The Way Out is Through

by hexagram

Summary:

Taeyong is living the dream: overworking himself in his graduate studies while grappling with the toxic pressures from his advisor.

Then, he meets Professor Suh, and things only get more complicated.

Chapter 1: One

Notes:

hello! I'm here with another multichap coming your way … and this one's a little personal

having been a graduate student myself, this story will not only be lovely johnyong love but also a pretty realistic telling of the dynamics of academia and the relationship between graduate students and their advisors

some quick explanations for those who don’t know how graduate school works:
- professors/researchers/advisors in science/STEM research have labs where they oversee research being done by a group of students that are studying to get their PhD, and those advisors basically sign off on your progress as a PhD and determine your graduation
- in this story the field will be psychology and neuroscience, so pretend those are under the same umbrella for the sake of the story
- anyone with a PhD is a Dr., so I will be using Dr. and Professor interchangeably (there are no medical doctors in this story lol), every professor is a Dr. but not every Dr. is a professor, generally
- if you are confused as you read or have questions, please feel free to reach out to me on twt or cc and I will clarify things

ALSO! this is my a/b/o ever so please bear with me as I figure out how to build that world

finally, thanks so much to my twitter friends who I've been nagging with all my questions about a/b/o, especially Pari, Shiloh, Cindy, Kathy and Sunknee

"The neuroscience behind semantic memory has long been a subject of debate. There are many clinicians and researchers who believe that brain systems which store semantic memory are the same which store episodic memory. According to this view, the hippocampal formation and the medial temporal lobes play a vital role in storing semantic memory."

This is Taeyong's element—his voice echoes through the auditorium and every seat in the room is filled, with a few people standing at the back behind the rows of chairs. If he stopped to count, there would be easily a hundred people attending, maybe a couple hundred. There's an occasional cough or squeak of the chair from the periphery, but it’s naturally easy for Taeyong to ignore the distractions and continue his talk, leading his laser pointer back to the PowerPoint slide up on the screen.

"When it comes to memory and recognition of familiar faces, we know how information from the eyes is transformed to extract facial identity across varying viewing conditions in the face-processing network, but not where and how this representation then activates person memory."

Every single person in this room is here for one person: Dr. Oh Sehun, the well-respected semantic memory research professor from the University of Chicago—also Taeyong’s PhD advisor. But since the professor decided to have a throwback to his graduate school days and get messy with his old classmates last night, it is up to Taeyong to take over the seminar this morning as the only student from his lab in attendance.

It's the second day of the APA conference in Atlanta, a gathering for psychology and neuroscience researchers from all over the world to network and present their research. That morning, Taeyong woke up with the sun to get ready for a full day of seminars and workshops—he’s somewhat overbearing, so he made a schedule and mapped out every hour down to bathroom breaks.

But his planning had to go to shit when he checked his phone while chewing on the sad breakfast bagel provided by the hotel: an email from his advisor saying that he would be the taking over the seminar followed immediately by an email with the PowerPoint presentation attached. From that moment, Taeyong had exactly two hours to prepare. Charge his laptop, go through the slides, replace the batteries in his laser pointer.

If this was Taeyong two years ago as a fresh first-year graduate student in the Oh lab, he would have had a full blown panic attack. But Taeyong is a seasoned veteran now, at the end of his third year and always prepared for the shitshow that comes with working for his advisor. Last minute assignments he cannot refuse, constructive criticism that masks subtle jabs, occasional threats to delay his graduation date. Living the academic dream.

But he takes his victories where he can get them, and he considers this chance to replace Dr. Oh on the podium of the plenary morning lecture an ultimate win.

"Through our laboratory's fMRI studies, we have discovered regions in a small region of the anterior temporal cortex that respond to the sight of familiar faces. These areas respond to the internal features of familiar faces but not unknown faces. Some of these responses are very highly selective, reliably responding to only one face out of a vast number of other stimuli."

The heavy wooden door of the auditorium opens and a tall man with glasses steps in, ducking his head as he makes his way past the back row, which is a futile effort because even when crouching he's still taller than most of the people in the room. Taeyong throws him a sharp glance—he is already halfway through his seminar, showing up at this point is just rude.

The first and only time he stumbles over his words in his talk is when they first make eye contact.

Taeyong inhales a sharp breath, his train of thought suddenly derailed; the man stops in his step too. Caught like a deer in headlights, Taeyong can tell that the man is an alpha unlike the others just in the way his presence seizes him. After a moment, he gradually resumes speaking, lifting the laser back up to the brain images on the slides.

Taeyong feels the gaze on him through the rest of his talk, and when the distinct scent eventually reaches him up at the podium—a trace of forest and flowers, rain and smoke—it makes him shiver in a way that he hasn't felt since he presented as an omega at thirteen. But he can't spend the time thinking about that right now.

"We expect these findings to advance our understanding about where and how semantic memories are stored in the brain," he turns his pointer off with a smooth click and fully turns to the audience. "Thank you for your attention, and with that, I'd be happy to take any questions you may have."

The room erupts with applause, modest but prevalent, and a few members of the audience raise their hands. Taeyong calls on them one by one. Most of them are genuinely interested in the research, scientists researching the same field, but Taeyong also had to be honest with himself and acknowledge the few alpha professors that are pulled to him due to his omega scent. Although their society has advanced enough to largely control their primal urges, not all instinct can be completely suppressed, especially not to potent triggers. They ask their questions, most of them laughably simple, and Taeyong ignores the hungry looks in their eyes as he answers them.

The hosts then cuts the question session off due to time limit and calls for a coffee break.

After speaking for a full hour Taeyong is exhausted, and as soon as he unplugs his computer from the projector he lets out a breath spanning almost half a minute, finally letting his shoulders slump. He thinks about his schedule for the rest of the day and tosses it aside—instead he's going to catch the poster session, take a nap, then take advantage of the free bar at the social hour in the evening. That sounded much better than the back-to-back seminars.

When he walks down the steps of the podium, the distinct scent catches up to him again as it lingers in the air. He took so much time answering questions that he did not even notice when the man exited the room with the rest of the audience clearing out. He shakes off the goosebumps running down his back, hand clutching his computer bag when he makes his way out of the auditorium, looking forward to collapsing on the queen size bed of the hotel room paid for by his school. Another opportunity he's going to abuse for all it's worth.

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

"No way, you just went and did the whole thing yourself?" Sicheng is an astonished face on Taeyong's phone. "You're a beast. Did you get a lot of questions?"

"Yeah, but they were whatever, mostly having to re-explain the numbers and some elaboration on the method," Taeyong sighs, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

The Facetime call from Sicheng—his only labmate supervised by Dr. Oh, the sole person who can understand his struggle through and through—woke him up from a deeper sleep than he planned for. He swipes down on his phone screen to check the time: 8:42 pm, still enough time to chug his proper three free drinks per hour provided by the conference. It's what science communication is all about.

"How are you holding it down there back home?" Taeyong asks, a yawn breaking through at the end of the sentence.

"Just beautifully," Sicheng grins a pretty smile, and he really does look much happier than his usual mid-semester self. "Nice to have some peace from all of yours and Sehun's bickering. You know he really only goes off when you're around."

It's an unspoken fact that Dr. Oh has a particular attitude towards Taeyong, partially due to his old belief of omegas' inferiority especially in higher education and sciences. Sicheng, being a beta, is immune from the wrath.

"Yeah well, only two more years, right?" Taeyong's mood lifts just at the idea of graduating. "Publish this manuscript, write and defend my thesis, and I'm free from the cold shackles of academia."

"If I didn’t know you better I'd say you're a masochist," Sicheng says, shifting out of the frame so Taeyong can only see the ceiling and wall behind him for a bit. It's clearly not their lab nor office, and he is relieved that Sicheng is not pulling late hours working like Taeyong always does. He always feels weirdly protective of Sicheng even though he is only a year older.

"It's called Stockholm syndrome, I'm sure you covered it in cognitive psych," Taeyong remarks, pushing up off his bed and digging his hand into his hair, combing out the black locks with his hand.

"Yeah, whatever," Sicheng's camera is back on his face. "You going to go get drunk on the school's budget or what?"

"Oh, you know it," Taeyong nods, getting up from his bed and opening the hotel room closet, browsing through the few outfits he brought for the short weekend.

"What are you gonna wear? You know how horny these things always get," Sicheng said with his mouth almost at the screen, like it was something scandalous and not half the reason people attended conferences. The mingling of all types people fueled by alcohol and academia-induced cockiness is a perfect recipe for all sorts of decisions that induce regret throughout the next morning's lectures.

"Haven't decided yet, gotta shower really quick," Taeyong says, switching on his bathroom light. "Talk to you later, Sich."

"You better. I want to know everything," his friend says before sending an air kiss at the screen. "Have fuuun.”

Taeyong wants to take full advantage of the glamorous hotel bathroom—crystal clear glass shower doors, two waterfall shower heads, fluffy towels—but he has slept through enough and does not want to miss out on any more action.

Maybe he can see that man again.

After a quick shower and blow dry he dresses in a silky beige blouse, paired with black jeans and a few thin golden chains. Checking himself out in the mirror he's thankful to finally be out of stuffy button-ups in something more casual and undoes one more button. Brushing back a few loose strands off his forehead he slides his hotel key card in his back pocket and makes his way to the elevator.

The evening social event is held at the spacious hotel bar, walls lined with occupied booths and a few tables in the middle with name tags for each seat: the faculty dinners. Most of the students are stuffing the booths along the perimeter and lining up at the bar, already more than a couple drinks in and invading each other's personal spaces. The later it gets into the night, the heavier the air becomes with the mixing scents of types people, the musk of alphas and sweeter aromas of omegas, permeating the atmosphere with less restraint.

Taeyong feels eyes on him when he enters the space—not an uncommon occurrence—but immediately zones on in a table in the far corner: the man that interrupted him halfway through his seminar and the empty seat next to him.

Right away Taeyong knows he has to figure out how to get next to him. He weaves in between the tables, making a show of checking the name tags of other empty spots before approaching the table of interest. When he reaches it, he reads the label for the empty seat next to the man—Oh Sehun.

It is now make-or-break for Taeyong—he can either claim his boss's seat and risk getting humiliated when Sehun finds him there, or his one chance with the alpha can be over right now. But the magnetism acts faster than his thoughts and before he knows it he's sliding into the seat, politely bowing to everyone else seated at the table.

The waitress is at his side immediately and he orders a simple cocktail—he cannot risk staying long enough for a dinner—and when she leaves, the man addresses him.

"Fascinating research you've done on facial familiarity and recognition, you must certainly be leading your field with your discovery," he says, swirling a dark liquor in his glass as he leans back in his seat. His voice is low and smooth, and he's not shy about the way his eyes eat him up from head to toe.

"Thank you, and I would agree," Taeyong says, observing the man up close now. His dark brown hair is messily parted and pushed out of his face, bone structure sharp and strong from his heavy brows down to his beautifully shaped lips. Taeyong doesn't remember the last time he saw someone this handsome at a conference let alone in an academic setting. The man has a hint of a stubble on his upper lip and chin, and the slight red indent above the bridge of his nose indicates to Taeyong that he usually wears glasses.

He's mesmerized until he's spoken to again.

"Though your choice of localizing your imaging in the temporal pole makes sense," the alpha says, and every cell of Taeyong's body is polarized toward his deep voice. "Do you think you could benefit from scanning the outer areas of the temporal lobe, since so little is known of the exact location of memory cells?"

The man follows his question with a sip of his drink, maintaining eye contact with Taeyong over the rim of his glass.

"There's enough evidence that suggests the temporal pole is largely responsible for semantic memory including social processes like face recognition and theory of mind," Taeyong answers, thanking the waitress for his drink in the middle of his answer. Although his body reacts so strongly to the alpha, the academic in Taeyong is stronger. "I discussed this at the beginning of my presentation."

"Forgive me for missing that part, I'm not so good with neuroscience," he says, leaning forward and offering his hand in a handshake. "I'm Dr. John Suh. I'm a cognitive psychologist myself but my concentration is in psycholinguistics with a focus on bilingualism. Though I've always been fascinated by memory, it's a very difficult subject to research."

“Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Suh," he says, taking his hand. There's a potent tension that simmers between them when they touch, in the silences between their words acknowledging an unseen force pulling them toward each other. "I'm Taeyong."

"Just Taeyong?" Johnny's eyebrows quirk up and he checks the name tag on the table. "A collaborator?"

"Something like that."

"Then I'm just Johnny," he smiles.

“Ah, so you’re the beauty that took over Dr. Oh’s seminar,” the man on the other side of Taeyong catches their attention, leaning toward them with a distinct bounce to his hair as he speaks. “It’s great seeing some fresh, young faces in this tired, old field.”

Taeyong pulls on a polite smile. “Science cannot progress without new ideas that aren’t biased by old precedents,” he says, earning a thoughtful nod from both men.

“If the new generation of researchers is as eloquent as you, then I think we’re in good hands,” the man speaks, taking Taeyong’s hand as the introduces himself. “Kim Jungwoo, fMRI technician at the Berkeley Medical Institute. Amazing work you’re doing with the technology, Dr. Lee.”

Dr. Lee—yeah, Taeyong will be rewinding this in his head every second of the day till he graduates.

“Thank you, Dr. Kim,” he returns the handshake with a smile, and that sliver of attention gets Jungwoo even closer in his space. His presence is light, the lack of any specific scent making him either a beta or a human, Taeyong cannot immediately tell. Jungwoo lowers his voice just slightly when he continues speaking to both of them.

“Some things never change, do they? Everyone else is always doing Sehun’s work while he takes credit, and you poor omegas especially vulnerable to his tactics,” he says, eyes narrowing before they turn to Johnny. “But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Dr. Suh?”

There’s a moment between them seems unnecessarily tense—until they both laugh.

“Dr. Kim, do you only attend conferences for the gossip, or are you here for intellectual merit purposes?” Johnny asks. "Guess things really don’t change."

“One must keep up-to-date on all the new findings in the field—research and personal," he states, swirling a colorful liquid in his glass.

Before they move on from the topic, Taeyong’s curiosity pipes up. “Care to fill me in?”

They both turn to him, but Johnny presses his lips tight as he finishes the rest of his drink. The ice cubes rattle in the now empty glass when he definitively sets it down.

"Sehun and John here studied under the same advisor, Byun Baekhyun," Jungwoo discloses in a voice just quiet enough for Taeyong to hear. "One being alpha and the other beta, working for one of the first omega research scientists in the world? You can only imagine the shitshow. And the competitiveness."

"Fuck," the word escapes Taeyong before he can stop it, so many things starting to make sense. He was not sure if he was ready to unpack the reasoning for his advisor's prejudice against omegas, and the stone cold look on Johnny's face signaled to him that he and Sehun did not leave on good terms. He plays with the straw of the hotel's watered down cocktail while he processes the new information.

"Well, I think that's all the damage I'll do tonight," Jungwoo says, brushing off his pants as he ceremoniously rises from his seat. "Great seeing you again, John, I'll catch your lecture tomorrow afternoon."

"And Taeyong," Jungwoo takes his hand again, holding it in between his own with a wide grin. "I do hope I get to see you again. Have a good evening."

They wave each other off and Taeyong uses the opportunity to sneak glance around the room to make sure the coast is clear of his boss. Maybe he should have studied theater because he was way too immersed in playing a professor. Or maybe he's just criminally insane.

"It's been years since I've last attended a conference, and I have to admit I'm out of practice with the whole program," Johnny sighs with a soft smile. "Must have been why I missed the beginning of your lecture. But honestly, the loss is all mine. The more you speak, the more I regret all I missed."

Taeyong laughs at that, feeling giggly after the first few sips of his drink. With no dinner in his small body, he was basically setting himself up for cheap and quick intoxication. "That's alright, Johnny. But now you have homework," he smiles, the alcohol drawing a light flush to his cheeks. "What made you take the sabbatical?"

"I was teaching at the University of Oxford for the past six years and was not really up for flying across the ocean for conferences," he says, circling a fingertip around the rim of the glass—Taeyong zoned in on his hands, fingers long and gorgeous; he wants them on his skin. "But some circumstances brought me back to the States, so now I'm here."

Taeyong does not probe any further—to be honest, he's not here for an autobiography anymore. Now Taeyong yearns to find out if Johnny's taste is as addicting as his scent. "Must be fate then."

Johnny smiles, pushing his glass away and moving to get up, pulling his blazer closer to his body.

"Must be," he shrugs, turning towards the exit. "But I'm probably getting too old to keep up with all the mingling, I'll leave that to the students. It's been a pleasure, Taeyong."

He gets up, and before Taeyong can bury his face in his cocktail to chug and dash, there's a heavy hand on his shoulder and the breath tickling his neck when Johnny leans in close.

"Room 519," he whispers, and the hand leaves with Johnny as he makes his way out of the bar.

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

Taeyong tried not to count down the exact amount of time that would make it seem completely casual and spontaneous to show up at Johnny's hotel door. Yet throughout several comparatively uninteresting conversations with blatant attempts at flirting, he could not keep himself from sneaking glances at his watch. His mind kept replaying that number in his head until he saw it in front of his eyes when he arrived at the door.

The leftover chips he scavenged from the students' table and a dream were keeping him from crossing into sufficiently fucked up territory, just tipsy enough to loosen his tongue. He swept his hair out of his face and knocked on the door.

"It's Taeyong," he calls out, and within a minute the door opens.

"Took you long enough," Johnny says when he peeks out then pushes the door wider for Taeyong to enter. His blazer from earlier is draped over the chair at the desk and Johnny's left in a black button-up and suit pants. Taeyong would drop on his knees at the sight, but in his world the banter came first. Sure, he came willingly, but he's still planning to make the professor suffer for it.

Being drunk on power comes so naturally to him that Taeyong knows academia is his ideal career path.

"I wasn't exactly eager to run up here since you made yourself sound so old and unpleasant," Taeyong smirks, making himself at home in the professor's hotel room, sitting on the bed while looking around and checking off every way that it was better than his. A king bed, a sofa in the corner, a two-person bathtub. Maybe he can move in.

"Yet you're still here," Johnny says from behind him. "Have you eaten?"

Taeyong frowns, momentarily thrown off by the question. Was Johnny trying to hook up or hang out?

"Is this a food play thing? Do you have chocolate covered strawberries somewhere?" he jokes, leaning back on his elbows and not-so-subtly spreading his legs. Johnny watches every movement by the millisecond yet he still stays away, chuckling to himself. Professor Suh is a weirdo, Taeyong decides.

"You're very forward," Johnny says, eyes following a path from Taeyong's ankle to his hip then up to his face, lingering there at his top lip.

"Is that not what the premise of this was?" Taeyong scoffs. "You said you're out of practice with conferences, so I thought you'd want to see the full program."

"You listen well."

"Or should I present my seminar to you again, all the way from the beginning. We can talk psychology all night, but you should have at least giv—"

The fingers under his chin interrupt him.

Johnny is between his legs, forcing Taeyong look up at him—he leans down so his mouth hovers just above Taeyong's, and the sheer strength of the wave of Johnny's scent completely derailing him. Johnny's dark eyes piercing into his, a breath ghosting over his skin, he speaks.

"Shut up."

Their lips clash with an urgency, the first touch electric all the way to his fingertips. Johnny tastes as exhilarating as he smells, and Taeyong is completely taken by his heady essence of deep woods, flames and smoke. Taeyong spent his entire life resisting his omega nature just for it all to crumble into nothing from one kiss.

They messily consume each other with teeth clashing between kisses, tongues soothing the harsh bites, coaxing out breaths and sounds. Taeyong is panting, the intensity crushing him and making his head spin—he feels like he's being devoured. Johnny regains control when he takes Taeyong's face in his palms, tilting his head to kiss him slowly but more intently, really exploring every gasp that escapes him.

Taeyong crawls up the bed, tugging Johnny with him by the collar of his shirt. He feels huge, the size difference more obvious when he's being pressed into the sheets by his weight, Taeyong caged in between strong arms and arching up into the heat.

It’s embarrassing how quickly he submits to Johnny’s touch, even more embarrassing are the sounds pulled out of his throat by the trail of kisses and bites down his neck. He senses Johnny’s breath as the man takes in his scent, a strained groan vibrating against the thin skin.

Taeyong loses himself in the aura of their warmth, scents entangling into an intoxicating mixture. Never has he felt so in over his head so quickly before, and the thought overwhelms him. He’s already willing to do and say anything just for Johnny to undress him, beginning to leak droplets of slick that soak into his briefs.

His hands tighten around Johnny’s neck to pull him back into a scalding kiss. Johnny’s hand quickly works Taeyong’s buttons open, pushing the fabric aside to expose his chest and cover a nipple with his hot tongue, closing around it with his lips. With a tremble Taeyong moans, echoing in the darkness of the hotel room.

“On second thought,” Johnny’s voice is low and raspy against his chest. “I don’t think I can keep you quiet.”

Taeyong groans and sits up, hands on Johnny’s shoulders.

“Fuck you,” he says, using the last bit of the strength in his arms to push Johnny onto his back and climb into his lap.

His hands get to work on the professor’s buttons. “You next.”

Johnny chuckles under his breath, letting Taeyong undo his shirt and slip it down his shoulders. His breath visibly hitches when he bares Johnny under him, hungry eyes eating up his toned torso, every muscle line and dip down to the waistband of his pants.

Meanwhile, Johnny can’t take enough of the sight of Taeyong in his lap, his silk shirt pooling at his elbows, exposing pale skin that’s flushed with reddening teeth marks. His eyes are dark, even more deeply so when black strands of hair fall to obscure them, the contrast striking against his skin.

“God, Taeyong, you’re fucking pretty.”

Taeyong laughs, and his smile is beautiful too. “I can get prettier.”

With those words, his hands grapple with the pant button and zipper, pushing them down Johnny's legs, impatient to get his cock out. He's moving fast—needy and impatient, like he's running out of time even though they have all night. Restlessly his mouth attaches to Johnny's abdomen, moving in a trail of careless bites towards the waistband of his boxers.

Johnny watches him with heavy eyes, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth when Taeyong's hand palms his hardening cock. Taeyong can't help but groan at the feel of it in his hand, like he expected the wet dream of a professor to be anything but hung. With filthy images flooding his mind, he shuts his brain off by taking his cock into his mouth, sinking down in one go.

"Fuck," Johnny gasps, hands flying up into Taeyong's hair as he sucks until his cock nudges the back of his throat. Taeyong is as naughty as he is talented. He pulls off, pausing to take the head between his lips and suck, encouraged by the beautiful string of moans coming from Johnny and a hand tightening in his hair. Johnny is not shy with praise when Taeyong keeps going down on him, hand moving from his hair to his cheek, in his eyes a pool of lust and awe.

When Taeyong releases him to take a deep breath, he's pulled up by strong hands into Johnny's lap, collapsing into his arms. Immediately Johnny's hands are on his ass, pulling his pants down.

"Now let me," Johnny whispers right below his ear, lapping at the skin along his jawline. "Let me take care of you."

Before Taeyong can think—still catching up on breathing—he's laid down on his stomach. After Johnny undresses his bottom half he hovers above him, and in such a vulnerable position, face-down and unable to fully see Johnny's movements, time seems to slow and Taeyong stills.

He feels Johnny's lips ghost over his shoulder blades, goosebumps spreading from the source of the touch. The hand not holding Johnny up next to him caresses down his back with long but gentle fingers, and Taeyong isn't exactly sure who these touches are for.

Johnny nuzzles into the back of Taeyong’s neck, breath ghosting over the vulnerable skin there, then inhales. He pauses with Taeyong’s scent filling his lungs, exhaling as he moves down his spine in a torturously slow path of kisses. His mouth reaches his lower back, tongue darting out to taste along the way and hands already palming the flesh of his ass and spreading him.

This is the usual ideal moment for him to say something bratty—to regain control. But here, submitting in the darkness to Johnny's light touches, Taeyong feels caught, willingly.

All Taeyong can do is lay under him and tremble.

Johnny's fingers slide in between his ass cheeks, and he feels the cold air hit the slick leaking out of him in a trail down onto the sheets. For all the teasing touches leading up to this moment, Johnny toys with the wetness to coat his fingers then plunges one in, immediately curving it to elicit a strained cry from the man below him.

"More," Taeyong commands, arching out towards Johnny's hand. "Give me more, I want more."

Johnny bites down on his shoulder, adding another finger in silent obedience, sliding them in and out of Taeyong's ass with the ease that his natural lubrication provides. Meanwhile Taeyong pushes up against them, head buried between his arms in the sheets, moans softened by the pillow.

His body illuminated by the moonlight is almost ethereal, glowing with a thin layer of sweat as Johnny's fingers work him open, unraveling him at every turn.

"Look at you," Johnny whispers against the back of his neck, tongue and teeth on the sensitive skin there. "Fuck, just look at you."

Taeyong trembles at the words, head quickly clearing of anything but Johnny—the smoky scent heavier around him now, consuming him whole until his omega brain can't think of anything else.

"You need to fuck me now," Taeyong says, lifting up to throw a glance over his shoulder, Johnny still two fingers in his ass. But he just adds another finger, sending Taeyong back face-down into the sheets.

"Fuuuck," he cries, writhing under his touch and burned up all over, panting out of his mouth. "Fuck, Johnny, just fuck me."

Johnny chuckles and pulls his fingers out, pressing kisses to the parts of Taeyong's face that he can reach. "I have a feeling I won't be able to get you to ask nicely."

Taeyong lifts up, scrambling into Johnny's lap again in a way that doesn't give Johnny time to protest, arms sneaking around his waist as Taeyong is already taking his cock and lining it up against his ass.

"You'd be right," Taeyong says, biting down on his lower lip when he starts sinking down, slowly opening and adjusting to Johnny's girth. The man under him gasps, hands gripping his hips uselessly because it's clear that Taeyong is in control here, moving steadily until he's fully seated.

He pauses like that, fully stretched around Johnny's cock, chest expanding with shallow breaths. In this short moment, Johnny takes his face in his hands and kisses him, the gentleness of it throwing Taeyong off-course. Lips still locked in a slow kiss, he grinds his hips forward, whimpering into Johnny's mouth at the slow friction, lighting every nerve on fire at how overwhelmingly full he feels.

Johnny is intent on kissing him until he's breathless, drawing out gasps out of Taeyong as tremors shake the omega's body, the slow drag of his cock inside him driving him out of his mind.

"Fuck me properly," Taeyong instructs, wrapping his arms around Johnny's neck and lifting up. Johnny nods and takes the cue to lay back with knees bent, one hand on Taeyong's ass and the other securely wrapped around his back, pressing him flush against his body when he starts fucking into him.

When Johnny takes full control, Taeyong has half the mind to hate himself for not letting it happen sooner. Johnny fucks him fast and hard, ramping up the pace exactly how the likes, skin lewdly slapping against skin in the otherwise quiet night, grinding against his prostate with each thrust.

The hand on his back slides up to his hair and pulls, yanking his head up so they can properly look each other in the eyes. How Johnny can make a face so gentle—when his hips are anything but—is a mystery to Taeyong.

"Fuck, Taeyong," Johnny grunts, eyes dark as they swallow Taeyong whole, sweat collecting at his temples when his pace gets more erratic. "Gonna be the fucking death of me."

Taeyong's mouth falls open and at this point he's fully incoherent, chasing the buildup of pleasure pooling at his groin. He full-on screams when Johnny takes his neglected cock into his hand, pumping with a quick fist and throwing him over the edge, merciless.

He quivers when his orgasm washes over him, tears rolling down his cheeks with the pleasure completely taking him, fucked brainless. Johnny starts slowing down, but Taeyong's hands are quick to claw at his shoulders.

"Don't stop, keep fucking me," he says, but his arms are too weak to hold himself up, so Johnny switches their position, throwing Taeyong back against the sheets and resuming at a brutal pace. Face in Taeyong's neck, the animalistic grunts coming out of Johnny vibrate along the skin, as if he is following pure carnal desire—the academic Taeyong met earlier long gone. It's so fucking hot and everything Taeyong has wanted since they first made eye contact that his cock starts filling out again as Johnny keeps plunging into him, prostate abused to the point of aching.

Johnny's movements become erratic, and he warns Taeyong before he starts cumming, sinking his teeth into his neck with one final groan and spilling inside him. Taeyong whines when he slows down to a stop, so close to reaching his second orgasm.

With shaky arms Johnny lifts up and looks down on him and he looks like a mess—damp hair falling into his face, eyelids heavy and lips bitten raw, chest heaving with heavy breaths. He looks between them then back up to Taeyong with a playful glimmer in eyes.

"Think you can cum again?" he asks and before he even receives an answer, he pulls out, replacing his cock with his tongue plunging into Taeyong's ass.

