Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Soobin comes home from work the next day to the sound of Beomgyu’s dremel floating through one closed door and Kai’s voice floating through the other one. It’s a beautiful, relieving symphony of sounds. He’d spent most of his factory shift worrying that Beomgyu’s preheat symptoms might have been kicking in already, a day early, but those fears were unfounded.

He smiles to himself as he washes his hands, even though he has no idea what he’s about to scrounge up to feed them all. He’d much rather be the one cooking if it means that Beomgyu is healthy — and busy with work. Beomgyu doesn’t get nearly enough time to work these days.

Soobin starts to unbutton his work shirt, heading for his bedroom to change before he starts dinner, then changes his mind and heads for Kai’s door instead. Would Kai have eaten already? He thinks Kai was working this afternoon, and sometimes he eats at the professor’s. He’ll just call through the door to ask if Kai has eaten, and then leave him alone until he’s done with his phone call.

He gives the door a soft knock and calls out, “Kai-ya, quick question.”

“Just a minute!” Kai’s voice calls back. “On the phone!”

“Just tell me if you ate dinner. I’m pulling something together.”

There’s a pause, and then he hears Kai’s footsteps approaching the door. Soobin feels them reverberate through his chest, despite how soft they are: omega closer, closer.

“No need to come out, I’m just—”

Kai swings the door open. He’s changed into his pajamas, a cozy, matching flannel set, and his hair is pressed to his forehead, damp. He must have done his whole bedtime routine, unwinding after work, even though it’s barely eight in the evening.

“Sorry for the knock,” Soobin says quickly. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“It’s okay, hyung,” Kai says, slipping into a tight smile. “I was just talking to my mom.”

Behind him, the room glows softly from his string lights, and Soobin catches a glimpse of his tablet lit up on his bed.

“I thought Junie-hyung might be coming over tonight. Is he here?” Kai glances over towards the dark bathroom, as if Yeonjun might materialize in the doorway.

“Oh, no, he didn’t… uh, something came up.” Yeonjun had said he and Taehyun didn’t want to hog Beomgyu’s precious last night before his heat symptoms start again, which only made Soobin ache about how few “normal” nights Beomgyu really has. Hard to verbalize that, even to Kai.

“Bummer,” Kai sighs. “Eomma wanted to say hi to him.”

“Do you want food? I’ll make something.”

“Oh, yes, please.”

“One food, coming up,” Soobin says, and Kai’s smile widens. Instead of closing the door again, he lingers, his eyes falling down Soobin’s body.

“You going to change first?” Kai asks, nodding at Soobin’s half-opened shirt.

“Oh, yeah. I’m not getting all the factory filth near our dinner.”

Kai pulls his lower lip between his teeth for a moment and casts a glance back over his shoulder.

“Maybe… ah, never mind. It’s… well, if you want…”

“Want what?”

“Do you maybe… um, want to meet her?”

Meet Kai’s mother? Soobin’s hands immediately race to re-button his shirt, and his throat goes dry. Shit.

“You don’t have to,” Kai says, shifting on his feet. “I’m sorry. Let’s wait for when Beomgyu-hyung… I just thought, uh, alpha first, you know…”

“No, I want to,” Soobin says quickly. “I really want to. Thank you, Kai-ya.”

“You sure?”

No, he’s not sure. He’s fucking petrified. Meeting Kai’s mother, even virtually, is probably one of the highest-stakes things he could do. Aren’t Kai’s parents hyper-concerned about him, to the point of uber-vigilance? Betas who would never get the way Soobin feels for their son? And isn’t Soobin the already-mated creep who moved into their son’s apartment and tried to snap him up too? His thoughts race back to what Beomgyu had said on Christmas: that there are a trillion reasons why Kai’s parents wouldn’t like them, and a lick of panic flares in his chest.

But Kai wants him to meet his mother, and so he’ll do it. This is just one hurdle he has to clear if he wants Kai to be his.

“I’d love to,” Soobin says. “Lead the way.”

Kai reaches for his hand without another word, and Soobin lets him lead him into the room, towards the blurry face partially visible on his tablet screen.

“Anything I need to know first?” Soobin whispers nervously, but Kai ignores his question, eyes fixed on his goal.

“Eomma, I’ve got a visitor,” Kai says, his voice undeniably shakier.

“Oh? Who?”

“Soobin-hyung.”

Kai drops down to his bed, reaching for the tablet, and Soobin freezes like an idiot. He has no idea what to do with his body. Does he sit next to him? Lean in closer? He lingers on his feet instead, awkwardly hovering next to the bed and squeezing Kai’s hand as Kai lifts the tablet to face them.

“Get closer, hyung,” Kai says, looking up at him. “You’re out of frame like that. You’re way too tall.”

His eyes are big and unblinking. Please make this easy, Soobin imagines him saying, and yes, yes, Soobin can try to make this easy, terrifying as it may be. He charmed Beomgyu’s parents once, didn’t he?

“He’s just like you, Kai-ya,” a voice says from the screen. “You just couldn’t stop growing.”

Soobin kneels next to Kai and looks at the screen, at the woman smiling at him. He’s seen Kai’s mother in miniature form, a tiny face in some of the framed photos he keeps on his bookshelf and his walls. Now, lit up on a screen, their broad smiles make them a matching set. She’s a gentle-looking, middle-aged beta, with elegant features that look like Kai’s had been warped to make them a bit crookeder, a bit less magnetic.

“Soobin-hyung, this is Jung Eunhee, my mother,” Kai says. “Eomma, this is Choi Soobin.”

“So you’re dating my son, Choi Soobin,” Eunhee says, leaning in closer to the screen. “I’ve got a lot to learn about you.”

Soobin can’t read her tone, but his alpha is already racing to respond instinctively. She needs to know that Kai is safe with him, cared for, absolutely treasured. That he’ll be the best alpha Kai could possibly have, the only alpha he’ll ever need, and that Soobin will never, ever leave him. Of course, it would sound unhinged to say all that when the woman has barely said a word to him, and so instead, Soobin shoots his hand up to Kai’s shoulder, grabbing it tight at the junction of his neck as if to stake his claim for her to see. Maybe she’ll understand what it means: he’ll be mine, always. I’m serious about him.

“I’m honored to meet you, eomeonim,” Soobin says. “You have such a special son.”

She nods her head approvingly. “Ya, he’s smart, Kai-ya.”

Kai giggles nervously. Soobin can’t tell what he’s thinking.

“I’ve been nearly begging my son to tell me more about you. The mysterious alpha roommate.”

“Come on, I’ve told you plenty about him,” Kai says to her, giving Soobin a fleeting, alarmed look.

“We’ve heard more about him from your sisters than from you. Soobin-ssi, when are you coming to Incheon?”

“Eomma,” Kai complains. “Don’t push.”

“Why not? We want to meet him. And his mate. Next time Kai comes home, come with him, Soobin-ssi.”

Soobin immediately feels a flash of awkwardness at the word mate. How will Kai’s parents possibly think that he’s good enough for their son when he’s already mated? Wouldn’t they think Kai deserves an alpha all to himself?

“Thank you for the invitation. Beomgyu and I would love to come,” he says, trying to sound low and serious, like an alpha with real gravitas, someone responsible. His voice cracks a bit on the second syllable of Beomgyu’s name, though, and Soobin’s hand shoots nervously across Kai’s back to wrap all the way around his shoulders.

He remembers feeling just like this when he met Beomgyu’s parents, except that time he had advance notice. He had worn his only suit and gotten a fresh haircut, trying to make himself as respectable and mature-looking as possible, only for both of Beomgyu’s mothers to coo over his dimples and dote over him like a child. The fact that they liked him immediately is still the second-biggest relief of his life, after the relief he felt when Beomgyu said yes to his proposal a few months later. You and me, for life.

“It’d be better for you to come here,” Kai says. “Hyung has to work a lot, and Beomgyu-hyung can’t travel easily. Remember what I told you?”

“We’d make it work, Kai-ya,” Soobin says, squeezing Kai’s shoulder. “We could fit in an afternoon trip. You’re too thoughtful.”

“Tell me more, Soobin-ssi,” Eunhee says. “What else do you think of my son? Did we raise him well?”

Is this a trick question? What does he think about him? Kai is already groaning, embarrassed, telling Soobin he doesn’t have to answer it, but of course Soobin is going to answer it the best he can. He’s no poet, but he can tell the truth.

“He’s perfect,” Soobin says. “You raised him just right, eomeonim. You have no idea how happy it makes us just to be with him.”

On the screen, he watches Kai’s mother’s smile grow.

“Oh my god,” Kai mumbles, hiding his face in his hand. “Mortifying.”

“I have to admit, it’s been a bit… new, learning about all this,” Eunhee says. “We’re betas, as you know. Kai’s father and I had never heard of… well, of what you’re all trying out.”

A pack. Soobin’s honestly surprised that her immediate reaction wasn’t to reject it, when it’s practically unheard of. He wonders if her reaction had been more negative when Kai initially told them; Kai had seemed unwilling to share the details of that conversation, and neither Soobin nor Beomgyu had pushed him on it.

“Neither had we,” Soobin says. “But it’s real. And it will work. We’ll do whatever it takes to make it work.”

“I told her you would,” Kai says. Soobin’s nervousness ebbs away just a bit, hearing Kai’s bratty little tone. He’s acting years younger, and it’s so cute.

“And you’re right. We will,” Soobin agrees. “Eomeonim… I can’t tell you what your son means to us. I know it hasn’t been long, but we’ll take such good care of him. Thank you for letting us have him.”

He ducks his head in a little bow and pinches Kai’s shoulder when he feels him squirming self-consciously.

“I need to tell you, Soobin-ssi — and Kai will give me grief about this—”

“So don’t say it, eomma,” Kai complains.

“—but we’re so glad that our Kai is finally dating. He’s always been a little—”

“Eomma!” Kai nearly shrieks, but Soobin laughs, and Kai’s mother doesn’t seem to notice his absolute horror.

“—shy, I suppose, and I’ve always thought he should just put himself out there, when he’s such a handsome boy, you know? But it’s been a bit of a… journey—”

“I am literally going to mute you,” Kai says, frustrated. “I am so not kidding.”

“Don’t talk to your mother like that, Kai-ya,” Soobin says, still chuckling. “I’m glad he’s dating too, eomeonim. Dating me and Beomgyu, at least. No one else.”

That might have come out a bit too possessively. He takes a deep breath, in case his tone is getting too intense. He just can’t help feeling this burning desire to prove himself, prove that he’ll never hurt her son. She might have said she’s excited about Kai dating, but he can only imagine how worried she must be, too, when it would be so easy for her son to get hurt. Shy wasn’t exactly the right word for the reason that Kai hadn’t been dating, but he gets why she’d rather use a euphemism.

“Ah, Beomgyu. I’d love to talk to Beomgyu-ssi, too,” Eunhee says. “When will that be, Kai-ya?”

“Maybe never, if you’re gonna say weird things about me to him,” Kai pouts.

“He’ll get on your next phone call,” Soobin promises. “I could even bring him in now. He’s just working in the next room.”

“He makes jewelry, right?” Soobin nods. “Kai’s told me he’s very talented.”

“Oh, very.”

“He’ll have his own shop one day,” Kai says, clearly eager for any new topic. “He should be famous.”

Oh, if only. Beomgyu is far too sick to run his own shop.

“True,” Soobin agrees. “He’ll bring something for you when we come to Incheon. And something for Kai’s sisters.”

“I’ve heard such lovely things about Beomgyu-ssi,” Eunhee says. “Kai says they have a real special connection, mm? And you just sparkle when you talk about him, darling. It reminds me so much of the way I felt about your father, when we first met…”

“Eomma, I’m sorry, but Soobin-hyung needs to make dinner,” Kai says. “I should probably help.”

“There’s no need,” Soobin says quietly, lowering his lips towards Kai’s ear, but Kai shakes his head insistently.

“What, you don’t want to talk about your parents falling in love?” Eunhee laughs, and Kai makes a cute, crinkled-up face. “That’s fine, sweetheart. We’ll talk again soon. Be sure to call your uncle tomorrow, it’s his birthday.”

“Will do,” Kai says, too loud. “Gotta go now. Love you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Soobin says politely, just before Kai hits the end call button, too quickly for his mother to respond.

“Holy shit, that was so awkward,” Kai moans immediately. “Why did I do that, I should have given her a warning so she wouldn’t be so embarrassing…”

“She seems lovely, Kai-ya,” Soobin says, soothing his thumb over the collar of Kai’s pajamas to graze his neck. “I think that went well, right? Do you think she liked me?”

“Who wouldn’t like you?” Kai says, and starts rambling anxiously. “But that’s not the point. I promise my parents haven’t been, like, waiting with bated breath for someone to volunteer to take me off their hands, because that’s so old-fashioned, and they’re really not like that. And when she said she’s heard more about Beomgyu, it’s not that I didn’t tell her about you, I just felt so weird talking too much about an alpha when I’ve always been so, like… weird about them, and I thought they might make a big deal…”

“Kai, baby, calm down,” Soobin interrupts. “It’s all okay. She loves you. She wants to know you’re dating someone who deserves you, that’s all.”

“Was it like that when you met Beomgyu’s moms? Did they ask you what you thought about him, too?”

“If they did, I would have said the same thing I said about you,” Soobin says, grazing his thumb all the way across Kai’s scent gland and hoping it calms him down. “That he’s perfect. Perfect for me, just like you.”

“They didn’t make him sound like some kinda old maid, I bet,” Kai grumbles.

Soobin laughs. “Because we were babies back then. If anything, they should have told me we were too young. Still can’t believe they said I could have him, when I had absolutely no way to prove I could take care of him…”

“Yeah, as if that would have mattered to Beomgyu-hyung,” Kai says. “If he wanted you, even his parents saying they didn’t approve of you wouldn’t change a thing.”

Kai’s right, of course, and now Soobin has to ask.

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“What if your mother doesn’t like me?”

“I think she did,” Kai says. “You said all the right things.”

“But… if she didn’t. Would things change?”

Soobin wishes he hadn’t asked, because Kai hesitates, and a weird hollowness opens up in his chest. But Kai’s voice isn’t tentative or awkward when he speaks, just thoughtful.

“It would never happen, though,” Kai says. “Because I know for a fact that you’re right for me. I’m sure of it. And I know for a fact that she wants me to be happy. So even if you were weird on the phone, once she met you, she would never disapprove of you, if you’re the one who will make me happy.”

Soobin inhales so he can smell exactly how sure Kai is of that statement. His scent is mellow, settling down, either from the calming sensation of Soobin’s thumb stroking him or just from his relief at the phone call being over.

“You’ve gotten so confident,” Soobin says.

“Shouldn’t I be?” Kai asks, turning his head to look into his eyes.

Soobin nods. He watches Kai’s cheeks begin to flush as he refuses to drop Soobin’s gaze. They’re still side-by-side on the bed, still nestled together.

“I like it. Makes me feel like I’m doing something right.”

“You’re doing lots of things right,” Kai says. “Did you… um, go to the pharmacy?”

Soobin nods. “Meds for you in my coat pocket.”

Kai cracks a shy smile. “Thanks, alpha,” he says.

Soobin’s nail scrapes over Kai’s scent gland.

“Ow,” Kai giggles.

“S-sorry.” 

“Hyung, do you think… would your parents like me?”

“Without a doubt, baby. They’ll adore you.”

“They won’t think it’s weird?”

“They’ll probably think it’s less weird than your parents did, and your parents don’t think it’s that weird, right?”

Kai nods. His eyes finally wander away from Soobin’s face, and he cricks his head to the side, stretching out his neck as he thinks. Soobin strokes over the little red line his thumb accidentally left behind.

“I wish you’d let me see your neck more,” Soobin says.

“My neck?”

“You cover it up nearly every day, and it’s so pretty.”

Kai clutches a hand to his throat self-consciously.

“Just feels kind of… provocative,” he says quietly. “I don’t really want people thinking about the fact that I have scent glands.”

“Well, I’m thinking about it,” Soobin says. “Maybe I want you to provoke me.”

He thumbs all the way up to Kai’s jawbone, and Kai’s head tilts back on his neck as if Soobin had flipped a lever. Soobin leans in to press a kiss to the side of it, and his lips come away sweeter.

“I like when you’re bold for us. Show off for me, if it feels good.”

“It does, mostly,” Kai says haltingly.

Soobin kisses his neck again. It’s gonna be hard to tear himself out of Kai’s bed now that it’s full of his needy, mouthwatering scent. He shouldn’t have done this to himself.

“I’m glad she met you,” Kai says, and it takes Soobin a moment to realize he’s still thinking about his mom. “Even if it was weird. I kind of wanted to… well, show you off for her.”

“Show me off?” Soobin pulls away. “I’m nothing special. Show Beomgyu off.”

“You’re massive,” Kai giggles. “And hot. And you did the whole…” Kai shrugs the shoulder that Soobin had been grabbing the whole time they talked to his mother. “Protective thing, you know. I bet she’s running off to tell my dad all about how I’m dating a real alpha, and they never, ever, ever thought I’d be interested in one…”

“Neither did you,” Soobin says.

“Stupid of me, right?” Kai says. “Okay, hyung, if you don’t stop doing that to my scent gland…”

Soobin hasn’t stopped stroking it, massaging it, and he has a feeling that it’s the reason that Kai’s cheeks are getting pinker and pinker.

“Um, I don’t wanna repeat last night right now,” Kai says, ducking his head.

Soobin drops his thumb immediately. Now, all he can think about is exactly what they did the night before: his hand between Kai’s legs, Kai writhing, Kai gasping…

“Right,” Soobin says, swallowing. “I wasn’t, um, wasn’t trying to…”

“I know,” Kai says. “It’s cool. And maybe we could repeat it… like, later, maybe?”

“Today?”

Soobin gapes at him, but Kai just lets out his shrill bark of a laugh, bringing his hand to Soobin’s chest and leaning in closer.

“Maybe I should try again with Beomgyu-hyung first,” he says. “A redo, since our first time wasn’t so great, was it?”

Kai’s fingertip catches on the chain of Soobin’s necklace, and he uses it to tug Soobin in one final inch. He leaves a sweet, soft kiss on Soobin’s lips, and stares him in the eyes as he draws back.

Damn, he’s gotten so much more confident. Damn.

“Another,” Soobin orders. That wasn’t nearly enough contact.

“Kiss?”

Soobin nods. Beomgyu would make him beg for it, but Kai seems downright excited to obey, leaning back in with his lips parted this time. Soobin drapes an arm down his back, holding him close, and savors his perfect taste, the warmth of his pink tongue. The fatigue in his muscles from his hard day of labor is rapidly slipping away. Making out with Kai needs to be a regular part of his home-from-work routine.

“Hyung,” Kai mumbles wetly after he pulls back, bright pink now all over his face.

“Mm?”

He gives Soobin’s necklace another firm tug, though he isn’t trying to pull him back in. Instead, he pinches one of the charms on it, the gemstone for Beomgyu’s birth month. Aquamarine.

“Do you think…”

“Go on, love,” Soobin prompts, as Kai hesitates.

“Do you think… ah, never mind.”

“No, tell me.” Kai shakes his head, but Soobin can tell where this is going. “Or should I guess?”

“No, it’s silly.”

“It’s the charms, right?” Kai doesn’t answer, but Soobin knows it’s right from the way his eyes flit away nervously. “Of course I want a charm for you.” Soobin lifts his hand to wrap around Kai’s. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“And Beomgyu-hyung would make one?”

“You know the answer to that,” Soobin says, squeezing Kai’s fingers.

Kai buries his face in Soobin’s shoulder, hiding his eyes.

“That’d be a nice way to show off Beomgyu’s work to your parents, hm?” Soobin says giddily. “Making it necklace-official?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Kai mumbles. Soobin can tell he feels embarrassed again, as if he’s shown too much of himself, but it’s everything Soobin wants to hear. Kai wants to be permanent, linked with the two of them on the chain that Soobin wears everywhere.

“Here, let’s go start dinner,” Soobin says cheerily, pinching the accessible inch of Kai’s cheek. “I’ll stop getting you all worked up.”

“I’m just working myself up now,” Kai says, and Soobin eases his face out of his shoulder.

“Then I’ll make it harder for you. No more kissing. You check on Gyu, and I’ll pull some food together.”

“He told me I couldn’t distract him today,” Kai says, as Soobin hauls himself off the bed and reaches down to help Kai up. “Too busy working.”

“I bet he won’t mind getting distracted by you telling him all about how you introduced me to your mom,” Soobin says. “Or how you want him to get you off tonight.”

Kai yelps, but it’s true.

“We need to talk about heat,” Beomgyu says to Kai in the morning.

Soobin immediately stops threading his belt through his belt loops and stares at the omegas, still tangled up in bed.

“Yeah, I’m all prepared,” Kai says, working a hand out of the bedding and sticking his fist straight up in the air. “Preheat tonight. I’m ready. I got out of one of my shifts on Thursday, so I can be around more.” He puts a finger up. “And I’ve been collecting hyung’s undershirts for the nest—” Soobin startles, pulling open the drawer that his undershirts usually live in and realizing for the first time that it’s mostly empty— “and I checked on all your pain meds. None of them need refills.” Soobin looks back at him to catch his proud smile and the three fingers he’s waving happily in the air. “See? Am I a good nestmate or what?”

