Prey Animals (25)
— Pairing: Yoongi x ot6, Yoongi x reader, Bts x reader
— Genre: Omegaverse, Mafia au, Polyamory au, Found family, Suspense, Eventual Smut, enemies to friends to lovers, Healing & Themes of trauma,
— Summary: In a world where Beta's are rare, valuable, and often have more than one pack; Beta Min Yoongi does everything he can to keep his mafia heritage a secret from his primary pack. Little does he know he's not the only one who's living a double life.
— Words: 9.2k
— Warnings: depressed mc x caregiver yoongi, Muteness, eating disorders, emaciated characters, chronic illnesses, angst, hurt/comfort, fluff, implied! autistic jimin, implied homophobia, child abuse, religious trauma, childhood friends to lovers,
— Check in at the end for my notes on this chapter! —
— Masterlist —
(14 years prior, Taehyung)
“Taehyung! Jimin is on the front porch again!”
The hills of Appalachia are the oldest in the world, and it takes several calls of his name and the whisper of the forest before Tae can take his eyes off of the woods out his window and stand from his desk. It’s pushed up against the only wall in his room that has a window- because sometimes in the middle of the night- Jimin climbs through that window and Tae always leaves it unlocked, sat there in his little room at the edge of the house a two-story colonial.
Even at the age of 12, Taehyung’s heart beats extra fast at the call of Jimin’s name. He doesn’t really know what it means yet and he won’t for a few years more. But this Taehyung is short, body long, Jimin is taller than him for now, but that too like school is something that Taehyung will eventually outpace Jimin in.
Tae often feels a little bit guilty when comparing his house to Jimin’s childhood home. Here the crosses are lit with lower lighting and the glass on the frame of Jesus’s picture is polished smooth. When they do hang out- they do it here at Taehyung’s house because Jimin’s house comes with terms and conditions. Yes sir and have you done your chores yet. Tae is also generally considered an easy target for Jimin’s big brothers. Tae doesn’t mind bearing their derision if it means that Jimin is spared their cruelty for a little while.
An older sibling’s cruelty takes many forms; worms in sandwiches, dog shit in the bottom of his shoe. Glue in Jimin’s hair that Tae couldn’t wash out and had to shave instead (Jimin keeps it that way in the summer time, Tae too, the same haircut that all kids out here get, a 1 or a 2, down all the way to the bone. Nicks in their ears just for laughs).
Violence begets violence, and Jimin’s brothers are bullies through and through. Some things are Jimin specific, like wrapping him up in jersey knit fabric tighter than a swaddle for their baby brother, that had actually made Jimin hyperventilate until he passed out. Had made Tae feel like he was going to pass out in panic too- one of Jimin’s older brothers with their forearm wrapped tight around Tae's throat.
Other stuff like the noogies and gas pedals and ganging up on him until Jimin screams and bleeds is harder to watch.
But boys will be boys. Tae is starting to think that he isn’t a boy at all.
Tae would fight back against them on Jimin’s behalf. But he’s weaker than Jimin and shorter than him still, both of them are very used to bruised cheeks and scuffed palms. To rug burn and bend back knuckles. Tae has never been a fighter but has always been a dreamer. Tae still remembers the first time that Jimin’s oldest brother picked him up and shook him like a bag of bread and laughed said, “God you fags are skinnier than a fucking pencil. I could pick my teeth with you.”
But it’s alright, everything’s alright so long as Jimin has Tae and Tae has Jimin.
Jimin easily has the worse homelife. In the kitchen there is no box of snacks or easily accessible fruit like there is over at Taehyung’s house. Everything is eaten and nothing is saved. They both might be poor but Tae is educated poor. His parents have empty 401k’s and passible healthcare. There isn’t even a bookshelf in Jimin’s house (Jimin just tells Tae that why would he need books when he has Tae to read them too him or better yet, can just tell the stories). Jimin’s parent’s got food stamps last year, but Jimin’s mother can only go to the grocery store once a month because she just can’t seem to find the time. Filling her cart with non-perishables and instant meals and enough alcohol to sedate her until church on Sunday.
If Jimin doesn’t fill up that first week or the second, the rest of the month goes lean. He ends up eating dry rice before the 30th. Tae has gotten used to sneaking an extra granola bar or portion of dinner into his Lego lunchbox. Tae's mother asks him where he puts it all, since Tae is still thin as a wire. He’s not sure if she’s put it together yet where it all goes. She doesn’t invite Jimin over for dinner ever, unless Jimin is already here.
Taehyung’s father probably wouldn’t approve. Taehyung’s father doesn’t like Jimin. Never has and never will.
Jimin shares the big attic bedroom with three of his older brothers in his decrepit old farmhouse. Rented since they moved out of the trailer park a year ago after his father made Forman. It’s hardly got enough space for the four of them even with the bunkbeds. And Jimin isn’t allowed on the top bunk since his eldest brother yanked him down and bruised his skull bad last month. The attic is sweltering in the summer time and okay in the winter. He sneaks out to Tae just as much for the company as he does the relief of a cool breeze.
His eldest brother has only just left the house and gone into the military at 18. He’d left the space a little lonelier, but it’s only going to get worse, because unlike Tae's father, Jimin’s alpha raises all his sons with whip like discipline. Favoriting endless lists of chores and long hours at the old karate studio in town to try and hone their anger and aggression into something worthwhile. Somehow, there’s always money for violence.
Tae doesn’t have to wonder why his brothers harass Jimin so endlessly- it’s very very clear whenever Tae goes to watch Jimin at the studio. It’s because Jimin, half their size and half their age, is more talented than many of the instructors there. Jimin can fight back and win most of the time, and it’s only going to get worse the bigger he gets. There is a certain awareness of his body that Tae has yet to see in anyone else. the way that Jimin can feel his skin press into the fabric, the tell of a sloping floor beneath his feet. The places in the attic where the floorboards go squeaky and the vibration transfers from floor to ceiling.
