Archive of Our Own ^beta

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There are only three things Jungkook is currently absolutely sure of:

One: The earth’s orbit is more elliptical this year than initially predicted due to one too many sun flares edging it barely off course, meaning they’re set up for a more hellish experience of being alive than expected.

Two: His faction’s storage facility just got raided during the night. Again. Everything from food to new weapons to loot they’ve collected from difficult raids was compromised.

Three: Jungkook also happens to know who did it. Even without the tufts of white fur left behind as evidence. And he’s going to kill him.

He loads his gun almost a little too readily, pulling the slide back until he knows there’s a round sitting ready in the chamber. Not everyone can say they have a gun dedicated just to killing one person, but this gun has a name etched into it, and Jungkook wouldn’t use it for anything else.

“Come out you greedy fucking bitch,” he hisses to himself under his breath, staring up through the cross-hairs of the scope he’s manually mounted onto the handgun. Jungkook isn’t a bad shot by any margain, but this target happens to be fast and fucking tiny. Call it added insurance. “I know you can’t resist. Didn’t get your stupid fucking clock, did you?”

He’s perched in the darkness of their now empty storage unit, aiming up at the ceiling by the windows he knows were compromised. Nobody believed him when he said it, but the culprit is a known high-flyer, operating in the air more than on ground. It was definitely the fucking windows. That’s where he came in and left, regardless of the weight of the loot and the amount of logistics that would take.

He crouches down and coughs a few times, nose hit with a whiff of the remnants of the gasoline-filled goodbye that was left for them as evidence. Any remaining resources they couldn’t carry out was also promptly destroyed.

Everyone’s told him this is a bad idea, so it’s not like he doesn’t know it is. Literally everyone. His brother, his uncle—the two beta girls that never do anything but suck up to him because he’s just about the only person left who hasn’t had his face disfigured in an explosion.

It’s too bad he has this gun with a name on it that’s been itching to hit its target for five fucking years. And he’s beyond feeling impatient.

Behind him on a shelving unit sits a tritium alarm clock, one of the only glow-in-the dark models he’s ever come across. In a reality where people are starving, trying to keep away from government poachers, and every day is only as good as the sum of your last bounty, nobody in their right mind would look twice at some gimmicky shit like that.

Nobody, that is, except Park Jimin.

Something metal clangs to the ground to his left, and Jungkook misfires loudly in his heightened anticipation, his heart rate and now the echoes of the fired bullet ringing in his ears as he spins on heel. He steels himself in annoyance, taking a few calming breaths and dragging his soot-black fingers through his equally black hair.

He never used to misfire. Jungkook can admit that his ‘obsession’ has driven him to, perhaps, make slightly less sound decisions. But as he sees it, whatever weird looks he gets or however many times his actions are now questioned, that will all stop once he finally gets his hands on what has been the biggest pain in their collective side for way too fucking long. Once he gets a hold of him and humiliates him the way they’ve been made to be humiliated, again and again. Then they will understand. They’ll thank him.

There’s a drop of something wet on his forehead. To anybody else, that wouldn’t be enough to cause anything remotely close to alarm. It’s likely rain water from the ceiling that’s damaged, or oil from any of the burned lamps that are still structurally sound enough to not have fallen down. Besides, the metal clang from earlier would have been the more plausible trigger for concern.

But Jungkook has danced with this devil too many times to make that mistake.

Without moving his head or gaze, he raises his gun right above himself and fires two rapid shots entirely on instinct, both rounds whizzing through the air until they clang off the metal bar in the ceiling and the shells tinkle back to the ground.

Except the sound of the second bullet was less sharp than the first. Ever so slightly. It didn’t hit the metal with as much velocity. It met resistance. It travelled through something.

The grin on Jungkook’s face is so wide he can barely contain himself.

Got you.

The drop of warm blood that drips down and hits the finger clutched at the trigger of his gun feels victorious only for a split second.

Then, something hard and blinding collides with the side of his head, and his vision goes white as he blacks out momentarily, before stumbling himself back into balance by sheer luck, looking around himself wildly and assessing the damage to his head.

It’s too dark to see anything, even with the moonlight shining in through the high windows. He looks down at the floor next to him. A rock. It’s slightly red, but only on the one end of it. Jungkook feels a sharp sting remain at the side of his head and winces. It’s blood that’s on that fucking rock. His blood

Worse than that is the only other thing on the rock:

:)

Drawn on in white chalk. The signature form of communication.

“Get down here, you chicken-shit little cunt!” He hears himself yell into the empty area, waving his gun around wildly as he realizes the hit to his head somehow fucked with his night vision. Jesus Christ. How does this always happen? Just when Jungkook thinks he’s figured him out—has him exactly where he wants him, even one-on-one—somehow he always gets lobbed upside the head by something.

He blinks rapidly, jerking his head backwards to squint up. Did Jungkook even get him at all? How many steps ahead is he? Did he want to make Jungkook shoot up all along? Was the metal clang actually him while the wet drop was the decoy—because he knows that would be funny to do when Jungkook thinks he knows better?

“I know I got you!” He proclaims, standing his ground and taking a few cautious steps backwards, his gun raised and ready. Nobody is this good. Especially not some fucking twink of a cat. He lets out a low, sardonic laugh as he winces from the bleeding wound at the side of his head. “Show me yours and I’ll show you mine...”

It’s just a bit of a jest. Not something he ever has the wildest expectation might work.

But maybe that’s exactly why it does.

As if summoned—no, as if dropped by God himself—the heavy weight of something much larger and softer than a rock lands on top of him, sending him sailing backwards to the ground. His shoulder blades and elbows break the fall, and it’s only when he’s aware that he’s definitely on the floor and struggling to breathe that he realizes his neck is bracketed by a pair of ridiculously thick thighs, the heavy pressure weighing on his chest being a literal ass.

Now. He doesn’t see Jimin up close all that much. It’s kind of hard to when they only ever look at each other through the crosshairs of a gun, and there’s always a fist or rock following not too far behind. He also just generally has no desire to. Look at him up close. Why would he?

But it’s admittedly impossible not to really see him right now. To really look. It’s not like he has anywhere else to even turn—he’s been forced to take up the front row seat view of someone who might as well be about to eat him out.

Jungkook has eyes. He’s always know that Jimin is a cat hybrid, which was obvious enough the first time they met. It’s what he tells himself is the reason he’s so caught in this intense hunt for him; like he’s driven by pure instinct. That, and that it’s kind of hard to miss the obnoxious tail swishes and perky, flicky ears that flash around whenever the other boy moves. They’re always the last thing he sees at the scenes of a crime. A resounding stamp of evidence. They move differently when the kitten is agitated; when he’s afraid. He’s seen them cause him pain when they get caught in something. And there was the one time Jungkook stepped on his tail to trip him up and make him eat shit before the little thing got to grab the last battery pack their factions scrambled over at a run-down government facility they decided to raid on the same exact Wednesday.

But Jungkook isn’t always the one on the fucking ground. Jimin just likes to pretend that’s the case. Because if Jungkook ever bested him—ever dragged his pretty, little kitty paws down in the dirt—he would run off and cry somewhere. Retreat just due to not getting what he wants.

But laying there, Jungkook’s just…maybe not entirely sure he’s ever paid attention to how white they are. The tail and the ears, that is. It’s not like they could have gotten whiter over the years or anything, but staring up at him with the moonlight flooding between them, they look almost glowing—crowned only by pale and slightly curly blonde hair. The little demon being vain enough to dye his hair in the middle of a dystopian warzone checks just about every box of assumptions about him that Jungkook has.

“You did get me, I’ll give you that,” he hears above him, before a hand is held right over his face and he feels another drop of blood fleck down, landing on his nose. He cringes, twisting his head to the side. The drop of blood rolls off the side of his cheek. He also realizes the voice he just heard is reverberating from Jimin’s thighs and ass directly down to Jungkook’s fucking ribcage. “Guess you aren’t that dumb for a mutt. Or is this a one-off?”

Jungkook grimaces, images of him ripping Jimin’s head off repeatedly making him regain his bearings as he finally feels recovered from being knocked over and winded while being drenched in kitty cat stench.

Jimin is only barely able to hide his shock when Jungkook digs his left heel into the ground and uses all his core strength and both activated quads to roll—or maybe more like slam—them over, flipping them around. Jimin doesn’t have time to scramble for purchase or a leg up before Jungkook has him in an even more compromising position, Jimin’s thighs up on either side of Jungkook’s upper body and his neck craned at an uncomfortable angle against the ground. Jungkook’s right hand shoots down to squeeze around the exposed throat, grinning victoriously when Jimin startles, his hands scrambling up to Jungkook’s forearm, as if desperately trying to find a way to peel him off.

“This dumb mutt is going to squeeze you so hard your pretty head pops off,” he murmurs, enjoying the feeling of the kitten’s throat muscles spasming under his fingers a bit more than he’d like to admit.

“O-oh my,” Jimin gasps out through a choke. Jungkook is confused at first. Then he realizes Jimin isn’t panicking. At all. Instead, he puts on an obnoxious pout, feigning a display of scandalized, tainted innocence. “Y-You’re meant to buy me dinner first—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jungkook seethes, tightening his grip and bending the delicate neck harder against the floor.

It has to at least hurt a little bit due to the stretch. Jimin’s chin is practically forced down against his own clavicles. It’s just that no matter what Jungkook has ever done, however much force he puts in, Jimin is able to just take it. Like some indestructible cockroach.

The kitten, as expected, only grins. Jungkook doesn’t. But maybe Jungkook has missed this. Just a little bit. Something about the pull and push makes him feel a little bit on track with things. A little alive.

Especially knowing he’s seconds away from planting a bullet from his favourite gun right between those dopey, little eyes.

Jimin’s demeanour changes when it finally presses against him. The barrel of Jungkook’s gun. Right on the bridge of his nose between his eyebrows. Jimin’s eyes strain to keep sight of it while Jungkook puts more power into the squeeze around his throat.

He’s not fucking around this time. He never has been, but especially not now. Jimin and his pack of picky felines are a fucking pest. Every time Jungkook and his family finally find resources—find bounty—Jimin and co come to pluck it right out of their hands. Like they can’t fucking get a hold of their own bounty, with their prissy, little bodies and their sneaky, little movements.

Cats are leeches. They wait for the dogs to do the heavy lifting before they pluck flesh from an already open wound. And the more they eat—the more the devilish kittens take—the more of Jungkook’s family goes hungry and dies.

Jimin, more than he is anything else, is a murderer. Annoyances put aside, when he’s stripped down, the pest is a cold-blooded killer. And he always has the nerve to smile about it.

Jungkook clenches his teeth and feels his face redden in the explosive burst of rage channelling through him. He’s serious this time. He’s waited on this for so fucking long. For the chance to snuff this little shit out. Get him off their fucking back. Rid himself of the torment of running circles around a cat like doing so is his punishing Sisyphus rock.

Below him, Jimin has started sputtering. A few stray tears leak out of his eyes as he goes the second full minute without access to air. His ears have flattened against his head and he’s blinking rapidly, like he’s trying to stay conscious.

Jungkook pushes the gun harder into his skin. Into the bone of his skull, until the cat has gone entirely cross-eyed from looking up at it. Until the whites of his eyes come out and he finally starts to genuinely look somewhat afraid.

But Jungkook won’t be fooled by his helpless act. Jimin always gets the last laugh. He’s always the one who’s three steps ahead. Not that Jungkook likes to admit it. In a sordid way, he maybe even respects it. Not many people can fight Jungkook to the death over two hundred times and come out alive every single one. And certainly nobody can make it seem like it’s just a bit of fun; that they could do it in their sleep.

“Yield,” he seethes, shoving the gun so hard into the hybrid’s skin he breaks it. Blood trickles into Jimin’s left eye and spreads to glaze the full, wet sphere when he blinks. If Jimin wasn’t already so red in the face from lack of air, that might have been the scariest part about looking down at him.

He doesn’t even need Jimin to yield, so he’s unsure why he commands it. He can just shoot him. Jimin has about thirty seconds left of being alive without any air now anyways, so why not put him out of his misery sooner? Is it that the furball doesn’t deserve an easy end? Why can’t Jungkook pull the fucking trigger?

It’s a split second of hesitation enough for it to happen.

In less time than it takes Jungkook to blink, the hand Jimin had used to so desperately clutch at Jungkook’s forearm erupts. His claws eject with no warning—and by the time Jungkook has opened his eyes back up—they are embedded deep inside his flesh, like a sea urchin he’s managed to fall onto that sinks in as far in as to the bone.

Jungkook howls.

His gun goes first. His arm spasms, sending it careening onto Jimin’s face before it tumbles off, clattering to the floor, where it fires upon contact. The stray bullet goes off into nothingness, leaving Jungkook entirely disoriented, because he can’t tell where or when it fired just by sound alone, and whether he hit Jimin, or himself, or something he hasn’t even thought about yet.

In his slump of confusion and between his release of Jimin’s throat and his newly freed up hand flailing around bloody in the empty air where the gun was, another one of Jimin’s hands grabs him (entwining their fingers this time, almost lovingly) until a flash of claws spear the web between Jungkook’s fingers, carving through his palm from the back to the front.

He gasps and sputters, too stunned and in too much pain to yell. His vision swims, briefly. When it stops swimming, he’s on his back on the floor again, clutching his bleeding hands and gasping for relief. It’s akin to the searing sting of a paper cut, only magnified by a thousand.

Jimin stands above him. He has one booted foot on each side of Jungkook’s shoulders. His claws have retracted, but his fingers are still dripping with blood; proof of the carnage he’s just put Jungkook through. His face is splattered with the carnage, too. His eyes look sharp as he casts a moonlit shadow over Jungkook where he stands, newly painted red.

Jungkook’s gun remains forgotten on the floor, too far away for him to even think about grabbing. Not that Jungkook is able to grab or do anything other than lay there. He’s not nearly bleeding close to enough to die, but just enough to give him pause and worry about whether he eventually might if he doesn’t stop it within a certain currently-being-calculated period of time.

“There’s nothing worse than the smell of wet dog,” is all he hears above himself.

Jungkook thinks it’s the last thing Jimin says before he disappears, but he has to be honest in admitting most if not all of his attention is stolen by shock and pain and panic.

The moonlight never dims in there, even slightly. It’s a cloudless night, and where that would usually feel beautiful, it remains a little jarring considering the circumstances.

Jungkook eventually manages to get himself up to a semi-erect position, his forearm and palm pressed between his knees and chest in a continuous effort to stop the bleeding.

He hates his almost compulsive need to check, but allows himself to cast a strained glance behind towards the upper shelving units.

Surely enough, there’s a distinct lack of gimmicky clock there to greet him.

*

“Dumbass.”

It’s all his brother offers him when he finally swallows his pride and stumbles into their supply tent, leaving a more than obvious trail of blood from both wounded, dragging arms.

“Lay off,” he grunts, not in the mood to start whatever this could turn into.

He staggers over to the supplies instead, trying but failing to open the first aid box with his elbows to avoid the excruciating pain of using his hands. If Junghwan cared to placate his temper, he would leave it there. Try to help him, even. Unfortunately for Jungkook, this is one of his favourite sports.

A hand comes up and slams the box he’s almost managed to open back shut. He hears himself hiss in frustration, the sound scraping out of his mouth from the roof.

“We’re running out of bandages because of you,” Junghwan just says. He smells oddly like cigarettes up close. Which is weird for someone who supposedly doesn’t smoke due to it being too risky for them in their current environment to diminish their health by any sliver of a margain. “If you care.”

“Cry about it,” Jungkook lets himself mutter.

He attempts to bat Junghwan’s hand away but fails, forced to groan in pain when Junghwan grabs his wrist instead, squeezing him pointedly. It stings, and he watches a wave of blood ooze out, his forehead beginning to glisten over.

“I’m not wasting any more sterile medical supplies on the weekly masochistic trysts you have with your favourite kitten.”

The firmness of the grip around Jungkook’s injured wrist tells him his brother isn’t joking around this time. Despite the mocking jab. They usually collectively refer to Jimin as such as a means to mock him and the rest of the kitty cat pests, so hearing this goading directed specifically at him—as if he’s the only one trying to wring Jimin’s neck—feels so unnecessary.

“You rather I bleed to death?” Jungkook bites out, forced to just stand there and pant out of his open mouth as he slowly gives up on the first aid box. He’s starting to feel a little light-headed.

“I’d rather you stick to dying for things that actually contribute to our survival and stop fucking around.”

Jungkook grimaces, his hand going numb seeming almost like a mercy at this point. Something in him feels slighted, even though he knows how it all looks. In the back of his mind he can barely justify his own actions to himself.

“We wouldn’t even go on missions if I didn’t lead the charge in the first place,” Jungkook pushes back, not appreciating the unsubtle implications when they both objectively know what he bring to the team. “And it’s not fucking around for me to try and take out our biggest enemy.”

“It is if you fail to do so every fucking time,” Junghwan laughs. He’s acting like this conversation is getting so ridiculous he can’t even bother to be angry anymore. Jungkook thinks he can see him rolling his eyes out of the corner of his own, but then he stills and lowers his voice before Jungkook has time to get worked up. “But trust me, we can run our missions without you. Don’t get cocky.”

“I carry on every mission,” Jungkook retorts, forcing it a bit through his teeth as he grits his jaw through the unrelenting pain that he’s still unable to tend to. “And thanks to that, we always succeed.”

Junghwan purses his lips, staring at Jungkook as he grows increasingly agitated. Jungkook has always hated how Junghwan is uniquely able to get under his skin. And conversely—how Jungkook has somehow never been able to get under his.

“‘Always’ with the exception of the missions that happen to clash with a certain kitty cat brigade.”

Jungkook readies himself for a rebuttal, but there isn’t much to push back on when Junghwan isn’t lying.

They’re dog hybrids. The remaining lot of them banded together over time—post The End of the World. Their innate kinship gives them an unexpected advantage through safety in numbers, while their animal traits turned the tables for them against most humans in a shocking switch-up. Turns out physical ability and instinct is more useful in a survival situation than just about anything else. Especially for close combat or grit. It’s one of the only things that allowed them to safely navigate the fascist dystopia of a nuclear wasteland they ended up in. Where the remaining humans hide behind massive machines and tanks and fortresses in their high towers, while the rest of them scramble around to live another day. Jungkook prefers existing on the ground like this—where all the real things are. He prefers knowing that at least he’ll never resort to relying on shields or mecha monstrosities to have a competitive advantage.

Only cat hybrids took the same exact approach. Not that they shouldn’t be allowed to, but suffice it to say it turned into a bit of a hairy situation when the amount of territory and resources left seemingly dwindled down to zero, and the only groups stubborn enough to keep fighting for their independence from humans ended up being Piss on Territory 1 and Piss on Territory 2.

And his favourite kitten just so happens to be the best fighter for Piss on Territory 2.

“Raid without me then.”

Jungkook stalks to the other end of the tent and leans himself back against a working bench, methodically beginning the process of ripping strips of fabric off his tank top with his teeth. He tightens his fist, wrapping a piece of his sweat-soaked, grey tank around the expanse of his forearm, before using the thinner pieces to tie a tight knot to keep the pressure on the padding. He does the same for his hand, only it hurts enough to signal to him one or more of the tiny bones in his palm are broken.

Fucking cat.

“How pissed would you be if I got to crush him before you?” Junghwan’s disembodied voice sounds into the room at some point after he’s finished dressing his wounds. It’s playful enough, but Jungkook knows he’s prodded Junghwan enough times now to be able to recognize it for the warning it is: behave, or I take your toy away.

The already obvious answer to Junghwan’s question is: pissed enough to never risk sitting out any missions in the first place.

*

Jungkook is embarrassed to admit the next raid he leads is a rather flimsy cover-up for his real and much more irrational motive: getting the random fucking clock back.

It’s just—it’s more than a piece of shit item now. It’s a mark of Jungkook’s pride, and also a reminder of his previous humiliation. He doesn’t know why the cat has any interest in it at all, but he also doesn’t give a shit. It could be a fucking piece of string and Jungkook’s motive would remain unfaltering. To take it back and fucking destroy it.

“Dead midnight?” Junghwan huffs in a half laugh from behind him.

He usually lets Jungkook call the shots during raids, but he’s clearly having trouble buying into his vision after their little confrontation. Being de-facto leader because of age, alongside being sole contender for best alpha fighter, Jungkook is well aware that Junghwan calls the final shots for most things. If he ever disagreed with a decision, Jungkook would be the first to know.

“We’ll be at a disadvantage in the dark. I assume you’re aware of that,” he add.

“Better cover,” Jungkook lies, fingers already gripped and ready around the trigger of his Jimin gun. “Less patrols.”

And cats always raid at midnight, is the part he wonders if Junghwan knows he’s conveniently leaving out. Jimin wouldn’t miss a night raid on an abandoned factory for the world. And if Jimin is any smart, he’ll be carrying his precious clock with him wherever he goes, because that’s the only guarantee he has that Jungkook won’t locate it wherever it is at any given moment and smite it at his soonest opportunity.

“You better be fucking right,” Junghwan just says, pulling his buckle to strap his weapon holster tighter against his chest.

It’s a vague threat. A hint that he knows he’s lying, but won’t call him out as long as they still come out on top, just like Jungkook always points out they do. Junghwan usually doesn’t care enough to police his brother’s antics on principle, aside from the odd comment here and there. It‘s usually too much fucking work. Then again, most alphas are.

“I’m always right,” Jungkook feels the need to say, because he is. Usually. And Junghwan knows that, which is why—just like most things—he lets this slide.

They both know Jungkook likes winning too much to ever lose.

Nobody expects a blaring alarm that suddenly goes off to be what ends up signalling the start of their charge instead. Nobody except Jungkook—who’s already looking up towards the ceiling inside the factory through the distorted windows from his position outside. As expected, flickering shadows up high signal that the kitty cats are first to dip in, though strangely not tactile enough to prevent themselves from tripping the security system, or whatever wire was set up to act like one.

It feels like a mistake too big to be one, he just doesn’t have time to linger on it.

“Those fucking—” he hears Junghwan start in a cut-off rant that is all intention and no substance, before he’s gone, storming the door they’ve been camping by before Jungkook even has a chance to ready for the charge himself.

It seems as though even if Junghwan expected the cats to eventually show, he absolutely didn’t expect them to get a head start. This kicks Jungkook into gear too, seeing as the only thing worse than him not managing to get to Jimin this time (after being utterly humiliated) would be for his brother to get to him first, and Jungkook just wouldn’t put it past him to take the opportunity to punish him for his insolence.

He ducks left with his gun leading his line of sight and barges in a door further down boot first, stomping the thing almost clean off its hinges. Once inside, he waves the gun all around while spraying bullets through every window he can see, announcing their presence more than clearly enough for the cats to quickly swap tactic from charging to scattering

Junghwan halts in the distance, turning back to glare at him, as if Jungkook is being a menace on purpose. He is, but Junghwan doesn’t unequivocally know that. He likes to think his injured hands are alibi enough to get him off the hook.

“Nerve damage,” he yells to excuse his actions, barely done with that thought before he starts sprinting down the old conveyor belt on the factory floor. Away from his brother.

Jungkook doesn’t know how he knows this himself, but he’s hit the right trail. Once he’s far enough across the conveyor belt, his ears perk up right as his sensitive nose picks up something that can only be described as a faint scent of…milk.

He doesn’t want to get into why he knows that’s Jimin’s smell.

Turns out, Junghwan doesn’t hang around either. He sprints off in the other direction while about five others in their team stay back near the doors, readying an ambush or quick getaway.

But Jungkook has already stopped paying attention to most things. Because milk.

Milk, milk, milk—if that’s even what it smells like. Not as if he’s been near any in recent years, or had the luxury to wean from his mother before he was ripped clean off to be hardened for combat.

Jungkook feels a little weird when he notices a stray thought that worries the kittens might be caught out by something as routine as a raid clash. At the end of the day, whatever gets him closer to Jimin and that stupid clock shouldn’t phase him. And it’s not like that’s all he’s there for: there’s canned food enough to feed a hundred mouths for a hundred winters. Spam and corn and jackfruit. Tuna and peaches. Stacked high against the walls and somehow yet to deteriorate. Though he might need to check the cans to make sure. That’s what his intel told him. So if this goes his way, not only will he best the cats once and for all—he’ll be the reason his faction is so plentifully provided for that nobody will care to notice how horribly disproportionate the structure of his priorities has been. He might even manage to get Junghwan off his back.

It all sounds good enough to make him run faster, scaling the west end of the factory for the second time and shooting the central alarm system he locates in hope that patrols aren’t alerted to trace the break-in. Suppose he can’t avoid in some way collaborating with the kitty cats when the situation calls for it. It’s the type of thing that benefits them equally, no matter how they spin it. At the end of the day, regardless of how much their groups clash, they’ll always be united against a certain group out of sheer spite. After all, humans aren’t only the reason they’re in this mess in the first place (which is bad enough), they’re also the ones seemingly preventing everything from getting better. The reason it went from bad to worse, then worse yet than that—some cancerous fucking creatures set on dragging everything around them down.

Jungkook allows himself to follow his instincts again, looking back up at the ceiling. He senses something amiss in the way he hasn’t come across him yet, like he always does. Jimin wouldn’t turn down accompanying his comrades for a raid—it wouldn’t make sense. He’s the fastest and most nimble of them; the only kitten to ever have drawn blood from Jungkook, not to mention knock him over without even using physical strength. He’s their only shot at coming out of a raid clash with anything at all, not to mention the preservation of their lives. Jimin wouldn’t skimp on such a duty just to ‘avoid’ Jungkook, or guard his clock, or whatever the fuck else he could be doing that isn’t being there.