“The absolute best nestmate,” Beomgyu says, reaching up to take his hand. “But you knew that already.”

“Still nice to hear it,” Kai says, weaving their fingers together on top of the blanket.

“I wanted to talk about something else, though,” Beomgyu says. “When do you need to get up for work?”

“Eh, ten minutes? What’s it about?”

“Oh, just about heat. Something I want from you during heat.”

“From me? What?”

Beomgyu peers down the bed at Soobin.

“Hyung, you got stuck,” he smirks. Soobin is just standing there with his hands hanging uselessly by his sides, one dresser drawer half-open behind him and his belt only halfway through the loops. “Won’t you be late?”

“I’m always late these days,” Soobin says, grabbing his belt again. “Let me hear this.”

“You know what it’s about already. I don’t wanna bore you. You hurry along, bun.”

Beomgyu winks, and Soobin lets out a tiny, weak growl. It makes Kai twitch. Not Beomgyu, though; his omega is well-used to that kind of play growling. He knows that Soobin’s little alpha-isms are harmless, even if Kai’s omega is still figuring it out.

“Fine, fine, be late,” Beomgyu says airily, and turns back to Kai. “You know how good everything has been going lately? Like last night, that was good, right?”

Everything has not been good, not outside this room. Inside of it, though, good doesn’t begin to describe it, and Soobin’s brain fills in all the details of their previous night. Beomgyu had taken a turn with Kai again, and it had gone so much better than that first time. He had kept his hands above Kai’s underwear, and Kai’s scent had been so ripe and rich as he slipped into ecstasy that Soobin hadn’t been able to keep his mouth away from his neck, lapping at it as the omega moaned and twitched. Absolute heaven.

“Yeah, so good,” Kai says. “You’re really, really good at that, hyung. Like, genuinely gifted. Maybe better than Soobin-hyung.”

He shoots Soobin a mischievous look, but Beomgyu doesn’t indulge him in a laugh. He’s too focused on his own goal.

“I want more from you this heat,” Beomgyu says. “I want you to fuck me with my dildos.”

Kai’s eyes snap back to Beomgyu’s face, surprised.

“I wanna try them all out with you,” Beomgyu continues. “Not just the vibrators anymore. I want you to really plow me, Kai-ya, give it to me like hyung does—”

Soobin’s leg wobbles, sending him sideways into the half-open drawer. It slams closed, and Kai lets out a tiny shriek at the noise.

“Ignore him,” Beomgyu says, reaching up to hold Kai’s face. “It’s about you. Would you be down to fuck me?”

Kai licks his lips nervously, buying him time.

“You’ve already been inside me with your hands,” Beomgyu says eagerly, and Soobin coughs on his next breath. The two omegas don’t even look at him, too engrossed in each other. “And your tongue. I want your dick inside me, too.”

“I don’t… have one,” Kai says tentatively. His cheeks are so rosy.

“But you would,” Beomgyu says. “Just fuck me with a dildo, easy. I mean, we could go…go further than just a dildo, if you want, and I definitely want to try that, but maybe not…”

“Go further?” Kai says, dropping his voice almost to a whisper. “What’s further?”

Beomgyu sits up straighter in bed, and a stream of morning sunlight falls across his head, turning his dark hair as golden as Kai’s. He’s glowing, and his voice only sounds more eager when he speaks again.

“Just first, do you think we can try it this heat? Using the dildos? Please, pretty please, Kai-ya?”

He clutches his hands together in a prayer pose. Soobin grips onto the handle of the dresser drawer as tight as he can. Beomgyu only uses that voice on him, that impossible-to-deny begging tone, and even though he’s using it on Kai right now, it makes Soobin feel like giving him anything in the whole world.

“But what… what would be further than the…dildos?” Kai asks again. His body is perfectly rigid, face impassive, and he stumbles over the word.

“You wearing a strap,” Beomgyu says, perfectly calm. “You know about those, right?”

“Right,” Kai says, although he very much seems like he doesn’t. Somehow, Beomgyu doesn’t seem to notice that. He keeps talking instead, animatedly.

“But really, we don’t have to go there yet. I know that might be a big step for you. I just wanna play with more of the toys, baby. As long as you’d like that, too.”

“I wouldn’t know what I’m doing,” Kai says uncertainly.

“Yes, you would,” Beomgyu says confidently. “You’re so good at everything you do. You nail my g-spot every time you finger me.”

And how many times has that been, Soobin wonders? How many times exactly did Beomgyu ride Kai’s fingers during his last heat, when Soobin was at work? He wishes he could ask them to film it for him, but that would be a new level of perverse.

“Think about how hot I’d be begging for you properly,” Beomgyu says, lowing his voice to a sultry, syrupy drawl. “You like the way I sound with his dick in me, I know you do.”

Soobin can practically smell Kai’s brain whirring through his feelings. Beomgyu probably can, too, because he reaches up to brush Kai’s messy bangs out of his eyes, as if giving his brain more space to think.

“You can tell me what you’re thinking about,” he says quietly. “You know I love you, even if you don’t want to try it.”

“No, I think I want to,” Kai says. “Just…”

He looks directly at Soobin again, who’s managed to buckle his belt but gotten no further in his attempt to get dressed.

“Can I talk to Soobin-hyung for a minute?” he asks.

“Me?” Soobin hates the way his voice sounds intruding into the room, too low and rough.

“No, the other Soobin-hyung,” Kai says.

“Dumbass,” Beomgyu adds.

“Living room?” Soobin asks, and Kai nods. He clambers out of bed, hitting Soobin with the full sight of him clad only in his underwear, and grabs Beomgyu’s bathrobe off the back of his desk chair before Soobin can get too distracted. Sue him for not being used to the view yet, when Kai’s body is a top-two best sight he’s seen in his life.

“Turn my tea water on, will you?” Beomgyu asks, settling back into bed. He seems perfectly content, as if Kai’s already said yes.

“So,” Soobin says the moment they’re through the living room door. “Talk to me.”

“Okay. So. This is a bit, um. Don’t be weird about it.”

Soobin grabs his hand, emerging from the sleeve of Beomgyu’s fuzzy robe. It’s far too large on Beomgyu, but it fits Kai just right.

“Never, love.”

“I know he likes having sex,” Kai says nervously.

“He does,” Soobin agrees.

“I know it’s a good thing for him. It’s not gonna hurt him.”

“Exactly. It’ll be just like when you fuck him with your hands,” Soobin points out. “I mean, bigger, but… you like doing that, right?”

Kai nods.

“So the idea doesn’t make you feel…” Weird? Disgusted? Scared? Soobin doesn’t know quite the right word for it, but Kai shakes his head before he has to figure one out.

“What do you wanna talk about, then?”

Kai looks back at the closed bedroom door and steps a few inches further away from it.

“He hasn’t been… like, lying about wanting me?”

“What do you mean?” Soobin frowns. He feels like Beomgyu’s body language has been more than obvious about how much he enjoys Kai playing with him. That wasn’t a fake orgasm that Soobin watched on the couch. “You know he hasn’t.”

“But does he wish I had a…”

Oh. “A dick?”

Kai scrunches his eyes together and nods.

“Baby,” Soobin says, reaching for Kai’s other hand too. “No. Not in the slightest.”

“This is so silly of me,” Kai mumbles. “I’m an idiot.”

“I’ve got enough dick for him,” Soobin says honestly. “What I don’t have is your scent, and your touch, and your perfect little face. You don’t need a dick to give all that to Beomgyu.”

Kai pulls his cheek through his teeth and chews it.

“He likes to touch you the way you are. He likes that you’re different from me. It’s exciting.”

“Right,” Kai says, unconvinced.

“He wants you so bad. You. He wants you to satisfy all of his heat urges, even the ones you aren’t… well, born to satisfy, I guess. You can do it anyway.”

“Can’t knot him,” Kai says in a small voice.

“You could, with the right toy. Would you want to?”

“No,” Kai says immediately. “Knotting is so…”

Violent, Soobin’s brain fills in.

“Special,” Kai finishes. “That’s for you guys. Him and his alpha, not his nestmate.”

Soobin’s neck feels warm. He squeezes Kai’s hands hard, pulling him closer.

“Leave the knotting to me, then. But there’s nothing to worry about. He wants all of you, however you want him to have you.”

Kai stares into his face for a moment, stoically.

“I do, too,” Soobin adds, for good measure.

Suddenly, Kai lunges up to kiss him on the cheek. He tries to pull right back, but Soobin grabs him before he can, gripping him tight by the lapels of the fuzzy bathrobe.

“You know I always want two,” he says, and Kai obeys.

Soobin feels a heady rush of something behind his eyes. Kai is such a good omega. So many parts of him are just the way an omega should be, totally textbook, sweet and obedient. He wonders if Kai would like being told that, or if it would get him thinking too critically about all the parts that aren’t textbook.

“I was thinking, Kai-ya. I know it’s gonna all be new for you, and maybe it would help if—”

“I wanna watch you first,” Kai whispers right to his lips, ripping the words out of Soobin’s mouth.

“You—you do?”

“So I can know what I’m… well, just, I want to watch first. Can I watch you?”

“Fucking him?”

“Yeah. Watch you properly.”

It feels surreal that Kai just said it out loud. Kai is safe enough, curious enough, turned on enough, that he isn’t afraid anymore. Honestly, has he ever been afraid? He’s been curious from the start, asking questions, listening through the door, drinking in Beomgyu’s post-sex scent. It’s Soobin who’s afraid of violating his boundaries, and Kai’s been the one wanting to push them.

“Fuck, yes,” Soobin exhales. “Yeah, you can watch us.”

Soobin watches Kai’s throat bob as he swallows.

“You’re sure?”

“Kai, it was literally what I was about to say. Watch us. See what it’s like.”

“I mean, I know heat sex is kind of… intense, maybe?”

“Watch us in preheat tonight,” Soobin says, trying his absolute best to keep himself from sounding too gleeful and scaring him away. “Beomgyu would want to be conscious for it, the first time.”

“Oh, he wants me to watch?”

Soobin scrunches his eyes closed for a second to keep his bearings. Kai can’t really fathom just how badly they want him, can he?

“More than you can imagine,” Soobin says fervently. “He is absolutely desperate for you to watch.”

“And you?” Kai asks, sounding completely genuine in his curiosity. Soobin can’t believe he would even have to ask. Soobin’s wanted Kai to watch him with Beomgyu for as long as he’s wanted him for himself.

“Yeah, and me,” Soobin says. “Kai-ya… I do too. So much. Beoms has made so much fun of me about it already.”

“Okay, good,” Kai says happily. “I’ll go tell him we’re set, then.”

He gives Soobin one more cheerful peck on the cheek and wriggles out of his grip, darting back to the bedroom door.

“Oh, turn the water on for his tea, remember?” he says over his shoulder, and then scurries back into the room. 

It takes a few minutes for the water to boil, and Soobin paces in the kitchen, counting the seconds in his head until he’s able to hurry back to the bedroom. When he finally does, steaming hot tea in hand, Kai is already happily nuzzled back into Beomgyu.

“We’re gonna try it,” Beomgyu beams at Soobin. His chin is tucked over Kai’s scalp, with Kai’s face buried in one of his bare shoulders.

“I know you’re gonna try it,” Soobin says. “You missed a fairly important conversation in the living room.”

“He’s the best nestmate in the world,” Beomgyu says, ignoring him. “He’s the absolute sweetest nestmate, the most thoughtful, the sexiest—”

“You don’t even know any other nestmates,” Kai says, lifting his pink face.

“We should pick out which dick we want to try first,” Beomgyu says excitedly. “Hyung, do you think we’d have time to go buy a new one before heat? No, probably not, but we could go after…”

Soobin hadn’t even had time to open his mouth, but Beomgyu is still prattling on, elated.

“Oh my god, and maybe we can pick something out for me to wear tonight. Wouldn’t that be so fun?”

“To wear?”

“Yeah. I don’t have anything fancy, but I’ve got some cute panties. Like, lacy ones. Oh, and I have these thigh-highs, but I think he put a rip in them the last time… I should probably toss them…”

“Don’t you dare,” Soobin says, setting the tea down too firmly and making it slosh onto the nightstand. “Don’t throw those out ’til I can replace them.”

“Then get your ass to work,” Beomgyu smirks at him. “Go bring home some lingerie money.”

There’s never any money for lingerie anymore, but Soobin thinks he has more than enough to feast his eyes on anyway.

Kai tucks his head back down, sneaking in one last cuddle.

“Are you on dinner duty with the kids tonight?” Beomgyu asks.

“Yeah,” Kai says, and Beomgyu lets out a disappointed noise.

“Wish we could just do it now,” he says sadly, eyes falling to Soobin’s waistband. “I can’t believe you want to watch, Kai-ya. I’m so fucking happy.”

“Why?”

Kai lifts his head to look into his face.

“I want you here for everything,” Beomgyu says. “Want you in all the good parts of my life. You make them all better.”

Beomgyu sends him a voice message right as Soobin and Yeonjun head out of the time card room at the end of their shift: his preheat is in full bloom. I want you so bad already, he croons into the phone. Unfortunately, Soobin plays the message out loud rather than up against his ear, and Yeonjun is listening in.

“Never seen you this red, Soobin-ah,” he chortles. “Priceless.”

“He never tells me about his flare-ups anymore, but he has to send me that, when I’ve still got the whole bus ride home,” Soobin complains, as Yeonjun leads the way back down the starkly lit hall of the factory. “That’s just cruel.”

“Since when do you mind him trying to rile you up?” Yeonjun says, which is fair. “I’d never complain if I got a message like that.”

“Your boyfriend doesn’t have preheats to sext you about,” Soobin points out, and Yeonjun shrugs.

“That doesn’t stop him wanting me so bad, though…”

“When you talk about him like that, it makes me regret introducing you two.”

“So, about our time cards,” Yeonjun says loudly. “Think you’re gonna need me to cover for you during this heat? The usual drill?”

“Honestly? No,” Soobin says. “Kai comes home for a few hours while the kids are in school, and that tides Beomgyu over ’til the evening.”

“What a difference,” Yeonjun hums appreciatively. “That’s good, right?”

“Yeah, good. Very good.”

A bit of hollowness opens up in his chest when he says it. Good for Soobin to be unnecessary. Good for him to be here, not there. It’s good that Beomgyu doesn’t need him half as much as he used to. His brain agrees with the assessment, but his alpha prickles uncomfortably at the thought.

“Hm.” Yeonjun is too astute for his own good. He must have noticed something in Soobin’s expression, but the last thing Soobin wants is a follow-up question.

“It’s good, hyung.”

“I know it is, Soobin-ah. Less pain for him, less stress for you.”

Soobin swings the staircase door open for Yeonjun, and they start descending in silence, side by side. Is it good? He knows it’s good. Beomgyu has two heat partners now, two people to share the burden, two people to ease his suffering. That’s what Soobin wanted.

The whole point of Beomgyu asking for more and more from Kai is that Soobin doesn’t have to be there, but it’s just so fucking hard not to be there. He wishes his alpha could live fully in the realm of happiness about how good it all is and stop slipping into jealousy so often.

“It’s funny,” Yeonjun says. “I remember back when I first brought Kai up to you, you were absolutely sure you didn’t need help. Now, you’ve got more help than either of us possibly could have imagined, don’t you?”

Soobin snorts. That’s an understatement.

“Permanent help,” Yeonjun adds. “New mate help.”

“Not yet,” Soobin says automatically. If he could only mate Kai, if he could truly bond with him, this all would be so much easier. His alpha would know, really know, that they all share each other equally. If that omega specialist was right, and they need to mate with Kai sooner rather than later for the sake of his health… well, none of them have talked about it yet. He can’t get his hopes up.

“Not yet,” Yeonjun acknowledges. “But soon.”

“Hey, I met your auntie yesterday. Kai’s eomma.”

“You met her?”

“Yeah, on a call. Kai wanted her to meet me first.”

“Oh, he’s so serious about you, Soobin-ah,” Yeonjun croons. “He’s such a mama’s boy, too… you didn’t scare her off, did you?”

“God, I hope not,” Soobin says, feeling a flash of panic. “I don’t think so.”

“Please tell me you didn’t tell her all about how badly you want to sink your teeth into her son?”

“Hyung, obviously not.”

“I mean, maybe she’d like to hear that… some betas love hearing about the mating stuff. Like looking at animals in a zoo.”

Soobin winces at the comparison, and Yeonjun seems to regret saying it, too.

“Nothing wrong with them being curious,” he says, hurriedly. “I’m dating one of those betas, aren’t I?”

A group of men spills into the staircase, and Yeonjun flings an arm out to halt Soobin, letting them pass. Soobin trips on his feet, the sudden motion jolting him.

“Don’t break your neck,” Yeonjun says. “Beomgyu needs you in one piece tonight.”

“Not just Beomgyu,” Soobin says, before he can help it.

“Oh? Really?”

“Not like that,” Soobin says hurriedly. “But Kai wants to…”

Watch us. Why is it making him blush to think about saying it, when he’s overshared about his sex life so many times to Yeonjun before? It was just different when it was only about Beomgyu. Beomgyu’s heats were so entwined with Soobin’s exhaustion, his anxiety, his emotional state that he just couldn’t not talk about them to the friend he saw every day. Kai, though… their sex life with Kai is so fresh, so new, and so much more complicated. Talking about it feels like it might cheapen it.

“You know what? Maybe we don’t talk about exactly what you’re doing to my cousin tonight,” Yeonjun laughs.

Oh, right. That, too.

“So you’re back on the family track?” Soobin says. “Because I’m getting whiplash. Wasn’t it just last week that you were all like, tell me more about him and Beomgyu—”

“And Taehyunnie told me that was fucking weird, so I’m over it. Keep it family-friendly about Kai,” Yeonjun says. “Oh, and he told me something else to tell you, but I can’t remember… something about… fuck, it’s totally gone.”

“The project? Does he need me to do something?”

“Nah, he knows you’re out of commission for the next few days. I’ll tell you when it comes to me. Wasn’t that important.”

They reach the bottom of the staircase, and Yeonjun leans against the door, stepping out into the cold night with Soobin at his tail.

“I’m assuming no cigarette break for you, then?” he asks, looking back over his shoulder at Soobin and cocking an eyebrow.

“Not a chance,” Soobin says. “Can’t waste a minute.”

“You could splurge on the hyperloop, to really rush home,” Yeonjun muses.

Now Soobin’s alpha is screaming at him to run in the other direction across the courtyard towards the hyperloop station instead of the bus. What if Beomgyu is already ready to go? Fuck, what if he’s skipping through preheat so quickly that his real heat has started?

“Okay, relax, alpha,” Yeonjun says, grabbing Soobin’s shoulder and giving it a firm squeeze. “Calm down. He’d rather wait an extra twenty minutes in preheat than have you waste the money, I promise. I’m only joking.”

Soobin sprints for the bus stop, just in case, and barely manages to make the bus before his usual one. Beomgyu isn’t the only omega waiting for him tonight.

“That’s just unfair,” Soobin says crossly, slumping against the doorframe to their bedroom.

“What’s unfair?” Beomgyu says, putting down his pliers with an infuriatingly mischievous look on his face. “I told you I want you, and I meant it. When do I not want you?”

“You made me think you were, like, in heat. Like, that you wanted it now.”

“Did I? I never said that.”

“I ran for the bus because of you. I’m literally still out of breath.”

“Horny bastard,” Beomgyu snickers, turning back to his work.

Soobin strides to the desk and grabs him by the hair. Beomgyu gasps, and Soobin immediately loosens his grip just a smidge. It’s hard to tell if that gasp was pained, aroused or just surprised without being able to detect Beomgyu’s scent.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t punish you tonight for that,” Soobin says, leaning down towards Beomgyu’s ear.

“Maybe you should,” Beomgyu breathes. Good — aroused.

“Do you think Kai would like that? What if I made you scream?”

“He could shut me up.”

“With what?” Soobin tightens his grip again, yanking Beomgyu’s head back an inch to get a good look at his scar. It’s nice and neat now, but it’ll be bloody tomorrow.

“His lips,” Beomgyu whimpers. “What if… what if…”

Beomgyu licks his lips, and Soobin leans in closer, grazing his ear with his nose.

“Say it, princess.”

“Eat him out,” Beomgyu whispers, so quietly Soobin can barely hear it. “Could shut me up that way.”

“Fuck,” Soobin spits out. Fuck.

“One day, do you think…”

Soobin kisses Beomgyu’s cheek.

“Yeah. One day,” he says, hoping against hope that it’s true.

“Hyung. We gotta… pause,” Beomgyu chokes out. “Too much. Slicking.”

Soobin regretfully lets go of Beomgyu’s hair, and Beomgyu hangs his head forward, breathing heavily as he steadies himself.

“We gotta wait for Kai,” he says, between breaths.

“Yeah, sorry,” Soobin says, leaning down to kiss his cheek again. “But you deserved it, Beoms. Admit it.”

“Yeah, yeah. I deserved worse.”

Beomgyu pushes his chair back from his desk and stretches his sore shoulders. Soobin grabs one automatically, massaging his strong thumb into the tense muscle. He breathes deep, matching the cadence of Beomgyu’s breath, until he feels his own heart slowing back down.

“How much could you work today?” Soobin asks quietly.

