Archive of Our Own

In his line of work, Jeongguk had met many attractive people. Usually, it was his colleagues; other times it was customers – not necessarily the richest ones, because you could spend millions to have your features redone, but science had not yet managed to find a way to alter someone’s scent at the root, and there was a limit to how much rotten smell perfumes could cover.

Whoever they were, anyway, they always had one thing in common: cleanliness. Clean clothes, a clean body, and – most importantly – a clean scent, one that wouldn’t bother Jeongguk’s sensitive nose.

The man before him failed to meet at least two of the three requirements: he was not only wearing clothes that were dirty with soil, but he was also visibly sweaty in the bright spring sun, and had a huge smear of drying mud on his face.

What a face, though: a crop field separated them, the man was donning a (hideous) straw hat with a wide brim, but Jeongguk could perfectly see his chiselled features, almond-shaped eyes, and full, rosy lips, pursed in concentration while he operated the tractor to plough the land. Maybe it was the movement of the tool that had something sexual about it, but Jeongguk felt a certain tension in his lower abdomen just by looking at the stranger. Luckily, before leaving Seoul, he had had the foresight to put on a scent blocker, otherwise his grandfather, who was standing right next to him along the fence, would have smelled every horny pheromone Jeongguk was emanating. This way, instead, he could pretend nothing was happening and just keep ogling the farmer riding the tractor and fantasise that he was actually riding Jeongguk’s knot to obli—

Smack!

“Grandpa!”

“Stop drooling over our lad, or I’ll slap your ass harder.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Cut the lies and shut up, he is coming over,” his grandfather silenced him, then started waving at the man. “Seokjin-ah! Hello!”

“Hello to you, Ilsung-nim,” Seokjin greeted back, approaching with a smile on his lips. While doing so, he shrugged his nasty shirt off his shoulders and used it to wipe the sweat from his face and neck – movements that Jeongguk followed with an almost transfixed gaze, taking in the sight of broad shoulders and sharp collarbones, muscular arms left uncovered by a white tank top, and a slim waist that made Seokjin’s hips look wider, dare he say… breedable?

Nothing could have been further from reality, though: in fact, when Seokjin got close enough, Jeongguk caught a whiff of his scent – earthy, mossy, certainly exacerbated by sweat, but unmistakably belonging to an alpha, not an omega.

Not that it made any difference to Jeongguk: he still felt on the verge of busting a nut in plain air, and he was concentrating so much to prevent it from happening that he missed the first part of the conversation between his grandfather and Seokjin, only recovering when he heard his name at the same time as an old, bony elbow was jabbed into his hip (because his grandfather was too short to stick it into his waist).

“W-what?” Jeongguk mumbled, looking down for explanations.

“You are making a fool of yourself,” Ilsung hissed, glaring up at him and baring his only remaining tooth.

“Ilsung-nim was telling me that you came to visit him from Seoul, Jeongguk-ssi,” Seokjin came to the rescue, flashing an encouraging smile.

“Ah, I… yes,” Jeongguk finally managed to answer. He cleared his throat. “We hadn’t seen each other for months, and the last time, Grandpa was the one who came all the way to the city, so I decided I could return the favour and I ventured to this place forgotten by the world.”

“My son sent my grandchild to check how far along I was on the road to the grave,” Ilsung piped in with a disapproving mouth twist. “As if I had an inheritance to leave other than a field of chilli peppers.”

“Grandpa! This is absolutely not true!”

“I am sure Jeongguk-ssi came because he missed you, Ilsung-nim,” Seokjin supported him. “And that he would be delighted to inherit your chilli pepper field.”

“Well, I couldn’t do much with it other than eat them— ouch! Why are you elbowing me again? I just stated a fact!”

“When I was young, we knew how to appreciate the value of land, because the war could make you lose it at any moment,” Ilsung preached. “While your generation—”

“—still knows how to do that,” Seokjin interjected with an amiable smile, taking the sentence elsewhere. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“Of course, I wasn’t talking about you,” Ilsung easily agreed, flashing an enamoured one-tooth smile. “Pups lucky enough to still grow up in the countryside know better, but city pups like my grandson would rather die than live and work in… what did you call it? A place forgotten by the world?” He made a face. “As if sitting at their desks all day wouldn’t kill them!”

“But I don’t have a desk job?” Jeongguk protested, scolding himself for giving the sentence the tone of a question. He had to find a way to distract his grandfather from the topic, whose unwarranted tirade had at least had the welcome effect of making his arousal wilt.

Luckily, Seokjin seemed to be on the same wavelength as Jeongguk, because he jumped at the chance and asked him, “Hmm? What do you do for a living?”

“I have a medical degree. I am not a surgeon, but I specialise in, err, field operations,” Jeongguk replied with just a touch of hesitation.

“Like, what, emergency room?”

“… You can put it that way,” he said, wondering if the answer was too vague and Seokjin would continue prying. Jeongguk almost hoped he would, so maybe he could suggest that they go somewhere alone for a face-to-face demonstration, but Seokjin dropped the subject with a light hum and turned to his grandfather.

“If you don’t mind, Ilsung-nim, I would go back to work,” he said, nodding at the tractor. “And I think you’ll want to go home too, so Jeongguk-ssi can unpack his suitcase.”

Seokjin hadn’t even finished speaking, but Ilsung was already nodding in agreement and ushering him to return to his field, and Jeongguk could not help but admire the alpha’s ability to make his grandfather do what he wanted without directly ordering him. It also made him wonder how close they were, since he didn’t remember ever hearing his grandfather mention Seokjin or seeing the alpha around when he had visited the village in the past.

Jeongguk at least understood that Seokjin had been around for a while when, a moment later, Ilsung casually asked, “See you at the club tonight, yeah?”, and the other confirmed, “Of course, I would never miss it.”

Then, almost as if in a dream, Seokjin turned to look at Jeongguk with a light smile and asked him, “Will you come too, Jeongguk-ssi?”

“Oh, sure,” he replied without knowing what exactly he was agreeing to. Beside him, Ilsung rolled his eyes and sighed.

Much to Jeongguk’s dismay, Seokjin didn’t linger any longer and promptly took his leave, but at least a whiff of his strong, musky scent reached Jeongguk’s nostrils as the other turned to walk away. It left him slightly dizzy, but in an extremely pleasant way – at least until his grandfather gave him another slap on the ass.

“If you can give it a rest, you would be doing me a favour. My son’s hormonal crisis was enough; I don’t need my grandson’s, too. At my age at that!” Ilsung groused, moving away from the fence.

“I am not having a hormonal crisis, I was just very pleasantly surprised by this meeting,” Jeongguk pointed out, slinging the bag over his shoulder and following his grandfather on the path home. “I thought the youngest in the village was Grandma Soonja, and she is, what, 75?”

“73 this year, and I know you are trying to get me to tell you about the life and times of Seokjin. Well, I’m old but not dumb, and my lips are sealed,” his grandfather stated resolutely, turning towards him so suddenly that Jeongguk almost ran into the elderly man. “If you want to get to know him, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way and just come to the club later. You got your invitation anyway.”

“Yeah, I did,” Jeongguk hummed.

And he would make the best of it.

The village club was a nondescript building that would have blended in with the neighbouring single-story houses if it weren’t for the crooked, faded sign hanging above the door and the 1960s music filtering through the thin walls, whose volume rose exponentially once Jeongguk and Ilsung entered. At least the Pearl Sisters’ songs wouldn’t deafen anyone, even if blasted at 100 decibels.

Half the village seemed to be at the club that night, and while his grandfather went to greet some friends, Jeongguk looked around for Seokjin, wondering if the alpha had arrived yet.

He finally found him at the back of the room, sitting on the ground and hunched over something undefined, together with an elderly omega, while three other old men watched.

“Good evening, Seokj—” he began to say, but fell silent abruptly when a bell rang loud enough to drown out even the music, startling him.

“Aish, Seokjin-ah won again!” the omega complained, patting himself on the knee with annoyance. “I thought I had gotten fast enough to beat him!”

The spectators just cheered while Seokjin reached over the bell to pick up the cards placed on the floor in front of his defeated opponent. “You need to train a little more, Youngjae-nim, although I admit you have improved since the last time we played,” he said with a little smile which, despite the consolatory words, exuded self-satisfaction.

“That old fart can try as many times as he wants, but he also knows he is hopeless. No one is stronger than our Seokjin-ah,” an elderly beta stated proudly.

“And that’s why he’s going to win the district tournament,” another one agreed.

“Come on, we shouldn’t count chickens before they hatched,” Seokjin tried to minimise. “Anything could happen.”

“Speaking of chickens, who is this chick?” someone asked. “Are you lost, lad?”

“Who, m-me?” Jeongguk stuttered, realising that they were talking about him – and that, most regrettably, they had just called him ‘chick’ in front of Seokjin.

“Yes, Jeongguk-ssi, you,” said alpha answered with an amused and slightly derisive smirk. “He is Ilsung-nim’s grandson.”

“For real? He doesn’t look like hyung at all.”

“Maybe he is adopted.”

“Are you an omega or what, lad?”

“Are you single and ready to mingle?”

Jeongguk blinked, overwhelmed by the barrage of questions. Seokjin’s smirk became more noticeable.

“Aish, I think he is daft.”

“What a shame, such a handsome boy…”

The elderly men collectively clicking their tongues in mourning had the effect of jolting Jeongguk out of his stupor. He straightened, tugging at the hem of his leather jacket as he puffed out his chest and cleared his throat.

“I am an alpha, and yes, I am single and… ready to mingle.” He glanced at Seokjin before focusing on his audience again. “It is nice to meet you all.”

“Jeez, gods forbid young omegas pass by here! At this point, our Seokjin-ah will die alone and unmated.”

Collective nodding and humming erupted from the group while the aforementioned alpha’s face took on a peculiar – and unexpectedly fascinating – shade of purple as he stuttered, “N-now you are just being unnecessarily drastic…”

Everyone ignored him. One of the men raised an eyebrow and said, “Tell us, Ilsung’s grandson, would you maybe happen to be interested in another alpha too?”

“Minki-nim!”

“What? I am an alpha too, but I would test my luck with Seokjin-ah if I were fifty years younger! He is extremely agreeable!” Minki explained, waving his index finger around before pointing it at Jeongguk again. “So, would you take an alpha into consideration?”

“Sure, I am not a picky man,” Jeongguk confirmed with enthusiasm, smirking down at Seokjin, who scowled.

“Then—”

“Guys, would you please stop giving rope to my grandson’s hormonal crisis?” Ilsung interrupted, joining their group. “He is already embarrassing himself by drooling all over poor little Seokjin without any encouragement.”

“It’s fine, Ilsung-nim,” Seokjin reassured him as the elderly men grumbled among themselves over the ruined fun. “Jeongguk-ssi is harmless anyway… as long as he looks, and doesn’t touch.”

Though the words were directed at his grandfather, Seokjin’s eyes shifted to Jeongguk as he finished the sentence, and his gaze paired with a somehow sultry tone… Jeongguk could have sworn the alpha was being flirtatious, and he wished he could smell Seokjin under the scent blocker to make sure what he was feeling.

For his part, Jeongguk was starting to feel horny – again. It seemed inevitable with Seokjin around, but it was inappropriate to let his dirty thoughts dominate him in a public place, so he opted to change the subject. His eyes fell on the bell and the cards scattered on a rug covering the hardwood floor.

“Do you mind if I join your game of Halli Galli?” he asked. “Or is the group complete?”

“You can take my place, I have had my share for tonight,” the omega named Youngjae answered, rising to his feet with a great creaking of the knees. “Good luck, lad. Trust me, you will need it.”

