Chapter Text
Jeongguk would not generally consider himself a person who regularly finds himself involved in situations wherein he unironically fears for his life.
But this situation? This situation just might be one of them.
“Are you, uh, rich?”
The answer to his question is so glaringly obvious that asking it all feels rude, in hindsight. His words flatten on the oriental rugs, between the leather and the chaise lounges that smell like money and loaded bank accounts, and the heavy curtains with the five-layer shit going on. This place is a fucking mansion, and isn’t afraid to flaunt it at every turn. There might have been an actual stained glass window in the foyer complete with a floral frieze around the ceiling.
“I’m comfortable.” The guy’s name is Jimin, as Jeongguk would take it. Park Jimin. Between the old cherrywood cut of the walls, and the rustic motif of the entire house, he’s oddly misplaced wearing his biker jacket.
“You live here alone?”
“Nah.” Jimin laughs. “I have two housemates. Namjoon’s the loaded one. Yoongi packs some heat himself. Not sure if they’re home yet—oh, you’re in luck, they are. I wonder how they’re back so early today.”
It’s mid-afternoon, so Jeongguk has the sense to be surprised, too. Though he supposes that anyone that can afford a getup like this doesn’t have to work around the clock to make their paycheck come through. Jimin’s phone click-click-clicks as he shoots them a text, and Jeongguk continues ogling the house around them, not quite registering that he’s looking at his third chandelier in the span of ten minutes, or the actual home theater they’re standing in the entrance of. The floor itself is the couch. The wall is the screen.
Jeongguk, a just-toeing-broke college student, feels a headache coming on, as most college students do when they’re around a lot of riches they can’t have.
“Okay, they’ll pop by to say hi.”
“I thought you said they were home.”
“They are. Not sure where, though. So, Overwatch, right? You said you were good?”
“I—yeah, I’m good,” Jeongguk says, dropping his questions to rise to the challenge. “Why, you don’t think I am?”
“Listen, my housemates aren’t what you call amazing gamers. I’m just trying to get a feel for what I’m up against here.”
“I play ranked.” Jeongguk pulls his laptop out of his beat-up backpack. “I was a master-ranked Widowmaker last season.”
Jimin raises his eyebrows, giving a low whistle. “Damn. You didn’t tell me about that part.” He holds his hand out so Jeongguk will give him his laptop and get it connected to the TV screen.
“I try not to brag.”
“Hmm,” says Jimin, eyeing Jeongguk until he squirms on the cushions. “Oh, here they are.”
“Jimin, I hear we have guests?”
The door slides open and a man with ash brown hair slicked out of his face peeks in, looking like he’d just gotten back from work in a somewhat uncomfortably pressed pinstripe suit. There’s a smaller figure behind him, looking equally as intimidating but nowhere near as starched, the collar of his black dress shirt relaxed around his neck.
“Hey, hyung. Yeah, meet Jeongguk!”
Jeongguk sits up, raising his hand to give an awkward wave, when it hits him: the intoxicating scent of alpha, alpha, alpha. Three of them, including Jimin sitting next to him, as if the smell of their skin awakens only when they’re together.
It all punches him so very hard, square in the nose.
He’s walked right into the pit of an alpha’s den.
Rewind, rewind. This is not where the story begins.
There are some things to understand here. Like how Jimin, Yoongi, and Namjoon, three alphas, manage to all live under one roof. Or Jeongguk’s very good question about their wealth (yes, they are wealthy, where that money comes from is Another Story). And, of course, this seemingly stupid decision to invite two other alphas to come sniffing at the tail of the first and only omega that’s ever stepped foot in this mansion.
Yoongi does not actually react when Jimin breaks the news at the dining table at breakfast, staring catatonically at his konjuk as if he’s fallen asleep with his eyes open. Frankly, Jimin wouldn’t put it past him.
“Wait, wait, let me get this straight,” Namjoon says, a hint of a disbelieving chuckle stuck in his throat. “Are you telling me your life has been a literal parody of a coffee shop story, and that you’ve been chatting up the college kid that comes and studies at the Caffè Bene you work in until it wasn’t weird to invite him over?”
“Hyung! You don’t even know. He smells. So fucking good? The nicest smelling omega I’ve ever met, I swear he has to be it. Once he walked in to study after a workout, and I think I jizzed on the spot.”
“Christ,” Namjoon mutters. “Real question is why you’re telling me. I’m flattered and touched, but at the end of the day, you don’t need my permission, nor is it any of our business who you end up mating.”
“It is too our business.” Yoongi rises out of his waking coma to interject. “It means we have to start clearing out rooms for nests.”
“Well,” Jimin says, electing to ignore Yoongi, “you bring up a good point, hyung. It’s why I’ve been dawdling so much about bringing him around. He hasn’t exactly been rejecting my company, either.”
“No? I suppose that’s a good sign.”
“Leaning in, wearing low collared shirts, stretching his neck out. The whole deal. He was definitely presenting.”
“So what is this good point Namjoon brought up,” Yoongi says. His spoon clinks against his bowl as he finally musters the energy to sit up and start eating. “Because I failed to see it.”
“The good point is, I’m not bringing this up at the breakfast table just for shits and giggles. Do you not realize that there is the possibility that he might not just be my omega alone?”
The noises of breakfasttime cease abruptly. Namjoon looks up from the news widget on his phone. Yoongi actually deigns to meet Jimin’s gaze, eyes all the way open for the first time since rising from bed nearly an hour ago.
“Think about it, right? Have you ever heard of alpha dens with three alphas and no omega? You know other dens are always the other way around, an alpha plus a couple of omegas. Not to mention you and Yoongi-hyung have been together for years and years now.”
