Archive of Our Own ^beta

🩸

“Fucking- press the button , Seokjin!”

Yoongi knocks another hissing vamp on its back, slamming his boot down on its neck before he’s blindsided on his right, air whooshing out of him as he hits the concrete with a thud.  He raises both arms defensively over his face and neck, already scrambling his legs to get a good kick in.

“It’s, shit, get off me you fucker , it’s daylight, Yoongi!  I don’t have a deathwish yet .”

Yoongi spares his partner an incredulous glance.  Seokjin is similarly locked up with a foamed-mouth vamp, pushing its face away and shoving at its skinny torso.  The button for the warehouse window shades is within arms-reach of Seokjin, a sight that makes Yoongi beyond frustrated.

“Are you serious?  You’re actually being this much of a bitch, when,” He kicks the vamp away, swinging brass-covered knuckles down a second later with a satisfying crunch . “–you know there’s cover.  Goddamnit,”

Yoongi doesn't have time for their usual back and forth.  He hardly has time to think, there’s so many vamps.  They haven't seen a nest this far developed since Seokjin’s own coven got busted years ago.  Yoongi had come out of that damn near soaked in black vamp blood, enough of the stuff to mat his hair up into chunks when they loaded the vans with survivors.  The few that were left.

He lunges for Seokjin, throwing the vamp off of his partner and making for the button.

“Yoongi, I swear to–”

Yoongi smacks a bloodied palm over the button, leaving a black print behind as the rusty windows groan open.  Seokjin’s eyes widen and then he’s diving behind a piece of scrappy machinery, a slew of curses falling from his mouth.

The rogue vamps don't have enough of their brains left to react, pale eyes turning toward the sound just before sunlight burns through them like lasers.  Their flesh has seconds to melt before they’re all crumbling piles of ash.

Yoongi coughs against the plumes of ashy smoke, waving a hand in front of his face.

“You singed?”

“Fuck you.” Seokjin’s voice filters from behind the machinery.  He sounds tired.

“What should’ve I done, huh?  Black coats won’t be here for another fifteen, anyway.  You catch sight of the kid?”

“Maybe if you closed the blinds I could actually open my eyes and let you know, asshole.”

“Right.” Yoongi slaps the button again, wincing when it sticks a little to his palm.  The blinds squeal closed.

Seokjin slinks out a few seconds later, furious.  He stalks up to Yoongi, pushing his shoulder hard .  It wouldn't be an issue, but Seokjin is strong .  He forgets his own strength, and Yoongi goes sprawling over the concrete.

Seokjin looks concerned for half a second before his face melts back into a frustrated expression. “You could’ve killed me.”

Yoongi gets up carefully, rolling his shoulder. “I gave fair warning.”

“This is your problem.  You think I’m just some fucking vamp scum beneath your white coat boot, right?  Awfully convenient way to get yourself a new partner– a human partner, since you’re so sick and tired of me.  Question.  Who, exactly, found this nest, hm?  Who led us here like a collared bloodhound and gave you whatever information you needed to raid successfully?  And then who , Yoongi, told you to wait for the goddamn black coats before you completely ignored me and rushed directly into an ambush.  I can’t even be surprised, this is practically your modus operandi.”

Yoongi is half-listening, checking around the ash-caked warehouse for the trapdoor the vamps had crawled out of like ants.  He knows it’s gotta be around here somewhere, the intel was clear that they’d taken the kid to this exact location.  Certainly they hadn’t moved him.  Seokjin hadn’t smelled spilled blood, so his heart is probably still beating.

“Yeah, sorry.” He mutters when Seokjin seems done ranting.  The vampire’s mouth pops open, Yoongi can hear the little pop his jaw still makes ever since he got sucker punched months ago.

“Sorry?  You’re sorry?  I swear to god–”

“Ah,” Yoongi pops the latch on a flimsy trapdoor with the toe of his boot, grinning over at Seokjin. “Found it.  Catch a whiff?”

Seokjin stills, nostrils flaring on instinct.  He looks confused for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, he’s down there.  No thanks to you.  I can barely smell him past your fucking Calvin Clein.  Is it really that important to smell good before every single raid?”

“Yup.” Yoongi is already swinging into the black pit in the ground, white coat fluttering behind him as he does.  

“Hey, wait, this conversation isn’t over, alright?  I’m being serious.  You can’t put my life at risk like that.”

“What life?” Yoongi’s voice echoes up the shaft of the tunnel. “You’re already dead.”

Seokjin pinches the bridge of his nose before following after his partner dutifully.

The underground is dark.  Yoongi can see Seokjin’s retinas flash reflective every few seconds when his flashlight swings upwards too far.  It sends a shiver down his spine.

“You smell any blood?”

“Sure.  Not the kid’s, though.” 

“Helpful.” Yoongi breathes, sweeping the light over the area.  The air is damp, stale, sticks a little to the back of the throat when inhaled.  The walls are rounded like a sewer line, most of the exits blocked off, likely so that the rogue vamps wouldn’t get confused when released.  Prime vampires were bitches like that, always making sure to keep several of their dogs around in case The Establishment sent coats in.

Seokjin takes a second to scent the air again before he’s walking ahead and turning down an even darker exit.  The blood in the air is so pungent that Yoongi’s dull human senses can pick it up.  He gags.

“Are there,” He heaves a little, but swallows it back.  He sticks the cologne-drenched part of his wrist up to his nose and breathes that in, instead. “Sane vamps?  Or just their dogs leftover?”

“No, actually,” Seokjin seems a little taken aback. “Just the kid left, I think?”

Yoongi tilts his head. “What, they left him behind?  Unharmed?”

On cue, they turn another corner and the kid is there on the ground.  He has zip ties fastened around his wrists and ankles, dark hair greasy and splayed out over the grimy concrete.  There’s a gag in his lax mouth.

“Heart’s beating.” Seokjin confirms before Yoongi leans down to try and shake the kid awake.  He’s dressed in a ratty hoodie and jeans, the same outfit that his parents had described him wearing the last time they’d seen him.

The kid groans a little when Yoongi pulls out the gag with clean fingers, having wiped his hand against his pants to remove the black blood.  He blinks at Yoongi, eyes glazed.

“He’s gotta be half-starved.” Yoongi mutters, already working a knife through the zip ties on his wrists.

“Hyung?” The kid asks, hoarse.

Seokjin frowns. “Maybe.  His chemistry smells off, though.  Might’ve slipped him something.”

“Hey kid.” Yoongi helps him sit up, slicing through the ties on his ankle. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Jeon Jungkook.” The kid says, bewildered.

“Alright Jeon Jungkook.  I’m Yoongi, and this is my partner Seokjin.  We’re here from The Establishment.  Your parents reported you missing a week ago.  Do you remember being taken?”

Jungkook’s glassy eyes flit between Yoongi and Seokjin with uncertainty. “They took me from practice,” He slurs. “Had a van, something wet on a rag.  Where’s hyung?”

“Who, kid?” Yoongi motions for Seokjin to get in contact with the black coat backups.

“Hyung.  He said…” Jungkook’s brow furrows. “He promised .”

Yoongi takes a pack of wipes out of his thigh holster, wiping Jungkook’s face and hands with it carefully. “Alright, kid.  We’ll figure it out, okay?  Are you hurt anywhere?”

“No,” Jungkook shakes his head and sways with the motion.  Yoongi catches his shoulder to keep him from falling. “Want hyung.”

“Alright.  I said we’ll figure it out, right?  Hey, look at me,” He pats Jungkook’s sticky cheek. “You’re safe now.  We’ll find your hyung later, okay?”

“No, no they’ll– they’ll hurt him.” His round eyes go impossibly wider. “They’re a-already hurting him.  They’re gunna kill him–”

Jungkook’s chest starts rising rapidly.  Yoongi curses. “Hey, calm down.  Breathe.”

“Black coats are sending a stretcher in.” Seokjin says, sticking his hands in his pockets.  Yoongi catches Jungkook against his chest when he falls, petting over the back of his messy hair to calm him down.

The kid falls asleep, or maybe unconscious, against him, his arms falling limp.  Yoongi frowns, pulling back to check his vital signs worriedly.

“He’s just tired.” Seokjin supplies.  Yoongi is sure he can hear the frail heartbeat with his vamp ears, and it makes his stomach twist uncomfortably.  He’d much rather feel Jungkook’s steady pulse beneath his own, human, hands.

“Clearly,” Yoongi snaps.

Seokjin looks away.

🩸

Yoongi’s been down in the lab for the last few hours, watching Namjoon bend over his science tubes and use droppers to add chemicals.  There’s a vamp corpse laid out in the middle of the room, Namjoon sometimes taking samples to biopsy.  Yoongi’s not totally sure what he’s doing.  Namjoon is notoriously quiet in his concentration, usually spacing out for hours at a time before starting up conversation like it hadn’t ever stopped.

The quiet is good.  It means that Yoongi can sit and scroll mindlessly through his phone without his coworkers breathing down his neck about reports and schedules, and whatever other office work he’s skipping out on.  Best of all, Seokjin is always upstairs, pouring over his shitty macbook screen, too focused to notice that Yoongi has slipped away.  

His partner is many things, and a stickler about follow-up reports is definitely one of them.  That suits Yoongi just fine, so long as he isn’t the one that has to deal with them.

“Hoseok said the kid’s fine.  His parents are coming to collect him from the clinic.”

Yoongi glances at Namjoon from his perch in his desk chair. “Yeah?”

“Namjoon sniffs behind his mask, brings a clean wrist up to rub at his face.  He’s all in scrubs, completely ruffled and definitely in need of a proper wash.  It’s clear that Namjoon hasn’t left the basement in a while; maybe more than a day.

“Kept mentioning his hyung, though.  You and Jin never found anyone else down there?”

Yoongi shakes his head. “Black coats swept the area.  He asked me about him too, I dunno.  I feel like he would’ve mentioned more if they’d been kept together after the kidnapping.  Did the parents give any info?”

“I would ask Hoseok.”

Yoongi’s curiosity is piqued.  He stands up, heavy boots creaking after being up on Namjoon’s desk for the last couple hours. 

“Hey,” Namjoon calls after him before he can skitter out the doors. “Did Seokjin smell anything unusual on these vamps?” he motions with bloodied surgical scissors to the corpse laid out on the table, one of the stragglers brought in by the black coats, Yoongi guesses.

“Unusual how?”

“General chemistry, I guess.  I’m seeing a physical difference in fang length, but the rest is internal.  The circulatory system is…” Namjoon trails off, snipping the scissors absentmindedly. “I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.  I’ll talk to Jin later, maybe.”

Yoongi bobs his head, having mentally checked out as soon as Namjoon started talking about the circulatory system .  It sounds like doctor-speak for some kind of anatomical mystery, and not the kind Yoongi tends to take interest in. “I’ll let him know you’re curious about, uh, whatever is going on there.”

🩸

Yoongi forgets.

He’s in the elevator, just reaching the clinic’s floor when he remembers he was supposed to ask Seokjin about the weird vamp anatomy.  He pats himself on the cheek with a grimace.  Most likely Namjoon will find Seokjin later, ask his questions and have a conversation that doesn’t involve Yoongi at all.  

It’s out of his hands, anyway.

Hoseok is at the nurse’s station, rifling through some paperwork.  His bright red hair is mussed up, pretty lips quirked out as he focuses.  There’s a line between his strong eyebrows.  Yoongi grins, leaning forward to knock on the countertop.

The nurse glares up, clearly ready to give Yoongi a piece of his mind.  

“Oh,” Hoseok visibly relaxes. “I thought you were another visitor here for a patient past hours.  Shit, I was seriously about to go off on you.  Don’t do that.”

“Sorry.” Yoongi thrums his fingers over a folder splayed on the desk.  Hoseok moves it out of the way to shuffle through the contents while he talks.

“Hm.  You smell nice.  New cologne?”

“Thanks.  Any news, Hoba?”

Hoseok leans back, pushing his messy hair back with a tired hand. “You know I’ve been here, like, nineteen hours?  The kid just left, by the way.  The nest vic.  Parents were totally beside themselves.  I brought the mom, like, four barley teas.  Thank god for quick water boilers, huh?”

“For sure.”

Hoseok’s mouth twists down. “You’re not even listening, are you.”

“Sure.  Long shift, barley tea.  I actually came to ask about him.”

“What, the kid?” Hoseok smiles like he knows something about Yoongi.  Like he’s poked a hole in his tough-guy facade.  Yoongi rolls his eyes. “He was real sweet.  Kinda quiet.  He asked for his hyung, some Taehyung guy.  His parents were real tight-lipped about it, though.”

Yoongi rummages in his pocket until his fingers close around his ratty work pocketbook, flipping it to a clean page and writing taehyung ? in messy scrawl. “He say anything else about it?  Maybe a description or phone number?”

Hoseok eyes him, a half-smile still on his lips. “Are you interviewing me right now?”

Yoongi sighs. “He mentioned his hyung to me, too, when I was in the tunnels with him.  I’ve got a gut feeling.”

“About what?” Hoseok asks, expression curious.  His hands have completely stilled over the paperwork he was sorting.

“His hyung.  Taehyung.  It seems like… maybe there was another vic down there with the vamps.  Seokjin couldn’t smell anything out, nothing else human.  So if his hyung was down there with him…”

“His hyung is a vamp?”

Yoongi shrugs. “I’ve got no idea.  But I’d like to find out.” He raises an eyebrow at Hoseok.

The nurse shakes his head. “I wish I had anything, he really only mentioned his name.  But,” Hoseok shuffles until he’s behind the counter, fingers tapping over the computer keys, face flushed blue from the monitor light.  The printer whirrs to life a second later, pushing out a paper that Hoseok hands to Yoongi. “This is his information, address and mobile.  His parents’, too, right here,”

Yoongi takes the paper, instantly grabbing his cell to snap a photo of the information in case he loses the physical copy. “Thanks ‘Seok.  You’re not gunna get in any trouble for this, are you?”

Hoseok shrugs. “I’m a slut for a good mystery.  Solve it and get back to me and I’ll consider us even.”

Yoongi snorts. “Yeah, okay.  Hey, get home and get some sleep.”

Hoseok rubs his hand over his tired face, nodding. “Stay safe out there.”

🩸

“Hey,”

Yoongi glances up from where he’d been halfway through composing a midnight text to Jungkook.  Boundaries be damned, he’s got a crawling feeling under his skin and he’ll do anything to get to the bottom of his mystery.

Seokjin is standing in the hallway, too-still in that creepy vamp way, his pale skin damn near reflective beneath the fluorescents.  His face is lit with contrasting shadows, the cut of his high cheek bones prominent, the curve of his jaw.  

“Yeah?” Yoongi doesn’t mean to sound so snappy, but his fingers are twitching over his phone screen, itching to type.

“Black coat Park’s got us booked for a raid in Itaewon.”

“Fuck,” Yoongi drops his head back until it hits the wall with a dull thunk. “That guy’s got a bug up his ass, I swear to god.  He give us a printout?”

Seokjin holds up a piece of printer paper in answer, handing it over when Yoongi reaches for it.

“Are you… Texting the kid from the tunnels?” Seokjin’s eyes are narrowed, and Yoongi glares at him.

“Don’t use your freaky vamp eyes to sus out my business.”

“Just seems a tad unprofessional–”

“If you’re done ruining my night with this,” He shakes the paper. “I’d like to get my personal space back.  You know.  Personal, professional , space.”

Seokjin’s lip raises up over his teeth, one sharp fang visible as he scowls. “Some of us actually do their job .  While you were downstairs sitting in the damp dark with Namjoon, I was up here writing your reports.  You have absolutely no respect for this job, let alone for me, your partner.  Don’t think I’m letting the window incident slide.”

Yoongi rolls his eyes. “Please.  Go ahead and report me, give yourself a big ole stamp on the forehead as the vampire The Establishment decided to let live, only to become a pain in the director’s ass.”

“I didn’t choose this!” Seokjin’s voice shakes.

It’s too loud.  There are offices in both directions from the secluded hallway, and Yoongi glances over his shoulder like another white coat is going to come barging in hissing at them to be quiet.  After a few seconds of silence, when it’s clear they haven’t made enough of a disturbance to get yelled at, Yoongi turns on Seokjin.

