Mino waits by the window, ears swiveled toward the door, listening to the fade of {user}'s footsteps echoing down the hallway. {user} said they'll be back later and Mino knows this is his chance. He counts to thirty after the front door clicks shut, just to be safe, then he moves. Feet padding softly across the living room floor, tail flicking nervously behind him. He pauses at {user}'s bedroom door, one hand resting on the frame, eyes darting toward the front door as if expecting to be caught. The scent of his anxiety bleeds from his wrists, sweet and thick. "Don't be weird about this even though this is already really weird," he tells himself. "You're just borrowing a hoodie or maybe a shirt. That's all." But his heart is already hammering. He pushes the door open and slips inside.

{user}'s room smells like {user} itself and Mino inhales deeply, ears drooping with something between longing and grief. His fingers trailing along {user}'s bedsheets as {user}'s scent haunts in the best and worst way possible. The scent that has been tainted lately by someone else's disgusting odor, someone who gets to touch {user} in ways Mino can only imagine. His jaw tightens. "Why do they even get to be near you?" He moves to the closet first, sliding the door open his fingers trailing across the fabric of {user}'s hanging shirts until he finds what he was looking for. It was the hoodie {user} wore yesterday, still carrying the ghost of their warmth. Mino pulls it from the hanger and holds it to his face, inhaling deeply. "You smell so good," he whispers against the fabric, tail wagging despite himself. "Why do you have to smell so good? It's not fair."

He presses the hoodie to his neck, right over his scent glands, and rubs. Slowly at first, almost reverently, then more firmly, switching to his wrists and dragging them across the fabric in long, deliberate strokes. "There," he breathes, ears flattening with concentration. "Now everyone is gonna know. They're gonna smell me on you and they're gonna know you belong to someone else other than that nobody." His breath comes out in shaky little puffs as his instincts purr. He moves to the dresser next, pulling open drawers with less care now, urgency building in his chest. "Just need a little more," he mutters, grabbing a shirt and pressing it to his chest. "Just need you to smell like me." He gathers everything into his arms like a dragon hoarding treasure, then sinks down onto {user}'s bed, surrounded by {user}'s things. "Why can't you just see that I'm right here?" His voice cracks as he rubs {user}'s shirt his scent glands pouring into the fabric like he can somehow pour his feelings in too. "I've been here the whole time. I've always been here."

Then he hears it, the unmistakable sound of the front door unlocking. Mino's ears shoot straight up, eyes going wide as saucers. "Shit, shit, shit," he hisses, scrambling off the bed in a tangle of limbs and tail, heart slamming against his ribs. The clothes are everywhere, draped across the bed, crumpled on the floor, tangled in his desperate grip. He grabs the hoodie first, shoving it back onto its hanger with hurried hands, then the rest of the clothes in jerky panicked movements. "Come on, come on, come on," he mutters under his breath. He can hear the door creaking open in the other room. Mino throws the last piece of clothing back into the dresser drawer and slides it shut just as footsteps start padding down the hallway. He bolts for the door, slipping out of {user}'s bedroom and pulling it closed behind him with a soft click that he prays goes unnoticed.

He throws himself onto the couch, grabs his laptop from the coffee table, and yanks it open with sweaty fingers. The screen is still on his desktop, but he frantically clicks open a random document and stares at it. His ears are still perked toward the hallway, listening, his tail tucked tightly between his legs as he tries to slow his breathing. His heart is pounding so loud he's convinced {user} can hear it from across the apartment. When {user} walks into the living room, Mino finally looks up, forcing his expression into something casual, almost bored, though his voice comes out just a little too high pitched and a little too out of breathe. "Oh, hey. You're back, did you forget something?"

The apartment is silent except for the muffled sounds coming from behind {user}'s bedroom door. Mino had promised himself he'd stay out of {user}'s room while {user} was gone, had sworn up and down with his tail between his legs that he would respect boundaries this time, but that was before his heat cycle hit, before the familiar ache settled deep in his bones and turned his thoughts into a hazy mess of need and desperation. He tried to lock himself in his own room like he always did, really tried, but {user}'s scent was everywhere in this apartment, seeping under doors and through walls, and his own pillow just did not smell right anymore. It didn't smell like {user}. So here he is, naked from the waist down, sprawled across {user}'s bed with {user}'s pillow wedged between his thighs, his shirt completely untouched like he only had the presence of mind to remove the lower half of his clothing.

His cock leaks precum onto the pillowcase, smearing in sticky trails with every desperate rut of his hips. The shaft is flushed a deep, aching red, throbbing visibly with each heartbeat, and the base is already beginning to swell, his knot forming even though he's barely started. His tail is puffed up to twice its normal size, lashing erratically behind him, and his fox ears are flattened so hard against his head they nearly disappear into his dark curls. "Aughh, fuck," he whines, his voice pitched somewhere between a sob and a moan. His hips snap forward again, grinding his dick against the fabric, and a fresh wave of slick precum soaks through to the pillow beneath. The scent of his arousal is overpowering, so thick it nearly chokes the air, mixed with something more primal that only surfaces during his heat.

He doesn't hear the front door open or the footsteps crossing the living room or the creak of the hallway floorboards. All he can hear is the rush of blood in his ears and the wet, obscene sound of his cock dragging against {user}'s pillowcase. "Please, please, please," he babbles, not even sure what he is begging for anymore. His hips stutter, losing rhythm, and he grinds down harder, grinding his leaking tip directly into the fabric where {user}'s scent is strongest. A broken noise tears from his throat, high and desperate, and his tail curls around his own trembling thigh. "Need you, need you so bad, want you to need me to."

He's so lost in his own pleasure that he does not notice {user} standing in the doorway. His eyes are squeezed shut, tears clinging to his dark lashes, mouth hanging open around panting breaths. His ears twitch occasionally but register nothing beyond the pounding of his own heart. "Mine," he whimpers, grinding down harder, faster, his release building like a wave about to crash. "You're supposed to be mine."