Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

THE ALPHA

When they first find the alpha—chained by the ankle to a radiator in the basement of a house in the middle of nowhere—he’s feral.

He reeks, too. Starvation oozes from every inch of him, rotten berries covered with furry mold, slimy and gooey to the touch. Rank enough for Jaemin to throw a hand over his mouth. There’s a deep gash on his ankle from where the chain digs in. The skin there bubbles with little pops of veiny, translucent flesh. Fish eggs. Tadpoles. Infected derma swimming in its own pus. There’s dry blood smeared across his face. He looks like a horror movie come to life.

Jaemin wants him dead.

Renjun disagrees. He kicks away from the stairwell to crouch down in front of the alpha, sounding unimpressed when he says, “We can’t just kill him.”

“Why the fuck not?” Jaemin asks. He shifts in annoyance. Scrapes his elbow. The sudden scent of blood in the air makes the alpha’s nostrils expand, a shark in the water. A predator. Jaemin doesn’t like that. Has him on edge, eyeing the hand Renjun holds in front of him like the alpha is a stray kitten in some back alley they can save. Easy as that. Here, kitty kitty. Come into my arms. Please don’t gnaw my fucking face off.

Renjun spares a quick, disapproving look over his shoulder. Bad alpha, the look says. One day Renjun will learn not to scold. It will be his downfall, Jaemin is sure. In a world where alphas turn feral at the snap of fingers, it’s imperative to be mindful. Keep to yourself. Try hard as you fucking might to not piss anyone off. It is a lesson Renjun has yet to learn, one of the few fortunate ones who found a pack so early on in the apocalypse.

His reply is curt. “Because I don’t feel like killing anyone today.”

“Then I’ll do it,” Jaemin says with a snort.

“Who made you the executioner of today’s hunt?”

Ah. There he is. Mark, their ever-calm beta. He was a journalist once. A real do-gooder. The guy first on the scene of campus protests and nation-wide upset. He’d covered issues like the systemic sub-gender discrimination between alphas and omegas within the workplace. Betas who wanted more respect in their fields. An omega’s desire for better, gentler sex from alphas who just wanted a warm place to stick their knot. To anyone who lends him an open ear, Mark will prattle on and on about the work he once did. He’s got a lot of pride in the fact that when news about the plague first broke, he’d written article after article calling out the government for their misconduct pertaining to the situation. He’s always cared too much. And it’s carried on to the end of the world.

His job is to keep their hunts controlled. Keep Jaemin and Renjun from being impulsive, eager to pull the trigger—snap their jaws—at the smallest sign of a threat. Neither alpha is feral. Not yet, anyway. But they’ll protect what is theirs. Mark ensures that unnecessary blood is not spilled.

Jaemin was wondering when he’d speak up.

“Someone needs to be,” Jaemin tells him.

Mark spares him a flat look. “We don’t need to kill him.”

Again, Jaemin asks, “Why the fuck not?”

“Look at him,” Mark says, gesturing to the alpha. “He’s chained up. Poses us no threat. You won’t kill him.”

“What exactly is your plan then?” Jaemin asks, patience waning. “We leave him here? To what? Die?”

Mark doesn’t answer. He shifts from foot to foot, avoiding Jaemin’s gaze.

“Let me put him out of his misery.”

Renjun huffs, unamused. “No one is falling for your big bad alpha act, Jaemin. We listen to Mark for a reason.”

“It’s not an act if I’m being serious.”

“He doesn’t deserve to die,” Mark insists.

Jaemin moves away from the wall. The heel of his boot catches in a hole in the ground, a misstep that makes him grunt, annoyed. This catches the attention of the alpha. He stares at Jaemin’s foot for a moment before trailing his gaze up Jaemin’s body. Their eyes lock. It’s a tense moment. Odd. Jaemin’s nose twitches as the musk of the alpha only seems to fatten, take up too much space in the basement.

“It’ll happen one way or another,” Jaemin says.

At the sound of his voice the alpha lets out a low, broken growl. A puppy-like sound.

It incenses Mark.

“Jaemin,” he warns, voice deepening as though he’s a parent rebuking a child. “You won’t fucking touch him.”

Really, what is Mark’s hang up? This isn’t the first time they’ve had to kill, but he’s been on his moral high ground as of late. The feral alphas that chased them to this run down home would have easily been dealt with if it weren’t for Mark wanting to run. But he did. Now he and Renjun suffer respective ankle and head injuries, and Jaemin is the only one of them in the right state of mind.

Jaemin continues forward. He doesn’t like how little he can see down in this basement. How pungent the smell is. Mold trapped in the rafters, piss on the floor, mouse shit under his boot. He goads Mark a bit more just because he can. Because he doesn’t like the look of disgust on his face. It’s not warranted. Not now.

He asks, “Yeah? What’re you gonna do about it, Mark?”

Renjun stomps, no doubt growing irritated by their back-and-forth. “You’re acting like a bad dog, Jaemin. Fall back.”

Jaemin doesn’t fall back. He takes his gun from a loop on his belt and grips it tightly in his hand. It’s a heavy weight, warm to the touch. Damp metal in his palm from being stuck between leather and denim for too long. Jaemin hasn’t shot it yet on this hunt. Ans he’d rather use a knife, not waste a bullet, but Mark holds onto that for now. Idiot dropped his gun in their rush to find shelter.

He raises the gun in the air. “Feral alphas have no place in this world.”

“Jaemin.” Mark’s voice, distant now. Water slow-drips from the ceiling. Jaemin’s finger itches to pull the trigger. “Stop it. Now.”

Jaemin remembers everything they taught him while he completed his military service. Deep breath in, muzzle up, align the front and back sight, drag other hand under handle, take the fucking shot. Easy.

He points directly at the alpha’s forehead. “Close your eyes.”

“This isn’t fucking funny,” Renjun snaps.

Jaemin clicks the safety off. “Who’s laughing?”

“Put the fucking gun away, now,” Mark growls, and it’s not as scary as he would hope it is.

Jaemin closes one eye. All he can see is the top of the alpha’s head. His matted hair, his bloody forehead, his eyes wide with fear. He’s pale-faced and teary-eyed like some kind of doll. But he doesn’t shake. He doesn’t beg for his life. All he does is slump over himself as though he’s accepted his fate. Jaemin clenches his jaw, annoyed by the sight. There’s no room left for empathy this late into the apocalypse. This alpha should’ve been dead a long time ago.

The click of the gun’s hammer. The loading of a bullet. Deep breath out, hold it. Seconds roll into each other one after another.

Three… two… one…

Jaemin is just about to shoot when the low-pitched whimper of a dying animal cuts a hole in the air like it’s trying to get relief from its own stink.

Jaemin hesitates. All it takes is that one moment for Mark to barrel through and slap a hand down on his wrist.

“Smell him,” Mark says, urgency in his tone. His grip is hard enough around Jaemin to feel his pulse. “Fucking—smell him, Jaemin.”

Jaemin does. He prepares himself for spoilt milk and ammonia. Death always smells the same, he's learned. Just as rotten as the waste people used to leave alone in their fridges. But none of that comes. Instead, muted traces of fresh fruit and honey eat away at Jaemin’s senses. His nose twitches. He feels his blood turn cold.

He snaps his eyes to Mark. Vindication stinks like shit from his peppermint-sage scent.

“Not feral,” says Jaemin, wrenching his arm free.

And Mark sounds so gleefully matter-of-fact when he says, “Not feral.”

Renjun starts to laugh. “Not fucking feral.”

It doesn’t make any sense. The alpha’s stench was strong enough upon entry that it felt instinctual for Jaemin to hunt. To seek the source out. A frustration unlike anything he has ever felt ripples through his body. He stomps toward the alpha and shoves the toe of his boot under his chin, lifting so that they meet eyes. “How’d you get down here, runt? Who are you?”

The alpha flinches back like Jaemin has done real harm. It’s an act. Jaemin can tell that it’s an act. He can’t place what feels so wrong about this alpha, but it’s there; in the minute twitch of his mouth, the heavy stare he keeps locked onto Jaemin, the sudden flush of his clean scent.

Jaemin lifts higher so that he alpha’s neck strains. “Fucking answer me.”

Another broken whimper. An animal skitters from inside a wall. Wind whistles in from the basement’s only window. It’ll be dark soon. They need to leave. But it seems Mark is adamant on his do-gooder mission because without warning Jaemin is shoved to the side. Hard. He loses balance and nearly falls to the floor. Mark flinches when a growl rips from Jaemin’s throat, but he isn’t deterred. He crouches next to the alpha, runs a hand through his dirty hair.

“What’s your name?”

No answer. The alpha falls against Mark but keeps his focus heavy-lidded on Jaemin. His shoulders slouch. His eyes flutter. He seems to like the way Mark begins to scrape the blood off his face.

“He won’t hurt you,” Mark whispers. He doesn’t look over his shoulder or motion toward Jaemin. They all know who the bad guy is. “I won’t let him. What’s your name? How’d you get here?”

The alpha shifts as much as he can. His jaw ticks. His foot flinches. He wants to move, but the malnourishment won’t let him.

“You’re hungry,” Mark says.

This gets the alpha’s attention. His eyes slide from Jaemin to Mark. It’s clear as day in this dark basement just how starved he is.

Mark sits down next to him on the dirty floor. “How long have you been down here?”

The alpha’s throat bobs. His lips open a fraction, just enough to slip a coin through.

“Maybe he’s mute,” says Renjun.

Jaemin shoves his gun back into his belt with a dissatisfied huff. “Maybe he’s playing you, and you’re falling right into the fucking trap.”

“Or maybe,” Mark says, brows pinched as he glares up at Jaemin, “he needs help.”

“And we’re the ones to offer that?”

“Who else?”

“You’re being a fucking idiot,” Jaemin snaps. He thinks this is a waste of time. The alpha might not yet be feral, but he is well on his way. Another day or two and those wires would re-fuse. He’d chew his own foot off if it meant freedom. And they’re supposed to—what? Set him free? Offer him a warm cup of nothing? He wants to know what exactly Mark’s plan is, and how he would like to execute it. “I want no part in this shit.”

Mark stands up in a whoosh. Quick enough to have him dizzy on his feet. It doesn’t take away the hostile tone of his voice when he yells, “People need people, Jaemin!”

“It’s the end of the world, Mark. Or did you forget that? You can’t Mother Teresa your way out of a feral alpha.”

“He’s not feral!” Mark yells. The alpha whimpers again which forces Mark to quiet down a bit when he next opens his mouth. “You smelled him, Jaemin!”

“Why are you fighting so hard for this anyway?”

“Aren’t you tired of killing people?”

“I’m tired of starving. I’m tired of running. I’m tired of—” Jaemin’s voice grows louder. Mark doesn’t look like Mark anymore. He looks like a threat, and that scares Jaemin. “—of ferals killing us. You set him free, that’s exactly what’ll fucking happen, Mark. You know that.”

Mark sniffs. “No, I’m not sure that I do.”

There’s a headache splitting down Jaemin’s forehead. He and Mark stare each other down. Neither one of them wants to concede, yet Jaemin knows that it has to be him. That anger that he feels bubbling and blistering all over his skin, it isn’t new. Just an old friend who likes to remind him of what he could’ve been had Jeno not found him one night out on a run. It’s been months since then, and Jaemin is still learning the ways of a pack.

He isn’t one of the lucky ones. He isn’t Renjun or Mark. He’s an alpha who once toed that line of sanity and insanity, so he knows it well when he sees it. A threat is a danger is a death. It all stems from somewhere.

Renjun places his backpack on the ground and begins to rifle through it. He sets out a clean horizontal line of band-aids, hydrogen peroxide and a packet of baby wipes. Jaemin realizes then that there’s nothing else he can do. The others have made up their minds. He grumbles, “You’re going to get yourselves killed.”

Then he stomps up the stairs.

It’s dusk. The sun is a shaky torch in the sky caught between the thin gap of night and day. Jaemin sits on the front porch with his revolver in hand, spinning the cylinder over and over for something to do. So fucking hot out, he’s leaking through his clothes. There’s sweat on his upper lip that tastes rotten like dirt.

The gun keeps him busy, focused. Repeating the same process: spin the cylinder, release it from its case, check the amount of bullets loaded, cock the hammer. Spin the cylinder. Count the bullets. Lock it in place. Spin the cylinder, spin the cylinder, spin the cylinder. Five bullets. One for himself, one for Mark, one for Renjun, two for the alpha in case the first doesn’t leave him dead. The click, click, click of metal whirrs in Jaemin’s brain like the rattle of batteries.

He can’t kill them all.

But he can think about it. Imagine gooey, hot splashes of blood in the cracks of that shattered-glass basement floor. Purple-bruised guts on the pebbled brick walls. Their faces as he pulls the trigger. All Jaemin does anymore is think, fixated on how quick it took for the world to end.

No one could explain the hows or whys of it when omegas started dying off without reason. Not scientists, not doctors, not scholars, not the government. Not a single person could come up with a reason why one by one, someone’s omega brother or sister died in their sleep. On the way to work. In the middle of a lecture. Sat in a chair, watching late night television.

It sparked what they call mass hysteria. Mass grief, more like. Which is such a fickle thing. That bone-deep sadness of losing a loved one is strong enough to gnaw away at even the most headstrong of a person’s sanity. While medical professionals were giving speeches over radio and television about what steps were to be taken, people were foaming at the mouths for answers. And when those never came, instinct rose to the surface.

Which explains alphas, at least. Without their omega counterparts to breed and emanate calming pheromones to keep them well-behaved, alphas reached deep down to the most primal parts of their brains. The parts that said: rape, pillage, take what’s yours, it’s all yours. Kill or fucking be killed.

Jaemin has seen it first hand. The sudden shift in an alpha’s demeanor, wires being cut and re-fused. Pupils dilating. Muscles expanding. Growls ripping from throats and shoulders spreading wide. Too wide. These new-age alphas demand submission and will stop at nothing to get it. All it can take is a minor inconvenience. Someone snagging the last canned goods in a grocery store after weeks of starvation. An unclaimed omega found hidden away after months of knotless ruts. The scent of another alpha in the air.

A threat.

Seconds—that’s all they need, nanoseconds at times—and then boom. A crick of the neck. A low growl. Cars flipped, limbs ripped from their sockets, omegas laid flat and claimed without consent. Screams of agony carried in the air like the nightmarish ting, ting, tings of a wind chime.

