junhun/inhun fated pairs abo au where
Gi-hun keeps his world small on purpose. Open the shop. Count the cash. Call his kid. Let Jun-ho take the stove and half his pillows, because he loves him and because his place feels right with the alpha humming over a pot.
But then the older brother starts showing up.
He says hello like it’s procedure. Carries wrists slick with scent blockers like anyone needs them that heavy just to visit family. Watches locks instead of faces. Gi-hun could let it slide, he’s pushing fifty, he’s seen worse.
But this one starts coughing the second Gi-hun’s scent spikes, like he’s allergic to him. The bastard won’t take a dumpling from his hand, and he’s the first to snap a window open the second his scent hits the room.
Gi-hun tells himself it’s not worth the breath. He never has the heart to argue with Jun-ho anyway. The kid worries himself sick if he so much as sighs too hard. Always ready with a fix, an errand, something to make it easier. Gi-hun has no idea how he’d make this one easier, though, not when Jun-ho’s on a mission to come up with every rational excuse for the shit his older brother pulls.
Sometimes Gi-hun thinks he should get a medal for patience. He can survive Jung-bae’s dramatics, the supplier who never answers calls until rent’s due. Even the stepfather’s polite texts about Ga-yeong: flights, dentist, school shows. Always a neat ‘we have it handled,’ like he’s a guest at his own kid’s life.
But Hwang In-ho might be the real test.
All that silence, all that neutral air, like he’s trying to erase himself and everyone else with him. Each time, Gi-hun walks away more confused.
Somehow, down the line, the world starts arranging things so he and the alpha end up in the same place more often than makes sense. The kind of timing that feels like a joke, like something keeps tugging them into orbit.
And speaking of fate, Gi-hun can’t escape hearing about that crap lately. Geum-ja and the ajummas park themselves at their usual table, gossiping about fated pairs like it’s romance, not biology turning on people who never asked for it. All that talk about bonds that drag you back no matter how far you run, and they all sigh like it’s something to want. Gi-hun doesn’t believe in that nonsense, never did. Nothing romantic about your own body deciding for you.
But the old story about the man who started to stink after his wife died still sits in his head when the lights are off. He tells himself Geum-ja juiced it for drama, that the ajummas nodded because they like a good shiver and Min-yeo likes an audience.
If it were true, even a little... That’s not romance. That’s a trap. That’s your body turning on you, cruel in a quiet way.
One smell and what? Suddenly you’re bound to someone for life? Just one whiff and that’s it? Gi-hun stares at the ceiling and thinks that this can’t be love. One breath and every other scent fades, the whole world narrowing to one person like nothing else exists.
Scary, he thinks. Really scary.
Not that he’d ever say it out loud, but it is. What if you already built a life? Someone’s waiting for you at home and then some stranger walks in and your biology decides to rearrange everything? What if all the effort, all the choosing, stops mattering? He turns the thought over once, twice. If that’s how it works, what’s left of being human?
He turns onto his side, pulls the blanket up, and tells himself it’s stupid to think about. Just stories. Old women’s talk. Still, it takes him longer than usual to fall asleep.
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