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Male idols in South Korea were not allowed to mate until after they completed their military service. It wasn’t legally enforceable, of course, but it was in all the contracts all the same. In accordance with my own best interests, the contract Mark signed at the age of 15 read, I will refrain from participating in a mating ritual for the duration of this contract or until the age of 30.
Mark and Donghyuck were not mated, but—
But when Mark found the tshirt that he’d been missing since he wore it to dance practice the previous Thursday tucked in between the cushions of the worn-out couch in their dorm’s living room, well, he didn’t need to be mated to Donghyuck to know what it meant.
“Babe, you’re nesting.”
Donghyuck, who was riffling through the fridge looking for a snack, turned on his heel and leveled Mark with a look of immense displeasure. “Don’t call me that,” he snapped. “That’s the least convincing babe I’ve ever heard.”
Mark smiled sheepishly. Johnny had made an offhand comment the other week that they were “unromantic,” because they always called each other by name. He’d been floating in a “baby” here and there since then, but it was hard to make it sound like he wasn’t thinking very, very hard about it every time he said it. As it turned out, after you’ve known someone for so long and called them by their name for a decade, give or take, trying to switch pet names was a bit impossible. Mark knew Donghyuck as Donghyuck, and learning to call him Haechan in front of the cameras had already been hard enough; baby had yet to stick.
“Sorry. Where do you want this, by the way?” Mark asked, holding out the shirt he fished out of the couch.
Donghyuck rolled his eyes and stalked over to the couch to grab it from Mark, collecting the shirt against his chest. “I wanted it in the couch, obviously.”
“You know I don’t mind, but Taeyong gets mad when he finds my stuff all over the dorm.”
Donghyuck huffed, carefully folding the shirt into a perfect square. With each turn of the fabric, he smoothed it out as if it were silk instead of a smelly gym tshirt that had seen much, much better days. Mark must have made the mistake of being a little bit too pleased about it, because a playful glint suddenly sparkled in Donghyuck’s eyes.
Mark should really have known what to expect by now, years and years of exactly this behind him, but Donghyuck had always known exactly how to get him riled up, and knowing it was coming did little to stop it.
“Maybe we should just get our own place.”
Ah, there it was. Mark was absolutely powerless to stop the rush of possessive pheromones that escaped him at Donghyuck’s words. The air abruptly filled with his scent, and Mark flushed. Donghyuck laughed, a little bit maniacally.
“You alphas are so easy,” he said, but the heat of it was tempered by the kiss he placed in the spot where Mark’s neck met his shoulder, where the scent of his pleased pheromones was surely the strongest. “You always know when I’m in preheat before I know it,” he mused.
If they were mated, Mark would be able to tell Donghyuck was in preheat from the slightest alteration in his scent from up to 50 meters away. If they were mated, Mark would be able to track Donghyuck’s heats as easily as his own ruts, because they would be completely synced together. They were not mated, but even so, they’d been together for long enough that Mark knew Donghyuck’s tells.
“At this point, it would be weird if I didn’t.”
Mark and Donghyuck were not mated, in accordance with their own best interests, but when you’ve been with someone for long enough, some things just were, mated or not.
-
Most omegas had some preheat symptoms. For instance, Jaehyun complained about cramps, Ten got unbelievably clingy, and Donghyuck—Donghyuck nested.
Donghyuck had started doing this thing where, in a fit of restlessness, he just…moved things around. It was a fairly recent development, only appearing over his last couple of heats, but it was extremely noticeable. Mark would find his old clothes, his toiletries, the chapstick from his coat pocket, basically anything that smelled even remotely like him scattered about the dorm. It got to the point where he and Taeyong got into a fight over all of Mark’s “clutter” before Donghyuck confessed that it was him, not Mark, who’d been spreading around all his belongings in a subconscious effort to get the whole dorm to smell like him.
He went into heat the next day.
During his last heat, Donghyuck took all of the clothes out of Mark’s dresser, unfolded them, refolded them, and put them all back in different spots. Mark thought he was having an episode when he opened his underwear drawer and found all of his shirts instead. He couldn’t find any of his shorts until the next day. They were, inexplicably, under the bed.
But Donghyuck hadn’t always done that. Before his first heat, well, that was a whole can of worms in and of itself, but before his first heat, he was just tired. He sat down during practice instead of draping himself over the members, during all of dinner, he leant silently against Johnny instead of driving the conversation, and when he got back to the dorms, he went straight to sleep instead of staying up until 3 in the morning playing video games.