“It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t choose, alright?  None of us chose to live in a world with literal monsters under our beds and in the shadows.  But now we ,” He motions to himself and then Seokjin. “Are the ones who get to clean it up.  You can hold it against me, but it’s your species that’ve created this mess, and it’s only fair that the rehabilitated ones help mop it up.”

Seokjin’s jaw tenses like it does when he’s really angry, but there’s something else in his sloped eyes that actually makes Yoongi’s heart seize up with guilt for half a second.  Seokjin turns on his heel and walks down the hallway with fast steps, leaving Yoongi with the half-crumpled raid summons still in his fist.

Yoongi straightens up, glancing over his shoulder again to make sure they’d been well and truly alone.  He isn't sure why, but the thought of someone else hearing him speak to Seokjin like that leaves a sour taste in his mouth.  He tries to shake it off and read over Jimin’s summons, smoothing the paper out over the wall.

It’s a fairly simple raid.  A seedy club in Itaewon that’d been growing in vamp attendance for the last few months.  It’s no wonder it developed from coven to nest.  Vamps spread like disease, their covens festered and got too big.  He folds the paper up and pockets it, setting the date and time into his phone in case he needs the reminder.  

It’s around eighteen hours away, definitely leaving Yoongi with enough time to question Jungkook first.

🩸

Yoongi isn’t sure how the kid managed it, but he’d snuck out of his parent’s mansion and met Yoongi at a cafe just down the street.  They don’t have a lot of time, mostly because Jungkook’s parents are still on high alert after the kid had been snatched, and they’re not likely going to overlook him being missing, even in a multi-storied house with more bathrooms than bedrooms.

Jungkook’s skin is still sallow, but he looks clean enough.  There’s a hint of rosiness to his cheeks as he sips on the latte Yoongi had gotten him.  He’d erred on the safe side with vanilla and oat milk, just in case the kid had some kind of dairy allergy or didn’t like the taste of coffee.

“You didn’t have to get me anything, Yoongi-ssi.”

“It’s not a problem, really.” Yoongi’s too antsy to drink his own iced americano.  There’s energy in his limbs from the catnap he’d taken while waiting for Jungkook to wake up and respond to his messages.  It’s clear the kid is still in recovery and had slept in, and now there’s only a few hours before Yoongi needs to be back at base for raid prep.

“Does this mean you’re trying to find him?” Jungkook’s voice is small, raspy.  He peers up at Yoongi with large rounded eyes.

“That’s the thing, kid.  I couldn’t find anyone reported missing under the name Kim Taehyung.  Are you sure that’s his real name?  And you never got back to me on his address, his family, contact information…” He trails off, not wanting to overwhelm Jungkook right off the bat.

“I don’t really know much.  My parents hired him.  He was supposed to give me voice lessons at the house, but then he found out I liked dance and said he knew a really great instructor.  We started going to the classes together, since I was too shy to go alone, and.” Jungkook hunches into himself.  He’s fairly broad in the chest and shoulders, but manages to look tiny when he caves in the way he’s doing now.

“Then he was with you when…”

“They took him, too.  Took both of us.  I can’t tell my parents, since they didn’t know about the classes and I was using my own savings to pay for them.  They don’t like Taehyung hyung, said he’s got bad manners.  They forced me to quit the voice lessons, so I kept sneaking out with him to go dance.  Sometimes I would go to his place too, and he’d give me lessons for free.” Jungkook shakes his head, fingers trembling around his cup.  “You can’t blame hyung.  You just can’t.”

Yoongi furrows his brow. “Blame him for what, kid?”

Jungkook looks away, tears brimming over his lashline and down his cheeks.  He’s looking but not seeing, Yoongi knows that stare.  He knows that feeling.  He reaches over the flimsy cafe table to touch gently at Jungkook’s shaking hands and bring him back to the moment, back to where reality is.

“Blame him for what?” Yoongi asks again, gently. 

“He knew them.  He knew the–the vampires.  The ones that took us.  He needed money for his mom, she’s sick, and made a deal with them for my ransom.  But he told them he didn’t want to do it when we started getting closer.  He said he tried to back out, thought they had backed off, but they were tracking him.  They saw us together and mapped our routes.  Nobody is—” Jungkook stops, tears closing up his throat. “Nobody is looking for hyung, because he doesn’t have anyone.  He has me.  They took him, Yoongi-ssi, and they were hurting him.  He’s still d-down there.”

“Okay,” Yoongi says.  He fishes his notebook out, flips to Jungkook’s informational note page and starts writing. “Okay Jungkookah, I need you to tell me everything you know about your hyung, alright?  Oh,” he pauses.

Jungkook wipes his nose on his bare wrist, flinching when snot rubs on his skin.  Yoongi wordlessly hands him a napkin. 

“This might be weird to ask, but do you have anything of his?  Clothes, wallet, anything?”

Jungkook considers. “I slept in one of his shirts one night and ended up accidentally taking it home.  Would that work?”

Yoongi nods. “Yeah kid, that’d work.”

🩸

“Don’t think for even half a second that the reason you got summoned was ‘cause I needed you,”

Yoongi sighs, rubbing a calloused hand down his face.  He’s already tired, and they haven't even shipped out yet.  “Honestly, Jimin, I don’t really give a fuck.”

Jimin snorts, sliding on black protective pants that cling to his muscled thighs way too tightly.  He’s toeing on his boots right after, tiny feet disappearing into the chunky shoe.  Yoongi barely holds back from making another comment about Jimin’s size, especially because they’re so close in height.  The last time he’d gone down that rabbit hole they’d both limped back to base, bruised black eyes and loose teeth abound.  Hoseok had nearly killed them himself after patching up their sore knuckles and stitching them up.  Jimin and Yoongi had been better since then.  Sort of.

Seokjin is quiet as they all gear up.  Yoongi hates that he still feels guilty for what he’d said before.  They haven't spoken since.  Yoongi received an email confirming that his reports had been submitted and processed, obviously Seokjin’s doing, but he can’t bring himself to push his pride aside and thank him.

Yoongi looks away only to get an eyeful of Jimin’s ass.  He wrenches his eyes up to the ceiling, breathing an exasperated puff of breath out.

“Hyung, did you read the email I sent you this morning?” Jimin’s voice takes on a whole different tone with Seokjin, somewhere between dongsaeng whining and the smooth croon of someone hitting on a guy at a club.  Yoongi wrinkles his nose.

Seokjin hums. 

Yoongi looks down again at both of them.  Jimin is swinging on his black uniform jacket, his eyes bunched into half-moons as he smiles over at Seokjin.  The vamp takes a second before responding the affirmative quietly.

“Okay, cuz I didn’t want you to be too surprised when we get in there.  Sorry to call you into something like this, just.  There’s been a few of these weird vamps around, and their chemistry is off.  Namjoon hyung said he wanted you in on this, train your nose up or something.  Not that I’m not happy to have you, of course.  You’re always an asset to my team.”

Seokjin shuffles on his feet.  Yoongi notices that his eyes are sunken in, small beads of sweat on his forehead.  He knows the signs of hunger when he sees them.

“You fed?”

Seokjin’s gaze snaps up. “Is that any of your business?”

Yoongi puts both hands up. “Just asking you a question.”

“Well don’t.”

Yoongi grinds his teeth together. “Ironic that you’re suddenly big on privacy.”

“What did you say?”

“Whoa,” Jimin steps between them, one hand out towards Seokjin.  He cranes his head around to glare at Yoongi. “What is your problem, huh?”

“So I shouldn’t be worried that my vampire partner hasn't fed himself before a raid?” Yoongi scoffs.

“Have you fed, hyung?” Jimin asks, miles softer than Yoongi’s own tone.

“Yeah, I’ve fed.” Seokjin spits.  His eyes are hazy, little black veins spiderwebbing around the bottom of his sclera.  Yoongi knows he’s lying and says as much. “Since when do you give such a shit?  Just the other day you tried to kill me .”

Jimin looks between them. “What’s been going on with you two?  I know it’s been rocky these last few months, but this.  This is weird, even for you.”

“Forget it.” Seokjin snaps, shrugging on his shorter white coat and storming out of the supply room.  The metal door clangs so hard behind him that it makes Yoongi’s teeth rattle.

“You tried to kill him?” Jimin accuses.  His face is half joking, half confused.

“No.” Yoongi answers, leaning down to zip up his boot.

Jimin waits, but it becomes clear very quickly that Yoongi has nothing else to say.  He sighs.

“You know what, not my issue.  Fucking white coats.  You’re all drama queens.”

“Fuck off, Jimin.” Yoongi calls, still hunched over his boots.

Jimin grunts and follows out the door that Seokjin had slammed, leaving Yoongi in relatively blissful silence.

🩸

Black coats never have much to say.  Yoongi appreciates the concise conversation.

There’s a few vamp black coats around, too, red tags hanging from their dark coat collars, mostly keeping to themselves.  Seokjin sits on the opposite side of the cab, hands between his knees and brows furrowed angrily.  

Yoongi knows this raid is a simple in and out, but his gut rolls with the lurching of the car, minutes feeling far too fast and yet all too slow at the same time.  It’s been years since he’s felt so completely ruffled by a mission.

Jimin has a map open, swaying on his feet as the driver navigates Seoul.  “Club’s got eight exits, including upper level fire escapes.  I figure we stick a few men out in the alleyway, bust in through the entrances.”

“City called in approval this morning,” One of Jimin’s black coats confirms, tapping away on his work-issued phone.

“Good.  Try to steer clear of any humans, let’s keep our hands clean on this one.” Jimin slides wobbily to where his vamp teammates are, handing each of them a short glass vial.  He stretches to reach Seokjin, plopping the glass in his palm. “Namjoon hyung asked for samples from any vamps you might encounter that seem abnormal to you, whatever that may look or smell like.  Any questions?”

One of the black coat vamps raises her hand and Jimin nods at her. “Are blood samples preferred?”

“Blood or tissue would be ideal, yes.  Hyung did warn to keep your teeth out of them, try not to ingest any infected biological material.”

Seokjin raises his head. “Infected?”

“It’s a working theory.  There haven't been any reports of our vamps getting sick.”

“Not yet.” Yoongi pipes up.

Jimin glares, but his face clears up when he turns back to the vamps.

“Any other questions?”

Yoongi tunes them out.

🩸

Seokjin is leaning against the armored car, fingers twitching against his arms like he wants to light one up, though Yoongi’s pretty sure he’s never smoked anything in his entire life or undead existence.

Yoongi scuffs his boot against the small pile of loose gravel in the alleyway, sniffing.

“D’you hear anything?” He asks after a second.

“Fighting.  There’s a lot of them.”

Seokjin is using his Work Tone.  Not that Yoongi would expect anything else.  They’re both working, both sidling up alongside a few black coats waiting their turn after the initial raid is through.  It’s as official of a job as any.  Still, impatience and worry sends little vibrations through Yoongi’s limbs.  He’s not sure what it is about Park Jimin’s raid that’s got him so worked up.  Something feels off.  The humid Itaewon alleyway air sticks to the back of his neck, makes his skin prickle uncomfortably.

One of the other black coats presses a finger to their ear, listening to the radio.  Yoongi fishes for his radio, sticks the bud into his ear to listen in.

“–basement is clearing out.  We have 5 vics still breathing, three turned and one stable.”

“Got it.  Clean-up crew moving in.”

Yoongi and Seokjin hang behind the first row of black coats as they press into the building like shadows.  The radio crackles in Yoongi’s ear with instructions and information.  It seems clean-cut.  A job well done.

Seokjin’s face is pale in the yellowed lamplight from the street, black veins of hunger spiderwebbing out from his eyes.  He’s staring resolutely ahead at the building, avoiding Yoongi’s stare.

“Listen,” Yoongi starts.

“Why?”

There’s a beat before Yoongi huffs, confused. “What?”

“ Why should I listen?  Or give you any more of my time.” Seokjin faces him, fangs poking into his lip.  He looks a little trembly, like how Yoongi gets when he skips a few meals and his blood pressure drops.

“I guess you don’t have to.” Yoongi shrugs. “Was gunna apologize to your face, like a man, but you’re clearly uninterested.  Consider any future apology rescinded.”

“You’re so fucking petty.” 

“And you’re too much of a goody two shoes to be anything but an Establishment bloodhound, pardon the pun.”

They stare one another down until Seokjin snorts, and then laughs out loud. “ Bloodhound .” He repeats, still laughing.  

Yoongi blinks at him, suddenly overcome with the urge to smile along.  How can he resist when Seokjin is tipping his head back, pale throat on display as he laughs loudly into the humid night.  Past the pale skin and black veins, Seokjin has always been pretty.  

The entire argument feels incredibly stupid suddenly.

Yoongi waits, rubbing at the stubby hairs on the back of his neck sheepishly, until Seokjin is done guffawing with his squeaky laugh.  Yoongi had no idea someone could have a laugh like window wiper blades over glass, but Seokjin is nothing if not surprising tonight.

“Look, about yesterday at the office,” Yoongi sighs, staring at his boots.  He feels his tongue tie itself, pride beating through his chest like a heartbeat.  He wants to say he’s sorry.  Sorry for being careless with Seokjin’s life, sorry for accusing him of being a monster, sorry for being the shittiest partner.  Sorry that his own personal hangups ever got in the way of his work performance.  Instead, he knits his eyebrows together and mumbles. “Next time, don’t forget to eat before a raid.”

Seokjin’s face drops, and Yoongi looks away.

Yoongi’s earpiece crackles to life with Jimin’s tinny voice. “Jin, Yoongi, head through to the basement.  V squad is waiting with an aberrant subject.”

Yoongi takes it for the blessing it is, gathering himself up and marching through the club doors with Seokjin on his heels.

The club is washed in black viscous vamp blood, most of it dripping messy onto sprawled bodies, soaking through shirts and pants.  Yoongi tries to slide through what used to be the club dancefloor, sidestepping the corpse of a young vamp.  Behind him, Seokjin gags on what must be the overwhelming stench of death.  If Yoongi can smell it, Jin is likely drowning in it.

One of the black coats points them to the basement stairs, and they descend with quiet steps.  Seokjin pauses halfway down, and Yoongi twists around to look at him.

“What?  Smell something?”

Seokjin has a hand to his chest, crooked fingers pressed clumsily to the place where his heart used to beat.  His face looks drawn in the bad lighting, cuts of shadow hollowing out his cheeks and the fragile skin beneath his eyes.

“Sorry,” he mutters, sounding half-awake. “We can go.”

“I can radio Jimin–”

Seokjin’s hair falls over his eyes when he shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

Yoongi faces forward again, taking the stairs as carefully as he can.  He tries to push the bad feeling in his chest down, tries to drown it in the placid lake of his usual confidence.  But something in Seokjin’s face had made the feeling flare up like wildfire, and Yoongi is burning with it.

Jimin’s vamps have a live vampire trapped between them, a gag in its mouth and several bindings cuffed onto its squirming form.  It hisses and spits when they get closer, black blood and spittile flying around.

Immediately, Seokjin gags.

“I know.” says one of the guards. “It’s nasty.”

“What’s nasty?” Yoongi takes in the vampire’s longer fangs, pointed ears, and claws.  It looks truly like something from a horror movie, like nosferatu himself had crawled out of the silver screen and into this seedy club basement.  Clothes hang off of its pale skin, a pretty blouse and several gaudy necklaces.  One of the black coats is filling her glass vial from a small cut on the vamps arm, her nose scrunched.

“Stinks like decay,” Seokjin says, muffled behind his coat lapel.

Yoongi had assumed all vamps smelled somewhat like decay, but the pained expression on Seokjin’s face tells him that this vamp smells like hell itself.  He shifts on his feet, glancing around the underbelly of the club.  It looks damp, like most nests, with some ragged seating scattered around.  One of the coffee tables is piled with tiny white pills and a few bottles of rancid blood.

Yoongi nods in the direction of the table. “Could drugs be affecting these vamps?  Turning them into,” He gestures at the wriggling vamp. “That.”

The guard shrugs.  Seokjin makes his way to the table, sliding a glove on and bagging up some of the white pills.  He sniffs the open bag directly, nose scrunching.

