Chapter Text
“Why are you buying two boxes of condoms?”
Wide-eyed, Jake almost misses the way Sunghoon’s cheek and ears burn after the raw question while two grannies were shopping for their adult diapers just two lanes from them.
“Jake, in what situation do you think I would need this? When you get the answer, keep it to yourself and continue living.”
Now genuinely concerned, Jake lets go of the little shopping list he had on his work phone before rounding around a blushing Sunghoon who continued to eye the lubricant section.
“But you just had your heat like two weeks ago? I even booked you a grand suite under my card which you’re still not wiring me back—but besides the point—didn’t you just get dicked down a couple of weeks back?”
“You’re too–” Sunghoon leaped around their cart to cover Jake’s burdened mouth before delivering a good smack on his friend’s chest. “Why are you so undeniably loud on matters we should not be talking about in public? It’s times like this that makes me wonder how it’s so unusual for you not to know shit about sex when your mouth belongs to the dumpster.”
“You grew up in the suburbs, mind you.” Jake fires back, already stepping back and wiping his mouth. “And I’m genuinely curious because that amount isn’t something I consider normal.”
“I’m mated with an alpha. What's not normal is me not buying that amount during the nesting season.”
Nesting season …Jake shivered at the thought while eyeing their growing cart of what now looked like a honeymoon explosion kit.
“You wouldn't get it. I doubt you ever would, considering you don’t even hold hands with your husband .”
It was now Jake’s turn to land a smack against Sunghoon’s chest.
“Don’t go there.”
“Oh yes I will if you don’t stop shitting on my preparations for an occurrence you never once participated in despite being married for three years now. Seriously, if some desperate writer got their hands on your story? That would be the plot of the decade.”
Now that might seem like such a humorous description. Such a humorous statement that was probably just halfway true but it was not. Despite the humor of their rebuttals, every point made and names announced were part of the plot in Jake’s story he called his life.
His life as a married but an unmated man who only got to hold his spouse’s hand on the day of their wedding and only because he was about to fall face first on their enormous cake when he side stepped while going down the altar for a picture.
“Heeseung must be a stone at this point. He’s a damn fossil.”
Sunghoon closes his lips and turns away before Jake could even mourn his statement further.
Because to speak the truth? Jake knows even the concept of celibacy would shy away from the way he was living his married life.
Entering the clinic a couple times a month shouldn't be this embarrassing if he was not the owner’s youngest son who his father continuously boasts to the medical board.
“Mr.Sim!” Sunoo, one of the new interns on his first year of residency, hiccuped between what looked like his fifth cup of coffee. “I thought your appointment was not due until next week?”
Jake knew half his face was probably the answer itself but he still tried to find some strength in his core to respond with words. “Just pain prescriptions…I don’t think I can last next week if I don’t pop some in until then.”
Nodding out of pity and courtesy, Sunoo was quick to accommodate the young heir. Not even a minute longer, Jake was already situated inside the VIP lounge just a couple of doors away from his father’s office. A cooling pad was also placed on his forehead where Sunoo was still gently hovering around his equally heated face.
A soothing scent of what smelled like almonds and the purest milk almost lulled Jake to sleep.
“Are you mated?” The question was out of his mouth before he could think it over for another minute.
Jake probably heard the faint gasp but it was soon covered by another layer of the sweet scent he wanted to drown in.
“Uh…do you mean for a particular heat cycle or…ever?” Sunoo timidly clarified after a few seconds.
Jake almost felt bad when he felt the little tremble against the towel that was soothing his skin. But everything was just too much. He can’t even see properly because of the unexplainable burn inside his body. He knows it was not normal when he was already dressed down with both his bare feet now soaked in an ice bucket that Sunoo had to call the utility for.
So that question was nowhere near the conscious part of his wits when all Jake felt was the need to drown anywhere near the Arctic zone just to cool his body down.
“Um, well…not yet but I already met him.” A small pause followed then a slight shake that Jake thinks was the younger one smiling. “He’s in the radiology department.”
Jake was sure there was a smile on the other’s face.
