Chapter Text
Jimmy Smith had much better things to do than traipsing through the woods at ten o’clock at night on a Friday. His wife had taken the kids out to her mother’s for the weekend and he had every intention of having Miss Johnson, his son’s school librarian, over for nightcap. She had been making eyes at him ever since the parent teacher conference, and as soon as she bent over to pick up a pencil she had “dropped” he knew it was game over. But, instead of getting her nice and loosened up in the warmth of his abandoned living room, he was staring at the much less impressive ass of his partner as they made their way through the trees and brush.
“Kevin, I think we can call it. The kid isn’t in here, he probably just ran off with some other girl,” Jimmy said. Their captain had sent them out roughly two hours ago after a very distraught-looking seventeen year old had stumbled into the police station, yelling and flinging her arms around about her boyfriend disappearing in the woods. She was absolutely hysterical, which lead to the captain sending Kevin and Jimmy out to check.
Kevin, however, ignored Jimmy and continued to search, shining his flashlight along the leaves and through the trees. Jimmy thought everyone was prone to infidelity like he was. Kevin, however, had seen teenagers hysterical over boys liking other girls. He had three teenage daughters. The girl that had come into the station had real fear in her eyes, which made Kevin much more willing to enter the forest that late on a Friday night.
Kevin continued to make is way deeper and deeper into the woods, when he suddenly realized that Jimmy was no longer following him.
“Jim?” he said, spinning around. Jimmy was standing maybe twenty feet behind him, completely frozen and pointing toward something on the ground. “JImmy, what is it?” Kevin asked, starting to feel a prickle of fear himself as he made his way over to his partner.
When Kevin saw what Jimmy was looking at, he felt his stomach drop right out of his ass. Laying, half-buried in the leaves, was a teenage boy. Roughly eighteen or nineteen. His hair was a dull orange, having been dulled by dirt and leaves. There was a large birthmark that stretched from his nose to back behind his right ear, somewhat resembling a heart, and light brown freckles dotted his pale face. His mouth was slightly open, as were his eyes which were completely glazed over white. Kevin swallowed, taking out his walkie.
“Th-this is officer Wilson. We uh… w-we got a 10-67 here, captain.”
The crisp autumn hair blew across Kim Taehyung’s face as he made his way across campus, clutching his books to his chest. He figured he could stop by the student center for a hot tea before Music Theory, if he hurried. The coldness in the air seemed to be much more biting than usual. He suspected it was because they were fast entering October.
He had the urge to take out his phone and check the group chat he shared with his friends, wondering if they had decided on a group Halloween costume yet, but his hands were too full and he was sure Seokjin was still pushing for him to be a King, and the rest of them his jesters. He suggested this every year, despite Namjoon’s insistence that this was hardly a clever costume idea. Taehyung rarely entered the argument, though he was grateful for Namjoon’s interference.
The wind was beginning to blow harder, and Taehyung did his best to wrap the knitted scarf Hoseok had made for him last Christmas, tighter around his neck, one-handed. It turned out to be much too difficult to manage without dropping his books, so he gave up and just began to walk faster towards the student center. He wondered if Jungkook was working in the cafe today and would be willing to hook him up with a free tea. He could see the large building just up ahead when another hard gust of wind whipped past him, causing his scarf to blow back and smack him in the face.
He looked up, his bleached blond hair blowing across his face. The clouds looked dark and angry. Perhaps it was a better idea just to hurry to class, he suspected, instead of getting caught in the oncoming storm.
Quickly changing his route, he turned around and waited at the crosswalk, planning to make a quick cut across the quad to get to the music center. The lights still flashed with a bright orange hand, but he looked left and right and saw that no cars were coming for quite some time. He decided to make a quick dash across the street. He clutched his books tighter, and started to make his way across. He was halfway there when suddenly a darkness overcame the entire campus. He started to look back up at the sky, but something else crossed his vision. A boy, about his age, was standing in the middle of the street. He had bright orange hair and freckles spotted around his nose and his eyes… which were pitch black from corner to corner. A large birthmark stretched from his nose to his ear, and somewhat resembled a large, stretched-out heart.Taehyung gasped, dropping his books. He kept his eyes on the boy, and right as he heard the insistent honking of a car horn, the boy disappeared as if made of smoke.
The horn honked again, sounding closer and Taehyung turned quickly to see a rush of cars now coming towards him. He quickly scooped up his books and made a run for it, barely making it across the street as the cars whipped by, blowing his scarf right off of his neck. His heart was racing, and his insistence on getting to the music center was now far from his mind. He chased down his scarf, quickly wrapped it around his neck and took off back toward the dorms.
From outside Room 819 on the eighth floor of Brayton Hall, one would hear the bass of rock musing thumping loudly, rattling the heavy door against its frame. From inside the room, however, one might find Min Yoongi pinning Park Jimin against the wall, his right hand on his neck and his left hand rubbing lightly and seductively across his lips.