“It’s got that same chemical smell as Namjoon’s cadaver.  They could be related.”

“S’not the same as this one, though.” The black coat mentions, leaning her head in to get a whiff of the infected vamp.

Yoongi sees her mistake seconds before anyone else reacts.  The vampire bites clean through the gag in its mouth and lashes at the guard, sinking its long teeth into the tender flesh of her cheek.  She screams as the vamp is yanked away by the other black coat guard.

Yoongi takes three panicked steps backward.

Above them, the general silence of the club erupts into peals of gunfire, flashes of yellowish light burning down the stairs until somebody slams the door shut.

Yoongi has no time to adjust to the sudden darkness around him.  Seokjin and the black coats have perfect night vision, but Yoongi immediately raises both arms to anchor himself somewhere anywhere .

It’s an ambush.  There’s no mistaking the shouting and gunfire, the fresh smell of death as more vampires swarm the club upstairs.

“Seokjin!” Yoongi tries.

There’s a hefty thump, flesh hitting concrete.  Someone groans.

Yoongi fumbles for his flashlight, cursing.  His finger slides along the cool metal until he finds the on-switch, flicking the yellow beam forward.

Bright light illuminates the jaws of a very angry, very untied , vamp standing just a few feet in front of him.  He recoils, dropping the light.  He has half a second before the vamp is on him, teeth ripping into his arm while he scrambles away.  The ground rushes to meet him as he trips backwards, landing hard on his side.

Hissing breaks through the gunfire, followed by a sharp pain as his hair is yanked up, head wrenched to the side with the force of it.  He has both arms bracing against the vampire’s unnaturally cool flesh, pounding with closed fists, but it’s like bashing a wall of marble.  His knuckles ache.

Teeth are in his neck.

Yoongi hasn't been bitten before.  He’d always had the jump on the vamps, always managed to get lucky enough to fight them off the way he’d been trained.  But these new vamps are different.  Even the weight on his chest feels heavier , like the thing’s body is really made of stone.  He struggles against the feeling of his blood leaving his body, against the cool burning sensation left behind.  He feels like a juice box with one too many holes poked in it.

The venom hits him like an armored truck.  His head swims.  He chokes on air, gasps, hands falling useless over his own chest.

The weight lifts from his chest like clouds from a mountain.  He sprawls out, gasping, curling onto his side a second later with both eyes squeezed shut.  There is hissing and growling somewhere in the darkness behind him, the wet noise of blood splashing concrete.  Yoongi shakes, closing his eyes.

“–ongi.  Hey.  Get up, please, I don’t think I can… I don’t, ah, shit, you smell so…”

Something cold presses against Yoongi’s throat, the feel of skin on skin.  There’s cool air too, puffing down his clavicles.  He groans, lifting a hand and finding the bump of a face and nose, the caress of soft hair between his fingers.

“Your blood, ah,”

Awareness happens to Yoongi like live television.  He pops back into his head after being miles above, and the basement comes to him in stark relief, like a red light in a recording studio.  He pushes Seokjin’s face away, panting.  The vampire sits very, very still just inches away from him.

“Get yourself together,” Yoongi tries and quickly fails to get his hands and knees under him.  He rolls uselessly onto his back and tries to sit up, his abdominal muscles screaming at him. “Where’s Jimin?  They fuckin’ ambushed us, we should’ve been more careful.” He presses against the earpiece still hanging in his ear.  It sends static into his brain and makes him flinch. “Shit, radio’s out down here.  Are the black coats alive?”

“Yoongi,” Seokjin sounds breathless, voice pitched lower than Yoongi’s ever heard it.

His flashlight is pointing uselessly at the wall, a circle of yellow against the grubby basement wall.  The bodies of the black coats are crumpled, one leaning limply against the wall and the other curled in on herself on the edge of the room.  This is bad. This is very, very bad.

Seokjin is squatting down, both hands palm-open over his face, fingernails digging into his skin.  He’s breathing fast, eyes wide and black spiderwebs zigzagging out over his skin.

“Seokjin,” Yoongi says, careful.  “Jin.  “You’ve gotta breathe.  Do it in time with me.”

Seokjin’s eyes zip to Yoongi. “You smell… incredible.  Why?  Why do you smell…”

“Okay,” Yoongi brings a hand to cover the weeping bite in his neck.  He can’t staunch the flow with his hand alone, but it’ll have to do. “Listen to my voice.  You know me, right?  Min Yoongi.  We’ve been partners a year, ever since you became a white coat with The Establishment.  You remember that?”

Seokjin blinks rapidly.

“You’ve never given up, right?  Remember the kid we saved?  Name’s Jeon Jungkook.  His parents sent you a personal thank you letter, you know?  I heard you tell Namjoon about it.”

Seokjin’s chin crumples a little, his lips wobbling.  He looks younger, covered in black blood and on the cliff’s edge of unstoppable tears.  Yoongi’s heart gives a weak pang.

The earpiece crackles. 

“ –out of nowhere.  Rendezvous point is safe fo– captain is down— door locke– ”

Yoongi strains to listen in, but the rest is gibberish.  He strains his sore neck to look at the stairs.  It’s a long flight, and steep.  They won’t make it unless Seokjin gets ahold of himself, and fast .

“Okay,” Yoongi rubs at his blood-wet skin. “Okay, we can–”

Yoongi stops suddenly, hearing the click of shoe heels echo against the basement walls.  Someone is coming from inside the underbelly of the club, likely vampires.

A figure steps from the shadows in that quiet way vamps do, expensive loafers the only thing making any sound.  He’s dressed expensively, a tailored suit and necklaces glimmering cold against his exposed collarbones.  There’s another vamp behind him with shaggy hair over his eyes and slumped shoulders.  He looks young if the ratty hoodie and worn sweatpants are anything to go by, the contrast between them is extreme.

The gaudy vampire tuts when he spies the body of the infected vamp behind Seokjin.

“She was such a good little test subject.  That’s a shame.  I don’t suppose you’d be willing to take her place, hm?  Since you caused this little mess.” He grins at Seokjin with sharp fangs.

Seokjin stares owlishly at him with wide, black-vein swamped eyes.

Slowly, Yoongi drags his free hand to his brass knuckle holster.  White coats don’t carry guns, but Yoongi knows exactly where to hit that’ll count.  He’s done it before, and he can do it again.

The vampire swings his gaze around, head tilting when he catches Yoongi’s slight movement.  Yoongi feels like prey beneath his steely gaze, like at any moment this vampire could rip his throat out.  It’s probably the truth.

“We ran your black coat friends off.  Guess you Establishment dogs generally don’t account for counterstrikes.  You’ve been cocky for years, thinking you own this city.  You own what exists in the sun.  The streets, those reflective skyscrapers meant to blister our skin,” He stops to lick his lips, a ghost of grin quirking up the edges of his smile. “But the truth is, anything that matters exists in the dark.  And we own the night.”

“Skyscrapers still exist at nighttime, you fuckin’ imbecile.” Yoongi mutters.

The vampire laughs, full-bodied.  He pretends to wipe tears away before taking eerily silent steps until he’s stood just a foot away from where Yoongi is half-sitting up.

“Cute response.” He sticks his hands in his pockets. “Tell me, is that your partner there?” Yoongi doesn’t respond.  The vamp doesn’t expect him to.  He keeps talking, unbothered. “He looks starved half to death.  And truthfully, I could smell your blood from rooms away.  You delicious little thing.”

The vampire smiles.

“I’m nothing if not a scientist at heart.  Let’s run a little experiment, hm?” He glances over his shoulder at the young vamp, snapping his fingers. “Collect the white coat vamp, make sure he’s properly contained.  And you,” He looks back to Yoongi with mirth in his expression. “You be a good boy for me and try to stay alive, hm?”

Yoongi has no time to defend himself.  The vampire catches both his wrists in one strong hand, catching hold of Yoongi’s hair with the other.  Yoongi expects the sting of teeth in his neck, for the sickly feeling of blood leaving his system.  Instead, the vampire slams his head forward into the solid concrete, pain shooting over his skull and his vision blurring.  He tries to right himself, tries to fight back, but his head is spinning.  He can feel himself getting hauled up and over the vampire's shoulder.  The last thing he’s aware of is the retreating yellow circle of his flashlight against the wall, and then it’s all black.

🩸

Yoongi has been running his tongue over his teeth for the better part of however long he’s been here.

The walls are wholly uninteresting.  Badly painted concrete that has a vague dampness to it.  He guesses they never left the basement, though that would mean Jimin’s map and recon was so incredibly unresearched that Yoongi has half a mind to strangle him if he makes it out alive.

That’s the other thing about this uninteresting white-washed room.

Seokjin is sleeping against the wall on the other end, face still bloodied black, a dark bruise forming over his temple where Yoongi is pretty sure he was whacked hard enough to rattle teeth.

Yoongi is also pretty sure that Seokjin hasn’t fed since the last time they were both conscious.

The door is locked.  The glass of the single window might as well be bulletproof, Yoongi tried banging on it and screaming at the top of his lungs.  He guesses, judging by the neon red blinking of the camera in the corner, that they’re being watched.

He feels eyes on him, sometimes.  Can hear the huffing laugh of a gaudy vampire decked out in a three-piece suit.  Maybe that’s in his head.  His thoughts are loud when confined in four walls like this.  He never was much good at sitting still.

Yoongi guesses that a world filled with horror movie monsters will always have the fate of being a horror movie.  It’s how things tend to work.  He stares at the blinking red of the camera.

One.  Blink.  Two.  Blink.  Three.  Blink.

Maybe the SAW movies were onto something.  Or maybe Gaudy Vampire just watched too many SAW movies.  Yoongi is fully expecting some cliche edited voice to blare over hidden speakers, saying something like cut both your arms off with a rusty spoon or your vamp friend bites it!

Ha!  Bites it.  Seokjin would probably find that hilarious.

Yoongi stares at his unmoving body.  Without breath, he just looks like a corpse.  It would be gross if it wasn’t Seokjin.  His face is angelic, even bloodied up.  

Yoongi frowns, pulling at his socks.  They’d taken anything remotely lethal from Yoongi and Seokjin.  He’d checked.

Across the room, Seokjin inhales breath so loudly that Yoongi jumps.

“Jin?”

“Ugh,” Seokjin slides an arm up to his face, pressing over the tender skin of his temple with a wince. “W’re we?”

There’s a short silence only broken by Seokjin’s heavy breaths and Yoongi’s wild heartbeat.  He feels like his heart is going to run out of the room before his body will get the chance to follow.  Mostly, he’s waiting for Seokjin to wake up fully, feel that burn in his throat, and get a whiff of the dried blood decorating Yoongi’s shirt and coat like a garnet necklace.

Seokjin pulls himself up, limbs dragging as he struggles to catch his breath.  Newer vamps do that, sometimes.  They forget they don’t have to breathe and wake up with their lungs screaming.  Muscle memory, or something like that.

“Yoongi,” Seokjin blinks at him, eyes black. “Wh’s goin’ on?”

There’s not a lot to explain.  Yoongi lets him take in the white painted walls, the camera, the block-shaped window pressed into the wall.  When he’s gotten his bearings, he looks timidly across the room until they meet eyes.

“Are we in SAW?”

A surprised laugh escapes too fast for Yoongi to stop it, and he pulls on his socks harder.  He shakes his head, greasy hair tickling his eyelashes. “They took our stuff.”

“What’s that?” Seokjin nods to the neatly arranged objects laid out to Yoongi’s right.  He’d spent a good amount of time turning them around and putting them exactly equal distances apart.

“Whatever shit was in my pockets that they didn’t take.  Yours too.  Sorry.”

“You carry your cologne bottle around?  Oh my god, that makes so much sense.”

Yoongi scowls. “What does that mean?” 

“Half the time you ask me to sniff something out for you I can’t smell it past the wall of chemical stink that you’ve always got on.  Is that a male ego thing, or are you just massively insecure?”

“Not that I need to explain myself to you, but I don’t like to smell like death when I go home after work, alright?” It’s a half-truth, but Seokjin doesn’t need to know that.  Yoongi crosses his arms over his chest, sticking both arms in his armpits for good measure.  There’s no telling what Seokjin’s dogish nose might pick up next.

Seokjin puts his hands up in mock surrender, a grin on his bloodied face.  Yoongi hesitates, and Seokjin must see it.

“What?  Have I got something on my face?”

“Just bloodied up.  Here.”

He tosses the scrap of Taehyung’s shirt he’d ripped off after Jungkook had run home and brought it to him.  It’s flimsy, the cotton fraying out on the edges.  Seokjin leans forward to grab it off the cold floor, wiping his face down, and staring at the black smudges left behind.

“I’m fuzzy on the details of what happened in the basement,” He says, gaze resolutely fixed on where he’s pulling the fabric between his fingers. “After you got bit, I only have bits and pieces.  There were people, maybe?”

Yoongi runs his tongue over the dryness of his bottom lip. “You killed the vamp.  Some fucker showed a few minutes after and ambushed us, I went lights out, and woke up with you slumped in the corner like a corpse.” He raises a shoulder and drops it. “I know about as much as you.”

“Did they… I mean, are we hostages?” Seokjin looks at the window, then the camera, squinting. “They’ve got us wired up.”

“Vamp mentioned something about being a scientist.” Yoongi winces, looking at the piles of his pocket garbage. “He knows you’re hungry.  I think he sees it as a game.  Or an experiment.”  Yoongi leaves out the part about his blood.  He’d sprinkled cologne around the wound, hoping to wipe out the smell of his blood just a bit longer.

Seokjin is quiet a while, his body still in the eerie vamp way.  He remembers his breath a second time, pulling a long inhale through his chest and letting it out.

“I guess the SAW comment wasn’t too far off, huh.”

“I was kinda hoping you’d say you weren’t too hungry.  Or that you wouldn’t eat me cuz I stink too much.  You know.  Provide comfort.”

“Is it really eating if I drain you like a juice box?  Is a capri sun a meal?”

Yoongi wipes a tired hand down his face, letting his head bounce against the concrete wall. “I’m serious.  Don’t fucking eat me.”

Seokjin shuffles, folding his legs under him. “It’s been a long time since I’ve lost control completely.  I’m not a fledgling anymore.”

In the back of Yoongi’s mind, a reel plays on with Seokjin nosing at his neck, acting like a puppet of his own body, controlled by the melody of Yoongi’s blood.

They sit in silence.

“Hey.”

Seokjin looks up a little joltingly, like he’d been listening hard elsewhere and the loudness of Yoongi’s voice took him by surprise.

“I know you were a nest vamp.  And that you were a rehab vamp, got all those gold stars and stuff.”  Yoongi checks Seokjin’s face, but it’s carefully blank.  A slate that Yoongi has no hope of being able to read.  He pulls on his socks. “The nest you were in before.  What happened?”

“Jesus,” Seokjin huffs a laugh, and Yoongi’s head snaps up.

“What?”

“Nothing, I just,” He laughs again, but it’s got no humor. “I just didn’t think you’d ever ask.”

Yoongi furrows his brow, feeling a little insulted.  A little guilty. “Well, I’m asking now.”

“I know.” Seokjin’s tone is a little condescending, his expression still lightly amused.  Yoongi sort of hates it.  He almost takes it back, but Seokjin’s blunt voice breaks the awkward silence before he gets the chance.

“Before The Establishment and rehab, I was human.” Seokjin tears a frayed piece of shirt and drops the spool at his socked feet. “I was a capri sun for the nest.  Me and a few other humans got snatched from the streets.  Basic nest vamp stuff, you know the drill.”

Yoongi’s hands pause on his own ankles.  He doesn’t laugh, even though Seokjin’s crooked grin tells him he’s trying to make the statement lighter.  It’s hard to imagine Seokjin with warm tanned skin and pretty pinked up lips, even though he knew that Seokjin had to have been human at some point.  He imagines he had warm hands, before.  They’re large, close to the size of Yoongi’s own, with crooked fingers.  He can visualize Seokjin cooking, flipping pajeon in a greased-up pan.  Burning his hands a little pink, cussing loudly with friends and drinking good wine.

Another life.

Seokjin continues, completely unaware of Yoongi’s imagination running off the rails.