It’s awful. Feral alphas have no place in this new post-apocalyptic world. Jaemin wishes they were dead. All of them. Heads in his lap with eyes torn from their sockets, hollowed out black holes, ringworm veins left to lay limp over gaunt cheeks. He wishes he were dead. That the sickness would plague him and his bones would bend, snap, break until there’s nothing left of him. He doesn’t think he’d be missed. Doesn’t think it’d be much of a loss. Might be for the best, actually. Might be exactly what the group needs to—

“Jaemin.”

His head pops up, mind muggy and out of it. When he blinks, blurry vision gives way to Mark and Renjun standing before him, the alpha leaning on one leg between them. All eyes are on him. Beady little bird-like things. They’ll pluck and chew if he lets them. Jaemin closes the cylinder of his revolver with a quick snap.

“Done?” he asks, brushing cold mud from his bottom as he stands.

Mark’s head tilts. “Couldn’t have helped?”

Jaemin raises his gun in the air, a lazy show of condescension. “I’m keeping watch,” he says.

“Any reason you’re being a dick?”

“Any reason you’re playing God?”

“Can you two stop fucking fighting?” Renjun interrupts. He sends both of them a seething glare. “At least until we get back to the house. We have more important shit to worry about right now.”

That’s right. They do. It’s a six hour trek back home, give or take, and there’s an injured alpha added to the mix now that will only slow them down.

He’s been cleaned up, at least, shirt on his back one Jaemin recognizes as the spare Mark keeps in the knapsack in case of emergencies. The left leg of his jeans has been cut so that a portion of his calf is exposed. The bandage around his ankle is already soaked with blood. Sharp red in the middle that dilutes to a softer, pinker shade. Jaemin thinks about how much it must’ve hurt. Renjun’s dirty hand in that infected, pus-filled wound, alcohol stinging on a nice fresh layer of gummy flesh. Ouch.

Jaemin holds his hand out. “Give me the map.”

Mark hesitates. He’s the only person who has ever led them on a hunt, knows just as well as Jaemin that the scribbles he’s left all over its margins are indecipherable to anyone that isn’t him. But he’s being stubborn just because he can be. Because Jaemin pissed him off a little bit and he can’t help but to hold it against him.

Jaemin won’t have it.

“Mark,” he demands.

A flinch. Slow movement as his free hand reaches around to his back pocket where the map is. This is Mark’s most prized possession. Jaemin should be a little more thankful, maybe nod and unfold the paper with care, say he’ll be careful. But all he does is snatch it from Mark’s hand.

“It’s basically a straight shot,” Mark is saying, urgency in his voice. “We took backroads this time. Street signs are highlighted. But if we meet trouble, I’ve circled hide-outs, left notes on short-cuts. And there’s this—”

The look Jaemin cuts him is petty and mean on purpose. “I think I got it covered. I used to do this all the time by myself, remember?”

Mark’s eyes always shine like coins when he’s wary. “Yeah,” he says. “I remember.”

“Then get behind me and start coming up with excuses you can give to Jeno on why the fuck you’ve decided to bring another alpha home.”

The reply is soft, a whisper behind the shell of Jaemin’s ear as he takes off northbound.

“People need people, Jaemin.”

Maybe that’s true. Maybe the key to survival is a little bit of sympathy and a willingness to help those in need. But Jaemin stopped caring about other people a long time ago. It’s one of the most important lessons he’s learned of the new world, and he hopes the others come into that realization sooner rather than later.

This is not how today was supposed to go.

They’ve been gone for a day and a half too long. Recovery missions follow a strict protocol: ransack unmarked locations, take whatever is viable, head back home. Easy. Simple. They’ve got it down to a science. But because this is the end of the world, not every plan goes accordingly. Sometimes rogue alphas storm out of patches of dry brush on all fours, red-eyed and frothy-mouthed, hell bent on sticking their cock into the first sweet scent they’ve smelled in a while. Jaemin wonders who it was that got the few from earlier so riled up. Couldn’t have been Mark, scentless and quiet. Renjun, maybe. He’s always smelled a bit too candied for an alpha.

Fucking animals, they’d knot a bunny or a fawn if it meant having something warm to sink into.

It’s dangerous to be out in the woods at night, caught in the middle of thorns and thicket, possible threats creeping around in the shadows. All they have to lead the way is a few flashlights and the vague path highlighted on Mark’s map. They’ve been walking for a few hours, at least. Jaemin can hear the trickle of water from the shallow creek that separates their home from the woods. He recognizes the smell, earthy moss and wet dirt, and lets relief wash over him.

It’s a small, broken down home in the middle of nowhere. The kind of place that was made with cheap materials. There’s a kitchen wall with crayon-marked heights and stairs that open to store shoes. A light shines out through one of the downstairs windows.

“They’re awake,” Jaemin calls over his shoulder.

“Figured they would be,” Mark grumbles.

“Yeah? Figure out your excuse yet?” Jaemin asks, pausing to hold a tree branch out of the way so the others can get through. He holds his breath when the alpha passes him. “Better be something good.”

Renjun tries to stomp on his shoe but misses, too preoccupied with holding the alpha up. His backpack looks double its normal size. Has probably been killing his shoulders. “You’re being a smartass. Stop it.”

The house is so close now. Jaemin lingers behind, watching the others struggle as they trudge through tufts of soggy mud. “I’m just trying to warn you,” he says.

No one responds. There’s a tension in the air that Jaemin wants to poke at and play with, but doesn’t get the chance to. The front door swings open when they’re still about a meter away. Jeno storms out through it with a wild look in his eye.

“Who is this?” he asks, scent slicing through the cool midnight air in a fat burst of smoked wood. “What the fuck did you three do?”

Mark is the first to react. His shoulders draw up, but his chin lifts, proud. “Let’s talk inside,” he says.

Jeno shakes his head. “No, let’s talk now.”

“If you’re going to yell, it doesn’t matter where we do it. They’ll still wake up.” Mark’s voice stays hard. He doesn’t waver under the alpha’s weight or Jeno’s glare. “But I’m pretty fucking tired, Jeno, so I’d prefer you bitch at me while I’m sitting down.”

Jeno’s eyes shift from Mark to Renjun to the alpha to Jaemin until they land back on Mark. “Fine,” he sighs. “In the living room, now.” His gaze lands on Jaemin again. “You’re not hurt. Why’re you the only one not hurt?”

Jaemin’s scent must be cleaner than the others’. He shrugs. “Guess I’m just that good.”

Jeno scoffs, raises a hand in the air. “I don’t have time for you right now. Take the… alpha into the kitchen and clean him up while I talk to the others.”

“What?” Jaemin rushes forward, words coming out faster than his brain can keep up with. “Why the fuck? No. No, Jeno. No.”

“I have a feeling this,” Jeno says, a bitter sort of amusement in his voice that suggests he’s just as exhausted as everyone else, “wasn’t your idea. And we need some… privacy.”

Refusal sits heavy on Jaemin’s tongue, but he doesn’t dare. A pissing contest isn’t something he wants to get into right now tired and hungry as he is. But his skin buzzes, anxious and hesitant to put his hands on the alpha. He nods once, holds out his arms like he’s being offered a newborn, eyes focused on a crack in the wood of their front porch as the alpha sags into him.

But a moment passes. The alpha doesn’t seem too happy about being passed over, either, face all screwed up when Jaemin forces himself to look. There’s trepidation written across his features. Maybe that’s warranted. Jaemin hasn’t exactly proven himself as trustworthy. He waits until Mark whispers something into the alpha’s ear, which makes him suck on his teeth before nodding and unraveling from both Mark and Renjun.

He limps over. Half a step, and then another, and then Jaemin works his arms under the alpha’s armpits, grip sturdy enough to force their chests together.

Soft skin. Skinny frame. Honeysuckle, peaches, pomegranate. The alpha smells much sweeter this close. His breaths land hot and sticky on Jaemin’s neck as they tiptoe into the house, careful not to wake anyone up.

He’s oddly pliant. Silent even as Jaemin tosses him onto a wooden chair in the kitchen.

Jaemin finds a spot against a counter on the opposite side of the room and examines the alpha. He looks different under better lighting. Dark as it was in the basement, Jaemin couldn’t discern the color of his eyes or the length of his hair. But here, under the yolky candlelit lighting of their kitchen, Jaemin sees long, claw-like nails and grey-ish skin. Scars litter his face in tiny translucent fingernail shapes. He looks sickly. A child left beaten and starved.

They stare at each other for a bit, the alpha’s jaw clenched so tight it looks like it must hurt. Somewhere still outside, the others talk over each other in hushed tones that remind Jaemin of the scuttle of mice.

As the silence continues to thicken into something a bit too claustrophobic, Jaemin reaches into a cabinet for a glass to fill with some of the purified creek water they keep stored.

He asks, “Want some?”

The alpha’s throat bobs. He’s a pup. No bark, no bite, yet he bares his teeth when Jaemin waves the glass in the air.

Jaemin takes a sip, lukewarm in his mouth. He lets it sit for a moment before swallowing slow enough for this throat to bob. The alpha’s jaw stretches like a phantom motion of the same action. “You’re thirsty, aren’t you?” he asks, wiping his mouth for show.

Still, no answer.

“How ‘bout we make a deal?” Jaemin approaches the alpha, dipping a finger into the cup. He flicks water onto his face just to see him flinch. “You tell me your name and where you’re from, and I’ll let you have some water. How’s that sound?”

“I wuh—” the alpha rolls his lips into his mouth, takes in a deep breath “—I want… Mark.”

“Mark’s not here right now.”

The alpha’s head tilts. “But… but he’s in charge, right?”

“No.” Jaemin shakes his head. Mark might be in charge during hunts, and Jeno has the final say at home, but Jaemin is the one who keeps them safe. “Not here.”

“Must suck. Having to… to listen to a beta.”

He’s smart, Jaemin will give him that. Perceptive. The corner of his mouth threatens to lift like this is fun for him. Testing Jaemin’s patience. Poking right through his anger. Such a feeble thing, isn’t it? The way heat drips down his spine before he’s dumping the rest of the water over the alpha’s head, throwing the cup to the ground so that it shatters. He grips the alpha hard around his chin.

“I’d fucking watch myself if I were you,” Jaemin says, seething. He brings their faces closer together just to watch how the alpha’s pupils shake. “No, I’d be more grateful. You’re alive because of us. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Y-you tried to… kill me,” says the alpha, voice all mushy like his mouth is full of food.

“I tried to save my pack.”

“Some—” the alpha tries to yank his head back but Jaemin grips tighter to resist “—some pack. They don’t even… respect you.”

Jaemin’s fingers squeeze on their own accord, dig into the alpha’s flesh, enough to make him whimper, make his eyes snap shut, make him yank free and latch his teeth around Jaemin’s pointer.

“You little bitch,” Jaemin shrieks, trying to pull his finger out of the alpha’s mouth. He’s got a tight hold, a mean snarl on his face. He bites harder. Pain flares down to the bone. “Let go of me!”

The alpha growls. A nasally sound like it’s something he’s only just trying out.

Jaemin pulls again, feels where his bottom knuckle gets caught between incisors. The alpha’s mouth spreads into a nasty, dry-lipped grin. Blood between the cracks. Flakes around the edges. He’s having fun with this, tongue sliding just under Jaemin’s finger.

“Motherfucker—” yank “—let—“ yank “—go—!”

“What the hell are you doing?”

His finger is dropped. The alpha sits up straight, head dipped as he blinks up at Jaemin. The soft flutter of his lashes makes Jaemin want to do something irrational like slap him, watch how his handprint forms a cherry-pink welt on the alpha’s cheek.

Jaemin turns around to see varying looks of disapproval from Mark and Jeno. “Nothing,” he says. “We were just talking.”

Jeno looks at the shattered glass on the floor, then up at Jaemin. “That doesn’t look like just talking.”

There’s a frown on Mark’s face much louder than whatever it is he wants to say.

“Accident,” Jaemin grits out, feeling like he’s being backed into a corner. He’s not a stray mutt at the pound. He counts the heads in the room, confused. “Where’s Renjun?”

“Went upstairs to check on Chenle. Deliver Jisung his mice,” Jeno says.

Jaemin balks. “His what?”

Jeno steps around Jaemin to get closer to the alpha. He approaches with precise caution, avoiding the glass, maintaining a safe distance. He doesn’t look over his shoulder when he says, “Figures you wouldn’t have noticed he’d brought more mice home when you had—” he hesitates “—this to worry about.”

Right. Renjun still treats Jisung like a child. Except Jisung isn’t a child. He’s a grown man. A grown man with too much free time and a strong sense of conviction that he can one day save the world.

He experiments on anything, really. Bats, mice, cats. Sometimes Jaemin finds them in their fridge or under the porch just rotting away, bones and teeth missing, a collection of jarred hearts kept in the bedroom he shares with Mark and Jeno. It’s fucking sick. Jaemin doesn’t like to think about it, no matter how much Renjun plays into his little delusions.

“So,” Jeno is saying crouched low in front of the alpha. “Your name is Haechan.”

The alpha—Haechan, apparently—nods.

“Hi, Haechan.”

“…Hi.”

Jeno lets out a soft huff of laughter. “Seems like Mark has grown a soft spot for you. Thirsty?”

Haechan eagerly nods.

“Jaemin.” Jeno turns around. Gives him a look. “Get him some water.”

Jaemin’s knees lock. Now it’s Jeno being a dick just because he can. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously,” Jeno says, impatient enough to get under Jaemin’s skin.

But he does. He listens. Jaemin plays the good alpha role he knows he’s supposed to by abiding by the word of the house alpha. Jeno has always been so calm and well-assured, it’s no wonder why they chose to put him in charge when at home. He’s good at making quick, impossible decisions. At assigning people roles and keeping his temper under control. They’re at this house because of him. When starvation was nipping at all of their toes’ and tensions were high and Mark’s map stopped making any sense, Jeno decided to go past the creek.

He’s gotten them this far. He also saved Jaemin, once upon a time.

So Jaemin listens.

Jeno murmurs a thanks when Jaemin hands the glass of water to him before taking Haechan by the chin to tilt his head back. He makes maternal-like little ah, ah, ah sounds as Haechan tries to chug that water, lips shaking and throat bobbing. His entire body nearly lurches off the chair. He grips onto Jeno’s wrist with both hands to bring him closer but Jeno resists. Pulls away with the ease of an alpha not nearly as malnourished.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he murmurs, wiping some dribble from Haechan’s chin. “Too much now and your body will just spit it back up.”