Just as Jungkook thinks this, he glances towards a barely ajar exit door at the far end of the west wing, shrouded in darkness due to not yet being touched by the alerting, red lights or the chaos of the clash.

He doesn’t think—he’s already making his way towards it with his gun up, ready as he could ever be.

He swears he smelled it. Smelled the milk. The milk with the very faint infusion of honey or cardamom—something distinct and thick enough to almost have to be a type of cream—like all Jimin is is the smell of every decadent desert his original owner fed him before the Uprising.

It’s quite a hilarious thought, even someone as unruly and off-putting as Jimin once being owned. They all were, to some extent. In various ways, depending on their species. Jungkook has the literal whip lashes up his back to prove it. One for every fight he lost his Master money on in the ring. He didn’t get good at fighting from lounging in sofas and having his tummy scratched, unlike most other dog hybrids. He was ‘lucky’ to get a head start on his survival skills due to being big enough as a pup to get scouted for the most lucrative and inhumane category of ownership of hybrids thinkable: blood sport. Even seeing part of themselves in the hybrids who were force-pitted against each other, humans couldn’t seem to wane from whatever innate hunger for carnage and destruction marked them as a species.

Jungkook slows his running slightly, sniffing into the air from one side to another. The milk is somewhat more tangible now. Faint trails of it wafts into his open mouth just as makes his decision to shove his way out of the ajar door. He’s never taken Jimin for a coward, but Jungkook is now entirely sure the kitten isn’t anywhere inside the factory going head to head with his brother or the others in the spray of bullets that erupts behind him.

He grimaces in distaste as he steps out into an eerily quiet courtyard. There’s a dead-looking tree and patchy grass covering the space as far as the next factory over.

Strange.

He doesn’t know why he felt so sure Jimin would be there, regardless of milk. He’s in a factory for god's sake—there’s traces of anything there. Unless Jimin has learned to harness it now, too. Jungkook’s scent. To lure and trap.

Lure?

He whips around before he can complete his own thought, his gun flying to different dark areas near the door and factory exterior behind himself.

Nothing.

He can’t see anything—not yet, at least. Though if he stares long enough, he feels like he can convince himself that the plain darkness is murky, moving, and full of shapes and shadows.

Jimin operates in darkness. Cloaks himself in it. Tries to make himself as invisible as possible while somehow seemingly still being the most striking, space-uptaking entity sharing their fucking air. There’s this sense that he’s always lurking around.

Jungkook jolts when he sees the unmistakable flash of white out of the corner of his eye. He shifts on his feet, whipping the aim of his gun further down to locate a familiar, animated thing in the distance.

A tail. White, fluffy. Swishing and flicking out from around the corner of the building wall near the door he just came out of. He’s never been more grateful that he’s learned to be more quiet and light in his feet.

Jungkook feels his heart rate elevate before he makes the decision without even thinking twice. He rushes closer, trying to remain light on his feet and travel in silence, though such a feat is always easier said than done for dogs. He’d never admit that this is something he’s learned through years of studying him.

The kitten appears to not be aware he’s been discovered yet, and Jungkook uses this to his advantage. Sneaking up on a cat is one of his stupider ideas, but it might just be so goddamn stupid the furball won’t see it coming. That, and the fact that he realizes he didn’t plan much further ahead for the raid than showing up and hoping for the best, so this is kind of all he’s got.

He lets himself sink back into the shadows, obscuring himself near the metal wiring fence separating the factory foundations from the crummy grass. He still wonders if the cat is able to smell him the same way he vaguely can the other, but he’s also willing to assume his own nose is unfortunately just fine-tuned to kitten stench at this point.

He’s never given much thought to cat hybrids and their mechanics, but they usually smell rather unassuming. They must have hierarchies the same way dogs do, but considering Jungkook has easily physically dominated all of the cats so far, he doubts there’s all that much variation between them in the way of alpha, omega, or beta.

Not that that’s important or relevant right now. He grips around the trigger of his gun until he feels his hands turn clammy. He’s about to do something unhinged like let his instincts barrel him right around the corner and grab at the cat’s almost bait-like tail, when something…beats him to it?

A leather-gloved hand emerges, grabbing the thing where it moves. In the middle of one of its rhythmic swishes. The hand in question comes from the same side of the wall Jimin is standing on.

He’s about to question why Jimin is grabbing his own tail and why he’s dressed like that, when he hears not one, but two distinct voices.

“You said—“

“I say a lot of things, don’t I? And now I’m saying something else. Either way, we both know you’ll still let me.”

It’s Jimin. And someone else. Someone with a deeper voice, who’s speaking in a way that emphasises each syllable. Forces Jungkook pick up that whoever it is is speaking down—both in height and authority. They don’t care that they’re speaking to someone like Jimin using that tone.

In fact—the result of it causes Jungkook to experiences something entirely new as far as Jimin is concerned:

The kitten’s tone accommodates it.

In an unusual occurrence, the usually spiteful and snarky voice adapts. It sand-papers the edges of his personality until it’s almost unrecognizable. And not only that—the shift dials up more and more with every additional response.

“You promised.”

Jungkook narrows his eyes, confused as to why someone like Jimin would speak to one of his own in a tone that now betrays a distinct hint of deference. At the same time, he feels confused as to why two of them are out and away from everything when the cats have clearly already stormed, and—if anything—would need pretty imminent back-up inside.

Unless…unless that’s just it—it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense, because that isn’t what’s going on.

Jimin isn’t acting against his own protocol.

Jimin just isn’t there with a cat.

Jungkook swallows rather hard, not sure why the thought of that unsettles him. He shifts sideways, slowly creeping to the right as much as he can to try and catch an angle that will give him a line of sight past the corner of the building where the two parties stand. The more he moves, the more of Jimin’s tail he sees, even if he’s a decent range away in terms of distance.

The more clearly he can also see the gloved hand. It’s still gripping the tail. So tightly, it appears, that said tail is forced at an angled bend far too uncomfortable-looking to not at least be causing a sprain.

“W-We had an agreement…”

It’s Jimin’s voice, filling the silence the other man refuses to break. But Jungkook has never heard him sound like this. He has to stop to replay the voice in his head to make sure it’s actually still him. It does sound like the kitten he knows—but a kitten entirely threadbare. A little husk of the confidence he’s known to carry himself with, trickling along like a drying stream of water over a bed of hot pebbles.

The profiles come into full view as Jungkook finally steps over two further stretches of sticks and grass, moving more silently than he has in his life. The more he leans in that direction—gun remaining up and ready—the more of it all comes flooding into view.

It’s hard not to recognize who Jimin is with, because he reacts to the visual cues of it immediately. It makes him feel embarrassed for not recognizing the other party by the sheer entitlement in the voice coupled with the distaste dripping off the tongue. Everything there is to identify who he has come across is blaring—because they always show it off. They like the power and threat they project, especially with the specific context of appearing in the middle of a hybrid raid.

A human. But more specifically: a patrol officer.

“Well? Do you accept my proposal or not? I’m more than happy to fuck off and spare myself from having to hang around your little gathering of stench and fleas.”

The patrol officer is gripping Jimin’s tail so hard Jungkook can’t believe the hybrid isn’t yelping in pain. Then again, that’s more like the Jimin he knows. Still there and defiant as ever, just…understated.

The patrol officer seems to lean impossibly closer to Jimin then—as if daring the kitten to flinch away. Jimin, rather impressively, remains entirely still. Likely to avoid breathing in the full range of human sweat stench, Jungkook likes to think. To him, that’s their most distinguished feature. Which is far worse than whatever ‘stench’ the human is referring to, in his opinion.

“How long?” Jimin asks.

“Until I say so,” The man replies.

Jimin’s tail finally twitches—just slightly. It must have cramped up. Either that, or the officer’s tone is pissing Jimin off just as much now as it is Jungkook.

The officer seems to notice, and moves even closer to Jimin’s ear. Jungkook has to strain to hear him now, squinting his eyes as if that will help somehow.

“You gonna let your pride deter you from the only thing you’ve been dreaming about this whole time? The only thing that even motivates you?”

Jungkook’s gun lowers ever so slightly in confusion. He realizes he’s been standing there passively staring and listening in for an excessive amount of time. Too long for his liking. And when the officer moves his grippy, leather hands all the way from Jimin’s tail to his neck—whatever the fuck they’re planning to do there—Jungkook decides he’s had enough of standing around like he’s there to decorate the backdrop of a painting.

The day a human patrol officer smiles is a bad day for anyone involved. Whatever the stupid kitten is trying at: Jungkook is better off stopping it.

He’s trigger happy by default, but in that moment, Jungkook fires with glee. The aim is at Jimin’s shoulder, but since he’s standing in a bit of a downward slope, the shot fires a few degrees further upwards than intended—flying above and past its target in the blink of an eye, before it finds a home in the nearest skull. A rookie mistake, but he can’t exactly bring himself to regret it.

Jimin isn’t often taken by surprise, but this seems to do it. Uncharacteristically, he shrieks the moment the bullet lands, the resulting spray of blood raining into his open mouth. He appears disoriented for a second. Frozen with his hands up—as if reaching for the swaying body of the human who just got his head cleaved off—before he finally seems to remember his motor neurons and looks around in a panic.

“Whoring yourself out on the job?” Jungkook laughs. It’s rather humourless somehow.

Jimin finally spots him. He’s a lot closer than he thought he was, because he can now almost count the flecks of blood up Jimin’s cheek. He recalculates the pathway of his next planned bullet to make sure it will shoot at an angle that actually hits.

“What the fuck have you done?”

Jungkook opens the eye he closed for aiming, thrown off enough by the lack of instant retaliation that he finds himself unable to fire. His gun lowers ever so slightly as he removes his focus from his target, and then he finds himself actually looking at the hybrid instead of observing him through the tint of his scope.

Jimin’s face is entirely unpleasant. It’s weird to realize he’s standing still enough for Jungkook to notice that. He very distinctly doesn’t move. At all.

“There’s plenty more where he came from,” Jungkook brushes off, trying to refrain from rolling his eyes. He can’t believe this is what the furball is choosing to make a fuss about. Between this and his alarm clock, Jungkook isn’t sure which is weirder. “You should have no problem getting your pick of any other braindead git willing to let you bribe their squad into only killing dogs whenever they finally storm our raid.” He’s annoyed with himself that he feels a need to justify the thought process that just led him to his actions. Jimin isn’t stupid and should know why he barged in—so why is he acting like this? “I’m sure many men would offer much for a chance to pet your pwetty, widdle—”

“You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

Jimin’s response is quicker than he expects. His voice is entirely venomous, his eyes sharper than Jungkook has ever seen them. But most notably—Jungkook detects something he didn’t see before. The officer’s hands didn’t leave Jimin’s neck unscathed.

They left something behind.

That something appears just as leather as the leather gloves, somehow having had a chance to get buckled tight and locked before Jungkook offered his complimentary head removal service.

It all feels like some sick joke. Or maybe Jungkook just wants it to be. Only Jimin is so angry this can’t even pass for something meant as a play into their wider rivalry. It almost doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with Jungkook at all. Like if he wasn’t feeling so overwhelmingly angry and ambushed, Jimin‘s first priority would be to hide it.

“Is that a fucking…”

Jungkook doesn’t want to say it, because it’s already weird enough having to see it with his own fucking eyes.

A collar.

Jimin is panting so hard he’s red in the face. His hands are already on either side of himself at his hips, criss-crossed over himself in his signature reach for his twin, needle-point knives. Jungkook’s least favourite things to be at the aiming end of.

Still—he can’t disengage himself from the almost paralyzing revelation that Jimin has been made to wear a fucking collar.

Jungkook doesn’t intend to stand there like an open invitation for Jimin to use as a bullseye, but the only thing letting his fingers and brain catch up to what’s happening is the fact that he can smell the air has now developed bloodlust.

He squeezes his trigger before Jimin manages to throw. Even with the kitten’s quick reflexes, the shot manages to graze over the top shirt material of his shoulder as he ducks out of the way. It catches his skin. Jungkook knows because the shirt starts prickling red.

He made a last-second decision to aim lower than he typically would to catch the kitten out, hoping to intercept him halfway through where he predicted him to duck and his current position. Effective and well-calculated. Though clearly not effective or well-calculated enough.

Either way, Jungkook has only just gotten started.

Though, as he’s about to find out—so has Jimin.

The pain comes before it visually ever unfolds. Sharp and searing and just below the cap of Jungkook’s knee. He buckles, folding over to clutch at himself in agony.

Jimin remains entirely still while he sags into a stupor of groans and howls. He tries his best to steel himself as he prepares to rip the knife out of the hollow of his knee cap, but there’s almost nothing that can prepare someone for that. The thing found an opening large enough to not get rejected, landing nowhere near any obstructing bone. It sank—easily and entirely—into the soft flesh and fluid of his joint.

The thin knife thumps to the ground, blood splattering around in the grass in its wake as Jungkook is forced to forego any relief in favour of grappling with his own mistake when the torrential stream of blood follows from the gaping wound. He’s about to raise his shaky arm back up to keep his offence alive, but he barely catches the sight of a tail disappearing behind the corner of the other end of the building.

He groans audibly, hissing as he forces himself to move so fast he almost convinced himself he isn’t bleeding.

“Think you can outrun me?” He bellows.

His blood pumps so hard his skin feels like it vibrates where it lays in a flimsy cover all over his flesh and muscles. Only he doesn’t let himself lose sight of the kitten this time. He sees Jimin turn his head back with a glance that seems to hold a lot more apprehension than usual, Jungkook having caught up to him at a heel turn and markedly more adept at tailing him despite supposedly being incapacitatingly wounded.

Regardless, Jimin doesn’t hesitate. He must rapidly realize he can’t outrun Jungkook even with the big handicap, because just as Jungkook thinks he might be close enough to grab Jimin by the scruff—the cat’s gone.

It takes Jungkook a few seconds to realize he’s jumped up, suddenly in the midst of scaling the building by climbing the water pipe that jaggedly runs up the side of it. Only Jungkook refuses to give up now. Not after everything.

He shoots a few rather useless rounds up near the pipe, before he discards his gun and goes straight for the drain at the base of the wall, wrapping his clawed hands around it and digging his heels into the concrete to pull.

He feels something hit the pipe a few times as he dislodges it from the wall entirely, bolts peppering on him from above. Jimin shrieks for what is the second time Jungkook has known him, scrambling to grab a hold of any sort of purchase he can from where he’s located, which is halfway up a goddamn building and only supported by a tumbling cylinder of tin.

“Don’t worry, I’ll catch you!” Jungkook taunts, some glee seeping back into him when he starts to realize he’s regained his upper hand.

He takes his time to enjoy feeling very close to outmanoeuvring the kitten. Jimin must have been too preoccupied to think before changing his direction upwards, entirely reliant on the metal pipe that Jungkook has all but dismantled with no effort, in a singular second.

Nonetheless, the kitten remains stubborn, and Jungkook can see it scrape its nails against the wall hard enough to draw blood, using its own sheer weightlessness to keep suspended between the water pipe and the concrete.

He’s distracted enough by the amusement of this to not realize that—somewhere along the line—Jimin has actually taken him up on the verbal offer.

Boots collide with his shoulder and head as the creature drops down like a tonne of bricks from the pipe, slamming Jungkook against the wall and buckling him to the ground from the sheer accompanying velocity.

Jimin’s already off him the second he gets a bounce from Jungkook’s kindly offered cushion, springing far enough away to land himself in a break-fall roll. When he gets up to standing position, Jimin pauses there, almost like he’s impressed with himself. Jungkook uses that time to spring back to his feet, the only thing propelling him forward with the confidence he suddenly finds himself with being that he now has Jimin exactly where he wants him, which is back on the ground.

On the ground, Jungkook dominates.

He catches Jimin’s arm. For a second, he thinks he has him, until he feels the sharp sting of something cutting flesh near his wrist. He groans in pain, releasing his grip. Not claws, this time—a knife.

Small. Butterfly.

It does more damage than it needs to, and Jungkook feels his head run cold, his vision swimming as he loses blood horribly fast from a second location.

Fucking cats.

“I’d sell you out for half a can of worms and a wet rag. As if I’d ever let some filthy human touch me.”

Jungkook tries to look up at the cat while he says that, but clutching at his bleeding arm, he can barely manage. He has to physically lick his wound before it actually relents its gushing a bit, as if pitying him.

“Fuck—“

His anger and annoyance feel near breaking point, no less assuaged by his now throbbing skull. If Jimin is good at anything, it’s being the only creature alive who can get him to this point and live to tell the tale.

They’re both hunched, staring at each other as blood drips and sprays. Until they aren’t, because remaining that way would be too peaceful. Too painless.

Jimin ducks off and Jungkook gives chase, a pattern they’ve grown so accustomed to it almost feels familiar. They round the corner at the far end of the building, then dive inside without a second thought.

Inside is chaos: hands and bullets are flying everywhere while he and Jimin somehow beeline for the stairs that spiral up to atop everything. He chases Jimin up the chicken-wire looking grid flatform overhead the factory, sprinting over the unsteady surface as they’re able to see the free-fall that would await them below should any of the metal panels give under their weight. To his surprise, they remain in place and stable all the way over, until he’s chasing Jimin up another set of spiral stairs in closer quarters, heading up a concrete contraption with no light or windows.

He hears Jimin crash into something, and follows not far behind, before vaguely eerie light floods their field of vision back and they spill out onto a rooftop. Jimin has moved to stand away from him by instinct, while Jungkook just remains where he is. He’s barely thought about anything other than following the swishy white tail in front of him til the end. And now that they’re both there, standing unmoving with nowhere else to go, he falters.

Speaking of the swishy, white tail…it’s not so swishy or white anymore. Jungkook blinks when he glances behind Jimin to spot it red wonky misshapen the brief moments he catches sight of it. Red and…lumpy. A bit like—like it’s not quite one continuous entity anymore. Jungkook doesn’t let himself linger on that thought, allowing his body to drive him forwards as he all but itches—fingers—gums—lungs—to finally get a hold of the cat.

“Wait! Not that…please...”

The night air feels especially biting as it whips up at him from below. He finds himself standing at the far end of the roof somehow; the opposite to where he was, and clearly having ducked past Jimin to cross. His eyes follow where Jimin is looking, and he sees his own arm outstretched, at the end of which is the janky clock, stuck in the tight grip of his bare hand.

The speed of him doing all of this aside—the voice that just spoke to him is begging.

Why is Jimin begging?

He clenches his fingers around the clock. He’s not even sure it functions anymore—whether it ever did. He’s never seen the hands move or heard any alarm go off.

Jimin must be fucking with him. There’s just no way. There’s no way he actually cares. The cat is stringing him along again—like a puppet on strings—made to believe he cares about some piece of junk.

So he can amuse himself. So he can laugh at him afterwards.

“Don’t act precious with me,” Jungkook snarls, before he shakes the clock so hard something rattles inside. He supposes it was already broken. “It doesn’t even work.”

Jimin hesitates visibly, his lips moving to form sounds before seemingly deciding against doing so. His eyes dart between Jungkook’s face and the clock, as if debating whether or not to say something.

“Well?” Jungkook presses, already feeling the clock hang looser in his grip.

“My mate needs it.”

Jungkook feels like he can barely process what the furball is saying. But even in his state of confusion, Jimin hasn’t moved to attack or stop him.

Back to the more astrounding discovery—that fucking thing has a mate? Cat hybrids even have those? Full offence to them, Jungkook thinks, but he’s always thought they look rather sexless. Flimsy, little shapes of beta. Different flavours of the same thing, over and over and over.

He feels himself grow frustrated. This isn’t an aspect of Jimin he cares for or wants to think about at all. And it’s a weird card of him to pull for some shitty junk, of all things.

“Can’t imagine anyone would want to love you.”

He drags his eyes fully over Jimin’s form where he now stands, rather hunched across from him. His gaze doesn’t even meet Jungkook’s anymore.

Why does he suddenly look so pathetic? This isn’t the Jimin he likes clashing heads with. And even if the kitten happened to be some distressed damsel of an omega all of a sudden, why is he rolling over at the mere mention of some fucking object? Why won’t he meet Jungkook head on? Blood to blood?

“Other than being uncouth and unruly, you’re far more trouble than you’re worth,” he clarifies, as if his first statement needs clarification. Mostly to spur the kitten out of whatever shock horror has him rooted in place. “I almost feel sorry for them. What terrible luck, getting stuck with you.”

He grimaces when Jimin doesn’t make for him any more than he did from his previous insult, only remaining rather still in his jilted position. Jungkook tightens his jaw.

He makes a decision he has no idea whether or not will pay off, but the second he makes up his mind, he can’t take it back.

The flimsy clock is outstretched in his arm, clearly dangling in the air far enough away from the building to be positioned exactly above the ground far below.

“Fine.” Something drives him internally; some motor. Or maybe it just happens on reflex. His mouth and his hand. His vocal chords. All of it. “If your ‘mate’ wants this clock so bad, why don’t you tell your big, bad alpha to come get it then?” His voice almost is tight in how blatantly it is infantilizing; entirely cruel. Still, Jimin remains unmoving, only staring over at him. As if he’s forgotten how to move. How to bargain. “Oh wait—it’s not as though anyone ever comes to help or protect you, is it?”

It’s the last thing he says before his arm suddenly feels a whole lot lighter. So much lighter there is no longer anything weighing it down.

Only now does Jimin move or react. Jungkook watches him scrutinizingly enough to notice the worry in his forehead releases at the same time that his pupils constrict, and his face grows—no, pulls—into a silent agony.

Jungkook looks away, feeling queasy. His head tilts forward, and he realizes the clock has fallen faster than he remembers most things falling from any which height. He’s not sure why he almost expected it to soar a little first; float for a while. Perhaps it’s the misplaced expectation that Jimin would sprint forward to catch it in time—even throwing himself off the roof after it considering his extreme displays of attachment so far.

The distance is too far to see much, but the crash to the ground is explosive. A shatter. Bits of what must be plastic and glass fly off into a million pieces and tinkle around in ripples of echoed sound far below them.

Neither of them have moved. Jimin’s eyes look somewhere in the direction of where the clock disappeared from Jungkook’s hand, and other than the wind whipping up his hair, his body remains almost statue-esque where it freezes in time.

Jungkook frowns. At no point during this encounter has he gotten the reactions he’s been wanting. He shot a patrol officer for this. Chased a cat all the way up a building. Deserted his brother. Insulted someone using the most cruel thoughts he could find.

“Is this pity party really about some stupid clock?” He hears himself berating. “Get over yourself. There’s a fuckton of food below our feet just waiting to be stockpiled. I thought you were clever. Sensible, at least. That you care about survival and tactical strategy. And yet, every time I learn something new about you, you just make less and less—“

“You’re the fucking disgrace!”

It’s loud. Menacing. When Jungkook actually looks up at Jimin because of how loud and menacing it is, the face that meets him is excruciatingly red, eyes a vibrating level of wild. It’s almost overwhelming.

“Selfish—entitled piece of shit!” Jimin continues. He sounds like he can’t get his words out fast enough. Can’t even bother to string them together properly. “At the top of the food chain and somehow with the gall to whimper when someone claws for even a crumb of your hoarded fucking resources!”

Jungkook just stands there. He doesn’t have an automated, snarky response for that. Nor any other response, for that matter, because he’s never heard Jimin say something like it before.

He tightens his fists, his arm finally lowering from horizontal to vertical. His eyes narrow as his upper lip pulls up in a sneer. He won’t be insulted by some cat who’s acting like he’s lost the will to live due to a broken item nobody even has any use for anymore.

“Sounds like survival of the fittest to me. Always happy to speed up natural selection.”

At first he wonders if Jimin even hears him. It’s windy up there, and the cat has spent the last however many minutes looking frozen in time and matter. All that moves is the rhythmic billow of his hair, still. He has a lot of it—it’s quite long.

Eventually, when the wind barrels something over to Jungkook, the hairs all up his arms and legs stand on end, travelling with the pierce of it.

A scream. So shrill it borders on a wail.

His blood runs cold as he tries to evaluate what’s happening. Tries to predict any of the entirely unexpected turn of events.

The cat hybrid has never acted like this. Never sounded like this. Never looked like that. Jimin has given him crocodile tears and fake-outs by the bucket load—but he’s never given him this. Something so wounded it comes across unhinged. So over the top it feels too excessive to be exaggerated. No, this—this is entirely bare.

Something collides with Jungkook before he can finish that thought. He blinks slow through a realization the kitten must be in a dive to drive him off the edge of the roof.

Luckily for Jungkook, he isn’t the one completely clouded in a flare of hysteric emotions which appears so bursting it’s causing him to implode. He manages a side step, using his left foot to stomp down on the cat’s already ripped tail. It fumbles the thing’s momentum enough to save Jungkook from tumbling directly backwards himself. There’s a sick sound of the tail tearing further, which erupts into the otherwise rather quiet air. Jungkook forces himself to ignore it, refusing to go down due to some bitch in heat‘s delayed moment of lunacy.

It feels like it happens in slow-mo, but Jimin’s body stumbles. Jungkook reaches to grip around it, but decides last-minute not to waste the momentum.

If Jimin wants off the building so bad, who is he to stop him?

It’s only when their positions are fully swapped that Jungkook feels himself positioned not entirely level, and realizes the momentum has already carried him too far off his centre of gravity to keep him standing.

That’s how he finds himself tipping after Jimin’s already falling form, deciding to all but shove himself hard enough on top of the kitten to dive them both into a head-first free-fall.

It’s a weird feeling, free-falling. Especially with someone else. Both of them seem suspended in time and space, the mere seconds they spend in the air before they hit the ground going on forever.