“Before the nest, I was pre-law.  Parents wanted me to be a lawyer.  It’s funny.  Before everything, I was so convinced that my life was going to be horrendously dull.  Just paperwork and phone calls and rich clients wanting to divorce their even-richer spouses.  I dreaded the rest of the living I would have to do.”

He stops, tone a little choked.  Yoongi sees the anguish come and pass over his features like a cloud over the sun.  It’s uncomfortable.  Yoongi wishes he hadn’t asked.  It makes Seokjin so human .  Guilt gnaws at Yoongi’s insides like the teeth of one of the infected vampires.  He presses a hand to his stomach.

“It’d be super ironic if you were hungry right now.” Seokjin says, one corner of his mouth quirked up.

“I guess it would make two of us.”  When Seokjin doesn’t respond, Yoongi finds himself breaking into a cold sweat.  Anxiety twists at him, nips at his ankles.  He tries to rein it in.  It’s been years since he’s felt so anxious, and he finds that he hasn't missed the feeling at all.  He breathes slowly, in through the nose out through the mouth. 

Seokjin readjusts to sit with his legs sprawled out.  “So,” He raises a hand and lets it drop. “Who were you in your before .”

Flashes of a dark subway station, lights flickering, huddled somewhere behind an ancient vending machine.  Yoongi shakes his head, pulling himself together.

“Chicken delivery driver.  I had the scooter and everything.”

“The helmet too?”

“Oh yeah.  Even had the little red thingies like roosters have, superglued to the top.  I looked absolutely ridiculous and I hated it.”

Seokjin laughs. “I don’t blame you.  That’s a shitty job.”

“All my friends back then, man, the amount of shit I got.  Like, we all have bills to pay, you know?”

Seokjin nods. “That’s why you chose The Establishment?  For the wads of cash?”

“Ha,” Yoongi makes a face, but he’s grinning and it ruins the bitter look. “Oh yeah, I’m practically rolling in the dough.”

“Dunno about you, but I’ve got room and board.” Seokjin taps his own knee. “Rehabilitated vamp perks, baby.  Really makes all the months of agony worth it.”

Yoongi shakes his head, smiling.  He feels a little sad and he’s not sure why. “Yeah, you rehabbed vamps got it made.”

Seokjin sits in their silence for all of two seconds before he’s speaking again.  Yoongi has a feeling the vamp needs it, needs to keep his mind distracted.

“Alright, so you didn’t soldier up to get out of the chicken suit,”

“It was a helmet ,”

“Chicken helmet .  Then why,” he gestures to the room they're in, the situation at large. “All this?  It’s not exactly a dream job.  More of a last ditch.”

“I like to think of it as the end of the road.  I was born and raised down south, in Daegu.”

He regrets it as soon as it’s out of his mouth.  The brief horror that flies over Seokjin’s face is enough to turn Yoongi’s stomach.

“Fuck,” Seokjin shakes his head. “I had no idea.”

Yoongi shrugs. “Yeah, well.  You never asked, either.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My family didn’t make it out of the massacre.  We were centrally located, living like roaches in an underground apartment.  I was across the city on delivery when they got to them.  Cousins, too.  There was something in my family’s blood, some kind of fucked up flavor.  The vamps came for us first, like blood magnets.  We weren’t the only ones.  I’m sure you saw the headlines.”

Blood in the streets running like rivers.  Severed pieces of the ones lucky enough not to survive.  The distant hissing of the ones unlucky enough to be turned.

“Yoongi.”

Something about the way Seokjin says his name kind of pisses him off.  He curls his lip, an ugly grin cut into his face like a knife. “You of all people should know that vamps are always the beginning and the end of everything.  Nobody chooses.”

It’s a little like vindication.  The look on Seokjin’s face doesn't make it worth it.  It just makes Yoongi feel ill with guilt, alongside the rest of his swirling emotions.  They both already know the truths of their world, how many people come and go, how much the war costs in blood and love.  Seokjin chose his fate as much as Yoongi did.  He knows that.  But when Yoongi looks across the room and traces black veins with his eyes, the ugly thing deep in his chest tells him:

Look.  Look at this monster.  Remember what he’s done to you.

Yoongi pulls into himself, hugs his knees to his chest.

“I’m gunna try to sleep.”

Seokjin frowns. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

It isn’t.  Yoongi swallows around the lump in his throat. “You’re right.  I’m– can we just sit for a little bit.  Without talking.”

Unease flits over Seokjin’s expression, it’s in the crease between his brow, the perk of his lips.  He nods after a second, a halting thing that makes his matted hair shake. “Okay.”

🩸

Yoongi doesn’t mean to, but he drifts off with his back against the wall and his head tilted against the stone.  The white of the fluorescents isn’t enough to fight off the fatigue of blood loss and a beating, and he hadn’t exactly had enough time to get his full eight hours before the raid.

He dreams of Daegu.  Of the sloped streets at night time, the abandoned subway stairs, how the broken light in Banwoldang station made little rings of white reflect off pools of blood.  Red splashed up on his tan converse, on his forearms, on his face.  The ancient vending machine buzzes, and Yoongi is dousing himself in cologne.  He’s across the city from his family, out on delivery, but the screams from above the station sound like they’re right in his hear oh god he can hear them dying he can hear them screaming he can–

He wakes up with a chill down his spine.

Seokjin is over him, caging his body down with his own, arms locked on either side of his head.  He stares up at the vampire’s face, the black spiderwebs zipping out from his sclera.  Whatever traces of a human Jin that Yoongi had imagined feel small and fragile in the face of a monster.

Seokjin breathes deep, nostrils flaring, panting open-mouthed with his fangs bracketing his tongue.

“Jin,” Yoongi whispers.

The lights in their room have dimmed considerably, the red bulb on the camera flashing.

One.  Blink.  Two.  Blink.

“Jin, come back now.  You have to keep it under control.  Think about that paperwork.  The stuff you would’ve had to deal with after law school.  Bet you would’ve been a fucking menace in the courtroom, nobody would’ve stood a chance arguing against you.”

Seokjin blinks, his mouth closing.

Yoongi’s heart is in his throat.  He brings a hand up slowly.  The slowest he’s moved in his entire life, probably, and yet it doesn’t feel slow enough.  He stops with his hand against Seokjin’s sticky cheek, his palm big enough that he can thumb at the dip between nose and cheekbone while his other fingers curl around to cup his ear.

“Come back.”

“Shit,” Seokjin groans, dropping his head between his shoulders.  Yoongi’s hand hangs awkwardly in his matted-up hair, completely still.  “Why d’you have to smell so fucking good.”

Smell.

His blood.

Yoongi’s eyes cut to the neat stacks of junk he’d laid out before.  Loose change, lint, Seokjin’s earring, and the cologne.

His cologne.  The stuff he’d worn since the vamps in Daegu had tried to sniff him out while he was pressed into a corner of Banwoldang station with both hands covering his mouth, scared for his life.  It’d saved him, then.

His free hand snakes around Seokjin’s pale forearm, fingers twitching desperately as they crawl closer to the auburn bottle.

Seokjin drops his body weight, knocking the air out of Yoongi’s lungs.  He wheezes, distracted, trying not to throw up whatever is left of his stomach while he reaches with everything for the cologne.

Sharp digs into his neck, just below the wound already there, and Yoongi yells.  It burns badly, like the sting of a needle jammed hard and fast into the skin, the fire spreading down to his shoulder.  Seokjin moans and rips his teeth out, lapping greedily at the wound immediately.  He’s lost to his senses.  Lost to the world.

The blunt edges of the bottle dig into his hand, and then he’s dragging the cologne up, shoving it between their bodies messily.  Seokjin bites down again, trying to keep Yoongi from wriggling around.  It’s another hit of venom, and it makes Yoongi’s knees weak.  He goes limp with it, drifting in the heavy daze where everything seems far away and as light as a feather.

He comes back to himself enough to sluggishly tug his arm from beneath Seokjin’s stomach, the bottle coming away harder.  He can feel the strength leaving his body with every pull Seokjin takes from him.

Yoongi digs his thumb against the cologne spout and pushes .

Seokjin shouts, bodily pushing Yoongi away to cover his nose with both hands.  He stumbles a few steps away, blood running down his chin to his coat.  Yoongi lifts into his elbows, spraying himself down with the cologne until Seokjin is howling, cowering in the corner.

“You come a step closer and I’ll chuck this thing at the ground like a grenade,” Yoongi hisses, dragging himself back to the opposite corner.

“Shit,” Seokjin is curled over himself, head between his knees, desperately clutching his nose.  “That was… really smart.”

“Let's just say I have experience.” Yoongi says dryly.

There’s a lot of quiet between them.

After he rips up his white coat to wrap a makeshift bandage around his neck, Yoongi is content to sit up straight and watch Seokjin like a hawk.  He sprays himself and the air every few minutes with the cologne, and Seokjin winces every time.

The problem is that Yoongi is very much human.  And the human body needs blood to live.

Against his will, Yoongi’s eyes start to droop, fall shut, until he shakes himself awake to find that Seokjin’s crawled halfway across the room.  He spritzes him like a bad cat until he shimmies back to his corner.

It’s a waiting game, and they both know it.

Above them, the camera winks over and over and over.

🩸

Yoongi startles awake to cold hands around his neck.

The cologne bottle is on the other side of the room, likely pushed away when Seokjin had finally been able to crawl across the floor and over Yoongi’s slumped body.

He can’t breathe, can hardly move his body with his limbs feeling like they weigh a thousand pounds each.  Still, he bats at Seokjin’s heavy body with closed fists, pounding relentlessly against his ribs and stomach, the places he knows he could hurt the most.  His legs kick weakly up, knees aiming for his groin.

“ Stop ,” Seokjin hisses in a whisper.  Yoongi chokes. “Listen to me.  I’m not going to hurt you.  I need you to keep fighting me like it’s real, but I’m going to let you breathe.  Don’t scream.  Do you understand?”

The blood flow to Yoongi’s brain is already weak, but he nods anyway, spots coloring his vision.

Seokjin lets go and Yoongi’s arms and legs fall limp.

“Fucking–” Seokjin presses down on his adams apple, just enough to make Yoongi panic.  He shivers back to life, pushing against Seokjin.  “Keep fighting.  When I tell you to, close your eyes and play dead.  I’m going to get us out of here.”

Yoongi wants to whine.  Wants to cry.  His throat is bruised and bleeding and his entire body smells like cheap cologne and dried sweat.  Still, he fights.  He fights until Seokjin whispers to stop, and then he lets his movements taper off, his arms to fall weak to his sides, his head to loll sideways and his eyes to fall shut.  Playing dead.

Seokjin stays very, very still.  And then his hands slide down Yoongi’s chest, and he sits back against his thighs.  He shifts, like he’s turning to face the camera.

“Game’s over, you fucking prick.”

🩸

The metal door squeaks open less than a full minute after.

“You brat,” Yoongi recognizes the slightly-nasally tone of the Gaudy Vampire. “You’ve ruined all the fun–”

The pressure on Yoongi’s legs disappears.

He cracks an eye open to see Seokjin ram himself into the vampire, grabbing around his waist and pushing him against the wall hard .  They grapple, but Seokjin is obviously still weak from his hunger, and the Gaudy Vampire has the upper hand.

Seokjin gets a nasty backhand, his face whipping to the side.  He staggers.

“Fucking Establishment dogs.  I forgot how single minded you all are after they brainwash you.  Always gotta take the fun out of everything.” The vampire shakes his hand out, eyes narrowed to slits at Seokjin.

He advances another step and sucker punches Seokjin down.  It’s a violent hit, one that has real raw power behind it.  One of his rings splits Seokjin’s cheek open, black blood dripping down to his chin.  Seokjin coughs against the dirty concrete.

Yoongi’s fingers are twitching at his sides.  He tries to roll himself over, get good enough leverage to slide his torso up and grab for the cologne.  He’s not sure how sensitive Gaudy Vampire’s nose is, but he figures there’s only one way to find out.

The heavy sounds of boot-on-skin echo loud behind Yoongi as he army crawls for the bottle.  He’s inches away, extending his arm out far enough that his fingers are just barely brushing the bottle.  It wobbles away from his grip at the last second.  He’s so close he can smell it, just a little bit further and he could clasp it.

A hard shoe lands over his wrist, something delicate inside snapping, and Yoongi screams.  He’s pinned beneath the weight of the shoe, tears of frustration in his eyes.  When he glances up, Gaudy Vampire is looking down at him with a vile smirk cutting into his face.

“Well, well.” He looks between them, huffing a laugh. “Isn’t this romantic?  A bit of team effort, just for old times sake.  Warms my heart, honestly.  Don’t think I couldn’t hear your little human heartbeat from down the hallway.  Quite the plan you two devised.  Shame that it isn’t going to work.”

There’s the sound of shoes scuffling over concrete.

The younger vampire from the basement slides into the room in his ratty hoodie and sweats, a metal baseball bat between his white-knuckled fingers.  He’s moving so fast that his hair is blown back from his forehead, exposing strong eyebrows over wide, young eyes.  He swings the bat hard across Gaudy Vampire’s face.  It cracks, black blood spraying out onto the white walls in satisfying sweeps.  The speed and strength of a newly turned vampire lights the kid’s body up as he moves almost too fast for Yoongi’s tired eyes to follow.

He brings the bat down again, and again, and again.  By the time he straightens up, his chest is heaving and his clothes are black with blood.  He licks his lips, wide eyes turning on Yoongi.

“Are you okay?”

“Am I– Yeah, yes,” Yoongi’s voice is hoarse, ragged. “What… who…?”

“I’m, um, Taehyung.  Kim Taehyung.  I think you… I think you know Jungkook?”  His wide eyes slide to the rag of his own shirt that lays near Seokjin.

Seokjin drags himself into a sitting position, wiping the blood from his mouth.  He meets Yoongi’s eyes from across the room.  Yoongi’s heart gives a traitorous thump, and he has absolutely no time to process all that.

“Taehyung,” Yoongi can’t sit up, but he uses his good hand to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. “Okay.  Do you know the way out of here?”

“I–” Taehyung hesitates, his bat clicking against the concrete. “I can help you.  Just.  I need to see Jungkook again, okay?  I can’t leave him alone, this is all my fault.”

“We’ll get you help,” Seokjin says, his words a bit slurred.  Yoongi wonders absently if he’d been hit hard in the teeth.  It makes him wince to imagine. “Let’s start at step one and get out of here.”

“Most of us moved on since the dogs– er,” Taehyung blinks like he’s trying to clear dust from his eyes. “Sorry.  Since The Establishment raided the club.  Can you walk?”

Seokjin nods, bracing himself with a hand on his knee to stand.  He looks tired and beat, which Yoongi can relate to.  They’re both covered in blood and grime, most of it smudged around like sticky jajangmyun sauce.

Yoongi tries to roll and sit up, tries to engage his core enough to power his legs.  Immediately, his head is spinning with the effort, bloodloss and pain making his eyesight go dark.  He curses, steadying himself with his good arm.

“If you can get the black coats,” he pants in Seokjin’s general direction. “I can stay here and wait for backup.  You guys get out, get the kid to safety.”

“Shut up,” Seokjin rolls his bloodshot eyes. “Are you going to cologne bomb me again if I pick you up?”

Yoongi eyes him warily. “Probably.”

The vampire laughs, picking up the bottle and shaking it with a little wiggle before handing it over to Taehyung.  The younger vampire scrunches his face up, holding the bottle out from his body like it might bite him.

“Don’t make it weird.” Seokjin says to Yoongi, sidling up close to him.

Before Yoongi can protest, Seokjin slides an arm under his legs and around his torso, lifting him like he weighs nothing until he rests up by his chest.  Yoongi flings his broken wrist around his neck, face flushing red.  He can feel his ears heating up as Seokjin follows Taehyung out of their room.

“You’re making it weird.” Seokjin whispers halfway down the dark hallway they’re following Taehyung down.

The kid in front of them snorts and Yoongi does his best to smack Seokjin’s chest.  It comes off more playful than he means, and with his adrenaline falling his head gets fuzzier and fuzzier.  He means to respond with something witty, but he finds his tongue is like lead in his mouth.  His eyelids droop.

