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yoongi and hoseok are a pair of shared-trauma bonded biologists who had been separated from their study group due to a sudden, and very deadly, avalanche.
they regress- something modern society shuns to the point that there are laws in place to control the validity of bonds formed whilst under the influence of their wolves. regressing is very simple- people forget about the things that happened before their instincts took the reigns of their logical, human brains, and they essentially become archetypes of their subgenders.
doctor jung hoseok and doctor min yoongi rarely interacted before the disaster. they never had a reason to- their lines of work had never collided. in order to survive, however, hoseok regresses into his alpha headspace to protect himself and yoongi. it doesn’t take long for yoongi to follow- they’re recovering from injuries, hidden away inside a small alcove deep in the forest. they had lost their gps tracker in their hurry to get to safety from the falling rocks and snow. they’re stuck in confined quarters. yoongi's leg had been injured quite severely, and hoseok had barely held onto mental clarity long enough to clean the large gash and stitch it shut using supplies left in the small first aid kits that had been in one of their bags.
they mate during yoongi’s unsuppressed heat- his medication ran out, obviously, and he had experienced his first real cycle. unsuppressed cycles are illegal and controlled by the government for a reason, it seems, and yoongi can’t help but notice how quickly his belly seems to grow. his alpha keeps him safe, though. the den and their nest is the coziest place in the world, to yoongi. this life is heaven.
two years pass.
hoseok and yoongi are presumed dead. however, emergency service worker and mental rehabilitation expert kim seokjin receives a tip from a local hunter that there is reason to believe that a pair of regressed wolves are living within five miles of the avalanche site.
seokjin insists that his supervisor hire a team of rescuers to check it out.
and there they find hoseok and yoongi, completely and utterly feral, living in that same alcove- but it’s more of a den now. it’s lined with furs. a fire burns just outside the threshold of the cave.
yoongi has a child at his breast and he’s heavily pregnant.
in an attempt to protect his mate from the group of people armed with guns, hoseok lunges at a group of rescuers- and he is immediately sedated. yoongi passes out from the stress.
the government intervenes and states that the trauma-bond needs to be broken. they argue that hoseok and yoongi are not in the right frame of mind to consent to a mating bond. it’s null, regardless of the children they had sired together in the two years being regressed.
seokjin slowly starts to realize that while yoongi and hoseok are not truly themselves, it’s still extremely cruel to separate them. they took yoongi’s child away to be taken care of while the omega went through withdrawals. he is forced into therapy, though he does not speak for a very long time. the same goes for hoseok.
the omega is so fearful, so distrusting of the facility staff, that they have to force-feed him nutrients and medication in order to help him recover.
seokjin confides in his mate, jeongguk. he’s frightened of the way the government treats regressed mated pairs.
“what if it were us?”
“hyung, you know as well as i do that they are not like us.”
“who’s to say they aren’t? who’s to say that they don’t love the same way we do? you can’t tell me that their bond means nothing. hoseok’s so thin, he looks deathly ill. he refuses to eat. he asks if his omega is alright but the workers never respond to him. i think hoseok believes yoongi is- he thinks yoongi’s dead.”
“hyung. stop-“
“yoongi begs them to bring him his baby, and they never do. he cries until he passes out from exhaustion most nights. they’re trying to get them to remember who they were before the accident, but they can’t. it’s not working. i don’t think that is their fault. all they want is each other. they just want to know if their mate is okay. i don’t think that is feral. i don’t think that is evil. whatever this is, whatever it is that this government is forcing upon these poor people… it’s torture.”
“we cannot question them! we are not in a position to… to fight back! i can’t- we cannot do that. we can’t risk our safety for these people.”
