The Way Of A Criminal: Chapter 2

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The Way Of A Criminal: Chapter 2

Genre: Mafia!AU, Criminal!AU, Angst, Romance

Pairing: OT7 x Reader

Characters: Normal!Reader, Gangster!Namjoon, Gangster!Seokjin, Gangster!Yoongi, Gangster!Hoseok, Gangster!Jimin, Gangster!Taehyung, Gangster!Jungkook

Summary: Your father was a stranger, you never knew who he was and what he did. But one day, someone knocks on your door, informing you of his passing. Now, you learn more about him, his life and the legacy you are expected to continue with the help of his 7 executives.

Story warning(s): This story will contain depictions of violence, blood shed/gore, death, mentions of abuse, smoking, alcohol drinking and gambling. This story is fictional and has nothing to do with real life events or the actual members of BTS. Please read at your own discretion.

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Eunoia // Ch. 25

eunoia (noun): beautiful thinking, the possession of a well-balanced mind, which exhibits goodwill and kindness

Pairings: Hybrid! BTS x reader

Summary: You are a world famous director and you have dedicated your life to your job.You have everything you could ever dream of; wealth, recognision, talent, your friends and family. But loneliness isn’t cured by success. So what happens when you somehow rescue seven hybrids? Can they fill the void?

Genre: Angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, eventual smut

Word Count: 9.2k+

Warnings: past abuse, past sexual abuse, cursing, past violence, mentions of blood, panic attacks

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Trained in waking up early and pulling all-nighters because of filming, you were used to witnessing the sun rise. Usually, you didn’t pay it much attention. The sun rose every day and you had other more important things to do than watch it go through the same motions. You were rushing to leave, making coffee and answering texts on your phone or you were too tired to do anything other than go straight to bed and close the blinds.

You had forgotten how beautiful it was, how the quiet of the early morning glowed in soft orange. Only you and Seokjin were awake, snuggled up on the large white couch on the balcony on the main floor. Your feet were laying on his lap and his arm was wrapped around your waist.

You had woken up early, fading images of the red ballroom and empty eyes haunted your sleep as much as you tried to bury them during the day. Thankfully, Jimin hadn’t been there when you had woken up, drenched in sweat and grasping wildly at the sheets to remind yourself that you were at the Castle. That it had been more than a week since you had been in that ballroom.

It would go away. It had to. It was over. Nothing happened to you. You would get over it.

 You got up, stretched your sore muscles from all the walking the previous day and put on some music to take your mind off the long green dress and paddle numbers, and started your day. No one else was supposed to be awake so early in the morning but when you went to the kitchen to make yourself a cup of coffee, Seokjin was already there, mixing pancake batter with a large wooden spoon. 

Putting your arms around him, you had watched him work until he sent you away, claiming that you were distracting him. It wasn’t your fault that his neck looked in desperate need of kissing and that your mouth had trailed downwards subconsciously. Since you weren’t wanted in the kitchen, you went outside to the balcony to savor the sharp air before the sun appeared on the horizon.

Seokjin joined you soon with two cups of coffee. “It feels like a mug of hot coffee would be more appropriate, but the weather’s too hot,” you had joked.

He had made your favorite iced coffee in the way too-expensive coffee machine you had purchased when you first got the house. Another one of your impulsive purchases. But it was worth it. It made some of the best coffee you had ever tasted. The only coffee above that was made by a small coffee shop nestled in a quiet alleyway in Paris. The perfect amount of milk and sugar, not too sweet and not too bitter. 

You were both a little tired from your little trip to the lake. A sweet kind of pull in your chest, not easily noticeable. You had returned as the sky grew darker and had ordered takeout for dinner, which you enjoyed spread around the garden. Surprisingly, almost everything in the baskets had been devoured during your time at the lake. Alice had been reluctant to leave but you had promised her that she was welcome to visit you again soon. She had hugged each of you tightly—even Yoongi, who didn’t seem to mind at all—and promised that she would be back to play more.

“She’s a little hurricane,” Seokjin said. He was glowing with the sunrise stroking his face. “She reminds me of you a little. Was that what you were like when you were little?”

“I was never that cute,” you joked. Your aunt would argue but while Alice was a hurricane, sweeping up everyone in her way and winning them over, you had been a nightmare, difficult to handle, not listening to anyone, and independent to a fault. “Or that social. I would like to believe that I contributed a little to the shaping of her personality but honestly, her parents are both amazing. They raised her really well and she was already incredible to begin with. She will become a much better person than me.”

He looked down at your legs resting on his lap. “That will be hard. You are probably the best person I know.” He shrugged as if what he said didn’t matter, as if it didn’t make flowers bloom in your chest.

You caressed his cheek, prompting him to look at you. “That might be a little worrying but thank you. You are one of the best people I know too. Shhhh,” you quieted down his protests. “If you can say that about me, I can say that about you.”

“I haven’t done anything special. Nothing like you. You-”

“Stop that.” You laid two fingers on his lips and he obediently stilled them under your touch. “First, you don’t have to do anything special. Who defines special either way? Some of the kindest, most loyal, amazing people I know show these qualities in small ways, that doesn’t make them any less special. Second, who says you didn’t do anything special? Who was there for Jungkook when he distanced himself from everyone else? Who cooks for us every day and takes care of us? Who is always trying to cheer us up when someone is feeling down? Who-?”

“Enough, enough,” he interrupted you, shaking his head. His human ear and cheeks were stark red at all the praise. “I know I’m amazing, that’s enough.”

You laughed and captured his lips in a kiss. Warmth, more comforting than what the sun could provide, filled your insides as you tangled your fingers in his soft hair. He opened his lips for you and you slowly explored the inside of his mouth. You had always enjoyed kissing but nothing compared to the kisses you had shared with your hybrids the past few months.

Lazy mornings were rare for you. There was always one reason or another to be running around the house in a hurry to leave or lock yourself in your office. You were hostage to an endless need to always be productive. That’s what mornings were for. Maybe you had been completely wrong because this one was one of the best mornings you had ever experienced.

Seokjin heard the footsteps on the stairs before you did, turning his head around to watch Jungkook, Jimin, and Namjoon climb up. You called for them and Jungkook and Jimin ran to you, squeezing themselves between you. Namjoon followed laughing and sat down next to Seokjin, throwing an arm around his shoulders.

Hoseok, Yoongi, and Taehyung appeared soon and Seokjin left to go plate the breakfast and bring it to the balcony. You didn’t eat on the balcony often, mostly because of the low table that made it a little uncomfortable, but no one wanted to move. Jungkook and Namjoon went with Seokjin inside to help but when you moved to do the same, Jimin wrapped his arms around your waist tightly and wouldn’t let you go.

“No, you are staying with me!” he exclaimed and proceeded to bury his face in your belly, purring.

Hoseok looked at you in amusement and you shrugged your shoulders, used to Jimin’s antics by now. The three of them took one of the other two couches while the five of you remained squeezed in one. Yoongi looked adorably rumpled from sleep, messy hair and heavy eyes, the stark opposite of Hoseok, who was wide awake and energetic as usual. Taehyung wasn’t the statue he was the first few days but he remained perfectly kept and quiet.

You filled your plate with three pancakes and your favorite toppings and dug in. The conversation returned to your trip to the lake.

“When can we go again?” Jungkook asked, chewing his pancakes with passion.

You cut another piece of your pancakes. “You can go whenever you want, it isn’t that far from the house.”

He pouted. “I meant all of us together.”

“That’s… a little harder,” you said. “I’m back at work next week and I have a full schedule. You can go together though. John and Alice could join you even if I’m not there.”

Jungkook’s bottom lip stuck out even further. “It isn’t the same without you.”

“If there is a day I finish work early, I might join you.” You could barely drag your feet back home most days after work and the trek to the lake would feel like hell, but you would try for them.

Namjoon seemed to know exactly what you were thinking. “You are too tired after work for that. After working for so many hours we can’t expect you to trek down to the lake. You come back after the sun has set or just as it’s setting, it would be exhausting for you to walk for half an hour down to the lake in the dark and then in an hour or so walk back again.”

You wanted to protest but you knew he was right. Although your work wasn’t physically demanding, you spent long hours on your feet, instructing the actors and the crew and checking in with different departments. By the time you were home even dragging your feet to the garden for dinner was a struggle.

You reached for Jungkook’s hand, rubbing your thumb in circles to soothe him. “We’ll figure something out, yeah? If I take a day off–When I take a day off,” you corrected yourself, “we can do something fun. We could go to the lake or we could do something else. Los Angeles is full of places to visit and activities to try.”

Jungkook seemed to think about it for a few seconds before perking up and asking if you could visit a gallery he had seen on the internet. You were quick to agree as Jimin joined as well, asking you about all the places he wanted to visit. You had told them before that they were free to go out without you anywhere they liked, you had printed their papers just in case so they could have them in case the Hybrid Services asked any questions, but they had yet to step further than the Castle grounds and the forest alone. John could also accompany them but no one had taken you up to your offer.

As you were finishing breakfast your phone started ringing. One of the producers of Six of Crows was calling.

“Sorry, I have to take this one,” you said, answering the call.

You ended up having to go down to your office to look up some files on your computer. As the premiere date approached, you would be getting more calls like this. Post-production was finished by now and the movie was nearly ready to be shown on the big screen but there were still a few tiny details that needed fine-tuning.

Ending the call, you checked your emails since you were already in front of your computer. You would probably go to the studios later in the day to speak with a few members of your team on the Raven Cycle project. You wouldn’t stay long but it meant that you had to schedule your day around it. Your break hadn’t ended yet you were already overwhelmed with work. Your to-do list stretched on and on, seemingly endless.

Your back and neck were getting stiff because of all the sitting and lounging around. You should start doing some exercises again. During your break, you had only been to the gym once and it was only two floors down. You should get back into the habit but you were great at finding excuses not to go. You were too busy, too tired, too preoccupied.

There was a knock on the door. You looked at the time at the bottom right corner of your computer screen and realized it was four hours later.

“Come in,” you called. You rolled your neck and heard the little pops. You desperately needed some exercise. And a massage. And an improved posture probably.