“–ey.  Hey, Yoongiya, you with me?”

There’s a brick weighing down Yoongi’s head but he slots his eyes open anyway, squinting up at Seokjin.

“Did I go out?” He sighs, then cracks an irritated eye open. “Don’t call me that.”

Seokjin snorts. “I think you should stay awake.”

“Brilliant idea.  Wish I woulda thought of that.” 

Seokjin chuckles.

They keep up the conversation, Seokjin gently waking him every time he slips off into sleep, until they arrive at the basement from before, still covered in vamp blood and bodies.  Taehyung hikes the stairs, waiting patiently until Seokjin makes it up behind him with Yoongi, walking sideways to fit.

“Dawn is in a few hours, we don’t have a lot of time.” Taehyung skips ahead, bending down to pick over a body.  Yoongi can’t see everything going on from where his head is leaning on Seokjin’s arm, but he slots an eye open to watch anyway.

“Here,” The kid bounds back to them with a black coat radio, still sticky with blood. “Can you use this?”

Seokjin sets Yoongi down carefully, sliding his arm around his back to keep him from falling.

“Yeah, that’ll work,” Yoongi takes the radio with his good hand, thumbing at the buttons and sighing in relief when it comes to life.  He sticks the plastic nub in his ear and scans over to Jimin’s line, calling out a few distress signals.

“Yoongi?  Hello?”

“Who is that?” Yoongi asks, pressing his ear piece in farther. 

“It’s Hoseok, ah.  Jimin was hurt in the raid, along with basically every black coat he summoned.  What’s your location?  The black coats have been looking for you for hours.”

Seokjin sighs in relief beside him, listening in with his freaky vamp ears.  Yoongi wets his lips. “We’re in the club.  Seokjin is wounded and in need of blood, plus we have a rescue vamp here that needs placement.”

“...And your injuries?”

“I’m fine.” Yoongi sniffs as Seokjin leads them to the exit, rolling his eyes.

“Gimme the radio.”

Yoongi holds it farther away on purpose with a frown. “I said I was fine.”

Taehyung snatches the radio with a twirl, plopping it right into Seokjin’s palm with a box-shaped grin.

Yoongi complains about being outnumbered as Seokjin pulls the earpiece away, chattering to Hoseok about all of Yoongi’s many, many injuries.  If he thinks about it too much, his head will spin.  The three of them spill out in the dark alleyway, swiveling to follow the directions Hoseok gives to Seokjin.

It’s a hazy walk until they meet up with a mini squad of black coats, piling into the back of another armored vehicle.  Yoongi leans up against Seokjin in the darkness of the car, their legs occasionally lit up with yellowed streetlights.

Across from them, Taehyung wrings his hands, the whites of his eyes showing.  He looks like a scared animal.  But Yoongi knows that with time, he’ll be alright.

“Taehyung,” He pauses, blinking slow. 

“Yeah?” Taehyung looks up, his fingers folding together in his lap.

“You and Jungkook.  He told me about what happened.  That they took you, too, that day.” Yoongi shifts. “I won’t ask what they did to you in the tunnels.  It takes a lot of strength to survive what you did.  I was in contact with Jungkook and his family, so I’ll make sure he knows you’re safe now.  Rest assured that he’s okay, too.”

Taehyung’s eyebrows knit together. “I won’t be able to tell him myself?”

It’s Seokjin who speaks up next, much to Yoongi’s surprise. “You’re still considered a liability.  You’ll be put into a rehabilitation facility run by The Establishment until your transition from human to vampire has been eased.  They’ll likely offer you options afterwards.  Jobs.  Placements that could help you ease back into human society, if that’s what you’d like.”

Taehyung stares down at his lap. “I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of other options for vamps.”

“No,” Seokjin says, a bit sadly. “There aren’t.”

Guilt twists hard at Yoongi’s insides again, and suddenly Seokjin’s arm around him feels like cold lead.  If he had the strength, he’d squeeze away and curl into the corner of the car.  Seokjin must sense his sudden rigidity, because he glances over worriedly, vamp eyes glinting reflective in the dark.

“Are you in pain?”

“No,” Yoongi says, clipped and too-fast. “No, I’m fine. Just.” He isn’t sure what to say, so he stops talking, teeth biting into his chapped bottom lip.

They take the rest of the ride in silence, heads heavy.

🩸

For three long, long weeks, Yoongi is in recovery.

It’s a lot of seeing Hoseok, which he doesn’t mind all that much.  He spends some of it bedridden, then physical therapy, and finally remedial training.  He attends the seminars his boss requires after a large-scale raid fails, and he sits down for horrendous corporate meetings that involve black and white coats.  

Afterwards, he and Jimin get drunk.  He finds out that despite Jimin’s anger toward him, he’s a quick drunk, and a quick friend.  They limp out of bars together, Jimin with his leg in a cast and forehead scraped up, and Yoongi with a bandaged neck and broken wrist cocooned to his chest with a sling.  They joke that together they make one whole functioning soldier, what with their cuts and bruises and broken bones. 

Seokjin keeps an eye on Taehyung.  Even becomes his sponsor in his rehab.  Jungkook nearly takes Yoongi’s head off when he tells him he can’t see Taehyung yet, but Seokjin takes him aside and says something .  Whatever it is, it leaves the kid in tears, hugging Seokjin’s middle like they’ve known each other an entire lifetime and not all of an hour.

Yoongi tries to ask about it, but Seokjin just gives him a sad half-smile.

“Just told him some truths, Yoongiyah.  About the monsters under our beds.”

It makes Yoongi think.  A lot.

He thinks about what he said before, and regret slithers its way inside his chest to make a home with his guilt.  It eats away at him.

Yoongi starts writing his own reports.

Seokjin is caught so off-guard that he accidentally writes a second report for Yoongi and their supervisor gets back to them with a confused email, wondering when Yoongi had the time to write two entire reports on one case.

Things are fine, though.  Better, even, than before.

Right up until a Tuesday nightshift, when Yoongi is kicking back in Namjoon’s lab, both boots slung up on the desk and his new phone in his hand.

Namjoon’s been prattling on and off about the new vampires, how they differ from the mindless goons and insane vamps at the top of all twisted covens.  He speaks mostly in doctor talk, about anatomy and all sorts of chemical things that Yoongi hums along to, adding the occasional “Right.”  And “Wow, really?”.

Seokjin saunters inside around 1 a.m., a grin on his face.  He’s so focused on the paperwork in his hand that he doesn’t notice Yoongi at all, beelining for Namjoon where he’s bent over a cadaver, elbow deep in vamp blood.

“Namjoonah, look at this.  Hoseok gave me some prelims from the big hospital, some of their specialists have been looking your data over, combining it with whatever notes they already had.  Seriously, you might’ve– just, you need to look.”

Yoongi watches them, watches how Namjoon’s face gets all bright and excited.  They lean close together, shoulders pushed together.  Seokjin guides him through the pages, pointing at quotes and research values with the tone of a four year old on Christmas morning.  Namjoon is quieter, his voice lower, but no less ecstatic.  

“And this part, this is, ah Namjoonah,” Seokjin shakes his head, clapping Namjoon on the back. “You’re something special.”

Namjoon flushes, the tips of his ears going pink.  He peels his surgical gloves off so that he can grab the papers, eyes as wide as saucers behind his thick glasses.  He looks up with a beaming grin, dimples pressed into his cheeks, and Seokjin looks back, joy making his eyes sparkle.

“They really…”

Seokjin nods, smiling and bouncing on his heels. 

They embrace, Namjoon’s hand wrinkling up the papers clumsily behind Seokjin’s back.  He tucks his head into the crook of Seokjin’s neck, obviously overwhelmed.  And Seokjin sort of nuzzles back against his hair, rubbing pale hands down his back.

Yoongi’s boots hit the floor with a thud.

Seokjin jumps like a cat, nearly throwing Namjoon in the process, and they both turn to him.  He clears his throat.

“Good news, I’m guessing.  Congrats, Namjoon.” His tone is drier than convenience store samgyupsal and he knows it.

Seokjin scratches at the back of his head while Namjoon nods obliviously at him.

“Thank you.  This is really big.  I think I need to make some phone calls.  Maybe thank Hoseokie, too.  I appreciate you telling me, hyung.” He says to Seokjin with an adoring smile.  Seokjin returns it, patting his arm.

“You did this, don’t forget.  Go make those calls now, hm?”

Namjoon slips out of his lab coat and then into the hallway with his phone up to his ear already.  He’s so glued to the papers in front of him that he nearly rams headfirst into the door.  Seokjin is there in an instant, using his vamp speed to safely push the door open until Namjoon disappears into the dimly lit hall.

Yoongi crosses his arms over his chest, leveling Seokjin with an irritated glare.  He’s not even sure why he’s so frustrated, just knows that he’s suddenly got several chips on his shoulder, and Namjoon just made his shit-list for the year.

“Why are you glaring at me like that?” Seokjin asks in a laugh, leaning against the wall.  He looks beyond amused, eyebrows raised and a slimy grin on his too-plush lips.

“Like what?  I’m not glaring at you.  It was just inappropriate.” Yoongi says, sniffing.

Seokjin’s smile widens. “What was inappropriate?  Paperwork?  Dear god, now I understand why you’ve been so allergic to writing your own reports!  It’s all coming together.”

“PDA in the office, actually.” Yoongi seethes. “Don’t play coy.”

“PDA?” Seokjin laughs, throwing his head back.  It bears his long throat, down to his broad shoulders and– Yoongi forces his eyes upward, frustration growing.

“Public displays of–”

“No, I know what it means,” Seokjin pretends to wipe his eyes. “You’re really handsome when you’re angry, you know.”

“Yeah, well,” He pauses. “Wait, what?”

Seokjin shakes his head, still smiling.  “Report on that missing vehicle down in Hongdae still needs writing, don’t forget.  Even the petty vamp crimes don’t sleep!”

Seokjin ghosts out of the room on silent steps, and Yoongi stares openmouthed after him.

“I didn’t forget!” He calls, a full five seconds later.

He can hear Seokjin’s squeaky laughter echo down the hallway.

🩸

Yoongi has no idea how he ended up in a company dinner with Jimin, Hoseok, Namjoon and Seokjin.  He’s pretty sure that he’s had nightmares about this exact situation before.  Hoseok is already drunk, face red and sweaty, gaze laser-beam focused on the meat as Yoongi turns and cuts a thick chunk into strips.

They’d made him do all the cooking now that his wrist was healed up.  Something about making up for months of slacking off.  They had been kidding, but something in the back of Yoongi’s head whispered that they were right, that joking aside he owed them this.  Owed Seokjin to at least try.

Seokjn sits politely across from Yoongi, sometimes picking strips of raw pork up to suck on like candy.  Yoongi thinks it's absolutely disgusting.  He snips another piece off for him anyway, pushing it over until Seokjin picks it up with a lopsided smile.

“You can’t get drunk!” Jimin announces, snapping his chopsticks at Seokjin. “That’s a travesty.”

Seokjin moves the meat into his cheek. “I don’t miss it that much, honestly.  Always kinda made me feel sick when I was in school.”

“Still,” Jimin sighs dramatically, scooping a glob of thick samjang and slathering it over his piece of meat. “Tragic.”

“Do you ever think of going back?” Namjoon asks.  Yoongi looks up, surprised.  Namjoon’s glasses are fogged up, and he pushes them up to his forehead so he can see better.

“What?” Seokjin laughs. “Back to law school?”

Namjoon shrugs easily. “Why not?  The Establishment grants leave for further education efforts, and you’ve got standing with the white coat department.  Have you looked into the Establishment’s law team?”

“That–” Seokjin laughs, but it’s uncomfortable.  

Something big and protective flares up in Yoongi’s chest, and he clears his throat. “Sounds like a lot of paperwork.”

Seokjin cracks a grin, fangs high up and sharp in the hazy restaurant.  Yoongi’s throat bobs with a swallow.  Those fangs had been in him, had pierced his skin so easily.  The thought doesn’t disgust him like it should, and he instead finds himself shifting in his seat.  Seokjin turns back to Namjoon. “I’ll look into it Joon, really. I hadn’t thought about it before.”

“You don’t miss it even a little bit?” Jimin groans, mouth still full. “I mean the drama of being drunk!  The pure bliss of stumbling home at sunrise.”

“Jiminah you stumble around anyway with that broken leg of yours, what do you need alcohol for?” Yoongi calls over, frowning. “And chew your food before you speak.”

Jimin swallows obediently before grinning a wide, white smile, his eyes smushing into crescents. “What’s this?  You sound just like a hyung.  Where’s the Yoongi from before?!  He was like batman.”

Namjoon guffaws, and his glasses plop back down on his nose. “Oh my god, the eyeliner and everything!  He’d be sitting on top of skyscrapers in the rain if he had an ounce of climbing ability in his body.”

“I don’t even wear eyeliner– hey!  What!  Batman is literally a billionaire.  He doesn’t scale buildings by hand .”

“Yeah but he’s jacked Yoongiyah.  Like.  Built.” Seokjin nods wisely, still sucking on his meat candy.  

“I cannot believe you’re taking their side.”

Hoseok’s hand comes down on the table hard enough that their glasses jump.  Everyone turns to him, eyebrows raised.

“If I don’t get meat right now, Yoongi, you’re not going to have any body parts left to scale buildings with.  Trust me, I’m really handy with a scalpel.”  

“It’s true.” Namjoon says. “I’ve seen it.”

Yoongi uses his tongs to plop a piece of pork belly on top of Hoseok’s pile of rice, rolling his eyes.  “I’m built .” He mutters, turning the other pieces of meat over on the grill.

Seokjin catches it with his vamp hearing and grins slow and sly, an indecipherable expression passing over his face like the shadow of a cloud.  It’s so quick and dark that Yoongi barely catches it before it's gone.

He’s left stunned, ears and neck heating.  Jimin starts pestering Namjoon, but Yoongi processes it like he’s underwater.  Why does he feel so warm?  He has to stop himself from reaching up and feeling his own forehead for a fever.  There’s pinpricks in his thighs, a stir in his stomach.  It feels like anxiety, but makes him want to press his legs together and– oh.

He stares at Seokjin’s pale profile, how the restaurant lights catch on his glossy black hair.  His nose is straight and even, pretty lips a little wet from where he’d stuck his tongue out to wet them a moment before.

Oh.  Oh no.

Seokjin’s head cocks, a tiny frown turning the corners of his mouth down.  His eyes cut to Yoongi, glittering black.

“You okay?” He mouths, pressing his own hand to his chest and patting it.  Yoongi looks at his hand, then down to his own chest where his heart must be slamming against the cage of his ribs hard enough to echo in the vamps ears.

“I’m–” He clears his throat and lowers his voice. “Good.  Totally good.  Just.  Here,” He cuts another raw piece of meat and nearly throws it at Seokjin.  The vampire huffs, amused, and pops it on his tongue like candy.

Jesus .

“Thanks, Yoongiyah.  S’good.”

Namjoon’s shoulder bumps into Yoongi, and he nearly falls out of his seat. “ Joon , what ,”

The tongs are scooped out of his hand, Namjoon quickly removing several pieces of meat from the grill with a wince. “Aw.  They’re burned.”

Yoongi stares down at the crispy pork belly, mouth hung open.  He’s got a perfect track record for grilling, and it’s been completely demolished because he’d been busy feeding raw meat to his very attractive vampire partner who he absolutely does not desire in any way shape or form.  Jesus, this is bad.  This is so bad.

“D’you want me to take over?” Namjoon asks, round glasses all fogged up.

Everyone at the table is staring at him.  Jimin is swirling his soju like its fine wine, leaning on the table with the slyest of grins spread over his mouth.  Hoseok is chewing the charred meat with a glare, and Seokjin is… Well, he’s staring.  But there’s something in his eyes that makes Yoongi’s breath catch in his throat.

“Yeah,” he chokes out. “Yeah, I think I need to, um, just.  Bathroom.”

He stands up so fast that he bangs a knee on the table, knocking Hoseok’s careful pile of perilla leaves onto its side, and then half-runs away before the nurse can come after him with the cooking scissors.

