yoongi could feel her scent easing the slight edges of scent-withdrawal that he was feeling, if he was honest, being away from Minhyuk for the first time since his cycle started.

“Genius,” Hoseok pronounced. He’d sat back on the sofa, stretched out like a starfish, on the verge of sliding onto the floor. “Genius. Visionary. National hero.”

Yoongi rolled his eyes and kept on spitting sounds, jigging Junhee up and down and doing a little walk round the apartment to keep up the motion that usually calmed her. And there was the door of the second bedroom, and there was the door of the bathroom, and there was the master, and there was the kitchen, and round to the second bedroom again.

He’d been coming to this apartment for years. He’d been to this apartment before and after he’d stayed here for that short time. He didn’t have to think about any one time in particular, when he saw those rooms.

He’d cleaned, after Taehyung had moved back to his repaired apartment about a week after Namjoon’s departure, and then Seokjin had cleaned ahead of the first time Hoseok stayed over, and then Seokjin had hired some kind of semi-industrial scent-stripper that had squatted in a corner for a week making a low buzzing and now really nothing smelt like alpha any more. Or like Yoongi – it wasn’t like the machine discriminated. It didn’t matter where in the apartment you went, all traces of what had happened were gone.

“Dumpling!” exclaimed a voice from the door, and Yoongi turned with Junhee to see Jimin, his arms outstretched.

“Ka ka ka ka!” Junhee declaimed with happiness, lifting her arms.

Yoongi gave up his charge, handing her off to Jimin with a move that he was surprised to find they were getting quite good at. Jimin cooed and started whispering something sweet and soft, Junhee laughing quietly.

“Don’t purr at her, she’ll fall asleep,” Hoseok instructed Jimin from the sofa. “And then it will be impossible later.” He leant back, his hands over his face. “Why is everyone else better at my baby than me?”

“She adores you,” Seokjin chimed in, apron finally off, coming to lean over the back of the sofa. He kissed the side of Hoseok’s head and then leant in to wrist-scent at his neck. “You have to do this all the time; they show up fresh and energised and do a great two hours, and mysteriously dissolve away when the nappy needs changing.”

“She adores you too,” Hoseok shot back, and they exchanged a look that Yoongi turned away from, not sure he ought to be watching.

He was glad for them, so glad they had found their way to each other, and that Junhee had them both.

“Anyway, Yoongi-yah, welcome,” Seokjin added and Yoongi turned around, then went over to greet them properly. They did still have time for him, of course they did, they just… needed to have time for other things first, nowadays.

“It was good, then?” Hoseok asked, once he’d trapped Yoongi in a hug. “Hmmm, you still smell a bit like him, although his scent is more like yours than most people’s. I guess citrus really is a beta thing.”

“It was good,” Yoongi confirmed, and cleared his throat. He still felt a little self-conscious of the fact that he’d asked someone they didn’t know to be his support, when either of them would have done it willingly. But they both said they understood why he’d wanted a beta, and it wasn’t like he could have taken either of them away from Junhee for three days. “And now it’s over, so I’m here.”

“Yay!” Hoseok smiled, and wrist-scented him again. His scent was settling back to something sweeter, following his pregnancy, but it blended with Seokjin’s now, so closely that Yoongi sometimes wondered if they’d made a mating bond and just not told anyone yet. The thought made him happy and just a little bit achy at the same time. “You can sweet-talk my grandmother; she really likes you.”

“That’s because spiritually they’re the same generation,” Seokjin said sagely, and laughed in the face of Yoongi’s indignation. “My father is coming too,” he added, more soberly.

Yoongi raised his eyebrow. “Not your mother?”

“Still doesn’t approve,” Seokjin mouth had gone thin. “But my father says as an omega he wants to see his… his…”

“His grandchild,” Hoseok said gently, and they exchanged deep looks again, whilst Yoongi studied the rice cake arrangement and started to feel hungry.

“Can I dress her up?” he heard, and turned to see Jimin with Junhee, gurgling happily, expertly balanced over one forearm in a rugby-ball hold, and the tiniest hanbok in the world on a little clothes hanger in his other hand. His eyes were sparkling.

“Be my guest,” Hoseok tilted himself sideways again, resting on Seokjin’s shoulder. “She was meant to be in that before you all arrived but, well, the best laid plans are ruthlessly eaten by babies and then pooped out over the course of many, many hours. Aren’t they, my little cabbage?” And he leant in to nuzzle Junhee’s nose, which made her squeal again. “Go ahead, I’ll come in and change in a second.”

Jimin having borne off Junhee, Hoseok turned back to Yoongi.

“Hyung, just so you know, Kim Taehyung’s coming along later with the rest of the guests.”

Yoongi felt the sides of his neck heat. “Sure, that makes sense,” he pointed out. “Why are you telling me?’

Hoseok shot a look at Seokjin; they exchanged some kind of conversation with their eyes.

Yoongi folded his arms. “If you remember, I was the one who suggested Jimin move in with Taehyung when he came back from Russia and was looking for somewhere to go. So, it’s not like I didn’t expect him to be at things.”

Hoseok chewed his lip. “I know, but it was just that at the baby shower you seemed….”

“Yeah?”

Hoseok drew back, holding up his hands. “If you say it’s fine, it’s fine.”

“It’s fine,” Yoongi told him.

Seokjin leant in close to Hoseok, and Yoongi thought for a second that he was going to start whispering right in front of him, but all he said was: “You need to change, Hob-ah, they’ll be here soon,” and Hoseok sighed and got up pliantly.

Alone now with Seokjin, Yoongi eyed him suspiciously, but Seokjin took one look at him, raised his eyebrow and then held up his hands placatingly: I surrender. As he lowered them, he held out his wrist.

“Oh OK,” Yoongi allowed, and submitted to being scented again. He knew Seokjin wanted to inspect him in a way not that different to Minhyuk, and that Minhyuk’s persistent presence on him probably made Seokjin feel some way or other.

”Have you ever accompanied anyone else in a cycle, then, even if you’ve never had a support?” Minhyuk had asked Yoongi about a month ago, as they’d been sitting in Minhyuk and Eunkwang’s cosy apartment, drinking soju and eating crab chips, dealing with what Minhyuk called ‘the preliminaries.’ Eunkwang had claimed an appointment with League of Legends and gone to bed early, which Yoongi felt was intended as his blessing for the two of them to carry on getting to know each other.

And in response to Minhyuk’s question, Yoongi had almost said “No”, because it had been true so long, he’d got so used to saying it.

“Once,” he’d corrected himself, after another sip of soju.

“With?”

“An alpha. Quite recently. That’s what…”

Minhyuk had studied him, waiting patiently. Yoongi cleared his throat. “It wasn’t planned. I’d like to try it planned and…”, he picked the label on the bottle. “Well, I told you already.”

“It’s really common to want a companion in a cycle,” Minhyuk had pointed out. “Alpha, omega, beta, and some designation in between or no designation, it’s a wish anyone is allowed to have. I bet the alpha you supported really benefited from having you there.”

“I suppressed my next cycle, when it was due after that,” Yoongi had told him. He’d not told anyone else, either about the decision or that he’d done it. Saying it out loud, it felt like a bigger deal than when he’d been sitting doing calculations with his tracker app, telling himself it was mainly so that if Hoseok went into labour he’d be sure to be ready. “So, this will be my first, since that, so…”

“Ah. I see.” Minhyuk had said gently, and Yoongi hadn’t been sure if it would be worse if he didn’t get it or if he did. But there hadn’t been any more questions after that. Minhyuk was very good at making him comfortable.

-

Jimin had taken Junhee to the second bedroom, Hoseok was changing in the master and Seokjin had gone to escort some family members from the incorrect place their taxi had dropped them. Yoongi looked around the apartment, saw nothing he could additionally help with, and sat down on the sofa.