Hoseok opened the door with his elbow as he carried a tray inside your office. “I come bearing gifts,” he said with a wide heart-shaped smile. It was like the room instantly brightened. If the sun was personified, it would be Hoseok.

“What have you brought me?” you asked, making space on your desk for the tray. You had to look through some of your old files and they covered most of the surface. You stacked them into piles quickly, to be organized properly at a later time.

“Jin made fruit salad and we have some leftover muffins from yesterday. Jungkook made the juice, it’s banana and cherry!”

The fruit salad was a mix of mango, strawberries, watermelon, blackberries, peaches, and berries. A vanilla muffin was next to it and a tall glass of juice. “Everything looks delicious. Thank you.”

You moved to grab the fork and winced when you pulled on your stiff muscles. Hoseok’s smile faded. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry,” you were quick to say. “I’ve just been sitting in this chair a lot these past few days and my back is complaining. Really, that’s on me.”

“I…” He hesitated for a moment. “I could give you a massage if you’d like. I’m not a professional but I… I used to give massages to my past owner often. He was an idol so he danced and performed a lot and I had learned from masseurs how to do it. I could do that for you if you liked.”

“You don’t have to. It’s just a stiff back, it’ll go away when I stop sitting all day.”

A massage sounded like heaven at that moment but you could do without it. Giving massages could be tiring and Hoseok didn’t have to do that just because you had bad posture and had stopped going regularly to the gym. If you really needed it, you could pay a masseur to come to your house. It seemed silly so you never did, but you could.

“I want to,” he said eagerly, his tail standing at attention. “I can make you feel better, I promise. If you’re comfortable with that, of course.”

You searched his face for any sign that he didn’t actually want to do it but you found nothing. “Okay, then. I would love a massage right now.”

“Yay! I will do my best,” Hoseok promised. “Let’s attack those muscle knots! Gently of course.” You giggled as he came to stand behind you. He pretended to crack his fingers before settling them on your shoulders. You were wearing a shirt with spaghetti straps and his hands were warm on your bare skin, which buzzed in anticipation. “Lean forward a little. Yeah, that’s perfect.”

He dug his fingers on either side of your neck and you had to bite your lip to stop a very embarrassing sound from slipping out. It sent a current through your whole body like you went numb to everything except the feeling of his hands on you. He kneaded your muscles, progressively adding more pressure. You closed your eyes, your body relaxing, losing some of the tension.

“That feels good,” you said, trying to keep your voice steady.

“I told you.” You could hear the satisfied smile on his face even though you kept your eyes closed.

One by one, your strings unraveled and your body felt lighter, as if you could float away if he pulled his hands away. He worked on the knots on the back of your neck and around it before he moved on to your shoulders and shoulder blades. You had received massages before–you had visited spas with friends on several occasions–but this felt different. You forgot about work and all the things you had to do, all the million little things that were hanging over your head, and for a moment you let yourself relax.

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The forest was still, bracketed by the almost black of the night. There were no lights that Yoongi could see coming from inside, even though you said there were multiple holiday homes around the lake. The Castle stood alone, like a real castle guarding the forest.

Hoseok was humming along to a pop song that was playing on his phone, it was at a low volume so his humming was almost as loud as the music. It was late into the night, everyone in the house having already retreated to their rooms. Yoongi didn’t care much about the song, it was generic at best. The vocals weren’t great and the beat was the same beat that every song used this summer with a little tweaking. But Hoseok liked it so he didn’t say anything.

The fox hybrid was sprawled on his bed, his eyes half closed as he moved his head to the music. His silk nightshirt had ridden up to expose a sliver of smooth tanned skin and Yoongi’s eyes kept being drawn to it.

“Anything interesting out there?” Hoseok asked. Yoongi shrugged. “You have been standing there for half an hour. Don’t look at me like that, you have.”

He raised his eyebrows, doubting that it had been that long, but moved away from the balcony door, sitting down on his bed. “It’s the same every night.”

“And you still look every night.” Hoseok turned off the music and stretched. His shirt rode up higher.

Yoongi looked down at his hands. “It’s calming. There is something about the trees and the lake, being away from the city. It’s quiet.”

His ears picked up the soft shuffling before a weight dipped into the bed next to him. “It’s nice, isn’t it? Has it really been only five months since we’ve been here? Less than that? I can’t imagine living in the city again, too much noise.”

Yoongi had lived his whole life in cities, he was used to their noise and the way it never went away. The sound of cars and motorbikes, people talking and shouting. It was never quiet. Not the way it was out here.

He wanted to tell Hoseok that he would never have to live in the city again but he couldn’t. On one hand, your job could lead you anywhere and Yoongi had a feeling that wherever you went, they would follow you, just like Virginia. On the other hand, although some part of him insisted that this was permanent, that this life they had built here wouldn’t be taken from them, he knew that the world wasn’t so kind. Sometimes, he stayed up at night thinking about it while Hoseok dreamed. He gazed at the forest to remind himself that they were still here, in this small paradise on earth, and then contemplated all the ways this could end. His mind wasn’t kind to him on those nights.

“Virginia was like this too,” Hoseok continued. “I miss it a little. The countryside was pretty and the house too. Almost like a fairytale. Do you think we’ll go back again?”

Hoseok’s hand was fidgeting on his thigh and Yoongi grabbed it to still it. “Maybe. She will have to film another season after this one. If this show is as successful as they say, there will be a few more seasons to come. They built sets and everything there.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Hoseok scooted closer to him and laid his head on his shoulder, their hands intertwined. “Do you think she will rent the same house? I want to go back there. It felt like home.”

Yoongi refrained from telling him that wherever he was, it felt like home. It was something someone more expressive than Yoongi would say, instead he said, “We can ask her. I don’t think she’ll mind. If it isn’t booked at the time, we could stay there again.”

“I’ll recruit Jiminie, she can’t say no to him,” he said, nuzzling closer to Yoongi’s neck, almost scenting him.

“She can’t say no to any of you.”

Hoseok hummed, his breath warming Yoongi’s skin and the scent of cinnamon tickling his lungs. “She wouldn’t say no to you either. If you ever asked her for anything.”

Yoongi didn’t know what to think about that. If he believed it. Yoongi had been trying to do better, trying to be a better person than he had been at the beginning. He would hate himself if he ever put you through what he had before. He would be making it up to you for his whole life. He wasn’t the same as the other hybrids, the same courtesy shouldn’t be extended to him.

Hoseok’s lips brushed his neck, light as a feather, and Yoongi shivered at the touch. Scenting each other wasn’t something new, they had been doing that since they escaped the ring. Before that, they would brush their wrists together through the bars of their cages, longing for the small comfort of each other’s scent. After Yoongi had disappeared, Hoseok had been touching and scenting him more as if he was afraid that he would slip through his fingers.

Some nights, Hoseok would crawl into his bed in the middle of the night and cling on to him. “Stay,” Hoseok would say. He didn’t tell him what his nightmares were about, he didn’t have to.

Yoongi vowed to himself to never leave him again. He would bite, scratch, and kick his way to him if he ever had to.

He had a lot to regret about that first month. He hadn’t only hurt you, he had hurt everyone else too. His own nightmares persisted, leaving him clutching the sheets, with his back to Hoseok, staying deadly still so he wouldn’t wake him up. So no one would know that those days still haunted him even though he wasn’t the one who had suffered.

In some of his dreams, the hybrid ring got to him before you did and punished him for escaping, before stabbing an injection in his neck and hauling him to the ring for one last fight. In others, it was Hoseok that they took and those were worse. They found him when he was looking for him and Yoongi could do nothing to stop them, voiceless with his feet rooted to the floor.

In some rare ones, he never made it out of the house. Namjoon threw him against the wall and held him there, looking more like a vengeful god than the real Namjoon. His sharp teeth gleamed viciously as he sunk them into Yoongi’s neck, breaking the skin and ripping out everything that was keeping him alive.

Hoseok pulled back, his eyes searching Yoongi’s face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Thinking.” Of course, Hoseok would notice his thoughts spiraling. Yoongi had mastered hiding all emotions from his face but Hoseok could see right through any masks he crafted.

“You looked a little lost there for a moment,” he said, drawing closer to him again. “You can talk to me, you know.” He spoke almost jokingly but he couldn’t hide the tendrils of hurt in his voice. “I know you like to keep some things to yourself… But I’m here for you. I would never judge you, I swear.”

Yoongi was a coward. After his talk with Jimin, he had been planning to tell him everything but he kept putting it off. It was never the right moment, it could wait.

“I know,” Yoongi said quietly, squeezing Hoseok’s hand. “I want to tell you. I think you deserve that after everything.”

Hoseok frowned. “It isn’t about what I deserve. I just want to know so I can help. So I can understand you better. Nothing you say can ever change the way I see you. Nothing. You were there for me when I thought my life was over, that everything was over. You saved me, Yoongi. I would have died in there if it hadn’t been for you. I would trust you with my life. But sometimes, when you don’t tell me things—important things—it makes me feel like you don’t trust me at all.”

Yoongi’s heart gave a terrible bang. “That isn’t true. I trust you. I trust you more than anyone. I trust you more than I trust myself. It’s just… It’s hard to tell you when I want to forget.”

“I understand,” Hoseok said, his gaze falling on their joined hands on Yoongi’s lap. “But I don’t think you can forget either way.”

“You’re right, I can’t. And I never will.” It was too big, too cruel. For worse or for better, it had changed who he was to his core. He was who he was because of what had happened to him and Jimin. He had met both Jimin and Hoseok because of that monster. “But I want you to know now.”

So he told him everything. He detached himself from his words and numbed his feelings, because he was afraid that if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He started from the beginning, from his first owner to the terrible end. He couldn’t look at him as he spoke, focusing on their connected hands. Hoseok’s scent soured until Yoongi could barely recognize it. But he had to power on.

When he was finished, Hoseok shot up, wrapping his arms around him impossibly hard and buried his face in Yoongi’s neck. There was wetness brushing against his throat and Yoongi only hugged him tighter.

“I’m sorry.” Hoseok’s voice was breaking and Yoongi hated that he was the cause for it, even though it was better this way. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t. I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.” He brought his wrist to Hoseok’s neck, gently scenting him. They both needed it. “You saved me too. You saved me, Hobi.”

