Chapter Text
I think what drew me first to Sana was that I had things to say to myself that only she could address. I mean, at the time I just didn’t know where I was going, or even who I was. I had almost no friends. [He laughs.] I had no friends at all. I was so broke, so broke, I was doing late-night deliveries to get by, so I was hardly sleeping because I was going to class during the day. The only time I got to relax was when Sana was having problems. But her problems were my problems, y’know? Her issues were mine. So I just made hers far bigger, far harder to solve, and I made her really work for them, and I made her suffer just to prove that I could do it too. And Sana taught me things. She did all this stuff I put her through, and she came out the other side still alive, still up for a laugh, and it made me think - that’s going to be me someday. She taught me that my problems were universal. I know I made her up, but in a way I think she was always waiting around somewhere, waiting for me to notice her. She followed me around everywhere in this little yellow exercise book from junior year math, so I just paid attention to her, and the more I did the more I was. I don’t know where I would be without Sana. She helped me. She made me. She is me, you know, but a little bit better in every way that counts. I guess everyone says that, though, about their characters.
- Audio extract from Goodlier Readings, a podcast hosted by Kathryn and Elodie Ryans, twin sisters who have a minor following as book-centric YouTubers and podcasters. This episode was series three, episode eleven, titled Further Away From Pleasant Lands. For the first half hour, the Ryans deconstructed and summarised Yoongi Min’s novel, and for the final half the author was brought on for an interview on his inspirations and goals while writing.
Domhnall Leary is a frightening man, and he knows it. It isn't for nothing that he takes point on everything they do, and it isn't for nothing that he has kept control of them, nebulous but firm, for as long as he's lived in the city. Edie and Evie might ache to take him over, and Saoirse might plot his death with every beat in her body, but none of them could ever do it. Domhnall is unkillable, unbeatable, unhurt, and he knows it.
"I know you know what I am," he says, to the woman sitting in between Edie and Evie, her hands around a hot cup of instant coffee, all her limbs free in theory - in practice, she knows just as well as he does that a single move will have her back to the floor and her throat sailing through the air, unwrapped from the skin that surrounds it. "My question to you is, what are you?"
Her face twists. She is small and slight, with brown hair and narrow features, and a faint English accent. "A traveller. I have business in Paris. I stopped for a fucking sandwich before - I was going to Rosslare, I was going to Calais, not here-"
"You stink of wolves," Saoirse says, from behind the woman. Her dark eyes make contact with Domhnall's, and then dance away; her long, shining blonde hair has been braided, and all she wears is a pair of grey sweatpants and a tank top. More than the usual. Domhnall, too, has put clothes on for the occasion; in the unlikely event that this woman really is just passing through, and has no intent to find them, it would do good to present a fairly normal front.
(Richard hadn't liked the gag, but it was that or have the whole fucking street know about him. The full moon hadn't been a good one, even by his standards.)
The woman doesn't turn. "Yeah, sure, sure. Dogs, maybe. I was in a sanctuary a few days ago and I haven't washed my jacket."
Domhnall sniffs the air. He knows that smell. "You've been fighting wolves." He knows that smell. "Familiar wolves. What's your name, friend?"
"Collins," the woman says, her shoulders slumping. There's the ugly cast of a bruise on her cheek, high, green, and old, and she was walking with a limp when they found her, and he knows by her heart that she’s telling the truth about this bit, and she’s anxious. Terribly anxious. "Deirdre Collins. But you don't know me, and you haven't got a cause to know me, so can I go now? I've done what I came here to do."
"Drink up," Domhnall says, and over her head he meets Saoirse's eye.
She nods. She's smelled it too.
Edie and Evie are, despite their many faults, very good at fulfilling tasks they've been given. They squash up next to Deirdre, their shoulders pressing into hers, and begin a quiet and very thorough discussion about whether the cat they ate last night actually tasted nice or not. They dwarf the woman between them, although it isn't on purpose; neither of them are very aware, really, of the power they have. They leave that to the older two.