He tried not to let it get to him but the heaviness of bearing the thought of everyone else he met having their mates so conveniently open and just normal was starting to eat him alive. And quite literally now that he was burning up.
“Mr. Sim? I don’t want to get ahead of myself but I think this is your heat coming up. It might just be your body resisting it for you to feel this heat.” Sunoo frowns when he notices the older panting even more the longer they stay there.
The next available doctor was on an overseas convention so rescheduling an appointment at this point was suicide. But then again even if Jake was the hospital owner’s son, being a walk-in patient did not give him that pass to be accommodated than the listed patients. It was just the ethics of the medical institution and probably one of the reasons why it was thriving for years now.
“I’ll be fine…I think I just need those pain prescriptions…” Jake pants against the ice pack on his cheek before everything went black.
..
The first thing Jake noticed was the coldness of his skin wherever he thinks he was placed on. Maybe it was water? Maybe he was finally ascending above the heavens right where he rightfully belonged.
But he still felt hot. The warmness was numbing. Brutally crisping something inside him despite the coldness of the place he was in.
Then he hears it and he knows he can never be wrong.
“Does he need to take it every hour? Or will one pill a day be good?”
“Alright, I’ll take note of this. Thank you.”
Jake knows it was a hand that slid its way across his forehead trailing down to his cheeks across his nose bridge…then lips…chin and up his bottom lip and then…
“I know you’re awake, Jaeyun.”
Slowly forcing an eye open, Jake fights a tremble when he straight out locked eyes with Heeseung who was still clad in his pilot uniform.
Out of all the days the man had to wear it around him, it had to be today when everything felt too heightened for Jake to sense.
“Hi,” Jake managed to croak out as he forced his eyes away just as he opened them.
“How are you feeling?”
Like death. “Just a little nauseous but better…I think I can even stand after this.”
Heeseung does not respond after that. The older man marinates the situation and lets Jake process his emotions first and the evident turmoil he was going through with the way the hospital bed was silently creaking with how much he was fidgeting.
“You’re in your pre-heat already. Something about your cycle being earlier than expected that is why your temperature was on the roof and couldn’t be leveled because of its sudden notice…or lack thereof.” Heeseung’s explanation was both firm and sympathetic. The latter being understood in a way that was probably coming from an area of concern courtesy of being a fellow endurer of pain and discomfort during their mating cycles due to their peculiar setup.
“Oh,” Jake only gets to say. “Well…that is unfortunate for me and um…you.”
He tried to supplement that more but when Heeseung continued to stay mute as he continued to half sit there as he struggled to expound on his last phrase, Jake thinks cruelty really spares no one.
“Um… well then there isn’t really much to discuss. I’m—I’m going to discuss this with my doctor at most and the rest follows according to our agreed routine. It just came earlier than expected so nothing too bad that–”
“Your body will never stop heating up as it has reached its maximum endurance of spending heats alone.”
This shuts Jake up completely. His bones were probably melting under the sheets and he was certain his blood pressure was borderline low.
That can’t mean any good. Not with the way things are between them and the practice of consummation was an act greater than treason and probably death because their union to begin with was out of formal affair.
“Damn,” it was meant to be whispered inside his head but it was out of his mouth in a heartbeat.
If Heeseung heard it, the other paid no significant attention as to not make the situation worse. It was already a hard realization and a fact they could not change and with the silence filling the room, the mere realization of the situation was already a world’s grief for them to entertain.
There isn’t any room for a solution to be made at this point.
“I’ve already signed the papers and filled in your information. We can go after you finish your IV solution.”
..
During Jake’s last year of college, his degree of medical biology magically translated to being his father’s right hand man in their medical empire because of his brother’s religious calling back in Brisbane. Having decided to be the Lord’s vessel, his brother took off to commit to his spiritual calling and Jake was advised not to practice his degree and proceed with it. That shift meant he needed a good alliance, a good union to see him through the business.
And where else can he find potential people for that?
This is where the Asian family values come in.