With a cry Taeyong arches up off the bed, Johnny's hot tongue feeling fucking incredible on his sensitive ass, and the hand wrapping around his cock again sending him back into a state of mindless ecstasy. Johnny's face is buried between his thighs as he pushes his tongue deeper, and the thought that Johnny is just as nasty as him and didn't think twice before diving in to taste their mixture of slick and cum in his ass is what pushes him over the edge again.

Johnny's fist is unforgiving as it milks him till the last drop until his legs begin shaking, closing them up on Johnny's head still between his thighs. Eventually Johnny releases him and pulls up, wiping the wetness off his mouth with the back of his hand, licking his lips with a satisfied grin.

They spend a silent minute regaining their breaths, looking at each other through the darkness of the room, the air heavy with their scents settling a comfortable haze. Taeyong decides to break the silence before the body fluids start drying on his body.

"Let me clean up real quick so I don't walk around the hotel with cum in my ass," Taeyong complains, and Johnny laughs on the other end of the bed, gloriously naked and sweaty.

"Don't go anywhere, just shower here," he says.

"Well, you do have that incredible bathtub," Taeyong thinks for a moment before stopping and turning back to Johnny. "Wait, are you asking me to stay?"

Johnny shrugs. "Yeah, I am."

Taeyong tries not to let the surprise show on his face—this is usually not how his one-night stands go. Either he dips first or hints the other person to leave. He gets up off the bed, waddling over to the bathroom, flipping on the light switch and getting under the warm stream of the shower before he starts overthinking.

When he comes out, Johnny is laid back on his bed but only in boxers this time, glasses perched on his nose and reading something on his phone. He looks so mature again, the same as he did earlier at the conference, and Taeyong wonders what his age is, but decides not to say anything in fear of giving himself away. Johnny might lose his mind if he finds out that Taeyong is a student.

When Johnny notices Taeyong exit of the bathroom, he puts his phone aside and spreads his arms, inviting him into the bed. Cute, he thinks.

"You seem weirded out," Johnny says. Taeyong hums in response; he'd be insane to say he didn't want to spend as much time as he could together. He's just cautious of the potential consequences of it on his heart. No matter how easily they fit together, how well they get along or how their bodies trigger each other's most innate desires—this is just for tonight.

"You don't do this often, do you?" he asks, settling under the sheets and into Johnny's warmth, muscles slowly releasing all their tension.

Johnny chuckles. "Not really," he answers. "I just enjoy your company, is that so bad?"

Taeyong shrugs, and before he can think of a response, the warm comfort pulls him into sleep, resting easily against Johnny's chest.

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

The blaring of an unfamiliar alarm shakes Johnny from his sleep, and he'd get up to look for the source but there's a warm, heavy weight on his chest. He looks down at the head of black hair nuzzling into his chest and decides to indulge himself for a just moment longer.

He thinks back to last night with Taeyong. Beautiful, smart and mouthy Taeyong. Johnny would be an idiot to think that one night with him will free him from all that weighs him down. But being with Taeyong was so easy that he might start believing that he could open himself up to someone else again.

Someone else, but not him. Because he'll probably never see Taeyong again.

"Mhhm," Taeyong stirs from sleep, disoriented with one hand searching for his phone around the bed, mumbling something incoherent under his breath. "Time's it?"

Before Johnny can answer, Taeyong finds out when he pulls his phone from under his pillow.

"Shit!" Taeyong jumps, peeling himself from Johnny's bare torso, making him shiver from lack of body heat. "I can't miss my flight."

"Flight?" Johnny asks, watching Taeyong get up from the bed and frantically search for his clothes around the room.

"Yeah, my school did not grant me one more day at the hotel, unfortunately," Taeyong says, shaking out his pants and pulling them over his legs before finally turning to Johnny with an apologetic face. "Sorry I'll miss your lecture."

Lecture, right. Johnny masks the gnawing feeling of disappointment with a smile.

"It's nothing you can't read in a journal," he brushes off, suddenly dreading the idea of giving the seminar.

Taeyong's shirt hangs on his chest with a single button when he trots back to the bed, even prettier in the sunlight, leaning over Johnny to press a chaste kiss to his lips, gone too soon.

"I had a great time last night, Johnny," Taeyong says, pulling back and slipping his phone into his back pocket. "Enjoy the rest of the conference!"

As he leaves the door shuts behind him and it's dead quiet, leaving Johnny surrounded with unavoidable thoughts and the final hints of rose and violet lingering in the air.

Notes:

lol johnny has a crush what an idiot

i know i said slow burn but maybe i lied

obligatory "gauging interest how are we feeling??"

 

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Chapter 2: Two

The University of Chicago campus is dull and grey, quiet in the biting mid-February cold. Branches of trees frozen in time since the moment they shed their leaves three months ago, sticking out clammy like chicken feet. By this time of the year students usually start seriously complaining about the gloom and doom, hanging onto the false hope that as soon as the calendar turns to spring then so will the weather.

Taeyong learned to be thankful for the harsh winter because it’s the time when all the students nest in buildings, and the campus alleys become dead quiet in the middle of a living city. Any other season it’s just him with his work, taking breaks to daydream as he looks out from his office window into the courtyard that buzzes with students who don’t have brain images and deadlines to worry about. When everyone else is also burrowing, he doesn't feel so alone.

Taeyong loves his research and he's here for a purpose, he reminds himself of that often, even if his advisor challenges the idea weekly. The challenge of this week was being called into Sehun’s office to follow up on the events of the conference. The hike from his own office on the opposite end of the hall is usually just enough time to put up the mental barricade.

“Good morning, Dr. Oh,” Taeyong greets as he walks through the open door of his professor’s office, wondering if his first response will be berating Taeyong for showing up without scheduling the meeting first (mostly a whim to test out the Teams app he learned about last week). But Taeyong senses that his boss is in a good mood today, which is unusual for a Monday.

“Morning, Taeyong,” the professor glances up from his laptop. "How did you enjoy the conference? I've heard some great feedback about our lecture."

Taeyong beams. "It was amazing, yes!" he tries not to jump out of his shoes and pauses to clear his throat. "I've gotten a lot of great suggestions for future studies, and some professors asked for my CV in case I consider a post-doc."

"A bit too soon to think about that, but good to know it was fruitful," his professor nods, slowly rotating in his chair. "It'll probably the only one you'll get a chance to attend while you're here."

Taeyong feels the tension pull at the back of his neck. "Well, I'm sure you really enjoyed the conference."

Sehun gives him a look that makes him want to burn through a hole in the ground. It's always the intimidating fucking eyebrows, hanging so heavily over his eyes that they lose any spark.

"Don’t forget you'll still need my recommendation to get hired in those labs," he throws the dagger so casually that Taeyong almost doesn't feel it, because he also knows he spoke out of line.

He can tell that his boss is only a second away from ruining his day, but he's saved by his labmate peeking through the doorway.

"Dr. Oh- Wow, great haircut!" Sicheng says to him with an easy smile before pointing back behind him into the hallway of offices. "The new professor is here, sounded like he's looking for you."

The hard look in Dr. Oh's eyes softens only slightly at Sicheng's presence but Taeyong senses another form of irritation replacing it. That irritated look that was usually meant only for Taeyong.

"You may direct him here, Sicheng, or we can hold onto the hope that Professor Suh knows how to read door tags," Sehun says, leaning further back into his chair.

The name hits Taeyong like thunder—Professor Suh.

"Professor Suh? Like, John Suh?" Taeyong spurts, barely putting the words together. Because there was no fucking way…

"Of course John Suh," Sehun says, his eyes staring down the hallway past Taeyong, unblinking. "You read your current literature so you should know of his work. I reached out to him about our open faculty position, so now he's moving next door to your and Sicheng's office."

And just like that Taeyong is hung between panic and excitement. Heat rushes up his neck faster than he can notice and like a skipping tape there are images, scents, and sounds flooding his consciousness, pushing aside everything else from the forefront of his mind. John Suh, the alpha he has not spent one day without thinking about since their morning in the hotel room, spending the time trying to push away each memory one after another believing what was done is done.

Not only that but there's also the very nontrivial element of him lying to Johnny and making him believe in a Professor Lee. Taeyong feels his stomach sink, knowing he dug himself deeper in than he ever meant to.

"Now, Taeyong, I think Professor Suh will be the first alpha male in the department to be unmated, so you should consider taking suppressants," Sehun says, arms folded across his chest.

"Wait—" Taeyong freezes, mouth hanging open and the words are slow to form. "What… What are you saying?"

"The department has let you go on like this long enough," Sehun waves his hands with wrists so light that they mock Taeyong's anxieties that start piling on one by one.

"I don't think the department has the authority to require that of me, Professor," Taeyong says with the best poker face he can manage, all the strain in the tightness of his voice and tautness of his back, strung like a string.

"Probably not, but this is the least you could do for the good of everyone," his boss says, face set in stone and completely unwavering. "You were already privileged enough to attend the conference, now you should consider Professor Suh's placement to be a networking opportunity."

The Taeyong two years ago would probably hold his breath the entire way to the bathroom just to bawl against the stall door for half an hour. The Taeyong standing here today can usually find it in him to bicker. But this time is different—he's paralyzed.

His mind is a fog other than the senses that suddenly focus on finding Johnny wherever he is in the building, trying to piece him together from the details of that night. Either Taeyong's mind is that powerful, or the alpha's scent gets stronger the more he thinks about it—so much he almost feels the forest after the rain under his fingertips.

Taeyong is getting dizzy in his professor's office, and at this point it's getting a little embarassing.

He can feel his heart all the way in his throat when Johnny approaches the office, everything about him overwhelming, filling out the doorframe with his height when he leans against it. His face is an easy smile when he speaks to them.

"Hello, new neighbors. Sehun and—" Johnny's grin pulls tighter when they make eye contact, a moment that drags for an eternity as their minds work to fill the gaps. "Taeyong?"

The last time Johnny said his name it had a different pitch—more pleading, strained and a little desperate. Now, it echoes in the office with all the authority it can carry.

"Welcome to the department, Professor Suh." Sehun says with a telephone voice and no hint of a smile. "Lee Taeyong is one of the senior students in my lab. Are you acquainted?"

Shit—Taeyong didn’t even consider the fact that Johnny could be a complete cop and expose him to Dr. Oh. This becomes a real fear for a painful minute as they take each other in before the moment is cut a second short of being awkward.

"Yes, we met at the conference. Taeyong gave an incredible seminar, very in-depth on the research," Johnny nods to him but his dark eyes are so penetrating and attentive that Taeyong feels himself wane under the look. "You've got quite talented students."

"A top lab only has top students, and I recruit them to be such," Sehun says, face full of arrogance. He leans further back into his chair, one hand on the computer mouse and the other on a mug of coffee.

Taeyong has gone through all the stages of authority with his advisor: admiration, idolization, resentment, fear. Yet he still wishes to be a similar image some day: powerful and respected to the point of being untouchable.

But one thing that his professor has always had trouble hiding is his desperate need to compensate—just a beta too focused on what he can never be. He visibly folds under the alpha's gaze, crossing his arms across his chest but shoulders slumping almost against their will.

It follows that it's no longer a surprise to Taeyong when his professor expresses his archaic beliefs about types people—especially about the duties of omegas to all the others.

"It's a pity you're moving in during such terrible weather," Sehun comments. "But I guess England isn't any nicer in the winter than here."

Johnny smiles a charming grin, leaning on one hip with hands tucked into his pockets. "Chicago is home for me, so I don't mind the cold. It’s good to be back."

Taeyong has to admit that watching his professor squirm under Johnny's obnoxiously charming demeanor just became his top favorite activity.

"It’s a Byun lab reunion," Taeyong chimes in, remembering from the conference that Johnny and Sehun graduated under the same advisor. "You must have both really enjoyed graduate school to be back for a taste of it."

"Graduate school is not supposed to be enjoyed," Sehun says, tapping his fingers on the desk.

“We did have some great times though,” Johnny says mostly to Taeyong, easing his mind with his composure.

“I’m sure you remember them as such,” Sehun takes his coffee mug and tips it to finish the last sips, setting it back down with finality. "Don't let me keep you from getting settled in, Professor Suh, you must still have a lot to get done."

That is Dr. Oh speak for please fuck off immediately, yet another phrase usually meant specifically for Taeyong. It feels strange to watch it in third person, addressed to someone who does not even fidget in response.

But Johnny still gets the hint, turning with a wave of the hand. "I guess I'll see you then."

When Johnny leaves, Taeyong decides to take this as an opportunity to save himself from his professor's wrath of the earlier interrupted conversation. Either way he's in a pit of fire—either defending himself from Dr. Oh or justifying himself to Dr. Suh.

He turns back to his professor and leans forward in a curt bow.

"I'll see if Dr. Suh needs any help," Taeyong says, dismissing himself quickly before Dr. Oh remembers his reasons for being in a shit mood. If anything, he can call this networking.

He leaves the door open when he exits the office, following the scent down the hallway and around the corner to the opposite end to the young faculty offices. In his rush he doesn't even think of what he'll say to Johnny, just yearning to be in the same room with him again— like that would be enough. Meanwhile the pull just gets stronger until he reaches the door.

It’s left open, and he finds Johnny hunched over his desk with his back to the door. The office walls are still bare, stacks of books and piles of computer cords scattered on the long desk, windows completely uncovered and pouring in light. Taeyong gives a gentle knock on the door frame.

“Taeyong,” Johnny says and Taeyong stalls. Johnny probably felt him there just as much as Taeyong felt him when he was back in Sehun's office. Taeyong realizes he may have greatly underestimated how difficult this was going to be.

“Hello again, Professor Suh,” he waves when Johnny turns to look at him. His face is unreadable, somewhat stoic as he studies Taeyong. "I- uh- didn't expect you here."

Johnny's expression breaks into a soft chuckle. "I could say the same to you. Though, under different circumstances I would be pleasantly surprised.”

When Johnny takes a step towards him, the scent gusts to him and Johnny immediately stops too. The proximity makes it so much more obvious how much taller Johnny is, how his body covered his completely…

"I guess we should—" Taeyong cuts in. "—address the situation."

"Let's address the fact that you lied to me," Johnny leans back to sit on his desk, hands resting on top of his knees.

"Technically you never asked," Taeyong crosses his arms, because, technically, he was right.

"Lying by omission is still lying," Johnny says. He pauses as he takes off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You’re a student and it’s- inappropriate.”

Taeyong's head is a hive of arguments—he presses his lips tightly together before he can say anything he regrets, thinking through all his reasons for fighting. First one being that they're both adults, and their professor-student status may become just a slight issue as a potential conflict of interest.

But Taeyong is ready to overlook most things because, well, he wants him.

"Not that it matters but I'm twenty-five," he shrugs, narrowing his eyes as he steps in closer. "What are you like, thirty-two? It's barely a scandal."

Johnny takes a breath but hitches half-way, and Taeyong wonders if it’s his own scent, just as destabilizing to him as Johnny’s is to Taeyong. "Thirty-six, but we both understand that it's not exactly about that, don't we?"

Taeyong sighs, knowing there's no use arguing any more, but that didn't mean he couldn't give it at least one try.

"So that’s a no on next time then.”

Johnny throws his head back in a howling laugh. "You're a menace," he accuses but his face is bright with a smile that is seemingly permanent on his face. "But it'd like to lay low here and keep my career, please."

For some reason, Taeyong doesn't feel as humiliated by the easy rejection as he thinks he should. Because he remembers, and in the gloss of Johnny’s eyes he knows Johnny remembers too. The lips bitten to soreness, the gentle breaths on the back of his neck, large hands encompassing his waist.

But when he looks up again at Johnny, perched up on his desk with strands of hair tucked behind his ear and glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose, he almost gets whiplash from the untouchable image.

Though he understands Johnny's reasoning, he still hates it. It’s an inherent requirement of a scientist—to accept the facts despite your precedent.

"I was just testing you, and you passed," Taeyong says before turning towards the doorway, on the verge of fleeing. "I'm the door to the left with Sicheng, if you need anything."

Johnny pushes off the desk, hand going to the doorknob, lazily pushing the door closed as Taeyong walks away. "Same to you, Taeyong."

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

The apartment is eerily quiet when he gets home. Maybe he's just not used to being here while the sun is still up, so he doesn't know what it’s usually like. But tossing off his shoes and making his way through the living room he notices trash bags lining the walls, which definitely has to be unusual.

"Doyoung?"

His roommate's voice calls from down the hallway. "Hyuck's room!"

When he turns the corner to peek through Donghyuck's open door he sees only Doyoung, surrounded by clothes, books and trash in tiny piles. Doyoung has a laundry basket sat on the bed, and he's separating Donghyuck’s dark clothes and white clothes from where they litter the floor.

"What's happened here?" Taeyong asks.

Doyoung turns a quick glance over his shoulder at him. "Mark finally managed to get Hyuck out, and his room is… well, I'm cleaning it. Wanna help?"

Taeyong nods with a shrug, not like he had any plans for his evening after fleeing the neuroscience building after his conversation with Johnny. In a quick detour he tosses his shoulder bag onto their couch before returning to their roommate's cave, trash bag in one hand and duster in the other. He decides to begin with Donghyuck's desk that's littered with torn notebook paper and candy wrappers. Doyoung seems to have a good handle on the clothes and linens, making Taeyong wonder how long he's been at it.

"So, I'm guessing he figured it out with Mark?" he asks as the first round of wrappers makes its way into the plastic bag.

"Guess so. His emotions are still a little out of control," Doyoung says with a sad sigh, contemplative as he watched his hands fold the fabric. "It's not easy presenting at our age, but I'm sure he's gonna figure it out."

Taeyong moves on to the space below the desk, crawling under to grab three empty soda bottles with one hand and toss them in the trash. Then, he follows up with the duster.

After a moment pausing as he's crouched on his knees, he asks. "Do you think he's disappointed? You know, by presenting as a beta?"

Doyoung hesitates before he speaks. "I don't see why else he would be taking it so hard. I think a part of him hoped to present as an omega, since Mark is an alpha and all."

When he says that, he pulls the two now filled laundry baskets toward himself, tucking one under his arm and the other dragging on the floor as he leaves the room.

Taeyong's hands pause on the sides of the pile of books he was organizing, fingers pressing into the sides of the dry pages. He straightens out the stack and tucks it into the bookshelf, thinking how ironic it is that Donghyuck would want to be what Taeyong is, meanwhile Taeyong feels like it’s the only source of all his problems.

Down the hall he hears the pipes vibrating in the walls as the washing machine turns on. Among many others, the one major perk of sharing a house with roommates is not having to share a laundry with an entire dorm building. Sharing it with best friends is another major perk, and for a moment Taeyong feels guilty for making the lab his primary home but figures his roommates might actually appreciate the space he frees up.

Doyoung returns into the room with a broom in hand, bending down low to reach under the bed.

"What's up with you by the way?" he asks. "Why are you home so early?"

Early meant that the sun just set, and Taeyong actually gets to watch it from their apartment, conveniently perched on the third floor to absorb all the views. It's the little things in life, Taeyong perks up for just a moment before he remembers his friend's question.

"Ugh," he starts, the most accurately he can put it. He sits down in Donghyuck's gamer chair, becoming sort of mesmerized by Doyoung sweeping the more he focuses on it. "Remember Johnny I told you about? The professor from the conference?"

"You wouldn't let me forget."

"Yeah, so, he just got hired to work next door," Taeyong lays it out plainly, making Doyoung stop his sweeps.

"No way?"

"Not only that but I basically got immediately rejected," Taeyong complains, falling back into the chair feeling the cringe from the talk with Johnny wring his insides. Now that he thinks about it, did he seem completely desperate?

“Ouch,” Doyoung says with a tone that’s his perfectly concocted mix of pity and mockery. “Kind of bold of you to hit on him first day on the job. I'm sure he's not eager for a teacher-student scandal."

“I know,” Taeyong groans, resting his head on the back of the chair and staring up at the ceiling speckled with star stickers. “I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s like my brain functions at half capacity when I’m around him.”

“Is it the feelings or the scent?” Doyoung asks, himself being unburdened by types people issues as a human. Now it’s an invisible jealousy circle, Donghyuck to Taeyong to Doyoung.

“I don’t know. Can anyone really know?” Taeyong slumps further into himself, glancing out the window to realize he’s missed the sunset. “It’s like not knowing the difference between truly liking someone and liking them only because they like you back. It’s all just a tangle of feelings.”

Doyoung only scoffs at Taeyong’s philosophizing. “I feel like there’s a big difference.”

With the weight of the words his friend says so lightly he sighs, realizing once again how different he and Doyoung are, especially when it comes to relationships. Doyoung is careful, meticulous, takes his time to learn and takes his time to think. Taeyong jumps in headfirst without trying the water, only realizing everything he has missed when he resurfaces when it’s often too late.

“Either way I have every reason to stay away,” he states, hoping that saying it loud enough will give it more merit.

“Yeah, there’s no reason to get involved when you’ve got enough on your plate,” Doyoung says and they both read the undertone of that sentence, a warning that if anything happened it would not turn out well.

“Dr. Oh also asked me to start taking suppressants,” Taeyong discloses, not immediately connecting it to the fact that it’s because of Johnny’s presence.

“Taeyong,” any smile washes from Doyoung’s face and it stills in pure concern. “Asked or…?”

“Well, they don’t ever really ask right?” Taeyong’s mouth slants.

Despite their differences, Doyoung understands him better than anyone else, since day one. It helped that they were on parallel academic paths, Doyoung studying abnormal psychology and Taeyong one year ahead of him in neuroscience. They have mutually dedicated themselves to being each other’s rocks through all the muck of academia.

“He can’t ask you to do that,” Doyoung says with furrowed brows and hands holding the broom more like a weapon now.

“I know that,” Taeyong says. “And I won’t.”

“Is it only because of Johnny?” Doyoung is also a scientist after all.

“He said so, since he’s the only unmated alpha in the department,” Taeyong has long forgotten his cleaning, hands in the fringe of his hair. “I don’t get it though, there are plenty of students who are the same, so this is only because of faculty status.”

He tries to not let himself even consider Dr. Oh's suppressants idea as a good one, having been without them his entire time he’s been in the States. They don't particularly cause any pain other than the occasional migraine or nosebleed, nothing that ten-hour days in the instrumental lab don’t give him.

But for Taeyong it's all in the principle—why should he be the one on a pill regimen when all parties are equally involved? Why should he be the one put under control? No living being is meant to yield, regardless of type, and these are the thoughts that keep Taeyong’s head clear of the plastic pill bottles.

“Maybe he’s just being an ass, who knows?” Doyoung resumes his sweeping, although he has made good progress and Donghyuck’s room looks at least livable.

“Maybe,” Taeyong nods, standing up to feel a little more useful and pulling the trash bags towards the hallway. “Either way, it’s our business, not his.”

“Our?”

Taeyong doesn’t respond because it wasn’t an unintentional slip. He thinks back to the moment he saw Johnny again, in Sehun’s office, and how he could feel the world start spinning like his life just inevitably changed trajectory. Of course, it’s him and Johnny. But now between them is a webbed barrier, too dense to really know but enough gaps to drive from curiosity into madness.

And Taeyong will have to learn how to stay away.

Notes:

i actually finished this and im posting it on the way to an academic conference lmfao

starting slow but i have so many ideas for this... why must i make johnyongs so FORBIDDEN

hope you're strapped in for the ride

 

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Chapter 3: Three

It’s barely past ten in the morning when Aeri pops her head into their shared office, tearing Taeyong and Sicheng from their work as they look up in unison. She twirls her hair around her finger, always exuding a confidence that can only partly be explained by her alpha type, the charisma paired so naturally with everything she does.

“Coffee?” she asks with a coy smile that knows that she can get at least one of them to agree.

The boys exchange glances over their dual monitors but Sicheng doesn’t attempt to move, resuming his finger-tapping on the keyboard. Losing an impossible battle against his own escapism, Taeyong gives in, unfolding his hunched spine and getting up.

“Fine,” he says, not like he’s actually complaining—he has to at least act like he was deeply engrossed in his work.

“Yay! Yi Zhuo is coming too,” Aeri says, spinning on her heel. Taking a look out the window as he follows her, Taeyong figures he should get some air anyway—he has an odd feeling that his day is about to be a long one.

On their walk through the quad the girls chatter away about their undergraduate students, complaining about the classes and the content and begging for grade boosts. Taeyong fades in and out of the conversation, eyes on the long dead ground beneath his feet and then up to the sullen trees, no sign of buds or greenery even with the approaching of April.

“I think I’ve narrowed down my theories about why John moved here,” Aeri says, instantly getting Taeyong’s attention.

“Can't you just accept his explanation?” Yi Zhuo asks with wide, innocent eyes, a perfect match for her soft omega traits. Though they are both Johnny’s new students—the two that that were brave enough to change advisors mid-academic year— they are still wildly different women. Yi Zhuo focuses on her schooling and research and generally keeping her head down, meanwhile Aeri has a hand in every corner of the department and can call every professor by first name.

So, Aeri scoffs at her labmate’s naivety.

“No one just up and moves halfway through the year,” Aeri says, holding the door open for the two of them as they approach the campus café. “Especially leaving a tenured position at Oxford. Something isn't right."

"What did he tell you?" Taeyong asks them, trying not to sound too interested.

But to say he has not had the same suspicions would be lying to himself. Something about forcing himself to stay away from Johnny made the yearning to know him magnitudes worse, especially after noticing how he buries himself so deeply into his work night after night. Sometimes Johnny doesn’t even hear Taeyong wish him a good evening when he passes his office on the way home—the only interaction he really allows himself other than the occasional passing in the hallway. So he resorts to getting his crumbs of information from the new students of the Suh group.

"Something about a change of scenery," Aeri pairs this explanation with an eye-roll. "I don't buy it. And Yangyang wasn't as ready to talk as I thought."

"Who's Yangyang?" Taeyong asks before their place in line moves up to the barista at the counter.

"John's student from Oxford. His visa got delayed so he isn't getting here until the summer," Aeri shrugs and Taeyong adds another bullet point to the list of why he's always so amazed by her.

"He hasn't even gotten here and you're already trying to gossip with him about Professor Suh?" Taeyong would be bewildered but he has a feeling that she's capable of much more.

She defensively puts her hands up. "Isn’t the best way to bond is to gossip about your mutual advisor?" she grins, walking over to the counter to place her order.

When they re-group to wait for their caffeine dosage of the day, Aeri speaks up again. "Anyway, you're focusing on the wrong thing. I think John is, like, running from something."

"What like… the cops?" Yi Zhuo's eyes are in a perpetual state of surprise like a newborn doe.

"No, like, maybe some conflict with old colleagues? Some bad blood?" she says and tightens their circle when she comes closer and lowers her voice. "I mean, he's always here, works late almost every night and doesn’t really talk about his life back in England."

"I don't know," Taeyong eyes her suspiciously. "He doesn't strike me as the type of professor to have tension with other faculty. Everyone seemed to love him at the conference."

"Except your advisor," Yi Zhuo pipes up.

"Who's surprised though?" Aeri laughs. "Professor Oh probably shrivels in his pants every time the alpha comes through."

Taeyong laughs, knowing he shouldn't. "Not only that but they also graduated from the same lab."

"No shit?" Aeri gasps, and Taeyong can tell she's about to mentally record every piece of information that he's about to give her.

"Yeah, remember the early cognitive psychologist Dr. Byun Baekhyun? One of the first omegas in research psychology?" he says.

"Yeah, John told us about him," Yi Zhuo chimes in. "He always speaks really highly of him, but never mentioned that he and Professor Oh used to work together?"

"Oh, he must have hated that," Aeri says and for a moment Taeyong believes she holds more petty hatred for him than he does, but that would be scientifically impossible. "No wonder he's so bitter towards you."

Taeyong shrugs because, really, what else can he do.

They retrieve their coffees from the counter one by one and head outside in silent agreement to take the long path back to the psychology building, even though the cold is biting at their ankles as they walk.

"Okay, well, we established that no one can possibly dislike Professor Suh so," Taeyong continues. "What else could it be?"

"The other option is a bad breakup," Aeri says, and that one is even harder for Taeyong to believe.

"Change countries to avoid an ex-lover?" Taeyong asks though that option seems too far-fetched to him.

"Try ex-husband," Yi Zhuo says and the other two whip their heads towards her in unison. She sort of folds in on herself under the intense looks but still continues. "He mentioned once that’s he's divorced, and at the time I assumed it was a long time ago, but maybe it could be more recent than I thought?"

"Why have you been keeping this from me?" Aeri accuses, coming so close into her labmate's space that the cold off her breath hits her in her reddened nose.

"I didn't think it was important!"

Aeri stays upset for exactly half a minute before letting out a long sigh and resuming like nothing happened, because the information is more important.

"I guess it makes sense that he lives in the building then, if he has no one to come home to."

"You make it sound so depressing," Taeyong says, the statement feeling a little too targeted for his liking.