"I smell him," Domhnall says, once they're away from Deirdre and in the hallway between the kitchen and Richard's room, "Which is fuckin' funny, Saoirse, because I could have sworn you told me he'd died."
She doesn't have the strength to meet his eyes, and it sends a thrill of power down his spine. He can hear Richard crying on the other side of the door. "He was taken by one of the big wolf packs north a bit," she says sullenly, "They have two fucking blood and bone witches. How was I to know he wasn't going to die? I thought they’d killed him, Domhnall, and you know I did."
"You wouldn't lie to me."
Which is Domhnall's problem. Saoirse won't lie to him, won't do anything to him to warrant his getting rid of her, but at the same time he knows she doesn't entirely respect him. He knows she harbours dreams of running Dublin, the way he does.
"No," she agrees, "I wouldn't."
"If Jeongguk is still alive, we have a problem."
"Yeah."
Domhnall pushes open the door to Richard's room. Richard is sleeping, maybe, his head bowed over his bare chest, his breathing even and shallow. The bruises around his wrists aren't healing as fast as they should; he'll need to be let out again soon, before he's pushed too far and they have to get a new one. "Rich." He rips the tape from Richard’s mouth, and pulls out the balled cotton cloth.
Richard jerks awake, out of whatever doze he'd settled into. His dark eyes are hazy with pain. "Domhn-"
"If you're lying to me I will kill you," Domhnall says once Saoirse is in and has the door closed behind her.
"I know," she shrugs. "I'm not lying. I thought he'd died. Any coven would be mad to try and take in a disconnected stray-"
"Any coven is obviously not this one. Find out what she knows. Don't let her get to Rosslare."
"I wasn't going to," Saoirse rolls her eyes, her hand still on the doorknob, "She's up for it, you know. But she isn't magical herself."
"Red Circle, then. Paris," Domhnall has a friendly relationship with the Red Circle in Trinity and in UCD, friendly enough that he's never bothered unless he's a little too careless with the places he lets Richard into. "Who's in Paris?"
Saoirse shrugs a disinterested shoulder. "Why do I give a fuck? Let's just go there and get rid of him before he tells anyone."
"He would have in the last few years, if he was going to," Domhnall says, with a measure of reluctance. He would like to see Jeongguk again. He would like to do it himself, if he could, just for his own personal satisfaction.
"I'll see what Collins knows," Saoirse says. She opens the door, and then nods at Richard, now tugging weakly at the cuffs keeping him attached to the radiator. "Don't bang him up too much before Tuesday, 'cos it's meant to be cloudy."
"No promises," Domhnall says, and locks the door when she leaves.
They almost don't talk about it at all, and Yoongi is perfectly happy with that, but Jeongguk is clearly not. He looks out the corner of his eyes at Yoongi, and shuffles his feet when he walks, and doesn't talk to anyone, and he keeps moving towards private places and looking at Yoongi as though he wants to be followed.
"You had better go," Seokjin murmurs into his ear, one evening after tea and a dish of berries, "He's been awful all week. Go on."
Yoongi, glaring at him, goes.
Jeongguk has gone to his bedroom, and now he's sitting on the mattress, cross-legged, staring at a bruise on one wrist that's already fading far faster than Yoongi could ever hope to heal at. "Sorry," he says, as soon as Yoongi closes the door behind him. "I've been stupid. Sorry."
Yoongi leaves his hand on the cool metal doorknob. "I'm sorry," he says, staring at the back of his own knuckles, "I shouldn't have pressed. I just... yeah. I'm sorry."
There's a very long pause.
"Will you look at me?" Yoongi says, just as Jeongguk says, "Will you look at me?"
They both laugh, and something breaks in the air, like a careless boot over ice crystals formed over time and neglect. "But I really am sorry," Jeongguk says, holding his hand out for Yoongi, just snagging the corner of his thumb and curling his fingers around it, "I really am. I wasn't mad at you, I'm not mad at you, not really, not at all. Just at myself. You were there when it happened, is all."
