Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Namjoon is greeted by a blast of refreshingly cool air as he lifts the tent flap and enters the pawn shop, leaving the scorching sun and sand behind.

He unwraps the heavy shawl from his face. At the dimly illuminated stall, the masked man waits patiently as Namjoon takes tentative steps towards him, places a tattered notebook onto the counter. 

“Here it is,” Namjoon says. “My lyrics, my soul.” 

He doesn’t get a reply, never expected to. He’s been to the pawn shop many times, and the masked man has never spoken. But for some reason, the mysterious figure always knows what Namjoon wants. 

He pawned a ring once, received a small hut in return. The masked man knew he couldn’t survive in a desert without a roof to stay under. 

He pawned a teapot, received a working plumbing system. He pawned a wallet, received a rice cooker. He has shelter and water and food now. He has the basic means to live. 

But he wants more. Needs more. And he has a feeling that material objects will not suffice this time. 

The masked man flips through Namjoon’s notebook—Namjoon’s soul—and seems to deem it worthy. He rummages under the counter and slaps a paper bag into Namjoon’s hands. 

“Seeds,” Namjoon murmurs as he peeks into the bag. “B-but what do you expect me to do with it? I’m no botanist. I can barely keep myself alive, let alone plants.”

The masked man doesn’t give a reply, he never does. With a brief bow, he disappears back into the shadows. 

**

Namjoon finds a small slip of paper in the bag, once he is back in the comforting shade of his small hut, downing copious amounts of water after his venture into the simmering desert. You shall repopulate the dead desert with these seeds, the note says. It is no easy feat, but you will find six special seeds in the bag, sealed in a tiny pouch. They can help you. Plant one whenever you need something.

Okay, Namjoon tells himself. Okay. He left home in hopes of becoming a musician, to make music, not plant seeds. But okay. He’s already pawned his soul, so he might as well repopulate the desert. Maybe that way he’ll be able to get his soul back.

So he plants. Dutifully, he plants. He spends every waking hour in his little backyard garden. He showers his saplings with water, fertilizer, love.

By day one, a couple little toadstool houses sprout nearby. He can hear the neighbors moving in.

By day two, the neighbors are planting their own toadstool houses. 

By day three, Namjoon is down with heat stroke. 

I can’t do this alone, he thinks. I can’t spend the whole day out there in the heat. I’ll die.

He needs a hand. 

So he sits up in bed, unwraps the tiny pouch, fingers trembling with dehydration and fuzzy anticipation. He takes out a seed and plants it, not outside in the garden because he’s not going out there right now, but in a little pot on his bedside table. And then he rolls around and sleeps.

He wakes up to a cool hand on his forehead. Or should he call it a... flipper? Because it’s webbed, the hand. And a pretty sky-blue color.

He looks up into what can be only described as a slippery blue blob with platypus hands and feet. He gazes at Namjoon with small, joyful eyes.

Namjoon screams.

Soon, Namjoon discovers that he can’t get rid of the joyful blue thing no matter what he does. Wherever he goes it follows, waddling on its short feet. Whenever Namjoon so much as make eye contact, the blue thing holds out a webbed hand.

When I said I needed a hand, this really wasn’t what I meant, Namjoon thinks. But what’s done is done, he might as well accept it.

By day four, there are a total of sixteen toadstool houses around the place, Namjoon notices. The new neighbors are planning to open a market. 

By day five, the market opens and Namjoon heads over for free air-conditioning. The webbed monster-thing waddles behind him down the aisle and the aunties all stop to pet it on its cool, slippery head.

By day six, Namjoon gives in and takes a webbed hand into his, because the poor thing seems to really want to hold hands, and who is Namjoon to deny him of such a small pleasure, right?

With a poof, the webbed thing turns into a whole human, almost Namjoon’s size, but not quite.

“I’m Yoongi,” he drawls. “Thanks for holding my hand.”

Namjoon screams so hard his neighbor aunties come over and peek through the windows to see if anything is the matter. When they see a full-grown human man sitting on Namjoon’s lap holding his hand (because, of course, they didn’t let go even through all the screaming), they decide that, no, nothing is the matter, and disperse back to their toadstool houses.

Turns out that Yoongi is much more than just a hand to hold. He helps Namjoon out in the garden and cooks and produces music. Yoongi is also extremely good at haggling in the flea market that sprouted from the ground sometime around day eleven.

Namjoon’s tiny bed doesn’t have enough space for two adults, but when they need to sleep Yoongi will hold Namjoon’s hand and he becomes a blue blob again. He fits snugly in Namjoon’s arms and is cool and slippery, perfect for cuddling with in the summer heat.

Things go well for a while, until Namjoon realizes that his garden is a whole mess. Yes, the plants are kinda growing but, again, he’s no botanist. He doesn’t even know when to water each plant (he assumes that, maybe, they would need to be watered at different frequencies? Who knows? Not Kim Namjoon, for sure).

He needs a planner, he realizes. Yoongi is amazing company but he knows as little about plants as Namjoon, maybe even less. He’d probably water them with coffee if Namjoon would let him (there’s been a coffee shop around the corner since day sixteen, much to Yoongi’s delight).

Before they go to bed that night, Namjoon plants another special seed into his bedside pot. Maybe he’ll get a literal planner when he wakes up, he thinks. One of those cute little schedule books with motivational messages, detailing what he needs to do each day to keep his plants thriving.

Instead, he wakes up to Yoongi, in blob form, greeting a sleek, long-bodied creature. Kind of like a lemur, complete with a bushy ringed tail and little claws, but seventy-percent yellower. Namjoon is also fairly sure that lemurs do not have little kangaroo pouches on their stomach.

But this one does, and is in fact in the middle of stuffing Namjoon’s many pencils into it.

Namjoon sighs and takes his hand, in hopes that this one will turn into a human too. But the yellow lemur remains a yellow lemur. He takes to following Namjoon and Yoongi around. Now, when Namjoon goes to the supermarket, there is a waddling blue blob behind him, followed by a perky yellow lemur who keeps trying to grab Yoongi’s slippery tail and hold it in his claws for reasons unknown.

It’s not just at the supermarket. Those two follow Namjoon to other places as well, including the toilet, which is very inconvenient. But Namjoon learns to live with it because despite everything, they’re adorable.

He finds himself petting the lemur’s furry little ears one night because he’s so cute. The very next second, there’s a lithe, full-grown human male sitting on his bed. He greets Namjoon with a heart-shaped smile.

“I’m Hoseok!” He announces, and takes a few more of Namjoon’s pencils. He works all night under the warm glow of the desk lamp while Namjoon and Yoongi cuddle away in bed. By the next morning he has a whole plan of garden duty shifts mapped out, tacked onto the wall. Namjoon is delighted and a bit surprised by how well Hoseok understands plants.

“It’s because I’m a flower myself,” Hoseok says with a loud yawn. Namjoon pets his head to turn him back into a lemur and tucks him into bed, with his little claws curled around the covers.

Their garden blossoms, so much that the neighbors all come around to see it. From the sheer number of people that show up Namjoon gets an uncomfortable feeling that this place is growing far beyond his neighborhood, far beyond his comprehension. It’s probably the size of a moderately big city now, and Namjoon doesn’t even have the time to leave his own neighborhood to check out how things are going.

It makes him nervous. Yoongi and Hoseok are excellent helpers and Namjoon honestly thinks that they’ve contributed as much as him to the garden, maybe even more. But he’s the one whom the masked man tasked with repopulating the desert, and that’s, naturally, a lot of pressure.

Maybe, if there were someone to give him advice? Yoongi and Hoseok are his pets. Pets are supposed to be coddled. He can’t put that burden on his pets.

So Namjoon plants another seed into the same bedside pot where Yoongi and Hoseok sprouted, hoping for a sage, wise elderly figure who’ll tell him what to do.

The seed grows into a crossover between a quokka and a dorito with eyes. It waggles its furry arms and falls onto the ground, which Hoseok has recently carpeted. It pouts its full lips and makes kissy noises at the three, who are perched upon the bed, staring down.

“See,” Yoongi says. “See, Namjoon-ah. This one is still a pet. This means that pets can give good advice too. You should trust us with your troubles more.”

“Alternatively, you can also just not see us as pets. We are functional human beings, even if we’re fluffy and sprouted from seeds and follow you to the toilet,” Hoseok offers.

Namjoon supposes they’re right. So after he finally finds the correct way to turn dorito quokka into a human (apparently he has to kiss its rich lips) he sits all three of them down and tells them. About the pressure, the uncertainty, the confusion that inevitably comes with dealing with something way beyond his scope of understanding.

“I moved to the desert to make music, not to plant seeds and grow a city,” he says. He’s trembling, even in the desert temperature, even when surrounded by three men and their body heat. “And it’s great that we now have such a big city, but... but I don’t know enough about it. I want to, but there’s never time. I still have to tend to the garden. I still want to make music. And I still need to, like, sleep, eat, masturbate and stuff.”

“Hey, you did great things, you know?” Yoongi says, voice so gentle, so doting. “You planted us and we grew. And not to toot my own horn, but we’re amazing.” He reaches up and wipes away the tears Namjoon didn’t realize were on his face. “You did so well. You’re doing so well. Hyung is proud of you. 10/10 will always follow to the toilet.”

Namjoon sniffles and Yoongi reaches out to hold his hand. He immediately turns into a blue blob. He doesn’t bother clamoring to be turned back, like he sometimes did when he and Namjoon held hands by accident. Instead, he moved behind Namjoon and wraps cold, slippery hands around his waist, lays his cold, slippery head on his back.

“You can always come to us if you’re not feeling fine,” Hoseok says. “You asked for a planner and here I am, but I’m more than just a planner! I’m your angel, I’m your hope.” He forcefully grabs Namjoon’s hand, uses it to scratch his own ears, and immediately turns into a yellow lemur. He hops onto Namjoon’s shoulder and wraps his long tail around his neck. It itches. It feels nice.

Dorito quokka, who says to call him Seokjin or Jin-hyung, is the only one left in human form now. He smiles with his cute v-shaped lips and lets Namjoon lean on his broad shoulders. It feels nice too.

“I can’t sleep for you, eat for you, or masturbate for you, obviously,” he says. “But I can help you with the garden. I can go outside and explore the city. I can meet the locals, talk to them, find out what they think. Whenever you feel burdened, come to hyung. Hyung is old and wise and you can always, always rely on me.”

“You’re hardly old,” Namjoon points out. “You sprouted from soil, like, two days ago.”

“Two days old is a long time, I know some men who were born five minutes ago and are already president,” Seokjin says, puffing his chest out proudly. It’s a very nice chest and Namjoon is slightly flustered. He hopes Jin-hyung won’t follow him to the toilet, that’d be very embarrassing.

Unfortunately, Seokjin does follow him to the toilet, and everywhere else too. Going to the supermarket is like leading a parade now. There’s Namjoon in front, smiling awkwardly at locals who recognize him, followed by a waddling blue blob, a yellow lemur and a fluffy dorito, the latter two of whom never stop picking up new items to add to their shopping cart. Yoongi prefers online shopping, so he’s just there to follow Namjoon around.

The four of them work together excellently. Seokjin actually does venture out into the city to mingle with the locals, wearing a straw hat and riding on a golf cart which he grew in the greenhouse Hoseok made on day seventy. Namjoon found it a bit awkward in the beginning that he had to kiss Seokjin on the lips every night in order to get him to fit into the bed, but he eventually got used to it.

Seokjin, on the other hand, seems to enjoy it very much and chases after a screaming Hoseok to try to kiss him too sometimes. With how chaotic he usually is, it’s almost hard to believe that Seokjin can be a dependable, heartwarming source of comfort.

But he is, Namjoon thinks. Oh, he is, he is.

**

The thing is, Yoongi, Hoseok and Seokjin all arrive fully-grown. Which isn’t a bad thing and is in fact very convenient, but sometimes Namjoon can’t help wondering what it’d be like, to really grow someone from scratch.

He starts it as a side project, plants the seed into his bedside pot and thinks, very specifically, to whatever genie is out there, that he wants this one to not sprout as a whole adult. Still, it’d be nice if it has various helpful skills like the other three. That’d make his life much easier, considering how he’s growing a metropolis in a previously lifeless desert.

It grows slowly. Just a tiny tiny little bit of green at first. And then a little bit more, each day. The others catch up onto Namjoon’s intentions too, and he often finds the three others crowding over the plant, chattering in their own incomprehensible pet language.

“What are you saying to it, exactly?” Namjoon asks one day, when he can hold back his curiosity no longer.

“I tell it to grow up and become me,” Seokjin says. “Imagine how cool it’d be to have two mes. We’d wreak so much havoc. We’d throw things at each other all day.”

“I tell it to grow up and become me,” Yoongi says. “Which means I want it to grow up to be perpetually sleepy.”

“I tell it to grow up and become me,” Hoseok says. “One word: loud.”

Namjoon laughs. He doesn’t want the seed to become him. He’s too uncertain, too flawed.

The seed finally sprouts and it’s a black round ball of fluff with two huge, round eyes. Namjoon bops it on the nose and it becomes a boy who calls himself Jungkook.

Jungkook does wreak havoc like Seokjin. And like Seokjin, he’s also kind, protective, full of excitement and spontaneity.

He’s also hard to wake up, like Yoongi wants him to be. And like Yoongi, he’s an empath, so thoughtful, so dreamy.

He’s loud like Hoseok as well. And like Hoseok, he’s nurturing, friendly, creative and goal-oriented.

Maybe he has a little bit of Namjoon in him too, at least that’s what the others think. Jungkook will grow into an amazing leader, musician, listener, they say. Just like Namjoon.

Namjoon vaguely remembers hoping that Jungkook would be useful. And useful he is—he breezes through the garden watering everything at once, writes music, cooks, cleans the house, and throws tomatoes at the neighbors who let their dog poop in Namjoon’s yard.

Yes, he’s useful. But when all is said and done, when the round furry ball closes its huge round eyes and snuggles against Namjoon’s chest, Namjoon knows it doesn’t matter whether he’s useful or not.

He could be the most useless thing ever, but Jungkook would still be Jungkook. They’d love him all the same.

**

The supermarket parades are now quite the spectacle. Namjoon leads the way, pushing the shopping cart. Behind him is Yoongi, wearing his cute customized headphones, despite the fact that in blob form he doesn’t even have ears. Next, Hoseok, clutching a banana in his small claws, followed by Seokjin, who’s eating Doritos (Namjoon considers it cannibalism). Jungkook comes last—he doesn’t have legs in ball form so he’s just sort of floating. He wants Hoseok’s banana but he doesn’t have hands to hold it so he sulks as he goes.

Namjoon’s little family is a whole mess, he thinks. He won’t have it any other way.

He still has two special seeds and he’d be lying if he says he hasn’t considered planting them—but he decides to save them for emergencies. Their garden is gigantic now and Hoseok is working on an automatic irrigation system. Their desert has become a whole megacity. Seokjin brings Namjoon on his golf cart sometimes, to see how the locals are doing.

They’re doing well. Namjoon is horrified.

“I planted all these people,” he mutters to himself, head in his hands. “They’re out there. Enjoying their lives. Because of me.”

It’s insane. It’s unimaginable. It’s beyond anything Namjoon can comprehend. He just wants to stand in front of the bathroom mirror and scream.

But it’s his life now. When Seokjin takes him out for a ride, inhabitants of the city chase after the golf cart and throw rose petals at them. When they go to the supermarket, there’s a whole horde of other shoppers following their little parade.

It’s his life now, and nothing is simple anymore.

Namjoon just wants something to remind him of how he used to be before it all began. Something that will love him, be proud of him, even without all his accomplishments. Something that will see him as just Kim Namjoon, instead of Kim Namjoon who planted a fucking city.

He wants it, that simple, pure kind of love. So he plants the second-to-last seed.

When he wakes up, it’s quiet. There’s a note on the bedside table.

Joon, it says, in Yoongi’s handwriting. You’re tired. We can tell. Please rest, at least for today. We’ll tend to the garden. We’ll go to the supermarket. Just rest, wait for us. We’ll be back soon and I’ll brew soup. We love you.

Namjoon sniffles. He loves them too.

And then, somewhere between his chest and the thin blanket, a furry, striped orange head appears. It’s shaped kind of like a dog’s, but with a fleecy tuft of hair at the top. It gazes at Namjoon with slender, trusting eyes, places two soft paws on Namjoon’s arm, says rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and falls asleep again.

“Why, hello,” Namjoon says. “Who are you?”

Rrrrrrrrrr, the dog replies, and Namjoon tears up, suddenly overwhelmed with sheer warmth and love, and thinks, okay, wow, okay.

He wakes up in the late afternoon, all invigorated and ready to build his city again.

By now Namjoon thinks he’s good at finding the right way to turn his pets into human. The dog pokes his head out of the blanket and says brrrrrrrrt, and Namjoon kisses him on the little tuft of fur. He turns into Taehyung, the newest addition to their crazy family.

Namjoon soon discovers that human Taehyung gives cuddles that are as nice as when he’s a tiger-dog.

Hoseok begins working on enlarging the hut, originally built for one person. They need enough space for a real dining room so that they can stop sitting on the floors. They need space for the music equipment, Jungkook’s Playstation, Yoongi’s beanbag chair, and now that there’s Taehyung they need space for his easel too.

They enlarge the hut, but not the bed. In pet form, they can still all fit. Namjoon has only two arms and he can’t hug all at once, which makes him sad, but the others assure him that they have arms too so he can just hug Jungkook, the only one who doesn’t have arms, while the rest of them hug Namjoon in various positions.

That’s how Namjoon falls asleep each night, a soft ball of Jungkook in his arms, Yoongi’s calming presence behind his back. Seokjin and Hoseok each hog one leg, and Taehyung is nestled in Namjoon’s hair. Strangely enough, even though there’s a whole city out there that never sleeps and Namjoon should congratulate himself on growing it, nothing makes him feel as accomplished as when he turns off the lights, falls into bed, and his five friends all come hopping in, getting into their designated positions.

So this is what the masked man wanted me to do, Namjoon thinks. Perhaps I can get my music back now. Perhaps I can get my soul back now. I’ve accomplished so much.

He heads to where he thinks the pawn shop is supposed to be, but it’s not there.

Maybe it’s been replaced by one of the towering skyscrapers? Or maybe it’s under a pretty sand dune? Either way, it’s gone.

Namjoon comes home devastated. He’ll just write some new music, he tells himself. He still composes music a lot, right? So it’s not like his whole essence of being is no more.

But he thinks about how those lyrics in that tattered notebook he pawned were written by someone entirely different from the current Namjoon, someone who did not have the mission of growing a city, someone who did not have people chasing after his golf cart, someone who did not live in a desert. That version of himself is lost now. Gone, along with his tattered notebook and the masked man and the pawn shop.

And the more he thinks about it, the less adequate he feels. He puts down his pencil—maybe he’ll work on a song tomorrow. He can’t be assed to do it today.

He doesn’t work on a song tomorrow, the next day, the day after. He tries to hide it from the others, says he’s concentrating on watering his flowers right now, says he’s feeling faint from the heat and just needs to sleep it off. But of course the others notice, they always do.

“Plant the last one,” Yoongi says. “I know you’re saving it for an emergency, but this is an emergency.”

“Why is it an emergency?” Namjoon asks, sitting up from his bed groggily. “The city is doing fine, no one’s gonna die just because I’m not writing music.”

“But you’re not doing fine,” Seokjin points out. “If you don’t plant it we will, but I just feel like it’d be better if you do it since you were the one who was given the seeds.”

Namjoon sighs. Might as well. So he plants the very last of his magic seeds, watches as the pot glows and glows and glows. From the soil floats out a small fairy, graceful, ethereal, light-yellow wings shedding shimmery dust as he flies around.

“I’m Jimin!” He declares.

“Oh, you can speak even in pet form,” Namjoon says, intrigued.

“I can also sing!” Jimin adds, sounding quite proud. Namjoon has no doubt he can sing. The fairy has one of those voices, the kind of voice that makes flowers bloom, rainbows appear, life worth living.

“Sing, then,” Namjoon orders.

Jimin sings. Suddenly Namjoon no longer feels like burrowing into his bed. Which is saying a lot, because he loves his bed as much as the next person.

He reaches desperately for his pencil, his paper, nearly knocks over the pot that previously held Jimin in the process. Taehyung plods over with Namjoon’s slippers in his mouth, sets them down at his feet. Hoseok drags back Namjoon’s chair with his little claws, so that it’s in the perfect position for him to sit in. Yoongi and Seokjin, who are both currently human, run off to the kitchen to whip up some midnight snacks and tea to help keep the inspiration going. Jungkook doesn’t do anything because in pet form he doesn’t have hands, but it’s fine because he’s adorable.

Jimin sings, in some incomprehensible fairy language, and Namjoon writes. Writes. Writes. When he finally stops because he really has to go to the toilet, he has a whole seven pages done, more than he’s ever done before in one night. He didn’t even realize that Jimin had stopped singing and is now curled up peacefully in Namjoon’s pencil case.

The fairy transforms into his human form if you poke his cheeks, Namjoon soon discovers. What’s funny is that human Jimin looks just like fairy Jimin, except larger and less shimmery. He also doesn’t shed fairy dust everywhere, which is nice because as pretty as fairy dust is, it can be kind of inconvenient, especially when they’re at the supermarket, a seven-membered parade that never fails to turn heads in every aisle.

It’s also very inconvenient when they all follow Namjoon to the toilet, of course, but Namjoon has accepted that this is something he simply has to live with. All seven of Namjoon’s magic seeds have grown and he can’t be prouder of the result. This wasn’t what I asked for when I moved to the desert, he thinks, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

**

He wakes up one morning to all six of them, standing in front of him in a line.

“I think it’s time,” Yoongi says solemnly. Namjoon rubs his eyes.

“W-what?” He sputters, confused. “Time for what?”

“The ritual,” Yoongi says, and Namjoon thinks oh shit, that sounds ominous, and the next thing he knows Yoongi is holding his hand.

Then Hoseok comes up and scratches him on the head. Seokjin kisses him on the lips, tender and full of love, and Jungkook bops him on the nose. Taehyung kisses him gently on the forehead, and Jimin pokes his cheeks.

There is a whoosh of golden light, and Namjoon lets out a roar.

He can’t help it, he’s a dragon now.

An orange dragon, with wings. And smoke coming out of his nostrils. And a gigantic tail.

I’m a dragon, I’m a fucking dragon, what the fuck, he wants to say, but all he is capable of emitting are roars.

Jimin and Jungkook, the two who can float in the air, are swooping up and down in front of his face. Fly! Fly! They seem to be saying.

Namjoon suddenly feels little claws on his back. Hoseok. And then a pair of cold, webbed hands—Yoongi. He counts enough furry paws to know that Seokjin and Taehyung are on board now. Jimin and Jungkook disappear from sight so he assumes they’re on his back too.

Yes, it’s time, Namjoon thinks. It’s time to appreciate it all from above. The little toadstool houses, the shining skyscrapers, the majestic statues, the border where magnificent sand dunes meet the sea. And the people, the countless inhabitants of the city, down there going about their everyday lives.

It’s time for an adventure. An adventure that, even though exciting, he’ll be able to easily handle with his powerful wings and fire-spitting expertise. On his back are companionship, organization, wisdom, talent, love and his muse. He’s safe. He can fly now.

So he spreads his wings and soars.

Chapter Text

Seokjin never asked to be the owner of a dessert shop. His dream was to be a ramen chef. Savory, rich, heart-warming ramen. Seokjin would be so good at making ramen. He was born to make ramen.

