For about five days the only person he has seen, let alone interacted with, is Yunho. It isn’t until the end of the fourth day that Jaejoong starts to come down from whatever heat induced ledge he’s been on. 

He no longer feels like he is positively dying unless he is on his back or knees under the alpha for hours on end. When he finally opens his eyes on day five, the first thing he notices is the warmth of the thin blade of sunlight that cascades across the bed and bits of his exposed skin, not the fact that Yunho is only touching him slightly. 

He doesn’t open his eyes only to be met with the frantic need to touch and taste and curl around the alpha until he feels like the man belongs to him.  

Rather he is a little bit mortified at himself. The memories of days prior don’t disappear like he is suffering from a bad hangover, and although he remembers brief flashes of trying to reel himself in or fight against his instincts it didn’t actually work. In a big way though, he is definitely going to try and blame Yunho who spent a great deal of effort in coaxing him out, convincing him to talk through it all. 

And with those memories clear in mind he isn’t even surprised by the lingering ache that pulses through him. It would probably be worse if they hadn’t spent time soaking in a hot bath last night, but that time with a few newly reacquired braincells had also given him a moment to look the alpha over. 

Yunho was exhausted no doubt, and if he hadn’t noticed by the way the man was practically drifting off in the warm water and drinking more coffee than anything else, he was paying attention now. 

Jaejoong is awake bright and early, a habit long ago learned into him, made more intense in waking to sharp pains or to the feeling of the alpha on his skin. 

Now he feels content, the bed under him is soft and clean, he is warm but not burning and feels well rested instead of frantic. 

Yunho however, probably doesn’t feel the same. 

The alpha is sprawled onto his stomach, face turned toward the blonde and with one hand splayed across his waist, fingers curled in a weak claim. Somehow, he finds the way Yunho’s jaw is slightly unhinged to be endearing instead of unattractive, but it is hard not to notice the darkening of his under eyes, the way Yunho’s hair is a mess in a way that is less attractive bedhead and more too exhausted to do anything but collapse against something soft.  One of the alpha’s feet isn’t even all the way onto the mattress, and he really does wonder if Yunho passed out as soon as he realized the omega wasn’t frantic and needy and pawing at him. 

He wants to leave, immediately. 

He wants to spring up, find his clothes and go. 

Back to his apartment where the curtains will stay drawn shut tight and keep his room dark, where the silence will be thick and heavy like a blanket that is both suffocating and comforting. Where he is safe and locked away from reality. 

His mind is clear with that desire, and he is calm which is the only reason he is not actually halfway out of the door already. 

Jaejoong isn’t stupid even if he is an omega. 

Sure, he isn’t in heat now, but that doesn’t mean the heat pheromones have just magically vanished from his skin. They took a long bath but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still smell like Yunho, like he’d been thoroughly claimed. The problem is that he isn’t actually claimed and anybody he stumbles across outside will notice that too if they spare him a second look or smell rather and that... 

He isn’t actually the sort who thinks people are good by default. He used to be, and he wishes he could look at a stranger on the street and think something pleasant about them but he doesn’t, not really. Rather the blonde immediately starts a list in his mind about what could be wrong with them, what could go wrong. Bad temper, violent? Selfish? ist? A thief, maybe? 

The thought always settles, prickles under his skin and makes him anxious and once he catches himself, he forces himself to step back, to try and recalculate and turn the direction of his thoughts before he settles into a panic attack. 

Most of the time he comes off cold and y for it he knows. Plenty of people look at his face and the stutter in his social interactions if he speaks at all and decide he thinks they’re beneath them. If only they knew, really. 

Being an omega, he was beneath them all by default, something dirty at the bottom of society to be tossed aside. But those are just strangers, really, people he never sees again. 

He does marginally better with repeated encounters, and if nothing else he fakes it enough that only half of the people he stumbles into think he is stuck up and horrible. The other half thing he’s sweet and kind and shy. 

He’s definitely shy, and he is horrible so none of them are ever quite right. 

But as he catches the thoughts spiraling in his head, he squeezes his eyes shut.  

It happens often, the definition of a vicious circle, really. 

He makes a bit of progress in something- anything, like hating himself less, or coming to terms with being an omega and then there is something invisible that reaches out and grabs him. He gets yanked backwards. Sometimes it’s a step, sometimes it feels like a mile.  

Once he’d been rather confident in the stance that he was a good person, not a malicious one. Then he had had an unexpected run in with Hwayoung and the rubber banding of his mental state had been jerked so violently it felt like he’d suffered from physical whiplash.  

What Jaejoong needs is to hash it out, he needs to figure out what is going to happen next. 

He knows what is supposed to happen. He's supposed to be an omega, now. He’s supposed to sit down with Changmin to figure out a plan, a better way of weaning him from the suppressants, one that would hopefully help more than the light rounds of them he had been taking. He’s not sure he will be able to deal with another heat creeping up on him so violently again. 