And sleep claimed them like that, wrapped up in each other with dried tears on their cheeks.

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Taehyung lay still in his bed, not making a sound. Phantom pains spread over his body, squeezing and squeezing until nothing was left of him. His head was loud but the sounds were muffled as if he was submerged underwater.

The room was illuminated by the soft light from the lamp next to his bed. He left it on every night. It was the same pattern, his nightmares not allowing him to rest more than a few hours at a time. There were new ones now. Ones of the red ballroom, the people in the chairs turning into monsters and dragging their claws all over his skin. You stood among them in your green dress, watching as it happened, your face empty.

Taehyung opened his eyes. He could see the forest from his room. He had never been to a forest before coming to the Castle, had never even seen one. It was majestic, the dark greens and browns, the way the branches reached towards the sky. Upwards and upwards.

He closed his eyes again. His tears had long dried when sleep swept him away again.

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Your heartbeat rattled your chest as if being chased by an invisible force with no escape. You swallowed down the bitterness in your mouth and willed the sharp images of your nightmare away. They were so clear, the red curtains and the shiny floors. The taste of the expensive champagne and the hors d’ oeuvre on your tongue. Long dresses swayed at your vision's edge, silk, velvet, and satin. Steady hands held guns aimed at you, they went off with a terrible scream. You woke up.

You were awake. You were in your room in the Castle. You were safe.

You tried to calm down your erratic breathing. Jimin was sleeping next to you and the last thing you wanted was to wake him up in the middle of the night and worry him. Clenching your teeth, you silently counted each breath. Were your hands shaking? They felt like they were shaking.

One, two, three.

Slower. Try slower.

Did your hands stop shaking? You gripped the fabric of your nightgown.

One, two–

A sleepy voice calling your name disturbed the murky waters of your mind. “Are you okay?”

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath. It was over. You were in Los Angeles. You were fine. Nothing had happened to you, no one had questioned you. You had gotten out. You were fine.

“Did I wake you up?” you asked. Your voice sounded weak even to your ears.

You heard the sheets rustle as Jimin moved closer. “Can I hug you?”

In the darkness of the room, you couldn’t see him well, only the shape of his body. “You don’t have to ask.”

“You are shaking.”

Were you? So it wasn’t just your hands. Another deep breath. Force your muscles to relax like the pieces of a machine.

“I am okay now, don’t worry. Come here.” You opened your arms and Jimin crawled into them, hugging your waist and laying his head on your collarbones. “Go back to sleep, kitten.”

Jimin shook his head. “Not if you don’t. What happened?”

“Just a bad dream, it was nothing.” The lies tasted bitter on your tongue. Were they lies though? It should be nothing, it shouldn’t be haunting you like that. Nothing had happened to you, you reminded yourself as if you repeated it enough times maybe the nightmares would go away. “I just need a few minutes to forget it.”

“Do you want to talk about it? Maybe that could be better than forgetting,” Jimin said.

But forgetting was the goal. Or at least getting rid of the nightmares that shouldn’t still be happening. It was over and you were okay. You were okay. There was no reason to worry Jimin, not when you weren’t the one who had suffered. You got dressed up, drank some champagne and made small talk. It wasn’t the end of the world.

“You don’t have to worry about this, it’ll go away on its own.” You run a hand up his back to comfort him. “My brain is just playing tricks on me.”

Jimin’s hand sought out your own and intertwined your fingers. He was quiet for a few moments before speaking, “Is this about the auction?”

You stilled. He couldn’t have known. You hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. And what right did you have to complain about it? You composed yourself. “How did you guess?”

“You have been… different since you came back. You have been lost in your head. I know you are tired and it’s hard with Taehyung now but you can talk to us if you want to. It must have been really scary.” He drew closer to you, gripping your hand tighter.

“I wasn’t alone. I had John there with me.”

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t scary,” he whispered. “We were scared for you. We thought– We trusted you but we were scared.”

Your fingers tangled in his hair and rubbed behind his cat ears which you knew would relax him. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“It’s okay. Taehyung is here now.”

Regardless of how many nightmares you had and the tightening in your chest whenever you saw the color of blood. Regardless of the constant fear of being discovered that would never go away. You could never regret what you had done. Not for a moment. Just thinking of Taehyung in that man’s hands evaporated any doubts you had about your decision.

Jimin nosed softly at your collarbones. “We love you. It’s okay to be scared, you can share it with us. You can share it with me.”

“I’m not scared,” you said. It didn’t matter that it sounded like you were lying to yourself. “It’s over. It’s been more than a week since it happened. I’m the last person who should be having nightmares over it.”

“Why are you saying that? It must have been terrifying.”

You took a deep breath, the red bleeding into the darkness. “It was easy to blend in. It was like so many of the parties and galas I have attended. I was the guest of honor, no one suspected anything. I wasn’t the one–”

You cut yourself off before you uttered the words but both of you knew. Silence fell between you. You wished you could fall asleep again but sleep was so far away.

“Do you feel guilty?” he asked quietly.

“For what?” You were confused. Why would you feel guilty? You had done your best, probably more than anyone in their right mind would do.

Jimin gave a small shrug, bringing your joined hands to your chest. “You just sounded like it. Like you felt guilty for having nightmares about it. You don’t have to be. You are here and you are okay but– But you could have not been.” There was fear in his voice and it hurt.

You held him closer and squeezed his hand. You were there now and you wouldn’t be going anywhere. His breath warmed your bare skin. You weren’t alone anymore, you had seven people to think about when you made decisions. You had a home and you would fight to get back to it every time.

“Let’s go to sleep, kitten. We’ll dream better together.”

♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩

After your short break, your return to work was uneventful. A few more days would have been nice but time was moving fast and there were a lot of things to do. On your first day back, before you had left the house Jimin and Jungkook got teary-eyed saying goodbye to you. Going back to work was hard for you too after being used to staying at home with them, but you would fall into your usual routine soon enough.

Your work was a big part of who you were, returning to the studios was like returning home in a way. The cast and the crew greeted you warmly with hugs and pats on the back. Will handed you a pack of papers and you made your way together to the reading room. You would be doing a few read-throughs to get the actors familiar with the characters again and work through a few knots in the script.

It was the same way it had been, waking up at the crack of dawn and returning when the sun was descending in the sky. The hybrids clung to you in any way they could while you were home. At breakfast and dinner, there was always someone touching you, Jimin sitting on your lap or Namjoon holding your hand or Jungkook hugging you from behind. They missed you and you missed them too but there was little you could do.

In the quiet of the night when most of the hybrids had retired, you asked Hoseok how Taehyung was adjusting. The answer was always the same. Hopeful but disappointing as well—guilt ate at you for feeling disappointed when you knew Taehyung was doing his best.

The story of the Raven Boys unraveled during the days and the nights. Your copy of the script was overflowing with red ink, underlined lines, and writing in the margins. It was shaping up to become everything you had envisioned and more. And you were happy. But you also missed spending more than a few hours at the Castle.

You could invite them to join you for filming and spend a little more time with them. However, you had a one-track mind while you were working and you couldn’t provide the attention they deserved. Often, you got too lost in your work. You could feel it now, clouding your mind and blending the days into a string of numbered scenes and takes.

It was a blessing that one week into filming, you finished early, just a couple of hours after lunch, and instead of staying and obsessing over the smallest details like you were prone to doing, you packed your backpack and returned home. John drove you back with instructions to relax and not think about work until the next morning. You didn’t mind listening to him.

“I’m home,” you shouted after opening the door. Due to their sensitive hearing any hybrid on the top two floors would hear the door opening, you liked to let them know it was you so they wouldn’t worry. You had wanted to surprise them so you hadn’t texted that you were coming back.

Jimin and Hoseok were the first ones to rush to the living room. Jimin fell into your arms with practiced ease and buried his face in your neck.

“Surprise,” you said, ruffling his blond hair.

He purred in contentment. Hoseok also joined the hug, his fluffy tail wrapping around your legs.

“Are you staying?” Jimin asked, his eyes shining with hope.

“I am. We finished early today so I’m all yours for the rest of the day.”

Jimin cheered and held onto your hand, following you into the kitchen where you poured yourself a glass of homemade lemonade from the fridge. A book and a few notebooks were spread over the kitchen island and you took a closer look at them. You recognized the textbook as one you had bought a few years ago during your first visit to Seoul for the press tour of one of your Oscar-winning films. You had read through the first few pages on the plane back to LA and when you had arrived you had placed it on the shelf that housed all your language-learning books and never picked it up again.

“Are you learning Korean?” you asked Jimin, scanning the awkward handwritten Korean letters in the pages of the notebook.

Flustered, Jimin didn’t look at you as he replied, “Hoseok is helping me. I thought I could communicate better with Taehyung if I knew a bit of Korean but it’s really hard.”

“He’s doing really well though,” Hoseok interjected with pride. “He is getting good at reading Hangul and he knows a few basic phrases too. He is learning very quickly.”

Jimin shrugged, his cheeks getting adorably rosy. “I have a great teacher.”

Hoseok cooed at the younger hybrid while you flipped through the pages of the textbook. You recognized your handwriting on the first few, you had written down a few questions you had so you could look them up later, which didn’t happen. Now, the answers were written underneath your questions in blue ink. The next pages were marked in both Jimin’s and Hoseok’s handwriting, there were notes in the margins and between lines and little doodles of flowers and butterflies.

Footsteps climbing up the stairs prompted you to let go of the notebook. Jungkook came running through the kitchen door and threw himself at you, nuzzling into your neck. You planted your feet on the ground and caught him just in time before you both went flying back.

“You’re back,” he whispered. He was bouncing on his feet, his excitement contagious.

“We finished early so I packed everything up and rushed back,” you said. “Has it been that long since I was back at a normal hour?”

Jungkook nodded resolutely and you couldn’t help but giggle. The truth was that it was the first time you were finishing early since filming had started again. The first week back was the busiest since you had to review everything, redraw most of the plans, check in with every department, and generally when you weren’t actively filming you spent them running around the studios like a headless chicken.

You should get a day off as soon as you could. For a workaholic, you missed being at home with them too much.

Namjoon and Seokjin were the next ones to appear at the kitchen door. Jungkook still hadn’t let go of you so they were content to leave twin kisses on your cheeks while teasing the bunny hybrid.