Jake was 21 when he first met Heeseung over a fancy dinner where a dark blue velvet box sat between them from across the table.
“Do you prefer I call you Jaeyun?” Heeseung asked, who back then was someone Jake called as ‘Mr. L’ for the very reason that the man was wearing a full blown suit when they were under a 35 degrees celsius heat.
“I think Jake will do.” He nods more to himself, not too dense to read that the other man was not interested in him for even a pinch of time when all it took was that line of conversation between them then a couple of minutes later, he was engaged.
Jake thinks even Cinderella’s situation from that ball was better than his. In his life, the midnight curse was forever lived.
And no fairy mothers to be of help.
“It’s time you guys fuck.” Or maybe it came in the form of a Park Sunghoon in Jake’s little morbid life at the moment.
“You have a sinner’s mouth, Hoon. I hope you know that.”
But his good friend only brought him back to his current reality in the rawest possible way so Sunghoon continues.
“And I don’t know how else to put it and tell it to you put you need to get railed for a straight week with only water breaks in between to make up for all the heat and rut cycles the both of you decided to spend in a fucking hospital room away from each other.”
He didn’t want to entertain such truth. The brutality of Sunghoon’s interpretation (or what could be deemed as mere narration of real events at this point) was burning him more when the realization of their current situation was coming into light.
But it was the truth. Their peculiar union despite it being the grandest wedding between two conglomerate families was a tabloid rush of news in their social empire, spared them no immunity to their innate mechanisms.
It must have been the moon cycle for them to be fated mates taken out of an agreed alliance but it was the truth. If there would be a memory he can commit up to his last breath, Jake would be sure to indulge the stars when he remembered how hard his heart fell to his stomach when he saw Heeseung’s heat mark resembled the very one he has.
He remembered running inside their newly purchased 1.02 acre lot in a private valley where each house has an estimated 10,000 square feet of living space at minimal.
A week after that on his first preheat exactly a month before their wedding, his initials were subtly patched on the older’s heat mark.
“I need some alcohol for this.” Jake bites his own finger to get him back to his current doom. It’s been a day after his cute little hospital visit and his preheat symptoms were continuously annihilating him from within.
“You’re insane.” Sunghoon throws at him, eyes hard as he continues to finish fixing Jake his usual organic concoction that could temporarily ease him from his pain junctures.
“I probably am! No—hell, I am with the way my body burns every damn minute.”
Sunghoon continued to stir and paid Jake no mind (gave him the silence to vent).
Jake feels another clogged muscle burning at the back of his head. His eyes were warm, sight blurry with unshed tears but he couldn’t even sweat to release even a pinch of this heat.
“He—he couldn’t even look at me on the way home. I get it, I was gone from the medications and barely responsive but…” A pitiful sigh burned his mouth as he stretched on the marvelous granite counter top of their vacant kitchen that could fit three more families. “He was there. He was beside me and he knew how unwell I was.”
The thing is, Jake was never one to place a cap on what they had. To begin with, a cap was never needed to contain whatever it was between them. Heeseung was family in a sense that they were binded by law and the legal union was just the way it was supposed to be but to look at it outside the legality that their rings associate them with, there was nothing there but respect.
Respect that played around cold dinners and empty mornings.
“You must really be in heat if you’re talking like this. It’s been three years.”
They’ve been married for three years.
The first time they ever held hands was on their wedding night.
“Is he coming home tonight at least?”
“I think he’s planning to declare his leave. I heard him requesting it on the way home.”
Sunghoon continued stirring while Jake replayed his words in his head, mouth heavy and tingling.
..
It was out of formality for them to discuss their arrangement when their cycles ever align. Again, the most peculiar case of an alpha-omega marriage was lived by them so it was inevitable for them to seek special services to counsel a tad bit of normalcy and help to sustain their needs during those times.
“Is it tolerable?” Jake’s doctor was one of his godfathers. It might have been a bullet to his head to get someone with an intimate association to him as his medical physician but Jake figured he needed at least one person in his life aside from his family to give him practical and rational decisions to navigate his curious case of being an unmated married man.