But someone approached him at the bus stop one day and said hey, you look like you’d be really good at making dessert, you should open a dessert shop. And who was Seokjin to say no? So lo and behold, he now has his own dessert shop called Jinnie’s Oasis. Because it’s in a desert. Come to think of it, desert and dessert look mighty similar. Maybe one day he’ll make a pun out of that.

But, at least for today, Seokjin doesn’t make puns. He makes desserts.

There isn’t a set menu in the store, which resembles a hippie trailer with colorful murals on the walls and pots of bright flowers hanging from the window sills. The interior is cozy and snug, with wacky armchairs, frilly tablecloths, Seokjin’s favorite guitar. The temperature is perfect, the windows let in the perfect amount of sunlight, and the cushions are the perfect degree of huggable.

There isn’t a set menu, which isn’t something most people are used to, so Seokjin doesn’t get that many customers, but those he does get are extremely loyal and return all the time, sometimes not even to have dessert but simply to chat. Seokjin likes it that way. It’s easier for him to memorize his customers’ likes and dislikes, easier for him to personalize their order for them just the way they would want it.

He’s watering the flowers, humming, when the mosaic door swings open and Jimin comes staggering in. Jimin usually comes in near closing time due to his erratic schedule, and as the place would usually be empty by then the two of them would chat all the way into the night, about work and family and life in general. Jimin is fun to talk to. He loves his alcohol and always gets extraordinarily giggly when he has too much.

He isn’t giggling today. Just slumps into a chair, lets his head drop to the table.

“Bad day, huh,” Seokjin says in a sympathetic voice.

“Save me,” Jimin groans out.

“Is that your order?” Seokjin asks. Jimin nods. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about what’s bothering him, but Seokjin knows he’ll loosen up after a drink.

A drink that he’s going to make.

Save Me. That’s Jimin’s order. Save Me reminds Seokjin of blue waters, a lifeguard reaching out to a drowning man. So he makes the drink blue, fizzy, an adequate amount of alcohol, blue jello at the bottom. On the surface of the water floats little colorful life-saving swim rings, which are actually fruity cheerios. He adds a scoop of blueberry ice cream and a chocolate wafer stick to top it off.

Jimin takes a dainty sip and blinks owlishly. “What type of cocktail did you add? Hawaiian?”

“Keep guessing,” Seokjin says, as he sits down opposite Jimin, plonks a tray of cookies on the table. “Now, tell me why you need someone to save you.”

“Work’s been hell,” Jimin replies. And he tells Seokjin, about the way his coworkers always leave him out when they’re ordering meals and blatantly show off the food to his face, making sure he knows he’s not part of their circle and will never be. The way they gossip about him in the water room, jeering he’s such a suck-up, bet he sucks the boss’s dick too.

“You should come work for me, I pay handsomely,” Seokjin says. Jimin giggles.

“I can’t.” He shakes his head, downing the last of his drink with relish. “I can’t create magical food like you do. Your desserts always make me happy, you know, hyung? It’s amazing, I can never figure out how you do it. I tried to recreate the dishes in my own kitchen but they never tasted quite the same.”

“It’s because I have my secret ingredient,” Seokjin explains. Jimin leans in, and Seokjin whispers into his ear: “Moonshine.”

Jimin bursts out laughing. “No way! Where’d you even get moonshine?”

Seokjin doesn’t answer. He watches Jimin depart, slightly tipsy, cheeks rosy. It’s okay to let him leave alone because he lives just next door. Seokjin silently watches over the cute boy until he is safely back in his own trailer.

Then Seokjin goes to the table Jimin just vacated and picks up fragments of moonshine, carefully gathering them with gloved hands into a glass jug, which he’ll keep under his pillow for a few days before eventually using it in a dish.

He knows he’ll sleep well tonight.

**

Hoseok is the only one of Seokjin’s regular customers who always orders the same thing.

“Love,” Hoseok declares, plopping himself down into a comfy sofa. He’s not his usual sprightly self today, Seokjin notes. He’s fidgeting, leg jiggling, playing with his fingers. Overflowing with anxiety.

“One Love, coming up,” Seokjin sings, as he busies himself at the counter. The result is a heart-shaped cake of a deep, velvety color. Smack in the middle, a knife. Strawberry jam leaks out from the knife wound.

“This doesn’t look like the one I ordered last time,” Hoseok says. He always says that. “The one I got was mango jello with apple dices and a dollop of whipped cream and a cherry on top.”

“There are many different types of love,” Seokjin tells him. “What you got last time was passionate love. This one is fake love.”

Hoseok digs in, though not before carefully removing the knife first. He frowns at Seokjin. “How did you know I’m really… not feeling good about love today?”

“Just a hunch.” Seokjin pours some tea for Hoseok, and sits down across him. Hoseok is a punctual, punctual man. He always shows up on Tuesday nights without fail. He always makes the same order. He always wears a silver ring on his left ring finger.

He isn’t wearing it today.

“My engagement with… you-know-who… it’s cancelled,” Hoseok announces. The more cake he puts into himself, the calmer he seems to get.

“Good for you,” Seokjin says. Because he’s talked with Hoseok enough to know that he doesn’t want the arranged marriage, a strategic venture purely for his family’s business. The girl doesn’t want it either. It’s good news that they’ve decided to not go along with it.

“My parents are flipping out like no tomorrow, you have no idea.” Hoseok chuckles, a bit darkly. “Hers are too. Man, I don’t think I can go home tonight. Maybe I should go back to my office and sleep at my desk.”

“You can crash here, I have two beds,” Seokjin suggests. He does have two beds. His little brother, Jungkook, stays the night a lot.

“I wouldn’t want to impose.” Hoseok shakes his head. “But thanks for offering. I just… my head’s a mess right now. I’m glad we’re no longer engaged, but there’s still a whole lot to sort out, you know? My parents and her parents will never let us hear the end of it. But… but you don’t have to worry about me, hyung. I’m… I’m happy about this. I’m honestly happy.”

Seokjin knows he’s happy. Hoseok’s been complaining about the marriage situation for months. He’s even brought his fiancee over once and the poor girl broke down in tears over Seokjin’s sweet peach campfire cobbler because she had a girlfriend and she didn’t want to marry Hoseok anymore than he wanted to marry her.

But yes, even though he’s happy, there’s still a lot of trials ahead of him. Seokjin knows this. Hoseok knows this. That’s why he’s so antsy.

Seokjin puts on his best straight face when Hoseok reaches the bottom part of the cake to find a heart-shaped candy buried there, on it the words Love you! Fighting!

Hoseok grins so big that Seokjin knows that, no matter Hoseok agrees to stay tonight or not, he’ll be able to collect enough sunbeams to power the store for years.

**

The famous rap duo, Room8s, always shows up together at Seokjin’s shop at the most obscure hours. Yoongi and Namjoon have a tendency to work late into the night, and even though Seokjin’s shop does have an official closing time, he keeps the lights on for them if they let him know they’re coming beforehand.

Keeping the shop open at odd hours consumes a bit more of Seokjin’s secret power-up ingredients, but he still does it because he loves making desserts for Yoongi and Namjoon. His desserts inspire them to make music, they always say. And they’re so fun to chat with. They’ve been around the world on tours, seen so much, met so many influential people. They never run out of topics to talk about. The hours with them always seem too short.

Tonight, they don’t talk. They just sit there, on different sofas, each hogging a cushion, faces stiff. It takes Seokjin one look to know that they’re fighting. It’s not uncommon for the duo to fight—it happens at least once a couple months—but they’re here for dessert and Seokjin has to take their order.

“You’re here for dessert and I have to take your order,” he tells the glum-looking pair.

“Namjoon is a bloody idiot,” Yoongi says.

“Yoongi is an ass,” Namjoon fires back.

“Okay,” Seokjin says with a sigh. “Okay.”

Bloody idiot is easier. Seokjin knows how to do blood. He used strawberry jam for Hoseok’s cake, he can use it here too.

Ass, now, is… not ideal. He doesn’t have many ingredients in the color of Namjoon’s ass. And a perfect, ass-shaped pudding will take some time to bake, but he isn’t sure how much free time the two have tonight.

“Can you pick something other than ‘ass’?” He asks Namjoon as he rummages through his jars and boxes of flour.

“Yoongi is an… asshole?” Namjoon suggests.

“Same difference,” Seokjin points out. “To make an asshole, I need the ass. It’s like how you can’t have a donut hole without the donut.”

“Okay.” Namjoon rubs his neck. “I’ll change it to Yoongi is a grumpy cat. But I kind of feel like having a donut now that you’ve mentioned it…”

Seokjin hears Yoongi snort.

A cat is much easier to make than an ass, for the obvious reason that cats come in many colors. He covers the donut in white, then dots it with brown and orange—chocolate and passion fruit respectively—draws on the cutest little cat face with chocolate syrup, and even adds a tiny pink ribbon on the cat’s head. Scattered on the plate are cheddar goldfish crackers.

His other masterpiece, Namjoon is a Bloody Idiot, is composed of a lanky figure made out of breadsticks with strawberry and raspberry jam all over him. His head is topped with grape yogurt, representing Namjoon’s current purple hair. It doesn’t seem too tasty but Yoongi loves breadsticks and besides Seokjin will be serving it with a Bloody Mary, so he thinks he can get away with it.

The duo stare at their respective dishes after they are served. Pick up their forks. But neither of them make a move to eat.

“This is making me uncomfortable,” Yoongi finally mutters. “I don’t want to see all this blood on Namjoon. It makes me sad.”

“Hey… it’s just jam, it’s okay, don’t be upset,” Namjoon says, voice impossibly gentle. “And… and I can’t eat this kitty… it’s so beautiful… it looks just like Yoongi…”

Seokjin wipes his hands on his apron. “So I take it that you’re both going to make another order?”

“No, we don’t want to trouble you, hyung,” Namjoon says hastily. He is sitting beside Yoongi now, running a hand soothingly over his back. “I’ll just eat the goldfish crackers. Yoongi will drink his wine.”

“But it’ll feel like I were drinking your blood, Joon,” Yoongi says, eyes moist. “Oh god, why were we even fighting over something so stupid? You’re so important to me, goddamit. I can’t lose you. I can’t have you covered in blood.”

“It’s just jam,” Namjoon whispers. “And you’re so important to me too. Best partner one could ever ask for. You can share my goldfish crackers.”

The two eat away in silence, free hands that are not holding the crackers intertwined. Seokjin does not talk to them tonight, and instead minds his own business behind the counter. Those two are hopeless. Seokjin supposes they really need a push to figure things out amongst themselves.

They’ve figured it out, he thinks, when the two thank him and leave, still holding hands, Namjoon’s jacket draped over Yoongi’s shoulders.

At the table where they had been sitting, Seokjin collects little blue and purple shards of melodies and place them into a glass jar. They float around in it, singing in tinkling voices.

Seokjin knows that he’ll sleep well tonight, with a living, breathing lullaby right under his pillow.

**

Seokjin thinks he should’ve seen it coming, should’ve known this would happen one day ever since the first time the Room8s entered his shop.

The duo is famous. They have fans. Fans follow them around. And somehow, someone managed to snap photos of the two entering Seokjin’s shop.

It’s not like it’s a scandal or anything of course, rappers need to eat too, but it does put Seokjin’s humble shop on the radar. Business is booming now. Which is a good thing, yes, Seokjin loves meeting different people, learning about their stories, making them the exact dish they want. But it’s all very hectic. The trailer is always full, with more lining up outside, waiting.

With the publicity comes pressure. Comes articles, reviews, sometimes negative ones. Not enough space in the restaurant, too crowded, one says. And Seokjin agrees, but he absolutely has no time to give the place an upgrade in size or a renovation. Always have to wait for hours. Not worth it, one says. And Seokjin agrees, his dishes are good but time is an important commodity that not all have the luxury to afford. But there’s only one of him and so many customers. He’s doing his best to hurry—but making good desserts takes time.

Time. There is never enough time. He barely has time to water his flowers. He gets reviews about that too—flowers in the store all dead. terrible aesthetics. And he barely has time to clean the place properly, which he also gets reviews about—tables are sticky. ants all over the windowsill.

There is never enough time, and sometimes he gets comments that are just plain mean. Yoongi and Namjoon tell him that they have haters and whoever hates them will automatically hate anything they’re associated with too, and that includes Seokjin’s shop. He shouldn’t let it get to him, as the comments usually don’t make any sense.

Seokjin still lets it get to him.

Why do you even try? The comments say. You don’t even have a menu! Why would you even open a stupid shop like this?

And Seokjin wonders, right, why would he open a stupid shop like this? He didn’t even want to make dessert in the first place. He wanted to make ramen. He’s been cooking ramen since he was ten, ran a cute little ramen booth. He hired his little brother Jungkook and Jungkook’s kindergarten classmate Taehyung to deliver the ramen for a penny each. They were ridiculously underpaid, of course, but ten-year-old Seokjin always did have a knack for swindling innocent souls.

Why did he even agree to open a dessert shop in the first place?

He can’t remember.

He sits up in bed in the middle of the night, letting the little jars under his pillow sing to him. And he can’t remember.

Sometimes he almost has it, as if someone walking by outside his window is whistling the answer to him, but then the person walks away and the whistling fades out and he still can’t remember.

He sits there on a sofa after closing one night, just thinking. He’s got tables to wipe and a floor to mop and a counter to clean and so much so much so much to do, but he simply can’t do anything except sit.

Maybe he should close the shop, he thinks. Go back to his ramen dream. Or maybe entirely something else. A conveyor belt sushi restaurant sounds appealing. It’s not like making dessert is the only thing he’s good at. Kim Seokjin is amazing at a variety of things. He won’t go broke after closing the shop—perhaps he’ll be even richer. And yes, some of his customers might be upset at the news, but… but they’ll move on, right? And it won’t be like Seokjin has abandoned them. Perhaps, without the shop, he’ll actually have time to go out and make friends.

The door jingles open, and Jungkook comes in. His bright-eyed little brother, now a university student.

“Maybe I should close the shop,” Seokjin tells Jungkook. Jungkook’s textbooks drop to the floor.

“B-but hyung. People love your shop. And you love your shop too. Didn’t you say it makes you happy to hear so many stories from so many customers? And didn’t you say you really enjoy making desserts and coming up with crazy combinations? And you’ve met so many friends through the shop, you can’t just—”

“I’m tired, Guk,” Seokjin cuts in. He’s almost surprised at how resigned he sounds.

“Then get someone else to help you run the shop,” Jungkook says, staunchly. “You don’t have to do it alone. I’ll work here part-time. Jiminie-hyung finally resigned from his stupid company and he’s available to help too. Hoseokie-hyung’s ex-fiancee’s girlfriend is looking for a job. And Taehyungie is studying interior design, he can help you redesign the space so that more people can fit in. I’ll text him now.”

Seokjin sees Jungkook already typing away on his phone and has no doubt he really is texting Taehyung now.

“You don’t have to shoulder everything yourself, you know? I’m an adult now. I can work. I can help,” Jungkook persists. “You can’t give up what you worked so hard for.”

But can he? Seokjin wonders. It’d be so simple to just give up. No one would blame him for it, he knows. Jungkook wouldn’t, despite what he’s saying. His brother would support him till the end, no matter what choice he makes.

It’d be so simple to just give up, yet Seokjin’s hands are already automatically decorating the little cupcakes he’s prepared for Jungkook because he knows they’re his favorite. He draws pink bunnies on them, adds rainbow sprinkles.

Maybe his hands aren’t ready to end this yet.

The door opens again, with it, a gust of frigid desert-night air. Taehyung comes stumbling in, chin buried snugly in a scarf, tips of ears red. There are dark circles under his eyes, and he crumples into a couch, letting his head fall backward.

“Are you sick?” Jungkook exclaims, placing a hand on his childhood friend’s forehead. “You could have just said so. You didn’t have to come all the way if you’re sick.”

“I live next door,” Taehyung points out, groggily. “And you said it’s an emergency.”

“Hyung is thinking of closing the shop,” Jungkook explains. “But you still shouldn’t have come.”

“Not sick, just exhausted,” Taehyung murmurs, burying himself deeper into the scarf. “You know, finals.”

Seokjin tuts, already busy behind the counter. Taehyung didn’t make an order, but Seokjin knows that college students usually don’t have many brain cells left during finals, so he’ll just whip up something that can help him heal.

Alcohol is the obvious first choice, but Taehyung doesn’t like it—Seokjin’s heart squeezes suddenly as he realizes just how much he knows about the likes and dislikes of his favorite customers. Jimin is a picky eater who bites his ice cream, Jungkook puts in the milk before the cereal and Hoseok gets drunk way too easily and—

And Seokjin’s heart squeezes. And Yoongi doesn’t eat anything that reminds him of blood now, and Namjoon doesn’t like crab-shaped food because crabs are his friends, and Seokjin’s heart squeezes again because he knows so much, so much about all of them and he can’t help thinking oh, maybe this is it.

He thinks oh, maybe this is it as Taehyung takes a sip of the marshmallow-filled hot cocoa Seokjin places in front of him, and beams like a bright summer’s day.

His cheeks are blooming red now, stardust dropping from his eyelashes. It doesn’t seem that Taehyung himself can see them, or else he’d have probably it found it very disconcerting to have glitter all over his drink.

Seokjin collects some stray stardust with a jar and thinks, oh, maybe this is it.

The smiles flash through his mind. Jimin’s, Hoseok’s, Namjoon’s and Yoongi’s, Jungkook’s—tons of different versions, from four-year-old Jungkook’s to twenty-one-year-old Jungkook’s. Taehyung’s. Hoseok’s ex-fiancee’s. Some of Room8s’ fans. Some of Room8s’ haters, who came to trash the shop but were won over when Seokjin invited them inside for honey milk tea.

This was why he opened the shop. He remembers now.

To make people happy.

As Jungkook and Taehyung wave him goodbye, one trailing stardust and one scattering tiny sapphires, Seokjin stands in the doorway of the shop, his shop, and smiles.

From behind the counter, the moonshine, sunbeams and melody shards smile back.

**

“The smiles you collected may help you sleep, but I don’t think they’re what makes your food so good, hyung,” Jungkook says as he digs into a rabbit-shaped waffle lined with banana slices. He’s the only one who can see Seokjin’s smile collection. It runs in the family. 

“What else can it be, then?”

“The reason your desserts make people smile… I think it’s simply because you’re the one who made them. Because it’s you. You make people smile."

And even after you really close the shop for good one day, you'll still be the reason many, many smiles are born. Because you're you.

Chapter Text

Yoongi resembles a cat, Seokjin often thinks. He’s got those sharp cat eyes and soft cat mouth and boopable little cat nose. And, like a cat, he varies between acting aloof and demanding affection, between hyperactive and lethargic, between elegant and downright hilarious.

He’s pouting up at Seokjin now, looking cuddlier than ever as he points at the black-and-white cat mascot costume in the latter’s hands.

“I wanna wear that,” he demands, “it’d fit me so well.”

Seokjin has no doubt it will. A cat for a cat. Makes perfect sense. It’s not like Seokjin has to wear the costume anyway. The director of their new music video said he wanted footage of one member popping out of a cat mascot costume—he never said who. The team just decided it would be Seokjin because he lost at rock paper scissors. If Yoongi wants it, there’s no reason he can’t have it.

Yoongi reaches out and tugs at the cat mascot costume’s furry tail, face sheepish. “It’s just that… I’m just… just feeling a bit… you know.”

Seokjin knows. As a fellow introvert himself, he knows how hard being surrounded by people and cameras can be. Years of experience in showbiz hardened them, of course, and they’ve even gradually learned to enjoy it, to bask in the admiration and live in the moment.

But sometimes it can still be too much to handle. And they’re working with a new director with a new crew today. Being ogled at by too many unfamiliar pairs of eyes is always… a lot. Seokjin was actually looking forward to getting dressed up in the mascot costume, because that way he can goof around and show off stupid dance moves and trip over his feet to his heart’s content, so safe, so protected. He can be himself without being seen as himself. Because the mascot is what people see, not worldwide handsome Kim Seokjin.

But Yoongi needs the anonymity more than Seokjin today, so Seokjin just smiles and agrees to let Yoongi have the cat mascot costume. He looks absolutely adorable in it, Seokjin thinks. Yoongi is born to be a cat.

He watches Yoongi waddle around the filming scene—a lush meadow with a nice lake—wiggling his hips, crashing into Namjoon, then Taehyung, then a stack of foldable chairs. Jimin and Hoseok are following him, tugging at his tail. 

Cute, Seokjin thinks, when Jungkook pops up out of nowhere, way too close and way too sudden, and shouts hyung! in his ear.

Caught by surprise, Seokjin’s fight-or-flight instincts are triggered and he lashes out at the maknae before losing his balance and tumbling backwards into the lake. He comes up seconds later, spluttering and laughing, easily propelling himself to shore, letting Jungkook pull him up. The makeup noonas swarm upon him, tutting as he attempts to wring his soggy shirt dry. The horrified wardrobe managers rush back to the van to search for a spare outfit. 

“Hyung!” Namjoon exclaims, shoving through the crowd, glaring at a cheerily dripping Seokjin in disapproval. “Hyung, what happened to being more careful? You promised me to be more careful.” 

“Sorry, Joon-ah, didn’t mean to hold up the filming schedule,” Seokjin apologizes as he towels at his now messy hair. 

“The schedule’s fine, the director’s doing Hoseok’s solo shot now, you’re not up until a while later anyway. But you really should be more careful. The lake is pretty deep, isn’t it?” 

Seokjin grins, attempts to smooth away the frown on Namjoon’s face. “It is, but I can swim. Don’t be silly.” 

Namjoon only sighs. “You do realize that if you had been wearing the mascot costume it would have dragged you down? That it’d be hard to swim with wet fabric covering your whole face? And that cat headpiece is super heavy even when not wet?”

Seokjin briefly imagines the scenario. Doesn’t sound like fun. 

In fact, it sounds like death. 

“But it’s fine,” he assures Namjoon, who’s got distressed lines over his forehead. “It’s fine. I’m not wearing the mascot costume, Yoongichi is, and that’s all that matters.” 

Namjoon doesn’t seem very assured. The fearless leader looks so small then, wringing his hands, eyes brimming over with worry. Finally, he whispers: “I just… I just really don’t want to lose you, hyung.” 

And Seokjin beams at him, because Namjoon is as much his little brother as he is his leader. “You won’t lose me, I promise. I’ll be more careful, and I’ll thank Yoongichi later for suddenly wanting to be a cat.”

Namjoon smiles wanly, shakes his head, finally leaning it against Seokjin’s wet shoulder with a tired sigh. 

From a distance, through tiny mesh openings in the cat headpiece, Yoongi watches. 

**

Despite Yoongi’s claims that he’s one whole centimeter taller than Jimin, Jimin personally believes that he’s the less vertically challenged one of the two. Yoongi just refuses to admit it because he’s proud, like a kitty. 

Ooh, kitty! Jimin thinks, giddy with happiness. Yoongi-hyung would be such a cute kitty. Jimin wants to kiss his little button nose and scratch his plush kitten belly. 

And oh, Yoongi-hyung looks so cute under the yellow street lamps, tucked into a soft soft scarf and a soft soft beanie and a soft soft goose down jacket and he’s just soft soft soft and Jiminie loves Yoongi-hyung, the best kitty.

Jiminie vaguely remembers eating at a pretty restaurant, pwetty Chinese restaurant with pwetty lights, ooh so many lights! pwetty pwetty lights, mostly red but some of them were purple teeheehee. Yoongi-hyungie talked so much! He always does when he drinks, and he’s cute super cute so cute when he talks, when he’s all drinky and he talks and Jiminie likes listening to Yoongi-hyungie talk and it’s only the two of them on a dinner date tonight so he gets to have all of Yoongi-hyungie’s attention and Yoongi-hyungie talks to him only to him, and Jiminie is so happy. 