Mark had tried not to show it, but he’d been a little beside himself. He was on edge the whole week leading up to Donghyuck’s first heat, trying to figure out what was wrong with him, trying not to hover. Donghyuck never turned down the opportunity to make fun of Mark for making a mistake during practice, and he certainly was never too tired to try to convince someone to game with him after dinner, so it was obvious that something was very, very wrong, but there was little he could do about it except watch and obsess from the sidelines. Their relationship had been a little strained at that point, Mark’s presentation several months earlier having thrown it out of orbit. They were too close to let something as silly as a presentation drive them apart, but it was impossible to say that nothing had changed between them. Mark craved Donghyuck’s attention in a way he hadn’t before. He was protective of him in ways that he wasn’t before. It drove Donghyuck up the wall, but Mark simply hadn’t been an alpha long enough to know how to suppress the urge to wrap up his best friend and hide him away from the world, so they distanced themselves from each other, and Mark pined.
When Donghyuck’s first heat hit after that, Mark sat outside his room for hours, head dropped between his knees, decidedly hovering. He found himself unable to leave but unable to go inside, paralyzed by the smell of Donghyuck’s heat pheromones seeping out from underneath the bedroom door. It was perhaps the most inopportune time he could have possibly chosen to realize that he was in love with his best friend, but it was what it was. Mark was in love with Donghyuck, and Donghyuck was tired of his paternalistic alpha hovering, and Donghyuck was in heat, and the closed door separating them clogged all the feelings in Mark’s chest like a vice grip around his heart.
Jaehyun walked by and took pity on him.
“Dude…what are you doing?”
Mark opened his mouth and closed it again. How could he explain that Donghyuck smelled like he was his? That he smelled Donghyuck’s heat from outside his room and knew, somehow, that Donghyuck was his mate? That just the slightest hint of suffering in the undercurrent of his pheromones prevented Mark from moving an inch further away from his door? He looked up at Jaehyun from the floor, eyes wide, and shrugged pitifully.
Jaehyun barely suppressed an eye roll. “If you’re that worried about him, go in there and help. God knows he could probably use it.”
The thought of going into Donghyuck’s bedroom was just as terrifying as walking away. “I don’t know…how to help.”
This time, Jaehyun didn’t bother suppressing his eye roll, “Just ask him, bro.”
As it turned out, Mark didn’t even have to ask. Donghyuck looked up at the sound of Mark timidly opening the door and whined, making grabby hands at him from underneath his comforter.
“What took you so long?” Donghyuck whispered, voice raspy and demanding.
Mark let himself be pulled into bed and spent the next two days serving as Donghyuck’s personal body pillow, Donghyuck’s nose pressed firmly to the side of his neck. That’s how they spent his next heat too, and the one after that.
Even now, not mated but having been officially together together for so long, they had sex during Donghyuck’s heat as often as they didn’t, Donghyuck being too tired and crabby and sad to really want to half the time. But during his last few heats, Donghyuck had been…the only word Mark could think of for it was insatiable. Donghyuck had been insatiable.
Really, Mark liked sex as much as the next guy, but there was something to be said for, like, showering after. Changing the sheets, maybe, if things had gotten particularly messy. Donghyuck’s last couple of heats had been, for lack of a better term, nasty. Hot, for sure, but also kind of nasty. Mark had tried to instill a “shower after three orgasms” rule, but arguing with a heat-laden omega with a seemingly limitless libido was a fruitless endeavor.
Mark had been silently preparing himself for another heat spent just like the last one. He bought wet wipes. He bought a lot of wet wipes.
-
“You’re hovering.”
“Sorry,” Mark said, guiltily taking a step back from where he’d been standing in the background of Donghyuck’s rather haphazard filming of Haechan Cam while they were waiting to film a virtual performance for…honestly Mark couldn’t even remember. An American TV show maybe? “Can’t help it.”
“Oh, to have a big strong alpha look after me while I’m in preheat.” Chenle sighed, throwing an arm over his face as he flopped down onto the tiny couch in their dressing room. One of their makeup artists shot him a scandalized look from where she was packing up by the mirrors. Well, if this whole conversation didn’t have to be edited out of their behind video already, it certainly did now.
Donghyuck giggled, and he had that glint in his eye that Mark knew meant trouble. He turned the camera towards Chenle. “Chenle-ssi, tell us more. What kind of alpha are you looking for?”
Chenle popped up instantly, face lighting up as he faced the camera. “Well, first of all, my ideal alpha would be tall. I can’t get mated to anyone shorter than me.”
“Of course,” Donghyuck nodded along. Mark wiped a hand across his face.
