Archive of Our Own

When Beomgyu was a kid, he liked to sit around and imagine what his future partner would be like. First and foremost: they had to make him happy. They had to be gentle, kind, and fun to be around. They had to share the same interests as him, and they had to put up with his spontaneous afternoon naps.

None of his criteria were that difficult. His needs were simple. But in his twenty-seven years of life, he’d only met a handful of people who checked off even half those boxes.

He wasn’t that worried about it. He had lots of time to meet someone he clicked with, and a lot to do before then.

He wasn’t worried about it—but his parents were. A lot. Like, a lot.

To the point where, when Yeonjun called and told him “I think your parents are trying to match you with someone”, he wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

“They say that all the time and never go through with it,” Beomgyu said. He’d picked up Yeonjun’s call right as he was stepping into his apartment, and put him on speaker so he could shrug off his jacket and backpack. “It’s just annoying.”

Yeonjun’s next words made him pause while he was hanging his jacket on the closet hook. “They asked me if I knew anybody who you would be good with. I don’t think they’re joking this time, Beoms.”

That was further than they’d ever gone before. The most he’d dealt with was a few snide comments at family gatherings and the occasional text from his parents showing him articles about how mated pairs had better financial security and blah blah blah—stuff that was supposed to convince him he needed to mate tomorrow. They’d never gone so far as to actively try and find him a match.

“Did you give them a name?”

“Of course not!” Yeonjun sputtered. “I told them I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head and I’d get back to them later.”

Knowing Beomgyu’s mother, she would follow through with Yeonjun’s fake promise, even being well aware that he only said it to try to leave the conversation. She was persistent like that.

“Well…” Beomgyu picked his phone back up and made his way to his room. His parents always ragged on him for owning such a shit apartment, but it was the closest thing to work that wasn’t a) owned by his parents, and b) leased exclusively to couples. After four years of living here, he’d gotten used to the small space. “I don’t think they will. They always drop it after a while then bring it back up a few months later. They’re just getting more impatient.”

“Yeah, which means they’re more likely to do something.” Yeonjun sighed. “I hope they aren’t trying to find you a match for real, but you should mentally prepare yourself if they do.”

Beomgyu groaned, throwing his arm over his eyes. “Even if they do try, I don’t have to accept it. They can’t force me to see anybody. That’s literally illegal.”

“And then what are you going to do, cut them off over this?” He could hear Yeonjun’s doubt. “Because you know they’re not going to give up, right?”

“I’ll figure it out. Now, what about you, hyung? If you’re going to pester me about mating, it’s only fair I get to ask you,” Beomgyu replied evenly, and Yeonjun squawked.

There was no reason to dwell on it. It would be unnecessary stress, and he always figured things out in the end.

Always. Except maybe not this time.

Being unmated at Beomgyu’s age wasn’t rare, but it wasn’t so common that people didn’t ask him about it. The spectacle of him being rich and pretty and yet unmated intrigued people enough to gossip.

The logical answer was that he just hadn’t found the right person, yet most common answer people gave him was that they assumed Beomgyu had a shitty personality and was difficult to deal with.

Why was such a beautiful, successful omega not mated yet? It couldn’t possibly be because he didn’t want to be mated, could it? No way. That would be preposterous. Every omega—every person over the age of twenty-five should want to mate. What was life for if not to mate and have children?

Beomgyu scoffed every time he thought about it. It was so stupid. He was hopefully going to live for another sixty-or-more years. Why did he need to get mated now? He had other things to do. His bedside journal carried a whole list of goals he had over the next ten years, and many of them would be fucked up if he mated for the sake of mating.

And besides, he wasn’t lonely. He went through a bout of “I’m going to be single forever” depression when his two best friends started dating, but that was a temporary blip in his otherwise consistent record of not caring.

Yes, the idea of having someone to love and cherish, and love and cherish him in return, sounded so wonderful. Sharing with someone all the little things he couldn’t share with anyone else, like how he wrote shitty lyrics in the dead of night or that he still thought of his first partner sometimes. Going through his heats with someone beside him, rubbing his belly and kissing his closed lids as he drifted in and out of sleep. It certainly wouldn’t hurt.

But Beomgyu received love from his friends and family, and his passion for what he was studying gave him enough joy to tide him over until he met the one.

Either way, his longing certainly wasn’t bad enough that he wanted to find a partner solely for those reasons. He was content with how things were. And he assumed his parents understood that—his happiness outweighed their impatience.

Right? Wrong.

He wouldn’t be able to explain in words how strong his sense of betrayal was when his father texted him with a bunch of heart stickers, “You have your first match meeting on Saturday! Don’t make plans.”

He’d never seen his dad use a single emoji sticker ever. Apparently today was taking a lot of firsts from him.

His subsequent call to his parents was full of a lot of frantic talking, raising his phone, and even a few tears. He dumped all of his hopes and dreams for the future on them, explaining in point form how he would only be dragged down by a mate. He whipped out studies on how matchmaking was a farce and even online dating was more effective. He cried about how they were taking his chance for true love away from him.

All his mother said in response was, “I hear you, honey. But I know you’ll love the alpha we found for you. Trust us!”

How could he trust them when they’d gone behind his back like this? He flung his phone across his bed and hid his head in between his knees so he could cry more.

Now, the following day, he was stuck frantically trying to find some loophole out of this that wouldn’t end up with him irrevocably fucking up his relationship with his parents. He didn’t want to cut them off over something he found so silly, but he also couldn’t comprehend why they were taking this so seriously.

Did they really think some stupid matchmaker knew himself better than he knew himself? He didn’t care if he and this alpha had a one-hundred percent compatibility rating or whatever. All of the happy couples he knew met organically, not through matchmakers. Nobody their age believed in them.

Matchmakers aren’t prophetic or anything. They’re just people who supposedly are really good at reading profiles and discerning who they would be good with. Like online dating but more pretentious. Beomgyu fundamentally disagreed with the way they worked.

There was no person that could be summarized efficiently in a handful of bullet points. Especially not Beomgyu. Whatever the profile his parents had submitted said, it couldn’t be a proper reflection of him.

And then after they “accepted” the match as being accurate, they were supposed to mate? Just like that? They would barely know each other by then.

This practice was dying out for a reason. It was just a glorified version of arranged marriages, and since those were frowned upon, why wasn’t matchmaking?

Plus, Beomgyu had shit to do. He didn’t have time for this. It was pretty presumptuous of this guy and their parents to assume Beomgyu would just drop the rest of his life, however briefly, to date and mate.

Sometimes he felt like the universe was working specifically against him.

“He’s not bad looking, though,” Yeonjun observed, his chin hooked on Beomgyu’s shoulder. “The red hair is cute, but the black hair makes him look like a movie star. He’s totally your type, don’t even try and lie.”

They were loitering outside a bubble tea shop, waiting for Taehyun to return with their drinks. His mother just sent him the name of his supposed match—Choi Soobin—and naturally, he was stalking the guy’s Instagram.

“A lot of your friends follow him,” Beomgyu said, scrolling back up to Choi Soobin’s profile. They had a fair amount of mutual followings.

Not a surprise. He didn’t know Choi Soobin, but he knew of him. He was the youngest son of one of their very distant family friends. All of their families were connected somehow. It came from being in the manufacturing industry, which, until recently, had been extremely small and difficult to break into.

Plus, his parents would never approve a match with somebody who they didn’t know. He suspected that part of the reason why his parents were so insistent on him getting a mate was because of their rapidly slipping control over him.

“His company is owned by Samsung, right?”

He made it sound like Soobin’s family owned Samsung, which was very different from being the primary shareholders in a company owned by Samsung. And it wasn’t even Soobin’s company. Nowhere near that. As far as he could tell, by Soobin’s Instagram mainly being pictures of books and him and his friends, he had no interest in taking over.

To Beomgyu’s parents, it didn’t matter if Soobin was taking over the company or not. All that mattered was that they had some kind of in into the company’s workings. If Soobin’s parent’s company ever needed help, Beomgyu’s would be the first they’d turn to.

A single connection like their son being mated to Soobin could help foster real trade deals in the future. Soobin’s parents must’ve imagined the same thing when they saw who Beomgyu was.

Even love was business to some people. His parents had eventually fallen in love after being matched, but Beomgyu didn’t want to take the chance. He was too picky for that, and life was too short to waste time trying to fall for somebody.

“His parent’s company,” Beomgyu corrected. “But yes.”

As a person and potential partner, Choi Soobin seemed fine. Visually, Beomgyu had no complaints, at least judging by the literal hundreds of selfies the alpha had on his Instagram.

But he didn’t even know this guy. How could his parents expect Beomgyu to just be okay with mating someone he’d never even met before?

This entire thing was so ridiculous that he almost was embarrassed to talk about it. He didn’t need people thinking he approved of it, or worse, that it was his idea.

It was worse since Soobin was an alpha. Like if they were going to do something popular in the 1800s, couldn’t they have tried to be a little less predictable? Match him with a beta instead, or another omega? Then at least Beomgyu would have something to comfort himself with.

“Parents schmarents,” Yeonjun singsonged. “I think it could be a lot worse. Chin up!”

“Easy for you to fucking say,” Beomgyu spat. “Nobody is bugging you to mate with a stranger.”

Yeonjun shrugged. “I did warn you that it was coming,” he pointed out. “And that’s not true. You bug me about mating Taehyunnie all the time.”

“That’s not the same! You guys have been dating for years, it’s normal to ask a couple if they’re going to mate. It’s not normal to ask a single person if they are!” Beomgyu argued, flicking his phone into sleep mode.

He’d do more research on his own later, away from his annoying cousin. Yeonjun wasn’t as much help as Beomgyu thought he’d be. Both in a practical sense and an emotional one.

“Some people date for years plural and don’t mate,” Yeonjun said. He crossed his arms, leaning against the wall in front of Beomgyu. “And yet you still bother us about it.”

“Whatever,” Beomgyu said flippantly. He stood on his toes and tried to see over the crowd of people. “Speaking of your mate, why isn’t he back yet? I’m thirsty.”

“We’re not mates,” a familiar voice said. Beomgyu screeched when Taehyun tapped his shoulder. “What?”

“You scared me,” Beomgyu cried, a hand over his heart. He was only being dramatic for effect. Taehyun’s exasperated expression amused him too much not to.

“But I spoke up before I… nevermind,” Taehyun said, smiling and then schooling his expression into a frown. “Here, hyung.”

He passed Yeonjun his drink first. The favouritism was real.

“Thanks, baby,” Yeonjun cooed. Beomgyu pretended to gag. “Hey, you aren’t allowed to complain about us not being single when you’re trying to be single by choice.”

“I’m not disgusted because I’m jealous,” Beomgyu grumbled. “Did you get mine?”

“Of course,” Taehyun said. He fumbled with the remaining drinks to give Beomgyu his. Brown sugar, seventy-percent sugar, no ice. “Don’t worry about the cost. It’s on me.”

Beomgyu exchanged a sharp look with Yeonjun. He tried to convey with his mind buy him something later to make up for it, though Yeonjun was likely already thinking the same thing. Taehyun refused to accept payment for their drinks every time, so they had to get creative.

In some ways, Beomgyu thought Taehyun was trying to prove himself, in a “look, hyung, I don’t care about your money—in fact, I’ll treat you!” way. And Beomgyu would’ve understood that mindset if Taehyun and Yeonjun had just met each other, but they’d been friends since they were children. Yeonjun had never expressed any doubts about Taehyun’s intentions. And Taehyun was quite literally the opposite of whatever a gold digger was. A coal scraper?

The sentiment was sweet, however, even if it was misguided. And it gave Yeonjun an excuse to give Taehyun gifts, which Yeonjun—a regular retail therapy user—absolutely adored doing.

Beomgyu thought about his own future partner a lot when he saw them together. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted a relationship like theirs or not, maybe because he didn’t want one at all. All he wanted was that he would be as happy as they were with whoever he ends up with.

Which was why the match thing pissed him off so bad! Was he going to find the we can read each other’s thoughts through our eyes from across the room relationship that Taehyun and Yeonjun had from a fucking matchmaker?

Of course not.

Beomgyu had a handful of friends who were forced into matches by their parents, and all of them had high hopes for their partner, telling Beomgyu they would fall in love eventually. The number of his matched friends who ended up falling for their partners: one. Out of seven.

Not good odds. It wasn’t pessimistic to say he was walking into a doomed relationship, it was just logic. Taehyun taught him that line.

He sulked into his bubble tea. It wasn’t sugary enough.

“... actually met him once at Kai’s party,” Taehyun was saying. “I remember Beomgyu hyung was there.”

It took Beomgyu a moment to realise Taehyun was addressing him and not Yeonjun. “Huh?”

Yeonjun snorted. “I told you, he wasn’t listening.”

“Choi Soobin,” Taehyun explained. Beomgyu blinked at him, waiting for the elaboration. “He’s one of Kai’s close friends. Do you not remember Kai?”

“Kai…” Beomgyu tapped his finger against his chin. “Oh! Kai. Yeah. Omega, short, giggly, fluffy hair like a dog.”

“I don’t think he could be considered short anymore,” Taehyun laughed, some inside joke Beomgyu didn’t get. “Anyway, if you remember his 16th birthday party, Choi Soobin was there.”

Beomgyu’s face dropped into a scowl. “How would I remember that? Don’t be silly. That was like a decade ago.” He squinted at him. “Is this an elaborate way to point out that I’m getting old?”

“What? No!” Taehyun squawked. “I’m just saying, I think you guys have met before. That’s all. So he’s not a total stranger.”

“I don’t care,” Beomgyu said, fitting his lips back around his straw and slurping loudly. “He could be my actual partner and I still wouldn’t approve of the match. The whole process is stupid. You can’t force love.”

“Hey!” Yeonjun yelped. “Your best friend is standing right here.”

“You aren’t my best friend, you’re my cousin. I didn’t have a choice but to be friends with you.”

“It’s alright, hyung, I know I’m your real best friend,” Taehyun snickered. “Just ignore him.”

“Hey!” Yeonjun yelled again, louder. Now he was blushing. Taehyun grinned at him, eyes twinkling, and suddenly Beomgyu felt like gagging again. Why did they have to make every fun friendship moment into some unspoken romance? It was so gross.

After a few seconds of shooting heart eyes at Yeonjun, Taehyun seemed to remember Beomgyu was standing there in the middle of a crisis and coughed, “Anyway, I hope you can figure it out, hyung. Let us know if we can help.”

“I will.” Beomgyu swirled his straw around in his drink. “I will, thank you.”

Choi Soobin was, in summary, not what Beomgyu expected.

It was hard to describe him in any other way. Soobin had spoken a maximum of three words since they’d entered the room… thirty minutes ago. Beomgyu wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it was more than what he was getting right now.

Soobin somehow looked better than his pictures. An impressive feat, given that he looked really, really good in all of his Instagram selfies. He was significantly taller than Beomgyu, dimples, neatly trimmed hair, a waist Beomgyu would gladly put his hands on.

If he’d seen Soobin at a club, he might’ve danced with him. But he could not imagine Soobin going to a club. Or going anywhere at all. He, somehow, looked even less like he wanted to be there than Beomgyu—and unlike Beomgyu, he wasn’t hiding it.

Their eyes had met briefly on the way in, and Soobin's were gentle, more downtrodden than fierce. Like a kicked puppy. They were gone in a flash, back to staring at the floor, but Beomgyu was so startled he’d missed his introduction cue, too busy comprehending that Soobin didn’t want this either. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? It felt like it should be a good thing, but he doubted even their combined begging for their parents to call this off would do anything.

Beomgyu was still trying to determine how he could get out of this without irrevocably fucking up his reputation and relationship with his parents. He couldn’t very well simply reject Soobin to his face. Both his and Soobin’s parents would kill him.

They were sitting on the terrace of one of the many cafes Soobin’s family apparently owned, with a too-small glass table separating Beomgyu’s family and Soobin’s. Beomgyu tried to sniff out Soobin’s scent through the smell of the tea in front of them and the flowers hanging over them, but he couldn’t make even a little bit of it out. His scent suppressants were strong.

“So, Beomgyu-ssi,” Soobin’s mother, an alpha, said, shaking him from his thoughts. She looked quite literally one thousand times more enthused than Soobin did to be sitting across from Beomgyu. “Your parents informed us that you were looking to stay in Seoul after graduate school.”

“Well, I actually—” Beomgyu started.

“Yes, our main office is situated in Gangnam,” Beomgyu’s mother gushed, interrupting him before he could finish. “Beomgyu aspires to be a marketing and brand coordinator.”

“Oh!” Soobin’s mother clapped her hands. “That’s an excellent choice. Such an in-demand area of expertise—marketing is so important nowadays. Our industry needs more creativity than ever.”

Beomgyu gave her a thin smile and hummed, “Mhm.” If he tried to speak, he was going to say something he regretted.

Soobin shifted in obvious discomfort beside his mother, a stone cold presence in an already-chilly room. He barely blinked as they conversed. He didn’t seem to be listening at all. Beomgyu couldn’t blame him.

How fucking long were they going to be here for? Beomgyu usually enjoyed small talk, but this was unbearable. Neither of them wanted to be here; it was their parents doing all the talking.

“Well…” Beomgyu’s father coughed. He wasn’t half as outgoing as Beomgyu’s mother was. Beomgyu could feel the discomfort radiating off him from the other side of the couch. “Shall we leave you and Soobin-ssi alone for a while?”

“What?” Soobin suddenly straightened his back, looking horrified at the prospect of being alone with Beomgyu, voice suddenly rising in pitch. Beomgyu resisted rolling his eyes. So overdramatic. “Why? What are we supposed to—”

“Just to talk, Soobin,” Soobin’s mother said primly, lifting her chin. “I can tell you’re both uncomfortable speaking in front of us, and I understand. You two don’t want to talk about romance in front of your parents. We’ll leave for twenty minutes, take the time to get to know each other properly.”

Twenty whole minutes? Twenty? That might as well be an eternity when the air between them was so uncomfortable. Time passed slower in awkward situations. Everybody knew that.

Beomgyu glanced at his own parents. They were both nodding along to Soobin’s mother’s words. Fuck, this was so stupid. How would twenty minutes alone suddenly make them fall in love?

The sooner they did it, the sooner their parents could see it wasn’t working and call things off. He would have to suck it up for the greater good.

“That’s fine with me,” Beomgyu said, slathering on all the politeness he’d learned from manner lessons as a kid. “Thank you for the opportunity.”

“... Thanks,” Soobin said, anything but grateful. Beomgyu withheld a snort.

Their parents left, chatting amongst themselves. Beomgyu heard his own name, Soobin’s, and Soobin’s father going sorry, he takes after me, he’s quite shy…

Beomgyu wasn’t so sure that shyness was Soobin’s issue.

He and Soobin sat across from each other in total silence. It had to be at least fifteen minutes of their allotted twenty. Eventually, Soobin’s leg began to shake from nerves, jostling the table’s wooden legs.

Beomgyu reached over and placed a hand on his knee to stop him, opening his mouth to tell Soobin to stop. Soobin flinched away like he’d been burned by the touch, before Beomgyu could get a single word out.

“Um,” Beomgyu said, recoiling also, flushing. “Sorry.” He shouldn’t have touched Soobin without permission. That was weird. He was too used to slapping Yeonjun’s leg to get him to stop fidgeting. “It was a reflex.”

“No, I—” Soobin tugged at his collar. “I’m sorry. I’m a little out of it right now.”

Beomgyu snorted. “You and me both,” he muttered, dropping his arms onto his own knees.

“I’m not really looking for a… you know, right now,” Soobin said, pointing at Beomgyu. So eloquent. It was hard to believe he majored in literature. Beomgyu couldn’t tell if he was referring to Beomgyu being his mate, or Beomgyu being an omega. “This was my parent’s idea.”

“And you think my side wasn’t?” Beomgyu ran his fingers through his hair, careful not to dislodge the scent suppressant clinging to his nape. “I don’t want this either, trust me.”

Soobin appeared surprised at that, his head lifting. “You don’t?”

Beomgyu raised a brow at him. “Do I seem like I do?” He gave one-sentence answers to all of Soobin’s parent’s questions. “I’m going to school. I have a job. I don’t have time for this and I don’t—I don’t want my parents to pick out my partner. That’s just weird. Why would I want this? I don’t even—”

“Okay, okay, I get it. But you were chatting with them, so…”

“Yeah, because it’s polite,” Beomgyu said snappishly. “Sitting there and sulking isn’t polite.”

“Why do I need to be polite? We aren’t going through with this.”

“Oh, we aren’t?” Beomgyu crossed his arms. “How are you going to get out of it? Politely ask your parents to call it off? I’ve been trying to convince mine all week to give up on this bullshit, and I’ve gotten nowhere.”

“I—well…” Soobin’s lip curled into a half-pout. “I haven’t thought that far yet. But I will.”

So they were both on the same page. Unfortunately, Soobin didn’t look like the go-getter type—Beomgyu had a feeling he was going to be doing most of the work here in getting them free of this. But it made things much easier that Soobin was with him and not against him.

“Look, if we work together—”

“We should just tell them together that we don’t want this,” Soobin said, not listening to Beomgyu at all. Beomgyu could’ve throttled him. “If neither of us want it…”

“And you think that’ll work?” Beomgyu laughed hysterically. Talk about naive. “It definitely won’t work on my parents.”

Soobin’s face fell even more, and he groaned. “Then what do we—”

“We don’t have enough time to discuss this right now,” Beomgyu interrupted. Their parents had to be coming back any moment now. They’d wasted a lot of time sitting in silence. “DM me on Instagram after this. We can meet later tonight in private and talk further.”

“I have work after this,” Soobin said.

“You have work all night? All night?”

“No, but why can’t I DM you tomorrow? Tonight is the only night I have off this week, and I told my friends I’d play Overwatch with them, and—”

“Is Overwatch more important than making sure you don’t mate a random omega?” Beomgyu grumbled.

He wasn’t really judging—that would be hypocritical of him, when he had so many hours in Valorant—but Soobin didn’t need to know that.

Soobin raked his fingers down his face, stopping on his cheeks. He looked like he’d aged a ten years in the span of a few seconds, the lines on his face growing more harsh than handsome. His stress was palpable. “But I never get to—”

“Soobin-ah! Beomgyu-ssi! Are you two decent? We’re coming back in!” Soobin’s mother yelled. “You have one minute!”

“Fuck,” Beomgyu swore. “You can skip hanging out with your friends for one night, Soobin-ssi. Please. We have to deal with this as soon as possible.” He wasn’t going to survive three weeks of these meetings. Two weeks, maybe. Maximum. He was not letting this drag on for nearly a month. And think about how many more nights with friends they were both going to have to cancel if they didn’t get this dealt with?

Soobin gave a long-suffering sigh, looking between the wide golden doors blocking their parents, and Beomgyu. “Fine. I will. As soon as possible.”

“I look forward to working with you,” Beomgyu said, and took a long sip of his cold tea as their parents rushed back in, eager to hear what they’d learned about each other.

Six hours later, Beomgyu was inviting an alpha into his apartment for the first time in over a year. It only occurred to him once he opened the door that he should’ve double-checked to make sure Soobin was still wearing the scent suppressant.

He subtly sniffed the air as Soobin walked in, and didn’t catch anything other than the outside air. Soobin had some common sense, if he was smart enough not to enter an unmated omega’s apartment without masking his scent. Beomgyu could work with that.

“Your place is…” Soobin trailed off for a moment, thinking. His eyes darted towards Beomgyu’s couch, then the polaroids strung over his hallway mirror. “Cute.” He pulled off his jacket and was about to take a step inside when Beomgyu blocked him, arms outstretched.

Beomgyu scoffed. “Let me guess, you have a ten bedroom apartment in Gangnam? Also, take off your shoes before you walk inside.”

“Dude, I was literally just about to take them off,” Soobin said. “But you’re blocking the shoe rack.”

He was so taken aback by Soobin’s word usage that he could only blink in return. “Dude?”

Beomgyu could not handle being called dude by his potential future mate, temporary or not. It made him feel icky. Who called their potential mate ‘dude’? Whatever pinnacle of romance Beomgyu was chasing after, this was the exact opposite of it.

“And so what if I live in Gangnam?” Soobin said, and then tacked on belatedly, “... Beomgyu-ssi.”

“Just call me Beomgyu,” he muttered. Soobin was barely a few months older than him, but Beomgyu didn’t have the time or energy to argue over the semantics of Korean age. It was easier just to let Soobin talk to him informally. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Ah, I’m pretty bad at holding my alcohol,” Soobin admitted.

A vein in Beomgyu’s temple throbbed. “I meant water.” He wasn’t inviting Soobin to consume alcohol in his apartment. God. Was Soobin this oblivious all the time, or was he frazzled from their situation?

“Oh.” Soobin turned to him, jacket and shoes off. “Uh, sure, thank y—”

Beomgyu scurried off to the kitchen, already prepared to rip his own hair out of frustration.

He resisted. Barely. It wasn’t Soobin’s fault he was in a bad mood, and Soobin was in just as much shit right now as he was. He didn’t deserve Beomgyu’s annoyance, no matter how dry he was in conversation.

… Well, actually. It was Soobin’s fault, but not directly. He’d spoken to his parents after their quaint little first meeting earlier in the day, and his parents had completely brushed off all of his subtle probes as to whether or not they still thought Soobin was a good match for him.

It was clear by the end of their mostly one-sided conversation that it truly did not matter to them that they were signing Beomgyu away to a loveless relationship. Soobin’s family was rich and successful. His parents wanted this match as bad as Beomgyu’s did. Those two things alone comprised all the necessary criteria.

But Beomgyu was not a quitter. He would find a way out of this that ended without their parents hating them. There had to be some way to convince them to call it off.

His hands were shaking as he poured two glasses of water. Soobin stood awkwardly by the couch, hands clasped in front of him, waiting for Beomgyu.

“What?” Beomgyu blinked at him. “Please sit down. We’re not talking while standing.”

“Um…” Soobin’s arms curled around his middle. He didn’t move. “I think I’m good, actually. Can I just have the water?”

Beomgyu glanced at his couch. It was a nice couch. He’d only had it for a few years now; it wasn’t fraying at the edges or anything. Beomgyu was a neat person. He hated mess; he cleaned up after himself. Nothing was wrong with his couch.

“... What’s wrong with my couch?”

“It’s not the couch,” Soobin mumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “The scent in your apartment is really… really strong. I don’t want to go near anything.”

Shit. It’d completely slipped Beomgyu’s mind that he should open the windows and air his scent out. He was wearing scent suppressants as well, of course, but he’d forgotten about his scenting clinging to every surface in the apartment.

The only alphas he ever had over were Yeonjun and Taehyun, one of whom was his family and the other who was long desensitized to his scent.

“I’ll open a few windows, that’ll help.” He shoved both glasses into Soobin’s arms then raced around his tiny apartment, opening all the windows not blocked by stacks of boxes. Within two minutes, the room was already beginning to smell more like the outside, crisp and sharp to the nose. “Is that better? Now you can sit down.”

“I don’t… nevermind,” Soobin said, fighting an internal battle on if he should die on this hill. Beomgyu understood that it was likely uncomfortable for him, but he couldn’t just remove his scent entirely from his apartment. It was his apartment.

“Are you not on suppressant pills or something?” Beomgyu questioned, reaching for his glass of water and taking one small sip. His throat was dry from standing near the windows. He’d never seen an alpha so bothered by an omega’s scent before, unless they weren’t on hormone regulators.

“No, I am,” Soobin said. He cradled his own glass close, not taking a sip. “I’m just… sensitive to scents. It’s always been like that for me. I try to avoid being in closed spaces with omegas.”

“Well…” Beomgyu didn’t know what to say to that. Sorry? Okay? That was an interesting fact? All of those sounded insensitive. “We can make this quick. Thank you for coming by. The faster we get this sorted, the faster we can stop worrying.”

“No problem. Like I said, I can only stay for like twenty minutes, though. The last bus here leaves in half an hour,” Soobin responded. He was as stiff as a board, but he flashed Beomgyu what appeared to be a genuine smile, dimples and all. Beomgyu only needed five minutes with him, so he did his best to smile back in what he hoped came off as reassurance. “I wasn’t able to speak to them—my parents—much after we met, but they didn’t seem to care about the fact I’m not into you at all.”

Soobin could’ve phrased that better. But it was better than lying, Beomgyu supposed. He didn’t even know what Soobin’s sexuality was. For all Beomgyu knew, his scent might repulse Soobin because he’s not into any omegas at all.

He sighed. “They don’t care if we’re indifferent. They don’t care about our feelings at all.”

“Yeah…” Soobin pressed the back of his head to Beomgyu’s couch, shutting his eyes. If they had time, Beomgyu would give him a massage. The alpha was so tense it was making Beomgyu tense by association. “I don’t know what to do. I wish I could just tell them to fuck off.”

Beomgyu laughed loudly. “I doubt that would go well.”

“It definitely would not go well,” Soobin confirmed. “But what else can we do? Their values are so… so different from our generation.”

Beomgyu chewed on the inside of his cheek. The two key components here were reputation and money, in that order. Money came second. They already had enough of it. Reputation was how they kept the money flowing in.

Their precarious images were the biggest block—Beomgyu didn’t trust Soobin’s parents, who were technically their competitors, not to throw him under the bus if he did something as horrible as break their son’s heart. Or vice-versa, honestly; Beomgyu’s parents would do the same to Soobin, for ruining their perfect match.

“What we have to do is make sure it affects them,” Beomgyu said slowly. “Without making us look rude.”

It sounded obvious when he said it out loud, but it was a difficult thing to pull off in practice. They had to make themselves just inconvenient enough to call off the match, without doing anything that would irrevocably harm their reputations.

There was a picture brewing in his mind already: Beomgyu meeting Soobin’s parents alone, being so over-the-top they’d wordlessly call off the match. Or Soobin meeting Beomgyu’s parents, not saying a single word in response to their attempts at conversation, being even sulkier than he was earlier.

Little things that would make their parents slowly resent each other, but nothing major enough that they could actually complain about it. Irritation could be a powerful tool. Beomgyu would know. He used it all the time against Yeonjun.

“Like how?” Soobin’s brows knit together.

He didn’t immediately shut down Beomgyu’s vague idea. That was a good sign.

“We just need to be so… ridiculously incompatible with them that they can’t stand to be around us,” Beomgyu said, rubbing his chin. “Nothing that’ll make us seem like terrible people. Just enough to make them go, ‘wow, can we really spend the next fifty years with this guy as our son-in-law?’”

“... So you’re saying we need to annoy them until they snap?”

“If you want to look at it that way. It just has to be subtle,” Beomgyu said, gesturing with his hands. “We don’t want to make them angry. It’s a delicate process. Do you understand?”

“I guess,” Soobin said, shrugging, not adding anything more.

Beomgyu originally chalked up Soobin’s standoffishness due to irritation at his parents, but it seemed like Soobin was simply a man of few words. That, or he was intimidated by Beomgyu. Or he hated him. Beomgyu wouldn’t blame him. They were the cause of each other’s problems, indirectly.

But they were also a team until they got out of this situation. Surely Soobin could give him a little more enthusiasm. Soobin didn’t have any better ideas, so their entire futures rested on this half-assed plan.

