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Humin almost doesn't pick up when he gets a call from Baekjin. He has been asking Humin to join the Union, or, instead, threatening might be a more apt term.
Baekjin wants him by his side, and Humin knows why. He can even wrap his head around it in fleeting moments. Like when he gets a whiff of a stormy scent, when rough ghost fingers dangle tenderly over the scar on his elbow, and when he wakes up from a dream with a taste of youth on his lips.
Lately, however, that's not why he has been considering Baekjin's proposal. He has been thinking of his angry and impulsive dad. He has been thinking of Sieun and Juntae, immensely fragile and immensely brave. A dread constantly creeps under his skin, and his chest is under tonnes of bricks.
Then, he thinks of Hyeontak. Hyeontak has been sending him messages every eight hours for seven days because Humin has been avoiding everyone. The messages range from threatening “I will fucking kill you, you asshole” to pleading “Don't do this to me. You can't do this to me, Humin.”
He thinks of waking up in cold sweat, their legs tangled under Hyeontak's sheets. The weight lifts off his chest, and he is grounded again. He thinks of Hyeontak's head on his chest and his puffed-out cheeks. The scent of cardamom, pine, and ocean is mixing in the air, and every breathy sound from last night rushes to his head.
He thinks of Hyeontak's voice, all scratchy and muffled. “Seriously? You can get it up after all that?”
“Thought you loved my stamina,” he boasts in return.
“Oh, I do love that,” Hyeontak coos and places a sweet kiss on his cheek.
He thinks of Hyeontak at the hospital with a knee that wouldn't support his dreams anymore. And yet, when Humin cried by his side, he ruffled his hair and patted his back.
“It's not your fault, Humin,” he said, smiling. His smile reached his eyes. His stupid fucking smile.
It was his fault. It is his fault. He won't make that mistake again.
He is determined not to let it happen again, so when Baekjin calls again, he picks up. It's a video call.
Baekjin's face appears a bit gritty on screen. He smirks in a way that always means he is up to no good.
The sound of commotion is audible in the background. Sounds of skin hitting skin, fits connecting, loud jeering from men getting off violence. It's all too familiar.
“Hey. How are you doing?” Baekjin asks, his tone lax and casual as if he is talking to a friend.
“What do you want?” he says, hoping to sound cold and unperturbed.
Baekjin shifts the settings to the back camera. Humin's breath catches in his throat. The quality is bad, there's too much happening, but Humin recognises Hyeontak instantly. He'd recognise him anywhere, in infinite darkness and infinite light.
He watches in horror as Hyeontak stands guarding his head with raised fists. Seongje's fists connect to his stomach, and Hyeontak falls before he can defend.
“Thought you should know your omega is venturing into some uncharted territories,” Baekjin says.
His heart is pounding in his ears. His chest contracts and expands faster than it should. Before he could say anything—beg and cry, if that is what it would take—Baekjin himself asks Seongje to stop.
Then, he walks over.
“Why stop? The fun has just begun,” he hears Seongje complain in the background. “His scent is driving me insane.”
The way he says it brings Humin back. It's too casual, like it means little. His fingers clench into tight fists by his side, and his blood rushes in his veins.
Baekjin focuses the camera on Hyeontak, who has folded into himself on the floor. His lower lip is busted. A bruise is already forming on his right cheek. His scent patch is ripped off, and his scent gland looks irritated. His eyes are disoriented, and Humin knows it's taking him every bit of his strength to keep his gaze concentrated. His hands are still by his side, defensive and alert.
Baekjin caresses Hyeontak's head before he fists his hair and pulls his head back. Hyeontak whimpers in his throat. Humin lets out a growl, which is met with Baekjin's chuckle.
Baekjin holds the camera too close to Hyeontak's face. “Say hi to your Alpha, omega,” he tells Hyeontak with a mocking sweetness that should be reminiscent of something, but now it just makes him sick.
“Humin?” Hyeontak asks, squinting his eyes.
He is confused and terrified. He hides it too well, but Humin sees right through him.
“Please leave him alone, Baekjin. I'm coming.”
He sounds a little pathetic—too desperate, too compliant. He doesn't care, not right now.
“You better be quick,” Baekjin says, adjusting the camera again. A landscape view of a horde of boys. Their aggressive stances and dishonest gazes. Looking, waiting—ready to take.
“One word and they'll be all over him,” Baekjin warns. “Run for your life.”
The call ends.
And Humin runs, runs for his life.
His strides are way too long, his balance too frantic, and he can't feel his legs. He barely knows where he is going. All he thinks of is Hyeontak and the underlying terror in his eyes. Hyeontak alone, almost defenceless in a room full of immoral alphas.