Chenle ticked off one of his fingers. “They would also have to be good at dancing, because I’m good at dancing, and I want to dance with them, so they have to dance.”
“Are we really doing this, you guys?” Mark tried, but he was ignored as Donghyuck pushed him further out of the frame of the camera. He protested, but then Chenle joined in the pushing, shoving a hand in his face.
“They would have to smell nice!”
Jeno let out a burst of laughter from where he was getting his hair touched up, trying to pretend that he wasn’t paying attention. Really, this was not an appropriate conversation to have with so many witnesses. Not that they probably hadn’t done worse before, but still…
Suddenly, Jaemin jumped onto the couch, shoving himself right onto Chenle’s lap and pulling the camera towards himself. “Well, my ideal mate would have to be strong, so they could pick me up and carry me places!” He declared, looking inordinately pleased with himself. In the background, Renjun cackled.
“Excellent interview, thank you Chenle-ssi,” Donghyuck said before wrenching the camera out of Jaemin’s hands and pivoting towards Mark. Oh no. Mark tried to back away, but the room was too cramped to move anywhere far enough away, and Donghyuck caught him by the waist before he could escape.
Donghyuck positioned Mark in front of him and hooked his chin over Mark’s shoulder, holding the camera out in front of them. “Mark-ssi, what’s your ideal mate like?”
Mark tried very hard to ignore the sudden weight of the eyes of all their staff on him. “He would, uh—”
“Oh, he? Do you have someone specific in mind?”
Mark rolled his eyes over the sound of Chenle’s sniggering. “He would steal all of my things and scatter them around our apartment just so it smelled like me when he was in preheat because he loves me so bad, he can’t stand to smell anyone else.”
“Okay, interview over!” Donghyuck declared over the roar of Jaemin and Chenle’s combined laughter. He managed to both turn off the camera and pointedly elbow Mark in the stomach at the same time. It hurt. Bad.
Totally worth it.
-
Donghyuck and Mark being who they were, having gotten together in the way that they did, skipped over most of the more salient aspects of courting in the modern sense. There didn’t seem to be much point in the whole flowers, homecooked meals, handcrafted gifts, etc. when they were, for all intents and purposes, practically mated already. And Mark didn’t necessarily consider himself a stickler for tradition, and a lot of the more traditional steps to courting had fallen out of favor anyway, but…
But there was just something in him that couldn’t help but be disappointed that he didn’t get to do it. That he didn’t get to facetime his mom freaking out about which flowers are supposed to go in a courting bouquet, to facetime his mom again freaking out about how to make Donghyuck’s favorite meal, to facetime his mom innumerably many times freaking out about what kind of jewelry was most appropriate to buy at which stage and what Donghyuck would like. To see Donghyuck’s face when he gave him his courting gifts. To get the same gifts from him, knowing how much thought and effort went into them.
Mark could never regret anything about his relationship with Donghyuck, but he was a little disappointed that he never got to do any of it right.
So when, a couple days before Donghyuck’s heat was going to hit, Mark happened to pass by a flower shop advertising traditional courting bouquets, well, there was only so much opportunity in his life to be spontaneous and romantic (yes, Johnny, romantic), so he was going to take it. He didn’t even feel nervous about it, just excited, until the moment he was handing it to Donghyuck.
Donghyuck raised an eyebrow at the bouquet in Mark’s outstretched hands. There was pretty much no mistaking the combination of white lilies and pink roses, so he knew. He had to know. There was no not knowing.
“Is this…a courting gift?” The words tumbled from Donghyuck’s mouth as if he was confused about how to even produce the sounds to say them. He hadn’t looked up from the bouquet to meet Mark’s eyes.
Maybe he should have been more nervous after all. “I know we never got to do all the stuff that, you know, that people are technically supposed to do, but I just—I just wanted to.” He shrugged. A little smile tugged at Donghyuck’s cheek, and that was all that Mark needed to know that he’d done right.
“A little belated, don’t you think?”
“No,” Mark grinned, “I think it’s right on time.” He knelt to the ground in their bedroom, knee planting in a small pile his laundry that Donghyuck was sure to redistribute around the dorm later. “Lee Donghyuck, would you do me the honor of letting me spend your heat with you?”
Donghyuck laughed, and said, “You’re actually ridiculous,” but he tackled Mark to the ground when he said it, and they both went down in happy giggles.
It was a while before they got around to putting the flowers in a vase.
-
“This doesn’t mean that I have to buy you a bracelet signifying our eternal union, does it? Because all the traditional designs are so ugly.”
“Nah, you’re good. Not unless you want me to attempt to make you kimchi jjigae.”
