Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Taehyung walked into the living room with a pillow clutched to his chest and total disorientation on his face.

Jimin, from his place on the floor where he was bent over his left leg trying to stretch out a persistent ache in his thigh, looked up and said, "Hey, Tae."

Taehyung tilted his head down just enough that he could stare at Jimin through his sleep-swollen eyes, and said absolutely nothing.

“Did you sleep well?” Jimin asked, even though he knew the answer, because he’d woken up with Taehyung wrapped around his torso and purring.

Taehyung blinked.

“Are you hungry?” Jimin tried, and Taehyung pulled a face and shook his head, but still said nothing.

Jimin sat upright and rolled his shoulders before twisting his upper body until his back made a satisfying series of pops and cracks that had Taehyung’s face scrunching up in distaste. Jimin ignored him, stretching out his other leg and folding himself over both of them, reaching down to lightly hold his ankles.

“Do you want to stretch with me?”

That, finally, got a response, and Jimin had to bury his smile in his knees as Taehyung’s monstrously gravely morning voice said, “Jimin, you know I can’t touch my toes before noon.”

“Arguably,” Jimin responded, “that’s why you should come stretch with me.”

Taehyung made a snarly little sound of emphatic disagreement and said, “Not all of us enjoy folding ourselves in half recreationally.”

Had he been more awake, Taehyung would have thought that through before he said it. But Jimin took victories any way he could get them, so he pounced unashamedly.

“Interesting,” he said sweetly, and he sat up again so he could watch Taehyung’s face when he said, “I feel like you were enjoying it pretty thoroughly last night.”

It took a few seconds to land. When it did, Taehyung’s face flared endearingly red, and Jimin was already halfway to falling over with laughter before the pillow flew through the air and hit him in the face.

“I’m going back to sleep!” Taehyung yelled, and Jimin called out, “Nooo, stay awake with me!” at his retreating back, even though he knew he’d probably join Taehyung in bed as soon as he finished stretching.

The ache in his thigh wasn’t entirely gone, but Jimin was satisfied enough for a lazy Sunday morning, so he stood. The pillow Taehyung had thrown was still on the floor, and Jimin reached down for it without thinking. It was Taehyung’s favorite pillow, one that he’d brought from his own apartment, and he’d definitely appreciate Jimin bringing it back, even if it was a little strange that he’d brought it out of the bedroom at all—

Jimin stopped with his fingers just barely touching the pillowcase.

“Hmm,” he said.

He left the pillow on the floor.

~

One of Jimin’s favorite things about Jungkook was that he took working out very seriously, so gym nights with Jungkook were always at least three hours long. One of Jimin’s least favorite things about Jungkook was also, consequently, that gym nights were always at least three hours long.

They’d been doing some stupid pushup contest, which Jimin really should have known better than to cave to, and they were somewhere in the indefinable space past a hundred by the time Jungkook finally gasped out, “Oh, my god, hyung, this is the fucking worst, please let’s stop.”

Jimin dropped flat on his face without shame, groaning into the weirdly bouncy floor that covered the entirety of the gym.

“What is wrong with you?” he wailed into the floor, which smelled like sweat and dirt and metal and spilled energy drinks. “My arms are literally going to fall off.”

Jungkook, also on the floor but rolled onto his back, laughed. “You’re the one who said yes.”

Jimin turned his head enough that he could glare and say, “I refuse to be cowed by your biological advantages.”

Jungkook answered with a coo, which was irritating, and then rolled over so that he could pin Jimin to the floor, burrowing his face into the back of Jimin’s neck while Jimin squawked and flailed and made no actual attempt to escape.

“That’s so gross, I’m so sweaty, I stink so bad,” Jimin protested, and Jungkook responded with a soft little growl and a performatively deep inhale.

“Nah, hyung. You smell good. Smell like Tae.”

There were very few things about whatever was going on between Jimin and Taehyung that Jimin wasn’t sure about. Jungkook was one of them.

For a half-second, Jimin stilled. He wanted to ask if he really smelled like Taehyung, because the thought made him a little giddy. He wanted to ask what Taehyung smelled like, because he didn’t know, and that stressed him more than he’d ever like to admit out loud. He wanted to demand that Jungkook call Taehyung hyung, that he not be so informal, but he didn’t think that was his place. He wanted, desperately, to say, “Back the fuck off; he’s mine.”

He wasn’t sure if that was true.

So Jimin just squawked and flailed a little harder, and accepted the hand Jungkook used to pull him to his feet when the other eventually rolled off him. They bickered and shoved at each other the whole way to the showers, and when Jungkook had inevitably forgotten his own body wash and invaded Jimin’s shower cubicle to demand his, Jimin yelled and tweaked his nipples, and Jungkook howled and swatted Jimin’s ass, and despite the nakedness and the excessive touching of two very grown men in a very small shower, everything was normal and what Jungkook had once dubbed “very bro-propriate” until Jungkook’s eyes slid down, and he said, with a lecherous grin, “I bet that makes Tae happy.”

And the thing was that Jimin had known Jungkook first. They were both dance instructors in the same company, and in the midst of endlessly running songs and complaining about trainees that honestly couldn’t tell their left from their right, they’d bonded over the way they both unintentionally slipped into the same dialect on late nights. Jungkook invited Jimin to work out with him; Jimin paid for dinner whenever Jungkook whined. Jungkook sent him links to the most recent English songs he’d heard; Jimin sent him videos of ballet performances.

Jungkook talked, endlessly and in great detail, about the best friend he was sleeping with.

“It’s like,” he would always start, “it’s like, on one hand, he’s my best friend and I love him, you know—but not like that—but on the other hand, he’s fucking hot.”

And Jimin would mmm into his tea, or his shitty coffee, or his equally shitty protein drink, and Jungkook would say, “It’s like—he’s so sweet, but he's also so professional and competent, and sometimes he’ll walk into a room like he fucking owns the place, like he knows everyone wishes they could fuck him, and he’ll be all coy and fucking smug, but then once he’s actually in bed, he gets so breathy, and all, “just fuck me, I don’t wanna think,” and that’s—I mean—I mean, it’s hot.”

And then Jimin would smirk and go mmhmm, and Jungkook would groan and roll his eyes and say, “Trust me, hyung, you’d understand if you knew him.”

The problem was that Jungkook was right, and from the moment the words, “Jimin-hyung, this is Taehyung, the friend I’m always talking about,” left Jungkook’s mouth, Jimin understood perfectly.

And now Jimin was alone under the sputtering spray of a gym shower, belatedly covering his dick as he listened to Jungkook sing while he walked away with Jimin’s pilfered body wash.

Jimin turned around and tipped his face into the spray of water, like the uneven pressure could chip away at the multitudes of thoughts until Jimin’s head was empty.

Taehyung did get breathy in bed, and it was hot.

Jimin just wished Jungkook didn’t know that.

Chapter Text

The first time Jungkook invited Jimin over for dinner with his friends, Jimin had been worried.

“But I’m human,” he’d said, and Jungkook had looked at him like he was an idiot.

“So?”

So Jimin had gone, been ferociously relieved that Namjoon was also human, and then been even more ferociously relieved when that ultimately hadn’t really mattered, because he was just as comfortable clinging to a terrified Hoseok during scary movie nights or being Seokjin’s cooking assistant as he was falling asleep on Namjoon’s shoulder six shots in.

He was pretty sure it was a little socially stigmatizing to think words like “pack,” but he still couldn’t help but think that if they were pack, there was a possibility that he was also pack, and the first time he’d thought that he’d teared up so hard Taehyung had poked him in the cheek and whispered, “Who made Jiminie sad?”

The point, though, was that when he got to Yoongi and Hoseok’s apartment after work and only Seokjin, Yoongi, and Hoseok were there, he just vaulted over the couch so he could land obnoxiously between Yoongi and Hoseok and open his mouth to be fed like a baby bird.

Seokjin yelled something about enabling, but they all collectively ignored him, so when Namjoon and Jungkook walked in, Yoongi was making airplane noises as he poked chopsticks full of bite-sized pieces of meat into Jimin’s mouth while Hoseok made baby noises and stroked over Jimin’s stomach.

Jungkook said, “Ew,” and promptly took the seat closest to the door and farthest away from them, as if he wouldn't be thrilled to be in Jimin's position, and Namjoon shot them a disturbed look and retreated to the kitchen.

Taehyung didn’t get there until almost an hour later, most of which time Jimin had spent either mooching food off the hyungs or trying to flick peanuts into the pocket of Jungkook’s massive t-shirt without the younger noticing. He’d just managed his fourth when the door opened and Taehyung tumbled through, calling out “I’m sorry!” as he fumbled with his shoes and his bag and his coat all at once.

Jimin was halfway up and on his way to help, but as soon as Taehyung looked up he zeroed in on Jimin like it was the most natural thing for Jimin to be the first thing he looked for and waved him back down to his seat.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, and despite how flushed and out of breath he was, he didn’t seem like he was lying, so Jimin settled back into Hoseok’s arm around his shoulders and made a sympathetic noise along with everyone else when Taehyung said, “I just had to stay to late with a client and it was kind of high-stress, so I didn’t get a chance to text. Sorry again.”

The thing between Jimin and Taehyung wasn’t new, but they’d only just started to be more open about it with everyone. Despite that, both Yoongi and Hoseok were already scooting without being asked, making space for another body in between them on the couch, and Jimin thoughtlessly raised his arms. And it should have been fine, really, chill like everything always was when they met together, but all three of them had forgotten that Jungkook was the one closest to the door.

The moment Taehyung walked past, Jungkook reached out to snag him around the waist and haul Taehyung down into his lap with enviably effortless strength. Taehyung let out a surprised laugh, and his wide eyes shot to Jimin’s outstretched arms longingly. But he settled more comfortably on Jungkook’s thighs, laughing hesitantly and slapping at Jungkook’s hands when Jungkook growled playfully and nosed at the hair curling just behind Taehyung’s ear.

At Jimin’s side, Yoongi let out a quiet, almost disappointed-sounding sigh.

“Hyung.” Jimin turned to Yoongi and smiled what Taehyung called his angel smile. “Feed me more.”

The seating shifted throughout the night. At one point, Jimin had his head against Namjoon’s knees and his hand on Hoseok’s ankle, and at another point he had his feet in Seokjin’s lap and one hand carding through Jungkook’s hair. And then he somehow ended up alone on Yoongi’s enormous armchair that they all teased him for but secretly loved, and not two seconds later he had a lap full of weight and warmth and the loveliest smile he would ever see.

“Hi,” Taehyung said.

“Hi,” Jimin said back.

“Sorry about that,” Taehyung murmured, low, so that only Jimin could hear it. “It’s been a while since he’s been that touchy, and I wasn’t expecting it.”

“That’s okay,” Jimin responded honestly, smoothing his hands up Taehyung’s thighs, careful to keep the touch appropriate for the setting. “You still ended up where I wanted you.”

And then Taehyung didn’t say anything, just looked at Jimin like he’d never been more content, and Jimin felt his smile grow wider, push up until his eyes were almost hidden.

“Work was okay?” Jimin asked, and Taehyung shrugged and shifted in his lap while Jimin admired him. He’d come still dressed for the office, and though he’d ditched the suit jacket and tie, and his sleeves were rolled up and his shirt unbuttoned scandalously low down his chest, his clothes were still crisp, his hair was still gelled back, and he was wearing one of his expensive watches. Jimin liked him soft, fluffy-haired and pouty and wrinkly from early mornings and late nights, but he liked him like this, too, sharp with hard-earned success and defied expectation and easy confidence.

“A little frustrating, but not more than normal.”

Jimin ran a gentle hand up Taehyung’s back, and Taehyung arched subtly into the touch, eyes closing and a peaceful hum leaving him as Jimin’s hand reached the back of his neck. Jimin pressed his fingers in gently, checking for tension, but there were no winces, only a soft purr that elicited a smile Jimin didn’t bother hiding.

“Are you coming over tonight?” Jimin asked, and he kept it quiet, private, an affair over which only he and Taehyung needed to be concerned.

Taehyung pushed his neck back into Jimin’s fingers. “Mmhmm. Is that okay?”

He opened his eyes as he asked it, so sincere, as if Jimin could ever say anything other than yes.

“Of course, Tae,” Jimin told him, and Taehyung beamed and adjusted himself until he could curl up in Jimin’s lap with his nose tucked into Jimin’s neck and Jimin’s arms loose around his waist. Jimin was pretty sure both Yoongi and Jungkook were looking at them, alert in that way that meant they were either smelling something that confused them or wanted to talk, but everything was secondary to the way Taehyung had begun a continuous, quiet purr, and Jimin didn’t move until Hoseok was shooing everyone out the door.

Taehyung was half asleep, arms around Jimin’s neck and face pressed to one of Jimin’s shoulders as they all shuffled outside. Jimin thought that he heard Jungkook call out, “Tae! Do I need to drive you home?” and Yoongi respond, “Jimin’s clearly got him, Jungkook-ah,” but he was focused with trying to wrestle Taehyung’s endlessly long legs into the car.

Jimin drove while Taehyung sang along quietly to the radio, and when Taehyung slipped his hand over the center console so he could rest his open palm on Jimin’s thigh, Jimin dropped a hand from the steering wheel so he could fit their fingers together.

By the time they were in Jimin’s apartment, toeing off shoes and shrugging off jackets, Taehyung was more awake than he had been, but Jimin was still anticipating a quiet night where all they did was curl up in bed and sleep. Taehyung’s hands slipping under his shirt were a pleasant surprise.

Warm fingers pressed against the bare skin of Jimin’s hip, and Taehyung fit his larger frame up tight against Jimin’s front.

“Is this okay?” he whispered, voice fathomlessly deep, and Jimin kept his own voice just as low when he replied.

“Yes.”

They left their clothes next to their shoes by the door, and when a naked Taehyung carefully pushed an equally naked Jimin onto the couch and then followed him down, Jimin couldn’t help the content noise he made.

“What?” Taehyung asked, and Jimin laughed.

“Sorry, just—you’re really warm. It’s nice.”

He shifted under Taehyung’s weight, and Taehyung nipped at his shoulder to keep him still, then immediately got distracted and started trailing kisses down Jimin’s body.

Taehyung checked in again, another soft, “It’s okay?” before he was swallowing Jimin down, calmly catching one of Jimin’s hands and bringing it to his head when Jimin reached out to grab the back of the couch. Sometimes Taehyung liked to be held in place, made to take Jimin’s cock down his throat while tears slid from his eyes, but it seemed like the wrong kind of night for that, so Jimin just petted through his dark hair and whispered, “So good, Tae, you’re so—oh my god, you’re so fucking good.”

Taehyung pulled off when Jimin warned that he was close, mouth wet and plush and too kissable for Jimin to resist. They adjusted so Jimin was sitting with Taehyung straddling his lap, and as soon as Jimin took them both in hand, Taehyung was letting out obscene little sounds and arching his neck back so far it looked painful.

“Easy,” Jimin murmured, and pressed kisses all up and down Taehyung’s throat. He smelled sweet, like something floral and barely spicy, and Jimin made an absent note to himself to ask later if Taehyung had gotten a new perfume. For now, Taehyung twisted his long fingers through Jimin’s hair and brought his mouth lower, just at the junction of neck and shoulder, and it was with Jimin’s mouth open over that particular stretch of skin that Taehyung moaned and came apart.

Jimin followed barely a minute later, because the sight of Taehyung mid climax was probably a little more affecting that it should have been, and then for a moment they just sat there, Taehyung slumped in Jimin’s lap and Jimin’s hand still caught between them, covered in filth.

“Listen,” Jimin said eventually. “This is gross.”

Taehyung laughed and rolled off him, then he reached up and pretended to hi-five Jimin’s  jizz-covered hand.

“Oh, my god! No, you nasty shit, don’t even pretend!”

Taehyung cackled and left Jimin scrambling for safety away from the couch,  but by the time Jimin came back with clean hands and a warm washcloth, Taehyung was spread out shamelessly on the couch, all naked and smiley and pliant.

“Let’s sleep here tonight,” Taehyung said as Jimin carefully dragged the cloth over his stomach. “That seems nice.”

“I have a perfectly good bed literally right through there,” Jimin said, pointing.

Taehyung blinked twice at him, therefore rendering all arguments invalid.

Jimin sighed. “Fine. I’ll get blankets.”

He turned before he could see Taehyung’s excited shimmy, but he heard it in the rustle of still-bare skin against the couch. He tossed the washcloth directly in his tiny washer, pulled on boxers and a t-shirt, and then grabbed blankets, pillows, and pajama pants before returning to the living room.

Taehyung pouted at the pants Jimin threw at him, uttering a miffed, “Pants?” like Jimin had betrayed him.

“You’re so sweaty when you sleep,” Jimin shot back. “I don’t want to stick. Besides, I’m not even making you wear underwear.”

Taehyung nodded like that was a fair point and pulled on the pajama pants, then made no effort to help Jimin lay out blankets and arrange pillows, actively trying to spread himself out so that he was more in the way. He giggled like a child when Jimin manhandled him up so that he could fit a blanket underneath him, made grabby hands as soon as Jimin slid a pillow under his head, and immediately pushed his hand past the waistband of Jimin’s boxers once they were snuggled up together.

Taehyung’s hand felt enormous on Jimin’s ass, and he wiggled against it, eliciting a gentle squeeze.

“We literally just did sex,” he said, and Taehyung curled up tighter against his chest, stroking over Jimin’s ass, from his waist to the top of his thigh, with a dreamy little hum.

“Yes, but butt-touches are different."

Jimin couldn’t find it in himself to disagree.

Trapped between the back of the couch and Taehyung’s overly warm body, Jimin knew that the night would be hot, unpleasant, and definitely result in back pain and complaints from Taehyung that he knew they should have slept in the bed, god, Jimin, why don’t you listen?

Jimin fell asleep with his smile buried in Taehyung’s hair.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Taehyung woke Jimin up with endless kisses to his cheeks and called out a goodbye when Jimin was still in the shower, trying to get his eyes to stay open for more than a few seconds.

When he came out of the shower, Taehyung was gone, but the clothes they’d left by the door were in the washer, the pajama pants Taehyung had borrowed were neatly folded on Jimin’s bed, and all the blankets and pillows were in a disorderly pile on the floor, right next to the pillow Taehyung had thrown at Jimin’s head two days earlier.

Jimin didn’t touch a thing.

~

Jungkook wasn’t at the doors where they always met for lunch, so Jimin descended into the bowels of the company building, where the oldest, smallest dance studios were. As expected, music was streaming from the last door down the darkest hallway, but instead of the usual R&B, Jimin was pretty sure he was hearing Tchaikovsky.

“Shit,” Jimin murmured, and pushed open the door.

Their company favored hip hop-style dancing, so most days that was all Jimin and Jungkook did. But Jimin had specialized in contemporary back in college, and Jungkook had toured with a ballet company for a couple years before he quit to teach instead. That was easy to forget when you were drilling kpop numbers all day, but watching Jungkook move through arabesques and sissones and jétés was an almost frightening reminder that this was still what his body knew best.

Jungkook didn’t look at him as Jimin shut the door and sat against the back wall, but Jimin was content to watch as Jungkook launched into the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux male variation. He’d stripped down to just his black leggings, and with his hair pulled back and the dark ink of his tattoos stark against his pale torso and arms, he looked every bit the black swan sent to break a promise of true love.

The variation was short, but Jimin could see the way the muscles in Jungkook’s thighs were jumping, and the moment Jungkook hit his final pose Jimin was up and across the room, pausing the music.

“I wasn’t done!”

“You were,” Jimin responded easily. He turned and met Jungkook’s glare head-on. “You only dance Swan Lake when it’s a bad day, and you always overdo it.”

Jungkook’s glare held for a few more seconds, then he let out a breath that seemed to go on forever and settled on the floor with crossed legs and slumped shoulders.

Jimin grabbed Jungkook’s water bottle and walked across the studio, dropping down by Jungkook’s side. He held out the bottle and frowned disapprovingly at the way Jungkook’s arm shook when he took it with a quiet thanks.

“Seriously, JK,” Jimin said quietly, absently tapping at the Carolina allspice tattoo on the back of Jungkook’s shoulder as Jungkook drained his water bottle. “What’s going on?”

Jungkook set his bottle down and tipped, dropping his whole sweaty, shirtless top half in Jimin’s lap. Jimin let out an oof, and immediately reached for the ponytail in Jungkook’s hair. He pulled the band free and slipped it onto his own wrist, careful not to pull at Jungkook’s scalp as he wiggled his fingers into the mess of sweaty hair and started to comb it loose.

They sat in comfortable silence, Jungkook curled up and Jimin patiently dragging fingers through his hair, until Jungkook eventually shifted and said, “I had a trainee pass out in my class.”

“Aish,” Jimin said. “Bad?”

“I mean, I caught him,” Jungkook responded. “Before he hit the ground at least.” He shifted again, turning until he could push his face into Jimin’s stomach. “So he didn’t get hurt or anything.”

That was honestly a best-case scenario. Jimin had had at least two classes where someone had ended up in an unplanned heap on the floor, and one of those had resulted in a concussion. Still, it was always jarring, and Jimin tried to make generally comforting noises, only realizing once they’d already left his throat that he was just imitating the sounds Taehyung made whenever he was trying to make someone feel better.

“So it could have been a lot worse,” Jimin said diplomatically, because he didn’t want to downplay either what happened or what Jungkook was feeling, but he still wasn’t quite sure why it was enough of a deal for Jungkook to be drilling Tchaikovsky over it. “What’s got you upset, then?”

Again, it took a while for Jungkook to answer, and Jimin used the time to separate three messy sections of hair and twist them into a short braid, then comb them all out again.

Jungkook took a breath that made his torso even more imposing in Jimin’s lap, then let it all out in a sigh until only Jimin’s favorite Jungkookie was left, and mumbled, “They made me take the day off to reconsider how my abilities and stamina don’t necessarily reflect the abilities and stamina of the trainees I’m working with, and to reflect on how I can give better instruction to all trainees, not just the ones who share my presentation.”

“What the hell,” Jimin snarled. “This is just because you’re an alpha?”

Jungkook curled up tighter, and a sound left him that was probably best qualified as a whine.

“Have you told Taehyung?” Jimin demanded, and Jungkook buried his face even more aggressively in Jimin’s stomach.

“No,” he mumbled, words muffled by Jimin’s shirt. “I don’t want him to be disappointed in me.”

“Why would he be disappointed? Because you’re being discriminated against?” Jimin grabbed a firm handful of Jungkook’s hair and gently pulled until Jungkook’s enormous eyes came into view. “Kook-ah. We both know that those trainees aren’t eating or sleeping enough, and that’s not our fault.”

“Yeah,” Jungkook shot back, “and then on top of that I’m pushing them too hard.”

Jimin let out a sigh and bent down, smoothing the hair away from Jungkook’s forehead and pressing a kiss there.

“I think,” he said, “that you’re not in a problem-solving mood. I think you’re more in a give me love and chicken kind of mood.”

Jungkook, large and half-naked and stunningly attractive and painfully cute in Jimin’s lap, answered with a sigh of his own and said, “That’s probably fair.”

Jimin dropped another kiss on his forehead. “Put a shirt on. I’m calling Tae.”

~

Jimin’s phone said it was ten minutes to midnight when his apartment door opened. He stayed in bed, listening to soft humming and the shuffle of feet, the sound of the bathroom sink and the creaky section of floor outside his room, and wordlessly pulled back the covers and when the silhouette of Taehyung’s head poked through the bedroom door.

“Sorry,” Taehyung whispered. “I was with Jungkookie. You didn’t have to wait up.”

Jimin just flapped the covers at him, and Taehyung walked fully into the room, shedding clothes as he came until he was crawling into Jimin’s arms in nothing at all.

“You can’t tell me to put clothes on tonight,” Taehyung said as he nudged his head against Jimin’s chin.

Jimin felt his lips curving up into a smile. “And why is that?”

“Because I,” Taehyung said, “have been a delight today.”

Jimin ran his fingers over the smooth expanse of Taehyung’s back, keeping his touch light enough that Taehyung shivered. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Taehyung said emphatically. “I was charming, and productive, and attentive, and very professional, and I don’t think anyone could tell how frustrated I was.” He nuzzled a little more aggressively, forcing Jimin’s head back so he had more access to Jimin’s throat. “And I did all of that with Jungkookie tagging along behind me like a lost puppy. So you can’t tell me to put clothes on.” Almost to himself, he muttered, “I deserve freedom.”

“Naked Tae night,” Jimin agreed easily, because that wasn’t exactly a trial. “Is JK feeling any better?”

“It’s been a while since he’s come to work with me, and every time I introduced him to someone knew, they’d ask, ‘Oh, is this your alpha?’ and then treat him like the cutest thing they’d ever seen, so by the end of the day he was smug as hell,” Taehyung said wryly.

Jimin adjusted himself beneath Taehyung so he could reach down and trail the same light touch across the very base of Taehyung’s spine. “I’m sure that thrilled him.”

They were both silent for a moment, Taehyung absently nosing along Jimin’s throat and Jimin letting his fingers run across Taehyung’s back and hips as he wondered, a little absently, if that was the kind of thing that should bother him when he was the one who had Taehyung in his bed.

They were both silent for a moment, Taehyung absently nosing along Jimin’s throat and Jimin letting his fingers run across Taehyung’s back and hips.

“We talked after I was done with work,” Taehyung said eventually, his voice so quiet Jimin had to strain to hear him even from so close. “And Jungkookie was really sad.” Taehyung pushed his face into Jimin’s neck like he could hide there. “I hate it when Jungkookie’s sad. It’s fucking devastating.”

“I know,” Jimin said.

Taehyung pulled away enough to raise his head, and though it was dark enough that all Jimin could really see was the vague shape of him, he could hear the frustration in his voice and picture what that would look like in the slant of his eyes and the clench of his jaw. “And it’s bullshit, what they said to him. He’s so careful about making sure that he doesn’t hold anyone to his own standard, because he’s so aware of how his biology affects his physical capabilities.”

“I know,” Jimin said, because even though Taehyung probably didn’t need to hear it, Jimin felt like he needed to say it. “He didn’t really seem like he wanted solutions when I was with him, so I didn’t say anything, but I’ve had students pass out in class before.”

Taehyung sat fully upright, and Jimin watched the shapes of his arms as he gestured to emphasize his words. “Exactly! And didn’t you have a girl get a concussion one time?”

“Yep. And no one said anything to me.”

“Kookie even caught the kid who fell!”

“Really he did everything right,” Jimin agreed, and Taehyung curled in again so that he could press his forehead to Jimin’s chest.

“I hate that there’s still so much unthinking discrimination,” Taehyung said, and Jimin smoothed a hand over his head in sympathy. “I know that’s literally what I deal with all day every day, but it feels worse when it’s someone I know.”

Jimin fit a hand under Taehyung chin so he could pull him up and drop a kiss on his cheek. “Are you going to pursue it?”

“Kook asked me not to.”

Jimin smiled against Taehyung’s cheek. “But?”

Taehyung let out a long breath, “But, without technically violating any NDAs, we’re maybe possibly going to be representing a new act from your company, and I could maybe possibly mention to the CEO in my meeting with him tomorrow that it would look bad if news got out that there’s been discrimination in a company that’s about to debut the first mainstream mixed human/lykan idol group.”

Jimin surged upright, catching Taehyung by the shoulders so he moved with Jimin instead of toppling off. “You’re repping HiGEM?”

Taehyung’s hands clapped over Jimin’s mouth as he needlessly hissed, “Shhh! I know you’ve signed NDAs, too!” He was speaking through a laugh, though, so Jimin just tried to bite his palms and waited for Taehyung to pull his hands away with an aggrieved whine.

“Those girls are so talented,” Jimin said, wrapping his arms around Taehyung’s waist and pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “I know they’ve been really concerned about debuting, and it’s a relief they’ll have you on their team.”

Taehyung sighed and pushed Jimin back down. “I mean, not me personally, but I’ll definitely keep an eye on them.” He shifted, trying to get comfortable, and Jimin made an effort to think calm thoughts that didn’t involve flipping them over and pinning Taehyung to the bed. “If the debut goes well, this could be a really huge step in representation.”

A shiver ran down Taehyung’s spine, and Jimin dutifully didn’t tell Taehyung to put clothes on, just reached down so he could pull the blankets fully over them again. Taehyung hummed contentedly, rolling off Jimin enough that he could plaster himself to Jimin’s side, looping an arm over his waist and a leg over his hips.

“That’s part of why I think it’s important to pursue the thing with Jungkookie,” Taehyung murmured after a few moments of silence. “Aside from the fact that he’s my best friend and any time someone makes him sad I want to rip their throat out, it could honestly damage the success of the group if someone goes digging for dirt.”

“Protective Taehyungie,” Jimin said fondly, but he somehow couldn’t help the way his hand drifted along Taehyung’s side until it rested just above his hip, where the delicate, full-color tiger lily that was Taehyung’s only tattoo sat.

He thought it was subtle enough to go unnoticed, but, as always, nothing slipped by Taehyung.

“Does it bother you?” he asked softly, lips barely moving against Jimin’s jaw.

It would have been pointless and unnecessary to lie, but Jimin wasn’t quite sure what the truth was, so he settled for kissing Taehyung’s head and saying, “I don’t know that I’m in a position where I’m allowed to be bothered.”

“I’m cuddling you naked,” Taehyung replied easily. “You’re allowed.”

Unsure what to say, Jimin just pressed another kiss to Taehyung’s head, and eventually Taehyung said, “I’m trying to do better, but I’ve spent a long time letting Jungkookie do whatever he wants, and I’m still not very good at knowing what my boundaries should be.”

“I feel like he sometimes takes advantage of you,” Jimin said, so quietly he almost hoped Taehyung didn’t hear it.

He felt Taehyung tense against him, then let out a long breath, ticklish and warm against Jimin’s neck.

“Protective Taehyungie,” Jimin said again, tone wry, and Taehyung growled playfully against his throat.

Jimin growled back, which was entirely useless because he was human, but made Taehyung laugh like he’d known it would. They took time to readjust until they were face to face and Taehyung was drawing shapes across Jimin’s cheeks with his fingertips before Taehyung said slowly, “I don’t think you’re wrong. But I also think I don’t like to admit that.” A little quieter, Taehyung said, “He’s my best friend, and I love him more than almost anyone, but I think that's always made it really hard for me to say no.”

“He’s my friend, too,” Jimin said, dragging a thumb along the sharp cut of Taehyung’s jaw and ignoring the way Taehyung unconsciously arched with it, exposing his neck. “And I don’t think he’s ever trying to be malicious or anything, he’s just—”

Jimin cut himself off, not sure how to end that, and Taehyung jumped in, a little fond and little begrudging.

“Really used to getting everything he wants and kind of a spoiled brat sometimes?”

Jimin buried his chuckle in his pillow. “Yeah. Maybe a little spoiled.”

Taehyung shuffled closer, very gently touching their noses together, and whispered, “Can this be an ongoing conversation? I’m tired tonight and I don’t have a lot of really cohesive thoughts, but I think this is important to talk about.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” Jimin put a hand to Taehyung’s jaw and tipped his head down just barely enough to smack a kiss against the tip of his nose. “Sorry if I made it a little weird.”

“Sorry that things with me and Jungkook make everything a little weird.”

“Fair,” Jimin muttered, and Taehyung pressed in until they were close enough for Jimin to feel his smile.

