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Chapter Text

SVRCINA - Deeper

His plan is reckless, but Jimin really doesn’t care anymore. He feels stupid reckless. Reckless and wrecked.

All his life he’s been told and taught to stay far, far away from the surface. His parents made sure he understood the dangers from a young age.

Only once had little Jimin playfully chased the light up the continental slope from their home at the hilly base. Only once and his parents, frantic and fearful, had found him before he had gotten very far. Only once and little Jimin, sobbing at his parents’ distress, had tearfully promised to keep to the darkness and the depths, even on the coldest of days.

But he’s not a kid anymore. In his endless searching, he’s grown used to the continental shelf and the plenitude of its shallower waters, with its vast kelp forests and vibrant sea life.

He’s used to all the colours, now. The forests casting a green glow over everything, warm with the sun’s light. Warmth that would never reach the deeps. Fish flashing iridescent hues he’s never even seen before, entire schools skirting around him. Hues that would find no use in the dark. The pink of corals matching the scales of his tail. His tail that never looked quite so bright, not in the deep and the dark.

He never risks going hungry here. Smaller fish swarm in easy to hunt groups, shellfish cling or crawl over every imaginable surface, and seaweeds grow in all shapes and sizes. Before, they’d scarcely had enough to eat, what with plant-life unable to survive in the depths with so little light and the fish rarer there, more dangerous to hunt.

So why do these shallower waters continue to keep him on edge? Despite their abundance? Despite growing used to it?

He’s known numbing cold and bone-crushing pressure. Knows how far down he can dive before it becomes too much for his body to sustain. He’s known hunger. Knows how to scavenge and stretch his food to make it last. He’s known giant squid and whales and how to evade them when necessary. Knows where to strike his knife in the frilled shark’s vulnerable underbelly to reach its heart, avoiding its needle-teeth and long, eel-like tail. These dangers of the deeps he knows.

It’s the dangers of the surface that scare him. The dangers he doesn’t know.

It’s the shadows of human vessels passing overhead. It’s their giant ships’ unnatural, grumbling roars, near-constant reminders of the monsters patrolling just beyond. It’s the human’s debris collecting on the ocean floor, long foul-smelling stretches that pollute the water and sour the taste in his mouth. It’s their nets and shining hooks that wound and mutilate so many whales and fish.

It’s the stories he’s grown up with. How humans hunt merfolk, not to eat, but for their scales and tails, ripping them from their bodies and leaving them to die broken and bleeding. How they take even children, never to be found again by their parents. How they haul them out from the water so they can’t swim, can’t defend themselves, leaving them completely helpless.

Not only their source of light and life, the surface is also their source of constant fear and peril. A cruel joke played on his people.

Maybe merfolk like him had once travelled freely to the surface and its land-beaches, but that was before his parents’ memories. Before humans began hunting and capturing them. Long before their numbers had dwindled to near extinction. Jimin himself has never met any other merfolk except his parents.

Understandably, fear of the surface has grown with him. He carries it with him even now into adulthood. It is ever-looming, weighing on his fins and dragging him down, always deeper. There’s always somewhere deeper.

But even if he could survive the crushing weight of the ocean, deeper isn’t always better either. He’s seen creatures of the abyss when they rise from the bottomless depths at the day’s end to hunt the night-blind fish above. He’s seen their bulbous eyes, their sallow skin, the treacherous glow of their bodies.

He’s lived between Scylla and Charybdis his entire life, and he can’t keep the balance any longer. He’s made his choice.

Jimin swims against that downward pull toward the dark, volcanic shores of the island he’s carefully circled the past few weeks. Even though it’s reckless.

Morbid curiosity has steadily overcome him through the years, lacing through his fear and choking it, and he’s too wrecked to care about the consequences.

After all, his parents aren’t here to tell him not to anymore. Maybe if they were, he could have lived content, never wondering about the monsters that lurk beyond the sea.

But he’d last seen his parents when he came of age. They’d sent him away to find a partner, someone to love and spend his life with, as they had when they were young.

Forming the words with trembling hands, he’d signed to them, begged them to let him stay. He’d joined a plaintive song to his signs, one of longing and home, but his parents had been adamant, even as they sang their own heartbroken songs in return.

He knew they’d only done it because they love him – merfolk songs can’t lie, can only convey the truest, wordless felt emotions – but he still hadn’t understood why they would push him away from the only home he’d known.

“We won’t always be here for you,” his mother had signed what she could not weave into her song, flashing the familiar shapes quickly. “You must find someone who will love you in ways we cannot and who will remain by your side after we are gone.”

She’d looked to his father for support. Ever-obliging, he’d added, “my lovely son, there are reasons for tradition. We have only survived this long because of tradition. Find a partner and then return to us. We do not banish you forever.”

Even with their tradition, Jimin didn’t believe they were surviving all that well, but in the end, he’d torn himself away from one last desperate hug with both of them. Their songs had only grown more mournful, bleeding into one another, amplified to echo off the sharply rising wall of rock behind their home.

After years searching the Pacific without finding a trace of his people, Jimin knows they aren’t surviving.

He’d tried. He’d left and truly tried to find a partner. He spent a year swimming all over the far reaches of their ocean, only keeping from the coldest waters that drew lethargy into his fins and dimmed his senses.

Not only had he not found a partner, he hadn’t found any of his kind either. Sick with loneliness and despair at being set an impossible task, he’d returned home only to be struck the worst blow yet.

His parents were gone. Their little hollow nestled among the hills at the base of the continent had been emptied of its tools and stores. Looking so barren and grey, it had felt even colder than he remembered. He would have convinced himself he had the wrong place, but seeing the angular shapes he’d scratched into the bedrock as a child guaranteed that he couldn’t have lied to himself.

He’d searched in wider and wider circles, calling out endlessly, but he never found a sign of his mother or father. His song had rung out full of grief and turmoil, going unanswered, as it had for the past year. His only comfort was that there were no signs of violence, so that whatever reason his parents had for leaving, they were hopefully safe.

Then, he’d taken up his search anew, adding his parents to the list of those he was searching for.

The years following the discovery of his abandoned childhood home had been the loneliest yet, but Jimin took his comforts where he could.

He hadn’t found a partner, but he had made a best friend, quite literally the biggest friend of his life. If he hadn’t met the solitary whale when he did, he might truly have given in to grief.

He’d been drifting aimlessly, weariness grown too large to shake. Hunting had been out of the question when he couldn’t muster the energy to swim properly, even as he felt himself grow weaker the longer he went without food.

His friend found him like that. Jimin hadn’t reacted to the whale circling him at first, not until he was being buffed and batted with the whale’s back or tail on each pass. He’d only stopped when Jimin finally stirred, weak and tired, a little confused, but reanimated. The whale then filled him with his song, guiding him with the force of the current he created to some much-needed seaweed.

Whale calls are a language he can’t speak, the sounds beyond what he’s able to make. But they are not so different to the songs of his people that he can’t understand some.

And what Jimin could understand from his new friend was lonely, so lonely that he felt an immediate kinship and connection.

The whale was unlike any other he’d met before or since, and he sang in a higher pitch than the rest of his species. Other whales his size seemed unable to hear him. But Jimin could. Whales were all thunderous bass and low rumbles, some using clicks and whistles, but his friend’s voice was just that much higher and closer to his own.

He’d named his friend Tae-Tae, his sign the shape of his tail fin, middle and index fingers held up and spread at eye-level.

Names are special. For Jimin’s people, they are the only words to have a vocal component in addition to their sign, the only words that can be inserted into their songs. Names stand witness to a life and become part of that life’s story. A part of that person. Giving Tae-Tae his name was an act of recognition, an affirmation of their bond.

Jimin travelled with him while he migrated. He would often catch a ride, clinging to the barnacles atop his head and singing near an ear where Tae-Tae could hear him.

At times, Tae-Tae would simply listen. At others, he would join in, the sound shaking through Jimin’s ribcage with its sheer volume, so large and deep compared to his own song. The feeling comforting, leaving him warm.

He would trace the scars all over his massive body, some running deep, other merely scratches, and wonder at the stories they told, the life they guarded.

Jimin would scratch Tae-Tae in hard-to-reach places with the blunt edge of his abalone knife, Tae-Tae would offer Jimin his pick of the krill he’d caught in his baleen plates, and both their songs became a little less lonely. 

And so, they’d travelled together, Jimin waiting worriedly for Tae-Tae to return to the deep whenever he needed a breath of air from the surface.

For months, they’d been nearly inseparable, until Tae-Tae’s migration moved too far into colder waters where Jimin knew he couldn’t follow. At least not if he wanted to keep from freezing to death.

He’d said goodbye the only way he knew how – with a parting song. He’d swum the long way around until he was before one of his massive eyes, still singing, and signed sadly, “I will miss you, but I will find you again, Tae-Tae.”

He liked to think Tae-Tae caught at least part of his meaning (though he was sure it was because of the singing, not the signing), because he’d given Jimin the gentlest of nudges and called with the deepest growl he could manage. Jimin had giggled and tittered as the gentle vibrations tickled all the way through him.

They’d found each other again every year, Jimin having grown familiar with his migration route.

But it’s been months now since Jimin has last seen Tae-Tae and the loneliness is clawing at his throat, each song he sings more painful than the last.

Which is how Jimin finds himself swimming up to the base of the island, stupid and reckless and wrecked. He squints against the strong light, so warm this close to the surface. As the light grows closer, so does an indistinct noise, broken by the waves and the water’s surface but nevertheless there.

He swims up behind a rocky ridge rising from the sandy bottom, far enough that he hopes he’ll be out of the worst danger.

Not giving himself the opportunity to hesitate any longer, he breaks the surface all at once, gaping helplessly at the air a long moment before his instincts take over.

With a violent convulsion, he squeezes all the water from his lungs, gills clamping shut on his neck. He gasps and takes his first breath of air, lungs burning at the new sensation but gradually growing accustomed to their natural function.

Jimin would have wondered more at the sudden switch in his breathing, if it weren’t for the assault on his other senses. The light is brighter and warmer than ever, to the point he can barely see past the glare on the sea. His upper half feels dizzyingly heavy out of the water, the air thinner but weighing on him. And the noise he’d heard below is now a cacophony hammering into his sensitive ears. Sharp cries and shrieking laughter carry over from swathes of creatures bobbing in the waves or creeping across the sandy shore. Smaller creatures swim through the air high above his head, adding their own piercing cries.

If there’s meaning to their calls, it’s lost to him in their sheer number and discordancy. Nothing like the songs of his people he’s longed for.

He flinches back, already reflexively pressing his hands tightly over his ears to block out the noise. He’s made a horrible mistake. He’s never been sure what he hoped to find, but there’s nothing for him here. Only more fear. With one last terrified look at the grotesque scene before him, he dives back down beneath the waves.

He swims down and away, adrenaline driving his racing heart and maneuvering his tail with record speed. Bolting past smaller fish, he only thinks of escape.

He can’t say how long he’s been swimming when the rocky coral bottom guides him through the narrow entrance of a small cove. In his panic, he hadn’t even noticed that he’d been funneled up into the shallow waters around a second island.

Jungkook – Breathe (Cover)

Surrounded by rocky cliffs on both sides, a beach just a fraction the size of the first lies before him. He slows his hasty flight with difficulty, strain and weariness settling into his muscles. He should return to the depths of the ocean once and for all, but instead he lingers and lets himself be pulled further into the cove.

Something barely heard through the water’s barrier holds him. It’s unmistakably different from what he’d heard at the last island. To call it noise feels wrong.

He’s so close now his tail stirs the sandy bottom in small whorls. Just before his upturned face, a thousand blinding lights are set in a glimmering mosaic across the surface. His heart beats loud with the knowledge that this is a single voice filling the air with song.

But it’s frustratingly distorted by the separation of air and water.

He pokes his head up, just enough for his ears to rest above the waves, and becomes instantly entranced by tender, melancholic notes. A touch sad, a touch comforting, the breathy words fitted to the melody are in a language Jimin doesn’t know but are one he can understand.

Merfolk songs are wordless emotion put to music, but he’s heard songs like this before. It reminds him of whale songs. Whales who have no hands to speak in signs as Jimin’s people do.

But where Jimin struggles to decipher the complexity of whale songs, only puzzling out the basic shape and shade, and unable to reproduce the sounds, this song is elaborate pictographs dancing in living colour. It only waits to be learned and sung.

The song ends softly with a gentle reassurance, and Jimin comes back to himself slowly. He has tears streaming silently down his cheeks. He’s risen out of the water as far as his chest and swum even closer to shore in his trance.

Directly before him, the singer lounges on a low overhang beside the beach, eyes closed lightly. He resembles one of Jimin’s people from the waist up, but below, instead of scales and a tail, more flesh extends past his waist into two long limbs.

Human. Legs.

The thoughts flash through him like a warning. But it’s not what he expected.

The human’s legs are unlike any he’s ever seen. Whenever he’s imagined the humans from his parents’ cautionary tales, he’s always pictured them with ugly features and hard, spindly legs like a spider crab’s, fitting for the faceless creatures of his nightmares.

This human looks nothing like that, seems nothing like that, and Jimin still feels helplessly lulled by his song.

With a sigh, the singer tilts his head to the sea breeze and lets his eyes fall open. They’re big and dark, and they widen when they land on Jimin, who freezes.

The human opens his mouth. The sounds that escape are varied and placed in a stilted rhythm. It isn’t a song, but Jimin still infers some of its emotive meaning – confusion and a question. He’s speaking without using his hands or a song.

That’s what finally startles Jimin from the spell he’s been under. He flips backwards with a powerful push of his tail, sinking headfirst under water, his body following in an arc.

The human’s cry of surprise chases him to the deep underwater grotto where he hides and curls up on himself. He hugs his tail to stifle the tremors that rock him, overwhelmed from all the emotions of the day, but he only really stops shaking when he falls unconscious, exhausted.

Chapter Text

Jungkook – Ending Scene (Cover)

Jimin can’t stay away from the cove after that first time.

Sirens are supposed to be his mythical ancestors, and yet he’s the one powerless against the human’s pull, lured to him despite the danger he represents.

He’s more lonely than he is afraid. He’s been reminded what it is to feel connected with someone, the human’s song like a ray of warmth in the freezing depths of the ocean. He can’t help but seek that solace again, even if it scares him.

When he’s sure he’s alone, he slots himself in a groove hidden among the shadowed rocks of the cove’s high walls, carefully concealed as he waits. If he isn’t seen, he’ll still be safe. Probably.

To Jimin’s delight, the human returns each day to sing without fail. He’s relieved, and he can’t even lie to himself about it. He always arrives well before him and waits until long after he leaves to slip back into the ocean, new songs looping in his head. He barely finds time to eat or sleep, obsessed as he is.

The human’s voice is beautiful. And he sings the prettiest songs, all a little melancholic, each one resonating deep within Jimin. Once or twice he’s made the cove ring out with a long-held, belted phrase, but for the most part he sings softly. He obviously prefers the finesse of the breathy, quieter sound over power.

Jimin appreciates the aesthetic choice, and it makes the songs easier to understand too. The quietest, whispered notes just quivering with emotion. Soon, he’s picking out and recognizing words and patterns.

After several days spent this way, the new routine grows familiar, Jimin feeling quite cozy nestled in his little groove in the rocks. Waves lick soothingly up his tail, the beautiful voice blanketing him.

He pillows his cheek on an arm and closes his eyes. This song is especially sad, one of longing for an ending relationship and one of goodbyes. He can’t quite pick apart the particulars, but the emotion is potent, palpable, and Jimin lets his imagination fill in the blanks. His chest twinges with an echoed ache as he thinks of his parents, praying they’re well and safe wherever they are.

He has to keep from adding his own voice to the song several times. That’s one urge that never quite goes away, but he holds it in. He’ll hum and sing the melodies to himself later, up until he finally falls asleep for the night.

The song ends too soon, as they always do. The waves and his breathing suddenly loud in the quiet. He waits impatiently for the next song, but it never comes.

Frowning, Jimin checks the sky and scrutinizes the shadows that move with the sun as the days pass – it’s much too early for the human to stop singing. Jimin hasn’t heard the heavy sounds of him climbing the path up the incline leading inland either.

After many long minutes of silent, internal debate, Jimin pulls himself up and peers over his rock. The human faces him, curled on his side, but thankfully his eyes are shut. Jimin watches and waits, but the human never moves except to breathe.

Cautiously, Jimin slides into the water and swims closer, yet he still doesn’t stir, fast asleep. He’s resting on the edge of the same overhang he always occupies, and Jimin is able to swim right up to him.

His tail bends back behind himself, but he’s always been flexible.

The human looks harmless like this, completely unarmed as far as Jimin can see. It hasn’t helped that his fear shrunk with every day he’s listened to him sing. He’s even begun to think of him as his human, which is especially dangerous. He shouldn’t be laying claim to any humans.

He studies his features carefully, looking for any sign that he might wake, but the human sleeps on.

With a weightless touch, he traces the defined jawline, the small scar on his cheek, the nose anchoring the rest of his features. He has a strong face, but pretty too. His bottom lip pouts against the curve of the top one, plump and pink. His eyelashes lie dark against his skin, framing eyes Jimin remembers being big enough to fall into. Far too beautiful for a monster.

Jimin runs his fingers wonderingly over the smooth, unbroken skin of his human’s neck. He has no gills. He understands logically that humans can’t breathe underwater, that their need for air is what keeps them from fully invading the ocean, but it’s strange to see the proof with his own eyes. As Jimin leans closer, he feels steady breaths along his collarbones, sending shivers through him.

Three shiny, shell-like nubs are attached along the outer edge of the ear Jimin can see. Jimin winces at the sight of where they pierce through the delicate skin. Doesn’t that hurt? What could their function possibly be?

Above his ear, his dark hair is fluffy in the way Jimin’s gets after spending hours hidden in the cove. Curiously, it smells sweet, unlike anything he’s encountered, and it makes his mouth water. The smell is so enticing he can already imagine its taste.

He sticks out his tongue to tentatively lick a lock of hair, only to shake it out of his mouth just as quickly, the strands clinging on. He makes a face, tongue still poking from between pursed lips. It tastes bitter and a tad sour, nothing like it smells. Gross.

He moves on from the hair-that-doesn’t-taste-like-it-smells to examine the human’s broad chest and shoulders, rising and falling with slow breaths. They look to be the most dangerous part about him. Jimin puffs out his own chest and flexes, but he still seems smaller. Well, no matter. Even if his muscles are bigger, Jimin’s are toned and conditioned from hunting, and he has his knife in the event he needs it.

A few more shell-like objects encircle the base of his fingers, though Jimin is relieved to see these rings are merely fitted to him rather than piercing through him. They glint in the light and they’re hard to the touch. Jimin plays with them, twisting them around and sliding them down his fingers carefully, throwing the occasional glance to make sure he hasn’t woken their owner.

Skipping over the thin, colourful material wrapped below the human’s waist (he doesn’t quite know what to make of that yet), he trails a palm down one of his legs, the skin warm and soft. He’s getting bold with how nothing seems to wake his human, doing as he pleases, a little giddy with discovery. He squeezes the thickest part of the muscle, feels it give beneath his fingers, and hums.

At the end of the legs, past the joints, are parts jutting out at an angle. They look vaguely like hands if hands were elongated and fingers were only stubs. The bottoms like palms.

Jimin pokes here and there at the leg-hands, until his attention wanders back to the covering over the human’s hips.

Like the ear-shells and finger-shells, he can’t understand its function. Why is it attached to his human? It doesn’t seem like a weapon or tool. And while it clings to his body in places, it flares in others.

Jimin tugs at one of the openings lying loose around a leg and peers under. His leg continues upward, but there is something else there too. Frowning, Jimin yanks harder on the material for a better look.

~*~

Jungkook wakes up with an uncomfortable wedgie digging its way deeper. He hadn’t even realized he’d accidentally fallen asleep at the cove. The sun must have made him drowsy. Blinking his eyes open, he only grows more confused. He blinks some more.

Peeping up his swimming shorts is the merman he’d glimpsed a week ago, eyebrows drawn together and pretty pink lips puffed up in a pout.

What the actual hell.

He’s a bit offended. This isn’t the usual reaction he gets when guys see his dick (he’s maybe not fully awake yet, okay).

Alertness crashes over him when the merman’s free hand reaches for the opening of his shorts. He catches his wrist just as his fingers brush the top of his thigh.

The merman snaps his head up, face full of panic as he pushes away from Jungkook. Jungkook tightens his grip on instinct and holds him there, which only has the merman struggling more frantically. Choppy waves ripple out from where he’s thrashing in the water.

“Wait, I– Ah!”

Jungkook cries out and falls in. The water is shallow, so he’s not fallen far before he bumps the sandy bottom, but in the ensuing confusion, something sharp stabs into the soft flesh between his thumb and forefinger, which has him reflexively releasing the merman as he fights to his feet, coughing up water. Blood blooms from the cut on his hand, small but fairly deep, red spreading quickly with the help of the water. He clutches it tight in pain and tries to stem the bleeding, looking up to search for the merman who’d wasted no time getting away.

A head of pink hair ducks behind some nearby rocks along the inner cove wall. It’s a small formation, but just big enough to conceal a person.

He takes a deep breath and a moment to calm himself.

He almost thought he’d imagined him the first time, but the memory of glassy hazel eyes, tears falling to merge with the ocean, was too vivid. He’s been haunted by it the past week, and by the raw terror that set into his features in the moment before he’d disappeared with a flash of fuchsia scales. And sure, he’s kept coming to the cove in hopes of seeing him again, but he hadn’t really thought he would.

He isn’t about to waste this second chance.

“It’s okay,” he calls over in what he hopes is a soothing tone. “I won’t hurt you.”

The cove feels as though it’s holding its breath, caught on an inhale. He keeps his gaze fixed on the rocks where he’d sighted pink.

“I’m–” he falters, “I’m sorry I scared you.”

Now Jungkook is the one holding his breath as pink hair reappears over the rock and a pair of wide, watchful eyes stare back at him.

“It’s okay,” he says again, quietly breathy on his exhale. Can he understand him? He’s not saying anything, just staring.

“Ah, wait!” Jungkook says a little louder when the merman dips below once more and he hears a small splash.

But no sooner has he said it than the merman comes swimming around the rock into the open. He hangs back, eyes flickering cautiously over him, but there’s more than fear there now.

He has what looks like an iridescent knife strapped to the outside of his arm, just below the shoulder, by a thin braided cord. A guard of similar looking material interwoven with fuchsia scales protects the vulnerable flesh underneath.

He assumes the weapon’s what he has to blame for the current throbbing in his hand. Although, judging by the size of the knife, it would have been a lot worse if he’d seriously been trying to hurt him.

It’s the first time he’s getting a good look at him, and wow, he’s really real. Really pretty. Are all merfolk supposed to be that pretty?

He has a dainty nose and high, round cheeks. He’s unnaturally pale, like he’s never spent a day in the sun, but it only serves to make him look more delicately stunning. His thick, plush lips are parted in wonder, eyes reflecting the same emotion from beneath the uneven fringe of his hair.

Shouldn’t Jungkook be the one in awe? How many merfolk were even left? And here Jungkook has seen him not once but twice. It’s incredible.

He’s oddly moved that he would come out of hiding for him. That he’s been given a small piece of trust, fragile and breakable porcelain trust, but given easily at a few encouraging words. He sees it in the flicker of his gaze, and something passes between them. Recognition, maybe.

He looks to be about Jungkook’s age, twenty-two or twenty-three at most, but there’s an innocence about him that makes him seem younger.

Jungkook very much doesn’t want to shatter that innocent trust.

He meekly holds up his uninjured hand and says, “hi.”

What a lame thing to say. Why hasn’t he ever bothered to do research on merfolk? If he had, then maybe he’d be able to give a proper greeting now. They must have their own language, right? Jungkook doesn’t know. He’s way out of his depth.

Turns out he needn’t have worried so much. Excitement lights the other’s face as he mimics the gesture and repeats Jungkook’s greeting, “hi!”

His voice is high and melodic. Figures he would sound pretty too. He drifts unconsciously closer but doesn’t say anything else. This first step at communicating looks promising though.

Jungkook touches his hand to his chest and says, “I’m Jungkook.”

The merman again copies him exactly, gestures at himself and parrots, “I’m Jungkook.”

Okay, so maybe he doesn’t understand all that well.

“No, no.” Jungkook shakes his head. “I’m Jungkook.”

The merman tilts his head cutely. Hesitates, then tentatively tries, “Jungkook?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Jungkook nods encouragingly.

At the praise, a sweet smile bunches up his cheeks and buries his eyes. “Jungkook!” he singsongs happily. And god, how is he so adorable?

He swims closer yet again, doesn’t even seem to realize he’s doing it. He’s nearly within arm’s reach now, beaming up at Jungkook where he stands almost waist-deep in the cool waters. He sinks slowly to his knees so they’re on a level, careful of making sudden movements.

“What’s your name?” he asks, waving a hand in his direction.

The merman’s smile slips as he fiddles with his fingers (why oh why are his fingers so small and cute too?), and he makes a few noises in the back of his throat like he’s testing the sound. Finally, he forms a complex one-handed gesture and says something that sounds like…

“Jimin?” Jungkook tries, but the merman bites his lip and shakes his head slowly, uncertainly.

He gestures again, deliberately, stubby pinky half-raised and index finger doing something strange with his thumb, and he clearly says the name, “Jimin.”

Jungkook looks from his hand to his determined face and back again. He fumbles through a pale imitation of the gesture, and the merman gasps and surges forward excitedly, closing the last gap between them.

He feels somewhat stunned as small hands close over his, setting his fingers carefully into the correct position. When he’s done, he doesn’t let go but looks up into Jungkook’s eyes, gaze weighted with the moment and intense, and repeats, “Jimin.”

Okay, so his name is Jimin, but the hand gesture seems to be just as important. Jungkook tries it out, Jimin’s hands sliding loosely down to his wrist, and another radiant smile breaks out over Jimin’s face at the sight and sound. Jungkook feels warm.

He wants more of Jimin’s smile, and it’s so easy when just saying his name brings him such unguarded joy.

He keeps repeating his name over and over until their fingers are a tangled mess and he’s chanting a garbled, “Jimmychimmychim…”

But Jungkook couldn’t care less if he gets it right anymore, because Jimin is giggling uncontrollably at the purposeful chaos he’s making of his name. And he’s squeaking between giggles. Actually squeaking. He tips over into Jungkook with the force of his mirth, Jungkook is laughing too, and it’s all so painfully endearing.

Jungkook catches his shoulders and breaks off with a quiet hiss at the sting from his cut. He’d forgotten all about his injured hand. It’s still bleeding, but slower now.

Jimin’s laughter fades and he makes a pained noise of sympathy. He pulls back, bright hazel eyes suddenly large and worried again, and Jungkook hates it.

“It’s okay,” he reassures, hoping Jimin understands. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. You were just scared.”

Jimin coos unhappily as his eyes rove over the injury. He makes a series of gestures Jungkook has no hope of following when it finally clicks for him – Jimin must speak a kind of sign language, which is why he couldn’t just verbalize his name. He’s a bit confused though because Jimin seems to hear him just fine, seems to understand him remarkably well actually. He supposes there's no reason he needs to be deaf to speak a sign language.

“Hurt,” Jimin says aloud, snapping him back into the present. “Jungkook hurt.” He’s kind of singing the words, while still signing, but he’s obviously trying to get Jungkook to understand.

“Jimin sorry,” he says, and okay, when did he learn that? Jungkook struggles to keep up as Jimin starts tugging him forward. He resists weakly until Jimin says, “it’s okay,” in the sweetest whisper.

He stands bent before Jimin who bobs a little lower, awkwardly because of his tail. Jungkook watches it, neon-bright beneath the waves as it constantly moves, adjusting Jimin as his upper body remains impressively stable by contrast.

Jimin pulls him deeper. As a passing thought, he wonders if maybe he should be more worried about a strange merman dragging him toward the ocean, especially after he’d been stabbed by that same merman. But he just isn’t.

Jimin guides him through the water so carefully, looks far more worried than Jungkook, and keeps checking his expression with every inch of water that creeps up his chest. And Jungkook trusts him.

“It’s okay?” he asks when the water level reaches Jungkook’s shoulders. Jimin’s gentle hands cradle his injured one.

“This is okay,” Jungkook assures “I’m fine as long as I can breathe.”

Jimin nods thoughtfully like he understands, eyes fixed on his neck. Maybe he does understand.

Jungkook winces as Jimin submerges himself with his hand he’s holding, salt water stinging his wound some more. Jimin looks up and their eyes meet through the rippling water, and Jungkook’s breath catches when Jimin begins to lick the pad of his thumb.

It’s wet. Well, of course the water is wet, but Jimin’s tongue feels somehow more wet, coating his skin and providing a barrier against the stinging salt of the ocean.

And Jungkook’s blushing, but it’s not his fault. Jimin is licking him. Jimin is licking him thoroughly while staring him dead in the eye, so he can’t be held accountable for how flustered he feels.

Jimin emerges, water sloughing off him, and Jungkook tries not to watch where it runs along the lines of his body. There’s still a slice of angry red near his thumb but Jimin’s licking has stopped the bleeding. Jungkook adds curative tongues to the list of things he didn’t know about merfolk.

Jimin squeezes his fingers to get his attention (because Jungkook’s been spacing out for who knows how long) and asks, “it’s okay?”

He nods quickly and says, “thank you, Jimin.” He makes sure to say his name correctly to convey his sincerity, positioning his fingers just the way Jimin had showed him.

They smile at each other. And though he has no reason to hold onto Jungkook any longer, Jimin doesn’t seem to want to let him go, hasn’t really let go of his hands since he first reached for them, so Jungkook lets him.

They stay in the water the rest of the day, playing with each others’ hands, and learning the limits of their communication, only to expand them. Other than his name, Jungkook struggles to make sense of Jimin’s signing, but Jimin makes deciphering Jungkook’s speech seem easy, so they work on that.

He picks up the simple things with amazing speed, but more complicated ideas outside his experience have him glaring in confused concentration, like when Jungkook tries explaining bandages to him. Soon they’ve made a game of it, Jimin diving below, coming up with whatever he finds at the bottom of the cove, and asking for its name.

Jimin is never underwater for too long, always shooting back up with something else, gripping onto Jungkook’s arm or cupping his hands around whatever new offering he’s brought him. He’s got a growing collection of gifts gathering on the overhang where he usually sits. A small shrine to their new friendship.

Jimin learns the words for rock, shell, seaweed, coral, crab… though he’s fairly certain the crab has since escaped.

Once, he even surges up holding a wriggling fish the full size of his torso, exclaiming, “what’s this, Jungkook?”

Jungkook honestly doesn’t know how to answer. He’s dumbfounded for a couple reasons. It’s a fish, but not one he knows. It has a big bulbous chin, sparse and uneven teeth, and a massive pink lump on its head. And he has no idea how Jimin managed to catch the poor creature with his bare hands in under a minute of diving time, but he’s impressed.

And Jimin, after Jungkook convinces him they can’t keep it on the overhang with the rest, Jimin actually snuggles the ugly thing and kisses its forehead bump before letting it go. Dear lord. He swears he even hears him call it Yoriko.

Another time, Jimin picks a fight with a seagull that gets too close to his collection of gifts. He bares his teeth in a non-threatening snarl and thrusts his narrow chest outward, but the seagull seems unaffected by his posturing, pecking unconcernedly at a shell. Stifling a breathless laugh, Jungkook secretly agrees with the seagull. He just looks adorable. Has he never seen a seagull before?

When the seagull squawks curiously at him, Jimin squawks back, and Jungkook almost loses it. When the seagull hops a little closer, Jimin bristles and quick-draws his knife, and that’s when it stops being cute. He braces the weapon in his hand like he won’t hesitate to skewer the seagull if he makes one more wrong move. Jungkook intervenes before his favourite spot becomes a birdie bloodbath.

Jimin – Promise

They spend hours this way, and Jungkook is past the point of being pruny, but Jimin learns “wrinkle” and wrinkles his nose each time he says it, and Jungkook stays in the water and plays with him.

He stays until the sun begins to set and he can’t stifle his shivering any longer.

Jimin doesn’t miss it. His teeth have barely begun to chatter when Jimin cradles his face in his hands, holds his eyes. He’s firm in the way his fingers grip his jaw, in the way his stare bores into him, but his voice is gentle in the way he says, “it’s okay, Jungkook.”

The gesture is sweet, but it does nothing to warm him at this point. Confusion wars with concern in Jimin’s expression.

He thinks I’m shivering because I’m scared.

“I’m n-not scared, Jimin, it’s ok-k-kay.” Now he looks extremely confused. “I’m just cold.”

“No,” Jimin laughs, concern disappearing but not confusion. He hugs Jungkook around the middle, pressing against the length of his body, and shit that’s not helping.

He feels the cold brushes of his tail against his legs, and Jimin’s torso against his is about as warm as the water (not warm at all). He’s not sure how merfolk regulate their body temperature, but even when the sun was out Jimin always felt a couple degrees cooler than him.

“Jungkook is warm.”

His voice is low and sultry and he’s glued to him, which might have affected Jungkook more if his frozen balls weren’t currently trying to reabsorb themselves into his body. It’s a good thing, because he really needs to stop thinking of Jimin that way – he’s far too innocent to have intended the comment the way Jungkook’s traitorous brain interprets it.

And merfolk clearly don’t have the same reservations about touch and personal space as humans, so it’s not like Jimin’s physical affection indicates any special feeling toward Jungkook. He kissed Yoriko for fuck’s sake.

“N-not like that.” Jungkook pulls back. “I feel too cold and I need t-to get warmer.”

Jimin looks like he has too many questions and too much to say with no way of saying it. A look Jungkook has grown familiar with by now. Jimin understands him well enough, but he can’t always find the words to make Jungkook understand in turn. Jungkook can only try to explain better.

“I have to go b-back.” Jungkook points up the narrow path worked into the cliff that leads to his brother’s private summer home.

It’s an innocuous thing to say, but Jimin recoils with a jerk.

He recovers and clings to him harder, rubbing a hand over his chest and down his arm, disturbing his goosebumps. Jungkook squirms. He’s cold, almost numb, but Jimin’s touch still feels a little too good.

“No Jungkook,” Jimin insists with vehemence, pouting. Stubbornly adorable.

“Jimin, I can’t stay,” he says exasperated. “I have t-t-to go. I n-need to eat and sleep and get warm.”

He’s let go then, which is when he sees it shatter. Shards of broken porcelain reflected in hazel eyes. This is the moment he inadvertently betrays Jimin’s trust.

He reaches for him, but it’s too late, Jimin gliding away. Why is this what drives distance between them when Jimin had so quickly warmed to him before? It’s not like he isn’t going to come back.

“I’ll come back tomorrow. Please just understand. P-please, Jimin.”

