Chapter Text
The scouts pick their way through an apocalyptic urban landscape, their pack alpha ranging ahead to check out the shell of an abandoned school-bus. Its accordion-folded door is partially jammed shut, and Randa grunts as he pries it open, grimacing as a metallic clang echoes down the desolated street. He can hear his own heart pounding, too loud, as he pulls himself up into the bus and immediately drops into a half-crouch. He creeps around the corner to get a clear view of the aisle, one hand hovering over the blunt weapon at his hip. He’ll go in swinging, if he needs to.
Yoongi makes a note to add more tense strings to this cut-scene. The atmosphere needs to be oppressive, tension ratcheting up for the player until Randa determines that there are no Nightmares lurking on the bus and gives his scouts the all-clear. Then the music can level out again, back to a baseline of grim determination.
Leaning over to take a sip of his now-lukewarm coffee, Yoongi opens the file for the next scene that he needs to review.
Vante is the last to join the other boys in their makeshift shelter. As he passes alongside the bus, one of the creatures emerges to wrap a tendril of shadow around his ankle, yanking him underneath as he lets out a guttural scream–
A sharp knock makes Yoongi nearly jump out of his skin and clutch at his chest, fingers curled into the cotton of his oversized hoodie. When he looks up for the source of the noise, Yoongi can just make out the lanky shape of his coworker and close friend Seokjin on the other side of his office’s frosted-glass door. He slumps against his high-backed office chair, waving him in.
“Jesus, Jin. You scared the shit out of me.” Yoongi lifts his glasses off his nose to rub at one eye and glances at the clock on the wall – dinnertime, technically. “What are you still doing here?”
“I’ve been off the clock for an hour, my friend. But I could ask you the same question!”
As Seokjin waggles an admonishing finger in front of Yoongi’s face, he scoffs and rolls his eyes. But he supposes that the man has a point – working to the point of exhaustion helps no one. He’ll finish reviewing this last clip, and then start packing up to head home. But as he returns his attention to his monitors, Yoongi can feel Seokjin lingering in the doorway, haunting him like the infamous office ghost that the IT department claims they’ve seen roaming the building’s halls late at night. After a couple more clicks of his mouse that are honestly just for show, Yoongi turns his chair around again, arms crossed.
“Was there something else, hyung?”
“Hm?” Seokjin blinks, looking startled for a second. “Oh, right. You know Jeon Jungkook?”
Yoongi assumes that Seokjin doesn’t mean the question literally – it’s not a huge company, so of course he knows him. The guy even ate lunch at the same table with them in the office cafeteria earlier this week. Jungkook was hired fresh off of his university art degree a couple of years ago, but Yoongi rarely works with him directly. A game is usually in a more play-ready state once his own department gets involved.
“Kid from Design & Concepts? Long hair, emoji tattoos on his hand, writes emails with way too many exclamation points in them? That Jeon Jungkook?”
“The very same.”
“Yep. What about him?”
“We’re about to get to know him a lot better,” Seokjin says, smiling broadly. “He’s coming with us!”
Huh. Well, that’s cryptic.
“Coming with us where? Hyung, we’re not kidnapping Jungkook.”
“Kidnapping?” Seokjin makes an offended noise, hand clasped to his chest. “No! He was nominated by his department to go to the conference with us?”
Nominated. Yoongi snorts. More like volun-told. But hang on a minute...
“Uh, which conference is this?”
A silly question, if Seokjin’s bemused expression is anything to go by.
“Game-Con? To promote Dream No More, once we have the playable demo in a good spot.”
And that would make sense, except that Game-Con is always held in August. Seokjin already attended that conference earlier this year, returning with the usual stories of crowded exhibition halls, flashy esports tournaments, and their competitors’ latest projects. It’s mid-December in Seoul now, flurries of snow drifting past the office windows to settle on bare tree branches. Yoongi just stares, wondering if Seokjin maybe hit his head navigating the icy stairs outside.
“Don’t tell me this is the first you’ve heard of this, Yoongi-yah. It’s the been the latest hot goss’ in the office for the past month.”
“Don’t say goss.” Yoongi spins his chair and reaches for his coffee to take a distracted sip; it definitely hasn’t improved with time, but caffeine is caffeine. “We’re both too old for that kind of slang.”
“Yahh, speak for yourself! You’re only as young as you feel, you know?”
“Yeah, and I feel old as shit. My bones, Jin.”
Yoongi flops one of his sleeved arms at Seokjin, who rolls his eyes.
“You’d be fine if you got a standing desk like me,” he says with a click of his tongue. “Keeps you limber, instead of hunched over in your chair like a gremlin. I swear, both you and Jung–”
“Okay, okay,” Yoongi says. “Let’s circle back to Game-Con, and the way it already happened. Unless we’re already planning for 2025…?”
“Oh! Oh, no. Not Game-Con Seoul. This is their new annex conference next month. In Sokcho?”
“Sokcho,” Yoongi repeats. In January. Surely he must have heard Seokjin wrong. That’s…
“Kind of far away, I know. But our company is paying for accommodations, and we’ll have some free time to explore. Should be fun! A change of scenery could do us both some good.”
Seokjin looks downright excited about the idea, but the man actually likes the snow. He has regaled Yoongi with many stories over the years about how he grew up skiing and snowboarding on family vacations. Yoongi, on the other hand, prefers to be warm and cozy and very much indoors.
“Right. Good to know, I guess.” Yoongi sighs, resigned to his chilly fate. “So, I assume this conference is over a weekend?”
Seokjin gets a mischievous glint in his eye.
“Why? Think you might have plans? A hot date lined up?”
Yoongi glowers at him half-heartedly.
“I could have plans. You don’t know.”
The doubtful look he gets is answer enough. Which, fair. Yoongi has a reputation at this point – he doesn’t date, doesn’t do the whole alpha-omega thing. Hasn’t for years. People would probably joke that he is married to his job, if they weren’t also a little afraid of him. (Yoongi doesn’t think he is actually that scary, but he supposes he can see how his resting face can be a little intimidating sometimes.)
It’s also how he winds up in situations like this – sent on business trips halfway across the country in the middle of winter, because they know that Yoongi doesn’t have a family counting on him to come home. But it’s fine, really. He will just have to check his calendar first.
“Nah, I’m just kidding. You know that Randa is the only man for me.”
“Yoongi,” Seokjin says, very seriously, leaning in to take him by the shoulders. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but Randa is a video game character. He doesn’t actually exist. I know this might be hard for you to accept, but with time–”
“He’s beefy and sensitive, Seokjin-hyung. They don’t make alphas like that anymore.”
“They literally do not! Because he isn’t real… wait, where are you going?”
Yoongi stands and stretches as several of his joints pop noisily – ugh, he really is getting old. Is this what life is like after thirty-five? He turns his monitors off and brushes past Seokjin to open the door.