It’s endless hours of the same loop of them just falling, air billowing their clothes and whipping their hair with increased intensity despite everything slowing down to a snail’s pace.

It might have all felt less weird if Jimin didn’t turn his body around at the last minute.

Jungkook watches it happen, all the while unsure why it even does. Is it a bizarre landing technique? All he knows is he’s suddenly forced to spend the hours of free-falling staring down at that face and into those wide eyes that greet him there. So wide they’re almost saucer-like, distinctly open the same way his silent mouth is.

He almost looks…betrayed? Jungkook’s not sure why he’s attempting to read into this in the span of the two seconds he knows it realistically takes them to hit the ground, but now he’s stuck right there—inside that thought. Maybe it’s something about everything feeling like hours. Staring at Jimin, entirely for hours. Staring at the weird expression on his face.

Long enough to forget why they’re falling off a building in the first place. Why he did that.

Did he do that?

It’s not like there was ever a plan to dive anyone of the building, most especially not himself. It’s an overdramatized conclusion to the bizarre situation, and somehow all he can conclude in that moment is that none of this equates in worth to the piece of junk that just shattered.

He blinks. Or, at least he thinks he does, if there even is time to do that. The kitten sails back with those strikingly wide eyes for the remainder of the drop. Whatever caused the expression seems to also have caught the kitten off guard enough to appear to forget to do what he usually is very adept at doing—what Jungkook would expect:

Countering. Or at the very least, bracing himself.

Wait—why isn’t he bracing himself? The ground is coming up right under him, the soft hair that’s dangling off the top of his head one quarter breath in from touching down.

Aren’t cats meant to always land on their feet? Why isn’t he turning around? Why aren’t his hands out?

Jungkook discards the thought before it can fester. No. He’s learned the hard way to always expect the worst.

He won’t be taken for a fool this time.

It’s the only thing that gives him no qualms about what he does next. He leans his full weight forward, hands pushing at the kitten’s shoulders to drive him harder to the ground, at the same time readying his knees to diffuse any impact to his own body. Making the kitten take the brunt of the fall, almost entirely.

Then, there’s ground.

Suddenly.

Finally.

It creeps up on him, somehow. Maybe because he again thinks he has a few more hours; a couple more thoughts or moments of suspension in mid-air, since they’ve felt so weightless for so long. But Jungkook’s knees slam down first, colliding down on something softer than concrete but harder than water—crushing into dirt on each side of Jimin’s waist. The momentum lurches him into a painful keel, face barely escaping planting forward thanks to his elbows buckling last minute, which allows his bones to prop him up by the sheer accident of being in the way.

Simultaneously, or more likely before all of that—Jimin’s neck and head collide with the ground.

There’s nothing breaking his momentum. The force of Jungkook’s weight on him is so concentrated that the kitten’s skull all but ricochets up from the dirt as it hits. It’s a bounce so hard anyone around would be able to hear it. A distinct and rather sick thud. Those weirdly open eyes finally close, but not before he sees them roll all the way back.

Sound and sight come back to Jungkook piecemeal and slow. There are gunshots in the distance; darkness painted by overcast moonlight.

He gasps and pants, feeling himself grip at the ground—or whatever it is he can reach that gives under the desperation of his lean. It’s slightly damp, an unfamiliar mixture of grass and something like mud painting up his skin.

When did it start raining?

He groans in pain, the sting to his ribs making him prepare himself for the feeling of a knife or another deadly weapon against his neck or up against his stomach—an immediate retaliation planned for exactly when he comes down from his adrenaline rush. When he’s at his most vulnerable.

But it doesn’t come.

He realizes he has yet to let go of Jimin’s body harness. It’s a white, strappy thing the kitten always wears on missions that matches his stupid ears and tail. It’s useful to grab for anyone who gets close enough to try—though nobody ever does. Jungkook has no idea when he even grabbed it.

Now he’s stuck in a hunched position over a familiar but still body, his forearms skidded into the waiting dirt and grass on either side of the tilted head. He steadies himself a little more, before he forces himself to sit up, ignoring his screaming arms and knees. His grip on Jimin’s harness remains painfully tight, and he realizes he’s pulled the harness with him as he sits up, the boy hanging ever so slightly suspended off the ground as he follows him part-way up.

“Yield,” Jungkook growls suddenly, re-gripping the harness in warning and getting a fistful of Jimin’s shirt at the chest along with it.

He yanks Jimin further up and closer to his face. Usually his eyes would be open and livid by now—neck already craning to find the next move to weasel out with his tricky, little eyes looking for a creative way to stab Jungkook in the back.

Yet this time, his head doesn’t animate to follow anything resembling what has come to be a familiar pattern.

In fact, it doesn’t animate at all.

Jungkook blinks rain out of his eyes. He shakes Jimin in his iron grip. There’s a restless but familiar headache building between his temples, only now punctuated by a heavy weight somewhere unknown in his body.

This is a ploy. Park Jimin can withstand anything. He’s not above faking death, and has pulled dirtier tricks before. Not beneath foul play. He also just wouldn’t be taken out by something as dumb as a fucking fall. Or maybe it was more of a push.

Either way—he’s a cat, for fuck’s sake. He has instincts. And they always…

Jungkook loosens his grip a little, realizing how loudly he’s panting. There’s drool from his erupted canines dripping down onto the face below him, right next to the open, slack mouth. The soft tufts of blonde that usually frame said face still manage to lilt and whisp around in wet clumps with each of his heavy exhales.

Jimin made him chase him halfway around the world. Jungkook wouldn’t expect anything less than for him to be heaving over him like this, barely able to catch his breath. He just wants a chance to gloat in it, for once. To finally look down into those big, glassy eyes and see fear rather than apathy. Make sure Jimin finally sees him. Memorizes the face and the eyes of the man who has bested him—who holds his life in the palm of his big hands.

“I said fucking yield,” Jungkook spits in final warning, head lowered close enough to Jimin’s to feel his own breath bounced back at him, desperate to impress the weight of his own threat.

Any moment now, Jimin will counter. Any moment now, Jungkook will feel stupid for even for a second thinking about the stupid cat with any sort of hesitation. Or worse, hesitation from the beginning tendrils of guilt.

No—Jungkook knows better. He’ll feel the white-hot pain of a steel blade kissing his side soon; kitten claws planted inside his scalp.

So he waits. Even as the sweat starts to cool against his heated skin where the rain hasn’t yet touched, he waits.

The body doesn’t attempt to brace the neck that Jungkook now realizes hangs at an awkward angle from his incessant grip. Not only that, but the head doesn’t just hang in the air—it rolls.

It’s when his hand lowers the kitten’s body back down on the ground and it remains completely slack—not a limb remotely flinching in pain or a bracing apprehension—that Jungkook realizes something is actually wrong.

“Jimin?” He hears himself saying out loud. He doesn’t know how or why it comes out, but his tone and the name sound so foreign emerging together from his mouth.

He sounds stupid. He knows that. He knows that if Jimin gets the run around on him now—lets his pathetic moment of uncertainty give away the upper hand—Jungkook will hate himself for the rest of his life. Played most puppet-like and perfect into a decoy so perfect there can’t have been the like of it before. The biggest cry of wolf that could possibly distinguish itself from an actual cry.

He doesn’t know how long exactly he remains there on the ground, but eventually the chaos starts to tune back in. Glass shatters behind him, and something heavy crashes into something else. It seems to signal that someone has realized there’s something going on outside. Either that, or they’ve accomplished what they came there to do.

“Did you get one?” He distantly hears a comrade yell from somewhere inside the factory—perhaps through the carry of a smashed window.

He slowly registers it’s aimed at him. Thankfully, he’s aware nobody can see him properly through the old, distorted glass, as well as the added distance they seemed to have landed away from the building.

“One what,” Jungkook half-yells back. His voice cracks rather bizarrely. Unconvincingly. He wants to think he’s just confused, but suddenly there’s a tightness to his chest, followed by a cold prickle at the base node of his neck.

Jungkook has never been the only one out for blood. Jimin’s broken body would water the morale of all of his twenty-something men. A joyous moment; a victory.

So why does Jungkook feel an almost desperate urge to hide it? To draw attention away from it and pretend it hasn’t happened?

“A kitty cat,” Junghwan laughs obnoxiously from an equal distance, though a little closer than the other person. His voice carries over the sound of what must be an explosion erupting from the factory, punctuated by tumbling metal cans of preserved food and the crackles of a hungry fire.

Jungkook, as if only now remembering he has the heightened senses of a canine, picks up on the whiff of burning flesh, which hangs heavy and thick in the air. If Junghwan is smiling, which it sounds like he is, there’s only one possible thing or group of things that could be burning.

He pants over the still body below him, now mostly because he’s unsure what else to do. He sags a bit, somehow, leaning over the body a bit more. There are burning prickles up his back, hot air wafting out of the factory behind him as a few new explosions sound one after the other, eagerly dismissing the cold of the rain.

His legs and arms so that even if someone were to look directly out of the windows, they wouldn’t be able to see what’s under Jungkook on the slightly downward slanted ground.

“Slipped away,” he lies, unimpressed with his lack of conviction and volume. He can’t exactly remedy it when his mouth works against every instinctual and logical call sent by his brain. When his voice at some point has turned hoarse.

He hasn’t stopped staring down at the face he’s been expecting to reanimate for the full whatever amount of time they’ve been stuck there. That he’s been stuck.

“You’ll get that cocktease next time!” His brother yells back, sounding preoccupied with lifting something, or at least grunting through some physical effort. Probably trying to squeeze out of a window. Or carry body weights of cans. “We gotta dip! Place is about to blow! Daehoon stuck one of them in the busted incinerator.”

Jungkook squeezes his eyes shut and feels himself retch, unable to look down at the face anymore. His back is getting warmer and the air is starting to smell thick. The stench only gets worse and worse the more he inhales.

The best thing to do would be to move away from the body and run. And he knows the better thing yet would be to drag Jimin’s body over to his brother by the ankle, like he’s delivering a war prize.

“Jimin,” is the only thing he hears himself croak out instead.

One of his hands shoots down to touch the kitten’s throat. He releases a breath he didn’t even know he was holding right into the warm crook of said throat. The skin heats the tip of his nose. There’s a faint pulse there.

And milk.

He pushes himself up on his hands, preparing himself to get fully vertical.

“Fucking get up,” he hisses, pausing as if he’s really waiting for Jimin to listen to him. “They’re going to come over. You know what‘s gonna happen if they find you, don’t you?” He’s not sure why he’s even telling him this. What does it matter to Jungkook, really? He wants Jimin to suffer. For all the shit he’s put him through. Put his family through. He doesn’t understand why on earth he’s still perched over this cat when the building behind them is about to explode. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go,” he sneers through a cloaked whimper, touching Jimin’s neck again. The head rolls to the side and stays there. Jungkook promptly yanks his hand back, like he’s been burned. “You’re gonna bite it because I fucking pushed you?” He seethes, unable to hold himself back from gripping Jimin’s harness again. Their faces are so close now he can see the faint freckles up Jimin’s cheeks for the first time ever. “That’s pathetic! You didn’t even fight back!”

He reigns his voice back in, worried his comrades will hear him and assume he needs assistance. Luckily for him, the burning flesh keeps the explosions going a little louder and a little more destructive than a fire or any regular calibre.

Somehow forcing himself to look down at the kitten’s face like this—all pale and unaware, with the soft, white ears sooting grey or caked with flecks of drying blood—insulting him just doesn’t give him the satisfaction it should.

“Fuck,” he hisses out, exhaling hard against the kitten’s shoulder.

He realizes he’s planted his head there. His hands are gripping thin, little arms.

He doesn’t make the decision so much as his body makes it for him. That’s the extent of how autonomous anything feels. Has felt, ever since he arrived. All he knows is that there’s a large amount of people likely to come looking for him soon, and the volume of the last explosion was massively loud.

But he’s already vertical. He’s already running. A gamble between the risk of moving the kitten’s body abruptly while being this injured and risking the opposing fate of his comrades getting to them first.

Jungkook tries his best to keep a steady, firm grip at the back of the kitten’s head in support of his neck, praying all the while that any of this is good enough to prevent existing or further damage as he thunders across the courtyard, stumbling feet aiming for cover amongst the nook of abandoned apartment buildings some measure ahead.

He weighs nothing, Jungkook notes. The kitten. Nothing at all. Jungkook supposes he’s never thought about something like that. How tiny the body has always been. How delicate and breakable the physical contraptions of ferocious kitten might be up close. It’s not exactly something he’s had time to think about while at the other end of Jimin’s needle-point knife. The kitten has always hilariously preferred avoiding close-contact combat despite a staunch refusal to use guns. It’s always a brick or knife or rope or sling over anything that gets Jungkook close enough to be a grabbing distance.

And now Jungkook understands why. Despite incessant and loud claims that the distance he keeps between them is due to Jungkook stinking and being dirty—feeling the kitten’s body so full against him like this, Jungkook swallows the painful realization that Jimin’s neck could all but be snapped in one of his singular hands.

His erratic thoughts don’t do much to bring the feeling back into his frozen limbs, or get his heart to stop trying to desperately beat out of his chest. He knows he’s running, but the stumbling with a sustained speed tells him he’s never run like this before. For all he knows, it was the instantaneous impact with the ground that brought braindeath, and now all he’s carrying is a corpse the weight of his own regret.

Still, he finds himself unable to let go or slow down. Unable to let himself throw the kitten body away for the streets to swallow up and disappear him into the rest of the decay that’s always existed around them. He’s still warm where he’s curled against Jungkook’s chest. His chin is warm where Jungkook has hooked it over his shoulder. Even where Jungkook’s fingers are pressing into the roots of the hair on his scalp. Jimin is warm.

He doesn't keep track of how long he’s been running for. That is, until he realizes his legs have carried him to an oddly familiar area. He wouldn’t be stupid enough even in his panic to carry the kitten to their base, but this space is somewhere nobody would come looking for them, while at the same time being familiar enough to allow him some rest.

His legs sear with lactic acid as he sinks to his knees, forced to laugh to himself when admitting the kitten must be at least slightly heavier than he‘s able to feel. It’s the only thing keeping him fully conscious as he bends over and lays the small body down, painstakingly holding the back of the head alongside his breath. Afraid any sudden move will undo the work put into keeping the kitten stable.

Jimin’s face is awfully pale. Jungkook tries not to pay attention to the newly sinking feeling in his stomach that tells him the kitten’s spine was damaged too much in the fall to ever recover.

He straightens up a little, removing himself from the body entirely for the first time since they careened off the roof. He’s aware he has wounds he should be tending to. Pretty bad ones, at that. He just can’t.

He startles when the kitten’s body jerks. He hears him gasp for air. His eyes are still closed.

“Shhh,” Jungkook rushes unhelpfully. Except the cat only panics more when he seems to realize who it is that’s there with him. “Hey—please don’t move. No, no, no—” the kitten just continues to gasp, his eyelids fluttering as if they’re trying to blink, but remain unable to open. Like he can’t actually see or breathe, and this makes him panic more, Jungkook all the while trying to hold him still. “I’m not trying to hurt you, I-I promise. Ow! Fucking—” he hisses. Jimin’s claws managed to catch him up the cheek as he flails his hands up to bat him away. When he looks back down, the face below him is soaked with tears, skin an impossible mix of white and pink, a dying pallor with a hint of effort. “Hey—you’re going to hurt yourself! Stop fucking moving!”

Jungkook’s not sure if it’s his yelling that does it or if he’s talked Jimin into something resembling sense, but the kitten ceases flailing then, body going rather slack aside from a visible current of trembles.

Is he in pain? Is he scared?

“It’s just me,” Jungkook says.

Dumbly, he wonders if Jimin can even hear anything. Because if he can, why hasn’t he recognized Jungkook’s voice already? Or at the very least his smell? Although there is a dawning feeling inside of him that maybe that’s what’s so terrifying in the first place. The fact that it's Jungkook, specifically. Trying to hurt him, Jungkook. No mercy, Jungkook.

Last thing he saw when being pushed off the building, Jungkook.

Something about his mere existence being enough to send Jimin into a trembling-level panic feels weird. He doesn’t like it.

“I don’t hurt anyone when they’re down,” he rushes out, pulling his hands off of Jimin in the hopes that it will help somehow. “Unlike a certain someone,” he adds bitterly, trying not to think about all the times Jimin has pulled a fast one on him entirely out of nowhere while he’s spread eagle somewhere, barely knowing which way is up.

Jungkook forces himself to let go of the bitterness, sighing heavily. When he’s unconscious, Jimin isn’t so bad. He doesn’t insult Jungkook, for one. But more than that, he doesn’t try to stab him when his back is turned.

There’s always an upside, he thinks bleakly.

“Jesus,” he blurts when he notices the hybrid’s tail.

It’s ripped. Almost shredded. There’s a bloody chunk hanging off. He knows the fur is meant to be white, but the entire thing is closer to pink with how drenched in blood and rain it has grown.

Jungkook his t-shirt off before he can think about it, then carefully scoops up the damaged thing into his palm, cupping the fabric under it. Jimin’s body lurches, either from pain or from being touched, but Jungkook ignores him. He’s determined to not have the hybrid bleed out all over their storage unit, of all places. The tail bleeds through the material quite quickly, but he manages to tie a tight enough knot around the bleeding part to ease it.

He lays it back down on the ground afterwards.

“Look…I’m sorry, alright? I didn’t know your tail was…” he trails off, a sick feeling creeping up him again.

He gets unwelcome memories of stepping on it to trip Jimin somewhere between the overhead metal passageway, the stairs, and the roof door. Likely more than once. And he was well aware before that it had already been manhandled by the patrol officer. Yet Jungkook still chose to exploit that, stomping on the tail in what has to have been several grating drags across the steel grid walkway. And still, Jimin never cried or complained.

Actually—why was he so fucking angry up on that roof? Jimin doesn’t deserve his pity in any regard, but hindsight is barely allowing him to justify half of his words or decisions.

“What I’m saying is,” he continues, wondering if he’s just digging himself a bigger grave. “I’m not a barbarian. We may be dogs, but dogs have ethics. We don’t bite unless provoked. And that’s what you’ve been doing all these years—you know that, right? Provoking.” He reigns himself in, frustrated with the fact that he’s growing so concerned with making excuses and accusations that his temper is rising. “Regardless…I thought you were going to pivot before you hit the ground. You must be aware of that. There’s no fun trying to kill you if you just…give up half way.”

Be realizes that at some point, the kitten seems to have stopped panicking. Or maybe it’s just that he’s stopped moving. He reaches a hasty hand down to Jimin’s neck, just to check. Just in case.

Still warm. Only this time, Jungkook sees some goosebumps ripple over Jimin’s skin when he touches him. He flinches, hand retracting.

“Anyways,“ he diverts. There’s still a remaining sore spot he’s been unwilling to address. “Sorry about the clock, too. I guess. Not really sure why I did that. And mate thing…” he trails off, realizing he never got the full picture there, either. It just feels weird thinking about Jimin with someone. Jimin feels above that sort of carnal, human-ish thing. It seems like too much of an emotional weakness. Especially for Jimin to be divulging it to someone who’s meant to be his mortal enemy. Jungkook now has way more ammunition on him than he would ever want. “I still don’t know why your mate needed a piece of junk clock so bad. But we have mutts in our lineup who lose their minds at the sight of their own tail, so…”

Monologuing to himself isn’t as fulfilling as he wishes it was, and so he stops short of asking the kitten something sappy like whether or not he’s cold.

He’s already up to look for the moth-infested blankets he knows they have stored around there somewhere, letting his legs walk off his awkward silence. When he gets back, Jimin appears to have turned to rest on his side, facing away from him. Mostly, Jungkook feels at ease knowing he’s still technically able to move. That at least whatever parts of him he had to mobilize to move himself over are still in-tact.

He sighs, dropping the blanket on top of Jimin, who flinches. Jungkook hates himself once more for being so used to treating him like this. He’s not out to make the cat afraid. Jungkook doesn’t gain anything further from the discomfort or humiliation when there’s been plenty of that already.

Truthfully—he’s starting to question whether it’s something he’s ever really revelled in or wanted. Maybe it’s Jungkook’s age talking. Maybe it’s alpha instincts sparking at the mere prospect of harming something that is so technically small and sweet. Not that Jimin is sweet, just—you know, lithe. Lithe and…nimble. Soft-looking—especially his fur—with tiny feet and tinier hands. Long eyelashes. The burst of freckles that can only be seen up close. Just physical observations that anyone would be able to pick up on. And now he’s helpless.

He stops thinking himself into a swirl when he realizes that Jimin appears to be sleeping. His chest falls heavier and slower than before, and even if Jungkook can’t see his face, his neck now looks relaxed. Realistically, he knows it’s likely due to the head trauma and exhaustion. But a tiny part of him—just the tiniest, silliest, most shameful, but incessantly protruding part—wants to think it’s because Jimin no longer feels unsafe.

*

The first three days Jungkook wonders if Jimin has slipped into a coma. He doesn’t move or do as much as open his eyes, though his pulse remains steady and his eyes sometimes flutter behind their lids.

The fourth day, of all things, he finally opens his eyes. The trade-off appears to be the rest of his body remaining entirely still—as though aware something isn’t quite right.

Jungkook can hear tiny, distressed sounds emanating from him sometimes, but he doesn’t know what else to do other than crush up some of their expired painkillers in a helping of water, only to drip-feed the mixture into Jimin’s half-open mouth using the scoop of one of his claws.

He’s afraid to touch him. To move him. For all he knows, Jimin’s body is aggressively mending, and he needs to be entirely still for it to work. Or—perhaps worse of him—Jungkook might be too afraid of finding out whether or not the kitten is stuck like that, robbed of being able to freely move ever again.

It’s depressing. For a little while, Jungkook can’t find it in himself to even be remotely playful with him, too hyper-aware of how still the body sits. How afraid his eyes remain when he thinks Jungkook isn’t looking; when Jungkook musters up the courage to glance his direction out of the corner of his eye from the other end of the room.

It doesn’t let up until they pass the sixth day, when Jungkook knows Jimin needs to start eating. Or at the very least drinking more than what Jungkook can drip-feed him from a finger. The kitten seems to know this too, because he starts mewling where he sits, bandaged tail swishing around impatiently. He appears so weak he’s almost shrunken himself into an entirely cat-like state.

At least the tail has mended well, Jungkook thinks. It’s a small win he gives himself as he prepares to approach Jimin with a singular grape and a cup of water.

Jimin glares at him as soon as he approaches, the only thing he’s still more than able to do without compromising his neck. Something clearly more important to him than food or water.

“Grape first,” Jungkook just tells him, crouching down and pushing it up against the kitten’s dry lips with little preamble. “And if you manage that, I’ll get you something more substantial for later.”

There’s a palpable embarrassment he manages to feel out of the cognitive dissonance that comes part and parcel with his newfound caretaking role. Jimin, too, appears reluctant—but doesn’t put up a fight when Jungkook squishes the grape between his thumb and forefinger, only to start pushing bits of it into his mouth. At least Jungkook hopes it’s him not putting up a fight out of concession, rather than any sort of physical limitation.

The kitten swallows a few times. Both the food matter and the water he subsequently tips in for him to drink. At the last tip up of the cup, he accidentally floods him with too much water, half of it hitting his nose and spilling out over his face. An aggressive hand grab his arm then—familiar nails digging into his skin as it tightens.

This is the first time Jungkook has been relieved to be caught in Jimin’s little claws. The cat doesn’t mirror the smile Jungkook feels growing onto his face. Not that he needs to. Jungkook will allow himself to take a victory with or without Jimin’s express approval.

*

The kitten regains the ability to move the rest of his body over the next few days. Jungkook tries to stick around to keep an eye on him, but he knows he has to show face around his community a lot more to draw any suspicion away from his long periods of disappearance. Jungkook was decently solitary prior to all of this, which helps the transition feel less jarring. They all know he likes to go off and brood on his own.

As it turns out, even when recovering from severe and potentially life-threatening physical damage, Jimin seems to have enough energy to spare to be a bit of a menace.

He’s started refusing every bit of food Jungkook has tried to feed him since the grape, spending most of his time sulking and turned away from him. The one time he does agree to take some food into his mouth, it’s only to be able to spit it right back out and into Jungkook’s face.

“Fucking eat,” Jungkook demands, growing annoyed. Jimin hasn’t eaten anything for four straight days. He hates that he still thinks Jimin is a lot more enjoyable when he’s not unresponsive and in a semi-coma. He doesn’t like being spat on, exactly, but a part of him prefers this over the uncertainty of the stillness. “You think you gain anything from starving yourself? Don’t be so fucking predictable.”

Jimin doesn’t answer him. Just keeps glaring up at Jungkook with those beady eyes, like it’s Jungkook’s fault they’re sitting here like this, and he has the nerve to try and feed him like some fucking baby bird.

“You need me to chew it for you first?” Jungkook mocks, tipping the canned food into his mouth for good measure. He mashes the already mushy matter up with his teeth, before opening his mouth and sticking his tongue out so far several bits of food fall off. “Open your throat, baby. I’ll spit it right in for you.”

Jimin has the decency to do something similar to blush, crossing his arms over his chest and looking anywhere but up at him. Jungkook supposes insulting the kitten would under no circumstances make him more likely to want to eat. Yet again, Jungkook’s pervasive frustration has led him further from their actual goal.

“I’ll leave it here.” says in defeat, putting the whole can with the spoon down next to him on the floor before he starts walking away. “Don’t cry to me because it hurts to lift your arms when you had the opportunity to have me help you in the first place.”

He walks off, a tense silence following behind him. He stops and glances back at the cat when he’s just a few paces away.