Jimin hugs himself, a tightening around his eyes and mouth, and his arms look like all that’s left holding him together.

“I’ll be back first thing in the morning,” he pleads, prays Jimin understands at least this. “I promise.”

“Promise?”

His voice wavers on the question, and Jungkook’s heart breaks a little more. He feels like he’s abandoning his puppy, being unjustifiably cruel. He would probably just give in and stay all night with Jimin if he didn’t think he’d be a hypothermic, starved zombie-man by morning.

“That’s right.” He reaches out, extending his little finger. “Here, let’s make a pinky p-promise. You can’t break a pinky promise, so I’ll have to come back no matter what, okay?”

Jimin seems uncertain, but he holds out his pinky in the same way. Jungkook locks them together, Jimin’s so small around his pruny one.

It hurts to see him act so distant, Jimin always the first to initiate physical contact while Jungkook is usually the one who hesitates, never knowing how to interpret his actions.

Jungkook tries to make up for it now, pulling him by his pinky into one last, tight hug. Jimin whines, long and pitiful, the sound instinctual and almost animal. Jungkook squeezes his eyes shut and whispers against the top of his head, “I pinky promise I’ll come back as soon as I can tomorrow.”

“Pinky promise,” he repeats quietly.

Jungkook lets him go, backing away, Jimin very still as he watches. When he reaches the bottom of the path he turns but stops before he can climb. He looks over his shoulder at Jimin, who’s begun singing something high and lilting. It’s wordless, but there’s a cry in Jimin’s pretty voice, an ache, that squeezes at his insides.

He says something while he’s singing, but Jungkook can’t read his signs, especially not in the growing dark. His song ended, he nods once at Jungkook and raises his pinky. Jungkook returns the gesture and finally leaves the cove and Jimin behind, feeling a little choked up and a lot like shit.

~*~

RM – Moonchild

Jimin feels sick. Jungkook disappears over the top of the cliff with his peculiar way of moving, and all at once Jimin feels so sick.

A part of it feels like it’s been there a while but he’s suppressed it so he could play with Jungkook just a little longer. Or maybe he’d been too happy to notice. The other part feels like Jungkook took every good feeling with him when he left.

Jimin had sung him a parting song and told him everything today had meant to him, that he’d be waiting for him, but that had been more for his own benefit than Jungkook’s.

How long has it been since someone’s said his name? How many years?

Tae-Tae is an irreplaceable friend, but it’s impossible for him to ever use Jimin’s name. It’s no wonder he’d been fading away alone. He’d almost forgotten what it feels like. Jungkook has woken up his very being by calling to it. He’d felt himself expand each time he said it, swelling with undefined emotion.

Everything about Jungkook has been warmth and light, like he holds his own small sun beneath his skin. Jimin had greedily absorbed the life-giving rays coming off him, touching each time he had him in reach. So maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised at how hard he’s crashing without him. Deflating and hollow without Jungkook’s presence to fill him up.

Without the buffer of Jungkook’s enveloping warmth, he feels so cold and weak, which is ridiculous. Even with the sun setting, it’s so much warmer above the surface, so much warmer than what he’s used to, but the empty night and the sea leech the heat from his skin. His skin that feels oddly sensitive. His head feels stuffy too, thoughts sluggish.

He knows he’s gotten attached too quickly, but that was true even before they’d spoken. From the first song, Jimin’s been caught. He knows that now.

And to think that he’s a human. Humans are monsters – he’s always believed that – but… But he’s known from the start that Jungkook is more than a monster. He’s a person before anything else, just as much as Jimin. His language is different, his body is different, but he sings and laughs and bleeds like a person. Not just any human, Jungkook is his human.

And perhaps this is how he ruins him. He’s been caught by the song of his human-siren, hooks in his heart, and this sudden sickness is the proof. But it’s too late to regret – he needs him now as surely as he needs Tae-Tae. Jimin will willingly drown for the sound of Jungkook’s voice.

He digs his fingers into his arms, skin stinging, and reminds himself that Jungkook has to come back. He promised in an unbreakable human ritual. But it doesn’t do much to ease the ache he feels everywhere.

Without Jungkook there, he begins to worry at how extremely exposed he is. He dives down to return to the grotto where he’s made a temporary home, but he doesn’t get far before he’s doubling back.

What if he’s misunderstood? What if Jungkook has returned to the cove because he meant he only had to leave for a moment? What if he’s forgotten something? What if he’s hungry and remembers the seaweed and crab Jimin brought him earlier? What if he’s looking for Jimin but he’s not there? What if–

Jimin breaks the surface, doesn’t even have to think about the water he pushes from his lungs now.

“Jungkook?”

In the darkness that has well and truly set over the cove, the only answer is Jimin’s own small whimpers between shaking breaths.

The moon shines down weakly over him, but unlike the sun, it has no warmth of its own. Its silver light is only borrowed, and Jimin is cold.

It’s pathetic how he tricked himself so easily into what he wants to believe. He waits but Jungkook doesn’t reappear. He sinks below the surface but doesn’t fully retreat this time, just lingers at the bottom of the cove.

He can’t sleep. He’s too anxious and worked up so close to the surface, but he doesn’t dare leave. Knows he’ll be pulled back by the what ifs. He won’t miss Jungkook. He’ll keep his pinky promise and Jimin will be here when he does.

He sings one of Jungkook’s songs and he waits. But it sounds different from the way Jungkook sings it, and he still feels so sick, and he cries in exhausted frustration.

Chapter Text

BTS - Make It Right

The cove is empty when Jungkook gets there the next morning.

The sun is barely up. He’s barely slept, barely eaten breakfast, and barely taken the time to throw on his swim shorts before tearing down the rocky path to see Jimin. He couldn’t stop tossing and turning all night, eager to get back to Jimin. He’d made a promise.

He hadn’t expected an empty cove when he got down to water level. Not with how reluctant Jimin had been to let him go.

Waves crash against the ocean entrance of the cove, casting spray high over the rocky walls and painting them dark as pitch. Inside the waves are much gentler, little more than languid ripples where they lap at the shore. There’s no other movement. He chides himself for assuming that Jimin would be waiting for him rather than sleeping or eating or… whatever it is merfolk do at the crack of dawn.

He stretches and settles down on his grassy ledge to wait. He looks down at his lap and examines his thumb appreciatively. Jimin’s tongue had worked wonders, sealing his cut quickly so that today a clean scab protects it. He hadn’t even needed any bandages or disinfectant.

After a minute of twiddling his thumbs, he toys with a large spiral shell left on top of the pile from yesterday’s game, grinning down at it like an idiot. Jimin had laughed at him for listening to the ocean through it, but then he’d gasped when Jungkook put it up against his ear and he heard the sounds captured within. He’d spent the next several minutes alternately trying to see inside the shell and returning it to his ear, completely incredulous. And completely oblivious to how adorable he looked.

Honestly, Jungkook would have rushed down here even if he hadn’t made a promise.

He’s a bit smitten. He can acknowledge that. Jimin is too sweet and too precious not to like.

But Jungkook, he just… he just knows better than to get carried away with this sudden attraction, or whatever it is. He should know better, for all the obvious reasons. Namely, that Jimin is a merman, which becomes infinitely more complicated beyond the sanctuary of their private little cove.

Jungkook doesn’t know much about merfolk, not about them individually or culturally, but he has spent enough time around Namjoon, has heard enough of his political rants, to know a little about the state of the population. A little and too much.

He knows they’ve been brought to the brink of extinction by poachers, despite the protections put in place to prevent just that.

He knows most people still consider it fishing and poaching, rather than murder. And he knows that’s one of the biggest barriers to actually changing anything.

The UN had declared merfolk a protected people ages ago, back when he was a kid, but it’s not like advocacy groups can do much when the wealthy want more luxurious scales and colourful tail leather to add to their collections. There’s too much power in money and corruption.

He knows most of the surviving merfolk population live in aquariums, scattered across countries that don’t have laws against that kind of thing, prisoners kept as entertainment for people to gawk at.

He feels sick just thinking about it. Tries to keep the images far away from his thoughts of Jimin.

Just meeting Jimin was already an impossibility. And, he hates to admit it, but the longer he waits here alone, the more he begins to worry.

He sighs and dangles his feet in the water.

He startles mere moments later as Jimin bursts out of the water before him in a sudden, powerful display. He gets his whole body a full foot above the surface before he overbalances and flops back onto his side with a giant splash.

Gaping in astonishment, Jungkook can’t help cackling as he wades over. Turns out Jimin is eager after all. And clumsy. He only stops laughing once Jimin resurfaces and he sees the state of him.

There isn’t an inch of him that’s not a shade of pink. There’s his hair and his tail, pink as always, but now his skin is darkened with a sunburn to match, reddest over his shoulders, across his nose, and along the tops of his cheeks. Painfully red.

He feels responsible since he’d clearly gotten burned playing with him yesterday. Jungkook himself had been well-protected by the sunscreen he’d applied before he left the cabin that day (and by a bit of all-natural melanin). But he’d never thought to worry about Jimin burning, despite how pale he’d been. He truly must have never spent a day in the sun before.

Though in his defence, offering to share sunscreen hadn’t been his first priority after meeting a merman.

“Jungkook!” He latches onto Jungkook’s arms and gives him such a relieved look that Jungkook immediately feels bad about.

“Jimin… you got burned.”

“It’s okay.”

But the more Jungkook looks at him, the less he seems okay. His eyes are glazed over and his breathing a bit unsteady.

“That looks like it really hurts.” He reaches out to brush a ruddy cheek and Jimin flinches. “See? You’re not okay.”

“No hurts,” he insists stubbornly. “It’s okay, so let’s play.”

He tugs on his arm, but Jungkook’s made up his mind and is already returning to shore.

“I’m going to go get some aloe, but I’ll be right–”

“No!” Jimin cuts him off desperately. Right. It had been distressingly difficult to part ways yesterday, and Jimin looks like he might have a full blown panic attack if he leaves now after barely sharing a greeting. “Stay. Please, please, please...”

He can’t even reassure Jimin with a hug like he did yesterday, since he probably hurts all over. He holds his hand and caresses it with his thumb instead. He doesn’t know what else to do about his separation anxiety.

“I’ll stay,” he soothes, Jimin still pleading from his eyes. “I’ll stay all day, but I need to get a few things first. So if I go now, just for a little while, really quick, I can stay longer.”

“Really quick?” His breaths are coming in short and he struggles to get the question out.

“Really, really quick.”

He doesn’t say anything, but Jungkook takes his silence as reluctant agreement. It feels like he’s ripping away from him despite Jimin not putting any force into his hold. He almost checks his skin for damage, sure that kind of thing leaves a mark, but instead he focuses on what he needs to do, doesn’t dare look back. He practically sprints uphill to the cabin.

He starts throwing things in a big canvas bag, everything he thinks he might need, banging doors and drawers as he goes, silently thanking his brother for always being so well-stocked. Seokjin would probably have a fit if he could see him abuse his fancy furniture, all dark, expensive-looking wood, but what Jin doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Making Jimin wait will absolutely hurt him.

He tosses in a bunch of bananas, some protein bars, and a bottle of water for himself as an afterthought, since he’s definitely going to be hungry later.

Approximately ten minutes later, out of breath, he’s walking to the far side of the cove where the cliff wall blocks out the morning sun and casts a cool shadow along the beach. Even as the sun rises higher in the sky, the way the wall curves and juts out at the midway point should still offer them some protection.

Jimin follows in the shallows anxiously. Jungkook sets down his bag and digs out a towel to spread just above the water line.

“What’s this?”

Jimin has gotten as close as he can without dragging his tail, but he’s craning his neck like he’s about to start, torso pushed up by his arms.

“I brought you something to help with your sunburn, but you have to be dry before I put it on.”

“Dry?”

Jungkook smiles at the repetition. Jimin has a tendency of trying out the unfamiliar words he hears on his own tongue. It’s cute and probably helps him learn the language, so Jungkook has no complaints.

“Yeah, dry.”

Explaining the concept of dryness to someone who’s spent his whole life living in the ocean doesn’t sound appealing, so Jungkook decides to demonstrate.

He walks over into the shallows, kneels on the sandy bottom, and wraps his arms around Jimin, who seems more than content to let him maneuver him even with his tender skin. He places one arm around his back and one under the smooth underside of his tail in the water. Jimin just blinks dazedly, curious and unguarded, as he holds Jungkook around the shoulders in return.

Should be easy. He doesn’t seem too heavy, his waist tiny in Jungkook’s grip, and the scales of his tail are less slippery than he thought they’d be.

“Hold on.”

But when he lifts him into the air, Jimin cries out and starts struggling, his tail fins smacking into Jungkook’s shoulder and against the left side of his face.

“Wait, it’s okay! Ah– s’okay, s’okay!”

Jungkook miraculously manages to carry him the short distance to the towel and set him down without dropping him. Jimin stops struggling but he curls in on himself, wide-eyed and wary. Jungkook did that to him. Again.

“Sorry! Sorry, Jimin!” He’s seriously an idiot. How many times does he have to terrify Jimin? Hurt Jimin? He just wants to see him smile. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” He falls back on the familiar phrase. The one they both use to reassure and check in with each other.

The words manage to calm him down to a degree, some of the tension leaving his body, but Jimin is left looking very vulnerable. He looks small on the large blue beach towel. His spine splits his back in two, vertebrae standing out sharply with the way he’s hunched away from him, only disappearing past his waist beneath the overlapping scales of his tail. He looks back with hooded lids, shadows that Jungkook’s only just noticing bruising below his eyes and darkening his gaze.

He feels like he’s seeing him for the first time. Without the filter of unbridled joy and excitement Jimin had worn for most of their interactions until now, expressions exaggerated and exuberant, he looks like he hasn’t been well-cared for. Past the sculpted muscles, he’s awfully thin, bones protruding. He looks subdued partly from exhaustion, like he’s too tired to even fully feel his fear. Like he hasn’t had enough food or sleep. The sunburn is a minor, temporary ailment in comparison.

He’s rushed with the need to look after him in every way.

“Scared,” he says quietly, like he’s worried Jungkook will get mad at him for admitting it. He knows Jimin is still learning to trust him, but he’s been doing a terrible job of befriending him if he’s still scared Jungkook might hurt him.

But despite his fear, Jungkook takes note that he never once reached for his knife through all of it. It gives him hope.

Jungkook clears his throat and whispers, “why?”

Jimin averts his eyes to his tail and flaps the end of it against the towel weakly. Of course. He can’t move like he’s used to, and Jungkook just threw him into this unfamiliar and compromising situation without warning.

“This is different.” Jimin rubs a careful hand over the soft towel material. He glances up at Jungkook from beneath his eyelashes. “I don’t know this.” Another half-hearted flap of his tail.

“I’m so, so sorry. I– I should have at least asked first.”

“Pinky promise I go back.”

He holds out his little finger and Jungkook takes it eagerly.

“Of course– yes, of course I’ll help you back to the ocean after. Pinky promise.”

Jimin is completely compliant after that, if still a little tense. He’s quiet too, but Jungkook can’t tell if it’s from fear or because of how tired he seems.

After Jungkook carefully dries his burnt skin with a smaller towel and pulls out a clear green bottle of aloe vera, his curiosity comes back in full force, which is much more reassuring than his compliance.

Jungkook lets him examine it, watching him turn the bottle over in his hands and sniff the glob of gel Jungkook squirts into his own hand. He only snatches it away when Jimin snakes out his tongue to taste.

Jimin melts under the cooling aloe when Jungkook starts to spread it over his face, chest, arms, and back. As he reaches the worst burns over the back of his neck and shoulders, Jimin starts making little sounds of pleasure that have Jungkook flushing as darkly pink as him. He sets his jaw and finishes as quickly as he can.

His sanity is tested again when he offers him a banana, having hoped the food would be as beneficial for Jimin’s half-starved body and energy-levels as it is for humans. Bananas are Jungkook’s go-to food for everything. They can’t hurt. It’s definitely better than letting him eat manufactured aloe gel if he’s that hungry.

But he’s wrong. He immediately regrets giving Jimin the half-peeled banana when he begins tentatively licking it. (Why does he have to lick everything??) It’s seriously hurting his resolve to remain unaffected.

Jimin is like a puppy, he reminds himself. A sweet, innocent puppy who doesn’t know any better. A cute puppy with toned abs, sinful lips, and holy shit, how is his tongue that long?

Jungkook finally gets Jimin to bite into the banana so he can actually taste it, and he looks like he’s having a religious experience. He practically inhales it then, red cheeks stuffed full with banana and shiny with aloe.

He has to keep him from eating the whole bunch, not sure he should eat too much new food all at once. They compromise, and Jungkook brings him the seaweed he points out and manages to catch a crab for him, not wanting Jimin to wash off all the aloe by getting it himself. Jimin praises him proudly from where he waits on the towel, but he’s sure he’s being patronized, having seen Jimin in action the day before.

Jimin makes quick work of the palm-sized crab, taking his knife to skillfully pry apart the shell and eat the meat raw. Jungkook tries the seaweed at Jimin’s insistence (he’d absolutely refused to eat raw crab), but it’s so salty and bitter it has him chugging from his water bottle. Jimin watches enviously as he eats a banana instead. Swallowing around nothing, Jimin licks his lips, seaweed forgotten and clutched tight between his fingers. Jungkook relents and gives him the last bite of his banana. It’s worth it for the way he lights up.

BTS – Butterfly

After they eat, Jimin grows sleepier, but he’s being stubborn about staying awake. He keeps wavering where he’s sat on his tail, and he keeps hiking his eyebrows high in an attempt to lift his eyelids, but they stay low and heavy.

“Just sleep! You can’t play like this anyway.”

“No.” Jimin gives a little shake of his head like he’s trying to clear water from his ears. “Sleep is dangerous.”

Jungkook catches him as he nearly tips over again, Jimin’s tail not really designed for sitting. He’s been using his hands for stability, but his balance is lost somewhere between here and dreamland.

“It’s more dangerous if you don’t sleep,” Jungkook says, starting to get exhausted himself.

Jimin turns toward him, still in his hold, and seems to deliberate.

“Jungkook don’t sleep,” he tells him seriously. “Tells Jimin if it comes.”

“If what comes?”

He hadn’t planned on sleeping anyway, but he wonders over what Jimin is expecting. The property is private, and as safe as it gets. Nothing should disturb them here.

His only answer is a pout and, “Dangerous.”

“What, seagulls? I told you those weren’t dangerous.”

“Dangerous,” Jimin whines, gesturing around the cove and up the cliff path.

“Okay… okay, I’ll wake you up if anything comes, but please sleep?”

Jimin makes him pinky promise again before he leans his full weight on Jungkook with a deep sigh. Jungkook freezes while Jimin nuzzles into his side and shifts around until he finds a comfortable position on his lap. He blinks sleepily up at him, clearly exhausted but nevertheless occupied with studying Jungkook’s face from this new angle.

It’s too much, and Jungkook looks away to the glittering scales of his tail. He hasn’t really had a chance to appreciate Jimin’s tail yet. He’d felt self-conscious about staring at it too intently (he didn’t want to be rude or that guy), and there had been plenty else to distract him (like all the rest of Jimin).

But he has to admit, now that he really looks, it’s beautiful. His scales iridescent and fins long and flowing even draped across the towel.

“It’s okay.”

He jerks his attention toward the sleepy mumble coming from his lap, brows furrowing in question.

“Touch. It’s okay.”

Jungkook searches for any hesitation, but Jimin just smiles at him sweetly and sleepily. Trailing his eyes back down his length, he reaches with a hand, touch tentative, tracing the shape of dime-sized scales, the places where they overlap. The individual scales are hard, offering protection, but they’re designed to move against each other easily, with flexibility.

He flattens his palm over an expanse of scales where Jimin’s hip should be, feeling their smoothness and gentle give. They’d felt cool when he’d picked him up earlier, but they’re almost warm now that Jimin has been out of the ocean for a while. Jimin sighs in content at the contact.

Jungkook glances at him, asking, “Can you feel that?”

Jimin gives him a look and a cheeky, “Yes, Jungkook.” He hadn’t thought his question that obvious, but he’s learning that Jimin has a bit of a snarky side.

“No, I mean, like…” He moves his fingers up to where scales meet the soft skin of Jimin’s waist, wiggling them all the way. “Like this. Can you feel it the same?” Judging by the way Jimin giggles and squirms at the tickling touch over his tummy, he can already guess the answer is no.

“No. Different,” Jimin says breathlessly.

Jungkook hums and grins, suddenly feeling mischievous. There’s no way his scales hold nerve-endings in the same way skin does, so it’s likely the weight of his hand that Jimin feels on his tail.

“But you can feel it if I do this?”

He places his hand over the center of Jimin’s tail, below his navel, and presses down the heel of his hand. He’d expected a reaction, but not for Jimin to practically convulse and squeal in distress. Jimin shoves his hand away, leaving his own protectively over the spot he’d pressed into. He looks positively scandalized. Crap, maybe he’d gone a bit too far. He’d probably squished an organ or something.

“S-sorry, maybe you should just sleep.”

Jimin raises his eyebrows as if to say, Really? Now you expect me to sleep?

It’s more than a little awkward.

“I’ll- I’ll sing you a lullaby.”

He jumps into it without much more thought. He’d always liked the acoustics of the cove, and it gave him something else to focus on beside Jimin’s judgement.

He sings a favourite of his, something soft and slow, averting his gaze. To his surprise, Jimin’s demeanor changes instantly. He relaxes against him, lowering all defenses, and harmonizes with him wordlessly. It sounds pretty, the two of them together, but Jimin’s voice begins to fade out after a while. He rolls onto his side and eventually even his low little hums disappear.

Carefully running his fingers through the pale pink strands of his hair, still a little damp, and untangling the knots stiff from salt, Jungkook marvels at how far they’ve come, despite minor setbacks, how far Jimin is willing to trust him in just two short days.

Looking at the bunched fists and squished lips from where he’s wrapped around Jungkook’s thigh, he vows again that he can never take advantage of that trust. Jimin looks so helpless like this and clearly needs someone to care for him at the most basic levels, and Jungkook is prepared to be that person for as long as he can, regardless of his own complicated feelings.

From this new resolution, he decides he needs to learn Jimin’s language. It’s fantastic that they’ve more or less been able to communicate because of Jimin’s startling aptitude for language, but he’s realizing now how poor of an excuse that is not to put in any effort himself. Jimin has eagerly done all he can to meet Jungkook on his grounds, in terms of language and literal land, so the least Jungkook can do is try harder.

Chapter Text

BTS - A Brand New Day (BTS World Original Soundtrack)

As the days pass and Jungkook continues to return to the cove each morning, figure framed by the clifftop and the dawn, Jimin’s fears gradually lessen. He still resents each setting of the sun because he knows Jungkook will have to leave, his absence always lying heavy over the cove, but he’s not as afraid he’ll disappear completely, swallowed up by the rise of the land where Jimin can’t reach him.

He takes to waiting above the surface, out in the open, emboldened because he never meets anyone else in the cove except for a few of the noisy squawkers that swim through the air and try to steal his food. Seagulls, as Jungkook calls them.

And despite how Jungkook teases him, he’s not afraid of seagulls. They just have a lot of nerve. As if he would share any of the sweet human food his Jungkook gives him (bananas are still his favourite, but he’s liked most of what he’s tried so far).

He notices other changes in himself, growing stronger each day he spends with Jungkook. He can feel it. His frame swiftly fills out over muscle and bone, the result of eating twice as much as usual, though most of it goes to his tail, rounding it out below his hips. His energy returns. He shows off a little, jumping as high above the water as he can before crashing back down, just for the way Jungkook laughs and smiles at him fondly.

And once the tender redness of his sunburn fades, soothed by Jungkook’s strong-smelling aloe, his body begins to turn just as golden as Jungkook. Like a bit of his golden warmth has rubbed off, seeped from his skin, and bathed Jimin in his colour.

He wonders at his own skin, holding an arm before his face to examine it, or pressing a hand to Jungkook’s chest to compare their tones and feel the reassuring beat of his heart.

He finds his voice again. Songs rising from his chest after being trapped and painfully constricted for so long. Songs of joy and meeting, excitement and gratitude, euphoria and serenity – almost forgotten after going so long unused but then slipping out unbidden whenever Jungkook chases him underwater with goggles that make his already big eyes bigger, whenever he brings him something new with which to learn or play, or whenever he simply lies next to him on the beach, close enough to root out any cold tendrils of lingering loneliness from his heart.

Jungkook simply listens as Jimin sings until he urges him to join in, and he does, clumsily at first, but he tries. And his voice is beautiful regardless. Jimin thinks he’ll know these songs as well as his own one day.

That has to be the greatest change of all.

He’s surprised when Jungkook asks to learn more of his language. Jimin had been trying so hard to communicate with Jungkook that initially he worried he'd failed somehow. But Jungkook had been quick to reassure him that he only wants to learn more about Jimin the same way Jimin has been learning about him.

He can’t help choking up from the emotion he feels then.

Jungkook progresses much slower than he himself does, but it warms Jimin to see him trying just as hard.

Jimin begins speaking Jungkook’s language over his signs (though it’s impossible to do both fully without compromising one or the other) in the hopes he’ll pick it up easier. Jungkook too will try to throw in the signs he knows as he speaks. It never fails to make Jimin smile when he does.

Today, they’re playing a vocabulary game. And because Jungkook sometimes needs a little extra encouragement, Jimin has come up with a set of rewards for him.

“Nose,” Jungkook says aloud and signs, tapping his own nose.

Most body parts are intuitive and easy to learn, but now comes the challenging part of the game.

“Trouble,” Jimin says, picking something closely related to nose, conceptually, but with a more metaphorical meaning. He clips the tip of his nose with his fingers – because trouble is getting your nose caught – slowing his movements and exaggerating his expression of distress so Jungkook can more easily copy the word.

“Trou… trouble?” Jungkook tries, looking at Jimin questioningly. He’s close. He has his hands right, even if he’s hesitant, but there’s something about his facial expression that’s a little off. Maybe he’s being too picky.

Jimin swims closer to Jungkook where he stands waist deep in the water. It’s the easiest depth for them both to move freely and their mutual comfort zone, where Jimin’s torso breaks the surface while the water holds his tail safe and hidden, hugging the boundary between their worlds.

He demonstrates again, really making his face pop until the expression is glaring with trouble.

It works, Jimin sees realization light behind Jungkook’s eyes and he repeats after Jimin triumphantly, practising a few more times for good measure.

“You did it!” he giggles, stomach fluttering in anticipation. In one smooth motion, he pushes against the water below him to rise up and meet Jungkook’s nose in a kiss, hands framing his cheeks. It’s just a brush of his lips, a peck, but they’ve tingled pleasantly each time he’s pressed them to Jungkook’s sun-warmed skin.

They’ve covered quite a few words today that resulted in kisses to Jungkook’s hand, arm, shoulder, chest, back, neck, forehead, ear… and now nose, so there’ve been a lot of tingles. But he likes the feeling.

Even better may be the way Jungkook fidgets and ducks his head after each kiss, with a bashful, “Um, th-thanks.”

He’s too cute with how flustered he gets each time, like he’s unused to the simple affection.

He wonders, not for the first time this morning, if Jungkook’s parents never gave him kisses. Jimin’s own mother and father had lavished him with their kisses and sweet songs of love and care while he was growing up. He never had to doubt how much they cherished him. He would have assumed Jungkook’s parents to be the same. Parents are supposed to love their children.

The idea that Jungkook’s parents might have withheld kisses combined with how much he misses his own mother and father is too sad for such a happy moment. He tucks the thought away for before sleep when he reflects on his day.

Jimin reaches up and gives him a quick peck on the cheek. An impulse. Jimin will give him all the kisses he could ever want.

Endearingly wide-eyed, Jungkook looks at him in confusion.

“But I haven't learned that one yet.”

“It’s okay.” Jimin shrugs his shoulders and tucks his chin low between them. “I want to kiss Jungkook.”

Something passes through the air between them on the warm breeze. Jungkook’s eyes are no longer confused but quiet and serious. Heavy on him.

“Lips,” he says. Jimin’s breath catches under Jungkook’s unwavering attention, though he’s not sure why.

“Lips.” He makes a quick gesture tracing the outline of his mouth, then puckers his lips and adds, “Kiss.” It’s simpler than the other words he’s taught him today, but it’s the only one he can think of in the moment.

Jungkook imitates him easily this time, signing it perfectly on his first try. It seems almost a request to Jimin, who knows what is meant to come next, as if Jungook were asking, kiss me?

“Did I get it right?” he asks aloud, voice low and probing.

Jimin nods silently, leans up against him. The tingles are everywhere and he hasn’t even kissed him yet.

He feels shy when Jungkook’s eyes dip down to his lips. He should really kiss him. If anyone deserves kisses it’s Jungkook.

Jimin draws a sharp, shallow breath and pushes their lips together, and – oh. Those can’t be called tingles anymore. A kiss has never felt quite like this. Like it’s stealing his breath and making his head spin.

Dazed, he pulls away, but instantly misses the feeling, the warmth and softness of Jungkook’s lips.

At least Jungkook looks equally disoriented, tipping forward where Jimin had been. He shakes himself and seems to regroup.

“Lunch!” he exclaims. “Let’s eat lunch. I can’t handle any more words unless they’re the kind I can eat.”

“Okay,” Jimin agrees quietly, but he can’t put the kiss from his mind. He’s not naïve. He knows there are different kinds of kisses, but he’s unsure where this one falls. He thinks of how his parents would kiss each other, tender and lingering. A new ache grows in his gut.

He’s distracted all through lunch, and even sweet bananas can’t erase the trace of Jungkook’s kiss. Can’t keep him from fixating on the shape of his lips as they wrap around mouthfuls of food.

~*~

“What is it?” Jimin asks from over his shoulder. Jimin makes no attempt to hide his eagerness. By now he’s used to Jungkook’s daily surprises of new foods and new items to play with, but he appears no less enthralled by each one. It’s why Jungkook continues to scour Jin’s cupboards for something different every day, just to see his eyes light up with a giddy smile.

He has to at least try to match the treasures of the ocean Jimin keeps bringing him. Even so, bananas and knick knacks scrounged up from the cabin had begun to feel woefully inadequate the day Jimin had shown up with an honest-to-god perfect pearl the size of his thumb and insisted he keep it.

Unfortunately (for Jin), he hasn’t brought many of his own possessions with him to the island, more focused on getting away from the mainland and his parents in a hurry, not ready to deal with any of his family drama.

But for once this surprise legitimately belongs to him and isn’t just something he’s stolen from his brother. (Though it’s just borrowing if he brings it back afterwards. If he brings it back. He can’t help it if Jimin’s grown attached to a couple of Jin’s Mario figurines. The same goes for several of Jungkook’s rings. What could he do when Jimin looked at him with bright, expectant eyes?)

Even though he’s been feeling artistically stifled and been busy hiding away from the world, today he’s feeling inspired, or maybe he just needs a distraction. He knows he won’t survive another of Jimin’s vocabulary lessons if today were to go anything like yesterday’s, if the rewards were to be half as sweet as Jimin’s kisses.

He absolutely cannot, will not think about that and the tension that settled between them afterwards. Not a bad tension necessarily, more like an awareness that didn’t exist before. But he’s not going to think about it, so this particular show and tell is a big one, featuring one of the few things he’d never travel without.

“It’s my camera.” One of them anyway. He’s built up a bit of a collection by now. Jungkook lifts the precious cargo from its compartment in his large, black camera bag, its weight familiar in his hands. “Careful. It’s fragile and important to me.”

He’s opted for his waterproof camera and lens to bring to the cove. He trusts Jimin to be careful, but sometimes his curiosity gets the best of him, and he still doesn’t seem to understand that water can ruin things. Like bread. He’s watched him eat one too many soggy sandwiches, Jimin scarfing them down unbothered while Jungkook tries not to wince at the sight.

“Can I touch? What’s it do?” Jungkook smiles at the cautious question. He’s kneeling on the ledge with Jimin eagerly crowding in as close as possible while still remaining in the water, but he waits for Jungkook’s express permission to touch.

“I’ll show you,” he says, detaching Jimin and powering on the camera before swinging around and turning it on him, pressing record.

“It… captures images so you can watch them again later,” he explains. Jimin blinks at him in the viewfinder, getting closer until only an eye and part of his nose are visible. “Can you say hi to the camera and introduce yourself?”

“Hi camera?” Grinning uncontrollably, Jungkook puts enough distance between them until he’s in frame again. “I’m Jimin.”

His pink hair is half-dry and mussed, a cute, untamed look. Behind him, the cove glitters with reflected morning sunrays, providing a perfect, picturesque backdrop. In the high-resolution of his camera lens, Jungkook can even pick out faint freckles over the bridge of Jimin’s nose.

Each day the merman spends under the sun, the more it seems to draw his natural beauty into the light.

He’d intended to film a few silly things to show Jimin how his camera works, but now he wants this for himself – Jimin captured in his camera so he’ll have him like this always. He switches to interview mode, only semi-serious but wanting to keep Jimin engaged.

“Tell me about yourself, Jimin.”

“What do you mean?” Jimin still seems baffled by the camera and the reason why Jungkook is looking at him through it, but as long as he has Jungkook’s undivided attention, he’s typically content to play along.

“What are your hopes, fears, dreams? All the generic stuff.”

Jimin bites his lip and considers his answer.

“I hope Jungkook stays here.”

Jungkook’s gut knots. That’s something they’ve never addressed. As much as he’s loved every magical moment spent with Jimin in their sanctuary, it’s been escapist, and he knows he can’t run from his life forever. Eventually he’ll have to return to the mainland, to university, to his parents.

“I’m scared of all,” Jimin continues and gestures around himself, unaware of Jungkook’s inner turmoil and yanking him back into the present.

“What do you mean by ‘all’? What do you have to be scared of here?”

Jimin shakes his head.

“Above water, it’s always dangerous for me.” He hesitates and Jungkook watches his eyes flicker over him behind the camera. “People like you are dangerous for me.”

Oh. So he does know. Jungkook lowers his camera and pauses the recording to meet Jimin’s eyes directly. Until now, he’d thought that maybe Jimin had escaped the horrors of the hunt for his people, had remained innocent of all that humans have inflicted on them.

But of course he knows. And now he has enough mastery of Jungkook’s language to express it to him clearly, so he can’t deny it any longer. It must have been his own wishful thinking that even allowed him to believe otherwise. It had been the only way to hold at bay the guilt that’s now eating at him.

“I’m sorry,” Jungkook whispers. “But I promise it’s safe here. At least here, with me.”

Over his shoulder, Jimin’s eyes follow the cliff top, which conceals the cabin lying beyond it and the path leading to the small island village beyond even that.

Though Jimin can know none of that, he asks, “How do you know?”