“A lot. Preheat’s not too bad so far.”

Soobin presses his hand to Beomgyu’s forehead; he’s a bit warm, but not burning up yet. He certainly seems fully lucid, so he can’t be far gone.

“I’ve just been thirsty all day. Some cramping, a bit dizzy.”

“Maybe it’ll be an easy heat,” Soobin suggests, and Beomgyu grimaces.

“Yeah, maybe. When is it ever?”

He stands up, and Soobin inspects his face, registering how temptingly flushed his cheeks are. No matter how normal he seems right now, he’ll be in heat before they know it.

“Kai won’t be home ‘til nine,” Beomgyu says. “No more turning me on until then, or he’ll miss the fun.”

“Or we could do two rounds,” Soobin says.

Beomgyu smiles ruefully. “We’ll do more than enough rounds starting tomorrow, hyung. Dinner? I’ve got a container of gukbap to heat up, and a bunch of other shit to scrounge up if you’re still hungry after that.”

“I’m not hungry at all,” Soobin lies. “Let’s just cuddle.”

“Well, I am. Eat with me. I need to stock up on calories for heat.”

He takes Soobin’s hand and leads him back towards the bedroom door. As they pass the dresser, Soobin catches sight of something bright red laid out on top of it and stops short.

“Sweetness…”

“What is it?” Beomgyu says sweetly, trying to tug him along again.

“I thought you lost that,” Soobin says.

“Lost what, bunny?”

Soobin gestures wordlessly at the red lace thong on the dresser.

“How could I have lost it? It’s not like I took it anywhere.”

“You haven’t worn it in…”

Years. Soobin had bought him that thong and a pair of red thigh-highs to match for their first mating anniversary, but it’s been so long since he’s seen them on Beomgyu that he almost forgot about them. The thigh-highs are long gone, ripped to shreds during some heat or another, and he had just assumed that the thong went the same way.

“Yeah, well. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood,” Beomgyu says, shifting on his feet. “Stop looking, or you’ll get too excited.”

“You’re wearing it tonight?”

“Yeah, but not because of you,” Beomgyu says. His fingers tighten around Soobin’s hand, nails digging in sharply. “Because I showed Kai his options, and he picked that one. So you better thank him, okay?”

Soobin scoops Beomgyu into his arms, clutching his thin body close, and Beomgyu drops the attitude, rising up on his tiptoes to fling his arms around Soobin’s shoulders.

“Can I thank you, too?” Soobin asks, and Beomgyu nods rapidly, over and over. “Thank you, princess. Thank you, thank you. I…”

He kisses Beomgyu’s forehead instead of finishing. It feels like such a silly thing to get choked up about, just a sexy piece of underwear sitting on their dresser, but Soobin doesn’t think Beomgyu took it out once at their last apartment. What would have been the point of him getting all dressed up just to ask Soobin to bite him? When would there have been time to enjoy it?

Beomgyu clings on tight and nuzzles his nose into the front of Soobin’s neck.

“I want you to wear your jewelry tonight, too. Get sparkly,” Soobin murmurs.

“I can get sparkly, baby,” Beomgyu coos. “So cute of you to ask.”

“Dinner, before I start crying.”

Beomgyu kisses his fingertip and taps one of Soobin’s still-dry tear ducts with it.

“I’ll heat up the food. You go shower. Try not to think about it for a few hours, or you’ll drive yourself insane, ‘kay?”

Beomgyu knows how hard it is for Soobin not to think about it. At least he does his best to make it easier, making Soobin tell him all the nitty-gritty details of his latest design work on the project while he picks through his dinner. Seeing as the thing he’s been working on is a children’s ward, that does a damn good job of getting his mind off of the sex that’s ahead that evening.

“The hospital was pretty chill when I had to stay there as a kid,” Beomgyu says, poking at his own bowl. “When I broke my wrist. I remember the food being weirdly good.”

“What about the space? What was the room like?”

“Are you doing research on me?” Beomgyu says, grinning, and Soobin shrugs. Yes. “It was fine. Kind of boring. White walls. Could have done with a bit of color.”

“Was it segregated? Alphas, omegas?”

“Can’t segregate us when we haven’t presented, can they?”

“But it wasn’t a secret what you were gonna be.”

Beomgyu hums in acknowledgement. “I think they just stuck all us kids in together.”

“So they just didn’t care? ‘Cause Taehyunnie looked into it, and all the hospitals in Seoul put kids in the omega wing as soon as they’ve got a subgender on file. So, like, from birth.”

“Maybe they’re more liberal in Daegu,” Beomgyu muses.

“Maybe we should move to Daegu, then,” Soobin says. He means it to be a joke, but Beomgyu looks far too taken by it.

“No, I don’t think Kai would like that,” he says seriously. “He wants to be close to his family.”

“What about being close to yours?”

“Kai cares more,” Beomgyu says, with a definite air of finality.

“Then Daegu’s out,” Soobin says.

“Daegu’s out.” Beomgyu slurps up a spoonful of gukbap, and Soobin watches his little tongue dart out to dab a drop of stew off the corner of his lips. He hadn’t thought much about big decisions with three voices, rather than two. He wonders if they’ll come naturally.

“Keep talking, hyung,” Beomgyu says, pausing with his spoon in midair. “So when’s the deadline?”

Soobin groans. “Don’t ask. Sooner than we’d like.”

Beomgyu rifles a hand back through his hair, pushing his bangs off his face, and Soobin can’t help noticing how pink his skin is. He doesn’t say anything. If he can see it, Beomgyu can feel it.

“Gonna take a cold shower,” Beomgyu says. “See if I can stave it off a bit more.”

“He’ll be home any second now,” Soobin says, though it’s nowhere near nine. “Be quick.”

Kai takes far too long to get home, in Soobin’s opinion. Long enough that he has time to do the dishes, change the sheets, and clean the bathroom after Beomgyu’s shower, all to keep himself occupied. Long enough that he ends up sitting on the couch with his hands clasped, too worked up to do anything productive and exiled from the bedroom by Beomgyu, who says he’s setting up. Long enough that he starts to worry about whether Beomgyu will truly still be lucid by the time they get started.

The surge of adrenaline that hits when Kai walks through the door is dizzying.

“Hey, hyung,” he hears, and he’s already up on his feet, hurtling towards the door.

“Hey, Kai-ya. Baby. Sweetheart.”

“Wow,” Kai says, as Soobin reaches him and yanks him in for a hug. “Um. Okay!”

“Had a good day?”

“I s’pose. A long one, though.”

“The longest fucking day of the year,” Soobin says, and Kai laughs.

“Hyung, it’s January. These are the shortest days.”

Soobin ignores that. “So Beomgyu’s waiting for us already,” he says, hands flashing down the buttons of Kai’s coat. “You wanna get started?”

“Oh, damn,” Kai says, letting Soobin pull his coat off his shoulders. “No time to catch my breath?”

“Do you want to catch your breath?”

“A little bit. Or maybe not,” Kai says, tossing his scarf on the rack after his coat, and Soobin laughs, clapping his pink cheeks. He smells eager and nervous and amped-up, a raincloud about to shower. “Ow!”

“Tell you what. Go in there and tell him you’re home, and come back out if you still want to catch your breath first.”

“And if I don’t? You’d be… ready?”

“Kai-ya, I’m always ready,” Soobin says unabashedly.

Kai’s eyes flick down Soobin’s body for a nervous second, but then he smiles, and without another word he brushes past Soobin, heading towards the bedroom.

He pauses at the door, one hand on the handle.

“You’re not coming?” he asks, eyes big and round. “Only we can’t exactly do this without you.”

Soobin braces himself against the wall with one hand and takes a deep breath. The sweetness in the air does nothing to steady him.

“Ask him if he wants me yet,” Soobin says. “It’s his plan tonight.”

Kai nods and cracks the door open. Soobin only hears a little it’s me, hyung before it closes again behind him, and through the gap of the briefly open door he thinks he sees the light inside the room flicker.

Where did Beomgyu get candles? Oh, this is terrible, terrible. An unbearable thing to have to wait for. He hears a few faint sounds through the door, excited, happy voices, and then it opens again to Kai’s lit-up face.

“You said you’re ready?” Kai asks, and Soobin makes it to the bedroom in three massive strides.

On the other side of the door, Beomgyu is fidgeting with the bedding, as if he’s re-making it for dramatic effect. He’s in his robe, though it’s falling off one shoulder, and something shiny flickers around his neck, catching the light from the tea lights lined up on the dresser.

“Smells good in here, doesn’t it?” Beomgyu says, straightening up and beaming at him. Soobin breathes in, but all he smells is Kai’s anticipation.

“So where do I go?” Kai says, shutting the door behind Soobin.

“Where do we want him, hyung?” Beomgyu demurs, cocking his eyebrows at Soobin. He turns towards them, and Soobin’s eyes fall down his open robe, over the golden line of the long necklaces that rain down his sternum and the body chain draped over his navel. He’s sparkling.

“Um,” Soobin says. “B-bed?”

Kai snickers.

“Lesson three, Kai-ya,” Beomgyu says. “Alphas are dumb.”

“That’s not a new lesson,” Kai says, and Soobin feels a hand grab his own and squeeze it. “Should I… uh, clothes on, or…”

“Take off whatever you want,” Soobin says. That he can manage to answer properly.

“For after,” Beomgyu says, nodding. “Easier to cuddle if you don’t have your jeans on.”

He reaches out his arms, just as Kai lets go of Soobin’s hand, and Soobin freezes in place while they orbit around him. Beomgyu presses his body into Soobin’s, letting the robe drop down to the floor, while Kai slips off to the bed, leaving a trail of garments in his wake. The whole room glows, and Soobin feels that glow resonating through his chest. What a perfect night, perfect room, perfect omegas.

“Hold me,” Beomgyu says, so that Soobin fans his hands out across the small of his back, circling his narrow waist. “Tighter.”

Soobin grips him tighter. He can’t help but notice how hot Beomgyu’s skin is in comparison to the cool metal chain.

“How long d’you think you’ve got?” Soobin whispers. It can’t be long before the fever will take over.

Beomgyu ignores him. He teeters up on his tiptoes, draping his arms around Soobin’s neck.

“Lower,” he orders.

Soobin drops one of his hands to Beomgyu’s ass. It grazes the delicate lace waistband of his thong and lands on his bare, burning skin, and instinctively Soobin squeezes, hard.

Beomgyu lets out a satisfied murmur. In an instant, his lips are on Soobin’s. His eyes fall closed when they kiss, but Soobin’s don’t. Half his gaze is past Beomgyu’s tilted head, fixed on Kai, silently finding his place on the bed in nothing but his underwear.

He couldn’t look more different from Beomgyu if he tried: plain navy briefs, long thick body. No sparkles, no lace. His chest is all gentle bulges, not bony ribs. Wide brown eyes turning to stare at Soobin, rather than fluttery, soft eyelashes.

Kai looks so… expectant, excited, anticipatory, and importantly, he looks completely shameless about it. His very first time actually seeing how they get to the knot that he had been so curious and timid about, and he’s clearly ready for it. Soobin’s never had that experience before: being someone’s first, in any sense of the word. It hadn’t been like that with Beomgyu, and as little as Soobin likes to think about it, in some way, it had been a relief to not be Beomgyu’s first alpha. In all of their first times, Beomgyu had been deadly confident, and all Soobin had to do was let him lead. It wasn’t hard to please Beomgyu when Beomgyu knew exactly what he liked, and how to guide Soobin into giving it to him.

Kai knows nothing aside from what they can show him, and as Beomgyu slithers one hand down Soobin’s front to palm his crotch, Soobin feels a jolt of terror. What if he fucks this up, and Kai hates it? What if he loses control, and it scares him? He scared him the last time Kai saw his cock, even if just for a moment. What if this time he does something worse?

The worry slaps him in the face, and all the momentum inside him grounds to a halt.

You’ve wanted this for so long, he tells himself desperately. There’s nothing to worry about. All he’s doing is making love to Beomgyu, the thing he’s best at, and Kai finally wants to be there, just as Soobin had longed for. At every stage of their relationship, he’s been far too worried about Kai. His alpha just can’t help it when the stakes are so high.

He gives Beomgyu’s ass another squeeze to ground himself. Don’t ruin this. You’re thinking too much.

 “Let’s get all this off of you,” Beomgyu whispers in his ear, loud enough for Kai to hear it. “Maybe Kai can help me?”

Soobin needs to just let Beomgyu lead this night with Kai. Beomgyu has learned his lesson from Kai before, and he’s got an intoxicating confidence to him this time around, that sultry little smirk that Soobin knows too well. If Soobin is hesitating, Beomgyu hasn’t noticed. He’s too busy taking over, reveling in the spotlight.

Before Soobin knows it, his shirt is on the floor, and Beomgyu is leading him over to the bed, giving him a weak push that Soobin knows is meant to make him topple over to sit on the edge of the mattress. He obliges, and Beomgyu lets both him and Kai both drink him in, standing alone beside the bed and glimmering in the candlelight. His eyes sparkle almost as much as his jewelry, and Soobin doesn’t know where to look first. His smooth, slender chest, his peaked, pink nipples. He’s so unreasonably beautiful. He could never fuck a first time up, not when he looks like that.

“Hyung,” Kai says, breathless. “Look at you. Holy shit. You’re like a mermaid with legs.”

Beomgyu giggles and shakes back his hair so that his bangs fall out of his face. He cocks a knee, sticking out his hip, and hooks a thumb under the waistband of the red thong, snapping the lace against his hipbone. Kai lets out a little throaty yelp at the sound it makes.

“Help me,” Beomgyu repeats. “We can’t fuck for you if hyung’s pants are on, can we?”

“Nope,” Kai says. His voice cracks. He’s nervous, god. Soobin leans back on his palms on the bed and tries to breathe steadily. Just fucking Beomgyu, you’re just fucking Beomgyu. He’s just as nervous as Kai, and he shouldn’t be, and the more he tries to stop it, the worse he feels. He’s got two omegas to handle. He has to be the best alpha he’s ever been, and here he is, freezing up.

Beomgyu drops to his knees between Soobin’s spread legs, hanging off the edge of the bed.

“Do his belt, baby,” he says. His little fingers splay out on Soobin’s clothed thighs, a sight that normally makes Soobin ache to see them on his cock instead. Today, though, something interrupts his train of thought: the mattress shifting as Kai rolls over to kneel next to him, his long fingers reaching for Soobin’s belt buckle.

Soobin looks down at him fumbling with it. His hand is quivering.

Don’t fuck it up don’t fuck it up don’t you dare fuck this up, his alpha screams at him. It has to go perfectly, make him want you, make him want this!

“Sorry,” Kai mumbles as the belt catches on Soobin’s skin.

“S’okay,” Soobin tells him, reaching for his hand and guiding it through the motion. He barely felt the pinch. His whole body feels like it’s vibrating. Somehow he hadn’t realized Kai would be… involved, but of course Beomgyu wouldn’t leave his nestmate out of the fun, and the pressure inside Soobin’s chest only mounts.

Another hand joins Kai’s: Beomgyu’s fingers are on Soobin’s fly now.

“Taking forever,” he teases.

Soobin cups his pointed chin, and their eyes meet.

“Be patient,” he says, trying to approximate a stern tone, but Beomgyu knows him too well. He smiles at him, and his lip disappears between his teeth for a moment as he recalculates.

“Kai-ya, he’s nervous,” Beomgyu says. “Our big, strong alpha, nervous about you.”

Soobin pinches his cheek, and Beomgyu’s squeal nearly drowns out Kai’s voice saying, “About me?”

“I am not,” Soobin protests. Fuck, why does Beomgyu need to be having a mischievous day on this day, of all days? Why not a cute, sweet omega day? It’s the preheat, riling him up, and Soobin normally loves it. Today, he feels like he’s caught in a riptide of Beomgyu, dazed by his impact.

“Scent him, Kai, and then tell me I’m right,” Beomgyu says, starting to yank at Soobin’s pants.

That dazed feeling only grows stronger. Soobin can feel Kai getting closer, tangibly, as if his presence is creeping physically up Soobin’s neck. He presses his nose into Soobin’s scent gland from behind and Soobin hears an embarrassingly weak gasp escape from his own lips.

“Mhm,” Kai breathes out, nosing in deeper. Ah, heaven, peace flooding Soobin’s system. “Good.”

“Good? What does he smell like?”

Soobin’s body is going limp, falling into Kai’s arms. He lifts up enough to let Beomgyu strip his pants down his thighs, and Kai hugs him tight, his lips and nose nudging back and forth over Soobin’s scent gland.

“I dunno what he smells like,” Kai whispers. “But I want more of it.”

Soobin’s eyes close. He’s so overwhelmed. This is what it feels like to surrender to both of them, together. Isn’t he supposed to be in control tonight? He’s supposed to be teaching Kai something, but here he is, melting into Kai’s arms instead.

“Take as much time with him as you want,” Beomgyu says. “He’s not… uh, ready yet, anyway.”

That’s an odd statement. Soobin cracks an eye open. Beomgyu’s hands are cupping his soft cock over his boxers.

“Ah,” Soobin says. “Sorry, I’m…”

Beomgyu shakes his head, stroking one hand after the other over the soft bulge.

“You look so relaxed,” he smiles. “You need it. Got a long four days ahead of you, huh?”

Kai squeezes his arms even tighter across Soobin’s chest like a seatbelt. His skin is all over Soobin’s, his chest against Soobin’s back, his bare thighs straddling Soobin’s hips, and Soobin can’t focus on Beomgyu when he’s so cloaked in Kai’s scent, his being. His arms are thick and strong against Soobin’s muscles.

“You’re making him drunk, Kai-ya,” Beomgyu says.

Kai pulls his face away. Soobin’s neck feels cold now, lonely.

“I’m sorry,” Kai mumbles. His hair tickles Soobin’s ear. “I just… like it so much.”

“Still nervous?” Beomgyu asks Soobin softly, not waiting for an answer. He doesn’t need one. “Look at your boyfriend, hyung.”

All Soobin has to do is obey him. Beomgyu is making it easy. He swings his head around to look back at Kai and swallows at the impact of his face, just inches away. Oh, he’s so beautiful, his eyes in dazed little slits, his lips glistening with spit.

“Tell him what you want, Kai,” Beomgyu says.

“Wanna see what you do to him,” Kai whispers into Soobin’s ear, and lets out a shy, nervous giggle.

Soobin groans. Beomgyu has pulled his boxers down over his cock, and now his hands are fondling his balls, rolling them in his palm like toys. It tickles more than anything else.

“It’s growing,” Beomgyu says. “Look, Kai. Look how it gets all red.”

“Not helping,” Soobin forces out, choking on a shudder. He can tell he’s not close to hard, and he has no idea why not. The nerves, maybe, or the way Kai just sent him to the clouds, floating in another dimension. Or it’s all just too much, so many hands on his body that his blood doesn’t know where to rush. But Beomgyu doesn’t seem too worried. He just spreads his hands out across Soobin’s crotch, palms nestled into his pubic hair, and leans in closer to where Soobin’s head lolls onto Kai’s chest. 

“You know what would help?” Beomgyu says. “More hands.”

Soobin reaches his hand for his cock, but Beomgyu slaps it away.

“Not what I meant, bunny,” he teases.

“Oh, fuck,” Kai says. “I thought I was here to watch.”

“You can,” Beomgyu says. “Or…”

“Jesus Christ, Beoms,” Soobin mumbles, willing his cock to get hard faster. He really wishes Kai would touch him when he’s in peak condition for once, instead of all these weird half-hard scenarios. Not exactly the way it’s played out in his fantasies.

“Here, give me your hand.”

Beomgyu is gazing into Kai’s eyes, hopeful, and Kai unhooks one trembling hand from around Soobin’s chest.

“I don’t know what I’m…”

“Nothing you need to know. It’s like the last time, remember? Just—”

Beomgyu guides Kai’s fingertips right to Soobin’s dick. Fuuuck… Soobin’s breath sputters out of him.

“—Touch him however you want,” Beomgyu finishes, his face already lighting up.

For a moment, Kai’s hand just sits there, draped over Soobin’s mostly-soft cock. Then his fingers close around his shaft, and Soobin’s vision goes red around the edges.

Well, that works. That gentle, hazy, drunk feeling is rapidly draining from Soobin’s body. He’s frozen in place for a new reason now: fire is catching in his belly, shooting up through his ribs, and any second now he might fully ignite. Was it this overwhelming with Beomgyu, the first few times he touched him? It must have been even more intense, but the years have worn down the sharpness of that memory.

Beomgyu’s hands creep back around his balls, and Kai drags his fingers up to the head of Soobin’s cock, zeroing in on its slit. “Ooh, wet,” he squeaks out.

Soobin groans. His abs seize up as Kai grips him right around the head of his cock, and he twitches so violently he jerks himself half out of Kai’s grasp. He grinds his skull back into Kai’s shoulder, needing to be closer, needing to be in his space however he can, but it’s not enough. He needs more, more of his touch, and Beomgyu can tell.

“Here, get down here,” Beomgyu giggles. “Get a better angle.”

Whatever ideas Soobin had for how this night would go down were nothing like this. He falls back on his elbows, barely keeping his head up to watch as Kai scurries off the edge of the bed to join Beomgyu, who rips Soobin’s boxers down his legs unceremoniously. He spreads Soobin’s knees apart so wide that Soobin nearly cries out in complaint, until he realizes that Beomgyu’s only spread them like that so that Kai can fit there too, and the complaint dies on his tongue.

