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They have dinner together the night before their break officially begins.
Being together to eat — away from the cameras and hovering staff — are some of Seokjin’s favourite times they have together. It’s rare to all be in the same place when they aren’t working, but after this break they’ve promised to spend more time together like this. Anything that might make their job easier, or help them carry the weight of it for longer.
Tonight there is a giddy sort of glee between the seven of them that reminds Seokjin of how he used to feel the night before a family holiday — when all he could think about was how different everything would be the next day. He stays quiet and listens to the rest go back and forth about what they should order, before they all settle on what seems like it should be too much food, even with seven of them. Seokjin knows it will all disappear over the time they spend together tonight and that somehow, someone will still complain of hunger by the time they’re done.
The food arrives. They all scramble over one another to get to it, pulling out their dishes and glasses, which they don’t have a lot of, and alcohol, which they do. Taehyung breaks into a song as Seokjin and Yoongi plate out the food. Jeongguk and Namjoon join after a second, swaying in their seats, and then Yoongi as he carries food over, his loud voice drowning the others out.
Maybe because Seokjin is thinking about how things were when he was young, he starts to remember their first meals together. There was a specific stress that came with meals back then, especially dinners that happened after a long day of practicing and before another. Seokjin and Yoongi did their best to make sure the maknaes had enough to eat without leaving themselves too hungry, but sometimes that was a struggle. More often than not, someone would fall asleep in his food. It seems like that strange, hard to hold time should sit as a dark cloud between the warm memories of his childhood and the meal in front of Seokjin, but he can’t look at it that way — not when such a good night still reminds him of it, no matter how different this table covered in bowls and plates of food might seem to their days of debut diets.
It’s the excitement of what could be in front of them, maybe. Recently, they’ve grown used to being intimidated by the thought of the future when they used to imagine what it might be like. Now, tonight, Seokjin is imagining what it will be like to be away from it all. The others are all being loud in a way that still feels new after their burnout — in a way that is finally starting to feel less forced every time it happens. Seokjin listens to everything happening around him and offers them stories of his own. Eats. Drinks. Thinks about how he’ll never let them know the sappy sort of thoughts he has around them.
Drinks some more.
Yoongi leans in and lifts a piece of his own samgyupsal onto Seokjin’s plate. He nudges it closer to the centre with his chopsticks in sharp little movements, like he thinks Seokjin won’t notice if he doesn’t move too much at once. It’s silly. Seokjin bits down his smile and stares at him until Yoongi gives up on pretending not to notice and stares back just as deadpan. His gaze flitters all around Seokjin’s face, jumping from his chin to his cheek before he settles on eye contact.
Seokjin raises an eyebrow because he doesn’t trust himself enough not to laugh if he tried to talk. It would give their game away, he thinks, but he shouldn’t have worried, because Yoongi can’t keep up whatever he’s started. He laughs instead, his hand curling back into his chest and his head hanging down in defeat. His round face is flushed from all the alcohol, all his movements looser and less thought-out than the more careful and calculated ways Seokjin associates with him — even still, although they all know how hard Yoongi has worked to feel the sort of good he’s been feeling this comeback. Yoongi glances back up at Seokjin through his fringe and then laughs again, canting his head to press his cheek against his own shoulder.
He’s drunk. He’s so wonderfully beautiful that Seokjin can’t look away. Seokjin knows he’s been staring too long already, but there’s always something about seeing Yoongi like this — barefaced, relaxed, happy — that makes Seokjin’s brain try, embarrassingly, to shape a future around the sight.
Yoongi probably expected to be able to sneak a glance. He probably expected that Seokjin would be back to listening to the conversations around the table, so that he could get back to sneaking food over, but he probably also expects that Seokjin isn’t in love with him. It’s too late to change some things. So Seokjin watches Yoongi and doesn’t let himself wonder about what it would take for him to admit his feelings. He thinks about how they won’t see one another for a while, until the fishing trip they have planned, and how Yoongi will spend the whole day talking about his family in the eager-to-share mood he always comes back from Daegu with.
“What are you gonna do over the break, hyung?” Yoongi asks.
Sometimes it really feels like Yoongi can read his mind. They’ve joked about their roommate telepathy before, but it still shocks Seokjin every time when he’s reminded how much attention Yoongi pays to him. Seokjin tries to make sure he isn’t an easy person to know so much on camera that he thinks it’s bled through to be a part of him.
Yoongi knows him.
“Not much,” he answers. “Family. League. More League, you know. You?”
Yoongi shrugs. He’s still half-slumped over in his chair, looking up at Seokjin from such a strange angle with his eyes shining. There’s a certain energy that surrounds Yoongi in their professional life that allows him to fill a room with just his presence. It’s something they’ve all talked about before, that gets brought up in reviews and writeups — the magnetic quality of Min Yoongi. Seokjin doesn’t know how anyone can command attention without getting loud, but Yoongi is sometimes at his most compelling when he’s quiet. It’s something specific to Yoongi. For a while, he kept that too-big energy around him in the dorm too, like he was trying to keep them all away, but time and therapy and little pushes have all chipped it down. He looks small now, and warm, his hand moving around whenever he speaks.
“Well, you know, there’s work I wanted - want to do.” He’s so chatty when he’s drunk. “I wanted to have it done before now actually, but it’s just that I haven’t gotten around to it because of — ah, hyung. I’ll have to see Holly too. Maybe I can bring him here and he can come and work with me. Oh, that wouldn’t — it wouldn’t be fair to poor Holly … help me, Seokjin hyung.”
He slumps down further in his seat, pouting. God, Seokjin is done for.
“Yoongi hyung’s asleep!” announces Jeongguk, pointing across the table.
Yoongi shoots back up in his seat, his face scrunching up as he points back. “Yah, Jeon Jeongguk!”
The maknaes explode into laughter. Even Hoseok, who is a quiet and almost-mopey sort of drunk at best, laughs and claps along with them. Namjoon chokes on his drink. Yoongi turns back around to Seokjin to share the joke and lifts the last piece of meat from his plate to Seokjin’s with a victorious smirk.
Seokjin lets him win.
—
There’s always a faint ache in Seokjin’s muscles come morning, no matter how well he stretches the night before or how many hours of sleep in his expensive bed he gets. If the pain is really bad he lets himself lie there and takes five deep breaths through his nose before he makes himself get up to face the day. It’s fine. It’s what he has to do. He’s learned the most effective ways to deal with it, and how to keep it off his face for photos. These are the things he has to trade for the sort of life BTS are living.
But this morning Seokjin doesn’t have to get up for anything. This morning, BTS are on a break. He lies in bed with his cheek on his forearm and scrolls through his phone. Messages from the members start come through to the Bangtan group-chat — goodbyes, news about their plans and promises to bring home gifts, invitations to eat breakfast together. Seokjin leaves them unread. He’s the oldest, which means that he’s allowed to ignore the group-chat with no consequences and then flood the chat with replies when everyone else is offline.
He tabs away from Twitter to message his friends about playing a couple of games together. Seokjin wants to spend as much time gaming as he possibly can. It’s a hobby he really honestly, enjoys, no matter how much fun Yoongi pokes at him. He sends his friends another message reminding them that he suddenly has a lot more free time, his thumb hovering over an RJ sticker thoughtfully. He eventually sends it, but it’s strange to acknowledge celebrity things so openly among friends.