“You mean to say,” Namjoon asks, with raised eyebrows, “that he is an omega to the three of us?”
“I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if he were.”
Namjoon turns to look at Yoongi, sitting across from him at the long dining table, with Jimin’s gaze ping-ponging back and forth between them where he sits at the end. “Is that possible?”
“Like he said, it’s not impossible.”
“So you’ve heard of this happening before?”
“Not between three alphas. Two, sure. From what I understand, two of the girls from the Red Butterfly gang have an arrangement like that with their omega. Solar and Moonbyul. Their omega is some civilian by the name of Jung Wheein or whatever.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of them.”
“So it’s definitely not unheard of.” Yoongi folds his napkin in half, then into thirds, then, compulsively, into quarters. “Just uncommon, maybe.”
“And you’re saying you want to bring him over so we can—what? Take a whiff of him?”
“I mean, we’re not going to know what the verdict is unless I do, are we?”
“You’re going to scare the shit out of him.”
“What? No! He loves gaming, I’ll invite him over for some Overwatch. You guys can just say hi.”
“Like a couple of well-to-do parents offering condoms.”
“God, you don’t have to say it like that, hyung,” Jimin mutters. “What do you think?”
Yoongi does not immediately say, “It’s a horrible idea,” which means it’s probably a great idea. Even Namjoon, though silent, seems like he’s going to say yes, and Jimin can’t help the triumphant look that crosses his face.
“You need to be transparent with him, Jimin.” Namjoon laces his fingers together and rests his chin on the bridge they make. “If he’s anything like Jung Wheein, he’s not going to react well to being led into a mansion of an alpha den.”
“Great! So it’s a yes?”
“It’s a, ‘I mean, I guess,’” Yoongi says.
“Awesome, I’m excited too.”
“Don’t be ostentatious, okay,” Namjoon says. “Just invite him over for video games. Dinner, I guess, if he wants to stay.”
So, uh, the Maserati might fall under the heading of ostentatious but Jimin really didn’t think to take that into consideration until Jeongguk was following him out to his car after his shift ended that day. He watches nervously as Jeongguk’s eyes get big, then bigger, and he regards Jimin with a kind of terrified admiration.
“This is us?”
“Uhm. Yeah, this is me,” Jimin says. The car chirps as it unlocks, the headlights flashing as they blink sleep away from their eyes.
“You drive a real Maserati.”
“Hard to pirate cars, yeah.”
“A Maserati.”
“A GranTurismo.”
“You have,” Jeongguk sinks into the passenger seat, rummaging for his words. “A sweet ride.”
“Not bad, right?” The controls and stereo light up with a dim blue glow as Jimin starts the car, hearing Namjoon’s sigh of what did I tell you about being ostentatious in the back of his mind, garnished with Yoongi’s legendary eyeroll. “Settle in, we have a bit of a drive.”
“You live far from here?”
“It’s a little out of the way,” Jimin says. Jeongguk seems like he’s on the verge of asking another question, but stays quiet, and runs his hands appreciatively over every nook and cranny of the car that his hands can reach—the leather seat, the glove compartment, the door handle, even the lid of the airbag on the dashboard. “You ever been to the far side of the city before?”
“I don’t have a reason to. University’s in the next city over, my apartment’s a couple of blocks away.” Jeongguk figures out how to roll the window down and brings it low enough so that he can stick his face out slightly, hair whipping around his head. The wind is strong enough to blow Jeongguk’s scent back into Jimin’s face in pummeling gusts, and he white-knuckles his steering wheel in an attempt not to breathe too hard or reach out and put his hand on Jeongguk’s thigh. Yikes. It’s not good alpha etiquette to touch any omega before they’ve agreed to be touched at all.
“You’re in for a treat, I’d say.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Yeah, I thought so,” Jimin says, cutting off a Lexus to get onto a highway ramp and chuckling when he gets a furious horn at his back windshield. “Hope you like tteokgalbi.”
“You’re worried.”
“I am not worried.”
“Your pen’s been silent for going on fifteen minutes now. You’re worried.”
“You noticed, huh?”
Even without looking, Yoongi can tell Namjoon is shaking his head. “Your surprise is not reassuring. Of course I noticed. In all the years we’ve been together, I’ve gotten pretty good at reading you, hyung.” Yoongi’s desk creaks where Namjoon leans against it. “So. Spit it out. What’re you thinking about?”
“Do you really think it was a good idea to let the kid go through with his whole idea to bring that omega home?”
Namjoon raises his eyebrows. “Why would it be a bad one?”
“I don’t know what to expect.”
“Do either of us, really? What’s the worst that could happen? He decides he doesn’t like us and doesn’t return. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Ouch. Don’t remind me.”
“Sorry.” Namjoon laughs under his breath. “Hey, he was hot. I’ll give you that.”
“That’s hardly the worst that could happen, and you know it.”
“What?”
Yoongi grimaces.
“Oh, come on, hyung. That’s not going to happen. And even if it does, why are you worried? Jimin and I are here.”
“You stand in front of me when we go see him.”
“You really need to give yourself more credit, hyung.”
Yoongi wets the seam of his lips with his tongue, then heaves a sigh. “Whatever. You’re right, as you are about most things. I don’t know. What if the kid’s actually right? What if that omega is ours, all of ours? How would that even work? What’s going to happen to the three of us? What—”
His words trail off into the muted, omnipresent silence that hangs over the house’s miniature library at all hours, punctuated just barely in the evening by the sleepy hoots of great grey owls. Namjoon’s knees hit the hardwood with soft thuds when he kneels down in front of where Yoongi’s seated, and reaches up to cup his face in his hands.