Haechan’s chest heaves. It’s as if he’s run a mile rather than take a few sips of water. Jeno waits for him to catch his breath before lifting the glass back up to his mouth. He chugs just as desperately as before. Jeno laughs at him.

“Can you tell me what you were doing in that basement, Haechan?” asks Jeno once he’s pulled away again. The glass is more than half-empty already.

“I… I don’t—” Haechan blinks. His mouth opens and closes a few times as if he’s trying to give an answer but can’t come up with anything good enough. “I don’t remember.”

Bullshit.

Jaemin keeps his mouth closed, even as Mark leaves his side to crouch down next to Jeno. “That’s okay,” he says. “We don’t need answers now.”

“But we will eventually,” Jeno says. “We’ve got a pack here, Haechan. And I can’t let just anyone into my pack. Do you understand?”

That irks Jaemin. He can’t explain it, doesn’t want to pick apart the how’s and why’s of his irritation, but it pours out of him in a snide little scoff. Mark looks over at him so fast it’s as if someone’s slapped him.

“What’s your fucking problem?” he snaps.

Another scoff, and it feels just as petulant coming out as Jaemin knew it would. “You know what my problem is, Mark.”

“Oh my god,” Mark groans. “Get over it. We saved someone. You should feel proud of that instead of acting like a whiny little bitch.”

Jaemin’s chest tightens. He’s been poked and prodded at all day, is wound so fucking tight it feels like now is the best time to snap. “You put all of us in danger just so—”

“No one is in danger, he can hardly—”

“This is going to bite you in the ass, and I can’t fucking wait to say—”

“You can be so fucking—”

“So fucking what, Mark?”

“So god damn—!”

Jeno stands from his perch, lip curled in a way that can only read as: I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t like it.

“Are you two done?” he asks, gaze flitting between them. “Or do you want to wake the rest of the house?”

Jaemin hadn’t noticed their voices rising or his heartbeat picking up, but the sudden awareness sends a rush of heat to his cheeks. He can feel Haechan’s stare on his skin. He itches to move, get out of here, but won’t let himself.

“He’s been like this all day,” says Mark, the tattletale. “I know it’s not smart, but I couldn’t just leave him to die.”

They keep talking about Haechan like he isn’t there. He can speak, he can move, he can bite. His gaze is heavy and his silence speaks volumes. He’s assessing this situation, and Jaemin feels wary at any conclusions he might be coming up with. They’re not exactly giving the impression that this is a close-knit pack. It’s embarrassing.

Jeno hums, contemplative. He stares down at Haechan for a few moments before his gaze wanders back to Jaemin. “I’ve made a decision,” he says in a tone leaving no room for arguments. “No one’s gonna like it.”

There’s silence. Somewhere upstairs Renjun is trying to convince Chenle to lay down, go back to sleep, wait until tomorrow. Jisung’s mice are crying. They’re clawing at the insides of whatever bag they’ve been stored in. The walls of this house are too thin. Jaemin’s ears have always been too sensitive.

“Jaemin, you’ll help Haechan wash up.” At Mark’s instant protests, Jeno raises a hand and waits for quiet again before he continues. “Then you’ll take him up to your room and he’ll sleep there.”

“I don’t think that’s—”

“He can’t sleep with Renjun and Chenle,” Jeno tells Mark without looking at him. He’s got his eyes focused on Haechan. “And there’s not enough space in our room. Jaemin is the only option. That alright with you?”

Jaemin knows what Jeno is actually saying, what he’s doing by pairing him and Haechan up together.

In case those wires re-fuse and the alpha turns into a yellow-eyed feral version of himself, Jaemin is the only person in this house that’d be willing to put him down.

No reaction at first. Haechan sits with his hand held by Mark, body limp as a boiled noodle in that chair, eyes unmoving as he thinks about the situation he’s somehow ended up in. Jaemin gets it. He’s less than thrilled himself. But Jeno has this way of speaking that implies there is no room left for argument, so it’s not surprising when slowly Haechan nods and says, “Yes.”

The downstairs bathroom has always smelled ripe with mildew and piss. The walls are covered in a layer of yellow dust so thick it looks like fur and there’s a nasty seafoam-like grime on the mirror that no one has even bothered to try to clean. All of their cleaning products go toward keeping the bathtub, at the very least, usable. Soap scum covers the sides in a thin, slimy layer, but it’s not nearly as bad as the rust that has built up in the tub upstairs.

Someone must’ve bathed before they returned home. There’s lukewarm water leftover in the tub, smelling of nothing but the scent of wood ash and fish fat. Jisung. That’s good. No sweet omega scent for Haechan to get attached to. Just the stench of their half-assed homemade soap. It’s usually scentless, deodorized by alcohol, but supplies were running low last time they brewed a batch, and the liquor is better used to clean open wounds.

Jaemin sets his flashlight face-up in the middle of the floor so that it casts a halo on the ceiling. Light pours out down the walls, enough for him to see an arms-length out ahead of him. Haechan doesn’t move away from the clawfoot tub, an unimpressed look on his face.

“The faster you clean up, the faster we can go to bed, you know,” Jaemin tells him.

He’s met with an eye roll. “Turn around.”

“…What?”

“Do you think I’m going to let you watch?” Haechan asks like Jaemin is dumb.

Jaemin’s mouth goes dry. He spins around, nose in the corner, feeling like a bad dog. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he mumbles.

There’s a small huff before the soft thud of clothing hitting the ground followed by water rippling. Jaemin looks down at the teeth indents on his finger. Little pale crescent moons frame the curve of both his knuckles. When Jaemin flexes it, his finger throbs. Fucker nearly broke skin.

It almost makes Jaemin laugh. The sight of it is so ridiculous. Barely a noise made in that basement, yet he’d had the nerve to latch onto Jaemin’s finger like a rabid fucking animal.

Putting the two of them in the same room is a mistake. Jeno has to know that. But maybe this is a test, Jaemin’s final hurdle to overcome in order to prove himself worthy of this pack. They’ve given him a home, assigned him a role, bitten him on the neck to ensure that if he dies, they’ll feel it.

Pack bonds were practically extinct before the end of the world. Families were bound by blood and scent, and as sub-genders evolved with time, it just wasn’t necessary. The only people who still did were the rich and powerful families who thought they could shift on a full moon if they kept their bloodlines pure enough. Jaemin always thought they were a bunch of freaks. Then omegas started dying off, and traditional ways of life started making a bit more sense.

They can feel each other’s emotions better this way. Too much time apart starts to hurt. Distance is a second sense rather than something they could look up on their phones. It’s almost the same as a mating bond, except the bite doesn’t have to happen during sex.

Jaemin rubs at his bite now. It wasn’t that long ago each member of the pack opened their jaws around his neck and bit down. And he’s grateful every day for it.

He wonders if that day will come for Haechan. Will Mark’s sweet spot melt down into the others?

Probably. They’re all a bit weak-hearted here at the end of times. It's how Jaemin got accepted so easily.

But he doesn’t want to think about any far-off possibilities right now. He has to stay focused. There is a new, strange alpha in his home. Jaemin focuses instead on a dust bunny caught between the corner of the wall and the doorframe. Hears a soft humming begin to fill the humid air around him.

It’s a sweet sound. Smooth and melodious in a way that makes Jaemin feel oddly nostalgic. He doesn’t recognize the song. Isn’t sure if it’s a real tune or something Haechan has made up on the spot, but it’s a pretty sound. Relaxing. Reminds him of mornings spent with his mother making breakfast for their family while it rained softly outside. Butterflies and hummingbirds and damp leaves on the ground. Nostalgia wrapped into a note Jaemin knows he wouldn’t be able to hit even if he tried.

The humming stops. Water breaks, drips on the ground. Several seconds pass where Jaemin wishes he were dead.

“I’m done.”

Jaemin turns around.

He’s such a small alpha, Haechan. The clothes he’s been given by Jeno to change into swallow his entire frame. Sleep pants at least three sizes too big rolled over to fit his tiny waist and a shirt covered in grease stains that hangs down to his knees. Dark wet hair plasters to the shape of his head. Water drips slowly from his bangs down to the floor. All of the dirt and blood is gone. He’s much better to look at now. Better to smell, too.

Jaemin sniffs the air without realizing what he’s doing. Sweet peaches. Fresh honey. Wet, hot summer air. Haechan notices the way Jaemin’s nostrils expand. He takes a step back, eyes slitting into a glare.

“Water was cold.”

Jaemin snaps out of it at the sound of his voice and forces himself to cough before saying, “You want warm water, lug about a dozen buckets from the creek to here by yourself next time, then.”

“Does that mean there will be a next time?”

“Don’t know.”

Haechan’s brows lift. “You don’t know? Really? They don’t tell you these things?”

“Shut up,” Jaemin snaps before snatching his flashlight from the ground. He throws the bathroom door open and remembers to slide an arm around Haechan’s waist before walking him upstairs. “Follow me.”

They take twice the amount of time it would usually take limping up the stairs with Haechan’s bad ankle. Jaemin has to bite his tongue to not snap when Haechan steps on his toe. At the threshold, Haechan hesitates. Jaemin can hear his breathing grow heavier. He’s scared. Good. He should be. Jaemin won’t do anything, he isn’t that lost to his surroundings yet, no matter how much he might think about it.

Besides, Mark would have his head.

He presses his arm further into the curve of Haechan’s back to urge him forward. When they finally make it to the bed, mattress springs scream at Haechan’s added weight. He blinks up at Jaemin. “I get the bed?” he asks.

Jaemin takes a step back. “Sure.”

“Is it comfy?” Haechan gives the bed a few experimental bounces. The old rusted, metal frame knocks against the wall.

“Stop it,” Jaemin says, slamming a hand down on the arch at the top of the frame. “You’ll wake everyone up.”

Haechan looks over Jaemin’s shoulder where the door is, his gaze contemplative. He hums. “Three alphas here already.”

Jaemin nods. Feels his hands clench and unclench. “Yes.”

“One of them mated?”

There’s a comforter in the back of the closet that Jaemin had shoved in there when the seasons started shifting from winter to spring. He walks over there now to pull it out, lay it down on the ground. The edges are frayed and it’s full of spiderwebbed holes of cotton, but it’s big enough to fold over once. Thick enough that sleeping on it won’t totally kill his back. “Yes,” he eventually answers.

“What’s that like?”

Jaemin goes over to the bed and steals one of the two pillows on it. Haechan has still not yet laid down. He stares blatantly at Jaemin’s face before dragging his gaze down to the pillow. Jaemin tells him, “I like you better mute.”

“Liar.” Haechan scoots back further into the bed, bad ankle gently places at the foot of it. “You don’t like me at all.”

Jaemin doesn’t answer. Stares at a frayed end of the comforter on the floor. He turns away, fluffing the pillow before falling into the abysmal softness of his new bed.

Haechan doesn’t seem ready to drop his earlier topic of conversation.

“Surprised you haven’t killed each other yet.”

“We’re pack.”

“Right.” Haechan hums. The bed creaks like he’s finally laid down, but Jaemin doesn’t look to check. “Right, okay.”

Jaemin dreams about dogs that night.

A distant memory from his childhood of a neighbor’s pitbull, yellow-eyed and frothy-mouthed as it rips apart a short-haired pomeranian. He can see the girthy muscles in the pitbull’s back, how they flex and expand, angry with each back and forth whip of its head. Scrunched snout and pointed ears. Sharp nails that dig into dirt, dig into flesh. Ribbons of fat and tendons glazed over like honey ham pouring out from the inside of the pomeranian’s round, wet belly.

He can smell the fear leaking from the pomeranian as it howls, lodged between the pitbull’s jaw, tiny legs kicking out from underneath its body. Smell the fresh puddle of piss it writhes around in. Hear the tear of fur being ripped from skin and raw meat as it slaps against the ground. The pitbull spends what feels like hours chewing up pieces of the pomeranian just to spit it back out.

By the end of the dream, after the harrowing sound of death has fizzled out from the air, Jaemin can convince himself that it couldn’t have hurt. That it wasn’t so bad. That the pomeranian didn't actually suffer because it wasn’t actually real.

THE RABBIT

The decision to keep Haechan is not unanimous.

Jaemin sits on the sidelines while Mark sweet talks his way into convincing everyone that keeping a stray is the sort of good karma that will bring them luck in the future. What sort of luck that might be, Jaemin isn’t sure. He thinks Mark is so full of shit it’s stinking up the entire fucking house, but what does he know. What he thinks doesn’t matter. They raise their hands one by one while Jaemin braves the glares he receives for being the only outlier.

The first few days of acclimation are rough.

Mark is too soft with Haechan. Makes up excuses for him every time Haechan sleeps in later than the rest of the house. He says that Haechan is tired, he’s recovering from an injury, he needs the rest. And for a few days that was fine. Jaemin wouldn’t hold it against either one of them. But a few more days dragged on without Haechan so much as learning to build a fire. Then more and more days passed and he still hadn’t been taught how to purify water. They’re heading into nearly two weeks with Haechan now, and Mark has only just decided to teach him how to shoot a bow.

This was Jaemin’s request.

Mark wanted to offer Haechan a handgun, teach him how to load it and unload it, release the magazine and clean the barrel, but Jaemin vehemently refused. Luckily, Jeno had taken his side.

The target lessons are short-lived and half-assed. Mark found some white paint in the shed on their property and painted a giant bullseye on the side of it. He taught Haechan how to nock an arrow and pull his arm back, but neither of them really knew how to aim. Learning how to shoot a gun was hard enough for a guy who hadn’t been required to do any military service. Jaemin isn’t sure how or where Mark learned, but he was probably the worst shot of them all. Even Jisung, who decided he would never kill a living thing, was better.

Haechan fills his time now by perfecting the bow and arrow. They’re lucky to have found it once on a run. Renjun almost didn’t let Jaemin take it home. Said there was no point if no one knew how to use it. Jaemin argued that when it came down to it, someone would have to learn. Besides, he had a vague idea. Archery was taught, if only briefly, while he completed his military service. He’d be willing to hand over his gun and use the bow if need be.

But he never steps in to correct Haechan’s form. Decides it isn’t his place.

Staying with them—joining their pack—means Haechan has to earn his keep. Means he has to learn how to defend himself without anyone there to hold his hand as he does so.