Jimin clearly thinks Jungkook is still walking and isn’t looking, because in less than a few seconds he’s down on all fours. Jungkook isn’t sure what he expected, but it definitely wasn’t to see the kitten desperately eating out of the can using only his mouth and tongue. His arms are visibly still hurting. Jungkook can see him curl his fingers in, foregoing any attempt to eat with his hands.

He bristles a bit, unable to understand why the stubborn cat just won’t accept his help. Then again, he thinks of how he might act if he were in the same situation, and rubs the bridge of his nose upon the realization he’d be down on all fours to feed himself faster than it probably took Jimin to get there. It’s pride, but also pain. Desperation to save face against the innate need to be able to sustain yourself. Maintaining some hope of reminding and convincing yourself that you don’t need anyone else, even at the end of the world. Even with almost no food left, kin burned, and a broken body at the mercy of an enemy. Jungkook hates that he understands why Jimin feels like he’d rather lick bits of food out of a can on all fours than have a dog hybrid spoon feed him like he should be grateful about it.

He concedes and rolls another can of spam over across the floor. Jimin only notices it when it hits the side of his shin. He looks up, and for a split second, he almost appears afraid. His ears flatten against his head again, as if to protect it. They’ve been doing that a lot lately. Flattening back. Jungkook hasn’t seen them do so all that much before. It’s another thing that feels off. That he doesn’t like.

He sits there just to watch him, trying to remain still and unobstructive. When Jimin realizes he’s not actually yet gone, he quickly grabs the can and places it on the other side of himself, like Jungkook is likely to snatch it away again and he needs to hide it.

Jungkook realizes there’s not much he can do about that, so he gets up and heads for some fresh air outside in the aims of potentially reducing some of Jimin’s (in his opinion, at least a little unwarranted) paranoia.

*

It’s been about two weeks of this now. Jungkook nursing the cat hybrid back to health, with said hybrid hissing with his claws up every time he so much as moves to care for him. In that regard, ‘nursing the cat hybrid back to health’ might even be a bit of an exaggeration. The extent of it now is him rolling Jimin cans of tuna and jackfruit every now and again. He also threw a new woollen blanket at him last week, which the hybrid has taken to laying on top of, like it’s a bed.

Jungkook is just growing a bit concerned about the fact that the kitten seems to have lost his fight somewhat, mostly resting deflated against his blanket and never facing anywhere except for towards the wall away from Jungkook. Not that Jungkook cares, but he’s never exactly been prepared to be responsible for someone’s death. And for some reason, he’s worried that that’s where this is heading. A slow version of it. Or something.

Is Jungkook just not feeding the kitten correctly? He never took much care to think about what cats eat. He just assumed—since they raided the factory too—it meant they were after the same stock of food. But now that he thinks about it, he feels like he’s seen images from old films and adverts that showcase cats happily lapping up bowls of milk. Perhaps that’s something they prefer, or something more nutritious for them overall? He definitely saw Jimin inhale the spam he offered up, so they must at least eat meat and other foods for sustenance. Regardless, the hybrid is starting to look more angular than usual. A little like he’s disappearing. Jungkook can see the tip of his shoulder bone more prominently than he could before. See the nodes of his spine from the base all the way to the top of his neck.

He’s not sure he likes it. It’s a little weird. But how is he meant to fix it? It’s not like if he asks the cat he’ll tell him what’s wrong. That would be too peaceful. Too easy for them.

He grumbles to himself as he ravages the cold pantry shelf located at base, ignoring the voice in his head that tells him he’s slaving around for a fucking furball for no reason.

Milk is a luxury. They sometimes have some around when they manage to harvest some from a pregnant omega, but that hasn’t exactly happened in a while.

Are kittens even able to drink puppy milk?

“We’re raiding the military wing by the river today,” he hears behind him.

He startles, looking up. He’s face to face with his brother, who’s staring down at him. He’s forgotten what day it even is; what time. He knows he’s been spending most of his days away to care for the kitten, and his brother has mostly left him to his own devices. Also luckily for Jungkook, is that Jimin hardly smells of anything.

“Well? Wanna join us?” His brother presses, before settling into a tipped grin. “You might even be lucky enough to see your little friend again.”

“A military base?” Jungkook remarks, trying to refocus his brother’s attention onto the logistics of the mission he mentioned and away from said ‘little friend’. “Isn’t that a bit risky?”

Junghwan snorts, grabbing a knife off a shelf and hoisting himself up to sit up on the work bench in the same move.

“Not when it’s their lowest priority and a planned abandonment,” he says with a shrug, using the blade of the knife to pick dirt from under his nails. He leans his head back against the cupboards, looking an indistinguishable something between bored and annoyed. “That means there’s resources left to sustain the very small handful of enforcers that are still there. But even with their fancy, bullet-less guns—you know we have the numbers to rush them.”

Not soon after he finishes that sentence does Junghwan hop off the counter again, something akin to a pep colouring his step. Jungkook feels him sling an arm around his shoulder, and he perhaps all too noticeably suppresses a flinch. His heart involuntarily beats faster in his chest, and he feels stupid for thinking it, but he prays his brother won’t notice he smells different while standing this close to him.

“So what do you say, hm?” Junghwan prods. His excitement is palpable in his voice, even before he uses his arm to send a friendly squeeze to Jungkook’s neck. His typical brand of camaraderie. He then leans a little closer just to add something in a feigned whisper. “Think we should have ourselves another kitty barbecue?”

Jungkook freezes up, his mouth slackening as he lets go of the slab of butter he was holding. He doesn’t want to, but he turns his face to the side to meet his brother directly.

“We started the fire?” He forces out, even though he knows they did, because he vaguely remembers Junghwan saying something about it in the middle of him being preoccupied with panicking above a certain unmoving, small body. “How…how many of them burned?”

Junghwan stares at him for a second, searching his face a little with tiny movements of his pupil. Then he just shrugs, almost as if a bit miffed.

“I told you we put one in the busted incinerator,” Junghwan reiterates, the playfulness in his voice not nearly as prominent as it was a second ago, but as always, never quite gone. “As for the number—a good enough of them,” he continues easily, the grin from before returning unsettlingly fast. “After all, we had them mostly cornered thanks to you distracting their head bitch.”

Jungkook remembers darkness and moonlight and height so high it makes his stomach swoop. Him and Jimin standing toe to toe on the roof.

Wind blowing. Jimin yelling.

“‘Bitch’ isn’t a term that applies to cats,” Jungkook hears himself say, entirely unsure why does. It’s not even a focal point of their conversation. He knows what his brother means. He understands the degrading implication. “They’re mollies.”

Junghwan laughs heartily then, springing back from Jungkook in how bodily he does it. Jungkook frowns, feeling himself grow even more irked. It’s the only feeling he’s been able to feel around Junghwan for a while. He’s mostly felt guilty about it, though he’s been able to ignore it largely thanks to always volunteering himself up to dive head first into missions—not all of which involve Junghwan. But every time he’s forced to spend extended periods of time in his general vicinity, such as right now, all he can really think about is how to get away from him.

“Thanks for that riveting information, little tomcat,” Junghwan snorts, ruffling his hair as he teases him, rough hand passing over Jungkook’s pointy ears. It really doesn’t help Jungkook that he’s the younger brother. Junghwan lays off him most of the time because he’s jarringly easy to anger (something Junghwan exclusively refers to as him being ‘sensitive’) and the fact that Jungkook has also always had a little bit of extra height and muscle on him. But he revels in the moments he gets carried away due to the sheer ridiculousness he sees in Jungkook sometimes. “Good grief—are you having conversations with them?”

Jungkook doesn’t answer that question. Mostly because he sort of does have conversations with them. If you consider Jimin yelling and glaring at him ‘a conversation’, anyways. The ‘molly’ debacle was one of the first arguments he and Jimin ever had, where Jungkook goaded Jimin by telling him he looked like the kind of guy that would just stand there and watch if Jungkook decided to go knot his ‘bitch’. He remembers vividly Jimin sneering (while entirely red in the face, as if Jungkook really hit a nerve) that only dogs have ‘bitches’, you dumb mutt. No molly would get within smelling radius of you.

“Don’t tell me you’ve fucked one?” Junghwan gasps. His scandalized voice interrupts Jungkook’s memory of Jimin. He recoils, feeling his brother’s breath get way too close to his face for his liking. “You better not have fucked an omega kitty without reporting back on the full experience.”

“Gross,” he blurts. He grimaces at the thought of even being anywhere near some theoretical cat omega. “Not everyone thinks with their dick enough to consider sleeping with the fucking enemy,” he also makes sure to jab.

Involuntary images of some headless and naked female cat hybrid infiltrates his mind. Small and with supple breasts that graze his shoulder as she leans over him to say something.

He physically recoils.

“Besides—you can’t fit something the size of a fist through a mollusk.”

“Hilarious. Point is,” his brother interrupts before Jungkook can continue his tirade, and drops the previous tone of amusement again, setting off a wave of weird chills up Jungkook’s spine. “Whatever I fuck, I fuck it like a bitch. It’s not like we even have many of those to go around, considering they were the first to croak.”

He laughs as he says it, and now Jungkook really feels nauseous. Their mother was one of the first omegas to die. Though not before she got bred by their uncle—their father’s brother—in order to attempt to sustain their numbers as a species. Him and Junghwan were young when it happened, barely close to presenting. They later learned their father became the only alpha to die by suicide, killing himself soon after finding out. Jungkook never forgave his uncle for the death of both his mother and father, though he’s always had a suspicion Junghwan placed blame entirely on their father instead.

For not even trying to defend their mother‘s honour. For choosing a coward’s way out.

Their uncle never received punishment. Most considered the act necessary. While Jungkook loves his uncle out of obligation, Junghwan, at one point, revered him. When it came time for them to step up and take the reins as the strongest alphas of the faction, it was only Junghwan who insisted they keep their uncle’s council.

“I’m just saying,” Junghwan continues, jolting Jungkook back to attention. He’s closer than he was before, and Jungkook feels like a kid again. Like he’s being told off; or teased. Maybe both. Usually both. And there are no adults around to hear. “If I get desperate enough, I won’t be spending time discriminating by species.“

There’s an uncomfortable silence that falls over them. It’s not like Junghwan has said anything completely untoward, or that no hybrid has ever thought about or attempted. Jungkook just doesn’t like it coming from his mouth, specifically. He doesn’t want to be forced to envision it.

“Anyways, can I count on you later?”

Junghwan changes the topic easily, the weight of his previous words entirely dissipated. It’s just a plain statement. Even quite sincere.

Jungkook steps away from the pantry shelf, looking to cut their interaction as short as possible.

“You know I want to, but—“

“You got injured in the fall,” Junghwan finishes for him. It’s the excuse he’s been using since he brought Jimin back. To explain why he keeps disappearing and turning down new raids. Junghwan gave him his space at first, not dumb enough to push their biggest brawn to breaking point on any given day. But now Jungkook wonders if he’s really just imagining the sound of Junghwan’s patience running thinner and thinner every time he talks to him. “I know, I know. It’s cool, Jungkookie. We can manage.”

“Thanks,” Jungkook offers.

He leaves his brother with a grateful nod, curt though as it is. He doesn’t plan to stick around long enough for him to attempt to pivot to any sort of further conversation.

*

There’s some sordid cross of him feeling between insane and pathetic when he finds himself walking up to Jimin twenty minutes later holding a tiny bowl of milk.

They didn’t have much in the pantry, and it might be…well, off—but he managed to slip the tiny bottle into his pocket just before his brother barged in. He kind of feels a little proud of himself. And if it makes Jimin wipe that sour look off his face, he’ll get to gloat about knowing more about cats than the kitten thought he did. Though mostly, he’s sick of watching him waste away.

It’s not like any dog hybrids like milk. They don’t need it. It’s the sort of thing they wean on as pups and never look back to. It’s a soft, sweet drink, only creamy and decadent enough for something as picky and spoiled as a cat.

As he walks up to Jimin, the kitten predictably glares him into a circle, like he’d rather he were anyone else. Would rather be left alone, even. Jungkook scoffs.

He plans to set the bowl of milk down and promptly walk off. Except when he’s close enough to practically stand over Jimin, he doesn’t smell what he’s expecting to. Instead, he sees something shiny hidden under Jimin’s blanket. Not only there, but there’s plenty to the side of him; the side hidden from Jungkook’s view.

Shiny tin cans. Full. Entirely unopened. About as many as Jungkook has been passing him across the floor for two full weeks.

He falters, almost dropping the milk in his shock. But only right before his fuse finally ignites. He grips the bowl tight. He’s not sure he cares if it breaks.

“God, you—“ he cuts himself off to groan loudly, staring at the cans. Then he stares at Jimin’s face, which remains entirely unbothered, like he hasn’t been lying to him for two entire fucking weeks. “You’re fucking insane, you know that?” He yells. He thinks about all the time he’s spent worrying, ruminating, and risking his own position while sourcing food for the hybrid. His mood nosedives. “What’s wrong with you, huh? You wanna starve that bad? All I’ve been doing is try to help!”

Jimin still refuses to look at him. In fact, he turns to face more away from him than before, practically turning around so that his back is towards him.

“Ungrateful fucking—“

“What am I meant to do when you stop feeding me?“

Jungkook takes a moment to recognize that it’s the first time he’s heard Jimin speak since they were on the roof. It’s not like he actually considered the idea that Jimin might have gone mute, but he wondered if there was a reason for him withholding talking in general. The voice is scratchy and a bit hoarse, but Jungkook can hear him perfectly fine.

“Stop feeding you?” Jungkook says mindlessly, furrowing his brows as he tries to make sense of his words. “What do you mean?”

Jimin doesn’t answer him. The sound of his voice disappears as quickly as it appeared to come. Jungkook glances down at the cans, then over to Jimin, entirely confounded as to why Jimin would do that to himself. He looks back at the cans one last time. The only food Jimin ever ate must have been the can Jungkook pre-opened for him. The one he got on his hands and knees to consume. Because he was starving.

“You’re unable to open them,” Jungkook blurts out.

His stomach sinks. Jimin’s claws are sharp and can pierce through any flesh (such as Jungkook’s, which he has ample proof of)—but unlike Jungkook’s thick, hard claws, Jimin’s are too thin and brittle to even remotely hope to pierce something like the tin of the cans he needs to get inside.

“Fuck—why didn’t you tell me? You’re gonna starve to death because you can’t bare to ask me for help one singular time?”

Jimin mumbles something under his breath then; something Jungkook can’t hear. His fists tighten and his brows pull down hard enough to strain.

“Listen, I get that being annoyingly stubborn is your only fucking personality trait and all, but—“

“I said I thought you did it on purpose!”

It’s piercing. Not only that, but Jimin had turned around to fully face him. Jungkook feels the air in his lungs all but get punched out of there, his muscles stiffening up.

Jimin commands attention, and Jungkook is unable to not give it to him. Entirely. His eyes are back to sharp and ablaze where they meet his, almost like how he remembers them that night. Still, they also seem wide in a vulnerable enough way to not appear to convince even himself that they are entirely hostile, which he doesn’t expect.

It takes Jungkook so aback that anything he was about to say is absorbed through his constricted throat almost immediately, and he’s made to process what Jimin’s actually just told him.

For the briefest moment he swears Jimin looks like he regrets lashing out at him. Those ears wiggle out of habit and almost move to flatten against his head again, before he stops them. As if he’s just come to the painful realization that there might be real consequences to antagonizing Jungkook now, but wants to hold his ground at the last minute. His expression hardens and morphs into one of contempt. His fists grip tight at the wool blanket under him. So hard his knuckles drain white.

Once Jungkook feels like he’s processed what the kitten said, he frowns. It seems selfish of him to feel affronted, but somehow, he manages to.

“Why would I do that?” He grits out, staring down at the kitten.

He wants to throw the bowl of milk he’s holding to the other end of the room and watch it crash there, splattering up the walls and maybe even breaking. He’s not sure why he’s the only one taking this seriously, when Jimin appears dead set on painting him as some imaginary villain that has him held captive.

When he doesn’t get an answer, he presses on; louder this time. It comes out in a bit of a snarl, barely contained from a growl by the sheer force of its delivery.

“I said why would I fucking do that?”

A weird moment follows. He can see Jimin doesn’t want to answer—tries not to, very clearly—but something about Jungkook’s tone appears to force something out of him, almost against his will. The words tumble out, like Jungkook has physically reached into Jimin’s mouth with his bare hands, only to yank the answer he’s wanting out himself.

“To h-humiliate me.”

He can hear Jimin’s pitiful attempt at making it sound venomous, but the kitten’s voice breaks twice in his attempt at forcing it out. The exhaustion he must be feeling after not eating for the past two weeks bleeds through, too.

Generally, everything about Jimin makes Jungkook forget that thing is technically at a disadvantage. Makes him forget the fact that he’s rather small and relatively weak. It’s a calculated effort on the cat’s part for sure. For what it’s worth, it’s quite impressive. But it means Jungkook forgets to hold back when he probably should. He’s forgotten they’re not just meeting in a quick and quippy clash at some shithole place on some thousandth mission that looks the same as the last one. He’s forgotten he’s the one that has forced the cat into a complete physical and tactical disadvantage. Hell—every word Jungkook says and every twitch his hands make have the power to decide whether the hybrid lives or dies.

Jimin’s not looking at Jungkook anymore. The confidence from before appears gone, and his face has turned down with his shoulders, which now seem awkwardly sunken. Jimin’s arms and legs are just kind of there—hanging from him. Not putting any effort into propping him up properly or straightening his back.

Is it because he’s hurting still? Is he just too weak to? Or is this some result of Jungkook speaking to him so forcefully?

Molly, his brain supplies unhelpfully.

He physically shakes his head.

Absolutely not. Even if that was the case—which it isn’t, because they’re not the same species—it shouldn’t work like that. Granted, not that he’s ever tried to—

“It’s why you’re keeping me alive, isn’t it?” Jimin’s slings the accusation as much as breathy words straining to even get out of someone can sound like an accusation. He’s talking to the wall again rather than Jungkook directly, speaking in a tone which, regardless of fragility, suggests he’s figured him out. That even now, he wants to demonstrate he’s managed to remain ten steps ahead, like he always is. A last attempt at taking back some semblance of control despite it all. “To torture me.”

Jungkook stares, unable to figure out how to respond. Again.

Him? On purpose? Almost killing someone by accident and then bringing their broken body back just to make sure to torture them some more?

He wants to be angry and frustrated that this is what all his efforts to be kind have gotten him. He wants to shake the stupid cat and yell at him that the entire world doesn’t revolve around him, nor does Jungkook’s time and energy, and that this push and pull shit is getting so fucking tired.

He wants to. But only briefly. Because it dissipates.

It dissipates when he looks down one more time and sees the kitten’s fingers are clutched tight around one of the cans of jackfruit. It’s dented and scratched to hell. Jimin has clearly been trying to get in; to open it. He’s been desperate to. When Jungkook shifts his gaze to Jimin’s sides, he realizes his fingernails are dotted with red and black, as if they’ve been bleeding on and off; crusting with blood. He also sees a clear-ish, white-looking sliver of something abandoned on the floor, connected to Jimin’s body only by the thinnest, spottiest trail of blood.

He swallows a lump in his throat, his balance faltering. One of Jimin’s claws have come off. Presumably from trying to get into the cans. Ripped entirely out of his finger.

It’s only in that moment Jungkook understands Jimin hasn’t been trying to be difficult or combative with him just to have a go. In Jimin’s accusatory and confident words, there’s baked in a sordid kind of a plea. A sliver of hope that he’s actually wrong. But no matter what, Jungkook needs to prove it. Because Jimin would never forgive himself if he let his guard down at his most vulnerable. If he was the first to take Jungkook’s metaphorically outstretched hand of truce, only to be pulled against him where a dagger awaits to sink into his gut like a lover’s kiss; twisting and turning until it slowly bleeds him out. But only after Jimin has been forced to make the fatal mistake of trusting, and has no other choice but to blame himself for his own downfall.

The ultimate humiliation. The ultimate victory. For Jungkook.

It’s dark—really dark. Jungkook can’t in good conscience say it’s entirely unwarranted. Or that he himself hasn’t set up conditions ambiguous and consistent enough to stoke it. To make him even go there.

It’s a little funny—not in a mocking way, but in an ironic and tragic way—how Jungkook now feels like their reads on the same exact encounters over the last few years might have been entirely different. Or maybe not entirely, but where Jungkook has perhaps felt some form of comfort and excitement in Jimin as a familiar presence and healthy competition (inappropriate though as that is given that they typically clash over wider community grief). He wonders if Jimin has perhaps never experienced that feeling.

Never had the luxury of it, his brain corrects, which is only emphasized the longer he stands there, towering above the hybrid’s smaller form. The echoes of the words the kitten shared with him on the roof almost sing between his ears.

Jimin’s never had the luxury of reading their encounters as anything other than a matter of life and death.

As if to confirm his realization, the light that reflects off of Jimin’s cheek where he faces away seems to grow slightly brighter and more speckled. It reflects a glisten; a new wetness that has just come to decorate the surface, spreading down the matte of his skin slowly but consistently. The longer the silence, the more he feels he can also visibly see the small body tremble, where it might have only revealed itself through touch before.

The nausea that’s been growing in Jungkook’s stomach and consequently up his throat is back, now feeling overwhelming. He knows the longer he doesn’t say anything, the worse he’s making it. The worse he’s making everything. He just isn’t sure what he can say; what he can do. Especially given that most of his actions read as hostile to the creature below him. Nothing about him is soft, or warm, or welcoming. And all of that is entirely by design, too.

Jungkook furrows his brows and steels his jaw, forcing himself to unclench his fists. He also forces down the unhinged part of him that has a knee-jerk desire to reach out and pet the cat hybrid’s ears—to touch his head. The sort of placating touches they practise amongst themselves in his pack. Between Alpha and omega, usually. Not that that matters. He’s just still not sure what Jimin is. Though it still doesn’t matter at all. It’s not important. Those are just social conventions. And for all he knows, cat hybrids don’t even follow them. He’s still absolutely clueless there.

He decides against any form of physical touch, probably only likely to spook. Instead, he sits himself down next to the kitten, slowly. Jimin’s ears twitch in an alert apprehension, but Jungkook presses on. He keeps his movements slow and deliberate, making sure the hybrid can see him and what he’s doing.

“I’m going to open them for you. And you’re going to eat them. If you don’t, you’ll eventually die,” is what he settles for saying, before grabbing a can that Jimin isn’t holding from the floor.

He settles on being straight forward and factual, as he has a feeling that trying to convince Jimin of his intentions will still be like talking to a brick wall. If actions speak louder than words, Jimin won’t hear anything he has to say until he gives him a reason to believe it.

The kitten doesn’t move as Jungkook ejects his claws as quietly as possible and pierces metal, pulling his finger around the serrated edges enough to peel open the top of the can and bend it backwards. When he’s done, he places it on the opposite side of Jimin’s body, the one he can see from where he usually sits.

Then, he picks up another.

Jimin doesn’t look at him or turn his head back around to see what he’s doing. As Jungkook works, however, he catches the cat hybrid reaching one of his arms up to wipe his face with his sleeve. It’s quick enough, but it’s revealing. More telling than that, is that the kitten hasn’t motioned or said anything in protest. No further quips or comments or physical attempts to thwart Jungkook’s efforts. As humiliating as it might be for the little hybrid, he’s now entirely sure Jimin was sitting in silent prayer for him to do this. They both know where this will go if he doesn’t accept the help.

Only Jungkook doesn’t plan on letting the hybrid get there if he still has something to say about it.

Once all of the cans have been opened, placed in a neat, little row next to each other, the air around them smells hefty. It’s a sordid mix of two food items Jungkook would never personally consume together. He allows himself to look back up at the hybrid’s form, which remained unmoving the entire duration of his ministrations.

He’s still quiet. Still facing away.

Only now—he’s no longer trembling.

Against his better judgement, Jungkook bites back another unprompted grin. It’s a grin he’s entirely unable to hold back when he catches the kitten ever so briefly turn his head around to check and confirm what Jungkook has done. Perhaps also to check whether or not he’s still there.

Jimin quickly whips his head back to where it was, but he doesn’t manage to do so before Jungkook gets to see his cheeks flood with colour. There’s an awkward, little silence between them as Jimin refuses to acknowledge anything and Jungkook refuses to leave. Jungkook, unfortunately, has all the time in the world right now.

“You can’t expect me to eat with the smell of dog hanging around,” he hears Jimin jab, watching him grab one of the open cans, only to snap it against his chest, where he cradles it protectively.

Jungkook feels his grin pull so hard his teeth most definitely come on show for the entire room. He’s unable to stop the light and almost instinctual hand he finds himself placing on top of Jimin’s head, resting ever so briefly and gently on top of his soft hair and ears both.

Because what he heard just then was Jimin for thank you.

*

Jungkook spends an ungodly amount of time trying to piece together the various bits of information he’s stored about Jimin in his head from the days before head petting day and the days following, trying to paint a full picture of him. It feels weird that, for a person he has seen and known for so many years, he’s come to realize that he’s never really known Jimin.

He knows his height. His general speed. His thought patterns, and a few of his bad habits. He knows his weapons of choice, the exact amount of risk he’s willing to take on in a fight. He knows Jimin is their best fighter—the cats. Or at least, he thinks so. He’s the one that gives the dogs the most grief, anyways. But Jungkook supposes he’s never tried any of the others, because he always goes for Jimin first. And by the time they’ve faced off, his brother and the rest of their faction have dealt with the forgettable rest.

