Archive of Our Own

"Well, you know what they say," Seokjin muses as they survey the box apartment that Namjoon can cross in only six strides. "You gotta kiss a few frogs before you find your prince."

"And in this half-baked analogy, my prince is what, an apartment that fits a fucking bed and a sofa? Or one that doesn't reek of piss?"

Namjoon wrinkles his nose and narrows his eyes at the suspicious brown stain that's creeping down the walls from one of the corners. The apartment doesn't even have a window. It feels like a strange, melting room that shouldn't exist outside the walls of a prison—like Seokjin has found some gray void, plucked it from the ether to shill to Namjoon for more-than-he-can-afford dollars per month plus maintenance. For what, Namjoon doesn't know, because he's pretty sure he saw week old dog shit on the stairs on the way up.

Seokjin shrugs and pulls out his phone. 

"You do know this is your actual job, right?" Namjoon elbows his best friend, who is leaning on the doorframe flicking through his apps in a set of matching purple sweats. He looks and smells like a ripe passion fruit, his sweet omegan scent drizzling over the room and adding a touch of delicacy that the sad apartment desperately needs. "Aren't you supposed to be good at this?"

Seokjin turns his dark eyes on him, thick lips circled in a grimace as he sends Namjoon one of his well-practiced withering glares.

"I'm excellent at this when I'm actually being paid. You have the budget of Oliver Twist." 

He holds out his hand and wags a finger in Namjoon's face like he's six years old, and not a thirty year old alpha that just so happens to be down on his luck lately. This kind of thing just happens to people at this stage of life, it's not that Namjoon is a failure or anything.

"You know, three million won a month for rent is a fucking normal budget for most people in Seoul, Seokjin. We can't all have Scrooge McDuck as a fiance," he sighs, digging his hands into his wide legged slacks. It's a low blow given how touchy Hoseok is about his generational wealth. Rich people have problems too, apparently, but Namjoon is tired of viewing shitholes. 

He pulls out a toffee and unwraps the paper, sticking it into his mouth so he can stop thinking about smoking for a single second of the day. The sugar is too saccharine and it doesn't taste as good as smoking feels, three months cold turkey be damned. Namjoon is almost certain he's gained in cavities whatever number of days he's added to his life span by quitting before the damage to his lungs is truly irreversible. But at least his friends say they can actually scent him out these days, without all of the tobacco stink.

Seokjin opens his mouth to argue or defend Hoseok's honor when there's a scrabbling sound from the back of the studio. They both snap their eyes over to the single futon in the corner of the room where a left-behind fleece blanket has started to twitch.

"Fucking hell," Seokjin whispers, backing out the door and peering from the other side of the wooden frame. "You go."

Namjoon is a pretty chill alpha at the best of times. He'd like to think he's the kind of guy that his friends would describe as placid, easy-going if a little chaotic from time to time, not easily spooked—the one in the group that catches spiders with a ceramic cup and newspaper and sets them off into the streets of Seoul, free arachnids to probably meet a worse fate than the squish of a foot. 

He spent a whole summer in the Amazon during his gap year, so he's seen creepy crawlies that would make someone like Seokjin faint. 

And yet ascending further into the heart of darkness and challenging whatever monster is currently making its home on the mound of beer stained upholstery… Well, it doesn't sound appealing either.

"It might be a rat," Seokjin quivers as Namjoon stalls, edging back towards the wall that he, in any other circumstances, wouldn't have touched with a ten foot barge pole. "I could get rabies."

"That's dogs," Namjoon hisses, scrabbling for the keys in his pocket. The jingle only seems to anger the pile of fleece, because it starts to vibrate. 

"The plague then, I don't fucking care."

"I think you mean the Black Death," Namjoon sniffs, pushing his black framed glasses up his nose to stall.

He unhooks the chain that's currently lassoing his wallet to the waistband of his slacks, then tosses it across the room at the creature on the futon. It goes still, momentarily.

"God, you're such a nerd," Seokjin curls his lip in distaste. "Are you a toddler? Why do you need your money literally tied to your pants like that?"

The pile on the futon yelps, and a marmalade head pops out. 

"Oh," Seokjin says, eyes wide as Namjoon makes for the futon, with his lip wobbling.

"You poor little baby," he soothes, scooping up the garble of ginger fur. 

"What the hell is that thing?" Seokjin asks, determined to keep his distance and be as unhelpful as humanly possible—which, given that he got Namjoon into this mess, is rich. 

"It's a guinea pig, Seokjin. Don't act like you've never seen a guinea pig before. Though the poor thing is looking pretty worse for wear,” he fusses. “He has matted hair on his back." 

Namjoon scoops the creature up into his hands and runs his fingers through the long, knotty fur. He can feel the guinea pig's ribcage against his finger pads, bones delicate and pronounced like the poor lad hasn't been fed in days. Which, logically, he probably hasn't. According to Seokjin, the apartment has been vacant for quite a while now. 

"What kind of a monster just abandons a pet like this?" He huffs, feeling a smart in his chest at the thought. Namjoon has always been soft for tiny, cute things. 

"God, it looks like Ed Sheeran," Seokjin hisses as he peers over Namjoon's shoulder, bony fingers digging into his clavicles. "I thought guinea pigs were cute little guys that fit in your pocket. This guy is a total unit. He looks like he could take Mickey out."

He is, to be fair. 

Even half emaciated, the little rodent that's now wriggling in Namjoon's arms weighs easily as much as a couple of mangoes. 

Namjoon knows all about mangoes. 

He's been stretching his measly sound editor wage to fruit lately after he saw a video on YouTube about a man who died of scurvy in the year 2025. He hadn't left the house in days that week, hyper focused on editing a documentary for a client that was due sooner rather than later. He'd been shoveling his third cheese sandwich into his mouth as he watched, one of his four hourly breaks dwindling away on brain rot, when it hit him like a tonne of bricks—he could be that guy, wasting away in his bedroom because he chose to eat the ninth pack of noodles that week instead of buying an apple.

Namjoon spent money he didn't have on a pineapple, plums that cost more than his car loan repayments, and as many mangoes as he could handle. It was ironic really, that his landlord had called to give him his marching orders just the next morning—and with it, taken all of Namjoon's prospects for cosy winter TV marathons in the comfort of his own apartment, long evenings of shampooing his hair in the deep bathtub he'll never be able to afford again, ruts easily handled from the safety of his own bedroom. 

And there Namjoon was, poor as shit and so unused to that much dietary fiber that he also had to stretch his dwindling budget to a bumper pack of tums for the diarrhea.

Rock bottom sure smelled like mango.

"You'd better take him home with you," Namjoon shakes his head solemnly, peering into the animal's beady little eyes. He's pretty cute under the matted fur, his little buck tooth nibbling Namjoon's fingers for whatever it is that guinea pigs eat.

"Me?" Seokjin gasps, fumbling backwards towards the door like he's going to run. He can't, not really. He's Namjoon's ride, and they have one more place to view today. 

"Yes, you. I don't even have somewhere to live after today, thanks to you." Namjoon wraps his black bomber over the trembling guinea pig and zips it back up until the little guy is nestled against the warmth of his belly. 

"No, no. Hoseok wouldn't allow it. Mickey is very delicate, and our heats are coming up and—" Seokjin scrambles for an excuse, and Namjoon sighs. 

"Guess it's you and me and the mean streets of Seoul, pal," he says to the sleepy little pile of rust that's already snoring on his chest.

"He's imprinted on you," Seokjin whispers, and Namjoon can't tell if it's awe or disgust in his voice. "Just like Jacob and Renesmee."

"I wish I didn't know what that means," Namjoon says, forlorn, as he follows Seokjin out into the hallway, and watches him bolt the door. 

Not that he should bother, you couldn't pay someone to break into that haunted shit hole. 

Namjoon and Eggs do eventually find an apartment. 

It doesn't happen that day, because Namjoon ends up spending most of the afternoon in the vet's office while Doctor Yoongi slowly untangles the mats in the little guy's fur with a tiny comb. 

"He's actually quite healthy, aside from being a little underweight," Yoongi, who Namjoon has known since childhood, says while the beady eyed rodent looks up at him with an expression Namjoon has seen many times in his life directed at Yoongi. 

He is awe-inspiring, seemingly to humans and animals alike— with his pretty pale skin that looks oddly luminescent under the clinic’s tungsten lamp, slender thighs like a girl group leader, and a compassionate brain to match his intimidating good looks. The guy smells like crackling fires and fucking sandalwood, for God's sake. 

Sometimes Namjoon thinks that if he was into other alphas, he might have started looking at Yoongi that same way.

Some alphas get it all.

It’s also Yoongi, not Seokjin, that recommends the apartment.

"My friend lives in this building just around the corner, and there's an empty apartment. I nearly took it myself, but I really do need an extra room for Tangie and my records, you know?" 

Yoongi nods like Namjoon could possibly understand what it's like to be the kind of adult who not only needs an extra room for their record collection, but one who can afford one. 

"Right. Well. You know me, editor's salary isn't stretching far now I'm freelancing," Namjoon shrugs, tucking Eggs Sheeran into the carrier that Yoongi is letting him borrow to get the poor thing home.

Home being Seokjin and Hoseok's couch, so Mickey will have to cope with Eggs regardless of Seokjin's tantrum, at least until they get their own place. The rental market is crazy in Seoul right now, and Namjoon is not making half of what he did when he was working as an in-house video editor. But the past five years of working in corporate hell had drained every creative bone in his body, so when he saw the chance to get out with a severance package, he jumped on it.

Yoongi calls his friend, who calls his landlord, who also happens to be Namjoon's future landlord too, if the place works out. Within a couple of hours of arriving, Namjoon shuffles out of the vet's with a new pet that's passed his check up with flying colors, and an apartment he's told is not only perfect but totally in the bag. 

Kim Seokjin might be a total liar, but Yoongi is bang on the money. 

When Namjoon leaves Eggs with an enamored Hoseok the next afternoon to see the apartment, it is perfect. So perfect that Namjoon can hardly believe it falls within his sad art boy budget. 

The whole neighborhood is pretty, clean, and quiet, with small indie businesses and cafes lining the road at street level, and a huge communal garden out back of the building. People even have allotments where they're growing real, actual vegetables that have never seen a chemical spray in their short, budding lives. Namjoon bumps into one older man in a beekeeper hat, though, without a bee in sight, he's not overly sure the guy isn't just a little eccentric. 

People smile at each other but keep their distance, which is the exact secret sauce in a perfect Namjoon cocktail for living your best life without any drama. He likes going out, and having a good time, he's a sociable guy at heart, but who wants friends in their own building?

Namjoon has a good feeling about this whole thing, and he’s somewhat smug as he waits in the lobby for the lift to come and take him up to the seventh floor. He's meeting the landlord for an apartment tour and to hopefully sign the papers. He wore his best shirt in hopes that the guy won't get the ick when he mentions that he's self-employed, and he's even dabbed on a little of his favourite subgender-neutral perfume to compliment his natural sea salt.

And then, while he's pawing out a text to Seokjin, the lift doors ding and Namjoon is hit with a cloud of downy fabric softener, clean laundry, sweet and soft and pleasant. He looks up in what feels like slow motion into the prettiest brown eyes he's ever seen. 

"Oh sorry," the omega says, grinning a big wide smile that looks like triangular cheese—so broad it takes up his round face and makes his eyes arch. 

He has dark curls, long enough that his eyebrows get lost. He looks youthful and soft in his black denim overalls, yellow sweatshirt stuffed underneath, dangling so long he has sweater paws. His wire frame glasses are oversized, round like coke bottles that seem to exaggerate his already wide eyes. 

Namjoon doesn't even notice the dog leads wrapping around his calves because he's too busy staring into the hazelnut abyss, diving for cocoa beans with his mouth open and tongue lapping, swimming a backstroke in the ocean of molten chocolate. Not that they're dog leads at all, because that is definitely a gaggle of cats wrapping rings around the guy's ankles.

"They're so eager to get out," yellow sweatshirt says with a fond sigh as he drops to his knees and starts untangling the cat leads from Namjoon’s legs. He plants a delicate tattooed—tattooed?—hand on Namjoon's knee as he does it. 

"I don't think I've ever seen a cat on a lead before," Namjoon remarks uselessly, watching in awe as the sun glints in the boy's thick hair. He looks like he takes vitamins every day, cod liver oil and keratin, hair and skin so bright with fatty acids he could be in some sort of catalog. For what, Namjoon doesn't know. 

He thinks about his own hair, unwashed under the cap, the sad fact of his own dwindling self-care of late. Sure he wore a shirt, but a shower probably wouldn’t have gone amiss. Namjoon really should just throw caution to the wind and shave it all off now that he doesn't have the corporate handbook to abide by.

"That's tragic," yellow sweatshirt says, patting Namjoon's knee a little now that it's free. He scratches each of the three cats in turn—tuxedo, black, tabby, with little plush paws like teddy bears and identical pink collars. "It's too dangerous in this part of the city to let little buddies like this roam out the windows. They love the allotments, though. I planted cat mint in mine."

"Cat mint," Namjoon echoes, a little dumb, a little in love. 

The omega likes to yap, he can tell. He bounces a little on his feet when he does it, soft black converse on the big wooden floorboards in front of the lift, his hair fluttering as he wobbles. 

Because they are still in front of the lift. 

Namjoon sighs a little when he realizes the doors are closed and someone has already called it back to the ninth floor. 

"Of course," yellow sweatshirt says, his cheeks round and buoyant like wet grapefruits. "They go nuts for it, and it makes them less goofy than catnip."

"Do you live here?" he adds when Namjoon only nods like a lemming. He's already five minutes late for his viewing, which doesn't exactly leave a great impression. 

"Hopefully," Namjoon says, wincing a little when he feels the phone in his pocket vibrate, the cosmic cockblock. He thumbs the button for the 7th floor and gives the boy an apologetic smile. "I'm viewing a place, so… it seems like a really nice building."

"Oh it is," yellow sweatshirt says, plucking the biggest cat of the gang, the swole tuxedo, up into his arms. With his overalls and his cute eyes, he kind of looks like a toddler trying to carry the family pet, his surprisingly strong frame dwarfed by cat belly. "I've lived here for two years now, and everyone is lovely. I'm on the tenant's committee. Sometimes we even watch movies on the rooftop when it's dry in the summer. Everyone is so chill." 

He thrusts out the hand that isn't supporting the biggest cat Namjoon has ever seen in his life. Maybe he’s too used to Tangie and his gentle ways.

"I'm Jungkook. If you ever need anything, I'm usually out in the allotments when I'm not at school." 

"Namjoon," he replies, taking the long but delicate fingers in his own just as the lift dings. "And that's my cue."

Jungkook squints at the cat in his arms and gives a little sniff. "Mine too, these guys are getting antsy. See you around, potential neighbor."

Namjoon watches Jungkook as the doors to the elevator slide closed. He bounces when he walks. Namjoon feels like Gwyneth Paltrow in that movie Sliding Doors—like a sexier version of his life is playing out on the other side of those metal, elevator doors, one where he follows the pretty omega and his weird gang of cats instead, maybe gets a kiss and falls in love, buys one of those modern hanok houses and write's erotic manhwa for the rest of his blessed existence.

All through the meeting with his new landlord, while he runs a finger over the smooth plaster of the large bedroom and open plan living space, while he flushes the toilet and checks that the water pressure is good in the shower, Namjoon thinks about downy fabric conditioner. 

Seokjin and Hoseok come over for dinner on Namjoon’s first weekend in the new apartment. They bring fresh magnolias for the table, and Seokjin fills his fridge with so many Tupperware containers of food that Namjoon fridge starts to look like a round of jenga.

"It's the best apartment we've ever had," Namjoon says as he chops some fresh vegetables for Eggs. 

The guinea pig has been enjoying their home as much as he has, free roaming the open space in the living room, wiggling into the gap between the comfy loveseat and the wall before falling asleep in his mounds of newspaper. Namjoon has since invested in the best little wooden house that Etsy had to offer—oak finish, two stories, with little cut out stars and moons emblazoned on the side, and some inbuilt cosy cushions for his joints. Eggs loves to crawl into its corners and snooze the hours away.

"Glad to hear that the little rat hasn't infected you with any communicable diseases, after all," Seokjin smarts, his eyes filled with onion-chopping tears. 

"Diseases?" Hoseok gasps from the island where he's cuddling Eggs under his chin. "This little peach? How could he have diseases when he's absolutely perfect."

Seokjin rolls his eyes and tosses some veggies in the hissing wok.

"It is a nice place," he relents, pushing the odds and ends of his vegetable offcuts into a small pile for Eggs’ lunch. "Spacious. Clean. Probably the most grown up place you've ever lived. I’m so glad you ditched that rag of a sofa you’ve been carting around since the dorms."

"It's perfect for you, really," Hoseok adds when Namjoon sets the vegetable board down in front of him and reaches out to take the guinea pig into his own lap. He feeds him carrots chopped into tiny pentagrams, celery ribbons, and the crunchiest lettuce they had in the farmers market. 

And Hoseok is dead right. It is perfect. 

Or so, so close to being perfect at least, except for one tiny, little detail. And Namjoon is fine about that, absolutely fine. There's always a fly in the ointment when you're faced with the overwhelming possibility of perfection. It's like that beautiful omega from the lobby. He might look and smell and sound like the prettiest creature Namjoon has ever seen with his own two eyes, but he's probably a serial killer or washes his dishes with hand soap, or something. He has to be. It's a truth universally acknowledged that wherever a pretty boy doth roam, madness doth follow shortly thereafter. 

