“Do whatever you want.”
Doyun stretched his legs out, thinking he’d have to dig through the photo album later — he was pretty sure they’d all taken a photo together wearing elephant t-shirts. Minjun, having lost the game, let out a roar and threw his head back. Eunho’s hand shot in between just before the back of Minjun’s head could thud into Doyun’s stomach.
Doyun, tired despite not having done much of anything, opened his mouth wide in a yawn. Eunho, watching him, reached over and unrolled the cuffed hem of his pants. Then he yanked the blanket Minjun had been using as a backrest and draped it over Doyun. The moment he was wrapped from the neck down in the soft, fluffy blanket, sleep came crashing over him all at once.
***
When Doyun opened his eyes, he was on the bed in what used to be Suhyeok’s room. After Suhyeok’s parents had moved to the countryside, Suhyeok had taken over the master bedroom, and the room he and his older brother used to share had become the guest room. Eunho was lying on the small bed beside him.
“…When did we move to the bed?”
His voice came out cracked, still thick with sleep. As his eyes adjusted to the dark and came into focus, Eunho’s face gradually became clearer. A faint sliver of light coming through the gap in the door traced the outline of Eunho’s clean-cut face.
“The guys are still out there playing games. You were sleeping so soundly — snoring right through all that noise — so I just brought you in here. Are you fully awake now? Or… still a little sleepy?”
Eunho’s hand lightly grazed Doyun’s bangs. The touch tickled, and Doyun reached up to ruffle his own hair. He heard Eunho laugh softly.
“I feel like I slept a lot. Hey, and I don’t… snore. Do I?”
“You were snoring… purring away like a cat, though. It wasn’t loud.”
When Eunho shifted, the narrow single bed pressed the two of them close together. Each time Eunho spoke in a near-whisper, the gentle breath that came with it brushed against Doyun’s forehead.
“You must have been exhausted too. Falling asleep right next to someone who was snoring.”
“I wasn’t asleep. Doyun, don’t pull away — come closer.”
Perhaps because of the prominent ridge of his brow bone and his long lashes, the area around Eunho’s eyes looked especially shadowed. As Doyun stretched and shifted back toward the edge of the bed, Eunho tugged him by the side. As the distance between them closed to nearly nose-to-nose, a faint but sweet scent drifted from Eunho and hit him all at once.
“Did you put on cologne? You smell good. Is it body lotion?”
“No. I deliberately avoid scented products. They don’t mix well with pheromones.”
“Really? You smell good though — what is it? Something sweet. Like candy.”
“My rut is coming up soon… maybe that’s why?”
“I’m a beta, how would I even smell pheromones… Are you sure it’s not actually body lotion or fabric softener or something? You smell really good.”
Rut was a physiological cycle that alphas went through periodically. An alpha on the verge of rut would run a higher body temperature, which in turn made their natural scent and pheromones grow stronger.
In crude terms, it was also called a heat cycle. Eunho, who said his rut was coming soon, looked only slightly drowsy — there was no sign whatsoever of the kind of feral, frenzied arousal the word might conjure. As Doyun kept sniffing and insisting that Eunho must have put on cologne, Eunho smiled faintly and asked:
“Want me to drive you home later? I brought my car.”
Doyun shook his head with a reluctant expression.
“No, I promised to cover the night shift today, so I’m heading to the convenience store in the evening.”
“What time do you leave? I’ll drive you to the convenience store.”
“It’s down an alley and it’s evening, so going by car would actually take longer… I’ll just rest a bit and walk over.”
Doyun’s parents ran a total of three convenience stores. Two were small stores tucked inside apartment complexes — quiet places that didn’t see much foot traffic. The third, however, was located in a restaurant alley that office workers frequently visited for company dinners. Since they were always short-handed at night, Doyun helped out almost every day.
“Okay… come closer, I said. You’re actually going to fall off.”
Eunho nodded and pulled Doyun in by the torso. The hand that had been tickling his side migrated to the small of his back. It stroked down his back with a touch that was gentle but carried a subtle, deliberate pressure. The steady weight of Eunho’s hand stroking his back eased Doyun closer.
“Are you… sleepy?”
“No.”
Then why…
He’d been about to ask why he was being so clingy and insisting on hugging him like a whiny, overtired child — but closed his mouth. Eunho already ran a little warm as a trait-carrier, but with rut approaching, every point of contact through the thin t-shirt was hot enough to be distracting. His whole body was burning.