“Hey, shh. It’s fine. It’ll be fine. The three of us have lived together for all this time now, and if Jimin really does bring home the one, it won’t make you worry like you are now. Okay?”
Yoongi looks into Namjoon’s face for several moments, then turns his gaze away. “How can you know,” he says, more quietly than before.
“I don’t know how I know,” Namjon says, nudging Yoongi’s jaw with his fingers until he meets his gaze again. “You asked me the same question about how I could know bringing Jimin into this pack was the right decision, but in the end, wouldn’t you say it was?”
“Instinct.”
“Exactly.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“I can tell you’re worried, because you’re asking me and not arguing,” Namjoon chortles, and Yoongi rolls his eyes as Namjoon’s hand slips down to take both of Yoongi’s where they’re pillowed in his lap. “I’m not sure about this omega. But I am sure that if he’s it, then you don’t have to worry what he’ll mean for the three of us, or what will become of us. Or whether he’ll be all of ours. It’ll be easy.”
Namjoon’s phone dings in his pocket, then, and he gets back to his feet to read the text.
“Oh, they’re here. Let’s go.”
“Wait—now? They’re here?”
“Yeah. Come on, let’s not keep him waiting.”
“You’re really going to meet them in that suit,” Yoongi says. “Jesus. I look underdressed next to you.”
“You look fine, Yoongi. They’re down in the home theater.”
The setting sun casts long, golden slats through the house where the curtains have not yet been drawn, and Yoongi admits that his nerves jitter with anticipation as they take the stairs down to the first floor. Just as they make the landing, he hears the muted sounds of conversation behind closed doors.
“Relax,” Namjoon says, and slides the theater door open. “Jimin, I hear we have guests?”
“Hey, hyung!” he says, looking behind him as a figure stands up slower. “Yeah, meet Jeongguk!”
“Jeongguk,” Namjoon says. “Awesome to see you.”
Christ, Yoongi doesn’t know where Namjoon gets his control. Maybe for sale on Ali Express, he’ll have to check. It’s reflected in every aspect of his life, really, from how he talks to how he holds himself during ruts, but his breathing stays soft and even as he gives Jeongguk a standard little handshake that makes this feel a lot more like a business deal than meeting a new omega.
Jeongguk’s scent absolutely clobbers Yoongi in the face. It almost hurts to breathe around him, and Namjoon, as controlled as he is, still feels tenser beside Yoongi than he had been seconds before. “Yoongi,” he says, extending his hand and feeling as though the touch of Jeongguk’s palm to his is enough to electrocute the blood in his hands. “It’s great to meet you.”
“Are you guys,” Jeongguk looks from Jimin, to Yoongi, to Namjoon, “all—all together?”
It sounds as though he was about to say all alphas, catching himself just as the syllable was about to roll off his tongue. Namjoon clears his throat.
“Somewhat. Did Jimin not tell you?”
Jimin has the shame to look rebuked.
“Not really.”
“We’re an alpha triad. We share this den—well, if you can call it one, we know it’s big. So yeah, we’re together.”
Jeongguk’s eyes are big and dark, as if the combined scent of three alphas is making him lightheaded, too. They linger on Namjoon’s face for several heartbeats too long, drinking him in deep and slow, before he seems to shake himself out of the trance. “You have a lovely place.”
“It’s a lot, right,” Jimin says. “That’s what I said when I first got here.”
Yoongi fidgets. Jimin cottons on quickly, and says, “Anyway, get the fuck out. I’m trying to smash him to smithereens in Overwatch, so we’ll see you at dinner—you down to stay, Jeongguk?”
“Wait, I really can’t intrude—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you’re not intruding. I told you to be ready for tteokgalbi,” says Jimin.
The door slides shut as Namjoon and Yoongi step out, and they’re silent the entire way to the dining room, where Yoongi falls into his usual seat at the table. To his surprise, Namjoon follows suit.
“Well.”
“I have a boner,” Yoongi confesses candidly.
“No, honestly,” Namjoon drags his hands down his face, once, twice, and presses his fingers into his eyes. “I do too.”
“Holy shit,” Yoongi says, and can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of his throat. Namjoon, too, laughs despite himself, cheeks dimpling as he rocks forward and presses his head into the tabletop. “Holy shit, he’s it. He’s the one. Jimin was actually right.”
“Did you see his face?” Namjoon groans as he straightens. “God fucking dammit. He had no idea what he was getting himself into, I knew Jimin would forget to give him the rundown about us.”
“Yeah, he definitely looked like he was going to bolt for good minute back there. It helps that he’s,” Yoongi winces at the memory, “big.” Bigger than both him and Jimin, lacking only in the height and breadth department in relativity to Namjoon.
“He’s gigantic. I thought Jimin might have fucked up and brought home another alpha, but that smell. God, he’s an omega alright.”
“What now?”
“Dinner, I guess. I asked the cooks to stop by this afternoon and make tteokgalbi.”
“No, like. I get that, but what do we do now that, well.”
“Oh.” Namjoon frowns. “Standard protocol is courtship, then wait and ask the omega to accept you as their alpha.”
“And there are three of us.”
“It doesn’t have to be much different. I’d say it’s the same.”
“Will you do the asking?” Namjoon is the de facto leader of their small, cozy triad. It would only seem right.
“If that’s alright with the two of you.”
“I trust you,” Yoongi says.
“I know you do.”
“Anyway. That tteokgalbi, I want to fucking eat.”
Namjoon won’t admit it to his face, but Jimin’s probably the best out of the three of them at the courtship thing.
The last time Namjoon went out on a date with someone with Yoongi was never, and Yoongi isn’t your usual Saturday night date, so he has to redesign his entire approach to the romantic dinner thing. Yoongi’s idea of a romantic dinner is naengmyeon in the home theater watching Inception.
