Chapter One #3
The full dark settles in quickly, the city lights below us sharpening as the last traces of orange bleed out of the horizon.
Dokyeom has moved on from wrestling to attempting some kind of interpretive dance to the tinny music still blasting from Jaeho’s speaker, and Pilkyu is filming it on his phone while Seungwon provides commentary in a mock-serious announcer voice.
Wonjoon is on his back staring at the sky, having eaten two of the mystery bananas and declared them “spiritually significant.” Jaeho is trying to balance an empty soju bottle on his forehead.
I’m laughing at something Pilkyu says when I catch the movement in the corner of my eye.
Hongjoong is on his feet. He’s moving toward the rooftop door, and the way he’s moving makes my stomach drop, because he’s gripping the metal railing beside the stairwell entrance with both hands, his knuckles bone-white even in the dim light, and his whole body is listing to one side like the ground is tilting under him.
He doesn’t look back at any of us. He just pulls the door open and disappears into the dark stairwell, and the door swings shut behind him with a dull clang that nobody else seems to notice over the music and the noise.
My heart kicks hard against my ribs. I sit there for maybe five seconds, staring at the closed door, and then I push myself to my feet and stretch my arms over my head in what I hope looks like a casual gesture.
“I need the bathroom,” I announce to no one in particular, already walking toward the door. “Be right back.”
Dokyeom waves vaguely in my direction without pausing his dance. Nobody questions it. Nobody even really looks up, which is exactly what I was counting on.
The stairwell is pitch black once the door closes behind me, the overhead lights long since shut off for the night, and I have to feel my way down the first few steps with my hand on the railing before my eyes adjust enough to make out the shapes of the walls and the concrete stairs descending below me.
My footsteps echo, bouncing off the walls and coming back to me doubled, and the sound of the music and laughter from the rooftop fades with every flight I descend until it’s just me and the sound of my own sneakers on concrete.
I don’t know exactly where Hongjoong went, but I have a feeling. When you spend four years with someone, you learn their patterns, the places they gravitate toward when they’re not performing for an audience.
The third-floor hallway is dark and silent; the empty school takes on the air of after hours, a mere building once the day’s activity has ceased.
I head straight for our homeroom instinctively.
The classroom door is ajar. I push it open and step inside, and the first thing I see is Hongjoong on the floor between two rows of desks, slumped against the side of a chair with his legs stretched out in front of him and his head tipped back.
His face is red, deeply and unevenly flushed, and his skin is shining with sweat.
His chest is rising and falling rapidly, his mouth slightly open, and his eyes are squeezed shut like he’s trying to hold something back through sheer force of will.
He looks bad. He looks really bad.
I cross the room and drop down beside him, folding my legs under me and keeping my voice light, easy, the same tone I’d use if I found him napping somewhere he shouldn’t be.
“Damn,” I say, nudging his knee with mine. “I didn’t think you were that much of a lightweight.”
Hongjoong’s eyes crack open. They’re glassy and unfocused, the sharp brown of his irises swallowed up by dilated pupils, and it takes him a second to find my face even though I’m right next to him. When he does, his mouth twitches.
“It’s not the alcohol,” he says, his voice sounds rough, thin like he’s been clenching his jaw for a long time. “I only had half a bottle.”
I frown. Half a bottle of soju is nothing for Hongjoong. I’ve watched him put away twice that and still be steady on his feet, still be cracking jokes and arm-wrestling Dokyeom and winning.
I look at him more carefully. At the sweat beading along his hairline and rolling down the side of his neck.
At the way his hands are fisted against the floor, the tendons in his forearms standing out in sharp relief.
At the tremor running through his shoulders.
At the deep, mottled flush that’s spread from his face all the way down past his collar, disappearing under that red shirt.
And then I take a real breath in through my nose, a full one, and my lungs seize.
It’s like walking into a wall. Hongjoong’s pheromones, thick and heady and so concentrated in this small classroom that the air is saturated with them, filling my nose and mouth and coating the back of my throat.