Namjoon hasn't even seen Jungkook again since he moved in, and he's circled the allotments at least four times over. Daily.

"I think my neighbor is a porn star," he says, watching casually as Eggs' upper lip wobbles on his thumb, tiny orange ribbons of carrots shaving onto Namjoon's fingers as he nibbles. 

Hoseok drops his jaffa cake into his tea. "A porn star?"

"You mean Youporn, or some sex hotline or whatever?" Seokjin asks, with his mouth slack. "Your neighbour is recording erotica in his bedroom?"

"Why are you the oldest person I've ever met?" Namjoon huffs as he sits down at the island. Seokjin lays a bubbling wok of violent red stew on some folded up dishcloths and Namjoon nearly burns himself when tries to dodge its path. "Youporn? Is that even a thing? Do you jack off to VHS tapes, Old Man Seokjin?"

"He means OnlyFans," Hoseok says kindly, tapping Seokjin's hand as he continues to set the table.

Namjoon huffs in the scent of delicious food. He’s not exactly talented in the kitchen and relishes when his friends come to take care of him. He gently lays Eggs down on one of his folded sweaters on the fourth empty bar stool, a dish of his vegetables in front of him. 

"Yeah, that," Seokjin says with a nod, forking some sesame cabbage onto each of their dishes.

It all started on their first night in the apartment. Namjoon had fallen into bed absolutely exhausted, fingers pruned and chemically burned from hours of scrubbing the floorboards, the back of the toilet, every smudge on the perfect ceiling to floor windows. It hadn't quite felt like home yet, but it was clean as a whistle, and slowly filling up with his own things, Eggs' quickly accumulating blankets and toys, his records. That vague, musty scent of the beta that had probably lived there before him had been washed clean, and every corner of his apartment smelled minty fresh.

Namjoon had just mustered enough strength to dress the bed with his newly bought Egyptian cotton, almost as much of a splurge as Eggs' bedding. His white noise machine was on, eye mask down to block out the fact that it was only 8pm and definitely not a normal hour to sleep. Doubly so for his own pathetic sleep schedule, but the exhaustion was ripe. 

"I was so hopped up on Windowlene that I thought I was having one of those lucid dream things," Namjoon munches, frowning at Seokjin's awful chopstick etiquette. "But you know, like a sex one."

"What kind of sex noises are we talking about here?" Hoseok asks him, pointing the sharp end of his own errant chopstick right in Namjoon's face like he was the one filming porn at ass o’ clock. "What makes you think he wasn't just getting some?"

"Yeah, you know there are young people out there that actually have sex from time to time, Namjoon," Seokjin adds with a helpful snicker. 

"I'm aware. I heard enough of that sort of thing when I was forced to listen to your nightly sex show from the sofa, thanks."

Seokjin might have the good graces to look embarrassed, his ears glowing red as he makes eye contact with his plate, but Hoseok looks proud as punch.

"We are newly engaged," he points out, stealing the last dumpling from Namjoon’s plate. "It's a normal way to express our love. We're young, hot omegas in the prime of our youth, and sex is important for a healthy relationship."

"Yeah, I'm not ten, Mom and Dad, save it," Namjoon mutters.

"Grumpy guts," Hoseok pouts. Seokjin scowls at Namjoon. 

"Sorry," he says with a big sigh. "I'm just tired. It's every fucking night since we got here. I did think he was just getting some on night one, but I haven't heard a peep from anyone else in there. Like, the walls are thin, I haven’t heard a single conversation or other voice. Even the footsteps sound the same."

Namjoon migrates over to the kitchen to make some coffee when everyone's finished their soup, stacking up the dishes in the sink for later. Or maybe tomorrow. He's a cool, young alpha with his own place now, he can do what he wants. Gone are the days of Hoseok stink-eyeing him until he washes the single teaspoon he used to make his coffee only five minutes ago.

"He could just be masturbating a lot," Hoseok says, thoughtfully. "Before Seokjin and I met that summer, I was going through a real dry spell. I'd say at the worst of it I was masturbating say, three, four times a day maybe? I had to invest in some slick repelling undersheets."

"Babe," Seokjin says, taking Hoseok's hand in his own, softly thumbing the honeyed skin of his future mate's hand. "You don't need to say everything that pops into your sweet head, you know."

Hoseok just shrugs. 

Hoseok’s lack of shame is actually one of his most attractive qualities. Where Namjoon and Seokjin are similar in that mortification is just their natural state of being, he seems to float through life with endless confidence, not sweating the small things when they don't deserve his salt. It would be annoying if he wasn't also such a nice person. 

"If he is jacking off, then he sure has a colourful vocabulary while doing so." Namjoon pours each of them an espresso from his dinged up moka pot. "Daddy this, Daddy that, put it in me Daddy, fill me up Daddy, yada yada." 

He downs his espresso and bangs the glass cup on the table. He really needs to sleep. 

"It could be worse you know," Hoseok says, cooing when Eggs startles from his slumber. He scoops the ginger fluff up into his lap. "When Taehyungie and I lived together in senior year, he used to have all of these sex dreams. I think he wanted someone to treat him like a dog, judging by the barking. I don't want to kink shame or anything, but…"

"Well that's something I could have lived with not knowing about my own brother," Seokjin mutters, cupping the heat of his red ears in his hands like blocking his hearing could somehow eradicate the anecdote.

Hoseok takes Seokjin's hand in his own across the table and kisses his palm. Maybe it's the lack of sleep—the fact that his eyebags are dragging on the floor and a nerve in his eye has been jumping for three days now—but in the depths of his exhaustion, their adorableness makes Namjoon retch.

Later, when he's doing his weekly wash in the communal laundry room, a sleepy Eggs tucked into his favourite nook inside his jacket, Namjoon bumps into Jungkook. 

"Oh hello there," he says when he sets his basket of soft looking cottons on the machine beside Namjoon's. "I guess this means you got the apartment?"

He's even cuter than Namjoon remembers. Maybe even twice as cute, or three times so, in a big soft purple jumper and some even baggier pants. It's the same laundry smell as before, and Namjoon guesses that despite their location in the laundry room, it might actually be Jungkook's natural scent. 

"Yeah, I moved in last week," Namjoon bites his lip. "Uh, I haven't seen you around the allotment much."

"I have like a hundred jobs," Jungkook pouts, seriously. He starts filling up his washing machine, measuring out exactly a capful of baby pink detergent before kicking the door closed with his socked feet. "And I'm in college too, final year, so my project is taking me out. I swear, I don't even have time to sleep anymore."

His eyes are big and round when he speaks. Namjoon leans an elbow on his own machine to watch Jungkook work. 

He chuckles gently as he meticulously folds each item of clothing, from cuddly black sweaters to tiny, kawaii-charactered handkerchiefs and fuzzy socks, an eclectic mix of either end of the maximalist and minimalist scale. Namjoon thinks that Jungkook is a strange and alluring contradiction, a pretty omega with wide shoulders and a beautiful, soft pout.

Though Namjoon can't say he understands why someone would fold their dirty laundry, Jungkook looks like the kind of person that has a reason behind everything he does. Namjoon feels a smart of regret at the way he'd balled his own laundry up in the oversized drum, darks and colours swimming together in the soapy water like the shameful evidence of his own ineptitude as an adult. His laundry has probably only survived thus far because he’s boring enough to only buy clothes in like four different colours—half of which were already some variant of greige. 

"You're a college student?" Namjoon asks, angling his body so that Jungkook can't see the chaos in his own washing machine. 

"Mmm, I'm nearly done. It's just beauty school, cosmetology. I'm not even sure I wanted to do that kind of thing anymore," Jungkook sighs like it's been on his mind. “It’s hardly Plato, but I’m feeling kind of done with studying.”

And Namjoon remembers it well, the stress of his final year, hours and hours of editing his last documentary project in the dark. Not a whole lot different to his current audio goblin lifestyle at all, come to think of it. 

"I think that happens to most of us at some point," Namjoon says. 

He has to restrain himself from reaching out to tuck a stray curl behind Jungkook's ears. The omega wears a tiny dangly charm earring in his ear, a baby heart with an arrow shooting through it. Namjoon notices that his earlobes are attached, that he has a perfect freckle underneath his lip and a smaller one on his nose. Up close, there are so many details to his face that make him prettier.

"Tell that to my Mom," Jungkook laughs, moving his wicker basket on the floor so he can climb up and sit on the top of the machine. It makes his hair jiggle as the cycle kicks in, his lower lip wobbling like a slice of freshly cut peach. "Oh my God, what's that in your shirt?"

Namjoon startles, then follows Jungkook's gaze downwards. He'd almost forgotten about Eggs. He grins and slowly unzips the first third of his bomber, a busted old brown leather jacket that looks shabby beside Jungkook's bright sweats.

"He's sleeping," Namjoon whispers. Jungkook leans forward and splays his palms right on either side of his zipper like starfish. He peers in and yelps. 

"This is Eggs."

"Oh my God, you just carry a guinea pig around like that?” Jungkook says, his face cracking into a delighted smile. “Oh, Eggs, he’s so precious.”

“Says the guy who walks like ten cats around the building on a leash,” Namjoon counters with a smirk of his own. 

Jungkook grins and leans back against the wall, tucking his legs up in front of him and hugging his knees. Namjoon is pretty sure that Jungkook is barely an inch shorter than him, tall and strong for an omega, but he looks so small and cosy in his big clothes, the fabrics impossibly rich and cotton soft. 

“Maybe you can walk Eggs sometime,” Namjoon says casually, leaning on the corner of his own machine and giving what he hopes is his coolest, most casual expression. 

“Wow, I’d love that,” Jungkook yelps, then bites his lip. “Could I hold him?” 

Namjoon nods, reaching a hand inside his half open jacket to scoop Eggs out. He leans forward against Jungkook’s machine to gently lay the snoring guinea pig in his arms. 

“Oh, he’s so soft,” Jungkook coos, in a sing-song voice that Namjoon wants to fall asleep to every night for the rest of his life. Everything about Jungkook is so gentle, like all of his hard edges have been sanded down until he’s paper smooth. “Aren’t you chicken? Yes you are.”

Namjoon realizes how little he really knows about guinea pigs, or about Eggs' temperment. He looks like a chunky kitten in Jungkook’s hands, laid out on his back with his eyes closed and his four feet wiggling in the air. He’s even purring like a cat as Jungkook’s thumb caresses his small head between the ears. It's like a pokemon acquiring a new skill, a wobbly purr that Namjoon hopes he'll earn again.

“He likes to be stroked when he’s eating,” Namjoon says, as Jungkook drops to his knees and plops Egg’s in the crook of his lap. “He’d nip me if I pet him like that. You’ve got the magic touch.”

"I don't know why, but animals have always liked me more than people," Jungkook laughs, tucking his dark hair behind his ears. Namjoon can't imagine a single human not being endeared by Jungkook. He's adorable, but almost as though he's cute despite himself, just naturally round and loveable. 

"Well, then you're in the right career."

Namjoon thinks about asking Jungkook up to his apartment for coffee, maybe inviting him out for a walk around the allotment with Eggs. But it's nearly midnight, and he has a mountain of work ahead of him. More than that, Jungkook looks tired.

Namjoon slept most of the day away because of his neighbour's antics, and he now has hours and hours of editing to do. He probably won't hit the hay until morning. Which isn't ideal for a guy like Namjoon, who if he could, would probably turn entirely nocturnal. He's worked so hard in his adult life to sleep before 2am, get out of bed at a reasonable enough time to meet a friend or client for lunch. And now that he’s free of all of that, his sleep schedule has gone insane.

And anyway, he doesn't want to come on strong with Jungkook. He doesn't even know if Jungkook likes alphas like that, given that half of the omegas he knows are with others of their subgender. 

"I better get back up," Jungkook yawns when his machine dings. Namjoon's own washing has been sitting in the drum, his economy cycle long since finished. "I have class first thing, and I gotta call my mom before I sleep."

Namjoon nods and starts unloading his own laundry.

"Let me just tuck this little guy back in?" Jungkook smiles, wriggling in between Namjoon and the washing machine, propping Eggs up on his hip so he can free a hand to unzip Namjoon's jacket. The burn in Namjoon's stomach at his proximity is both horny and shameful. 

Jungkook plops the guinea pig back inside, and pats the warm, protruding mound on Namjoon's stomach. 

"You know, if you're around one afternoon—" Jungkook starts thoughtfully, his cheeks flushed a pretty peach. Namjoon swallows.

"Yes?"

"Well, I'd be happy to take Eggs for a walk. Maybe not with the girls, though, not sure how they'd react to a guinea pig. But I walk my Doberman later in the evenings, and he's gentle as a baby. They'd be so cute together."

We'd be so cute together, Namjoon thinks, but doesn't say. 

Hours later, Namjoon is buried in the sounds of the frozen Antarctic Tundra. He's spent the last few weeks working on a documentary about penguin courtship, the pebble gifting Adelie males, their tender bowing displays, and it all feels like a thinly veiled attack on his own paltry love life. He hasn’t had a whiff of romance in over two years.

He leans back in his office chair, specially chosen by Hoseok to be ergonomic, but somehow the least comfortable thing Namjoon has ever laid cheek to. He closes his eyes, letting the sounds of the ocean lapping in his headphones take him somewhere else, somewhere that isn't his too-expensive Seoul apartment after midnight, far from the smell of cold pizza he burned while trying to reheat in his toaster.

Namjoon thinks about Jungkook, a delicate lady penguin glistening from the sea, his feathers an onyx black that cuts shockingly against the pure white snow they're plodding through. Namjoon is looking for the perfect stone, while Jungkook grooms his feathers, his beak sharp and discerning, his plumage fluffy. 

He's preening, watching Namjoon as he grooms himself. 

Namjoon tries to focus, but he can't look away from Jungkook's shiny eyes, the way the blistering sun makes the white feathers on his belly look like frozen icicles—each unique in its perfection.

"Shiny stone?" Jungkook says with his eyes, a little cock of his head, an animalistic wobble of his penguin butt. Today, Namjoon speaks and understands penguin, because he is a penguin too.

Namjoon nods, proffering the finest stone their corner of the beach has to offer. He stole it from his neighbour's nest when they'd gone to fish. It might not be the most majestic method, but he's an Adelie penguin, afterall, and the fool should have known better than to leave such a treasure unguarded. His neighbour, who Namjoon must admit sounds a little like Kim Seokjin when he brays, doesn't even have a mate to impress. 

It's nearly as black as Jungkook's coat, as smooth as the fluff on his lower belly, as round as Jungkook's everything. It will make the perfect token for their nest, and will one day rest alongside their eggs—keeping them safe with love, safe from the melting snow and predatory barren creep of the unforgiving landscape.

"Shiny stone," Namjoon confirms, waddling closer to Jungkook with his own head reaching up to the sky. 

He stretches out his neck, and spreads his flippers as wide as they can reach. Jungkook raises up to mimic his stance, and they bray in harmony, their chirps and trumpets echoing through the icy hills, the jagged rockery. They call the attention of some of their colony, dipping their flippers in the choppy ocean, ice fishing for their winter store. Kim Seokjin is likely honking among them causing a scene, as of yet unaware of Namjoon's deception.

It's an acceptance of his courting, a bond. It makes Namjoon feel warm in his belly, the hot lick of anticipation running through his small, dense body. He thinks about the eggs Jungkook will lay for him, the hundreds of stones just like this one that will make up their nest. 

Namjoon wakes to the sound of banging on the wall, his neck in a crick from his awful sleeping posture on the supposedly back-happy chair. Damn Jung Hoseok, he thinks, grumpy to be woken. 

"Oh my god," the high pitched voice whines through the wall. "It's too big, it won't fit. It won't fit."

I bet it will, Namjoon grimaces. 

They all say that it won't but when does it ever not fit? Honestly, despite having what he likes to think of as an impressively large dick and a mighty knot to boot, Namjoon has never understood why he's supposed to get turned on by the idea of ripping his sexual partner's asshole in two with it. Far be it for a man to want his penis to be an instrument of pleasure, and not one of torture. 

"You're going to split me in two. I can feel you in my guts." 

And that's another thing Namjoon has never understood the appeal of. Maybe he's just prudish with his dirty talk, though he does enjoy when his partners are vocal. But the idea of his dick massaging someone's colon as they make love isn't exactly the turn on porn makes it out to be.

Speaking of— despite the banging on the wall, he's come to the conclusion that his horny little neighbour is not actually getting dicked down every night of the week. Either his partners are ghostly silent as a rule, or Hoseok's theory that the guy is a chronic masturbator rings true. But Namjoon just can't get over the performance of it all, the theater of it. Maybe it turns him on. It definitely seems to. Hoseok says that omegas, and Namjoon does suspect that his neighbour is an omega, are better with their imagination than alphas are.

Maybe it would turn Namjoon on too, if he wasn't so sleep deprived, and nearing a deadline he's nowhere ready to meet. 

Either way, Namjoon is pissed and only a tiny bit horny. He's been in the apartment for two weeks now, and this shit is happening every night. He'd finally nodded off at a normal hour for once, chair be damned, and getting back to sleep once he's been woken is impossible. Worse yet, the glow of happiness he’d had in his dream feels as though it was tugged out from under him, like a damp beach towel on the sand. 

Namjoon picks up his giant, two litre water bottle and tosses it across the room, right against the wall he shares with his nymph neighbour. He misjudges things terribly, because despite Namjoon's belief that their shared wall is actually a sheet of crepe paper, nearly thin enough to see what the haunted omega gets up to, the bottle bounces right off with barely a thud. 

