Chapter Text
It’s the middle of February now, which means three months have passed since November. Usually, this also means that Taehyung’s heat has just settled, that Yoongi’s isn’t due until another month—but Yoongi spent a few days in their Hannam-dong penthouse when Taehyung’s pheromones, frosting-thick, clung to the walls of every shared living space, stubborn even when Namjoon left the balcony doors open overnight. None of them fare well beneath the hull of Taehyung’s heats, but Yoongi has always struggled the worst. Taehyung’s drooling mouth, his wet, gasping Yoongi-hyung, help me, please, help, the slick that drips down his thighs and colors his clothes black-grey—Jimin’s seen Yoongi drawn to the depths of madness and back. In his most susceptible moments, some of that heat-insanity clings to Yoongi like Taehyung’s slim, leaden chest clings at his back.
Jimin hasn’t been to the penthouse in weeks; only Yoongi, Jungkook, Seokjin, and Taehyung have. They were meant to evacuate in time for Seokjin or Jungkook to tend to Taehyung’s needs. Then mid-February came too quickly to be avoided, Yoongi didn’t have the time to pack up and go home in-between schedules, and they were trapped with a needy, desperate omega for a week.
According to Seokjin, Taehyung’s heat tapered off over the weekend. Soon after, Yoongi went into hiding.
It’s a month too soon.
“Oh, hyung.”
Jimin’s been in the penthouse for all of thirty seconds before he—nose alert, body jerking into autopilot—sniffs him out.
Yoongi makes his nests in the closet. It’s the same routine whether he’s home alone or in Hannam-dong with everyone else; clambering around to scavenge for his nest, perpetually caught between sleep and arousal, face scrunched up in a frown-grimace. His cheeks fattened and dusted with a lacy, red-pink that threads across his nose bridge and tip like doilies. Yoongi’s hair is left smushed to his temples, tacky with sweat, cowlicks at the crown of his head, at his fringe. His heat manifests quite literally: skin glazed over, body warm to the touch. The potency of his heat-scent carries that same warmth, quietly lingering, while Taehyung’s matches his desperate cries for help. Yoongi-hyung, Yoongi-hyung, please—
Jimin tries not to compare. Yoongi and Taehyung both hail from the same city, sure, are both omegas, too; that’s the extent of that. It’s tough, though. Jimin’s a slave to his most primitive instincts. It’s what Namjoon says—more so than Seokjin or Jungkook—and even with his canines bared he stands helpless, letting his own hormones strap a collar at his throat and drag him into nonsensical thought. Alpha-nonsense, Hoseok would tease. That’s just how it is when you’re young. Whatever. Jimin knows when to let his hyung’s theories go unchallenged.
So Jimin’s always kept tabs. Jungkook and his propensity for pre-rut rough-housing; how Hoseok gets dizzy when there’s too many scents and sounds at once; how pliant Namjoon can get when he’s aroused (how wet, too); that sometimes Seokjin needs a knot and an alpha’s teeth at his nape to calm down from the worst of his rut-highs.
Then, heats with the Daegu omegas: Yoongi recedes into himself; Taehyung nearly crawls out from inside his own skeleton in search of comfort. Taehyung finds Yoongi; Yoongi finds solitude. Yoongi’s scent changes minutely, vague but rare enough that it’s impossible for Jimin to miss; Taehyung’s scent shouts and knocks about, plumes up in Jimin’s sinuses until a sneeze chases it away. Jimin’s always kept tabs on every member’s habits and routines—that’s more so about who he is rather than what he is—but when heats begin to cycle, and Yoongi’s scent climbs from unassuming to a pervasive linger over Jimin’s shoulder, he finds his instincts leading him by the nose once again. They don’t do that for Taehyung, Hoseok, Namjoon.
It’s mid-February—a whole month too soon—when he’s led to Yoongi’s closet.
Jimin repeats, “Oh, hyung.” This time, it’s breathless.
Yoongi’s pheromones are never loud. Still, in a smaller, enclosed space, it’s potent, jarring Jimin to attention the moment he cracks the door open to peek through. Light from Yoongi’s bedroom leaks in around Jimin’s slight figure while sweet leaks out, pouring over the nest of used clothes and washcloths. There’s one or two jumpers that look like Taehyung’s, a cream blouse that may be Jimin’s. Mostly it’s Yoongi’s things, bunched-up sweats and underclothes and sweaters strewn about, meticulous, until you can barely see the hardwood flooring.