“It’s a yes or no question,” he said, voice purposely even. Calm, Beomgyu. Stay focused.

“It was a yes, I understand,” Soobin said, sounding a little sheepish. “I can’t think of anything else. I’ll try to… I don’t know, brainstorm ideas? And let you know?”

Beomgyu clapped his hands together. “Great!” he said, in the tone of voice people used when they were forcing themselves to be chipper. Beomgyu was great at that. “We have another dinner this Saturday. We should meet in private again before then.”

Before their relationship became ‘official’, they would have four dates, alternating between being chaperoned by Beomgyu’s parents and Soobin’s. It used to end there, and they’d go home after every meal, giving their opinion after the fourth. Somewhere in the past few decades, matchmakers realised that chaperoned dates weren’t enough to get a feeling for someone’s true personality, and now it was expected that they’d go home together as well.

Not for anything dirty. That would be scandalous. Just to talk more, maybe drink and watch some TV.

What Beomgyu found funny is that they were expected to be completely civil with each other when left alone, and not meet up outside of their scheduled meeting times. Their parents had too much faith in them. Beomgyu wasn’t that much of a stickler for rules.

“Why?” Soobin looked horrified that Beomgyu would want to spend time alone with him.

“So we can talk,” Beomgyu huffed. “If we’re going to be incompatible, we need to get to know each other. I can tell you about the very long list of things my parents hate. If we just be ourselves—I don’t think that’ll be enough. The matchmaker put us together for a reason.”

“We can’t meet in public. If they somehow find out—”

Beomgyu shook his head. He wasn’t that dumb. Matched pairs weren’t technically allowed to meet on their own terms until the match was solidified, according to the code of conduct most matches followed.

“We can just meet here. I’ll order us take-out or something.”

“I—” Soobin licked his lips, then did it again, his nerves radiating from every pore. Beomgyu almost laughed—an alpha like Soobin being afraid of Beomgyu? Give him a break. “Can we just call instead? We don’t need to see each other, do we?”

Beomgyu’s ego was taking a lot of blows today, and he didn’t understand why Soobin seemed so afraid of him, but it made no difference to him if they spoke in-person or over the phone. “Fine. Just make sure you’re somewhere private. When are you free for the whole evening?”

Soobin took out his phone. Beomgyu stretched slightly to view his screen and saw him swiping through a very colourful, fully booked calendar.

“Tomorrow night at nine?”

“Deal,” Beomgyu said.

Beomgyu spent the next day texting back and forth with Yeonjun and Taehyun, regaling them about how boring and mediocre his first meeting with Soobin went. Then he told them, over the phone, how their second meeting went—the one at Beomgyu’s apartment. He was too afraid to message them through KakaoTalk. What if somebody hacked his account and leaked to his parents?

Extraordinarily unlikely that anybody had a vested interest in hacking Beomgyu’s Kakao account so they could expose him to his parents, but the chance wasn’t zero, and that was too high for his comfort.

“You let him into your apartment?” Yeonjun gasped.

Beomgyu rolled his eyes even though Yeonjun couldn’t see him. Hopefully Yeonjun felt it. It was all about the vibes. “Yes, I let him into my apartment. We’re both adults. Fuck, we’re almost thirty. He can handle being in a closed space with an unmated omega.”

“Hyung…” Taehyun warned. They were together in Taehyun’s apartment when Beomgyu called, probably doing something gross and gay. Like kissing. Or worse—watching TV together. Beomgyu hated to interrupt them for a multitude of reasons, but his need to spill his thoughts was vital to his mental stability.

“You come into my apartment all the time!” Beomgyu defended himself.

“I’m also not attracted to you,” Taehyun said.

If he had a bill for every time he’d heard that this week, he would have two bills. That was two more than he thought he would ever have.

“And he isn’t either,” Beomgyu grumbled. “That’s not the important part of my story, guys!”

“... Whatever you say,” Taehyun chuckled. Beomgyu glared at him through his microphone, hoping his bad vibes came through the phone. “It could work?”

“Why wouldn’t it work?” Beomgyu asked. He had faith in himself, but if Taehyun saw some glaring issue he missed, he had to find out sooner rather than later.

“I dunno.” Beomgyu could hear Taehyun shrug by the sound of his shoulder hitting his phone’s microphone. “It just seems a bit… abstract? To me. You want to annoy them but not enough to make them hate you?”

“Yes,” Beomgyu grumbled. “What’s so hard to understand about that?”

“Do you have any examples of what you’re going to do?”

“He’s very talented at being annoying, I’m sure he’ll have no problems with—ouch!” Yeonjun began drawling, then let out a noise of pain as Taehyun elbowed him to shut up.

“Shut up, hyung,” Taehyun said. “Not now.”

“Owwww,” Yeonjun continued to whine.

Beomgyu rubbed his face with his hand, opting to ignore their flirting. Or whatever it was they were doing on his phone call about him. “I don’t have any examples. I need to speak to Soobin first, and then…”

“Soobin?” Yeonjun faked another gasp.

“Soobin-ssi,” Beomgyu corrected, cheeks burning. “Whatever. You know who I’m talking about!”

He could hear the smirk that was on Yeonjun’s face as he giggled, “I didn’t realise you two had gotten close so quickly—”

Yeonjun’s voice was abruptly interrupted by a loud ring, and the name Choi Soobin popped up on Beomgyu’s screen. His brain came to a screeching halt, wondering why the fuck Soobin was calling him, before he saw the time: 9:04. Shit. He’d lost track of time texting.

He switched back to his original call and said, “He’s calling, I have to go, I’ll talk to you guys later.”

Taehyun began to laugh alongside Yeonjun, “They’ve known each other for three days and he’s already starting to ditch us for him—”

Beep.

Beomgyu did not need to hear their nonsense.

“Sorry,” he said, picking up Soobin’s call. “Are you still there? Soobin-ssi?”

“You can just call me hyung,” Soobin told him.

“Soobin hyung,” Beomgyu amended, pursing his lips. It felt weird on his tongue. “Can I video call you and put you on speaker instead? I need my hands free for my laptop.”

“Uh, sure,” Soobin said. A click, and then Beomgyu’s phone lit up. He placed it in the phone holder connected to his laptop, then went to open Naver.

“What are you... oh my god,” he cut himself off halfway, catching a glance of Soobin’s face out of the corner of his eye. “You look terrible. What the fuck?”

Soobin rubbed his eyes with his fists. Clunky black frames sat on the bridge of his nose, and they might’ve been attractive if it wasn’t for how they accentuated the heavy bags under his eyes, showing how little sleep he’d gotten. His hair was a bird’s nest. Unlike yesterday, there were no traces of makeup on his face to cover up his exhaustion. Even just through the screen, Beomgyu could tell Soobin was half a second away from falling asleep.

Or passing out. Whichever came first.

“I’m fine, just had a long day at work,” Soobin mumbled.

“A long day?” Beomgyu echoed. He shifted closer to his phone, squinting like it would give him a less pixelated image of Soobin’s poor face. His exhaustion didn’t take away from his boyish handsomeness, but it did nag at the part of Beomgyu’s heart that hated to see other people hurt.

“I had to work overtime. Which isn’t unusual these days, but—anyway, sorry, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, so I’m more tired than usual today.”

“Don’t apologise,” Beomgyu snapped without thinking. He hated when people apologised for things that weren’t their fault. It was a bad mindset to get into, and Soobin shouldn’t be afraid of him. “You just got home? Did you even eat?”

“Uh…”

Soobin didn’t have to say anything for Beomgyu to know his answer. Ugh. How were they supposed to get anything done when Soobin was exhausted and on the brink of starvation?

“Go eat and then we can talk,” Beomgyu said, making a shooing gesture. “I’ll do some research on my own.”

He had a list of things to look up—mostly about Soobin’s parents and family history. That, along with Soobin’s words, should give him enough to go off. And he would do the same for Soobin and his own family.

“I don’t have anything good here,” Soobin replied.

Beomgyu found that extremely hard to believe. Soobin was rich. He’d never met a rich person with an empty fridge. Even Yeonjun stocked expensive cup ramen in “You don’t have anything good. At all.”

“Nope.”

Beomgyu drummed his fingers against his thigh. How did this guy not have food in his fridge? “Do you order takeout normally?”

“No, I just eat at the company cafeteria,” Soobin explained. He picked up his phone and carried it along with him to the kitchen, a journey that took much longer than it would have in Beomgyu’s apartment. It was difficult to see anything with how Soobin faced the camera upwards, but it was safe to say his apartment was big.

“Alright, well…” Beomgyu felt slightly motion sick as Soobin flipped the camera around, showing off his fridge. It’s as empty as Soobin said it was. “Just order something.”

“Too lazy,” Soobin said, shutting the fridge door.

It was like dealing with a child. Beomgyu had that mindset when he was twenty-three and in university, not twenty-seven with a full-time job like Soobin was.

Beomgyu turned to his laptop again and typed in Choi Soobin home address. He wasn’t surprised when a sleek apartment complex showed up as the first result. Thinking about why and how Soobin’s living information ended up online was alarming, but this probably wasn’t the time to pester Soobin about his lack of privacy.

When Beomgyu looked at his phone again, he saw that Soobin was currently comparing the nutritional value of two types of Spam. Beomgyu liked Spam as much as the next person, but not enough to have a single can of it for dinner.

“Is your apartment in Banpo-dong?” Beomgyu asked.

Soobin dropped both of the cans onto the stainless marble countertop.

“What?” he choked, raising his phone extremely close to his face and giving Beomgyu a great view of his pinched brows. “How do you know that?”

“Not important,” Beomgyu said. So that was a yes, then. He copied the address and then opened Shuttle. Delivery closed in an hour. Soobin lived in Gangnam, so that shouldn’t be an issue. “Do you eat chicken?”

“Yah, are you trying to order me food—”

“You clearly aren’t doing it yourself,” Beomgyu taunted. Truthfully, he thought Soobin would cave by now, but he just continued to glare at his phone. Fine—Beomgyu was fine with spending twenty thousand won in exchange for Soobin’s attention.

He picked out the simple twelve-piece chicken box with normal soy-sauce flavouring. They couldn’t go wrong with the basics; Beomgyu was a picky eater and even he could eat this. Then he threw in a Pepsi and a side order of potato wedges. Done.

His card autofilled in the browser, and he ignored Soobin’s whines of “stop” and “I’m not even that hungry”.

“You’re an alpha,” Beomgyu drawled. He snapped a picture of the receipt and sent it to Soobin through text. “Of course you are.”

Slotting his phone back into the holder, he returned to his original tab. Soobin’s apartment was in a very nice area, and the developer’s site hosted plenty of images on what the model interior of the suites looked like.

Soobin’s parents would be horrified if they saw Beomgyu’s run-down apartment, filled to the brim with memorabilia and lacking any of the sleek furniture Soobin’s had. That was perfect for his plan. It was very possible Soobin’s parents wouldn’t want him to be paired off with someone as whimsical as Beomgyu, using Beomgyu’s own mother’s words—but it wasn’t anything bad enough that they could attack him for it. Just a simple incompatibility between him and Soobin’s family.

He pocketed this information in his brain for later, and kept scrolling.

He didn’t notice how much time had passed or how quiet Soobin was until he said, “Why does that matter?”

“Hm?” Beomgyu hummed absently, leaning closer to his laptop screen to get a better look at the pictures. The hardwood flooring was beautiful. Beomgyu rarely got envious of people’s apartments, but he could appreciate the aesthetic of them.

“What does me being an alpha have to do with me eating?”

The question caught Beomgyu so off guard, for a moment he didn’t understand what Soobin was asking.

“I—nothing, I guess?” Beomgyu paused, then tacked on, “Sorry.”

“Are you… do you believe in that kind of stuff?”

“What?” Beomgyu asked, dumbfounded. “I feel like I missed something here. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

Soobin had gone back into his room at some point, and he shifted around until he was on his back, holding the phone over his face so he could see his screen. Somehow, the unflattering angle didn’t do much to him. Pretty privilege was real.

“Those like… stereotypes.” Soobin’s eyes flickered away from the screen when Beomgyu glanced at him. “Alphas are loud and eat a lot and are aggressive, and omegas are quiet and small and shy…”

“It was more of a joke than anything, hyung,” Beomgyu said softly, though his voice wavered. Soobin seemed legitimately bothered by his comment, and Beomgyu was afraid of provoking him.

Soobin continued on, picking up the pace when Beomgyu spoke like he was trying to say the rest of his piece before Beomgyu could. “Because if you are, that’s fine, I can’t—I can’t control what you think or anything, but my parents are pretty similar so you might want to tone it down a bit, if you’re trying to not get along with them—”

Beomgyu rubbed his temples. For someone so quiet, Soobin could ramble. Or maybe the quietness was the act and the rambling was the real Soobin.

“Soobin,” he said firmly, “I just made a shitty joke. Of course I don’t think those things. It’s okay.”

Soobin sucked in a deep breath that Beomgyu heard through the phone.

“Okay,” he said.

“I’m tall as well, and do I seem like I’m quiet?” Beomgyu scoffed. “I’m surprised your parents even approved of me if they’re that conservative.”

There were lots of traits he had which screamed stereotypical omega, and even more that didn’t. Like most people, he was slightly more multifaceted than pretty and polite. His parents would have said as much before they were matched.

“... You’re shorter than me,” Soobin said, propping himself back up. “And you don’t seem quiet, but you don’t seem that loud either.”

“And that’s their criteria?”

“It’s more like… I don’t think anything about you is so egregious that they wouldn’t accept a deal that benefits them.”

Beomgyu whistled. “Nice vocabulary there.”

“I’m being serious—”

“I know you are, hyung. I’m sure once I get to know them better, they’ll find lots to nitpick,” Beomgyu said, smiling. “I’ll try not to offend them too much.”

Soobin opened his mouth to say something, but then there was a loud buzz from somewhere else in his apartment and he dropped his phone in surprise. “Shit, uh—”

“Food is there,” Beomgyu chirped.

“I’ll be there in a second!” Soobin yelled, so loud it came through as static over the phone. Beomgyu laughed to himself.

He was getting a better picture of what Soobin’s parents were like in his mind, but knowing what they liked and disliked was only one part of the problem. The bigger part was acting on it.

There were a few things he could think of off the top of his head that Soobin’s parents wouldn’t have much love for, and some white lies they would. After all, they’d already established they couldn’t be outright assholes or rude, so he had to butter them up a little. Enough that they’d feel bad when they broke off the match and not vindictive.

Soobin swiped his phone off the bed and carried it to his dining room. Beomgyu couldn’t see what the phone was leaning against, but he got a great view of Soobin tearing into his chicken.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“I wash gonna thay thank you in a shecond,” Soobin said, with a mouth full of food. He looked silly with his cheeks bulging out like a chipmunk’s and his tired eyes suddenly bright with the joy of eating. Not hungry Beomgyu’s ass.

“Sure you were,” Beomgyu sang. He believed Soobin, he just liked teasing him too. “Now, tell me more about your family while you eat. I’m taking notes.”

Soobin must’ve been too hungry to bicker with him. He diligently answered all of Beomgyu’s questions, pausing every so often to rip into his food. He was a messy eater, hands and mouth covered in sauce, but it brought Beomgyu joy to see him finish the food. It hadn’t been a waste of money, and more importantly, Soobin wouldn’t starve tonight.

By the time Soobin began washing the dishes and his hands, Beomgyu had three full pages of notes. He opted to type them up despite his preference for handwriting, so he could access them easily from his phone. So far so good.

Soobin was much easier to deal with now that he’d eaten. This time, when he sat down, it was on his couch. Beomgyu spotted a few picture frames over his shoulder and a massive red-and-blue abstract painting. He couldn’t make out any of the faces in the photos.

“What about you?” Soobin asked, once he’d settled under a blanket.

“What about me?”

“What is your family like?”

That was a broad question. Beomgyu had already thought of a few ways to answer, but after hearing about Soobin’s difficult relationship with his parents, saying that his parents had always been great up until now seemed insensitive.

“They’re… nice,” he settled on. “They’re pretty old-fashioned as well, but not as extreme as yours. They paid for me to go to art school, so long as I still worked for our company.”

“That’s cool,” Soobin commented. His voice told Beomgyu that he wasn’t impressed.

Beomgyu laughed, “That was a big deal for me, okay? I thought they were going to force me to go to business school. I was so afraid.”

“So now you’re going to work in branding or something? You’re in graduate school for art, right?”

Soobin had been listening during their initial meeting more than he thought.

“Only part-time,” Beomgyu nodded. “My parents listed it as a company expense.”

“That sounds fun, I guess. Branding. Art is cool,” Soobin said. He sounded like every mediocre date Beomgyu had ever been on.

“It’s alright. I’ll graduate soon, and then I can leave,” he said, tapping his fingers against his laptop screen. ‘Soon’ couldn’t come fast enough. He literally had a widget on his phone that counted the minimum days remaining, though he’d memorised the date in his mind too.

“Leave?” Soobin’s eyebrows raised. “Leave what, your company?”

“I don’t care about the company,” Beomgyu huffed. “I mean, I care in the capacity that my family cares, but I don’t personally have any interest in it.”

“Then why do you care so much about your image?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Beomgyu shot back. “Fucking up here would follow me forever. Even if I moved industries, or cities, or countries—if a rumour spread online about me being a bitch, all it would take is one search of my name to find it. And what would future employers think if they saw that? A bunch of online rumours saying that I was so horrible your family would rather lose all connections with mine than put up with me?”

He took a deep breath. There was too much pent up anger in him. He rubbed his face. Now wasn’t the time to get worked up.

“... I get that,” Soobin said, softly, like he didn’t want to break Beomgyu’s train of thought. He was done ranting, though. If he kept going, he would spend all night stewing in anger, and that wasn’t what he wanted. He had to focus. “I never thought about it like that.”

“You should,” Beomgyu said, clicking his tongue. “You have a big social media presence.”

Even though Soobin’s room was dim, Beomgyu could see the way his cheeks dusted red. That was what he was embarrassed by? How cute.

“You looked me up?”

“I think I’d be an idiot not to look up my supposed future mate,” Beomgyu snorted. “I’m sure you tried to look me up as well.”

“I did, but I couldn’t find anything,” Soobin admitted, scratching the back of his head.

“Mm. I quit social media a while back. You should try it sometime, it’s very healing,” Beomgyu said, flashing a smile at his phone. “Anyway, that’s why it’s so important we do this carefully.”

“I’ll think on it,” Soobin said. He was not going to think on it all. “Tell me more about your family. If they’re so nice and accommodating, that’ll make it harder for me to bother them without it being ‘too much’.”

“Okay, so my mom is an omega. She’s pretty much the opposite of me…”

“You look good.”

Beomgyu was fiddling with his tie in his car mirror, doing last-minute checks on his hair and makeup, when there was a knock on his window. He screamed, throwing his hands out like he was about to stop an assailant, then slowly lowered them to see Soobin staring at him weirdly.

“Holy shit,” he muttered, rolling down the window. Soobin was too tall to see through Beomgyu’s low car windows when he stood up straight, so Beomgyu ended up speaking to his broad chest instead, stretched beneath a prim white button-up. “You scared me.”

“Sorry,” Soobin laughed. Beomgyu peered around him. There was no sight of his parents. “Don’t worry, they’re already inside. I just told them I had to stay out here and make a phone call.”

“You recognised my car?” Beomgyu asked, surprised.

“No.” Soobin patted the outside of it. “It’s the only car here like it, though, and I guessed that you wouldn’t have a fancy Mercedes.”

Beomgyu’s car was a red Toyota MR2, with once-bright red paint that had faded into a desaturated brownish red. He’d inherited it from his dad and gotten it refurbished years ago, but he kept some of the imperfections. What was the point of having a vintage car if it didn’t look vintage?

“Why would you think that?”

“Your apartment?” Soobin said, phrasing it more as an answer than a question. “I got the impression you don’t like flashy things.”

Beomgyu rolled his eyes and went back to fixing his hair. He could use a little more hairspray, and a touch up of concealer under his eyes. He hadn’t pegged Soobin as being that observant, but he supposed that quiet people tended to be the ones you needed to look out for. The slippery ones who saw everything and said little.

“It’s not that I don’t like flashy or modern things or whatever,” he said, “I just don’t see what’s wrong about appreciating the past too.”

Soobin laughed at him, “I didn’t say there was anything wrong. Anyway, I’ll head inside. You have like ten minutes before my parents start getting annoyed. And not the kind of annoyed you’re looking for.”

“I’ll be five minutes, max.”

“See you inside,” Soobin said, giving him a little wave, and then he wandered towards the restaurant.

Beomgyu dabbed on the extra concealer and nearly killed himself by choking on hairspray with the windows in his car up. Then, after he finished his coughing fit, he sent a quick text off to Yeonjun and then another to his parents saying he arrived safe.

Show time.

The restaurant was one of those Japanese fusion places that was more like a mixing pot of ten different country’s food than any particular region. The architecture was all wood—wooden floors, wooden walls, wooden supports. In terms of first dates with rich people, he had been to far, far worse before.

If he and Soobin had met naturally and Soobin brought him here, he would have been impressed. Excited, even. When it came to expensive restaurants, the loud, joyous atmosphere of this one was right up his alley. He hated stuffy places where you were expected to hold your chopsticks in a certain way or keep your voice low. Beomgyu was not built for that.

The waiter showed him to their table at the very far end of the restaurant, and all three Chois stood up to greet him. Seeing them side by side, he realised how much they all looked alike. Soobin had his mother’s nose and lips.

When they’d spoken a few minutes earlier, he hadn’t gotten a good look at Soobin’s face. If there was one thing Beomgyu would readily admit, it was like Yeonjun said: Soobin wasn’t bad looking. Not even a little. There was a swipe of gloss over his lips, accentuating his cupid’s bow, and his eyes were lined with black. Not even on Soobin’s Instagram did he have pictures like this. Beomgyu felt very special.

Standing in a fancy restaurant like this, all dolled up and standing across from one of the hottest people he’d ever met—it almost made Beomgyu blush. Almost, but not quite. Soobin’s parents standing beside him put a damper on things.

“Oh, Beomgyu-ssi! You look wonderful.” Soobin’s mother grinned at him, then at Soobin. “Doesn’t he look wonderful? Soobin-ah?”

“Mm.”

“You too, miss,” Beomgyu said, smiling. She was wearing either an incredibly strong perfume, or not-so-strong scent suppressants. He could smell the warm hint of cinnamon from all the way across the table. He subtly turned his head away and pinched his nose briefly, trying to clear his nose of it.

Either way, he could tell she was an alpha. She just had one of those presences—so totally different from Soobin. It wasn’t necessarily rare to have an alpha and beta as parents, but it also wasn’t commonplace—not in their status level. Old money families like theirs preferred the simple nuclear makeup of one alpha and one omega, an example being Beomgyu’s own parents.

After reflecting on what Soobin said, Beomgyu had come to the conclusion that the reason why Soobin’s parents were so conservative was just plain projection. Not being an alpha-omega couple, were insecure about how their peers would perceive them, so to make up for any potential doubts, they doubled down on what they thought was normal.

The scary thing for them was that old money was dying out by the day, and all of the new tech companies Beomgyu had encountered campaigned heavily against the idea of there being a normal. Innovation and breaking the mold were prized characteristics. Families like Soobin’s and even Beomgyu’s, whose identities were built on old views, felt pressured to move on.

People like Soobin’s parents were nice on the outside, and Beomgyu didn’t doubt that their happiness to see Beomgyu was genuine. But it was a reasonable assumption that once they peeled back Beomgyu’s exterior, they would be shocked to find he still didn’t fit their status quo.

He bowed to them, hands over his stomach, then gave Soobin a demure wave. Beomgyu had never thought of himself as an actor before, but he was better than Soobin, who flushed and grunted awkwardly.

“Soobin-ah,” his mother scolded.

“... Thank you for coming,” Soobin said. He bowed back to Beomgyu.

“My pleasure,” Beomgyu said, amused. “You look good as well, Soobin-ssi.”

Soobin’s mother clapped her hands, overjoyed at the sight of them conducting ritual small talk, and ushered Beomgyu into his seat beside Soobin. They were sitting even closer than they had on Beomgyu’s couch, and it was difficult to stay an appropriate amount of space apart without half of him falling off the bench.

“How was work this week, Beomgyu-ssi?” Soobin’s father nodded towards Beomgyu.

“Good,” he said, then winced internally. He had to give more than that. But there really wasn’t much to say about his job. “Until I finish my schooling, I’m not contributing to any large projects.”

“Ah, that’s right. You’re in school for—what was it, marketing?”

“Art,” Beomgyu said, biting the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t grin. His parents loved to hype it up as marketing, but it was closer to design than anything. Marketing was the business-coated version.

“That’s right, that’s right, art…” Soobin’s mother repeated, and Beomgyu could see in her eyes that she was contemplating something. “Did Soobin tell you he double majored in classical literature?”

“Mom!” Soobin hissed, fingers digging into his lap.

Beomgyu didn’t know. He side-eyed Soobin, watching him grow redder and redder. The alpha was horrible at controlling his face, and this time Beomgyu smiled outwardly too.

“I didn’t,” he said, patting Soobin’s arm. “Classical literature, huh?”

“It was nothing,” Soobin mumbled. “My real major was business.”

“That’s not true at all, Soobin-ah,” his mother said. She smiled at Beomgyu, “Literature can be a very difficult major. So many writing and critical thinking skills tested—it’s an excellent supplement to any degree.”

She had clearly practiced this. Beomgyu understood; his parents did the same spiel about his art degree. Hence the marketing claim. Maybe people had questioned her about her son’s choice to study the arts, but more likely she was just insecure about it and thought Beomgyu might be too.

Silly, since Beomgyu also had an art degree, but understandable.

“It’s nice to see more and more alphas going into the arts,” Beomgyu said, and he was being honest. “Gendering fields of study is a bit ridiculous, in my opinion.”

“Well…” Soobin’s mother faltered for the first time, and she exchanged a glance with his father. Hook, line, sinker. People like them were so predictable. “There are some fields that may lend themselves better to a particular gender, but there’s no harm in trying things out.”

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be a racecar driver,” Beomgyu continued brightly.

“Really?” Soobin laughed.

Beomgyu pouted at him, “What’s wrong with wanting to be a racecar driver?”

“Nothing!” Soobin’s father interrupted, laughing, though it was strained. “Kids always have unattainable dreams. It’s a part of growing up. Soobin wanted to be a teacher.”

As much as he tried not to, Beomgyu ended up snorting into his tea. What was so bad about being a teacher? He had alpha teachers as a kid. Fuck, he was pretty sure one of his professors now was an alpha.

“How scandalous,” Beomgyu drawled, making it clear he did not think it was scandalous at all.

“Soobin’s skill set is better used elsewhere,” his mother said, more tactful. “That’s all.”

Thankfully, before they could stumble into another topic of conversation, the waiter came to get their order. Beomgyu ordered chicken katsu, while Soobin ordered a tempura box. Both of his parents ordered soups.

They chatted about milder things after that, Soobin’s job—a conversation which Soobin barely contributed to—and his parent’s recent work. Beomgyu ooh’ed and aww’ed at the appropriate times, and made sure to get in any contrarian jabs when he could.

Their food came after a few minutes, much faster than Beomgyu expected, and once again put a blip in their conversation until they’d all taken a few bites. The chicken melted on his tongue, the crispy outside giving the perfect crunch. If nothing else came out of this night, at least he got a good meal for free.

“So, Beomgyu-ssi,” Soobin’s father said, tilting his head towards him. “How are your heats? Are they difficult?”

Beomgyu’s knife made a screeching noise against his plate. The entire room fell silent, and Soobin shifted uncomfortably across from him, undoubtedly aware of how utterly inappropriate his parents were being.

Luckily, he came prepared for this.

“They’re fine,” he responded.

“Nothing irregular?”

Beomgyu shook his head. “I just get some weird cravings sometimes, that’s all. Nothing major. It’s nothing to worry about. I spoke to a doctor and he said it was a rare but harmless condition.”

“I understand,” Soobin’s father said. “My younger sister is an omega. I used to drive two hours to get her favourite foods across the city whenever she went into heat.” He laughed, and Soobin’s mother laughed as well.

Beomgyu thought it was more likely that Soobin’s father made some poor servant drive two hours to get it. But either way, that wasn’t what Beomgyu meant.

“That’s nice,” he said, smiling. After a beat, he forced out, “But I was talking about sexual cravings.”

They reacted exactly like he expected. Soobin’s father choked on a noodle. Soobin slumped in his seat, looking like he wanted the ground to swallow him up. So much for table manners.

The alpha better realise that this wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for Beomgyu either. It was amusing, yes—but easy? It was never easy to talk about sex with your date’s parents!

Soobin better return the favour when he meets Beomgyu’s parents. Assuming their match wasn’t called off before then. If they were lucky, Soobin would never have to meet his parents privately, ever.

“O—oh,” Soobin’s mother stammered. “Well, we can’t ignore that either. It’s a natural part of life. So long as it’s not something, erm, completely outlandish, I’m sure Soobin can handle it. He’s a strong kid.”

“Let’s not be hasty,” Soobin’s father said, in the midst of coughing. “Can you elaborate for us, Beomgyu-ssi?”

Beomgyu looked Soobin straight in the eyes and took one, big bite of his tonkatsu as he said, “Pegging.”

Soobin blinked at him, then spat out his food. Soobin’s father laughed hysterically.

Beomgyu wasn’t actually into pegging, but even if he were to be, he didn’t think it was that big of a deal. It was sex either way. He knew Soobin’s family would find it gravely offensive, however, and their reactions amused him.

Especially how red Soobin’s cheeks became. He looked like a cherub, refusing to meet Beomgyu’s gaze, and Beomgyu wanted to squish his cheeks.

“I—um, well…” Soobin’s mother was at a loss for words. “What you and Soobin do in the bedroom is none of our business.”

“Of course not,” Beomgyu said, but he could tell by the furious twitch of Soobin’s father’s eye that he disagreed with his wife. “Anyway, I need to go to the bathroom for a moment. Please excuse me.”

He gently shoved away his plate then stood up, wiping his lips with a napkin and giving Soobin’s parents a parting smile. He winked at Soobin on the way out. Hopefully, Soobin’s parents saw.

Mission (mostly) accomplished.

“It was… nice to see you again, Beomgyu-ssi,” Soobin’s mother said before they left for the evening. She shook his hand with a surprisingly strong grip, small, smooth fingers with no callouses pressing into his palm. “Soobin, please text us when you get home later.”

“I will,” Soobin promised. “Thanks, Mom. Dad.”

Soobin’s parents left in a hurry, and once they were out of sight, Beomgyu bent over laughing.

“Stop!” Soobin whisper-yelled, slapping him on the back. Beomgyu swayed on his feet and did not stop laughing. “What are you even laughing over?”

“Just—” Beomgyu wiped fake tears from his eyes. “They looked so horrified. Oh my god.”

“Probably because you told them you wanted to fuck me!” Soobin hissed.

“I said a lot of things tonight. Not my fault they fixated on that part,” Beomgyu said, standing up again. He was still laughing a bit. “Do you think it worked?”

“Do I think you annoyed them? A little. Do I think you offended them? Yes!”

“Oh, come on. You were the one talking about stereotypes. Would you really be that offended if I said I wanted to bend you over?”