He knows Jimin has a mate. Or at least he thinks he does, because Jimin told him that himself. No matter how weird that feels. He doesn’t think the kitten would blurt something like that out for no reason, and so now it’s something that hangs there weirdly over his shoulders whenever sneaks a look at him.

Jimin is currently resting against The Wall, eyes closed and breathing deeply. There’s a littering of empty food cans around him, and he’s pulled the wool blanket over himself as far as it will go without letting it disappear from its role acting as a cushion under him.

It’s just weird to think about. Jungkook has never thought of Jimin as a being who is similar to him. One that has carnal desires. One that is capable of romantic feelings. One that kisses; feels pleasure.

Has sex.

He gets an unsolicited image in his head of some generic tomcat wrapping its arms around Jimin’s waist from behind as he sleeps, making the hybrid mewl and turn around to nuzzle into the feeling of warmth and sturdy body.

Hold up—tomcat? Why would Jimin’s mate be a tomcat? It’s not like Jimin looks like one himself, but with the way he acts, it’s almost forced Jungkook to disqualify the possibility of him being a molly. Except when he makes himself imagine up Jimin some mate in his head (just to start making sense of things) it’s almost impossible to create a figure that resembles more of a molly than he does. If one disregards the stupid harnesses, crusted and bleeding claws, and the billion weapons, Jimin can pass for a molly. Minus also that piercing look in his eye, zero smell, etcetera, and so forth.

He frowns. Again, he’s never really considered it all that much. Maybe a few select times. But he supposes he can’t reasonably disagree with his brother’s classification of Jimin as a bitch.

There are cat hybrids taller than Jimin. Bigger than him—with rougher faces and bushier ears and tails. Jungkook has seen them, after all. With the little amount of attention he pays. And Jimin just…doesn’t smell like much. Not that he would know whether cat omegas even smell. But dog ones certainly do. At least from what he can remember. Before they all got old or died. The two that are left and still below forty years old are kept segregated in their own living space, well away from all the chronically deprived alphas that might feel their control wane. Junghwan always insisted the two fertile omegas would end up wanting the two of them for mates anyways, as they’re the most virile and desired alphas amongst the rest.

But Jungkook isn’t so sure. Especially when he’s always recoiled at the idea of it. It’s not really been the temptation for him that it seems to be for everyone else. Maybe Jungkook just isn’t around them enough to be affected by their pheromones. Or depressingly, as they happen to both be female, there’s a chance he’s just unable to sever his perception of them with that of his dying mother.

He groans to himself, pressing his palms into his eyelids for a few seconds to clear his head of any thoughts. He blinks them blearily back open just to settle back onto Jimin, who’s still sleeping soundly against the wall.

Jimin feels as small as he looks, is the rogue thought that drops into his head anyways. Jungkook knows it because he has felt him against his body, his entire weight pressed against him while he carried him to safety a few weeks ago. He supposes some tomcat out there might find that somewhat appealing, if nothing else. Jimin’s mate must have, whoever it is. Because that’s just about anything about the kitten that’s appealing or could pass for something remotely molly-like.

He frowns deeper as he wonders if cats feel the same aches and withdrawals when being away from their mates as dog hybrids have described to him. It’s apparently very painful. Unbearable, even, the longer it lasts. Until eventually their bond breaks after a few years from the grief of separation. Jimin doesn’t appear to be in any pain. Not like that, anyways.

Now that he thinks about it—he’s entirely certain he’s never seen anything even close to a mating mark on Jimin’s body. And he’s seen quite a bit of it over the years. Not in a weird way, just…whether from Jimin ripping bits of clothes off for when they’ve had to race in water, or Jungkook tearing something off to find where he’s hidden his newest knives—Jimin’s body has always appeared entirely smooth and unmarred.

It bothers Jungkook enough for him to march over to where Jimin is sleeping, standing like an obelisk over him, until Jimin senses his presence and promptly startles to a fully wakened state.

“You’re a fucking liar,” Jungkook starts. He crosses his arms over his chest. “You don’t have a mate. Why would you lie about having one when you don’t even have a mating bite? And you don’t smell like someone at all.”

Jimin blinks up at him with tightened brows, more than a little confused. Then he rolls his eyes and sinks back to his regularly scheduled, standoff-ish position.

“Do you spend all your alone time thinking about me?” Jimin throws back, seemingly not amused enough today to accompany it with any sort of effort. “Why do you care?”

Jungkook wants to say he doesn’t, but that wouldn’t make much sense considering the glaring evidence against him.

“I don’t like being lied to,” he settles for. Flimsy at best.

“Well I haven’t lied, so…”

Jimin leaves him with that and turns away from him again, as if to mark his finality on the matter. He seems to try to go back to sleep.

But Jungkook won’t let him. He has this bizarre, unrelenting, and entitled need to know. To fully and finally understand.

Jimin shrieks when Jungkook pulls the blanket off him and grabs at the hem of his neckline, before yanking it down.

“Where’s your mating mark then?” Jungkook snares, stretching Jimin’s shirt so hard in his agitated frenzy that the seams give way through several loud, ripping noises.

The material is stretched beyond recognition, the neck opening now so wide it’s pulled all the way past Jimin’s chest to the bottom of his ribs. Jungkook freezes a bit, surprised by his own strength. One of Jimin’s nipples peeks out there in the dim light, exposed purely due to the disappearance of fabric.

Jungkook stares for hours. He tells himself he’s looking for the mating mark—frantically taking in every bit of skin his eyes can locate—but at some point he realizes he’s stuck in a bit of a trance near the chest area, his eyes involuntarily ending up fixated on the slightly puffy nipple he’s never actually seen before. It’s really small. It looks soft.

And is that fucking collar still around Jimin’s neck?

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Jimin screams it, but Jungkook can barely hear him through the thick veil of his trance, only to be violently yanked out of it when he feels a powerful kick to his chest. It almost winds him, and he grunts in pain, bracing himself. Unfortunately, he realizes his fingers are still stuck gripping the fabric of Jimin’s shirt, and the kitten is jerked forward onto his front in a bit of a face-plant.

Understably, this results in the kitten freaking out more.

“L-Let go of me, you brute!” Jimin accuses, scrambling up from the floor and attempting to pull back and away, only to compromise the integrity of his shirt even further. Jungkook is still blinking himself out of being winded by Jimin's foot, unable to even locate his limbs to control their function just yet, even if he wanted to. He can’t even control whatever muscles in his hands have cramped his fingers tight into the fabric he’s trying to let go of. “Get your hand off of me!”

Jungkook finally comes to when he hears something akin to a sob, which all but releases some sort of latch that lets him finally yank his hand away from the fabric of Jimin’s shirt, even though it is with great difficulty.

“Fuck—shit. S-Sorry—“ he scrambles, all but shooting up from the floor and shaking his hands like he’s trying to rid something incriminating from them.

How is he meant to explain falling into some brain-numbing hypnosis due to seeing a cat hybrid’s nipple for the first time? Can that even be considered an excuse? What is wrong with him, exactly?

He can’t bring himself to look at Jimin’s face, just in case he’ll find the kitten crying. When he looks vaguely in the kitten’s direction though, all he can see is Jimin using both of his small hands to cover up each of his nipples in turn. The shirt is all but cleanly ripped down the front, now overly exposing his chest and shoulders.

Jimin’s entire body curls in on itself.

Jungkook squeezes his eyes shut quickly and even covers them with his hand on top of that, taking blind steps backwards and stumbling as he goes—already up from the floor.

“Sorry, sorry—I don’t know…” he trails off mid-sentence when he realizes he doesn’t have any idea what he’s trying to say.

He feels like shit, because he likes to think he made progress with Jimin. Likes to think he’s gained something like a fraction of trust, if only enough to allow Jimin to sleep a full night through (and without his claws out). Has he ruined that now? There’s almost a sense of despair at the thought, a heaviness moving to occupying the space between his ribs. He never planned to stare, or ask invasive, unnecessary questions. Definitely didn’t mean to pull at him.

Unable to stomach confronting anything directly, Jungkook stumbles backwards until he starts sprinting, panting through a desperate exit from the building as his legs burn with the speed of his dash.

He doesn’t realize his hand is still covering his eyes until he remembers it’s supposed to be daylight out, and he lets the sun flood his vision in pseudo punishment as he squints his way to somewhere that isn’t there.

*

Jimin keeps himself mostly wrapped up in and hidden under his mouldy blanket on the floor from then on, only some tufts of blonde hair peeking out now and again. How he’s managed to make that crumbling thing hide all of him is almost impressive.

It’s also entirely understandable. But that doesn’t stop it from being sad, and to a certain extent painful. For all Jungkook’s self-proclamations about maturity and control, that day he experienced a bizarrely difficult time of it, and is still struggling to make sense of his actions.

It’s time for him to open Jimin another can of food, but Jungkook finds himself reluctant to approach him again. Even if he knows he has to. It would just be better if literally any other person could do this instead.

Is there a possibility that Jungkook is coming up on his rut and is somehow confusing the furball he’s taken in for some omega of his own species? He’s had his fair share of sex, but only ever with betas due to how rare omegas are. Sex with betas takes the edge off a little bit, but it never satiates. Barely even satisfies—not in the way he wants. It feels like the world’s worst game of charades; entirely play pretend. A mere substitute for the real thing, and he doesn’t even know what the real thing feels like. There’s just something about it that feels so off. Sex with betas is best enjoyed outside of his rut, because at least then he isn’t trying to ease a horrific, excruciating burn by pouring luke-warm water over it.

Unfortunately, Jimin’s neck and shoulders have been the only things on his mind the past few days. For some god forsaken reason. Due to this, he’s reminded of the collar he saw still stuck around Jimin’s neck—the one the patrol officer put on.

Jungkook tried to get the collar off a few times back when Jimin was really struggling, because it’s on quite tight and likely doesn’t do much in the way of aiding his healing.

Unfortunately, the thing is all but sutured there. The lock has no key, made entirely out of what must be industrial steel, and the leather itself feels boned inside by something that can’t be cut through. The collar doesn’t give even when Jungkook uses all of his physical strength to try and rip it apart, which is usually enough to find give in things like trees and spines. Though he does only use as much of his strength as he can without risking hurting his kitten in the process.

He just has a bad feeling about it. Jimin appears to have almost forgotten it’s there, going by his days as if he isn’t wearing it at all.

They never actually talked about it. He supposes he hasn’t exactly had time to ask. Why Jimin let a human put it on. All Jungkook knows is that a collar is a sign of oppression and ownership; of weakness. Largely always has been, but especially after the Uprising. There isn’t a hybrid around who would be caught dead still offering servitude or ownership to a human. And those who do usually end up sprayed dead outside the gates of the human encampments, having clawed at the walls to try and get in.

But Jimin is prideful. He gets embarrassed about anything that might make him appear remotely lesser. Weaker.

So what’s so different about this?

The kitten has twisted and turned in his sleep, the blanket having slowly slipped down his back. It means that today, Jungkook can see his body for the first time in quite a few days days. The collar is visible, too—on full display where it rests against the dip of his delicate throat.

Jungkook is sitting next to him, an opened can of food in hand. He wishes Jimin would wake up from the smell of food alone, because maybe that would stop him from opening his mouth and having the first things that pop into his mind falling out.

“Let’s say you do have a mate. Why would you let some human collar you?”

He tries to make his voice sound less judgmental, but half the point is to get Jimin to wake up, so he has to be a bit forceful with it. He also feels like if he doesn’t ask now, they’ll never push through the space that’s been propped up between them since the shirt incident.

There’s just too much, in Jungkook’s mind, that still doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t quite check out. Pockets of mystery that leave him feeling like he only has fractions of Jimin around him rather than a full whole.

Jimin stirs, but doesn’t jolt or jump. Instead, Jungkook sees him rub his eyes while still facing away from him.

Then—of all things—Jimin slowly turns around. Like he’s moving to face someone sleeping in bed with him. He stares up at Jungkook with the endless, big eyes Jungkook has somehow still not grown entirely accustomed to looking into. At least when they’re not familiarly sharp and prickly.

“It was meant to be temporary, obviously,” Jimin says. He doesn’t blink at all, which would be unsettling if Jungkook didn’t already know Jimin barely blinks to begin with. He’s talking to Jungkook like he’s the stupid one for not immediately getting it. “Except then you killed him.”

Jungkook chews on that, remembering the gleeful way he aimed straight for the slimy-looking man, who barely had the chance to look him in the eye before his brain matter jumped in a spiral around the bullet from Jungkook’s Jimin gun. Technically that shot was a bit of a breach of his own rules. Using it for anything other than the person it was intended for is a massive faux-pas. Then again, he’s the only one keeping score, so he supposes it doesn’t matter much.

Either way, he most definitely aimed for Jimin. He just happened to miss. The intention maintains his clean conscience. After all, what desire would he have to kill some human he doesn’t know? He kills enough of them when they stand in his way as it is.

He finds himself leaned ever so slightly closer to Jimin on the ground. He doesn’t want to speak too loudly, and he‘s trying to shake as much of the edge out of his voice as he can, lest the hybrid pull away from him and retreat into his blanket.

To his surprise, the hybrid remains quite still. Even as Jungkook inches closer. Even as Jungkook continues to speak. He wonders if he’s imagining it, but the kitten almost looks curious, body and muscles relaxed as he peers up at him.

“How was I meant to know he had some special lock mechanism?” Jungkook mumbles, watching two strands of blonde hair fall into Jimin’s face. “That thing is like a chastity device for your goddamn throat. Anyways,” he clears himself, before splaying his legs out near Jimin’s body, hunching his back to stretch his spine.

Jimin follows him, letting his head dip to get comfortable, now holding his gaze by looking up at him sideways.

It’s almost a little…cute. He’s mirroring him. Responding to Jungkook’s closeness and indicated lack of being a threat with his own physical cues.

“Temporary, you said,” Jungkook continues. “In exchange for your immunity when they were meant to rush the raid, I assume? Perhaps even a request that if they shoot at any dogs, they only shoot to kill.”

Jimin still hasn’t blinked, but he moves his gaze away for the first time, settling for staring at Jungkook’s knee. His gaze looks like it’s focusing on something not directly in front of him. Maybe not even in the room. Jungkook just concentrates on the fact that Jimin’s warmth suddenly seems to emanate all the way to him, even if they’re not touching. Grazing his knee like a ghost caress, which is the closest part of him to Jimin’s body.

“No exchange,” Jimin murmurs. His voice is slow and quiet. “Just…just temporary.”

He watches the kitten reach for the edge of his blanket that has fallen down, and pulls it up so far it swallows his nose, letting him nuzzle ever so slightly into the itchy fabric.

Jungkook is probably losing it now, because the only prominent, screaming, and vaguely distraught part of his brain currently functioning can only think to confirm that yeah, everything happening currently is real fucking cute.

He grips his own hair at the root, manually moving his head up to stare at the grey wall Jimin loves so much at the opposite side of him. Yet he remains close enough to Jimin’s body to not have to lose the warmth. As if following it, his eyes slip back down, now fixated on where Jimin’s neck would be visible were it not for the obstructing blanket in the way. And truthfully, even mostly hidden by said blanket, Jimin’s pale, untouched skin is hard not to stare at.

There’s also a collar under there somewhere, gripping into that skin. Hugging the entire expanse of Jimin’s neck and refusing to let go.

A ripple of goosebumps travel up his back. He’s not sure if it’s anger, jealousy, or arousal. Regardless, the result is the same.

“You like wearing them,” he remarks lowly. “Collars. You wanted it on.”

What other reason would Jimin have to agree to wear one without asking for anything in return? It feels like he’s so close to grasping whatever the fuck this is all about, even though what he’s reaching for is so hopelessly elusive.

Jimin giggles from under the blanket.

Jungkook’s eyes widen. He’s never heard him do that before. The goosebumps rush forth again, only this time prominently rushing blood to his cock. Despite that, he feels a carnal need to convey his disapproval. Jimin appears to have allowed himself to look up at Jungkook again, and their eyes meet when Jimin’s body heat feels so close it’s almost scorching.

“You think I stepped out of the raid for a quick break consisting of getting off on being degraded?”

Jimin laughs it, light and tinkling into the heady air around them. The sound is so rare Jungkook just hangs his head there where it is, staring at Jimin from his position slightly hunched near him.

“What, then?” He pushes. Jimin appears to be a lot more cooperative when Jungkook doesn’t insult him. When he speaks just a little softer. Maybe it’s more pleasant to be around Jimin like this. Not for the kitten’s sake—just to spare himself the headache of the aggression and spitting. “And what does this all have to do with your mate? Who the fuck is he?”

There it is. A little falter. The muscles in Jimin’s forehead engage, and the brows that lay there resting pull together; just barely. His eyes hollow—if that’s even possible. Still looking at Jungkook, though Jungkook can tell his mind has gone somewhere else entirely. Briefly. Unwillingly.

Jungkook doesn’t move at all, but somehow he feels rather imposing where he’s leaning over him. Almost like Jimin is shrinking before his very eyes.

He’s about to check what’s wrong with the kitten—already reaching a hand down—when he sees Jimin flinch, blurting out something he seems like he doesn’t even want to share.

“I don’t wanna talk about him.”

So it is a him.

Jungkook already figured that, but something about hearing it makes his jaw clench tighter. Something dark fills his throat. Then his eyes and nose. It’s a little suffocating; like smoke.

It drives open his mouth.

“I’m not fucking asking.”

Jimin visibly notices the shift. All his attention is suddenly forced up, and his mouth closes. Hell—Jungkook notices the fucking shift. He just has no idea how to reign it in. What it even is.

“Please,” Jimin seems to start, but he seems a little too taken aback to talk to him properly. “I’m….”

He has these uncertain eyes fixated up at him now, like Jungkook is suddenly bigger and badder than he’s ever appeared. Like the tone of his voice has crossed a very specific line that’s hard to come back from. Something forceful enough to jolt Jimin into a rather dramatic state of apprehension.

Smaller, smaller, smaller. There he goes, shrinking again. How small can Jimin shrink?

Something sour hits his nose. It rather jarringly breaks him out of whatever concerning thought cycle he was stuck inside. The smell is sharp, wafting up in waves from all under him.

Up from Jimin.

No, his mind laments, eyes searching the ones pinched shut below him with a growing weight of guilt.

How did he let this happen? When did he manage to start causing the kitten distress?

And when did he get on top of him?

“No, you don’t have a mate,” Jungkook hears himself coo, a gentler voice accompanying the unsuspecting thumb he pushes under the collar around the kitten’s neck, before his hand grips the thing tight in his fist. It’s like he’s watching himself through an out of body experience, only able to sit in the passenger seat as the him down there with Jimin talks and touches however he likes. “Not like that.”

The squeezed shut eyes of the small hybrid below him are forgotten as he stares at the leather again, entirely transfixed. He stares so hard it feels like his eyes might defy physics and burn a hole in the thing by pure power of will.

He reaches his other hand down to pet the kitten into something closer to calmness, despite an initial struggle. All the while, he keeps an unrelenting grip on the collar.

“It’s okay, I understand,” Jungkook murmurs, feeling himself grow more at ease the more the kitten accepts him, taking to laying still and letting himself be pet through the assurances. “You’re ashamed of it, but the truth is, your love is entirely warped from and confused with devotion. To a certain human. Your original Master. Is that right?”

Jimin doesn’t reply. Which on its own, says quite enough.

Jungkook crouches further down near him now. He can’t help the pitying look he knows he’s casting his way, which colours the full extent of his body language. Nothing about his own behaviour is expected or makes sense. He doesn’t even feel like he’s in charge.

“You miss your Master,” Jungkook whispers, wiping a stray tear that has rolled down the side of Jimin’s face.

“I miss my mate,” Jimin corrects wetly, his small hand reaching up to bat Jungkook’s away. There’s barely any strength to it, and Jungkook grabs it easily, forcing it flat against the floor.

He softens further. It’s a mixture of the distress and the utter display of helplessness presented before him. It’s why his voice comes out so achingly gentle as he holds Jimin’s eyes, almost like he were speaking to a pup.

“Oh dear. As much as we’ve evolved,” he explains, searching Jimin’s eyes while he talks for signs that he understands. “Humans can’t replicate mates. All they have is ownership. You know that…right?”

“I’m not stupid,” Jimin blubbers. Though it is quiet; like he doesn’t quite believe himself.

“He paid for you,” Jungkook coaxes. His hands cup both sides of Jimin’s face as he speaks down to him, holding the kitten so he‘s forced to look him in the eyes as he speaks. “That’s all you are to him. Something he owns.”

“Y-You don’t think I know that?”

There’s a heavy wobble to Jimin’s voice now that his brain is only just registering. The previous hollowness in his eyes gets filled, until they’re just drowning. His face is pink, his hands too shaky to attempt to hold the blanket up to his chin anymore to put something between himself and Jungkook. To get some reprieve.

“Okay,” Jungkook whispers in understanding.

Just about every bone in his body is bent into a caring curve. One of his hands has found itself a purchase resting on a part of the blanket covering Jimin’s forearm—the part of him closest to Jungkook’s body.

He realizes in an abrupt horror that isn’t the worst part. The most alarming part is his other hand, which was gripping the collar, is now touching—no, entirely covering—Jimin’s warm neck. Over the collar, but also over his oesophagus. Jimin’s pulse vibrates up from the skin beneath his fingers.

The jarring position and touch places such a weird dynamic between them that he feels too out of his mind to even start processing what’s been happening.

“Why are you hung up on someone like that, hm?” He exhales in a breathy sigh, speaking as though Jimin is the most sorry little creature in the world. A small garden snail he wants to pick up and place in a little jar to nurse back to health.

He can hear himself talking, but he’s not the one making those words come
out. It sounds awfully like he’s telling Jimin off. How is the kitten able to lay there and just take it? Stay listening to him rambling demeaning and infantilizing things to him?

Jimin’s eyes remain wide open. Strangely, his neck appears like it’s almost pressing into Jungkook’s touch—or wanting to. But Jungkook could easily be imagining that part. All he knows is that none of this deters him. Or the him that’s driving all of this, whatever that him is.

He’s closer again. Closer to Jimin’s face. Every time he blinks.

“You know he would never bond with you. Humans see hybrids as expendable. Little playthings for companionship. Or if they’re the reprehensible sort—for pleasure. But no matter how cute he finds you; how much he dotes on you, holds you, or touches your sensitive, little parts.” One of his hands is fingering Jimin’s soft left ear, stroking it between his index and thumb. The kitten shivers. “It’s a lie.”

He tries to swallow whatever it is his mouth keeps trying to expel, because Jimin is shrinking so bad under him he almost looks more limp now than when Jungkook first brought him back. Except the warmth under his splayed fingers seems to drag his mind to somewhere entirely different, and he thinks he‘s breathing over Jimin now. Breathing onto him. Into him. Into his face.

And Jimin’s face is flushed the prettiest pink.

“Does he even fuck you?” Jungkook fans warmly over Jimin’s mouth, the itchy feeling down his chin alerting him to the fact that drool is dripping down from his teeth.

He watches his spit fleck Jimin’s nose and cheeks, only barely missing it’s mark where Jungkook disturbingly wants it to go.

Somewhere along the way he’s moved so that he’s fully on top of the smaller hybrid, his forearms now resting on either side of his head, caging him in. Which must also be how he ended up with his face directly over him.

“Don’t you want someone who can actually make the pain go away?”

His voice is so horribly, horribly grating, while still remaining coated in something saccharine. Husky and deep with how much he suddenly wants, but lilting and melodic in how much it tries to beckon.

He feels like he’s singing to Jimin; calling him in. Desperate for him to answer the call. To sing with him.

To beg him to eat him whole.

“Don’t you think your tight, little body should take what it was made for?”

It doesn’t register to him even when he’s entirely, inebriatingly dizzy. When he only gets moments of consciousness back in between periods of almost blacking out. In those conscious moments, all he can register is Jimin’s unfocused, almost crossed eyes, and the pearly drip of his scorching, sweaty skin.

The kitten’s eyes close eventually as his head rolls to the side. His body lays slack.

Finally, Jungkook understands what’s happening. And whatever he did that made it happen broke the entire dam.

There’s an eruption. The world tilts on its axis a little bit, and Jungkook wonders if he’s the only one who can feel it.

All of a sudden, Jimin smells like everything. He smells warm, if that’s even possible. Sweet, in a way Jungkook has never come across before. But it’s cloying—entirely covering the inside of Jungkook’s nostrils and worming up the roof of his mouth, before it burns an unrelenting trail down his throat, intent on choking. And when he pulls a full breath of it—an entire inhale, against his better judgement—his lungs behave like he’s never inhaled air in his entire life.

It’s so overwhelming he pulls back and gasps for air. His body folds in half and his head, closely followed by his shoulders, hangs down over the floor, finally torn away from the body that’s a living furnace, beckoning him back.

“No, no, no,” he faintly thinks he hears a familiar voice sobbing. It’s quite hysterical, but his brain is drugged up, barely allowing him to think about anything that isn’t the smell, the smell, the smell—

He drags his face along the concrete ground, cutting his nostrils off from air for a second long enough to be able to regain some conscious thought. Because now he’s picked up on the distinct smell in the midst of the rest of it: even more distress.

He covers his nose and mouth with his sleeve, all but shoving his face into the crook of his arm. His mouth is still watering entirely on instinct, which in hindsight should have been the biggest clue. He drools down past his shirt sleeve, all over his own pants and the floor.

He has his answer. That one he was looking for, for whatever reason he was. Fuck, if he has it.

The kitten’s been on suppressants for so long he’s almost entirely rid himself of it. In order to not have to live by the needs that come with it, perhaps, or deal with the weakness and risks that inevitably follow.