“It’s the strongest so far. What worries me is my cycle being messed up. It was not supposed to come for another month or two. This has never happened before.”
“It’s because you reached your maximum tolerance.” Wiping under his glasses, the old doctor tried his best to stay neutral despite his worried demeanor. After all, this was the same child he’s held during his first cry.
Perhaps, Jake was loveable like that. Even to people he was not biologically related with, he crafts a certain gentleness that will wind them under his wing.
“I've been told. I just didn't want to comprehend it to that extent." Jake grows silent as the reality of having the same two medical opinions finally settled on him.
"So…does that mean I’m nearing my death bed? Like I’m about to die and I need to settle all my land titles right after this consultation type of urgent?”
“Well if I’m being frank and literal then yes. You might just reach your death bed if you still don’t mate in your upcoming heat to which I’m not understanding because you’re married. What’s the issue?”
Silence filled the consultation office. At one point, only the clock ticking kept the space alive as he felt his body start to warm up again at the possibility of having to shed light to such a controversial truth.
“Just yes or no from here. When I ask you from our previous consultations about your heat copings, what are the extremes between the two of you? I am talking in absolutes from the start of your marriage because this type of reaction is not normal for anyone.”
“It's a partnership at this point.” Jake squeezed in, the back of his neck heating up when he tried to go around the answer. “And I’m going to answer in absolutes as well and say that the last time we ever held each other’s hand was during the night of the marriage…and that’s all we ever did so far.”
Jake watches his doctor struggle to maintain his composure. His hand trembling from the fountain pen as the old man tried to compose himself at the revelation.
“In simpler terms, from the start of your marriage which was three years ago, the two of you never mated at all?”
“It was an arranged alliance. Father and everyone else arranged this. I never had a hunch he never told you about this.”
“And I wish he told me sooner. He really should have told me sooner.”
Jake watched his doctor nod more to himself: solid, firm and if he squints enough, troubled.
Coming home from the doctor after bearing such news, the reality hits Jake all at once when he takes notice of Heeseung’s work car being parked out front. His husband’s escalade was never parked haphazardly even on days where he had emergency work calls and needed the vehicle to be on the go.
“He’s home?” Jake was quick to ask the passing maid who tended to his things. He received a polite confirmation and worry stricken eyes.
“But sir, he’s been holed up in his room since arriving around five in the morning. He didn’t come down for breakfast and lunch.”
Jake was already halfway from entering their house with Layla pawing at his trousers before he could even push the double doors open. “It’s 3:00 in the afternoon.”
Risking a quick glance on his wrist watch while the maid only stared back at him with the same frown, something told him this was not a casual homecoming.
He understood it clearly the moment he stepped inside their house and the strong smell of alpine wood and something that was entirely Heeseung rendered him to a complete stop. He could feel his blood pressure shooting up, the warmness of his blood and pulsing of his eyes heightening the more he indulges himself with the fused scent.
“In simpler terms, from the start of your marriage which was three years ago, the two of you never mated at all?”
Could it be?
His doctor’s exact words from a couple of hours ago paralyzed him while he takes two steps at a time to reach the older’s room. Every step was numbing, he felt like the air was never enough and by the last step, he was certain he was drenched from the waist up.
In front of the room, even with a meter distance, Jake could already hear the distant groans and mewls.
Heat enveloped his whole being while his limbs seemed to disintegrate the closer he got to the door. Placing a shaking palm against the metal knob, he has half a mind to walk away when he realizes why he came running in the first place.
Within those three years, Heeseung never once spared him even an inquiry about his heats and never offered an implied aid of intervention when he’s going through his own. Jake’s not one to count or even hold it against the other when he’s sensibly aware of where they stand but why was he standing there, panting away half his soul, ready to break down the door just to get to his mate?
It must be the pre-death hormones, if those fucking exists.
His train of thoughts and the entirety of his equilibrium got disrupted by the door flinging open on its own as he was met by a pair of teary and red rimmed eyes.