“Oh my God, it’s not that hard.” Jimin comes home nearing midnight halfway through the next week, shouldering his gym bag over his sweaty shoulder and smelling so strongly of Jeongguk that Namjoon has to close his eyes and do impromptu breathing exercises. “Just take him out to do things you like doing. Don’t be boring. Take him for a joyride in your car, ask him what he likes to do, celebrate when it’s physical shit like working out, and then make out with him in the back seat in a parking lot until the windows steam up.”
Yoongi raises his eyebrows. “Is that. What you did?”
“Yeah. Makeout session was pretty good, thanks to me.”
“He let you kiss him?”
“Well, I’ve known him for a while now, so. It wasn’t that hard. We got back to the car after hitting the showers at the gym, but the smell of him was to die for, so I just leaned over the console.” Just about here, Namjoon suspects that were Jimin to have the adequate length for it, he would’ve hairflipped. “Your move,” he concludes, waltzing up the staircase to deep clean.
Yoongi turns back to look at Namjoon.
“God, he’s good,” is all Namjoon can say.
“Well, we have to make our moves at one point or another.”
“I know.” Namjoon groans, like a sad cat mid-bath.
“Wait,” Yoongi says, realization dawning on his face.
“No,” Namjoon says, immediately on the defensive.
“Are you nervous? Oh my God, you’re nervous.” Yoongi cackles. “You’re nervous!”
“As if you’re not? Have you figured out a way to tell him exactly where our money came from, or where our lines of work lie at night?”
“God, no, but you said it yourself,” Yoongi says. “He’s it. It’ll come easy. It’s not like we have any real crimes to confess to, you know. Stop painting yourself as the criminal.”
“He’s so cute,” Namjoon says, pained. “I do not want to fuck this up.”
“What did we even do when we met?”
“Fuck if I know,” Namjoon says, sitting back from his work and resting his head on the back of his chair. “You got a light?”
“Mm. Yeah, down to my last two.”
Neither of them light up much, if at all, and only in the sitting room with the skylights when it so crosses their mind to. Yoongi doesn’t tease as he sticks the cigarette between Namjoon’s lips, movements methodical and soothing as he lights up with his Zippo. The gold monogram flashes beneath the glare of the lamplight.
“Thank you.” Namjoon draws his eyebrows together as he takes a long, burning drag into his lungs. The end of the cigarette glows, then darkens, a dying phoenix. He reaches up to pinch it between his fingers, then blows a long column of smoke over himself.
“That stressed, huh.” Yoongi stores the lighter away inside his desk drawer. “Try dinner. That’s easy. Not to mention Jeongguk looks like he could clear out an entire all-you-can-eat in under thirty minutes.”
“It’s not that impressive.” Yoongi gives him eyebrows, and Namjoon sighs as he taps the ashes into his glass ashtray, immaculate for ages now. “Fine, you’re right, you’re right. It doesn’t need to be.”
“Just be honest. We’re not trying to get him to like us. Biology takes care of that part. We’re trying to get him to trust us. Only love bridges that gap.”
It’s not like Yoongi to give Namjoon spiels about The Power of Love, so he gets his shit together—he is, after all, the head of this triad—and asks Jeongguk out to dinner by the end of the week, after Jimin squeezes in another double-whammy date.
“Are you gonna go pick him up in your Rolls Royce?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s worse than a Maserati,” Jimin drawls, lying on his stomach on the chaise lounge and watching Namjoon adjust his tie in the mirror.
“If he’s seen this house, he’s seen it all.”
“I guess I can’t argue with that.” Jimin frowns. “Hyung, come here.”
“What? Why?”
“Just come here.”
Namjoon does, coming to a stop in front of Jimin on the lounge, and bends when Jimin beckons him in. He scrutinizes him.
“Hm.”
He yelps when Jimin reaches forward and rakes his fingers through Namjoon’s hair, still stiff from being coiffed all afternoon. It stings across Namjoon’s scalp when he drags the strands out of their hairsprayed formation, and he only relinquishes his hold after Namjoon feels like he’s been run through a sifter.
“There. Now you don’t look like you’re on your way to embezzle a hundred million won from a top CEO.”
“I’ve never done that.”
“No, but I’m sure you’re capable of it, hyung.” Jimin winks cheekily. “You want an insider tip? Yoongi said he’s above that shit, so I’ll offer it to you.”
Namjoon snorts. “Sure, what is it?”
“He likes duck meat. Loves duck meat.” He concludes this with a pat on Namjoon’s much-taller shoulder. “Good luck.”
“Damn, really?”
“Yeah. Woo him with that duck meat to your meat.”
“I’m gonna total your car, Park Jimin.”
“Do it,” Jimin says, waving a lazy hand as he leaves, presumably to go bother Yoongi. He doesn’t even look back as he snags his half-full glass of malt whiskey off the sitting table. “It’ll give me a reason to get the Levante, anyway.”
Jeongguk is late, which is fine, because that gives Namjoon enough time to read the menu and act like he’s been here before.
In the booth by the window, he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the glass, and proceeds to loosen the knot of his tie, too. Jimin’s work on his hair looks better than he could have imagined, and he’s in the middle of considering whether he should take off his Rolex when someone slides into the seat across from him.
“Did you wait long?”
Jeongguk is as college as they come, wearing a dark red hoodie and a beanie over his hair, pulling a backpack that’s coming apart at the zipper seams off his shoulders. He whisks his hat off, shoving it into the bottle pocket of his bag, and smiles.
“No, I just got here.”