Yoongi lies in its center. He has his knees drawn up, scowling softly, eyes squinted and hands nestled between his thighs. There are splotches in his white tee at his lower belly and near his pits; his sweat-damp t-zone glitters where the light touches.
Yoongi scowls harder, if possible, licks his mouth. “Bright,” he mumbles. “Jimin-ah. Close th’door.” He knew without having to look. Always so attuned to one another’s pheromones.
Cute. Jimin giggles softly. “Cute.” He steps in and closes the door.
Yoongi smacks his lips, shifts into the nest.
Their routine has become a ritual. Jimin likes to think of it that way. Yoongi when he’s helping the members through their heats or ruts is kind but firm, a confident touch, guiding them along like he’s tolerating it for their sakes—for love. And Jimin when he’s in rut wants to feel protected and cared for, so it works out, works out seamlessly, Yoongi’s confident, assuring hand, his slur-mumbled, you’ve got it, Jimin-ah, knot hyung, okay? Wanna knot hyung? pressed to the shell of Jimin’s ear or said over Yoongi’s shoulder, when Jimin’s got Yoongi to kneel and present for him.
That sort of unwavering attention softens Jimin up until Yoongi can knead him tight and tuck him close, tame.
But, this…
“Hey, baby.” Jimin drops to his knees, then his palms. Yoongi doesn’t stir, just keeps scowling like he’d been woken up from a nap, so Jimin crawls up and over the clothes. “Sleepy?”
Yoongi gives an eventual, weak mm, voice impossibly deeper with premature heat.
“Need alpha’s scent?”
Yoongi doesn’t mm this time. But he’s pliant, loose-limbed, and Jimin keeps crawling forward with his seeking nose nudging up along Yoongi’s bare shins—soft and smooth from laser treatments—gulping in mouthfuls of that sweet, canine-throbbing scent. Every breath throbs at his cock. He can feel the stretchier skin of his knot begin to tighten up with interest.
The closet air already feels humid. Pheromones practically bead on Jimin’s arms, seeping into open pores. Who knows how long Yoongi’s been holed up in here. “More sleepy or more horny?” Jimin murmurs. He’s at Yoongi’s wrist now, whatever he can reach from where they’re hidden between his thighs, and he tries to lap at the gland for a few seconds before giving up and peering at Yoongi’s frowning face. “Hyungnim.”
Yoongi smacks his lips again, squirms. “‘Dunno,” he sighs. “Jimin-ah.”
Jimin presses his forehead to Yoongi’s shoulder. “Yeah.”
“...Jimin-ah.”
Alright. Heat is really taking its toll. Jimin’s just going to have to decide.
“Taehyungie really got to you this time.” Jimin drags his nose and mouth along Yoongi’s broad shoulder bend and up under his jaw; it’s strongest here, that scent, aside from the slick that leaks out everytime Jimin so much as exhales. “Think you’ll still have yours next month?”
Yoongi responds with a shudder, then a gasp. Jimin kisses sweetly at him.
“I hope you do. Is that selfish?” He slides a sure palm under Yoongi’s tee, fits a few, chubby fingers under his boxers’ waistband. A plume of arousal escapes from beneath Yoongi’s clothes; his hands flop out from between his thighs. “I like you like this.” Yoongi’s breath catches with every word Jimin speaks into his throat. “You’re so cute… you’re always cute. But—this is cute. See?” His hand dips down onto Yoongi’s drenched groin at the same time Jimin’s teeth scrape over his scent gland, and it’s a full-body reaction from Yoongi, his hips jerking up, the loudest gasp yet bullied from his chest. Haa-ah.
Jimin leans back and peers up.
The red-pink doilies have melted into a curtain; the color trails to the highpoints of Yoongi’s cheekbones, down his throat, under the neckline of his tee. Then: his hair is one, big ink-smudge that cradles his face, haloed out on the sweatshirts beneath his heed. He has his eyes open now, too, dazed but determinedly fixated to Jimin’s, a stubbornness that only Jimin himself can match. Draped in the dark and their shared solitude, this view feels too intimate. Jimin almost remembers to feel a bit shy.