Still, hours after separating, he missed Minhyuk and also felt fairly unbothered about it. He could note the hormonal connection, the fact that his scent would have been welcome, but also didn’t feel like texting him, and wouldn’t particularly have wanted him to show up suddenly, although on a theoretical basis he was fun company. It wasn’t nothing, this bond, but it also didn’t feel like…

Yoongi took a deep breath, and got his phone out of his pocket, swiping his way to the sample tracks he’d downloaded from the email the record company had sent. They were just labelled sample1, sample2, samlep3, sampel4 and so on, but this one, his favourite, he’d started thinking of as Persona. It was hybrid Korean and English rap and it just worked for him in a way he couldn’t quite describe but was already excited to start playing around with in the studio, if they signed the person involved – and he definitely would say they should. Other tracks had a very different vibe, spoken word more than rap or singing, quite, but with rap’s steady determination to speak truth. If the rap gave him energy and frustration, these calmed him down, made him feel like someone else knew his feelings; these songs were going to be huge.

He still needed to check his email. He opened one up and scanned it. OK, come to the headquarters tomorrow, listen to the some of the artists the CEO liked, live, see what Yoongi thought – Yoongi scrolled rapidly, it all looked reasonable enough.

The door opened, Seokjin with a flurry of relations, and the Yoongi went into duty mode, greeting, making conversation, which was good because when Taehyung appeared as promised not long after, Yoongi had his ‘other people’ face all ready to go. It was fine, it was fine, he was fine, but he wanted Hoseok and Seokjin to see that it was fine and to stop asking questions.

When Taehyung saw Yoongi, though, his eyes widened. Then, with quick, furtive movements he beckoned Yoongi to come aside with him, pointing and tilting his head.

Yoongi felt another unpleasant wave of heat. He was conscious of wishing suddenly that he had something of Minhyuk’s with him, to ground him. Except it wasn’t only Minhyuk that he could catch a phantom scent-memory of, suddenly.

“Hyung!” Taehyung exclaimed in a conspiratorial whisper.

Yoongi felt a million scenarios going through his brain. Possibilities. Chances. Disasters. Answers. He had, after all, barely seen Taehyung recently, had more or less completely avoided him at the baby shower, avoided his celebration for passing his most recent exams, and not crossed paths with him when they’d all gone to Hoseok in hospital – if Taehyung had some news to relay, perhaps he wouldn’t have told Jimin first, perhaps he would have needed to wait to tell Yoongi in person, directly, perhaps…

“Hyung,” Taehyung continued, “listen, this is really important.” He took a deep breath, looking side to side again. “I got Junhee a crocodile sleepsuit for her present, and it is the cutest thing in the whole world, but Jimin-ah says that Seokjin is really afraid of crocodiles and so it will give him hysterics? Is that true?”

Yoongi took a moment to breathe. And to laugh at himself, just a little, and be grateful that his friends hadn’t witnessed any of that.

He patted Taehyung on the shoulder. “Seokjin doesn’t love actual crocodiles, but I think Junhee in a crocodile suit will be just fine.”

Relief flooded Taehyung’s face. He smiled. “Thanks, hyung, you’re the best.”

There was a voice behind them, and Yoongi turned to see Jimin wandering over to greet his flatmate, now without baby and with a plate of Seokjin’s buffet; Junhee being in the middle of her photoshoot on the altar with a range of adoring relatives, which Taehyung then gravitated towards, phone out to take pictures, cackling with appreciation and delight.

“It went well, then, hyung?” Jimin asked, as he and Yoongi were left alone together. He was smirking a little.

Yoongi rolled his eyes theatrically. He could hear the actual question. “Yes, Jimin, you were right. It was a good experience to go through a cycle with someone from my own designation.”

Jimin nodded regally. “And?”

“And Eunkwang’s husband is as nice as you said, and thank you for introducing me.”

Jimin giggled and put a salmon canape in his mouth before reaching for him.

Yoongi felt himself blushing, and squirmed instinctually. “Is everyone scenting me today?”

Jimin rubbed harder with his wrist, laughing again, and then paused as Yoongi caught at his arm, nosing at him more closely, because that was unmistakeably green-fern-and-sunshine, that was definitely…

“You know,” Yoongi told him stiffly, drawing back, “if you’re seeing Jeon Jeongguk again, you don’t have to keep it from me.”

He was expecting denials, like Hoseok had given him over Taehyung, but Jimin tilted his head, one eyebrow raised, suddenly sharper like light catching on a knife.

“What do you want me to say, then?” Jimin asked. His scent was sharper too, vinegar with the strawberry. “That I met up with a man who still seems completely confused about what he wants from me, but who I like too much to tell to go away and sort his shit out, who I like too much to stop him when he wants my wrists all over his neck when we fuck?” He took a deep breath, and drew himself up. “Not everything’s about you, Yoongi.” He turned on his heel, striding back over towards Junhee’s altar, and Taehyung.

“Jimin-ah!” Yoongi called after him, and then sighed. Better to leave it a little. Jimin’s anger flared fast and bright like a match, and it wasn’t like he forgot easily, but it was better to let him get through the first fury of it before trying to apologise.

He turned around and saw Hoseok with a couple of his work colleagues, and went over to join them.

“…having your own little one, after all this time looking after other people’s,” one of the other nurses was saying, smiling and casting a glance back towards where Seokjin was helping older relatives with baby selfies.

“For sure,” Hoseok agreed with her, and smiled.

“Even longer shifts, all day and all night!” another joked, and everyone laughed, in Yoongi’s opinion, more than the joke deserved, but he joined them to be companionable, keeping his eyes checking on Jimin for signs of cooling off.

“Well, I’ll have the actual shifts again soon,” Hoseok answered with a sigh that sounded halfway between happy and sad. “Maternity leave passes quicker than you think.”

“And they’re ready to have you back?” Yoongi asked him, surprised.

“Oh my,” the first colleague answered, grinning, “let me tell you sir, since Hoseok-ssi’s case our human resources lead has been like a new alpha! Suddenly he’s able to give us leave to go to medical appointments and family funerals, and he didn’t even penalise Shinwook-ssi for tardiness the day the metro had the signal failures! I guess that all really scared him!”

“Scared him?” Yoongi turned to Hoseok. “You scared him, Hob-ah?”

Hoseok laughed, eyes wide, “I didn’t! But someone must have done! To make him change his mind about having me back the way he did – didn’t I tell you about how that happened?”

Yoongi shook his head.

“It’s so random, really,” Hoseok explained. “Basically, do you remember that organisation, the one all about the designation scents? PureScent?”

Yoongi stared at him. “Yeah?” he said slowly.

Of course, they had been so careful to prevent Hoseok learning about the connection between PureScent and the people he’d invited to Seokjin’s flat, that he would be completely oblivious, now, to Yoongi having any particular reason to be interested in the context.

“Well,” Hoseok continued blithely, “as far as anyone can tell, our human resources lead is quite senior in that organisation and after he’d told me that I couldn’t return to the course, I guess he must have talked to someone there about it, or something, because seemingly – if you can believe Sungjin-noona,”

“Sungjin-ah saw the email on his phone!” the first colleague broke in excitedly. “He was in such a panic he left it on the desk and she saw it for sure.”

Hoseok nodded, “so anyway someone inside PureScent emailed him that same night and said that it was contrary to the image of the organisation to ‘abandon an omega in the street’ and quoted all these things from their literature, and told him he had to let me stay and gave me the board allowance and everything else. Can you believe it?”

“Quite something,” Yoongi murmured. His legs felt weak. He was a long way from anywhere it would make sense to sit down.

“Hyung?” Hoseok prompted him. “Are you OK? I know you don’t like that organisation, but like I say…”

“No, it’s fine.” Yoongi waved him away, “I’m fine, I just… Do you know who sent the email? Did Sungjin-ssi see that?”

“I have no idea,” Hoseok said slowly, frowning. “Would it matter?”

Yoongi licked his lips. He felt...sick? Faint? “Maybe.” Except how could it have been Namjoon? Namjoon, quitting, would have had no influence over anyone, let alone any authority to make demands. It could be coincidence – surely it was?

There was a sudden wail from the other side of the room, and they all turned to look at where Junhee was taking an objection to a grandparent’s enthusiastic bouncing. Seokjin was already swooping in, arms out, but Yoongi could smell Hoseok’s urgency to go and attend to her too. He stepped aside, gesturing. “Go and get your daughter.”