“You’re a lifesaver, you know,” Jeongguk says, running his fingers roughly through his fringe to get the tangles out of his hat hair, probably self-conscious next to how well dressed Namjoon is. Fuck, he should have taken the Rolex off. He can’t regret it for too long with Jeongguk effectively fanning his scent across the table. “I’ve been trying to get by on not spending money to eat out, but our fridge broke down in our apartment.” He groans. “I just love coming home to rotting food and nothing to eat.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Going to freshman events for free food,” Jeongguk laments. “There’s nothing like being asked what your major is and what dorm you live in fifty times to get your hands on a measly bowl of ramen.”
“And you are…?”
“A junior.” He picks up his menu. “I know this is the first time I’ve really talked to you, hyung, but you don’t have to be so formal.”
Namjoon unlaces his fingers where they’ve come to be folded over the table.
“Sorry. Habitual.”
“Jiminie told me you’re not much of a playboy,” Jeongguk says, and Namjoon rolls his eyes at this. Of course he did. “When’s the last time you went on a date?”
“To be honest with you, it was pretty recent. But I’ve been around Jimin for a while, and Yoongi for even longer.”
“How long?”
“Yoongi? Maybe seven years now. Probably closer to eight. Jimin, four.” Namjoon eyes the waitress approaching their table, and jerks his chin at Jeongguk’s menu. “Order your food.”
“Oh, right, right.”
Jeongguk spends a lingering moment looking at the order of a whole duck before he flips the page, and Namjoon lets him read the dishes before he says, “If you want the whole duck, I’ll get it for you, you know.”
“No, that’s so much money. My mom didn’t raise me to order expensive food when someone else is treating.”
“And my mom raised me to treat—to treat an omega to whatever he wants. Checkmate.”
Namjoon laughs when Jeongguk squints at him, trying to decide who wins this one. Mostly he’s glad Jeongguk doesn’t seem to notice how Namjoon nearly said “my” instead of “an.” Phew.
So they get a whole duck, and some doenjang jjigae for good measure. Jeongguk eats like a starved child, and Namjoon is thankful for the steaming soup under his nose to mask the flare of his scent when he ducks his head to shovel tofu into his mouth.
“You weren’t kidding about that broken fridge.”
“I couldn’t make that shit up,” Jeongguk says, tilting his head back and chewing, with eyes closed like he’s tasting a little corner of heaven. “Thank you for taking me to dinner today.”
“Hey, the best part’s not even out yet. Thank me later.”
“So, can I ask you something?”
“Absolutely. Ask me everything.” Namjoon scratches the back of his neck. “We’re here to let you figure out who we are, to be honest.”
“Who are you three, exactly?”
“We’re all alphas. An alpha triad.”
“And you all live together.”
“It’s unconventional, I know. But we work well together, better than we do apart. I’d say, before we met each other, we were all lonelier than we knew.”
“And how are you all so rich?”
“Well,” Namjoon props his elbows on the table and leans in slightly, until Jeongguk does too. “We do some work with some very wealthy people.”
“Like chairmen, something like that? Are you chaebols?”
“No, not exactly.”
“So what is it?”
“Yoongi and I,” Namjoon chews on his lower lip, looks into Jeongguk’s face. For a horrible moment he thinks Jeongguk might turn tail and run in the next ten seconds, but then Jimin’s smiling face and Yoongi’s slouching eyeroll cross his mind and he takes a breath. “Happened to be in the right place at the right time years ago, and helped out someone without realizing who she was.”
“You helped out a chairman’s daughter?”
“Think a little more interesting.”
Jeongguk’s eyebrows disappear into his bangs. “The president’s daughter?”
“No,” Namjoon says. “Uhm, think a little less legal.”
Understanding unfurls across Jeongguk’s face. “You accidentally helped a crime boss?”
“Shh,” Namjoon says, peering at the tables beside them, though the restaurant is noisy enough for their conversation to go unnoticed. “Kind of.”
“What did you do?”
The air feels hot and sticky, and Namjoon swallows around the pulse in his throat. “You’re not gonna run?”
“Well, it’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Jimin kind of gave me the primer,” Jeongguk picks up his spoon, swills it in his soup. “And I don’t get the vibe from either of you that you’re bad people.”
“Back then, Yoongi and I shared a motorcycle, and we made money doing deliveries. It was a pretty miserable life, but we lived it. And we did it together, just the two of us. He’d crushed his shoulder on one weekend, it was a pretty bad accident, and I decided to take on his shift—the night one—to make ends meet, and, well, I found myself in the middle of what I guess must have been a crime scene. Girl jumps on the back of my bike after I make my last delivery for my shift and screams at me to go, just go. I was so tired, I didn’t even think about what was happening. So I did.”
“And she was the daughter of a boss?”
“So it would seem.” Namjoon pins his napkin under the point of his chopstick, twirling it until it makes a soft indent in the paper.
“Are...are you guys in the mobs?”
“Not really. I mean, Jimin works in a cafe.”
“I don’t think that cafe paycheck got him that Maserati.”
“No,” Namjoon says. “We help them out from time to time. Technically speaking, it’s not illegal, but, well.” A shrug. “That paycheck is handsome, I have to say.”
“What happened to that bike?”
“What, the one that I was riding at the time? Up in the attic of the garage somewhere, under a tarp.”
“How can you be embarrassed about that, then?”
“What do you mean?”
“You say it with so much shame. ‘I helped the daughter of a crime boss.’ It’s not as if you committed a crime, or even knew what was happening. All you saw was someone who needed your help, and you gave it, even when it wasn’t convenient for you.”
The cushion of the booth whistles when Namjoon sits back and the air whistles out of it. He’s it. It’ll come easy, comes Yoongi’s voice. Unable to find his words, Namjoon can only laugh, though it’s more like a sigh of relief than anything.
