statistical anomaly

by chitthaara

Summary:

Betas can’t get pregnant. That’s the rule.

Namjoon doesn’t mean to be the exception, not from casually sleeping with an alpha who’s only meant to be his friend.

It’s probably his fourth time reading the same paragraph, but Namjoon doesn’t notice until the words start looping in on themselves, turning into a vague mess of vowels and jargon. Something about market inflation and long-term equilibrium, but all the words feel like they’re sticking to each other, like bread stuck to the roof of his mouth. The kind of dry he only notices because the apartment’s quiet, save for the hum of the AC and the soft tumble of water through pipes.

He blinks. The page is still open, spine pressed flat, his elbow propped to keep it from closing. His glasses are barely clinging to the bridge of his nose. The book is bent slightly under him, pressed against the dip of his belly, and he wiggles a little to adjust, squinting at the print without really caring to understand it.

The couch is big, a tan thing with those boxy armrests and stitched-down cushions that squeak a little if you put your knee in the wrong place. Namjoon’s sprawled on it chest-down like a lazy house cat, one leg stretched and the other bent slightly at the knee, his foot dangling off the edge like he’s still too long for furniture made for regular humans. 

He’s aware that Yoongi’s in the bathroom, the sound of the sink faucet having stopped a few minutes ago. The door creaks faintly when it opens, and Namjoon doesn’t lift his head.

There’s the sound of a towel being tossed onto the hallway chair, followed by the soft, bare-footed pad of Yoongi making his way into the living room. Namjoon doesn’t have to see him to know he’s probably in those loose black pajama pants and nothing else. His hair’s always a little damp because he's too lazy to dry it completely.  

“You gonna fall asleep like that?” Yoongi’s voice is dry, halfway through a smirk.

Namjoon snorts and finally turns his head just enough to glare back, cheek squished against his arm. “Like what?” 

“Folded like a lawn chair.”

Namjoon clicks his tongue. “This is comfortable.”

Yoongi yawns through a smile, lazy and amused. “Such a stubborn fuck.”

Namjoon sticks his tongue out. 

Yoongi walks around and drops down onto the opposite cushion, sitting where Namjoon’s feet are.

“Hey, don’t sit on my toes.” Namjoon flexes them dramatically.

“You’re the one who leaves them everywhere.” Yoongi leans forward, elbows on his knees, looking at him now. “Scooch back.” 

Namjoon hums, shifting his hips slightly against the cushions. “Why are you in my space, anyway?”

Yoongi laughs through his nose, that fond sound that barely escapes his throat. “Aren’t you a bit big for this couch?”

“Fuck off. I’m exactly the right amount of big,” Namjoon says, without lifting his face. He’s lying, and they both know it. The spine of the book is pressing into his sternum.

Yoongi doesn’t respond immediately. Namjoon hears the faint scrape of fingernails against fabric. The air smells faintly like whatever moisturizer Yoongi just used, that earthy cedar-lavender one that clings to his skin in the nicest way. It mixes with the lingering scent of the laundry detergent, fresh from the cycle he’d forgotten to take out earlier.

Then Yoongi shifts again, sliding his hands from his own knees to Namjoon’s ankles, then up the back of Namjoon’s calves. They’re warm, slightly rough, and casual enough that Namjoon doesn’t register anything until they climb further up to the dip behind his knees, then his thighs.

He stiffens just slightly. “What’re you—?”

Yoongi hums. “You got any plans for the next hour?”

“I was trying to read.” Namjoon tries. 

Yoongi doesn’t buy it. “No you weren’t.”

Namjoon kicks one foot half-heartedly. “Don’t just feel me up out of nowhere.”

Yoongi’s thumbs press into the meat of Namjoon’s thighs, slow and steady, grabbing palmfuls. He leans forward now, both palms settling on Namjoon’s hips.

“Lift up a little,” Yoongi says, voice almost too normal for what he’s about to do. 

Namjoon groans. “Hyung…”

Yoongi slides his thumbs along the hem of Namjoon’s sweats and pulls gently. “Up.”

Namjoon just breathes against the page of his book like it’s suddenly too heavy to lift. Then, with a slow exhale, he shifts his weight onto his elbows, lifting his hips just enough. It’s not dignified. The hem of his sweatpants bunches in a weird crease, and he can feel the way his tank top scrunches under him.

Yoongi’s hands slip beneath the waistband, warm, dry palms that feel big on his bare skin. He cups Namjoon’s ass like he’s sculpting something with his hands, fingers spreading lightly, then squeezing firmly.

Namjoon’s voice is flat. “Here?”

Yoongi kisses the small of his back, just a press of lips. “Don’t pretend you don’t like it like this.”

Namjoon sighs, too resigned to argue. He closes the book, places it down by the armrest with one hand, and peels his glasses off his face to place them over the coffee table. “You’re impossible.”

“I know.” Yoongi squeezes him again. His voice is closer now, right behind Namjoon’s ear. “Baby.”

The word drags heat down Namjoon’s spine. 

Yoongi tugs the sweatpants lower, carefully, easing them over Namjoon’s ass without resistance. The fabric drags across his thighs, down to his knees, bunching there in soft folds. 

Namjoon doesn’t resist. His cock’s half-hard already, resting against the cushion beneath him. The air hits Namjoon’s skin and his hips twitch slightly. 

Yoongi kisses his waist and drags his lips lower. His hand smooths down the curve of Namjoon’s ass, then spreads him open with a slow pull that makes him suck in a breath.  

“God, I love it when you get like this,” Yoongi mutters, fingertips dragging down the cleft of his ass.

Namjoon shifts his weight. “Like what?”

“Mouthy but soft where I need it.”

The heat in Namjoon’s cheeks is annoying. He covers his face with one arm. “Shut up.”

Yoongi’s hands trace the softest touch across Namjoon’s inner thighs, to where the skin is warmer. His slit, just beneath his cock, is flushed, soft lips glistening with just a bit of slick and the folds relaxed in that way they only get around Yoongi.

Yoongi breathes out softly. “Fuck.”

He spreads Namjoon gently, thumbs that pull him open a little, enough to bare the pink, glistening inside. Namjoon makes a noise, embarrassed already, even though there’s no one here to hear it but Yoongi.

“You’re so wet already.”

Namjoon mutters into the crook of his elbow. “‘s your damn alpha musk in this house.” 

“Perfect for me,” Yoongi says. 

They don’t use lube unless Yoongi fucks Namjoon’s ass. Yoongi never remembers it, or maybe he does, and just likes it like this. His fingers come up slick anyway, gliding between the folds like they’re made to fit. He presses two fingers just against Namjoon’s entrance and feels the warmth there.

Namjoon’s breath stutters. “You’re not even gonna warm me up?”

Yoongi’s thumbs dig in like he’s testing how much give there is. “I am prepping you.” 

“That’s not—mmn.”

Yoongi pushes the fingers in halfway, just enough to make Namjoon clench down and gasp.

“Hyung.”

Yoongi leans down and kisses the back of Namjoon’s shoulder. “You’re such a greedy beta,” he murmurs, one thumb teasing the clit.

Namjoon rolls his eyes. “You’re the one ready to mount me on the couch.”

Yoongi laughs, soft against his skin, and presses his thumb a little deeper. “I’ll be gentle,” he says, the lie smooth as anything.

Namjoon huffs. “Don’t lie.” 

Yoongi’s cock brushes the inside of Namjoon’s vulva as he lines up behind him, one hand on Namjoon’s hip, the other pressing down gently at the base of his spine to arch him just a little more.

Namjoon resists just enough to be petty. “Could’ve just done this on the bed but you’re a pervert.” 

“Shut up, Joon-ah.” Yoongi slaps his ass, not intending to hurt, but the burn seeps through his skin anyway. His cock bumps against the slick heat of Namjoon’s slit and slides through the folds without pushing in just yet. The head is already wet. He drags it up once, until it nudges Namjoon’s cock and then back down, wetting him both ways.

Namjoon rolls his eyes, even if Yoongi can’t see it. 

The sting is barely gone when Yoongi thrusts in all at once, deep enough to seat himself fully inside. Namjoon’s arms jolt against the cushion, and his cock twitches where it’s trapped beneath him.

“Shit hyung.” Namjoon hisses through his teeth, shoulders tightening. His fingers dig into the side of the sofa. “Fuck. Be gentle, asshole.”

Yoongi’s already bent over him, chest to back, mouth brushing the side of his neck. “You like it when it hurts.” 

“Warn me at least.” Namjoon glares into the cushion. “Geez.”

Yoongi moves again, just enough to pull out halfway and push back in, hips rocking with maddening restraint. “You say that, but your pussy’s already sucking me in,” he rasps into Namjoon’s ear.

Namjoon makes a noise, offended, embarrassed, maybe even turned on. Probably all three. “Don’t call it that.”

“Why?”

“Because—” he gasps as Yoongi thrusts again, deeper this time, “—it sounds—ah—filthy.”

“Then what do I call it?” Yoongi rocks his hips forward, deeper. “It’s not your ass I’m fucking right now, is it?”

And that shuts Namjoon up for a moment, because what do you say to that?

The rhythm Yoongi sets is slow at first but it dissolves into something faster. His hips roll in a curve, hammering just right. The sofa creaks under them, the occasional faint thump of the backrest against the wall, but it’s not loud. It’s rhythmic. It blends into the night sounds of the apartment. 

Namjoon lets his eyes flutter closed. “You’re so—nghh—rough today.” 

“It’s because of your scent,” Yoongi grunts, voice heady with lust. “It’s so—fuck—it’s so strong today, so good.” His nose skims the back of Namjoon’s neck, lingering there like he’s scenting him. “You smell different,” he murmurs, breath ragged. “It’s messing with my head.” 

Namjoon exhales a soft, shaky laugh. “Maybe your brain just short-circuits when you see my ass.” 

“Not denying that,” Yoongi breathes, but his hands tighten at Namjoon’s waist, anchoring him. “But it’s more than that.”

Namjoon groans, breath hitching when Yoongi hits just a little deeper. 

Yoongi shifts his angle, just slightly, pulling Namjoon’s hips up with both hands now, tilting him higher so his cock pushes in at a sharper angle. It hits that part of Namjoon’s heat that makes his vision blur for a second.

Namjoon gasps. “There, fuck—there.”

“I know.” Yoongi doesn’t even sound smug, he just knows. His hands tighten around Namjoon’s waist. “You always clench when I get there.”

Namjoon mutters something unintelligible into the cushion.

“What was that, Joon-ah?”

Namjoon lifts his head enough to turn and glare over his shoulder. “I said you’re a bastard.”

Yoongi just fucks into him harder. 

The sofa’s cushion dips beneath Namjoon’s hips with each movement, a quiet creak in the frame where weight shifts. Namjoon bites into the fabric of the cushion, cheek resting against his folded arms. He’s warm all over, belly tight, the stretch fading into something almost good.

Yoongi thrusts into him like he knows how much is enough. Never too fast or never too slow. 

“Your hips keep pushing back,” Yoongi grunts, hand sliding along Namjoon’s waist. “You gonna pretend you don’t like this?” 

Namjoon exhales into the couch. “It’s a biological response—ah—fuck—hyung slow down!”

Yoongi’s angle shifts just enough that it pulls a noise from his throat and has him leaking around Yoongi’s cock. “Baby,” Yoongi says, and Namjoon doesn’t answer, not right away. “Joon-ah.”

Namjoon turns his head slightly. He’s sure his cheeks are flushed. “What.”

“You’re making a mess,” Yoongi points, glancing down. “You’re dripping.”

Namjoon lifts his middle finger without looking at him but curls it when he feels Yoongi’s cock in his guts. 

Yoongi laughs, short and quiet but doesn’t lose his pace. His grip on Namjoon’s hips tightens. 

“It’s insane when you get—fuck—like this,” Yoongi says after a moment, voice lower now. “Fucked dumb.” 

Namjoon exhales like he doesn’t want to admit it feels good. His fingers curl around the couch cushion. “Fuck, just—keep going.”

Yoongi leans over him more, bracing one hand beside his head, the other still curled firmly on his waist. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Fuck yeah.”

Namjoon swears under his breath, but he’s already close. He can feel that tight pull just behind his navel, the way his slick is pooling, the stickiness where it runs down his thighs. Yoongi’s cock is getting thicker like it always does when he’s close.

The next few thrusts are firmer. He shifts his grip and fucks into him with a rhythm that feels like muscle memory. The sound of it fills the room, wet and obscene, the couch frame sighing beneath them. Namjoon’s breathing shifts again, and his cock hangs heavy between his legs, leaking onto the throw blanket below.

Yoongi’s voice breaks into a grunt. “Touch your cock.”

Namjoon barely hears it, brain melting into mush. 

“Baby.” Yoongi calls again. 

Namjoon reaches under himself slowly. His knuckles brush the cushion, then he wraps a hand around his cock and strokes in time with Yoongi’s thrusts. It’s clumsy, but enough to make his breath hitch.

“You’re clenching—oh fuck,” Yoongi grunts.

Namjoon grits out, “Don’t stop—hyung please.”

Yoongi fucks into him harder now, one hand braced beside Namjoon’s shoulder, the other gripping his waist, thumb brushing just above where he’s slick and flushed. Namjoon keeps his forehead pressed to the couch. He doesn’t say much, just exhales with each push in, soft shaky sounds that don’t quite form words.

Yoongi’s close. It shows in the way he lets the tension in his shoulders take over, the shallow drag of his hips speeding up. His breath is in Namjoon’s hair now. He leans over him fully, mouth near his ear. “You gonna come?”

Namjoon nods, barely. His hands are still moving, thighs trembling.

Yoongi fucks him through it. He doesn’t slow down. Namjoon gasps once, a sharp sound that gets punched out of his chest and spills into his palm, a wet smear across the couch blanket.

Yoongi’s breath is shallow now, hips snapping harder. He shifts his angle, one hand braced against the backrest of the sofa, the other keeping Namjoon pressed down.

Namjoon tries to brace himself, but Yoongi’s already rutting faster now. His breathing is rougher, and Namjoon knows that pace, knows how Yoongi moves when his knot’s about to swell. 

“Hyung—” Namjoon gasps, voice caught between want and warning. “Knot—gimme—fuck.”

“Yeah,” Yoongi says, breathless. “Hold still.”

Namjoon obeys, shifting his hips back, meeting the next thrust, and his cunt flutters around Yoongi’s cock.

Yoongi groans, the sound punching out of him. “I’m almost there—nghh.”

The knot starts to swell fully, right at the base of Yoongi’s cock. Namjoon can feel it, the push-pull of it inside him, the way it stretches him open with every grind of Yoongi’s hips.

His own cunt is dripping now, trapped against the cushion, slick and spent.

Yoongi leans down, mouth right against his ear. “You’re so fuckin’ tight when I knot you. Can barely move.”

“Don’t—don’t say that,” Namjoon pants.

Yoongi pushes in deeper, grinding his knot against Namjoon’s hole, testing how far he can go. “Wanna see how much you can stretch for me.”

Namjoon groans, the burn blooming low and sweet. “God, you’re gross.”

Yoongi kisses the back of his neck, right where his scent gland would be if he were an omega. He doesn’t say anything about it, but he always lingers there.

The knot presses in deeper, slick squelching around it, and then with a final rock of his hips, Yoongi’s knot pops inside, locking them together.

Namjoon arches up with a sharp gasp, body jolting. “Fuck—”

Yoongi’s groan is low and broken. He presses in all the way as he spills inside. The warmth floods Namjoon’s slit, thick and pulsing, and Namjoon cums through his cunt this time, moaning into the cushion, eyes squeezing shut. He can feel every twitch of Yoongi’s cock inside him, every pulse of come.

The afterglow sits thick behind his ribs, edged out only by the slow, weighty swell of Yoongi’s knot.

“Too much?” Yoongi’s thumb rubs gently at his sides, grounding him. “Tell me if it is,” he adds, gentler than before.

“No,” Namjoon mutters. “Just—can’t breathe like this.”

Yoongi hums like he already knew that. He beckons Namjoon carefully, both of them twitching at the drag, and moves his hand from Namjoon’s hip to his chest, coaxing him up. “C’mere.”

Namjoon lets himself be guided, pliant but heavy, muscles slack with aftershocks. Yoongi shifts back against the couch cushions, legs spread, arms steadying him as he pulls Namjoon into his lap, back pressed into his chest. Namjoon’s thighs settle over Yoongi’s, slick-sticky between them. The knot stays snug where it is, a dull ache tucked deep.

“Better?” Yoongi asks.

Namjoon nods slowly. He shifts slightly and winces. “Used to think your big cock was hot,” he mutters. “But now I find it annoying.”

“Sorry.” 

“Don’t. I know you get all proud about it.” 

Yoongi chuckles under his breath, one hand smoothing up Namjoon’s spine. His palm settles between Namjoon’s shoulder blades like it belongs there.

The room’s dim except for the TV still running, something with canned laughter and soft jazz, half-muted. Outside, the wind’s picked up, brushing at the windows.

Namjoon exhales again, steadier this time. “I think your knot’s getting bigger.”

Yoongi raises an eyebrow. “It’s not.”

“It feels like it.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re sensitive, baby.”

Namjoon clicks his tongue, but doesn’t move. His cock lies soft and sticky against his stomach, half-forgotten, and Yoongi’s hand finds its way down, fingers brushing over his clit casually. 

Namjoon slaps his hand away. “Don’t.”

“Didn’t even do anything.”

“You were about to.”

Yoongi rests his chin on Namjoon’s shoulder, then noses at his nape and drinks him in. “You smell real fucking good, baby. Hyung can’t help it.” He admits, voice hoarse, hand going back to slow circles on Namjoon’s back.

Namjoon doesn’t think he’s done anything different tonight, sure he took a long shower and washed off his scent masking spray after work. But Yoongi keeps bringing it up like something’s changed. 

He frowns. What the hell is that about?

The thought quickly dissolves into the back of his mind when the knot throbs and makes him jolt slightly. 

Namjoon blinks up at the ceiling and sighs softly. “Can’t believe you actually fucking knotted me on the couch, you animal.”

Yoongi chuckles under his breath. “Next time I’ll do it on the floor,” he says.

Namjoon mutters something under his breath and lets his eyes fall shut.

 

The bathroom light’s still on when Namjoon steps out, bare feet sticking slightly on the tile. His thighs and hips ache. There’s slick drying on his inner thigh that he tried to wipe off with toilet paper. The warm water helped a little but not enough. 

Yoongi’s in the kitchen again, reheating something over the stove. There’s a pan out, chopsticks tapping against metal, the soft clatter of a cabinet shutting with his hip.

Namjoon scratches his scalp under his beanie and yawns.

The air still smells faintly of sweat and detergent. One of Yoongi’s shirts is balled up in the corner of the couch. His own sweatpants are folded on the armrest. Yoongi must’ve picked them up when he was cleaning. He always does that. Doesn’t say anything about it.

Namjoon walks over and slumps into the kitchen chair. “I thought you had prep tomorrow,” he says.

Yoongi shrugs with one shoulder, still facing the stove. “I’m off. I switched with Sungho.”

“You hate switching.”

“It’s fine. He owed me.”

Namjoon hums, resting his chin on his palm. “So you decided to ruin me on your night off?”

Yoongi glances at him. “Couldn’t waste the chance when you looked so pretty arching like that.”

Namjoon rolls his eyes, but doesn’t hide the smile at the corner of his mouth.

The rice cooker clicks behind them. Namjoon shifts in the chair and feels the dull tug in his slit, Yoongi’s knot had stayed longer than usual this time. He’d sworn under his breath in the bathroom when he sat down.

The pan hisses, something soy-based. Maybe leftover chicken from the fridge. There’s steam rising, and Yoongi doesn’t flinch even when it catches his wrist.

Namjoon watches him, mostly because it’s easier than looking anywhere else. His back is bare, faint stretch lines at his waist from where he must’ve leaned too far forward on the couch. Namjoon’s fingerprints are still red on one hip.

Yoongi moves without talking, dishes up rice and the chicken, some kimchi on the side. He doesn’t ask if Namjoon wants anything else. He knows he’ll eat whatever’s there.

He sets it down in front of Namjoon with metal chopsticks and a spoon. Yoongi eats standing, one hip against the sink.

The food’s good. It always is. That’s the thing about Yoongi, he never does anything halfway. Even fucking feels like a favor he decided to execute perfectly, like prepping a steak, balancing a sauce. All intention behind the performance.

Namjoon takes a bite and tries not to look grateful. “This is the ginger chicken,” he says around a mouthful.

Yoongi nods. “You liked it last time.”

“I like everything you cook, hyung.”

“Can’t take your taste seriously when you survive on protein bars and three days old espressos.” Yoongi snorts.

Namjoon doesn’t argue. He chews and then swallows. “Prep been shit lately?”

“Yeah.” Yoongi lifts his own spoon. “The manager accidentally overbooked the station. Monday night service took four hours longer than it should’ve.”

“Are you still coming up on the Michelin renewal?”

“Inspection month, yeah.”

Namjoon makes a low sound. “I keep forgetting you’re famous.”

“I’m not.”

“You literally have a Wikipedia page.” Namjoon says in a deadpan. 

“Not a biggie.” Yoongi shrugs. “How’s work?”

Namjoon eats another bite. The kimchi’s good. Not too sour. He’s not looking at Yoongi when he speaks next. “I booked three fittings this week. Jinsoul’s comeback shoot is Friday.”

Yoongi scoffs. “You just keep piling on more and then you whine about being overworked.” 

“I don’t whine.”

Yoongi eats without pause. Namjoon sets his spoon down and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

They eat like this a lot, just two people too tired to make conversation, who still somehow end up in the same room at the end of a long day. Maybe that counts for something. Namjoon wouldn’t know.