Two omegas, between his legs, like a dream.

Kai is staring at his cock, but Beomgyu is staring at Kai.

“Spit,” Beomgyu says, holding Soobin’s cock tight around its base. It’s growing rapidly, to Soobin’s immense relief. If he wasn’t getting hard in the middle of this, he’d be paying the factory doctor another visit tomorrow.

“On his dick? Ew,” Kai says, and when his eyes meet Beomgyu’s the two of them both break into an unexplainable peal of laughter.

“I… you don’t have to…” Soobin tries to say, weakly, but neither of them pays him any heed.

“It’s cheaper than lube,” Beomgyu says. “And hotter. Spit on it, or I will.”

Kai scoots in closer, oh, Soobin can’t watch. He has to watch. Kai’s face is so close to his cock, and now his hand is back, wrapping gently around Beomgyu’s. He summons up a gob of spit, purses up his delicate lips, and lets it drop carefully down onto Soobin’s shaft. Then he sits back on his heels, looking proud of himself for his perfect aim, and Soobin’s thoughts erupt.

Kai is so untouched, unfathomably pure. Soobin wants to bite every inch of his omega, bloody up his neck and sink his teeth into the meat of his chest, coat his lips and cheeks and tongue in cum, teach him how to take a knot in his mouth, if he can’t take it anywhere else—

“Ah, that’s got him going,” he hears Beomgyu say through the dull roar in his ears, and Soobin’s head falls helplessly back against the mattress as Beomgyu’s hands begin to work him over, up and down, one over the other. “Here, you take over. I wanna lick him.”

“Just stroke him?”

“Unless you want to lick him?”

He can feel the difference immediately: Kai’s hands are larger but softer, slower in their motion than Beomgyu’s and far too loose, as if he’s afraid to squeeze him too tight. It doesn’t make Soobin feel any less ecstatic. His alpha is tame in his chest, rolling over for them. Kai’s hands.

“Pretty,” Beomgyu hums. “Such pretty hands.”

Beomgyu doesn’t warn him before he brings his tongue to Soobin’s cock. Soobin isn’t strong enough for this. Not Beomgyu sucking his tip, the tantalizing feeling of his tongue grazing him where he’s most sensitive, and all the while Kai is still figuring it out in the best possible way, hand over hand over hand…

“Can’t,” Soobin gasps, as the seconds of bliss wear on. “Sweetness…”

He’s only ever felt Kai’s hands on him for a few timid moments before, and even that short-circuited him. Now he’s being properly jerked off, and it’s too much.

“Well, he’s definitely ready,” Beomgyu says, resurfacing. “Want me? Want me, alpha?”

Soobin nods. Think about anything but Beomgyu’s mouth, his body, his cunt, or he’ll burst all over Kai’s hands. He tries to think of something mundane, the dishes in the kitchen sink. Instead, his mind fills with thought of his cum dripping over Kai’s stroking fingertips.

“So you like this?” Kai asks, clear and high-pitched, and Beomgyu must have done something to answer for Soobin, because Kai just says, “This is fun, hyung.”

“Fun, right?” Beomgyu says. “Like he’s our toy.”

Kai’s stopped stroking him to explore some more, hands wandering down to Soobin’s balls. Soobin grips the blanket tight in both hands and breathes through the torture as steadily as he can. He absolutely won’t scare Kai off, no matter how hard it is to control himself, and how unnatural it feels to be spread-eagled for the omegas to just play with like this. If they want vulnerable, he’ll give them vulnerable. He’s controlled for a reason.

“I like your dick better when you’re not knotting,” Kai says, letting out his highest laugh. “It’s right here, isn’t it?”

Kai wrings Soobin’s dick right where his knot will pop into Beomgyu’s cunt. His hands twist the loose skin, and now Soobin imagines it filling out, knotting Kai’s hands. The sight of his lips parting in surprise as Soobin’s cock inflates in his palms…

“Right there,” Soobin breathes out.

“Be gentle, Kai-ya, or he’ll blow before I’m ready.”

Beomgyu flicks his tongue over Soobin’s frenulum one final time, the exclamation point on the end of the sentence. As Soobin twitches and whines at the aftershocks, he feels Beomgyu crawl up his body.

“Baby,” Beomgyu whispers in his ear. “This is all good, right?”

This has rewritten the word good for Soobin. Nothing else will be good again. They’re finally complete, the three of them, in bed together properly.

Beomgyu’s lips latch onto Soobin’s neck and Soobin grips him by the hair, holding on tight. Kai’s hands are still wandering, one of them stroking him slowly, the other trailing down over his balls again. When Soobin opens his eyes, Kai’s cheeks have grown nearly as flushed as Beomgyu’s. You did that to him, Soobin’s alpha cries out. He barely suppresses a deep, throaty growl.

Kai’s eyes fly up to meet his, and his lower lip drops open, a dewy petal.

“Fuck,” Beomgyu breathes, writhing under Soobin’s arm. He didn’t suppress that alpha sound as well as he thought he did. “Me, my turn.”

“Oh?” Kai’s hands falter.

“Alpha, lick me?” Beomgyu says in a little, needy voice. He moves before Soobin can respond, swinging a knee over Soobin’s chest, straddling him.

Maybe the rest of their lives will just play out like this: wild fantasies coming true, porn scenarios alive and well in their bedroom. Soobin feels ravenous, gripping Beomgyu’s thighs as the omega hovers around his head. He can just make out the cleft of Beomgyu’s cunt through the red lace, and then Beomgyu pulls the thong aside.

“Closer,” Soobin groans. The flimsy fabric is soaked through. Beomgyu’s skin glistens, pink and sticky. He’s tantalizingly out of reach, a few mouthwatering inches too far away from Soobin’s mouth, but Soobin doesn’t have the patience to let him play coy for another second. He yanks him in by the thighs and buries his tongue between Beomgyu’s folds.

It won’t be his best work, not when Kai’s fingertips are an unbearable distraction, but Beomgyu is already collapsing onto his face a few licks in, so he must be doing something right. 

Soobin smells Kai in the air more than he tastes Beomgyu on his tongue, no matter how drenched his face is getting. It makes his stomach turn somehow, drinking in so much but so little of Beomgyu. He flat-out fucks his tongue into his pussy to get closer to the source, and he thinks he can detect a hint of preheat acidity in his slick, biting at his tastebuds. It’s a phantom taste. His imagination is just strong enough to make him believe there’s something more there, and even that is enough for his alpha to go mindless inside him. Omega in heat, omega needs him.

“You’re not crushing his head?” Kai’s voice asks, awed. Neither of them answer. Soobin can’t pull his tongue away, and Beomgyu just howls, his thighs giving out even more. One of his hands is fluttering around his clit, trembling too hard to make contact and landing in Soobin’s hair instead.

“Ah, sorry, I stopped…” Kai spits again, hot on the head of Soobin’s cock, and squeezes his hands tight down to the root. All the pieces snap together in Soobin’s empty brain: Kai jerking him off, Beomgyu riding his face, fuck I’m gonna cum—I can’t—

He digs his fingertips into Beomgyu’s thighs and hauls him off his jaw.

“Get on me, now,” Soobin hisses.

“How? Kai-ya, how?” Beomgyu is wild-eyed too, sweat dripping down his chest under the long, dangling necklaces. The thong stays stuck to the crease of his groin, glued by slick.

“I dunno,” Kai says, voice sounding much smaller all of a sudden. “Nothing crazy.”

“I’ll lay down, then. Hyung…”

Beomgyu dives onto the bed, and when Soobin sits up, he’s left with nothing but Kai’s anxious face between his own thighs, his bangs pushed back from his sweaty forehead and his lip chewed up with nerves. Soobin’s alpha is skipping back and forth, Beomgyu Kai Beomgyu Kai, Beomgyu on the bed Kai between his legs Kai’s face in his hands now Kai’s lips on his own—

Kai moans, his tongue flirting around Soobin’s lips, drinking Beomgyu’s taste off of him. His hands fall helplessly onto Soobin’s thighs, his fingertips clammy with residual spit.

“Please,” Beomgyu begs.

Soobin’s alpha snaps again. Beomgyu. Beomgyu is sprawled out on the pillows looking like he’s on the verge of tears, legs spread out, waiting for him. Beomgyu in preheat, irresistible, needy. Beomgyu Kai Beomgyu Kai—

He flies up the bed, catching Kai by the forearm and dragging him along too.

“Where do I—”

“Hold,” Beomgyu whimpers, kicking one leg towards Kai, and Kai settles in gratefully next to him, holding Beomgyu’s leg back by the ankle.

Now Beomgyu gets to be the star again. Soobin drags his hands down all the necklaces, tickling a line across the chain on his belly, and Beomgyu’s soft tummy seizes up under his fingertips. “Now, hyuuung, don’t tease me!”

Soobin bends Beomgyu’s other leg back even further, folding him in half. He slips his cock along the wet slit of Beomgyu’s labia, back and forth, like he’s done thousands of times — but this time he hears Kai’s breath hitch in his throat, just a foot away.

“If you need to leave…” Soobin implores, seeking out Kai’s eyes and finding his gaze fixed on the action. If Kai is only forcing himself to be here…

“Do it already,” Kai whispers, his nod wiping away Soobin’s last fears.

Faintly, Soobin recalls that this is all supposed to be a lesson for Kai, a demonstration. All Soobin has to do is make Beomgyu blissfully, ecstatically happy, to show Kai how to send him off into heat with a proper, deep fucking, so he can replicate it the best he can one day. Soobin wants it so bad. He wants to share him. He can’t believe how badly he wants to share his omega.

He glides his cock through Beomgyu’s slick one last time and sinks his full length into him.

Kai has seen how well their bodies lock together before, statically. But now they’re in motion for him; if that first time was a sneak peek, this is the real act. Soobin draws out slowly, deliberately, and sinks back in faster this time, so Kai can hear the moan he knows Beomgyu will make. It doesn’t disappoint, throaty and uncontrolled.

Kai stares, open-mouthed, totally rapt.

“Fast, go fast,” Beomgyu pleads. His voice sounds muffled. His eyes are already tucked into Kai’s neck, one hand clutching Kai’s wrist against his lips. Soobin gives him another thrust, faster, deeper, and Beomgyu’s tongue flicks out as if he’d fucked it out of him, smearing a wet stripe across Kai’s scent gland.

Soobin wants a taste of Kai’s scent gland too. Maybe next time they do this, he can be the one scenting Kai… fuck, imagine how he must taste right now, ripe with arousal. How his slick would taste… Soobin knows Kai is slicking up, he can smell it when he breathes in, and if he thinks about it too much, he’ll knot far too early.

No, it’s not time for that yet. Soobin takes out his need on Beomgyu, building a rhythm that makes his cunt clench up tight. He presses Beomgyu’s ankle as far back as it’ll go, and now the angle is just right. Beomgyu wails into Kai’s wrist on cue, and Soobin’s alpha takes over: right there, there, there.

This is the best part. When it’s all instinct, no thought required.

“Kai-ya,” Beomgyu whines. Kai looks dazed, still staring at their point of contact, and his Adam’s apple is dancing up and down, swallowing down the taste of sex in the air.

Should he tell Kai this is how your boyfriend likes it, just like this? Soobin’s words are failing him, but Beomgyu’s whines are telling Kai everything he needs to know. Pitched and peaking, growing sharper and sharper as Soobin’s vision starts to narrow. It’s no secret how much he likes this. His body is going lax under Soobin’s grip, a shadow of how pliant he gets during heat. How pliant he gets when Soobin bites him…

Soobin’s eyes fly to Beomgyu’s face. His forehead is wracked up, his cheeks are bright red, he’s nuzzling into Kai’s wrist over and over, panting against it. Full of energy, nothing like when he’s bitten, nothing at all, and Soobin feels a rush of heat to his cock at the sight. He’s gonna knot any second.

“Wanna fill you, gonna fill you,” he grunts out. “Baby…”

“Coming coming I’m—” Beomgyu whimpers. Soobin can already tell. He’s spasming erratically against Soobin’s inflating cock.

Baby. Baby… Soobin’s thrusts stutter, barely pulling out. He drops Beomgyu’s ankle to cup his perfect cheek, and Beomgyu immediately clutches his leg around Soobin’s hips, slotting them together just right. 

“Knot me,” he breathes, and what else can Soobin do but obey? He collapses on top of him, his hips falling still as they lock together, and Beomgyu nuzzles Soobin’s hand, kissing his palm. He doesn’t yelp or squeal or scream when the knot pops into place. As much as Soobin is in a trance, Beomgyu seems to be just the same.

“Mmm,” he hums. “All full.”

Soobin is still coming, pouring heat into Beomgyu’s body. His mind is blissfully clear. He feels something brush his other fingertips, and he grasps at it, weaving his fingers into someone’s soft hand.

Beomgyu’s legs are both wrapped tight around him now, and he settles his weight into Beomgyu’s warmth. Warm cunt, warm body, warm hands around him.

“Scent,” Beomgyu mumbles, turning his head out of Soobin’s palm.

The air is syrupy, humid with sweat and full of sweet scent. Soobin starts to fall back into himself, inch by inch, limbs switching back on. His weight must be crushing Beomgyu, but the omega hasn’t complained yet.

“Good boy, Beoms,” Soobin whispers, shifting his weight up on his elbow. “Everything feels good?”

“Mhm,” Beomgyu murmurs drowsily. “More.”

“More what?”

Soobin lifts his head and startles. Beomgyu’s face is buried in Kai’s neck, and Kai is so much closer than Soobin had realized, looking wrecked. Glassy-eyed, jaw agape, his knuckles white as he grips Soobin’s hand tight.

He’d almost forgotten that Kai was there, and the realization makes his knot bulge even bigger against Beomgyu’s tight walls.

“More, more, Kai,” Beomgyu slurs, right before he bites Kai’s scent gland.

“Hyung! Oh—”

“Beomgyu-ya!” Soobin yelps, but it was only a little nip, too weak to break the skin. Beomgyu laves his tongue over his own toothmarks, and Kai moans as if he’s being knotted himself. “Kai, shit—you— you okay?”

Dumb thing to ask. Kai looks more than okay. He squirms, squeezing Soobin’s hand impossibly tightly, and Soobin’s heart leaps as he registers the way Kai is squirming: grinding his pelvis into the mattress.

“Kai-ya, sweetheart,” he hears himself say, “need help?”

“Help? I’m… I’m fine,” Kai mumbles.

“Tell me how you’re feeling, baby.”

Soobin can hardly move, fully locked into Beomgyu’s sated body, but something tells him he’s not done taking care of his omegas tonight.

“Maybe I feel like he does,” Kai whispers. “Nestmate stuff.”

If Kai feels the way Beomgyu does right now, Soobin knows what he needs.

“Spread your legs for me,” Soobin says, and unbelievably, Kai does. Kai rolls onto his side, fanning out his top leg obediently, letting Soobin get a glimpse of the crotch of his underwear. His slick has soaked through the gray cotton, darkening it all across the gusset.

“Oh, Kai-ya.”

Kai makes to close his legs, but Soobin manages to wriggle one of his own between them, blocking him from squeezing them tight again. Beomgyu whimpers; the motion had jostled him, and Soobin has to take a deep breath as his cunt clenches up around the knot. Holy fuck, he needs to hold himself together.

“No, let me see. Show me how much you liked it.”

Kai lets out an embarrassed squeak, but he stops trying to squeeze his thighs back together. Soobin can still see the dark border where the fabric goes from dry to saturated. He can’t tear his eyes away from it.

“You want to try doing this to him?” Soobin says, and in his peripheral vision he sees Kai nod, chin bumping into Beomgyu’s cheekbone. “Tomorrow when I’m gone, you’re gonna have your sweet way with him, aren’t you? Pin him down and fuck him with all of his dildos, one after the other?”

Kai’s thighs suddenly squeeze Soobin’s knee again, muscles bulging, and the words keep falling out of Soobin’s mouth.

“We gotta get you a strap, so you can fuck him just like I can,” Soobin says. “You could have a bigger dick than me, if you wanted.”

“No,” Kai whispers.

“You don’t want that?”

“Not… bigger,” he breathes. “That’s for alpha.”

Soobin can’t hold in his exhilarated laughter.

“So thoughtful of you, baby. So good of you.”

That word, good. Kai’s thighs squirm again, and inside his chest, Soobin’s alpha urges him onwards. Take care of him already.

“Use me,” Soobin says. “Get off on me.”

“On you?”

Soobin thrusts his bare thigh up against Kai’s crotch.

“Hyung,” Kai gasps, but he doesn’t recoil.

“Use me,” Soobin repeats. “Please, Kai-ya. Please?”

The last word slips out a bit softer, a bit needier. How can he make Kai understand how much he wants, needs to help him feel good? He’s seen Kai in ecstasy before — he’s put Kai there — and it’s what he deserves to feel tonight, too. If Beomgyu gets to be sated, right now, Soobin needs the same from Kai. The balance of the world will be off-kilter if he doesn’t make Kai come.

But if Kai doesn’t want him to—

Kai rolls his crotch against Soobin’s leg tentatively, and a wave of relief breaks over Soobin.

“Harder,” Soobin says. “Really use me. I know that wasn’t good enough.”

“How do you know?” Kai whispers.

“Scent, baby.” His arousal is thick in the air, but it’ll get even sweeter soon.

Kai does it again, harder. Soobin can feel the squish of Kai’s body against his tensed-up thigh, his soaked underwear wet on Soobin’s skin, and he’s too weak to not imagine exactly what’s hiding underneath that fabric. Soobin’s sick brain hasn’t stopped thinking about it ever since Beomgyu touched Kai’s cunt that fateful night. Plump lips drenched in slick, a tight little hole that’s never been touched, and it’s all pressed into Soobin’s leg right now.

Soobin thrusts his leg up a little bit harder into the soft swell between Kai’s legs, riding against the next jerk of Kai’s hips. When Kai gasps this time, something is different.

“Fuck,” Beomgyu mumbles into Kai’s neck. He clenches up around the knot, nuzzling back and forth against Kai’s neck.

“Keep going, Kai-ya,” Soobin urges him. Begs him, nearly, but Kai doesn’t need it. He’s already moving on his own.

Soobin can smell the change in Kai’s demeanor. Whatever anxiety was holding him back is breaking. His body is so needy, and Beomgyu is working him up too, mercilessly wearing down his scent gland. He grinds up on Soobin’s thigh again, and then again, clamping his own legs tight around it and squeezing his eyelids shut even tighter.

It takes Beomgyu letting out a devastating howl for Soobin to realize that he’s fucking him again in miniature, thrusting the knot an inch into him over and over and over. He tries to slow his hips, but the motion is so instinctive, he can’t stop it. If he physically could, he’d fill Beomgyu up again from the sight of Kai like this, pink cheeked, desperate, soaking Soobin’s leg, biting his pretty lip—

“Go, pretty boy, come for me,” Soobin murmurs. “Hottest fucking thing, Kai-ya, let me make you come—”

Kai whimpers.

“Gyu, taste him, how does he taste?”

Beomgyu’s tongue is already on Kai’s scent gland. He’s too fucked out to speak, but the noise he makes answers for itself.

“God,” Kai chokes out. “So… god, so…”

“You’re so close,” Soobin finishes. “You’re gonna be a good boy for me—for alpha, right? And for him, for Beoms — Beomgyu wants it too…”

“Too…” Beomgyu slurs, and a burst of white-hot need flares up in Soobin’s belly. Before he can stop himself, he rams the knot in as deep as he can, need to be deeper. His tip slams hard against Beomgyu’s cervix, but Beomgyu’s made for this. He takes it easy, no complaints. He’s too high in the clouds to scream.

Maybe that thrust did something to Beomgyu’s scent. Soobin wouldn’t know, but Kai would. Suddenly, Kai’s breaths shorten sharply until he’s not breathing at all, just grinding manically on Soobin’s leg with his face all scrunched up and the veins sticking out of his tense neck.

Please come, please come for me, I need it, Soobin thinks. Or his alpha thinks it, because the feeling comes from somewhere deep in his core, not from his own brain. Either way, it’s like sunrise breaking when Kai starts to fall limp, twitching through the aftershocks of his orgasm. He relaxes into Beomgyu’s own tired arms, his thighs finally unclenching from around Soobin’s. His cotton-candy scent pools in the back of Soobin’s throat, his cunt still radiating heat across Soobin’s skin. He’s gorgeous, splayed out on the bed in the dim light, outstretched limbs like rays of sunlight creeping across the sky.

“Mmm,” Beomgyu mumbles. “Better.”

He nuzzles his face up until he fumbles into Kai’s slack lips, and as Soobin lets his own body go limp, he catches sight of Beomgyu’s tongue lazily working into Kai’s.

It’s silent in the room for a few breaths, aside from the quiet sounds of Beomgyu’s gentle kisses, quiet enough that Soobin wouldn’t have heard them if he wasn’t so attuned to every inch of Beomgyu’s being right now. After all, his omega is still knotted, and still on the verge of heat. Still Soobin’s responsibility to care for, in every way.

He waits for the sounds to stop before he tries to formulate words, but when he goes to speak, Kai beats him to it.