“Hi,” he says. Their faces are close enough that they could eat one another’s words.
Yoongi lifts an arm, drapes it lazily around Jimin’s neck. He licks at his parted lips. Licks them again. Once more. Then, huffed like a laugh, “It is selfish.”
Jimin pauses to watch him. The gleam of saliva on Yoongi’s bottom lip, his button nose tinged pink. Then, a viscous smile spreads across his own mouth. He whispers, “There you are.”
Admittedly, Jimin still isn’t sure if he believes in true mates like Taehyung (and Jungkook, as much as likes to pretend otherwise) does. It’s fantastical at best, tragic at worst. Simultaneously too good to be true—someone created in your image just out there, waiting for you to find them—and horrifying, the idea that millions to billions of people die without ever experiencing that one, true love. Who dictates that happy ending? How can something like that be determined? Karma? Probability?
Could Jimin win the lottery? Has he accumulated enough good karma to cash in? Those are the nonsense—alpha-nonsense?—thoughts Jimin arrives to when he’s kissing Yoongi’s eyelids closed. To taste the sweat and sweet on his skin, to drink it from his mouth. The dark, humid closet air that will stick to them for days, Yoongi’s heaving gasps as Jimin nudges inside that Jimin will hear in his sleep. Broad fingers scraping down between his shoulder blades, knees and slender thighs trapping him between them. Trembling, quivering hips trying and failing to match Jimin’s rhythm, exhausted. Yoongi’s drenched hole clings to the thick and fat of Jimin’s cock, Yoongi’s slick-ruined boxers hanging off one ankle from where Jimin slid them down. Jimin’s baking and turning stupid in Yoongi’s heat, and his nonsenical alpha thoughts bring him back: is this his true mate?
Yoongi makes his nests in the closet, but Jimin knows how to find him. There are subtleties in Yoongi’s scent no one else seems to be able to catch. Instincts that date to centuries before their birth. His mate.
Jimin-ah, Juh-Jimin-ahh, Yoongi’s voice is tilting up a few octaves. O-oh, ah—
He keeps it steady. An oscillating roll of his hips is all Yoongi needs to tremble and come once, then, mere minutes later, twice. Arousal sticks to their thighs, their groins; Jimin whimpers into Yoongi’s throat. “Knotting,” he’s drooling, unmistakably, but it’s already so wet everywhere that it doesn’t matter, “knotting, hyung—”
“Alpha.” It’s the most lucid Yoongi’s sounded since Jimin snuck in. His arm closes the angle at his elbow, dragging Jimin closer. “A. Alpha…” Jimin’s not the only one losing himself here.
When he knots, hips fucking deep to ensure his come catches in false procreation, they lie together and pant, chests jostling where they’re pressed together. Yoongi can’t fight that instinct to comfort, his fingers massaging into Jimin’s nape and shoulder-curve. Jimin feels that loose, tamed sensation prickle over him.
He whispers, “Good?” into Yoongi’s collarbone.
Yoongi rubs his cheek into the crown of Jimin’s head. Languid scenting. It says—Yes.
“Okay. Good.”
Pre-mature heat never lasts more than a knot or two. Yoongi should be back to himself once they’re up in the morning. For now, Jimin will enjoy the comedown in Yoongi’s nest, those fingertips ushering him to sleep. He’s nearly there, knot gradually deflating where it’s nudged far into Yoongi’s hole, when Yoongi kisses at his temples. “Had your fun?” He still doesn’t sound fully recovered, voice breathless, try as he might to tease.
“It’s not about having fun,” and Jimin sounds like he’s whining, try as he might to keep his voice leveled. “Mostly. I like helping you.”
“You like me too weak to fight back.”
“Hyung. C’mon. That sounds awful.”
Yoongi’s silent laughter trembles at his shoulders. “Jimin-ah. Hm? Don’t like that? Having your way with a—”
“Stop. Sleep.” He’s not going to let Yoongi’s insecurities about being vulnerable ruin this. Not gonna let him frame it into a joke to distance himself. It’s about finding balance. Leaving a trail so they can find one another when they need it.
“Alright, I’m done.” Yoongi slows his scenting. Then, softer, “Thanks.”
Jimin nudges up at his chin. “Always.”
He likes this. A routine now into a ritual, they won’t separate until morning.