Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Jun showed up on move-in day with two suitcases, a box of snacks, and a heart so full of hope it could've floated him up the stairs. He had it all planned out in his head. He'd meet his roommate, they'd hit it off right away, and by the end of the year they'd be the kind of friends who stayed friends forever.

The first surprise hit him in the hallway. He'd always figured the school would keep alphas, omegas, and betas in separate wings, to keep things simple when ruts and heats came around. But no. Everyone was mixed together, all jumbled up, with a few special rooms set aside for ruts and heats that everyone shared and cleaned up after. Jun stood there blinking at the wall directory, a little stunned.

But then the beta in the next room, a friendly guy named Pepper, leaned out his door and said hey, and Jun's worry melted fast.

Then he met his roommate. Dylan was sitting on the far bed when Jun pushed the door open, already unpacked and settled, like he'd been there for hours. He was an omega, with a pretty face and a scent like a croissant fresh out of the oven, warm and buttery. Jun's first thought was that he was nice to look at. His second thought never got a chance to form, because Dylan spoke first.

"Just so we're clear," Dylan announced, not even looking up from his book, "I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to get my degree. You stay on your side, I'll stay on mine, and we'll both be happy."

Jun stood frozen in the doorway with all his hope leaking out of him like air from a balloon.

"Oh. Okay. Sure. Yeah."

It did not get better from there. Their whole first year was one long string of tiny fights. Dylan kept the desk light on until three in the morning, working on assignments that weren't even due, and Jun would lie there with the glow burning through his eyelids, too polite at first to say anything. Then less polite. Then throwing his pillow across the room.

They fought about the heat being too high. They fought about Dylan's stuff being arranged perfectly, and Jun bumping a single pencil out of place, and Dylan acting like Jun had set the whole desk on fire.

Jun couldn't figure him out. Some days Dylan was bratty and impossible. Other days he was just quiet, curled up at his desk, and Jun would catch himself wanting to ask if he was okay, until Dylan snapped at him for breathing too loud and the wanting went away.

The worst part was the smell. Even on the days Jun was the most annoyed Dylan still smelled like the best bakery in the world, and Jun hated that he noticed. He shoved it down every time.

By the end of the year, Jun was tired. The friend he'd dreamed about hadn't shown up. He'd gotten Dylan instead, and Dylan, it seemed, would rather room with a brick wall.

So on the last week, Jun went to the housing office and asked, very nicely, if he could switch roommates next year.

The answer was a flat, immediate no.

"Assignments are locked for your group. You're with the same roommate until the end, unless you find someone to switch rooms."

Jun walked back to the dorm with his shoulders slumped. There was no way anyone would agree to switch. When he told Dylan, he half expected the omega to be just as upset.

Dylan just shrugged and turned back to his book. "Fine by me. At least you're predictable."

Jun didn't know what to do with that, so he threw his pillow at him and called it a night.

The thing that really got under Jun's skin in the second year wasn't even the light preventing him from sleeping anymore. It was the group work.

By some bizarre joke of the universe, Jun and Dylan kept getting paired together for class projects. Over and over. Different classes, different teachers, but none of it mattered. The names would come down and there it was, every single time: Jun and Dylan. Pepper thought it was hilarious. Jun thought the universe had a grudge against him.

And here was the truly maddening part. Dylan never let Jun do any of the work.

"I'll handle the slides," Dylan would say, already dragging the laptop away. "Just send me your half by Friday."

"I can do the slides," Jun would offer.

"It's faster if I do it."

So Jun would sit there feeling useless while Dylan did everything himself, mouth pressed in a tight line, working late into the night like always. And then, when the project was done, Dylan would somehow find a way to complain that Jun had slacked off.

"You barely helped.

"You wouldn't let me help!" Jun threw his hands up. "You took everything!"

"Because if I leave it to you, it gets done five minutes before it's due."

And okay. Maybe that one stung a little, because it wasn't completely untrue. Jun did put things off sometimes. But it wasn't on purpose, and it wasn't fair, and the two things together—being shut out and then blamed—made him feel like he could never win.