They met the first time when Namjoon was fourteen and had just gotten his classification bloodwork back — beta, not omega or alpha. Just… adaptable. “Unremarkable” was the word the physician used when he asked if anything looked strange on his pheromone profile. 

Yoongi was already sixteen. Hoseok introduced them in the parking lot behind a bus stop, eating bungeoppang while waiting for their ride to hagwon. Yoongi smelled like gasoline and rain and something bitter underneath, like he was already angry at the world, and maybe he was.

Namjoon hated him on sight.

Yoongi made fun of his glasses, called his lyrics embarrassing and said his rap name sounded like an energy drink brand.

It didn’t get better until much later.

Hoseok made them share a practice room once. That was the first time Yoongi heard Namjoon rap properly, not mumbling under his breath or hiding in the back of the cipher. After that, they still fought, but it was different. Less bark, more bite. Respect buried under insults.

Yoongi always talked like he was smarter. Namjoon acted like he didn’t care. They were both lying.

At sixteen, Namjoon was convinced Yoongi hated him, and couldn't breathe right when he was around. Not in a romantic way—just in that fuck you, you think you’re better than me kind of way. Every time Yoongi gave him that bored once-over like he could see straight through Namjoon’s skin, it made him want to disappear or punch something, preferably Yoongi’s face. 

By nineteen, they stopped fighting….mostly. Yoongi had gotten into culinary school. Namjoon had moved into styling after giving up the music dream halfway through another failed showcase. He said it was to “get closer to the industry.” He told himself that made it sound better.

When Namjoon turned twenty-nine, Hoseok threw him a party. He drank too much prosecco and passed out on Yoongi’s couch.

When he woke up later with Yoongi’s mouth between his legs and a knot splitting him in half. He didn’t mean to say it meant nothing. But the panic in Yoongi’s eyes when he came down from it, like he’d done something wrong, made Namjoon say it anyway. 

It’s fine, hyung. We’re friends, this happens. No strings. Let’s keep this casual. 

Yoongi agreed a little too quickly and Namjoon pretended that didn’t sting.

To this day, Namjoon’s not sure if he was saving his pride or his heart. 

They’ve been fucking for eight months now. Always with rules because Namjoon came up with those things to pretend he was being an adult about it. 

No kissing. No expectations. No talking about it. No spending the night cuddling. 

Namjoon spends the night anyway. Just doesn’t mention it the morning after.

Yoongi finishes his bowl and sets it in the sink, washing his hands. 

Namjoon stays seated, half-finished rice bowl in front of him. His thighs are sticking to the chair now. The space between his legs feels used in a good way.

“Should I clean the couch?” Yoongi asks without looking.

“Don’t think so.” Namjoon shrugs. “I tossed the cushion and the blanket in the washer.” 

Yoongi dries his hands. The faucet squeaks a little when it shuts. “Thanks.” 

Namjoon hums. The rice sticks to the roof of his mouth. He swallows, chases it with aloe tea. His stomach feels warm. 

The sliding door sticks when Namjoon tries to open it. The glass shudders in its track before giving way. Outside, the air’s heavier than before, city heat clinging to the railing, to the potted plants on the sill that Yoongi never waters but somehow keeps living.

Namjoon leans on the railing, elbows bare in his sleeveless tee. Yoongi joins him without saying anything, flipping open the cigarette box with one hand and lighter in the other. He nudges it open with his thumb and lights up, the end of the cigarette flaring orange.

Namjoon wrinkles his nose. “You didn’t smoke the last time I was over.” 

Yoongi exhales slowly. “Didn’t feel like it then.”

Namjoon squints at him. “Trying again?”

Yoongi shrugs. “Mmh. Been a long week.”

The same shrug he gives every time Namjoon accuses him of anything, forgetting to answer texts, burning the rice, fucking him too deep. That lazy, unbothered roll of a shoulder that says: yeah, and?

Namjoon turns his back to the railing, arms folded. “You always say that.”

Yoongi smiles around the cigarette. “Yeah. But this week I mean it.”

“Don’t your line cooks bitch about you smelling like smoke?”

“I change shirts.”

“That doesn’t do anything. You still smell like carbon.”

Yoongi flicks ash over the railing, unconcerned. “Better than scent masking spray.”

Namjoon hums. He’s not wrong. Yoongi’s scent, whatever it is, whatever strange alpha-bitter chemical cocktail he exudes, always cuts through everything else. It should be unpleasant. It isn’t.

They stand close in the hush of the balcony. Yoongi doesn’t look at him, but their arms keep brushing when the wind picks up. 

When he speaks again, his voice is gentle. “You okay?”

Namjoon glances over. “What?”

Yoongi taps ash off the end of the cigarette. “You were quiet after. Just checking.”

“I’m always quiet after.” Namjoon scoffs under his breath. “Don’t worry.” 

“Yeah,” Yoongi says, and this time there’s a pause that means I still noticed.

Namjoon doesn’t smoke but the smell gets to him anyway. The stench is familiar. Bitter and nostalgic. Like the corner store by their old practice room. Like concrete floors and paint on hands. Like being eighteen and lying about who he was.

Yoongi leans on the railing beside him now, shoulder brushing shoulder.

The wind cuts through the balcony. Namjoon stares at the floor tiles. His toes are cold now. 

He doesn’t know how long this thing will last. The fucking. The late dinners. The clean-ups and lazy balcony silences. But he knows that of all the people he’s ever slept with, Yoongi’s the only one who feels like a room with the lights off, where he can actually exist and not perform.

They don’t love each other. At least, not in the way that could complicate this. 

Yoongi finishes the cigarette and snuffs it out in the chipped tray he keeps by the railing. It’s the same one from the old studio, used to be Hoseok’s. There’s a faded sticker on the bottom that still says “Property of Hope.” 

The silence is broken when Yoongi exhales again, slower this time. “You ever think we grew up too soon?”

Namjoon raises an eyebrow. “Mn?”

“Sometimes it feels like it.” His tone is light, but there’s something careful underneath. “Late-night sex, stolen chicken, cigarette on the balcony after.”

Namjoon gives him a look. “Stolen?”

“You stole my leftovers.”

Namjoon grins. “I earned them.”

Yoongi glances at him now, and his gaze lingers. “You did.”

Something about the way he says it sticks. Like there’s more behind it. Like Yoongi’s looking at him instead of through him for once.

“Are you staying?” Yoongi asks, already knowing the answer.

Namjoon hesitates. It’s only nine. He could make the subway. Yoongi knows that. Namjoon knows he knows. He shrugs. “I’ve got an early morning.”

Yoongi nods but there’s a pause before it. Just enough space for something unspoken to edge its way in. “I’ll drop you off tomorrow. It’s on my way.”

Namjoon nudges him lightly with his foot. “Awh, is this my reward for taking your fat knot?”

Yoongi exhales a quiet laugh, nose wrinkling. “You’re such a little shit.”

“You still like me,” Namjoon counters with a smile. 

“Yeah.” Yoongi says, sighing softly, “What a mistake.” He steps back into the flat. “Come inside. You’re gonna catch a cold.”

Namjoon obeys, following him back into the warmth of Yoongi’s flat. 

Tomorrow, they’ll go back to work, to missed calls and tight schedules, to acting like none of this means anything.

There’s silence. There’s familiarity. In between that, there's whatever this is. 

 

They leave Yoongi’s flat a little after eight, a few minutes behind schedule because Namjoon couldn’t find his other sock and Yoongi refused to help, citing some “anti-enabling” philosophy he read in a chef’s memoir once. It’s cool outside, early autumn pushing its way in through the stairwell windows. The sun’s up but hasn’t fully warmed the pavement yet, so there’s that brittle crispness in the air, like the city hasn’t decided if it wants to wake up yet.

Namjoon’s head hurts, a weird, dull pressure behind the eyes like he’s wearing someone else’s body wrong.

It started last night, just barely. A weird, twisty feeling in his stomach after dinner, but he chalked it up to being full and freshly knotted, something about the way his gut always felt too sensitive after. He assumed sleep would fix it. It didn’t.

Now his limbs feel like they’re moving through water. Every motion half a beat slower than it should be. His head is heavy and his mouth tastes stale, even after brushing twice. He doesn’t say anything about it. Yoongi notices too much as is.

At the car, Yoongi opens the passenger side for him before Namjoon can get there. He doesn’t comment on it. He’s in black again, long sleeves, analog watch, hair still a little wet at the ends. 

Namjoon slides into the passenger seat, hoodie sleeves pulled over his knuckles, and clicks his seatbelt in place with more effort than usual. His hips still ache from being bent weirdly; Yoongi always forgets how long Namjoon could take it until he couldn’t.

“Here.” Yoongi passes him a thermos, settling into his seat. “Drink this.”

Namjoon turns it over in his hands, not quite meeting his eyes. “What is it?”

“Tea. You looked like you were gonna faint brushing your teeth.”

Namjoon unscrews the lid, sniffs. Ginger and a whisper of honey, just enough to soften the edge. Maybe even lemon rind or one of those mystery roots Yoongi buys from overpriced markets and stores in unlabeled jars. It smells strong. 

Yoongi turns the key in the ignition and starts the engine. 

Namjoon takes a sip. It’s hot. He makes a noise in his throat and puts the lid back on.

The ride starts quietly. The jazz station is on again, some soft brushed drum loop and a sax that whines just beneath the static. The kind of music Namjoon usually makes fun of him for, but he doesn’t have the energy this morning. Even the soft hum of tires over pavement feels too loud.

Namjoon leans his temple against the window glass and closes his eyes. The heat’s on low, warming his shins.

His stomach’s doing something strange, like there’s a bowl of water sloshing around inside him and every pothole on the road shakes it a little more. He shifts, trying to sit straighter, then slouches again when that doesn’t help. 

Yoongi drives cautiously, one hand loose on the wheel, the other resting near the gearshift, index tapping.

“You’re quiet,” Yoongi says, glancing at him at a red light. 

Namjoon doesn’t open his eyes. “I’m tired.”

Outside, the city’s already in motion, Morning buses heaving to stops, bikes cutting between lanes, office workers in matching trench coats with their coffees tucked under their arms. Namjoon wonders if any of them woke up with the same weird buzz in their belly, the kind that doesn’t bloom into real nausea but won’t go away either.

Yoongi speaks again after a second. “You should’ve said something if you weren’t feeling well.” He glances at him. “You look pale.” 

“Maybe you drained all my fluids last night.”

“Don’t blame me when you’re weak.”

“I’m not weak,” Namjoon mutters. 

Yoongi hums like he doesn’t believe it. The thermos is still in Namjoon’s lap, warm against his thighs. He unscrews the lid again and takes another sip. The ginger hits harder this time, sharp down his throat and burns a little in the back of his mouth. But the warmth helps.

“You always make this?” he asks, voice scratchy.

Yoongi nods. “When I’m sick.”

They drive past a school zone. Kids with backpacks cross the street in clusters, one of them falls and starts crying, and Namjoon watches as the mom rushes over and pulls him back up, brushing invisible dirt off his knees. He wonders if that kind of comfort ever stops working. If someone touching your arm and saying “you’re fine” really does make it fine, when you’re older.

“Can you skip the fitting?” Yoongi asks suddenly. 

“I’ll be fine. It’s not even a full day schedule.” Namjoon pulls his sleeves tighter over his hands. “It’s just some alpha kid. I’ll pin him and leave.”

Yoongi doesn’t look convinced. “Is that the kid you were complaining about last week?”

“Yeah. Some brand deal thing. He’s got a million followers and no personal space.” The thermos is warm in his hands. He rests it against the side of his jaw for a second, letting the heat soak in. “You didn’t have to make tea.”

“I didn’t,” Yoongi says. “I made it for myself. You just looked like you needed it more.”

The light turns green. They’re two streets away now.

Yoongi shifts gears, steady hand on the stick, not glancing at him this time.

Namjoon stares at his profile. Yoongi’s jaw is clean-shaven today, his hair pulled into a ponytail. His eyes still look half-asleep. The same shirt from last night, sleeves rolled up just past his wrists.

It hits Namjoon, that there’s something about being taken care of like this that makes him uncomfortable. Not that he doesn’t want it—he does, probably more than he’s allowed. 

They reach the building. He usually alternates between client locations, but today’s work is at the studio headquarters in Gangnam. Namjoon doesn’t move to get out right away. He finishes the last sip of tea and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

Yoongi kills the engine and leans on the steering wheel, one brow raised. “Want me to walk you in?”

Namjoon clicks his tongue and unbuckles the seatbelt. “It’s not that bad.”

Yoongi hums. “Text me if it gets worse.”

Namjoon opens the door, steps out into the morning air. It’s cooler outside, a breeze kicking up. His legs feel heavy, but he tells himself it’s just bad sleep. He hears the window roll down behind him.

“Don’t give that idol kid your cold,” Yoongi says. “He’ll cry and tag you on Instagram.”

“Then I’ll be famous with a Wikipedia page of my own.” Namjoon retorts, turning and walking backwards toward the entrance. “Thanks for the ride, Hyung.” 

Yoongi always waits until he’s through the doors. 

Namjoon told him not to, once. Maybe twice. He doesn’t remember. But Yoongi never listened and he stopped. 

By the time Namjoon makes it to the studio, his head’s pounding again.

The main room’s already set up. Rack of pre-pulled looks by the wall, assistant flitting back and forth between the steamer and the folding table, double-checking the jewelry layout. They’ve booked one of the smaller studios this time, top floor, bad ventilation. The lights overhead buzz faintly, like they’re struggling to stay on.

Someone says hi, but Namjoon just nods, drops his bag on the edge of the couch, and moves toward the garment rack. His scalp feels prickly under his beanie. Yoongi’s tea settled his throat but not his stomach. There’s a slow roil down there, like something just started to boil.

Namjoon toes off his shoes by the wall, peels off his hoodie, grabs the designer sweater he keeps racked there and pulls on his clean white slippers. 

The idol kid is late, obviously. Ten minutes past call time and no apology, just a too-loud greeting and an iced Americano in his hand like he’s the one doing everyone a favor by showing up.

“Hyung,” the idol—Yugyeom, wasn't it?—calls out from across the room, voice low and warm like he means well. “Was wondering when you’d show up.”

Yugyeom’s an alpha, built like he trains twice a day just for the mirror selfies. 

Namjoon lifts his hand, half-hearted. “You’re early.”

“I’m professional,” Yugyeom grins. He’s already stripped down to a ribbed tank top and the branded boxer-briefs the shoot’s half-sponsored by, chest broad and arms folded like he’s about to start bench pressing the camera equipment if he’s allowed. 

Namjoon steps in, reaches for the hem to get the measurement.

“Woah, at least buy me dinner first,” Yugyeom jokes, grabbing Namjoon’s wrist lightly. His grip isn’t firm, but it lingers a second too long. “Relax, hyung, I’m joking.” 

Namjoon forces a laugh and pulls his hand back. 

Yugyeom leans in again when Namjoon crouches to mark the hem. “You look pale.”

Namjoon hums without looking up. “Monday blues.” 

He crouches to open the kit bag. His joints feel off, like his knees might fold the wrong way if he isn’t careful. When he straightens, Yugyeom’s closer.

“Hey.” He fiddles with the edge of Namjoon’s collar. “You nervous or is it just me?”

Namjoon steps back, just barely. “Maybe you’re just running hot.”

“I am, hyung,” Yugyeom replies, no shame. “These lights are cooking me.”

The studio air smells like warm polyester and fabric glue. Namjoon moves to grab the jacket from the rack, holding it out. “Arms up.”

Yugyeom obeys, and the fabric settles awkwardly over his bulked frame. Namjoon reaches to adjust the seams at the shoulder. His fingers brush the slope of muscle. There’s a heartbeat in his ears that doesn’t belong there.

“You never gave me your number,” Yugyeom says, like he’s joking, but not really.

Namjoon clicks his pen shut. “Get it from the company if you really need it.”

“Not for work stuff.” Yugyeom smirks.

Namjoon stands, grabs the blazer off the rack. “You trying to end up in a Dispatch scandal caught flirting with your stylist?”

“Depends. I don’t really do relationships. Just something casual, maybe?” 

Namjoon’s stomach gives a strange roll. Sharp at the edges.

It shouldn’t bother him. It’s nothing. It’s the kind of thing people say in this industry, quick and harmless. Just noise.

But he hates that word, casual. Hates the way it makes him think of Yoongi’s hand in his hair, Yoongi’s knot buried deep, Yoongi texting him two days later like nothing happened. 

Casual, like the tea this morning. Like the wait in the car.

Casual, like something soft handed over in a paper cup and never mentioned again.

He steps back, smooths the shoulders of the blazer he’s holding. “Sorry. You’re not my type.” 

The grin stays on Yugyeom’s face. “Brutal.” He shrugs it on without much fuss, but when Namjoon steps in to adjust the collar, the heat between them is almost unbearable. The room’s too warm, the lights above them too strong. 

Namjoon shrugs, lets the pin fall into the tray. “Lift your arms,” he says, because he needs to keep the momentum going, needs to finish pinning and get the hell out of this room before his knees give out.

When he’s done, Namjoon crouches again. The movement sends a rush of nausea up his throat, hot and fast. He swallows it down and clenches his jaw.

The blazer sits right on Yugyeom’s shoulders now, lapels flat and sleeves sharp.

Namjoon gives it one last tug at the cuff and steps back. “Done,” he says, voice rough in his throat.

Yugyeom’s already checking himself in the mirror with a grin. “You’re magic, hyung.”

“Mn.” Namjoon shifts sideways and smiles because that’s the polite thing to do. 

His stomach rolls, deep and low like a wave pushing in from somewhere far. His mouth tastes sour, that strange thickness that comes before it turns.

“Back in a sec,” he mumbles and bolts. 

He doesn’t walk so much as sprint toward the bathroom, shoulders rounded, like he’s trying to shrink without noticing. Every step lands weird, like his center of gravity’s shifted.

Inside, the light is sharper. White tiles, silver taps. The hum of the fan fills the silence, barely masking the nausea curling in his gut. It’s not nerves. He knows his body better than that.

He grips the sink, bends forward fast, hand slapping the edge of the counter as he coughs up water and bile.

The taste scorches the back of his throat, ginger and acid. He spits and gargles until he doesn’t taste it anymore. 

The porcelain’s cold under his palms. His knees ache. He stays like that for a minute, forehead almost touching the mirror, eyes squeezed shut. The sweat on his neck cools and makes him shiver. His undershirt is soaked down the spine.

Right after a minute, he hears a knock. 

“Namjoon-sshi?” That must be his poor assistant. “You okay?”

Namjoon wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah.” 

“Should I call someone?”

“No.” He closes his eyes. “No, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Yunha says, quietly. “Let me know if you need anything.”

Her footsteps retreat. The air feels heavier than it should. There’s something weird about his scent too, not wrong, exactly, just louder. Sharper at the edges. He doesn’t know what that means.

He splashes water on his face, rubs at the sweat clinging to his hairline, then presses his palms against the cool ceramic. His stomach gives a faint twitch. 

He waits until the color comes back into his vision, until the edges stop flickering. Then he straightens up, dries his hands, and opens the door like nothing happened.

Yunha’s at the end of the hallway, phone in hand. She looks up when she hears the latch click. “Do you need a doctor?” she asks, holding out a water bottle.

Namjoon shakes his head. “Get me an Americano iced.” He says. “We’ve got lots to do.” 

She nods and walks off. 

It’s probably just the ramen from three nights ago. It’s fine. He’s just tired. 

 

Namjoon hears the knocking before he registers he’s awake.

It comes again, persistent and he shifts in bed, blinking against the dim. His sheets are damp from sweat, tangled around his ankles like they’ve been there all night. The room smells like fabric softener and something older. His mouth tastes like he hasn’t eaten in hours, which might be true.

The clock says 4:47. Evening. 

He drags himself up, padding barefoot to the door, bones aching in places that shouldn’t ache. The floor’s cold, his shoulder cracks when he stretches to unlock.

Hoseok’s standing there, hoodie zipped up, brows already lifted before Namjoon even says anything.

“You’re alive,” he says in lieu of a greeting.

“Nice to see you too,” Namjoon rasps. 

“You didn’t answer my texts or calls all day.” Hoseok mutters. “What the hell, Joon.”

Namjoon squints. “Did I miss something?”

“Yeah,” Hoseok says, stepping in without being invited. “We were supposed to meet for lunch today, remember?” 

“Oh shit.” Namjoon blinks. “I’m sorry. I think I slept through the day.” 

Hoseok walks in, tosses his shoes by the mat and crosses the room in three strides. Namjoon follows slowly, brain still working through the fog. 

The air’s thick inside. The window’s not open. There’s an untouched bowl of soup on the coffee table, congealed at the edges. His phone’s buried under a stack of old receipts and a half-charged power bank.

“You sick?” Hoseok asks, peering into the kitchen. “Shit. You look pale as fuck.”

Namjoon shrugs. That’s all he’s got. His body’s heavy. Every sound feels too sharp, every scent too thick. Food makes him nauseous and sleep doesn’t help.

“Go change,” Hoseok says, already pulling the blinds open. “We’re going to the clinic.”

“I’m okay—”

“Don’t argue. You can barely stand.”

Namjoon sighs. Ten minutes later, he’s sitting passenger side in Hoseok’s car, head against the window, hoodie zipped to his throat, sleeves tugged over his palms. The air outside smells like street food and oncoming rain. His stomach churns.

By the time they reach the clinic, he feels hollowed out.

The receptionist knows Hoseok by name. She greets them with a slight bow and a clipboard. Hoseok scribbles in the details while Namjoon leans on the counter, elbow tucked tight against his side like that might calm the ache still low in his gut. 