“Kisses?” Taehyung asked, voice sugar-sweet and pouty-cute, and Jimin answered by gently catching Taehyung’s bottom lip between his teeth and cushioning his own lips around it.

“Always, Tae.”

Chapter Text

Taehyung sent a text hours after he should have been done with work that just said, get rich and let me be your sugar baby so I never have to go to work again followed by nine crying faces.

It was going to be another late day, then.

Also, there was no way, because while Taehyung had never actually specified how much he made, Jimin was pretty sure it was somewhere around triple what he and Jungkook made combined.

Jimin had texted back send me a selfie so I can cry with you while looking at your beautiful face, and Taehyung had predictably sent him one of those horrible selfies that was mostly nose and chin and comically widened eyes.

Jimin saved it to his phone immediately.

And then he called Seokjin, because he’d been planning on dinner with Taehyung tonight, and Jimin wasn’t great at being alone on a normal night, much less a night he’d had expectations, as laid-back as they were.

“Hyung!” Jimin exclaimed as soon as Seokjin answered. “How are you?”

There was a half-beat of silence, then Seokjin said, “Is this you begging to come over for dinner so you’re not lonely?”

“Absolutely,” Jimin said, because shame was for other people.

Seokjin let out an aggrieved sigh far too dramatic to be sincere and said, “Fine. Bring beer.”

~

The thing about Seokjin and Namjoon was that they were the power couple/stand-in parental figures/role models/counselors/relationship goals that Jimin never knew he needed. They made things look easy in a way that made it clear how much work they put in to keep everything running smoothly, and if somewhere were to ask Jimin what his perfect life would look like in five years, it would probably be pretty close to what Seokjin and Namjoon had.

Unfortunately, their own successes seemed to have gifted them the preternatural ability to sniff out the flaws in other peoples’ lives, and that made them fucking nosy.

Hyejin opened the door when Jimin knocked, which was a pleasant surprise, and he immediately picked her up, exclaiming “Hyejin-ah!” and swinging her around while carefully not knocking her into the door or any of the walls.

From somewhere in the depths of the apartment Seokjin bellowed, “What have I said about answering the door, Hyejin-ah?” and Hyejin, with her arms firmly wrapped around Jimin’s neck as he balanced her and his case of beer, bellowed back, “Joonie said I could if I know them!”

Jimin shut the door with his foot, giving Hyejin a little boost so that she was resting more solidly against his hip, and kicked off his shoes. He slipped his feet into a pair of guest slippers and made his way to the kitchen, where he was pretty sure Seokjin had yelled from.

“Can I come in, hyung?” he asked belatedly, shooting Seokjin his cutest smile as he set the beer on the counter and adjusted both his arms around Hyejin.

“Apparently, I don’t have a say in the matter,” Seokjin muttered, waving a pair of chopsticks at the two of them. “Not when this little hooligan and Namjoonie are constantly conspiring against me. Also,” Seokjin fixed Hyejin with a withering glare that held so much affection Jimin could have cried over it, “what have I said about making people carry you everywhere?”

“He just sorta picked me up,” Hyejin said honestly, and Seokjin turned that withering glare to Jimin, barely losing any of the affection.

“Enabler.”

Jimin just shrugged, because he definitely was.

“How did you even know it was Jimin-ah anyway?” Seokjin demanded. “What if it hadn’t been someone you knew and then even Joonie got mad at you?”

From her spot in Jimin’s arms, Hyejin rolled her eyes. At four, that was a skill she still hadn’t quite mastered, so Jimin had to move out of the way as she rolled her entire head to achieve the effect she so often saw from her father. “But I did know, appa. My jageunabeoji smells like Taetae.”

This time when Seokjin looked at Jimin, it was sharp.

“Your samchon, sweetheart,” Seokjin said, and waited for Hyejin to repeat it before he added, “now go find Joonie and tell him we’re eating.”

Jimin let her down and she ran off yelling, “Joonie! Appa says it’s dinnertime!”

“She’s right, you know.”

Jimin turned, and Seokjin was watching him like a hawk while he set dishes on the table.

“Sorry?”

“You smell so much like Taehyung-ah,” Seokjin said. “Like, you reek.”

Despite all the times Jungkook and then Taehyung had tried to explain it, Jimin still wasn’t entirely sure how the scent thing worked. He knew that some of it was proximity, but he also knew that scent glands were involved, and that some scents could be washed off while other couldn’t, and emotions and intent could dictate the strength or long-lastingness of a scent, and, according to an offhand comment Taehyung had made once when they weren’t even talking about scent at all, sexual compatibility often had a significant effect. 

All that said, Jimin wasn’t really sure how to respond. Taehyung had spent yesterday with Jungkook, but he’d also spent the night cuddling Jimin like Jimin was a teddy bear, so Jimin thought it seemed pretty reasonable that he smelled like Taehyung.

Also, Jungkook had kind of indicated a few times that he always smelled like Taehyung these days.

Eventually, Jimin just settled on saying, “So I hear,” and then Hyejin was barreling back into the kitchen with Namjoon in tow, and the matter was set aside for a while.

Dinner was delicious, relaxed, and entirely focused on Hyejin, who exclaimed “Appa, this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted!” no less than four times, and then immediately flipped around and announced, “I’m actually not really into rice these days. I liked rice more when I was three,” when Seokjin told her to finish her food.

When the rice was eventually gone (though Jimin noticed that Namjoon had eaten half of it when Seokjin got up to get Hyejin more juice), Seokjin announced, very unsubtly, “Hyejin-ah, Joonie and I need to have a conversation with our guest. What do you want to do while we talk about boring adult stuff?”

“Can I watch Pokémon on your bed?”

Almost like it was rehearsed, all three of them, perfectly in time, belted out, “PO-KÉ-MOOOOON! GOTTA CATCH ‘EM AAAAALLLLL!” and Jimin fell out of his chair laughing.

“Two episodes!” Seokjin said, pointing imperiously at his daughter as Jimin picked himself up. “Then it’s bedtime for you, tiny miss.”

“Tiny appa!” Hyejin shot back, pointing just as imperiously, and then Namjoon scooped her up and hauled her out of the room, singing the theme song off-key at her while she made Pikachu noises and pretended to try and electrocute him.

By the time Namjoon came back, Jimin had helped Seokjin clear the food from the table and pack away leftovers, and when Seokjin raised an eyebrow from where he was opening three cans of beer, Namjoon just smiled and shrugged unselfconsciously and said, “It was the episode where they meet Charmander.”

“A classic,” Seokjin agreed, handing Namjoon and Jimin their cans before he gestured them back to the table.

Jimin sat, both because he didn’t know that he had another choice and because Seokjin and Namjoon had uncommonly serious expressions on their faces.

“Is this an intervention?” Jimin asked, mostly joking, and then felt his heart give a nervous little stutter when neither of them laughed.

There must have been some change in his expression, because Namjoon reached across the table and patted his hand comfortingly, and Seokjin said, “No, it’s okay, we just wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?” Jimin asked, even though the question was pointless, because he already knew.

“How are you?” Seokjin said instead of answering the question. “How’s your, uh, thing with Taehyung-ah going?”

Jimin set his beer down.

Almost from the moment they’d met, Taehyung had felt like an extension of Jimin. Jimin had always been a little reserved, a little isolated, but it had felt natural to stop being Jimin and to suddenly become Jimin-and-Taehyung, Taehyung-and-Jimin. Taehyung had said a few times that it was like they were made to fit together in all the ways that were most comfortable and most safe, and Jimin, in a rare fit of poetry, had once said that it was like they’d been born with the keys to unlock each other’s souls.

Soulmates, Taehyung would whisper with his lips pressed against Jimin’s forehead, or eyelid, or mouth, or cheek, or throat, or chest, or wrist, or hip, or thigh, or the boney arch of his foot. Soulmates.

Sometimes it was hard to remember that Jimin was the only person who heard those whispers. Sometimes it was hard to remember that they’d only met six months ago, and that no one else knew how it felt like their hearts had known each other much longer. Sometimes it was hard to remember that to everyone else they weren’t Jimin-and-Taehyung, Taehyung-and-Jimin, but Jimin-who-had-fallen-under-the-spell of Taehyung-who-was-beautiful-and-flirty-and-wanted-by-everyone, and that to everyone else their coming together wasn’t a cosmic event full of fate and stardust and eternity, but just a thing.

“My thing with Taehyung is going fine,” Jimin said.

“Have you spent much time with him lately?” Namjoon asked.

Yesterday, Jimin wanted to say. He slept naked in my arms. He woke up and kissed me so deeply I thought I’d never breathe again. He curled around my back when we showered together.

“He’s been a little busy the past few days,” Jimin said.

Seokjin and Namjoon exchanged a look that Jimin didn’t like, and he wished he could abandon this conversation and go watch Pokémon with Hyejin instead.

“You know that Taehyung was with Jungkookie yesterday?” Seokjin asked, and his tone was a little too gentle.

Of course I know, Jimin wanted to say. I was the one who called him. I hugged him and said, “The baby’s sad,” and he pressed his nose under my chin and inhaled like I was the only thing he wanted to smell and told me, “God, I spend so much time missing you.”

“Yeah, we talked about it,” Jimin said.

“Good!” Seokjin said, a little too enthusiastically, nodding along for emphasis and smiling brightly at Jimin in a way that felt almost condescending. “That’s really good!”

“Hyung, what is this?” Jimin demanded, leaning back so he could fold his arms across his chest and try and hide the way his fingers were starting to twitch. He couldn’t tell if he was mad, a little scared, or just confused, because while they’d always been a little weird about everything with him and Taehyung, always tiptoeing around it in conversations, he didn’t think anything had happened that warranted an intervention.

“Jimin.”

The fact that it was Namjoon was worse.

The thing was that Namjoon had known Taehyung almost as long as Jungkook had, so when he leaned forward and said, slowly and gently and sincerely, “We just want to talk to you about Taehyung and Jungkook,” Jimin felt his shoulders dropping in defeat before Namjoon even said anything else.

He was pretty sure that they said helpful things. Reassuring things. Things like, it’s obvious how much Taehyung likes you, and you seem like you make each other happy, and, from Seokjin, sometimes I don’t realize he’s been having a bad day until you walk in and his scent suddenly brightens.

But it was hard to focus on the nice things when Jimin heard everything else.

It takes Taehyung a long time to form relationships; everything with you two happened so quickly.

Taehyung and Jungkook have known each forever. They practically grew up together.

Taehyung dates a lot, but never for very long.

You know about Jungkook and Taehyung, right? How they gravitate toward each other when neither of them are dating anyone else?

Taehyung’s so sweet and accommodating; sometimes it’s easy to get the wrong impression from him.

No matter how many people he dates, Taehyung always goes back to Jungkook.

Taehyung’s never dated a human before.

Taehyung and Jungkook have always had such a special relationship. They’ve always been so intense; so intimate.

And then, in all seriousness, Namjoon had leaned across the table and said, “I know it can be hard for us to understand, Jimin-ah, but there’s a kind of natural chemistry and inherent attraction between alphas and omegas that we, as humans, really can’t compete with.”

Jimin stared. At Namjoon, at Seokjin, at the two of them together, the picture of interspecies relationship perfection, a human and an alpha raising a lykan child from Seokjin's failed marriage to an omega woman, and thought with a viciousness that straightened his spine and drew a too-sharp inhale through his nose, Fuck you.

“I think I’m going to go home,” Jimin said.

They rose almost in unison, both of their faces falling in misery.

“Jiminie,” Namjoon said.

“Fuck, Jimin-ah,” Seokjin said. “We didn’t mean to—”

Jimin knew that. He knew they didn’t mean to. He knew they were being sincere and caring and concerned and trying as best they could to make sure everyone was okay and no one got hurt, and Jimin was sure he would forgive them the moment he started thinking a little more rationally. But, for the moment, Jimin didn’t think he could stay any more.

“Thank you for dinner,” Jimin said, and when he bowed it was probably a little too formal, but his spine was too stiff to accommodate anything else. “And for letting me come over. Tell Hyejin-ah I said bye.”

One of Namjoon’s hands floated up, like he wanted to reach for Jimin. But Jimin was clearly not in the mood, so Namjoon’s hand dropped to his side, and Seokjin sat back down, sinking into his chair a little too heavily.

“Sorry, Jimin-ah,” Seokjin said, and Namjoon echoed his words.

“That’s okay.”

It wasn’t, really, but Jimin just wanted to say whatever he needed to say so he could leave.

“Thank you for coming,” Namjoon said softly. “It’s always nice to see you.”

“You too, hyungs,” Jimin said, and his words felt like cardboard in his mouth, dry and papery and bland.

He bowed again and then turned to leave, Namjoon half-heartedly following him to the door where Jimin switched the slippers for his shoes, opened the door, and left the apartment to the sound of Namjoon’s quiet little, “Goodbye, Jimin-ah.”

~

Jimin drove for two hours before he headed back to his apartment, because he hated going home when he felt like such a mess inside.

Taehyung’s shoes were by the door, and even just the sight of them had some of the tension in Jimin’s shoulders releasing. But Taehyung wasn’t in the kitchen, or the living room, or the bathroom, or the guest/office/storage room, and when Jimin poked his head into the bedroom, the light was on but he didn’t see anything.

“Tae?” he called out, and after a few seconds of silence, a muffled kind of purr came from the space between Jimin’s bed and the wall.

Jimin was already grinning as he crawled across his bed so he could look down at where Taehyung was curled up on the ground, wrapped in a throw Jimin had bought him after he’d navigated a particularly rough contract with two beta models whose agencies were going to drop them because they got engaged to each other.

“You okay down there?” Jimin asked, folding his elbows on the edge of the mattress and resting his chin on them so he could look down at Taehyung comfortably.

Taehyung rolled his head from where he’d seemingly been staring raptly at the wall, glazed eyes catching on Jimin’s face. He smiled like it was reflex, twisting on the floor until he could look up at Jimin from his back, while his fingers endlessly stroked along the throw.

“This,” he said wonderingly, “is the softest blanket in the world.”

“That is why I bought it for you,” Jimin agreed, and even though he’d been caught between furious and heartbroken barely an hour ago, as he watched Taehyung rub his cheek against the throw and purr, Jimin was so full of affection he could have lifted up and floated off.

“How long have you been down there?” Jimin asked, because it kind of looked like it had been a while. “And, actually, why are you down there?”

The space between Taehyung’s eyebrows creased, and he glanced at the wall, the bed, and then up at Jimin’s face, like he hadn’t realized he was on the floor until that very moment.

“I don’t really know,” he said, and Jimin didn’t think he was imaging the slur to Taehyung’s words. “I just—I walked in the bedroom to find comfy clothes, and then I saw this blanket on the bed, and then I thought, that looks soft, and then I think I grabbed it so I could curl up with it, and then I heard you and I looked up and there you were!”

Taehyung made it sound like that was the most perfect ending any story could ever have, and Jimin felt the last of the tension leave his body.

“Do you want to come back up here with me?” Jimin asked, and Taehyung let out an excited little yelp and squirmed in delight.

“Yes!”

“Okay, Tae,” Jimin said, rolling off the bed and fitting himself on the floor next to Taehyung. “Let me get you up.”

Taehyung was really too tall to be trying to maneuver out from such a tight space, and his general bonelessness didn’t help, but Jimin regularly worked out with one of the most competitive alphas he knew, and he’d weirdly had a lot of experience hauling Taehyung around. So he got his arms around the taller man and hefted him up without much trouble, making sure he was bringing the throw with him before he deposited Taehyung on the bed.

When he stood up, Taehyung’s eyes were fixed on him, bright with attention, interest, and definite arousal.

Jimin raised a hand and coughed to hide his grin.

“What’s up?” he asked innocently.

Taehyung’s mouth opened just enough to let the tip of his tongue through, and Jimin felt his own arousal curling low in his belly as that tongue flicked across Taehyung’s lips, giving them just enough wetness to make them shine.

“Jimin-ah,” Taehyung said, voice dropped to that particularly enticing rumble. “Jimin-ah, you’re so sexy.”

Jimin stayed standing, barely arching his neck and watching as Taehyung’s eyes flared with the motion.

“You horny?” Jimin asked, still keeping his tone light, and Taehyung let out the softest little growl.

“You’re here,” Taehyung replied, almost accusingly. “How can I not be horny?”

And honestly, that was damn flattering, but Jimin was an incorrigible tease, so he just let out a sigh and said, “But it’s almost midnight.”

“Astute of you to notice,” Taehyung said.

“We both work tomorrow.”

“That happens on weekdays,” Taehyung agreed.

“We both have very demanding jobs,” Jimin said, intentionally adopting a patronizing tone, because he knew it would piss Taehyung off in all the best ways.

For a moment, Taehyung just stared at him. Then he slowly tipped his head back, baring his entire throat as his legs spread invitingly and he murmured, “But Jimin-ah, don’t you want to fuck me?”

What the hell was Jimin supposed to say to that?

Taehyung moaned the moment Jimin latched onto his throat, arching obscenely in the bed, pressing himself up against Jimin’s body so that they were touching everywhere, and Jimin dropped a hand to Taehyung’s thigh so he could adjust them until he could roll his hips down with just enough to pressure to keep Taehyung’s moan continuous. Once again he smelled the faint floral spiciness of what must have been a new perfume, but he was a little too busy to be asking Taehyung about it now.

Despite how Taehyung hadn’t changed out of his work clothes, Jimin still had both of them stripped and Taehyung on his stomach in barely a minute. He reached down to the little box under the head of the bed for lube and a condom while Taehyung muffled his cries in a pillow and pressed his hips into the bed. Jimin dropped the condom on the bed next to them and flicked the cap of the lube open, fitting himself between Taehyung’s legs and using his knees to spread Taehyung out on his thighs, making the other man wail into his pillow like even that was too much to handle.

“You okay?” Jimin asked, coating his fingers in lube even though he could see the spread of slick wetness at the tops of Taehyung’s thighs. “Tae, you good?”

“Good, Min-ah,” Taehyung gasped out. “Good, please—”

At the first finger Taehyung moaned as if the sound were being wrenched out of him. Jimin saw his hands twist in the bedding, long fingers tangled in sheets and that soft throw, and Jimin couldn’t help but drag his free hand down Taehyung’s back, from the base of his neck to his ass, all while Taehyung arched like a cat underneath him.

At the second finger Taehyung pushed back a little too quickly, rising up on his hands and knees, and Jimin wrapped a hand around his thigh and dropped a kiss just to the side of his tiger lily tattoo, whispering, “You’re so goddamn beautiful,” and knowing that Taehyung would hear it even if the words were pressed against his skin. In response, Taehyung only pushed back more, fucking himself on Jimin’s fingers as he let out these quiet little ahs and clenched his hands even tighter.

The switch was abrupt. One second Jimin was working on stretching him out, twisting his two fingers inside Taehyung, brushing teasing fingertips against his prostate while Taehyung whimpered and moaned and said “Please” over and over again, and the next moment Taehyung was frozen, tension tightening his whole body.

Jimin pulled his fingers out gently but immediately, ignoring the slick sound of it as he said, “Tae?”

It took a while for Taehyung to answer, enough that Jimin pressed forward, wrapping himself around Taehyung’s back and pressing a kiss to the tense line of his jaw. “Hey, Tae, is something wrong?”

“Jimin,” Taehyung said, and Jimin felt alarm light up all his nerves at how embarrassed and guilty Taehyung sounded.

He pulled back enough to gently flip Taehyung onto his back, scanning his face and body for any sign of hurt, and his eyes caught on Taehyung’s very limp dick the moment Taehyung said, voice still riddled with shame, “I don’t think I’m horny any more.”

Jimin deflated.

“Tae,” he said, and Taehyung raised both his hands to cover his face and let out a soft, unhappy noise.

“Tae, baby,” Jimin said, reaching to pull Taehyung’s hands away so he could press kisses to Taehyung’s frowning mouth. “Why are you sorry? You don’t have to be sorry.”

“We were, like, in the middle of sex!” Taehyung exclaimed, but he still nuzzled into the hand Jimin fit to his cheek. “You’re really fucking hard!”

Jimin was actually trying to ignore that at the moment, so he just kissed Taehyung again.

“That’s okay,” he said. “That happens.”

He wanted to wrap Taehyung up, cuddle him against his chest and tangle their legs together, but, as Taehyung had pointed out, he was still really fucking hard, so Jimin contented himself with dropping kisses all across Taehyung face and neck and shoulders.

“Was it anything I did?” Jimin asked, less because he thought it was and more because he thought it was important to check. Still, it was a relief when Taehyung shook his head.

“Do you need to—” Taehyung said, cutting himself off as he flapped a hand at Jimin’s lower half. “You can, like, jerk off.”

Jimin tried to muffle his regretful huff of laughter into the skin of Taehyung’s throat. It was nice of him to offer, but if Taehyung didn’t want sex than he usually didn’t want any sex, and Jimin wasn’t about to make him uncomfortable or leave him alone.

“It’ll go down,” Jimin reassured, lifting his head so he could look at Taehyung’s face as he said it. “Don’t worry about it.”

He smiled, and because Taehyung was good at reading his smiles, he felt Taehyung relax underneath him soon after.

Jimin stayed where he was, carefully balanced over Taehyung while they lazily kissed, until he’d calmed down enough that it didn’t feel inappropriate to roll them both onto their sides and pull Taehyung against him, all their soft, awkward parts pressed against each other while Taehyung buried his face in Jimin’s neck and Jimin stroked his hands through Taehyung’s hair.

“I really am sorry,” Taehyung said.

“You really don’t need to be.”

“Jungkookie used to—”

Taehyung cut himself off and tensed minutely in Jimin’s arms, and Jimin held him a little tighter and said, “If you’re thinking it, you know I’d rather you say it than think it and pretend you didn’t.”

Then Jimin waited, losing himself in the feel of bare skin and soft breaths and tangled hair, until Taehyung said, “Jungkookie used to get really bothered if we stopped in the middle of sex.”

As often happened when Jungkook was brought up in bed, Jimin had mixed feelings.

“Not that—like, he was nice about it,” Taehyung said, squirming in Jimin’s arms in that way that meant he was uncomfortable, but determined to follow the thought through all the way to the end. “But I could always tell how frustrated he was, and how even when he said it was okay, he was saying it because that’s what I needed to hear, not because that’s what he meant.” Taehyung tucked his face a little more firmly into Jimin's neck before he added, "I think it's probably a biology thing. Like Kookie's alpha was pissed that I was telling him I didn't actually want him."

Sometimes it made Jimin angry. Sometimes it made Jimin sad. Sometimes, even though Jimin hated to admit it to himself, it made him feel insecure. Sometimes, it just made Jimin tighten his arms around Taehyung and hope that he never had to let him go.

“I hope you know that I mean it,” Jimin said softly. “I’m not frustrated, and I really, truly don’t think you have to apologize.”

It took a while for Taehyung to respond. When he did, all he said was, “I believe you,” and Jimin didn’t know that he’d ever heard Taehyung sound so fragile.

Jimin got up briefly, countering Taehyung’s bereft whine with, “You’ve got lube and slick all over your cute butt, I just want to clean you up,” and Taehyung wrapped himself in the throw and waited patiently until Jimin was done cleaning him and they could curl up together again.

They lay in comfortable silence, and Jimin was almost convinced that Taehyung had fallen asleep, but then he heard him murmur, “Met with your CEO. He actually brought up the Jungkook thing first, which I thought was a good sign, especially since he wasn’t aware that I knew you guys.”

“It went well?” Jimin asked, half-asleep himself.

“Yeah,” Taehyung said. “They’re going to have Jungkookie meet with HR tomorrow, and we’re going to send one of our corporate lawyers over in the next couple weeks to go through the company’s lykan policies so that everything’s standardized and aligned before the group’s debut.”

“Good,” Jimin said. “How’s JK feeling about it?”

“I didn’t actually see him today,” Taehyung mumbled, nuzzling deeper under Jimin’s chin. “But he seemed good when I called.”

They lapsed into silence again. Jimin was caught up in the smoothness of Taehyung’s skin over his ribs, and Taehyung was mouthing absently at Jimin’s neck.

“What about you?” Taehyung asked. “How was your day?”

Jimin didn’t think he’d reacted. But as soon as the thought of the conversation with Seokjin and Namjoon crossed his mind, he had a face full of very concerned Taehyung.

“What happened? Taehyung demanded, sitting up so suddenly that Jimin followed like a habit. “Oh my god, are you okay?”

“No, I’m fine,” Jimin said, confused. “What do you—”

“Something upset you today,” Taehyung said, and it was emphatically not a question. “What was it?”

It didn’t even cross Jimin’s mind to be anything but truthful. Maybe that was because he was too tired, but probably it was just because it was Taehyung.

“I had dinner with Seokjin-hyung and Namjoon-hyung,” Jimin said. “And after dinner they said some . . . some stuff.”

“Some stuff.”

Taehyung sounded and looked distinctly unimpressed.

“Some stuff about what?”

“I mean, us, I guess,” Jimin said, and reached out for Taehyung’s face the moment he started frowning. “Not like, bad stuff!” And then Jimin reassessed that, and Taehyung’s frown got even deeper. “Or, I mean, not—God, I don’t know.”

“It upset you,” Taehyung said firmly. “Tell me what they said.”

And they’d said a lot, honestly, but when Jimin opened his mouth, all that came out was, “That there’s a chemistry and attraction between alphas and omegas that humans can’t compete with.”

Unless he was feeling open, all of Taehyung’s emotions were conveyed solely through his eyes and eyebrows, and Jimin watched as Taehyung cycled through surprise, disbelief, confusion, surprise again, realization, and anger as the skin around his eyes alternately widened and tightened and his eyebrows drew progressively closer together.

When he spoke, all he said was, “What.”

“It’s probably not a big deal?” Jimin tried, and he thought that this was probably something they should talk about, but at the same time, the look in Taehyung’s eyes indicated that he’d somehow understood everything perfectly from the single thing Jimin had told him.

Taehyung’s endlessly long fingers touched Jimin’s face so gently they felt like silk, and the intensity in Taehyung’s eyes could have held Jimin captive for eternity.

“Jimin,” Taehyung said gently. “They had no right to say that to you.”

Jimin said, “I know,” and found, surprisingly, that he believed it.

But there was still something in Taehyung’s face, both achingly vulnerable and unwaveringly firm.

“Jimin,” he said again, and Jimin remained caught. “Jimin, it’s not a competition: there’s no one for you to compete against.”

It was said so emphatically and intently that Jimin felt it would be useless to reply, so he just accepted the kiss Taehyung pressed against his mouth and didn’t protest when Taehyung flipped them so that he could plaster himself to Jimin’s back. Taehyung wrapped his arms tight around Jimin’s waist, slipped one ankle between Jimin’s calves, laid his cheek gently on top of Jimin’s head, and started humming what Jimin was pretty sure was an EXO song.

In the last moment before he fell asleep, Jimin could have sworn he felt something soft on his shoulders.

When he woke up, it was with Taehyung’s arms still around his waist and the soft throw carefully tucked around him.

Chapter Text

Jungkook had texted Jimin that he’d be stuck in HR meetings during their normal lunchtime, so even though Jimin knew he shouldn’t, he stayed in the studio after dismissing his last class before lunch and put on Taeyang’s Eyes, Nose, Lips, running the contemporary number he’d choreographed to the song in his sophomore year of college.

Like magic, Hoseok let himself into the studio during Jimin’s second run through, armed with a bag sporting the logo of his and Yoongi’s café, and Jimin let out a laugh mid-choreo, because he’d never had a group of friends so attuned to each other needs, and it was honestly kind of delightful.

“Those body rolls, Jimin-ah!” Hoseok called out the moment Jimin was finished with his second run, and Jimin beamed at him and turned the music down to background noise as he took a seat next to Hoseok on the floor. Hoseok had chosen to open the café with Yoongi instead of pursue dance, but Jimin knew that he’d gotten far more offers than Jimin himself ever would, and any compliment from Hoseok was always the best compliment.

“How’d you know I’d be skipping lunch?” Jimin asked, accepting the disposable chopsticks and a bowl of noodles from Hoseok.

For a second it looked like Hoseok was going to make something up, but then he just shrugged good naturedly and said, “Tae-yah texted hyung and said that you’d probably be skipping because JK was busy today.”

Jimin had assumed it was something like that, but hearing it confirmed gave him a little flash of giddy heat, because Taehyung knew and Taehyung cared and because of that, Hoseok was here, and Jimin was happy.

They ate quietly, or as quietly as Hoseok could ever do anything, which meant pleased little noises with every bite and the occasional sound effect, and Jimin basked in the comfort of sitting wordlessly with a friend.

Somewhere between Hoseok handing Jimin a cold peach tea and Jimin begging for the uneaten half of Hoseok’s muffin, Jimin felt a toe prodding into his leg and looked up with wide, questioning eyes.

“How are you?” Hoseok asked.

“Okay,” Jimin said, because there was no pressure from Hoseok and it felt like an honest answer.

Hoseok seemed satisfied if that was all Jimin wanted to give him, but then Jimin had a thought and asked, “Actually, can I check with you on something?”

At Hoseok’s nod, he said, “I don’t want to get all TMI on you or anything, but last night I found Taehyung curled up on the floor in between my bed and the wall with a throw I bought him, and then when I asked if he wanted to come up to the bed with me he said yes. So I hauled him up and then—”

Hoseok was already laughing. “And then was he suddenly super horny?”

Jimin felt his own lips curving up into a smile, because it was borderline impossible to not mirror Hoseok’s expressiveness. “Yeah. But—”

He paused, just to see, and Hoseok obligingly filled in, “But then maybe a little later he just as suddenly wasn’t horny at all?”

“That precisely,” Jimin said. It felt strange to be speaking about him and Taehyung quite so openly, but he fought down his blush because Hoseok wasn’t being teasing at all.

“Yeah, no, that’s normal,” Hoseok said, and Jimin nodded in relief.

“I kind of assumed, but I just don’t know as much as the rest of you, and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t do anything wrong,” Jimin explained, and Hoseok patted him on his knee.

“That’s good of you to check. Really, though, it’s normal. Yoongi does the same thing, sometimes.” Hoseok pulled a face, equal parts exasperated and affectionate, and Jimin was abruptly reminded that another reason he liked Hoseok so much was because Hoseok was the only person in Jimin’s circle who was in an extensive, committed relationship with an omega.

“I think it’s the hormones,” Hoseok continued. “They get wild around heat.”  He leaned back, nonchalant about the topic in a way Jimin, who had tensed up instinctively, didn’t know that he would ever be. “How long until it hits? Three, four days?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jimin said, fiddling with the cap on his tea bottle. “Something like that, I think.”

Hoseok was silent in an inviting, nonjudgmental kind of way, and Jimin blurted out, “I think I’m really nervous.” Hoseok’s face stayed pleasant and inquisitive, so Jimin added, “I feel really unprepared. I’ve never—”

Suddenly everything he could think to say sounded dirty and vulgar and inaccurate, and he was too scared that any gestures would be the same. Helpless, he just looked at Hoseok imploringly.

Somehow Hoseok managed to skip over all the options of things Jimin had never before Taehyung—dated a lykan, slept with an omega, been so terrified of messing something up, been so fucking invested so fucking quickly—and land precisely on “This is your first experience with heat?”

Jimin said, “Yep.”

“But hasn’t Tae—”

“He’s been on suppressants, but his doctor said he needed to stop the suppressants and have a normal cycle.”