One by one, the others leave the dorm. Seokjin hears them call out loud goodbyes, even after the long drunken goodbyes they all shared the night before. It really is strange to be planning to do things apart for so long. He calls back to them, his morning-rough voice catching in his throat, and then they’re all gone. It’s a big dorm — not like their first, when you would be able to tell if someone else moved at all, no matter where in the dorm you were — but it’s nice to be alone and able to recharge at his own pace.
Only … it soon becomes obvious that he isn’t alone.
There’s a strange sound coming from down the hallway. At first Seokjin thinks it’s a child crying, as impossible as that is. The sound is shrill, and stops and starts in sharp falls and rises in volume. The more Seokjin listens, the less sure he is of what it could be.
He gets out of bed to find out, groaning at the pull in his muscles, and then again at the thought that one of them might have left their television on and sabotaged Seokjin’s mid-morning rest.
“Hello?” he calls down the hallway.
The noise stops for a second and then starts back up again, louder this time. It’s coming from Yoongi’s room. Seokjin knocks on the closed door with a knuckle.
“Hello? Yoongi-yah?”
Silence. And then the squealing again, louder than ever.
Seokjin opens the door.
The bedclothes have been half-dragged onto the floor and left in a heap there with Yoongi’s pyjamas. His favourite sleep shirt is all bunched up and one leg of his trousers is inside out. One of his pillows is in the mess, too. A phone charger. His glasses. Even his underwear.
In the middle of this nest is — an otter, blinking out at Seokjin.
Seokjin blinks back, and then looks around the room for Yoongi. He’s bound to be watching Seokjin and laughing at the shocked expression Seokjin can feel on his own face. Yoongi’s bedroom is the smallest in the dorm, because he asked for that. When they were moving Yoongi said that the one thing he cared about was that Namjoon should get to pick his room first out of all the options. That one thing turned into two things, because then Yoongi said he wanted the smallest room. Then three, because he wanted blackout curtains fitted as soon as possible. Then four, because he wanted some of Seokjin’s space to use as storage. Seokjin said yes, of course, because Yoongi’s room really was too small for that, and because he didn't want to lose Yoongi all at once like that.
The room is too small to hide a person, too. There’s no Yoongi here. Seokjin’s attention goes back to the otter, which has escaped the mess and is loping across the floor toward Seokjin. It can’t get enough grip on the floor to stop itself without sliding forward a little bit first, ending up just in front of his feet.
It chirps up at him.
“Oh,” says Seokjin. “Hello.”
The otter makes a chattering sound back. It sounds like it’s trying to mock him.
“Yeah?” Seokjin glances around the room again. “Tell me, little otter, where’s my Min Yoongi? Why’d he leave you all alone in here?”
The otter rises to stand on two legs and then starts to move its front legs quickly up and down, like a dog that’s been taught to beg. It moves a little awkwardly — hitting itself on the chest with little hand-like paws hard enough that Seokjin can hear a small thump. Really, Seokjin wouldn’t put it past any of them to have a trained otter all of a sudden, but Yoongi would be low on his list of guesses, and Seokjin certainly doesn’t think that Yoongi would leave an animal alone in a room to cry. One of the maknaes by mistake, maybe, but he’s not certain they’d ruin Yoongi’s room by locking it in here like this.
The otter chirps up at Seokjin again, louder this time. It taps itself on the chest with deliberate force and then leaves its paws there, staring up at Seokjin with big dark eyes.
Things start to dawn on Seokjin in a horrible, slow sort of realisation. He checks behind him once more to make sure Yoongi hasn’t snuck in, but Seokjin is still alone with an otter. He looks back down at the animal. It’s got all four feet on the ground, but when it notices Seokjin looking it rises back up and chatters, tapping itself on the chest over and over.
Seokjin kneels down. Checks behind himself one last time. Takes a deep breath.
“Yoongi-yah?” he asks.
The otter lets out a string of high-pitched noises. Seokjin thinks it nods. Whenever he holds a hand out, it races straight toward him and pushes its face into his palm.
“Yoongi?”
The otter — Yoongi — chirps.
Seokjin stands up and backs out of Yoongi’s room in a panic, slamming the door shut. As soon as it clicks closed, the crying starts again. Long, horrible, high pitched wails, and then taps on the door, like Yoongi is slapping at it because he can’t do anything else. Because he’s an otter. Seokjin breathes, and breathes, and breathes, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to pull himself together. They’ve been taught what to do in situations when their knees lock in front of the camera and all they really want is to run the other way. They just have to face forward and make it seem like they’re alright with everything that’s happening.
Seokjin opens the door again. Yoongi squeezes out as soon as the gap is wide enough and bolts towards him, running rings around Seokjin like an over-excited dog. He’s making a barking sort of sound, loud and panicked, but he doesn’t seem to be angry that Seokjin closed the door on him; just relieved he opened it again.
“Ok,” Seokjin says. “You’re an otter.”
—
Yoongi follows Seokjin into the living area. Seokjin doesn’t look at him, still trying to wrap his head around what could possibly have happened. Yoongi’s feet patter on the floor as he struggles to keep up with Seokjin’s bigger steps, but when Seokjin slows down Yoongi keeps his pace and scampers on ahead. Seokjin watches him run, the motions seeming more comfortable with every step. Yoongi can be surprisingly quick at adapting to things when his anxiety lets him. He likes to learn. He likes puzzles. He’d have an idea of how to solve this if it was Seokjin that got turned into an animal, probably.
Seokjin sits down on the couch with a sigh. Yoongi’s head whips around at the sound, his small ears pricking up. He trots back over to lie on the floor by Seokjin’s feet, short legs splayed out flat on the floor behind him like a corgi. Seokjin looks at the reflection of them both in the dark screen of the television, hating himself for not knowing what to do. Yoongi is looking up at Seokjin, making quiet noises. Seokjin can see how his whiskers are twitching in his reflection.
He forces himself to look away from the television to Yoongi. Yoongi seems so calm, his half-pink nose twitching along with his whiskers and little chirping noises rising from the back of his throat. Seokjin watches and tries to think about what he’s going to do to fix this. He needs to do something.
Steeling himself, he lifts Yoongi onto the couch beside him, holding him in the same gentle way he held Jjangu when the dog was too old to jump. Yoongi allows the lifting without a fuss, flopping onto his side whenever Seokjin sets him down on the cushion beside him.
“Alright,” Seokjin says. “I’m not going to tell the others about this. And you won’t tell them anything either. Deal?”
Yoongi chirrups. Seokjin pats him on the head and then, feeling weird about it even as he does it, lifts one of the small paws in a hand to shake. There’s webbing between the little fingers. It’s strange, but he goes through with it. He tries not to hold on too tight, afraid of hurting Yoongi.
“Deal?”
There’s a moment of silence — where Yoongi would normally respond — in which Seokjin realises that an otter probably can’t understand speech or handshakes or anything about the deal they just made at all. To Yoongi, Seokjin is probably just someone who happened to hear him cry. It makes Seokjin feel exposed, suddenly; lonely. He lifts Yoongi again and sets him down on the floor, afraid that the jump from one of the cushions would be too high and he’d hurt himself somehow. Again, Yoongi lets himself be lifted without a fight, and when he’s set back down on the floor he spends a couple of seconds staring back up at Seokjin. Seokjin tries to smile, unsure why he’s putting in the effort but too used to smiling when he doesn’t know what else to do now to stop, and Yoongi lops off to go explore the room.
