“Emergency contraceptive isn’t good for you either, Mr. Shin Eunseo, just like regular birth control pills. I told you. Since your constitution can’t tolerate regular pills, you must use barrier contraception.”
“Yes, I know that, but….”
“Did you meet your imprint partner?”
“…Yes.”
“Did he knot?”
“…….”
“If he didn’t, then there’s no real need to take the pill….”
“I’m anxious. And I’m not sure I remember it right.”
Last night Jaeheon hadn’t knotted, but of course he hadn’t used a condom either. Since he thought of him as a beta, contraception wouldn’t even have crossed his mind. He knew the risk of pregnancy was almost nil, but Eunseo was gripped by an obsessive fear.
“…I’ll prescribe it for now, but after taking the first pill, you must avoid contact with alphas as much as possible for twelve hours.”
“Understood.”
“And if you can take tomorrow off work, you’d better do that.”
“And you have quite a fever.”
“I think I’ve caught a cold.”
“I’ll prescribe antipyretic with it, but don’t take any other medicine.”
“…Understood.”
Eunseo, who’d been planning to go straight to internal medicine with his body aches coming on, only sighed. The doctor again urged him about barrier contraception and got his promise to really avoid the pill if at all possible.
At the pharmacy he exchanged the prescription for two contraceptive pills, and got the antipyretic too. Only after swallowing the pill straight down his throat did he feel a little relieved.
Eunseo called his team leader and got tomorrow’s leave approved, and could head home with a somewhat easier mind. But the body that had been tense since yesterday collapsed the moment it crossed the front door, and he barely made it to his room, nearly tripping over the threshold. And Eunseo tossed the cumbersome carrier and medicine bag aside carelessly and flopped onto the bed with only his outerwear off.
An extremely annoying sound kept coming. One was a vibration, one was a bell. Eunseo opened his eyes in full irritation, then shivered with chills and curled up because of his shirt sticking to him, damp with cold sweat.
The emergency contraceptive caused nausea and headaches. Dry-heaving from his churning stomach, unable to lift his splitting head at all, Eunseo only tossed and turned face-down. Then he gasped and opened his eyes. He’d realized what the annoying things were. One was his phone, one was the intercom.
*Han Jaeheon, Executive Director*
Startled, Eunseo sat up and held his phone, not knowing what to do. He could neither ignore it nor answer it, so he waited for it to stop ringing. The phone vibrated a few more times and stopped, and this time the intercom bell started ringing.
His body awkwardly half in heat, moving was a pain and an irritation, but he couldn’t let the bell keep ringing in company housing, so Eunseo barely pulled himself together and stood. He set the carrier rolling on the floor upright, and the moment he stood before the door, his phone started ringing again and the intercom bell stopped.
Surely the person outside wasn’t the same person as the one calling… right? He hurriedly declined the call to stop the vibration, but the person hammering the intercom outside surely already knew someone was inside.
“What are you doing?”
A voice tinged slightly with laughter came from beyond the door. Eunseo, who’d stepped back without realizing it, hurried to the door at Jaeheon’s next words and opened it. The words being: “Wouldn’t it be better to open up before someone comes to the next unit?”
“I told you to contact me when you arrived…?”
“…Ah.”
“…I see you weren’t in a situation to contact me.”
Seeing Eunseo drenched in cold sweat, not even properly undressed, Jaeheon — unusually — reacted normally. Checking his own wrecked state, Eunseo hurriedly tried to go back to his room, but his spent body couldn’t possibly function properly. The body aches and the emergency pill’s side effects had a tremendous synergy. Eunseo had lost the strength of every muscle in his body, his vision, his ability to think, even his sense of balance.
Which was why he was in this state. Eunseo, backpedaling to get away from Jaeheon, got his feet tangled and toppled straight backward, and Jaeheon, rushing inside without even taking off his shoes, caught his body and held him.
“You have a terrible fever.”
“Ah, it’s a cold….”
Ah, this won’t do. Jaeheon can’t be here. Eunseo tried to push Jaeheon away, but he lightly scooped Eunseo up and walked into the room with its black, gaping mouth. After a moment of looking around, he stood by the bed.
“Did you eat anything? The hospital?”
Laying Eunseo on the bed, Jaeheon pressed his forehead again. It was boiling with fever. The antipyretic’s effect had completely worn off.
“…I have medicine.”
“Where? Don’t you need to eat something before taking it?”
Jaeheon picked up the medicine bag sprawled on the floor. While he was momentarily distracted by it, Eunseo dragged the blanket over to cover his lower body. The emergency pill dumped an excess of hormones into the body all at once, and for Eunseo, with his constitution different from ordinary omegas, it induced an ambiguous heat. And this heat would clearly affect Jaeheon too.
He had to drive him out, but Eunseo only chewed his lip anxiously — now that he’d come inside, there was no way he could drive him out himself. He could only pray that nothing would happen.
“This looks like antipyretic — what’s this pill?”
“Ah, that’s….”
