Chapter Text
“I’m sorry, I’m just not looking to date anyone right now. You seem like a lovely lady, though, I must say. As smart as you are beautiful.”
The compliment that trails after the rejection, spoken by pink, plush lips, seems to be enough to placate the hopeful omega. She had chosen to be bold today, deciding to shoot her shot with the Kim Seokjin – the university’s most desired alpha – only to be rejected in front of her entire class. (Seokjin had kindly offered her the chance to take this outside, perhaps somewhere more private, but she had insisted on getting through it here, just a few small steps away from their professor.)
“I-I understand, oppa,” the young woman’s tone is bashful as she dips her head in a frantic bow of apologetic acknowledgement, her cheeks flushed and her dark doe eyes downcast, “thank you for your consideration.” She scuttles up the steps of the lecture room before she even finishes speaking, her hurried words hovering in the air alongside the blooming scent of fresh raspberries. Ripe, promising a battle of sweetness with a confident tang.
Her scent is almost enticing, secret notes of which taste candied on the tip of Seokjin’s tongue. Part of him, the part that mourns the absence of his base instincts, craves to feel warmed by the scent. Logically, his mind can make the reach to note which aspects of the scent, of the benevolent omega, could be palatable to him. But his heart cannot agree with his mind, and his inner alpha has long since given up searching for something he cannot feel.
Instead of admitting to his peers that he is broken, a shell of the alpha he should be, of the alpha they see him as, he pastes on a smile and turns to bow towards his lecturer.
“Forgive me, teacher,” slowly straightening with a hand placed over his chest, Seokjin looks up to notice the endeared look on the older beta’s face, “I apologise for distracting the class. That was not my intention.”
“It’s okay, Seokjin, these things happen, my boy. Please, take a moment if you need to, step outside, otherwise you are free to take a seat and we will get started in due course.”
Nodding, Seokjin turns to find his seat, eyes gazing lazily across the middle rows towards the left side of the room. He finds his empty seat right next to Kim Taehyung, the annoying little brother of Seokjin’s good friend Namjoon. Seokjin may be the most popular alpha at this university (not to toot his own horn!) but if he were to sit anywhere else, by any of his other friends, he would never hear the end of it. From Taehyung or Namjoon, who would eternally torture Seokjin as revenge for the headache he would no doubt receive from his younger brother.
“Seokjin!” Taehyung calls as he approaches, unnecessary in the near-silent lecture room, somehow drawing more attention to Seokjin than what was already on him. The young omega bounces in his seat, waving energetically. The waving slowly loses momentum as Seokjin shuffles along the row, coming to a complete stop as the older alpha takes the empty seat between him and a (to them) nameless student. “Gosh, I am so glad we ended up on this module together. There is never a dull moment with you.”
The emphatic awe in the omega’s demeanour has Seokjin cringing, embarrassed, but he nods and smiles graciously as he pulls his laptop from his bag and places it on the desk in front of him.
“The uni gods are really in my favour,” the omega says, laughing lightly as he shakes his head in disbelief.
Fortunately for Seokjin, the younger man goes silent as their lecturer calls for order, directing their attention to the PowerPoint loaded on the screen. The first slide of the – 62-page, Seokjin checked last night – slideshow is a black and white headshot of some old-timey actor Seokjin has no recollection of. No matter how hard he stares, the name just won’t come to him.
“Who is that guy supposed to be?” Taehyung asks, leaning over to whisper the question in Seokjin’s ear at a way-too-loud volume. Seokjin shrugs, shaking his head and tutting at the same time, as if Taehyung should be able to name the man on the screen.
If Seokjin takes some form of joy out of hearing Taehyung scramble through his notes, watching the action from the corner of his eye, then no one has to know. As Taehyung starts retracing the material from several previous lectures, their lecturer introduces the actor on the screen, but Taehyung doesn’t catch that, distracted as he is.