"Maybe you two are meant to be," Aeri counters back very pointedly at Taeyong. He burrows his chin into his scarf, gripping his cup until he can feel the warmth permeate through his gloves.

"How's he as an advisor by the way?" Taeyong diverts the topic. "Better than Professor Moon?"

"Oh, he's amazing," Yi Zhuo clasps her hands together with a bright smile. "He doesn't really do appointments and just keeps his door open for us any time we need him. Group meetings are always so fun, and he even gets us lunch every Friday!"

Taeyong would probably start crying if his face wasn't frozen.

"Don't get me wrong, Dr. Moon is cool but," Aeri says in between sips. "I was more interested in language research anyway, so the switch was a no-brainer."

"I just wish he'd give us a little bit more structure," Yi Zhuo comments, nose tucked in her steaming paper cup. "Sometimes he's a bit too hands off."

"Of course you'd say that."

Dragging their feet, they make it back to the building they pile into the elevator up to the fourth floor and scatter to their respective offices. Taeyong taps his mousepad to wake up his computer to find another round of new emails, though he cleared his inbox just that morning. A plague that does not end.

One of them is from Sehun.

 

From: Oh, Sehun
To: Lee, Taeyong
Tuesday, March 12th, 10:33 am

Come see me.

OS.

 

Sicheng is not in the office so Taeyong feels free to let the groan erupt from within him to echo all the way around the room. This email is way too ominous to mean anything good.

One good-luck coffee sip later and Taeyong is knocking on his advisor's door. When he gets the signal to come in, Sehun doesn't look up from his computer as Taeyong approaches his desk and awkwardly comes to stand.

"I got your email," Taeyong says, though he figured that much was obvious.

"How's your project going?" Sehun asks, fingers not taking a break from their typing across at the keyboard. "What stage are we on?"

Taeyong mentally sums up all the work he has done up until now, pushing through a mild panic as he speaks. "I'm confirming our schedule with the fMRI lab, and I plan to start collecting participants during spring break."

"Great, then you’re ahead," Sehun finally looks and him, folding his hands together. "There's an NIH grant that needs to be done by the end of next week, and I'll be too busy with invited talks, so I need you to finish it."

Taeyong gulps. "The end of next week?" he gathers the courage for the question the answer to which will either make or break his next few days. "How far along are you?"

"The introduction, which should give you enough information to finish the rest of the document," his advisor says. "Most of it is about your project anyway, so you'd be the best person to write it."

Taeyong can feel the doom settle over him like a heavy cloud, mind beginning to panic with how the hell we was going to pull off a worthwhile grant while staying on track with his project and juggling grading work from Seuh's classes.

"Dr. Oh, I have to start collecting participants," his voice is strained when he speaks, tight from how hard he's working to control it. "The fMRI lab has to be scheduled half a year in advance, and if I don't have a set number of participants in two weeks that can delay the whole project indefinitely."

“Could you close the door, please?” is Sehun’s only response.

With those words the dread sinks all the way down to his feet, but he knows he can’t do anything but do what he's told. When the door shuts, Sehun folds his arms and stalls for a moment, staring Taeyong down into the spot he’s stuck in.

“Taeyong, I have been very gracious to you the entire time you’ve been at the university,” his voice is several degrees colder than a mere second ago. “Do you think other labs will risk taking on a student with a visa? Especially a male omega student in this field?”

Taeyong swallows.

“But I saw the potential and gave you this chance. And right now, you’re wasting it,” he pauses as his eyebrows sink lower, casting a shadow over his eyes. “I’m trying to help you become the best scientist you can be, but I will no longer tolerate disobedience.”

At this certain finality in his words, Taeyong knows he lost the game he never had any advantage in.

“Understood?”

In the single breath he can manage to stabilize, he answers. “Yes, Professor Oh.”

As if he didn’t just take Taeyong’s spirit and crush it in his fist, Sehun glances back at his computer and takes a moment to poke around on it. Eventually there’s a whoosh of an email being sent and Taeyong assumes it’s the grant document. He’s still immobilized by his own humiliation, the office feeling more and more suffocating with each second that the door remains closed.

“And another thing,” Sehun says, and Taeyong would panic more but he figures it cannot be worse than what he just had to hear. “Professor Moon is retiring next semester.”

“Oh,” Taeyong manages as the wheels slowly begin turning in his head again. “He’s on my dissertation committee.”

“Exactly, so you’re going to need to get someone to replace him in time for your defense,” Sehun says.

“Do you have anyone you would suggest?” Taeyong asks, hoping and praying that he doesn’t suggest the name he doesn’t want to hear.

“Why don’t you ask Professor Suh?” Sehun turns to him again and Taeyong cannot elucidate what he’s trying to say with the look he gives. His heart rate picks up again and for the first time he wonders if Sehun can smell him—can tell he’s not taking suppressants as ordered. Is Sehun just as fixated on this intangible conflict between him and Johnny as Taeyong is, or is he just overthinking? All these unspoken things that weigh so heavily around them are smothering Taeyong, another layer of stress he didn't ask for.

“Okay, I’ll ask him,” Taeyong says as his instinct to flee tenses him up. “Is there anything else?”

“Make sure you finish the grant early enough to provide a draft for me to edit,” Sehun says before dismissing him with a wave of the hand. “That will be all.”

Like a snapping string Taeyong immediately throws the door open and walks out, feet moving so fast he almost trips over them. When he passes by Johnny’s office, his door is open and the professor is looking up over his monitor, probably hearing the scrambling of Taeyong’s steps ricocheting through the hall. If he tries to say something Taeyong doesn’t hear him, the anxiety muffling all the sounds of the world like his ears are stuffed with cotton.

It takes Taeyong twenty minutes alone in his office to calm down. Eventually Sicheng comes back to a sight of him face down on the desk, head in his arms, the automatic light in the room shut off until the opening of the door wakes it again.

“Oof,” his friend says when Taeyong lifts his head. “Did you meet with Professor?”

“Sich, can you smell me?” he asks the beta.

Sicheng pauses and takes a minute to contemplate, this clearly being something he has spent no time thinking about. “Well, yeah. But it’s like, super muted.”

“Do you think Professor Oh can too?”

A longer pause this time as he thinks. “Well, I’d assume yeah, but it can’t be as strong as to an alpha.”

Taeyong nods, leaning back in his desk chair with a sigh and toggling his computer mouse just to wake his computer up, like that will get him into a productive headspace. Sometimes that works, most of the time it doesn't.

“Why are you asking all of a sudden?” Sicheng probes, stuffing his laptop into his backpack.

Taeyong shrugs in response, not ready to open up the whole suppressants discussion to Sicheng, who's not only his friend but more importantly his co-worker. Truthfully, he wanted to avoid that topic with anyone and everyone for as long as he could, but if he has to simmer on it he’d rather do it alone.

Sicheng accepts his silence, bunching up his laptop power cord and adding it to his bag before leaving the office with a quick ‘goodnight’, granting Taeyong the silence he’s been wishing for.

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

hyuckie [8:18 pm]
thanks for the cookies, yong <3 don’t stay too late

 

The message lights up the phone laying face up next to him on the desk—a sudden but much needed distraction and validation. He shoots kissy emojis back, grinning to himself knowing Donghyuck is most likely about to dislike them.

The depression cookies he baked last night are at hit, he thinks as he mentally pats himself on the back.

Though it’s been a few weeks since The Great Awakening of Donghyuck, as the roommates began to call it, Taeyong still feels a special sympathy towards Donghyuck. He’s handling his sudden change better than Taeyong thanks he ever could, and he knows part of that is because of Mark by his side.

Taeyong has a special sort of relationship with Donghyuck, their expressions of appreciation and love for each other almost unnoticed. For all his unrestricted opinions on literally anything else, the only time Donghyuck hesitates is with verbal shows of affection. While Taeyong and Doyoung have found it easy to be vulnerable with each other with late night talks and easy exchanges of complaints, with Donghyuck that dialogue is channeled through passing actions.

As happens often, Taeyong does not notice the switch from daylight to nighttime until he stops to save his work, finally detaching his eyes from the screen and looking through the window into the darkness. Stuck in his office too many hours into the night, he suddenly misses his roommates and all the commotion the three of them create. But he’ll miss his dream career more if he doesn’t make serious progress on this grant. After giving it some thought, he now believes he can somehow fit grant writing, report grading, and research progress into the span of a single week.

He wouldn’t be a graduate student if not for his overinflated sense of ability to multitask and stretch time beyond its limits. And, as scientists do, he will keep trying it until it doesn't work anymore.

As he saves again, just in case, he realizes how much his eyes are stinging from the harsh light of the computer after hours and hours of hypnosis by the digital light. There's no way he's going to continue to stare at his monitor—so he hits the print button on his keyboard to switch mediums and keep working.

The building is a hollow shell at this hour, with lights lining down the hallway and rare sounds echoing against the walls. On the way to the printer in the department secretary's office, the only door open door aside from Taeyong's is Johnny's. Taeyong peeks in but it's empty, so he continues down the corridor.

The shuffling of the paper as the printer releases the pages covers faint sounds of footsteps, and Taeyong knows he isn't the one printing that many pages.

"Hey, Professor Suh," Taeyong says when he sees Johnny in the secretary's office, leaned up against the wall as he watches the pages slip out of the printer almost in a daze. When he sees Taeyong walk in, his face breaks into a smile.

"Taeyong, you're still here," he says like they haven't been working late nights separated by a single wall for nearly a month.

"Yep," he pops his lips with the answer, leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the giant printer tower, an accidental but probably necessary barrier between them. "And so are you."

"Yeah, but I don't have a life. You should take breaks to enjoy yours," he says, his grin making the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes even more prominent. His eyes looked darker, sunken-in from apparent lack of sleep. "Aren’t you working a little too hard?"

"Maybe, but that's what it takes, isn't it?" Taeyong says, finally tearing his eyes away from overanalyzing every detail of Johnny's face.

Johnny takes his stack of papers from the printer as Taeyong's batch begins, and the tension is so stupidly thick in the air that Taeyong wonders how he got to a place in his life where he's starting to feel flustered in the fucking printer room. Whether Johnny feels it or not, he steps away when he straightens out his pages.

"I had a question for you, actually," Taeyong speaks up, if not just to break this fog between them. "A member of my dissertation committee is retiring, and I would like to ask you to replace him. If you're taking students."

Johnny breaks out into a grin that paints over the surprise that passed over his face. He clears his throat, sort of straightening himself out, and for a second Taeyong doesn't remember the difference between Johnny and Professor Suh.

"Yeah," he says with an enthusiastic nod. "Yes, I'm taking students."

"Great," Taeyong says, picking up the grant draft out of the printer, laying there for so long that the pages have already gone cold. "Thanks."

"I have the committee forms in my office, we can get them done right away," Johnny says, passing by Taeyong on his way out of the room. Taeyong follows, down the hallway and into Johnny's territory.

This time, it looks much more lived-in: books logically organized on the shelves, a new whiteboard in the corner and posters of diagrams on the walls. He's also one of the only offices in the entire department that has plants lining the windowsill. Johnny pulls out a drawer with neatly filed folders, opening one of them up and taking out a blank dissertation committee request form. Realizing he's in the presence of someone who's just as earnestly organized as he is, Taeyong thinks he falls in love just a little.

"Wow, you just—" Taeyong is a bit lost for words. "Just have those ready to go."

"Yeah, I was hoping students would eventually ask me, but I thought it'd be mostly in my own classes," Johnny says, filling out his name on the form with quick script, long fingers pointing the pen into the paper as it slides across the lines. When he signs it, even his signature is as beautiful as it is illegible.

"What are you teaching?" Taeyong asks.

"Psycholinguistics and intro to cognitive psychology," Johnny turns the form around and slides it down his desk towards Taeyong. "To be honest, I asked for another one but got denied."

"You're gonna stretch yourself thin," Taeyong says like he's looking at his own reflection. The black circles under their eyes may as well be mirror images. "Shame I already took psycholinguistics, but it was one of my favorite classes."

"That's not your research focus though, correct?" Johnny asks, watching Taeyong's hand fill out the form before looking back up at his face. "Now that I'm on your committee, I'd like to know about your project."

Taeyong's heart races for a moment seeing how Johnny is leaning forward, elbows on his desk and chin perched up on his hands, eyes attentive in anticipation. Taeyong feels a little pathetic that he's been deprived of any real enthusiasm about his project for so long that this is what sets off the butterflies in his stomach, but to Johnny's credit he actually looks captivated.

"Well, it's an expansion of our work on facial recognition," Taeyong says, pulling out the chair on the opposite side of Johnny and taking a seat. "We have identified areas of the brain that respond to familiar faces, but we can corroborate this data if we use participants that no longer recognize faces or that have lost familiarity."

"Like, dementia patients?" Johnny asks, brows furrowed in thought.

"Exactly," Taeyong nods. "If those areas we identified are inactive in people with dementia, then not only does that support our finding that those specific areas are responsible for facial recognition, we can also understand so much more about semantic memory storage. If we can understand the neuroscience of that process, we can apply those findings in prevention and treatment of those diseases."

Johnny leans back in his chair and his lips are pressed in deep concentration. Slowly he nods, like he's rewinding what Taeyong said before he inhales.

"Taeyong, that's-" he glances down at his desk. "That's really incredible. Are you the only one on this project?"

"Yes, it was my idea so Professor Oh is having me steer the whole ship," Taeyong nods, remembering to breathe. "It's really simple concept, maybe a bit too simple—"

"Are you kidding?" Johnny scoffs. "The most impactful science does not need to be complicated. It's always the most straightforward ideas that can get the best empirical data. You have a good sense of scientific logic."

"Thanks," Taeyong says, taking a deep breath because he can feel his neck get hotter, and he guesses it's probably flushed pink, his own body betraying him as always. He's not ready to unpack whether it's due to Johnny's praise or just him being interested in what he says. Either way, he knows if he lets himself indulge in it too long then he'll be setting himself up for disappointment.

"How far along are you in the project?" Johnny asks and Taeyong realizes how close they are all of a sudden, leaning toward each other across the desk like this other inevitable barrier between them cannot hold them back.

"I'm collecting participants," Taeyong answers, glancing over at the fresh draft of the grant sitting next to him on the desk since he placed it there earlier. "I just have… some other things taking up my time."

Johnny's eyes follow Taeyong's line of sight. "Is that a grant proposal?"

"Hey, that's proprietary information," Taeyong laughs and places his hand on top of the pages, sliding them toward himself. "But yes. Just a small Thursday night project."

Johnny narrows his eyes at him and though Taeyong tries to laugh off the conversation, he can feel Johnny's eyes read him down.

"You need to be careful of taking on too much," Johnny says, more serious than Taeyong has ever seen him behave. "Otherwise, you're gonna burn out, and trust me, that's not a fun place to be."

"I've managed this far," Taeyong stops himself from rolling his eyes. "But I'll keep it in mind."

There's a bittersweet feeling that stirs in his chest, something poisonous that doesn't let Taeyong believe Johnny actually cares. Maybe Johnny's just trying to catch up, compensating for the move and having to start over. Maybe it's the damn scent, alpha and omega matched by instinct despite everything else.

Still he can't stifle the hope that fights so strongly within him, telling him that the way they're pulled to each other like tightening strings around their necks, connecting them in a slowly shortening thread, is something beyond biology. It's an instinct beyond intuition that rewinds the memories Johnny's lips on his, his breath on the back of his neck. How can something that fit so perfectly be just a circumstance of nature?

"Taeyong…"

Johnny's voice pulls him back to reality, the soft grin from across the desk. Taeyong wonders if he remembers it too—if he's thinking about it now—the way their bodies met like they waited patiently for each other.

"I should finish," Taeyong pushes his chair back and gets up.

"Wait, Taeyong," Johnny holds his hand up with another light smile. "Feel free to join our group's Friday lunches. Unless you have other plans."

Taeyong lets the invite process for a moment. "No, I uh- My group is small, so we don't do anything."

"The offer is open if you ever feel lonely," Johnny says. Taeyong nods in response, feeling the rise of that suffocating feeling again, like the one earlier in Sehun's office. But this one is painted with something sweet, sweeter than it is bitter.

He wishes Johnny a good evening and returns to his office, his racing heartbeat pumping blood through his veins at a nerve-wracking pace. Everything he holds back around Johnny is pushing against a dam threatening to break with each microscopic crack in its foundation, but he keeps it back because Johnny is still a mystery and that keeps him wary. If what the girls from his group said earlier is true, why can't Taeyong see anything beyond captivation in Johnny's eyes when they look at each other? Is there a sadness there that Taeyong doesn't know well enough in him to recognize?

But between all his tender feelings Taeyong is frustrated, pulled between what's allowed and what's forbidden while Johnny talks to him like he's something precious.

Because he cares about Taeyong, and he knows this. He just doesn’t know how much to allow himself to show it, so he represses most of it, and Taeyong is already sick of watching Johnny maneuver this game. It’s inevitable that Johnny will find this out about Taeyong: he doesn’t deal well with patience.

Notes:

*clenches fist* im gonna write a love so forbidden

we have a CHAPTER COUNT, EVERYONE!! things are going to start going DOWN next update so stay tuned....

 

twt
cc

Chapter 4: Four

Most of Johnny’s evening nights go like this:

He'll commute home from the university—barely a full commute because it’s barely half a mile north of campus into the center of the city, even most student dorms were further away. But what his new home did by being so close is tie itself to his work, almost unintentionally.

After he gets home, he’ll work out, shower and have the take-out or cooking debate. Eventually he starts feeling like a living human being with the tiredness beginning to settle into his muscles. Then he spends the rest of his awake hours at his desk grading assignments or preparing for the next day’s lesson. Some emails get cleared out and moved around in his mailbox, an endless stream of requests and spam and things he’ll sort away and try to remember later. Then he’ll realize it’s already past midnight and he needs to be on campus near sunrise to either set up the classroom, help set up a lab, or buy provisions (food) for his research group.

He only finally sleeps when he’s too exhausted to stay awake anymore. Then, the next day begins.

And it’s busy, and it keeps him focused, but more importantly—distracted.

Which is why he comes to dread the weekends ever since he's pulled the plug on England and made the move. It gave him all this free time, and all this time is now staring him in the face—and he tries to fill it with anything, tries to remember the things he likes. But it’s a long, slow process. He couldn't escape everything that made him jump on an international plane, still having to face it in digital print.

Eventually, he has to answer him.

On this particular Saturday, Johnny pours himself a double shot of whiskey. Usually he’ll space them out, drink one then, after a break, the other, like a normal person. But he feels an ominous fog over this week and over himself, something strange pulling down on his shoulders. Could just be seasonal affective disorder, something he only started becoming familiar with only three years into living it Oxford and now carrying it with himself overseas.

The ice clinks in his glass when he swivels in his office chair in a slow and lazy half-rotation, staring at his laptop screen with the glare bright in his glasses. He has read this email so many times and yet every time it doesn’t quite sink in the whole way. The words are there on the page but they might as well be in another language, his brain putting up a complete barrier to any meaning in them.

His phone lights up and buzzes on the desk next to him.

When Johnny sees the name on the screen, he thinks maybe the bad karma on his side will continue for the rest of his life—and it would only be fair if he found out now so he could be ready for a lifetime of regrets. Now it is as if he conjured up the caller from that same email that hangs on the screen as his phone vibrates the surface of his wooden desk.

With a deep inhale Johnny picks up his phone and answers the call. “Hey, Kun.”

“Good evening, John,” the voice on the other end is light and airy, like it has always sounded—at least in the beginning “How are you?”

The first thing Johnny wonders is—what does he expect him to say to that? The question would probably piss Johnny all the way off if he hadn't already worn himself down into complete compliance in his self-pity.

“Fine,” he says, swirling the ice in the glass leaning against his palm. His eyes are drowned in the golden liquid as it reflects his lamp light—he’s looking but that’s all he’s doing. “Just fine.”

He notices the mere lack of Kun’s breathing, knowing by the way he’s holding it that he’s already being set off.

“How was your move? How's Chicago?” Kun asks, and it brews something ugly inside of Johnny that Kun can just talk so casually while hiding his clear intentions behind a veneer of politeness. As he thinks this, Johnny knows he’s already throwing a tantrum, but it’s hard to care when not caring has become so natural.

“You don’t have to put yourself through this,” Johnny says with a bitter grin pulling at the corners of his lips. “Being polite to me.”

There’s a long sigh from Kun—a sound too familiar. The sound of it comes out fuzzy like static from being passed through the phone speaker. “Johnny, please. Just … make this easy on us.”

And what can Johnny say to that, when he’s thinking the exact thing—that he’s really the source of all this, the beginning and now the end. All the momentum behind what they used to be, all on his shoulders.

“Can you just sign the final papers, John?” Kun uses that maternal voice on him, and it makes it really obvious to Johnny how little Kun knows him if he thinks this is what would work on him. “If you want to negotiate a settlement, we can do that, but you said—”

“I don’t want to settle anything,” Johnny interrupts. “I don’t want anything.”

They don’t say anything for a moment because they’re both letting Johnny play this out, whatever it is going on through him. He realizes how ironic it is for this simmering resentment to come out now when all he remembers is the slow extinguishing of the fire.

Nothing about the divorce has been easy, neither mentally nor physically, and Johnny is a bit too late on psychoanalyzing himself to realize he’s just simply lashing out. He curses himself for being so loose, wishing this conversation wasn’t happening while he’s just trying to have a fucking drink.

“I’ll sign it over. I’m sorry…” he says with defeat weighing heavy on his words. “For making you wait.”

“Thanks,” Kun replies, and he sounds much less diplomatic with a softness to his voice as he continues. “And Johnny… I know. That it’s hard. But…we’ll be okay.”

Johnny wants so badly to be uplifted by that, wants those words to actually mean anything to him, but they’re another brick to the weight on his chest.

“Yeah. Bye, Kun.”

Of course Kun would think so optimistically, Johnny thinks as he sets his phone back down and watches the screen die. Not that it hasn’t been hard on him too, but Kun objectively moved on faster than Johnny, and Johnny watched it happen while he still tried to figure out where he went wrong. And he desperately wished he could be like Kun, to not wake up with this fog hanging over him until he can chase it away with busy work and keep pushing until it breaks on him.

But here he is, avoiding his personal email because the document hangs somewhere in there, marked with an angry red flag.

This final contract, the stamp on the fact that he simply failed. That he has loved, and love dies.

If he stopped to let that reality really settle and soak into him, freed from the dirt he throws over it every time he tries to bury it somewhere in the back of all his priorities, then it becomes too heavy to bear. He’d have to face himself and his naivety in thinking that loving is nothing but disappointment.

Still he opens the document and sends it to the printer. The pages fall out one by one in hopes that having this hard copy will force his hand over to sign them, just a few lines of his initials and name, barely any work on Johnny's part. He takes the stack of paper and aligns the corners together as he stares at the top page, with his name and Kun’s under the title written in obnoxiously large bold font.

He just lets it sit there, not fully ready to leave his mark on it yet. His throat tightens up, no movement of air in him as the black ink on the page paralyzes him. Though one step was taken forward today, the next he decides to leave for another time. Maybe he’ll find the strength, just not today.

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

The next Sunday morning Taeyong wakes up with a stupid, massive headache. He tries everything he can to wear it off—big greasy breakfast, minimal chores around the house—but it develops into a full-blown migraine and the only option left is sleep. It’s not even noon when he knocks out in his bedroom, missing all the commotion of Donghyuck in the kitchen the entire time he's sleeping.

When he wakes to the orange glow of the setting sun beating through the window, the headache subsided to a small tension he can easily ignore. It would have to be good enough, since he’s already annoyed at himself for wasting so much of his day sleeping when he has so much work to do.

Although campus is not his ideal place to spend Sunday night, it wouldn’t be the first time he does, so it's familiar territory. At the beginning he only leaned on it during emergencies, especially since the city can get suspicious at night on the way home. But now it's easy to make any excuse to go back to campus to work, getting by knowing his routes and sometimes taking the taxi home. Tonight's excuse is on Donghyuck for offering up their apartment to the entire soccer team after their win, especially since Mark is the big star as the main offense player. And a house big enough for three of them is a fine enough venue for an impromptu post-game rager.

And of course Taeyong isn’t one to shut down a good-natured party just because he’s the only person lame enough to actually have work to do, constantly checking things off the list that never ends. He leaves for campus a few hours before the guests are expected to start pouring in and prepares himself for an evening.

When he walks through the halls of the neuroscience building all the automatic lights that have been long shut off snap on one by one as Taeyong crosses to the other end into the office wing. He actually likes the building better like this, only his footsteps echoing off the walls. It didn’t take long for him to become intimately familiar with everything around the corners, so having this space now empty made it feel more like his own home.

Taeyong's arrival triggers the light in his office—and it's as empty as he expected. He opens his laptop, stretches out his arms, and settles into his desk hunch.

He’s good at free-falling into work, a map of all his tasks a perfect image in his mind as it webs out and he works seemingly without end. The silence of the abandoned building also helps him stay focused—right up until the pattering of footsteps sounds down the hallway, louder and louder as it approaches his office.

Taeyong knows there is only one other person pitiful enough to be here on a Sunday.

“Ah, I shouldn’t be surprised anymore,” Johnny says when he peeks through the open door of his office.

This makes Taeyong look up from his stack of papers for the first time in the past hour, and the harsh glow of the sudden light in the hallway pouring in from behind Johnny stings his eyes. Then, the headache is back. Taeyong probably had this tension in his head for a while now but somehow kept pushing it down page after page.

And then, the scent hits him like a truck—Johnny rolling in like a tidal wave, a necessitated force behind it. Taeyong freezes up but wills himself to relax, shoulders dropping with slowly releasing tension. He wonders if he’s really so exhausted that his usual resistance to the alpha has been worn down to nearly nothing.

“Seems that you and I are on the same schedule,” Taeyong says and in his words is a suspicion that they’re both here to escape something else, burying it in their work.

Johnny shrugs but freely enters his office, leaning against Taeyong’s desk when he looks over the precisely organized stacks of papers spread out across its surface. Taeyong tries not to make it obvious how attentively he’s watching the professor, but from the few modest glances Johnny doesn’t notice Taeyong's inner turmoil.

“Why are you here?” Taeyong drops his pen to the side and straightens out. “Since it can’t possibly be shitty roommates or their parties, or at least I'd hope not.”

Johnny’s grin is lopsided and his eyes shy away from Taeyong’s, looking down at his hands in his lap. “Nah, nothing like that. Just needed to get out of the house.”

Taeyong finds it hard to resist from rolling his eyes, since he’s sure that even professors have a lot of work. But tenured, salaried, successful, yet not taking the time to celebrate any of that? Taeyong could never relate. The first thing he's doing when he walks off that graduation stage is catch up on everything he's missed out on while he was studying.

The melancholic undertone in Johnny's answer does not escape, but he's not about to pry.

"How long have you been here?" Johnny asks. "You look rough. No offense."

Taeyong brushes off the comment more or less, but only because he's more focused on looking for the time. He reads on the bottom of the screen that it's almost eight and quickly does the mental math.

"I don't know, a while?" he's too tired for math, that’s what his spreadsheet is for. His brain space is reserved for more important things.

"I'm guessing you got unwillingly exiled from your home?" Johnny comments, still scanning over Taeyong's puffy face from his mid-day sleep.

"Basically," Taeyong says. "I thought living with two other psych grads would lessen the chance of my home becoming a frat house. But I was very wrong."

"Oof, roommates?"

"Yup, Doyoung and Donghyuck," Taeyong says. "And sometimes the entire soccer team."

Johnny grimaces, his features somehow even more striking in the white light. "Shit, I'll take having five roommates over that any day."

"You had five?" Taeyong startles, his chair squeaking as he's thrown back by the surprise.

"Oh, yeah, it was a gross alpha house," Johnny says with a fond laugh and a glimmer in his eye when he glances at Taeyong. "They didn’t have graduate student housing back then, so we had to stuff into some pretty pricey apartments."

"And this was during the industrial revolution?" Taeyong says and gets a loud laugh from Johnny along with a dramatically offended look.

"Please," Johnny rolls his eyes. "But now that you put it that way, I guess I'm not that old."

"Right, because your diploma is printed, not hand-written," Taeyong laughs again and receives a full shove from Johnny. Well, there's a subject that Taeyong didn't realize makes Johnny squirm—he stores this information for future torment.

"What are you working on?" Johnny asks before the follow-up. "What could possibly be important enough for a Sunday?"

Taeyong wonders exactly what Johnny's own schedule was when he was a graduate student if he's asking this question. "I have to start making phone calls to pull participants for my study. Sunday evening is probably my best bet at getting people to pick up the phone."

"How many numbers do you have?" Johnny inquires, arms crossing over his chest.

"I think like—" Taeyong starts, squinting at the list on his computer. "One hundred thirty-two."