“My brother, Jin– ”

“Family?” Jimin interjects. He’s laser-focused, nearly vibrating in excitement at the mention of family.

“Yes, my family, my brother. He owns this cove. It’s private property, so no one else can come here,” Jungkook does his best to explain.

Jimin furrows his brows, visibly trying to work that one out in a way that makes sense to him.

“Your brother is very strong? He protects here?”

Jungkook snorts, picturing Jin guarding his property from anyone who would dare try to visit. Jin posturing, proclaiming himself king of the rock, waving around a stick and red with outrage. Yeah, he can see it, maybe even a little too easily.

“No, not like that but, um, there are rules. Only people he lets can come here.”

“But I come here.”

Well, he has him there.

“The rules only apply to humans. You get special access from the ocean as a merman, and I’m the only human allowed here because I’m family.”

Jimin visibly relaxes at the news, shoulders loosening. He smiles, pure and peaceful.

His moods mirror the phases of the moon – eyes popped round in wonder, then shrinking into happy crescents, until finally they’re entirely eclipsed in absolute euphoria. Jungkook wants to chart them all. To make sense of the tides pulling at him now that he’s fallen into Jimin’s gravity.

Jungkook fights the urge to lift his camera back in place to capture the moment. He wants to be fully present for this conversation.

“Tell me about your dreams.”

“I want to find my family and my…” Jimin huffs in exasperation. He signs a word, linking two of his fingers, but Jungkook has no way of divining what it means, not if Jimin doesn’t also know it in his language.

“What is it? Can you tell me some other way?”

Jimin casts about and seems to make a decision. He swims around the ledge, into the shallows, and beaches himself. Though it’s not his favourite thing, Jimin has gotten much more comfortable out of the water. Jungkook follows him and crouches down next to where he’s lying on his stomach.

Chin resting on one of his hands, Jimin draws in the sand with the other. Two simple figures with tails, outstretched arms connected, likely holding hands, and a similar, but smaller figure below them.

“My family.”

Jungkook indicates the two connected figures and guesses, “Your mom and dad?”

“Yes, and Jimin,” he says, pointing to the remaining merman figure. Jimin draws a fourth merman next to the one representing himself and joins their hands as well. He draws a circle around the fourth figure, breaking the connection between them with the new line. “I want to find my family and my…” he repeats, pointing at the circle and making the same sign as before.

“Oh.” Jungkook feels something sink in him with the realization. “Your lover.”

“Yes! Lover.” He’s smiling, triumphant at conveying his meaning, but Jungkook can’t match his enthusiasm.

He’d told himself that Jimin was off-limits from the start, but a few kisses were all it took to make him waver. So much for not thinking about it. Now all he has to show for it is a growing hole where all his fragile, malformed hopes had been. Unsure what exactly he’d even wanted other than more. More of anything Jimin had to offer.

Despite his disappointment, he has more urgent questions.

“Why…” Why does Jimin need to find them in the first place? Why had he been alone when he found Jungkook? “What happened? Where are they?”

Jimin glances down at his rudimentary drawing.

“I don’t know,” he says quietly, pitifully. Jungkook aches at the cast of his eyes and the pout of his lower lip. He should have asked all these questions sooner, provided some comfort for Jimin, who has only ever asked for his company.

“Jimin…” he hesitates, not wanting to dig carelessly at a wound he doesn’t know the full depth or breadth of. “Are you… all alone?”

Jimin startles him by pushing himself upright abruptly, disturbing the sand beneath him that holds the likeness of his family.

“No.” His lips are pressed thin with determination. “I have Jungkook and Tae-Tae.”

“Tae-Tae?” Jungkook asks in surprise, making the V sign before his eye as Jimin had. It’s the first time he’s heard the name, heard Jimin reference a specific person at all. “Who’s that?”

Jimin smiles something sweet and precious, warmth bursting from the curve of his lips and squint of his eyes. Jungkook feels a pang of jealousy and realizes how accustomed he’s become to being the only cause for those smiles.

“Tae-Tae is special. I find him again soon in the deep water when the cold comes.”

“Oh.” The realization takes full hold of him. Jimin is looking for his family and his lover. Even the mere mention of Tae-Tae has Jimin glowing with happiness. Tae-Tae is special and Jimin is going to find him again.

“What’s Tae-Tae like?” he asks, trying not to be too obvious in his motives for this line of questioning.

“He’s big!” Jimin exclaims, and Jungkook nearly chokes on air. He hadn’t expected that. “And strong and kind and gentle,” Jimin gushes.

Jungkook pictures it. A merman, built big like a body-builder. Tae-Tae, holding Jimin with careful hands, a gentle giant. Them swimming together in a magical ocean wonderland.

“Oh, that’s great, Jimin.” Despite the stiltedness of his comment, Jimin still smiles at him, happy.

“Tae-Tae plays with me and feeds me sometimes.”

He tries not to think of how he’s done those things with Jimin too. How he’s kissed him. 

Seeing the soft look that overtakes Jimin whenever he talks about Tae-Tae, he thinks Jimin deserves someone like that. Someone to love him tenderly, who can meet his affectionate nature and match it. Another merman who can share the ocean with him.

He shouldn’t be jealous.

But he doesn’t think he can keep talking about Jimin’s lover either.

He gets his camera again. Filming and photography have always been the perfect outlet for Jungkook. Whenever he doesn’t want to feel, he’ll let the camera do it for him.

Parents fighting again? He’d always wanted to film the flow of traffic from their high-rise. He’s having trouble making friends in high school? It’s the perfect time to snap that shot of the tenacious wildflower growing out of a crack in the concrete.

He can always process his emotions later when he’s going over the footage.

“Look here, Jimin.”

So he’ll film Jimin and fill his memory card with the memories that are too much for him to hold all on his own.

Later he’ll show Jimin the playback and how his camera works.

Even later, back at the cabin, he’ll go over it all again, organizing clips, colour-grading, or just simply letting it replay.

For now, he zooms in on Jimin’s smile. A smile just for him.

Chapter Text

BTS - Paradise

Two feet wade deeper into the shallows, shins, knees, and part of a thigh appearing. Jimin watches them from where he’s hiding behind a rock, waiting. Bubbles pulled down from the surface with each step caress and conceal the two legs, and beyond that he can just barely discern the rest of the person, blurry and indistinct above water.

He suppresses a giggle and waits until the water reaches the human’s strange, colorful shorts that he’s not allowed to peek under (no matter how curious he still is). He loves surprising Jungkook like this but, unexpectedly, today he’s really let his guard down.

Jimin strikes. Darting out from his hiding place, he launches himself out of the water with one massive push and wraps his arms around the human’s waist, tackling him.

“Got you!”

The human screeches, unfamiliar voice echoing off the rocky walls, and falls backwards with a splash and panic equal to Jimin’s, who’s frantic to untangle their limbs as alarm races through him, heavy with his heartbeat.

It’s supposed to be safe here. Jungkook said so. Only Jungkook should be here, but even if he were startled, he doesn’t screech like that – loud, repeated, and sustained. And as Jimin finally puts some space between himself and the stranger, his eyes confirm what he already knew. It’s not Jungkook.

Jungkook lied.

The water is too shallow for Jimin to move properly, but he braces himself with one hand against the sandy bottom, while the other draws his knife to point up at the other, steady but for the occasional tremor.

“Stay away!” Jimin demands.

Still sprawled on his back in the shallows, the human splutters and curses and speaks too quickly for Jimin to fully understand, but beneath the panic and between profanities, he does pick up, “…can’t even go for a swim! in my own cove! without being attacked …”

Wait, his cove? Had Jimin heard him correctly?

“You’re Jin? Jungkook’s family?” Jimin asks with surprise.

He realizes that while Jungkook had said his brother protects the cove from other humans, it would make sense for his brother to come and go as he pleases, to be the exception. He breathes out the barest bit of tension, hoping.

The stranger gasps and points an accusatory finger at Jimin, who flinches.

“That brat! I knew he was hiding something! He runs away to my cabin – without a word mind you, hasn’t answered his phone in weeks – and now he’s keeping a murderous merman in my cove!”

Jimin relaxes some more, lowering his knife, and raising his voice over Jin’s fast-paced rambling.

“It’s okay. You only scared me. Please speak slow.”

Jin seems to calm down a fraction at that, or perhaps he’d simply frozen at the sound of his voice, but either way he pauses long enough to properly look Jimin up and down.

“Holy shit,” is all he says, eyes wide as they go trying to take him in, finally catching up with the situation.

Jimin laughs at his outburst and feels his residual fear drain away.

“Holy shit,” he agrees as he greedily drinks in the sight of Jungkook’s brother, searching for resemblances in his features. Disappointingly, he finds less than he hoped. Jin’s face is more rounded and his lips much fuller, mouth set in an almost permanent pout with how thick they are.

Jin also has extremely wide, broad shoulders that taper down to his waist, similar in body-shape to Jungkook, but even in this regard he’s just a bit bigger than Jungkook, whose waist is so small that it rivals Jimin’s own.

Jungkook’s brother is extremely handsome in his own right, but Jimin can’t help but compare him against the familiar features he’s grown to cherish in Jungkook, that he’s traced with reverent fingers. 

It takes a while longer and Jimin making a show of tucking his knife away and making himself as non-threatening as possible, before Jin truly calms down from his shock and surprise.

“So Mr. Murderous Merman,” Jin begins tentatively, “you seem to know me and my brother, but I have no idea who you are.”

“I’m Jimin.”

Jimin shows him how to sign his name the way he did for Jungkook, a small thrill going through him as Jin learns and speaks his name. Jin is still timid and it’s not as overwhelming as it had been the first time Jungkook had said it, but it satisfies something deep and primal within him all the same.

He smiles brightly, and when Jin returns it, he thinks that despite the scare he had, this day will turn out splendidly.

~*~

Jungkook wakes with a start. When he becomes aware of where he is, lying on the plush leather couch with a blanket thrown over him in the cabin’s cozy living area, and why he’s slept here, he jolts to his feet. He’d not been expecting visitors when his brother had shown up late last night without warning and taken the bedroom.

When he spies the omelet breakfast left out for him on the counter in the adjoining kitchen, a gesture which he’d normally appreciate, he curses his ability to sleep through anything.

“Seokjin!” he calls as he dashes to the bedroom, skidding in the doorway. The bed is freshly made and there’s no sign of Jin anywhere.

Why does Jin have to be such a functional human being first thing in the morning? Couldn’t he sleep in just this once? Nevermind how he’d found Jungkook so easily, figuring out where he’d run away to despite him cutting off contact with everyone.

He runs out of the cabin, as usual not bothering with his sandals, still in the t-shirt and boxers he’d gone to sleep in.

He can’t find Jin outside in the yard anywhere either. Shit, shit, fuck .

He’d explicitly asked him not to go down to the cove without him. But then again, it’s just like Jin to do the exact opposite of what he’s told.

Usually Jungkook admires him for it. Jin’s impressive that way. It’s how he’s made it out from under their parents’ thumb while Jungkook has been left there to squirm.

His quiet defiance, defined by actions and not words, began with him dyeing his hair blond at fourteen and ended with him kickstarting his own acting career straight out of high school, getting cast off the street. Unlike Jungkook, Jin is a force that even his father couldn’t tame, chaotic and pervasive.

Jungkook thinks that what bothers his father most is not that Jin has followed a path he disapproves of, but that he’s done it without using any of his money or connections and become incredibly successful in his own right.

Jin somehow always gets away with whatever he wants and paradoxically remains the best equipped to smooth over any familial tensions that arise, even if he's the cause. Jungkook’s not at all surprised he’s the one who managed to find him, but there’s a certain merman he desperately hopes Jin hasn’t also found in the process.

He hurries to the cliff edge, but upon seeing what awaits him at the bottom, Jungkook nearly tumbles down the rocky path to the cove. It’s only the familiarity of having walked this path countless times in the past few weeks that has his feet remembering the steps for him.

There, across the stout beach squeezed between the cliff and the ocean, Jin stands on his ledge as if it were a stage. Rapping enthusiastically. Each word articulated with gusto and punctuated with equally enthusiastic dance moves. If they can be called that. He’s more or less flailing for his gleeful audience of one.

Jimin is tickled pink at his antics – which is why Jin must be playing it up. Jin has his goofy side, but he doesn’t usually push it this far. Jimin’s obvious delight must have encouraged him. A dangerous thing, encouraging Seokjin.

But Jimin is truly the best audience, Jungkook can attest to this. His giggles have taken control over his body as he flops and splashes in the water before Jin’s improvised stage. His head dips in out and out of the water without care except for the performance he might miss. It’s laughter making him breathless anyway, not whether he’s breathing air or water.

The sight is as ridiculous as it is relieving.

“ I don’t give a shit! I don’t give a fuck– ”

“Jungkook!”

How Jimin spots him through his laughter and scrunched eyes, he’ll never know, but he feels some petty satisfaction at having Jimin refocus on him while Jin is still performing.

“Good morning, Jimin. I see you’ve met my brother Jin,” he says wryly as he reaches the water.

“Hey, Kook! What do you think you’re doing running away and hiding a merman in my cove?”

“I’m not– ” Jungkook sighs exasperated, cutting himself off. Jin has always been prone to dramatics, as is fitting for an actor. “You know what? Nevermind.”

“Jungkook,” Jimin whines, drawing his attention back to him while he pouts at being ignored.

Jungkook chuckles and makes his way over to him, uncaring if he soaks his clothes through. Jimin won’t let him get away without giving him a proper greeting anyway.

When he reaches him, he traps Jimin in his arms, lifting him up and hugging him tightly. Jimin returns the hug just as eagerly, planting a quick kiss on his cheek (which still flusters him and makes his heart hurt a bit no matter how many innocent pecks he’s endured now).

When he glances back, Jin is eyeing them both, looking serious and thoughtful. It makes him uneasy, so he deposits Jimin and claps a huge spray of saltwater at Jin to break the spell.

“Jeon Jungkook!” Jin splutters as he shakes off excess water. “I did not raise you on my back from a baby for you to disrespect me like this, you little shit!”

Jimin’s giggles renew and he repeats cheerfully, “Little shit.”

Oh god, he’s like a toddler repeating the swear words he hears. He’s going to have to keep him away from Jin before he tries to teach Jimin anything too embarrassing. Jungkook hopes Jin hasn’t already planted bad ideas in his head.

“Don’t lie in front of Jimin. We met when I was seven and our parents remarried. You didn’t raise shit.”

He splashes him again, with vigour, to Jin’s squawking protests. When Jin decides his clothes are beyond saving, he jumps off the ledge into the water to retaliate.

The water fight devolves as Jimin joins in and proceeds to nearly drown them both. They’re no match for the sheer volume of water Jimin can move with his tail, and he’s promptly declared the winner, Jin and Jungkook pleading for mercy.

Jimin beams at them, looking far too pleased with himself, but the two brothers can’t hide their smiles either.

It’s strange, Jungkook thinks, how easily Jin fits into his and Jimin’s dynamic. But no, that can’t be right. He should be surprised at how easily Jimin adjusts to his relationship with Jin. They’ve been brothers for more than a decade and he’s only known Jimin for a few weeks.

Still, as they continue to tease and play around, it feels as though Jin is the one joining them, not the other way around, no matter how Jungkook tries to rationalize it.

~*~

“Jimin seems pretty attached to you.”

At Jin’s words, Jungkook glances at him before quickly looking away. It feels like an accusation.

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t have a ton of people in his life.”

“You can’t stay out here forever, Jungkook.”

“Is this you kicking me out?”

“You know that’s not what I’m doing.”

“I know,” Jungkook agrees quietly, properly chastised. As much as he likes to give him shit, Jungkook loves and appreciates his stepbrother more than anyone else in his family, knowing how he always puts him first.

He’d been joking earlier, but Jin might as well have raised Jungkook. Five years his elder, Jin hadn’t hesitated in embracing the responsibility of a new little brother. Ever since, Jin has been there when Jungkook’s parents weren’t, which happens more often than not and is the reason why to this day he’s the first one he runs to.

Fleeing to the cabin had been like taking refuge in Jin, even if he hadn’t quite gone directly to him this time.

“Have you told Jimin?”

Jungkook takes a deep breath, slowly pushing it past his lips in a sigh. He watches Jimin as he swims tirelessly in the cove. Occasionally doing a jump or a flip for his and Jin’s benefit where they’re taking a break on the beach, sitting on the ledge with their legs dangling in the water.

“I will,” he says.

“It’s not even just about you going back home. I don’t have to tell you why a merman shouldn’t spend too much time around either of us, do I?”

“No, I know! I get it!” Jungkook can’t help his frustration. He doesn’t need Jin to spell it out for him. Hell, Jimin understands why it’s dangerous for him to be around humans, and yet he still returns here each day. “But you didn’t see him, Jin. He was so lonely . I couldn’t just leave him when he needed me,” he finishes quietly.

Jin pauses and considers his words. Then he says, tone still serious, “I’ll let them know you’re here. That you need time on your own. That should buy you a few more weeks, at least until the start of the new semester.”

“Can’t you just not say anything?” Jungkook pleads. “Pretend you don’t know where I am?”

It’s Jin’s turn to sigh.

“They’re really worried about you.”

Jungkook scoffs, “Like they care.”

“They do ,” Jin emphasizes. “They might show it in ways you or I don’t agree with, but of course they care.”

“Maybe your mom does, in her way, but dad just wants control of me. You don’t get it because he let you go. You’re free.”

Jin’s uncanny ability to get his way combined with the fact that he’s not the one sharing DNA with Jungkook’s controlling father are the two determining factors that set him apart from Jungkook. They may have shared the same household for years, come from the same world of rich elites, but Jin will never really get it. He’ll never feel that heavy obligation his father uses to chain him, the strings that move him. When he’s not distracting himself, he still feels their pull, how trapped he is, even out here.

Jimin is the fairy-tale he’s chosen to escape into. If only he could stay.

“You’ll need to talk to him eventually,” Jin says firmly, “and I have to let them know you’re alive and well, at least. And when you do go back, I’ll support you – you know that. You want to do videography? Great! You already know how brilliant I think you are at it. Pops will just have to accept that both his sons would rather be starving artists than inherit his business.”

Jin winks at him.

“You have a private cove,” Jungkook deadpans. “Your vast fame and fortune object to you calling yourself a starving artist. Your worldwide fan club too.”

“I didn’t say I was. I said I’d rather be one,” Jin replies cheekily.

Jungkook would have shot back with a smart retort of his own, but he suddenly has a very wet, very pouty merman pushing his way onto his lap.

“Why do you talk all alone? You missed my flip.”

“Sorry,” Jungkook apologizes as he wraps an arm around Jimin for stability, tucking his wet hair behind his ear with the other, as always relishing in each point of contact between them. “Jin was distracting me.”

He ignores the look Jin gives him in favor of chasing Jimin’s pout away with a cuddle, watching raptly as his eyes light up and he blooms under the gentle attention. He’ll deal with it later. All of it can just… wait. He wants to live with his fairy-tale a little longer.

~*~

Jin only stays with them a few more days, but his visit leaves an impression on the cove and its inhabitants.

Up until then, their meeting place had been something secret and private, inviolable. Jin had torn down that illusion of safety, that this place with its high walls and still waters exists only for them.

For Jungkook, his visit has been a reminder of the family and expectations that wait for him on the mainland, everything he’s been trying to escape. A reminder that this peace can’t last.

For Jimin, Jin had been a contrast to Jungkook, bringing his own feelings into sharp relief.

He adores Jin. The human has been nothing but kind to him, silly and eager to play, his singing voice strong and beautiful. 

But he’s not Jungkook. Jungkook who can make him smile with a look, who can make his heart race with a touch, and who floods his thoughts until he could almost forget everything he’s supposed to be searching for.

His parents are still out there somewhere. Tae-Tae will be returning from his migration soon and will worry if Jimin doesn’t meet him as always. And he still hasn’t found a partner, the entire reason he’d ever left the safety of his home, though this last grows less urgent with each passing day. Even if he were to find a partner, could they ever compare to the pure elation and warmth Jungkook’s presence brings him?

Jimin’s sad when Jin leaves the cove, and he questions why it’s necessary, not fully understanding the mysterious and faraway world of the Mainland that Jin and Jungkook describe, but it’s nothing close to the devastation he knows he would feel if Jungkook were to leave.

Life before Jungkook had been so much more grey than even he’d realized. He can’t fathom losing all these colours now. He won’t. Jungkook is his to keep.

Chapter Text

 Fleurie - Hurricane

Jungkook’s phone rings from the bedroom and he groans. He’s in the kitchen packing food so he can get down to the cove to see Jimin for the day.

He considers pretending he hasn’t heard it. The wind outside has been howling loud enough that it’s plausible, and he’s done a good job of ignoring his phone while he’s been out here so far.

When his phone stops ringing only to immediately start up again, he drops the canvas bag he’d been packing onto the table next to his camera bag with another groan and quickly makes his way to the bedroom where the damned device is plugged into the wall.

Before he left, Jin made him promise to keep the infernal thing charged and to check it at least once a day. But if this is another call or text from his father, he’s going to ignore it like all the others.

When it’s Jin’s ID that pops up instead, he fumbles around to unplug it and answer before it can go to voicemail.

“Jin?”

“Jungkook! Finally! I’ve been trying to reach you. ” Jin’s voice comes out impatient and hurried over the connection.

“I said I wouldn’t drop off the face of the earth again, not that I’d be glued to– ”

“No, listen,” Jin interrupts him and Jungkook feels a wave of annoyance and his own impatience starting to rise. “There’s a tropical cyclone about to hit the island. It’s missing us here on the mainland, which is why I didn’t hear about it sooner, but Jungkook, you have to get the cabin ready…”

Jin’s voice fades into intelligibility as Jungkook drops his phone onto the bed and turns to run out of the cabin, only one thought in his mind: Jimin.

~*~

Jungkook stumbles out of the cabin to the cove path. The wind whips his hair about his face and into his eyes distractingly. It’s grown long and a little scraggly during his stint away from the rest of the world. He pushes the strands aside impatiently.

At the edge of the cliff, where the path begins its steep winding descent, distant urgent cries reach his ears and raise goosebumps on his skin. There’s no mistaking Jimin’s voice or one of his mer-songs. The long, drawn-out melody is haunting and punctuated with sharp staccato notes that call out in warning.

He’ll never get used to the way Jimin’s songs seize onto his heart, visceral and immediate.

He frantically scans over what he can see of the cove as he descends, but Jimin is nowhere to be seen among the increasingly choppy waves. And the way the cove amplifies Jimin’s voice, it seems to be coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.

“Jungkook!”

The wordless song carries on around his name, and he finally locates the source at the bottom of the path. It’s no wonder he hadn’t spotted him sooner. He’d been searching the water, but Jimin has dragged himself across the beach and partway up the cliff path where he’s nearly hidden among the rocks.

He’s shocked Jimin managed to get that far, now noticing the trail of disturbed sand he’d left in his wake and how he seems to be trying to reach him through the strength of his arms alone. For how long has he been at this?

“Jimin, what are you doing?” he gasps when he finally reaches him, taking in the wild look of his eyes. His singing cuts off abruptly and he stretches a hand out to desperately clutch at Jungkook’s shorts. His fingers are scratched and his palms are a raw red from the rocks. The hands he relies on for communicating, exploring, hunting... the hands that hold on to Jungkook.

“Dangerous– coming.” In his panic he struggles to articulate himself. His hand jerks like he wants to sign but thinks better of it, and he tries again to vocalize his warning, “It’s not safe. Jungkook, you’re not safe.”

He tugs at Jungkook’s shorts, nearly pulling them down with the force, but Jungkook catches them and kneels down, taking Jimin’s face in his hands, attempting to calm them both.

“You’re worried about the typhoon that’s coming, right?” Of course Jimin would realize before he would. As alert as he is to his surroundings, he could probably sense it coming. Unlike Jungkook, who has apparently had his head in the sand. But they must also think alike, seeing as both of their first instincts had been to reach the other. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be safe up in the cabin.” He gestures up behind himself, but Jimin does not seem reassured, shaking his head in refusal. “Do you have somewhere you can hide and be safe during the storm?”

“The storm can’t reach deep into the water.” Jungkook is relieved to hear Jimin has the greater part of an entire ocean to take refuge in, though he should have guessed this isn’t the first storm he’s weathered. “But Jungkook, you can’t stay up there.”

“I’ll be fine, it’s okay– ”

“It’s not okay!” Jimin looks on the verge of desperation as he appeals to him. His knuckles are white where one hand still fists Jungkook’s shorts. “How can you be safe up there? Up there is where the storm comes from!”

“You just have to trust me and get yourself to safety,” he practically begs. If Jimin’s going to avoid the storm then he has to get away from the cove where he’s confined to shallower water. “Come on, hurry.”

They don’t have time for arguments, but Jimin isn’t in the right state to be reasoned with. Jungkook feels his own panic rising again as Jimin stubbornly shakes his head, resisting when Jungkook tries to pick him up and help him back to the water. He pushes against his arms and leans his weight away from him. They’re not high up the cliff, maybe a metre from the bottom, but Jungkook’s still scared of him getting hurt if he tumbles down.

Jimin has tears in his eyes and voice as he says, “No! no! I need to see you safe. My Jungkook.”

At those words, Jungkook’s heart breaks, only to sink further at their predicament. Jimin refuses to leave him. Jungkook doesn’t think there’s anything he can say to convince him either. He’s incredibly stubborn and strong-willed when he wants to be. But they need to separate to shelter from the storm. It’s not like Jimin can bunker down in the cabin with him.

Jungkook pauses and reconsiders, looking over his shoulder and following the rocky path up the cliff with his eyes. It’s well-worn, so the footing is sure, but it’s narrow. It would be easy to miss the path and have loose stones and soil give way underfoot. On his own it’s easy to catch himself, so it’s not something he usually worries about.

He glances back at Jimin, tonguing his cheek and calculating. Jimin still seems scared, but he’s also tensed with a determined look in his eyes like he’s about to fight the typhoon barehanded, or fight Jungkook if he tries to bring him back to the ocean again. He’s gained a bit of weight since they’ve met, necessary weight, but Jungkook’s also strong and has grown used to picking him up and carrying him short distances, especially since Jimin has begun asking for it. 

It’s not quite the same as carrying him up the cliff, but he has to do something. He has to try.

“Will you come with me then?” he asks before he can think about it too long or about every reason why it’s a bad idea. “I can carry you to the cabin and we can wait out the storm together.”

Jimin looks uncertain, face pinched. He clearly doesn’t trust that there is any safety to be found nearer the sky and the typhoon, but Jungkook hiding at the bottom of the ocean is not an option and they both know it. 

“Okay,” he finally agrees, “I trust you.” This time he easily, thankfully, lets Jungkook pick him up and hugs him tightly around his neck. They have no more time to waste.

"Okay, okay.” Jungkook takes a first firm step up the path. “We can do this.”

He’s about a third of the way, making good progress, when Jimin makes a distressed sound, jerking in his arms and clinging to him harder. He stiffens, bracing himself against the sudden movement and securing his footing until he can regain his balance.

“Shit, don’t do that.”

“Sorry, it’s high and scary,” Jimin whimpers into his neck where he’s hidden his face, quivering pitifully in Jungkook’s arms.

Jungkook takes a deep breath, trying to imagine what this must be like for Jimin. What if Jimin were to suddenly drag him down to the bottom of the ocean? Yeah, he’d probably be pretty freaked out too. And dead from lack of oxygen, but you know, details.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” he soothes. “Just try to stay still, hold tight, and don’t look down. It’s all gonna be okay.”

He’s trying to convince himself as much as Jimin, but they’ve gotten this far, so he sets another foot resolutely in front of the other.

He’s panting heavily by the time they’re nearing the top of the cliff from fighting wind and gravity, and each step is no longer as sure as before. He usually has no problem carrying Jimin, but it’s been a slow, careful uphill climb and he’s tiring by the second, legs trembling and thighs burning from the sustained effort. His back and arms ache from the strain, palms sweating treacherously as he adjusts his grip, trying to shift Jimin’s weight in a way that hurts less without actually dropping him.

Mercifully still, Jimin has a vice-like grip around Jungkook’s neck, taking at least some of the weight off his arms.

A few last agonizing pumps of his legs and he reaches the top. A few more unsteady steps taken away from the edge and he collapses on solid ground with Jimin still safely cradled in his arms. Jimin squeaks at the action, but finally unburies his face to look around in awe.

Jungkook is too busy catching his breath to care about the familiar sight, but it must all be so new and foreign to Jimin – the ocean blue and hazy in the distance on one side, the modest-sized cabin surrounded by its wild, leafy garden on the other.

Exhausted as he is, he’s aware he can’t keep Jimin out in the open like this, even if they are mostly tucked behind the cabin. With a grunt, he pushes to his feet again and hurries through the back screen door, catching it with his foot, and slipping past it shoulder first.

He peeks down at Jimin, who is gaping at his surroundings with his eyes bugging out. Cool, he’s just smuggled a merman into his brother’s cabin and probably broken at least two merfolk protection laws. It’s cool. He has to set Jimin down somewhere though, or his arms are going to fall off. 

Water. He should find some water.

He brings Jimin to the bathroom and deposits him in the bathtub, set against the far wall under a high window, a little gracelessly. It’s a tight fit, Jimin’s tail overflowing the sides, fins sticking out awkwardly. The ivory white basin and the varied green tiles along the outside contrast strikingly with Jimin’s pink. His scales slide over the slick surface of the tub walls as he slips down, and his palms squeak against the porcelain as he scrabbles for purchase.

Jimin looks up at him and makes a questioning noise in the back of his throat, appearing harried with arms akimbo as he braces himself just in order to stay upright.

“Right, bad idea.” Why he thought it was a bright idea to keep Jimin in the bathtub, he has no clue. Experience has quickly taught him otherwise. He might need to keep the bathtub filled with water so they have some ready to use during the storm anyway. “Let’s try the bedroom.”

His muscles hate him at this point, but he manages to get Jimin settled on the king-sized bed. The curtains remain closed, but even in the dim light, Jimin stands out against the slate grey of the bedding. After this he’ll never be able to get rid of the vision of Jimin laid out on his bed with tousled hair and bright, innocent eyes looking up at him.

Jimin swishes the end of his tail over the silky, unmade sheets and wonders wide-eyed at the multitude of pillows. At least he looks comfortable, although he flinches when the wind rattles the windowpane, reminding Jungkook he doesn’t have time to relax yet. 

“I have to go secure everything outside before the storm, so just stay here on the bed for a bit, okay? I won’t be long.”

Jimin, predictably, doesn’t want him to leave but seems to understand the urgency and the concessions Jungkook has already made for him, so he doesn’t protest too much as Jungkook heads out into the oncoming storm one last time.

He hardly knows what the hell he’s doing anymore, but he’s going to get them through this storm one way or another.

~*~

Daughter - Shallows

Jimin listens to the sounds of Jungkook leaving, his least favourite of all the sounds he makes. He strains for the traces of him outside over the howling of the wind. He listens until he’s unsure if he’s still hearing him, or if he’s simply tricking himself into believing he can.

As he’s chasing the last perceptible beats that could be Jungkook or the deceptive echo of his own heart, a piercing sound rings out and rips through his concentration.

He jolts up, heart racing wild in his chest as he hunts for the cause. The harsh trilling sound continues determinedly, and he locates the culprit near his hip where Jungkook had laid him down.

It’s a hard, flat slab like polished stone. But it’s too smooth, shiny, and perfectly shaped to not have been carefully crafted by someone. It lights up and flashes distressingly, still calling out stridently, and he doesn’t know how to make it stop.

“Shh, shhh,” he hushes it, trying to soothe the object that seems just as alarmed as he is. He pats it placatingly a few times and all at once the lights stop flashing and the noise cuts off.

A relieved sigh barely leaves his mouth before he hears a familiar voice ask, “Hello? Jungkook?”

He fumbles with the mysterious object, raises it to his face, and gasps.

“Jin!”

“Jimin??” Jin gapes back at him from the object, but in miniature, like the images captured in Jungkook’s camera.

Jungkook carries his camera around so often, and Jimin is familiar enough with it now, to recognize that Jin is appearing on a screen even though he must be elsewhere in reality. But unlike with the camera, Jin seems to see him. Jimin notices a smaller image of his own face squeezed into a corner and watches his eyebrows bunch in confusion.

“How did you get Jungkook’s phone? How– Hold on, is that the cabin’s bedroom? How on earth did you get there?”

Excitement quickly replaces Jimin’s confusion when he realizes Jin is actually talking to him through this phone and is not simply a recording.

“Jin!” he repeats, happier. “I miss you.”

Jin visibly softens at that.

“I miss you too, Jimin, but why are you there? Where’s Jungkook?”

“Jungkook carried me up here, but he left outside. He’ll come back soon, after he gets ready for the storm.”

“Oh good,” Jin breathes out. “I was worried since he disappeared all of a sudden, but as long as you’ll both be shut up in the cabin, you’ll be safe, so that’s a relief.”

A sudden worry dawns on Jimin.

“Jin. Are you safe?”

Jin chuckles and reassures him quickly, “I’m completely safe. I’m quite far from where you are, and the storm isn’t even going to really hit us here. We aren’t getting more than a little wind and rain later on. Just worry about you and Jungkook, okay?”

“Hm, okay,” Jimin hums, pacified. “Jin, why did you have to leave? Is it because of the storm?”

“No, I didn’t know about the storm before. But I guess we never really did do a good job of explaining it to you, did we?” In the pause that follows, Jin takes a long time to consider his next words, causing Jimin to fidget and slap his tail down a few times. “There are people who are counting on me and need me here. I had to leave because my whole life… my job, my home, and my family… is over here on the mainland.”

“But Jungkook is here and he’s your family,” Jimin is quick to correct, frowning and creasing his brow. He can see it in the little image of himself still reflected in a corner of the screen.

“He is now…” Jin trails off hesitantly, as if he’s not sure he should say what he does next, “but his life is here too and the cabin isn’t meant to be a place to stay, only to visit.”

Jin’s words wash over Jimin like ice water and freeze the air in his lungs. He can’t speak. He can’t breathe. He understands the implications of what Jin is saying all too well. And in Jin’s careful choice of words, he thinks he understands what he’s choosing not to say. Jungkook has already stayed longer than he was meant to.

 “Jimin? Jimin, can you hear me?”

“I understand,” Jimin forces out. It hurts. His chest hurts so badly he doesn’t know how it hasn’t collapsed under the unbearable pressure. But he takes one breath, then another. Breathing in spite of the impossible agony that fills him. It doesn’t ease, and he finds no relief.

A part of him has always known this happiness would be temporary. Since Jin left it’s been gnawing at him ever more insistently.

Jungkook always arrives at the cove with the sun, bright and golden, a warm balm to Jimin’s aching loneliness. Until the day he won’t. He’s forever terrified of it, their parting, but he’d managed to quiet those fears, gotten lost in the bliss of the moment, and nearly forgotten.

