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The plum rain season had begun.
Easily, soundlessly, the finely misted air was altering the atmosphere. The season of promises, though if he counted, many would stay empty.
Yuta stood at the foothills of the stepped salt pans. The place was steeped in swimming darkness the way it had been six years ago. He had presented then. Nineteen and over-eager for his first night spent in the salt mountains. He hadn't found his mate that night, nor the year after. Now he was back, the same hunger in him and he in the same place. The same gleam of crushed salt and solid salt and everything salt beneath and around him.
Barefoot, he stepped onto the sizzlingly white path, weaving his way up. Around the salt summit, other unmated alphas and omegas were moving along, walking on their clammy, solitary paths, slow or rushing or sated or lonely, collapsing on inwards.
A tradition as old as time.
The year he'd presented, Yuta had met Taeil's eye in one of the white-licked passes. Had thought that, maybe; that the shyness he saw meant something, until another alpha had held Taeil against the shimmering mountainside and taken him then and there.
Yuta had walked out of the mountains alone as the plum-tinted dawn spread over the summits. Back to a prolonged childhood, to a grinning Donghyuck.
Deep below, where the simple happiness of things staying unchanged didn't reach, it shamed him to go back unmated.
His fingertips stung from brushing them against the steep sedimentary walls, the white gold, the only thing their closed community had with its salted plums and salted tea leaves and flower salt. He had so little to offer that his hands, blistered with salt, were the only present he was bringing along with his bare body.
~
A plateau hemmed by the salthills and spare blossoming plum trees opened up before Yuta. In its vastness, its scentless blossoms, he shouldn't have missed the heaviness that hung in the air around him. But he did.
He felt the omega before he smelled him.
Petals crusted with salt smeared into pieces underfoot. The vast nowhere on all sides. Above, the omega. Yuta tensed beneath him and then just as quickly laughed. His arms wound around the familiar body.
“I'd hoped you would wait,” said the omega breathlessly, and Yuta knew him, knew the depth of his voice that, dipped in darkness, sounded raspy despite the softness.
Donghyuck wasn't grinning; his eyes held too much uncertainty for that. His weight plasted Yuta to the wet-like ground, to its translucent gleam, without the conviction a body like his should have had. Yuta had heard of unbearable lightness; this was it.
He lay there dumb with wonder with laughter dying on his lips, and he looked at Donghyuck.
His friend. His pack.
The one he'd grown up with, worked the salt pans with, birdwatched. To whom he would go back on churning legs with a wry, hurt smile after letting other alphas have their share and coming up empty. Whose scent had imprinted onto Yuta so permanently that he no longer smelled it unless he searched for it, burying his head in a part of Donghyuck's body for a playful bite.
Yuta exhaled. A sweet exhale that signalled the erosion of everything.
For two years, he'd let each opportunity slip through his fingers. Come down the mountain yearning for what was waiting for him down at the baseline. What found him in these folds and valleys instead.
Veined with black, the ground turned beneath him, the pulpy petals sticking to the sweat and salt slicking his back, forming a second skin. But it wasn't the world that was turning; it was Yuta. He throbbed along the seam of his chest as he slowly lay down on Donghyuck's stomach, on the inviting fleshiness which he timidly trailed, continuing up, kissing with his fingers. He pulled back when he met Donghyuck's mouth.
Donghyuck blinked up at him, and he was so deliberate that the slow shift of his eyelids seemed like a nod, a shy agreement.
He had a briny taste when Yuta kissed him.
“I should have hunted you,” Yuta breathed out into the tremulous kiss.
“I wasn't sure you would.” Donghyuck smiled up at him with his eyes. Continued to speak in small kisses. “You can be a bit oblivious about these things.”
“But you knew I was waiting for you?”
“I was hoping you were. Every time you left, I was wondering if you were,” said Donghyuck and, hesitating, he ran his hands up and down Yuta's arms. Feeling the taut and soft places, brushing off the sheeny film off his skin.
Realizing their nakedness, Yuta barely suppressed a full-body shake.