“Guys,” Kai says in a breathy, loose voice. “This is… fucking… awesome.”

Beomgyu giggles. Soobin’s belly swoops.

“You’re fucking awesome,” Beomgyu echoes, singsong.

“You look incredible,” Kai says, and Soobin lifts his head in time to see him wiping sweaty hair out of Beomgyu’s eyes. “And not too feverish? It’s working?”

“What’s working?” Soobin says. His brain sure isn’t.

“Me. I’m working. For him,” Kai says. “Like, with heat stuff, remember? Isn’t that kind of the point of… me?”

“Nestmate,” Beomgyu says.

“Yeah, nestmate,” Kai agrees. His gaze washes down Beomgyu’s face, so soft and affectionate. “Look. Doesn’t he look better?”

Soobin reaches for Beomgyu’s head and gently tilts it towards him by his hair. He does look good, at least for this stage of the game. He’s not as wild-eyed and pink as he should be. He’s loopy from the knot, but not from preheat. It’s coming on slower, and Kai is right: with how much Beomgyu’s been scenting Kai tonight, and the potency of Kai’s pheromones, it’s not a surprise that Beomgyu is in such good shape. Kai is his best medicine.

Kai is a miracle, isn’t he?

“It’s the scenting,” Kai says confidently, and before Beomgyu can ask for it, he gives him his wrist to scent. “It’s helping.”

“Or the knot,” Soobin says, a bit defensively. It’s just barely starting to deflate, but his alpha doesn’t want him to pull out. He feels needed like this, even if he knows it’s Kai that’s making the difference.

Beomgyu nods into Kai’s wrist.

“You’re so good, bunny,” he whispers. “To Kai, too.”

Soobin’s eyes fall on own leg, still between Kai’s. Kai must have forgotten where his body is, because suddenly he squirms violently, trying and failing to escape from around Soobin without dislodging his upper body from Beomgyu’s grasp.

“Oh, fuck,” he curses. It’s cute to watch his panic, honestly, and Soobin lets out a snort, wiggling his own leg. It feels like a lifetime ago that he was a nervous wreck Kai being here. Now, he’s so elated he doubts he’ll be able to fall asleep when this is all done.

“Relax, babe. Stop—kicking, I’ve got it.”

“Oh,” Kai says, as Soobin extracts his leg, then — “oof.”

“There ya go,” Soobin says, one arm around Kai’s bare back now as he pulls him properly into their pile. “Stay here until I get up, and then hold him when I clean him up, okay? He doesn’t get left alone tonight, not for a second.”

“‘Course not,” Kai breathes. Soobin feels him inching in closer. The wet spot he left on Soobin’s thigh is starting to go cold. Soobin wants to let it dry there, perfectly intact, so he’ll smell like Kai all night. He’s an animal.

“What’s your verdict?” Soobin asks, stroking his fingertips up Kai’s long spine.

A grin creeps across Kai’s full cheeks. “Verdict is… I can do that to him, no problem.”

“You can? Or you want to?”

Kai closes his eyes and says the most beautiful three words. “I want to.”

“And Kai-ya…” Soobin leans into his ear. “You know how hot you were, right?”

“Pretty hot?”

“If I could bend enough, I’d lick my thigh clean,” Soobin whispers.

“Fucking disgusting,” Beomgyu mumbles, but from the swell of his scent, Kai doesn’t agree. Soobin kisses his neck, and he tastes like he’s at home.

Taking care of Beomgyu during heat is hard work. Even now, with the rough edges of his sickness dulled, his pit of need is bottomless, and filling it is exhausting. Soobin knows this all too well, after so many years of being the one doing all the fucking. Of course, the cruelty of heat means that there’s very little sleep at all. In the worst of times, Beomgyu’s sickness always kept him supernaturally energized, unable to fully rest for days on end, and all that meant that Soobin couldn’t either.

So there’s something kind of beautiful in how Soobin keeps catching the two omegas beautifully asleep in the middle of heat, or at the very least resting peacefully. It’s no different on the first day of this heat. He comes home from the factory to find both of them tangled up in each other, fast asleep in the nest that they must have made in Kai’s bed earlier that day. The lights are off, and it’s so dark that Soobin only knows they’re in there from the vague shape of a lump of bodies.

“Kai-ya, it’s me,” Soobin whispers. “How long have you been home?”

No answer.

“Wake up, baby. We’ve got to feed him some dinner.”

He walks into the room to turn on the little lamp on Kai’s nightstand. He can hear Kai faintly snoring now, and he already feels bad for waking them up. But Beomgyu is obviously feeling good if he’s able to sleep, which means it’s the perfect time to get some calories in him before the next wave of desire hits him. Soobin knows better than to let him get too hungry during heat.

He clicks the light on.

“Oh my god,” Soobin hears his voice say, his fist clenching up so tightly around the neck of the lamp that it makes a cracking sound.

What a sight. They’ve fallen asleep on top of the covers, Kai fully clothed and half on top of Beomgyu. It’s not a surprise that Beomgyu is naked from the waist down, but his bare legs are spread enough for Soobin to see what’s between them, and that’s surprising. He’s never fallen asleep still full of a dildo.

A big one, too, if Soobin remembers Beomgyu’s toys properly. Fuck. They didn’t spare any time getting to the action. He can’t tear his eyes away: Kai’s legs draped across Beomgyu’s spread ones, Beomgyu’s arms cuddled around Kai like he’s a teddy bear. Purple silicone emerging between his legs. It must have felt so good to be full of something, anything that Kai would put inside him. Leave it in me, please, please, Soobin can hear him saying in his heat-addled voice. Wanna be full of you.

So many nice things have happened here in Kai’s bed: the first time Beomgyu ever scented Kai, the first time Soobin ever kissed him. This time might not be as romantic as those times were, but this one gives Soobin an instant boner, so that’s something.

Fuck making them dinner. They can heat up ramyun later. Soobin dives for the bed instead, shaking Kai awake and smothering him with a kiss before he can make a sound.

“Tell me how he took it,” Soobin growls into his lips.

“Wha—mmph...”

Soobin kisses him frantically, nearly smashing their teeth together. He’s seeing red again, like he did yesterday, so hot he feels like he’s sweating. He fumbles for the base of the dildo and pulls it out of Beomgyu in one long, quick stroke.

“Nooooo,” Beomgyu mumbles, half asleep but kicking his leg out in protest.

“Tell me how you liked it when Kai stuck that in you, and I’ll give you a knot,” Soobin orders. “You wanna be full again?”

Beomgyu nods, and as Kai rubs his squinty eyes, Soobin rips through his own zipper, freeing his erection.

“Hyung, you’re — oh,” Kai squeals.

“How deep did he take it? Did he moan for you?”

“Deep,” Kai says. “And loud — holy shit, hyung.”

“Stay?” Soobin asks, and Kai does.

Heat is so good these days, Soobin thinks, pressing his cock into Beomgyu’s swollen cunt. He reaches for Kai’s hand, and Kai squeezes it tight, right as Beomgyu whines the most satisfied sound. So good, so good, and better every time.

“Soobin-hyung?” Kai says, and Soobin rummages for the remote to pause the episode of Sakusaru that they’re watching with the volume down low. “Sorry.”

“How dare you. In the middle of a fight scene, too.”

“Sorry,” Kai says again, in a sweeter, higher voice, and giggles so Soobin knows he doesn’t mean it.

Soobin turns to face him on the couch, careful not to disturb Beomgyu’s head too much. The side of his forehead is pressed into Soobin’s thigh, and the rest of him is so swaddled in Soobin’s too-large sweatshirt and sweatpants that he might as well just be a pile of fabric. He’s melted into the couch, as if the depletion of heat has shrunk him.

In contrast, Kai seems larger than life. Whatever path they’ve fallen into is awakening something inside him, making his shoulders roll back and his head stand taller on his neck. No turtleneck, either; just an undershirt with a beautifully stretched-out neckline, showing off the little moles on the side of his neck.

Soobin thinks he recognizes something about the hint of delicious cockiness that’s suddenly creeped into Kai’s smile. It’s obviously from all the heat sex. It’s hard not to feel good about yourself when you’ve spent days making Beomgyu moan your name.

“I was just wondering what would happen if you won the contest,” Kai says.

Ah, the contest. Soobin’s eyes wander guiltily to the pile of sketches sitting neglected on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. He lets himself off from working on the project during heat, but that doesn’t make him feel less shitty about shirking his responsibilities. Taehyun will want to meet up again as soon as it’s over, and he doesn’t have much to show.

“Well, Beomgyu-hyung would make me say when you win the contest.”

“We won’t win the contest,” Soobin says automatically.

“But if you did?”

Soobin sighs wearily.

“I mean, you don’t have to tell me,” Kai says. “Only I’m just trying to support my boyfriend, but if that’s such a burden to you…”

“Brat,” Soobin says, as Kai grins at him. “If we won… there’s prize money involved, of course.”

“Of course,” Kai says seriously.

“There’s a job up for grabs, too. A design job with a biotech firm in Germany.”

“Germany?” Kai repeats, face falling.

“Yeah. I doubt we’d have to move. Taehyun said something about some holographic office connection they can do. He says they’ve got Americans working at Turu who just beam in every day, even when they have to do lab work on the premises.”

“Oh, cool!”

“We’re not going to win, though, so it’s not an issue.”

“Right,” Kai smiles. “Still cool. My boyfriend, beaming into some office across the world…”

He settles back on the couch arm, squeezing Beomgyu’s toes where they rest in his lap, and Soobin can’t help noticing something.

“Saying the word boyfriend an awful lot tonight, aren’t you?” he says.

“I am not,” Kai retorts.

“Are too,” Soobin teases. “Don’t stop. Say it again.”

An alarm goes off on Kai’s phone.

“Will my boyfriend get me my medication?” Kai says, faking annoyance.

His cycle regulators are just across the room on the top shelf of the bookcase. Kai has only been on them for a few days, but every time Soobin hears that alarm go off, it makes him feel a flare of hope that maybe, just maybe, everything is under control. Beomgyu’s heats are getting better, and Kai’s next heat shouldn’t be nearly as scary, now that he’s been told to take a half-dose of his suppressants. And it won’t come as soon, which is the whole point of the regulators.

“Gladly, if you’ll take this one off my hands without waking him up,” Soobin says, gesturing to Beomgyu’s head.

Kai makes a face, but he doesn’t want to risk disturbing Beomgyu any more than Soobin does, not after Beomgyu’s made it through four long days of heat. He carefully shifts Beomgyu’s feet off of his lap and tiptoes across the room for his medication.

“What about you?” Soobin says, as Kai pops the pill bottle open. “That certificate’s just about done, isn’t it?”

Kai pops the pill in his mouth and grimaces as he swallows it dry.

“Get water with that,” Soobin admonishes him.

“Takes too long.” He walks back to the couch, and when he sits back down, he sits a little closer, close enough that Soobin can reach along the back of the couch and stroke his hair.

“So? When you’re all done with school, what’s the plan?”

“Applying for teaching jobs,” Kai shrugs. “Nothing fancy. I’ll just keep nannying until I get one. God, quitting that job… that conversation’s gonna be so rough…”

“I’ll help you, if you need it.”

“Don’t need it, but thanks, hyung.”

Beomgyu grumbles in his sleep as Kai pulls his feet back into his lap, and Soobin reaches down to check his forehead. It’s cool again, for now. His fever didn’t reach the highs that it usually does, and Soobin knows that’s all thanks to Kai. His beautiful Beomgyu, safer and more comfortable than he’s been in years.

“Thanks for everything you did for him,” Soobin says quietly.

“Yeah, no need to thank me. It was fun.”

“I thought so too.” Soobin catches his eye, and Kai buries his face in his hands. “Don’t pretend to be all shy with me, now.”

“I get so self-conscious when you watch,” Kai mumbles.

“Really? Didn’t seem that way during,” Soobin says.

“Shut up, hyung.”

Soobin grabs one of Kai’s hands and yanks it away from his face easily to reveal his pained expression underneath. Even Kai’s thick biceps can’t hold off an alpha’s strength.

“You’re gonna wake him,” Kai complains, as Beomgyu grumbles from the jostling, but Soobin just pinches his cheek.

“I liked what I woke up to yesterday morning in particular,” he says in a low voice. “Putting him on his knees like that… you could have taken him to your room if you didn’t want me to see, couldn’t you?”

“He was desperate,” Kai says. “You know how he gets.”

“I do know,” Soobin agrees. “And he begged you, right?”

“Right.” Oh, Kai is so pink.

“Use the big one,” Soobin says in a high voice, even though Beomgyu’s is low and silky. “You were totally locked in. You had your tongue out, like this.”

It was a vision: Kai’s tongue between his lips, one of his hands spread out on the small of Beomgyu’s bare back, working a thick pink dildo into Beomgyu’s cunt. His fingertips wandering up to tug Beomgyu’s hair, is this good, hyung? Harder?

Life was so much worse before they discovered that Kai was born to fuck Beomgyu. He wonders how that ass will look under a harness. And no matter what Beomgyu says, Soobin absolutely has to be there the first time Kai straps up for Beomgyu. He wouldn’t miss it for a billion won.

Soobin hooks his fingertips under Kai’s jaw. “You’re so cute when you fuck him, jagiya.”

“Hyuuuung,” Kai whines, his eyes flashing wide. Is that the first time Soobin’s called him that? Every little name, every note of affection, feels like it matters so much. Another piece of proof that Kai belongs to him.

“Felt incredible,” Beomgyu says groggily in Soobin’s lap, and Soobin startles, letting go of Kai’s face.

“You’re awake?”

“Practically flung me off your lap,” Beomgyu grumbles, bringing one sweatshirt-clad hand to his eyes to rub them.

“And you feel…”

“Good. Better. Tired.”

“Excellent,” Soobin says, relieved. “Get a bit more rest, if you’re tired.”

“Wet,” Beomgyu adds. “Sticky.” He flails his legs limply in Kai’s lap.

“I’ll help you to the shower,” Kai says immediately, but Beomgyu shakes his head.

“Keep talking,” he says. “You talk all the time without me.”

Kai looks at Soobin, who shrugs. The two omegas talk without him all the time, but Soobin does get jealous about that, so it’s not like he can criticize.

“Do you remember yesterday morning? How good your boyfriend fucked you?”

“Maybe,” Beomgyu says, lifting his head. He’s probably giving Kai a look, something that will make his belly flutter. “Tell me more.”

“He had you ass up on the bed,” Soobin begins, combing his fingers through Beomgyu’s long hair. “Your face was so deep in the mattress I could barely hear you moaning. But you know what I could hear?”

“What?”

Kai makes a swipe at Soobin, but Soobin only grabs him by the wrist again, twisting it back until he squeals hyung, stop it.

“Your cunt, princess.” Beomgyu giggles, and Soobin plows on, emboldened. “Him fucking your wet cunt, just like you wanted all along—”

“You guys are sooooo,” Kai cuts in. His face is bright red now.

“So what?” Soobin asks, grinning.

“You just say all these… these things. I dunno how you do it.”

“Easy,” Beomgyu says, yawning and dropping his head back onto Soobin’s leg. “I like riling him up too much. And he’s an alpha, so it’s probably easier for him to talk about sex than anything else…”

“Do you mean all the stuff you say during heat? The dirty stuff?”

“Like what?”

Soobin knows where this is going, but Beomgyu obviously hasn’t put it together yet. His heart sinks, and he opens his mouth to try to cut Kai off, but Kai’s already answering.

“Breeding,” Kai says. “Kind of a nasty word, isn’t it?”

Soobin grabs Beomgyu’s hand off the couch and squeezes it. Beomgyu had barely said anything about breeding this heat, for once. Not when Soobin was with him, at least. Now, Soobin can’t help wondering what Beomgyu was saying during all those hours when Soobin was at the post office and Kai was home for his lunch break. Here he was, thinking they’d all just gotten lucky, but Kai must have gotten the brunt of it instead.

“What did I say?” Beomgyu says. He’s trying to sound normal, but his voice is too quiet.

“Oh, god,” Kai says quickly. “Is this… um, is this sensitive? I know it’s not — well, you told me you can’t, but… fuck, I’m sorry hyung, I—”

“Kai-ya,” Beomgyu says, sitting up straight. He doesn’t let go of Soobin’s hand. “No, it’s fine. We can talk about this stuff. We have to.”

“Okay,” Kai says weakly. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Remind me what I said to you,” Beomgyu repeats. “It all blends together for me after.”

“Just that you wanted me to breed you,” Kai says, managing to say it like it’s all casual and no big deal. “You carried on a bit like that. Oh, and about Soobin-hyung, you said he told you he’d give you a pup, but that he hadn’t.”

Ah. If only it was Soobin’s fault.

“He sure hasn’t,” Beomgyu says in that same weird, fake-normal voice, giving Soobin’s hand a deeper squeeze. “Some alpha, huh?”

“Ha ha,” Kai says. “Hyung…”

Soobin doesn’t know where to look, so he just looks at the screen, frozen on a still image of a cartoon dragon soaring through a fiery sky.

“It’s just a sex thing,” Beomgyu says. “It comes out during heat a lot. Which makes sense, because, like. Heat.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“It doesn’t mean anything bigger. I’m not, like, wasting away about it or anything.”

“Okay. Yeah, I know you’re not.”

Both of them are quiet for a moment. Soobin’s brain fills the silence with numbers, one, two, three…

At fifty-one, Kai speaks again.

“You’d talk to me if it did mean something, right? You’d tell me how you’re feeling?”

“Yeah,” Beomgyu whispers.

Soobin tears his eyes away from the screen. Beomgyu has dropped his forehead onto Kai’s shoulder, and Kai reaches for the nape of his neck, stroking it.

“I never thought a lot about what I would want my boyfriend to be like,” Kai says. “I think the one thing I always knew I wanted was someone I could talk to about anything, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Not have to hide all my shit.” Somehow, Kai manages to make it sound both pointed and gentle.

“I totally know,” Beomgyu says. “I couldn’t have hidden my shit from Soobin-hyung even if I wanted to. He was there for all of it. And this isn’t, like, something I’m hiding from you, either.”

“I’m not saying you are hiding something from me,” Kai says. “I’m saying I’m glad I found that with you. And that you found it with me, I guess.”

Soobin looks at the screen again, as Beomgyu leans up to Kai’s lips. He can let them have this kiss to themselves.

“Kai-ya,” Beomgyu breathes, when Soobin hears the soft sound of their lips subside. “I wanna have a baby with you. One day.”

“Okay,” Kai whispers. “We’ll have a baby.”

He doesn’t question it, even though all of them know what they aren’t saying. Soobin’s heart does something funny that he won’t question, either.

“And him,” Kai adds. “With him too.”

“Kind of got an important role to play, actually,” Soobin says, faking a cheerful annoyance. He abandons his attempt to give them privacy, turning to watch them again.

Beomgyu is slouching back onto Kai’s shoulder, but Kai is wide-eyed and open-faced, bright and alert.

It’s a nice thing to hear, Soobin thinks, the first time you hear it. It was for Soobin, until it got harder the next time, and the next time, and the next time. But for now, this is still a dream for Kai.

“If you could put a baby in me, would you?” Beomgyu murmurs into Kai’s ear.

“Only once I get a teaching job,” Kai says, reaching for Beomgyu’s hand and weaving their fingers together. “I gotta feed our baby, if I’m putting one in you.”

“Hm.” Beomgyu smiles a little. He likes that answer, and Soobin does too, a bit too much. He likes how Kai squirms as he says it, pushing through his awkwardness. He wonders if Kai will think it’s sexy to play like this, one day. It might be easier for Beomgyu to play pretend with Kai, with whom it’s truly an impossibility, than with Soobin, who should have knocked him up three times over by now.

Kai clears his throat. He’s reached his fill of the sex talk. “Can we hit play?” he asks, nodding at the screen.

Soobin isn’t ready to move on, not just yet.

“Keep telling us what you want, Kai-ya,” Soobin says. “When you think of things. You tell us everything you want, and you’ll have it all, okay?”

“I already do, hyung,” Kai says. “And right now I want to watch more Sakusaru, before Beomgyu-hyung wakes up enough to complain about it.”

They’re so many date nights behind that Beomgyu doesn’t want to waste any time squeezing one in. He won’t take no for an answer the next morning — “But it’s Sunday, guys, it’s hyung’s morning off!” So they bundle themselves up for an excursion, regardless of the fact that Kai has to be at the professor’s in a few hours, and that the landlord had dropped off Nabi with an apology and some story about a last-minute trip out of town.

The icing on the cake is Taehyun calling, begging to come over, just as Kai clips Nabi’s harness on.

“It’s literally so cool,” Taehyun bubbles. “I have to show it to you, like, now.”

“Can’t it wait ’til the evening?”

“Ughhhh,” Taehyun whines uncharacteristically. “I’m busy tonight. My noona’s coming over.”

“To meet Junie-hyung?”

Beomgyu is eavesdropping by the door, and his face rapidly switches from annoyed to elated. Soobin presses his fingers to his lips to tell him to shut up before he can start carrying on about meeting the family and all that.

“Yeah, if he doesn’t get back from his community service too late. Otherwise she’ll just badger me with a billion questions.”

“So tomorrow, then?”