“What?”
“Nothing, you’re just,” Amazing? Different? It, whatever that means? Anything he could think of sounds contrived. Namjoon shakes his head when he sees their waitress elbow her way out of the kitchen with a whole duck plated. “Never mind.”
The conversation doesn’t get so heavy again, and like Yoongi had predicted and Jimin had promised, it is easy.
Conversation with Jeongguk is surprisingly easy for how far apart their current paths in life are. He likes to sing, but doesn’t think he’s good at it (Namjoon doubts this). He can stay up late into the night drawing. He hates spending a lot of time on something if he can’t be perfect at it on his first try. He’s a handful of contradictions; sudden yet measured, excited yet unbothered, and watching him talk has a certain mesmerizing quality like watching a sparkler burn down its wick during the summer months.
“But what about you?”
“What about me?”
Jeongguk snags some duck skin off Namjoon’s plate and crunches it between his teeth. “Lame. You know that’s the best part. I mean, what about you? What do you like?”
“Music.” No-brainer there. “That’s where Yoongi and I work now. We spent our days on that bike dreaming about making it, so when that windfall came along, we decided to go after those dreams.”
“You need to show it to me sometime.”
“Whenever you want, just come over,” Namjoon says. Jeongguk’s smile is shy. “No, really. Just say when. One of us is bound to be free.”
They’re one of the last people in the restaurant when they leave, and Jeongguk goes through the predicted meltdown when he sees what kind of car Namjoon drives.
The trunk pops open. “You can put your backpack in here.”
“Sure is an upgrade from a motorbike, huh,” Jeongguk says weakly, setting his bag down so gently that you’d think it was carrying live cargo. “You close it, I might fuck it up if I touch your car.”
“Fucking shit up by touching it is my job,” Namjoon says, reaching around him and tapping the trunk lid so it falls shut. He makes to pull away when, in that moment, it becomes obvious that Jeongguk is standing awfully close.
He is standing awfully close, and he’s not moving away, wedged between Namjoon’s body and the car, staring up slightly into his face.
“Uh.” His scent makes Namjoon’s blood warm, and he tries not to scratch his nails across his car’s paint job. “It’s cold.”
The words We should get in the car get lost somewhere in the air between them, inexplicably charged, as Jeongguk leans in even closer. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”
Namjoon would be a fool to tell himself that he was the only one that had been intoxicated all evening, and now, out in the near-empty parking lot, Jeongguk seems to finally be unafraid to acknowledge it. The body of the car is cold as Namjoon plants his other hand on the back of his trunk, trapping Jeongguk’s body with his.
“What do you want me to do?”
Jeongguk doesn’t answer this time, so close their noses are practically brushing, but he does look down at Namjoon’s mouth before he meets his gaze again. Namjoon steels himself, not moving until Jeongguk does it again, then lets his eyelids flutter shut.
It’s not the backseat of the car, so there are no windows to steam up. Still, Namjoon is sure that they would if they were curled up back there like Jimin had so sordidly described. Streaks of heat dash down Namjoon’s spine as Jeongguk whimpers and presses closer, wrapping his arms around his neck in an attempt to close the distance between their bodies. His lips are warm, and not all that clumsy, like he’s done this enough with other alphas to be practiced. A wave of possessiveness tears at the insides of Namjoon’s chest at this thought, and he backs Jeongguk into the trunk more roughly than he means to. The force of it knocks their lips apart.
“Sorry,” Namjoon says, after a beat of silence, and Jeongguk shivers with giggles.
“I liked it.” Jeongguk drags his fingers through the back of Namjoon’s hair. “You should do it again sometime.”
Fuck. Jeongguk’s lips are red and kiss-swollen when Namjoon pulls back, and he wears that tiny smile on his mouth the entire drive back to the station he asks to be dropped off at.
Their omega is going to be the absolute death of him.
Waking up in the middle of the night is inconvenient at best, and disorienting most other times, especially when Jeongguk doesn’t know what woke him. He could probably sleep through a tornado and be found in the rubble still knocked out and snoring.
But well before sunrise, he jerks out of sleep, like someone had looped a hook around his body and tugged hard. The air feels too thick to breathe. His blankets weigh down on his chest. It takes a few seconds, but as his senses come back to him, so does the acute awareness of the desire scorching holes through his skin, slamming against the inside of his ribcage like a sledgehammer.
Fuck, what the fuck. It’s far too early for his heat to be here, and yet it is, wreaking havoc on his body. Moving feels like a monumental chore, but he forces himself to sit up and whimpers at the pressure of his own weight against his tailbone. It’s not enough, not nearly.
Heat alone fucking sucks. This much Jeongguk knows. He’s single-handedly army crawled through all of them for years now, except for one particular episode during a moment of weakness. The experience was not amazing, and frankly, kind of uncomfortable; the alpha had started acting like they were mated when that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Still, he’s not unfamiliar with curling up in a nest big enough for only himself with nothing but the comfort of pillows and his own hand.
He’s smart about his nest now. Blankets, sheets, blankets, clothes that smell nice, more blankets, and a towel, just to catch all the slick that puddles in the divots of his nest and coats the insides of his thighs. Jeongguk trips over his own feet and ankles pulling it together.
Nests are lonely by default if they play home to only one person during heats, but before now, it’s never hurt. Not quite like this. The ache swells in Jeongguk’s bones even as he pushes his pants down to his ankles and takes himself in the curl of his palm, breath hissing through his teeth as he strokes off.
The first orgasm is the easiest. He lies spread-eagled, wishing he was tired, one hand resting against the sticky mess on his belly. There’s a sweet smell somewhere near his face, and when he turns his nose the scent grows strong enough to make his cock ache between his legs.