He dipped his head down for another kiss, a slower one because it was surer, because his aimless want and hunger had a home at last. There was a want that pulled back at him, mirroring his own and pasting him close to Donghyuck till the salt crystals between them dissolved in sweat.
There was more tugging and touching, more of their bodies. Yuta found himself splayed on the ground again, with Donghyuck's thigh holding him in place. Donghyuck broke the kiss. His eyes crinkled. Climbing over Yuta and clasping him down fully with his dark thighs, he leaned over, and something pulsed when he slowly sat down.
Yuta hissed as if burned. Smooth skin slid over his bare cock, quickening the swell and the ache. There was no room to be without touching Donghyuck somewhere, somehow, in ways which wouldn't have been right just hours ago.
“Mate me,” murmured Donghyuck.
“I will. In your bed, or in mine,” said Yuta. “Somewhere safer.”
“No, here. Now.” They didn't kiss, not quite. Donghyuck just hovered above him. “Finally.”
Curving his grip to get a better hold of Donghyuck's hip bones and steady him, Yuta drew in a sharp little breath. His cock made full contact with Donghyuck's thigh. A warm and then chilly wet smear. A slow squeeze of flesh as Yuta's cock slid between Donghyuck's thighs and came out shiny with slick. In the barely-there space between them, Donghyuck's scent grew saturated, unsweetened and resembling the lakes he and Yuta would swim in, the bluebells they would crush when play-fighting at the edge of the forest. It choked Yuta up, and he opened his mouth to take a deeper sip.
It took all he had to halt halfway.
“Hyuck, I want you happy,” said Yuta, voice taut in his throat, while he held on to Donghyuck's waist so tight that his flesh dimpled to receive Yuta's fingerprints.
“Then make me happy,” Donghyuck replied simply. He sank into himself as if becoming self-conscious, as if thinking Yuta was refusing him. His nakedness suddenly more visible.
“But shouldn't we, you know.” Yuta let the silence speak for a moment, and he looked up just as self-consciously. “Properly?”
Donghyuck smiled a bit. “Are you saying we're being improper? You, hyung, of all people?”
“I'm saying...”
Stilted for words, Yuta stopped mid-thought. They didn't need a bed. Didn't need something external to sanction this. Happiness, for them, was always the most obvious thing.
“I don't know what the hell I'm saying.”
He reached up and, breathlessly, he pulled Donghyuck mouth to mouth with him. There was the smallest gasp, and a chuckle, and Donghyuck opened up to kiss back. Eagerly. Bodily. He kissed like he'd come to the same conclusion ages ago: that no outside object or person could make this more real, or less real. It was only them.
Always had been.
Yuta trembled beneath him once, twice, as Donghyuck slowly spread his legs to accommodate more of him. The filled-out cock. The curious fingers. Touching, tasting. A gush of slick filled Yuta's palm, weightier than he'd thought it would be, a fold of fluid satin. Yuta rubbed it between his fingers before tracing the seep up Donghyuck's thigh. Beneath the smooth glide of skin on skin, beneath the wetness, Donghyuck oozed body heat.
When Yuta slid his hand between Donghyuck's thighs, the heat pulsed.
Breaking free from the kiss, Yuta wiped his hand onto the cleanest part of his body, trying to get off the slick-sharpened tiny crystals. Then he put two fingers in his mouth. Licked the salt clean off. Along with Donghyuck's sweet-tinted taste.
Donghyuck watched, and he opened his mouth to speak, and shut it when Yuta put both fingers back. Breached the tight wetness. Slid as far as Donghyuck would let him, closing and clenching around him.
They moaned together. A shocked little sound.
A beat of stillness.
Tentative, Donghyuck ground his hips down, the line of his stomach lenghtening and shrinking into itself as he tested how the motion felt. Tilted his head back. Hung it forward. Tried, kept trying. To take it all at once, with Yuta's eyes on him the whole time because he couldn't look away.
Another low moan set the air between them trembling.
“Hurts?” said Yuta hoarsely.