“Yoongi-yah, aren’t you going to take your coat? I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s freezing out there.”
“I’m not leaving yet.”
The thing is, Yoongi needs to chat with his actual manager to get the rest of the details of this alleged game conference, instead of secondhand from his hapless best friend and coworker. Maybe Seokjin got some of the information wrong – maybe they aren’t actually going on a snowy road-trip to some remote conference center.
Yoongi can dream, anyway.
Unfortunately, not even the director is still in by the time Yoongi wanders down the corridor toward the executive suite. Even the big-shot executives have to get home to their families eventually, he supposes. The lights are mostly off in this part of the office, casting the low-walled cubicles belonging to interns and newer employees in moonlit blue-gray shadow through slatted blinds. Yoongi should probably get home himself, before the janitorial crew starts showing up. His long-neglected stomach grumbles a complaint at the thought.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll feed you some ramyeon soon,” he mutters, rubbing at his belly absently. “I wonder if I still have any eggs…”
The Design & Concept department is so dark as Yoongi passes by its open doorway that he almost assumes no one is in there, until he spots the distant, dim glow of a monitor in the far corner. Facing away from Yoongi, he can just make out a head poking over the top of a desk chair, streaks of blue and purple in their dark hair catching the light like an oil spill.
“Jungkook,” Yoongi says into the gloom.
There is a sudden clatter that sounds like a limb connecting with a keyboard tray, followed by a muffled curse. The chair spins around to reveal Jeon Jungkook, his feet up on his chair with an oversized hoodie pulled down over his knees.
“Isn’t it hard to work in the dark like that?”
Yoongi doesn’t bother asking why Jungkook is still here this late, too. They all have their deadlines to meet, with Dream No More set for an early-summer release date. Jungkook’s dark eyes glitter up at him, his legs slipping down out of the hoodie. The jeans underneath are almost more hole than pants – Yoongi wrenches his gaze away from the strips of bare skin peeking out between the fraying white threads.
“Mm, no,” Jungkook says, reaching up to play with the lip ring at the corner of his mouth. It always seems like he has more piercings every time Yoongi sees him. The latest is a barbell through his tongue, which makes Yoongi shiver a little to think about. Jungkook has only just gotten used to talking with it in without a lisp. (Mostly.) “I can see fine.”
Yoongi supposes that is probably true. Jungkook is a young alpha, with all the hyper-acute senses that come with that designation. Still, even alphas can get eye-strain.
“Okay. But you might want to order a blue-light filter, at least. I put in a request for one myself a little while back, and they come through pretty quick. Helps you sleep better, too.”
Not that Yoongi ever follows his own advice, scrolling on his phone late into the night. Insomnia is a hell of a thing.
“Yes, Yoongi-sunbaenim.”
Always such a polite kid.
“Hey,” Yoongi says. “I just heard from Seokjin about our trip next month. The new Game-Con?”
“Oh!” Those big eyes go even wider, Jungkook’s knee jiggling up and down a few times until he stills it. “Yes. I heard about that, too. I’ve never been to Sokcho before, have you?”
Yoongi has, in fact – somewhat against his will, with his parents and older brother. It had been during the summer, at least. They took him to the beach, where despite slathering him with sunscreen his shoulders had burned bright pink and tender. He shrugs, tries to look less sour about it.
“Once or twice. It was okay.”
Jungkook only nods, a quick and eager motion. Yoongi wonders if he was ever this excitable about anything; he somehow doubts it. His energy tends to come in short bursts these days, usually when he’s out with friends and has had a little to drink.
“This is your first big launch, right?” Yoongi says, somehow feeling compelled to make more conversation. Like Seokjin said, they’ll be spending more time together soon. “As a design lead?”
The nodding intensifies.
“Yeah! It’s been so cool to see my concept drawings come to life. Some of it gets changed along the way when other departments touch it, obviously, but they were still my ideas to start out!”
Yoongi supposes that he is fortunate as a senior soundtrack producer that his work ends up mostly unchanged, other than a few minor tweaks and approvals. Everyone has to pay their dues starting out, but Jungkook is something of a prodigy within his team – usually it takes at least a decade to become a lead in the Design department, not just the handful of years since he finished his internship.
“Yeah,” Yoongi agrees with a small, placid smile. “That’s really great.”
Jungkook beams up at him with a toothy grin that is entirely too bright and sincere for the late hour.
“Anyway, I hope you’re getting overtime. Don’t let them take advantage of you.”
This earns a small giggle from Jungkook. “I won’t, Yoongi-sunbaenim.”
“You don’t have to… you can just call me sunbae, Jungkook. Or whatever you want, really. Hyung, even. I don’t mind.”
Yoongi scratches at the back of his neck, not entirely sure why he is suddenly extending this offer to Jungkook. Their industry and company are fairly informal, though, as things go – they are much more lax compared to the average office about things like dress codes, body modification and unnatural hair colors. It’s the kind of place where Yoongi can shuffle into work wearing his preferred uniform of black track pants and an oversized hoodie of the same (lack of) color, and no one is going to say shit about it.
“Oh,” Jungkook says, his mouth becoming a rosebud circle. “Thanks, um. Yoongi-hyung.”
He sounds unaccountably shy when he says it, his front teeth just barely showing in a smile. Yoongi has to admit that Jungkook is one of the more unusual alphas that he has ever met – though sometimes his brash side does come out, mostly when he is joking around with other alphas in the office. A group of alphas together is unfortunately kind of always the same, though Yoongi has to admit he’s never observed Jungkook being disrespectful or particularly aggressive.
Here and now, though, Jungkook has his hoodie sleeves tugged over his tattooed hands, his left leg raised up on his chair like he wants to tuck it underneath again. Yoongi refuses to give a name to what he thinks of the whole picture – he is too old and too tired. It’s time to head home and actually eat something before his stomach digests itself.
When he gets home, Yoongi checks his heat calendar against the conference dates while the water for his ramyeon boils. It would be much easier if he could just go on heat-blockers like most other omegas, of course – heats aren’t medically necessary, and they’re a huge inconvenience for most working adults, usually indefinitely delayed until it is time to start a family. Unfortunately, Yoongi is part of the unlucky five percent or so of omegas whose mental health is royally fucked if they take the powerful hormonal blockers necessary to stop their heats entirely. It always makes for an awkward conversation with HR, who are legally required to grant leave for heats and ruts but tend to be thrown off by an omega who needs up to a full week off every four months, every single year.
But what can Yoongi say? Depression is a bitch. Sometimes he wishes he could junk the whole business and be done with it, not that many doctors would be likely to grant such a drastic surgery for an unmated omega like himself. It’s just that his forties are approaching, his fertility steadily on the wane, and he sure as fuck isn’t getting any good out of it. Just an uncomfortable four to seven days of delirium and drained knotting-toy batteries.
