Work Text:
“There was another attack last night.”
Yoongi pauses, hand extended halfway towards the cup of coffee settled on the table in front of him. He flicks his eyes upwards to his companion sitting across the small cafe table, frowning. “What?”
Namjoon frowns back at him before rolling his eyes, locking his phone and setting it down on the table. “Another attack, hyung. Last night. In the park.”
“Not one of ours?”
Giving him a wounded look, Namjoon fiddles with the napkin in his hand. “Hyung.”
“I know, I know,” Yoongi sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I was just hoping maybe Taehyung wanted a snack or something.”
It really wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary, the second youngest had a penchant for sneaking out of the house to go hunting. Taehyung was a firm believer in “don’t ask permission, ask forgiveness”, much to Yoongi’s irritation. But Yoongi also knew that he was careful, that he would never do anything that could jeopardize the coven.
Yoongi unlocks his phone, pulling up the latest news article on Naver. The pictures are blurred, but even with that he can tell that they’re gruesome, splashes of red on the ground below the victim, distinctive even with the pixelation.
It’s not the work of any of Yoongi’s coven, and he knows it. He also knows that most of the magical community in Seoul know better than to draw attention to themselves.
Namjoon looks at him with a raised eyebrow, taking a sip from his cup.
“It’s a rouge,” Yoongi finally sighs, ignoring Namjoon’s smug look of victory.
“And?”
“And you were right,” he grits out, grinding his teeth. He hates to admit it but Namjoon has been saying that they needed to investigate; if there’s one thing Yoongi hates, it’s his younger nestmate being right.
Namjoon hums, pulling out his phone and unlocking it, their group chat already pulled up. “Are we all going tonight?”
Yoongi sighs. “No,” he says, carefully swirling his cup and watching the coffee inside cling to the sides. “I’ll go alone.”
With a nod Namjoon stands, slipping his phone into his back pocket as he waits for Yoongi to gather his things. “Alright, hying. But if you need help, you know we’re all here. Be careful, hmm?”
“Stop acting older than your age, Namjoon-ah,” Yoongi grunts, slipping a few bills on the table and nodding at the girl behind the counter. “I’ve been around a while. I can handle myself.”
Namjoon holds the door open as they leave, shooting Yoongi a doubtful look. The elder pretends not to see it, ducking under Namjoon’s arm and dipping into the brisk September air.
“I really think you should reconsider, Yoongi-yah.”
Yoongi pauses, coat halfway on, turning to look at the vampire beside him.
Seokjin frowns, reaching out to brush the bangs off of Yoongi’s forehead, looking down at him with piercing eyes. “What if it’s something you’re not equipped to handle? I believe you should take one of us, at least.”
The elder reconsiders, rubbing a hand across his chin. “Well, maybe not either of the babies. At least Hoseok. Or me. Potentially Namjoon?”
A crash echoes across the house and both men wince.
“Maybe not Namjoon.”
Yoongi huffs out a laugh, pulling his coat securely around his shoulders, carefully buttoning it up. “Hyung, you’re worrying too much. I’m not going to do anything reckless, I just want to…observe.”
Seokjin looks at him, unimpressed, and Yoongi resists the urge to roll his eyes as the elder resumes his fretting. “Just be careful, I’ll be upset if I have to come and collect your corpse tomorrow or something. Or rescue you from some fanatic’s basement.”
“Just leave me there if I manage to get captured and restrained by your imaginary maniac,” Yoongi mutters back, dodging the swipe that Jin attempts to aim at his head. “Stop worrying, hyung. I’ll be back soon. Take care of the babies while I’m gone.”
“I’m the only one that takes care of them around here,” Jin sniffs, lingering by the door as Yoongi makes his escape. “Come back in one piece, Yoongi-yah!”
The park is eerily silent, and Yoongi is sure that if his heart still beat it would be running a mile a minute. As it is his heart stays still in his chest, even as his eyes dart around his surroundings suspiciously.
Being a vampire has its perks, namely night vision, but all Yoongi can think about is the movie Seokjin had been watching a few days ago about serial killers lurking in the bushes much like the ones here and–
A branch breaks beneath unseen feet, and Yoongi jumps.
Nothing pops out from the darkness, no axe-wielding serial killers, and Yoongi is just starting to feel ridiculous when he hears it.
“—Me!”
It’s a soft voice, wheezing, and Yoongi straightens his spine as he inhales deeply.
The scent of blood washes over him, and he doesn’t even think before jumping into action, already racing to the source.
It’s not far, but deep into the park, where the flower beds have been left to run wild, where the trees are thick and tall. Yoongi follows his nose, listening carefully as the gurgling starts.