Johnny's mouth falls open. "Damn, that's—"

"A lot, yeah," Taeyong's answer is paired with an anxious laugh. "Since I need a specific set of subjects, I probably need to throw a wide net."

"It's unbelievable that you're running this study yourself," Johnny says, and it's quieter this time, like he's speaking to himself. "Would you like help?"

Taeyong snorts. "I'm sure you have more important things to do as faculty."

"As a member of your dissertation committee, your success is just as important," Johnny retorts with a charming smile. "Besides, I really like the design of your study, so I feel personally invested."

Now, Taeyong has a very strong sense of pride. But his common sense still wins over, so he'll take the help where he can get it. Especially since the pile of tasks dumped on him by Sehun never seems to go down.

"Fine, I'll print out the list of names and a script for you to use," Taeyong says and Johnny immediately hops off his desk with a satisfied grin. "And…thanks."

"Happy to help," Johnny says before making his way out of the office towards the printers.

The silence wraps the surrounding spaces again until he hears Johnny's muffled voice on the other side of the wall, his words indiscernible but his tone high and cheerful. It takes Taeyong more than a few minutes to pull himself out of his trance, so attuned to Johnny's voice and more so when trying to pick out the words of his own script. He tries to shake the focus back into himself, pulls up his own half of the list and begins calling one by one.

Taeyong gets through his list within the two hours and uses the time to move onto the next task—the daunting tower of exams he has to grade for Sehun's class. He pulls off the top paper from the stack—a black-and-white printout of the brain with various areas labelled and mislabeled. Taeyong misses the days when identifying brain parts was the greatest of his anxieties.

It's not long before Johnny pries his door open, an annotated list in hand. He sets it down in front of Taeyong right on the exam he's currently grading, and the page is so beautifully color-coded that Taeyong feels unstable enough to start bawling right there at his desk.

"All done! The green ones are the ones that volunteered, yellows I left voicemails for, and reds are rejects," his finger follows down the page as he explains, and he's so close into Taeyong's space that the omega feels a bit light-headed. That wall between them was doing more work than he thought.

"You've been more helpful after two months on my committee than my advisor my entire care—" Taeyong starts but quickly remembers than he's talking to faculty—not a friend.

But Johnny smiles a knowing smirk. "You're welcome," he says before his line of sight follows down to the papers in front of Taeyong. “I didn’t know you were the TA for this class.”

When Johnny says that he's not necessarily gentle about it. Taeyong’s jaw tenses, fingers folding into his palm. “I’m not.”

“Is that Sehun’s class exam?” Johnny asks him directly, and for some reason Taeyong feels like he’s in trouble even though he has not done anything wrong. The professor's tone is an unnerving mixture of forward and concerned, his eyes boring down into Taeyong's.

“He’s the only one that teaches brain anatomy,” Taeyong avoids Johnny’s gaze as he tilts away, nervously gathering all the papers into a somewhat coherent stack.

“You shouldn’t be the one doing this work,” Johnny says and Taeyong can tell he’s trying to sound as gentle as possible, but that frustration still strains his words. “Don’t you have your own class work to grade?”

“I’m not on a teaching assistantship,” Taeyong says, deciding he might as well be honest with this already unexciting information, since Johnny seems so curious. But he's only one pry away from feeling aggravated. “I’m here on a full scholarship, only for research.”

With an exasperated sigh Johnny turns away from him for a moment only to take Sicheng’s chair from his desk and roll it over to his side to take a seat next to him.

“This concerns me, Taeyong,” Johnny says, his gaze so strong and unwavering on Taeyong’s that it makes him freeze up, hands gripping the peeling leather arms of his chair. “You should not feel obligated to do your advisor’s busy work.”

Taeyong doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t necessarily disagree—but he knows that the last thing he wants is Johnny’s involvement in his relationship with Sehun, especially considering their own complicated history. Taeyong needs to keep his head down, finish his shit and graduate the fuck out of there.

Besides, how laughable would it be to have the same alpha that Sehun warned him about come to his rescue? His advisor would not let him hear the end of it—more likely, he's going to be pissed enough to make the rest of Taeyong's days at the university a nightmare.

“Do you want me to—"

“No,” Taeyong immediately cuts him off there. “Absolutely not.”

“But Taeyong, I know you must probably feel a certain level of duty to your advisor but by contract you shouldn’t—”

“I understand, but no,” Taeyong stops him before Johnny can look any more pitiful, eyes wide and worried at him from where he looks at him, a carefully planned distance with their knees just a move away from each other. “I need you to respect my decision and let me handle this myself. And unless I decide otherwise, you cannot bring this to anyone without my consent.”

Johnny's lips press tighter the more he sits in stunned silence, and Taeyong can just see all the thoughts racing through his eyes. He feels so empathetic but has to hold it all there in the tension of his shoulders.

"I appreciate you trying to help," he says after a moment. "But I just cannot stand the principle of it."

Johnny knows there's nothing he can say to that, not when Taeyong sits so full of resolve in front of him. So, he drops it.

"Understood," he says, rolling his chair back when he gets up, not ready to let Taeyong off the hook completely. "Wanna go get coffee? You look like you might need a walk."

Taeyong takes one glance outside and just realizes that the sun has already set. The darkness outside seems inviting—and he's not even being emo about this. He just really needs a change of environment, dead office to dead streets. "Yeah, I could air out," he answers, quickly saving his work and shutting his laptop.

When Johnny holds the door open for him to step out into the breezing cold of the city, Taeyong realizes this is the first time they've been alone together outside of the grey walls of the neuroscience building. For a moment he thinks that maybe it should feel different, more reminiscent of their first night together. But here and now, though it's another night of dark dreariness of academia, all Taeyong can feel is the return of his migraine. He tries to shove it down by focusing on the wind beating against his face and paling his lips or the way Johnny walks next to him not even attempting to keep his hands warm by hiding them in his coat pockets.

It's unsettling, this air between them, the tension subsiding just enough that Taeyong is twice as anxious about the force at which it may return. He's learned not to get too confident in the calm.

When they get to the café, Taeyong opts for a tea since he's wary of the effect too much coffee will have on his headache or his possibility of any upcoming sleep. With these thoughts in mind he suddenly dreads coming home to the aftermath or, even worse, the height of the party. He seriously considers sleeping in the office.

They return back to the building with small talk and laugher which manages to distract Taeyong from everything buzzing in his head just for a moment. Johnny diverts to his own office and Taeyong continues the few steps down to his own.

The automatic lights come on in the room and they're so sudden and oddly aggressive. Taeyong's head instantly starts pounding and there's a slow warmth climbing up his back and spreading through to his limbs. The aches follow so quickly that they turn into pain, and it's such an instantly overwhelming feeling that he doubles over, the styrofoam cup of tea slips from his hand, falls to the floor and splashes all the contents to cool on the vinyl.

Fuck.

Taeyong's arms shake holding him over his desk and he inhales deeply to let the pain subside back into an ache, that gnawing feeling crawling right under his skin. The warmth seeping through to every pore of his body, his mind going fuzzy and attuning to his empirical senses, the breaths coming out of him so heavily.

He knows exactly what this means.

"Hey, what's—" Johnny cuts himself off when he sees Taeyong, and he must think he's completely breaking apart by the panic in his eyes. "Taeyong, are you okay?!"

It's the moment when Johnny steps closer to him that Taeyong can feel the pain subside into a boundless need, all the paleness in his skin painting over with a red blush.

"Shit," Taeyong curses under his breath and holds out an arm to keep Johnny at a distance. "Don’t fucking come near me."

He knows it's harsh, and he can tell from the shock on Johnny's face, but he doesn't care. He just got his fucking heat in front of a professor—and he's humiliated.

"Taeyong, you seem—"

"I'm fine," Taeyong says even though he looks the exact opposite, his knees trembling from holding up his weight, elbows folding in as his body turns all its energy from functioning like a human being to omega—bringing out his scent, mouth wet with spit and it's only a matter of time before he starts leaking.

"Something…triggered my heat," he says the most objectively he can with the last bit of consciousness that remains.

Surprisingly, Johnny doesn't panic more and just keeps at a distance, but Taeyong can tell from the way his hands are balled up into fists that he's not immune to this. What a fucking moment.

"Let me help you home," Johnny says and it's bittersweet, because Taeyong doesn't know if it's Johnny or the alpha speaking to him so protectively.

"No," Taeyong says and though his rational brain wants Johnny the fuck out of here, his other state of mind needs him closer, impossibly closer. "No, I can't. There are too many people there. You— You need to leave."

Spending his heat in his office would easily be one of the most pathetic things Taeyong has ever had to do in his academic career, but he's prepared for it. Especially if it meant avoiding the locker room that is his house right now. And especially if it meant avoiding Johnny.

"Then let me take you to mine," Johnny offers and before Taeyong can even open his mouth to argue. "You cannot spend it here, you know everyone will know."

When he's right, he's right—Taeyong knows that his scent is on overdrive during his heat, if his roommates and his friends ever had to say anything about it. And if Sehun finds out he might as well never return to the department.

"Fine," Taeyong says, and this acceptance allows Johnny to approach him. "But you cannot—"

"I'm not going to do anything," Johnny reassures, both in the softness of his voice and the arm that wraps around Taeyong's waist. The omega leans in readily, and it's so easy for him to rely on Johnny he'll have to remember to berate himself for it later, when his brain is proper and straightened out.

They make it to Johnny's car that's parked in the faculty lot at the back of the building, reminding Taeyong of the severe divide between him and the professor. But the logical string of thoughts slowly starts unraveling as he sits in the backseat on top of his coat, feeling himself get hotter, wetter, body unwillingly reaching for Johnny in the driver's seat.

The entire drive to Johnny's the professor neither speaks nor looks at him, gripping the wheel so tight that his knuckles turn white. His alpha scent is already mixing in with the strong fragrance of Taeyong's heat, filling the interior of the car to the point of suffocating them both. On the edge of breaking right up to the point that Johnny parks outside his house.

Taeyong can only discern small details of his surroundings—the staircase up to the front door, the dim interior lined with black furniture—but nothing really specific. It's like the only duty his senses have now is to Johnny—where he is, how close he is, how to pull him in. Having to resist hurts almost as much as spending heats alone.

"Here," Johnny's voice is soft and low next to him as his strong arms unwrap from Taeyong, laying him down on soft sheets. "Take my bed."

"Johnny—" Taeyong starts, fingers digging into the fabric of the professor's shirt, almost pulling it off his shoulders. His mind is a war with his body, pushing away and letting go, and he's slowly wearing out.

Johnny stops in Taeyong's grip, his own hands still on Taeyong and also hesitating to let go. He tries to pull back but there's a fight in his eyes, and he's pulled in by an invisible force, the world blurring around them when his eyes drop to Taeyong's lips. The memory of them, so potent, so addicting now that they're right there, within reach, the omega looking up at him with glistening eyes.

But he said he wouldn't. And he shouldn't. So, he doesn't.

The bedroom door slams behind him and the sound echoes through the empty apartment until it subsides, slowly giving way to Taeyong's whimpers from within the bedroom. Johnny only has enough will to not throw the door open again; he leans back against the door and slides down until he's on the floor, head in his hands as he takes deep breaths, desperately trying to keep it together.

"Johnny…" the sound is so quiet on the other side of the door, Taeyong soft voice so close to making him forget everything that forced him to resist. "Help me…"

He can't—and when he tells himself this the anger simmers deep within until it begins boiling. He scrambles off the floor and bursts through the bathroom door, switches on the cold water and plashes it over his face. He doesn't know how much longer he can keep it together, but he knows he can't just leave Taeyong alone.

The rose scent saturates his house and burns Johnny up until his clothes stick to him with his sweat. He finds Taeyong's bag and searches for his phone, already ready to apologize for this later. After two passcode guesses he unlocks Taeyong's phone with the year of his graduation date—which would make him laugh if he wasn't hysterical.

He scrolls through the contacts and dials.

"Doyoung?" he says when the other end picks up. "Hi, this is John Suh. I'm not sure if Taeyong uh- mentioned me."

There is a long pause on the other end with some cheering in the background. "Yeah, I know who you are."

He'd wilt under the awkwardness if this wasn't a dire situation. "Listen, Taeyong's heat triggered, and he's here now, so can you—"

"His heat?" Doyoung says, his voice more definite now. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, yes," Johnny nods vigorously. "Please, you need to come help him. I can't—"

"Text me the address. I'll bring his suppressants," he says before hanging up. Johnny lets out a sigh of relief, punching in the address in the text message box on his way out of the apartment. His home just feels too suffocating, but he knows he shouldn't go too far in case needs him again, so he sits on the porch, letting the winter cold pull the fever from him.

Johnny's been so concerned with Taeyong that now when he's alone with himself he finally realizes how worn down he feels, his senses crawling out of his skin with how bad his alpha responded. It takes him seconds to pick apart these feelings until they wear down to a consistent, fueling feeling of desire in each part of his body.

Doyoung reaches him soon enough, and Johnny collects himself one final time to hand him the key.

"Feel free to use the guest room," Johnny says, letting Doyoung eye him suspiciously. "I'll be back tomorrow."

Notes:

*gordon ramsay voice* finally some spicy fucking food
yeah we are heading somewhere ;)

 

twt
cc

Chapter 5: Five

Notes:

some tags have been updated <3

Taeyong wakes up multiple times throughout that night.

The first time is still in the dark, mind still hazy but the scent saturated into the bedsheets wrapping him up in a comfort that lulls him back to sleep.

The next time is to the sound of the bedroom door opening and Doyoung's voice, distant and dream-like, until his hands are on his back and he's placing a pill on Taeyong's tongue, tilting his head back to wash it down with water from the glass at his lips. Everything about Doyoung is neutral aside from his voice, shaking with worry. But the room he's in is anything but neutral. Everything about the sense of it covers Taeyong up like a heavy blanket, pressing that ceaseless itch under his skin deeper inside until he doesn't feel anything but the cloud of Johnny's comfort as he drifts back into sleep.

The final time he wakes the sun is already up and his mind finally feels clear, aside from the tired pull of his long slumber, having slept more hours in one night than he usually does in a single weekend. There are footsteps through the hall before Doyoung enters the room again.

"Hey," he says, and though his voice is totally calm the crease of his brow line gives away his worry. "How are you feeling?"

"Physically, much better," he says, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with lazy fists. “Mentally, I’d rather eat glass than see Johnny again.”

Doyoung’s face contorts unpleasantly but he still nods, sitting down next to Taeyong who still refuses to leave the comfort of the sheets surrounding him. His silence speaks volumes, and Taeyong knows that Doyoung is using this moment to choose the right things to say. From the few years they've known each other they have learned to read each other's smallest behaviors, and Taeyong reads this one as a warning to himself.

"What happened last night?" Doyoung asks. "What triggered this?"

Taeyong purses his lips, somehow knowing that Doyoung is not going to be thrilled with his answer. "I was just working late, then Johnny showed up. He helped me with participant collection for my study, we got coffee, and when we got back it just… hit."

"Taeyong, you know you haven't had—”

“I know, Doie,” Taeyong interrupts the thought that has been spinning in his head the second he could get it clear again. “I’m not stupid, I know that Johnny triggered my first heat in years.”

They let the confession hang in the air, more a verbalization of both their worries. Taeyong stopped having regular heats by the second semester of graduate school, which he chalked up to severe stress. There are few things that can halt heats: suppressants, stress and pregnancy. The latter is not possible for Taeyong, and he’s stopped taking suppressants as soon as he crossed the border.

But now it looks like he might have to start again because there’s only so much humiliation he can take.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Doyoung asks, sensing the way this conversation was making Taeyong slump into himself.

“Yeah, this was actually one of the better ones,” Taeyong says, freeing his arms from the sheets to inspect them: no bruises, scratches or blood. Sometimes his heats got so bad that he’d claw at his own skin and wake up in blood-soaked sheets, which him and Doyoung had to meticulously wash out with shampoo in cold water.

“Evidently,” Doyoung says though he’s holding back much, much more. “I gotta get to class. Do you need me to help you home?”

Class? “Fuck, it’s Monday, isn’t it?” Taeyong panics.

“Yup, I have to get to campus, but I might get Hyuck to—”

“I’ll be okay,” Taeyong says, adamant not to involve anyone else in this mess. “Thanks for coming, Doie.”

“Always,” Doyoung gives a small smile with a hand on Taeyong’s shoulder. “The next dose is up in five hours, don’t forget.”

Taeyong glances over his shoulder at the bottle of suppressant pills—the emergency bottle from their kitchen cupboard, also his mortal enemy. He obediently nods, letting Doyoung leave him alone in Johnny’s apartment.

Finally with a clearer head he can take in his surroundings other than Johnny’s intoxicating scent, which by now Taeyong thought he’d get sick of because of how strongly it takes to him, but it has only become more addicting over time. It’s a scent that conjures up warmth like nostalgic memories can, a bittersweet hope of something tender and safe.

Taeyong throws the sheets aside then carefully examines the mess he made—there are evident spots of slick, some wet and some dried out, so he sets off to search for the washing machine in Johnny’s apartment to spare him any more embarrassment. He hasn’t even considered the fact that as comforting as the alpha’s presence was during his heat, Taeyong’s own scent must be torturing to Johnny. But the amount of self-restraint Johnny showed from what he remembers of last night also makes Taeyong’s heart swell.

After checking half a dozen closet doors Taeyong finds the washing machine and dryer stacked on top of each other in the closet by the kitchen. He quickly strips the bed and shoves the bed sheets to wash, letting the dull noise of the working machine fill the silence of the room. He also changes into the spare clothes Doyoung left for him, not feeling comfortable enough to shower in the professor’s apartment.

Even though it’s Monday he finds it difficult to bring himself to care—his body is exhausted to the bone, he’s emotionally worn out, and all he wants is to pathetically sink into an alpha’s embrace and maybe have an orgasm. Chasing away these thoughts he checks his phone for texts from Sicheng and then his email, and so far the coast is clear of his advisor’s wrath. If he’s lucky, Sehun won’t even notice he’s gone today.

When he tosses his phone aside he takes the time to look around Johnny’s apartment. He knows he probably shouldn’t snoop, but he’s a scientist with an insatiable curiosity (nosiness), so he justifies his wandering around. The apartment is fairly small, only made spacious by the tall ceilings and huge windows, and the other rooms are the bedroom, guest room and the office.

When Taeyong opens up the door to the office, it’s impossible to hold back a gasp as he’s faced with walls lined with books. He approaches to examine the shelves and finds that they’re not organized in any specific order, nonfiction blending in with fiction with some old dissertations snuck in between the rest of the books. When he comes across the desk, he notices a pair of glasses different than the ones Johnny usually wears—probably his reading glass. They’re set on top of a document.

Final Decree of Divorce: Suh John and Qian Kun.

Taeyong reads the title two times, then two more. By the fifth it starts sinking in.

The girls were right—Johnny was running from something when he left Oxford, still is. The document sits printed, unsigned, and sends Taeyong’s heart plummeting to his feet.

The knock on the door is drowned out by his rapid heartbeat, pulsing in his ears as he walks out of the office to the front door. It opens before he can answer it, and Johnny steps in.

“Oh, you’re up,” he says, and all Taeyong can think about is that they’re both somewhere they shouldn’t be right now. “Are you feeling better? I brought some breakfast. I don’t know what you usually eat since, now that I think about it, I’ve never seen you eat breakfast, but no one can say no to a fresh croissant, right?”

Of course, he brought breakfast, and of course he knows that Taeyong never eats breakfast. Of course, Taeyong is here, in the apartment of the alpha that triggered his heat and took care of him the best he could, taking care of him again. The alpha that isn’t his because he’s not only a professor, but he’s also still fucking married.

Taeyong turns to sit on the counter because if he doesn’t, the whiplash would knock him off his feet.

“Yeah, I feel better,” he gives a response, and it’s definitely not what he wants to be saying now. “Thanks for all your help.”

“Don’t mention it, I’m just glad you’re okay,” Johnny gives a bright grin before turning his attention to the brown bag of pastries, taking them out one by one on the plate in front of him. Taeyong watches for a silent moment with his ache eating away at the back of his neck, incessant and irritating.

Then he decides, fuck it—they’re here now. “Johnny, are you still married?”

Johnny doesn’t pause or stop moving, just keep his eyes down until he’s done. Then, his hands settle on the edge of the counter next to Taeyong as he stills with a long sigh.

“I mean, Professor Suh,” Taeyong corrects himself even though he's way past the point of appropriateness. Still there’s an odd taste in his mouth when he uses his name, the taste of Johnny’s tongue and the salt of his skin. “I apologize, I’m being too—”

“You’re alright,” Johnny turns to him with a smile forced onto his lips for Taeyong’s sake. “Nothing about us is conventional, so I cannot blame you for asking. You can also call me Johnny.”

Taeyong won’t—he’s still stuck on us.

“I’m only married on paper, but it’s been over for a long time,” Johnny says, eyes down on his hand that’s mere centimeters from Taeyong’s thigh. When he looks up they’re a pool of deep melancholy, but maybe if he looked long enough he could find hope in them. “I’ve been out of love for so long now but can’t bring myself to sign my name off. How stupid is that?”

“It’s not stupid,” Taeyong immediately answers. “It’s not, and we both know that our behavior is not always consistent with our attitudes. It’s just part of being human.”

The corner of Johnny’s mouth lifts up to a grin, more colorful this time as Taeyong tries to comfort him.

“I wish I could be more analytical like you,” when Johnny says this Taeyong cannot help but laugh—Johnny making Taeyong seem like the wiser one though he’s the older one. “But I’ve just been lost trying to remember how to live as myself again.”

Taeyong listens, afraid to move because it might shatter the thin vulnerability of this moment, Johnny suddenly so open with him, standing so close.

“At the conference,” Taeyong starts, eye contact with Johnny unwavering. “Were you also lost?”

Johnny holds a pause before answering. “Initially, yeah,”

“And now?” Taeyong asks. He has no place to ask, he knows this as soon as he sees something break in the honey of Johnny’s eyes, the crease more prominent in the wrinkles on his forehead.

“Taeyong…” his voice is nothing above a whisper, and Taeyong watches his lips intently when he speaks. Johnny’s eyes drop to his mouth too and again there’s the magnetic force that pulls them to each other, strong and slow like molasses.

Taeyong knows he can’t—but pushing and testing the boundaries is in his blood, and he couldn’t stop if he tried. Even if he told Johnny to stay away.

There’s a sing-song beep that sounds from the hallway.

“Did you start the laundry?” Johnny asks, clearing his throat as he steps back.

Taeyong is still in a haze, so deeply so that it makes him anxious. “Yeah. Slick sheets, you know.”

Johnny nods with a laugh. “I appreciate it.”

“I should get home,” Taeyong pushes off the counter, grabbing the few of his own things he had with him and stuffing them into his bag before making his way to the front door past Johnny.

The professor doesn’t release him so easily. “Please take some food with you.”

They stand off for a second before Taeyong decides it’s not worth the effort to protest. He grabs a croissant and makes a show of taking a bite out of it, making Johnny laugh.

“I’ll see you on campus, Taeyong,” he says, like anything could ever be the same after this.

“Yup,” Taeyong sighs. “See you on campus, Professor.”

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

On his way to lunch at a very reasonable three in the afternoon, Aeri catches him on his way out.

“Hey, you okay?” her grip is right on his arm when she stops him, which she probably doesn’t realize. “I noticed you weren’t here yesterday.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Taeyong says, looking down each end of the hallway before turning back to her. “I’m totally good, you don’t need to worry.”

She seems to accept his answer but Taeyong cannot tell if the curiosity in her eyes is targeted to him or just part of her neutral state.

“John wasn’t here yesterday either,” she says, and it’s not a casual comment by any means.

“Aeri,” his voice is quiet enough just for the two of them to hear when he speaks. “We’re not…”

“I wasn’t implying you were,” she shrugs as her hand falls away from him, but there’s a glimmer in her eyes like she’s ready for her catch.

“You’re always implying something,” Taeyong rolls his eyes. Her nosiness is something he’d confront her about if it wasn’t the source of half the information he knew about the department. But it’s probably about time that it turned back on him—he’s surprised it took this long. His main concern now is ensuring that all her suspicions stay between them and don’t spread like the flu throughout the department.

“He’s just… overly protective of you, I guess,” she comments, checking her nails in faux-nonchalance, like Taeyong doesn’t know the game she’s playing.

“Probably just all my sob stories about Dr. Oh, don’t think too much about it,” he says, then narrows his eyes. “Unless you’re bothered by all the attention taken from you.”

She scoffs. “Please, you know I’d rather have him off my ass,” her laugh is sharp as her attention is successfully diverted away from Taeyong’s business. “Yi Zhuo might cry though.”

“I’m sure you’ll comfort her like a good lab mate,” Taeyong says. “Anyway, I’m late for lunch.”

“Taeyong, it’s almost four.”

“If it’s my second meal of the day it’s lunch,” he says on his way out, giving Aeri the back of his head as he rushes down the hallway and out of the building.

He crosses the busy streets of Chicago, maneuvering between buses and bikers, over to the café on the other side of campus where he agreed to meet Yuta. Taeyong’s relationship with him is somewhat odd—they met in their first year of graduate school, forming a quick bond as international students in the program, but Yuta quickly dropped out to pursue freelance work. They hooked up on and off through the first year—it was good and nasty and just what Taeyong needed until Yuta settled down with his Russian literature professor in a grossly domestic lifestyle that made them seem like an old, married couple.

He sees the red-haired beta man at the window of the café sipping on a hot coffee, and Taeyong knows he’s way late because Yuta is usually running at least half an hour behind.

“Hi,” Taeyong squeaks apologetically as he takes his seat. “Sorry I’m so late.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it, I’ve only been here like ten minutes,” Yuta shrugs, offering Taeyong his brilliant smile that washes the worry away. “Wow, you look different. Like you slept.”

“I did,” Taeyong says, shrugging his coat off and hanging it over the back of his chair. “You wouldn’t fucking believe the shit show I've been dealing with.”

Yuta’s eyebrows perk up. “Do tell.”

Taeyong recounts the said shit show from all the way back to the conference onto his heat two nights ago, taking up so much time he almost feels guilty about it. But Yuta seems to chew through it with interest all the way to the end.

“Trying to bag a professor? You wish you could be me,” Yuta laughs.

“Have you missed the part where he’s completely off-bagging-limits?” Taeyong groans, pushing his half-cold coffee away from himself.

“Those limits are made up by both of you,” he says, elbows on the table and cradling his chin in his hands. “What’s a little impropriety for a lifetime of happiness?”

“A little too soon to assume that, no?” Taeyong asks, taken aback by the mention of a whole lifetime—his life simply does not exist past his graduation day right now.

“So you finally find the alpha that dicks you down exactly how you want, then fate brings you back together but you both spend nights after nights running away from your problems by drowning in work?” Yuta asks with a long pause for dramatic effect. “You’re literally meant for each other.”

“You’re right, Yuta,” Taeyong mumbles. “I could never be you.”

Yuta smirks, dropping that line of conversation as Taeyong turns from him and into his empty plate, pushing the crumbs around with his fork. Taeyong realizes that most of the conversation has been centered around his drama and remembers to be a better friend.

“How’s Professor Jung doing?” he asks with a forlorn look in his eyes.

“As good as ever,” Yuta’s smile grows wide as it always does when he talks about his alpha. “He just got a raise so we moved into a bigger apartment. You should come by.”

“I’d love that,” Taeyong smiles, happy for his friend despite his own misfortune.

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Yuta’s finger circles his cup when he drags out the last word. “Jaehyun and I have been kind of looking for a third.”

Taeyong snaps to look at him. “Huh?”

“Just for fun,” Yuta leans closer into his space. “We’ve both missed playing with an omega. You still suppressing your heat?”

Taeyong narrows his eyes, his body increasingly more interested by the suggestion. “Yeah, my last day is tomorrow.”

“Want some release? Come over, no suppressants,” Yuta says. “Jae and I will take care of you.”

Taeyong's fingers fiddle with his straw as he considers. Suppressing his heat does not suppress how horny he gets, and he hasn’t been with anyone since Johnny, but he’s been so busy he hasn’t had the time to think about taking care of himself. Until Yuta hands him this tempting offer.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, but the warmth climbing up his neck is close to answering for him.

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

He doesn’t know why he hesitated, because when he ends up on Yuta’s doorstep later that night, his friend greets him with a wide grin. That grin Taeyong remembers.

“Jae!” Yuta calls out, stepping aside to make room for him to enter. “Taeyong’s here.”

He turns to saunter into his apartment, his bare shoulders peeking out from his white tank top and sweatpants loose on his hips. Taeyong always considered Yuta stunning, almost inhumanly so. Every way that others described Taeyong he felt it applied to Yuta more.

Then, Jaehyun steps out of the bedroom and meets them halfway in the hallway, and Taeyong thinks it’s unfair how the two most gorgeous people alive claimed each other.