“Hm? Is there something I should know?” Jeongguk inquired as he took off his shoes and sat down on the floor.

The men around him laughed knowingly. “This boy here” – a beta explained, patting Seokjin on the back – “wins every game. He is unbeatable. No one at the village has ever managed to defeat him.”

Jeongguk raised his eyebrows, intrigued. “Ever?”

“Ever,” Seokjin confirmed with a smirk.

Jeongguk looked at the alpha, then at the cards and the bell placed on the ground, then again at the elderly men around him. They were on average eighty years old and, no offence, had the reflexes of a tortoise. He, on the other hand, was young like Seokjin and pretty fast.

How hard could it be to win?

Jeongguk took the first defeat well, as well as the second: after all, he was still adjusting to the environment and the players. By the third, he started to feel irritated, by the fourth, he blamed Grandpa Minki for sneezing right at the climax, and by the fifth, he protested that the music was so loud that it was distracting him. The result was that he was so busy grumbling that he was eliminated right away, instead of making it to the final one-on-one challenge against Seokjin as had been the case up until then.

It really seemed that the only ones Jeongguk could defeat were the village’s octogenarians: Seokjin stayed untouchable, an impenetrable fortress. His quick reflexes were remarkable, and his speed was the stuff of legends: every single time Jeongguk reached for the bell, Seokjin’s hand beat him to it – and the fleeting touch of that moment was becoming the most erotic contact Jeongguk had ever experienced. Besides, he was the only one to experience it, because the elderly men’s hands remained placidly in their laps: they seemed content to admire Seokjin’s prowess, and completely uninterested in victory.

Unlike Jeongguk, who, after his thirtieth defeat, let out a cry of frustration.

“How the hell do you do it?!”

Seokjin tilted his head, and the smirk reappeared. “Talent, practice. Photographic memory, too,” he listed dismissively. “Or maybe I can just count to five faster than you.”

“Ilsung-hyung’s grandson did seem a little slow on the uptake earlier,” someone reasoned, but Jeongguk didn’t even catch that veiled offence.

“I’ll beat you, sooner or later. You’ll get tired, and I’ll seize the opportunity. You’ll see,” he declared, blood boiling in his veins as he stared at Seokjin.

“I don’t think so, but it’s cute that you think so,” the other alpha murmured, his voice sounding almost sensual.

“I don’t just think so, I am sure,” Jeongguk half-growled, bending forward towards Seokjin. “In fact, I am willing to bet on it.”

“Really? And tell me, what would you like to bet?”

“Oh, just fuck already, you two,” Minki mumbled from the sidelines.

His comment fell right in the transition moment of silence between songs, so everyone in the club heard it – and chaos erupted. An outraged Ilsung rose; some whistled in appreciation, others laughed at the joke. Seokjin looked flushed and flabbergasted, and Jeongguk…

Jeongguk said, “Yeah, why not?”

Attention shifted to him.

“If I win, I want to bed you,” he continued, the tip of his tongue peeking out from the corner of his mouth as he looked at Seokjin and let himself be carried away by the fantasy of rhythmically thrusting into the alpha.

In the meantime, their small audience shouted in amazement and admiration at such an explicit statement, while Seokjin went from baffled to entertained. He chortled, his ring finger brushing a lock of raven bangs away from his eyes.

“And, pray tell, what do I get if I win? Because I’m not interested in fucking you.”

“I think Jeongguk-ah should take off an item of clothing every time he loses.”

“Kyungsoo! It’s my grandson you are talking about!”

“So what? He’s still a good-looking lad, and since I am too old and apparently too omega to be taken into consideration, I can at least feast my eyes on him, can’t I?”

The other omegas all nodded and hummed in agreement.

“Seokjin-ah, please do us this favour,” one of them went so far as to beg.

The alpha giggled. “I’d gladly do, but it doesn’t really depend on me.” He glanced at Jeongguk. “We should ask Jeongguk-ssi if he is okay with putting on a strip Halli Galli show.”

At least ten pairs of eyes fell on him, and Jeongguk fumbled under the attention.

“I… wait, does it mean that you accept the bet?”

“Hmm, yes. I’ll sleep with you if you win,” Seokjin confirmed. “But that won’t happen anyway.”

“It’s decided, then. Your bum for my body,” Jeongguk stated, the excitement and anticipation lighting up his nerve endings, making it difficult to stay still. “Let’s get it.”

Jeongguk was disconcerted. He expected, of course, to lose a few times more, but he was sure that sooner or later the wind would blow in his favour and he would be the one to win.

Instead, he simply couldn’t.

It always went the same way: he and Seokjin took turns playing their cards, in a rhythm that became increasingly tense and unnerving as they went on, then somehow Seokjin was ringing the bell, and Jeongguk would realise that there were five fruits in front of them and he hadn’t even noticed. Perhaps it was nerves that were getting in his way, because he truly couldn’t fathom how his head could struggle with a simple addition. Anyway, while he stared at the five bananas or five strawberries resentfully, Seokjin pocketed all the cards they had played, leaving his stubborn opponent with nothing.

Truth be told, Jeongguk had succeeded – quite surprisingly, judging by their audience’s very unflattering reaction – in ringing the bell twice, but never in the decisive round, and the cards Jeongguk had managed to steal had only remained his for a short time before ultimately ending up in Seokjin’s deck.

It was frustrating.

And hella hot.

Had he been a spectator and not a challenger, Jeongguk would have watched for hours as Seokjin crushed the opponent with deadly precision. Going against him, Jeongguk had become convinced that the alpha’s victories were no accident at all: Seokjin must have been some sort of genius, who memorised the cards already drawn and by the end knew exactly what was about to be played in advance.

Jeongguk had tried too, without any success – and so, he had started undressing.

The first to hit the ground was the red leather jacket; no big loss. For his second defeat, it was the black shirt’s turn, its absence allowing those in attendance to notice the intricate pattern of tattoos covering Jeongguk’s right arm. It always had him labelled a bad boy, both in a positive way – he had made easy amorous conquests just because of them – and in a negative way – with criticism of how he was ruining his body and accusations of resembling a gang boss. As expected, the elderly men also had mixed reactions, though mostly positive. Jeongguk, however, only cared what Seokjin thought, but regrettably, the alpha showed no particular reaction.

Seokjin remained annoyingly unfazed even when Jeongguk took off the white tank top he was wearing under his shirt – unlike the elderly omegas, who fought over the item of clothing as if it were used underwear made available for an impending heat, forcing Ilsung to intervene to save it from their greedy clutches.

The fourth defeat brought a major dilemma, which manifested itself when the spectators’ eyes slid down Jeongguk’s faded jeans, anticipating the moment he would take them off. Maybe they should have gotten a private room for their little show, because they were really facing a charge of indecent exposure this way. If only the village club had one!

At the thought that they might not see the young alpha in his underwear, a collective sigh of despair ran through the elders, immediately followed by a gasp as Jeongguk moved his hands to the waistband. As if on cue, Park Jiyoon’s Coming of Age Ceremony started playing from the speakers, giving the scene a nightclub sensuality even in the absence of strobe lights.

And yet, Seokjin didn’t change his expression, just returning Jeongguk’s gaze calmly, as if to say that nothing that was happening had any effect on him. That he would remain impassive even if Jeongguk stripped naked.

Jeongguk didn’t want Seokjin to feel nothing. He wanted the other alpha to feel hot and bothered and desperately horny just like him.

That’s why, instead of taking off his jeans in front of everyone, he did something worse. Something provocative and exciting.

He reached behind his neck, ran his fingers over the skin until he found his target, and pulled the scent-blocking patch off. He did it slowly, while his eyes dared Seokjin not to react when he would smell Jeongguk’s unmasked scent.

Meanwhile, the patch ended up in his pocket, much to Ilsung’s relief as he was already preparing to tame a general revolt amongst the elderly, eager to challenge each other to see who would confiscate it to do unspeakable things.

“Let’s play another game,” Jeongguk said with a velvety voice.

Seokjin grunted, unimpressed, and dealt the cards.

It wasn’t immediately clear that anything was changing, but after a few hands, Jeongguk noticed that this round seemed more balanced and that he was able to ring the bell more often. At the same time, he could smell his warm, spicy clove scent wafting through the air, so much so that the elderly men were no longer following the game, but had their noses in the air and squealed at each new whiff. Jeongguk would have found them vaguely disturbing if he hadn’t been focused on the victory that this time seemed ever closer.

Even though the music continued to play in the background, the slapping sound of the cards being revealed seemed to drown it out. The speed at which they played them became more and more accentuated to confuse the opponent, and Seokjin made such believable feints that Jeongguk almost rang the bell by mistake.

Almost. He stopped himself just in time and gloated at the disappointed expression that Seokjin couldn’t hide.

“Jeongguk-ah, fighting!” someone cheered from the sidelines, and indeed, it was time to fight and put an end to the game.

Jeongguk tuned out all the sounds around him and focused on the cards. He let himself be captivated by their drawings and the fluid movements with which they played them, until he felt part of a hypnotic whirlwind of fruit and Seokjin’s long, fascinatingly twisted fingers. At that point, it was as if time slowed down, showing him everything in slow motion, but speeding up his reactions.

So, when in the last round of that match, not two, not three, but five bananas appeared on the playing field, Jeongguk’s hand moved as if by its own volition, and – for a fraction of a second – landed on the bell before Seokjin’s.

No one spoke. Then the elderly all started screaming at once, different versions of “he won!” and “Seokjin-ah was defeated?!” and “congratulations Jeongguk-ah!”. Even his grandfather gave a little applause, but Jeongguk didn’t pay much attention, still amazed at what had just happened.

The realisation dawned on him little by little, and when it finished, Jeongguk snapped his eyes up to Seokjin. The other alpha looked composed but slightly pale while pretending to listen to the passionate advice of a pair of omegas, who assured him that he would enjoy the imminent ride. Jeongguk’s stomach did a little happy flip at that, and the anticipation must have filtered through his scent because Seokjin immediately turned to glare at him.

“You cheated,” he accused, his tone sharp. “You used your stench to distract me. That’s not how you win fairly.”

Jeongguk tongued the inside of his cheek. “No one ever said that I was not supposed to remove my scent-blocking patch when stripping. I saw a loophole, I took advantage of it.” He shrugged. “It’s not my fault if my scent bothered you. I couldn’t change it even if I wanted to.”

“It’s still unfair,” Seokjin insisted, gritting his teeth. If Jeongguk could smell the other’s scent at that moment, he would surely sense intense animosity and dislike.

“So what are you going to do about it? Will you go back on our bet?” Jeongguk asked, starting to feel disappointed.

Seokjin straightened up suddenly, as if he had been bitten by an insect. “How dare you? I gave my word, and I’ll keep it. The bet still stands. However,” he immediately added, “I need time.”

“Time? What for?”

“Yeah, what for?” Minki echoed, curiosity getting the better of him. And he wasn’t the only one: the others were also following the discussion with bated breath.

“Time to get used to the idea. I…” Seokjin hesitated, biting the inside of his cheek, fidgeting on the spot, “I don’t like alphas. I haven’t— I just need some time,” he finished abruptly, looking at Jeongguk with his neck slightly flushed.

If what Seokjin’s speech was trying to do was elicit pity by implying that he had never been with another alpha before, he wasn’t succeeding, because it only made Jeongguk want to get rid of the obnoxious crowd, take Seokjin right then and there on the floor, make him experience what he was missing out on, and—

And it was better for Jeongguk to stop there if he didn’t want to broadcast his urges for the whole room to know, and find himself with a big problem in his pants.

“I can give you some time,” he granted, magnanimously, “but not much. After all, I’ll only be here a few days, and… Well. I hope you understand.”