“It doesn't.” Donghyuck was out of breath. His face broke into vulnerable pieces. “Hyung, it doesn't.”
Yuta spread his soaked fingers without thinking, seeking what Donghyuck was seeking with his rolled-out thrusts, and getting it. Donghyuck's grip on Yuta's shoulders buckled. He groaned, throaty, holding himself up on unsteady hands until he simply folded. Yuta hugged him close.
Tangled, they rolled to the side, Yuta slipping out of Donghyuck's loosening warmth and slipping back from behind.
Donghyuck buried his face in Yuta's neck. Breathed out in hot gusts. Soundless things that got hotter, harsher, louder against Yuta's ear. Yuta moved in and out of Donghyuck at a clumsy pace, but he had to be doing something right, there had to be a method to his madness because Donghyuck gripped at him and shifted against him and pushed just so that Yuta's fingers could go deeper, open him wider.
They rationed the air that slipped between their open-mouthed kisses. Shared it, returned it. Their lips burned from the shock of salt and sweetness.
To all of that, Donghyuck let out a sigh.
“I've wanted this.”
Yuta felt himself throb as he went flush with Donghyuck.
In the clamour for closeness, scents sharpened, salt clung to sweat and seeped into skin. Some part of Yuta was always at one with some part of Donghyuck. His tongue tipping the inside of Donghyuck's mouth. His fingers slowly easing out of Donghyuck. Holding him open for a heartbeat, and then Yuta's body fitting into him.
They let out wounded moans.
Overwhelmed moans.
It didn't exactly hurt. It ached that they hadn't belonged to each other sooner. Sidling up to Donghyuck, Yuta felt them fuse deeply together, hips pressing and trying to find a place to fit. Donghyuck was breathing quicker. Yuta watched closely as Donghyuck willed himself to get used to that fullness. Watched those tightly shut eyes.
Donghyuck opened them. He looked at Yuta, heavy-lidded, and he smothered him in a kiss that seared and claimed him and had in it years of silent yearning.
A spasm of short thrusts strangled needy noises out of them. They lay on their sides, locked into one and clumsy and clamouring, but already learning the other's yes'es. Donghyuck was coiled tight around him. The slick helped, the sheer amount of it, to slide in and out and deeper in again. Softly; softer than Donghyuck would let him finish. Fearfully, almost.
But the fear of belonging and not belonging and being wrong and being right couldn't undo that Yuta craved it all.
Arms wound around Donghyuck's sun-darkened, surging back, Yuta lay into him and turned him over. Fucked into him until his cock was buried so deep that Donghyuck went speechless and shaking.
The sound he made next echoed through the salthills.
Head thrown back, Donghyuck clutched at Yuta, easily pulling him in so Yuta's mouth pressed against his throat. Everything about him became more heady. His scent susurrated like a voice, a steady hum of alpha, alpha, alpha. Yuta knew he oozed the same cry for him.
Yuta opened his mouth, and as his teeth grazed the tender skin of Donghyuck's throat, the wetness between them spilled over.
When he came to, Donghyuck was crushing him in a barely human grip, crying on his cock, pulling in sweet, sated sobs. There was a tear-shaped bruise under his chin, the darkening stain all but fluttering over his pulse point. Yuta let out a long, shuddering exhale. Still inside Donghyuck, and still somewhat hard, he returned the desperate embrace. Buried his face in Donghyuck's neck. To hide, to smell him because his scent soothed him. Kissing blindly along Donghyuck's ear and throat, his lips finally landed on the warmed mating mark and bit the spot lightly.
“Hyung,” said Donghyuck, a hoarse little whine. His hand completely covered the girth of Yuta's bicep and clutched it, hard. “Shit. Shit...”
“It's okay,” Yuta replied quickly, though his voice sounded thin and small to him. He'd shut his eyes, tasting the tiny bruise and tracing it with the tip of his nose. “We're okay.”
And they were.
~
Yuta walked out of the mountains as the plum-tinted dawn spread over the summits, Donghyuck grinning beside him.