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Kim Dokja reasonably took Yoo Joonghyuk’s clinginess towards him during his rut as the regressor’s biological instincts to seek comfort during an alpha’s rut (being clingy) and chronic trust issues (being clingy to him of all people). He genuinely could not comprehend what it was about his bland beta self that Joonghyuk prefers over, say, Lee Seolhwa’s refreshing apple mint scent—especially when he considers that they were once mates.
His first attempt to make sense of the mystery fell short as the glare the alpha shot him in response to the question was so scathing he thus learned to never bring it up again.
(“I cannot believe you,” Han Sooyoung pinched the bridge of her nose, sounding as fed-up as she usually is with Gilyoung and Jihye’s conspiracies, “He had him on your lap and cozily tucked in his arms, and you really went and asked something like that ?!”
[ Kim Dok ja is a fo ol. ] The Fourth Wall unhelpfully supplemented. Dokja promptly ignored them both.)
As much as he prides himself on understanding Yoo Joonghyuk, courtesy of 3149 chapters of TWSA, he sometimes has to admit the sunfish can be an indecipherable enigma. It had been one peaceful evening in the Industrial Complex when the woody scent of cedarwood with a bitter edge of tea leaves clogged up the living room, intense enough for a plain beta like Kim Dokja to remove his attention from his phone.
Dokja can still recall the unreadable gaze he was met with when he looked up at his companion by the doorway and the slight shift of cushion when Joonghyuk quietly sat down next to him, a bit too close for comfort. He politely greeted the alpha with a smile and a light nod, earning himself a noncommittal grunt in response—an indication that the latter wasn’t exactly up for conversations. The rut must have hit particularly hard, he idly noted, for Yoo Joonghyuk to seek company instead of isolating himself God-knows-where like he usually does.
As there were no omegas present, Dokja chose to leave the other to his own device, trying to ignore how invasive the pheromones were even to his poor beta senses. They minded their own businesses for a good while—until the regressor decided to rustle closer for whatever reason.
The shortened distance was negligible, truly, but the heat permeating his skin where their arms nearly touched did the constellation in.
Dokja was up to his feet in a split second, quickly excusing himself, and escaped to the safety of his room with his heart hammering in his chest. It filled him with sheer dread at the belated realization that the scent was making him increasingly delirious while it shouldn’t—
To his horror, Joonghyuk, too, picked himself up and followed him. Kim Dokja let him be, convincing himself that they just happened to head in the same direction.
It was eventually clear that nothing was a coincidence when they both stopped in front of Dokja’s bedroom.
“Yoo Joonghyuk,” he exhaled, turning his head to look at the regressor. Gosh, had cedarwood always been so suffocating a scent? “Do you have any business with me?”
The alpha silently stared at him for a moment before he blinked. Kim Dokja pursed his lips, watching his companion return to his senses before the taller male turned on his heels and left without another word.
The door softly clicked shut as the beta leaned onto it and took a deep breath. He was reminded of Yoo Joonghyuk’s rough hand tightly wrapped around his throat upon their first encounter when the lingering prickly scent filled his lungs. He slid down to the floor, face burning and buried in his hands, not knowing what he should make out of his current state.
[ Kim Dok ja kno ws. ]
“...Shut up.”
Yoo Joonghyuk fucked up badly the next day.
The hidden scenario was easy enough for nobody to be severely injured despite one of their core fighters getting terribly distracted. Still, it was unlikely that luck would remain on their side to the next round, so Dokja took it upon himself to ask Lee Seolhwa for suppressants.
“Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi hasn’t used medication for his rut for a while now, so I cannot tell if there will be unknown side effects,” the doctor regretfully informed him, “I also talked to him about that a while ago. He insisted against using them and indeed had a fairly strong hold of himself, but…”
Distinctively heavy footsteps were heard approaching them. Dokja saw the way Seolhwa raised her eyebrows before she grinned at him.
“He seems to be quite fond of your presence. Maybe you keeping him company would work a lot better, Dokja-ssi.”
She had retreated into the backroom when Dokja opened his mouth to refute. The door then opened to reveal the brooding protagonist, whose shoulders, for some reason, immediately relaxed when dark eyes fixed themselves on the beta’s frozen form.
He could definitely pretend that he was blind to the reaction, but,
“Kim Dokja.”