Mark won’t hear him when Jaemin tries to bring this up. By now, Haechan’s ankle is healed, and the others have taken a liking to him, so there’s really no reason to be such a helicopter parent. Just the sight of Mark’s fond smile as Haechan fails over and over again to shoot a bullseye makes Jaemin’s skin boil hot with irritation.

It’s happening now.

Mark stands in front of a short, fat tree stump with an axe in his hand. He’s giving Haechan instructions on the right way to lift the tool up, where to place his hands, how to bring it down on a piece of wood to slice it clean down the middle. Haechan nods, hands on his hips. He accepts the axe when Mark offers it over. His arms raise in the air and the axe shakes as he heaves it downward, knees bent as he goes. A chip falls off the edge of the wood stood up on the stump. Mark pats Haechan’s shoulder.

Jaemin watches from a few feet away, hands slick with oil as he cleans his revolver. He’s got his knees spread out on the top step of the wooden porch. There’s an ache at his nape from being hunched over for too long. The gun is a solid weight in his hand. It clinks and clatters as he removes parts, wipes them down with an old handkerchief and puts them back into place. He doesn’t want to be paying so much attention to Mark and Haechan, but with the way Haechan fails over and over and over again, Jaemin can’t help but to be distracted.

He snaps the cylinder back into place when Haechan slinks away from wood-chopping duty without Mark putting up much of a fuss.

Bullshit.

It’s such bullshit.

Jaemin wouldn’t care so much if Haechan had picked his bow up from the ground and started up target practice—at least then he’d be doing something useful—but that’s not what he does. He wanders off to the litter of kittens who have lived in the shed for longer than the pack have lived in the house.

They’re a lively bunch. Fucking each other and multiplying tenfold, they’ve as good as taken over the land. The pack are just some strange visitors who sometimes feed them scraps if they’re up for sharing. No one has proven good enough for the kittens yet. Renjun has been scratched the few times he’s tried, Chenle always gets hissed at. Jaemin doesn’t bother with them. And Jisung has been bitten more times than anyone can count, but that’s probably because he likes to pluck them off one by one to conduct his little experiments.

Haechan, however, cherishes the kittens. And they cherish him right back.

They leap up from play-fighting and licking each other when Haechan approaches. Their raspy little meows carry in the wind. Haechan has saved them from Jiaung’s mad scientist ways. Jaemin thinks he’s earned their respect that way.

Crouching down low, Haechan pets a rowdy bunch of them. They tumble over each other to get to him. One with crusty eyes and matted fur drunkenly ambles into his arms. He picks it up without any prejudice and coos at it.

Jaemin averts his gaze over to Mark who only watches on with a fondness in his eyes that feels a little bit like being punched in the face.

He reassembles his gun and clicks the safety into place before setting it down on the porch. Then he takes off toward Mark.

“You need to stop babying him.”

“I’m not,” Mark says, brows flinching as he turns to look at Jaemin. “I’m helping him.”

“How does letting him fuck around help anyone?”

A shrug. “He takes a break every now and then, so what? We all need a break sometimes.”

“You’re too soft on him,” Jaemin insists.

“Just because it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean everyone needs to be just as miserable as you are.”

Mark isn’t listening to him. Why won’t he ever just listen?

“What’s your problem with me, Mark?” Jaemin asks. He rubs a hand to his nape to keep it to himself.

Mark hesitates. His gaze wavers. It’s easier for him to look at the ground than Jaemin’s face when he replies, “I just… I don’t trust you with him.”

“That’s not fair,” says Jaemin.

“You’re not—” Mark huffs, digs the heel of his boot into the ground so that dirt gapes around it. “You’re… rough. With him. It makes me nervous.”

Jaemin feels any fight left in his chest suddenly dissipate like air from a balloon. Maybe that’s a fair assessment. Maybe he deserves that. But it doesn’t make the blow any easier to come back from. He steps away from Mark. “I keep us safe,” he says, trying to sound as convicted as he was just a a minute ago.

Mark’s eyes wilt. They travel over to the shed where Haechan has now taken a seat, legs crossed, more kittens in his lap. Jaemin takes a mental bet on a gray one with half an ear being Jisung’s next experiment. “He’s harmless. If you’re that worried, you try to teach him something. Earn his keep, right? Well, what about yours?”

Jaemin takes a second to let that roll around in his mind. Is it his duty now, too, to help Haechan acclimate to life out in the middle of the woods? It’s not something he signed up for. Not something he cares to do. Being around Haechan makes him feel tight all over. Tense. Like there’s something wrong about the skin on his body and it needs to be ripped off.

There’s the fear, too. The bone-deep worry of what he’s capable of if left alone with Haechan for too long. He’s not like Renjun, the mated alpha, or Jeno, the gentle alpha. He’s like Jaemin, unpredictable and unknown. There’s too much uncharted territory there that Jaemin doesn’t care to jump off the deep-end into.

But Mark is looking at him like this is Jaemin’s chance to rectify his behavior in the basement.

Sucking it up tastes awfully bitter going down as Jaemin swallows his pride.

“Fine,” he says.

Mark jolts, surprised. “Fine?”

“Yes.” Jaemin nods. “Fine.”

A low whistle. “Okay, then. Good luck.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Jaemin mumbles as he turns away. Mark’s laughter follows him all the way over to the shed where Haechan now has a kitten with a bent tail held close to his chest. He’s talking to it. It talks back. Scrunches its nose and opens its mouth to reveal the tiniest set of razor sharp teeth before meowing into Haechan’s face.

“If you’re lucky, it’ll bring you a dead mouse.”

Slowly, Haechan lifts his gaze. “What?”

“That’s what cats do,” Jaemin says, “if they like someone enough. Bring you their game.”

Haechan nods, hums. His fingers disappear in the orange and black speckled hair of the cat.

Jaemin’s hands clench at his sides. He hadn’t fully thought his plan out. The sun is high in the sky, a ray beaming down to slice Haechan’s pupil in half. Long lashes. Golden flecks that dance in his eyes and along the bridge of his nose.

It’s hard to believe he’s really an alpha.

“Where’s your bow?” Jaemin asks.

The kitten in Haechan’s lap looks up at him and hisses. Jaemin hisses back at it. Haechan laughs.

“My what?” he asks, thanking the kitten for sticking up for him.

“Your bow,” Jaemin says. “Where is it?”

It takes a moment for Haechan to look up at him. Confusion purses his lips to the side. “Why?” he asks.

Jaemin shakes his head. Any questions will make him doubt himself, maybe give up on this idea. “Find it,” he says. “Then follow me. We’re going hunting.”

Haechan doesn’t complain. He sets the kitten down on the ground, ignoring how it nips at his fingers, and stands up. The bow is lost somewhere in the front yard with a bag of arrows next to it. Haechan grabs it and follows Jaemin past the line of trees that will take them into the forest. There are traps set up out here spreading out at least a kilometer wide. Jaemin makes Haechan check every single one, not surprised to see they’re all empty. It’s like all of the game has taken off. Like they sensed the shift in the air, the increase in demand, and made themselves sparse. Fear isn’t unique. It isn’t personal. It’s spread just as far and wide as the plague has.

They trudge through a pathway in the woods strangled by branches, eventually finding a spot hidden behind a pair of fat shrubs to crouch low into. Jaemin will use his gun if he needs to, but he tells Haechan that this is his responsibility. Today he will feed the pack. Do something other than play with a couple of feral incest kittens.

Haechan settles with one knee dug into wet dirt, the other propped up to hold his elbow as he gets his bow into position. Half of the arrows are made of real metal, the kind sold at the store, while the other half are hand-carved from wood and stone. Jaemin has shot a few of them, knows that they work just as well. He watches a muscle at the side of Haechan’s jaw flex as he steadies his gaze. The peach fuzz on his cheeks shines under the sun. He’s tinged auburn around the edges, the beginning of a sunburn. Peach, just the same as his scent.

“If you see anything,” Jaemin whispers, “don’t hesitate. Just shoot.”

Haechan sends him a look from the corner of his eye. “Sure,” he says. “Is my posture right?”

Upright spine. Chin raised. Elbow bent back in a ‘T’ shape. He lets one eye fall closed when focused.

“Yeah.”

“How’d you learn to shoot a bow?”

Jaemin looks forward. He gets the urge to cover up his nose. “No talking,” he says. “Pay attention.”

A gentle, amused snort. “In the military?”

“Shut up. Pay attention.”

“How many ferals have you killed, anyway?”

Jaemin shifts. Leaves crunch from underneath him. When he talks, he keeps his voice low. “That’s none of your business.”

“I haven’t killed any,” Haechan tells him, light in a way that hints he’s had this sort of conversation before. Who else is he asking this? “Haven’t killed anything before.”

Jaemin finds that hard to believe. It’s inevitable to take a life this late into the apocalypse. Whether that be human or animal, it’ll happen at one point. A person needs to eat. Needs to protect themselves. He isn’t sure how many ferals he’s killed. Dozens, at least. More than he can count. They start to blur together at a certain point. The same overgrown trapezius muscles and claw-like nails and fangs in their mouths. They become something totally inhumane.

Branches rustle from somewhere in the distance. Jaemin places his finger under the arrow Haechan has nocked and directs toward the sound.

“Pay attention,” he says, enunciated this time.

Haechan readjusts his crouch, tilts his head slightly to the side. “I am, I am.”

From underneath some low hanging twigs of a large bush about two meters away, a rabbit skitters out. Dark eyes, tawny fur, a nose that won’t stop flickering like a light about to go out. Jaemin’s heartbeat picks up. He places a hand on Haechan’s lower back to alert him of the animal. “Look,” he whispers. “Right there.”

Haechan leans into the touch. “I see it.”

“So shoot,” Jaemin tells him.

But Haechan hesitates.

The rabbit’s ears hang over its head like two limp socks on each side of its head. Its eye twitches. It brings a paw up to rub at the area. It doesn’t seem to be concerned about anything.

“You wanna earn your keep, right?” Jaemin asks, pushing his palm further into Haechan’s spine. “Then shoot the fucking thing.”

Haechan’s voice is thick. “It looks scared.”

Jaemin doesn’t give a fuck.

He wouldn’t care if the rabbit was missing a leg. If it was a baby left alone to fend for itself in its mother’s nest. He cares about food, charred meat down his throat, greasy fat around his mouth, a full fucking stomach.

He pivots as quietly as he can, plasters his chest to Haechan’s back and wraps his arms around him to pull the arrow further back. The bowstring stretches out taut in their combined hold. Haechan fusses. Quiet whines pour from his mouth as he tries to throw Jaemin off of him, but Jaemin closes him in further. Their bodies are hot together. Combined sweat and beating hearts. He lines up the shot best he can with Haechan’s head obscuring the view. Lets the arrow fly.

“No!” Haechan cries at the same time the arrow whistles through the air. Past shrubs and branches until it lodges itself deep into the rabbit’s back.

But the shot isn’t good enough to kill it. The rabbit’s feet skitter below its tiny body to take off deeper into the forest.

Jaemin stands up too fast, slices his finger against the cable slide. “Shit,” he curses, sucking on the blood that bubbles from the cut. It’s the same finger Haechan had once bitten. “Get up. We have to track it now.”

Haechan stares at the ground, unmoving. “I don’t want to.”

“I don’t give a shit what you want,” Jaemin tells him, anger blistering at his temples. “That’s food, Haechan.”

Haechan rises from his crouch with a strange mix of both agony and anger on his face. It curls his upper lip, pinches his brows tight. His pupils shake as he glares at Jaemin. “There are other ways I can earn my keep here,” he says.

“This is the only way that matters. Come on.”

Without making sure Haechan follows him, Jaemin takes off in the direction he saw the rabbit flee. They march further into the woods where trees and ferns cluster together to create little obstacles that stand in their way. Beetles zip in the air while birds trill from high up in the branches. There’s a beautiful array of flowers so deep out here. Pale pink monardas and red-yellow speckled gaillardias and starlight white hydrangeas. Jaemin found a book once in an abandoned library about seasonal flora. He’d brought it home and read from cover to cover, wanting to know what sort of poisons he could find in the middle of the woods.

Droppings of blood no larger than marbles lead them down closer to the creek where water rushes against a bank made of sand and rocks. Sunlight glistens like stained glass on the rippling surface of the water. The rabbit lays helpless near a fallen tree littered with open wounds for bugs to crawl out from.

One of the rabbit’s legs kick out sporadically as it tries to get further away, but it’s losing energy. Blood covers its entire backside down to its two hind legs. Its tail won’t stop twitching.

This is the circle of life, Jaemin thinks as he watches the animal struggle, it can’t be helped.

He pulls his knife out from a notch on his belt and hands it over to Haechan. “Here,” he says, not meeting his eye. “Finish the job.”

When Haechan doesn’t immediately take the knife, Jaemin faces him. “It’s more cruel to keep it alive and suffering.”

Haechan stares unblinkingly at the rabbit. “You do it, then,” he snaps.

“No.” Jaemin grabs Haechan by the wrist and unfurls his tightly wound fingers to place the knife in his hand. “This is your kill.”

Every step forward that Haechan takes is timid as if this is his first time on a brand new set of legs. His back is a straight, tense line, shoulders drawn up to his chin. He hesitates more just above the rabbit. The knife shakes in his loose grip. Jaemin is about to snap again, demand he just get it done and over with, when Haechan drops to the ground and wraps his fingers around the rabbit’s head. Beady little eyes shake with furious terror. There’s something delicately broken about the meep that escapes its tiny mouth as Haechan raises its chin.

With one quick cut, Haechan slices the rabbit’s throat clean open. He doesn’t linger to watch it bleed out.

They don’t talk on the walk back home. Haechan stays about a meter ahead without ever slowing down. He refuses to look at the rabbit dangling by the ears trapped in Jaemin’s fist.

But he doesn’t know where he’s going, and Jaemin is too tired to give him the right directions. Figures it might be better to let Haechan walk his frustration out instead of blowing up on the whole house. The sun has begun to dip below the horizon, a fat egg yolk in the sky that glitters through gaps in the trees. Jaemin plays a game with himself where he tries not to step on too many clusters of golden sunlight.

They’re near the edge of the woods when Haechan halts. Jaemin slows his walk, reminds himself of the location of his revolver. Rightside notch of his belt. Safety on, four bullets loaded. There’s a pack stuffed in his boot, too.

He stays quiet when Haechan drops low to the ground. Dry leaves crunch under his hand when he starts digging around the dirt.

“You live by a peach orchard?”

It’s a statement, Jaemin thinks, but it comes out like a question. He feels his face skew in confusion. “What?” he asks, coming up close behind Haechan.