Once his blood is drawn, he’s asked to go to the waiting area again. 

“Dr. Jung is in. She can take him,” the nurse announces sometime later. “Give us ten. Bloodwork too?”

“Yeah,” Hoseok answers, before Namjoon can say anything. “He hasn’t been keeping food down.”

The nurse nods, eyes flicking briefly to Namjoon’s face. She doesn’t ask more than that, offers a soft smile and gestures toward the waiting chairs.

Namjoon sits. The plastic creaks under his weight.

The lights in the hallway buzz. There’s a faint antiseptic sting in the air, mixed with something citrus, maybe from the cleaning spray or the hand sanitizer pumps mounted on the walls. A kid coughs in the room next door. There’s a poster on the wall about seasonal allergies and a rack of pamphlets on contraceptive compatibility across secondary genders.

“Here.” Hoseok’s voice is quiet. He passes Namjoon a warm green tea from the vending machine. “Drink.”

Namjoon holds it with both hands, letting the warmth soak into his palms.

“I swear I thought you were murdered,” Hoseok says again, more concerned than annoyed. “You always text back.”

“Dramatic.” Namjoon huffs. “I just slept because I felt like I was dying.”

“Felt? You still look like it.”

He closes his eyes, rests his head against Hoseok’s shoulder. Hoseok doesn’t move.

They sit like that. It’s quiet except for the low buzz of the nurse’s keyboard behind the desk and a faint rattle of wheels from the hallway. The kind of place where time folds in on itself. Namjoon thinks he might drift off, just a little. His body’s too hot in some places, cold in others. 

They call his name after an hour. Namjoon straightens, wipes a hand over his face.

The nurse gives him a gentle look. “Dr. Jung is ready. Room three.”

Hoseok stands too, already reaching for the door but the nurse lifts a hand.

“Just Namjoon-sshi for now,” she says. “Dr. Jung insisted.”

Hoseok blinks. “Okay… sure. I’ll wait out here.”

Namjoon gives him a glance, then nods to the nurse and walks in.

Dawon noona’s office looks more like a therapist’s than a doctor’s. There’s a couch under the window, not just chairs. A jacket slung over the armrest. One of those tiny ceramic humidifiers on the corner shelf, humming faintly. On the desk, a framed photo of her and Hoseok from probably ten years ago. He’s wearing a blazer and throwing a peace sign. 

Namjoon lingers by the door until she gestures him in. “Come in, Joon-ah.” Her face is warm, but there’s a crease between her brows that wasn’t there before. “Sit.”

The chair’s leather is soft where he sits. His fingers toy with the hem of his sleeve.

Dawon closes the file, slides it forward. “I ran your blood twice.”

Namjoon blinks. “…Why?”

“Because the first results didn’t make sense.”

He blinks, watching her fingers drum once against the edge of the folder.

She opens it. “You’ve been feeling nauseous?”

“Yeah.”

“Loss of appetite?”

“Yeah.”

“Fatigue and sensory sensitivity?”

Namjoon nods slowly.

She sighs. “Your hormone panels are irregular. Not abnormal, irregular. Your estrogen markers are higher than they should be. You’re showing signs of hCG increase and your cortisol baseline has doubled. That shouldn’t happen without trauma or major stress response.”

“I’ve not been sleeping,” Namjoon offers. “It could be—”

“There’s more,” she says, glancing at the numbers. “Your progesterone levels are climbing and your LH spike… Namjoon, these values are practically impossible.”

None of these make sense to him. His mouth is dry when he swallows. “What are you trying to say?”

Dawon looks at him for a long moment. Then, softly with a look only an older sister can muster, she says: “You’re pregnant.”

The air shifts sideways. The words don’t land right away. It just hangs there, thin and impossible, until something in his chest stumbles trying to catch up.

“I—what?” He exhales, a laugh bubbles out of his chest unbidden. “Noona. That’s not possible. I’m a beta.” 

“You are. And the likelihood of this happening to a male beta is very, very low. But not zero.”

Namjoon leans back like it might help the room stop spinning. His shoulders touch the chair’s spine. “But they always told me—I mean, betas don’t—my androgen levels—”

“Are high,” Dawon agrees. “But you have a latent set of secondary traits. It’s rare, but in certain genetic profiles it’s not uncommon. The blood is clear. You’re showing all the early-cycle pregnancy markers.”

Namjoon just stares at her, dumbfounded.

She clicks into the monitor again and flips the screen around, showing a row of lab values he can’t make sense of. Numbers and chemical names. Ratios. Spike charts. 

“But—” He shakes his head. “They said I couldn’t. They told me I wasn’t even compatible. All my life.”

Dawon leans back in her chair. “It’s a statistical anomaly. It happens in less than one in seventeen thousand cases. Usually only with alpha partners. We’ve never seen this in omega-beta pairings, the probabilities are too low. But alpha-betas… it’s rare. Not impossible. Do you want to see the scan?”

Namjoon shakes his head without thinking. It’s not like he’ll understand it. “No. I mean—I don’t even… I didn’t think…”

She studies his face. “Were you with an alpha?”

He’s not been with anyone that’s not Yoongi. Oh fuck. Namjoon blinks and sighs. “Yeah.”

“That would explain it.” Dawson says, voice softening around the vowels. “Listen, this isn’t common. I’ve only seen something like this once. Years ago, was it? But your values are strong. Your body isn’t confused. It knows what it’s doing.”

That doesn’t make Namjoon feel better. If anything, it terrifies him more.

He looks down at his hands. They’re clenched together, knuckles white. The thermos from Yoongi flashes through his brain suddenly. That first sip of ginger. The ache in his belly that never went away.

“This—” he swallows. “—could it be a mistake?”

“No.” She leans in, voice even. “I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t sure.”

Namjoon nods slowly, as if doing so will buy him time.

She turns the monitor back toward herself and clicks through a few more screens. “Your values look good if you’re worried about that. Better than good.” She pauses. “Honestly, you’re tracking healthier than most of my omega patients.”

Namjoon huffs out a breath, a little hysterical, like it’s not his body they’re talking about.

She tears a small white prescription slip from the folder. “This is for the nausea. Take it with food. Twice a day.”

He takes it from her hands, stares at the printed name. Some long pharmaceutical string that means: this isn’t a stomach bug.

It’s not ramen or work stress or bad sleep.

He’s pregnant. 

“I’m guessing this wasn’t planned,” Dawon says gently.

Namjoon lets out a quiet laugh. “Is it ever?”

She leans back in her chair and watches him for a second, like she’s trying to read something between his lines. “I’m going to bring Hoseok in now,” she says, after a moment. “Is that okay?” 

Namjoon nods. Yeah, having Hoseok here might anchor him.  

She stands, opens the door and calls for Hoseok softly. There’s a shuffle of footsteps and then a rush of cool air as the hallway leaks in. 

Hoseok enters, gaze flicking from his sister to Namjoon. “You okay?”

Namjoon holds the prescription note up. “Morning sickness meds,” he says, voice flat. “I caught a complicated bug.”

It takes Hoseok a second, then his brows shoot up in a way that looks almost comical if it wasn’t for the situation they’re in. “Oh—shit. Joon.”

Namjoon just nods again. What else can he do? He’s still processing.

He stares down at the note in his lap, thumb dragging across the corner where it’s marked positive in a pale pink sign. 

Pregnant. He’s pregnant. 

The word still doesn’t feel like it belongs to him. It feels like a joke, like he’s going to wake up tomorrow and realize he’s hallucinated the whole week. But the weight in his belly says otherwise. The nausea, the way his scent’s been off. The heavy look Yoongi gave him when he touched his forehead Monday morning and said nothing.

Maybe that’s the part that scares him the most.

Once they’re done, Hoseok holds the clinic door open and lets Namjoon out ahead of him. The sun’s down but the air still carries that weightless warmth of late evening, the kind that sticks more to skin than fabric. 

The steps outside the clinic are old concrete, cracked slightly in the middle, probably from winter frostbite and years of weight pressing down. Namjoon sits on the third step from the bottom. Hoseok joins him without asking.

It’s quiet out here. Late golden hour light catches on glass railings and stains them pink. A bus goes by below, some school girl’s laugh carries over the traffic.

Namjoon stares down at his hands. He doesn’t usually let them sit still. But now they’re just there, palms open with a slight tremor in them. 

The bag with the prescription rustles when the breeze picks up. It’s not cold out, but he pulls his sleeves over his hands anyway. 

Hoseok’s chewing on the inside of his cheek.

He glances sideways at him and exhales. “If you make a single joke about me becoming a MILF I’ll knock your teeth in.”

Hoseok puffs out a laugh. “I’ll just shut the fuck up then.”  

Namjoon snorts, dry and thin. “You’re so fucking annoying.”

They sit like that for a while. The city moves around them. Somewhere below, the subway rattles past, that heavy, groaning sound of wheels grinding against steel. Namjoon listens to it echo through the concrete, like the city’s bones shifting underfoot. 

His stomach isn’t rolling anymore. But the breath he held inside feels heavier in hindsight. Like it’s sitting somewhere deep in his ribs now, trying to mean something it didn’t mean before.

Hoseok taps something into his phone, then locks the screen. “Jiminie’s coming back from Japan.”

“Yeah?”

“He said he brought you some of those hair masks and the peach lip stain you liked.”

Namjoon nods and looks ahead. 

Hoseok’s voice is quieter than usual. It’s not the tone he uses when he’s joking. It’s the one he reserves for long train rides. For when he’s trying to treat Namjoon gently. For when neither of them want to admit they’re scared of something but both know it anyway.

The prescription bag makes another crinkle. Namjoon finally sets it down by his feet. He leans forward, elbows on knees and stares at the sidewalk like it might hand him a map or a manual or something equally impossible.

“What the hell do I do now?”

Hoseok runs a hand through his hair. “You do what you always do,” he says, “you pretend you’re fine until you really are.” 

Namjoon huffs out a dry sound. 

There’s a worn sticker by his foot on the stair, old Korean telecom branding, half-peeled and sun-faded. He nudges it with the toe of his shoe.

Hoseok stretches his legs out, sneakers scuffing against the edge of the step below. He’s wearing the same jeans from when they last met a month ago, the ones with the frayed knee and the patch Namjoon stitched into the back pocket years ago. There’s a leaf stuck to his shoelace. The wind tugs at it but it doesn’t come loose.

“You think she’s wrong?”

“No,” Hoseok says. “She doesn’t get this stuff wrong. She wouldn’t have said it if she wasn't sure.”

Namjoon leans back, lets his head fall against the rail. “I’m a beta.”

“Apparently not a regular one.”

“I’ve had blood work done like, five times a year since middle school.”

“Yeah. And now you’re on track to get put in a textbook.”

Namjoon closes his eyes. The wind picks up slightly, brushes against the side of his face. There’s an ache starting behind his eyes again. 

He doesn’t feel anything yet. No sudden flood of joy or fear. Just static like white noise in his bones, like his body hasn’t caught up to the information.

“You’re really not gonna say anything else?” Namjoon asks, voice softer now.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know. ‘Congrats’? ‘That sucks’? ‘Holy shit, Joon, you’re having a pup’?”

“Would any of that help?”

Namjoon doesn’t answer. What can he even say to that?

Hoseok sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “Okay. I’ll say something. I’ve known you for fifteen years,” Hoseok says. “You’ve handled worse.”

“This is not worse,” Namjoon mutters. “This is… not even on the same fucking scale.”

“Yeah. But it’s you.”

“So?”

“So you’re the same person who dropped out of that scholarship program two days before orientation because the mentor alpha tried to rub up on you in an elevator. You’re the person who worked three part-time jobs and still dropped your mixtape on fucking Tumblr at two in the morning. You moved cities with nothing but a duffel bag and a soundcloud with six listeners and didn’t give up when things went downhill.”

Namjoon’s jaw works. He continues to stare ahead, eyes unfocused.

“You survive shit,” Hoseok adds. “Even when you shouldn’t have to.”

Namjoon flinches a little. It’s not visible, really, except to someone who knows how he holds tension. “I don’t even know if I want this,” he says after a moment. “I haven’t even thought about—pups. Or anything like this. I didn’t even know it was possible for me.”

“You don’t have to decide everything right now.”

“I can’t do this alone.”

“You’re not alone, Joon,” Hoseok replies. “Even if you act like you are half the time.”

Namjoon picks at the seam of his sleeve. There’s a bit of thread coming loose. He pulls at it but it doesn’t break off. “Should I tell him?” he asks, voice brittle. 

Hoseok doesn’t ask who. He doesn’t have to. 

“I mean,” Namjoon swallows. “It’s not like he—this wasn’t—” He gestures vaguely with his hand. “It’s not like we planned this. Or even talked about it. We don’t talk about things that matter, really.”

“I think you will have to…eventually. Doesn’t have to be today.”

“Don’t tell him, anyone else, until I figure this out.” 

Hoseok pats his back. “Goes without saying.” 

Namjoon tips his head back again. The sky’s gotten darker without him noticing. Hazy lilac, that dusty dusk kind. He watches a plane blink its way across the clouds.

There’s the prescription near his shoes, Morning sickness tablets. He hasn’t looked at the label, doesn’t want to know how many pills make it real.

“You wanna get noodles?” Hoseok asks suddenly. “There’s that place you liked by the station.”

Namjoon considers it, standing up and stretching his legs. “No appetite.”

Hoseok follows him. “Doesn’t mean you don’t need food.”

Namjoon exhales through his nose. “You’re so annoying.”

“Come on. First bowl’s on me. You’re not allowed to skip dinner when you’re pregnant.”

Namjoon flicks him in the arm and walks toward the car.

The night air tastes stale when he breathes in. He’s not sure what comes next, only that something already has and it’s sitting heavy, right under his ribs. 

 

When Namjoon was eighteen, he used to carry his lyrics in the back pocket of his jeans. Folded four times over. Sometimes scrawled on receipts or old quiz papers, ink bled through the lines where the pen pressed too hard. His handwriting was messy when he was in a rush, clean when he wasn’t thinking about anything else. The edges always curled where his hands had been.

He liked that part; the wear of it.  Like proof.

It was sometime in early March, the tail end of winter still dragging its feet across the city, all half-melted snow piles and cigarette butts drowned in gutters. Cold enough that his scarf still felt necessary, warm enough that he hated the way it scratched his neck when the sun was out too long. 

The air had that sharp, biting kind of clarity that only came when seasons were shifting, sky blue enough to make his head hurt and breathing in felt like it scraped his throat clean.

He had just gotten off the bus, headphones still in, backpack slung over one shoulder, boots clumsy with old snow-mud at the soles. There was a leak in his left shoe he kept forgetting to fix.

The hagwon was three blocks from the bus stop, fifteen minutes if he walked slowly. Ten if he didn’t stop to buy a lollipop from the corner 7/11 and seven if he was late and sprinting.

That day he walked slowly. There was a group of boys already loitering by the stairwell when he got there, two smoking, one eating a triangle kimbap. Someone was wearing headphones, nodding to a beat only they could hear. 

Hoseok wasn’t there yet. Namjoon barely met their eyes, just slipped past them with a half-shoulder tuck. The stairwell smelled like vinegar and old sneakers. He took the steps two at a time, hit the third floor, then turned down the hallway.

Practice room 2 was at the end.

He was early, apparently. No one else was inside. The lights were still off. The mirrored wall stared back at him in a wash of dusk-blue.

Namjoon closed the door behind him, shrugged off his jacket and dropped his backpack against the wall with more force than necessary. He sat on the floor, back against the speaker, and tugged the crumpled paper from his back pocket.

He unfolded it, stared at the lyrics. There was a line crossed out so violently it tore through the page. He couldn’t remember writing that part, but he recognized the anger.

He hated his voice these days. Too soft. Too breathy. Too much and too little. 

Hoseok had said it was getting better, that he was overthinking the structure again, but Namjoon knew when something wasn’t sitting right. It was in the way his own rhymes made him flinch.

He read the verse again, lips moving without a noise. Then the door creaked open.

Yoongi walked in late these days. Culinary school was getting busy he’d say. He was wearing a beanie pulled low, sleeves shoved up to his elbows, and his hoodie had some band name across the chest that Namjoon didn’t recognize. His headphones were slung around his neck, cord trailing into the front pocket. He tilted his chin slightly in greeting when he saw Namjoon. 

“Hey,” Namjoon said, stiff and automatically on guard.

Yoongi toed off his sneakers by the door, dropped his bag in the corner with a soft thud. “You’re early.”

Namjoon shrugged. “Couldn’t study.”

Yoongi nodded like that made sense. “Figured.”

Namjoon didn’t like that. Like he was predictable. Like Yoongi knew something about him he hadn’t meant to give away.

“What’re you working on?” Yoongi asked, voice casual.

Namjoon hesitated, his fingers clenching the paper too tightly. “Nothing good.” He said, sliding it under his leg. 

Yoongi didn’t push. He rarely did. He sat down beside him. They faced the mirror, two reflections in a room built for people trying to become versions of themselves they hadn’t figured out yet.

Yoongi cracked his neck once, then leaned forward and tugged his bag closer, rifling through it. After a second, he pulled out a small rectangular case. One of those old plastic cassette shells. Transparent, scuffed on the edges. There was a sticker on the front. Yoongi’s handwriting in slanted letters. 

     for joonie

Namjoon stared at it. “What’s this?”

Yoongi passed it over without looking. “A mixtape.”

“I can see that.” Namjoon blinked. “Why?”

Yoongi shrugged. “Felt like you’d want something that doesn’t suck.”

Namjoon narrowed his eyes, already defensive. “So you’re saying my taste sucks.”

Yoongi looked over at him then. “No,” he said, eyes softer than usual. “I’m just saying you deserve to hear stuff that makes your chest feel less heavy.”

Namjoon didn’t say thank you, only stared at it, turning it again. The plastic was warm where Yoongi had held it.

Yoongi leaned back, arms braced behind him, legs stretched out. “Hoseok said you’ve been overthinking your verse again.”

Namjoon’s jaw clenched. “Did he now?”

“He’s not wrong.”

Namjoon exhaled hard through his nose. “Yeah, well, Hoseok thinks everything I write sounds ‘too smart for its own good.’”

Yoongi didn’t argue. “He’s also the one who said your voice sticks out.”

That landed wrong in Namjoon’s ears. Everything did, when it came from Yoongi. Like it had a barb at the end of it.

He crossed his arms. “You’re not complimenting me, are you?”

Yoongi gave him a look Namjoon couldn’t decipher. “No. I’d rather die.”

Namjoon scoffed. “Right.”

“But you’re good,” Yoongi said, voice soft. “Better than you think.”

Namjoon turned his head and blinked. “What?”

Yoongi didn’t look at him. “I said your tone’s better now.”

Namjoon’s face was burning and he didn’t know why. He leaned harder into the speaker behind him. “Whatever. Still sounds fake to me.”

“You write like you’re scared someone’s going to read it and know who you are.” 

It hit too close to a sore spot in his chest. Namjoon looked away.

Yoongi leaned over, plucked the crumpled paper from under his leg. Namjoon flinched and went to grab it back. 

“Don’t,” Yoongi said. “I’m not here to roast you.”

“You usually are.”

Yoongi didn’t bother retorting, he just read, folded it again and handed it back. “Keep the third line,” he said. “It’s nice.”

Namjoon blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Yoongi tapped the side of his head. “You’re good when you don’t overthink it.”

Namjoon’s lips twitched. “Says the guy who won’t cook for anyone.”

“I’d cook for you if you asked,” Yoongi cracked a smile. “You’re not just anyone.”

Namjoon froze. When the hell did Yoongi go from don’t go thinking you’re the shit to you’re not just anyone? 

Yoongi didn’t look like he realized what he’d said or maybe he did and didn’t mean to or maybe he did and meant it more than he wanted to.

Namjoon stared at the tape in his hand, the silence suddenly loud. He shifted, clearing his throat. “What’s on this?”

“Some songs I want you to hear.” Yoongi shrugged. He stood and flicked off the light by the door. 

The room smelled like dust and old foam from the speaker cover. Something about it felt permanent.

“Hey,” Namjoon said, hesitant.

Yoongi shifted slightly, pulled the hoodie down just past his nose. “What.”

“Thanks.” He said, then added a softer, “hyung.” 

Yoongi’s eyebrows shot up but Namjoon looked away before he could see the change in his expression. 

Hoseok never showed, probably got caught up in dance or forgot to text. They left the practice room a little after eight. The hallway lights had dimmed, sensor bulbs already flickering at the far end. Most of the other kids had gone home. The stairwell was quiet now, just the echo of their steps, the occasional squeak of Yoongi’s shoe dragging against the vinyl.

Namjoon had his backpack slung lazily over one shoulder, earphones wrapped tight around his fingers. The cassette tape was still in his hoodie pocket. He could feel the edge of it pressing against his thigh with every step. 

They didn’t talk much on the way out. 

Outside, the air had dropped a few degrees, cold enough that the wind cut at his sleeves. He shoved his hands in his pockets and didn’t complain. Yoongi never did, so Namjoon didn’t either.

They walked side by side under the streetlights. 

Yoongi’s voice came quiet, barely louder than the wind. “You hungry?”

Namjoon hesitated. “A little.”

“There’s a pojangmacha near the station. The one with the fried mandu.”

Namjoon glanced at him. “The one that gave Hobi food poisoning?”

Yoongi shrugged. “He’s dramatic.”

That made Namjoon snort softly. “You’re the one who called him a walking biohazard for a week.”

“Because he wouldn’t stop breathing near me.”

Namjoon smiled into the wind.

