Yeongu was a little taller than Dohyeon, and standing side by side their eyes sat at about the same level. Not enough of a difference to make a voice sound like it came from above. The next moment Dohyeon realized his vision had blurred. He blinked, and Yeongu’s alarmed face swam into the wavering frame. He had an arm braced under Dohyeon’s waist... and he was looking down at him.
His legs had given out and he’d nearly gone down.
Dohyeon realized it, sucked in a sharp breath and got himself upright fast. He shoved Yeongu off and backed away a few steps, and the world was still spinning.
“Ah, I just, for a second.”
His mouth strung together something about being tired, his legs going out from under him for a moment, anything to patch the situation over. His condition only got stranger.
Everything reeled, the hand he looked down at warped like something boneless, and his breath, coming faster and faster, seemed to carry heat in it. He reached up to feel his own forehead and found it a little hot. No, the reason it was only a little hot was that his hand had already gone hot too...
For all the trouble he’d taken to put distance between them, Yeongu closed it in a few easy strides. Yeongu’s hand touched his forehead, and only then could he feel that he was burning like a coal.
Instead of saying you’ve got a bad fever, Yeongu spoke after a long silence.
“I thought you were an alpha...?”
It hit Dohyeon like lightning.
What was happening to him.
Heat cycle...!
His mind went white.
He’d definitely heard that a heat cycle came with warning signs. And he’d taken every dose of the medication Sinjun handed him, so it had never occurred to him his first heat could break out of nowhere like this. Had feeling off been the warning sign? Was that why even Yeongu’s smallest gestures had irritated him? And here he’d assumed it was just his own foul temper...
Yeongu faced him with a composed expression. Wherever that shameless grin had gone.
“Would you like some help?”
What he intended to help with, and how, Dohyeon didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. Summoning every last scrap of willpower, he managed a smile.
“Seems like you’ve misunderstood something.”
He left behind a line about talking later and slowly backed away. As though to keep Yeongu from coming any closer. One step, two steps, three... the instant there was a little distance, he turned and broke into a run. His feet tangled and he nearly fell, and this time he made it off the roof without collapsing into Yeongu’s arms.
...
He’d been found out.
Found out, and beyond any real doubt!
Dohyeon kept running, unsteady. Though calling it running was generous, given how pitiful the pace was next to normal. That this would happen on the first day of shooting. Where had it gone wrong? He should have recognized this particular problem the moment he first felt off, and he’d gone up to the roof without a clue, which was lamentable. He’d all but offered up the back of his neck and invited someone to eat him alive.
He couldn’t take the elevator, so he ran down the emergency stairs tucked in the corner. All he could do was hope everyone on the set used the main staircase and the elevator instead of these.
The steps under his feet seemed to fold and sag like melted candy, an illusion that had him gripping the rail as he went. And as he went, Yeongu’s expression came back to him. I thought you were an alpha...? He’d said exactly that. Could it be explained away as a health problem? That he was an alpha, all right, and if Yeongu had picked up omega pheromones he must have imagined it...
Fuck, there’s no way he’d buy it.
He barely made it to the parking garage, and then he realized he didn’t have the car key. He had to reach Sinjun before anyone else caught him. He tried to find his phone as he approached the car and his hand kept slipping. He panted out a breath and swore under it. Reaching the car at last, he braced himself against the rear door and dug through his pocket again. Just then the driver’s door flew open.
“...What is this state you are in?”
It was Sinjun. He couldn’t lift his head enough to check the face, and the voice was unmistakably his, and that was a relief. Could hearing this man’s cold voice really put him this much at ease? With a hand on his forehead, Dohyeon answered.
“Ha, fuck... you have no idea what it took, to get down here... do you have to, hah, put it like that, every single time?”
Sinjun’s eyes were lightly narrowed. No, they seemed to be. Dohyeon couldn’t tell exactly what expression the man wore. The vicious heat kept blurring his sight, the world rippling as though seen through a haze.
Sinjun came at him in long strides and opened the door. He crammed Dohyeon into the back seat, then scanned their surroundings.
Dohyeon yanked over the hand that had gripped his shoulder to seat him and buried his face in it. There was no other intent behind it. He was simply too hot, and that hand was cool. Sinjun’s body temperature seemed to run slightly below average. Dohyeon was very nearly boiling right now, so the reaction was only natural. He gasped out,
“Do something, do something about this... don’t you have medicine? Ah, hnh... you’re the one who picked up the prescription.”
He heard Sinjun let out a small sigh. His breathing only came faster.
Dohyeon expected to be reproached, blamed. The man was merciless by nature. He’d left everything to Sinjun instead of keeping track of his own medication, then failed to notice until a heat cycle broke, and he’d have nothing to say if the man found him pathetic.
In fact Dohyeon was already blaming himself. Which, for him, was extremely rare.
But what Sinjun said was unexpected.
“This is my failure. I should have had them ready in advance, but I did not watch your condition closely enough. Knowing you are not an ordinary omega, that you are unstable. Normally something like this...”
“...”
It sounded as though there had been something more he meant to add. Dohyeon was in no state to work out what. Sinjun let the sentence trail off and slammed the rear door shut. As though hiding Dohyeon from the outside world. He stood in front of the door a moment, looking around as if checking for something, then returned to the driver’s seat.
Sinjun’s voice reached him faintly as he started the engine. That this level had cramped parking to begin with, and what little there was had been taken up by the production vehicles. That the other celebrities and staff had therefore used the garage upstairs. That it was a good thing he’d parked here just in case, and that thanks to it no one else would have seen, which was pure luck... Dohyeon was in too poor a state to catch all of it, though not so poor that he missed the gist.
He was in no condition to say good work or thank you, so he just kept his mouth shut. Sinjun checked on him in the mirror.
“Medication will do nothing for you at this point.”
“Then what the fuck am I supposed to do about this...”
His breath was coming faster and faster. Dohyeon fumbled for the button, dropped the seat back as far as it would go and lay down, and when even that didn’t settle him he twisted around wildly. He turned his head and rubbed his hair against the cool headrest. To bring the heat down.
Then Sinjun, watching him flounder, climbed over from the driver’s seat into the back. That long body moved with an easy flexibility. He adjusted the seat position to make room, then settled himself between Dohyeon’s legs.
“Ah... what are you doing.”
Dohyeon asked in a voice drained of strength. He worked the deep creases out of his face to get a look at Sinjun’s. Sinjun’s eyes were clear and cold, without a trace of reason clouding over.
The car was so full of pheromones that even Dohyeon could dimly register it. As an alpha he’d never paid this much attention to his own, and now he was frantic with anxiety. This feeling, so much like shame, was presumably a measure of how unstable he was.
Which was why, looking at Sinjun’s expression, Dohyeon felt relieved. The man was holding on to that cool face, not affected by the pheromones in the slightest...
Thank god...
Come to think of it, he’d never asked about the man’s traits. He’d assumed beta as a matter of course, without any solid grounds for it. For a start, though, Sinjun did not look remotely like an omega. Granted, prejudices like that meant very little now that Dohyeon himself had become one, but the agency held not a shred of doubt that Dohyeon was an alpha. Knowing his scandal record, they’d hardly assign him an omega manager. However much Dohyeon was the type not to touch men regardless of their traits.
Judging by physical characteristics alone, alpha would have been the most credible answer, and no alpha could stay this composed with someone in the middle of a heat cycle right in front of him. Not as far as Dohyeon knew.
“A heat cycle worsens the longer it is left alone. If it is the first, it is more dangerous still. It has to be brought down at least a little before medication will take.”