Seokjin watches with his head in his hands.
Yoongi circles all their furniture again and again, making little mumbling chirps that trail off into nothingness. He stands on his back feet a couple of times to try and scramble up onto the other couch, but gives up after a short struggle and goes back to taking stock of the room. Seokjin still just doesn’t know what to do. He can’t tell any of the others. They all have things planned in the first real break they’ve gotten in years, and there’s no way Seokjin can begin to figure out how he would explain what’s happened and convince them to come home.
He couldn’t. They’d think he was lying, or crazy, or they would come home and he’d have no answers for them — he won’t tell them. He’ll stay with Yoongi until Yoongi turns back into a human, or the others will come back in their own time and find the problem themselves. Seokjin’s not sure what Yoongi had lined up, aside from the work he’d mentioned and the visit to his family. Yoongi usually calls his mother once a week. Seokjin hopes he doesn’t have to worry about lying to her.
Yoongi’ll turn back soon. Seokjin has to believe that. He’ll keep Yoongi safe and fed in the meantime, if it’s all he can do.
There’s a noise from behind him. Seokjin turns to look over his shoulder just in time to see Yoongi running out the door and down the hallway, building up enough speed and then sliding on his stomach. The sight startles an honest laugh out of Seokjin for the first time that morning. He stands from the couch.
“Yoongi-yah,” he calls. “I’m going to see if we have any fish. Be good.”
Yoongi rolls onto his back and waves his paws in the air, batting around at something Seokjin can’t see. It teases another laugh from him.
Maybe this won’t be so bad.
They don’t have any fish in the dorm. Unwilling to leave Yoongi alone, and feeling guilty that he didn’t even manage to last a full day of an ordinary life without asking someone else to do something, Seokjin messages one of the staff to drop them off some. He gets a reply almost instantly — they always do — letting him know someone is on the job. As he waits, he unearths Yeontan’s dog pen. Yeontan is staying with Taehyung’s parents as Taehyung spends time with friends, which is lucky, because Seokjin doesn’t know how he would have reacted to this strange new animal in his territory. Or how Yoongi would have reacted to Yeontan. Gukmul is with his own parents, and Seokjin feels weak with relief he doesn't have to worry about that either.
He sets the pen up in the living area while Yoongi is still playing somewhere in the hallway. It sounds like he might have moved on to explore his own room now, his snuffling so quiet Seokjin almost can’t hear it at all. He seems to be having fun exploring the dorm, a round of excited chattering drifting up the hallway. Seokjin looks at the pen and wonders if Yoongi will fight the idea. Does Yoongi have claws? Could he really fight? Seokjin doesn’t know much about otters — isn’t even sure if they’re a social animal or the kind of creatures that live most of their lives alone. He finds a bowl to fill with water and then, after an internal debate, some of Yeontan’s puppy pads to put in a corner.
Yoongi comes racing back into the room. He’s running strangely — at first Seokjin thinks Yoongi’s hurt, his heartbeat kicking up, but then he realises that Yoongi is holding something tightly against his chest with one of his paws, forcing him to run on three legs, and that’s what’s knocking off his gait.
“What have you got there?” Seokjin asks.
Yoongi drops what he’s holding on the ground with a clatter. Unexpectedly, it’s a plastic mini figure of a green Koopa shell from the Mario games of Seokjin’s that Seokjin hasn’t seen in a while. Yoongi must have gotten into his room and found it somewhere, but Seokjin really has no idea where. It must have fallen somewhere Seokjin couldn’t see from his human vantage point. Wherever it was, Yoongi apparently fished it out to give to Seokjin.
“Oh,” Seokjin says. “Thank you.”
He reaches down to pick the shell off the floor, but Yoongi darts out and snatches it back, sitting up on his hind legs and holding it between his little paws. Seokjin falters, his hand still outstretched. Yoongi pats the shell clumsily, and then looks up at Seokjin.
“It’s yours? Alright.”
Yoongi chatters happily and flops down on the floor, holding the shell in both front paws again and wriggling around on his back. He’s cute. He doesn’t look like he could hurt Seokjin. Seokjin takes his chance and swiftly lifts him over the small fence, dropping him down on the other side beside the water bowl. He holds his breath and waits for Yoongi to scream about being trapped in a dog pen, but all he does is twitch his whiskers and lie back down on the floor. Seokjin sighs. Yoongi starts batting the plastic shell back and forth over his chest, squirming to catch it again the couple of times he loses control of the little figurine.
“We’ll be ok Yoongi-chi,” Seokjin tells him, and tries to believe it himself.
—
The fish arrives. Seokjin collects it at the door from the delivery person with a bow and a smile, then brings it to the kitchen to cut it into smaller pieces. He’s certain that Yoongi could manage the whole fillet, but he needs something to do that feels useful, and breaking down the fish seems to offer him a solution.
As he works, ignoring the smell, he thinks about what little he knows about otters. They like water. Seokjin is sure of that at least. He could run a bath. Yoongi is small enough that he’d be able to swim a little. Will he expect his fish to be alive? Seokjin looks at the chunks he is cutting and pushing to the edge of the chopping board with the blade of the knife. Maybe he’ll put Yoongi in the bath and feed him the fish in there, and that’ll be close enough to nature to trick his otter brain into accepting the dead and chopped up fish chunks.
“Ah,” Seokjin says to himself. “Kim Seokjin. What’s the matter with you, that you get stuck in these situations?”
As he’s finishing chopping the mackerel, Yoongi starts to shout. He’s so loud — Seokjin would never have expected that something so small would be capable of making so much noise, but the squeaking rings right through their dorm. Seokjin sets the knife down and washes his hands in a rush, wincing as Yoongi starts to sound more urgent. By the time Seokjin gets to the living area Yoongi is standing up, peering over the pen like a toddler.
“What do you want?” Seokjin asks him.
Yoongi just screams.
“Yah,” scolds Seokjin, his own voice hushed. “None of that. You want some fish?”
Another shout. Maybe a more positive-sounding one. Seokjin takes it as a yes, anyway.
“I’m going to run the bath for you. When it’s ready, I’ll get you and bring you your fish. Ok?”
Yoongi doesn’t answer, of course.
Seokjin has to stop asking Yoongi questions. The lack of a response is still hard to hear. He pats Yoongi on the head and leaves to fill the bath. He leaves all the doors between them opened, which means that he can hear Yoongi’s whimpering cries start up. He must think Seokjin has left him alone, which is funny, because Seokjin feels the same way about Yoongi. He fills the bath, then drains and refills it again, afraid that the water would be too hot for Yoongi. Seokjin knows that Yoongi likes to run baths as hot as he can stand it, so he’ll be able to spend longer in the water before it’s too cold, but Seokjin makes this one something closer to lukewarm to be safe, testing it against the inner skin on his forearm before he’s satisfied.
Yoongi’s still standing up to peer over the pen. He looks like he hasn’t moved at all. He reaches his front paws up as Seokjin gets closer, but when Seokjin lifts him he suddenly twists and cries out, trying to throw himself back on the floor.