So when Pepper knocked on the door one Friday night and asked if he wanted to come out and forget about all of it for a few hours, Jun said yes before Pepper even finished the sentence.

They met up with Nano, a bright, bubbly omega who laughed at everything and clearly had a crush on Pepper, though Jun kept that thought to himself. The three of them found a spot, and Jun proceeded to get completely, gloriously shitfaced.

Here's the thing he should have paid attention to. Earlier that day, his body had been giving him signs. A warm, restless itch under his skin. A short temper. His rut was coming, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knew it. He ignored every bit of it. The drinks were cold and his friends were funny and for one night he just wanted to not think about Dylan or anything at all.

By the time he stumbled back to the dorm, the warm itch had turned into a roar. His head was foggy and his whole body ached in a way that wouldn't wait. He pushed through the door, barely registering the dark room, and crashed face-first onto the nearest bed. There was a designated room for this. He knew that. He should have gone there. But he couldn't think past the heat in his blood, and the bed was right there, and so he started grinding down against the sheets with a low groan, chasing relief, too far gone to care about anything else.

It took a long time for his brain to wave a flag. The pillow under his face smelled amazing. Sweet, like a croissant fresh out of the oven. Jun's hazy mind shrugged it off. Dylan must've left his pillow on Jun's bed somehow. Whatever. He kept going.

It was only after he'd made a mess of the sheets, after the worst of the urgency had crested and broken, that the truth landed on him all at once like a bucket of cold water. That wasn't a stray pillow. That was the whole bed.

He wasn't on his own bed at all. He was on Dylan's, surrounded head to toe in Dylan's scent, and he had just ruined the omega's sheets—the same sheets Dylan would absolutely yowl at him over, the same Dylan who lost his mind over a single moved pencil.

Jun's stomach dropped straight through the floor. And that was the exact moment the door opened, and Dylan walked in, and froze.

Jun didn't trust himself to say much. The smell of Dylan was everywhere, and every instinct in him was screaming to do something he absolutely could not do, so he kept his mouth shut and moved fast.

He scrambled up, made sure to hide the mess as best he could, and bundled the ruined sheets into his arms. He grabbed a fistful of clothes and shoved them into a bag without looking. Dylan stayed pressed against the far wall the whole time, pinching his nose shut, eyes wide.

"I'm sorry," Jun managed, barely able to look at him. "I'm so sorry. About the nest. About all of it. I'll fix it, I swear, just—I have to go."

And then he was gone, out the door and down the hall, before he could make anything worse. Jun had the rut room all to himself for the next few days.

He should have felt relieved. He had clean sheets and a stocked mini-fridge. But every time his body settled for a moment, his mind drifted right back to the same place. Or rather, the same person.

He'd grabbed Dylan's bedding by mistake, and now the whole room smelled like warm croissants and something sweeter underneath, and of course that was messing with his head. Any alpha would react. It didn't mean anything.

Except it kept happening. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Dylan frozen against the wall, pinching his nose, his cheeks gone pink. The way his scent had spiked the second he walked in, turning even sweet. Jun had expected yelling. Instead Dylan had just stood there, wide-eyed, saying nothing at all.

Jun groaned into the pillow that wasn't his. "This is so dumb," he mumbled.

He'd never had a face in his head during a rut before. Not once. It had always just been a fog of want, blank and easy. Now there was a person attached to it, and worse, it was the one person on campus who drove him absolutely up the wall.

By the third day the fog finally lifted, and Jun was left feeling embarrassed and weirdly nervous, which was somehow worse than the rut itself.

He showered. He washed the borrowed sheets twice, even though he knew his scent would still cling to them a little. He folded them as neatly as his clumsy hands could manage, which wasn't very neat at all, and stood outside his own dorm door for a full minute before he found the nerve to go in.

Dylan was at his desk. He turned when the door opened, and for a second neither of them said anything.

"I, um." Jun held up the folded bundle like a peace offering. "I brought these back. I washed them. Twice. I'm really sorry. About all of it."