In the end, he isn’t sure if he is relieved or not when he confirms that his next heat cycle won’t begin for another three weeks after they get home. It’s the only way he would have been able to get out of the trip entirely. As much as Yoongi pretends to complain, though, he does imagine that a change of pace might do him some good. He has been so absorbed in polishing up the atmospheric music of their latest game that he really hasn’t interacted in society all that much in the past few months, which is probably not the best for his mental health, in the long run. So, Sokcho it is.
Yoongi’s phone rings while he is chopping up some scallions to add to the instant ramyeon. He smiles when he sees that it’s a FaceTime call from his older brother, especially when his nieces with their matching ribbon-tied pigtails immediately dominate the screen.
“Yoongi-samchon!” the oldest, who just turned nine, yells excitedly. “Ow! Appa, she elbowed me…”
“Settle down,” Geumjae says calmly, only part of his face visible on the screen behind his daughters. “You’ll both get your chance to talk to your uncle. Hey, little bro.”
Grinning widely and shaking his head, Yoongi sets his phone to stand up on the counter so that he can fry his egg and still catch up with his family.
“You both doing well in school? Listening to your teachers?”
“Yes, samchon,” the girls say in unison. It’s a well-worn call and response – they know by now what comes next.
“And you’re not causing too much trouble for your appa and eomma?”
“No, samchon.”
They giggle, the seven-year-old whispering in her older sister’s ear.
“Good, good,” Yoongi says. He nods as he turns the egg over and listens to it sizzle in the pan. “Make sure that you–“
“Yoongi-samchon,” his eldest niece says, quickly before she can be scolded for interrupting her elders. “When are you going to have a pup that we can play with?”
Before Yoongi can fully process this question and formulate a response, his brother laughs and pats his daughter’s head, as if that were an especially silly thing to ask.
“Don’t be rude, girls,” he says. “Not everyone wants to be a parent. And that’s okay! Yoongi is an excellent uncle, isn’t he?”
“Yes!”
A wrinkle appears in the middle of Yoongi’s brow as he turns the stovetop off. It’s true that he is getting closer to the end of his potential pup-bearing years, but that doesn’t mean he has completely given up on the idea of having a family of his own one day, whether he would be the dam that carries them or not. He has just… been busy. Too busy to meet anyone and think about any of that, he supposes – nevermind the whole alpha business. Still, he bristles a little at his brother’s assumption that it is a foregone conclusion, even if he does agree in principle that having pups is not for everyone, and certainly is not a requirement.
“Maybe someday,” he says, ignoring the skeptical curiosity in his brother’s raised eyebrow. “A cousin or two for you both to terrorize, hm?”
Yoongi laughs as his nieces protest that they would be sweet as candy to the as-yet completely hypothetical pup, their voices raising in pitch until their father shoos them both off to start getting ready for bed.
“Pups, huh,” Geumjae says, after they have gone. He leans back in his chair with a considering smile, arms crossed. “Got someone new in your life that you wanna tell me about?”
“No,” Yoongi says, with a rueful smile of his own. “Not yet.”
The sun has barely risen when Yoongi pulls up in front of the address that his supervisor gave him when they finalized plans for the trip. Exhaust puffs in the chilly air as he puts the sleek dark SUV into park and hops out to join Jungkook where he stands on the curb shifting from foot to foot, zipped up into a black puffer jacket. Seokjin stays in the passenger seat, setting up a new route to the lodge on his phone.
When Yoongi rounds the back of the vehicle, he finds Jungkook in a nearly parallel bow, the ends of his long hair swinging forward under his beanie.
“G’morning, thank you for picking me up, Yoongi-hyung,” Jungkook says, so quickly that the syllables run together, but his jaw cracks on a muffled yawn at the end as he pops back up. His large eyes go even wider, knuckles curling against his lips as he covers the yawn with the back of his hand. “Ah, sorry.”
Yoongi huffs a small laugh.
“Hey, Jungkook. It’s fine. Thanks for being ready so early – Seokjin and I wanted to get on the road so we have plenty of time to unpack and set our booth up before the opening speakers tonight.”
Jungkook bobs his head a couple times in understanding, then shuffles over to shrug off his backpack and sling it into the hatchback trunk of the SUV. At least the company didn’t cheap out on this much – a rental car is the least they can do after sending their employees on a two-and-a-half plus hour drive from the heart of Seoul into the snowy mountains.
If it were just Yoongi and Jungkook in the car, he thinks that things might have started out a little quiet and awkward, but Seokjin seems determined not to let that happen.
“Gummy?” he asks, holding an open bag of sugar-coated sour candy out to Jungkook as he settles into his seat, pulling down the belt and clicking it into place.
“Hyung, it’s not even eight a.m.,” Yoongi protests, but Jungkook dips his hand into the bag and grabs a couple of the neon-bright gummy candies with a quiet word of thanks.
“I don’t see your point, Yoongi-yah.” Seokjin turns back around and tosses a gummy into his own mouth with a self-satisfied little smile, and Yoongi just shakes his head. He looks in the mirrors for traffic as he pulls back out onto the main road.
“You guys are close?” Jungkook asks after he finishes chewing, pointing back and forth between them.
“Unfortunately,” Yoongi says, but his words are belied by the way his smile stretches up over his gums a little. “This guy came up to me on my first day, introducing himself with a wink as–”
“A beta tester, heavy emphasis on the beta,” Seokjin and Jungkook say in unison, then burst into laughter. Yoongi rolls his eyes fondly – Seokjin makes the same pun to everyone he meets, and breaks into squeaky giggles at his own joke every time. He technically isn’t even a beta tester anymore – Seokjin is a lead on the Quality Assurance team, but he enjoys the joke too much to give it up.
“Yeah, exactly. That was ten years ago now. Haven’t had a moment of peace ever since.”
“Don’t listen to him, Jungkook-ah. We’re the best of friends,” Seokjin says conspiratorially, looking back between the seats. “I’ll have to tell you about the time Yoongi climbed into my bed after we’d been out drinking after work, clinging to me and telling me how much he loved—”
“Yahh. Don’t tell the kid those kinds of stories.”
“Pfft, Jungkook isn’t a kid. He’s… how old are you?”
“Mm. Twenty-four,” Jungkook says, around a mouthful of gummy candy.
These two are going to be a handful together, Yoongi can already tell. Seokjin recently turned thirty-seven, but he has a tendency to turn into an overgrown child around their younger colleagues, like he is feeding off of their youthful energy. At the same time, Yoongi is a little surprised to hear Jungkook’s current age, which is a bit older than he had assumed. He supposes it has been a few years now since Jungkook was hired at the company – they had all been younger back then. But even though twenty-four is still pretty damn young, Yoongi thinks he should probably stop thinking of and referring to Jungkook as a kid. God knows Yoongi hated it when people did that when he was his age.