Lee Seolhwa’s words replayed in the reader’s mind. He averted his gaze, likely out of guilt, when he made no resistance to the warm, calloused fingers finding their way around his wrist.
(“He dislikes being around everyone,” Dokja couldn’t make sense of the teasing glint in Yoo Sangah’s eyes, “You know how that guy is, Sangah-ssi.”
I’m simply helping him meet his secondary gender’s needs so he can work with higher efficiency being free from physiological drawbacks, he wanted to add, and he happened to trust me to not stab him in his back. He didn’t, but he believed Yoo Sangah could understand what he was trying to say.
“Do I now?” Moonlight Empress hummed, taking another sip of her warm coffee. He found the aroma on Han Sooyoung that very evening and fully indulged himself in the well-needed distraction.)
The event had activated a switch in Yoo Joonghyuk that gave the man severe difficulties keeping his hands off Kim Dokja. It wasn’t long until it became an unspoken norm that Dokja would be the alpha company during his bimonthly ruts.
Things were easy—well, as easy as the situation could be—at first, with nothing more than light, casual touches that could effortlessly be passed as involuntary. The Fourth Wall verbally jabbed his denial without fail, to his ultimate displeasure, but he knew he owed it for keeping him from freaking out when Joonghyuk so much as brushed their fingers together.
Still, he would give himself credit for, at some point, normalizing it into a natural part of his routine. The alpha grew bolder with his demands for physical comfort, and Kim Dokja had somehow started reciprocating instead of simply freezing up like a statue. To pet the other’s hair soothingly whenever strong arms wrap around his waist and the regressor’s chin comes to rest on his shoulder, for example, had become something that occurred to him more naturally, like a built-in reflex.
It was like placating a pet, Dokja thought, turning back in time to see said pet wielding his sword masterfully and cutting a fifth-grade monster’s head off. Bittersweet fondness had his heart caught painfully in his throat. He knew it would only be temporary, only until Yoo Joonghyuk finally settles with a suitable mate, yet—
“Don’t slack off, you fool!”
He patted the regressor’s back in appreciation for the alert after cleanly finishing off the beast approaching him from behind in one blow. Yoo Joonghyuk huffed in dismay, likely not wanting his clothes to be dirtied by Dokja’s bloody hand, but he didn’t avoid the touch either. A knuckle knocked against the beta’s forehead, barely enough to hurt. The reader wasn’t given enough time to complain until he was pulled into a loose embrace around his shoulders.
Fuck.
“...What the hell,” Kim Dokja swallowed an unsavory noise, turning his head around intelligently, trying to detect the familiar smell of cedarwood, “You’re not in rut, aren’t you?”
The alpha let out an exasperated sigh in response,
“You talk too much.”
“Else I’ll die, Joonghyuk-ah.”
“Kim Dokja.”
The constellation laughed at the look in Joonghyuk’s eyes despite himself. He smoothly shrugged himself off when the hold gave the slightest hint to tighten up, ignoring the evident frown on the alpha’s face. To his mild surprise, the regressor acquiesced with only a furrow of his eyebrows. He crossed his arms and stared Kim Dokja down,
“Don’t joke about something like that again.”
Dokja blinked.
He had never imagined himself as an omega for the nearly 30 years of his life. At that moment, though, the vision of him being able to bear Yoo Joonghyuk’s permanent mark at the back of his neck and being protectively surrounded by cedarwood and tea leaves in the air breezed past his mind, reminding him of his dormant want to belong to Yoo Joonghyuk in the truest sense, body and soul alike. A small part of him whispered like a devil, how nice would it be if he could seduce Yoo Joonghyuk out of his mind with his own essence…
Surely, he couldn’t dream of having Lee Seolhwa’s apple mint the alpha had been infatuated with, but—
[The Fourth Wall is shaking.]
“...Yeah, I shouldn’t. I’m sorry,” Kim Dokja jerked the hand that had unconsciously reached backward to touch his nape back, all while avoiding his companion’s curious, piercing gaze. What did he just think about again?
“It’s getting late. Let’s go back together?”
The protagonist didn’t reply, but he took Dokja’s hand and tugged him on as he strode his way back to the Industrial Complex.
The beta quietly sighed. This much… he could sanely take.
This is wrong.