It’s the hoodie he’d been wearing from last night, and the surprise is enough for Jeongguk to pulled out of heat haze to prop himself up on a shaky elbow. The fabric is soft and giving under his fingers. When he brings it to his nose, warmth pools deep in his belly when the scent hits him—Namjoon’s scent, he realizes, breath rushing from his lungs when his back hits the nest again.
“Fuck,” he whimpers, reaching down for his cock again. “Fuck.”
The orgasms blur together. Jeongguk pushes his face into his clothing, chasing the scent of Namjoon in the knit of the fabric, wishing that there was something to fill him just to calm the rattling emptiness in his chest. Farther along into the night, he thinks about Jimin and Namjoon and comes to fast that he catches himself off guard.
Any permutation of them is enough to make him come with only a couple of strokes. Namjoon and Yoongi. Yoongi and Jimin. Namjoon, Yoongi, and Jimin. He tries not to think too hard about what the could mean, just yet, and Jeongguk falls into a restless, dreamless sleep just as the first birds start to sing outside.
Heat goes on for longer than usual this time, just to taunt him.
Jeongguk wakes up on the sixth day flat on his back, starving and tired, and nearly cries with relief when the burn under his skin is silent. For someone whose heat will fizzle itself out by the fourth night, Jeongguk has never known a full week defined by desire so thick it was painful. Jaehyun had knocked on his door once, asking if he should call an alpha, any alpha, “how about the one upstairs, he’s kind of hot and what if you die.”
“You look horrible.”
“I need food,” Jeongguk says, sounding like a middle-aged smoker. All the groaning he’d wrestled back into his stomach has rendered his throat sandpapery and raw. “Fridge still fucked?”
“Unfortunately.”
“I want to die.”
“I know,” Jaehyun says soothingly, a beta who doesn’t truly understand, but has seen enough of the carnage to know. “I have an apple, if that’ll keep you going. You want me to grab something for you to eat?”
Jeongguk bites into the offered apple and nearly says yes—because, yes, the answer is yes, he does want food. But although the painful burn of heat is gone, an uncomfortable niggling feeling sits at the base of his skull, petulantly saying no, no, I want Yoongi to feed me. I want Namjoon or Jimin to go buy something for me.
“I’ll just call someone,” Jeongguk says.
“Are you sure?” Jaehyun hovers. “You look like a washed-up demon.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s not the worst I’ve seen, but you were in there for six days with no alpha. Mingyu came asking if you were okay.”
“Christ. What did you tell him?”
“That you’ve done this a bunch of times and you’d be fine, and not to worry. Then I started to worry by the fifth morning.”
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Jeongguk lies. “I’ve got uh, a friend. Owes me dinner, anyway. I’ll just ask if we can go to KBBQ or something and eat everything I’m allowed to order in two hours.”
“The servers are gonna smell that heatscent on you.”
“I’ll manage,” Jeongguk grimaces, head hurting from this conversation alone.
Jaehyun stops hovering long enough for him to send a text to Jimin. He doesn’t get his hopes high; mid-afternoon, Jimin is probably still in the middle of his shift at the cafe. Not much luck with Namjoon, either. The text goes unread for ten minutes.
Yoongi, surprisingly, answers.
hey yeah. what’s up? we haven't heard from you in a while. you haven’t replied to jimin in days
hyung im so sorry. are you busy? i don’t want to bother you. do you have time to go eat right now
right now?? A long pause as Yoongi types. Then the typing bubble disappears, as if the realization has dawned on the other end, and no i’m not busy. jeongguk are you okay?
uhm, just really tired. because uh i’ll tell you later. i want to eat...
fuck give me your address, i’ll come get you right now
A wave of lightheadedness washes over his temples when he stands up to go find his shoes, and Jeongguk grits his teeth until the feeling passes. Just a little while longer, he tells himself. If Yoongi’s car is anything as extra as Namjoon’s or Jimin’s, then he should be screeching into the apartment complex soon enough.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I don’t know why it wasn’t more obvious by the third day, I can’t believe we’re this fucking stupid,” Yoongi (tries not to) yell at his phone, perched in its holder on his dashboard. “He went through heat! No fucking wonder he seemed to drop off the face of the fucking planet, and it makes total sense—he was around all three of us multiple days in a row, then went out with Namjoon for a whole evening. Of course his body would trigger heat.”
“Shit,” Jimin curses, voice filtering through the sound system as Yoongi makes an extremely illegal turn and earns a chorus of horns. “Shit, I still have three hours before I can clock out.”
“Oh my god, as if that’s important right now?” Yoongi actually does yell this time. He glances over his shoulder and swerves across some four lanes of the highway to the fast lane. “I got a text from him openly asking if I had time to take him out to eat. Can you even imagine how fucked up he must be? Last I recall, he tried to turn down dinner we already had cooked for him and tried to tell Namjoon duck was too expensive.”
“Fuck me,” Jimin says. “Fine, let me tell my supervisor I have an emergency at home. It’s not much of a lie. Should I call Namjoon hyung?”
Yoongi worries his lower lip between his teeth, weaving around two cars going too slow. “No, don’t freak him out yet. You know he’ll blame himself for it. If I can get Jeongguk out for food and back without incident, we can tell him later.”
“Got it. Let me know where you guys are gonna go eat as soon as you know.”
The maps app takes Yoongi into the heart of a college town, and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat as everyone ogles him passing by. Sure, he has a matte black paint job that makes his otherwise modest Audi look fancy as fuck, but it’s still not a fucking Maserati. He’s not sure how Jimin just shamelessly drives through these parts in his.
hey i’m outside. come out and we can go eat
It takes a few minutes, the time during which Yoongi occupies himself by scratching his thumbnail across the grooved stitching of his steering wheel. Then, Jeongguk appears at the entrance of his building, taking the dusty steps down to the sidewalk two at a time, hop-skip. He looks alright enough.