“Look,” Haechan says, turning a hand over to reveal the orange-burnt skin of a peach. It’s nearly rotted all over, soft spots turned to brown mush, but it’s real. “How long have you lived here and you never noticed?”

Jaemin plucks the fruit from Haechan’s hand and drives his thumb into a weak spot. Juice immediately seeps underneath his nail, gushes down his wrist. He licks a fat stripe up the trail it leaves. Sour. Bitter. But just the right amount of sweetness leftover to have him drop the rabbit in search of more.

Most of the peaches are rotten to the core. They all but melt under his hold, too soft to touch. It’s disappointing. He wants to bring some back to the rest of the house. Next to him, Haechan gets the hint and helps him search. They blunder around on their hands and knees, throwing up fistfuls of dead leaves and dry dirt until they build up a small collection of five peaches just good enough to eat.

They stare at it, their pile. Feels so stupid to call it a treasure, but that’s what it feels like. Jaemin licks his lips and tastes tangy-sweet sugar. He wants it in his gums, under his tongue, down his throat. He wants to take a bite so big that chewed up pieces of the fruit pour out from his mouth and drop to the ground. He wants to be able to waste some of it.

“We don’t have to tell them,” he finds himself saying, eyes glued to the peach fuzz that shines iridescent under the sun. “One for both of us. They can cut up the rest and divide it.”

Selfish, maybe, but Jaemin is a man starved. They’re lucky he doesn’t eat them all right now.

Haechan runs a delicate finger around the dip of a peach the size of his fist. “Okay,” he says, voice soft.

The first bite fills Jaemin’s mouth in a burst of overwhelming citrusy tartness. His eyes close. His lips fold over. He lets himself hum loud and appreciative as gooey, thick pieces of the fruit stick between his molars as he chews. The peach is gone in less than a minute. Jaemin takes a heavy seat on the ground, feels the food in his belly move up to his esophagus with the shift. It’s so satisfying he has to fight the urge to eat the rest of them.

His eyes flutter open to see Haechan with the peach core pressed to his mouth. It shines against his puckered lips. His tongue is pink and gentle as it darts out to lick into the split open crevices of the peach’s pit where the seed hides. The wet suction of his mouth sucking around what’s left echoes out into the vast forest. It’s all Jaemin can focus on; his chin glossy with spit and juice, how it slides down his fingers and over his wrist in shiny trails, teeth wet as they sink into the fruit’s tender flesh.

Haechan blinks up at him once done, eyes shining. “Holy shit.”

Jaemin looks away fast. Centers his attention on the open dead-eyed stare of the rabbit. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “Holy shit.”

Everyone is overjoyed when they arrive home with a rabbit and three peaches. Mark wants to know more about the location so he knows where to mark it off his map, but Jaemin spent the rest of the walk home with his head down, gaze settled on the pieces of mud that spit out from under Haechan’s boot with every step he took. He wasn’t paying attention.

Jisung skins the rabbit and saves its hide for his experiments. Chenle cuts up the peaches and gives everyone but Haechan and Jaemin a few slices. They eat out by the fire in a silence interrupted only by the low whirring of bugs in the air. Embers fly up into the sky like a mini fireworks show. Jaemin focuses only on that. Not the sound of molars ripping into charred pieces of rabbit meat. Not the gleam of animal lard lathering chins. Not even the persistent pulsing of his finger where the cut has only deepened without him bandaging it.

He knows that it needs to be cleaned unless he wants to lose his finger to an infection, so after they’ve cleaned up and retreated to bed, Jaemin sneaks into the upstairs bathroom with disinfectant pads and a bandage from their first-aid kit.

Jaemin hadn’t realized how deeply he’d cut himself until now. It starts from the nail and reaches well past his second knuckle. The skin is serrated and bright red in the middle where flesh glistens like the inside of a grapefruit. Blood cakes around the area, dry and deep red, making his stomach roil to even look at. Jaemin rips open the disinfectant pad, doesn’t bother to hesitate before slapping it to his wound. It stings like hell. A quick, sharp breath shoots past his nostrils as his teeth clamp down on his bottom lip in an effort to stay quiet.

The pad comes back diluted with a yellow-red combination that reminds Jaemin of the sort of piss he used to see from patients at the hospital. He throws it out, disgusted. Then he wraps his finger with the bandage tight enough for throbbing pain to shoot down to the bone.

Haechan isn’t asleep yet when Jaemin returns to the bedroom. He lays on his back in bed, staring up at the ceiling. When he hears the door open and close, he turns to his side to watch Jaemin creep in the dark to his homemade bed on the floor. Jaemin can’t see his eyes but he can feel them.

It’s yet another sleepless night.

“You’re getting better with him,” Chenle says one night when they’ve snuck away from the house to sip from the bottle of vodka Jaemin keeps as contraband under the front porch. It’s well into the night and they’ve got a small fire boiling so that Chenle can disinfect all of the things he thinks needs. It’s sort of his thing, his end-of-the-world purpose. A pile of spoons and forks and knives and toothbrushes and loose change rests between them. He’s got a pot over the pile full of water. The spoons have the biggest splash when he tosses them in.

Jaemin looks up at him. “What?”

“With Haechan.” Chenle pulls out the spoons with a pair of tongs and exchanges them for a couple of forks. “You’re getting better with him.”

Jaemin’s stomach clenches without his permission. He swipes the vodka up from the ground to take a swig before answering. It burns the inside of his mouth like antiseptic. “I’m tolerating him.”

Chenle snorts, unimpressed. Half of his face is painted burnt orange so close to the fire. “You’re doing more than that. Taking him out to hunt, helping him with the bow. You haven’t even touched him once, have you?”

Jaemin shifts on the tree stump he sits on and refuses to answer. Upstairs in their bedroom, Haechan is fast asleep with the rest of the house.

He’s not doing anything he hasn’t been asked to do. Jaemin made a promise to himself when the pack accepted him that he’d keep them safe. Protect them. Keeping Haechan close to him, monitoring what he does on a day to day basis, is just another part of his promise.

“Renjun told me it’d be less than a week before you killed him. What the fuck even happened that day you guys found him?”

Again, Jaemin doesn’t answer.

He isn’t surprised that Chenle and Haechan have become fast friends. Chenle is such a clever, smooth talker, he could make friends with about anyone, even at the end of the world. It’s impressive. Jaemin has always been a little bit jealous. Chenle’s instantaneous liking to him was such a shock all those months ago that he thought it was fake. A phony tactic at warming Jaemin up to the pack so that eventually they can catch him off guard, slice his neck, then eat him for dinner.

Jaemin was a bit paranoid when Jeno had saved him from isolation. He isn’t proud of the way he acted back then.

But Chenle really is just that personable. He’s easy-going, quick-witted and sharp. It’s a wonder how he ended up with Renjun who has maybe more walls up than Jaemin does.

“He’s cool, you know,” Chenle says in place of Jaemin’s silence. “Talks a lot more when you’re not around, sure, but his story is… it’s kinda brutal, you know?”

An owl hoots somewhere in the distance. It’s always the same sounds out here so late at night; animal growls, bugs humming, wings whistling through the trees. A firefly floats past Jaemin line of sight, its bottom half a golden orb against the black sheet blanketing the sky. Jaemin tracks the path it maps out in front of him before he shoots an arm out to capture it. He brings his closed fist to his chest, unravels it. The big clings to his damp skin. Maybe he’s scared it.

The firefly crawls up the groove of Jaemin’s palm where knuckle meets pinky, its legs tickling his skin. When it flies away, wings fluttering in fast-motion, Jaemin curls his hand again, soaking up the pain that flares up in his wound.

It hurts so good he can barely hear Chenle’s voice over the roaring in his ears.

“…had a bunch of little sisters, I guess. Omegas. Mom was an alpha, but—I don’t know. He didn’t want to talk more about her. And the scars. I don’t know what happened there, but they’re fucking everywhere. I only—”

Jaemin glares at Chenle’s hunched back. Nudges Chenle with the bottle of vodka as an excuse to interrupt him. “Why are you telling me this?” he asks, eyes focused on the red stinging that runs down the length of his pinky.

Does he think Haechan is special because he has some sort of sob story in the middle of the apocalypse? He isn’t. No one is. Anyone who’s still alive has a story, a trauma, a hardship they’ve had to overcome. Jaemin included. Chenle included. There’s a reason he and Renjun have mated. The claiming bite of an alpha makes an omega marginally less appealing to a feral. Their scent dims, their pheromones dull. Jaemin has never once asked what the circumstances were for Renjun to rip into Chenle’s neck. It can’t be a very good story. Sometimes when Jaemin looks too closely at the raised pink skin at the hollow between Chenle’s shoulder and chin, a sickness rolls into his stomach. The healed-over lacerations of teeth are jagged and bumpy like it was a job done on impulse, necessity. That wasn’t a love bite. It was a dire last option.

“Just thought you should know.” Chenle shrugs.

“Well.” Jaemin hums. “I don’t care.”

Chenle’s eyes waver. His mouth falls open like he wants to say something but thinks better of it, accepting the bottle and taking a sip. His throat bobs. His face flinches. “Fuck, this shit it gross,” he mutters. Sets the bottle back on the ground and returns to his fire. “Get something better next time you’re out, okay?”

And that’s that. Chenle doesn’t bring Haechan up for conversation again after that night.

There are a lot of topics that Jaemin likes to avoid for the sake of his own sanity. His own backstory, his mother and sister and father, ferals that remind him too much of himself, the lives that he’s taken, Jisung’s freaky little experiments. And now Haechan.

Jaemin hates talking about Haechan.

He can admit this to himself. He can blame it on the distrust, how sometimes Haechan looks at him before they’re about to fall asleep like there’s a question burning the tip of his tongue. He can blame it on the surety he feels at the prospect of Haechan turning feral. That one day he’ll have to snap Haechan’s neck or shoot him point-blank.

There is no point, he figures, in talking about a person who will soon be dead.

When he lays down for bed that night, Jaemin squeezes the cut on his finger, his new bad habit. The pain keeps his thoughts at bay. He listens closely for the sounds of Haechan sleeping. Hears nothing. He imagines himself standing up and tiptoeing over to the edge of the bed, peeling the blanket away from his body, lifting his shirt and taking a peek at the scars Chenle told him about.

He wonders what they look like. The size, the color, the feel of them. He wonders if they’re something that ever keeps Haechan up late at night the same way Jaemin is by his own.

The creek isn’t deep enough to be swimming in, but it’s the hottest day of summer yet and tensions were rising, the seven of them trapped in that sweaty little house. When Chenle stood up from the ground in the middle of an argument with Jisung about whether or not the world actually could be saved, no one tried to pull him back inside.

They swim butt naked. Most of them, anyway. Jisung insists on keeping a pair of shorts on. Jaemin and Haechan haven’t gotten in the water. They lay on their backs on top of a thin sheet laid under a tree to avoid getting sunburnt while the others splash each other waist-deep in the water, their laughter loud enough to drown out the roaring moans from bullfrogs down the stream as they fuck each other. It’s such a beautiful day that Jaemin decides he won’t focus too hard on the close proximity between him and Haechan.

Haechan found a book somewhere in the attic of the house and has it raised close to his face now. Jaemin resists the urge to ask what genre the book is, if he likes it so far. He feels as though he should be making small talk, getting closer to Haechan. If not for the sake of the others, then for the sake of himself. It isn’t healthy to harbor such a grudge against someone who hasn’t even done anything wrong. Maybe if Jaemin poked in deeper past Haechan’s defenses, got to know him the same way Chenle or Mark has, then he’d unearth some deeply buried secrets that could warrant his suspicions.

Because the thing is, Jaemin still doesn't trust Haechan. Doesn’t trust how long it takes him to fall asleep at night, how easy it is for him to charm everyone through stories he tells over dinner, how it’s possible that no one knows what he was doing in that basement all of those weeks ago.

Jaemin has tried to get the information out of the others, but they’re either being tight-lipped about it or don’t yet know themselves. Which is bullshit. One of the conditions of Haechan staying with them was that he offer an explanation.

The scar on Haechan’s ankle from where the chain had been is one big dark spot against the golden shade of his skin. At least two fingers thick and protruding from bone, it stares at Jaemin now. Distracting. Jaemin follows the length up Haechan’s leg where the shorts he wears reach down to his knee. He’s the only person who decided to keep all of his clothes on. Jaemin wonders what he’d look like with the uneven patches of a sunburn on his shoulders. The shirt he wears is oversized and falls off of one shoulder enough to reveal the sharp just of a collarbone. As Jaemin skims past his waist, up his torso, to his chest, he searches for any other scars and is disappointed when he finds none.

He’s been imagining them far too often. When he and Haechan are out in the woods hunting—a routine they’ve made since that first time—Jaemin searches for bits and pieces of raised pink flesh. Sometimes Haechan’s shirt rides up his backside. Sometimes his collar sags when he’s bent over, focused. Jaemin wants to see the proof. He wants to know that the terror on Haechan’s face that very first day wasn't all just a ruse.

Because Haechan is smart. And that is maybe more dangerous than brute strength when it’s the end of the world.

He reads in silence next to Jaemin. Their thighs are centimeters apart. The sheet isn’t very big and it’s wet around the edges from when the others have emerged from the water to take a rest. Jaemin stares at the gap of skin between Haechan’s basketball shorts and his thigh. If he tries hard enough, he can imagine a scar the same shape as a centipede crawling up past his waistline.

There’s a shout followed by a loud splash that catches Jaemin’s attention. He looks for it. Jisung has Chenle trapped under his arm while Renjun attacks him from the side with big waves of water.

“Jaemin!” Chenle squeals. “Haechan! Someone help me!”

Sitting up, Jaemin scoots to the side a bit so he can get a better view of Chenle almost being drowned. He looks like he enjoys it, a wide grin on his face. Beside him, Haechan sets the book down.

Chenle’s head breaks water when Jisung manages to dunk him. He comes up giggling and gasping for air. He swims away before turning on Jisung and assaulting him with maybe enough splashes to drown him. Renjun cheers from the side. Jeno and Mark swim idly by, shaking their heads.

Jaemin’s eyes fall on the way Haechan’s toes grip around the sheet like he’s suppressing his eagerness.

“You don’t have to get naked to swim, you know.”

Haechan’s gaze pivots in an instant. His eyes squint against the bright daylight, legs stretching out before him. “I know,” he snaps.