“You sure I can’t come over for just a sec? Just a few minutes? ”

Soobin lowers his phone. “He’s laying it on thick,” he says to the omegas. “He sounds like he’s gonna burst if he can’t show me this holo-whatever.”

“Just tell him to meet us at the dog park,” Kai shrugs. “Fine with me if he comes along.”

“I’ll leave before the PDA starts,” Taehyun calls out of the phone.

Sure, an early-morning dog park trip isn’t the most romantic date idea, but romantic isn’t the point. Together is the point, even if that means together with Taehyun, too. Soobin tells him the right intersection and ends the call, reaching for Beomgyu’s hand.

“You don’t mind?” he asks as they head for the elevator.

“Taehyunnie crashing our date? Not a bit. Maybe he’ll foot the bill for some coffee.”

It’s a decently long walk to get to the dog park, about a half-hour towards the university, but Beomgyu is so cheerful to be done with his heat that he practically skips the whole way, and the fresh air feels perfect in Soobin’s lungs after four long, tiring days of heat action. Nabi yanks at her leash, and Kai runs the last fifty meters with her at risk of his arm getting dislocated.

The dog park is already crowded when they get there, and Nabi chomps at her leash as the three of them make their way through the gate. Once she’s free and they’re all inside, Soobin leans up against the fence by the gate, waiting for Taehyun, and the two omegas run after Nabi, who’s already gone on a tear around the place, chasing after a little terrier.

Soobin watches Beomgyu trip on a tree root and face plant into the wood chips, clutching onto the fence to keep himself from leaping over to check on him. He’s fine, he’s laughing, he’s getting hauled to his feet by Kai, and everything is okay. No need to go all alpha on him. It’s good to be controlled sometimes, when it keeps Soobin from acting like a protective lunatic.

Kai kisses Beomgyu’s roughed-up palms. Soobin makes a mental note to tell him to wear gloves the next time he might go for a jog on uneven ground.

“Minor chaos in here,” Taehyun says, and Soobin turns to see him shutting the gate behind him. He’s carrying his nice briefcase and a silver puffer with a fancy label, incongruous with the dog park setting, but his hair is sticking up in strange directions, like he raced out of his apartment without brushing it. He’s got dark circles under his eyes, making his sharp cheekbones look even more prominent. “Nice day out for January, huh? How was heat?”

“Oh, better, always,” Soobin says, and Taehyun smiles at him. He knows how much that means. “How long are you sticking around?”

“Just to show you the little surprise that I whipped up,” Taehyun says excitedly, rubbing one of his tired eyes. “Can we sit somewhere?”

They find a vacant spot on one of the park benches, and Taehyun tucks his briefcase between his legs to keep it from becoming an attraction for one of the dogs that keep wandering over to sniff them. He opens it, pulling out a silver metal contraption with a flat screen and an upwards-facing projection lens. Soobin recognizes it: he’s seen similar ones on the desks at TuruTech when he’s visited Taehyun there. It’s a hologram processor.

“You used these in school, right?” Taehyun says, pressing a button on the edge of the device.

“Older ones,” Soobin says. A husky sidles up to his leg, begging for attention, and he scratches it behind the ears absently. “Much older, and much shittier. The ones in the drafting lab barely worked.”

“Well, this one does,” Taehyun says. “And wait ’til you see what I cooked up with it. I think we could win this, hyung. I really, really do.”

“Taehyun-ah!”

Beomgyu suddenly appears, red-cheeked and smiling. His coat is wide open to let the cold air cool him down from all the running around, and Soobin’s gaze locks onto the splotches across the front of his neck, marks that he hadn’t realized he’d been leaving there during heat. Or that Kai had been leaving, perhaps. Double the love bites have left Beomgyu looking fairly wrecked, now that Soobin is viewing him through an outsider’s eyes.

You take such good care of him, his alpha purrs, and it’s even happier when Soobin notices the edge of Beomgyu’s mating scar poking out from under his coat. It stands out so beautifully against his pale skin in the bright sun.

“Hey, Beomie-hyung,” Taehyun says. “Thanks for letting me crash the date. I’ll be quick, I swear.”

“No worries,” Beomgyu says, waving his hand. “Whatcha got to show us?”

“Where’s Kai?”

Beomgyu gestures across the park. Kai has one end of a rope toy, the other firmly locked in Nabi’s teeth. “Occupied.”

The husky seems to notice what Beomgyu is gesturing at, and takes off to mix himself up in the tug-of-war. Soobin makes a little sad sound that Beomgyu giggles at.

“I didn’t know you were such a dog person, hyung. Maybe we get one, when you strike it big?”

“So last week, I had this thought,” Taehyun says, before they can keep talking about dogs. “We’ve done enough to get a feel for the direction the project is going in. What if instead of doing more theory and subgender-rights research and yadda yadda, I just… made the hospital?”

“Made the hospital?” Soobin repeats, confused. They’ve been making the hospital already, in a sense, with sketches and renderings and floorplans, but this sounds different.

“Yeah. Just made it, a few rooms of it. In the holo-space. But I didn’t want to make a big deal about it if it wasn’t gonna work, so I tinkered around with it first to see if I could make it work, and then last night, it worked.”

Taehyun types a few things into the screen and drags his finger around a touchpad. Like magic, the lens flickers to life, and a purple-tinged shape faintly springs into the air above it.

“Lasers,” Taehyun says, as Beomgyu lets out an ooooh. “Okay, so this is only one room, and it’s not done. But here’s the really fun part…”

He reaches into his briefcase and pulls out what looks like a set of metal sunglasses.

Soobin knows all about this part, although it had never worked quite right with the hologram processors at school. He’s never truly stepped into a holo-space. It’s expensive to create one, with all the processing power required.

“Taehyun-ah, you shouldn’t have,” Soobin begins, but Taehyun only shakes his head, thrusting the glasses into Soobin’s face.

“Put them on,” he orders, and Soobin doesn’t dare disobey.

“What’s happening?” Beomgyu asks excitedly.

For a moment, nothing does. Soobin just looks at the world through the metal glasses, everything looking slightly blurry through the thick lenses. But then Taehyun presses a button on the screen, and suddenly, the purple shape re-materalizes around Soobin’s head. He knows it’s just a trick of the lasers, tracking a holographic shape everywhere around the glasses as he moves his head, but damn, it’s convincing.

It truly feels like he’s inside a shimmery, translucent hospital room. There’s no furniture in it yet, but as he swings his head around to look up, look down, look everywhere, he can see the vents for the advanced air circulation system they’re working on, and the thick anti-pheromone curtain hanging in front of the door to help prevent any alpha or omega pheromones from trickling out of the room into the hallway. Everything they’ve been working on is meant to equalize each space, so that no one has to be sequestered in a subgender-segregated hospital wing, and surrounded by this hologram, Soobin feels for the first time that it might all be coming together as well as Taehyun keeps saying it is.

“It’s so real,” he mumbles. It’s just a hologram, but that’s beside the point. It could be real, if they win.

“Point at the vent,” Taehyun says excitedly, and Soobin lifts his hand, waving it through the purple-tinged air to point at the intake vent on the ceiling.

He lets out a little yelp as a window pops up in midair, as if he’s in a video game. Pheromone-Managing Air Circulation, it reads, followed by a paragraph of text and a few schematic diagrams. Within this hospital, airflow to each room will run through a series of filters intended to reduce the cross-contamination of air from an alpha or omega’s room with…

“That’s genius,” Soobin says, swallowing his feelings.

“I know,” Taehyun says proudly. “We’ll set up info boxes for anything we want to highlight in particular. Much more compelling than a poster presentation, isn’t it?”

Soobin nods, and the purple room around him sways with his head.

“I wanna see!” Beomgyu says. “My turn?”

“It’s not close to done yet,” Taehyun warns him, as Soobin takes the glasses off and hands them over. The world is too bright without the purple filter on it. He squints across the park, seeking out Kai, and finds him already walking back towards them, dragging Nabi by the rope toy. He’s practically bouncing, radiating a magnetic joy that Soobin can’t help noticing is catching the attention of far too many people in this dog park.

If they win the contest, Soobin would get to see an awful lot more of that smile.

“What the hell is that?” Kai asks cheerfully, gesturing to Taehyun’s contraption just as Beomgyu slides the glasses on.

“Holy shit! Taehyun-ah, this is insane!”

That smile, too.

Taehyun can’t answer Kai; his attention immediately snaps back to Beomgyu, who’s prattling off rapid-fire question and swinging his head in mad circles.

Soobin pats his lap. “Sit. I’ll explain.”

“I’m not a kid,” Kai says, making a face, but he drops the rope toy and slings himself across Soobin’s lap anyway. He has such a nice weight to him, solid enough to make Soobin’s thighs ache pleasantly. When he drapes one of his arms around Soobin’s shoulders, Soobin feels like he’s being tucked away in his body, safe and warm.

“It’s for the project,” Soobin starts to explain.

“Yeah, I figured that much,” Kai says, poking Soobin’s nose, and Soobin snaps his teeth at his finger.

“You want me to explain, or you want to get fresh with me?”

“Um… get fresh?”

Soobin tries to tickle his side through his felt pea coat, and although Kai can’t have felt much, he squeals anyway.

“Kiss,” Soobin says, and Kai gives him two, short and sweet. “Good. You’re learning.”

“So tell me more,” Kai says, suddenly breathless.

His bangs are sticking into his eyes, and Soobin brushes them away gently, hoping he can steal just a little bit more of his breath away.

“Have you ever used a hologram processor?”

“Nah, though I’ve heard of them. Is that what they look like? I thought they’d be a lot bigger.”

“Well, Taehyun’s got the top-of-the-line one from work. The cheaper ones are—”

A fluffy little brown dog in a purple sweater materializes out of nowhere, leaping up against Soobin’s leg and scrambling at his pants. He gives his leg a shake, but the dog is persistent, trying to jump into Kai’s lap.

“Sorry, but we’ve got a friend here,” Soobin laughs.

Kai glances down at the dog, and then does a double take, so sudden and sharp that he nearly wobbles off of Soobin’s lap.

“Soha?” he says, as Soobin steadies him around the waist, and the little dog starts yapping along with his leaps. “Oh shit, oh my god.”

“You know this little guy?”

“Fuck, fuck.” Kai’s whole body goes rigid, and his head swivels around the park.

“Kai-ya, what’s going on?”

“He’s here,” Kai says in a panic, trying to slide off Soobin’s lap, but the frantic dog is getting in the way, and Soobin hasn’t let go of him. “That’s his dog, hyung, let me go, I can’t be seen like this—”

The professor. Soobin has never disliked a person quite as much as he hates this professor, and he’s never even met him. It figures that he’s shown up and ruined their lovely morning.

“And why not?” Soobin demands, but he lets Kai unfurl his arm from around his waist. “Kai-ya, why won’t you tell me what the fuck is going on with that guy?”

Kai doesn’t have time to answer. They both spot her at the same time: a woman with a short, trendy haircut walking briskly towards them, wrapped up in a dark fur coat, her severe face creased by her heavily furrowed brow. Soobin doesn’t have to be told who she is. This must be the professor’s wife.

“Huening Kai-ssi,” she says, with all the warmth of an iceberg.

Kai finally slips off Soobin’s lap and to his feet, with the little dog still jumping and yapping and pawing at him.

“Kim Hyunhee-nim,” Kai says. He sounds terrified, and even though they’re outside, Soobin can smell his scent going sour in the breeze.

Soobin leaps to his feet, too, which might be a bad idea. Kim Hyunhee is looking at him now, sizing up his height and heft, and she looks livid. Soobin feels like he’s about to be chastised by an extremely strict teacher, a feeling he hasn’t had in approximately fifteen years.

“Explain,” she says. “Who is this man? This alpha?”

The disgust in her voice is palpable. Beomgyu and Taehyun’s conversation has stuttered to a halt next to them, and before Soobin can say anything, Kai fills the icy silence.

“I’m so sorry, I meant to tell your husband, it’s just—it’s just very new, and—”

His voice is trembling. Soobin grabs his shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly.

“It doesn’t look new,” the woman says, narrowing her eyes at Soobin’s hand. “So. A boyfriend, is he? An alpha boyfriend?”

Soobin won’t drop his hand from Kai’s shoulder, no matter how hard she stares daggers at it. Is Kai not allowed to date? That’s news to Soobin.

“Yes,” Soobin says coldly. “Choi Soobin.”

He holds out his other hand, but of course she doesn’t shake it. Instead, she reaches down for the dog, scooping him up and tucking him under her arm like he needs protection.

“This is entirely out of line,” the woman says, scowling at Kai now. “And in public. All over an alpha, in public.”

Soobin bites back the growl that rumbles through his chest. Not this. Not someone threatening to shatter all of Kai’s precious confidence. He jostles Kai backwards by the shoulder, trying to place himself between him and the woman, but Kai is rooted in place, stammering out another apology.

“Nothing’s wrong here,” Soobin interrupts, glaring back at the woman. “Kai-ya, stop apologizing.”

“What’s going on?” Beomgyu asks loudly, as the woman opens her mouth to retort something. “Who is this?”

“Beomgyu, stay out of this,” Soobin warns him, but he knows Beomgyu won’t heed it. Suddenly, Beomgyu appears at Kai’s other side, the hologram glasses pushed back from his forehead. He grabs Kai’s hand, and the woman’s sharp eyebrows shoot up, taking him in.

“My—um, this is Kim Hyunhee. I work for her,” Kai mutters, lowering his head. The panic in his voice has faded into a dull resignation.

“Oh, cool,” Beomgyu says, though he doesn’t sound like he means it. “Choi Beomgyu. Nice to meet you.” He doesn’t reach his hand out.

Beomgyu normally has perfect manners in this kind of situation, just as charming as an omega should be, but Soobin can’t blame him for being prickly. This is all so off, and he grips Kai’s shoulder even tighter.

“And so how exactly do you know this man, Kai-ssi?”

“We live together,” Beomgyu says. He’s smart enough to not say we’re nestmates to this beta-of-all-betas, who would never understand.

“Live together?” The woman’s eyes are darting across all three of them now, back and forth, her mind clearly racing, and then they lock onto Beomgyu and widen in horror. “Good god, Huening Kai-ssi. You’re not mated?”

Beomgyu’s neck, Soobin realizes. All those hickeys, the bright red mating scar. It’s damning, and now Kim Hyunhee’s eyes race back to Soobin’s collar, checking for more evidence. Nothing to see there, though. His jacket is buttoned up to his chin.

“No, no, of course not,” Kai says quickly. “If I can only just explain…”

“What a discovery. Our nanny has two boyfriends, and they’re both breeders. I will not have my children be cared for…”

It’s happening again: that feeling of something straining against shackles within Soobin’s chest, roaring to be let loose on this bitch of a woman. The chains holding his alpha back are melting, but he can’t, he can’t give in to the urge. It’s brain against instinct, and Soobin fights back against the twitch in his muscles.

“Excuse you?” Beomgyu flares up, taking a step forward.

“Don’t threaten me,” Kim Hyunhee snaps. She’s a bit taller than him, but Beomgyu is teeming with anger, magnifying his presence.

“Say that again. What you just called us. What a fucking nasty—”

“Hyung, calm down,” Kai begs, hauling Beomgyu back into place easily, but Beomgyu is trembling with rage now, and the damage has been done: Kim Hyunhee takes a step back as if she’s been slapped, clutching the dog in front of her like a shield.

“Brat,” she spits out. “I would have expected that kind of behavior from the big savage, not the little one.”

Soobin can feel her eyes all over him. The big savage. He won’t, he won’t, he won’t live up to that word, won’t let the shackles break.

Should he? Shouldn’t he protect his omegas? He could, in a heartbeat. All it would take is letting go, and he’d snap at her, have her on the ground in an instant. How much would it scare Kai to see him grab his boss and break her wrist with one twist? How much would Beomgyu cry, seeing Soobin on the other side of the alpha cage in the courtroom downtown? He’s frozen in place, numb. If he was born to protect them, why is it the last thing he can risk doing right now? He can’t even find the right words to say.

“Hi, what’s going on here?” Taehyun’s voice says. If he was trying to stay out of it, he’s clearly decided that’s no longer possible. “Can I help?”

Taehyun steps right into the middle of it all, and Soobin lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. A beta like Taehyun is just what they need to defuse this situation.

“Not another one,” Kim Hyunhee says derisively. “How many men are you seeing, Huening?”

“Ma’am, you need to calm down,” Taehyun says in a steady, quiet voice, a stark contrast to the simmering hiss that Beomgyu lets out on the other side of Kai. “You’re making a scene, and frankly, you’re embarrassing yourself.”

It’s true: people are staring from every direction. Taehyun takes a step closer to her, and she cowers away from him.

“Don’t touch me,” she snarls at Taehyun.

“I haven’t touched you,” he says coolly, both hands in the air. “But if you keep yelling at my friends, I might.”

Only a beta could make that threat and get away with it. It seems to work. Kim Hyunhee is silent for a moment, combing her fingers through the dog’s fur aggressively, and Taehyun starts to lower his hands. Soobin can feel Kai’s shoulder shaking under his hand, and he wraps his arm around his neck instead, pulling him in possessively.

He fixes his glare on Kim Hyunhee, the most threatening thing he can risk doing to her. If he’s such a savage, maybe his eyes will be enough to scare her off. Look at me, he hisses at her in his head, but she won’t look at anyone but Kai anymore, squinting at him over Taehyun’s shoulder.

“Now. How about we leave, or you leave. Either way, this conversation is over,” Taehyun says, crossing his arms firmly. “We’re all just trying to enjoy our mornings. No need for this nastiness.”

Kim Hyunhee isn’t done. “Wait ’til my husband hears about this,” she says angrily. “He’ll have a lot to say to you this afternoon, I’m sure.”

“You still want me to come in today?” Kai asks incredulously, miserably.

“Don’t you dare go back there,” Beomgyu says, turning to face him, but Kim Hyunhee doesn’t hear him.

“Of course you’re coming in today,” she says briskly. “I’ll let him deal with you. I always knew you’d breach your contract, but he said you were different… well, it’ll be a rude awakening for him, hm? He should have expected something like this from an omega.”

“And why is that?” Beomgyu says angrily.

Kim Hyunhee clips the leash onto the little dog and drops it to the ground.

“You know exactly what you people are,” she snarls at Beomgyu, and turns to walk away.

Taehyun grabs Beomgyu the moment she steps away. It’s a good thing, too, because he’s there to stop Beomgyu from lunging after her, practically throwing himself into Taehyun’s chest.

“Fucking say it!” he shouts after her. “Don’t be a coward, say it to my face! What am I?”

“Beomie-hyung,” Taehyun says urgently, as Kai turns and lets his shoulders slouch into Soobin’s chest. “Hyung, let it go.”

“A slut, right?” Beomgyu says, his anger starting to fade into tearfulness. “Just say it. Why won’t they say it, when they all think it?”

“A lot of them do say it,” Taehyun says quietly. “You don’t want that either. That’s no better.”

“No,” Beomgyu sniffs. “No. No, you’re… you’re right.”

Soobin has a world of things to say to Kai, but now isn’t the time. He seems like he’s in shock, silently hiding in Soobin’s chest. His shoulders are slumped down to half their normal breadth, and Soobin just strokes his back, holding him tight.

“Nabi,” Kai whispers, almost inaudibly. “Someone check on her.”

Soobin nods at Taehyun. “The dog. Can you?”

“Which one?” Taehyun says quickly, and Soobin points across the park, to where he spots Nabi happily digging a massive hole. “I’ll grab her.”

As soon as he runs off, Beomgyu wraps himself around Kai’s back, cocooning him against Soobin. He nuzzles his face into Kai’s hair, and Soobin presses his lips into the crown of Kai’s head.

“Baby, I’m so sorry,” Beomgyu whispers.

“Are people still staring?” Kai’s little voice asks, muffled in Soobin’s coat.

Yes, they are. “Doesn’t matter,” Soobin says. “Should we sit? What do you need?”

“Scent me?” Beomgyu asks, and Kai spins around in their arms immediately, burying his face down into Beomgyu’s neck instead of Soobin’s chest. “Ahh, that’s it. Deep breaths, love.”

He stares at Soobin over Kai’s shoulder, unblinking and serious.

“Sit?” Soobin asks, but the two omegas don’t move, so he just rubs his cheek into Kai’s scalp, gaze locked onto Beomgyu’s.

Did you know? Soobin mouths. He’s not even sure what he’s asking about, exactly, but Beomgyu shakes his head. He would have told Soobin if he’d known how bad it was.

You ask, Beomgyu mouths back. His eyelids flicker for a moment as Kai draws in another deep breath of his scent.

“Kai-ya, sweetheart,” Soobin begins.

“Don’t be like that,” Kai mumbles.

“What?”

“All oh, Kai, I’m so sorry, that was so unfair.” Kai lifts his head. Soobin can’t see his face, but Beomgyu lifts a hand to his cheek, wiping his thumb under Kai’s eye. “It’s my fault. I was stupid, that’s all. Should have known better.”

“No,” Beomgyu says forcefully. “Get back in my neck. You’re not done scenting me.”