Traffic is as hellish as always getting out of the city, one of the other reasons they had started so early. Once they get on the Seoul-Yangyang Expressway, things open up a little – Yoongi squints into the sun as it reflects in golden ripples off the water below the Misa Bridge. He half-expects one or both of his passengers to zonk out once they get underway, lulled to sleep by the SUV’s smooth forward motion and the soft, bouncy vocals of the all-omega girl group filtering from the stereo system. But despite his yawning earlier, Jungkook is bright and alert, Yoongi flicking a glance back at him every so often through his rear-view mirror to see him leaning on an elbow against the window to watch the blur of other cars and scenery go by. He clears his throat, changing lanes to get around someone who is going entirely too slow.
“So I was thinking we could stop at the Gapyeong Service Area, it’s about half-way to Sokcho. Grab some coffee, hit the restrooms, you know.”
“And get snacks?” Jungkook asks, sounding a little too excited about this prospect. Yoongi’s mouth twitches up at the corner.
“Of course,” Seokjin says with a scoff. “I’ll be out of gummies by then.”
Jungkook snickers as he turns his attention back to the window. Light flashes from between the trees they pass, casting stripey shadows over his features in profile – the sharp jaw resting in his tattoo-scrawled hand, the bluntly rounded nose, the straight dark eyebrow pierced through by a glinting silver bar. But Yoongi needs to keep his eyes on the road, not on the young alpha in his rearview mirror.
Seokjin is in charge of the music, and his taste is what Yoongi might consider basic but inoffensive. Pop, mostly. He doesn’t know what Jungkook’s feelings about hip-hop or indie rock are yet, but he supposes he could just, you know, ask him.
“Jungkook,” he says, and his head turns toward Yoongi on a quick swivel. “Who are your favorite artists? Jin-hyung can change the music up, we don’t have to just stick with his tastes.”
“Oh, um. Probably Justin Bieber and Troye Sivan? This playlist is great, Seokjin-sunbaenim!”
Yoongi suppresses a sigh and glances over at Seokjin, who looks delighted and more than a little smug. Annoying. Yoongi reaches over and flicks him in the thigh, because absolutely not.
“Call me hyung, Jungkook-ah,” Seokjin says, leaning around the seats. “Call me hyung.”
By the time they reach the service area, a light dusting of snow is falling. They bundle back up in their puffer jackets and beanies to weave between the rows of cars in the parking lot, Yoongi smiling to himself as he notices how both Seokjin and Jungkook tilt their heads back, trying to catch the drifting flakes on their tongues. When the anemic winter sun reflects off glinting metal in Jungkook’s mouth, he quickly looks away.
They separate once they reach the shops, Yoongi to relieve himself of the half-caf he has been sipping on since their too-early departure. When he exits, Yoongi scans the crowd until he spots a familiar shock of iridescent blue and purple where Jungkook removed his snow-dusted hat indoors to stand in line for one of the food vendors, the shoulders of his dark jacket rising and falling as he bounces on his toes. Jungkook rubs his hands together, breath puffing across his palms to warm them as Yoongi quietly sidles up next to him in the line.
“We have hand warmers in the car,” he says. Jungkook jolts, just a little, but doesn’t seem especially startled at Yoongi’s sudden appearance. “Didn’t you bring gloves?”
“In my bag,” Jungkook mutters, but there’s an edge of determination to it. “Don’t need them yet, ’m not cold.”
“Alright,” Yoongi says easily, shrugging one shoulder.
Alphas do run hot, as a rule, but they also tend to be stubborn as shit about these kinds of things. As unusual of an alpha as Jungkook otherwise is, he does not seem to be an exception in this sense. He keeps bouncing as they slowly shuffle forward, full of energy with no outlet.
“Hate lines,” he whines softly, and Yoongi snorts. Clearly.
“It’s almost our turn.”
Jungkook brightens considerably and stops fidgeting when they can see the food through the vendor’s glass, succulent meat glistening as it slowly turns on a spit and various fried foods nestled in grease-spotted paper cups. His round eyes are huge as they dart among the options, the tip of his tongue flicking out to lick his lips in anticipation.
“One twisted potato,” he says, leaning forward against the counter. “And a cup of ramyeon.”
It’s typical young bachelor fare, but Yoongi doesn’t feel like judging. They might technically be working, but it’s also kind of like they’re on vacation. He orders a tteokbokki with some fish cakes for himself while the worker is handing Jungkook his spiral-fried potato, then taps in his payment for both of them before his coworker can say anything.
“Hyung’s got it,” he says, before Jungkook can put up any kind of macho protest. But judging by the way that he just hums and nods, biting at his lip ring like he is very pleased, it seems that he might not have objected in the first place.
They spot Seokjin at a table at the edge of the central seating area as he waves them over. It seems he has stopped at a different shop for some kind of savory-smelling noodle soup, which he is slurping down with his usual gusto.
“The pho here is so good, Jungkook-ah. You should try it!”
Seokjin clearly means ‘if you come back here again,’ but he chuckles when he notices Jungkook’s gaze fixating on the soup and pushes the bowl over with a gesture encouraging Jungkook to take a bite. He doesn’t have to ask him twice.
“Mmm,” Jungkook groans in noisy approval around his large chopsticks-full of meat and noodles, throwing his head back like he is in ecstasy. A deep line appears between his eyebrows like the food has gravely offended him, but it is pretty clear that the truth is the opposite, like it’s so good that he is kind of angry about it. Yoongi has been there, though he doesn’t normally let it show so transparently on his face. They attract some strange looks from the tables around them, but Jungkook seems completely unbothered.
“Glad it meets your approval, Jungkook-ah,” Seokjin says with a chuckle as the pho bowl is slid back in front of him. “There’s a reason I always come here whenever I travel this way.”
“My ramyeon seems so plain now,” Jungkook complains, holding up a bite of noodles dripping with spicy broth. “But then again, ramyeon is always good.”
He nods to himself, then tucks in with the bottomless enthusiasm that young alphas so often have in their first decade or so post-presentation. Yoongi has to shake himself out of his own fascinated fixation, leaning forward to blow on the steaming tteokbokki that he spears with the provided fork. He isn’t even halfway through the cup when Jungkook pushes the ramyeon aside to start on his twisted potato, holding the skewer sideways to chomp away at it happily, the toe of his boot tapping under the table.
“Is that hard to get used to?” Yoongi finds himself asking, before he had really made up his mind to ask the question.
“Oing?” Jungkook says. With a mouthful of hot potato, though, it comes out more like ‘mng?’
