#taebear

Yoongi stepped out of the studio at 8:30 pm, exhausted from the length of the day but so excited to go home to Taehyung. He had the best news: his album was finally finished, and the company had given him a solid week off to rest up before his debut preparations exploded into a rush of MV filming, content creation, photo shoots for the album, interviews, and performances. He was exhausted from the many hours he’d spent re-recording tracks and trying to convince the higher ups at the company that his songs needed the profanity he’d originally included. Taehyung had heard every single song as he’d written it and potentially was more excited about its impending release than Yoongi had been. Yoongi knew that Taehyung would always be his biggest fan, and that was the reason for one tiny secret that Yoongi had kept pressed to his chest. It was currently pressed there literally, in a tiny velvet box inside the breast pocket of his leather jacket. Yoongi had gotten an impressive bonus upon signing with the label, certainly enough to get their bills caught up and leaving them with a little padding for a while. What Taehyung hadn’t known is that it was also enough for Yoongi to pay off the diamond engagement ring in his pocket too. Yoongi had written one final track that Taehyung had not heard yet, just for Taehyung, and it was the closing track to the album—the closing words “Marry me?” in Yoongi’s gruff heartfelt baritone.

Every time things had gotten difficult, Yoongi would reach into his pocket and watch the light glint from the shiny string of diamonds across the top of the white gold band and remember the man waiting for him at home. Taehyung made every aspect of his life better, and he encouraged him to take a chance on himself. His omega was gorgeous and gentle and nurturing, but he was also strong and fierce and loved Yoongi in a way he’d never experienced before. Taehyung had always soothed his alpha in ways that he’d never have the words to declare to the world. So now, with the greatest news that he could have until proposing, he jumped on his bike and sped toward their home.

He arrived quickly and got lucky with an elevator actually awaiting him in the lobby when he walked in. Within a few minutes, Yoongi was unlocking his door and calling into the space from the doorway.

“Tulip, are you here? I’m home.”

He paused to slide out of his boots and into the pair of Kumamon slippers that Taehyung had gotten him for Christmas. He hadn’t heard him call back, so maybe he was back in their bedroom and didn’t hear him.

“Taehyungie?”

His own voice echoed slightly back to him as he peeped into their bathroom, and then their bedroom. Yoongi was starting to get concerned, as the café Taehyung had been working at closed at 7, and it was inching towards 9 pm. He should have been home by now, and with as sick as he’d been lately, Yoongi’s alpha was raging inside his chest for their omega. They had always shared their locations with each other as their schedules usually didn’t align well and it kept Yoongi from losing his cool when his ruts were approaching. It only took him a moment to pull up the tracker they favored, and he was a little surprised to see it show the tiny blinking purple heart that he’d chosen to represent Taehyung blinking around at the Assassination Records building. Yoongi chuckled to himself at the thought of Taehyung showing up the building he’d just left, so he called to let him know he’d gotten out of the building before 2 am for the first time in months. The unease Yoongi started to feel when his call went straight to Taehyung’s voicemail left him unsure what to do. Taehyung hated it when he hovered, overbearing and posturing, for no good reason so he tried not to usually. But, fuck…something felt like it was very wrong.

There’s probably a good explanation for this, Yoongi thought to himself as he pulled his boots back on and headed back downstairs. His motorcycle was sitting in their designated spot, with moonlight glinting off the chrome, as he climbed on and revved the engine back to life. He took every shortcut he could think of to get back to the building where he hoped that Taehyung had come by to bring dinner and his phone had died. The battery hadn’t been holding up well lately, but Taehyung had put off buying a new model until it stopped working altogether. He blasted through the front doors of the building, taking deep breaths as he followed the tracker into a room off to the side facing the elevator that no one really used. To Yoongi’s utter horror, there were a few drops of blood on the floor and Taehyung’s cell phone in the garbage. It had been smashed to bits, but the blood stopped Yoongi in his tracks. What had happened here?

Yoongi bypassed the elevator and jetted up the stairs to the third floor where his studio was housed, begging the Moon Goddess to let him find Taehyung up there. No one was in his studio, the only light shining from under the door of Namjoon’s studio. Namjoon was a force to be reckoned with as the only omega producer in the company, but the man had musical genius dripping out of his pores. He’d been Yoongi’s primary producer helping him with his album, and he’d met Taehyung a few times, so Yoongi knocked on the door hard until Namjoon answered.