Obediently, Yoongi allows himself to be pulled, and falls onto Jeongguk's bed, his leg brushing Jeongguk's. The mattress is warm, and absorbs him just as kindly as any other. "I'm sorry anyway. You didn't want to talk about it, and it isn't your fault that I kept pushing - and I am sorry. I missed you. You don't have to tell me anything."
"Can we-?" Jeongguk wraps his arm around Yoongi and tugs him down so they're lying together, face to face, side by side. "Comfortable. I want to tell you, but I - just, you know-"
"Don't," Yoongi says. He presses his forehead against Jeongguk's. "I haven't got a right to any information just because I'm your friend, Jeongguk. I know it's something you don't want to think about, and that's enough for me."
"Thank you," Jeongguk whispers. This close and Yoongi can see the eyelash that has escaped him and lies, resting, curved on his smooth cheek. His eyes glimmer with words unsaid. "I will tell you someday. I just have to... work my way up to it."
And Jeongguk is warm. Of course that isn't new to Yoongi, but he sort of wishes it was; then the observation would have more weight behind it than it does. Jeongguk's hand is still on his waist, broad and all-encompassing, and his mouth is just a little open, so that Yoongi can see the bottom of his front teeth, feel each breath huffing against his skin. "I know," Yoongi says, but he doesn't know anymore what he's responding to, and he knows his face is tilting upwards almost without his knowledge, "I promise I know."
He almost thinks he could do it.
Almost.
His dreams are full of this moment, in all the ways it could play out. They lie in the bracken, and Yoongi closes the gap and his lips touch Jeongguk's and it is virginial and hesitant; they stand, and Jeongguk has him pressed against the thick trunk of a tree near the circle, and he bends down to breach the distance and the kiss is strong and possessive and quickly develops further; they run towards each other, magnetised, two links, and when they crash Yoongi doesn't know which happens first, and he doesn't much care to remember.
This is different. Yoongi is awake, and so is Jeongguk. Jeongguk's eyes are trained firmly on his mouth, and his breathing is slower and deeper and with far more intent, and for a second Yoongi really believes -
"Jeongguk! Yoongi! D'you wanna come with me to get the London ones from the airport?"
And the moment breaks. Yoongi flushes down to his collar, and Jeongguk jumps off the bed like he's been electrocuted. "I-"
"Oi!"
But the moment is gone, and it won't return in a hurry. Yoongi isn't optimistic enough to believe it will.
Madeline is shorter than Yoongi had been expecting, and rounder, too. She unfolds from the passenger seat of Namjoon's Land Rover, jumping the few inches from the height to the ground, her platform boots crunching on the stones. Her backpack is covered in iron-on patches; from his position kneeling on Taehyung's bed looking out the skylight, he can see a unicorn, a rainbow springing from one cloud to another, and a flag. He can't make out the colours. Her hair is short and straight, shaved over her ears, and her cheeks are round with laughter, responding to something Namjoon is saying.
"That's Amandi," Taehyung murmurs, his fingertips gripping the edge of the skylight, even closer to the glass than Yoongi is, "He's a dreaming witch. He predicted trouble for us, way back before you moved here, and we all assumed - you know the rest."
"Hmm," Yoongi watches Amandi get out of the car, unfolding elegant limbs, dark skin under crisp white clothes, pointy black shoes, long dark hair tied with a green bow, the only sprig of colour he's permitted himself. He would be a representation of magic as mysterious as Taehyung sometimes is, but the veneer has been torn in two by his own laughter; his head thrown back at whatever the conversation provides.
"And that's Susannah, then, right?"
"Right."
Susannah clambers out at the same time as Amandi, on the other side of the back seat of the Land Rover. She's also tall, long-limbed and fae, as preternaturally beautiful as all the others Yoongi has seen under magical influence. Her hair is long, thin, blonde, curled and springing from a fountain tied on the top of her head; her cheekbones seem to sparkle when they catch the sun. Her clothing is loose-fitting, but falls in just the way to show Yoongi how slender she is, and around her neck is a small glass vial sloshing with some dark liquid. Her hands are drenched in slim golden rings. She's smiling.