Kim Dokja whimpered into the heated kiss, involuntarily creating an opening for Yoo Joonghyuk to slip his tongue in. A large hand pinned tightly his wrists to the wall as the regressor brought a knee between his legs to nudge them apart.
[ Kim Dok ja wan ts it a ny ways. ]
It was an unholy hour in the morning when Joonghyuk practically kicked his door down. Thankfully for Dokja, he had been pulling an all-nighter to review the strategy for the scenario they would be entering later that day to save himself from a heart attack, but his brain was still mudded enough from fatigue to promptly shut down when he was dragged by the collar of his shirt from the desk and roughly slammed to the wall.
“...Yoo Joonghyuk?”
The intensity of cedarwood and tea leaves was enough to asphyxiate the beta. He struggled to breathe as he tentatively peered into the alpha’s dark eyes. Dokja couldn’t find a word to fully describe them, but they reminded him of wildfire spreading into the dead of night. The pheromone wrapped snugly around his throat like a thick, sentient piece of rope. He could barely gulp before warm lips covered his.
This is wrong.
His consciousness dimmed in and out with the oxygen deficiency. He gasped for breath so hard when he was finally released that he ended up choking on air. If it weren’t for the hand still stubbornly holding both his hands up, Dokja would have pathetically slumped to the floor from how weak his legs felt.
“You’re… It’s…,” he started, his voice rasped, “Worse than normal… it seems?”
This is wrong. I cannot be—
The grip on his wrists suddenly relaxed. A hand moved to support the constellation by his tailbone before he could stumble forward. Kim Dokja instinctively gripped the black sweater in front of him, trying to catch up with respiration. His whole body felt inexplicably hot, as if he had been swept in by the flames lighting his companion’s eyes.
[ Kim Dok ja kno ws wh at tha t me ans. ]
Bodily pleasure was something he knew conceptually but had never been accustomed to; hence he was powerless against the small sparks of electricity running through his veins from where the protagonist was gently stroking him through his shirt, where his lips carefully traced the arteries on his neck down to his collarbone. Seeing that a little kiss had already thrown him out of the loop, he could not imagine what would become of him if they were to go all the way.
Even if Dokja survived the pheromone clogging the room and feathery sensations trickling down his spine solely by miracle, then it would be the lack of sleep that easily took his last line of defense down. His reflexes lagged horribly, leaving him clumsily fumbling to follow Yoo Joonghyuk’s movement over his body. The clearest he could comprehend was the tightness in his pants, which he mindlessly ground against the regressor’s legs, instinctively eager for friction. He vaguely heard Joonghyuk’s breath hitch when his nails dug into the taller male’s chest, and he was alone in the cold—
Huh?
[ The Fourth Wall is violently shaking. ]
“Kim Dokja, I’m sor—”
The beta shut the rest of Yoo Joonghyuk’s sentence up by slapping a hand over his mouth. He didn’t want to hear it.
This is wrong.
[ The Fourth Wall is— ]
He was tired and aroused. More tired, still aroused nevertheless. He could not think—didn’t want to think.
“Yoo Joonghyuk,” he started, quietly, “Do you want me?”
[ The exclusive skill, The Fourth Wall, is temporarily disabled. ]
The voices in his head sounded like radio static: Blame it on the lack of sleep. Blame it on the rut. There’s a difficult scenario to clear in the evening and Yoo Joonghyuk needs to be in top condition. We can pretend that everything was a dream, the signs would be easy to get rid of. No one has to know. No one has to remember. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.
The alpha raised his eyebrows as if the beta had told him the Earth is flat, “Why wouldn’t I?”
There was time to dwell on any other complications. That much was more than enough.
Dokja threw his arms around Joonghyuk’s neck and pulled him down for a kiss. It was clumsy, all teeth and tongue, but the alpha didn’t pull back. Something as warm as relief washed over him when the protagonist pulled him even closer and took over control, once again dragging the beta to the verge of death in the best ways possible.
“Bed,” he muttered, licking his bitten lips and pulling back. The metallic aftertaste simultaneously scared and excited him. Yoo Joonghyuk’s searing gaze followed his every move like a hungry predator stalking its prey, and Kim Dokja wanted nothing more than to be fully devoured.
Circumstances had taught him not to overestimate himself, however, so he added, for good measure, before he was picked up and dropped unceremoniously onto the bed on his stomach,
“...Please go easy on me.”