“She’s overstimulated,” Hoseok apologised, still hovering on the balls of his feet. “She needs some quiet for a bit.”

“I can respect that,” Yoongi told him. “Go.”

Hoseok paused. “Hey,” he said slowly. “She really could use some time now just in her cot, but maybe with someone to look over her, in case she gets hungry and I don’t hear the monitor. Could you take her into the bedroom and just sit with her for a bit, hyung?”

Yoongi bit his lip. Sometimes Hoseok was so good at this that it overwhelmed him a little. He nodded quickly, his mind still reeling.

“OK,” Hoseok nodded back. “OK, one quiet time coming up.”

-

Junhee cried at first in her cot, lying there in just her nappy and waving her arms and legs in the air. Yoongi went to sit down next to it, and looked at her, her wide dark eyes and her little red fingers.

“You want some music?” Yoongi asked her. “Huh, tiny pickle? You want some tunes?”

She blinked at him. For such a long time she’d not really seemed aware that there were such things as other humans that interacted with her, but now she’d look, really stare at you and then, sometimes, break into a smile like you were the best thing she had ever encountered in her whole existence of precisely one hundred days.

Yoongi hoped she’d keep smiling like that, for hundreds and thousands of days more. At this age, her designation was still a mystery. Seokjin and Hoseok weren’t the type to pay huge sums for an infant abdominal scan that would claim to predict accurately based on anatomy, even if they didn’t understand that anatomy and designation weren’t necessarily linked.

Somewhere in her future, she’d tell them her designation, tell the world. Maybe the world would try to tell her first, or try to tell her what her designation ought to mean.

Unlocking his phone, Yoongi went for one of the sample tracks again, the soothing one. It was about Seoul, about a city it was easy to hate and easy to love, a place of hurt and yet inexplicably of healing. The words were about a city – about the Han River, about Seonyudo, even about Cheonggyecheon, which ached just a little every time Yoongi heard it – but Yoongi heard something else in it too, about a soul, the homonym pun the songwriter had clearly wanted to make, about an existence, one that wasn’t always comfortable or clean or pretty, but that someone who lived inside it had come to find the beauty in. Come to love, despite what others said.

Junhee burbled a little a first, listening. Her eyes fluttered closed.

Sitting back on the floor, Yoongi breathed. In and out. Slow.

Someone inside PureScent emailed him that same night

Was it possible? Could it be possible? It couldn’t be, and yet…

And yet even if it was, that still didn’t make it anything to do with Yoongi, didn’t make it for Yoongi.

“You said you suppressed your last cycle?” Minhyuk had asked him, as they waited in the awkward silence of Yoongi’s apartment six days earlier, on the evening of the first day Yoongi’s cycle had been supposed to start. “That might be why. If you’re really concerned to get it moving – I know you want to make this Baek-il party – then the best I can suggest is, if you’re still in touch with that alpha you supported, meeting with them might get things moving? You probably have some residue bond your hormones would respond to.”

“Not in touch,” Yoongi had told him, looking at the floor, arms wrapped around his knees, deep inside his largest, chunkiest cardigan, which wasn’t even uncomfortable because there was no sign of his cycle at all.

“Not to worry, we have the whole of Netflix and I’m not going anywhere,” Minhyuk had reassured him, getting up and pottering about. “And this is a great chance to make sure you’re really hydrated ahead of time.” Pausing, he sniffed the air. “Huh, I think you’re starting to let down, actually, just now. That’s a good start.”

“That’s good,” Yoongi had echoed, trying to stop thinking about what Minhyuk had reminded him of, seeing the memories anyway and feeling his body ache with them, even ahead of the hormones doing their worst.

-

“Someone wants food,” Yoongi announced, carrying Junhee gently out of the bedroom. “And she might want some milk or whatever, but I leave that to you.”

Seokjin chuckled, coming over to him. As he took Junhee a purr started up in his chest, rumbling and low, and she cooed sleepily back.

The apartment was nearly empty. Aside from Seokjin, Hoseok was washing up in the kitchen and – Yoongi saw with relief - Jimin was sitting on the sofa on his phone.

Yoongi walked over to sit down next to him.

“Hey,” Jimin said, voice neutral.

“I didn’t realise,” Yoongi apologised, “about your situation,” – his tone low so that Hoseok and Seokjin, absorbed in any case with Junhee, wouldn’t notice.

“Seems I didn’t realise about yours either,” Jimin shot back, raising an eyebrow, but it was wasn’t barbed. He sighed. “Oh hyung, do we need to hold a ‘to hell with all alphas’ pity party?”

“Hashtag NotAllAlphas,” Yoongi deadpanned. He cleared his throat. “Seriously, are you OK? Is he a problem?”

Jimin smiled a little ruefully. “Not the way you’re worried about. He’s not a terrible person, he’s just… he doesn’t seem to know what he wants, from me, from life, from the future.” He waved out his hands, encompassing wider and wider fields of queries.

“Lots of people are like that, especially at his age. You’re unusually focussed in your goals.”

“’At his age’ and what are you? Eighty-five?”

“Sometimes I feel it.” Yoongi settled back on the sofa. “Sometimes I feel younger than you. Definitely younger than them.”

They both looked across at where Hoseok was settling into a rocking chair that had been pulled back from being party-tidied into one of the bedrooms, his daughter held close as she had her milk, a cloth over his shoulder. He was rocking gently to and fro, purring softly, and Seokjin standing over them both was joining in, his hand cradling the side of Hoseok’s chin, wrist gland to neck gland.

“Hyung,” Jimin said, summoning Yoongi’s attention back again. “Do you need to call Minhyuk? You did leave him pretty soon after your cycle.”

Yoongi thought about it. Thought about Minhyuk walking into the room right then and there, how soothing that would be, and yet it still felt totally optional. That was scent bonding, that was instinct – it would feel nice, he knew it would feel nice, but he didn’t need it. It was like being offered a chocolate mousse when you weren’t particularly hungry – by no means unappealing, but absolutely not urgent.

If he called Minhyuk, he’d be counting down in his brain until it was time for Minhyuk to go again and leave him in peace.

No, he couldn’t explain what he’d felt with scent bonding.

And now there was this new information, that he couldn’t begin to explain at all.

“Actually,” Yoongi said to Jimin, tentatively “If it’s OK with you – only if it’s for sure OK – I need to talk to Jeon Jeongguk.”

-

The Itaewon bar was pretty busy for a weekday, but Jimin had managed to find them a small table and now Yoongi was nursing a whisky, relieved by the strong taste washing away the scents of the journey from Seokjin’s apartment. Jimin, his foot bouncing anxiously as he scanned the rom, waiting, was sipping something yellow with pineapple in. Yoongi thought again of Minhyuk – he’d texted him before they’d set off, telling him not to bother dropping round that night, that he was feeling OK – which had been a lie, obviously, but not absolutely; seeing Minhyuk would soothe him, but it wouldn’t solve anything.

Soothing seemed pretty appealing again right now though.

Yoongi checked his phone just to distract himself. A text from the producer he mostly worked with at TuneTown, checking Yoongi was coming to the meeting tomorrow, sending over background material – well that he could skip, background material was for PR and HR, the people who wrote bios or dealt with scandals.

“Sorry I’m late, hyung,” said a voice above him, and Yoongi looked up to see Jeon Jeongguk, who was addressing himself rather pointedly to Jimin. “I had to swap a session with my colleague at the gym.”

Yoongi blinked at the man before him. Over the course of nearly a year, they’d all changed, he supposed, but on Jeongguk it was literally written across him. Whereas before he’d have been fine to attend high school the next day, give or take an earring, he now had shoulder-length electric blue hair tied in a ponytail, a thin silver bar through his right eyebrow and tattoos visibly creeping up from his t-shirt’s neckline and down from his elbow where the sleeves were rolled up to show even more muscular arms.

Yoongi understood why Jimin struggled to resist.

