#hhj

Gets in moods sometimes where it’s hard for him to come no matter how much he wants it, and sometimes he gets overstimulated before you can even get him there — whining, biting his lip, bucking his hips into your hand

A bit of a praise kink — receiving, not giving. Praises you too, but it's more automatic than something he gets off on, muttering compliments, or exhaling them around a breath: "There you go, pretty; so good; you got it..."

Capricious with where he likes to come: inside, outside, all over your face, making you hold it in your mouth— Usually even he doesn’t know until he’s already there

It isn’t because he doesn’t like it. He likes to feel useful and he likes when people need him; he likes the feeling of someone seeking him out, asking him for something they couldn’t get anywhere else. That feeling of exclusivity, of being special — only Hyunjin does that move right, or only Hyunjin would know that trivia bite. Or, when the exclusivity isn’t there, the element of choice: someone else could do this, and maybe they could even do it better, but for whatever reason, it was Hyunjin they went to in the end. Even barring choice, there’s desperation, and that’s it’s own kind of appealing, in an opaque, murky way he doesn’t completely understand: Jisung looking up at him wide-eyed and unsure because no one else is around to drive him and he still doesn’t quite know how to ask, his hand fisted in Hyunjin’s sleeve. Chan calling him in the middle of the night because he had too many words in his head and Jeongin is already asleep, voice dragging rough over things he would never want Hyunjin to hear, not in daylight. There’s something satisfying about it, collecting these pieces of the people he loves, existing in their heads even when he isn’t physically there.

Hyunjin likes to be needed; he just isn’t good at it, not like the others. Minho has the practice and Changbin has the give; Seungmin has that sense, that intuitive flicker. Felix has the eagerness: pulling tissues out of nowhere before anyone has asked, bringing drinks and snacks that they’re all too full or tired to eat. A boundless level of care, bouncing around, knocking things over — sweets that don’t get eaten, tissues that are never used.

And, of course, they’re all alphas. They all want to be needed; it’s hardwired into them, the desire to earn their place in the pack. Hyunjin is no exception to that. It puts a sort of careful balance into even their pack, lacking a formal hierarchy though it may be: to give or take or allow too much is threatening. It shouldn’t be; it is. It sets his hackles to rise, and his pride to sting, and competition to bubble up inside him until he can taste it behind his teeth — because there’s always that instinctive part of him that marks his packmates as his rivals, and the sweet things they do for one another as a stage. Who can provide the best. Who’s the most capable. Who deserves it the most.

Until recently, that ‘it’ to be deserved was nebulous. Some sense of respect, maybe. Or something more internal: something to quell that pervasive voice inside him that tells him there’s no inherent reason for anyone to keep him around.

And then there was you. And that changed things.

Hyunjin isn’t a caretaker — except now he fantasizes about things he never used to think about. Brushing your hair. Dressing you. Feeding you, straight from his hand, his fingers to the pretty seam of your lips. He remembers when you had fed him, once: the berry-burst in his mouth, crisp and sweet just like your scent; the subservient way he’d had to bend his head to get what he wanted. Maybe even more than that, the way you looked at him: eyes wide, mouth popped, a pretty little oh he wanted to push his tongue into.

But it isn’t just that: tongues and flesh or an excuse to see you naked or his hand in a fist in your hair. There’s something else.

The dream tonight is a sweet one: bright and glowy, something soft cresting from a CD player he doesn’t own in real life. They’re in your room, the one he’d had such a hand in decorating, but the proportions aren’t quite right: your vanity chair is too big, so much that Hyunjin has to help you hop onto it. The distance between the bathroom and the balcony is all wrong.

But you’re there, and you’re beautiful, and Hyunjin doesn’t care about any of that. He adjusts you on the chair like you’re a little wooden doll, and you sink right into his arms with a pleased little hum, letting him move you here and there.

In the dream, Kkami appears on your lap — a little too big, just like the chair, the black and white of his fur blanketing your thighs. You have Hyunjin’s t-shirt on — or maybe his robe, the one he accidentally stole from a hotel last year and never told anyone about, an unused fugitive hiding in the back of his drawers. Maybe it’s both, the robe layered over the t-shirt. All he knows is that under Kkami, your legs are bare, and he’s barely even looking.