Jimin has absolute control of his body even at 12, can hurl himself off the edge of the cliff at the quarry without fear, carving a perfect circle through the air, head tucked into a flip, eyes closed. Steady with the absolute faith that Jimin has in his body or God. It doesn’t make much difference to Jimin but to Tae-
Tae always catches himself watching Jimin at church. Can never quite tare his eyes away.
Tae doesn’t like Jimin’s father. He always looks at Tae a little too long when he comes by to knock at their door. Beady dark eyes that seem to find Tae's seems and pull them apart. Eyeing his new light up sneakers or his lunch box with an air of blue-collar derision. A few weeks ago, when Tae stopped by mid-morning on a Saturday, Jimin’s father shut the door in his face and told him to wait outside. And Tae heard them talk through the door.
“I don’t want you getting any ideas hanging around that one.”
“I won’t sir.”
“He’s not your brother, and men shouldn’t keep close relationships with other men outside their family. God says it isn’t right.”
“I know sir.”
All three of Jimin’s older brothers have presented as alpha’s by now and there’s very little to guess about what Jimin will present as. Cut from the same cloth as them, the same as them down to the curl in his hair.
Tae is a bit more of a mystery. Both of them have the classic parental structure, female omega mother, male alpha father. The picture of gender conforming bliss. But Tae is an only child, and his parents hadn’t been able to pay for the fancy genetic testing that would tell if Tae, as a male, carries the omega gene let alone if it’s dominant. (He is a carrier, but that won’t change anything about how he’ll present).
Jimin is not his brother. Tae is only just beginning to realize the line between friend and soulmate. Between brother and stranger. Neither of them has any sisters, they only have mother to understand the other side of gender. Maybe it’s a shame that they didn’t, then it wouldn’t have taken Tae so long to understand, to know. But if brothers treat each other the way that Jimin’s brother’s treat him- then Taehyung wouldn’t want to be a brother to him anyway.
Jimin doesn’t live far, if Tae sticks his head out the side of his window, he can see the yellow lights of Jimin’s house peaking up over the hill and the thick trees, more the impression of a house than anything else. Tae knows that if he ran the distance, he could be there in less than a minute.
His mother calls, it takes several iterations of his name before Tae looks up from his book in the yellow light, the walls all rough shades of the same knotty pine, pinned with posters from books turned movies, harry potter and Eragon. Tae's room even now is full of books in a million colors, an old stained-glass lamp turned on that Tae reads by, and a worn desk filled with deep gashes.
Everything is old and nothing is new in this house, the worn Corelle cups and the old speed queen washer that thwacks against the side of Tae's bedroom wall and luls him into an easy sleep when it’s not too fucking hot to close his eyes.
But Tae would leave his window open anyway. It’s only because of the hour, too early in the evening for Tae's parents to be asleep, for him to come through the window. At least Tae's mother likes Jimin. Otherwise, they might have been doomed from the start.
Jimin is only wearing shorts probably because nothing else is clean. The summers are like this often. One day blending into another. Reading down by the creek and waiting for Jimin to be done with chores, hiding in the thicket at the very bottom of the mountain where Jimin’s brothers rarely ever look for them. Their giggles and laughs hidden by the roar of the waterfall. Where no one can see if Tae tucks the small pink flowers that grow in the brush behind his ears and Jimin picks him a whole bouquet.
Making eye contact with each other at church every afternoon and hoping until Jimin eventually works up the courage to ask Tae's mom if he can get a ride back with them. Never mind that on the way there Tae's father has said once again that he doesn’t like the look of those boys. That the bible says that a violent person entices their neighbor, and Tae very very carefully reminds him that that’s not in the bible but some other book. Tae's father quotes it back and forth, a professor of religious studies and ethics at a college two towns away.
Tae's mom always tells him that Jimin is a good friend, making eye contact with her son in the back seat. Eyes heavy and cautioning to shut up before he starts to yell.
Sometimes at night, Tae hears…strange bad noises from his parents’ bedroom. He always clamps his hands over his ears when that happens. It sounds like his mother crying, like begging.
Tae scuttles through the house, passed his father drinking whisky in the lazyboy and his mother cleaning up after dinner in the kitchen. The worn linoleum floor and the crumbling parquet hallway. He smiles when he sees Jimin sitting on the porch through the grain of the screen door. Pushing into his slides as a second thought. Jimin isn’t wearing shoes at all, and if he wants to come inside, he’ll have to wash his feet. “Why didn’t you come through the window?”
“Saw you reading and I didn’t want to bug you.”
He turns, face catching the light finally and Tae's book drops onto the floor, spot lost as the cover lands closed. Jimin’s whole eye looks like it’s going to swell closed, the spot where his cheekbone sits puffy and red. Black on the bone. A bruise bad enough to break to break skin..
Tae cups his cheek before he can think better of it and Jimin grins up at him. One of his teeth is chipped, just a little. If Tae wasn’t so familiar with Jimin’s smile he might not have noticed. “Got me good this time. I know.”
This is not from his brothers, no- this mark Tae knows is from either Jimin’s mother or father.
“I got in trouble with the pastor again.” Jimin says, after Tae has gone inside to retrive both a cool cloth and an icepop for each of them. His mother grins, hands it too him without a word, lifting a finger to her mouth for Tae not to alert his father with a ‘thank you mama’ he mouths it instead.
“Ah” Tae says. Because Tae doesn’t know what to say. His heart aches, they’ve been here before. When Jimin gets in trouble with the pastor things tend to go a little bit worse for him with his mom.
He holds the cloth to Jimin’s cheek, dabbing. It smells a bit too much like onions and dinner for it to be totally comforting or sanitary. Tae has no doubt in his mind where the slap on his cheek came from or the black eye.