"C'mon downstairs before Jeongguk wonders where you've gone," Taehyung holds his hand out for Yoongi, and smiles a little bit, his too-sharp teeth poking his lip, "And I want to talk to you about that, actually."
Yoongi pretends he hasn't heard, and bustles down the attic stairs before he can catch a good look at the last one.
Downstairs, in the hall, there is an explosion of sound. Hoseok and Seokjin have buried Madeline in a hug, Jimin has swarmed Amandi and is almost climbing him to embrace him, talking nineteen to the dozen; Namjoon is still laughing, spinning the keys around his hand, and Jeongguk is -
Looking at Yoongi. Smiling at Yoongi, as though he's the only thing in the room worth paying attention to. "Yoongi! I wondered where you'd been - hey, come on, let me introduce you! This is Daniel-"
Taehyung pushes Yoongi down the stairs, and he barely manages to catch himself on the banisters before he falls or does something equally embarrassing in front of yet more stupidly pretty people. "Hi," he says, and falls into Jeongguk's side, and breathes, and looks up, "I'm Yoongi."
"I've heard all about you," Daniel says, and offers his hand, his grip firm and pleasant. His hair is cut shorter than Amandi's, but longer than Madeline's, falling from a central part in waves over his high forehead and brows. His lips are dark, but his skin is pale. His eyes are dark amber, now the light shines on them properly, not the brown they must seem in the outdoors. His nose is long and defined, and his voice is trying hard to be neutral, but with a turn of Edinburgh in the ends of the vowels.
"And I you," Yoongi says, desperately trying to cast his mind back, to remember some tidbit about Daniel he can drop in. "I-"
"Which one are you, then? Have you finally added some flavour?" Daniel's hand turns from the handshake and, in one very strong and fluid movement, his thumb presses against the pulse point at Yoongi's wrist. "Heart still beating. A witch?"
"Yoongi isn't - he's a writer, he's a writer," Jeongguk is quick to wrap his arm around Yoongi's waist, and Yoongi feels vaguely claustrophobic when Daniel waits a few seconds to drop the touch. "We just met him by chance. He isn't magic or anything."
Over Daniel's shoulder, Jimin is trying very hard to catch his eye.
Yoongi ignores him, too. They think they have him with their little pointed Christmas message - they don’t. He’s ignoring it all until he can’t anymore, but that time hasn’t come yet, has it?
"Pleased to meet you in any case," Daniel says politely, but his gaze dances towards Jeongguk's arm, his hand, resting on Yoongi's hip. "I'm sure we'll get on."
"Yeah," Yoongi says. He feels weird, and weirder when Daniel just wanders away, aiming for Seokjin. "Jeongguk-"
"You're just his type," Jeongguk breathes, and manages to make the sound snappy, just quiet enough for none of the supernatural beings in the room to miss it, "And I don't want my... friend getting with my friend." His ire dies down to uncertainty at that last bit, and the weight of his hand lightens on Yoongi's waist. "Um. Tea?"
"Tea," Yoongi agrees, and it's with twin sets of flaming ears that he and Jeongguk wind their way into the kitchen to begin boiling a kettle for the army that's now staying in the coven house.
And Yoongi, apparently, is the new attraction.
Madeline and Daniel are the two most outspoken, bubbly characters here, and that much emerges within twenty minutes of him knowing them. Madeline has read his book, and grills him up and down about his college experience, and whether he intended for Sana to resonate with the lesbian experience as much as she thought he did, and whether he's staying permanently, and what he's writing the next one on. In turn he learns as much about her as he thinks is freely given; she's around Namjoon's age, and her and him go very far back, and she established her coven almost by accident as Namjoon did, and she's sheltered Seokjin, Hoseok, and the witch duo at various times during their travels to and from the Follie coven.
She's fun. Yoongi decides he likes her. She puts her warm hand on his shoulder, and kisses him on the cheek, and tells him he's good for the place.