“Just saying.” Jaemin shrugs.

Haechan turns back to the water. He crosses his arms, uncrosses them. He huffs. He looks down at Jaemin for half of a second before another shout distracts him. “Why do you only talk to me when no one is around?” he asks.

Jaemin chews the inside of his cheek. A mosquito floats down to the space of skin where Haechan’s shirt falls off of his shoulder and settles itself there. For a moment, Jaemin wonders what he tastes like.

He shakes the thought away.

“I don’t even talk to you when we are alone.”

Haechan scoffs once, all air. “Then why’re you talking to me now?”

“Should I not?”

“No,” Haechan snaps, eyes ablaze as they once again fall on Jaemin. Angers works his lips from side to side as he tries to think of more to say. “No, you shouldn’t talk to me. And I won’t talk to you.”

Jaemin settles back down against the sheet, feels grass poke through its thin material. The urge to scratch is suppressed by focusing on the insolent tone of Haechan’s voice. “Then don’t,” he says.

“I won’t.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Jaemin folds his hands over his bare stomach where sweat has been collecting for hours now. He feels soaked down to the bone with it. He grips tight around his injured finger just to stop himself from laughing. “…Are you going to swim, then?”

A low curse.

Haechan stands up with a quick whoosh. Jaemin blinks back sun and sweat from his eyes and stares at the way Haechan’s damp shirt clings to the curve of his back. He’s gained very little weight since staying with them. The grooves of his spine poke out like knobs Jaemin could hold onto. He keeps his fists wound in tight balls by his sides. His knuckles shake, white around the edges. Jaemin sits back up. Haechan is nervous.

He trudges through slick mud and grass to the edge of the creek, dips a toe where water meets land. His shoulders shake with a recoil. Water must be cold. The others encourage him to get in. They call for Jaemin, too, but he’s never liked the feeling of that filthy water on his body. Can’t stand the way the stench of algae and fish clings to his hair. He waves them off to watch as Haechan hurriedly peels his shirt over his head before running into the water.

A chorus of cheers once Haechan emerges. He keeps his shoulders low beneath a blanket of dark, murky water. Jaemin brings his knees to his chest, squeezes tight around his injured finger. He caught maybe a second of Haechan’s bare skin. But it was there.

It was everywhere.

The scars. They littered his back as if someone had taken their time delicately placing every single one. Some were long, some were short, some were fat and fleshy while others were thin as a fingernail. Jaemin can see them in his mind. He embellishes the sight. A mosaic of raised bumps along a smooth plane of tan skin. One dragging around his side, dark and fleshy like a warm had burrowed beneath the skin.

Jaemin tries to rid himself of the image. He grabs Haechan’s book and skims through it. Haechan hadn’t marked what page he’d left on. The pages are aged and yellowed, stiff in Jaemin’s hand. It’s a fantasy novel about kings and queens and their dragons. Jaemin wonders if Haechan had actually been reading it or if he brought it for something to do. An excuse not to swim.

It doesn’t matter now. He’s in the water. He wafts a little ways away from the others. He doesn’t splash or play, doesn’t save Chenle from Jisung. He shifts to float on his back. More skin for Jaemin to see even if it is too far away. Haechan stays like that for a while. He looks calm. More relaxed than Jaemin has seen him yet. Then he disappears underneath again, and he stays like that for long enough that Jaemin thinks he might be trying to kill himself.

When Haechan’s head breaks through water this time, he isn’t heaving or gasping for air. He’s facing Jaemin. His bangs fall past his eyebrows, eyes two black holes on his face from this distance. But they’re set on Jaemin, staring at him the same way Jaemin tends to stare at Haechan.

Haechan blinks. Jaemin drops the book.

They stay outside until the sun starts to set, pink lemonade sky melting into orange, burning into dusk. They eat a quick dinner of canned beans and beef jerky and a twinkie split seven ways. Then they head for bed.

Jaemin lingers downstairs with the excuse of taking stock for their next hunt. He has a notebook in hand. Haechan is the last to leave, a question somewhere in the pinch between his brows. His hair had dried into a frizzy mess at the top of his head. His clothes have been changed. There’s a long line of shirts and pants waiting on the front porch to be washed tomorrow. Jaemin makes a mental note to teach Haechan how to scrub filth free of fabric.

“Goodnight,” says Jaemin, injured finger pulsing as he curls it behind his back.

Haechan wavers. His mouth opens, then it closes, then he nods. “Night.”

The images have been plaguing Jaemin’s mind since they were first brought up by Chenle. All he can see when he closes his eyes are the various ways Haechan might’ve acquired his scars. Once he’s heard every bedroom door close, he sets the notebook down and heads upstairs. Counting stock wasn’t such a bullshit excuse. In fact, it’s what he should probably be doing instead of locking himself in the bathroom.

No one uses the upstairs bathroom. It’s safe here. Quiet. Grants Jaemin the privacy to sink down into a dirty tub and imagine Haechan’s skin littered with lacerations. That big one. How did it get there? Someone big and angry and wielding a knife? And the smaller cuts. The scattered bits of tattered flesh. A set of heavy boots? Cigarette burns?

What had Haechan’s face looked like when he was crying out in pain? Jaemin can see it. He wants to see it. Eyebrows drawn together like arrows. Teeth poking past swollen cherry lips. How his limbs must’ve contorted—long and stretched out and gorgeous—as someone hurt him. When the first warm wisp of arousal makes its presence known in Jaemin’s gut, he doesn’t try to deny himself the pleasure.

He takes hold of himself. Masturbates to the image of Haechan with his eyes glazed and his neck veined like a grape. He can smell it, if he tries hard enough. The muddy fear that must’ve leaked from Haechan’s candied scent. It’s enough for Jaemin to finish after a few tight-knuckled strokes.

He cleans up after he’s done. Rights the hem of his shirt and smooths out the crotch of his shorts. Then he walks into the bedroom he shares with Haechan like nothing happened. His chest is tight with a concoction of shame and glory. He wants Haechan to smell what just happened on him and call him out for it. To pick a fight. He wants an excuse to hurt Haechan, maybe have Haechan hurt him back, to feel the weight of his body in his hands.

Jaemin isn’t sure why these thoughts manage to get him so worked up. Why it worked so well to put Haechan in these scenarios. He can’t even remember the last time he felt well and properly turned on before this. Has to have been before the world ended. Is this lust for him now? The promise of violence, so fickle and so sweet? Violence is all he’s seen for so long now, it’s all he knows. Is he so damaged from it all that all he can think to do is hurt?

He’s too attached to the idea of turning feral. Loyal to it as if it is a promise rather than a possibility. And it’s been ages since Jaemin has fucked someone. He misses sex, the smell of pussy, the feel of another man’s balls in his hands. He was never that picky before the end. Had his standards, sure. Pretty enough face, charming appeal, a clear and open willingness. But sometimes he liked to give himself away if the nights dragged out for too long. Liked strangers calling his name like it was a word they’d never heard before.

Sometimes he’ll listen to Renjun and Chenle. Will never let himself touch, just sharpen his hearing so that the whimpers that Renjun fucks from Chenle’s gooey, spitty mouth swim between his ears until they pop.

God, he wants. He misses. He desires. Is that so bad? To want to fuck and kiss and breed? Half of the world’s population is dead. Hell, maybe more than half. Jaemin deserves this. Deserves the image of Haechan’s dry, cracked lips spreading and bleeding as they wrap around his cock.

Haechan is lying on his side when Jaemin slips through the door. He’s not asleep yet, which isn’t surprising. Jaemin doesn’t look at him as he sinks into his floor-bed even if he can feel the heavy weight of Haechan’s stare.

This will just be another thing Jaemin refuses to think too much about. The end of the world, Jisung’s experiments, the way his blood vessels crackle anytime he’s in close proximity to Haechan. He’d like to say this isn’t a habit that builds up. That he doesn’t start to ruminate on the grunts of pain Haechan makes when he nicks a thumb on his bow while they hunt, or the humming he does when they’re all alone in the middle of the woods.

That he doesn’t stay up late in their shared bedroom, imagining himself swallowing every single sound whole.

THE RADIO

A pair of pants are thrown at Jaemin’s face. The zipper nicks his mouth. He peels them off and directs a glare Renjun’s way. “That hurt,” he says, licking the taste of metal from his lips.

Renjun doesn’t look up from the piles of clothes and fabrics he has spread on the floor before him. “Sorry.”

He isn’t. But Jaemin doesn’t complain. He holds the pants in front of him, frowning at how small they look. “Renjun,” he says carefully, “these are not going to fit me.”

“They will. I know your measurements.”

“They’re too tight.”

“You haven’t even tried them on.”

Jaemin doesn’t need to try them on to know that the waist is at least two sizes too small. Even with all of the weight and muscle he’s lost in the past year, Jaemin is sure this is a kid’s size. He isn’t paying attention when a shirt comes flying his way. It smacks him in the face, too.

“Renjun,” he chastises.

“Pay attention,” Renjun tells him before standing up. He has a sewing tape measure hanging around his neck and a piece of black lace gripped in his hand. “Go try those on. I have a vision.”

He always has a vision. They’re gathered in the living room for a semi-regular fashion show of sorts where Renjun refashions old pieces of clothes and random fabrics into something new and stylish. He likes to cut up blankets and pillow covers. Any furniture in the house not mauled by stray animals has been cut up and repurposed. Shirts and pants and sweaters and dresses are always Renjun’s main focus when they go on hunts.

Jaemin thinks the art of crafting something new out of the old helps Renjun feel out of his body. It’s nice to disassociate. Important, even. Slipping into another skin and feeling like another person.

The pants are, as Jaemin knew they would be, too tight. He can just barely close them where they come up past his belly button. He looks down. They’re long, too. Long enough to sweep the dust off of the bathroom floor where he’s gone to change. Bell bottoms, he thinks. And the top is a short-cropped vest covered with thin, vertical stripes . It dips far past his chest, revealing the hard lines of his pecs, nearly exposing his nipples. Jaemin looks at a disfigured version of himself through the grime-covered mirror and throws a hand over his chest. All of a sudden, he feels modest.

He can’t breathe in these pants. He unbuttons them and pulls them off in a hurry. Folds them over twice to hold under his arm. He looks in the mirror until he can’t anymore.

His body is not what it once was. Time spent hunting and killing have doubled his shoulders in size. Has widened his chest. But he’s too skinny. Gaunt in places he used to be able to press into, muscles tender and ripe. This usually doesn’t bother him. Jaemin can hardly picture what he looked like over a year ago.

But he remembers the feel of his body. How much muscle used to be on his abdomen. A juicy six-pack has turned into a wiry eight-pack, and Jaemin can’t stand the sight of it. He doesn’t want to go back out into the living room and have everyone gawk at him. The praise doesn’t feel as good when his body is the outcome of starvation rather than hard work in the gym.

Jaemin remembers what it felt like to have sex, too. He looks down at his limp cock and feels a little sad for it. A year and a half, give or take, is a long time to not feel the heat of another person around him. To not have his knot swell up far inside some omega’s cunt when ruts have him feeling sick and desperate.

Nostalgia has his dick flinching. A minute movement, but enough for Jaemin to drag a finger along a vein on his lower abdomen. He fingers his pubic hair. Flattens his palm and presses hard against his cock as images of red-rimmed eyes and teeth poking past lips flash through his brain.

As Haechan flashes through his brain.

Jaemin presses further and further until the images begin to blur. Until his dick starts to hurt. His entire body recoils with the pain. His shoulders curl. He has to shove a fist in his mouth to stifle a whimper of pain. This can’t happen tonight. He won’t allow it.

The pants slip on with ease now that Jaemin wills them to. He can’t be in this bathroom anymore. Can’t have the image of Haechan teary-eyed and wet-lipped eating away at his consciousness. It’s another bad habit. A sick and shameful one. Jaemin doesn’t mean for it to happen when he sneaks away at night and touches himself to the thought of Haechan. Every night after he’s done, he comes down feeling trapped and panicked. A dog in a hot car. Orgasms felt good, once.

Orgasms felt really good once.

Jaemin longs for the time when all it took was an omega to get him off. Everything is so twisted now. Nothing is right. He was a traditional guy in a lot of ways. The stereotypical knothead alpha who liked and dated exclusively omegas. Pretty omegas. Pliant omegas. Omegas with cherry lips and candy scents and smooth, bare skin. He liked the smell of them and the way they opened up for him. The way their biology was perfectly crafted to welcome each other. Wet and tasty and loud when they came. He had his preferences once, sure, but he understood people like Jeno, too.

Alphas who liked alphas. Omegas who liked omegas. Betas who liked neither or both.

But that wasn’t Jaemin.

Sometimes he thinks that’s why he’s so angry. Because he can’t fuck the way he used to, and is now stuck with daydreams about a weak alpha writhing around in pain. It’s all second nature now. Hurting and being hurt. Jaemin wonders how far gone he is if the only thing that gets him worked up anymore is reworkings of the violence that all but surrounds him nowadays.

Has he lost himself?

When will he be too far gone?

He walks out of the bathroom wondering what Haechan will think of his body. Will he follow the ridges of Jaemin’s rib cage? Will he trace the juncture of his collarbones? Will it be disgust he feels at the sight of Jaemin’s deformity or will curiosity have his fingers buzzing as it so often does to Jaemin?

None of that happens. Turns out he’s too busy swatting at the skirt Renjun has put Chenle in. It’s long and it’s half-plaid, half-floral, and it’s overtop a pair of jeans with holes at the knees. Chenle likes the skirt. He laughs and darts away from Haechan, but not too far that they can’t have their fun.

Haechan has been given a full-body outfit of mismatched animal print. Cheetah and zebra and cow and snake. Patches on the jeans he wears, jacket sleeves longer than his arms. He flaps around and fiddles with the buttons. Doesn’t turn away when Chenle drives a finger into his bellybutton, curious about the array of patterns. It’s overwhelming to look at, which is sort of perfect.

Old Korean trot music plays at a low tune on the radio. It’s the only channel Jeno has ever been able to figure out despite all the hours he’s put into tinkering with it. Haechan grabs Chenle’s hands and makes him dance along to the distantly familiar tune.

There are more than a dozen candles lit. Tiny bursts of fire gasp and chew around corners, cast misshapen shadows on Haechan. He floats around the center of the room. Most eyes are on him, like always. Entranced or trying to figure him out. It all feels so sacrificial, the way light bleeds onto his skin, deep embers and burnt coals. He’s a match lit. A swan. A pig on the spit. They’ll pour wax onto his skin and watch how blood vessels burst in his eyes. They’ll tie his hands behind his back, his feet together. Maybe they’ll kill Haechan thinking it’s what needs to happen to save the end of the world.