There is little that sugar won’t fix. Tae hugs a leg to his chest, Jimin’s knee is close enough to his foot that Tae can feel the heat from him. They watch the fireflies burst into being in the grass. Watch the forest, the line where the porchlight fades. Where the shadows blur the bushes. Same as always. Jimin slurps at his ice pop, and Tae watches his melt, turning his fingers sticky.
“So, what did you say? What made him tell your mom?”
“He was talking about gay alpha’s again.” Tae licks his ice pop slow. Jimin’s eyes flicker from it and then to his face. “I talked back.” Tae can sense Jimin isn’t finished, but he watches, waits. Tae has no doubt that Jimin was just asking questions again. Those questions. The same ones they talk about down by the creek where no one can find them. “He said that it was unnatural, that alpha’s mating alpha’s isn’t what god wants.”
If there is a god it’s in the trees and stories. Tae doesn’t say, but even at 12 Tae is several steps into deconstructing his faith. Jimin isn’t there yet. But everyone in their little town goes to church on Sunday, Tae included. Not believing in God feels like not believing in wishes on stars or his parents. Both of which Tae and Jimin will not believe in by the end of their lives.
Tae has been thinking recently that the bible is printed on paper just like any other story. If it really were the word of God, why did it not come to him in some other fantastical way? Written on flowers, in the trees and dirt and bugs. In Jimin’s eyes, so dark that you almost don’t notice that they’re blue not brown.
Jimin tilts his head, chin and blonde hair catching the light. Finishing his icepop with one final lick. “I asked him that if it was so wrong, then why does it stick you know? Like why can omega’s bite omega’s, and why can alpha’s bite alpha’s. Why do the mating marks stick if it’s not supposed to happen? If it’s not right?”
Tae watches his popsicle melt and drip into the dust. One drop after green drop.
“If God controls everything and makes everything in his image, then why did he make that happen?”
Tae doesn’t have any answers for Jimin, at least not one that he’ll like. Temptation, love, dishonesty. Or maybe all three. So instead, Tae asks. “Can you sleep over tonight?”
“Yeah, but I should probably ask.” Tae watches him, standing there on the edge of where porchlight becomes dark, and driveway becomes woods. Jimin is already sinking into it. popsicle stick clutched in his little hand. Tae knows he’s still a little afraid of the dark. That he’ll run the whole way home and whole way back.
“I can walk with you.” Tae offers.
“You probably shouldn’t.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be back in like 3 minutes.”
“I’ll be waiting.” Jimin grins, and breaks out into a run. Tae listens until the sound of his feet against the gravel disappears into the lull of cicadas and spring peepers.
Jimin doesn’t come back.
Taehyung waits on the porch until his mom tells him it’s his bed time and he comes inside. And then Taehyung waits in his bedroom. The window open just in case. Staring at the ceiling listening to the washer and hoping for the sound of footsteps outside and a knock against the window frame.
He falls asleep still thinking about Jimin. Still thinking about the mating marks. Still dreaming.
~-~
(You and Yoongi, 3 days later).
The pack is not going to know about your mating marks any time soon, Yoongi decides, not if he can help it.
There is too much to explain about the circumstances. Geumjae. The family. The stakes. There is simply too much to justify on Yoongi’s part. Yoongi will not guilt them into forgiving him. To use you as justification is only half the battle. The week has been busy enough that he’s not immediately alarmed that the pack don’t contact him over the weekend, regardless of Jimin’s promise regarding the flooring and siding.
Yoongi has other things to worry about.
You’d both read that mating marks from a beta go too deep but the reality of Yoongi’s mating mark is something else entirely. The mating mark is a creeping a tingle, a sense that someone somewhere is watching him or that there is something else in the room. A feeling like you’ve forgotten something very very important, déjà vu but for a person.
Yoongi hadn’t anticipated how much he’d feel it. But it’s real, it’s really there, a string under his skin that sometimes pulls tight enough to sting. Not like a bee or like pins and needles from sitting on a limb too long. Something deeper, something fuzzy at the edge of where Yoongi ends and the world begins. You. A silver lining.
He’d thought that like the rest of his bad decisions- you’d bear the brunt of it. But every time he leaves the house it’s like someone’s hooked a finger over his shoulder and is trying to pull him back. And there’s this dis-ease that builds with every meter until his heart pounds with fear and it feels like he can’t take another step or else risk befalling to some unseen harm. A tingle in his hands and in his shoulder. A pain that hits like lighting through his mating mark.
Yoongi doesn’t know if it’s worse for you. Because you won’t talk about it.
Yoongi doesn’t like the paranoia, even if his paranoia did keep both of you alive this last year. He lets it be most of the time, dismisses it as less of a mental condition and more of a simple cost. It’s not like he could do anything to change it anyways, he can only get used to it.
He revolves back to you like some sort of comet or planetary body. Here and back again. In orbit. On your worst days, that’s all you tell yourself that it is. On the good days- it’s harder to restrain your overactive heart:
Yoongi sits on the edge of the bed, not nest, because you don’t nest like another omega might. There is no careful border or elegant border comprised of fluffed pillows. Your bed in the house is just a bed. Because omega’s only nest when they feel safe- and you’ve never felt safe a day in your fucking life. Not even with Yoongi. Not even here. You are coming to the conclusion that there are likely many things that separate you and them. That make you different from the pack. You are not like the other omega’s, not like Seokjin and Jungkook.
You’re just waiting for Yoongi to notice.
You sit in the bed buried under a thick blanket so heavy that your body underneath it hardly matters. You imagine it might be able to press you thin and translucent like a pressed flower and turn you into a good decoration. You imagine it while you watch Yoongi get ready in the bathroom. Running a bit of water through his hair to make it less fluffy, and a bit of watered-down conditioner so that his ends don’t look so split.
You’re having a hard time remembering if he’s ever put that kind of effort in for you. You don’t wonder why he puts that effort in for Seokjin. You can hardly blame him for any of it when you’re like this. You don’t know if he’ll come over today, but probably someday soon. Yoongi might not get any warning, which is why he puts the effort in every morning.