“I’ll pass.”
-
After the courting flowers, Donghyuck stepped up the odd preheat behaviors quite a bit. It wasn’t just tshirts in couches; it was underwear in the kitchen cabinets (ew); it was one of the blankets from their room replacing the comforter on Johnny’s bed (hard to explain); it was the last three books he’d read, along with the old receipts from his jacket pocket he used for bookmarks, mixed in with Taeyong’s dirty laundry (very hard to explain).
It was—
“Mark, is this your deodorant? What’s it doing in the freezer?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Mark said as he ran from where he’d been helping Johnny remake his be to snatch the aforementioned deodorant out of Yuta’s hands. Fuck, it was cold. “Donghyuck’s nesting.”
Yuta squinted down at the deodorant before looking back at Mark. “Is that what nesting is?”
Mark opened his mouth to reply, but then he stopped. He’d never really thought about it. It wasn’t exactly typical nesting behavior, was it? To just scatter things that smelled good around the house? There didn’t seem to be an…actual nest involved.
Huh.
“I guess?”
“I think your omega is going through something. Is Haechanie okay?”
Mark frowned. “I think he’s okay. He hasn’t said anything, and he hasn’t seemed different other than the, um, this.”
Yuta gave Mark an unconvinced look.
“Listen, I’m no omega in a long-term union that’s somewhat-illegally forbidden from mating, but if he can’t stand the idea of even the freezer not smelling like you, I feel like something’s going on.”
That was a fair point. Mark looked down at the deodorant in his hands. This was definitely…different, but Donghyuck’s preheats had been different before, too. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to think that he just liked Mark’s smell and wanted it everywhere, right? That the smell of the other alphas in the dorm grated on him during this particularly hormonal time?
“He’s fine. It’s pretty normal for him. Just a regular heat.” Probably.
Yuta just shrugged and pulled a pint of ice cream out of the freezer. “It’s your funeral, bro.”
-
“What are you doing here? Isn’t Haechan’s heat about to pop?”
Mark sighed. It was, and his instincts had already thrown every alarm in his body about it, but—
“He demanded that I bring him the toothbrush he left in your dorm. I told him that I could just get one of you guys to bring it up if he really needed it, but he insisted I go.”
Jeno gave him a blank, disbelieving look. “That…does not make any sense.”
Mark, from where he was crouched on the ground in the second bathroom in the Dream dorm staring at the toiletries shoved in the cabinet under the sink, could not help but agree. “Yes.” Mark grimaced while moving a bottle of shower gel over to get a better look behind it. No toothbrush. “I am aware.”
“What’s Mark doing down here?” Jaemin called out as he opened the door to the bathroom that Mark was riffling through wider to peer in. “Is there trouble in paradise?”
Mark swallowed down the small voice inside his head that said, maybe?, and instead said, “No, Donghyuck’s just being weird. Heat stuff. Everything’s fine.” Mark returned the shower gel to its original spot and stood up, wiping the dust off his knees.
Jaemin raised an eyebrow. “No offense, dude, but everything does not look fine, considering you’re here and not there.”
Obviously, Mark knew this. Usually, at this point in his heat, Donghyuck would whine tremendously if Mark got more than couple feet away from him, so the fact that he purposefully sent Mark out of the dorm, of the building, was grossly out of character, especially since Mark was starting to suspect that Donghyuck didn’t actually leave some mysterious and very important toothbrush in the Dream dorm for him to retrieve.
But Donghyuck hadn’t seemed upset at all. He hadn’t said anything that implied that something was wrong. Mark couldn’t think of anything that had happened recently that he might be mad about, and it was very unlike Donghyuck to be upset about something and not make sure that Mark knew exactly what it was. His behavior was getting increasingly odd, but Mark had no idea why.
Mark sighed and admitted defeat. “Has he said anything to you guys? He’s not acting like anything’s wrong, but it kind of feels like something’s wrong.”
Jeno and Jaemin shared a look, and fear immediately stuck in Mark’s chest. Was there actually something wrong with Donghyuck that he hadn’t noticed? The thoughts rushing through his head must have shown on his face, because Jeno immediately started placating him.
“No, he hasn’t said anything to us! Um, but he has been kind of complaining about his heats? I mean everyone does, but it seems like he’s really been dreading them lately, like, more than usual.”
Mark contemplated that. Donghyuck’s heats had changed recently, with all the, um, sex that they’d been having, but it had seemed like Donghyuck was enjoying himself? It was Mark who’d been worried that his dick was gonna fall off while Donghyuck crawled on top of him for another round, but maybe Donghyuck’s new-onset insatiable horniness was making him miserable, too. Mark hadn’t even really considered it, but it was kind of obvious in retrospect.