“Have you seen Taehyung?” Yoongi burst out as soon as Namjoon opened the door.

His eyes were round with surprise when he said, “No, hyung. He’s not been here. What’s up?”

“Fuck. I can’t find him; he wasn’t at home. But I found his phone smashed to bits in a room downstairs that had blood on the floor.”

“Shit, hyung! Maybe you should go back home. Maybe you just missed each other,” Namjoon replied. “I’ll call you right away if he shows up though. I’ll be here a few more hours to wrap up some songs for my mixtape.”

Yoongi’s alpha was on the war path at this point, and it was taking everything in him to not be out for blood. But Namjoon was right. Maybe Taehyung’s phone was broken in a freak accident or something and he’d gone back home after not finding Yoongi in his studio. Yoongi said goodbye to Namjoon and then headed back out to his bike to head home.

The trip home, 15 minutes at most, felt like it had taken years with the volume of worry that Yoongi had. He waited impatiently for the elevator, then shoved his way past a group of people heading to the floor above his to run down the hall to their flat. Yoongi didn’t bother to take off his boots when he got through the door, heading straight toward the kitchen. Taehyung and he had bought some silly magnetic notepads to write sappy notes to one another when their schedules got crazy, so Yoongi beelined for them to see if there was a note from his love. But goddess knew he wasn’t prepared for the note he found.

The note Taehyung had left was written in obvious duress. Taehyung’s normally flowy handwriting was jerky at best and there were tear stains all over the page, blurring the ink. Yoongi honestly had to read it twice to comprehend that Taehyung had left. The only family Taehyung really had left was his elder brother, so that had to have been where he’d gone. Honestly, most of his belongings were still in the apartment they had shared. He’d left all of his sewing projects scattered across the armchair in their bedroom, his most prized possession—his sewing machine—sitting where he’d left it on the desk in their room. Yoongi barely gave half a thought before calling Seokjin. Seokjin barely got hello out before Yoongi interrupted.

“Where’s Taehyung?” he growled into the phone.

“Yoongi, he’s not here. Is he not there with you?” Seokjin replied, far too calm for Yoongi’s liking.

“What the fuck, Seokjin? Do you think I’d ring you up to ask that if he was here? All I have are his smashed cellphone from a trash bin at the office and a shaky note saying he was leaving. He must be with you! I need to talk to him. Put him on the phone.”

Yoongi barely suppressed the howl of frustration bubbling up his throat when Seokjin replied to him. “I don’t know what to tell you, Yoongi. He’s not here. But if he left, maybe he had a damn good reason.”

The called ended abruptly and it took Yoongi more than a minute to realized he’d been the one to disconnect it. He stared at his phone screen and the note Taehyung had written, now wadded into a tight ball in his palm. Just this morning, he’d kissed Taehyung. He’d said he loved him.

And Taehyung. He’d said, “Go to work, Yeobo. I’ll be okay, I promise. I’m seeing my doctor this morning and working a half shift this afternoon. I love you more than life. Go make your dreams come true.”

He’d promised to let him know what the doctor said. Taehyung, his Tulip, had promised him. And he never broke a promise.

At that thought, something began shattering inside Yoongi. Yoongi didn’t remember locking their apartment door. He honestly didn’t remember riding the elevator down to the lobby. He didn’t remember getting on his motorcycle, the same one on which he’d driven Taehyung back to his dorm on the night they met, when Yoongi met his soulmate. He never made the conscious decision that he needed to drive to Busan, but he came back to himself at just before 1 in the morning when he was slamming his fists against the door to Seokjin’s house.

Seokjin answered the door in nothing but a wrinkled pair of sweats and a pinched look on his face. “What are you doing here, Yoongi? I told you he’s not here,” he sighed after throwing open the door.

“Where is my fiancé. Where the fuck is he, Seokjin?! You know he’s my soulmate. I need him,” Yoongi snarled, trying to press past Seokjin into the dimly lit house.