Soobin opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, then slammed it shut. Beomgyu covered his own mouth with his hand and snickered. He wasn’t going to make Soobin say it out loud if he didn’t want to.

“It’s okay, hyung. Your secret is safe with me,” he said, patting Soobin’s shoulder. “My car is over there. Let’s go.”

He slid into the driver’s seat and checked his rear-view mirrors. Soobin seemed to fumble with fitting his legs into Beomgyu’s not-meant-for-people-over-180cm car, and Beomgyu occupied himself by texting Yeonjun back while Soobin figured out how to sit down.

“How do you drive this thing?” Soobin complained, slamming the door shut. Beomgyu looked over at him and instantly split into laughter again.

He hadn’t laughed this much in ages. Soobin wasn’t even intentionally being funny.

“I already have a hard time fitting into these seats. I’m surprised you can fit at all,” he said.

Soobin grumbled to himself, fighting with the seat belt. Once he was securely strapped in, Beomgyu flicked off the light inside the car and pulled out of the parking lot. Soobin didn’t say anything, so Beomgyu turned on the radio. A love song he hadn’t heard in years was playing. He used to listen to it when he was in high school, daydreaming about the alpha of his dreams. Hah.

He’d only gotten his license last year, after getting fed up with having to have Taehyun and Yeonjun drive him around. After a lot of trial and error, he could now navigate this side of the city without a GPS, and even though it felt like cheating, Beomgyu enjoyed not having to rely on technology so much.

It felt good to feel his way through places he knew by heart. He only needed to remember how to get there; all other details would fall away from his mind eventually if he didn’t think about them too long.

Mostly, it reminded him of when he was a kid and he would watch his dad drive around. They’d aimlessly circle around the city, driving onto the back roads and looking in awe at the changing tree colours.

He turned up the sound on the radio and hummed as he drove. During a red light, he looked over and saw Soobin with his eyes shut, his arms curled around himself. For a big, tall alpha, he wasn’t intimidating at all.

The parking garage of his apartment complex was deathly quiet, and Beomgyu turned off the car and carefully undid his seatbelt. Soobin didn’t react.

Beomgyu leaned over and tapped his shoulder. “Soobin-ssi, we’re here.”

Soobin’s eyes fluttered open, lashes clinging together from sleep. Beomgyu recoiled, surprised by how pretty he was. Nobody should look that good while waking up from a nap in the car.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” Soobin mumbled, sitting up. “Is this your apartment?”

“Yeah.” Beomgyu swallowed. “Let’s go up. Do you like beer?”

“Mhm.”

“I have some in my fridge.”

They didn’t run into anybody on the elevator ride up, for which Beomgyu was grateful. He’d lived here for years and managed to dodge the usual gossip that came from his neighbours. If they saw Soobin with him, the next time he saw someone he recognised, they’d pester him about if that alpha he was with was his.

Soobin flopped onto Beomgyu’s couch, either too tired to care about the anxiety he’d had the last time he was there, or just more comfortable around Beomgyu than before. Beomgyu moved to the bathroom and scrubbed his makeup off, then grabbed two cans of beer from the back of his fridge, the most basic brand he could find at the store a few weeks ago. Couldn’t go wrong with the classics.

“Don’t drop it,” Beomgyu joked, passing the cup to Soobin. Soobin readily accepted it, slumped against Beomgyu’s couch arm. He looked cosy, and despite his formal clothes, looked like he perfectly fit into the landscape of Beomgyu’s home.

It reminded Beomgyu of when he was in university and he and his friends would hang out together on the couch, watching anime and eating shitty food together. He missed those days—they were simpler. He would bet that Soobin missed them too.

Soobin yawned, then opened the tab on his beer and took a long sip, smacking his lips.

“We don’t actually have to do this,” Beomgyu said, observing Soobin. “It’s not like we’re going to be keeping this match. We don’t need to get to know each other.”

“I know,” Soobin said. He sat facing Beomgyu, knees to his chest. Between their long legs, there was no space on the couch. “But I… I kind of like talking to you. Is that bad?”

“As a friend?” Beomgyu asked, just to make sure they were on the same page.

Soobin cracked a smile. “Yeah. As a friend.”

“That’s not bad at all. We can be friends.” He held out his beer. “To friendship!”

Soobin laughed openly and pressed their beer cans together. “To friendship,” he said, and they both drank at the same time.

Beomgyu turned on the TV, and while scrolling through the channels, Soobin made him stop on one showing Jujutsu Kaisen. Beomgyu wouldn’t have pegged Soobin as an otaku at first glance, but seeing the way his eyes lit up watching—he couldn’t deny it.

“I bet our parents think we’re fucking right now, but really we’re just watching animation,” Beomgyu giggled. “We must be the only match in the world who are really ‘just talking’ after a date.”

Soobin had his eyes glued to the screen still as he asked, “My parents know I wouldn’t do that.”

“Hm. Mine too, I guess. I hope.”

“To me,” Soobin began, “it makes no sense that they’d let us go home alone like this and yet they’re so worried about us getting too close outside of their supervision.”

“None of this makes sense. Don’t think too hard about it,” Beomgyu said. “This practice has been around for a long, long time. It’s evolved a lot, and the parts that have been added on since then are basically just band-aids for all the issues it has. People refuse to cooperate with matches because they’re too strict? Let them meet in private too—but only once a week. In their minds, I bet they’re hoping you’ll be able to fuck me into submission, and then they won’t have to worry about how tense the dinner was. That’s the real purpose of it.”

Soobin blinked at him once he finished speaking, dazed by all the information Beomgyu just dumped on him.

“... You know a lot about this process.”

“I did some research,” Beomgyu said, shrugging. Understatement of the century. But he wasn’t ashamed about it or anything. This was important—one of them had to step up. “I only knew about this stuff before this from like, books and movies, and a few friends. I had to brush up on the reality of it.”

“To be honest, I never thought that…” Soobin’s voice lowered, and his eyes fell to the floor for the first time since Beomgyu turned on the TV. “My parents have been talking about this for a long time. But I never thought they’d actually go through with it.”

“It’s so ridiculous, right? It seems like it should be fake, like someone is going to pop out and be like ‘haha, it was just a prank!’. But it’s not.” Beomgyu’s face hardened. “They really do believe this’ll work out exactly like they want it to, just because it’s worked out in the past. But I’m not going to give in.”

He twirled his beer around in his hand, watching the liquid slosh around on the inside. He wanted more alcohol, but he was hesitant to drink too much with someone else around.

Judging by how quickly Soobin was downing his beer, he didn’t have the same reservations.

“Would you have gone along with it if I wanted to?”

“No. I would have just tried to stop it by myself.” But he was glad that didn’t end up happening. He would’ve felt like a horrible person to dash Soobin’s fantasies about an ideal, seamless match, even though it wouldn’t have been his fault.

“Me too,” Soobin said. “I just hope they’ll give in and break it before we get in too deep.”

“Me too,” Beomgyu echoed.

Soobin must’ve been verging on tipsy, because he kept going, honesty bubbling in every word, “None of my friends understand why I don’t just yell at them or tell them to fuck off. But they’re… they’re my parents. I don’t want to be estranged from them.”

“Me too.”

“Are you a parrot?” Soobin huffed.

“What should I say instead? ‘I as well’? Are we in the 17th century?” Beomgyu rolled his eyes. “I’m agreeing with you. I feel the same way.”

“That’s not how people spoke in the 17th century.”

“Okay, classical literature major,” Beomgyu said, and grinned when Soobin’s mouth twisted. “You don’t need to be shy. I majored in the arts too. I think it’s nice that you did.”

“Why, because I’m an alpha?”

“You’re so hung up on this alpha thing,” Beomgyu said. “No, because I’ve never met a lit major in general, ever. That’s why!”

“You’re the one who said it earlier!” Soobin cried, raising his beer. Yeah, he was definitely tipsy. “You said it yourself. I was the only alpha in most of my classes. It sucked.”

The image of Soobin getting worked up was funny... until Beomgyu saw a vision of Soobin dropping his beer can by accident. Beomgyu pulled his arm back down before it could become a reality.

“I’m not pitying you. For the love of god, please put your beer down before you spill it. Does it bother you that much that you’re not a stereotypical alpha?”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Soobin mumbled, setting his beer down. “But it bothers everyone else.”

Beomgyu had a lot of issues with his parents, but them pressuring him to be the ideal picture of an omega had never been something they bothered him with. He could see how much he’d benefited from it, in terms of self-image, when he looked at other omegas, especially those in their social circle. So many of his friends—well, more like Yeonjun's friends—were unhappy with who they’d grown up to become. As exhibited by the fact they spent most of their time partying.

Soobin having been forced to become so aware of how he was an alpha, before he was even a person... Beomgyu itched to give him a hug, but he was afraid Soobin would take it the wrong way.

“Who cares what they think? It’s twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You aren’t even close to the least alphalike alpha I’ve met. You should meet my cousin and his partner. They’re both alphas too. One of them wears skirts to work, the other takes it up the ass every night. Fun combo.”

“I don’t like meeting new people,” Soobin complained, so petulant. Tipsy Soobin was like dealing with a child. Curled up like this, he looked deceptively small, broad body squished into the corner of Beomgyu’s couch. “Do you like being an omega?”

“What is this, twenty questions?”

“I’m just curious. Don’t answer if you don’t want to.”

“It’s fine,” Beomgyu said. He paused to let some of the beer run smoothly down his throat. “It’s alright. I mean, I have nothing to compare it to. It could be worse.”

“Hmmm,” Soobin hummed. Beomgyu wondered what was going on in his flattened brain right now. Probably… not a whole lot. “Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I was born as something else.”

“Well, if you really want to find out, medical advancements in that area have come a long way—”

“Not to that extent,” Soobin cut in. “I just think my… I dunno, I’m not cut out to be an alpha. I think my life would’ve been easier if I was a beta or omega. That’s all.”

“The grass is always greener on the other side,” Beomgyu said sagely. “As a kid, I wanted to be an alpha like my dad. Then I decided I wanted to be a beta like my brother.”

“Your brother is a beta?”

“Yeah. He’s much shyer than me, though. One time we ran to the corner store and didn’t wear scent suppressants. The lady at the counter thought he was the omega she was smelling.”

It wasn’t the first or last time Beomgyu was mistaken for being another gender. His height alone tended to capture people’s attention. He didn’t work out anymore, but when he did, people always commented on how nice his build was, ‘even for an alpha’. He just laughed and said thank you—correcting them was too much effort.

“... Can I say something that might be rude?” Soobin said, slightly slurred. His eyes were staring holes into the side of Beomgyu’s face.

“You’re going to say it anyway.”

“True,” Soobin giggled. His lips curled into a wide smile, his cupid’s bow forming a heart. He picked his beer back up and finished the rest, crumpling the can in his hand after. “I guess it’s not that rude. I was going to say you look like an omega. I would’ve been able to tell you were one either way.”

“What gave it away?” Beomgyu asked.

“You’re pretty,” Soobin said simply.

Beomgyu choked out a laugh, forcing something thick and uncertain down his throat. Compliments weren’t new to him, but coming from Soobin, who he was positive had no interest in him—it felt more genuine.

“Don’t say that, hyung. I’ll get the wrong idea.”

“Sorry.” Soobin sat back up. “But I’m sure you already know that. You don’t need me to tell you.”

Beomgyu blushed in the dark. “Can I tell you something that might be rude too?”

“I guess it's only fair,” Soobin said, not looking very enthusiastic about it.

He probably thought Beomgyu was going to say something serious. It made Beomgyu feel better about saying, “I like that you're shy, and quiet, and not aggressive, or any of those other things people think alphas should be. No offence to all the other alphas out there, but...” He giggled.

It felt strange to be so direct, but Soobin's bashful smile made it worth it. “Thank you. That... that means a lot to me.”

“No problem,” Beomgyu said, smiling back. “I was different as a kid, though. Not nearly as pretty. Not hard to mistake me for a beta.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Trust me, you should be counting your blessings that we didn’t meet in high school,” Beomgyu snorted. “We wouldn’t have been friends then.”

He’d been much more quiet when he was younger—louder than his brother, but he would hide behind his parent’s legs every time Yeonjun came over because his seven-year-old cousin seemed so cool and put-together compared to his five-year-old self. Yeonjun would have to drag him out, else he would spend all his time in his room, flipping through comic books handed down from his father.

It was only when high school came around that he started putting effort into living his life. Going out, making friends, prettying up his appearance. But even if he’d met Soobin ten years ago, he wouldn’t have approached him. Beomgyu rarely approached people in general. He only had two close friends, because why did he need any more when he was happy with the way things were?

God, he hoped they severed this match before his parents brought out the baby photos—or worse, his graduation photos. Some of them were cute. Most of them were not.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Soobin replied with a shrug. “Hey, do you drink often?”

The sudden change in topic gave Beomgyu whiplash. He wondered if he’d said something wrong, or if Soobin was just at the point of tipsiness where he couldn’t keep his mind focused on one thing. “Yeah. A few times a week. Why?”

“You aren’t red at all. Did you even drink anything?”

Beomgyu peered at Soobin from over the rim of his can, and giggled when he saw why Soobin was asking.

“Oh my god, you’re like a tomato!” he said, poking Soobin’s cheek. “I’ve had as much as you’ve had. I just have a high tolerance.”

Soobin wasn’t muscular, but he was bulky, and it surprised Beomgyu that he was this bad at holding his liquor. And he had a horrible case of Asian flush.

“I’m not…” Soobin stuck his tongue out. Beomgyu wanted to poke it back into his mouth. “It’s been a while since I drank.”

“You don’t drink by yourself?”

“It’s boring by myself.”

“Or maybe you’re just boring,” Beomgyu teased. Soobin glared at him and smacked him on the arm, sending him toppling against the side of the couch. They were both laughing as he yelped, “Hey!”

“I’m not boring,” Soobin whined. “Take it back.”

“Fine, fine, you’re not boring,” Beomgyu said, steadying his breathing. His head was a little floaty, a brief byproduct of all the alcohol and no water he’d drank. “I hate tomatoes, by the way. Note that down.”

Soobin’s nose scrunched up. He batted Beomgyu’s hand away. “Is this your roundabout way of saying you hate me?”

“Well, if you’re a tomato…”

Soobin’s face fell, and Beomgyu sat back, covering his mouth and giggling at him. Whenever he joked around with Yeonjun or Taehyun, it felt like they had the upper hand. When was the last time he bickered with someone on equal footing as him?

“I don’t want you to hate me,” Soobin said. A dimple dug into his cheek when he smiled this time. “I actually really want to be friends. Is that weird?”

“I already told you it’s not. We have a lot in common. I can see why we got such a high compatibility score.”

Had they met in any other way, like a friend introducing them, Beomgyu would’ve even said he was happy to meet Soobin. It was nice to branch out and meet new people, something which became more difficult as they aged. Beomgyu would gladly accept a friend version of matchmaking, no strings attached, no pressure, no parents watching them.

“Do you believe in the matchmaking process?” Soobin tilted his head. “I don’t know if I do. I don’t think I do.”

Beomgyu shook his head. “There’s nothing to believe or disbelieve in. It’s just not enough information to go off of. Our entire personalities can’t be summarised in a single profile.”

“Yeah. I’m too cool for that,” Soobin stated proudly, puffing out his chest.

Beomgyu almost cried from how hard he laughed, and an hour later, he waved Soobin off with a bright smile.

If anything good was going to come out of this horrible arrangement, he hoped it was that he and Soobin stayed friends. He couldn’t remember the last time he spoke to someone so freely other than Taehyun and Yeonjun.

But he would relish in his newfound friendship after they were no longer being forced to mate.

Choi Soobin [8:22]
i have bad news

Me [8:23]
do you have good news along with it

Choi Soobin [8:24]
not really

Me [8:25]
sigh
okay just go

Choi Soobin [8:26]
did you just type the word sigh?

Me [8:26]
just tell me!!!!!

Choi Soobin [8:28]
i think my parents actually like you more now

Me [8:29]
excuse me
what?
how???
after i said i wanted to bitch their only alpha kid?

Choi Soobin [8:29]
my mom thinks you’re innovative or something
and that we need to start being more progressive

Me [8:31]
……

Choi Soobin [8:32]
i think it’s a coping mechanism tbh
she doesn’t want to admit she made a mistake

Me [8:33]
…k
now what?

Choi Soobin [8:34]
we just need to try harder i guess

Me [8:36]
please can we sit down later this week
before the next date
and talk more about it
we only have 3 more chances

Choi Soobin [8:37]
yeah, sure
when?

Me [8:38]
are you free thursday
around ten?

Choi Soobin [8:39]
sure

Me [8:41]
alright
i’ll look forward to it
talk to you then

Choi Soobin [8:43]
see you

“So basically, after you guys went on your fake date, you went on a real date.”

“No!” Beomgyu snapped, for the tenth time. “It was still a part of the fake date. We were just by ourselves. It’s not like we just met up for fun and drank together.”

Taehyun and Yeonjun had wandered over from the eleventh floor of their company’s building to the seventh floor where Beomgyu worked, uninvited and bearing the gift of food.

Beomgyu should’ve known they only came over to wrangle gossip from him.

“I dunno, it sounds like a date to me,” Yeonjun said, tossing popcorn into his mouth. Popcorn! Like he was watching a movie. Except in this case, the movie was Beomgyu’s personal life.

“Couldn’t you guys have just… not hung out together?” Taehyun pointed out. He was sitting on top of Beomgyu’s desk, feet dangling right above the carpeted floors. Yeonjun tossed him a handful of popcorn and he munched on them one by one while talking. “Nobody would’ve known except you guys.”

“I told him that,” Beomgyu huffed, “but he said we could still be friends, and I don’t see why not.”

“You can be,” Yeonjun agreed. “But I’m still pretty sure you guys went on a date.”

“Stop,” Beomgyu said, more seriously this time. He didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with their teasing, whether they were truly joking or not. “It wasn’t a date. Okay? Neither of us are looking for a relationship. That’s part of why we’re trying to get out of this in the first place. Just drop it.”

Taehyun and Yeonjun exchanged glances. Beomgyu didn’t need to speak their mysterious silent language to know they were both alarmed by his tone. Beomgyu refused to apologise for telling the truth.

“Alright, alright. We’re dropping it,” Yeonjun said.

“Did you guys hear about what happened on the first floor last night?” Taehyun asked, moving on, as promised. Beomgyu let himself exhale in relief. He was grateful they didn’t keep pushing. For once.

“First floor?” Yeonjun said.

“So apparently one of the security guards found some omega trying to break into the lobby, and…”

Beomgyu tried to listen to Taehyun’s story, he really did. After the first few sentences, he found himself zoning out against his will. He was too annoyed by their jokes to give them any of his attention.

He hated being the party pooper of their group, but he couldn’t find it in himself to laugh along with them. They didn’t get it. Only Soobin did. When they laughed at him, it felt like they were just trivializing what was actually one of the scariest things Beomgyu had ever gone through.

It really wasn’t a lie to say that if they went through with this match—if he and Soobin actually had to mate—his life as he knew it would be over.

And what kind of idiots would they be to fight back against this match only to just go off and date on their own time? It would be like admitting their parents were right after all the fuss they’d put up. Or worse, that the stupid matchmaking thing worked. Beomgyu refused to contribute to this phenomenon.

He could be silly, but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew that much about himself.

He spent the rest of the day loitering around with Taehyun and Yeonjun, stopping by the mall on the way home and Yeonjun’s favourite ramen place, but his mind was elsewhere. He had too many thoughts in his head about the future to think about the present.

Two days before their second (chaperoned) date, Beomgyu’s hands started to get clammy.

He wiped them on his pants and tried to go on with his day, but he soon realised he wasn’t going to get any work done in this mindset. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Soobin and him in suits at the altar and he had the sudden, strong urge to rip his hair out and scream out a window.

Calm, Beomgyu, he told himself. Calm.

The second it hit five o’clock, he reached for his phone and dialed Soobin’s number. Soobin would probably be working. Beomgyu only needed a few minutes of his time. He just wanted to confirm they were still on for speaking later that night. Soobin was forgetful, and Beomgyu didn’t trust that he would check his phone before it was too late.

The phone rang twice, and then a voice Beomgyu that was only vaguely familiar answered, “Hello!”

Alongside the chipper voice, there were faint screams in the background and the bustle of people walking. Whoever just picked up, they were in public, somewhere busy.

“Um, hi,” Beomgyu said. He squinted at his phone. He’d definitely called the right number—Soobin’s name was right there. “Is Choi Soobin there?”

“Can I ask who this is?” the person on the other end said patiently.

Maybe this was Soobin’s… receptionist? But as far as he knew, this was Soobin’s personal number, not his work one. And he’d never heard of a receptionist who sounded that happy to be answering calls in the evening.

“Choi Beomgyu. Um, we’re… friends.”

“Oh! Beomgyu hyung!” There was a whisk of wind as the person moved around. “It’s been so long!”

Beomgyu blinked.

“What?” he said ineloquently.

“It’s Kai?” The person—Kai—said. “Huening Kai? We went to high school together!”

Beomgyu wouldn’t have remembered Kai if it wasn’t for Taehyun reminding him the other day—but now that he heard Kai’s voice, all the memories were flooding back to him. Mostly, Kai was Taehyun’s friend, but there were a fair number of times Kai tagged along with them as well.

He’d been surprised when Taehyun said they didn’t talk much anymore, and he never divulged why they’d grown apart. But he hadn’t thought about Kai in years before Taehyun brought him up. Beomgyu preferred not to think about high school at all.

“Hi, Kai,” Beomgyu said, smiling, and then dropping it when he remembered Kai couldn’t see him. “Why do you have Soobin’s phone?”

The background noise suddenly got much louder, and so did Kai’s voice to overtake it. “We’re at the amusement park! He gave me his phone so he wouldn’t drop it on the ride.”

“What?” Beomgyu said, for the second time.

It was five o’clock on a Thursday. Why the hell was Soobin at an amusement park at five o’clock on a Thursday? Choi Soobin? Who, every single time Beomgyu ever called him, was either still working or just got off work late in the evening? Soobin didn’t even seem like the type to like rollercoasters, not unless—

“Wait, am I interrupting something?” he choked.

“No, it’s okay—don’t hang up, he’s coming over now!” Kai hurried to say. “Hyung! Beomgyu hyung called!”

Soobin’s voice came surprisingly clear through the phone, “Hey, you better not have snooped through my phone—Beomgyu? Can you hear me?”

Beomgyu’s mind was reeling from his newfound comprehension that he’d interrupted Soobin on a date. A date!

He allowed himself to frown at the wall. Soobin never told Beomgyu he was seeing someone, or going on dates.

“Beomgyu?” Soobin’s voice cut through his thoughts.

“Yeah, sorry, I can hear you,” Beomgyu said. “Why are you at an amusement park?”

“Uh, Kai said I’ve been too high strung lately,” Soobin said, laughing. Normally Soobin’s laugh made him smile by association, but right now it just made him frown deeper. “I took the afternoon off. What’s up?”

“Did you forget that we were supposed to call later tonight?”

“No?” Soobin answered, in his um, duh voice. “It’s only five, though. Weren’t we going to talk at ten or so?”

“... I just figured I would remind you,” Beomgyu said, though now that he knew Soobin did remember, he felt silly for calling at all.

Soobin huffed out something between a sigh and a laugh. “I didn’t forget, Beomgyu-yah, don’t worry.”

“Don’t call me that,” Beomgyu grumbled, feeling his face warm. They didn’t know each other like that. “Just make sure you get home in time. We have a lot to discuss.”

“I will. I wouldn’t abandon you like that.” Soobin’s voice was serious.

Beomgyu swallowed and then forced out, “Right. Sorry for interrupting your date. I’ll talk to you later. Don’t forget!”

“It’s not a fucking date—”

Beomgyu hung up, then dropped his phone into his bag and began to gather his things to leave the office. It took everything in him to muster up smiles to his coworkers as he left. One of them commented on how stressed Beomgyu looked, and Beomgyu just answered with a “haha, yeah”. They had no idea.

He didn’t care if Soobin was on a date or not in the sense that he was jealous—but he very much cared in the sense that Soobin’s personal life affected their chances of breaking the match. This was a team effort.

Soobin better get his head in the game. He could go on cute amusement park dates with his cute omega BFF after they got out of this match.

Taehyun [7:03]
they aren’t dating, hyung
i told you this already

Me [7:08]
okay but how do you know this for sure

Taehyun [7:09]
i just do

Me [7:11]
whatever
i don’t care what he does in his free time
but i hope he isn’t getting distracted from our plan

Taehyun [7:14]
have a little more faith in him
has he done anything else to make you doubt him?

Me [7:15]
not really

Taehyun [7:17]
then take a deep breath and trust him
you guys will get through this

Me [7:18]
we better
else my life will literally be over

Beomgyu spent the entire call attempting to subtly scope out whether or not Soobin had really been on a date the other day, but everything Soobin said about Kai sounded strictly platonic.

“We’ve been friends since we were kids,” Soobin said, laughing like he thought Beomgyu was crazy for even bringing Kai up. “I think he has his sights set on another alpha. You guys should be friends!”

“Um, maybe after all this,” Beomgyu interrupted him before he could lodge the idea of Beomgyu and Kai being BFFs into his mind.

“Okay, but after this, I’m holding you to that,” Soobin said cheekily. He sounded so sure that things would work out. “By the way, I have some bad news as well.”

“Again? Will you ever bring me good news?”

“The only good news I could bring you right now is that the match is getting cut off. And if that happened—I’d be inviting you to a party, not calmly calling you.”

“... Fair point.” Beomgyu had to start thinking about cake flavours for that future party. “What is your bad news?”

In the end, because of scheduling issues, their next date got pushed back by three weeks.

Three fucking weeks.

Soobin kept being called in to work overtime or on the weekends, and Beomgyu’s parents were unable to get the same evenings off. Apparently, Beomgyu was the only one who had a decent work-life balance. Funny, since his co-workers always told him otherwise.

They were, hands down, the three most agonizing weeks of Beomgyu’s life.

He just wanted to get things over with. Face the music, do their jobs, get shit down and then never have to think about this again. The waiting was killing him. He could feel his concentration for everything else in his life fraying at the seams, untangling day by day, until his thoughts were a jumbled mess.

And he worried that the longer their parents lived in this limbo of them being together or not, the more they’d begin to subconsciously solidify it in their head, to the point where no matter what they said or did, things were already set in stone.

He and Soobin called each other a few times a week, and met up twice. Soobin said there was no reason for them not to talk, and Beomgyu had nothing to say in response. At first it was mostly for them to ramble about how stressed they were. Eventually, it devolved into them watching anime together on their laptops and them yelling at each other for not having a healthy dinner.

It was what Beomgyu would now call ‘the usual’.

He found himself looking forward to Soobin’s messages, and then his calls. They spent hours texting each other in bed late at night, and Beomgyu attributed Soobin to being the only reason he hadn’t gone completely insane the past three weeks. It was easier to push his worries out of his brain when Soobin was ranting to him about some niche subject he’d never heard of.

He found it endearing, and he absently wondered what the fuck he’d gone with his evenings before he met Soobin… one month ago. Time flew, and Soobin had slotted himself into Beomgyu’s life eerily quickly.

A voice in his head that sounded eerily like Taehyun’s nagged him about how a lot of their interactions seemed like dates to an outsider’s point of view. But just because they were in the midst of being matched didn’t mean all their private conversations were inherently romantic.

And yet still, even though he knew that, he kept finding himself laughing along with Soobin only to abruptly remember why they knew each other in the first place, as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over his head—and after that, he no longer felt like joking around.

Not by any fault of Soobin’s, but their situation seemed so big and scary compared to the two of them, and it was daunting to think about. He hated that they’d only become friends because of the match. It made the relationship feel tainted to him. He wanted it to be over so that they could be friends without worries.

The constant back and forth of emotions was exhausting to him. Thank god his heat was still a few weeks away. If he had to deal with this and heat hormones, he might’ve snapped for real.

He occupied his free time by alternating between texting Soobin, complaining about their situation, and messaging his group chat with Taehyun and Yeonjun. It made him realise how peaceful and non-adventurous his life normally was, that this situation shook him up this much, and adding Soobin to his routine was so notable.

Somehow, three whole fucking weeks passed, both slower and faster than Beomgyu expected. Each day felt like it was ten years long, but it also felt like he blinked and it was the day of their date already. He couldn’t reconcile the two in his mind, and it left him jittery all day, like he was both unprepared and over-prepared.

So much rested on them getting out of this match. Beomgyu didn’t want to have to think about revising his future plans in life because he suddenly had a mate. They had three more chances, including tonight, but the sooner they got out of it, the better. The quicker things could get back to normal.

It was nearing six. He put the finishing touches on his makeup, smoothing cream blush over his cheeks, before hurrying to his car. Hooking his phone up to his bluetooth speaker, there was a single text from Soobin, telling him not to be nervous.

Hah. Funny joke. Soobin was probably just as nervous as Beomgyu—but it was easier to tell someone else not to be nervous than not be nervous yourself.

Their date with Beomgyu’s parents was being held at his parent’s house, which Beomgyu had strongly objected to. Like everything else when it came to this situation, his complaints fell on deaf ears.

A few years ago, his parents had sold the home Beomgyu grew up in. He’d thrown a fit, and his father had made up a dozen excuses as to why they were selling it—they couldn’t hold onto it forever, they needed to live in Seoul full-time for work, Beomgyu hadn’t lived there in years, why did he care?

He’d said it all like it was meant to be apologetic. It only pissed Beomgyu off more. It was the first time he’d realised that even people like his parents grew and changed. The parents he had as a kid would never have sold the home they’d made so many memories in. But now they had different friends and different priorities, and what Beomgyu wanted wasn’t automatically what they wanted too.

A security guard greeted him at the front gate and opened it up for him after taking a quick glance at his license plate. He pulled into the driveway and then, after whipping out an article on deep breathing exercises, forced himself out of the car on shaky legs.

This was probably only his third or fourth time coming here in the past year. He took in the well-manicured lawns and gardens full of tall, wispy flowers; the pool at the corner of the house, and the tall glass windows of the rooms beyond them; the gentle breeze carried the scent of flowers and warm wood.

It had a certain kind of ‘rich but cool’ energy to it. His parents had hired a designer to remodel it, and it showed. The whole exterior looked straight out of a movie.

From both an aesthetic and practical perspective, it wasn’t a bad house. But it wasn’t what Beomgyu thought of when he imagined home either. It made him feel uneasy to be reminded that his parents sold the home he’d grown up in for… this. Maybe it was home to them, now, but that didn’t make it home to him.

Soobin was standing by himself, twiddling his thumbs, when Beomgyu walked up the stone brick steps to the front door. Beomgyu raised a brow at his back and tapped him on the shoulder.

“You good?”

Soobin jumped a metre into the air. His eyes were as big as saucers, and he held his fists up like he was ready to sock Beomgyu in the face.

Is that what Beomgyu looked like every time Taehyun snuck up on him and he freaked out? How embarrassing. Beomgyu hadn’t even been that quiet walking up to the entryway.

“Oh, it’s just you,” Soobin said, putting his hand over his heart like he’d been seriously scared by Beomgyu approaching him. “I was waiting for you.” He lowered his hands, and Beomgyu glanced over his clothing of choice for their date.