“Sorry, hyung is being nosy. Your… tongue piercing. Is it hard to eat with it in?”
“Oh!” Jungkook swallows his bite, a flash of the metal in his tongue showing for a moment. “Kind of, at first? It felt really weird when I got it, but I’m pretty much used to it now.”
If he is bothered by Yoongi’s probably too-personal questions, Jungkook doesn’t show it. Yoongi can feel the weight of Seokjin’s stare on the side of his face and mentally tells him to shut up, despite the fact that he has not said a single word.
“Cool,” he says.
Because it totally is. Yoongi has even thought about getting a piercing or two himself, especially back in his own somewhat rebellious, Goth-adjacent youth. He has always wanted to appear a little spiky whenever he is expected to be soft, draping his slender omega physique in dark, baggy clothing like armor against the world’s assumptions. The Yoongi in his thirties may let himself show a softer side sometimes now, to the people that he trusts – but truthfully, he isn’t sure he ever totally grew out of that.
“You’d look good with one, hyung.”
Yoongi has a split second of irrational panic where he thinks that his coworker must have developed mind-reading superpowers, before he remembers that they aren’t in the Marvel Universe – he has just been fiddling with his own lip while staring unsubtly at Jungkook’s. His hand drops down into his lap as Seokjin snorts pho broth into his lungs, laughter turning into a coughing fit that has Jungkook rushing over to his side to vigorously and helpfully slap his back.
After they finish eating and sort their trash, Yoongi pulls up the conference website. As busy as they have been preparing for Dream No More’s launch date, he really hasn’t had time for a deep dive into the programming, but he figures it would be much the same as usual. Keynote speakers, panels featuring the usual industry innovators and mover-and-shakers, some playable demos and release announcements – though probably fewer of those at an off-shoot of the main conference. Sokcho won’t get quite the same level of press coverage as the Seoul con, but it will still be plenty for their little indie game. Despite his initial reluctance, Yoongi is excited to see what the reaction of both his peers and the general public will be. He wonders if–
“Wait,” he says, pausing in his scrolling of the Special Guests page where it displays a man with yellow-tinted sunglasses flashing a toothy grin and a peace-sign at the camera. “The opening keynote speaker is Jung Hoseok? Hyung…”
Everything that had previously raised some vague alarm bells about this weekend crystallizes all at once, Seokjin’s enthusiasm about their attendance taking on a different flavor. Along with his insistence that Yoongi, whose department never gets sent to these types of things, goes with him.
“Hm? Is he?” Seokjin straightens his back on the bench, expression carefully neutral, but his neck is turning a suspicious shade of pink. Yoongi sighs, deflating.
“Yahhh. Why didn’t you just say so? All this secrecy, when I already know how you feel about him.”
As Yoongi leans back and crosses his arms, Jungkook looks back and forth between him and Seokjin like he’s watching a tennis match.
“Yoongi-yah, it’s too embarrassing,” Seokjin whines. “I keep asking him to get a drink with me whenever he’s in the neighborhood, but he keeps ghosting me on KakaoTalk. I don’t think he believes I’m serious.”
“That’s because he’s an Aquarius. Or an INFJ. Take your pick.”
“I don’t even know what that means?”
“I mean, of course you don’t.”
“Oooh, is that because I’m a…”
“Sagittarius, I think. And I don’t know, maybe? It’s kind of all bullshit anyway.”
“Hmm, if you say so. But we should still do my whole chart, just in case. I want to see if I’m compatible with–”
“Um,” says Jungkook, raising his hand like he’s in class. Cute, Yoongi thinks.
“…Yes?”
“Seokjin-ssi… I mean, hyung. Are you two in an open relationship?”
Seokjin just stares at him, turning redder by the second.
“Jungkook-ah,” he finally wails. “I am not in a relationship with Jung Hoseok at all. That’s the whole problem!”
He covers his face with both of his hands in despair, but Jungkook just looks even more confused.
“No, I mean...” He gestures between Seokjin and Yoongi. “Yoongi-hyung, you don’t mind?”
“Mind…?”
“That Seokjin-hyung wants to be compatible with this Jung Hoseok guy?”
Yoongi stares blankly ahead at Jungkook’s earnest face for a moment longer, until he abruptly realizes the shape of the misunderstanding. His shoulders lift in silent laughter as he doubles over wheezing, clutching an arm around his stomach. Seokjin peeks out between his fingers, lips twitching as he also realizes Jungkook’s mistake.
“Ahh, Yoongi should be so lucky. Alas, we have never known each other carnally–” he begins loftily, getting a smack to his shoulder for his trouble.
“What do you mean, alas? We’re not together,” Yoongi clarifies, shaking his head.
Jungkook’s lips round into an oh shape, his large, dark eyes still blown wide.
“Ahh, ah. Sorry! When you said Yoongi-hyung was going on about how he loved you and stuff, I guess I thought… you two seem really close?”
“Oh, we are. But strictly as platonic friends and colleagues. Yoongi is also just a very cute and cuddly drunk,” Seokjin adds with a wink, ignoring Yoongi’s scowl. “Especially when it’s cold out like this.”
“Got it,” Jungkook says, his nose scrunching into a toothy grin. He tilts his head, looking at Yoongi like he is cataloging that information: a new side of his coworker that maybe he didn’t expect. And Yoongi isn’t actually sure how he feels about that at all.
Back on the road, Jungkook dozes off after his carb-filled snack, only briefly snorting awake when they go over a bump at the toll station and his temple knocks against the window. He smacks his lips and pulls his makeshift padded-jacket blanket back up to his chin, Yoongi watching in the rear-view mirror and wordlessly turning up the heat in the car, daring Seokjin to say anything about it.
It is getting steadily colder as they climb in altitude. Seokjin has up until this point been a reliable navigator, but Yoongi frowns as his directions have them turning off the main Donghae Expressway route and onto Gwangwang-ro’s much smaller road.
“This isn’t the way to Sokcho.”
Even not having visited the city in many years, Yoongi knows that this sharp turn onto a smaller road that winds between the pines, away from the glimpses they had been getting of the ocean and coastal buildings in the distance, doesn’t seem correct.
“Right, well, the con isn’t… in Sokcho proper, I guess,” Seokjin says, squinting down at his phone like this is brand new information. Shit, maybe it is. “Looks like it’s at this conference center inside a fancy old hotel at the entrance to Seoraksan.”
Seoraksan. As in, the national park. The one that is on a literal fucking mountain and very much not in Sokcho.
“Hyung…”
“I hear it’s beautiful this time of year,” Seokjin says cheerfully, still scrolling on his phone.
“Mmm, almost there?” Jungkook asks from the backseat, stretching his arms over his head until the tips of his fingers brush against the roof.
“Only about ten kilometers!”