He comes back to himself only when he makes it to the bowling alley. It’s partly because it stinks. Too many scents are fighting each other for dominance. Partly because even in the chaos, the pine and the ocean make their way to him. Distressed pine and ocean. Terrified pine and ocean. Ashamed pine and ocean.
He rushes to Hyeontak, hyper-aware of the scent. Hyeontak has his hand pinned to his scent gland to mask his scent, and his thighs pressed together. His body shivers despite the room's heat.
He is in preheat, Humin realises, and his heart breaks.
His palm frames Hyeontak's face. His skin, slicked with sweat, radiates heat.
“Hey, Gogo?” he asks, trying to smile. His voice lowers to a whisper, something intimate, something theirs.
Hyeontak's glazed eyes look beyond comprehension, but he nestles against his touch.
“You there?”
Hyeontak nods, his movements languid. His eyes are more focused. He recognises Humin. His scent is immediately calmer.
“I'm here, okay? I won't let anyone hurt you. I promise,” Humin whispers as he swipes Hyeontak's hair off his forehead and caresses his swollen cheek.
“I have to say this is heartwarming,” Baekjin declares from somewhere behind him.
Humin’s relief transforms into rage. Something hideous crawls in his gut.
He gets up, takes off his jacket, and wraps it around Hyeontak. He wants to get Hyeontak away from here as soon as possible.
Humin almost pounces at Baekjin as he half-yells, “How dare you bring him into this again?”
Baekjin doesn’t even twitch a muscle, unthreatened.
“You’ve got it all wrong, Big Bad Alpha,” Baekjin snides. “Your little omega came looking for you. We were just trying to help him.”
He is at the hospital again—witness to his crimes, guilty of collateral damage. There's no time to feel sorry for himself.
“What do you want?” he grunts.
Humin might be a bit of an airhead, but he knows Baekjin wouldn’t let them go as they came.
Baekjin settles back onto the couch, easing himself into the space. He tucks his wrist under his chin and tilts his head.
“The knight in shining armour comes in to save his distressed damsel. But it doesn’t work without some action, does it?”
“Stop being a fucking asshole for once, God,” Humin groans. He just wants to get Hyeontak out of here. Why is that so difficult?
“Look at these touch-straved alphas, Baku. I promised them something. Wouldn't it be unfair?” Baekjin says in mock concern. “They’re waiting for my word, but once Hyeontak goes into heat on the alley's floor. God knows nobody can save him.”
Humin feels his chest grumbling. The thought alone drives him insane. His scent must have come off strong because he sees displeasure crack into Baekjin’s cold facade.
“I’m going to kill every single one of them,” Humin tells Baekjin. “And then, I’m going to kill you.”
Humin can tell Baekjin is a bit taken aback by the resolve in his promise, or maybe it is the way his body is out of control. He doesn’t know. All he knows is that he means it.
He glances at Hyeontak again, cornered and shaking. He can’t stop thinking about how haunting it must be for him.
He places his foot back, widens his stance, raises his fists, and loses himself to his instincts. All noise is white noise. Whatever collides with him hurls his body, but doesn't hurt. Whatever his limbs touch shakes, shivers, and shatters under force. His body finds momentum on its own, driven solely by adrenaline. A sinking feeling in his gut tells him that he'd never feel alive again if he stops before utter demolition. His fists pound at everything that comes his way like a thoughtless, feral animal.
He stops only when the room fills with overwhelming ocean and pine.
The first thing he hears is a hoarse and desperate plea, “Humin! Stop! You'll kill him.”
He notices his almost mangled fists wrapped around Seongje's throat then. He looks around to find all the mangled limbs and broken faces he has amassed. Bloody, ugly, and visceral.
Under him, Seongje pants heavily, scratching weakly at his hand. His eyes are wide and terrified.
Humin remembers. That's how Hyeontak looked when he found him, how he begged Humin to tell him that his knee isn't entirely gone, that it isn't beyond repair.
Humin squeezes tighter.
“Humin, please. You have to stop,” Hyeontak begs. “I'm okay now. I'm right here.”
His hands relax as if on their own. He glances at Hyeontak.
He lets go.
He catches Baekjin tutting from the corner of his eye.
“Didn't know you liked the omega so much,” Baekjin snarks.
On the surface, it’s just another remark to push him over the cliff, but Humin knows better. Baekjin thinks Humin couldn’t love an omega, not after he has shared something unholy and visceral with another alpha. Baekjin clings to their days when they were just empty-headed, lonely alphas who belonged nowhere but with one another.
“There's a lot you don't know about me,” he manages to whisper.