The fitted suit he was wearing made him look more like a businessman than any other time Beomgyu had seen him, and his hair was trimmed at the back, sleek and professional, similar to how Yeonjun kept his. His face was obviously flawless, full lashes curled and his eye bags covered by layers of expensive, matte foundation.

He took this meeting the parents thing seriously. He might’ve dressed up a little too much, actually—but that could work in their favour, depending on how Soobin played his cards tonight. Their goal was to make Beomgyu’s parents not want him around, after all.

“You could’ve gone in on your own. I’m sure my parents would’ve loved to have alone time with you.”

Soobin scratched his cheek. “I know. I’m just—I’m sorry. I’m nervous.”

Beomgyu patted his upper back. “You’re the one who told me not to worry.”

“I wasn’t nervous until now!” Soobin stressed, balling his fists at his side. Beomgyu shouldn’t find it cute, not when they were both in deep shit, and Soobin had the right to be anxious—but it was cute. A huge alpha whining on Beomgyu’s parent’s doorstep because he was afraid he might not annoy them well enough.

“Hyung,” Beomgyu said, using Soobin’s preferred name for once, “just do what we agreed on the other day. I know my parents, I know what they like and dislike.”

His parents were trickier than Soobin’s—they were slightly more lenient, less prone to obvious discomfort. That also meant it would be easier to annoy them without really annoying them, like Beomgyu had worried about Soobin’s parents. So Soobin had it both harder and easier than Beomgyu did.

Soobin only looked more queasy after he heard Beomgyu speak. Beomgyu nudged him to get his attention back.

“I’ll be right there with you. And I’ll pinch you if you start saying anything wrong,” he added.

Soobin’s breathing was erratic. “Let’s just go in.”

Beomgyu worried his bottom lip between his teeth, but nodded. Standing out here overthinking things wasn’t going to help. He grabbed onto Soobin’s sleeve and together, they entered Beomgyu’s parent’s place.

“Soobin-ssi!” Beomgyu’s mother said, clasping her hands together. Her grey hair was curled and pinned into a tight bun behind her head, and while her face showed her age through wrinkles and worry lines, she held herself well. When Beomgyu was young, she was what he had thought of as the ideal omega. “And Beomgyu. You look lovely. Oh, look at you two together! You look like the perfect couple already!”

“Hi, Mom,” Beomgyu greeted. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Please, come inside—Dinner is almost complete, I have so much I want to ask you, Soobin-ssi…”

Beomgyu gave Soobin one last pat on the back, outside of his mother’s view, and mouthed at him silently, you got this.

Surprisingly, once Soobin was in his element, he was a force to be reckoned with. All evening, Beomgyu watched him in fascination, trying not to let it show on his face how amazed he was by Soobin’s acting skills.

Their goal was to make Beomgyu’s parents so uncomfortable they felt like they had no choice but to break off the match, and Soobin was acting like he was born for the role.

“I don’t want kids at all,” Soobin told them, not missing a beat even as Beomgyu’s father looked on in clear horror, like Soobin had just said the gravest offence in the world.

“Not even one?”

“Nope,” Soobin replied, drawing out the word. “Not even one.”

Beomgyu’s parents exchanged pointed looks with each other, probably freaking out internally over the thought of getting no grandchildren out of Beomgyu. His mother’s eyes landed on Beomgyu after, and Beomgyu gave his best fake-awkward-smile, AKA a smile that seemed fake but was actually genuine.

His mother spent all evening twirling her spoon around in her soup, only occasionally taking sips of the broth, which said it all: Soobin unnerved her. Exactly like how they’d planned.

Beomgyu was overjoyed. He had to tense his jaw to hold back his manic laughter whenever Soobin said something particularly off-putting.

A good feeling bubbled in his chest all night, the relief of things not having gone horribly wrong. He didn’t dare presume they were successful in their plan, not until the match was called off; but as Beomgyu had said to Soobin before, he knew his parents, and he knew when they were doubting their previous decisions.

Now was one of those times. It was written all over their faces. Soobin glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, gauging Beomgyu’s reaction to his words, and Beomgyu squeezed Soobin’s thigh under the table in encouragement. Neither of Beomgyu’s parents looked enthused at how Beomgyu was sitting so closely to Soobin.

The date came to an end, and Beomgyu’s parent’s voices were significantly less upbeat than they were at the beginning, thanking both of them for coming. Soobin shook both their hands, and Beomgyu gave them tight hugs, nosing at his mother’s neck to catch a whiff of her scent. It was bitter.

They seemed reluctant to let Soobin and Beomgyu go off alone, but Beomgyu was in too bright a mood now to listen to them. Let them think Soobin was a bad influence on him. Maybe they’d come to their senses and break the match because of it.

Soobin smiled at them as they left, and wrapped his arm around Beomgyu’s waist. Beomgyu jolted, surprised, and felt winded briefly by how big Soobin’s palm was on his side. It was a weird thing to notice when they’d just had dinner with his parents.

He shook it off and waved goodbye to his parents. They whispered between themselves, and Beomgyu could only hope they were saying good things. Or bad things, rather—that meant good things for Beomgyu and Soobin.

Instead of going to Beomgyu’s place, Soobin invited him to his apartment this time, and Beomgyu couldn’t find any reason to say no. Why shouldn’t they be able to hang out as friends? They’d known each other for a month now. He thought it was safe to call them friends, finally.

He was all smiles as he buckled himself into Soobin’s glossy black Lamborghini. The radio was playing Love Poem. Soobin sang under his breath to it as they drove leisurely down the back roads of the city.

Beomgyu thought he had a very nice voice, and he wondered if that was something that had impacted their compatibility score. He’d always loved music, and the soft lilt of Soobin’s voice reminded him of his favourite ballads.

Soobin’s apartment building was exactly like what he’d expected from the images he saw online and the glimpses he’d gotten from their video calls. It was more of a condo despite not being listed as such, and they had to go through two different secured doors just to get to the lobby.

White floors, white walls, a woolen white carpet. Soobin waved at the concierge, who smiled back and then led them towards the elevators. Soobin pressed the button for the top floor. Beomgyu was as wealthy as Soobin, but for some reason, he felt out of place. He stuck close to Soobin’s side as they took the elevator up, playing with his phone in his pocket.

“Do you have anything to drink?” Beomgyu asked.

The elevator climbed smoothly upwards, each floor passing with a sharp ding.

Soobin laughed, “Is that going to become our post-date routine?”

“Ideally, this will be the last time we have to do it, so consider it a celebration.”

Soobin swung his keys around his finger, nodding in response to his original question. Beomgyu straightened up, more awake at the prospect of alcohol. It wasn’t often he had the opportunity to drink anything other than beer and whatever gross flavour of wine Yeonjun was trying to bring into style.

“I’m the last apartment down the hallway,” Soobin said, making conversation as the elevator doors opened. Beomgyu stared in amazement at the high ceilings and red accents. He’d never been into one of these fancy Gangnam apartment buildings before—all of his friends opted for smaller places.

Even Soobin’s door was beautiful, black cherry wood with a red and golden doorknob. Beomgyu tapped it with his finger like it was solid gold. It wasn’t, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if it was.

“Home sweet home,” Soobin said, pushing open the door.

From what Beomgyu could see, it was, as expected, much bigger than his own, but anybody could’ve told that by the exterior of the building. This was the kind of place his parents had wanted to set him up in. Multiple twenty-four hour security guards, marble hallways with sleek red and black doors.

The chandelier hanging over Beomgyu’s head probably cost more than his monthly rent did, and he didn’t even want to think about how much the welcome mat cost. Knowing Soobin and his obsession with cute animals, it was fake fur, except fake fur of this quality cost more than real fur.

Soobin slipped his shoes off, then opened the closet to toss his jacket haphazardly inside. “I’ll get the drinks. Just… um, make yourself at home,” he said. “You can hang up your jacket if you want.”

Beomgyu nodded and waited until Soobin was out of sight before snooping around. There wasn’t much personal memorabilia decorating the apartment, at least not at the entrance; the paintings hanging over the shoe rack were authentic designer pieces, and there was a single potted plant flowering beside them. No picture frames or items with Soobin’s name on them.

The apartment was beautiful, there was no doubt about that, but it didn’t suit Soobin. When Beomgyu thought of Soobin, he thought of harem animes, cheap take-out, and philosophical self-help books. If Soobin’s apartment looked like how Beomgyu expected, it would have been the perfect university student room, well lived in and littered with traces of who he was.

Beomgyu wondered if Soobin liked his own apartment, or if he just put up with it because of his parents. Considering how much Soobin ‘put up with’ because of his parents, he guessed it was more of the latter.

Maybe, after all this, Soobin would grow more of a spine to talk back to them. Getting out of this arrangement could give him the confidence boost he needed to understand that he didn’t need to let them control him. Soobin was so outspoken on his own, almost too outspoken at times, and he was more interesting that way. Beomgyu wanted everyone else to see it too.

The front closet was full of an assortment of spring and winter jackets, and a stack of bursting cardboard boxes. Beomgyu fixed the jacket Soobin carelessly tossed, then neatly slipped his own jacket onto one of the free coat hangers.

When he closed the closet door, his reflection blinked back at him in the mirror. He patted his own cheek, smiling to himself. Even tired and having been awake since eight in the morning, he looked pretty. His hair was still curled and for once, he didn’t hate the shape of his nose. Happiness really did make people look better.

Ironic, how this was the best and happiest he’d looked after a date in years, and it wasn’t even a real date. But it not being a real date didn’t put a damper on Beomgyu’s spirits.

He heard the fizz of a can opening from the direction of Soobin’s kitchen. The sound gave Beomgyu tingles.

They were going to drink all night, have fun watching shitty reality TV, then wake up tomorrow and find out one of their parents finally called this godforsaken match off. Beomgyu was manifesting it.

“Soobin hyung!” Beomgyu sang, skipping over to the living room. He flopped on Soobin’s (fake) leather couch, curling up on his side against one of the dozen fluffy pillows lying around. “Which of these remotes is the right one?”

“For what, the TV?” Soobin called back.

“What else would I be talking about?”

“Just use the grey one with the red button in the middle.”

Beomgyu snickered as his exasperated tone and picked up the remote. With a flick of the power button, the TV screen burst into colour. The channel was set to the news.

“A breakthrough in the hormone regulation sector has given hope for those with excessive hormone production,” the reporter said. On the screen, there was a picture of a handful of pills that Beomgyu was fairly certain were not hormone regulators. “Excessive hormone production treatments are currently uninsured and expensive. Experts are hoping that this breakthrough will allow the pills to be more accessible, particularly for omegas with irregular heats…”

Beomgyu shivered. He was glad he wasn’t affected by any of those diseases. Going into heat every few months was already bad enough. Even if he had a partner, having it happen every month or worse sounded like torture.

“Here,” a voice said. Something cold touched the top of Beomgyu’s head and he yelped, shaking it off. “It’s soju.”

“I didn’t take you for a soju person,” Beomgyu said. He took the small, clear glass, and the tall bottle of soju. It smelled like peaches. “Is this flavoured?”

“So what if it is?” Soobin grumbled. He sat down beside Beomgyu, kicking his feet onto the table.

“Nothing. I’m not judging you, alpha, calm down,” Beomgyu jested, knocking him in the shoulder. “You’re allowed to like whatever cute flavoured drinks you want.”

“Cute,” Soobin said, scoffing to himself. “No type of alcohol is cute.”

Soobin was still in his formal shirt, hair slicked back and matching the colour of his void black tie, and if Beomgyu didn’t know anything about his personality he would have pegged him as the ideal stern alpha. Someone who looked like Soobin preferring fruity drinks was cute to Beomgyu, but he just laughed and let Soobin think otherwise.

“Whatever you say,” he said, crossing his legs.

He was about to down more of his soju when something sour hit his nose, and his face scrunched up. It wasn’t coming from his glass, or the soju, but it was prominent enough that it made the inside of his cheeks ache, mixing with the cool burn of the soju.

“What’s that smell?” Beomgyu asked, looking over his shoulder. It wasn’t coming from the kitchen, but he didn’t know what else would smell like berries. “Did you open some wine too?”

Soobin tilted his head. “What smell?”

“It smells like…” Beomgyu took in a deeper breath, trying to pick apart what exactly it was he was smelling. Berries, obviously, but tangy ones, like raspberries. The inside of his mouth burned from the sweetness. There was a bit of chocolate in there too. Chocolate-dipped raspberries? “Raspberries?” he guessed.

“Oh.” Soobin ducked his head. “Uh, that’s my scent.”

Beomgyu couldn’t stop his shock from bleeding into his tone, “That’s your scent?”

When he thought about alpha scents, he thought of Taehyun’s smoky nutmeg, sweet on his tongue and dry in his throat, or Yeonjun’s freshly brewed coffee, zapping him awake during the day but lulling him to sleep during the night.

Opposite to both of them, Soobin’s wasn’t overpowering at all; it didn’t take long for him to fill his lungs with it, and it settled into his body nicely, the tips of his fingers going all relaxed. There was no jolt of alpha that Beomgyu was used to getting.

Soobin’s cheeks were starting to flush from embarrassment, pink all the way from the apples of his cheeks to his ears. “Yeah.”

“Sorry, I…” Beomgyu didn’t know what to say without sounding judgemental. “I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. I really like it. It’s nice.”

“You don’t have to lie, Beomgyu,” Soobin said. He gave a teasing smile, his eyes lacking any humour. “I know it doesn’t suit me.”

“That’s not why I was—” Beomgyu’s lips pressed together in a thin line. Soobin never let a conversation pass without arguing. Everything was debatable to him. “Yeah, it was unexpected, sure. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suit you.”

They were always taught to associate spice with alphas and sweetness with omegas, and while he knew plenty of omegas with sharp scents, he didn’t know of many alphas with sweet ones.

Taking in another breath, he watched Soobin as he did, and once his brain made the association it made perfect sense in his head. Most of the people he knew who had strong scents were outgoing and assertive, almost overly so. Soobin was the opposite, so of course his scent was also the opposite.

“... Thanks,” Soobin said, clearly not believing him still.

Beomgyu set down his cup and scooted closer to Soobin. Now that he knew how tame Soobin’s scent was, it wasn’t a surprise that he didn’t smell it the other day. Armed with this new awareness, he could catch it on Soobin’s clothes, and just in the air around him.

It was faint. A normal person wouldn’t have been able to pick up on it, but Beomgyu prided himself in being astute when he needed to be.

Soobin froze, hands on his lap, eyeing Beomgyu like he was a second away from bolting. Beomgyu hurriedly sat back, not wanting Soobin to get the wrong idea.

“I’m not lying. I mean, I can’t speak for anybody else, but I like sweet scents a lot. And it does suit you. It’s…” What was a word that couldn’t be misinterpreted? “... Modest.”

“Modest,” Soobin repeated.

“It’s almost like it’s shy,” Beomgyu said, and smiled to himself. Yeah, it definitely suited him—thinking back to the first time he and Soobin met, and Soobin couldn’t even look him in the eyes or say more than a few words at once. “It’s not sharp enough to command attention, but it has a presence you can’t ignore once you notice it. And the chocolate makes it sweet. You just have to look for it.”

“Why are you talking about it like it’s a person?” Soobin grumbled, snorting.

Beomgyu threw his head back and laughed. “Because it reminds me of you,” he said again.

“Well…” Soobin struggled not to smile as Beomgyu snickered. Amusement was contagious to him. “Thank you,” he said, voice small. “I’ve had people tell me that before, but nobody like you.”

“Like me?” Beomgyu raised a brow.

“An omega,” Soobin clarified. His leg began to bounce.

“Ah,” Beomgyu hummed knowingly. “That, I am.”

Soobin gave him a small smile, but didn’t say anything else, back to being timid. Beomgyu hadn’t meant to make him feel bad, and he felt a bit guilty about it. Soobin’s scent really was calming; it reminded him of all the tingly, tangy flavours he loved to eat in desserts. He wished he was better at conveying his thoughts into words.

They sat in silence for a while, drinking more and more of their soju. Eventually Beomgyu’s sinuses were so full with the haze of the soju’s artificial peach that he couldn’t smell Soobin’s scent anymore. Soobin was beginning to turn his signature tomato red, from his cheeks all the way down to his neck. Or maybe he should start referring to it as raspberry red.

The news channel switched to sports news, and Soobin’s eyes shifted towards the wall beside the TV. He wasn’t a sports person. He was an arts guy, just like Beomgyu. He’d said so himself.

Beomgyu cleared his throat to capture Soobin’s attention again. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed about anything, at least not around me,” he said. “I know we’ve only known each other for a little while, but—we’re friends. You’re cool. So don’t be embarrassed.”

“Thanks, Beomgyu,” Soobin said, lips thinning like he was somewhere between a smile and frown. “I know.”

Beomgyu huffed. If Soobin knew, why was he still acting all quiet and brooding? They were supposed to be celebrating. He couldn’t let one ignorant comment ruin their night.

“Anyway,” he said primly, “moving on from that, tonight went well, didn’t it?”

Soobin sat his glass on his lap, looking blankly at the TV. He seemed like he was thinking back to their evening, and Beomgyu gave him the time to reflect, watching the headlines on the screen roll by.

“You would know better than I do if it went well or not,” Soobin decided on saying.

“Don’t be so humble. Did you see my mom’s face when you said you didn’t want kids? I almost thought she was going to break the match right there,” Beomgyu giggled.

“Is it really that important to her?”

“My brother is planning on having kids, so I don’t know what the big deal is about me having or not having them. But you know how old people are about that stuff,” Beomgyu mused.

“I…” Soobin’s finger ran around the top of his glass restlessly. There was a tinge of anxiety in his voice, like he was afraid of what Beomgyu’s reaction was going to be. “I wasn’t lying. I really don’t want kids.”

Beomgyu tilted his head at him. “You don’t?”

“I don’t,” Soobin confirmed.

“Hm.” Beomgyu wasn’t sure how he felt about having kids either. It was mostly because the thought of becoming bloated and sick for nine months didn’t appeal that much to him. Kids themselves were fine. “I don’t feel that strongly about it either way. I wouldn’t say I want them right now, but I also wouldn’t swear off them forever. We’re too young for that.”

“I’m not,” Soobin said firmly. “I don’t want them.” He didn’t leave any room for arguments.

“... Can I ask why?”

“Well—” Soobin’s forehead scrunched up. It was so cute. All of Soobin’s mannerisms were so cute. “I just don’t think I’d be a good parent. That’s it.”

Now that, Beomgyu had to laugh over. Soobin shot him a glare, not impressed by Beomgyu laughing at his honesty, but Beomgyu swore his amusement wasn’t malicious. It was just that—”Who told you that?”

“Nobody. I just know I wouldn’t be,” Soobin said petulantly.

“Not with that attitude, you won’t be!” Beomgyu said, smacking Soobin’s arm.

“Ow!”

“Oh, fuck off. That didn’t hurt. Stop being a baby.”

“I’m not,” Soobin said, sniffling and rubbing the spot Beomgyu touched. “I’m not being a baby, and I’m not lying. I don’t think I’d be a good parent. Even if it’s all in my head, isn’t that enough for it to be true?”

He sounded like a wounded animal, and looked even more like one, getting frazzled and cornering himself against the couch. Beomgyu’s face softened.

“I can’t comment on what you think, but I don’t think you would be,” he said resolutely. “And you can’t tell me otherwise, because those are my feelings.”

Soobin poured his last bit of soju into his glass, shoving the empty can away.

“People expect certain things from their parents,” he said, toying with his glass. “And when they can’t give those things, they feel unfulfilled.”

“Which of your self-help books did you read that in?”

“None of them. It’s from experience,” Soobin answered.

Beomgyu’s lips twisted. “Explain,” he demanded.

Soobin groaned, as if he hadn’t brought this on himself by offering up half a bite of information for Beomgyu to chew on.

“People expect their parents to be… guiding. They’re supposed to be role models. Like yours—he’s charismatic, and successful, and cool. Especially as an alpha. There are a lot of bad alphas out there. Right? Of course you know this. I don’t need to explain it. So if you’re an alpha and you have a kid, you want to be the kind of alpha you want your kid to associate with the word alpha. But I can’t do that. I’m just me.”

He spoke more carefully than usual, like he was picking and choosing his words to better represent how he felt inside. But even so, even if Beomgyu understood what Soobin meant, he didn’t truly understand the meaning. It was just so outlandish to him. Soobin, a bad parent? Please.

Soobin was kind, witty, and generous. What other traits did he need to have to qualify as a good parent?

It was like when a hot person tried to claim they weren’t hot. You laughed at first because you thought they were fishing for compliments, then quieted down once you realised they were unfathomably serious.

“You might not be cool, but you’re plenty successful and charismatic, hyung. Why do you think otherwise?”

“I’m awkward, and I don’t like most people,” Soobin said, listing each point off of his fingers. He didn’t even crack a smile at Beomgyu’s joke. “I’m not that ambitious. I don’t want a lot. I just want to do the things I like around the people I like and that’s it. That’s not the kind of person you want as a role model.”

Now Beomgyu was starting to get irritated. He wasn’t trying to convince Soobin to have kids—but the idea that Soobin genuinely thought of himself as such a bad person his hypothetical kids would suffer for it upset him a lot more than he thought it would.

It wasn’t only a discussion about Soobin’s parenting skills, it was a reflection about Soobin himself. Beomgyu hated when people talked shit about his friends. Even if the person shit talking his friends were said friends themselves. Especially if the person shit talking his friends were said friends themselves.

“Why not? You don’t want your kid to see their parent being content with life? What could be a better role model than that?”

“I think if you’re going to have a kid, you have a responsibility to be a good example for whatever you represent. Isn’t that just basic logic? I don’t want my kids thinking alphas are rude and aggressive, but I also don’t want them to think they’re quiet and awkward like me.”

Soobin’s voice was stern, and his face was even more so, harsh lines etched into his forehead and turning his face even more red.

“Is this about your parents?” Beomgyu asked.

“I said it was from experience.” Soobin said, shoulders stiff. “I love my parents, but they weren’t really good role models. For a long time, I thought they were, though, and it took me a long time to get rid of the mindset they taught me. Especially about being an alpha. And I don’t want my kid to have to go through that.”

“There’s a huge gap between not being the perfect parent and being a shitty parent, Soobin-ah,” Beomgyu said, poking Soobin’s cheek playfully. Soobin pouted, lips jutting out. “Just because you aren’t perfect doesn’t mean you’re automatically bad. It doesn’t work like that.”

Soobin narrowed his eyes at him. Beomgyu stared back, unfaltering. He refused to back down, and he made a point of showing it by digging his finger further into Soobin’s cheek.

“I’m serious,” Beomgyu added.

Soobin responded by flicking Beomgyu’s finger with his tongue, from the inside of his mouth. Beomgyu shrieked, falling away from him.

“Gross!” he yelled, as Soobin broke into laughter. “I was being serious!”

“I was too,” Soobin said. “But it’s okay. Agree to disagree.”

Beomgyu hated moving on without grabbing Soobin by the shoulders and making sure he understood that Beomgyu was being Serious, capital S, but he was afraid of dragging anything out longer. Soobin was in a strange mood tonight, and while he didn’t seem entirely depressed, he wasn’t as happy as Beomgyu thought he would be.

He wished he knew what to say to bring Soobin’s mood up. Why was he so down all the time? Was he too stressed? If Beomgyu was Soobin’s mate, he would make him stay home from work at least one day a week, if not two. Soobin shouldn’t waste his youth overworking himself. It was such a… well, it was such a waste. And Soobin was such a star when he wasn’t sulking, with those deep dimples and twinkling eyes.

Soobin picked up the remote and switched to another channel. A lady on the TV was chopping garlic, and Beomgyu swore he could smell it under his nose. That’s how he knew he was drunk. He nudged his soju away, leaving his hands free to grasp his knees.

“We’ve drank together more than I have with anybody else in a long time,” Soobin commented, toying with the base of his glass.

“Is that a good or bad thing?” Beomgyu asked.

“It’s not a good thing or a bad thing,” Soobin said, shrugging. He stared into the murky orange spiral of his whiskey. “Sometimes it’s easier to be vulnerable with people you don’t know.”

“Hey,” Beomgyu whined, “we know each other. You said we’re friends. Are we not friends?”

Soobin’s eyes widened, and he rushed to shake his head. “No, no, we are… I didn’t realise you agreed, though.”

“Why would I not agree?”

“When my parents first told me that they had found a match for me, I was a little excited. For like one second.” He pressed his thumbs together.

“Um. Can’t relate,” Beomgyu said dryly. “Why were you excited?” That was not the adjective he would’ve picked for his initial reaction.

“Because I’m—” Soobin crossed his arms and spat out, “lonely. But then I realised that if I went through with this, if I just listened to them, it’d just solidify their control over me.”

Beomgyu’s insides churned. Deep down, he understood the feeling, that lonely ache that came from knowing you were missing out on something. But Soobin was right. No potential ‘match’ was worth the message it would send. Beomgyu would never give in no matter how precious the reward was. Their parents were acting as snake oil salesmen.

Someone like Soobin shouldn’t be lonely. He shouldn’t be embarrassed of himself either, or insecure, or feel like he didn’t fit in. Beneath his snarkiness, Soobin was one of the best people he’d ever met, hands down. It made Beomgyu wonder what hope was there for the rest of them, if someone like Soobin was struggling so much.

Beomgyu blamed Soobin’s parents. And the rest of the world too, but mostly Soobin’s parents.

“You don’t need a fucking matchmaker to find a partner, hyung,” Beomgyu said matter-of-factly, hoping to shoo away any of Soobin’s lingering moodiness. “Don’t be crazy. Do you only like omegas?”

Soobin picked at some loose threads on the pillow he was sitting beside. “I like everybody, I guess. I dunno. But I’ve only dated omegas.”

“What about that omega friend of yours? Kai?” Beomgyu questioned.

“I’m not going to date Kai. Come on. Don’t be stupid.”

“What’s so stupid about me saying you should date someone who supposedly makes you happy?” Beomgyu gasped in mock offence. “I don’t even know him and I’m offended on his behalf. What’s wrong with him?”

“Don’t say that to him. He was excited to talk to you again. He said you were friends in high school.” Soobin lowered his voice, “And nothing is wrong with him. I just don’t want to date him. He’s not my type.”

Beomgyu waved his hand to brush him off. Fine. He would accept Soobin’s lame reasoning for now. He still couldn’t tell if Soobin was lying through his teeth or not. “Then what is your type?”

“Someone who can make me laugh,” Soobin said slowly. “Someone who keeps me on my toes. Someone who’s happy just watching K-dramas and eating take-out every night.”

Soobin looked right at him as he spoke, and Beomgyu’s heart began to stutter, his throat feeling tight. Soobin spoke with so much intensity that it almost felt like he was speaking about Beomgyu.

Logically, he knew that there were lots of people who could fulfill those criteria. They weren’t exceedingly specific or anything. But Beomgyu was too aware of how he fulfilled them too, and he grew self-conscious, his cheeks warming.

“... So why is Kai not an option again?” he joked.

“Kai doesn’t like take-out. He’s picky, he likes homecooked stuff,” Soobin said, chewing on his lip like he was thinking of an excuse.

Soobin could be lying, and Beomgyu had no reason to care. He could also be telling the truth, and Beomgyu had no reason to care. But there was a flicker of jealousy in him anyway, something irritable that made the joints in his wrists tensen up as he dug his fingers into his thighs.

He told himself it was just because he was scared of Soobin losing focus on their goal. Except they had been presumably successful in their goal today, assuming Beomgyu knew his parents in any capacity. And he didn’t know what to do with this fact. He had no reason to be jealous, and yet he was. It was a weird feeling.

Beomgyu wasn’t someone who got jealous often. He didn’t have anything to be jealous of others over, aside from his annoying, lovey-dovey best friends. Being jealous of someone’s affection for someone else was unnerving. He was treading new territory.

His soju was ninety-nine percent empty, but he downed what little was left, trickles of bitter peach that brought some life back to him.

“What about you?” Soobin turned the question on him.

“I don’t know. All I know is that my ideal type is someone who isn’t chosen by a matchmaker,” Beomgyu responded.

“Stop fucking around, Beomgyu-yah,” Soobin said lightly, and the lilt in his voice made Beomgyu smile a little. “Everybody has traits they want in a partner. You seem like the type to have a whole numbered list hidden in a folder on your phone.”

“Hey!” Beomgyu shouted, and he would’ve slapped Soobin if he wasn’t so conscious of how tipsy he was. He was scared they might knock over their drinks and make a mess if he did. God knows the cleaning bill for a couch like this would be enormous. “So what if I do?”

“Just tell me,” Soobin pestered him. He leaned over, and his body was big over Beomgyu’s, blocking his view of anything other than Soobin’s annoying, drunk face, trying to weasel information out of him.

“Why do you care so much?”

“I’m curious,” Soobin said nonchalantly. “I told you. Now you have to tell me. That’s how it works.”

“Says who?”

Soobin raised a brow at him, like he was astounded by Beomgyu’s stubbornness. Before Beomgyu could react, his hands landed over Beomgyu’s side and tickled up and down his waist.

Beomgyu shrieked, kicking his feet and hitting Soobin square in the stomach. “Stop, stop!” he laughed, desperate. “I’m ticklish—”

“Tell me,” Soobin said childishly.

So childish. But at least he seemed to be in a better mood now. Beomgyu could handle being tickled if Soobin was no longer down on himself for no reason.

He pushed Soobin away as hard as he could, pouting. Soobin sat up while on his knees, and crossed his arms. Still not intimidating in the slightest, even if he was blocking Beomgyu’s view of the rest of the room. His glare right now was fierce, but Beomgyu couldn’t unsee the slight hunch of his shoulders. Sometimes, Soobin seemed like he was mid-attempt of trying to make himself smaller in a world he was too big for, another one of his unconscious bad habits. Nothing like any of the alphas Beomgyu had known in university—or even the ones he knew now, like his ambitious coworkers or his annoying cousin.

There wasn’t anything wrong with those people per se, but Soobin was different. A good different. And Beomgyu wasn’t a risk-taker who normally enjoyed different, so that said a lot. As an omega, Beomgyu was rarely ever met halfway by alphas, other than so-called ‘nice guys’ who just wanted to fuck him. But Soobin was on his knees, looming over him without being too far, and it brought something warm to Beomgyu’s chest. Appreciation. Beomgyu appreciated him.

Still, it was one thing to be able to tell Soobin about superficial aspects of himself, parts that anybody could see if they looked hard enough, but a whole other ball game when it came to telling Soobin things that actually mattered to him. He didn't like discussing this stuff with his best friends, let alone anybody beyond them.

“Tell me,” Soobin pestered, pinching Beomgyu’s cheek. His nails dug into Beomgyu’s cheek, and Beomgyu glared. “Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.”

“I’m thinking,” Beomgyu said. “Give me a moment.”

“Moment.”

Beomgyu wanted to slap him, but instead he laughed.

“Give me one-hundred moments,” he revised. Soobin sat back on his heels and nodded, waiting.

Beomgyu closed his eyes. It was easier to envision his ideal type when he wasn’t staring at someone in specific.