“Hey,” says Yoongi, killing the engine and stepping out of the car. Jeongguk looks up, and then the magnitude of how hard his heat must have been on him crashes down upon Yoongi’s shoulders. Jeongguk’s complexion is a pasty grey, and his lips are dry and cracked. He smiles as he approaches the sight makes Yoongi’s heart twist in his chest. Are his knees bonier where they show in the holes of his ripped jeans? Maybe. He can’t tell. “Hey, Jeongguk, are you okay?”
“Yeah, just tired,” Jeongguk says. “Can we get KBBQ? I’ll explain in a second.”
“Are you sure you even have the energy to go out to eat? We can get takeout.”
“Yeah, I’m sure, I’m great. Look,” and Jeongguk does an impromptu dance with a lot of complex footwork that makes Yoongi feel tired just watching. He ends on a pose with his arms thrown wide, ta-da! “I’m A-plus. Let’s go.”
“Okay, if you—fuck, Jeongguk, hey—!”
Yoongi just barely catches him when Jeongguk’s lighthearted expression slides off his face like wet soap and his eyes flutter shut. His body slumps under his own weight. He falls forward, pinning Yoongi against the door of his car, and Yoongi struggles to hold his deadweight up and not topple himself.
“Jeongguk,” Yoongi says, shaking him gently. No response. “Fuck, Jeongguk-ah, come on.”
Getting an unconscious sack of muscle into the car and buckled in is not a feat Yoongi would attempt if you paid him, but for Jeongguk, for this omega, he does it. He’s not sure how. Not dropping Jeongguk as he wrestles the passenger side door open is the hardest bit of it, and he accidentally smacks the back of Jeongguk’s head trying to get him into the seat. At the end of it a light sheen of sweat covers the back of his neck.
“Jimin, we’re heading home.”
“Wait, what? Hold on, I just managed to weasel my way out of my shift, I’m clocking out. What happened?”
“He fainted,” Yoongi says grimly, snagging a blanket out of the backseat and covering Jeongguk with it before he starts the car. Jimin makes a noise of concern through the speakers. “He looks like shit. I need you to help carry him out of the car.”
“Okay. I’ll see you back at the house.”
Jimin is already there by the time Yoongi pulls into their driveway, glad for the quaint silence of their secluded neighborhood. The rosebushes rustle in the evening breeze, and the sun is blowtorch orange against navy sky.
“How is he?”
“Didn’t wake up,” Yoongi says, climbing out as Jimin opens Jeongguk’s door. “But there’s some color in his face now, he was looking real bad when I saw him.”
“Okay, let’s get you outta there,” Jimin says, reaching over and unbuckling Jeongguk’s seatbelt. He makes a noise of complaint, squirming when Jimin forces his arms under the crooks of his knees. “Hey, shh, it’s just me.”
“Yoongi hyung?”
“Yeah, I’m right here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, stop, it’s okay,” Yoongi says, and Jimin moves aside so he can push the hair out of Jeongguk’s face. His bangs are damp with sweat. “We’ll eat when you feel better.”
Jimin makes a strained noise when he lifts Jeongguk out of the seat, though it helps that Jeongguk wraps his arms around his neck and clings on. Yoongi shuts the car door behind them, then unlocks the front door so Jimin can step inside uninterrupted.
“Get into my bed, the one I share with Namjoon,” says Yoongi as he undoes the laces of Jeongguk’s shoes. “It’s probably a mess in there right now, but—”
“Is that a good idea, right after heat?”
“Uh,” Yoongi hesitates. “I don’t imagine yours is much of a better option.”
They stare at each other.
“Fair enough,” Jimin says. “This is my workout for the day, then.”
If Jimin trips, Yoongi is absolute toast where he trails behind them, steadying him with a hand against the small of Jimin’s back. It’s a bit of a journey, but they make it without any bumps in the road. Jeongguk blinks his eyes open again blearily when he lands in the mass of blankets on Yoongi’s bed, bouncing slightly on the mattress.
“Smells good,” he mumbles, pulling the sheets up to his nose and breathing in deep.
“Sleep. There’ll be food when you wake up.”
“And us,” Jimin says. “The best part.”
Yoongi steps on his foot.
“Best part,” Jeongguk repeats, not quite hearing his own words before the features of his face smooth out again. They stand over him, watching him sleep for a few moments before going back out into the hallway. The door shuts soundlessly behind them.
“I’m not calling him.”
“I did all the calling today, you call him.”
“Oh my god, you’re his life partner, he’s not going to get mad at you of all people. This is the obvious course of action.”
Yoongi snorts as they take the stairs down. It’s probably too late in the day to call the cooks to come, and the both of them aren’t terrible in the kitchen, so it’s probably not a horrible idea to go see what they can rustle up. “Let’s not pretend like he’s not the absolute softest on you.”
“That’s not going to remain the same much longer, now that we have an omega.”
“Just fucking call him! Holy shit.”
“Call me? About what?”
Yoongi stiffens as the front door closes. Namjoon is toeing off his shoes in the foyer and unbuttoning his coat, curiosity dancing along his eyebrows. Jimin runs right into him from behind.
“Fuck, uh, hyung,” Jimin stammers. “You’re back.”
“You don’t sound all that happy about it,” Namjoon says, a laugh in his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“Uh,” Yoongi says, thinking how to tread lightly.
“No, seriously.” Now, Namjoon is no longer smiling. “What’s wrong?”