Smirking, Seokjin doesn’t repeat the name for the young omega’s benefit. Instead, he listens attentively to the words of their lecturer, typing out a couple notes lazily.
Before anyone can insist that Seokjin is mean to Taehyung, Seokjin knows full well that he will be sharing his notes with the younger student before the day ends. They have had an open email chain since the start of the semester, with Seokjin’s contributions all being curt words with attached documents and Taehyung’s being strings of emoticons.
And despite Seokjin’s insistence on the use of their university emails in order to keep things professional, he still finds his phone weighed down with dozens of notifications from the rambunctious omega. Every Tuesday and Wednesday without fail.
Two hours later, Seokjin finds himself hurrying out of the lecture room with all of the speed of a man who practices incognito mode every other Thursday. His ears are ringing with the memory of Taehyung’s incessant chatter, have been since twenty minutes into the lecture, and he hopes to get out of the general vicinity before he sees the omega girl again. He was really hoping for a better start to his day than having to reject someone’s polite advances, and now he is going to have to carry that weight for the rest of the day. Week, month, year.
Ugh, his life just feels like one big rejection after another. Not against him, though, of course. Seokjin can confidently say that he has never fallen under cupid’s spell, and the only person he has ever confessed to was the stuffed bear he had as a child. He used to carry that thing everywhere with him, unable to let go of it until the day an older kid made fun of him for it.
Grateful to finally be free, to have an hour all to himself before he has to trudge over to his afternoon seminar, Seokjin strolls off in the direction of the best cafe in the area: one just off campus that happens to sell the best everything. He finds himself in dire need of a hot drink this chilly Spring morning. Any will do. (At this point, with how his day has been going, he may even take something caffeinated despite his recent choice to mostly swear off of the substance.)
Just as Seokjin begins to daydream, eagerly fantasising about the warming effects of his chosen drink, of the frothy goodness of a hot chocolate or coffee, Seokjin feels his breath get knocked out of his body, choking its way out of his mouth, as a force collides with his chest, the impact akin to a tossed basketball or football.
“Oof!” The breathy vocalisation falls from Seokjin’s lips without him intending it to, the sound pulled straight from his unwilling lungs as they recoil in surprised pain. His hands reach up to cradle his chest, to hopefully rub away the impending soreness, but that plan is derailed by the touch of soft hair.
Looking down, Seokjin is met with a head of blond hair, at which point he promptly realises that the item that collided with his chest wasn’t a ball but a human head. Thankfully alive and still attached to its owner’s body, but a little bit of dramatics never hurt anyone.
“Excuse you,” Seokjin says, intentionally this time, as he peeks down at the individual who clearly views him as prime tackling material. Not that they seem to have the body for tackling, too slight to be a rugby player and… way too pretty to be a footballer. “Um, I mean, excuse me.”
The eyes that meet Seokjin’s then are wide, brown and frightened with a little speck of what reads, to Seokjin, as curious insanity.
“I’m so sorry,” the mysterious person, an omega considering the pheromones currently combating his innocent senses, apologises, in a manner Seokjin can only describe as word vomit. The omega turns their head frantically as they speak, checking their surroundings either side of them before glancing behind themselves hastily. Before Seokjin can mourn the loss of eye contact with such a piercing gaze, the eyes are back on him, equal parts skittish and cryptic. “I’m sorry, I just- I didn’t see you there, I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings, I just wanted to-”
An uncomfortably familiar voice interrupts the beautiful omega. Seokjin flinches at the use of such unsavoury language, his eyes searching immediately for the culprit, one he already knows before he even sees them.
A group of four alphas, all fourth years, are leering across a patch of grass at Seokjin. Wait, no, not Seokjin, he doesn’t fit the criteria of their usual tormented victims. The four alphas, infamous around campus for their misdemeanours and sheer stupidity, are leering across the courtyard at the omega currently crowding close to Seokjin’s chest. Not cowering, just-
Not there anymore.
The omega is gone.