Seokjin was like a brick wall; the other alpha didn’t have a hope of getting past him. He honestly barely exerted any effort shoving Yoongi out of the doorway, reaching to pull the door solidly closed behind him. Yoongi rushed back at him, and when Seokjin held him back, he started screaming.

“Taehyung! Taehyung, I know you’re here! Tulip, please. I need you, I NEED YOU! TAEHYUNG!”

 Taehyung had gone to bed, sobbing. He hadn’t been able to bear the thought of sleeping alone without Yoongi by his side. He missed the scent of forest all around him in their bed, the scent bleeding protection and alpha into his very bones. When he’d tried to force himself to lie down on the scentless bed in the spare bedroom, he’d thrown himself into a panic attack so strong that he vomited up the 4 bites of dinner he’d been able to force down his own throat. Hoseok, a nurse at a local children’s hospital, had known that was terrible for the pup growing slowly inside Taehyung. He’d held back Taehyung’s overgrown curly hair while he’d hurled viciously into the toilet, then wiped his face and neck and chest with an ice-cold washcloth to cool him down before letting him take timid sips of water. Hoseok had hugged him tight and let him sob the rest of the panic attack into his chest, the mild spearmint scent of the beta soothing his nausea and the panic he couldn’t seem to tamp down. When Taehyung had finally settled down, Hoseok had gently taken his hand and guided him down the hall and encouraged him to lay down in the middle of the bed he shared with Seokjin before climbing in beside him and pulling him into his chest again.

“I know this is so hard for you, TaeBear. I can’t imagine someone forcing me away from Seokjin. But it’s going to be okay. We’ll take care of you, and we will spoil the ever-loving hell out of your pup,” Hoseok had whispered into Taehyung’s hair as he ran gentle hands up and down his back until Seokjin joined them in bed and wrapped around him from the back.

Taehyung dozed off into a fitful sleep until he woke up to a sound he loved, but hated too in that moment. Yoongi’s motorcycle is a sound Taehyung could never forget the sound of—and loved so much normally—but it wrecked him now as he shook Hoseok awake.

“Yoongi’s here,” he whimpered, tears trickling down his cheeks. “He’s got to go. They’ll hurt our pup, hyung, please.”

Hoseok jerked into action at that and smacked his palm into Seokjin’s chest. “The fuck, Seokie?” Seokjin mumbled as he sat up.

“Yoongi’s here. His motorcycle woke Tae,” Hoseok whispered.

Seokjin saw his baby brother trembling with fear, one hand across his mouth to stop the whimpers that were attempting to blast out of his chest, the other pressed to his stomach where his unborn pup lay. Seokjin jerked out of bed at that, the scent of his brother’s fear and agony flooding the room. That was enough to push the alpha into action. He left the bedroom, pausing in the laundry room to strip off the clothes he’d had on when he’d been lying pressed against his brother, and slid into a pair of scentless sweats he pulled out of the dryer. Honestly, he thought they were Hoseok’s because they weren’t quite long enough for him, but they’d do. He needed to rid himself of Taehyung’s scent before facing off with Yoongi. Seokjin had just gotten the pants pulled up fully when the banging at the door started. He marched to the door and took a deep breath before moving to handle the issue. Seokjin had always respected Yoongi, one alpha to another, and normally would trust his brother with him. This scenario was just so incredibly fucked up; if Taehyung wanted him to send Yoongi away, Seokjin would shove him back on his bike and force him back to Seoul if necessary.

 Meanwhile, Taehyung laid in bed with his brother-in-law, shaking with the effort of staying in the bed and not making any sounds. He and Yoongi hadn’t mated in the physical sense, and he didn’t have Yoongi’s teeth marks scored into his flesh, but Taehyung’s omega was screaming for their mate. The sound of Yoongi’s voice screaming his name was nearly more than he could handle. He had started to whine against his own best interest, and he felt a scream coming up his throat, so he crammed his own forearm into his mouth and bit down so that the wail wouldn’t pry its way out of his lips and leaned into Hoseok’s embrace as much as he could. After an eternity, that was truly only 5 minutes, Yoongi’s desperate yells and pleads stopped ringing out; 10 minutes after he stopped screaming, Taehyung heard the bike rev and gravel crunch, followed by the screech of the tires spinning on pavement, as his mate left him there.