“…On a winding mountain road, so it’s still a while to go, Jungkook-ah.”
This gets a nod of understanding from the backseat passenger, but he doesn’t settle back in to try and sleep any longer. Outside, the snow falls more heavily than before, piled up in deep, sheered-off banks along the road and bending evergreen tree boughs low wherever blankets of white have settled. It has been snowing off and on all winter in Seoul too, of course, but city snow and mountain snow are two different beasts. Here the snowfall is sparkling white, with a storybook quality that is lacking that sickly tinge of pollution, the slushy trampling of many feet.
There are far fewer cars on this route. The ones they do pass are all making the same careful way up the potentially treacherous mountain road, Yoongi trying not to white-knuckle the steering wheel too obviously. He supposes he should have been more suspicious about the explicit instructions to include all-wheel drive on their rental car. It had just seemed like a prudent contingency at the time, even with the original expectation that they would only travel on well-maintained urban, coastal roads.
Though it steadily climbs and encircles the mountain, the road isn’t quite twisty enough to cause any wooziness or real challenge in navigation. Jungkook looks out the window with an expression of excitable wonder, and Yoongi finds himself wondering if he would go bounding off into the snowbanks if they were to pull off at one of the scenic vista points where families and tourists gather in shivering bunches to take photos of the sea of snow-covered trees below, stretching as far as the eye can see. If Jungkook were to speak up wanting to stop, Yoongi isn’t sure he would be able to say no, though he is certain to make a show of grumping about it. But the young alpha doesn’t say anything, just presses the tip of his nose and fingers to the fogging window and watches the trees zip by in a snowy evergreen blur. They drive on.
By the time that they arrive, it is early afternoon. The event center is a sprawling campus tucked among the pines, its centerpiece being a multi-story lodge with a façade of honey-gold wood and natural stone. They park the rental SUV at the apex of a semi-circular driveway, under a wooden archway that comes out over the entrance’s large glass-paneled doors.
“I’ll ask the front desk about our rooms,” Seokjin offers, hopping out from the passenger side as Yoongi keeps the engine – and the vehicle’s occupants – warm.
They had passed a snow-covered parking lot on their way to the hotel’s entrance, crisscrossed with the arcing lines of icy tire tracks but not even a quarter full of parked cars this early on the conference’s first day. While the car idles, Yoongi decides where he wants to park – close to the stairs into the hotel would make carrying their boxes of promotional items easier, but parking closer to the entrance would make for a quicker exit. There is always a trade-off.
“Hyung,” Jungkook says, after a while. “I think you’re being summoned.”
Yoongi glances over at the entrance and, sure enough, Seokjin is making a vigorous ‘get over here’ motion while propping one of the glass doors open with his foot.
“Hmm, that can’t be good. I’ll be right back.”
After having Jungkook move up to the driver’s seat and quickly showing him where the SUV’s gearshift is if someone asks him to move the vehicle, Yoongi tramps through a light, crunchy layer of snow to reach Seokjin.
“Problems with our room?”
“No,” Seokjin says, but he sounds uncertain about that, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Well, it depends on your definition of a problem. We do have rooms.”
“Okay...”
“They’re just not, uh. Here at this hotel, exactly?”
“What?” Yoongi cranes his neck up at the multi-story building. There must be enough rooms for everyone who would be attending this somewhat provincial game conference, and then some.
“Yeah. It, um, turns out it wasn’t in our budget.”
Yoongi groans, his fingers clenching into a fist in his gloves. Of-fucking-course.
“So where are we staying? Back in Sokcho?”
What a pain in the ass. Yoongi is already bracing himself for driving back down the mountain and into the coastal city, and having to return for each day of the conference.
“Oh, no,” Seokjin says, waving his hand. “The good news is that our rooms are nearby! They rented us a cabin that is affiliated with the hotel, but much cheaper.”
Well, that’s not the worst news. A little inconvenient, but it could be cozy.
“Okay. Did they give us directions to the place, at least?”
Seokjin nods and flips his phone around to show Yoongi. Squinting, he can see a winding switch-back on the map that goes a bit further up the mountain from their current location. Maybe another ten or fifteen minutes’ drive away.
“Alright,” Yoongi says. “Lead the way.”
The cabin, it turns out, is a modest hanok-style building, a thick overhang of snow built up on its dark tiled roof. Yoongi stomps the ice off of his boots on the front door’s steps, breathing in deep lungfuls of the mountain’s crisp, cold air. A hint of distant woodsmoke lingers, the signs of another cabin’s occupants staying cozy and warm.
That does sound nice, Yoongi thinks. He wishes that he had time for a nap on the couch in front of the fire. No chance of that, though – they only have about half an hour to unpack their bags before they need to be back at the hotel’s exhibit hall to set up their booth. And Seokjin certainly isn’t going to risk missing the conference’s first industry dinner, not when his precious Jung Hoseok is set to be one of the opening speakers. Yoongi is more grateful than ever that they got on the road so early.
“Three bedrooms,” Seokjin observes, sliding the door open for one on the left side of the hanok from its small central courtyard as Jungkook does the same for one on the right. There’s a central living area with a kitchen in the front of the building, and another bedroom across the courtyard from that.
“Small miracles.”
Worst comes to worst, though, Yoongi and Seokjin could have shared a room – even a bed, if absolutely necessary – quite comfortably. They’ve had to do it before, with their company’s often limited budget. Still, it’s nice to have the prospect of some privacy at the end of the night if Yoongi needs it, a place to hide away and recharge his batteries.
“I like it here,” Jungkook announces with a grin, and his tail would probably be wagging if he had one.
The young alpha disappears with his bag into the West-facing room – they’re all about the same in size and amenities, so far as Yoongi can tell. Seokjin has already claimed the bedroom across the way, so Yoongi shoulders his bag and heads for the door between them. It turns out that there is a bathroom connecting his room and Jungkook’s – Yoongi makes a mental note to remember to lock both doors to prevent any embarrassing walk-ins. There always seems to be some kind of quirk, in older buildings like this. At least the heating seems to be working well. It really could be much worse.
“So I figured that you and Jungkook could take first shift here,” Seokjin says casually, in the middle of snapping the lock into place on one of their booth’s table legs. “I’ll scope out the lay of the land, see what our competition is up to, you know?”
Yoongi looks up with a snort, smoothing his hand over a wrinkle in the thick black tablecloth.
“Scoping out where Hoseok might be, more like.”
Nose-deep in one of the conference’s brochures, Jungkook is oblivious to their banter – and Seokjin’s faux-scandalized scoff.
“Hyung,” he says, excited and non-specific. “They have a horror games panel all about creating atmosphere with art and sound. We should go!”
Yoongi groans.
“Those panels are all the same. They always invite the same jerks who think horror is about how edgy you can make it. Every single year. I’m so tired of it.”