But even so—
“He never said anything to me.” Donghyuck was usually very vocal in making sure that Mark knew he was displeased about something. It didn’t make a lot of sense to Mark that he was suddenly hiding it from him. It was very out of character. “I’ll go talk to him about it. Thanks, guys.”
Mark turned around, a determined set to his shoulders, and started making his way back to the dorm.
“Wait,” Jaemin said just as Mark reached the door. He waved a purple toothbrush in the air. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Mark almost laughed. “Where on earth did you find that?”
Jaemin just shrugged, an amused glint in his eyes as he dropped the toothbrush in Mark’s outstretched hand. “Call it an omega’s instinct.”
-
Donghyuck wouldn’t let him in their room.
Donghyuck was in heat, and the dorm reeked of loneliness, the scent of it clinging to every inch of Mark’s body, absolutely dripping with misery, but whenever Mark tried to open the door, Donghyuck screamed for him to leave. It was hell. It was unbearable. It was—It was the most painful thing Mark had ever experienced.
He was beside himself. He couldn’t sit. He couldn’t stand. He stood up. He paced. He sat back down. Rinse, repeat. He growled at Johnny when he walked by to check in on them, actually growled at him. Mark didn’t think that he’d ever growled at anyone in his life, and now he’d fucking bared his teeth at Johnny of all people, the least intimidating alpha he’d ever met.
Donghyuck had never ever rejected Mark during his heat. Throughout all their years spent together, through dozens of cycles, not once had Mark been absent for more than the few hours he spent outside Donghyuck’s bedroom door that very first time. Now, he did the same thing he did then: he sat in front of his door with his head in his hands, and he pined.
“Again?” Jaehyun’s voice came from above as he peered down at Mark just like he’d done so many years ago. “What happened? You guys were fine yesterday.”
“I don’t know,” Mark said, trying not to pull his hair out. He didn’t know. He had no idea. Donghyuck wouldn’t let him in their room, and he had no idea why.
“Did you try talking with him?”
“I tried. He won’t let me in.” Mark blinked back tears. “He doesn’t want to see me.”
Jaehyun frowned. He turned his head towards the door. “Do you mind if I…?”
Mark physically ached and the thought of someone else getting to talk to Donghyuck while he was distressed and in heat, the idea of it revolting to every last bone in his body, but there was little he could do about it when Donghyuck wouldn’t even talk to him. “Go ahead.”
Jaehyun knocked on the door. “Haechanie? It’s Jaehyun. Can I come in?”
…
Silence.
And then, in the tiniest voice that Mark had ever heard Donghyuck use, “No.”
Jaehyun’s face pinched up in concern, and Mark felt his stomach drop through the floor.
“I don’t know what to do,” Mark confessed softly. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Give him some time; he’ll come around,” Jaehyun said, but it was clear from the tone of his voice that he didn’t quite believe it. Then he left, and Mark was alone. Again.
Mark scooted over towards the door to their bedroom and leaned his head against it. He fought every fiber of his being screaming at him to wrench open the door and forced his mind to calm down. Breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth, he did the only thing he could think to do; he willed himself to release the most soothing pheromones he could. They probably wouldn’t even reach Donghyuck, and if they did, they would likely do little to calm him down, distressed as he was, but it was all he could do from out here.
All the hours he’d spent on high alert weighed on him, and Mark could feel the adrenaline fading from his system. Despite the dread coursing through him, he was exhausted. He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
Mark woke up some hours later to the sound of crying, and he was on his feet in an instant. Donghyuck’s scent reeked of despair, even more pungent than it was before, and it rolled out from under the crack in the door in thick waves.
That was enough. Whatever was going on, it was clear to Mark that him not being there was not helping.
“Donghyuck?” Mark called out, knocking on the door lightly. “I’m coming in, okay?” He didn’t wait for a response.
Mark opened the door to their bedroom to reveal Donghyuck, curled into a ball in the center of their bed, sobbing, and Mark’s heart shattered. He knocked his shin on the side of the dresser and stubbed his toe on the corner of the bed in his haste to get to him.
“Hey,” he said, crawling into bed, “hey, it’s okay.”
Donghyuck immediately reached for him, pressing his nose directly into the juncture of Mark’s neck and shoulder. He sobbed forlornly, clutching at Mark’s shirt.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Whatever it is; it’s okay. I’m here. It’s okay.”