Pure concrete, dense enough to shatter his stupidly expensive green matte bottle like an atom bomb. The shards fly everywhere, and the water spits back at Namjoon like a furious wave, sloshing all over his mixing desk. 

"Holy fucking shit," Namjoon screeches, surveying the carnage. "I'm so fucked."

"The problem—," Park Jimin—brother in law to Seokjin, mate to Kim Taehyung, and the smartest beta Namjoon knows—says as he sips boba the colour of parmaviolets, "—is that you need a good fuck. You've been single for what, ten years?"

"Two years," Namjoon grimaces, swishing his own tea, disgustingly milky, way too sweet to be enjoyable for anyone that isn't five years old or Park Jimin. He thinks that's why Jimin always orders it for him, so he can have Namjoon’s leftovers. "And I don't see how me fucking someone is going to make my neighbour shut the hell up."

"Oh?" Jimin says with a raised eyebrow, looking Namjoon up and down with his calculating eyes. "So you'd be doing the fucking? I don't know why, I always presumed—"

Jimin gestures vaguely towards Namjoon and shrugs his shoulders. 

"No you didn't, because it's not normal to think about your friends' sexual proclivities in that way. You haven't thought about it once in your life, am I right Park Jimin?"

"I've thought about fucking all of my friends, actually. It's normal and healthy, Taehyung says." Jimin shrugs again and goes back to his boba. 

"Kim Taehyung isn't exactly the yard stick for normal," Namjoon sighs, running his fingers through his dark hair.

He loves Jimin and Taehyung. He really does. He just doesn't always have the energy for their distinct lack of boundaries. Their ways. 

"Where is Taehyungie, anyway?" Namjoon asks as Jimin giggles at his phone. 

"Taehyung has a big order for a wedding. They changed their mind last minute right after he'd ordered in these fucking hideous Morning Glories," Jimin scoffs, leaning back in his chair to fold his arms, indignant at his mate's wasted time. "Which apparently means like, fleeting love or some shit, according to Tete." 

The gang had formed in college, Namjoon and Yoongi already friends from childhood, Seokjin and Hoseok, too—later, Seokjin’s younger brother needed a roommate, and Hoseok needed to get out of the dorms. Through Hoseok, Jimin joined the gang too. Namjoon had TAed for a film production class that Taehyung took on a whim before dropping out a year later to pursue horticulture and flower design. They were an incestuous friend group in that way, all somehow tenuously connected before they'd actually gathered as a group, a gang of similar-minded dudes pointing their fingers at each other like that spiderman meme.

Jimin, the other half of Taehyung even then when it was supposedly platonic, had been enamored with Yoongi at the time, as everyone is at some point in their life. Crushing on Min Yoongi was like a rite of passage in their world back then. Even Hoseok and Seokjin, who seemed to have come out of the womb entangled with each other and disinterested in alphas as a rule, had gone through a brief period of trying to court Yoongi as their third.

One day, Namjoon had looked around and found that all of the dark and dusty corners of his life had been permeated by them. 

But it was rare these days to see Jimin and Taehyung apart. 

As the group had dipped their toes into the stiller waters of their late 20s, they didn't have as much time to see each other as casually as they had in college. There weren't any parties to attend every Thursday to Sunday night, daily hangs and video games had become full time jobs, partners. Hell, Seokjin and Hoseok were even talking about pups these days, and Namjoon is certain that Taehyung wouldn't wait long to get pupped himself. 

Yoongi had opened his clinic and thrown himself into working every hour of the week often to the detriment of his personal life, and Jimin and Taehyung had finally dropped the pretense that their soulmate bond was in any way platonic. 

And Namjoon. Well, back then… Namjoon was Namjoon. A little hopeless in love, but a consummate romantic. As his friends had settled into life, found their other halves, Namjoon had had his heart broken more times than he cares to count. After a while, he stopped trying.

Jimin is right, it's been so long since he's last had a partner or even been out on a date that the weeks and months have started to blur together. His last breakup hadn’t left him broken or anything, it was a pretty amicable split from the beta girl he'd been dating for nearly a year by the time they called it. It just wasn't going anywhere. 

"There is this guy," he says slowly, regretting the words as soon as they leave his mouth. He can see the soft, slack of a half-bored Jimin slowly prickle alive—his loose jaw firming into a deviled line, his eyes narrowed like a natural predator circling a lame antelope. 

"Oh a guy," Jimin demurs, prodding his little rice cake with a sausage pinkie. Namjoon rolls his eyes at the innocent act.

"I don't even want to tell you because I know what you and Tae are like. You're like filthy bloodhounds, you'll find him and… make him one of you."

Namjoon gestures at Jimin with his own wobbly finger. Jimin has the gall to look scandalized.

"What does that mean, like us? When have we ever done that?" 

"Literally every person I ever had a crush on—"

"We like to help, is that a crime?" Jimin interrupts, his cheeks flushed pink. He's pouting, but Namjoon has long since grown immune to Park Jimin's innocent wiles, unlike the others in the gang. The things Namjoon has seen… he shudders to think. Park Jimin and innocent shouldn't go in the same sentence. Which is precisely why they should never, ever meet Jungkook. At least not until Namjoon himself has made a little more progress.

"You don't help, you take over. You make them your best friend before I've even had a chance to… do my thing."

Namjoon shifts his shoulders, pushing his now sad and melted boba away from himself with a distasteful fingertip. Jimin takes it without a word, huffing his chin into the air and turning to watch pedestrians as they pass the cafe. 

"Don't be like that," Namjoon whines, breaking his orange mochi in half and adding it to the peace offering. Jimin takes that too, popping it into his mouth before Namjoon has a chance to even take a breath. 

"You could do a lot worse than dating someone like Tae or me," he says, his mouth springy like taffy. 

"Of course I could. It's not that at all." 

The thing is, it's not just in life that Namjoon sometimes feels like he's fallen behind his friends. He's the same age as Hoseok, even if his friend demands that he call him Hyung. Namjoon acts like he doesn't like it but sometimes it gets tiring being sensible and grown up. Sometimes all he wants is someone to baby him. 

And since he's been circling the drain lately, fully fleshing out the details of his longest flop era to date, the desire to be looked after, to feel smaller and younger sometimes… Well, it happens more than he'd like to admit.

"Well, what's the problem then? I thought you'd want this guy you're into to be cool with your friends like that, no? There's nothing worse than dating someone who doesn't vibe with your core group."

Jimin is looking at Namjoon now in that way he does, his eyes oddly discerning. Like he has cracked the code to Kim Namjoon and can see all of the self deprecation he hides under his layers of I'm fine actually bravado. Or… whatever the opposite of bravado is, because the last thing Namjoon wants to do is call attention to the fact that he feels like he's been swimming in a fish tank when everyone else is cruising the open sea. 

"I just think sometimes, that these guys think I'm going to be a lot more interesting than I turn out to be when you and Tae dazzle them first," Namjoon admits. His half of the mochi tastes like a rock on the way down. 

"Hyung," Jimin starts, his voice soft and sad. He looks bereft, like he wants to reach inside Namjoon and pour him full of squishy chocolate hearts, plushie keyrings, teletubby slogans, shake him up like a carrot in a blender and scream Why can't you love yourself?

"You really, really need to fuck someone. This sad boy shit is… you need the love of a good man," Jimin says instead. 

Well, so much for that. Namjoon can't help but laugh. Park Jimin is Park Jimin, always and truly, and there's a solid comfort in that.

"But listen, tell me about the guy. Omega?"

Namjoon nods, heaving a reluctant sigh. Jimin's snake eyes go wide and puppy-like.

"I promise that Tae and I won't meet him until you want us to, okay?"

Namjoon thinks. He thinks, he thinks. 

"Well, he's perfect for one," he says huffily, the corner of his lip threatening to twitch into a smile as he zips his jacket all the way up to his chin. He nods at the door, and Jimin follows him out. They start the short amble to the library Jimin works at, half a mile or so from the coffee shop they meet in as often as Namjoon can be convinced to leave his apartment. 

"Perfect is a big word," Jimin says, linking his arm in Namjoon's. Namjoon takes a whiff of his friend's lovely chamomile scent. It's soothing in the way betas often are.

"No, he really is. That's half the trouble," Namjoon sighs, as the October wind chops at his sensitive skin. He can feel his nose flushing warm to heat him up. "He's genuinely perfect. Like a penguin…"

He trails off in embarrassment when Jimin cackles. 

"Like a penguin, right," he laughs, yanking Namjoon's along to keep him moving.

"He's very… pure. He walks cats, and he wears like… he dresses like a kids TV presenter, but also a bit like a goth, you know the sort." 

Jimin pulls him to a stop in front of a boutique window after glancing at his watch. He's like a magpie, he can never resist a shiny window display. They have at least fifteen minutes before they need to be back at the library, and only a block of two left to walk, so Namjoon leaves him be.

"So this is your usual innocent lamb in the woods type, then," Jimin says as he makes fluttering cow eyes at a blazer that sure looks like any old blazer to Namjoon. It definitely doesn't look like something Park Jimin should spend a month of rent on. 

"I do not go for the innocent… fucking lambs? Lambs Jimin, really?" he coughs out, tucking his chin into his blazer like he can hide from any passers by that might overhear and mistake him for… well, some kind of… predator. Sure, he's an alpha, but he's not a monster.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Jimin says, eyeing the price tag of the blazer through the window, before yanking Namjoon back on their journey. "You like what you like. Taehyungie is into feet, you know. I had to really work to get with it, because initially I had this knee jerk reaction whenever he touched mine. Kicked him in the face a few times by mistake, but honestly, he loved it. Something about the thrill of worshiping a resistant foot."

Namjoon covers his eyes with his hands, letting out a big, exasperated sigh. Jimin is not deterred. 

"I'm pretty sure Yoongi-hyung has a hiccup fetish. I asked him once if it was like, you know, a jiggling boob thing since you know he likes people who are well endowed—"

"Enough, enough," Namjoon gasps, slapping his hands over his cold ears. "What is it with my fucking friends and TMI about Min Yoongi?"

Jimin just shrugs, and they make the rest of the walk in companionable silence.

Later in the week, at midday, when Namjoon has finally woken up for the day, he decides to take the plunge. 

He's far from a wilting flower who can't advocate for himself, but coming face to face with his excitable neighbour and addressing the really-fucking-horny-elephant-in-the-room isn't something he's exactly relishing. He already regrets not doing as his Eomma would do, and knocking in on day one with a gift, coffee, or honey, or anything that would mean that he wasn't starting from scratch and being that neighbour.

He’d just leave it. He really would, if he hadn’t been up half the night again. Namjoon is exhausted.

In the end, he manages to whip some oat cookies together from the paltry ingredients he has in his kitchen—porridge oats and raisins, the last of his butter. He indiscriminately empties in a bunch of the bits and bobs that Seokjin had stocked him up on when he moved in, food items a functioning adult like he and Hoseok probably used often in their day to day life, but which Namjoon had absolutely no use for. Who needs desiccated coconut? Why does he now own apple cider vinegar? 

The cookies are passable, maybe, at least by Namjoon's very low standards. He stuffs one into his own mouth and swallows it down with black coffee before he leaves, impressed that they only sort of taste like sawdust. 

Namjoon knocks three times, and even though he can hear some shuffling behind the door, no one answers. 

"Open up," he shouts, eventually, pissed off that the nymph is clearly home but can't be bothered to act like a decent human. "I can hear you, you know."

The door remains closed, and Namjoon grapples with whether he should go home, eat the cookies, maybe scribble a strongly worded letter for his neighbour instead. But he really, really doesn't want to be that guy.

Namjoon likes his apartment, he might even love it. He doesn't want to move out. He doesn't want to sleep on Seokjin and Hoseok's couch again, listening to them in the throes of newly-engaged passion every night. That is possibly worse than the neighbour and his daddy kink, because at least, as of yet, Namjoon doesn't have a face to match the noises. When he hears Seokjin grunting, Hoseok whining the way he does, the alarming slippery noises they make together, it's a lot harder to mentally distance himself from what might be going on behind the shared wall.

Namjoon leaves the cookies, but decides it's not time for a note yet. 

Despite being almost November, the people of Namjoon's new building seem to be the kind of joiners-in who are happy to gather in the cold and freeze their nuts off in the name of cinema. And despite a distant memory in the back of his head of Jungkook telling him something about a film club, Namjoon actually discovers them quite by accident. 

And even stranger is his getting to the top of the roof to stress smoke his first cigarette in five weeks on a Friday evening, only to bump into Yoongi and Taehyung in the depths of said cinematic bonding.

"Namjoonie-hyung, you came," Taehyung grins like his being here isn't totally abnormal. He extricates himself from a gaggle of cooing aunties and drags Yoongi over to Namjoon. "I didn't think this was your kind of thing."

"Well, whatever this is," Namjoon narrows his eyes and peers around the lively rooftop, shoving the cigarette into his ass pocket. "I came up to try and record some stuff on my zoom. Why are you here?"

There are people sitting on floor cushions, wrapped in coats and hats, thick cotton and fleece blankets over their shoulders that make them look like woolly sheep. A marquee of sorts is keeping everyone sheltered, and the makeshift screen is just a projector and two white sheets seemingly stitched together. It's haphazard and endearing, even if Namjoon is currently regretting all of the life decisions he's made to lead him to this moment—to aunties and little kids sipping hot chocolate, to the inevitability of socializing away his should-be-busy Friday night of work. 

Well, the penguins haven't been doing great. The deadline seems to get closer by the second, and Namjoon never seems to not be working, and yet the pile of work he needs to complete by the end of the month never seems to get any smaller. 

"It's Casper," Taehyung says, doing a little jazz-hand move that he somehow makes look cute. "You know, spooky season? Yoongi hyung brought me once when Jimin and I were fighting. I can't get enough of these wholesome Gilmore girls vibes."

Yoongi grumbles something about being dragged along. And honestly, Namjoon still doesn't understand why they're attending a movie night in his apartment block. 

"What are you doing here? I don't think I've even seen you outside the clinic before—," he checks his watch, "eight p.m. Fuck is it really that late?"

Namjoon groans and looks forlornly at the elevator door. Honestly, what does he even have to go back to? He's already ignoring his constantly dinging phone, the surmounting messages from their group chat. Even old-married Seokjin and Hoseok are going out. All Namjoon had planned for the night was working himself into an early grave and a half empty box of toaster waffles. 

"I never miss movie night," Yoongi says seriously, pushing his big glasses up his nose. Namjoon thinks about how strange it is to see him out of his scrubs for once. "Jungkook would murder me."

It hits Namjoon like a tonne of bricks—like someone's pissed on his leg then ripped up his baggy sweats to expose him to the elements, ice cold wind on burning hot piss. He shivers.

"You… and… Jungkook? You know Jungkook? Penguin Jungkook?"

Yoongi tilts his head and gives Namjoon a funny look. "Of course I know Jungkook. That's how you got the place. Jungkook. Googie, remember?" 

Googie. Oh, God that's so cute.

Namjoon looks down at his stained denim jacket, and the cargo pants he hasn't washed in three days and cringes. He might look like shit, but he can't miss an opportunity to see Jungkook. 

Yoongi and Taehyung lead him over towards a busted little fold up table where an older man is serving hot apple cider. They're rolling ads from the 90s before the movie starts, and people are sitting in little gaggles and cliques, gossiping about the garbage man, or whatever it is people have to talk about with their neighbours. Taehyung hands him a tin mug full of cider, and Namjoon feels a little less uncharitable about the whole thing when he feels the tips of his fingers start to warm, his aching white knuckles loosening.

"Wait," Taehyung sneers, as he kicks the edge of a giant bean bag sofa to the back of the small crowd. "Penguin Jungkook? You know Jungkookie too, hyung?" Taehyung has the balls to act innocent but Namjoon knows that Jimin tells his mate everything, even when it means betraying Namjoon's trust. 

"Since when is my Jungkook penguin Jungkook?" Yoongi chuckles in confusion. "He's more of a rabbit than a penguin, surely?"

Namjoon flushes in hot embarrassment but he doesn't miss the possessive my. Something uglier prickles in his stomach as he narrows his eyes at Yoongi.

"No, I mean. He's my neighbour. We've… are you guys dating? You never mentioned a boyfriend, hyung."

Yoongi folds his arms and shifts demurely onto the edge of the bean bag sofa. Namjoon's so much bigger than him that his half tilts off the ground. He works his face into something impassive. Totally casual.

"God no," Yoongi laughs. "He's a bit on the young side for me."

"He's a grown man," Namjoon grumbles, sipping the tart apple cider. It's good. He wishes he had a blanket of his own, but the warm drink feels like it's massaging his insides. 

"I mean sure, but you know," Yoongi shrugs. "He and his dog Bam were my first patients when we opened the clinic. Literally patient 001, Jeon Bam. He had a really serious case of the shits. God, I remember it like it was yesterday."

Yoongi trails off with a half-smile, almost wistful. Like he's recalling the days of Yore, and not that one time a giant dog shat on his clinic table. 

"Right," Namjoon says, peering around the rooftop. He tries to school the smile that's trying to overtake him into neutrality. Jungkook and Yoongi aren't dating, thank the heavens. "And is he coming tonight or? I presume you don't just show up to someone else's building just to talk to some aunties and watch some movie."

"I mean it's Caspar," Taehyung says seriously, his eyes like wide, shiny conkers. He pulls Yoongi onto his own beanbag, leaving Namjoon alone.