Jimin twisted and untwisted the cap of his bottle over and over again. His thoughts were stumbling and turning over themselves, and he couldn’t pick a single one out of the mess inside his head to try and explain to Hoseok exactly what he thought and felt and was terrified of.

Apparently he didn’t need to.

“There’s a lot of bullshit about alphas and omegas needing each other,” Hoseok said quietly. When Jimin looked up, the other man was studiously packing takeout containers into the bag he’d brought them in. It felt intentional, like Hoseok knew that it would be too overwhelming for Jimin to be looked at right now. “Especially when ruts or heats are involved. The first time I spent one of Yoongi’s heats with him, I had a moment where I opened my dumb mouth and said something like ‘Wouldn’t this be easier with an alpha?’ and he just gave me this incredibly confused look and said, ‘Why would I ever want an alpha when I have you?’”

Again, Jimin couldn’t help but mirror Hoseok’s smile, and when Hoseok looked up and met Jimin’s gaze, it didn’t feel overwhelming at all.

“Taehyung is one of the most cautious people I know,” Hoseok said. “He’s always been guarded and skittish and shy, even if he spends a lot of time pretending like he’s not.” Hoseok leaned forward, and the intensity that was the flip side of his usual relaxed, happy nature was suddenly burning in his eyes. “But he’s jumped into this thing with you with no hesitation or fear, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so happy or comfortable, so even if you feel like you can’t trust yourself on this, trust him.”

Jimin’s eyes pricked with tears, and Hoseok immediately broke into a smile, reaching out to pat Jimin on the head while Jimin sniffled and used the backs of his hands to wipe tears from his cheeks.

“You made me cry,” Jimin accused, and Hoseok cackled.

Jimin threw on Girl’s Generation before Hoseok left, simply because he knew the other wouldn’t be able to resist dancing, and between Hoseok’s exuberant girl group choreography and the selfie Taehyung had sent, which was mostly just a finger heart with one of Taehyung’s eyes visible behind it and clearly squinted in a smile, Jimin was happy until the moment he checked his phone on the way to his car and saw that Seokjin had texted can you stop by after work?

Jimin debated for only a minute. But he hated to leave things unresolved, and Hyejin spent Thursday evenings with her halmeoni on her mother’s side, so if things came to yelling or crying, at least she wouldn’t hear. So Jimin texted Taehyung, a quick be home late, got in his car, and drove to Seokjin and Namjoon’s apartment for the second time in two days.

~

Seokjin opened the door looking tired and apologetic, but Jimin was strangely much more concerned about the smell that seemed to permeate the apartment.

“I guess I should start by saying I’m sorry,” Seokjin said. “We both are. Namjoonie would tell you himself, but he had a late client.”

“Mmm,” Jimin said, barely paying attention as he slipped his shoes off, followed Seokjin into the living room, and tried to sniff as discreetly as he could.

“I realize that regardless of our intentions, we shouldn’t have said what we said.”

The smell wasn’t bad, necessarily, just strong. It was like burning, but also like flowers, and a bit like sugar and spices if they’d been charred almost beyond recognition.

“It’s just that Taehyung-ah’s never—we all know his heat is coming up, and Namjoon said that in all the time he’s known Tae, Tae’s never spent a heat with anyone other than Jungkook.”

Jimin peered around Seokjin’s broad shoulders, trying to see if something had been left on the stove, though that would have been out of character for Seokjin. But the stove was clean, the oven was shut off, and when Seokjin dropped to the couch, the smell suddenly became even stronger, as if it had settled on the cushions and been disturbed by Seokjin’s movement.

“Honestly, we weren’t sure if you were aware of the full extent of Taehyung and Jungkook’s, uh, involvement, but we’ve been assured that you knew the situation before you and Taehyung even did anything, and I guess we probably should have trusted you and Taehyung more with that.”

“Definitely,” Jimin agreed. It was almost bitter, but still sweet, and hot in a way that had nothing to with fire or spices or anything like that. Bizarrely, Jimin had the thought that if anger from someone who didn’t usually get angry had a smell, it would smell something like this.

“We just don’t want anyone getting hurt. I guess—I know there’s no excuse for what we said, and that we shouldn’t have said it, but we honestly were just trying to look out for both of you. Everything between you has just happened so quickly, and I guess neither Joonie or I thought that Taehyung would be willing to spend his heat with someone new, not when he’s been spending it with Jungkook for his whole life. But he’s made it clear—”

“Sorry, hyung—I’m sorry,” Jimin said, turning to Seokjin and belatedly realizing that he’d interrupted, “but is something burning?”

Seokjin blinked at him and repeated his words. “Is something burning?”

“Yes!” Jimin exclaimed. “That smell!” Surely Seokjin could smell it. Both Taehyung and Jungkook had implied that alphas had the strongest sense of smell, so the confusion on Seokjin’s face seemed more than a little unwarranted. “What is that?”

Somehow, Seokjin’s confusion only worsened. “You can smell that?”

“Yes?” Jimin exclaimed again, throwing his hands up. “It’s so strong, I don’t know how I couldn’t. What is it?”

“Jimin-ah,” Seokjin said, and his voice was so serious that Jimin actually stopped sniffing the air around him and focused all his attention on his friend. “Jimin-ah, that’s Taehyung.”

For a moment, the words didn’t register. Then they did, and Jimin was just as lost.

“What?”

“That’s Taehyung,” Seokjin repeated. “He came here to yell at me and Namjoon about what we said to you, and he wasn’t making any effort to hide how mad he was.” Seokjin leaned forward with his hands on his knees and his gaze searching. “What you’re smelling is his scent when he’s mad.”

Jimin heard himself say, “Oh.”

“You can actually smell it?” Seokjin asked, and Jimin just nodded.

“Damn,” Seokjin murmured, more to himself than to Jimin. “I think we’ve misunderstood some things.”

And just like that, Seokjin accepted that Jimin, despite being a hundred percent human with no lykan ancestry anywhere in his line, could apparently smell Taehyung.

Jimin, honestly, was having a bit of a harder time.

By the time Namjoon got back and he and Seokjin had to leave to pick up Hyejin, Jimin had no answers beyond an incredibly unhelpful, “I’m sure this happens sometimes,” from Seokjin, and an equally unhelpful “Somehow this feels very Taehyung-like” from Namjoon. They shooed him out the door with more apologies, pleas for him to call them if he had any questions, and an entire box of cookies because Seokjin was a definite stress baker.

Jimin drove home feeling like he’d transformed from a human into an enormous question mark. He’d hoped that would get better once he saw Taehyung, because Taehyung made everything better, but when Jimin let himself into his apartment, the lights were off, the shoes Taehyung had worn to work were missing, and everything was forebodingly silent.

Jimin puttered aimlessly around his apartment for an hour and a half, doing dishes, throwing a load of laundry (half of which was Taehyung’s) in the washer, heating up leftovers from two nights ago. He saw that the soft throw had joined the pile next to the couch, as well as an old, worn-thin hoodie from high school that Jimin kept in the back of his closet purely for the sake of nostalgia.

He checked his phone for what must have been the hundredth time, but Taehyung’s selfie was still the last text he’d received, and the three texts Jimin had sent—saying he’d be home late, asking where Taehyung was, and a brief, hey, you ok?—were still unread.

And Jimin knew that Taehyung was probably fine, and that it wasn’t as if they had to spend their nights together. But Jimin also knew that Taehyung had called Yoongi for him, and yelled at Seokjin and Namjoon for him, and that once, when they were cuddled up in bed after Taehyung had had a bad day, Taehyung had said, “If you’re ever, like, concerned and I’m not texting back, just call.”

So Jimin did.

Taehyung picked up on the last ring and didn’t say anything.

“Hey,” Jimin said cautiously. “I was just calling to check on you.”

The silence from the other end of the line was broken by a sniffle, and Jimin’s heart dropped.

“Tae,” he said quietly. “Hey, Tae, what’s going on?”

All Taehyung said was, “Work was really bad.”

“Tae,” Jimin said again, helplessly. As Taehyung said, a sad Jungkook was devastating, but a sad Taehyung felt like nothing could ever be right in the world again. “Can I ask where you are?”

“’m at my apartment.”

“Okay,” Jimin said. He let that sit for a minute while he tried to figure out if it was appropriate to ask why Taehyung hadn’t come to Jimin’s apartment instead, and decided that it probably wasn’t. Instead, he asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Taehyung was quiet, and Jimin wondered for a half-second if he’d overstepped. But then Taehyung said, ”I wish I could see you.”

Jimin wasn’t quite sure how to take that, so he asked, “Do you want me to come over?”

“No,” Taehyung said miserably. “I’d rather come over to yours.”

A little confused, Jimin ventured a cautious, “You can?”

Taehyung was a surprisingly quiet crier, so Jimin didn’t hear anything, but when Taehyung spoke again, his voice was significantly more watery and unsteady. “But I’m in a really shitty mood. I don’t want you to have to deal with me and my fucking misery.”

“Shitty mood Taehyung is just as valid and important as any other Taehyung,” Jimin responded. “If you’d rather not come over I understand, but if you do want to come over, I’d would love to see you. Besides,” he added, smiling as he spoke because he knew Taehyung would be able to hear it, “I’m sure fucking misery would love some fucking company.”

Taehyung laughed, nasty and wet and heartbreaking, and said, “Okay. I’ll grab clothes for tomorrow and then I’ll be over.”

Jimin said, “I’m looking forward to it,” and Taehyung, very quietly, replied, “I believe you.”

~

Almost the moment Taehyung stepped inside the apartment, fully clothed in one of his patterned pajama sets he almost never wore and with an armful of pillows and blankets and clothes from his place, he said, apologetically, “Actually, can I call Yoongi-hyung?”

Jimin slipped the pillows out from where they were clamped under Taehyung’s elbows and said, “For sure. Do you want me to order fried chicken for you guys?”

And then Taehyung had cried, and Jimin had held him and his blanket pile while Taehyung said, “Work was so bad but I just don’t want to talk about it right now.” Jimin detached long enough to toss all the pillows and blankets onto the couch, then returned to fetch Taehyung and guide him to the couch.

Taehyung stayed limp and sad, but he didn’t protest as Jimin carefully started arranging blankets and pillows around him, and when Jimin was done, Taehyung looked up at him with huge, wet eyes and said, “I’m too comfortable to move. Will you call Yoongi-hyung for me? And also get me one of your pillows?”

Yoongi sounded dead inside when he answered, but he kind of always sounded dead inside.

“Hello?”

“Hi, hyung,” Jimin said, reaching for the pillow Taehyung usually slept on, then reassessing and grabbing his own pillow instead. “Do you have any plans tonight?”

“Sleeping,” Yoongi said, but that was pretty much always his plan, regardless of the time of day or who asked, so Jimin didn’t feel bad about interrupting. “Why, did you need something?”

“I’m good,” Jimin replied, walking back into the living room and finding Taehyung exactly where he’d left him on the couch, staring blankly at the wall. “But Tae’s having a rough day and wanted me to call and see if you could come over.”

“Are you at his place?” Yoongi asked, and Jimin thought he could hear the murmur of Hoseok’s voice in the background.

“No, mine.”

Taehyung looked up as Jimin approached with the pillow, and his eyes lit up fractionally, almost like he’d forgotten Jimin was there and was pleasantly surprised to see him. Jimin held up the pillow, not sure where to put it, and one of Taehyung’s hands emerged from the blankets.

“Yours?” Yoongi said, a hint of surprise in his voice, and Jimin handed the pillow over to Taehyung and watched him immediately bury his face in it and let out a content purr.

“Yeah, that was what he wanted.”

“Cool,” Yoongi said in that bland way that either meant he didn’t care or he had a lot of thoughts he wasn’t sharing. “Do you think he wants beer or hot chocolate?”

Jimin looked at the wildly curly mess of hair that was all he could see of Taehyung. “Definitely hot chocolate.”

Taehyung stayed with his head hidden in Jimin’s pillow until Yoongi showed up, and then emerged only enough to tip over onto Yoongi’s lap when Yoongi sat down next to him on the couch. Jimin heard the quiet rumble of a question from Yoongi, but focused on turning on Netflix and navigating to the documentaries page so that he wouldn’t overhear anything he wasn’t supposed to.

It was only a few minutes until the chicken showed up, and Jimin spent the time gathering plates and cups and napkins, flitting around the couch where Taehyung was curled into Yoongi and Yoongi was stroking gentle hands down his back. As soon as he had the food, Jimin set the chicken on the coffee table and the remote next to it, sent Yoongi a quick smile that Yoongi returned, and sent Taehyung a lingering smile that Taehyung didn’t see, because his face was turned into Yoongi’s stomach.

He grabbed a jacket and his phone, but the jingle of his keys and his soft, “Text me if you need anything,” made Taehyung sit upright so quickly he nearly clipped Yoongi in the chin with his head.

“Are you leaving?”

Jimin flung the keys onto the table like they’d burned him, because Taehyung sounded distressed.

“Um, I don’t want to invade or anything,” Jimin said, and Taehyung made one of those noises he was always embarrassed about when he was aware, something high and pained and not very human at all.

“It’s your apartment!” Taehyung said, and Jimin raised his hands like he could sooth Taehyung from his place by the front door.

“But if you’d rather I not be here, I’m okay to leave.”

Taehyung made another sound, a distinct whine of confusion and hurt, and in the half-second Jimin’s gaze darted to Yoongi, Yoongi shook his head in an emphatic no.

Jimin said, “Tae,” in the way he usually only did when they were alone, and when Taehyung held out a hand, Jimin toed off his shoes.

Jimin draped his jacket over the back of the couch, and Taehyung scooted just barely further into Yoongi’s space, enough that Jimin could fit on the couch with them. It left Jimin on Taehyung’s other side, closest to the pile of pillows and blankets, and Jimin carefully maneuvered around it so he could take his seat next to Taehyung and take Taehyung’s hand in his.

Yoongi started some nature documentary that Jimin was pretty sure Taehyung had already seen at least three times, and though Taehyung stayed wrapped up in his blankets and tilted into Yoongi’s chest, his feet slipped under Jimin’s thigh, and Jimin could feel his toes wiggle every time Jimin squeezed his hand.

For a while Jimin was on his phone, checking emails and answering texts, but that was difficult to do when one of his hands was occupied, so he abandoned his phone in favor of watching Yoongi and Taehyung.

Jungkook had always said that Taehyung was Yoongi’s favorite. Jimin felt that he personally hadn’t known Yoongi long enough to really know that for sure, but as he watched Yoongi patiently hand-feed Taehyung chicken and help him take sips of his hot chocolate, he was pretty sure Jungkook was right.

Taehyung had started crying somewhere near the middle of documentary, which was preceded by a sudden and inexplicable scent of rain and dirt, but Yoongi just held Taehyung’s head to his chest and shook his head calmly when Jimin moved like he was going to reach for Taehyung.

When the documentary ended, they all sat in silence until Taehyung announced tearily, “I need to go change my shirt.”

Yoongi and Jimin both helped unwrap him from the blankets, and Taehyung disappeared into Jimin’s bedroom and shut the door behind him.

Yoongi said, “So.”

Jimin looked at him, and Yoongi was staring at the pile of blankets and pillows by Jimin’s legs. When Jimin didn’t immediately say something, Yoongi looked back up, eyes sharp and inquisitive and more than a little protective.

“Do you know what that is?” Yoongi asked, and his tone was so even that Jimin almost called Taehyung back just for something to hide behind.

“I do,” Jimin said.

Yoongi’s eyes narrowed, and Jimin sat still and let himself be scrutinized.

“Have you talked about it?” Yoongi asked, and Jimin swallowed and made sure to keep his body still and his tone relaxed.

“We’ve been talking about everything since he said he was going to go off suppressants,” Jimin said. “But,” he admitted, sending his own glance at the pile, “We haven’t specifically talked about that. I’m not sure he’s even aware he’s doing it.”

Yoongi studied him again, then said, in that slow, rumbling way of his that usually meant either he was exhausted or being careful, “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but have you guys talked to Jungkook about it?”

The irritation was aggressive and unwanted, because no one had actually done anything wrong. Jimin was just maybe a little sensitive. And the way Yoongi’s gaze softened, like he could tell how it bothered Jimin, was another reminder that they were all trying their best, and it was only fair for Jimin to try his best too.

“Not individually or explicitly or anything,” Jimin said, and it was an effort to keep his voice calm, but he thought it was an important effort. “He knows that Taehyung’s spending his heat with me, but I haven’t had a one-on-one conversation with him about it, and I don’t think that Tae has either. Why would that matter?”

Yoongi made it easy to forget how kind he was, because he spent so much time looking apathetic and tired and like he didn’t care about anything. But when he reached out, his touch was gentle, and the way he carefully brushed his fingers through Jimin’s hair, right against his hairline, was soft and sweet and caring.

“It’s not because of you,” Yoongi said, “and it’s not because of Taehyung. It’s because Jungkook’s an alpha, and Jungkook’s also the only person Tae’s ever spent a heat with, and I think that as soon as Jungkook pieces together what’s happening, he’s going to have a hard time with it.”

“It’s not his place to have a hard time with it,” Jimin couldn’t help but say. And even though Yoongi’s grimace was sympathetic, Jimin still felt like he had to add, “And you know I think the world of Jungkookie, hyung, I just—”

He didn’t want to say anything bad about Jungkook, both because Jungkook was amazing and didn’t deserve bad things said about him, and because Yoongi, like everyone else, had known Jungkook much longer. But staying silent felt like he was hiding things, so Jimin mumbled, “Sometimes I feel like there’s something I’m missing, that I don’t understand—like, some reason I should be okay with the way Jungkook is with Taehyung, because no one else seems to think there’s anything wrong with it.” He leaned forward, pushing into the pressure of Yoongi’s hand in his hair and closing his eyes. “And Taehyung has been open about how hard it is for him to try renegotiate boundaries, but he’s trying so hard, and I feel like he’s not getting any support from anyone else in maintaining those boundaries, because everyone is too caught up in some alpha-omega destiny bullshit that assumes I’m just a detour on his way back to Jungkook.”

There was more bitterness than Jimin had meant to let out by the time he was finished speaking, but he didn’t pull away from Yoongi’s hand. Yoongi was silent, stroking through Jimin’s hair and over his head until Jimin felt himself relax, and then Yoongi said, “I think we’re just too used to it. To them. To the way they have no boundaries and are always drifting back to each other.”

Jimin nodded into the pause, even though his throat felt tight, because he wanted to seem adult and reasonable about this.

“We all know that Taehyung’s really indulgent with him,” Yoongi said. “And we all know that it’s more so than he should be.” He moved his hand to Jimin’s forehead, pushing gently until Jimin was sitting upright again and Yoongi could make meaningful eye contact with him. “We all know that. But we’ve all been equally indulgent with them and their bad boundaries because, honestly, yes—we’ve assumed that for all the dancing around each other they’ve done, they were going to end up together.”

Jimin nodded again, and tried to cover his sniffle with an overly-loud clearing of his throat, though the eyebrow raise he got in response indicated that Yoongi, as always, saw right through him.

Jimin’s bedroom door opened, and he sniffled a little harder, quickly raising his hands and wiping at his eyes just in case anything had leaked out, and Yoongi leaned over, hand firm and comforting on Jimin’s knee, and said very quietly, “But Jimin-ah—Taehyung’s building a nest in your living room. Trust me when I say that you’re not a detour on the way back to anything.” He smiled then, big and gummy and a little delighted, and said, with a bit of sardonic drama mixed in with the authenticity, “You’re a goddamn destination.”

He patted Jimin’s knee meaningfully, and Jimin suddenly had a hundred clarifying questions he wanted answers to, but Yoongi was already leaning back so that Taehyung could fit back in between them.

“Is that Jimin’s shirt?” Yoongi asked, and Jimin looked up to see that Taehyung had changed into an old, huge t-shirt that Jimin only wore when he was feeling particularly in need of comfort.

“Smells the best,” Taehyung mumbled in response, and when Jimin looked over at Yoongi, Yoongi was smiling smugly back at him.

Chapter Text

Yoongi hadn’t left until well after midnight, and only when a sleeping Taehyung had been safely tipped over into Jimin’s lap. Jimin had meant to wake Taehyung up enough for them to move to the bed, or haul him to the bed still asleep, but when Jimin had woken up, it was with his head on the arm of the couch and Taehyung sprawled on top of him and burning so hot Jimin started to panic.

Thankfully, he’d remembered this was normal for the circumstances before he’d started yelling or making rash phone calls, and instead he’d just pushed against Taehyung’s shoulder until squinty eyes were peering at him through a curly fringe and said, “Listen, I understand that you’re literally the hottest, but don’t you think this is overdoing it?”

Taehyung had groaned and refused to move as punishment for how terrible that was, and maybe Jimin would have complained, but then things had somehow escalated to the two of them grinding frantically against each other and panting into each other’s open mouths, and while Jimin was generally pretty opposed to coming in his pants, it was, like most things, kind of sexy when Taehyung was involved.

Taehyung had been clingy and almost non-verbal in the shower, and had blatantly whined when Jimin reminded him that they both had work. They hadn’t talked about whatever had happened at Taehyung’s work the day before, but Jimin trusted that Taehyung would bring it up when he felt ready, so he sent Taehyung off with a kiss and a butt pat, and Taehyung had responded by asking, “Can I bite you?” and then, when Jimin said yes, biting Jimin’s neck so hard that Jimin was positive he’d left definite, distinct, and very visible teethmarks.

The mark, when Jimin checked, was much too high to be covered by a shirt, and wearing a scarf or something with a high collar would make it too obvious that Jimin was hiding something. Also, he was almost positive that Taehyung had left the mark intentionally high so that everyone would see it, and while Jimin was by no means an expert in lykan behavior and meaning, he did understand how possessiveness worked.

So he endured the titters from his human students, the either knowing or surprised looks from his lykan students, and the wide eyes from Jungkook when they met up for lunch.

“Hell of a mark,” Jungkook mumbled through a mouthful of gimbap, and Jimin said, “Mmm.”

“Is he fucking hot right now?” Jungkook asked, and Jimin, apparently unable to let it go today, faked an affronted gasp.

“Kook! He’s always hot.”

Jungkook rolled his eyes and let out an exaggerated groan, but seemed appeased when Jimin said, “For real, though, he’s like a furnace. I don’t know how he’s even functional.”

“Omegas are wild, man,” Jungkook returned, sounding equal parts impressed and intimidated, and then they’d finished their lunch talking about a choreographer who was bad at disguising that he put the same six-move tutting sequence in every dance he choreographed.

Taehyung called as Jimin was walking out of the building.

“Hey, Tae,” Jimin said, cradling the phone against his ear. “How are you today?”

He was met with silence, but Jimin knew better than to check to make sure the call was still connected. Phone conversations with Taehyung were always a little ponderous, like he had to think a little longer when he couldn’t see who he was talking to. Jimin made it to his car and was already in the driver’s seat before Taehyung said, “Can I make a request?”

Jimin had been worried that Taehyung was still sad, or frustrated, or any of the other emotions he had been feeling yesterday, but Taehyung’s voice was measured and calm, if a little intense.

“Yes, of course,” Jimin said, putting his keys in the ignition but waiting to start the car. “What’s up?”

“How would you feel about bottoming tonight?”

Jimin felt his eyebrows raise.

“You know I’m good with either,” Jimin replied. He glanced habitually in the rearview mirror, and if he craned his neck just enough, he could see the imprint of Taehyung’s teeth reflected back at him. “Is that your request?”

“No.”

Jimin waited, and when Taehyung spoke again, his voice was that smooth, velvety kind of deepness that had shivers running down Jimin’s spine.

“Work’s been terrible again,” Taehyung said. “But today it’s just making me fucking mad.”

Jimin felt a little bad about the electric thrill that ran through him at the words, because it was never a good thing when Taehyung’s work was bad. But it was also rare that Taehyung got angry and wanted to deal with it in any way other than rationally and calmly, and Jimin was already catching his breath before Taehyung said, “I don’t think I’m quite ready to talk it out.”

The pause was brief.

“But god would it be nice to fuck it out.”

“What’s your request, Tae?” Jimin asked, not at all embarrassed about the huskiness of his own voice.

“I want you to prep yourself,” Taehyung murmured, voice slow and luscious. “And I want you waiting for me on the bed with your legs open, so that when I get back I can slide right into you.”

So maybe Jimin was a little hard. So maybe his breath was getting a little raspy. So maybe all he needed was, like, four sentences from Taehyung before he was ready to fucking go, and maybe that was a little embarrassing, but in the space before he could reply, Taehyung spoke again, voice soft and gentle and tentative as he asked, “Is that all right, Jimin-ah?”

“I’m going to go home,” Jimin said instead of answering, fighting to keep his voice even. “And I’m going to get in the shower. And then I’m going to open myself up for you, and you better not keep me waiting long.”

Jimin could hear the smile in Taehyung’s voice. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

~

Jimin had never particularly enjoyed the preparation part of sex when it came to him bottoming. Even with Taehyung, who was by far the most thorough and considerate lover he’d ever had, and additionally had hands and fingers like damn, Jimin found prep uncomfortable, awkward, and generally a boner killer. Over the course of the last six months, Taehyung had become increasingly skilled at keeping Jimin hard while he fingered him, but Jimin would still rather rush through it and endure a few minutes of pain that felt like his ass was literally being split apart than take the necessary time to be opened up enough to keep things comfortable.

Taehyung wasn’t exactly small, though, and any time they skimped on prep, Jimin spent the next few days aching in ways he found neither sexy nor convenient, especially when he danced for a living.

All that said, Jimin acknowledged Taehyung’s “request” for what it was: a way for Jimin to fully and safely prep himself without feeling like he had to keep it sexy, so that all his time with Taehyung could be spent on parts of bottoming that Jimin actually enjoyed, all under the guise of Taehyung being so horny he wasn’t going have the patience to prep Jimin himself when he got back.

Again; Jimin had never had a lover as considerate as Taehyung.

Taehyung had texted 45 minutes? after they’d hung up, so Jimin let himself take his time in the shower, cleaning, shaving, clinically opening himself up with three fingers, and then even going so far as to apply a new body lotion, because he had a few minutes to spare. By the time he was stretching out naked on his covers with lube and condoms handy, Jimin felt relaxed, prepared, and more than a little excited.

Taehyung hadn’t said anything about not touching, but Jimin still kept his hands above his waist, running light touches across his own chest and sides, stroking fingers down his arms, and when he heard the front door open, he was half-hard and filled with delicious, simmering arousal.

He closed his eyes, listening to Taehyung move through the apartment, and just as Taehyung’s footsteps approached the bedroom door, Jimin let his hands drift down his own thighs as he tilted his head back into his pillows, exposing the whole length of his throat.

There was a sharp intake of breath from the doorway. Then Taehyung’s deep, deep voice said, “You’re so fucking gorgeous.”

Jimin made no effort to hide his pleased smile. He just opened his eyes, batted his lashes at Taehyung, frozen in the doorway, and murmured, “Come show me just how gorgeous you think I am.”

Taehyung shed his suit jacket, loosened his tie just enough that he could pull it over his head, and unbuckled his belt before pulling it through the belt loops of his pants and dropping it to the floor. All his motions were sharp, tense, filled with an aggression Jimin rarely saw in the man, and Jimin had to bite his lip to hold in a grin.

But for all his intensity, the first thing Taehyung did when he had Jimin pinned underneath him, body hot and heavy above him, elbows caging him in on either side of his head, was nuzzle his nose against Jimin’s cheek and whisper, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Jimin whispered back, reaching up to work his fingers through Taehyung’s carefully gelled hair, ruining some of the styled perfection.

Taehyung pressed a quick kiss to Jimin’s mouth, then another just to his bottom lip. “You ready?”

“Super ready,” Jimin said, giving Taehyung a smile.

Taehyung smiled back, small and sweet, and then dropped his head so he could lick a long, possessive stripe up Jimin’s neck, starting from his collarbone and ending just below his ear, where Taehyung whispered, “I’m going to fuck you now.”

With all the time Taehyung spent being cute and cuddly and controlled, sometimes it was easy to forget that he was still a lykan, filled with effortless strength, primal instinct, and just a dash of something feral. So while Jimin knew, technically, that Taehyung was capable of going beast mode at any time, there was still something surprising and more than a little thrilling about every time Taehyung effortlessly flipped him onto his stomach and pinned him down, teeth in the back of his neck and a commanding murmur of, “Stay still and be good for me.”

Jimin could have sworn that there was never a moment Taehyung’s hands weren’t on him, running over his arms, his chest, his sides, his thighs, his ass, working him up more and more with each touch, but at some point Taehyung must have detached himself long enough to take off his clothes and rip open the condom, because when he sat back and Jimin managed a glance over his shoulder, Taehyung was naked and rolling the condom on, pupils blown and tongue running over the faint points his teeth while he stared at Jimin.

Jimin arched, pushing his ass back just far enough to draw Taehyung’s attention to it, and was rewarded with Taehyung’s eyes zeroing in and a low growl sounding from his throat.

“Come on,” Jimin said tauntingly, and then Taehyung was plastered against him, pushing him back down into the bed with his body while he slid two lubed fingers in, just to make sure Jimin prepped himself enough, and then there was blunt pressure and heady pain and Jimin was dropping his forehead to the sheets and unable to stop from groaning out a long, breathy, “Fuck.”

Taehyung barely gave him time to adjust, and there was something unbearably hot about that, about how Taehyung knew precisely how much Jimin could take, and then gave him just barely more than that. The moment his hips were flush with Jimin’s ass he was already pulling away and then thrusting back in sharply, and Jimin couldn’t help the gasp, the way his hands clenched in the sheets when Taehyung snarled, “Fuck, you’re fucking tight, Jimin-ah.”

Jimin said, “Tae—” kind of helplessly, and then couldn’t follow it up with anything, because Taehyung was moving hard and fast and agonizingly steady, and Jimin was reduced to moans and gasps and frantic thoughts that he should really bottom more often.

At some point Taehyung hauled him up so they were both kneeling upright, Jimin’s back pressed to Taehyung’s chest, and the change in angle was enough to make Jimin keen, even before Taehyung wrapped an arm around his waist and a hand around his cock.

“Fuck, Taehyung, fuck, fuck, fuck—” Jimin babbled, and he felt Taehyung’s tongue trace along the shell of his ear, a gentle touch completely at odds with the way the arm across his chest was holding him tight so that Taehyung could nail his prostate with every ferocious snap of his hips.

“Want you to come,” Taehyung whispered, and Jimin arched against him, head thrown back on Taehyung’s shoulder and body on fire from both the sensation of being so thoroughly fucked and the way Taehyung’s skin was burning against his. “Want you to come for me, Jimin-ah.”

He sounded so composed, so even, like he wasn’t buried in Jimin’s ass with a hand stroking him just mean enough that Jimin couldn’t catch his breath, and Jimin loved it.

“Please—” he managed, and then Taehyung murmured all sweet right in his ear, “Don’t you want to come, Jimin-ah?” just as he twisted his hand and drove his hips forward, and Jimin didn’t have a choice.

For one aching moment, Jimin’s body went electric, and then he collapsed forward onto his hands and knees, coming all over Taehyung’s endlessly stroking fingers with a cry while Taehyung followed him down and fucked into him even faster, chasing his own climax with a roughness he rarely displayed. 