He does feel a little bit like an ornament, but that's fine. Rather an ornament than a nuisance, or someone with any real power about him.
Amandi is quiet, and he laughs when jokes are made, and contributes only a little, but watches all the time. Susannah and Taehyung tuck themselves into the long green sofa, tea in their laps, and discuss something, Susannah talking in French, Taehyung with a haze of shimmer around his ears, replying in French himself, although his lips look as though they’re forming English words.
“This is magic,” Madeline whispers behind her hand, her eyes crinkled merrily, “Oh, man, it took me so long to get used to when I was first bitten. I used to follow all the witches and sorcerers around, y’know, and just watch them do things with the magic. I liked it way more than being a wolf.”
“Do you now?” Yoongi asks, curious despite himself.
She smiles. She looks perfectly content. “Not anymore. When Hoseok met me, he taught me a lot about the moon, and one of the things the moon does is she only gives you what she thinks you deserve. So I used to really wish I had been given a different sort of magic, but this suits me far better. It suits everyone.”
“I like the way you talk about it,” Yoongi says, “You and Hoseok especially. When he looks up…”
Madeline laughs. “It sounds a lot more mystic than it is. I’m just devout, but look at Namjoonie - we grew up almost together, and he doesn’t think that way at all. You pick and choose. That’s the beauty of the moon there, too, ‘cause she doesn’t care whether you believe in her or not - she’s always gonna be in the sky, regardless.”
Yoongi grins. “I suppose you’re right, there.”
Now Taehyung and Susannah are both talking in fluid, fluent noises, a sound completely alien to Yoongi. It rings a bell for him, but only very vaguely, like perhaps someone said a sentence like this to him months ago; he turns to Madeline, a quirk in his eyebrows. "What's that?"
"Oh, witchtongue," Madeline nods, "It's a magical language, I suppose. I don't speak very much of it myself, but Namjoon-"
"He's been teaching me on and off," Jeongguk leaps in, nodding, looking pleased with himself. "It's complicated, though," and then to Yoongi, "Every word in witchtongue has magical weight as well as meaning, y'see? So when you say someone's name, that's technically invocation. Witchtongue is meant to be impossible to lie in. It's got space in the world."
"Witchtongue," Yoongi repeats, staring at the side of Susannah's head, at her springy, golden curls. "Interesting."
Daniel, Seokjin, and Jimin are having a loud and friendly argument over who out of the three of them can fit the most mini-marshmallows in their mouth. Through cheeks bursting with pink and white, Jimin is trying to yell at Seokjin, waving car keys in the air, to drive into Follie to get some more. Namjoon is making more tea, and Madeline has quietly departed from her perch at the table to talk to him. Amandi and Hoseok are talking over something Amandi has cupped in his palm.
"He has these marbles," Jeongguk whispers behind his hand, "He can divine the future with them. He can divine the future with basically anything, though, but he has these preferred methods. Remember, that's how-"
"How you decided I was the devil incarnate, yeah," Yoongi finds his mouth quirking, turning up, in a way he wouldn't have thought was funny three months ago. "Madeline's nice."
Madeline turns over Namjoon's shoulder and winks at him, then gestures to her heavily-pierced ears. Wolf senses, she mouths, Don't say anything too raunchy.
Yoongi giggles.
As the day winds on, bags are slowly transferred from the Land Rover to inside the door of the hall; suitcases, bags, an old-fashioned hatbox, a terrarium with (apparently) nothing inside, but chains wrapped thickly around the top and a heavy lock connecting them, and a single leather-bound book, tied with a leather strap and buckle, like a belt. It's brown, and it doesn't have a title. "Of course you're all welcome to the attic," Jimin says like a purr, his body wrapped around Taehyung's in the hanging basket chair, "But we won't be leaving."
"It's soundproofed for a reason," Daniel quips, his hands folded over his bouncing knee, "I'll be fine wherever. Fuck, I'll be fine down here."