“Of course. Thank you for your understanding,” Seokjin replied, his expression still bashful, and Jeongguk couldn’t help but notice how strange it was to see him so submissive. “I’ll get back to you… soon.”

The next day, Jeongguk woke up in the late morning. On the one hand, he had to recover from the tiredness of the journey to the countryside, on the other, he had gone to bed late, because not only had he and his grandfather left the club after eleven o’clock (with closing time already well past), but once they got home, Ilsung had given him a good scolding – for the inappropriate bet, for stripping in public, for harassing their poor Seokjin with his lust, and for putting his own selfish desires first when he claimed to have come to the village to be with his grandfather.

Admittedly, Ilsung was right on that last point. Jeongguk couldn’t bring himself to regret what had happened with Seokjin, but as he fell asleep in the too-small bed, he had promised himself he would spend more time with his old man.

However, when Jeongguk walked out of the small room that had once been his father’s teenage bedroom and found himself in the kitchenette, his sleepy good morning greeting was cut short when he realised there was no one to hear it. After a few minutes of hesitation and then cold sweats as he dragged himself to his grandfather’s bedroom to check if Ilsung had by chance gone to join his wife (who had passed away seven years earlier after a life of saintly patience in putting up with her curmudgeonly husband), and after breathing a sigh of relief upon discovering that no, there was no corpse in the bed, Jeongguk returned more cheerfully to the kitchen to look for something to eat.

He was just finishing untangling the ramyeon that had just begun to soften in the boiling water when his phone rang.

“Hey, Jimin-hyung!” he greeted, then blew loudly on the hot meal and took a large bite with his chopsticks. “What’s up?”

“... Did you just wake up?”

Jeongguk, having his mouth full, just hummed in confirmation, spluttering a bit.

“Okay, I see you are thoroughly enjoying your days off,” Jimin chuckled, then his tone became vaguely sheepish. “That’s why I am sorry to ask you this…”

“Hyung! Don’t tell me you are trying to assign me a client!” Jeongguk protested, immediately understanding what was about to happen. “I don’t feel like it.”

“I know, I know, but just listen to me for a moment, then if you want, you can tell me no,” Jimin pleaded.

“Alright, if you really have to, I’ll listen to you,” Jeongguk conceded, knowing before even speaking that he had no other choice anyway: in the background, he could already hear the omega tapping away on the computer keyboard, ready to recite the assignment details to him.

“Great!” Jimin exclaimed with the satisfaction of those who know they always win. “One of our regulars scheduled an appointment with Bomin-hyung for this afternoon, but hyung had a setback and can’t make it. So I thought, hey, since Jeongguk happens to be at Cheongpung village too, he could take care of it.”

“The client lives here? Wait, are you trying to assign me an elderly omega?!” Jeongguk panicked, trying not to imagine one of the old men he met the night before in compromising positions with Bomin’s knot. He was having breakfast, for Heaven’s sake!

“What elderly omega? No, no, it’s a young alpha – unless 33 is too old for you? Oh, maybe you already know him – his name is Kim Seokjin.”

The world, for lack of a better euphemism, stopped. The hand holding the chopsticks, which Jeongguk was holding up, fell back onto the table with a thud, narrowly missing the bowl of ramyeon. A rooster crowed from the yard, and the words from the night before replayed in his mind.

I don’t like alphas. I need some time.

I don’t like alphas. I need some time.

I don’t like alphas.

I don’t like alphas.

“That fucking liar…” Jeongguk whispered.

“Hm? Come again?”

“I… nothing.” He ran a hand over his face, trying to gather his thoughts. Then: “Yes, I know him.”

“Oh, grea—”

“You said he is a regular, correct? Does he always ask for Bomin-hyung, or, or not? Maybe an omega every now and then?”

More clicking sounds. “No, as far as we know, only alphas. He’s been in a regular arrangement with Bomin-hyung for three to four years.”

Somehow, that bit of information almost had Jeongguk puke up the little he had eaten.

“And what exactly does he expect me to do? Does he need someone for a rut, or…”

“Why? Are you accepting the job?”

“… Maybe. Just answer for now.”

“Say ‘please Jimin-hyung’ and I’ll do it, brat.”

“Please, Jimin-hyung.”

“Good boy,” Jimin giggled. “No, he denied a rut in his application. And before you ask, yes, he needs a top. I know how to do my job; otherwise, I never would have called you.”

Jeongguk fell silent, his brain processing information while the ramyeon, now abandoned, cooled and got soggy.

“So? Can I confirm this for you, or should I look for someone else?”

“No, no, I’ll do it,” Jeongguk replied quickly. “Just… Don’t inform him of the change of plans. I’ll take care of it. I had brought my ID badge anyway.”

Jimin didn’t reply.

“… Please, Jimin-hyung.”

“Okay,” the omega accepted cheerfully. “See how much easier it is for you to get things done if you are nice to your dearest hyung?”

Jeongguk barely held back from snorting, not wanting to risk Jimin changing his mind. “Thank you, hyung.”

“That sounded insincere, but I’ll take it since you are my favourite. I’ll text you right away with the time and address.” On clockwork, Jeongguk’s phone pinged with a notification from Jimin. “Take care of yourself and have fun!”

“Oh, you can bet on it,” Jeongguk mumbled.

He would have a blast with Kim Seokjin.

Jeongguk didn’t know why he had thought Seokjin’s house in the village would be a modern building: in reality, it was a traditional one-story construction like all the others, with walls of wood and white stones, paper doors, a roof of tiles that if not moldy were covered in moss, and a small courtyard bordered by a stone wall with a gate that was kept open at all times. Jeongguk took advantage of it to step inside without anything stopping him, not even a dog, since the kennel in the corner under the pine tree was empty – a likely legacy of the previous owner of the house.

Seokjin, as expected, was home for his scheduled appointment: his shoes were lined up next to the stone step leading up to the wrap-around porch. Jeongguk left his next to Seokjin’s rain boots, hopped onto the hardwood with a soft thud, and gave a good shake to the windchime that hung from a beam beside the door to signal his presence.

He was trying to figure out whether the metal fish-shaped pendant hanging from the bell chain was a carp or a tuna when the door opened.

“Good afternoon, Seokjin-ssi,” he greeted cheerfully, flashing a toothy grin.

The door slammed closed.

Well.

Jeongguk shook the windchime again.

“Go away!” Seokjin’s enraged voice came from inside. “I told you I need some time!”

Yeah, sure. “I am not here to claim my prize! I just want to talk, I swear!”

“Of what?”

“Listen, do we really have to yell at each other through a wall? Can’t I come in?”

A few minutes passed, during which Jeongguk thought Seokjin had left him there, then the door opened again.

“I’ll give you ten minutes,” the alpha warned him, moving aside to let Jeongguk pass.

Unlike the traditional exterior, the interior of the house was a mix of modern appliances (a large shiny refrigerator could be seen through the open sliding door of the kitchen) and old Western-style furniture. The cushions around the living room coffee table told Jeongguk that Seokjin was also one of those Koreans who sat on the floor to watch TV despite having a sofa available, and learning that little detail about the other made him smile, but only briefly: he had more pressing matters to attend to.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” he asked with nonchalance while slowly removing his shoes. “Are you waiting for someone?”

“I… yes, actually. I have an appointment.”

Seokjin said it while surreptitiously wringing his hands, betraying a touch of nervousness. Jeongguk imagined the other was afraid he and Bomin might meet, and Jeongguk might find out Seokjin had lied to him about not liking alphas.

“It must be someone special if you’re all dressed up,” Jeongguk commented, taking in Seokjin’s well-groomed clothing and styled hair – far from casual, appropriate for a date.

The thought soured his mood.

Seokjin, meanwhile, raised an eyebrow, seemingly annoyed. “Respectfully, it’s none of your business. So, what did you want to talk about? I don’t have all afternoon.”

“Of course, because you are waiting for Bomin-hyung,” Jeongguk seethed. “Well, breaking news: he is not coming.”

It was extremely satisfying to witness how Seokjin’s eyes widened hearing those words, realising that Jeongguk knew everything – and coinciding with that realisation came the discovery, in the form of a whiff of alarm, that Seokjin wasn’t wearing a scent blocker.

Jeongguk’s nostrils flared with interest, warmth coursing through him.

Seokjin, meanwhile, recovered from his shock. “How do you know Bomin-hyung?” he inquired, suspicious.

“What do you think? Of course, we are colleagues,” Jeongguk disclosed, brandishing his ID badge like a weapon.

“You— weren’t you a doctor?”

“I am, just not in a hospital, but in a private clinic for clients with very special, intimate needs, as you well know. And honestly? I was surprised to find out you asked for someone like Bomin-hyung. He is old.”

The other alpha gasped. “He’s not! He turned forty last month!”

Oh, so they even knew each other’s birthdays? “Exactly! He could be my father!”

“Well, he couldn’t be mine, so stop minding my business, you nosy brat!”

Jeongguk had been called a brat before, but when Jimin said it, his insides didn’t do cartwheels, so “Say it again,” he requested, his voice low and scratchy.

Seokjin looked at him as if Jeongguk had grown a second (and likely kinky) head. “Not even in your wildest dreams,” he finally declared. “Now just go.”

“I want to know why you lied first,” Jeongguk said, crossing his arms. “Why you said you didn’t like alphas only to book an appointment to get fucked by one of them not even twenty-four hours later. You could have just had me; I was more than available.”

Seokjin scowled. “Exactly. Has it ever crossed your mind that maybe, just maybe, the problem was you? I just don’t like you.”

He said it with such a sharp tone and so much animosity that Jeongguk would have been hurt if he only had to rely on hearing and sight to discern the speaker’s feelings, but since Seokjin had given up scent blockers, Jeongguk could smell the alpha’s scent doing the strangest of things.

Going – completely and unmistakably – on the opposite side to his words dripping with vitriol.

It hit Jeongguk with the force of a nose-splitting hook, and automatically, his nostrils flared, and his lips parted, almost as if he wanted to savour it with his taste buds too.

“You… you are aroused right now,” Jeongguk marvelled, eyes growing a little wider, a tad darker. “It’s not true that you don’t like me. On the contrary, I turn you on.”

Flushing, Seokjin tried to cover the scent glands on his neck, to do anything to prevent the treacherous fragrance from spreading further, as he tried to deny it, but the damage was done. Jeongguk, in the meantime, was elated.

“Since when has it been happening? Because you turned me on from the very first moment.”

Seokjin scoffed. “Yeah, I notic—”

“Wait, wait. It was as early as last night while we were playing Halli Galli, right?” Jeongguk smirked. “I made you so horny that you panicked and rejected me, missing out on the great, great pleasure you would have experienced if you only had let me take care of you.”

“Oh, shut up. I rejected you because you are not my type, and the more you talk, the more I am proven right,” Seokjin stated firmly.

“But I turn you on nonetheless.”

“I— you— okay! Okay, yes, you do!” the older alpha blurted out in exasperation. “You do, but it does not matter. It’s not important if my body reacts to you the way it does. I like mature men, not young cocky alphas who can’t keep it in their damn pants.”

Jeongguk’s expression hardened. “Like Bomin-hyung?”

“Yes. Like Bomin-hyung,” Seokjin confirmed. “At least he is a gentleman.”

Silence fell between them. Jeongguk would have liked to call it nauseating, but the truth was that Seokjin’s arousal still hung in the air, making his own tingle at the same time.

“Alright. I get it,” he acknowledged, but before Seokjin could think he was giving up, he added: “However, he is not here right now, you are still horny, and despite everything you just said about me, I am still available, so what do we do?”