Just in case.
You imagine your bedroom must have been something of an office in the house’s previous life. If the dark blue green of the walls and ceiling and chair marks in the carpet have anything to say for it. It’s at the back of the house where the windows get the least natural sunlight. Quiet and cozy and compact.
You did at least try to nest last night. You piled every available blanket in a haphazard little mountain (Most of them are folded on the floor now). Half of the blankets were unscented (no need to taint them with your unhappy scent) and most of them where the wrong color (why should you worry about being pretty here? Yoongi doesn't love you because he wants too- love is what the mating mark demands. The affection must just feel like scratching the itch).
But Yoongi had elected to keep it that way, told you it was very very comfy until you covered his mouth with your hand. His smile pressed to your skin, his hand on your waist, and you too shy to meet his gaze. It had felt almost alright with you both warm and cozy and still, curled up in the center. Especially once he’d shut of the lights and your brain decided that there was nothing to see here.
Nothing to see if his hands stay on your waist and your face stays buried in the front of his shirt, head tucked to collarbones and his chin resting over the crown of your head. You like to sleep this way, his every breath nudging the front of your face, a reminder that he is here. That he’s still breathing. You are a delicate yolk within a fragile egg cage. Yoongi’s pale hands eggshells that crack with your every breath.
Sometimes in the darkness, when you both can’t sleep, you lift Yoongi’s hands to the ceiling to look at them. The scars across his knuckles, your fingers wrapped around his wrist, tracing the familiar lines. Hooking into the silk scarf of yours he still keeps tied around his wrist although it’s gotten progressively darker over the last few months. Stained from cooking, from paint, from life. You’ll tug at it almost playfully, aware that if you just look across the pillow, you’ll find him watching you with just as much intent.
You and Yoongi still haven’t’ broken the habit of sharing a single pillow. One day soon you might have too. Pretty soon he’s probably going to want to spend nights over at the pack’s apartment. You should have never let yourself get used to this.
You try not to look, but sometimes when you do, he leans across the pillow and presses his lips to your cheek, the corner of your mouth, and then properly. His hands don’t stay on your waist for long after that, and yours can’t stay on his wrist, not when they tremble so. The first time he’d ever asked, “is this alright? Can I-” You’d covered his mouth until he’d just shut up. But now he rarely verbally asks anymore. It’s easier when the two of you leave the uncomfortable reality on the other side of the shadow, there’s very little good that comes out of it. Very little good that exists on the other edge of the light.
But if you didn’t want it, Yoongi would be able to feel it. If you didn’t want it, you wouldn’t pull him in or mouth at the column of his throat.
The mating mark is very hard to ignore. Insistent at times, with how it demands you two remain close. Sometimes, no amount of distance is small enough.
Your feet stretch now, a little like a cat, nudging the big blue duvet piled up at the bottom of the bed. There are a pair of fuzzy socks placed on top, because your feet get cold easily (your hands too) and Yoongi doesn’t like it when you get cold.
The blackout curtains make your room feel like a soft cave. His work flannel hangs on the bathroom door, neither clean nor dirty. You made a noise when he tried to turn on the light, as you often do in the morning (Or is it afternoon?) You remain covered, first by the blue blanket, and then by the shadows, watching his pale body move through the dark, looking at the freckles on his back when he rifles through the closet. The way his muscles move below his skin.
As if he can feel your gaze, he turns, and smiles.
Your mate’s presence even makes the room feel a little safe. Just a little. Not enough to matter.
Without Yoongi in the bed, it’s hard for you to feel warm at all. There is a full plate of breakfast on the bedside table. You know Yoongi won’t beg you to eat any of it. But it stays there, placed by him and taunting you. Gooey egg and tomato with fried brown green onions crispy and burnt. It’s the first meal he ever made you in this house, the first one you’d ever devoured fully, and Yoongi makes it for you every morning. Hoping that just like the first time, you’ll swallow it down with ease.
It's been several days since you’ve touched it.
Maybe when he leaves the bedroom, you’ll carry it to the cramped ensuite and flush it down the toilet. Maybe you’ll open up the window and dump it out the side of the house. He caught you doing that one morning a few weeks ago. And sometimes you hear his soft footsteps outside, checking to see if you’ve done it again. The betrayal on his face was almost worse than the thought of eating.
Almost.
But dead things don’t eat, and if you’re going to keep him happy, not eating is hardly the worst thing you can do. You cannot get Yoongi to understand this (not that you’re any good at explaining these days, your brain is as scrambled as the eggs on the side table).
Geumjae liked you skinny. Men like you when you’re skinny and there are very very many men around these days, some more dangerous than others.
You are very aware that other girls get this and more, they get food and they get love too, they get to be safe and eat and lick their fingers with it. But you do not get any of those things without giving others up. You are safer this way. You are safer small. Even before Geumjae you’d been too weird, too dumb, too much. To get any love, to get anything good at all you have to be perfect. You’ve known this for years, and the rules don’t change even if the man you love does.
And selfishly you’d like to keep Yoongi with you just a little bit longer. Without the mating mark he’d already be gone. Although it will probably all go poorly anyway if the sight of the pack’s omegas had anything to say for it…
Why did both of them have to be pretty?
It's inevitable and yet, you still cling to this. To him.
You couldn’t articulate why you won’t eat even if words came easy to you. Some days are better than others, and when you are having a good day it’s hardly the first thing on his mind to interrogate you about the why. Maybe he already knows.
On the good days, Yoongi only appreciates the hours he has you here and waits for the good to fade like midwinter sunlight. He waits for you to go still and quiet and silent. Like the last of the snow that melted just a few short weeks ago. First mist- then nothing at all.
You stare blankly into space, pushing at the blanket on the end of the bed. The socks, pushing them just to the edge, teetering.