Even with all of the warnings, Yoongi almost trips on the body when he finally arrives, sprawling ungracefully on the ground. He scrambles forward, flipping over to look below him, inhaling sharply as he takes in the scene before him.
It’s definitely a human, but what’s weird is the bandages stained red around his neck, like a quick attempt at first aid—
“Don’t move.”
Yoongi ignores the command, whipping his head around to stare into the barrel of a gun before it presses against his forehead.
“I said don’t move!”
Nothing about the situation makes sense. The human, though injured, has clearly been taken care of, or at least an attempt has been made. Yoongi is on the ground with a gun to his head, something that almost never happens, bar some questionable escapades with Taehyung.
Lastly, Yoongi is pretty sure the man threatening him is supposed to be dead.
Park Jimin stands in front of him like a ghost, unchanged, even though hundreds of years have passed since Yoongi had last seen him, young and dying in a small house by the sea in Gyeongsang-do.
Jimin is saying something, but Yoongi can’t hear him over the roaring in his own ears.
“Park Jimin?”
Ghost Jimin startles, the gun lowering for just a second before he seems to gather himself, pressing it harder against Yoongi’s forehead. “Who the fuck is asking, and how do you know my name?”
Yoongi can’t decide if he wants to throw up or cry. Possibly both, most likely at the same time. “Is it really you? Park Jimin?”
“Yoongi?” the gun finally lowers, and Jimin flicks a look at the park around them. “Min Yoongi? Hyung?”
Breathing in a sharp inhale, Yoongi gathers himself, clambering to his feet. This is impossible, but Jimin is in front of him, hands shaking as he grips a gun, his heart racing—
Yoongi pauses.
He can’t hear Jimin’s heartbeat.
“Oh hyung,” Jimin starts, voice impossibly sad. “Oh no, hyung—”
The werewolf explodes from the underbrush, foaming at the mouth, muzzle streaked with blood. Yoongi barely has time to shove Jimin away before the rabid beast is upon him, his right arm trapped in its slavering maw. Yoongi hisses, fangs already elongating in response to the threat when a single bang echoes around the park.
The werewolf falls to the side, easily letting Yoongi’s arm slip free from its lax mouth, and Yoongi doesn’t even need to see the bullet hole in its forehead to know that the wolf is dead.
Jimin stands above him, hands still shaking, both wrapped around the grip of the pistol. Yoongi looks up at him from the ground, eyes wide.
“Hyung, I think we need to talk,” Jimin says. He glances towards the injured human, absentmindedly wiping werewolf blood off of his face.
Understatement of the fucking century, Yoongi wants to tell him. Instead, he nods.
Somehow they end up back in the same cafe that started all this mess, the one where Namjoon had first mentioned the murders.
Yoongi orders them both coffee while Jimin washes up in the bathroom, sitting down in his customary booth and fiddling with the to-go cup in his hands.
Jimin reappears soon enough, face clean and the tips of his bangs slightly wet. He stands at the edge of the table, almost bashful, and Yoongi sighs before waving him down.
“Hurry up and sit, you’re making me anxious just standing there like a statue.”
Jimin collapses into the seat across from him, passing a hand over his face before reaching out for the coffee Yoongi slides towards him, taking a deep sip.
Yoongi waits.
“It’s nice to see you, hyung,” Jimin starts, and Yoongi can’t resist interrupting.
“‘It’s nice to see me’, what the fuck Jimin. You’re supposed to be dead,” Yoongi spits, already feeling the anger and guilt, long buried in his heart, rise to the surface. “Are you fucking kidding me? You died in our house four hundred years ago, and I find you in a goddamn park in Seoul of all places, and that’s what you have to say to me?”
Jimin winces under Yoongi’s verbal onslaught, seeming to sink back into his chair, shoulders bunched up protectively. He looks worlds different from the vampire who killed a werewolf just a half hour ago. “Look, I—”
Yoongi interrupts him again. “I can’t believe you. Four hundred years, Park Jimin. Four hundred years.”
Jimin’s chair screeches across the cafe floor as he rockets to his feet, the cups on the table rattling as he slams his palms down. “Can you just let me talk, hyung?”
“No,” Yoongi mutters, but he falls silent anyway in favor of taking a sip of his coffee, ears burning as the barista behind the bar looks at them. “Alright, alright, I’ll listen. Just sit down before we’re kicked out.”
Jimin huffs at him before complying, dropping into his seat and pouting petulantly at the man across from him. Yoongi averts his eyes. “Well, after you left me to die, obviously I took the bite. But you were gone hyung.”
Jimin’s voice goes impossibly quiet as he studies the cup in his hands. “You were already gone.”
Yoongi winces, looking down at the top of his own to-go cup instead of at Jimin. He clears his throat once, twice, before finally just taking the plunge after Jimin shoots him a withering glare. “I… why didn’t you ask me? To give you the bite. Who did you ask?”