Donghyuck cried until he fell asleep, and Mark, drained as he was, followed him not long after.
-
Mark woke up for the second time to the early afternoon light peeking in through the blinds of their bedroom. He blinked away the dust and rubbed his eyes, or he tried to, but Donghyuck was clutching at him so tightly that he couldn’t move his arms without waking him, so instead, he studied Donghyuck’s face. His eyes were puffy from crying, and he still had tear streaks on his cheeks from last night. His hair was starkly in disarray, even more mussed than it usually might be in the morning, but his face was peaceful in his sleep.
He was the most beautiful thing Mark had ever seen. He always was.
Donghyuck blinked after a few minutes, and Mark smiled. The smell of his heat, steady while he was sleeping, stirred awake just as he did. It smelled nice. Call him an alpha, but Mark loved the way Donghyuck smelled, especially during heat. Donghyuck looked up at Mark and smiled before realization seemed to dawn on him, and he immediately averted his eyes.
“Hey, none of that,” Mark said, reaching out to rub at some of the crust under Donghyuck’s eye. Donghyuck huffed. “Let’s go shower, okay?”
Mark got Donghyuck out of bed and escorted him to the bathroom without much resistance, Donghyuck still quiet with sleep. The only person they met on the way was Johnny, who gave them a curious look. He was clearly about to say something, but he snapped his mouth shut at the force of Mark’s glare before he could get any words out. Mark gave a silent jerk of his head as he opened the bathroom door and Johnny returned a weak thumbs up before tucking his laptop under his arm and immediately exiting the dorm. Hopefully, he texted everyone else to give them space, too.
Under the spray of the shower, it was like yesterday never happened. Donghyuck flicked water in his face while he washed his hair and giggled when Mark dropped the soap, like he always did. And even though Mark was desperate to know what happened, to know what was so wrong that he felt he had to lock Mark out of their bedroom during his heat as a solution, he was grateful for the return to normalcy. He was still emotionally spent, but wrapping his arms around Donghyuck while the hot water slowly ran out helped. It helped a lot.
They stopped at the kitchen on the way back to their room, and Mark attempted to make them cereal. Donghyuck snatched the milk out of his hands before he could, though, complaining that Mark must be braindead if he was trying to pour the milk first instead of the cereal.
So yeah, pretty much back to normal.
Despite sleeping so late, Donghyuck started to droop while they sat at the table, and Mark took that as his cue to put him back to bed. He was still in heat, after all, even if he barely smelt like he usually did at this point in his heat.
When Mark started corralling him back towards the bedroom Donghyuck blinked up at Mark through his eyelashes and asked to be carried. If he were feeling a bit less worn-out, he might have tried, but as it was, he just laughed and pushed a pouting Donghyuck lightly back to their room.
He opened the door to their room and did a double take. He looked at it, really looked at it, for the first time since before Donghyuck’s heat had begun. In the light of day, the bruise forming on his shin from his collision with their dresser last night made a lot more sense, because the dresser was not in the same place it was yesterday. In fact, every single piece of furniture in their room was in a completely different spot. Their bed was pressed against the far wall instead of up against the right side of the room. Donghyuck’s desk was where the bed used to be, tucked in next to the dresser, which used to be over in the back corner. How had Donghyuck managed to do all of this by himself? It was kind of a wonder that he hadn’t noticed at all last night, even with all of the…drama.
“Hey, Donghyuck?”
“Yeah?” Donghyuck blushed, actually blushed. Donghyuck was categorically incapable of being embarrassed, so seeing him blush was nigh an impossibility. Mark was amazed but also very afraid. Something was definitely going on, more than just heat hormones. He treaded lightly.
“Why…has all of our furniture been rearranged?”
“Ah, that,” Donghyuck started, but he just scratched the back of his head and didn’t say anything else.
Mark led Donghyuck to sit down on the side of their bed, carefully avoiding the dresser this time. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with whatever was going on last night, would it?”
Donghyuck buried his face in his hands and let out a loud groan. He sat like that for a moment before he said, “It’s nesting,” quietly from underneath his fingers.
Yuta’s words from the other day floated back through Mark’s head, and he frowned. Aside from an old tshirt that Donghyuck had been crying into last night, there wasn’t really a…nest. “I’m a little confused about what parts are the…nesting…parts.”
Donghyuck sighed, still not moving his face from his hands. Mark splayed a hand on his back and started rubbing what he hoped were soothing circles into it. “The past few heats, it’s just been so crazy!” He said, frustrated. “The baby fever is so bad, I can barely think though the, like, feral urge to sit on your knot until you’ve creamed me 30 times because all I can think is baby, baby, baby, and how much I want you to just give them to me! And then, it’s like, all the furniture is in the wrong spot? Where’s the crib supposed to go? How are we supposed to raise a kid with all these other alphas just hanging around our place all the time? And it’s all just so much, you know?”