Seokjin splutters on his surprise, holding tight. Yoongi has more power in his body than Seokjin was expecting, but it’s not enough to wriggle free. He wails, reaching down to the ground. Seokjin looks. The koopa shell is on the floor.
“Is that what you want?” he asks. “Can’t it wait?”
Yoongi wails right in Seokjin’s ear, and doesn’t stop until Seokjin awkwardly bends to lift the piece of plastic. He passes it to Yoongi, who takes it with a happy chirp and wriggles around again in Seokjin’s arms until he can nose at Seokjin’s jaw. Yoongi’s nose is cold, and his fur and whiskers tickle against Seokjin’s neck.
“Please don’t bite me,” Seokjin mumbles, afraid to move his jaw too much, although Yoongi hasn’t tried to bite him yet.
Yoongi just noses against Seokjin’s skin some more, chittering quietly.
Seokjin expects Yoongi to be excited about the bath, but he just sits in the water when Seokjin puts him in, looking a little lost. After a moment, he lifts a paw and hits it against the surface of the water, shaking his head with an angry snuffle whenever the water splashes back and hits him in the face. That makes Seokjin pause. Yoongi — the real, human Yoongi — hates getting his face wet. Seokjin doesn’t think an otter would. His heart leaps.
“Yoongi?” he says. “Is that you?”
Yoongi looks at him.
“I’m going to get your food,” Seokjin says. “Stay quiet for hyung, ok? I need you to be quiet. Show me you can do this, Yoongi.”
Yoongi is quiet the whole time Seokjin is out of the bathroom. Seokjin’s whole body is tense with how hard he’s listening out for any sort of noise. He’s convinced by the time he gets back that Yoongi really is himself, but when he gets back to the bathroom Yoongi is lying at the bottom of the bath, totally submerged. He surfaces with a bark.
Seokjin sighs. Yoongi couldn’t have made a noise even if he wanted to, and why would he want to, with a bathful of water to have fun in?
“Do you want fish?” Seokjin says.
Yoongi chatters, reaching out toward the bowl in Seokjin’s hand. Seokjin lifts one of the pieces of mackerel and hands it to him. Yoongi holds the fish in his his paws, lifting them to his mouth and clumsily chewing. Some of the pieces fall past his sharp teeth into the water and he dives right after them, snapping them up where they’re floating. He reaches out even after Seokjin has no more left to give him, chattering quietly.
“No more,” Seokjin tells him, over and over. “I don’t have anything to give you.”
Eventually, after painful back and forths like that, the shell grabs Yoongi’s attention again. He starts to play with it like a bath toy; first pushing it so it floats one way and then the other. He stays there for almost an hour before he tries to scramble back out.
Seokjin dries Yoongi in a towel after rescuing him from the bath. Yoongi allows Seokjin to do it without complaint, sneezing when Seokjin carefully dries around his whiskers and mouth. Seokjin makes sure he won’t catch a cold and then leaves Yoongi in the pen as he makes himself food. He prepares for more noise, but Yoongi doesn’t seem to mind being alone now he’s not hungry. He watches Seokjin eat in silence and eventually drifts off to sleep, his chin resting against the ground and his breath coming out like soft snores. Staring at him, Seokjin finishes his meal mechanically. Answers messages on his phone without any real thought. Invents a reason he won’t have time to game with his friends after all. Tells his family he’s doing fine. Then he gives up and goes to bed, even though it’s still early in the evening.
Even though it feels strange to do, he brings Yoongi to bed with him, telling himself he just doesn’t want to be woken up in the middle of the night by Yoongi’s cries. Yoongi brings the shell, of course, but he seems easy-going apart from that. He noses around Seokjin’s bed as Seokjin is doing his skincare in the bedroom mirror, paying even less attention to the process than he usually would. The shell sits on the pillow and Yoongi circles back to it every few seconds, like he’s checking it’s stayed safe when he’s let it out of his sight. Seokjin watches him closely in the mirror, trying to see Yoongi in the movements. It’s difficult.
He needs to know. The wondering might be the worst part.
Yoongi looks up when Seokjin makes his way across the floor and chitters a bright greeting. He watches from the very edge of the bed as Seokjin stretches, and burrows underneath the covers when Seokjin pulls them back to climb in. When Seokjin lies down Yoongi wriggles around in the bed, getting closer to Seokjin until he’s able to rest his chin on Seokjin’s shoulder. Seokjin raises a hand to pat Yoongi’s head and Yoongi sighs, content.
“Are you tired, Yoongi-chi?” Seokjin asks him.
Yoongi sighs again, then yawns, and then he’s asleep. Seokjin lies awake and looks at him. His fur is mostly a dark brown, but in some places it’s lighter — light enough that it looks kind of a greyish white. Two lighter stripes track down his round cheeks like tear tracks, and a round spot sits just on top of his fat muzzle. His chest is lighter-furred too. He looks sweet. If Seokjin tries he can start to pick out the similarities between this and Yoongi’s human face. He’s certain their fans would be able to in a heartbeat — the mouth that curls up at the corners, the cheeks, the puppy-dog eyes — but then looking for his friend in this animal starts to hurt.
Seokjin closes his eyes until he finally manages to fall asleep, praying that when he wakes up it’ll all have been a dream.
—
What he actually dreams about is a boat that’s letting in water.
Seokjin holds his hands over two of the holes that have been punched in the wooden sides, but it doesn’t help. Cold water still trickles in around the gaps in his fingers, still rushes in through the other holes Seokjin can’t cover. The water rises up to his ankles, soaking up his tracksuit bottoms until the grey material is wet and dark; clinging to his skin. He knows something is down there, under the surface.
“Hyung.”
The boat starts to sink.
“Hyung, would you look at me?”
In front of Seokjin, the black water of the lake stretches out until it touches the grey sky. There is nothing but water to either side. No tree-lines shores, no peninsulas. Seokjin peers over the sinking side of the boat. His own reflection stares back, pale-faced and worried. And then Yoongi’s smiling face, over his shoulder.
“Hyung, turn around. We’re at the shore. It’s shallow. You can walk.”
—
Seokjin opens his eyes the next morning to Yoongi half-draped over him, his arm dead from the weight of the otter cutting off the blood flow. Yoongi is still asleep, curled into Seokjin and snuffling breaths into his skin. Every so often one of Yoongi’s back feet twitches, like a dog caught up in a dream. Seokjin runs a hand over Yoongi’s back to wake him, stopping to scratch the soft fur and the knot of muscle between Yoongi’s shoulder blades for a moment. Yoongi’s leg kicks out, but he doesn’t rouse.
“Yoongi-chi,” Seokjin whispers, running his hand down Yoongi’s back again. Yoongi sighs, awake now. “Let’s not be lazy, hm?”
That was something he used to say to Yoongi when he didn’t know what else would help. Even back then Seokjin knew Yoongi’s habit of falling asleep whenever he could on shoots wasn’t because he was lazy — they all knew it was something else, even if Yoongi denied it every time Seokjin tried to broach the subject. Yoongi wanted to pretend like everything was ok, so he refused to let Seokjin know what he was really feeling, and Seokjin did the best he could to play along.