"Oh, he's around here somewhere," Yoongi chuckles. "He's usually commandeered by someone who wants him to go on a date with their sister's cousin's alpha son or whatever. He brings out real mother in law instincts in older women."

"Alpha sons, you say?" Namjoon mutters, narrowing his eyes and looking away from Yoongi to watch a bird peck at someone's hotdog. "So he dates alphas?"

Yoongi just looks back at him blankly. 

"Oh, there he is now," he says, pointing over towards the elevator where Jungkook has appeared carrying a tray filled with crafty little boxes of movie theater popcorn. Namjoon is almost certain he cut and decorated the boxes himself, with cute doodles adorning the sides of the paper, and a variety of washi tape swatches holding them together. 

He can't quite decide if it looks like it was done by a professional modern artist, or a toddler with a penchant for chaos, but one thing is for certain—Namjoon is hopelessly endeared by the omega. The smart in his chest, the sheer intensity of the cuteness aggression, kind of makes him want to fight. He balls his hands into a pair of tight fists and shoves them into his jeans.

"Are you alright, Joon? You're kind of flushed," Yoongi says, pressing his hand to Namjoon's temple like he's one of his cats. 

"Yeah hyungie," Taehyung giggles. "You're looking a little hot under the collar. Hope your rut isn't coming early." He wiggles his eyebrows at Namjoon. "I'll go get you something cold to cool off a little," he adds, before disappearing into the crowd. 

Namjoon just ignores his friends, because Jungkook is on his way over. He leaves the crafty popcorn with some kids, and then he's waving, big and broad, with his hand thrown wide over his head. Namjoon straightens his awful clothing, checks that his shirt is at least tucked into his pants.

He looks to his left and sees Yoongi narrowing his eyes at him, following his line of vision to Jungkook and back.

"I see," he says with a knowing look that Namjoon hates. Namjoon shuffles to stand.

"Hyung," Jungkook whines, pushing into Yoongi's side for a hug. He tucks himself into the crook of Yoongi's neck, even though he has to stoop, and wiggles until Yoongi throws an arm around his impossibly small waist actually, wow. 

Yoongi never hugs Namjoon. Namjoon narrows his eyes again.

"I had no idea that you know Namjoon-ssi, Yoongi," Jungkook says, pinching the non-existent fat on Yoongi's hip. "He's my laundry pal."

"You're supposed to call me hyung, Jungkook-ah," Yoongi smiles.

Namjoon's eyes are wide. "You didn't let me call you hyung for a whole year after we met."

Yoongi rolls his eyes, and Jungkook laughs. A light, airy, caramel thing that tickles the tiny hairs on Namjoon's arms. 

"We were seven, Namjoon," he says with a grimace. 

"No, I was five and you were seven," Namjoon says with a sniff. 

"Wow," Jungkook says, looking between the pair of them with his eyes wide like saucers. "So you guys are childhood friends?"

Namjoon opens his mouth to answer, but the safety lights that are flooding the rooftop suddenly go dark.

"Oh my God, it's starting," Taehyung says, appearing just over Namjoon's shoulder with drinks in his hand. He drops back into his beanbag beside Yoongi, and points to the big square cushion beside him with his other hand. “Kookie, sit. It's Casper time."

Namjoon swallows, and eyes the small bench cushion beside him with his stomach on fire. Jungkook is already curling up in it, and digging a bag of candy from the pocket of his shorts. 

"Hyung," he smiles, patting the cushion beside, just enough butt room for Namjoon to squeeze in beside him. "Sit, you'll miss the best part.”

Namjoon shuffles down on his knees, sitting tentatively on the cushion while trying to keep a normal amount of distance between their bodies. It doesn’t really work, because despite Namjoon’s efforts to balance all of his body weight on a single ass cheek, Jungkook cuddles up beside him like they aren’t just two guys in an apartment block that have only met twice in their lives.

He’s wearing a little pair of runner shorts that slide up his bare thigh as he sits. His legs aren’t quite as thick as Namjoon’s, but they’re honey brown, soft, and totally hairless. Namjoon feels the drool start to pool up behind his tongue.

Around the rooftop, people talk in hushed voices while the movie plays. Taehyung is babbling in a stoic Yoongi’s ear beside them, pointing out the directorial aesthetics of the film as though they’re watching The Godfather, and not a kid’s movie about a cartoon ghost. 

Namjoon has nearly managed to relax, pushing his horny thoughts deep down in the depths of his stomach where they belong, when Jungkook turns to whisper in his ear.

“You know human Caspar was like, my first crush?” he laughs, in that airy voice that makes Namjoon shiver. 

“Ah, a universal experience,” Namjoon grins, but his smile feels goofy and awkward. “My first crush was Lola Bunny, you know, from Space Jam?”

Jungkook laughs and claps his hands joyfully, loud enough that the group of aunties on their fold out chairs nearby look over at them. 

“Excellent choice, hyung. Horny,” he adds, wrapping his arms around his bare knees. “But excellent.”

Namjoon doesn’t take in a single detail of the movie, hyperfocused as he is on Jungkook’s comfort, his soft linen scent. When Jungkook starts to shiver half way through, Namjoon wishes once again that he’d chosen to wear anything other than his stained denim jacket. He tucks the omega in beside him in one of the many throws that are strategically placed around the rooftop in baskets, wishing instead that he was zipping Jungkook up in one of his cooler bomber coats, surrounding him in his own scent.

He ends up discarding his own coat anyway. It’s so hot on the rooftop, despite the pitch black, starless sky. Namjoon feels a cold sweat start to prickle on his bare arms, and he rolls up his t-shirt sleeves, dabbing the cool condensation of his beer can on the heat of his temples.

“Hyung, you look a little hot,” Jungkook says when the movie credits roll and people start to disperse. Yoongi is fast asleep on his beanbag, curled up like a kitten in front of a warm fire. 

“You really do,” Taehyung says, leaning over to lay a cold palm over Namjoon’s brow. “Hyung, you’re on fire, Jesus Christ.”

“I–,” Namjoon gasps, suddenly thirsty despite all of the beer he’s been drinking. 

“Your… shirt, hyung,” Jungkook says, suddenly coy, as he bites his bottom lip. “Um, you’re looking a little… sweaty.”

Namjoon looks down at his chest, the almost translucent white shirt that’s sticking to his boobs and making him look like he went all out at a wet t-shirt concert. 

“I can see your nipples,” Taehyung says, matter of fact, starting to move towards Namjoon with both of his palms up. 

“Yah, don’t even think about it,” Namjoon grunts, folding his arms over his chest. 

Taehyung and Jimin are both on the more tactile end of the scale in their friendship group, but their maknae has earned the nickname of tentacle monster for his propensity to grope when given the option.

 And normally, Namjoon doesn’t even mind being manhandled by their littlest omega. These days, Taehyung copping a feel or slapping a buttcheek is the closest he gets to intimacy. But Jungkook is here, and Namjoon doesn’t think that Taehyung tweaking his nipples in public is exactly the right way to woo another omega. 

“Maybe we should wake up Yoongi-hyung,” Jungkook pouts in worry. “He does have medical training. He’s so gentle with Bammie.”

Taehyung giggles, accepting Namjoon’s interception and tossing an arm over the alpha’s shoulder instead. “I mean, Joonie does have golden retriever energy, I’ve always said it.”

Namjoon guzzles an entire bottle of water when Jungkook hands it to him, the clear plastic almost slipping through his damp fingers when he tries to crush it. 

“Hyung,” Jungkook whispers while Taehyung tries to attempt the impossible feat of waking Yoongi—much like his feline patients, surly and unhappy to be removed from their warm sleeping spot. 

Jungkook leans a little closer and wraps his long fingers around Namjoon’s wrist. “I don’t want to be rude, but… is your rut due any time soon?”

Namjoon feels the heat under his skin prickle to a chilling cool as he remembers himself just a month ago, before his life went down the toilet, circling the second Thursday of the month on his personal calendar. The one that’s still packed up in storage in his new utility cupboard. 

“Oh,” he says dumbly, avoiding Jungkook’s eyes.

Namjoon is not the kind of guy to fumble his rut preparation. He only gets two a year, after all, and while he’s not exactly a natural Type A, it's hardly difficult to stay on top of things. Not like Hoseok and Seokjin who have heats every month. But it's been a funny couple of weeks, from leaving his corporate job to becoming unexpectedly homeless, the imminent penguin deadline that’s burning his stomach with stress.

“I… shit.”

“I’ll get him to his apartment,” Taehyung says, slapping Namjoon on the shoulder. “I’d say he has at least an hour before he turns into a rabid dog and starts humping the cushions.”

“Taehyung,” Namjoon gasps, but Jungkook only giggles. 

“I’ll take Jungkook, then,” Yoongi says, appearing over Taehyung’s shoulder with his hair standing on end, his voice sleepy and deep. 

A growl starts to build in Namjoon’s chest before he even realizes he's doing it, his upper lip thinning and lifting until he’s bearing his teeth at his best friend.

“Oh, ho,” Taehyung howls, slapping his thigh as he laughs. “He didn’t like that, hyung.” 

“Calm the fuck down, I’m just walking him home,” Yoongi chides, grabbing Jungkook by the wrist and pulling him away from Namjoon. 

And… Namjoon’s alpha doesn’t like that either. 

He stands up on his hind legs and howls at the barely visible moon, starving for more of the omega’s scent which smells sweeter to his animal nose, like fresh laundry bathed in a tub of cherry water. Thankfully, Namjoon the human still has enough control to keep his howls to himself, even if all he wants to do is rip the omega from the other alphas arms, cover him with his body, and maybe challenge Yoongi to some kind of duel. 

“I’m fine, no need to be so dramatic,” Namjoon says, squaring his shoulders back despite the quiver in his voice. He tosses his shedded jacket back over his shoulder, before stumbling over a heavy terracotta planter that definitely wasn’t there a second ago. 

It takes a couple of seconds for the crash to resonate, and for Namjoon to realize that he’s actually wrapped a long and trailing throw over his shoulders and not a stained denim jacket. One that smells like omega—sweet, beautiful omega, tender, rolling in the evening sun omega, soft and forbidden, like the downy fur on the belly of a mate, omega. 

So, Namjoon is not fine. 

“Come on, fella,” Taehyung says with a fond sigh, slipping an arm around Namjoon’s waist and righting him until that odd feeling that the ground beneath his feet has tilted abates. 

Taehyung smells like omega too, but it's different from Jungkook—more familiar and comfortable, warm like a puppy sibling or nestmate that makes Namjoon’s fire ease off for a moment. He snuffles his face into Taehyung’s neck, scenting his friend until his own nose starts to smell like warm jasmine instead of burning hot sea salt. 

“I’m sorry about that, Jungkook,” Yoongi says behind him. “It’s a bit awkward, but he’s had a hard month.”

Namjoon prickles, and tries to wriggle out of Taehyung’s tight grip, but Jungkook only chuckles.

“He’s very sweet,” he says, and Namjoon’s alpha goes lax and pliant, content to have pleased the omega. 

“That’s one way to put it,” Taehyung mutters beside him, dragging Namjoon away from the rooftop and into the rickety lift that will take them to the seventh floor. 

Namjoon’s rut is frenzied and intense. Hours after he drops Jungkook home, Yoongi appears at his door with provisions—the only other alpha in their group, and thus the only one unaffected by the intensity of another alpha in pre-rut. Provisions being a whole week's worth of pre-cooked meals from Seokjin, electrolyte drinks, and a questionable box of toys from Jimin and Tae that Namjoon can’t even look at directly without blushing.

“I’m thirty years old, I know what I’m doing,” he grumbles from the sofa as Yoongi unpacks the items on the coffee table one by one. “It’s not like I’m a fifteen year old who’s going to try knotting into a sock.”

“Well, it sounds like your first rut was interesting,” Yoongi says with a look of disgust on his face. 

“I have too much work for this,” Namjoon groans, cuddling his face into the cushions on his sofa, and whimpering until Yoongi tucks him in. “The penguins need me.”

“All you fucking talk about these days are bloody penguins,” Yoongi sighs, folding his arms as he looks around the apartment. “Now listen to me. I’m child locking the door on the way out, so call me if you need anything. Bed is made, and there’s fresh sheets on the locker. Drink lots, and for god sake, don’t leave the apartment. I’m taking Eggs with me, you’ll be too fucked to take proper care of him.”

“Child lock” Namjoon guffaws. “What do you think I am, some kind of animal?”

“Well, you’ll be dumb enough for it soon enough,” Yoongi grimaces, before he leans down and gently pats Namjoon’s head, stilted and awkward. “There, there.”

Namjoon has seen him kiss dogs on the mouth, cuddle with reptiles that look like they could take out a man. But when it comes to humans he loves, showing how much he adores his friends through physical affection, Min Yoongi is like an awkward middle aged dad. 

“Go,” Namjoon moans, laying a hand on his forehead like a sickly Victorian child. “Yes, go, I would not wish you back again.”

Yoongi scowls from the doorway. “Don’t you talk Jane Austen to me, you ungrateful pup.”

For the first few hours, Namjoon sleeps blissfully. He’s still mostly in control of himself, and in the stage of pre-rut where he just wants to feel cosy and comforted, not yet at the heel of the vicious predator inside of him. 

He wakes in the middle of the night, still on the sofa, with his apartment in total darkness. The only light is the red, blinking timer on the microwave, stuck on 30 seconds because he couldn’t wait for his ready meal tteokbokki to fully cook before devouring it earlier in the day.

Namjoon drags the warm blanket he stole from the rooftop into his mouth, the fresh smell of laundry still heady in its threads, and pads into the kitchen for some midnight dinner. He’ll carb load, maybe watch a period drama, or play some games on his Switch. Pretty soon, the week will spiral into chaos that Namjoon will hardly remember, so it's smart to eat and rest while he can.

He heats up two portions of jajangmyeon, enough noodles to feed a playgroup, and slops the food into a large salad bowl before taking it to his room. When he’s finished eating and has changed into some clean boxers and a tank top, Namjoon slithers under his duvet and props his laptop up on his belly, a pleased rumble building in his chest at the comfort of the warm bed, the feeling of his bare toes on the clean bedding. 

When Namjoon comes to next, he’s boiling from the inside out—his body now totally bare, hot to the touch despite the climate of the frozen tundra. His skin looks so pale next to the black slippery blubber of his colony, Jungkook’s little flipper so tiny and delicate in Namjoon’s human hand. 

The little penguin looks up at him with shiny, marble eyes and turns his orange beak to the sky to bray.

“Arp-aah, arp-aah,” Jungkook honks, his little feet slapping the snow in excitement. 

Namjoon realizes that he doesn’t speak penguin in this form, but he tries his best to return the enthusiastic bray with his unpracticed mouth. He has a good ear for sound of course, it’s literally his profession. But when Namjoon attempts to wrap his lips around the harsh, donkey-like sounds that his penguin mate is making, it comes out cracked and broken, a crumbling match that withers into nothing.

Jungkook looks at him blankly, before turning his attention to oiling his feathers. He has the prettiest feathers in the colony, due in no small part to his meticulous grooming. Namjoon sits down beside him, and his little mate attempts to groom him too, though he’s only further confused by Namjoon’s paltry human skin, the greasy sheen that’s left in place of luminescent onyx plumage.

And then, from over the icecaps and rolling white mountains, a breathy moan shakes the frozen tundra like an earthquake, a disembodied voice so loud it starts to permeate the landscape.

Jungkook yelps with fright, and Namjoon throws his larger human body over his tiny penguin form as shelter from the avalanche of snow that the horny voice from the heavens has unearthed.

“Yes,” it screams as havoc reeks on the tiny colony and its community of beautiful nests. “Oh God, yes, just like that, right there.”

Namjoon’s eyes snap open, and he’s shamefully alone, melting into his mattress in the dark. He’s not sure how long he’s been sleeping, but the clock on his bedside locker reads a bleary three a.m. He feels ten times worse than when he drifted off to sleep—migrane building behind his eyes, a hard-on that could drill a hole through the wall tenting his shorts, mouth dry as a desert. 

For a moment, he tosses and turns in silence, shamefully aroused at the moaning through the walls, and equally as furious that he was woken from his dream. His alpha is snarling in his chest, goading him to slip a hand into his shorts, but it feels wrong to take advantage of his neighbour that way—even if he’s literally begging Namjoon through the wall, a second devil on his shoulders.

Where’s the angel when he needs it? What ever happened to good cop, bad cop? 

Namjoon whines, swiping a sheen of sweat off his forehead, and rolling over on his stomach until his erection presses into the firm mattress and makes his guts tighten.

“Oppa,” his neighbour pants, his voice light and affected, sliding up in pleasure that Namjoon feels reverberate in his dick. He won’t touch himself, he’s not a monster. If his hips start to pick up the pace, his knees spreading wider on the bed until he’s mounting an invisible conquest, fucking an amorphous idea of a voice, then so be it. 

“Oppa, we can’t, we shouldn’t,” the voice next door pants as Namjoon reaches his orgasm shamefully quickly. 

Three invigorating thrusts into a mattress and he’s knotting in his pants to the sound of his neighbour and an Oppa kink.

Namjoon has never felt more pathetic. 

The first three days of his rut are a blur of hot sweat and barely tamed arousal. Namjoon is lost to most of it, floating somewhere between the sweet imaginings of Antarctica, and his grim reality as a single alpha, with no one to truly sate his animalistic appetite. 