Yoongi skips over the bathroom door, walking outside instead to stare up at the cloudy Seoul sky between buildings.  It’s loud and polluted, the smell of fried chicken and cooked meat thick in the air.  Yoongi sort of wishes he smoked, just so he could have something to do with his hands.  Instead, he shoves them in his pockets and tries very hard not to think about Seokjin.

It’s a losing fight.

The worst part of it all is that Yoongi still hasn't apologized.  The guilt had been biting at his ankles before, but now it’s a tangible thing lumbering after him day after day.  He feels the weight of it like a physical sensation, a rock tied to his shoulders.

Seokjin is more than just a rehabbed vamp, now.  Or, he always was, and it was Yoongi who couldn't see through the blurry void of his past.  Hate has always come from hate and now– Now Yoongi sees Seokjin and thinks that he’s always been beautiful.  He sees the things that were ripped away from him, the life that his parents wanted for him, and the friends that loomed in the corners of his memory like ghosts.

Seokjin is beautiful and he is alone.  And Yoongi knows what alone tastes like.  He knows the bitterness of it on his tongue, the way it shadows into every part of life and makes mundane horrifying.

The door to the restaurant slides open, and Seokjin steps out a second later, turning to Yoongi without looking.  He’s clearly following his nose, though he does look up when he’s close enough.  He slings an arm over the railing to lean beside him, his jaw flexing as he chews.

“You know this meat has been pretty much drained of blood already?”

Yoongi frowns. “You don’t like it?”

“It’s a little dry, actually.  But I liked that you gave it to me.  It was thoughtful.”

“You keep saying things like that,” Yoongi looks away, shakes his head until his hair falls into his eyes. “You’re being so… so…”

“Nice?”

“Yeah.”

Seokjin hums, still chewing.  They both stare out at the street where people are milling around, a few lugging bags of groceries to their apartments.  College age kids biting into convenience store ice cream.  

“Do you remember when we first got paired up?” Seokjin asks, and Yoongi looks at him, confused. “You barely acknowledged me.  I overheard you tell our supervisor you wanted a different partner, that it was unfair you had to work with one of them .  I understood, though.  If I hadn’t… If I’d been in your shoes, I wouldn't have wanted to work with a vamp either.” He shifts, a soft smile playing at his lips. “But I’m happy you stayed.  I’m genuinely so happy to know you, Yoongi.  Even after everything.  I could always feel this sadness from you, this tension that came from a dark, dark place, and I related to it.  You made me so angry sometimes, too, don’t get me wrong.  But I think that you’re a storm of a person.”

Yoongi wipes at his nose and keeps his head low, eyes fixed on the concrete.  He’s pretty sure that if he looks at Seokjin right now he’ll start crying, something he hasn’t done for years .  Not since… Not since his parents in Daegu.  It’s a monster of a feeling in his chest, a shadowy thing with long claws buried deep beneath his ribs.  He rubs at his chest absentmindedly while Seokjin lets his words sit in the air between them.

“I still want you to apologize to me.” Seokjin says eventually.  Yoongi looks up at that, fixing Seokjin with wide eyes. “I’m still hurt.  Of course I am.  I’m a person beneath… all this twilight shit.”

“I still don’t understand that book.” Yoongi rasps.

Seokjin laughs. “What, vamps aren’t sparkly sex gods?  News to me.”

Yoongi feels himself flush.  He wipes a tired hand down his face.  They wait out the awkward silence, Seokjin picking at a piece of splintered wood on the railing.

“I’ve been meaning to say it.  The apology stuff.” Yoongi rubs his neck nervously. “For a while, actually.  I just didn’t know how to, like, do it.  I didn't know what to say.” He steals a glance at Seokjin and finds him looking at his hands with a sad sort of smile. “I still don’t know what to say.  All I know is what I did and said before, you didn’t deserve any of that.  I was scared because I didn’t understand, because I didn’t see you.  And… shit, Seokjin, if I could go back in time I’d change so many things.  I’d start with treating you better, like you deserve, and I’d make sure that you knew how much I, um.  How much I respect you.  How often I wished that we could just talk, and be people together.  I guess I haven’t felt much like a person since, um, before.”

Seokjin picks at his nail, looking down. “Sometimes I thought you’d kill me.  You almost did.”

Yoongi bites down on the inside of his cheek, wincing.  He’s terrified of this part.  That they have to acknowledge all the good, bad and ugly pieces of their fractured history.  It makes Yoongi’s throat ache, his chest concave.

“I’m so sorry.” He says, genuine.  What else can he say?

“I know.  Give me time to forgive you?” Seokjin looks up, pretty eyes shadowed by his lashes and the semidark of the glowing restaurant corner.

“Whatever you need.” 

“I’m sorry, too.” Seokjin says. “For biting you, losing control like that.  I didn’t think that was something I would continue to struggle with after so long, but it’s just…”

“My blood.” Yoongi says for him.

Seokjin glances at him, Yoongi can see the worry even from the corner of his eye. “That isn’t your responsibility.  You can’t help what you were born with.”

“No,” Yoongi says. “I can help it as much as you can help being turned against your will.”

He looks up to see that Seokjin is already looking at him.  It’s a quiet look, one that says more than his voice ever could.  They’re the same, different sides of the same coin, and they probably always have been.  

The moment snaps out of focus like a bad camera lens when Seokjin looks back at the grimy street and the people wading through it.  He scrunches his nose, eyebrows drawn together.

“Do you smell th–”

“Hey,”

Seokjin startles before Yoongi does, both of them straightening up and clearing their throats like they’d just been caught doing something illicit.  

Namjoon looks between them, mouth hanging half open.

“Sorry, am I interrupting something…?”

“No,” Yoongi says, the same time that Seokjin says “Kind of,”

The doctor huffs a laugh, nodding. “Okay, well, Hoseok is insisting that he foot the bill and Jimin’s asleep on the table, so,” He looks between them with thin lips, eyebrows raised expectantly. “Help? Maybe?”

“Right.” Seokjin nods, looks at Yoongi. “I’ll take on Hoseok if you’re good with Jimin.”

“Oh, deal.” Yoongi says, relieved.

They bustle back into the restaurant together, beelining for their abandoned table and the worried waiter hovering over Jimin’s slumped form.  Yoongi hauls Jimin up, supporting him with his better arm while Seokjin and Namjoon both physically restrain Hoseok from paying the bill.  

There’s a feeling in his chest, then, that expands out into the delicate veins of his arms and fingers.  It’s something like shivering warmth, the excited buzzing of good friends and soju, the smell of grilled meat and a light breeze on his back where the restaurant door is propped open for cooling.

He hasn’t felt it in years, whatever it is.

Jimin mumbles and drools against his shoulder and instead of pushing his face away, Yoongi pulls him a little closer, holds his shoulder a little tighter.

🩸

Seokjin and Yoongi are both called up for another joint raid operation around the fourth week of their recuperation.  It’s a small operation, a team of four black coats doing cleanup on a turned family deep in myeongdong, Yoongi and Seokjin’s unit responsible for recording and finalizing the investigation.

Still, Yoongi is more anxious than he thought he’d be.  

He starts dragging himself to the gym again, testing out his own endurance and feeling disappointed when his blows don’t land with the same hard finality that they had a month ago.  He’s in the middle of punching his knuckles open on a sandbag when Seokjin’s pale face appears behind the bag, his hands steadying it.

“Training alone?” 

Yoongi wipes some sweat from his eyes and squints at him. “Do vamps actually need to work out?  I thought your muscles were frozen in time, or something.”

“I might be frozen in the prime of my life, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn new tricks.” He grins, fangs poking into his plush bottom lip. “I’ve been practicing with Jiminah, working on some sparring.  Although I’m short a partner today.  You up for it?”

“What, Jimin’s not gunna lay you out on the mat himself?” Yoongi laughs, fiddles with the wrapping on his knuckles.  He feels flushed and sweaty compared to Seokjin, who is put together and clean.  He’s trying hard not to imagine the smells Seokjin is picking up right now.

Seokjin pats his own leg. “Leg, remember?  He’s been supervising me with partners.  Namjoonah was here the other day, actually.  You wouldn’t expect it out of him, but he’s actually incredibly nimble for his height.”

Yoongi frowns. “You sparred with Namjoon ?”

“Sure,” Seokjin nods. “Once or twice over the last month.  Three if you count that time he got me in a nasty headlock at the office.  I smelled him before I saw him, but I didn’t want him to feel embarrassed that I caught him sneaking up, you know, he’s such a sweetheart.”

It’s hard to remember to keep his mouth closed.  Yoongi snaps his teeth together so hard that they rattle.  Seokjin doesn’t seem to notice.  He looks up expectantly and Yoongi has to untie his own tongue to respond.

“You… sparred.  With Namjoon.” He repeats intelligently.  Then, after realizing how completely stupid he sounds, he corrects himself. “I mean.  I could take Namjoon.  So.  I don’t know if you could tak– I mean, I don’t know if you’d like a less advanced sparring partner, because I might be…”

“Too much?” Seokjin smiles, a slinking thing that spreads across his face, cheshire-slow. “You think I couldn’t take you?” His eyes skim down Yoongi’s body, over his chest down to his thighs and back up past his collarbones to his face.

If Yoongi didn’t know better, he’d think Seokjin was flirting with him right now.  But that’s impossible.  Unlikely.  Unheard of.  He clears his throat.

“You could try,” he says, a little weak.

“Let me, then.”

🩸

Yoongi’s back hits the mat hard .  All the air rushes out of his lungs in one long whoosh, and he rolls onto his side before sitting up with a wince.

“Good form, hyung!” Jimin calls from the bench.  Yoongi shoots him a glare. “What’re you looking at me like that for?  It was good form, plain and simple.”

Behind him, Seokjin rolls his shoulders out, swinging his arm around to loosen the tense muscle.  Yoongi levels a glare at him, too, for good measure.

“This is an unfair fight.  You’ve got vamp muscles.” He spits.

Seokjin raises an eyebrow. “Haven’t you been wrangling vamps for, like, the last 3 years?”

Yoongi pushes himself into standing, hands running a little slippery over the plastic mats where his sweat left streaks.  The sparring area is cleared out, most of the late-night gym goers having trickled out around 3 a.m.  Even Jimin is looking a little tired, resting his face against his palm and yawning.

“Go again?” Seokjin asks, bouncing on his heels lightly.

“Hyung, as much as I enjoy watching you toss Yoongi hyung around like a rag doll, I think I need to call it a night.” Jimin calls.

Something pops when Yoongi stretches himself out, hands splayed over the small of his back as he pushes his hips outward.  He groans.

“You should get some sleep, take some time to heal up.” Seokjin smiles at him, his eyes crinkling with it.  It’s soft, light.  Yoongi’s chest squeezes.

“All I do is rest.” Jimin stands up, rolling his eyes. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t,” He says offhandedly, already hobbling to the gym lockers to grab his bag and go home.

Yoongi waves him off.

“Think you can handle one more?” Seokjin asks, eyes glinting.

“I don’t think you’ve proven you can take me, yet.” Yoongi says, deadpan.

It’s a lie.  Seokjin had easily dodged Yoongi’s sloppy attempts at pinning and got him all the way down to the mat more than a few times at this point.  Vamp strength aside, he has strategy and quickness that Yoongi hadn’t ever noticed when they were in the field.  

What else had he not noticed?

“Oh, really?” Seokjin’s smile turns predatory. “Would you like me to prove it for you again?”

A shiver crawls down Yoongi’s spine. “You can try.  I’m notoriously difficult to please.”

“Since when was this about pleasing you?” Seokjin snorts.

Yoongi feels the tips of his ears go red.  He wipes at his nose, leveling his feet out a shoulder-length distance apart and raising his hands.  He lets his body go loose, tilting his chin up at Seokjin. “Ready.”

Seokjin mirrors his stance. “What round is this?” 

Yoongi strikes first, an offensive move that Seokjin barely avoids.  He still catches his arm, rolling it over himself and stepping into his space.  He plants his foot and shoves, trying to get Seokjin to go down over his knee, hopefully onto the mat just after, but the vampire shimmies out of the grip.

Yoongi wants to curse, but the tremble in his muscles tells him he only has enough concentration and energy left to get Seokjin pinned on this round.  He breaks Seokjin’s counter-hold, pushing against his defensive stance with everything he has.

Seokjin laughs, a little breathy and surprised.  He moves, switches to offensive, and prepares to strike.  This time, Yoongi is ready.  He pours himself into his offensive position, then switches to defense at the last second.  Seokjin is clearly startled by the fake-out, stumbling when his push into Yoongi’s space comes up short.

That’s all Yoongi needs.

He fastens his hands around Seokjin, the feel of him cool against his dry gym clothes, and maneuvers both of their bodies around until Seokjin is tripping backwards.  Yoongi is there to follow him down, both of them crashing down to the mat in a flurry of harsh breath and tense limbs.  Yoongi keeps his grip, hikes his thighs up close to Seokjin and pushes his weight down, down, down.

Seokjin stares up at him, bewildered.  Yoongi smiles back, triumphant.  

His hands are still on Seokjin, one around the gentle curve of his ribcage, the other pushing his leg flat.  He moves to release the hold, but Seokjin’s hands dart out to hold him in place.

“Wait,” He says, breathless despite not needing to breathe.

Yoongi blinks at him, sweat rolling down his nose and threatening to drip onto Seokjin’s face.  He wants to ask why, but his lips feel frozen by the expression on Seokjin’s face.  He stares back up at him.  They’re pressed so close together, bodies a mix of human warm and cool, hips digging into stomach softness.

“Jin?” Yoongi’s voice comes out more of a whisper.  It should be embarrassing.

Seokjin bends upwards, the gentlest crane of his neck, and their lips meet.

His lips are soft and a little wet.  Yoongi drops his weight, sucking in air before kissing back hard .  

Something within him bursts.  A dam, maybe, or a natural rainfall.  He melts into Seokjin’s body like it’s all he ever dreamed of, all he was built and made for.  Seokjin’s skin might be cold, but his mouth runs warm over Yoongi’s lips, tasting him and groaning when Yoongi opens his mouth to allow him inside.

Yoongi’s arms start to tremble where he’s holding himself up.  He ignores the burn in his muscles and focuses instead on the burn of Seokjin, on how he feels when he fills his lungs with air and surges up into Yoongi, presses closer but misses his mouth and kisses the corner of his lips instead.  How he feels when he smiles against his skin, when he shifts them both up into sitting and kisses him breathless again.  He pushes his hair back like they’ve done this before, like he knows the strands were irritating Yoongi’s eyes, like he knows Yoongi.

“Hyung,” Yoongi says.  It’s between a plea and a question, and Seokjin hums.  Kisses him again.  Pulls back to kiss Yoongi on the jaw, the throat, then again on his mouth.

“Sorry,” Seokjin breathes, not sounding sorry at all.

Yoongi shakes his head.  His eyes are burning.  He blinks rapidly and tries to remember the last time he was held without the threat of violence looming over his head.  It had to be before the broken lights of Banwoldang station, before the blood slicked over the streets, before everyone that Yoongi had ever loved left him.

Seokjin thumbs at his cheeks and Yoongi opens his eyes with a gasp.  He hadn’t noticed he was crying, hadn’t felt the hotness of his own tears as they ran down his face and intermingled with the sweat.

“Yoongiyah,” Seokjin says, soft and concerned.  Yoongi shakes his head, trying to control the shake of his chin.

“It’s just been a while,” Yoongi scratches out, his throat aching from the inside. “Since I’ve felt close.”

Seokjin looks at him with gentle eyes, his mouth a thin line. “Me too.” He says.

Yoongi falls forward into his shoulder, pressing his forehead into the dryness of Seokjin’s gym shirt.  He feels the spinning dark that’s become to natural to push down, to ignore, to drown out with work and violence.  Now it sits with him like an old friend, just beside Seokjin.  Unlike that shadow, Seokjin is real and whole.  He runs his hands down Yoongi’s spine and doesn’t ask him why he’s crying.

🩸

It’s nearing dawn when Yoongi and Seokjin make it out of the gym locker rooms and through the main entrance.

Yoongi had needed a short rinse before they left, to scrub off the sweat and tears.  He also needed a second to himself, to figure out what had happened.  None of his conclusions helped.  He decided as soon as he turned the water off, that none of it had to be dissected.