By this point, Taehyung was inconsolable. He was borderline hysterical, just crying and wailing against Hoseok’s chest, “My alpha, I need my alpha. Bring him back.” He was howling between the words as his omega pushed to the forefront of his mind and barely even registered his brother coming back in and climbing into the bed. Seokjin pulled Taehyung into his lap like he’d done when he was small and rocked him back and forth, apologizing and consoling the omega as much as he could. He wasn’t the alpha being begged for, but hopefully his scent and gentle purring would be able to sooth him long enough to get some sleep. It took a while, but eventually the pregnant omega settled enough to fall asleep in Seokjin’s arms.

“What are we gonna do, Jinnie?” Hoseok whispered frantically. “This whole situation is so fucked up.”

Seokjin shifted slightly to lay his unconscious brother into the bed between them. He leaned over and pressed his forehead to Hoseok’s own gently before murmuring back, “We take care of Tae and protect the pup. We’d talked about joining a pack, but maybe this means we have to make our own.”

 Taehyung woke up the next morning to his head pounding. His consecutive panic attacks from the evening before had wrung all the energy out of his body and he’d cried so much he knew he had to have been dehydrated. He had woken up alone in his brother’s bed, surrounded by Hoseok’s subtle spearmint and Seokjin’s sweet buttercream scent. Their combined scents were soothing in a weird way and made Taehyung think of these buttery mint candies that his grandmother had made when he was a pup for events in their home pack. He took a few more moments to lay there and stare at the ceiling before his full bladder forced him out of bed. Instead of using the bathroom connected to their bedroom, he wandered into the hall to use the guest bathroom. In the light of the bathroom, he caught sight of the dark bruise on his forearm where he’d bit down to try and keep Yoongi from hearing him. After using the restroom and washing up a little bit, he wandered out into the living room to find out where the rest of his family was. He found Hoseok curled up on the sofa with a cup of coffee, giggling at something Seokjin had called out to him from the kitchen. Seokjin gestured to Taehyung with the spatula he’d been using to flip the toasted sandwich he was making.

“I saw you looking at my husband’s coffee. Don’t you even think about it,” Seokjin said with a flourish of scowled eyebrows and loud proclamations. “Caffeine is bad for pups.”

“I know, hyung. I don’t even like coffee. I usually have tea,” Taehyung mumbled.

Hoseok giggled again at Seokjin’s actions before patting the sofa seat beside him. “Come cuddle with me, TaeBear, since someone else won’t.”

“YAH!” Seokjin yelled as he flipped the sandwich onto a plate. “I’m feeding your ungrateful ass, so zip it!”

Taehyung smiled softly at their playful bickering even as he tucked himself into Hoseok’s arms. He thought fondly back to when they’d first gotten together. Seokjin had been in culinary school, and for his business management course, he’d been assigned to work for the semester in any restaurant of his choosing. Seokjin had thought vastly outside the box and did his semester of work in a hospital cafeteria, wrapping stale sandwiches in green and pink cellophane and making terrible coffee. It had been an interesting take on a restaurant born of necessity, and he’d met a beautiful boy with gentle hands and a cordiform smile. He’d walked out of that semester with the only A in his class and the man of his dreams in his arms. Taehyung had felt comfortable with Hoseok from the moment they’d met; Hoseok had always felt like hearth and home to both Kim brothers.

They were quiet during breakfast as Taehyung took tiny sips of peppermint tea. When Seokjin had cracked the egg to make Taehyung’s sandwich, the smell of the egg frying triggered Taehyung’s morning sickness so hard that he hadn’t been able to make it to the bathroom. He’d opened the back door behind Seokjin and puked into the bushes in their tiny back yard while Hoseok and Seokjin frantically aired the smell out of the kitchen. They’d tried to apologize, but Taehyung knew that morning sickness and hypersensitivity to smells would just be his life for the next little while. He knew it would be worth it to hold his pup in his arms, so he wouldn’t complain about it.

“Taehyungie, you and I have a few places to go this morning. Get dressed after you finish your tea,” Hoseok said gently. “We’re going to go get you some more outfits, a pair of shoes you can work in at hyung’s café and get you set up with a bank account since you’ll need it for direct deposit.”