Yoongi catches them before they hit the floor, smiling at you with his red toothbrush hanging half out of his mouth, and putting them on your feet, tugging them a little until you lay a little more sprawled. Grinning behind toothpaste. Hands moving slow up your calves, warm and appreciative.
You’re getting used to it, Yoongi hardly ever touches you without that same kind of hesitant warmth. Watching your face for every movement, accepted or eschewed.
That same appreciation often takes its form in devious ways. Ways that feel selfish and entitled. Yoongi is your mate; it shouldn’t feel so selfish to want to touch him. You’re used to that appreciation ending with you bare on the edge of the bed, Yoongi on his knees before you panting damp breaths against the thin hair on the inside of your thighs.
Or pressed together in the tiny shower with your forehead against his sternum or wrapped up with him on the couch under a thick blanket with the blinds drawn and the heat turned up. All your clothes folded neatly to the side.
Or once on the floor with nothing but a sheet to keep you from getting splinters in your ass from the freshly sanded floor. You’d gotten them anyway. And had barely restrained your blush while he helped you pick them out, bent over his lap in more than a compromising position that Yoongi had not at all taken advantage of in the slightest.
Other than to touch.
When alpha’s and omega’s mate it almost always triggers a heat or rut, or an increased feeling of sexual appetite that lasts for several days. Ruts and heats have only one purpose; to get the omega bred and pupped. Claimed. Without a mating mark- heats hit yearly, Usually in the spring for omega’s, and ruts in the fall for alphas. Although ruts are generally more random and alpha’s often have more than one in a given year. There are other symptoms to a fever for omega’s and what Jin would call ‘an era of dumbness’ in the alpha’s where instincts to protect and provide reach a fevers pitch and aggression becomes a need rather than just a general inclination.
It's sort of fun most of the time. Jimin, Taehyung, Hoseok, and Namjoon do make quite the picture when they all try to wrestle and pin each other.
A mating mark triggers a biological impulse to breed and fuck until something comes of it- most of the time a pup. And while Yoongi isn’t an alpha obviously- and beta’s don’t have heats or ruts at all (and Yoongi thanks god for that every single time one of his packmates goes into rut or heat). You’re still an omega. Your instincts and needs bleed across your bond.
Maybe it’s just because you haven’t had your heat yet, Yoongi doubts you will, as the season treads closer and closer to summer.
You like it when Yoongi touches you. It feels nice in the moment even if it always makes you feel selfish and yucky later. It’s the only nice feeling you have most of the time. He’s been doing a lot of it as if he knows, casual little brushes of his fingers over your shoulders and across your face, a gentle pet over the top of your head. You don’t know if you’ll ever get used to being touched with such gentleness. Sometimes you don’t know why he does it since things like you, creatures like you are generally undeserving of that type of affection (thus the yuckiness). Sometimes you see his hand coming and flinch before it even meets you. Out of instinct and necessity.
(The months and years that Geumjae trained you are sticking around despite Yoongi’s best efforts).
It’s hard for you to reciprocate without it feeling scary but you’re getting used to it. Sometimes when you really can’t resist your impulses like when you shuffle up behind him in the morning and press your body against his. Cheek against his shoulder, arms around his waist. And his answering smile is worth all the fear in the world.
And that’s not to mention all the kissing.
It’s so much easier not to move in winter, to stay frozen as you are. To ignore the thaw. You hold your cup of coffee which is safe enough for you even if Yoongi does make it very very sweet. It tastes different today, and you can’t put your finger on why. You lie there, anxiously awaiting the spring and the end of all this. You don’t know why the churn of grass going from gold to green makes you feel so nauseous.
The change in season makes you feel like you’re running out of time. And now that the pack are here, you feel every second. You shouldn’t really care and deep down you don’t care about anything.
You’ve always known about the pack; you have never been under any illusion where Yoongi’s heart lay or how this was going to go. You don’t mind the idea of him having a place to go and get comfort when you’re finally gone. Which could be soon, or has it happened already? You’re not sure, maybe you should ask him.
When you lift your hand to your chest to feel you find a heartbeat after a moment. Very slow, too sluggish. Not yet then. (The mating mark works in devious ways. Geumjae hurts you, even dead. Even gone.)
That’s one of the reasons why you don’t really react when Yoongi pauses in the doorway. You lift your head in his direction. Aware that he’s been working up to saying something all morning.
“I don’t think we should tell them about the marks yet.”
You stir softly. Looking at him directly after a moment, he’s standing at the foot of the bed, in his flannel now. You don’t remember watching him put it on. And the light might be different too. It’s not that bad of a day today but you’re still losing time. Minutes and seconds bleed freely from you.
But after you clear your throat and banish the near constant feeling like you’re choking on something, you’re actually able to muster up a reply.
“Alright.”
Yoongi looks away then back at you. “I’ll tell them when it’s right, when you’re-”
Gone. Dead. Better. You don’t care how he wants to finish that sentence, so you cut him off. “I understand, don’t have to say it.”
He sits on the edge of the bed, and you get the sense that you’re losing something, time or meaning behind his words. You pull your knees up to your chest reflexively but he doesn’t let you get far, leaning forward to rest his chin against your knees. “Come on, you know it’s not that.”
“It’s okay.” Yoongi looks at you like it’s anything but. “Really, I don’t care.” He leans over and you duck just in time, his arm depresses your pillow and his lips press to your forehead and not your cheek. It makes you feel warm at least, but Yoongi doesn’t look pleased when he pulls away. It’s hard for you to read his expression. Less hard for you to feel down the bond. Although the feelings you get from it are rarely clearcut.
Whatever Yoongi’s feeling- it’s the sensory equivalent of running your hand through cold water and feeling something slimy at the bottom of a shallow pool.