“Let’s agree that you’re leaving,” Seokjin quasi-ordered, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Let’s agree that I take care of you.”

An indignified snort left Seokjin’s mouth.

“I am good, I swear,” Jeongguk said, taking a step forward. As he moved, the air moved too, enveloping him more tightly with Seokjin’s musk.

“I think it’s time for you to go home,” the older alpha said sternly through gritted teeth. “Excessive persistence is not sexy.”

“Are you sure? Because you are persistently keeping your distance, but my interest doesn’t fade, and judging by your scent, you would rather throw me in your bed, not out of the door.” Jeongguk opened his arms wide. “So here I am: do what you want with me.”

It was a challenge, alpha to alpha: if Seokjin wanted Jeongguk out of his territory, he would have to get his hands dirty and take action, not wait idly for Jeongguk to leave, because with the scent the older alpha was giving off? If Jeongguk could, he would have stayed there even if he were dead.

He hoped he would be given a chance, but he saw with extraordinary clarity the instant when Seokjin decided he had had enough and moved. He charged. He pounced like a wild beast, and a moment later, he was on Jeongguk, body to body, warmth to warmth, his musky scent up Jeongguk’s nostrils like a drug, and in the younger alpha’s ears a guttural growl of warning.

Jeongguk didn’t heed it; instead, he let his instincts consume him, which told him: Threat. Fight. Tame. The result was a melee where hands grabbed arms, feet tripped each other, shoulders bumped against each other, jaws snapped while threatening bites that never landed. Jeongguk lost his leather jacket, Seokjin narrowly avoided having his shirt sleeve ripped off, and as Jeongguk waddled on one leg trying to regain his balance so as not to end up sprawled on the wooden floor, Seokjin let out a beastly roar and jumped on his back.

“Give up,” he growled into Jeongguk’s ear, trying to strangle him with his arms.

“I don’t want to,” Jeongguk growled back, bucking to dislodge the other.

Seokjin was heavy, but in a hurry to cut Jeongguk’s airflow, he hadn’t grabbed the younger’s back properly, and a couple of jolts were enough to make him lose his grip. He slipped, but was quick to grab Jeongguk by the T-shirt, dragging him down, and they collapsed together against the back of the sofa. Seokjin’s elbow landed squarely in Jeongguk’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him more effectively than the attempted chokehold, but the young alpha didn’t care that he couldn’t breathe, when his nose was in the crook of Seokjin’s neck, and the other’s bum against his crotch.

It was a heavenly position to be in.

“Goodness, your scent…” Jeongguk rasped, rubbing his nose against Seokjin’s gland and barely holding back from licking it. “You’re even more turned on than before.”

Jeongguk was too, and his pants were so terribly tight that he felt like ripping them off for relief – but with the way Seokjin was squirming beneath him, involuntarily rubbing against his erection in an attempt to free himself, Jeongguk would have only one way to find true peace.

The thought made him tremble with desire, and his hips thrust forward out of reflex, wedging him better between Seokjin’s buttocks, who gasped and mumbled something which turned out incomprehensible despite their high proximity.

“I’m sorry, what?”

Seokjin swallowed, turned slightly towards Jeongguk but not so much as to see him, and repeated: “At least use a condom.”

Jeongguk blinked, and his lips parted in a small ‘o’ when his foggy brain processed the words. “Wait, are you giving me permission to—”

“Yes!” the older alpha cut him off, his neck and ears so red with embarrassment that one would have thought all the blood had flowed there. “Goodness, yes…”

As he said this, he reached for the crevice between the sofa cushions, and when he withdrew it, hurriedly pushed the contents into Jeongguk’s hand.

“I promise you won’t regret it,” the younger alpha pledged triumphantly, finding a bottle of lube and a row of condoms in his fist.

“You better, since I’m giving you the victory despite myself,” Seokjin retorted, sounding a little less breathless now that Jeongguk had straightened up and was no longer crushing him between his body and the back of the sofa. “Hurry up and let’s put it behind us.”

“I am hurrying,” Jeongguk remarked, pulling down his jeans and underwear just enough to get his cock out. At least the condom was the right size, and he put it on in a flash, although the friction of the latex on his already sensitive member made him hiss in discomfort.

Meanwhile, Seokjin had also pulled down his pants, but Jeongguk stopped him before he could take off his underwear.

“I want to do it,” he stated, removing the cap from the lube with a loud pop. Seokjin’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and he just gave a curt nod of permission.

Even though Jeongguk approached slowly so as not to startle him since the older alpha still had his back to him, Seokjin flinched when Jeongguk’s hand landed on his hip, and even more when Jeongguk’s fingers slipped into the waistband of his underwear.

“Relax,” Jeongguk whispered in his ear as he slowly lowered the fabric, revealing toned, milk-coloured buttocks, whereas Seokjin’s skin was otherwise lightly tanned. “You’ll enjoy it more if you do.”

Seokjin didn’t react, a behaviour that Jeongguk found odd, expecting the other alpha to put up more resistance, or play some last-minute prank on him, but Seokjin’s scent betrayed no second thoughts, continuing to spread only palpable arousal in the air. Not to be outdone, Jeongguk removed his scent-blocking patch, letting their scents blend and amplify each other.

Seokjin frowned a little. “You smell really strong right now.”

“You can say ‘divine’, it’s not a dirty word,” Jeongguk teased.

“You won’t put words in my mouth that I never thought.”

“I would put something else in your mouth,” Jeongguk snickered into the other’s ear. “Maybe next time. But for now…”

He trailed off, his fingers sliding into the crack of Seokjin’s ass, who gasped loudly and held on tighter to the sofa while the younger alpha explored him, making unexpected discoveries.

“You prepped yourself beforehand…” Jeongguk marvelled out loud, inserting a fingertip into Seokjin’s moist hole. The channel was loose enough that he could immediately add another finger. “Did you use a dildo, or…?”

“Dildo,” Seokjin replied through gritted teeth, tense as a violin string as Jeongguk continued to touch him.

“Knotted?”

The answer was slow in coming, but when Seokjin reluctantly said “Yes”, Jeongguk had already guessed it. What he hadn’t expected was for the older alpha to add, “And r-ridged.”

“Fuck,” Jeongguk hissed, his head spinning lightly as he pictured the scene. He would have liked to see it. “Is Bomin-hyung that hung? Or do you like to feel full?”

Seokjin twitched around Jeongguk’s fingers as he stammered, “B-both.”

“Then I won’t make you wait any longer,” Jeongguk stated, slipping his fingers out and immediately pushing the tip of his cock against Seokjin’s opening. “Ready?”

Seokjin nodded, and Jeongguk thrust his hips forward, sliding inside a few centimetres. Despite the preparation, Seokjin’s body was still predictably tight, yet Jeongguk still managed to advance a little at a time with each thrust, punctuated by a series of moans that sounded like music to his ears.

“God, do not be silent,” he begged Seokjin, crushing his chest against the other’s back and pushing him down onto the couch.

“Then you should let me breathe,” Seokjin pointed out, his voice coming out muffled. "I have the seat back in my diaphragm.”

Jeongguk was quick to bring them back to an upright position, although he stayed glued to the other. “Apologies. Would you rather move to bed?”

“No, you don’t get bed privileges. Here is fine,” Seokjin replied. “And stop licking my neck. It makes me want to bite you, but not in a good way.”

His warning sounded like a half-growl, and though Jeongguk hated having to detach himself from the other’s scent gland, he reluctantly did it for his own sake, and with one final thrust, he sheathed himself completely inside Seokjin, who let out a choked moan.

“Full enough?” Jeongguk asked, taking calming deep breaths as his cock was squeezed by the enthusiastic grip of Seokjin’s inner muscles.

“For now, yes,” the older alpha conceded, sounding a little dazed.

“More than when Bomin-hyung fucks you?”

“What kind of question is that? Does it turn you on to think of me with other people?” Seokjin turned slightly towards him. “Are you into cuckholding?”

“No, I’m just evaluating the competition.”

“It’s not a challenge, you know?”

“Oh yes, it is,” Jeongguk stated, drawing back until only his tip remained inside, “since you had chosen him over me.”

He pushed himself in all the way again as he said it, crowing in Seokjin’s reaction, in the way the other alpha’s body welcomed him, opening up until Jeongguk bottomed out. It felt so good that his knot was already starting to swell at the base.

Jeongguk reached out towards Seokjin’s front for the alpha’s cock, finding it big and heavy in his hand. Seokjin groaned as Jeongguk fondled his erection, collecting precum from the tip and smearing it along the sizable length whose knot was also starting to swell as Jeongguk’s hips picked up the rhythm – flesh against flesh, a harmony of scents and a litany of moans that became increasingly more frequent and louder as the peak of pleasure came towards them at dizzying speed.

Jeongguk reached it first, with a growl and a powerful final thrust as his knot popped and his seed poured copiously into the condom. As he pulsed, filling the latex as he would have liked to fill Seokjin directly, he felt himself being squeezed to the point where he thought his cock would fall off as Seokjin came all over Jeongguk’s hand and the couch, knot swelling in the younger’s fist.

What followed were long minutes of silence, disturbed only by faint gasps as they came back down to earth. Jeongguk was so up in the clouds he would have sworn he had just had a transcendental experience, a one-way journey to Nirvana, but it was probably just his scent-drunk brain talking.

“Stop marking my territory,” Seokjin grumbled with a rough voice.

“I am not, though? And I would never be that rude, I swear.”

“Whatever, your scent is getting too much. Keep it at bay, or I’ll kick you out in no time.”

“Right now, it would be a little difficult to do that without coming with me,” Jeongguk said with a smirk, moving his hips slightly to test the hold of his knot, and smirking even more upon finding it firm. “You will have to put up with me for at least another hour.”

“An hour?!”

“Minimum.”

Jeongguk felt Seokjin roll his eyes even though he could only see the back of the elder’s head.

“In that case, here’s what we are going to do…”

A few hours later, Jeongguk emerged from the fog of sleep onto Seokjin’s floor: in fact, after cleaning themselves of the residual lube and semen (and after scrubbing the fluids off the sofa as well), they had mutually decided to spend the time needed for Jeongguk’s knot to deflate by taking a restorative nap, and since there was no room for two on the sofa, Seokjin had decided that they would sleep on the hardwood, repeating once again that his bed was off-limits.

He had been so peremptory that Jeongguk had started to suspect that Seokjin was hiding some dark secret in the bedroom, but his flights of fancy had been proven wrong when they had to waddle to the room to get some more comfortable trousers to wear in their condition: the bedroom, in fact, looked perfectly normal, and smelled pleasantly of Seokjin.

Even though he hadn’t been able to lie down in the large and comfortable (and even more fragrant) bed, Jeongguk was satisfied that he was at least wearing a pair of the other alpha’s sweatpants – and it had been extremely hilarious when Seokjin had discovered that, since Jeongguk couldn’t pull them up to his waist because of their current situation, he had instead tied the drawstrings – with a nice bow at that – around the root of his penis to ensure that the trousers did not slip to the floor. Seokjin’s outrage had continued until Jeongguk pointed out that if the older alpha didn’t shut up, it would only further arouse him, and his knot would never deflate. At that point, Seokjin had closed his mouth, and they had fallen asleep next to each other, chest to back, with Jeongguk spooning the other.

It was wonderful. Perhaps too wonderful, because it didn’t take long – just enough time to wake up fully and give a little pull to his knot – to realise that nothing had changed.

“You said an hour at most!” Seokjin protested while they were manoeuvring to stand up. “It’s been three! The sun is setting!”

“I said an hour at least,” Jeongguk corrected him with a pout.

“This never happened with Bomin-hyung.”