“Oh.”
A twinge of guilt hits when Jungkook’s shoulders sag, deflated. Yoongi fights the bizarre urge to smooth the line that appears in the center of his brow.
“Yahhh, let the guy be excited,” Seokjin scolds, popping up from securing the other table locks. “It’s his first time at one of these. Just because you’re old and jaded now…”
“You’re a year older than me!”
“Age is just a number, Yoongi-yah! You have old-man energy. While I, a fresh-faced youth…”
With a put-upon sigh, Yoongi holds his hand out impatiently until Jungkook, blinking at him, realizes that he is asking for the brochure. He scans the description with the list of guest speakers on the panel.
“Hm. Okay, it does have that asshole from the company with all of the discrimination lawsuits. But there’s also some cool people, from indie developers like us. Should balance it out. It’s tomorrow?”
Jungkook nods, visibly brightening. “Yeah! At 3 p.m.”
“Could probably swing that. Hyung, do you mind holding down the fort at that time?”
Seokjin sketches a silly salute as he scatters some Dream No More stickers and buttons across the table for people to take as freebies. But Yoongi notices that his eyes never stop scanning the crowded room.
“Ahh, go on. Jungkook and I can take it from here.”
Seokjin practically bounds out of their booth space as soon as Yoongi finishes speaking. He shakes his head, unable to help the fond smile as he watches him go.
“Wow. He really likes that guy, huh?”
“Jungkook-ah, you have no idea.”
“I think it’s kinda sweet,” Jungkook says, his nose and eyes crinkling. “I hope someone is into me like that someday too, you know?”
Yoongi hums. Admittedly, he is somewhat surprised to hear that Jungkook doesn’t have someone already. He seems like the romantic, head in the clouds type.
“Someday, huh? No, uh, partner waiting for you back in Seoul?”
“Nope. Actually, Seokjin-hyung told me that he thinks the three of us were chosen for this trip because we’re all… what were his words? ‘Woefully and eternally unattached’?”
Jungkook giggles at the face that Yoongi pulls.
“Damn, Jin. Speak for yourself.”
“Oh! Does that mean you do have…”
“No, he’s right,” Yoongi says dryly, busying himself with fanning out some flyers and QR codes as Jungkook hoots with laughter. “He just didn’t have to say it like that.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being single, hyung.”
“I guess not.” Yoongi shrugs a shoulder. “Still, it makes sense for me. I’m old. But you… I don’t know.”
Yoongi does know, actually. He has eyes, after all. As a strong, healthy young alpha – a quite attractive, successful one, at that – Jungkook could have his pick of partners, omega or otherwise.
“Hyung! You’re not old.”
“I really am, Jungkook-ah. It’s okay.”
“You’re not.”
The way that Jungkook says this is so fierce and confident that Yoongi can’t help but look over. There’s a stubborn set to his jaw that wasn’t there before, Jungkook’s eyes flashing with dark intensity. Yoongi blinks hard, scratches at the back of his neck and looks away. He doesn’t know how to respond to that at all.
“Anyway. It surprised me, that’s all. But hyung is probably being nosy again, so we can just–”
“It’s okay,” Jungkook says softly, with a slight shake of his head that sends his short ponytail swinging. “I mean, I’ve had a lot of casual things before, but… oh, but not a lot! Like, plenty. A normal amount?”
He waves his hands in front of himself, flustered, as Yoongi snorts. Cute.
“But I don’t know. Sometimes it isn’t all about looks or anything. I keep odd hours, especially during crunch time. People think they can handle it at first, but they get tired of working around my schedule after a while. And…”
Jungkook takes a breath here, fingers tapping a nervous pattern against his leg. When he starts speaking again, it’s quieter. More hesitant.
“And they also notice that… I’m not really a normal alpha, I guess? I don’t always act the way they expect. It throws people off, like they want me to be… I don’t know. More serious all the time. Tougher, or something.”
As Jungkook chews on the corner of his mouth where his lip ring is, Yoongi can’t help but feel bad for being yet another person to make subgender-based assumptions about him. He can relate to that, all too well.
“Eh, fuck subgender norms. Gender norms, too. We can be whoever we want to be.”
In his peripheral vision, Yoongi detects some sharp, alarmed looks from nearby booths and passersby, but he really doesn’t give a shit. All he cares about at that moment is the way that Jungkook is staring at him with the widest eyes, and the moment his face morphs into a bright, toothy grin.
“Fuck ‘em,” he agrees.
Jungkook bumps shoulders with Yoongi companionably, cheerfully oblivious to the judgmental frowns of anyone eavesdropping on their conversation. And something in Yoongi unwinds.
When it’s time to head to the opening industry dinner together, Seokjin doesn’t show. They wait for him at the booth for a while, Yoongi sending chat messages that are mostly a long string of question marks, with a few eggplant and peach emojis mixed in for good measure. (Seokjin will be proud, he thinks – once the man actually looks at his phone.) Eventually, he and Jungkook decide to walk over from the exhibit hall with the other stragglers, not willing to risk missing out on food.
Yoongi lets out a low whistle as they step through the open double-doors into the hotel’s banquet hall. It’s not the fanciest set-up he has ever seen or anything, but they’ve put enough effort into giving it some pomp and circumstance that he is glad he opted to change into one of his nicer button-down shirts before they left the cabin. The circular tables scattered around the room are covered with crisp, navy-blue cloths, each set with folded napkins and golden place-settings – certainly not real gold, but at least giving the effect of opulence. One benefit of holding the conference at a nice hotel like this that already is set-up for this type of fancy dinner, Yoongi supposes. Remote as this one may be.
“So do you think this is assigned seating, or…”
“Jungkook!”
Yoongi turns at the stranger’s voice, and his mind skids to a dramatic, screeching halt. Because the man in front of him doesn’t exist. Can’t exist.
Because he’s…
“Randa,” Yoongi says, stunned and breathy. And then a hand is clapped firmly over his mouth.
“Hyung! That’s supposed to be a surprise, he can’t know about… ah, sorry!”
The hand is gone as quickly as it arrived, but Yoongi can feel the echo of warm skin pressed against his lips.
“Sorry,” Jungkook repeats softly, but all of his attention is focused on the other man as he gets closer. “Hi, Namjoon.”
Yoongi raises his eyebrow at the dropped honorific for someone who is almost certainly older, but Randa – or Namjoon, apparently – just breaks out into a lethal, dimpled smile.
“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” he says, pulling Jungkook into a quick hug.
“You, too! I mean, me neither.”
Namjoon laughs brightly, a staccato bray that should be unattractive, but instead only adds to his array of charms.
“We almost didn’t come, actually. A last-minute addition.”