"You're a guest, you're not sleeping on the sofa," Hoseok says, scandalised. "We can bunk up, and there's two guest rooms-"
"Someone can sleep in my cottage, if you want," Yoongi offers, "I don't mind the sofa and it's perfectly warm."
"You can't do that," Jeongguk says to him, and presses his hand against Yoongi's shoulder, "You're busy!"
"Jeongguk could sleep on the sofa, though," Taehyung muses. His eyes are glimmering, strangely wicked. "Or on Yoongi's sofa. His room faces the woods, and you can see the moon from it. You'd be happy there, Maddy, I think, if you wanted it."
"Oh-" Yoongi looks uncertainly up at Jeongguk; he doesn't want Jeongguk to feel pressed to stay at his house, but he doesn't want Jeongguk to think that he doesn't want him to. Or something. "Oh, that might work, yeah-"
"I have to have a room to myself, I'm afraid," Susannah says in accented, but otherwise perfect English, "The creatures are volatile, and they don't like invasion of space." She curls her fingers upwards, her palm empty and cupped, and a mote of something gold and insubstantial winks there for a second, its appearance coinciding with a knocking bang from the empty terrarium.
"I would prefer privacy, also," Amandi, who so far has not spoken to Yoongi beyond perfunctory greetings, shrugs, his shirt rolling over his dark skin, "I have communing, and I don't want you two knowing how I do it."
"What makes you think I'm interested?" Jimin scowls, but his eyebrows are quirked upwards, as interested as Jimin ever becomes.
"Stay at mine," Yoongi says, turning to Jeongguk, the conversation folding towards the private, "It won't be much different to usual, y'know? It'll be fine."
"See? Fine," Seokjin says, and winks at him.
Yoongi doesn't know what to do with that.
The thing in the circle wants to be Yoongi's friend, of that Yoongi is sure, or at least it doesn't wish him any harm right now. He'll take that. The light, the ambiguous voice, the beautiful alien landscape within it, mentions this Gwyneth again - someone to talk to Yoongi, someone to be his friend.
Like Yoongi is lonely. Like Yoongi needs friends.
That night, with Jeongguk curled up on the couch on the floor below him, Yoongi doesn't sleep. He sits bolt upright in his bed, and his cats stay cat-shaped, and his fists rest on his folded legs and he stares blankly at the wall and he does not let himself fall asleep, and the sun rises across his curtains and against his cheeks and he wills himself against exhaustion.
He can hear Jeongguk downstairs, fussing with the coffee pot, and Spanner leaps from the bed to the door to go and join him. Beanbag stays, loyally awake, her head on Yoongi's thigh.
He can feel the displeasure of the circle, but he is unwilling to do anything about it. He won't go there yet.
Deirdre has not been treated anywhere near their other captive, but neither has she been treated particularly kindly, and there has been no word, no indication, that Domhnall or Saoirse are about to let her get back to Paris. Slowly the itch of anxiety is burning the back of her skull, the throbbing knowledge that her last letter to Claudia was three weeks ago and the black curse on her won't be getting any better.
She had been well on her way to Rosslare, to the ferry, when the vampires reached her.
(She wishes now, of course she does, that she knew their names. The ones in Edinburgh. There had been a small, round one, a pretty woman with thin hands and curves, and a slender, pointy one, a man all angles and dark hair and a piercing in the left of his lip. There had been more in the dark, the ones she set fire to, but she never got close enough to see their faces.)
(The vampires caught up to her halfway down the country, in the vast green swathes between those odd Irish towns that never quite recovered from the war. They tried to kill her, she thinks, tried very hard, and then there was a fight - a long fight - a car ride, confused and dulled - another long and very one-sided fight - a negotiation, a desperate one, with someone identified with the Red Circle - a bus trip over the night to the early morning, a stopover to sleep on a chair in the train station in Monaghan - a long Bus Eireann trip to Dublin -)
And now this. She scowls into her coffee.
And now this.