“Because he is ancient and has no stamina. Anyway, don’t worry, I won’t charge you for the service if you are so unhappy, although I see zero reason not to be satisfied. I’ll just consider it our bet’s payoff.”

“I wasn’t trying to get a discount, but since you’re offering it, I’ll take it, thank you very much,” Seokjin retorted, sounding not at all grateful. “And you should stop playing the age card: first you say hyung could be your father, now you treat him as if he were your grandfather when anagraphically he could be neither—”

“Oh shit, my grandfather!” Jeongguk gasped.

“What? What happened to Ilsung-nim?” Seokjin inquired, immediately worried.

“He has no idea where I am! I last spoke to him last night, then we both had other things to do, and we haven’t seen each other this morning. Wait, I’ll send him a text. Where’s my jacket now… Oh, there it is.”

Without a second thought, Jeongguk wrapped his arms around Seokjin's waist and lifted him off the ground just enough so that he could waddle to his jacket – which had somehow landed on the back of a chair – while carrying Seokjin with him. Finally, all the hours spent hitting the gym were worth it.

There wasn’t much signal, but Jeongguk hoped his grandfather would see the text anyway. Resting his chin on Seokjin’s shoulder, he began to type, only for the other to immediately stop him.

“You will not tell Ilsung-nim that you are here, and especially that you are spending the night! He’ll come check what is going on!”

“So what, I claim that I came across a gumiho and I ran away to save my liver from her jaws? Grandpa may be old, but he is not stupid,” Jeongguk pointed out. “Relax a little. It’ll be fine, hyung.”

Before the older alpha could protest again, he typed, “I’m staying over at Seokjin-hyung’s house. Please don’t come 😇”, and sent the text. He then tried to put the phone in his sweatpants pocket, but the weight almost dragged them down, so he ended up putting it back in his jacket while Seokjin muttered discontentedly to himself.

Surprisingly, Ilsung’s response came just a couple of minutes later – a disapproving “You are hopeless”, which made Jeongguk chuckle as it sounded so perfectly in keeping with the old man’s personality. On the other hand, Seokjin didn’t find it that funny.

“There is nothing laughable about this situation,” he mumbled grumpily, crossing his arms, and Jeongguk felt stung to the quick.

“Does it bother you that much that someone thinks we are having sex – which, by the way, is the truth? We are no longer living in an age where talking about it is considered scandalous, come on.”

“I know, but I care about my private life, and in such a small village – made more curious by the boredom of old age – privacy is a very rare commodity,” Seokjin explained. “I simply wish I didn’t have to wonder if everyone I meet was gossiping about what I do, and who I do it with, right before I showed up.”

“It’s a legitimate wish,” Jeongguk recognised. “So I guess nobody knows about Bomin-hyung, or, well… that you prefer alphas.”

“You were there last night when they were hoping I would find an omega, right? From what I understand, they’re unaware of everything – though not for long, if Ilsung-nim decides to speak about tonight,” Seokjin sighed.

“I don’t think he will. My grandfather may like to gossip from time to time, but he is a prudish man. Dad told me that my grandmother had to intervene to explain the whole thing about heats, ruts, and sexual instincts to him when he presented, because Grandpa was just too flustered to do it. Trust me, he won’t open his mouth.”

“I hope you are right,” Seokjin hummed. “Wait, but so what does Ilsung-nim think of your job? He must disapprove of it.”

“Oh, yes, he does. When he found out, he shut himself away for months. Now he just pretends I’m doing something else. Or he has forgotten about it for real: given his age, you never know,” Jeongguk giggled.

“How did you end up doing… this? Being a sex worker?”

“Well, I’ll have you know that it wasn’t a long-held dream of mine. Actually, I was street-casted.”

“… Pardon?”

“I swear it’s true!” Jeongguk assured him, sensing the disbelief in Seokjin’s voice. “The clinic sent staff to the university to scout medical graduates for their assistance programs, and I caught their attention,” he recounted. “I hadn’t yet decided what to do after graduation, whether to take a specialisation or look for a job, so it seemed like an opportunity like any other to make up my mind, to see if I was ready to, so to speak, throw myself into the world. I tried it, I liked it, and I stayed.”

“Yeah, you must have liked it a lot,” Seokjin chuckled.

“No, seriously, it wasn’t because of the sex,” Jeongguk defended himself. “After all, what we do with clients isn’t real sex. We don’t have a romantic relationship with them; there are no feelings. It’s a giving on our part, and a taking on theirs. A transaction,” he summarised.

“So what made you stay?”

“I felt – I still feel – helpful. Of course, it was strange at first, embarrassing even, but at the end of the day, I was happy to have helped those people feel better, whether it was for a heat cycle or other needs.”

“So much dedication. Then, I imagine that if I looked up your profile on the clinic’s website, I would find only positive reviews from satisfied clients.”

“Of course!”

“Has anyone ever complained about getting Dr Jeon’s knot stuck in their butt?”

“Not a single soul. I take the pill to prevent it from happening when I sleep with another alpha, you know,” Jeongguk pointed out. “Except this time. I didn’t imagine I would need it here, so I didn’t bring it.”

“… But your knot isn’t stuck stuck, is it?” Seokjin asked with a clear hint of terror.

“I…” Jeongguk mulled over it for a moment, “don’t think so.”

“You don’t think?” Seokjin squeaked. “So you are not sure! Oh my goodness, what the hell have I gotten myself into?”

“Hyung, it will be fine! It will deflate soon, don’t worry,” Jeongguk reassured the older alpha.

The truth, however, was that even he didn’t know what was going to happen. Objectively, his knot had never lasted this long – an hour, as he had told Seokjin, and then it would return to its usual size. This time, however, it was still completely engorged, and Jeongguk was almost painfully aware of Seokjin’s grip on it, even though he tried not to pay attention to it, because if he did… well. His cock would surely become erect again, and the chances of his knot deflating in a reasonable amount of time would go straight out the window. If he really had to pay attention to the sensations coming from his groin, he’d better focus on the annoying one of the wet, used condom enveloping his flaccid penis – a good reason to get out of Seokjin as soon as possible so that he could dispose of it.

(Jeongguk could always try to entice the older alpha to let him slide back into him later, perhaps without the latex separating them. But first he had to pull out.)

“—guk. Jeongguk!” Seokjin’s call pierced through his tantalising thoughts.

“Huh, what? I wasn’t listening.”

“You don’t say!” Seokjin huffed. “I asked, how…” – his voice became fainter, more hesitant – “How does the issue of bodily needs work while we’re like this? Do you know?”

“Oh! Well, that’s a legitimate concern,” Jeongguk acknowledged. “But rest assured, the body is a wonderfully efficient machine, and your intestines and my bladder won’t play any nasty tricks.”

Seokjin audibly sighed in relief, also dramatically placing a hand on his chest. “Then let’s go have dinner, I’m getting hungry.”

It took them a while to figure out how to move, amidst apologies and grunts as they tripped over each other’s feet. Jeongguk suggested that he lift Seokjin and carry him to the kitchen as he had done moments before, but the alpha insisted that he wanted to stand on his own two feet, so Jeongguk ended up walking with his knees slightly bent to make it easier for Seokjin, and they set off looking like a little human train. At least there was no one to see them and laugh.

“Fridge,” Seokjin instructed, directing Jeongguk to the appliance and opening its door. “I was really looking forward to grilling these briskets…” he mumbled, casting a disconsolate glance at a hermetically sealed container on the shelf.

“We can do it anyway!” Jeongguk exclaimed, already feeling the greasy taste on his tongue.

“And how? Out in the yard for the village to see, me sitting on your knot while I flip the meat?” Seokjin deadpanned.

“Well, ye—” he tried to say, but Seokjin cut him off.

“No, I’ll just put them in the soybean paste stew and call it a day.”

“Beef briskets… in the stew?”

“Don’t say it like it’s a sacrilegious idea when I know full well that in Seoul you do even worse things to your food,” Seokjin tutted. “Like mayonnaise in makguksu.”

“Or spicy ramyeon porridge,” Jeongguk added, realising a moment later that the elder was making fun of him. “… It tastes good, I swear.”

“Sure, sure. Cabinet,” Seokjin ordered; he filled his arms with all the utensils needed for his recipe, then, “Now counter.”

“To bend yo— ouch! Okay, okay, I got it,” Jeongguk mumbled, following the other with a sore foot. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“I’m about to start handling a knife, so please don’t make any sudden movements. That would be very helpful.”

Jeongguk hummed in acknowledgement, arranging himself so as not to disturb the other alpha while he cooked, but Seokjin tutted and gave him a sidelong glance. “Be careful where you touch.”

“It’s not my fault if your waist is perfect for my hands,” Jeongguk replied, lightly tightening his arms around Seokjin, “and your shoulder is right at the height of my chin.”

Seokjin made a disbelieving sound, but he didn’t push Jeongguk away and instead started cutting the briskets. “Out of curiosity, are you this… affectionate with all your clients?”

“Of course not. But you are not a client.”

“No? Then what, a hookup?”

“That, but also a person I like,” Jeongguk answered, his voice dropping, as if speaking softly made him less vulnerable. “Opportunities to spend time with someone who isn’t part of my job are quite rare, so when I can, I try to take advantage of them.”

Seokjin didn’t say anything, but his scent sweetened slightly and remained so throughout the cooking. It was so good that Jeongguk couldn’t tell whether his stomach was rumbling because of it or because of the savoury fats in the meat melting into the pan. Seokjin used them as a base for the broth of the soybean paste stew, and when he let Jeongguk test-taste it, the younger alpha found that they had made its flavour deeper.

“It’s truly delicious,” he marvelled. “When are we going to eat? I am starving.”

“When I figure out how to do it without having to sit down. At least they’re not noodles.”

“Why can’t we sit down? There’s no one inside the house who can see us, and as I said, I have no problem keeping you on my lap,” Jeongguk teased. “It might be fun. I’d be curious to see if I could make you come again on my knot alone,” he murmured, his fingers starting walking step by step from Seokjin’s waist to his groin. The older alpha slapped them.

“We are in the kitchen, Jeongguk-ah. Keep the dirty talk and your curiosity for the bedroom.”

“Oh, so we are finally moving to your bedroom?”

“No.”

“Party pooper,” Jeongguk snorted. “I don’t want to spend the night on the floor.”

“Well, me neither, but I don’t let other alphas in my den, so guess what?”

“Couldn’t you make an exception, given the exceptional circumstances? We’re already inconvenienced because of me, let’s not be inconvenienced because of you, too, hyung.”

“… Just so you know, you have shitty ways of persuasion.”

“Imagine a comfortable bed… a soft mattress… luxurious sheets caressing your peach skin—”

“My what?”

“—strong arms holding you, a solid body keeping you warm…”

“And that would be you?”

“Is there anyone else with his knot stuck inside you right now?” Jeongguk whispered into Seokjin’s ear, blowing his hot breath on the elder’s neck.

“If you stop talking nonsense, I’ll think about it.”

“About my knot insi—”

“Jeongguk!”

The younger alpha’s mouth snapped shut.

Later, as they dined on the soybean paste stew – which they had ultimately resolved to eat standing up, Seokjin directly from the pot with a spoon and Jeongguk sipping from a glass with a straw – the elder alpha announced, “Okay, we can sleep on the bed. But,” he rushed to add before Jeongguk started celebrating, “you need to put on a scent blocker. I don’t want you to stink up my room.”

“Fine, but it’s a shame,” Jeongguk lamented. “I have a nice smell in the morning.”

“Regrettably, I’ll have to live without it,” Seokjin replied, without sounding at all sorry. “I just hope the more comfortable arrangement will help you relax, and your knot deflate. That’s everything that matters.”