He winks, Jungkook giggles, and Yoongi thinks he just might see the shape of things now. Jungkook had been the lead on designing Randa, the masculine and charming pack leader of Dream No More’s post-apocalyptic strike team, and now here he is in the unrealistically-handsome flesh. Some version of him, at least. The original.
Intense, hooded eyes glide over to Yoongi, Namjoon’s smile dimming by a few watts but no less genuine.
“And you must be…”
“Min Yoongi,” he somehow manages to say. “Ah, I work with Jungkook. Well, not directly. I’m in the Sound Design department.”
“Oh, no shit? Me too. At my company, I mean. Magic Shop Studios? Jungkook here was our intern for a bit.”
Namjoon pats at Jungkook’s shoulder, a bit ungainly, as he ducks his head and whines.
“Hyung…”
That would explain the literal schoolboy crush that Jungkook seems to have on the guy. He’d imprinted on him as an impressionable college student, fresh off his presentation. Although, unless Yoongi is mistaken and Jungkook drastically changed the subgender for his doppelganger in their game, Namjoon is also an alpha…
Well, it isn’t any of Yoongi’s business who Jungkook likes.
“We should definitely talk shop later!” Namjoon continues, oblivious to all of this. “I think they’re about to get started here soon. Would you guys like to join our table?”
Yoongi isn’t sure who ‘our’ includes, but it sounds like a good plan to him. Spots at the tables around them seem to be filling up quickly, everyone getting settled as a woman adjusts a mic-stand on the stage at the far end of the room.
“Sure. Got room for three more? We lost our QA Lead somewhere.”
“It’s kind of a maze in here,” Namjoon agrees. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we can fit you all in. Come on, follow me.”
He leads Yoongi and Jungkook to a table much closer to the stage – someone in their party must have gotten there much earlier to snag such a prime spot. A twin-cry of “Jungkookie” erupts at their approach, and Yoongi resigns himself to a night of third-wheeling this company reunion until Seokjin comes back to rescue him. It’s undeniably cute, though – two men spring up from the table to wrap themselves around Jungkook in an octopus-sandwich of clinging arms, exclaiming over him, their words overlapping. There aren’t three seats together left, but Namjoon grabs an extra chair with his apologies from another table, squeezing it in after they do some quick rearranging.
“Park Jimin,” the sweet-voiced, shorter man seated at Yoongi’s left elbow introduces himself, hand extended. His gaze seems appraising, like he knows a very funny joke but he isn’t sure if he would like to tell it to Yoongi yet. “And this is Kim Taehyung.”
“Pleasure,” he says, with a smooth baritone.
“Do you also work for Magic Shop?”
“Oh, no. Taetae has his own small indie studio.”
The man nods, shaggy curls swaying, and holds up two fingers in a V.
“Ahh. What’s it called?”
“Vee,” Jimin says, tilting his head at Yoongi like he thinks that he might be a little dull-witted.
Of course. Privately, Yoongi thinks that the name must be hell for SEO. But it does suit the eccentric artist-type that the other man appears to be.
A server comes around and offers everyone beverages, so Yoongi orders a highball to help him get through the social minefield of this evening. Jungkook gets a beer, and Namjoon and Jimin each order a glass of Chardonnay.
“Just water, please,” Taehyung says, waving them away with his other hand pressed against his stomach.
“Still feeling queasy?” Namjoon asks after the server moves on to the next table, his brow furrowing with concern.
Taehyung nods, his lips pressed together. He does look a little pale, a sickly tinge to his skin. Something prickles in Yoongi’s instincts, but he doesn’t dare voice his suspicions.
“Oh my god,” Jungkook says under his breath, who apparently has no such qualms. “Taehyungie-hyung, are you…”
A toothy, squared-off grin spreads on Taehyung’s face, despite his apparent nausea.
“Three months, next week,” he says softly. “Sorry, Jungkook-ah, I wanted to tell you so badly, but we were waiting…”
He laughs as Jungkook gets up and throws his arms around his shoulders from behind, nuzzling his face against the side of Taehyung’s neck. He abruptly stills as his eyes meet Namjoon’s across the table, backing off and tilting his chin up to show his own neck.
“Sorry, hyung.”
Ah, so now he’s Jungkook’s hyung. As Yoongi observes them, more of the puzzle pieces in this dynamic are snapping into place.
“It’s fine,” Namjoon says with an easy grin that has the added benefit of flashing his teeth. “You can scent him – just be gentle.”
Thus given the older alpha’s permission, Jungkook applies himself to the task with gusto despite the people at tables around them shooting them discreetly curious glances. He softly noses at Taehyung’s scent gland – more of an instinctual gesture than anything, with the widespread usage of scent-blockers in modern society.
“They were roommates in college,” Jimin leans in to explain, in response to Yoongi’s open curiosity. Yoongi opens his mouth, then thinks better of it at the sharp glimmer in the other man’s eye. “Off campus, obviously.”
“Of course.”
It makes sense. Even the most progressive university wouldn’t assign an alpha and an omega of any gender to room together in their dorms.
Jungkook returns to his seat on Yoongi’s opposite side radiating satisfaction, though not in the usual, smugly macho way. He seems shyly pleased to have indulged in his instincts with an old friend, without a hint of claim in the gesture. But there isn’t much about Jungkook that is usual, Yoongi is finding.
A short squeak of microphone feedback alerts them that the first speaker is about to begin.
“Where the hell is Seokjin,” Yoongi mutters, unfolding his napkin.
“Hyung, what if he didn’t know we’d leave without him and he’s still down in the–“
A beautiful man strolls onto the stage, picking up the microphone with long, elegant fingers. It’s hard to pick out the precise details from this distance, but Yoongi thinks there may be some kind of smiley face painted on the fingernail of one of his pinkies. He flashes a brilliant, cheery smile at the room at large, but his eyes seem to be tracking one person in particular. Someone shuffling and bowing as he weaves between the tables with whispered apologies until he slumps into the chair opposite Jungkook, a little out of breath.
“Please, Jin, for the love of all that is holy tell me that our keynote speaker isn’t late because you were screwing–“
“Yoongi-yah!” he hisses around Jungkook. “In public? Don’t be vulgar, I would never.”
“…around. Screwing around, is what I was going to say. What did you think I was saying?”
Seokjin just ignores him, reaching for the water that Yoongi had ordered for him as retribution for his tardiness. As out of breath as he is, though, he seems to actually need it. He downs the glass in several long gulps, his throat working and the stare of the man on stage never wavering. God, but Yoongi is tired of them making pathetically horny eyes at each other. He almost wishes they had been fucking somewhere. At least then he wouldn’t have to keep listening to Seokjin whine and pine about…
“Jung Hoseok,” the woman who set up the microphone announces, leading everyone in a round of applause, with no one more enthusiastic than Seokjin.