But Yoongi-hyungie is deffo drunk, he drinkly because he pink cheeks and pink nose and pink ear tips so cute like a cat’s. Diminie thinks drinky Yoongi-hyungie very cute very good kitty. And night streets dark but dorm not very far away, Diminie will walk Yoongi-hyungie home! It dark and cold and Diminie will keep Yoongi-hyungie safe. 

Diminie feels Yoongi-hyungie’s hand in his and he knows hyungie must be scared, a scared kitty, brrrr. But it’s okay because Diminie smash, Diminie strong. Diminie holds Yoongi-hyungie close as they walk. At the corner, some hoomans, they smoke, they smell smokey and they have angry eyes and they are coming close and hyungie must be afraid but it’s okay because Diminie has black belt, really nice black belt it Gucci, it present from Taetae. Diminie misses Taetae but Taetae don’t drinky so he can’t come with them, only cute kitten Yoongi-hyungie good at getting drinky.

What happen to smoky men? Diminie don’t remember but they gone, maybe they know Diminie cool and strong and have black belt so they afraid and leave. Yoongi-hyungie cute soft kitten paw in Diminie hand. Diminie will protect Yoongi-hyungie. They go home. Home is so far, Diminie tired. Diminie sleep. Why is street swaying why is Yoongi-hyungie has sixty fingers? Diminie sway Diminie sleep, Yoongi-hyungie smell good like good kitten warm kitten. 

Jimin will wake up hours later in his bed, nursing a killer headache, unable to recall a single thing that happened in the past night. And by his bedside table he will find a glass of water and a couple painkillers. Hoseok will chide him for getting so drunk that he practically fell unconscious halfway home and poor Yoongi had to lug him all the way back. 

Hoseok will also scold him with that serious triangular pout of his that he really should’ve known better, they could have called a taxi or a manager or any one of them to pick them up, even if the restaurant was really close to home. There could be dangerous people on the streets. If Yoongi-hyung hadn’t been looking out for you, who knows what could have happened?

Yes, Hoseok will say that, and Jimin will look suitably ashamed and apologize to Hoseok, and Hoseok will say what the heck don’t apologize to me, go apologize to Yoongi-hyung! But that’s all in the future. Right now, Jimin is cozy and happy in Yoongi’s embrace, and he feels safe, so safe, even if Yoongi doesn’t have a black belt that’s Gucci. 

**

It is no secret that Jungkook adores Yoongi. Yes, of course, he respects him and admires him, but he also adores him because Yoongi is so adorable goddamit. Jungkook’s soft little heart really can’t take it sometimes. 

Jungkook loves how strong Yoongi is. Like, not strong in Jungkook’s own muscly kind of way (Yoongi does have his fair share of muscles too but not as impressive as Jungkook’s, he’s very proud to say), but, like, mentally strong. Yoongi is brave, so brave, and sometimes Jungkook wants to burst into tears just by thinking about how brave Yoongi is. 

So when he receives a call—a call, not a text—from Yoongi, saying Kook-ah I need you, please come, Jungkook grabs his jacket and bag and keys and is out of the door in a flash. Yoongi is brave, but what makes him the bravest, Jungkook thinks, is that he’s not afraid to show weakness, to ask for help when he needs it. 

Like, yeah, sometimes he asks for it in that endearing kitten way, like a cat who entangles himself in a curtain track cord and can’t get out and meows for attention and instead of looking appropriately ashamed when a human comes save him he just looks like the human offended his ancestors, but still. Brave. Yoongi is brave. The bravest kitten. 

So Jungkook runs, runs all the way down the street, into Yoongi’s waiting arms. He doesn’t ask Yoongi why he called him. If Yoongi wants to tell Jungkook what’s making him upset, he’ll let him do it on his own terms.

Instead, Jungkook takes Yoongi shopping. They look at electronics and the way Yoongi’s eyes light up when he sees the newest bestsellers on the rack is adorable. They also grab coffee and the way Yoongi’s eyes light up as he takes a dainty little first sip is adorable too. Jungkook isn’t great at comforting people—at least he doesn’t believe he is—but he can still keep Yoongi company. Show him that he’s right here, he cares, he won’t leave him no matter what.

Jungkook knows he’s probably not his hyung’s first choice—he’s very humble if he says so himself—Yoongi probably wouldn’t have asked for him if the others weren’t all busy and he didn’t happen to be the only one at home. But it’s okay. It’s okay to not be the first choice. He’s just glad that he has the chance to be by his hyung’s side, to take care of him, like how his hyung always took care of them all in his silent, gentle way. 

They’re getting lamb skewers when Seokjin calls, out of breath and rushing through his words, demanding to know their whereabouts. The eldest hyung exhales in relief when he hears that neither is at home.

“There’s been a gas leak, Hobi discovered it when he got home a few minutes ago. Said the place didn’t smell right, backed right out and called the fire brigade. Luckily it was Hobi who got there first, you know how careful he is. If it were Namjoonie or me—we’d probably have just walked in without thinking and… and…” Seokjin trails off and sniffles, sounding utterly defeated. 

“No one else is at home, right?” Jungkook asks in horror.

“Taehyung’s still filming, Jimin’s waiting for him. Joonie’s on a dinner date with his mom.” Seokjin takes a shaky breath. “I’m so glad you’re both fine, goodness. I almost thought… didn’t you say you’d be home all day, Kookie?” 

Jungkook gulps. He did plan to be home all day. “Something came up,” he explains hastily.

“Thank goodness something came up,” Seokjin murmurs. “I had a friend who had an experience with a gas leak… it was at a party, heaps of people were there and they all just fell like dominoes. My friend… he said he felt very, very sleepy… he knew something was wrong but he couldn’t move and it didn’t hurt or anything but he still knew something was wrong and he needed to go to the window but he just couldn’t do it.” 

“Sounds horrid,” Jungkook whimpers sympathetically. 

“Luckily he was saved.” Seokjin lets out a breath in a whoosh. “Luckily you weren’t at home, Kook.”

“Luckily I wasn’t at home,” Jungkook repeats. He was lucky indeed. His afternoon plans before Yoongi called were to play games and compose beats. Both required intense focus. He would likely not notice anything was amiss during episodes of intense focus. 

He shudders. The hair on his arms are standing on end. 

Yoongi takes the phone from him, attempting to comfort a distraught Seokjin. “Wanna join us for skewers, hyung?”

Seokjin says yes, of course he wants to join them for skewers, and Jungkook still has goosebumps on his arms but he’s okay, he’s okay, Yoongi has his cat paw on his wrist and he’s okay. 

He takes Yoongi’s hand. He’s okay. 

**

Taehyung likes assigning different pairs of glasses he owns different superpowers. For example, wouldn’t it be fun if his glasses could show subtitles in his language? That way watching artsy foreign movies would be so much easier. And he could use it to understand animals, too. Imagine finally getting to hear Tannie tell him how much he enjoys peeing on Yoongi-hyung’s beanie, in his own words! 

Speaking of Yoongi-hyung, Taehyung thinks it would be amazing if he had Yoongi-hyung-forecast glasses. Like, he would put it on and immediately know how Yoongi-hyung is going to feel that day. That way, if he’s feeling down, Taehyung could protect him—because as cute and harmless as he seems Kim Taehyung could be fierce and badass too—and if hyung’s in high spirits Taehyung could go to his room and they could chat. 

And wouldn’t it be wonderful if he had censoring glasses, too? Like, if he wears those glasses, he won’t be able to see anything he doesn’t want to see. That way, he could lend them to Hoseok-hyung, who’d finally be able to join them for movie night when the movie in question happens to be horror. The glasses would censor all the snakes and spiders and stuff. And Taehyung could give those glasses to Yoongi-hyung so he would never have to see anything that annoys him and saddens him and scares him ever again. So that his life is filled with happiness and only happiness. So that he would always smile that cute gummy smile and plod about like a smug kitten all day. And ooh, wouldn’t it be great if he had glasses that would let him know what thing Yoongi-hyung currently wants the most now? That way, he could get it for him and—

Okay, yes, Taehyung knows he sounds like a lovesick idiot. Because he is a lovesick idiot. He’s completely smitten for his Yoongi-hyung and wants him to be the happiest person in the world, just like how he wants Jimin and the rest of BTS and his family and an assortment of other people to be the happiest person in the world (they can all be the same level of happy, so he’s not breaking any rules).

Taehyung knows for a fact that Yoongi-hyung loves dogs. And there’s a cute dog by the road. If he snaps a picture of the dog and sends it to Yoongi, he’ll be happy for sure. So Taehyung kneels down in front of the grey pup with wiry fur, pointy ears and a tail that goes whap whap whap and pulls out his phone to take a photo, all the while absently wondering: wouldn’t it be cool to have dog-identifying spectacles? That way, when he sees a new dog he hasn’t petted before, the glasses would tell him the breed. This one, for example, is definitely a berger picard. A very good boy.

He would have stayed there with the dog for maybe ten, fifteen minutes, because the street is empty and the dog could probably use some company. But his phone rings and it’s Yoongi-hyung, who sounds… anxious. Agitated. 

“Come home?” He asks, voice quivering. 

Kim Taehyung is but a simple man. If his Yoongi-hyung tells him to come home, he’ll come home, no questions asked. So he gives the very good boy a final pet on the head and strides off, taking huge steps because he’s always secretly thought that the reason God gave him long legs must be because that way he could get to Yoongi-hyung faster. 

He takes about ten steps when a scream comes from above and he whips his head up, just in time to see… an incoming baby. 

It sounds weird when described like that, but there’s no better way to put it. It’s an incoming baby, falling from the skies, finally landing in Taehyung’s arms with a satisfying thump.

The baby looks up at him and giggles.

The mom comes flying down the stairs seconds later, on the verge of a panic attack. She takes the babbling child back into her arms, explains to Taehyung amidst snot and tears that she lives on the fifth floor and her underwear fell out of the window onto the flower deck and she was trying to retrieve it with the end of a broom, and Taehyung isn’t quite sure what that has to do with the baby but he doesn’t think it’s polite to ask. 

He comforts the crying mom, kisses the baby and hurries home to cuddle with Yoongi-hyung, who’s waiting for him on the couch like a grumpy kitten. 

He actually makes it into the news not soon after, there's footage of the mom gushing oh my god that BTS guy really was in the right place at the right time, it’s amazing, he’s magic, my wig is snatched. But all Taehyung can think is no, I’m not magic, I may enjoy imagining myself owning magic spectacles but I’m not magic. 

Because without Yoongi-hyung, he wouldn’t have been in the right place at the right time. He would be ten steps away, cooing at a berger picard, and a baby will drop to the ground with a splat like a smashed watermelon and it will happen right in front of him and he’ll be so traumatized he’ll move home to plant strawberries because that really isn’t the kind of experience he can just recover from. 

He’s not magic. Yoongi-hyung, on the other hand… he’s the most magical person Taehyung’s even known. 

**

Namjoon isn’t upset. He really, really isn’t, even though they’re having a photoshoot in a nice mountain resort and he’s the only one who can’t do the photoshoot today because he ate some mollusks that didn’t agree with him, so now he’s forced to stay back in the lodge in bed doing nothing and the group shots will have to be pushed back another day because there’s no way Namjoon can do it now. 

He isn’t upset. It’s not like the mollusks affected him that much. It was mostly rashes and itches, around his neck and his belly and on his face. He actually thinks he’s still able to do the photoshoot, their graphics editors are highly capable and know how to conceal the rashy parts. But then he made the mistake of taking some allergy pills, which triggered side effects including drowsiness and pain in limbs, so he’s now stuck in bed with nothing to do.

But he really isn’t upset. It’s great to get to do nothing once in a while, because they usually have so much to do all the time. It’s great to just sit in bed, play some iPad games that don’t require brains, surf the net, browse through some shows. The drowsiness is manageable, with their job situation he’s tired 24/7 anyway. 

So Namjoon doesn’t understand why Yoongi keeps apologizing to him. Like, yes, Yoongi was the one who bought the mollusks, but none of this was his fault. How would he know Namjoon is allergic to stuff like that, when Namjoon didn’t even know himself? And the others all enjoyed the mollusks and they’re all fine and healthy after eating them, so the mollusks can’t be that bad. Namjoon’s body is just wonky. 

Namjoon assures Yoongi countless times that he doesn’t have to apologize, it’s not his problem, and Namjoon isn’t upset. But for some reason Yoongi still persists to think he’s sad. Namjoon thinks it might be because Seokjin keeps singing “why you sad? I don’t know, nan mollusk” to him, and it kind of hammered the idea that Namjoon is sad into Yoongi’s cute kitty mind. Doesn’t help that Jimin finds that pun incredibly funny for some reason and always laughs until he’s on the floor when he hears it, which makes Seokjin want to sing it even more. 

“I’m really okay, and I’m not sad, hyung,” Namjoon says, smiling gently at his forlorn-looking band member, housemate for eight years and one of his best friends. Yoongi looks like a sulky cat at the moment, pouting and playing with Namjoon’s fingers. “You go along to your photoshoot. I’ll probably be able to join the group shots tomorrow. Keep me updated, yeah?”

Yoongi does keep him updated, they all do, sending him behind-the-scenes shots of each member doing their individual filming. Jungkook also sends scenery photos—there’s one of a lovely wooden fence overlooking a shallow, rippling stream a few feet down. It looks perfect for a photoshoot, with the bright sunshine dancing on the waters and an equally bright Taehyung posing in the forefront.

We’re practicing, Jungkook explains in his message. You and Tae are supposed to have a pair shooting here today, you’ll be standing right here beside him, leaning on the fence! But since you can’t film today we’re practicing for tomorrow. Forecast says it’s gonna rain in the afternoon so we thought it’d be better to practice now!

Namjoon doesn’t see the point of “practicing now” because Taehyung doesn’t need practice, he’s effortlessly radiant anyway—but they seem to be having fun and that’s what matters. Jungkook is getting really good at capturing light and shadows with his camera. Is there anything that kid can’t do? Namjoon wonders. 

He’s still wondering when he receives another picture from Jungkook. Same spot, same fence, except some of the posts are gone, leaving a gaping hole in the wood. He was going to ask Jungkook goodness, did you kick it that hard? when the maknae calls, sounding frantic, half in tears. 

“It broke off, the fence broke off,” he blabbers, “it’s rotted in parts, I think, we didn’t even touch it, and it just snapped—” 

“Okay, okay, Guk, calm down, deep breaths,” Namjoon orders. “It’s okay, it’s all right, it’s just a fence, they’ll repair it.”

“You could’ve gone down with it!” Jungkook screams into the receiver, and Namjoon pauses, gives his poor ear some time to recover from the ringing, and thinks. 

He could have. He was supposed to be leaning on the fence for the pair photoshoot. If the thing gave way without anyone touching it, it’d probably snap even quicker if he had been leaning on it. It’s only a few feet down, but the stream is shallow. He could have broken some limbs, hit his head. It could have been serious. Worse, he could have pulled Taehyung down with him, but he tries not to think about that possibility.

“But I’m okay, I wasn’t there, I’m in bed because of Yoongi-hyung’s magic mollusks,” he tells Jungkook, who snorts at the other end of the line. 

Later in the afternoon the photoshoot ends a bit early due to rain, and Yoongi comes crawling into Namjoon’s bed, all whiney and cuddly like an angry cat with frizzly hair. Namjoon whispers into his ear: “Why you sad?”

“I don’t know, nan mollusk,” Yoongi complains, and Namjoon dozes off all happy and warm, to quiet raindrops pitter-pattering on the window. 

**

Hoseok knows Yoongi must be stressed. They all are, what with a whole day of exhausting filming and their trusty leader being bedridden. There’s also the fence incident, which got everyone shaken, and Hoseok knows Yoongi must be the most upset of them all, that he must be asking himself again and again what if I didn’t buy the mollusks, what if I changed my mind and bought pizza, what if, what if? And he wants to help Yoongi relax, wants to tell whoever it is who dumped cement into Yoongi’s brain and is stirring it to please stop with what he’s doing and leave Yoongi alone.

He wants to help, so he does something normally level-headed Jung Hoseok would never do—he brings Yoongi to look at stars beside the stream. It’ll help, he knows. The air smells fresh after the rain shower in the afternoon, and the skies have cleared up now and there are stars, so many stars, stars not visible in downtown Seoul, stars that Hoseok can’t name but find absolutely fascinating. 

He also finds Yoongi fascinating, but he’s too shy to say so. Like, yeah, people consider him one of the loud ones in the band and they’re not wrong, but when it comes to praising Yoongi… he’s shy shy shy. 

So he simply sits and watches as Yoongi gazes up at the stars, cute little mouth slightly agape, slanted eyes shining. He’d snap some pictures from time to time—presumably to share them with poor Namjoon who’s still stuck in bed—but most of the time he just stares. Hoseok wonders what it’s like, to have someone look at him the way Yoongi looks at stars. Perhaps he already knows. Perhaps he already has someone who looks at him like that. Thinking about it makes him feel simultaneously queasy and content. 

Yoongi’s phone dings with a message. The older man suddenly grabs Hoseok by the hand, yanks him up, and runs. Hoseok can’t do anything but follow. They run, and seconds after they start running, the water comes.

It’s a flash flood. Not a devastatingly heavy one, but rapid and sudden, with overwhelming force. It doesn’t reach where they’re standing, panting, but it does sweep past the spot they had been sitting seconds ago, with the force of a tornado that could lift little girls and their dogs out of Kansas. 

Yoongi bursts into tears.

Hoseok holds him, shushes him, all the while gently guiding their legs towards the lodge, towards higher ground. “Shh, it’s okay, hyung, we’re safe now. You’re so cool, how did you sense it coming? I had no idea, I really couldn’t tell—”

Yoongi just sniffles and stuffs his phone into Hoseok’s hand. Hoseok squints at the brightly-lit screen and sees that Yoongi has, as he had expected, been sending Namjoon pictures. Lots of pictures in a row before Namjoon replies—he had probably been asleep. 

Namjoon’s reply says, simply: RUN.

Hoseok gulps. Namjoon told them to run. But how did Namjoon know? 

Then he reads on and nearly chokes himself laughing.

Namjoon

RUN

I mean, fun, not run

sorry typo

still kinda groggy

you guys seem to be having fun, that’s great

hyung why do you have me on read lol

hyung

hyung?

“We avoided a flash food because Namjoon made a typo.” Hoseok chuckles, gazing tenderly down at Yoongi, who’s leaning against his shoulder. “Wow. Life really works in crazy ways.”

But then it hits him. If he had been the one who got the text, he wouldn’t have run. He might wait a bit to see if Namjoon would say anything else, or maybe reply to him to ask him what he means. Or he might just ignore the message and write it off as Namjoon’s idea of a good joke. 

But no, he wouldn’t have run.  

“Hyung…” he begins, gently. “Do you… do you know something I don’t?” 

Yoongi sniffles again, buries himself deeper into Hoseok’s chest. “’m so tired, Hobi. ‘m so tired of seeing all those signs everywhere… all those warnings… and I can’t even be sure which are real warnings or which are just coincidences or if I’m just being paranoid… but ‘m so tired, Hobi.”

Hoseok doesn’t ask Yoongi to explain, he doesn’t seem to want to explain. Perhaps he thinks it’s something Hoseok can’t understand? No, no way. Yoongi considers Hoseok a lot of things but he’ll never consider him stupid, and Hoseok knows that. Perhaps he thinks it’s something that’ll scare Hoseok away? Not that either. While it’s an ongoing joke that Hoseok is scared of a lot of things, Hoseok knows that Yoongi would never see him as anything that’s less than brave. 

Perhaps—and this is the most likely reason—whatever is making Yoongi so tired, he doesn’t want to burden Hoseok with them. 

Silly, silly Yoongi-hyung. Yoongi’s burden is his burden. Yoongi might not think so, but Hoseok does and it’s all that matters. 

Hoseok turns his face up to the stars, twinkling, blinking, all-seeing but so emotionless. He swears he sees one shoot by (thankfully he’s always had good eyesight) and makes a wish (thankfully he’s always had good reflexes).  

Whatever is affecting Yoongi-hyung, let us share it too.

**

Yoongi stands on the roof, wind in his hair and coffee in his hand. Down there the city sprawls, lights coming on one by one, getting ready for nightfall. 

The skies fall from deep orange to purple to velvety blue. The stars pop out, so many stars—a rare sight in downtown Seoul.

It’s beautiful, and Yoongi’s going to die. 

It’s such a silly way to die too, he thinks. All he wanted was to snap some pictures of the evening sky, so pink and orange and pretty. But there were too many buildings in the way so he took the elevator to the roof of one of the tallest skyscrapers he could find in the area—it seemed to be a building comprised of mostly offices, and access to the roof wasn’t restricted. He simply pushed the door and it opened way too easily.

It didn’t open when he finished taking pictures and was ready to go back in. 

It didn’t open.

Yoongi sighs. This is such a stupid way to die. Stuck out on a roof in the blistering cold, by an ill-designed door that automatically locks up from the inside. It might even snow tonight. So cold. And no one even knows he’s here. He didn’t tell anyone which building he entered. His phone is out of battery. He has no other means of communication with him.

In a nutshell, he’s screwed. 

“I’m screwed,” he says to no one in particular, laughs dryly. Maybe it’s time for him to pay the price, he thinks. Maybe fate sent him all those warnings, alerted him to look out for his bandmates, because fate expected a payment. Because fate expected him to give his life in return.

Because meddling with destiny never ends well, right? Isn’t that part of what the HYYH storyline is about?

Yoongi laughs. Too bad he won’t live to see what his company has planned, how they want HYYH to end. Or maybe it won’t end. HYYH is forever, after all. 

It all started when he got that oddly specific captcha, Yoongi remembers. He’s forgotten why the captcha came up, what form he was filling out online, but it doesn’t matter. What matters was that the captcha said JIN MASCOT DANGER, and Yoongi had been shaken for two whole days, vigilantly keeping tabs on every mascot he saw on the street (luckily there weren’t many). When Seokjin lost the round of rock paper scissors and received the cat costume, Yoongi just knew.

He thought it was a one-time thing. He paid extra attention to all captchas that popped up after that, but none of them ever made any sense. 

Turned out the next message wasn’t in a captcha. It was in a fortune cookie, in the Chinese restaurant he and Jimin visited for the night. Look out for your friend and make sure he gets home safely, it says. Simple and straightforward. Yoongi had been planning to head to the company a bit after dinner, let Jimin walk home himself since it was close. He was glad he didn’t because Jimin turned out to be way more drunk than he thought he was. If he fell asleep in the streets and some of those men looking for trouble came across him—who knows what would have happened?

Good thing he didn’t eat the fortune like Namjoon might have. For one thing, he wouldn’t have read the fortune that could have saved Jimin’s life. For another… he’d have paper in his stomach. Ew. 

He called Jungkook a couple days later, when his music player was acting up and kept playing Jungkook singing Save Me again and again and again. It was annoying because it was so vague, he knew he had to save Jungkook but he had no idea what he was supposed to save him from. So he did the only sensible thing he could think of, and that was to hang out with Jungkook all day and keep an eye out for any potential disasters.

It worked, but it was so vague. Vague was bad. The one he got for Taehyung was even vaguer, and borderline ridiculous. The egg vibrator Seokjin got him as a joke vibrated itself off the shelf while he was typing up lyric notes. It landed on his keyboard and rolled away, still happily vibrating. After Yoongi retrieved it from under the bed and came back to the laptop to see what message the egg left him, it was a simple V. 