They got two servings. Hot enough to burn the roof of his mouth, oily in that good way. Namjoon held the paper plate between his palms, standing with one foot on the curb and one in the street.

Yoongi blew on a dumpling, more out of habit than heat. “They over-fried this.”

Namjoon glanced at him. “You always complain about the food we eat.”

“It’s true though,” Yoongi said. “If you’re gonna use frozen mandu you’re supposed to fry them half-thawed. This is straight from the freezer. The insides are still dense.”

Namjoon scoffed. “Okay, chef.”

Yoongi took another bite. “It’s a waste. The oil’s good.”

They shared the second plate without talking about it.

Namjoon dropped a piece on the sidewalk when his chopsticks slipped. “Fuck.”

“It’s fine,” Yoongi said, already offering his own with one hand, still chewing. “Here.”

Namjoon accepted it without thinking. His fingers brushed Yoongi’s. 

There was a cassette player shop tucked between a PC bang and a cell phone repair place, about three blocks from the hagwon. It was more of a parts place than a real store, run by a half-retired sound engineer who kept the blinds shut and never looked up from whatever he was soldering.

The front window was dusty. Most of the signs had faded into the background, peeling at the edges.

Yoongi stopped there that evening, lingered in front of the display like he was checking in on something. 

Namjoon stood beside him, chewing the last of the mandu. “You gonna go in?” he asked, wiping his fingers on a napkin.

“Nah.” Yoongi squinted through the glass. “Just looking.”

Namjoon followed his gaze. “Don’t you already have like two tape decks.”

“Only one works properly.”

“That’s still a lot.”

Yoongi leaned a little closer to the window, hand braced against the frame. His breath fogged the glass.

“Hyung.” Namjoon rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t hide the grin. “You know your attitude’s why no omegas approach you, right?”

“Don’t need them to.”

“Oh yeah?”

Yoongi glanced at him, meeting his eyes. It felt foreign. “It’s not fun if it’s not who I want.”

Namjoon blinked. “What?”

Yoongi didn’t clarify, turning back toward the window.

The wind picked up again. Namjoon shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. His thumb brushed the corner of the tape.

They started walking again.

There was a small cement ledge outside the laundromat, the kind kids used to sit on after school. Namjoon used to wait there for Hoseok when they had back-to-back practice slots. He sat on it out of habit, dragging his heel along the edge until it caught a chip in the concrete.

Yoongi lit a cigarette a few feet away, turning slightly so the smoke wouldn’t blow toward him.

Namjoon watched the ember flare in the dark. “When did you start again?”

Yoongi didn’t look at him. “Last week.”

“I thought you quit after your throat thing last year.”

“It was just tonsillitis.” Yoongi shrugged. 

Namjoon looked down at the chip in the ledge. He ran his fingers over it absently. A little too hard, the stone caught his thumb. “Shit.”

Yoongi looked over. “What?”

Namjoon held his hand up. There was a tiny split along the side of his thumb, already beading blood.

Yoongi flicked his cigarette into the gutter and walked over. “Let me see.”

“It’s not bad,” Namjoon said, but didn’t move. “I’m fine.”

Yoongi crouched in front of him, hand out.

Namjoon offered his palm, reluctantly. He didn’t meet his eyes. It felt stupid. 

Yoongi studied the cut, then reached into his bag. “Hold still,” he muttered.

Namjoon didn’t ask what for.

Yoongi pulled out a small tin, the kind you’d keep guitar picks or coins in. From inside, he fished out a bandaid. It was one of those cartoon ones, a little wrinkled from being in the tin too long. He peeled the wrapper open with his teeth.

Namjoon watched the way his fingers moved, careful and gentle. Like he was used to fixing things on instinct. Yoongi was, after all, that kind of alpha. 

Yoongi cleaned the cut with a bit of tissue first, and didn't comment on the hiss Namjoon let out when it stung. Then he wrapped the bandaid around Namjoon’s thumb in one clean motion, smoothing the ends down with his thumb. “There.”

Namjoon looked at his hand, then back at Yoongi, still crouched in front of him. “Thanks,” he said again, voice shaky.  

Yoongi nodded and looked away. “Don’t pick at it.”

Namjoon felt his throat pull tight for no reason.

Yoongi never held eye contact with Namjoon. Not for long. It used to piss Namjoon off, like he was dodging or hiding something. 

Now he’d come to understand. Yoongi was scared of how much his eyes would show what his words couldn’t. 

“Come on.” Yoongi stood, slung his bag over his shoulder again. “Your bus’s gonna leave.”

Namjoon didn’t move immediately, staring down at his thumb. The bandaid was a little crooked, edges not quite aligned but it held.

They walked together to the corner. The bus stop sign was tilted slightly to the left. Same as it always had been.

Namjoon tugged the mixtape cassette from his hoodie pocket, turning it over in his hands as they waited. “I don’t have a player,” he said conversationally. 

“Oh yeah. I forgot.” Yoongi reached into his own bag, pulled out something wrapped in a sweatshirt and held it out.

It was a Walkman, old and scuffed, stickers peeling at the sides but functional. 

The same one Yoongi had used last semester. The one he always kept clipped to his belt, cord dragging between his hoodie and jeans.

Namjoon stared at it. “What the hell.”

“It plays.” Yoongi offered. 

“I thought you needed this.”

“It’s fine. I don’t need it.”

“Hyung…”

Yoongi’s expression didn’t change. “Just borrow it. Not a big deal.”

Namjoon’s voice dropped. “Is this your way of saying sorry?”

“For what.”

Namjoon hesitated. “For that time you said my bars sounded like they were written by a kid.”

Yoongi blinked. “They did.”

Namjoon’s mouth opened in offense.

“But,” Yoongi added, eyes steady, “you’re not that kid anymore.”

Namjoon didn’t know what to say. Thankfully, the bus pulled up just then headlights slicing through the dark.

Yoongi stepped back, hands in his pockets, the same neutral expression on his face.

Namjoon got on, took a seat near the window and glanced back only once.

Yoongi hadn’t moved. He unwrapped his earphones, popped the cassette into the Walkman and pressed play.

The tape hissed for a second, then a low beat started, an epik high song. 

Namjoon didn’t breathe for a long moment. His thumb pressed to the bandaid.

The city passed by in streaks of yellow and glass and his heart… did something.

It wasn’t loud or sudden. It didn’t say this is it. Rather an oh. A hiccup through a steady breath. 

It just skipped once then kept going into a new rhythm. 

 

Namjoon keeps the box under his bed, next to a pair of sneakers he doesn’t wear anymore and a roll of extra trash bags. The sneakers are a half-size too small and the trash bags are just convenient to have around. The box, though, is deliberate.

It’s one of those flimsy paperboard ones from Muji. Off-white and slightly crushed at one corner. He’s taped over the tear with washi tape that has little birds on it, which he took from a gift Jimin gave him once and never threw away. The birds have faded, but you can still make them out if you squint.

He hasn’t opened it in a while. Weeks probably. Maybe a month. Depends what counts. He thinks about it a few times in between, during late nights when the flat is quiet and the air tastes like toothpaste and sleep doesn’t come easy. But he doesn’t touch it.

Tonight, though, his Spotify was on shuffle and the third track that came on was the one Yoongi once put at the very start of a cassette.

So he gets out of bed, pulls the box from under it, and opens it.

Inside, Namjoon’s first rap encore ticket, a bus ticket to Seoul he once took after a fight with his father and then the cassette Yoongi gave him when he was eighteen, transparent case, handwritten label with ink that faded in one corner. 

There’s also a bandaid wrapper. He doesn’t remember putting that in. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was already there, tucked into something else. Or maybe he put it in on purpose and just doesn’t remember when. Either way, it’s there now.

After graduating, Yoongi dated other people. Namjoon did too. 

That was just what you did. You met people, you tried, you learned to sleep beside someone new and pretend your body didn’t notice the difference.

Every time, it’d start normal, flirting, sharing a coffee and a quiet optimism that it would turn into something. But then something would crack around the edges, something as small as mismatched routines or a bad week or something as complicated as a silence that stretched a little too long.

And always, without meaning to, Namjoon would think of Yoongi. Not in the big moments of a fight or a breakup or when he was under someone else. Just… in the gaps. 

Like sitting at a crosswalk in someone else’s passenger seat and realizing he missed the smell of Yoongi’s car. The sound of someone’s lighter flicking open beside him. The faint scent of rain when the wind changed.

He told himself it was just nostalgia. Muscle memory. The kind of ache you mistake for comfort when you don’t want to call it longing.

It wasn’t fair, probably. It wasn’t rational.

But there he was, Yoongi, quiet and unspoken, living like static under everything else.

Namjoon never said it out loud. He never tried to move on but moving on didn’t mean moving away.

Now, he’s here, staring at it all in the warmth of his palms. 

He promised himself he won’t open it until he knows what to do with it. That was the rule from the beginning.

Don’t touch until you’re sure.

He’s not sure, not even now. 

It’s not like Yoongi has said anything. Not anything direct, anyway. And Namjoon doesn’t know how much of what he remembers is real and how much is just something he built from leftover silence.

He doesn’t want to be the one who misunderstands. He doesn’t want to ask and get it wrong. He doesn’t want to look Yoongi in the eye and say something irreversible and ruin the only version of closeness he’s ever had.

So he doesn’t say anything. He hasn’t. He won’t. Not until he knows what he wants and can handle whatever answer he gets.

He’s not dramatic about it. It’s not like he cries over it or anything. He just… thinks about it sometimes in passing. Like tonight, on the floor of his bedroom, cross-legged in sweatpants, holding a box with things that don’t mean anything to anyone else but still feel like they hum a little if he keeps the lid open too long.

He slides the box back under the bed.

The hallway light is still on. The reports from the clinic and the pamphlet with the pale pink positive sign sits on the coffee table. He doesn’t need to check it again, but it doesn’t change anything.

Namjoon leans against the bed, exhales, and presses a hand to his stomach. 

The skin there is warm. It feels strange, knowing something can start without him noticing. Quietly, invisibly, like all the other things that have taken root in him over the years without permission.

Teenage crushes are supposed to fade, aren’t they?

They’re supposed to fold themselves neatly into the past and stay there, buried under exams and rent payments and the practicalities of adulthood.

They’re not supposed to live in the pit of your chest ten years later, surfacing only when a song comes on shuffle or a memory finds its way through the cracks.

But there it is, still there, that pesky hum under the static. 

He turns off the lights and climbs back into bed, the city still half-awake outside, and pulls the blanket up to his chin. The box stays where it is, tucked under the bed. 

His hand rests on his stomach again, a little longer this time. Maybe if he’s still enough, he’ll make sense of what he feels. 

 

On Friday, it rains the kind of light, persistent drizzle that never really lets up. The kind that sticks to your clothes like breath on glass. Namjoon stands under the overhang of the restaurant awning, one hand in his coat pocket, the other clutching the handle of a foldable umbrella he hasn’t bothered to open. His shirt collar is a little damp. The air smells like wet concrete, starch, and the synthetic tang of the scent-masking spray he’d layered on like armor.

It’s for the Michelin renewal. Yoongi’s kitchen passed its review, again. Hoseok said it called for celebration, and since Jimin was back in Seoul it was mandatory. 

Namjoon gets to the restaurant first, even though he thought he’d be the last. His scent is dull under a ton of masking spray. The pills are working, thankfully. His cheeks look flushed in a good way, not the runny-egg pale they were the week before. He touches his jaw once, unnecessarily, then heads in. 

Hoseok texted earlier that he was picking Jimin up from the hotel. “Don’t rush,” Hoseok said. “We’ll get there a little late.” 

Namjoon didn’t realize how quiet the neighborhood is at night. The rain from earlier hasn’t dried completely, sidewalks still slick and gutters still full. The restaurant’s tucked into a block of tall buildings, glass-framed and wood-panelled, upscale without being showy. It doesn’t have a sign, just a name etched into the stone outside in kanji. It’s an Asian fusion blend and Yoongi had pulled strings to get a celebrity interior designer. 

The glass is steamed. It’s warm inside. He presses the door open and the bell chimes.

There’s a host, younger than Namjoon, probably a student. She recognizes him instantly and smiles like she was told to expect him.

“Namjoon-sshi?” she asks. He nods. She bows and motions toward the back. “We’ve reserved the tatami room tonight.”

He thanks her under his breath and slips off his shoes by the step-up. The restaurant is dimmer than he remembers it, Yoongi’s always liked low lighting, warm bulbs that make everything look a little older, a little more intentional. Even when the restaurant first opened, it didn’t feel new. It felt like it had already been there for years. Like they’d all missed it somehow.

The hallway to the private room smells like sesame oil and simmered kelp. It’s comforting, a little nostalgic. His stomach doesn’t turn, for once.

Yoongi’s already inside. He’s sitting on the floor with one leg bent under him and the other stretched, flipping a paper menu. His hair’s tied back in a stubby knot and he’s wearing the charcoal-grey shirt he usually reserves for front-of-house nights. The sleeves are rolled just past the wrist. He doesn’t look up right away, but he knows Namjoon’s there.

“You’re early,” Yoongi says, still flipping the menu. “Thought you’d be the last one.”

Namjoon crouches and slides into the room. He takes the seat across from Yoongi, automatically. “Got a taxi on time,” he replies.

Yoongi folds the menu, sets it on the table and looks up. “You’re not late-late,” he says. “Just regular late for you.”

Namjoon rolls his eyes. It comes out gentler than he expects. “Hoseokie said they’re running behind. Jimin’s check in was delayed.”

“Of course it was.” Yoongi reaches for the cold barley tea pitcher near the corner, pours a glass and slides it to Namjoon without asking. “They said they’d show. I’ll believe it when I see them.”

Namjoon murmurs a thank you, takes a sip. It’s cold and nutty, the kind that coats your tongue.

“I heard you didn’t drink at that Idol pre show event,” Yoongi says suddenly. “What’s that about?”

Namjoon chokes a little. He didn’t expect that to come up. Hoseok must’ve said something. “I had work the next day,” he says too quickly, then adds a little slowly: “And I wasn’t in the mood.”

Yoongi tilts his head like he doesn’t buy it but won’t say so. “You get drunk twice a year and now you’ve used up both?”

Namjoon shrugs. “Trying to be boring.”

“You’re succeeding.” Yoongi smirks.

Footsteps echo in the hallway before Namjoon can follow that up. He cranes his neck slightly and sees a familiar pair of Nikes by the door.

Jimin’s voice cuts through next, high and bright. “Oh my God, I forgot how cold Seoul is.”

“I told you to buy a proper coat,” Hoseok says behind him.

“You told me to bring layers. Layers are for Instagram girls. I needed a coat.”

The door slides open and Jimin immediately throws himself to the floor with exaggerated drama, half-collapsing beside Namjoon. “Hyung,” he groans. “I hate this weather. My ears are frozen.”

Namjoon huffs a tired laugh, eyes still on the floor. “You’ve been back five seconds.”

Jimin’s scent hits with sharp undertones of pine, fresh and grounding. It’s always smelled like home to Namjoon, in the way family does, in the way warmth sneaks into a cold room.

He was the alpha Hoseok met at the dance academy when they were barely teenagers. When Jimin joined them years later, it felt like they’d always been four.

Hoseok follows in, shaking water off his umbrella. He bows toward Yoongi. “Congrats, chef-nim.”

Yoongi scoffs. “Don’t do that.”

“No, seriously, hyung,” Hoseok grins. “It’s official now. Again.”

Namjoon smiles as he watches Yoongi wave it off. But Yoongi’s eyes are soft when they land on Hoseok. And softer still when they land on Jimin, who’s finally sat up properly and is dusting nonexistent snow from his sleeves.

“How was the flight?” Yoongi asks.

“Long,” Jimin sighs. “And I was seated next to a man who sneezed every three minutes.”

“Still better than when you flew in next to a crying baby.”

“Babies don’t do it on purpose.”

Hoseok lowers himself next to Jimin and lets out a short sigh. “Flight etiquette discourse, part two.”

Jimin pinches his thigh.

Yoongi clears his throat and picks up the menu again. “I ordered a few starters already. Let me know if you want anything else.”

“It’s your kitchen, you pick,” Jimin says, flopping onto his elbows. “We’re just here to eat.”

“I’m here to celebrate,” Hoseok adds. “And eat.”

Namjoon sips his barley tea. It tastes stronger now.

The table fills slowly, first with cold dishes: vinegared daikon, seasoned spinach, chilled tofu with soy-pickled scallions. Then the hot starters: egg custard with crab meat, warm enough to steam up Jimin’s glasses.

Conversation picks up between bites.

“I thought you were coming in tomorrow,” Namjoon says to Jimin.

“I changed my flight when Hoseok hyung said we were doing this,” Jimin replies. “I wanted to be here.”

“Just for my food?” Yoongi asks, dry.

“For you, hyung. Obviously.” Jimin sticks his tongue out. “And your food too.”

Hoseok leans back against the wall, one arm draped lazily behind Jimin. “How’s the trip been?”

“Fine,” Jimin answers, chewing. “I saw Jeongguk before I left. He said he’s got a new song out next week.”

“Oh, right.” Hoseok blinks. “He texted me something cryptic. ‘It’s emotional but not embarrassing.’ Whatever that means.”

Namjoon chuckles. “That’s very him.”

Yoongi hums. “When’s the last time we were all in the same room?”

“February?” Jimin guesses. “That was when Yoongi-hyung made that spicy beef and we all cried.”

“Namjoonie cried the most that day,” Hoseok corrects. “His face was flushed like a peach.” 

“It was hot,” Namjoon says, defensive, swatting Hoseok’s hand when he tries to pinch his cheeks. “And I was drunk.”

Yoongi lifts an eyebrow. “Of course, you cry baby.”

That prompts a laugh and Namjoon pouts, picking at the daikon. The vinegar makes his tongue curl slightly. His stomach is calm, but he doesn’t feel hungry.

There’s a moment when Hoseok glances across the table at him. It’s brief. He knows what it means. Namjoon meets it and gives him a subtle nod. 

Jimin’s talking about his itinerary. He’ll be in town for three days, then flying to Busan to see family, then back to Tokyo before Chuseok. His voice is bright, as usual, but Namjoon can hear the fatigue in it. The way he talks a little faster when he’s tired. Something he never quite unlearned from high school days.

“I’m gonna come back in spring if I can,” Jimin says. “Cherry blossom season.”

Yoongi hums again. He’s refilling his glass, not looking up. “Bring better shoes next time.”

“I brought boots,” Jimin protests.

“Instagram boots,” Hoseok mutters.

“They have laces.”

“No, they have heels because you’re short.”

Namjoon tunes them out for a minute.

The heat from the floor is creeping up his legs. His thighs are sweating where his pants meet the cushion. He adjusts slightly, presses his knee under the table to keep some circulation going.

He told himself he could do this. He told himself it wouldn’t be hard. He’d pick at the food, and no one would notice. He would laugh in the right places, and it would be fine.

It is fine…mostly.

Jimin’s pouring drinks now, soju into small clear cups. He nudges one toward Yoongi, another to Hoseok, and sets one in front of Namjoon.

Namjoon doesn’t touch it.

“No drunk Namjoonie hyung?” Jimin asks, a pout on his mouth. 

Namjoon shakes his head. “I’m on a wellness diet.” 

Luckily, Jimin doesn’t push. Hoseok drags the cup to his spot and raises one for a toast.

“To Yoongi-hyung,” he says. “Two stars and counting.”

“One Wikipedia page for now.” Namjoon adds, lifting his barley tea and clinks. 

Jimin cheers softly. “May your temper remain in the kitchen.”

Yoongi sighs through his nose. “Just drink.”

The second round of food comes in quietly.

Yoongi’s junior chef delivers it, bowing once, politely, and announcing each dish as if Yoongi didn’t write the menu himself. The boy places the dishes like art. A thinly shaved perilla salad dressed in warm sesame oil, grilled eggplant with fermented soybean glaze, and pan-seared duck with pickled gochujang aioli on a lacquered plate the color of soot.

“Hyung, this is insane,” Jimin says, poking at the duck with his chopsticks. “Are we even allowed to eat this?”

“You’re supposed to,” Yoongi replies flatly. “Don’t be weird.”

Jimin giggles, and Hoseok says something about duck being good for the skin. 

Namjoon’s already chewed his first bite. It tastes rich, like it’s been marinated overnight, the kind of flavor that folds into itself, salt, smoke, a little honey at the tail end.

“Yoongi hyung’s food is the best.” Hoseok cheers, big smile on his face. 

Jimin’s still poking at the salad when he says, out of nowhere, “I think I’m seeing someone. An omega.”

It comes out breezy, like an afterthought, but Namjoon blinks up anyway. “You think?” He asks, lifting an eyebrow.

“She lives in Tokyo,” Jimin adds, as if that explains the ambiguity. “We haven’t made it a thing yet.” 

Namjoon glances sideways. Yoongi’s chewing slower now, his attention narrowed like he’s deciding whether to comment.

“She’s a textile student. Works at that concept store I like,” Jimin continues. “The one with the hand-dyed shirts and the oversized jumpers.”

Hoseok whistles low. “Art school girl?”

“Mmh.”

“Park Jimin, you’ve matured.”

Jimin laughs, pushes some perilla leaves into his mouth and says, “Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I’m not,” Hoseok says. “Just wondering what finally got you over your eternal fear of commitment.”

“I wasn’t afraid,” Jimin protests. “I was busy.”

“You were allergic.”

Jimin pouts and throws a napkin at him. It lands in Hoseok’s lap.

Namjoon smiles briefly but his jaw is tight. The words fear of commitment echo a little too loud in his head. He keeps his gaze down, eats a little more of the salad, and doesn’t speak.

