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Jaehyo always wished he could catch scents the way the other castes could. It wasn’t like betas couldn’t smell anything, it was just that they weren’t beholden to those sways of pheromones like the others were. He couldn’t tell who it was coming at him before they were even in earshot the way Taeil could. Couldn’t tell when Minhyuk and Yukwon had been fucking around the way Kyung could. He didn’t know what he smelled like. Didn’t know what the scents of his whole pack mixed together really smelled like the way Jihoon liked to talk about when he buried his face into the couch cushions when his hyungs were away on schedules.
Sometimes, when they were finishing a particularly hard dance practice and everyone was covered in sweat, he wondered if maybe it smelled like that, but he figured that was pretty gross, most likely. That was probably not what everyone was talking about. Besides, he’d heard that Jihoon smelled like gingersnaps and spice when people talked about how he didn’t smell like most alphas would and he didn’t smell anything similar to that.
He never told anyone about that, though. He didn’t want them to feel bad for him. He didn’t want to make Jiho feel weird either. Besides, it wasn’t like he didn’t like being a beta. He did. It suited him. He liked that his presence was calming. He liked that he never had to go through any of those wild periods of time. He liked Jiho being able to count on him for something since he never came to him for seemingly anything else. (He didn’t blame him. He’s fucked up a few things in his time.)
It was just that he sort of wished he could smell what made the rest of them so anxious when a rut or a heat hit and he and Jiho were the only ones operating on a clear head, making sure everyone ate and had water. It was just that he wished that he could know what the smell of maple and hyacinth was like when Kyung buried his face in Jiho’s neck even though he didn’t need to be scented. He wished he needed to be scented. He wished he knew what being scented was like.
“What do you mean you wish you knew what being scented was like?” Minhyuk asked, frowning over the beer in his hand.
Jaehyo blinked blankly, looking across the table and then shooting a look at the man beside him. Yukwon was in his lap, so he couldn’t get up and dodge the question, but he was enthralled in whatever story Jihoon was telling with his booming voice, commanding the room at large. Or at least commanding the attention of Taeil and Yukwon while Kyung drunkenly nuzzled against Jiho’s neck and their leader pretended he was invested in anything else.
“Jaehyo,” Minhyuk said a little more firmly.
“Nothing,” he replied, putting on a heavy sigh and rolling his eyes like that would make it more convincing. “What were we-”
“You were thinking out loud,” Minhyuk interrupted, which wasn’t necessarily common for him in the first place. “Which means that’s what you were thinking. What do you mean by that?”
Jaehyo’s lips pursed and he turned away to look at the couple across the table and took a long pull from his bottle. “Just that I don’t know what it’s like, you know? To be scented like that.”
He didn’t look back at Minhyuk. He turned his gaze to the table instead and wrapped his arm a little tighter around Yukwon when he laid back against him with a loud laugh. He ignored the look he knew he was being given for the rest of the night, but he could feel it trained on him until the moment they all went their separate ways into their rooms.
Nothing came from that slip up for a few days. Jaehyo had all but forgotten about it by the time he had to deal with it, honestly. He didn’t think he would have to in the first place. Even if he did, he would have assumed it would have been someone else dealing with it.
He was bedding down, getting ready to sleep, the lights already out and the door firmly locked when he heard it. The jiggling against the knob, the click of the lock. He groaned and dragged a hand down his face.
“Jaehyo,” Taeil said lowly, creeping in and closing the door behind him. He was quiet, soft, and that in itself was strange.
Most of the time, the pack slept all together, dumping themselves in a big nest and snuggling up. Some nights, though, they needed time to themselves. It was normal, accepted, and Jaehyo usually slept better on his own anyway. The others didn't always take well to his absence and would fetch him to be dragged into the pile in the other room. Normally, they would barge in, loud and boisterous to ruin his sleep here alone. Normally, they would leave the door open and drag him out. Normally, it was two or three at a time. This was abnormal.
“What?” he groaned anyway, turning over and away from the alpha coming towards his bed in the dark.
A dip in the bed told him that Taeil put a knee down beside his hip. Another dip and the brush against him said a hand came down on the other side of his shoulder. It was dark and he couldn't see, but he heard the scrape as glasses were settled on the table beside his bed.
