Chapter Text
“Yoongi.”
The leg of a chair slips firmly into its joint. He exhales. Namjoon coming into the shop is never a good thing.
He straightens, stretching.
“What do you need?”
Namjoon peers into the work room, stiff and awkward as ever.
He could be there to place an order, though Jin has rearranged and redecorated more times than there are rooms in Namjoon’s cabin—the same cabin Jin has no immediate plans to live in, but that’s none of Yoongi’s business. It leaves two other options: he’s come just to bother Yoongi, or he needs something neither wooden nor crafted.
It’s the latter.
“We’ve got a default. In a week.” Namjoon shrugs, gesturing with the manila folder in his hands. “I need help with luggage and furniture transport.”
Yoongi’s happier to wipe his eyes with the glue oozing its way from a wooden seam, though he doesn’t share the preference.
“Get Jeongguk to do it.”
“I did,” Namjoon corrects. “I said the betas might be bringing furniture, Yoongi. Not all of us can carry a couch across Compound.”
Yoongi has spotted a bubble in the adhesive, but pauses. More than two people required. Lots of belongings.
“An omega,” he realizes, irritated.
“I haven’t made the announcement, yet,” Namjoon shares. “Not with the alphas’ moon approaching.”
Yoongi sighs and wipes the lingering glue.
“I don’t want to do it.”
Namjoon shifts his weight. “I already assigned the hunt roster. There’s no one else.”
“Switch me.”
“About that.” He winces. “I don’t want to.”
Yoongi pins him with a look, narrowing his eyes. He wants Yoongi to be there.
Namjoon does his best to straighten. “Elders’ orders,” he hedges. He steels himself to add: “And mine, too.”
But the sliver of weakness in it is obvious. He wilts quickly, shuffling his feet.
“You don’t have to,” he acknowledges, fussing. “I know that.”
It’s exactly why Yoongi doesn’t like Namjoon asking for favors.
He exhales again, setting the adhesive-stained rag back onto the work bench.
“Keep me out of the bullshit,” he warns. “No offering season, no elders’ arrangements.”
Namjoon’s lips are pressed into a thin line—Yoongi knows, without a doubt, that they’re already trying. Of course they are. They’d eat their own shit if it meant Yoongi would take a mate.
“Alright,” Namjoon agrees, shrugging. “Be alone forever, man.”
Yoongi nods; that’s perfectly fine by him.
Like any news, the hint of a beta default brings chaos.
The date approaches with an exponentially increasing count of irritants. Yoongi can hardly eat a meal without the spit of an alphas’ fight flying toward his bowl. They have no idea if the omega will be even slightly desirable. It doesn’t matter, and apparently neither does the lack of guarantee that the omega will be interested in any of them. Worse, with the Order desperately fluctuating, the other dynamic is beginning to reek with anxiety. Sugary scents of this and that are beginning to waft through the seals of his shop’s windows and beneath the doors.
At least he has his cabin.
“You ought to at least pretend you’re remotely interested,” Hoseok recommends at one point. “Maybe you’ll like the new default?”
The headache of omeagan sugar-stressed scents is an undefeatable deterrent. Yoongi can hardly make it to central compound.
“No,” he barks.
Hoseok leaves him alone, even if only because Yoongi’s shop offers him the easiest shift on compound.
With the issue settled, Yoongi decides to do what he always does: he avoids.
‘A couple days’ turns into ‘majority of the week.’ But as the day grows closer and Yoongi is able to work less and less, even he finds himself desperate for the release of tension that will naturally occur with the default’s arrival. He can’t deny he’s bored with avoiding dramatics and, therefore, all of the unmated compound. Even hunting, he finds, is only interesting when a challenge is presented.
He brings a string of venison down on the morning of the seventh day. The itch of boredom lingers from the moment of the kill until Yoongi crosses the compound to meet the others.
“Hunting for seven days? And you’re not interested?” Namjoon asks, whistling low under his breath. “What’d you kill?”
Jeongguk nods, shifting on his feet anxiously. “Deer?” he asks, scenting the air. “How many?”
Yoongi bristles.
“Enough.”
Namjoon sighs, hands deep in his pockets. Yoongi knows, right then, that he wants to roll his eyes at his brother’s mooching. He takes his frustration out on Yoongi instead.
“Yoongi,” he starts, very seriously.
He also wants to lecture, apparently. Yoongi grunts.
“You won’t have any expectations to meet,” Namjoon promises, looking him in the eye with the kind of sincerity that only sparks discomfort in Yoongi. “The elders will stop.”
“No they won’t,” Jeongguk snorts. “Sohyang threatened to give him a lashing if he doesn’t make an offer this season.”
Namjoon snaps at his brother, though his scent is so tame Jeongguk only shrugs.
Yoongi stares at the treeline while they bicker. Unable to see the sun but for a slightly brighter spot in the cover of clouds, he waits.
It will be the third default he has seen in his lifetime. From what his limited conversations with Comms has taught him, that’s a very high number. The first, though, had come just after he’d been born—an alpha. Won Yooseok has since mated, started a sizable family, and become one of the better hunters on the grounds. The second was significantly less impressive; omega Zhou has a tendency to avoid her shift in favor of loitering in his shop.
What he hasn’t witnessed, though, is the actual process of bringing a default across the border. None of them have, not even Namjoon; it's the nature of an event so rare. Namjoon’s father remains the only man on the compound to have such an experience—until their waiting ends, and the tunnel’s gates open. As the road seems to expand, uncovered, they pause.