He goes through five sets  of bedsheets, because while he might be away with the fairies, he’s not going to lie in a pool of his own spunk for longer than he has to. He spends the moments of clarity in the madness piling up his laundry hamper and washing down rice balls with electrolyte drinks, like some kind of teenager.

In his lower, more base moments, he finds himself yelling back at the wall, calling out for an omega that never comes.

The second half of his rut is what Namjoon often calls the sad boy phase. His body is exhausted as though sick, and he craves affection more than sex. The heat runs out of his body, and is replaced with the kind of ice of a lingering flu, cold fingers and toes. He drowns his sorrows in a shower so hot it leaves red mottled heat on his back and thighs, and abandons the bedroom of sin for his living room.

And like some kind of act of pathetic fallacy, his neighbour’s one sided conversations through the wall turn soft and gentle. 

“Good alpha, you’ve done so well,” coos the soft voice. 

Namjoon starts to wonder how he’s even able to hear it, if there’s some kind of maddening portal between their apartments sending him these messages like a lifeline. It almost sounds like he’s speaking through a microphone. “Lay your head on my lap, alpha, and let me touch your hair. You made me feel so good.”

Namjoon wants someone to touch his hair. He contents himself with laying on his couch in a thick and fuzzy new set of loungewear, running his own fingers through the dark lengths of freshly washed hair. 

“Let me feed you alpha,” his neighbour tells him, and Namjoon pouts. It’s been a while since he’s eaten anything that he couldn’t fit in his mouth in a single bite. Even with Seokjin’s cooking, the provisions have been practical, not soul warming. 

He nods at the cooing voice, and shuffles to the kitchen to make a plate—cold chicken, spicy potatoes, some noodles, kimchi, cubed radish. It’s a mish-mash, but his stomach roars as he watches the food rotate in the microwave.

“Open up, sweetheart,” his neighbour soothes, and Namjoon’s mouth drops open for his first bite of tender chicken. He chews it with tears pooling in his eyes. 

On the final day of his rut, and after a lot of sleep, Namjoon’s friends visit him for game night. He could do without the actual games, Hoseok’s trilling laugh that he normally adores, and Seokjin’s competitive nature—but Namjoon is so touch starved that he not only welcomes the couple, but invites the rest of the gang over too.

“Did you know there’s a pile of shit outside your front door?” Seokjin asks him when he and Hoseok arrive. 

“A pile of shit?” Namjoon gasps, keening his neck over to peep over Seokjin’s shoulder—intruiged by their arrival, but ultimately too lazy to get up off the sofa. 

“Well, figuratively speaking,” Seokjin amends, pushing into the apartment with a basket on his hip. “Not actual shit.”

“You brought me a gift basket?” Namjoon says, oddly touched as he reaches out his hands for the woven basket balancing on Seokjin’s hip. He thinks he might cry at the gesture. “Pretty.”

“As if,” Seokjin sniffs. “I spent a whole day cooking for you, I’m not bringing you a gift basket. This is the pile of shit.”

He lays the basket on Namjoon’s lap, and makes for the kitchen to brew some tea. Hoseok settles down on the sofa, and pulls at the soft blanket covering whatever is inside the basket. 

“Who’s your secret admirer? I didn’t think you had any friends that aren’t us.”

Namjoon scowls, and pulls the basket closer to his chest, sniffing the corner of the blanket for a scent, but he can only catch a faint whiff of neutralizer spray. 

“I want to be mad at you for making me sound like a loser, but sadly you’re not wrong,” he sulks, lifting the blanket from the basket to reveal the bounty within. 

“Well, someone definitely loves you. You don’t make soup for someone unless you want in their pants,” Hoseok says, before he slugs Namjoon on the shoulder. “Wait, is someone courting our baby alpha?”

Namjoon picks up the tupperware of what looks like chicken noodle soup, and feels a strange flutter in his chest. It doesn’t make sense, because he doesn’t even know where Namjoon lives… but it could be Jungkook, right? 

Along with the soup, there’s a canister of some kind of loose leaf tea, some salty snacks, and a couple of well loved looking romance novels. The strangest addition though, is a bunch of carrots that look like they came from the farmers market, tied up in twine with their greens still on. They’re a little dirty, too, leaving some loose soil in the bottom of the basket. 

“For Eggs?” Hoseok asks, scratching his chin. “Where is my little guy, anyway?”

“Yoongi,” Namjoon mutters, but he’s too distracted to pay too much attention to Hoseok’s babbling.

Carrots for Eggs. Surely it’s from Jungkook. Who else, other than his friends, even knows that he has a guinea pig? He blushes so pink that Hoseok starts fanning him with one of the harlequin novels. 

Jungkook made him a basket. Jungkook knows where he lives. Jungkook knew he was in rut and was thinking about him and making him soup and tying up carrots with the most adorable twine bow because he’s the perfect human. 

“Ah, there’s a note,” Hoseok interrupts Namjoon’s thoughts, unfolding the scrap paper without even asking. Seokjin comes back into the living room with a big pot of tea and three mugs. 

“What’s this?” he asks, pushing a warm cup into Namjoon’s hand before curling up on the floor between Hoseok’s open legs. 

“Secret admirer,” Hoseok giggles, before clearing his throat to read. “Dear neighbour, you sounded like you could use a little TLC.”

“Oh shit,” Seokjin grins, grasping Namjoon’s knee. “The chronic masturbator?”

“Oh that’s so good,” Hoseok laughs, tossing the note on Namjoon’s lap as if he hasn’t already trampled all over his illusion of privacy. “Namjoon spends weeks complaining about this guy masturbating through the walls, then treats his neighbour to a whole ass rut’s worth of fucking himself silly.”

“Divine retribution. The hand giveth and it taketh away,” Seokjin gasps, his honking laugh grating on Namjoon’s last nerve.

“I did not fuck myself silly. I mostly slept,” he sniffs, folding up the note until it’s a tiny wad of paper, then stuffing it into his jeans.

He has to admit that it hurts just a little. The disappointment. Granted, he has softened towards his haunted neighbour in the last couple of days. He might even say he holds fond memories of his sweet little illusion of domesticity through the walls, the gentle voice leading him to eat, to take care of himself. Telling him that he was a good boy who did so well. 

But, for just a few seconds, he thought that Jungkook might be reaching out to him. Not courting, exactly, of course not courting. But extending an olive branch. Showing just a little touch of interest in return.

Namjoon can see now, with the burn of bitter post-rut healing tea in his guts, that the idea is actually preposterous. 

Life goes back to normal quickly. Namjoon’s extension deadline for the documentary looms, and for nearly two weeks, he barely leaves the apartment. It’s not until the smell from his hamper starts to keep him awake at night that he makes a fateful trip to the laundry room, and sees Jungkook again.

“Hyung, it’s been ages,” Jungkook yelps when Namjoon lays his basket on his usual machine. He can’t help but feel embarrassed about the last time they saw each other, about the basket misunderstanding despite there being no way for Jungkook to know how pathetic Namjoon’s presumptions had been.

“Ah, life, Jungkook. It’s being a total bitch,” he sighs, grinning at the cute omega that’s kicking his feet on his own machine again. He’s wearing black today, a baggy cropped hoodie and sweatpants that Namjoon thinks he could fit inside with Jungkook already in there. A sobering thought. He looks serious and cool, except that his face is literally a circle, and he’s wearing what look like hand-knitted baby pink socks on his shoeless feet. He looks so good in cropped clothing, with just a peak of his toned belly on show when he moves here and there.

“Oh dear, that doesn’t sound very nice,” Jungkook chuckles, uncapping his laundry detergent and handing the brightly colored bottle to Namjoon. “This one is much nicer than yours,” he nods at Namjoon’s cheap convenience store bottle. The thought that his clothes might now smell just like Jungkook’s makes Namjoon feel giddy as he loads a scant cap full into the soap drawer of his machine. 

“I hope you’re feeling better, hyung,” Jungkook sighs, puffing out his bottom lip as he fiddles with the string of his sweatpants. 

“You could say that, but this deadline is kicking my ass. I have like… two weeks of work to squeeze into three days. But,” he coughs awkwardly, twiddling his thumb and looking at his cheap plastic slippers. “I do feel a lot better. Ah, about last time—”

“Hyung,” Jungkook scolds, folding his arms and slipping down off his machine. He’s shorter without those stompy boots he sometimes wears. Namjoon thinks he’s been a different height every single time they’ve met, but he doesn’t claim to understand the ways of omegas. 

“You have nothing to feel weird about, okay? I’m just glad you’re feeling better. It sounded like a bit of a rough one.”

Namjoon blanches at the thought of Yoongi or perhaps even Taehyung filling Jungkook in on the ins and outs of his ruts. Maybe Yoongi had told him that, when in rut, Namjoon really likes to be held and babied, and whatever fine illusion of mysterious sexiness he’d managed to cultivate in Jungkook’s mind would be shattered. 

“Ah, you know, just the average, totally normal alpha rut. Nothing weird or out of the ordinary,” Namjoon laughs awkwardly, squaring his shoulders and looking away casually. 

“Ah, there’s nothing wrong with needing a little TLC, hyung,” Jungkook lays a soft hand on his forearm, and Namjoon’s skin erupts in goosebumps. “I’m the same during my heat. When all of the madness passes, I mostly just want someone to hold me.”

“Hmm,” Namjoon smiles. He feels warm at the thought of being pressed up against Jungkook’s back, sliding a big palm over his bare stomach, or washing him in the bath. If Jungkook really were a penguin, they’d curl up in a nest they’d built together, and Namjoon might keep watch while the little Adelie slept. 

“Penguins build their nests together, you know,” he says in a goofy, faraway voice, barely even conscious that he’s spoken aloud. “It’s not just the females that make it for their babies. Mated penguins rearrange their pebbles over and over again until it’s perfect.”

Namjoon doesn’t realize what he’s said until Jungkook starts to giggle. 

“I like that,” he says, and Namjoon flushes when he realizes that the omega’s hand is still on his bare skin, a loose circle from Jungkook’s finger to his thumb holding onto him like he might slip away otherwise. “I get a bit lonely in my own nest, sometimes. It would be nice to have a couple of pebbles to spruce it up.” 

Jungkook’s smile, Namjoon realizes, is like a quartered orange—big and triangular, impossibly juicy. He seems to have a hundred of them, stored away, ready to whip out just when Namjoon thinks he’s already seen the omega at his most beautiful. 

He stares with his mouth open, until Jungkook lets him go. 

“Well, I have some work to do, and a Bammie to feed,” he says with his light voice lilting. “Call over for tea, sometime yeah?”

It’s not until Jungkook is long gone, and Namjoon’s machine starts whistling its happy load-finishing tune that he realizes he has no idea what apartment Jungkook even lives in.

On Friday, after Namjoon finally completes the penguin documentary and is a free man once more, Jimin and Taehyung come over to drink.

They try to convince Namjoon to get dressed up and go out to some club in Itaewon, maybe dance with an omega or kiss someone pretty. But Namjoon is too tired and feels too old for that kind of Friday night. Even if he is only thirty. 

“You’ve gotten so boring lately, hyung,” Jimin chastises as he unpops the cork on a bottle of cheap prosecco, and dribbles boozy fizz all over Namjoon’s new rug. “You used to fuck. I miss your slut era.”

“I never had a slut era,” Namjoon huffs back, tucking himself and Eggs, who is comatose on his belly, back under his blanket on the sofa. The fateful “not from Jungkook” post-rut gift from his neighbour now smells like the omega’s pink detergent, and just a touch reminiscent of Jungkook’s scent. “If anything, I was a serial monogamist. I didn’t fuck, I dated.”

“Dates, fucking, yada yada, same old same old. The truth is, monogamists fuck more than anyone else,” Jimin says, waving a dismissive hand. He fills Namjoon’s champagne saucer up to the brim. Namjoon isn’t the kind of alpha to own something like a champagne saucer in the first place. The set had been a housewarming gift from the couple, who were just the sort to refer to something as perfunctory as a glass as a saucer.

“What’s going on with your omega, anyway?” Jimin asks as Taehyung starts fiddling with Namjoon’s record player. Somehow, he skips over every interesting record Namjoon owns, and finds a single Diana Ross record that Namjoon had no idea he even owned much less ever listened to.

“Quality,” Tae tosses a thumbs up over his shoulder and gently sets the needle on the record. The apartment is filled with the crackling hiss of 70s disco pop. “Yeah, how are you faring with Jungkookie? Jiminie, you should have seen him at movie night, he was dragging his tongue around like a total bitch–”

“Excuse me?” Namjoon yelps, clutching his metaphorical pearls to his chest. “That kind of language, in my house?”

“Better his tongue than his big, fat co—”

“Jimin,” Namjoon screeches, tackling his friend from behind and slapping a palm over his filthy mouth. Eggs shuffles off to his house in a huff. “Will you hush.”

Lately, Namjoon has been thinking about the probability that if he can hear everything his neighbour does through the wall, then perhaps the rice paper walls issue runs in both directions. And, despite mostly only having negative feelings towards his irritating neighbour, he did leave Namjoon a lovely basket. And he did unwittingly guide him through the sad boy, touch starvation that was the final leg of his rut. Not that Namjoon cares what anyone thinks about him, much less an omega that doesn’t seem to have any sense of self preservation and privacy.

“Jungkook is such a sweetheart,” Taehyung says, after he rescues Jimin from underneath Namjoon. “And he has the best taste in movies. We bonded over our shared love of The Olsen Twins early catalogue.”

“What is it with you and kids movies?” Namjoon asks, taking an offered bowl of popcorn from Jimin and nestling back into the sofa. “There are actual movies made for adults you know, with adult themes, and everything.”

“Oh, how dare I want a little whimsy in my life,” Taehyung scoffs. “And what’s more complex than the haunting theme of twin souls, forced to be apart in this cruel world? It Takes Two is a masterpiece, actually”. He downs his own saucer of champagne in a single gulp before yelling, “Bottoms up!”

And well, Namjoon drinks. 

He drinks, and he drinks, and he drinks. Exactly this many times, he drinks four overflowing saucers of prosecco so cheap that it makes his nose burn, until he’s giggly and half asleep on Taehyung’s shoulder. 

“You know Y-yoongi hyung’s hiccup fetish?” Jimin giggles, his head bouncing where it lays on Taehyung’s stomach. The three of them are curled up on the same sofa now, Namjoon squished onto one side while the other two sprawl out all over each other. “Do you think that he gets people to like, fake them during foreplay? Because how often are you going to have that occur in the wild?”

“Not all fetishes are things you actually want to do during sex, though,” Taehyung points out as he combs his fingers through Jimin’s hair. Namjoon thinks that Jimin’s hair looks like the raw honey that Hoseok eats from the jar, like sunkissed taffy stretched until it turns translucent, like summer when he was a kid. Jimin is nice. “Like, maybe Yoongi-hyung gets off on coming across hiccups in the run of his day, and having to hide his arousal.”

“I feel upset that so much of my life has been spent talking about this,” Namjoon croaks, his voice scratchy and tired, a little slurry from the booze. “Do we even know if this supposed hiccup fetish is canon, or are we running with one of Tae’s wild assumptions again? I feel like this is slander at this point.”

“Hey,” Tae says, jerking upright and nearly upending Jimin. “When have I ever made a wild assumption? I’m just an intuitive person, I can’t help it. I’m an empath.”

“When we started hanging out in college, you told Hoseok that I was obsessed with him and that I was trying to hook up with him and Seokjin. I literally had a girlfriend at the time,” Namjoon mumbles. “The day Hoseok let me down gently was one of the most embarrassing days of my life. And my girlfriend dumped me. I never even liked him like that.”

“So you say,” Taehyung huffs, folding his arms over Jimin’s chest. “Your energy at the time begged to differ. Maybe you just hugely repressed your feelings, and needed a kind friend to bring them to the surface so you could confront them head on, and get out of your stifling relationship.”

“Didn’t you buy matching shirts for you and hyung?” Jimin giggles, jumping on the bandwagon as he wobbles a finger in Namjoon’s face.

“Uh, we literally went to an Epik High show and I bought us merch? Because I had a job and Hoseok was broke. That’s not matching t-shirts, for fuck sake,” Namjoon facepalms. He’s getting so sleepy, and his friends are so annoying.

“You know, that only means one thing in Korea,” Taehyung says seriously, topping up all of their glasses with Amaretto. 

They ran out of champagne hours ago, and Jimin raided Namjoon’s cupboard, completely outraged that he didn’t keep wine on hand at all times. Without anything to mix it with, the sweet liquor tastes like almond soap, the bottom of syrupy fruit juice cartons, and leaves a worrying coat on Namjoon’s tongue. He’s not even sure if someone can get drunk on Amaretto, and getting as hammered as possible seems to be Jimin and Taehyung’s goal this evening.

“We literally live in Korea, what are you talking about?” he sighs, shaking his head as he stands. If he stumbles a little on the long ends of his sweatpants, it's nobody’s business. “Guys, I’m done. I’m throwing in the towel. I need to pass out and sleep for ten days.”

“Same,” Jimin sighs, following Namjoon to the bedroom. “Bagsy being the middle spoon,” he screeches, suddenly breaking into a run with Taehyung at his heels. 

Namjoon doesn’t even argue. 

Namjoon is becoming accustomed to waking in the middle of the night to the familiar sex noises from next door. Perhaps, the unique factor tonight is that Namjoon awakens to sex noises from next door while feeling like a human trash can. 