Taehyung sank his teeth back into the mark on Jimin’s neck, and between the oversensitivity and the white-hot pain of the bite, Jimin must have blacked out for a few seconds, because when he opened his eyes, Taehyung was dropping kisses all across his back as he carefully pulled out, whispering, “So sexy, so beautiful, so perfect,” in the most affectionate tone Jimin had ever heard.

Jimin groaned and let Taehyung roll him over onto his back and smother his face with even more kisses. Jimin probably would have been happy to lie there forever, but there was a satisfied sort of glaze in Taehyung’s eyes, and when Taehyung lifted his hand, still covered in messy, milky white, the way he stared at it was a little too hungry.

“Absolutely not,” Jimin said, and Taehyung’s eyes darted over to him.

“Hmm?”

“Kim Taehyung, I will literally kick you out of this bed if you lick your hand,” Jimin said, firmly, and Taehyung had the gall to pout at him like Jimin had denied him a treat, which was a thought he tried to scrub from his brain as soon as he’d thought it.

“But—” Taehyung said, and Jimin cut him off.

“Clean that off,” Jimin demanded, and Taehyung grumbled but obligingly reached for the folded towel Jimin had set near the head of the bed.

When his hand was clean and the condom was safely tied and thrown away, Taehyung used the towel to gently wipe Jimin down, painstakingly careful around both his now-soft cock and his aching ass. He hummed while he worked, dropping random kisses to Jimin’s stomach or knees or wrists, and Jimin stayed still and let himself be taken care of.

Eventually, Taehyung was satisfied, and he threw the towel away, where it would probably stay a disgusting heap on the floor longer than was necessarily sanitary, and curled up next to Jimin.

“Was that okay?” he asked, gathering Jimin to his chest and rubbing his cheek against Jimin’s head.

“Perfect,” Jimin answered. “How about for you?”

As a reply, Taehyung grabbed one of Jimin’s hands and drew it back far enough that Jimin could feel the slick spread all across Taehyung’s thighs.

“Oh, wow,” Jimin said, laughing. “You got all worked up, didn’t you?”

“Still kinda worked up,” Taehyung mumbled into his hair.

Jimin almost asked if that meant another round was imminent, but Taehyung seemed like he was ready to be comfortable for a while, so Jimin carefully nudged Taehyung’s chin up and placed a kiss on his throat.

The resulting purr was so loud it startled a delighted laugh out of Jimin, and Taehyung swatted at his back and whined, “Don’t laugh, I told you I’m still worked up!”

Jimin let himself be dragged around while Taehyung grumpily resituated, rolling onto his back and pulling Jimin with him so Jimin was half on Taehyung’s chest. Jimin slung a thigh over Taehyung’s hips and an arm across his chest, and obligingly nestled his face into Taehyung’s throat when Taehyung tilted his head back.

For a while they were content wrapped up in each other, Taehyung’s fingers brushing lightly across the Jimin’s bare shoulders and Jimin’s fingers tracing meaningless shapes across Taehyung’s chest, but then Taehyung let out an aborted sigh and said, “Can I talk about work?”

Jimin tried to sit up, but Taehyung’s arm tightened around his shoulders, keeping him in place, so he laid his head back down and smoothed his hand soothingly over Taehyung’s stomach until Taehyung relaxed again.

“You can if you want to,” Jimin said. “But if you don’t want to, there’s definitely no pressure.”

Jimin felt Taehyung nod, like he was thinking about that, but when he spoke, what he said was, “We recently started representing an actor—an alpha—who got dropped by his previous agency. I won’t use his name right now for legal reasons, but I can say that if I said his name, you’d know it.”

“So a pretty big deal?” Jimin asked. Careful of the arm that was still tense around him, Jimin shifted against Taehyung’s chest until he could prop himself half up, enough that he could see Taehyung’s face and watch how his mouth twisted into a grimace for a half-second.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Jimin made an appropriately commiserating noise, even though he didn’t have any details yet, and Taehyung sighed and said, “I won’t give you the long version, but the basic situation is that he was on set for a movie he’s currently filming, and after filming was finished for the day, he approached a sound technician and invited her to his trailer.”

“Uh-oh,” Jimin said, and Taehyung’s arm, now resting around Jimin’s waist, tightened even further.

“Again, I’m trying to keep this short, but essentially what happened is that he invited her to his trailer, she politely declined by saying she was busy, he—like the world’s most stereotypical, self-centered asshole alpha—” and Jimin had to hold back a tiny wince, because Taehyung was strong,  “more or less said ‘What could you possibly be doing that’s more important than me?’ And then she said, ‘I’m mated,’ and then he, like an asshole, responded to that with, ‘Don’t you mean married?’ and she said, ‘Why do we need to differentiate,’ and he said something about how he’d noticed she didn’t have a mating mark, and then she said ‘My partner’s human,’ and then, in the middle of the set, with at least a dozen witnesses, he straight-up went off on this whole-ass tirade about how lykans and humans shouldn’t mix, because lykans are superior and humans are weak, and how it’s shameful for any human to dare claim an omega that’s meant for an alpha.”

Absently, Jimin noted that this could be a good time for his own insecurities to rear their cowardly little heads, because that was basically what his own fears boiled down to, but mostly he was just concerned that Taehyung was going to literally squeeze the air out of him.

“Um, Tae—” Jimin gasped out, and the vice grip around his waist loosened in an instant.

“Sorry, sorry,” Taehyung said, leaning up to nuzzle Jimin’s cheek in apology. “Sorry, baby.”

Jimin kept his face painstakingly neutral, because that wasn’t a term of endearment that they tossed around, but Taehyung was distracted, and Jimin wasn’t going hang his hopes and dreams on a petname that had slipped out like that.

“Sorry,” Taehyung whispered one more time.

“You’re good,” Jimin told him. “I’m just fragile and you have to handle me delicately.”

He batted his eyelashes for good measure and Taehyung laughed, because Jimin had just emphatically gotten off to being handled rather undelicately, and was probably going to have fingerprint bruises on his hips to prove it.

“Keep talking,” Jimin encouraged, reaching up to push Taehyung’s sweat-messy hair away from his face.

Taehyung dragged him down into a kiss, slick with tongue and wet with saliva, and when they both pulled away panting, Jimin could tell Taehyung was trying just as hard to keep himself in check as Jimin was.

“Anyway,” Taehyung said, clearing his throat, “I heard all this yesterday, because I had the guy’s agent, one of my assistants, my secretary, one of my lawyers, and the assistant director all call within, like, a ten-minute window absolutely losing their shit.” The arms around Jimin’s waist stayed relaxed this time, and Jimin folded his own arms on Taehyung chest and dropped his chin on top of them while he listened. “I started making phone calls, and I found out that apparently the actor has a history of this kind of behavior—both harassing omegas and going on anti-human rants—but that somehow wasn’t mentioned at any point during our contract negotiation with him, which is so frustrating because I was involved in that contract myself, and I asked so many fucking questions.”

Taehyung rarely got louder when he was frustrated. Instead, his voice dropped and gained a growling quality that Jimin would have found sexy if he didn’t so strongly associate it with Taehyung being sad.

“I ended up finding the number of an agent he had like a year ago,” Taehyung said as Jimin gently stroked over his collarbones. “I called her, and I was trying to explain everything that was going on, and how we were all really thrown because there was no indication that this was a problem we were going to have to deal with, and right in the middle of the conversation she just stopped me and said, ‘Wait, are you an omega?’ And that doesn’t matter, but I said yes, and then she said, like it was obvious, ‘That’s probably while they didn’t tell you.’”

Taehyung deflated all at once, so suddenly and absolutely that Jimin jolted up to make sure he hadn’t somehow gotten hurt. The problem was that he had, but not in any way Jimin could fix, and Jimin was helpless to just watch and listen as Taehyung said, “I’m really competent. Like, I’m so good at my job, and literally everyone knows that, and I’m incredibly confident in my own abilities. But it’s disheartening to realize that sometimes, no matter, how badass I am, I’m still going to be discounted just because I was born with the ability to produce slick out of my ass. And that all hit me on the phone, you know, and I felt like I couldn’t even respond. So I just thanked her for her time and then hung up and cried, and then I went home and cried more until you called me.” He paused for just a second, then tacked on the end, “And then I cried all over Yoongi-hyung on your couch. So. Yeah. Lots of crying.”

“Tae,” Jimin said, and it felt ineffectual, but Taehyung pulled him up enough that he could bury his face in Jimin’s hair, and the contact seemed to steady him enough to take a deep breath and continue.

“So, yeah,” Taehyung mumbled. “That was my really shitty work day yesterday that made me feel sad and kind of defeated and hopeless.”

Jimin kissed Taehyung’s cheek, and Taehyung kissed the top of his head, and when Taehyung didn’t say anything else, Jimin prompted, “And what about today?”

“Today,” Taehyung said matter-of-factly, “was a fucking shitshow, because as soon as I showed up to the meeting with the guy and our entire PR team, it was like the guy was some alpha out of a fucking period romance. He was all sweet and fucking deferential, and he tried to pull my chair out for me, and he complimented my fucking suit literally six times, and every time I said fucking anything he just nodded and said some shit like, “Yes, of course, whatever you think is best, you’re the expert,” and then fucking dimple-smiled at me, and I was ready to rip his fucking throat out with my fucking teeth.”

Jimin was pretty sure that was the most he’d ever heard Taehyung swear in such a short period of time, and he was honestly kind of impressed with how even Taehyung had kept his tone through the whole thing.

“Um,” Jimin said. “Why?”

He meant it vaguely and broadly, because he wasn’t entirely certain what he was asking, and Taehyung, like the wonder he was, answered specifically and concisely like Jimin had been following the intricacies of the conversation all along.

“Because even though I’d popped a scent blocker before I went to the meeting, I smell fucking fantastic right now, and the moment I realized we weren’t going to get anywhere while I was in the room and I excused myself, he stood up and said, ‘I would never forgive myself if I didn’t ask—do you have a partner for your upcoming heat? Because I’m more than willing to help you.’ And then he gave me the greasiest smile I have ever seen on a real person and just waited, all smug and fucking entitled, like he was expecting me to rip off my clothes and fucking present myself right there.”

Jimin had to shake his head to clear that enticing picture from his mind, both because it wasn’t the time, and because he already had Taehyung naked against. “What did you say to him?”

Taehyung pushed at Jimin until he could roll them so they were both on their sides with enough distance between them that they could face each other but still tangle their legs together, and said, “I think I said something about how unless it was in court, I’d rather not see him again, and then I walked out while he was still sputtering.”

“Nice,” Jimin said approvingly, and Taehyung shot him a small smile.

“Mostly I was just frustrated because you could tell he hadn’t heard a thing I said,” Taehyung said. “I’d literally been explaining to him why I was going to encourage the sound tech to press charges, even though when I talked to her she said she’d be okay not to, and he was just stupidly smiling at me from across the table and being all like, ‘Yes, Taehyung-ssi, of course, Taehyung-ssi, the gold in your tie really brings out the highlights in your eyes, Taehyung-ssi.”

Taehyung growled and turned his head to bury his face in his pillow muttering, “Fucking alphas,” while Jimin reached out and ran his fingers through Taehyung’s hair.

“Sorry, Tae,” Jimin said, and Taehyung peeked up at him with half his face still in the pillow

“I know what I’m doing is important,” Taehyung said, “but some days I wish I could quit and go paint murals on the back walls of quirky cafés or something, you know?” Almost to himself, he mumbled, “That would be better than having some asshole openly discuss my heat in the middle of a PR meeting literally about him harassing omegas.”

“Sorry your days were so bad,” Jimin said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Taehyung lifted his head fully from the pillow and said, with uncharacteristic seriousness, “Jimin-ah, you have honestly been perfect.”

Jimin felt himself flush, and tried to brush it off by saying, “Uh, well, if there’s anything else, you know.”

For a moment Taehyung just stared at him, close enough that Jimin could watch his eyes slowly darken, and Jimin had a pretty good idea where things were headed before Taehyung spoke.

“I’d like to be done thinking about this for a little while,” Taehyung said. “I’ll probably have meetings about it for the next few weeks, especially as it starts getting press coverage, but I’d rather focus on something else right now.”

The look in his eyes and the way he was slowly inching closer across the sheets made it pretty clear what he’d like to be focusing on instead, but Jimin still asked, because clarification was never bad.

“Do you want to have sex again?”

Taehyung let out an exhale that Jimin felt across his whole body. “Yes.”

“What kind of sex?”

“I don’t want to think,” Taehyung replied, emphasized and meaningful like he needed Jimin to understand, and Jimin did.

The first time they’d done this, Taehyung had gone full negotiation style and made them talk it out. They’d sat cross-legged on the bed while Taehyung explained that sometimes what he wanted out of sex was to exist entirely within the physical sensations of it, without any need for coherency or opinion.

“I don’t want to be asked what I want, or if I like it, or if it’s okay, because I want to be able to trust that you already know all that,” Taehyung had said, and even though he’d clearly been anxious, hands twisting around each other in his lap and shoulders hunched around his ears, he’d maintained eye contact and had spoken clearly and firmly. “I don’t want to think. I want you to be able to do all that for me.”

And then, very hesitantly, Taehyung had added, “I tried it with—with Jungkookie. But I don’t think he ever really understood what I meant, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t quite what I wanted.”

There’d been some trial and error, which was mostly Jimin learning that when Taehyung said he didn’t want to think, it was less about fucking him dumb and more about being so attuned to Taehyung that he knew precisely how to take care of him without needing input, which Taehyung confessed later was the main point Jungkook had never understood.

“The point isn’t to be incapable of thinking,” Taehyung told Jimin. “The point is that I don’t have to think, because I know you’ve got me,” and Jimin had quietly sworn to himself that he’d always treat Taehyung’s trust like the remarkable gift it was.

Now Jimin was confident with the way he sat up and stared down at Taehyung, pliant and lax on the bed, hair haloed out on the pillow around him and hands limp at his sides. Without speaking, Jimin leaned down and took both of Taehyung’s wrists in hand, lifting them up and pressing them to the pillow on either side of Taehyung’s head.

“Stay,” Jimin said quietly, and Taehyung’s eyelids fluttered and his breathing hitched and his fingers twitched, but he kept his hands where Jimin had put them.

He stayed while Jimin looked at him, assessing, and he stayed while Jimin trailed fingertips from his wrists to his forearms, across his biceps, down his chest and ribs and stomach, which jumped and flexed under the touch, and down even further until he reached Taehyung’s pretty, pretty thighs and pushed, just enough to give a suggestion of what he wanted.

Taehyung let his legs fall open, and Jimin didn’t hide his smirk as he dragged his nails lightly along Taehyung’s inner thigh, because he knew Taehyung was watching his face.

“So pretty, Taehyungie,” Jimin said, and the faintest tremor shook the skin under his hands. “So beautiful.”

“Jimin—” Taehyung said, and Jimin was over him in a heartbeat, covering Taehyung’s larger body with his own as he pressed a hand against Taehyung’s mouth and murmured, “Don’t talk, sweetheart. You don’t need to say anything.”

He replaced his hand with his mouth, and Taehyung offered no resistance to the tongue in his mouth or the teeth against his bottom lip.

Jimin let himself get lost in the kissing, in the lush softness of Taehyung’s lips, and the wet heat of his mouth, and the sharp sting of his teeth, and the way Taehyung panted and strained toward Jimin the moment he pulled away.

Taehyung was fully hard beneath him, hips moving in tentative little upward jerks every time Jimin touched him, and when Jimin trailed a hand to the curve of Taehyung’s ass and was met with a thin, warm layer of slick, he didn’t hesitate to reach for the bottle of lube abandoned on the far edge of the bed.

Taehyung’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm before Jimin could reach the bottle.

“Min—“ he said, and as soon as Jimin looked at his face, understanding twined with arousal, and he couldn’t help the way he ground his hips down.

“I thought I told you to stay,” he said, pushing Taehyung’s hand back down into the pillow.

Taehyung’s eyes flickered between the bottle of lube and Jimin like he still wasn’t sure if Jimin had understood, but Jimin cleared that up the moment he reached down and dragged his fingers through the slick between Taehyung’s thighs.

“Don’t even want lube tonight, Tae?” Jimin said teasingly, and Taehyung arched beneath him with a tiny little whine. “You want me to open you up with your own slick?”

The whine was louder this time, the arch more insistent, and as Jimin sat back, his fingers wet with slick, Taehyung spread his legs wide.

“Goddamn,” Jimin heard himself say, entirely unable to help himself, because Taehyung was a vision.

He thought he heard something, a huffed-out breath that sounded a little too close to a laugh. But Taehyung had said he didn’t want to think, and while Jimin would never say no to Taehyung laughing, even if it was at his expense, if Taehyung could still make those kinds of sounds, Jimin clearly wasn’t doing his job well enough.

Jimin bent one of Taehyung’s legs and pushed it into his chest, opening him up even more, and slid the first finger in with no hesitation.

Taehyung let out a yelp, but it morphed into a moan almost as soon as it started, because unlike Jimin, Taehyung loved prep. He’d told Jimin that the physical sensation of it was nice, especially if his partner was good with their fingers (which Jimin was), but more than that, he liked the idea of his partner taking their time with him, opening him up and making an effort to get him desperate for it.

Jimin worked up to two fingers quickly and then kept it there for a minute, stroking Taehyung from the inside while he let out mewls and whimpers and gasped-out pleas that Jimin silenced with languid kisses. Taehyung was tight and wet and searingly hot around Jimin’s fingers, and even though it technically felt the same, there was always something heady about knowing that Taehyung was turned on and trusting enough to want Jimin to only use slick to open him up.

By the time Jimin was three fingers deep and brushing teasingly against Taehyung’s prostate while he fucked his tongue into Taehyung’s open mouth and told him, “So wet, Taehyungie; you’re so wet for me,” Taehyung was keening and writhing on the bed, and Jimin was so hard it was honestly becoming difficult to think straight.

Jimin pulled away from Taehyung’s mouth, all red and wet and delicious, then slid his fingers out of Taehyung’s ass and murmured a quiet, “’S okay, you’re okay,” when Taehyung wailed at the loss. He resituated himself between Taehyung’s open legs, one hand holding Taehyung by a knee, and the other reaching past Taehyung’s head for the condom by the lube.

“Jimin-ah,” Taehyung said, desperate and wide-eyed and already wrecked, and Jimin ripped open the condom, smoothed a hand over Taehyung’s thigh, and said, “Shh, Tae, you don’t need to talk.”

Taehyung’s whole body shivered and he threw his head back, hands clenching into fists as they trembled right where Jimin had left them. He whined when Jimin bent to press a kiss to his throat, and whined again, even higher, when Jimin carefully lined up the tip of his cock against Taehyung’s hole.

“Shh,” Jimin said again, as he teasingly rocked his hips forward, just enough that Taehyung could feel the pressure. “You don’t have to think at all, remember?” He leaned forward, over Taehyung’s shaking body, and spoke right into Taehyung’s ear, “You just have to get fucked.”

The moment he buried his cock inside Taehyung’s wet, carefully stretched hole was the same moment Taehyung finally lost control of his arms and jolted forward, locking his arms around Jimin’s neck and letting out a cry right into Jimin’s ear.

Jimin thought he heard Taehyung whisper, “Oh, fuck,” but he was too focused on the way Taehyung was clenching around him, how fucking hot he was inside, how Taehyung’s nails were digging into his shoulders and his hard cock was pressing up against Jimin’s belly as he breathed in gasps and moans and begged senselessly, “Please, please, please.”

It was hard not to get lost in the sensation of tightness, of slick, of heat, of the warmth of Taehyung’s skin and the tremble of his breath against Jimin’s ear and his arms around Jimin’s neck. But Jimin kept his pace steady and relentless, gentling when a gasp sounded just at the edge of pain, driving harder and deeper when Taehyung’s moans went low and throaty and blissed-out. He focused on every tiny reaction, every wordless encouragement or instruction, twisting a hand into Taehyung’s hair when he threw his head back, angling directly for his prostate when he moved his own hips to try to get Jimin deeper, dragging nails down his thigh when Taehyung locked a leg around Jimin’s hip.

He didn’t ask if Taehyung was close because he already knew, had already read all the signs, so he just pushed Taehyung back down to the bed, splayed out and fucking breathtaking below him, hair wild and eyes wide and lips kissed and bitten raw, lovely and precious and shuddering with how close he was.

Jimin took Taehyung’s cock in hand and Taehyung screamed.

He watched Taehyung’s face as he fucked him through his orgasm, watched the way his mouth opened and his eyes fluttered shut and he tossed his head back back back until he was all throat, and Jimin leaned down and breathed “Beautiful” right in his ear.

He came with his teeth in Taehyung’s throat, his mouth and nose full of something overwhelmingly floral and spicy, and his cock buried so deep that it felt, for one exquisite moment, as if he and Taehyung would be connected forever.

He collapsed on top of Taehyung, trembling with the aftershocks, and whispered, “Shh, shh, ‘s okay, you’re okay,” when Taehyung shivered and arched underneath him, sensitive like an open nerve in the way he sometimes was after sex. Jimin trailed open-mouthed kisses across Taehyung’s neck, gently bit at his ear and his shoulder, stroked down his sides and kept whispering, “It’s okay, Taetae, you’re okay. It’s okay.”

Eventually Taehyung let out a breath and went boneless, and sometimes Jimin thought these few moments, when they were still connected and so close that it was like they were one person, were his very favorite.

“You’re so sexy, Jimin-ah,” Taehyung mumbled, still sounding sex-drunk and a little shaky, and Jimin, in an eternal bid to not say something a little too raw and heartfelt, vetoed what he wanted to say and replied with a much less damning, “Not as sexy as you, Taehyung-ah.”

Taehyung made a pleased sound and aggressively rubbed his face against Jimin’s face until Jimin was laughing, which made Taehyung let out a shriek, because “Laughing while your dick is literally still in me is rude, Jimin-ah!” and Jimin reluctantly slipped out, careful of how sensitive Taehyung was.

“Cuddles?” Taehyung asked hopefully as Jimin threw the condom away, but Jimin could tell from his resigned face that he already knew what Jimin was going to say.

“Shower and then cuddles,” Jimin replied, and Taehyung kicked his feet petulantly and said, “You’re no fun.”

They made out lazily in the shower, and cleaned each other of lube and slick respectively, fingers gentle against tender, swollen holes, and maybe both of them lingered a little longer than strictly necessary over the curves and muscles of each other’s asses.

Jimin washed Taehyung’s hair, which was long enough to trail down his neck when wet, and Taehyung rubbed soapy hands across Jimin’s back and all the way down to his ankles, dropping to his knees behind Jimin and biting playfully at Jimin’s ass while Jimin yelped and complained and absolutely didn’t preen under the affectionate attention.

Jimin swaddled them both in towels, intentionally wrapping Taehyung’s only around his head and shoulders so that he could stare at Taehyung’s ass as he walked back to the bedroom, and Taehyung played along, sauntering with purpose ahead of Jimin and pausing at every doorway to cock a hip and shoot flirty looks over his shoulder.

Taehyung latched onto Jimin’s back and hampered every movement as Jimin stripped the sheets, picked up the come-covered towel from the floor, put everything in the washing machine, and then stretched new sheets over the mattress.

“You could help,” he told Taehyung, and Taehyung snuck both hands around his chest to tweak his nipples and make Jimin squeal.

“I am helping.”

When the bed was finally put together again they abandoned their towels on the floor—ruining Jimin’s earlier attempt at responsible wet-towel handling—and crawled into bed naked. Taehyung rolled them unnecessarily across the bed, getting them all tangled in the sheets while he bit at Jimin’s neck and shoulders in a way that seemed one part teasing and two parts possessive. Eventually they settled with Jimin wrapped around Taehyung’s back, and Taehyung’s arms holding Jimin’s arms tight against his chest. Taehyung had one of Jimin’s ankles trapped between his calves, and Jimin had his face buried in the back of Taehyung’s neck, and Jimin had a quick, sleepy thought that he never wanted to move, because this was probably the most comfortable and content he’d ever be in his life, and that was, typically, the moment when Taehyung’s head popped up, he flipped around in Jimin’s arms, and he said, far too excitedly for two rounds of sex and one heavy conversation later, “Oh, my god, what if we got McFlurries?”

Jimin blinked at him.

“Now?”

Taehyung blinked back.

“Yes?”

“Tae,” Jimin said. “I don’t know that McDonalds delivers this late.”

Taehyung’s eyes went wide and his lips pursed in a devastating pout, and the worst thing was he didn’t even seem to be aware.

Jimin gave himself one moment to close his eyes and regret every decision he’d ever made.

When he opened his eyes, Taehyung was already smiling.

“Go put on pants,” Jimin said. “Let’s get you a McFlurry.”

Chapter Text

Jimin woke up with Taehyung plastered to his side, and the moment he so much as shifted, Taehyung’s arms locked around him like iron.

“No,” Taehyung said firmly, his voice very much awake and not sleep-gravely like Jimin had thought it would be. “Stay.”

“How long have you been awake?” Jimin asked, and Taehyung made a snarly sound into Jimin’s neck.

“A while, I think,” Taehyung said, and when Jimin tried shifting again, the leg Taehyung had thrown over his hips tightened, keeping him in place.

“Why didn’t you get up?” Jimin asked, and Taehyung made another snarly sound and muttered incoherently.

“Right,” Jimin said. “Okay. But, like, I have to pee.”

There was silence for a moment. Then Taehyung said, “You can wait.”

A disbelieving kind of laugh escaped Jimin, and he tried, yet again, to move, and was, yet again, thwarted by Taehyung and his inhumanly strong frame.

“Tae, seriously,” Jimin complained, and Taehyung growled into his ear, which didn’t phase Jimin at all, and tightened his leg further around Jimin’s hips, which phased Jimin significantly, because it put a little more pressure than was entirely comfortable on his bladder.

Jimin swatted ineffectually at Taehyung’s mess of hair, then at his back, and tried to kick at his feet only for Taehyung to use his other leg to pin Jimin’s calves down so he couldn’t move.

“Tae, seriously!” Jimin repeated, a little more emphatically. “You know how much I love to cuddle, and I am super willing to spend all day in bed with you, but I’d really prefer to pee first.”

Taehyung lifted his head enough to glare, but it was the pouty kind of glare, not the mad kind of glare, and it was tempered by a worrying look of calculation that Jimin figured was best to put a stop to immediately.

“Taehyung-ah,” Jimin said seriously. “This is probably a good time to mention that piss play is a hard no for me.”

Taehyung lips pouted out impossibly further, and Jimin leaned up to kiss them, both because they were there and because he knew it would make Taehyung melt for the half-second it took for Jimin to wriggle his way out of Taehyung’s burning embrace and make a run for the bathroom.

“We should work on your aversion to fluids!” Taehyung called from behind him, and Jimin waited until the bathroom door was shut and locked before he yelled back, “Me and my aversion to fluids are fine, thanks!”

Plans for cuddling were, unfortunately, delayed the moment Taehyung turned on his phone and the chimes of his incoming notifications went on for over a full minute before he’d silenced his phone and looked up at Jimin with the face of man going to war.

So they’d gotten dressed, they’d had breakfast while Taehyung texted furiously, and then they had gone their separate ways as much as they could when neither of them were leaving the apartment and Taehyung seemed insistent that five feet was too great a distance between them.

Taehyung followed Jimin into the bathroom when he showered, sitting on the closed toilet seat and saying things into his phone like, “I don’t care about the negative press, I care about the integrity of a company in which I have always encouraged complete transparency.” He’d followed Jimin into the hallway while Jimin did laundry, leaning against the wall and saying, “I understand he’s a client, but why would my focus be on maintaining his image when he’s so determined to ruin it?” He followed Jimin into the kitchen, and he sat on the counter and kicked his feet while Jimin made lunch, definitely talking to one of his assistants and not someone on the board as he said, “If I hear one more fucking alpha call me fucking sweetheart, I’m going to fucking start ripping fucking testicles off with my fucking teeth.” He’d paused for a moment, then, clearly listening, and then muttered, “No, you’d right. They’d enjoy that too much. Bastards.”

He followed Jimin into the bedroom when Jimin went to retrieve the wet towels, and that was almost a disaster, because Jimin heard a growl behind him the moment he bent over to the get the towels, and when he glanced over his shoulder, Taehyung’s eyes were definitely fixed on his ass.

“Tae,” Jimin whispered warningly, because he was pretty sure Taehyung was on the phone with a lawyer.

Taehyung’s eyes flicked up to the marks across Jimin’s neck and he growled again.

“Taehyung,” Jimin said, a little more firmly, and Taehyung just stared at him and licked over his lips practically in slow motion.

“Okay,” Jimin said, and he shoved Taehyung out of the bedroom and shut the door behind them.

By early evening things had calmed down enough that Taehyung could at least periodically set his phone down and either take deep breaths with his nose buried under Jimin’s chin, or reach over and half-jokingly knead at Jimin’s ass like it was a stress ball. Unfortunately, by early evening Taehyung was also shifting uncomfortably and wincing when he moved, curling into himself and pressing his free hand just below his stomach.

In the space between one phone call and the next, Taehyung dropped his phone to the counter and let out a groan as he practically doubled over, arms wrapped around his abdomen and face too pale.

Jimin didn’t ask if he was okay, instead choosing to go directly to, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Taehyung looked up from where he was bent over and said, “I don’t suppose you have any heating pads?”

And it just so happened that Jimin did, because he may or may not have gone on a massive, panic-fueled shopping spree immediately after the first conversation where Taehyung had said, “you,” and “my heat,” and “me,” all in the same sentence. So while Taehyung took another phone call, Jimin fetched the heating pads, the painkillers the internet had assured him were safe for omegas pre-, mid-, and post-heat, the three extra extra soft and very pastel blankets, and the tea that one reviewer swore had taken her from “heat-cramping so bad I was ready to rip out my own intestines” to “I think I smiled at my boyfriend for the first time in three days.”

Jimin led Taehyung to the couch and helped him lie down. He plugged in the heating pad and tucked it under Taehyung’s shirt and the edge of his waistband. He shook out two pain relievers and brought Taehyung a glass of water to swallow them down with. He arranged the blankets around Taehyung until everything was comfortable and soft shades of purple and green and gray. He brewed a cup of tea, and watched with satisfaction when the first sip made Taehyung close his eyes and breathe out a noise that sounded an awful lot like bliss.

For just a few seconds, Jimin felt like he absolutely had this heat thing in the bag, humanness and lack of experience be damned, but then Taehyung blinked his eyes opened and asked, tears beginning to trickle silently down his cheeks, “But what about Tata?”

Tata, as it turned out, was a plush, red, heart-shaped pillow that Taehyung regularly lost until he was mid-heat and suddenly needed it desperately and instantly. But Tata was not, as far as Taehyung could remember, at his apartment, and Jimin had never remembered Taehyung bringing something like that to Jimin’s apartment, and Jimin had a moment of both panic until Taehyung said that maybe the last place he’d had it was at a movie night at Yoongi’s place.

When Jimin called, Yoongi had suggested he ask Namjoon, and Namjoon had suggested he ask one of Taehyung’s assistants, and Taehyung’s assistant had suggested he ask Jimin, to which Jimin had responded, “I am Jimin,” and the assistant had responded, “Oh,” and then they’d sat in awkward silence until Jimin had said, “Um, yeah, I’m gonna go.”

The moment he hung up, Jimin realized how stupid they were all being and called Jungkook.