Yoongi, without looking up, refills his barley tea.

The next course is poured from a narrow black flask, labeled with a handwritten tag. Yoongi sets the bottle down on the table with no fanfare. “Private batch,” he says, almost shy. “My old professor sent it. He’s experimenting with regional distillations.”

The liquid is pale amber, cloudy. Jimin gasps. “It smells like chestnuts.”

“That’s because it is,” Yoongi says. “Chestnut and rice.”

Hoseok holds his cup to the light and examines the color. “You get the good shit, hyung.”

Jimin drinks and hisses. “Strong,” he says. “But good. Can we buy this?”

“No way,” Yoongi answers. “It’s not even labeled.”

“Fancy.” Hoseok clinks his glass with Jimin’s.

Yoongi glances at Namjoon periodically to make sure Namjoon’s eating. 

Conversation keeps drifting and the room breathes between bites.

Jimin talks about a streetwear brand he’s been helping out part-time with, and says he might collaborate with them for a summer drop. 

Hoseok says he’s been working on choreography for a new web drama OST and complains about the budget. 

Yoongi makes a face and asks, “Do web dramas have tight budgets?”

Namjoon listens, eating slowly. 

Eventually, Jimin turns to him with narrowed eyes. “Oh! speaking of celebrities,” he says, mouth full. “What’s going on with that trainee? The idol boy? You know, the one with the huge eyes and the giant shoulders who keeps saying he has a crush on you.”

Namjoon groans. “What?”

“You know who I’m talking about.” Jimin leans in, conspiratorial. “He was on that game show last month promoting some drama and his ideal type was literally legs and dimples.”

“He was joking,” Namjoon says.

“He posted about it again on Instagram. You didn’t see?”

“No, I mute half the people I follow.”

Yoongi exhales sharply, almost a laugh, but not quite.

Namjoon glances at him. “What?” he asks.

Yoongi doesn’t answer. His lips twitch like he’s trying not to make a face.

Namjoon frowns. “It’s harmless. That kid flirts with everyone. He called Taemin ‘baby boy’ on live.” He’s not even sure why he’s justifying this to Yoongi. It’s not like it makes a difference but Yoongi’s expression provokes him and Namjoon’s barely holding on as is. 

“He did what?” Jimin coughs.

“I’m serious.”

“Let’s celebrate when Namjoonie gets his first scandal,” Hoseok grins, “my treat.” 

“Never happening.” Namjoon rolls his eyes and sips his barley tea to wash down the prick in his throat. 

Yoongi says nothing, but his silence is thick and unreadable.

There’s something about it that irritates Namjoon. The edge of his mouth tightens. He looks at Yoongi, but the man’s focused on his plate, slicing a piece of duck with surgical care.

The back of Namjoon’s neck starts to prickle with warmth. 

Eighteen to twenty nine. Did he even grow up? It’s always the same thing when it comes to Yoongi. 

The evening tapers into a softer rhythm. After dessert, a black sesame panna cotta that Hoseok declares “sinful” they lounge longer than they should. 

The staff has already cleaned most of the kitchen. The clatter of dishes is distant now, more echo than noise.

“I should go,” Jimin says eventually, checking his phone. “I have to take a call.”

“Work?” Hoseok asks.

“More or less,” Jimin shrugs. “It’s personal work.”

Hoseok stands with him. “I’ll drive you back.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Let’s go before it gets colder.”

Jimin grabs his coat and tucks a last bite of panna cotta into his mouth before bowing in Yoongi’s direction. “Hyungnim, this was amazing. Don’t forget to invite me when you get your third star.”

“I won’t,” Yoongi smiles.

Hoseok throws on his coat and ruffles Namjoon’s hair on the way out. “You coming too?”

Namjoon nods, halfway to standing but Yoongi looks up. “Hyung will drop you,” he says.

Namjoon freezes. “What?” he says.

Yoongi’s already standing. “I didn’t drink much. Just wait, I’ll grab my coat.”

“You don’t have to,” Namjoon says. “Really. I can get a cab—”

“Stop being stubborn when you know you’ll give in,” Yoongi says, voice flat.

Namjoon stares at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Yoongi just looks at him and Namjoon swallows. 

Hoseok glances between them and raises a hand. “Okay. I’m going before this gets weird.”

“Good night, hyungs,” Jimin says, already halfway out the door.

The door shuts behind them with a click.

Namjoon sits back down and stares at the empty plate in front of him. There’s a bit of sauce left in the corner, thick and orange-red like a brushstroke.

Yoongi comes back with a coat in one hand and his phone in the other. He taps a few things on his screen and slides it into his pocket.

Namjoon exhales. “Why are you starting an argument?”

“I’m not starting anything, baby.” Yoongi replies, voice eerily calm. “If you wanna throw a tantrum, do it in the car.”

Namjoon presses his tongue to his molars and huffs. 

The lights are dimmed now, staff nodding goodnights on their way out. Namjoon slips his shoes back on. Yoongi makes a joke in Japanese to one of the kitchen boys and Namjoon doesn’t catch it.

Outside, the drizzle’s back. The streets glisten under the amber hue of streetlamps. Yoongi unlocks the car with a beep, and Namjoon slips into the passenger seat. 

The air inside smells faintly of Yoongi and something clean underneath it. Fabric softener, maybe or that cologne Yoongi never admits to wearing.

Namjoon presses his palm to his thigh, feels the fabric of his pants, just to remind himself that he’s here, that this is real.

Yoongi turns the key in the ignition. Rain dots the windshield like tiny breaths and the wipers sweep it away, slow and rhythmic.  

The car pulls away, and the city folds in around them. 

 

The drive back is quiet for a while.

Yoongi’s hands are steady on the wheel, thumbs tapping against the leather like a metronome. His window’s cracked just slightly to let the condensation out, and the faintest bit of cold air slips in, curling around Namjoon’s ankles. The heater’s on low. 

Namjoon crosses his arms and looks out the window. It’s still drizzling, just barely, the kind of misty half-rain that’s more persistent than wet. The streetlamps blur behind droplets. The dashboard glows soft blue, and Yoongi’s playlist is low in the background, some ambient jazz loop he probably queued automatically. 

He knows how the night will end. This is how it usually goes. 

And Namjoon always lets it happen. He tells himself it doesn’t mean anything. That it’s just convenience, familiarity. Detached. 

But he knows better. He hates how his body softens before his mind does. How Yoongi’s scent cracks him open in all the places he thought he’d sealed. How he folds so easily, like a habit.

Like longing dressed up as routine.

Yoongi doesn’t speak until they’re a few blocks from Namjoon’s building. His voice is casual, “You still sulking?”

Namjoon exhales through his nose, but doesn’t look over. “No.”

Yoongi hums. “Could’ve fooled me.”

He takes the next left, pulls up beside Namjoon’s building, and kills the engine.

“Just come in.” Namjoon snorts. “I know you want to.”

Yoongi glances over, eyes sharp in the dark. “That so?”

Namjoon finally looks at him, jaw slack, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’m not going to invite you twice.” 

“Okay okay. Sorry,” Yoongi says, throwing his hands up in mock surrender. 

They don’t talk as they head up through the lot, then the elevator and then Namjoon punches in the door code with the back of his knuckle and pushes it open. 

The apartment’s dim and warm, faint light streaks from the kitchen window. It’s clean and lived in. 

Yoongi steps in and toes his boots off. Namjoon doesn’t look at him until he’s halfway down the hall, heading for the kitchen.

Right then, a finger curls into his belt loops and tugs him back easily. “I didn’t have dessert, baby.”

Namjoon’s body stills, Yoongi’s breath is on his neck, waiting for permission he doesn’t need.

Namjoon turns his head just slightly, voice flat. “You’re such a pervert. Why do I even put up with you?”

“Because I’ve got a fat knot and big fingers?” Yoongi doesn’t miss a beat.

Namjoon rolls his eyes. “That’s disgusting.”

Yoongi grins. “Didn’t hear a no.”

“Didn’t hear a yes, either—”

Yoongi pushes him, one firm hand to his lower back, guiding him down the short hallway like he owns the place. “Shut up, you’ll be dripping by the time I get your pants off.”

Namjoon stumbles slightly, but his feet carry him forward like instinct.

“Oh, so you have the decency for a bed tonight?” he mutters as they reach the bedroom.

Yoongi only grins. His hands move like he’s done this a hundred times, which he has. He slides one hand under Namjoon’s sweater, just barely skimming his stomach, and the other palms his ass. Namjoon swats at his wrist, but Yoongi grabs his hand instead, spins him around and backs him against the edge of the bed.

Namjoon’s breathing picks up, even though he tries to act annoyed. “Can’t  you initiate it like a normal person?”

Yoongi tugs his pants button open deliberately slow. “Namjoon-ah, please let hyung eat your cunt out. There, good enough?”

Namjoon glares. Yoongi dips his head and kisses his neck, scenting him. When they pull apart, Yoongi’s thumb brushes under the waistband of his briefs. 

The musk in the air is obvious. 

“You got wet on the ride back?” he murmurs, amused.

Namjoon glares harder. “It’s not. Hyung. Can you not?”

Yoongi’s eyes flicker downward. “Uh-huh.”

He presses the flat of his palm against Namjoon’s ass, giving it a firm squeeze that makes Namjoon hiss. 

“You feel different,” he murmurs, more serious now.

Namjoon doesn’t respond. 

Yoongi lifts his gaze. “Still mad?”

It’s a game now, something they’re familiar with more than anything. 

Namjoon exhales. “Maybe.”

Yoongi kisses his throat, collarbone, just under the curve of his jaw. “Hyung will have to make it up now.”

He drops to his knees before Namjoon can come up with a response. His hands hook into his waistband again, tugging everything down at once, underpants, trousers, all the way to his knees.

Namjoon’s half-hard already, his cock resting against his lower belly. Below it, his slit is soft and flushed, visibly wet, lips puffy, heat folds parting just slightly with the angle. 

He slides his hands behind Namjoon’s knees, pulling him forward, guiding him to sit at the edge of the bed. 

Namjoon lowers himself slowly, watching Yoongi through lidded eyes. His breath’s already shaky. He grips the sheets beside him.

Yoongi sinks, slowly, like his body already knows what to do. Like there’s no point in dragging out a formality they’ve both outgrown. He palms Namjoon’s thighs, thumbs stroking the skin absentmindedly.

Namjoon watches him, shoulders still set like he’s bracing for something. He doesn’t resist when Yoongi reaches for his waistband, just lets him tug, fabric folding down in soft rustles, cotton briefs dragged along with it until both are pooled at his knees. His thighs flex slightly, more out of instinct than modesty.

He exhales slowly. His cock hangs half-hard against his lower belly, flushed at the tip, the shaft resting just over the rise of his mound. But below, the heat of his cunt is obvious, slick glistens along the folds of his cunt, the lips a little swollen, parted slightly at the seam like he’s been open for too long.

Yoongi looks up, eyes dark and a little glassy. 

Namjoon shifts his weight, bracing his hands behind him on the mattress. His voice comes rough. “If you make a meal out of staring, I’ll make you sleep on the couch.”

Yoongi huffs a breath through his nose, the kind that might’ve been a laugh if he were in a different mood. He leans in without warning and kisses the inside of Namjoon’s thigh, near the crease where thigh meets groin. 

Namjoon’s breath catches. His knees twitch, spreading wider.

Yoongi presses another kiss, just over the crease of the lips. 

“Hy—hyung. Don’t tease,” Namjoon says, voice wound tight.

“Not teasing,” Yoongi murmurs, nosing gently along the heat of him. “You’re just sensitive tonight.”

“‘m not.” Namjoon huffs, a pout tugging at his lips. 

Yoongi parts him with both thumbs on either side of the slit, spreading Namjoon open like a book he’s read a hundred times but still finds something new in.

Namjoon’s cunt is slick and flushed, folds glistening from the wet that’s already started to pool. His clit hides just under the hood, stiffening shyly in the open air.

“How the hell do you slick so much?” Yoongi breathes out. “You’re so wet.”

“I’m greedy, remember?” Namjoon mutters, trying to sound smug but it lands somewhere closer to breathless. 

Yoongi smiles like that answer satisfies him. He ducks his head and licks a slow stripe up the length of his cunt, tongue, flat from bottom to top in one long stroke. 

Namjoon flinches, thighs tightening involuntarily. “Fuck—” he gasps, hand clenching in the blanket.

Yoongi hums against him, mouth working with the same kind of patience he brings to plating a dish, like he knows exactly what kind of mess Namjoon’s gonna be in ten minutes and doesn’t mind taking his time getting there.

His tongue moves in long drags, parting Namjoon’s folds to dip between them, warm and soft and maddeningly patient. When he reaches the clit, he circles it, laps around it, presses just slightly with the tip of his tongue until Namjoon starts shifting his hips forward.

Yoongi pulls back. “Sit still, baby.”

“I am,” Namjoon hisses through gritted teeth. “You’re just—fuck—you’re slow.”

Yoongi licks again, firmer this time, dragging up and then flattening his tongue against the whole length of Namjoon’s cunt. He tilts his head and does it again, then again, until the slick is coating his chin and the room smells like sex. 

Namjoon’s hand finds his own thigh, gripping tight to ground himself. 

Then Yoongi sucks his clit into his mouth and closes his lips around it, tongue flicking slowly under the hood.

Namjoon’s whole body jerks. His breath punches out of him, cock twitching against his belly. “Oh f-fuck.” 

Yoongi closes his lips around Namjoon’s clit and draws back with a low, open-mouthed suck. The sound is faint but obscene in the quiet. 

Namjoon makes a strangled noise and grips the back of Yoongi’s head with one hand, fingers threading into his hair without pulling. “Hyung.”

Yoongi looks up with his mouth still pressed to him. His eyes are dark, wild around the lashes and his lips are slick and parted.

“You’re really gonna make me beg for it?” Namjoon whines, cheeks flushed and breathless. 

Yoongi lifts his head, just enough to speak. “Thought you liked when I take my time.”

“I don’t.” Namjoon’s voice cracks on the vowels. “I hate it.”

Yoongi smiles, a lazy mean thing. “Don’t care.”  Then he goes back in, rougher this time, tongue pushing deeper and dragging over every inch of slick. 

His hands slide beneath Namjoon’s thighs and lift them slightly, angling him more open like a dish served for himself. 

Namjoon makes a low, caught noise. His thighs tighten around Yoongi’s shoulders. “Don’t—don’t tease—” he stammers. “Don’t fuckin’—just—”

Yoongi hums low, the vibration sending shockwaves straight up Namjoon’s spine. He licks again, slower now, then seals his lips around Namjoon’s clit and sucks with steady pressure.

His nose brushes against Namjoon’s mound, chin slick with spit and lust. 

Namjoon makes a wrecked sound. His stomach clenches and his voice pitches high. “Shit, I’m gonna—don’t—”

Yoongi presses in deeper. Two fingers slide with no warning, slick easing the way. He curls them up, fucking up into Namjoon’s heat like he knows the exact shape of him.

Namjoon lets out a sound that’s not quite a moan, not quite a sob, somewhere in between.

The stretch is sweet, just enough, and the pressure on his clit doesn’t let up. He grabs the sheets beside him, hips stuttering forward and fingers clawing at the sheets. 

Yoongi groans into him, mouth greedy. “You taste—fuck—nothing comes close to this,” he pants, nose brushing the top of Namjoon’s mound. “Best thing I’ve ever had.”

That’s what does it. 

“Hyung—fuckfuckfuck—”

Namjoon comes like the air got yanked out of his lungs, whole body tensing, then breaking apart, toes curling into the mattress. His cock jerks against his stomach and his cunt clenches hard around Yoongi’s fingers, slick flooding out and coating his knuckles. 

He gasps and his chest heaves. The breath that leaves him shakes all the way through. 

Yoongi works him through it, mouth gentle now, tongue soft, fingers stilled inside him and working Namjoon down like he’s coaxing a flame to flicker out. 

Namjoon’s thighs are still trembling. His breath comes rough, voice cracking with what little’s left of it. “Okay—okay, that’s enough.”

Yoongi pulls back just enough to glance up. His face is slick, lips red, like he just drank something sweet and hot.

Namjoon’s chest heaves, breath catching on every inhale. His cock is flushed, softening slowly against his skin. His thighs are open and wet and his whole body hums like a struck tuning fork.

Yoongi presses a kiss to the inside of his thigh and slowly slips his fingers free. 

Namjoon lets his head fall back, eyes closed. “Hyung,” he murmurs, voice softer than before, still frayed at the edges. 

“Yeah?”

“You’re an animal.”

Yoongi grins against his skin. “I know.”

Namjoon doesn’t realize he’s trembling until Yoongi’s hands return to his thighs, thumbs rubbing soft circles just above the bend of his knees, strangely gentle for how filthy it’s just been. 

“You’re shaking,” Yoongi murmurs, almost to himself. 

Namjoon snorts, breath catching halfway through. “No shit.”

Yoongi’s gaze flicks up, lips still shiny. “You good?”

Namjoon nods with a slow, delayed motion. His body has yet to finish catching up with his mouth. “Mn. Just—fuck. Sensitive.”

Yoongi hums, satisfied. He leans in and presses one more kiss to the inside of Namjoon’s thigh, open-mouthed and lazy. Then he pulls back slightly, dragging his hands up Namjoon’s thighs, then around, palming the swell of his ass again like he’s reacquainting himself with territory he’s never forgotten.

Namjoon watches the shift in him, the slow roll of control retaking shape in his body. Yoongi’s always been a bit more intense than any alpha Namjoon’s been with. A little bit of slicking and Yoongi looks like he’s cracked open and filled with more hunger. 

Namjoon’s already familiar with that look. “Hyung,” he mutters, bracing himself.

Yoongi’s voice comes softly. “Lie back for me.”

Namjoon raises an eyebrow but obeys instantly. He pushes himself back onto the bed, elbows first, then shoulders, until his head finds the pillow. His sweater is still on, rucked up just under his chest. His pants and briefs are tangled halfway down his thighs. His cock’s wet and twitchy, and his cunt still pulses faintly like it’s remembering Yoongi’s tongue.

Yoongi stands between Namjoon’s legs, eyes dragging slowly over every inch of him. The hunger’s back in full now, but it’s measured, held on a leash. 

“You already look fucked out,” he says, almost admiring.

Namjoon sighs, head tipped to the side on the pillow. “Gee. Wonder whose fault that is.”

Yoongi chuckles. “Mine, heh?” 

He leans forward, and in one easy pull, drags Namjoon’s pants and briefs the rest of the way off. He drops them to the floor like they’re in the way of something more important. 

“Hyung.” Namjoon swallows, growing needy. “Please.”

Maybe it’s the hormones from the pregnancy. Or maybe it’s just how Namjoon’s always been with Yoongi. 

Yoongi meets his eyes again, expression dark. “Yeah?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“I wasn’t gonna,” Yoongi says, even as he leans forward and presses both palms against Namjoon’s inner thighs, spreading him wide again, “but you should.”

Namjoon scowls, cheeks hot. “Don’t be a freak.”

Yoongi just grins. “Too late.”

He steps back to strip, pulling his shirt over his head in one motion, then his belt undone with a metallic clink, jeans shoved low on his hips. He doesn’t take his eyes off Namjoon the entire time. When he steps out of his pants, his cock’s already hard, tip flushed. 

Namjoon eyes it warily. “Hyung—”

“I’ll give it to you, baby,” Yoongi says, stroking himself lazily. 

Namjoon’s fingers curl tight in the sheets.

Yoongi climbs onto the bed slowly, knee between Namjoon’s thighs, hands bracing beside his hips. He dips down and noses at his throat, lips pressing under his jaw. “You cock hungry?” he asks, smug under the heavy breath.

Namjoon looks away. “I’m not.”

Yoongi kisses his neck. “Say yes?”

He huffs. “Fine. Yes.” 

Yoongi smiles against his skin. “You’re always so needy after I eat you out.” 

Then he leans back on his knees, grabs Namjoon by the waist, and drags him down in one smooth pull, tugging him toward the edge of the bed. Namjoon slides easily on the comforter, his legs falling open. 

His body reacts faster than his mouth. The slick starts up again, glistening at the seam of his cunt, soft lips parting just slightly.

Yoongi grabs the base of his cock, gives it a lazy pump, and lines himself up, head brushing against Namjoon’s hole without pushing in. 

Namjoon’s breath shudders out. “Stop being a dick.”

Yoongi leans in, nose brushing his cheek. “Say please.”

“Fuck off.”

Yoongi laughs, a gruff thing that’s more breath than sound. He kisses Namjoon’s cheekbone, then his collarbone. “Baby, you’re dripping.”

“You’ve made your point,” Namjoon mutters, voice thinner now. “Just—fuck, stop teasing.”

Yoongi presses in slowly, thick heat parting Namjoon’s cunt in one smooth stroke. 

Namjoon gasps, his back arching and legs tensing around Yoongi’s waist. “F-fuck, hyung—”

Yoongi groans from somewhere deep in his chest. “God, you’re so fucking warm.”

His cock stretches Namjoon open, pressure building slow and sweet. He’s way too thick, and Namjoon’s heat clenches tight around him, sucking him in.

Namjoon gasps louder this time. “You’re big—always f-feel—shit—”

“Feel full, baby?”

Namjoon nods without speaking. His hands scramble up Yoongi’s arms, holding tight as Yoongi bottoms out.

Yoongi stills when he’s all the way in, his balls pressed right up against Namjoon’s ass. 

“Good?” Yoongi murmurs, brushing hair from Namjoon’s face.

Namjoon nods, eyes glassy. “‘s fine.”

Yoongi kisses his temple. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

Namjoon swallows, then mutters, “I’ll pinch your thigh.”