The cover-up was so powerful and the resulting consequence of extinguishing it so potent Jimin must have been on them at least since his Master first bought him. When he was only a little kitten, which is when most humans decide they want one. And Masters don’t want little kittens who make a mess. Masters can also get jealous and possessive—most especially one who from what he can tell seems to have rattled his kitten into a some sick blend of servitude-like romance. And why would a human choose to feel inadequate around his play-thing when he could just dull Jimin down to a shell of his true self, all the while convincing him that the scraps of attention he’s being fed is the highest height of experience.

Jungkook exerts so much will power to flatten himself down on the cold concrete floor and keep himself there that he all but exhausts every fibre in his body. Still, it does nothing to dull the onslaught of the smell and the carnal itch that surrounds him, all but congealing every pore in his body.

He blinks through his frenzy and another wave of bodily trembles to glance over and check on Jimin. When he does, he realizes he shouldn’t have looked.

He shouldn’t have looked because his kitten’s mouth is open in a silent scream—or moan—or whatever the overwhelming feeling is. And he’s writhing, his small hands up and clutching at the collar like it’s a lifeline. He grips it tight like it will save him. His shirt is gone. Perhaps pulled off in a scorched desperation. His face is flushed a heady red, skin shining in a messy blend of tears and spit that string down to what was previously the innocent safety of his blanket.

Jungkook knows he has to get himself as far away from the hybrid as possible. The fact that he was able to pull away at all is a miracle. The only problem is he isn’t sure he has the energy or willpower to keep himself down for much longer.

“Fuck,” he tests out, almost shocked that he can still speak. “Get out,” he croaks in a rapid plea, fully aware Jimin is likely in a worse state than him, and trying to solve the situation like this is all but a wishful dream. “Get out. I can’t—“

He doesn’t want to finish that thought. An anxiousness squeezes his throat into silence, and he just turns his head back over to his kitten, trying to get him to understand the urgency. The danger that’s imminent.

Luckily, he finds a relieving surprise. If there’s one thing that will override most other things, it’s a command from an Alpha.

Jimin quietens almost as if strung up by a string. His limbs scramble where he lays to get him right-side up, and he trembles through every movement, but he does so well to execute them nonetheless.

Jungkook knocks his head into the ground like a bull, trying to drive away the animalistic instinct that surfaces within him to chase.

Not only is Jimin an omega—but as far as Jungkook and any other dog hybrid is concerned—he’s also prey.

He thinks his forehead is bleeding by the time he hears the unmistakable sound of unsteady feet hurrying away. The steps pitter patter, barefoot and light. And as much as he desperately wants to know where they go—feels a newfound need to know exactly where they disappear off to—he knows he has to do everything in his power to avoid doing just that.

Because it would defeat all the effort they’ve put in. It would risk something arguably worse than accidentally killing the kitten he’s grown so fond of happening. Something horribly unforgivable.

Jungkook pants and feels like it gets slightly easier to breathe every couple minutes. It’s impossible to tell the passage of time like this, but with Jimin gone, eventually the air returns to normal—to something clear. His breathing balances, and his mind clears. The sweat up his back and neck slowly cools and dries, along with the blood crusting his face.

It feels so weird being outside of it after being in it. Feels a little empty, almost. He’s not sure if it’s because it’s the first heat he’s ever been in radius of, or if it’s Jimin’s unfortunate and explosive variation of one that has mutated up from him staving it off for an extended period of time before subsequently not having further access to suppressants during his recovery in Jungkook’s territory.

Jungkook isn’t entirely uneducated. He’s aware heats come in waves, and that they don’t remain so forceful during all hours of the day. Still, he’s so worried about crossing Jimin in that state again that he slinks off to eat dinner with his pack hours later, after having made sure to scrub every inch of himself and changed his clothes.

He can’t exactly snap out of his stupor, but thankfully, if he does seem off, nobody comments. His brother and uncle glance at him a few times, but otherwise busy themselves in their own conversation a little further down the table.

They’ve always considered him somewhat unstable.

*

He goes looking for Jimin after nightfall.

He doesn’t mean to wait so long, considering he’s already feeling horribly anxious being separated from him when he knows the state the kitten is in and he’s also aware Jimin could catch the attention of any larger predator out there—even someone from Jungkook’s own group. The only thing assuaging his fears is that he knows the area he’s been keeping Jimin in is separated enough from places any other hybrid would need to go, so it would be utterly bizarre for them to wander in close proximity by accident.

There’s a (much fainter now) smell of the kitten in the air, which is what leads Jungkook to his hiding place. When he finds him, it’s clear he’s tried to keep himself so small and inconspicuous he can be hidden from the entire world forever. The kitten is stuck all the way at the back of a tight squeeze under a shallow crawl space quite a distance away from Jungkook’s storage building. It’s a little closer to the city centre, and he keeps a vigilant eye out as he gets down on all fours, inspecting to see if the kitten is okay and looking for recognition and any trust in his eyes.

Jimin is pressed entirely flat to the ground, like he’s wanting to disappear into it. His ears are down, and every part of his body is shaking, the perfect picture of a little leaf blowing in the wind. He’s a far cry now from the him Jungkook is familiar with. Maybe Jungkook can see more than a few reasons why Jimin would want to be on suppressants now, whether or not they were first provided to him by someone else. Jimin’s true nature is one entirely void of control. A sort of prison of his mind and body, making him subservient to nature rather than being subservient to man. Jungkook has never thought of this as a weakness or something to be suppressed, but unfortunately, he knows Jimin would.

He reaches an open-palmed hand out, slowly. His arm is steady and encouraging as he offers a smile alongside it, which he hopes is disarming.

“Come here,” he offers, making sure to watch his tone so that it doesn’t come across firmer than intended. He doesn’t need to stress the hybrid out more than he already has today. “It’s okay now. I’ll take you back home.”

The ‘back home’ bit just kind of slipped out. He supposes that technically isn’t the case, but it’s not like Jimin is worried about semantics right now.

Jimin doesn’t move. He just stares at Jungkook’s hand, untrusting. His stomach sinks for what feels like the hundredth time that day, unable to blame the kitten for his apprehension after the way Jungkook behaved just a few hours earlier.

“I promise, okay?” He hums, tipping his head to the side in an attempt to showcase his sincerity. “I promise it’s okay to come out now. I’ll protect you.”

To his relief the kitten seems to have already been desperate to believe him, and reaches a tiny hand out, stretching himself toward him. His arm isn’t long enough, however, and so Jungkook has to lean further in, until he’s able to grab Jimin by closing his entire hand around his wrist.

He promptly pulls, all the while wondering how Jimin managed to squeeze himself into a space so narrow. He supposes desperation will make quite a lot possible, and frowns as he gathers the trembling kitten into his waiting arms, thinking about how scared he must have been as he was running, all the while not knowing whether Jungkook or some other predator was hot on his heels.

Jimin’s limbs are still sticky with cold sweat. His skin is cold, and his bangs are plastered to his forehead.

The lull of Jungkook walking them back is the only thing that seems to ease the remaining trembling. They sway with every step he takes, Jimin finally allowing himself to rest his head fully down on the larger hybrid’s shoulder.

Jungkook feels his heart stutter in his chest just as he sees their storage unit in the distance. He’s promptly distracted by the feeling of a nose bumping shyly against his neck. It’s very careful—almost as if trying to appear accidental. Until the nose in question remains in place for a little longer and takes a deep breath in.

The tension in the kitten’s thighs instantly releases as they cease to clamp anxiously around Jungkook’s waist. His head gets a little heavier too, resting more weighted where the rest of his body joins it in a boneless slump that feels like one big sigh.

One of Jungkook’s hands, which until now busied itself supporting the weight of Jimin’s left leg, raises up slowly to cradle the back of Jimin’s head. It’s a familiar space it has occupied before. He rubs a few mindless circles into the kitten’s hair. Without the haze, he now feels very aware of what he’s doing. Something about it still feels right.

Right enough for him to realize that at no point along the way has he found himself hesitating.

*

He leaves Jimin with some water and food to last him through the night, predicting the waves of intense heat will return, and not trusting his body enough to be around for that. Luckily he knows the first day is the worst, and it should wean considerably from there.

He also spent some effort timing the waves of it. This means that when he next comes in, he’s relieved to see Jimin is sitting up against the wall, eating normally. A far cry from the agony he was going through just yesterday. Perhaps even just an hour earlier.

Still, Jungkook isn’t suddenly immune or some kind of saint—he can definitely still smell him. And he smells delectable, annoyingly. But Jungkook tries to solve that by sitting a decent distance away from the kitten, and also having given him a cloth, some water, and soap to routinely wash himself with. It’s not a perfect plan, but it helps.

Going back to the saint part—Jungkook would be lying if he tried to claim at least part of him didn’t want to just give in and have at it. Have him. He would be utterly delusional if he tried to claim now that he doesn’t want him. Not just carnal carnal either—in fact, that feels like the lesser of the very many pressing urges. He wants to hold and to reassure and to share belonging.

He wants him in every way someone could want someone else. So bad. And maybe part of him always has.

Jimin wants him, too. Or at least, his body does. But the larger part of him—which has grown exponentially over the past few weeks—is worried this whole situation will cross a myriad of unsaid boundaries and change things. Not only is he now worried about hurting his kitten, he knows Jimin isn’t fully in his right mind. Even without the heat—he’s suffered so much stress.

That part of him also looks back on the nose against his neck happily breathing him in with a distinct amount of sadness.

Reality is that Jimin likely would rather it not be him. Would likely rather it was anyone but a sworn enemy that happened to be the only Alpha around during his first heat in years. He’s also reminded that Jimin chose to rid himself of heats at whatever point.

Which leads to the bigger thing he definitely overlooks too much, which he has to fight himself to keep front of mind sometimes, because it’s a vital part of everything happening.

Jimin has a mate. A Master. Somewhere.

“Don’t look at me like I have some terminal illness.”

The kitten is chewing his food as he speaks, his normal self slinking back in the moments he’s not incapacitated. Jimin mostly just concentrates on looking down into his can of food.

The whole situation is awkward, Jungkook knows. And a part of him was worried that Jimin would never want to be near him again. Luckily, it appears Jimin doesn’t put blame on him for anything, and surprisingly doesn’t seem all that afraid or wary of him, either.

But Jungkook still wishes he could make him feel more comfortable. Physically, Jimin needs to be held. Heats are only worsened the less contact Jimin gets, and he must be in horrendous amounts of pain. And Jungkook is all too aware that without being in the throes of hysteria, Jimin is likely to react explosively to him offering something that could replicate the level of closeness he needs. Even as little as a gentle touch.

“And especially don’t fucking look at me like you feel sorry for me. Why are you even still here? I’m not going to drop dead.”

Jungkook blinks, realizing he hasn’t actually stopped staring at Jimin since he got in that morning. And the call-out is awkward because all he wants to do is be around Jimin. Which is probably weird considering it’s supposed to be the opposite, and the opposite is likely what Jimin expects. But truthfully it’s entirely reluctant and dependent upon much self control that Jungkook manages to force himself away from this place when the kitten is about to have another intense flare-up of heat.

“Would he be able to help you?” Jungkook blurts, electing to ignore the jabbing comments Jimin is trying to engage him with, and also aware that he sounds strained. “Your Master.”

Jimin stops chewing, but only for a split second. He then continues, scooping another handful of tuna up to his lips and pushing it into his mouth.

“Well, no. He’s not here, so...”

He trails off. Jungkook tries to search his face for some hint of explanation, but finds it void of much of anything.

“Where is he, then?” He presses.

He’s not entirely sure why he does. It’s not like he’s readily prepared to go searching for this bitch of a human and serve him up to inadequately try to help an omega in need. Much less the very specific kitten he likes. But maybe it’s a masochistic reminder to himself that this lover in question should be top of mind. That he needs to put Jimin’s needs above his own. Even when this all feels so personal to them. To him.

He does wonder though—what does Jimin even see in this guy if Jungkook hasn’t known about him or seen a whiff of him all these years? What sort of fucking pussy is gorging away in a human sanctuary or wherever the hell he is while his precious kitten gets beaten bloody trying to fight for scraps? It doesn’t check out, and it just makes him unspeakably angry.

All he knows is he doesn’t like this man. Doesn’t like him one bit.

“Why do you care?” Jimin pushes back. He’s always bristled the more Jungkook pushes him, which Jungkook really needs to stop doing. It’s just that Jimin isn’t divulging what he feels is very important information to him. He’s caring for him, and he needs to know if there’s a better way he should be cared for. “He’s not actually my mate, so we’ve established that. Great. And he’s not here.”

“I know I’ve made it more than clear how I feel about humans,” Jungkook starts, trying his level best to offer up something that isn’t just frustration, but falling a little short. “And I’m sorry a lot of it has been harsh and uncalled for. It just comes from experience, is all. And I don’t like how this guy has all but abandoned you. An omega should be cherished and cared for, not least by someone who can actually tend to their needs and be around.” He thinks he sees Jimin’s cheeks redden ever so slightly as he speaks. He knows what he’s saying is very traditional, but he doesn’t care. Those are still his feelings, and he stands by them. Or maybe it’s just Jimin being reminded of his status, as Jungkook supposes it’s not something Jimin has had to reckon with much for the past however many years. Reckon with his status through Jungkook, of all things. “Someone should protect an omega, at the very fucking least. Just generally, or whatever. Anyways…if it would bring you comfort or help you, I still think your Master should be with you during this time. I can take you back to him.”

“All but abandoned me,” Jimin chuckles humourlessly, his voice coming across eerily flat. “Guess you could say that. Listen—I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, really. But he can’t be here, okay? And I can’t go see him. So can we please just leave it at that?”

Leave it at that? Does Jimin just not want to admit to human shortcomings?

“Because he doesn’t care to deal with your heat?” Jungkook snaps.

His temples throb as he thinks about this stupid cuck of a human who is unable to accept Jimin fully, all because it reminds him too much of something he lacks. God—it really shouldn’t make him this angry—but he feels overcome with it. And maybe he’s also in a little deep. Maybe this all just hurts. A lot. But not being able to handle a hybrid because they get heats is that human’s shortfall and problem, not Jimin’s. And some coward has no place being that picky. No place being near Jimin at all.

“Because he’s at the bottom of the fucking city river.”

Whenever Jimin says something he feels ferociously about, which he’s also forced to confront Jungkook with, Jungkook has come to expect the particular brand of wild eyes. Only this time—perhaps because of his heat—Jimin doesn’t appear to be able to snarl and send him the sharp gaze as confrontational as before. It feels more resigned. It feels exhausted.

As for Jungkook—his body runs cold. His breath and voice catch in his throat, and it’s almost like he’s been kicked in the chest again. He wouldn’t be able to speak even if he tried.

“Congrats,” Jimin continues, laughing when he takes in Jungkook’s flummoxed expression. “Y-You’ve figured me all out, I guess.” The bitterness in his voice edges into a wavering grief, his words broken up by how wet he sounds due to his own tears slipping into his mouth and down his throat. Blubbered further yet by his rapidly stuffing nose. “Happy now?”

The pieces slot together so quickly and obviously now that Jungkook finds himself stupefied.

“But the clock,” he says automatically, hating that his mouth is so malfunctioning that all he can do is spill out whatever falls into him. Jimin wouldn’t be crazy enough to believe his Master is still alive when he’s admittedly dead—so how does the clock fit in? “You said he needed it.”

“It glows in the dark, genius. Tritium—on the hands. It glows forever.”

Jimin says it like that should explain everything. Jungkook opens and closes his mouth a few times. He thinks he’s gaping.

“He’s dead, Jimin,” he reminds him that Jimin just shared, now definitely understanding things even less. “You said that just now. He doesn’t need a clock. So how does—“

“It’s dark down there. Where he is.”

Jimin’s food lies abandoned at his feet. Jungkook stares at it so that he doesn’t have to look Jimin in the eyes, but he’s learned he’s unable to ignore his little omega’s emotions by now, because his eyes are right back up moments later.

There’s a silent accompaniment of tears flooding Jimin’s face. He’s never liked to have anyone see him crying, but he now appears too exhausted to even turn himself away. The tears drip out of wide eyes, softening them from their hardness prior, before trailing down his pink cheeks, his chin, and his throat. Into his mouth. Lots of them.

The kitten’s voice has been stretching out and thinning since the beginning of their conversation, and only the faintest traces of hardness or venom are tangible now. Jimin clearly doesn’t want to keep talking. And yet—he does.

“It’s fucking dark down at the bottom of a river. He doesn’t like the dark.”

Jungkook doesn’t think he can handle hearing him say any more. Doesn’t want the conversation to keep going. He almost wishes he never started prying. If he didn’t, maybe they wouldn’t have ended up here. Maybe he wouldn’t feel his insides shredding themselves one by one because he’s managed to make his already distressed, little omega cry.

Kitten. He meant his kitten. Jimin is just an omega. One singular one, who exists near him. Only mated pairs can speak in terms of belonging.

To steer away from his blunder, Jungkook rather unhelpfully remembers all the nasty things he’s ever said about Jimin having a mate. Or well, about his ‘Master’, specifically. Not only now and yesterday, but plenty before that. How it even led to absolutely explosive anger and accusations from Jimin on the roof, as well as on several occasions prior.

Maybe Jimin getting aggressive about any remarks he has on his love life isn’t at all unwarranted, considering the circumstances. This is all also so far from being his business that he’s bordering on acting like a stalker.

He just can’t help feeling utterly crushed; overwhelmed with sympathy and remorse to the point that he’s not sure he could ever put it into words. There’s a pain building that’s bordering on being so excruciating he almost questions whether somehow, somewhere along the way, Jimin gave him a mating bite by accident. He just…it’s almost like he can feel the kitten’s grief, sinise himself. His heavy, weary loneliness.

Jimin looks beyond miserable when Jungkook glances back up. His face is sunken and pale, his eyes lifeless in their sockets. Jungkook has to actively fight down the worsening urge to envelop the smaller being into his arms. To lick his cheeks free of tears and just lay close to him and breathe him in for a little while—blow warm air over his face and hair until the worrying wrinkle on his forehead disappears and he falls into a peaceful sleep.

“And, you know, yes—” Jungkook jolts when he realizes Jimin is speaking again. It’s unexpected, and snaps him to attention. “Maybe I beg patrol officers to collar me like a little pet because it’s the only way I can feel close to my dead Master. Poor pathetic, deranged, little kitten, right? You’re free to have your laugh. Just know—“ He sharpens his humourless, mocking tone, then. Finds Jungkook’s eyes and holds them, speaks directly to him. Sincere. “That Master—regardless of what you have to say—happens to be the only person who has ever loved me.”

Jungkook forces himself to hold Jimin’s gaze. To take every single one of his words into himself. He knows he’s had a large part in a lot of the hurt that can be heard in them. Knows he, of all people, deserves to be told this. To be put in his place.

But Jimin is wrong. He’s wrong about at least one thing, and needs to be corrected.

“That’s not true,” Jungkook blurts.

There’s this sense now that he might implode if Jimin has to exist another second thinking some piece of shit human who is now dead is the only person to ever have any care for him. Though as soon as his words come out, he also realizes what he’s set himself up for.

“Come again?” Jimin pushes. His voice remains relatively apathetic. He’s not in a joking mood—not even in a talking mood. But Jungkook, of course, is deadly serious.

“There are people who love you. People who are alive. You’re loved.”

He really doesn’t know how to steer away from this one. He suddenly realizes he can’t remember Jimin having any friends or family that he can use as examples. He supposes Jimin does raids and missions rather solo, unlike Jungkook—who very evidently (at least towards the start) tag-teams with his brother.

Has he ever even seen Jimin interact with anyone other than himself?

“I’m all ears,” Jimin challenges, as if he can read his mind. Knows exactly what he’s thinking, and what trap he’s walked into.

The kitten is scowling at him from where he sits. Everything about this suggests he knows Jungkook will come up empty, and should have rather just left him be.

Jungkook just doesn’t think there’s any alternate timeline of this conversation in which he would have been able to bare not interjecting with the same exact intention.

“E-Everyone is loved. By the people we touch, every day.” It’s vague and weak, he knows that. Of course, he has the one obvious example he could use. But he’s not sure he’s ready to go there. If Jimin would ever even want him to go there. So instead—he scrambles. “You have comrades who admire you, for example.”

Jungkook watches Jimin curl his lip in a way that feels like an entirely disproportionate amount of distaste to display in response to what he said.

What was wrong with what he said? Jungkook thought it was a pretty safe bet. Safer than confessing he’s in love with him anyways, and that he wonders if he’s ever loved anyone else around him ever since his mother died. That Jungkook feels just as unloved and wanting to provide love, if that’s comparable.

“You mean the same comrades you burned to death?”

Fuck.

Oh no.

No, no, no.

Not only has Jungkook all but forgotten about that (partly to cope—forced entirely out of his head), but—how did Jimin even find out? Has he been carrying the burden of knowing this whole time?

“Their bodies are still rotting at the factory,” Jimin says. Oddly enough, he doesn’t emote nearly half as much as he did earlier. He’s returned to a rather blank affect. “All of them entirely unrecognisable. Before you ask—I went to check for them when I had to hide from you.” He pauses, releasing a short burst of air that sounds somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “And you wonder why I prefer humans.”

Jungkook knows the issue at hand is Jimin’s dead comrades, and his involvement in this, even if he didn’t have any. He knows this.

But—there are alarm bells. All he can hear is alarm bells.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Jungkook hisses, all but cutting Jimin off.

The grief he feels is consumed entirely by the sheer anxiety filling him up at his new visions—the new pictures and scenarios in his head. Jimin stumbling across town while sweating. Leaking. Entirely defenceless and beckoning anyone in. A rarity—a scarce resource—freely walking in a world driven almost entirely by deprivation.

He’s angry. He’s so angry. Jimin should have at least told him.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for you to be wandering near civilization in the middle of a full-blown heat?” He seethes. Jungkook has already moved closer to Jimin, his chest vibrating with the sheer immiscibility of worry and anger—both refusing to dissipate or coalesce to let him behave more normally. “What if something happened? Didn’t I tell you to run and hide? How are you unable to comprehend that your main priority should always be to keep yourself safe?” His voice is scratchy with how forcefully he speaks. Jimin just remains sitting still on the floor below where Jungkook stands, eyes level to Jungkook’s knees. “I can’t fucking protect you if I don’t know where you are. Do you hear me?”

Jimin doesn’t budge. It would be in his nature not to, considering Jungkook’s commanding tone. No Alpha voice, but the authority is still there.

He knows he’s way out of line. Knows it’s not his business or his place. Jimin has just discovered his kin dead. And he isn’t Jimin’s mate or Alpha. Isn’t even remotely Jimin’s keeper.

“Suppose you would love that,” Jungkook hears. It’s a musing, little tone from below him. He’s all but forced the power out of Jimin’s voice, so the words are delivered as harshly as they can without having any actual bite. Like Jimin is floating in space, and trying to string words together from there. “To find me broken and humiliated on a street somewhere. Maybe then you can finally learn how to aim your stupid pistol. As a mercy to me.“ Jungkook’s jaw is clenched so tight his molars ache. He has to actively prevent himself from thinking. From imagining anything to life. Grabbing Jimin and shaking him. The kitten adds his final bit as something which might have actually been intended as private thought, but it slips out with the rest. “I think you’re forgetting you’re talking to someone who has nothing left to lose.”

“You have everything to lose,” Jungkook counters, immeasurably pained by the slowly dawning realization of how Jimin considers himself; considers his life and his value. What anything even means. “Because you are everything. You’re an entire universe in a bite-size body. And you won’t lose anything else. Not on my watch.”

He says it with enough finality that Jimin doesn’t move to engage further. He’s satisfied with that, and walks right back to where he previously sat in order to resume his post.

They sit in silence just like that, for a little bit. Stepping away from Jimin’s proximity helps calm him down. Helps him organize his thoughts a little more.

He hopes Jimin’s silence is in some part a processing of Jungkook’s very overt demonstration of care and worry for him. At the very least, he likes to think being an Alpha doesn’t grant him the power to silence someone for half an hour. Because if there’s ever anything he doesn’t intend, it’s to exert force over Jimin against his will. Or rather, maybe specifically in a way that makes him feel lesser than, or unheard. But if any part of the omega desires force and control even a little bit, even just during his heats, Jungkook is almost designed to provide that.

He won’t make any assumptions, but the collar comes to mind.

“I didn’t mean to speak to you like that,” he says quietly, staring at the wall across from them. The calm in his body now makes his outburst feel rather juvenile. “This is new to me, too. Being around an omega—especially one in heat.” He pauses, just to see if Jimin has something he'd like to say. He doesn’t hear anything, and doesn’t want to disturb him by turning towards him and staring, so he keeps his face straight forward and continues on. “I just want to make sure I say that I really am sorry. About your Master. Your kin. About…about hurting you. About my behaviour and the things I’ve said. The clock. The clock, especially…” he trails off, allowing the memories from the roof to come back to him. Somehow, they’ve been what has hurt the most this whole time. The sense of betrayal Jimin projected in his push off the roof and when Jungkook let the clock drop despite the kitten even foregoing his pride just to beg—Jungkook wonders if Jimin’s been hurting as much about it as he has. “I don’t even have an excuse, I just—” he swallows hard. Every path he takes seems to try and lead him to the same conclusion. The same confession. “I-I haven’t been myself lately. Especially around you. It’s like there’s something wrong with me. It’s fucking weird and scary, but also…” he risks only the quickest glance over in Jimin’s direction, as if forgetting himself and instinctively searching for a way to convey his sincerity. He snaps his head back right after, gripping his knees with his hands. “Is it weird if I say whatever it is has made me realize I’m alive a little more than I felt I was last year?”