“Hello, Taeyong,” Jaehyun says, pulling a white shirt down his torso over a head of tousled hair. Seems like they were already getting started.

“You’re just in time,” Yuta says, taking Taeyong’s hand and entwining their fingers, pulling him towards the bedroom. “We’re so excited to play with you.”

Jaehyun says nothing, languidly following behind them.

Yuta was never one to hesitate, neither in actions nor words. His hands are slipping under Taeyong’s shirt as soon as they both crawl onto the bed. Yuta closes into his space, pressing in when he slides Taeyong’s shirt off, nuzzling at Taeyong’s neck as he breathes him in.

“Do you want a safe word, baby?” he asks against the skin of his neck.

“Color system is fine,” Taeyong breathes out, vividly aware of the goosebumps running down his arms at Yuta’s hovering touch. God, it’s been so long.

Jaehyun has been watching from the doorway, stalling or stalking, but he reaches the foot of the bed in no time, slowly starting to undress himself as he watches the two on the bed.

“Can we make you submit to us?” Yuta asks, and both of their eyes on him—dark, hungry.

Taeyong gulps. “Yes.”

He feels Yuta’s smile widen where he’s kissing his shoulder, tracing his lips up to the column of his neck and following up with a swipe of tongue. His eyes fall closed and he feels hands pulling his thighs apart, and a dip on the bed where Jaehyun kneels between them, his scent a heavy fog as it settles over him. An alpha, but his scent is so different—bergamot and ocean, much lighter than Johnny’s.

“Kiss him, Jae,” Yuta says, moving to sit behind him with Taeyong’s bare back pressing against his chest, arms on both sides of him caging him in—a haven and a trap.

He doesn’t get another moment to think when steady fingers take his chin and tilt him up, Jaehyun’s lips pressing against his. It’s calm, grounding the way he moves against Taeyong, kissing him gently but pressing in hard, a tongue coming out to lick at the seam of his lips. It’s gentle, slow, and Taeyong is impatient—hand grabbing at the back of Jaehyun’s neck, he bites.

Jaehyun laughs against his mouth, low when his mouth spreads into a grin. He pulls back, hand clasped at Taeyong’s jaw.

“Bad,” Yuta’s voice vibrates against the skin of his neck and his hands make a slow path up his thighs, past his hips and up the torso, weaving around him like snakes. They crawl up Taeyong’s arms and clasp his wrists, pulling them behind his back.

Now he’s trapped, an open display of blushed skin to Jaehyun towering over him while Yuta nuzzles against his shoulder, alternating tongue and teeth.

“Open,” Yuta says when Jaehyun’s hand tries to pry his jaw open and two fingers of his other hand come to press against his lips. When Taeyong obeys, the fingers slide into his mouth and press down on his tongue.

His jaw is slack open as the fingers move in deep, claim the back of his tongue and fuck into his mouth. He relaxes his throat feeling his mind begin to cloud, slipping from his surroundings into his body, growing hotter and needier.

“Good, pretty omega,” Yuta’s voice is a ghost below his ear and he inhales. “Mm, you smell so good.”

His answer is a whine, words melting together like wax in his head until all that’s there is the hazy fog and the heat rushing through his blood. He whines again, feeling the air tickle his skin where Yuta breathes him in. The fingers leave his mouth, moving in a trail of spit down his torso until they catch on the waistband of his sweatpants, pressing right onto the tenting erection.

Then, the fingers are gone. “Get in his lap,” Yuta instructs from behind him.

Taeyong does not need to move because Yuta keeps his promise—they both take care of him, pushing and pulling and maneuvering his limbs until he’s straddling Jaehyun’s lap completely naked. Yuta keeps his wrists clasped together behind his back—deliciously cruel, exactly how Taeyong likes it—while Jaehyun’s hands at his hips force him to grind down on his thigh.

The fabric is rough against Taeyong's cock but he doesn’t care—he writhes in Jaehyun’s lap searching friction, feeling the hands loosen their grip and slide up to grab and spread his ass. He gasps as the air hits the slick dripping out of his ass in thin streams down his thighs, a sharp contrast to his skin, so hot it’s almost steaming. His forehead glistens with sweat and he drops his head on Jaehyun’s shoulder when he feels one finger penetrate him, giving in with ease.

“Fuck, you’re so wet,” Yuta says, one hand coming up to wrap around Taeyong’s throat and force him up and against Yuta’s chest, tilting Taeyong’s head so far back it was almost painful. “Little omega, think you can take us both?”

Taeyong doesn’t have time to answer as the hand at his throat squeezes and chokes the breath out of him. At the same time Jaehyun adds another finger, not hesitating to start moving them in and out with constant pressure against his prostate, grinding over and over into it. A third finger follows and the hand moves mercilessly, pumping until Taeyong's thighs start shaking and there are tears pooling in the corners of his eyes.

The hand at his throat loosens and there are lips at his neck and teeth at his shoulderblade and all the pain and pleasure coalesce with the heat fogging up his mind and coursing through his blood, opening him to the hands of the beta and alpha he’s trapped between. He’s glistening with sweat and slick, unabashed moans spilling from his lips by the time Jaehyun pulls out his fingers and aligns his cock, Taeyong’s hips held still in Yuta’s hands.

“Color, baby?” there’s an unidentifiable voice at his ear.

He nods vigorously, sinking back into the blur. “Green,” he croaks out, the word choked out by the moan that forces its way out of his throat when Jaehyun breaches his entrance. A hand takes his face and twists it to the side so Yuta can claim his mouth, all tongue and little finesse, exchanging spit as Taeyong bottoms out with quick panting breaths.

By this point Taeyong is a ragdoll in their arms, draped over Jaehyun’s shoulder as the alpha fucks into him, his occasional growls vibrating against the skin of his neck. Yuta at his back keeps him grounded, hands on his hips to meet Jaehyun’s thrusts until one slides over his abdomen down to wrap around his cock, moving with languid, half-speed strokes, tethering the omega right on the edge.

Jaehyun quickly picks up the pace, fucking into Taeyong until the bed begins slamming against the wall, and though Yuta’s hands and lips are all over him Taeyong’s mind is engrossed by the alpha. His strong arms, the secure thighs he’s grinding into, the scent that is so close, so close to what he yearns for.

He moans but it comes out as a whimper, and he feels Jaehyun begin to swell inside him but all Taeyong can think about—all that his body is begging for is the alpha that stole his heart that night months ago, a yearning so strong he almost spirals out of this moment.

“Can I knot you?” Jaehyun’s voice is deep and strained when he asks, slowing down the thrusting of his hips. The question splits Taeyong between his two answers, not entirely certain in either one until he goes with the one in his heart and shakes his head.

“That’s a red no?” Yuta asks behind him.

“Red,” Taeyong manages, the word vulnerable on his tongue as the lips moving up his neck keep him safe in saying it.

“You can knot me, love,” Yuta says, grabby hands at Taeyong’s hips pulling him off the alpha’s cock.

There’s little maneuvering other than the pushing of Jaehyun onto his back so Taeyong can move up and Yuta can replace him, letting Jaehyun enter him with some resistance as the beta has more difficulty taking an alpha’s cock. The time allows Taeyong’s mind to stop spiraling, regaining his breath as he lays on top of Jaehyun and buries his face into his neck, inhaling him deeply.

He hears Yuta let out a groan behind him coupled with his hands digging into Taeyong’s hips—then, they pull him back until Yuta’s cock nudges his ass, and he does not need any further command. He wiggles his hips as Yuta lines up and pushes all the way so that he bottoms out in a single thrust. It’s a bit clumsy when they start moving again, a mess of sweaty limbs sticking to each other until skin slaps against skin, friction and heat and strained breaths. Jaehyun warns that he’s close just as his hips stutter with a few last, hard thrusts up into Yuta, making them both still as Jaehyun’s knot fills his partner out.

Taeyong tries to fuck back onto Yuta’s cock, using the last bits of his conscious energy to chase his own climax with a needy whine. But Yuta comes soon after his partner, overstimulated by the knot inside him and the omega bouncing on his lap, squeezing out his erection until he spills everything inside Taeyong. The omega pulls off when Yuta softens, shivering and shaking with how badly he needs his release, how badly he needs everything that he cannot have.

As his whines turn into cries, tears soaking into the pillow he’s pressed into as he’s splayed over Jaehyun’s body, the hands are back on him, returning him to warmth and security. One hand wraps around his cock while another one stands fingering him—he cannot tell which hands belong to whom, not when another hand adds two more fingers into his entrance, both hands pumping fingers in and out of him until he comes with a strained cry, spilling over the hand gripping his cock and shaking until there’s not a drop of him left.

They take a long minute to even out their breathing, wiping slick- and cum-stained hands on the sheets as they untangle from each other. Taeyong turns over onto his back next to Jaehyun, pushing his sweat-stuck hair out of his forehead as he looks up at Yuta, who’s all too comfortable still sitting on his alpha’s knot.

Yuta’s brows furrow for a split second as he leans over and swipes a thumb under Taeyong’s eyes.

“You cried a lot today,” he comments, not necessarily concerned yet because tears are not an unusual side effect of Taeyong getting fucked out. Still, he’s tender when he asks. “You okay?”

Taeyong nods with a pressed smile, letting himself at least be okay in this moment, glowing after his orgasm.

“Good,” Yuta lazily pecks him on the lips before resting his head on Jaehyun’s shoulder. “Give me a minute and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

To break up his eat-sleep-email routine Johnny indulges in an old friend’s invite to the bar.

They’ve known each other since their undergraduate days, quickly forming a brother-like bond despite their very different areas of study. Graduation took them on separate paths but they still remained in contact ever since, a friendship that Johnny is grateful for after the past several years of his own hardship.

And whenever he’s not in the company of his partner, Jaehyun is always on time.

“Finally I got you to crawl out of your cave,” is the first thing he says when Johnny approaches him at the bar, quick to raise a hand to get the bartender's attention.

“My place is too bright to be a cave,” Johnny rolls his eyes, ready for inevitable stream of banter whenever they reunite.

“I meant your office,” Jaehyun says, an easy smile on his lips as he pulls Johnny into an embrace—their first one in years. Johnny has a smile of his own when he embraces his friend, but it’s quickly gone when a jarring scent emanating off Jaehyun hits his senses.

He tenses up and pulls back, his hands gripping Jaehyun’s shoulders with a strength out of his immediate control.

“Johnny,” Jaehyun eyes him suspiciously, stuck in the man’s hold on him. “You alright?”

Johnny shakes his head but only to chase away the feeling wrapping around him and starting to choke—he takes a deep breath and exhales, the wrinkles on his brow gathering in tight worry.

“Yeah, sorry—” he loosens his grip and clears his throat, realizing how odd he’s acting. “You just… smell strange.”

“Bad?” Jaehyun perks up, quickly taking a whiff of his jacket as he looks back at Johnny with a confused look.

“No, no,” his words are slow but his heart is racing, an unpleasant shiver running through to the ends of his limbs. Jaehyun notices his strain and suddenly grins.

“Ah, it must be the omega’s scent still on me,” he says, chalking the behavior up to possessive alpha antics.

“Omega?” he asks, and follows up before giving himself away. “I thought Yuta was—”

“We fooled around with a third to celebrate,” his smile is bright, and it would be infectious if Johnny’s mind was not racing with the pace of his heart. “We just moved to a bigger place and we wanted—”

“Who was it?” Johnny tried to keep the question back but he’s evidently too weak to his own intuition.

“Yuta’s friend Taeyong,” Jaehyun says and Johnny sees red.

“Jae, you—” Johnny spits out, hands balling up on the bar top. He swallows the growl rumbling deep in his throat to keep himself together.

“What’s the big deal?” Jaehyun sits looking at Johnny’s behavior with mild amusement, and if he’s acting out of character then Jaehyun doesn’t comment on it.

“He’s a student,” Johnny says, tearing his eyes away from Jaehyun to stare down into his fresh glass of whiskey.

“You didn’t have a problem with Yuta,” Jaehyun mentions.

“He’s my student,” Johnny pushes through gritted teeth.

A sly grin pulls the corners of Jaehyun’s mouth. “Sorry, man, didn’t realize he was claimed.”

“I’m not claiming him,” Johnny grimaces, washing down the bitterness with the liquor. “I can’t, Jae, I can’t.”

“This isn’t about him being a student, is it?” ever-so perceptive Jaehyun asks with a voice, quieter now to provide Johnny with a sense of safe space for his thoughts. “What is this really about, Johnny?”

Johnny stares at the ice in his glass until he feels like he can drown in its darkness, the condensation off the glass sliding down in quick drops onto his fingers. Watching the water seep between the cracks, he sighs before finding the words.

“We hooked up at the conference in January. At the time I thought he was another professor,” Johnny says, shaking with a bitter chuckle. “What’s worse is I thought he could be someone I could love. But… I can’t love again. I cannot fuck it up again.”

The words are heavy as they hang against the busy noises of the late-evening bar crowd, and Jaehyun allows him the moment to sit with their tension. His expression is nothing short of heart-broken as he watches Johnny slump over his glass.

“Johnny, I know it’s not easy to let go, but the divorce was not your fault, not anyone's,” Jaehyun licks his lips before continuing. “You have to stop punishing yourself about it and try to let love back in.”

Johnny wants to trust these words so badly, but there are voices in his head that are louder than Jaehyun’s tame and careful one.

“It’s too big of a risk,” is all Johnny manages to say, tipping his glass back until the ice hits his upper lip.

“Don’t you think he would be worth it?” Jaehyun asks.

Johnny finally turns to look at him, into Jaehyun’s glimmering eyes with the small smile there as he poses the question.

“I don’t know,” his reply is vague though he's ripped apart within by a different answer. “Was Yuta?”

“Without a doubt,” Jaehyun smiles. “He’s worth every fucking thing.”

Notes:

was it a bit random of me to shove a yujaeyong threesome in this? absolutely
did i do it for me cuz its what i think taeyong deserves? yeahhhhhh

anyway i hope you enjoyed this update :) happy new year!

 

twt
cc

Chapter 6: Six

From: Kim, Min Jeong
To: Suh, John
Friday, March 30th, 6:56 pm

Dear Dr. Suh,

This email is to let you know that we have received your signed Decree of Divorce. As soon as the document is processed and handed to the judge, the marriage dissolution is final. This process should take no longer than 1-3 business days. Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach our office.

Otherwise, it's been a pleasure working with you. The billing department will contact you about outstanding charges, if there are any.

We appreciate your business and wish you well.

Kim Min Jeong
Attorney —Winter Legal

 

Johnny thought that by the third read-through of this email he would feel the weight lift off his shoulders and allow him to breathe that light air of closure. Surely some of the weight lifts—especially with the thought that he never has to look at a document with his ex-husband's name on it ever again. But the iron weight of failure is still heavy—not just a single tangible mass but more so one spread through his conscience like metal shards, grinding away at him when he dares to make any move forward.

He lifts his head from where it rested against his palm, elbows slipping off his office desk as he forces a steady inhale. He checks the time and entertains the idea of maybe spending the evening home, then immediately dreads the thought of coming to an empty, dark apartment. The nights are becoming shorter as the Chicago spring continues on, but it doesn't incentivize him to spend the longer days outside the confines of his office.

Before he sinks into a deeper pit of sadness he turns to his record player, tucked into the corner—more for the vibe that it provides rather than the actual use of the vintage thing. He sifts through the records one by one, hoping to fill the silence of the office that's starting to become more gloomy by the second, especially with the pattering sounds of the rain hitting his windowsill.

Hearing footsteps down the hall, he changes his mind.

Taeyong doesn’t take timid peeks into his office anymore—not at all. Rather, if the door is open, he waltzes right in.

“Back already?” Johnny asks, and Taeyong answers with an easy eye-roll.

His usually bouncy black hair sticks to his forehead, the rain-soaked ends longer now that he’s at least two haircuts behind his usual style. Whether he doesn’t go by choice, budget, or lack of time, Johnny tries not to dwell on it. He doesn’t allow any thoughts to linger on Taeyong, not for any longer than necessary.

Taeyong seems determined to make it impossible for him though, stepping around his desk with that usual drag in his step, leaning his hips against it like Johnny’s office is his model set. Johnny acknowledges that Taeyong’s striking beauty comes easily to him, naturally—even if he sometimes doesn’t seem to realize it.

Taeyong tucks a wet hair strand behind his ear, making it poke out endearingly. “Yup,” Taeyong pops the answer with his maddeningly pink lips. “The fMRI lab closes early Fridays, I just came to process some scans.”

With that he shakes the jacket off his shoulders, which Johnny notices is also wet. Then, he runs a hand though his hair, pushing it out of his face and gliding over the back of his neck to wring out any excess droplets.

When he shakes it out, Johnny suddenly catches the hint of Jaehyun’s smell again—and it goes straight to feed that possessive feeling he tries to keep chained away. He visibly stiffens, rolling back in his chair as his legs straighten to put some distance between them. Taeyong notices—he’s too attentive, too smart—and Johnny’s always caught by him, one way or another.

“Professor?” Taeyong says, and the title should shake Johnny out of staring at Taeyong’s mouth so intently he’s got it memorized. But it doesn’t.

Taeyong moves to sit in front of him, a lean against his desk, blocking off the view of Johnny’s laptop until it’s just him dominating his view. Then—this menace determined to make Johnny’s life a test in self-restraint—he spreads his legs, hooking onto the wheel of Johnny’s chair with one foot.

With a smile that was shy for show now melting into a sly grin, he pulls Johnny towards himself. “Something wrong?”

Johnny’s reaction is immediate beyond instinct—he pushes up off the chair to crowd Taeyong against his desk, arms on either side of his waist caging him in. Taeyong freezes but doesn’t run away, only tilts his head when he feels Johnny’s lips against his temple, his breaths as he inhales Taeyong’s scent.

“You—” Johnny forces himself to stop, the rational part of his brain still present somewhere there, berating him for making his own greediness Taeyong’s problem. He inhales again, the scent of the other alpha, and his temper is a growl in the pit of his throat. “Your scent is- I can smell him on you.”

Taeyong turns his head towards Johnny but not enough to catch his surprised expression, the sly grin now morphing into a laugh. “Is that a problem?”

“No,” Johnny lies, everything in him telling him to take Taeyong’s hips and pull him against himself, to mark up his neck until he tastes the salt of sweat and blood.

His heavy breaths hitch as he feels Taeyong’s legs wrap tighter around his hips. His fingers are gentle when they come to slide his glasses off, setting them aside before returning the hand to his cheek as he pulls back to look him directly in the face. “I don’t need him if I can have you,” Taeyong says—and then, closing his eyes and inching in until their lips brush, he whispers. “Alpha.”

Johnny splits—one hand on Taeyong’s hip and the other at the back of his head he crashes their lips together, harsh with an undertone of punishment in the way he kisses Taeyong. He’s impatient, unrestrained as his tongue seeks out Taeyong’s, teeth nipping at his lower lip and pulling.

Taeyong moans, half of the sound cut off by Johnny incessantly attacking his mouth. Grabbing a fistful of wet hair, he pulls Taeyong’s head back and lunges for the neck, hot tongue tracing the skin up to the sharp cut of his jaw and lips following the trail to his ear.

“Fuck, Taeyong,” he growls, lips kissing behind the shell of his ear, then moving down his neck again. “You don’t know what you’re fucking doing to me.”

Taeyong throws his head back and bares more skin, a pretty laugh escaping his lips when he returns to kiss Johnny, threading his long fingers through his hair and pulling, also battling for a sort of control from his side. Still writhes where he sits trapped in Johnny’s arms, and Johnny can sense the distinct shift in his scent—stronger now, overriding his restraint and fucking with his head.

Then there’s a hand palming his cock, which already strains damp in his suit pants. Taeyong wraps as much as he can around it, then with a wicked smile he says. “I think I have an idea.”

Mouthy and cunning—this Taeyong drives Johnny up a wall, makes him want to rip the clothes off his body and bend him over the desk, to touch him until he’s shaking and begging for Johnny’s forgiveness.

With a grunt Johnny pulls back and takes Taeyong with him, one hand at Taeyong’s lower back keeping him balanced and the other tugging his jeans down his legs. He only has enough patience to pull them just below his ass before he turns Taeyong back around and shoves him over the desk, thankfully with enough finesse to avoid crashing him into his laptop. Taeyong lands with a thud that Johnny would feel regretful for—except Taeyong moans out unabashedly and arches his back, his hips moving in a tantalizing wave.

Johnny’s hands paw at his ass and spread him open, watching the stream of slick leak out of his hole and down over his perineum. Taeyong hisses at the sensation and tries to pull away only for Johnny’s nails to dig in and keep him pressed up against the desk, his aching cock hanging pathetically ignored.

Both of Johnny’s thumbs press his ass apart and move in to circle the rim, occasionally slipping in with just a tease of penetration, getting wet from the generous amount of slick. Taeyong writhes and incoherently pleads for something, hanging onto the edge of the desk as he braces for Johnny’s next movements. The alpha has him completely trapped, teasing him in his strong grip until he's desperate enough to be ready to do anything for him.

Before he can start begging for more, he feels Johnny’s tongue lick at his rim, lapping hot and eager at his hole before plunging in. Johnny eats him out messily, shoving in deep and filling him out, so nasty that it has Taeyong losing his mind, quivering and hazy with only Johnny’s name on his lips. The memory of the night at Johnny's hotel room at the conference runs through his mind, seemingly so long ago. Taeyong doesn't know exactly what it is that made Johnny snap, but he doesn't have time to think about it now.

Johnny's thumbs move in again, slipping in where Taeyong’s hole is stretched around his tongue to pull him apart even more. Taeyong squeals, fucking himself back onto the mess of fingers and tongue.

“Please, Johnny," Taeyong pleads, glassy eyes and blown pupils behind a fringe of black hair. "You have to fuck me."

Johnny obediently pulls his face away from Taeyong's ass, rolling him over onto his back. When he sees the flushed and sweaty mess of Taeyong’s face, the drool glistening at the side of his mouth, it’s an image that goes equally to his heart and his cock.

"Wanna see your pretty face," he kisses a trail up Taeyong’s abdomen to his neck, covering his body as he presses his cock up against Taeyong’s ass, spreading the wetness there as he coats it with slick. "To see what I'm doing to you."

“You made me wait so long,” Taeyong arches up, eyes glistening as his arms throw themselves around his neck, grabbing onto his shoulders. "Take what's yours, Johnny."

Johnny groans, everything coming out of Taeyong sinful mouth a spell over him. If Taeyong told him to abandon his career and move oceans away with him, in this moment Johnny would do it in an instant. Taking his cock into his hand he lines up, grabbing Taeyong’s face to pull him into a hungry kiss when he pushes into him.

Taeyong’s moan dies between their lips as he wiggles impatiently onto Johnny’s cock, taking him with ease until he bottoms out with his thighs against Taeyong’s blushed ass cheeks. Johnny’s kisses slow down to a sedated pace, the meticulous movement of his lips hypnotizing Taeyong when Johnny pulls out almost completely before thrusting back in. He goes at this agonizing pace, letting Taeyong feel every inch of him against his prostate before he speeds up, the control slowly slipping from him until skin starts slapping against skin with the screeches of his desk paired with each thrust.

Johnny releases Taeyong’s mouth and dives in for his neck, lips, and teeth at the sensitive skin there. Meanwhile Taeyong cannot keep back his noises, whimpers and moans and chants of Johnny’s name as he’s fucked into next week, the pleasure blinding everything out of him.

It’s Johnny that hears it first—the sound of the double-doors on the far end of the hall, clacking footsteps following behind. That doesn’t make him slow, let alone stop. Instead, puts a hand over Taeyong's mouth, stifling his noises into the palm while he continues fucking into him.

There’s a moment of recognition in his face when Taeyong registers the footsteps too, but it immediately washes away as Johnny’s other hand wraps around his cock. His eyes roll into the back of his head and with a stiff groan he cums into Johnny’s hand, pulsing and clenching around Johnny’s unforgiving cock. With the tightening around him it only takes Johnny a few more thrusts before he’s releasing inside Taeyong, fucking his cum deeper into him with the last few shaky thrusts.

The footsteps are long gone when they slow down, deep breaths in-sync as Johnny lays half-draped across Taeyong. The slender fingers card through his sweaty hair, pushing it behind his ear before pulling down to play at the earlobe. Johnny becomes alarmingly comfortable, so he makes himself pull off and out of Taeyong, just to simply not fall asleep right here, wrapped up in each other on his office desk.

Taeyong winces when Johnny pulls out, looking up at him to find Johnny staring back. He looks so disheveled, far from the put-together academic face that he puts on daily. His eyes are curious at Taeyong, who rests with a satisfied grin before finally speaking. “Took you long enough.”

Johnny doesn’t reply with anything other than a smile, tearing his eyes away from Taeyong's devious stare. If Taeyong hadn't seen the look in his eyes when he pounced on him, he would think Johnny is suddenly being shy now.

Taeyong hisses when he sits up, feeling the air cool against his skin everywhere that is soiled with slick followed by the trail of Johnny's release dripping down his inner thigh.

He steps one foot onto the office chair, right at Johnny's side to show the mess he's made of him. “Looks like you’re cleaning up.”

Johnny looks back up at him from where he’s pulling his pants over his legs. He pauses with a pensive look at Taeyong before breaking out into a light laugh with a shake of his head. “Don’t you ever stop?”

Taeyong shakes his head, spreading his legs with an expectant grin. It widens when he sees Johnny pick up his clothes and hand them to Taeyong, using his own undershirt to begin cleaning the drying body fluids off his skin. In turn, Taeyong takes his glasses and slides them back over Johnny's face.

They don't speak as they gather themselves, the snapped tension now dissipated into the air that is potent with their mixed scents. They let the unspoken stay between them, right with the flutter somewhere in their lungs.

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

It's not every day that Taeyong's professor decides to pay him a visit in the student office. And when those days come, Taeyong knows they're never a sign of anything good.

He hears Sehun's steps approach the door and barely even recognizes them, so used to hearing them as an echo down the hall. The professor walks in without greeting with a stack of papers marked all over with red ink, overtaking the neat black script that Taeyong slaved over for weeks.

"This grant application is incomplete," Sehun does not beat around the bush with the first thing he says when he enters. He spares one glance to Sicheng's empty desk before taking his chair, pulling it with him and assuming a seat next to Taeyong.

The stack of papers lands in front of him with a smack, and Taeyong immediately dreads the conversation of the draft that should have simply been an email. Taeyong stares at the pages for a moment before turning to Sehun, whose eyebrows are pulled low over his eyes, nearly menacing with the way he looks him over.

"What's wrong with it, professor?" he asks, even though the wrong is very clearly and brightly marked in every empty space of the white margins.

Sehun pulls the stack back towards him and sifts through the pages with agitated fingers, landing on the graph somewhere halfway through the document. Unfortunately, it's Taeyong's proudest work, the figure that took him nearly two hours to complete.

"This correlation is not strong enough," Sehun says, so close in Taeyong's space that he starts to feel suffocated. It almost feels like his safe space has been breached, even though every corner of the office, the lab and Taeyong's soul is owned by him.

"The NSF will require better preliminary data to give enough funding for a project of this size," Sehun says then turns to look at Taeyong expectantly—Taeyong doesn't understand exactly what he's expecting.

"This is the data that we have," Taeyong says almost offensively slow, like he's speaking to a kindergartener when, really, he's trying to find the right words to maneuver the delicate conversation. "I swear I checked it over multiple times when I entered it into SPSS. I even had Sicheng cross-check it."

"Taeyong, this isn't enough," Sehun says. "I know what it takes to get funded. You don't."

Taeyong blinks, eyes jumping between the professor's face and the stack of pages in front of him, the red ink much less intimidating than the other option. "I'm not sure what you want me to do. There's not enough time to redo this study."

Sehun's lips press in that tight line that tells Taeyong that he said exactly the wrong thing. The shadow over his eyes gets heavier when he leans in, yanking the pages back towards himself.

"Eliminate participants until you get an acceptable correlation," Sehun says, pointing at the scattering dots of outliers on the graph. "Return the draft to me when the numbers look better."

Taeyong's heart stops in his throat, then he feels it pulse back to life and speed up until it's pumping, deafening in his ears. He turns to look at Sehun again, who closes the draft and pushes his chair back when he stands up.

"Dr. Oh, I—" Taeyong swallows, re-processing the words in his head again. "I— can't change the data."

"Adjust it," Sehun's words are sharp. "Do what needs to be done."

Taeyong feels himself crumble under his professor's threatening stare, trying to find his words so they don't die before they can reach his lips.

"Dr. Oh," Taeyong starts again, swallowing down the dryness in his mouth. "That's data manipulation. It's against all ethi—"

"What are you implying, Taeyong?" Sehun cuts him off, the chair rolling from his hand and slamming as it docks back into Sicheng's desk.