His mouth tastes awful, like last night's alcohol and burning garbage, and his head is pounding. He thinks it's Jimin’s foot that’s tickling his nose, but he can’t be bothered to lift his head to find out. At some point in the night, he seems to have migrated to the bottom of the bed, his own feet now wedged between his sleeping friend’s and his head half dangling off the mattress. 

“Oh, did my baby wake up horny? You just need somewhere warm to put your knot, don’t you my darling?”

Namjoon nestles into the covers, gnashing his teeth at the mystery foot in the face until it disappears back under the duvet. The voice through the wall is warm, comforting, like a small, sweet hand on his cheek lulling him back into sleep. 

“Yes,” he whispers, smacking his lips as the voice resonates through the walls. He has half a mind to wonder how Jimin and Taehyung sleep through the racket. 

“Curl up in my nest alpha and let me take care of you,” nymph neighbour coos, and Namjoon smiles sleepily with his eyes closed. 

He does want to be taken care of. It’s been so hard lately, and his head hurts. He wishes the voice could lay a cool compress on his head, and wiggle its butt against his half-hard but too tired to do anything about it dick.

“Come on, my lovely, roll over on your side so I can take care of you. You don’t need to do anything except lie there and nestle it deep inside. There’s nothing wrong with needing a little TLC, alpha.”

Namjoon’s eyes snap open.

There’s something so familiar about those words, but in his sluggish state, Namjoon can’t quite grasp where the little nugget of memory is hiding. He has that feeling he sometimes gets when he puts off a task for later without writing it down—that something important is lurking just out of sight, shading itself in the leafy trees and foliage that spring up in the back of his head sometimes, the tendrils of the weeds of long discarded memories. 

There’s something he needs to remember, something that isn’t the soft marshmallow of his pillow calling him to sleep. Something that isn’t the sweet, sickly almond on his tongue and the smell of beautiful, expensive bedsheets creeping through the wall. 

Namjoon closes his eyes and falls asleep again in a pool of his own sticky drool. 

Jimin makes the best hangover eggs Namjoon has ever tasted. 

For a man that can’t cook any better than Namjoon can, it's an impressive feat—something that Jimin had cultivated during his single years of feeding one night stands, sending them back into the wilderness of their early twenties with only the memory of incredible sex and fried eggs sizzled in lao gan ma chilli crisp on their tongues. Namjoon has a theory that it's the combination of the two that had half of their campus in love with the beta during their college life. 

“God, I could mate you again right on this table,” Taehyung groans as he swallows a fried egg whole. Namjoon watches him in disgust as a trail of yellow yolk pours down his chin.

“Not in my apartment you won’t,” he mutters, piercing his own yolk with a chopstick. He feels a little tender, honestly, like the eggs will either cure him or knock him stone dead for the rest of the afternoon. 

“Eat, you’re not going to feel better until you do,” Jimin mothers him, dishing him up a crusty slice of sourdough and another egg.

“I think I have the egg ick,” Namjoon pouts. “You know when you look at them for too long and become way too aware that we’re literally eating chicken periods.”

“Don’t even start,” Jimin smacks him on the hand. 

Namjoon nibbles on the lacy edges of his fried egg where the white has turned a greasy red from the chili crisp. It’s absolutely delicious, even with his head still throbbing and his eyes so dry they might fall out of his head at any moment. He tucks heartily into his breakfast, and thanks the lord for Park Jimin and the one dish he can cook. It’s one more than Namjoon, at least. 

“We should go on a trip,” Taehyung says with a burp. “We could invite Jungkookie and hook you up. I know he likes you.”

Jimin perks up. “Oh? Has he said anything?”

Namjoon feels like a bucket of ice cold water has been tossed over his head, and suddenly the magical eggs don’t taste so magical. 

“No, but an omega can tell. He’s definitely into hyung,” Taehyung nods with confidence. 

Jimin hums, and stacks their empty plates up on top of each other, which Namjoon hates. There’s something so gross about unstacking them later to do the dishes, trails of detritus and left over yolk sticking to his fingers. It’s enough to make the food in his belly lurch.

“Wait,” he whispers, his face turning pale, the sounds from last night. The too familiar voice rushing back to him like a sickness. “Jungkookie—”

“Yes, dummy,” Taehyung giggles, pinching his cheek. “You leave it up to your good pals vmin, hyung. We’ll organize everything.”

“No,” Namjoon grimaces, slapping his hand away. “You don’t get it. Jungkookie—”

“...is the cutest omega in the world, he’s a perfect, innocent dear that you want to corrupt,” Jimin rolls his eyes. “Yes, we know hyung, we heard it all a hundred times over last night. You know you were yelling right?”

Namjoon wants to throw up and cry at the same time. Maybe he’ll cry so hard he bursts a blood vessel in his eye, and it gets infected, and he has to go to the hospital, and the doctor takes one look at him and says, “Actually, lets just put this loser out of his misery, he doesn’t deserve to live anyway.”

It might even be the first ever modern case of active alpha euthanisation in South Korea, Namjoon thinks. 

“You don’t get it,” he croaks, but Taehyung and Jimin are still babbling about the trip. “I… I’m so ashamed.”

Namjoon slaps his head on the table, which adds a little fire to his headache. Jimin runs his fingers through the back of his hair, tickling enough to make him shiver under his light sleep shirt.

“Why so blue, Namjoonie? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“He’s worried that Jungkookie doesn’t like him,” Taehyung commiserates, adding his own hand to Jimin’s and using his mate’s hand to massage Namjoon’s neck like a pupateer. 

“No,” Namjoon whispers into the table. “It’s the sex voice. Jungkook… he’s the sex voice. He knows that I—God, the basket. He heard everything.”

Taehyung looks at Namjoon like he has two heads, which is rich coming from easily the strangest person that Namjoon has ever encountered. For Jimin, however, the penny drops.

“No fucking way,” he gasps, slapping a comedy hand on his jaw and grinning widely. “You made him sound like such a little cherub, but of fucking course he’s as much of a freak as you are. Oh this is so good.”

Namjoon whines, and closes his eyes, relishing in the touch of his friends, soaking up the comfort that sometimes—due to Taehyung’s enthusiasm—borders on punishment. 

“What am I missing here?” Taehyung asks as Jimin’s cackle intensifies. Well, if Jungkook hadn’t heard them before he certainly will now.

“Oh, Tete, this is so fucking funny,” Jimin gasps and Namjoon can only nod along miserably. “Jungkook is the nymph neighbour from next door that Namjoonie was yelling about last night.”

“The masturbation guy?” Taehyung gags. Jimin is wheezing now. “Holy shit, I didn’t think he had it in him. It’s always the ones you least expect. Just like Yoongi hyung and his hiccup—”

“Enough with the fucking hiccups already, Taehyung,” Namjoon snaps, bearing his teeth at the omega. “I’m having a legitimate crisis here, can we focus on my problems?”

“It’s a bit kink-shamey to imply that hyung’s fetish is a problem, Namjoon—” Taehyung frowns, folding his arms and giving Namjoon a serious stink eye.

“I give up,” Namjoon laughs but with absolutely no humour. “I can’t with you. I can’t with anything. He’s going to think I’m such a fucking pervert, jacking it to his voice for my entire fucking rut. Oh, I want to be sick.”

Jimin clamps a hand on Namjoon’s shoulder and pulls him back down into his seat. Namjoon hadn’t even realized that he’d risen, that he was throwing his hands to the heavens in a dramatic plea for salvation.

“Hyung, chill the fuck out for a minute,” he says in his stern voice. Namjoon pouts, suitably chastened. “He’s the one that’s been basically erotic roleplaying in there by himself, right? Why would he think you’re the freak?”

“Nah, freak digs freak,” Taehyung says with an eager nod. “Game recognizes game.”

Jimin raises his eyebrow at his mate, but Taehyung only shrugs. 

“He’s not wrong,” Jimin says with a thoughtful expression. “What if he wanted you to hear him? What if all this time, he’s been performing these sexy monologues hoping you hear him?”

Namjoon doesn’t know what to make of it all, if he’s honest. His head is still too cottony to think it all through, to traipse through their unusual timeline and figure out the conundrum that is Jungkook—the beautiful omega with the soft voice, and the innocent smile, the same omega that sounds like a wonderful sex demon through Namjoon’s wall each night. 

Namjoon is a fool.

Namjoon is a fucking idiot.

How in the world did he not recognize the voice?

What is the best thing to do when you find out the guy you like maybe likes you back? That maybe he’s been flirting with you through a wall? That the innocent, cute omega that has been starring in all of your fantasies for weeks now might actually be some kind of masturbation addict, but in a hot way?

Well, if your name is Kim Namjoon, then absolutely nothing. So much nothing, in fact, that you avoid said object of affection at all costs. 

“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, and I have family dinner with Taehyung weekly,” Seokjin says, slowly shaking his head at a miserable Namjoon as he slumps on their kitchen table. “Do you know you’re the most pathetic alpha I’ve ever met, or do you delude yourself into thinking the way you behave is normal?”

“Harsh,” Namjoon sighs, smiling a little as Hoseok joins them and pats his head. “Way harsh. And if you knew me at all, you’d know that self hatred is like my brand. Of course I know.”

“What exactly are you afraid of?” Hoseok asks as a boisterous Mickey jumps up onto his lap. The little Shih Tzu looks at Namjoon with the forlorn eyes of a dog that has been eating the healthy, organic kibble for months now, maybe the only creature in the room that’s feeling more miserable than Namjoon is. 

When he’d dogsat for the couple a few months back, Namjoon had secretly snuck him cheap but delicious wet food from the grocery store, and the little guy had gone absolutely insane—almost running up the walls and barking at balls of fluff in the corners of the room. It was like giving skittles to a toddler. 

“I’m just… I don’t know,” Namjoon moans, grimacing right back at Mickey in solidarity. 

“You know, Yoongi said that Jungkook has been asking about you…” Hoseok says, almost too casually. “Said you disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I’m just busy, that’s all.”

“Busy my asshole,” Seokjin scoffs, polishing the table around Namjoon like he’s a mere annoyance, or part of the furniture. “You had enough time to talk my ear off 24/7 about this kid for months on end. You had enough time to bore me stupid with that awful, depressing garbage you’ve been reading for absolutely no reason. Suddenly you’re too busy when I know for a fact the most profound thing you did this week was scratch your ass?”

“Excuse me?” Namjoon yelps, shrugging Hoseok’s arm off his shoulder and levelling Seokjin with the full force of his pout. “That was Dostoevsky, hello? Literally one of the most profound novels of all time–”

“Next,” Seokjin bleats, holding up his hand to silence Namjoon. 

The polishing cloth in his hand smells like the good kind of polish. The fancy, expensive kind. Namjoon, shamefully, cleans his own kitchen with bog standard dish soap because he’s not yet the kind of functioning adult who buys different cleaning products for different appliances and purposes. He knows it's a little struggle-life of him, but who wants to spend ten bucks on some windowlene when you can buy the fancy peanut butter instead?

“I’m starting a new project,” Namjoon coughs demurely to change the subject. “It’s about the octopuses of the South African kelp forest.”

“Octopai,” Hoseok corrects him gently, really going to town on scratching Mickey’s ears. The dog is drooling on his jeans, and it makes Namjoon shudder, grateful that he has a guinea pig instead. 

“Actually, no. Octopuses. Common misconception.”

“You need to have sex, Namjoon,” Seokjin says, frankly. “This can’t go on. You’ve become an even more boring shell of the boring man you once were. I don’t relish in saying this to you, but this is an intervention.”

Hoseok gives him a half hearted smile. 

“You know interventions are supposed to be for, like, life changing addictions, actual problematic behaviour. Real, actual issues,” Namjoon points out, delicately nibbling one of the salted peanuts Seokjin has laid in front of him. They’re good. Also more expensive than the ones Namjoon buys, damn them.

“This is serious. Very serious,” Seokjin sighs, deep and long suffering. “Your personality is missing in action. You’ve started to alienate people around you by talking about dead Russian novelists. The only thing more depressing than reading a garbage novel about impoverished turn-of-the-century murderers is listening to you talk about reading garbage about impoverished turn-of-the-century murderers.”

“So you’ve read it,” Namjoon grins. “I’m impressed you even know what Crime and Punishment is—”

“No, we’re not doing that,” Seokjin shakes his head and points towards the front door. “Go back to your tiny home and flirt with that omega for fuck sake. Get your knot wet. Live a little.”

“Ew, I don’t like it when you talk about my knot,” Namjoon cringes, tying his thick, red scarf around his neck and shrugging on his denim jacket. The stained one from movie night on the rooftop. It still vaguely smells like Jungkook, but that might be Namjoon’s brain tricking him in some wishful thinking. “Fine. I’m going home. Not because you told me to, but because I have work to do, and because Yoongi left some hundred-year eggs in my fridge and I really want to eat them.”

On the quiet cycle back to his apartment, Namjoon reasons that he’s not wrong for being overly cautious. Firstly, he has no idea if Jungkook is interested, or if he’s actively disturbed that Namjoon had practically whimpered for him through the wall. Maybe Jungkook was doing OnlyFans, and didn’t want his dumb, horny neighbour listening in to his ministrations, gagging for it through the wall like an alpha possessed.

Maybe he’s only nice to Namjoon because sometimes it’s like that for omegas. He’s heard many a horror story from his omegan friends about alphas who can’t take no for an answer—dumb cavemen that they feel they have to be nice to, to keep on side, in case things turn ugly. 

What if Jungkook is being nice to Namjoon because he is a threat that the omega is trying to contain? Namjoon feels too pathetic most of the time to be a threat to anyone except himself, but that doesn’t mean Jungkook feels that way. The thought makes him feel queasy.

Namjoon knows that this is partially his insecurity speaking. He never really thought that getting attention from an omega like Jungkook was actually going to happen. Especially not in his flop era, when nothing has been going right for him. Maybe, maybe, he could see himself with an omega like Jungkook in a couple of years, when he has his shit together?

But this Namjoon? He washes his kitchen with dish soap for fuck sake. 

And yet, all of this spiralling pales in comparison to the fact that since that night when Taehyung and Jimin stayed over, Jungkook has been silent.

His nymph neighbour, the microphone, the words that made him feel like he was being patted on the head through a wall of concrete… it’s gone silent. Namjoon doesn’t know what it means, but it can’t be good. Maybe Jimin and Taehyung were right, and Jungkook did hear him that night—waxing lyrical about the omega’s beautiful eyes, his pretty smell, his arms that could rival Namjoon’s own. 

Maybe Namjoon’s desperate puppy act had given him the ick.

So, despite everything, after he’s locked up his bike in the underground carpark, Namjoon avoids the lift, and climbs seven flights of stairs instead.  

Three days later, Namjoon does his laundry at midnight because he’s still a coward. He does intend to talk to Jungkook eventually, he just needs a little more time to lick his wounds, and figure out exactly what it is he wants to say. 

With his laundry hamper propped up on his chest, and only its wicker in his field of vision, Namjoon hears him before he sees him.

“Well, well, well,” Jungkook laughs sweetly from inside the laundry room. “It’s been a while, Kim Namjoon. I thought maybe you’d died, or something. I even had Bam sniffing at the door of your apartment when I took him out this morning, in case there was a body.”

Namjoon drops his laundry basket on his toes, and all of his dirty clothes and underwear topple out over the laundry room floor. Which is exactly the kind of undignified entrance he’s been fretting over making when he eventually comes face to face with his crush again. 

“Oh, no, you know me. Alive and kicking. Stupidly alive,” Namjoon laughs awkwardly, and way too loudly for this time of night. “So alive it hurts. It might have been better if I was dead, actually.”

He drops to his knees and starts gathering his clothes, thankfully none of which are that dirty. Sure, he wore the grey sweatpants for three days straight while he pitched for the octopus documentary, but he spritzed them in body spray, so surely they’re fine. 

He thanks his lucky stars that Jungkook doesn’t hop down off his favourite machine to help him, because that would be humiliating. 

Namjoon can see him properly now, his legs criss-cross-apple-sauce on the machine, his loose shorts and long sleeve shirt, some fuzzy cat socks dangling over the side. He has adorable bedhead, dark curls standing up seemingly at random. Namjoon wonders if he’s actually sleeping these days now that the sex noises have run dry, because he looks glossy and well rested.

“I haven’t heard from you in a while,” Jungkook says, smiling broadly at him, his pretty teeth all on show because, Namjoon has noticed, he smiles with all of them. “I thought maybe you were avoiding me.”

“Well,” Namjoon lays the over-full laundry basket beside an empty machine. He wisely leaves a buffer washing machine between himself and Jungkook, just in case he is the predatory loser he’s been stressing over being. He hangs his head in shame, kicking his own slides on the tiles and peering out at Jungkook from under his bangs. “I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

Jungkook cocks his head, and his eyes are so round. They’re like the moon, pretty and shiny in the night sky, like oranges, and big, chunky plastic letter Os from those magnetic letters Namjoon learned his English ABCs on. 

“Why would you make me uncomfortable?” Jungkook asks, seemingly baffled. 

“Well. You know. The… I thought maybe, during my rut… I was noisy.”

He winces, remembering his whimpering. He blocked a lot of it out in the days that followed his rut, but slowly, like a sick cheese dream, memories of the frenzied start of his rut have come back to haunt him. He thinks at one point he might have humped the wall between their apartments.

“And then, last weekend, I had some friends over… We were noisy.” Namjoon rubs his hands together for warmth. It’s cold in the laundry room this late at night, and he can see goosepimples on Jungkook’s bare legs. “I didn’t want you to feel disrespected.”