Though Yoongi had him pinned, Jimin was smiling wickedly and moved the hand that wasn’t already tangled in Yoongi’s pastel hair down to his thigh. Yoongi sucked in a sharp breath of air, but didn’t loosen his hold on Jimin’s neck. He pulled his other hand away from Jimin’s full lips and seized the hand that was now grazing his thigh, making his erection press painfully against his black jeans. Jimin cocked his head, grinning.
“What’s wrong, Yoongi? Do you--”
But Yoongi didn’t let him finish his sentence. He pressed his mouth against Jimin’s, hard and vicious, finally releasing his neck to tangle his hand in Jimin’s dark hair. Jimin moaned against his mouth, and Yoongi couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed Jimin around the waist, spinning him around and leading him towards the small dorm room bed, not even coming up for air as he devoured those full lips.
Yoongi pushed Jimin backwards, causing him to flop back onto the bed, giggling slightly. Yoongi climbed on top, straddling Jimin’s thighs. He reached down and began to unbutton his own jeans when Jimin wiggled out from underneath him, and climbed on top, pinning Yoongi to the bed instead. Yoongi didn’t fight it, he laid there his hands behind his head as Jimin continued to unbutton his jeans, exposing how hard he was. Jimin grinned, and leaned down to put those lips exactly where Yoongi had been wanting them all day when a loud and very insistent knock rattled the door.
“Yoongi! Yoongi, it’s Tae open up!”
Jimin froze, still grinning, his mouth centimeters from what Yoongi was dying for.
“Ignore him,” Yoongi said. Jimin looked happy to do so, but Taehyung’s pounds on the door became more urgent.
“Yoongi, I hear the music! Open the door or I’ll force it open myself!” he yelled. Yoongi growled, annoyed and now very very frustrated. He knew that Taehyung had the will and the means to force the door open. Jimin got up, not at all looking as annoyed or grouchy as Yoongi. Yoongi gave him a long kiss on the cheek before standing up and buttoning his pants. He didn’t however, bother to fix his mussed up hair or his t-shirt that was now wrinkly and twisted slightly.
He wrenched the door open to find Taehyung, standing about an inch taller than Yoongi. He had bright red, hand-knitted Hoseok originally wrapped around his neck and his cheeks and nose were pink, whether from the cold or from the fact that he had probably just run up eight flights of stairs, Yoongi wasn’t sure.
“I need to talk to you,” Taehyung said, pushing his way past Yoongi and into the dorm room. “Hey,” he said casually to Jimin, as if he found them in this state all the time… which admittedly, he did.
Jimin sat cross legged on Yoongi’s bed. “What’s wrong, Tae?” he asked, frowning. Jimin and Taehyung had been best friends for as long as anyone could remember. Well, they all had been best friends for as long as anyone could remember, but Taehyung and Jimin had always had a special bond that couldn’t be rivaled.
Taehyung didn’t answer, but made his way over to the stereo and turned the music down so low that they could hear the faint sound of the news playing on the TV that Yoongi rarely remembered to turn off. Yoongi rolled his eyes at this, but couldn’t help but feel concerned by the stricken look on Taehyung’s face as well.
“I saw a darkling,” Tae said, sitting his books precariously on top of a large pile of papers and books that were near toppling on Yoongi’s desk. Yoongi frowned, crossing his arms and taking in this information. Darklings were extremely rare and only appeared when someone used their powers to kill.
“Are you sure it was a darkling? Maybe it was just someone dressed up for Halloween or something…” Jimin said, voicing what Yoongi was thinking. Taehyung shot Jimin a glare.
“It’s barely October.”
Jimin shrugged, and apparently decided it best not to comment further. Taehyung looked between them both. “I know what I saw,” he said defiantly. Yoongi sighed, collapsing into a chair that wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it had been free, and free was always good when you were a college student. There was a patch sewn onto the arm and Yoongi began to pick at it, thinking hard.
“Well what did it look like?” he asked. Taehyung relaxed slightly, taking this as a sign that they believed him, although Yoongi still wasn’t entirely sure Tae saw what he thought he saw.
“He was about my height, when I looked up he was right there. We were practically nose-to-nose, and he had red hair and freckles. And…” Tae scrunched up his face, thinking. “And he had a birth mark on the side of his face… it was shaped like a--”
“Like a heart?” Jimin said suddenly. Yoongi and Tae both looked at him, startled.
“How-- how do you know that?” Taehyung asked. “Did you see him too?!”
Jimin nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “But not as a darkling…” He pointed at the TV. The news was still showing, and on it was a picture of a boy about their age. He had bright orange hair and freckles around his nose and eyes… and stretching from his nose to his ears was a long light brown heart, almost like one giant freckle. Yoongi swallowed. Below the picture the caption read: “LOCAL COLLEGE STUDENT FOUND DEAD IN FOREST NEAR FREEWAY.”
Yoongi blinked. “Call Namjoon.”