The insurmountable pain that comes with this returned knowledge is what’s unexpected. It feels like he’s already lost him.

“You… understand?” Jin asks, unsure and worried.

“I am always scared of the day Jungkook doesn’t come back,” he confides in a strained whisper.

“I’m so sorry,” Jin apologizes like it’s somehow his fault, but Jimin doesn’t believe it is. “I know he would stay forever for you if he could. He cares about you so much.”

Jungkook should have probably left after a few days like Jin, but he stayed. For Jimin’s sake? The thought satisfies some secret longing just as much as it cuts into him.

Jimin’s chest heaves, but he can’t dislodge the shards of ice that pierce him there.

“Care…”

“Hey,” Jin starts, leaning closer into the frame. Jimin clutches the phone closer for comfort like he would if Jin were really here and not just a tiny image on a cold screen. “Talk to Jungkook when he gets back, okay? You can both figure this out together.”

Together. Would there ever truly be a together for them? Not in the way he wants, he realizes in a moment of icy clarity.

With Jungkook, he wants a togetherness like his parents shared. A lifetime partnership.

Since coming to the cove, a part of him had given up his search for a partner. He had only to realize it’s because he’s already found him.

All that searching and he’s finally found him. He’s found him despite his fear and uncertainty, amid his heartbreak and crushing loneliness. He’s found him on an island he was never meant to visit, beyond the forbidden surface, up where the people are and Jimin shouldn’t be.

If only he could keep him, but this is not a place Jimin can stay either.

A tear quietly drips onto the phone, still gripped tightly in his hands, melted from the ice around his heart. He’s found the partner he wants, but neither of them can follow far after the other into his world. Jimin is already pushing it by being here. They could only ever meet temporarily in the liminal space of the cove.

“Oh, Jimin,” Jin murmurs.

Jimin hears the sound of water drops falling. At first, he thinks they’re his own tears now flowing freely down his face, but the pitter patters intensify into the loud rush of rain hitting the cabin. He looks up into the gloom of the dim room as if he could see it falling beyond the walls. The storm has found them.

“Jimin, I’m so sorry, but I have to go.” Jimin turns back to face Jin through the blurriness of his tears. He sees the scene behind Jin change, but he’s moving too quickly to make out much. He hears distant voices in the background. “I’m still on set and I– shit, I can’t let anyone see you.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t know what else to say.

Clearer now, Jimin hears a deep, distant voice say, “Jin, they need you NOW. Are you still trying to reach Jungkook?”

“Be safe and make sure to talk to Jungkook,” Jin says to Jimin in a rush. “I’m so sorry,” he hastily apologizes one last time before the screen goes black and he disappears.

Jin is gone, and Jimin is wholly alone again in this alien environment.

He’s never been so out of his element before.

Each time he thinks he’s uncovered the main mysteries of the surface, he reaches new heights and finds himself as ignorant as ever. He doesn’t even know what there is left to know. And the uncertainty is terrifying.

In the cove, he had the ocean, the promise of sanctuary never far from his reach. In the cabin, he can no longer even sense where it is.

He can hear the wind and rain raging outside with occasional thumps he hopes might be Jungkook, but there’s no hint of crashing waves. And though he can hear them, none of the elements reach him with their touch. The cabin is entirely enclosed. Even as he’s beginning to understand why Jungkook said they’d be safe here, he’s equally unsettled.

Visually, his surroundings are so foreign and overwhelming that they are too much for him to truly take in beyond a smattering of shapes and colours.

Falling back on the bed, he closes his eyes and curls up with his arms tucked tight to his chest, tail coming up and bending around him, fins curving above his head protectively. He turns his tear-stained face into the softness of the bed he rests on to shut out even a portion of this new, strange reality, the inevitability of losing Jungkook.

He takes a shaky breath in and a faint, familiar scent reaches him. It’s as mouth-wateringly sweet as always, with a hint of underlying musk.

Brushing his face and nose along the silky softness beneath him, he seeks out more of the scent until he finds it concentrated on one of the loose, fluffy mounds that surround him. He presses his face more firmly into the spongy material and draws in a deep breath through his nose.

So sweet and comforting it aches, Jungkook’s scent wraps lightly around him in a gentle embrace that tears the first sob from his throat. Helpless against the flood that follows, he buries the rest of his sobs in the bed. It hurts more for the sweetness, his only comfort lying in his ruin.

Chapter Text

Billie Marten - Bird

Jungkook wrestles the door shut against the heavy wind and rain and bolts it, shaking the storm out of his hair, breath short from rushing around. His shirt clings to him, heavy with rainwater. He plucks it from his chest and gives it a little shake as well, but it doesn’t do much good, so he peels it off over his head and discards it in the bathroom on his way past.

The outdoor furniture is locked up in the small shed to the side of the cabin. He’s checked and removed any loose items that could fly around the yard with the increasing winds. The windows are shuttered tightly. There’s only one matter left to attend, the most important.

As he approaches the bedroom, he hears the growing sounds of crying, which have him tensing with worry and hastening his steps. And the sight that greets him as he rushes in through the door and flicks on the lamp, Jimin curled up on himself and sobbing brokenly into the mattress, is even worse. He lets out these little heart-rending wails of despair and bone-shuddering sadness. Cries of utter devastation.

Jimin had been a little anxious when he’d left, but otherwise fine. He doesn’t understand what precipitated this sharp decline during the time he’d been outside, what happened between then and now.

His body reacts on its own, eyes filling with sympathetic tears and feet moving him over to his side, climbing onto the bed and gathering him in his arms. His skin is still slick and cold with rainwater, and Jimin feels warm against him, if only in comparison.

Raindrops slide free from his hair onto the side of Jimin’s face to join the free-flowing tears there, as though Jungkook were crying with him.

He attempts to soothe him, rubbing over Jimin’s back and smoothing his hair back from his face, but Jimin only sobs harder with the recognition of his touch.

“What’s wrong? Jimin, what’s wrong?” he asks, voice breaking over the question to match his heart. He feels awful for leaving him here alone, even if he knows logically that he had to.

Jimin pulls back far enough to speak, face a wreck of tears, but he can’t gather his voice well enough to get a word past his sobbing. Instead he makes a few simple signs, ones even Jungkook recognizes from their practice together. A simple plea of, “Stay with me.”

“I will,” he promises without hesitation. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay”

And he means forever in that moment, as hasty and naïve as the promise may be. In the second moment, he thinks of all the problems he would inevitably face, the ties holding him back, but he wants so badly to make it true. Here with Jimin is the happiest he’s felt in a long time, maybe ever.

What if he were Jin’s caretaker for the cabin instead of the over-friendly guy he’d dismissed from his duties when he got here? He could look after the place and the garden and spend his days with Jimin in the cove. He’d just sleep on the couch again whenever Jin wanted to vacation.

Or he could work in the village. He could learn to fish, probably. Maybe Jimin would help him, secretly of course. Or he could sell his photography and videos online. Only… all the footage and photos he’s captured lately have featured Jimin so prominently that he wouldn’t be able to show them to anyone. He’d intended them for his personal collection.

The prospect of such a simple future on the island tempts him like no other. That is, if he could really make it work and support himself. He’s never had to before and has no concept of how realistic any of his fantasies are. Anything he’s ever wanted has always been given to him – the only exception being any real choice in his own life.

He has his collection of expensive cameras and equipment back in the ritzy on-campus apartment his father had also bought him (and keeps spare keys for) to prove it.

But none of that is important in this moment. Jimin needs him here and now.

Jungkook – Lost Stars (cover)

Gently rocking Jimin in his arms, he begins singing without thinking. All that matters now is comforting him, and Jimin’s always been highly receptive to songs, listening to them with as much rapture as when he sings them himself.

The song starts softly with a croon and builds as it goes on. His voice competes against the sounds of the storm and Jimin’s crying but comes out high and clear.

“Take my hand, let’s see where we wake up tomorrow,” he sings, intertwining their hands. They look so small against Jungkook’s, his fingers short and stout. Precious like the rest of him.

He rubs the pads of his palm and fingers, gently caressing the red patches where he’d scraped them against the rocks while trying to climb the cliff in the face of a typhoon. All to reach Jungkook with a desperation that was terrifying with how little care he’d reserved for himself.

When he hits the first chorus, Jimin’s sobs have quieted enough to indicate that he’s listening. As he goes on, Jimin falls quite still so, hoping he can reach him, he pours his heart and soul into the next verse – “Don’t you dare let our best memories bring you sorrow. Yesterday I saw a lion kiss a deer. Turn the page maybe we’ll find a brand-new ending, where we’re dancing in our tears…”

He sings of an impossible love, but one still fighting for a better outcome and refuses to lose hope. He identifies with the sentiment more than he’d care to admit, but at least while he’s singing he can be honest. Everything since meeting Jimin, including meeting him, has been impossible, but he wants to hope. There has to be some good that comes from all of this, even if all he can hope for is that he leaves Jimin with a little light.

As long as he doesn’t regret meeting Jungkook, as long as he can look back and smile, that’ll be enough, even as the growing pit of yearning deep in his gut says otherwise.

If he can just ease Jimin’s tears and whatever is weighing on his heart right now, that’ll have to be enough.

At the end of the song, Jimin is no longer sobbing, though Jungkook still sees a few tears leak from the corners of his eyes as he pulls away from where Jungkook had him cradled against his bare chest.

The position screams of its intimacy, but he and Jimin have long ago crossed those boundaries of closeness and touch, and he tries not to think too hard about it. Especially since Jimin has no concept of nudity and struggles more with why Jungkook would want to cover himself at all.

Their gazes meet, Jimin’s directed up at him and searching.

Transfixed by tear-bright eyes, Jungkook barely dares breathe into the still bubble that swallows them and mutes the elements raging outside.

Slowly, as if he too is afraid of bursting the sudden peace that has descended over them, Jimin brings a hand up to his own mouth and, with a careful deliberateness, he traces the seam of his plump lips and puckers them. A sign Jungkook couldn’t forget if he tried, the word and memory inscribed on his own lips. Jimin follows it up with signs indicating himself and a question.

“Kiss me?” he’s asking.

Jungkook gasps, too loud in their bubble, and gets pulled in despite himself, close and closer until their breaths mix and quicken. He hasn’t allowed them to kiss on the lips since their game, though he’d guiltily let Jimin lavish him with sweet, innocent kisses anywhere else he pleased. The prospect of one now has him burning in anticipation.

With his eyelids fallen nearly shut, his focus narrows to Jimin’s lips and the way they part the barest amount in invitation.

But then Jungkook’s thoughts flash to big, strong arms and Jimin held in another’s embrace. And in the last moment before their lips meet, he wrenches himself away from Jimin and off the bed.

“I can’t.”

Jimin chases him with all the clumsiness of a merman on a bed, pulling his torso around to the edge, stumbling on his hands before stretching one out, but falling short of reaching Jungkook where he stands back to the wall. Jungkook feels physical pain at the way his face twists and crumbles.

“Why?”

“You have Tae-Tae.”

 Jimin’s expression remains muddled with puzzlement and pain.

“I don’t understand. Tae-Tae is far from here. Why don’t you kiss me?”

Jungkook doesn’t know how merfolk do things, but he can’t. Even if Jimin has no issue with it, he can’t do the whole polyamorous thing with him and another merman. Even if it meant he could have Jimin in the moment, he can’t do it with the shadow of another hanging over them.

“Tae-Tae, your lover ,” he bites out the distasteful word, “all I can think of is him holding you and kissing you and…” Jimin’s expression clears in slow understanding, like the moon appearing from behind clouds after a storm, but Jungkook barrels on. “Even if you’re lonely right now, he’s out there, and I just can’t.”

“Tae-Tae can’t hold me,” he says simply, and a weighted pause follows. Jungkook wants to yell that it’s not about whether Jimin’s relationship is long-distance or not, but Jimin gathers himself just then and adds, “Because he has no arms. And Tae-Tae can’t kiss me, because he has no lips like us.”

All Jungkook’s arguments dry up on his tongue, the image he’d had of Jimin’s lover irreparably altered into an armless, lipless unknown. He’d missed something crucial, something currently dancing just beyond his grasp.

“Tae-Tae can’t even call my name,” Jimin continues. “Jungkook is the first to call me after I lost my family.”

“Tae-Tae can’t…?”

“Tae-Tae found me when I was alone and became a friend, not a lover.” He says it firmly, so there’s no room for argument or further misinterpretation. “He’s special to me and special because he’s the only one of a kind. None like him hear his song, but I can, and I became special to him too.”

One of a kind. A kind other than Jimin. He remembers Yoriko, Jimin’s fish friend, and belated understanding begins to dawn on him.

“He’s a… fish?”

Jimin shakes his head resolutely no.

“He’s big .” The repeated statement hits differently than before when Jungkook had assumed he was another merman. “He travels two oceans, farther than I can go. To breathe, he swims up to the surface, where I was too scared to follow. And he sings – not like a fish.”

Jimin gives him a meaningful look, willing him to finally understand. Jungkook feels slow, both for the misunderstanding and late realization, stunned as it finally clicks.

“He’s a whale.”

“Yes, whale.” Jimin latches onto the word, despite it being the first time he’s heard it. The way he seems to have privileged access into the meaning of everything mystifies Jungkook as it always does, but he doesn’t question it. Like so much else about Jimin, it just leaves him in awe, falling for him even harder.

Jungkook laughs at the ridiculousness of it all. He’s been jealous of Jimin’s friend all along, and a whale besides.

Then he reassesses Jimin, propped up on an elbow in bed and tentatively reaching for him.

He’s as he’s always been – innocent and inexperienced, but wholly unguarded toward Jungkook and achingly sweet. It’s Jungkook who’d kept him at arm’s length for reasons that seem increasingly foolish and hard to remember.

Sara Bareilles – The Light

At last, he meets Jimin halfway, taking his outstretched hand, and lets all his remaining restraint dissolve. He holds Jimin close to his chest instead of holding back. Jimin clings to him in return. And when Jimin asks him again to kiss him, this time in a desperate whisper, he no longer has it in him to refuse.

Still, he takes him time. He leans over him and brushes a thumb reverently under his bottom lip and up the side of his cheek. Jimin holds his wrist with one hand as if to keep him there, while the other travels over his face, mapping it with touch.

With Jimin boring deep into his eyes, he’s left exposed and vulnerable, but for once it feels right. He no longer wants to hide his heart.

“I’ve always wanted you but never thought I was allowed,” he confesses over the noise crowding around them from outside. The wind and rain have reached their peak, slamming against the walls and shaking the cabin down to its foundations as if to get at them sheltering inside. But as hard as the storm rages, they’re untouchable here in the quiet between them.

Jimin’s breath catches and his eyelids flutter as Jungkook lightly kisses his brow and trails his lips over his temple and down his cheek.

“I allow you,” Jimin says on a shaky sigh. “Take me.”

Jungkook finds his lips and tastes the words as they leave him, sweet like summer rain and twice as lifegiving. He swallows them down and presses more insistently against Jimin’s lips, already thirsty for more.

Jimin whimpers and doesn’t know how to respond in his inexperience, but his lips slack and part under the pressure and that’s all the invitation Jungkook needs. He slots their mouths together and rolls over Jimin, sinking into the mattress with their combined weight. Jimin’s tail wriggles against his legs and he grabs at Jungkook’s shoulder and his side, but he’s holding him closer, not trying to push him away.

He breaks the kiss a few times only to change the angle and recapture Jimin’s lips immediately. Each kiss becomes needier than the last as Jimin falls into his rhythm and begins to respond. He’s unsure at first, but soon he’s seeking out Jungkook just as fiercely, both their chests rising and falling rapidly with the sharp shallow breaths they steal between kisses.

Jungkook nearly goes mad with want when Jimin lets out another of his small whimpers. He slips his tongue past his lips, needing to coax more of those intoxicating little sounds from him.

He’d thought Jimin would taste salty, coming from the sea. The kisses he’d pressed over his face had been salted with dried tears and seawater, but unlike his skin, his mouth holds a sweetness. With just a bite of tartness underneath that, he tastes unique and enticing.

His flavour nips at him and sets his nerves alight as he caresses Jimin’s tongue with his own. He licks deeper and is rewarded with a whine and shudder. God, he’d give up breathing to fall in deeper with Jimin, drowning be damned.

Jungkook relishes every unrestrained response as he devours him. With no sense of self-consciousness, Jimin is wholly honest in his reactions. With every lick and kiss Jungkook takes him apart piece by piece until he’s a whimpering, trembling mess.

Eventually, they break apart, Jungkook needing to cool down before he moves too fast. He admires Jimin with his narrow chest heaving, eyes blown, hair tousled, and lips swollen and tinted red.

He can’t resist kissing those delicious, plumped lips once more before pressing their foreheads together and closing his eyes, letting them both just breathe for a bit. 

Warmth and fondness blooms within him, followed by a fierce protectiveness. He’s always felt protective of Jimin but feels it even more so now that he’s held his sobbing form together until he could ease the pieces back into place.

“Why were you crying?” he asks gently, lips seeking silken skin along the top of his cheek and by his ear.

“I don’t want you to leave.” Jimin’s voice is soft, a shaky murmur.

“Leave?” Jungkook frowns. “Who said anything about leaving?”

“Jin,” Jimin said, casting his eyes downward.

“Jin? How would Jin– ” He follows Jimin’s gaze and lands on his discarded phone half-hidden among the sheets. “Oh.”

He has a pretty good guess as to what might have happened. He had expected his brother to call him again after the way he’d hung up on him. But Seokjin would be the one hearing from him if he’d made Jimin cry. Though he knows it’s not like Jin to be intentionally mean-spirited or go behind Jungkook’s back.

“You talked to Jin on the phone and he told you I was leaving?”

“Not really,” Jimin says quickly. “Don’t be mad at Jin. He is very sorry and only said your family and your life are not here.”

Jungkook lets out a long, weary sigh, closing his eyes against the thoughts he doesn’t want to consider. He’s only just begun entertaining the idea of actually staying here long-term. He doesn’t want a reminder of everything holding him back. He wishes those things – his parents, university, money – didn’t have such a hold on him.

He wonders if Jimin can even properly conceive of his own freedom. He has an entire ocean, can swim anywhere he wants, eating seaweed and making fish friends as much as he pleases.

“Yeah, well, I came out here to run away from my life and especially my family, so don’t listen to everything Jin says.”

He opens his eyes and meets Jimin’s sad, uncomprehending gaze, giving him pause. He takes his thumb and rubs away the last traces of tears from his face. Jimin could go anywhere, and yet he’s here with Jungkook instead, in a place that is strange and terrifying to him.

He remembers Jimin’s state when he’d first found him, how thin and tired he’d been, how desperate he’d been for Jungkook’s company, and he regrets his earlier thoughts about him. Jimin might even be grateful for the kind of ties Jungkook has if it meant he’d have people to go back to.

Freedom may look different to Jimin.

“I don’t understand. Why run away from family?”

Jungkook wants to quell his concerns, but he probably won’t be able to do that and talk about his family in any kind of honest way.

“It’s complicated. My mom left my dad and me when I was really little and remarried – er, found a new lover – so I don’t see her much anymore, maybe once a year around my birthday.”

Jimin looks sad for him, but Jungkook carries on.

“Then father married Jin’s mom. She’s not so bad, except when she’s worrying about appearances.”

“Jin’s mom is not yours?”

“No, we only became a family when my father and his mother remarried each other. We’re technically stepbrothers. That’s what it’s called, but Jin’s been more family to me than anyone.”

Jimin’s eyes pop, mouthing “stepbrothers” silently with awe.

“That’s amazing.”

Jungkook laughs and asks, rolling to lay next to him, “You don’t have that with merfolk?”

Jimin curls into him and nuzzles into his neck, just beneath his jaw.

“I don’t know. I only know my parents and they always love and stay together.”

“That sounds nice.”

Jimin’s parents sound lovely. They’d have to be to raise someone as lovely as Jimin, someone so giving with his attention and love. Jungkook’s glad he’d had them, even if talking about them now brings that small, sad smile to his lips. He hopes he can find them again someday.

“You’re amazing, you know?” he tells Jimin. “The world looks different when I’m with you. And I don’t feel like the sky is closing in on me anymore, like maybe I can actually make something of my life, something I want.”

Jimin makes a noise of dissatisfaction and squeezes him tighter.

“Why closing in? What will you do with your life?”

Jungkook winces at the unfortunate turn of phrase. That’s the question, isn’t it? And the one everyone in their twenties dreads.

Jimin doesn’t know that though, so he turns and presses soft kisses to the top of his head. Jimin lives in a simpler world. Granted, Jimin deals with many terrible realities that Jungkook doesn’t envy him for, but there’s no denying that Jimin’s experiences have made him into a delightfully refreshing person, who has no need or understanding of the messy bullshit in modern human life.

“I don’t know yet, but I know I don’t want to leave you. I have to return to the mainland at some point, to sort everything out, but I’d like to come back here. To you.”

Jimin lifts his head, eyes sparkling silver with reflected lamplight, and pounces on him. That’s the only way he can think to describe how he suddenly has Jimin all over him, writhing tail tangling and forcing its way between his legs, the rest of him draped over his torso, and lips planting kisses all over his face.

Breathlessly, he gasps out between fervent kisses, “Soon, I go find Tae-Tae, but I want to come back too.”

Jungkook smiles and snags an errant kiss and deepens it, pulling Jimin bodily into him.

Outside, the storm carries on, whipping the landscape into turmoil, but here, in Jimin’s arms, he finally feels at peace. Maybe they can figure this thing out after all, human and merman together.

Chapter Text

Chelsea Cutler – Lucky (with Alexander 23)

The bananas are mocking him.

They rest out of reach, high up on a ledge, and Jimin glares at them from below where he’s propped himself up on the ground.

All around him are high walls and hard, shiny surfaces with harsh points and edges that dig into his skin if he bumps into them. Unnatural shapes and objects he doesn’t have names for, but recognizes as human-crafted, surround him. The perfect black squares on the ground beneath him are cool to the touch and glint darkly with reflected light like the deepest, stillest brine pools.

It’s a harsh, foreign environment, but one that belongs to Jungkook, and Jimin is nothing if not adaptable and determined. He’ll familiarize himself with this place just as he did with the cove.

If only being on land weren’t so awfully inconvenient, his tail rendered cumbersome and ungainly when he’d never before considered it so. His tail is strong, has always propelled him swiftly and surely through the water, but here, and in trying to climb the cliff earlier, it has only impeded him. He feels so heavy.

And he’s getting awfully hungry with the bananas in sight but tantalizingly out of reach.

He sings to himself quietly in frustration. He’s careful not to be too loud and wake Jungkook, who he’d left sleeping on the bed, though he’s not overly concerned since the human has proven himself to be a sound sleeper.

They’d both dozed off after many long, slow kisses, the storm quieting with them. But Jimin is not a sound sleeper and had woken up at some unknown trigger, real or dreamed up, and which thereafter made sleep impossible. But he’d been loathe to disturb Jungkook’s sweet sleep-face.

Jimin’s soft song turns happy in spite of himself and his hunger. He’s never felt so warm as when he woke up in Jungkook’s arms. Never felt so much peace and belonging. He could have stayed there forever if his curiosity hadn’t gotten the best of him.

He has so many questions about everything human, but especially about how Jungkook lives. He tugs at the opening of the shirt he’d found to burrow his nose into the material and smell Jungkook’s lingering scent.

He remembers the way Jungkook had kissed him. How his heart pounded, how the tips of his fins fluttered with his shudders, and how his body thrummed with each brush and slide of their lips until all he could feel was Jungkook. Every sensation overwhelming and wonderful.

He sweeps his tail across the ground giddily and smacks hard into an object, one roughly as tall as Jimin is sitting, with four long, skinny legs and a small, round platform on top. It wobbles, tips, and almost lands on his tail before he can catch it. Two other objects, identical to the first, stand near the ledge, not quite reaching the top but nearing it.

He again eyes the bananas where they peek over the edge. He had eventually bested the shirt and gotten it onto himself the way he’d seen Jungkook and Jin wear them. He won’t let the bananas beat him either.

He pushes the object upright against the ledge and begins the precarious process of climbing up it, straining his arms against his own weight and thrusting with his tail, to reach his prize.

~*~

The sound of a loud crash and clatter in the next room over startles Jungkook awake.

He casts about in confusion and gawps at the disaster that is now the bedroom. The dresser drawers have been pulled open haphazardly, spilling clothes out and across the floor. The bookcase has been picked through, particularly the lower shelves, and a few volumes lie open and strewn about. And the large, leafy Alocasia plant lies on its side, knocked over by the doorway with a thin trail of dirt leading out into the hall.

And then Jungkook’s memory of the morning returns and he gasps, “Jimin!” before leaping from the bed and running out, following the smear of dirt down the short hall and into the living area.

“Jungkook!” Jimin says, giving him a guilty grin from where he sits, teeteringly, on the kitchen island countertop. He’s not entirely sure how he managed to get up there, but an overturned stool sits beneath him, undoubtedly the crash he heard. “You’re awake.”

He’s wearing one of Jungkook’s long-sleeved shirts, inside out with the tag flapping at the front, dirt smudged at the hem, and the sleeves draping over his fingers where they form paws. He adjusts the sleeves to bunch around his wrists and then carefully peels open a banana from the bunch he has resting on his tail and holds it out to Jungkook.

“Banana?” he offers.

And Jungkook, he can’t help it. He bursts out laughing and doubles over. He laughs so hard it hurts and his heart spills over, eyes filling with tears. With Jimin he feels so much, he doesn’t think he can contain it all.

When he can look at Jimin again, he’s giggling along with him despite looking like he doesn’t really understand why they’re laughing.

Jungkook rights the stool, sets it in front of Jimin, and accepts the banana with a thank you. Jimin peels himself another banana, and they both settle in to eat their snack together simple as that. As if eating together in the kitchen were an everyday occurrence for them.

Jungkook is still working on his banana when Jimin finishes devouring his and starts smacking his lips and working his tongue in his mouth. Jungkook stares at him and when he notices his own cottony mouth, he realizes that Jimin’s likely thirsty, especially after all the crying he did earlier.

In the cove, Jimin never seemed to have an issue staying long periods out of water, but he’d eventually get dehydrated like anyone else if he doesn’t drink.

“Do you want some water?”

Jimin perks up and nods enthusiastically.

Jungkook retrieves a glass from the cupboard and fills it with water from the sink. Jimin watches his every move with fascination. Jungkook wouldn’t mind except he’s slightly concerned that Jimin could fall off the counter if he leans over any further.

He hurries back over to him and hands him the glass.

“Here you go.”

“Thank you,” Jimin says with round eyes and sincerity. He takes the glass preciously, fingers cradling it carefully, and promptly dumps the entire contents over his own head. Water pours over him and splashes down the counter onto the floor.

Jungkook gapes at him slack-jawed as water continues to drip down over Jimin onto the kitchen floor. Part of his shirt is now soaked in addition to dirty. Jimin blinks water out of his eyes and licks up a few stray drops that make it to his lips.

“Mm, sweet,” he hums appreciatively.

“Ha!” Jungkook bursts out in a huff, fondness overtaking him. “Honestly, I should have expected that at this point.”

Jimin tilts his head in question, but Jungkook just shakes his, chuckling to himself.

“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up and I’ll teach you some new things about the human world, okay?”

“Okay, but I can eat another banana?”

Stomach fluttering with happy butterflies, Jungkook leans over to kiss his banana-sweetened lips. Because he gets to do that now.

“You can eat as many bananas as you want.”

~*~

After Jimin has his fill of bananas and has been successfully encouraged to drink a glass of water, not dump it over his head, Jungkook carries him to the bathroom. He sets him down at the bottom of the spacious corner shower, rather than make the mistake of trying to fit him in the bathtub again.

He coaxes Jimin out of his dirty shirt and promises him a new one once he’s clean.

He takes longer than he needs to lather Jimin with soap and wash his hair, tickling his sides and kissing him playfully.

Jimin is just as eager for the new experience, sighing and relaxing back into his touch, only pushing him aside when the tickles become too much. He’s curious about everything, and Jungkook lets him explore even though he ends up as soaked and sudsy as Jimin by the end of it.

Jimin’s gills flutter under the spray of water as if unsure what to do, and Jungkook traces their delicate lines reverently. Jimin squirms and bites his lip at his tickling touch, but doesn’t tell him to stop, so Jungkook leans down to press light kisses there, delighting in the airy giggles he pulls from him.

Jimin tilts his head to give him better access to his neck and tangles his fingers in Jungkook’s hair, wetting the strands with soap and water. Not that he cares when he’s busy running his lips over every slick inch of skin bared to him, feeling the vibrations in Jimin’s throat from all the little noises he makes.

The only hiccup occurs when Jimin accidentally gets a mouthful of shampoo bubbles, leaving him hacking and spitting out soap, face twisted in distaste.

Once clean, dry, and wrapped up in a new long-sleeve striped shirt, Jimin rests on the bathroom vanity as Jungkook blow-dries his freshly cut hair. Jimin’s bubblegum-pink hair had grown quite long over the weeks they’d known each other, so Jungkook had offered his amateur hairdressing skills and given him a trim that reveals his ears and frames his face cutely.

Jimin seems to love the pampering, or maybe it’s just his attention he’s after as usual. Regardless, Jungkook is more than happy to run his fingers through the cloud-like fluffiness of his hair as many times as he’s permitted.

Aiming the blow-dryer directly into Jimin’s face, he laughs at how he scrunches his features. Turning it off and setting it aside, he leans in for a lingering kiss. Jimin wavers when his hands come up to cradle his face, and Jungkook instinctively pulls back to steady him, despite Jimin’s disgruntled whine at the interruption.

Jungkook just laughs again and drinks in the sight of him.

He’s struck suddenly by how different he looks. Where before his hair had been unruly, wild with waves and tangles from the wind and the salty sea, now it lies straight and neat. Just that small change radically alters his entire appearance. And with him wearing a shirt he really cleans up well, but there’s something about it that begins to unsettle Jungkook the longer he looks.

The fresh scent of open air and ocean that always seems to cling to Jimin’s skin has been covered by Jungkook’s favourite brand of passion fruit shampoo, and it bothers him that he can’t smell Jimin underneath it any longer.

Jimin, however, doesn’t share his concerns and keeps delightedly stealing glances at his reflection in the mirror.

“Now I’m like you!” he beams at Jungkook, and his words twist the knife that had begun sinking into his gut. Jimin’s excitement fades when he reads Jungkook’s expression. “You don’t like it?”

“No, it’s not that,” Jungkook tries to reassure him. He’s as adorable as he ever was. “You look good, great even.”

 “What’s wrong?” Jimin asks in a whisper, unplacated and sensing Jungkook’s unease, still looking crestfallen.

He doesn’t want to dampen the easy, exuberant atmosphere they’d shared all afternoon, but he can’t shake the feeling of dread that overcomes him when he thoroughly takes in Jimin and his words. Now I’m like you.

He knows what’s bothering him about it. Discounting his tail, Jimin could pass as human right now.

Jimin had captivated him from the first. His wildness of spirit and gentle innocence. A merman living beyond the rigid existence he’d known all of his mundane life. He never wants to groom that out of him.

Jimin recaptures his attention by squeezing his hands and smiling reassuringly.

“We go back to bedroom and you can teach me about humans more.”

But rather than reassure him, Jimin’s words only make him feel worse. He’s getting entirely too comfortable in the cabin. He’s beginning to understand what Jin was really trying to warn him about.

“Maybe we should get you back to the cove.”

“You say you show me how to clean mess,” Jimin pouts at him.

“I know I did,” Jungkook says hesitantly, “but the storm is over now. Don’t you want to go back to the ocean?”

“Jungkook.” Jimin searches his face with pleading eyes, all their earlier carefree happiness fled with Jungkook’s growing anxiety. “What’s wrong? You want me to leave?”

“You shouldn’t get used to this,” Jungkook whispers, and drawing a deep breath he says more gently, “I’m scared of what could happen if someone sees you here. There aren’t many people who come here, but it’s not private like the cove. Anyone could come up to the door. I don’t know what I’d do if someone hurt you.”

He strokes Jimin’s cheek with a thumb, and Jimin softens in his hold but comes alert with a new wariness.

He pauses a moment, but then asks with such soul crushing directness, “Why humans want to hurt me?”

It breaks something in Jungkook that Jimin has to ask.

He thinks on it and answers carefully, “Because of greed and vanity mostly. Humans see something beautiful and want it for themselves, and the bad ones don’t care, or don’t care to know, who they hurt to get it.” He spares Jimin the gory details of how the scales and skins of his people are used in clothing and accessories worn by humans, the results of the lucrative illegal trade sprung up from their suffering. He doesn’t know how he’d even begin to explain all of that. “Not all humans would immediately hurt you, but if the wrong person finds out you’ve been here, I don’t want to even think about what could happen.”

“But some humans are good,” Jimin stresses almost desperately.

Jungkook nods reluctantly. He doesn’t want Jimin to take any chances with humans he doesn’t know, but he’d be lying if he told him all of humanity is against him.

“There are good humans that fight for merfolk and your rights. They try to stop the other humans from hunting and hurting you.”

“Like Jungkook!” he chirps, considerably brightened. “And Jin,” he tacks on.

Jungkook takes a sharp breath, chest tight.

“No, I… I think Jin might have contributed to some organizations, but I haven’t done anything, really,” he admits, feeling shame claw its way up his chest, but he’d feel worse if he took credit when he has no right to. “I’m sorry…” he trails off, and Jimin’s visibly growing disappointment hits him hard.

What can he say? How can he explain the helplessness he feels when he thinks of the sheer magnitude of the issue? It’s been a global problem for as long as he can remember, and even with activists fighting for decades it feels like nothing has fundamentally changed.

“Why? You don’t want to help?”

“I do!” Jungkook protests. “I promise I do. I’ve always been sympathetic, but the bad people are really powerful, and it’s all so complicated. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to do or how to help.”

Jimin’s disappointment softens, but it’s still there, and Jungkook can’t really blame him. He brushes soft, straight strands behind Jimin’s ear, capturing Jimin’s gaze and impressing on him the sincerity of his next words.

“I’ll do better from now on. Now I know who I’m fighting for, and I’d do anything to keep you safe.”

Jimin holds his hand and presses it into his soft cheek, his other hand coming up to rest on Jungkook’s chest, just over his heart.

“I don’t understand all. But you want to help? Yes?” He waits for Jungkook’s hasty, emphatic nod. “Then it’s okay. I know Jungkook is a good human, and I will protect you too. You are very special to me, Jungkook.”

He closes his eyes and focuses on his heart beating steadily beneath Jimin’s palm.