That was vague as fuck and Yoongi was appalled, but he still called Taehyung just to be on the safe side. He was just in time. He managed to save his sweet dongsaeng from being eternally traumatized by a dead baby he was steps away from catching. 

Or no, Yoongi was not the one who saved his sweet dongsaeng and the baby—the egg vibrator was. 

Yoongi was fuming by then. Because if that was a warning, anything could be a warning. He was truly, utterly terrified. Everything seemed like a sign to him. Stray hair in the shower formed letters. Spilt soy sauce formed shapes. He was paranoid, always paranoid, he could barely sleep because Namjoon and Hobi hadn’t had their turn yet and what if the warning came when I was sleeping and I missed it? And, alternately, what if the warning was supposed to come in my dream and I missed it because I didn’t sleep?

He was stressed, and he wanted to do stress shopping. That was when he noticed the product ads that kept popping up on the webpages, on Twitter, on Facebook. Always the same ad, the same product. Even when he was playing mobile games, the interstitial ads were all of the same thing.

Mollusks. 

Yoongi knew that the ads were usually targeted. Back when he was googling for things to do in Malta all the ads were of Malta hotels and Airbnbs and tour packages. That was understandable. But he was pretty certain that never in his life had he ever searched up mollusks. 

So he sighed and gave in. If life wanted to give him mollusks, then who was he to say no, right?

And that led to the final night of him crumbling in Hoseok’s arms, crying because he was so fucking tired and the signs kept getting more and more obscure and he was seconds away from losing Hoseok to a goddamn flash flood and the warning had to come at the very last minute in the form of Namjoon’s typo. It was horrible and unfair and he almost lost Hoseok and true he would have been swept away too but who cares about that if Hoseok was gone? 

But it’s all over now, Yoongi thinks. He curls up, back against the wall, trying his best to keep warm. He wonders how long he’ll be stuck up here until he dies. Weekend is coming so it’s unlikely that any of the people who work in the building would come up here. They probably don’t ever come up, judging from how no one’s complained about the horrible door design yet. Because if someone had complained they’d have changed it, right? 

It’s all over now, and he’s sad that he can’t even leave a message to the people he loves, sad that they might never find him, that they might think he’s still alive but simply left them and gone somewhere to become a hermit. Pfft. As if he would ever abandon them like that. He might be gruff at times and grouch about wanting to become a rock, but it doesn’t mean that he’ll just up and leave everyone. He loves them too much to leave. Even if he becomes a rock he’ll still let Taehyung carry him around, in fact he’ll be annoyed if Taehyung doesn’t carry him around because he promised and going back on a promise is bad.

Taehyung’s pocket would be so warm. Yoongi wants to be warm. 

And then light is pouring in, glowing yellow light from the door, the open door, and his bandmates are running towards him, arms wide open and faces pale, except for Jungkook who’s standing at the door keeping it open. Yoongi is very relieved that at least one of them has common sense. 

“Yoongi-yah! Look at you! My goodness!” Seokjin yells, pulls him into a crushing hug, and promptly bursts into tears. Namjoon unfurls his scarf and wraps it around Yoongi, Hoseok pitches in by giving Yoongi his coat, even though he’s already wearing two.

Jimin is nuzzling Yoongi on the chin and Taehyung is kneading his hands on his sweater and Yoongi thinks, why do people call me the cat? They’re more like cats than me. Geez.  

But whatever, he tells himself, it’s warm and cozy and they’re in Jin-hyung’s car now and Jungkook is kissing him on the forehead and it’s Jimin’s turn to start crying and then they’re all crying and Yoongi has never been happier in his life.

“We were in the dorm,” Jungkook tells Yoongi, who’s lying in his lap. “Jimin and I, we were in the dorm and the lights started flashing and it was so weird because like, we’re rich, the lights are expensive, they shouldn’t flash. And then we noticed it was flashing in morse code—SOS.” 

“So we called Jin-hyung,” Jimin continues, “we told him hey, someone needs saving, and he asked, huh? Who needs saving?” 

“I was getting takeout with Taehyungie,” Seokjin says. “In front of the store, there’s this parrot that Taehyungie is friends with, so we were talking to the parrot while waiting for our food.”

“And then Jin-hyung asked, huh? Who needs saving? And Beyonce—that’s the parrot’s name—whispered, sexily: yeah, Suga.” Taehyung proudly shows Yoongi a picture of Beyonce. 

“So they tried to call you and couldn’t reach you, so they called me. Hobi and I were hanging out at the park,” Namjoon says. “So I knew that you needed saving but didn’t know where you were. I went to Hobi to tell him, but he happened to be taking a selfie with the stars then, so the second I came over yelling hey do you know where to find Yoongi-hyung? he just showed me the phone—”

“The stars scanned as a QR code,” Hoseok finishes for him. “It opened up a page on Google Maps with your exact location.” 

“We’re so cool. It’s like we have superpowers,” Jungkook whispers dreamily. 

“Guess you’re the only one without superpowers, hyung.” Jimin giggles, kissing Yoongi on the nose. “But it’s okay because we’re cool and badass and you’re our favorite kitty.” 

The car is warm and peaceful and Jungkook’s thighs are nice and Jimin is draped over him and Seokjin is humming in the driver’s seat and Taehyung is showing him bird pictures and Hoseok and Namjoon are each holding one of his hands. Yoongi feels loved. 

The guys are joking about how cool it is that they have mundane superpowers now. Yoongi lets his lips curl up like a cat’s. 

Oh, you guys have no idea.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, Hoseok listens in on the conversations of the trainees in his agency. 

He doesn’t mean to, of course. He’s most definitely not interested in what the trainees have to say about him, especially since, most of the time, it’s bad. 

He doesn’t deserve the spot in the elite special ops squad, they’d say. Dude can’t even do transfiguration. Isn’t it the whole point of joining the company? To do transfiguration?

The rest of the guys in their squad are so skilled at transfiguration, they’d say. Jiminie wasn’t in the beginning but he tried real hard and now, look at him go! No idea why the people up there gave Hoseok a position on the team. Real stupid decision if you ask me. He’ll just drag the rest of them down.

Yes, Hoseok can do hand-to-hand combat and is fast and smart and discreet and all that jazz. That’s why they call him the golden hyung, they’d say. But if he sucks at transfiguration as much as we do, it’s not fair to promote him to the elite squad while we remain trainees, is it? 

Fine, Hoseok will admit—yes, he’s kind of interested in what the trainees have to say. Very interested. He actively eavesdrops on their conversations because, somehow, they make him feel validated. He’s not sure why—it’s twisted, he supposes. He knows that he’s terrible at transfiguration, never succeeded even once, and for some reason hearing someone else say it justifies his self-deprecation. In a see? It’s not just me, they think I suck too! If so many people think so it must be right, right? kind of way.

Because, come on, he does suck at transfiguration. Which makes him horribly unsuitable for his job, because this particular spy agency specializes in training recruits to do transfiguration. Into inanimate objects, mostly. It’s an excellent skill to have when it comes to espionage. As inanimate objects, agents can easily listen in on top-secret meetings. Who’d suspect that inconspicuous potted plant in the corner? Who’d lower their voice just because there’s a packet of tissues on the table? No one, that’s who.

Yes, transfiguration is an excellent skill to have for a spy. And Hoseok doesn’t have it. 

He tried, he really did try. Namjoon helped, they all did, but mostly Namjoon since he’s the best at explaining things. You have to believe in yourself, to put it simply, he had said. When was the last time you felt fully accepted, loved, safe? When was the last time you were truly comfortable with being yourself? Remember that feeling? Try to get into that mindset, and you’ll be able to transform. 

Easier said than done, Hoseok thinks. Maybe he’s never truly felt comfortable with being himself, not even at home—his father loves him, he knows, but he’s the old-fashioned type who never praises, only criticizes. His mother does praise him, but it’s always things like Hoseokie, you looked very handsome and confident today! Your eleven aunts all said so in our group chat! Which only makes him more uncomfortable because doesn’t that mean that they must have discussed other stuff about him in their group chat? About all those times when he wasn’t handsome nor confident? Why are they watching, always watching and evaluating, as if all that mattered in their lives were whether Hoseok was handsome and confident?

He hates it. Hates how his mind can’t take a compliment at face value and has to overthink it, hates how he actively seeks out negative comments about himself and sort of enjoys it in a twisted way. Hates how he still listens in on other trainees’ conversations, even though he’s told himself countless times that he shouldn’t, it’ll only bring him down. 

Well, I’m a spy, right? It’s a good way to prove to myself that I’m good at eavesdropping without needing transfiguration skills, he tells himself. Besides, sometimes he does obtain important information from his eavesdropping sessions. Today, for example, he finds out that some of the trainees have put Taehyung into the washing machine. Again. 

Hoseok makes his way to the laundry room just in time, pretending that he’s simply there by coincidence and totally hadn’t been stalking innocent trainees in his free time. 

Nah, not innocent. Those trainees are a bunch of assholes. 

“Who the fuck put Taehyung into the washer this time?” Hoseok yanks open the cover of the washing machine, which is making noisy banging sounds. “Leon? You again?” 

The group of little shits, led by stocky, snub-nosed Leon, simply stick out their tongues. Hoseok gives them the finger. Not an ounce of respect, those brats. Even though Hoseok can’t do transfiguration, he’s still technically their sunbae. He scowls as they run off, hooting and guffawing. Idiots.

Taehyung is an easy target for the trainees because he’s a Gucci bag over half the time. Probably the only one in the agency who never needed transfiguration training. He’s been spontaneously turning into a Gucci bag ever since he was three, before he even knew what Gucci was. 

The trainees aren’t happy about that. Most of them worked their asses off to earn a position in the agency, while Taehyung just air-dropped into their ranks out of nowhere, with no previous professional training whatsoever. Makes sense that they’d target him.

But still, it’s getting on Hoseok’s nerves. Hoseok is a firm believer that everything belongs in their own place. Gucci bags do not belong in washing machines. Even if it were just a normal Gucci bag and not Taehyung’s inanimate form, it still wouldn’t belong in a washing machine. Gucci bags are expensive shit that need to be handwashed by professionals. Yes, their agency is rich, but Hoseok still doesn’t like the idea of wasting money. And what if the bag breaks the machine? It would be such a hassle to replace and Hoseok hates hassle.

He pulls the dripping Gucci bag out of the machine and shakes it. The bag vibrates and soon a very wet human materializes, taking place of the equally wet bag. Hoseok’s teammates’ transformation processes always fascinate but also slightly frighten him, though Taehyung’s is one of the least gross ones (Namjoon’s is definitely the grossest because his body disintegrates into pieces and it’s plain disgusting to watch).

Hoseok still flinches when Taehyung lands on his lap, dripping chilling water all over his favorite ripped shorts. Laundry water is icky and he hopes Taehyung hasn’t swallowed too much of it. Their washing machine doesn’t fill to the brim so Taehyung’s life isn’t in any danger, but getting tossed into the wash all the time must not be a very pleasant experience, Hoseok imagines.

“It’s fine, I’m used to it. I think I’m starting to like it,” Taehyung always assures him. But he can never hide his trembling form and quick gasps whenever Hoseok pulls him out. 

“This has been going on for too long. We should tell the coaches,” Hoseok says, handing Taehyung a set of dry clothes. He sits down beside the wide-eyed boy, one hand on his back, waiting for him to catch his breath.

“Don’t…” Taehyung pants, “don’t tell anyone. Please.” 

Hoseok sighs. Deep down inside he knows that telling the coaches isn’t going to do any good. They’re a spy agency, the coaches probably already know about everything that’s going on in the dorms. Since they haven’t stepped in, they probably expect the recruits to solve it among themselves. 

It’s just that “solving it among themselves” would likely mean Jimin and Jungkook punching Leon senseless, and Seokjin and Yoongi might resort to medieval torture methods. They would probably all end up in jail or something. No one wants that, Taehyung doesn’t want that, so he’s developed the habit of hiding his washing machine adventures from everyone else except Hoseok, whom he trusts to be level-headed enough to not go around punching people. It’s not a big deal anyway, he always says. He just tumbles around in the water for a while until Hoseok finds him. 

It must be scary though, Hoseok thinks, to be stuck in such a small, dark, uncomfortable space and helplessly whirled around and around in cold foamy water, having to stay awake and alert in order to not drown, knowing that you can’t transform back into human form until you have enough space. It’s pure nightmare material. Taehyung is just good at pretending and very patient. 

So when Taehyung, freshly clad in dry pajamas, blinks up at Hoseok with a bleary “sleep with me?” he agrees in an instant. 

Taehyung cuddles up to Hoseok, long-lashed eyes already falling shut. Tumbling around in a washing machine is exhausting business. Hoseok smooths his loose strands out of his face and hums a soft lullaby. 

“You always save me, hyung,” Taehyung murmurs. “My hero.” 

Hoseok just holds him tighter, until his own eyes close in peaceful slumber. 

**

Seokjin used to be bad at transfiguration in the beginning, possibly even worse than Hoseok. 

He’s now so good at it that he sometimes randomly transforms out of nowhere, so good that the coaches have decided that instead of practicing transforming, he should practice not transforming. Seokjin finds it mighty funny.

“The key is loving yourself,” he always tells Hoseok. “Once you love yourself enough, it just happens.” 

He’s right, Hoseok knows. Seokjin’s learned to love himself. Or, perhaps, as Namjoon once observed, he’s always known how to love himself, it’s just that he’s only recently learned that it’s okay to show it. 

Either way, he’s now one of the agency’s favorite recruits. They usually send him to high-profile events because he’s charming and looks absolutely stunning in a suit. CEO, movie star, socialite—he plays any role they assign him flawlessly, skillfully, like he was born to do this sort of thing. 

Kim Seokjin is one of Hoseok’s biggest idols. 

But even Kim Seokjin can get sick, tired. When he lets his guard down, he loses control. The agency has entrusted Hoseok with the task of stepping in whenever he thinks things are about to get bad. You’re observant, Hoseok, and you have quick reflexes. You also look good in a suit, so you’ll play the role of Seokjin’s bodyguard just perfect. 

Sometimes Hoseok wonders if that’s all he is to the agency—“Kim Seokjin’s bodyguard”. Wonders if the agency wants him in the elite squad not because of the skills he spent years to hone, not because of his excellent performance in training sessions, obstacle courses, simulated missions, not because he’s proven time and again that he’s very good at leading a team.  

It keeps him up at night sometimes. 

But he loves his squad and he loves Seokjin and he’s okay with following him around in big parties in luxury penthouses because Seokjin is radiant and navigates social scenes like he‘s the world’s most handsome man, which he probably is, and it inspires Hoseok to want to work harder, to want to be like him.

They have had a successful night. Seokjin’s retrieved the microchip they need from their informant, and they’re good to leave—it’s just that the waiter keeps pouring white wine into Seokjin’s glass and it’s getting kind of annoying.

Hoseok notices immediately when Seokjin’s steps falter after a glass too many. He sways, eyes meeting Hoseok’s in a brief moment of horror, of vulnerability. Hoseok has one hand on Seokjin’s shoulder immediately, guiding the tall man towards the exit. There are people in the way, too many people, so many that it kind of makes Hoseok dizzy, but he pushes on.

Seokjin smiles politely at everyone he makes eye contact with, but Hoseok simply glares. He’s a bodyguard now, he’s allowed to glare. And under his breath he whispers to Seokjin: it’s okay, hyung, we’re almost there, just a little longer.

The second they emerge on the open roof, Seokjin collapses into Hoseok’s arms. His body temperature is awfully high and Hoseok scans the area quickly, infrared spectacles telling him that there’s no one around to witness something they shouldn’t. 

“It’s okay, hyung, you’re safe now. You can transform. I’ll drive you home,” he whispers into Seokjin’s ear. 

Seokjin giggles. “Thanks, Hobi! You know we can’t do a thing without you, right? You know the team would be nothing without you, right?” 

“You’re drunk, hyung,” Hoseok replies stiffly, But Seokjin just giggles and vibrates. Soon, worldwide handsome Kim Seokjin is no more. In his place is a sleek helicopter, propeller whirling. 

Hoseok jumps in. The megacity is sprawled underneath them, neon lights and billboards and streetlamps lining the freeway like a shining stream of stars. 

He follows the stream, humming a little tune, and lets the stars guide him home.

**

Hoseok likes thinking of himself in relation to his squadmates. He’s Seokjin’s bodyguard, Taehyung’s hero.

Maybe it’s because it makes him feel like he belongs. Maybe it’s because the trainees he eavesdrops on always say that he’d never be able to go on a mission alone, that he’s nothing without his team, and a twisted part of himself simply wants to agree that they’re right. 

So he’s Seokjin’s bodyguard and Taehyung’s hero and also Yoongi’s nanny. Because Yoongi has the worst track record out of all of them when it comes to falling asleep in his inanimate form. Which he’s really, really not supposed to do because there’s a limit in how long you can stay as an inanimate object. If he remains in that form for too long, he’ll never be able to change back. He’ll stay an object forever. How sad. 

The time limit differs with the person. Taehyung can go on for a really long time as a Gucci bag—Hoseok secretly thinks he probably spends more time as a bag than as a person. But for the others it’s usually two hours tops. 

And the Rolex watch—Yoongi’s inanimate form—has been lying there on the table for more than an hour and a half already. Hoseok should know, because he’s been keeping tabs on it for a while. Like, he’s got better things to do than sitting there staring at a watch, but someone’s gotta keep an eye on it, make sure Yoongi doesn’t stay a watch forever (not that Yoongi wouldn’t like it—he’d probably enjoy it, in fact, Hoseok thinks).

He’s Yoongi’s nanny. 

He starts getting really worried at the hour-and-fifty mark. Yoongi did fall asleep as a watch sometimes. He can still hear in watch form—if not, the agents wouldn’t be able to listen in on private conversations after all—but Hoseok’s been playing loud dance music for minutes and Yoongi still shows no sign of wanting to transform back.

“Maybe he’s finally decided to be a watch for good,” Hoseok whispers in horror. He’s tried screaming on the top of his lungs, playing a vacuuming video at max volume, and getting Taehyung to play bagpipes. The Rolex doesn’t budge. 

“If that’s the case, we should be happy for him, right? He’s found his true calling,” Jungkook offers, trying to be diplomatic.

“I’d really prefer him as a human though,” Hoseok says, on the verge of tears, as poor Jungkook pats him sympathetically on the back. 

“Let’s try screaming together at him, all three of us,” Jimin suggests, gesturing at himself and Jungkook. “Taehyungie can continue playing the bagpipes.”

“On the count of three,” Hoseok says, and they scream. And Taehyung plays the bagpipes. 

Upstairs, a door slams. A gruff-looking Yoongi peers over the railing, hair tousled, like he’s just gotten out of bed. 

“What’s with the racket?” He demands. “Can’t a guy get some peace and quiet around here? Is that too much to ask for?” 

Hoseok shoots up the stairs in record speed and wraps his arms around his small hyung. “Oh my god, Yoongi-hyung, it’s been two hours and the watch is still... I thought... I thought...” 

“Shh, don’t cry, baby, I’m fine,” Yoongi murmurs. His eyes dart around the room. “What watch?”

His cat eyes finally land on the Rolex sitting innocently on the coffee table. “Goodness, that’s not me,” he says. “I’ve got, like, silver lines on the sides. I think Jin-hyung’s hyung got that one for his birthday. He went swimming so he probably just left it here.” 

Hoseok doesn’t say a word, can’t, because he’s sobbing in relief. Yoongi runs a hand down his back gently. “Two hours, huh? You kept an eye over the watch for two hours, Hobi?” 

Hoseok nods tearfully. “I... I know b-being an inanimate object has its charms b-but hyung... stay human? For me? P-please?” 

“Of course. For you, everything,” Yoongi replies. He leans forward and whispers into Hoseok’s ear. “And thank you, for always looking out for me.” 

**

After Jungkook succeeded in transforming for the first time, he cried for two days straight. Because in spite of being muscular and the best boxer in the squad, Jungkook never wants to hurt people. 

“Why... why?” He had sobbed into Hoseok’s chest. “Yoongi-hyung is a cool watch and Taehyungie is a nice bag and I... I’m a knife? Why?” 

“There’s nothing wrong with being a knife, Kook,” Hoseok had told him, gently, trying his best to suppress his envy because at least Jungkook managed to turn into something, and that alone already made him much better than Hoseok himself. 

“D-don’t wanna hurt people,” Jungkook whimpered. “C-coach said the things we change into... are d-decided by our p-personalities... that means I... I wanna hurt people! B-but I don’t!” 

Hoseok ruffled the younger boy’s hair, kissed him on the top of his head. The coach was right. Back at that time, excluding Jungkook, three others on the squad had already successfully completed their first transformation, and their items all matched them in a way. Yoongi was a Rolex because he was classy and expensive. Namjoon was a puzzle set because he was freaking brainy. Taehyung was a Gucci bag because he was probably the world’s prettiest three-year-old back when he first transformed.

And now Jungkook had completed his first transformation and he was a knife. 

“A knife doesn’t have to be used to hurt people,” Hoseok had told him. “It can be used to protect those you love too, you know? It really depends on who’s holding the knife.” 

“Then will you hold me?” Jungkook was looking up at him, face blotchy with tears, eyes red and so sincere. 

“Hold you as in what I’m doing now? Or hold you when you’re a knife?” 

“Both,” Jungkook replied, and Hoseok held him, held him all night until the tears went away and the boy was all smiles once more. 

Hoseok became an excellent knife wielder. Most of the other recruits prefer guns, but Hoseok trained himself in melee combat because the day might come when he’d have to use Jungkook to fight, and he wanted to prove to the boy that a knife can be used to protect, not to hurt.

He’d probably end up being the one wielding Jungkook anyway, since the others can all transform. Hoseok, on the other hand, is only useful in combat. Because he can’t do transfiguration. 

So he trained, trained hard. Made sure he was prepared for all combat scenarios. He's prepared to use Jungkook for combat. 

He’s not prepared to use him when the two of them are on a cute hiking date, sitting down by a creek for a nice little picnic. 

Hoseok’s sharp eyes catch movement a distance away, amongst the trees on the other side of the creek. He slaps on his special vision spectacles and— 

“Oh my god, someone’s hanging himself,” Jungkook exclaims, springing to his feet. Jungkook is the fastest sprinter of them all—but the old man with the rope is on the other side of the creek, which is all the way down, which means that when Jungkook climbs down to the creek and wades over and climbs all the way back up again, it’s gonna be too late. 

“Jungkook, let hyung throw you,” Hoseok says. 

Jungkook turns around. “What? Oh, okay.”

Hoseok’s not sure about his knife-throwing skills. He’s trained and trained but there’s a lot of trees and the rope is so thin and so far away and there’s probably a less than 0.001% chance he won’t miss, according to the calculations his cool spectacles did. He might even accidentally hit the man, which is the total opposite of what he set out to do. 

But he’s got a life to save, and Jungkook is a knife. As soon as Hoseok asked, he had transformed. He trusted Hoseok that much. Maybe Hoseok should trust himself that much too. 

He picks Jungkook up, aims, and throws. 

Jungkook is quiet all the way home from the hospital, though Hoseok thinks he’s probably just embarrassed because the old man’s granddaughter had wrapped him in a tight hug thanking him again and again and again because granddad is such a knucklehead he thinks he could send me to college with insurance money if he dies but he’s an idiot, insurance money doesn’t even work that way, and I give zero fucks about college, I just want him, thank you for saving his life, and Jungkook’s always been easily flustered when it comes to girls. 

But the kid livens up very soon after they’re back in the dorm, play-fighting with Seokjin and the rest of the maknae line, and eats twice as much for dinner.