Your scrunchie is on his wrist. Then he starts braiding bits of your hair — little princess braids, like the kind he watched a Youtube video on — and that scrunchie turns into a normal hair tie, more appropriately sized for the task. Your hair is so soft. You tell him it’s tangled, that there’s a knot on the back of your neck you can’t get out. He works it with a brush; it comes away too easily.

In the dream, you tell him you’re hungry, and he brings you hand-in-hand to the kitchen and peels you an orange. In the dream, you stop in the middle of the hallway — “Oppa, I’m tired,” you complain, stomping your foot, and he carries you to the kitchen instead with his lips to your temple. In the dream, you never even step foot in the hallway; you tell him you’re hungry, and food just appears beside you. In the mirror, he watches your lips pop open, eyes locking with his, already expecting his hand there to feed you.

When he wakes, the first thing he thinks is that he wants you. He wants you here, next to him. He wants to feed you. He wants to do your hair.

He wants to take care of you — in every way, always. The obvious ones, of course: your taste on his tongue, your thighs shaking around his ears. Then the other obvious ones, in the other direction — you holding onto his sleeve, asking for a ride; you calling him in the middle of the night.

He wants to dress you. He wants to pick you up. He wants to kiss your tears away. He wants to buy you things. He wants to wipe some food from your lip and then lick his thumb, the way alpha love interests always do in the movies.

He wants to bow his head to you — eager, subservient, your fingers in his mouth. He wants to hold you down. He wants you to need him until you drown in it, until the only thing in your head is his name, until you’re stupid on him. He wants to empty you out, then fill you up.

And he isn’t a caretaker. Hyunjin doesn’t get brooding and moralistic about it the way Seungmin and Jisung do, but he still knows this feeling is too selfish for that. It isn’t the desire to nurture, but to consume. He knows that.

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like it.

“I was listening to that song you sent me on repeat all day,” you tell him on the phone later: nighttime for you, late morning for him. “I feel like you’re my only source of new music these days, honestly.”

You sigh, playfully dispirited. In Hyunjin’s chest, his heart is pounding.

It’s nice to be special. Even if you can’t be special, it’s nice to be chosen — the way you’d chosen him for this, trading songs back and forth like they aren’t all crazy about music and crazier about you, like they wouldn’t all grovel for the chance. And even if you can’t be chosen — because there are always more places for you to find new songs, outside of him, if you looked — it’s nice to be needed. Desperation, appealing even when reluctant: a sigh in your voice. Your fingers curling in his sleeve.

He just wants to exist to you when he isn’t there. It’s all he wants.

Good, he thinks, in response to the statement he’s still too tongue-tied to answer. Then, more viciously: Don’t listen to anything else; you don’t need it. Just listen to what I send you; just need me. I’ll send you another song; I’ll write you another song; I’ll write you a million songs. Do you have a playlist of me, like I do of you? I need you to need me. Need me. Need me. Need me.

“Good,” he says finally, in the first second when his motor functions recover but his impulse control doesn’t. Then, before he can spill his guts all over you: “I’ll send you more. Whenever you want.”

It sounds the way you like him: eager, sweet, nonthreatening. Not too heavy. He can tell it lands right, because you laugh that one laugh of yours — the one that means you aren’t taking him seriously, and you like it that way.

“Let me send you one first,” you say, that laugh lingering on the edge of your voice, bright and glowy. “We’re trading, right? Equivalent exchange.”

It doesn’t have to be. Hyunjin would give you anything and the reward would be giving it to you; if you gave him something in return, he would keep it like a token, but it isn’t an equal trade. He wants to peel an orange for you just to peel an orange for you. He wants to shrink you down until you need him to put you places. He wants you to need him — desperately, debilitatingly, until it almost hurts to be without him. Until it does hurt.

“Okay,” he says instead of that, “I’m waiting.” And you laugh that laugh again — bright, glowy, not at all taking him seriously.

That night he dreams he has your ankles and wrists tied up in sweet little ribbons. You’re smiling at him in the mirror. Something soft crests from a CD player he doesn’t own in real life, tucked into the corner past his periphery.