Yoongi laughs again. “Good.” Then he pulls out halfway and thrusts back in, hips rolling deep.

Namjoon gasps, voice caught in the back of his throat. His nails dig into Yoongi’s arms. His cunt tightens around the cock inside him, slick noises filling the space between them.

Yoongi sets a rhythm, slow and unhurried at first. He drags out each thrust, pressing in until Namjoon’s breath catches, then pulling out just enough to make him whine.

Namjoon’s legs wrap around his waist. His cock’s pressed between their stomachs now, rubbing with every motion, leaking against Yoongi’s skin.

Yoongi leans down, lips brushing Namjoon’s ear. “Best cunt I’ve ever taken,” he whispers.

Namjoon pants out a breath. “Do you have to—shit—talk like that?”

“I can’t help it.” Yoongi groans, voice rough. “I see you and get all filthy.” 

Namjoon glares, lips parted and brows pulled tight, but it’s ruined by how wrecked his expression probably is. 

Yoongi thrusts deeper, hips smacking loud now. “Tell me if it’s too hard.”

Namjoon lets out a half-laugh, half-moan. “You think too much of yourself.”

Yoongi grabs his hips tighter and changes the angle, fucking in harder now. Namjoon gasps again, this time louder, one leg slipping up Yoongi’s back.

Their bodies meet over and over, the room humid with heat and their breaths.

Yoongi’s knot’s swelling slowly now, dragging against Namjoon’s cunt each time he thrusts in. Not entirely there, just teasing the edge of it, spreading slick deeper into Namjoon’s cunt with every stroke.

Namjoon feels it and swears under his breath. “Don’t—don’t knot me yet.”

“I won’t,” Yoongi pants, even as his hips keep grinding deep. “Not yet. Just—fuck, just need a little longer.”

Namjoon clenches around him again, cunt twitching hard.

Yoongi groans. “You’re so fucking tight.”

Namjoon grips his shoulders. “Shut up and fuck me hard.”

Yoongi pounds in harder, breath ragged, rhythm breaking down slightly as the heat builds. His balls slap against Namjoon’s ass. The smell of slick and sweat is thick in the room.

Namjoon’s voice breaks open. “Hyung—gonna—oh my fuck—”

Yoongi leans in and bites under the collarbone, swallowing the noise he makes.

Namjoon’s cunt clenches hard around him again, and Yoongi bites back a moan.

He’s close, so is Namjoon.

Yoongi only fucks in deeper, dragging his cock all the way out to the tip before slamming it back in again. The echo of skin meeting skin fills the room. 

Namjoon’s gasping like he can’t get enough air. His legs lock around Yoongi’s back, holding him there, and his cock drags against both their bellies.

“You—f-fuck, harder—harder—”

Yoongi fucks him through it, moaning under his breath. His eyes are glazed over, not quite focused anymore, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.

The next time he thrusts in, his knot presses against Namjoon’s hole, thicker now.

Namjoon flinches. “Hyung.” 

“Not yet,” Yoongi pants, pulling back, dragging out slow to give him space to breathe. “Just—getting close.”

Namjoon swallows hard. His whole body is shaking now, twitchy and overstimulated. His cunt pulses every time Yoongi hits deep, like his body’s begging for the knot even if his brain hasn’t caught up yet.

Yoongi leans in again, forehead against Namjoon’s temple. “You feel too good, baby. Gonna fuck you full, knot you so deep—”

“Hyung, please,” Namjoon’s voice breaks.

Yoongi slams in again, hard enough to make the bed jolt and punch the air from Namjoon’s lungs. His knot presses again, grinding slow circles at the edge like it’s asking permission without really needing it. 

It’s too soon. Namjoon chokes.  “Wait—”

He knows what’s coming. He can feel the pressure building, the stretch that’ll leave him sore for a few days. And still, some fucked-up part of him wants it. Wants to be filled, locked down and ruined by Yoongi. 

“Let me in,” Yoongi breathes, mouth at his jaw. “You’re already sucking me in, baby. Just—fuck, just a little more.”

Namjoon shakes his head, voice breaking into incoherent noise. 

Yoongi grabs the underside of Namjoon’s knees, pushes his thighs up to open him wider. His cock sinks deep again and he grinds in firmly. 

The pressure builds. Namjoon’s slick squelches, and the knot starts to push inside.

Namjoon throws his head back, mouth open in a soundless gasp. The stretch is brutal for him. His body fights it for half a second before giving up and giving in.

Yoongi moans loud and feral when the knot pops through. His whole body jerks, hips twitching hard. 

Namjoon’s cunt clamps down around the swell, clenching tight like it doesn’t want to let go.

“Fuck—fuck—fuck—shit,” Yoongi groans, shaking all over. 

Namjoon whines, hands clawing at Yoongi’s shoulders. “Too much,” he gasps, voice thin. 

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi says, panting. “Hold on for me, baby. Almost, just hold on—”

Namjoon should push him off, tell him not to use him like that. But instead, he clings tighter. He always does. That’s what makes this so stupid. 

Yoongi grinds in deep and shudders hard, all the air leaving his lungs at once and comes. 

It’s deep, thick waves of cum flooding Namjoon’s cunt. The heat hits instantly, spreading inside, warm and heavy. 

Namjoon gasps, legs locking tighter, back arching as his own orgasm rises too fast and too sudden to stop.

The pressure of the knot, the weight inside him, the feel of being fucked full. All of it. The intensity is otherworldly. 

Namjoon comes like he’s being stretched inside out, cunt clenching around Yoongi’s knot in rhythmic spasms. His cock twitches against his stomach and spills between them, hot and sticky. A moan tears out of his throat and he tips his head back, baring his neck. 

Yoongi groans, buried to the hilt. His cum leaks out in thick dribbles around the seal of the knot, sliding down Namjoon’s ass onto the sheets.

Their bodies stay locked, trembling against each other. 

Namjoon’s cunt pulses, stubborn and greedy, still trying to draw more. His body’s too hot, too full, too everything.

Yoongi kisses his nipple, his neck, his earlobes, sloppy and off-center. “Good boy,” he murmurs, voice cracked.

Namjoon lets out a broken laugh. “Don’t—don’t say that.”

Yoongi smiles against his cheek. “You love it.”

“Don’t make it a thing.” Namjoon groans, tilting his head to the side. “It’s not happening.”

“Oh but it is.”

Namjoon’s breath comes in slow, ragged waves. His whole body’s overheated, sweat-damp and sensitive all over. The stretch of the knot still aches, too big to move but not painful now. 

Yoongi brushes hair off his forehead, then kisses his temple.

They stay like that for a while. The only sound is their breathing and the low creak of the mattress as Yoongi shifts to get more comfortable without pulling out.

Namjoon exhales a long sigh. “I’m so sleepy.” 

Yoongi hums, nuzzling into his neck. “Did I make it up to you?”

Namjoon rolls his eyes. “Stop it.” He relaxes under him, breathing deep. His cunt still throbs faintly around the knot, but the urgency is gone. Everything’s slowed down now, their breaths, heartbeats, the pace of time itself.

“I’ll clean you up, you sleep.” Yoongi rubs his back gently, grounding them both. 

“Use the cleansing wipes for my makeup, please.” Namjoon murmurs, slipping his eyes shut. 

Yoongi kisses his shoulder. “Got it.” 

The knot holds them together. 

Yoongi’s hand finds his. Namjoon lies there, full of a man he loves and pretends it’s enough for now. 

 

There’s a chill under his arms when Namjoon wakes up. The covers are down his back, twisted into a corner like they gave up halfway through keeping him warm. His skin’s tacky with dried sweat. He doesn’t remember dreaming, but his body feels like it held onto something all night and still hasn’t let go.

The ceiling is a dull patch above him, white where the light slips in through the far side of the curtain. A few inches of morning leaking through a gap. It doesn’t feel enough light to matter. 

He stretches a hand down slowly and presses against his belly, fingers grazing skin like he’s not sure what he’s checking for. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel like anything but it does make him still.

His palm flattens, lingers, and he feels something softer underneath. It’s way too early for a bump but it’s warmer there, like something lives under the skin. Something he hasn’t said out loud yet. 

Not even to himself.

The sheets are damp around his thighs. He slides his legs under the blanket, knees pulling up slightly. The position curls him over that warmth and makes him feel smaller. 

He doesn’t want to get up. There’s an ache in his bones, in his chest, his stomach, on the tip of his tongue. Something reluctant.

Namjoon’s jaw tenses. It’s stupid. He knows it’s stupid.

The bed still smells like Yoongi. That gasoline and rain and something woody, skin-warmed, smoke-soaked. His scent is all over the pillow beside him, pressed into the cotton like memory.

And it smells good.

Namjoon shifts his face into the pillow and breathes in deep. His body reacts before he does, the ache in his chest softens and his spine unfurls.

Maybe it’s the hormones. That’s what it is. That’s all it is.

Namjoon peels back the blanket, slowly. He’s still naked under. The air hits his skin and he shivers faintly, staring at the other side of the bed where Yoongi’s left his mark. 

He sighs, reaches for his panties, still warm from the sun pooled on the floorboards. He steps into them, winces faintly at the pull in his slit from the knot. The bed creaks softly beneath him.

It starts unintentionally, he grabs the the cream knit blanket folded at the foot. He pulls it up over his lap. Then his sweater from last night. He presses it to his chest before setting it behind him like a cushion. A minute later, he leans over to pick up the heavier grey one that Yoongi must’ve dropped last night. It smells like him. 

Namjoon stacks it over the pile without thinking. Then he reaches for the pillows, stacks one against his back. Another to the left, anchoring his curled leg. The corner of the comforter folds into a wall. The knit blanket gets wrapped again, this time over his feet.

Then comes the final touch: Yoongi’s shirt from yesterday, wrinkled and faintly sour with sweat. Namjoon doesn’t even question himself as he folds it neatly and tucks it under the pillow nearest to him. Right by his belly, right where it’ll touch.

By the time he’s done, the bed doesn’t look like a bed anymore. It’s not about comfort. It’s about something else. Something older. Primal. 

It doesn’t even register to him until he’s halfway through re-folding a throw blanket along the perimeter that he—

He’s nesting. 

“Oh,” Namjoon says out loud.

He looks around at the small, soft pile of things wrapped around his body and keeping it in place, and his breath catches in his throat. He stumbles and sits cross-legged in the middle of what he’s made, this half-circle of fabric, this cave of soft things, this stupid animal instinct scratching at the walls of his rational mind.

He rubs the heel of his hand over his stomach. His skin is warm to touch. His body feels safe. The kind of safety that doesn’t make sense unless you know what it’s protecting.

I want it, Namjoon realizes. It drops in his chest like a pebble in water.

He didn’t mean to. He really didn’t. But his nest is there. Made of pieces of him and Yoongi…of them and it feels right. 

What am I supposed to do now? He doesn’t say it out loud this time. The thought is too scared to have a voice.

It’s the hormones. It has to be. He’s read about this, instincts, nesting behavior, comfort-seeking in early pregnancy. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to make it mean anything—

But his body is already three steps ahead of him and his mind won’t stop. 

He rubs a hand over his face, suddenly clammy. The air around him is warm, wrapped too close, too much.

What if he doesn’t want it?

The thought sneaks in before he can build a wall against it. 

Namjoon and Yoongi had been friends longer than he knew how to define that word. And then, somehow, not that long ago, things shifted. A night that didn’t stop where it used to. A body that said yes even when the heart held back.

Now they exist in this middle ground.

Where Yoongi still brings him ginger tea when his throat hurts and remembers how he likes his ramen and always stands close enough to be something but never quite…never quite asks for more.

Because they promised. They promised it wouldn’t be more.

Namjoon closes his eyes. His pulse thuds hard at his temples. 

I want you, hyung. I feel like I’ve played catch up to you all my life. Can you hold on for me? Can you want me back? Please want me back, I’ll be good. I’ll be everything you want.

Now, in the silence of his nest, Namjoon hugs his knees tighter.

He wants to be wanted back. Desperately. It scares him how much.

The scent of Yoongi all around him isn’t helping. It feels like belonging. It feels like safety. It makes his skin feel too thin and his eyes sting for no reason.

He hears the pan in the kitchen. Yoongi’s probably making eggs. He always does, when he stays over. Scrambled over rice, soy sauce and green onions if there’s any left in the fridge.

That’s what Yoongi does. Takes care of things. Takes care of Namjoon. 

Namjoon swallows thickly. Before he can reach for the pile of pillows at his side, the door creaks open and Yoongi is standing there. 

He’s holding two mugs and the second he sees what Namjoon’s done, he stops in his tracks. His eyes travel slowly, sweeping over the pillows, the pile. The arrangement. Namjoon in the middle of it, knees drawn up, half-covered in blankets and red-faced.

“What…?” Yoongi blinks. “Are you—nesting?”

Namjoon wishes the bed would swallow him whole.

The air feels tight, like the moment before a glass shatters. 

Yoongi just stands there, two mugs cradled in both hands like he doesn’t know what else to do with them now, caught between stepping forward and stepping out. 

His face doesn’t give away much. But his eyes look startled. Maybe something else Namjoon doesn’t have the stomach to name.

“I—” Namjoon starts, and instantly hates himself for it. He curls his fingers into the edge of the blanket, the nest folding in around his thighs. 

Yoongi clears his throat, steps in like the sound gave him permission. He sets one mug on the windowsill and the other on the desk.

Namjoon doesn’t look at him, keeping his gaze on his knees instead. His hands. The soft drape of Yoongi’s hoodie pooled near his hip. The way the room smells like Yoongi, like rain still caught in the cotton, like something that’s been lived in.

Yoongi stops at the edge of the bed.  “You don’t…” he starts, then tries again. “You don’t usually do this.”

Namjoon flinches. “I know.”

“It’s okay,” Yoongi says, quickly, palms up. 

Namjoon’s stomach turns. “I didn’t mean to. I just. I don’t know,” he sighs. 

The air between them crackles in that quiet way it always does when they’re too close, too aware of everything they haven’t said.

Namjoon pulls the corner of the blanket higher over his belly. “Can you just—not make it weird.”

“I’m not,” Yoongi says, stepping in slowly. “It’s not weird, baby.”

Namjoon shoots him a look. “You’re literally staring, hyung.”

“It looks nice.” Yoongi shrugs. “You did good.”  

Namjoon groans and hides his face for half a second. It must be flaming. “Oh my god, hyung.” 

Yoongi steps closer to the bed. “Can I…?”

Namjoon blinks. “What?”

“Is it okay if I come in?”

Namjoon’s throat works. He hesitates, then nods softly.

Yoongi doesn’t waste the permission. He moves carefully, knees on the bed, one palm pressed flat into the sheets as he slides in beside Namjoon. Close enough that the heat off his body feels like a tide rolling in.

Namjoon doesn’t say anything. He watches Yoongi’s hands. They settle in his lap, fingers tapping once against his own wrist like he’s grounding himself.

“You smell stronger lately,” Yoongi says eventually. “Today especially. Different. Good different. Really good.”

Namjoon’s eyes flutter shut. “I don’t know why.” 

Yoongi leans in slightly and tilts his head and noses at Namjoon’s shoulder. “Is that okay?” He asks. 

“I guess.” He means yes.

Yoongi turns toward him. “Can I, more?”

Namjoon already knows what he’s asking. He tips his head and bares his neck. 

Yoongi moves closer. It starts with his nose pressing into Namjoon’s neck, just beneath his jaw. He breathes him in, then rubs the bridge of his nose against Namjoon’s skin, just under his ear. His breath warms the side of his neck. He nuzzles there, drops lower to the side of his throat. Big hands come up to cradle Namjoon’s ribs, thumbs sweeping carefully like he’s afraid to press too hard.

Namjoon melts under it. No other word for it.

The scenting turns something off in his brain, or maybe it turns everything on. His body leans into it on its own, without permission. His hands slide into Yoongi’s shirt, grabbing fistfuls at the back to hold him in place.

It feels… good. It feels like he’s wanted. 

Yoongi noses at his collarbone, breathes him in again, just under the ear, and this time his lips brush skin. 

Namjoon twitches, breath caught.

Yoongi’s hand drifts lower and settles on Namjoon’s waist. Then his mouth presses to Namjoon’s neck, his jaw, the mole on his chin closer to his lips. 

Namjoon tenses. “Hyu—”

In the next second, Yoongi’s lips are on his. The kiss happens so fast that Namjoon almost lets it. Just a warm, open-mouthed press that fractures his breath and binds it back. 

Namjoon inhales like he’s been slapped. “Hyung,” he says, mouth pulling back. “No.”

Yoongi freezes.

“We said no kissing.” Namjoon wipes at his mouth like the kiss left something behind. His hand lingers there, over his lips, thumb pressed against his bottom lip. 

Yoongi swallows hard, pulls back a little and waits, still as a held breath.

Namjoon sits up, his spine curled like he’s protecting something or hiding it.

The silence has a bite.

“I didn’t mean to cross—”

“You didn’t,” Namjoon cuts him off. “I mean, you did. But it’s not that.”

Yoongi watches him cautiously. “Then what is it?”

Namjoon looks at him. That’s a loaded question, isn’t it?

Because if Yoongi had kissed him again, maybe he would’ve let him. Maybe he would’ve broken all the way, folded into him like a hand into water. Said yes without words. Said love without saying it.

But the way his chest is beating now, he knows.

He almost gave too much away.

“I don’t know,” he says like a consolation. 

Yoongi leans his chin against his hand, elbow on his knee, like they’ve done this before. Like this is just one more iteration of them not knowing how to be.

Namjoon wants to drag his hand through the nest and ruin it, destroying the comfort he accidentally built.

“I was going to make breakfast,” Yoongi offers, voice gentle. 

“Not hungry.”

“You’ll feel better after.”

Namjoon shakes his head.

Yoongi frowns, something in his expression twitching. He’s careful with it, but it’s there, the disappointment he doesn’t mean to show. The tiredness around the eyes. The same look from that night. Panic trying not to be obvious. 

“Don’t do that,” Namjoon says suddenly.

Yoongi frowns. “Do what?”

“That. That thing where you act like you’re being normal about this.”

Yoongi raises an eyebrow. “I am trying to be normal about this.”

“Well, you’re not,” Namjoon snaps. It comes out harsher than he meant it. “You don’t get to act like this is normal. You don’t get to just—” His voice falters. “—to kiss me and make me eggs and think that’s okay.”

Yoongi sits back a little, like the words physically hit him. “I never said it was okay.”

Namjoon’s chest feels too full. His hands are shaking. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to hold in. “I can’t do this,” he says.

“What can’t you do?”

“This thing. This… whatever this is between us.” 

Yoongi says nothing. His silence makes it worse. 

It always falls to Namjoon, doesn’t it?

The weight of it feels unfair. 

Namjoon runs a hand down his face, then over his stomach again. The sheet pools at his hip. 

The nest is still here. The baby is still here. And Yoongi doesn’t know anything. 

“I think you should go,” Namjoon says, voice quieter than he wants it to be.

Yoongi blinks. “What?”

“I’m not feeling great,” Namjoon clarifies. “I need to be alone for a bit.”

Yoongi frowns and blinks again. “I just came in. Let me—can I make you something? I started breakfast, I can—”

“I said I’m not hungry.”

“I know. But—”

“No,” Namjoon says.

“Joon—”

Namjoon’s voice cuts through the room like a snap of ice. “Get out.”

Yoongi stills, eyes wide and then it goes blank into that quiet detachment he wears like armor.

“You’re crossing a line,” Namjoon adds, softer only by voice. 

Yoongi’s shoulders fold in. His hands twitch like they want to reach out again, like they don’t understand they’re not allowed to. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” Namjoon says. His eyes don’t move from the floor. “Just go.”

Yoongi stands and looks around for something, his phone maybe, or his dignity. Namjoon doesn’t help him find either.

“I’ll—” Yoongi clears his throat. “Okay. I’ll go.”

Namjoon nods once, doesn’t see Yoongi leaving, eyes stuck on the sheets. 

The door clicks shut behind him.

Namjoon is still breathing like he ran a mile. The nest is warm around him. Too warm. Like a cocoon that turned into a trap.

He buries his face in the hoodie Yoongi left behind, breathes in until his lungs burn with it. 

 

The days start blending at some point. Namjoon’s not exactly sure when. 

Maybe it was Tuesday. Or maybe that was last week. The calendar’s still flipped to September even though it’s not anymore, and the post-it he stuck on the fridge to remind himself to reheat the leftover rice from three days ago is still there, peeling at the corners.

The sun rises the same way every morning. Slow and quiet, like it knows not to disturb. It comes through the blinds in thin gold slats, brushing first across the far corner of the floor near the laundry basket, then dragging itself inch by inch until it lands on the dresser, then his ankle if he’s still in bed by ten.

He usually is.

It’s not that he’s not functioning. He gets up, showers and eats his meals. He checks his work messages, taps out replies that start with “Sorry for the delay,” and sets them to “unread” again just so he won’t forget them later.

He’s doing things. But something in him has jammed, like a browser tab stuck in limbo. He keeps refreshing the page but nothing loads.

He hasn’t cried. There’s no big breakdown, no sobbing into a pillow or sinking to the floor in the middle of brushing his teeth. He’s not unraveling, at least not visibly. But he can feel the looseness in his chest, the slow undoing of something held together by too much breath.

There’s a lull in him now. The kind that makes him do everything at half-speed. His body moves, but his heart lags behind.

His trash can’s filling with tangerine peels. That’s one thing that’s different.  

He never used to like fruit in the mornings. Now, it’s the only thing that makes sense. Cold, bright wedges, peeled slowly, eaten barefoot in the kitchen. The citrus cuts through the fog in his brain like glass through clouds. He peels them carefully hoping the answer to everything might be hiding in the center of a slice.