Mark was…well. He had. A lot of thoughts. Not very many thoughts? A lot of thoughts.
“…Baby fever?”
“Obviously, I know we’re not going to, like, actually have a baby, that would be the stupidest thing we could possibly do, but I’m just—I go into heat, and it’s all I can think about!” Donghyuck flopped backwards onto the bed and groaned again. His heat pheromones had spiked again throughout his rant, and Mark tried his best to keep his steady in the face of his omega declaring his primal desire to…carry his children.
He was not doing a very good job.
“Ugh, I’m so horny, but I don’t want to have sex. This is the worst heat ever!”
Mark was still a lot stuck on the baby fever situation, but he was at least gracious enough to tell when the subject was being very deliberately changed and decided to put that on a shelf for later, when Donghyuck wasn’t being made miserable by his own hormones. He rubbed a hand up Donghyuck’s thigh and tried very hard to not think about…babies, though he was sure the pheromones he was emitting just at the thought of it were passing right through pleased territory and moving fast past smug into possessive. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
“We don’t have to have sex. Hey, it’s okay.” Mark reached out to smooth some of Donghyuck’s hair, still wet from the shower, out of his face. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Do you want to cuddle?”
“I’m so horny, Mark. I’m, like, criminally horny. I might die if I don’t get off right now.”
Mark let out a snort of laughter. “There are things we can do other than sex that can help with that, baby.”
Donghyuck shuddered, curling in on himself. “Please never call me baby again. We tried it, okay? We tried it, and it didn’t work. Please stop.”
“Okay, okay. Donghyuck,” Mark said pointedly. Donghyuck rolled his eyes. Mark moved to climb on top of him. “Take off your pants. Let me get you off.”
Donghyuck frowned, avoiding eye contact. “Well, that’s not very fun for you.”
Mark just barely stopped himself from laughing. Honestly, spending this heat just getting Donghyuck off sounded more fun than the last few had been, dick chafing and all that, but as tenuous as Donghyuck’s emotions were during his heat, he wisely decided not to say that out loud.
“Look at me.” Donghyuck, quite predicably, did not look at him. “Do I look like I’m upset at the idea of fingering you until you forget the fact that you just told me that your uncontrollable desire to have my babies made you rearrange all the furniture in our room?”
“…Good point,” Donghyuck acquiesced. He pushed Mark off of him and started kicking off his sweatpants. “Get at it, then, will you?”
Mark laughed and tugged down Donghyuck’s boxers. He nudged his legs apart, marveling at Donghyuck’s body like he did every time. How did he get so lucky? “Let me know how you want it.”
“Just make it as fast as possible, so I can get to the forgetting part afterwards.”
Mark did as he was told, easing a finger into Donghyuck’s slick entrance. Donghyuck let out a blissful sigh from underneath the arm he’d thrown across his face.
“This was a good idea.”
Mark worked in a second finger. “I’ve been known to have them from time to time.”
“Less talking more making me orgasm.”
Mark didn’t need to be told twice.
When Donghyuck let out a shaky, “I’m close,” a few minutes later, Mark leaned in and licked a strip up his cock. That was all it took for Donghyuck to release with a pleased moan all over his stomach.
Mark pulled his fingers out of Donghyuck and was about to wipe them on Donghyuck’s discarded boxers, when he suddenly remembered—
“Oh my god!”
Donghyuck blearily pushed up onto his elbows. “What? What did you do?”
“The wet wipes!” Mark cheered, grabbing the container from the drawer on his nightstand, luckily still next to the bed. He shot Donghyuck a victorious look and pulled one out, using it to wipe his fingers before cleaning Donghyuck off.
Donghyuck dropped back down onto the bed with a dramatic sigh. “I can’t believe I’m mated to a huge fucking nerd.”
Well—
“You know we’re not actually mated, right?”
Donghyuck opened one eye and with it, gave Mark the most withering glare he’d ever been on the receiving end of.
“Right, sorry, babe.”
Donghyuck exhaled another regretful sigh and said, “I’ll let that one go. For now.”
They weren’t mated, not technically, but—
“Love you,” Donghyuck said sleepily.
But, mated or not, babies or not, Mark was going to spend the rest of his life with Donghyuck. That was nonnegotiable.
“I love you, too.”