“Let’s sit,” Soobin says imploringly, as Kai ducks his nose back into Beomgyu’s scent gland. He meant it when he said it didn’t matter that people are staring, but the reality is it matters a little — an omega scenting another one isn’t exactly a common sight, and Kai doesn’t deserve to end up in the neighborhood gossip mill any more than he already is. At least if they sit, it won’t be glaringly obvious how closely they’re entwined.

It’s awkward, but Soobin manages to guide the two omegas back over to the bench without making them let go of each other. They settle down in a little huddle around Kai, Beomgyu draped over Kai’s lap this time, and Kai hides his face in his hands.

“Tell us what just happened,” Soobin says quietly, splaying one hand out on Kai’s thigh and gripping it in what he hopes is a reassuring way. I’m here, we’re together, always. It’s hard to fathom how differently this morning had been going when they were sitting on this bench just a few minutes earlier, all excited about Taehyun’s hologram.

“It’s the usual,” Kai says, muffled.

“The usual? You mean that woman calls you slurs, like, on the regular?” Beomgyu says, aghast.

Kai shakes his head.

“Not to me, but I’ve overheard it. She’s just like the rest of them, you know? Doesn’t like people like us.”

“But that doesn’t make it okay,” Beomgyu says. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us.”

“Didn’t think it was a big deal,” Kai says in a tiny voice.

“Why would she hire you, then?” Soobin asks.

“She didn’t.”

“So he did?”

Kai nods, but he doesn’t explain.

“Baby, we need to hear the whole story,” Soobin says, rubbing his thumb in circles into Kai’s thigh. “Please. What do you mean, he did?”

“I interviewed with him, that’s all,” Kai says, still in that tiny, scared voice, as if he’s going to get in trouble for whatever he says. “He wanted an omega nanny, she didn’t. They compromised on a boy one, ‘cause, like… well, I dunno why, but they hired me. And with the way I look, you know… maybe I didn’t really count as one.”

“Kai-ya, don’t,” Soobin says forcefully. “Don’t do that to yourself.”

Kai mutters something that Soobin doesn’t catch.

“You’re so omega that you broke my alpha when we met,” Soobin says. “Being tall doesn’t change that, pabo. You’re omega enough to be Beomgyu’s nestmate, aren’t you? To fix him, yeah?”

“If you don’t count as an omega, he wouldn’t have hired you, and she wouldn’t hate you. And you got hired, and she hates you,” Beomgyu says darkly.

“How horrible are they to you, then?”

Kai lets out a tired, defeated breath. “Hyung, they’re really not that bad. I just have to be well-behaved. I’m not supposed to talk about subgender stuff to the kids, or, like, bring friends around, especially if they’re like us…” He takes a deep sniff and fixes his gaze in the distance, to where Taehyun is taking his sweet time collecting Nabi from the other side of the park. “She doesn’t want the kids to ask her questions about heats or ruts, so they tell them I’m on vacation when I’m on heat leave. And there’s some morality clause in the contract, but I dunno. It was pretty vague about what counted as immoral. I figured dating… well, what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, but now they know, so. Yeah.”

“Are you kidding with this shit?” Beomgyu says. “That sounds pretty fucking bad, Kai-ya. So you can’t date? What, it’s immoral to have a fucking boyfriend?”

Or two, Soobin thinks.

“Maybe,” Kai says distantly.

“Well, you’re quitting that job, obviously, because that’s absurd,” Beomgyu says curtly. “Fuck that woman and fuck her creepy fucking husband.”

“I don’t think I have to quit,” Kai says. “I think I’m fired.”

“Baby, you don’t want their money,” Soobin says, squeezing his thigh. “Not when she looks at you like you’re… subhuman.”

The word comes too easily. Soobin knows that look so well.

“I do, though,” Kai says sadly. “They pay me so well. Twice what I got at my last nannying job, with all the tips.”

“Tips?”

“Yeah, tips. He gives me a lot of bonuses for good work.”

“What’s good work?”

Kai shrugs. “It’s pretty random. Just when he feels like it. Like when I do both kids’ baths, sometimes he’ll give me an extra few hours’ pay.”

“He does, but not her?”

Kai shakes his head.

Soobin has heard enough. There is no way in hell that that professor didn’t hire Kai with at least half a mind towards keeping a young, naive, single omega in his home for reasons that surely can’t be good. The distinctly bad vibe Soobin got from him over the phone tracks perfectly with all of today’s new information. His brain fills with a fictional vision of Kai in nothing but a white undershirt, emerging from a bathroom with a toddler on one hip and his shirt half-translucent from all the splashing, and a creepy little man leering at the swells of Kai’s body as the shirt clings to his chest… no, that’s not allowed. Even the conjured-up vision makes Soobin feel sick. 

“Kai-ya, you need to quit even if they don’t fire you,” Soobin says. “It’s not safe for you there anymore. It probably never was.”

“That dude wants to fuck you,” Beomgyu says.

“I really don’t—”

“And it’s not your fault, and you didn’t do a single thing wrong, but he does, and I can’t let either of those assholes hurt you,” Beomgyu continues. “So quit for me, okay?”

Kai stares across the park. He still looks fairly shell-shocked, squinty-eyed like he’s on the verge of tears.

“I never think of myself that way,” he says.

“I know you don’t,” Beomgyu says. “So I’ll do the thinking for you. You’re too fuckable for me to trust some horny old man around you.”

“He’s only, like, forty,” Kai says faintly, his hand fluttering to his throat.

“Even worse. He’s looking for his midlife crisis.”

Taehyun is approaching tentatively, dragging Nabi by the collar, and Soobin nods at him to let him know it’s okay to come back.

“Here comes your next pick-me-up, babe,” Beomgyu says. “Let’s ask Taehyunnie what he thinks of your boss, okay?”

“He’s just gonna say something about betas being awful, hyung.”

“Yeah, so let’s hear him say it. It’s true, isn’t it?”

“She’s a rowdy one,” Taehyun calls out brightly, finally reaching them with still Nabi trying to break free of his grip on her collar. “Got a leash?”

Beomgyu finds the leash on the bench, and Taehyun busies himself with clipping it onto her harness. He makes like he’s going to walk away with her again, but Soobin reaches out to grab his arm.

“Tell us something,” Soobin says. “What would you do, if you were Kai?”

“Quit that job.” Taehyun says immediately, dropping the smiley facade. “Never let a beta get away with that kind of shit. Make them suffer without you. It’s the only way they’ll learn.”

“I don’t think that would make her suffer, when she hates me,” Kai says, but Soobin can tell from his defeated tone that there’s no fight in him. His adrenaline has fully crashed into something closer to despair.

“What I really wish you could do is ruin her life somehow, but that’s unrealistic,” Taehyun says. So at the very least, make yours better and get out of there. You’ll find another job. Nearly done with school, right?”

“Yeah. But… rent,” Kai says. “Bills.”

“We’ll make it work,” Soobin says. “Don’t think about that.”

Now he’s thinking about it, though. He’s just escaped the stress of barely making rent, of unpaid heating bills, of three jobs. Soobin would do it all again if it meant getting Kai out of this nightmare of a job — and it wouldn’t be forever, surely. But… he thinks of the joy on Beomgyu’s face the first time they walked into the new apartment, when he saw that window and a whole new, better future unfolded for them, and feels it slipping a step out of reach again. Why can’t it just stay easy?

Soobin can tell what Taehyun is thinking from the way he’s pursing up his lips, teetering on the edge of the offer, but he won’t let him make it. Taehyun is kind enough to them already without spotting them for months of Kai’s share of the rent.

“Taehyun-ah, thank you,” Soobin says. “Sorry this got so… messy.”

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. It’s a fucking embarrassment, the way most betas think. Makes me feel sick.”

He holds the leash out to Soobin and trades it for his briefcase. Nabi seems to have thankfully tired herself out, settled down in a ball around the base of the bench.

“Cute dog, by the way,” Taehyun says. “Maybe bring her home and take it easy the rest of the morning, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Thanks for everything, Taehyun-ah,” Beomgyu says, reaching a hand out, and Taehyun squeezes it. “Stepping in, and everything.”

Taehyun shrugs it off. “It’s nothing. I just figured…if it got nastier, better for the heat to be on me, you know?”

On him, and not on me, Soobin thinks. Better for another beta to get in trouble than the alpha. He can’t remember the last time he felt quite so useless.

“I wish I could fix it, Kai-ya,” Taehyun says. “I’m so, so sorry.”

None of them have anything to say after Taehyun slips back out of the park. Soobin tries to think of something cheerful to suggest — maybe they could stop at that coffee shop on the way back, or pick up marshmallows to put in their hot chocolate back at home, but he doesn’t think any of that would do much to lift Kai’s mood.

“Beomgyu-hyung,” Kai says, finally.

“Mhm?”

“Being an omega sucks so much.”

Beomgyu snorts, and then he laughs for real, a bubbly belly laugh that Kai can’t help but smile at, too.

“It really does,” he chortles, once he’s caught his breath again. “It sucks ass.”

“It’s all so unfair,” Kai adds. “So fucking unfair, right?”

“So unfair. I think about it all the time.”

Beomgyu grabs Kai’s face and presses it to his own, kissing him, and before the smile even begins to melt off of Kai’s lips, Soobin can tell that he’s going to cry. Beomgyu must feel it too. He presses their foreheads together and just stays there, waiting for Kai’s tears to start falling.

“Give it all to me,” he murmurs.

Kai lets the tears fall. He’s silent as he cries, but his broad shoulders shudder heavily. Beomgyu keeps their faces pressed together, close as can be, mindless of all the people staring at them from across the park. What will help Kai the most is being with Beomgyu, wrapped up in his nestmate’s scent.

Soobin strokes the back of his neck with his thumb, working it through the baby hairs on his nape. It’s meditative, keeping him calm even as he hopes it’s helping Kai. His own emotions feel like a shaken-up bottle of carbonated soda, about to explode erratically if he can’t defuse them, and no one needs him to add to this mess.

Beomgyu leaves a soft kiss on Kai’s lips and pulls back to survey him.

“I wish you weren’t so pretty when you cry,” Beomgyu says. “It almost makes me like watching it.”

“Sick,” Kai says through his tears.

“You look like a wet fairy.”

“Isn’t that called something else? A nymph?” Kai laughs a wet, sloppy laugh, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, and then takes a deep breath down to the bottom of his belly. Soobin feels his spine straighten up under his thumb, and he leans in to kiss him right at the base of his neck, above the collar of his coat.

Fuck it, he’ll give the people one more thing to stare at. Soobin takes a deep, long drag of Kai’s scent, rubbing his nose into the side of his neck. He doesn’t smell the way Soobin likes him to — over-sweet, content — but Soobin can tell how much that long embrace with Beomgyu has helped him.

“Hyung,” Kai gasps. Maybe that was too deep of a drag.

“Let’s head home,” Beomgyu says quickly, glancing across the park. “If you need loving, let’s do it where we can really love you up.”

“Nothing’s gonna help,” Kai says, as Soobin unravels himself from around Kai’s back and Nabi leaps to her feet, shaking out her fur exuberantly.

“Well, let’s plan out what’s next, then, so you don’t have to stress about it,” Beomgyu says, standing and reaching for Kai’s hand.

No matter how much they try to salvage this morning, Soobin knows it’s ruined. They can’t shake off the rot at the core of what went wrong, not when it’s everywhere around them; not when people naturally give Soobin a wide berth on the sidewalk, or when every set of eyes that falls on the others makes Soobin’s heckles go up.

He hears the two omegas talking as they walk just ahead of him, but his thoughts drift away from their voices. All his anger has left him in a simmering haze, lost in how fucking unfair it all is. He remembers the way his mother always behaved in public when he was a boy, demure and too polite to store clerks and strangers, bowing deeply three times for every one dip of a beta’s head and shrinking down her tall, willowy frame to catch less attention. He remembers her wearing a sundress on one particularly hot day, something bright red and floral in Soobin’s blurry memory, and a passing man calling her a word that made her cry when they got home from the grocery store. After that, Soobin’s father never liked it when she ran errands without him, something that had struck Soobin as unjust as a child. He understands, now, of course. He’d lock his omegas up permanently if it would keep them from getting leered at, harassed, abused, but that would be no less unfair, would it?

“…hyung should come too,” Beomgyu says, breaking through Soobin’s haze.

“Hm?”

“I said that maybe you should come too,” Beomgyu says, turning to face him as they stop on a corner. “Could you? Miss work?”

“Come to the professor’s?”

“Well, duh, to the professor’s. Have you been listening at all?”

“A bit,” Soobin admits.

“I said I want to come along for moral support,” Beomgyu says, crossing his arms. “And Kai said you wouldn’t let me.”

“Absolutely not,” Soobin snaps. He doesn’t even want Kai going back to that house, much less send Beomgyu into the lion’s den, too.

“Right, so then I said you should just come too,” Beomgyu says impatiently. “Caught up now?”

The light changes and Kai lunges into the crosswalk, yanked by Nabi.

“It’s really okay,” he calls back over his shoulder as they race to catch up with him. “I can quit a job on my own.”

“But I don’t want you to have to walk home alone after,” Beomgyu whines. “Let me come. I can wait outside.”

“I’m coming too,” Soobin says. Now that Beomgyu’s suggested it, there’s not a chance in hell he won’t play bodyguard. The idea of letting Kai go into that house alone is unfathomable. He’s already failed him enough by freezing up while that woman berated him, and this is how he’ll make amends.

Kai groans. “You have work, hyung,” he says, exasperated, as they catch up to him on the other side of the street. “You’ll be late if you come. If I’m quitting my job, the last thing we need is for you to get fired too.”

“There are a billion factories I could work at,” Soobin says dismissively. “We’re both coming.”

“Then you’re both waiting outside,” Kai says. “What kind of baby brings his boyfriends to help him quit his job?”

“A very well-supported baby,” Beomgyu says. “So how long until you have to go in?”

“God, I don’t know. Way too long.” He reaches for Beomgyu’s hand again, and they settle back into that same walking stance, the two of them in front of Soobin. “I’m probably gonna be sick by the time I have to leave again.”

“So let’s just do it now,” Soobin says.

Kai stops in the middle of the sidewalk, yanking Beomgyu to a halt too and nearly toppling over as Nabi tries to keep going.

“Now?”

“Now. Why wait for your shift when all you’re doing is quitting? Send him a message that you’re coming in early to officially resign, and ask that he have your last paycheck ready, or whatever. Get it over with.”

“And then hyung won’t miss work. Perfect,” Beomgyu chimes in.

“But Nabi,” Kai says nervously.

“We’ll drop her at home first, and then head over. Let’s get it done, Kai-ya.”

It’s the right plan, but as soon as Kai agrees to it, his demeanor shifts from defiant to terrified. He stays silent for the rest of the walk back to the apartment, and runs to the bathroom as soon as they get back, insisting he just needs a moment to “freshen up.”

“You need to plan out what he’s saying in this voice message, because he’s too scared to do it himself,” Soobin says to Beomgyu as they hover anxiously by the front door, unsure if they should bother taking their shoes off or not. Nabi has already settled down happily on the couch, and the clock is ticking; if Soobin truly is going to make his factory shift, they’ve got to keep moving.

“And you should go in with him,” Beomgyu says, eyes fixed on the bathroom door. “I know he said he doesn’t want you to, but the idea of letting him go into that snake nest…”

“I know. I want to, too.”

“I bet he’ll let you once we get there. He was just trying to seem brave.”

“I know. He is brave.”

“Not that brave,” Beomgyu says, and then raises his voice. “Kai-ya? You coming?”

“In—in a minute,” Kai’s little voice responds.

Beomgyu gives Soobin a look and bends down to untie his shoelaces.

“I’m coming in,” he calls out, and Kai doesn’t complain. He just cracks the door open when Beomgyu knocks on it.

Soobin has gotten very good at waiting for the omegas by this point. He hears their voices, but doesn’t try to eavesdrop. He pulls out his phone instead and shoots off a voice message to Taehyun, just a quick update in case he’s worried. Then he follows that up with one to Yeonjun, asking him if he could maybe pull some timecard shenanigans if Soobin is late to work today, which is seeming increasingly likely. By the time he’s done on the phone and gone to top off the dog’s water bowl, Beomgyu has dragged Kai out of the bathroom.

“We left him a message,” Beomgyu says proudly. “Short and sweet. Just told him Kai will be there within a half hour and that he’s planning on resigning after an incident this morning.” He stresses the word incident dramatically. “As if he doesn’t know exactly what we’re talking about…”

“Good boy, Kai-ya.”

Kai is already starting to go a bit pink from the praise. His face looks more composed than it did when he went into the bathroom, a bit more prepared for what’s next.

“I just repeated all the things Beomgyu-hyung was whispering to me,” he says. “It wasn’t much.”

“Still. It was scary, and you did it.” Soobin bends down to pick up one of Kai’s sneakers, reaching it out to him. “Ready to get this over with?”

On this walk, Soobin leads the way. Kai calls out the turns when he needs directions, but otherwise, he walks tentatively behind him, firmly gripping Beomgyu’s hand.

“Think about time to apply for teaching jobs,” Beomgyu says to him. “More time to finish your schoolwork. No drama around your next heat.”

“I know, I know. All good things.”

“You’ll help me with my work, for now. I’ll keep you busy. You can spend all day with me.”

“Maybe you’ll get sick of me then,” Kai says. Unbelievably, he sounds like he means it.

“Never,” Beomgyu responds emphatically.

“Take a left, hyung,” Kai says. “Fuck, and I have to tell my parents…”

“They’ll totally understand. Who would want you to keep working for them after that?”

There’s a long pause. Soobin takes the left turn and keeps walking, making his strides a little longer and hoping they’ll keep up.

“It’s just… mortifying to have to talk about,” Kai says. “To have to say why.”

I had to quit my job because one of my bosses thinks all omegas are sluts, Soobin imagines Kai saying into his tablet. It’s awful, but it’s true.

The professor’s house is a few blocks away from the dog park, and the neighborhood gets nicer with every passing block. Most of the buildings here are shiny, sky-high towers, but when Kai finally says, in a shaky voice, “It’s on this block,” they’re walking past a row of low houses fronted entirely in glass. It’s the kind of neighborhood Soobin barely even enters, one where he could never picture himself.

“Good lord, they’re rich,” Beomgyu says. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Very.”

“You lead from here,” Soobin says, turning. “Did he ever respond to your message?”

“I felt my phone buzz, but I didn’t check it,” Kai says. He drops Beomgyu’s hand and wrings his own together.

“Good idea. Just go in blind and do it fast, then.”

“Oh, the kids might be sad,” Kai says, like he’s suddenly realized it. “Oh, shit, what if they… what if they cry?”

“They might,” Beomgyu says gravely. “But it’s not your fault.”

Kai’s face looks like it might crumple again, which would get them nowhere.

“Let’s go,” Soobin says, reaching a hand out to Kai. “I’m coming in with you.”

Kai nods. It’s as if he’s totally forgotten about his earlier insistence that he do it alone, now that he’s on the literal doorstep of the confrontation, and Soobin feels a rush of relief that he’ll be able to do what he can to keep him safe. He squeezes Kai’s fingers as tight as he can and resists the urge to kiss him and sidetrack their mission.

“And Beoms, you’re staying right by the door?”

“If I hear a commotion, I’ll kick the door down,” Beomgyu says. “Off you get, Kai-ya. Quitting time.”

Kai steps forward, leading them to a house three doors down, and Beomgyu gives him a little slap on the rear.

“You’ll be great,” he says, as Kai swings open the low gate in front of the rowhouse’s little front patio.

Imagine having a house like this, Soobin wants to say to Beomgyu. In a different set of circumstances, he’d be drooling at the prospect of living this life, of having enough money to afford a home with a cherry blossom tree out front and a cute little bench underneath it, right here in the middle of Seoul. This is what it could be like one day if Beomgyu’s talent was truly rewarded, and he could bedazzle celebrities in his gorgeous creations, with a proper workshop and employees to craft his designs. With three real salaries, maybe they could live like this, in a world where Soobin could work anywhere but a factory and where a real estate agent would give two omegas and an alpha the time of day. Well, maybe not a house quite like this, but at least one of those apartments in the glassy towers — something like Taehyun’s, but bigger. That home with a nursery that he described to Yeonjun.

No, it’s not worth dwelling on it. Not now, not ever. Too many pressing problems to think about the unfixable ones.

“I could let myself in, but that feels wrong when I’m quitting,” Kai says, shifting uncomfortably on his feet. He’s staring at the doorknob as if touching it will burn him.

“Do whatever you need to do,” Soobin says reassuringly. “Baby, it’s really okay. It’s just quitting a job. Everyone has to do it at some point.”

Kai presses the button on the intercom next to the tall glass doors and tries to let go of Soobin’s hand, but Soobin doesn’t let him.

“Don’t be ashamed. There’s nothing to hide,” he whispers, and Kai stops wriggling his hand. “You okay?”

Kai nods.

They don’t have to wait long. In just a few seconds, a small figure appears on the other side of the glass, bouncing down the stairs inside, and a moment later, the door is thrown open by a girl no taller than Soobin’s waist and with ribbons tied in her little pigtails.

“Oppaaaaa,” the girl sings out. “You’re early!”

Oh, this will be harder than Soobin expected. He’s suddenly struck by just how much time Kai spends here with this little girl and her brother. Whatever she’s about to be told about Kai after he quits surely will leave her with tainted memories that Kai doesn’t deserve, and maybe one day she’ll talk about him with her mother’s prejudices: remember that omega nanny we used to have? Can’t believe you hired one of them…

“I know, Jiwoo,” Kai says. “I have to talk to your appa, okay? Is he in his office?”