Seokjin handed his bag to him when he came out, and that was all there was to it.

Outside, the air is wet with oncoming morning, sticking to their skin and clothes as they walk.  The streets are abandoned, even the late-night buskers having packed up hours ago.  The buzzing of convenience store signs is the only background noise besides their footsteps.

“Are the Establishment apartments still shitty?” Yoongi asks, hiking his bag higher up on his shoulder.  All of his body is protesting him, the tired-shaky-fatigue of a long gym day battering down on him the closer he gets to the subway station.

Seokjin snorts. “Yeah.  Although a lot of the long term rehabbed vamps get the nicer places.  I’ve only got another year before I’m allowed to move out.”

Yoongi hums, imagining Seokjin living in a quaint place in the city.  He’d probably have houseplants.

“What ab–”

Something heavy swings into Yoongi side, too fast for him to process the hit before he’s crumpled on the sidewalk, gasping in air like a fish out of water.  He sees Seokjin go down a second later, hissing at something on top of him.  

A man.

Yoongi takes in the mangled face and patchy hair, the wicked curved fangs that are inches away from Seokjin’s face.

It’s gaudy vampire from the basement of the club.  Taehyung had done a number on him, enough that his vampiric healing hadn’t been enough to keep the damage from scarring.  He’s in black, loose-fitting clothes instead of a three piece suit this time.  Yoongi spies the glint of silver in his clawed hand, the syringe needle long and dripping.

“Jin,” Yoongi wheezes, struggling to his knees.  He’s going to be too late.  The syringe is out of his line of sight, and the vampire has a clean shot at plunging it in.  Panic wells in Yoongi’s chest as he throws himself forward, into the squirming mess of their bodies, just as the vampire brings the syringe down.

It’s a short second of burn as the needle buries into Yoongi’s thigh, and then a blooming ache that spreads over his skin like wildfire.  He gasps, breathing through his mouth as he wrestles the vampire away from Seokjin, putting him in a hold not too different from the one he had Seokjin in not even an hour earlier.

“JIN!” He yells, yanking his head back to avoid fangs to the cheek.

Seokjin is there a second later, black blood dripping into his eye.  He fastens both hands around the vampires squirming head.

“You took everything!” The vampire screams, frothing at the mouth like a mindless vamp out of its nest. “You took everything from me!”

Seokjin doesn’t hesitate.  He rips the mans head from his neck in one quick yank, a spray of black blood covering his clothes and face.  He drops the head a second later and sits back, looking dizzy.

Yoongi releases his hold and drops back as well, panting into the cold morning air.  His thigh is burning noticeably, the pain lancing down to his calf and up to his hip bone.  He swallows.

“Jin, I think you should call Hoseok and Namjoon.”

“What?”

“I, um,” Yoongi squeezes his eyes shut as pain shoots over his leg. “J-just hurt myself.”

Seokjin reaches for his phone, perplexed. “I’ll call the Establishment first responders, they could–”

Seokjin inhales, mouth falling open.  His eyes snap to the syringe laying on the street, the body of it cracked open and leaking whatever fluid was leftover.  Yoongi follows his eyes.

“Namjoon and Hoseok,” Yoongi repeats, breaking into a sweat as the pain licks over his skin.  He feels like he’s burning up from the inside out.

“It’s the same smell,” Seokjin says, unlocking his phone and selecting a contact before lifting it to his ear.  Someone answers a few seconds later, and Seokjin speaks quickly. “Namjoonah, Yoongi and I were attacked.  He injected him with something, I think the same chemical that those new vamps had been given.  I have no idea what… No, he’s conscious.  Heart rate is high–”

Seokjin glances at him and Yoongi offers a shaky thumbs up.  It doesn't get the smile he hoped it would.

🩸

Somewhere between getting into Namjoon’s car and arriving at the offices, Yoongi knows something is really wrong.  He’s burning with fever, the pain working its way up to his chest and hips, the injection site swelling up like a bad mosquito bite.  He has to pause to throw up before they fully enter the building.

“–and if the director finds out he’ll want a full case study.  Shit, I want a full case study.”

“Namjoonah, focus, please,” Seokjin sounds strained.  He hauls Yoongi through the back hallways, avoiding the night workers who are just coming off shift until they make it down the stairs to Namjoon’s lab. “We have to keep this low until we know for sure what’s going on.”

Namjoon shakes his head. “I know.  It’s acting more like a toxic chemical on his body, I could probably flush it out with fluids, maybe an IV.  Hoseok said he was on his way from Itaewon.  Maybe 20 minutes?”

“Does he need an antidote?” Seokjin asks, a little helplessly.

They both help Yoongi up onto a cushioned gurney, laying his sweaty head back so Namjoon can check his pupils.

“I honestly have no idea.” Namjoon flashes the lights over his eyes and shakes his head. “You still with us?”

“Hurts,” Yoongi groans.  It’s all he can think about.

“Where does it hurt?” Namjoon runs a steady hand over his shoulder and down his arm.

“Leg, leg,” Yoongi pushes his head back against the pillow, gritting his teeth. “S’ on fire.”

Namjoon grabs surgical scissors and cuts Yoongi’s sweatpants away, inhaling sharp when he sees the puffy, reddened skin. 

“I have no idea if we need an antidote,” He mutters. “I’ve only seen the aftereffects on cadavers.  Vampire cadavers.  As far as I know, it’s a chemical compound that alters the physiology of a fully-turned vampire.  On a human…”

“What about,” Seokjin sounds uncharacteristically nervous, Yoongi thinks, like he might be pulling his fingers through his own hair and chewing on his lips. “What if you could suck it out, like a snake bite?”

“Are you referencing Twilight again?” Yoongi wheezes.  He cracks both eyes open, unaware that he’d closed them in the first place.  Seokjin’s face comes into blurry focus, black blood streaked over his cheeks and forehead.  Somehow, through the gore, he’s still the most beautiful thing Yoongi’s ever seen.

“The injection site is miniscule in comparison to a snake bite or vampire bite,” Namjoon presses against the swollen skin and Yoongi yells. “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.  Look, I could increase the size of the site, but if it wasn’t injected directly to a vein,” He shakes his head, then pushes his glasses back up his nose when they slip down.

“You realize Twilight was fiction , right?” Yoongi pants, glaring through one eye at Seokjin.

“I don’t sparkle in the sun, so,” Seokjin deadpans back.  Namjoon sighs.

“I don’t have a better plan.  Whatever that chemical is, Yoongi hyung, it could be fatal.  I have no way of knowing.”

“Or I could just sleep it off,” 

“Or you could swell to the size of a human grape and die on my cadaver gurney.” Namjoon crosses his arms. “I’m with hyung on this.  I’ll increase the injection site size and he’ll suck a majority of it out of you.”

“Majority?” Seokjin is ansty, moving his fingers to his mouth to bite at the cuticles.

“If it’s like a snake bite, there’s no way to completely remove the venom.  Some of the drug had to have been absorbed by now.  Most likely whatever reaction he has will be lessened but not eliminated.”

“Is killing me on the table at all, or…”

Namjoon rolls his eyes. “I’m going to get my equipment.”

Yoongi watches blearily as Namjoon disappears into the back room, then shifts to face Seokjin.  He looks messy, hair askew over his forehead and dried blood over his face.  He stares back at Yoongi worriedly.

“I’m not dead yet, you know.” Yoongi says, cracking a shaky grin that he hopes doesn’t look too much like a grimace.

“Don’t joke,” Seokjin says, quiet, like he might really be angry.  Yoongi rolls his head up to look at the basement ceiling.

“Sunrise is probably right about now.” Seokjin doesn’t say anything, but Yoongi can feel the weight of his gaze against the side of his face. “Hey, if I live through this, can you promise me something after?”

“You’re going to live through this either way.” Seokjin sounds more like he’s convincing himself, but Yoongi smiles and nods anyway, turning to look back.

“I just wanna make sure you’ll kiss me again, after.”

“You–” Seokjin sputters, pulling on the small hairs at the back of his neck. “ Of course I’m going to kiss you again.” He whisper-hisses, eyes darting to where Namjoon is puttering around in the back. “I’ll kiss you whenever you want, however much you want, wherever you want.”

Yoongi’s grin widens. “Wherever I want?”

Seokjin’s eyes are glassy-angry, stuck between crying and yelling and laughing.  His lips tremble. “Yes.”

“I’ll live just to see that.” Yoongi laughs.

Namjoon comes back in, the silver glint of his medical equipment clutched to his chest.  He pushes his glasses up and mutters under his breath about sterilization. “People aren’t usually alive when I do this.” He says, exasperated.

“Gee, I feel better.” Yoongi rolls his head back to the ceiling, dizziness rocking him to his core.  The pain has become familiar and aching, a burn like whiskey through his veins.

“How long should I…” Seokjin trails off.

“Until you don’t taste chemical, I think.  Or if he starts to suffer from too much bloodloss.  Hoseok said he’d bring bloodbags just in case, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.” Namjoon organizes the scalpels and clamps, a new clean pair of surgical scissors.  None of it looks very friendly, glowing green-blue under the fluorescent lights.

“You really can’t just knock me out?” Yoongi sighs, already knowing the answer.

“Sorry hyung.” Namjoon snaps a pair of gloves on, and looks up at Seokjin. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Okay, slight sting here.” Namjoon picks up the scalpel and Yoongi grabs at the gurney with both hands, gripping the edges with sweaty palms and bracing for the pain.

It isn’t as bad as he thought it’d be.  The blade bites, Yoongi grinds his teeth, and then Namjoon is rolling his chair away to make room for Seokjin.  Maybe it's the wildfire raging across his skin, but this new pain feels long and distant.  He exhales harshly and stares at Seokjin, blinking sweat out of his eyes.

“I trust you.” He says on an exhale.

Seokjin looks between his eyes, expression terrified.  He looks younger all ruffled up with blood splashed on his skin, less like the monster Yoongi always associated him with.

He lowers his head until Yoongi can just see the top of his hair and feel the press of his lips against his thigh.

Everything Yoongi knows and understands about pain changes in the second that Seokjin begins sucking the chemicals from his wound.

Whatever fire in his veins comes back through with twice the fury.  It retracts so cold that it burns, and Yoongi swears he can feel it travel back the way it had spread, following hollow-out and swollen tunnels to the source.  He screams so hard that his throat goes raw with it.

Namjoon has both gloved hands over his torso, holding him steady against the involuntary thrashing.

The only reprieve comes when Seokjin leans over to spit mouthfuls of blood and chemical into the stainless steel pan Namjoon had put on the ground next to the gurney.  Beyond that, all he knows is fire tracking over already-burnt ground.

At some point, Hoseok bursts through the basement doors.  Yoongi hardly registers the pain of an IV needle in his arm.  He’s stopped being able to thrash, his body too worn out to do anything but tense and curl into himself.

Hoseok pets a hand through his hair and asks Namjoon medicinal questions that Yoongi can’t hope to make out through the gusts of pain that billow through him.  It’s getting better, slowly, more tolerable.

He closes his eyes for half a second.

🩸

When Yoongi cracks his eyes open again, he’s on Namjoon’s deskchair, at least two jackets and Namjoon’s white doctor coat thrown over him.  He smacks his lips and stares at the IV stand next to the desk, the tubes disappearing under the mounds of jackets over his body.

Across the room, Seokjin is sitting in the corner with his head against the wall, eyes closed.  He looks cleaned up, like Hoseok had taken wet wipes to his face and patted his hair down.  His cheeks are puffy, mouth slightly open.

Yoongi can make out Namjoon and Hoseok talking lowly in the back room, and he shifts to get up.  Pain lances up through his leg and he winces, sitting back down carefully so that he doesn’t wake Seokjin.

If standing isn’t an option, rolling is the next best thing.  Using only his good leg, Yoongi rolls the chair across the floor and around the desk until he can peer into the back room where Namjoon has a few slides he’s sifting through and Hoseok has his arms crossed and lips pouted out.

“I took biology in college, too, you know.  I think I know when I see a blood panel that makes no goddamn sense.”

Namjoon sighs. “I’m not saying you’re wrong.”

“Really, because it sort of sounds like you’re saying I’m wrong, and out of my mind, and potentially even making shit up.”

Namjoon shushes him.  Yoongi clears his throat and they both startle, Hoseok lifting a hand to his chest like he has pearls to clutch.

“Oh.” Hoseok relaxes. “How’re you feeling?”

“Dizzy?  Nauseous?  Is the pain still around?” Namjoon adds.

“Fine.  No.  A little.  And kind of. Does that answer everyone’s questions?” Yoongi twirls a little on his chair, careful not to jostle his IV line. “How long have I been out?”

Namjoon’s tired eyes flit to the wall clock. “A few hours.  It’s the middle of the day, around lunch.”

“We’ve been analyzing the chemicals, your blood, trying to figure out if you’re, you know, okay , and–”

“And you are,” Namjoon finishes, flashing Hoseok a look.  The nurse narrows his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Technically.” He says.

“Technically.” Yoongi repeats. “What aren’t you telling me, Namjoonah?”

“The blood panels came up weird, some of it from the chemical.  It’s like.  It’s like you’re somewhere between, um.”

“It’s not biologically a possibility.  We have to reanalyse the material, get a third opinion, maybe a fourth.  The Establishment is going to want to understand what’s happened here.”

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said, Kim Namjoon, I swear to god.  I thought you had a whole ass doctorate degree, huh?  What are they teaching in medical school these days?”

Namjoon flips his glasses off, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “How long can we keep this a secret realistically, Hobi?  You do realize we’re employed here, right?  That we legally can’t just keep shit to ourselves if it’s, if it’s… something like this?”

“Oh, right, yeah, let’s just turn Yoongi over to a massive government branch that definitely has a history of performing unconstitutional testing and mass incarceration.  You realize the Establishment was under fire by the UN only like, three years ago, right?”

“Um,” Yoongi says.

“They’re not going to lock him up and experiment on him.” Namjoon has a deep frown on his face, his glasses clutched in his hand. “The Establishment isn’t a Bond villain.”

“No?  You don’t think you’d jump at the chance to study him in a controlled environment?”

“Um,” Yoongi says again, louder.  They both turn their heads, mouthes falling open like they’d completely forgotten he was there. “Can someone tell me exactly what’s going on?  Because I’m about five seconds from going upstairs and seeing myself out while I apparently still have a chance.”

“It’s a good thing you’re already sitting down.” Hoseok says dryly.  Namjoon’s face is several shades of sour, but he sets his glasses back on his nose and turns to fully face Yoongi.

“Your blood isn’t fully human anymore.  At least not the samples we got from the procedure.” Namjoon licks at his lips, staring down at his hands. “You’re not a vampire, not a human.  We honestly have no idea what you are.”

“Our best bet is that the chemicals, which were meant to turn a vamp into… whatever those new vamps are, melded with your red blood cells.  It’s like it knew how to… hide, from your white blood cells, so that your body wouldn’t attack it.  It’s changed your biology.”

“I don’t feel any different.” Yoongi says, feeling breathless.  Even as he says it, he knows it isn’t true.  His head feels clearer, his limbs stronger.  There’s an energy in his body that shouldn’t be there considering everything he’d just gone through.

He blinks up at the fluorescents, then back at the main room.  It’s dark, the lights all out to allow him and Seokjin to sleep, but he can make out everything in the darkness.  He can count Seokjin’s eyelashes from across the room.  How had he not noticed that before?

When he looks back, Namjoon and Hoseok are staring at him with unreadable expressions.

“Okay,” Yoongi exhales shakily. “I feel a little different.”

He runs his tongue over his teeth and finds that his canines are longer, sharper.  Nothing like the wicked curve of a vamp's teeth, but still something .  Not human.

“And nobody else needs to know that.” Hoseok looks at Namjoon with tight lips.  Namjoon puts both his hands up.

“Fine.”

🩸

It’s a long process between waiting for Seokjin to wake up and answering Namjoon’s endless questions.  They take height, weight, more blood samples.  Yoongi’s wounds close themselves fast.  Not as fast as a vampire, but somewhere between.  