Taeyong freezes in his seat, torn between what he wants to say and what he should say. Suddenly every conflict he has had with Sehun comes back to him, rushing through his head like a speeding train, each memory tearing through one after another with a dull siren until he's nearly dizzy. Would this argument be the last straw?

"Nothing, Professor," Taeyong says, grabbing the draft of the grant into his clammy hands. "I'll see what I can do."

It seems like hours pass by before Sehun tears his eyes away, finally letting Taeyong have the room to breathe. He doesn't inhale until he sees Sehun step out of the office, leaving the door ajar behind him. For a moment Taeyong sits and tries to ignore the impending shock, willing himself to get back to work just to end up staring at the screen of his laptop until it dies down to black.

The downward spiral is imminent—his train of thought goes to consider his future as an academic researcher, whether he's worth anything if he ignores ethics to stay in his professor's favor. Or would it be worse to get kicked out of the lab due to disobedience with the potential of being blacklisted in his dream field by his advisor?

The automatic light in his office dies only for a moment before it's awakened again by a figure stepping into the office.

“Oh, hey,” it’s Johnny’s voice, light and easy compared to the boulder settling on his conscience. “I was hoping you’d still be here.”

Taeyong lifts his head from his desk, hands immediately in his hair to push it back into a presentable, black mess.

“You alright?” Johnny asks, and Taeyong mentally curses him for being so observant, the scientist that he is. Taeyong simply does not want to give Johnny another reason to worry about him, having given him one reason too many already.

If Johnny dotes on him any more Taeyong simply does not know if he can take it. Dealing with his body and all of its carnal desires is easy—the heart is the difficult part.

“Yeah,” Taeyong nods, hoping to believe in it himself. “Yeah, just… fell asleep.”

Johnny hesitates to accept that, but he still does when he sees the way Taeyong looks at him. Johnny throws a suspicious look over his shoulder towards the hallway before closing in, a small grin playing on his lips when he leans against Taeyong’s desk. Taeyong thought he’d be anxious having Johnny in his space while he’s dealing with his own levels of whiplash, but his presence wraps him in a comfort that he did not expect, whether it's his scent or his smile.

“Do you wanna get away?”

The question snaps him out of the relief that Johnny’s presence has granted him, throwing him into a state of confusion. Johnny fumbles a bit, his hands all in the space in front of him when he picks up with the explanation.

“I just mean, I know you’ve been stressed as hell lately. So have I, and so I've been really wanting to get out of the city, then realized, I’d much rather do it with you. Maybe it could give you a break from all the bullshit, too, ” Johnny rambles, his formality and prestige stripped away until it’s just the Johnny that only Taeyong gets to see.

If Taeyong wasn’t already in love with the idea, it would certainly fuck with his head in a special way.

“I’d love it,” Taeyong blurts out, then catches the glimpse of the red ink on the pages atop his desk. “But I don’t have any days off left since the conference, so I don’t really know if it’s a good idea.”

Johnny’s grin widens. “Sehun’s away at an invited talk this weekend.”

At that, Taeyong is absolutely elated. He smiles as they stare at each other like fools, forgetting all the circumstance and setting around them for the blissful moment of imagining being away from it all, together.

“So,” Taeyong breaks the trance. “Where are we going?”

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

“Colorado?”

Taeyong would shrug, but he’s too deep into his closet looking for his snow pants stuffed somewhere in the back. He can feel Doyoung’s annoyance from where he sits in his room though, judgmental eyes on the suitcase spread open on Taeyong’s bed.

“Yeah!” Taeyong says, breathy when he breaks the clothing items free from the closet and pulls himself out with them. “Doesn’t it sound nice?”

“I guess if you want somewhere just as miserably cold as here,” his roommate says, a half-scowl on his face. If Taeyong didn’t know him better, he’d chalk the attitude up to jealousy.

“Come on, can’t you be a little more excited for me?” Taeyong groans, folding the thick pants and stuffing them into his suitcase, sighing when he realizes they take up nearly half of the space.

Doyoung's own sigh is even heavier this time, exaggerated with a groan.

“I am happy,” he says, arms crossed over his chest and not a hint of a smile on his face. “I’m also just… cautious.”

“Doie…” Taeyong’s shoulders drop, his heart twisted by the worried look that Doyoung is giving him. They know each other too well to beat around the bush, and Taeyong expects nothing but honesty from his best friend. Even if it shoots for where it hurts the most.

“He asks you this all of a sudden? What happened to worrying about his career and all the conflicts of interest? What changed now?” Doyoung folds his knees up to his chest when he sits on the bed in the small space left on the edge near the suitcase. His eyes are ever calculating, making Taeyong twice as hesitant to admit what happened the previous week.

But his evading eyes are only too telling. “Taeyong,” his friend starts slowly. “Did you two fuck?”

Taeyong doesn’t even attempt to evade the straightforward question. “Right in his office.”

“Holy shit,” Doyoung’s jaw drops, and it’s the first time since Taeyong has known him that he’s actually speechless.

“It’s not what it looks like, it’s not because of that,” Taeyong argues, snapping the lid of the suitcase shut and shoving it closed with all his body weight. “I’m not stupid, I know part of what is between us is because of who we are. But I know he cares about me beyond our nature. You saw how he treated me during my heat.”

The conversation stops for a moment and the room is filled with the sounds of zipping and huffing as Taeyong struggles with his packing. It's Doyoung who breaks it again with his carefully given opinion.

“You two are way too volatile to play around with something like this,” he says.

“Managed this far,” Taeyong shrugs, his back turned to Doyoung because he cannot face the worried look that only gets more and more disappointed with each explanation that's thrown back at him.

“What about his divorce?” Doyoung does not let up, even though for a tiny second Taeyong held onto the little hope that he would just drop it.

“I didn’t say I’m trying to date him,” Taeyong rolls his eyes. “It’s just a weekend in the mountains.”

He turns around and Doyoung is still wearing the concerned look all over his face. It doesn’t die down the longer Taeyong stares at him in silence, sighing as his face falls.

With some semblance of finality, Doyoung adds. “I just don’t want you to be too in over your head with this.”

Taeyong nods, understanding the concern but not fully ready to accept it. Because if he does, that will threaten to unlock everything he’s been trying to hold back, behind all of the other things he has to constantly keep straight in his head. Maybe this break is exactly what he needs.

"It's fine," Taeyong says, taking his passport out of the top drawer of his desk. “I know what I’m doing.”

Notes:

i have nothing to say to justify them, they're just so stupid

hope yall are still hanging in there

twt
cc

Chapter 7: Seven

The morning of their flight is as grey and dirty as all the previous Chicago spring days have been, the snow melting under the tires and flooding the streets with grey slush. When the stabbing cold air hits his face as he exits his apartment building, he wonders why he even decided to trade one freezing cold place for another.

Johnny is already at the sidewalk, having parked his sleek black Audi not far down the street. He undoubtedly looks out of place here, in Taeyong’s neighborhood with its shifty, narrow streets and stacked apartments.

As soon as he sees Taeyong come trudging out, dragging his suitcase behind him while hiding as much of his face away from the cold into his scarf, Johnny rushes over to his side. He tugs the suitcase out of his hands, freeing them to hide away in his pockets. When the suitcase is stowed into the trunk, their good mornings mixed somewhere in there, they climb into the car.

Taeyong looks around the interior and suddenly remembers that he has been here—and then the circumstance of why he was here.

"So this is what the car actually looks like," he teases, making a show of looking over the interior only to avoid looking at Johnny. The last time Taeyong was in this car he was so out of it he couldn't even recall the color of the seats.

When he looks at Johnny he finds the other looking back, eyebrows raised in a question to him, not entirely oblivious to Taeyong's discomfort.

“Ready?” Johnny asks plainly, to which Taeyong nods and the car sets off on course. Meanwhile, Taeyong struggles keeping back the thoughts now agitating his mind. He considers holding it in but not long enough, his mouth moving faster than his better thinking.

“Thank you,” he blurts out—and to be fair, it’s not the worst way he could have went about this. “I never thanked you for what you did for me that… night.”

“Any decent person would have done the same, Taeyong,” Johnny’s words follow a wave of the hand. Taeyong decides not to argue it, knowing full well not everyone would have the level of resistance Johnny did. He doesn’t dwell on it longer.

“If you say so,” even though he can’t let it go without a last word, he then quickly continues with the next thought. “I realized I should have asked where this Colorado idea came from before we bought the tickets.”

Taeyong pauses, noticing how Johnny shifts in his seat in anticipation. “But I’m still curious to know.”

Johnny’s fingers tap over the top of the steering wheel in succession as he thinks. When he steals another glance over at Taeyong, eyes away from the road for only a moment, he finally speaks.

“Wanting to get away wasn’t actually far from the truth,” Johnny says with a shrug. “But when I was a grad student, some of my cohort and I would plan trips to the mountains or the woods to celebrate all the milestones we achieved that year. Publications, exams, awards, stuff like that.”

Taeyong cannot help but smile, imagining for a moment young and starry-eyed Johnny--long before the idea of Dr. Suh and his entire reputation. Just Johnny, chasing ideas and dreams then getting wasted and maybe fucking his stress away.

For a moment Taeyong regrets not having a close circle he could share the same with, so buried in his work he rarely ever reaches out to his peers. Maybe if he did his life would be less complicated, and he would not be here, pathetically hung up on his professor.

The line between them has become impossible to read.

"So your version of celebrating is whisking me away from one cold place to another?" Taeyong says, unable to stop the smile that pulls at every corner of his face. The realization sets slowly—that he was the one Johnny thought of first.

Johnny shifts in his seat, raking his fingers through his hair. He seems to be holding something back but keeps his lips dutifully shut, which Taeyong finds somewhat unsettling.

“So, what are we celebrating?” Taeyong asks, his head shaking against the headrest as he lulls it to the side to watch the buildings pass by.

Johnny hesitates next to him again, glancing nervously over at the passenger seat. Taeyong frowns and sits up.

“What is it?” he urges, straining against the seatbelt when Johnny comes to a particularly abrupt stop of the car.

“I just… I finalized my divorce,” Johnny speaks out and the words hit Taeyong immediately, even though Johnny plummets through that shock when he continues rambling. “But I mean— that does not need to be the reason. That would probably be pathetic of me, now that I—”

“Johnny, please,” Taeyong cuts in and Johnny’s lips snap shut. He exhales slowly and stills to listen. “That’s absolutely a reason. You overcame something life-changing, and that’s worth everything.”

Next to him Johnny lets out a bitter laugh, more of a dry exhale while his head shakes. “Please, there’s no need to dote on it any longer. It’s probably the last thing you want to talk about.”

“You’d be wrong,” Taeyong counters, looking him directly in the eyes as they’re stopped at a red light that allows Johnny to finally grant him the eye contact. “There’s a lot I don’t know about you, Johnny. And if this is a part of you, then I need to know everything.”

The impact of his words makes the silence that follows deafening, only the distant hum of the radio that Johnny never adjusted before they took off filling the space in between them.

Eventually Johnny grins, his mouth pulled up halfway, and Taeyong does not know if it comes from amusement or awkwardness. But it ultimately doesn’t matter as he senses Johnny’s shoulders sink as he finally starts speaking again.

“Kun and I met at Johns Hopkins, he was the same year as me, but he was in Dr. Kim’s lab. We went through everything together in grad school, every exam and every defense. We got engaged right after graduation and… I guess it just felt right at the time.”

“But almost immediately after we moved to Oxford, things started changing. The decay was so slow we almost didn’t notice it. Until it was too late. I realized then that love can just die, and realizing that changed me. But you—”

Taeyong takes a sharp intake of breath, noticeably tensing as Johnny addresses him now. He can feel his heart flutter against his ribcage, and even though Johnny is keeping his eyes straight ahead, the attention is undeniably only on him.

“Meeting you at the conference. That changed me too.”

Taeyong gulps; there are so many things Taeyong needs to say that are all threatening to spill out, pooling up in the dip of his tongue—that he needs answers, more from Johnny to know exactly what the hell they’re doing here.

“I know I’ve been contradicting myself, and it’s got me all fucked up too,” Johnny says, stepping on the brakes until they jolt back in their seats at the stop. “But the truth is, I just can’t stay away from you.”

The daylight around them dies as they enter a tunnel, the words echoing in Taeyong’s head as they plunge through the darkness. Then, as quickly as it left they’re tossed back into the light again—but the words don’t make any more or less sense than they did before.

“Anyway, enough about me, I don’t want to hear myself talk anymore,” Johnny says with an easy laugh, throwing his head back as they slow down to a crawl in the line of traffic through the exit lane. “I want to know, too, how you managed to find yourself here.”

Taeyong breaks into a grin again even though none of the weather or scenery outside matches that. Despite the fact that the streets are dirty and the skies are grey more often than they’re not, the city still has a charm to it that Taeyong wouldn’t trade for anything else. Its weathered buildings and unforgiving weather match like puzzle pieces to Taeyong’s journey through academia.

“My undergraduate advisor was collaborating with Sehun, so he ended up recommending me for his lab. I had a rough start there that left me with a shit GPA, so I already felt undeserving of the opportunity, so I just kind of took what I could get.”

“Do you regret it?” Johnny asks, likely picking up the sourness of Taeyong’s voice. But as he considers it, Taeyong knows that even though his years in graduate school have been nearly traumatic, it’s not necessarily the city’s fault. Nor is it his.

So, his response is straightforward. “No. I’m still a better scientist for it.”

He sees Johnny nod from the corner of his vision, mostly focusing on the airport traffics signs beginning to crop up. Then, Johnny asks. “What made you interested in neuroscience in the first place?”

Three mileage signs pass as Taeyong thinks of how honest to be with his answer. His reasoning is a heavy weight that he carries with him, one that only few people know. But something about the space they’re in together comforts him, close together and completely alone, even the sounds of other cars on the highway around them slowly drowning out.

“For a long time I watched my grandparents struggle with dementia as a result of Alzheimer’s, until they eventually ended up succumbing to it,” Taeyong pans out, his fingers playing nervously in his lap. “Choosing to study memory is the easiest decision I’ve had to make.”

He doesn’t turn to see Johnny’s reaction, who sits quietly as he finally takes the exit towards the parking garages. Their speed gradually decreases, and Taeyong takes Johnny’s silence as his way of recognition and reverence, and appreciates it.

Johnny takes time to circle the overnight parking garage, pulling into a spot in the far corner. Taeyong assumes the conversation is long behind them—until Johnny suddenly speaks.

“They would be proud of who you’ve become, Taeyong,” he says, eyes jumping between Taeyong’s as he offers a sheepish smile. “Now, let’s do this?”

 

 

⇆     ⇆     ⇆     ⇆

 

 

The first day of their weekend trip is brim full of surprises (for Taeyong).

First being how well they get on when the academic façade is stripped away and it's just the two of them. Taeyong finds it much easier to treat Johnny as a peer and not as a superior, and that dynamic sets in as soon as they begin their travel.

Though there's still a level of careful distancing, a remaining formality. Not that Taeyong was expecting any explicit hand holding, but the fact remains that he's still uneasy from the uncertainty of their relationship to each other. Because when they come back from this getaway to reality, their titles and statuses will still be waiting there for them.

But it takes one look at the snowy mountain view from out of his window for Taeyong to lock those worries away for the time being and commit to enjoying every moment here.

Which sets him up for the next surprise—Johnny's plan to spend the day snowboarding. The extent of Taeyong's athleticism is the occasional jog to catch the last train of the day to avoid taking the bus, and that's usually a once-a-week occurrence. When Johnny offered him to learn how to snowboard, he wasn't going to reject it off the bat because he's not one to back away from something new. But the regret set in very quickly after the first fall. After the fifth one, the regret turned into full blown rage.

It subsided in the third surprise of the day—the cabin that Johnny rented for them to stay in. No skyscraper hotel views or breakfast ordered to the room, just the wooden walls and the fireplace that Johnny starts as soon as they get back.

"I don't think I'll ever be warm again," is the first thing Taeyong says when they return from their snowboarding escapade, already starting to peel his snow-soaked clothes off himself.

"That's a bit dramatic, don't you think?" Johnny says without looking back, focusing on setting the logs to start the fire. Sure, he may be dramatic, but he's not the one that signed them up to try a death sport that made Taeyong's face meet the snow on more than one fall.

He sits next to Johnny on the soft fur rug in front of the fireplace, figuring that's his best chance of getting warm other than throwing himself directly into the fire. He strips off layers of sweaters and long-sleeves until he's left in a single shirt, moving on to pull his pants down his legs.

When he rolls over onto his hip, the pain shooting up his leg makes him hiss. "Shit."

"What's wrong?" Johnny turns to him with an immediate worry forcing his eyebrows together. Taeyong groans in his answer, laying on his back to continue attempting to undress himself.

"Hip hurts like hell," Taeyong says, grunting a few more times as he tries to wiggle out without having to roll over onto the hurting hip. Johnny takes a minute to watch him struggle before grabbing him by the ankles and tugging at the legs of the pants to help him get them off.

"Have you tried not falling on it over and over?" he teases but as soon as Taeyong's skin comes into view after his pants are discarded, his eyes widen. "Shit, Taeyong, this looks rough."

Taeyong lifts up on his elbows to inspect the skin and sees a comically huge bruise that is brilliantly purple and blue and black and all signs of constant failure. He groans and flops back, mentally counting the uncomfortable nights ahead of him.

"Great," he says with a defeated voice. "Now I'm freezing and battered."

"You are—" he places his hand flat over the bruise, to compare the size without pressing into it. "—impressively stubborn."

Taeyong is about to snap something back, which would only confirm Johnny's comment, but he stills. His voice is softer when he speaks again. "Your hand is warm."

He watches Johnny's Adam's apple bounce up with a swallow when Taeyong places his hand on top of his, grasping it as he gently slides it up the cold skin, over his briefs and under the hem of his shirt. The sound he lets out is almost a purr when Johnny's hand spreads across his stomach, fingers swiping over the skin and mapping its softness.

Taeyong urges the hand up and as it moves it pulls his shirt up, leaving rosy skin in its wake as it settles just below his throat. Johnny tears his gaze away from his skin to look at his face—which only bodes him doom when he sees the coy grin there.

“What is it?” he asks, the innocence only in his words but not in the black doe pupils swimming in his eyes. “Professor—”

“Don’t,” Johnny swallows, feeling his heart lurch at the word, along with something much darker simmering in the pit of his stomach.

In an instant Taeyong switches, his face softens and he sits up, inching closer to Johnny with fragile, slow movements. As he rises, Johnny’s hand drops from his neck into his lap, wrapping around his thigh with fingertips pressing into the skin—like he’s trying to keep Taeyong there, close but at a distance.

But by now Taeyong has seen all the ways Johnny has failed to stay away from him—even now, the weak hand pushing him away while his eyes long for closeness.

“Johnny,” Taeyong whispers, watching the other’s eyes fall to his lips as he leans in for their foreheads to connect. “It’s okay…”

Johnny grimaces, his breathing visibly picking up as the fingers of their hands thread together in Taeyong’s lap. He seems so tense, and Taeyong cannot understand why.

“What do you want?” Johnny’s voice is strained, shaky at the tails of his words. “Taeyong, you— you have to tell me what you want.”

Taeyong licks his lips and tilts his head until his lips brush over Johnny’s cheek.

“It never changed, Johnny,” he says.

Johnny’s hand comes up to softly thread through Taeyong’s hair until it sinks to rest on the side of his face. Taeyong can feel his quickening breaths against his skin and notices the unreadable look in Johnny’s eyes, saturated with longing and aching that swallows Taeyong deeper the longer he looks.

Heat rises to his cheeks when he realizes they’re breathing in unison, heart rates neatly matched as they lean closer into each other’s warmth. There’s the hint of each other’s scents, mixing together into the feeling that wraps them now—one that quiets everything but the two of them in each other’s view.

With a raspy voice Johnny breaks the silence. “What is this between us?”

A breathy laugh escapes Taeyong and he weakly shakes his head. He knows what Johnny means but cannot give a proper answer, knowing he’s already in too deep to figure out any logic to the two of them.

“I don’t know,” Taeyong says, turning until his lips collide with Johnny’s.

With the heat wrapping around them—the fireplace, the places their skin is touching, their quickening breaths—Taeyong expected an overflow of intensity, something exothermic and wild. So when Johnny moves his hand to caress the sharp line of his jaw then pulls back to press a gentle, slow kiss on his lips, Taeyong doesn’t know which option would have been worse.

Johnny kisses him like he’s taking him apart, lips moving slow but with purpose, each press of his mouth pulling painfully at Taeyong’s heartstrings. Johnny kisses like he loves.

Before Taeyong can allow himself to fully succumb he chases Johnny’s mouth until their teeth clash, letting his tongue coax the alpha’s mouth open. Then he climbs into Johnny’s lap, letting out a satisfied hum as he feels Johnny’s hands slip under his shirt and snake around his waist, pulling him against his torso until they're flush against each other—like they were right where they left off.

Johnny quickly loses his tenderness as he gains control, impatient mouth landing occasional bites at Taeyong’s lips then trailing down to abuse his neck—slowly unhinging with his kisses getting clumsier, sharper. One hand around Taeyong's waist presses him in almost too close to breathe, forcing him down against the hardness at Johnny’s groin. Johnny grinds up to meet his hips, his other hand gripping the back of Taeyong’s neck to lead him back into a kiss, messy and wet, his tongue following the trail of spit at the corner of Taeyong’s lips back into his mouth.

Taeyong groans and rips himself away, gasping for breath that was robbed of him. Ignoring Taeyong's fight for his life the alpha sucks marks into the easily-bruising parts of his neck, reckless with the teeth that follow over the reddening skin.

Taeyong is burning up, lava in his veins but it’s somehow not enough—there’s not enough friction and not enough of Johnny’s touch, more where he needs him.

“Johnny, please,” he begs, throwing his head back to toss his hair out of his face, already starting to stick with the sweat collecting there. “Touch me.”

Johnny does not respond other than the hand that untangles from Taeyong’s hair, moving down the length of his spine and sliding into the back of his briefs. Taeyong’s breath stops in his throat when he feels Johnny’s fingers part him and dip shallowly into the slick collected there, spreading it over the skin and tracing along the rim. He moans a soft whimper as Johnny’s hand moves there in the wetness that has started long before Johnny even touched him, now leaking sluggishly to coat Johnny’s hand to the palm as the slowly slips one finger inside.

Taeyong gasps, jolting in Johnny’s lap only to be held back by a strong grip on his torso, forcing his hips down onto his hand. He whines louder, circling his hips as Johnny adds another finger and moves them both in all the way, pushing the slick deeper inside then pulling out agonizingly slow to spread it across his hole. He fucks the fingers inside again, this time pressing against the walls and moving with constant pressure at the walls that has Taeyong’s thighs beginning to shake.

“Fuck— Johnny,” Taeyong drops his head against Johnny’s shoulder, pleading with hot breaths against the skin. “Please. Hurry...”

“No,” Johnny answers back and his voice is unrecognizable—scratchy, deep, and slow. “I need to take my time with you.”

Taeyong groans, drawn out now fully knowing that Johnny can take him apart all the way to the bone, and the look that he’s wearing on his face now certainly seems to guarantee it.

Meanwhile Johnny continues fingering him, mercilessly pressing right up against his prostate as he moves in and out, slowing down to an agonizing pace with the drag of his fingers. When he pushes a third finger in Taeyong is nearly delirious.

With three fingers stretching him out he feels beyond full, the static simmering in his blood as the flames from the fireplace behind him lick at his back with their heat. His cock is trapped in his briefs in the tight space between them, Johnny’s intense grip refusing to let even a centimeter of space between them. With his cock trapped, leaking and aching, he can only shallowly grind his hips to chase any sort of friction.

Then, Johnny speeds up the pumping of his fingers in and out of Taeyong, stretching then filling him up until they push up as deep as they can go, the pressure constant and overbearing on his prostate as he feels the coil pull in his groin, getting hotter and hotter as his heart picks up.

“Johnny, s-stop—“ he breaks off with a moan as Johnny only picks up the pace. Taeyong pushes weakly at the hand fucking into him, gripping the straining muscle. “I’m gonna fall apart if you keep—“

“Let go, baby,” Johnny says with his lips right at Taeyong’s ear, a safe arm around his torso holding him up. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you…”

With the last series of pumps Taeyong’s orgasm crashes over him like a violent wave, spreading out all the way from his groin to ring in his ears, skin vibrating as his nerves tense and give. He clenches around Johnny’s fingers and feels a generous stream of slick release over Johnny’s hand and drip down his legs onto the rug underneath them.

His cock twitches pathetically in his now cum-stained underwear, which Johnny pushes down and over his ass. Taeyong takes that opportunity to toss the rest of his clothing aside and finally begin undressing Johnny. It’s so embarrassing for him to already have cum while Johnny is still dressed head to toe. Taeyong aims to change that, but he is only patient enough to undress him down to his tank top, getting distracted as he pulls his cock out of his boxers.

Not salivating too long at the sight he takes it in his mouth, moaning at how perfect it feels, so heavy on his tongue and heady with the alpha’s scent. He swallows it down and sinks along the length until the tip of his nose hits the trail of hair that leads from the base of his cock up his abdomen. He suppresses his gag reflex when he feels it prod at the back of his throat, pulling off it to take in a raspy breath.

Johnny’s hands are immediately on him, threading through his hair, fingers caressing over his cheeks, praising him with his touch as his eyes follow the movements. Taeyong’s eyes fall closed as he wraps his lips around the head of his cock, coyly licking over it then taking it in his mouth again, bobbing his head as he lets it shallowly fuck his mouth. Then he deepthroats it again, sinking around it to sit until he begins to feel lightheaded—breathless for so long that Johnny pulls him off by a handful of hair in his grip.

“Taeyong,” those hands are on him again, pushing his hair out of his face as his eyes look down attentively, taking him apart. “Do you need a break?”

“Need your cock,” Taeyong slurs out, drool all around his mouth, lips glistening. He scrambles up and Johnny helps him, hands all over him until they tangle into his hair again. Then, he’s diving in for Taeyong’s lips again.

“Fuck, Taeyong, so fucking—” more kisses, hurried and needy. “—so fucking perfect for me.”

With that he doesn’t hesitate to maneuver Taeyong on his back and behind him up in half, rough hands pressing down into the back of his thighs and squeezing, hard enough to surely leave bruises in forms of pressed fingers the next day.

He climbs in between his legs until they’re skin-to-skin again, Johnny’s deep brown eyes gazing into his own.

“Wanna look at you when I fuck you,” Johnny says, diving in for Taeyong's neck for the rest of the words to mingle in with kisses at the damp skin there.

Taeyong whimpers at that, feeling Johnny line up at his entrance and tease by pushing in the head then immediately pulling out, spreading the abundant amount of slick along his cock. Taeyong’s hands fly up to wrap around Johnny's back and arch up into him, releasing a needy whine that all but begs Johnny to claim him.

When Johnny finally pushes inside, he goes all the way in without hesitating, his hips meeting Taeyong’s with a dull smack. Taeyong erupts with a moan, wiggling his hips down, feeling deliciously full of Johnny’s cock, the fullness of it getting to his head and making it spin. He hugs closer to Johnny, his soft moans dying against Johnny’s shoulder when he starts seriously fucking into him, over and over pressing him into the soft fur beneath is back covering the wooden floor.

Johnny pulls back and lifts up, detaching from Taeyong’s skin as he grabs the omega by the waist, thumbs digging into his hipbones as he speeds up his thrusts. Johnny’s arms easily support him and allow Taeyong to go limp at the knees, upper back pressing into the soft rug as Johnny simply annihilates him. Taeyong’s cock has filled out until it's aching red and bouncing against his tight abdomen with each of Johnny’s merciless thrusts.

When Taeyong glances up he sees Johnny’s furrowed brows, eyes black and lost in the wilderness as he paws at Taeyong’s skin, undecided between holding him impaled on his cock or touching him everywhere he can reach. Taeyong keens at the attention, trailing one of his hands down his chest to wrap around his neglected erection.

Johnny is immediately aware of it, an unreadable smirk when he grabs both of Taeyong’s wrists in one hand, forcing them up over his head.

“Think you can cum untouched again?” Johnny leans in until he can nip the shell of Taeyong’s ear, the strong arm still caging him open under him as his hips slow to a stop. “Just on my cock? Think you can be good for me?”

This is not the Johnny that Taeyong knows—he’s only seen glimpses of this side of Johnny, the full extent of the alpha that he can be, the one he usually hides away. But he seems completely unhinged now and Taeyong wonders if there’s anything holding him back at all. It drives him insane how he just takes Taeyong, unravels him with his rough hands and his needy mouth, those words spoken only to him.