It never is.

The air feels thick even when the windows are open. His apartment smells like coffee sometimes, it lingers from the last time Yoongi made it here. Sometimes he thinks he should open all the windows and strip the bed and wash every fabric down to the last pillowcase. But then something stops him.

Maybe he’s scared of what it’ll smell like when it’s all gone.

He doesn’t text Yoongi. Yoongi doesn’t text him either. Not even to ask if he’s okay.

Which is fair, logical. They never promised each other anything. And technically, Yoongi didn’t do anything wrong. Namjoon said go. Yoongi went. 

That’s just how things are. That’s how they agreed it’d be.

Still, the silence spreads. 

It creeps into the corners of his apartment like condensation on glass. 

There are two bowls in the sink that he hasn’t washed yet. Two mugs. One of them is Yoongi’s, black, chipped near the handle. Namjoon uses his own now, the blue one, but the black mug stays there. Just in case.

He thinks about throwing it out. He doesn’t.

His body aches in strange ways. His chest feels heavy in the mornings. His stomach is weirdly tight some days and soft on others. His lower back pinches when he shifts too fast. He Googles things at night he doesn’t save to his history.

Week 5. Week 6. Early signs. Mood swings. What’s normal. When to tell. He doesn’t get very far.

Most of the time he just ends up reading the same sentence over and over again: trust your body.

But what if he doesn’t?

What if his body is asking for things his mind hasn’t caught up to yet?

By Thursday, he stops trying to explain it away. He stops pretending it’s just hormones or stress or an off week. He stops blaming the lack of sleep, or the way he’s been skipping lunch.

There’s a clock ticking inside him now, and it’s not metaphorical. It’s real. 

He thinks about Yoongi. The way he kissed him like it was an accident. Like it was inevitable. The way he said sorry with his eyes. The way he stood at the door too long, like maybe he wanted to be asked to stay.

He thinks about texting him.

Just a hey. Just a sorry. Just something small, neutral, like a toe dipped back into the warmth they ruined.

But what would he say after?

Hey hyung, I’m pregnant and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing and I’m scared you’ll leave for real this time if I tell you.

Too much. He turns his phone face-down on the coffee table and lets the week move without him.

On Friday, he showers late. There’s no urgency to anything he does anymore, but he still dries his hair, still folds his towel, still eats his tangerine at the kitchen counter with his eyes on the sunlight dripping across the floorboards.

Routine is all he has.

The week folds itself up and tucks into the drawer of the past. Saturday is only different in name. He puts on a hoodie he hasn’t worn since spring and realizes too late that it still smells like Yoongi. A memory in the cuffs, something that aches in the seam under his arm.

He doesn’t take it off even if he wants to. Instead, he sits by the window, legs drawn to his chest, hoodie sleeves over his hands, and watches people pass on the street below like he’s not part of them. 

If the baby is the size of a sesame seed right now, that means next week it’ll be bigger.

He swallows around a knot in his throat and rests his cheek against the windowpane.

Maybe next week, he thinks. Maybe next week he’ll be brave enough to say it out loud.

 

The week before Chuseok always slips by steady and quiet, like the sound of rice washing in a bowl.

Namjoon’s morning starts in the waiting room of the clinic, one leg crossed over the other, thumb tapping faintly against his knee. The fluorescent light overhead flickers once, then settles. The nurse behind the counter offers him green tea, and he accepts it without thinking, though it’s gone cold before he remembers to drink it.

They ask him to fill out another form. Some insurance related. He checks the same boxes again. First trimester. No complications yet. He hesitates at symptoms, circles “fatigue”, then scratches it out and then circles it again.

Dawon noona’s office smells like something vaguely citrus, lemon soap, maybe, or a diffuser she ran out months ago. She’s kind in her words without prying. Her voice is soft when she says, “You’re progressing well.” Like it’s something to be proud of, like his body has managed to do something right for once.

Namjoon nods along to everything. He doesn’t ask any of the things stuck in his throat. Not if it’s normal to feel like this. Not if it’s supposed to be lonely, even with another life growing inside you. Not if wanting something this much is supposed to hurt this quietly.

He just takes the vitamin samples she recommends and keeps a blank face. 

“Blood pressure’s a little lower than last time,” Dawon says, eyes on the monitor. “You keeping up with your supplements?”

Namjoon nods. “Yeah.”

“You’re still working?”

“Only light styling,” he says, and then amends after a second, “And admin stuff. I’m rarely on set anymore.”

“Good,” Dawon says, checking off something on her tablet. “You’re early. Most people don’t show up until something hurts.”

Namjoon shrugs. “I didn’t want to wait for that.”

He doesn’t say much else. The rest of the check-up is quiet. They talk about symptoms, nausea tapering off, fatigue sticking around. Dawon does a pelvic, writes him a referral for another scan. Her tone stays calm throughout, like it always has been. 

When it’s over, she squeezes his shoulder and says, “You’re doing okay.”

He nods again. It doesn’t feel like a lie. But it sits like one in his mouth.

Outside, the air is humid. Namjoon walks to work with his headphones in, volume low. He listens to an epik high song. The kind with slow synth and soft piano overlaid with static. It sounds like the way the weather feels. 

His phone buzzes. It’s from his dad.

Come home this year. Your mom misses you. I won’t ask again.

Namjoon stares at the message for a while before replying: Okay.

That’s how they talk. They’re not a long message kind of family. Never were.

At the office, he wraps up back-to-back styling meetings. The Chuseok campaigns are going out early this year, and the pressure to nail the visuals is unspoken but present. Namjoon adjusts swatches, re-arranges moodboards, pinches the bridge of his nose more times than he can count. He doesn’t mind the work. It keeps his hands moving while his mind hovers elsewhere.

By the time it’s five, he’s managed to cross off every task from his to-do list, which is rare and mildly satisfying. He folds it up, shoves it into the pocket of his tote, and heads out.

Hoseok texts around five.

Hobi [16:59]

☕️ before you disappear for the holidays?

Me [17:07]

sure.

but no baby talk.

Hobi [17:09]

🤐 zipped.

They meet outside the usual café near the station, the one with the burnt espresso and the wobbly stools that Hoseok insists are “vintage, not broken.”

Namjoon orders something decaf. Hoseok gets something sweet and says, “You look better.”

Namjoon sips through the straw. “The pills work.” 

Hoseok grins. They talk about work, which Hoseok hates. About a jacket Namjoon wants to steal from a brand showroom. About how weird Chuseok is now that everyone’s grown up and half the cousins live abroad. Hoseok mentions something about his parents trying to guilt him into dating someone from church again and Namjoon snorts into his cup.

“Still not over the guy with the cat?”

“He gave the cat its own Instagram,” Hoseok mutters. “I draw the line at animal influencers.”

Namjoon chuckles, and for a while it almost feels normal, as if he’s not walking around with something small forming inside him, whispering change into his bones.

But eventually, Hoseok’s eyes flick toward his stomach, and Namjoon straightens a little in his seat.

“I told you,” he warns.

“I wasn’t gonna say anything,” Hoseok replies gently. 

Namjoon fixes his straw. “Don’t.”

“Okay.”

They sit in silence for a bit. Then Hoseok adds, “You should tell him soon. You know before you start showing.” 

Namjoon doesn’t respond. He finishes the last sip of his drink, the ice clinking gently at the bottom of the cup.

“I should pack,” he says. 

Hoseok smiles at the deflection. “Alright, alright. I won’t press.”

They leave the café as the sun starts slipping behind the rooftops.

Before they part, Hoseok brushes a hand through Namjoon’s bangs and says, “Take care going home.”

Namjoon nods. “You too.”

The subway back to his apartment is quiet. The train isn’t too crowded yet. It’s a Thursday. Everyone’s waiting until Friday to leave. But Namjoon likes beating the rush.

His apartment feels stale when he opens the door. The fridge hums louder than usual. He opens it, stands there too long, and closes it again without touching anything. 

The shadows are long already, the sun filtering gold through the sheer curtains. His backpack is where he left it last time, half-unzipped in the closet. 

He pulls it out by the straps. It’s the navy one, the one that’s seen better days, the zippers frayed a little and the inside lining torn at the seam. He packs slowly. A hoodie, two shirts. Toothbrush and phone charger. The scarf he only wears at home because his mom says it brings out his eyes. A book he probably won’t read.

On impulse, his hand finds the box under the bed. He slides it open and pulls out his old Walkman. It’s scratched near the side, and the rewind button sticks if you press it too fast.

He holds it in his hands for a second too long, then tucks it into the side pocket of his backpack. The cassette goes in after, the one from years ago, the one with Yoongi’s handwriting still half-visible on the label.

   for joonie

The corner is curling, he presses it down, then lets it be.

He washes his face, brushing his teeth with one hand while opening the train schedule on his phone with the other. He booked a seat from Daegok station. 10:32 a.m. Direct to Ilsan.

The subway station smells like metal and soap. People brush past with shopping bags and wired headphones. It’s not rush hour, but it’s full enough. The train takes five minutes to arrive. Namjoon stands near the end of the platform, shoulder brushing the tiled wall.

He scrolls through Instagram without meaning to. One story down, a repost from Yoongi’s  older brother in Daegu. The table in the photo is full of food: lotus root, japchae, grilled fish, stacks of tteok. Yoongi’s off-center in the photo, caught mid-laugh and chopsticks in one hand.

Namjoon pauses. His chest tightens with something quiet and mean under his ribs. He taps out of the story, locks his phone and puts it back in his coat pocket.

The train rolls in.

He doesn’t usually get a seat this fast, especially not on the Gyeongui-Jungang line during pre-Chuseok rush. But something opens up at Wondang and Namjoon slips into the window seat before the older ajusshi behind him can decide if he’s going to take it or not.

His backpack lands on his lap. He flips it open and pulls out the old Walkman he dug out that morning. He thumbs open the tape deck and pulls the cassette out. The plastic’s yellowing around the edges, but the handwriting across the spine is unmistakable. 

Namjoon presses his thumb into the label and sets the tape in. 

The first track crackles to life like an old memory. Kim Kwang-seok’s voice unfurls slowly, the edges caught in static. Namjoon leans his head against the window, watching Seoul peel away station by station.

The carriage hums beneath him. The tape whirrs softly. It feels like something alive in his hands.

Namjoon closes his eyes and lets the song fill in the spaces where his thoughts would be.

It’s quieter than he thought it’d be, this mixtape. Quieter than Yoongi tends to go. He must’ve put it together at night. The kind of night where sleep doesn’t come and your hands look for something to mean something.

Namjoon’s fingers absently graze the edge of the cassette. He plucks at the corner of the sticker. It curls up under his nail. 

The tape keeps playing, a ballad he recognizes but can’t quite name. It’s Seo Taiji, maybe. Or Kim Hyun-sik. He’s not sure. Something about being left behind in a season someone else has already survived.

Halfway through tugging idly at the sticker, something catches his eye. Under the paper, there’s ink, faded, almost rubbed raw. As if someone wrote something and then changed their mind, and tried to cover it up. 

Namjoon squints at it, tilts it toward the window where the sunlight breaks through. 

      please love me back

The letters are thin and barely visible.

Namjoon stares at them. His stomach flips in the quiet, something hard to name settling under his ribs.

He doesn’t move for a long time.

The train tilts around a bend, trees blurring past, their leaves just starting to rust at the edges. Outside, the weather feels liminal, the kind of almost-autumn that still clings to summer at the edges.

The music keeps playing. His thumb stays on the tape. The sticker falls into his lap, clinging to the skin of his palm like it wants to stay. 

His eyes are hot suddenly, which is stupid, because it’s Chuseok weekend and he has a family dinner tonight and he’s not going to cry on a train.

The PA system crackles. “Ilsan station. Ilsan-yok.”

His heart drops into his stomach like it’s caught the wrong stop.

 

The road to their house isn’t long, an hour or so from the city center, depending on traffic, with a few glances out the window if you’re not the one driving. But with Namjoon in the passenger seat, hands curled around the fraying strap of his bag, the world outside feels like it’s skimming past without him. He watches the green signs fly by on the expressway, fingers tightening whenever his dad switches lanes a little too fast.

His dad drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting by the gear shift. The car smells faintly of old air freshener and mint gum. The radio plays something low, some old trot singer crooning about someone’s mother or a lover who waited too long. Neither of them talk for a while, and Namjoon’s grateful for that. Silence is easier than trying to wrap words around the weight in his chest.

“You eating okay?” his dad asks eventually, eyes still on the road.

Namjoon nods. “Yeah.”

“That place you’re working at—still the same one?”

“Yeah,” Namjoon repeats. “Still doing the styling stuff mostly.”

His dad hums. “You look tired.”

“I’m okay.”

Namjoon counts the dotted lines on the road as they disappear beneath the tires.

When they pull up in front of the house, the same house with the cracked tile on the step, the same house where his mother still refuses to change the curtains because “they still do the job”, Namjoon feels his breath catch, like his body’s registering something his brain hasn’t caught up to yet.

The sight hits deeper than he expects. It’s all the same, and somehow that sameness hurts; the proof that time kept moving even when he felt stuck in place. 

His mom is already at the door, apron on, a towel in her hands. Her eyes shine the moment she sees him. “Joon-ah,” she says, and Namjoon’s throat burns.

He lets her pull him into a hug, his bag falling to the floor with a soft thump, and his head bows down without meaning to. His mom smells like perilla oil and detergent and something warm he can’t name. When she pulls away, she cups his face in both hands and says, “You’ve lost weight.”

“No, I haven’t,” Namjoon lies.

“Don’t argue with your mother.” 

“I’m not.”

She swats at his arm, muttering about stubborn sons, and tells him to sit down and turns toward the kitchen.

Namjoon walks slowly to the living room instead, to the couch he’s known his whole life, and something inside him folds so suddenly, so sharply, that it almost knocks the air out of him.

“Eomma,” he says, and his voice breaks a little.

She turns from the kitchen, worry pinching at her brow. “What is it?”

“I—” He doesn’t know how to explain it. The ache in his chest. The exhaustion that’s clung to his ribs like ivy. The thing inside him he hasn’t told her about. The way he’s been holding himself together with routine and caffeine and pretending.

“I just missed you,” he says.

His mom looks at him for a long moment, then nods. She sits down, pats her lap like she used to when he was sick with the flu or too tired from school. “Come here.”

He’s twenty-nine years old, but he still fits there, somehow. He curls into her like it’s instinct, like he never left, and the moment his cheek touches the soft cotton of her apron, the tears come without warning.

They fall soundlessly, steady and relentless, like rain on a windowpane. His hands are still in his lap. His breathing is shallow. He presses closer and hopes she doesn’t ask him why.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Shh,” his mom says, running her fingers through his hair. “You don’t need a reason.”

But he has one. He was eighteen when he liked Yoongi. Eighteen, and trying to be braver than he felt. Eighteen and already a little cracked inside. And now he’s twenty-nine and carrying something that’s half him and half someone else and realizing he’s still learning things about love he didn’t know he was allowed to hope for.

That night, dinner is quiet. Comfort without commentary. His dad grills too much meat and keeps piling it into Namjoon’s bowl. Every time Namjoon tries to protest, his dad waves him off.

“You need more meat on your bones.”

“Appa—”

“Eat, Namjoon-ah.”

So Namjoon does; even though he’s full after a few bites. Even though his chest is too tight to breathe properly. He eats because he can’t tell them the truth yet. He can’t ruin this, the grilled garlic, the sound of chopsticks clinking on ceramic, the way his mom laughs at his dad’s old jokes even though she’s heard them before.

The comfort settles like a weight instead of rest. It should be enough, being loved this easily. It only makes him want the other kind again, the one he keeps pretending he doesn’t need.

After dinner, Namjoon helps with the dishes. His mom tries to shoo him away halfway through, tells him he’s a guest, tells him to rest but he stays. She lets him dry the plates while she rinses, and the quiet between them is soft enough to lull his thoughts a bit. 

When everything’s put away and his dad’s retreated to the living room to fall asleep in front of the TV, Namjoon climbs the stairs and finds his room exactly as he left it. The same posters on the wall, the same books on the shelf, the faint scratch on the desk corner where he used to hit it with his knee. Time didn’t move here at all. It just curled up and waited for him to come back.

He doesn’t sleep, just lies there in the dark, limbs stretched over the too-short mattress, listening to the night creak around him. The cicadas outside the window, the hum of the fan on low. The familiarity of it all feels like wearing clothes that don’t quite fit anymore.

There’s an itch in his fingers. He flips his phone over in his hand. Then again and again. 

By Sunday morning, there’s a dull ache in the back of his throat. It sits there through breakfast, even as his mom sneaks one last fried jeon into his lunchbox for the train ride home, even as his dad insists on dropping him off at the station himself, even though Namjoon insists he doesn’t have to.

He sits quietly in the passenger seat and stares out the window.

The roads are less crowded this time, the post-holiday lull still in effect. There’s an old Yoon Jong-shin song playing on the radio, half-faded, the station cutting in and out the further they get from the neighborhood.

His dad taps the steering wheel twice and doesn’t say anything else.

By the time the train arrives, Namjoon’s palms are damp and his throat hurts from holding things he doesn’t plan to say. 

He watches his reflection in the dark window glass the whole ride back. The slight curve of his cheek, the way his own fingers twitch in his lap. He wonders if his mom saw it too, the restlessness. She probably did, she’s his mom, after all. 

He doesn’t mean to be distant, his body is too crowded with thoughts.

And one keeps looping, over and over again.

He gets back to Seoul just past sunset. His apartment smells a little stale when he gets in, like closed windows and something faintly floral that’s gone too long without movement.

He drops his bag at the door, shrugs off his coat. The light in the hallway flickers once before settling, and Namjoon stands there for a long time, hands in his pockets, just breathing.

He eats toast for dinner and half a pear from the fridge. He turns the heater on too high and has to crack the window open. He waters his plants, moves the laundry to the drying rack. All the things he was supposed to do. All the things that make it feel like a normal evening.

But it’s not normal, is it?

Because every time he closes his eyes he sees the tape again. The sticker curled in his lap. The ink under it, faint and frantic. And he has to keep swallowing his heart down like it might jump out of his throat.

    please love me back

I did. I’ve loved you back all this time. How could you not know?

He almost texts Hoseok first but his stomach twists. It’s the same hollow flutter that started everything, the reminder that hiding has a heartbeat now.

It’s almost 11 p.m. when he finally gives in to the impulse. 

He opens the chat with Yoongi, sends a photo of the cassette, the peeled-back label and the writing underneath.

    Since when? 

The second he hits send, he wants to take it back. The silence afterward is a canyon. 

His phone buzzes almost instantly. Incoming call from Yoongi. 

Namjoon’s thumb hovers for a second and then taps. “Hyung?” he says, barely above a whisper. 

Yoongi’s voice is in a rush, breathless. “Joon-ah—”

“I saw it,” Namjoon says. His voice cracks at the edges. “On the cassette. Did you mean it?” 

There’s a long pause, breathing and static.

“Shit, hold on.” Yoongi says, voice thinner. “Fuck. My heart’s in my ears right now.” 

Namjoon huffs out something that isn’t quite a laugh. “Yeah.” 

“Namjoon,” Yoongi croaks after a moment. “When—when did you see it?” 

“Friday,” Namjoon says. “I was on the subway. I was just… fidgeting with it. Did you—should I have not seen it?” 

“No,” Yoongi says fast. “No, it’s fine—I mean, I didn’t mean for you to—but fuck, okay.” 

Namjoon sits down on the edge of the couch. His knees feel like paper. “Hyung, do you still feel that way?” he asks, voice barely there. “Or was it just then? Please tell me if I’m misunderstanding you.” 

Yoongi breathes like he’s running. “I can’t—Joon-ah, I can’t answer this on the phone.”

Namjoon nods like Yoongi can see it. “I know. I’m sorry I should’ve waited but I was restless.”

“I need to see you,” Yoongi says, low and wrecked. “Where are you now? Are you still in Ilsan?” 

“No, I’m back in Seoul.” Namjoon mumbles. “Hyung. I’m sorry. I’ll wait for you. When are you back?” 

Yoongi doesn’t say anything for a moment and Namjoon presses the phone harder to his ear. “Hello?”

“Fuck,” Yoongi breathes. “Okay. Fuck it. I’m coming.”

“Hyung,” Namjoon sits up straight, alarmed. “It’s the middle of the night. What? No. Come tomorrow. You’ll—”

“I’ll drive,” Yoongi cuts him off. “Give me a few hours.”

“What—Hyung. What are you—are you crazy?”

“I’m sorry. I just—fuck—I miss you. I’ve missed you so much. I’m really fucking sorry.”

And then, he hangs up before a protest. 

The apartment hums in the silence. Namjoon sets the phone down, palms still shaking, and stares at the screen.

It takes him a whole minute to remember how to breathe.

 

Namjoon doesn’t hear the hour change, but he can feel it. He’s been sitting on the edge of the couch for maybe ever since the call, maybe more. Long enough that his phone’s gone dark twice and he’s woken it up again just to see the same screen. 

Outside, the rain’s picked up since earlier. A low, rhythmic patter against the glass panes. 

He only moves when he hears the elevator ding. The knock comes only a moment later, soft like hesitation dressed itself in skin and curled its fingers against the door. 

Namjoon opens the door before he thinks to be embarrassed about how quickly he’s moving. Yoongi stands there, a little hunched, hood over his head, hands deep in his coat pockets. 

The rain hasn’t been kind. His bangs are soaked, clinging to his forehead, and the sleeves of his coat are darker where the water’s crept in. He looks strange and familiar. 