“… Right.”

“Also, I need to wash, which means we will have to wash. Somehow.”

“Why ‘somehow’?”

“Because there is no room for two in the tub, and the shower is outdoors.”

“Oh.” Jeongguk thought about it for a moment. “Well, no one forces us to wash,” he found himself saying, the part of his mind that appreciated cleanliness screaming, scandalised at the concept.

“True, but I don’t want to go to bed with this smell on me. It gives me goosebumps every time it hits my nostrils,” Seokjin explained.

Jeongguk frowned, his heart tightening from feeling a bit hurt. “Is my scent that disgusting?”

Seokjin had the decency to blush in shame. “That’s not what I meant. It’s not disgusting, it’s not even bad, actually, but it’s imposing. It triggers my instincts, and it doesn’t let me calm down. I’ve been constantly feeling on edge.”

“Then we’ll take that shower,” Jeongguk agreed reluctantly. He didn’t like the idea of Seokjin washing his scent off, but he understood that smelling like another alpha might mess with the other’s head. It had happened to Jeongguk, too, even though he had outgrown that phase: with the job he had, it was practically mandatory.

He was sure, however, that even if that hadn’t been the case, smelling like Seokjin wouldn’t have bothered him in the slightest.

“It’s quite dark, and I don’t see anyone around. We should be safe. Let’s go,” Seokjin whispered, putting one foot out the back door and literally dragging Jeongguk with him.

They tiptoed quickly to the shower, mounted against the wall of the house and closed on two sides by wooden boards. A swing door at hip height allowed entry and served as additional protection from prying eyes; once inside, Seokjin used it to hang up the towel that hid them while they walked the short distance between the door and the shower, since to save time, they had undressed beforehand.

“You said we wouldn’t fit in the tub, but it’s not like there’s much more room in here,” Jeongguk commented, only to be shushed without ceremony.

“Don’t make yourself heard and wash quickly.”

“I would do it if there was water— agh!”

“Don’t raise your voice!”

“It’s freezing!”

“What did you expect? It’s an outdoor shower for quick rinses, not a spa!” Seokjin retorted, whisper-shouting. “Hold the soap, and I beg you, don’t drop it.”

Jeongguk was tempted to drop it out of spite, but given the limited space and the dim light – there wasn’t a single lamp in the courtyard – he decided to behave and bravely threw himself under the cold jet that rained down from the slightly crooked shower head above them.

“You’re pushing me against the wall,” Seokjin hissed, his face half squashed against the side of the house.

Jeongguk smirked. “Should I be sorry about that?” he asked in a whisper, squeezing Seokjin a little more between his body and the wall. The other alpha’s skin was warm, and the contrast with the temperature of the water made it feel scorching.

Jeongguk expected a sharp reply, but Seokjin did nothing of the sort; instead, he made a small noise that alerted the younger alpha as it sounded so much like a whimper. He immediately moved away from the elder.

“Hyung, hey, what’s wrong? Did you hurt yourself against the wall?” A terrible thought crossed his mind. “You didn’t get a splinter or a pebble stuck in your cock from the wall, did you?”

Seokjin laughed, or at least Jeongguk thought the noise that came out of his mouth was laughter, because otherwise it was a remarkable imitation of a windshield wiper, which could only mean the other alpha had gone crazy.

“Where the hell do you get these ideas from?” Seokjin huffed, turning just enough for Jeongguk to see that a hint of a smile remained on the elder’s lips. “No, I got a knot stuck in my ass, and an inattentive alpha who likes to keep impaling me with it.”

“O-oh. Okay. Hmm, sorry? Sorry,” Jeongguk fumbled, feeling himself flush in the dark. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“If you’re more careful how you move it, I’ll manage. Now soap my back.”

“Yes, hyung!”

“Quietly.”

“Yes, hyung,” Jeongguk repeated in a lower voice, getting to work without hesitation since Seokjin had permitted him to touch him. Honestly, he took advantage of it a little, running his fingers along every curve of bone and muscle, from the elder’s shoulders to his waist and a little lower, just above the curve of the butt. It took him a tremendous effort of will not to cup Seokjin’s buttocks and spread them apart to look at the point where they connected, but Jeongguk managed to hold himself back, even though Seokjin’s scent was sending him mixed signals, almost as if it were intensifying under the fragrance of the soap in reaction to Jeongguk’s ministrations, making an invitation.

Jeongguk hoped Seokjin would ask him to do more, and his heart skipped a beat when the other alpha sighed softly, but instead of the coveted invitation, Seokjin just said, “What about you? Does your knot hurt?”

“More than anything, it’s uncomfortable because of, you know, the used condom,” Jeongguk replied, moving his hands to soap the other’s hair. “But it doesn’t hurt. Actually, my knot is happy, especially when you give it involuntary squeezes,” he confessed, and immediately felt Seokjin’s hole twitch around him. “Yeah, just like that.”

In response, Seokjin pulled the chain, and a rush of cold water drenched them. Their shared shower ended like that, with shrieks of protest and petulant jeers which resounded in the night.

There was a first time for everything, and Jeongguk’s first time after stepping out of that hellish shower was finding himself annoyed by the smell of cleanliness. He buried his nose inside the shirt and couldn’t smell Seokjin’s lingering scent, neither on himself nor on the borrowed clothing: the soap covered everything. What was worse was that Seokjin didn’t smell of Jeongguk either, and the younger alpha couldn’t fix that because he had to put on the scent blocker patch as requested.

The only silver lining in the whole thing was that he was about to sleep in a bed that, besides being more comfortable than the floor, would be Seokjin’s, and Seokjin would be in it with him, more specifically, in Jeongguk’s arms. Strangely enough, the thought made him happy as a clam, and he couldn’t wait to slip under the den’s sheets and smell all the typical Seokjin scents he’d find there, but a moment before opening the sliding door of the bedroom, the older alpha said: “Maybe we should reconsider and just sleep on the floor.”

“No! Why?”

“Because the goal is to make you relax enough so that your knot can deflate, but you’re so agitated and nervous that I don’t think it will do any good.”

“It’s not nervousness, it’s anticipation – and if you let it down, I’ll be so sad we will be stuck together even longer,” Jeongguk stated. “Now open that door, hyung. … Please.”

With a resigned sigh, Seokjin complied, and the room revealed itself to Jeongguk as a pearl inside an oyster would. Even though he had already been there to collect the clothes he was wearing, now that it was night, everything seemed new, from the low desk under the window to the chest of drawers with mother-of-pearl inlays that Seokjin had told him was a family heirloom dating back to his great-great-grandmother, from the bright lava lamp on the night table to the Western bed with its crisp pink and blue sheets, that seemed to look at them with expectation and hum a siren song to lure them into its soft depths.

It’s just a bed, nothing more and nothing less, Jeongguk told himself, but it gave off such a nice musky scent that he salivated as they approached it in silence. When Seokjin’s knees were almost touching the mattress, the elder muttered, “Now behave.”

Jeongguk understood what he meant a moment later, when Seokjin crawled onto the bed and, to accommodate his advance, Jeongguk had to assume a position that he had to force himself not to associate with mounting, even though it was one in every way. His eyes went dark, and his cock nearly twitched with immeasurable interest, but luckily, a moment later, they were lying on their sides, and Seokjin reached for the bedside table to turn off the light. The room plunged into darkness.

“Now relax, Jeongguk-ah, and let’s hope we’re lucky in our sleep. Goodnight,” Seokjin whispered.

“Goodnight, hyung,” he replied, snuggling better against the other’s back to spoon him. They were an almost perfect fit, and the position was so comfortable that Jeongguk immediately felt at ease and yawned.

Lulled by the absence of any scent other than his own, Seokjin fell asleep within ten minutes, and shortly after, his low, regular breathing dragged Jeongguk towards the silent realm of dreams.

Jeongguk had told Seokjin that he smelled delicious in the morning; what he hadn’t anticipated was that the older alpha could smell just as delicious, if not more.

Given the lingering fragrance of the den, Jeongguk should have expected Seokjin to have the best scent that had ever been created by nature or artificially synthesised, and in his awakening state, Jeongguk’s nose went hunting for it, nuzzling the other’s neck with the abandon of a bee sniffing a flower. He went as far as giving the scent gland an experimental lick, to which Seokjin moaned something that, while unintelligible, did not sound like an order to stop, so Jeongguk licked him again, this time slower and longer, and in response Seokjin clenched around him.

“Goodness, do it again,” Jeongguk rasped, burrowing closer into the other’s nape while Seokjin reached back to thread a hand in his hair…

… only to pull them a little too hard and tear Jeongguk’s mouth away from his skin.

“Of course you had to be the kind of alpha who wakes up horny,” Seokjin grumbled as Jeongguk exaggerated his whimper of pain. “You were supposed to relax and make your knot go down in your sleep, not to get turned on again!” Frustrated, he tried to thrust his hips forward, but Jeongguk’s knot held him back. “What do we do now?”

The question was rhetorical, but Jeongguk still answered: “Emergency room?”

“What?!”

“Look, I am not thrilled about it either, and we’re definitely going to be the joke on everyone’s lips, but we have been like this for over 12 hours now, so—”

“No, you don’t understand,” Seokjin interrupted him agitatedly, dragging Jeongguk out of bed to pace around the room together. “The nearest hospital is an hour’s drive from here, and aside from not having the transportation to get there, they would keep us too long, and I would never be able to get back in time.”

“Huh? In time for what?”

“For the district Halli Galli tournament this afternoon.”

Jeongguk blinked. At first, he was sure he had misunderstood, because there was no way Seokjin’s top priority was that, but thinking about it again, the elderly men at the club had mentioned it the other night, so who knew?

“Well, given the circumstances, you will have to forfeit,” he said sensibly, but Seokjin stopped abruptly and snapped, “I don’t want to!”

“But—”

“I said no! It may not be important to you, but it is important to me. To the village,” Seokjin insisted. “There’s a cash prize for the winner, and by combining it with my savings, I will be able to buy a minivan to take your grandfather and the others for medical checkups. You have no idea how many of them neglect their health just because they can’t physically go to the hospital.”

It was true, Jeongguk had no idea – just as he hadn’t even fathomed that there could be such a motivation behind Seokjin’s insistence on participating in the tournament. He gulped, a lump of emotion stuck in his throat.

“You would do this for them?”

“Without thinking twice. When I lost my job four years ago and decided to move to the countryside, I thought I would have a hard time adjusting – not to life as a farmer, because I had already experienced it as a child on my uncle’s strawberry farm and it was just a matter of getting back into the habit, but to the… what should I call it? Social structure?” Deciding it was a fitting definition, Seokjin hummed, nodding to himself. “It’s well known that outside the cities they are more conservative and the pack organisation is still very much alive, so I feared they would see me as an intruder, if not a threat, everywhere I went, because, well. I am a young, strong, and handsome alpha.”

“Of course you are,” Jeongguk murmured, smiling to himself at the other’s display of self-awareness.

“Then, you can imagine my surprise when this village welcomed me warmly, allowing me to settle among them, even becoming their pack alpha. So I can’t disappoint them. Last time they held the district tournament, I lost, but this year I’m confident in my skills; I have to show up. It’s my duty.”

Jeongguk had some reservations about Seokjin being elected pack alpha, since, from what his father had told him, the village had never cared about such titles even when Ilsung was young. He had more of a feeling that the elders rather saw the one they called ‘Seokjin-ah’ as their baby alpha, but he was careful not to say so. Instead, he rested his forehead on the other’s shoulder and sighed.