Jungkook always finds himself stuck listening to his own heavy breathing. It’s somewhat of a recurring situation for him, but applies very heavily now. Because he’s not sure where that word vomit came from, but if Jimin hasn’t noticed anything off about him at this point—through their recent excessive time together and his odd behaviour—he’ll be shocked. Really, he just feels like he’s going crazy. Jimin is slow to chip away at, and he’s suddenly so desperate to get in. To beg Jimin to chip at him back in turn.

Jimin just sits still on the floor. Jungkook doesn’t think it’s with any intention to ignore him, because he doesn’t proceed to do anything else, either. He just doesn’t reply. Not that he expects him to. He’s fine just getting it halfway off his chest. He’s well aware he’s not entitled to have Jimin hear him out or understand him—god forbid feel the same—but he’s content with Jimin’s lack of reaction, because it indicates that he actually listened.

Jungkook lifts himself up to sit perched in a squat of sorts, raised slightly from the ground by his legs. He can’t seem to sit relaxed around Jimin either. Another fun, innate thing he’s having to deal with is this drive to suddenly always be ready to get up. To spring to his feet and move. It’s part of the whole protection thing, he’s sure. It probably does look rather stupid, though.

Regardless, as long as Jimin doesn’t order him away or chase him out, Jungkook is more than happy to half-stand half-sit near him while looking stupid. He thinks that probably, right now, the only need he has in the world is to be allowed to be around.

The smile he sits there with for a second slips a little bit, slowly. If he dares to acknowledge it, to think about it, there’s a thought at the back of his mind that he’s sort of been trying his best to keep at bay. To barely glance at, and mostly pretend doesn’t exist. In large part because it would just be too painful to think about. Especially under the influence of a heat.

But now that he’s acknowledged it, it takes its permission to step in.

What happens when Jimin is fully nursed back to health? What then—when the kitten’s joint issues and pains are gone, and he also no longer has a heat to render him vulnerable to the outside world?

Obviously, Jimin is very capable. A part of Jungkook sort of knows that Jimin would have been just fine if he left him after the second week of caring for him. First week, even. The kitten at that point already visibly demonstrated full use of his limbs, with his biggest struggle being eating.

Jungkook feels like he’s kept Jimin here past what’s been necessary. Selfishly. Even with the added complication of a heat—if anyone would survive through anything in this ragged hell of a world, it’s Jimin.

And letting Jimin go is how things are meant to be. He’s missed chasing him maybe a little bit, and the two of them are natural born enemies, making sense of the world by engaging in their little antagonistic routine.

But as he tries to tell himself that, the weird emptiness always grows.

Maybe it’s the fact that Jimin has all but made a little nest of what is technically a pile of Jungkook’s mouldy blankets on the floor. Maybe Jungkook has already gotten addicted to Jimin’s very abnormal pheromones due to over-exposure. Maybe he imagines Jimin wandering back to lay himself to sleep amongst the burned bodies of his kin, unable to find warmth even pressed near their charred flesh. Maybe there’s also an irrational fear somewhere amongst it all of Jimin remedying his inability to sleep near his comrades by deciding to take a nap at the bottom of a certain city river. One from which he never returns.

A warm hand comes in contact with his arm, and Jungkook jolts. He whips his head to the side, only to be met with deep, brown eyes.

Jimin is sitting a lot closer to him than he remembered. So close, in fact, that he can reach him from where he sits, his arm outstretched as his hand rests light and warm on top of Jungkook’s tattooed forearm.

Thankfully, it doesn’t get much more overwhelming than that. Because even if the hand remains, Jimin has already moved to rest his head back against the wall, his face now looking straight ahead, as if he’s decided to join Jungkook in doing so.

It’s only when he notices his body is trembling and his face is sheened with sweat that he comes to understand he’s been sitting there having a panic attack. His face feels cold, with at least two tears having dried down his left cheek, because that’s the part of his face that’s currently itchy. He thinks he’s feeling so dizzy because, up until Jimin touched him, he must have been breathing too quickly to actually intake air.

“Cats are allergic to milk.”

He blinks very slowly, glancing over to Jimin again. He still feels disoriented, and isn’t exactly sure he’s heard what he’s said. He just knows that he likes the sound of his voice, and he feels a lot better now than he did only a few minutes ago.

“Wh-What?”

He must sound as unwell aloud as he does in his head, because Jimin turns to face him again. The warm hand is still there, unmoved. Still so hot. He’s not sure if it’s magic or some weird pheromone thing, but the skin under Jimin’s hand is tingling. Like each hair follicle and cell are happy to see him, wanting to be near him.

“I know, It’s a little funny,” Jimin chuckles. As if Jungkook has been coherently communicating something, and they’re just having a normal conversation. “But yeah, most cats can’t actually tolerate milk. Which makes all the cultural stereotypes and staples rather bizarre. Not really sure who started that.”

Jungkook is breathing normally again. However normally you can breathe next to someone who is in heat.

“You drank the milk I brought you.”

“It was good milk,” Jimin just says, then he shrugs. Jungkook’s unsure if he imagines it, but the kitten’s cheeks feel like they tint ever so slightly pink. A rising up from his ears and down his neck, spreading all the way across his face by climbing the bridge of his nose. There seems to be something else Jimin wants to say. He just seems unsure whether or not he should say it. “And also, I know you went out of your way to get it for me. The milk. So...” Jimin drifts off, peering down at the tattoos on Jungkook’s arm, like he’s suddenly occupied tracing them with his eyes. There’s a little noise, and Jungkook looks down to see Jimin poking a little pebble around on the ground with his foot. “A-Anyways,” Jimin says when Jungkook keeps staring at his foot. He tucks his legs under himself, meaning Jungkook loses sight of it. “you should probably leave before…well, you know...“

He does know. Every part of him knows.

But he doesn’t want to leave.

Jungkook wants to grab Jimin’s head with his hands on either side of his face and hold his forehead up against his, so that all Jimin can pay attention to is him. So that he forgets he’s ever been sad. Forgets what ‘sad’ even feels like.

He doesn’t like Jimin a normal amount.

“Did you hear me?”

He did. He just doesn’t want to leave.

He’s stuck there with the debilitating consequences of not liking Jimin a normal amount.

He thinks about the things he wants to do often, mostly when he’s alone, because he’s so worried lingering on it too long will tempt him to take action. But sitting there, it’s all very loud. He wants to scent Jimin fully—inhale and exhale against his delicate neck. Make him whine in contentment. In genuine relief. Then, he wants to snap that offensive collar off his neck—wants to tear it to absolute shreds.

He’s not sure if these are just impulsive thoughts or his Alpha making action plans. Maybe he really needs to get out of there.

“Earth to overgrown hyena.”

But the thing is—he doesn’t want to leave.

He grips the fabric of his pants so hard he wonders if his claws eject and break his skin.

Fuck—when did this get so hard? Why is this almost killing him? All he can do is glare at that collar. The collar on that neck. Some dead human’s collar on his kitten’s fucking neck.

“Seriously—why are you being weird?” He hears Jimin complain. His voice is swimming a bit in Jungkook’s head again. The haze feels somewhat familiar. Oh no— “If the smell is getting that bad, you can just say so. I’ll wash myself or something. Just…you’re freaking me out.”

The mention of fear accompanied by the wavering of Jimin’s voice makes Jungkook snap out whatever is brewing almost immediately. He forces his eyes away from the collar, then moves his jaw and licks his lips to check he still has control of those. Finally, he retracts his claws out of his own thighs, hoping Jimin doesn’t notice.

“Um,” Jimin comments, staring at him like he’s the crazy one now. Maybe he is. It’s so weird to realize that maybe he always was. “Y-You’re bleeding…”

“Stay,” is all he hears himself say.

It comes out rather flat and cold, even though he doesn’t intend for it to. Unfortunately, he’s at the point where he doesn’t have many options to choose from considering the only thing that wants to come out of his mouth is some ungodly, detailed description of how he wants to breed the little omega. A full, detailed account. As if he’s had this planned out for years—was born to do it.

He gets up quickly. It has to be quickly, because if not, he doubts he would be able to at all. The warmth of Jimin’s hand is ripped off his arm, and he misses it instantly.

He wants to look back apologetically, or provide some reassurance—anything other than what he’s currently doing—but the fear that even a split second longer in this space will trap him there and doom Jimin’s fate makes it surprisingly easy to deny himself.

He doesn’t look back when he stalks off. Jimin knows it’s time for him to leave—he even said so himself. The kitten knows to stay put and wait for him to come back. He knows Jungkook will be back with food and water later, such as has been their routine for many alternating hours of the day now.

*

There are bright lights shining into his eyes. Or at least, brighter than he’s used to. He feels some unkempt grass tickling his ankles, the smell of food somewhere in the distance. The smell of swear and gunpowder.

Mostly, it’s the movement around him that truly orientates him. There are others around, and many of them. They’re big.

Jungkook licks his lips, blinking his vision back, which slowly bleeds into view, as if he just needed the saturation and clarity back.

He’s at base.

“What the fuck is that smell?”

Junghwan—he knows that voice. He wasn’t just before, but now Jungkook can see him right in front of him, staring at him like he’s just seen a ghost. Maybe like Jungkook is the ghost.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed or where exactly he’s been, but the words he replays that Junghwan just said cause an unease in him before he even understands what they’re referring to.

Jungkook has dragged Jimin’s heat scent all the way with him to base. He can smell himself, so he clearly hasn’t washed himself off. And now here he is, having taken it right into the lion’s den.

What the fuck is wrong with him?

“What smell?” He hears himself croak, relieved he still remembers how to talk.

Junghwan doesn’t look convinced by his feigned ignorance. In fact—he’s already closer to Jungkook than he was just a second ago, staring him down with his signature piercing, big-brother eyes.

Jungkook tries to avoid his gaze, but it’s hard. At this point, it’s also likely that it does the opposite to help.

“Should me and the boys go track it down?” He hears. It sends a cold shiver down his spine. His neck begins to sweat. “Because it smells pretty good.”

And then that’s the single thing he’s able to focus on. The thought of anyone—any Alpha dog or his brother—finding Jimin in his current state. The resurfaced panic ignited in him is so real that he barely remembers to reply.

Why did he show up here? Why didn’t he have the lucidity to wash himself off? He knew he should have done better to cast his brother off their trail ages ago. He’s just been so caught up in being around Jimin that he barely wants to show his face around the rest of their faction.

He can’t help but wonder which of them helped load the cats into the incinerator.

“I found…” he starts before his brother can come to any rash decision, although he trails off when he realizes what he’s about to say, unsure if he can actually bring himself to reveal it.

Giving Jimin away would be something he can’t take back. But he has this inkling that his brother somehow already knows, and he’s just waiting for him to say something. So then if he doesn’t…the consequences could be much worse.

“Found what?” Junghwan demands. He’s forceful, his eyes entirely black to accompany the air of threat in his voice. “What did you find, Jungkook?”

“Th-The cat…”

Anyone would know what he means by that. Coupled with the full effect of the smell, it isn’t hard to paint a vivid picture. Their omegas are all accounted for, and they’re nowhere near. But more importantly, don’t smell half as sweet or potent.

“The bitch,” Junghwan corrects, unwavering eyes now locked with Jungkook’s own. Jungkook is unable to break eye contact, afraid it would set his brother off. He’s sweating over his forehead now. His canines are itching. Is that normal? “Their prized fucking molly?”

Jungkook refuses to react, breaking their gaze only when his brother’s tone and sharp pupils stirs a paranoia so overwhelming and rumbling in his chest that it clashes with the erratic heartbeat already thundering there.

Junghwan isn’t stupid. Neither is Jungkook. The arousal emanating in waves off of Jungkook is only matched by the creeping smell of the undercurrent of Junghwan’s own. Coupled with Junghwan’s growing frustration with him and their general desperation due to lack of resources, it’s the perfect storm.

“What?” Junghwan laughs. Jungkook realizes his brother is staring down at the noticeable bludge still tenting his pants. That he can now also see the spots of blood drawn out through the fabric in piercing dots all over. “You don’t want to share the good news? Even with your own brother?”

‘Sharing’ here isn’t referring to the mere revelation of Jimin being discovered alone and in heat. Jungkook knows that. Junghwan has made his mind up—or maybe he did a while ago, without Jungkook noticing. Even without the off-putting factor of an admitted interest in cross-species breeding, Jungkook has always held the undercurrent of the worry around in the back of his mind. But he also feels like even deeper down, he’s always known:

He’s never been the only one who has wanted Jimin.

“You need to calm down,” Jungkook strains, gripping Junghwan’s shoulder as he tries to think of a plan to walk Jimin out of this entanglement with the least amount of damage possible. If Jungkook refuses to give him up, Junghwan will only hunt him down more ferociously, if only out of spite. To the ends of the earth. “You’re not thinking straight. Let’s wait for the first wave to blow over before I take you to where I’ve captured him.“ He pauses, squeezing Junghwan’s shoulder harder, trying to convince him this was his plan all along. That he’s sharing this information willingly—was coming to share it, specifically. “You want him to think he has the entire pack out of their minds? Every dog in existence dropping everything to salivate over some fucking furball?” He lets go of his brother's shoulders while staring at the ground as miserably as he can muster, his erection still in view. “I’m embarrassed enough as it is.”

Somehow, this seems to bring Junghwan down a notch. He stares at him some more. Jungkook knows Junghwan moves to check his raging hard-on again, which is now straining in his pants so painfully he wonders if he will start to lose blood circulation. If he’d known at any point that being in the presence of heats was this powerful, he’d start taking suppressants himself.

There’s a brief sense of relief when Junghwan finally laughs, yanking Jungkook by the front hem of his pants to parade his shame for others to see—because he realizes they never were standing there alone. He recognizes them all, and they appear to have just finished their dinner, likely otherwise only having planned to retire for the night.

“Can I get a moment of silence for my little brother, who’s just been pussy-whipped by his arch-nemesis,” Junghwan sings, clearly feeling clever about his play on words. Jungkook just lets him have at it, taking the laughs that follow in stride as he thinks about the fact that every second he keeps anyone and everyone away from the debilitated kitten means a second more added to the poor thing’s life-span. “Seems we’ve finally learned the reason he’s unable to do his fucking job and just kill that thing is because he‘s always busy trying not to cream himself.”

There are a few scoffs and snorts, only outmatched by a grouped roster of cackles. Jungkook isn’t sure what to do about the fact that he feels more than happy to be sacrificing his pride and reputation for the added time and distraction.

Maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised at how ready the others are to taunt and take part in humiliating him. He may be the strongest Alpha around, but Junghwan has this habit of emboldening the lesser sort.

“You like getting turned on by murderers, you little runt?” Someone sneers. It’s way too direct to come any random alpha, and so close to him he whips his eyes into focus, only to land on the face of his uncle, who is barking at him from his left. He looks livid. “Are we all a joke to you?”

Jungkook feels his head shake side to side, automatically, still trying to de-escalate the situation. Even if those words in particular are more than ironic coming out of that man. He has always had a sneaking suspicion his uncle has resented him for not worshipping him the way Junghwan does.

“Nobody fucks that thing, you hear me!” His uncle bellows, to a wider audience this time.

He’s turned to face the rest of them, his leathery, knotted forehead and tightly drawn lips making him appear excessively serious. Everyone’s quiet, their respect for the man as one of their eldest overriding any amusement they felt earlier at Jungkook’s humiliation, or any enticement they might be enjoying surfacing from Jimin’s lingering smell.

“Uncle—“ Junghwan jumps in. He’s clearly not on the same page, but he’s quickly silenced.

“I will not have anyone stick their knot inside that thing and treat it as an equal. It has no friends out here—no fucking lovers. Do I make myself clear?”

It’s addressed to the entire group, his uncle all but looks at individual people in turn as he says it. Nobody moves to protest the sentiment this time, not even Junghwan. Though a fair few do squirm in discomfort.

His uncle turns back to the two of them, then. His voice is as dry as it’s always been.

“It should suffer alone. Unwanted. Entirely despised. Until it dies.” His uncle pauses, making sure to eye them both in turn. “Like the pathetic creature it is. Allowing it pleasure or attention would be too kind, because that’s what it’s trying to lure out of you. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Even Junghwan hesitates for a second after that, though he still beats Jungkook in managing to conjure up a reply.

“Absolutely.”

Jungkook doesn’t know if he’s ever able to respond, but he banks on his uncle considering the both of them one and the same enough to accept Junghwan’s answer as covering for them both.

*

“Never knew uncle had such a kitty vendetta,” Junghwan snorts.

He’s lounging down on a large bag of clothing inside their sleeping quarters. Across from him, Jungkook is perched very stiffly on a chair.

Jungkook wasn’t aware either. It’s not out of character for their uncle to be so ruthless and firm, but even this feels excessive.

“He practically out-‘arch nemesis’-ed you with that speech,” Junghwan continues. “He’s either misplaced his own self-hatred over betraying his brother onto that furball somehow, or his cock and balls shrivelled up and fell off when he raped mother, and now he’s forgotten that the rest of us never got any tail. Taking bets?”

Jungkook remains hunched over in his seat, staring at the ground as he fights a losing battle against a newly throbbing headache and dizzyingly bad nausea. Jimin’s smell has diminished somewhat in the past twenty minutes. But without the haze, it’s only made way for him to really start to feel the harrowing fear of the reality of their current situation.

He’s deemed it best for him to be here, where he can mostly keep track of everyone. Regardless, it’s all too much of a gamble to return to where Jimin is for a while, which risks him leading anyone to his hiding spot.

Jungkook’s only hope is in his uncle commanding enough respect from the whole camp to mean they will all override their carnal instincts to fuck an omega in favour of a moralistic punishment of said omega instead.

“Look—I get it,” Junghwan laughs, kicking a bucket at Jungkook from across the room, just to get his attention. Jungkook humours him, looking up. “I can vaguely comprehend your desire to fuck that thing—really can. I mean, I’m as tired of trying to get off inside betas as you are. Pussy, ass—doesn’t fucking matter if I can’t knot inside it to save my life. It feels like forcing my soft dong inside a half-rotten head of cabbage—“

“Do you ever shut the fuck up,” Jungkook spits, pressing his hands against his temples as he tries to ignore the annoying rate at which his heart continues to hammer in his chest.

“Touchy. Okay,” Junghwan scoffs.

His brother appears to decide to get up instead. Jungkook watches him waltz over to the door with pointed steps. If he wasn’t all too aware Junghwan was a dog, he’d go so far as to say several of his mannerisms are hilariously cat-like.

“Where are you going?” He asks, head straightening up from its slouch.

Junghwan just smirks.

“You think I’m that much of a bootlicker I’d let my uncle talk me out of fucking a kitten in heat? What’s he gonna do—inspect for my cum inside that thing?”

Jungkook winces, hands clamming up as he realizes his brother is probably right. Their uncle must have gone to bed by now, and Junghwan has the leg up on any others in that his uncle has always been forgiving of him.

Before Jungkook has a chance to contribute to their conversation, the door has been opened. Suddenly, his brother isn’t there anymore.

Jungkook springs up, all but throwing himself outside, each leg tripping over the other, as well as over the raised entrance of the door. He looks around himself, searching the dark, open area between their dorm buildings for his brother.

Lights are on in the building to the right of him. Those aren’t sleeping quarters, and so Jungkook takes the gamble. He rushes over, shoving himself in the creaking back door as he looks for signs of where his brother has disappeared off to. He recognizes the corridor that leads to their food hall, because the remaining LED lights have been blinking on and off for a while, and there’s a faint scent of hot rubber and oil.

Someone stands a little further down the hall—who he can see because the lights blink on for long enough to illuminate him. Jungkook releases a breath when he recognizes it as Junghwan. But the relief creeps to a a pretty immediate half when he realizes he’s standing way too still, and he’s looking down. He’s looking at something with interest, which is just around the bend of the corner, out of Jungkook’s sight.

Except the smell is there—in between the stench of hot rubber and oil somewhere, just gently making itself known. The smell he hoped had diminished, milky and soft and full. But it isn’t just a lingering remnant, because it’s not there, where Jungkook is standing. As he walks closer to his brother, about to ask him what he’s doing, he realizes the scent follows him as he walks. Because it’s everywhere.

It’s fresh.

He hurries forward, only to freeze entirely in his tracks before he comes close enough. Because right there—right across from them at the other end of the hall has emerged what his brother was looking at.

Jimin.

The kitten is blinking in their direction. His hand comes up to shield his eyes, like Junghwan has just turned the overhead lamps on, and it was otherwise dark before. As if Jimin hasn’t seen light in a long time.

Fuck—everything he’s wearing is drenched, although Jungkook can’t exactly tell what fluid it is.

“Kitty cat,” Junghwan exclaims, almost softly. Uncharacteristically filled with concern. Jungkook’s stomach sinks. “Oh, sweetheart…”

The eerily melodic coo follows his brother casting his eyes up and down the little thing’s sweat-soaked skin, slick-soaked pants, and tear-stained face.

Jimin has clearly been going through it while alone. Jungkook thought the heat would only get easier with every passing day—not the other way around. Or does it only get easier with a mate there or an alpha that can give him a knot? Jungkook isn’t so sure.

“Has nobody wanted to help you?”

There are chills up his spine now that he realizes the full extent of the situation, his brother fully immersed in his sheep’s clothing already. There isn’t a world in which Jimin can outrun Junghwan in this state. There also isn’t a world in which he can reach Jimin first.

Something sharp bothers his tongue and lips, and he realizes his hands are balled into tight fists. After all his firm warning to Jimin regarding wandering around when in heat—how has he still managed to not comprehend that suffering for a little while alone is better than risking coming across any area where dog-hybrids have any remote chance at getting a hold of him. Because when they do, it’s already too late. They’re the brutes that regard him as an enemy. As less than the dirt beneath their shoes.

And here Jimin is, blearily peering up at Jungkook’s brother, like he just took a wrong turn while trying to find the toilets for some midnight relief.

“Jimin.”

It rumbles, and it’s loud. Because he’s not asking, not suggesting. He’s not even telling. He needs this to be unmistakable, and if there ever was a situation in which he would feel justified in using it, it would be this one.

Right now, Jungkook is commanding.

He can only stretch the cover of not caring for the cat hybrid so far before his brother would stop buying it, but him buying it is their safest option by far. He settles for the most neutral thing he can instruct while still feeling like it gets his point across.

“Leave.”

Except the fear or submission he expects to finally sober up the hybrid’s buggy eyes never comes. Instead, the kitten’s eyes grow more wet and weary, his bottom lip wobbling something horrible; to the point where Jungkook feels pause in being afraid he’s somehow managed to invent a way to physically hurt an omega through words alone.

In his own confusion, he barely hears his brother continuing his conversation with the kitten in favour of ignoring Jungkook’s.

“How cruel,” Junghwan admonishes. Jungkook swears his brother has taken a few steps closer to Jimin somehow, but he can’t be sure. He feels like time has stopped flowing how it’s meant to again; how it usually does. He feels stuck where he stands. He feels faint. “Casting you away like that when you need him the most,” his brother’s words turn silky sweet, light and easy on the ears as he talks in a way Jungkook has never heard him talk before. “And all he’s been doing while you’ve been suffering is wasting time fucking around with us.”

Junghwan isn’t commanding with his alpha voice; has never really needed to overtly grab control. It’s worse than that.

He’s luring him.

Jimin sways a little where he stands. There seem to be endless drops of clumpy tears squeezing out of his eyes, one after the other. His unfocused pupils follow Junghwan’s slow body movements, as if entranced.

“That was painful for you, wasn’t it?” Junghwan hums. Jungkook shivers because somehow, he can almost hear the genuine pity in his voice, underneath all the demeaning manipulation. “Yeah, I can tell.”

Next thing Jungkook knows, Junghwan has lowered himself down on one knee. Jimin is still staring at them, but his eyes widen just a little.

Is he standing closer? Which one of them moved closer?

“I’ve never tried to hurt you though, have I? All these years,” Junghwan continues. He turns his head to the side a little. Jungkook knows a disarming tactic when he sees it. “I never could bring myself to. No matter how much Jungkookie wanted to hurt you. That’s how precious you are.”

Jungkook feels himself shake, picking up that Junghwan is expecting him to play along with some good-cop bad-cop routine to lure the cat hybrid further over, even though Jungkook has clearly expressed not being remotely in the mood. But that’s the kicker—it’s meant as a way for Jungkook to make things up to him. There’s no way Junghwan hasn’t known for some time—at least before today. And the subtle offer of redemption on the table for Jungkook is that he can prove his loyalty and remorse by playing along. Playing into the lure.

Before he can step in, he sees Junghwan hold a hand outstretched, as if for Jimin to take. His kitten stares at it at first, in a at the very least present bout of apprehension. Then, as if by instinct—or pure habit—he returns his gaze to Jungkook.

It’s a gesture of request for guidance. For permission. All in spite of the harsh rejection he just doles out.

Worst of all is that Jungkook is well aware he’s still standing there looking a filthy brand of mean. And he’s never really thought about it, but he wonders if Jimin has ever felt genuinely scared by him. Or hated by him. Obviously Jungkook has never exactly had time to think about such things in the middle of fighting him off on a given Tuesday, but he knows that at least that time on the roof—Jimin spent the whole two, endless seconds falling to the ground looking completely and utterly terrified.

This all throws him off so bad he’s barely able to process that Jimin has started stumbling towards them, very openly crying now and holding his own arms out like he wants to be held more than anything else in the world. Like there’s nothing more important to him than satisfying that need.