Seokjin looks around himself, half expecting (hoping) to find the omega obscuring themselves behind him, behind his broad shoulders, as he has experienced once or twice before in situations involving Hajoon and his little gang of ‘bullies’. Seokjin prefers the term ‘predators’, but apparently he isn’t allowed to use it in polite company.
Instead of finding the little omega obscuring himself behind the alpha, Seokjin notices a small blip of blond disappear through the double doors of a nearby building. For some reason, a small seed of disappointment begins to settle in Seokjin’s belly at the observation, which makes absolutely no sense. Not only is he usually relieved to not have to interact with most omegas more than what is considered courteous, but also everyone and their mother would run in the opposite direction of the university’s notorious brutes.
Well, everyone except Seokjin’s own mother, who marched straight up to Eun-Kyung in Seokjin’s first year and demanded that the alpha keep her mouth shut if she didn’t have anything nice to say about the poor omega girl who had misplaced her newly-given student ID card.
Scowling, Seokjin glares as he makes eye contact with Hajoon, the group’s self-designated ringleader, the worst of the worst. Hajoon grins in response, a wide, menacing thing that bares the sharpened points of his canines and saps the joy out of any soul unlucky enough to encounter it in any form. Seokjin can feel the corner of his lips curl in response, distaste etching itself across his features as bile rises in his throat.
He watches three of the four alphas chuckle together, batting at each other ‘playfully’, their movements on the fringe of aggressive, before they turn to walk in the opposite direction, the direction Seokjin had previously been heading in. (Well, it seems he will have to find another location to spend his hour-long break in. He doesn’t want to look at those animals again, let alone walk anywhere near them.)
Hajoon doesn’t immediately turn with the others, and doesn't immediately join them on what is probably another quest to harass another innocent, blameless omega. Instead, the violent alpha continues to stand in place, stubbornly holding eye contact with Seokjin, the rest of the world frozen around them. Then, the creep rears his head back and spits, saliva shooting in Seokjin’s direction but landing just a few feet in front of Hajoon.
Even though Seokjin is nowhere near close enough to be within hitting range, he still finds himself recoiling as he witnesses the foul action, so unbecoming of a member of pleasant society. He shouldn’t, though, because Hajoon’s name hasn’t been uttered alongside the word pleasant since before the animal’s conception.
“Hyung,” a meek voice calls from slightly behind Seokjin, repeating again closer until a large hand reaches for the ridge of the alpha’s elbow. Taehyung. “Hyung, what are you- don’t get yourself involved with Hajoon. Please.”
Seokjin can hear the worry, the care, the affection in Taehyung’s voice, but all he can see is the fear in that mystery omega’s eyes, a gorgeous intelligence hidden stoically behind a wall of pure terror.
“I won’t.” He promises off-handedly, going willingly when the omega uses his hold on Seokjin’s elbow to guide the alpha away from the courtyard and into the university canteen. “I don’t want any trouble with Hajoon.”
Even as he says the words, Seokjin can taste the bitter acid of a lie on his tongue, his eyes searching the canteen for any speck of blond hair. All he finds is platinum highlights in locks that descend down to a woman’s lower back. No fluffy, shorter crop.
Seokjin doesn’t want any trouble with Hajoon, that much is true, but Hajoon clearly hopes to incite trouble with the omega from the courtyard, and there isn’t a muscle in Seokjin’s body that could willingly allow that to happen.
He doesn’t even know the omega’s name, but he finds a part of him wants to, and he wants to keep him safe, away from the greasy claws of Hajoon and his unsocialised cronies.
He isn’t sure, but he genuinely thinks he could fight Hajoon if he had to (and everyone and their dog knows Seokjin isn’t a fighter), because there are two things that won’t leave him as the day progresses: one, the abandoned plea on the omega’s lips, and two, the bitter tartness of the heavy scent of organic bergamot, coupled with the awful stench of dread.
Who was that omega?