Baekjin is wrong. Hyeontak is more than a fragile, needy omega. He is a loud-mouthed fool. He is bigger than life. He is almost unbreakable. He is Humin's anchor. He doesn't push him into doom. He stops him at the end of the bridge, over and over. He builds concrete from ashes and pulls him back.
He watches Baekjin stare at Hyeontak for a while. Right now, Hyeontak looks like everything an omega appears to be. Weak, imprisoned by nature, powerless, and waiting on an alpha to save him. But it’s not disgust he sees in Baekjin’s eyes. It’s an unfathomable yearning.
“But it's not too late,” Human adds before he turns around.
Once Humin got off the haze of instincts, his body sagged under exhaustion and pain. Hyeontak refused to let him carry him home. He insisted they call Sieun because neither could go home in their current states. Sieun came with a cab.
If it was out of pity at their sight or the fact that Hyeontak was halfway into heat, he doesn’t know, but Sieun offered them his apartment. He said his mother wouldn’t be home for a while.
Hyeontak’s heat broke on the fourth day. It usually only took two to three days. This one, though, was hell to get through. Not because he did not enjoy it.
With his stamina and Hyeontak’s insatiable greed, they are perfectly compatible. He’ll never admit it, but seeing Hyeontak in heat drives him insane. His usual brattiness disappears. He gets all compliant and pouty because he knows it always works on Humin. He begs, whines, and moans. He clings to his hoodies and forms a cocoon, odd-shaped and disordered. And he looks so pretty, glistening in sweat, near tears, gasping and whimpering, puckering his swollen lips and threatening Humin to dare stop.
This time, Hyeontak was needier and clingier. He wouldn’t let Humin out of bed, even to clean up or get them food. He had all his energy to wrap his legs loosely around Humin’s thighs and whine against his chest. It stopped him the first day.
He asked Sieun for help. Sieun scrunched his nose in slight disgust at whatever he could see of his room. Humin couldn’t believe they were doing it in their friend’s bed, but Sieun got them food and supplies. Thankfully, Sieun is an omega and a smart one. It saves Humin from the embarrassment of having to dictate everything they need.
The next day, he protested. They ate once the previous day because Hyeontak wouldn’t let him out of bed at all. He managed to get breakfast because Hyeontak was still asleep. Later, when he got up from bed, he firmly told Hyeontak that it couldn’t go on like this, and Hyeontak started crying.
“Alpha, don’t go,” he kept murmuring.
Humin felt like the worst person alive. He returned to bed and wrapped the distressed omega in a hug. He was sure that if the scent reached Sieun, he would have ended Humin’s life all by himself.
“I’m sorry. I won’t go, okay?” he promised Humin. Hyeontak smiled into the curve of his neck.
At first, he shrugged it off. Instincts, hormones, and stupid biology. However, it came to him later. He realised how much the incident in the bowling alley affected Hyeontak. He was scared, and he felt safe only in his presence. The foreign environment doesn’t help much. Although Hyeontak tells him he likes Sieun’s scent.
The fourth night, Humin thought that if this heat didn’t end soon, he would have to be hospitalised. Hyeontak has sucked every bit of life out of him, in every way you can take that.
Humin sagged into bed in relief when Hyeontak sighed in his lap and said, “I think it’s over.”
Now, they lie on the bed, the exhausting rumbling in their bones—Hyeontak's head is snug on his chest.
“Were you scared?” he asks.
“A bit, I think,” Hyeontak muses, “I don’t know. It was scary. Those alphas and their scents. But I knew that Baekjin won’t let it happen.”
“How would you know that?” he asks, genuinely surprised because even he wouldn’t say that with such certainty.
“It wasn't on my account. It was on yours. You’d truly hate him then. He wouldn't know what to do with himself,” Hyeontak tells him. Somehow, he sounds almost empathetic. Almost as if he understands what incentive fosters a little goodness in Baekjin.
Sometimes, it awes Humin how perceptive Hyeontak can be. He sees people for who they are, even Baekjin.
But Humin can’t stop thinking about it. What if he couldn’t make it? What if he failed? What if he wasn’t there? The thought alone is suffocating. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself. He’d rather die than live to see that.
“I just want you safe,” Humin breathes slowly.
“I want you safe, too,” Hyeontak says as he brings his thumb to stroke the bruise on his cheek.
Their hands are intertwined under sheets. He shifts on his side to wrap his other hand around Hyeontak’s torso. Hyeontak giggles and kicks him under the covers.
“It tickles,” he supplies as a belated explanation.
Hyeontak’s cheeks soften, and his eyes glint with glee. Humin thinks he could live an eternity like this.