“Taeil?” he asked, confusion tinting his tone as he rolled to look up at him. He couldn't make out features, but he knew the man hovered over him, looking down into the darkness like he could see clear as day.
Without answering, the smaller man shifted around until his whole body was laying across Jaehyo's, legs settled between his own and forearms holding him up.
“Do you know what I'm doing?” Taeil asked, voice low still. It was still higher pitched than anyone there, but it was low for him, soft, purposeful. He leaned down, skating his lips over Jaehyo's neck and then nuzzling at his throat.
Jaehyo frowned and tilted his head up. He'd done this before. They all had, he thought. “Scenting?” he asked carefully.
Taeil’s lips connected gently, like a reward for a correct answer. He shifted, putting more weight on the body underneath him as he continued to bury his face against the skin there. “Good. So why did you wish you knew what it was like to be scented?”
Jaehyo froze. It had felt good for a few moments, making hims relax into the motions and lulling him to sleep. There was the kind of scenting that led to fucking and the kind of scenting that made him comfortably drowsy. Taeil was still at it, but the spell was broken anyway.
“Minhyuk is a snitch,” he mumbled, pushing at the alpha to no avail. He didn't move an inch from where he had Jaehyo pinned down.
“Minhyuk cares about you,” Taeil huffed against his skin. His teeth nipped at the skin in warning and Jaehyo whined but stopped pushing him away. “We all do. Why do you think we don't scent you?”
“I know you do,” Jaehyo huffed, flailing un frustration as much as he could and then flopping limply back onto the bed. “That's not what I meant. I just wish i knew what it feels like. To be scented like that. To know what the mix is like. I want that too.”
Taeil hummed, his lips vibrating against Jaehyo's skin. He pressed his face in a little further, nosing under Jaehyo's ear and kissing gently along the arc of his neck. “You smell like jasmine,” he murmured and although Jaehyo knew that, he held his breath. He'd been told before, but always in passing. Not like this.
Shifting a little, Taeil moved down some to nip and suck and abuse the place a more prominent scent gland would be, as though he could make it work better that way. “Mine is like chai and nutmeg.”
He knew that too, but again in passing, from the comments people liked to make about how two of their three alphas had such uncommonly sweet scents. Still, it made something in his stomach flip to hear Taeil press the words into his skin. He could almost smell it, could almost catch hints of jasmine and chai mashing together, nutmeg filtering in. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend it was real.
Taeil lifted his head again, the dark still too deep to be able to see one another, but he could feel Taeil’s breath over his lips, knew he was hovering just over him. They came together the way petals fall, soft and with an undeniable gravity. Jaehyo melted against his lips and sighed contentedly as he sank bonelessly into the bed.
When the kiss broke, Taeil turned back to Jaehyo's neck, laying soft kisses against him and nosing gently along his skin until he drifted off to sleep.
Waking up was a struggle for different reasons than falling asleep was, but somehow was much the same. He was buried under a sea of bodies, barely able to breathe in the little twin bed that too many people were unceremoniously piled into. Both of his arms were asleep and it took a few moments to get his bearings.
Someone was wrapped around him from behind, but he couldn't turn enough to see who it was. Yukwon was mashed against his front, clinging on like a koala so he didn't fall off of the narrow mattress and his face buried against his neck. Jihoon was curled around the foot of the bed, one long arm stretched over all of them and his legs curled up in a way that couldn't possibly be comfortable. Taeil was wrapped in the other arm, held close for safety and curled into a ball. Kyung was laid across the mass of bodies as though he didn't care about things like sharp elbows and lumpy shoulders or anyone else's ability to breathe. When Jaehyo shifted, he realized that his head was in someone's lap and looked up to see Jiho leaning against the wall, his lap a pillow for all three of them.
The movement alerted him and he looked down from the book in his hand and a small smile tilted his lips, turned his eyes to crescents. “Morning,” he said softly.
Jaehyo shifted, trying to get any limp at all free and failed. “Why is everyone in my bed?” he croaked, voice raspy from sleep.
Carefully, Jiho’s fingers slid into his hair, carding through then gently. “You weren't in the group bed, so we joined you.”