He shot a glance between the two of them now. He couldn’t quite read the mood, but Jimin reached out to stroke Jeongguk’s arm, drawing down to wrist-scent, and something went over Jeongguk’s face for a moment, before being replaced with a frown as he turned to Yoongi.

“Jimin said you were working as a personal trainer, now,” Yoongi said, aiming to be conversational, as they all sat down again.

“That’s right.” Jeongguk folded his arms and sat back, legs splayed, textbook alpha posture. This was not the awestruck and bubbly young man Yoongi remembered.

Yoongi felt the shivery sensation across his scalp and neck that preceded a hackle, and took another sip of his drink.

“Yah!” Jimin hissed, leaning in and slapping Jeongguk’s arm. “Be respectful!”

Jeongguk turned to him. Yoongi froze, watching the moment intensely, aware of his own muscles coiling, ready.

But to Jimin, Jeongguk’s entire manner changed. He lowered his gaze and then his head, nodding slowly, obedient.

And Jimin slid his hand up and over Jeongguk’s shoulder, grasped the back of his neck and shook him, once, quick, like a pup, and then stroked him, pushing his hands up into his hair. Jeongguk’s eyes closed, his face softening.

Yoongi sat back in his seat, only aware as he relaxed of how he’d tensed.

“Now, hyung,” Jimin said to Yoongi, prompting. He still had his hand on Jeongguk’s thigh, not just resting but a grip. “Ask him what you want to know. As you can tell, he’s got a lot of feelings about this topic.”

“Jeongguk-ssi,” Yoongi began, clearing his throat – and Jeongguk’s gaze was back on him, narrow and accusatory. “I was hoping you would give me the number of your old mentor.”

“Wow,” Jeongguk shot back, eyes gone wide in heavily-telegraphed shock. He looked from side to side, like other people in the bar would be just as stunned at what Yoongi had said. “Really, Yoongi-ssi? After all these months, suddenly you need him again?”

“Excuse me?”

Jeongguk moved forward quickly, leaning in, raising his hand. “You use him to get what you need for your friend, and you never contact him, and then suddenly, now, you want something else? And he’s supposed to just help you?”

Jimin was murmuring something, squeezing Jeongguk’s thigh, but Yoongi couldn’t hear it. His heart was racing, swelling in his chest as his throat constricted. He was hot and then cold again and he could feel his scent glands swelling from the emotion, a sharp, quick ache.

“I have,” Yoongi began, and ran out of words. He took a breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on, Yoongi-ssi, like you didn’t tell him to intervene for your friend! Hyung denies it but I’m not an idiot. He would have done anything for you!”

“He didn’t want to be around me,” Yoongi couldn’t understand what his body was doing, in this moment, hearing those words. Whether it was an alpha thing, an omega thing, a beta thing, or just a Yoongi one, the way it hurt. “He left.”

Next to them, Jimin took a sharp intake of breath.

“I get that PureScent is fucked up, OK?” Jeongguk was continuing, as if Yoongi hadn’t spoken. “He’s explained it all to me, it’s fucked up and they messed him up and I get that, I get that you probably hate him for having been involved at all, and me too, and I get that… that,” he ducked his head again, flushing, “that Jimin-hyung will probably never really trust me for having got so close to it, but if I was benefitting, he didn’t, OK?” He looked up again, staring at Yoongi. “They put him through shit you can’t even imagine, he told me it all, and in exchange for sorting out that job thing for your friend they made him sign all kinds of stuff to give them indemnity for what they did to him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know. You can imagine. Things they call ‘therapy’ or ‘treatments’, that they tell them are healing them, and he believed it, you know? He thought he needed fixing and he just wants to do right, OK?” Jeongguk was sitting forward, frowning, hands raised to emphasise his point. “He taught me you’ve got to examine yourself, always, for where you could be doing better, and he applied that to himself and they told him so much shit!”

Yoongi closed his eyes for a moment. He could imagine. He didn’t want to imagine. He’d known, really, or could have guessed.

Jeongguk hadn’t known. Jeongguk had thought Namjoon was sharing the best thing in the world with him.

“I know he was hurt,” Yoongi managed to say. “I was there when he quit. I knew it was bad. I would have helped him, Jeongguk-ssi,” Yoongi took a deep breath. “I would have helped him. He left. He walked away. I never had a way to contact him. But he knew exactly where to find me and since he didn’t, I assumed what he needed was… not me.” He swallowed. “I just heard today, about how Hoseok’s situation had to do with PureScent. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Because I thought he might still be in touch with you, because he told me meeting you was what first gave him the strength to step away from them. So that he wouldn’t drag you in.”

He looked up, meeting Jeongguk’s eyes just in time to see them filing with tears, and then the way his face scrunched as he fought it, nose wrinkling.

Yoongi made himself press on. “Like you say, he’s a good man. Just because he helped Jung Hoseok doesn’t mean it was anything to do with me. I swear to you, I didn’t ask him, I didn’t tell him – he was there when I heard Hoseok had problems but I had no idea it was anything he could do something about. That’s why I have to get in touch with him, to thank him, because Hoseok doesn’t know about any of it.”

Jeongguk angrily drew the back of one hand across his eyes, still staring at Yoongi. Then he turned to look at Jimin.

Jimin was holding himself very carefully, breathing like someone who was counting. He blinked, nodded.

And then Yoongi was copying the number from Jeongguk’s phone – taking a photo of the screen as well in case his fingers had slipped, and he had it, he had it, now there was nothing left to do but use it.

He stood up to leave, clasping hands with Jimin, nodding to Jeongguk, and turning away.

“You think I don’t trust you?” he heard Jimin saying, softly, as he left. “Is that what this is about? You think I don’t trust you, Guk-ah, when you trust me so beautifully?

Jeongguk made some kind of noise in answer, and there was a sudden sunshine-warm-fern scent travelling through the club, mingling with notes of strawberry, but Yoongi had to keep walking, had to get to somewhere, anywhere with a phone signal and without background noise.

-

Standing in an alley, surrounded by plastic bags of rubbish, the only person in sight a fast-food worker catching a smoke several doorways away, Yoongi watched his thumb hover over the ‘call’ button on his phone screen, and then pressed it.

He listened to the ringtone. The night air was cold, and the alley smelt of rotten food. It reminded him of the most dangerous moment in Namjoon’s rut, that moment Yoongi had really started imagining the evening ending in hospital.

Where was Namjoon now? What was he doing? Yoongi hadn’t even though to ask Jeongguk that. It hadn’t seemed like something he needed to know, as though Namjoon might have just been sitting somewhere, waiting, unchanging, inactive.

He would have been due another rut, if not two, in the time that had passed. Yoongi had tried not to notice the dates, tried not to worry about whether Namjoon had come to terms with using a suppressant, or found someone as a support, or just reminded himself how to fly solo.

What was Yoongi going to say to him when he picked up?

But he didn’t pick up. The tone rang out. An automated voice informed Yoongi brightly that the owner of the phone was not available right now, and invited him to leave a message.

Yoongi ended the call.

He stared at the phone, then pressed the call button again and put it back to his ear. All the words and questions and hopes and fears on his tongue, and he’d not been ready for this.

And now he was worried, which was stupid, why on Earth should Namjoon be available to take a call randomly on a weekday evening? Why should he be waiting for Yoongi in any sense, by certainly this one?

The tone rang out again and Yoongi hung up before the automated message had finished.

He looked at the number on his screen that he’d dialled, and then opened up the photo he’d taken of the contact details on Jeongguk’s phone. Checked. But yes, they matched.

After the third attempt failed, he made himself stop. This was not a rational approach. Namjoon could be anywhere but was more likely than not in the shower or something perfectly simple, and ringing any more times in a row just looked psychopathic. Yoongi ought to wait, and try again later.

Should he text, in the meantime? Was that better? Was Namjoon thinking his number was a scam call and screening him?

But then what did he say? He wouldn’t even have the tone of Namjoon’s answer to him to guide him on how this was going to land.

On the bus home, after composing, recomposing, deleting and restarting, he sent:

>Hi, this is Min Yoongi. Are you free to talk sometime?