Jungkook doesn’t feel entirely deserving of the praise, but he’s equally relieved that Jimin won’t hold his inaction against him. He will do better. The precious life in front of him, the gentle touch that caresses his hand, and the generous heart that has forgiven his shortcomings depend on it.

~*~

Jimin convinces him to spend a little more time in the cabin together. It doesn’t take much because, despite his misgivings, he loves discovering the world anew through Jimin. The new intimacy they’ve shared here doesn’t hurt either.

He rarely sees anyone from the village even on the best of days, and surely they have better things to do after a storm like today’s.

They resolve to eat a proper meal together before Jungkook carries Jimin back down to the cove in the evening when they’re less likely to be seen.

Of course, Jungkook is the one actually making their dinner. He’s not quite to the point of trusting Jimin anywhere near a hot stove. Or near their meal prep, for that matter.

He doesn’t mind though. He thinks of it like he’s cooking for a date, and he wants to impress Jimin with dinner. Sure, he’s given him all kinds of foods to try, but that had only been simple snacks or lunches that required little to no preparation, even though Jimin hadn’t noticed the difference.

And Jimin is keeping him company from the adjoining living room, arms hooked over the back of the leather couch with his head peeking over the top so he can watch each move Jungkook makes in the kitchen. As he fries shrimp and asparagus in garlic and butter, occasionally checking on the potato wedges roasting in the oven, Jimin fills every silence with his endless curiosity.

“Why we have to wait for the food to cook?”

“Because some foods don’t taste very good raw, or they’re not safe. Though you might be able to get away with it. I have no idea what your stomach is made of, but trust me, it’ll taste better this way.”

“What is your stomach made of?”

Jungkook chuckles and stirs around the contents of the pan while he answers, “Um, I don’t know, but I don’t think my stomach is as tough as yours. I think I’d get sick if I ate everything you do.”

Jimin makes a dissatisfied sound.

“But I want to feed you also.”

“Well, you are. These are the shrimp you brought me yesterday. I wouldn’t have been able to catch them.”

Jimin beams at him proudly. Jungkook does not tell him he could’ve bought some just as easily at the little store in the village. He lets him have his moment.

Satisfied that the shrimp and asparagus are done, he turns off the heat. He’s about to check on the potatoes again, when knocking at the door stalls him in his tracks. Jimin’s head swivels over to the end of the kitchen where the sound is coming from.

He doesn’t dare move. He doesn’t dare breathe. This can’t be happening, not now.  Not when he’d just decided to be more careful with Jimin.

He’s jerked into action when the knocking repeats, and he hears someone call, “Jungkook?” from beyond the door.

He runs over to Jimin, who’s staring at the kitchen door like it’s going to come alive and eat him, and frantically thinks of how he’s going to hide him.

“Just– just hold on!” he shouts back. “I’ll be there in a minute!”

He wraps his arms around Jimin in preparation for picking him up, and Jimin reciprocates just as the door knob turns and the door swings wide.

“Don’t worry. I can let myself in.” Hoseok, Jin’s caretaker, steps into the kitchen, tanned and sunny as ever, and Jungkook freezes where he stands bent over Jimin. He’d always thought the man acted far too overfamiliar. “Oh, hello there. You didn’t tell me you had company,” Hoseok remarks upon spotting Jimin, sending a sly grin Jungkook’s way.

He straightens slowly, relinquishing his hold on Jimin, and tries to keep his senses enough to salvage the situation. Hoseok is glancing between them with far too much interest, but no more than if he’d found Jungkook with any other unexpected guest.

Hoseok has seen Jimin, but only what’s visible of him from over the top of the couch. Only his head and shoulders. He hasn’t seen his tail yet.

He’d been worried about how human Jimin looks today, but now it just might work in their favour.

“Hello,” Jimin returns the greeting, to Jungkook’s utter shock. But Jimin is looking back at Hoseok with almost as much curiosity as wariness.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Hoseok. I usually look after the cabin and the garden, but I’m guessing you’re the reason Jungkook sent me away when he got here.”

Jungkook feels a tick of annoyance. He had dismissed him, and still Hoseok shows up uninvited, with the worst timing, flashing his sunniest smile at Jimin.

“I’m Jimin. You are friends with Jungkook and Jin?”

“You bet!” Hoseok says at the same time as Jungkook says, “Not really.”

Jungkook knows Jin considers Hoseok a friend and had gone to visit him a couple times while he’d been here, but Jungkook barely knows the guy. And he doesn’t like how quickly Jimin has begun to let his guard down around him.

Hoseok glances at him and then back at the half-finished food on the stove.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt if you two had plans. I just wanted to check on things, make sure everything’s alright after the storm.”

“Everything’s fine. And we do have plans, so if you wouldn’t mind…” Jungkook takes the opening Hoseok had given him, needing to end this encounter already. He moves around the couch to get between Hoseok and Jimin.

“Jungkook is cooking dinner,” Jimin offers unnecessarily, and Jungkook wants to cry a little at his sweet sabotage.

“Oh, is he? How romantic.” Apparently delighted by this tidbit, Hoseok takes a couple more steps into the cabin to peer around Jungkook, to his horror. A few more steps to the left and he’ll see the tips of Jimin’s fins trailing on the floor.

“But I caught the shrimp.”

Hoseok’s eyebrows raise at that, and before anyone can say anything else to prolong his torture, Jungkook takes matters into his own hands.

“Yes, we’re having a date, so you need to leave. Now,” Jungkook stresses as he physically corrals Hoseok and ushers him out the door.

“Okay, okay, I’m leaving,” Hoseok laughs. “Bye Jimin! Enjoy your date!”

“Bye! Thank you!” Jimin calls to him. Jungkook shuts the door in his face.

Jungkook ensures through the window that Hoseok has in fact left the property, before readying to smuggle Jimin out of the cabin, barely remembering to turn off the oven.

“Hoseok looks kind.” Jimin tries to reassure him but goes with him easily. “He talked with me.”

“Even if he’s a friendly person, he could still tell the whole village about you. I don’t know him that well.”

Jungkook heads toward the cliff path in the fading daylight. He barely sees the wreckage of the garden or the small debris littering the yard in his haste, everything storm-swept.

“I forgot to ask you about the bathroom window,” Hoseok’s voice comes loud and clear from behind him. He turns as if in slow-motion, caught in the open with Jimin still in his arms, dread instantly weighing down every cell of his being. Hoseok rounds the corner of the cabin and into full view. “Sometimes it leaks and…”

Eyes and mouth agape in surprise, Hoseok’s takes in the two of them, takes in Jimin’s long iridescent tail with its delicate fins that catch and lift in the breeze, and says absolutely nothing for an interminable minute.

Jungkook is far too terrified to speak, and even Jimin cowers, making himself small in Jungkook’s arms, but there’s no hiding the blatantly obvious.

Then, Hoseok’s mouth closes, the corners of his lips turn down and his eyes grow cold and hard. Until nothing of his friendly demeanor remains except its memory.

“What are you doing with him?” he demands, voice cracking through the silence, harsh as a whip.

Chapter Text

“He’s a merman,” Hoseok hisses, taking a step toward them, and Jungkook takes two back, maintaining the distance between them. He tightens his grip on Jimin almost painfully.

“What are you doing with him, Jungkook?” Hoseok demands again, increasing anger lancing through his words at Jungkook’s panic-driven silence. His throat feels closed up and his only thoughts are for how badly he’s messed up and how he can possibly protect Jimin now. “He belongs in the ocean, not as a pet for some spoiled rich kid!”

“Don’t yell at Jungkook!” Jimin shoots back, fins raising and flaring out along his tail threateningly, even with Jungkook’s hold on him. His sudden, vehement exclamation takes both him and Hoseok by surprise, if the jolt that runs through Hoseok is any indication.

Junkook’s still processing it all, Hoseok’s accusations and Jimin’s spirited defense, when Hoseok’s surprise morphs into pity.

“Jimin,” he starts gently, attempting to placate. “You don’t have to listen to him. I can help you.”

“It’s not what it looks like!” Jungkook blurts, finally finding his voice. Does Hoseok truly believe that he’s keeping Jimin as a pet?

“Really? Because it looks like you’re playing house with an endangered merman.”

“No, I– I’m bringing him back to the ocean. We were just sheltering from the storm together.”

“And the dinner date? And the clothes?” Hoseok remarks wryly, indicating the shirt Jimin still wore. “Are those also part of your merman rehabilitation plan?”

“I…” Jungkook’s voice starts off faint and trails off into nothing. What can he offer in his defense? He knows what it looks like, and he’d already felt like he was doing something wrong. His own guilt hadn’t needed Hoseok’s accusations to manifest, but it certainly isn’t helped by them either.

“That’s what I thought.”

Jungkook glances over his shoulder at the cove wistfully, but his limbs feel weak enough from shock that he wouldn’t risk Jimin’s safety by trying to carry him down now.

“Look, I’ll explain everything, but can we just go inside to talk this through?” 

Hoseok scrutinizes every inch of him, lips pressed so tightly together they almost disappear, and doesn’t budge.

“I don’t want anyone else to see Jimin out in the open,” Jungkook tries again, pleads. “And I can’t hold him like this for much longer.”

“Fine,” Hoseok concedes grudgingly. “But I’m not letting you or Jimin out of my sight until he’s safely back where he belongs.”

“Jungkook holds me safe,” Jimin chips in, and Jungkook dearly wants to kiss him. Kiss him and hold him safe like they did during the storm, until neither of them has a thought or care for the outside world.

But he doesn’t want to make the situation any worse than it already is. And by Hoseok’s look of pinched pity whenever Jimin speaks up to defend Jungkook, he wouldn’t take well to such a display of affection.

Jungkook breathes out a deep sigh of relief when Hoseok silently follows him back into the cabin. At least he seems like he might listen if Jungkook gets the chance to explain. And, frankly, his concern for Jimin is reassuring, even if he’s suspicious of Jungkook as a result.

Now he just has to find the right words to protect them both.

~*~

BTS – Whalien 52

Jimin snuggles deeper into Jungkook’s side, which only seems to agitate Hoseok more as he argues with animated gestures that Jungkook should have never brought him to the cabin or even interacted with him.

The few times Jimin had tried speaking up for himself or Jungkook, Hoseok had gotten this look like he’d swallowed a jellyfish. Like he feels sorry for Jimin but, more importantly, like he also doesn’t believe him.

So Jimin speaks less, letting Jungkook speak for them both and drawing as much comfort as he can from him with Hoseok in the room glaring Jungkook’s direction whenever he so much as pats Jimin on the head.

He doesn’t fear Hoseok – not directly. From what he’s gathered, Hoseok is genuinely concerned for his well-being. But he thinks Jungkook is a threat to his safety, for some unfathomable reason, and Jimin’s worried about how Hoseok still seems to want to separate them, even after talking for so long.

Hoseok keeps threatening to call some merfolk he knows named Protection-Agency, which Jimin thinks is an unusual name, but he’s sure they’re very kind if they’re willing to help him. He would like to meet them, frankly, curious about another of his kind who knows a human, but not if it means leaving Jungkook behind.

“This isn’t something either of us should be dealing with on our own,” Hoseok says for at least the third time.

“The more people who know about Jimin, the more dangerous it is for him.” Jimin has heard Jungkook make this same point more than once as well.

“And you’ve been doing such a great job of keeping him hidden? You admitted Jin found him too, though how he knew about this and let it go on…” Hoseok shakes his head disapprovingly. “And I still don’t trust that you’re not just taking advantage of him.” Of all Hoseok’s arguments, that has to be his most frustrating one, and the one Jimin understands the least. “We should call the Merfolk Protection Agency, and I can talk to my friend to make sure Jimin is safely rehabilitated– ”

“For the thousandth time, he doesn’t need rehabilitating! He was fine before, and he’s fine now with me! I’m taking care of him.”

Jimin flops down sideways and lays his head in Jungkook’s lap, making the two humans pause in their fight. He feels contentment bubble up inside him at the closeness, despite the stress of the last hour. It’s been so long since he’s had someone to take care of him, who wants to care for him as badly as he craves it. It makes him unreasonably happy.

“Jungkook, I’m hungry,” he says quietly.

Gentle fingers comb through his hair, and Jimin preens and sighs under the affection radiating from Jungkook’s touch. Soaks it in like sun rays.

“You never did get to eat the dinner I made you, did you?” Jungkook sounds sad.

Jimin straightens up and runs his fingers through the long, wavy strands of Jungkook’s hair. He ignores the piercing gaze that Hoseok pins the two of them with and strokes over Jungkook’s face until the frown lines between his eyes disappear. He nuzzles his nose against Jungkook’s and is rewarded with a smile.

“It’s okay,” he whispers, kissing his forehead.

Jungkook glances at Hoseok off to the side. Jimin follows his gaze and is surprised to find Hoseok softened, even with a somewhat muddled emotion dancing over his features.

“Why don’t I reheat dinner and we can all eat?” Jungkook suggests. “And we can try talking about this again when we’re not all hungry and cranky?”

Hoseok nods hesitantly and clears his throat.

“Sure. I think that would be a good idea.”

Jimin’s chest lightens at the agreement and at the renewed promise of dinner. He wants the food he’d watched Jungkook take so long to prepare for him. He settles back into the spongy couch as Jungkook moves him to get up.

While Jungkook works behind Jimin in the kitchen, Hoseok observes him closely from the short couch, called a chair, next to Jimin’s couch. Beneath warm honey-brown hair, his eyes darken further in thought, contemplating Jimin.

“You are unkind to Jungkook. I don’t like it.” Jimin announces. “Why?”

Hoseok’s eyes widen fractionally at suddenly being addressed before he blinks and gathers himself. In the background, Jungkook moves about the kitchen with an occasional clatter.

“I don’t mean to come off so harsh,” he says slowly. “Even if Jin wasn’t always singing his praises, I really do think Jungkook’s a good kid who means well. Watching how he is with you… I can see that he cares. But I don’t think he’s doing the right thing.”

“And what is right thing?” Jimin demands. “You want to separate us but don’t know anything.”

“Wouldn’t you rather be swimming free in the sea with other merfolk?” Hoseok tries.

Jimin shakes his head in frustration.

“You don’t listen!” he says, cupping a hand emphatically around his ear a couple times in the sign for ‘listen.’ “I don’t want to stay alone. I want to stay with Jungkook. And when it is time, when Jimin decide I go back to ocean, Jungkook pinky promise he bring me. I don’t want to go with Protection-Agency.”

Hoseok holds his palms pressed together, and taps his extended fingers against his lips, and doesn’t say anything for a long minute. Jimin hopes it means he’s finally listening.

Jimin speaks firmly and as clearly as he can, so that Hoseok will finally understand.

“Jungkook is my human. He sees me, hears me, and calls my name. The sea is big and empty when no one sings with me. But Jungkook sings with me here, and he is very special to me.” He signs ‘precious’ and cradles his cupped hands close to his chest.

“The other merfolk won’t sing with you?” Hoseok asks as he frowns, in disapproval or confusion.

“No. No ‘other merfolk.’ I look for a long time.” Jimin holds back the upset he can’t help but feel every time he thinks about it, but his eyes still water and his words grow thin. He signs along to bolster his voice. “Everywhere empty.”

“Oh… oh, no.” Hoseok says in a hushed whisper. “So to you, Jungkook is…”

“Everything,” Jimin whispers just as quietly, and Hoseok sucks in a harsh breath. “So please listen.”

“Okay,” Hoseok nods. “Okay, I think I get it, for the most part. I’m sorry I wasn’t listening to you before. I guess…” he takes another deep breath and sighs it out. “I was worried Jungkook was influencing you, but I shouldn’t have ignored your thoughts about this either way, especially when it’s about you.”

Hoseok grins at him apologetically, a bit faded from the bright smiles he’d shown him when they first met, but it’s enough to relax Jimin regardless. These smiles are what had originally put him at ease, made him trust that Hoseok is a good person.

“Thank you.”

“But Jimin, there are laws,” Hoseok tries to explain. “Human rules that tell us what we’re supposed to do when we find merfolk like you. Jungkook could get into a lot of trouble for keeping you here.”

Jimin tenses. He doesn’t want Jungkook to be in danger because of him. That’s not something that had ever occurred to him before, that humans would go after other humans.

“Don’t listen to him. I’ll be fine,” Jungkook interrupts them, setting a tray laden with savoury smelling food on the small table between them. Jimin is still troubled about Jungkook’s safety, but he’s also successfully distracted. Jungkook passes Jimin a bowl filled to the brim after setting out plates before himself and Hoseok. “Since it’s your first time eating something like this, I wanted to make sure you could eat it easily, but careful – it’s hot.”

Jimin moans around the first shrimp Jungkook picks up and puts in his mouth with the two little sticks he holds between his fingers. He’s never tasted anything like it. Everything is warm and soft, and the enhanced flavour of the shrimp spreads through his mouth along with the zing of unidentified seasoning.

He looks up at Jungkook to find him smiling fondly at him, causing a flutter in his belly.

“Good?” Jungkook asks.

Jimin keeps chewing around his bite and signs, “Delicious!”

Jungkook’s smile widens, and he doesn’t hesitate to pick up more food and hold it out for Jimin, apparently unconcerned about feeding himself. He seems happiest to watch Jimin greedily eat one bite after another.

When Jungkook has fed Jimin the entire bowl, Jimin reaches for his untouched plate and takes the little sticks from Jungkook. He tries to use them as Jungkook did, but they won’t move how he wants them to, and he drops them in frustration, leaving them to roll across the ground.

Jungkook stifles a laugh, Jimin pouts at him, and he schools his expression into something more neutral, but the corners of his lips still tilt upwards.

Jimin resolves to do things his way and picks up a shrimp with his fingers. With his other hand, he thumbs at the edge of Jungkook’s mouth until he opens it, and carefully, Jimin pushes the shrimp past Jungkook’s lips. He traces the soft edge of his bottom lip as Jungkook blushes and chews.

The more he fixates on Jungkook’s lips, the more he finds himself leaning into his space. Jungkook swallows, and Jimin licks his own lips.

The moment is broken when Hoseok coughs loudly behind them, and they both startle and lean back into their seats. Hoseok is staring at them with both eyebrows raised to their limit. It’s difficult, but Jimin tries to stick to just feeding Jungkook for the rest of the meal.

~*~

Jungkook doesn’t know what Jimin said to him, but after their little talk before dinner, Hoseok becomes much more agreeable, even if he won’t stop giving them both looks. Well, he can’t blame him too much for that since Jimin is all over him, and Jungkook is a weak, weak man.

He even helps Jungkook bring Jimin back down to the cove after their meal, for which he’s grateful. It’s nearly full dark by the time they make their way to the cove path, and he would have worried for his footing without Hoseok shining a flashlight at his feet.

Jimin too has warmed up to Hoseok considerably, but then again, Jimin warms up to everyone quickly. For someone who has every reason to be afraid of humans, it’s particularly troubling.

Once Jimin is safely back in the water, he swims around ecstatically, stretching out the muscles he couldn’t properly use on land and showing off his aerobatics. He shines with silver light reflected off wet scales and skin, brighter than the moon.

Jungkook wishes he had his video camera. Since the storm began, he’d become a bit distracted from his ongoing project of capturing every precious memory of Jimin that he can on film, but he’s ready to pick up where he left off.

“I don’t approve, but I won’t interfere out of respect for Jimin,” Hoseok says just before he heads back to the village. They’d climbed back up the cliff after Jimin had vanished into the dark, inky ocean (but not before he’d kissed Jungkook soundly goodnight, much to Hoseok’s consternation). “And I’ll be checking in on you both.”

“Actually,” Jungkook begins uncertainly. “I have to leave in a week. I’m coming back as soon as I can, and I think… I think Jimin is also leaving soon to meet a whale friend of his, but if you could come by sometimes…”

“In case you forgot, that’s literally my job,” Hoseok says with a laugh. “At least it was before you rudely dismissed me to hide away your merman boyfriend. But sure, I’ll look out for him. Keep everyone else away too.”

Jungkook breathes out a sigh of relief and thanks him sincerely, for once glad that Hoseok’s gone back to teasing him. He’s relieved, but that night, even as he tosses and turns his way to sleep, the pit of unease that sits at the base of his gut never fully goes away.

Chapter Text

Elisa – Dancing

Time slips more quickly from his grasp the harder Jimin tries to hold onto it. As futile as trying to recapture Aeolus’s winds after releasing them, he can no more easily regain these last precious days spent together in the cove with Jungkook.

With every game, cuddle, and stolen kiss, he aches for more than their remaining time allows.

Hoseok had frequently visited as well, and Jimin treasures his bright laughs and easy company now that they’ve reached an understanding with each other. But even he had begun to begrudge him those short hours he could have spent alone with Jungkook.

A novel concept for Jimin, to want to be alone, even alone with someone else.

Jungkook had taken Hoseok’s visits as prime opportunities to film Jimin, his face hidden behind the camera but gaze palpable.

Hoseok hadn’t approved of Jungkook’s camera either, at first, but with Jimin already well-accustomed to it and Jungkook’s determination behind the lens, he’d had to concede.

Jimin would splash and jump, and he would smile at Jungkook through the camera, anything to feel that familiar weight watching him, lingering with intent. It’s intimate in an entirely separate way from when Hoseok leaves and Jungkook sets aside his camera to pull Jimin into his arms.

But now hours are all they have and Jungkook has packed his camera away. Their days have run out, the sun rapidly falling in the sky and Jungkook leaving with the morning.

He knows he has to let him go, knows why he too must soon leave the cove, but his fingers only clutch harder, arms threaded under Jungkook’s from behind, as he holds onto his chest. He swims on his back in languid circles around the cove, cradling Jungkook and bolstering his lower half with his tail.

Jungkook rests his head against Jimin’s shoulder, eyes closed, and sings in wistful melancholy with him.

When he’s able to hold Jungkook like this, when they kiss until he’s trembling, the warm fullness he feels eclipses all the past voids that would eat holes through his chest, as though he’d never known cold, empty solitude. As much as the feeling comforts him, he’s also scared of how much has changed, and what will happen when he’s on his own again.

He doesn’t want to be on his own again.

Jungkook’s singing fades, and he murmurs into Jimin’s neck, “I’m getting cold.” In contradiction to what he says, his breath is liquid warmth pouring over Jimin’s skin, but he no longer questions his human’s many vulnerabilities in water, only how best to protect him from them.

Without a word, he twists his tail around and propels them back toward shore with renewed purpose. They reach the ledge, and Jimin only detaches long enough for Jungkook to turn and reach behind himself for leverage. He hoists himself backwards out of the water until he’s sitting, feet still dangling in the water and Jimin clinging to his neck.

He doesn’t want Jungkook to be cold, but he can’t make himself unwrap from around him either. But Jungkook only grabs him by the waist and lifts him up with exhilarating strength, falling back onto the grass with Jimin draped over him, kissing him with a sudden desperation. Jimin whimpers as he feels it take hold of him too and returns each kiss with the same hungry ferocity.

Tongues seek and slide against each other, mouths working and only separating for the thrill of rejoining to find a new angle, to hear the ragged intakes of breath, to relive the kiss over and over as if doing so could draw out the time they have left.

It feels so good, and yet Jimin wants to cry.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he gasps into Jungkook’s mouth. “I don’t want to go.”

He draws back far enough until their eyes meet, Jungkook’s dark and shining as they flit back and forth between his. Their chests rise and fall rapidly against each other, slick with seawater, and Jungkook’s legs wrap tightly around his tail with a pleasurable pressure that fizzles through him. They’re inextricably tangled and still not close enough.

“Wish we could stay forever like this,” he breathes and cups Jimin’s cheek with his hand. “Wish I could have you like this always.”

Jimin makes a pained sound and ducks his head down by Jungkook’s ear.

“You say things– you say this, and I feel soft.” He trembles and Jungkook holds him tighter, runs a soothing hand up and down his back. He thinks suddenly of the ice cubes he had shown him once. How cold they were to touch but how quickly they had melted to puddles in the warmth of Jungkook’s palms under the blazing sun. “I am so soft I can melt into water. If– if you touch me more, I will melt and you will need to drink me.”

“Drink you?” Jungkook says with half a chuckle, but the tightness of his voice gives away how much he’s affected too. “What are you– ”

Jimin lifts his head and stares at him with a fierceness brought about by desperation, eyes watering with rising tears.

“Do you understand?”

“I do,” he assures him quietly, his tone caressing as gently as the hand brushing over Jimin’s shoulder to come stroke his cheek and catch the single tear that had begun to fall. “Shh, I do.”

Jimin kisses him again, but softly this time. Softly the way he feels. Feeling every slightest brush and press of their lips throughout his whole body. Feeling the pure sincerity and affection returned through Jungkook’s answering kiss.

His fingers get lost in the dark waves of Jungkook’s hair, and he rolls bodily against him to the rhythm of their kisses, skin sliding and synthesizing with each slow ebb and swell. Jungkook moans into his mouth, making him go breathless.

With one hand cradling the base of Jungkook’s head, Jimin drags his other hand down through the tight space between their bodies, caressing over his chest and stomach. So much of Jungkook has become familiar to him, well-mapped by questing fingers and well-loved by hungry lips seeking the heat beneath.

Only one part of Jungkook truly remains unknown to him.

After Jungkook had caught him trying to see what lies beneath his shorts at their first meeting, he’d made it clear that was a place he didn’t want Jimin to touch, that it was not a place to explore.

But Jimin’s curiosity burns. Now more than ever as he feels a hot hardness through the material of Jungkook’s shorts where they’re pressed together. He’s briefly felt it before when they’ve been close like this, and each time the knowledge of its presence would have Jimin searching his eyes with curiosity and awe, but Jungkook would always respond by avoiding his gaze, putting some distance between them, or slowing down the pace of their kisses.

But he doesn’t want any of that this time.

Kissing more insistently, he moves more firmly against Jungkook, almost frantic to feel with any part of his body he’s allowed.

“Jimin,” Jungkook pants.

He can feel it growing harder trapped under his waist and feel the excited response inside himself, reaching and yearning for Jungkook. Whining his need, he seeks another open-mouthed kiss, Jungkook hot and wet where Jimin dips his tongue inside him. He leverages the end of his tail against the ground to thrust his body harder between Jungkook’s legs.

“Jimin– ” The earth and the sky spin and reorient themselves as Jungkook flips them both over so that Jimin is the one lying on his back and Jungkook can prop himself up over him, panting. “Whoa, slow down.”

Jimin squirms at the loss of pressure and warmth around his tail and throws his head back with a groan of frustrated desire.

“Hey, hey, what is it?” Jungkook asks worriedly.

Jimin feels untethered, adrift and overwhelmed. He doesn’t know how to articulate what he feels, except for– “Want you.”

“What?” Jungkook’s eyes flicker, uncertain as they scan over him, a furrow in his brow.

Jimin drags a hand down past his belly button, lower to the place where skin meets scales and hides his slit. Jungkook tracks his movements and lingers where he covers himself with his hand.

Licking his lips, Jungkook smooths a hand up his tail to rest below Jimin’s. Jimin moans loud and long when Jungkook puts pressure over his sex inside him.

“Jimin, is that...?”

Jungkook doesn’t finish his question and Jimin doesn’t try answering, too focused on keeping his slit shut and his sex inside himself. He’s not supposed to let it out in front of others, but it’s starting to ache as much as it’s pleasurable with the way Jungkook is feeling him through his tail. He hasn’t had any trouble with controlling it since he was very little, but now he nearly shakes with the effort to restrain himself.

A warm hand covers his. Gentle as the question that follows.

“Can I see?”

He hesitates only a moment before removing his hand, which comes away wet with a slick, viscous fluid leaked from his slit. Jungkook’s eyes are blown wide, and Jimin is mesmerized by them and the way they look at his body.

He mewls when Jungkook passes curious fingers through the slick, and he can’t help the way his slit starts to gape with Jungkook’s teasing touch around the opening, sex poking out briefly before he manages to pull it back in.

“Fuck,” Jungkook swears quietly.

“Can’t– can’t hold it in,” Jimin gasps. “Hurts.”

“It’s okay,” Jungkook says breathlessly. “It’s just you and me – you can let go.”

There’s something in those words that touches Jimin, something so accepting of his everything. He wants to offer the same to Jungkook.

With a light but meaningful touch to the material of Jungkook’s shorts, he says, “You too. It’s okay.”

He looks briefly surprised, but then his features soften and settle into resolve.

Kissing him once deeply before straightening up, Jungkook hooks his thumbs in the top of his shorts and Jimin watches, rapt, as he peels them away and down his legs and tosses them aside. Beneath he’s all delicate skin and dark hair. The hardness he’d felt before is clearly Jungkook’s own sex, which some instinctual part of him had guessed but couldn’t confirm until now, rising from the thick patch of curly hair between his legs.

Their differences fascinate Jimin as much as their similarities.

Touch as light as the first time he’d reached for him on this very ledge, with reverence, Jimin feels over the place where Jungkook’s legs meet and the folds of skin over two balls of roundness that hang below his sex. Fingertips pass through coarse, curled hair and trace up the length of his sex, smearing the small pearl of moisture building at the tip. Jungkook shivers in response.

“Your turn,” he whispers.

Jimin slowly relaxes his muscles and groans as the pressure eases and his sex emerges to stand hard, red, slick, and curved slightly toward his belly. The painful pressure eases, but his desire for Jungkook only builds low in his gut.

Jungkook leans back over him and touches him just as carefully. It’s barely there, and yet every touch paints indelible lines through slick and reaching to his core.

He realizes he’d stopped his exploration of Jungkook, fingers curled loosely around the length of him, when Jungkook pushes further into his palm. He closes his hold instinctively, and Jungkook lets himself fall over him with a shaky sigh.

Jimin’s awareness then shrinks down to the place where Jungkook’s hand forms a tight ring around his own sex, and then the sensation expands infinitely when his hand begins to move and shocks of pleasure pass through him and out in a drawn out moan.

Though he’s drowning in the overwhelming feeling as Jungkook strokes him so intimately, he struggles to stay conscious of himself enough to start moving his own hand and to seek a kiss. Jungkook responds immediately, pulsing hotly in his hand, and kisses him with tongue and teeth.

The longer Jungkook is touching him, the more he’s losing himself and falters in the kiss, though he tries to keep up.

He tries, but Jungkook speeds up his pace and it’s all he can do to moan into Jungkook’s mouth as his muscles tense and shake involuntarily, body alight with too much, too good to contain.

The pitch of his voice rises higher and higher in an unfamiliar melody, Jungkook adding lower, complementary notes as he ruts faster into the stuttering movements of Jimin’s hand.

His muscles strain to the point of cramping, and just when he thinks he can take no more or Jungkook will break him apart, his pleasure crests and crashes over him and he releases it all to Jungkook’s hand. His eyes have squeezed shut, he tosses his head back, and his fingers spasm and tighten around Jungkook, who thrusts twice more, spills his own warm release between them, and crumples limp over him, breathing hard in his ear.

BTS - Heartbeat

When he regains control of his limbs, Jimin gathers him up in his arms and holds him close, heart beating a fast rhythm but slowing to something steadier as Jungkook’s body moulds to his.

He opens his eyes and stares up at the sky above him. The sun is setting, colouring everything with brilliant pinks and purples as a parting gift before it disappears and takes its light with it.

But, as he listens to their breaths even out, it’s the moon Jimin can’t tear his eyes from. Already high in the sky, it glows brightly, full and round despite the uneven shadows that mar its surface.

It looks bigger and closer than he’s ever seen before, filled to bursting with light and potential.

~*~

Jungkook comes into consciousness with Jimin in his arms and a new dawn lancing through his eyelids. He aches with every shift of his muscles from sleeping on the ground, even with the bedding he’d laid out last night, but it’s nothing compared to how his chest clenches at the way Jimin’s little nose scrunches as he snuffles into Jungkook’s chest in his sleep.

He rarely has the opportunity to observe Jimin this way. Even with the few times they’d napped or rested together, Jimin is usually awake and exploring before him. This is the first time they’ve spent the whole night together, but there’d been no question of him leaving the cove yesterday.

He holds him tighter and buries his face in his hair, breathing in the smell of the boundless sea that he’s begun to associate with Jimin and freedom.

Naked skin brushes pleasantly against naked skin within the cozy cocoon of blankets surrounding them. The unconscious flutter of a fin tickles at his calf, and even that small thing feels sensual now. He can’t believe he held back as long as he did when Jimin had apparently wanted him just as badly.

Jimin stirs again and makes a small noise of question. Cute. Precious. Adorable.

“I have to leave, but I’ll be back for you. Pinky promise this isn’t goodbye,” he whispers, unsure whether Jimin even registers his words.

He thinks he hasn’t heard until a wet mouth latches onto his nipple, prompting a small, startled moan. A tongue works over the stiffening bud and he lets out a second half-moan, half-groan.

Jimin tilts his head up to kiss him, a sharp moan leaving his own lips, and he’s drowning in him all over again.

Jungkook slips a hand down and tests the stretch of scales beneath his abdomen. He can feel that Jimin is already hard inside his body, and as he moves his hand up the firm bulge underneath his scales, he easily finds Jimin’s slit, slick and gaping already.

Slowly, he teases around the opening, fingers dipping inside and circling the silky inner walls, and Jimin lets out a desperate noise, needy even as he remains languid and pliant from sleep, eyes heavy-lidded.

“That feels good?” Jungkook asks, thrusting a finger in a little deeper. It bumps against Jimin’s cockhead, still tucked inside him, and Jimin twitches in his arms, clutching tight to his shoulders.

He makes the sign for yes and presses it into Jungkook’s shoulder so he can feel it even without seeing.

Sliding his finger in deeper, Jungkook marvels at the way Jimin gasps and shudders, plush lips parted, head tilted back, eyes shut, and face relaxed in rapture. So honest, so trusting. And through it all, Jimin’s cock stays snug in its channel as Jungkook fucks him with a finger, making sure to stroke along its hard length.

He circles his finger around his cock, which pushes back, pressing all around the hard erection and the soft, wet walls that surround it. Jimin lets out the longest moan yet, melodic and breaking over the last note.

Jungkook kisses up his neck, paying special attention to his sensitive gills, then claims his mouth, circling his tongue in a mimicry of his finger. His own breaths are coming hard and fast now as he breaks away to add another finger inside Jimin’s slit.

“Still okay?”

“Yes, yes!” he signs firmly into his skin. Aloud he whines for more.

Jungkook stretches his fingers apart to test how much Jimin can take. He arches and groans, but Jungkook reads only pleasure from him. The fit is tight, but Jimin’s body is making room for him.

A third finger and Jungkook’s own erection is throbbing where he has it pressed against the smooth scales of Jimin’s tail.

“Please,” he begs. “I want to be inside you.”

Jimin looks at him through clouded hazel eyes, sleepy softness melted into a new burning lust.

“Okay,” he replies. “Want you.”

