Strawberries & Cream

Love Me A Little

Seonghwa felt isolated. His place within KQ- within Ateez- had never felt more unsure to him, even when his debut had not yet been guaranteed. Nothing compared to the hurt he felt knowing that his company had put him in this position and hadn't deemed it worth telling him- whether that was because they had intentionally kept it a secret or just didn't think it was important enough to remember to fill him in. He couldn't bring himself to talk to anyone about it. No matter how disgusted he felt, Seonghwa couldn't stand the idea of Wooyoung finding out so he refused to talk to any of the other members after making San swear to secrecy as well. Besides that, he couldn't talk to anyone at their company because, truthfully, he didn't really want to know if they'd done this to him on purpose or not. More than anything, Seonghwa just wanted to pretend it hadn't happened. He wanted to live in ignorant bliss that his place in Ateez had been decided because of his talent, not because of the usefulness of his anatomy.

Their schedules had been so empty since their debut, though, it wasn't easy to find ways to distract himself. Even though Seonghwa despised adhering to the omega role KQ apparently expected of him, he wound up attending to Wooyoung during the rest of his rut anyways. Only the first day or two of rut came with sexual needs and those had already been dealt with, so all Seonghwa had to do was keep Wooyoung company and keep him soothed through the agitation. It wasn't so bad and he did kind of appreciate having some time alone with Wooyoung to rebuild the bond that had been damaged between them. Of course, Wooyoung was totally unaware of that and was just pleased to have an omega doting over him. Eventually, Seonghwa was able to start putting the whole ordeal out of his mind and regain a sense of normalcy with the other members again. No one else was showing any signs of going into rut any time soon so Seonghwa tried to just forget about it until the issue arose. At least now he knew that the others would come to him and he'd be prepared enough to say no.

That is, Seonghwa had thought he'd be prepared until the issue did finally arise again. He'd kind of thought Jongho would be the next to go into rut, so he'd been preparing himself to deal with that. Despite being younger than everyone else, no one could deny he was the most 'traditionally alpha' among the group, so Seonghwa just assumed his hormones would kick in next. Knowing he definitely could not overpower Jongho once he was in full rut, Seonghwa had been keeping a close eye on him to watch for signs before it happened so he could just pull him aside and talk to him in private. Bringing it up unprovoked posed too much potential for questions and Seonghwa didn't want anyone knowing he'd already slept with Wooyoung. If they knew, he'd be forced to either spill the beans about the nonconsensual nature of the encounter or figure out some excuse for why he was willing to fuck Wooyoung but not anyone else. Neither outcome sounded appealing so it just seemed best to keep everyone in the dark; He'd already mentioned to Wooyoung that he shouldn't bring it up to the others, as best he could without making Wooyoung feel like there was a particular, shameful reason to hide it.

It wasn't easy to navigate. Seonghwa was constantly worried that Wooyoung might slip up, not knowing the severity of the situation, or that he would make Wooyoung feel hurt in thinking that Seonghwa was ashamed of him or thought he'd been bad in bed. It was stressing him out so much, Seonghwa was immensely grateful when their schedules started filling back up in preparation for their comeback. They'd been on a rest period for a couple of months and no one else seemed to be going into rut any time soon, so the company couldn't put off activities any longer. They just put them back to work with the understanding that they could leave without question if they needed to and everyone else would keep working without them until they could return. That worked well enough, Hongjoong and Eden got most of their next album put together and they'd begun learning the two choreos that had been made so far. The long days required for a comeback was exhausting but Seonghwa didn't mind, it gave him an outlet for his pent up stress energy and it made it hard for the members to spend too much time talking about things that Seonghwa didn't want them talking about.