As soon as he’d sent it, he wasn’t sure again about the ‘sometime’ – was it the right amount of urgency? But this wasn’t urgent, was it, from any sensible viewpoint? Never mind that he felt he’d never relax again until he spoke to Namjoon, it wouldn’t actually make a difference if it was tonight or tomorrow or in two days or next week.

His apartment smelt like Minhyuk, still, but it wasn’t really comforting any more, even though he tried burrowing into the bedding Minhyuk had left neatly piled next to the sofa, and breathing deeply.

Yoongi was tired. He’d eaten leftovers before he and Jimin had set off from Seokjin’s apartment and so all that stood between him and being ready for bed was a shower.

There was no answer to his message. In fact, it was still unread.

He tidied up the spare bedding, and washed a mug and glass that were still in the sink. Still no answer.

Then he showered, and then he blow-dried his hair, but nothing had changed.

What was different, he tried to reason with himself, that he had to talk to Namjoon now? Whatever had happened had still happened, so what was one more day or two waiting to discuss it?

But it was… if it was… Yoongi had let himself forget, somehow, Namjoon being kind, because it hurt too much to remember, and he’d let Namjoon leave and never tried to follow him or find him because he’d felt so stupid, so deluded to have believed he mattered to Namjoon in any special way, that the tug had pulled in two directions, when Namjoon could just leave him so easily.

But what if he’d been wrong? What if Namjoon’s silence had been an attempt, clumsy, blunt, mistaken, flailing, at kindness?

And what if he thought Yoongi had turned his back to it?

He found it hard, the idea that Namjoon was just out there somewhere, thinking that about him.

“Namjoon-ssi,” he began, on the fourth attempted call, once he’d heard the message beep. “If this is you and Jeongguk didn’t give me a false number, which…. Uh…hi, I just… I wanted to say thank you, for Hoseok, and that I didn’t know… uh…” he ran his hand through his hair, pacing, desperate; no one in his generation was ever supposed to have to leave voicemail. “Like I said, thank you so much, that was incredibly generous of you and I didn’t know that you had…. Hoseok mentioned it today, not that he knew it was you, but I asked Jeongguk and he explained, and I wanted to say thank you and,” he stopped, pausing for breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And I don’t even know how to fucking speak to you, because I don’t know what happened, still, before, but I want to understand, if you want to talk to me about it? I miss you. I never… Anyway, this is Yoongi, Min Yoongi, hi, I wanted to just say thanks and if you want to talk, please call me or text me or whatever, thanks.”

He hung up and then folded himself onto the sofa in horror, staying with his head buried for several minutes.

The message stayed unread, and the phone didn’t ring back.

Eventually, he tore himself away and went to bed, his phone still grasped in his hand just in case.

-

“Where are you?” Jedeok demanded.

“On my way?” Yoongi lied, and coughed to clear his throat, aware how shattered he probably sounded. He’d been startled awake by the phone ringing from the doze that he’d finally fallen into around half four in the morning, and been so desperate to pick it up that he’d registered only too late that it was a TuneTown producer calling.

“Well, when are you going to get here? I need you to back me on this one. CEO-nim isn’t sure about this guy.”

Yoongi sighed, rubbing his face, trying to blink himself awake. “I’ve got some shit going on,” he protested. “You don’t really need me, hyung? Surely? You can sell this Rapmonster person to the company without me, his music is unbelievable.”

“You think so and I think so, but CEO-nim needs persuading, he says it’s a risk, too different. And the artist is late too and you know that never goes down well. Come on Yoongi-ssi, please, do me a favour! I’ll give you first dibs on recording slots in the studio for a month.”

Yoongi lay back on the bed and looked at the ceiling. He was being ridiculous again. His message to Namjoon still wasn’t even read. Namjoon could be on holiday, in another country, with a hook-up, having a digital detox, or his phone might have died, and Yoongi ought to adult up and just go do his professional thing.

Would he be able to concentrate, though, with this on his mind? Could he give this candidate a proper support, when he felt like this? Perhaps it would be better if he didn’t go after all.

“Two months,” Jedeok offered.

“Oh, fine,” Yoongi sighed. “And I am at home, so I’ll be forty minutes. Stall them with food.” He swung his feet off the bed and went to embrace a chilled coffee whilst trying to get dressed with the other hand.

In the end he made it to the head offices of TuneTown in thirty-two minutes and fifty seconds, which he felt he deserved a medal for, even if he was a little sweaty from running for the bus, which had made more people stare at him and done nothing to improve the ride or his mood.

Rather than go first to his own little studio room to dump his bag and get a bottle of water, he ploughed straight on to the main offices, riding the lift all the way to the top floor where the CEO kept his huge-windowed lair.

Opening the door, he was aware of someone already sitting in the chair placed intimidatingly opposite the CEO’s desk. Someone tall and alpha-smelling and apologetic-toned:

“…that I forgot the instructions for how to access the building. You see, I lost my phone.”

“Well never mind that,” the CEO answered, and gestured at the door, “It would seem Suga-ssi is only just with us now himself.”

“My apologies,” Yoongi began.

The man in the chair got up slightly awkwardly, turning around to be ready to bow, and was six feet tall and was beautiful, and was broad-shouldered, and was smelling sweetly of cedarwood, and was Kim Namjoon.

-

Yoongi stared at him, breath caught.

Namjoon looked horrified. Unmistakeably, clearly horrified, and the embarrassment in his scent – oh, Yoongi could read his scent still, that was his scent, Namjoon’s scent that he’d not been around in so long but he could taste every nuance of it and it was scared, distressed, mortified.

“Suga-ssi,” the CEO was saying in the background, and it wasn’t just him in the room but Jedeok and two other producers too, and the CEO’s PA and someone else – from finance? Maybe? “Suga-ssi, this young man is Rapmonster, who I understand you want me to sign.”

Yoongi looked around the room. From behind the CEO’s shoulder, Jedeok was making frantic thumbs up signals and nodding.

“That’s right,” Yoongi heard himself say. It didn’t sound convincing. He couldn’t stop feeling a pre-echo in his limbs, from the steps it would take to close the space and press his wrist precisely to the centre of Namjoon’s chest, and keep pushing until he was calm.

“But you’ll recognise him from the background info pack.”

“I didn’t read the background info pack,” Yoongi corrected automatically.

“He is very tall, isn’t he?” the CEO said approvingly, perhaps pegging this as the source of Yoongi’s surprise, and looking Namjoon up and down.

Namjoon was still staring, still absolutely distressed, but, Yoongi realised, the others in the room couldn’t tell. No one else was reacting. They were alphas but that wouldn’t fully explain it, only that Yoongi could still pick up more from this scent than usual, even now.

And was that true in reverse? Could Namjoon sense the effect he was having on him?

“Rapmonster-ssi.” Yoongi bowed. His mouth was so dry it was hard to talk, his tongue clicking and sticking on the sibilance.

‘Suga-ssi,” Namjoon answered, and then quickly, words falling out in a rush, “I didn’t know this was your company! I thought you were with RetroActive!”

“Ah, so you’re a fan of our best rap artist?” the CEO beamed. “RetroActive is our subsidiary, we have an imprint for folk music as well, it helps keep a sense of brand identity and ownership within more layers of the corporate structure.”

No one said anything for a moment after that, and then Jedeok cleared his throat. “Rapmonster-ssi,”

“Please, call me Kim Namjoon,” Namjoon told him, wincing.

Yoongi’s heart was going to beat out of his chest.

“Namjoon-ssi,” Jedeok corrected with a bow.

“Yes, it’s a terrible name,” the CEO agreed under his breath. “Let’s all sit down,” he instructed, gesturing.

Yoongi’s knees folded gratefully under him as he found a chair, one of the few remaining in the room, pushed up against the side of the wall. He’d been sweating scent when he arrived as it was, and now he could feel the ache in his neck and wrists as more let down, and even if no one else in the room had noticed anything yet, surely Namjoon would have?

Seated, Jedeok began again. “Namjoon-ssi, it would be great if you could tell us some more about your musical identity, about the background to some of these tracks which Suga-ssi and I have been enjoying so much. In fact,” he continued, his eyes on the CEO, “I’ve never heard Suga-ssi so enthusiastic about a sample mixtape.”

