but it's better if you do {taejin} {kookjin}

first mistake, but who counts them anyway?

"Will you be alright?"

Seokjin looked up, meeting the concerned gaze of his best friend, with whom he'd lived for approximately... a lifetime. Not so literally, mind you, but they'd been neighbours for their entire childhoods which led their mothers to the great idea of allowing them to move into a small flat in Seoul (where they'd both gotten into nearby universities) together, but not scrambled. Butterfly style, with the common spaces together, but not far enough apart for intimacy to be an issue that went unnoticed. How many times had Jin not been unlucky enough to run into the omega his friend was rolling around with in the kitchen, preparing eggs in lesser clothes and practically clawing at him as soon as his scent was present? Because it was natural for an omega to be intimidated when another omega appeared close to the alpha they had been with - even if they were nothing more than one-night stands - for it was a very deeply primal act that unfortunately everyone had access to even nowadays.

"Of course I do," was his reply, as he finished arranging his hair with his fingers, in his opinion the best hairbrush there could possibly be. "Are you going to miss me, by any chance?"

Yoongi's giggle was always a balm to his heart when he was hesitant, and this time it had the very same effect.

"The truth is,... I can't wait for you to leave."

"Rude" Seokjin scolded him, taking one last look at his reflection in the mirror and finding that he looked fine. Could he put more effort into it? Yes, but he wasn't in the state of mind to do so right now, not after the string of bad events that had befallen him. He could detail them perfectly, because his head had turned the matter over a hundred thousand times, but why get bitter? Seokjin turned around to observe his friend, noting the details of anxiety he observed in him: Yoongi was biting his nails, and his leg was bouncing insistently. "Are you nervous?"

It was almost a stupid question, but Jin had always tried to get Yoongi to lose the bad habit of people assuming his feelings instead of making them public for whoever he was interested in, so ever since they met Jin tried to get Yoongi into the habit of verbalizing it.

It has been hard as hell.

"A little..."

"You're serious about him, I assume?"

"Yeah." Again he started biting his nails, and that's when Jin moved closer. His hand gently cupped his alpha best friend's too-thin, too-pale wrist.

"Hey... Hey," Jin caught his attention with gentle taps on his wrist. "He looks really interested in you, Yoon. If he wasn't, I don't think he would have asked you for something as important as this, you know?"

"That's what worries me."

Yoongi was probably one of the best alphas Seokjin had ever met in his life. Funny. Smart. Loving (in a very particular way) but he was also so different from the conventional prospect of alphas that in the sight and patience of the rest who didn't give a second of their time to look at anything beyond their navel, he was considered weak. How could that even be possible, when for Jin the most worthwhile alphas were the ones who acted like his friend? Caring, docile when they had to be, thoughtful to the omegas.

That was when Jin realised that society was rotten: when someone's tender heart was considered a weakness.

It had created a constant insecurity in Yoongi that he wasn't enough and no matter how many times Jin said it, he didn't seem to understand his worth. But he had finally found someone who considered him, finally someone who deserved him, and today they were going to spend their first rut together.

Jin was proud, because, just as alphas had always been a complication for him and he had never found one to his liking and thus had many disappointments, the truth was that his main concern had always been Yoongi.