Dylan looked at the sheets, then at Jun, then back at the sheets. His ears went a little red. "You folded them wrong.”

Jun blinked. "What?"

"The fold. It's wrong. The seam goes the other way." Dylan stood up and took the bundle out of Jun's arms, and started refolding it right there fussily. And Jun, who had spent a year and a half being annoyed by this exact brand of pickiness, felt his chest do something strange and warm instead. He bit back a smile.

"You could've yelled at me. When you walked in. I kind of expected you to."

Dylan's hands paused on the fabric. "I didn't want to make it worse. You looked like you were trying really hard not to lose it. I figured the nicest thing I could do was just... let you leave."

Jun stared at him. That was, possibly, the kindest thing Dylan had ever done for him.

"That was nice of you. Like, actually nice. You're never nice to me."

They stood there a beat too long. The room smelled like both of them now, tangled together, and Jun noticed Dylan hadn't stepped away. Neither had he.

"For the record," Jun added, before he could lose his nerve, "I kept thinking about you. The whole time. Which is weird."

Dylan finally looked up at him, startled. "You thought about me?"

"Yeah." Jun rubbed the back of his neck. "Apparently my brain decided that's a thing now. So. Whatever. I guess I’m sorry for that, too."

For a second Dylan just looked at him, that bratty mouth slightly open, like he had a comeback loaded and couldn't find it.

"You're an idiot. But I, um. I didn't sleep great while you were gone. The room felt weird without you. I’m not used to you being gone."

Jun grinned, big and helpless. "So you missed me."

"I said the room felt weird," Dylan huffed, turning back toward his desk, but he was definitely smiling now. He sat down, glanced over his shoulder, and after a moment patted the chair beside him.

"Come here. You're behind on the assignment. We can do it together this time."

And Jun, who had spent so long hoping his roommate would turn into a real friend, thought maybe the universe had been onto something with all that bizarre pairing-up after all.

Jun noticed it before Dylan did. He had been snapping at everything all morning—the slow kettle, the shower’s temperature, a pen that wouldn't write, Jun breathing in his general direction. Normally Jun would've snapped right back, or thrown something. But he'd spent two years now living three feet from this exact person, and somewhere along the way he'd gotten good at reading him. Too good, maybe. This wasn't regular bratty-Dylan. This was something underneath it, a restlessness that hummed off him.

"Your heat's coming," Jun commented, not even looking up from his cereal. "Like, soon. Today, probably."

"It is not."

"It is. You've been biting everyone's head off since you woke up, and you keep adjusting your shirt like your skin's too tight."

"I have not."

"Check your app."

"I don't need to check my app, I know my own—" But he was already pulling out his phone, thumb tapping fast, scowl firmly in place.

Dylan's whole body just... deflated. Shoulders dropping, scowl going slack. It was so visible, so instant, that Jun couldn't help it—a laugh slipped right out of him before he could stop it.

Dylan's head snapped up. The glare he aimed at Jun could have killed him. "Shut up."

Jun grinned into his bowl instead of replying. Dylan made a strangled noise and stomped off to start throwing things into a bag.

Weirdly enough, things had been a little better since the whole rut disaster. Jun would never in a million years have bet that that—of all the embarrassing, mortifying things—would be the thing to thaw Dylan even a fraction. But somehow it had. The cold-as-ice routine had melted just enough that there were actual conversations now. Jun wasn't about to push his luck by mentioning it, but he'd noticed, and he liked it more than he wanted to admit.

He didn't dare help Dylan pack. That felt like a bridge too far. So he just sat on his own bed and watched as Dylan moved around the room gathering his things. And the strangest thought settled over him: he was going to miss Dylan. The huffing. The constant low-level annoyance of another person sharing his space. A few days of quiet suddenly didn't sound as good as it used to.

At the door, Dylan paused. He turned back, and his eyes swept over Jun's face intensely. For one wild second Jun was sure that Dylan was about to ask him to come along. To spend the heat with him. The question seemed to hang right there in the air between them.