The problem is, who is he supposed to talk to? 

Solar, of course. She’s his first thought, she always is when he has a problem but... 

Omega. She’s not actually an option, not yet. She’ll find out some day and it’ll be the day he loses her permanently he knows, he isn’t stupid enough to rush that, he won’t survive his sister turning him away at this point. 

So then Junsu, perhaps. 

Except Junsu wants him to have a normal life, wants him to be happy and healthy. Sure, the beta is patient, it’s been a few years already and Junsu hadn’t run away from him, but things have all of the potential to get ugly and volatile and he isn’t sure Junsu truly understands the level of society he was born into. 

Being told he isn’t the only omega on campus is true, that he doesn’t have to do anything or answer to anybody? Also true. Helpful though? No way. 

So like his sister, he crosses his best friend out as an option. All of Jaejoong’s thoughts are in the extremes. Loss, rejection, the entire world collapsing in on him, maybe he would even be kicked out of university because he’s a fraud? With something like that on his record he’d be ed forever... 

But if he withdraws on his own? For a semester, maybe, or for a year? 

It’s not that he is running... but he won’t be able to convince Junsu of that, because he is running a little. 

But maybe it is more like speed walking? 

Jaejoong is an omega and he can’t change that. He can feed his body enough drugs to trick himself and his physiology into thinking he is a beta but it’ll cost him his life when his central nervous system winds up collapsing in on itself.  

So, he’s being impulsive. The thought of stepping away from school isn’t entirely new, but the seriousness in which he is considering it is. It isn’t as though people have never withdrawn from university before, it doesn’t mean he can’t go back. 

The blonde just isn’t sure he’ll survive. 

He has to come to terms with being an omega himself and he isn’t very comfortable in his own skin by himself. How is he going to manage it on a campus with so many people there to judge and watch? He’s insignificant enough, it isn’t like everyone would be watching or talking about him, surely... 

But some would. The pack of jocks always cat calling at him come to mind. The different omega girls always trying to brush up against him, too... 

Funny, his stomach twists something awful and he feels weirdly ill at the thought of other people in any capacity. He wonders, briefly, if it is the side effect of being in bed with an alpha following his heat. Like he’s betraying Yunho. 

He isn’t, of course, the alpha isn’t his and it isn’t their bed or their anything. 

Which promptly upsets him and the swinging pendulum of his emotions is making his head ache.  

If Yunho wasn’t half collapsed on top of the sheet he would have pulled it along as he climbed out of bed, but he’d hardly been dressed at all for the better part of a week and the alpha is passed out. Does modesty even matter? 

It doesn’t. At least, not during the walk from the alpha’s bed to his closet. 

Which , actually. His lower back hurts, the muscles in his thighs burn, and his legs in general feel like they’re going to give out under him but he does manage. 

He stays up right long enough to put on undergarments and one of Yunho’s sweaters. 

If he stays still any longer his head is going to explode, so he makes his way to the kitchen to focus on something much easier. 

Breakfast. 

-----

In between cooking Jaejong puts together a checklist.  The pros and cons of walking away from school. 

A big con is that his degree will be set back, both of them. He’s doing well in both his business and art classes. 

The business degree realistically could help him, but art is his passion and that he could at least work on independently.  

Smaller crowds, less people, less interaction? Major win, he underlines it several times. 

Being able to come into himself slowly? It is probably the only way he is going to ever manage to come into himself safely. If he has a bad day he simply won’t have to face anyone if he doesn’t want to or feels like he cannot. 

But when he went back to school he probably wouldn’t know anyone anymore. Not that he has friends but Junsu is there- and just knowing he is there someone is comforting. 

Junsu isn’t actually in his classes though, he puts that into the cons. Comforting or not knowing his friend is there somewhere, he’s a phone call away. 

If he can get a job, maybe something better than his part time jobs currently where he can just be an omega maybe that could help... 

Speaking of, did he still have a job, either of them? He absolutely did just off for nearly a week without calling. Well, . 

That thought finds him nearly burning the omelets as he begins to fret, attempting to remember where his phone is, but he rescues the poor eggs just in time to plate them instead of tossing them into the bin. 

With an omelet, toast, some strips of bacon and a small container of blueberries and yogurt spread onto the table he sets off to find his phone, and then after he’ll try to wake Yunho. 

-----

Somehow, he is getting used to waking up and being alarmed right away. 

His hand stretches out, searching for Jaejoong to reel the omega in, to tuck Jaejoong up against his chest so he could breathe the blonde in and catch another half hour of sleep, at least. 

But his hand comes up empty, hits a cold, empty spot on the bed and he is alert immediately, struck with a nauseating sense of déjà vu. 

His eyes aren’t even open all the way before he is moving, feet carrying him on auto pilot as he rushes out of his bedroom. He whacks his shin on the chest at the end of his bed and doesn’t even notice. 

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