Edie and Evie are the two silent members, and mostly what they do is skulk. Domhnall and Saoirse go out and stay in the flat in even amounts; Richard, the fifth and final member of the little pack in Dublin, stays in his room. He doesn't make any noise. The only reason Deirdre even knows his name is in mistake, one night, hearing Domhnall shout at him. You're a fucking idiot, Richard! You're stupid! You can't go out, you can't even suggest that you go out, when the moon is up - when the clouds are clear! Then she'll get you! And a long silence, and a muffled sob. I only want you to live, Rich, he had said, I only want you to live.
Deirdre curls up on the sofa and misses Claudia.
"We need to get to him," Saoirse says quietly.
(It is four in the morning. Everyone else is asleep. Deirdre should be asleep. Deirdre is sleeping, her heart rate low and peaceful, just as Claudia taught her to do. Undetectable. Wolves rely too much on their noses; it is their weakness.)
"I know," Domhnall says, and there's rustling fabric, "Loose ends, loose ends. If anyone tracks Richard-"
"They won't-"
"I know they won't, but Jeongguk and Richard, that's two in the one area, both nebulously connected to me. At best we'll have to relocate. I don't want to have to do that. There isn't another city on this island big enough to accommodate us without attention, Saoirse, you know that."
She exhales; she sounds angry. Deirdre just breathes.
"I know that, so we go to fucking Follie, then. We go to the stupid village and we get him. We have to make sure none of the other witches know - I know that Follie pack. I've heard of them. They have friends in high places, and I'm sure one of them is out of that pair of blood and bone witches that were racing across the continent a few years ago. If we get Jeongguk it has to be an accident."
"That's why we've got the fucking hunter. She's been hanging around him for the past month, she's bound to know something we don't about him, and if she doesn't-"
"Why would she tell us?"
Domhnall laughs. It's low and mean and ugly. "She wants to leave the country, doesn't she? We have that against her. Of course she's going to tell us."
Of course she is, Deirdre thinks. Claudia will be in bed now, sleeping, her hands pressed protectively against her blackening, rotting skin. Because some things are more important to her than whatever this is. Of course she will.
Jeongguk can't sleep. It's the second night of his stay (for however long that turns out to last) at Yoongi's, and just like last night, he can't sleep. He knows it isn't the loss of his bedroom, not really; he's never been particularly attached to places like that, and there isn't anything urgent in there he can't retrieve in the morning, and Amandi wouldn't really mind if Jeongguk woke him in the middle of the night.
This sleeplessness has to do with something else, Jeongguk knows it. Someone else, if he's being honest with himself.
(He hasn't had a dream with Yoongi in weeks, not for lack of trying, and his showers have grown longer and hotter in comparison, but still those visions elude him. He's beginning to think they never really happened at all.)
Yoongi's kitchen is different without Yoongi in it. Jeongguk pads from the living room, his nest of duvets and cushions on the sofa, into the kitchen, seeking a midnight cup of tea, unsettled by the lurking darkness of the room. It's like the place wants him out; wants him to come back with a chaperone or not at all. The kettle doesn't switch on until Jeongguk holds down the button, and every time he turns around to look at the pile of unread library books on the table, he feels as though they've grown taller.
"Mrow."
"Jesus!" The cat makes Jeongguk leap, clutching his t-shirt over his chest, but the only thing standing in the doorway to the hall is Spanner, his eyes flickering greenish-yellow with the dark. "Fucking warn me," he gasps, and then kneels down, rubbing his finger and thumb together, watching the cat pupils track the movement, "C'mere, then. What, you've been kicked out of bed? Why're you down here in the cold?"
Spanner pads forward. He meows again, a full-bellied, content sort of sound, and then rubs his head against Jeongguk's cupped palm. His fur is soft and deep and the hairs part for Jeongguk's fingers like the sea.
"Does Yoongi know you've escaped?" Jeongguk tickles behind his ears, "Why're you down, huh? What's up?"