 Yoongi woke up disoriented and angry. He’d struggled to deal with Taehyung’s absence in the apartment and Seokjin’s whispered words ricocheting around his head.

“Yoongi, stop being selfish this instant. My mate is inside that house and I am not letting you near Seokie acting like this! Taehyung is his own man and is an adult. We both know he loves you, so don’t you think if he left, he’d have a damn good reason to? Did you even stop to think that maybe he had to do what was best for the both of you, no matter how much it hurts?”

And Seokjin was right. Taehyung wouldn’t have left without reason. Yoongi was logical enough to know that Taehyung must have made the decision under a substantial amount of duress, but he just couldn’t figure out why. He felt like he was working a jigsaw puzzle that had half the pieces missing. He just kept hoping and praying that Taehyung would change his mind and come home. It had been so difficult to sleep in their empty bed the night before that Yoongi had stripped down to his boxers and wrapped Taehyung’s satin dressing gown around his body, pulling Taehyung’s pillow from his side of the bed to sleep in the floor. Yoongi had slept the entire night curled up in a tiny ball on the carpet beside Taehyung’s side of the bed. He was still laying there when his phone rang from somewhere above his head. Hoping against hope that it might be Taehyung, he scrambled up and snatched it from the charger only to be smashed in the face by the disappointment of it being his manager calling.

"Hello?” Yoongi growled into the phone.

“Yoongi, I know you were supposed to be off this week, but something has come up and we need you to come down to the studio. There’s a problem with one of the tracks for your album.”

Yoongi stood there stunned for a few minutes before saying he’d come down in a bit. He pulled on the jeans from the day before, but stared into the closet to find a new shirt to wear. The closet they’d shared was still full of Taehyung’s things. It honestly looked like he’d left everything behind. Yoongi’s chest clenched as he once again couldn’t tamp down the thought that something was seriously wrong. He didn’t want to be anywhere Taehyung wasn’t, and his alpha was howling like it was mortally wounded in his chest. Yoongi lifted one hand and rubbed his sternum as hard as he could.

“He’s going to come back,” he whispered to the alpha inside him as he pulled Taehyung’s favorite silk button down shirt on before walking out the door.

Yoongi didn’t remember much about the drive into the office. He’d been lost in his own thoughts, trying to figure out what might have happened and where Taehyung had gone while he zipped his motorcycle through traffic. He parked it in his designated spot without much thought before catching the lift to the main office from the underground parking deck, nose tucked into the collar of Taehyung’s shirt as he walked in to find Namjoon and Jiwoon nearly coming to blows in the main lobby of the building in front of the reception desk.

“You’re just a manager, Jiwoon! You don’t have the right to fucking mettle in the producer’s computers!” Namjoon yelled, his usually subtle leather scent spiking into a suffocating chemical fire in his rage.

“I’ll do whatever the fuck I want to, omega. You shouldn’t even be here! Go back to the fucking kitchen where you belong,” Jiwoon sneered back.

Yoongi had been willing to watch them battle it out until Jiwoon had insulted omegas. The ache that his own omega was missing had him snarling and stepping in front of Namjoon.

“That’s enough. Just because you are my manager doesn’t mean I won’t deck you right here for saying shit like that about omegas. Namjoon is the best producer in this building, and you know it,” Yoongi rumbled, pushing Jiwoon back a step before glancing back to look at Namjoon. “What’s going on here, Joon-ah?”

Namjoon was obviously stressed and angry, having lifted both hands to tug on his own hair. “That slimeball you call a manager broke into my fucking studio and deleted the last track for your album. Said it wasn’t hard enough for a rapper to include on his album.”

Yoongi’s head whipped back to Jiwoon, eyes narrowing as some puzzle pieces he’d been missing slipped into place. “What the fuck did you do, Jiwoon?”

The leash he’d held on his rage must have slipped a little because Jiwoon had begun backing away from Yoongi, but had run out of space behind him as his back thudded against the wall. Only a few seconds passed before Yoongi had him pinned against the wall.

“The fuck did you do, Jiwoon? What did you do to Taehyung?” he snarled right into the weaker alpha’s face.

“Nothing. I didn’t do anything do him,” Jiwoon rushed to say.