He slides into bed beside Hoseok that night and presses his bunny nose into his neck. His breaths tickle and Hoseok can’t help giggling. 

“Thank you, hyung,” Jungkook whispers. “You’re the best knife-holder ever.” 

“That’s a cool title, knife-holder,” Hoseok comments. “Like a dragontamer.”

“It’s because you’re cool,” Jungkook murmurs before drifting off. “The coolest.” 

**

Hoseok wants to believe it, too, that he’s cool. It would help with transfiguration, Namjoon said so. The sole reason Yoongi-hyung transforms so easily is because he considers himself cool, he said. So you should feel cool too. Be like Yoongi-hyung. 

But Hoseok is not Yoongi-hyung and he’s been on countless covert operations with his team and still can’t transform. It doesn’t help that the others are all ridiculously good at what they’re doing and it makes him feel lame. Which is the opposite of cool. 

“Not being able to transform doesn’t make you lame,” Jimin’s told him multiple times. “You said so yourself. You always said so, back when I also couldn’t transform.”

Ah, Hoseok remembers those days. When Jimin was like him, good at everything except transfiguration. And not from lack of practice—Jimin is one of the most dedicated people Hoseok’s ever met. He practices until he collapses, and then simply gets up and practices some more. 

Jimin used to cry in the showers, Hoseok knew because he had trained his ears very, very well. And Hoseok would let the younger recruit climb into his bed every night, even though their dorm room was tiny in the beginning and the beds were tiny too and Hoseok really liked his bed to be neat and tidy and not smell like anyone else. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make. Anything for sweet little Park Jimin who only wanted to be perfect, to be loved, to please. 

And yes, Hoseok remembers—he did tell Jimin that it was okay to not be able to transform, on those cold sleepless nights when the dorm walls were closing in and Jimin was suffocating himself in sobs. You’re good at a great deal of other things, right? Hoseok would say. Who said espionage had to be about transfiguration and nothing else? 

“You always told me that it’s okay to be different, because we’re a team and teammates are meant to complement each other’s skillsets, make up for what each other is lacking,” Jimin’s told Hoseok multiple times and he says so again today, sitting cross-legged on Hoseok’s bed. They’re the elite squad now and the beds are bigger and the dorm room less insufferable, but Jimin still likes to sit in Hoseok’s bed. They all do.

“You always told me that it’s okay,” Jimin says, “and I believed you. I still do. But why won’t you believe your own words?” 

Hoseok has no answer to that. He does believe his own words, that it’s okay to not be able to do transfiguration, but only when it concerns Jimin. Jimin is one of the agency’s most talented, most brilliant recruits. He’s nimble and graceful and flexible and smart and a whole range of other things. He’s a great sniper, a great martial artist, everyone’s favorite. It’d be okay if Jimin couldn’t transform. It’d be okay. But somehow, when Hoseok is the one who can’t transform, it’s no longer okay. 

“Double standards,” Jimin remarks. He opens his arms wide, motioning at Hoseok to come hug him. Granted, the look in his eyes are more challenging than welcoming—I dare you to hug me! I dare you!—but that’s just the kind of person Jimin is, and Hoseok lets himself melt into the hug because he’s tired, goddamit, he’s tired of the voices in his head that never stop judging. Were you handsome and confident today, Hoseok? I see you still can’t do transfiguration! Even though Namjoon spent so many nights studying up on ways that could help! What a shame! Do you really think you belong in the elite squad, Hoseok?

He’s tired of the voices. Leon’s, his aunt’s, his own. So he lets Jimin hug him, lets his caramel-like voice soothe it all away. 

“If only you could see how amazing you are, and that your lack of transfiguration skills doesn’t define you,” Jimin murmurs, and he smells like honey and cinnamon and fabric softener and it’s nice. “You’re the one Namjoon-hyung trusts the most. You always make sure Jin-hyung is safe. You taught Kookie to be confident. You never stop looking out for Yoongi-hyung. You save Taetae from the washing machine—” 

“—wait, you know about that?”

Jimin hums non-committally. “Who did you think broke Leon’s legs last week in the locker room?” 

“Shit, you did that?”

“No, that was Kookie. I was the one who broke his arms.” Jimin has the audacity to continue acting all cute, nuzzling Hoseok’s cheek. “Anyway, back to the point. You saved me, too, back when I first started turning into a cushion, you know?” 

“I did?” 

“The others kept throwing me. Remember? When Jin-hyung made a lame joke, they’d throw me at him. Or when Kookie and Taetae were playing videogames too loudly, people would throw me to shut them up.” 

Hoseok seems to recall that. It was back in their trainee days. Everyone threw Jimin around, even used him for volleyball practice. Because he was a cushion and cushions didn’t hurt, and Jimin always giggled so hard after being thrown, so they all assumed he liked it. 

“It didn’t hurt, but it still made me dizzy,” Jimin admits. “I just... I was the worst trainee out of us all, I was the newcomer... I wanted to be liked. And even though being thrown made me dizzy, it... it made me feel included. Like I was part of the friend group.” 

“You could have said you didn’t like it,” Hoseok says, shifting uncomfortably at the bitterness in Jimin’s voice.

“I know better now, of course!” Jimin laughs. “But yeah... you saved me. You saw right through me, scolded the others and said cushions aren’t supposed to be thrown and should be hugged instead! So the others all took turns hugging me every night, and I was so happy, I was liked, I had friends even though I was the newest recruit. And it’s all thanks to you. I think about it all the time.” 

Hoseok chuckles. “All the time? Even though it was such a long time ago? Like, years ago? I barely remember it myself.” 

“It’s because you’re the kind who’s quick to forget the nice things you did,” Jimin says, voice gentle. “But, for us on the receiving end, we’ll remember a long, long time. Forever, maybe. Until we develop Alzheimer’s, at least.” 

Hoseok lets Jimin hug him. He really doesn’t remember. How did he see through Jimin’s facade back then, all those years ago? He has no idea—but, perhaps, he was quick to spot the moments of uncertainty, the cracks in the mask, because he too wore a mask himself. 

Wears. He still has that mask on. Maybe that’s why he can’t do transfiguration. Namjoon will probably say it is. 

So he lets Jimin hug him.

**

Sometimes Hoseok thinks it’ll be easier to just give up on this transfiguration thing, because Namjoon’s been working on it with him for years and it still hasn’t worked out and if Kim Namjoon, the agency’s best, can’t work it out, maybe it’s just not meant to be, is it? 

Yes, Namjoon is the agency’s best, no dispute. He’s even better than the coaches when it comes to transfiguration—better than the head of the agency, even. Because he can transform into puzzle pieces, which can be separated, which means that he can be in multiple locations all at once. Incredibly efficient for spying, but also incredibly unsafe. It requires intense focus, exceptional brain power. Namjoon is the only one in recorded history who can do this. 

Namjoon is another one of Hoseok’s idols. He wants to be just like Namjoon—but he can’t, of course, Hoseok knows that. He can’t even transform into one thing, let alone multiple pieces at once. 

We don’t need you to transform into multiple pieces, Hobi, Namjoon always tells him. I’m the squad leader, but only by name. On covert operations, I’m usually in pieces and can’t lead. I don’t even have, like, autonomy! I have to rely on others to scatter me in places so that I can obtain information. You’re the actual leader. On our missions, you’re always the one who gives orders. Without you, there will be no mission. We can’t make it without Jung Hoseok.

Hoseok simply smiles and nods when Namjoon says things like that, because he knows Namjoon is just being a good friend. They’re the same age, the two of them, and they understand each other way too well. They tease other members of the squad freely, but never each other. There’s this mutual trust, a silent agreement. We’re each other’s safe harbor, and safe harbors don’t tease.  

He knows Namjoon is just being a good friend and just because he’s a few dozen puzzle pieces and not a whole person it doesn’t mean he’s less of a good leader. He always lays out the mission plans beforehand anyway and discusses with Hoseok. 

Hoseok isn’t actually leading, he’s just reciting Namjoon’s orders because the others are honestly a chaotic bunch and can’t be trusted to recite orders. Namjoon makes good plans that always work out, so it’s not like Hoseok needs to come up with his own plans, right? 

That’s what he thinks, until the hostiles come pouring in from the only exit and oh, maybe Namjoon’s plans don’t always work out. 

It was supposed to be a simple mission, in a sprawling underground base designed for scientific research. The hostiles come pouring in and Namjoon’s not there—at least a piece of him isn’t. Seokjin had discreetly sneaked that one piece into the lab, dressed in a hazmat suit and masquerading as a researcher. No one ever suspected, and even if they did Seokjin has studied up on the relevant subject and would be able to blend in quite easily. 

Either way, that part was over. The team has set themselves up in their designated positions and a piece of Namjoon is in the lab and the mission is going just fine. And then the hostiles come pouring in. 

There are so many of them, all twisted joints and scuttling limbs, like some kind of human-spider hybrid. Hoseok hates spiders. Maybe he should have opted out of this mission, he thinks. They did warn them that the research done in the base involves arachnid mutations in the debriefing. 

But he didn’t opt out and the spider-humans are pouring in and Jungkook, concealed in the air vent right above Hoseok, clutches his head and groans out.

“They know,” he whimpers, “oh god hyung they know.” 

Hoseok feels it too, the radio waves. They used it in their agency for training. At a certain frequency, the radio waves force recruits to turn into their respective corresponding inanimate objects and remain that way until they’re out of range. The coaches had used it to train the other recruits on resistance, so most of them are able to fight off its effects, though only for a little while. Seconds.

They didn’t use it to train Hoseok. They used it to try to get him to transform. It never worked. Funny, huh? Hoseok has always thought. What others have to learn to fight off has no effect on him at all, and that’s not even a good thing. The ringing simply buzzes in his ears for a while and then he gets used to it, as if it were the whirring of an electric fan. 

“How did they find out?” Jungkook demands weakly, hands over his ears. And yes, how did they? No one outside the agency is supposed to know that their agents can turn into inanimate objects. That’s what makes their operations so successful. And they most certainly aren’t supposed to know about the radio wave training. Someone from the inside must have leaked the info to one of the organizations they’ve been tracking. 

“Leon,” Jungkook pants, “must be him. He never returned to training after they fixed his legs, he must have gone to the other side...” 

The organization they’ve been tracking knows all about their abilities and the radio waves. And they’ve walked right into their trap. 

But Leon—if it’s really him—must have omitted mentioning Hoseok. Probably completely forgot about him, wrote him off as not important enough. A fatal mistake, Hoseok laughs bitterly. Their enemies would never have chosen this method to trap them if they had known Hoseok existed. 

The radio waves have no effect on him. And the spider-people are kind of creepy and his teammates are gradually turning into inanimate objects but oh please, come on, Hoseok is a trained agent, they really think he’d be deterred by that?

He barks short orders into his headset. Seokjin is the closest to the exit at the moment and Hoseok tells him to grab Jimin and go, leave before they’re forced to turn, report back to the agency and call in reinforcements. He orders the rest of his team to meet him at his location, and he sees them coming—Jungkook landing gracefully from the air vent above, Yoongi and Taehyung turning the corner. They fight the spider-people while doing their best to resist the radio waves, but they can only last so long before collapsing. 

It’s fine, because Hoseok is immune. 

He sticks Jungkook into his belt, slaps Yoongi on his wrist and slings Taehyung over his shoulder. They’re safe with him, but Namjoon won’t be able to turn back before all his pieces are put together again. Hoseok needs to reach the lab. Find Namjoon. 

The spider hybrids surge upon him, and Hoseok just laughs, wielding a gun in one hand, Jungkook in another. He’s Namjoon’s safe harbor and safe harbors aren’t supposed to be afraid of spiders.

He laughs. Fighting the hybrids is a bit like dancing. Hoseok’s always been good at dancing. Piece of cake. He’s trained for years for this. 

Down the corridor, over metal floorboards smeared with the icky green liquid that’s the hybrids’ blood. Down rickety stairs, past an eerie exhibition room with dim lights and carpeted floors. Into the lab, where the workers aren’t actual scientists but agents in disguise, but who’s scared of them? Hoseok sure isn’t. He lets Yoongi guide him with his built-in target-marking system, for who says a Rolex watch can’t have multiple functions? He swings Jungkook and incapacitates two men at once, for who says a knife can’t grow into a katana with time? 

He reaches inside Taehyung, who always carries gadgets in his pouch, and is delighted to discover a whole bag of onions. He throws the onions one by one at the hostiles, who expect Molotov cocktails or something and keep wasting ammo firing at them. Once the guys kind of get used to the idea of there being onions and start letting their guards down, Hoseok launches a grenade. 

His mask keeps him safe as he locates the missing piece of Namjoon amidst the heavy smoke. He grabs him, place him securely in his pocket. Then it’s past the exhibition room, up the stairs, down the hall littered with broken-off spider legs. Like a very intricate dance that Hoseok knows all the moves to. He can still hear the ringing of the radio waves in the background, but it doesn’t bother him. Never did. 

Up another floor, smash a window, into the waiting helicopter. Jimin, who’s piloting the helicopter, which is Seokjin, extends a hand and pulls them in. The helicopter makes its way back to the headquarters, and the rest of them, now human once more, piece Namjoon back together. The finished puzzle vibrates and Namjoon materializes, dusting off his impeccable outfit.

“See,” he says to Hoseok, “told you we can’t do it without you.” 

And for the first time, Hoseok realizes that he’s right. He did good, without needing his teammates fighting at his side. And he was confident through the whole thing, his trust in himself never wavering once because he knows he’s got the perfect skills for this, he knows he can do it, he knows he’s enough. 

This feeling is new to him and probably won’t remain for long, but it’s a start. The beginning of his journey to love himself. 

He knows it’s okay to not be able to transform.

Because if Hoseok hadn’t been the way he is, his team would have been lost. As inanimate objects. Forever.

**

There’s a whole lot of shit to sort out when they get back, of course. Now that the news of the transfiguration abilities is out, if only to a select group, there are people to silence, bribes to be made, organizations to destroy. Their operation standards have to be changed up, new equipment introduced, for to avoid there being more similar incidents it’s kind of mandatory for everyone to plug their ears on future missions, and the gear they use would have to be designed around that.

There’s a whole lot of shit to sort out and the day is a really, really busy one, and when night falls there’s nothing Hoseok wants more than to just crash in bed and sleep for years. 

He emerges from the shower to discover his bed already occupied. Taehyung and Jungkook are there, with a cushion between them—yellow, frilly. Jimin. 

Yoongi yawns and plops himself down beside them. Then Seokjin joins in, then Namjoon, looping a long noodly arm around everyone. 

“Guys,” Hoseok complains, “where am I supposed to sleep if you’re all on my bed?” 

“Hyung’s bed smells the best,” Taehyung explains from the very bottom of the pile. 

“Not our fault we’re feeling cold,” Seokjin slurs. “It’s the after-effects of the radio wave thing. You wouldn’t know because you’re the coolest and the radio waves can’t hurt you.” 

“J-Hooooooooooope,” Yoongi cheers, even though he sounds already half-asleep.

“Come to bed and keep us warm, hyung,” Jungkook murmurs. 

“Turn off the lights and join us,” Namjoon says, eyes closed. The others all make various noises of assent, except for Jimin, who’s a cushion and can’t talk. 

So Hoseok turns the light off and makes his way towards the puppy pile on the bed. But his hair is still dripping wet from the shower. How could he keep the others warm? 

But he has to, because he’s Taehyung’s hero and Jungkook’s knife-holder and Yoongi’s nanny and Seokjin’s bodyguard and Jimin’s hugger and Namjoon’s safe harbor, and his team needs him and he deserves to be on the team and it’s where he belongs and he can’t do transfiguration but so what? He’s Jung Hoseok, special agent, with or without transfiguration skills. Human or inanimate object, he knows he’s capable all the same.

So he falls into bed and makes sure to stretch himself into the perfect length to cover Namjoon’s long legs and Seokjin’s exposed shoulders on the opposite side of the bed. 

Hoseok is a soft, fluffy blanket with little airplane patterns on him, and in a few hours Seokjin will wake up screaming shit we really gotta find a way to deal with the radio waves because not even Hoseok is immune anymore! Oh my god Hoseok you’re a blanket! You finally turned! Hyung is so proud of you! 

But, tonight, he’ll keep his team warm.

Chapter Text

Yoongi knows the drill. Lurk in the toilet until someone comes and uses it. Then pop the question—

What’s your favorite color, red or blue? 

If the person says red, they die from blood loss. If blue, the bathroom fills with water and the person drowns. 

Yoongi knows the drill. He’s been a toilet gremlin for so many years he’s already lost count. Seen so many dead bodies. Made a whole statistic sheet inside his head on the color preferences of toilet-goers. Too bad nobody would be interested in seeing his detailed report, especially considering how everyone who knows about it is dead. 

It’s been ages since anyone visited him, though. No one wants to rent the apartment he’s in—and for good reason. Who’d want to live in a flat where all tenants died on day one? Yoongi probably wouldn’t have, had he been a sensible human. 

But he’s not a sensible human. He’s a toilet gremlin and it’s getting lonely, goddammit. Bathtub monster Seokjin, his partner in crime, helps lighten up the atmosphere by cracking jokes, but not even the bright and caring Kim Seokjin could remain cheerful forever. Bathtub monsters need company too. 

So they’re both immensely relieved when they hear the telltale jingling of keys, of the realtor talking. An eager, high-pitched voice follows, one neither of them has ever heard. There’s talk about signing forms, about a lease, about neighborhood policies. Someone’s moving in. 

The high-pitched voice, Yoongi soon learns, belongs to Park Jimin, a rosy-cheeked boy with squeaky shoes and a surprisingly small number of belongings. He must be poor, Yoongi decides. Who would want to stay in a place like this unless they can’t afford much rent, right? Yoongi doesn’t know exactly how much the rent for the apartment is but he bets it’s super cheap. Like, maybe three dollars a month. Perfect for broke students like Park Jimin. 

At least Yoongi assumes Park Jimin is a broke student. What else can he be? He doesn’t even own formal attire and just slouches around in old garments two sizes too big. Not that it offends Yoongi or anything, he thinks the guy is attractive either way.

Too bad he’s going to die, sooner or later. If Yoongi doesn’t take his life, Seokjin will. It’s simply a matter of whether the boy uses the toilet or the bathtub first. 

To Yoongi’s pleasure and Seokjin’s chagrin, Jimin shows up first at the toilet, humming, fingers moving towards his boxers. And Yoongi speaks. 

“What’s your favorite color, red or blue?” 

Jimin lets out a small squeal, then immediately kneels down and peers into the toilet. 

“Who are you?” He asks, eyes shining in excitement. “Are you in there? Will it hurt if I pee on you? I don’t wanna hurt you, I can go in the bathtub instead—” 

Yoongi knows the drill. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Jimin should answer the question instead of becoming concerned about pissing on Yoongi’s head. 

“Technically I live in the tank, so it doesn’t affect me. And don’t pee in the bathtub, that’s Jin-hyung’s territory,” he growls. “Just answer the question.”

“Ooh! Ooh!” Jimin exclaims, bouncing on his heels at the new information. He reaches over to lift the cover of the toilet tank. “Can I see you? You sound like an old man. Can I call you hyung? And who’s Jin-hyung? Does Jin-hyung like potted plants? I brought some potted plants, they look so nice on the window sill.” 

“Answer the question, brat—” 

“Yellow! My favorite color is yellow!” Jimin is peeping into the toilet tank now, beaming like a child who’s meeting a chow chow for the first time. “Where are you hiding?” 

Yoongi has to admit that he’s feeling very threatened. He bets Seokjin is silently laughing in his bathtub. But it’s not his fault he’s hiding, okay? He hasn’t seen a single human in eons and he doesn’t think he’d look very presentable, unlike Kim Seokjin who’s the world’s most beautiful bathtub monster, with silky hair so smooth to the touch.

The silky hair is also what ultimately brings unfortunate bathers to their doom, but Yoongi decides it’s not the time to think about that part because Jimin’s chubby fingers are pinching at the tip of his ears— 

“There you are!” Jimin beams, dragging the toilet gremlin all the way out, letting him drip water over his t-shirt. 

Yoongi blinks water out of his eyes grumpily and curls his sleek tail protectively around himself. Seokjin is most definitely howling in laughter in his shelter under the bathtub. 

“Hi!” Jimin greets. “I’m Jimin! My favorite color is yellow!” 

“I know,” Yoongi grouches. The toilet gremlin manual never told him what to do about targets who like colors that aren’t blue or red. 

Jimin’s face falls suddenly. “Uh, am I scaring you? Am I being too pushy?”

Yoongi wants to assure him no, he’s just out of his depth and Jimin’s not being too pushy, but the boy is already placing him down on the ground and wrapping him with a towel that Yoongi suspects was totally stolen from some hostel, judging from the logo.

Jimin takes a deep breath and wrings his hands, as if he’s not sure what to do with them now that they’re not holding Yoongi. His eyes dart around the bathroom, small, dingy, dimly-lit, walls bare, and finally he looks down at his lap. 

“Sorry, I was just excited,” he murmurs, and Yoongi can’t help noticing how his lips form a slight pout. It makes Yoongi want to pout too. “It’s just… I just moved to this town and I don’t know anyone and I haven’t talked to anyone for the whole day and I was really happy to hear your voice, so… I didn’t mean to unroot you from your home just like that. I can… plant you back inside if you’re really uncomfortable?” 

Yoongi’s mind is running in several different directions at once, namely dude not getting to talk to anyone for just one day is no big deal, I’ve had much worse, and why does he seem to see me as a plant, I’m not a plant, yes I’m kinda covered by moss but it doesn’t mean I’m a plant, and wow this apartment really sucks, the inside of the toilet is much better. 

But what horrifies Yoongi most of all is that as nice as the inside of the toilet is, he doesn’t necessarily want to go back. 

Or, should he say—he does want to go back, but he wants Jimin to come with him. 

Jimin can’t come with him. College students aren’t supposed to live inside toilets. Yoongi knows that much.

“You’re so cute,” Jimin says suddenly, petting Yoongi on his leafy ears. “Can you be my first friend here?” 

Yoongi’s mossy mouth falls open. Friend? What’s a friend even supposed to do? Like, he’s friends with Seokjin, yes, but all they do is have bathtub-toilet conversations and he can’t do that with Jimin because Jimin doesn’t live in the bathtub. College students aren’t supposed to live inside bathtubs. 

“I can be a very good friend, I promise!” Jimin adds. He’s still petting Yoongi’s ears and it feels nice. “I’ll text you creepy emojis and make you sundaes and we can go on cute little outings and—oh, wait, you can’t go out, right?”

Yoongi shrugs. He can’t leave, that’s true. He won’t last long without the toilet, which his soul is bound to. 

“Then I’ll just stay in here with you for as long as I can,” Jimin concludes. Yoongi gazes up at him with wide eyes under his leafy bangs. Jimin smiles. 

“That’s what friends do.” 

**

Seokjin knows the drill. He’s the world’s most beautiful bathtub monster, with thousands of kills under his belt. There’s a new guy who’s just moved in. When he comes in and chills in the bathtub, soaking away the day’s woes in the warm water, that’s when Seokjin’s gonna act. He’ll wrap a strand of sleek, black hair around the ankles and pull—and the boy will disappear down the drain, leaving but a tubful of crimson blood.

Yes, Seokjin knows the drill. He doesn’t need to kill to survive or anything, he’s a bathtub monster and bathtub monsters don’t die, but it can get a bit boring down here, in his small shelter underneath the bathtub. It’s well-decorated—Seokjin prides himself on having exquisite taste—but it doesn’t inspire him. It’s nothing new. Dead bodies, on the other hand, are new and fun. 