“I’m sorry my knot ruined everything. I swear I would have taken precautions if I even imagined it might refuse to deflate.” He paused. “No, actually, I could have suspected it, but there’s no point crying over spilt milk now. Just believe me when I say I am mortified by what happened and by the gossip that will go around later. To make up for it, I’d like to contribute to the minivan fund—”

“Stop, stop, stop, rewind a moment,” Seokjin interrupted him. “What do you mean you could have suspected it?”

“Well… Physical attraction, breeding instincts, and knot size are all connected and one consequence of the other. The attraction I felt for you was pretty strong from the very first moment, so my knot was bound to swell more than usual.” Jeongguk gnawed at his bottom lip. “But I never could have imagined that it would remain so for so long, even though I understand it.”

“What do you understand?”

Jeongguk moved his head to the hollow between Seokjin’s shoulder blades and murmured, half earnest and half embarrassed: “You repeatedly told me to relax, to distract myself so my knot would deflate and let us go our separate ways, but the truth is that I am too aware of being inside you to get my mind off it. I keep thinking about how amazing you feel around me, and I’m afraid my knot won’t deflate because of this.”

Jeongguk waited for Seokjin to curse at him and deservedly call him a knothead. He imagined they would probably come to blows, as much as was possible in their situation, and automatically recoiled when the older alpha’s hand reached for his hair again, remembering the pain of feeling it tugged, but Seokjin was persistent and managed to grab it anyway one mere attempt later. However, he didn’t pull – he used his grip to push Jeongguk’s head down, towards Seokjin’s face, which had turned as far as possible, towards the older alpha’s waiting mouth, which took possession of Jeongguk’s with devouring passion.

Jeongguk barely had time to realise what was happening before Seokjin was already sliding between his lips, parted in surprise, plundering the inside of the younger alpha’s mouth. A dart of Seokjin’s tongue towards Jeongguk’s caught the younger alpha in the vortex of the kiss, and Jeongguk tightened his arms around the other’s waist as he met the elder alpha’s advance with equal enthusiasm, until he was tasting the warm, velvety cavity of Seokjin’s mouth. A hint of teeth on his lower lip made Jeongguk moan greedily, sending a spark through his body—

— and his flaccid member plopped out of Seokjin with a faint wet sound.

Jeongguk’s knot had finally deflated.

Seokjin immediately pulled away from him, turning fully and looking at Jeongguk – taking in the younger alpha’s dazed and confused expression, his dishevelled hair – with a smile somewhere between amused and mocking.

“If I had known that a kiss would distract you enough to let me go, I would have done it sooner,” he said, and Jeongguk followed with rapt eyes Seokjin’s thumb as he wiped a drop of saliva from his reddened lips, making them bounce a little.

A moment later, Seokjin had disappeared in the direction of the bathroom, and as the pants he was wearing, no longer held up by the knot, slipped to the floor, Jeongguk touched his lips. They stung a little, in a pleasant, goosebump-inducing way, and even without looking in a mirror, he knew a dopey smile was starting to tug at them.

Oh, shit.

Once free, the first thing they did was go to wash themselves. Jeongguk heard Seokjin humming from the tub as he threw the used condom in the wastebasket in the kitchen, and he wondered if maybe, just maybe, he could go and ask to join him. He even got as far as the closed bathroom door, but then shook his head, picked up his clothes from the day before, and stepped outside to take a shower. The cold water slid pleasantly over his hot skin, especially his private parts, which were a little red. Maybe Seokjin had some remedy for it, and with that thought, Jeongguk quickly finished rubbing his body and went back into the house.

Albeit not singing anymore, the older alpha was still in the bathroom, but this time Jeongguk didn’t let himself be stopped by the closed door and knocked on the frame.

“Hyung? Do you happen to have any ointment for the private parts in there? I’m a little red.”

Seokjin took a moment to answer, so much so that Jeongguk was about to repeat the question louder, thinking he hadn’t heard him, but then the muffled voice of the other alpha said, “Hmm, I do.”

“May I borrow it?”

“In a minute.” A pause. “I’m using it.”

“O-oh,” Jeongguk stuttered and gulped, his mind immediately flashing with images of Seokjin’s fingertips smeared with balm grazing his puffy hole.

“Jeongguk-ah?” Seokjin called out to him, his voice sounding closer this time, as if he were just behind the door.

“Huh?”

“Did you remove your scent blocker?”

The younger alpha’s hand immediately flew to his bare neck. “Yes, I took a shower, so…”

“I can smell you,” Seokjin murmured. “Thinking with your second head again?”

“… I’m afraid so,” Jeongguk replied softly, pressing his lips together, then he shot his shot. “Would you open the door?”

This time Seokjin took even longer to answer, and while he waited, Jeongguk surreptitiously tried the handle. It was firmly locked.

Finally, the older alpha sighed. “We shouldn’t risk it again, you know?”

“… I do.”

“Then I’ll bring you the ointment after I’m done. You can make yourself something to eat in the meantime, if you want.”

“Thank you, hyung, but no, thank you,” Jeongguk replied with a sad smile only he knew about. “Actually, I think I overstayed my welcome. I appreciated your hospitality and… and everything else, really, but it’s time for me to go home.”

Seokjin hummed in understanding. “Okay. Thanks to you, too, Jeongguk. Come to the club for the tournament later, if you like.”

“I’ll think about it. Thank you for the invitation, hyung. I’m off, then,” Jeongguk said, taking a step back, putting some space between himself and Seokjin even though there was already a door separating them.

It felt strange to be able to move freely now, Jeongguk mused as he put on his jacket and walked out of the house that had been his home for half a day. He had almost gotten used to having Seokjin constantly in front of him, to feeling the slightly shaggy hair on the back of the elder’s head brush against his nose if Jeongguk got too close, to catching wafts of scent rising from the other alpha’s neck, so now he felt an odd sense of deprivation. He also couldn’t get over the fact that his body had reacted that way to Seokjin: there probably wasn’t a more romantic answer than mere hormonal compatibility, but it had made the older alpha inevitably unforgettable.

By the time Jeongguk got home, he had made up his mind: he’d show up at the club later to cheer on Seokjin. He hoped the older alpha would win, because he deserved it – and the village deserved its minivan, and a pack alpha so thoughtful he’d forgo the prize for them. He also refused to consider that awkward goodbye they had exchanged through a door as the end of their, dare he say, relationship: there were still some things he wanted to tell Seokjin, so another meeting was necessary.

“I see you are back,” a voice muttered behind him, and Jeongguk, lost in his thoughts, started.

“Grandpa! You gave me a heart attack!” he exclaimed, turning towards the entrance of the house, where Ilsung was taking off his slippers with the slowness befitting his old age.

“Either I’ve turned blind, or you’re not dead, though,” his grandfather groused, glaring at him through half-closed eyes. Even though Ilsung was trying not to show it, Jeongguk noticed that he was looking for signs of his night with Seokjin, and cleared his throat in awkwardness.

As if in reaction, Ilsung also coughed.

“I won’t ask you for the details of what happened, but I hope you don’t have any strange designs on Seokjin,” the old man said after a while.

“Strange designs like what?”

“Like using him once and then trashing him. Thinking he is good enough only for a… a one-night stand,” Ilsung responded with difficulty, visibly blushing as he broached a topic that clearly made him uncomfortable.

“I don’t think he is. I quite like him,” Jeongguk reassured him with a smile he hoped conveyed his sincerity.

“Oh! Oh, good. Because he’s a great guy who deserves someone who values him,” Ilsung continued. “He deserves a little love, too.”

“From what I’ve seen and what I am hearing, he gets it from all you villagers. And by the way, it’s mutual. He told me what he wants to do with the—”

Ilsung rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean it that way, come on.”

“… I know.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Jeongguk blinked. “Pardon?”

“Goodness, for being my grandson, you are really dense.” Ilsung pointed out the open window. “There are some flowers in the garden, go pick them. This courtship has to start somewhere.”

“This what?”

“Jeongguk-ah, look. Honestly, you were not exactly my first choice, but after that little scene at the club the other night, the others decided they liked you, and at least you don’t see Seokjin-ah as a one-night stand only, so I guess you are good enough. Seokjin-ah is still very handsome but well past mating age, and if you look closely, you’re not getting any younger either,” Ilsung muttered, clicking his tongue. “When I was your age, your father was already old enough to make your grandmother’s hair go white from nearly breaking his neck rolling down hills with his friends.”

“Those were different times!”

“But flower bouquets never went out of style,” Ilsung noted, and to that Jeongguk had nothing to rebut.

Five minutes later, he had a pair of shears in one hand and a field of sunflowers in front of him.

When Jeongguk and Ilsung reached the village club later that afternoon, they found it exceptionally bustling: young and old were busy here and there with the management of the tournament, advertising banners and flags had been hung above the door, from the windows and on all the available railings, and, in addition to a couple of tables for managing the registrations, even food carts had appeared. The village seemed to be in full festive mode, while Jeongguk wondered where they would fit all those people: the club hadn’t seemed that big at first glance.

He soon got his answer when Ilsung led him to the back of the building, where it opened into a large dirt courtyard where they had set up many raised wooden platforms with a small table on top. Along the perimeter, there were benches for the spectators, who had already filled all the first rows in search of the best viewing spots, so the two of them had to make do with the third row and its more limited view, blocked by the heads of those who had preceded them. It was funny to think that there was so much participation in a Halli Galli tournament, but Jeongguk supposed that in the countryside there weren’t many alternatives to pass the time – and understandably, the villagers would all have been in attendance to find out if they would win their minivan.

While waiting for the event to begin, Jeongguk thought about going to find Seokjin for a final good luck wish, but in the meantime, the seats next to theirs had filled up, and it would have meant making too many octogenarians stand up, so he reluctantly gave up, regretting not having sat at the end of the row for an easier exit.

At least the contestants entered shortly afterwards – as many as 32 of them, Jeongguk counted as they filed past and were introduced by the host, a middle-aged man in a top hat that didn’t match the traditional hanbok he was wearing. Seokjin stood out among them for his youth and good looks, and Jeongguk chuckled to himself as he noticed that the older alpha’s walk was a bit lopsided. He grinned even more when Seokjin sat down at his place on one of the platforms as if he was having trouble putting weight on his butt.

Slap!

“Your lewd thoughts are showing, and it’s disgusting. Spare me,” Ilsung pleaded while Jeongguk massaged his offended arm.

Jeongguk’s response was drowned out by the piercing sound of the whistle that started the tournament. The pairs of challengers began to clash under the watchful eyes of the judges while the announcer commented on the results as if they were boxing matches: his high voice was absurdly annoying, but Jeongguk was still partly grateful because it allowed him to know how Seokjin was doing, since he couldn’t figure it out from his seat.

“I am sure our boy will win,” Grandpa Minki commented, turning back from his seat in front of Jeongguk. “He is strong, and the competition is way older.”

It was true, most of the contestants were in their sixties, but Jeongguk knew that Seokjin’s prodigious skills were not to be underestimated either – and in fact, an hour later, he had easily made it to the final round. His challenger was an omega younger than the average competitor, closer to Seokjin’s age, and Jeongguk tensed as he watched them interact: not only was she quite pretty, but she also seemed suspiciously self-confident, as if she took it for granted that she would win.

His sixth sense proved right shortly after, when, in the final stages of the match, the omega tucked a lock of hair behind one ear and craned her neck.

“What a cheat! She’s trying to distract him with her scent!” Ilsung exclaimed indignantly as the other villagers around them gasped.

Jeongguk, for his part, felt a growl rise from his chest, which came out guttural and possessive, and made several heads turn his way.

“Sorry,” he apologised sheepishly, clearing his throat as Grandpa Minki laughed at him.