"Mrow," Spanner sounds like a sentence, and then darts towards the hallway door, his tail flicking, his eyes dancing between Jeongguk and the stairs, his paws hopping between the forward and backward movement. He bares his teeth when Jeongguk still hasn't moved.
Jeongguk sighs. He's not as good with animal motion as he would be, were he in wolf form, but he's good enough to know what Spanner is trying to tell him. "Yoongi might not like it as much as you," he says, halfway across the kitchen, kettle boiled and ignored. "I don't think he'd appreciate me arriving in the middle of the night."
Spanner hisses, and his tail stands bolt upright. Displeasure. Jeongguk's answer isn't what he wanted.
"Go on, go on. Back up to bed."
But the cat stands in the doorway, and when Jeongguk goes back to the living room nest, he can hear Spanner scratching at his door. After ten minutes, he still hasn't stopped, and Jeongguk has no chance of getting to sleep with that sort of racket just outside him.
"What," he opens the door again, grumpier than he'd like to admit, "What do you want?"
Spanner runs from him to the stairs, and then Jeongguk would swear he rolls his eyes.
Well, that's him told. Jeongguk follows him as quietly as he can, up the carpeted stairs, past the little reading desk beside the window, through the door to Yoongi's bedroom, crooked completely open, light from the moon spilling into both rooms freely. Spanner streaks in; Jeongguk follows, stopping right before the entrance, his hand on the frame. "Yoongi?"
"I wondered where he went," comes the reply, dry but awake. Completely awake. "Fucking hell, Spanner. You may as well come in."
Jeongguk does.
Yoongi is sitting bolt upright in bed, fully clothed, Beanbag asleep and purring on his lap, Spanner splayed across his shoulders and smiling at Jeongguk in a decidedly smug way for a cat to smile. Yoongi is smiling, too, but he looks exhausted; his eyes look heavy in his head, and the dark shadows under them are deep and pronounced. "Trouble sleeping?"
"I should be asking you that, by the looks of things," Jeongguk steps further into the room, worried despite himself, the moon turning everything shades of silver and grey, "Are you okay? Can I get you anything?"
Yoongi looks small on his own in the bed, the blankets pooled around his waist. "I'm okay," he says slowly, as Jeongguk advances in stages across the floor, "I guess I... I've been having pretty weird dreams recently."
"Dreams," Jeongguk repeats. His throat dries up. He can feel panic beginning to pulse at the base of his skull.
"Dreams, yeah," Yoongi shoots him a look, "Weird shit about the forest. And dying. And, like, ants? And talking to things. I think it's just... something like coping, probably, from all the stuff recently, but they're starting to properly bother me, y'know? I don't want to have them on my mind after everything else."
Jeongguk takes the risk and sits on the end of the bed. The mattress bounces; Beanbag wakes up and shoots him a disgruntled look. "So you thought... staying up all night was the way to go?"
"When you say it like that," Yoongi drawls, wry smile on his face, "It does sound a bit stupid, doesn't it?"
(Nothing about Jeongguk. Not even a hint that Yoongi's been dreaming about anyone other than himself. Of course it's stupid to assume that they were sharing dreams in the first place, but Jeongguk can never be sure anymore, not when things like circles and the moon and fairies and vampires and werewolves are real and something he just has to know about, every day.)
Jeongguk in the real world puts a hand on Yoongi's ankle under the bedsheets. He can feel him, shaking. "Get some sleep, idiot. The world will still be here in the morning."
"I know," Yoongi says. He breathes in - hesitates - exhales. "I know."
Jeongguk moves towards the door, although he's never wanted to do anything less in his life.
"Jeongguk-"
"Yes-"
"Can you s-"
"Yeah," Jeongguk says, and Yoongi laughs the sort of breathless, embarrassed laugh Jeongguk feels like doing right now. "Yeah, I can." He's in his pyjamas and everything. He came prepared.
"Get in, then."
"Yeah - yeah."
The cats move as though they've understood the whole thing, and Jeongguk carefully, deliberately, like stepping onto a frozen lake without being sure of the depth, slides between the sheets next to Yoongi.