Yoongi grumbles and tries to burrow his face deeper into Seokjin’s neck. He tucks his muzzle into the dip where Seokjin’s neck meets his shoulder and twitches his nose, his whiskers tickling Seokjin enough that a giggle works its way from his throat even as his heart sinks thinking about how much Yoongi is really aware of. Yoongi makes a noise after Seokjin laughs, but it’s mostly lost into Seokjin’s skin.
“I need to get out of bed,” Seokjin says. “You have to do what I say. You’re an otter. You can’t fight back, you aren’t allowed.”
Yoongi doesn’t move. He squawks in protest whenever Seokjin moves, his paws scrambling to try and pull Seokjin back towards him. His noises of protest trail into growling. With a little struggle, he rights himself on the bed and runs up and down the length of it as Seokjin gets dressed. Seokjin kept an eye on him but every time Yoongi gets too close to the edge he stops and takes a few shaky steps back. He doesn’t seem willing to try and leap down.
“I’m sorry Yoongi-chi,” Seokjin says. “I have things to do.”
Yoongi whines, half-rising onto his back feet but giving up when the soft bed below him throws his balance off. He seems to realise he isn’t going to get his way and scurries back up the bed to fish the koopa shell from where it had ended up underneath one of Seokjin’s pillows. Yoongi holds the shell to his chest carefully and curls around it.
“Will you be alright in here if I leave? Should I put you in the pen?”
Yoongi just glares up at him with a dark eye. Seokjin, afraid to lift him, leaves the door to his bedroom open and heads to the kitchen alone.
Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t find anything helpful online about people turning into otters. He finds video after video of people and their pet otters, all smiling into the camera, and it frustrates him enough that he quickly gives up trying. He orders more fish for Yoongi instead, wanting to stock up incase Yoongi as an otter eats in the same way he does with a human body — either in hailing little handfuls he will wander to and from for hours, or in one huge meal that does him for the entire day. Yoongi emerges from the bedroom while Seokjin is scrolling through photographs Hoseok has sent of a sad-looking Mickey and short videos of his bright voice bothering the old dog. Yoongi is pushing the shell along the floor with his nose and running after it. He chips when he spies Seokjin sitting on the couch, all sign of his bad mood from earlier gone.
Seokjin lets him run around. Yoongi keeps a wide berth around the pen Seokjin had kept him in yesterday, batting the shell around and launching himself after it. Once or twice, Yoongi loses control of the path of the shell and it clatters underneath the couches where he can’t reach. When that happens Yoongi runs between where he last saw the shell and where Seokjin is sitting, whining louder and louder until Seokjin gets up and rescues the shell for him so his game can start all over again.
“Yoongi,” Seokjin says, after a couple of hours, “can you understand me?”
No response.
“Yoongi, do you know what I’m saying?”
Yoongi throws the shell up and fumbles to catch it again, his webbed hands batting gracelessly through the air. Seokjin sighs.
“Yoongi, if you know what I’m saying, turn around. Please. I’ll give you fish.”
That gets a reaction. Yoongi turns to look at him, his little rounded ears pricked and his whiskers twitching. Seokjin tries to make himself take it as a good sign, but he can’t. Yoongi heard the word fish, the same as a dog hears walk and gets excited. That’s all this is.
He lets Yoongi follow him into the kitchen, shell forgotten behind them. Yoongi sticks close to Seokjin’s heel, standing on his back feet and using Seokjin’s leg to help balance as Seokjin prepares the mackerel and tries to think of a plan that’ll prove once and for all if he’s really as alone as he feels, or if there’s some way he can still reach Yoongi.
And then it hits him.
Music.
—
Yoongi treats music like it’s something alive inside his heart that needs attention and light and love to live. He and Namjoon write lyrics everywhere, as long as they’re together — both of them bent over Namjoon’s phone screen or the notebook Yoongi carries around to scribble his thoughts in. When they’re done with schedules for the day Yoongi vanishes into the studio. He writes 200, maybe 300 songs a year.
If Yoongi is still in there, music will find him.
Seokjin has to get him to the Genius Lab. He hunts through the big box in Taehyung’s room that’s filled with toys and coats and harnesses for Yeontan — the only part of Taehyung’s organising that makes sense to anyone who isn’t Taehyung — and finds a blue harness from when Yeontan was smaller that looks to be closest to Yoongi’s size.
Yoongi is very interested. When Seokjin kneels on the floor he runs over to investigate the harness, nosing Seokjin’s hands and all over the material. He puts his front paws on Seokjin’s thighs to peer closer at it, tipping his head to the side and looking at Seokjin’s face searchingly.
“Work with me here,” Seokjin says, pushing Yoongi back so all his feet are on the floor.
Yoongi squirms just a little when Seokjin lifts his legs through the holes in the little blue harness, but he’s still when Seokjin clips the buckles and does his best to tighten it around Yoongi’s slim little body. It’s not a perfect fit, but Seokjin is confident that it will work as long as Yoongi doesn’t try to escape. He hopes so, anyway.
He stands up when the job is done and looks down at Yoongi. He seems uncomfortable, holding his weight strangely and blinking up at Seokjin with sad eyes as he clips a lead onto the harness.
“Relax,” Seokjin smiles, running his hand down Yoongi’s back.
Yoongi grumbles, but then he seems to get used to the feeling of the harness and stands up straighter. Seokjin calls the car and then practices walking with Yoongi up and down the hallway. It starts a little shaky but Yoongi gets the idea quickly and soon he’s running along without a care, no pulling on the lead or trying to back away like a badly-trained dog. Seokjin smiles, even films him with his phone, so sure that he’ll get Yoongi back in the Genius Lab and they’ll be able to figure this out together.
As soon as Seokjin gets the call that the car is waiting and steps outside it’s a different story. Yoongi squeaks over and over, trying to walk between Seokjin’s legs and almost tripping them both up in his determination. His feet are scrambling along the ground of the complex, like he’s not sure if he wants to bolt from Seokjin or stay this close to him forever. Scared that Yoongi will slip the poorly-fitted harness or cause a scene, Seokjin gives up and picks up the struggling Yoongi. He holds him tightly against his chest so that he doesn’t fight free and fall, but Yoongi just slumps and lets Seokjin carry him to the car, half-hidden under Seokjin’s jacket.
The driver looks at him strangely, but Seokjin is relying on the fact that he’s that an idol and people expect him to be strange and that seems to work well enough, because the driver doesn't say anything to him. He gets a couple of looks in the BigHit building too, but none of the staff try and stop him as he rushes past and soon he’s standing in front of the Genius Lab with Yoongi in his arms.
“I’m going to set you down now to enter the code,” Seokjin says, “please don’t run away.”
They all know the code for Yoongi’s passcode. There was a time when it really was a secret, but plenty of conversations about trust and secrets and opening their space up for others have happened since then, and Yoongi sent them all the combination in a text message and then claimed it was because he’d managed to forget it overseas and didn’t want to have to call a locksmith again.
Seokjin keys in the numbers and pushes the door open slowly. Even though Yoongi had shared the passcode willingly, Seokjin has rarely been in here. He’s seen photos — the same ones fans see, and the ones Yoongi took the night after he’d finished setting the studio up — but he can’t remember the last time he was actually in here. Yoongi keeps it neat and ordered and clean. It feels wrong to be here without him in his chair, so Seokjin does his best not to touch anything but what he’s there for. Yoongi himself walks in slowly, like he’s testing some invisible barrier with every step before he comes to a stop in the centre of the room. The lead trails on the ground as Seokjin closes the door behind them.