He leans over again, hand on one side of your cheek, and although you pull away Yoongi’s lips land true. It takes several pecks in quick secession to get you to smile. Until you’re pushing at his chest and saying, “Stop! Tickles!”
A soft croon of “there you are” is easily dismissed into the lingering shadows and his hand that combs through your hair can almost be called a daydream. Your eyelashes flutter. Half bent over his lap with him above you. The touch of his knees hidden only by the blanket. Resting against your cheek.
He did not open the blinds, because Yoongi knows better than that. But a small shaft of sunlight cuts across the floor and almost reaches the two of you where you’re curled.
The pads of his fingers rub over the curve of your jaw, you don’t know how he knows it hurts there- but it does. Probably from you clenching in your sleep. You think about the pack, the three of them standing in the door, one black head, one brown, one blonde.
Yoongi must know you're thinking about them, because he asks, “What did you think of them?”
You close your eyes so that Yoongi won’t be able to see your emotions quite as easily. “The pretty one. Stares.”
“Jungkook?” You shake your head, tilting it to the side, pretty and omega yes. But not who you’re talking about.
“Jimin.” You pout, glaring up at him.
“Ah, Taehyung huh?” Yoongi’s voice is smooth and calm, he gives nothing away easily. But even he cannot help what you can feel through the mating mark. There’s a tell-tale twinge of longing, of pain. It's still bad but not as visceral as when he talks about Seokjin. Taehyung makes Yoongi feel like the airs been plucked out of his lungs. But Seokjin feels like being buried alive. Suffocating slowly. Something scrambling and frantic.
At least that’s the image the mating mark gives you.
You kind of wish that Seokjin had done something back to you. Something worse than only hissed. You don’t know why you want the vindication of that. It’s strange, without any violence to occupy your body- you don’t know what to do with your emotions.
“Yeah, I noticed that. The staring. Taehyung’s not usually that way.” You turn your face into Yoongi’s stomach, soft and squishy. Yoongi’s legs kick wider, and he holds you gently by the waist and back of the head, fingers threading through your hair almost without thought. Thumb and pinky rubbing behind each ear.
Even with just one meeting. You’re pretty sure that this Taehyung is hiding something. You’re just not sure if it’s only from you- or the rest of the pack. His eyes lingered on you too long, not interested, just fixated. But it was his scent that gave him away, cinnamon but with an undercurrent of something floral, fighting but failing to give out. A secret if ever you’ve scented one.
You’ve never had a particularly good sense of smell. If no one else had picked up on it, that must mean that Taehyung’s been keeping it for a while.
Yoongi’s voice is rougher when he says, “Taehyung has always been more… aesthetically inclined than the average alpha.”
You peek up at him, and you forget everything about secrets that may or may not exist. there’s humor playing on the edge of his lips, a shy excited smile. So it must be from just you then. You turn over quick enough that the room spins. “No!? Explain?!”
Speaking in one-word sentences and monosyllabic questions is hard for you even on a good day, and today is not a good day. You squirm closer but Yoongi just tips his hip to the side and sighs. A pinch of distress between his eyebrows the way someone might squint at the sun and guess at how many hours of daylight might be left, like he’s judging what you can handle or what will send you spiraling. The expression dissipates as quickly as it comes.
Sometimes the intent at which he studies you intimidates you. You can hardly meet his eyes.
You don’t blame Yoongi for treating you like you’re too fragile to speak the truth, because you just might be. He settles for ruffling your hair. Effectively steering you into another topic. Covering your forehead with hair so that you can’t see when he bends over your body and presses his lips to your forehead, your nose. Your lips. Several in quick succession. Your muscles hurt from the unfamiliar reaction of smiling.
“Will you come and sit by me while I work today?” he asks instead. Once your giggling has calmed down and your body has gone lax again.
Your fingers trail along his knee. “Library room?”
“Yes, the library room is for Taehyung. But I was thinking the kitchen, you know how that one cabinet needs to be rehung before the backsplash? And the waterproofing needs another coat-”
You sigh out a big breath and let Yoongi’s usual spiel on everything that needs to happen with the house melt into the background noise. Concentrating on the feel of him below you, the harsh jut of his knees against the too sharp edge of your ribs in his lap. The vague hurt there as his body presses too close to yours.
There have been many days where you have stayed in bed and have only left when Yoongi decided to get into it. It’s scary sometimes, to share a bed with a man again. If it wasn’t Yoongi you don’t think you could manage it. But he rarely lets you sleep the whole day away inside this room, moving you to the couch, the kitchen, the window, the porch. Anywhere where he can keep an eye on you.
You peek up at him and find him watching you with such an intent look of focus that you have to look away, your lips puff out, mumbling through it. Your cheek squished against his knee as you ask. “Window seat?”
“Yes. It should be sunny. I’ll open the window so you can look outside.”
You trace a circle around his hip, around where you know the mating mark is. You could find it in the dark, some part of you always aware of that inch. It’s so strange to be aware of something like a limb, especially something that is so separate from your body.
“Music?” You ask, voice a pitch quieter. Yoongi’s smile is very very loud, you almost want to cover your ears from it. You can hear the smile in his voice. The mating mark feels like those cat tails, like running your fingers through something soft, like grass or fur or goose down.
“I can play the playlist. Yeah.”
“Okay.” Yoongi continues his rubbing and hardly moves an inch in the direction of the doorway, but still you have to ask. “Stay? Till I’m ready?”
Yoongi’s hands continue to pet over your jaw, the movement endless and looping. “However long you need.”
You close your eyes; Yoongi continues to rub. And the thought of sunlight, despite everything, sounds nice.
~-~
One of your favorite spots in the house is the bay window that opens out onto the garden. It was one of the only seats or things left in the house when you moved in, the wide-open window drops about 6 feet to the garden. Where the crickets hum and the sunlight pools. Where you can watch the people in your cul-de-sac come and go, the trio of alphas on the corner, the big vacant white house and the yard that sometimes has little rabbits. The people with pups across the way, the youngest one and the oldest and how they fight and play basketball and chase each other round and round and round.