Mark laid down and opened his arms for Donghyuck to curl himself into. Donghyuck made a pleased little sound that told Mark he was not far from sleep.
“Okay, so, wait, if the rearranging furniture is the nesting part, then why was my deodorant in the freezer?”
“Mmm,” Donghyuck hummed into the side of Mark’s neck. “Smelled like you.”
“…In the freezer?”
But Donghyuck had already drifted off to sleep.
-
“Please, please, please, pleasepleaseplease—”
“Please what, baby?”
“Give me your babies, Hyung. Want ‘em so bad—Ah—Knot me, please, I—”
“Fuck.”
-
Mark let his eyes wander the holding room that Dream had been sitting in backstage for the last several hours. It was small, much smaller than the rooms they were usually put in for the music shows, and it just barely fit all seven of them and all their staff hustling around, doing makeup and hair touch ups as the clock ticked down. Less than ten minutes now and they were going to be on stage, performing in front of fans. It never got old.
It was just one of those concerts put on by one of the broadcasting stations, SBS, he thought, with dozens of groups performing throughout the day, but he was still excited for it like it was their own. It had been a while since Dream had performed together in front of fans like this, and he was buzzing with the anticipation of actually getting back on stage again. They had to schedule all of the rehearsals around Donghyuck’s heat, so it had been a little tight, even for just the five songs they were performing, but hearing the crowd scream while some other groups were performing just underwrote how incredibly worth it was going to be. He couldn’t wait.
Mark didn’t realize that he’d been bouncing his right leg until Jaemin slid into the spot next to him and put a hand on it to still him.
“So,” Jaemin said, casually looking straight ahead, “what was Haechan’s whole heat-thing about? He won’t tell us anything.”
Now, that was a conversation he certainly didn’t want to have with Na Jaemin, of all people. Jaemin was like a shark, he could smell blood a mile away, and if he heard about the whole, uh, baby fever, as Donghyuck had called it, then they’d never live it down. No way was Mark going to tell Jaemin and then have to face Donghyuck’s wrath.
“Oh, um, it was just—his hormones. Kind of, you know, heat. Not really a big deal.” He tried.
Jaemin shot him an unamused look.
After that first round, Donghyuck was in a much better mood, and the rest of his heat passed much in the same fashion that the previous few had gone, but with a lot more, uh, baby references. (Mark was really, really glad he bought those wet wipes.) After it was over, he and Donghyuck talked. Donghyuck hadn’t even needed much prompting, to Mark’s surprise, considering his reluctance to bringing it up in the first place. He was going to go to the doctor to talk about getting on low dose suppressants to control his…more base urges during heats, and they hadn’t made concrete plans yet, but they were going to move out of the dorms. If the scents of the other members bothered him that much while he was in heat, then they were going to move out. Mark wasn’t budging on that.
And if Mark had started planning an elaborate proposal with his mom for the January that Donghyuck turned 30, well, that was nobody’s business but his own. And also his mom’s.
“NCT Dream, five minutes!”
Mark shot a Jaemin an innocently apologetic look as they were corralled to the side of the stage by the staff. Jaemin gave him a glare in return that he deftly ignored.
Mark could see some of the fans in the corner of the upper level from where they were standing, and he spotted a couple NCT light sticks. This was real. This was really happening. The pre-show rush never got old, and Mark bounced a bit on his toes, adrenaline rushing through him. Suddenly, Mark felt someone come up right behind him, and Donghyuck’s scent flooded his senses.
“Want your babies, Hyung,” Donghyuck whispered roughly into the side of his neck, and then, he licked him. In public.
At work.
So, Mark was going to go on stage with a hard-on. Cool, cool, very cool. There were definitely going to be pictures of his crotch on the internet tonight. Awesome.
“Donghyuck—” Mark whipped his head around to see his inordinately pleased-looking omega. “Please.”
Donghyuck batted his eyes innocently. “Please, what?”
“Mark,” Chenle called out from underneath the hands of one of their hairstylists giving him a last-minute tousle, “why do you smell like you’re about to pop a knot on stage?”
Well, that hairstylist was definitely going to quit.
“Two minutes!”
“I really hate you guys,” Mark sighed, closing his eyes as if that would drown out the laughter surrounding him.
“Love you, too,” Donghyuck said, planting a wet kiss on his cheek. He winked at him and then unceremoniously grabbed his hand and dragged him on stage to their positions.
“You’re lucky you’re cute,” Mark said, exasperated.
“I know.” Donghyuck’s face scrunched up into a smile. Then the music started playing, and it went slack with concentration.
Mark took a deep breath and cleared his head. Show time.