Jungkook lines himself up, and despite the newness – in every sense he’s never had anyone like Jimin – it feels familiar and so right as he pushes into his slit.

He thrusts shallowly, sliding in with first just the tip, then the head, and finally the shaft in careful increments. All the while Jimin remains lax except for the noises he makes in his throat, the fingers that press into his shoulder blades, and the muscles inside him that welcome Jungkook and massage him in deeper.

Jimin’s cock emerges as Jungkook pushes in and slides between both their bellies, but it hasn’t left much extra space in its wake. He’s still so tight Jungkook’s vision blurs, and once he’s completely inside him, he stills to let them both adjust.

When he can see again, Jimin is there, expression wide open and full of love. Enough to match the growing aching tenderness Jungkook feels.

He’s so trusting it terrifies Jungkook sometimes. But the most frightening is how easy it’s been for him to give in to that openness and fall himself. How ready he is to reciprocate.

“I love you,” he says and moves at the same time, without rush. He savours the way Jimin’s eyebrows furrow and his lips part, the way his body accepts each deep, purposeful thrust and carries him higher than he’s ever felt. “Do you know how much I love you?”

“Love...”

It’s a word he’s never taught Jimin, and yet he can see a spark of understanding in Jimin’s eyes even as they’re both losing themselves to one another. Even without teaching him, Jimin somehow knows, as he so often does.

But this word he’s going to make sure he learns with every part of him. He’s going to teach it to him body and soul.

“Do you understand?” His thrusts build, but stay dragging and deep in a way he feels down to his toes. “I l–love you. I love you.”

“Love you!” Jimin cries back. Their foreheads are pressed together, and Jungkook memorizes the moment in its every detail.

The waver of his voice. The thrashing of his tail. The pained expression that comes not from pain at all, but instead ecstasy as Jimin loses himself. The way more wetness joins the slick smeared between them. He tightens around him, and Jungkook soon too is lost.

~*~

Leaving is the hardest thing he’s done. 

He gazes out at the shrinking island, the dark volcanic rocks with greenery on top rising high out of the sea, from the well-worn deck of the small ferry boat, squinting against the glare of the morning sun and his own tears. He imagines that he can still hear Jimin’s haunting parting song, that he can feel it tight around his heart.

He holds traded kisses and love yous close to his chest with his camera bag.

Chapter Text

Dermot Kennedy – Outnumbered

No sooner has Jungkook stepped through the door of his apartment than his phone rings in his pocket.

He drops his bags heavily in the entryway and checks the caller: Jeon Jungshik. Of course it’s his father. He can’t even have a moment to catch his breath from the trip back from the island, not even to process the hollow that had opened up inside him when he’d left Jimin and the cove behind.

But he has to face him sooner or later. It’s the whole reason he came back, so he might as well get it over with.

“Hello father.”

“It’s about time you stop hiding behind your brother and running away from your responsibilities,” his father greets him, brutally to the point as always. Jungkook guards himself against the purposeful digs aimed at him, old walls easily resurrected, and doesn’t try to challenge his father on his accusations. He’s saving his reserves for the battle that matters, the one that’s coming. “I expect you at dinner tonight.”

That takes him a bit by surprise. He takes a bracing breath.

“What makes you think I can make it to dinner? I could still be on the island for all you know.” He hears his father scoff, as if the answer were obvious.

“No matter how you disappoint me, you’re still my son. Of course I’m going to know where you are.”

Jungkook’s skin crawls like he can feel his father’s eyes on him.

“Did Jin tell you?”

“Be here for seven sharp, Jungkook,” his father says with a finality only he can manage and promptly hangs up without answering the question.

It would be out of character for Seokjin to snitch on him to his father, but he can’t figure out how else he would know he’s back in the city when they haven’t spoken for months now.

He sends a quick message to Jin, asking, Did you tell Darth Vader I was getting back today? And after a second thought, he adds, Come to family dinner with me tonight?

Frustration and dread build in him and he hasn’t even met with his father yet. He’s barely set down his phone when it starts ringing again. He’s ready to mute it if it’s another call from his father. But when he notices who’s calling, he starts fumbling with it in his haste to answer.

“Hoseok! What is it? Is Jimin alright?”

“Yes, yes. He’s fine. Everything’s fine,” Hoseok reassures him quickly, and Jungkook slumps in relief. “He’s leaving now actually, but he wanted to talk to you first.”

Coldplay X BTS – My Universe (Suga's Remix)

“Oh,” he says, the hollow part of him contracting and throbbing painfully with urgent want. “Yeah, put him on please.”

Hoseok hums and makes unnecessary robot noises, little beeps and blips, as he switches to a video call. Jungkook accepts as fast as he can, and he glimpses Hoseok’s head before he shifts off-screen, leaving only a blur of clear blue sky.

He swears his entire chest seizes when Jimin pops into view and a blinding smile overtakes his features.

“Jungkook!”

“Hi Jimin,” he says softly.

“I’ll be over here,” Jungkook hears Hoseok say in the background. “Just remember not to get the phone wet, alright?”

“Okay. I will keep the phone dry,” Jimin says with heavy seriousness, briefly looking off to the side before turning back to Jungkook, eyes roving over his image on the screen. Jungkook does the same, overjoyed at this chance to talk to and see Jimin so much sooner than he’d anticipated.

It bolsters him in unexpected ways. The dread and demoralization he felt after talking to his father melt at the sight of Jimin’s bright expression alone. It’ll all be worth it in the end.

“You’re leaving the cove?” Jungkook asks.

Jimin nods and hums in affirmation.

“I need many days swim to find Tae-Tae. Jungkook, are you safe?”

“I’m safe,” he confirms with a smile. “You’ll be safe when you’re swimming to find Tae-Tae too, right?”

Jimin coos at him.

“I swim fast. Don’t worry.”

“I know you’re an amazing swimmer and you can handle yourself.” Jimin visibly preens at the praise, straightening his posture and puffing out his chest. “I guess I just worry about you making such a long journey alone. What if something happened? How would I help you?”

“It’s okay,” Jimin says quietly, reassuringly. “Tae-Tae will help. Does Jin help you in city?”

“Yeah, he does. He’s going to protect me at dinner tonight.” He hopes he will. He’s going to need every advantage.

“Jin will help fight big predators?” Jungkook laughs and Jimin scowls at him. “Don’t laugh.”

“Sorry, but there aren’t any big predators in the city.” At Jimin’s skeptical look, he adds, “I promise. Don’t worry about me, okay?”

“Okay,” he relents.

“The only thing I’m worried about is how I’m going to deal with my father.”

Jimin looks impossibly sad for him. He hasn’t told Jimin many details about his relationship with his father for exactly this reason.

Jimin has always spoken of his own parents with such love and longing, and the fact that Jungkook isn’t on good terms with his leaves him positively heartbroken on Jungkook’s behalf.

After years of introspection, Jungkook is done grieving his lack of parental love and support and has long accepted that the situation’s not likely to change. He has Jin, and that’s enough for him.

“It’s okay though. You’ve already made me feel so much better. Thank you for calling me. Just seeing your face again gives me courage.”

Making a sudden reappearance, Jimin’s smile breaks across his face and stretches impossibly wide.

“I love you. I miss you. Jungkook, you are strong and good, and you will come back to Jimin,” he says with such confidence that Jungkook believes him.

“I will. I love you too much not to find my way back to you. The same goes for you.”

He could continue to talk to Jimin like this forever, but too soon Hoseok is interrupting, asking for his phone back.

Jungkook should get ready for dinner (never a simple affair with his father), and Jimin also needs to leave, mentioning something about the tide and currents being favourable.

Jimin holds his hand over his heart in the sign for love as he says goodbye, and Jungkook returns the gesture to Jimin’s delighted little grin.

When he hangs up the hollow is still there, but it throbs just a little less.

With a sigh, he shucks off his t-shirt and swim shorts. He’d practically lived in them for the duration of his stay on the island, but he won’t be needing them again for the next while. Turning on the shower, he pulls a suit from his closet while the water warms.

~*~

Jungkook’s belted slacks and stiff-collared dress shirt feel strange and constricting after months in casual clothes. The cacophony and bustle of the city overwhelming after the quiet and peace of the cove.

The grandeur of his family home appears even more alienating than usual. His father’s stern demeanour and icy welcome do nothing to warm the cold marble-floored halls of the mansion just outside the city they’d moved to after his father had remarried. Instead of a true home, it’s an ostentatious display of wealth accumulated from the massive jewellery empire Jeon Jungshik built by ruthlessly dominating and buying out all his competition.

Jin has texted him that he’ll be there for support, but that he’s running late, though Jungkook could really have used his presence as a buffer about fifteen minutes ago.

Jin had also denied telling their father of Jungkook’s return home, which only unsettles him further. His father already has enough leverage over him without this new mysterious ability to know where he is.

“Your brother tells me that a new university would only hinder you at this stage, that you can’t even handle switching schools.” Jungkook is surethat’s not what Seokjin had said to him, certainly not in those words, but he doesn’t bother disputing it. Familiar numbness dulls the barbs. “But you will drop those silly picture-taking classes and enrol in the business program before the semester begins.”

“Really? You couldn’t even wait until we sat down for dinner to start on this?”

Jungkook’s father casts a sharp look back at him as they walk the long corridor through to the formal dining room. As much as Jungkook hates to admit it, they look like each other, father and son. But where Jungkook’s features are softened with big eyes and bigger smiles, Jungshik’s remain stern and framed severely with the lines of age and stress.

“You’ve run away from this conversation for as long as I will tolerate.”

Jungkook stops just outside a set of thick wooden doors, polished until they’re gleaming. Beyond them, he spots his step-mother waiting for them in a deep emerald gown, standing formally behind her seat next to that at the head of the table. She has elegant features, looks young for her age, and she means well, and that’s about as much as he can say for her. He’s never felt the same attachment to her that Seokjin understandably does.

Meanwhile, a couple of servants busy themselves setting the long table with far more food than they could conceivably eat, even with Jin’s steep appetite to help them. Kim Mijoo, Seokjin’s mother, doesn’t spare them a glance even as they move around her, their white and gold uniforms camouflaging them against the room’s wallpaper.

Jungkook sees them because he always makes a point to. He knows too well how it feels to pass invisible through this place.

“I’m not taking Business.” The steadiness of his voice surprises him, but he’s never been more sure of this, and the memory of Jimin’s radiant smile bolsters him. He’s not aimlessly running away this time; he’s running towards a brighter future with Jimin, and the direction has given him a resolve he’s never felt before. “I’m not returning to university at all this fall.”

Jungshik’s eyes flash in anger. It’s the first time Jungkook has so directly defied him, always avoiding the issue or relying on Jin to mediate, and it’s clear he doesn’t appreciate Jungkook’s new tack. But his father had bluntly brought up the topic first, and Jungkook doesn’t want to draw this out either.

“What new foolishness is this?” his father begins with threatening quiet, voice growing in volume as he continues. “I will not support indolence. I have not paid for your schooling, your apartment, your godsdamn cameras for you to waste your life away!”

“I don’t plan towaste anything,” Jungkook bites out. “If you’ll listen—”

“No, you listen here! I let you have your fun, and now you need that business degree to take your place at the company. I’ve given you everything, set everything up for you, and you’re so ungrateful you can’t do a single thing for your father.”

“I never asked for any of that!” Jungkook raises his voice desperately. He had known this conversation would go badly, but it’s currently spiralling out of control quicker than he had foreseen. “I’ve never wanted to work at the company.”

“What else would you do?” Jungshiks snarls. “You’ve never accomplished a single thing on your own, Jungkook. Every internship, every job you’ve ever had has been handed to you.”

“And whose fault is that? You never even gave me the chance to try to do something on my own!”

“Darling,” a nervous voice interjects in between their shouting, “dinner’s ready. Perhaps we could have this discussion after we have a family meal together.”

Jungkook stares incredulously at his stepmother’s brave, pointless attempt to salvage the dinner. As if there could be any peace after this. Mijoo flashes a practised, plastic smile at them regardless, somehow determined to remedy everything by force of will and artifice. This is the exact reason why he can’t deal with his stepmother either. The world could be crumbling around her and she would insist that it’s fine.

“We’ll eat when Jungkook starts seeing sense.”

Mijoo turns towards his father then, and Jungkook catches sight of a flash of emerald at her ear. He’s used to seeing his stepmother constantly bedecked in lavish jewellery, a result of his father’s trade, but this particular earring stops his breath and has blood pounding in his ears.

“What’re you wearing?” he croaks out.

“Oh, now you’re interested,” his father scoffs. He has storm clouds brewing beyond his furrowed brow, clearly unfinished with the verbal lashing he intends for Jungkook.

Contrary to her husband, his stepmother looks extremely pleased, tilting her head to the side to show off her earrings to the best advantage as they dangle and twist at the end of a silver chain.

“Aren’t they just beautiful?” she asks. “They’re part of your father’s newest, exclusive collection. They’re real merfolk scales.”

Jungkook feels so sick, he reaches out a hand to steady himself against the wall. These dime-sized scales shine a deep emerald green, but in his mind all he can see are familiar, perfect, overlapping fuchsia scales glittering with water and sunlight.

“You c-can’t. That’s – that’s illegal.”

“It’s illegal to poach merfolk,” Jungshik explains patronizingly. “The trick is to stay away from the leather trade.” Junkook hates the smug set of his jaw, how self-satisfied he is at finding a loophole in the law. He doesn’t think he’s ever hated his father this much, even through all the emotional abuse he’s put him through over the years. “We’ve partnered with an organization that gathers ethically sourced scales, which we then incorporate into the jewellery line and is perfectly legal.”

“See? No one gets harmed, dear,” his stepmother chimes in with a pat on his arm. He recoils from her touch and ignores the hurt look she sends him.

“Are you kidding me? Ethically sourced? What does that even mean?” The words burst out of him with the outrage that swiftly overtakes him. “You do know that any trading in merfolk – merfolk body parts further endangers the whole race, right? Or are you really that ignorant? You’re only encouraging more people to go after them!”

“You will not speak to me this way. You’re already on thin ice–”

“I don’t give a shit! Yell at me all you want – I’m done with you and your fucking company! At least I’m not a damn murderer!”

“Get out!” Jungshik bellows, every muscle ticking along his neck and jaw.

His stepmother has her hands pressed tightly over her mouth, eyes filled with tears and horrified at their fight. Jungkook wishes he could care more, because she’s not the monster his father is, but she chose her side a long time ago.

“Happy to!”

Jungkook turns on his heel, tears building in his eyes, righteous rage still burning through him, but his father shouts after him, “And don’t even think of going back to the apartment! You wanted to make it on your own, son? Well try it! I’ll be watching the surveillance cameras, and if I see you anywhere near my property, I’m calling the cops on you for trespassing.”

That admission makes Jungkook pause as it sinks in. He hadn’t known about the surveillance cameras. His father’s been spying on him this whole time. That’s how he’d immediately known when he returned to the city. And now he’s homeless.

He starts walking again and doesn’t look back.

He’s rushing out the front doors when he bumps into Jin, who’s just arrived for dinner. He sobs uncontrollably as he tries to explain what happened, but beyond a few words, he’s incoherent.

Jin, confused but always solid and reliable when it counts, takes it in stride and ushers him into the passenger seat of his car and starts driving them.

Jin grips the steering wheel tightly while Jungkook haltingly explains about their father’s line of merfolk jewellery (he chokes on his tears just calling it that), but he doesn’t say much. When he gathers that Jungkook’s also been kicked out and cut off financially, he drives straight for the apartment despite Jungkook’s blubbered protests about security cameras and trespassing.

“Wait in the car,” he says firmly, taking Jungkook’s keys from him, “I won’t be long. He can try to bully you, but he wouldn’t dare call the cops on me, not if he doesn’t want bad press.”

He’s right, Jungkook realizes with the smallest degree of comfort. No matter how angry his father is, he wouldn’t risk a scandal with his world-famous actor step-son. Better to get his things now before his father has a chance to change any locks.

Good to his word, Jin returns swiftly, loaded down with Jungkook’s most valuable filming equipment and the still-packed bags he’d abandoned in the entryway. He tears up all over again. Jin knows him so well, the things that matter to him most.

Once Jin has fitted everything in the back of the car and rejoined him at the front, Jungkook grabs him and buries himself in Seokjin’s shoulder, squeezing him tight. Jin returns the hug just as fiercely.

“You’re coming home with me now. We’re calling Joonie, and everything’s going to be alright, Jungkook.”

He loves his big brother so much.

~*~

BTS – Whalien 52

Jimin pumps his tail as fast as he can, working with the current agilely while his heart races with the thrill of the chase. All around him the ocean is a blur, but he can feel movement close behind him in the disturbance of the water. He pushes himself harder, but it’s no use. A noise of alarm squeaks out of him the moment just before he’s caught.

He giggles as a massive body pushes up from under him, and it’s all he can do to swim with the slipstream it creates as he slides over and down the thick back faster and faster. His belly swoops as the ride seems never-ending.

Just as he thinks he’s about to lose control, the current gotten too strong for him to navigate, he reaches the end of the back and the gigantic tail flips up to launch him upwards in one big burst. He tumbles head over tail in a spiral of bubbles and breathless hollers.

When his careening slows down just enough, he pulls out of a somersault and gathers his bearings.

“Tae-Tae!” he calls. When Tae-Tae swings his head around to focus an eye on him, Jimin signs, “That was too much! I almost lost my lunch, you big lug.”

Tae-Tae approaches him again, gently this time, until Jimin is lying flat on his nose, arms stretched out as far as they’ll go and pressed to him tightly. His body vibrates lightly with Tae-Tae’s whale-song, filled with amusement and affection. Jimin can’t read much more from it, but he thinks he knows the whale well enough now to know that he’s making excuses.

He’s missed Jimin. He loves him. He can’t help it if he got a little overexcited to see him.

Jimin closes his eyes, singing his own song of love, and focuses on the reassuring presence beneath him. Sometimes Tae-Tae gets a little too playful, but Jimin also knows there’s nowhere safer under the sea than with his best friend.

The only safer place lies in a quiet cove with the human who holds his heart.

~*~

Tae-Tae has gone up to the surface to breathe, and Jimin has chosen to stay beneath the waves and wait for him. He hasn’t even been gone long and Jimin can still see him, a dark shadow far above, but already the creeping loneliness digs its tendrils back into him.

He can somewhat forget about it when he’s playing with Tae-Tae, but it’s in lulls like this that all Jimin can think about is Jungkook.

He’d gotten so used to being with Jungkook every day. And in their last day together, he’d only just started to discover the myriad ways they could fall together into unparalleled ecstasy. He craves the heat of Jungkook’s touch with a fierceness he’s never felt before.

To dull the aching need, he’s been sunbathing, which he would have never dared do before. But he’s begun accompanying Tae-Tae to the surface at least some of the time when he goes up to clear out his blowhole and breathe.

He only does it when the vast, open seas are completely clear of signs of humans for miles around. He understands better now that it’s not the surface he should fear, but the poachers and others who would seek to harm him that roam it.

He’s taken to lying on the broad expanse of Tae-Tae’s back, listening to him breathe as he shuts his eyes against the direct glare of the sun. Its rays warm his front, caressing down the side of his face and over his chest. He imagines the warm touch as Jungkook’s, holding him, and being apart becomes a little easier.

He dreams of the day he can kiss him again.

For now, he twists in anxious circles waiting for Tae-Tae to return. He hadn’t felt safe surfacing with him this time, though there aren’t any obvious signs of humans. But they had passed a few discarded human-crafted objects littering the sea floor, and part of the colourful local vegetation had been disturbed recently, which is enough to have Jimin too wary to surface.

He’ll be glad once they’re swimming together again, away from this place, so he can distract himself from his worries and missing Jungkook.

He trains his eyes on Tae-Tae’s shadow, the distance belying his size, but he’s still resting.

That’s when he hears it, so faint at first he thinks it’s some faraway memory or his anxiety manifesting, but then the sound takes shape into an urgent melody.

He whirls around, straining to listen over the stuttering of his heart. He pinpoints the direction it’s coming from, and he’s off like a shot. As the song grows louder, it becomes familiar, so achingly familiar.

It feels like the last time he’d heard a song from another of his people was an entire lifetime ago. But he can hear her so clearly now, a mermaid singing. And she’s in distress.

She calls to him, to anyone listening, for immediate help, and Jimin doesn’t hesitate. It’s the first sign he’s had from any of his people in years, and he’s not about to lose her just as quickly.

He calls out to her, but there’s no change or acknowledgement in her song. He’s close now, her voice pressing him to hurry hurry, but he can’t find her. He doesn’t understand. She should be here. Why can’t he see her?

He slows to a stop and just listens. There’s something wrong with her voice. Before, he’d attributed it to her distress and the distance, but it doesn’t ring out as clearly as it should. She sounds muffled and distorted even though he should be right on top of her.

He spots a thin cable that extends from the surface and sways with the current. He examines the hard-shelled box at the end where her voice seems to be coming from. It’s blue and no larger than his fist.

He inspects the strange object for a moment longer, before a chill rips through him. A trap.

Reckless. He’d been so preoccupied in finding another of his people, he hadn’t spared a thought for his own safety and already he’s swum closer to the surface than he’s comfortable with. The sound-emitting box is clearly human-made. He’s seen similar mysteries with Jungkook’s phone and camera.

There is no mermaid here.

He darts straight down only to meet a net sweeping under him and pushing him back up.

He twists back on himself and tries to escape in another direction, but the massive net has already pulled up around him on all sides and the gap at the top is closing too rapidly. He bellows his frustration, draws his knife, and starts hacking a hole in the net, but the ropes are tough and thick and it continues to pull him upward.

The hole he’s cutting grows just big enough for him to try to squeeze his shoulders through when he feels a sharp tug on his tail and one of his fins, wrenching them painfully. The net has closed too tightly around him, leaving him no room to work or maneuver and tangling him in its grip. He barely has time to cry out in horror before he’s breaking the surface and the net catches around the rest of his limbs, locking him in suspension.

He hears shouting from several voices and the world jerks and flips on itself as Jimin is swung through the air and lands heavily on a solid surface.

Raising his head against the weight of the net, he glares and hisses up at the humans that surround him on all sides, crowding the deck of the boat.

Searching each of their faces and seeing only giddy greed, he knows that all the monsters he’s believed in since he was a child are real.

Chapter Text

BTS – Black Swan

Namjoon comes by Jin’s apartment in the fallout from the ugly fight and Jungkook being disowned by his father.

A scriptwriter and one of Jin’s closest friends, Namjoon is just the kind of rational, level-headed comfort Jungkook needs right now. Although Jin had met Namjoon while working in his first big breakout role, Jungkook had quickly befriended him too.

Okay, so maybe at first teenage Jungkook had harboured a massive crush on his older brother’s cool, smart, and mature friend with the thickest thighs. And maybe it had been a little embarrassing when he realized everyone else had known about it, but over the years his crush has faded to a deep respect and admiration and transformed into a mutual friendship despite their age gap.

“I just don’t understand how it’s possible for him to do this legally,” Jin says, running a hand through his hair and betraying his agitation. He’d kept his cool just long enough to drive Jungkook and his things to his penthouse apartment and call Namjoon, but Jungkook can see how shaken up Jin is about their father’s new business venture as well.

“The laws only forbid poaching, not the reselling of merfolk leather or scales,” Namjoon explains with a distasteful twist of his mouth that deepens his prominent dimples. “If, theoretically, you were to find a scale washed up on the beach, you could keep it or sell it. That must be how he’s getting around the law.”

“He said ‘the trick’ was to stay away from leather,” Jungkook spits out, anger and worry still boiling just under his skin. He feels cornered, even in the open concept living room, as he paces in front of the couch where Seokjin sits slumped and Namjoon leans against the armrest.

Namjoon nods, grim. “That makes sense. I assume that whoever is supplying your father is claiming that they find the scales through beach-combing or something like that. Merfolk do lose scales here and there, though it’s likely only a cover story. It would be much more difficult to convince the authorities that they’re finding leather or entire tails washed ashore.”

“Please don’t say it like that,” Jungkook begs, clutching his stomach as a new wave of anxiety and resulting nausea washes over him. The gruesome imagery keeps invoking thoughts of Jimin, his Jimin, at the mercy of these butchers, and he can’t entertain them or he’ll lose his mind.

“I’m sorry,” Namjoon says regretfully. “A friend of mine works in this field, as an activist, and he’s been pushing for them to change the laws for years, but there’s a general complacency surrounding the issue. When you can get people to care at all, they think if the hunting of merfolk is banned, then there’s no harm done.”

“It’s sick,” Jungkook hisses, even if he knows he had once been guilty of sitting comfortably in ignorance. He knows better now and he won’t make the same mistake again.

“The biggest problem is that it creates an incentive for poachers and black market resellers to continue their activities. When there’s a demand, there will always be those unscrupulous or desperate enough to take the risk for that kind of profit. Especially when the laws are so rarely enforced.”

“So what do we do?” Seokjin asks, again being the practical brother when all Jungkook feels like doing is crumbling.

Namjoon pauses, thinking, then says, “I’ll talk to Yoongi – my friend – and I’ll see what he says about it. In the meantime, if you can find out anything about Mr. Jeon’s new business partners that would be helpful.”

Jungkook turns pleading eyes on his brother, but Jin is already agreeing with a nod. There’s no way Jungkook will be able to find out anything from his father about his business now, but Jin still might. He hasn’t been disowned, at least.

“What about me?” Jungkook asks. “I need to do something, anything. They can’t be allowed to do this.”

Namjoon turns pitying eyes on him. “I’ll let you know if there’s anything you can do, but for now, just try to take it easy, alright Jungkook?”

“Yes,” Jin agrees, “leave it to us for now. Why don’t you unpack and get settled in your room?”

He tries not to feel like a kid being sent to his room so the adults can work. He knows that’s not how Jin and Namjoon see him. And even when he had been a kid, they had never treated him like he didn’t matter or that he was in the way.

Begrudgingly, Jungkook accepts that they’re probably right. He’s in no state to help anyone right now even if he had a clue what to do. He just feels frustratingly useless.

He moves his things into his room, putting clothes in drawers and toiletries in the bathroom, and the tightness of his chest loosens just a fraction. The simple action of doing something making him feel just a bit easier in his body.

The downstairs spare bedroom has always been his whenever he stays over, though he hasn’t needed to take advantage of it as much since he enrolled in university and his father had given him his own apartment nearer to campus. Although had it ever really been his?

Don’t think about that, he admonishes himself.

At least Jin has made sure he knows he always has a place with him. And his apartment is big enough that Jungkook doesn’t feel like he’s encroaching on his space too much. Jin’s own bedroom, bathroom, and gaming room are on the second floor, up the staircase that descends from the ceiling as a statement piece, while the kitchen and communal spaces are all downstairs.

He’s unpacking his computer and camera equipment and setting it up on the desk when he opens the main camera bag he’d used on the island and pauses.

He pulls the camera out and adjusts the small monitor, playing back the last thing he’d filmed. A close-up of Jimin smiles at him in miniature. It’s a sweet smile and Jungkook feels the same as when he first saw it. It melts him around the edges, and he feels himself expanding outward if only to better hold all the love he feels for this precious, precious merman.

If only everyone could see Jimin as he does. There would be no room for complacency, only the urgency Jungkook feels to protect him with everything he has.

Tears blur his vision, and then he nearly drops his camera as the realization strikes him. He knows what he has to do now. Something only he can do.

They may have had it wrong all along, trying to keep Jimin like a secret. The laws forbidding people from interacting with merfolk at all may be just as counterproductive. They’re meant to keep humans from interfering with the dwindling merfolk population, but how can people care about an issue when they’re so far removed from it?

~

Jungkook throws himself into his videography. Specifically, he finds himself pouring over all his footage of Jimin while he coops himself up in his room at Seokjin’s.

He only grows more lovesick with every rewatch, as he gathers together the pieces of Jimin’s abounding sweetness, feverish as he edits them all together to tell the story he wants. He barely stops to eat and sleep.

Jin is worried for him, he knows, but he reassures him he’s just preoccupied with working on something, and he needs this. It’s not a lie.

With a painful crack of his neck and back, Jungkook saves the file and at last straightens out from where he had been bent over his computer, sighing.

The thumbnail shows Jimin sitting on the beach of the cove wearing a striped shirt with too long sleeves that partially cover his hands. He looks back at Jungkook over his shoulder, ocean beyond him, smiling angelically as the wind ruffles his hair. His tail is out of the shot, and Jungkook thinks he’s never looked more human, but that’s the point.

His phone starts ringing where it sits on his desk, and he feels a familiar spike of dread thinking it’s his father. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to hear a phone ring and not have that instant gut reaction. But his father has truly cut ties the past couple weeks, and even Jin hasn’t been able to get much out of him. He’s that furious with Jungkook confronting him.

He’s surprised and relieved to find that it’s Namjoon calling him, and he picks it up on the fourth ring.

“Hey?”

“Have you been on social media today?”

There’s an urgency to Namjoon’s voice that instantly has Jungkook on alert. Without thinking, he switches to his web browser and starts scrolling.

“No, I’ve been busy. What’s wrong?”

“Jungkook, listen, Jin and I are on our way to the apartment. Just stay off social media until we get there.”

“What? Why would I...”

Jungkook trails off as an on-screen post with an obscene amount of shares catches his attention with the words MERMAN and CRAZY LIVE CAPTURE, the rest of the title a blur as he clicks on the link to the video.

He feels numb as Jimin appears, so different to the version of Jimin in his own videos. This Jimin is snarling, trying to slice at the net he’s tangled in while it bends his tail back at an unfortunate angle.

Around him people laugh and goad him, though Jungkook can’t see more than a few tall fishing boots in the frame.

“Jungkook? Jungkook, are you listening?”

Jungkook hears Namjoon call him as if from far away, but he can’t tear his eyes away from how one of those boots gets closer to step on Jimin’s hand that clutches his pearlescent knife and crush it from his grip before kicking it out of his reach. Jimin cries out and Jungkook’s breath snags painfully in his chest and his own hand jerks where it holds his mouse.

“Shit, hurry, Jin. I think he’s seen it. Jungkook, hey, we’ll be there soon, okay? Just keep talking to me.”

But words are beyond Jungkook in this moment, and he drops his phone as the Jimin in the video begins to sing. Jungkook doesn’t know all of Jimin’s songs, but he knows this one is of distress.

The notes are urgent and staccato before being drawn out in an appeal. It’s discordant and loud.

“Why the fuck they always gotta howl n’ holler?” a faceless voice shouts to someone else in the video.

“Stupid fucking fish,” someone else answers, “they’re not smart enough to do anything else.”

“Get it in the hole so we don’t have to fucking hear it.”

Another man grabs part of the net and drags Jimin across the deck, cutting off his song with a whine as it further contorts his body. The camera shakes as it follows the movement.

“Please stop,” Jimin says aloud, as if to prove them wrong about his intelligence.

He’s not stupid. These ignorant poachers haven’t got an inkling of the multilayered communication merfolk use. But they don’t care to know.

Instead they laugh at him, and Jimin shrinks back onto himself, as much as he can all tangled in the net. His chest rises and falls, rises and falls, and his eyes are wide and wild with fear.

“Fish brain knows some tricks!”

One of them nudges a boot into his ribs, jostling him.

“Come on, do it again! Say something else!”

Their cruel taunting is cut off by a thunderous bellow and the deck shuddering as something large crashes into the boat. The picture blurs before going completely dark, but the audio continues, though it’s all chaos.

“What the fucking fuck–”

“A whale!”

There’s another bellow and the rumble of a second blow to the boat.

“The harpoon! Get the damn harpoon!”

“Shit!”

Jungkook then hears the high pitch of Jimin’s voice ring out above the others.

“Tae-Tae!” he cries out, and Jungkook isn’t breathing. Then Jimin lets out a piercing warning that translates even through Jungkook’s computer speakers.

The bellows and rumbling from the whale stops, but Jimin’s warning doesn’t. Not until someone growls, “Shut it up!” and a few moments later there’s a dull thud and Jimin goes quiet.

A sob wrenches through Jungkook like it’s torn from the lining of his lungs and he chokes on it.

The owner of the phone recording everything must finally pick it up again, and Jungkook desperately scans the blurry images for any sign of Jimin. When it refocuses on him, Jungkook lets out his own weak cry.

He’s crumpled limp on the dirty, stained metal deck. His arms are trapped awkwardly under his body and his neck stretched uncomfortably. A man stands next to him with a harpoon, the yellow butt of it wielded over him.

“Fucking finally.”

“Idiot, you better not have killed it.”

“I only knocked it out, Captain. It’s alive and breathing.”

“Good. Now turn that fucking thing off, show’s over.”

The video ends and Jungkook is left staring at a blank screen. He wills it to change, for there to be more to the video. For the audio to come back in and to hear Jimin’s voice, but there’s nothing.

Nothing.

~

Jungkook (Prod. Suga) – Stay Alive

Jimin wakes in the dark and isn’t sure he’s awoken at all. But then he tries to uncurl and his tail and shoulder hit against opposing walls, and the illusion of nothingness is broken.

He aches all over, but his head throbs especially painfully. He calls out, but his voice is weak and his throat sore. He can hear people speaking, but it’s muffled, the sound confused and distant.

He’s underwater again, but it’s all wrong. He’s surrounded by walls, and the water tastes faintly of blood. There’s a shallow pocket of air above him, but beyond that there’s another solid wall trapping him in on all sides.

He remembers being caught with sudden, awful clarity. Remembers losing his abalone knife, remembers the way the humans had mocked and laughed at him as he lay there powerless.

He remembers Tae-Tae coming at the sound of his distress. Then, how the humans had readied to hurt his friend. Jimin had shrieked out a warning just in time. Tae-Tae had slipped back beneath the waves before everything had gone dark for Jimin.

He doesn’t know where he is, but it’s with sinking certainty that he knows the humans still have him. He searches the walls surrounding him, beating and pushing at them. But he finds no exit to his cramped prison and only further exhausts himself.

With nowhere to go, he closes his eyes against his splitting headache and curls back in on himself helplessly, arms holding his sore tail tight to his body, wishing it were Jungkook holding him instead.

~

Namjoon is talking to him, but Jungkook can’t hear him past the empty roaring in his ears.

“I’ll fucking kill him,” he chokes out past the tears that still wet his cheeks.

“Jungkook!” Jin snaps, grabbing his arm before he can storm out of the apartment to hunt down his father.

“Let me go!”

He rounds on his brother, but Jin doesn’t back down.

“If you want to help Jimin, you need to stop and think! You don’t even know whether your father has anything to do with it.”

“I told you what he said to me. He knows what they do to them, and now Jimin–”

“I know. I know, Jungkook, but it doesn’t mean these poachers are connected to him. They could be anyone.”