“I found his phone down here in that side room, smashed and blood in the floor. If you harmed a single hair on his head, it will be the last thing you do.”

Yoongi hadn’t even realized he’d balled up his fist to start in on Jiwoon until Namjoon grabbed it and tugged, trying to get him to back off.

“Hyung, let’s go to your studio for a few minutes. I think we all need to cool off,” Namjoon was saying as he tugged him back.

“I meant what I said, Jiwoon. If you touched him and I find out about it, I’ll rip your arms off and beat your face in with them,” Yoongi threatened again before following Namjoon back to the elevators.

Namjoon kept his hands on Yoongi’s arm the entire trip up to the floor housing their studios, then tugged Yoongi towards his own studio. He spent a moment resetting the passcode before opening the door and shoving Yoongi inside. Yoongi was too agitated to sit, so he stalked around the studio, from wall to wall and back again, in front of the door as Namjoon sat in his computer chair.

“So, you weren’t able to find Taehyungie?” Namjoon asked softly.

“No. But I think his elder brother is hiding him somewhere. I drove to his house last night and something about the way he reacted to me makes me think he knows more than he’s saying. But, fuck, Joon-ah…Jiwoon is giving me bad vibes.”

Namjoon was quiet for a moment before looking into Yoongi’s eyes. “I hate to say it, but I kind of agree with you. You know that guy I’ve been dating, Chanyeol?”

Yoongi nodded. “What about him?”

“Well, Yeolie is on the security team here. I called him this morning about how Jiwoon was sneaking around and he’s going to try to pull the security cameras from the lobby yesterday. He said that there’s one that faces toward that room you found Taehyungie’s phone in. If we find something bad, we’ll end him. Our CEO is a good man and won’t tolerate any bullshit. Yeolie is supposed to call me as soon as he looks over all the tapes. In the meantime, Jiwoon might have deleted the copy of your song from my computer, but you know I always have like three other copies of all my work.”

Namjoon’s words helped to give his alpha something to chew on for the time being. He’d keep trying to find Taehyung, but in the meantime, he might be able to sort out what had caused him to run to begin with.

 Taehyung and Hoseok had gone through a few shops already, but Taehyung was super hesitant to allow a large sum of money to be spent on clothing he wouldn’t fit into in a few months when his abdomen blossomed to make room for his growing pup. He could tell that Hoseok was beginning to be a bit frustrated that he wouldn’t choose things, but he just didn’t know how to express the things going on his head. Taehyung had honestly thought that the headache he woke up with would get better after he’d had some water, but it just seemed like it had been getting worse in the bright fluorescent lighting of the mall they’d come to. Hoseok was chatting away with the girl in the shop they’d come in while Taehyung pretended to look through a rack of pajamas in the corner.

“Taehyungie, this lovely lady just let me know that they are having a sale. Everything in the shop is buy one, get one free. Isn’t that amazing? You can get twice the things for the same price,” Hoseok called as he approached him.

Taehyung rubbed his hand across his eyes before replying, “That’s great, Hobi-hyung.”

Taehyung held up a plaid pajama set to see if it might be tall enough to fit him, when he suddenly began seeing spots in his vision. Before he could say anything to alert Hoseok to how he was feeling, everything started to go black, and Taehyung felt his knees buckle.

“Tae!” Hoseok cried out, catching him before he hit the ground.

The panic in Hoseok’s voice was the last thing to register before Taehyung was completely unconscious.

 The first thing he was aware of as he began to come to was the feel of something annoying in his nose. Taehyung tried to lift his hand to knock whatever it was loose, and that’s when he realized that someone was holding his hand and that there was something slightly sharp poking the inside of his elbow. He furrowed his eyebrows a bit, trying to remember what had happened before he slowly opened his eyes.

“Taehyung!” Seokjin exclaimed. “Oh, thank the goddess!”

“Jin-hyung? What happened?” he croaked out.

“You passed out on Hoseokie while you were shopping for some clothes. How are you feeling?”

“Weird. And my head is still throbbing. Can I have some water?”

In lieu of a response, Seokjin helped Taehyung to sit up a bit and take small, slow sips of water from a pitcher on the hospital’s bedside table. Just the action of sipping the water made Taehyung feel exhausted in a way he hadn’t felt before.