Namjoon twisted in his chair to look at Yoongi, cheeks dimpling. He looked surprised and pleased for a moment, before embarrassment overtook him again.

“I have really enjoyed listening,” Yoongi confirmed. And of course he had, of course it was fucking Namjoon, fuck, that wordplay, that mixture of seriousness and fun? He’d noticed the voice was a bit similar, told himself his affection for the songs had nothing to do with that, but he’d never imagined…

“You said in the background notes you sent over,” Jedeok continued, holding up a small sheaf of print-out of the material Yoongi had skipped downloading, “that several of these songs were fuelled by your experiences of love and loss, can you elaborate on that?”

Namjoon closed his eyes for a second. His ears had gone pink.

“Perhaps,” Yoongi said quickly, “this is a bit personal for Namjoon-ssi to discuss in front of all of us.”

“That’s what music is about, isn’t it?” the CEO protested. “If you can’t put your personal feelings out in front of thousands, maybe even millions of people, can you succeed as a musician? Come on, I’m interested in this, because most of them aren’t love songs, as such, are they?”

Behind him, Jedeok was making more frantic and encouraging gestures.

Namjoon took a deep breath and opened his eyes again. He looked straight forward, directly at the CEO.

“I think music can be about a lot of things. All creative art is like that. You set out to capture something, but maybe you capture something else along the way. You reveal yourself by revealing your vision, even if you only seek to hold up a mirror to the world. We know that elementary particles are changed by our observation of them, but they have changed us too, in luring our curiosity to attempt that observation.”

The CEO tilted his head to one side, neither smiling nor frowning, but interested, Yoongi could tell that much.

Yoongi couldn’t breathe.

“My songs aren’t love songs, exactly, you’re right,” Namjoon continued, shifting upwards in his chair, setting his shoulders back. “But they’re about me, and the thing about me, recently, was that I fell in love.” And he paused, taking one deep breath, nostrils flaring just a little.

Yoongi was clenching the arms of his chair. He held himself absolutely still.

Namjoon licked his lips. “And when that happened to me, it changed how I thought about myself. And I can’t describe the love, that was… that was more than I think I could put in a song, but I can talk about the changes it gave me, the things that bloomed in its light. He changed – the person I fell for – he changed me, or, I guess, he changed how I saw myself, helped me to see who I was. So, the songs are about him too, perhaps in the most profound way.”

“This omega isn’t the type for tell-all stories, is he?” the staff member Yoongi didn’t recognise cut in, leaning forward over her clipboard. Publicist, then, Yoongi thought, even as he wanted to yell at her to shut up and let Namjoon speak, let him…

“Well?” the CEO prompted Namjoon. Then, smiling. “It’s OK to be frank, we’re all alphas here, we know how it goes.”

Namjoon blinked at that, stiffening, but he didn’t look at Yoongi.

“It wasn’t an omega,” he said slowly. “I’ve never been attracted to omegas. You probably ought to know that before this goes any further. Except I thought I was, because when I met this man, the way I felt about him was like nothing I’ve felt in my life before and so I thought… I thought he had to be an omega, because this was how people said alphas felt about omegas. But he wasn’t, he isn’t an omega. And that changed everything.” He took another slow breath. “It was complicated, I messed up in some ways and I don’t know… I still don’t know everything he thought of it,” he cleared his throat. “But whatever else, he gave me that; knowing that I could feel that way about someone, that anything could feel so right. And from there, I did a lot of thinking, I meditated, I really… I really put myself in a room with myself and made myself listen, and these songs, mostly, are what I realised I heard.”

“Hmm,” the CEO shifted on his chair and looked at the legal representative.

“They’re beautiful songs,” Yoongi blurted out. “They’re the most beautiful songs I’ve encountered.” He looked at Namjoon, intent, willing him to understand.

Namjoon looked back, the fatalistic confidence of a second earlier replaced with a kind of terrified hope.

“Ah, so you think you could work with him?” the CEO asked, shifting his focus.

Yoongi bit his lip. “Yes. I think I could. I would like to have that chance.” Desperately, he tried to read Namjoon’s face as he spoke.

“Articulate, anyway,” the CEO murmured. “Media would like that, some things to take into consideration though, especially given the, ahem, other more controversial content we’re expecting to push this year.” He looked at Yoongi, who remembered to nod in acknowledgement.

“How about a trial demonstration?” Jedeok stood up brightly, clapping his hands together as though the idea had just struck him. “How about some rap, right here, see how they play together?”

“Oh yes, I like that,” the CEO gestured to his PA, “where’s the iPad with the samples? Get it bluetoothed, yes, that’s it.” He took the device, punching in a pin code and then navigating a file library. “What shall it be? Any requests?”

Yoongi stood up from his chair. “Give us some practice time! I mean, CEO-nim, I think it would be better if we had some time to find a flow, to really showcase to you what we could do. Give us some time and we’ll come back and show you.”

“Hmm, I guess so. When’s the thing with the yoghurt drink people?”

“Half past one,” the PA read off her schedule.

“So that gives you, what?” The CEO looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes? Shall we say fifteen?”

Yoongi had been picturing an hour, maybe longer, but Jedeok was signalling again and he knew when he’d pushed it enough.

“We’ll go to my studio,” he announced. Suddenly he couldn’t even look at Namjoon, that couldn’t happen if they were going to make it to the studio together without giving anything away. “Come on.”

-

“I didn’t know!” Namjoon cried out, the second Yoongi’s studio door closed behind them. He wrung his hands. “Yoongi-ssi, I swear, I didn’t know that you were the person they were bringing to meet with me, or that you were signed here, I would never have dreamed of putting you in that situation!” He paced to and fro in the tiny room, and then he turned, eyes wide and imploring.

“And are you sorry,” Yoongi managed to ask. He was still leaning back against the door. His limbs were shaking, he felt ten feet high and like he was about to collapse. “Are you sorry, that it was me?”

There was a pause, seconds ticking away. Namjoon drew himself up again. He was so gorgeous, how had Yoongi ever convinced himself otherwise?

“No. No, I’m not sorry. Are you?”

“I loved your songs,” Yoongi told him, and took a step forward. “I had no idea it was you, but I loved your songs because they reminded me of…of you. Why didn’t you try and contact me?”

“I wanted to be ready.” Namjoon ducked his head. “I wanted to be able to say: look, I’ve got all my shit figured out, I’m ready to… Well, I guess you heard it all anyway. We’re running out of time,” he added, flushing, looking at the clock on the wall.

“No, we’re not,” Yoongi corrected him nonsensically. Then he smiled, and let out a sharp laugh. “I have left you the world’s worst and most embarrassing voicemail and you are never, ever going to hear it because once again you have lost. Your. Fucking. Phone.”

“What?” Namjoon began to ask, but it was cut off as Yoongi surged forward and kissed him.

Namjoon tasted like he smelled, or maybe he smelled like he tasted and that was why Yoongi’s mouth had been watering since he’d been beside him again, and his glands aching, all the geography of his rare body gathering and warming and heating itself for touch.

“Fuck,” Namjoon gasped, between their lips brushing, and broke away from the press of their mouths, nosing under the curve of Yoongi’s jaw, going for scent, his wide, warm hands on Yoongi’s back, holding him upright, steady.

“We’re running out of time,” Yoongi told him, on a gasp, voice cracking a little; they weren’t even doing anything, really, kissing almost slowly enough for a primetime drama, not even pressed together and he was on fire.

“No, we’re not,” Namjoon told him earnestly. Then, hesitating. “Pineapple?”

“He was my cycle partner,” Yoongi explained. “It only finished the day before yesterday. Another beta.”

“Oh. Ah, OK, that’s good.”

“It was good, he was a really good friend,” Yoongi said, and cupped Namjoon’s face in his hands, carefully meeting his gaze, “and you should replace all his scent with yours. I want to smell like you now.”

“I can’t,” Namjoon gasped, and his head dropped down, “I cannot go back to meet your boss if you say things like that, I will not be in a fit state.”