Jungkook purses his lips and looks at Namjoon like he’s a puzzle. “That’s a shame,” he says eventually in that whisper soft voice he has, almost lisping consonants and faint busan satoori. “I thought we were doing something there.”

Namjoon’s mouth drops open, and it makes Jungkook giggle again. 

“I—you…we were?” he croaks, feeling a faint sweat at the back of his neck. His stomach flips at Jungkook’s cute laugh.

“Well, I mean, not at first. But you did flirt with me an awful lot, you know. You wrapped me up in a blanket, made me feel special,” he sighs, biting his lip with a coy little expression. “I even left you a basket, hyung. And then you just ghosted me. I thought we had this cute, through the wall flirtation going, but you disappear on me just when it got good.”

“No,” Namjoon yelps, holding his hands up and wobbling them at Jungkook with panic in his eyes. “No, I… you were… on purpose?”

Jungkook laughs again, and Namjoon feels like he’s stranded in the middle of the ocean without a paddle. What is a mouth? How are they used to make sounds, human feelings and logical dialogue with one’s crush?

“So,” he says slowly as a painful flush starts at his hairline and dribbles over his entire body. “The… noises. It was for me?”

“Not quite,” Jungkook grins, slipping down off his machine and padding over to Namjoon in his socks. His slippers are nowhere to be seen, and Namjoon imagines carrying him back up seven flights of stairs to his apartment, so he doesn’t get his little cat socks dirty. He imagines carrying Jungkook on his back, like he’s a pony so that the omega never has to bother himself to use his legs again. 

“I’m still in college, you know,” he says, conversationally. Namjoon frowns a little at the sudden change of subject. “One of my friends from back home, Mingyu. He and his mate are working on an app, and I took a little extra work from them for cash.”

“An app,” Namjoon repeats, dumbly. Jungkook stops right in front of him, with his toes touching Namjoon’s through his slides. 

“An app for alphas in rut, and omegas in heat. It’s like, if you don’t have a partner for your rut, the app is like a companion. You can set water reminders, and get food deliveries. I recorded a bunch of different audio scenarios to help the alphas specifically.” He pauses, chewing his lip, batting his long eyelashes at Namjoon. “I know, it’s a little spicy, but the money was good.”

“Ah, alphas in rut,” Namjoon mutters weakly, not at all humiliated that, for at least a few minutes there, he thought maybe it had been about him. The he was thee alpha in rut.

“But—” Jungkook slides a hand up Namjoon’s bicep, soft and gentle fingers heating his skin through the fine layer of his cotton shirt. The goosepimples on Namjoon’s neck prickle, and his fine, baby hairs stand on end. “When I realized you were next door, and I started hearing you moving around your apartment… I realized how thin our walls really are. Did you know that, Namjoon?”

Namjoon nods so vigorously, both of their bodies shake. 

“I really thought you hated me at first, and I couldn’t figure out why. Whenever I was working, I could hear you stomping around like a little, baby elephant. It took me a while to realize what was going on,” he laughs. “You probably thought I was a total slut.”

“Never,” Namjoon yelps, reaching out to grab Jungkook’s hand before stopping himself halfway. He tries for a casual yawn and stretch, but Jungkook’s eyes are amused. “I would never think that. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a slut, sex is a normal and healthy thing for anyone, your body, your choice, you know. Down with the patriarchy.”

“Then you left me cookies,” Jungkook grins, and there’s no coyness in it. He looks genuinely fond and warm at the thought of the awful, chewy cookies Namjoon had made as more of a threat than a gift. “And I thought, wow, maybe he likes me back. I wasn’t performing for you or anything, but when you went into rut, I was maybe a little more selective.”

“Wow,” Namjoon whispers, and it only makes Jungkook laugh more. 

“Yeah. Why did you ghost me?” 

“Ugh,” Namjoon whines, hiding his face in his hands. “I’m so stupid. I thought… I don’t even know what I thought. That I’d offended you by interrupting your sexy work, or that you heard me acting like the pathetic idiot I am… Jungkook, I had no idea you lived next door until… and I liked you so much, and—” He flushes at the memory of his revelation, bricked up in his bed with two of his friends sleeping and Jungkook recording next door. “God, I’m a loser.”

“You’re not a loser, you’re stupidly adorable. Kind of… clueless, maybe,” Jungkook shuffles closer even though there’s nowhere to go. He’s close enough that Namjoon can make out the fine details of his face—a pretty scar no bigger than a bandaid stretching over his cheek, the slight crooked slant of his pink lips. 

“You’re pretty,” he sighs, his fingers twitching to reach out and hold Jungkook’s hand like a lovelorn fool. 

“You’re gorgeous,” Jungkook smiles. “Can I kiss you?”

Namjoon nods, and lets out a deep sigh when Jungkook connects their bodies. He takes Namjoon’s heavy arms and wraps them around his own small waist. When Namjoon’s hands make contact, he feels insane about the tiny circumference of it, the maddening thought that if he only squeezed a little tighter, maybe he could make his fingers touch. 

Jungkook slides his own arms around Namjoon’s shoulder, and pulls him close until their bellies touch. 

When they kiss, Namjoon thinks, finally. Jungkook tastes like fresh water, and rolling icecaps. Namjoon wants to give him so many fucking pebbles. 

“And then you fucked like rabbits?” Jimin sighs, dreamily, as Namjoon recounts the events of last night to his overeager friends at lunch. 

“We did not fuck like rabbits—” Namjoon starts, looking around the busy cafe in embarrassment. The coffee shop is next to his apartment building. He often edits from here when he needs a break from his home office. Namjoon has a reputation to uphold.

“They’d have fucked like penguins, if anything,” Taehyung says through a mouth of buttery cookie. “Hyung has that penguin kink, right? He probably asked Jungkook if he could rub his cloacae.”

“I do not have a penguin fetish,” Namjoon stomps his foot. The truth of his words remain to be seen, honestly, but he doesn’t want to be known locally as the penguin guy. If anything, he’s been dreaming more about octopuses lately.

His stubbornness makes the rest of his friends laugh. It’s the first time the six of them have managed to all get together in a while. Even Yoongi showed up on his break at the clinic. 

Namjoon giddily thinks of next time. Maybe Jungkook will be with him when they all get together again. Maybe the gang of six might become seven, just as it grew when Jimin and Taehyung started dating, when Hoseok joined the fold. Just like that, Namjoon has been gathering all of these important people to his chest, and now there’s Jungkook.

Namjoon and Jungkook. Jungkook and Namjoon, he sighs, dreamily as his coffee goes cold beside him.

“God, he’s slick whipped,” Seokjin groans. “He’s going to be even more insufferable than he already is,” he says to Hoseok, who is goofily smiling along with Namjoon. If anyone is slick whipped, it’s that guy. 

“Well, we didn’t have sex, if you demand to know every intimate detail of my private life,” Namjoon huffs, pushing his muffin over to a vociferous Taehyung who is nibbling everything in sight. 

“I am literally begging not to know any of your intimate details. I’d die a happy man if I never heard anything intimate from you again in my life,” Seokjin points out with a scoff. 

Namjoon ignores him completely. 

“We had a little kiss, and we went our separate ways. Because I’m a gentleman,” he says, proudly puffing up his chest. 

“So you chickened out, again,” Yoongi says, finally chipping in. Namjoon feels betrayed by the only other alpha in their group, who clearly should understand how important it is to be respectful when courting an omega like Jungkook.

“I did not—”

“Bet you totally blue balled him,” Jimin says, shaking his head at Namjoon’s incompetence. 

“I—”

“Bet he thinks you’re not even interested in him now,” Taehyung says with big, wide eyes. “Oh, hyung, why didn’t you fuck him? He literally did all the work for you, and you still fumbled the bag.”

Namjoon’s stomach starts to turn, and he instantly regrets the sickly sweet coffee he ordered. 

“I need to go home,” he says, rushing to put his coat on, zipping it up to the neck so quickly that he pinches the delicate skin under his chin. 

“Go get some, hyung,” Taehyung and Jimin jeer in unison. Seokjin watches him fumble with his wallet with a look of disgust on his face. 

When Namjoon knocks on Jungkook’s door, it takes a while for the omega to answer. Last night, he mentioned that he’d be home all day, but Namjoon doesn’t know his schedule well enough yet—whether he spends his college and work free afternoons in the allotments, or if he steps out for tea when he has time to himself. 

When Jungkook answers the door, he’s holding back the biggest dog Namjoon has ever seen in his life—a beautiful chestnut brown Doberman with floppy, chocolate ears and round eyes that look just like his dad’s. 

“Hyung,” Jungkook smiles, wrapping his arms around his dog’s neck and ushering him back into the apartment. “Bammie, down. Down, baby. Come on in, hyung. I’m just making lunch.”

Namjoon is so nervous he thinks he might actually shit himself, which really wouldn’t be sexy. He follows Jungkook and Bam inside to an apartment that is the mirror opposite of his own, but with far more personality. Where Namjoon favours plain white walls, minimalism, the occasional struggle plant and books in favour of decadent decor, Jungkook’s apartment is moody and intense, filled with oddities. 

Namjoon feels a little like he’s entered a sensory cave, with rich green walls and a dark, enormous sofa covered in throw pillows and plushies. There’s a strange contradiction in Jungkook’s personality that is echoed in his apartment, a constant push and pull between overwhelming cuteness and a rougher edge. 

“I hope you came ready to eat. I wake up starving, hyung. I’m making shakshuka from a recipe I found on Tiktok, but you use, like, curried lentils as your base instead. Isn’t it annoying when people say, hey look at the thing I made that's definitely not shakshuka, but I’m calling it that because, reasons?”

Jungkook looks at Namjoon expectantly, shuffling a little on the hardwood floors. His feet are totally bare this time, and Namjoon thinks it's cute how little he’s seen the younger omega wearing shoes. 

And when he has been shoed, it’s these thick soled biker boots, or Doctor Martens that make him look like he rolled right out of a 90s alt girl romance drama—-the soundtrack of Dreams by the Cranberries playing in the background as he, the beautiful but moody omegan protagonist, struggles to make a choice between the kind but nerdy boy next door and the dark, and mysterious bad alpha. Namjoon feels infinitely grateful that he hasn’t had to wrestle any bad boys for Jungkook’s attention.

He clears his throat. “I did come to eat. I… I came totally ready to eat, you could say.” Namjoon tries to lower his voice so he sounds mysterious and sexy, like Yoongi. “But it’s not food I’m hungry for, Jungkook.” 

Jungkook raises an eyebrow. Namjoon thinks he sees the omega’s lip twitch, just so, but he maintains a stoic expression.

“Kim Namjoon, you’re so weird, but in a very specific hot way that drives me insane,” he sighs, biting his bottom lip until it's pink and juicy. “You,” he points at Namjoon. “Go sit on my sofa while I turn the oven off. And you, best boy,” Jungkook continues, gently patting Bam’s haunches. “Off to the bedroom, on you go. Bam, house.”

For a haunted moment, Namjoon sulks that Jungkook didn’t tell him that he was a good boy, then quickly decides not to entertain that avenue of thought. The last thing he needs right now is to be jealous of a dog. 

He sits dutifully on the sofa and fiddles with his thumbs until Jungkook returns.

“So,” Jungkook says slowly, his voice flirtatious and teasing. “You came to eat. I think that could be arranged, hyung.” 

Namjoon gasps as Jungkook bypasses the empty space on the sofa, and takes a seat in his lap instead—his thick thighs straddling either side of Namjoon’s, his pretty, long fingers splayed on Namjoon’s shoulders. He looks taller, with Namjoon looking up at him, the softness of his face more angular from this viewpoint. Round boy, cute boy.

Namjoon swallows a deep sigh.

“Yes,” he whispers back, as Jungkook’s legs tighten and he pushes their bodies closer. Namjoon feels all of the bravado that it took him to get here ebbing out of his body like a softening balloon, his limbs loosening like taffy. He feels small under Jungkook. 

“You’re such a tease, hyung,” Jungkook pouts, slowly rocking his body against Namjoon, pushing the alpha back on the sofa until his head is lagging back on the cushions, his mouth lax. He could watch Jungkook just move forever, like an almighty bird of prey slowly wrapping him up in his beautiful plumage. “I had to come back home all by myself last night, when you were only next door.”

“That’s bad,” Namjoon sighs, sliding his hands over Jungkook’s incredible waist again, making small, undulent circles with the pads of his thumbs. Jungkook shivers on top of him, his hips still swaying on top of Namjoon. “So bad.”

He’s getting so hard against Jungkook’s plush ass that he thinks he might just pop a knot like this, like a teenager dry riding their first boyfriend. Jungkook is wearing some baggy, black yoga pants that feel like absolutely nothing against Namjoon’s jeans. When the omega moves just right, and spreads his legs, Namjoon thinks he can feel the fly of his own jeans getting wet. 

“God, you’re so sexy,” he whimpers, burying his forehead against Jungkook’s shoulder. “You’re so pretty. You smell so fucking perfect, I want to die.”

He does smell incredible, too, it's not just horny talk. Jungkook smells like expensive cotton absolutely drenched in slick—a perfect meld of earthy sweetness and his fresh, clean scent. It makes Namjoon’s teeth ache. He opens his mouth to bite at Jungkook’s shoulder, but mouths at the omega’s shirt instead, suppressing the urge to just mate him right now—to toss him down on the sofa and take everything. 

He uses his grip on Jungkook’s hips to move them in tandem, pushing his own hips up off the sofa when Jungkook’s thrusts meet his own. It doesn’t take long before they’re both sweating.

“Off,” Jungkook huffs, leaning back to pull at the hem of Namjoon’s t-shirt. But despite the instruction, he doesn’t wait, just whips it right off, and tosses it across the room, before arching backwards to remove his own big hoodie.

And well. Jungkook wears a lot of these cute, oversized outfits. Big pants that cut in at the waist but keep his legs a total mystery, t-shirts that end at his knees. It’s really cute. 

But without his shirt on, his body is marbled. He looks like one of those Greek statues of what men used to look like, back in the day—a perfect hourglass, with broad shoulders, a tiny, delicate core, and wide hips. Michelangelo’s David, from way back when omega’s were lauded for being strong, building their lean bodies up to be pup-bearing warriors. Namjoon is breathless. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he moans, moving a shaking hand to Jungkook’s stomach. God, he’s touching the omega’s perfect stomach, and he’s thinking horrible, possessive thoughts about how small it looks under his hand, how it would look all swollen and full with Namjoon’s pups. 

Christ, Namjoon doesn’t even know if he wants pups, but in the heat of the moment, his thoughts are insane with them. He’s touching Jungkook’s belly, but in his head he’s brushing the home of their adorable twins, singing them to sleep so they grow accustomed to his voice, worshiping at the temple of almighty omega, bringer of salvation and wet dreams and horniness and life itself. 

“How the hell do you look like this?” he croaks, tracing Jungkook’s abs, the line of his hip bones, the ever so gentle semicircle of soft fat just under his bellybutton. He’s strong, and lean, and made to take Namjoon’s knot inside of him, and that makes the salty drool pool up under Namjoon’s tongue. 

Jungkook doesn’t look at all embarrassed by his body the way Namjoon often does, and that makes him so much sexier. He holds his shoulders back and braces his hands on Namjoon’s shoulders, curves his back so he’s fully on display for Namjoon to appreciate. 

“Pants,” he whispers when he leans forward, and kisses Namjoon’s ear. Namjoon shivers at the barely there brush of his lips.

“What if I…,” he stammers when Jungkook climbs off him, and shimmies out of his pants and underwear. After he’s discarded those too, he kneels on the rug and undoes Namjoon’s jeans, peels off his socks and his boxers. 

“I have to be honest with you, it’s been like two years since I’ve been with anyone and I’m nervous as fuck.”

Jungkook just smiles at him sweetly. 

“It’ll be fine. More than fine,” he says like it's no big deal, climbing back into Namjoon’s lap. “I know I said you could eat, and believe me that sounds… so fucking hot,” he gasps, sliding over Namjoon’s thighs until they’re nestled together again, his ass crushing against Namjoon’s erection. ‘But, I’m really wet, and I’d really just like it if you fucked me first.” 

Namjoon swallows as he nods. “Condom?” he asks in a small voice, slowly licking his lips to distract from the way Jungkook is sliding against him again, getting him all wet with his slick, digging his hand between their bodies to wrap around Namjoon’s cock. 

“We should, but I’m a dope and I don’t have any,” Jungkook breathes heavily in his ear as he slides his slick-wet hand over Namjoon with a loose fist, not tight enough to take him to the edge, just teasing fingers and painfully slow movement that get him fully hard. Namjoon bites his lip and thrusts his hips into the omega’s hand. “My heat is coming up, so I can’t fuck around with that. I’m not on birth control right now,” he gasps. “Did you bring something?”

Namjoon feels like there’s lead in his stomach—a deep, aching weight of doom crushing over him as the dream of Jungkook sucking him inside slips away from his aching fingers.

“No, and I don’t even have any in my apartment because I’m a sad, single loser who hasn’t fucked in twenty years,” he moans as Jungkook’s fist speeds up. He’s using one hand to balance on Namjoon’s shoulder, but he’s risen up on his spread knees to fuck Namjoon with his hand. His own smaller cock is bouncing at his belly, wet and untouched, stupidly pink and cute. “But, I promise I’m clean. I literally haven’t been with anyone, like I—”

“Can you pull out?” Jungkook interrupts, panting as he grips Namjoon firmly and uses the tip to circle his hole like it’s a fat crayola marker. It’s stupidly erotic, watching him drive Namjoon to the edge of distraction, his hips like liquid and his thick, strong thighs pinning Namjoon into the sofa. 