For how much Yoo Joonghyuk had spent all his previous ruts acting like a giant, clingy, physically affectionate dog in front of Kim Dokja, the protagonist became a textbook alpha in rut once he ripped Dokja’s loungewear off. While the reader simply had assumed it was his physiology that hit especially hard this time, it seemed more plausible at the moment that the alpha had simply been holding back. Joonghyuk’s overspilling endurance now dripped over his skin, as hot as candle wax, and what choice did he have aside from being pliable and nicely accepting it all? There was only so much a beta can provide for a distressed alpha, and Dokja felt a need to compensate for what he couldn’t decently do for his protagonist.
Despite the generous amount of lube and preparation that had gone into him, he believed that he was physically split in half when the protagonist pushed himself fully inside of him. Tears stung his eyes and his throat felt constricted. It hurt in a terribly unsexy way that had Kim Dokja genuinely wondering if there was any non-omega without self-lubrication who could truly enjoy this.
“Relax,” the alpha grunted lowly into his ears, pressing gentle kisses on his earlobe, and brushing his bangs from his sweaty forehead, “It’ll be better in a bit.”
He bit and clawed at the bedsheet, trying his best to adjust to the pain by focusing on the small circles Yoo Joonghyuk was rubbing reassuringly on his back. It made an amusing contrast, for foreplay had been somewhat terrifying, leaving his skin with a plethora of marks and bruises—perhaps as an initial relief for how pent-up he had been before having to be patient when the main course came.
The thought nicked his guilt-filled heart a bit deeper, so Dokja tried to rut back on the alpha’s cock, just to see if any movement would help, only for his hips to be roughly grabbed in place.
“Patience.”
It was weirdly embarrassing to hear that for some reason. Kim Dokja naturally quipped back despite the tremble in his voice,
“You made it sound like I’m the desperate one.”
“Aren’t you?”
“For the record, I did not break into someone else room at three to hhh— ”
The movement was slight but the beta could feel it against him as clear as day. It was, of course, painful, yet exhilaration too came in form of his cock hardening again, rubbing against the smooth fabric underneath. The alpha dipped his head and grazed his sharp canines on Dokja’s tender nape. Large hands moved to slot between his companion’s fingers, urging them to relax. He took a deep breath and felt the pain slowly dim away, noting how the scent of cedarwood was no longer as suffocating and tea leaves were sweeter than he ever smelled.
The constellation blinked away the tears from his eyelashes, “I think… I’m good now.”
Yoo Joonghyuk fucked him slowly, experimentally, as if mapping out what would elicit from Kim Dokja a soft, needy whine and what would have him sharply exhale and shiver. The pattern repeated with little alterations, and before long, the regressor had accurately pinpointed how to reduce his partner into a quivering mess. Movements then grew bolder, more rapid. Their bodies tangled and melt into one another. The reader succumbed to pleasure under his companion’s careful administration, mewling as his hips set into a rhythm in tandem with Joonghyuk’s.
“Hhn… M-more…,” it felt good, yet not nearly enough. Kim Dokja helplessly rutted his neglected dick into the mattress, words thoughtlessly spilling from his lips, “Harder—Ahn–!”
Any reservations and tenderness eventually dissipated into the air, giving the stage to primitive instincts and pure gratification. A hand roughly pushed Dokja’s head to the bed as the other raised his ass to make an angle that the alpha could conveniently pound into without thought. The shift from being treated as a cherished mate to a sentient toy was nothing the beta had prepared for, yet he keened, loving the way he was being thoroughly used to the protagonist's liking.
Sharp teeth teased the nape of his neck. Joonghyuk’s fingers locked tightly into Dokja’s disheveled lock. A simple push exposed the unblemished skin, and a sharp pain ran straight to his dick—
The alpha bit him so hard he could tell that he bled. If he still had half of his mind, not drunk on pain or pleasure or elation, he would have chided the oversized dog with the imagination of Lee Seolhwa giving them hell on how unsanitary and unsafe it is to lick someone’s blood off after you bite them.
“Y-Yoo Joonghyuk—Joonghyuk-ah, g-give me more,” he chanted instead, tightening up when he felt the fat cock inside of him happily twitch, “Joonghyuk-ie… Alpha … please—”
Heedlessly erratic as everything was, God’s favorite sunfish still somehow managed to nail his prostate every damn time. The constellation’s vision flashed white with climax building up in his stomach. Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand reached to wrap around his pathetically leaking cock, and everything crashed down at once. Kim Dokja tettered on the edge of consciousness as he came, barely aware enough to feel fingers releasing his hair to tightly grab his chin and turn his head back for a deep kiss.