“What’s it like from that angle?” Seokjin asks, watching Yoongi look around.
Yoongi doesn’t pay him any attention, and wanders off instead to investigate underneath the desk. He gets distracted by the reflective metal on the legs of the chair and stands looking at the lights bouncing off it as Seokjin lifts the keyboard down from the stand.
“Sorry, friend,” Seokjin huffs, lowering it gently to the floor.
Yoongi is still staring at the chair. Seokjin switches on the keyboard and calls Yoongi’s name to get his attention, but it doesn’t snap him out of his trance.
“Yoongi-yah,” Seokjin tries again, patting the floor beside him. “Yoongi-yah, come see what hyung’s got for you.”
Still nothing. Seokjin presses down on a key. That does the trick. Yoongi starts to edge over slowly, his whiskers twitching. Seokjin watches him creeping closer, his stopping to look from the keyboard on the ground to Seokjin every so often with rapid little twitches of his head.
“Come on, Yoongi-yah. You remember this.”
Seokjin mimes pressing down on the key again. Yoongi tracks the movement of his hand, his paw lifting from the ground and trailing half-heartedly through the air. Seokjin laughs and Yoongi blinks up at him.
“You really remember,” Seokjin says. Yoongi blinks again. “Play me something, Yoongi-yah.”
He mimes pressing the key again. This time, Yoongi walks around to stand right beside Seokjin and slaps a key with his paw. He doesn’t put enough force behind it. He looks up at Seokjin in frustration, so Seokjin reaches over him and helps him press it down.
The note plays, loud and clear.
For a second, Seokjin is certain that Yoongi has understood him this whole time, but then something happens that he didn’t expect. Yoongi bolts, his feet skidding across the floor and a horrible low whine escaping from the back of his throat. Seokjin feels frozen looking at the otter trying desperately to find somewhere to hide: scrambling to corners of the room and then back again, too startled by the loud noise to think straight. The trailing lead keeps hitting him in the back of the legs as he runs and he reacts every time with a full-body flinch, throwing himself into a turn and overbalancing once or twice, his chin crashing against the floor before he rights himself.
He finally forces himself into the small gap between the couch he keeps in the Genius Lab and the wall, the wailing whine trailing off into keening whimpers. Seokjin doesn’t know what to do. He feels totally alone, sitting on the floor of a place that is not his with a terrified animal hiding from him.
“Yoongi,” he tries.
The whimpering doesn’t stop.
Seokjin has to force Yoongi out from behind the couch. He calls Yoongi a few more times first, but there’s no fish here; nothing to entice a scared otter out from his hiding place. Seokjin drags the couch out from the wall and Yoongi scurries back with a whine, backing right into the wall and ducking his face down from fear. When Seokjin reaches down to lift him, a growl starts rumbling in Yoongi’s chest. When Seokjin gets closer the otter snaps his sharp little teeth.
In the end, Seokjin has to snatch the lead from the ground and pray Yoongi doesn’t bite his hand. He pulls Yoongi from behind the couch so he can stand behind him and then gathers the furious, frighted otter into his arms again.
“I’m sorry,” Seokjin says over and over, wishing Yoongi could understand him.
Yoongi cries and cries, shaking from fear. Seokjin has to ask one of the staff to call the car because Yoongi refuses to be put down for even a second. Even when they get home he cries if Seokjin tries to put him down so they end up on the couch together, Yoongi’s snout buried into Seokjin’s neck as he wails.
“I know. You had a fright. I’m sorry. I didn’t know — I thought you would have liked the sound. I really didn’t know.”
Yoongi shifts around. He seems to be getting tired. He pulls back from Seokjin’s neck and reaches a shaking paw up to Seokjin’s face to pat at his cheek. Seokjin is confused for a minute, and then he realises he’s crying.
“Ah, you’re worried because hyung is crying?”
Yoongi makes a warbling chirp. When Seokjin was sad, Jjangu used to sit right next to him and watch him carefully until he shook it off. The memory hurts.
“Sweet thing,” Seokjin says to Yoongi, and then lifts him into Yeontan’s pen and goes to bed alone.
—
BigHit Jimin
Yoongi-hyung answer my texts
BigHit Hoseok
Jimin-ie~
BigHit Hoseok
How are holidays?
BigHit Hoseok
[image attached]
Mickey says hello~~
Seokjin
Yoongi’s probably too busy earning trophies his game
Seokjin
Haven’t heard from him in days
—
Seokjin is lonely and embarrassed. He’s out of his depth, completely. He let himself get distracted with wondering if Yoongi could understand him because he wants Yoongi here to help him. But instead of Yoongi there is somehow an otter in Yeontan’s dog pen, waiting for Seokjin to get out of bed and feed him.
Seokjin can’t fix this. What the fuck is happening? Why? The pressure of it all sits heavy on his chest all of a sudden. It’s a different pressure than the one he’s grown used to living with, and it bleeds into all the other feelings Seokjin keeps trapped tightly in his chest about Yoongi.
Yoongi, who might not ever really come back. Stupidly — selfishly — Seokjin can’t think of what that means for the band. He thinks about what it means for him, and everything he’s never said to Yoongi out of fear he would lose one of his best friends. It seems to make perfect sense to fall in love with someone you are so close to until you are paralysed with the realisation that they might leave your live forever if they don’t feel the same. Seokjin never even took that chance, and now Yoongi’s just gone.
But Seokjin can’t leave the helpless animal alone, either. And no matter how overwhelmed and scared he is, he can’t tell himself to give up on the hope that Yoongi will come back again. He promised he’d keep the otter safe until that happens, and he meant it.
The otter is lying on his back and playing quietly with the koopa shell when Seokjin enters the room. Yoongi doesn’t pay him any attention after a quick glance, his whiskers twitching. Seokjin isn’t sure if Yoongi can sense that Seokjin’s in a bad mood or if he’s just unsettled enough by what happened in the Genius Lab that he wants to avoid Seokjin as much as possible. He’s chuffing to himself as he passes the shell back and forth between his paws, finding endless enjoyment in the repetitive movements until he starts to doze off and the shell clatters to the floor.
Seokjin searches the blogs he’d ignored about pet otters, slightly worried after he scared Yoongi so badly with the keyboard that he’s been misjudging his needs all along. He scrolls through, running his tongue over the back of his teeth as he reads.
It turns out that otters need a lot of care. Seokjin looks at Yoongi, sleeping on his side in the pen. His front paws are curled under his chest, his chest rising and falling with each snuffly breath.
He seems healthy enough.
Everything Seokjin reads tells him that otters can eat meat as well as fish, so he cuts some beef into thin strips and adds them to the bowl of fish. They warned about how otters aren’t comfortable with a lot of physical contact, and that they shouldn’t be taught to over-rely on humans, so Seokjin has left the pieces of fish bigger than he has every other time. There’ll be no hand-feeding, either. Honestly, Seokjin can’t be sure how much all of this matters. When Yoongi turns back into himself the otter won't exist any more, so it shouldn’t matter what bad habits Seokjin teaches him. But Seokjin doesn’t want to mess anything up more than he already has.