He was hard, Yoongi saw when he looked, which was a relief because Yoongi was too, Yoongi was aching with it, he wanted to push himself up against Namjoon, get their hips slotted and just…

“I have to thank you!” Yoongi managed, suddenly remembering. “You did an amazing thing for Hoseok, and I didn’t even know about it until the other day, thank you so much.”

“You weren’t supposed to know.” Namjoon frowned a little. “How did you find out?”

“He let something slip that he didn’t get the relevance of, I put two and two together, it doesn’t matter.” Yoongi took a breath. “But thank you. Really. Thank you.”

“So, he’s OK?”

“He’s really OK.” Yoongi assured him. Then he laughed, not even for any particular reason, and Namjoon gazed at him like he was in the presence of something precious and Yoongi did not have any way to handle that except to step forward again and…

There was a knock at the door. Thank goodness Yoongi had insisted on his own lock pad. “You all ready?” Jedeok called out. “Come on, you’re out of time.”

“No, we’re not,” Namjoon said at the exact same time Yoongi did, and they cracked up, and Namjoon kissed him again, and then Yoongi forced himself back and surveyed the situation.

“T-shirts,” he announced, and went over to his cupboard. “We have these fucking massive ones from a promo a while back, they’ve got my name all over them but ignore that. Stick one on and it’ll…cover things, and we’ll say it’s to give us a unified look.”

“You really can fix everything.”

“I’m a beta,” Yoongi said smugly, thinking how he’d learnt this tone from Minhyuk, feeling how good it was to say it, aloud, and meet a smile.

-

It didn’t matter that they hadn’t practiced. Back in the office they freestyled over one of Yoongi’s old tracks like it was a rap battle, except they were on the same team, rhyming and bouncing and playing off each other, Namjoon daring him to push further and faster, and Yoongi could, Yoongi did, and Namjoon’s delight and glee made him soar until Namjoon would land another ridiculous twist that made him cackle with his own joy.

“We’ll need to consider some details in the contract,” the CEO said finally, as his PA scribbled his words down. “But yeah, that’s going to play nicely as a debut, Suga ft. Rapmonster, just need to down a track, and then we’ll look to bring the solo material along a month or so after, when that’s built a good buzz.” He put on his coat, summoning his PA to follow. “Please have the paperwork ready for me tomorrow, and book an appointment for these gentlemen to come and sign once they’ve had a chance to read it.”

Yoongi was still catching his breath. He wiped off his forehead with the back of his arm, and then the towel over the back of his neck, and glanced over at Namjoon, who looked stunned with happiness.

Jedeok was giving a double thumbs up, then high fiving the other producer as soon as the CEO had left the room. “Yoongi-ssi, thank you!” he exclaimed, grinning with delight. “We ought to go for drinks! I’m so sorry that I have the time booked in with the girl group this evening!”

“That’s OK,” Yoongi reassured him. “I owe Namjoon-ah a meal in Cheonggyecheon.”

Which probably surprised Jedeok with the specificity and the intimacy, but Yoongi didn’t care, wasn’t looking at him.

-

Under the slate-grey sky, Cheonggyecheon didn’t sparkle, but as soon as Yoongi laid eyes on it he felt the same sense, picking up the thread they’d dropped, of something right slotting back into place

“You can’t step in the same river twice,” Namjoon murmured, coming up beside him.

They’d gone straight from the company to the bus-stop. Yoongi had been sorely tempted to suggest ducking back into his studio and just picking up where they’d been interrupted, but he wanted to talk more, really, before they got to that place again.

But on the bus, they’d stood close, too close for respect, if you weren’t intimate, and Yoongi had let his hand dangle and Namjoon had pressed his own against it, wrist scenting, and the electricity had climbed up Yoongi’s arm and through his body and all the way inside him. Maybe others had noticed, maybe not, Yoongi had had too much to think and feel to take account of anyone else in the world.

He was slick, and a little hard again, and he thought maybe Namjoon could tell, and he felt nothing but good about it.

“Huh?” he asked now, and batted Namjoon lightly, because he could, because he could touch him, he could touch him, Namjoon was there and he could touch him.

“We call it ‘the river’,” Namjoon explained, with the earnestness that made Yoongi want to kiss him again, right here in public. “But what is the river? The river is water, the water is always moving and replacing itself. You can come back and back to a river, but it’s not the same river. It’s different, than it was before.”

“Maybe it’s better?” Yoongi went forward, sat himself down on the top rake of the seating that went down to the water’s edge. Namjoon followed to sit beside him. “Maybe sometimes you have to wait. For the right river to come along.”

“Are you teasing me?”

“No,” Yoongi assured him, and waited a moment, and then gave in and turned, and nuzzled his head into Namjoon’s chest, resting against the broad plane of his muscle, up close to where the scent was best. He could remember lying in the spare bed at Seokjin’s like this, remember their scents mixing.

They hadn’t been ready, then. They weren’t ready now, who could be ready? But this was better. It had been awful, in between, but this was better, they were going to be better, for this.

Namjoon froze under him at first, and then, after a long pause, lifted his hand to curl around Yoongi’s shoulders, stroking.

“I’m supposed to be buying you lunch.” Yoongi pointed out, breath catching.

“Mmm,” Namjoon murmured.

“It’s really too cold to eat outside anyway.”

“Hmmm.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing, then?” Yoongi asked, pulling away, skittish with happiness, sitting back to look at him properly. “All this time? Writing music? What about your job? Are you living in the city again?”

“I do online English language coaching.” Namjoon sat up. “No, I don’t live here – I will do, though, with this contract giving me some more income. I’m staying in a hotel right now, which my parents paid for. My mother is… we don’t agree on everything, but she wants to support me. And yeah, music. It’s all been music. And having too many thoughts. You?”

“Work-wise, it’s been the same.” Yoongi drew up one knee and clasped it. “Hoseok had his baby and that’s been, well you can imagine, that’s been a lot of our lives, now. She has. Junhee.”

“Wow.”

“And I have a beta hyung now, like I told you. Lee Minhyuk. He’s alpha-passing too, he’s married to an omega actually. It’s been good, knowing someone like me.”

Namjoon nodded, then bit his lip. “And was it OK? That I told CEO-nim I wasn’t straight?”

Yoongi grinned. “I don’t think he was hoping for it, but he’s agreed that for my next album launch, I can tell the world I’m a beta – someone did some social media analysis and convinced him it might even boost sales – so he’s getting a bit more ready to roll with it.”

“Seriously? That’s amazing!” Namjoon’s eyes widened. “Oh my goodness!”

“I ought to thank you for that, too.” Yoongi ducked his head, looking away. “My songs aren’t about you, either. They’re for you. At you. All the things I wanted to yell at you when we first met, about who I was and how I was allowed to be myself, I’d never…” he sniffed. “I can’t wait until you hear them.”

“Wow,” Namjoon repeated, softly. He reached out his hand, then hesitated, and Yoongi reached in turn to meet him, slid their arms together so they were wrist-to-wrist. For a while they were silent, waiting, watching the point where they met.

“Is that how you categorise it, then?” Yoongi asked gently, after a while. “Being attracted to… to me? As ‘not straight’?” He flipped their arms so that his was on top, keeping the gentle rhythm of the movement of skin against skin, to show that it was not a trick question.

Namjoon shrugged. “I’m an alpha and you’re not an omega, so I guess? Does ‘straight’ encompass betas at all, do you think? Do you think dating one designation or another would mean you were straight?” He flipped their arms the other way, his on top, sliding them together in a slightly different path. It felt amazing, shivers all down Yoongi’s spine.

“I don’t think so.” Yoongi chewed his lip.

“Well then, I feel like in a queer relationship, both participants are queer?”

“Good question.” Yoongi swallowed. “Is that what this could be, then? A relationship?”

He twisted his wrist on top again, and held it still for a long moment, feeling the ache of his own glands meeting the heat and the swelling of Namjoon’s. It kicked heat deep into his gut.

“I wanted you since you threw coffee over me,” Namjoon told him simply. “I just never knew what to do about it.”

Yoongi shivered, and not just from cold. “I can think of a few things.”