“Is Yoongi with Taehyung?” you asked, noting the absence of the two hybrids.

“They are in the garden,” Namjoon said, a fond smile playing on his lips. “Yoongi has been lounging in the sunlight since we finished lunch.”

“He’s starting to gain some color, he looks less like a ghost these days,” Seokjin joked. “Sometimes I think he is more cat than Jimin is.”

You laughed with them before your attention was drawn back to the textbook. It was hard learning a new language, you knew that very well. It could take years to reach a decent level depending on your dedication and the language itself. You remembered Alice suggesting you should learn Korean to communicate better with Taehyung. Jimin was doing just that without anyone asking him to and by the handwriting on a good chunk of the textbook, he had been doing it for some time.

Namjoon also took an interest in the textbook but he already seemed to know that Jimin had been studying the language.

“I would like to learn to,” he said. “I didn’t have to chance to learn another language in the past and it would be beneficial if we could communicate with Taehyung in his mother tongue. Maybe it would get him to open up more.”

Seokjin nodded. “I think it’s a good idea. I would like to learn a bit of Korean too.”

“I could teach you a few things,” Hoseok offered. “But I’m not a teacher, I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time. I can teach you a few words or phrases but”, he glanced at Jimin with a guilty look, “we are having some trouble with grammar.”

“That makes sense,” you reassured him. “It is very different speaking a language, especially when it’s your mother tongue, and teaching it to someone else. That’s why there are university courses for it. It’s a difficult job. But if you really want to learn Korean, I could find you a teacher who specializes in it. That way Hobi would have less on his plate as well.”

Jimin’s eyes widened. “Really? Can you do that?”

“Of course, I can,” you said. “I can find the best Korean teacher in Los Angeles and I can ask them to come here so you won’t have to go to the city. I’ll have to provide transportation of course. How does that sound?”

“Amazing,” Jimin cheered and hugged you again. “Thank you, thank you.”

“It’s the least I could do.”

The least because you couldn’t do the same. You didn’t have the time or the energy to learn another language when most of your day was taken up by your work. During the days you were at the studios and at nights often you had to retire to your office to answer emails and revise scripts before going to sleep. The best you could manage would be to learn a few basic phrases but that wouldn’t be helping anyone.

The arrangements for the teacher were easy. You didn’t have to look long on the internet and after a few calls you had found the perfect candidate who was more than happy to make the trip to the Castle three times a week and stay for three hours to teach the hybrids. You added a very generous bonus for her trouble.

Before finalizing the contract, you talked with Hoseok about an idea you had.

“She could help Taehyung with his English as well. A couple of hours a week could help a lot,” you suggested.

Hoseok was on washing duty after dinner and Taehyung had gone to his room for the night so it was the perfect opportunity to talk to him about this.

“It’s a great idea, if he wants to. I do my best but… I don’t think I’m helping on this,” Hoseok said, scrubbing a plate with the sponge. Foam was everywhere.

You rubbed his arm soothingly. “You’re doing amazing. Much better than I could have hoped for. But I know it’s hard for you and I wish there was a way to help you. I’m sorry I can’t do much.”

Hoseok shrugged, bubbles rising above the dishes. “You are doing the best you can, given the situation. You have already done more than anyone would have expected of you.”

Laughter floated in from the living room. You smiled through your exhaustion.

“Ask Taehyung about the teacher, okay? And tell him it’s your idea, not mine. I don’t want him to accept because I am the one asking.”

♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩

Jimin ran down the stairs, laughing wildly. Energy coursed through his veins and urgency pushed his legs to run faster and faster. He felt like a nymph in Land of the Gods, running through their trees, their hair flowing like an enchantment and laughing and laughing. He didn’t look at his pursuer, he knew who he was and it only filled him with delight.

The rooms blurred as he passed by, never losing his footing. He emerged in the garden and the sun kissed his skin, the fire inside him burning hotter in the heat. The green stretched around him and for a moment, he got the crazy desire to go into the forest and get lost there, underneath the shade of the tall trees. He wanted to dance and drink and eat juicy fruits between the trees like the fae in the stories you told them yesterday night.

Maybe one day.

Instead, he rushed to the stairs that led down to their room. The footsteps behind him were getting closer and he pushed himself to go faster, flying down the stairs.

There was nowhere else to go now and he paused in front of their bed. It was enough time for two hands to wrap around his waist and tackle him on the mattress. He resisted a little, just for show, before wrapping his own arms around broad shoulders and laughing some more. He felt like a child, in a way he couldn’t remember ever feeling before.

“You can’t escape from me,” Jungkook said, hovering above him.

“I didn’t try,” Jimin replied, running his hands over his shoulders and up the sides of his neck. “Bunnies are supposed to be fast, aren’t they? But you only caught me when I had nowhere else to go.”

Jungkook leaned into his touch. “I would have caught you anyway. You couldn’t run forever. Now you’re mine.”

He lowered himself until their bodies were merged together. He sniffed at Jimin’s neck, taking in his scent like he had done so many times, before rubbing his nose and his cheek over his scent gland. Jimin couldn’t stop the purrs that escaped him as his body melted. His hands tangled in Jungkook’s hair, who made an appreciative sound.

The scent of pears and gardenias was everywhere, it was deliciously overwhelming. He could almost taste the sweetness and tanginess of the pears on his tongue.

He tugged on Jungkook’s hair before he could lose his mind. “My turn.”

Jungkook arched his neck back to allow Jimin to scent him. He quickly found his scent gland and buried his face there. He closed his eyes and a garden bloomed behind his eyelids.

Jungkook’s scent was so sweet and it was mouth-watering combined with the pack’s scents. He could smell his own scent there and Namjoon’s scent of summer rain and pine trees was enveloping everything. The aroma of honey buns and sweet milk glazed over them like sugar and notes of cinnamon and sandalwood pushed through. If he looked for it, he could detect your scent, naturally fainter than hybrids’. Greedily, he searched for two more scents but he could only get the impression of dark chocolate. He might have imagined it.

“I’m happy,” Jmin whispered like it was a secret. There was the irrational fear that if he said it any louder, he would tempt fate to take it back.

“I’m happy too,” Jungkook said, laying his head on Jimin’s chest.

Jimin tangled his hands in his hair and massaged his scalp, he was rewarded with a pleased sigh. “It’s like everything has finally fallen into place. I’m not sad anymore. I didn’t realize how sad I was until I wasn’t. Even when I was happy, I was sad too. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You don’t have to.” Jungkook caught his hand in his and brought it to his mouth, placing kisses on the back of it. Jimin’s heart fluttered with the wings of thousands of butterflies. “All that matters to me is that you aren’t anymore. I only want you to be happy. I know it isn’t possible to be happy all the time but I want us all to be happy. Together and happy.”

“Together and happy,” Jimin repeated quietly.

Every time he was was with Jungkook like that, his mind strayed. It went to all the possibilities, all the could-have-beens and the what-ifs. What would have happened if Jimin wasn’t a coward, if he hadn’t run away? If he had told you what had happened before, would he have been braver? Did Jungkook feel the same after everything that happened? Did he still want to kiss him?

His bunny was so beautiful, his soft dark brown ears that flopped against his hair, his cute nose and large eyes that held the galaxy inside them. Everything about him was beautiful and Jimin loved him so much he could burst. He wasn’t sure if it was right to love him like this, to want to kiss him and hold him like lovers did but he trusted you when you said that it was okay.

Lost in his thoughts, he tugged lightly on Jungkook’s hair, who let out a sound that lit a fire inside him. It was a moan, Jungkook had moaned.

His cheeks growing red, he looked at Jimin like a deer caught in headlines. “I’m sorry! I didn’t- I shouldn’t-”

“Jungkookie, it’s okay.”

“No, no. I’m sorry,” he continued quickly. “I don’t know why I did that. I’m-”

“Jungkook,” Jimin said more firmly. “It’s okay. Really. I didn’t mind. You… sounded good.”

“Good?” Jungkook asked confused. And his eyes, how could his eyes hold so many stars inside them?

Slowly, Jimin tugged at his hair again. “Yeah, good. I liked it.”

“Oh.”

They looked at each other and the world faded around them. There was only them, them and the heat brewing between them.

“Do you-” Jimin looked away. He couldn’t just ask him like that. But what else could he say? “I love you, I love you so much. I never want you to forget. Anything that may happen, I’ll still love you.”

“I love you too, you know I do. You are my Jiminie. I would do anything for you.” He bit his bottom lip and Jimin wished he was the one doing it instead. “Did something happen?”

“No, I just wanted you to know,” he said, cupping Jungkook’s face. His skin was the highest quality of silk and satin under his hand. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m so difficult, so… scarred.”

Jungkook’s hand covered his and his gaze was unyielding, it didn’t allow him to look away. “Never apologize for that. Never. You aren’t difficult, you are incredible. You are strong, stronger than I could ever hope to be. Your scars don’t define you. I met you with your scars and I love you with them all the same. I don’t care if I have to be a little more careful or if I have to hold you a little closer sometimes. Just being close to you is all I need.”

There was a stinging behind Jimin’s eyes. “My baby,” he said like a prayer. An invisible thread pulled him closer to Jungkook until only a breath separated them. “Can I kiss you?”

“Kiss me?”

Jimin hated the doubt and the fear in his voice, he grieved that he had been the one to put it there. “I want to, I promise. It’s okay, I talked with Y/N. I’ve been so stupid. I want to kiss you so much, baby.”

“Please. Please, kiss me,” he said, voice breaking.

Their lips came together softly. There was no rush, no harshness, only love and patience. He was warm, warmer than he had ever felt. He was safe in Jungkook’s arms, hidden away in the Castle, in their home. Sweetness coated his lips. He might not deserve this, might be too broken for this but he never wanted to let go.

Two tears rolled down his cheeks. Catharsis.

Jungkook pulled back in panicked haste. “Did I hurt you? Did-”

Jimin let his tears run their course down to his neck in favor of cupping Jungkook’s face. “You could never hurt me. They’re happy tears. I’m very happy.”

The tension in Jungkook’s face eased and Jimin pulled him closer again. As he kissed him, he tasted love and freedom. He tasted of healing.

♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩ ♩♪♩♬♬♩♪♩

The grand piano stood by the glass wall in the living room, polished until the black surface reflected the light like a mirror. It was a thing of beauty, a gem dipped in luxury to decorate a rich household. For Yoongi, it was so much more.

It was a few hours until you would be back home and the sun was setting behind the forest. The lights were off in the living room and it was painted in the red, gold and pink of the sunset. You would be back later than usual, the filming schedule was packed for the day and after that was done you would visit the headquarters of the production company. You had told them to eat dinner without you.

Yoongi’s fingers flew over the black and white keys. He closed his eyes and focused on the music. Each note was a bright light in the darkness behind his eyelids. It was easy to get lost in the music, in the feelings it evoked and in the pictures it weaved.

He heard it when Taehyung arrived. He didn’t speak, gave him space to go away if he wanted or simply listen in silence. The melody grew more tender.

Taehyung didn’t go away, he drew closer. He hesitated before sitting on the bench next to him, leaving a small space between them. The song blended into the next one and the next one until the familiar stiffness spread over Yoongi’s fingers and he stopped.

Outside, the reds and golds had turned into purples and deep blues. Yoongi would have to turn on the lights soon.

“Do you want to try?” Yoongi asked when the silence stretched and Taehyung didn’t seem to find the words he was looking for.

Taehyung looked at the piano in quiet wonder. “Can I?”

He was so young and it made Yoongi furious that some bastards had carved the innocence and joy out of him. He wanted to find the monsters who had done this to him and tear them apart limb by limb.

His long fingers hovered over the keys. “How?”

“Just do whatever feels right.”

Taehyung pressed the keys one by one at first, the faint lines of a smile appearing on his face at every new sound. Progressively he got braver, pressing keys together and creating disjointed melodies.

“Together?” Taehyung asked shyly.

Yoongi couldn’t say no.

Please comment and reblog it motivates me to keep writing

💜💜💜

summer nights and morning dew | jjk

“Look, I don’t care. You can’t trust people, and we need to protect what’s ours, okay? So do us all a favor and take off those rose-colored glasses.”

Hoseok huffs, standing from the log and staring into the now smoldering fire. “You’re one to talk,” he mutters. “As if we don’t know where you go every night.”

Jeongguk blinks in surprise. “Wh—what?”

But Hoseok is already on his way to his cabin for the night, and whatever he mumbles, it’s unintelligible.

pairing: alpha werewolf!jk x f knitter!reader

genre: FLUFF, a grain of angst, sorta oldentimes cottagecore au lol

word count: 11k

warnings: like 1 use of ‘fuck’ but there’s also some nudity because werewolves shifting, otherwise, this is incredibly sweet

rating: like… PG

masterlist

author’s note: so… this is honestly one of my favorite fics i’ve written in a long while 🥺🥺🥺🥺 and i really hope you guys like it too <3<3

August 

“No, look, we need to constantly be on guard, and frankly, expect the worst. Do you realize how much we lost on that one elk?!” Jeongguk questions, angrier than he usually lets himself become.

Hoseok sighs quietly, throwing a small stick into whatever’s left of the fire.

“Huh?”

“Yes,” he finally answers reluctantly.

“So what did we lose, exactly?”

“Money.”

But Jeongguk doesn’t let go so easily. Not when the recent mistakes have cost so much, already.

Hoseok meets the unwavering, waiting gaze of his alpha, sighing once more and sitting up straighter on the log. “If we’d managed to protect him until sexual maturity, then the herd would’ve had a chance to grow further. Which would’ve meant that we’d have more elk meat to sell in the coming years.”

“Right. But you let those wolves through, why?” Jeongguk pushes because he needs Hoseok to get it.

“Because he found one of them hot,” Yoongi comments, an underlying teasing tone to his voice.

Keep reading

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cry me a river | the reckless

— summary: in the face of danger, you run right into it

— pairing: bts x reader

— genre: angst, mafia!au

— word count: 4.7k

— warnings: slight violence

— PART 24 / previous post / masterpost

It’s about one in the morning when you sneak out of the room with gentle steps, making sure to not wake the one who sleeps on the armchair beside the bed, his soft little snores still heard until his presence disappears with the closed door.

The hallways are as silent as it was back in the room, the only thing heard is the sounds of your footsteps echoing through, and as you close your shawl closer to your body, you look around to make your way to the familiar steps that lead outside where the greenhouse stands.

The doors are left unlocked so you let yourself in and step through the glass doors, closing your eyes for a moment to breathe in the scent of the greens all around you.

It’s during lonely moments like this you feel your heart craving for some sort of familiarity. Not just the presence of your Reapers but for the presence of your manor itself.

For years you spent hating that place more than anything because that was where everything happened; where you were born, where you grew up, watching your mother hating you with every fiber left in her, chasing after your father’s attention, shedding tears on top of gentle shoulders, trapped behind the steel door of a white room, training, meeting good people, meeting bad people, everything.

Everything.

You can’t recall when the feeling of dread and disdain turned to eyes seeking for it, feet yearning to step back into it. Maybe it was the moment your father died, when the dynasty he worked so hard to build broke down into pieces like a house of cards, when you took over and made it into the home that it is now starting to feel like.

You returned to it after Leehyun, locking yourself in the comfort of your room, knowing that if you were to step outside, your Reapers would be right there with the smallest calling of their names. It served as your escape when it used to be the very reason you hated your existence.

The manor has become home and perhaps the only reason it’s able to be such a thing is because of what you’ve built it to be.

You want to escape, to return to it and simply hide in it and have no one bother you until you’re ready to step out yourself.

On the bench where Alexander sat this morning, you take your seat and close your eyes, trying to manipulate your mind into thinking you aren’t in Norway, that you’re back in Seoul, back at the manor, and not somewhere far, far away.

It’s exhausting doing this, your revenge plan. It’s exhausting having to put up a front, exhausting having to freeze up and recall unwanted memories that you wish could bury forever in the back of your mind.

But buried memories can’t always stay buried. They return, eventually, in time, whether you’re prepared or not.

You can’t tell how much time has passed but when you feel something against your feet accompanied by small little pants, you open your eyes to find the little puppy that accepted you from the moment he laid eyes on you.

You look down at him and he returns your gaze with a tilt in his head, tail wagging, and swirls about in a circle once before using his nose to poke at your leg again. He reminds you of the children at The Academy, how they’ve never been scared of you despite wanting to always push them away with your cold demeanor. It’s like Kiwi sees right through you, just like them, and in your silence, you pick up the small little thing to bring him onto your lap.

His tail wags a little more and when you run your hand through his fur, he gets a little more excited and affectionate.

Besides the children, there’s someone else you see in him.

“You remind me of someone,” you say as he nuzzles into the feeling of your palm. “Though unlike you, he wasn’t too fond of me in the beginning. It took some time for him to warm up but once he got to that point, he wouldn’t stop following me around.”

You fall silent again, thinking, remembering, reminiscing, and your fingers stop playing around with the little puppy on your lap.

The memories aren’t as hazy as they used to be, they’re a little clearer, a little closer to home. You can feel it in your heart when something feels like it’s just stabbed it, and in your stomach when you feel a little drop.

“I’m sorry for being selfish,” a voice whispers into your ear. “I’m sorry for only ever thinking about myself.”

But the thing about that is, you cannot be sorry for something that is within your nature, you cannot be sorry for wanting to put yourself first in a cruel, cruel world. When everything feels wrong, when the world feels like it’s always against you, when you do not know who to put your trust in.

If you were a little more mature and a little more brave, would you have been able to tell him the things you want to say now?

Things like; it wasn’t your fault. Things like; it’s alright, and you’re okay, and rest well.

Rest well, rest well, rest well.

You lean your head forward to the sky, gaze closed, as if hoping the things you spoke within your heart could be heard from him wherever he stays.

And as the silence continues, you feel your consciousness eventually slip away as your shoulders loosen their tensions with the feel of the little puppy resting well in your lap.

You didn’t realize it, that you had fallen asleep, but you know yourself waking when you feel a presence closing in and immediately opening your eyes to meet the old man who has a blanket hovered before you, his eyes falling a little surprised because he hadn’t expected you to wake up so easily.

“It’s good to put your guard down a little, you know,” Alexander says with a small chuckle as you accept the blanket to drape it behind you.

“I’ve learned my lesson with that,” you answer him and scoot over to the edge of the bench in order to make room for him.

He takes his seat beside you though leaves enough space in between and you’re thankful this man is observant. Kiwi’s awake but remains quiet and still, head resting against his paws with his tail swaying side to side.

“Do you have anyone you can trust in this world?” Alexander crosses a leg over the other and you look at your watch to see that it’s about four in the morning.

You managed to sleep in an unfamiliar place while knowing there weren’t any Reapers that could come to you at any second. How odd.

“There are always chances someone can stab you in the back.” Maybe the presence of Kiwi helped you. “It’s never a good idea to put your full trust in anyone.”

“You say that but one day you might come to know it feels rather nice putting unconditional faith in someone.”

You shake your head, brows furrowing. “Even if that someone has a good heart and good intentions, it doesn’t mean it hurts any less.”

There’s only been one person you know you can truly trust but he’s gone from this world, only ever being able to see him again when he wishes to visit you in your dreams. He’s the only person you’d ever allow to hurt you over and over again, even if it isn’t the real version of him.

Mister Butler can hate you and betray you but you’d let him do it again and again and maybe that’s because in your heart, you know those versions that the nightmares give you are simply from your own imagination and that he’d never truly come to hate you. He’s incapable of betraying your trust. Someone like him, who stayed by your side when he didn’t have to, isn’t a man who can have his heart easily swayed into hating you.

“Are you tired of betrayal?”

“I’m tired of everything,” you admit and he looks at you up and down, eyes narrowing slightly.

“And yet here you are, out in Norway.” Alexander knows a thing or two, he isn’t dumb, and you aren’t someone to think otherwise. He wouldn’t be in the position he is now if he was, and you don’t deny what he implies in his words. “You run straight into the very things that make you tired.”

“Because it is the only way I can feel alive.” You look on straight ahead before you, watching the pretty sky that pokes out from behind the plants of the greenhouse. “Otherwise I’d be in my room, rotting away. There is no purpose in running away, there is no purpose in leaving things be. My father did not leave this world for me to simply carry on as if he never existed.”