“Do you have Tata?” Jimin asked, not even bothering to say hello, and Jungkook just laughed and said, “Yeah, I’ll be over in like ten minutes.”

Jimin had texted the group chat twice, once to say crisis averted, Jungkookie had Tata, and once to say, also, kook, we’re at my place, not’s Tae’s, and Yoongi called approximately five seconds later.

“Hyung?” Jimin answered, and Yoongi made an affirmative kind of huff through the phone. “What’s up?”

“You and Tae-yah are at your apartment?” Yoongi asked.

“Yeah,” Jimin said, and glanced over to where Taehyung had abandoned his phone on the arm of the couch and sunk entirely beneath a lavender blanket, leaving only tufts of dark hair behind as he let out periodic soft sounds of pain.

“And Jungkookie’s coming over?”

“Yeah?” Jimin confirmed again, unable to help the questioning note in his voice this time. “Why? Is something wrong?”

Yoongi went “Hmm.” And then, “If he gets there before me, don’t let him in.”

With that cryptic command, Yoongi hung up, and Jimin was left staring at his phone in disbelief until he remembered that there was a whole-ass burgeoning nest right in the middle of Jimin’s living room, Jimin did not, actually, have this whole heat thing in the bag, and if there had ever been a time for gentle but firm one-on-one conversations with Jungkook, it had passed.

“Shit,” Jimin said, and from his pastel pile on the couch, Taehyung absently echoed him with all of the fervor and none of the context:

“Shit.”

~

Jungkook knocked on Jimin’s door eleven minutes after Jimin had called him. By that time, Yoongi, who lived significantly farther away and openly berated everyone he knew for speeding, had shoved his way into the apartment, hauled a kitchen chair into the living room, and taken up residence directly in front of the pile of blankets and pillows like a guard.

Taehyung was still swaddled in his spot on the couch, and he was still crying those silent tears that he assured Jimin were very hormonal and would go away once he had Tata. But he’d sat up enough that he could comfortably hold one of Yoongi’s hands, and he had a second cup of tea delicately held in his free hand as he and Yoongi bent their heads together and engaged in conversation that seemed to mostly be variations of “fuck this shit.” Jimin had confiscated Taehyung’s phone as soon as Yoongi had shown up, because Taehyung had started looking at it like it had personally dishonored him and his cow, and it was still vibrating on the counter where he’d put it when Jimin opened the door and was immediately hit in the face with something red, heart-shaped, and, honestly, pretty damn soft.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Jimin muttered into the plush surface of the pillow. “Tae’s been crying and I’m about to start crying too if I can’t help him.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jungkook responded, with a kind of compassionate and intimate knowing that Jimin, for once, took comfort in. “That gets you right in your fucking heart, doesn’t it?"

Jimin left Jungkook to shut the door behind himself, and hurried across the room into the space between the couch and the coffee table to extend the pillow to Taehyung, who dropped his tea (which Yoongi effortlessly caught like he’d been expecting it) and reached out for the pillow with both hands.

Tata disappeared under the blankets, and Taehyung followed a moment later, once again only a mess of dark hair peaking out the top of the pile. Jungkook drifted over, sliding up behind Jimin with the same endeared expression that Jimin assumed was also on both his and Yoongi’s faces.

“Hey, Tae,” Jungkook said gently, and Taehyung made a content little noise of acknowledgement. “You good in there?”

“Mmm,” the blanket lump responded.

Jungkook laughed, glancing around to the cord from the heating pad running out of the blankets, the tea still in Yoongi’s hand—“Oh, shit, that’s a really good brand,” he said after he took a sniff, and Jimin felt weirdly proud—the bottle of painkillers on the coffee table, and the massive pile behind the chair Yoongi was aggressively occupying.

Jungkook’s face went uncharacteristically blank.

Yoongi’s face stayed characteristically confrontational.

Jungkook blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Three more times, in rapid succession.

“Oh,” he said.

He sounded distant. Or confused, maybe. Taken aback. Something that, regardless of the preciseness of the words, was not typical for Jungkook.

“Oh,” Jungkook said again, and Yoongi set the cup of tea on the table and crossed his arms over his chest like he was preparing for a battle.

Jungkook moved forward almost absently, in a way that seemed significantly more typical of Taehyung than Jungkook. His eyes were fixed beyond Yoongi, down on the floor, and when Jimin did his best to follow Jungkook’s gaze, he saw that Jungkook was staring at where the corner of Taehyung’s favorite pillow was peeking out from the bottom of the pile.

“Sorry, hyung,” Jungkook said, and there was something strangely brittle and unknowable in his voice. “Sorry, can you just—”

He slipped around Jimin, who was trying to make eye contact with Yoongi because he didn’t know what was happening, and therefore if there was protocol for this, but Yoongi’s eyes were firmly and unblinkingly fixed on Jungkook’s face.

“Sorry,” Jungkook repeated. “I just need to—”

“Kook.”

Yoongi’s voice was sharp, and for one second, it froze Jungkook’s hand where it was reaching out and down. But then Jungkook shook himself, and when he spoke again, there was a falsified kind of cheer to his voice that Jimin hated.

“Oh, no worries, hyung,” Jungkook said, and Jimin watched him try a smile that didn’t do anything comforting or happy at all. “I just—that’s—that’s Tae’s favorite pillow on the floor, I was just going to pick it up for him.”

He reached out again, and Jimin watched how carefully Yoongi didn’t touch him, and how carefully Jungkook didn’t touch Yoongi in return when Yoongi shifted his weight in the chair so he was protecting the pile even more obviously.

“Don’t touch it.”

“It’s his favorite pillow,” Jungkook said, and there was an edge to his voice that made the hair on the back of Jimin’s neck rise, and Yoongi’s fingers clench tight against his arms. “It’s on the floor.”

For just a moment, Jimin thought that Jungkook had never seemed larger, never seemed more intimidating and powerful and fierce, and that Yoongi had never seemed smaller and more delicate.

And then Yoongi stood, slowly, and deliberately, and with ferocious and terrifying calm, and despite the size difference and the teacup that Yoongi was still holding delicately in his hand, it had never been more obvious that in so many ways, Jungkook was still a child.

“Don’t touch it.”

Jungkook deflated in an instant, suddenly looking lost and sad and unsure of anything, and Jimin, despite being barely a step away from both of them, had no idea what to do.

“The fuck is going on out there, you guys fucking stink,” Taehyung’s voice demanded morosely, and when half his face emerged from the blankets, there were fresh tears in his eyes. “You can’t be all aggressive and pheromone-y right now, it’s making me fucking cry.”

With that, he disappeared back into his pastel cocoon, and all pheromones and hormones and posturing and unspoken conversations wilted as Jimin turned to Jungkook and Yoongi, and with fire in his eyes and absolute steel in his voice as he said, “No making Taehyungie cry. Out.”

Yoongi made Jungkook go first, and right before they stepped through the door, looking respectively like a disgruntled cat and a kicked puppy, Taehyung called out from where he was buried, “Thanks for bringing me Tata, Jungkookie; you’re the best and I love you.”

Jungkook paused in the doorway and looked back at the blanket pile on the floor, and then the blanket pile on the couch, and then he said, “Of course. You too, Tae.” And then, after closing his eyes, he added a very, very quiet, “I know."

The look on his face was devastated, and Jimin didn’t understand why.

He didn’t have time to contemplate it, though, because the second the door was shut, Taehyung launched himself out of the blankets and started aggressively rubbing Tata all over Jimin’s face and neck.

“Um,” Jimin said, stumbling a step back.

Taehyung followed, undeterred, and shoved the whole pillow up Jimin’s shirt so he could drag it against the bare skin of Jimin’s chest and stomach.

“Tae!” Jimin laughed out, because he was ticklish, goddamn. “What the hell?”

“It doesn’t smell like you,” Taehyung mumbled darkly, expression thunderous apart from how pouty his lips were. “What’s the point of Tata if it doesn’t smell like you?”

Jimin didn’t point out that Tata obviously didn’t smell like him, as this was the first time he’d even been aware of Tata’s existence. Instead he held as still as he could and tried to contain his giggles as Taehyung rubbed Tata furiously all over him.

Taehyung retreated back into his blankets as soon as he was done, and Jimin spent the rest of the evening reviewing choreography, watching his massive backlog of videos people had sent him, and answering every one of Taehyung’s calls for food, water, tea, painkillers, or kisses.

They ate dinner with Taehyung still on the couch and refusing to feed himself, and the moment Jimin had poked the last bite into Taehyung’s mouth with his chopsticks, Taehyung had unwrapped himself, pushed all the blankets onto the ever-growing pile on the floor, and dragged Jimin into the bedroom.

Jimin let himself be stripped of his shirt and pushed onto the bed, pliantly opened his mouth for Taehyung’s desperate tongue, and wasn’t even bothered when Taehyung rolled off him barely a minute later and announced that he was kicking Jimin out of the bedroom because “I don’t want to have sex tonight and you’re so fucking sexy that you’re making me forget that, what the fuck, literally goddamn, you’re so hot.”

Jimin had obligingly put his shirt back on, grabbed a pair of pajama pants, kissed both of Taehyung’s cheeks so Taehyung knew he wasn’t mad, and gone out to the couch. Ten minutes later, he’d happily made his way back into the bedroom when Taehyung called him because all the blankets had somehow disappeared and Taehyung was cold and needed something to cuddle. He’d gently bullied Taehyung into pajamas, and then let himself be pinned down again when Taehyung insisted that he had no idea where all the pillows had gone and that was definitely Jimin’s fault and because of that Jimin was going to have to be Taehyung’s pillow for the whole night and not complain even once (not that Jimin ever did).

Taehyung was tense and restless in Jimin’s arms, and even though he was tired, Jimin stayed awake, listening to Taehyung inhale sharply and open his mouth like he was about to say something, only to snap his mouth shut again and burrow his head back into Jimin’s shoulder.

“Jimin?” he whispered eventually, just as Jimin was about to drift off, and Jimin’s eyes flew open in the dark.

“Mmm, yeah?”

“. . . My pants are twisted the wrong way around my ankle.”

Jimin didn’t laugh, but it was close.

“Sorry, baby,” he said, pressing a sleepy kiss to what felt like Taehyung’s eyebrow. “Do you want me to fix them for you?”

“Would you?” Taehyung asked plaintively, and Jimin obligingly sat up and felt down Taehyung’s body until he reached where Taehyung’s pajama pants had wrapped into a tight jumble around Taehyung’s ankle.

“You’re perfect,” Taehyung told him when Jimin laid back down, and Jimin’s immediate thought was, yet again, something he wasn’t sure he should say.

“You should get some sleep,” Jimin said instead, and Taehyung draped himself over Jimin’s body and pulled Jimin’s arms around him, shifting until he was comfortable, and then shifting more until he let out a long breath and thumped his forehead onto Jimin’s shoulder.

“Jimin?” he said again.

“Yeah?” Jimin responded softly.

“Do you still want to do this?”

Jimin could have said, “If you want me to,” but he thought Taehyung had actually made it pretty obvious that he did. He could have said, “I’m a little scared,” but he’d probably made that pretty obvious to Taehyung. He could have said, “Are you sure?” but he trusted Taehyung too much to doubt him.

“Yeah,” Jimin said, and when Taehyung’s arms tightened around him, Jimin tightened his own right back. “Yeah, I really do.”

Chapter Text

“Jimin.”

“Mmm?”

“Jimin.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“Jimin-ah.”

“Uh-huh, what’s up?”

Something bit his neck, hard, and Jimin flew upright with a yelp, almost headbutting Taehyung where he sat on Jimin’s lap.

“Tae, what the fuck,” Jimin groaned, falling back to the bed.

“You were taking a long time to wake up,” Taehyung said simply, and Jimin let out a quiet laugh and leaned up so he could sloppily kiss the sharp line of Taehyung’s jaw and inhale the almost alarmingly delicious scent that was getting stronger every day.

“Shake my shoulder or something, you animal,” he mumbled into Taehyung’s hot skin, and Taehyung wrapped his arms around Jimin’s neck and tilted his head back so Jimin could kiss down his throat.

“That’s boring,” Taehyung said, deep voice only a little breathy as one of his large hands moved to the back of Jimin’s head, pulling Jimin ever so slightly closer to that sensitive junction between Taehyung’s neck and shoulder. “And this woke you up much faster.”

Jimin couldn’t really contest that, so he just slipped his arms around Taehyung’s waist to hold him a little tighter, then hummed and dragged his tongue from the dip between Taehyung’s collarbones to the point of chin.

It never escalated beyond Taehyung warm and pliant on Jimin’s lap, content to sit still as Jimin layered kisses all over his neck and tugged the collar of his shirt away so he could carefully work a hickey into the skin below Taehyung’s collarbone, just where a shirt could barely cover it. It was sleepy and soft, unbearably hot in a way that Jimin didn’t feel any need to pursue further, and the words were so heavy on Jimin’s tongue he could hardly stand it.

“Why’d you wake me up?” Jimin said, more as effort to distract himself than because he actually needed an answer. “I thought we didn’t have anything to do until dinner at Seokjin-hyung’s and Namjoon-hyung’s.”

Taehyung immediately let out a groan of the decidedly unsexy variety and said, “I’ve got to do a video conference.”

“But doesn’t your leave officially start today?” Jimin said, pulling back enough that he could look at Taehyung’s despondent face. “I thought no one was supposed to contact you.”

Taehyung grimaced, looking both put-upon and a little guilty, and said, “Okay, yes, and that’s definitely the policy for other people, and I absolutely don’t tolerate interruption of leave for the other employees, but I maybe told Soojin that she could call if it was an emergency, and she sounded like she was going to cry, and I couldn’t just tell her no, especially because it’s not like anything’s, you know, actually started yet.”

He’d dropped his head just enough that he could peer up at Jimin fetchingly through his bangs despite how he towered over Jimin from his place on Jimin’s lap, and Jimin shot him a wry smile.

“You’re allowed to follow the rules you literally created for your own company,” Jimin said, and Taehyung groaned again, hunching forward so he could bury his face in Jimin’s shoulder. But it wasn’t like Taehyung needed Jimin to tell him that he was a chronic overworker who always wanted his employees to experience as little stress as possible, even if that was at his own expense, so Jimin just rested his chin on Taehyung’s head and rocked him back and forth, cooing a little teasingly, “Poor Taetae, always trying to fix everyone’s problems and bad decisions.”

“They make such bad decisions,” Taehyung agreed, muffled by Jimin’s shirt. “I wish more people would wake up in the morning and just choose not to be absolute idiots.”

Jimin could hear the pout in his voice before he pulled back so Jimin could see it on his face, and Jimin pouted back supportively.

“What do you need from me?” Jimin asked, and watched as Taehyung’s mouth curled up suggestively.

“What a question to ask, Jimin-ssi,” Taehyung murmured, letting his eyes drag up and down Jimin’s body. He slid his tongue out of his mouth, licking his lips so slowly it was an obvious tease, and just as Jimin was about to lean forward and catch that sly tongue between his own lips, Taehyung rolled off him, popped off the bed and onto his feet, and shot Jimin a blinding smile.

“But actually all I need is your laptop right now, because I didn’t bring mine.”

And Jimin had groaned and complained and thrown himself back against the bed with a dramatic wail, and Taehyung had laughed just like Jimin had known he would.

Jimin set Taehyung up in his kitchen, laptop and phone charger and orange juice and two pieces of toast with strawberry jam, and when Taehyung had assured him that he’d be fine alone for a bit, Jimin had showered, gotten dressed, nominally done his hair, and then peeked into the kitchen as he was pocketing his phone and wallet.

Taehyung was sitting at the counter with the video conference up on the laptop, a call with Soojin and another assistant running on the phone, and what Jimin was pretty sure was an email thread with two different lawyers and an entertainment company CEO. Jimin couldn’t hear much, just quiet murmurs from the laptop and phone, but he could hear the way everyone was saying Kim Taehyung-nim, as if Taehyung wasn’t sitting there with messy hair, thick nerd glasses, and Jimin’s t-shirt slipping down his shoulder enough to reveal the edge of the darkening hickey Jimin had just left on him.

Taehyung looked up and beamed when he noticed Jimin, and Jimin waved and blew him an overly-dramatic kiss, which Taehyung subtly caught out of the frame of his webcam, and then sneakily pressed directly on top of his hickey, making his touch look casual instead of pointed.

Jimin laughed off the resulting flash of heat, because if he let himself get turned on by every sexy thing Taehyung did, he’d never be able to go out in public again, and flashed Taehyung a peace sign before he left.

~

Jimin’s heat partner leave had also technically started that day, and, like the hypocrite he was, the first thing he did was go to the company building and check on all his classes. That ended up being a much quicker process than he’d thought it would be, because each time he stepped into a room, all of his lykan students shot him the same horrified look and variations of the demand, “What are you doing here?” and then aggressively shooed him out and insisted that his partner needed him much more than they did.

Sufficiently chagrined, Jimin retreated to HR to quadruple-check that his heat-partner leave had gone through and was unsurprised when the man in the office told him that it was probably the best paperwork they’d ever received—Taehyung, after all, had been the one who filled it all out. Jimin had just signed in the appropriate spots and given Taehyung hundreds of kisses as thanks, because Jimin hated paperwork.

He hesitated before going down to the small practice rooms, but when he texted Taehyung to ask if the conference was over, Taehyung just sent him back a crying face, so Jimin sent one back in sympathy, and went to dance off some of his tension.

He shuffled through Usher and Jay Park, Wonder Girls and Whitney Housten, alternating between freestyle and sections of choreography as he lost himself in the pure freedom of movement. He’d meant to keep it loose, relaxed, purely for the sake of soothing his own body and mind, but he got caught up in executing the moves perfectly, just like he always did, and it was only when the song changed unexpectedly that he realized he’d been drilling the same sequence for almost ten minutes, ignoring the music to focus on making his arms just that much tighter here, and his hips that much smoother there, and his footwork that much sharper right at the end.

But he’d been doing hip-hop, something he and Jungkook had choreographed just to challenge themselves, and it was hard to dance hip-hop to Frank Sinatra and Samara Joy, so Jimin just stood there grinning like an idiot and maybe liking it a little too much that Taehyung had taken up residence in every part of his life, even his dance playlists.

By the time Taehyung texted saying he was finished, Jimin was already on his way back, and when he opened his apartment door, it was to an armful of Taehyung declaring, “I missed you so much!”

And Jimin just laughed and replied, “I missed you, too,” because it was true.

They spent the rest of the time before dinner lounging around the apartment, drifting around with a pleasant sort of aimlessness. They watched part of a show on the TV in the living room, then part of another show on Jimin’s laptop in the bedroom. They turned on music while they made lunch, and Taehyung kept hip-checking Jimin any time Jimin turned away from him for more than a few seconds, so they barely got anything done until Jimin pinned Taehyung against the counter and kissed him boneless to the sound of Ella Fitzgerald crooning around them.

Taehyung was still hurting, pausing occasionally to grimace and curl into himself, but every time Jimin asked if he wanted to lie down with a heating pad, Taehyung shook his head and clung a little more tightly to Jimin. So Jimin made him more tea, gave him a half-dose of painkillers when Taehyung insisted he didn’t need the full dose, and returned every one of the affectionate touches Taehyung gave him.

Taehyung vacillated all day between being extra soft and sweet and almost comically cranky, either smiling so wide it felt like Jimin’s whole world had gotten bigger, or glaring at everything that wasn’t Jimin with his eyebrows drawn tight together and his lips pursed into a furious scowl that was honestly pretty intimidating, even accompanied by Taehyung’s still-undone hair and old, loose t-shirt. One moment all he’d want was to be cuddled on Jimin’s lap with Jimin’s fingers stroking against his forehead, and the next he’d be popping up and barking out that everything in Jimin’s apartment was wrong, snarling and pacing and glaring until Jimin had moved the couch so it was facing the kitchen, the loveseat so it was facing the hallway, and the kitchen table so it was jammed into the corner with all its chairs crowded around only one side. And then Taehyung would be sweet again, curled up against Jimin chest while he pushed his hands up Jimin’s shirt and ran the pads of his fingers up and down Jimin’s spine, over and over again.

When it was time to get ready, Taehyung asked Jimin to shower with him, and despite having already showered, Jimin agreed. Yet again, there was no escalation, just Taehyung humming and drawing shapes on Jimin shoulders with the shampoo, and Jimin trying to blow bubbles into Taehyung’s face just so he could see the way his nose scrunched.

They got dressed between kisses and playful, not-so-sneaky gropes, and when Taehyung pulled on one of Jimin’s shirts that was loose enough to show the edge of his hickey, Jimin wasn’t even surprised.

He was surprised, though, when Taehyung’s hand stopped him picking his own top, and instead passed him a deceptively simple brand-name t-shirt that had definitely come from Taehyung’s closet, not Jimin’s.

“But this is your shirt,” Jimin said.

“Yes,” Taehyung replied, and Jimin decided not to question it.

The moment the shirt settled over his torso and he saw the satisfied look on Taehyung’s face, Jimin laughed and crowed Taehyung against the door to steal another round of kisses.

“Possessive Taehyungie,” Jimin teased against his lips, and Taehyung responded by murmuring, “It was either this or bite you again.”

“I wouldn’t have been opposed,” Jimin murmured back, and then danced out of reach before Taehyung’s eyes could get any darker.

They took Taehyung’s car but Jimin drove, because Taehyung seemed a little spacey, staring out the window and drumming his fingers against the dashboard and his own chest and Jimin’s thigh while he hummed along to whatever was on the radio. He tried migrating across the center console three times, eyes fixed on Jimin’s face, and all three times Jimin had to gently remind him that he couldn’t drive with Taehyung in his lap.

“This honestly seems like a design flaw more people should be concerned about,” Taehyung said, after the third time, and he sounded so serious that Jimin had to fight to hold in a smile as they pulled onto the street Seokjin and Namjoon lived on. “What if there was nowhere else for me to sit?”

“I think at that point you get in a different car,” Jimin said, and Taehyung looked aghast and affronted and ready to argue, but by then Jimin was already parallel parking behind Yoongi’s car.

Hyejin opened the door, yet again to Seokjin bellowing, “Hyejin-ah, what did I tell you?” but that didn’t matter, because she and Taehyung were both already letting out identical shrieks of delight, and a moment later they were tearing through the apartment into her room, still screaming.

“I don’t know which one of them is worse,” Seokjin lamented from the kitchen, and Jimin bent down to line up Taehyung’s carelessly discarded shoes.

“At least when she wants to be picked up it’s easy,” Jimin called back, and Taehyung’s shout of, “I heard that, Jimin-ssi!” was echoed by a laugh and a younger, higher-pitched, “Yeah, Jimin-ssi!”

Jimin toed off his own shoes, tossing a “hello!” at Yoongi and Namjoon, who were sitting together on the couch, bent over something on Namjoon’s phone. They let out almost identical grunts of acknowledgement, but neither of them looked up, and Jimin openly laughed at them as he made his way to the kitchen. Hoseok passed him in the kitchen entryway, carrying a plate of watermelon out to the dining area, and instead of greeting him, he just shot him a knowing look at asked sweetly, “Is that Tae’s shirt?”

“Fuck off, hyung,” Jimin replied, quietly and just as sweetly, and Hoseok laughed.

Seokjin, from where he was stirring jjigae at the stove, took one look at him and scoffed, but it was the fond kind and not the judgmental kind, so Jimin ignored it and boosted himself up to sit on the counter like a kid.

“Is it a shirt swapping kind of day,” Seokjin asked, “or just a Tae marking his territory kind of day?”

Jimin wondered if there was a difference.

“Swap,” he said. “But I think I got the better deal—I’m pretty the shirt he’s in cost about as much as a pack of ramen.”

“It’s definitely not about the quality,” Hoseok said as he came back into the kitchen, falling effortlessly into the conversation like he always did. “I’m sure Tae-yah would be happy to wear your ratty clothes instead of his designer shit all day every day if he could.”

“Not all my clothes are ratty,” Jimin said, a little miffed, and Seokjin and Hoseok let out surprisingly similar cackles of laughter before Hoseok leaned against the counter next to him and stared at him with one of those appraising but supportive kind of looks on his face.

“How are you feeling about everything?” he asked, reaching out to ruffle Jimin’s hair, which Jimin accommodated with a dip of his head. “Any questions or concerns?”

“I think I’m feeling okay,” Jimin said honestly, kicking his feet and letting them gently thump against the cupboards below him. “I have probably a million questions, but I think that’s mostly just because it’s a new experience and I’m a little nervous.”

Both Hoseok and Seokjin nodded understandingly, and Seokjin reached out the same way Hoseok had to ruffle Jimin’s hair.

“Do you feel pretty prepared for everything?” Seokjin asked, and Jimin couldn’t help the slightly disbelieving laugh he let out.

“Hell, no,” he said, and Hoseok wordlessly raised a hand to give him a fist bump of solidarity.

“Honestly, that’s the only right answer,” Hoseok said. “I feel like all you can really do is trust that your partner knows what they need, and trust that if they picked you, you’re what they need.”

Jimin tried not to absolutely glow in response to that, but given that both Hoseok and Seokjin had endeared little smiles on their faces, he’d probably failed.

“I do have a question, though,” Jimin said, and only hesitated for a moment after Seokjin and Hoseok’s encouraging nods. “It’s about, um, nesting.”

They didn’t have time to do anything but share a strangely surprised glance before Hyejin was darting into the kitchen with wide eyes and blurting out, “Taetae-oppa’s sad and hugs aren’t making him better.”

Jimin was at the door to Hyejin’s bedroom before he even realized he’d moved, and he was pretty sure he heard Seokjin laughing somewhere behind him and telling Hyejin that Jimin would take care of it, but he was much more concerned with the sad lump of a man sitting on Hyejin’s bedroom floor.

“Hey, Tae,” Jimin said softly, and when Taehyung looked up, Jimin could see the shine of welling tears in his eyes.

“Hey, hey,” Jimin crooned, dropping immediately to his knees and wrapping Taehyung up in his arms, pulling at the other man’s limp body until he had Taehyung mostly on his lap. “Hey, baby, why are you sad?”

This close, Jimin could tell that Taehyung smelled subtly different, like wet leaves and stale baked goods, but the scent did something—Jimin could really only describe it as brightening—as soon as Taehyung was tucked into his arms.

Taehyung had his face buried in Jimin’s neck the moment he was secure on Jimin’s lap, and it was only after he’d taken a few deep breaths that he let out a quiet laugh and said, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Jimin said, stroking over one of his shoulders and pressing a kiss to his hair. “Why were you sad?”

Taehyung laughed again, half amused and half embarrassed, and said, “I just missed you.”

Jimin felt his cheeks lifting in a smile and said, “You’ve been in here for, like, three minutes.”

Taehyung pinched his side, and Jimin yelped and tried to push Taehyung off, but Taehyung held on like a leech, and as a result, they both tipped over onto their sides, Taehyung’s face still tucked into Jimin’s neck, and Jimin’s arms still around Taehyung’s shoulders.

“I hate hormones,” Taehyung said, blowing a huge breath out onto Jimin’s skin and making him squirm. “They make me such a stupid mess.”

“Never stupid,” Jimin assured him, pushing Taehyung’s hair out of his face so he could see his eyes. “It’s a little cute.”

“You’re only saying that because I’m not sobbing because you got up to get a water bottle,” Taehyung said, but his lips were almost curving up into a smile, so Jimin just replied, “That’s why we’re putting all the water bottles in easy reach.”

The curve of Taehyung’s lips expanded to a full smile, and Jimin smiled helplessly back, and they were still there, lying on the floor and grinning at each other like idiots, when Yoongi popped his head in and said, “Namjoon says you shouldn’t fuck on his daughter’s floor.”

Jimin could barely hear Namjoon’s aggrieved call of, “Hyung, I did not say—!” over Taehyung’s quiet laughter. Taehyung refused to let go, which made standing a whole process, and the moment they were on their feet, Taehyung pulled Jimin’s head in so he could sniff his hair and then aggressively rub his own hands through it like he was trying to purge Seokjin’s and Hoseok’s touches. Which, Jimin belatedly realized, was probably precisely what he was trying to do. They wandered back into the kitchen with Taehyung wrapped around his back like a limpet, and all four of their hyungs smiled with varying levels of endearment, smugness, and lasciviousness, and Jimin ignored all of them.

At some point Jungkook had shown up, slipping in and quietly taking a seat, and if Jimin thought that he looked a little on edge he definitely wasn’t the only one, because he saw both Yoongi and Seokjin throwing concerned looks Jungkook’s way as they finished up with the food. But at that point Hyejin had convinced Namjoon to turn Mario Kart on, and Taehyung had dragged Jimin in front of the TV to play with them, and Jimin had been too busy falling over laughing at how efficiently Hyejin was slaughtering all of them to pay much attention to Jungkook’s atypical reservedness.

By the time Seokjin had brought out all the food, spread across the coffee table in the living in the most laid-back meal Jimin had had with the group of friends, Taehyung had detached himself from Jimin enough to drift from person to person, cuddling up under arms and against backs, rubbing his cheeks and hands and head against them and accepting the bites of food that they offered him. When Jimin asked Hoseok if Taehyung was scenting everyone, Hoseok had just nodded, and Jimin had watched fondly as Taehyung layered kisses all over Hyejin’s tiny cheeks, only to do the same to a dramatically and falsely protesting Yoongi only moments later. At some point Seokjin had noticed that Taehyung was a little more possessive than usual, and spent a good ten minutes goading everyone into getting close enough to touch Jimin, then laughing at how Taehyung would suddenly be right there, wedging himself between Jimin and whoever had dared come close enough to touch what was his.

As always, positions shifted and seats moved, and Jimin was laughing with Hoseok one moment, talking with Namjoon another, and then finding himself curled up between Hyejin and Taehyung, watching dolphin videos on Hyejin’s tablet. He couldn’t help but notice, though, that for the first time, Jungkook seemed to be avoiding him, never sharing a seat, never reaching out for the same banchan, never bumping into him in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. And it wasn’t just that—Jungkook shifted uncomfortably any time Taehyung plopped himself into someone’s lap and started nuzzling against their shoulders, frustration evident on his face, and any time Taehyung was near, Jungkook reached for him almost desperately. His face would relax as he took his own turn being cuddled by Taehyung, who would coo and pat his cheeks and stroke his arms and gently nudge Jungkook’s face away from his neck whenever it got too close, then Jungkook’s expression would fall again the moment Taehyung popped up to make another round. Jimin watched the way Jungkook’s hands clenched and unclenched in his lap every time Taehyung drifted away from him, and when he caught Yoongi’s eye across the room, he saw that Yoongi was watching just as carefully.

The moment Taehyung was distracted, engaged in some serious conversation with Jungkook in the corner of the room, Yoongi grabbed Jimin by the shirtsleeve and dragged him into the kitchen.

“Okay,” he whispered the moment they were through the doorway but still within eyesight of Taehyung should he need to suddenly check where Jimin was, as he’d been doing all evening, “I realize it’s a little late for this, but I think it's probably important for you to have a little bit more context for Taehyung, Jungkook, heats, and nesting.”

The switch from comfortable and happy to entirely overwhelmed was instantaneous, and Jimin felt himself lean back, like a few inches of distance could lessen the impact of that tidal wave of potential information.

“Damn, hyung,” Jimin said weakly. “You couldn’t let me ignore JK’s angst-fest and live my life in peace?”