Jaemin’s stomach rolls. He presses a hand to his lower abdomen to try to quell the ache. He falls onto their couch with weak knees and covers up with a beaten-up throw pillow. When he shifts, the couch groans in protest.

“So,” Haechan pants, still dancing with Chenle, “this is something you do a lot?”

Renjun hums, distracted. He’s got his hands around Mark’s waist, sticking pins and needles into the hemline of his skirt. His is long and it’s matched with an oversized blazer that reaches his knees, no shirt underneath, buttoned in the middle. Mark doesn’t move an inch, the well-trained dog that he is.

“It’s more fun when Renjun puts us in something that actually looks good,” Jisung says, stretching out the collar of his shirt.

Renjun side-eyes him. “My designs always look good. And stop messing with that. I know it’s the perfect size.”

“It’s tight,” Jisung groans.

“It’s supposed to be.”

“I’m uncomfortable.”

Renjun shoves Mark away and grabs Jisung by the wrist to pull him closer. He spins him around, gives him a once over before nodding to himself. “I’ll add a zipper on the side. It’ll look good,” he says before bending into a chest full of random accessories.

Jisung grumbles but stands still. He raises his arms in the air when Renjun comes back up with scissors to cut a slice up the side of his shirt, revealing the thinness of his abdomen. There is no fat on Jisung’s body. Jaemin isn't the only person who’s too skinny. They’ll need to go on a hunt soon. Scavenge some canned goods or try to kill something. Anything with more nutrients than the sugar packets Renjun hoards for tea, the bastard.

Jisung wraps arms around his middle. Renjun gives him a moment of modesty before using gentle fingers to pry them apart.

“Thank you.”

Haechan’s voice splits down the center of the room. All attention is on him, but he only has eyes for Jisung.

“Hm?” asks Renjun, now able to get Jisung’s arms back at his sides. “For what?”

“For taking me in,” Haechan says. He looks across the room to get his point across, a docile smile on his face. His gaze lasts half a second on Jaemin. “You didn’t have to do that. I’m just really grateful.”

“We’re glad you feel safe here,” says Mark, sliding a pointed look at Jaemin. It cuts deep. “I’ve always said people—”

“Need people. Yeah, yeah,” Renjun interrupts. He separates from Jisung with a pat to his chest. “We get it. The world ends, and you become a saint. Now come back here. I need to see the full picture of what I’ve created.”

“I’m not—”

Renjun’s brows raise. “Not what?”

Mark’s mouth does that thing where it guppies out in confusion. He has no witty comeback, so he settles on smacking Renjun on the shoulder. “Whatever, man,” he mumbles, “you act like it’s such a bad thing.”

“Never said that,” Renjun tells him.

Chenle has been watching from the corner, a sly grin on his face. “Jaemin,” he calls, just for fun. “What do you think of Mark’s savior complex?”

Mark’s voice cracks, boyish. “Dude!”

Jaemin chews around his inner cheek. He stares at a frayed end of the pillow in his hold.

“Stop trying to stir shit up,” Renjun chastises.

Chenle raises his hands in the air. “I’m not!”

“You are.”

“I—”

Jeno comes out from the corner where he’s been fiddling with the radio to slide a hand over Chenle’s mouth. “You definitely are,” he says. “Now quiet.”

Jaemin doesn’t react. He stays quiet on the couch, forcing laughter and smiles because this is all for fun, isn’t it? They’re poking fun because they care. Because they’re bored. They need something to pass the time with before Renjun starts making them pose. It is all just for fun.

But Jaemin isn’t having fun. He tries so hard to keep any sourness from leaking from his scent, but Haechan catches onto it. Of course he does. They’ve spent too much time together now for it to go unnoticed. He knows Jaemin’s peeved scent maybe better than he knows anyone else’s. Locked in their room together at night, hunting together during the day. Hours at each other’s sides learning and perceiving and attuning to. Jaemin hates to think what Haechan could’ve figured out about him after all this time. Has he caught on to the fact that Jaemin’s own affinity to anger feels like a predecessor to turning feral?

That’s why he tries so hard to tamp it down. To stay calm, be normal. He will not let himself become a monster. Does Haechan now feel he has to watch over Jaemin the same way Jaemin has to watch over him?

The stare doesn’t last long. Haechan follows Jaemin's chest to his crossed arms before turning away. Whatever he’s looking for he doesn’t find.

Renjun gives instructions like a drill sergeant. Hand to your hip, smile wide, stick your foot out, no, not like that, wider, happier, to the side, please try to look like you’re enjoying this, yeah, just like that. One by one, they all fall to his command. The living room is in such a state of disarray. Furs and satins and silks. Candle wax covers the hardwood floor in sporadic clumps. Beeswax and peaches fill the air. With the pack bond, their scents coalesce into one cohesive smell when so close together like this. For Jaemin, it smells like nothing. It might be different for the others, but he’s never asked. The only scent that really sticks out is Haechan’s.

It’s gotten so ripe over the weeks. Fresh and sweet and heavy. Everywhere.

Someone wanders off to turn up the music. Jaemin doesn’t see who. Trot music floods the room. Laughter grows louder. Mark twirls when Renjun tells him to. Jisung falls against Chenle with a smile on his face.

Jaemin wants to join in on the fun, but he’s glued the couch. He fiddles with a button on the pillow he holds until it pops off, then he rolls it around two fingers.

It’s Haechan’s turn to pose. He covers his face but swivels his hips. Jaemin runs the curve of the button against the cut on his finger just to feel something. He needs to get a grip, wants to get a grip. He wants to be more level-headed. He wants to be more like Jeno, their calm alpha. Or Renjun, their strict alpha. Fuck, even ever-distracted and deranged beta Jisung will do. So long as the thought of bending Haechan’s fingers back one by one stops sounding so enticing.

Jaemin is tired. The air in the room is heavy, hot summer heat sneaking past creaky window sills and gaps in the house’s old walls. It complains with each gust of wind. There are pieces of art with splintering frames that Jeno insisted stay nailed to the walls Jaemin chooses to look at. Watercolor sunsets and fruit baskets offer him solace. He imagines he’s at a dentist’s office or a school teacher’s classroom. Thoughts of simpler times grant him mercy.

That is, until it’s his turn to model.

Renjun doesn’t give him much of a choice. He grabs Jaemin and interlaces their fingers, lets the pillow fall to the ground with a soft, dusty thwump. Jaemin feigns a laugh. He remembers how to charm a room. Put his smile to good use. It’s a shame what lack of resources have done to his teeth, but it’s better than the carnage that creeps beyond the walls of their home.

Fingers in belt loops, Jaemin leans side to side while everyone cheers. His skin crawls.

Somewhere between Jisung wolf-whistling and Chenle cackling, the radio begins to sputter. Soulful hooting turns into static and distorted voices. It’s an awful sound. Makes everyone flinch. Jaemin scratches behind his ear and says to Jeno, “Can you fix that?”

Jeno is already halfway across the room, muttering to himself when familiar murmurs break through the radio fuzz.

“Come…join us…Oper…Forward…Route 63…”

Jeno smacks the side of the radio. It glitches, sputters, coughs until the room is casted into an awkward silence. Jaemin is sure someone is about to make a joke to crack into it, let the yolk bleed a bit, but a whimper slices through the air. That familiar putrid scent of death fills the room so thickly that Jaemin’s mouth waters around the taste of it. Spoilt milk, wilted flowers, rotten fruit.

His eyes snap to Haechan. The look on his face is reminiscent of the one worn when Jaemin first found him down in the basement. A muscle in his jaw feathers over and over again. His pupils shake. His eyes are filled with water. All that’s missing is the rusted chain around his skinny ankle.

Mark is the first to speak. “Haech—”

“…join us…Operation…ward…down on Route 63…”

Haechan’s face splits into a red wail. Everyone stops moving all at once. Trot music and electronic voices run up and down, pouring from the radio in a stream of nonsensical noises. A horrible, grating sound that scratches at Jaemin’s brain. He resists the urges to dig into his ear canal and shake the feeling away, too busy watching how Haechan’s mind visibly works overtime.

Pinched brows and wide, panicked eyes, it’s obvious he’s trying to fit puzzle pieces where they just don’t belong. Fear spreads like a heat rash across his face as the voice drones on. He looks feverish.

Jaemin doesn’t look away from Haechan when he throws out an impatient hand and says, “Jeno, can you—”

“Come…Operation Forward…63…save the world…”

Haechan screams. He curls in on himself, shoulders heaving. It’s such a piercing and sudden sound that Jaemin’s heart lurches.

“Jeno,” he shouts. “Turn the fucking radio off.”

“I’m trying!”

Jaemin takes a cautious step toward Haechan. “Hae—”

“Shut up!” he wails, voice torn around the edges. Someone whimpers. Jisung, maybe. “Turn it off! Please, please. Turn it off!”

“Chenle’s working on it,” Mark cuts in. Jaemin glares over at him, jaw tight. He can’t stand the self-assured look on Mark’s face. This isn’t something he can easily fix. “Haechan, hey, are you—what’s wrong?”

“I can’t.” Haechan’s mouth opens with a wet, strangled pop. His neck strains with each breath he tries to gasp around. “I can’t. I can’t. I have to—”

And then he’s gone. Storming out of the living room while garbled curses follow from behind. They float like dust particles. Leave a bad taste in the air. Chenle has to fly out of the way to avoid being run down by Haechan in his mad dash.

The door creaks open, slams closed. Hard enough that the walls shake. There’s a scream full of so much anger and hurt that Jaemin feels his nape pebble over. Feet pound on wood, loud and fast enough that it sounds like an army is on their front porch. It makes Jaemin feel just as ill as it does alert, so when he turns to face the group he’s surprised his voice isn’t shaking. “I don’t—” he starts. Stops. There doesn’t feel like a correct way to address the fit Haechan just threw. “Someone should—”

“I will,” Mark says, already halfway out of the living room.

Jaemin doesn’t like that, the impatience. How Mark’s face is hard with determination. Like he’s the only solution to this problem.

“Mark, wait,” says Jeno. He’s standing with his shoulders squared, the radio busted into pieces on the floor below him.

Mark whirls around, livid. “On what?” he demands. “Haechan needs help.”

“We need a plan of action. That was—I’ve never seen something like that before.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Mark says. His face has grown impossibly red, he looks about to burst. Brains will cover the walls. It’ll be awful to clean up. “I-I’ll talk him down.”

“You don’t know him well enough for that,” Jaemin says.

Mark meets Jaemin’s eye in a nasty glare. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means you don’t know him well enough. He’s unpredictable right now. Let me—”

“What? Let you talk him down?” Mark scoffs, wet and disgusted. “Yeah, great fucking idea, Jaemin. We all know you can’t stand him.”

“I’m an alpha,” Jaemin says around a stiff jaw. “He snaps? You’re fucked, Mark. So let me go out there.”

Mark raises his chin, determined. “He won’t hurt me.”

Jaemin feels anger swell up in his limbs like air blown into a balloon. He fights every nerve in his body singing out: push him, hurt him, do whatever the fuck you want. He opens his mouth to reply but Jeno beats him to it.

His voice is quiet but sure. “You… we don’t know that.”

“You’re taking his side?” Mark asks, gesturing madly toward Jaemin.

“I’m not taking anyone’s side,” Jeno says. He steps away from the wall, carefully glances around the room.“But… it’s a quick thing, you know? And it feels like it’s dormant. In all of us, I’m sure. I think it’d be better for me or Jaemin to go out there.”

Haechan’s outburst has everyone’s scents ripe as the day they present. Strong and overwhelming, enough to feel drunk off of. Jaemin is distantly aware of the fact that Renjun has crouched over Chenle, running a gentle hand over the side of his neck where his mating mark is. Jisung hovers somewhere close to Jeno pretending that he is not scared. There’s a good chance he wants to flee. But they all blur around the edges of Jaemin’s eyesight, a watercolor painting of a scene he’d only seen in movies once upon a time.

With what he considers permission enough from Jeno, Jaemin lets wobbly legs guide him out of the living room. Mark is speaking. It goes in one ear, out the other, sluggish river water that tries to hold Jaemin back. He won't be deterred.

In hindsight, Jaemin thinks he should’ve clarified his plan once out of the house to everyone. But he has no plan. Just a tight chest and brain fog to accompany him on the front porch.

A fat full moon sits high in the sky. It shines on Haechan, paints him silver as a dirty dime. He’s sitting in a heap by the shed. Not even the kittens dare to come near him with how sour his scent has become. Jaemin only watches him for a bit, wanting to give him time to cool off. He doesn’t think Haechan is capable of it, but also doesn’t want to risk getting his neck snapped. Ferals have a way of managing the impossible.

Rounding the front porch, Jaemin digs out his bottle of vodka and sits down on the stairs. The glass is cold and covered with dirt that clings to his palm.

The first sip burns like hell, but it’s welcome. A good distraction from the voices arguing like birds from inside the house. The liquor is cheap. Made to get a person drunk fast and easy. Jaemin feels like a college student every time he sneaks away to sip from it.

Jaemin drinks until his jaw starts to tingle. It’s with false bravado from the liquor in his bloodstream that he stands from the porch and stalks toward Haechan.

“Drink this.”

Haechan reels back like a spooked kitten. Scarred face and ovaled eyes, he might as well be another freak of nature for Jisung to experiment on.

He eyes Jaemin warily. A cool breeze blows a few tufts of hair into his face. He doesn’t blink them away. Just yanks the bottle from Jaemin’s outstretched hand and begins to chug.

“Careful,” Jaemin says, reaching to take it back, but Haechan jerks away from him and tilts his head back to swallow more. The liquor dribbles down his chin. “You’ll get sick. Stop it.”

Haechan drops his hand and heaves. Water swells in his eyes in tiny puddles, lashes soaked. “Not like you fucking care,” he croaks.

Jaemin supposes that’s fair. He’s given Haechan no reason to believe he cares about his well-being. So he leans against the shed, wood still warm from the day’s blazing sun.

Tense but mutable silence passes. Time in which Jaemin watches Haechan more free and open than he has before. It feels well-deserved to study him like this, stumbling around like a drunk man before the liquor has had any real time to lighten his step. Crickets buzz in the distance. The only light comes from the moon and hazy faraway flickers from the candles inside the house.