Except Soobin’s knees were touching his, and he could feel the weight of Soobin’s stare on him, so it was impossible for the image in Beomgyu’s mind not to take on the shape of a black-haired alpha with silly glasses and dimples. How annoying. Soobin’s presence was too strong to ignore completely.

“Someone taller than me,” he started, shooing away the image of Soobin in his mind. He already knew what he liked. He didn’t need a visual. “Someone who will hug me without me having to ask. Someone who can cook my favourite foods and won’t make me eat things I hate.” He thought about Taehyun and Yeonjun. “Someone who can make me feel better when I’m sad, not by laughing but just by being around.”

Beomgyu’s eyes flitted towards the TV. The lady from before was pouring chocolate over a row of strawberries. They were onto dessert now. Strawberries were Beomgyu’s favourite fruit, but he found his brain drifting towards Soobin’s raspberry scent when he thought of biting into them.

A nice scent was on his list of things in a partner too. But it would be weird to bring that up after discussing Soobin’s scent earlier.

“Probably not someone who can be found by a matchmaker,” he quipped instead.

“Probably not,” Soobin agreed softly.

Beomgyu swallowed. “Matchmakers, online profiles, all those things… they can see a person’s appearance, yeah. And they can even show a person’s hobbies. But can they guarantee that they’ll make me laugh? Can they guarantee that every time I look at them, my heart will race? Of course not. Only I can decide that.”

“I don’t think the point of matchmaking is to make all those things happen. It’s to give you a better chance to find someone like that,” Soobin said.

“It’s a waste of time and money,” Beomgyu argued. Fuck, he hadn’t even thought about the cost until now. He dreaded finding out how much his parents spent matching him and Soobin. Too much, if it was over one thousand won.

“I agreed with you. You already know I don’t believe in that shit. But I mean… you never know. You can’t say for sure that a matchmaker wouldn’t be able to find that person for you.”

“I do know,” Beomgyu said, shaking his head.

“I don’t think you know,” Soobin said, unfaltering.

Beomgyu played along, since it seemed like Soobin wasn’t giving up, and said coyly, “Oh, yeah? Are you a prophetic?”

He giggled imagining Soobin with a crystal ball, doling out hints about Beomgyu’s future partner. Soobin wouldn’t make a good prophet. He got too worked up easily, and took on too much of what he was doing into himself. Beomgyu would bet that if Soobin was a matchmaker, he would get too invested in every pairing and cry his eyes out every time one of them failed.

On the other hand, that was the type of person you’d want for a matchmaker, was someone who really cared. That’d be a far cry from most of the matchmakers Beomgyu had ever heard of. Soobin was too good for that line of work. He was too good for his current line of work as well, for that matter.

His laughter came to an abrupt stop when Soobin said, “No. I’m not a prophet. But the person you described kind of… kind of sounds like it could be me.”

Beomgyu blinked slowly, turning from looking at the TV and back to Soobin. His heart felt like it would break through his ribcage.

Suddenly, he didn’t feel like laughing anymore. Soobin’s words echoed in his mind. I’m so lonely.

“Soobin—”

“I’m just saying,” Soobin said easily. His leg was shaking. “Your criteria isn’t that specific. Like, I could hug you if you wanted.”

“You’re drunk,” Beomgyu whispered.

“I’m not.”

Beomgyu poked the tip of Soobin’s nose, trying to be playful. His hand was trembling. “You should see how red you are.”

“Do you think I’m drunk, or do you just want me to be so that you can pretend I’m not thinking properly?” Soobin countered.

Beomgyu was at a loss for words. Soobin shifted closer, and the air between them was disappearing bit by bit, taken up by Soobin’s body. There was barely a hair’s length of space in between their chests.

“Nobody like you has ever liked my scent before,” Soobin said, repeating his words from earlier.

“You need higher standards,” Beomgyu breathed. And that couldn’t be true. Soobin must have had dozens of omegas who pined after him. Beomgyu was already half-convinced that Kai was. Who else took their single alpha friend to an amusement park? That was a date. That was definitely a date.

The Taehyun that always sat on his shoulder, judging all his actions, told him that this was a date too. But it wasn’t. Beomgyu would die on that hill. Kai and Soobin were friends for real. Beomgyu and Soobin were friends through circumstance.

He felt bad immediately after thinking it. He had no reason to not consider Soobin a real friend, at this point. They talked every day; they got along like two peas in a pod, almost alarmingly so.

But that only made Beomgyu more fretful. He didn’t want to lose the precarious friendship he’d formed with Soobin. It was as simple as that. Especially not when they were still in the middle of trying to get this match broken.

He breathed in to try and regain control of his thoughts, but he ended up catching Soobin’s scent, sweet raspberries seeping through the waning scent suppressant he had on.

Beomgyu froze, lips parting, and Soobin’s eyes dropped towards his mouth. Beomgyu only belatedly realised Soobin was no longer staring at his eyes, and he scrambled to stop him before he could do something stupid.

“Soobin—” he tried to say again, and something flared in Soobin’s eyes as he surged forward, pushing Beomgyu back onto the couch.

Soobin was a sloppy kisser—or he was too drunk to control his mouth, slobbering all over Beomgyu’s mouth like a dog. There was no chasteness, no delicate pecks to coax Beomgyu into the fact Soobin’s tongue was parting his mouth open, his teeth grazing Beomgyu’s bottom lip.

His hand landed in Beomgyu’s hair, long fingers running through dark strands, and Beomgyu gasped out of shock as Soobin’s tight grip sent a tingle down his spine. His own hands flew to Soobin’s shoulders to ground himself, though he was squished between Soobin’s body and the couch, and Soobin held onto his waist in return, the edges of his palm grazing over Beomgyu’s fluttering stomach. His tongue was everywhere inside Beomgyu’s mouth, gliding over his lips and lapping at him like he couldn’t get enough.

Beomgyu was trying to hang on, but the combined onslaught of Soobin’s lips and scent were damning him. There were raspberries, sour on his teeth, but there was a rich, dark chocolate that was even more overpowering, coating every corner of his mouth. Beomgyu swallowed all of Soobin’s quiet sounds, needing so much more than he could get.

Their noses knocked together and Beomgyu only vaguely registered the dull pain. It was nothing compared to how strongly Soobin tasted on his lips, on every corner of his tongue. Everywhere, all at once. Beomgyu had always been weak for sweet over spicy.

Fuck, had he always wanted Soobin this badly? Since when? Since they started talking every day? Since they first met? His heart was soaring, head in the clouds, and the only thing keeping him present was Soobin sucking on his tongue, lavishing him with kitten licks. Beomgyu gripped his hair tightly, fingers brushing over Soobin’s nape, covered in sweat.

Then Soobin moaned, and the sound brought something hot to Beomgyu’s core that he hadn’t felt in so long, if ever.

“You taste so good,” Soobin said, dropping his head to Beomgyu’s neck, teeth grazing his collarbone. His fingers squeezed Beomgyu’s shoulders as he spoke, and Beomgyu wanted nothing more than to fall into him again. He blinked, dazed.

His head was full of sugar, sticking to his thoughts and making them all blend together, and it took all of his energy to sift through his thoughts to pull out the memory that was screaming at him to pull himself out of the spell of Soobin’s lips and pay attention.

Soobin was more affected by scents than most people. And if Beomgyu could smell Soobin, then Soobin could definitely smell him. Soobin had said he was sensitive, and if Soobin could smell him, he wasn’t in his right mind—and they were drunk, even if Soobin didn’t realise it, and…

“Wait,” Beomgyu said, at the same time part of his mind screamed at him no, no, keep going. “Wait, wait.” He pushed Soobin away, probably more harshly than necessary.

He understood being lonely. He understood wanting someone. But he didn’t understand throwing away his life and values for them, and he didn’t think a more sober Soobin would understand either.

Soobin frowned. “Beomgyu—”

“We’re drunk,” Beomgyu whispered, placing his finger over Soobin’s lips, quieting him. It was for his own good. “We’re drunk, and you’re being affected by my scent. You can’t lie, you told me that yourself. We’re being stupid right now. Please, hyung…”

Soobin’s eyes were hazy and half-lidded, and Beomgyu couldn’t tell if he was listening or not. Then he parted his lips and let out a low, frustrated noise, before pulling away.

“You’re such a tease,” Soobin said.

“Say that to me again when you’re sober, and maybe I’ll believe you,” Beomgyu said. There was no chance of that happening. Soobin just wasn’t in his right mind at the moment. He couldn’t be. Too many factors.

Soobin eyed him, but Beomgyu didn’t falter. He wasn’t going to do this knowing Soobin would regret it later. They both agreed that they didn’t want this match, and that also included each other. They were the match.

“Fine.” Soobin sighed. He released Beomgyu, standing up to his full height. From where Beomgyu was sitting, he looked so tall, his head almost reaching the ceiling. Beomgyu had to lift his chin to meet his gaze. It did seem lonely up there. “You’re not going home at this time. It’s too late, all the taxis will be sketchy. You can sleep in my guest room.”

He didn’t leave any room for argument, and waddled off before Beomgyu could answer. A moment later, the fridge door opened, and Soobin was filling up a glass of water.

Beomgyu was starting to worry that his problem was bigger than he thought.

He woke up to a flutter on his nose.

He sat up sharply, hands frantically searching the bed. The mattress was too soft, the sheets too heavy, and he panicked for all of one second before opening his eyes against the bright sun and seeing the abstract art framed across from him.

The time on his phone read 10:33 AM. He had a bunch of missed messages from Yeonjun and Taehyun, but he couldn’t read the tiny letters. His screen was blinding and he dropped it to instead pull off the sticky note attached to his forehead.

I had to go into work today. Sorry. You can have some cereal if you want. Painkillers are in the bathroom.

Soobin’s handwriting was horrible. Beomgyu crumpled up the note in his fist and slipped out of bed. To his credit, his hangover wasn’t that bad, even though he hadn’t had much water last night. High tolerance counted for something.

The entire apartment smelled like Soobin, and Beomgyu washed his face as quick as he could, finding his bag by the couch and his shoes still by the door. Soobin’s offer to stay and eat was kind, but Beomgyu had to get out of here. He might’ve thrown up if he stayed any longer.

He called for a taxi and within half an hour he was back in the safety of his own apartment, the familiar scent of his air freshener washing away the stickiness that came from being drenched in Soobin’s all night. As he was stripping to get into the shower, his phone dinged again, but he didn’t check it. He had to get rid of Soobin’s traces on him.

He felt so sick, bile rising in his throat no matter how many times he swallowed it down. His head throbbed like a bitch, but not from his hangover. Why did Soobin kiss him? Why did he let Soobin kiss him?

There was so much wrong with it. But most of all, it was that their relationship represented who they were to their parents. It didn’t matter how compatible they were. Beomgyu wasn’t going to give in to the stupid fucking match. He’d already told Soobin that.

The kiss had been good. He couldn’t deny that, and if left unchecked, he was terrified they really would end up like how they were supposed to. And Beomgyu resented being put into boxes. He wasn’t supposed to be anything other than himself. Certainly not someone’s match, or worse, mate.

It took him twice as long as normal to shower. The soap kept slipping out of his hands and chipling on the wet tile. He got shampoo in his eyes and almost started crying. He was such a mess.

Bundled up in a towel on his bed, he called his mother without checking his texts. He needed the reassurance. Please, if his faith was true after all, let their plan have worked. Then they could all move on from this.

“Mom,” he said, desperate. “Hi. How are you?”

“Beomgyu-yah?” she said. She sounded like she’d just woken up. It was almost ten now, and she wasn’t normally such a late riser. Was that a good sign or a bad one? “Is something the matter? Did something happen?”

“No, no…” Beomgyu winced, grateful she couldn’t see the obvious lie spread over his face. “I was just calling to talk about last night’s dinner.”

“Oh.” Once again, he couldn’t tell what her tone meant, stilted and sharp. “What do you want to talk about, cub?”

Beomgyu bit his lip. It hurt to hear that nickname from his parents right now, when he felt like they were on opposite sides.

“How… how did it go? What did you think of him?”

“Well…” She sighed, and her apprehension stoked some of his hope from last night. Please, please, he begged. “He wasn’t what we were expecting.”

“Oh?”

He tried not to sound excited. Don’t be excited until it’s over, he told himself.

“Your father is upset that he doesn’t want kids. And he wants to move abroad…” His mother was fretting, “That would be so far from us. His parent’s never mentioned any of those things.”

“I don’t want to move abroad either,” Beomgyu said hastily. He wasn’t lying, like Soobin had been. “I would miss you guys. And I wouldn’t be able to work at the company.”

“Mm. I know. Your father and I talked all of last night about it…”

She trailed off, not offering any more info, and Beomgyu’s heart pounded. He adjusted his towel over his shoulders, fidgeting with the hem.

“And?” he prompted.

“I don’t know, cub, his parents are so sweet and Yeonjun put in such a good word for him. I think we should give him a few more chances before making any rash decisions. Maybe we can change his mind on a few things—“

Beomgyu recoiled from his phone in shock, the towel over his back falling off.

“Yeonjun?” he said, sputtering, “what does Yeonjun have to do with this?”

His mother sounded reluctant to speak, like a kid caught with their hand in the candy jar. “Don’t worry about it, cub. Let’s just finish the next two meetings before we make a choice on the match, okay?”

“Mom,” he said. “What does Yeonjun have to do with this?”

Her breathing came out harsh through his phone’s speakers.

“Yeonjun was the one who gave us Soobin-ssi’s name,” she explained. “But—”

“He what?” Beomgyu screamed.

“Beomgyu!” she snapped. “Keep your voice down. He’s so good at these things, you know, him and Taehyun are such a perfect pair, and we knew he would know someone perfect for you. But I assure you that—”

Beomgyu couldn’t believe what he was hearing. All his blood rushed to his ears, a strong thump throughout his body.

“Yeonjun was the one who suggested this?”

“He told us about Soobin, yes. He said they were friends in high school. Soobin was such a good kid back then, according to him. Isn’t that sweet?”

Sweet Beomgyu’s ass.

“The matchmaker wasn’t the one to put us together?”

“They didn’t match you, no, but we still went to a matchmaker with his parents. You guys have one-hundred percent compatibility. The match is official. Don’t worry about that!”

Beomgyu’s jaw was on the floor. His whole face felt like it had been injected with lead. His phone suddenly felt too big for his hand, and he squeezed it tightly, afraid he was going to drop it.

“So… even though last night went badly, you aren’t calling off the match?” he asked, terrified of her answer.

“Beomgyu,” she said sternly. “We can’t do that. We… we should give him another chance. It would be rude for us to call it off after one date. His parents said very nice things about you.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” he said.

“Just…” She sounded like she was going to say something more, but then cut herself off, “just trust us, cub. Please. I promise things will get better. Soobin-ssi is a good kid, and a good alpha. Those things he talked about—I’ll speak to his parents. They’ll set his mind straight. Don’t worry.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Beomgyu’s problem was bigger than he’d thought. He needed to go to the bathroom. He had to throw up; he could feel it about to come out, for real this time.

Forget Soobin trying to kiss him. He’d already been freaking out about that while thinking that their match would be called off. But Beomgyu’s mother was so resistant, genuinely pushing back even though she knew now that Soobin was a bad choice, and there was no light at the end of the tunnel anymore.

One of those things was bad enough. But both of them together—what if Soobin was so caught up in his own head that he started wanting the match? What if he switched to their parent’s side? What could Beomgyu do then, other than go along with it?

Yeonjun. This was all Yeonjun’s fucking fault. He had to give Yeonjun a call—and pick out a grave for him.

“I have to go, mom,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’ll speak to you later. I love you.”

“Beomgyu—”

“I love you,” he said again, and hung up.

Yeonjun picked up on the second ring.

“For fuck’s sake, Beoms, I called you like five times last night and this morning. Where have you been? How did your dinner go?” Yeonjun asked. There was a lot of noise in the background, people chattering and the high, robotic voice of an announcer. He was on public transit. “Can you hear me?”

Beomgyu tried to speak and just made a wounded noise instead. He was so upset he could barely talk. When he tried again, all he could get out was, “Why did you do this to me?”

“Um. Hold on.” Yeonjun switched his phone to his other ear, a whisk of wind over the receiver. “What are you talking about?”

“You told my parents about Soobin,” Beomgyu choked. “You told them about him! They wouldn’t have gone to a matchmaker if you hadn’t given them a name to go off of! I thought—I thought they’d gone to one and we were put together, but you gave them his name! We wouldn’t be in this situation if it wasn’t for you!”

He was screaming, and while he wasn’t crying, it felt like he was about to. He rubbed at his face, so frustrated he didn’t know what to do with himself.

Yeonjun let out a shaky breath. He had no excuse. Why would he? Yeonjun knew all about how Beomgyu had spent years resisting his parent’s suggestions for him to mate. He knew how much Beomgyu hated the idea of being paired off by his parents.

He knew all that. He helped them anyway. To say Beomgyu felt betrayed was an understatement. He felt like his heart had just been ripped out.

“Beomgyu…”

“Does Soobin know?”

“How would he know?” Yeonjun countered, sounding exasperated. Beomgyu’s blood boiled. “Beomgyu, if you could just let me explain—”

Yeonjun wasn’t allowed to be annoyed at him! This was all his fucking fault!

Maybe this entire thing was just a blip on Yeonjun’s radar. But to Beomgyu, this was his entire fucking life. Yeonjun wasn’t allowed to be exasperated, not when he was speaking to Beomgyu. He could save that shit for his partner.

“I don’t know, I—” Beomgyu narrowly avoided biting his tongue in his attempts to speak. He didn’t have the vocabulary to explain how angry he was. “I can’t believe you, hyung.”

Yeonjun sighed. There was a shuffle of static, and then the creak of him sitting down, probably on his bed.

“I didn’t think they’d actually go through with it, Beoms,” Yeonjun said softly. “I just threw out his name so they’d stop bothering me. It’s not like I made the match myself.”

“They wouldn’t have—if you hadn’t given them a name to go off of, they would’ve just given up like every other time! You told me you didn’t tell them anything! You told me that!”

He covered his face with his hand. That explained why his parents abruptly decided to take initiative after years of gentle prodding. Yeonjun gave them a potential lead, all they had to do was follow up on it.

“I said that before I realised they were going to keep calling me if I didn’t tell them.” Yeonjun paused. “Beomgyu, I’m sorry, I didn’t think they’d go through with it. If I’d known they were going to contact his parents I wouldn’t ha—”

“Don’t,” Beomgyu snapped. He was going to burst if Yeonjun kept apologising. “I don’t want to hear it. You should have… you should’ve thought about this before you told them.”

Yeonjun didn’t respond for a moment, and Beomgyu tilted his head back, blinking away his angry tears.

He knew Yeonjun was sorry. Yeonjun wasn’t the type to relish in other people’s pain. Hearing Yeonjun’s shaky breath made him feel guilty, but he swallowed it down. He deserved to stew in his anger for a while.

All of his plans for the rest of his life could be upended because of this one lapse of judgement from Yeonjun. It was just a throwaway line from Yeonjun to get Beomgyu’s parents to leave him alone, but it was a lot more than that to Beomgyu.

“Alright,” Yeonjun said eventually. “I understand. Do you want me to leave you alone now?”

“Please,” Beomgyu said, voice cracking. He rolled onto his side, arms around his knees, and waited for the click of Yeonjun’s phone disconnecting before screaming into his pillow.

Me [11:04]
soobin
soobin
soobin

Me [3:38]
soobin
????????

Me [4:19]
please stop ignoring me
this is important
soobin

Me [8:27]
fuck you
i’m coming over

“What the hell?” was the first thing Soobin said when he opened the door.

Beomgyu, drenched from the rain and wearing only a thin jacket, shivered violently. He hadn’t checked the weather before he left his own apartment, and he’d been halfway to Soobin’s apartment from the closest subway stop when the torrential downpour began.

Soobin was in a pair of red and white pyjamas, embroidered with a blue accent and topped with a bunch of hair clips holding his bangs back. It was utterly adorable, but Beomgyu didn’t have the time to appreciate how the biggest alpha he’d ever met was wearing what seemed to be princess pyjamas. He was going to freeze if he stood in the air conditioned hallway for any longer.

“H—hi,” he stammered. Not on purpose, he was just so fucking cold. He wrapped his arms around himself, tentatively stepping into Soobin’s blissfully warm apartment. Soobin didn’t stop him. “I—I need to t—talk to you about something.”

He sniffled, congested, and lifted his chin to show Soobin he was serious.

Soobin gawked at him. Beomgyu tore his gaze away, puffing out his cheeks. He knew he didn’t look very assertive right now, but this was urgent.

“Holy shit, you’re freezing,” Soobin said, putting his hand over Beomgyu’s forehead. His body heat eased some of the chill on his skin, and Beomgyu struggled not to close his eyes and bask in it. Soobin’s touch made his heart pick up in pace, and he hated it. “Did you walk here?”

“O—of course not,” Beomgyu said. He wasn’t a marathon runner. “I took the s—subway, but it started raining while I was—” He shoved his face into his arm and sneezed abruptly, leaving him dizzy. He wavered on his feet.

“Oh my god, Beomgyu,” Soobin groaned. “Wait here, I’ll get you a towel and—I’ll make you some tea too, just hold on—”

Beomgyu had to suck back all his congestion to say, “You don’t have to—”

Soobin was already gone. Then he was back to throw a towel at Beomgyu’s face, and then he was gone again.

So apparently, Soobin wasn’t busy doing anything other than ignoring Beomgyu, since he just dropped everything to make Beomgyu tea. A bitter taste filled Beomgyu’s mouth, and he swallowed it down, breathing in harshly.

He waddled to the couch, and he was grateful that he was so congested he couldn’t smell Soobin’s scent on the furniture. He needed a clear mind for this. There were gears in his brain turning, and they didn’t have time to dwell on them being drunk and dumb.

Soobin returned with a cup of steaming hot tea, and he carefully placed it in Beomgyu’s hands, not letting go until Beomgyu’s fingers were wrapped around the handle.

“Beomgyu, look,” Soobin said, arms crossed over his chest. “About last night…”

“I don’t care about that,” Beomgyu said, waving him off with his free hand. He was no longer shivering, the heat from the tea taking away the biting edge from the cold. “I didn’t come here to talk about that. We were drunk, it doesn’t matter.”

Soobin gazed at him, expression unreadable. The corner of his lips dropped into a frown, but Beomgyu couldn’t tell what he was upset about—Beomgyu brushing him off, or Beomgyu not wanting to talk about it. Or both.

“What did you come here to talk about, then?”

Beomgyu buried his nose into his cup and let the warm air from the tea heat up his face, easing some of the tension in his throat.

“It’s about our match,” he said, his voice echoing inside of the cup.

“Our match?”

“Like…” Beomgyu set the tea down after taking a sip. “There are two ways to do matches. Do you know them?”

Soobin thought for a moment. “Aren’t they all done through matchmakers? That’s why it’s called match. We were matched together.” He squinted at Beomgyu. “... Right?”

“Well, yes, but it doesn’t necessarily have to go in that order,” Beomgyu said. He was jumping to some conclusions here, but between what his parents had said and the internet told him, he had a pretty solid guess as to what led up to them being matched. “Agencies usually match people together, that’s true. But you can also take two people to a matchmaker and ask if they’re compatible.”

“Which means…?”

“The only reason my parents went to your parents about us, and we got ‘matched’—” Beomgyu used quotation marks with one hand, “—is because they already had you in mind and wanted to see if they could make it work.”

“I… don’t really follow,” Soobin said.

“My parents are nosy, but they’re not usually so assertive about my personal life. They just make snide comments and—I’m sure you already understand. Anyway, I think they were asking some of our family about why I was still single, and Yeonjun,” he spat his name, “gave them yours.”

“He what?” Soobin choked, shoulders going stiff.

“He gave them your name, which then prompted my parents to contact yours, and then they gave our profiles to the matchmaker, and… we know the rest.”

“I haven’t even—we haven’t even talked in years,” Soobin said, dumbfounded. He sat down on the edge of the couch, hands under his thighs. “Yeonjun? Choi Yeonjun?”

Beomgyu nodded. “He’s my cousin.”

Idiot fucking cousin was his new title in Beomgyu’s head, but he didn’t think Soobin needed to hear the embellishment. And as angry as Beomgyu was, he felt bad for ragging on Yeonjun so much, when he was sure Yeonjun was making himself feel guilty enough already.

“Why would he…” Soobin shut his eyes, rubbing the crease between his brows with one hand. “So this match isn’t even real?”

“No, it is.” Beomgyu shook his head. He’d done plenty of research on this process when his parents first told him—alongside Taehyun—and it wasn’t legal to call something a match if it wasn’t made by a matchmaker. “But the only reason we were put forth as options for each other at all is because my parents approached yours and asked. Does that make sense?”

Soobin slumped against the back of the couch, head flopping against one of the pillows. He looked up at the ceiling and blinked a few times, then said simply, “I see.”

Beomgyu snorted, picking up his tea again. “Yeah. So. This changes everything.”

Soobin fell quiet for a second, and Beomgyu gave him time to work through his thoughts. He couldn’t tell if Soobin was hungover or not, but he was certainly overwhelmed.

“I mean, it’s not… ideal, but I don’t see how it changes anything,” Soobin said slowly, “in the end, the matchmaker still confirmed us as being ‘compatible’, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how my parents approached yours.” Beomgyu grit his teeth together. “My parents were the ones to bring it up, so it would be like, the biggest faux pas of all time for them to break it off, especially after two dates.”

Imagine if someone begged you for your son’s hand, then threw him aside after two dates? Yeah, Beomgyu would be pissed too.

Soobin listened to him speak, and then his eyes grew slightly wider. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. So it has to be your parents to call this off. I don’t know if there’s anything you could do that would bother my parents enough to piss yours off like that. Nothing that they wouldn’t end up hating you for,” Beomgyu said, biting the tip of his thumb nervously. “We need to make sure this next date with your parents goes horribly.” No pressure to him. Ha-ha.

“Horribly, but not too horrible,” Soobin said, groaning.

“Yes,” Beomgyu confirmed. “Horrible, but not so horrible they end up hating me. We just—I don’t know if we’ll have another chance, after this. Then, our only option would be to not listen to them, and—” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t want to fight with my parents like that. My dad holds grudges. Your parents have to call this off after the next date.”

“Mine too,” Soobin mumbled, chuckling humourlessly.

Beomgyu hummed solemnly. “We should go over what we’re going to say. I don’t know if we should go down the route of you agreeing with all the stupid shit I say, like I’m being a bad influence on you, or if you should disagree with everything, to drive home the point that we’ll be unhappy together…”

“Wait, Beomgyu.” Soobin’s fingers grazed the side of his shoulder, but then he pulled abruptly back. “Before we get into that, I—I really think we should talk about last night.”

Beomgyu shook his head. “Hyung, there’s nothing to talk about.” He looked over at Soobin, and found Soobin biting his nails, looking every bit as guilty as Yeonjun sounded earlier. “You… you still want to break this match off. Right?”

“Of course I do,” Soobin said quietly, “but—”

“No buts, then,” Beomgyu said. He slammed the cup down. “Whatever you want to talk about, we can do it after we’ve dealt with this. We can’t let them go through with this, hyung. We just—we just can’t.”

Soobin chewed on his lower lip. “... I understand.”

“Good,” Beomgyu said, chest swelling. “Good. Okay, I had some more questions about your parents—”

Taehyun [11:33]
hey

Me [11:54]
i don’t want to talk to him
i’m still angry

Taehyun [11:57]
i know
i’m here to check up on you

Me [12:03]
i’m whatever
i just want this to be over

Taehyun [12:05]
mhm
when is your next date? it’s with his parents right?

Me [12:07]
well it was supposed to be tomorrow
but they pushed it back another week

Taehyun [12:10]
a whole week? why?

Me [12:09]
how the hell would i know
every day that passes is another day our parents might decide to just ask us to mate right then and there
i’m so scared
taehyun

Taehyun [12:12]
it’ll be okay, hyung
just stay calm and don’t let your emotions get the best of you

Me [12:13]
yeah, well
maybe you should be telling that to soobin

Taehyun [12:15]
1. i don’t even know soobin
2. why?

Me [12:19]
because he fucking
ugh
it’s so stupid

Taehyun [12:19]
you sound like a teenager
“it’s sooo stupid~~~ >.<”

Me [12:20]
i don’t type like that
we got drunk the other day and for some reason he kissed me
and now he’s acting weird
that’s all

Taehyun [12:21]
uh
i’m going to guess that he’s probably acting weird because he kissed you

Me [12:23]
well he needs to fucking stop
and get his shit together

Taehyun [12:25]
maybe he’s having second thoughts?

Me [12:27]
no
no he’s not
he told me he’s not
i think he just feels awkward that he, you know, kissed me
and he doesn’t know how to react to his own drunken stupidity

Taehyun [12:28]
maybe be a bit kinder to him, hyung
he’s in this stressful situation too

Me [12:29]
i am being kind to him
the biggest kindness i can give him is to make sure he does his part so we can get out of this

Taehyun [12:30]
i guess so
but i have a question
if, theoretically, he did not regret kissing you
what would you do about it?

Me [12:31]
nothing?
why do i need to do anything about it
he was overwhelmed and i was right there
it doesn’t need to be a big deal
we can still be friends after

Taehyun [12:32]
that’s not really answering my question

Me [12:33]
that’s my answer
i like him a lot as a friend
but i would never
go through with this stupid match even if i was madly in love with him

Taehyun [12:34]
i don’t think that like
even if you did, again this is just theoretically, agree to go through with this match
it’s not some big statement on what your thoughts on the process are

Me [12:35]
it literally is though
i’d be a hypocrite if i went along with the matchmaking process when we all know it’s fucking stupid and archaic and a bullshit way of our parents generation exercising control over us because they think my personal life is a way for them to make connections for their fucking business

Taehyun [12:37]
so the main reason you’re upset he kissed you is because you don’t want this match to happen, not because you’re actually upset he kissed you?

Me [12:38]
now you’re just putting words into my mouth

Taehyun [12:39]
we all know you can get a little too far into your own head sometimes, hyung
just make sure you aren’t missing the obvious on purpose

Me [12:41]
and now you’re patronising me
go comfort yeonjun while he cries about how he’s almost fucked up my entire life

Taehyun [12:42]
hyung
come on

Me [12:43]
“come on”
yeah, no
i’ll talk to you later
bye

Soobin wasn’t answering Beomgyu’s calls.

Beomgyu attempted to call him after he spoke to Taehyun, to blow off steam and reassure himself that Soobin and him still had the same goal. Then he attempted to call him after work, in case Soobin had been busy the first time. Then he attempted to call him the next morning, and then the next evening, and then the next-next evening, and the next-next-next evening—

He wasn’t even answering Beomgyu’s texts. And for the past month and a half, they’d been texting every single day. Soobin had seemed fine, if anxious, when Beomgyu saw him the other day. So to go from texting everyday to nothing was incredibly jarring.

Was Soobin eating properly without Beomgyu’s reminders, or had he gone back to skipping dinner? Was he working all evening without Beomgyu forcing him to chat instead? How much of Soobin’s life had Beomgyu actually inserted himself in? Why was it so easy for Soobin to ignore him?