Yoongi looked pained at that. “Look, I know he’s being kind of assholey about this, and while I don’t mean to, like, excuse his behavior or his total disregard for appropriate boundaries with Taehyung, I do feel like it might be helpful for you to understand part of why he’s being like—” He gestured back into the living room, where Jungkook had Taehyung practically pinned against the wall, and Jimin would have abandoned Yoongi in a heartbeat except that Taehyung looked up just in time to catch Jimin’s eyes and offer him a small smile that clearly communicated that he was fine, if a little annoyed.

Jimin let out a breath and turned his attention back to Yoongi.

“Fine,” he said. “Enlighten me.”

"Look,” Yoongi said, “alphas are weird about, like, providing and shit.” In an undertone, he added, “Honestly, that’s part of why I’m so much happier with Hoseok than I would ever be with an alpha."

Jimin folded his arms across his chest, an intentional move so that he looked just as receptive as he felt, which wasn’t very. "What do you mean?"

Yoongi’s lips pressed together tightly, but it seemed more like sympathy and less like frustration, so Jimin tried to relax his shoulders and give an encouraging nod, because as much as he didn’t really want to talk about this right now, it probably wouldn’t hurt.

It took Yoongi a minute of opening and then closing his mouth before he continued, as if he wasn’t quite sure that the words were going to be right. Eventually he settled on saying, "It's a big deal for alphas to take care of their pack.” He shot another look toward Taehyung and Jungkook, a perfect mix of both understanding and irritation on his face. “Their—their omega.” He continued before Jimin could protest, speaking faster than Jimin had maybe ever heard him speak as he said, “And even if they were never technically dating, the alpha part of Jungkook still thinks of Tae as his omega. In all the years they've known each other, Jungkook is the only person Taehyung has ever spent his heats with, but now Taehyung’s suddenly made plans with you, and I think Jungkook’s losing his shit over that and probably feels, on some level, like he’s failed in his duty as an alpha. Like he's failed to provide the comfort and safety and security and affection that an omega needs during heats.”

“And I think I get that, hyung—” Jimin said, but Yoongi cut him off.

“I don’t actually think that’s the problem, though.”

Jimin shut his mouth, mostly because Yoongi looked stressed, which was rare, and then felt his mouth drop back open when Yoongi confided, “The problem is that I don’t think Taehyung’s ever nested before.”

Jimin tried to think about that. Jimin realized he didn’t have enough context to even have thoughts about that. Jimin pictured, in his mind, how casually and constantly Taehyung had added to the nest currently taking up most of the floor space in his living room. Jimin said—

“I’m sorry. What?”

“Listen,” Yoongi said, stepping close and grabbing Jimin by the shoulders, speaking in a low, urgent voice. “Taehyung has never spent a heat with anyone else, and aside from his first heat he’s never spent a heat alone, which means that unless he was on suppressants, every single heat was spent with Jungkook, and I know for a fact that Taehyung has never nested with Jungkook. And not like he’s had a nest and not let Jungkook in it, because I do that all the time, I mean that as far as I know, Taehyung has never even built a nest.”

“What?” Jimin said again, because he wasn’t sure what else to say. And sure, he may not have been an expert in lykan behavior, definitely didn’t know the particulars of heat behavior in the same way Yoongi or Hoseok or Seokjin or even Namjoon did, but everyone knew that nests were a more vital part of heats than partners were.

“Look, I don’t know,” Yoongi said, running his own hands through his hair, “but that’s not normal, you know? I can’t even imagine not building a nest—I literally can’t imagine. And I know that we always talk about how indulgent Taehyung is with JK, how he’ll give him anything, but I think that maybe we’re all misunderstanding something, because Jungkook has definitely wanted to nest with Taehyung, and Taehyung has never—” He shrugged, a loose, jerky motion, and said, “I wondered if Taehyung wasn’t like that, if for some reason he just didn’t feel any need to build a nest, because he’s never nested during a heat and no one has ever even seen signs of a nest in his apartment, but your floor right now tells a very different story.” Yoongi deflated suddenly, like he'd used up all his words and all his energy, and finished with a quiet, “Now I’m desperately trying to figure out why Taehyung would be consciously stopping himself from nesting with his literal best friend for so many years.”

It took a while before Jimin could do anything but just stare at Yoongi. He was aware, vaguely, that he could hear Jungkook’s raised voice, but he was too busy in his own head to give it much attention.

“Yoongi-hyung,” he said eventually, settling on the one thing in his mind that he couldn’t shake, “Taehyung’s been on suppressants for almost a year.”

Yoongi nodded.

“Even though his doctor recommended against that,” Jimin added, because Taehyung had let slip how dangerous suppressants over an extended period of time could be more than once.

Yoongi nodded again.

“And Taehyung hadn’t—he and Jungkook hadn’t slept together for a while, like, a few months, before the first time he slept with me.”

Yoongi’s raised eyebrow indicated that that was probably news to him, but he still nodded to show he was following.

Jimin took a breath and strung together a whole slew of half-wondered thoughts to say, cautiously, “He told me that before this, he’d only suppressed occasionally. And he hasn’t said anything about it, exactly, but I think—I think it’s probably safe to assume that part of the reason for that is that something happened between him and Jungkook.” There wasn’t exactly a question there, but Jimin already had an answer from Yoongi’s face before the sudden, overwhelming scent of burnt spices and ashy flowers flooded the apartment and every head whipped toward the edge of the room where Jungkook still had Taehyung cornered.

Both Jimin and Yoongi ran the few steps back into the living room in time to hear Jungkook yell, “I don’t know why you’re getting so mad about this!” and Taehyung yell back, “I know you don’t, why the fu—”

Taehyung cut himself off, eyes darting to where Hyejin was frozen behind Namjoon’s legs, and Jimin watched him take a deep breath and try to push past Jungkook as he said, “It’s really pointless to talk about this, Kookie. I’ve been super vocal about my decisions.”

Jungkook didn’t let him go, catching Taehyung by the wrist and tugging him backward as he insisted, “It’s not like I’m offering to be your heat partner, Tae, I know you and Jimin are—”

Taehyung ripped his wrist out of Jungkook’s grip and snarled, “Because I don’t need a heat partner, Jungkook, because I have Jimin.”

Yoongi had a hand on Jimin’s arm. Jimin wondered, for a moment, if it was to hold Jimin back, but then he saw the warning looks Hoseok was shooting Yoongi and figured it was actually for Yoongi’s sake. Either way, he appreciated it. Seokjin had moved to Namjoon’s side, dropping a hand on Hyejin’s head as she peeked out from behind Namjoon’s legs, her tiny hand over her nose, and Jimin wondered how overwhelming the room must be to anyone who could smell more than just Taehyung.

“You’ve known him for like six months, Tae!” Jungkook snapped, and it was the first time he’d seen either Jungkook or Taehyung with their lips pulled back from their teeth like they were a second away from tearing into each other.

“Fuc—” Taehyung started, then cut himself off again with a ferocious shake of his head. He let out a snarl of a breath, then inhaled deeply and said, clearly trying to sound collected, “Don’t be so informal. Call me hyung.”

“Oh my god,” Jungkook said, blatantly rolling his eyes and ignoring the way that made everyone in the room bristle. “You’ve known him for like six months, hyung. Are you seriously going to nest in his living room?”

They’re weird about providing and shit, Yoongi had said, and Jimin was pretty sure he understood that as much as he possibly could, but also this was absolutely none of Jungkook’s business, and he opened his mouth to say so only to be beaten to the point.

Taehyung scoffed, a dismissive, aloof sound Jimin had definitely never heard him make, and said coldly, “I’ll nest wherever the hell I want, Jungkook-ssi, because I never have and never will need your permission.”

He turned away, clearly signaling that the conversation was over, but Jungkook reached out again, demanding desperately, “Then why can’t you just nest with me?”

“Because I told you I was in love with you!”

Silence.

The burning in the air subsided, replaced by that same sad, damp scent from earlier, and even though Taehyung had whipped back around to scream his words directly into Jungkook’s shocked face, no one needed to see his expression to know just how anguished he was.

“I told you I was in love with you,” Taehyung repeated into the silence, like once hadn’t been enough. “And you laughed.” His voice broke, his hands came up to his face, and for one second it looked like he was going to crumple.

But then his hands went to his hair, pushing it back from his face as he straightened, and he said again, voice calm and measured, “You laughed, and you said that I’d get over it.”

Jungkook didn’t seem to be aware of the tears slipping down his cheeks until Taehyung reached out with both hands and brushed his thumbs under Jungkook’s eyes.

“I did,” Taehyung said gently. “Jungkookie, I did.”

More and more tears came streaming down Jungkook’s face, but Taehyung was already taking a step back, already turning to the room with one hand twisted into his t-shirt above his stomach and the other lifting to press against his nose.

“I think I’m going to go home,” Taehyung said. He was quiet, like he’d run out of energy for anything louder, and his steps as he walked toward the door were a little shaky, but no one stopped him.

“Thank you for the food, hyungs,” Taehyung said politely, offering a half bow but not actually looking at anyone until his gaze fell on Hyejin, and his face softened. “Sorry for yelling, Hyejin-ah.”

“’s okay,” she mumbled, and Taehyung managed the barest sliver of a smile before he was toeing his shoes on and slipping out the door.

Namjoon bent to pick Hyejin up, whispering a quiet, “Maybe let’s go in your room for a minute, Hyejinnie,” and she wordlessly clung to him, leaving the others in silence until they heard the click of her bedroom door.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Jungkook burst out the same time Yoongi demanded, “Was he in heat?”

“What else was I supposed to do?” Jungkook pleaded.

“Was he in heat?” Yoongi demanded again, and Jungkook buried his face in his hands.

“You fucking idiot!” Yoongi shouted, and Seokjin rushed forward to hold Yoongi back, and Jungkook was crying, and Yoongi was yelling, and Seokjin was trying to yell over him, and Jimin just stood there staring at everything and processing absolutely nothing until he felt warm hands on his face and Hoseok filled his vision.

“Hey,” Hoseok said, and Jimin latched onto the even, soothing tone of his voice like it was the only thing that made sense in the world. “Jimin-ah, I need you to listen to me.”

Jimin’s hands flew up to Hoseok’s wrists, holding on and grounding himself with the feel of warm skin and sharp bone, and Hoseok said, “Are you listening, Jimin-ah?”

Kind of dumbly, Jimin said, “Taehyung hates it when JK’s sad. He said it’s fucking devastating.”

Hoseok offered him a sweet, wry smile, and said, “Taehyung’s not wrong.” His hands tightened against Jimin’s face just enough to draw Jimin’s attention away from where Seokjin was trying to pry Jungkook’s hands away from his face while still holding Yoongi back. “But Jimin-ah, we can take care of JK. Right now, you need to go take care of Taehyungie.”

And that was probably the most sensible thing that had been said by anyone the entire night, so Jimin nodded, held still while Hoseok fetched the food Seokjin had packed for them in anticipation of Taehyung’s heat, accepted a gentle hug and Yoongi’s car keys from the older man, and then left without another word.

~

Out of habit, Jimin went to Taehyung’s apartment first, and it wasn’t until he was standing in front of the silent door that he realized it was probably pretty dumb to assume this was where Taehyung had been headed when his favorite pillow was on Jimin’s floor.

So Jimin drove home and thought about how that’s what Taehyung had called it too: home . Jimin parked, and carefully stacked all of Seokjin’s food in his arms. and then approached his own front door and found it unlocked like he’d thought it would be.

Taehyung, for the first time, was in the nest.

The nest was still mostly just a pile of blankets and pillows and clothes, but Taehyung had curled up on his side and burrowed into the center of it so that only his head was visible, cushioned on Tata and turned toward the door, like he’d been waiting for Jimin to come home.

“I made a nest on your floor,” Taehyung announced quietly as soon as Jimin shut the front door behind him.

“You did,” Jimin said.

“It probably sounds dumb for me to say, but I really I didn’t realize,” Taehyung told him, and Jimin let himself smile.

“I could tell.”

Taehyung inhaled a little shakily, and the mass of soft things on top of him shifted like he’d curled into himself a little tighter. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Jimin asked, setting the food containers down and taking a few steps closer, careful to not touch the nest as he crouched down.

A few tears leaked out of Taehyung’s eyes, streaking across the bridge of his nose and out the corners of his eyes before dripping down to darken the plush red of the Tata pillow.

“I didn’t mean to take over your house,” Taehyung said quietly. “I’ve never nested before. I wasn’t sure if that was something you’d be open to. I—” He closed his eyes and turned his head to press his face into the Tata pillow. “Sorry,” He whispered. “I probably should have told you.”

Jimin wasn’t sure if he meant about the nesting, or about not realizing he was nesting, or about Jungkook. Jimin reached out, still careful not to disturb any part of the nest, and touched his fingertips to Taehyung’s hair.

“What should you have told me?”

Taehyung made a strangled sound, like a sob, or a sigh, or a whine, and Jimin pushed his fingers through the wild mess of curls until he could gently scratch his nails against Taehyung’s scalp. When Taehyung spoke, it was into the pillow, so muffled that Jimin could barely hear him.

“That I was in love with him.”

“Tae,” Jimin said softly, and then repeated it when Taehyung refused to look at him. “Tae. Hey, look at me for a second.”

Jimin tugged gently at Taehyung’s hair, trying to encourage him to show his face, and when Taehyung finally rolled his head enough for Jimin to see the shine of his eyes, he looked terrified.

“I think,” Jimin said, “that I already knew. And it’s okay.”

Taehyung stared, and Jimin watched as tears started pouring down his face like a waterfall.

“It’s okay,” Jimin said again, and Taehyung buried his face back in the Tata pillow and cried.

They stayed like that until Taehyung reluctantly rolled his head so his face was visible again, and Jimin couldn’t help the way his lips twitched in a smile as soon as he saw Taehyung, tear-blotchiness and all.

“This is probably going to be a pretty bad heat,” Taehyung confessed, worming one hand from where it was buried to clutch Jimin fingers against his burning palm. “’s why you’re not supposed to take suppressants like I’ve been doing.”

“It’s okay,” Jimin said, yet again, content for the moment to let Taehyung switch the subject. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll make it happen.”

Taehyung pulled Jimin’s hand down to his mouth to press a kiss against it. “Can you give me a minute to actually build my nest? If it stays a mess like this, I’ll cry the whole time.”

“Of course,” Jimin said, bringing Taehyung’s hand to his own mouth to return the kiss.

Jimin reluctantly detached from Taehyung and backed up enough that Taehyung could crawl out of his pile to sit cross-legged on the floor as he reached out for the closest blanket.

Jimin puttered around in the kitchen, checking that he had enough water bottles and electrolyte packets and protein bars, and making sure there were enough meals to keep them fed for at least a week, since Taehyung had admitted he wasn’t sure how long this heat would last. Jimin tried to keep quiet and unobtrusive, observing as Taehyung methodically folded blankets and arranged pillows and stuffed Jimin’s hoodies into the cracks, but he made sure to stay close in case Taehyung needed anything.

It took about an hour and a half before Taehyung sat back with a satisfied little grunt, during which time Jimin had really done nothing but make them both tea, reply with a thumbs-up to Hoseok’s text that Yoongi didn’t kill JK so we’re good! Have fun with Tae! and dare to disappear for a few seconds into the bedroom so he could grab them both pajama pants.

“What do you think?” Taehyung asked, and when Jimin looked at him, he was on his knees by the nest and waiting expectantly for Jimin’s answer.

“It looks great, Tae,” Jimin said, less because he thought it did and more because he knew you couldn’t insult an omega’s nest. Mostly it still just looked like a pile of blankets, though there was definitely a distinct shape to it now, with raised edges and a sunken-in center big enough for a couple grown men to curl up in.

Taehyung hummed in satisfaction, carefully tucking Tata under the edge of a blanket, and then looked back at Jimin with his tongue peeking out between his lips and asked, “Do you want to get in with me?”

Jimin set down his tea.

“You want me in your nest?” he asked. He could hear the vulnerability in his own voice, and he couldn't have given less of a damn, because he’d assumed that Taehyung wouldn’t allow him inside.

“Yeah,” Taehyung said, sounding worried. “Is that okay?”

Jimin answered by bending down and catching Taehyung by the chin so he could tip his face up and kiss him breathless.

“That’s perfect,” Jimin told a gasping Taehyung when he pulled away. “I’m honored, Tae-yah.”

A soft growl was the only warning he got before Taehyung tackled him into the nest, rolling him in among the blankets and pillows and clothes like he was just another feature that needed to be perfectly arranged, and Jimin laughed and helped Taehyung pull off his shirt and pants, then Jimin’s own shirt and pants, and then let himself be manhandled under a thick layer of blankets until they were curled up together in the center of the nest, mostly naked and pressed too tightly together and still kissing, kissing, kissing.

Despite how Jimin could definitely feel Taehyung's hard dick pressing into his hip, when Taehyung took over the kiss, he brought it down from wet and sucking to sweet and tender, chaste little pecks against the corners of lips and soft nuzzles into cheeks. Jimin followed his lead easily, content to tuck his fingers into the waistband of Taehyung’s underwear and keep his touches light instead of demanding.

Without the sparks of arousal to distract him, Jimin could appreciate how phenomenal the nest actually was, how wonderfully it smelled of Taehyung, and he tapped Taehyung’s shoulder to pull his attention away from where he was mouthing absently along Jimin’s collarbone.

“Tae,” he said seriously. “I’m going to be honest, I thought this would be really uncomfortable, but I could probably live in here.”

Taehyung beamed at him, wrapping all four limbs around Jimin’s body and squeezing him in the most enthusiastic and invasive hug Jimin had ever received.

“Thank you!” Taehyung said. “Thanks, I thought it would be nice!”

“The nicest,” Jimin confirmed, and then they were kissing again.

They stayed in the nest the rest of the night, curled up and gently touching each other, and Taehyung had murmured that being cuddled and kissed was probably all he was going to need for most of his heat. Jimin assured him that sounded like a dream, and Taehyung hummed and petted down Jimin’s arms and gave him endless little love bites all across his chest.

After Jimin had gotten up long enough to turn off the lights and not a moment longer, Taehyung whispered into the darkness, “I’m pretty unguarded during heat. I might say things.”

“What kind of things?” Jimin asked, mind immediately and unfortunately going to the unsubstantiated claims that all omegas, regardless of their ability to bear children, told their partners that they wanted to get pregnant during heat. “Things you don’t mean?”

“No,” Taehyung said, and the calmness in his voice made Jimin pause. “Things I really do mean.”

There was enough light to see the gleam of Taehyung’s unblinking eyes, and Jimin thought of what he’d yelled at Jungkook, and then of what he’d said to Jungkook before he left, and Jimin took a breath, leaned in until his forehead was pressed to Taehyung’s, and whispered back, “Then I guess I’ll just have to say things back.”

“I guess you will,” Taehyung said, and kissed him.

Chapter Text

The digital clock on the stove, barely visible from where Jimin was lying awake in the nest, read 1:15.

Taehyung’s fingers were tapping restlessly where they wrapped around Jimin’s elbow, and Jimin would swear he could feel the tension in Taehyung’s warm body seeping into the air around them.

“Tae?”

“Mmm,” Taehyung said, and in the darkness, he ducked his head so he could press a kiss under Jimin’s jaw.

“Can I ask you something?”

Taehyung said, “Anything,” and it sounded an awful lot like relief.

Jimin didn’t overthink. He just asked, as gently as he possibly could, “When did you fall in love with him?”

“In high school.”

Jimin laughed a little, a disbelieving and hurt  for Taehyung’s sake, because even though he’d assumed it wasn’t anything new, that was a long damn time to be in love with someone who didn’t love you back the way you wanted them to.

“And when did you start sleeping together?”

“College,” Taehyung said.

Jimin calculated that out, let out another little disbelieving laugh, because that was years and years of intimacy built on an already close friendship and unrequited love.

“When did you tell him you were in love with him?”

Taehyung hesitated on this answer, and pressed so close as they were, Jimin could immediately smell how the sadness turned every note in his scent wet and stale.

“A little over a year and a half ago,” Taehyung whispered.

And Jimin had already known, but the confirmation that Jungkook and Taehyung had, for a while, kept sleeping with each other even when Jungkook knew Taehyung was in love with him was like a punch to Jimin’s gut. He turned in the nest so he could crowd Taehyung down among the blankets, wrap around him like he could protect him from anything that had ever hurt, press their forehead together and try to convey just how much Taehyung hadn’t deserved any of it.

“Tae,” Jimin said helplessly, and he felt Taehyung’s big, warm hands envelope his face and push him back enough that Taehyung could kiss Jimin’s bottom lip.

“I spent one more heat with him after that,” Taehyung said, and Jimin didn’t know how he managed to sound so calm. “And when I realized he wasn’t going to love me back the way I wanted him to, I started taking suppressants.”

“Tae,” Jimin said again, because he didn’t know what else to say, and Taehyung pulled Jimin down and wrapped his arms around him like he needed something to hold on to.

“It’s okay,” Taehyung said, and Jimin shook his head where it was buried in Taehyung’s shoulder.

“I don’t think it is.”

Taehyung was quiet for a while. Eventually he said, “I’ve never told anyone that. I think maybe some of them knew anyway—”

“Yoongi-hyung,” Jimin said, and he felt Taehyung nod.

“Yeah. But I’ve never said anything.” Taehyung huffed out a soft laugh. “Until tonight, I guess, when I literally shouted it in the middle of a dinner party.”

“It was a little dramatic,” Jimin agreed quietly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so mad.”

“He just—” Taehyung started, then cut himself off with a growl and nuzzled extra aggressively at the side of Jimin’s head.

Taehyung was silent for a while, but his hands were stroking up and down and up and down Jimin’s spine, and he kept moving his head in tiny little jerks, like he was miming a conversation. Eventually he let out an impressively long breath and said, all in a rush, “I know you said once that you feel like Jungkookie takes advantage of me, but I feel like that puts too much blame on him. I know that ultimately what he does is up to him, but I also know that I could have chosen to talk to him about this at any time, or to, you know, establish some boundaries or something, and I know that Jungkookie would have respected anything I asked for, because he—”

Taehyung cut himself off again, clearly frustrated, and Jimin pushed a hand into Taehyung’s hair so he could drag his nails against Taehyung’s scalp.

“He does love me,” Taehyung continued, a little less rushed now. “And I know that. He might love me more than literally anyone other than his mom. And just because he’s not in love with me doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t give me everything within his power to give, and the problem is that I think—”

Taehyung twisted so he could bury his face as deep as possible in Jimin’s throat and inhale once, twice, and then a third time before he said, “I think that’s what he was trying to do when we kept sleeping together. And I think that’s what he was trying to do tonight, but because we’ve never really talked about it and I’m literally the worst at saying no, Jungkook’s never learned how to stop asking me for things that I’m not sure I want to give him.”

Jimin hummed quietly and smoothed Taehyung’s wild hair off his forehead, and waited.

“I guess I’m just trying to say that it’s not entirely his fault,” Taehyung said. “And when I was mad tonight—and I was fucking mad—that wasn’t entirely his fault either, because the whole time I just kept thinking about how this wouldn’t have happened if I’d just talked to him.”

Jimin waited to see if Taehyung had anything else to say, but he fell quiet, pressing into Jimin’s hand on his head and letting out an exhausted sigh.

“Can I ask what he said to you?”

Jimin felt Taehyung’s nod against his palm, and then Taehyung said, “He told me that he’d made me a nest in his apartment.”

“Oh,” Jimin said.

“After he brought Tata over that one night, you know? He went out and bought a bunch more blankets and pillows, and he’d put them all on his bed, and he’d pulled out a bunch of his soft clothes, and all my clothes that I’ve left there over the years, and he asked me to come to his apartment and nest there, so that he could make sure I was okay.”

“Oh,” Jimin said again.

“I think,” Taehyung said, “that he was doing that dumb alpha-brain thing, where he wasn’t actually thinking at all, he was just focused on, like, omega, and heat, and mine, and so he didn’t realize how incredibly inappropriate that was, but Jimin-ah—”

Taehyung sat up, and Jimin both loved and hated how easy it was for him to just bring Jimin with him, to catch him so he didn’t topple back into the nest, to hold him on his lap, and to take his face in both hands so he could stare at him in the dark, even though they couldn’t really see each other’s faces that well.

“Jimin-ah,” Taehyung repeated, “that was so inappropriate. You don’t make—” He scoffed, like he couldn’t believe it was necessary to say the words coming out of his mouth. “You don’t make an omega a nest. You can’t just throw some pillows and blankets and clothes together and expect an omega to be happy you did that, much less expect an omega to want to use any of that. You don’t even touch an omega’s nest, or anything that goes in an omega’s nest unless you’ve been very specifically and explicitly invited. Nests are personal, and they’re precise, and they’re about safety and trust, and you can’t just—”

He cut himself off again, like he didn’t have the words to express himself, and then he softened abruptly, shoulders dropping and hands gentling on Jimin’s face, and then he was pressed so close to Jimin, lips on lips, and all he did was whisper, “But you know that, don’t you, Jimin-ah? Because you’ve been perfect.”

And then they were kissing, and it was as overwhelming as ever, and Jimin entirely forgot what they were talking about until Taehyung pulled away with a last, lingering kiss to the corner of Jimin’s mouth, and said, “I don’t think he meant any offense to you, either. And I don’t think he was planning on having sex with me or anything, I think he was just alpha-dumb and not thinking anything through.”

“I think it’s pretty clear that he definitely didn’t consider me at all,” Jimin said, a little wryly, and he felt Taehyung press conciliatory kiss to his shoulder. “But I’m sorry. That sounds—”

He wasn’t sure how to end that thought, but Taehyung just said, “Yeah,” and Jimin left it at that.

He knew, somehow, before Taehyung spoke, that the next thing he was going to say was, “Do you think he’s sleeping?”

Jimin didn’t ask for clarification. He just said, “He was pretty upset when I left.”

Taehyung hesitated for a few seconds before he followed that up with, “Is your company building still open?”

“There are trainees who’ll stay there, practicing, all night,” Jimin said, because as much as he hated that, it was true.

Taehyung was quiet, and Jimin could tell that he was building up the nerve to ask his next question, so Jimin made it easier for both of them and said, “You’re not going to be able to relax unless you know he’s okay, huh?”

“No,” Taehyung burst out. “I’ll spend my whole heat having anxiety that I’ve messed something up irreparably, and then I’ll cry so much and you’ll be super sick of me.”

“That could never happen,” Jimin assured him, and Taehyung let out a shockingly loud purr and then collapsed into laughter at how hard Jimin jumped.

When he righted himself, Jimin still held securely on his lap, he said, serious again, “I know it’s absolutely shit timing, but I feel like this needs some resolution so that I can spend my heat thinking about you instead of thinking about how Jungkookie and I have literally the worst boundaries ever known to collective mankind.”

“Okay,” Jimin said. "Let’s go find Jungkookie.”

~

They left Jimin’s apartment dressed in sweats (Jimin’s, which meant that Taehyung’s ankles were exposed and definitely too adorable to handle) and hoodies (Taehyung’s, which meant that Jimin was absolutely swamped), and Taehyung had Tata clutched to his chest and a blanket, very carefully removed from the nest, wrapped around his shoulders.

They didn’t bother going to Jungkook’s apartment, just drove to the company building and parked in the almost entirely vacant parking garage.

The security guards they passed all gave them strange looks, but as far as Jimin was aware, they were all human, and they seemed much more focused on the general disarray than on the fact that Taehyung, despite layering temporary scent-blocking patches on all his scent glands, smelled like everything wonderful in the world. Jimin still watched every single person they passed, though, just in case.

Taehyung practically dragged Jimin along behind him, navigating the building with an ease that could have spoken of familiarity, but, given the way Taehyung kept tilting his nose up and inhaling, was probably a lykan thing. Unsurprisingly, Taehyung’s nose led them down to that same last door down that dark hallway, and equally unsurprisingly, the music coming from behind the door was—

“Tchaikovsky,” Taehyung said, and Jimin was already turning before Taehyung let out the first sob. “Jimin-ah, I made him dance to Tchaikovsky.”

“I think,” Jimin said, as he carefully wiped away Taehyung’s tears and adjusted the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, “that Jungkookie kind of made himself dance to Tchaikovsky.”

“No, you’re right,” Taehyung said, and the tears disappeared in favor of determination so quickly that Jimin assumed this was a heat thing, not a normal Taehyung emotions things. Taehyung lifted his hands to cover Jimin’s where they rested on Taehyung’s cheeks and said, “It’s not just me, and it’s not just him, and we both have terrible boundaries, but we’re best friends and nothing is broken and it’s okay to say no.”

Taehyung nodded decisively, and Jimin just said, “Fighting!” and tried to hide his amusement, because Taehyung clearly didn’t need him for this.

“Okay,” Taehyung said. “Okay. Um.”

He curled in, then, meek and worried, and said, “Um, is it okay if I talk to him by myself?”

Jimin wanted to tell him that he didn’t need permission, but the look on Taehyung’s face indicated that he knew that but maybe wanted the permission anyway, so Jimin just nodded and said, “I’ll watch the door.”

Taehyung unwrapped the blanket from his shoulders and wrapped it around Jimin’s instead, pressed Tata into his arms, gave him a firm and lingering kiss, and then opened the door to the practice room.

There was a small window in the door, and Jimin watched as Taehyung moved around the edges of the room, not disturbing Jungkook, who hadn’t stopped dancing. Taehyung sat against the wall, visible to Jungkook in the mirror, and pulled his knees up to his chest, clearly settling in to wait, and Jimin took a breath and turned away, putting his back to the door.

There were only two incidents as Jimin stood guard. The first was two men who walked a little too intentionally down the hallway, pausing in front of the Jimin, eyes flickering between him and the window in the door, clearly scenting the air, before one of them gestured with his head at the door and asked, “Your friend. I don’t suppose he needs—”

“He does not,” Jimin said, with a bright smile and an iron tone. And then, because he was disgusted and more than a little horrified that these men were so blatantly trying to solicit sex from an omega on the cusp of heat in the middle of the night down a dark hallway when he was already in the room with an alpha and when a human literally wrapped in one of his nest blankets was guarding the door, Jimin said, with the same bright smile, “Sorry, what were your names again?”

Like idiots, they gave their names, chests puffing out and cocky smiles taking over their faces, and Jimin just smiled and bowed and smiled and said, “Oh, thank you, I’ll be sure to let him know,” and they strutted back down the hallway like they were expecting anything in their future aside from a call from HR terminating their positions in the company.

The second incident was a mad scramble at the mouth of the hallway before half a dozen heads popped around the corner and Jimin, squinting through the dark, was able to make out the faces of a collection of the lykan trainees.

“You should be sleeping,” Jimin called out softly, and after a brief flurry of whispers, the whole mass of boys and girls darted down the hall until they were crowded around Jimin.

“Is he okay?” one of the boys asked, eyes wide with concern.

Jimin chanced a look through the window, where Taehyung and Jungkook were now dancing together, Taehyung happily and enthusiastically slaughtering the ballet choreography and technique while Jungkook laughed, and Jimin was smiling when he turned back.

“Yeah, he’s good.”

“But his heat—” one of the other boys said, and Jimin watched the way he twisted his hands in his t-shirt, how a girl reached out to press a gentle hand to the back of his neck.

“I’ve got him,” Jimin said firmly. “There was just something he had to take care of first.”