For a second, Namjoon forgets how to breathe.

“Oh my god,” he says, already stepping back. “You’re soaked. What the hell, hyung—get in.”

Yoongi untangles himself from the sleeves to pull his hood down. His hair is damp, flattened over his forehead. His cheeks are pink from the wind.

Namjoon closes the door. It clicks into place behind them.

“I’ll get you a towel,” he says, already moving toward the hall cupboard, trying not to let his hands shake as he opens the linen shelf. He brings back the softest one. 

Yoongi accepts it with quiet fingers.

“Your hair’s all wet,” Namjoon says, because he doesn’t know what else to do. “You’ll catch a cold.”

Yoongi huffs something between a laugh and a breath he doesn’t know where to put. “Started raining after the toll,” he says. “I parked a block away and ran here.”

Namjoon watches him towel off the ends of his hair, then hesitate at the hem of his coat. 

“Hyung,” he whines, nearly out of breath. “You’re so—did you seriously drive for three hours? What were you thinking?”

Yoongi blinks, looking just as wrecked as Namjoon feels. “You sent that photo,” he says, voice thin. “And I panicked. I couldn’t sit still. My heart—I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just had to see you.”

Namjoon’s chest does something strange. It feels like a trapped bird. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. 

“You should change. I’ll make tea,” he offers after a moment of quiet. “There’s—uh, there’s your stuff in the closet, top shelf.”  

“Joon-ah.” Yoongi’s voice catches on his name. 

“We’ll talk.” Namjoon clears his throat. “After. Just—go change first.” 

Yoongi nods. “Okay.”

He disappears down the hallway and Namjoon stares at the empty space where he was standing.

The kitchen feels loud in the silence he leaves behind.

Namjoon busies his hands, just to keep from overthinking. He sets two mugs down, fills the kettle. He stands with his hip pressed against the counter’s edge and listens to it boil, counting seconds by the rise and fall of his breath.

When Yoongi comes back, he’s wearing the navy hoodie he left the last time he was here. His hair’s still damp, but his face looks less pale. 

He stands there while Namjoon pours out the hot water and drops in the tea bags, letting the scent of chamomile fill the space between them.

They sit on the couch. Enough room for rain to drip down the windows and for silence to settle without suffocating. 

Namjoon curls his fingers around his cup. The heat sinks into his palm. He stirs the tea just to hear something move.

Yoongi watches the motion like it’s a language he’s trying to learn. 

Namjoon sighs. “I didn’t think you’d actually come,” he says, voice softer than intended.

“I didn’t think I would either,” Yoongi answers, then adds, softer, “But I wanted to. I needed to.”

“You’re an idiot.” Namjoon huffs, the one corner of his lips twitching. 

Yoongi turns the mug slowly between his hands. “I was scared,” he says. “Still kind of am.” 

Namjoon’s heart stutters but he doesn’t interrupt. 

“I didn’t know if I meant anything to you,” Yoongi goes on. “Back then. Even now, a little. I didn’t know if I could ask for more.”

“You could’ve asked,” Namjoon says, voice tight. “You still can.”

Yoongi lifts his gaze and for the first time since he’s arrived, their eyes meet and hold.

“You said you saw the cassette,” he says, barely above a whisper.

“The sticker peeled off,” Namjoon nods and laughs, watery. “Took almost a fucking decade.” 

Yoongi exhales. “Didn’t think you’d ever see it.”

“Why’d you hide it under the sticker?” Namjoon asks, voice small. “Why not just tell me?” 

Yoongi gives a dry, lopsided smile. “Because I was twenty and stupid. Because I thought writing it down was safer than saying it out loud.”

“Did you—”

“I meant it.” Yoongi rushes to say. 

Namjoon’s throat closes.

Yoongi stares at the space between his hands. “The cassette. The thing under the sticker. All of it. I meant it.”

Namjoon can only nod. He doesn’t trust himself to speak. 

Yoongi sets his mug down carefully on the table.

Namjoon swallows. “And now?” He asks. “Do you still—?”

Yoongi breathes in, and his hands curl into his lap like he doesn’t trust himself to keep them steady. He looks at Namjoon, and something raw flashes across his face. “I’ve never stopped, Joon-ah.” 

The air hums between them. The tea’s gone cold. Namjoon thinks he should move, but he doesn’t.

“I mean it even now,” Yoongi says, so quietly Namjoon almost misses it. “Every day since then. And maybe tomorrow too.”

Namjoon feels something snap in his chest, quietly, like a thread breaking. “I've liked you since I was eighteen,” he says. “No. Probably even before. I—” He laughs, but it’s short and close to tears. “I’ve always had this dumb thing for you. This stupid crush that never stopped being a crush. Did you know?”

Yoongi exhales something long and buried. “No,” he says, his voice heavy with the weight of what he didn’t see. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I wasn’t looking. I didn’t think I was allowed to. I didn’t think I’d be—” He shakes his head. “You couldn’t have. I didn’t believe you could.”

The rain doesn’t stop, but it softens around the edges. 

“I thought you knew.” Yoongi adds. “I thought you found out and that’s why you kicked me out of your nest. I thought you were letting me down.”

“You always assume the worst things.” Namjoon murmurs, eyes on the mug in his hands. 

Yoongi’s smile barely makes it to his mouth. “I did. I do. I’ll work on it.”

They’re sitting so close now that Namjoon can feel the warmth of Yoongi’s knee brushing against his. It makes the back of his throat hurt. 

“You—you looked so conflicted that night.” Namjoon says, looking down, “that night… the one that started all of this—you looked like you regretted it.”

“No,” Yoongi says immediately, sharp like a dropped pin. “No, Joon. I panicked that night because I was scared I crossed a line and that I’d end up losing you. But look where that’s gotten me.” He rubs a hand over his face. “I was so sure you didn’t want me. And I was selfish in wanting you however way I was allowed.”

Namjoon’s hands tremble. 

“I should’ve told you then,” Yoongi goes on. “I should’ve been brave.”

Namjoon breathes in, but it catches in the middle. “I don’t know if I believe this,” he admits, shoulders hunched. “I want to. I just—I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll say it again,” Yoongi tells him. “I’ll say it a thousand times. I’ll say it until you do.”

Namjoon closes his eyes. “It’s just. It’s so—we took a decade, hyung.” 

Yoongi nods. “I know.” He swallows. “I’m sorry. If I could go back—”

“Hyung.” Namjoon interjects, exhaling shakily. “I have to tell you something.” 

Yoongi says, “Okay,” and waits. 

Namjoon sets his mug down. It clinks a little on the coaster, and that feels wrong somehow. 

Yoongi’s eyes track him as he walks across the living room. There’s a drawer in the hallway table. Namjoon opens it, like he’s practiced this a dozen times in his head. He pulls out the envelope, it’s a little bent at one corner because he’s handled it too much. 

Yoongi stays still on the couch, one hand cupping his tea now gone lukewarm.

Namjoon crosses back over. His hands don’t shake until they’re close. “I should’ve told you earlier,” he says, fingers worrying at the edge of the folder. “I wanted to, but I didn’t know how. I still don’t, actually.”

Yoongi frowns. “You’re scaring me.”

“I’m not—” Namjoon exhales, then laughs once, a brittle little sound that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Okay. Maybe I am.” He pushes the folder across the table toward Yoongi. “Just—read the first page.”

Yoongi hesitates for a second and leans forward and takes it. The plastic sleeve crackles as he opens it.

The rain outside sounds louder now or maybe the silence between them makes it that way. Namjoon can hear his own pulse in his ears.

Yoongi’s eyes sweep the report and his lips part slightly. He blinks once, twice. “Namjoon,” he breathes. “What—what is this?”

“I’m pregnant.” Namjoon confirms it for him. 

The words sit there, suspended between them.

Yoongi doesn’t react at first. His eyes lift from the paper, slowly, like it’s taking effort to drag them upward. “You’re—?”

Namjoon nods. “Yeah.”

Yoongi’s breath hitches. “Are you—serious?”

Namjoon laughs again, softer this time, but it trembles. “You think I’d joke about something like this?”

Yoongi stares at him. His mouth opens, then closes, like he’s trying to form words he doesn’t trust himself to say. “You’re—holy shit.” He sets the file down too carefully. “You’re—” His voice catches. “Really pregnant.”

Namjoon nods, his thumb rubbing circles into his palm, the way he used to before exams. 

“How—” Yoongi stops himself, then shakes his head. “No, I mean—I know how, but—how did you—when—”

“About a month ago,” Namjoon says. His hands twist together in his lap. “They said something like one in seventeen thousand cases. Some sort of statistical anomaly. I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d leave, and I couldn’t stand watching you prove me right. But I’m keeping it.” His hands tighten on his knees. “I want you to know.”

Yoongi doesn’t speak for a long time, but his fingers are shaking now. You wouldn’t notice unless you knew him, unless you watched the way he rolled his joints when he was nervous, or how he never tapped his leg unless he was trying to not cry.

Namjoon’s heart is thudding. “Say something,” he whispers.

Yoongi reaches out and takes Namjoon’s hand in his, thumb brushing across the back like he’s tracing something only he can see. “Sorry. Sorry. Fuck. Give me a second,” he says. “I’m processing.” 

“It’s too much, I know. How would I have known I’d end up getting—” He trails off and glances up to find Yoongi staring at him intently. “Hyung, you’re staring.”

Yoongi leans back slowly, the couch creaking under his weight. He runs a hand over his face, then through his damp hair, exhaling through his nose. “Namjoon. A baby,” he breathes. “We… made that?”

“Yes.” 

“You should’ve told me sooner.”

“I know,” Namjoon says, his hand moving unconsciously to his stomach. “It still doesn’t feel real, sometimes.”

Yoongi’s eyes follow the motion. Something flickers in his face. “You’re really pregnant,” he murmurs, almost to himself.

Namjoon nods. “Eight weeks.”

Yoongi laughs, quiet and disbelieving. “Fuck. Eight weeks.”

Namjoon manages a small smile. “Yeah.”

“Holy shit,” Yoongi says again, rubbing the heel of his palm against his temple. “I’m going to be a dad?”

Namjoon looks up at him finally. His voice is small. “If you want to be.”

Yoongi’s eyes flick up, wide and raw. “If I—” He stops and swallows. His mouth moves, but no words come out until they do. “Namjoon, of course I—” He breaks off again, takes a breath and tries again. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“You don’t have to start anywhere,” Namjoon says quietly. “I’m not telling you this because I want something from you. I’m not expecting you to do anything. I just—I need you to know. Because it’s part of me now. And I didn’t want to lie anymore.”

Yoongi doesn’t respond right away. He just sits there, hands gripping his knees, his gaze darting between Namjoon’s face and the folder on the table.

Then, slowly, he stands.

Namjoon tenses, half-expecting him to leave, but Yoongi crosses the small space between them and crouches down, right in front of Namjoon’s knees.

His hands hover for a second before he places them gently on Namjoon’s thighs. “Hey,” he says softly. “Look at me.”

Namjoon forces himself to hold his gaze even if it feels too much. 

Yoongi’s eyes are glassy. “You’re not alone in this.”

Namjoon’s throat tightens. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I’m not saying it because I have to,” Yoongi replies. “I’m saying it because I mean it.”

Namjoon’s eyes burn. “Hyung—”

Yoongi shakes his head, a faint, trembling smile tugging at his mouth. “You think I’d ever walk away from you? After all this? After—” He laughs under his breath. “I know I never make things easy. I might’ve hurt you more times than I can count. But I’m not that kind of coward.”

Namjoon’s eyes flutter. “I didn’t want to trap you.”

“You didn’t.” Yoongi’s thumbs rub small circles into the fabric over Namjoon’s knees. “You couldn’t. Not in a million years.”

Namjoon doesn’t pull away. “You’re not—scared?”

“Of course I am,” Yoongi says. “This is huge. This is life-changing. But—I’m not scared of being with you. I’m not scared of trying. I’m not scared of loving you. I want to be here,” he adds. “I want to do this with you. However you’ll let me. However, you need me.”

Namjoon looks at him helplessly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to be like this.”

Yoongi shakes his head again. “Don’t apologize. Don’t—” His voice cracks, and he takes a breath before continuing. “I’m just—trying to catch up.”

They sit like that for a long while. The rain softens against the windows, the rhythm slower now, like the night’s finally catching its breath.

When Yoongi speaks again, his voice is steadier. “Do your parents know?”

“No.”

“You gonna tell them?”

“Eventually,” Namjoon says. “When it feels less like I’m hallucinating.”

Yoongi huffs out a quiet laugh. “You’re really something.”

Namjoon’s answering smile is weak. “You say that like it’s a compliment.”

“It is,” Yoongi reaches up, carefully, as if testing the air between them. His palm touches Namjoon’s cheek, warm and rough from dish soap and winters without gloves. “You’re incredible, you know that? Fuck. You’re making a whole baby.”

Namjoon’s eyes sting. “You don’t have to—”

“If I wasn’t clear,” Yoongi whispers, and then leans in.  

Namjoon doesn’t stop him this time. 

Yoongi kisses him like he’s been waiting years for permission. His hand comes up, fingers brushing against Namjoon’s jaw, thumb settling beneath his ear. 

The kiss lingers, a little unsteady, as if Yoongi’s memorizing the shape of it just in case.

Namjoon lets his eyes fall shut. His lips part on a breath, and Yoongi catches it. One more kiss, slower this time. He tilts his head just slightly, and Namjoon feels the edge of a sigh slip between them, the taste of chamomile still on both their tongues.

When Yoongi pulls back, it’s only a few inches. His forehead almost touches Namjoon’s.

“I love you,” he says, voice trembling. “I don’t know when it started. Maybe it never started. Maybe it’s just always been there. I loved you when I only got pieces of you. I’ll love you when you come with more. I’ll love you even when you won’t let me. I’ll love you always. It’s—” he huffs, “—a habit I gave up trying to quit.”

Namjoon stares at him, speechless. “I’m scared,” he whispers because that comes easy.

Yoongi tightens his grip on his hand. “Me too.”

“I don’t know how to do this.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

Namjoon rests his forehead against Yoongi’s. “I don’t want to do it alone. Don’t make me do it alone, Hyung. Please.” 

“You won’t,” Yoongi promises. “I won’t let you. I promise.” 

“I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Namjoon says, voice catching. “I was terrified you’d figure it out.” 

“Don't apologise.” 

It’s all a bit ridiculous, more disbelief than doubt. 

Namjoon’s been in love for too long to call it new, and too afraid to call it real. The words don’t reach him even if he tries. 

“I can’t believe this.” He lets out a shaky laugh, half a sob. “I can’t believe you. I spent my whole life thinking you’d never want me back, you’d never look at me and now. Now you—hyung. You want me back. You really do.” 

Yoongi’s face crumples. “I’m sorry, baby,” he says, and it sounds like it hurts to say. “For making you wait. For making this so much harder than it needed to be.”

“What. What are you saying?” Namjoon wipes at his cheeks, but the tears don’t stop. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“I do.” Yoongi exhales, slow and tight. “I should—I’ll make it up. I’ll wake up everyday trying to make it up for the years we lost. I’ll love you harder. I’ll love you longer. That’s all I know how to do.” 

Namjoon’s hand finds its way to Yoongi’s hair, still a little damp, still smelling faintly of rain. “You’ll stay?” He sniffles, voice barely audible. 

Yoongi pulls back just enough to meet his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, voice firm. “For as long as you’ll let me.”

Namjoon’s smile is tired. “That’s a long time.”

“Good,” Yoongi says. “I’ve got time.”

Outside, the rain hushes to a stop. 

Namjoon watches his hands held in between Yoongi’s and thinks, stupidly, this is what it feels like to be loved back. 

 

It’s just past nine when Namjoon waddles out of their room. He’s in the old AC/DC shirt he’d fished from Yoongi’s closet weeks ago and never returned, stretched now around the curve of his belly. His hair’s mussed from sleep, flattened weirdly on one side and sticking up in the back, and there’s still a line from the pillow creased into his cheek.

There’s sunlight caught in the curve of the window, warm against the half-built crib, and Yoongi looks up from where he’s kneeling beside it. “Hey, baby,” he says, dropping the wrench on the floor with a clink and walks over. “You look like you had a rough night.”

Namjoon exhales through his nose. “Your pup keeps troubling me.” 

“Our pup.” Yoongi corrects. He puts a hand to the back of Namjoon’s neck and pulls him in for a kiss. It lands a little off-center on his mouth but Namjoon makes a small, satisfied sound and doesn’t correct it.

“You’re so warm,” Yoongi murmurs against his lips. “How’s your tummy today?”

“Better than most days.”

“Good enough.” Yoongi pats his hip. “Sit down. I’ll get you something.”

He disappears into the kitchen, peeling a tangerine one-handed as he goes, a habit Namjoon still can’t figure out. 

Namjoon watches from the couch, the way Yoongi doesn’t use a plate, just loads the fruit into a bowl like he always does, half-segments still clinging to the rind. It’s the careless kind of sweet. He brings over the bowl and puts it into Namjoon’s lap, brushing his fingers under Namjoon’s chin before moving back to the crib.

The room smells like wood and orange and laundry detergent. Namjoon pops a piece of fruit into his mouth and makes a pleased noise. Yoongi is on the floor again, knees bent, sleeves pushed up past his elbows as he studies the instructions. There’s a pencil tucked behind his ear, doing absolutely nothing.

“Oh,” Yoongi says suddenly, like it just occurred to him. He gets up, walks to the entryway table, rustles around through some parcels.

Namjoon swallows another piece. “What’re you looking for?”

Yoongi tosses a small white cardboard box onto the couch beside him. “Got here this morning.”

“Oh,” Namjoon says, taking it. “What’s this?”

“Something dumb,” Yoongi mutters.

Namjoon opens the lid, tears the packaging and finds a tiny onesie. Soft cream-colored cotton, small enough to fit one of his palms. A black print on the front that says: statistical anomaly.

Namjoon stares, then laughs. It’s sudden and wheezy and makes his stomach tense. “Oh my god,” he says, holding it up. “You’re such a loser.”

“Don’t talk about the father of your child like that.” Yoongi deadpans.

Namjoon giggles, the kind that’s a little breathless, lips parted as he smooths a hand over the fabric. “She’s gonna look ridiculous in this.”

“She’s gonna look perfect,” Yoongi says, finally setting the screwdriver down. “Just like you.” 

Namjoon makes a face. “Stop.”

Yoongi smirks. “It’s true.”

Namjoon sets the onesie on the coffee table, leaves the fruit bowl behind and crosses the room. He lowers himself carefully into Yoongi’s lap with a grunt. “I wouldn’t mind if she looked like you.”

Yoongi wraps a steadying arm around his waist. “As long as she isn’t as stubborn as you. We’re good.”

“Don’t be mean.” Namjoon shifts until he’s comfortable. “You swore to love me despite all that.” 

Yoongi huffs. “That was before I knew how demanding you’d be.”

“I’m growing your child, Min Yoongi.”

“Fair.”

They sit like that for a bit. The hum of the radiator fills the silence. Namjoon folds the edge of Yoongi’s hoodie between his fingers. 

“My dad asked if we’re going home for seollal,” he says after a while.

Yoongi makes a face before he can help it.

“Don’t make that face.” Namjoon narrows his eyes. “He’s nice.”

“Easy for you to say,” Yoongi says. “I’m the one who knocked up his son before marriage.”

“You’re so dramatic.” Namjoon pinches his side. 

“You don’t know how he stares at me.” Yoongi lets out an undignified noise and tugs him closer, kissing Namjoon’s lips. 

When they pull apart, Namjoon’s still smiling. “Maybe you should knock me up again after the wedding. Do it the right way.”

Yoongi blinks. “That’s a great idea.”

Namjoon laughs into his neck.

Yoongi rubs one palm over the curve of his belly and says, “Think your back could take another one?”

Namjoon shrugs. “You’re the one who said I was hot like this.”

“Wasn’t lying.”

Yoongi kisses his mouth again, slower, a bit deeper. One hand cradling the back of Namjoon’s neck.

When they pull apart again, Namjoon trails his gaze along the half-finished crib behind them. The slant of Yoongi’s jaw. The hollow just beneath his ear.

“Didn’t think I’d be attracted to you like this,” he says casually.

“Like what?”

“Dad mode. Building cribs. Smelling like lemon dish soap.”

Yoongi hums. “Is that what does it for you now?”

Namjoon’s voice dips low, a little smug. “Yeah.”

Yoongi’s mouth twitches. “Has this got you hot and bothered?”

Namjoon doesn’t blink. “Yes.”

Yoongi leans in, presses his lips to the edge of Namjoon’s jaw, just below his ear. “We can’t have that, can we?”

Then he shifts, arms slipping under Namjoon’s thighs and lifting him effortlessly. Namjoon yelps a little as Yoongi stands. He clutches Yoongi’s shoulders but he’s not scared. It’s familiar now, being carried and held.

“Where are we going?” he asks, though he knows the answer.

Yoongi kisses his nose. “To solve your little problem.”

Namjoon laughs and then it’s just breath against breath, skin warm under the low lamp, Yoongi’s hand steady over the curve of Namjoon’s belly.

That ridiculous little onesie on the coffee table. The crib halfway built in the living room. Tangerine peels curled in a bowl. 

All the dumb, stupid proof of something real, made out of years of almosts. Proof that somehow, they found their way back. And this time, with a space for one more. 

Notes:

This was supposed to be an ‘oh no, I’m pregnant and the guy I like doesn’t know’ kind of thing, but it turned into whatever this is instead. Bad timing, years of pining, and relationships that are never as casual as they should be.

Is it even a Yoonjoon fic if there isn’t at least a little unnecessary unrequited love angst?