It’s a strange vehicle; very small and lower to the ground, not at all like the massive fleets of trucks brought in each time Comms came for a market. It’s also incredibly quiet—no blaring horn, no rumbling engine. Instead, it whirs quietly onto the compound’s edge and crunches delicately on the gravel.
With two settled alphas and one who refuses to even consider a mate, the process is naturally noncompetitive. It doesn’t mean they’re not intrigued by the newcomer, however. Yoongi is interested, as the car door opens, in judging the extent of the damage the compound will be caused.
The omega steps out; Yoongi breathes a great sigh of relief.
She’s older, and sure of herself. Yoongi doesn’t know how in the hell a middle-aged omega could have hidden herself in the outside society for so long, but he’s pleased this isn’t a recently-presented omega. The chaos of the compound will surely right itself within a matter of hours, considering that unmated alphas are nearly nonexistent at her stage in life.
More importantly, none of the elders will expect Yoongi to court an omega more than twice his age.
Namjoon, very subtly, shakes his head. Yoongi ignores it, at first, but the alpha’s alarmed scent is persistent. Something is off.
A second car door opens. Yoongi hadn’t taken the time to scan through the windshield. So, clearly, he’d mistaken the omega’s guide as the default.
“Hm,” Namjoon hums. His tone is light and airy, but Yoongi has the feeling—
—You’re fucked, Namjoon means.
He doesn’t realize that, not in the moment; instead all that’s immediately visible is a head of shiny hair and panes of a profile that are, admittedly, conventionally attractive. Yoongi frowns and watches as the profile blends into gentle curves and symmetry. He doesn’t see much until the omega steps around the car door. Small, then. And, though everything in Yoongi would prefer to deny it, beautiful.
Yoongi could groan.
That much is obvious, no matter how little he had seen. He could have closed his eyes and known; even Namjoon and Jeongguk are stiff with shock, mated or not. That alone would have told him to be prepared.
He isn’t the only one fucked over by the addition.
The entire compound will be a shit show. And maybe himself, too, though he’s already debating how long to isolate within his shop. Best to avoid the inconvenient.
But his eyes are fixated on the little thing’s face, on his mannerisms. Nervous and timid, hiding behind the woman. Then there are the eyes, which Yoongi refuses to acknowledge or focus on. Not the lips either, and definitely not his goddamn neck; he settles on the omega’s cheeks. The red dusting of chill on his nose. How will he be prepared for winter? Yoongi has a surplus of pelts in his cellar and a bear waiting to be hunted on the mountain’s southeastern ridge. His kill ought to get a decent use, for once.
The omega steps forward from behind his guide; Yoongi gets a clearer look at him and nearly forgets to bow.
A season, he decides, might be a long enough time to hide. Maybe two.
Namjoon begins his greetings—“Mrs. Park,” he starts, all that stupid diplomacy that makes Yoongi want to crawl up inside of his shop’s vacuum. “And you’re Omega Park.”
Park what. He couldn’t even give the full name?
And then there’s Namjoon’s introduction, the Lead Alpha bullshit—
“Jimin is fine.”
Yoongi freezes.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he adds, timbre soft.
The omega holds out a fascinatingly small hand—how, Yoongi wants to know, could it be so impossibly delicate—and Namjoon shakes it confidently in his bare hand.
Yoongi’s going to throttle the piece of shit.
They’re chatting, too. Namjoon’s always fucking talking. Beta research, he mentions. Yoongi doesn’t want to hear any of it, not out of Namjoon’s mouth.
“It’s an honor,” Namjoon finally concludes.
Fucking ridiculous.
“Well, we’re here to take your furniture,” Namjoon presses on. “It looks like the truck hasn’t caught up, yet?”
He’s finished gabbing, but Yoongi can’t even feel the relief that should come from Namjoon finally shutting his mouth.
Yoongi can easily take the entire year to the cabin, he figures. He’ll hunt and eat at home, avoiding the dining hall. Needs for furniture are sparse in the winter—he won’t even need to see the shop until Spring.
The omega pauses, wide-eyed: “Oh. They told me I could buy it up here.”
Then again, Yoongi has a passion for his craft.
He hasn’t put together a bedroom set in a long time. He has the lumber and the hardware. While he’s at it, he might as well bring out the scroll saw and add a few decorative touches. The outline of leaves, perhaps. If time would permit, he could engrave the entire set. Maybe he’ll be able to, at a later date. He won’t charge, either, he decides.
“Dude,” Jeongguk hisses under his breath.
Yoongi nearly bites the tip of his tongue off clean; Namjoon’s already gone and introduced them both. He hadn’t even acknowledged.
Thankfully, he doesn’t need to. Park Jimin is even closer when he nods at them all. Yoongi spots, from the action alone, that he’s reserved.
There’s something else, too. For all the things that are enough, there’s something more. It’s not anything more about his appearance, though, or even the way he carries himself. Those things are omegean as they could be, and admittedly as desirable as they could be.
Yoongi doesn’t need anything else, either—he’s already curious. He might have kept himself from pursuing based on looks alone, but he’d still noticed.
The air changes, though. As if it’s working purely to tear down the little remaining bit of resistance, it carries wind through the omega’s hair and toward the compound’s edge.
Yoongi inhales the scent; his world re-focuses.