Then Dylan let out a long breath, gave a little wave, and bolted.

Jun missed him almost immediately, which was stupid, and he knew it was stupid, and he missed him anyway.

It was only later, poking around for something to wear, that he realized a few of his things had gone missing too. A couple of shirts. And, most notably, his favorite hoodie—the soft worn-out one he'd had on just yesterday, the one that should've been right there on the chair.

It turned up again a few days after Dylan got back. Clean and folded on Jun's bed like it had never left.

Jun had figured he was safe. His rut had already come and gone earlier in the year, so he'd been counting on coasting straight through to the end of second year, no surprises.

The stress of exams had other plans. It hit him the same day finals ended, his body wound so tight from a week of cramming that something just snapped loose all at once. The plan was simple: grab his bag, get to the rut room early, hole up there until the very last day before going home, and bother nobody.

He hadn't planned on Dylan already being in the room when he shoved the door open. That sweet scent hit him the second he crossed the threshold—buttery, sweeter than he remembered—and Jun's mind went briefly, blindingly white. Images crowded in, of pressing Dylan into the wall, of scenting him, of claiming him, and his whole body lurched toward it before he caught himself. He forced his feet to carry him to his desk instead and gripped the edge of it so hard his knuckles ached.

"Could you maybe step outside? Just while I pack. Please."

And of course, Dylan picked that exact day, that exact moment, to be gentle.

"Are you okay?" Dylan asked, and his voice was soft in a way Jun had almost never heard. He took a step closer.

Jun stopped breathing. "Stop. Stay back." The words came out strangled. "You—you smell really sweet right now, okay? And it's really hard to not do something about it. So please. Back up."

That did exactly the wrong thing. Dylan's scent spiked even sweeter, blooming through the room, and his cheeks went hot and red as he jerked his gaze away to the floor.

Jun's foggy brain was barely steering anymore. He hardly registered his own mouth moving until the words were already out. "You could just come with me."

Dylan's head snapped up. "What?"

"Forget it." Jun shut his eyes, mortified. "Forget I said anything. I'm not thinking straight."

He turned back to his desk and tried, he really tried, to just pack his bag and pretend Dylan wasn't standing three feet away smelling heavenly.

Then Dylan spoke, almost mumbled.

"My heat's about to start...Maybe we could help each other out."

It took Jun a few seconds to even turn around, because surely he'd misheard, surely Dylan was messing with him. But when he looked, Dylan wasn't smirking. He was fiddling with his bedsheets, not meeting Jun's eyes, his own bag already packed and sitting on the bed behind him—and that was when it clicked. The restlessness and flushed cheeks. Dylan's heat really was right on the edge of starting.

Jun didn't say anything. He couldn't have found the words if he tried. He just finished packing his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and on his way to the door he reached out and caught Dylan's bag and wrist.

He led them down the hall, past the regular rut and heat rooms, to the larger one set aside for couples—the one with the extra soundproofing that Jun had never had a reason to use before. He pushed inside and didn't give Dylan a chance to fuss or change his mind. He dropped both their bags on the floor, pulled Dylan in by the waist, and pressed his face into the curve of his neck, breathing him in.

"You smell so good," Jun murmured against his skin, helpless with it. "You always have. You have no idea."

Dylan froze. For one long second Jun thought he'd made a terrible mistake—and then Dylan let go. His scent rolled out at full strength, sweet enough to make Jun's head spin, and a hand came up to pat clumsily at Jun's hair, pressing him closer instead of pushing him away. Closer, and closer still, until a low, content purr started up in Dylan's chest, his whole body going soft and pleased in Jun's arms. His inner omega perfectly happy to be held.

Four days passed behind a closed door, the rest of the world tuned out. There was no easing into it, no careful first time—the door barely shut before the scent took the last of his higher thinking and the rut swallowed him whole. There was nothing tender about how it began. It was all teeth and grip, his entire body running purely on instinct. Two bodies that had spent two years crammed into one room finally giving up the pretense, an alpha and an omega in rut and heat at the same time, running on something far older and dumber than either of them.