As embarrassing as it was to say, he just missed talking to Soobin. He missed their mundane chats about anime and the weather and other stuff that didn’t matter but made him smile anyway. He sent Soobin a few links to things that reminded Beomgyu of him, just to initiate conversation, to no avail. All his messages were left on seen.

He didn’t allow himself to dwell on Taehyun’s words at first, but after the fifth day of Soobin not responding to him, he began to worry that there was a kernel of truth in his accusation about Soobin’s feelings.

Beomgyu wasn’t arrogant enough to believe that anybody would fall for him until they said so themselves, but it tracked with Soobin’s behaviour. Being awkward after they kissed, avoiding him after Beomgyu reiterated his intentions. It wasn’t totally unreasonable to assume.

Truthfully, Beomgyu had no idea how he would react if that turned out to be the case. Maybe a part of him would be happy, because he really could see him and Soobin getting along in that way. He wasn’t completely ignorant; he had eyes, and the spark was bright. Soobin made him happy, and that was number one on Beomgyu’s list of things he looked for in a partner, the one he’d started building up long ago.

But his personal feelings on the subject didn’t matter. He’d said it time and time again—no matter who he got matched with, he refused to accept it. He could be in love with Soobin and he wouldn’t accept it. And he couldn’t look at Soobin without recalling everything that was resting on their shoulders. How could he entertain any feelings he had with that much pressure on him?

No matter what Taehyun or anyone else thought, their acceptance of this match was a statement. Like Soobin had said the first time they met, if they went through with this, what was stopping their parents from employing more and more control over them? If they let their parents pick their fucking partners, what would stop them from picking their jobs, their places to live, their clothes and what they ate and everything else?

It set a bad precedent. Maybe he was overreacting. But he refused to even take the chance.

He was just so, so afraid that this was going to end up going down the worst possible pathway, and it would end with his parents being disappointed in him, or worse, not talking to him at all. His parents loved him, and resenting him for not going along with it wasn’t rational.

But feelings weren’t always rational, and it was clear that his parents valued their business more than Beomgyu had once thought. They were already upset with him before this because he kept talking about leaving the company. If he were to ruin this connection for them, they would hate him. At least temporarily.

No, Soobin and him could stay friends after this, and their families had to stay civil. Nothing more, nothing less. That was the only option for him. He couldn’t entertain anything else or he would lose focus.

His phone reminded him the day before their dinner that his heat was coming. That explained why he was moodier than usual. Being aware of it didn’t make any of it easier to deal with, though; everything was pissing him off.

Taehyun called him, just to chat, and Beomgyu snapped that he was too busy to talk. Their conversation from last week was still on his mind, and even if Taehyun hadn’t insulted him or said anything rude, every time Beomgyu thought about it, he felt sick.

When had this become so damn complicated?

Tomorrow had to go well. He wasn’t sure what he would do with himself if it didn’t. The thought of their chances ticking further and further down terrified him. There was a tightness in his chest he couldn’t get rid of. Somewhere in the middle of the night, he broke into cold sweat in bed and threw all his sheets off to air out his body.

He went to text Soobin in the morning one last time, before he started what he knew would be a too-long day, only to find that Soobin had messaged him overnight.

sorry, i’ve been sick. i’ll be fine for tonight. don’t worry.

Sick? Soobin had been sick? How convenient, that he had been sick and felt better the exact day they were going to have dinner with his parents. It was almost like he hadn’t been sick at all and was just ignoring Beomgyu! Ha-ha. Hilarious. And he had the audacity to tell Beomgyu not to worry, as if Beomgyu hadn’t been worried out of his fucking mind all week.

He screamed out his window for ten seconds then slumped against the wall, head in his hands.

He had no choice but to trust Soobin. They were still in this together. But no matter how many times he reassured himself that Soobin wanted out of this just as much as he did, it never sounded right in his head. Maybe because he didn’t know what himself wanted anymore.

Beomgyu packed heat pads in his bag just in case. He was stressed out of his fucking mind, and he couldn’t disregard the idea that his heat might start out of nowhere. Beomgyu’s life was normally mundane and routine—he liked routine. All of this new stuff could bring his heat early. His doctor told him to stay out of stressful situations during his pre-heat for a reason.

Unfortunately, he had a feeling tonight would be stressful no matter how it went. But ideally, it would be the good kind of stressful. He was pumped up with adrenaline, his whole body jittery from nerves. The air was full of his sweat and his body felt sticky underneath his clothing, to the point where he ended up taking off his shirt while waiting to leave.

He had to call Yeonjun to do his makeup for him because he couldn’t hold his eyeliner without his hand shaking and smearing it everywhere.

“Just so you know, this doesn’t mean I forgive you,” Beomgyu said when Yeonjun walked in.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Yeonjun said. “Let’s go, you only have two hours.”

“‘Only’ two hours?”

“Good makeup takes time, baby.”

“Ew, don’t call me the same nicknames as Taehyun!”

The process of applying makeup with Yeonjun was an intimate one; the alpha took things slow, meticulously picking out the perfect colours for Beomgyu’s skin tone, wiping off and reapplying different types of blush until he found one he liked.

It ended up only taking an hour to do, which was fifty minutes longer than it would’ve taken him if he’d done it himself. After seeing the results in the mirror, though, Beomgyu had to admit that it had been an hour well spent. The shimmer of black eyeliner ran out from the corner of his eyes, and his lip gloss was slightly smudged, making his lips appear bigger.

He touched his mouth in awe, looking at his face from different angles.

“Impressed?” Yeonjun asked, smug.

“I think I look too good,” Beomgyu said. “I’m trying to get them to toss me out, not want me even more.”

“I’m sure your personality will make up for how pretty you are,” Yeonjun laughed. Beomgyu whipped around to scowl at him. “By the way, is your heat coming soon?”

Beomgyu went to bite his lip out of nerves, but stopped himself before he could mess up the gloss Yeonjun had so carefully applied. “Yeah. Why, can you tell?”

Yeonjun nodded. “You smell sweeter than usual.”

Family members were already desensitized to each other’s scents, so he had to be pretty close to his heat, if Yeonjun was picking up on it. Beomgyu cursed himself and his body inwardly. At least he wasn’t leaking yet, so he couldn’t be that close. If it came tomorrow, whatever, he could take the day off work. He just needed it to not come tonight.

Yeonjun leaned closer and sniffed the top of his head. “Maybe put two scent suppressants on, just in case.”

“They’ll just fall off. They don’t stick that well on top of each other.”

Yeonjun looked around Beomgyu’s tiny room, searching for something, before his eyes landed on a black collar sitting on Beomgyu’s windowsill. He snatched it and held it up to Beomgyu’s neck, observing how it looked with his outfit.

“They should stay if they’re being held down by something.”

Beomgyu hated when Yeonjun was right, but it was a good idea, and within five minutes there were two scent suppressant patches stuck to the back of Beomgyu’s neck, stuck firmly in place by the thin black collar wound around his throat.

It made his outfit look slightly less formal and a little more slutty, drawing the eyes towards his unmarked throat. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing when Soobin’s parents were so conservative. It helped offset how pretty his face was without being too overt.

“I’ll drive you there,” Yeonjun said. Beomgyu said one word and Yeonjun interrupted him, “I’m not busy tonight, don’t worry. You aren’t imposing on me. I’ll drop you off, then go pick up Taehyunnie, and then we’ll can just wait in the parking lot for you guys to finish. We’ll play cards or something.”

“Usually, we... me and him are supposed to go home together,” Beomgyu said feebly. He felt bad for monopolizing Yeonjun’s evening.

“Do you really think that’s going to happen when you guys haven’t spoken in a week?” Yeonjun asked, levelling Beomgyu with a stern look. Beomgyu’s lips stayed tightly shut. He didn’t need the reminder. He was the one suffering. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Just let me do this, okay? Consider it me trying to make up for partially causing all this in the first place.”

Beomgyu sighed. “Alright. Thank you, hyung.”

“Don’t mention it,” Yeonjun said. He took out his phone and his lips twisted to the side. “We should get going soon. Better to be early than late.”

Beomgyu let out a little huff of air. Suddenly, he was finding it hard to breathe, and all of his nerves from before came back all at once tenfold. He was more afraid of his incoming heat, now; his brain wouldn’t stop replaying Soobin saying he was sensitive to scents, over and over.

He thought about how Soobin had breathed his scent in when they kissed, how he had lapped at Beomgyu’s mouth like he was the best thing he’d ever tasted, and it made his stomach turn over. They were trying to break this match, not give into it. He had to keep reminding himself of that—not of Soobin kissing him.

There was a near-zero chance of Soobin being able to smell him in public with two scent suppressant patches on, but he couldn’t help worrying. He would be crazy not to worry. Worrying showed that he cared.

He found his bag by the door and shoved extra scent suppressants into his bag, because why not. It was already full of heat pads. At this rate, it’d become a first aid kit. He tossed in Tylenol too, for good measure. Why not.

Everything rested on tonight. Everything. He might as well prepare for the worst.

Yeonjun looked into his bag and raised his brows at him, amused. Beomgyu just shrugged, trying to hide his anxiety through nonchalance.

“Things will be fine, Beomgyu,” he said, ruffling Beomgyu’s hair in a cautious way only a professional model could—affectionate, without messing up the style. “They always have a way of working themselves out, when it comes to you.”

Beomgyu loitered outside the restaurant for fifteen minutes, waiting for Soobin to arrive so he could interrogate him and reassure himself that they were still in each other’s good books. After fifteen minutes passed, his phone buzzed—with a text from Yeonjun, telling him to just go inside already.

He waited another five minutes and then did so. There was someone a head taller than the booth sitting stiffly in the back, and Beomgyu almost swore out loud. Every other time they’d waited for each other before going in, except this one?

Now Beomgyu just felt like an idiot. His expression soured and he had to quickly fix it when he rounded the corner to the booth, plastering a smile on his face for Soobin’s parents.

“Oh my gosh,” Soobin’s mother gasped. “Beomgyu-ssi, you look beautiful!”

Beomgyu was getting used to the excessive compliments that came from these dates, but he still flushed when Soobin looked over, appraising him.

“Thank you,” he said, bowing. “I’m very hungry, so I’m excited to eat.”

“This place has excellent food,” Soobin’s father said, “you won’t be disappointed.”

No, but you will be, Beomgyu thought. Hopefully.

Beomgyu was forced into the seat beside Soobin, and he wasn’t oblivious to how Soobin turned away from him, legs pointed in the other direction. Beomgyu huffed under his breath and gave him a sharp look, one that Soobin ignored.

Whatever. As long as Soobin did his job tonight, Beomgyu could deal with Soobin being childish. He forced a wider smile to his parents and launched into conversation, pulling out all of the notes he’d made in his mind. He knew what he had to do; he just needed to do it.

Straddling the line between being annoying and rude was difficult, but he’d gotten better at it since their first date a month and a half ago. The whole point was to be someone his parents didn’t want their son dating, while being so sweet and pathetic at the same time that they couldn’t hate him. If there was one thing Beomgyu was good at, it was being sweet and pathetic. It had always been a talent of his.

His leg was shaking under the table, jostling it every so often, but his body was coursing with ideas and all the preparation he’d done, and he was able to fire off conversation like his answers were natural and not canned. He was proud of himself for being able to surpass how quiet and brooding Soobin was being, and he giggled inside whenever Soobin’s parent’s faces flashed with concern or surprise.

Their food came, and everything was going well. Until suddenly Soobin dropped his chopsticks and joined them.

Beomgyu wanted Soobin to talk with them. Their plan was more effective if Soobin showed subtle signs of discomfort, to drive home the point that he didn’t want Beomgyu around, consciously or otherwise. Except that’s not what Soobin was doing. In fact, Soobin was doing the exact opposite.

They were discussing paternity leave rights for alphas, something which Soobin’s parents firmly opposed, and Soobin joined Beomgyu’s side, pulling academic receipts out of his brain and explaining the science of why Beomgyu was correct in a manner that had both his parents nodding in agreement by the end of it.

Beomgyu was too stunned to move. He stared at Soobin blankly, all of his words going through one Beomgyu’s ears and right out the other. He was hearing what Soobin said, but he was so confused that he didn’t register any of it until Soobin was wiping his mouth and standing up, “That was an interesting chat. I need to go to the bathroom, I’ll be right back.”

His elbow nudged Beomgyu’s as he moved, and Beomgyu was jolted out of his thoughts like he’d been hit with a hammer. His chest felt two sizes too small for his heart, and he squeezed his chopsticks in his hand so hard it splintered.

“I need to go to the bathroom as well,” he said hastily, before Soobin’s parents could speak. He grabbed his bag off the floor. “Sorry.”

He raced towards the bathroom sign, and turned down the hallway marked with the alpha symbol. The door swung open to reveal Soobin splashing water on his face, and they blinked at each other, Soobin bent over and Beomgyu squaring his shoulders.

“Soobin,” he said, taking a step forward. Soobin stepped backwards in return. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“This isn’t the right bathroom,” Soobin said.

Wrong answer. Beomgyu laughed hysterically, hand clutching his stomach. “What the fuck are you doing? Why are you—you aren’t supposed to make them agree with me! We’re supposed to be making them disagree!”

“Beomgyu-yah—”

“Don’t Beomgyu-yah me!” he hissed, stomping his foot to shut him up. It worked. “You ignore me for a week and then we go to dinner and you pull this shit? This is our—this could be our last chance and you—”

“I told you,” Soobin said feebly. He wiped his face, getting his sleeve wet. His cheeks were splotchy red, glistening from the cold water. “I was sick.”

“How convenient,” Beomgyu drawled.

Soobin frowned, and his hands balled into fists by his side. Not intimidating at all. Beomgyu still thought he was the least intimidating alpha in the world, even now.

“I was just being honest,” he said. “I think alphas should get more paternity leave. Don’t you agree?”

“I—” They weren’t literally debating any of these subjects. They were acting. “Of course I agree, but this isn’t about what you or I think, it’s about making them think something!”

Soobin picked at his nail, gaze cast on the floor. “So we both agree on this subject.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” Beomgyu said, and both his voice and anger were growing. “This isn’t real. We are not holding a real conversation with them. We’re trying to get them to break the match!”

“But think about it,” Soobin said softly, “whenever we’re both telling the truth, we agree on everything. That’s why we got matched together. We have similar views, similar hobbies.”

“So?”

“So… why would you rather lie and pretend we don’t get along?” Soobin asked. “Isn’t it less effort to just be ourselves, and not pretend?”

Beomgyu slapped his palm to his forehead. He took a deep breath, but it felt like no air was entering his lungs.

“What the fuck are you saying, Soobin.”

“I’m saying, I think it’s pretty silly to pretend to be totally incompatible just so they’ll break off this match, when we’re really the exact opposite.” His voice was soft, the total opposite of Beomgyu’s. Beomgyu could feel his rising higher, breaking in the middle.

“That’s not what we agreed on,” he said. His jaw was so tense it stung his cheeks. “We agreed to act because we agreed that this process is stupid and morally wrong! You—you’re the one who said that to me the very first time we met!”

“I do think it’s stupid, but…” Soobin bit the inside of his cheek. “Maybe there is some merit to it, if it brought us such a good thing. I don’t know. I just don’t feel good about lying anymore.”

“What good thing?” Beomgyu asked, baffled.

Soobin looked up at him. His eyes were dark, almost withering. “You know what I mean, Beomgyu.”

“No, I don’t,” he said stubbornly.

“You do.”

“You’re making this up in your head!”

“You keep pinning this on me,” Soobin said, and he stopped hunching over to stand properly, so he could look down on Beomgyu. Beomgyu pursed his lips, challenging him. “But all you keep doing is talking about the match. You haven’t said once that you don’t like me.”

“I—” Beomgyu couldn’t remember how to speak. “My feelings don’t matter here. This isn’t about our fucking relationship, hyung, this is about not letting our parents have control over us.”

Soobin’s mouth thinned, and for all of one second Beomgyu felt smug over having gotten through to him, until he said, “I’m scared, Beomgyu. I’m scared that you like me but you’ll never admit it because you’re so fixated on being the opposite of what they expect from us, and I don’t know what to do.”

Beomgyu’s breathing quickened, but his attempts to slow it down just made it worse. He was panting from anger.

“You—” He rubbed his face with both his hands. “Fucking—do you even hear yourself? You want to keep this stupid match because you’re infatuated with me? You’re going to throw away your morals because we kissed once?”

Soobin glared. “You’re insulting yourself here, you know.”

“I know!” Beomgyu hissed. “I’m not worth going through with this. You aren’t worth it. Nobody is worth it!”

“I’m not even saying we shouldn’t try to get it broken, I’m just saying maybe we shouldn’t be going out of our way to trick and lie to our parents—”

“I don’t see you suggesting a better idea!”

Soobin’s nostrils flared. “I don’t have a better idea! But I… I think I got caught up in it too, trying to prove something to them, and—”

“Then let’s get the match broken and deal with this after!”

“—you keep talking about morals, but we’re literally trying to manipulate them instead of talking it out and trying to fix the root problem,” Soobin continued on, ignoring him, “even if we broke this match, who’s to say they wouldn’t just find us another? If you really want to break the cycle, you’re not going to get through to them like this.”

Beomgyu bit his tongue, and the blood made him choke, eyes watering.

“I don’t understand you,” he said, closing his eyes, blocking out all of the unnecessary sensation around him. He couldn’t handle this. “This is for both of our benefits.”

“You aren’t listening to me,” Soobin said, begging. Beomgyu heard every word Soobin said, he just didn’t agree with them. “I’m not saying we should go along with the match. But I think we’re doing it the wrong way.”

“What’s the right way?”

Soobin didn’t respond, and Beomgyu forced his eyes open, squinting to see him through the curtain of frustrated tears in his eyes.

“Just answer this,” Soobin said shakily, “if we didn’t have this matching thing hanging over our heads, if it was just us, would you like me?”

It tugged on Beomgyu’s heartstrings to hear him so upset, but he reeled his own emotions back in, lip wobbling. This wasn’t about him liking Soobin or not. Why didn’t Soobin understand that?

“Soobin, our feelings here don’t matter—”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been saying this whole time, is that you wish they’d listen to our feelings? How do your feelings not matter?” Soobin ran his hands through his hair. “Just answer, Beomgyu. Please.”

Beomgyu crossed his arms, clenching his fists. His voice was quiet as he answered, “Yes.”

“Okay,” Soobin breathed. “Then—we should tell them that. We should tell them that we like each other, and that we want more time to figure it out between ourselves. If we can get the match broken, and be together...”

“We can’t get the fucking match broken and be together at the same time, hyung.” Beomgyu was choked up, and he found it hard to speak. Thank god for the extra scent suppressants Yeonjun had made him wear, because he didn’t even begin to think about how intense his scent was underneath the patches. Enough to make an alpha go feral. “They want us to be together. They’re going to take it as a success. Don’t you see that? What happened to being your own person?”

“Then we can explain to them that it was our choice. But this match—our parents—didn’t make me fucking fall for you, Beomgyu. And I don’t think anybody made you fall for me either.”

“Oh, give me a break,” Beomgyu mumbled. He meant for it to come out harsher than it actually did. He felt like a cornered animal, flinging anything within reach at Soobin to buy himself time to digest Soobin’s words. “There are lots of other pretty omegas out there. Your best friend is one. You aren’t in love with me. Don’t act like you are.”

“Oh my god, you can’t seriously be bringing that up again,” Soobin said, jaw dropping. “I never said I was in love with you. But do you make me feel things nobody else does? Yeah. You do. Even now—” He snorted. “I don’t think anybody has made me this angry in years.”

“Lucky me.” Beomgyu used his shirt to wipe his face.

Soobin shook his head. Beomgyu still couldn’t figure out what his expression meant, whether it was the same frustration Beomgyu was feeling, or something else. But he looked distraught, as distraught as Beomgyu felt, like Beomgyu was breaking his heart, even though Beomgyu was fighting for both of them.

“You don’t need to look so sad,” Soobin said, huffing and smiling, though it wasn’t a happy smile. “Are you upset because you don’t want me? Or because you don't want this match?”

Beomgyu wasn't making sense to himself either. He was just upset. “I don’t want this match. With you, or anyone.”

“Okay, then, we can break this match together. But we can do it in a different way, without going behind their backs like this.”

“... Rich words from someone who was more than happy to lie before,” Beomgyu said.

“Am I not allowed to change my mind?” Soobin sighed, hand on his hip. “The stakes are higher now. I thought about it a lot. I didn’t come to this conclusion yesterday. All I’m saying is, I don’t want to lie to them anymore. Just because they’re being shitty people doesn’t mean we have to be.”

Beomgyu shook his head. Soobin’s words made him feel ill, but he didn’t know how to respond anymore. More than anything, he thought that he just felt betrayed by Soobin changing his mind without warning, and his heart was still an open wound from finding out about Yeonjun.

“Lying doesn’t automatically make me a shitty person,” he mustered up. “I’m doing this for our own good, you don’t even have a plan to get us out of this. But I do.”

“Then you can lie on your own, and I’ll be myself.”

“Don’t pin this shit all on me!” Beomgyu yelled. “Think about all the ridiculous expectations your parents have forced on you before—do you really want to give them more reason to—”

A knock on the door, and they both gasped. Soobin took a step closer, arm thrown in front of Beomgyu protectively, and Beomgyu was about to snap at him for it until he saw who it was.

“Soobin,” Soobin’s mother said. Her eyes slid to Beomgyu, and Beomgyu shrunk behind Soobin’s body. “Beomgyu-ssi.”

“Mom,” Soobin said, voice wavering. “How—how much of that did you hear?”

“Enough,” she answered, clipped. She had her phone in her hand, and her grip around it was so tight her knuckles were going white. “Soobin, we’re going home. Don’t worry, this date is cancelled.”

Beomgyu had a bad feeling. Beomgyu had a horrible, horrible feeling, and he grabbed onto Soobin’s arm, lowering it.

“Miss, I—”

“Beomgyu-ssi,” she snapped, and he quickly stopped talking, terrified. “I… I don’t even know what to say. We were so impressed by you before, and now to find out that you were trying to lie and scheme to us—” She sounded genuinely hurt, and Beomgyu took in shallow breaths, just trying to keep himself upright. “I don’t know what to say. I need to speak to your parents.”

“Mom,” Soobin said. “Wait, can we just talk for—”

“No, Soobin. We’re not talking. We’re going home.” She marched over and took Soobin’s arm from Beomgyu’s grasp, pulling him away. For the first time, Beomgyu felt that her presence was overwhelmingly alpha, and he understood why Soobin said he’d grown up with a view of alphas being domineering.

Soobin looked over his shoulder at Beomgyu, panicked, but Beomgyu didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t move, legs jelly and barely supporting his weight, but even if he could, he didn’t know what to do.

The last thing Beomgyu saw before the door slammed shut was Soobin’s wide eyes begging for him to do something. But Beomgyu didn’t know what to do.

He didn’t know what to do.

His brain was empty of thoughts, and he stood there for ages, listening to the clock in the corner tick by. Beomgyu spent every moment on edge that the door would open again, even though he technically had the power to leave at any time.

Was it over? Was their match done for now? Soobin’s mother had seemed really, really angry. But for some reason, Beomgyu wasn’t as happy about it as he thought he’d be. Were his parents going to be upset with him? Was Soobin upset with him too? What the fuck just happened?

He needed to sit down. He needed to speak to Yeonjun, and Taehyun, and… he needed to get out of here, first of all.

He took a step towards the door and stopped dead in his tracks, one foot in front of the other. There was something wet trickling down his inner thigh, released by his sudden movement, and he was torn between laughing and crying.

Thank god he’d brought those heat pads. He scurried to the omega bathroom and ripped one open, shoving it into his underwear. But going into heat seemed like the least of his problems now.

Beomgyu’s list of criteria he looked for in a partner wasn’t overly long or specific, but each point was important to him. If his partner didn’t check most of them off, they were done for. Each box was equally as important to him.

One of those points was that his partner would help him through his heats. Not physically—though that sounded nice too—but emotionally. Beomgyu was already an emotional mess on a good day. His experience with going into heat was like going on a rollercoaster where every loop sent him hurtling upside down before he landed and did the whole thing over again.

Soobin checked off a lot of Beomgyu’s criteria, except that one. Of course, Beomgyu didn’t expect him to, and he would’ve been incredibly weirded out had Soobin showed up on his doorstep declaring that he was here to help Beomgyu through his heat.

Beomgyu would’ve sent him away and marked him off as a creep, using it as proof that he had no reason to like Soobin, that he was right for brushing Soobin off.

But Soobin was smarter than that, and much sweeter. He was the sweetest alpha Beomgyu had ever met, metaphorically and literally. So he should’ve known that Soobin would find a way to be Beomgyu’s ideal type without falling into the trap Beomgyu had set for him.

“Wow, your place is so clean!” A voice that Beomgyu was getting increasingly familiar with said. “It’s way nicer than Soobin hyung’s apartment. And it smells so good in here! Is that your scent or something else?”

“Air freshener,” Beomgyu mumbled. He eyed Kai warily as he puttered around Beomgyu’s apartment, carrying plastic bags full of… god knows what. Stuff that was supposed to help with Beomgyu’s heat. If there were sex toys in there, Beomgyu was going to strangle him. “Kai—”

“You should link me what it is, I have to get it for my apartment too,” Kai barrelled on, either oblivious or uncaring about Beomgyu’s attempted interruption. “Where do you keep your bowls?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to heat the soup up for you, silly,” Kai said. He was carefully avoiding meeting Beomgyu’s eyes, probably because he knew Beomgyu was staring straight at him like he was a spilled box of puzzle pieces that he couldn’t solve. “I know you won’t eat much during your heat, but I want to make sure you get something in you before I leave.”

Soobin once told him Kai was shy, and Beomgyu had a feeling that if Kai saw how unappreciative Beomgyu currently was, the younger omega would crumble from nerves. He was putting on such a brave face in front of Beomgyu, bossing him around and peer pressuring him into eating. He wondered what Soobin had said to convince Kai to come here and do all of this with such enthusiasm. He wondered if that meant that Soobin wasn’t upset with him.

“You really don’t have to do that,” Beomgyu said, being sincere. “Like, you really do not have to do that.”

“I want to,” Kai said gently. “I heard you don’t have many omega friends. Let me help.”

Beomgyu rolled his eyes. He was so glad to know that Soobin was saying such nice things about him—that he couldn’t take care of himself and he had no friends. Was that why Kai was so eager to help him? He thought Beomgyu was a charity case?

“... They’re in the top cabinet to the right of the stove.”

“Great!” Kai chirped. “Just sit down and go back to what you were doing. I’ll be like, five minutes.”

Yeah, right. If Kai was gone in five minutes, Beomgyu would eat a sock. There was no way. He’d mentally buckled himself up to an afternoon of interrogation the moment he opened the door and saw Kai standing there.

Now that he saw Kai with his own two eyes, he remembered when they were in high school together—though, still, to say they had been friends would be an extreme overstatement. More like they travelled in similar circles, which was easy to do when they were the only rich kids at their neighbourhood school.

And Kai looked really, really different. Like, worlds apart different from how he did as a kid. He stood a solid three or four centimetres taller than Beomgyu, for one. And honestly, Beomgyu would have mistaken him for an alpha if he didn’t know better, with his broad build and handsome face. His disposition was so stereotypically omega, however, that once it clicked that Kai was indeed Soobin’s adorable, sweet, perfect omega best friend, that familiar jealousy crept back up on him, and he felt ill over his own thoughts.

He had no reason to believe Kai’s intentions were to do anything other than help him, but he was less than a few hours away from going into the throes of his heat, and being around the omega he’d been trying to ignore the existence of over the past few weeks made him feel weird inside. Gross, and icky, like he was one of those catty side characters in a drama, the ones who couldn’t stand to see the female lead succeed.

Ridiculous, when Soobin had essentially confessed to him before being forcibly dragged away by his mother. But he couldn’t help it. It was the pre-heat omega in him. Or maybe he was just a bitch.

He hadn’t heard from Soobin since last night, though he didn’t expect to either. Whether Soobin was ignoring him or simply too busy dealing with the fallout of their argument to message him, he doubted Soobin wanted to speak to him right now. And quite frankly, Beomgyu didn’t want to speak to him either, so that suited him just fine.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to speak to Soobin in general—no, he already longed for Soobin's silly texts again—but because he didn’t know how to respond to everything Soobin revealed to him.

His brain was all mush from his incoming heat and the flurry of emotions he’d been slapped with over the past twenty-four hours. He’d spent so long fighting for this match to be broken, now that it finally was gone, he didn’t know how to act. The rest of his night had been spent crying in his room into Taehyun’s shoulder, purely from how overwhelmed he was. He needed time to internalise what Soobin had said.

Well, much of what Soobin said was irrelevant now—his mother had texted him this morning telling him that the match was off and that they could talk once his heat was over. But everything else Soobin had said, about their feelings, he needed to mull over. Outside of the rest of their situation, he couldn’t pinpoint how even felt about that. So it seemed like a good place to start. He just hoped Soobin didn’t hate him for talking back.

Not that he had much coherent time left in him. Three hours, max, and Kai was likely going to take up most of those three hours. He took his sweet time in Beomgyu’s kitchen, making the soup on the stove instead of in the microwave, and Beomgyu was too polite to do anything other than watch and accept that Kai had invaded his home.

Beomgyu sighed to himself. He just wanted to curl up in bed and stop existing for a bit. Without his heat, without the pressure of their match—or their lack of match now, and without Soobin. Though the phrase without Soobin brought him more grief than anything. He wanted the match gone, not Soobin, though in hindsight, he might’ve accidentally started conflating those two as the same somewhere along the way.

He held his blanket over his shoulders, shivering. A cold flash passed through his body, yet another sign that his heat was imminent. He wondered if Soobin’s pheromones had an effect on him last night when they were huddled in the bathroom together, even though he hadn’t been able to smell him.

There was a part of him that was constantly in denial about his own situation that tried to claim everything he felt for Soobin could be chalked up to pheromones, but if he was being truly honest with himself, he knew that wasn’t the case.

No pheromones could make him look forward to seeing a text from Soobin, or hearing his deep, sleepy voice over the phone. Those things existed independently of their match and their biological connection or whatever it was that made their scents taste so sweet to each other.

Kai dragged him to the kitchen and sat him down on one of the stools, before promptly holding out a bowl of soup out for him, the tips of his thumbs touching the rim of the bowl.

“Um, here you go,” Kai said, giving Beomgyu a nervous look. “I hope it helps your stomach. I always get bad stomach aches before my heats.”

Beomgyu saw the exact moment their eyes met and Kai faltered. Beomgyu couldn’t let Kai think he did anything wrong. It wasn’t Kai that he was upset at, and Kai was… misguided, but trying to help.

He took the bowl and pressed the spoon to his lips, blowing on it. “It smells good,” he said encouragingly.

It didn’t actually smell like anything to him, with how heat-hazed his mind was, but he was sure it would taste good. Fucking up canned soup would be an impressive skill.

Kai gave him a wry smile. “Can I have some too? Making it made me a bit hungry…” he said, scratching his cheek.

“You made it,” Beomgyu pointed out. “Take what you want.”

Kai brightened, and quickly fixed himself a bowl. Beomgyu waited until he sat down before trying it.