Alpha pheromones, but not the normal ambient kind that I’ve grown used to after years of being surrounded by alphas.
These are dense and layered and unmistakable, carrying that specific sharp-sweet edge that I’ve only ever smelled a handful of times, always from a distance, always with enough warning to remove myself from the situation.
Rut.
I straighten up, my spine going rigid, and I stare at him.
“What the hell are you doing here if you knew you were going into rut?” I ask, my voice coming out sharp because my heart is hammering now and there’s a spike of panic at the realization that I’m alone in a dark room with a rutting alpha and nobody upstairs knows where either of us went.
Hongjoong shakes his head in a weak, jerky motion.
“I didn’t know.” He swallows thickly. “It’s early.
Wasn’t supposed to hit for another few weeks.
” He lets out a laugh that sounds more like a cough, bitter and humorless, and his head drops back against the chair behind him.
“I’ve been popping suppressants for weeks straight to get through finals.
Guess the rebound’s catching up to me now. ”
Shit. Shit. Alpha suppressants aren’t illegal the way omega ones are, but they’re not exactly gentle on the body either, and taking them consecutively for weeks is the kind of stupid, reckless thing that Hongjoong would absolutely do because he never thinks about consequences until they’re already sitting on his chest. Suppressants work by delaying the cycle, pushing it back, but the body keeps building up the hormones regardless, and when the dam finally breaks the rut comes back harder and faster than it would have naturally, a compressed wave of everything the suppressants were holding at bay crashing down all at once.
Which is exactly what’s happening to him right now, on the floor of our old homeroom, on graduation night, with only me here to witness it.
I can see how much he’s suffering. His muscles are twitching under his skin, involuntary spasms running through his arms and legs, and his jaw is clenched so tight I can see the muscles bunching at the hinge of it.
His whole body is coiled and rigid, fighting against itself, and the pheromones are getting thicker by the second, filling the classroom until I can practically taste them on my tongue.
I need to get him help. Says the part of my brain that’s been trained by years of being the responsible one in this group of idiots.
“Okay,” I say, already shifting my weight to stand. “I’ll go check if any of the guys upstairs have spare suppressants on them. Dokyeom usually carries—”
Hongjoong’s hand shoots out and catches my wrist.
His grip is tight, fingers wrapping all the way around and locking down with a strength that surprises me even though it shouldn’t, because he’s an alpha in rut and his body is running on pure hormonal overdrive right now.
He pulls with a sharp downward tug, and I’m yanked back down to the floor beside him, my knee hitting the linoleum with a dull thud.
“Hongjoong, let go, I need to—”
The words die in my throat because Hongjoong leans in and presses his nose directly into the side of my neck, right against the scent gland below my ear, and he inhales deeply and groans.
The sound comes from somewhere deep in his chest, low and resonant, vibrating against my skin where his lips are barely brushing, and every hair on my body stands up at once.
“You smell so fucking good right now,” he mumbles against my throat, the words slurred and hot against my skin, his grip on my wrist tightens as he presses closer, his nose dragging along the line of my scent gland like he’s trying to burrow into it.
My pulse spikes. My whole body goes taut, every nerve firing at once, Hongjoong’s rut pheromones are pouring off him in waves now, rolling over me in thick, suffocating pulses that fill my lungs with every breath I take, and my omega biology is responding to them with a swiftness and intensity that I am not prepared for.
Heat floods through my lower belly, pooling heavy and liquid between my hips, and I feel my cock thicken in my slacks, stiffening against my thigh in a rush of blood that makes me lightheaded.
And worse, much worse, I feel the telltale slick of arousal leaking from my hole, warm and wet, soaking into my underwear in a spreading dampness.
I try to shift away from him, try to put even a few inches of distance between his mouth and my neck, but Hongjoong’s grip on my wrist doesn’t budge and his other hand comes up to curl around the back of my neck, holding me in place with a firmness that isn’t aggressive but isn’t gentle either.
Then he drags his tongue up the column of my throat.