“Office?” she repeats. “Why?”

“It’s grown-up stuff.”

Kai makes to step into the house, but the little girl catches notice of Soobin and freezes, closing the door halfway.

“Who’s he?” she asks suspiciously.

“Oh,” Soobin says. “Um.”

Kai smiles.

“Good job, sweetheart,” he says. “No strangers, right?”

Jiwoo nods.

“But he’s not a stranger. He’s someone important to me, okay? Safe person, not bad person.”

“Okay,” she says easily, opening the door again. “I get appa.”

She turns around and practically runs into her father.

“I thought I heard your voice,” the professor says, crossing his arms. “I see you didn’t get my message?”

The professor is shorter than Soobin had imagined him to be, and younger; entering middle age rather than leaving it. He has lines settled in his face that could only come from frowning, not age, and hair that’s dyed noticeably too black, hiding whatever gray hairs he’s in denial about. He’s dressed in tight workout clothes made of some kind of high-tech material, showing off an incongruously fit body for his age and station. Soobin hates him immediately, but something inside him settles down in spite of his instant distaste. This is just a beta, just another one of the nuisances they have to ignore every day to live their lives in peace. They can handle this professor.

“I— I didn’t,” Kai says. “Can we speak privately?”

The professor grips Jiwoo’s shoulder, frowning so that the meat of his cheeks sinks into those deep, angry lines.

“If you wish to speak privately, why did you bring your friends?” he says pointedly.

Unlike Jiwoo, he’s noticed both of them, his gaze flickering past Kai’s head to take in Beomgyu leaning against the gate.

“Two of them,” he says, shaking his head.

“Two friends?” Jiwoo asks. She’s rocking back and forth on her feet, clearly bored already.

“Yes,” Kai says, at the same time that the professor says never you mind, Jiwoo-ya. “Sir, I’d really like to do this inside. Well, unless you have my wages right here…”

“I can transfer them the usual way,” the professor says. He’s staring at Soobin now, sharply and intensely, in a way that makes Soobin feel like a specimen in a Petri dish. “Where did he come from? You’ve never mentioned him, Huening-ah.”

“I’d rather take them in cash, if you have it,” Kai says firmly.

There’s a moment of silence while the professor just stares at Soobin, as if he hasn’t heard Kai’s request. His eyes are raking over his chest, like he’s measuring him.

“Fine,” he says suddenly. “Come in.”

He steps into the house and says something to the girl that sends her skittering away up the stairs, something Soobin can’t quite catch. Kai pulls Soobin through the door, and Soobin follows him without looking back at Beomgyu. He’s afraid of losing his nerve. Still, he hears Beomgyu hurrying up behind them to wait right by the doorway.

“Sir, this is Choi Soobin,” Kai says to the professor’s back as the door closes behind Soobin. “Just so you know.”

“Oh, I know,” the professor says without turning around. “You brought a bodyguard. Hyunhee mentioned you might.”

“Uh,” Kai stutters out. It’s true.

“I’m not going to hurt him,” the professor says, and Soobin knows that’s meant for him. “But if you insist, by all means, come in.”

It’s the least welcoming welcome that Soobin has ever received.

The hallway inside is dazzlingly bright, with rays of sunlight beaming through a skylight three stories up and a winding staircase leading into the light. The professor’s office is on the ground floor, right behind the staircase, and as badly as Soobin wants to get a peek at the rooms around them as they walk, all the doors in the hall are closed. Still, even the hallway reeks of wealth, with sleek armchairs artfully positioned in a niche that surely no one sits in and huge canvases providing the only splashes of color on the walls.

The professor scans his fingerprint on the office door’s lock and swings it open.

“Cash, you said?” he repeats. “So paranoid, Kai-ya. As if I’d shaft you on your pay after all this time together.”

Soobin’s alpha prickles at the sudden casualness. He hates the idea that this man knows his Kai, in any way at all. That he’s spent any time with him whatsoever, no matter how innocent, no matter how professional.

“All the same, sir,” Kai says. “If you wouldn’t mind. Cash is easier.”

Beomgyu will be so proud of him. He’s doing so well.

The office is startlingly traditional in comparison to the rest of the home, all classic wood paneling and leather-bound books. It’s like a movie set, comically perfect. Soobin wonders how many of the books have ever been opened.

“Shut the door, Choi Soobin,” the professor says.

Soobin does, leaning against it and crossing his arms. If he’s playing bodyguard, he might as well lean into the role.

The professor walks behind the broad desk in the middle of the room, dark wood with a leather top, and opens a drawer.

“Tell me what I owe you,” he says. “Oh, and sit. Sit.”

Kai had been lingering awkwardly halfway between the desk and the door, but now he sits tentatively in one of the sturdy chairs positioned in front of the desk. He’s only a few strides from Soobin, and Soobin starts to calculate: just a second and a half to reach him, if he needs to leap forward and seize him from the clutches of the professor. A ridiculous thing to think about, but he can’t help it.

“It’s a week and a half of full days,” Kai says. “Six overtime hours on top of that.”

The professor pulls a stack of cash larger than any that Soobin has ever seen out of the drawer, and stares right at Soobin’s face as he holds it up in the air.

“I’ll make it two weeks even,” he says, smiling. It doesn’t hide his frown lines.

A threat, Soobin’s alpha thinks. A challenge, but it doesn’t matter. He can show off his money all he wants, but it won’t change the side that Kai is choosing.

Don’t take it, he thinks at Kai with all his might. Maybe Kai will sense the message when he breathes in.

“Um, thank you?” Kai says uncertainly. “You really don’t have to.”

“Nonsense. After how Hyunhee treated you today, it’s the least I can do.”

He splits off a chunk from the top of the stack and holds it out to Kai without counting it.

“She takes it all too far,” he says in a pitying tone of voice, finally looking back at Kai. “It’s truly a shame. You’ve been an excellent nanny. But my wife is dead set on letting you go, and I’m afraid I can’t blame her.”

“But you’re not letting me go,” Kai says, taking the money. “I’m quitting.”

Soobin snorts. The professor glances at Soobin for a split second, and then purses up his lips, narrowing his eyes at Kai.

“I’m surprised it took you this long to break the agreement,” he says.

“Sorry?”

“At your age, with your looks, no alpha. Ever. Strange.”

“That’s out of line,” Soobin hears himself saying, and the professor’s eyebrows go up in surprise.

“He speaks,” he says. “Not just here to look threatening, then?”

“Kai-ya, let’s go,” Soobin says shortly. It feels like the room is getting smaller, and surely nothing good will come of staying here any longer.

“I need to — get my stuff,” Kai says uncertainly. “I have some things upstairs. Is that okay?”

“Be my guest,” the professor says, sitting behind his desk. “But he stays here.”

Kai turns to Soobin, who nods. He’d rather keep an eye on the professor than deal with the heartache of seeing that little girl following Kai around the house one last time.

“I’ll be quick,” Kai says quietly, and Soobin steps aside to let him slip out of the room. He closes the door behind him, but leaves it cracked open an inch, just in case something goes terribly wrong upstairs. He wants to be able to hear if someone yells at Kai.

“So,” the professor says, leaning back in his desk chair. “Take a seat.”

“I’m fine,” Soobin says.

“Want a drink?”

The professor gestures at the side of the room, where a long shelf of liquor is built into one of the paneled walls.

“Me?” Soobin asks, surprised. “Why?”

“Why not? You’re my guest.”

Soobin furrows his brow. The professor is looking at him with narrowed eyes, his cold expression a mismatch for his words.

“No, thank you,” he says, but the professor stands up and goes to the bar anyway.

“It’s never too early for bourbon,” he says, by way of explanation, and reaches for one of the brown bottles in the back of the shelf.

“I disagree,” Soobin says. “It’s not even noon.”

The professor lets out one short laugh, picking up a small crystal glass and bringing both back to his desk.

“Have you ever drank with our Kai-ya?” he says, leaning back against the desk and pouring what looks to Soobin like far too much liquor into the glass.

That felt like a provocation. A threat a threat a threat —

“Of course,” Soobin says calmly, ignoring the alarm ringing in his eardrums. “He’s my boyfriend.”

“For how long?” the professor says, putting the bottle down on the desk with a dull thud.

“Why are you drinking with Kai?” Soobin says, taking a step into the room. Three strides to reach him, if he has to knock him out. “Not very professional.”

“Oh, a bit of wine here and there, when he works holidays,” the professor says airily. “Omegas are such a joy when they’re tipsy, aren’t they?”

Whatever game this is, Soobin doesn’t want to play it. He watches the professor swill the bourbon in a circle in the glass, tilting it up towards his lips.

“I’ll ask again,” the professor says. “How. Long.”

“One heat cycle,” Soobin says, and tilts his head back, making himself taller.

That was the wrong thing to say, which makes it absolutely the right thing. Just a beta, just a creepy beta who Soobin can handle, and now Soobin can tell that he has the upper hand.

“Well,” the professor says, clearly off guard. “Well.”

“It’s new,” Soobin says, “but it’s going very well. He’s been very happy with Beomgyu, too. My mate. You saw him outside?”

“Beomgyu,” the professor repeats. Soobin has said that name to him once before, impersonating him on the phone. “Of course. Dating a mated pair, hm? Interesting.”

“Why do you care about any of this?” Soobin says. “It’s none of your business.”

“I take a special interest in my omega staff,” the professor shrugs. “Omegas need extra care.”

Lie. Soobin remembers all too well his haughty, dismissive tone on the phone, when Kai’s subgender got in the way of his daily routine. Apparently that extra care only applies to prying into his dating life.

“And it’s very much my business,” the professor says. “My wife is very sensitive about the influences our nannies might bring into this house. He was to abide by certain behavioral expectations, as per his contract.”

“What kind of expectations?”

“Oh, polite manners. Decent behavior.” The professor grins. “Not spending heats with an alpha, like an animal. Perhaps I should have been more explicit about that particular expectation.”

Soobin’s heart pounds. Stay calm.

“That’s an insane thing to ask for,” he hears himself say.

“I’m sure you can understand why it matters to my family that our staff have… good reputations,” he enunciates, gesturing around his grand office with his glass. “Picking an omega who we can trust to control himself is the only way I can get her to take on the risk of hiring one at all.”

“So stop hiring them. Find a beta,” Soobin says coolly.

“Oh, you of all people should understand why I’d rather hire an omega,” the professor says. His grin widens harshly.

Now, Soobin is the one caught off guard. He hadn’t expected the professor to just… say it.

“I don’t know what you want from me, but you’re not getting it,” Soobin says, taking one more step into the room. “Find another omega to drool over. You’re not doing it to mine anymore.”

“Yours, is he?” the professor says. The glass goes still in his hands.

“Mine,” Soobin repeats, lowering his voice.

Soobin hadn't noticed how little the professor blinks. It’s unsettling, especially when he just stares like this, boring his sharp gaze into Soobin’s.

“So it’s really like that,” the professor says. “Let’s have a little chat, then. Man to man. About your omega.”

Soobin would rather not, but if his demeanor stiffens, the professor doesn’t seem to notice or care. Instead, he lowers his voice confessionally.

“Were you the first?”

“I’m…sorry?”

“So that’s a yes,” the professor says. “What does he taste like?”

For a moment, Soobin thinks he must have misheard him.

“What?” he says, dumbfounded.

“Your omega. My nanny. What does he taste like?”

There’s not a hint of shame in his voice. He lifts the glass to his lips and takes another long sip, and Soobin processes the words, letting them simmer in his belly. Taste like. What does he taste like.

“You’re not serious,” Soobin says.

“Oh, come on, now. You lot love showing them off, don’t you? Talking about your conquests? Tell me how good he is.”

“I would never,” Soobin growls, but it doesn’t stop the professor. This is a man who’s used to being in charge.

“I’ve been with omegas before, but nothing like him,” the professor says casually, swilling the glass again and leaning back on the desk with one palm. “Nothing as much as him. And I’ve always wondered… if more omega is better in bed than less omega. If he wasn’t so frigid, I’ve have found out.” He raises his eyebrows at Soobin.

Before he can stop himself, Soobin takes two of the three strides.

“You’re disgusting,” he hisses. Punch him tear him bite him rip him — “You’ll never have him, and you’ll never taste him, and he’ll never want you.”

“I’ll taste the next one, then,” the professor says, shrugging. “One’s as good as the next. Wet little bastards, and easy, too. And one of them wasn’t enough for you, fucking dog.”

There it is, the hate, the envy that Soobin knew was coming. It’s always there, lurking in all the glares, the slurs.

“No,” Soobin says, halving the gap between them so he can loom over the desk. For the first time, the professor seems to shrink in his frame, just a bit. “No, I needed two of them. And I got both of them. And I didn’t have to bribe them with tips, or wine, or special favors.” The professor opens his mouth, but Soobin keeps going. “You said you’ve been with an omega before.”

“Of course I have,” the professor says haughtily. “Many.”

“Have you knotted one? Fucked him through his heat? Mated him for life?”

The professor shifts his weight against the desk, his tongue darting out to wet his cracked lips.

“No, you’re not enough for an omega,” Soobin says. “Not enough for my omegas. Don’t kid yourself. You’re desperate, and small, and you’ll never get what you want. I have what you want.”

Punch tear bite rip. That was close enough to the real thing. The professor slams his glass down on the table, scrunching up his face as if he’s been slapped.

“Get out,” he orders. “Take your whore and get out.”

“Whore? Funny thing to call him, when you couldn’t pay him to sleep with you.”

“You’ve probably ruined his cunt now, anyway,” the professor says savagely. “I bet he would taste like dog.”

Soobin boils over. Time slows down. His fingers tighten into a fist, his muscles coil —

“What?” Kai’s dumbstruck voice says from behind him. “What did you just say?”

Soobin spins around, his punch falling through the air into nothingness. Kai is standing in the doorway with a bulging tote bag slung over his shoulder and what looks like a child’s drawing in his hand. His jaw hangs open.

“Huening-ssi,” the professor says sharply. “Huening, I—”

In an instant, Kai turns and disappears through the door, and Soobin sprints after him.

“Baby, baby,” he calls out, as Kai runs for the front door.

“Out,” Kai cries. “Need—”

He flings the front door open and falls right into Beomgyu’s waiting arms.

“Kai-ya? Oh my god, what—”

Kai buries his face in Beomgyu’s shoulder and bursts into wrenching, deep sobs.

“Did he hurt you?” Beomgyu says, panicked.

“He’s a fucking cunt,” Soobin snarls. “A bastard. Worst kind of man.”

“Called me — said I’d taste like…” Kai sniffs out, barely audible.

Soobin can see the anger building in Beomgyu’s face, in his frame, his stiffening shoulders.

“He said what?” Beomgyu is seething.

“He’s worse than we thought,” Soobin says, reaching for Kai’s shoulders to massage them. “Fuck, I wanted to — he called him a whore, Beoms—”

Beomgyu’s rage overflows.

“Take him,” he orders, flinging Kai’s larger body at Soobin with a strength that he must have summoned up from the depths of his chest.

“Gyu—”

Beomgyu charges through the still-open door.

“No!”

Soobin can’t catch up with him; it takes a second to get Kai standing up properly on his own two feet in all his tears, and in that second, Beomgyu has already sprinted halfway down the hall. He heads right for the office, the only open door, and by the time Soobin reaches the doorway, Beomgyu is standing feet from the professor, practically quaking with rage.

“How could you?” he yells. “What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

“Very scary,” the professor says dryly. He’s behind his desk again, filing away the remaining stack of cash. “So here’s the other one. Not very threatening, darling.”

“Don’t you dare call me that.” Beomgyu leans across the desk, and when Soobin grabs his shoulder, he brushes it off forcefully. “How could you treat him like that? He’s practically raised your kids, you monster.”

“You know, this is all making me rethink hiring omega nannies,” the professor says smugly, looking at Soobin over Beomgyu’s shoulder. “I thought they’re supposed to have a motherly touch, but this one is just a bitch.”

Beomgyu slaps him.

“Fuck you,” he hisses, and lunges for his face again.

“Beoms!”

Soobin grabs him around the waist and lifts him before his second slap can connect. God oh god, Beomgyu just slapped a beta, he just slapped the professor —

The professor is clutching his reddening cheek in shock, and as Soobin hauls Beomgyu towards the office door, Beomgyu flails his legs, prying at Soobin’s forearm with his fingertips.

“Let me go, I’m not done with him — you fucking asshole —”

Beomgyu slapped the professor, Beomgyu slapped the professor. What next? What now? Soobin can only think of getting him out of there. He drags him, still kicking and screaming, through the hallway, where the little girl stands shocked halfway down the staircase, drawn by the noise. He hears her saying something quizzically, but Beomgyu’s yelling drowns her out, and Soobin runs as fast as he can for the safety of the open front door. He has to get him out of here, and they have to disappear. Beomgyu in a cage in a courthouse — Beomgyu in an institution — Beomgyu getting chemically castrated, just like Yeonjun almost was —

“What? Hyungs? What —”

“We need to go,” Soobin shoots at Kai as he stumbles through the front door, still carrying Beomgyu. “We need to get out of here.”

“What happened?”

“I hate him,” Beomgyu cries out, his rough yelling starting to waver into tearfulness.

“He slapped him,” Soobin says, setting Beomgyu down and taking one of his hands. “Let’s go, let’s go—”

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god…” Kai panics, grabbing Beomgyu’s other hand and starting to run for the gate.

“I wanna get him,” Beomgyu babbles. “Get him.”

Soobin drags him through the gate, and Kai yanks them both back in the direction they came.

“You already did,” Soobin yells as they run. “You got him good. Jesus Christ, Beomie…”

“I wanna kill him,” Beomgyu yells back.

“Thank god you didn’t! Do you realize—”

“Slapped by a… fucking omega,” Kai says, already starting to pant. “Imagine… the look on his… face…”

“He’s the bitch,” Beomgyu spits out. “He deserved it.”

“Just run,” Soobin says angrily, and the two omegas stop talking, letting Soobin pull them as fast as he can around the corner and far, far, as far as they can make it without stopping.

When they finally hit a red light at a broad avenue three blocks down, they have no choice but to skid to a halt. Kai immediately flings his arms around Beomgyu, and they pant together, chests heaving, embracing.

“Thank you,” Kai mumbles into Beomgyu’s shoulder.

“Thank you?” Soobin says. “Do you realize… Fuck, Beomie, that was a crime, what you just did!”

“So what?” Beomgyu says. “You mean you didn’t want to fucking murder him?”

“I did, but… Jesus, do you realize what he can do to you? Do you even remember what happened to Yeonjun-hyung when he just got accused of hitting a beta?”

Beomgyu lifts his head from Kai’s neck, and to Soobin’s surprise, he looks angry… at Soobin.

“Don’t be stupid,” Beomgyu says. “I’m an omega.”

“I… I mean, sure, but…”

“How could I have slapped him? I’m just a little angel,” Beomgyu says. “Just a little butterfly. Just a little whore.”

He breaks into a broad, mischievous grin, and Soobin is hit with an unbearable urge to kiss him, to kiss Kai, to drown them both in his embrace and never let go.

“I’ll take care of all the slapping, hyung,” Beomgyu says. “Better me than you.”

“Should’ve punched him in the dick,” Kai says, lifting his head and rubbing one of his teary eyes. Soobin can tell that his face is about to crack again.

The light changes.

“Even so,” Beomgyu says. “I think we should probably still run. And, like, fast.”

“Cry at home,” Soobin says, leaning in to wipe Kai’s other cheek. “Cry as much as you want at home. It’s all over.”

Kai takes a deep, shaky breath and nods.

“Run again?” he says, forcing his lips into the most beautiful, wobbly smile.

Soobin takes the middle this time, grabbing Kai’s elegant hand and Beomgyu’s tiny one, and they take off again, dodging a stroller in the crosswalk.

“Quite the story you’ll have for your parents now,” Beomgyu yells, as Kai nearly trips on a storm drain on the corner. “Think I should tell them I slapped a creep for you when I meet them?”

“That’ll make my sisters love you, at least,” Kai yells back.

Soobin takes a deep gulp of the cold air and lets it out as a deranged, giddy laugh. Nothing is funny, everything is twisted, and each step is only bringing a temporary safety. But Kai is here, and Beomgyu loves him more than anything in the world, and no pervert could ever ruin what Soobin has. What else is there to do but laugh?

“The world is wrong about us,” Soobin says at the next corner, doubling over. “It’s the omegas who are the savages, hm? The violent brutes?”

Beomgyu slaps him, light and playful.

“Make him pay for that at home,” Kai says, giggling, and it almost sounds genuine. He’s trying so hard to be brave, and Soobin thinks he’s fooling himself into believing it.

“Still going to work today?” Beomgyu asks.

“Fuck no,” Soobin says. “I’m taking you both to bed. Hot chocolate. Making out.”

“Crying,” Kai says.

“Crying,” Soobin agrees. “Calling your mom. Calling your therapist. Whatever you want.”

“Lots of making out, then,” Beomgyu says. “Come on, running again. Keep me out of jail.”

They’re ten blocks from the professor’s, and for now, they’re safe.