He got a few nods in return, but the group was still clearly hesitant to leave. Jimin eventually chased them away by saying that he absolutely would make sure Taehyung got home safely, and that he would take exquisite care of him during his heat, and also that if they left him alone and got some sleep, he’d give them all the bills in his wallet so they could get food.

And then Jimin was left alone, and when he looked back through the window one more time, Taehyung was sitting on the floor with Jungkook in his lap, and Jungkook’s shoulders were shaking as he cried.

Jimin eventually dropped to sit with his back pressed against the door, wrapping the blanket more tightly around himself and clutching the Tata pillow to his chest. He was fighting to keep his eyes open and his head up by the time he realized the music had turned off, and he scrambled to his feet only seconds before the door opened.

Taehyung was in his arms so quickly he might as well have teleported, and Jimin let out a little oof as Taehyung aggressively burrowed into his embrace, nuzzling into Jimin’s neck and letting out pained-sounding little hums.

“He needs to leave,” Jungkook said, voice a little raspy, and when Jimin met his eyes over Taehyung’s shivering form, they were red and still a little teary.

“Are you okay?” Jimin asked, mostly to Taehyung but kind of to both of them.

Jungkook shrugged, but his face, despite the red eyes and puffy cheeks, looked peaceful.

Taehyung whined in response, and bit once at Jimin’s jaw before he pulled back and said, “I think I have to go reapply my patches. They’re slipping, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to go anywhere with my scent so strong.”

Jimin nodded, because the scent was pretty damn overpowering, and as soon as Jungkook turned off the light in the practice room and locked the door, all three of them made their way down the hall to the closest bathroom.

Jimin and Jungkook spoke at the same time when they reached the bathroom, a simultaneous, “Do you need—” and Taehyung waved them off and said, “Just make sure no one comes in,” before he slipped inside.

They stood in silence for a while, Jimin still wrapped in the blanket and holding Tata, Jungkook in his leggings and tank top with his bag over his shoulder.

Unable to help himself, the first thing Jimin blurted out was, “Did you really laugh?”

“Ugh, shit,” Jungkook responded, dragging a hand through his sweat-dark hair and letting out a groan. “In my defense, it was much less a haha kind of laugh and much more a oh fuck my best friend just told me he’s in love with me what the hell do I do I’m freaking out kind of laugh.”

“Still,” Jimin said, miffed on Taehyung’s behalf.

Jungkook let out a sigh and slumped where he stood, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the floor. “No, I know It was—it was shitty.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “I’ve been shitty. I just—I don’t know.”

“I know you were just trying to take care of him,” Jimin offered, because he honestly didn’t think Jungkook had ever meant to hurt anyone.

“I just did a shitty job of it,” Jungkook muttered, and Jimin reached out to smack him upside the head.

“So do better,” Jimin said simply, ignoring Jungkook’s offended ow! “You’re his best friend; be the best at that just like you’re the best at everything else.”

The look on Jungkook’s face was complicated, and Jimin was too tired to try and make sense of it.

“You’re a really good friend,” Jungkook said eventually. “And I—” he shifted, looking down at the floor almost angrily, and then continued, “When I introduced you guys, I didn’t think anything would actually, like, happen. Even when you guys slept together for the first time, I think I thought that Tae—that hyung would still come back to me. And I guess—” He cut himself off again, running a hand through his hair, leaving crazy configurations in the wake of his fingers. “I know it’s selfish and terrible of me, and I know that I’ve never had any grounds to be possessive over him, especially after what I put him through, but I guess I want you to know that if it were anyone else, I would never have let this happen.”

He met Jimin’s gaze then, and he looked a little embarrassed, a little defiant, and a little scared.

“Jimin-hyung,” he said, and it sounded like the words hurt him. “When I introduced you I didn’t think it would actually mean anything, because part of me honestly thought he’d be in love with me forever. But it’s like you—it’s like he was lost and you found him or some shit, like he was waiting for you all this time. And as much as part of me fucking hates that, that’s all I’ve ever wanted for him. And it’s not just that—” Jungkook said, and now he was almost rushing through his words. “—It’s not just how he is with you, it’s also how you are with him. Shit, sometimes I catch you looking at him like he’s the only fucking color in a black and white world or some absolute romance song fucking bullshit, and it pisses me off, but I also think you might be the only person who deserves to be chosen by him.”

“Jungkook-ah,” Jimin said, and he let his voice be just as sharp as he wanted it to be. “If you actually think that, then I’m going to need you to give me a chance.”

Jungkook looked pained, but he nodded and muttered, “I fucking know.” And then, in a clear and abrupt effort to change the subject, Jungkook, scoffed, waved a hand over his nose and said, “Also, you fucking reek, my god, did he literally scent your entire body?”

Jimin thought it probably wasn’t the moment to gloat that, up until they’d come to the company building, he’d been cuddled up with Taehyung in the first nest Taehyung had ever made, so he just settled with saying, “Yeah, no, I know,” because he knew it would distract Jungkook.

“You know?” Jungkook said dubiously, and Jimin shrugged like it was no big deal.

“Yeah, I can smell him.”

“You can smell him?!” Jungkook exclaimed, but the bathroom door opened before he could pursue that further, and then Jimin yet again had a whole Taehyung all over him, hot and heavy and impressively delicious.

“Those scent blockers aren’t going to last long, huh?” Jimin said, and Taehyung shook his head.

“Let’s go home, Jimin-ah.”

Jungkook walked them to the car, warning away the few curious late-nighters who came close with a snarl and bared teeth. He hugged Taehyung for a long time before he reluctantly let him go, and when Taehyung shut the car door, Jungkook caught Jimin’s arm and said, “I swear I trust you, I really, truly do, but also please know that if you have any questions or need anything, you can call or text me, okay?”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jimin said, and ruffled Jungkook’s hair. “Now go home and sleep, okay? Hyung’s got this.”

Jungkook nodded jerkily, went to take a deep breath and then seemed to think better of it, and then turned and walked away to his own car, parked in the far corner.

Taehyung grabbed Jimin’s hand as soon as he sat down in the car.

“You good?” Jimin asked.

“Tired,” Taehyung responded. “A little stressed. I want to be back in the nest with you.”

“And JK?” Jimin asked.

“We’ll be okay,” Taehyung said softly. “It might take us a little while to figure things out, but we talked a little and identified some things we need to work on, and we’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” Jimin said, and squeezed Taehyung’s hand.

“Jimin-ah?”

“Yeah, Tae?”

“Take me home.”

“Taehyung-ah,” Jimin said seriously. “There is nothing I would like more.”

Chapter Text

There were lips against his back, the gentle touch of a tongue against his neck. A chin digging into his shoulder. A cheek rubbing against his head.

“Baby,” Jimin murmured, still mostly asleep. “You good? You need anything?”

“Mmm, no,” Taehyung said. “I just love your back. It’s warm and soft and wonderful.”

“’kay, baby,” Jimin slurred out, shifting a little so he could press his back more firmly against Taehyung’s burning chest. “Lemme know if you need anything, ‘kay?”

“Okay, Jimin-ah,” Taehyung said, rubbing his face between Jimin’s shoulder blades.

Jimin fell back asleep.

~

“Jimin. Jimin-ah.”

Jimin opened his eyes to Taehyung huge and dark and warm above him.

“Hmm?”

“I want a shower.”

“Now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay,” Jimin said, and rolled out of the nest.

He took Taehyung by the hand, using the other to cover a yawn, and led Taehyung to the bathroom. He turned on the little lamp, instead of the overhead light, but it was still bright enough to make him wince, and make Taehyung bury his face in Jimin’s shoulder with a quiet whine.

“You want me to get in with you?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Jimin carelessly dropped his own shorts and underwear, then carefully helped Taehyung out of his. Taehyung waited while Jimin started the water, a little too hot just like Taehyung liked, and then they stepped under the spray together.

Jimin washed them both absently, still too tired to really be thinking, but awake enough to remember all of the advice he’d gotten from forums and friends and books about how any opportunity to get clean during a heat should be latched onto to immediately. So he soaped Taehyung’s body, keeping his touches light and almost clinical, and he shampooed Taehyung’s head, letting his fingers drag through Taehyung’s hair in the way that made him relaxed, not the way that made him horny. And then he scrubbed himself as quickly as he could, wrapped them both in towels, and led them back to the nest.

“Snack?” Taehyung asked tiredly, and Jimin left the nest long enough to grab a handful of protein bars and a case of water bottles and drag them next to the couch. Taehyung ate a protein bar, Jimin helped him drink a bottle of water, and then they curled back up under the blankets, Jimin wrapped around Taehyung this time, and closed their eyes.

~

It maybe wasn’t strictly morning, so the eggs Jimin was making maybe weren’t strictly breakfast, but he’d heard that time was immaterial during heats, and this was their first meal of the day, so. Breakfast.

Taehyung was sitting at the table, holding Tata and wearing an overlarge hoodie and nothing else, and he’d been staring at Jimin and smiling for almost ten minutes now.

“You okay over there?” Jimin asked.

“I miss you,” Taehyung responded instantly, but he was still beaming. “I’m happy. I’m hungry. A little horny.”

“A whole triple threat,” Jimin agreed, plating the eggs and bringing them to the table where he already had rice and juice. “Do you want to eat this for me?”

Taehyung looked at the eggs, surprised, as if he hadn’t realized what Jimin had been doing over by the stove.

“Oh, thanks!”

He ate much more slowly than Jimin did, humming between each bite and kicking his feet out periodically to catch Jimin’s ankle between his own. Jimin had to prompt him to drink, and then, once Taehyung did, had to get him another glass of juice and two water bottles.

“I’m hot,” Taehyung said once the food was gone and the plates were washed.

“I hear that happens during heat,” Jimin answered, a little cheekily, and Taehyung growled and dragged him back to the nest, where they stripped out of their clothes and cuddled up beneath the blankets.

Their legs were tangled together, and Jimin could feel Taehyung half hard against his thigh, but when he asked, “Do you want to do anything about that?” and nudged his thigh barely higher, Taehyung shook his head where it was cradled on Jimin’s arm.

“I’m good right now,” he said. “I just want to be close.”

~

Taehyung refused to leave the nest for dinner, and he watched Jimin prep the noodles with an aggravated little furrow between his eyebrows. The expression didn’t ease when Jimin came back and sat down just outside the nest with the noodles, and Taehyung pouted through every single bite Jimin coaxed into him. Taehyung was only marginally more willing as Jimin encouraged him to drink another bottle of water, and the moment Jimin returned after putting the dishes in the sink, Taehyung dragged him to the center of the nest, stripped him of the pants he’d put on to make dinner, and sank his teeth into Jimin’s neck.

“Tae, ouch!” Jimin exclaimed. “What do you want from me?”

“You put on pants,” Taehyung grumbled, running his hands up and down and around Jimin’s hips and thighs and ass. “Why did you put on pants?”

“I wasn’t going to make you dinner with my dick hanging out!” Jimin said, and Taehyung growled and dove under the covers so he could rub his face aggressively against Jimin’s stomach until Jimin was laughing.

But then Taehyung was pressing kisses to Jimin’s hipbones, and then he was pushing at Jimin’s legs, and then his mouth was against the back of Jimin’s knee, and then his tongue was tracing up Jimin’s inner thigh, and then his long fingers were guiding Jimin’s cock between his lovely, lovely lips, and honestly, if Taehyung would prefer that he not wear pants, who was Jimin to disagree?

By the time Taehyung emerged from under the covers, Jimin was panting and so hard it hurt, and Taehyung had the smuggest and most endearing smile on his face.

“Do you—what do you want?” Jimin asked, feeling stupid and tongue-tied in the face of Taehyung’s everything.

“Too lazy to fuck you,” Taehyung responded. “Want to wait to have you fuck me.”

“Handjobs?” Jimin offered breathlessly, and Taehyung wordlessly rolled onto his side and brought Jimin’s hand down between his legs.

They came gasping breathlessly into each other’s necks, and even though Jimin hated the messiness coating their hands and stomachs, he waited until Taehyung’s had stopped gasping and settled into a pleasant purr before he asked, “Is it okay if I clean us up?”

“I can clean us up,” Taehyung mumbled, dragging his open mouth absently against Jimin’s cheek. “’S not always you who has to do that.”

“I want to,” Jimin said, both because it was true, and because Taehyung was definitely going to fall asleep within the next minute. “You just stay here, okay?”

Taehyung defined expectations by managing to keep his eyes open as Jimin cleaned them both down with one of the wipes that were also part of the preparation piles Jimin had stacked around the nest, and then threw the wipes into the little garbage bin Jimin had moved from the kitchen. Taehyung cuddled up to Jimin as soon as he was done, wedging himself so snugly and happily in against Jimin’s chest that Jimin had to laugh, because it was kind of fucking adorable.

“Thank you, Jimin-ah,” Taehyung said, and Jimin kissed his forehead and replied, “Of course, Taehyung-ah.”

The last thing Taehyung said, just before he drifted off, was “Next time I won’t be too lazy, and I won’t want to wait. ‘M gonna be, like, feral next time.”

“Feral Taehyungie,” Jimin agreed, and Taehyung made a pleased sound and tried to burrow even further into Jimin’s embrace. Jimin kissed Taehyung’s forehead one more time, and as the sweet, thick scent of flowers blossomed up from the man in his arms, Jimin said, “I can’t wait.”

~

Jimin woke up to Taehyung staring at him.

“Hey,” he said, a little groggy, rising halfway up on his elbows. “Everything okay?”

Taehyung was sitting, crossed-legged and with a blanket wrapped all around him. His hair was so wild around his head that all Jimin could see above Taehyung’s nose was the glint of dark, piercing, unblinking eyes.

“Tae?” Jimin prompted him, and Taehyung leaned forward and murmured in the deepest, darkest, most sensual voice Jimin had ever fucking heard, “How are you possibly real?”

Jimin had no idea what time it was, but it was definitely too early for Jimin to be functional enough to deal with this kind of intensity right after waking up, so he just blinked and said, “Sorry, what?”

One of Taehyung’s hands emerged from his blanket, and he brushed his fingertips against Jimin’s cheek so delicately it was like he thought he’d break him if he touched any harder.

“You’re perfect,” Taehyung said, and suddenly his tone was reverent, full of awe and wonder, and—

“Um, thanks,” Jimin said, still floundering. “You’re pretty nice yourself.”

“You should pet my head,” Taehyung announced, and then he folded himself in half over his own lap so he could thump his head down on Jimin’s chest, hard enough that Jimin let out an involuntary little oof.

“Okay,” Jimin said a little helplessly, and he pushed the blanket out of his way so he could get to Taehyung’s wild curls and start gently petting Taehyung’s head.

Jimin had no idea how long that lasted, but by the time Taehyung lifted his head, Jimin’s arms were tired.

“Happy?” Jimin asked when Taehyung’s eyes were back on him.

“Perfect,” Taehyung replied, and Jimin audibly swallowed, because Taehyung’s voice was back to that delicious honey-trap of a rumble.

Jimin watched Taehyung’s eyes drift down to his throat, then back up to his eyes, then down to his mouth, and it took all of Jimin’s willpower to not lick his lips out of delighted nervousness.

When Taehyung’s eyes made it back up to Jimin’s yet again, all he said was, “I’m hungry.”

Despite the prolonged and meaningful eye contact that proceeded that statement, Jimin could tell that Taehyung meant it literally, not euphemistically, at least for the moment. “I can get you—” Jimin started, already rising to find Taehyung food, but he cut himself off when Taehyung straight-up growled.

“Tae?” Jimin asked.

“I’ll get it,” Taehyung insisted, shoving the blanket off his shoulders and kicking at the blankets that had tangled around his feet. “You don’t—you should stay. In the nest. In my nest. You should stay in my nest. I made this nest for us and you should stay in it, because it’s my nest, and I want you to stay in my nest.”

Jimin fought to keep the grin off his face, but not very hard, because Taehyung was already stalking toward the kitchen, naked and gorgeous and muttering grumpily about how Jimin should never leave the nest, because Taehyung made that nest, and he made it for him and Jimin, and it was his nest and Jimin should just stay in it.

Taehyung banged carelessly around the kitchen, grumbling the whole time as he dug some premade chicken meal from Seokjin out of the refrigerator, tossed it in the microwave, slammed the microwave door closed, then stared judgmentally at the food the entire time it was reheating, only looking away to shoot increasingly longing glances at Jimin, who stayed sitting where he was in the nest, watching Taehyung with a smile he made no effort to tame.

Strangely, what Jimin found most charming about the whole thing was that Taehyung very, very hard. His cock was jutting out from his body at a ferocious acute angle, flushed and a little wet at the head, bobbing with every movement, but Taehyung was so intently focused on the food that Jimin honestly wondered if he’d even noticed. Regardless, when Taehyung returned to the nest, he entirely ignored the painful-looking erection between his legs and devoted all his attention to making sure nothing spilled as he loaded his chopsticks and held them out to Jimin.

“I can feed myself,” Jimin said.

Taehyung’s eyebrows pulled together, his lips turned down, his jaw tightened, and when he spoke, his voice was a whine absolutely incongruous with his thunderous expression.

“No, I want to do it.”

Jimin smiled and said, “Okay,” and then leaned forward to accept the first massive bite.

They ate from the same chopsticks, trading bites, and even though Taehyung was definitely feeding Jimin more than he was eating himself, he looked so pleased with each bite Jimin took that Jimin figured it wasn’t worth pointing out.

Jimin had kind of assumed that a round of sex was immediately going to follow their meal, especially given Taehyung’s state. But after Taehyung had put the dishes in the sink and crawled back into the nest, all he did was wrap himself around Jimin’s back like an octopus and nuzzle deep into Jimin’s neck. He took a series of deep inhales before he relaxed completely, his tight grip loosening enough that Jimin could take his own deep beaths.

“How are you feeling?” Jimin asked, wrapping his fingers around the hand absently Taehyung was brushing against Jimin’s collarbone.

“I like you in my nest,” Taehyung replied immediately, and Jimin beamed.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Jimin lifted Taehyung’s hand so he could kiss the palm of it.

“I like being in your nest.”

Taehyung let out the softest little growl, and Jimin, because he couldn’t help being a bit of a shit sometimes, pressed another kiss, a little wetter, to the tip of Taehyung’s thumb.

“Jimin-ah.”

“Mmm?”

Jimin brought Taehyung’s hand, warm and big and gorgeous, in front of his face. He regarded it with interest, watched the way it flexed, and then, as soon as Taehyung started to relax behind him, leaned forward and licked from Taehyung’s wrist all the way to the tip of his middle finger.

“Jimin.”

“Did you need something?” Jimin asked faux-innocently, and then popped Taehyung’s pointer finger in his mouth.

He was on his back a moment later with Taehyung looming over him, looking put out and turned on and aggrieved and very fond.

“I was trying to cuddle,” Taehyung protested, and Jimin reached around to shamelessly palm his ass.

Taehyung’s hips jerked forward, and he let out a hiss as the motion dragged his cock over Jimin’s abs.

“We’re basically still cuddling,” Jimin said, digging his fingers into the skin just at the top of Taehyung’s thigh. “It’s just, like, extra cuddling.”

“Cuddling with benefits?” Taehyung gasped out, practically writhing on top of Jimin.

“Exactly,” Jimin said, and then he flipped them neatly over, trapping Taehyung beneath him.

“Jimin, fuck,” Taehyung moaned, eyes wide and breath fast and body seemingly unable to keep still.

“That’s the plan,” Jimin agreed, and Taehyung whined and covered his face.

“You’re absolutely sure about this?” Taehyung said, big hands still covering his face. “Because this is, like, definitely your last chance to back out if the full heat experience is going to be too much for you.”

“That’s sweet,” Jimin said, dropping a short kiss on each of the backs of Taehyung’s hands, then a long, wet, sucking kiss to the base of Taehyung’s throat, because he was pretty sure it was going to make Taehyung arch like he’d been struck by lightning—which it did. “You’re sweet, Taehyung-ah.” Jimin peeled Taehyung’s hands back from his face and pressed them down until they were on either side of Taehyung’s head, pinned down by Jimin’s own small hands. Taehyung’s eyes were gratifyingly blown, his breath was coming in shuddering little gasps, and he was looking at Jimin like Jimin had hung the stars, the moon, and the damn sun.

“You’re sweet,” Jimin said once more. He leaned down, pressed body-to-body against Taehyung, and murmured in his ear, “But how about you shut up and let me fuck you now, hmm?”

Taehyung, as it happened, could not shut up. Nor could he keep still. It was like every single touch between him and Jimin was electrically charged, and he writhed and wailed and moaned and begged, “Please, please, please, please,” and “Faster, faster, please, faster.”

Jimin did not go faster, mostly because Taehyung needed to be stretched out, heat be damned, and Jimin figured that was going to be a lot harder to do later. So he was slow and careful and thorough, making sure to use lube because there wasn’t quite enough slick yet, and if he had to physically keep Taehyung in place so he wouldn’t fuck back against Jimin’s fingers too quickly, well, it’s not as if Jimin was going to complain.

The fucking part didn’t last very long. Taehyung was too worked up to last, and having Taehyung so desperate beneath him was enough to get Jimin just as worked up, and when Taehyung came with his teeth buried in Jimin’s neck to muffle his scream, it only took Jimin another series of frantic thrusts to follow right behind him.

For a moment they stayed as they were, Jimin with his elbows on either side of Taehyung’s head, Taehyung with both arms and legs wrapped around Jimin’s torso. Taehyung was still shaking beneath him, little post-orgasm shivers that made his legs twitch against Jimin’s hips and his breaths shudder against Jimin’s neck.

“You okay, baby?” Jimin murmured, lips against the sweat-drenched hair at Taehyung’s temple. “You good?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You’re so perfect, you know that?” Jimin said, lifting one hand to push all the hair out of Taehyung’s face. “So lovely. So sexy.”

“You’re sexy,” Taehyung mumbled back. “Sexiest. Best. So nice.”

“Can I pull out?” Jimin asked, and, expectedly, all of Taehyung’s limbed locked around him like chains.

“I won’t go anywhere,” Jimin promised, shifting just enough that he could run a hand down Taehyung’s side. “But this condom is a little uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t have to put it on,” Taehyung said, and Jimin let his hand continue to follow the same path along Taehyung side until he started to relax.

“I know,” Jimin said. “But there will be plenty of time for no-condom sex later, hmm?”

“Gonna come right inside me,” Taehyung agreed, suddenly almost blissful, and Jimin huffed out a laugh.

“Nasty,” he chastised gently, and this time when he shifted, Taehyung let him move enough to pull out.

Jimin ditched the condom in the garbage bin and wiped them both down, and gladly sank back into Taehyung’s embrace.

For a while they just cuddled, Taehyung occasionally shifting and making happy noises that sounded almost like chirps, and Jimin drawing careless, meaningless shapes across the expanse of Taehyung’s back. Eventually the noises got a little less happy and little more pained, and when Jimin asked if Taehyung needed painkillers, Taehyung buried a faintly miserable “yes” in Jimin’s chest.

So Jimin got up for painkillers and a cup of tea and sat behind Taehyung so Taehyung could lean against his chest as he washed the pills down with a swallow of tea that probably would have burned Jimin but didn’t seem to faze Taehyung at all.

“You doing okay?” Jimin asked after he’d set the mug aside and wrapped both arms around Taehyung.

“Honestly, I’m doing great,” Taehyung said, and he sounded relieved. “Usually I have to take painkillers every eight hours when I’m in heat, and I was anticipating it being a lot worse because of how long I’ve suppressed.  But this is the first time I’ve needed them since we got in our nest.”

Jimin couldn’t help the way his body shivered happily at the way Taehyung had said our.

“Do you think the nest is helping?” Jimin asked, and Taehyung hummed and turned so he could rub his nose against Jimin’s shoulder.

“Probably.” A moment later he continued. “I don’t know. It’s weird.”

“What’s weird?”

Taehyung turned fully and pulled his legs in to sit cross-legged facing Jimin, close enough that he could still lean forward and nudge his head under Jimin’s chin.

“It’s been a while since I’ve done the heat thing,” Taehyung said. “Sometimes I’d suppress for an occasional heat because of a deadline or an event or something, but typically I just let nature do its thing.” He flapped a hand at himself, at the flush to his skin, the sweat on his hairline, the way his eyes were still a little dark and heated. “So, I don’t know. I guess I was expecting this heat to be different in a bad way because I’d suppressed for so long.”

“Has it not been that different?” Jimin asked, because he honestly had no frame of reference, and any information was going to be useful in the near and (hopefully also) distant future.

Taehyung’s face scrunched a little in thought, his lips pursing and eyes drifting upward.

“It has been different,” he said. “Just not how I expected it to be different. Like, the sex.” He gestured again, this time between the two of them, and said, “An average heat for me doesn’t usually involve a lot of sex. Typically I only need sex once or twice during the whole heat, and other than that I’m good to just cuddle and watch dramas or sleep. But this—” he cut himself and laughed, both bewildered and delighted, and said, “Jimin-ah, I could probably go twice more right now.”

Jimin must have made a face, because Taehyung laughed again and leaned forward to kiss Jimin’s shoulder and chin and forehead and say, “I’m saying I could. Not that I need to.” He pulled back to beam at Jimin. “You’re just in my nest and so available and comfortable and lovely, and also you’re unbelievably sexy, and it’s like I can’t have you here with me and also not be constantly a little turned on.”

That was basically how Jimin felt around Taehyung all the time, so he just nodded understandingly and leaned in to catch Taehyung’s still smiling mouth in a quick kiss.

“So, it’s going to be like a porno heat?” Jimin asked cheekily, and Taehyung groaned.

“There’s honestly a pretty good chance of that, yes!” Taehyung exclaimed, and Jimin laughed and grabbed Taehyung’s hands so he could kiss all over the backs of them. “Media typically has such unrealistic depictions of heat, especially since most of the time you only need a heat partner to make sure you eat and drink and shower, because it gets pretty difficult to think about basic necessities instead of just sleeping. But apparently you’re just getting the full slutty Taehyung treatment.”

“But I think slutty Taehyung is wonderful!” Jimin said, and Taehyung pushed him over and crawled on top of him.

“You say that now,” he grumbled into Jimin’s hair, “but we’ll see what you say when we’re six straight rounds into sex and I’m still ready for more.”

Jimin let the silence sit for a second, sure that Taehyung was going to tack a just kidding on there.

He didn’t.

“Um,” Jimin said. “Is that—is that a possibility?”

Taehyung lifted himself up onto his hands so he could stare at Jimin as he said, incredibly seriously. “I didn’t spend my first heat with anyone, but I did have a dildo that one of my cousins got me when I started showing pre-heat symptoms, and I legitimately fucked myself with that thing eighteen times in one day.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jimin blurted out.

“Thankfully for both of us,” Taehyung said, “I am not that young anymore.” For just a moment he stared off, eyes glazed with a grim sort of remembering, and then he shuddered. “No ass deserves that kind of treatment.”

“But six rounds is still a possibility?”

Jimin could hear his nerves in the question, and Taehyung shot him an amused look before he collapsed back onto Jimin’s chest. “Probably wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t so sexy, Jimin-ah.”

“These are the things you’re supposed to tell me before I agree to spend a heat with you. Taehyung-ah,” Jimin responded, but he was a little amused, too, and he wrapped his arms around Taehyung so he could pull him that much closer.

“I thought you liked slutty Taehyung.”

Jimin didn’t even feel bad for reaching down to tickle Taehyung’s sides, unrelenting as Taehyung shrieked and giggled and pled for mercy.

“That was before I knew that slutty Taehyung was also a little brat.”

Taehyung was clearly indulging him—he was infinitely stronger than Jimin, but he let Jimin chase him around the nest with his fingers in Taehyung’s sides until Jimin collapsed back onto the blankets, and Taehyung collapsed at his side.

“Jimin?” Taehyung said.

“Yeah?”

Taehyung smiled at him, and Jimin’s heart melted.

“I’m so glad you’re here with me.”

~

The next time they woke up, the first thing Taehyung said was, “Hey, listen—what if you fucked me?”

Jimin, who’d dreamt of a warm body and floral spiciness and breathy whimpers, had said, “Fuck—yes.”

Taehyung had been loud. He wailed. He’d moaned. He breathed out those delicious ah ah ahs every time Jimin nailed his prostate. He’d clawed over Jimin’s back, definitely leaving marks, and kept his mouth pressed to Jimin’s neck with the only the barest hint of teeth against skin, and when he’d come it had been explosively, up his chest and clear to his chin, and his eyes had honest-to-god rolled back in his head.

It was fucking sexy. Also a little gross.

Jimin pulled out carefully, threw away the condom, and croaked out, “Shower.”

Taehyung had opened his mouth, probably to protest, but he closed it and smiled fondly as soon as he’d seen Jimin’s face.

“Shower,” he agreed.

Jimin probably should have been more wary. The moment the water was on, Taehyung was pressed body-to-body with him, dragging Jimin’s hand back to where he’d opened him up barely twenty minutes ago, and Jimin was fucking his fingers back into Taehyung’s warm, wet hole, dragging fingertips against his prostate and holding him close while Taehyung climaxed again, this time with a frighteningly sexy little whimper and mindless, open-mouthed panting against the side of Jimin’s face.

There was a glaze in his eyes and a restlessness in his motions that told Jimin Taehyung probably wasn’t satisfied yet, but when Jimin dried him off and said gently, “Can I get you to eat some food for me?” Taehyung only hesitated a moment before he nodded.

Jimin didn’t bother with anything fancy. He wrapped towels around both their waists, grabbed two protein bars and an apple for Taehyung, and another protein bar and a banana for himself, and then stayed at arm’s length until Taehyung had eaten everything and drank two bottles of water and an energy drink.

“Nest,” Taehyung insisted the moment Jimin was done with his own energy drink, and Jimin let himself be dragged down to the pile.

Taehyung relaxed the moment they were back in the nest, his whole body going lax and his face smoothing out.

“Are you okay?” Jimin asked him, carefully wrangling the towel out from under Taehyung, because it was still a little damp and that didn’t seem like the best addition to the nest.

“’s weird.” Taehyung mumbled, eyes closed and limbs splayed loosely out. “’m so fucking horny right now.”

“What do you want to do?” Jimin asked, dragging gentle fingers along the tops of Taehyung’s thighs. “More sex?”

“Tired,” Taehyung responded, and Jimin let out a sigh of relief, because while he was absolutely down to fuck again, he didn’t think they’d slept for long, and he wasn’t exactly at the top of his game.

“Sex later?” Jimin said, just to make sure they were on the same page, and Taehyung nodded tiredly.

“Yeah. I feel like I’d fall asleep on your dick, and while that’d be nice and definitely something we could explore in the future, I don’t know that that’s quite what I’m looking for right now.”

Jimin smiled at him, warm and enamored and more than a little—

“Tae,” he said, kind of helplessly.

Taehyung opened one sleepy eye, a half-grin on his face, and said, “I know, I know. I’m lovely.”

He posed with it, arching his neck back and dragging one hand up to frame his chin, and Jimin leaned down for a kiss, saw the glint in Taehyung’s eyes, and thought better of it. Instead he arranged himself in the nest next to Taehyung, carefully to keep their points of contact to the not blatantly sexy bits.

“You are,” Jimin said in response to Taehyung’s statement, and the grin widened.