Oblivious of the fuss from the onlookers, Seokjin just glanced at the omega with a derisive smirk and, unfazed, played his card.

Seconds later, he rang the bell of final victory.

The villagers erupted in cheers and rose from their seats like a jubilant tide, as if they had returned to the 2002 World Cup and South Korea had managed to advance beyond fourth place. Seokjin responded to their joy by raising his fist to the sky, looking at them with a smile and eyes full of affection that eventually met Jeongguk’s. The two alphas exchanged a knowing look, and Jeongguk nodded in acknowledgement, giving Seokjin an approving thumbs-up.

Once the hubbub died down, the host formally announced Seokjin’s victory, and the awards ceremony began, accompanied by thunderous applause. After the customary photos with the award certificate, the hero of the day was finally handed over to his waiting, overeager fans.

“Congratulations, hyung,” Jeongguk said as soon as the older alpha was in front of him, his hair a little dishevelled after having passed through a dozen old men – Ilsung included. “You were exceptional. Honestly, when your opponent exposed her neck, I broke out in a cold sweat, but I’m glad you didn’t let her distract you.”

“Unfortunately for her, the chances of an omega’s scent making me waver were frighteningly close to zero,” Seokjin smirked, then lowered his voice: “On the other hand, the growl of a certain alpha made all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.”

“Only your hair?” Jeongguk asked in the best sultry voice he could make while trying not to laugh.

Seokjin’s eyes flit down briefly at groin height, but he didn’t say anything, asking instead: “Is that bouquet for me, or are we ignoring it?”

“O-oh, right, this,” Jeongguk realised, glancing at the old men behind Seokjin, who immediately pretended to look away from the pair, before bringing his eyes back to the alpha and handing him the sunflowers. “Yes, it’s for you.”

“Thank you. They are very beautiful.” Seokjin stuck his nose in a corolla and smiled. “You had to be really sure I would win to get them.”

“Well, I indeed trusted your ability, but they are not actually a congratulatory gift.” Jeongguk bit the corner of his bottom lip. “Over the past twenty-four hours, I have become very familiar with your nape, your ears, and your neck, but I’d also like to know more about the rest of you, hyung. And even though I leave tomorrow, I’d like to see you again and for you to get to know me better.” Someone swooned in the background. “I hadn’t planned on telling you with flowers, but since they were, erm, kindly offered, here they are.”

“Wow,” Seokjin whispered, cheeks growing a faint pink, and Jeongguk would have loved to smell him at that moment. “Ass that good?”

“Kiss that good.”

“Oh!”

“Oooh!”

“Hyung, your grandson is smooth!”

“Shut that mouth, I can’t hear anything if you talk!”

“Another thing,” Jeongguk added, lowering his voice and moving closer so that only Seokjin could hear. “Don’t call Bomin-hyung anymore. When you want to have a good time in the future, just call me.”

“I… will think about it,” Seokjin murmured, smiling enough for Jeongguk to harbour hope in his heart, then the older alpha cleared his throat and said, out loud for the benefit of their voyeurs: “Thank you again for the flowers. Now let’s go celebrate!”

What followed was an evening of revelry the likes of which the village had never experienced. Music, though still strictly from the 1960s, blasted loudly into the night, and alcohol flowed freely, prolonging the party well past the club’s closing time, but nobody cared, too busy toasting Seokjin and chanting his name. The alpha, made more relaxed and boisterous by the soju, was enjoying the attention, and Jeongguk enjoyed watching him from the sidelines, happy and content among his pack of elderly people. It was his night, and his orbit was even more magnetic than usual, making Jeongguk want to be held captive by it, to get himself and Seokjin alone in a little corner of their own while they still had time, to drive the other up the wall – literally rather than figuratively – to ravish him…

But then Grandpa Kyungsoo said something, and the men tried to lift a tipsy Seokjin into the air, causing him to giggle instead of trying to reason that it was a terribly bad idea for their fragile limbs, and Jeongguk decided that the older alpha was exactly where he was supposed to be.

The next morning, Jeongguk and Ilsung woke up early and took the tractor to take the young alpha to the station so he could return to Seoul. As they jolted along the deserted, poorly paved road, Jeongguk reflected that the last time he had been alone with his grandfather for so long had been the day he arrived, as they were travelling the same route in the opposite direction, and he felt guilty.

“I’m sorry I have been of so little company,” he tried to apologise, but Ilsung immediately silenced him.

“It’s okay. It may not seem like it, but I know how things go when, erm, instincts take over. I’ve been there, too,” Ilsung said in an unexpected display of understanding. “Just try to come back, now that you have a better reason than me to do it.” He paused. “You are my grandson, but I will not forgive you if you break his heart.”

“I don’t plan to do it,” Jeongguk replied. In truth, the chances of the opposite happening were higher, since Seokjin hadn’t given him an answer yet. Maybe Jeongguk would have it next time he returned to the village – he was already planning it – or maybe he would never know.

He was trying to decide which one was better between a firm no and uncertainty when his phone started ringing: it was Jimin.

“Hey, hyung.”

“Why do you sound so weak? Did something happen?” Jimin asked in place of a greeting.

“No, I am just trying not to disturb the other passengers in the compartment,” Jeongguk replied, still whispering as he curled up in his seat.

“Well, that’s better. I take it you’re on your way home?”

“Yes, I left a while ago.”

“Did everything go well during your stay with your grandfather?”

“… Peachy,” he lied, images of him being stuck inside Seokjin flashing through his mind. Jimin would have made fun of him for life if he knew.

“Then can you explain to me why I don’t see Kim Seokjin’s payment for your services?”

“Oh, that,” Jeongguk pinched the root of his nose. “It’s because he changed his mind, and we didn’t do anything in the end. Sorry, I forgot to inform you.”

“Is that it? How strange. He sent a request to be removed from Bomin-hyung’s file and assigned to you just this morning.”

Jeongguk lifted his head with such a sudden jerk that his neck creaked. “He what?!” he blurted out loudly, attracting the attention of nearby passengers, some of whom glared at him.

“I said, he asked for you to answer his calls from now on instead of Bomin-hyung, so I logically deduced that he had had a taste of your abilities and preferred them,” Jimin explained, not without sounding a little teasing. “But if you say you two didn’t do anything… Do I tell him you are not available? It’s not even your usual area.”

“No!” Jeongguk rushed in. “No. It’s okay, I can do it. Put Kim Seokjin in my file, yes.”

Silence answered him, then Jimin asked: “Is there something you are not telling me, Jeongguk-ah?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, hyung,” he procrastinated, fidgeting in his seat as he began to look around to try to figure out how far along the train was in its journey. Had they already entered Gyeonggi Province?

“I just meant to say, if you feel that you are developing a preference for someone and don’t want to work in the field anymore, it is okay,” Jimin said placidly. “The clinic doesn’t fire its employees when they decide they want to be in an exclusive relationship. There are other tasks available.”

“I… well.” Speechless, Jeongguk just bit his lip as he picked up his backpack and headed down the corridor. “Thanks, hyung. It doesn’t depend only on me, but I’d appreciate it if you could provide me with more information on the alternatives in the meantime.”

“On it. Give me five minutes, and they’ll be in your emails,” Jimin replied cheerfully. “Good luck, Jeongguk-ah.”

“Thank you, hyung,” Jeongguk said with a smile before hanging up as the train slowed and entered the station with a piercing whistle.

Now, what time did the next convoy going in the opposite direction pass?

Later that afternoon, Jeongguk was back at square one: back in the village which he had left only that morning, exhausted after arriving from the station on foot, half running half walking for kilometres because he hadn’t wanted to call his grandfather and tell him that he had returned in case things didn’t go as Jeongguk hoped, but he felt more energized as soon as he saw the now familiar bell chain with the pendant shaped like… yes, it was a tuna.

He held on to it as if it were a lifeline and pulled.

The door opened, and didn’t close.

“Wow, you really are whipped,” Seokjin said with a smirk.

“And you are desperate,” Jeongguk countered. “I thought it would take you at least a couple of weeks to get back to me, but not even half a day? Seriously?”

“Not my fault. You gave me flowers, but didn’t even come close to me for the rest of the night. You just stood there staring at me, making me wait,” Seokjin grumbled. “Making me crave.”

“Oh, really? And there I was, thinking I was acting like a gentleman by giving you space,” Jeongguk teased.

“I didn’t ask you to,” Seokjin retorted, pursing his lips. “But it did make me realise that I would miss having you around, so… congratulations.”

Elated, Jeongguk flung his backpack, sending it skidding to the floor, and crossed the threshold. Seokjin was on him immediately, grabbing the younger alpha by the collar of his leather jacket and kissing him fiercely, crushing their bodies together with a gasp of satisfaction. Giving in to the desire to touch the other everywhere, Jeongguk splayed his palms on Seokjin’s waist and travelled every surface he could reach while a battle of little bites and indulgent licks was taking place between their mouths.

So fierce was the war and so careless were its warriors that they ended up bumping into furniture as they closed the door behind them and advanced into the house, trying not to be separated even for a moment. Eventually, they crashed into a wall and stayed there, Jeongguk caged by Seokjin’s body, drinking in the moans the other alpha made on his lips as he straddled Jeongguk’s thigh.

“Goodness, I love the way you smell,” Jeongguk rasped in a rare moment when he managed to breathe.

“I like yours too,” Seokjin mumbled, flaring his nostrils, nosing Jeongguk’s jaw up to his ear and pausing just before latching onto the earlobe to groan from a particularly passionate rub to his groin.

“Oh? I thought my scent bothered your instincts, triggering your territoriality.”

“It did and still does,” Seokjin confirmed. “But in a different way, as if it wasn’t your proximity that made me territorial, but your distance. As if you were part of my pack.” He licked his lips, whispering: “As if you were mine.”

Growling, Jeongguk surged forward, reversing their positions so he was the one pushing Seokjin up the wall, exploring his mouth with ravenous zeal. “I am, if you want,” he gasped between one nibble and another.

Seokjin smirked, pulling away and tipping Jeongguk’s chin so that they looked each other in the eye. “Then you should know that I don’t share what’s mine.”

“Well… I have always been attracted to country life. Truth be told, metropolises are boring as hell. I wouldn’t mind a relocation and a change of work duties,” Jeongguk stated. “Plus, my grandfather happens to have a chilli pepper field that I look forward to taking over—”

Seokjin burst out laughing, slapping the other’s chest. “So now you’ve decided you want to be a farmer? You are unbelievable,” he giggled, grinning from ear to ear. “And fun, and different.”

“Yeah? In what way?”

“Fishing for compliments now, are we?” Seokjin smirked, then he got more serious. “For starters, you made me enjoy bickering with someone for the first time in my life,  enough to want to prolong the fun. As for the rest, we’ll have to find out together.”

Jeongguk smiled, brushing their lips together. “Yeah?”

“Hmm,” Seokjin hummed in confirmation, sliding a hand down the other’s abdomen until it dipped below his belt. “And I think the search would be more enjoyable if it brings some additional benefit…”

“We can definitely discuss it— fuck,” Jeongguk cursed as Seokjin gave a squeeze to his erection that made him see the stars. “Please don’t stop, but also be aware that I don’t have the pill with me this time either.”

Seokjin clicked his tongue. “You should learn from your mistakes, Jeongguk-ah,” he reminded him, moving his hand even lower, caressing the younger’s rapidly swelling knot and sighing at its size. “You will get stuck again, right?”

Their eyes met, and though neither said anything, it was clear what they were both thinking. What they were remembering – perhaps even hoping for.

Finally, Jeongguk smirked.

“I don’t know, hyung,” he murmured. “Wanna bet?”