But you never linger there where there are workmen around. Never ever do. Because the idea of other people in the house besides you and Yoongi never fails to make you run for your room. The closet if you’re particularly afraid. And once, the bathtub.
But Yoongi looked at you weirdly when you did that, an odd look of disproportionate terror on his face. He shouldn’t be so afraid. But you care about him, so you try not to hide there.
The seat in the window is wide enough for you to lie down on the thick cushion and rest your cheek against a pillow when you don’t feel brave enough to cross the threshold of the house. The porch is fine most days, but sometimes, the only sunlight you get is in this window. It is midday, and the house is full of the quiet buzz of Yoongi’s radio. There is nothing in your body that wants to move from this spot. No feeling in you, no hunger or desire for anything else but this. The sun is warm, and since you are incapable of maintaining your own body heat these days, you close your eyes and lounge in it.
But when you open them, it’s night time. The window is still open, and there is an alpha in the yard.
You do not flinch, because you are very very aware of what it means to be prey to predator. The alpha is looking at you with beady eyes. He has red hair like a candle flame. Like the edge where darkness meets warm light. A strong nose and delicate birdlike features. A body that looks like it was made for movement. His eyebrows are wrinkled as he looks at you, smelling like something yellow but also ashy, like burning out suns or maybe comets. He came in Jimin’s car, but he’s not Jimin, Jimin never looks so angry, just disinterested. Jimin has no rage in him, and looks at you the way a god might look at someone undevout.
You are not very good at reading alpha’s expressions, everything that’s not threat slips by you without identification or acknowledgment.
He shuffles from foot to foot. Hands in his pockets, wearing an old sweatshirt with patches across the front, grungy but in that well kempt well-maintained way that designer clothes have.
You have been attempting to familiarize yourself with them. To remember all the little tidbits about the people that Yoongi loves. There are only two people you haven’t met yet. Hoseok. And the pack alpha. This man looks boyish. Looks like not a threat- at least not the same way that Jimin looked earlier.
Not Namjoon then.
There are no hello’s, no accusations, no pushing, or shouting. Your eyelashes flutter before they open truly. You lift yourself on shakey hands. Watching crouched. Loose hair falling over your shoulders.
The alpha takes a breath, but does not step back into the shadows. “I’m only here for him.” It takes you a moment, but you do lift yourself off of the cushion sliding on shaky legs and leave him there.
Hoseok has never known more than an apartment as home.
When he was little he thought of them as a collection of rooms and boxes. Suspended above the world. First this 4th floor, then the 6th, and then the pent house. Now the 22nd. But Yoongi’s house…
Hoseok can concede that Jimin was being a bit too harsh when he called it falling apart. The house is beautiful, even from the exterior. It stands narrow but large on it’s postage stamp. The trees grown in around it close and big, the way that they only do if the house is oldHalf a dozen yellow squares sit separated from incoming night, glowing soft and warm in the way that home only can.
Hoseok knows the ocean isn’t near, 5 miles away at best, but as the crickets in the grass squeak and the nearly salty air blows in from the shore Hoseok feels a terrible ache settle in him that he knows is only from the ocean. The air is blowing from the wrong direction- foretelling rain. Hoseok can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu. This is the sort of house he’d always admired as a pup, the kind he'd always wished his parents had.
Hoseok spent several minutes watching it from the car, the path, and then the grass. Getting closer step by step, dream by dream.
By the time that Yoongi rushes to the door and flicks on the porch light, Hoseok is already sitting on the steps and facing the cul-de-sac. He can't stand to look at the house anymore. It’s a chilly night, the kind that borders on comfortable if only it weren’t damp. He’s thought about getting up and leaving a dozen times, he sat in Jimin’s car for 10 whole minutes while he worked up the courage to come inside. He’s not sure he would have come at all if he’d known the crumpled-up shadow in the window was a person.
Let alone if he’d known it was you.
Hoseok hears the sound of the front door opening and Yoongi behind him and doesn’t turn. Yoongi’s stands there behind him. He breathes, and Hoseok closes his eyes, turning his cheek so that it catches the light. Holding up his hand for it. “Well? Are you gonna give me the fucking playlist or what?”
“Hoseokie-”
Hoseok prepared himself for this, and yet it’s still too hard to be here. “I’m just here for the music and then I’m going to go.”
Yoongi knows he sounds needy, and he doesn’t fucking care, “Daisy-”
Alpha’s are quick on their feet, Hoseok moves through air like a wave through water, standing and gripping Yoongi by the collar of his flannel. Hoseok’s fingers slide to the nape of his neck slowly. And for a terrible hopeful moment Yoongi thinks he might just cup his cheeks, might give Yoongi what he needs, that Hoseok will press his bird bone hands. Elegant hands, to Yoongi’s face.
But the next second he pushes, shoves, and Yoongi reels catching himself against the banister. But Hoseok is still there, still so close that Yoongi wants to sag against him. Only to refrain at the harsh relief of Hoseok covering Yoongi’s mouth with his hand like a claw.
Yoongi’s lips press against Hoseok’s palm. Words swallowed up by all his anger. Yoongi closes his eyes for a second and luxuriates in the feeling. But opens them next to find Hoseok glaring at him, eyes so bloodshot and irritated that Yoongi knows he’s close to tears.
Breath against Hoseok’s palm, body bending towards him and not away. Hoseok is almost angry about how good he looks, long hair faintly curling against his nape, worn and homey if home could be a person- then Yoongi would be that for him.
“You don’t get to call me that anymore. You forfeited the right to call me daisy when you walked out on me. On us. And you treated me like I was nothing to you.” Yoongi is staring at the floor, can’t meet Hoseok’s eyes. It pisses him off so bad that his hands go tight in Yoongi’s collar again. Shaking him a little. “Look. Fucking look at me.”