The hand around his wrists tightens and Johnny leans forward until Taeyong is folded in half, lodging the alpha's cock even deeper inside. It only takes a few full thrusts until Taeyong is coming over himself again, his cock dangling in front of him as it spurts out. He whines, shaking as his second orgasm drains him of consciousness, going lightheaded with thin streams of tears rolling down his cheeks.

What brings him back is the sudden feeling of emptiness, then more of Johnny’s hands pawing at his thighs and spreading him open. Suddenly he feels a hot tongue on his sensitive rim, making him yelp out in the intensity of the heat on his abused skin. The tongue moves over his balls and up the length of his cock until it laps at the head at the leftovers of his two loads of cum.

Johnny wraps his lips around it and sucks, making Taeyong twitch and writhe at the sensitivity. When Johnny’s eyes look up at him as he climbs up closer until they’re kissing again, Taeyong knows it's not over.

“You okay?” Johnny asks and that throws Taeyong completely out of orbit. Everything about him has been merciless—up until this point. Taeyong looks back at him, and Johnny’s lips are glistening while his eyes glimmer with the fire reflecting in them, making him look mature and pensive.

Taeyong leans in until their lips touch, pressing a hard, lingering kiss to his lips then pulling back. Without another word he falls back and turns over, angling his ass towards Johnny as he spreads it with teasing hands. He’s still stretched and leaking, and Johnny licks his lips at the sight.

He immediately climbs over Taeyong, pressing him chest down into the floor as he lines up again. Taeyong’s hips push up and back into him, encouraging him to keep going. Johnny’s hand slides up to cover Taeyong’s on the floor next to him when he slides in again. Taeyong moans, desperate hips slamming back against Johnny, pleading him to speed up, to split him open again and fuck him into the floor until he can’t think anymore.

Johnny ramps up quickly, hips slamming against Taeyong’s ass as his head falls against Taeyong’s shoulder. He sinks his teeth in, groaning against the skin and Taeyong swears he could fall apart caged in his arms like this, sensing how he can make Johnny come so undone.

When Johnny’s lips become gentle again, kissing over the skin of his shoulder and the back of his neck, moving to where he can reach on his cheek, Taeyong can finally breathe for a moment. With that moment, he speaks.

“Knot me,” Taeyong chokes out, almost not believing himself for asking it but his tongue is too fast. “Please, please, knot me.”

 “Fuck—” Johnny groans and Taeyong swears he can feel him swell inside, growling low in his throat at the pleading tone that takes Taeyong’s request. “Fuck, Taeyong— Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes,” Taeyong moans, his fingers gripping the fur of the rug under it, using all his force to push up into Johnny and take his cock as deep inside as he can go. “Please, yes.”

Johnny skips any thinking when his hips seem to act on their accord in their ramping up to speed again, slamming against Taeyong’s ass in repeated thrusts. Johnny’s body covers Taeyong’s completely and he buries his nose in Taeyong’s hair, inhaling deeply as his hips stutter and he lets out a strained groan when he comes inside Taeyong, his cock swelling until it forms the full knot. He slows down as he spills out, fucking his climax into Taeyong with dragging movements, slipping his knot in and out of Taeyong until he stops with it lodged inside.

Taeyong clenches and pulses around him, breathing heavily under Johnny who all but collapses over him. They stay like that for a long while, neither of them having an even close idea of the passing time. Johnny’s breathing slows down along with Taeyong’s, and with whatever strength he has left he lifts up, looking down between their bodies where Taeyong’s ass and thighs still weakly quiver with the aftershocks.

“Taeyong…” Johnny tilts his head down until he can kiss a slow path up Taeyong’s shoulder.

“—ck me w’ your knot,” Taeyong mumbles, the words slurred between his cheek and the floor that his face is planted into.

With the incoherent words he moves his hips from side to side, clenching around Johnny’s knot still wedged there, shrunk down to half its size.

“Fuck me,” Taeyong turns to look over his shoulder, hazy and unfocused eyes capturing Johnny. “With your knot.”

“Jesus,” Johnny blurts out, his cock swelling at the filth of Taeyong’s words. His head spins when his hands come back to Taeyong’s hips, already peppered with small markings and bruises. “Fuck, okay.”

Taeyong stretches both arms out in front of him and arches back again, pressing back against Johnny’s hands when he starts fucking his knot shallowly in and out of him. With each time it slips out Taeyong lets out the most lewd moans, broken like cries as he shakes at the feeling of Johnny stretching him open beyond belief like that.

With a few more shallow thrusts Johnny bends over to wrap his hand around Taeyong and take his neglected cock into a tight first. Taeyong nearly screams when he finally gets the stimulation that he has been depraved of this entire time, the friction on his oversensitive and spent cock sending him into space. It only takes one more thrust until Taeyong is violently quivering and plunging through his orgasm, his cock leaking out one last drop.

They finally collapse together, this time Johnny slips out of him and lets him place his hips back onto the floor. Taeyong groans weakly, stilling as his breaths start to calm down.

Johnny watches his eyes slip closed, and his heart soars at seeing the peace that washes over his face when he dozes off. Meanwhile, he rolls over to lay next to him for a moment, a quiet but malevolent voice still in the back of his head, staining his sleep.

He gets up to go into the bathroom and find a towel to clean Taeyong off with. He does a well-enough job, making sure to avoid the bruise on his hip that was somehow not a problem for them in their spontaneous fuck. He winces as he cleans while avoiding the skin around it, a lingering smile on his lips when he throws the towel aside.

He picks Taeyong up and carries him into the bedroom, slipping both of them under the sheets. Taeyong easily wraps around him even in sleep, while Johnny lays listening to the voice that won’t let him live with the happiness that keeps knocking to be let inside.

Notes:

yeah we just clocked in a chapter that was like 70% porn but can you blame me??? this moment was long overdue for them

TWO CHAPTERS LEFT!! just so yall know EVERYTHING is going down in the next chapter while the last one is more of an epilogue so... stay ready

 

twt
cc

Chapter 8: Eight

The return from Colorado back to the university feels worse than being thrown headfirst into cold water. The harsh, concrete slap of the academic reality that Taeyong comes back to is a dagger that stabs until it dulls to a slow ache. It pulls and twists within him so persistently that he would take falling onto the snow-covered ice over and over again rather than this reality he's living in.

He tries to pull himself out of the endless pit that his mind slowly sinks into by remembering Johnny back in the cabin when it was just the two of them—his warm hands on Taeyong's skin, the safety of the crook of his neck. After the long weekend together Johnny's scent clings to him, trying its best to comfort him, but the more Taeyong focuses on it the more it starts to suffocate him.

The same question that he was able to repress so successfully weeks ago now constantly repeats back in his head—what the hell are they doing? Escaping into a safe haven and ignoring the reality that awaited them at home: the secrecy, the ties of Johnny's past, the chokehold that Sehun has Taeyong in. Unfortunately, all of those things stayed back in Chicago, waiting for them to return and demanding to be acknowledged.

His eyes nearly begin watering as he stares unblinking at the screen of his laptop, the data table staring back at him until all the numbers begin to blur. He's so close to delirium that he nearly accepts Sehun's order—change the numbers, get the better correlation, submit the grant and assume it will never come back to bite him in the ass. All these numbers and their decimal points, inevitably, so insignificant.

"Yong, you good?"

Sicheng's voice pulls him out of his daze, and he finally tears his eyes away from the harsh light of his computer, staring like a deer in headlights across the office at his labmate. Sicheng's eyebrows pull higher, somewhere between surprise and concern, and Taeyong thinks he should probably use his voice so he doesn't look like a complete lunatic.

"Yeah," he says. It comes out scratchy at first but evens out as he continues. "Yeah, just, you know. Just grant shit."

Sicheng's mouth pulls into a flat line, and Taeyong can tell he's not convinced by the curt answer. He's a scientist that's simply too well-trained, just like all the other all-too-clever minds in this department.

"Professor dumping on you again?" Sicheng tries again—the sweet, kind soul that he is.

A laugh breaks out of Taeyong, dry and bitter. "Yeah, something like that."

"Did you get any rest during the long weekend you were gone?" his labmate asks again, this time looking away and somewhere around at his desk, scattering his gaze across his work. Taeyong narrows his eyes but chalks off his suspicion to paranoia. His heart twists at the thought.

"I got some but, you know," he shrugs, nervously tapping the space bar on his keyboard. "The work is always here, doesn’t just go away."

Sicheng nods slowly until he stills. Then, he speaks up again.

"Aeri said Professor Suh was gone too," he still refuses to look back at Taeyong. Meanwhile, Taeyong is staring needles at him from across the room.

"Okay, and?" Taeyong snaps back. "Maybe him and Sehun had a romantic getaway together to the conference."

"He wasn't at the conference," Sicheng mumbles under his nose. He pauses again before looking up with a determined sigh. "Taeyong, you know you can tell me anything, right?"

In response, Taeyong's sigh is heavier, longer but it doesn’t ease the constant pressure suffocating in his chest.

"Sich, seriously?" he says, because, honestly, he doesn't have anything better to say. The guilt pours in easily, all for having to lie to him, not only his labmate but also one of his closest friends through his grad school years, about the complicated situation between him and Johnny. He can barely call it a relationship, and that leaves a bitter taste at the back of his tongue. Johnny's words from so long ago now echo out in his head—Lying by omission is still lying.

"I can tell that something is going on with you," Sicheng insists, and this time he rolls out in his chair from behind his desk, leaning forward as his analytical eyes stare into Taeyong. "I can't— I can't smell you anymore."

Taeyong freezes where he sits, blinking slowly like he's been caught.

"Are you taking suppressants?" Sicheng asks, softer this time, like he can feel how fragile Taeyong is.

"Sicheng…" Taeyong starts but does not have it in him to continue further. All his breath leaves his body as he slumps back in his office chair, eyes staring up into the bright white lights lining the ceiling. "Yeah. Yeah, I am."

Sicheng falls back in his seat too, and his defeat is all too tangible. The unspoken hangs in the air but Sicheng doesn't let the silence sit for too long.

"Why?" he asks. He waits for Taeyong's answer for a long while, generous with his time before he presses again. "Did Professor tell you to?"

Taeyong's head lulls from side to side on the back of his chair as he feels himself nearly disintegrate into the space between them. The air conditioning turns on and its hum fills the space, persistent and irritating. There is too much that sits on the tip of his tongue, threatening to pour out one after another if he gives it just a millimeter of space. He sucks in his bottom lip between his teeth, biting until that ache distracts him from the hurt in the rest of his body.

"Taeyong, come on, talk to me," Sicheng presses again, and the broken tone of his voice breaks Taeyong too.

"I can't—" Taeyong groans, wincing at the pain in his neck when he snaps his head up again. "I can't afford to not do what he says anymore. I can't disobey. He's asked me to…"

Taeyong trails off, wondering how honest he should be now. But Sicheng's eyes are as kind as they've always been. And historically, Sicheng has never betrayed him—and Taeyong has definitely had his multiple instances of oversharing. But more than that, he takes the risk in trusting again because the weight on his shoulders is slowly starting to become unbearable. "He's making me falsify data."

Sicheng's eyes widen in an instant while his mouth slowly drops open. His verbal reaction is much more delayed than the instant surprise on his face.

"You’re joking."

"I really wish I was," Taeyong shakes his head, doubling over until his forehead hits the worn wooden surface of his desk. "Sich, I'm so fucking tired. Of the shit with Sehun, the shit with Johnny. I don't know how much more I can take."

The bit of truth slips out but Sicheng barely reacts to it. Instead, he gets up from behind his desk and comes up to Taeyong, placing a hand on his shoulder, heavy and warm. His eyes are light and determined, and Taeyong instantly wishes that he could somehow throw his own life away and live Sicheng's instead.

He curses his mind for bringing Johnny to the forefront of it again, for wishing it was him here, comforting him openly and without anything holding them back. For a moment he wonders if taking suppressants again will end up being a good thing—maybe it will snap the inexplicable tie that brings him and Johnny together, over and over again. Maybe it's for the better.

"We've got your back, okay, Taeyong?" his labmate says, squeezing his shoulder with a reassuring strength. "No matter what."

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

A week passes since Taeyong lays his heart out to Sicheng. In hindsight, it did little to lighten the weight sitting heavy on his chest, but there was still some relief in at least talking to someone who understands the politics of this department better than his roommates. The other two who simply don't get to enjoy the same level of drama and devastation in their own divisions.

On a mundane Tuesday in April Taeyong is successfully ignoring the doomed grant that is due on Sehun's desk by the end of the week. Instead, he's buried deep in the files of his fMRI scans, parsing through the images to annotate the changes in each participant. He feels an odd sense of safety in his own data, not yet soiled by Sehun's opinion.

He's barely an hour into his workflow when Johnny walks through the door of his office, waking the room's automatic light that Taeyong did not even notice go off. His usual cheery greeting is gone, and gone is the smile that usually sits like it belongs on Johnny's face.

"Taeyong, I'm sorry in advance but—" he stops at a painfully obvious distance away from Taeyong's desk and takes a deep breath, adjusting the glasses on the bridge of his nose. "Please come with me."

Taeyong eyes him suspiciously but rises up from his desk anyway. The look that Johnny is giving him tells him he's not here to ask him for a quickie.

"What's going on?" he asks.

Johnny shifts from one foot to the other, and Taeyong realizes he's never seen him look this bothered before, let alone nervous. The professor turns on his heel and Taeyong wordlessly follows. They're both remarkably quiet as they walk down the hallway to the conference room at the opposite corner of the building.

When they walk into the deceptively bright space, flooded with daylight from the large windows onto the long table in the middle of the room, Taeyong finds it completely empty.

"Professor Suh, you need to tell me—"

"Taeyong, I know you're not going to like this, but I need you to hear me out," Johnny says, his hand on the door handle as he keeps it shut. "I know what Sehun is having you do. And I've informed your doctoral committee. They're on their way here now."

The world goes dull as Taeyong feels it all start to crash around him. The flimsy balance that he managed to keep on this shitty tightrope of his academic life, now trembling and slipping from under him. It seems that Professor Suh is determined to turn his world upside down in more ways than one, and the feeling starting to spread in Taeyong's stomach feels oddly close to betrayal.

"Professor, I specifically asked you not to involve anyone," he says, jaw locked tight and teeth grinding as he feels the control completely slip from his fingers, all his emotions slowly cascading into a panic. "I was handling it."

"Taeyong, you need to understand that what he's doing is beyond any normal relationship between a student and their advisor."

"What the fuck do you know about a normal relationship?" Taeyong scoffs, his words echoing in the empty room, harsh when they resonate between them. "Are you kidding me?"

Johnny takes in a deep breath but nothing about him seems angry or irritated. Behind the veneer of professionalism in his eyes are sympathy and a pain beyond pity. He looks down at the carpeted floor of the space between them before he speaks again.

"As of today I am removing myself from your doctoral committee," Johnny says, his voice quiet and stern, but Taeyong can tell in the tightness of his fists that it's taking effort out of him to keep it together. "I'm only here to do what should have been done a long time ago."

Taeyong's jaw hangs open and empty words sit in his throat, not knowing whether he should scream betrayal or fall to Johnny's feet, thanking him for throwing him the rope that can pull him out of the pit he has found himself in.

Meanwhile Johnny senses the heaviness in his silence. His hand slips from the door handle, and he places his palms on Taeyong’s shoulders. The shortened distance nearly overwhelms Taeyong as Johnny’s scent washes over him and a sudden calmness creeps in faster than he can help it—so easy it’s almost cruel.

“Sehun's behaviour is not only improper academic conduct, it’s also completely immoral. Falsification of data, forcing you to take suppressants, the constant threats to your status,” Johnny's voice is too soft now to carry this harsh truth, and Taeyong’s breath catches in his throat. “Taeyong, it's abuse.”

“I chose to be here, to do those things,” Taeyong says, stepping back until Johnny’s hands drop from his shoulders. “I chose—”

“Taeyong, please,” Johnny cuts him off. “We both know that’s not exactly true.”

The argument dies quickly in his throat before any coherent words can take their time to form. Between Johnny knowing the reality of his situation and Taeyong wondering how he found out in the first place, it’s all becoming too overwhelming. It’s as if the world around him keeps caving in until there’s nothing left. Everything he has built, and everything he has been holding onto, slipping away from him so quickly that he does not have it in him to catch up.

"Johnny, I—" Taeyong starts, feeling his heartrate pick up. "Sehun is not above retaliation. He's going to fucking destroy my career for this."

"He does not have as much power as you think," Johnny says with some semblance of a smile.

They pause to look at each other and Johnny frowns as he begins to say something else but there are footsteps that originate down the hallway, approaching quickly until they stop on the other side of the door. It opens to reveal his doctoral committee, the three men he has not seen since his oral candidacy exam a year ago: Professors Yoo Kihyun and Huang Guanheng from the department of neuroscience, and Professor Chae Hyungwon from statistics. These same people who, besides Sehun, decide his academic future.

“Hello, Taeyong,” Professor Yoo is the first to speak—he usually wears a down-to-business expression that leaves no space for niceties, but this time everything is different. “I’m sorry that we meet again under such unfortunate circumstances.”

The panic rises in Taeyong's throat and he instinctively looks to Johnny, who steps aside and allows the three men to enter. He greets each of them with a handshake, charming and easy-going as ever, as Taeyong struggles to swallow the lump in his throat. The quietest member of his committee, Professor Chae, turns to Taeyong and points to a seat at the conference table.

“Taeyong, please sit,” he says as they all look towards him. “We’re here to help.”

It takes nearly half of the first hour of this meeting before Taeyong feels comfortable enough to speak in clear, complete sentences. Thankfully Johnny takes over the majority of the first half, bringing forward everything he has learned of Sehun’s behavior and relaying the version of the events as it became known to him.

It was Sicheng that informed him of the majority of the abuse, with Aeri's backup as a second witness—from the data fabrication to threats over his visa and omega status, including the pressure to take suppressants. Everything Taeyong laid out to his labmate a week ago is now laid on the table in front of them with Professor Huang quickly jotting down all the relevant points of the conversation. It takes Taeyong an even longer amount of time to finally look away from the writing hand to face the professors.

“Taeyong, we know this is difficult for you, but you’re not the only one in this fight. This is a case of the department against Professor Oh, not just you against him," Professor Huang says, if only to make Taeyong look away from his hand.

“It’s not the first time we’ve been informed of Professor Oh’s academic dishonesty. It has just never come forward so clearly before and among so many other frankly vile behaviours,” Professor Yoo says, his hands folding on the desk surface as he turns to Taeyong.

“Although the clear blackmail by using your immigration and type status against you as well as the coercion into taking suppressants are very grave offenses, we unfortunately will have to focus on the charges that can be backed up by the most evidence,” Professor Chae is the next to speak, receiving supporting nods from the professors on either side of him. “This isn’t to say we don’t believe you—because please, believe me, we do. But considering that the academic system is imperfect, the manipulation of data will hit him the hardest in terms of consequences.”

“I understand,” Taeyong nods, finally losing the nervous waver to his voice. He feels Johnny turn to look at him as he straightens out in his seat. “And I appreciate all your help but, with all due respect, I still have to worry about graduating.”

“Of course, and we already considered that,” Professor Yoo says. “If I understand correctly, you are the only one currently in charge of your research project.”

“Everything from its design to its funding,” Taeyong nods again.

“And that is extremely impressive,” he responds and, for reasons not yet obvious to Taeyong, he smiles. “As soon as these allegations are brought forward, Professor Oh will be placed under investigation and his lab will inevitably be dissolved. I’d be happy to supervise you as your primary academic advisor until you finish. How much time do you have left?”

Taeyong’s mouth drops open and he can barely keep straight the dates and numbers in his head, quickly collecting them into a coherent response.

“Uh— Two— Technically, two years but…” Taeyong swallows. “If I only focus on the project I can be done by next spring.”

“Then we can certainly work that out,” Dr. Yoo smiles again and Taeyong wonders why he seems so happy when he’s the professor with one of the most outstanding research programs in the department. The realization that not only is this a huge change but also a potential advantage for Taeyong slowly starts sinking in. And for the first time this week he feels the weight on his chest lighten, his persistent anxiety slowly releasing its grip. He even allows himself to hang onto a shred of hope that maybe this will work out in his favor.

“I—” Taeyong begins again. “I just— Thank you.”

“Before we adjourn this meeting, we need to identify if there is any concrete evidence that you have that can be brought up in the case against Professor Oh,” Professor Huang speaks up. “As it stands now, it will easily go before administration, but still, anything helps. So, we ask you to search through for any written evidence—emails, annotated drafts, texting communication. Can you do that?”

Although he dreads the thought, Taeyong still agrees. “Yes, I can.”

“Perfect,” Professor Yoo turns away from him and addresses Johnny. “Professor Suh, I trust that you can take the lead on working with Taeyong to gather the necessary documents.”

“Certainly,” Johnny’s voice is strong and reassuring, so commanding that it makes Taeyong shiver in his seat. “But I have to make you aware that I’m removing myself from Taeyong’s doctoral committee. Due to a personal conflict of interest.”

Dr. Yoo glances momentarily between them before replying. “Then we will suggest potential replacements.”

Johnny nods in agreement and there is a short moment of silence between the five of them, just long enough to let Taeyong’s anxiety remind him that this is just the beginning. He’s brought back by Professor Huang addressing him for the final time that day.

“We understand that this isn’t easy for any student, Taeyong,” he says. “But please be reassured that you’re doing the right thing.”

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

Taeyong does not return to his office until he gets the third text from Sicheng reassuring that Sehun does not come around the building anymore. It only took a week for him to get pulled from the department and be placed under investigation for academic misconduct, supported by the years of emails and edited drafts that Taeyong was able to provide. The red ink that used to condemn Taeyong to doom now did the same to Sehun, and Taeyong would laugh at this irony if the paranoia did not still loom over him. It felt as if any second he was going to get an email or a show of Sehun at his door, berating him for his ungratefulness and destroying his career as a result.

Days into the final week of the semester, that still does not happen. Taeyong can breathe a bit easier—whether it's from the blooming lilacs scattered around campus or the freedom to work at his own pace, or maybe both, Taeyong tries not to think too much about it.

As he focuses on his work, it also serves to keep him away from Johnny. He cannot tell who's exactly avoiding who, but the only indication of each other that they sense over the few weeks are their scents, seemingly more potent now that Taeyong stopped taking his suppressants and making their presence in the building painfully obvious to each other, night after long night.

Taeyong is returning from a coffee run right after the sun begins to set, his mid-week motivation pushing him through his endless tables of data. On his walk back to the building he sees a silhouette sitting on the bench and leaning so far back that his head it turned up to the purple-painted sky. Taeyong could tell Johnny apart just by the shadow of his upper body alone.

Although the bench is in the middle of the campus courtyard, it oddly feels like this moment is for the two of them alone. He decides to break their weeks-long silence and starts to approach him. Johnny looks to him before he even hears his footsteps, sensing his presence from across the courtyard.

Johnny's smile is warm when Taeyong sits down next to him, and they take a moment to breathe in acknowledgment of each other before they speak.

"Hi, Taeyong," Johnny is the first to say something, hesitant to meet Taeyong's eyes as they sit with a distance between each other that's just tangible enough to hurt. "Old habits die hard, huh?"

Taeyong follows Johnny's gaze into his coffee cup, the steam coming through the slit of the lid, and smiles. "Yeah, guess so."

"I hope you've been okay," Johnny says, and Taeyong feels the genuineness of his words.

"Honestly, I— I miss you, Johnny," Taeyong admits, equally shocked at his own sudden honesty. "But I still feel hurt by what happened. You went behind my back."

"I know," Johnny nods, tearing his eyes away to stare down at the hands fumbling in his lap. "I did it knowing it would make you angry, and I'm sorry for that. But I don't regret it."

Taeyong nods, his heart light and nervous in his chest, fluttering with a bittersweet feeling. "I know why you did it. And ultimately, I should be thanking you."

"You don't need to thank me," Johnny instantly turns back to him. "There's nothing to thank me for. It was the right thing to do."

Taeyong wants to argue back but this time he feels too tender, too sensitive to throw anything back at him. He's torn between avoidance and want, between running away and crossing the distance between them.

"Johnny, everything between us, it's—" he shakes his head, letting out a sharp breath. "With everything going on, it was too much all at once, too overwhelming. The stress of my fucked academic life then your divorce… We were in way over our heads."

There's something in Johnny's eyes that seems to break, the surface of his honey brown eyes glistening with a sensible change behind them. The sentimentality in his expression just reassures Taeyong that what he's saying is the bitter truth—that they began this before they had any idea of what this could become, the potential of disaster in the turbulence between them.

"You're right," Johnny finally says. "I'm still carrying too much baggage from my divorce, and I should not have gotten you involved, not with everything you have going on. I never wanted to be another burden to you."

"You're not," Taeyong says with a shaky breath. "You're a man with a good heart, I can see that. And I want to be yours so badly but the timing is just…"

Taeyong trails off, not knowing how to finish this thought that feels oddly like a breakup. Johnny's mouth pulls into a melancholy smile as he takes one of Taeyong's hand and squeezes it between his palms, setting the twine between them.

"I understand," Johnny says, pausing for a breath before looking up with a small smile. "Taeyong, I fell for you our first night together. I think you're so brilliant, clever and gorgeous beyond belief. And it may sound crazy, but if time is what you need, then I'm ready to wait."

"Because I think it's worth it. I think you're worth everything."

Taeyong's heart soars before the words can fully sink in, and he relishes in the free-falling feeling to launch forward, finally connecting their lips in a pressing kiss. Johnny smiles against his mouth, taking one hand to cup Taeyong's face and tilt his head to perfectly align their lips. When they disconnect they lean back only a centimeter, touching foreheads and tips of their noses.

With an incredible amount of effort Taeyong wills himself to part from Johnny, chasing away the fog clouding his head to try to get back into working mode. He gets up from the bench and Johnny's gaze follows him, his eyes also looking hazy but there's a giddy kind of happiness dancing in them. Taeyong grins back at him before speaking again.

"I'll see you around, Professor Suh."

Johnny smiles wider. "See you around."

Notes:

first of all, i am SO sorry for such a long wait! i usually update much faster than this but i have a good excuse...
...i was focusing on writing my own dissertation and passing my phd defense
and i passed!!! (a couple days ago lol) im a dr. now!!! :)))))

so yeah, i literally couldn't let taeyong have his academic happy ending before i had mine lol maybe im a terrible person for that

next chapter will be the last one, so we're almost at the end of this rollercoaster. i will try to update it soon, but i also have some other ideas (johnyongs and taeyongs) in the works so look out for those if you wish

once again im so sorry for the wait but i hope it was worth it! please let me know what you think

 

twt
cc

Chapter 9: Nine

"Taeyong, did you get my email?"

He takes a long minute to unfreeze before responding. "What email, professor?"

Professor Yoo always stand in a very matter-of-fact way, taut and proud, but he is also oddly approachable, even now lingering in Taeyong's office with a knowing grin on his face. Maybe the walk all the way over here from the sister building put him in a good mood.

"Cap and gown orders. Today's the last day," he says, watching Taeyong immediately start to scramble. "You didn't forget, did you?"

"Maybe," Taeyong says, frantically minimizing the Word document of his seemingly never-ending dissertation.

"Just wanted to remind you," Professor Yoo does not stay any longer than necessary and swiftly walks out of Taeyong's office.

Meanwhile Taeyong is still getting used to the whiplash of expecting the worst when a professor says his name and then getting that—just a normal conversation, no malicious undertone or guilt. Nearly an entire year under the mentorship of Professor Yoo is somehow not enough to overwrite all the paranoia that Sehun left him with.

Old habits die hard and that still applies to Taeyong's workaholic tendencies—pushing hard to finish the study until he was applying for graduation and setting his defense date. Between publishing his research and writing his dissertation, it took that whole year to finally make chasing his dreams feel worthwhile again.

The day of his dissertation defense feels absolutely cathartic.

It’s officially meant to be a public event—even though, realistically, only your cohort goes and so does your doctoral committee, but only because they’re required to be there.

Nearly the entirety of his department shows to Taeyong’s defense.

He knows that part of why they’re here is because he’s the last of Sehun’s students, almost like this is a mourning of his research program. And who doesn't like to see a figure of authority go down, especially by someone so underestimated. The very obvious emptiness of Sehun's seat in the conference room spoke volumes for Taeyong's reputation.

On the other hand, he knows his project is not only well-supported and researched but, more importantly, it's impactful. Prior to finishing his dissertation, he submitted the entirety of his research to a top journal in his field, and the day it was accepted was nearly the peak moment of his career. He knows that the work he has put in was going to be seen—and it would inevitably help somebody.

“In the work that I’ve completed over the past four years here at the University of Chicago, we were able to uncover groundbreaking understanding of the neuroscience behind semantic memory. In today’s seminar I’ll describe our discovery of familiarity cells as well as the application of this understanding to memory disorders.”