“no one is fighting for them, jeongguk. society says they don’t have rights because they regressed.”
slowly, yoongi begins to remember life before hoseok- before their den and their nest and the baby. yoongi remembers his mother. he asks the worker for her, because he knows at this point that no matter how many times he asks for haneul, his pup, they will not let him see him.
they let yoongi see his mother.
she touches yoongi’s swollen stomach and cries, telling him how sorry she is for him. she suggests adoption for his children, all of them, and yoongi’s hackles raise- is he not allowed to love his children? his mate? why are they so adamant that any decisions he had made in the past two years had been made against his will?
they tell him that hoseok isn’t really his alpha, but he doesn’t believe them. he remembers hoseok. hoseok had loved him. he kissed him, made sure yoongi was warm and fed and safe. he tended to his every need when he had birthed their first pup in that crude, little nest. he loved hoseok. he still loves hoseok, but yoongi is smart. he understands that if he ever wants to see haneul again, he’s going to have to pretend. he knows that hoseok would want him to fight for their children.
so he does that. he pretends. he pretends that he is healing from the regression, he pretends that he understands that he was taken advantage of by his own wolfish nature.
it takes time but they let him see haneul again, but this time, they drill him about options. they suggest that adoption would be a perfectly sane decision to make. in fact, conveniently, there’s an infertile couple who had volunteered to take both of yoongi’s children already- they had signed the papers and everything, and all they needed was yoongi's signature.
he feels sick.
he fights for them. he’s accepted that his nest is broken and the government would never agree to let him see hoseok again. he knows that his alpha would never be his again, but he wants his children. it takes a lot of convincing, but they let him go with haneul.
hoseok was transferred to a different rehabilitation center, but yoongi isn’t told that explicitly. it’s implied, and he’s not stupid.
years pass.
haneul is six and yerim is five when yoongi sees his alpha again, and it’s hard to keep the fact that they have met- that they’re seeing each other now- under wraps.
yoongi had moved to a new city for new job opportunities, and his first day at work was the first time he had ever been without his children in a very, very long time.
it had been odd- it had been so weird to see his alpha, dressed in a well-fitted suit, wire frames balanced on his slender nose. yoongi barely recognized him- he didn’t look like himself. hoseok didn’t seem like himself dressed like that, though yoongi could say the same about himself. he didn’t feel good or right in his clothes either, his outfit almost mirroring hoseok’s.
they had locked eyes across the street, and that had been it. yoongi was sprinting into traffic, cars skidding to a halt as he launched himself at his mate, his hoseok, his alpha.
his whole body had been shaking with nerves and excitement and dread.
hoseok had kissed him there in broad daylight- only once. nothing too suspicious. hoseok's hands had shook when he took yoongi's face between his palms, his eyes raking all over.
"jagiya ."
it had been whispered- barely a rasp, but yoongi felt his eyes cloud with tears.
to anyone else, they looked like normal lovers. yoongi and hoseok knew otherwise, though. their human brains had not decided that they were lovers, yes, but their wolves had. it hadn’t mattered that they barely knew each other. what they had those two years had not been fabricated. there was love there- just a different, more primal type of love.
they only meet at night. hoseok finally meets the children, properly, and he cries at the way haneul looks so much like himself.
he missed yoongi. he wishes they had never been rescued. it didn’t feel like being rescued- whatever this was, it was hell. they were happy in the forest, at least. yoongi agrees.
there’s the risk that seeing hoseok again will make them regress again- that’s why the government forbids regressed pairs who had been bonded in the past from seeing each other ever again. yoongi finds that he honestly doesn’t care.
if anything, they’ll just make themselves disappear again- but properly this time. they’ll make arrangements and they'll move and they'll be happy together again. they'll create that same joy they experienced when it was just them and the forest. they just need time.
hoseok sells most of his belongings over the span of three months. he encourages yoongi to as well- they'll need all the money they can get. they have plans to move countries- separately, of course.
yoongi applies for his passport, and registers his two children as well.
hoseok applies six months afterwards, in an attempt to throw off any suspicion.
yoongi moves first. they make plans to live somewhere that has better laws- better legislation protecting the validity of regressed bonds. yoongi rents an apartment in an unassuming town, close to a metro station where he'll be able to commute for work in the future, hopefully. hoseok books his tickets the moment he receives his passport in the mail, and suddenly-
suddenly, it’s very obvious that they’re actually doing something illegal. they’re doing something against the law.
seokjin, who had been paired with yoongi after he had been rescued for his “rehabilitation”, notices that yoongi doesn’t answer his calls, anymore. no emails, not calls, no letters. he knows immediately what has happened. he does not report it like he is supposed to, though.
he just lets it go.
hoseok and yoongi move around a lot, but they have eachother, and they have their children.
it’s everything they had ever wanted, despite it all.