Dissecting dead bodies, Seokjin supposes, is his hobby. Not a very glorious one, but at least it’s something. Yoongi has no hobby. Seokjin tells him jokes sometimes so that the gremlin won’t feel too glum, but jokes only last so long. 

Yoongi has been laughing more these days, though. He’s livelier. He actually walks around on his twiggy feet and visits Seokjin’s underground home sometimes, instead of holing himself up in the toilet tank for years on end. He can’t stray too far from the toilet, but the bathtub is mighty close anyway. 

Seeing Yoongi happy makes Seokjin happy too. That’s the only reason why he hasn’t dissected Park Jimin yet. Like, yes, he’s eventually going to, but not now, because bathtub monsters have feelings too and this one has a soft spot for toilet gremlin Yoongi. 

Besides, Jimin usually just showers and never baths. It’s probably to conserve water, since the boy is poor. It’s annoying because Seokjin’s hair trick only works when the victim is bathing. He can’t drag Jimin into the drain if he’s showering, there’s not enough water to work with. 

However, he can come out of the drain himself and capture Jimin that way, and he does so one night, when he’s feeling particularly dejected because his old best friend gushes about Jimin all day now and rarely has time for him. He crawls out of the drain in all his soggy, long-haired glory, looking up through wet strands, expecting to see Jimin’s—well, dick, he’s a bathtub monster and he’s not fazed about that stuff—only to find that Jimin is not there.

He peeks over the edge of the bathtub to see the boy on all fours just like him, which can’t be comfortable because the bathroom floor looks so cold. But Jimin looks determined. He lifts his right arm and left leg, supporting his weight with the rest of his limbs. Then he stretches the right arm forward and the left leg straight towards the back, holds the pose. 

He turns to Seokjin and beams like an excited dog that’s just been saved from a puppy mill. “Try it! It’s good for you. I’m a part-time yoga instructor!” 

Seokjin can’t really say no to that, so he copies the pose and holds it. It’s surprisingly hard, especially with his hair matted all over his face, but he persists and hopes he looks graceful. 

Jimin claps his hands like a baby seal. “You’re a natural!” 

“Of course I’m a natural!” Seokjin flips his hair. “I’m Kim Seokjin!” 

Jimin nods. “Yoongi-hyung told me all about you! Pleased to make your acquaintance! I’ve been waiting to see if you’ll come out and chat, but Yoongi-hyung says you’re just shy.” 

“I’m not shy!” Seokjin complains. “Jungkook is way shyer, he comes out around twice a year, only to ask for cookies. Which we can’t give him because we don’t have any.” 

Jimin covers his heart dramatically. “Poor Jungkook! I’ll get cookies on my way home tomorrow. Is that okay?” 

Seokjin is absolutely delighted. He’s not going to admit it, but he likes cookies more than Jungkook does. “Please do that. I… it’s not like I have money, but I can repay you with yoga lessons.”

Jimin laughs. “Wait, I’m the yoga instructor. Why’d I need lessons from you?” 

“You said I’m a natural!” Seokjin points out. “And I’ll learn. I’ll learn fast and soon I’ll be better than you, and then I can give you yoga lessons.” 

“Okay.” Jimin crosses his arms over his chest. “How do you learn, though? Like, are you gonna capture a yoga instructor and keep him in your bathtub or something?” 

That sounds startlingly like what Seokjin had set out to do, but he decides he doesn’t want it anymore. “I’ll take online courses,” he replies. “Now that you’ve moved in, I have wi-fi under the tub.” 

“So you’re the one leeching off my data?” Jimin screams, jabbing a finger into Seokjin’s chest accusingly. Seokjin raises both arms in surrender. 

“Only a tiny bit, I bet Jungkook’s using most of it, that little shit. Or Taehyung.”

Jimin doesn’t look the least bit alarmed at the sudden increase of cast size. “So there are two others living in this flat, besides you and Yoongi-hyung?” 

“I wouldn’t say ‘living’ since we’re all dead, but yeah, there are two others. We don’t see them much, though, since we’re restricted to different areas.” Seokjin gestures at the bathtub. “I can’t stray too far from this bathtub, and Yoongi can’t leave his toilet.” 

Jimin looks so sad that something tugs at Seokjin’s dead, unfeeling heart. “That… that’s horrible… there’s a whole world out there, and you can’t see it?”

“Not unless someone cuts off this bathtub and toilet and drives them around or something,” Seokjin jokes. Except he realizes that Jimin isn’t treating it as a joke and is in fact seriously considering it. 

“You really want to see the world, right, hyung?” The boy finally asks, and Seokjin smiles at how they’ve barely just met and the kid’s already calling him hyung. Maybe it’s because they’re yoga buddies now. 

“Of course I want to see the world! I’m a Sagittarius. Was a Sagittarius. When I was still alive.”

“Being dead doesn’t mean you have to stop being a Sagittarius. I’ll take you one day, when I have money,” Jimin says solemnly, and Seokjin looks at his face and has no doubt he will. “I’ll break off the bathtub and toilet and fit them into a caravan and you can come see the world with me.” 

Seokjin has no doubt he will, but he still holds out his pinkie anyway. Not because he needs Jimin to promise, but simply because the guy has a cute pinkie. 

Jimin giggles and reaches towards Seokjin’s slender fingers, and they promise. 

**

Taehyung knows the drill. All tiger spirits do. There’s even a folk song about them. 

Crybabies, don’t cry,

or they’ll bite your lil’ ears!

Children who stay up late, hurry and sleep,

or they’ll bite your lil’ fingers!

The song goes on for much longer and Taehyung’s forgotten the rest of the lyrics, but this is the only part that matters anyway. He’s a tiger spirit. He eats the ears of people who cry and chews the fingers of those who don’t sleep. It’s that simple.

But the thing is, Jimin always goes to bed on time—probably to cut down electricity bills? And he doesn’t cry—at least he hasn’t yet so far. He’s already met Yoongi-hyung and Jin-hyung and still hasn’t cried, so it must mean that he’s not easily disturbed. That’s unfortunate. People who aren’t easily disturbed normally don’t cry much. 

But Taehyung is starving and Jimin’s ears and fingers look ravishing, but he’s a good tiger who follows the rules so he can’t eat them unless Jimin cries or stays up late. Neither seems like it’s going to happen anytime soon and Taehyung is famished. Yes, Jimin always leaves cookies on the table in an attempt to lure out shy Jungkook, but tigers don’t eat cookies, do they? And yes, Jin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung have both offered up themselves as emergency rations, but Jin-hyung is always wet and Yoongi-hyung is eighty-percent moss, not ideal food for a hungry tiger.

And therefore Taehyung is delighted when Jimin comes home one evening, drops his stuff onto the ground, and slumps into bed with a loud sniffle. He smells so good. Taehyung can’t wait to devour his ears. 

He places his paws at the edge of the bed and peeks up. Jimin is crying openly now, tears streaming down blotched cheeks, pathetic little sobs escaping from reddened lips. 

In his lap is a plastic box of braised pig ears and spicy chicken feet. Taehyung is in love. 

Then Jimin turns to look at him, finally noticing the pair of furry ears pointing up from the edge of the bed. He holds up a chicken foot. “Want some?” 

Yes, yes, a hundred times yes, Taehyung thinks. He leaps up onto the bed with a delighted roar and begins eating desperately out of Jimin’s hand. He downs all the chicken feet, bones and all, not leaving Jimin any, but forgive him for being selfish—it’s life or death here. Like, he can’t exactly die, but his pretty orange coat loses its sheen and his tail goes all thin and frail and it’s very damaging to his tiger pride.

He gobbles it all down to the very last bit, smacking his lips loudly and letting out happy chuffs. That’s when he notices that he’s being petted. Between the ears. 

“Pretty kitty, nice kitty,” Jimin says, and there are still tears in his eyes and Taehyung feels infinitely sad all of a sudden, so he shoves the utter horror of being called a “nice kitty” to the back of his thoughts and reaches out a paw to touch the boy’s cheek. 

“Why are you crying?” He asks. Jimin doesn’t even look taken aback at the fact that Taehyung can speak. He sniffles and blinks and Taehyung realizes that he’s gonna burst into tears all over again—so he crawls up closer, wraps himself around the boy. The empty plastic box falls to the ground, but he can always pick it up later. 

“It’s silly,” Jimin murmurs, still running a hand absently over Taehyung’s fur. “I just… I think I flunked my f-finals… I… I feel like a failure. I promised Jin-hyung I’ll get a good job and b-become rich b-but I… how am I gonna do that if I d-don’t even graduate?” 

There are tons of ways to make money without a degree, Taehyung is sure, but then he’s a tiger spirit so he’s not sure if his advice will make any sense to a college student. So he nuzzles Jimin’s chin and suggests: “Namjoon-hyung. He’s smart, he was the best student in his class when he was alive! You can ask him to tutor you.” 

Jimin smiles. “Namjoon-hyung, huh? He lives here too?”

“He doesn’t, but he comes by often. You can hear him if you stay up late enough, he makes a clack, clack, clack sound.” 

“Oh, I hear that sometimes when I’m half-asleep, I think.” Jimin nods. “That’s him? But my classmates tell me to never look out the window if I hear clacking. Why? What will I see?” 

“You might see Namjoon-hyung’s face, he peeks into windows sometimes,” Taehyung replies. He’s glad to see that Jimin is much more relaxed now and curls his tail lovingly around the older boy’s waist. 

“Oh, he can fly?” 

“He can’t.” 

“We’re on the third floor, Taetae.” 

Taehyung can’t help letting out a happy little growl at the newfound nickname. “See, the clacking sound…” he explains, “Namjoon-hyung walks on stilts.” 

After their little chat, Jimin brings Taehyung chicken feet and pig ears every day. Taehyung protests and says that he shouldn’t have, Jimin’s not that rich to begin with and it’s not like Taehyung can die, but Jimin still does it because he says seeing Taehyung inhaling food at the speed of a vampire who hadn’t had blood for weeks pains his heart. He’ll never let it happen again if he can help it. 

Taehyung stops wanting to eat Jimin’s ears and fingers. Like how Yoongi is bound to the toilet and Seokjin to the bathtub, Taehyung is bound to the bed. But it doesn’t mean that they can’t cuddle every night, especially when it’s cold and Jimin can’t afford a heater. Tiger spirits are warm.

**

Clack. Clack. Clack. 

Namjoon knows the drill. Everyone in the neighborhood knows the drill. When the clacking draws near, close your eyes. Don’t look. Don’t try to peek through your fingers. If you’re inside, don’t look towards the window. If you’re unfortunate enough to happen to be outside, crouch down and cover your face. Don’t look. Don’t look.

Clack. Clack. Clack. 

Never, never look at the stilts monster’s face! People would warn their friends, their children. There was this thief, he was outside on the streets at four o’clock in the morning. And he saw the stilts monster’s face and he fell over, petrified. When they found him in the morning, all he could produce was nonsense babbles! 

It makes Namjoon sad. Is his face that hideous? He has no idea, because he can’t remember anything about himself before his death, even if he did retain all the knowledge he learned from school, and it’s not like he can look into a mirror, considering how high up he always is. He’s not sure why he has to walk on stilts all the time. Maybe he was using a pair when he died? Who knows. He’s bound to the stilts, like some others are bound to toilets and bathtubs and beds. He’s the lucky one, he tells himself. At least he can walk around, see places.

If only people weren’t so afraid of him. He’s a considerate monster, so he only roams when most people are asleep. It’s lonely, wandering in a sleeping city, his only friends being the moon and the rain. And oh, there’s Taehyung. Fortunately, the bed the tiger is bound to is next to the window. Taehyung comes to the window to chat sometimes, but no humans ever do that. Only a fellow monster would dare to look Namjoon in the eye, he supposes.

“You’re not hideous, hyung,” Taehyung always tells him, but Namjoon thinks he’s just saying that to comfort a friend. Taehyung attempted to make a drawing of Namjoon once, but Namjoon couldn’t make heads or tails of it because Taehyung happened to be an abstract artist. 

At least he has Taehyung—except not even Taehyung appears much anymore. He says it’s because there’s a human called Jimin residing in their flat now, and if he talks it’ll wake him. Namjoon would come over and look at the sleeping human sometimes—just a brief, fleeting glance, he doesn’t want to be a voyeur. 

Sleeping Jimin looks like an angel.

Namjoon can’t believe that the human would ever want to meet him, but Taehyung waves him over one day and says that he does, so Namjoon clack clack clacks himself to Jimin’s window. 

“Is it really okay for him to see my cursed face?” He asks Taehyung nervously. He would have covered his face for Jimin’s benefit, but it’s not like he has free hands. Both are holding the stilts. 

Taehyung doesn’t answer. Instead, Jimin does.

“It’s okay, I promise!” 

And the next thing Namjoon knows, he’s staring down at the cutest smile—sunny and bright and golden—and Jimin gazes right up at him, crescent eyes meeting Namjoon’s head-on, trusting, unafraid. 

Namjoon’s never had a non-monster look at him like that, not since he died. 

Then Jimin turns, bounces to his desk, and strides back again to the window, textbook and pens in hand. Namjoon notices a small, realistic sketch on the margin of the open page of the textbook. He can sketch. 

“Taetae says you can help me with my anthropology homework. You can, right? I’ll pay you with cookies. Or, if you don’t like cookies, I can—” 

“Draw my face,” Namjoon interrupts. “I want to see how it looks like. That’s all the payment I need.”

“Deal,” Jimin says. He’s leaning over the window sill, looking at Namjoon with his smiley eyes. Not petrified. Not babbling incoherently. Perfectly fine. Perfectly safe. 

Suddenly, Namjoon no longer feels like he needs to hide his face. 

They sit there late into the night, Namjoon explaining what he knows about the subject to Jimin, and Jimin telling Namjoon all about his day at school and his part-time job at the bakery, which is where he gets all his cookies. They also talk about various other topics such as feeding pigeons, Jimin’s favorite songs, how it feels to hold a hedgehog. Sometimes Jimin laughs so hard he almost falls out of the window, and Namjoon has to gently nudge him back into place with his tiddies. 

When Jimin comes to the window one day, shyly holding out an open sketchbook, Namjoon is utterly shocked. 

“That’s me? I look like that?” He asks. On the page is one of the most beautiful people he’s ever seen, and that’s saying a lot because he’s seen Jimin. 

“The guy who got petrified after seeing your face must have been stunned by how handsome you are,” Jimin says. “A gay panic kind of thing. And then the rumors spread and everyone thought your face was cursed, but in fact you’re just unfairly hot.” 

“I… unfairly hot?” Namjoon looks down, flustered all of a sudden. He would have hidden his glowing cheeks with his hands but, again, it’s not like he has free hands. 

“You’re unfairly hot, hyung,” Jimin affirms. “But I’m kinda glad that everyone has this misconception of you. You wanna know why?” 

He gestures at Namjoon to come closer, and the latter leans in eagerly. Jimin whispers into his ear. 

“Because this way I can have you all to myself.”

**

Jungkook knows the drill. He’s a paper doll with a large knife. He materializes at night and stabs whoever he sees. It’s his curse. He doesn’t exactly want to do it, but it’s the drill.

The thing is, Jungkook is Korean to the core and he knows how important it is to respect his elders. He’s the last one to have arrived in the house, and thus he should let the other ones have their go first. That’s how it is. He’s never seen Seokjin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung before but he hears them talking sometimes and knows that they’ve been in the bathroom since forever, so he does his best to hold his primal instincts in and tells himself he cannot stab Jimin until Seokjin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung have their fun with him. He must respect his hyungs. Taehyung says Jungkook doesn’t have to call him hyung because he’s a tiger, so he doesn’t count.

But it’s been, like, months, and Seokjin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung still haven’t done what they usually do with the tenants. In fact, Jungkook can hear them chatting with Jimin sometimes. They sound happy. 

And Jungkook doesn’t really blame them, because he, too, can appreciate Jimin’s charm. He’s brought life into this dark, barren room. Jungkook watched it happen. Watched him put handmade inspirational quotes onto the wall with removable poster tape. Watched him water the cute succulents on the window sill. Watched him bring back stuffed animals and figures he rescued from the community dump, piece together yellow lamps with components he gathered, sew light-colored rugs and furniture covers. 

Jimin has made the dilapidated apartment into a home. 

Jungkook doesn’t want to kill him, but a curse is a curse, and he has a knife. He begs Taehyung one day, when Jimin is off to classes, to claw off the paper knife in his paper hands. Taehyung tries and fails. Jungkook is but a tiny, tiny paper doll, and Taehyung’s big claws cannot sever the knife from his crudely-drawn hand without ripping the whole arm off.

“Rip off my arm, then,” Jungkook sobs, “I don’t want it!” 

“It’ll hurt, Kookie,” Seokjin-hyung says from inside the bathroom. 

“But I don’t wanna knife Jimin! He leaves me cookies every day!” 

“Jiminie wouldn’t want you to rip off your arm for him,” Yoongi-hyung says, also from inside the bathroom. It’s not fair, Jungkook thinks. 

It’s not fair that the bathroom hyungs and Taehyung and, recently, Namjoon-hyung, can all interact with Jimin just fine. It’s different for Jungkook. If he wants to get the cookies and talk to Jimin, he has to change into life-size human form first, but when he changes into life-size human form, he’ll be wielding a knife. A knife he has to use. 

And therefore he can’t change into his life-size human form. He’s doomed. He just wants to be Jimin’s friend. And eat cookies.

“Maybe we can just ask Jiminie if he has a solution?” Yoongi-hyung says. He sounds pained. “You’re our baby maknae monster. We don’t like seeing you sad.” 

“You can’t see me,” Jungkook points out. 

“Fine, we don’t like hearing you being sad, brat,” Yoongi says. 

They talk to Jimin that night, in the bathroom. They make Jungkook promise not to eavesdrop, so he doesn’t—but he bets his bathroom hyungs are telling Jimin stupid anecdotes about how he’s so easy to tease, how he cried all the time when he was still a baby monster.

Ugh. The down side of having embarrassing hyungs. 

Jungkook wouldn’t change them for anything. 

The next day, Jimin comes home from school lugging a sack of melons. He sits down on the floor and begins painting faces on them—faces that look very much like his own.

“There,” he says, facing Jungkook’s paper doll box directly, as if he could see straight into poor Jungkook’s non-existent soul. “These are for you! Cut them!” 

The melons look like human heads. They’re calling out at Jungkook—cut me, cut me! 

So Jungkook lifts his knife and cuts them. Jimin carefully collects all the slices in airtight containers and goes around the house asking everyone to take a few. He also gives Seokjin-hyung one whole box to savor down there in his bathtub hideout and sits on the window sill to hand-feed Namjoon, who doesn’t have free hands. He freezes the rest in the fridge for tomorrow.

Jungkook finds himself tiring out after cutting so many melons. So tired, that he can no longer pull the knife out after sticking it into a particularly tricky melon. Jimin picks up the melon, knife and all, and places it in the fridge too. 

“You can’t open fridges, right?” He asks Jungkook.

He can’t. His paper doll hand is drawn in a minimalist style, he barely has fingers. 

“I don’t think so,” he tells Jimin, truthfully. 

Jimin envelopes him in a hug. 

“From now on, you don’t have a knife. You can come out and chat,” he says, and gives Jungkook a cookie.

**

Hoseok knows the drill. The problem is once he starts, he can’t stop. 

It’s a very weird process. He’s not sure what whoever dreamed him up had been thinking in the first place, but, basically, he lives in a videotape. 

Hmm, wait, that’s not it. He’s… kind of in a videotape. Kind of there, kind of not there.

The gist is, if someone plays his videotape, they’ll see Hoseok, standing somewhere familiar—outside the gates of their neighborhood, for example—holding a whirring chainsaw. 

As the video goes on, Hoseok comes closer, closer. Into the building, into the elevator, at the door, inside the apartment, in front of the viewer. And then he raises his chainsaw— 

Well, you can imagine the rest. 

It’s a creepy urban legend, yes, but it’s very tiring for Hoseok because wherever the videotape goes, he goes too. He's always running, carrying a stupid heavy chainsaw. And once he starts running he can’t stop until his work is done.

It’s exhausting business. Hoseok wonders what he had done when he was still living, to end up with an afterlife like this. Maybe he ran a lot? Maybe he was a professional marathon athlete? Maybe he was an idol who filmed a music video called Run? Who knows, the possibilities are endless. 

Anyway, it’s been a while since Hoseok’s seen any action because, let’s be real, who owns equipment for videotape-watching anymore? Park Jimin, that’s who. Apparently that guy really likes picking things up from the junkyard. Managed to make a whole functioning radio once, out of scraps.

The first time he played Hoseok’s tape, he got so surprised that he tore the power plug out of the socket. That, of course, terminated Hoseok’s running process. He only barely reached the building. 

Park Jimin was a smart one. Usually, Hoseok’s victims never realize that Hoseok’s coming for them until it’s too late.

Jimin tried playing Hoseok’s video once again afterwards, which was annoying because he rewinded the tape and Hoseok had to start over. This time he made it as far as the door, and then Jimin paused the tape. 

This meant that poor Hoseok was kind of just stuck there, hovering in the door as a non-entity looking in. He saw that the apartment had changed a lot since he last visited it. It looked nice, lived-in. There were cozy rugs on the floor, and Jimin was holding the remote control on the bed. Beside him was some paper and a pair of scissors. He seemed to be… making clothes for paper dolls? Hoseok was surprised. This was the first time an arts-and-crafts type had taken up residence in this flat. 

Hoseok liked the arts-and-crafts type. It would have been nice to be friends with Jimin. He seemed like a cool kind of guy. Not many had been brave enough to play Hoseok’s video twice.

He didn’t get to see much else because Jimin switched off the TV soon after, but Hoseok could swear he saw a striped tiger tail poke out from under the bed before he was pulled back into the inside of the videotape. 

The third time the video is played, Hoseok starts at the hill outside the building. He runs, runs, turns a corner—wait, he’s no longer heading towards the apartment. Has Jimin selected to watch TV at someplace else? 

He turns, runs, runs some more. The chainsaw weighs heavily in his hands. And then he arrives— 

In the very back of the junkyard. Hoseok’s sharp eyes take in the whole scene. There’s a huge bus, painted a bright yellow. Some windows are covered by canvases, but he can still see the interior from the places where the canvas is rolled up. It seems that most of the seats have been removed, and the inside has been decorated to look like a camper van—but do camper vans normally have a toilet and bathtub sitting beside the window in plain sight?

There’s no time to wonder because he’s still running, so close, so close now. And he’ so tired. 

Jimin is standing there, welcoming him with wide arms. “Hoseok! You’re Hoseok, right? It’s written on your videotape! Aren’t you tired of running? Come join us, we’re going on a trip!” 

Hoseok melts a little at the bright, happy smile. “I can’t!” he attempts to warn Jimin. “Yes, I’m tired of running, but I can’t stop! I can’t stop until I use my saw on you, so you’d better drive away this instant!” 

Jimin nods. “I figured as much. But I’m not the one who played the video this time. He is!” He points towards the back of the bus, where some ridiculously tall dude is standing. Oh, wait, he’s not ridiculously tall. He’s just standing on a pair of stilts.

“YAAAAAH!” Hoseok screams. And runs. Runs. He can’t stop. He slices through the stilts. He’s so tired. 

His job is done now. He watches as Jimin smashes the video player on the ground and gently puts away the videotape into a box. 

He’s so tired. He falls down on his knees, panting hard. His chainsaw has stopped whirring. 

And then, there are arms around him.