The hour-long seminar passes by quickly like it's another one of Taeyong's practices, speaking lines through his sleep. The questions from the audience are plenty as usual, and he takes his time with each one—sometimes even taking advantage of the spotlight and speaking until he’s forced to move on. It’s his moment, and he wouldn't be him if he did not milk it for all it's worth.

It’s towards the end of the questioning that Taeyong notices Johnny, tucked into the peripheral end of the faculty row. And he only has reason to look because Johnny also asks him a question. Then comes the ultimate test of pretending they are nothing to each other but academic acquaintances.

What made the past year so difficult was not necessarily having to stay away from Johnny—that was a tried old game. Giving up Johnny was the easy part—he rarely had the time or the energy to eat let alone have sex anyway. He was pushing so hard to finish that he made no time for anything else, not for letting that longing feeling break through enough to feel it.

But the several people around that knew the situation complicated things. Taeyong ended up telling Aeri and Sicheng openly, though both of them already had their suspicions. And there's his committee, Taeyong is certain that some of them know but choose to keep it to themselves. In a way, nothing was the same since Johnny decided to take on Sehun. Maybe even earlier than that.

But this day justifies all the sacrifices he’s made over the past year.

The champagne pops and the entirety of the department is celebrating his successful defense. He’s hugged by so many people he loses count and shakes more hands than he was anticipating. Someone takes his hands and folds his fingers over the stem of a champagne glass, and his colleagues cheer loud enough deafen everything that it took him to get there. The lingering wounds from the meticulous traumatization of Taeyong by Sehun—it took getting rid of him and all of what was his to finally cross the finish line.

Taeyong sighs, thinking that no one should have to work this hard to make it through.

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

The first evening of August, there’s a knock on Johnny’s door. Johnny already knows, because he’s looked at the calendar every day this summer.

“Hey, Johnny,” it’s Taeyong in his doorway, everything on him loose and various shades of grey, looking like the image of pure comfort. He’s even wearing a beanie in the summertime, and Johnny grins.

“Isn’t it a bit late?” Johnny asks only after having stepped aside to let Taeyong come in. Taeyong kicks off his shoes and sets them aside to continue into his kitchen. He's carrying a tied white, plastic bag before he lifts it and sets it down on the kitchen island.

“I know you don’t sleep,” Taeyong finally says, fingers already pulling at the knot on the bag.

“I just mean… ” Johnny trails off, feet dragging as he approaches. If he walks up any faster, he thinks Taeyong’s scent might actually knock him off his feet—so oddly fresh, potent and light at the same time. “I just mean cause tomorrow, right?”

At the mention of tomorrow, Taeyong breaks into a grin.

“Tomorrow…” Taeyong pauses, dramatically. "…is going to be the best day of my life.”

Johnny grins, reminiscing about what Taeyong really means when he says that, having had his own graduation not too many years ago now. At least, not long enough ago to forget.

“My parents are in Chicago,” Taeyong says.

Johnny’s eyes widen. “Really? How'd you manage them over here?"

"Mom wanted to go but dad is terrified of flying," Taeyong turns just enough to glance over his shoulder. "Just some convincing and a lot of saving up did it."

"Taeyong," Johnny begins even though he knows it is unlikely that it'll lead anywhere. "You know you could have told me, I would have paid for—”

“Don’t start,” Taeyong’s words are biting but he still looks tender. “You’ve already done more than enough for me. Really, you don’t need to worry about it. Trust me when I say I’ve got it.”

Johnny is not convinced—knows firsthand how hard it is to survive on a graduate salary and having to count in buying international flight tickets he probably would have had to skip meals. But he trusts Taeyong—because he has to, and because if Taeyong says he’s got it, then there's no one who can argue with him.

With a snap Taeyong rips the bag open and letting the tangle of the plastic handles hang limp off the side. He hops up onto the bar stool and unwraps the delivery.

"Anyway, my mom made this,” Taeyong comments. “She said to give it to my special professor.”

Johnny snorts at that, instantly having so many things to say just for them all to shut down when Taeyong unwraps the final towel and reveals giant jars of homemade kimchi.

Johnny’s mouth drops open. “Look away, I might cry.”

Taeyong grins at that, pushing the jars into the middle of the island so he doesn’t somehow manage to knock them over. He twists around in the hit seat until he’s looking directly at Johnny—who is already stepping one foot forward, tentatively ready to come closer.

“Will you be there?” Taeyong asks, reaching out a hand towards him. “At my graduation tomorrow.”

Johnny takes his hand as soon as it’s given, letting his soft fingers pull him until he’s standing a few centimeters away. Taeyong tilts his head up to look up and Johnny could drown right there in the mesmerizing depth of his eyes.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Johnny grins. “I kind of have to, you know, I’m one of the faculty escor—”

“Shut up,” Taeyong smacks his arm, the softness in his eyes cut through with a flame. “We get it, you’re a professor. Stop rubbing it in before I get jealous.”

Johnny tentatively puts his hands on Taeyong’s shoulder, a tethering touch of so close but never close enough. They’ve been so good at staying away, Taeyong working himself to the bone and Johnny doing the work that he needed to do alone. For a moment there's a fear that this is what it will always be like between them—the push and pull that's out of their control, the inexplicable magnetism and the inevitable exhaustion of having to fight it.

Taeyong takes his hands between his palms, bringing Johnny’s knuckles up to his mouth. He kisses each languidly, then slows down enough to simply rest his lips against the skin there.

“What next, though?” Johnny asks quieter now, feeling Taeyong settle into this calmness that he does not want to disturb. He wants Taeyong to feel safe with him, no matter what.

Taeyong looks up at him again, a gaze for the impact of which Johnny is never fully ready.

“I’m going to stay here,” Taeyong says. “In Chicago. And with you.”

Johnny’s heart breaks out into a flutter, and he stands there, with the delay of the news actually hitting him. Before it reaches his brain, he’s already breathy when he tries to speak.

“Here? I— How?”

“I got a post-doc at Northwestern,” Taeyong says. “It wasn't initially the dream. But after everything, I realized I want to stay in academia and become a professor. And I think this post-doc is the next step.”

Johnny is speechless, processing the information slowly as it comes. Staring down at Taeyong’s face, vulnerable with Johnny but determined to everything else around him—Johnny is completely floored by him, again. Taeyong had every reason to quit academia for burning him like it burns many others. And although it’s unspoken, Johnny knows Taeyong’s choice is as spiteful as it is good-hearted.

Johnny thinks he may never stop falling for him.

“And does that— does it mean…”

“I’m yours,” Taeyong says, his arms sneaking their way around Johnny’s neck. “All yours if you want me.”

No words could ever come close to giving him a proper response so he does it instead with a kiss, pressing and harsh and the only thing that can describe the longing and ache. These emotions peak until they slowly release from him, exhaling this tension into the space between them as they kiss. Johnny’s hands take Taeyong’s face, caressing his cheeks as he licks gently into his mouth, kissing until they’re panting, intoxicated and breathless.

“I—” Taeyong sighs, cutting himself off with a kiss at Johnny’s lower lip. “I can’t stay.”

“I know, I know, your parents,” Johnny nods, taking everything in him to pull himself away from Taeyong. They’re both clearly thrown, disheveled and bothered. Johnny feels pathetic enough to laugh, realizing how much of himself is affected by Taeyong, by everything about him, and how he would give himself over and over to him without a shred of regret.

When Taeyong turns to leave, the finality of the look in his eyes is a memory that permanently stores Johnny’s memory.

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

Two Months Later

“Stupid thing—”

Taeyong’s words are followed by several not-so-gentle taps against the monitor, gradually getting more and more insistent as they hammer down. Still that (surprisingly) did not help his computer awaken as it instead turns completely to black. This is what he gets for insisting that his entire computer rig comes with him to their apartment, even though it was decades beyond an upgrade.

Everything that meant anything to him has lived through this machine—all data, analyses files, emails and codes, and now his green card application—all in this one computer. He's obviously more than a little attached to it, and there's also the fact that Johnny could not just own everything in their new shared place just because he got a head start on life.

“Taeyong.”

The sudden voice startles him and he jumps in his seat, turning around to see Johnny in his office room doorway. He’s shirtless, pajama pants low on his hips, and he’s already making his way over to Taeyong before the other can take proper look at him.

“Sorry, did I wake you up?” Taeyong winces, then frowns as he scans Johnny's face. “Where are your glasses? You’re gonna trip over our unpacked stuff again.”

Despite his teasing he is still truly apologetic because he knows how difficult it has been for Johnny to sleep lately. Whether it’s the stress of their move or Johnny’s work life as he overcommits himself to his research, he’s been all kinds of out of sorts lately.

So he doesn’t answer Taeyong’s question when he comes up behind him, hands sneaking in under his arms and around his torso, pulling him back until he's flush against Johnny’s chest.

“Hey,” Taeyong says in a hushed voice with Johnny being so close. “Everything okay?”

Johnny’s heavy breaths roll down Taeyong’s neck before he nuzzles his nose into the skin. He inhales deeply, slowly as he moves up the side of Taeyong’s neck and nuzzles under his ear.

“Come to bed,” he says between the open-mouthed kisses against the back of Taeyong’s neck. Everything in Taeyong is attentive now, shivers descending down his spine through to his fingertips. Johnny is sturdy and warm against his back, and it’s becoming more and more convincing to abandon his work for whatever he has in mind.

Taeyong gets lost in his head without getting to an answer, and this time for some reason that makes Johnny impatient. His callous hand comes up Taeyong’s chest, slides under his jaw and grips his chin to turns his face to himself, chasing his lips on their way to him.

Immediately Johnny dives for them, almost manic in the way he tugs and licks at Taeyong’s lower pout. In the heat of the moment Taeyong breaks the kiss—not for not loving this side of Johnny that’s basically begging for Taeyong’s attention, but because he actually needs the space to breathe.

“What’s gotten into you?” Taeyong says which makes Johnny pull away from him, parting just enough so they can look at each other. Johnny’s mouth is agape and he’s breathing heavily, hands not sitting still for a minute as long as they’re touching Taeyong. Now they’re coming to circle his waist, sneaking in under his sleep shirt.

“Fuck, Taeyong, I don’t know, who cares?” Johnny says, leaning in, barely getting the words out before his mouth stops at Taeyong’s. "I just… need you."

“Is this a rut?” Taeyong gasps, both from his realization and Johnny’s fingers that take his sensitive nipple between them, teasing. “How is that even possible? Aren’t you too old?”

“Watch yourself,” Johnny says and it comes out harsher than he means it, but Taeyong likes it. He likes getting to be who riles up the calm and cool Professor Suh until he’s like this, demonic and insatiable without Taeyong’s mouth on his. “But, fuck, it feels like it.”

“Oh, God,” Taeyong says, throwing his head back. He’s never been around a partner when they’re going through a rut, only some friends here and there to occasionally lend a helping hand. He cannot help but wonder why now.

“You know, you don’t have to—” Johnny starts saying but Taeyong’s palm is instantly on his mouth, muffling the rest of the words.

Since their first meeting which turned into lifechanging sex, Taeyong knew that their chemistry was something unreal, like they were somehow made to fit each other's needs. There are times when in those heated moments Taeyong does not know if he’s feeling his own feelings or Johnny’s. When they fuck hour after hour then take a long time to rest, pleasantly calm in the aura of their two scents mixing until they become indistinguishable.

“Johnny, I’m all yours, right?” Taeyong says, his hand sliding up the back of Johnny’s neck until he can feel the soft hair growing at the nape. “So, make me yours.”

A low growl rolls out of Johnny, barely noticeable as it gets buried in his throat. His hands work faster than his brain and he’s hooking one arm under Taeyong’s torso, lifting him from the chair and throwing him over his shoulders.

Taeyong lets out an oof as he’s tossed onto their bed. It snaps him out of it for a moment, but then his analytical brain is back to working in the background and curious about what else becomes different when an alpha like Johnny goes into a rut other than his strength and senses.

It’s as if Johnny senses that Taeyong’s mind is elsewhere else, so he flips him over, making his face hit the pillow when he lands on his stomach. Johnny’s hands are frantic as he yanks everything off Taeyong, pulling at fabric until it tears, His hands are rough and unforgiving when they take his legs and spread him apart. Taeyong winces as he feels the cool air hit the pool of slick forming between his legs—he shudders.

Johnny parts him with both hands and dives in for his hole, mouth eager and tongue already out to lick wherever it can reach, then focusing into eating him out filling the room with filthy squelches. Taeyong groans into the pillow, letting the sound out of him because he knows the fabric will swallow it up. But Johnny feels that sound as a vibration down Taeyong’s spine, and he grins like a madman against his ass knowing that Taeyong is his to fall apart freely like this.

He moves his mouth away, sliding his wet lips up his lower his back and the line of his spine until he stops at the back of his neck. At the same time, his fingers slide inside Taeyong, only one but immediately all the way to the knuckle. He shakes with a groan, shoving his hips backwards to chase Johnny’s hand.

“Just fuck me,” Taeyong looks over his shoulder as much as he can with Johnny’s hands pushing him down into the mattress. “Johnny, come on-”

“Fuck—” Johnny groans against the damp skin of Taeyong’s neck. Taeyong knows there’s a dilemma in Johnny’s head right now, between needing to take his time to stretch Taeyong like he always does or pushing that concern aside to chase what he needs.

To Taeyong’s surprise, Johnny moves back and places one palm down Taeyong’s shoulder, and the other hooking under his hip to shove his ass up and force the arch out of him. Then, he lines up and at the same time presses Taeyong's shoulders down into the bed.

At the first intrusion Taeyong’s moan vibrates his entire body, feeling himself be so ready to open for Johnny even with little preparation. It’s a tight fit and Taeyong feels so fucking full, Johnny’s no-doubt aching to go deeper and claim him but having to hold back.

He feels Johnny’s hands part his ass to help ease the slide inside, pulling out for a moment to get him entirely slick. At each tempered motion Taeyong is unraveling, mouth agape and drooling onto the pillow as he feels Johnny move back into him, control his hips with his hands and begin to really use Taeyong for himself. Even when Taeyong tries to shove his hips back to get Johnny’s cock deeper inside Johnny stops him, fingers digging into hipbones surely enough to leave bruises.

Johnny leans forward until his chest meets Taeyong’s back, and with a warning bite to the back of his neck he slides all the way in, stopping only when he’s flush against Taeyong’s ass.

“Fuck—” Taeyong groans, thighs shaking with small tremors as Johnny sits pressed up against his prostate. “Fuck, Johnny, move— Ah, please, move…”

Johnny braces himself with one hand against the headboard, the other on the bed next to Taeyong’s head, and proceeds to thoroughly fuck him into the sheets. He takes no time to speed up, rapidly picking up until he’s got Taeyong pressed so hard into the mattress he has nowhere to move, aching cock trapped between his abdomen and the bedding underneath him.

Johnny leans back, grabbing handfuls of Taeyong’s ass to get a good grip on him to shove him back on his cock. Taeyong's pretty skin is already flushing from his back down his ass, red imprints from where Johnny's hands dug into him. He grabs a fistful of Taeyong’s hair and yanks his head back, letting his whimpers free into the heavy space of the room.

“God, Johnny, you’re so fucking deep—“

At the same time Johnny nuzzles in close against his cheek, a touch too gentle for his hips ramming into Taeyong’s ass, driving it home at every thrust.

“Taeyong,” Johnny growls against the shell of his ear. “You’re all mine. Only mine.”

A filthy moan rips out of Taeyong, those words sending shocks straight through him and leaving just enough to have him tethering on the edge, his climax sneaking up on him until it washes over and nearly knocks him into unconsciousness. And Johnny fucks him entirely through it, with no intention on stopping.

Taeyong slumps against the pillows, feeling the damp spot of where his cum is soaking in underneath him. He’s motionless as Johnny pulls out and flips him over, grabbing both his hands in one and yanking them above his head.

With the other hand he’s bending Taeyong in half again, his cock lazily sliding over his crack, prodding at his gaping ass with slick dripping down onto the sheets under them. Johnny takes his cock and lines it up against Taeyong again, pushing in with one move.

He quickly picks up the pace, ramming his hips into Taeyong until his voice goes hoarse, each moan broken, his wrists rubbed red from Johnny’s grip that presses them against the headboard. Johnny’s hovering above him like an untamed animal, sweat collecting at his abdomen dripping onto Taeyong, the slapping of wet skin as hips collide with hips.

Taeyong feels Johnny’s hips suddenly stutter, and in that instant, Johnny’s head comes up to bring their lips together, like the only way he can communicate with Taeyong is through touch. In the intensity of his tongue sliding into Taeyong’s mouth, Taeyong somehow knows what he’s trying to say.

“Inside,” Taeyong whispers, throwing his hands around Johnny’s neck. “Knot me. Do it, knot me, alpha.”

Johnny snaps, bending Taeyong over with him until his hips leave the bed, his cock so deep inside him as he rams inside for the final time and fills Taeyong up with his release. His cathartic moan is muffled somewhere against shoulder with teeth sunk into the skin there, rough breaths against the angry red mark he left.

With this hips wedged against Taeyong’s he takes a hand and brings it to Taeyong’s cock, finally breaking to touch it. Taeyong wails at the first slide of Johnny’s wet palm against his skin—he’s been so hard for who knows how long now. And with Johnny’s hand moving languidly with his knot pressing into his prostate, he quickly reaches his second orgasm of the night.

He quivers and shakes under Johnny’s stone still body, clenching around Johnny’s knot that’s hesitating to shrink—and the size of it starting to get overwhelming. Taeyong’s mind clouds, feeling so claimed, locked up here with Johnny and only he has the key to let him go. He floats in the mind-numbing pleasure, the coil in his groin still swirling, tethering on the edge of unconsciousness.

It takes a while before Johnny is shifting from his laying position, as Taeyong is floating in his own head, his body feeling tingly and buzzed, intoxicated on Johnny. When Johnny picks up his head Taeyong’s hands are immediately at his cheeks, beckoning him closer so he can kiss him again. He looks so gorgeous and blissed out, chest shimmering with sweat and heaving, his hair matting into his forehead and his neck and fanning onto the pillow.

Johnny’s mouth stays on Taeyong’s when his hand moves to touch his nipples, taking one in between his fingertips. He catches Taeyong’s moan in his mouth as he feels the omega spasm under him, exhausted body somehow still responding to Johnny’s touch.

With that Johnny’s hips as if moving with a mind of their own start shallowly grinding into Taeyong, nudging his lessening knot against his sensitive walls. Taeyong arches and his eyes roll back at how incredible this feels, Johnny filling him up and not letting even a breath of space between them.

“Come on, baby,” Johnny’s voice rumbles as he speaks against Taeyong’s lips. “You can give me one more.”

With that his hand takes Taeyong’s cock, exceedingly sensitive from his last orgasm but somehow half-hard in Johnny’s hand, getting even more so as he slips a thumb over the head then moves down. As his hand stops Taeyong yelps, his hips starting to clumsily fuck into the fist of his hand to chase that imminent release, at the same time grinding the knot inside him even deeper. The sensations all take him and he loses it when his climax hits him again, erasing everything from his head except white noise and overwhelming pleasure as his spine goes taut.

Johnny is merciful in letting him ride it out, slowing down as Taeyong’s wave ends and he falls completely limp under him. He moves to carefully slide out, hissing as the cool air hits his cock, still half-hard but at least now not fucking with his thought process.

“I’ll get you cleaned up,” Johnny says, lifting up over Taeyong to look at the mess he’s made of him. “God, look what I’ve done to you.”

⇆ ⇆ ⇆ ⇆

The next morning Johnny’s first finally restful sleep is disturbed by Taeyong squirming against him.

He awakens to hips grinding back onto him, still spooning each other just like they were when they fell asleep.

“T’yong?” Johnny slurs dreamily against the other, hand moving from its resting position around his waist and down to his hips.

Taeyong doesn’t say anything, only sort of whimpers to himself. Then he’s turning around in Johnny’s arms, tucking into his neck.

“Holy shit, Taeyong, you’re burning up.”

“Hurts,” Taeyong says quietly but Johnny’s attuned to it.

“Where?”

“Everywhere, at once,” Taeyong’s words sound like they’re taking everything out of him to say. “Johnny, touch me.”

Johnny's hands are everywhere, in his hair then down over his back until they're slipping under Taeyong’s shirt to wrap around him. The skin-to-skin contact makes Taeyong writhe closer to him, gasping softly and Johnny gasps with him.

“How do you want—“

“Just touch me… ” Taeyong says, hands coming up to grip Johnny’s arms as they wrap around him and press him closer. “I need you, alpha.”

Johnny really awakens at that, hands moving instinctually determined when they slide into Taeyong’s shorts and wrap his already hard cock in a fist.

“Ah— Fuck, yeah… “ Taeyong gasps, panting helplessly into the crook of Johnny’s neck.

Johnny slides off his cock and moves to part his ass, feeling the pool of slick collecting and dripping down to Taeyong’s thighs. He collects enough to slather his hands then resumes their position on Taeyong’s cock.

He teases the head, lightly pressing his palm against the slit, before wrapping around and sliding a tight fist down the base. Taeyong’s nails dig into Johnny’s arms as he tries to find some balancing grip on him, shoving his hips to chase his cock back into Johnny’s hands. He’s frantic, clumsy, chasing his release that's threatening to collide into him.

“Johnny?” Taeyong calls his name, voice so tight it’s only too endearing, wrapped up in shaky breaths.

“Yes?”

“Can I cum?” he asks, saying it so sweetly that Johnny wonders where his Taeyong went—the one who jumps Johnny and rides him out, always taking exactly what he wants and making Johnny love it.

This Taeyong is so vulnerable, clinging onto his arms like if Johnny moves any farther away he’ll simply shatter. This Taeyong he has only seen one other time before, when Johnny turned his back to him and left him to sleep in his bed.

But this time is different—this time, Taeyong is giving himself to Johnny free and willingly. His lips reach for his mouth but miss and stamp somewhere under his jaw. He laps at the sweat collecting there, inhales Johnny's scent until he cannot hold any more breath inside him.

For a moment Johnny wishes he could keep him here to himself like this for hours.

"You can cum."

With that Taeyong shudders and spills over his knuckles, hips seizing up as they drive through Johnny's fist. He has a death grip on Johnny's arm as he cums, like letting go means a fate worse than death.

He nuzzles against Johnny as he comes down, breaths eventually steadying out with the clench of his hands loosening until he lets go. He doesn't seem as crazed anymore, and definitely not as needy.

"Are you with me?" Johnny leans forward until his forehead bumps against Taeyong's.

Taeyong eventually brings himself to open his eyes, which he immediately regrets. There's Johnny—in his shirtless glory, all sweat and messy hair and fuck, Taeyong thinks he may be dying.

With a mind of their own his heads reach up to Johnny's abdomen, palms pressing in and feeling the firm muscle there, the hint of his happy trail. His mind clouds like he's slowly being mind-fucked.

"Fuck, Johnny," he says, throwing a leg over Johnny's hips and trying to climb him. "Have I ever told you how hot you are?"

"Not explicitly," Johnny's arms slide around his back and down to his ass, grasping and hiking him up his leg. Taeyong manages a hand between his bodies, sliding down until he feels Johnny's cock there, hard and nudging against his bottom.

He guides it over his hole, suggestively wiggling his hips onto it.

"Taeyong, I don't wanna hurt you," Johnny says. "It hasn't been a lot of time. Are you su—"

"Means I'm still loose from last time then," Taeyong says, then shuts Johnny up by pressing his lips against his mouth. "Come on."

With that, the one thread of fight that Johnny had left in him snaps, and he takes Taeyong's ass to pull him onto his cock. He's still stretched enough from last time to fit him, and the endless amount of slick does help too—but Taeyong’s still a tight fit. Hot and overwhelming, always intense whenever he first enters him.

And now again he does not waste time before Taeyong is bouncing on his cock, draped face-down over Johnny's chest as he rails into him. Somehow Johnny can feel that this is exactly what Taeyong needs, just the release of this need—and Johnny's here to pull it out of him until he falls apart. He's fucked until he feels brainless, floating in the safety of Johnny's arms until he feels the alpha tense up under him, squeezing him tight against himself as he stutters and cums. Taeyong tenses around his cock as he feels the warmth of his release inside him—that sudden feeling so intoxicating, enough to worry that he may be addicted to this.

Johnny keeps Taeyong close against his chest as he slides out of him, kissing the top of his head before he speaks.

"Okay, now you take a break," Johnny says, a warm hand sliding down the back of Taeyong's neck then over his back, lower spine where his large fingers press in then slide back up. Taeyong could close his eyes and sleep here for weeks.

"Don- wanna move," he slurs, cheek squished against Johnny's shoulder where he feels him shake with a laugh.

"Bath?"

By the time Taeyong finally comes to himself he's being placed into warm water, complete with bubbles and something that smells vaguely minty—because Johnny knows that Taeyong would not have it any other way. Thankfully it's large enough to accommodate them both, and as soon as they're in Taeyong shifts to lean against Johnny, maximizing skin-on-skin contact.

Johnny's eyes follow his hand sliding up Taeyong's pale arm, his strong shoulder and over his chest, trailing his touches with glistening water. He feels the other sigh under his chin, visibly relaxing into him. Still Johnny can't help himself—and laughs.

Taeyong tilts up but not enough to break the coil of his embrace. "What's funny?"

"Nothing," Johnny says, even though he knows that would never satisfy Taeyong. "You're just clingy when you're in heat."

Though he can't see it, he practically feels Taeyong roll his eyes.

Although Johnny would never admit it out loud, he has definitely thought about how he practically gets two Taeyongs. His daily Taeyong does not tease—if he wants something, he directly goes for it—and Johnny always happily obliges. But during heats, he gets the other one—the one that begs for Johnny to do something, anything, completely undefined. The one that places his fate completely into Johnny's hands, making Johnny feel protective over him, but also something darker, more possessive.

Johnny does not mind wrangling both—in fact, he loves the challenge. Nothing about Taeyong has ever been simple, and that's part of what he loves about him.

"Isn't it not supposed to come for another couple weeks?" Johnny says, warm hand coming up to his shoulder, completely covering it as he spreads his palm out.

"Yeah, well…" Taeyong trails off. "Type people biology can be weird, I guess."

Johnny sighs, comforted by the water under his back and the weight of Taeyong wrapped around him.

“You know, there are some legends about what it means when a heat and rut suddenly sync up,” Johnny says.

Taeyong scoffs, sending a ripple of waves through the water.

“I believe in types folklore as much as I believe in the zodiac,” he says, the ever self-assured and confident Taeyong—and Johnny cannot help but smile.

“Some of it ended up being true, right?” Johnny says, fully knowing that it’s a half-assed argument just to rile Taeyong up. If only he did not make it so fun.

That does enough to get Taeyong sitting up, turning in the mass of steam and bubbles until they’re face to face. His skin is flushed pink, the peak points of his face glistening as they reflect the light from the water.

“I doubt it can ever be proven to be anything other than a coincidence,” he says, and Johnny swears he’s blushing and even deeper pink. “Besides, you cannot just use science to study love.”

Johnny grins, giving himself away before he even starts. “Ok, fine, let’s collect participants."

Taeyong rolls his eyes, but he was never one to back down from anything. He’s unlike anyone else, and exactly what Johnny did not know he was missing.

“Fine,” Taeyong huffs and straightens out, his words right on the edge of tension. “Do you love me?”

He’s so adorable that Johnny thinks his mouth might tear if he smiles any harder.

“More than anything.”

Taeyong’s eyes widen, and Johnny can tell he wants to look away, but he stubbornly looks back while so obviously having his own dilemma in his head. It’s almost a wonder why this is so difficult for him, but Johnny thinks he might figure it out if he gives it enough time.

“And do you?” Johnny asks.

He thinks Taeyong will hesitate—but instead, he blurts out. “I do.”

Johnny pulls Taeyong towards himself until they’re kissing, part to save him the embarrassment and part to remind him just to breathe. He quickly pulls back, holding Taeyong steady as the other sways in his arms.

Then comes the part that Johnny knew would inevitably come—where Taeyong whips his head away with a challenging scowl, but still nuzzles a shoulder into his warmth.

"Two is hardly a study," he mumbles to himself.

At that Johnny grins, arms reaching out to pull his lover toward himself. "It's enough for me."

Notes:

and so we have reached the end with a chapter that was 80% porn :)
can u blame me tho :))) i love them :)))))

also pls forgive me for the omegaverse lore i just made up… i just think its cute that they sync up when theyre in love

if you stuck out this long then thank you so much, i hope you enjoyed this ride!

i loved writing this work not only to give a glimpse into grad school life but also to try writing omegaverse which was really difficult for me! but i think that universe ended up fitting really well with this whole concept

as always id love to know the impression this left on you now that youre at the end
and
thank u again

 

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