“Take it all for me, Kim Dokja.”
Dokja weakly whimpered when the regressor pulsed inside him and filled him up. Yoo Joonghyuk took a moment to even his breathing out before carefully adjusting his exhausted beta to sit up in his lap, small back flush against his chest, not yet bothering to pull out from him. The reader slumped dazedly, letting the alpha shower his bitten neck with kisses—
—Then, he felt it.
“...Don’t move,” damn sunfish winded his arms around his midsection, keeping him in place, “It’ll hurt more if you struggle.”
“...”
“It’s only for a moment. Bear with it.”
[ The exclusive skill, The Fourth Wall, is forcibly reactivated. ]
Kim Dokja decisively closed his eyes. He didn’t have enough energy to deal with this.
The next evening, Dokja woke up to being nicely cleaned and dressed. His bedsheets were changed. His neck was probably taken care of, given the familiar texture of the white rayon bandage. Except for his whole body feeling like it was literally taken apart and put back together and the terrifying post-nut clarity he was hit with, he supposed it wasn’t too bad…
“The scenario can be postponed,” Yoo Joonghyuk handed him a glass of water, “You should be resting today.”
The beta nodded, feeling a little lightheaded. The cool water felt amazing against his sore throat, a great contrast to his mental gymnasium as he quietly recalled the events of the night before. What he was feeling at the moment was undecipherable—a part of him soared to cloud nine and another dove straight to the deepest depths of Hell. Tentatively glancing at Joonghyuk who appeared completely unaffected, he decided that it was time to have the talk.
They couldn’t go any further than this.
“Yoo Joonghyuk.” / “Kim Dokja.”
Their eyes met, both similarly widened, and the two fell into a silent staring contest. Under normal circumstances, Dokja would be the one with manners and let Joonghyuk speak first, but this was an urgent matter that needed to be solved as soon as possible. Maybe the determination in his orbs somehow shone through, because the stubborn regressor sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “Speak.”
The reader cleared his throat. Suddenly he was unsure if he was fully prepared for this.
“Yoo Joonghyuk.”
The man in question glared at him in annoyance, demanding that he get to the point. That eased his anxiety just the slightest bit.
“I’m a beta.”
“...I am aware,” the corner of Joonghyuk’s mouth twitched, eyes clearly read no shit Sherlock, “If you are messing with me, then—”
“I cannot bear children.”
Lee Gilyoung and Shin Yoosung’s bickering could be heard from outside. The alpha momentarily glanced towards the window, “Do you really want more?”
“No?” Dokja blinked, vaguely sensing that they weren’t on the same wavelength, “Yoo Joonghyuk, I don’t have scent glands.”
“And never have I had a problem with it.”
Stupid thick brows furrowed in dismay. Kim Dokja felt his heart growing heavier with each word. He truly didn’t want to spell that out himself.
“You cannot mark me permanently, Yoo Joonghyuk. You’re an elite alpha, you cannot just stick with me forever—”
The beta shut up. He had been lifted up by his collar. Yoo Joonghyuk looked seconds away from murdering him for real.
“Then I shall make sure the mark never fades, Kim Dokja," the taller male very literally growled.
"What is your point? I do not give two shits about your secondary gender, nor will I accept that to be the reason you would want to break up.”
[ Kim Dok ja is an idi ot. ]
“About time,” Jung Heewon applauded with a grin, “You reeked of him, Dokja-ssi. Nobody believed Han Sooyoung when she insisted that you two weren’t official.”
Lee Hyunsung looked like he was about to stand up and wished for their happiness aloud. Lee Jihye looked like she was waiting for that exact moment to laugh her ass off.
“It wasn’t fully my fault, though?” Kim Dokja side-eyed his new boyfriend, “You don’t just assume you are dating someone when you haven’t even confessed, do you?”
“Master literally could not keep his hands off of you.”
“I thought it was his trust issues—”
“You two,” the tip of Yoo Joonghyuk’s ears were pink, yet his voice wasn’t a bit less threatening as he gripped so hard on his teacup it could break any moment, “Shut up this instant.”