Eunho, who had been resting his head on one bent arm, slid Doyun’s pillow out from under him and stretched that arm out flat. Naturally, Doyun rested his head on it. Some people would say it was gross for friends to share an arm-pillow, but they were both guys — what was the big deal?
Doyun was a beta, and he firmly believed that one day he’d date a female beta and get married. He didn’t know much about alphas, but he vaguely assumed that Eunho would probably end up with a female omega.
So lending out an arm and having someone rest their head on it wasn’t really that strange.
But when he tried to imagine Suhyeok or Minjun doing the same — offering an arm pillow like this — even in his imagination, something in him recoiled. Turning the strange, tender intimacy of this moment over in his mind, Doyun’s thoughts had already drifted back to the summer of his first year of high school without him realizing it.
“This takes me back to when we went to that camp.”
Eunho whispered in a low voice, as if he’d somehow looked right inside Doyun’s head. The breath that touched his ear made him shiver.
“I was literally just thinking about that. You let me use your arm as a pillow back then too. We weren’t even that close yet — why didn’t I push you off? Don’t you get pins and needles? You’ve got a lot of muscle in that arm.”
“Does having more muscle have anything to do with pins and needles?”
“I don’t know.”
During the summer of their first year of high school, the two of them had participated in a leadership camp hosted by the school. It probably wasn’t going to do much for university applications, but Doyun had dragged himself to the dull camp anyway, thinking of his sparse school record. He’d tried hard to get Suhyeok and Minjun to come with him, but the one who ended up accompanying him was Eunho.
Eunho, who had lived abroad for a long time, had a different university application process altogether and had no real reason to attend the camp — yet he cheerfully joined Doyun for the tedious two-night, three-day event. They spent the days reading books, writing reflections, and doing group presentations, then ate a sorry excuse for dinner in the evenings before collapsing at the lodgings to sleep. Even though all they’d done all day was sit in an auditorium and write, Doyun was always exhausted by the time they got back to the room and would fall dead asleep almost instantly.
Originally, the camp participants were assigned to rooms with ondol floor sleeping, but they’d lucked out and were placed in a room with a single queen-sized bed. The two of them, who had started out lying rigidly side by side with their hands folded neatly, getting all tangled up together was only a matter of time.
While Doyun was lost in those old memories, Eunho pressed his forehead against Doyun’s and leaned in close. The moment Eunho’s warmth touched him, a silence settled between them. The gleam of his eyes in the dark looked different from just a moment ago. He wasn’t angry — but he looked like something was bothering him.
Doyun found this kind of calm, quiet silence harder to bear than having someone be openly angry or irritated at him. And this was something Eunho did often. Eunho called Doyun’s name slowly.
“…Doyun.”
“…What.”
Doyun’s voice came out low and cracked. Eunho’s free hand reached over and smoothed his hair back. Whether he had swallowed or not, the prominent Adam’s apple on Eunho’s long neck bobbed visibly. Eunho looked at him with a gently curving eye-smile and asked in a soft tone, at just the right volume to be easy on the ears:
“When were you planning to tell me you moved closer to campus?”
“Oh…”
A stupid little noise slipped out before the actual answer he’d been forming in his head. Doyun quickly scrambled to add an excuse.
“Did I not mention that?”
“No. I was waiting for you to tell me yourself.”
He turned it back on Doyun — you tell me. Eunho was making no effort to hide the hurt in his expression and tone.
As Eunho had said, starting this semester, Doyun had moved into a place near campus and was living on his own. He’d had the idea of getting his own place since his first year, but since he was trying to find something on a jeonse lease, finding somewhere that met his conditions hadn’t been easy.
He’d gotten lucky and found a place that fit what he wanted, so he’d moved quickly — but as it happened, Eunho had been in America at the time and they hadn’t been in much contact. He wasn’t sure whether not telling him about the move warranted this kind of crestfallen expression, but seeing Eunho looking so deflated, the guilt hit him for real.
“Sorry. If you ever need to pull an all-nighter, come over. It’s only a ten-minute walk from campus. Come over any time. I’ll give you the door code — only you. I haven’t told Suhyeok or Minjun either.”
Doyun held out his pinky in a promise gesture, and Eunho laughed and answered, “Okay. Just don’t ever bring other people over.” Eunho really did have something about him that made you want to stay on his good side. His hurt seemed to have fully lifted now, and Eunho smiled as he said:
“Look at Doyun, living alone like a real man now.”