Jungkook pants, trembling with adrenaline even as Jin’s words begin to sink in. Namjoon stands a few feet behind Jin, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“I have to do something,” he pleads. “I have to save him.”

“We will,” Namjoon says reassuringly, “but we have to be smart about it. Sit down and talk this through.”

“We don’t have time for that! They have Jimin, and he’s hurt!”

Jin grips his arm harder, until he feels it ache, but the pain is grounding like nothing else has been.

“Do you even know how long ago the video was posted?” Jin demands.

Jungkook’s mind races, drawing on horror-filled memories of the post and video, but anything useful slips away like sand, if he noticed it at all. All he can remember is Jimin, scared and alone.

“It was posted only three hours ago,” Jin says in his silence. “If we act fast we can get to him before the poachers pass him off to anyone else, but we need to find out where he is first.”

“How?” he asks helplessly.

Jin looks over his shoulder at Namjoon, who jumps in now that Jungkook has somewhat calmed. “I have a few ideas, but first you need to tell me more about Tae-Tae.”

Chapter Text

Jin drives them to the Merfolk Protection Agency in the coastal capital, while Jungkook sits in the back of the vehicle clawing into his own arms as he does his best to stay calm and fill Namjoon in on absolutely everything he can remember Jimin telling him about Tae-Tae.

He still doesn’t understand why it’s important, but he trusts Namjoon and his intelligence. If anyone can puzzle out how to find Jimin, it’s him. And he’s clinging to that hope with everything he has.

“Did he say anything about Tae-Tae being different from other whales?” Namjoon prompts him. “You mentioned he was completely alone?”

“Yes,” Jungkook says slowly. “He said something about his voice being different, higher, and that’s why he was alone like Jimin. The other whales can’t understand him.”

Namjoon sucks in a sharp breath. Jungkook leans forward in his seat anxiously, peering into the front where Namjoon sits next to Jin, to see his expression better.

“What? Joon, what is it?”

“I think he really is the 52-Hertz whale after all.”

“The what?” Jungkook asks numbly, still trying and failing to figure out if this is a good or bad revelation.

“It’s also known as the world’s loneliest whale. It calls at a frequency of 52 hertz, which is unusual and unlike any other known species of whale. It’s unique and sounds a lot like Jimin’s Tae-Tae,” Namjoon explains.

“Okay, that’s bad, right?”

Namjoon shakes his head.

“In this case, it could be very, very good.”

“What do you mean?” Jungkook asks, gripping the back of Namjoon’s seat as he fights against the seatbelt restraining him.

“Marine scientists have been tracking the 52 Hertz whale’s migratory pattern since roughly the 1980s, and if Jimin was actually shouting to Tae-Tae in that video...” he trails off, but Jungkook finally understands.

“We can find Jimin,” Jungkook gasps. “Where? Where is he?”

Jin, who had been silently driving while Namjoon explained the plan, finally jumps in with, “Namjoon knows someone at the Agency working on getting us that information. He’ll help us with a rescue plan too.”

The ball of anxiety wound tight in Jungkook’s chest loosens ever so slightly with the reassurance that they’re doing something. They have the beginnings of a plan and they’re taking action.

He’s taking steps to get closer to Jimin, and he has to be alright. He can’t consider the alternative.

The rest of the ride passes in a blur, Jungkook lost in his own thoughts as he thumbs obsessively at the USB he’d stuffed into his pocket earlier, before his world had come crashing in around him.

~

The Merfolk Protection Agency is smaller than he’d thought. It’s little more than a bit of old hallway with carpeted flooring worn thin down the middle by the tread of uncountable footsteps and a cramped office tucked at the back of a building housing a much larger law firm.

It’s empty except for a man typing and clicking furiously at the desktop computer. The nameplate on the desk declares him as Min Yoongi, the person Namjoon had said would help find Jimin.

The phone rings every few seconds, a harsh complaint in the small space, but Yoongi ignores it. He scowls at what he sees on his computer, accentuating the dark circles under his eyes. And when they cram into the office after Namjoon offers a cursory knock on the doorframe, he turns his glare on them.

“I found your whale,” is the first thing he says, and Jungkook’s heart leaps in his chest. “But as expected, it’s out in international waters.”

“What does that mean for us?” Namjoon asks carefully, following Yoongi’s lead and wasting no time jumping into the matter at hand.

“It means that I, and our government, have limited jurisdiction over what happens there. I’ve been trying to coordinate with the one international organization for marine protection, but they’re not being too helpful or quick to respond. Fuckers.”

“Just tell me where he is,” Jungkook demands, impatient now that he has his first hint of Jimin’s location.

Yoongi turns his flat gaze on Jungkook.

“And what will you do if I tell you? Swim to the coordinates and hope you bump into the boat?” He snorts.

Jungkook closes his eyes, feeling pressure build behind them. “Please,” he begs, “just help me find Jimin.”

“I’ve narrowed down the ports the poachers could be heading to.” Jungkook blinks his eyes open at the newly offered information. Yoongi meets his gaze levelly, and despite how wrought with anguish and desperation Jungkook is, he’s also grateful. “There are three close enough to the whale’s location that they could be their possible destination, but if I know anything about the illegal merfolk trade, they’ll be heading here, to Port Royal.”

Yoongi turns his computer monitor around and gestures at a point on the on-screen map along the coast of a country on the other side of the ocean.

“The good news, if you want to call it that, is that if they’re heading there and didn’t immediately kill him, then they’re probably planning to sell him to a wealthy buyer with a fancy aquarium. We’ll have a better chance of recovering him alive.”

Jungkook hisses in a harsh breath of air. It’s good news, he tells himself as his fingernails dig into his palms and his fists shake, though he can’t take much solace from it when Jimin’s options are either to become some pet or a piece of jewellery unless they can get to him before then.

The grim faces of the others seem to say the same.

“The three of you will need plane tickets then,” Jin says after a tense pause, sliding a shiny black credit card out of his wallet and onto Yoongi’s desk.

Namjoon makes a small noise of protest and begins, “Jin, you don’t need to pay for all of us—” but he’s cut off when Yoongi slaps a hand over the card and snatches it up.

At Namjoon’s look of surprise, he glares his way and says, “What? I run a non-profit. If you think I’m turning down a free flight, you don’t know how little I get paid for this shit.”

“Come on, I know you could take a bigger salary if you wanted to,” Namjoon retorts with the barest smile and attempt at lightening the sombre mood.

“I’m happy to pay for this. Let me,” Jin says, mostly to Namjoon.

Meanwhile, Yoongi turns back to his computer, and Jungkook notes with relief that he’s already begun the process of booking them the earliest flight possible.

“So what are you doing if you’re not coming with us?” Yoongi asks as he changes the subject, and Jungkook realizes with a start that he’s talking to Jin.

“You’re not coming?” he blurts, feeling something like betrayal.

Jin slowly shakes his head. “I wouldn’t be the most helpful there. Namjoon is better at thinking quickly, Yoongi’s the one with the authority and connections, and you obviously have to go, but I think I’ll be able to do more from here.”

Part of Jungkook wants to cling to the security his brother always carries with him, but instead he asks, “What do you mean? What are you going to do here?”

“I have a bunch of interviews lined up, for my newest movie’s promotions of course, but–” Seokjin’s brows furrow like he’s still working it out for himself. “I could talk about the video and Jimin instead. He’s already gone viral, but maybe I could bring more awareness to it, create pressure for governments to take action.”

“Do you think that could work?” Jungkook breathes, hand slipping back into his pocket to find the USB.

“It’s better than not trying,” he replies.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Namjoon adds encouragingly.

“This damn celebrity-obsessed culture,” Yoongi grumbles. “It pisses me off that you mentioning merfolk once on camera will probably be as effective as this entire agency.”

They all look at him, but he doesn’t turn away from his computer screen until he makes a few final clicks before handing Jin’s card back with only a hint of reluctance.

“You know this merman, right? Make it personal. People will care more if there’s a connection there,” Yoongi advises.

Jungkook hesitates only a moment longer before he pulls out the USB he’d been clutching in his pocket.

“What about this? Would this help? It’s– It’s a video I made of Jimin.”

Even with taking the earliest flight available, they still have a little time before they need to drive to the airport, so Yoongi takes Jungkook’s USB and connects it to his computer while Jin and Namjoon look on quietly. He opens the only file on the drive and plays it.

Jungkook has gone through the clips so many times, colour grading, speed ramping, and piecing them together, that he knows what’s there even without looking.

It opens with the sound and sight of waves and a shot of Jimin in the foreground facing away with his head turned back just enough to show his profile. His hair is ruffled by the wind, he’s wearing his favourite long-sleeved striped shirt, and the camera is tilted up so that his tail is out of frame.

It cuts to the first time Jungkook had ever filmed him, where he cutely introduces himself to the camera and turns a headshot into an extreme close-up.

Jimin – Serendipity

Then, Jimin’s sweet voice filters in over a series of short shots of him – Jimin gesturing widely as he signs and explains something, Jimin stuffing his cheeks with banana before offering some to the viewer, Jimin giggling so hard that he overbalances and tips over but never once stops laughing even sprawled out on the sand.

They’re all clips carefully chosen to show Jimin’s charms but that also strategically keep above his waist, hiding his tail.

In a lull of Jimin’s singing, the video cuts back to that first interview Jungkook did with him.

“Above water, it’s always dangerous for me.”

His singing picks up again, interspersed with new shots – Jimin swimming rapidly towards Jungkook’s underwater camera, then swerving at the last minute to reveal glimmering fuchsia scales; another shot of Jimin breaking the surface of the cove in a beautiful arc, revealing him in all his glory, tail and all; Jimin on his back making angels in sun-bleached sand with an inimitable smile.

These are the shots that present him in his entirety and only endear him more.

As Jimin’s song nears its close, the pace of the editing slows as well until the cuts stop and the only remaining clip is the one of Jimin singing, his expression open and warmed by the sun and the hint of a smile. His voice fades on a heartbreakingly tender note, and Jungkook hears his own hushed voice ask, “What was that song for?”

“To let me love you.”

The screen dims to black, and after brief credits to Jimin and Jungkook, a long list of resources for merfolk protection that Jungkook had found on the agency’s website scroll by.

Yoongi is the first to cut the silence.

“Yeah, kid, I think that’ll help a lot.”

~*~

The next few hours pass in a dizzying blur.

Jin takes Jungkook’s USB to post and promote the video on his social media ahead of his interviews. From the attention his posts are already getting by the time they board their plane, he won’t even have to be the one to bring up Jimin – the media will do it for him.

Public opinion had already been in Jimin’s favour after the first brutal video went viral, but after Jungkook’s is posted, the general sentiment of pity is replaced by righteous outrage at the innocent merman’s plight. People are demanding action to save him and others like him, and Yoongi replies to as many emails as he can from his phone while they wait in the airport.

The flight itself feels interminable, but when they finally land Namjoon reassures him that it’s still been less than twelve hours since the first video was posted. They’ve also determined that it had originally been a live video before being reposted by others, which is further reassuring. If they’re lucky, they might even beat the poachers to port.

They take a taxi there, chasing the sun as it falls lower over the horizon the closer they get. The drive should take less than half an hour, and yet it still seems too long.

“Jin already gave his first interview,” Namjoon announces into the anticipatory quiet of the cab, as he looks down at his phone. He sits in the back with Jungkook, while Yoongi is in the front, giving directions to the driver as needed. Namjoon plays clips from the interview that are now circulating on social media along with the videos of Jimin, though Jungkook only listens to the tinny voices coming from Namjoon’s phone speaker with half an ear.

“Many have applauded you speaking out, but there are others who are critical that your support of this issue seems to have appeared overnight. What do you say to those who are accusing you of using this for your own fame?”

Namjoon scoffs at the interviewer’s question, but Jungkook keeps his eyes trained out his window, as if Jimin could appear on the side of the road at any moment.

“While I understand why people might think that, this isn’t about me. It’s about Jimin, an innocent merman whose life is at stake right now. It’s about the entire merfolk population being in constant danger because we let poaching like this continue. We’re just finally seeing how barbaric it is because of the video.” Jin speaks confidently and re-centres the conversation with the grace of someone long used to the spotlight. “I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to get here, that I didn’t have to personally witness the horrors someone as sweet and kind as Jimin is facing before I acted, but all I can do is try to make up for it going forward.”

Jungkook roughly swipes a few stray tears from his eyes. Even half listening as he is, Jin’s words agitate the confusing swirl of emotions churning in his gut.

Before he can tease apart each dizzying feeling, they’re being dropped off and facing row upon row of fishing vessels lashed together and all along the far-reaching wharf, and Jungkook doesn’t know where to start.

But he doesn’t even have to ask before Yoongi says, “Let’s start searching boats, the ones farthest from the cameras first.” He gestures upwards and Jungkook notices a couple security cameras affixed to a utility pole near the first planks of the wharf. “If anyone asks, we’re fishery officers making our rounds.”

The wharf seems to go on forever as they walk down it, their shoes knocking against the wooden planks and going unanswered. The boats they pass are largely deserted, with only a person here or there checking gear or lines. But Yoongi walks with purpose and Namjoon stands tall with his usual self-assurance, so Jungkook does his best to mirror their confidence as his eyes dart around desperately.

~*~

There is little for Jimin to do in his narrow prison, so he takes to listening to the sounds beyond it.

His captors give him plenty to listen to, though much of what they say is as foul as the water he’s in, still tainted with an old scent of blood, but he closes his eyes past sickening dizziness and the throbbing of his head and ignores all his other clamouring senses. He leaves all his focus to his hearing, pushing his ability to its limits.

He’s thankful he learned Jungkook’s language, or else he might be even more frantic and confused than he is now.

There are five poachers, and he learns each of their names and voices, though he’s not sure to what end. He knows now that they don’t intend to kill him, but he’s almost just as frightened at their plan to send him somewhere far inland to be kept prisoner by another human. Even if he were to escape one day, he’s afraid he wouldn’t know how to get back at that point.

Where Jungkook had gradually introduced him to the human world and had begun to make some aspects of it familiar, the poachers have again reduced it to an alien landscape, inhospitable and terrifying.

The boat they’re on has stopped moving, and Jimin is scared of what it means. Their boots pound over the wall above him in a flurry of activity and shouted commands. He’s grown so tired, but he pushes himself to pick out more of what they’re saying.

“Stay here and watch the fish,” Captain’s muffled order reaches him. He knows also that the fish refers to himself. “We’ll confirm with Lee Kyungsoo that our buyer has the money ready and be back to get it.”

“It’s not like fish-man is going anywhere,” Donghyun protests. He seems to be one of the younger humans on the boat, and he’s often scolded by the others. “I want to get off this damn boat too.”

“You’ll do as you’re told and guard the stupid fish if you want your share of its price!”

Captain sounds angry, and Donghyun backs down quicker than he usually does at the serious threat in his tone.

“You better learn to be grateful and listen to your elders, brat,” Hojin adds. He often sides with Captain, and though the moments after his capture had been chaotic and confused, Jimin thinks he was the one who had stepped on his hand and hit him over the head, causing him to black out.

For the throbbing in his hand and temples, Jimin hates him even more than Captain, who orders the other humans around the most and seems to be in charge.

The others leave, and it is only Donghyun remaining. The boat is almost eerily quiet now that they’re gone and the rumbling roar that came from the boat itself has stopped along with its movement. Jimin can hear the gentle lapping of waves against the side of the boat and Donghyun’s irritated grumbles and not much of anything else.

He begins running his fingers along the walls of his prison. Unlike how he had frantically beaten against them before, he takes his time to explore each one properly, even though time is precisely what he’s running out of. If he’s going to escape, he needs to do it now.

The walls below him and surrounding him are seamless and just as unyielding as before, but his heart leaps when his questing fingers find a joint in the wall above him. Though even as he traces the contours of it, his hope dims the longer he digs and scratches at it. It won’t open for him.

He pauses when he hears Donghyun get up and walk over, fearing he’d heard Jimin’s feeble escape attempt. He strains his ears, holding his breath, listening for anything that will alert him to what is happening.

~*~

They’ve searched so many boats now that Jungkook has lost track of the exact number. Still, he follows Yoongi as he leads them over to another. If they’re empty, they surreptitiously inspect them, but if they’re occupied, Yoongi will strike up a conversation and ask a few pointed questions before deciding to move on. Sometimes Namjoon will chime in with a disarming, dimpled smile.

If they seem reluctant to speak to them or act antagonistically, Yoongi will flash a badge he carries in his pocket and claim to be a fishery officer checking on the vessels. It’s a lie, but it’s one that gets the fishermen to begrudgingly cooperate.

Jungkook isn’t sure exactly what clues he’s looking for, but he keeps his own eyes and ears open, looking for anything out of place, any trace of Jimin.

They’re at a medium-sized boat tied up near the end of the wharf. Jungkook doesn’t know what they’ll do when they reach the end. Turn around and go through them again, maybe? It’s getting harder to see with the sun setting after being at it for hours, but they won’t give up.

“Just getting in to port? Have a good catch?” Yoongi asks almost conversationally. The three of them stand on the wharf next to the boat and its lone occupant, but they don’t board yet.

The young fisherman, in tall rubber boots and water-resistant overalls, reluctantly answers, “S’fine.”

“Oh yeah, what did you fish?”

“How’s it any of your business?”

“Fishery officer,” Yoongi says, flashing his badge just long enough for it to register as something official looking before it’s back out of sight. “Just checking that everything is above board here.”

The fisherman keeps looking past them shiftily but doesn’t say anything. Jungkook grows suspicious of his behaviour and starts looking more critically around at the boat. The deck is covered in black rubber, but in the video of Jimin’s capture, the little he could see of the deck was the dull grey of dirty metal. He does his best to stifle his disappointment and keep looking.

“I asked what kind of fishing you did,” Yoongi repeats himself, amiability leeching from his tone. “And I’ll want to see that this boat’s fishing license matches.”

“Look, Captain’s not here. I don’t have any license to show you. I’m just crew.”

“Well, I’m sure you can tell me what you fish and give me a way to contact your captain. You must know that much.”

“Mackerel,” the fisherman spits out at Yoongi’s pressing, “but I don’t think I need to tell you anything else.”

There was so little of the boat visible in the video, just a bit of deck and the net Jimin was tangled in. It could be the same net stowed in a corner, but it also looks like so many other nets they’d seen.

“Mackerel, huh? Mind showing me your catch?”

“Captain has it.”

“Does he? Then why did he leave you here?”

“I’m just watching the boat,” the fisherman answers Yoongi, though he sounds more defensive than ever.

Jungkook’s eyes catch on something bright yellow on the nearest side of the hull where it rises above deck and forms a low wall. He approaches it to get a better look, and before he can stop himself, he says, “it’s the harpoon.”

The weapon is nestled in a groove carved into the top of the wall, and he feels sick just looking at it when it’s unmistakably the tool one of the poachers had used to knock Jimin out. Maybe his certainty is misplaced, maybe yellow shafts are common for harpoons, but added to the fisherman’s shiftiness, Jungkook’s sure this is it.

He turns back and sees Namjoon’s eyes flit from the harpoon and lock onto his.

“You won’t mind if we take a look around, then,” Namjoon says, breaking eye contact with Jungkook to join Yoongi, who is already climbing over the side of the boat onto the deck. Jungkook rushes to follow them.

“You can’t just g-go in there!” the young poacher stutters out as they push past him to look inside the cabin, but though he protests, he doesn’t move to try and stop them. He stands as though his feet are frozen in the middle of the deck.

Namjoon and Yoongi each tackle a different side of the cabin, so Jungkook aims for the doorway straight ahead. Passing through the small cabin and down a few steps, Jungkook discovers a sleeping area with six unmade bunks. Jungkook roots around halfheartedly before he decides there isn’t enough space to conceal Jimin there.

He backtracks to find Namjoon closing the door to a bathroom the size of a narrow closet and wrinkling his nose in disgust at the smell, while Yoongi peers down a trapdoor that leads to what seems to be the engine.

They head back outside onto the open deck where the poacher hasn’t moved an inch, but now he looks a little smug at their search turning up nothing. Jungkook burns in anger under that look.

“Where is he?” he demands, taking an aggressive step toward him but feeling someone, Namjoon or Yoongi, catch his arm to hold him back.

“Huh? Who?” he says, playing at ignorance with a smirk.

“The merman you captured, you–”

“Jungkook,” Yoongi barks at him, “let me handle this.”

But Jungkook stops listening to him as he catches the sound of a muffled cry that turns into a wailing melody that Jungkook recognizes as a song for help. He can’t tell where it’s coming from, but he knows that voice.

“Jimin,” he breathes, and it feels like the first true breath he’s taken since he’d seen that cursed video. And then louder, he shouts, “Jimin!”

“There must be a livewell under the deck,” Yoongi says, though Jungkook only hears him distantly over Jimin’s ongoing plea. It fills him with a desperation that has him moving before he thinks of it, breaking free of the hands that hold him back.

Jungkook charges the poacher, grabbing him by the straps of his overalls, finally dislodging him from the position he’d taken and slamming him against a metal railing on the far side of the deck. The poacher tries to get his arms up between them to defend himself, but Jungkook doesn’t give him the chance.

“Tell me where the fuck he is!”

He ignores the sounds of Namjoon calling his name in favour of ramming the poacher against the railing once, twice more until he starts to get a dazed look in his eyes.

It’s not until he hears, “Jungkook!” shouted with a different kind of urgency than before that he slowly looks back at Yoongi and Namjoon knelt down in the spot that the poacher had stood sentinel before. They had pulled back a section of the black rubber mats that fully covered the deck to reveal the dull metal beneath, just like what he’d seen in the video of Jimin’s capture.

A seam cut through the metal in the shape of a large square lifts up as Yoongi prises it open, and Jungkook lets go of the poacher to rush over.

Water splashes from the hole, and Jungkook collapses next to the other two in relief at the sight that greets him. Pink and fuchsia reflect the fading light as Jimin, squinting up at them warily, huddles at the bottom of the small water-filled container hidden beneath the deck.

“Jimin,” he calls gently, voice breaking as he stretches a hand down to him, “it’s okay.”

Still blinking furiously against the light that must be too bright after being shut away in darkness, Jimin nevertheless snaps his head in the direction of Jungkook’s voice and begins reaching back for him.

The next thing he knows, he has his arms full of Jimin and he feels a shock of cold as the front of his clothes are soaked with water. They pull and grip at each other, Jimin half in his lap but still trying to get closer as pitiful noises escape his throat. Jungkook chokes back a sob and holds him just as tightly.

“Jungkook! Jungkook,” Jimin whimpers.

“I’m here. You’re safe now – I’ve got you.”

Jungkook pulls away from the livewell, thudding back into a sitting position to cradle Jimin better. Jimin adjusts, taking his face in his hands and warbling his name one more time before he’s kissing him and everything slides back into place. The world finally righting itself again. This is how it should be – Jimin in his arms and kissing him.

Jungkook receives all the desperation and relief pressed into his lips, and returns it with his own, just as fierce. They kiss each other hard just to make sure the other is still there, breaths coming out in pants and cooling wet skin.

“Sorry to interrupt, but we need to get the fuck out of here.”

With great reluctance and regret, Jungkook pulls back just enough to look up at Yoongi, who’d spoken while turned away from them, looking back towards shore. Namjoon stands beside him, also seeming worried.

“That poacher,” Namjoon says in the way of an explanation for interrupting their reunion, “he took off as soon as he got the chance.”

“He’s Donghyun,” Jimin says, surprising all of them. “He probably goes to find Captain and the others.”

Yoongi’s discerning gaze takes him in. “Who are the others? Do you know their names?”

“Captain, Hojin, Jae, and Dal,” Jimin recites readily.

Yoongi looks like he’d gotten his hopes up only to be let down.

“Do you know any of their full names? A longer name?” Yoongi asks, but he doesn’t seem like he expects much this time.

Jimin thinks for a second and says, “Lee Kyungsoo.” They all straighten back up to attention. “Captain wanted to talk to him before he takes me away.”

Jungkook holds Jimin tighter, at the thought. Jimin’s own fingers dig into Jungkook’s shoulders and his breath tickles Jungkook’s neck where he reburies his head, just breathing him in.

“I shouldn’t have let go of that bastard...”

“There’s no time to worry about that,” Yoongi says, finally regathering himself, face grim. “I have no actual power here, and the poachers will know that now.”

“Can’t we call in the real authorities?”

Yoongi shakes his head at Namjoon, motioning for Jungkook to get up with Jimin and start moving.

“There’s a reason smugglers favour Port Royal. Merfolk protection laws are lax here, and the authorities are even more corrupt. We need to be gone before this Donghyun comes back with reinforcements. Jimin especially.”

To make it over the side of the boat and onto the wharf, Jungkook has to pass Jimin over to Namjoon, but Jimin has other ideas. When Jungkook tries to hold him out away from his body, Jimin clings harder and whines.

“It’s okay, Jimin. You have to let Namjoon take you for a second. I’ll be right here. Please.”

With a little more coaxing, the hand-off is made, and Jungkook leaps onto the wharf to take him back into his arms. Yoongi already waits for them a little further up, urging them to hurry with every tense line of his body. And Jungkook breaks into a heavy run, careful feet pounding against wooden planks, and he keeps a good pace with Namjoon and Yoongi, even with Jimin in his arms.

They’re lucky that the few fishermen they’d seen around all seem to have left with the setting of the sun, because even in the dark Jimin would be horribly conspicuous bouncing in Jungkook’s arms.

Back on land, Yoongi leads them around the wharf, down the pebbled beach to the water’s edge, and Jungkook falters.

“Where are you going?” he pants.

“We need to get Jimin back in the ocean.” Impatience bleeds into Yoongi’s tone, and the obviously is implied. They don’t have time to dally, but Jungkook can’t move, the realization that he’s being asked to part with Jimin again paralyzing him.

“There’s no way we can get Jimin out of here undetected by land,” Namjoon says more gently, sympathy in his eyes. And part of Jungkook knows this and hasn’t forgotten they’d gotten there by plane and taxi, but a larger part can’t let go. “The sooner we get him back into the ocean, the safer he’ll be.”

“It’s okay,” Jimin says suddenly, and Jungkook looks down at him. His gaze seems slightly unfocused, but determined nonetheless. “I will swim to you. I will find you again in the cove.”

“Jimin...”

“We don’t have time for this!” Yoongi urges again.

Jimin tries to look over at him but he winces, and Jungkook is assaulted by the memory of the poacher cracking Jimin over the head with the shaft of the harpoon.

“You’re hurt! I can’t just dump you into the ocean to fend for yourself. There has to be some other way we can all leave together...”

“I’m sorry. I wish there was, but I don’t see how we could,” Namjoon says in apology.

Jimin takes Jungkook’s face into his hands once more, voice and touch so, so gentle.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “I’m strong.”

Jungkook slides his hand from Jimin’s shoulder down his bare upper arm.

“You don’t even have your knife.”

“Tae-Tae is there,” Jimin says, nodding out toward the ocean. “I heard him follow. I will swim to him fast, and he will protect me.”

Jungkook’s tears trail hot and salty over his cheeks and lips, but Jimin wipes and kisses them away, hushing him.

“It’s okay. I love you.” Jimin signs the words over Jungkook’s cheek even as he simultaneously presses the hushed whispers into his lips.

“Jungkook!” This time it’s Namjoon calling to him with insistence, and he looks up to see vehicle lights in the distance, turning into the short wharf road. Even if it’s not the poachers, Jungkook knows he can’t wait any longer, despite how it tears his heart apart.

He stumbles forward in a rush, Yoongi gripping his shoulder and guiding him forward. He walks straight into the water, gasping as the chill of the ocean instantly soaks through his shoes and jeans, dragging at his legs. He pushes forward though his steps are heavy until the water nearly reaches his waist before he kneels down, uncaring how wet he gets.

“I love you,” he chokes out. “I love you so much. I’ll wait for you. However long it takes – I’ll wait for you in the cove.”

Jimin nods, and with one last desperate kiss, pushes out of Jungkook’s arms into the shallows, slipping through Jungkook’s hands before he can regret it or try to hold on longer.

A flash of a tail fin between the waves is the last glimpse Jungkook has of him before he disappears into the dark and depths of the ocean.

Their own escape is a blur after that. Jungkook’s wet clothes and shoes are more than uncomfortable, chafing and freezing his skin, but he barely registers the sensation. They sneak away along the shore under the cover of the night and the pale sliver of a crescent moon, spurred by the shouts that begin to fill the air around the wharf.

When they deem they’re safely far enough, they call a taxi and wearily begin to make the long journey home. Yoongi and Namjoon try to dry him off a little and console him, to remind him that they were successful in their rescue mission, but Jungkook feels too blank to even respond. He can only think of Jimin and getting to the cove to wait for him.

Chapter Text

Events don’t just halt after they make it back to their city, though Jungkook feels largely disconnected from everything.

It had all happened so fast, from Jimin’s capture, to his rescue, and to their sudden renewed separation. Jungkook hasn’t had time to process it at all, but the rest of the world doesn’t wait for him to figure it out.

With his personal connection to Jimin and his video of him going viral, Jungkook has several media outlets and personalities reaching out to him and Seokjin to ask for interviews. He even has a couple companies approaching him for his videography skills, offering him work. At another time, it might have been a dream come true, but he can’t bring himself to respond to any of them. Jin accepts some of the interview requests, but he does them alone.

The public doesn’t yet know that Jimin is free, because Jungkook, Yoongi, and Namjoon can’t admit to what they did to free him, so interest in the story is as intense as ever. Jin, talented actor that he is, plays the role of distraught friend perfectly, though he knows the worst of the threats to Jimin are past. He keeps the issue of merfolk protection in the public conversation day after day, and with it, he keeps on the pressure for real change.

Jungkook is thankful for it, but he just wants to get to the cove. It’s all he can think about.

Though logically he knows there’s no way for Jimin to cross the ocean and reach the island that quickly, Jin and Namjoon are hard-pressed convincing him to stay in the city for even a couple days.

In the end, he stays because of Yoongi.

All he says is, “Come help me track down the scum that captured Jimin and the others that tried to buy him,” and Jungkook is fully committed.

He spends every waking minute after that in Yoongi’s office, and considering how little they both sleep, it’s no small amount of minutes. He ends up staying four days, just until they get Lee Kyungsoo, a go-between for poachers to sell any merfolk they catch to some of the wealthiest people in the world. They get lucky, because even though he operates in Port Royal, he’s not native to it. Instead, he’s from their country, and Yoongi is able to make full use of his position and their laws to have him arrested, extradited, and handed over to their government for prosecution.

The poachers themselves are harder to find with the limited information Jimin had been able to give them, but that’s where the virality of Jimin’s story and the power of the internet works in their favour.

On the third day, they get an anonymous tip among the Merfolk Protection Agency’s emails. They’re sent the IP address of the person who had posted the original live video of Jimin’s capture, and he’s identified as Won Donghyun. From there, it’s simple enough to trace the connection from Donghyun and find the others with the first names Jimin had given them.

Jungkook waits just until they’re sure of Lee Kyungsoo’s arrest, just until Yoongi is well on his way to pinning the rest of the poachers with charges, and just until he can’t take it any longer and books a ferry to the island.

Yoongi is doubtful they’ll be able to get the wealthy buyers connected to Kyungsoo on any charges even if they find out who they are, even though they’re just as culpable, but the increasingly loud public support is granting them some wins. There is larger scrutiny than ever on the trade of merfolk leather and scales, and new laws are being drafted.

Jungkook’s father is forced to pull his line of merfolk jewellery before its launch, and the company supplying them with ‘ethically-sourced scales’ is facing its own investigation.

It doesn’t appear that they have any direct connection to the poachers that captured Jimin, but the hope is that they’ll lead them to even more bad actors in the illegal merfolk trade.

He doesn’t have any more contact with his father, though his father does try to call him a few times before Jungkook blocks his number for good. Jin tells him he’s furious about the activism they’ve both been doing and the effect it’s had on his business, but Jungkook no longer needs to hear it himself, or care what his father thinks. He still has complicated feelings about his father, but the overwhelming emotion he feels is relief.

He’s so much lighter for cutting his father out of his life, even with his worries for Jimin weighing on him. Maybe blocking his number is something he should have done a long time ago.

So Jungkook does as much as he can to fight for justice behind the scenes during the time he remains in the city, but the rest, the media stuff, he leaves to Jin, who has become the face of merfolk activism. And his popularity soars even higher, if that’s possible.

Namjoon is basically wherever anyone needs him, whether that’s crammed into Yoongi’s office with the two of them, or helping Jin with his social media posts.

Jungkook keeps in daily contact with Hoseok, who checks the cove for him, even though he knows, he knows, Jimin hasn’t had time to make it back yet. Hoseok never chides him for it, never complains as he makes the walk from his home in the village down to the cove beach when Jungkook asks, and Jungkook is endlessly grateful to him for it.

Jin had kept Hoseok updated on the status of their rescue mission, but Jungkook knows he’s anxious to see Jimin safe again with his own eyes just like all of them are.

Still, even with frequent check-ins with Hoseok, Jungkook feels an unbearable restlessness until he’s finally on the ferry to the island where he’s meant to meet Jimin again.

Hoseok is there to greet him off the ferry, and he helps him with his bags as they walk to the cabin in silence, Hoseok seeming to understand without being told that Jungkook doesn’t want to talk.

Hoseok doesn’t stop checking in on him once he’s settled back in at Jin’s private property, making sure he’s eating and sleeping, kind of like the mom Jungkook never really had. He appreciates it even as he complains every time he’s dragged away from the cove to shower and sleep in an actual bed.

Because that’s the thing, once he’s there, he barely leaves the cove for more than a few hours at a time.

Day after day, he’s just waiting. Just to pass the time, he sings both his own songs and what he knows of Jimin’s.

But as days turn into weeks and there’s still no sign of Jimin, Jungkook becomes more despondent.

Hoseok does his best to cheer him up, to remind him that it will probably take Jimin a while to cross oceans, even with Tae-Tae’s help, but Jungkook can’t help the dread that builds within him the longer he waits.

Anything could happen to Jimin out in the vast ocean, and if something were to happen, if Jimin never makes it back to their cove, Jungkook would be helpless to find him, forever left waiting and wondering. After all, it had been luck and stupidity that had Donghyun, the poacher they confronted, live-streaming Jimin’s capture in the first place. If he hadn’t, they likely wouldn’t have even known he’d been caught, let alone been able to rescue him.

And that thought terrifies Jungkook. It haunts his nightmares and plagues his waking thoughts.

He can only hope they’ve made the world a little bit safer for Jimin and his people.

“I’m going to head back, but promise me you’ll sleep in an actual bed tonight. The cove will still be here in the morning.”

“I promise,” he lies to Hoseok, fully intending to bring his blankets down again to sleep on the beach. Just in case. The nights are gradually getting colder, but they’re still bearable if he bundles up.