“I can,” Namjoon bobs his head eagerly. “God, I hope I can. No, I will. I promise, I’ll pull out,” he says, determined to make it so by the power of will alone. He is not going to let his knothead take over and fuck things up with literally the most perfect omega on the planet naked in his lap. 

“Fuck it,” Jungkook says as he lets go of Namjoon’s cock, and guides the alpha’s fingers to his own hole. He feels so hot, Namjoon thinks, half delirious as he pushes his finger inside. Jungkook is tight but pliant, like he barely needs to be stretched open at all. His body just opens up for Namjoon. 

“Two is good,” Jungkook says, and Namjoon feels a contented buzz at the instruction. He’s not a virgin, for fuck sake, but it feels good to have Jungkook lead, especially after such a long dry spell. He feels strangely overwhelmed by what they’re doing, like despite arriving here with a singular goal in mind, he hadn’t expected them to end up like this, moving as quickly as they are. 

“You’re doing well, alpha,” Jungkook purrs when Namjoon is three fingers deep inside of him, slowly moving his hand, hooking his finger tips and then scissoring them open. “You’re making me feel so good. You’re so good to me.”

Namjoon’s alpha woofs inside him, his wet nose pushing at the lump in Namjoon’s throat like a beast desperate for the praise. Slowly, Jungkook circles his wrist with his fingers, and pulls Namjoon’s hand out. 

His fingers are sapping wet with slick, tacky and sweet and elastic. Namjoon suckles at them, pushing the tips into his mouth, lapping the sides of Jungkook’s hands where it drips down to his wrists. He looks up at the omega through his sweaty hair with his own eyes wide, popping his thumb out of his mouth.  

“Good?” the omega whispers, patting the side of his cheek gently.

Namjoon nods. “You taste perfect.”

“Lets get it,” Jungkook giggles as he rises up on his knees and wraps his hand around Namjoon’s cock again, holding him in place while he gets ready to mount the alpha. “Remember, you need to pull out. Don’t come until I tell you,” he warns, wrapping his hands around the back of Namjoon’s neck. He holds him so gently, it makes Namjoon feel soft and sappy. 

“Jesus, God,” Namjoon growls as Jungkook slowly sinks down on him, his hole wrapping around him like molten velvet. He feels dizzy from the spike in pheromones, his and Jungkook’s together, the heady scent of sex in the room. 

“You good?” Jungkook laughs, a little breathless as he wiggles his hips, but doesn’t yet lift himself. 

“It’s… been a while,” Namjoon huffs, running his palms up and down Jungkook’s sides, his smooth skin that feels a little prickly from the aircon. “Just… don’t be mad at me if I come in like four seconds.”

Jungkook throws his head back and cackles. “I won’t be mad, it's a compliment. Just make me feel good.” 

He lifts his hips and starts to ride, the muscles in his thighs rippling before he sits back down. Namjoon feels useless and blissful, just letting Jungkook take over, watching him as he uses Namjoon to pleasure himself like all he is is a big, knotting dildo.

“Jesus, I can feel you in my throat and you haven’t even knotted yet,” Jungkook laughs. “Your cock is stupidly big. How do you walk around with that thing in your pants,” he huffs, building up the pace like Namjoon is Hallasan, and Jungkook is determined to conquer him. 

Namjoon thinks that if he hadn’t just had a rut a few weeks ago, he might go feral at the heat in his stomach—how cute and sexy Jungkook looks riding, how small his waist feels in Namjoon’s hands. “I don’t know if I’m gonna last much longer,” he moans, when Jungkook starts just grinding on him, making circles with his hips like he’s trying to make a spark of fire between their pelvises.  

Jungkook pants, and shoves his wrist into Namjoon’s mouth, pushing him further back into the sofa. “Bite down, and hold it,” he huffs, sliding his other hand into Namjoon’s hair and tugging. He leans into Namjoon’s neck, and starts lapping at his scent gland sloppily. 

Namjoon doesn’t want to hurt Jungkook, but the flush of pheromones at the omega’s wrist, the smaller scent gland there, is so intense he can’t help but bite. He can’t mate him this way, but the rush to his brain feels overwhelmingly like he is. He drools and nibbles, suckling at the small pearls of blood, the dents at Jungkook’s wrist where Namjoon has barely pierced the skin. 

He feels his knot starting to expand as Jungkook picks up the pace again, slamming himself down on Namjoon’s swelling cock like he’s trying to punish himself. 

“Good alpha,” Jungkook coos, his voice getting breathier and breathier, his soft moans tickling the little fire in Namjoon’s stomach and flooding him with warmth. He’s doing a good job. His omega is happy and he’s going to sit on his knot, and take it so deep inside of him. But, that’s not right is it?

“No, no. Need to pull out,” he reminds himself aloud, letting Jungkook’s hand drop from his mouth. The omega wails. 

“No, why would you—” he huffs, balling up his fingers into a fist in Namjoon’s hair, tugging at his scalp. The burn makes Namjoon feel insane, and he bites down on his own lip to get his shit together. 

God, he could fill Jungkook up right now. Bite him, claim him. Make him his forever. Jungkook would be such a good dam. Namjoon could take out a loan, maybe drive a sledgehammer through the fateful wall that separates their apartments so they can live together. Jungkook wouldn’t even have to record sexy app messages for other alphas, but Namjoon would support his choice as an omega if he wanted to. He’d shower him in riches, even if he had to sell all his records. Jungkook would sleep in a nest made of pebbles.

“Jungkookie,” he moans, grasping at the omega’s hips to stop him moving. “Gonna come if you don’t stop, I need to…”

Jungkook gives him these big, glossy eyes full of tears, and it's like a tiny knife in Namjoon’s heart, a weapon wielded in cuteness so potent he wants to scream. His alpha howls, howls at the moon, howls in agony at the betrayal in those eyes. It was dumb to think Jungkook’s omega would ever want him not to knot, especially if he is as close to his heat as he said. 

Namjoon leans up to snap at Jungkook’s hand again, sucking hard on the little wound before gently biting until it hangs in his mouth. With his hands free, he can manhandle Jungkook off him, and toss him on the sofa. 

“Alpha, no,” Jungkook sniffles, his little canines beared in an act of dominance he can’t seem to follow through on. “Inside, now.”

Namjoon holds him down with a hand on his hipbone, and uses the other to fist his own knot tightly. He nearly sees white at the pressure, but he needs to make his omega happy first. 

“Let me make you feel good now,” he whispers, pushing Jungkook far enough down the sofa that his head is crushed against the armrest. Namjoon grasps one of Jungkook’s thighs, and pistons it up to his chest so his hole is on display—pinker, Jesus Christ, pinker than it was before, swollen and wet from fucking. 

Namjoon dives right in, lapping with his teeth and his tongue. He hooks Jungkook’s thighs over his shoulder, and wraps a hand around his cock—the perfect handful, almost fully swallowed by Namjoon’s fingers. Jungkook is so wet that Namjoon’s chin is dripping, even the ends of his hair are soaked in it.

“Namjoon,” he chokes when Namjoon drives two fingers inside with his tongue and suckles at his rim. “Fuck, I’m going to come. I’m going to come. Don’t stop.”

Namjoon doesn’t bother to tell him that a pack of wild animals couldn’t pull him off Jungkook right now. He’s fucking into his own hand as he eats Jungkook out, clenching his knot like he could mold it back into shape with the will of his fingers alone. And take that, Kim Seokjin, who claims that Namjoon is so uncoordinated he can barely peel an orange—because right now, he’s multitasking like it's his job, making Jungkook come on his mouth, shucking the omega’s small dick in tandem with his own. 

When Jungkook comes all over his face, Namjoon thinks he might even deserve a medal for being the best multitasker in Korea.

“Alpha,” Jungkook hoists himself up onto his elbows to look down at Namjoon, who is still kitten licking the omega’s rim. Jungkook looks so pretty and perfect and fucked out that Namjoon thinks he’s going to die, his beautiful eyes wide and hazy with pleasure. “Let me help—”

“Oh god,” Namjoon groans as he smashes his knot against the sofa and comes. “Oh god, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, it’s going to stain, I can’t stop.”

Jungkook only giggles as Namjoon destroys his sofa. He clenches his strong thighs around Namjoon’s shoulders, pressing just enough on his neck that the alpha gets dizzy. 

“God, I haven’t knotted my hand like that in years,” Namjoon whines, laying his head down and nuzzling Jungkook’s soft dick, relishing in the warmth of his legs and soft belly. 

“You sound hot as fuck when you do it,” Jungkook laughs, and it makes Namjoon’s head jiggle where it lays, the omega’s abs clenching and relaxing as he breathes. 

They lay in silence for a while, content and sated, too tired to feel embarrassed. It’s not until Jungkook starts trembling from the cold that the omega moves them.

“Come on,” he says, groaning as he pulls his stiff legs back and rolls off the sofa. “Shower time. We can eat and cuddle in my bed, watch something, maybe?” he suggests with a cute cocked brow, as he pulls Namjoon’s head onto his thighs, and massages his scalp.

“Hmm,” Namjoon murmurs. 

Sure, he has dried come on his face, and he’s lying in a pool of it, too. But he hasn’t felt this content in years—like a safe, little rice ball, tucked up in Jungkook’s lap.

After the shower, they finally eat Jungkook’s shakshuka. 

It’s the most satisfying meal that Namjoon has eaten in years, and it's not until the steaming dish is in front of him that he realizes how hungry he is—his stomach growling painfully as he gasps in the hot steam, and breathes in the spice. 

While he eats, Jungkook watches him with a cute expression and sits on the countertop kicking his feet. He looks pink cheeked from the shower, adorable in his oversized hoodie and sweatpants, ever barefoot. 

He’s so lovely, that for a while as the silence stretches, Namjoon worries about fucking it all up. Sure, he thinks that Jungkook is beautiful. But he also likes Jungkook a lot, and he realizes that he doesn’t really know where he stands now.

“I was kind of joking earlier, you know,” Jungkook says with a sleepy lisp, breaking Namjoon’s thoughts. 

“Hmm?” Namjoon hums as he pops the yellow yolk of his egg with his teeth. It drips out all over the lentils like a golden waterfall. 

“You know, when I said I thought we had something going. I mean, I did, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t really know if you liked me or not,” he laughs a little awkwardly. “I mean, I think you did. But you’re really hard to read, you know.”

He looks just as he did when Namjoon first met him in the laundry room, no shoes and a giddy little expression, his natural scent blending in with the clean of soap bubbles and freshly washed towels. 

“You thought I didn’t like you?” Namjoon laughs because the idea of it is so bizarre. He lays his chopsticks down beside his bowl and leans back into the barstool. “Not liking you is so far from, like, the realm of possibility, I can’t even believe it. That I wouldn’t like you is just... You’re so far out of my league it’s not even funny.”

“Not,” Jungkook huffs, his cheeks puffing out in embarrassment. His hair is drying curly, and Namjoon wonders if he perms it, or if it's natural. He wonders what it would look like long, long. He has such a handsome face, he could pull it off either way. 

“If anyone is out of someone’s league, it's you. You’re like… you have your shit together. You work on nature documentaries like David Attenborough. You’re a real adult,” Jungkook smiles fondly at him, and Namjoon’s chest feels so warm. “I’m here practically failing out of school, walking pets for a living. It’s fine, I mean I’m okay with where I’m at, and I love my job but… you know. Some people think that it’s kind of… insignificant.”

“I am so far from having my shit together. You have no idea, Jungkook. I don’t want to shatter whatever illusion you have of me right now, but please prepare for disappointment.” Namjoon folds his arm, almost annoyed at the idea of anyone finding Jungkook less than perfect. “I don’t know who you’re hanging out with, but anyone who thinks that is a fucking asshole. You should meet my friends, they’ll agree with me. And they’ll tell you how much of a disaster I am, too.”

Jungkook hops down off the countertop and pads over to him. He wraps his sweaterpawed arms around Namjoon’s waist and nuzzles into his chest. 

“Namjoon?” he hums into the alpha’s chest, his voice muffled by the soft-cotton of Namjoon’s borrowed hoodie. 

“Hmm?”

“Do you like me? I mean. I know we fucked, but… do you like me, like me?” He asks it so cutely, batting his eyelashes.

Namjoon feels a rumble building in his chest as he buries his nose in Jungkook’s damp curls. “Jungkook, I like you so much. Genuinely, I’m slapping myself that you’re even giving me the time of day.”

“Good,” Jungkook says, pulling back to grin up at him, every star in the galaxy glimmering in his brown eyes. “I like you, too.”

“Well, I have to hand it to you,” Seokjin says from his place in the center of the sofa between Yoongi and Namjoon. “You drove me fucking insane with your manic indie pixie dream alpha bullshit, but you got the job done in the end.”

Yoongi grumbles his agreement as he lazily thumbs through Namjoon’s phone. He’s looking at photos of Eggs, even though the real Eggs is snoozing in his wooden house only yards away. 

“Excuse me, manic indie pixie alpha? So, if an alpha has feelings these days, he’s a romcom cliche? What do you want me to do, act like a caveman?” Namjoon huffs, a little stung at the evaluation. “And please don’t call the love of my life a job well done.”

“Is that not a bit much?” Seokjin scoffs. “You’ve literally been dating for a month. Hoseok and I dated for two years before I even told him I love him.”

“That isn’t the flex you think it is, hyung,” Yoogni deadpans, cooing at a photo of Eggs in a little star shaped hat that Jungkook bought for him. 

“Yeah,” Namjoon pouts, snatching his phone from Yoongi’s hands and shoving it back in his pants. He knows for a fact that only two swipes backwards and Yoongi will hit some particularly salacious photos that Namjoon had taken for Jungkook’s eyes, and Jungkook’s eyes only. “If anything, maybe you could use a little more emotional intelligence, Kim Seokjin. You’re just lucky that Hoseok stuck around for long enough for you to get your shit together and open up your cold heart.”

“Yah, just because Jungkook is sucking your dick on the regular doesn’t mean you get to be a brat,” Seokjin yelps, throwing his hands in the air with his natural sense of drama. “I’m still two years older than you, Namjoon.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Namjoon narrows his eyes, and turns his eyes to his boyfriend. 

As predicted, Jimin and Taehyung have adopted Jungkook as one of their own, and together they make a dangerous trio. They’re currently sprawled out on the stomachs playing monopoly, a game Namjoon refuses to play because he knows he’s going to get his ass kicked. And worse, Jungkook is so smug when he wins. If Namjoon didn’t find the victory dances so adorable, he’d be sick of it already.

“How are the octopi?” Seokjin asks, and Namjoon knows an olive branch when he sees one. 

“Oh, don’t get him started, hyung,” Jungkook says, rolling over on the floor like a toddler until he reaches Namjoon’s feet. He wraps his arms around the alpha’s ankle and looks up at him with wide eyes. “He’s working too hard. I barely saw him all week, and when I did it was all tentacles this, tentacles that.”

“I should have guessed you’d be into hentai, hyung,” Taehyung perks up, as Jimin tidies up their game. “I have some really wonderful graphic novels you could borrow, real gems of the genre.”

“I am not into hentai,” Namjoon gasps, stomping the one foot that Jungkook isn’t clinging to.

“I wouldn’t judge you if you were,” Taehyung gasps, holding his hands up. “There’s no shame in it. You know, sexual fantasy doesn’t have to mean you want to have sex with a real life octopus. It’s a safe environment for us to explore different things about our—”

“Yeah, I’m sure Jungkookie would be down with you edging him with one of those monster fucker dildos from Bad Dragon,” Jimin interrupts, giddy and eager. “You know, Tae and I have Fenrir, the wolf dragon one, but they have everything you could imagine, definitely the odd tentacle or two.”

Namjoon scrabbles to his feet and wags his finger right in Jimin’s face. “We need to know less about each other. I do not fantasize about octopuses, not octopi by the way. I fantasize about my ridiculously beautiful boyfriend, thank you very much.”

“Oh don’t be so boring,” Yoongi laughs. Namjoon didn’t even see him leave the sofa, but he’s now curled up like a cat in the corner holding Eggs in his hands. 

“Boring? Don’t even talk to me with your hiccup fetish,” Seokjin chimes in. 

Jungkook and Taehyung are both howling with laughter at his feet now.

“He doesn’t have a hiccup fetish, for the last time,” Namjoon groans in exasperation. 

“And what if I do?” Yoongi says in his monotone voice, seemingly content with everything in the world as he runs a delicate finger through Eggs’ rusty mane. 

“I told you,” Taehyung sniffs. 

Jungkook gently rubs Namjoon's leg, massaging the muscles in his calf. He looks up with a content smile. The most shocking thing for Namjoon so far in their short relationship, is witnessing how easy it's been for Jungkook to meld right into his world, into his friendship group. It's no surprise that the evil twins have taken him under their wing, ever eager to corrupt him. But Seokjin and Hoseok love him too, Yoongi even more than he did before. 

Jungkook is wonderful, and he makes Namjoon stupid happy.

"Come here," Namjoon whispers, ignoring his friend's earwigging.

“It’s cool, hyung, let them think what they like,” Jungkook says gently as he climbs into Namjoon’s lap. 

Namjoon wraps his hands around the omega’s waist, and nuzzles into the crook of his neck. “Yeah,” he grins, relaxing into Jungkook.