Heat is pain. Jungkook knows that. It’s weakness and an altered state of mind, even for someone as strong and resilient as Jimin. And this not only is the first heat Jimin has experienced since his ‘mate’ passed, it’s a forced and sudden heat that’s come on right after the kitten has taken an overwhelming bout of physical and mental trauma. And after…

He lets his last thought trail off, the guilt that’s steadily coiled around in his stomach feeling like it’s eating him alive now, one little bite at a time. He forces himself to finish his thought. Because he realizes that at this point, he doesn’t deserve not to:

Jimin is dealing with an excruciating heat after Jungkook has all but been acting like his mate for the better half of a month.

Only to abandon him without a warning or explanation.

“There you go. Let it out sweet, little thing.”

Jungkook startles, dragging himself out of the remaining effects of Jimin’s potent scent and his own self-flagellation to look up, only to find Jimin carefully gathered in Junghwan’s tightening arms.

He isn’t sure whether his brother intercepted Jimin as he tried to make for Jungkook, or whether Jungkook’s lack of recognition and support drove the kitten to aim for his brother’s outreached hand in the first place. Either way, the result is the same. And it happened fast—fast enough for Jungkook to miss it through the haze.

Jimin has been scruffed into an immediate stupor, likely as he was hoisted up, and now his short, pale legs dangle limply at either side of Junghwan’s waist.

Jungkook’s muscles still feel oddly paralyzed due to the stench of heat, his brain feeling like it’s processing most things abnormally slow. All he knows is that he’s stuck to the floor somehow—stuck in his body—and that his heart squeezes painfully as he observes his kitten looking so tiny, held like that. His tiny kitten, who is just so tiny.

The belated dawning that his tiny kitten is currently being held in another Alpha’s arms overrides whatever had him stuck in place.

He bolts for them. Except Junghwan doesn’t seem stupid enough to stick around. As soon as he has his armful of Jimin and Jungkook has only just started making for them, Junghwan slips them out the door on their left. Jungkook is already chasing, the flickering lights all around him making his sprint towards his lack of target horribly eerie.

“Where are you going!” he yells out after Junghwan as he stumbles after his faster form over the wet grass. It’s so dark out he fears losing them, even if they’re right ahead of him.

A part of him still wants to be delusional enough to believe that he and Junghwan are still on the same side—that Junghwan has taken his drugged inaction for the sick offering up of the prize he wanted—good enough of a prize to get Jungkook back in his good books. To have some sway.

He doesn’t have much more time to speculate about what Junghwan’s plan is, because they finally stop. All he has the capacity to process is how the sight of his kitten in someone else’s arms must be a very specific trigger for him. He’s been forced to imagine it a lot. First the theoretical alpha mate, then his human Master. But seeing it actually happen in front of him—all while Jimin remains lifeless—Jungkook can’t be sure of much other than that his feet are on the ground; if they even are at all.

The blaring alarm bells are going off in his head again, like anyone touching his kitten sends his world into unimaginable chaos.

They’ve approached the far edge of their base—the line drawn between the old power plant and the sugar refinery—and have turned between those buildings, finding themselves in a bit of an open space.

To Jungkook’s surprise, there are others already waiting there. He looks at their faces in turn, taking in how many there are. He knows them. These are people he’s raided with, eaten with. Grown up with. The twenty-odd men he accounts for on all his missions.

The Alphas.

“That thing barely passes for an omega,” Jungkook pants loudly, trying to catch his breath. His desperation has slipped him into a familiar but jarring role: someone he’s played many times before, who, at least as far as anyone else is aware, finds cats utterly repulsive.

It’s the first thing that’s spoken between the group of them, but they all seem rather content not talking. Mostly because every other dog is entirely caught up in their newest fascination—the hypnotic, sweaty lump nestled in Junghwan’s arms.

Barely anyone so much as looks in Jungkook’s direction.

“He’s—he’s some lowlife, dirty thief,” Jungkook rushes, louder and trying to think of things that would put them off before anything can even start. Except dread sinks in and weighs every corner of his body down when he watches Junghwan bend, slowly laying his kitten’s limp body on the ground, practically putting him on display. “He’s already—and he’s collared. Used—probably loose and dirty. Because he has a Master. You know the reputation of kittens who have Masters. Do you really want a human’s sloppy seconds?”

It’s painful to even say it. Any of the horseshit mess he’s just spewed out. He prays Jimin is entirely unconscious, because if he isn’t, Jungkook’s words will cause irreparable damage. But that’s how desperate he is now—that’s how sick he’s feeling at being unable to handle the unthinkable intentions he knows everyone around him is staring at his unconscious kitten with.

“But doesn’t that feel like the perfect send-off for someone so disgusting?” Junghwan muses. His tone indicates he has no intention of changing his mind. He’s crouched down by Jimin’s body now. tracing a curious hand up his clothed torso—up to his neck. The others stand around and stare, not moving at all. Jungkook isn’t surprised. Their imaginary hierarchy dictates Junghwan has first dibs. But the hand already feeling up Jimin’s body is what causes Jungkook to start shaking. “Using this furball for release until one of us wears him out. He can only take so many dry, ruining stretches before he bleeds out.”

Out of his peripheral vision, Jungkook can see his brother’s hand veering away from Jimin’s chest. He trails feather-light down his navel, before sliding ghost-like over his stomach, then settling near the lower of his tummy. Almost gentle. Almost loving. But only almost.

He can feel Junghwan staring at him, but refuses to flinch. If he flinches, he knows what the game changes into.

“Since I know you wouldn’t have the balls to fuck him, there’s only one way to find out how loose is really is, hm?”

Jungkook gives in, finally moving his head up to meet his brother’s eyes directly. Junghwan offers him a rather eerie smile, and regards Jungkook with every minute move of his hand.

That’s when Jungkook knows he’s been entirely bare for anyone to see. Has been for however long Junghwan decided to toy with him.

This is as much an intended punishment for Jungkook as it is a sheer bounty for the group of them.

Once Junghwan’s hand reaches as far as Jimin’s crotch, he cups his front, giving his small bulge a firm squeeze. The unmistakable sound of a whine is drawn from Jimin’s lips, the noise somehow coming from what remains an otherwise entirely lifeless body, before seeping out into the air around them.

It sends a stream of ice up Jungkook’s veins. He’s shaking, which he clearly does so hard that he barely notices his canines have forced their way out in his mouth so fast they cut both sides of his bottom lip at the same time, ripping the skin.

There’s a feeling of someone holding him back, but he also wonders if he’s imagining it. Hands are on him somewhere, trying to keep him from moving. He can’t see them, because his vision has tunnelled so bad, but he detects the pressure.

But the only thing that really matters is that Junghwan’s fingers are now travelling lower, seamlessly letting himself into Jimin’s underwear and reaching past his cock all the way down his underside, where it searches for the wet welcome Junghwan thinks he deserves.

Jungkook finds himself unable to move forward, literally restrained by something. Whatever it is is strong and in the way enough to go head to head with him and still keep him in place.

“Shit—I really thought you might have actually fucked him,” Junghwan snorts, keeping eye contact with his little brother as his own eyes light up in glee. His hand has clearly found its prize. There’s something horrendously dark in his tone. Something unsettling. It barely matches the crazed look now enjoying his eyes, as it feels almost too sinister. It adds to the nauseating experience that is having to watch Junghwan touch Jimin while the other forces eye contact with him. “Might have just been wishful thinking on my part. Just would have made your love-sick moping a little less pathetic. But you wanna know why I know you haven’t fucked him yet?” Junghwan pauses for dramatic effect, smiling in a way that doesn’t exactly reach his eyes. Jungkook refuses to give him a reaction. He knows that’s what he wants. “Because nobody has. I’m barely able to fit a single fucking finger in here.”

“Fuck you,” Jungkook hears himself snarl through his teeth. It’s so chillingly low he feels all eyes whip towards him, if they weren’t already there. He’s not sure when it became normal for biceps and traps to start swelling and straining so much they manage to strain holes into clothing, but suddenly everything he’s wearing feels too tight. “You wanna know what’s pathetic? Being so unloved you turn into a fucking rapist.”

Junghwan doesn’t like that. It must hit something like a nerve, because now he only looks angry.

Jungkook is unable to look down at Jimin. He finds it especially hard when he hears his brother laugh, something which never bodes well.

“My my,” Junghwan coos. Jungkook feels his skin crawl. “Did you hear that, little kitty?” He asks almost sweetly, taunting the unconscious body below him. He reaches his big hand out to scratch one of Jimin’s pristine, white ears. Then, he turns back to Jungkook, a pitying pout in place where his grin used to be. “I think your little kitty pussy hugged one of our doggies’ knots so hard he’s ready to get down on one knee .”

“You know I haven’t touched him,” Jungkook rushes. A part of him is deadly afraid of the thought of Jimin being able to hear anything they’re saying and suspecting that Jungkook might have done anything untoward to him in his helpless state.

“Yeah, I know,” Junghwan snorts, only this time a few of their comrades join him in laughing, and Jungkook realizes he’s standing there outnumbered twenty to one. At least. “It’s just embarrassing how you’ve deluded yourself into developing feelings for a furry fucking fleshlight.”

Before Jungkook can even process the insult, Junghwan has already pulled Jimin up into his lap, resting his body limply against him as he guides his head to lay supported on his shoulder. His hand is back, tucking under Jimin and disappearing below him.

There’s another broken, pained whimper.

“Shhh,” Junghwan coos. The hand under Jimin moves faster. Rhythmically.

Jungkook isn’t sure he has control of his limbs anymore. Isn’t sure he even knows what they’re doing. There’s a nausea continuously building in his gut that’s now threatening to do him in.

He blinks. There’s blood shooting in a straight splash across his line of sight.

It’s not his own.

There’s some screaming around him now. He knows he’s been fully tackled to the ground because his head hits the concrete and takes him by surprise for a moment. Then there are three, if not four, pairs of arms trying to hold him down.

He can’t see Jimin or his brother anymore because his neck is being gripped hard. It doesn’t matter, because next he hears a pained scream so loud he doesn’t have to see anything to know what’s happened.

The world goes quiet for him then. It’s weird how everything can just disappear, even as some of it still presents itself more vividly before him.

The next time he blinks, his vision is red. He feels something between his fingers. It’s hair.

Hair that leads down to a severed head.

There’s a part of a hand in his mouth. He only knows it’s a hand because he can feel at least four fingers.

There’s blood spraying from somewhere that rains into his open mouth as he spits the hand out. His mouth is only open because he appears to be roaring so loud his chest all but vibrates the ground below him.

He cuts three shrieks off before they can even formulate up individual throats. That’s how bad it’s gotten.

And that’s only the start.

From there, his hands feel like they move through butter. Warm and easy to give wherever he swings. It isn’t until he stares up and sees one of his claws caught in an eye socket that he comes to understand they’ve exploded out so far they’ve speared everything in radius around him like a pair of rugged pitchforks.

He smiles. He’s always loved playing with Jimin using his guns. Those weapons are more than slow against Jimin’s beautiful, god-like agility, to the point of being entirely useless. They’re faulty and finicky and fuck up more often than they don’t. Everyone knows him for his reliance on guns on the field.

But he’s not playing now. He’s not playing anymore. There’s been a rage in him that’s been bending his body beyond it’s wildest capabilities ever since this happened last time, back when he was confused and stood by while everyone around him convinced him that what was happening was a good thing.

He was maybe too young to cause enough damage back then.

Now he’s twenty-six and wants to watch the world burn.

“‘Guk—what the f—uck—k”

It’s not as loud as he expects it to be. He comes to understand that that’s because his fingers have crushed a windpipe, and his adrenaline is so high he can’t hear much over his own deranged panting. All he knows is that he’s still drooling. His teeth hang long and heavy over his split bottom lip, reminding him where exactly his face is, because it’s the only part of it he can feel.

He thinks he might also have sustained an injury to his ribs. It stings in a way he’s vaguely able to ignore with the light trance he’s in, but the dizziness of breathing too rapidly still catches up to him. So he just remains there, hunched over, gripping and squeezing in pulses. Until whatever it is he’s gripping and squeezing becomes butter, too.

Then, he squeezes some more.

He likes to think his senses gradually return to him. In reality, he has no idea how long he’s hunched there. He only has some awareness of when he’s able to return to singular, cohesive thoughts. When he’s able to remember where he is.

“Sorry–no idea what’s happened here. Growing pains I think—haha. We’re animals, after all. Right? Maybe I can convince you this is a more ‘authentic’ experience? Anyway—”

It’s a familiar voice talking, though his head is swimming too much to be able to place it. It sounds almost like he’s underwater. There’s fluid in his ears. He thinks there might be another voice, too.

He groans, every joint in his body hurting. He doesn’t know if he’s tried to sit up a couple of times or whether he’s only dreamt that he has. The past stretch of memory in his mind has felt a little less like a dream or reality and more like a downright mix. Things like his body doing stuff he doesn’t remember it ever being capable of before. Then there’s all the viscous, explicit things his eyes remember seeing that slowly dawn back to him.

It’s only when his adrenaline and breathing quieten enough that his sensitive ears pick up on faint, little noises. Tiny, staccato ones. From his left? No, maybe his right.

Jungkook forces himself up further and sways on his knees, his chest stings sharply as he grunts through a particularly sore move. Then he blinks hard and fast, realizing his vision is murky and red only because there’s so much blood in his eyes.

He drags his hands down his face to wipe it off, only that makes it worse, because his hands are more covered in blood than his face is.

“Don’t mind him—no, no, he won’t be a problem. You just take care of your business.”

He tries to locate the small noise beyond the grating voice, wanting to find out where it’s coming from. It felt way too familiar. He blinks his eyes again, finally feeling like his head is positioned somewhat vertical enough to know that he’s looking straight ahead.

When the blood is done rushing his ears from the change in position, the little sounds return again.

His vision un-blurs very slowly, but with every blink, he starts to wish he never turned around. A part of him wishes he could have been stuck in his trance just long enough to avoid having to see it; stuck on the ground long enough to only see it distortedly.But what’s even worse, is that now he’s having to see it and hear it at the same time.

He tries to yell, but his fucked rib makes him wheeze in asphyxiation before he can. His body sags flat to the ground again, and when he’s down there, he’s just forced to watch it sideways instead, not having collapsed with his eyes away from it.

He knows the figure isn’t his brother because of the stocky size of him, but deeper down because the smell of his brother was what was wafting up into his nose the whole time he was breaking a windpipe and turning it into formless matter.

Duplicated next to that stocky size is another one that’s very similar, only that one is familiar upon first sight. And below all of that, on the ground somewhere, is where the tiny sounds are coming from.

Every part of this all feels like the most cruel case of déjà-vu.

“Easy, Jungkook. Easy now.”

Jungkook ignores the voice in favour of staring so manically at what’s in front of him that the voice voice seems to quiet itself anyways.

“You didn’t exactly mention I’d have an audience.”

“I’d move him, but as you can see…”

The voice trails off just when his detail starts flooding back in.

White, white, and red. It’s familiar to him as only those colours, so he knows who’s lying there even when he can barely see.

What once was pretty, white ears, are now coated red, the tip of the left one half ripped off. Those eyes he loves are closed, and there doesn’t seem to be much consciousness there, to Jungkook’s relief. It is offset, however, by the pained, choked, little whimpers that are emitted every time the small body is moved over the unforgiving ground.

His front is sagged down like a rag-doll, his palms limp and facing up, while his head is craned in a cramped-looking position, which has him facing Jungkook. The rest of him is ass up, with a gloved hand gripping his hips where he’s held almost suspended up in the air. Another one is twisted several times into his tail. The tangle is used as leverage to ram collision-hard in time with a set of ruthless, endless barrage of thrusts.

It sounds wet. Jungkook laments. He wishes at least it could be difficult for the man—that it could be troublesome and full of friction—but the fat cock slips in and out of Jimin’s small body so easily because he’s always technically been made for it. And there’s no resistance left with him unconscious and Jungkook out for the count.

The broken, little whimpers get cut off quite suddenly. The man has grabbed Jimin’s face. He leans down over his already horribly arched, twisted body just to kiss him. As if anything about the exchange is meant to be tender. At the same time, he moves the hand at his jaw to grip him by the collar that’s still welded to his neck. He grips under and around it so tight Jimin’s throat starts straining red, and his breaths choke to halts a few times.

The man loves it. It’s probably not every day they get to see them like they used to. House pets. The golden era of unchecked sex slavery and human rights violations. The man loves it so much he groans, gripping harder and stuttering his erratic hips as he chases an end he can clearly almost taste.

He thrusts and thrusts and thrusts. Then it all slows to a screeching halt. He finishes with a pleasured moan into the kitten’s mouth, not bothering to pull out. Perhaps specifically not intending to.

Jungkook gags, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily. He hates leather. He hates black; hates gloves. Hates hats.

He hates everything about them.

“Perfect—great. I can count you as satisfied, then?”

Jungkook doesn’t have the energy to listen for the reply. Again, he’s just glad those eyes he loves are still closed. Since Jungkook is awake to oversee his kitten, it’s okay. He’ll process it all for him. It didn’t happen to Jimin if he wasn’t even aware. If Jungkook won’t be able to move for a little while, he figures he’s happy just staring at him like this. It hurts—he constantly wants to look away—but it’s better than not knowing. Not being able to oversee. He doesn’t think his Alpha could handle that.

A hand moves in front of his face. If he had the wherewithal, he’d pretend to startle. He just doesn’t care enough.

“I hoped you might be out long enough to not have to see that.”

His uncle is so close to him Jungkook can smell the nicotine on his breath. He’s obstructing his view of Jimin, and it makes him anxious. He doesn’t like not being able to see him.

He cranes his neck in irritation, and his uncle seems to get the hint, shifting slightly away.

“Today you have to be a man, Jungkook. We all have to do things we don’t want to do, and sometimes we have to make the best of bad situations.”

His brows furrow when he sniffs the air. There’s more of a smell of distress than there was before. It’s not from his uncle. Certainly not from himself. Which can only mean.

Fuck, is he waking up?

“I know you’ve grown attached to that thing for some reason, but we’re in this mess because you brought him back here,” his uncle just continues, clearly not able to pick up on the same thing as him. “Are you listening to me, Jungkook? The patrols traced him here by his collar. To our area. He was wanted for murder—did you know that? Apparently he shot some officer the same day we did that raid on that factory—”

Jungkook’s paying attention now, because Jimin doesn’t shoot. Only Jungkook shoots. And only Jungkook fired a gun that day.

There’s a chilling undercurrent now, and he lies there registering the words spoken to him, only almost wishing he didn’t.

“—so he shows up, and what was I meant to do? I knew it was only a matter of time before the rest all discovered what you were keeping around. And the officer wanted to take him away—to those camps. But I found a compromise. You wouldn’t have wanted him taken away, would you?”

Jungkook thinks he might be crying. But it could also be blood again. His arms just feel too weak to reach up and check, or wipe it away. At this point he also wishes his uncle would step more in front of him, so he doesn’t have to look at his kitten anymore.

He’s not sure he can bear looking at him any longer after knowing what he now knows.

“—luckily humans are as deprived as we are. Or maybe not, but they’ve always had a knack for desiring the unattainable. And how many mollies do you know walking around these days? Exactly. So that’s the situation. Getting to raw fuck a molly in heat in exchange for said killer molly’s pardon. I’d say that’s pretty fair.”

Jungkook shakes his head, wanting him to stop talking. His neck hurts. His rib hurts. His heart hurts, worst of all.

“—and as for the others—I knew you were the only way to keep them in line. You’ve always had such power inside you just waiting to be set free. Don’t ever apologize for being superior to others, Jungkook. At the end of the day, we now have less mouths to feed. We skewed so heavily Alpha before that our own omegas would have met the same fate by year end. Couldn’t even get a word in edgewise anymore. But now—now we can rebuild. Now we can make something from scratch.”

What?

His uncle is a little out of his sights now. He’s been strolling backwards the last few sentences, away from Jungkook. Jungkook stares after him, hoping the blood and his wide open eyes will be terrifying enough.

He quickly glances down to Jimin again, mostly forcing himself to. He’s still lying there exactly as he was left, neck bent and most everything stained red. If what he thinks is going to happen might happen…

“You know I always offer myself in the service of repopulation. You’re too volatile, and I think you know that.”

The hand comes out from nowhere, planting on the lithe hip the officer’s gloved one was however many moments prior.

Please, no…

“It’s better this way. You have to believe it’s better this way.”

None of this has been remotely feasible for him to process, but he recognizes this situation more than anyone. He’s seen it before.

Jungkook releases as many calming pheromones as he can. He won’t allow Jimin to wake—not for this. He tries to move his arms too—but the pain in his ribs is too sharp. He wonders if it’s pierced a lung. He’s panting again, gasping a bit and squeezing his eyes shut and open as if that’s meant to help him lift his legs. He sways a little bit, but only tips further forward rather than succeeding at getting even remotely closer to backing up.

“There you go,” his uncle’s familiar yet grating voice soothes, muffled and away from him.

Jungkook grimaces, forcing himself to look. It’s muffled because the man is speaking it into Jimin’s mouth, tongue already following his words, as if in greeting. A large hand comes up to pet Jimin’s damp hair, stroking the soft locks back. Each touch smudges endlessly more red in its wake, and it looks entirely jarring in the blonde hair.

He can see their forms moving somewhat rhythmically, which means his uncle must already have slipped inside.

Jungkook is beyond possessive—beyond being angry. As much as this drives him to a very particular form of lunacy—all he can feel is an immense grief.

Grief over not being able to protect him. Over promising he wouldn’t let him lose anything else, only to find them here. Over Jimin, who very notably was saving his innocence—whether for someone in particular or just in principle—easily and without much care now opened up for two enemies. Grief over Jungkook’s smell being entirely gone from him in a moment he wishes more than anything it was there. He hasn’t even been able to scent him or touch him, even after the first round happened.

And that makes him want to scream.

“It will only hurt for a little while,” his uncle murmurs. “Just since you’re so tiny, see?”

He wishes the trance would come back, just so he could have the rush of blood and breathing so loud in his ears he can block out the words now making him gag through an attempted hurl.

He all but whines in agony when he concludes that even if he were to regain some strength over the next little white—he physically can’t rip his uncle off of Jimin. Even if he wanted to. The heavy, bulbous base that smacks against Jimin’s taint has already started swelling purple, the sizable thing pressing and pressing, ever further, dying to get inside.

It feels like it’s years he has to lay and just watch. Decades; millenniums. He’s too scared to look away, in case something happens—like Jimin stopping breathing, or starting bleeding—but in turn, he’s forcing himself to relive his lack of action that he already has a memory of, while his uncle has his cock shoved inside someone he loves. It feels a bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy somehow; like a nightmare he always thinks he’s woken up from, but never quite does.

He only knows it’s in when his kitten lets out a hysteric, blood-curdling scream—eyes flying open.

Jungkook never imagined it being possible to be so livid and helpless you could black out, but that’s exactly what he experiences when somewhere in the pounding deafness of his own heartbeat his kitten looks for him—only to reach a desperate hand out for help when he finds him. Reaching, just for him. Begging him: please.

Jungkook’s head thumps down cold when he hears his uncle release a sigh of relief. The last thing he saw was him flattening his large, stocky body—as he’s enjoying his time getting comfortable—over an omega who is evidently and hysterically screaming.

*

The next awareness Jungkook experiences is pain. To start with. His entire body is aching, and his skin and eyes feel dry. The sun is suddenly high in the sky, beating down so hard the ground below him feels burning hot. Everything around him smells ten times worse than it did whenever he was last awake. Remnants of his brother’s flesh have dried to the underside of his arms and neck, and all of it reeks.

Speaking of his neck—he manages to crane it as soon as he remembers why he’s even there, desperately keeping his head up to locate his little kitten.

His kitten is slumped in the same position he visually left him in. Only now, there are trembling hands trying to wipe something off his still face.

“Touch him and die,” bubbles all the way out of him from the pits of his gut.

It’s some kid. Jungkook has no idea how old he is or whose he is—even where exactly he came from—but he yanks his hands away from Jimin as though he’s been burned.

He’s just a little pup; newly presented. But the stench of alpha is enough to keep Jungkook hostile, despite the act of kindness he appeared to be in the middle of.

“I-Is this that the cat everyone hates?” The kid stammers, careful to not so much as glance in Jimin’s direction when he speaks, which is rather smart of him.

“No,” Jungkook lies, before forcing himself to sit up from the ground in time to prevent himself from losing consciousness again.

Thank fuck—he can actually move. His ribs still smart, and moving first takes him ripping away from a few layers of what is now a sticky, brown-ish and red goo. His joints and back crack in protest as he tries to get completely upright.

The kid can’t help but steal a couple glances down at Jimin when he thinks Jungkook isn’t looking.

He doesn’t blame him exactly, but it’s enough for Jungkook to be forced to mark him for death. There isn’t all that much left of himself in this waking world, but he knows that at least he still has that:

His relentless, primal duty to go to the ends of the earth to protect the creature he’s latched onto as his mate. And at the very top of his list there already sits two people. Three if you count what is not yet a life, but a parasite he will pluck away as soon as there is enough size to allow him to do so.

“Wh-what happened?” The pup is brave enough to ask.

His eyes are quite big, clearly having taken the scene around him in quite a bit before Jungkook came to. Jungkook feels trapped again, staring at the smatterings of blood and entrails all around them. In the middle of it all lies one kitten, breathing softly and steadily in spite of the chaos and grime and memory all surrounding him.

Jungkook is finally up again. On his actual feet, which it feels like years since he’s stood on. Pain shoots through his body, but he barely feels it due to the elation in that he still towers above all things in sight.

Most importantly—he towers over the only other Alpha in sight.

He can repopulate. He can rebuild, too. Everything—from scratch. Just like Uncle said.

Starting here.

Starting now.

“I did.”

—