His eyes closed again, unable to help himself when someone played with his hair that way. “Seven people can't fit in this bed,” he grumbled, but it came out like a sigh.
“Not with that attitude,” he chuckled. “Taeil was pretty sad to lose his spot but he was fine when he realized we could all fit if he gave it up.” His fingers didn't stop moving, carding gently through his hair even when Jaehyo didn’t reply. “You scared them, you know,” he said softly.
Jaehyo's eyes opened again at that and he looked up. “They were scared you thought they didn't love you. I think the others forget we can't scent them quite the same."
“I don't think they don't love me,” Jaehyo argued softly.
Jiho nodded, letting his thumb slide down over the apple of Jaehyo's cheek. “I know that, and so do you, but scent means a lot to them. More than us. You saying you wanted it I think made them worry that you weren't happy with them.”
He hummed, too sleepy to really have a conversation like this. The body behind him, which had to be Minhyuk, shifted and pulled him closer, buried his face in the back of Jaehyo's neck. “We’ll do better,” Minhyuk said softly.
“You don't have to do anything different,” Jaehyo tried to assure him, but was cut off when Yukwon in front of him lifted his head and silenced him with a short, soft peck to his lips.
“Shut up,” he murmured. “Are you awake enough to move? Your bed is terrible.”
He huffed, squirming again and receiving an elbow to the soft bit of his side when Kyung went to sit up. He blinked blearily down at them and the clambered out of bed. A stray foot caught Jihoon in the chin and his grunt woke Taeil as well.
“Are we moving?” Jihoon asked, voice even deeper at the edge of sleep.
“Yes,” Minhyuk said firmly, which had Jihoon getting to his feet and carting the smaller man with him like he weighed nothing.
“I was gonna get up,” Jaehyo argued, frowning as all of the warm bodies migrated away from him. There still wasn't really room for it, but he managed to roll onto his back to see all three of them and frown. “You don't need to do anything.”
Yukwon slid a little closer, tucking his face down into Jaehyo's neck again, pressing a kiss to the mark Taeil had managed to leave again. “You're feeling left out. We are going to fix it,” he said firmly.
Minhyuk leaned in on the other side, pressing a kiss to Jaehyo's cheek and then drifting his lips over to catch the other's in a kiss that always made him feel like he was melting. “Come cuddle your pack, stupid,” he mumbled.
Jaehyo really didn't have a choice in the first place and he didn't have one now either. The three of them bullied him to his feet and shuffled him to the other room where Jihoon pulled him down into a new, more comfortable tangle of bodies.
“Jiho? Minhyuk?” he asked, trying to sit up some when he realized two of them were missing.
Yukwon curled against him again and stole alone calming kiss. “Hush. Give them a minute.”
Jaehyo frowned, watching their backs where the two were huddled by the window. There was a sharp sound. The strike of a match, and then light burning and then…
Jasmine first. Chai. Gingersnaps. Strawberries, hyacinth, maple, sharp black coffee. The two of them parted, moving candles away from the little desk and surrounding the bed in them.
Jaehyo sucked in a sharp breath, but it caught in his throat. “Where did you find those?” he asked, voice choked.
“We went together and got them,” Kyung mumbled, face buried in Jaehyo's stomach. “Minhyuk’s was almost too hard. And Jiho’s."
Jiho crawled onto the bed once the candles were set out, leaning over him and catching Jaehyo's lips lightly. It lingered for several long moments, until butterflies Jaehyo thought he would have been done with ages ago made his stomach flips again. “Thought we would have to bring in real flowers for a little while,” he laughed softly.
“You didn't have to,” Jaehyo insisted again.
Minhyuk nodded, settling down behind Yukwon but threading his fingers with Jaehyo's. “We didn't have to do it, but we did. Because we love you, Jaehyo. Okay?”
Another sharp breath and he closed his eyes abruptly, nodded and tried to relax when Jiho’s fingers moved to his hair again. His pack surrounded him, his pack who fought to give him what he needed even if he insisted he didn't need it. The scents of his pack filled the room, permeated it and sank into the sheets and the walls and finally into him the way he wanted, the way he craved it.
Jihoon hummed softly and nosed at his neck, smiling against his skin. “You smell happy.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, allowing himself to sink into the bed again. “I am happy.”