Sweat covered the entirety of his bare chest, the lean muscles flexing with every abdomen motion. Jake paused by the entrance, eyes staring straight at Heeseung’s own one before a firm hand enclosed itself around his wrist to pull him inside the burning room.
“Hee–” Jake half protested but it was drowned by the sound of the room being locked.
Heeseung was not even verbal at this point. He only pants, the sounds rumbling through his chest that was against Jake’s equally sweating back.
“You’re…you’re burning up, let me just get you—”
“Jaeyun…” it was half murmured against the shell of his ear. Everything was too hot. Heeseung barely even touched him but to feel the solid mass of his mate against his skin, Jake was fighting his own demons not to make any sound.
Even Heeseung’s voice was lost to his inner alpha. The sound entirely too deep and animalistic that Jake tried to remind himself this is his human mate.
When he felt the first grasp of palm sliding up along his sides, Jake was quick to jump away to force some distance between them. The first few seconds of Heeseung’s fingers against his skin was already enough to leave a path of ruthless heat and the thought of being in the older’s complete hold was enough to drive him to hysterics.
In a flash before he can get himself to think, a mid hard punch landed across Heeseung’s face, forcing his cheek to bear the blow while Jake jumped farther back to tend to his pulsing fist from the solid cheek.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” Jake whimpered as he cradled his fist under his chin. But his self-inflicted pain was wiped out when he heard the low growl of someone in front of him, now realizing that the blood from his skin was not even from his own.
“Shit, I’m so sorry….so sorry. I’m—” Rushing to where Heeseung was bent to his side, a hand cradling his cheek with both of his eyes closed, Jake completely drowns down his walls.
He figured, if he was at the brink of his death, courtesy of his recent medical visit, then he might as well drive his own grief all the way down and embrace the end with the person he was meant to live it with.
“I’m so sorry,” Jake whispered and held his breath the moment he found the courage to place a trembling palm against Heeseung’s uninjured cheek to guide the man’s face upright.
He watches how Heeseung never opened his eyes. How the man only leans into his touch, squeezing the uninjured side tighter against his moist palm as his skin caught the fresh batch of wetness from the other’s eyes.
“Hurts…” Heeseung murmured against his skin. His hot breath fanning the moist skin and Jake can feel his own eyes watering.
“Can you breathe with me for a bit? Let’s calm you down first and we’ll talk.” With his other hand preparing to grasp the other side of Heeseung’s face, Jake was surprised when he felt his free hand being taken completely until it was settled against the side of Heeseung’s face that he punched.
The skin was so warm and pulsing. Very quite telling of the impact and how worked up the older must be to control his rage.
Then Heeseung opened his eyes, now clearer but still red at the rim with unshed tears and a certain melancholy that pulled at Jake’s chest.
“Need you…” Heeseung says straight to his skin, right under his pulse against his wrist as he stared straight at him before his eyes closed and half his body weight collapsed on top of Jake.
Heeseung slept until 11 in the evening.
Within the duration he was out, Jake completely played the part of a spouse with a lover in the army as he waited on the other end of the bed with clasped hands and a moist towel he replaces every 10 minutes against Heeseung’s forehead.
“He was burning up. I was not able to get his temperature but that definitely went above 39°C and we’re not even talking pre-rut.”
“But what if he is…” Jake was about to yap more in his medical jargon when Sunghoon’s sudden conclusion puts an end to his babble.
“Like you said, his fever was to that extent and this all happened out of blue. But looking at your current timeline, you’re actually on your pre-heat as we speak.”
Jake stilled from where he sat by the edge of the bed where he could still see the bathroom’s door that was left slightly ajar.
“I hate that you’re making sense but given our timeline for the past three years, his rut and my heat never aligned. I need you to understand that.”
“And I need you to also understand that your pre-heat also came unannounced so if your cycle was messed up, what makes you think Heeseung’s could be spared?”
Jake's silence momentarily numbed their mouths. On the other end, Sunghoon was starting to feel bad at the heavy implications he was telling his friend but honesty is probably the best intervention for the situation Jake was in.