“You better sleep, Jimin,” Taehyung slurred out, hand falling to the pillow. “I’m going to wake up, like, so ready for sex.”

“I look forward to it,” Jimin said, and leaned over to carefully kiss Taehyung on the tip of his nose.

~

“Jimin.”

“Hmm?”

“Jimin.”

“Baby, what—”

“Fuck, Jimin. Jimin, can I—can I ride you? Please? Jimin-ah, please, can I—”

“Fuck, baby, of course, you—”

“Oh, god.”

“Goddamn, slow down, you’ll hurt—”

“I won’t. I really won’t I—I’m so fucking wet, baby, I—Here, Jimin-ah, feel—”

“Oh, fuck.”

“I—I—”

“Shh, baby, s’ okay, you’re okay, you’re so—you’re gorgeous, look so good, feel so good, baby, take whatever you need, so sexy, so goddamn—”

“Jimin! Jimin, oh. Ah. Ah. Ah!”

“Oh my fucking god, baby, what the fuck, you’re so fucking—”

“Can you—can you hold me here—"

“Yes.”

“Ohhhhhhh.”

“Baby. Baby. Fuck, baby.”

“Jimin, I—Jimin-ah, it’s so good, it’s too good, you’re so—”

“Come on, baby. Come on, it’s okay. Come on. Oh, you’re so wet, I can feel you everywhere. Come on.”

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, Jimin, fuck, I—Oh!”

“So sexy, so beautiful, baby, I—”

“Come inside me, Jimin.”

“What?"

“Baby, come inside me.”

Fuck.

~

So they hadn’t used a condom.

And they’d discussed that in depth beforehand, had gotten tested and shared results and talked about any limits or boundaries and established that that was something they were both okay with. Jimin had even been the one to bring it up, had been the one to hesitantly ask Taehyung, “Is that something you’d be interested in?” and Taehyung had flushed with relief and answered all in a hurry, “Yes. Definitely.”

And it was hot knowing that Jimin was fucking Taehyung bare, that there was literally nothing between them. It was sexy knowing that Taehyung wanted that.

But Jimin had, apparently, underestimated how much Taehyung wanted that, because after that first frenzied foray into bare sex, Taehyung was somehow even more insatiable.

If Jimin said, “Can you eat something for me?” Taehyung responded, “Can you come inside me again?” When Jimin said, “We should shower,” and Taehyung cheerfully replied, “You can come inside me and then we can wash it right out!” And when Jimin basically begged, “Hi, listen, I really need you to drink this, baby, come on,” Taehyung leaned in, so seriously, and told him, “Hi, hello, I really need you to come inside me.”

Jimin collapsed on top of Taehyung after what must have been the fourth round in the past few hours, still buried inside Taehyung because he’d asked Jimin not to pull out for a minute.

“Damn,” Jimin panted into Taehyung’s neck, exhausted. “Is this an omega thing or just a you thing?”

“Maybe it’s a you thing,” Taehyung responded dreamily. “I’ve never wanted to be filled up like this before.”

Jimin shifted very carefully so he didn’t jostle where his dick was still nestled inside Taehyung. “Not even with an—with an alpha?”

He felt Taehyung turn his head, and knew that for all the heat and sex daze, Taehyung’s gaze on him was sharp and discerning.

“You mean with Jungkookie?”

Jimin thought about dodging the question. He settled with saying, “Well, yeah.”

“Why would being with an alpha make me want to get stuffed like a cream puff?” Taehyung asked, and his tone was so honestly bewildered that Jimin didn’t even laugh. And Jimin thought that maybe he’d been asking more about being with someone Taehyung was in love with rather than someone who was an alpha, but the fact that Taehyung hadn’t differentiated between that with Jungkook and this with Jimin made something spark breathless and vibrant somewhere in Jimin’s chest, so he just smiled and went with it.

“I don’t know,” Jimin said, trying to adjust again and then stilling when Taehyung winced the tiniest bit. He dropped his hand to Taehyung’s hip, petting soothingly over the sharp jut of bone there until Taehyung relaxed around him. “Because of, like, knots?”

Taehyung was silent for long enough that Jimin raised himself so he could check Taehyung’s face, and then did a double-take when he realized Taehyung was making that particular expression usually reserved for when he tasted something he didn’t like.

“What?” Jimin asked, worried that he’d said something wrong.

“So a fun fact about me,” Taehyung announced in answer, “and probably the one thing that has caused me the most unexpected tension in physical relationships in general and with Jungkookie in particular, is that I fucking hate knots.”

Jimin kind of wanted to laugh, but Taehyung’s tone was dead serious, and his face was still set in that expression of distaste.

“Oh,” Jimin said. He moved again, still trying to keep himself inside of Taehyung but also give Taehyung his full attention. “Um, that’s very—”

He trailed off because he didn’t really know how to continue that thought, but Taehyung was more than willing to take Jimin’s ambivalent start and run with it.

“Uncommon? Unexpected? Uncharacteristic? Unlikely? One might even say un-omega-like?”

“I would not say that,” Jimin told him, because that seemed like an important point to make in the moment.

“But other people say it!” Taehyung—well, he definitely whined it. Like, full pouty lips and huffy breath and big old puppy eyes and Jimin basically melted all over him like a puddle, both because Taehyung was adorable and also because the smell of drenched spices was beginning to creep through the deep, sensual spicy floralness that Jimin kind of hoped he’d never be able to wash out of the blankets.

So, because Jimin was only human in light of Taehyung’s big eyes, and because all the research he’d done said that heat-hormonal omegas had to be dealt with affectionately and immediately, he stroked back Taehyung’s sweaty hair (which was both sexy and nasty; arguably Taehyung’s entire existence right now) and cooed, “No, baby, anyone who says that is wrong. Nothing about you is un-omega-like. You’re absolutely perfect.”

Taehyung’s dark eyes searched Jimin’s face for any trace of lie, but there was none. Jimin didn’t realize how tense Taehyung had become until he was relaxing underneath Jimin again, humming out something satisfied while the mopeyness of his scent retreated.

“So,” Jimin said as Taehyung settled beneath him, and Jimin did his level best to ignore the way he could feel viscous fluids leaking out around his dick, coating literally everything in cum and slick even more than it had already been coated, “what is it about knots that you hate so fucking much?”

“Ugh,” Taehyung said, tossing his head back to the pillow beneath him dramatically, hair haloing around him and making him look like some sex god that Jimin would absolutely, one hundred percent worship. “Literally everything. Do you mind me oversharing?”

“Of course not,” Jimin said.

“Right,” Taehyung said. “I was with Jungkookie the first time I took a knot. We were in college, our respective ruts and heats had lined up right after midterms, and I was expecting some magical movie sex experience where Jungkook knotted me and the heavens parted and then Jungkook declared his undying love for me and we got mated and adopted seven kids and five dogs.”

“Seven is lot,” Jimin said absently, and Taehyung made a thoughtful sound so low in his chest that vibrated it through Jimin’s stomach.

“Yeah, these days I think two is a lot more reasonable.”

“Yeah, two would be good,” Jimin mumbled into Taehyung’s hair, and didn’t even realize what he’d said until Taehyung was already back in his story.

“Anyhow, on day two or three or four or something, we were in middle of sex and Jungkook finally popped a knot, and I was immediately like, ‘Nope, hate that, get that out of me,’ but the thing about knots is that you’re stuck.”

And Taehyung sounded pissed about it, almost offended, but Jimin was having a hard time not smiling.

“So I was lying there, incredibly hormonal, with the worst unmet expectations and absolutely no desire for sex to continue,  and poor Jungkook was literally stuck with his dick in me while I went off on this rant about how stupid lykan biology is and how I was never going to let a knot near me again and I regretted all my life decisions and this was his fault for having such a massive fucking knot—which he does, by the way.”

Jimin was trying so hard not to laugh, so all he could manage was a weak, “Mmm.”

“We ended up trying two other times, once during another heat and once just normally, and it was almost worse than the first time. So after the third time, Jungkook was like, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t do that again,’ and I was like ‘Fucking hallelujah,’ but actually I still feel kind of bad about that, because I think it was kind of a huge blow to his ego, you know? Like, he’s such a stereotypically perfect alpha in so many ways, and I was over there being like, ‘the only place you’re going to pop that knot is back in your pants.’”

Taehyung fell contemplatively silent, and Jimin couldn’t help a few giggles from slipping past his lips.

“Are you laughing at me?” Taehyung asked incredulously.

“You’re just cute and I like you so much,” Jimin assured him.

Taehyung’s scent blossomed. Sudden and ferocious and bright and exuberant and almost overwhelming, and Jimin couldn’t stop himself from breathing out a soft, “Whoa.”

“Jimin,” Taehyung said breathlessly. “Jimin, I like you, too.”

He went to wrap himself impossibly tighter around Jimin, and the shifting of their bodies made the stickiness between them squelch and slide uncomfortably across Jimin’s skin and around all the most sensitive parts of himself, and Jimin must have grimaced, because suddenly Taehyung was pressing gentle hands to his hips.

“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry, Jimin-ah—I didn’t mean to make you stay here so long.” He carefully guided Jimin’s hips away from his own, wincing as Jimin slipped out but waving away Jimin’s concerned hands. “Sorry, that was probably kind of gross for you. Do you want to go shower?”

Jimin almost wanted to say no and stay with Taehyung in the safety and nastiness of their nest, but also everything felt disgusting, and when he looked at Taehyung without quite knowing how to answer, Taehyung just nodded and said, “Yeah, let’s go shower.”

They washed each other’s bodies, and Taehyung lathered a little too much soap onto Jimin’s skin just like he preferred it, and even let Jimin clean the cum out of his ass, which Jimin thought was weirdly more intimate than the act of putting in there in the first place.

“Tell me if you’re uncomfortable next time,” Taehyung murmured, wrapped around Jimin’s back as the two of them stood, clean and warm under the spray of the showerhead. He dragged his lips up and down the slope of Jimin’s neck, and Jimin tilted his head accordingly. “I really didn’t mean for us to stay there so long.”

“I wanted to be there,” Jimin protested softly. “I liked being so close to you, and I was focused on listening to you.” He paused, then continued, because honesty felt natural with their clean, naked bodies pressed together and Taehyung’s mouth on his skin. “It just was a little gross any time one of us moved.”

The arms around Jimin tightened, and Taehyung rocked him back and forth, in and out of the shower’s spray. “Sorry heat sex is kind of nasty.”

“All sex is kind of nasty,” Jimin replied. “I still have no regrets.”

~

At some point, Taehyung rolled on top of Jimin, said, “Don’t mind the tears, it’s literally just hormones and I actually feel great,” and then asked, “What if I fucked you?”

Jimin, who was still a little bit caught up in the big, fat tears that were running down Taehyung’s cheeks, said, “Huh?”

Taehyung shifted upward, dragging his whole naked self up Jimin’s body until he was caging Jimin in with hands on either side of Jimin’s head and his face hovering just inches above Jimin’s, close enough to drip tears practically into Jimin’s own eyes.

“What if I fucked you?” Taehyung repeated, and despite the waterworks and the slight glaze in his eyes, his gaze was intense and hungry enough that Jimin was already spreading his legs before he said “Yes.”

They’d talked about this, too, but mostly in passing. Taehyung, a little hesitantly, had asked, “Hey, would you be okay if I topped during my heat?” and Jimin had said, “Yeah, of course.”

Jimin had assumed that Taehyung would be a little less attentive than usual if he topped during his heat, given that he was deep in the throes of a biological phenomenon that had him all kinds of fucked up. Jimin anticipated something a little rushed and messy, maybe a little uncomfortable, but he was prepared for that.

Taehyung, though, was careful and thorough, coating his fingers in lube and stretching Jimin out one slow finger at a time as he kissed him through the whole process. He was so focused, so intent on Jimin’s comfort and pleasure that Jimin felt overwhelmed by it, and by the time Taehyung carefully pulled his fingers out, Jimin knew it wasn’t going to last long.

When Taehyung shifted away from him, reaching for something outside the nest, Jimin was confused.

“Tae?” he asked, hooking a leg around Taehyung’s waist and trying to get him to come back. “What are you—”

“I got you, it’s okay,” Taehyung replied, and when he fit himself back between Jimin’s legs, he had a condom in his hand.

Jimin felt a flash of something—nervousness, or guilt, or maybe embarrassment, and he said, “Tae, you don’t have to—”

“Jimin,” Taehyung said, and his voice was very serious, but his face was unbearably fond. “It would be so sexy to come inside your ass, but that would stress you out so much.” He tipped Jimin’s face up with a press from two of his long fingers and kissed him on the mouth. “Just because I like it doesn’t mean you have to. Let me take care of you, yeah?”

Jimin blinked maybe a few more times than necessary, cleared his throat, and said, “Please.”

Taehyung fucked him slow and gentle, rocking in and out of him with their bodies pressed close together and his lips against Jimin’s cheek, and Jimin held him tightly, arching into the hardest of the thrusts and sighing into the deepest. When Taehyung came, it was into the condom, and when he pulled out, all that was left inside Jimin was the stickiness of lube.

Taehyung cleaned them up this time, all soft and gentle and warm, and when he crawled back into the nest, Jimin curled into him tightly and buried his thank you into Taehyung’s shoulder.

~

On maybe the third or fourth or fifth day, they woke up basically in unison, blinked sleepily at each other where they were pressed together, both hard, and then Jimin rolled on top of Taehyung and slid into him, easy as breathing.

It was the softest, sleepiest, most relaxed sex Jimin had ever had in his life. He finished with a quiet moan, and when Taehyung finished, only moments later, it was with a satisfied little sigh.

For a moment Jimin stayed there, inside and on top of him, breathing in the scent of flowers and spice, and then Taehyung, sweet voice still fathomlessly deep and scratchy with sleep, said, “Good morning.”

“Arguably the best morning,” Jimin returned, and Taehyung hummed serenely.

“No arguments from me.”

They pulled apart, got up, and drifted toward the shower hand-in-hand, and Taehyung didn’t even try to elicit more sex out of him while they were under the spray of the water. Taehyung seemed too happy in the shower for Jimin to justify making him get out, so he left him there, assuming that an especially high water bill wasn’t going to be a problem for someone who occasionally took scissors to his Gucci shirts when he was feeling “inspired.”

Jimin pulled on pants while he could, assessed his stock of supplies, which seemed to be holding up all right, and then actually looked at the blankets they’d been lying on in the nest, and maybe had a little baby panic attack.

Taehyung walked out of the bathroom, wet and naked and blissfully content, while Jimin was huddled over the kitchen counter, ignoring all his texts in favor of an internet deep dive on whether or not it was okay to wash nest blankets in the middle of a heat when they were literally covered in bodily fluids.

“Jimin?”

Jimin looked up from his phone, and his eyes must have been about as crazed as he felt, because Taehyung’s own eyes went wide, and he rushed out, “Oh, god, what’s wrong?”

Jimin said, “Uh—”

He looked down at his phone, which currently displayed a message board telling him to not, under any circumstances whatsoever, ever ever ever ever remove a nest blanket to wash it of the slick, sweat, cum, and spit that had accumulated on it while an omega was still in heat. He looked up at Taehyung, who was frozen in the doorway and whose eyes were slowly welling with tears. He looked at the nest, which was—truly—an absolutely lovely nest, and which he one hundred percent could not get back into without feeling like his skin was going to crawl off his body.

“Um,” Jimin started, not at all sure how to continue any kind of thought, because he had somehow not prepared himself for the accumulating wetness of a heat.

But when Jimin turned back to Taehyung, Taehyung had followed Jimin’s gaze to the nest. It only took a few slow blinks before Taehyung’s face cleared, and he looked at Jimin and asked, “Is this about how disgusting those blankets are?”

“I mean—” Jimin tried, “I mean, I don’t know that I would say disgusting.” The clear disgust in his tone told a different story, and Jimin winced the moment the words left his mouth, waiting for Taehyung to burst into tears again.

Instead, Taehyung crossed the distance to him in a few long strides, and bent down to cover Jimin’s huddled body with his own, dripping water from his hair down on to Jimin’s bare shoulders. He carefully took Jimin’s phone from him, clicked the power off, and set it down on the counter.

“Hey,” Taehyung crooned. “Heats are so gross. There are a lot of fluids. It’s okay to acknowledge that, especially as someone who doesn’t have any kind of prior experience.”

“But I was prepared for that!” Jimin protested. “I just didn’t think about—” He raised a hand to gesture toward the nest, thought better of it, and curled into Taehyung’s drippy embrace. “I am so sorry. I’ll be okay, I swear.”

For a moment, Taehyung just held him silently, and Jimin took deep breaths until his chest wasn’t hurting quite so much.

“We can wash them,” Taehyung said eventually, and Jimin let out a horrified warble.

“The internet says—”

“Jimin.”

Jimin looked up at Taehyung’s face and frantically searched his expression for any hint that he wasn’t as calm and present as he seemed.

Jimin found none.

“Would that really be okay?”

Taehyung leaned in to bump his nose against Jimin’s cheek.

“It’s my nest. I can do whatever I want with it.”

“But—”

“And what I want,” Taehyung interrupted him gently, “is for you to be comfortable in it. Okay?”

Jimin took Taehyung’s face in his hands and looked deep in his eyes.

“You mean that?” Jimin whispered.

Taehyung held his gaze easily. “Absolutely.”

The deconstruction of the nest ended up not being as bad as either Jimin or Taehyung had thought it would be. Only a few blankets and pillows had taken the brunt of their activities, and though Taehyung did have to take a few bracing breaths before he pulled them out of the nest, he was relaxed enough that he even let Jimin help carry everything to the washing machine.

They ate while the machine ran, one of Seokjin’s pre-cooked meals, and then switched the load to the dryer and curled up on the couch next to each other to watch a few episodes of a new anime that Jungkook had recommended. Taehyung stayed naked, but didn’t make Jimin take his pants off, and while his hands drifted over Jimin’s entire body as they were watching, he clearly didn’t mean to start anything, content with touching for the sake of touching. He started cramping just a little after episode four, so Jimin got up for both a heating pad and a cup of tea, and by the time episode six hit the closing theme, Taehyung was asleep, curled up on his side with his face buried in Jimin’s lap.

Jimin turned the TV off and let him sleep, keeping one hand tracing aimless patterns over Taehyung’s bare back and responding to texts one-handed.

Hoseok got an I think things are going really well! in response to his How are you guys???

To Seokjin, who had texted asking if they were good on food, Jimin had replied I think we’re going to be okay. Seriously, though, thank you so much. You’ve already saved my life like twice.

Yoongi had texted simply to say, u do precisely what he tells u to do with that nest u fuckin hear me, and Jimin, keeping it short and sweet, texted back Of course, hyung.

Jungkook had texted kind of a lot.

First had been take really good care of him okay?

Then it had been Don’t let him watch anything too sad sometimes if he starts crying he wont’ stop

And then you have to make sure he eats. Sometimes he gets rlly distracted and doesn’t want to eat, and he might want to take a lot of showers, and He’ll probably try to check his work emails but he doesn’t need to do that shit he’s on leave, and sometimes if he wont drink water u have to give him juice or smthing to make sure he stays hydrated because that’s really important, and If you need me for anything you can definitely call or text.

Jimin stared at the texts for a long time, trying to figure out how to respond, or if he should respond at all. When Taehyung shifted against him in his sleep, letting out a pleased little hum as Jimin adjusted to stroke his hand through Taehyung’s hair, Jimin decided not to overthink it.

He took a picture of Taehyung, careful to only capture from the shoulders and up. Jimin stared at the picture for a moment, because even though he had the real thing in his lap, the picture had perfectly captured how clearly content and relaxed Taehyung was in his sleep.

Jimin sent the picture to Jungkook, along with a text that just said Thanks for checking in! I think I’ve got things pretty well handled.

Unsurprisingly, the three dots signaling an incoming reply popped up as soon as the text read sent.

Jimin waited, again unsurprised when the dots disappeared, reappeared, and then disappeared again. It was almost a full five minutes before the text finally came through:

I keep wanting to tell you that he deserves the whole world. And then I keep realizing that I don’t have to tell you that, because you already know.

“What’re you smiling so hard for?”

Jimin turned said smile to Taehyung, blinking sleepily up at him, and said, “I’m just happy to be here with you.”

~

“Uh, Jimin?”

“Mmm?”

“Hey, uh, can we talk about something?”

Jimin rolled toward the voice and reached out instinctively, still half-asleep, but the moment his hand met the bare skin over a muscular thigh, the scent of flowers and spices blossomed around them so thickly that Jimin almost gagged on his own saliva.

Jimin lurched upright, dizzy with sleep and the scent and how abruptly, achingly hard he was, and it took all his effort to focus enough to look Taehyung in the face.

And then it wasn’t any effort at all, because Taehyung looked stressed, and Jimin was lurching again, this time to reach out and catch Taehyung by the face so he could pet over his pale cheeks.

“No, no, no!” Jimin exclaimed. “No, baby, what’s wrong? What’s the matter? What can I do, can I fix it?”

Every brush of their skin brought a new wave of scent, so strong that Jimin had to hold back groans. It was like fireworks, or drinking water when you were dying of thirst, or an orgasm, or the best cake you’d ever had, or a rainbow after a storm, or a bath in your favorite perfume, or electricity, or the chorus of a song that made you cry.

“What the actual fuck—” Jimin said, and he tried to be calm, but he could hear the way his voice was shaking, “—is happening right now?”

Taehyung wasn’t crying, but Jimin didn’t think his eyes had ever been bigger.

“Okay,” Taehyung said. “Okay, so there’s this thing that can happen—”

He looked down, blurted out, “Oh, fuck, you’re so hard right now,” and reached out.

Jimin caught Taehyung’s hand before he could make contact.

“Tae,” Jimin said. “The moment you touch me is the moment I’m pretty sure we’ll be fucking for the next fifteen hours straight, so if you have something you want to say, you better get it out quick.”

“Fuck,” Taehyung said again, but now he was laughing a little. He still looked stressed, but there was something fond in his eyes, and maybe even a hint of excitement. “Okay. Okay, so you can smell me, right?”

The way he looked at Jimin made it clear that he already knew, but he still paused to let Jimin give confirmation.

“I have never smelled anything so fucking hard in my life before,” Jimin said with utmost sincerity.

Taehyung laughed again, a full, deep laugh this time, and said, “Damn, yeah, okay. Okay, so there’s this thing that can happen sometimes during heats where the—the pheromones, I guess, go just absolutely fucking wild. Like—” He paused, clearly trying to come up with some kind of analogy, but then he just shrugged and gestured at himself.

“Yeah, no, I think I get it,” Jimin said, and he could hear the strain in his own voice.

“Fuck. Yeah. Okay, uh—” Taehyung cut himself off with yet another laugh, this one sounding overwhelmed, and when he met Jimin’s eyes, he looked absolutely wrecked.

“Right,” Taehyung continued. “Right, so, basically my body is going, like, full primal and pumping out an absolute shit-ton of really powerful pheromones.”

“Like, super-sex hormones?”

Taehyung nodded once, and then couldn’t seem to stop, bobbing his head up and down and up and down in the cage of Jimin’s hands.

“Like super-sex hormones,” Taehyung confirmed.

“And what’s the point of the super-sex hormones?” Jimin asked, about two seconds away from throwing Taehyung down into the nest and absolutely ravishing him. “Because, like, given how I’m feeling I’m pretty sure, but—”

“Oh, fuck,” Taehyung gasped out, hands flying up to clutch at Jimin’s wrist. “Uh, basically the super-sex hormones are meant to make an ideal mate go absolutely feral and not stop fucking me until I get really fucking pregnant.”

Jimin had assumed, given the state of things.

“But this has never happened to me before,” Taehyung said, and his hands were shaking around Jimin’s wrists. “Not in all my heats, I’ve never—Jimin.”

“Baby,” Jimin breathed, and he couldn’t help the way he leaned in, until their foreheads were touching and they were breathing the same air.

“I’m a little freaked out,” Taehyung said. “I’ve never done this before, and I didn’t even know that humans could be affected by pheromones, but I guess if you can smell me at all it probably makes sense that you’d be affected, and there’s actually a pretty prominent hypothesis about how scent can transmit more strongly to specific individuals depending on intent and interest of the person who—”

“Baby,” Jimin said. “You’re rambling.”

“Just a little,” Taehyung whispered. “I just—I’m about to go full mating frenzy.”

“Hey,” Jimin whispered back, keeping the words in the scant space between their lips. “We’re about to go full mating frenzy.”

“Jimin,” Taehyung said, and it sounded like there was a space after the name, just enough to fit three other words.

“Hey,” Jimin whispered again. “We’ll take care of each other, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“And,” Jimin asked, just to make absolutely certain, “you can’t actually get pregnant, right?”

Taehyung let out a tiny, adorable giggle, and Jimin really needed to fuck him so fucking hard.

“No, that’s a biological function that male omegas lost, like, tens of thousands of years ago.” Taehyung lifted his shoulders in a little shrug. “But our bodies sometimes like to forget that.”

“And you don’t need me to talk about getting you pregnant or anything, right?”

Taehyung shook his head and grinned. “I don’t have any kind of breeding kink you need to indulge, no.”

“Awesome,” Jimin said. “That’s great.”

For just a moment, they were frozen there, locked together with the barest hint of space separating them, and then Jimin tilted his face just enough that when he spoke, their lips brushed together.

“Hey, baby?”

“Yeah, Jimin-ah?”

“What if I actually fucked you now?”

Taehyung inhaled so hard that it shook both their bodies. And then he breathed out:

“Please.”

And it was—

Bodies, and sweat, and heat, and slick, and moans, and whines, and deep groans, and teeth in shoulders, mouths on mouths, fingers pressed to tongues, tongues pressed to throats. Jimin laid Taehyung out beneath him and fucked him hard, fucked him open and screaming and beautiful beneath him. Taehyung flipped them and sank down on Jimin’s cock, riding him with back arched and head thrown back and hips lifting and rocking and slamming down, and Jimin cursed and dug his fingers into Taehyung’s thighs and knew he was leaving fingerprints behind. Jimin took Taehyung on his hands and knees, one hand clutching at his hip, the other tangled in his hair, and Taehyung wailed, “Yes yes yes!” and begged Jimin to go faster and harder and more more more, please, more. Taehyung pinned Jimin down and they rutted against each other, hard and hot and filthy, and Taehyung sank his teeth into Jimin’s neck and Jimin reveled in it.

And it was—

Bodies, and sweat, a little bit of laughter, and a few overwhelmed tears, and fingers intertwined with fingers, and kisses pressed behind ears, and smiles hidden in shoulders, and foreheads resting on cheeks, and the quiet murmurs of, “Is this okay? Is this how you want it?” Jimin laid Taehyung out beneath him and made sure he was stretched so there wouldn’t be any discomfort. Taehyung flipped them and cradled Jimin’s head, even though there was nothing hard in the nest for Jimin to knock against. Jimin stared at Taehyung’s ass, overwhelmed, and couldn’t help but smack it with an open palm, because, “Damn, Tae, what the fuck, your ass is a gift,” and Taehyung buried his face in a pillow to muffle his laughter. Taehyung leaned down and pressed his lips right over Jimin’s heart, and Jimin carded a hand through Taehyung’s sweat-slick hair and let himself fully think, for the first time, I love you.

Exhaustion pushed them into sleep, and arousal woke them, and time felt immaterial. Even though he could barely think through the haze, Jimin still reached for water bottles, and energy drinks, and protein bars, and Taehyung still reached for the condoms when he wedged himself between Jimin’s legs and filled him up.

At some point Jimin blinked, and they were lying on their sides, chest to chest and face to face. Taehyung smiled at him, close-lipped but still wide enough to push his cheeks up into his eyes. Jimin slid his hand into the space between them and brushed Taehyung’s hair back from his face, just so he could see him a little better, and whispered, “Where have you been all my life, huh?”

Taehyung turned his head and brushed a kiss against Jimin’s palm, and Jimin didn’t think he’d ever seen Taehyung look so at peace.

“I’ve been right here,” Taehyung said. “Just waiting for you.”

Jimin believed him.

~

Taehyung was at the stove, dressed in a hoodie and sweats, which, giving how much of his ankle was sticking out, were probably Jimin’s sweats. He was adding something to the rice—egg, maybe, or some kind of meat, but Jimin was too tired to lift his head off the table and actually see.

“We should get a watermelon when we go out,” Taehyung said. “A watermelon sounds so good right now.”

Jimin opened his mouth to groan in appreciation, then thought better of it. Even though Taehyung had said he was pretty sure his heat was fully over—if nothing else, he was in clothes—Jimin didn’t want to risk anything that might result in another round of sex. He didn’t think his body could take that.

Jimin settled for a thumbs-up when Taehyung glanced over, and the way Taehyung’s whole face split into a smile was almost as gratifying and gut-wrenching as that last orgasm had been.

They ate quietly, chopsticks clacking against bowls and both of them humming occasionally when a bite was particularly good.

Jimin let his head drop down to the table the moment he was finished, and when Taehyung made an inquisitive noise, he mumbled, “I’m so tired.”

“We can go back to bed,” Taehyung said, and Jimin lifted his head enough to stare blankly at Taehyung, because the nest was a fucking mess.

“I mean actual bed,” Taehyung said, laughing. “We can take a couple of the soft blankets and go watch anime or something.”

And Jimin didn’t mean to let it slip out. He absolutely meant to do it in more romantic circumstances, with pomp and ceremony and everything that Taehyung deserved, but when he looked at Taehyung, sitting across from him at his kitchen table, cuddly-soft and painfully handsome, tired and sweet and still a little fucked out, with his big eyes and his messy hair and his cheeks bulging with rice, all Jimin could do was helplessly open his mouth and say, “Taehyung, I love you.”

Taehyung blinked at him.

“Taehyung,” Jimin said, a little desperately. “Taehyung-ah, I am so in love with you.”

Taehyung held up a hand, and Jimin realized that maybe that confession could have been timed for when Taehyung didn’t have a mouth full of rice.

Taehyung chewed, and swallowed, and took a drink of water.

Then he put down his glass and said, like it was a fact, like it was the sun rising, like it was the fucking air he breathed, “Jimin-ah, I think I’ve been in love with you my whole life and I just didn’t know it until I met you.”

It had been a long few days. Jimin burst into tears and buried his face in his arms.

Taehyung hadn’t even mocked him for it. He’d just cleared away the dishes, lifted Jimin into his arms until Jimin could wrap himself around Taehyung like a koala, and taken them both to bed.

They curled up on Jimin’s bed, buried under a mountain of the cleanest of the nest blankets, with their heads cradled on Taehyung’s favorite pillow. Jimin was tucked into Taehyung’s side, and Taehyung’s hand had slid under Jimin’s t-shirt to trace along his spine. Taehyung pulled up Netflix on his phone, even though Jimin was pretty sure they were both going to fall asleep within five minutes, and Jimin hoped, briefly, that everyone could be this happy at least once in their lives.

“Hmm,” Jimin said.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Jimin said, and he smiled up at the sharp line of Taehyung’s jaw. “This was kind of fun. We should do it again sometime.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Taehyung made a happy sound that Jimin felt in his own chest, and as whatever show Taehyung had picked loaded on his phone, Taehyung tipped over so he could press his cheek to the top of Jimin’s head.

Taehyung murmured, “Love you, Jiminie,” already sounding half-asleep, and when Jimin responded, “Love you, Tae-yah,” it felt just a little bit like forever.”

THE END