“You can stop running now,” Jimin says, gently smoothing Hoseok’s bangs out of his eyes. Hoseok doesn’t think he has ever felt so relieved in his entire afterlife. 

Stop runnin’ for nothin’ my friend, he thinks. Sounds familiar. Maybe it’s from a song he liked when he was still alive. 

He can stop running now.

“But… but, wait, I sliced that poor guy’s stilts—” 

Jimin simply places a finger on his lips. “Shh, it’s all right. We’re so grateful that you helped. He was having trouble fitting into the bus.” 

The stilts monster, now with significantly shorter stilts, is tottering his way up the steps into the amphibious bus. At least that’s what Hoseok thinks it is, judging from the way the vehicle body is mounted above the wheels. 

“We’re going to see the world. You coming?” Jimin asks. 

Hoseok supposes he can’t say no to that. Jimin has his videotape, so it’s not like he can leave. 

Besides, he already feels like he’s home. 

**

Kim Army knows the drill. 

Like, she’s only seen the phantom bus maybe ten times and that’s not a lot, but she’s fifteen and it only comes by once a year.

It always passes by her grandparents’ farm at four o’clock in the night. A bright yellow bus. She’d see it outside the window. She’d hear talking, laughing, the clacking of stilts. Minutes later, it’d shimmer and fade away into nothingness.

“It’s the sunshine undead caravan,” her grandma had told her. “There’s been sightings all over the world. Legend has it that there was this boy who got adopted by a group of monsters—or did he adopt the monsters? I forgot. Maybe they adopted each other. Anyway, they started traveling the world on a bus they built themselves. They traveled for a long, long time, until the boy became an old man. The monsters were sad, because while they could live forever, the boy could not.”

Army clutched her heart. “Oh, no…”

“But they figured out a way. Like how the monsters were all bound to their respective objects, when the boy—the old man—died, they bound him to the bus. That way, they could all go on, traveling together. Forever.”

“That’s nice,” Army said. “It’s a sweet story, monsters loving a boy who wanted to show them the world. But… but why would a boy grow to love monsters?” 

Her grandmother petted her dotingly on the head. 

“Why wouldn’t he, if all he wanted was to love and be loved, and the monsters gave him just that?”

Chapter Text

Ever since Taehyung remembers, he’s been wearing a bowl of colorful fish on his head.

People talk about it, of course. Everyone he’s met talks about it. Most of the time, they’re worried. How does he breathe? They’d say. He doesn’t have gills! Taehyung would try to convince them that he can breathe just fine, the water doesn’t fill to the top and he can breathe by tilting his face up a little. But no one ever listens. They’re still concerned. Countless people have tried to pressure his parents into taking it off, to no avail. It’s not like his parents were the ones who put the bowl on his head in the first place. He was born with it. It’s just there. 

Taehyung soon discovers that what really makes it hard to breathe is not the glass bowl, but the way the people talk. But, again, he’s just a seven-year-old from the countryside with a fishbowl on his head, so no one ever listens. 

They never listen, but they’re always watching. And talking. 

The seven-year-old grows up to be ten years old, twelve. The fishbowl remains secure on his head. Taehyung adores the fish. There’s an indefinite number of them, it seems that new ones always pop up every time he wakes. Some disappear for a few months and come back again. They give Taehyung enthusiastic little kisses on his cheeks. 

And then the twelve-year-old becomes a teenager who goes to an audition with his friend. And all of a sudden, he’s an idol. 

The bowl comes off before the debut, of course. An idol wearing a fishbowl is unheard of. How’s the agency supposed to market that? Besides, with their intense dance moves, the fish can accidentally slosh into his mouth, and it’d be very inconvenient in a live performance. It’d also be very inconvenient for the makeup artists. 

Yes, it’d be very inconvenient. But, surprisingly, the company doesn’t ask Taehyung to take the bowl off. He chooses to do so himself.

He chooses to do so after overhearing a conversation from outside the door of the practice room. Some other trainees who didn’t make the group are hanging out, chatting. Seokjin’s there too. Pretty, meek Seokjin with his deer eyes and gentle mannerisms, who shyly convers his mouth when he gets embarrassed. He’s there, chatting with the other trainees. 

“This group is doomed from the start, Jinnie,” one of them says. “Like, I love Taehyungie and everything, but how’s this gonna work? Imagine the dance formations. How are they going to look balanced, when one of you is wearing a fucking fishbowl on his head? Come on.” 

“You’re the eldest hyung in the group, Jinnie,” says another. “You need to convince him to take that hideous thing off. Seriously.” 

“But what if the fish dies when he takes it off?” Seokjin says. Shyly. Meekly. 

“It’s just fish. I don’t have anything against Taehyungie, but think about the future of your group. The dance formations, Jinnie. Taehyungie will be the odd one out. You’ll be known as that boy band with a member wearing a fishbowl.” 

When Seokjin speaks again, he no longer sounds shy. He no longer sounds meek. 

He sounds excited. 

“In that case, we can all wear fishbowls on our heads. That way the dance formations will be balanced. No one will be the odd one out.” 

“Dude, that’s not what I meant—” 

“We can be the boy band with seven members wearing fishbowls,” Seokjin exclaims joyfully. “How’s that sound?”

“You know that’s not what I—” 

“I know,” Seokjin cuts him off, and Taehyung swallows because he’s never heard his meek alpaca hyung sound so deadly. “I know what you mean, and fuck you.” 

So Taehyung takes off the fishbowl himself, that night. The fish are sad to part with him, he can tell. But it’s for the best. He wouldn’t want to hold down his group. He wouldn’t want Seokjin—or the others—to actually start wearing fishbowls on their heads. It won’t be comfortable for them. Taehyung is used to it with all those years of practice, but the others aren’t. They’ll probably choke on their fish.

So he takes off the fishbowl, sets it down at the bedside table. The fish gaze up at him with beady, forlorn eyes. He can already see the colors beginning to fade from their scales. 

Seokjin comes in later and looks very taken aback when he spots the fishbowl on the table. Taehyung knows he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. Taehyung is grateful for that. 

He catches Seokjin sneaking inside the room halfway through dinner to feed some crumbs to the fish. He thinks Seokjin is wonderful. 

He thinks Seokjin is wonderful, and sometimes he coughs up fish because of that. Beautiful butterflyfish with a bold yellow color. 

It’s hard. Coughing up fish sucks. But at least they’re slippery so it’s easier on his throat, and at least he’s always got a bowl handy so the newly coughed-up fish have somewhere to go. 

Taehyung isn’t especially fond of coughing up fish, but he’s glad it’s him. He’s used to fish. And besides, if fish appear every time he thinks about how wonderful Seokjin is, it must mean that his feelings are valid, that mother nature agrees that Seokjin is amazing. 

He can live with that.

**

Taehyung coughs up koi, glowing red koi, when he thinks about Jungkook. It’s kind of a problem because he thinks about Jungkook a lot, it’s hard not to, he’s always there. 

He thinks about Jungkook when they first met, all small and timid and bunny-eyed, staring up at his fishbowl with awe. 

“They’re beautiful,” he says, eyes wide. Taehyung beams. 

Usually, people who meet him for the first time would want to know a multitude of things. How Taehyung manages his fishbowl in daily life, if it makes him uncomfortable, how he sleeps with that kind of thing on his head. They have questions, questions, questions. 

But Jungkook simply thinks the fish are beautiful. He’s never stopped thinking the fish are beautiful. He no longer voices it because he knows Taehyung already knows, they understand each other so well, they’re like two peas in a pod. But he still shows it in other ways. He’d sketch them. Do photoshoots with the fish. Kiss the glass bowl when he thinks no one’s looking.

Taehyung thinks about Jungkook a lot. For Jungkook, Taehyung will keep his fish beautiful. 

For Jungkook, the whole world. 

**

The fish fade in color and even disappear if left unequipped for too long, Taehyung soon realizes. That won’t do, of course. For Jungkook, for himself, he must keep the fish beautiful.

So though he keeps the bowl off for schedules, he still wears it in his free time. The fish seem to recharge that way. They regain color and shimmer back into existence. If he wears the bowl for several days in a row, it blossoms into a whole ecosystem. 

Everyone likes it when that happens. Taehyung catches them talking about it sometimes. 

“Taehyung’s fishes are doing well,” Yoongi would say. 

“Fish, hyung, not fishes,” Namjoon would say. 

“Fishies,” Hoseok would compromise. 

“Fishies,” the rap line would conclude in unison. Taehyung thinks they’re adorable. 

Taehyung looks up to the rap line more than anything, but he shows it in different ways.

Hoseok is the easiest. It’s so easy to love Hoseok. It’s so easy to show that you love Hoseok. Hoseok makes everything so easy. He’s like magic, he takes the stress away. 

But sometimes, Hoseok gets stressed himself. Taehyung can tell when Hoseok starts staring at his fish. It’s soothing, Hoseok always says. Staring at the fish helps him calm down a bit, helps him remember how to think. Helps him gain hope again. 

Perhaps that’s why there’s fish in Hoseok’s Hope World music video? Hoseok never says, and Taehyung doesn’t ask. He still makes sure to hang around Hoseok whenever he catches him staring at his fish, just to check if he’s stressing out again. It’s such an easy way to tell if Hoseok is stressed. Hoseok make everything so easy. 

Taehyung doesn’t stare at his fish when he’s stressed. Taehyung doesn’t do anything in particular—at least that’s what he thinks. But Hoseok can still tell when he’s down. Hoseok knows, and Hoseok hugs, and writes sweet letters to him and kisses his head and makes him feel like he’s he bravest person in the world for just existing. 

Taehyung thinks Hoseok is an angel. And then he’d cough colorful tropical fish into his bowl. 

But it’s okay. Coughing doesn’t hurt that much anymore. It’s as if the fish are deliberately making it easy for him to cough them up. And they always look so nice and serene, swimming around in their little bowl.

**

Taehyung always wears the fishbowl when he’s sleeping. He has to, especially when they have full schedules for the whole day and there’s no other available time to recharge his fish. The fish absolutely need to be charged, or else they’d fade away. 

In fact, sometimes Taehyung feels like he’d fade away too if the fish aren’t charged in time. Perhaps he needs the fish as much as the fish need him. 

So he has to wear the fishbowl when he’s sleeping. But sometimes, when the day’s been overwhelming, when people won’t stop talking, the water rises. Maybe it’s because the fish are crying? Do fish cry? Taehyung isn’t sure, but either way it gets harder to sleep and breathe at the same time. 

Taehyung makes it a habit to sneak out during times like that. Back when they all lived in the same room he kind of had to, because otherwise he’d wake the others. But even now, when he no longer has to share a room, he still sneaks out. Sits on the stairs and just tries his best to breathe. Like, he could take the bowl off, but he also doesn’t want to because he’ll just end up feeling worse the next day, so he supposes this is something he’ll have to deal with. 

Don’t get him wrong, Taehyung really loves his fish. He does. But humans need to breathe to survive so at times like this he can’t help wishing he wasn’t born with that fishbowl on his head. Because it’s so hard. Tilting his head up and pursing his lips to get air is so tiring. It makes him want to cry, but wouldn’t that just make the water come up even more?

And then, always, always, there will be a smaller, soft hand holding his. Even if he can’t see it, having to face up. Even if he can’t hear Jimin’s voice clearly, ears dipping under the waterline. He holds his hand.

I love you, Jimin writes on his palm, on his back, again and again and again, and Taehyung squeezes his hand hard, spluttering and gasping, until the water eventually comes down. 

It’s the Jimin effect. Jimin makes the water come down.

“You must be tired, baby, come back to bed,” Jimin says, helping Taehyung up as little fish dance in the water and kiss their human on the cheeks. 

Taehyung doesn’t need to tell Jimin he loves him. Jimin knows, and Taehyung knows too as he coughs up cute stripey clownfish into his bowl. The orange fish join the butterflyfish and koi and tropical fish and they all swim together happily, colors in full bloom. 

**

Eventually, Taehyung looks it up. He’s always had episodes of coughing up fish, but he certainly doesn’t remember coughing up this many when he was a kid. 

Apparently not even the internet has any idea what coughing up fish means, but he does discover a similar disease—one in which people cough up flowers when their love for someone isn’t requited. 

How sad. 

The others have done their research too, Taehyung hears them talk about it sometimes behind his back. 

“Hanahaki, that’s what it’s called, the flower-puking thing,” Hoseok would say. 

“But Taehyung doesn’t puke flowers. He only pukes fish. Sashimihaki?” Yoongi would suggest. 

“Sashimi is food, hyung. The word you’re looking for is sakanahaki,” Namjoon would say. 

“Fine, who cares what it’s called?” Yoongi would shrug. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure it works differently. Like, hanahaki only happens if your love isn’t requited. It wouldn’t make sense in Taehyung’s case. Everyone loves him. So maybe sakanahaki happens if your love is requited.”

“That’s horrible,” Hoseok would say, aghast. “Our love is making him puke up fish. What should we do? Stop loving him? How does that work? We can’t control stuff like that.” 

And then there would be silence as the rap line puzzle over how to stop loving somebody, until they’d eventually agree to do more research and see what happens. Taehyung thinks they’re adorable. 

Taehyung looks up to the rap line more than anything, but he shows it in different ways, and the rap line knows it. They show their acknowledgment of Taehyung’s affection in different ways too. Hoseok with kisses, Namjoon with words. 

Yoongi doesn’t make it obvious, but he’s always watching, caring, protecting in the background. Like a silent hero. 

He sits down beside Taehyung one day when he’s busy coughing his lungs out into the bowl. Well, not exactly his lungs, just fish. Yellow and red and orange and a variety of other colors. He sits down beside Taehyung and gently places one hand over his heaving back.

“If the fish represent requited love, who does each of them stand for?” He asks. Taehyung points them out to him one by one. There’s fish for his parents, for his brother and sister. There’s the yellow ones for Seokjin and the red ones for Jungkook and— 

“That one is mine,” Yoongi says, pointing at an absolutely ugly fish with a splotchy dark grey color and long whiskers, mooching at the very bottom of the bowl. It barely moves, just kind of chillin’. 

Well, that one is Yoongi’s, but Taehyung has always been afraid to tell him so because wouldn’t he be sad that other people’s fish are colorful and lively while his aren’t? He’s questioned himself multiple times why he always coughs up bottom feeders whenever he feels overwhelmed with love for Yoongi. He’s actually tried to get it to come out in different colors just so it would be less hard to explain to Yoongi, but it never worked. 

“I’ve always liked that one the best when I was little and looking at my grandpa’s aquarium,” Yoongi drawls. “It’s the cutest, don’t you think?” 

Taehyung squints. He supposes it’s kinda cute with those bubble eyes and old-man whiskers.

“It’s kind of like hyung. It eats other fish’s poop and cleans up the aquarium bottom,” he says. And when Yoongi narrows his eyes, he immediately realizes he’s said the wrong thing. 

“No, no, I didn’t mean you eat poop!” He quickly tries to amend. “I mean, you’re always looking out for us and when we need to unload the garbage that’s holding us down, you’re always there to listen. Without you, my fishbowl would be dirty and I’d swallow fish poop all the time and—” 

“Okay, okay, I get it, shh.” Yoongi laughs, and Taehyung knows he gets it because he always does, there’s never a need to explain anything to Yoongi, he just knows. He just knows and sits there with you in companionable silence, watching people go about their lives outside the window.

“Thank you, hyung,” Taehyung says, spontaneously, after a few minutes. Yoongi looks up from beside him, hand still on his back. 

“Why?” 

It’s something Taehyung’s always found hard to explain, why he’s thankful. But he is. He just doesn’t know how to say it in words. As always, Yoongi notices when he’s getting tense. 

“Relax, it’s not bad to not be able to explain something in words,” Yoongi tells him. “People will say it is, will pressure you to become better at it, but I think the best way to become better at it is to just think fuck it, I’m fine the way I am.” 

Taehyung stares, and Yoongi continues. “People always tell me being a bit shy and hating crowds is bad. That I should practice being more confident. What they don’t realize is by saying that, they actually make me less confident, because it means I’m not good enough and why’d I be confident about that? But then I learned to think fuck it, I’m doing as well as I can and people should mind their own fucking business and see, now I deal with crowds just fine.” 

Taehyung laughs, and he still doesn’t know how to explain his gratitude in words, but it’s okay because fuck it, he’s doing as well as he can.

**

“You know, I used to have fish too,” Namjoon says one day, when it’s just him and Taehyung, at a park beside the river, looking up into the skies. 

That catches Taehyung off guard. His eyes widen. 

Namjoon smiles wanly, taking it as a sign that Taehyung’s feeling betrayed. “I’m sorry I never told you. It was a painful experience for me.”

But Taehyung isn’t feeling betrayed. He knows how painful the experience can be and he doesn’t mind if Namjoon didn’t want to talk about. What he really wants to know is what happened to the fish. Why Namjoon doesn’t have them with him anymore. 

It must be horrible. Taehyung can’t imagine life without his fish. Without them comforting him, calming him, pecking him on the cheeks, booping him on the nose. Like, yes, when it gets hard to breathe he wishes he never had them, but those are only brief episodes that are over in a flash. He loves his fish. 

But Namjoon looks so confident, so happy, so comfortable in his own skin. If Namjoon can be such a wonderful person without his fish, surely it couldn’t have been that horrible for him, no? 

“I didn’t want to tell anyone about it… no one knows, not even Yoongi-hyung,” Namjoon says. “But you’ve been coughing up fish a lot and I’m concerned. It’ll hurt you eventually.” 

Taehyung feels his breaths come short. If Namjoon says so, it must be right. “So… you’re suggesting that I get rid of the fish?” 

It’s now Namjoon’s turn to widen his eyes. “No. No! I’m not suggesting that you get rid of the fish. I’m not suggesting that you do anything. It’s not something I can advise you on. You have to figure it out yourself.” 

“Oh.” 

Taehyung feels a bit like an abandoned puppy now. If not even Namjoon, his leader and fellow-fishbowl-wearer, can tell him what to do, then who can? 

“It’s not a bad thing to have fish,” Namjoon adds hastily. “Like, I’m sure you already noticed yourself, but the more love you feel and receive, the more fish you cough up. It’s a good thing to have love! So don’t feel bad about it. I… I might not be able to give you advice, but I’ll be here if you need me for anything else. I’ll be here for you, every step of the way.” 

Taehyung trusts that he will be.

When they leave the park and head home on Namjoon’s bicycle, Taehyung can swear he sees a velvety purple fish swim past in the sky. 

**

Taehyung first notices it when he lugs his easel upstairs, opens the pretty colors he’s ordered. He’s always wanted to try finger painting. 

He watches a fish escape from the bowl—just like that—when he’s busy at work on his first masterpiece. It circles around Taehyung’s head once, kisses his cheeks and boops the mole on his nose, then disappears out of the closed window, into the night sky. 

Taehyung’s art supplies clatter to the ground as he rushes to the window, throws it open, and looks out. His one little fish glides away, and up there in the sky he swears he sees a whole school of purple fish milling about, welcoming it into their ranks. 

Hm.

More fish escape when he writes songs. Sings songs. Dances. Plays the piano. Takes pictures. Sometimes they appear and swim around Taehyung in a swirl of colors, even when he’s just sitting there doing nothing. He asks Namjoon once whether it means, somewhere in the world, someone is gaining joy because of him, and Namjoon says he doesn’t think so because if that’s the case he’ll be radiating fish twenty-four seven. 

It’s fine if they don’t know why the fish appear, though, Namjoon says. You can’t define fish. 

More fish escape, join their brothers in the sky. Taehyung would have felt sad to lose them, except he does not lose them because he realizes that he sees them everywhere now. They’re there, weaving their way through the excited fans in concert avenues. They’re there on the street sometimes, he sees them swimming around random pedestrians, kissing them on the head, and he’ll know that they’re either listening to his songs with earphones or playing them in their heads. 

Sometimes he even spots his fish on the internet. In their replies on their twitter accounts, of course, there’s a lot of them, but other places also. Really random places that don’t seem to have anything to do with him. But his fish are there. He knows they’re his because they always come out of the screen to say hi.

He no longer coughs up fish now that he’s releasing them in other ways. And slowly, slowly, he realizes that maybe it’s time— 

“—to smash your fishbowl, yes,” Namjoon says. 

“Not before I try it on,” Seokjin says, genuinely curious. Namjoon chuckles. 

“It won’t work for you. Everyone has their own… thing, and you do too, hyung. They just appear in different forms, and Taehyung’s is fish. What fits on him won’t fit on you.”

“Okay,” Seokjin says agreeably, thinking about his own garden of butterflies he’s cultivated inside his chest. 

Taehyung looks down at the bowl in his hands. At the fish swimming around in it happily, fish of all colors. 

He lifts the hammer. 

In an explosion of light, the fish come swarming out. More fish than there had been in the small bowl. More fish than it could ever hold. 

They give Taehyung soft pecks all over, some of them beginning to peck the rest of the members too. Taehyung can hear Hoseok giggling because he’s ticklish and the fish keep aiming for his armpits. 

At the window, other fish are waiting for them. Some of them are purple. Namjoon’s. Namjoon wave at them with a goofy smile and they all wave back with dancing fins. 

And one by one, they’re gone. The slowest one is splotchy grey and keeps trying to go up Yoongi’s nostrils, but eventually Yoongi manages to wrangle it off and send it on its way too. 

They’re gone. 

But not gone, just around. They’ll be back to visit, Taehyung knows. Besides, he can always look at Jungkook’s photoshoots of them when he misses them. 

Jimin takes his hand. Squeezes. In his other hand is champagne. 

“So, are we gonna celebrate or what?”

Chapter Text

“This is Yeonjun!” Namjoon says proudly, holding up a small infant with grabby hands. “He’s one year old!”

“How can a person be one year old?” Seokjin says in disbelief. Namjoon laughs.

Beside them, Jungkook hesitantly reaches out, touches the baby’s chubby hand with his own. Tiny fingers curl around his thumb, giving him goosebumps.

This is a whole baby. He’s one year old. 

“Taehyun and Kai are minus two years old right now, but we expect them to sprout sooner or later,” Namjoon adds, busily watering the clumps of soil. 

Outside the airship is howling wind, a shimmering gray mist. Long-legged jellyfish-shaped monsters floating past, oozing venom. But here, in Namjoon’s greenhouse at the airship's rear, it’s warm and safe. Plants are thriving—colorful poppies, happy-looking grass, round bushes, purple-leafed trees. Many non-plants reside there too—small nests of fairy dragon whelps, goddess statues, straw huts for hedgehogs. A pond full of crabs, much to Namjoon’s delight and Seokjin’s horror.

“How can a person be minus two years old?” Seokjin demands, but Jungkook’s mind is already elsewhere. 

Ever since he can remember, he’s been the youngest on the airship. Yes, he’s aware that there are other vehicles out there, bringing parcels of joy around the desolate post-apocalyptic world, and he’s heard that some of them have younger passengers. But on this airship, his airship, he’s always been the baby. Even after he’s grown taller than Jimin and begun using Yoongi for weight-lifting training, he’s still the baby.

Yeonjun giggles at him and Jungkook wants to tuck him into a little pram with a transparent plastic cover on the top so that he can see the outside world but also be safe from hail or whatever. He wants to pamper him and build him a little miniature dollhouse that lights up in the dark and has a little slide in the backyard. He wants to sing him lullabies until Yeonjun closes his eyes and slowly turns into a dog snoring in Jungkook’s arms. 

He wants to do so many things—but are these even the right things to do? What if Yeonjun isn’t interested in turning into a dog? What if Yeonjun doesn’t want a miniature dollhouse? And what’s the point in seeing the outside world anyway, when it’s all grey nothingness and monsters with gnarly legs? How does one even take care of a baby? 