Some may take that as you carrying on your father’s legacy and whatever Alexander is thinking, you don’t care too much for it because all it matters is what you know. You didn’t kill your father just to stay silent for the rest of your life. His death was the beginning of everything.

Your turning point.

“And no one can stop a mind that’s already been made up.” Alexander nods, understanding, and doesn’t push for answers, but perhaps in the back of his mind, he’s a little curious about you and your goals and aspirations in this life. What drives you, what made you into the sort of person you are today, but Alexander is wise unlike many old men you’ve met throughout your life, so he doesn’t question things beyond your boundary.

And so he diverts the subject once again, turning it to the puppy in your lap.

“Perhaps you should adopt a pet of your own, to help you ease your mind a little,” he tells you with a fond gaze at Kiwi. “Humans can be quite disappointing, but a loyal pet will stay loyal for the rest of its life. Not to mention they’re the greatest comfort when someone needs it.”

Maybe that’s true. Maybe you should turn to a dog rather than humans in your time of need. Humans are disappointing creatures after all. But, “It’s too much of a hassle,” you say. “I can’t even take care of my own self properly, it’d be unwise of me to try and take care of another being.”

“...Is that so?”

It becomes a daily occurrence; the talks in the greenhouse, and soon you come to realize that Alexander isn’t one to let just anyone into his greenhouse. The doors that are usually locked during hours when one should be asleep are kept open, and perhaps that’s because he’s come to realize that you don’t sleep a lot, at least not in the house of a stranger, so he leaves them open for you to visit when you need your space.

And in the morning, around four or five AM when he awakens, he’ll come along and strike up a conversation and the two of you will speak about the things he brings up. Things like Seoul and of the Reaper gang, sometimes he’ll ask of Master Kitagawa, other times he’ll ask how far your skills go.

You speak to him in vague terms, careful not to tell him everything, but he comes to know that you were an only child, married once in an arranged marriage, but divorced. He doesn’t seem too surprised by that fact probably because everyone knows this happens all the time.

And in him knowing a little more about you, you come to know a little more about him as well.

Like when Kiwi came into his life and the fact that he’s had other pets throughout his lifetimes before but they’ve all died and left him.

You asked him why he continues adopting pets when he knows they don’t live as long as humans do, why he hurts himself over and over again, but he simply smiles and says that sometimes being able to love is better than being lonely. That it doesn’t matter how many times he has to watch them die and that he’d never regret loving them.

Alexander believes in reincarnation, that the souls of his first puppy dies and returns in the form of the other pets he’s had, so he’s never truly lonely, and something about that, believing in such a thing, though it sounds a bit absurd, is a little bit beautiful in its own way.

If you could believe Mister Butler died and returned through someone else, it’d be a nice delusion to live in, and despite the fact that there have been one or two guys that have reminded you of him, the truth is, no one can ever be Mister Butler.

Not Hoseok. Not Mingyu.

Because Mister Butler is like family. He was. 

Through your marriage with Namjoon, he was your older brother, but he always felt closer to a father figure to you, and perhaps that’s because your father was never there for you. Mingyu is closer to an older brother. A companion. A friend.

And Hoseok?

The one that got away.

The right person at the wrong time.

And because of that fact, you don’t allow yourself to be near him for too long, hence denying his companionship when Jungkook told you it’d probably be better if Hoseok were standing guard at your side rather than him.

It’s true, Hoseok would be better. You wouldn’t be as cautious towards him as you are of Jungkook, but it’s that exact reason that you cannot let him near.

You cannot let him shake your core, so you endure what you can and let Jungkook stay near you despite the constant reminder of what he did all those years ago.

It’s not entirely his fault but as you’ve said, it doesn’t hurt any less.

In your time getting closer to Alexander, he’s refused the appearance of Karl several times. Asher says if he has to, his grandfather will meet him elsewhere. Just not in the house. The guy has come to guess that you’re here because of Karl, and if he’s guessed it, maybe Alexander has too.

Though the old man never brings it up despite the plenty of chances during your greenhouse talks.

“Any progress?”

Dawn remains in the sky as ever and while Jungkook sleeps, you sit on the windowsill to take a call from the other side of the world. It’s a bit chilly to head out today so you stay indoors this time, making sure to keep your voice low.

“Plenty. It’s been quite peaceful these days, it feels a bit out of place.” Alexander’s kindness wasn’t something you expected the first day you walked into Norway. You expected things to be harder after meeting Asher but surprisingly, things are quite…easy, to say the least. “I have a feeling it won’t last too long.”

“No?” Namjoon sounds a little confused on his end. “Why do you say that? Should we come over earlier than planned?”

“No, don’t do that. Come as scheduled,” you say and look away from the window to the man who’s moved from sleeping on the armchair to the bed. It took some time to convince him initially but eventually Jungkook agreed to take the bed since you don’t really sleep anyway.

“You have something planned, don’t you?” There’s some suspicion in his voice and you want to laugh a little at how things are right now.

Who would have thought you’d be back on speaking terms with the man you thought you’d push away for good? But here he is, back and ready to give you his trust. You don’t know if he’s smart or stupid or both. Maybe there’s a bit of both, but it probably took some time for him to consider it, being as the whole thing was about his brother whom he loves very dearly.

Namjoon’s finally using his head.

Though you aren’t too sure if you like it so much.

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.”

“Y/N.”

“It’s nothing bad.”

“I don’t know if I can trust those words so easily. The last time you left the country, you disregarded your life just for that plan of yours.”

“Listen.” You roll your eyes. “I’ll be fine.”

There’s a pause on his end before he speaks again. “You didn’t assure me that you won’t do something reckless,” he notes and you internally click your tongue, “which means that feeling of the peace not lasting for long is you actively causing that to happen.” When you don’t respond, he goes on. “Will you stop being so secretive and let me know what you’re thinking? Maybe then you won’t be in the same position you were with Leehyun, and me and my boys and the Reapers will know how to help you.”

Well.

“You can’t keep hiding, Y/N. Stop being so reckless, you’re too reckless.”

“Watch me.”

He lets out a heavy sigh. “That wasn’t a challenge.”

“No?”

Another sigh and he knows he can’t win. “Just…if you decide it’s better for me to go over sooner rather than later, let me know. I’ll be waiting. Right here, just a phone call away.”

“...Sure.”

You don’t think too much about it. You don’t want to think too much about it. 

So when the cloud gives way to the sun and it shines higher in the sky, you finally take up Karl’s request to have tea and catch up, deciding you shouldn’t keep running away from what you’re trying to face.

You have Yeonjun stay by your side this time, rather than Jungkook, in case Karl says something out of line and Jungkook will hear more things than you want him to. You stay in the garden of Alexander’s mansion, keeping a little distance away from the building itself, and with the feel of eyes from a window behind you, the conversation begins.

“I remember him,” Karl points at your escort when he takes his first sip of the tea. “Jun? Joon?” Yeonjun doesn’t make an effort to fix him and simply remains quiet. “Right, never one to talk but always by your side.” His eyes settle back on you, a small glint of mirth in them. “You have quite the loyal companion.”

“Yes..I do.” You ignore his gaze to take a sip of your own tea, keeping your replies short.

“I’m still a bit hurt you didn’t reach out to me about your father’s death. We were good friends, you knew that.”

Of course you did. “I apologize, it slipped my mind.”

“Slipped your mind?” He raises a brow, unconvinced. “Hmm…and here I thought, I left a good impression in those four months I stayed in Seoul.”

You did. 

You did indeed leave an impression that will last a lifetime.

“Maybe I should have tried harder?”

That mirth in his eyes. Again.

You want to punch him.

“How did he die though? The man I knew isn’t someone who would have easily died and he would have updated me about his health had he fallen ill.”

“He was betrayed,” you say, not batting an eye, and Karl puts his cup down after hearing that.

His eyes are blown out. “Your father? Betrayed? And he didn’t see that coming?”

“They were smart.”

“Even still..” He can’t believe it, though you don’t blame him too much. The father you both know is not someone who’s easily trusting of others, therefore he’s always right there to pick out someone who will betray him before they can execute their plan. 

That’s why it took so long to manipulate him into believing you were a daughter full on worshiping his ground without an ounce of betrayal in your veins. That’s why your masterful plan took so long. You had to convince your father into believing he had won in manipulating you to his side when all along, you had been waiting to stab him in the back. Facing a man like him, smart, calculating, a manipulating gaslighter who thinks the world centers around him requires more than just simple brains and planning.

It took years to execute your plans and even then you feel like you could have done better with everything. For one, not letting anyone see what had happened, aka Bangtan. But what’s done is done. Dwelling on past mistakes is just stupid and a waste of time.

“And what about you?” When Karl points the finger at you, his gaze narrows, brows slightly furrowed. “You’re his daughter, his perfect little doll. You didn’t see that someone was plotting your father’s death? Is it not your job to protect him?”

“That’s right,” you give him nothing to fight against, just simply accepting the accusations placed upon you. “I failed in protecting him. I am an incompetent daughter who should have done better.”

Karl stands up, running a hand through his hair. “Your father did all that he could for you and still, you–” 

When he looks at you again and meets the gaze you send him, his word stops mid-sentence. Your stare isn’t threatening, it isn’t a glare, nor one that is meant to scare him off, yet something in them lies a hidden threat either way, were he to continue speaking. Karl, seeing that, lets out a chuckle and he closes in on you, patting you on the shoulder before simply leaving his hand there.

You look at it for a second before giving him the attention he wants as he leans in, nose inches away from you.

“Your father created you into the weapon that you are today, my dear little Y/N, and you’ve even been trained under Kitagawa, so why is it that you failed to protect him? Huh? Tell me.”

From the corner of your eye, Yeonjun moves slightly closer, though he keeps his distance and doesn’t dare to make a move unless you instruct him otherwise.

The breath against your face, the touch of skin burning through the thin cloth of your dress, the sides of your knees meeting one another, back straightening up, heels rising from the ground, fingers intertwined into each other, sitting on your lap.