Dylan built the nest fast and frantic, and the second it was right he hauled Jun down into it and pulled, all that bratty sharpness burned off into raw want. He didn't ask nicely. He demanded with his hands, with his teeth at Jun's shoulder and low needy whines that Jun felt drunk on. His body had gone slick and ready the moment the heat broke over him, his scent so thick and sweet it made Jun's vision swim, and every wordless signal it sent screamed the same thing: mine. Jun answered it like an animal, a growl rumbled up out of his chest. He pressed Dylan down into the blankets and covered him, and Dylan keened and arched up to meet him, and after that there wasn't much thinking at all.

It was rough, and the soundproofing earned its keep. Jun's whole world narrowed to the heat of Dylan's skin and the sweetness of his scent and the greedy rhythm their bodies fell into. There was no daylight here, just an omega in heat clawing him closer and an alpha in rut who'd have torn the room apart before he stopped.

And then the knot. His body locked them together that first time and Dylan howled, half-shock and half-relief, going taut and then melting all at once, pinned beneath him with nowhere to go. Even gone feral as he was, some buried piece of Jun gentled at that—but it came out as a low rumble against Dylan's throat instead of soft words, his weight a cage Dylan pressed up into rather than away from, both of them shaking through the long minutes it held them locked.

That was when the urge nearly took him. Mouth pressed to the scent gland at the side of Dylan's neck—that one spot, soft and warm and unclaimed—Jun's whole body went tight with a want so sharp it was almost pain. Bite. Mark him. Make it real. Make every alpha on this campus smell it and know he's taken, know he's yours. His teeth grazed the skin there. He felt Dylan’s pulse jump against his lips, his scent spiked sweeter, his body baring its throat, instinct begging Jun to do it.

It would have been so easy. One bite. Dylan was practically asking for it, lost in his own heat, in no state to think past the next minute. Which was exactly why Jun didn't.

He dragged his mouth away from the gland with a ragged, wrecked sound, pressed his forehead hard to Dylan's collarbone, and breathed through it until his teeth ached and the worst of it passed.

Not while Dylan was too far gone to mean it. Not as something Dylan would wake up to and regret, one more thing to bolt from. If Jun ever got to put a mark on him, he wanted Dylan clear-eyed and sure, not drowning in heat with his guard burned away. So he held the claim back behind his teeth, and it cost him more than anything he'd ever held back in his life.

Dylan, dazed and purring, never knew how close he'd come.

The four days softened from there: the frenzy bled off into a low contented purr, into Dylan going clingy and pouty and unbearably cute, lighting up every time Jun gave in. Still bossy. But melted now, soft in a way the daylight never got to see. And Jun gave in every single time, helplessly, gladly—gave him everything except the one thing his instinct screamed loudest for.

For four days, he got to keep him. He tried very hard not to think about what would happen on the fifth.

Jun woke up on the last day of the year to an empty bed. For a second he just blinked at the ceiling of the couples' room, reaching out across the mattress, finding nothing but cold sheets. Dylan's bag was gone.

Jun told himself he'd just gone back to their room early. He got up, got dressed, and walked back through the quiet halls with a knot already forming in his stomach.

Their room was the same story. Dylan's side was stripped bare. Bed cleared, desk empty, not so much as a stray pencil left behind. He'd packed up and slipped out without a sound, before either of them had to sit across from each other and figure out what any of it meant.

Four days of being tangled up together, of cuddling and fucking, and scenting and falling asleep with Dylan purring against his chest. And then Dylan had bolted before even saying goodbye.

Jun sat down on his own mattress and let out a long breath.He should have seen it coming. Dylan wasn't one of those warm, soft omegas. He ran cold and kept everyone at arm's length, and he probably always would.

It still stung. More than he wanted it to. He spent the whole summer thinking about it. Lying awake replaying those days, wishing they'd just talked. Mostly he found himself hoping it wouldn't ruin everything. That third year wouldn't be weird. That whatever fragile thing they'd built wasn't already broken.