Chapter Text
YEAR EIGHT OF THE BANGTAN COVEN, SPRING (Or: the end of everything, maybe)
To anyone familiar with the nature and shape of the Bangtan Coven, established in 2013 when the Witch Council sent seven blue letters through the aether and called it a day, there isn’t much to say about this morning. Everything is the same as it has always been, if one considers ‘always’ the past three or four years: six of them are sitting around the kitchen table, hair in different stages of disarray as they tiredly raise their head to signal whoever is cooking –Jin, this time– that they’d like another pancake, thank you. (Despite the familiarity of a morning like this, Seokjin doesn’t make pancakes every day, or very often, no matter how happy he feels when he does and six pairs of eyes settle on him with both gratitude and hunger, of at least two different kinds.)
Seokjin secretly-not-so-secretly loves feeding them, meaning his pleased smile would be difficult to notice if they didn’t know him so well. After giving Jungkook the last four pancakes, he settles next to Hoseok and accepts good-naturedly the kiss the other leaves on his cheek, the playful and affectionate smack another familiar beat in their morning patterns. Jimin, who is anything but a morning person when work doesn’t ask him to be, bonks Hoseok’s shoulder with his forehead, openly asking for a kiss, too. He receives one, sweet and brief and smile-shaped, on the top of his hair, and Seokjin should have known that it was a bad idea to start a round of kisses like this because there’s six of them and Hobi should have time to eat before leaving for work. They didn’t wake up early enough for Hobi to kiss all of them goodbye before leaving for war, forever (meaning: for work, until 6pm).
Seeing Jungkook ready to crawl under the table so that he, too, can fairly receive a kiss from his hyung prompts all of them into action, in different ways: Yoongi grumbles, a rare request for attention, and receives that from Jimin, right on the lips, sweet enough to shut him up for at least an hour and leave him in a Jimin-pink tinted daze; Taehyung solves the Jungkook-shaped problem timely by dragging him closer with an arm around his waist, forcing Jungkook to scramble on Taehyung’s lap, where he lets out a little ‘Oh’ before immediately asking to be fed. Namjoon, who is still the one who is most likely to stare at the others with love brimming in his eyes without asking for anything for himself, would remain alone if Seokjin and Hoseok didn’t share some Seok telepathy and agreed silently to take Namjoon’s hand in theirs, a tangle of fingers that would be awkward if not for their extensive practical research on the matter.
It’s ridiculous. It’s affectionate and soft and playful and it’s one of a thousand good mornings, because they have had enough of those to create a habit, a precedent. Seokjin never made the mistake of underestimating their luck, of forgetting the fragility of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity they have received and grasped with both hands, not willing to let go. But no matter how careful he has been, he can’t blame the others for not doing the same. If he weren’t the oldest, if he weren’t Namjoon’s hyung, he might have been able to simply enjoy the time they were given, to let the future become a nebulous thing one shouldn’t worry about.
They are so happy. So ridiculously happy and in love. Some days, he wishes Namjoon and Yoongi and him didn’t have to think about the finish line. Some days, but especially today, Seokjin wishes he could have forgotten all of this was always supposed to end.
A flutter of wings against the glass of the window.
“Jungkook, mail,” Seokjin says between one bite and the next. Jungkook turns towards the window behind him, and in that moment both Hoseok and Seokjin feel Namjoon’s grip on them tighten, the strength of it desperate and unsettling.
Jungkook opens the window, and not one, not two, but seven letters fly inside, their little white wings barely hiding the colour of the envelope. The letters are a deep midnight blue, their names written in silver. Seokjin –all of them, actually– hasn’t received one in seven years.
(The story goes like this, for every witch who wishes to live in modern society. At a certain point in your life, when you’re 21 if you’re lucky and 14 if you’re not, you’ll receive a blue letter that will take you away from your family, under the excuse of having to develop your core magic without relying too much on your parents’. You will be asked to leave at a specific day and hour, to never look back, and you will be instructed to find the companions of the worst years of your life. Coven years are for painful growing up and fending for yourself and making the best out of living with six or seven strangers. By the end of the seventh year, your magic will be strong with the Coven, and that will be the moment when you’re finally set free. Sure, you can always meet your Coven mates for ten-year reunions and weddings and funerals, but the rest of your life is not meant to be spent with them. You’re supposed to settle down for real , whatever that means. Everyone knows a Coven dies the moment the second letters arrive. Yours is not the exception.)
The letters are not magical once the wings disappear, yet they capture every sound in the room and leave a terrible silence in their place. Seokjin can’t look away from the letters, not even to see if Namjoon is okay –he’s not, by the way he’s still painfully clutching his hand.
What shakes them from their daze is the sound of a chair scraping the floor and loudly falling to the ground. Jimin is panting, Jimin, whose magic is a flow in his muscles and heart, who can calm anyone with a touch of his finger. He is shaking and it’s oh so terrible to see, but what’s even worse it’s how he’s trying not to cry. Jimin is not supposed to cry, but most of all he’s not supposed to cry alone. The fact that he leaves the room before the first sob can leave his lips, before Taehyung can get a hold of him, is the first sign that whatever they have, it’s already over.
The story goes like this: Coven years are supposed to be a difficult, tiny parenthesis in a witch's life, to be shelved the moment it’s over. For the Bangtan Coven, though? The Coven years are everything .
Note from the Covenmember:
These stories, though recounted as truthfully as memory will allow, are not a complete account of the time we spent as the Bangtan Coven. When we decided to narrate that period of our lives, we picked the episodes that spoke to us the loudest, for the joy or sorrow they bring back to memory. The Reader should know that for every happy memory, there are hundreds more that haven’t been told, just like not all our days of anguish and arguments have been made public. My wish is that the Reader will keep in mind that all those days, mundane but precious as they are, have been cherished, because they made us who we are today.
Yours in heart and magic,
KNJ, 2022