“Look, alright take all that shit out. Maybe an ice bath would do the trick.” Sunghoon’s voice flowed inside the dimly lit room that had Jake’s fingertips freezing as he blasted it on the lowest temperature to contain Heeseung’s fever.
“If I had other friends, I wouldn’t put you on speed dial like this.” Blurting it out of relief no matter how temporary, Sunghoon’s resolution comforted Jake as long as it deviated away from the idea that the other is possibly nearing his own rut in sync with his.
“I’m trying to help!”
“Lower your voice,” Jake lowly hissed as he turned away from the slightly opened bathroom where Heeseung was finally taking a shower he burned a hand for. “Besides, a warm shower might do him good since he needs to let that heat out from within. He needs his pores opened, idiot.”
“Well this idiot has been completely mated and fucked all throughout his heat cycles so I’m actually doing you a favor here to take lessons from me.”
“Well then I don’t need it. You and I both know we’re not going down that road. Might as well teach him prayer litanies by now to convince him we get our mate bond removed from the council even if it means a couple of years deducted to our lifeline.”
“Hang up, Jaeyun.”
With his back turned, Jake can feel something in him drain at the sudden voice behind him. Sunghoon must have heard it too as he heard a faint curse from the other end, followed by a squeak before the call was dropped on his end.
Turning slowly with bated breath, Jake accepted defeat as he dropped the call along with his heart.
“I didn’t hear you coming out.” He managed to let out, voice thick and unstable. “Can I just explain what I meant, it was supp–”
“We’re never doing that.”
Too rattled to process the other’s words, Jake’s rebuttal dies inside his mouth when he notices how Heeseung was bare with only a towel wrapped around his strong waist.
“Um,” Jake can’t even find it in him to hide how his mad eyes studied the expanse of his mate’s exposed skin. How the steam and droplets of water actually made his own skin moist along with the burn of his eyes as they recklessly followed the wet patch of skin in front of him.
And without any other words, Heeseung dropped the towel right in front of him.
“Heeseung!” Jake bellowed as he jumped back, hand over his mouth but his eyes remained focused .
Now Jake was not new to the anatomy of a human. He knows it like the back of his hand, courtesy of his pre-med degree that he sadly was not able to completely pursue. But this one…this thing was something taken out of an intimate illusion.
Over what ifs, of hypothetical thoughts bracketed away from natural tendencies.
“What? We’re married and it’s going to stay that way.” There was a certain hardness edging around the end of Heeseung’s statement. Almost like a direct referral, a telling of his side.
Jake hears it but his eyes fail to move away from the catastrophic confirmation of what he already knew.
Heeseung, his mate, his alpha, was indeed gifted . Never lacking, strong and capable.
Just not his .
“Yeah about that…” Jake finally bears his strength in and looks away to let his cheeks breathe. “Given what happened to me the other day, I think we should really talk about how to handle our cycles. I’m quite certain this goes way above being a random leap. It was never this intense for the both of us before.”
Heeseung took his time to get dressed. He barely even wore his sweats properly, rolling the waistband down to his v line which only confirmed his lack of underwear before throwing on some loose shirt that had Jake whiffing the air silently to mourn a scent that belonged to him.
“Today was your appointment, was it? How did it go?”
Biting the inside of his cheeks, Jake contemplated and weighed his options. One would be to lie lightly and tell Heeseung that yes, their messed up cycles and the alignment of it was triggered by external stress and what not. Such a domestic reason was the safest to deliver but with the caliber of his husband, Jake knew this would not resolve him for even a fraction.
The second option was to tell the truth, come clean and extinguish every open option they could think of to save themselves.
Jake settles for the in between he was thinking of.
“We need to plan around ways to handle our heat and rut if they ever come unannounced and completely off our usual cycle like mine. This is coming from the potential instance where it might align with each other and as medically commented, we can potentially reach our maximum tolerance if we keep spending them apart from each other.”
Heeseung remained his distance but the look he gave the younger was meant to pick him apart.
“In layman’s terms?”
Jake was sure the tips of his ears bled red.
“Something about dying if we don’t fuck.”