You keep your eyes open, meeting his gaze, but internally you’re counting in your head and holding your breath, hearing the beat of your heart that might as well rip through your rib cages and past the barrier of your skin to physically beat widely before Karl himself.

Maybe he hears it, maybe he can feel it, but whether he does or not, he has no will to move away from you and you know Karl, he isn’t dumb. He knows exactly the effect he has on you right now. He saw it, knows just how you felt all those weeks ago when you were in the living room and he touched you.

He knows and doesn’t care one bit.

Just as he was all those years ago.

They never change.

“What is it that you want from me, Karl?” He doesn’t fix you into calling him uncle this time. “Do you want me to repent on my knees and beg for forgiveness? My father’s already six feet underground, it’s not as if he’ll hear me now, but as his close friend, if you wish for me to do just that, I will. Just for you.”

There’s malice in his eyes, a scoff that leaves him when he watches you, and finally, he moves back. Just a little. “You’ve gotten quite bold, haven’t you? Now that your father isn’t here to teach you a lesson.”

“And if I have? What will you do about it?” You push back, leaning forward, challenging him despite your body screaming at you to run away. “Go ahead and do whatever you’d like with me, there’s no one here right now that can stop you. I can tell Yeonjun to pluck his eyes out right now and he’ll do just that. He won’t say a word and he won’t move unless I tell him otherwise.”

At the mention of the boy, Karl looks over between you and him, and then something in him lights up slightly as if he’d just remembered something. As if he’d just realized something.

“That’s right...what loyal companions…” He steps back, releasing your shoulder, and tilts his head back as he laughs obnoxiously. “Is this all about that little boy I messed with? Him?” The laugh rings a little louder, a little more crazed. “You pretend you’re so cold and have no feelings and yet here you are, chasing after me all the way from Seoul, just for a boy, the second you got the chance. If your father were still here, he wouldn’t have let that happen, but now that he’s gone…-”

He pauses again, and after hurling over laughing, stands back up straight again as the laugh dies all too abruptly. So you stand up from your seat, the corner of your lip curling over as you notice just why he’s gone silent.

By now the tea is slowly getting cold but you don’t care much for it as you stand tall, hands held together before you in a formal manner.

“The person who betrayed him…” His eyes narrow. “Who was it?”

“Oh uncle,” you mock that title, mirth in your eyes, “I think you know exactly where that answer lies.”

Danger.

Something screams danger when his gaze darkens in realization.

And yet you seem to only be attracted to danger as it is the only thing you’ve ever gotten used to seeing every day. The danger of being born as a mafia heir, married to a mafia powerhouse, spiraled into a hellhole you cannot ever seem to escape so you run towards it.

Directly into the fire.

Into the danger.

Provoking your enemies, knowing exactly just what their reactions will be, because danger seems to be the one thing in your life that will never leave and abandon you out of nowhere. The only thing you can forever trust to catch you were you to fall blindly into it.

And blindly you fall, trusting it to come.

And comes it goes, directly your way.

Never disappointing.

Never disappointing.

Namjoon called you reckless and for the first time in forever, you might have to agree with him. Because being reckless means not caring for the consequences to come after committing a rash action. The reckless ones do not care what happens to them, they live off adrenaline, they run towards the fire when everyone else runs away.

Towards the danger despite knowing there will always be a chance they may not survive. Unheeding, stubborn, thoughtless, careless, negligent, imprudent. Unwise, unwary, incautious, hasty.

A fool.

A fool.

A fool.

But misguided and left on their own. Lonely, abandoned, hurt, isolated, rejected, forsaken. An outcast and unloved, a disappointment and broken.

Broken.

A broken little soul whose heart lies empty with a hole pierced through the middle.

You are reckless. You are broken.

And broken things do not know how to save themselves, they only know the warmth of the fire. That is the only thing they can rely on.

So you stay within his vicinity, within Karl’s reach, watching, simply standing there, keeping still, as if keeping vigil. Like you’re just waiting, just expecting for something, anything, the inevitable, to happen. And when it comes in the form of a harsh, harsh slap across the face that has your body turning over to the side and having to hold onto the table to keep your balance, you can’t even say that you are surprised.

It feels like being in the presence of your father all over again, in the face of danger, of a manipulator, of a gaslighter, of an abuser.

He returns hard and so vividly in the form of anger, in the form of a ghost, a spirit whom you see standing right behind Karl. He stands as still as ever, hands held behind his back, simply watching.

Watching.

While you stand before him in front of a man he’s using to command orders over him. Using violence through others because father never raises his hands, father never puts in the effort or strength or power into physical forms. He does it through others, he commands through others, he hurts through others.

Watching until he’s satisfied.

But he’s never satisfied. He’s never satisfied.

And on your end, you can do nothing but accept it all willingly.

There is nothing else you can do, there is nothing else that can be done. It is like being in his presence all over again. Yeonjun, the Reapers behind you, standing still, told to not do a thing, to not move an inch, and your father behind the violence, keeping silent with a deadly gaze.

You return to the past.

You see him.

He’s right there.

And Karl raises his hand again.

💜💜💜

cry me a river | the habits

— summary: you are a weapon and weapons do not weep

— pairing: bts x reader

— genre: angst, mafia!au

— word count: 6.4k

— warnings: physical abuse, violence, mentally unstable mindset

— PART 25 / previous post / masterpost

One.

Two.

Three.

The seconds will pass. The minutes will fly. The hours will go.

You’re alright.

Endure it. Endure it.

It will pass.

Everything will pass just as everything has always passed.

In time, father will raise his hand to indicate them to stop. A stop signal. He may leave the room out of boredom but he will return just as he always does in order to demand them to leave you alone. He will never be satisfied but there is always a limit to everything and father sometimes gets too bored to keep seeing it, to keep hearing it, so he’s always there to stop it.

Eventually.

Eventually.

You just have to endure it for now until the signal comes, until—

“What are you doing?!”

You didn’t realize it and perhaps that’s because you blacked out, your mind keeping you from feeling it all completely, trying to protect you, but you’re sitting on the ground when a call demands out an answer in a loud, commanding voice, and a rushing of a pair of feet running over to push Karl off you.

Asher punches Karl right in the face, throwing him off you, before demanding the guards he has with him to hold the man back.

“She provoked me!” Karl argues like a child in a kid’s play.

He’s never been abruptly stopped before. Always angry, never satisfied.

Nothing is ever enough when it comes to the two of them. 

Karl landing hurt through his fists and weapons and anything he can get a hand on. Your father landing hurt through his commands, watching and watching and watching.

And you, their victim, who has to stay down and accept it all until there is a small amount of satisfaction that calls at them to stop.

You always wait on that call, no matter how much endurance it takes.

“That doesn’t make it right to lay your hand on a woman!” Asher retorts with anger laced in his tone, and this anger, despite how different it is from that of Karl’s, still shakes you violently though you keep as still as ever, paralyzed.

Paralyzed.

Even when the anger does not fall on you, even when he does not turn to you but towards the companion who stands behind you, who had stood still this whole time. “And what are you doing? Your boss was getting hit and you just stood there?”

Yeonjun, with a snap on cue, kneels over to your side and looks down at you with widened eyes and a frozen expression. He doesn’t touch you right away, cautious, but you see what those eyes mean, you know exactly what that expression is telling you.

That he, too, had reverted back to the past.

When your father still lived, when he had to stand by and watch everything without moving a muscle.

He reverted back just as you had.

Two little kids, who're still affected by the traumas of the past.

Two little kids.

You take Yeonjun’s hand, giving him the permission to touch you, so he helps you back onto your feet and the two of you remain in silence as you walk off with his help, not daring to look Karl in the eyes, not caring to reply to Asher.

But you feel yourself trembling with the presence of a pair of eyes boring right into your back. Not from Asher or Karl or the two guards but from someone else.

The ghost of him.

Of that man.

That man named father.

.

.

.

“Y/N?” There’s concern in Jungkook’s voice when you walk into the room and you guess that’s probably because of the state you’re in, but right now you can’t entertain him so you simply hold a hand up, asking him to stay back, and Jungkook, though worried, leaves the room on your behalf.

When you’re left alone with Yeonjun, you let your legs give in to sit on the floor rather than finding a chair or taking a seat on the bed.

The floor is comfortable. It’s always been more comfortable.

The boy takes your heels off, along with your jacket, and despite the sting of the pain that aches over your body, the only thing on your mind is the fact that you let it happen so easily, that you allowed yourself to walk back into that state of being an obedient and perfect little doll.

You reverted back to the damages just when you thought after father’s death, you wouldn’t let anyone walk over you anymore.

But it isn’t easy.

It isn’t easy.

And it will never be easy.

Father still lives in your head rent free and there’s nothing you can do about it. No matter how much time has passed, nothing will change. It’s already been a little over a year since his death but he’s still here, still thriving, mocking you, taunting you, controlling everything that you are.

You’re shaking, trembling, not just out of fear but out of anger. Angry at yourself. For being so weak, for reverting back, for thinking things could get better.

And with Yeonjun the only one here with you at the moment, you lean into his touch and let yourself into his arms to allow the sort of warmth only your Reapers can provide you.

Yeonjun’s heartbeat won’t be the same as Mingyu’s, it’s probably even beating rapidly right now, so you don’t let your ear rest against his chest and instead wrap your arms over his neck and climb into his lap to lay your cheek against his shoulder.

Yeonjun brings his hand over to rub down your back but he’s a little awkward and unsure because he’s never really had to do this; comforting you. It’s always been Mingyu, and if Mingyu wasn’t there, it’d be Yuna, and if Yuna couldn’t do it, it’d be Dasom, or someone else.

Anyone else.

He’s only a kid after all, just eighteen years old, the youngest of your Reapers, but because no one else is here, he does his best to pick up the role that’s been given unto him.

Yet you feel him tremble slightly himself and you guess that in some way, he must be afraid as well.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers to you. “I didn’t…I…”

You know what he’s trying to say, that he failed you, that he couldn’t protect you. But can you really blame him? Because just as you’ve been trained to endure through the pains and take everything that’s given unto you, Yeonjun, the Reapers, were trained to stand by and watch.

Habits are scary.

Frightening.

And because you don’t know how to console him and he doesn’t know how to console you, the two of you remain in silence simply holding onto one another.

Just two little kids having to rely on each other.