Yoongi does, tears welling in his eyes and spilling down his cheeks.
“Do you see what you did to me? What you made me? How you broke me? Do you understand that it was cruel to make those promises to me? Well do you?” Hoseok shoves Yoongi back, doesn’t give him time to answer. “Fuck you- you made me think I was everything to you. Fuck you for fucking leaving.” Hoseok needs to say it again, because he feels like Yoongi didn’t really get it that night when he came to the apartment. “I never would have done this to you. Not in a million years. You’re lucky I’m even fucking here.”
Hoseok’s words are viper quick. He takes his hand away from Yoongi’s lapel. Fingers sliding down and over his heart to feel it thud. He stands there in his warmth. And sees the goosebumps rising on Yoongi’s neck. Sees him sway. Lurching towards him in some way of bitter relief.
Yoongi’s voice warbles as he talks. This time he doesn’t look away. “I know. I know and I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t. I won’t tell you that I had to do it, even though it’s the truth. I know it won’t satisfy you. You deserve more than that, more than what I’ve done. I’m sorry for disappearing. You all deserve better than me. I wish I’d been able to do things differently. I wish I could be more than just sorry- I meant it, you have to know I mean it when I tell you I regret it.”
Hoseok shoves Yoongi back, he hits the wood with a satisfying thud. Because he hates that the words make him ache, that the words make him sag. But Yoongi doesn’t say I love you still. Because maybe he knows those are the words that Hoseok is waiting to hear. Yoongi isn’t manipulative. If he feels like certain words are too selfish, he just won’t say them. That’s one of the things that Hoseok had initially loved about him.
But now Hoseok just wishes that Yoongi would be selfish so that He didn’t have to be brave.
So instead of saying I love you, Yoongi wipes the tears from his mouth and says: “On the worst days, I missed you so bad I couldn’t fucking breathe. I couldn’t listen to music either without thinking of how I didn’t want to find a song I couldn’t show you.”
Hoseok’s eyes flicker from Yoongi’s face and then down. He shoves him again, one last time for good measure. But this time is so gentle it hardly has any weight behind it.
“Give me the playlist. I won’t ask again.”
Hoseok doesn’t know if he’s crying or not, he doesn’t say anything when he scuttles back inside. Hoseok doesn’t talk to him at all again. Just sits back on the step and holds his hand up for it when Yoongi comes back. It’s on a Walkman- fucking sentimental prick. (Hoseok says that like it wasn’t him who awoke Yoongi’s love for sentimental media, for records and mix tapes and doodled on cd’s. Playlists that are a dime a dozen when you have unlimited tracks to add. But these ones? These ones force you to really mean it. Yoongi only has 21 tracks to change Hoseok’s mind.
Hoseok takes the slim white headphones out of his pocket, puts them in his ears, and presses play.
Hoseok doesn’t get through all of it. The next time that Yoongi comes back, some ten minutes later the old Walkman is sitting on steps and the spring peepers buzz in the distance. His headphones loose and tangled sitting on the worn wooden floor. The music still turning away.
Yoongi takes it and hits pause, wipes his eyes, and shuts off the porch light.
~-~
Notes:
It’s interesting to talk about Jimin’s story when it’s not Jimin’s story to me. it’s the story of my cousin Wes. He lives very far from me now and I miss him a lot. I think about the cruelty I witnessed and underwent from the hands of his brothers often, even though I see one of them very very frequently and he’s like a doctor now. You can only see a 14-year-old hold an 5 year old’s throat until his face turns purple once before you can’t ever forget that. A lot of this section is based off of the summer that Weston moved from Tennessee up to where I live in New York one house away and then eventually to the Boston area where bily takes place. The summer where he earned the nickname ‘maggot’ and I got the nickname ‘blob from hell’ because I got so round. That was the summer they tried to bury me alive and our other cousin who I will only call ‘Swedish meat ball’ almost got killed by a crushing accident. The parents put an end to a lot of it after that, but it wasn't enough to spare us in the end. to this day weston is 8 inches shorter than the rest of his family because he was so malnourished he never grew. in my mind, this is why jimin is so short in bily.
Also feels weird to canonically call jimin’s eyes blue, obviously given jimin’s natural eye color. But I do have to make bily not about bts at one point- and jimin and tae are not going to be two characters that are Korean (tae is gonna be Pennsylvania dutch, jimin very slavic, idk I’ve been picturing him as Connor Storie lately for obvious reasons)
I think the 'dead things don’t eat' line might be the best and most well written part of this chapter and also the part that hits me so hard. I can’t remember if it’s an edit for the life of me- ie if this is from bily or something I added in early on in the editing process.
If it wasn’t clear- the m/c is an unreliable narrator, and yoongi is sort insinuating that tae is into the m/c’s appearance, which she is- but we know from the story that it’s also for a different reason (at first) than yoongi assumes.
The fact that hoseok is the only one in love with the house at first glance…I love him so much. I love what he’s become in this story. Him and the m/c are such foils for each other.
I wrote the part where hoseok is talking to yoongi like I was talking to someone I want to confront about betraying me. It felt very cathartic to write it in here. i still wish i could shake her and tell her that i wouldn't do to her what she did to me.
sometimes i think that someone could put their lips to my fucking forhead, arms around me, food to my mouth, and i still wouldn't be able to feel that they love me. i've been dealing with some pretty serious anhedonia recently (ive been looking forward to seeing bts next month and now it doesn't even make me want to smile) and unfortunately- i think this might be the last update that prey animals get for a little while. i don't know why i feel so hopless about it these days, and why i feel so...unmotivated. honestly i havent looked at bily or prey animals in months. i still hope i'm able to come back to it but part of me can hardly care about more than eating and sleeping right now. it's crazy how i don't want to do anything anymore. i wish i was still me enough to work on this consistently, but it might be a little while for another update.