The corners of Hoseok’s mouth turn down in a little frown. Jungkook can tell he doesn’t believe him, but sure enough, he lets it go just like every time before.

“Just make sure you sleep,” he sighs, resigned, and Jungkook nods.

~

Relief swallows Jimin with the embrace of the ocean. After being captured by humans and held in a small container, the currents and the vastness of the water he feels around him are a comfort he didn’t realize how badly he needed.

But with the relief over his freedom comes utter exhaustion. And overlaid all of that is the pain of separation from Jungkook. It throbs worse than the ache in his head and reaches deeper than the twinge in his tail.

He’s so tired and hurt he just wants to let himself drift to the bottom of the ocean and let the sands there cradle him to sleep. But he can’t. He knows he’s not fully out of danger yet, and he has far to go before he can safely find refuge in Jungkook’s arms again.

So he pushes himself to swim without stopping, going further and further away from Jungkook, the humans who helped him, and the humans who hurt him, until he reaches deeper waters. Then he starts calling with his sore vocal chords as he searches the area he thought he’d last heard Tae-Tae.

Another wave of consuming relief washes over him when he hears the distant, rumbling reply, turning and swimming in that direction as fast as his tired, aching tail will take him. Tae-Tae covers most of the distance to meet him, pressing his broad nose against him and calling soothing sounds, frantic with a concern that has Jimin release a sob as he goes limp against his broad body. He vocalizes his own reassurance to his friend with as much enthusiasm as he can muster.

Now, at least, he’s not alone.

With the last of his strength, he clings to a couple barnacles latched to Tae-Tae’s back and lets himself drift between sleep and wakefulness as Tae-Tae, intuiting what he needs, takes them both away to somewhere safer.

He gives in to his exhaustion and the familiar comfort Tae-Tae provides, trusting the whale to protect him.

~

Sara Bareilles – Send me the Moon

It’s been more than a month since he last held Jimin in his arms with feelings as fraught as their situation, and the separation has been slowly eating through him.

He can’t decide if it’s easier here, where he holds all his best memories of Jimin, or if it’s harder than when he was still in the city, longing to be here.

Jungkook plays with some of the ocean treasures Jimin had brought him what feels like a lifetime ago now. A lot of what he’d brought had been edible, but some – like the shell he’s toying with – he’d kept.

Besides his videos of Jimin, they’re all the traces he has of him. And after putting together that one video, he’s not ready to look over all that footage again.

Regardless, Jimin’s presence is everywhere. Memories of him fill every corner of the cove, and every inch of the cabin when he bothers to be there.

Jungkook doesn’t know how much more waiting his heart can take, but he also can’t do anything else but wait. Wait and hope.

He swims laps around the cove, works out on the beach, everything he can to keep himself busy, but it’s never enough.

After another day working his body to exhaustion, he flops onto his back, heaving deep breaths, and stares at the sky. The sun hangs low over the horizon, a day moon pale and wan next to it, growing brighter as time passes. His chest feels tight and his vision blurs with tears, obscuring the sun and moon.

He gives in to the tears and fears that have been dogging him, covering his face and crying quietly into his hands, his breath hitching and coming in gasps. He releases all the built up anxiety and aching want, the trauma of Jimin’s horrifying capture that he still hasn’t been able to think about and process without his mind fleeing from it.

He feels emptier when he lets his arms drop to his sides and his body stops shaking from his sobs, but it’s a relief. His mind is clearer than it’s been since he last saw Jimin at the cove.

With heavy limbs, he pulls himself to his feet, casting one last longing look at the cove’s waters emblazoned with the orange of the setting sun. It’s recently gotten colder during the nights, and it’s become more difficult to stay out here in the open, even with his blankets piled high. And his stubbornness has won him nothing. He’ll sleep in the cabin tonight and return in the morning.

He climbs the cliff with his heart weighing him down. A part of him begs for just one more night keeping vigil over the cove, but the rest of him is just resigned to the futility of it. He hasn’t given up on Jimin. He can’t. But he’s not helping him by spending every minute languishing away.

~

That night he dreams of Jimin.

Jimin carries his weight, rocking him gently in the waves of the ocean as he sings to him. Jungkook can’t see him, but he can feel him holding him, steady at his back. He feels more at peace than he has in months.

Jimin’s tail parts the waves, coated in silver as it glistens with moonlight and seawater. Jungkook reaches out to trace the shape of his scales, but his tail dips back below the surface before he can, and Jungkook’s fingers catch only empty water.

Something in Jungkook panics, and he twists around to look at Jimin, but as soon as he tries, Jimin’s hold around him disappears and his presence slips away. Jungkook is left floundering among the waves, spinning around in circles but facing an endless empty expanse in every direction. Only Jimin’s fading song and the moon remain, but that too is growing dimmer.

“Jimin!” he shouts, but the sound of Jimin’s voice only gets farther away. “Jimin!”

He wakes with a jolt, heart trying to pound its way out of his chest. He sits up, gasping in breaths as he orients himself, taking in the weak moonlight streaming through the window and the softness of the mattress below him, more comfortable than the sand he’s been sleeping on in the cove of late.

It had just been a dream, but now he’s wide awake and Jimin’s absence hurts like a fresh wound, like when he’d had to let him escape into the sea after their brief reunion, the loss of him so sudden and recent. It feels like that. Like he’d really held him in his arms and now he’s gone again.

It makes him restless with want.

With a sigh, he pulls himself out of bed, groping around in the dark for the pair of sweatpants he dropped on the floor before he got in bed. He finds them then moves to the dresser, feeling for the thickness of a sweater before he pulls both on.

Making his way to the living area, he grabs the thick quilted blanket off the wicker chair by the door. He feels some grains of sand still stuck to the blanket despite how well he’d shaken it out. No matter what he does, since bringing the blanket to the beach to sleep with, he can never seem to get all the sand out.

Slipping on some sandals, he leaves through the back door. He makes his way down the familiar path to the cove, surefooted even in the dark, and sets his blanket out on his grassy ledge, but even though he shivers at the cool night, he doesn’t burrito himself in it like he’d intended. Instead, he strips all his clothes back off, goosebumps rising prominently all over his skin, and jumps off the ledge into the water.

He gasps as he lands on his feet and the frigid water splashes over his waist, his groin the most sensitive to the sudden shock of cold. But he acclimatizes quick enough, body growing numb, and he wades out deeper, feeling an indescribable pull out to the ocean.

Maybe it’s the dream still fucking with his head, but he follows that pull and swims farther out than he would normally dare, treading water against the choppier waves near the rocks that frame the entrance to the cove.

He hesitates, but the pull calls him farther out into the open ocean, though logically he knows it’s unsafe to go as he is – butt naked without anyone else around.

He inches a little closer, trying to see over the tops of dark waves, seeking something. Something had drawn him out here.

He strains his eyes against the dark until the pull becomes all too real, a physical pull that takes hold of his lower half and drags him under. Water pushes on him from every direction, squeezes him tight and disorients him. He tries to fight it, but he’s carried along regardless. By the time the force of the current weakens and he breaks the surface again, he’s choking out water and his eyes burn with salt.

He’s horrified to find how far he’s been dragged out of the safety of the cove. He’s so stupid for letting himself get caught in an undertow. His limbs are already cold and tired, but he pushes them to move, putting all his remaining strength into swimming back towards the cove. He’ll die if he can’t make it back to shore.

He’s a strong swimmer and he cuts cleanly across the waves, but his progress slows the closer he gets to the entrance of the cove where the currents are the strongest and the most volatile. If he can just get past them, he’ll be able to make it.

He throws everything he has into it, his arms and legs burning with the effort to kick and pull against the weight of gallons and gallons of rushing water. He’s bolstered by a large wave that comes pushing up behind him and hope sparks in him when he’s able to make it just past the rocks.

But when the wave passes by him, he feels the undertow of the next one beginning to pull him back out. He doesn’t even have the breath or the time to curse before he’s dragged under again. It’s all he can do to take a gulp of air and hold it as water encloses around him again.

All he can think is that he’s really fucked up. He doesn’t think he can get out of this anymore, and his heart hurts so bad thinking of Jimin. What will he think when he finally gets to the cove and Jungkook isn’t there?

He’s eerily calm even as he wonders if this will be how he dies. The part of him that panics and regrets and rages against his own stupidity is distant from the part of him that’s remarkably aware and trying to find a way out of the situation even when he sees none. He can’t even find his way to the surface anymore and the last breath he took aches in his lungs.

Something grabs him firmly under his arms and yanks him hard in one direction, resisting the undertow. All he hears is rushing water and all he sees is darkness, but even in the depths of his fear and confusion, he knows not to fight this pull.

The currents begin to relinquish him from their clutches, but the hold under his arms only gets firmer. And then he’s breaking the surface and drawing in grateful, ragged breaths even as water continues to part around him as he’s swiftly towed along through calmer waters.

He stops moving and then he’s being shoved from underneath until he’s pushed and rolled up onto his ledge and the pile of his blanket and clothes. He lies there gasping and quaking for a moment, stunned at being back on shore. At being alive.

“Jungkook!” an upset voice cries out. “What do you do? Why?”

He turns his head to the side and lets out a noise like a wounded animal when he sees Jimin holding himself half on the ledge, half in the water. He’s beautiful, bathed in silver moonlight just like his dream, and he’s here.

“It’s dangerous for you to swim there!” Jimin continues to berate him and, beneath his apparent anger, Jungkook can see how scared he was for Jungkook, how he still feels it.

And maybe because Jungkook is also still scared of what could have happened, he doesn’t say anything, just rolls over and reaches for Jimin, drawing their mouths together in a searing kiss. They collide so hard, their teeth are bruising even beneath the cushion of their lips.

Pure relief unfurls in his chest at the contact. It’s a release unlike any he’s ever felt.

Jungkook unlatches just long enough to bite at his plump lips directly, to tug and tease, but he switches it up again just as quickly, seeking the depths of Jimin’s mouth with his tongue like he’s starving, desperate to taste him. And Jimin lets him do it all, inviting him in.

Jungkook’s hands slip into the wet tangle of his hair and grip and pull to get him closer, closer. When Jimin reciprocates and pushes back against him so hard it hurts, Jungkook is glad for the mild pain and how it grounds him.

With the way they grapple and tug at each other, Jungkook soon ends up back in the water with Jimin pressing him against the ledge.

“Jimin,” he whispers hoarsely in a break between kisses, “you’re here. You’re here and you saved me.”

Jimin whines in response and kisses him with renewed ferocity, grasping and groping at Jungkook’s bare skin. In the water, Jimin is the one with better leverage and control, and his strength comes out deliciously. Jungkook shudders at the fingers that dig into the flesh of his ass and waist. He’s numb from being in the cold water for so long that he needs it to hurt a little to fully feel it.

But when Jimin ruts against him and he feels the slick length of him against himself, he becomes all too aware of his own arousal. Heat simmers beneath his skin even as the night and the ocean do their best to steal it from him.

Jungkook kisses along Jimin’s jaw and draws his ear into his mouth, sucking on the sensitive shell and tasting the sea on his tongue. Jimin moans and retaliates by biting into his neck, licking and laving the sting away afterwards.

Jungkook fits a hand between them to take both their cocks together. His grip is firmer than what he usually likes, but there’s an urgency to everything they do now that he can’t escape and doesn’t allow him to ease up. Jimin is just as affected, thrusting roughly into the ring of his fingers.

The stimulation is intense but so good, and Jungkook groans long and low into Jimin’s ear, which only makes him more frantic, tail working harder in small jerky movements that create choppy waves around them. With the ledge jabbing into his back, all Jungkook can do is hold on and take what Jimin gives him.

They spur each other on with the sounds they make and the ways they seek to bring their bodies closer together, even though they’re already as close as they can get, no space between them – it doesn’t stop them from trying. The taste of salt-tainted skin under an open-mouthed kiss, the sting of nails clawed over a shoulder blade, the brush of cold scales against the front of Jungkook’s thighs, none of it is enough.

Someday Jungkook will ask Jimin to fuck him like this, with him pushed against the ledge and Jimin using the strength and dexterity of his tail to manoeuvre through the water and thrust into him. Someday when they have time to talk about it and prep. And when Jungkook isn’t so desperate that he might cry if they stop for even a moment.

So it’s not enough. He wants more of Jimin despite finally having him here, but he wraps an arm around his waist and brings their lower halves tighter together. He thinks of how good and slick Jimin feels thrusting into his tight fist and imagines how it will feel to have him inside. His breaths come out hard and fast, and he’s shuddering but it’s no longer from the cold, and when Jimin cries out, followed by a trailing melody of moans, it’s finally enough for Jungkook to tip over into his own climax.

He grunts and it burns. He’s too numbed, his dick too cold, and they were too rough for it not to be somewhat painful, but he relishes in the burn. He’s alive and he’s as close to Jimin as he can get, and everything about this moment is perfect.

“Never do that again,” Jimin says into his shoulder where he’d dropped his head to recover from his orgasm.

Jungkook releases his grip on the both of them and brings his other hand up to cradle the back of Jimin’s head.

“It felt pretty amazing to me.”

“Not that!” Jimin grumbles as he leans back to look up at Jungkook. “Swimming out to the ocean alone. You scared me.” His eyes are round and his lips tremble as he admits the last part, and Jungkook immediately feels bad for teasing him.

“I’m sorry.” He kisses Jimin tenderly this time, putting all his regret into the action. Jungkook feels Jimin’s lingering fear in the kisses he returns, but he’s glad that relief is the predominant emotion there. “I know. It was incredibly stupid of me.”

“Why did you?”

“I don’t know. I dreamt of you, and I felt something. I missed you so much and...” he trails off. “I wasn’t thinking, but maybe some part of me knew you were out there somewhere nearby.”

Jimin smacks his chest with a wet slap.

“What if I didn’t see you! What if I wasn’t here!”

“But you were, and I’m okay,” he promises. “And you? You’re okay now too, right?

Jimin pauses to look at him and seems to decide against scolding him further in favour of kissing him more, these little icy shocks of slick lips that Jungkook accepts greedily.

“Yes, I’m okay. I missed you so much too,” he whispers. “Tae-Tae took me away to safe, but that was far from here. It took a long time before I was healthy enough to come here alone.”

“Tae-Tae didn’t come with you?”

Jimin shakes his head. “Tae-Tae has a path he makes and he doesn’t come back here until very later.”

“I’m just glad you’re h-here now,” Jungkook says through chattering teeth, leaning his forehead against Jimin’s. The situation is starting to catch up to him again, and he really has spent too much time in the frigid water.

“You’re cold. Jungkook, you need to get warm.”

“I don’t. I have you now,” Jungkook says stubbornly.

Jimin smacks him again.

“Get out of the water!”

“B-but I want to hold you!”

“I’ll follow,” Jimin says reassuringly. “We’ll figure it out together, so get warm, please.”

“Yeah, we will, won’t we?” Jungkook whispers, fond.

He climbs out of the water onto the ledge, suddenly feeling the extent of his exhaustion. He feels like he has no strength left in him, but he reaches for his blanket and wraps his frozen body up tightly before stretching a hand down to Jimin to help him out too. Water sluices off him, dripping down the elegant length of his tail as he lies down next to him unbothered by the temperature.

Jimin has always seemed better able to adjust to whatever conditions he’s been thrust into. Jungkook has no doubt it’s how he’s survived this long, and it gives him hope that they will figure out how to make a life together. Jungkook can be adaptable too if that’s what’s required.

He traces over Jimin’s features with his eyes as they lie side by side and Jungkook works some warmth back into his body as he wriggles in the blanket. Jimin looks back at him peacefully.

Yeah, they’ll find a path forward together. And if they can’t find an existing path, they’ll make one.

Chapter Text

4 years later

This is How You Fall in Love – Jeremy Zucker & Chelsea Cutler

“Jungkook!” Jimin yells across the house in his voice that carries the best and hears Jungkook’s distant, questioning response. “I’m going to the sanctuary!”

“Can’t you wait for me?” Jungkook demands petulantly, knowing Jimin can easily hear him from the other room with his heightened hearing. It makes Jimin giggle a little. He sounds far, so he’s probably in his studio editing something. It might be another promotional video for the sanctuary or it could be one of Jungkook’s personal side projects he posts online to his ever-growing audience. “I’m only going to be a few more minutes.”

“I’ll see you there. Okay, love you, bye!” Jimin hollers back, not waiting for Jungkook’s grumbling reply.

Jimin uses the handrails affixed to the wall all along the dry end of the pool room to help him out of his wheelchair and across the floor to where it begins to slope and dip below the water that fills three quarters of the room.

He strips off his fuzzy blue sweater after giving it one last appreciative petting before tossing it onto the seat of his wheelchair.

He sighs when he reaches the water and is able to use his tail properly again, doing a few quick twists and turns in the large pool to stretch out his muscles.

He hasn’t been that long out of the water, only a few hours puttering around the island before returning to the home he shares with Jungkook, but he spent that time exclusively in his chair for mobility’s sake, and that always makes him a little stiff after a while.

When he’s home, he doesn’t usually bother with the chair, since he has his hand rails and Jungkook has done his best to make the dry parts of their house as comfortable and accessible as possible, but the island at large is not nearly as merman-friendly.

But in his unofficial role as a representative of the merfolk, he often has responsibilities that pull him away from the water and his home. He had fallen into this role because of his connection to Jungkook and his friends and had naturally gotten involved with their activism. It helps that he knows their language, which has also gone a long way in making humans take merfolk seriously. And then there’s the fact that he’d gone viral and so many people were eager to hear from him once he was freed. So with the help of the others, he’d made more videos and the list of people who wanted to talk to him only grew.

One thing led to another, and now he’s meeting with government officials for his input on drafted laws and company representatives seeking his endorsement for their products in exchange for sponsoring the sanctuary and its initiatives.

It’s all mind-boggling even after all this time, even as he’s more or less familiar with human society now.

For example, he doesn’t think he’ll ever fully grasp shoe fashion, no matter how many times Hoseok tries to explain it to him, but the humans value their feet and he supposes he can understand that in the abstract.

After a bit of stretching, Jimin makes his way to the bottom of the pool and unlatches the metal grate that acts as both gate and filter to the underground tunnel that leads out into the open ocean. They had their home built as close to the water as they safely could, so Jimin doesn’t have to swim far before he emerges from the tunnel into the ocean just offshore.

He follows along the coast of the island until he makes it to the other side. This island isn’t quite as small as the one where he’d first met Jungkook, but the distance around it is nothing to him with how swiftly he can swim.

They still visit the other island and the cove often, usually fitting in a visit with Tae-Tae on the way. They have standing permission from Jin to go whenever they want. It’s a little less convenient than the set up they have at their home, but they go for the memories and a chance to get away from their regular day to day lives.

The Kim Seokjin Sanctuary, founded by none other than the worldwide beloved actor and activist, Jin, occupies nearly the entire other side of the island and stretches out far offshore. It also has close ties and often partners with the Merfolk Protection Agency, which has only grown in recent years. Yoongi will grumble about how he has more employees and volunteers than he knows what to do with, but Jimin thinks he secretly likes having so many people looking to him for direction.

Jimin finds the break in the colourful buoy lines and slips in through the southern entrance. The buoys and the netting that drops down from them, anchored by weighted bottoms resting on the ocean floor, aren’t there to keep anyone from entering or leaving, but are there just as a demarcation.

The buoy lines mark the sanctuary limits, mark that this a safe place where merfolk can come find shelter and care if they require it. It’s mainly the home of merfolk who’d been previously captured by humans then freed from aquariums or wealthy buyers around the world by the Merfolk Protection Agency.

The merfolk who’ve spent the longest in captivity don’t often know how to live on their own anymore. If they want to learn, Jimin and the sanctuary staff help them. Tae-Tae is also always happy to adopt anyone who wants to travel with him along his migratory route and dutifully looks out for them. But for the most part, the freed merfolk are happy to live a safe and sheltered life in the sanctuary.

The residents of the sanctuary are mostly former captives, but over the years as some merfolk have left to live on their own, word of the sanctuary has gradually spread. And on rare occasions they’ll get merfolk coming to them from the far reaches of the ocean, either because they’ve suffered an injury, they’ve aged and find it increasingly difficult to survive on their own, or they’ve just given in to curiosity.

Jimin is in constant awe and filled with gratitude over the remaining numbers of his kind. At times it had felt as if he were the last merman alive, but he’s overjoyed to be proven wrong. Sadly, he’s met far more merfolk who’ve been captured than those who’ve always been free, but overall he has met at least a hundred through the work he does with the Agency and at the sanctuary.

The only shadow lingering over his happiness is that even after all these years he’s never been able to find his parents, though he asks everyone coming through the sanctuary if they’d seen or heard of them.

He would love to show his parents this haven he helped build along with Jungkook and Yoongi and Jin, and even Hoseok and Namjoon to an extent. He wonders if they’d be proud. He wants to tell them that he’s found his partner at last. He wonders if they’d accept Jungkook right away or if he’d have to convince them that his human is good. He’s sure they’d be convinced in the end because he knows they only ever wanted him to be happy and loved.

And he’s both so happy and so loved.

The sound of multiple merfolk singing, harmonizing or building on each other’s voices, acts as a balm to his heart. It’s something he’d never thought he’d hear – so many different voices rising and falling together – and he’ll never tire of it.

He lets his own voice out, joining in the song, one of peace and contentment as some merfolk harvest muscles from a nearby rocky expanse. The highs and lows of the melody tickle in his chest and he’s smiling without realizing when he started.

Growing up, he’d thought a nomadic, solitary lifestyle was normal and natural for his people. Or perhaps it could be extended to small, familial groups like his family. That’s what he’d been taught and how his parents had lived. But he’s realized that’s only because they’d been forced into that way of life through necessity.

Large groups of merfolk are easier to hunt, especially if they are stationary. Entire colonies of merfolk had been decimated before the survivors had scattered and splintered and hidden. Until, generations upon generations later, not even his own people’s memory of their history is reliable. Most of what Jimin has learned comes from Yoongi and human accounts bolstered by records and research.

But now he can sense with his entire being that this, living in community and security, this is how it’s truly meant to be.

He passes a few young mermaids as they chase each other, darting in and out of a mass of seaweed. They shriek in delight when one of them is caught and the game begins again. An older mermaid watches from a distance and smiles when she sees Jimin and signs a greeting to him, which he returns.

The little mermaids don’t notice him, too preoccupied with their fun, so Jimin decides to double back, quieting his voice, and sneak up behind the group, using the waving blades of seaweed as cover.

Two mermaids make the mistake of sticking close together. With one great rush, Jimin scoops them both up in his arms, roaring triumphantly, and their cries and giggles amplify and multiply.

“Jimin! Jimin, Jimin!” they chant when they realize it’s him. They tug on his hands and cajole him to play with their sweet little voices. Tiny hands ask, “Play? Play catch with us?”

And he can’t resist the youngest of the sanctuary’s residents when they ask him so cutely, so he indulges them for a while, taking on the role of catcher. He chases them around as they yell and scatter, and he snatches them up one by one, blowing bubbles into their bellies as they gleefully squirm in his hold.

Once he eventually extricates himself from the group of children, with promises to play with them again later, he continues his way through the sanctuary. Several others stop him to share a concern or just to talk to him. His time is in high demand. He’s the most well-known and respected person in the sanctuary, despite not technically living here.

Though some of the others can communicate well enough with the humans, most of them understandably don’t want to, the sanctuary workers and volunteers often the only exception, so they rely on him. But even if it weren’t for that, there aren’t nearly as many mermen in residence as there are mermaids, which leads many to seek his attention. He’s certain if he didn’t already have a partner in Jungkook, the advances he receives would be far more relentless and fundamentally different in nature.

The disparity between mermaids and mermen and its effects on their population is due, as too many things are, to the predilections of humans. Too many mermaids have been coveted as centrepieces in wealthy men’s collections, and mermen, as a result, had been more often seen as expendable for their parts.

It saddens and sickens Jimin thinking of it, of how close he himself had come to joining in that horrible fate. But it’s slowly changing now, and he’s working hard to make conditions better for all his people.

He’s reached the shallower beach portion of the sanctuary where merfolk can be found sunning themselves and relaxing on the sand when Bomseok hails him.

“Jimin! Your partner has been looking for you.”

Bomseok knows Jungkook’s name well by now, but the old merman has long had a distrust of humans and refuses to refer to Jungkook, or any of the other humans involved with the sanctuary, by name. Thankfully, he does at least talk to them now. Being one of the longest held merfolk kept in captivity that they’ve freed, he’s one of the few who can speak with the humans easily and translate for the others, as much as he grumbles about it. Although most of the humans who work full time at the sanctuary know some degree of the merfolk language, there are still plenty of temporary volunteers that don’t.

At least Bomseok has stopped calling Jungkook “your human” in favour of “your partner,” which is still probably more due to his respect for Jimin than for Jungkook.

“Thank you, Bomseok,” Jimin says, holding back his sigh. “Where is he?”

He hasn’t forgotten that he’s supposed to be meeting Jungkook here, but it’s always easy for him to get sidetracked at the sanctuary.

“With the boats,” he answers curtly.

Jimin turns tail to swim along the beach. He moves smoothly through the shallow water, warm sunlight reflecting off his scales and onto the pale sand below, speckling it in light. He stretches out his fingers to skim the bottom, relishing in the gentle resistance as he makes shallow grooves in the sand.

When he reaches the twin shadows of their two small skiffs moored to the small wharf jutting out from shore, he pops his head up above water.

Jungkook is sitting in the nearest boat suiting himself up in a wetsuit. He looks like he’d been about to go diving to find Jimin among the others, which is... unusual. Jimin may be a little late, but he always comes to Jungkook eventually and it’s easy enough to spend time in the shallows, Jungkook in a regular swimsuit.

“There you are,” Jungkook says, and there’s a reservation about him, a tightness to his smile, that’s out of character when they’re together. Another oddity that Jimin doesn’t know how to take. “Have you talked to anyone here yet?”

Jimin tilts his head and regards him curiously, pulling his torso up onto the edge of the skiff. “I’ve talked to a lot of people. Bomseok said you were looking for me?”

Jungkook finishes doing up the zipper on his wetsuit and jumps into the water next to him, splashing him a little in the process, but Jimin doesn’t even blink. He eases off the boat and back into the water himself.

Jungkook takes one of his hands and pulls him towards him, a serious look on his face. Jimin goes easily even as he grows a bit apprehensive at how strange Jungkook is acting. Jungkook keeps his hold on his hand even as it hinders the way they usually communicate with a mixture of spoken words and signs.

“Sana’s back.”

Jimin brightens, smile overtaking his frown.

“Oh, but that’s great! It’s been a while since we’ve all seen her.”

Sana is one of the first merfolk they’d freed back in the early days of their activism. The sanctuary hadn’t even been founded then, but still they had brought her here and spent many months working on her endurance and hunting skills, quizzing her on the dangers that lie under the sea and above it.

Sana had been kept in a billionaire’s private aquarium for years, but she’d always been determined to survive out on her own free from human help or hindrance. So they’d done everything they could to prepare her until eventually she set out on her own.

She comes back to visit the sanctuary maybe once or twice a year to see how everyone is doing, and her visits are always a joyous thing. And she loves regaling all the other residents with stories of her adventures.

Which is why Jimin can’t understand why Jungkook remains tensed, eyebrows drawn together in concern as he watches Jimin closely.

“But you don’t seem happy about it. What is it? Is she okay? Jungkook, is she hurt?”

Jungkook takes him by the shoulders, reassurance in his touch.

“It’s not that. She’s completely fine.”

“Then why are you acting like this? You’re worrying me.”

“Sorry,” Jungkook sighs, rubbing a hand soothingly along his upper arm. “She came back with some... information, and I just want to make sure you’re prepared before you hear it. I don’t want you to get your hopes up only to be let down.”

“What is it?” Jimin whispers.

“You’ll have to talk to her for the specifics, but she met a merfolk couple she thinks might be your parents.”

“What?” Jimin gasps, lurching forward as his tail jerks to get himself moving, but Jungkook holds him in place with the grip on his arms. “Where? Are they here?” His voice comes out strangled as his heart starts to race.

“No, no, they’re not here. Jimin, listen. They were too afraid to come anywhere near the island, even though Sana told them it was safe, so they only came part of the way here. But it might not be them,” he reiterates.

“But it could be them? Jungkook, it could be?”

“Yes, but there’s something else you need to know.”

Jimin is reeling, but Jungkook anchors him again with a steady gaze and gentle hand cupping his face. His thumb strokes over his cheek and Jimin leans into the touch.

“They weren’t alone when Sana found them. They had a young son with them, five or six years old.”

“But that would mean...” Jimin can’t finish the thought. He stares at Jungkook beseechingly, looking for answers in those gentle, expressive eyes he knows so well.

“It would mean you have a younger brother.” Jimin lets out a small sound of revelation and confusion. “If it’s really them.”

Jimin brings himself closer to Jungkook, gripping onto the front of his wetsuit and drawing their foreheads together. Jungkook wraps his arms around him solidly and rocks him a little, and Jimin takes the moment to gather some composure. They breathe together.

“Why does Sana think they’re my parents?”

“She knows your story, so she’s always been keeping an eye and ear out for you.” Jimin nods. He knows this. “I think you should have her explain the rest, but they said that they have a son named Jimin they lost years ago.”

Jimin can’t help the whimper that escapes him. Jungkook has told him not to get too excited, that they might not be his parents and he might not be their Jimin, but this is the first time he’s had real hope of finding them, and his heart is crying out for what he’d lost what seems like so long ago now. And he might have a little brother. That thought conjures a complicated concoction of emotions in him.

“Where’s Sana?” he asks, pulling away from Jungkook a little to look around for her.

“She went to talk to Yoongi about some poaching activity in the western Pacific, but she should be back soon. Just try to calm down now, love.”

Jungkook holds him closer and presses kisses all over his face. Jimin melts into him, joining their mouths in a deeper kiss.

“Whatever happens, I’m here for you,” Jungkook murmurs against his lips.

Jimin hears a splash and someone calls out, “Jimin.”

Jimin looks over at Sana, who rounds the other side of the wharf, her dark blue hair trailing behind her in the water.

~

They’re named Sooyeon and Jaesung, the same as his parents. Their son is Sunoo – Jimin’s little brother if his gut is to be believed.

Jungkook had warned him repeatedly not to get his hopes too high before he’s seen them, but with every new detail Sana gives him, he can’t help it.

The couple hadn’t known the precise time they’d last seen their eldest son, but Jimin himself isn’t certain exactly how many years it’s been. They did say they had been separated around the time their Jimin came of age, and then they’d been forced to leave their home shortly thereafter.

“Why did they have to leave?” Jimin asks with shaking hands, making a mess of his signs.

“The mermaid got pregnant with the little one,” Sana explains, eyes full of empathy. “The conditions were too harsh for her then and they didn’t have enough food where they were, so they had to relocate.”

Jimin cries hearing that as Jungkook gathers him up from behind, arms wrapped firm around his middle, holding his pieces together.

Since first hearing about Sana’s news it seems like that’s all Jungkook’s been doing – holding Jimin together while he falls apart.

But he can’t help the sobs as he’s overcome with so many mixed feelings. His parents are alive. They’ve been alive all this time. They had a reason for leaving their home at the bottom of the continental slope. But they still left. He had no way to find them and they left. And they left because of a brother Jimin has never met. All while Jimin has been missing them desperately, had almost died from his loneliness, his brother has had their ever-present love. And then there’s the pain of missing out on knowing his brother, even as he’s unreasonably jealous of him.

“Take me to them,” Jimin demands when his tears slow down enough for him to see again.

“It’s almost half a day’s journey back the way I came,” Sana says. “They wouldn’t come any closer to the surface.”

“Sana, please,” he begs. “I can’t wait.”

“I understand,” she concedes, glancing at Jungkook over Jimin’s shoulder. “I’ll be at the northern entrance when you’re ready.”

Jimin turns back to Jungkook as realization hits him.

“I wish I could go with you,” Jungkook says as he brushes away his tears.

“Me too,” Jimin says weakly.

“You’ll come back to me after you meet them.”

It’s not a question.

“I’ll always come back to you.”

“Good, because if you don’t, I’ll have to launch another rescue mission, and Jin’s getting old.” Jungkook smiles faintly, and Jimin knows it must be hard for him. Just as it’s always hard for Jimin when Jungkook has to leave for places that are difficult for him to follow too.

Despite their best efforts to mesh their lives and bridge the divides between, even now they are sometimes pulled apart like tides from the shore, the sun from the moon. But they always find their way back to each other eventually.

~

“The meeting point should be near here somewhere,” Sana signs over her shoulder. Jimin follows close behind her as they dive down the continental slope, right on her navy iridescent tail, silently urging her to go faster even though he knows she’s exhausted with the pace they’d already set. She hasn’t even recovered from her journey to the sanctuary, but she keeps pushing herself for his sake.

Sana starts singing a seeking song, and Jimin quickly joins his voice to hers.

His throat tightens when distantly they hear other voices join with theirs, first the lighter tone of a mermaid, then the deeper one of a merman. And as they approach, they hear the thin, slightly off-pitch voice of a child.

The voices are so familiar – even the childish one, so like his own when he was younger – that Jimin is choking back tears before he even sees them.

He rushes past Sana, dipping around the edge of a cliff until he finally sees them. A mermaid with fierce eyes, a few more lines decorating them, and crimson red hair and tail, and at her side a merman with a pure white tail and round face.

When his father sees him, he lets out a wail that Jimin feels in his bones, but it’s his mother who reaches him first and locks him in a crushing embrace. The years apart fall away as his father holds him too and they all cry bittersweet tears of longing not yet sated but with the first drop of promise.

They continue trying to crush each other with the weight of their collective relief until a small questioning call pulls their attention.

Past them, a small merchild watches with wide innocent eyes. He has sweet chubby cheeks and pouty lips. His little tail is almost the exact same shade of fuschia as Jimin’s.

“Sunoo,” Jimin’s mother calls tremulously, “this is your older brother, Jimin.”

Jimin doesn’t know what to do any more than the small child seems to, but he hesitantly holds a hand out to him, arms open.

Sunoo doesn’t need to be prompted further. He dives into the embrace, slinging pudgy little arms around Jimin’s neck, stocky tail barely reaching past the start of Jimin’s own. Jimin buries his face into his pink hair, scrunches his eyes up tight, and holds onto his little brother preciously.

Whatever jealousy he might have felt disappears. He could never blame the little being for what had happened to him, neither could he ever truly regret the events that had led him to Jungkook.

“I’m so happy to meet you,” he says vocally, even if the water distorts the sound and no one can understand him except Sana anyway. “I love you,” he signs simply into Sunoo’s back.

Sunoo stills in his arms and presses his own stubby fingers to Jimin’s neck to say “love you” back, and Jimin doesn’t try to stem the next wave of tears.