Even as the words leave his mouth Yoongi knows why Jimin never asked, at the very end. Because he had, once before, a long long time ago. Back before the disease, back when everything was perfect and Jimin was alive and vibrant in a way that Yoongi hadn’t felt in years, already well into his 50s at their meeting.
And Yoongi had told him that he would never bite him. Would never risk Jimin’s life for the chance, the very slim chance, that he would survive the change. That he would open his eyes again after he died for the first time.
Yoongi knows that Jimin sees the recollection in his eyes. The shame. The same shame that he had felt when he had left before Jimin had died, left him with his mother in their house by the sea, because in the end Yoongi was a coward that couldn’t face the loss of the greatest thing in his long, long life.
“Hyung,” Jimin says, voice soft. “Hyung, it’s been four hundred years. I was mad at first. I was so fucking mad.” He laughs, tilting his head back so that the light catches the silver in his hair. Yoongi wonders when he dyed it. “I tried to find you, you know. For a long time. But I never could. Even now you’re still slippery, you don’t have a single trace of social media. You weren’t ever even in the phone book, fuck! And now you’re complaining I never found you!”
Jimin laughs again, real mirth this time, and Yoongi relaxes against the back of his chair.
“Stuff like that… social media, technology, that’s more of the little ones’ thing,” Yoongi mutters.
“”Little ones’?” Jimin echos, eyes blown wide. “Wait, what? What little ones?”
Yoongi flinches, groaning at the already growing headache from just imagining Jimin meeting Jungkook and Taehyung. “I… I never turned anyone,” he begins, immediately soothing the growing worry in Jimin’s eyes. “I mean it, Jimin-ah. If I wasn’t going to turn you…”
Jimin nods, lacing his fingers together in front of him on the table. “It’s okay, hyung. Who are they? Your little ones.”
“I just picked them up,” Yoongi says, the corners of his lips twitching with the effort to contain his grin just at the thought of the youngest members of his nest. “Jungkook… his sire died. Almost immediately after turning him. I found him wandering around the outskirts of Seoul. Taehyung was better, his sire just liked to travel and he wanted to stay in Korea.”
Yoongi shrugs, looking down at the cafe table, tracing the grain of the wood with a fingertip. “After I left, I wandered a lot. Outside of Korea, I mean. But I always wanted to come back, and that’s where I found them.”
“How many?” Jimin asks, voice full of longing. “How many do you have, hyung?”
“Six, with you,” Yoongi says, and swallows down the lump in his throat.
It’s a ridiculous offer. He doesn’t even know if Jimin wants to see him again, after this night. He has no idea what Jimin has gone through, over the years that they’ve been apart. He doesn’t even know if Jimin missed him like Yoongi missed Jimin, on the nights that he let himself remember.
Jimin’s eyes widen.
“I’m just—” Yoongi stops. Takes a deep breath, surprised at the way the words sound watery. “I can’t let you go again, Jimin-ah.”
“You left me, hyung,” Jimin says, voice kind in a way that Yoongi doesn’t deserve. “I know why you did, now. I didn’t back then, when I woke up again and you were gone and I couldn’t find you. I’ve seen my eomma die since then, hyung. My family, friends. The ones that didn’t want to be saved, or the ones that screamed when I offered because they didn’t understand.”
He takes a breath. “The one that didn’t make it, when I tried.”
Jimin looks away, out through the window of the cafe, and Yoongi takes the opportunity to study the sharp line of his jaw, the way Jimin hasn’t seemed to have aged past the 25 years Yoongi left him as.
“I don’t think I can just jump back into what we were, hyung,” Jimin finally says, pivoting on his seat to look Yoongi in the eyes. “Too much… we’ve both changed, haven’t we?”
Yoongi finds himself nodding, because he knows that Jimin is right.
“But… I’d like to meet your coven. If you’d let me,” Jimin continues, voice low and shy. “I don’t just want to walk away from here and never see you again, hyung.”
“I don’t want that either,” Yoongi tells him, one hand reaching halfway across the table, letting it rest with his palm facing upwards, fingers spread. An invitation.
Jimin looks at him, really looks at him, eyes spearing into Yoongi’s soul. He hesitates, just for a second, before slipping his hand into Yoongi’s.
Yoongi lets Jimin settle, gather his thoughts, before opening his mouth again, barely resisting the smile that seeks to crawl across his face. “So, are you ever going to explain how you got here, showing up with a gun and hunting down feral werewolves?”
Jimin laughs, the full-bodied shake that sends him bending over their table. The laugh that Yoongi remembers from years ago.
“Well, you see, it all started when some rude vampire left me. I think it was in the Joseon Dynasty…”