He draws the line when they ask him to try ingesting blood.  There are some places he will not go, not even for the Establishment.”

Seokjin takes it well.  There’s relief on his features to see Yoongi standing up on his own, the IV line pulled from the fragile crook of his arm.  He agrees that they can’t tell the Establishment.

Hiding it is harder.  Yoongi knew it wouldn’t be a walk in the park, but his first raid back with Seokjin confirms it.

His sense of smell is on overdrive, and vamps smell strong .  Other humans have a scent too, but vampires come in all sorts of flavors.  He has to wear a surgical mask while finishing up their investigation, many of the black coats giving him odd looks while he takes notes and squints around the stronger smells.

He swings around a corner of the apartment building they’re in, right into Seokjin’s chest.  The vampire steadies him with a cool hand, tilting his head.

“Smells strong, right?”

Yoongi nods, buries his nose in Seokjin’s neck.  Something about him smells right .  It’s a warm smell, the same warmth the air gets on a humid day in early summer, when the rain still leaves the grass green and the clouds clean.  He inhales deep and feels himself melt into Seokjin.

“Yoongiyah, whenever you need this, you can come to me.” He whispers into his hair, leaving a little kiss there a second after.

And he does.  It takes a month, but Yoongi crawls through his assignments with Seokjin at his side, buries his nose in his partner's neck whenever the smells are too much.  Seokjin kisses him softly after, and Yoongi almost craves the kisses more than the relief to his sensitive nose.

Human food keeps the hunger pangs away, though Yoongi knows instinctively that blood would also do the trick.  It makes him sick to think about.  He doesn’t tell anyone, not even Seokjin.  The guilt of it weighs on him like tons of bricks atop his shoulders.

He takes to visiting Taehyung in the rehabilitation center, sometimes bringing Jungkook with the added protection of Seokjin to keep Taehyung’s cravings from getting out of control.  He listens to Seokjin tell Taehyung that things will get better, that he’ll find his control, that his life will mould itself around who Taehyung is now, not the other way around.

“But hyung,” Taehyung says, late in the night when Yoongi is half dozing on the ratty couch, pressed up against Jungkook’s shoulder.  The human is fast asleep.  Taehyung’s big eyes ghost over Jungkook, wide and a little afraid. “What if I never learn to control myself.  What if I hurt him?  I can’t do that.  He’s the most important thing to me.”

Seokjin smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You take it one day at a time.  You put one foot in front of the other, and you accept the things you can’t change.  You are still you .  This is just something you have to get through, learn to coexist with.  It’s a matter of time and practice.”

Yoongi slots his eyes shut and dozes.

Seokjin wakes him an hour later, a bit before sunrise.

“I’ll walk you home.” Seokjin says as they help a sleepy Jungkook up and into Taehyung’s arms for a quick goodbye hug.  They both look away awkwardly when the two share a quiet kiss, Yoongi’s ears burning.

Outside, Jungkook waves and steps into a private car his parents likely sent over, disappearing behind tinted windows.

“The station isn’t that far, Jin.  I could probably make it alone.”

Seokjin smiles, toothy. “When did you start that?”

“Start what?”

“Calling me ‘Jin’.  It used to be Seokjin.  Or dumbass.” He rocks on his heels like a little kid, still grinning.  In the yellow streetlamp light the planes of his cheeks are sharper, the cut of his jaw that much more pronounced.  

Yoongi sniffs, taking in Seokjin’s warm scent and sighing it out.  Something settles in his chest with it.  Comfort. “Should I call you hyung instead?  Jin hyung?”

“Hm,” Seokjin’s grin turns soft, a gentle smile that turns the corners of his pretty lips up. “I think I could get used to that.  It’s got a much better ring to it than dumbass.”

“Okay, hyung ,” Yoongi steps up a pecks a kiss to his lips, patting the lapels of his jacket down after. “Would you like to show me your shitty apartment?”

Seokjin blinks rapidly, looking more than a little dazed.

“You want to… come to my shitty rehab apartment?  The one that's,” He jabs a thumb towards the building adjacent to Taehyung’s. “Literally right there?”

Yoongi pretends to peer over his shoulder, like he’s never seen the building before. “Yep, that’s probably the one.  But how would I know.  You’ve never taken me inside before.”

“You want me to take you inside?”

Yoongi bites at his lip, grinning. “Yes please, hyung.”

🩸

Seokjin unlocks his apartment door with a tremor in his hands that Yoongi pretends not to notice.  They both step inside and toe their shoes off, the silence odd and thick between them.  Yoongi puts his hands in his pockets and spins on a heel, taking in the shelves of video game merchandise and unframed posters.  There are a few Maplestory plushies strewn about, one particularly large one set up against what looks like an expensive gaming chair behind a wall of computer monitors.

“Were you really pre-law?”

“Hey,” Seokjin says, hanging his coat. “Don’t forget you’re my guest here, Yoongiyah.  I wasn’t exactly expecting company.”

Yoongi hums, leaning closer to inspect an adorable Bowser figurine. “Big Mario fan?”

Seokjin wipes a hand down his face. “This is the worst dirty talk I’ve ever heard.”

“Oh?  You want me to talk dirty?” Yoongi takes a couple awkward steps until he can rest his hands around Seokjin’s waist, looking up at him through his eyelashes. “Would you rather me talk about how much I’d like you to fuck me up against your kitchen counter?”

Seokjin’s eyes skate over to the countertop, his throat bobbing. “T-that’s kind of unsanitary.”

“Hyung,” Yoongi whines.  Seokjin looks down at him, mouth slightly open.

“I’d just rather fuck you in my bed.”

“I never got the full house tour.  I’m a big fan of interior design, you know.  Might be able to give you some pointers…”

“Allow me to you the way.” Seokjin walks him backwards until his back hits a door, and they both fumble with the knob.  It ends up swinging open too fast, and they go sprawling over the floor, Seokjin landing over Yoongi’s chest with an oof .  Yoongi laughs, breathless, until Seokjin is laughing too.

It feels natural to slot their lips together, to feel one another out the way they have been for months.  Seokjin’s sweet smell is all around him, the potency of it increasing the longer they move together.  

Seokjin’s hands move up to Yoongi’s shirt buttons, undoing the first three and following his own fingers down with his mouth.

“Why–” Yoongi gasps and arches beneath Seokjin’s mouth, skin buzzing. “Why do you smell like that .”

“Dunno,” Seokjin mumbles against his skin. “What do I smell like?”

“Sex,” Yoongi groans, fisting a hand in his hair and drawing him closer.  He grinds his hips up in aborted thrusts, already embarassingly hard with the smell of Seokjin strong in his nose.

“You smell good, too,” Seokjin sighs, running a hand down his hip and pressing a thumb into the divot.  It’s gentle, but the force is enough for Seokjin to control Yoongi’s slow grind, putting heavy pressure against his dick from inside his pants.  There’s too many clothes between them, and it’s maddening.

“Shit, hyung–”

“You smelled good before, too, your blood,” Seokjin nips at his skin, the barest hint of fang between them. “But now you smell different .  I could eat you right up, don’t care how I have you.  Just want you.”

Something in Seokjin’s scent spikes hard and Yoongi feels lulled with it, the heat of his body increasing like it’s responding to Seokjin’s smell and words.  He gasps and ruts up, growling low in his throat when Seokjin pins his hips down.

“Let me have you,” Seokjin breathes. “Please.”

“You can have me, hyung, you can– ah, please take me.” He’s babbling, mindless with the smell and feel of Seokjin between his legs.  Nothing could compare to the feeling in his chest, through his limbs, it makes him boneless.  He melts into Seokjin like beads of wax from a candle burning at both ends.

It’s an easy surrender.  His body sings with it.

🩸

In the late evening of the following day, Yoongi stares up at Seokjin’s ceiling, a little pleasantly sore and a lot sated.  He feels hungry, nose twitching with the smell of sleeping Seokjin.  He’s not sure how a smell can convey emotions, but he just knows that Seokjin is sleeping content, that he’s relaxed and comfortable.  It makes Yoongi’s own bones feel more liquid, the tension in his muscles relaxing.  He tips his head to the side, smiling at Seokjin’s lax face, hair strewn over the pillow in every direction.

He wants to close his eyes again, but his throat is dry and his stomach is growling uncomfortably.  He rolls around until his feet find the cold hardwood, toes scrunching up to get away from the chill.  

Seokjin’s kitchen is sparse.  There’s three cups in the cupboard and absolutely nothing in his fridge.  It makes sense, really, but still makes Yoongi’s stomach twist a bit in discomfort.  He wraps a hand around a glass and fills it with tap water, downing it like a man parched.  He feels like he is.  Water drips down the sides of his mouth as he drinks but he doesn’t care, just wants more cold goodness down his throat as fast as possible.

He gasps when the glass is empty, already leaning forward for more.  He’s somehow even thirstier, even after the second and third glass.  On the fourth, he starts to feel a little nauseous, like how he used to feel when he overdrank water after basketball practice in high school.

He puts the glass in the sink and frowns at it, his throat still burning.

Deep, cold anxiety seeps into his bones.

He glances at Seokjin’s room, taking a deep sniff to confirm that he’s still sleeping.  There’s a few hours of daylight left, and Yoongi snatches his pants and coat from the floor, slipping out of Seokjin’s apartment and into the absolute silence of an apartment full entirely of vampires.

The convenience store down the street has a few trays of microwave dinners left, the triangle kimbap nearly sold out.  Yoongi buys a few spicy tuna rolls of kimbap, and a tray.  He taps his fingers against the dirty countertop as he waits for the food to heat up, the meat crackling pleasantly behind the little window of the microwave.

As soon as it beeps, Yoongi snatches everything out, ignoring the burn on his fingers to sit down and immediately dig in.  It singes his tongue, like he knew it would, but he keeps eating, pushing the food past his teeth and down his throat too quick to taste.  He feels his eyes well up as he finishes the roll and moves onto the tray, the hunger in his stomach remaining unchanged.

When the tray is empty, Yoongi stares down at the garbage left over, tears tracking wet and sticky down his face.

A few passing people on the streets stare in at him, muttering things that Yoongi can now hear.  Mean things, worried things, things said far enough away that he shouldn’t be able to hear, and yet.

Yoongi stands up and goes home.

🩸

“Yoongi!”

There are three loud knocks on his door, heavy blows that could only come from a fist.  Yoongi opens his eyes and closes them again.  His phone had fallen off the bedside table yesterday from the vibrations of people calling.

Seokjin, Namjoon, Hoseok, Jimin, his boss, Taehyung, and a quiet string of texts from Jungkook.

The hunger in Yoongi’s stomach screams and he curls farther into himself, biting into his ruined pillow.  His fangs are small, but they make tiny rips in the fabric that spill down feathers out onto the matress.  He’s surrounded by feathers and dirty bedsheets, the smell of his own distress high in his nose.

There’s more pounding on the door.  It sounds like Seokjin.  Yoongi drags his blanket closer, around his face, to cover his nose and protect himself from the smell.  The first time Seokjin had shown up, Yoongi had been halfway across his apartment following the inticing scent before he’d recoiled back to his bed, biting hard into a pillow and dragging the blanket up to his nose.

He can hear more, too, the thudding of human hearts and breath.  Hoseok’s voice is soft, speaking to Seokjin like he’s a child.  Namjoon quips quietly, something about Yoongi’s mental state that he doesn’t care to listen to.

And then theres the whirr of a powertool, and Yoongi shoots up in bed.  The hunger hits him hard, following by a crippling weakness and that brings him to his knees when he jumps off the bed.

He’s too slow, too sluggish.

The door bangs open, and Seokjin’s smell invades every inch of the apartment with worry, worry, worry .  It’s so potent that Yoongi covers his nose weakly, blinking back tears as it stings through his nostrils.

The next thing that hits him is Hoseok’s scent.  His blood.  It’s spicy and hot in his veins.  A sound comes out of Yoongi, one he’s never heard from himself before but would know anywhere as the sound of hungry vampire .  He’s heard it a hundred times before in a hundred different nests full of mindless monsters that mercilessly murdered humans.  Monsters that murdered his family.

He staggers to his feet and towards Hoseok, fangs beared.  Seokjin steps between them and catches Yoongi by the shoulders, shushing him when his growls raise in pitch, get higher, hungrier; god, he’s so hungry .

“Namjoonah,” Seokjin says, voice choked with tears.

“Yeah,” Namjoon is there, too, Yoongi remembers.  He smells good, too.  A little like death, though, enough that Hoseok’s blood sings much louder than his.

Something burns into Yoongi’s arm and his hisses, Seokjin shushing him.  He blinks, eyelids heavy.

“Y’drugged me,” He slurs, glaring at Namjoon.  He looks blurry.

“I’m sorry.” Namjoon takes his glasses off and wipes at his face.  Someone else sniffles.  Yoongi lets his eyes slip closed.

🩸

Yoongi doesn’t want to talk to Seokjin.  He doesn’t want to talk to Jimin, or Hoseok, or even Taehyung and Jungkook, when they come.

Still, Seokjin never leaves Yoongi’s cramped apartment.  He paces a rut into the floorboards and tries to reason it out with him.  Tries to change his mind.

Yoongi never has much to say.

“You could go to rehab, could become a white coat vamp, there’s no way they’d question you if you just showed up and asked.  I would corroborate the story, Yoongi, would tell them that you’d been attacked–”

“And my heartbeat?  The blood flowing through my veins?  The fact that I can walk in daylight ?”

“So we’ll be careful!”

“We’ve been through this already.  There’s not another option.”

“There is always another option.” Seokjin hisses. “Nothing is every so goddamn cut and dry!  I will never understand how you see in black and white like that.  I don’t understand why you won’t just try .”

“You have to let me go.” Yoongi says simply.

“You’re fucking giving up.” Seokjin falls into the chair beside the couch, burying his face into his hands and rubbing. “You’re giving up on yourself, and you’re giving up on me .”

“I’m doing this for myself, and for you.”

“You don’t get to say that when this isn’t something I want.” Seokjin looks up, eyes black with strain and sadness.  There are murkey tears tracking down his face, and his lips are puffy with crying and anxious biting.  

“You’re really beautiful.” Yoongi tilts his head and Seokjin makes a pained noise.

“If you do this.  If you leave me here.  I won’t forgive you.”

“You will.” Yoongi knows he will.  He can see it in his eyes right now.

There’s a soft knock on the door, Jimin pushing it open a second later with a conflicted expression.

“Sorry, hyungs.  Um.  Your taxi to the station is here.  Namjoon hyung insisted, even paid off the driver.” 

Yoongi sighs, standing and pulling his luggage with him.  “I told him a hundred times…”

Jimin releases the door handle and steps back, nervously glancing at Seokjin. “I’m going to be just outside, okay?”

He leaves the door ajar.  Seokjin glares at it like it bit him.

Yoongi bites at his lip, anxiety churning in his gut.  He walks all the way to the door before he turns back around and kneels in front of Seokjin, his joints protesting.

“I’ll come back.  When I figure it out.  I promise.  I’ll come back to you.”

Seokjin looks up, angry.  His strong eyebrows are harsh over his puffy eyes, the downturn of his lips so severe that Yoongi pushes his thumbs against them soothingly, a small smile on his face.

“I think I told you, when we were in that basement together.  About my family in Daegu,” He knocks his forehead gently into Seokjin’s.  “When they died, I felt so alone.  I felt so alone that I covered myself up with anger and I resented things.  People.  Monsters.  I resented myself.  I won’t lie to you, most of the time I still feel that hatred burning just beneath my lungs, and it feels like a fire that might never burn out.  But you make it better, hyung.  You make me feel like someday that fire might be just a flame.  With you, I’m not alone.  I will come back to you, because I don’t want anything but you .”

Hot tears spill out over Seokjin’s cheeks and to his lips, coating Yoongi’s thumbs.  He kisses them, tasting salt.

“Do you believe me?” He asks, looking between his eyes.

Seokjin swallows. “Yes.” He breathes shaky. “If you promise.”

“I promise.”

( when yoongi returns, seokjin feels every bit of his body sing.  he nuzzles his face into yoongi’s neck and wonders how he ever lived a day without him.

yoongi breathes him in.  the warm scent of home, home, home )

🩸