Jaejoong was miserable and Yunho wasn’t sure how to help, wasn’t sure if he could help. 

He could have waited, he could have sat back and watched as Jaejoong’s heat crept on the omega. Would the blonde have realized what was going on before or after it truly began?  

Yet he couldn’t really imagine what that might have done to the younger man, really.  He had seen a couple of things set Jaejoong off into different panic attacks and he wasn’t cruel enough for it. To find out his secret had been blown while in the middle of something as physically and emotionally taxing as a full heat?  

No, he was afraid Jaejoong would hurt himself somehow if they went that route.  

Sure, it hadn’t gone well but neither of them had been injured and they were both still in his apartment, far enough away from the outside world for the time being. 

He hadn’t actually had any plans to spend the Jaejoong’s heat with him, but with Jaejoong going about his day to day activities without realizing what was happening to him... He didn’t really want to think about what might have happened if the blonde hadn’t caught himself, if a kind person hadn’t been the one to pick up on the situation... 

There had been a lot of crying, a reasonable amount of yelling and a fair bit of hitting, even.  

Yunho wasn’t actually hurt, he might have a faint bruise or two later, but the red splotches on his chest would fade away without any other repercussions quickly enough.  

He’d told Jaejoong the truth as much as he hadn’t. Sure, he knew the younger was an omega, yes he’d recognized he was going into heat... but he had yet to rat Changmin out. He wasn’t ignorant, he did know it had been difficult for the boy to find a doctor who wasn’t associated in any form with his family, so he didn’t particularly feel great about potentially vetoing Changmin- even if he perhaps should have. 

Another slip up, another drunken anything and he would pay for a lawyer for Jaejoong himself, if that was the route things ended up, if only because he knew and he was also in the wrong. 

Yet from what he understood, (utter with a big mouth) where his best friend was concerned or not, Jaejoong was doing well under Changmin’s care.  

Sure, he still felt like a bit of a terrible person, but it wasn’t a new feeling so he would deal. 

In the meantime he would contemplate and brood over his choices until the blonde woke up. Yelling and fighting was exhausting and the omega had tired himself out. 

They could consider calling Changmin and or Junsu later, if Jaejoong preferred to have the betas around they could work that out.  

-----

“Yeah no, everything is fine,” Yunho murmurs to himself, dragging a hand through his hair as he moves from his room toward the kitchen, circles back and then opts to settle down onto the sofa. 

He has a 19 year old omega that is going to experience his first (or second or some other very low number) heat asleep in his bed. 

He is only a 31 year old alpha, considered to be one of Korea’s most eligible bachelors because of his face but mostly because of the obscene amount of wealth he and his family hold.  It isn’t like he is being groomed to completely taken over their businesses in the next few years or anything, it isn’t as though being with someone who is barely legal would be frowned upon. It isn’t like his parents have been nagging him to find a partner. 

And it definitely isn’t like his only, almost relationship with an omega had ever gone horrible, terribly wrong. He definitely hadn’t been manipulated and then blackmailed at 15 by someone a few years older than him and threatened with a record and jail and police. He definitely hadn’t thought himself to be a little (a lot) in love with that omega who has been plotting to stab him in the heart all along. 

It was fine, that was all in this past- insignificant now. 

Except for the part where he wonders if he is perhaps an aggressor in this situation.  

By all means he should have taken Jaejoong home, let the blonde sort out his ordeal however he would have.  He didn’t have to be involved; it technically didn’t involve him. He had reached out to Jaejoong, or he’d been trying anyway, he was the one who had asked his sister to... watch. 

Not kidnap, just to watch. Watch the people around the blonde, not pull him off campus and call Yunho away from work. 

He would have felt better too, if he was not so ing pleased that she had done it, that she had over stepped all of her boundaries. Well, he would have happily dealt with Jaejoong not reeking of Jihye- everything else had been fine. 

Maybe even a good thing, though isn’t supposed to be. 

Jaejoong is sleeping in his bed in his home where he is safe. For now. Forever? For now, hopefully. 

It would be easier for Yunho if he didn’t feel so... selfish. 

He’s just helping the omega, it’s sympathy because he knows how twisted the high society of alpha families are. He knows how ruthless and cruel and petty they are, knows that whatever fears that are so deeply rooted in Jaejoong probably aren’t unfounded, the poor thing was born into the wrong family, one of the worst of them perhaps.  

As far as generally awful goes, the Chois are probably the worst, reputation wise. The Kims at least have Solar, a shining star of sorts that stands out among the darkness of most of the alpha families. Besides, a ruthless, cold business strategy didn’t mean an unhappy or unsafe family life- he is after all considered a demon by most when it came to business, but the idea that the Kim patriarch ruled his family the way he ruled his business had always been a whispered rumor, one brushed aside because his daughters were bright and capable and strong willed.  

What of the son that practically went forgotten though? Jaejoong hadn’t admit to anything, hadn’t spoken to him but he didn’t need the boy to for his imagination to run wild. It was one punishment he’d gotten a glimpse of so many years ago now, a destructive behavior pattern that reminded him of an abused animal, prowling around, mostly fine when left alone but a bit too damaged to function properly. It was one thing to keep a status quiet, to keep an omega hidden for safety or even reputation. Jaejoong wasn’t just hiding from the alpha families though, he was hiding from the world- from strangers that knew nothing of him, he was hiding from himself. 

Jaejoong was nothing like the omega he met in high school. 

That still probably doesn’t make any of what he is doing okay. 

He likes the young man, that isn’t the problem. The problem is that nothing in the situation is standard, he isn’t really doing anything the right way. 

The biggest problem though, is that Jaejoong feels a lot like mine. He smells like mine. 

Yunho isn’t quite sure what to do with that feeling, he certainly has never felt anything like it before.  

It’s a lot like the instincts he has around his family, to protect and care for, the way he wants to spoil Jihye because she is his precious baby sister even though she is a menace. Yet it doesn’t feel the same as much as it does, it doesn’t feel familial in a platonic sense and that gives him pause, makes him wonder if he really can trust his instincts because it’s fast. 

Too fast, maybe too inappropriate for someone in the delicate situation Jaejoong is in. He just... cannot force himself to step back, to stay back. The most alarming part is that it isn’t really ual, either, his thoughts don’t resolve around luring the other into his bed and then sending him on his way with a pretty piece of jewelry.  

More than that, he can’t quite figure the blonde out, how to interpret anything he does.  

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