The pill Jaeheon had picked up was the one remaining contraceptive pill Eunseo had to take again in a few hours. He couldn’t possibly know omega contraceptives, but Eunseo’s face went pale with sudden fear, and only after a long while could he barely produce a lie.
“It’s for gastritis….”
“Oh no, you have gastritis?”
“…Yes.”
It wasn’t a lie. Eunseo had stress-induced gastritis, and it too was showing signs of flaring up. He’d clearly need to take gastritis medicine in two or three days as well.
“Want to take the antipyretic and sleep a bit?”
“…..”
“You weren’t answering, so I came because I was worried, and now that you’re really sick I’m a bit upset.”
More than worried… hadn’t he sounded rather amused? Eunseo shivered with chills, recalling Jaeheon’s voice from outside the door. But right now he really did look worried. It was the first such expression Eunseo had seen since meeting him, and he even found it novel.
“You should eat something before taking the medicine, I think.”
“…….”
“Your fever’s too high, so you’d better take the medicine first.”
Watching Jaeheon, who’d been perched on the bed, get up and head to the kitchen, Eunseo strained to calm his continually heating body. The heat radiating from his deranged body was half body aches, half heat.
“Here, take your medicine.”
Opening the medicine bag, Jaeheon put the pill in one of Eunseo’s hands and a cup of water in the other, and quietly watched him. But Eunseo had no chance to feel his gaze. The moment the cup, beaded with condensation from the cold, touched his palm, a sudden thirst struck, and he drank all the water in an instant, just like that.
Ah — he’d brought it for him to take the pill with, but only after gulping down even the last drop did Eunseo recall Jaeheon’s intention, and as he dragged his hips to get down, Jaeheon casually took the cup again and refilled it with water. At his kindness, Eunseo glanced at him cautiously and put the antipyretic in his mouth.
“I’m sorry… I couldn’t contact you.”
“It’s fine. You couldn’t, so there’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“You must have been very tired.”
Jaeheon pressed Eunseo’s forehead firmly to lay him back down and straightened the blanket over him. Eunseo, who flinched as if static sparked every time his fingertips touched, looked at him worriedly — wondering if Jaeheon might be going into heat.
The front of his pants was distinctly tented. Ah, what to do. Jaeheon had come like this to carry out this morning’s “favor” and “threats.” And with a half-in-heat omega lying here like this — not normal, but an omega was an omega — it was only natural he’d rut.
What to do — thinking the same thought again, Eunseo looked back and forth between Jaeheon’s face and the front of his pants. Then he raised himself slightly.
“I could, with my mouth….”
Jaeheon made quite a strange face, as if to say what on earth he was talking about.
“I could do it for you….”
He stared at him as if he were saying the stupidest thing in the world, and Eunseo’s voice grew smaller toward the end. Wasn’t that what he’d come for? But he really didn’t think he could do more than that.
“I guess in that head of yours I’m really a bastard.” Jaeheon tapped Eunseo’s head, tok-tok.
“Well, I suppose I deserve that.”
“Stop talking nonsense and get some sleep.”
And pressing Eunseo’s shoulder to lay him down again, Jaeheon left the room. Eunseo, who’d only stared at the dark ceiling, blinked for a long while and then, pook — fell back asleep without even knowing when.
***
The next time Eunseo opened his eyes, it was past four in the morning. After staring only at the luminous clock hands in the dark, he slowly got up, took the remaining contraceptive from the medicine bag, and opened the door. The time he was supposed to take it had long passed, so he was in a hurry.
Eunseo squinted hard at the brightly lit living room, then opened his eyes again — and froze on the spot at the human figure in the living room. It was Jaeheon, lying with his long legs stretched all the way out past the sofa.
“Why….”
Why was he still here? Even his sudden visit yesterday had felt like a dream, unreal — and him lying there like that, not having taken off a single piece of clothing, was beyond even fantasy. Clenching his pill-holding fist tighter, Eunseo went very quietly to the kitchen and took out only the water bottle. The moment he swallowed the pill and drank another sip of water, it went down the wrong way and a loud fit of coughing burst out.
“Mmh….”
He hurriedly covered his mouth, but couldn’t fully stop the sound leaking out. Jaeheon, who’d been tossing with a groan, snapped his eyes open, and Eunseo, watching him, startled even more and stepped back, slamming his side into the sink.
“You’re sick — why are you up doing this.”
Jaeheon shot up and came closer. Eunseo waved a hand to say he was fine, but he closed the distance without a care and embraced Eunseo’s waist. Then he rubbed, swish-swish, the spot that had loudly hit the sink, bent his head to press their foreheads together, closed his eyes a moment, then opened them. Eunseo, inhaling sharply, squeezed his eyes shut.
“Your fever’s gone now.”
“…Yes, I’m fine.”
Was mixing bodies something that entailed even this kind of behavior? Or was this included in the “relationship,” the “mutually good thing” Jaeheon had talked about? Eunseo tried to push away the big hand ticklishly rubbing his waist, but Jaeheon’s pull was stronger.
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