Jungkook is mortified. He’s not ready. He doesn’t feel ready. 

“How do I be a hyung?” He whines. Namjoon and Seokjin turn to look at him. Surely they’ll have the answer, Jungkook thinks. They’re both amazing hyungs. 

“It’s not that hard,” Namjoon begins, as he consults the fertilizing schedule chart Hoseok made him. “See, it’s all relative. Jin-hyung may be the eldest of us all, but before he boarded this ship, he was the maknae of the family. Jiminie and Taehyungie may be part of the maknae line, but at home they had younger siblings! So it just depends on how you look at it.”

That’s not the answer Jungkook is looking for. Even back at home, before he saw the ad asking for volunteer hope-deliverers, he was the baby of the family. His situation doesn’t apply here.

“I believe that you’re already very capable of being a good hyung, Jungkookie,” Namjoon says, and Jungkook wants to believe it because if Namjoon said it it must be true, but… but how could he be a good hyung, when he’s never learned how to be one? 

“Okay, what if we all act like we were maknaes for one day, and you act like you were our hyung? That way you’ll know how to be a hyung,” Seokjin suggests. It sounds like an absolutely horrible idea. 

Jungkook loves absolutely horrible ideas. 

“Sure, hyung, you’re the best!” He says, before correcting himself. “Sure, Jinnie, you’re the best!” 

Seokjin beams like it’s the best idea he’s ever had.

**

The thing is, nothing really changed that day. Jungkook is confused. 

Like, he’s prepared. He’s really, really prepared. They’re so gonna play pranks on him, he’s sure. Isn’t that his favorite thing to do, play pranks on hyungs? And they’re totally gonna sneak upon him from the back, begging to be carried. And they’re also totally gonna hit him (gently) and pinch his cheeks and throw things at him (again, gently) and force him to give them his food. Isn’t that what he does as a maknae? It’s maknae privilege, and Jungkook always uses it to his advantage, he’s proud to say.

But the day goes by normally. No pranks. No begging to be carried, whining for food. No what’s yours is mine, what’s mine is still mine. Jungkook is confused. 

Jungkook is confused, until he remembers that Jimin and Taehyung are on delivery duty that day, and that’s always draining. The air outside is toxic and they have to wear masks and full-body suits, and always be on the watch for gigantic mutant insects who’d be only too excited for some fresh meat. And the recipients of the packages can sometimes be hostile too. It’s not really their fault, life sucks for everyone, but still they really could’ve been kinder and less nit-picky towards people who go out of their way to deliver hope.

Jimin and Taehyung need time to rest up after the deliveries are done, so they probably aren’t in the mood to play pranks. And the other hyungs are busy too. Making care packages, maintaining the garden, training for potential battles against monsters. They must be tired. They must all be tired. Jungkook wishes he could take the burden away from them, if only a little. Wishes he could announce an impromptu vacation day for them all. But the world outside is grim, shrouded in a toxic fog, and without the care packages, holding necessities and some personalized extra items and hope, humanity will gradually die out.

People need hope. So Jungkook’s airship, and countless others out there, must deliver. 

Nevertheless, Jungkook sits up waiting, suspecting, staying vigilant after nightfall, just in case someone decides to ambush him and cling to him like a maknae would. But it doesn’t happen. Still no pranks. No one is treating him any differently. It pains his heart, not because he wants to be pranked, but because for Seokjin to propose a fun scheme and the rest of them to not go through with it—it must mean that they’re completely worn out. Spent. Or else they’d have at least tried. Right?

Or maybe they have something else up their sleeves. Maybe they have a whole big prank planned and want to catch Jungkook off his guard, when he’s sleeping. Hm. Jungkook scrunches his bunny nose. He wouldn’t put it against his hyungs to do something like that.

In that case, he’ll wheedle it out of Taehyung. Taehyung should be the safest one to go to at this moment, because most of the time he treats Jungkook like they were the same age, so even if their roles are supposed to be reversed right now, it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. 

Jungkook slips into Taehyung’s room without knocking. The older boy is lying on the ground, legs open just wide enough for a cat to be sleeping in-between them. How strange. Usually Taehyung sleeps curled up, hugging something, not with his legs wide open like that. Maybe he’s channeling his inner Jungkook? 

Jungkook smiles at his youngest hyung. He must be tired. Deliveries are not easy, and tentacled monsters are not kind. Not even to Taehyung, who always tries his damned best to befriend them. Jungkook sits down on the wooden floorboards and drapes a blanket gently over Taehyung’s sleeping form. 

Taehyung stirs, eyes blinking open. He smiles lazily and rolls over, grabbing an old-fashioned camera from under the bed, one of his souvenirs from when the world hadn’t yet gone to shit. He aims it at Jungkook, snaps a photo. Then another. And another. Colorful fish escape from his fingertips and some of them kiss and nudge Jungkook’s cheeks before disappearing into the grey mist outside. 

Jungkook has heard from somewhere that people tend to take photos of the things that they’re most afraid of losing, especially now when film is so scarce. Taehyung is taking photos of Jungkook. It must mean that he cherishes him.

It makes Jungkook feel all warm and fuzzy inside. He forgets that he came here to ask a question. Forgets that he had been worried about his hyungs all day. Forgets everything that has ever hurt him in his life. 

When he’s with Taehyung, it’s so easy to just forget. 

He giggles when Taehyung leans on his shoulder and begins flipping through his sketchbook, showing him each page. Jungkook sketches too, but he’s always enjoyed looking at Taehyung’s works, so different from his own yet holding the same amount of curiosity and wonder. He’s glad Taehyung is sharing it with him.

“You make me feel like I’m precious,” he murmurs to Taehyung, who smiles. 

“I’m just doing what my maknae always does.” He tilts his head to the side meaningfully. “What you’re feeling is what my maknae always makes me feel.” 

Jungkook stares, mouth forming a small ‘O’. 

“I heard you’re trying to be a hyung,” Taehyung says, fingertips still oozing fish. “Personally I don’t think being a hyung is that hard, when my maknae is the best in the world.”

**

When Jungkook leaves Taehyung’s room after tucking him snugly into bed, he notices a piece of paper on the lounge table, next to the fireplace. He rushes over and picks it up, not wanting it to land in the fire.

Jimin is definitely the culprit. So clumsy, always leaving things lying around. And he’s the group’s official doodler. They all doodle—it’s not like they have much to do, not having electricity—but Jimin does it the most. It’s his way to de-stress.

Jimin’s drawn a bus this time, Jungkook observes, with high wheels and canvas curtains. In the background is a blue sky and the sun and singing birds and a rainbow and a beach. All things Jungkook has only seen in books. He wasn’t old enough to remember what the world was like before it ended. 

Maybe it’s a good thing. Otherwise he’d have ended up like Jimin, always longing for a nature that no longer exists.

He carefully places the drawing into a round cookie tin and wonders where Jimin’s gone. It must have been a long day for him, having to do a dozen deliveries at once. 

That’s when Jungkook hears humming from the direction of the laundry room, barely audible above the constant roaring wind and rhythmic airship noises. He finds Jimin there, hand-washing the day’s laundry with a big smile on his face, despite tired lines and drooping eyes. Jungkook decides it’s time for an intervention.

“You’re exhausted, you should go to bed. Let me do this,” he says, forcing his way into the narrow space. Jimin simply grins even harder as he adds a lavish amount of Downy fabric softener into the pile of wet clothes.

“Nope, this is my job tonight,” he sing-songs and dips both hands into the cold water, attacking the clothes with gusto.

“You’ve had a long day,” Jungkook argues, trying to tug Jimin’s hands away from the soapy water. 

“But I’m the maknae,” Jimin points out. “My maknae does this even if he’s had a long day, so I should do it too. Don’t you think so, hyung?” 

His voice is lilting, teasing, and his face, though tired, is radiant. Jungkook smiles wordlessly and joins Jimin in doing the laundry anyway. 

He thinks he likes being called hyung even more than he’d ever admit.

**

An hour later, Jungkook returns to the room Jimin shares with Hoseok, carrying a whole basket of dried clothes he collected from the clothesline. He places them on Jimin’s bed as softly as possible, assuming that Hoseok must be asleep. 

Except Hoseok isn’t. “Jungkookie-hyung?” He says suddenly, nearly causing Jungkook to jump five feet into the air in surprise, but he recovers composure fairly quickly and decides to play along. 

“What, my dearest dongsaeng?” He asks. 

“There’s a spider,” Hoseok whimpers, voice muffled under his blanket with little airplanes on it. “On the wall. Kill it for me.”

A shiver runs down Jungkook’s spine. Spiders in their era have mutated, they’re entirely different things from what they used to be. They still have eight legs, but they can grow as large as your head. And when they move, their legs kind of rotate and—okay, no, Jungkook doesn’t want to think about their rotating legs. 

He spots the spider after some squinting in the dark. It’s on the wall, not too far from Hoseok, and he now knows why Hoseok doesn’t dare leave the bed to call for help—the eight-legged horror is in the way. It looks evil, scrutinizing Jungkook with its multiple beady eyes.

Jungkook swallows hard. He’s a hyung now, he must be strong. “Okay, hyung will get it for you.” 

He takes out his trusty pen knife—that’s what he uses to kill mosquitoes, roaches and other random bugs that appear in locations out of his reach. But as he aims, he realizes that there may be a problem. 

If he hits where he should, then everything’s fine. But if he doesn’t, well, the spider could make an escape—straight for Hoseok’s bed. It’s a risk Jungkook will have to take, yes, but is Hoseok willing to take it as well?

Hoseok gulps, eyes wide and tearful, but gaze unwavering. “I trust you, hyung.” 

Funny the effect four simple words can have. Jungkook immediately feels empowered, like he can take on the whole world for his cute dongsaeng Hoseok. So he aims, and flicks his wrist. 

The knife lands squarely in the wall, pinning the eight-legged devil in place. Greenish blood gushes out. Ew.

“Wow.” Hoseok sighs, sheer admiration in his eyes. “Hyung, you’re amazing.” 

Jungkook is grateful that the lights are off, because he doesn’t want Hoseok to see him blush. “It’s nothing,” he says, flustered. “Thank you for believing in me.” 

Hoseok shakes his head, burying himself back under the little airplane blanket again, not wanting to watch Jungkook deal with the remains of the nightmare arachnid. “My maknae always believed in me. Not when I’m dealing with spiders, but, like, during other times.”

Jungkook feels his face heat up even more. He can no longer see Hoseok since he’s concealed under the soft covers now, but he can still hear him speak. 

“My maknae doesn’t know how much it means to me, that he trusts me when I don’t even trust myself. Isn’t it nice to have a maknae like that, hyung?” 

Jungkook decides not to answer the question. He wraps the spider up in toilet paper and carefully drops it into the trash bin. “It’s safe, you can come out now, Seokie.”

Hoseok pokes his head out of the blanket, beaming like the sun that used to shine some years ago. Jungkook doesn’t exactly remember seeing it, but he remembers the warmth. Yeonjun is only one year old and has never felt the sun. It makes Jungkook sad. 

“Sleep well, Seokie,” he says, and gently shuts the door behind him. 

**

It’s past midnight now, but Yoongi is still up, just like Jungkook would expect. Yoongi’s room is his favorite. It’s password protected but it’s never stopped anyone. 

He pokes his head in the door, forcing Yoongi to look up from where he’s sitting in bed, mapping constellations. Stars still appear once in a blue moon, and that’s when all the airships rush to check and correct their traveling course. Yoongi is their official navigator, so he works with stars. The walls and ceilings in his room boast constellations too. Even the egg vibrator on his desk has stars drawn on them. 

Jungkook thinks it’s amazing, to have a star-themed room. The stars tell him things, Yoongi’s told Jungkook once. They help him see the future, decide where to travel next. 

Yoongi pats the empty spot beside him on the bed, and Jungkook happily plops himself down on the comfy mattress. Yoongi is chewing his pouty lip, focused on his work, and Jungkook busies himself with making some rough sketches that he can maybe show Taehyung later. He gets so immersed in his work that he barely remembers Yoongi’s there—but subconsciously he knows he is, because Yoongi is warm and the sound of pencil scribbling on paper and his soft breaths are soothing.

Without Yoongi there, the room would have felt empty, the bed too big, even though it’s only for one. The howling wind would have been too loud, the shadows cast on the walls by the oil lamp disconcerting. 

But Yoongi is there. They sit in companionable silence, comfortable and familiar despite the lack of conversation. Yoongi is good with words, but Jungkook feels like when he’s with Yoongi, it’s like he doesn’t need words anymore, they understand each other so well.

And in no time (actually it’s probably been an hour or so), Jungkook finishes his drawing. The rough sketch has ended up a fully completed work. He beams, proud of how smooth his lines are, how the shading’s perfectly done. Drawing on a bed, with the sketchbook propped on his knees, seems less practical than drawing on the lounge table—but somehow, Jungkook can never concentrate when he’s in the lounge.

He has to be with Yoongi. That’s when he works best. Feels the most inspired. That’s Yoongi’s magic. 

“I work the best when I’m with you,” Jungkook tells Yoongi, who puts down his pencil and stretches like a very long cat. 

“That’s the intended effect, yes,” Yoongi agrees. “I work the best when I’m with my maknae, so today I’m giving you a taste of how it feels.” 

“It’s not just today, though,” Jungkook says, picking up his stuff and Yoongi’s as well, so that the older doesn’t have to leave the bed. “I always work the best when I’m with you.”

“And I always work the best when I’m with my maknae,” Yoongi says, curled up like a cat that’s lying on a blanket all comfy. “Guess it’s mutual then, hyung?”

It feels so weird to be called hyung by Yoongi, Jungkook thinks, but he can live with it for one day.

He makes sure Yoongi is tucked in and kisses his forehead before blowing out the lights and tiptoeing out of the door. 

Maybe being a hyung isn’t that terrible, if it means he gets to tuck everyone in at night. 

**

Surprisingly enough, Seokjin isn’t in bed yet. Usually he would be—the eldest hyung is very responsible and keeps strict hours. Maybe he’s doing his best to act like Jungkook today, which is why it’s two a.m. and he’s still in the gym, doing an intense boxing workout. Maybe that’s his way of showing Jungkook how annoyingly stubborn a maknae can be. 

If that’s the case, it’s working, because Jungkook is extremely worried. Seokjin has a delivery run in the morning and he absolutely needs to be asleep. Jungkook contemplates taking Seokjin’s shift himself, but remembers that he has a shift at the same time too and he can’t exactly be at two places at once. 

“Jinnie,” he calls out at the door. “Jinnie, come to bed. You have work tomorrow.” 

“Gimme a few minutes,” Seokjin grunts out, slamming another fist into the sandbag. Jungkook marvels at how sharp and refined his movements are. Seokjin acts goofily and downplays his strengths a lot, but he’s actually very skilled in a vast array of things. Back when Jungkook was younger and could barely fight, Seokjin had saved him from many a jellyfish monster. 

“It’s two, it’s time for bed,” Jungkook tries again, and Seokjin simply rolls his eyes, sweat pouring down his temples. Jungkook sighs. That’s when he gets an idea. 

If Seokjin won’t listen, he’ll guilt-trip him into coming to bed. He’ll show Seokjin that if he doesn’t sleep, Jungkook won’t sleep either. Seokjin will have no choice but to rest, because he cares about Jungkook’s well-being. He’s not sure why this idea occurred to him in his two-a.m. sleep-deprived brain, but the logic somehow makes sense in his head.

So he sits down, back against the wall, watching Seokjin’s every move, making stupid comments such as Nice play! Keep it up! Hit me baby one more time!

He isn’t sure when he nodded off, but the next thing he knows Seokjin is carrying him to his room, placing him in bed, surrounding his pillow with little glass jars that sing a happy little lullaby.

Seokjin kisses him on the tip of his nose. “Silly hyung, I would never want you to stay up late for me. My maknae never wants me to stay up for him either, you know? He works so hard, he tires himself out, but he can’t stand seeing others being tired. My maknae is always so selfless.”

Half-asleep, Jungkook seems to remember—remember those days when he would try to sweat out his frustration late into the night, and Seokjin would stay up with him, reading, baking, waiting. Jungkook would eventually give up and go to bed, because he couldn’t bear to see Seokjin waiting up for him.

Oh. So that was a thing. No wonder the idea occurred to him so naturally. Like hyung, like maknae. 

He drifts off to dreamland again, to the tinkling lullabies in the jars, to Seokjin whispering sweet dreams, hyung into his ear. 

**

Jungkook finds Namjoon the next morning in his greenhouse. Some little mushroom houses have sprouted and gnomes are emerging from them, hopping around on dainty little feet, pitching in on the chores. 

“So,” Namjoon says, eyes sparkling as he watches his garden blossom, “how’s it like, being the eldest hyung?”

Jungkook looks down. Talking to Namjoon makes him feel so shy sometimes. Namjoon has galaxies in his eyes and seeing him enjoying what he does, so in his element, makes Jungkook’s heart hurt in a good way. 

“It was… I didn’t really do anything,” he confesses to Namjoon. “I didn’t feel like I was being especially hyung-ish at all, because my maknaes made it so easy for me.” 

“Same. Our maknae makes it so easy for us to be good hyungs,” Namjoon says, and Jungkook has to look down again because why is he so goddamn radiant? That wasn’t what Jungkook signed up for when he volunteered to board this airship. He just wanted to help people in this dying world, to deliver hope. He never expected to be constantly mesmerized by his leader, who looks so happy doing his job that it makes everyone around him happy as well. 

“Why are you looking down?” Namjoon asks. “C’mon, look at me. Is my face that scary?” 

“N-no, you’re just… you’re just… you’re so brilliant, you shine so bright doing what you do, it makes me feel ashamed, like I’m not working hard enough,” Jungkook quickly amends.

Namjoon simply nods, flashes Jungkook a dimpled smile. “Well, now you know how my maknae makes me feel. See? Being a hyung, being a maknae—ain’t that different, right?” 

**

Jungkook thinks he’s learned a great deal about being a hyung in one day. Hyungs and maknaes can both make people feel cherished and loved. Can both devote themselves to lessening the burden of others. Can trust, can protect, can provide peace, can motivate and take care of people and become others’ greatest inspirations.

Being a hyung, being a maknae—aint’ that different. He understands now. He shall treat his younger brothers the same way he treats his older brothers. 

Soobin is scheduled to sprout from soil tomorrow. Jungkook can’t wait to steal his baby food.

Chapter Text

“Do we really need that many air purifiers for the trip?”

Seokjin watches with interest as Jungkook appears, towing a grand total of seven air purifiers behind him on a little wagon.

“Bam doesn’t shed that much but he’s fifteen times bigger than Tannie. We gotta do something about all that fur,” Jungkook explains. He doesn’t really think Bam has a lot of fur. He just wants to see Seokjin smile.

Seokjin smiles. Jungkook has always been like that. Says something silly and instantly looks to his hyungs for their reaction. He still does that out of habit, even though he’s no longer the baby of the group.

They’re no longer babies.

The airship that they’ve built together painstakingly, bit by bit, hums softly next to the seven, all of them busy working on filling it with things. Jungkook brought way more mattresses than they would ever need. Taehyung brought his many music instruments, spray paint cans, and an easel. Jimin brought all his monsters. There are a lot of monsters and most of them are bound to furniture, but the airship is a big one and all the furniture can fit snugly by the many windows.

The seven have had a good time, mostly, but they’ve decided that they want to go flying. Namjoon enjoys his life as a gigantic dragon, but he moved to the desert to pursue music in the first place. Now that the desert has become the sea and small toadstool houses have mushroomed all over the lands, he’s decided that maybe it’s time for less dragoning and more musicking.

Seokjin likes running his little dessert shop, but sometimes his customers, and people who are not his customers, have very strange expectations. Just look at the Google reviews. I love pizza, why do they not offer pizza? Says one. The tea isn't sweet enough! Says another customer (who ordered unsweetened tea). And oh, there’s this gem: I’ve never been to this shop. The restaurant across the street sucks but they don’t have a Google review page so I’m giving them a one-star review on this page instead. Yes, Seokjin likes his little dessert shop, but he supposes it doesn’t hurt to take some time off.

Hoseok likes being a secret agent, even more so now that he’s mastered his transfiguration capabilities. But every secret agent needs a break. He realized this when he caught himself watching a Youtube video titled How to Live a Life of Leisure on 1.75x speed. Yoongi and Taehyung find idol life agreeable in general, but they’re not going to turn down a free trip on an airship. Jimin has been on a mission to see the world with his monsters anyway, and Jungkook… well, there’s only so much one could take in a world shrouded in a grey mist, populated by giant spider-legged monsters. He’d close his eyes sometimes, trying to imagine it all away. On some days he doesn’t want to open them at all.

So they’ve come to an agreement. They’ll go flying on their airship, shaped like a gigantic whale and covered with colorful lanterns that will light up the way and help them find themselves. The airship will be powered by Namjoon’s dragon flames and the sunbeams and moonshine Seokjin harvested, so fuel won’t be a problem. Yoongi will read the constellations and do the navigating. Hoseok has ample experience driving helicopters and Jimin has ample experience with his big yellow school bus, so they’ll take turns piloting. Jungkook will help sow seeds of pretty flowers wherever they go, and Taehyung will create rainbow fish that have no practical purpose besides making everyone who sees them very happy, which is of course a good enough purpose in itself.

They all have their own jobs and are happy with the arrangement. It’s not all smooth sailing, naturally. Namjoon worries about the cities and towns he grew, about the little people who live in the toadstool houses, the flower houses and the treehouses. Some will have doubts, and some will write headlines such as Oh No! The World Will Have No More Toadstools! But it will be all right. Namjoon knows that they’ll be okay. The houses are all connected underground, communicating with their roots, always singing, always thrumming to a beat only audible to the residents themselves. And more houses will grow, more flowers will bloom, for the crew will scatter seeds as they fly.

And so off they go. It works out exactly as they have planned. They soar, above enchanted forests and tundra and salt flats and prairies. People on the ground wave, holding balloons and bright-colored pinwheels, when they see the airship pass by. Sometimes they make stops to pick up fried chicken or picnic under the trees as sunlight filters through the leaves, and the residents on the ground will come by and give their airship a new coat of paint. Sometimes they split up, some of them exploring the villages, some of them busking, some of them fishing, some of them seeking inspiration, some of them making new friends, but at the end of the day their airship is always waiting and it will always be their special spot, somewhere only they know.

And so off they go, on the airship that they now call home. Most of the time, they do their own thing in companionable silence, legs tangled, leaning on each other’s shoulders, sharing the intimacy of being exhausted together. Seokjin hops off the airship one day and returns with a basket of berries, which everyone shares. Hoseok hops off and brings seven friendship talismans that he bought from the wizard people. Taehyung gets ready to hop off with his camera, but it’s kind of cold and Jimin tuts while he helps him button up his jacket since Taehyung has no free hands. Yoongi and Namjoon sit in the cockpit sometimes, going through old photos and collapsing into laughter every few seconds, because they’ve lived together for ten years and that’s the kind of thing that happens when you’ve lived together for ten years. Jungkook also hops off the airship one day and comes back with six cups of boba—he doesn’t need to get himself one because he'll just drink from everyone’s cup. That’s how he rolls.

On the ground, the singing never stops and the toadstool cities thrive. The yellow school bus still visits Kim Army’s home yearly. The families in Jungkook’s foggy world still receive their care packages. Somewhere in some faraway hospital, a patient getting chemo looks out of the window to see blue skies and purple fish weaving through the clouds.

They’ve all been running for so long now. It’s time to fly.

We’ve all been running for so long now. It’s time to fly.