Haechan looks better in the dark. Less haggard. But he shivers in the cold, one arm wrapped around his torso. Jaemin suddenly becomes aware that he, too, still only wears the pants and cropped vest given to him by Renjun and fights the urge to cover up. He feels silly. Juvenile. In need of a distraction.

“So,” he says like he’s testing the word out, “what was that?”

Haechan doesn’t answer or even spare Jaemin a glance. A soft purr floats up into his ear. He looks down to see a kitten the color of a storm cloud winding around Haechan’s injured ankle. He’s calmed down a bit. They must feel safe again. Bending over, Haechan runs a hand through its fur. He begins to hum. Jaemin wants to ask what song it is that he’s always singing but thinks better of it. Haechan doesn’t need to know just how much attention Jaemin pays to him.

Jaemin’s tongue buzzes with words unsaid. He needs to fill the silence and opens his mouth to do so, but Haechan beats him to it.

“Jisung’s funny,” he says, voice distant like the liquor is hitting. Took long enough. It’s not like they have much food in their belly to absorb it.

“Yeah? How so?”

“He’s just so funny.” Haechan laughs. He laughs and laughs until the cackling has no choice but to turn into coughing. Raspy sounds that come out in a croak like it was dug from underneath the ground. “He-he’s really onto something with those experiments.” Images of kittens with slashed throats and drippy internal organs hanging out of bellies flash through Jaemin’s mind. “There is a way to save the world, y’know.”

Jaemin snatches the bottle from Haechan’s loose grip and drinks from it. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asks.

“It means—” a drunken, wet hiccup “—exactly what it sounds like.”

Jaemin flinches away from the shed wall like it’s dragged a nail down his backside. The tone of Haechan’s voice makes him feel uneasy. His scent sours. Haechan wrinkles his nose at it.

“You stink.”

“You think we can save the world?” Jaemin asks. When Haechan beckons for the liquor, Jaemin doesn’t deny him.

“Oh, I know we can save the world.”

The kitten Haechan paws at nips at a finger when he gets too close to its mouth. It makes him break off into a series of maniacal giggles. He falls onto his back.

“Haechan,” Jaemin says, crouching low beside him. “How can we save the world?”

More laughter. Haechan’s teeth shine in the moonlight. His hair fans out on the grass, stiff and dirty and boyish. Reminding Jaemin of a time when playing out in the mud was a choice rather than a requirement.

Haechan’s hand waves around the air in search of something. The kittens aren’t too far away. Jaemin doesn’t help, just decides to lift Haechan’s head up and tilt the bottle back into his mouth. “Drink,” he says, hoping more will loosen Haechan’s tongue. Curiosity has Jaemin wanting to see him belligerent all of a sudden. “Just a little more. ‘S good, right?”

Slow blinking eyes, feline and delicate. Jaemin’s stomach lurches.

Tears spill over Haechan’s waterline as he drinks. Jaemin thumbs them away, feeling an odd breed of pride swell up as he does so. He isn’t paying attention to how much Haechan drinks so he’s surprised when Haechan begins to cough and shoves him away.

Haechan falls back onto the ground with a soft thump, arms spread out like wings. He makes a snow angel out of bugs and dirt.

“How can we save the world, Haechan?”

Jaemin isn’t sure he believes a word Haechan says, but he feels ravenous. On the verge of splitting Haechan’s skull open and digging around the mushy parts of his brain just to get some answers. He has to fall onto his butt and sit on his hands in order to keep them to himself. Touching Haechan while liquor has his strength unpredictable will do him no good.

“Haechan. Answer me.”

“So… bossy,” Haechan mumbles, eyes oily and unfocused. “Bossy, bossy mean alpha.”

“I’m mean?”

Haechan nods.

“You’re a strange alpha,” Jaemin snips, feeling defensive. He struggles to properly piece his thoughts together. “And you walk around here like you were never in that basement. I don’t really give a shit if you think I’m mean.”

Haechan’s lips purse in a pout. “Feral… you thought I was feral.”

Jaemin nods. Remembers Haechan isn’t looking at him and says, “Yes.”

“And you wanted to keep your pack safe,” Haechan says, voice moving up and down in spite. He’s poking fun.

Jaemin grinds his molars. “Yes.”

“Silly alpha.”

“Fuck you,” Jaemin snaps. Anger blisters around his jaw, coaxing his mouth open to spit out cruelty. “What the fuck was that inside, huh? Your freaky fucking tantrum.”

Haechan’s head lulls to the side like he has no control over the moment. He hums. Hovers a hand in front of Jaemin’s face like a butterfly. He wants to touch, but won’t let himself. His hand retreats underneath his thigh. “You… hm, you could do the job,” he slurs.

Jaemin flinches away. His head begins to throb. There are words somewhere underneath his tongue, but he’s lost them. All he can do is stare dumbfounded as Haechan drags himself closer.

“What… what is it that you do? When it’s late and no one is awake and you’ve locked yourself away in that bathroom?” Haechan seems to look through Jaemin. He licks his lips before continuing. “And then you walk into our room like nothing’s happened.” Jaemin grabs his injured finger and grips tight around it. “It smells, you know. That old fucking house traps smells, holds onto them. And you always walk back in smelling like—”

“It’s none of your business.” Jaemin’s voice slices through the air like a knife into someone’s gut. Blood pours out around them, suffocating. The taste of iron sits on Jaemin’s tongue.

Haechan snorts, sharp and bitter. “Can I guess?”

“There’s nothing to guess, Haechan.”

“No, no, wait. This is fun.” Haechan sits up with a whoosh. He sways back and forth, places both hands on the ground to stabilize himself. A sloppy grin fattens his cheeks. “Three guesses, like I’m a genie. Okay, is it… someone from the house? Chenle?”

“Stop it,” Jaemin says, strained. Dread is cold and tight in his chest.

“I’m close though, aren’t I? Can’t be Mark. Hm… Jisung? Got a thing for betas, alpha?”

“Haechan. You’re drunk.”

“This’s what you wanted though, isn’t it?”

Jaemin doesn’t respond. Haechan cocks his head to the side, that same calculating gaze reserved for Jaemin on his face. They’re in that basement again, but this time Haechan isn’t beaten down and Jaemin isn’t livid. They’re equal counterparts. Haechan looks more like the version of himself that’s always lived in Jaemin’s head.

“Did you know there’s a way alphas can become omegas?” Haechan asks, bumpy and abrupt. Drunken words Jaemin has to take time to process. “Did you know that all’t takes is—”

The world around Jaemin stops. The kittens aren’t mewling, the pack isn’t arguing, the fireflies that dance in the sky aren’t moving. He feels his limbs disconnect from his body. He has no control of the hand that darts out to grip around Haechan’s chin, not when he’s mentally flipping through old textbooks from school. Words and images flash through his mind. Veiny necks and cracked lips, warnings about how some practices are better off left for dead.

Jaemin knows the word for what Haechan talks about. Bitching, the—oftentimes—lethal bite from an alpha that can turn another alpha to an omega. It’s an old-world practice, something used when people could still shift. Far before evolution reduced sub-genders to scents and procreation. It’s a taboo topic. Outlawed. There’s no longer any reason to make a person submit like that when wars and famine are so few and far between.

But they would teach about it in school. Inform young alphas about the warning signs they could expect. A flood of venom gushing from their gums, their teeth sharpening, a pounding in their heads that persists to an unavoidable crescendo. It won’t feel as good as a mating or pack-bonding bite. It can consume an alpha. They’d always equated it to dark magic; tempting and alluring, but never worth the effort. Just the urge to do so is said to be enough to drive alphas out of their minds.

“Stop it,” Jaemin hisses, stressing his point by squeezing harder around Haechan’s chin. Spittle bubbles past his lips as they mush together. “You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We can try right now.”

Haechan shoots up onto his knees. He wrenches himself free of Jaemin’s hold. Places his hands on Jaemin’s shoulders and leans forward. Jaemin thinks about it. Gives himself a moment to imagine what it would feel like to kiss Haechan. It makes his head spin, his gut gurgle. He’s hot all over and full of a rage so sudden it makes him feel sick. Haechan grunts like it’s been punched out of him when Jaemin forces him back to the ground.

But he doesn’t look scared. There’s determination on the hard set of his face. That irks Jaemin.

“You’re drunk,” he says, scooting on his knees to sit directly beside Haechan. “You need to make yourself throw up. Get it out of your system.”

Jaemin expects resistance when siding a hand up the length of Haechan’s neck to cup his chin, but he’s as easy to move as a doll. He lets Jaemin slide two fingers along the humid seal of his lips.

“Open up for me,” Jaemin murmurs.

There’s a bead of sweat that rolls down Haechan’s temple. His entire face is wet and flushed, a fruit that’s been squeezed in someone’s hand for too long. He’s holding his breath. Hurting himself in a calm yet defiant way. Jaemin wants to laugh. He wants to stick his fingers far down Haechan’s throat and find out what the skin of his uvula feels like. Will it be soft? Will Haechan let him do this?

It’s for the best. He’s been speaking nonsense, trying to get a rise out of Jaemin. So Jaemin shoves his pointer and middle finger past Haechan’s lips. Strokes his tongue once inside the wetlands of his mouth. There are secrets buried in his enamel, stories untold along his gums. Jaemin will dig them out and set them free. He’ll make Haechan feel better.

Spit lathers down Jaemin’s hand. It streams out of the corners of Haechan’s mouth, wetting his lips and chin. It quickly becomes messy and out of control. Haechan’s gag reflex fights the sudden intrusion. Jaemin straightens his back and spreads his fingers wide along the underside of Haechan’s chin for a better grip.

“You need to let me do this, Haechan,” Jaemin says, running his fingers along the gumminess of Haechan’s cheeks. “It’ll help you feel better.”

Haechan tries to respond but it comes out in a gurgle. He coughs once, and Jaemin takes the opening of his throat as an opportunity. He glides his fingers far down the tight tunnel of Haechan’s throat, making sure to press hard against his tongue like he used to watch high school girls do in the movies. They always made it look so easy. Just a touch to the uvula and vomit will spray out like a water hose.

But Haechan makes it difficult. The back of his throat pulses with each breath taken, flutters around Jaemin’s fingers. It’s simultaneously like he wants to swallow them whole and spit them back out. A gag makes his entire body spasm and shudder as Jaemin slides further down. Down, down, down until Haechan is dry heaving over Jaemin’s lap, shoulders drawn up tight.

Jaemin nods. Hums. Strokes his thumb across the length of Haechan’s trachea. “That’s right, good,” he soothes, transfixed by the sight of Haechan’s gummy lips moving around his fingers. “You’re okay. You’re doing good.”

Haechan heaves once then hiccups. Jaemin feels slimy bile coat the tips of his fingers in a thin layer. He spreads it along the bumpy map of the papillae on the far end of Haechan’s tongue. Just a little deeper, a little more. Jaemin’s stomach clenches. His fingers curl when Haechan’s head falls forward and his body stiffens.

Yanking his fingers out, Jaemin avoids most of the mess as Haechan retches something violent and disgusting. Vomit pours from his mouth in clumps of peas and carrots and soggy bread. It’s a vile smell, sour and acidic burning Jaemin’s nostrils. He feels his nose twitch.

Haechan’s head sags. His hands spread in the mess before him. The sound of his dry heaves make Jaemin become suddenly aware of all of his body parts. His knees are cold and wet, dug deep into wet dirt. He spreads his fingers and sees a string of saliva shimmer like a spiderweb under the sun. His feet, his arms, his legs—everything is freezing cold. He realizes he has no shoes on. Can feel dirt slide underneath his toenails.

He shoots up from the ground fast enough for pain to spark in his kneecaps. He bites down on his tongue and forces himself to look away from Haechan. He’s always looked better to Jaemin when pathetic, but right now the sight is hard to stomach.

Haechan groans. Curses low under his breath. A soft thump follows as he falls to the ground. Maybe he’s covered in vomit and mud now. Jaemin can’t be sure. All of his focus is on the creak of the front door as it opens, Mark stepping past its threshold like some sort of obnoxious deity. A hazy warm light glows around his figure. His face is set hard in suspicion, Jaemin can tell that much even from their distance. It makes him want to do something foolish.

He could call Mark over to the shed so he can see the mess Jaemin and Haechan have made. He could kick Haechan while he’s down just to see fury split across Mark’s face. He could take Haechan up on his offer, fuck him until he’s red and raw all over while Mark stands and watches, too stunned to speak.

But Jaemin does none of that. He looks away from Mark and down at Haechan, who has curled in on himself in the fetal position. He managed to avoid the pile of vomit. Impressive. Jaemin toes at his hips and receives a grunt of displeasure in response.

“Let’s go inside.”

Haechan rolls onto his back. Blinks once. Twice. And before he can do it a third time, Jaemin has bent over and wound arms under his pits to heft him up. A huff of musky vomit breath tickles Jaemin’s neck. He feels like he’s handling a newborn, useless and unaware of their filth.

“Haechan,” he says, standing Haechan upright. “We need to go inside. Can you walk?”

A groan. Haechan slumps forward, hefting his full body weight onto Jaemin. Their skin clings tacky and gross. Jaemin wants to shove him away, keep him close, forget the last however long they’ve been outside ever happened. But Mark still lingers in that doorway, so Jaemin wraps an arm around Haechan’s middle and coaxes him forward.

They make it through the yard in sluggish steps. Haechan, belligerent and in recovery. Jaemin, still drunk and unsteady. It’s sure to be an unimpressive sight. One that calls the rest of the pack to crowd around the front entry, their scents bumping off each other like bees stuck in a glass jar. It makes hairs on the back of Jaemin’s neck stand up. He feels goosebumps pebble over Haechan's skin.

Jaemin pushes his way past the threshold. He offers no explanation, just trudges up the flight of stairs that will take him to his and Haechan’s bedroom. Mark’s energy is a nuisance. He’s not just a bee, he’s a fucking wasp. When Jaemin reaches the top step, he pulls Haechan closer into him and looks down the stairs. “It’s fine,” he says. No one appears to believe him, shaky pupils and jittery hands. Mark’s chin juts out. “He’s fine.”

It will have to do. Jaemin makes no plans of repeating the nonsensical ramblings of a drunk man coming down from a tantrum.

He tucks Haechan into bed for the first time that night. Then he retreats to the bathroom to throw up the alcohol in his stomach until he’s left feeling empty and raw.