He inhaled deeply through his nose as he took his first sip of the warm soup; it was clear that Kai had bought the expensive stuff just from the first taste. Maybe even fresh soup rather than canned like he’d thought. It tasted like fresh cream with just enough spices that it didn’t overwhelm.

“Is it good?” Kai asked, stirring his spoon around in circles. His lip curled inwards, listening intently for Beomgyu’s response.

“It’s good,” Beomgyu confirmed, taking another sip, louder this time. “Try it.”

Kai grinned, and the corners of his eyes disappeared. He was cute, like a really, really big puppy, and Beomgyu tried not to let his soup suddenly taste bitter with the knowledge that Kai had only come here on Soobin’s behest. They weren’t friends.

They ate in silence, the sound of their spoons clinking against the side of the bowl filling the air. Kai finished his first, before Beomgyu had even finished half of his.

“Sorry, I’ll just clean up while you eat,” Kai said sheepishly. “I… yeah. I was hungry. Sorry.”

Beomgyu reached for Kai’s sleeve. “Kai. Sit back down. It’s okay.”

“But, the dishes…”

“Sit back down,” he said, more firmly, and Kai hurried to listen, knees pressed together as he wedged himself on the too-tiny stool. “Why did you come here?”

Kai looked over at him, his arms curled around himself. “Soobin hyung asked me to,” he said, then added, “duh.”

Beomgyu laughed. Duh was right. “Okay, but why did you listen?”

“He said you seemed upset, and I was worried,” Kai murmured. “Going through heats alone really sucks. I just wanted to help.”

It was impossible for Beomgyu to be upset when Kai was so earnest. Fuck, they didn’t even know each other, and Kai had come all the way here.

“You don’t have to—”

“And,” Kai said, shaking his head to show Beomgyu he had more to say. Beomgyu’s brows rose, but he listened. “And I came to tell you something important.”

“Something important,” Beomgyu repeated. He had no idea what that could be, not from Kai, who he didn’t know. “Yes?”

“It’s… it’s about Soobin hyung.” From the way Kai was speaking, Soobin didn’t know Kai was revealing this information to him. He looked guilty, eyes flickering everywhere. “It’s important.”

“You said that already,” Beomgyu said, though not unkindly. He was just afraid Kai was going to pass out from anxiety in his kitchen if he didn’t get it out already. “What is it? Is he—is he mad at me?”

“Mad at—no! No, hyung, not at all,” Kai said, shaking his head. “You went to his apartment last week, right?”

Beomgyu had to think back to answer Kai’s question. “It was more like two weeks ago now, but yeah. Why...?”

Kai nodded, as if confirming the information in his head. “And you know that he was sick last week?”

Beomgyu snorted. “He told me he was, yes, but—was he actually sick?” He’d been so sure that Soobin lied to him.

“Kinda,” Kai said, cautious of his wording. “He went into rut.”

“Oh.”

What was Beomgyu supposed to say to that?

“But it wasn’t just any rut, it was… it was triggered because of you,” Kai whispered, playing with his hands. “Did he ever tell you that he’s really sensitive to scents?” Beomgyu nodded, dumbfounded. “You got your scent all over his apartment, and it sent him into rut.”

Beomgyu was aware of the effect alpha and omega’s scents had on each other, but he’d been in Soobin’s apartment for a grand total of ten hours over two days. It seemed incomprehensible to him that his faint scent had triggered such a huge reaction in him.

“Why didn’t he just tell me? He—you know that when he told me he was sick, I didn’t believe him, because—well, it just sounded like a lame excuse, honestly,” Beomgyu said, stumbling over his words.

“That’s what I’m here to tell you,” Kai said, sighing. “He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. I kept telling him he should just tell you, else you’d think he was ignoring you, but…”

“Of course I would!” Beomgyu sputtered.

“Exactly, hyung. So I told him to tell you, but he said he was afraid of fucking things up between you guys, and I—I guess I just need you to know that he really, really likes you.” Kai spoke all in one breath, panting like he’d rehearsed his words. “I don’t know what’ll happen between you guys and your parents, but he really likes you, and I could be totally wrong here but from what he and Taehyun said, you like him too, and—”

Beomgyu thought he heard wrong for a second. “What? You’re friends with Taehyun?”

Kai tilted his head, owl-eyed. “Yes…?” he said slowly, “didn’t you already know that?”

Was he supposed to? He combed through his recent conversations with Taehyun in his head, but all he could remember was Taehyun mentioning they used to be friends when they were younger. Nothing about them speaking recently. Then again, he’d been so caught up in his own head lately, it wasn’t totally out of the question to think he might’ve missed something obvious.

“Uh, yeah, I just forgot,” Beomgyu said awkwardly. He would deal with that later. “Keep going.”

Kai fisted in his hands on his lap, lips pursed. “I don’t have anything else to say,” he said. “I just wanted you to know he wasn’t lying when he said he was sick. Or… he was, but he did it because he was trying to protect you from… I dunno. Himself. It’s silly. But he wasn’t ignoring you.”

Beomgyu buried his face in his hands. What was he supposed to do with that information now? On the verge of his heat, having no idea what the fuck was going on with Soobin. It seemed a little too late.

“How is he right now?”

“He’s fine, I think…” Kai didn’t sound very certain in his own words. “His parents are really mad at him. I don’t know what’s happened since this morning. Things have probably changed.”

“Do you know why they’re mad?”

“He said it’s because his mom overheard you guys saying you were trying to trick them or something.” Kai glanced at Beomgyu, eyes wide and a little curious. “And that you guys thought they didn’t care about you. Is that true?”

“... Something like that,” Beomgyu confirmed. “So they really are mad?”

“Oh, yeah. Like, super mad.” Kai tapped his finger against his lips. “I think it’ll blow over eventually. Have you spoken to your parents yet?”

“I told them my heat came,” Beomgyu said. It hadn’t been the whole truth, when his heat was still a few hours off, but he had been too afraid to speak to them properly. “So they’ll leave me alone for a few days.”

“That’s a good thing though, isn’t it?” Kai smiled at him tentatively. “If they were super mad at you, they would’ve called you, or come here themselves. Since they’re okay with leaving you alone, they must not be that angry.”

He was never in danger of his parents being as angry as Soobin’s were, but they were still going to whoop his ass. He could just feel it. And he still didn’t trust Soobin’s parents not to do damage control on him.

“Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Of course!” Kai said. “Ask away.”

“Are his parents mad because of us trying to trick them, or because of the match itself being called off?”

“Well…” Kai stared at the counter, blinking. “I can’t answer that for sure, but I think it’s the first one. Soobin hyung’s mom is kinda scary sometimes, but his parents aren’t like, evil or anything. I think if he explained to them why he didn’t want to go through with it, they’d understand.”

“You’d think, but…”

“Did you guys ever sit down together and talk to them?” Kai asked.

Beomgyu’s lips thinned, and he shook his head.

“But when they first told me—I asked them to call it off, and they just ignored me,” he said. He pulled his half-empty bowl closer just to give his hands something to do. “They wouldn’t have listened.”

“Yeah, but… I… I’m not excusing the matchmaking thing. I think it’s stupid too. But maybe they really thought they were doing something good for you guys,” Kai said softly. “My parents are the same way. They think that we need relationships to be happy. I guess it’s a product of their generation. It’s stupid, but it’s not malicious.”

Beomgyu dragged his hand down the side of his face. “That’s dumb.”

“It is,” Kai giggled. “Maybe I’m wrong. But that’s what I think.”

Beomgyu didn’t know what else to say other than, “Noted.”

A beat of silence passed. Kai jumped off the stool, clapping his hands. “Well, that’s all I came here to say!” he said, back to his rehearsed voice. “Do you need anything else, hyung?”

Beomgyu wanted a lot, but he didn’t need much. He wanted to hear from Soobin directly, he wanted to speak to his parents without having to actually speak to his parents, he wanted something to squeeze during his heat because in five hours he would probably be crying from pain. Kai couldn’t give him any of those things anyway.

“Can you pass on a message to Soobin?”

Kai looked overjoyed at the fact Beomgyu wanted to speak about Soobin at all. “Of course!”

“Can you tell him that—” He didn’t actually decide on what he wanted to tell Soobin. He just knew he needed to say something. “Can you tell him that no matter what happens, I want to be friends, at least? Just so… just so that he doesn’t think I hate him.”

He pretended not to see how Kai’s lip wobbled and his eyes grew watery as he answered, “Of course, hyung. I’ll let him know.”

“Thank you,” Beomgyu breathed. Kai spun around and not-so-subtly wiped his face with his hoodie, sniffling. It made Beomgyu feel like shit, having cussed out Kai in his mind multiple times over the past week because of some perceived competition. The Kai in front of him definitely wasn’t in love with Soobin.

Though even if Kai was in love with Soobin, that wouldn’t have justified Beomgyu’s jealousy. Kai was the type of friend Beomgyu wished he could be.

“One more thing,” Beomgyu added. Kai perked up, turning back around. To his credit, he was doing a good job at hiding how red his eyes were. “Do you have a t-shirt on under there? Can I have your hoodie?”

Kai blinked at him owlishly.

“Um…” He tugged on the drawstrings of his hood. “Why?”

Beomgyu made a face in his effort not to smile, but he ended up breaking out into one anyway. “You’re Soobin hyung’s friend, and Soobin hyung is my friend, so we should be friends. And friends usually donate clothes for each other’s nests, right?”

He knew he made the right choice by how Kai’s eyes sparkled, his entire face beaming. Like the sun, Beomgyu thought. He hoped Taehyun and Kai really were friends—he would be a good influence on Taehyun.

“Y—yeah, yes, of course,” Kai said, struggling to pull his hoodie off. He slipped it over his hoodie and then folded it haphazardly. “But my scent is really sugary. You don’t mind that, right?”

“I like sweet things,” Beomgyu said simply, accepting Kai’s hoodie and depositing it on the counter for later. “Thank you, Kai.”

He found his blanket on the couch and wrapped it around himself again, protecting himself from what would inevitably be another cold flash now that he was no longer being warmed by the soup. Kai packaged the rest of it up, including Beomgyu’s uneaten half, humming to himself.

He seemed happy, and it made Beomgyu happy by association. Beomgyu clung to that blossoming happiness, however brief it was. He’d need it for this week.

Kai gave him a warm, tight hug before he left, his chin hooking over the top of Beomgyu’s head. Beomgyu hadn’t received such a warm hug in… he didn’t even know how long.

“Let me know if you need anything else! I don’t live that far,” Kai said, patting Beomgyu’s head. Beomgyu pouted. Who was the hyung here again?

“I don’t have your number.”

“Ah… actually, Soobin hyung gave it to me a while back, but I was too scared to text,” Kai laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll text you so you can have it.”

“Alright,” Beomgyu said. He went on his toes so he could ruffle Kai’s hair in return. “Thank you for coming, Kai.”

Kai’s smile reached all the way to his eyes.

“Anytime! Um… maybe text Soobin hyung before your heat starts just so he knows you’re okay. I mean, I can tell him too, but… I think he’d feel better hearing it from you.”

“I will,” Beomgyu said softly. “Don’t worry.”

Kai hid his laugh behind his hand. “Okay, okay, I’ll leave you alone now. Take care of my hoodie, hyung!”

Ten minutes after Kai left, the first real signs of Beomgyu’s heat began in the form of a dull pain in his stomach that radiated throughout his whole body. He quickly added Kai’s hoodie to the nest on his bed, arranging it between all of Yeonjun’s shirts and Taehyun’s beloved sweater.

It would’ve been better if he had something of Soobin’s too, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He laid down on his side, three blankets on top of him, and propped his phone up in front of him so he could text with one hand.

my heat is starting, he wrote to Soobin. He tried to think of more to say—there was so much to say—and came up short. He ended up adding only a few more words: i’m okay. i hope you’re okay too. we can talk after.

It only took Soobin a few minutes to reply. okay, he wrote. thanks for telling me. things with my parents will be fine. they’re just pissed off, but not because of the reason we thought. i’ll tell you about it after. get some rest.

Beomgyu wouldn’t be getting any rest during his heat, but the sentiment was cute, and he held his phone close to his chest as he tried to get some shut-eye before it started.

His heat passed by in a blur, full of frantic motions that never led to anything except more frustration. That wasn’t unusual, but what was unusual was that he had a specific person on his mind the entire time. He fucked himself with his fingers, whining about how Soobin’s hands were twice the size of his, overthinking how Soobin’s cock would feel inside him and making things a thousand times worse. He accidentally tore a hole through one of Yeonjun’s shirts after he became so frustrated with himself.

It had been three weeks since he visited Soobin’s apartment, but the memory of Soobin’s lips was fresh in his mind, and he could hear that single moan Soobin gave on loop. It was torturous, and no amount of focusing on his own noises could erase how fixated he was on Soobin. The only thing that got him through the week was thinking about what Kai had said, about how Soobin went into rut because of him. It made him feel less lonely, to imagine Soobin having gone through the same thing, fucking his fist and imagining it was Beomgyu.

Maybe he was delirious and delusional for assuming Soobin hadn’t spent the entire week cussing Beomgyu out, but he was allowed to be a little delusional, he thought. He would lose his mind otherwise.

Somehow, he made it through the week without calling Soobin and babbling to him about all of the illicit things he wanted Soobin to do to him. On the final day, his body felt like liquid and he could barely see from how exhausted he was, but he survived, and he hadn’t done anything stupider than imagine Soobin’s knot. Which in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t that bad.

The whiny, post-heat omega in him begged him to speak to Soobin first thing after. He forced himself to speak to his parents instead, tail between his legs.

“Beomgyu,” his mother whispered. “How are you? How was your heat?”

“It was okay,” he replied. Like any adult omega, he didn’t like talking about his heats with his parents. “Mom, about Soobin and I…”

Unsurprisingly, once his mother confirmed that he was lucid, she launched into one of the sternest talking tos of his life. Snapping at him for going behind their backs, yelling at him for embarrassing their family in front of Soobin’s. Most of all, however, she was pissed that he and Soobin had thought so little of them, that they went to such great lengths to break off the match.

“But I asked you to break it off and you ignored me,” Beomgyu argued. He could accept most of her complaints, but not that one. “What else were we supposed to do?”

“Cub, you didn’t see how you two looked at each other. You guys got along so well—it would have been such a shame to call off the match without giving you two a chance,” she said.

He brought his knees to his chest, huffing into his skin. “It’s not about that. It’s about you guys deciding for us. Whether or not we like each other doesn’t matter. I’m almost thirty, I don’t want my parents picking my partner for me. You can’t… you can’t control me like that forever.”

“Matchmaking isn’t all that bad,” she said, not giving up. God, she could be stubborn when she wanted to be. “I know kids these days think it’s silly, but it’s just about matching you to people who have similar hobbies and values as you. It makes your relationships less prone to error.”

“I need to make mistakes to grow, Mom. Dating and messing around and all that stuff is how we learn and find the person we like.” He leaned his head against the wall. “Maybe it was different for you and Dad, and that’s fine, I’m not arguing against that. But I know what I need, and it’s not for someone else to decide for me.”

She sighed. “Alright, cub. We already rejected the match anyway, so you don’t need to worry about it anymore. We won’t interfere again. I promise. But please… understand where we were coming from too. We just want to see you happy.”

Happiness was right at his fingertips even without the match. Beomgyu swallowed sharply.

“I know. Thank you, Mom.”

He spoke to his father briefly as well, and they said they’d talked to Soobin’s parents earlier in the week and agreed that the failed match wouldn’t impact their business relationship with each other. Beomgyu couldn’t care less about the status of their family’s company, but he was relieved to hear that he wouldn’t be blamed for any lost connections.

They finished up their call by agreeing to meet for dinner sometime next week. Beomgyu smiled at his dim screen after they hung up, and he laughed to himself without thinking, his relief all-consuming.

His parents didn’t hate him. That was half of what he’d wanted right there, and a weight was lifted off his shoulders knowing he wouldn’t have to wake up worrying about them resenting him for ruining the match.

Their reasoning made no sense, but he could accept that the generational difference was too vast for him to comprehend. So long as his parents loved him, he could handle it.

The other half of what he wanted was harder to deal with. Before he jumped into that, he texted Taehyun and Yeonjun, and even Kai, who all bombarded him with questions and offers to come help him clean up.

He told them all that it was fine, because the last person he had to text was the one he wanted to come over.

hey, are you free tonight? he messaged Soobin.

It came as no shock that Soobin replied near-instantly. yes, why?

my heat is over. can you come here tonight?

Soobin’s bubble typed for five minutes before his small message appeared, yes. in an hour?

sounds good. Beomgyu bit his thumb and then added before he could regret it, i’m looking forward to it.

He turned off his phone and threw it aside so he didn’t have to see Soobin’s reaction. If Soobin was coming in an hour, that left him a lot to do. He had to change his sheets, air out his apartment, and replace his air fresheners—the knowledge that he’d accidentally caused Soobin’s rut through his scent was all too present in his mind.

His hands shook as he cleaned up, jittery from thinking about seeing Soobin soon, and he hummed along to IU on his radio speakers, remembering how Soobin had done the same all those weeks ago.

It’d only been a little over a week since Beomgyu last saw Soobin, but his longing hit him full-force once they came face-to-face, the realisation that god, he’d fucking missed Soobin. Not only seeing him, but speaking to him and being around him too. He saw Soobin and while he should have been nervous, he was mostly just filled with relief, the tiny fear he had of Soobin not wanting to see him anymore dissipating. The match was over, and they’d fucked up, and yet Soobin still came.

He hugged Soobin loosely, giving him a chance to move away if he wanted to. Soobin didn’t, and he wrapped his arms around Beomgyu’s shoulders, shuddering and hiding his nose in Beomgyu’s hair. He probably smelled like his shampoo, lavender and vanilla.

“I thought you hated me,” Soobin whispered.

“Why would I hate you?” Beomgyu pulled back to look him in the eyes. Soobin avoided staring right at him, instead looking at a fixed point on Beomgyu’s shoulder. “Being annoyed at you and hating you aren’t the same thing.”

“Because we fucked up breaking the match, or… or I came on too strong, or… you just don’t like me. I don’t know,” he said, growing quieter and quieter the more he spoke.

“I was scared you hated me, hyung.” Beomgyu’s heart melted, and he reached for Soobin’s wrist, tugging him inside. “Have you eaten dinner?”

“No,” Soobin said guiltily. So predictable.

“Let’s order in, and we can talk. I have a lot to say.”

They decided on fried chicken, the same place Beomgyu had ordered for Soobin the first time he pestered him about eating three meals a day. The estimated delivery time was an hour—it was six in the evening on a Saturday night—so they sat on the couch together while they waited, a respectable metre of space in between them.

“So,” Beomgyu started, as Soobin said, “Beomgyu—”

“You go first,” Beomgyu urged.

“No, you go first, it’s fine,” Soobin mumbled. He held a pillow over his lap, squeezing it.

“No, it’s okay, hyung. You go first.”

“... I was just going to ask how you were,” Soobin said. He looked Beomgyu up and down, from his bare calves to the deep grey hoodie he was swimming in. “Was your heat bearable?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Beomgyu smiled. “It was fine. It could’ve been worse.”

I got through it because of you, he wanted to say, but held back. Too much, too soon. They had a whole list of things to discuss before that.

“Good,” Soobin said, pleased. He nodded to himself. “Good, that’s… that’s good.”

Beomgyu breathed in slowly. Good was one word for it.

“How are your parents?” he asked.

“It’s a little awkward,” Soobin admitted. “I think they’re hurt because we assumed the worst about them.”

“Mine are too,” Beomgyu said, shutting his eyes. He could feel his parents gossiping about them right now, and Beomgyu wouldn’t blame them. He expected to get a call from his older brother later that night. “But they did ignore us, so I don’t think it’s completely our fault.”

“No, I agree, it’s not,” Soobin hummed. “And I told them about... how some of the things they said to me, about being an alpha, hurt, and they were upset, but they listened. That’s more than they’ve ever done before. I hope they’ll really understand where we were coming from, one day, but for now, I’m just glad they haven’t disowned me.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

Beomgyu chewed on his lower lip. “Do you understand where I was coming from?”

He opened his eyes and saw Soobin watching the blank TV, unblinking, like he was wading through his own mind and not real life. Beomgyu gave him time to think, occupying himself by memorising Soobin’s profile, the small slope of his nose and his plump lips. They looked chapped.

“... I do,” Soobin said eventually, “you were afraid that letting things happen would make you seem weak, and I get that. I guess I just put more value on us than what people would think about us.”

“I keep thinking about you said, about not letting our parents control us, and I just—I couldn’t understand why you would change your mind,” Beomgyu said honestly.

Soobin rubbed the heel of his palm against the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t want to lose a good thing.”

“Well, to me, it kind of seemed like you were throwing away what you believed in because you wanted to get your dick wet. No offence.”

“Was it that obvious?”

Beomgyu gaped. He slapped Soobin’s arm, pouting.

“Be serious!”

Soobin ran his hand through his hair, chuckling. “You overwhelm me, Beomgyu,” he admitted, “But not in a scary way. That’s all I can say.”

“Do you really like me that much?” Beomgyu asked quietly.

He already knew the answer, or at least he thought he did, and it was the one he wanted. But he had to hear it from Soobin himself.

Soobin looked over at him, and he nodded.

“After only two months?” Beomgyu continued.

“I’m not in love with you,” Soobin said, and he sounded almost offended. Beomgyu burst into laughter, throwing his head back. “But—”

“Good to know, else I’d think you were desperate,” Beomgyu said. “Falling in love with somebody after two months? Wait three, at least. That’s half of half of a year.” He was joking to cover up his doubts, painfully obvious.

“But,” Soobin enunciated, “I think I could be. There are… there are so many things I’ve never felt before you. Good things. Things I want to hold onto. That’s why I was so scared, because I’ve never come so close to loving someone like this before.”

Beomgyu covered his face with one hand, steadying himself, blocking Soobin out of his view. The dimples were deadly, and he couldn’t think when Soobin was saying things like that while looking like that.

“Hyung, why didn’t you tell me that you went into rut because of me? Why did you make me think you were lying about being sick?”

Soobin choked. “Kai told you about that?”

Mentally apologising to Kai for revealing his subterfuge, Beomgyu nodded. “I thought you were mad at me, but I didn’t even know what for. I was so... confused.” He grit his teeth, frustrated on Soobin’s behalf, though he already knew the answer to his question from what Kai said. “Why would you be embarrassed over something you can’t control?”

“... You know why, Beomgyu,” Soobin said heavily. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. I—I didn’t want you to think that I only liked you because of—that reason. Because that’s not it. I like your scent, and it’s true that it triggered something in me, but I like you more than I’m simply attracted to you.”

It made Beomgyu think of all the worries Soobin had about being an alpha, that he couldn’t bring himself to be honest with Beomgyu in fear of making him uncomfortable. Beomgyu wanted to wrap him up, reassure him that he understood, that he found Soobin’s resistance sweet but unnecessary, except all he got out instead was, “I see.”

The gentlest alpha in the world, maybe even one of the gentlest people in the world, hidden under a prickly little exterior. What could Beomgyu say that would compare to that? Soobin deserved so much. And Beomgyu wanted to give it to him, but how? In some ways, being free of the match made him lose what little footing he had.

“And, honestly, you were kind of giving me mixed signals, and I didn't know how you’d react,” Soobin added, slightly more accusatory.

Beomgyu gave a silent laugh. “Yeah. Okay, I’ll give you that one.” But to be fair to himself, they hadn’t been in a situation where he had the time to sort out his feelings. He was still playing catch up now, in the middle of this conversation.

“What about you?” Soobin asked. “Do you understand where I was coming from?”

“What about me?” Beomgyu said, to buy himself some time, and he snickered when he heard Soobin huff, even though he shouldn’t be laughing at his misery. Cute, so cute.

“Don’t fuck around, Beomgyu. My heart can’t take it.”

“Your big, alpha heart can’t take it?” Beomgyu said, dropping his hand to his lap just in time to see Soobin stick his tongue out.

“No, it can’t,” Soobin said seriously. “It’s delicate, and tiny, and prone to heart disease. It runs in my family. Please be kind to it.”

Beomgyu scoffed, biting back a smile.

“I think part of me was… upset? Offended? That you weren’t on what I thought was our side anymore,” he said. It felt so long ago now, past the one week haze of his heat. “It almost felt invalidating, in a way, like you were saying I was being stupid by sticking to what I believed in. And I was so convinced that the only way we could break the match was through what we had planned, anything else felt like you were telling me to... I don’t know, give up, essentially.”

Now that he said it out loud, it sounded a bit silly. But it was the truth, and he couldn’t lie.

“I’m sorry,” Soobin murmured. “I get it. I didn’t mean to, but I get it.”

“It’s okay,” Beomgyu said. “I’m sorry too. In the end, you still wanted to break the match, and I should’ve focused on that. I was just freaking out.”

“And what about the rest of it?” Soobin asked, lowering his head. His hair fell in front of his eyes, masking them. “How you feel about me—”

Beomgyu licked his lips. How did he put his feelings into words? That was always the hardest part, wasn’t it? Speaking his mind when it counted.

“I… I don’t know how I feel about you exactly, hyung, but I—”

He lost his train of thought when their eyes locked. Out of all the things he couldn’t fuck up in this past month of not being able to fuck things up, this was by far the most important one.

Soobin had inched closer without him noticing. It was subtle, but in the past ten minutes, he’d gone from sitting on the other side of the couch to directly beside Beomgyu. Their thighs touched, Beomgyu’s bare legs against Soobin’s scratchy denim jeans, and Soobin placed his hand on the little space between their thighs, restless.

“But…?”

“But I like speaking to you,” Beomgyu said, saying the first things that came to his mind when he looked at Soobin, and there were a lot of them. It was crazy to think how much Soobin had turned his life upside down in the semi-short time they’d gotten to know each other. “I missed you so much when we weren’t speaking, hyung. Nobody makes me laugh like you do. You’re so stupid, and silly, and I find it cute. I like being around you, because your presence is comforting, and I can count on one hand how many alphas have made me feel like that before. I think you’re pretty, and handsome, and your lips drive me insane, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you during my heat, which has never happened towards anyone before, and—”

He was glad Soobin cut him off. If he kept going, he might’ve never stopped, and having his lips covered by Soobin’s was a much better deal for them both.

“You—you can’t say all that and not expect me to kiss you,” Soobin said, breathing right into Beomgyu’s mouth, stealing the air from his lungs. “Oh my god, Beomgyu.”

“I wasn’t not expecting you to,” Beomgyu mumbled, muffled by the press of Soobin’s lips against his. “Hyung, I…”

“Beomgyu-yah,” Soobin said, squeezing his waist, in the same way that once made Beomgyu almost fall over in front of his parents from how hot it made his body burn. “There’s no match anymore.”

“There isn’t,” Beomgyu whispered.

“But you still like me.”

Beomgyu swallowed and kissed his top lip. “I do,” he said.

“Can I kiss you?”

“You’re already kissing m—”

It wasn’t Soobin’s tongue that made him open his mouth, but the way his fingers dug into Beomgyu’s side, shooting something red-hot down his spine. Soobin took advantage of it instantly, groaning, holding onto Beomgyu like a lifeline.

“Your lips are perfect,” Beomgyu said. Soobin bucked his hips, rolling against him, and Beomgyu quivered in his grasp, being shoved against the couch so hard it had him gasping for air. “Hyung…”

“Your lips are perfect,” Soobin repeated back to him. “So perfect, Beomgyu, everything about you, you don’t understand how much I—”

“Show me,” Beomgyu begged. If he didn’t say it now, he was afraid he would lose his nerve and never say it again. “Kiss me harder.”

They kissed until there was no air between them, sucked into their lungs in their efforts to keep afloat. Beomgyu was drowning, and he would never be able to forget the shape of Soobin’s lips after this, no matter how fucked out he got during his heats. The taste of him was imprinted on Beomgyu’s tongue, entirely sober, and Beomgyu threw one leg around Soobin’s hips, not letting him move away even if he tried.

“Beomgyu—”

“Please, please,” Beomgyu whispered, already lifting himself to give Soobin easier access. To what, he didn’t know, but he would take anything. Soobin’s eyes darkened, lashes fluttering against his cheeks, and Beomgyu whined, “Please.”

“You’re such a tease,” Soobin breathed out hard, his breath fanning over Beomgyu’s neck, making his throat seize up. “Do you have any fucking idea how hard my last rut was? With your scent in the air, just the faintest hint I—I felt like I was going crazy. I buried my face in the pillow you used and didn’t come out for days.”

Beomgyu imagined Soobin fucking his fist, like he’d done during his heat, except this time Soobin was on top of him, confirming that Beomgyu’s fantasies weren’t only fantasies, and he felt like he was going to explode. He couldn’t hold back his moan, deep and throaty with need.

“Soobin…”

Soobin’s hands were everywhere, slipping under his shirt and pants at the same time, and they were huge, spanning one-thirds of his body with just his palms. Alpha, Beomgyu registered. Soobin was definitely an alpha, deep down.

“I kept thinking about… about this one noise you made when we kissed, this one little noise you made, so much that I was worried I’d made it up in my head,” Soobin panted, his nails digging into Beomgyu’s belly, forcing the muscles to contract underneath his touch. “But you made it just now, and now I—”

“Me too,” Beomgyu had to get it out, “I thought about the same thing too. You moaned, and I kept thinking about it. I felt crazy.”

Soobin laughed, and it was the most carefree laugh Beomgyu had ever heard from him.

“We might both be crazy,” he said, closing the gap between their lips briefly, giving Beomgyu the briefest taste of the chocolate on his tongue. “Beomgyu, can I…”

Beomgyu held onto Soobin’s nape, keeping him hovering over Beomgyu’s body, his fingers brushing the raised edges of the patch there. “Can you?”

“The scent suppressants, can I… can I take them off?”

“Fuck, yes,” Beomgyu said. He reached behind himself and ripped off his scent suppressant before doing the same to Soobin. “Yes, yes—holy shit—”

Tasting Soobin was one thing, but smelling him was another, because his scent was like sugar, even more so than the last time Beomgyu had smelled him. Beomgyu choked on it, and it went straight down his body to where he was growing wet, the arousal infectious.

Soobin’s mouth was watering over his own, the smallest bit of drool landing on Beomgyu’s lips. He looked completely out of it, and Beomgyu moaned, squirming his hips until they met Soobin’s.

“Beomgyu,” Soobin said lowly, and his voice coiled around Beomgyu’s body like a wire, making all his muscles tighten in anticipation. “If you want me to stop, you have to say so now.”

“If you stop, I’ll kill you,” Beomgyu said, moving to nip Soobin’s jaw. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Soobin made a noise between a hysterical laugh and a growl, and shoved Beomgyu’s shirt up, revealing his chest. The cool air had him shivering, but only for a second. In the next moment, Soobin’s fingers were on him, plucking at his chest like he was playing the strings, forcing a yelp from deep in Beomgyu’s throat.

It didn’t phase Soobin in the slightest, and he pinched hard. Beomgyu was helpless to do anything other than squeal, already overwhelmed. He found one of Soobin’s hands and grabbed onto it tightly for leverage, terrified he might float away if he didn’t keep Soobin close.