He places the bowl of fish and beef inside the pen. Yoongi’s nose twitches in his sleep and he opens his eyes with a chirp, roused by the smell of food. He stands up and stretches his short legs out behind him one by one, shaking them after he’s done, and then trots over to where Seokjin has left the food.
“Enjoy,” Seokjin says, already leaving the room to make ramen for himself.
He spends his time in the kitchen on his phone, frowning when the steam from the boiling water starts to make the screen more difficult to use. By the time he gets back to the couch Yoongi is still working his way through the bowl of food, grumbling with his mouth full as he tries to chew the larger pieces. Seokjin watches him as he eats, smiling at how Yoongi alternates between picking up the teeth with his teeth and with his front paws.
When they’re both done Seokjin takes the dishes to wash.
He puts new puppy pads in the pen.
He watches television.
He does everything he can to not think about what’s happening.
Yoongi watches him for a while, peering out at Seokjin with his dark eyes and a slight tilt to his head, but he’s quiet, and soon he falls back asleep again. His snores rumble in the background of the cooking show Seokjin is trying to watch, where the chef is fishing octopus and sea cucumbers out of a tank in her restaurant.
Seokjin doesn’t cry.
—
They spend days like that, just Seokjin and an animal.
Yoongi stops crying for attention if Seokjin leaves him too long. Seokjin plays games of League with his friends, checking every other game that Yoongi's ok.
Seokjin hurts.
He misses Yoongi.
He's tired of this otter.
—
Something starts to change with Yoongi.
Not a good kind of change — not anything that would make Seokjin think this will all be over soon, or like Yoongi is turning back into a human. Instead, Yoongi the otter gets quiet and sad. He lies lethargically on the dorm floor, the shell forgotten. Worried, Seokjin tries to tempt him into playing by handing him the shell but Yoongi just touches the plastic shell with his nose once and then turns away, uninterested.
He doesn’t really eat, giving up and leaving it if the pieces of meat or fish are too big to easily break apart. When Seokjin fills the bath for him Yoongi tries to swim but gets frustrated too quickly with the tiny space and angrily chatters instead.
“I don’t know how to help you,” Seokjin says. It comes out snappier than he'd intended. “I’m sorry.”
Yoongi rolls around in the water and grumbles, and then does it again and again. He reminds Seokjin of those animals pacing back and forth in zoo cages so often that their tracks are worn into the grass. He needs something, but Seokjin doesn’t know what. He knows what it feels like to need to go somewhere else, just for a while, even though that option isn’t available to you.
He and Yoongi were supposed to be going fishing soon. That’s what Seokjin thinks Yoongi needs right now: the space and time to breathe fresh air and the water below always shifting and moving under the steady deck of the boat. Seokjin can’t take the otter fishing, of course. What if he were to get scared again and run off like he did in the Genius Lab? He could get hurt, or lost, or worse. Seokjin can’t put Yoongi in that much danger. What an otter would need from a fishing trip wouldn’t even be the same as what Seokjin and Yoongi need from it.
He remembers the first bath he filled for Yoongi, and how happy Yoongi was because he didn't know he needed any more back then. Seokjin knows what this animal needs: he needs to be living his own life and fishing his own food.
Then an idea hits.
“Hold on,” Seokjin says.
There’s a slowly growing supply of mackerel in the dorm kitchen. Seokjin got another delivery this morning, hoping that fresher fish would make Yoongi eat when he started going off his food the night before. It didn’t, but now Seokjin doesn’t have to worry about Yoongi not having enough for dinner after this. He cuts it up and takes it to the bathroom. Yoongi is still rolling around, blowing bubbles underwater out of frustration.
“Yoongi-chi? Yoongi, stop,” says Seokjin. He sets the bowl of fish on the floor and folds to sit by the bath. “We’re going to fish.”
Yoongi cranes his neck and does his best to watch Seokjin pick up one of the slimy pieces of fish between his finger and thumb. Automatically, Yoongi starts to reach out for it, but Seokjin throws in into the water and Yoongi squeaks in surprise, diving after it in a hunt for the food. Water sloshes over the side of the tub as Yoongi swims around for the fish again and again, happily chirping every time Seokjin picks up another piece of fish.
Seokjin has cut enough fish that it takes them a while to get to the bottom of the bowl. Yoongi is loving it, throwing himself after the mackerel with enthusiasm every time and looking at Seokjin with his chest puffed out proudly as he waits for the next piece. It makes Seokjin smile. This time spent with Yoongi is letting him shake off most of the overwhelming fear.
When Seokjin is done and their game is over, Yoongi manages to catch his sleeve in his wet paws. He tugs at the sleeve to try and pull Seokjin’s arm closer to himself, struggling with his lack of strength.
“You’re lonely too, hm?”
Yoongi loses his gentle grip on Seokjin’s sleeve. Seokjin reaches out and lays his hand between Yoongi’s round ears. Yoongi presses his head into Seokjin’s palm, seeking even more contact.
“I’m sorry for leaving you alone, little otter. I want my fri — my Yoongi back now. I miss him. I think I love him. I think this is a crazy fucking thing that’s happened and all I can think about is how I never got to tell him what I want him to hear.”
It feels good to let it out. It feels better to let the words out into the world and know that this animal won’t understand, and that Seokjin’s greatest secret is still safe. Yoongi chatters and tries to clamber out of the bath, his feet slipping on the sides until he falls back into the water with an angry squeak and a splash. Seokjin drains the bath and laughs at Yoongi chasing the last of the water to the drain, then wraps him in a towel and lifts him out.
He rubs Yoongi’s fur dry, worried he’ll catch a cold. Then he does something he hasn’t done since he found the otter: he goes back into Yoongi’s room to look for clues to try and turn him back. Yoongi follows him, running between his legs and around in circles as Seokjin cleans up the mess that was on the floor. One of the lenses in Yoongi’s glasses is broken and the earrings are missing their backs, but Seokjin leaves them as neatly as he can.
“Can you see any clues?” he asks Yoongi.
Yoongi peers out from under the bed, where he’d gone to explore. Seokjin looks under there too, but there’s nothing except the otter, sliding around on his stomach. Seokjin stays on his knees for a second, his hands on his thighs as he looks around, but he doesn’t know what he’s looking for, and he accepts quite quickly that there’s no help in the small room.
Yoongi barrels past him out of the room. Seokjin finds him trying to reach the koopa shell through the small gap between the dog pen and the floor. Yoongi’s leg can fit through the gap, but it’s too short to reach anywhere near the shell. He huffs and whines, looking up at Seokjin for help and chirping when Seokjin reaches down for it.
—
“I think Yoongi almost kissed me once,” Seokjin tells the otter in the dark. Yoongi is probably asleep by now, the shell held tightly against his chest, but Seokjin has realised how good it feels to be able to say these things. “Maybe I just wanted him to kiss me, though.”
They were the only two left in the dance studio. Seokjin had been there since their practice ended, trying to get the footwork down, but Yoongi had wandered off with Namjoon to go work on one of the songs they were preparing for their comeback. Seokjin was watching himself dance in the mirrors when he saw Yoongi enter the room behind him. He saw Yoongi’s split-second expression of shock too, before it was smoothed over and locked away.
“Yoongi-yah. Fancy meeting you here.”
