⁖Title: multitudes ⁖Characters: Jungkook x female OC, reader (any gender) ⁖Genre: family au. non-idol au. ⁖Rating: general ⁖Words: 1.3k ⁖Warnings: reader has an adult child who is married to Jungkook. Past death of a pet referenced. Neurodivergent character (unspecified; discussed). Manic episode. ⁖Summary: You can trust him with your heart. ⁖AN: For T, who shines burning-bright. Thanks to @sugalaritae and Jester for beta reading. Sequel to prom date
ㅇㅇㅇㅇㅇ
“She went out for a run, Coach.”
Jungkook’s words are simple, but the tone is all wrong. His calling you “coach” had started as a joke when you pulled him aside to talk him through how he would propose to her, but it stuck around and the way he says it now is with both respect and worry, as if he’s lost something precious of yours and is terrified of the consequences.
“When?” you ask. Where is pointless. If he knew, he wouldn’t be calling you.
“Early. Around four, if I had to guess.”
“And you didn’t stop her?” You know he’s not her keeper, but it shouldn’t be that hard to just—
“I was mostly asleep. Just saw her putting on her running shoes and headband and figured I’d snooze until she was back. I don’t think I really realized the time. Not until I woke up later, anyway.”
Fuck, you think. Four hours. In four hours she could have run all the way to the nature preserve, around the lake. She could be deep in the woods or, just as easily, in the heart of the city, slipped into a café or down an alley.
It isn’t the first time.
“I already drove around the neighborhood,” Jungkook is saying, “and up to the reservoir.”
“Hang on,” you say, setting down the phone so you can tie your shoes. You don’t know what you’re going to do next, but it will probably require shoes, so it feels like the right choice. It feels like doing something useful. You can picture your son-in-law sitting high on the seat of his Tahoe, peering out the windshield, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the sunrise. He probably drove around for a good hour before calling you for help.
Not that you can do anything else.
ㅇㅇㅇㅇㅇ
Jungkook meets you outside your house, idling in your driveway as you lock the door behind you and then, on second thought, unlock it just in case she turns up and needs to get inside. Stranger things have happened, after all.
“So I was thinking we split up,” he says, not even waiting for you to greet him in person.
“Wait,” you say. “Slow down. Was there any warning this time or did she just get up and go?”
He toys with his wedding ring, fidgeting as he thinks through your question. “Last night she was maybe a little keyed up. Not fully manic, but excited. Telling me about a kind of deep-sea mollusk that had just been discovered. Her eyes–you know the look.”
You do, after all, know it well. You’ve known it since she first opened them twenty-six years ago. That fire behind them, burning white-hot. The scream that went with it, piercing and furious. And you’ve seen it over and over again when she’s taken by an impulse when you would have wished her to be more cautious.
Wished her to be, you remind yourself again, is irrelevant. She simply is, burning-bright, rage and wonder and joy and everything so big. So loud. So much. You never want her to shrink to less, but at the same time–
You’re tired. You’ve been tired for a long, long time.
You’re trying to keep up with Jungkook as he tells you what they talked about last night, how the conversation jumped from mollusks to ostracods to a pinpoint memory of something said in anger one weekend in college, what she was wearing then, holding then, drinking then. To the vote in Tennessee, protests both past and current. To the Devonian System. To teeth: her teeth, his teeth, shark teeth. Carnivorous plants, and the poaching thereof. To the venus flytrap sea anemone. To the cat you had when she was seven, Sweaters, dearly departed, who you haven’t thought of in years. How she cried about Sweaters over styrofoam containers of delivered curry, then leapt up, determined to make a memorial.
“How?” you ask.
“How what, Coach?”
“How can you remember it? How can you keep up?”
“I don’t know, Coach. I just do. I’m sure I’m missing something else important–some big life skill or something just to make brainspace for it–but this stuff doesn’t stress me. I can listen to it for hours and remember it all.”
You’re so thankful for him. For the man he is. For the qualities he takes for granted. For being someone you can trust with your heart. You want to show him how much he means to you so you pull him to you in a hug, tight and grateful.
“Hey,” he says, patting you on the back. “Hey, don’t worry. We’ll find her.”
You realize he thought you were breaking.
ㅇㅇㅇㅇㅇㅇ
The two of you end up driving together rather than splitting up. You watch as his hands grip the wheel, tattooed knuckles blanching white. You feel small in the passenger seat, an outside observer even though he pulled you in. Jungkook looks at home in the massive seat, anxious but determined as he decides where to go, following routes that she might have taken hours ago, reaching destinations he knows she’s been before.
There has to be a clue.
You think back through what Jungkook told you about the previous night, trying to find the missing pieces. How, you puzzle, did she go from memorializing Sweaters to taking off in the dark of the morning?
“Did she go to sleep or did she stay up and actually make a memorial?” you ask.
“She started. Gathered up some photos, some scraps of paper and fabric and some knitting stuff.”
“Knitting stuff?”
“Yarn. Needles or hooks or whatever. You know.”
“Did she have a pattern?” You sense a theory floating in the ether, just beyond your grasp.
Jungkook pauses before answering. “I don’t know,” he confesses.
“Does she usually show you if she does?”
“Yes,” he says with absolute certainty. “Therefore…no.”
“Where did she leave the stuff she was working on?”
“I–” he stops, horrified. “I didn’t see it this morning. She must have taken it with her.”
You can picture her now, feet shoved in her pink running shoes, jacket zipped up to her chin, her hair scraped into a tight ponytail. And you can picture the ball of yarn stuffed into one armpit, scraps of paper covered with doodles and glue pinned under the other arm. Tight and safe.
The last thing to picture now is where she would need to go with it.
“Jungkook.”
“Yeah, Coach?”
“Did she say where Sweaters died?”
“No.”
“Take a left up ahead.”
ㅇㅇㅇㅇㅇ
You navigate, guiding him across town to the house she grew up in, where she stored treasures in the cubbyhole under the stairs, where her height was marked on the kitchen door frame every year. The porch where you first saw him looking both terror-stricken and, inexplicably, worthy.
There.
She’s there, pink shoelaces untied, ponytail askew, yarn strung up between the trees in your old front yard. You don’t need a yard like that now, don’t have the back for mowing like you used to. The memories are strong here, though, and as you watch her hook a tidy loop of yarn through a hole in the top of a photo, you have to admit that having left it behind also meant leaving behind the memories attached to it.
She hasn’t seen you yet. Jungkook parks on the street. You reach for the door handle and get out, walk toward her, call her name.
He’s faster. She turns and goes to him, safe in his arms. You’re barely a glance over his shoulder, a smile as she meets your eyes confirming that she’s all right.
He holds her as you pick up the pieces, gathering the photos and yarn, the little felt mice with their knotted string tails, the crumpled quilting cotton. It’s all precious to her so you smooth it out on the seat next to you when you settle into the backseat of the Tahoe, ready to hand it over to someone worthy of holding it.
ㅇㅇㅇㅇㅇ