“I thought about so much,” Soobin panted, lavishing one of Beomgyu’s nipples with his tongue, rolling the little nub around without rhyme or reason. He did it exactly like he kissed, sloppy and uncoordinated, and Beomgyu fucking loved it. “I thought about so many things that I wanted to do to you, you have no idea.”

“So tell me,” Beomgyu said, peering up at Soobin through his lashes, all clumped together. “Give me an idea.”

“I thought about your chest,” Soobin said, accentuating his words by sinking his teeth into the space right above Beomgyu’s nipple. Beomgyu thrashed, held down by Soobin’s weight, and cried out as Soobin pulled back, letting the skin snap. “I want to leave marks everywhere. I want to cover you in my scent, make you all red, all mine…”

Beomgyu felt another wave of sensation rush through him, just from hearing Soobin speak so intimately, the raspiness in his voice short-circuiting what little remained in Beomgyu’s brain. His breathing grew heavy, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d be coming soon. “Keep going, keep going—”

“I thought about your lips,” he continued, kissing up to Beomgyu’s mouth. It was already wide open for him, and Soobin shoved his tongue inside without hesitation, harsh waves with no breaks, just so much wet. “Thought about—about making them all swollen, giving you DSL.”

Beomgyu laughed so hard a tear slipped out. “What the fuck?”

“And then I thought about you sucking my dick,” Soobin said, seemingly unbothered by Beomgyu making fun of his choice of words.

He should be unbothered. Every filthy thing Soobin said, Beomgyu found endearing. He shook his head, sucking on Soobin’s lower lip, winding his fingers around Soobin’s neck so he could press down on his Adam’s apple.

“What if I want your mouth on me,” he breathed out, and Soobin pushed an appraising moan in between his lips. “What if I said I thought about covering your face with my slick?”

“What if I said I’d thought about the same thing?” Soobin countered, giddy.

“I guess we aren’t that special after all,” Beomgyu mused.

“I guess not,” Soobin said, and within seconds he was climbing onto the floor, shoving his face between Beomgyu’s legs.

He looked like a dream down there, black hair matted with sweat to his temples, brows framing his eyes, focused on the place where Beomgyu’s thighs met. Beomgyu had always been shy during sex, had always been the type to ask for the lights off, but something about the way Soobin took him in made him feel so wanted that he didn’t dare ask for him to not look.

He felt appreciated—that was it. He felt adored, and sexy, and like he’d made the right choice. Soobin had said something about Beomgyu making him feel things he’d never experienced, and Beomgyu was the same way. The list was endless.

“Your scent is so strong down here, god,” Soobin whispered, nosing up Beomgyu’s thighs. Beomgyu couldn’t tell if his legs were too small or if Soobin’s hands were too big or both, but his entire hand wrapped around Beomgyu’s knee and it made him choke, another gush of slick dripping out of him. Beomgyu could even smell himself now, something which rarely happened, the jolt of cinnamon tickling his nose. “I need to taste you.”

“Does it look like I’m fucking stopping you?” Beomgyu asked.

Soobin grinned, his other hand not holding onto Beomgyu trailing over the front of his sweatpants. Through two layers of fabric, Beomgyu could barely feel it, but he felt it enough for him to gasp, his core tightening. More, more. He needed more.

“I dreamed about this,” Soobin said, and finally, he peeled down Beomgyu’s pants, then his underwear, tugging them off his legs and throwing them aside. “Holy shit, Beomgyu.”

“Don’t stare,” Beomgyu ordered, and he went against every fibre of his being that told him to clam up by spreading his legs. He didn’t have anything to be embarrassed about. Soobin had dreamed of this.

Soobin pressed a kiss to the mess of pubic hair there, all wet and stuck together from his slick. He was just as wet as he’d been during his heat, and he was only growing wetter by the second, rivets running down his inner thighs.

“Keep going, alpha,” Beomgyu said, trying to sound commanding, but it mostly just came out as wanton.

Soobin let out a little mm, and burrowed his face in between Beomgyu’s legs without warning, fitting his lips around Beomgyu and sucked. Beomgyu sobbed, both from the pleasure and the shock, and rocked his hips forward, chasing Soobin’s lips. And Soobin gave it all to him, tongue gliding everywhere it could reach, lapping up all of his slick like a dog. No shame whatsoever.

“Mm, that’s—oh my god, Soobin…” Beomgyu whimpered, at a loss for words. Soobin’s finger dipped inside of him, just a little taste, so close to what he wanted but not quite. He moaned loudly, gasping for breath, “Soobin, oh my god…”

He reached for his own chest, to give his restless hands something to do, but Soobin grabbed his hands before he could pull them off, pinning it on the couch beside him, holding him there as he continued to lick him into oblivion. One hand for both of Beomgyu’s wrists. Beomgyu couldn’t breathe through his nose anymore, eyes shut so tight it hurt.

Soobin was relentless, fucking Beomgyu on his tongue, slipping between his legs and getting as deep as he could with his lips. Even from this angle, Beomgyu could see how drenched his face was getting from all the slick, covering his cheeks and nose in glossy white.

“Pretty,” Beomgyu breathed out, and Soobin pulled back enough to smile at him, fluttering his lashes, making a show for Beomgyu. “You look pretty like this.”

“Thanks,” Soobin said, blowing on his thighs. Beomgyu jerked, his fingers flying to Soobin’s hair, uncertain of whether he wanted to pull him closer or push him away. He felt like the entire room was closing in, leaving just them. Soobin could probably hear his heart, with how loud it was beating, going haywire inside him. “You too, Beomgyu. You're beautiful.”

Beomgyu felt weirdly sentimental, teetering somewhere near the edge of blacking out from pleasure, from Soobin’s genuine compliment. Then Soobin thrust two fingers into him, and he forgot all about why he was smiling like a sap.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck—” Beomgyu moaned, driven up the couch with every sharp piston of Soobin’s fingers in him. Long, so long, like Beomgyu had imagined during his heat when his own fingers were nowhere near enough. “S—Soobin, hyung, Soobin—”

The noises Soobin was making were filthy, little hums of appreciation every time another glob of slick landed on his tongue, drinking straight from the source. He spooned it out of Beomgyu and spread it all over his thighs, getting him all wet everywhere before licking it straight off. He was ruining Beomgyu’s precious couch in the process. Fuck the couch. He never thought he would willingly be this messy. Soobin really did make him crazy.

“How much can you take?” Soobin asked, curling three fingers inside Beomgyu. Beomgyu’s eyes rolled back into his head, quivering, and he made a garbled sound in response to Soobin’s question. “Beomgyu—”

“Anything, everything,” Beomgyu said, fingers digging into the couch. “Give me your knot, I don’t care.”

“Don’t say that if you don’t m—”

“I do mean it,” Beomgyu hissed, tightening his thighs around Soobin’s head. He meant business. “Are you not hard?” he taunted.

“Beomgyu, I’m about to come in my fucking pants.”

“Then come inside me instead,” he said. He would’ve been fine coming on Soobin’s tongue, but now that he was thinking of Soobin’s knot—he had a one-track mind. “I’m on the pill. I don’t care, come on.”

“He’s on the pill, he says,” Soobin snorted. He pushed himself back onto the couch, legs wobbly, and Beomgyu caught him with an oof. “You always call me stupid, but you’re the stupid one.”

“Uh-huh,” Beomgyu said, uncaring. He drew Soobin closer for a kiss, sucking his own slick off Soobin’s tongue. It was dull, tinted by the heady taste of sex, but it was there, cinnamon spice and a bit of summer orange, marred by Soobin’s rich berries and chocolate. He could get addicted to it. “Whatever.”

“Aren’t omegas only supposed to have babies rabies during heat?” Soobin asked between kisses.

“I don’t want your fucking babies, I just want your cum,” Beomgyu huffed. He reached for Soobin’s jeans without breaking their kiss, fumbling with the buttons. As his fingers moved downwards, he could feel the tent in the fabric, and it had his vision blurring.

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Why don’t you get inside me and find out?”

Soobin shook his head at him, laughing, and Beomgyu laughed along with him. Even during sex, when he was two seconds away from jumping Soobin and sitting on his dick himself, he still could appreciate the easy banter.

“Hands and knees or back?” Soobin said, and Beomgyu answered by rolling onto his stomach. Soobin’s tongue gave a long stripe from the small of his back down to his perineum, and whispered, “Fuck, yes.”

“You—you sound like a teenager seeing an omega for the first time,” Beomgyu giggled. He shook his hips.

“I feel like one,” Soobin said.

Beomgyu was wetter than wet at this point, but Soobin still took the time to open him up, hooking three fingers inside him and rubbing at his walls until his legs gave out. He shoved his face into the side of the couch and moaned, pulling away every time he felt himself get too close. The delicate line of pleasure and pain whenever Soobin touched that squishy spot inside him, the one that made him keen; the way it made him feel like he could come from nothing but Soobin driving his fingers into him; the feeling he was clinging onto where everything became a blur and all he could do was make tiny sounds as he came undone—it was nearing on too much.

He didn’t want to come until Soobin was inside him. He wanted to come on Soobin’s knot, he wanted to feel Soobin’s cum inside of him, he wanted, he wanted…

“Now?" Soobin asked.

“Yes, god, yes,” Beomgyu whispered, kneading his hands into the pillow in front of him. Every nerve in his body lit up with pleasure. All paths led to Soobin. "Get in me, put your knot in me, fuck, Soobin.”

Soobin's fingers withdrew, leaving him gaping and painfully empty for all of one second.

“Open up,” he whispered, his chest flat against Beomgyu’s back, too big to settle on him perfectly. The head of his cock prodded at Beomgyu’s entrance, and that was too big for him too, Soobin’s cock. Fuck, he couldn’t begin to think about how huge his knot was going to be. And god, Soobin’s scent, how it flared as he pressed closer, sugar right into his veins. He wasn’t going to last.

“I’m too close,” Beomgyu whimpered, and Soobin shushed him, pushing in inch by inch. He was massive, stretching Beomgyu so wide he ached. Soobin rubbed his spine, soothing him. He kissed the back of Beomgyu’s neck as he adjusted. Beomgyu felt every bit of him, clenching down in amazement when Soobin finally stopped, balls flush against Beomgyu’s ass. It was a wonder how it all fit in there.

“Not yet, baby,” Soobin said, and Beomgyu preened at the pet name. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Beomgyu said breathlessly. He did his best to look over his shoulder, and caught a glimpse of Soobin’s face, pinched like he was just barely holding back. “I’m ready.”

Soobin pulled out slowly, then shoved back into him all at once, and Beomgyu was coming, toes curling and white-hot waves spreading from the tips of his fingers all the way to the crown of his head. He could hear himself calling Soobin’s name, mumbling the word alpha over and over, but then his mind went blissfully blank—and he was gone.

He woke up on top of Soobin, their legs tangled together, something thick nestled inside of him still. He opened his eyes and saw Soobin watching him, his hand mid-air like he’d been reaching for Beomgyu.

Beomgyu smiled and closed his eyes again, pretending not to see. “Keep going,” he mumbled. Soobin’s fingers landed in his hair, nails on his scalp, and Beomgyu hummed appreciatively.

It could’ve been ten minutes or ten years that they laid there, waiting for Soobin’s knot to come down. Beomgyu listened to the thump, thump of Soobin’s heartbeat, noting every time it raced, every time it slowed down. It was like a cycle.

“What are you thinking about?” Beomgyu whispered.

“You,” Soobin said.

Beomgyu propped his chin on Soobin’s chest, blinking lazily at him. Soobin’s dimples were etched into his cheeks, and while his eyes were drooping from exhaustion, he looked happy. There was no other way to put it.

“What about me?”

“Do you want the sweet answer or the filthy one?”

“Hmm.” Beomgyu contemplated, licking his lips. “Filthy, first.”

“I’m thinking about how I just came so much, you might be bloated,” Soobin said. Beomgyu expected it, and yet he still choked. “Your stomach is so flat. And my dick is—”

“Huge, yes, I know. It’s in me right now,” Beomgyu grumbled. He clenched down to prove his point, and Soobin’s face pinched. “What’s the sweet answer?”

“I’m thinking about…” Soobin waited for Beomgyu to relax again. He reached out and brushed a strand of hair behind his ear, fingering the locks adoringly. “I’m thinking about how relieved I am, that we don’t have that match hanging over us anymore.”

His thumb ghosted over Beomgyu’s temple, and Beomgyu let out a small, pleased sigh.

“Me too,” he said. “I’m so relieved too, you have no idea.”

“I didn’t realise until now how stressful it had been until now that it’s gone,” Soobin said, cupping Beomgyu’s cheek. Beomgyu leaned into his touch, legs kicking behind him. “I really hope you know that when I… when I got upset that day, at dinner, it wasn’t because I wanted to keep the match. It’s because I was afraid of losing the only connection I had with you. If we broke the match in the way you wanted—it felt like you’d never consider me as a partner.”

“I know, hyung. I got that earlier.” He snatched Soobin’s hand and brought it to his lips, kissing his palm. “But it wasn’t the only connection we had. And I think I would’ve just needed time to no longer associate you with the match.”

“I know that now. I was irrationally worried, I guess,” Soobin murmured, his cheeks going pink. “You felt so close, and so… so far at the same time. Ultimately, though, we kind of both wanted the same thing.”

“Cliché,” Beomgyu said.

“I’m full of them,” Soobin readily agreed. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m in a movie around you. You know one of those silly, late 2000s romantic comedies—”

“Ugh!” Beomgyu’s nose wrinkled. “I hate those!”

“What?” Soobin scowled. “How can you hate romcoms? They’re so innocuous!”

“They’re boring,” Beomgyu spat. “There’s no substance to them.”

“Not everything has to be deep, Beomgyu.”

“They should be as deep as your dick in me, at least.”

Soobin raised a brow at him, and then after a beat, they both broke into laughter.

“I hate you,” Soobin said, wheezing, as he held Beomgyu against his chest.

“Of course you do.” Beomgyu kissed Soobin’s chin, his heart soaring. “You just keep telling yourself that.”

Soobin’s knot went down within ten minutes, and Beomgyu’s legs nearly gave out on him when he tried to stand for the first time in an hour. Soobin held onto his arm, stopping him before he could fall flat on his ass and break his hip.

“I’m fine,” Beomgyu huffed. “I need to go brush my teeth. My mouth tastes gross.”

“My mouth tastes amazing,” Soobin said, puffing out his chest. “It tastes like you.”

Beomgyu stuck his tongue out at him, and Soobin kissed the tip of it, making them both recoil. It was weird and slimey, not as romantic as it seemed like it should’ve been.

“Ew,” Soobin said. “That was kind of gross.”

“You literally did it! Not me!” Beomgyu yelped, affronted. “I’m going to go brush my teeth.”

“I’m going to… clean up the couch,” Soobin said, letting go of Beomgyu. “Before it dries. It being our cum and—”

“Yeah, I don’t need the explanation, thank you,” Beomgyyu said dryly.

His appearance in the mirror was a minor jumpscare, with how many angry red marks Soobin had left over his chest. He poked one gingerly, but it didn’t feel like anything. One of them sat right beside his scent gland, and he craned his head to get a better look at it, awed.

To think that the person he’d been so resistant to being with would end up mauling him like a bear one day, and he’d enjoyed it. It didn’t feel like a loss, though, or like he’d given in. It just felt right, and he bounced on his heels as he grabbed his toothbrush.

There were love songs playing in his head, and he swayed along to them while he brushed his teeth, too joyous to care about the ache in his thighs.

He spit his toothpaste into the sink and jumped when two arms wound around his waist, pulling him close. The toothbrush fell into the sink and he looked at Soobin’s reflection in the mirror, seeing him smile.

“I’ll be done in a second, and then you can brush your teeth too,” he said, patting Soobin’s hand. “Just give me a second.”

“I’m not trying to hurry you up,” Soobin laughed. He pressed his cheek to Beomgyu’s head and squeezed him. “I’m just hugging you.”

“Why?”

“You said you wanted someone who would hug you without you having to ask.” Soobin kissed his temple. “So here I am.”

Beomgyu’s breath hitched, and he closed his eyes, basking in this moment, Soobin’s arms around him, his breath against Beomgyu’s skin, the soft trickle of the water from the tap breaking the silence. No match, no parents, no expectations, just them.

One, two, three. He gave himself three seconds to let it pass uninterrupted, then turned around, grabbing onto Soobin’s shoulders.

“Here you are,” Beomgyu said, and kissed him. Soobin giggled, the cutest fucking noise Beomgyu had ever heard from anybody, let alone an alpha, and they stayed there until their feet became cold from the bathroom tile.

They managed to make food without getting distracted, but eating it was a far more difficult task. Beomgyu perched himself on Soobin’s lap, getting used to having the heavy weight of Soobin’s chest on his back, and spoon fed him some of the same soup Kai had made for him last week.

“So, are we…” Soobin spoke in between Beomgyu’s plane noises. “Are we—” Beomgyu poked the spoon against Soobin’s lips. “Yah, Beomgyu, I’m trying to speak—”

“Say ‘ahhhh’,” Beomgyu sang.

Soobin rolled his eyes, and obligingly opened his mouth. Beomgyu merrily tipped the soup into his mouth, watching Soobin’s throat bob as he swallowed.

“As I was saying,” he grumbled, and Beomgyu grinned widely, proud of himself for getting Soobin to eat a bit more. “Are we…”

Beomgyu tapped his spoon against the side of the bowl impatiently. “You’re the one who complained about me cutting you off, and now you can’t even finish your sentences?”

“I’m thinking,” Soobin said, flushing. “Wait.”

“Ooh, he’s thinking,” Beomgyu cooed, “should I be impressed or scared?”

Soobin pretended to bite him, nipping at the tips of Beomgyu’s fingers. Or at least Beomgyu thought he was pretending. He wasn’t entirely sure.

“It’s embarrassing,” he said quietly, eyes darting away from Beomgyu. “You should ask me instead.”

“I don’t even know what you want to ask, hyung, so that’s not going to happen.”

“Are we going out now?”

Beomgyu dropped the spoon, and it clattered against the table with a loud noise. Soobin flinched away, and they stared at each other. The flush on Soobin’s cheeks spread further across his face, covering his round nose all the way up to his elephant ears.

“Um,” Soobin stammered, “I just—I mean, I kind of thought—if you don’t want to, it’s fine—well, actually, it wouldn’t be fine, but—”

“Oh my god, hyung,” Beomgyu said. He pinched Soobin’s cheeks, where there was just enough baby fat to make them nice and squishy. “You’re so fucking cute.”

“Beomgyu-yah—” Soobin tried to knock his hands away, but Beomgyu could be strong when he wanted to be, and he just smushed Soobin’s face in, smiling so hard his own cheeks hurt. “Stop!”

“But you’re sooo cuuuute,” Beomgyu cooed, just to be annoying. Soobin switched tactics and gave up on struggling to glare at him instead. It was so obviously fake, exaggerated in how his thick brows furrowed, and Beomgyu kissed the spot between them, giddy.

“You’re avoiding the question,” Soobin said, pulling at his sleeves. “Stop.”

Beomgyu’s hands slid to Soobin’s shoulders, and he shook his head vigorously. “I’m not, I’m not,” he assured him, more seriously. He didn’t want Soobin to be embarrassed around him, or doubt himself. “I know that the entire time we’ve known each other, I’ve been kind of… erratic, but I want you to be comfortable around me, hyung. Don’t be shy.”

“I’m a shy person.” Soobin’s lip curled inwards, and he bit it. “You know that.”

“You can be a shy person, just don’t be shy around me,” Beomgyu said, giving him a big, wet kiss on the cheek.

“Then can you answer my question before I have an anxiety attack?”

Beomgyu stroked his cheek. If he could take away Soobin’s worries, he would. But to tell the truth, it wasn’t that simple.

“I… I don’t know what we’d tell our parents,” he said, his thumb stopping below Soobin’s eye. He could so vividly recall the first time he called Soobin and saw how bad his dark circles were. Back then, he had no awareness of how overly hardworking and softhearted Soobin was. “I feel like they’d just ignore everything we said if we told them that in the end, we got together anyway.”

Soobin sighed. “Yeah, I can see that,” he said, his hand resting on Beomgyu’s lower back, fingers tangling into his thin t-shirt. “But what’s the other option, not telling them?”

“Well, no, but…” Beomgyu fell with his cheek on Soobin’s shoulder, snuggling him. Yeonjun gave Beomgyu the nickname of teddy bear when they were kids and he ran with it, his fluffy hair and doe eyes helping him play the part—but Soobin was a teddy bear in every other sense of the word, warm and the perfect size to hug. “Maybe we can… wait a bit?”

“I don’t mind waiting.” Soobin’s lips touched his forehead. “As long as I can have you in private.”

“So romantic,” Beomgyu said. “Words that would win any omega over.”

“I did major in literature,” Soobin reminded him, and Beomgyu giggled against his chest. Maybe that was one of the things that contributed to their supposed one-hundred percent compatibility rating—they were both art kids. One day, he’d make them fill their own profiles out so he could compare them.

“So you’ve told me.” Beomgyu sat straight up. “Hyung, there’s so much I want to know about you. If we’re going to date, you have to tell me everything.”

Soobin tilted his head. “... Okay,” he said. “Like what?”

“I don’t even know your favourite colour.”

“What do you think my favourite colour is?”

“This isn’t a quiz!” Beomgyu pinched his cheek again. He couldn’t resist. “Is it blue?”

Soobin’s dimples grew deeper under Beomgyu’s fingers, and Beomgyu smiled back without thinking. “Yeah, it is. How did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” Beomgyu said, puffing out his chest in pride. “You just seem like the type. Do you know mine?”

“Hm…” Soobin squinted at Beomgyu’s white t-shirt like it held a secret colour somewhere. “Black.”

“Bzzz,” Beomgyu whistled. “Black isn’t a colour.”

“Fine, white.”

“White isn’t a colour either!”

“Yellow?”

“Try again.”

“Red?”

“Closer, but no.”

“Purple?”

“Still wrong.”

“Pink?”

Beomgyu flashed him a thumbs up, and Soobin looked at him like he’d grown another head.

“Pink? Really?”

“Why are you so surprised?” Beomgyu asked. “I like light colours. Like light pink, light blue, light brown…”

“Light brown? Gross.”

“Have you never heard of the colour beige?” Beomgyu muttered under his breath, “Loser.”

“I heard that!”

“I know you did,” Beomgyu said, flashing him a toothy grin. “That was my first question out of one-hundred, by the way. Get ready.”

“This may surprise you, but I don’t mind answering.” Soobin found Beomgyu’s hand on his lap and slotted their fingers together. Big, small, big, small, alternating. Beomgyu’s hands were actually decently large, but Soobin’s just completely dwarfed his.

“That’s good. I would be pretty offended if you said you didn’t like talking to me,” Beomgyu said.

“Yeah, no, you’re right. This was actually me pulling a long-haul prank on you where now I reveal that I actually don’t like you, and…”

Soobin trailed off, and Beomgyu’s heart did an uncomfortable seize, the irrational, insecure part of him waiting for Soobin to reveal that he was actually being serious. Soobin looked terrified suddenly, all the colour leaving his face, and it made Beomgyu antsy.

“... Hyung?” he called cautiously, squeezing his hand. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh my fucking god, Beomgyu,” Soobin said, and grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him. “We ordered chicken and it’s been sitting outside your apartment for the past two hours.”

“—so we had to throw out the chicken, obviously, because it got all gross from sitting under the lights in the hallway, and then we moved to my bed, and I thought we were going to fall asleep, but while we were talking I kept noticing his dick poking my thigh and—”

“Please spare me the details,” Taehyun groaned, and Beomgyu crinkled his nose, shooting him a glare. “What is that look for?”

“Can’t you suck it up and listen to your best friend be happy?”

“Not when he’s telling us the play-by-play of his sex life,” Taehyun snapped.

“It’s important to convey the message,” Beomgyu said, hands on his hips.

“And what is the message here?”

“That I’m happy!” Beomgyu grumbled. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Yeonjun repeated in a drawl. “So obvious.”

Beomgyu narrowed his eyes at him. “Is that sarcasm I detect?”

“Nope,” Yeonjun said, drawing the word out. “I’m happy for you, Beomie.”

Beomgyu waited for the punchline, but Yeonjun only smiled at him, all the way to his eyes. Beomgyu smiled back tentatively and said, “Thanks, hyung.”

“Me too,” Taehyun added. “I’m happy for you too. I just could do without the details, okay?”

Beomgyu took pity on him and grinned. “Fine, fine. I know it probably disgusts you to hear about omegas having sex, you gay little—”

“That’s not what I meant!” Taehyun argued. “Ugh, you always put words in my m—”

“I do have one question,” Yeonjun said, leaning forward to hear Beomgyu’s answer. Weirdly forward. Like, super forward. “Did you end up pegging him?”

Taehyun choked on his water, spitting all over his lap, and Beomgyu shrieked when some of it landed on him.

“How did you know about that?!” Beomgyu screamed, as Taehyun tried not to pass out, coughing violently. Beomgyu attempted to help him by patting his back, but he was more focused on the fact his cousin somehow knew about the dumb remark he’d made on a privately arranged date with his partner’s parents.

“Kai told me,” Yeonjun said, shrugging. “So, did you do it or not?”

“Kai told you?” Beomgyu echoed. His eyes snapped to Taehyun. “Wait, how close are you guys?”

Taehyun shook his head, too busy choking to respond to Beomgyu, so Beomgyu looked back at Yeonjun expectantly.

“Close enough,” Yeonjun said.

“Close enough that he’s telling you about—about—” How did he even describe what this topic was? “This?!” He waved his hands wildly.

“Sex things?”

“Yes!” Beomgyu hissed.

“I guess, yeah.”

“But you…” Beomgyu pointed a finger at him, his slicked back hair and tight pants that screamed cocky alpha. “You’re an alpha. And he’s an omega. And you’re taken.”

“Alphas and omegas can’t be friends?” Yeonjun sniffled, slapping a hand over his heart. “You have no faith in me.”

“They don’t talk about sex stuff with people they just met!”

“We’ve—we’ve been talking for a while, actually,” Taehyun said, still wheezing. Yeonjun patted his head, coaxing him, and Taehyun leaned into his touch like a little cat. Beomgyu wasn’t single anymore, but he still felt nauseous watching them. “As long as you and Soobin hyung have.”

“Still!” Beomgyu said. He had to call Kai after this and tell him off. Nevermind, Kai-yah, they’re evil, don’t talk to them, and definitely stop spreading rumours! “That’s only a little over two months.”

“Okay, but again, that’s as long as you and Soobin have known each other, so why is it so surprising that Kai is close to us?”

“Soobin hyung and I are dating,” Beomgyu said, tugging his hair. What about this was so difficult to understand? “It’s different.”

“How do you know Kai and us aren’t dating?” Yeonjun quipped back.

Beomgyu couldn’t identify the emotion rising inside him. Horror? Disgust? A little bit of happiness that Kai was getting hot alpha dick? More disgust that said alpha dick was from his cousin and his long-term partner? All of the above?

“Stop, he’s going to faint,” Taehyun said, apparently deciding their conversation was more important than coughing in the corner.

“What? I’m being honest, we’d have to tell him eventually…” Yeonjun said.

“You could’ve been a little nicer about it, look at his face, he’s turning white…”

“He’s just a prude. He’s going to have to grow up one day, now that he has a partner…”

“He can’t be that prudish, he was telling us about his sex life. I think it’s more the shock of finding out we aren’t monogamous…”

“No, he’s definitely just a prude. Have you ever heard him talk about sex before this?”

“Yeah, but now he has Soobin hyung. We should explain to him what happened, but calmly…”

“Is there a calm way to explain what happened?”

“Well…”

They kept going on and on and on, like he wasn’t there, and it became so unbearable that he finally mustered the energy to stand up, shutting them both up.

“Um,” Taehyun said. “Hyung…? Are you okay, or—”

Beomgyu screamed at the top of his lungs, “I hate both of you!”

Yeonjun cackled, and Beomgyu hit him with the closest item to him, which turned out to be his phone. Yeonjun didn’t even seem to care about the imprint it made on his cheek. Asshole.

Soobin hyung [4:42]
beomgyu

Me [4:43]
soobin hyung

Soobin hyung [4:43]
i forgot to tell you something earlier
i have good news and bad news

Me [4:43]
holy shit
stop the presses
he finally has good news along with the bad news

Soobin hyung [4:45]
yeah
i specifically waited for good news so it wouldn’t just be bad

Me [4:46]
awwww
you’re so sweet to me

Soobin hyung [4:47]
wow
the bar is low, huh

Me [4:48]
then raise it, bitch

Soobin hyung [4:49]
okay so the bad news is they ran out of the chocolate cereal you wanted at the grocery store so i got you honey cereal instead

Me [4:50]
is this really considered bad news
i like honey cereal too???

Soobin hyung [4:51]
the good news is my parents want to have dinner with us

Me [4:52]
.
um
are you sure you didn’t get the good news and bad news mixed up
or is this all bad news and you’re pranking me

Soobin hyung [4:53]
???
this is great news!!!!
you can finally change their minds about you!!!

Me [4:54]
no i can’t
oh my god i’m going to die
just kill me now
what the fuck

Soobin hyung [4:55]
fuck off
you’re so dramatic
you’re going to have to see them again eventually

Me [4:56]
nooooooooo
why can’t we see my parents first!!!!

Soobin hyung [4:56]
better to start with my parents
then yours will seem easy peasy

Me [4:57]
fuck you
you just don’t want to do the work
after everything i’ve done for us
the entire thing was my plan in the first place
you’re so lazy

Soobin hyung [4:58]
you mean the plan that almost got us both disowned by our parents??

Me [4:59]
the plan that ended up getting us out of the match
it worked!!!

Soobin hyung [4:59]
it did not work
my mom just thought you were being mean to me so she called it off
it had nothing to do with your plan

Me [5:00]
okay well my plan would have worked if you hadn’t decided to stop following it halfway

Soobin hyung [5:01]
me not following it ended up with us here
sooo :p

Me [5:01]
what is here
texting while in the same apartment?

Soobin hyung [5:02]
yes

Me [5:03]
peak romance
kids these days, so cute

Soobin hyung [5:04]
that’s what my parents will say when they see us
beomgyuuuu
beomgyu
beomgyu
what do i tell them
this saturday?

Me [5:05]
whatever
fine
i’ll go in exchange for you pouring me some of that honey cereal

Soobin hyung [5:06]
your wish is my command, baby

Me [5:07]
ewwww
you sound like yeonjun

Soobin hyung [5:08]
can you stop
comparing me to yeonjun hyung
every time i say something remotely nice

Me [5:08]
then stop being sleazy

Soobin hyung [5:09]
what was sleazy about what i said

Me [5:10]
you called me baby
>:/

Soobin hyung [5:11]
yeah
because you’re my baby
look at that face
so cute

Me [5:11]
go get me my cereal

Soobin hyung [5:11]
fine, beomgyu
beomgyu-yah
is that better?

Me [5:12]
i liked baby more

Soobin hyung [5:13]
you’re insufferable

Me [5:13]
and yet you let me into your apartment anyway

Soobin hyung [5:14]
yeah, because for some reason, i let you into my heart
crazy shit
will never understand myself

Me [5:15]
crazy shit indeed
love you too btw

Soobin hyung [5:15]
you better