Yoongi smiled and lifted his hand in a strange half-wave that dropped to his side too early. “I was just coming back for something I forgot,” he said, even though they could both see that there was nothing left behind in the practice room apart from the clothes Seokjin had changed out of to dance.
He stared at Seokjin, daring him to call Yoongi out on the lie. Seokjin did, of course. That was half of their fun.
“Need a little more practice?”
Yoongi pursed his lips at Seokjin’s question, but he didn’t say no.
“We danced together,” Seokin tells the otter, ignoring the sleepy grumbles he gets in reply. “He kept looking at me in the mirror and I knew because I kept looking at him in the mirror, so I saw him.”
Yoongi grumbles again and rolls in closer to Seokjin until he’s lying with his head pillowed between Seokjin’s shoulder and his head. His breath hits Seokjin on the ear and it’s uncomfortable enough that Seokjin lifts the otter and lets him rest on his chest instead. The otter is limp with sleep, letting Seokjin do what he likes without complaint.
“But of course that didn’t mean he wanted to kiss me,” he continues. “Just because I wanted to kiss him doesn’t mean he wanted to kiss me.”
The otter growls.
“Alright, alright. I’ll be quiet. You can sleep. Lazy thing.”
—
Seokjin wakes up to Yoongi clinging to him. Human Yoongi. His bare chest is warm against Seokjin’s skin, and his messy hair tickles against the underside of Seokjin’s jaw, feeling strange against the stubble Seokjin has left growing for the past couple of days out of fear Yoongi would get himself into some sort of trouble whenever Seokjin was concentrating on shaving.
Seokjin takes a minute to look at Yoongi, ignoring the uncomfortable position he’s in. It’s a strange angle — with Yoongi so close and his face half-turned to rest against Seokjin’s shoulder — but it hits Seokjin that he really thought he would never get to see Yoongi’s face again. He looks at the slope of Yoongi’s nose and how his mouth is pushed out in a pout even when he sleeps. He must be dreaming, because he makes a funny-sounding grumble and his long, thin fingers skitter over Seokjin’s body. Seokjin clears his throat.
“Yoongi-yah.”
Yoongi cracks open an eye. “What?”
He’s whispering even though there’s nobody else in the dorm apart from them, his quiet voice still catching in his throat. His eyes are bright — he’s already wide awake, even though it usually takes him minutes to rouse from sleep. He must have been pretending to sleep.
“You’re human again,” Seokjin says, stupidly.
He can feel Yoongi smile. It makes Seokjin smile too, his expressions still feeling slow and soft with sleep. This all feels like it might still be a dream.
“I know, hyung.”
“I — how?”
Yoongi breathes out a gentle sigh.
“Dunno. There’s a lot to think about? I was an otter.”
“You were.”
“And now I’m not. I’m going to sleep instead.”
He nuzzles in closer to Seokjin, drawing his knees up against Seokjin’s side. His eyelashes flutter against the bottom of Seokjin’s neck as he closes his eyes and he smacks his lips a little, getting comfortable. Oh, how Seokjin has missed him.
“Yoongi-yah?”
He’s whispering now too. He hopes that somehow Yoongi has fallen asleep already, so he won’t have to ask, but Yoongi hums a response.
“That was really you? The otter?”
There’s a moment when he thinks maybe Yoongi doesn’t know what he’s really asking, but then Yoongi draws back and props himself up on an elbow to see Seokjin’s face.
“You know it was me.”
“But — you understood what was happening? You understood me?”
Yoongi’s expression turns careful. It’s the only word Seokjin can think to call it. He looks like he's hiding something because he doesn't want Seokjin to see it just yet, before Yoongi is sure. He looks at Seokjin like that for a long moment, and then he looks away.
“I did.” Then, shyly, “I think that you saying — telling me that, I think that’s why I’m back now. Feels like it could be, doesn’t it? ”
“I thought you didn’t understand.”
There’s panic. There’s regret that he ever said that to Yoongi, no matter how convinced he was that the otter wasn’t listening to him. There’s the fear of what telling Yoongi he loves him has done to their friendship, or their career, or both.
There’s a little spark underneath all of that that feels like hope.
Yoongi can read it all on his face. Seokjin knows he can. Yoongi knows him best.
“Hyung, I … me too. I like you too. I’m sorry that I made you think you were alone. It was strange to be like that. I didn’t know why I was doing some of the things I did, but I knew you. And I listened. And … yeah. I like you too, hyung. I thought I’d have to make you see that somehow before I could turn back, but it wasn’t as easy as it should have been.”
The spark of hope ignites and burns up through Seokjin’s body, lighting him up from the inside. He smiles and reaches out to touch Yoongi, meaning to cup his cheek but shying away at the last second and tugging on his ear instead. It’s so strange to see him without any earrings. Yoongi tolerates it once, but then moves his head away.
“Stop, hyung. We just … I don’t know .. confessed? So you’re pulling my ear? Weirdo. You were nicer to me as an otter.”
“I wasn’t that nice for a while.”
Yoongi’s expression shutters just a little. “Sorry about that. I panicked. I realised I might never make — otters can’t really, you know. Can’t really make music as an otter.”
Seokjin laughs. He can’t help himself. Yoongi watches him with a smirk at the side of his mouth and then he says in a soft voice, "I really like your laugh, hyung."
There's a blush creeping up to Seokjin's ears. He can feel it. “Do you like me as much as you liked that shell?”
Yoongi makes a surprised noise and twists to fish it out from where it must have fallen when he changed back into a human. He lets it rest in the centre of his palm. It looks tiny in the middle of his wide hand, but he still holds it like the otter did; like it has a weight to it.
“Where’d you find that figurine anyway? I don’t think I’ve seen that in a while. Did it fall down somewhere only your little otter hands could reach?”
Yoongi makes a face whenever Seokjin says otter hands. “No. I uh, took it when we moved here.”
“What?”
Yoongi flattens out his mouth and turns to lie on his back with a sigh, the koopa shell still in his hand. He closes his fingers over it. “I took it when we moved here.” He sounds like he’s about to admit something he’s worried Seokjin might tease him for, but he closes his eyes and gets it over with. “I wanted to have something of yours in my room but I didn’t want it to be something you’d miss.”
Seokjin remembers where the shell used to sit in their old room. It was at the very edge of one of his bookcase shelves, always about to be knocked off if something else was moved. He never knew why he didn’t move it back a bit, where it would be safer, or less of an annoyance, but it stayed there from the day he got it alongside a Mario figurine until they day they moved out. The day Yoongi took it, apparently.
“You thief,” he teases.
Yoongi opens one eye and then closes it again. “Yeah. Anyway I — it reminded me of you, I think. So. I missed you.”
“I was right there the whole time,” Seokjin points out. “I was feeding you fish.”
“Mmm. But you didn’t know that, that. I was worried I wasn’t going to get to tell you, well. Everything. But then you told me, so now we both know. Which is good.”
Seokjin smiles and pulls Yoongi so that they’re lying pressed close to one another. “Now we know,” he says.
Yoongi’s hand finds Seokjin’s under the covers and he tangles their fingers together. His long thumb strokes the inside of Seokjin’s wrist, gentle over the thin skin. He sounds exhausted when he speaks, his words slurred together. “I think I want to brush my teeth before I kiss you, hyung.”
“I think I want that too, Yoongi-yah.”