“Jin-hyung, what’s wrong with me? Is my pup okay?” Taehyung whispered fearfully, squeezing Seokjin’s hand.

“I don’t know for sure, TaeBear. I just know that when I got here, Hoseokie was helping them draw several vials of blood for testing while they were doing an ultrasound, but no one has said anything yet. Hoseokie works at this hospital, so they are letting him help to a certain extent in small ways. He’s currently somewhere bullying the lab into speeding up the blood tests.”

Taehyung giggled a little at the thought of his sweet brother-in-law bullying anyone. He still felt so exhausted from all the stress of the past day and a half, so he closed his eyes for a moment with the intention of just resting them. He woke up 45 minutes later when he heard Hoseok laughing a little in the hallway, his loud cackle jarring him out of the strange dream he’d been having about Yoongi. He slid his eyes open in time to watch Hoseok press a soft kiss to Seokjin’s forehead before greeting a female alpha who’d entered his room holding a clipboard.

“It’s good to see you awake, Taehyung-ssi. My name is Dr. Song, and I’ll be your physician for today. You gave our best nurse, Hoseokie, quite the shock today,” she said as she adjusted the oxygen canula that he’d tugged to the side in his sleep to fit more firmly in his nostrils. “We’ve gotten the results of your tests and I wanted to speak with you for a moment. Now, Hoseokie didn’t give me any details about what’s going on, and I don’t really need them if you don’t want to share them, but he told me that you just found out about the pregnancy yesterday and that the alpha father of your pup can’t be near you during this time.”

“Yeah, he’s right,” Taehyung replied.

“Well, seeing as this is your first pregnancy, I want to go over some things that are completely necessary in order to keep both you and your pup safe until you can see an OB/GYN in the area. I’ll make a referral for you, so you won’t have to scramble to find someone, okay?” Once Taehyung nodded his understanding, Dr. Song continued from where she had perched lightly on the side of his bed. “Now, I’m so sorry to break this news to you, Taehyung-ssi. But pregnant omegas have difficulty maintaining their hormone levels. Your body is so zoned in on the pup you are carrying that it won’t function properly to make the things you need. Your inner omega can only see the pup inside you, and it will sacrifice your health for the sake of the pup’s. In a normal situation, where the omega is mated, their mate takes the responsibility for keeping them healthy and scenting them often. At the bare minimum, you will need to be scented by an alpha twice a day, since the pup’s biological father is an alpha, and the alpha will need to be someone you aren’t related to. Your body won’t react the same way to your alpha brother as it would the scent of an alpha outside your family pack. The IV you are hooked to is an artificial hormone source that will work for the time being, but you will have to find an alpha willing to step in and scent you regularly. If you can’t, you’ll continue to vomit more than you should and have more fainting spells. Eventually, the lack of hormones that should be triggered by scenting will begin to affect your unborn pup, and I won’t be able to guarantee their survival. This is imperative, okay?”

Taehyung sat shocked at this. Omegas weren’t taught anything about their own bodies in the sub-gender education system in their home province, and he’d never thought to investigate it further. Just as Taehyung was beginning to despair at the thought of approaching some random alpha, his brother spoke up.

“I think I know an alpha that will help. He is working at my café while in college, and he helped a pregnant classmate last year when her alpha died in an accident. I’ll call him and see if he can come to the house for dinner tonight,” Seokjin murmured.

“In that case, you will be free to go home as soon as the IV bag you are connected to empties. You’ve taken in half of it already, so I think you’ll be able to be discharged in a couple hours,” Dr. Song said before bowing to them politely and leaving the room.

They sat there in silence for a few moments before Taehyung started to cry. “I don’t want just some alpha. I want MY alpha, hyung.”

“I know you do, Baby Bear. But is it safe for you to go back to him right now?” Seokjin whispered back.

“No. But the thought of being scented by someone besides Yoongi or you makes me want to die."

"Don’t talk like that, Kim Taehyung,” Hoseok broke in. “If hyung is talking about who I think he is, you’ll love him. Jungkook is unlike any alpha I’ve ever known. And he’ll be good to you. Just give him a chance, TaeBear. He’s a good man, I promise.”