-

“Fuck,” Namjoon hissed, as Yoongi pushed him back against the inside of the door of his apartment. “Oh fuck, you smell so good.”

Yoongi cackled a little, pressing closer, pushing his hips up against Namjoon’s, up on his toes. He had one hand curled to present his wrist to Namjoon’s face, flooding him as the scent let down.

With a moan, eyes closing, Namjoon caught him and kissed at the glands, with his lips and then his tongue, hot and wet and Yoongi whined, feeling the pulse between his legs in response.

He pulled back, holding Namjoon’s hand properly, and drew him, walking backwards, the few steps across the floor and around the bookcase to the bed.

“Still a bit of a nest here,” Yoongi murmured, and Namjoon kissed him, cradling his face and tilting it up to him.

“I like nesting,” Namjoon told him softly. “I always have.”

“We might argue about fabrics.” Yoongi pointed out, relieved, endeared. He ran his hands down Namjoon’s sides.

“We might,” Namjoon agreed. “No fake fur.”

“I can live with that.” Yoongi pulled his t-shirt off and over his head, made to throw it on the floor like he would have done in his previous hook-ups, and then thought about what he’d just heard and cast it onto on the bed instead.

He looked back to find Namjoon staring at him, mouth slightly open.

Yoongi looked down at himself, anxious despite everything.

Namjoon hissed. “Can I touch you?”

“That’s the general idea.”

Namjoon rushed forward. He stroked along the top of Yoongi’s shoulders, into the dips of his collarbones, slow and tingly. He pressed his forefinger into the notch of Yoongi’s sternum and then ran all his fingers upwards along the tendons to Yoongi’s neck glands, gentle where they were swollen, making a kind of whine as they let down even more scent.

It was almost too much; Yoongi caught his hands, rubbing his own thumbs at Namjoon’s wrists, and drew them down to his chest.

“Can I kiss you here?” Namjoon’s finger rubbed over Yoongi’s nipple.

“Yeah, uh,” Yoongi could feel his voice shaking. “Let me lie down.”

It was only as he got onto his back that he realised he didn’t quite want Namjoon over him. “From there,” he asked, stopping Namjoon from straddling him.

“From here,” Namjoon echoed, untroubled, and leant in sideways at an angle from where he knelt next where to Yoongi lay, his mouth to Yoongi’s skin, revisiting where his fingers had gone.

Yoongi took it for a while, gasping, aware of how he was rocking; like this there was no pressure for him to rut against, his hips lifting and lifting off the bed in that rhythm he felt like his heartbeat.

He put his hands to Namjoon’s waistband. “Can I?”

“I’ll…” Namjoon answered, and did it himself, pushing his trousers and his pants down in one grasp, wriggling and kicking them off. He looked at Yoongi. “Shall I bring them up here?’

Yoongi was so slick, so very slick now, wet and aching. “Yeah. Put them. Put them in the nest. Make it smell like you.”

Namjoon’s cock jerked – that was Namjoon’s cock, that was Namjoon’s cock, red and hard hanging down between his legs and it jerked at Yoongi’s words. Yoongi fought the urge to pull him closer, to put his hands on his butt and get that huge, hard thing closer to where he needed it.

He held off though and Namjoon got the clothes back from the floor, putting them on the edge of the bed.

It was something Yoongi had always thought seemed vaguely disgusting, someone else’s things in his nest, his place. But he wanted this, uncomplicated and direct.

“Didn’t see this, before,” Yoongi whispered, shuffling forward, still on his back, so that he could reach out, wrist up, and hold Namjoon’s cock, stroke and measure the width and weight of him, feel the slightly different sensation at the place where his knot would come in, familiar from himself.

“Ah, Yoongi-ssi,” Namjoon groaned.

“I think we’re back at ‘hyung’, don’t you?” Yoongi grinned. He changed the angle of his wrist, deliberately rubbing Namjoon’s cock with his scent gland, and Namjoon, watching, groaned again, his face like he was in agony. “Huh, Namjoon-ah?”

The knot was swelling a little, even, already. “That’s so hot,” Yoongi whispered, reassuring, trying to sit up, trying to nuzzle at Namjoon’s neck.

“I won’t last,” Namjoon warned him. He was biting his lip, breathing heavily through his nose. “Oh fuck, you smell so good, I want to…” he ducked his head, and then opened his eyes, looking at Yoongi’s crotch and then up to meet Yoongi’s gaze, intent and meaning.

Yoongi swallowed.

“Can I?” Namjoon asked, his hand lifted, not touching the fastening of Yoongi’s trousers but on its way there, unmistakeable.

“I want you to,” Yoongi told him. “You can smell how much I want it. But. Down there. I’m not. You’ve only been with alphas before. And I might not be, what you’re expecting.”

Namjoon flushed. “I did some reading. A lot of reading actually, but mostly, uh, about betas.”

Yoongi raised his eyebrow. “Did you now?”

“I mean reading! Real reading! There are books! It was… it was fascinating, actually, like did you know that the reason beta scents tend to read as citrussy is because of the influence of the moderated MEG-2 gene that also accounts for…”

“Namjoon,” Yoongi put his hand on his mouth. “Sex now. Insights later.” But he couldn’t help smiling, and he caressed Namjoon’s lips, his cheeks, the curve of his ears, the creases of his eyes and back to his mouth again, where Namjoon opened and sucked his fingertips, steady and rhythmic until Yoongi didn’t just feel good about taking his trousers off, he felt desperate.

And once Yoongi was naked, Namjoon knelt on the bed in front of him, dropping a kiss to the inside of each of his knees and then gently, watching his expression, pushed them apart.

“Gorgeous,” Namjoon told him, moving in. “You’re perfect.” And he opened his mouth again as Yoongi arched towards him.

-

“Seokjin wants to have us both over for dinner sometime this week.” Yoongi announced, reading from his phone. “Which means he wants to interrogate you.”

“Hmm?” Namjoon was over in the kitchen nook, making jjapaguri under strict remote supervision, as Yoongi lay on the bed kicking his heels, still naked.

He couldn’t help but think of when Minhyuk had been here. Completely different, and yet without that he wasn’t sure he could lie here like this now, starting to be ready to believe that Namjoon really did like his body, just the way it was, because clearly the way it was, was fucking great.

And great at fucking, going by the last hour or so. Yoongi stretched a little and sighed happily. Namjoon had got him off with his mouth and that had been amazing and then said something about how he was fine to take care of himself, not to worry, and Yoongi had been able to grin at him and say you think I’m done? and watch the expression cross Namjoon’s face as he began to understand.

He’d pushed his cock up against Namjoon’s, enjoying the contrast in sizes, enjoying how with a bit of his own slick he could really get a nice, toe-curling slide with each of his thrusts, and after he’d come for his third and final time, he’d reached down to grab Namjoon’s knot, studying his face for every reaction to guide his grip and pressure and movement, and Namjoon had melted under him.

The bed was a mess, but at least out of cycle he could just get away with washing the sheets once the nesting urge had lessened a little.

In cycle… well, they might spend their next cycles together. And that was… That was something.

“Seokjin. Dinner,” Yoongi repeated now, bringing his thoughts back to the moment. “You can meet Junhee anyway. She won’t interrogate you. Yet.”

Namjoon, still stirring attentively, smiled. “That would be nice.”

Yoongi grinned. He rolled onto his back, scrolling through his phone contacts. He ought to take Minhyuk for lunch. And Jeongguk, and Jimin, although they’d probably come to Seokjin’s meal, and Taehyung too likely as not, if Yoongi suggested it.

“I think it’s ready!” Namjoon announced proudly, turning to look at him, eyes hopeful, still a little shy.

Of all the people we could have been, Yoongi thought fondly, isn’t it wonderful we turned out to be us?

But that was a Namjoon-ish thought, and he’d save it for when they were composing together, in all the wide possibilities before them.

Yoongi swung his legs off the bed. Walking over to Namjoon he went up on his toes to kiss him.

“You did good,” he told him softly, and pressed his wrist to centre of Namjoon’s chest, feeling the purr starting to rise.

-