Just two little kids.

And after a little while, when things have settled a little more, when he starts shaking a little less, Yeonjun gathers himself and forces himself out of the state he’s in.

He stands up and you watch him leave for a second, not too long, because he rushes, and returns with materials in hand to begin tending to you. It remains as quiet as ever between the two of you, but you see the way his brows furrow in concentration and he stops himself from staying in the mindset of a teenager.

Of a child.

He becomes an adult, a reliable adult. For you. Applying what’s needed on the bruises that have swelled up, wrapping your arm with bandages, and when you frown with disgust at the sight of the white wrapping on you, wanting it off, complaining, he doesn’t fall into your trap and stands his ground just as he’s seen Mingyu do plenty of times.

Yeonjun gets frightened of you at times but he always listens to your every command and does all that you ask him within a heartbeat, but today he grows a pair of wings and knocks you lightly on the head with his knuckles when you try to push him away, when you get stubborn with him.

“Do you want to die?” You glare at him but he doesn’t give in.

“You can kill me after I treat you,” he says and continues his ministrations.

“I hate it,” you tell him. “I don’t like it, this…this white.” You try to scratch at yourself but he grabs your hand before you can and your face scrunches up with anguish. “Get it off me.” 

You tug the pearls on your neck and it scatters onto the floor but you don’t care and move on to the white dress, yet Yeonjun stops you once more.

“You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I’m not weak.”

“I never said you were.” And because he knows the signs, because he’s seen it plenty of times in you, he grabs the sleeve, rips it, then the hem of the dress, and tears that as well without doing too much. “See? Look. Imperfect.” You hate perfect things and seeing that, the tears of the dress, alleviate a bit of your drumming heartbeat, so Yeonjun grabs a pair of scissors to start cutting off bits of your dress.

All your life you’ve been told to be perfect, that everything you do must be under the command of your father. He made you into his perfect little doll, his perfect little weapon, prepared you for the battlefield, prepared you for war.

For the war that he brought, for the war that was his.

Or rather, he was the war itself.

You are a weapon, and weapons do not weep. Weapons are used and weapons do not run off on their own. Weapons are perfect, they fire at the command of their owner, they’re silent when told, and left to waste if they do not do their job.

You’ve never wanted to be left to waste, you’ve never wanted to be dropped back into an empty room, the White Room, and never picked up again.

“I look broken,” you utter a whisper as if shocked at the image of yourself when you look down at the mess of your dress and the white bandages on your body. Your brows are knitted, teeth grinding on each other, fingers dug into the skin of your palm, eyes red but as always, they refuse to cry.

Because weapons do not weep.

And Yeonjun, for a second, almost panics, thinking he did something wrong, but in Mingyu’s wise words, “Just because it looks like I know what I’m doing when it comes to boss does not mean that is the truth. It is far from the truth. There are times when it feels like I’ve messed up, times when I’m about to panic because she responds differently from what I imagined, but you cannot ever show her that you do not know what you’re doing. Ever. Just pretend when you’re in that position, and if you’re good at pretending, she won’t know a thing,” Yeonjun quickly pulls himself back up.

“You don’t look broken,” he puts the scissors down and takes your two trembling fists. “You look imperfect.”

You look imperfect.

Imperfect.

It does the trick.

He sees the way the crease between your brows starts to soften, how your clenched jaw loosens, the way you let him help your fingers unravel from the strength they held digging into yourself, and how your shoulders fall a bit from being so hunched up.

“I look imperfect?” You ask him, eyes wide and puppy-like, darting right to him and though they shake slightly, they look towards him for an answer, for reassurance, to detect any lie, to seek for the truth. But also pleading, also begging for him to say just that.

Even if the lie must disguise itself as the truth.

“You do,” so Yeonjun lies skillfully. “You look imperfect, boss.”

There’s a breath of relief, quiet and subtle, and it comes in a whisper just barely there. Yeonjun keeps you close and presses a palm to your chest, just where your heartbeat strums.

“Now count,” he tells you. “Mingyu says counting is good, right? Count until he gets here.”

“Is he coming?” You ask when he takes both your hands to take over where his palm once lay.

“Yes,” he lies again. He hasn’t made the call yet. “Soon.”

“You have to stay here.”

“I will.”

“No one can come in.”

“I know.”

“Don’t talk to him, don’t let Karl anywhere near me.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“I’m tired.”

“Alright, come here.” He pulls you in carefully into his lap, in his arms, and you let yourself be warmed and comforted in his arms once more, this time with your back pressed to his chest.

“I don’t want to sleep,” you tell him. “The nightmares…they’ll come. He’ll come. He’ll visit. And he’ll try to make me perfect all over again.”

He. Your father.

“I don’t want to be perfect.” It isn’t a command, it’s a plea. A desperate cry for help.

“Then don’t sleep. But count the heartbeats, yeah? Count.” The soft lure of his voice, gentle, encouraging.

With hands still pressed against your chest, you let your ear tune out everything else in order to hear the beat of your heart so that you can start counting them.

One. Two. Three…

It’s fast and you know that you can’t completely count every individual one of them but you try your best to simply concentrate on only that while your eyes stare out at the window a few feet away. The sun shines brightly from the opened curtains and there’s a small little bird perched on the closest tree.

It jumps onto a branch and rests there with its head moving about in different directions.

There are pretty white clouds up above and one of the bigger ones shapes like a castle and you imagine fairies up there, hiding.

There’s another cloud that looks like a cat and another one shaped like a ghost.

The wind blows and your eyes turn back to the bird that flies off.

Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five…

It’s slowing down, just slightly.

.

.

.

“I heard what happened this afternoon.”

Kiwi keeps you distracted as he nibbles with your finger. You can’t recall when he’s decided to hang around you rather than his own master whenever you’re around but at least it gives you a reason to not look someone in the eyes.

“Would you like to tell me what happened from your perspective?”

Thirty-something years old. You can’t even remember just how old you are but lately, it hasn’t mattered in the slightest because you feel much younger than what you actually are. Like you’re twenty-something. Even a teen. It doesn’t feel like you’ve aged much.

Your birthday hasn’t been celebrated since your time at the Bangtan manor but it doesn’t really matter. Nothing really matters.

Because you feel like a kid back under the control of your father, having to do what you’re told, obeying his every command like someone who can’t do anything on her own.

Under scrutiny.

“What did Karl tell you?” You pop a question of your own, eyes still unfocused, mind still trying to pretend you’re fine, that you’re okay in a room full of strangers.

There’s only one stranger but a stranger nonetheless.

“He said you provoked him.”

“That’s right.” You don’t deny it and instead nod, expression blank so that Alexander cannot tell what’s going on inside your head. And maybe he does, maybe all of this faking is futile because he’s so wise, but you don’t care. You keep still, you keep vague, and you remain cold.

“Is that so…?” He trails off, perhaps thinking, and you can feel his eyes never leaving you. “And what was it that you did to have provoked him?”

“I told him something he didn’t like.”

“And what’s that?”

“That I killed his best friend.”

“And did you?”

“I did.”

“And who was that?”

“My father.”

He pauses, perhaps because he hadn’t expected that answer but you’re sure he’s thinking back on the moment when you first mentioned your father to him. The “story” you gave him was that your father passed away and was a good friend of Karl’s, though you never mentioned anything else about it. 

And now here’s the answer; you killed him yourself.

“Is that why you let Karl do what he did?” He asks you. “Because you thought you deserved the punishment for what you did? Some people may not regret their actions but they’ll let the person most affected do something against them. Was that how it was?”

No.

No, not at all.

You didn’t let Karl hurt you because you knew he’d be hurt by what you did. You didn’t let him hurt you because you thought he at least deserved to lash his anger out on you. Or that you felt bad. Or that you wanted some sort of punishment. Or that you were repenting.

You let Karl hurt you because you’d always let him hurt you, just as you’d always let everyone hurt you.

Because that was how it always was.

A habit.

Being the weaker one, being the one who would chant the words endure, endure because that was what was instilled in you from the moment Mister Butler died. You cannot get out of your habits that easily, you do not just get stronger because you vow to yourself you will.

You don’t just get stronger and you certainly don’t just decide ‘I won’t let anyone step over me anymore’ and succeed on the first try.

Or the second try.

Or the third.

Even the tenth or hundredth time.

You let Karl hurt you because you were used to it and your body, remembering how it always was before your father died, returned to those habits.

The habits of staying still, the habits of enduring all that came at you.

“Yes.” But you lie because what else is there to say? You lie because there is nothing else to say. Because you don’t want to tell the truth. Because the truth means explaining and explaining means opening up and opening up means trusting and trusting never ends well.

You lie because you have to.

“That is all there is to it.” You put Kiwi down onto the floor and stand up straight, making sure to look in the old man’s direction with your hands held together in a formal stance. “Karl’s story is the whole truth. I deserved what he did, for killing his best friend, for killing my father.”

His brows are furrowed and you sense doubt in his eyes but because he has no proof and because you’re not willing to share anything else with him, he can’t push you too hard about the matter. “Whether that is the truth or not, do you really think a man much older and bigger has the right to hurt a woman younger and smaller in stature? No–” he fixes his sentence, “do you think a man is in his right to hurt a woman?”

“A man is capable of hurting anything that he wishes to hurt. He is in the power to do so.”

“You are strong, Y/N.” He stands to meet your eyes, serious, calm, and collected, but there’s a little twitch in his brows to indicate that he feels a bit frustrated by the situation. “You are capable of dodging his attacks. Even if a man were much bigger and stronger than you, you have the brains to outsmart them. You don’t look like someone who will easily let someone else step all over you.”

No. You are exactly just that. You are still the little girl you thought had changed. You’re still weak.

“So I’ll ask you again, Y/N; why did you let Karl hurt you?”

You hate feeling caged in and right now, despite the fact that only Alexander stands in this room, you feel eyes from all over. And maybe that’s just you being paranoid, maybe you’re just making it all up in your head, but you hate every bit of it. 

Every bit of this.

“I gave you my answer, take it with a grain of salt. Do not pretend to be on my side.” And with that, you turn your back to him and walk off without another word.

Alexander doesn’t chase after you but you feel his eyes.

It’s ironic the way you’re supposed to be the one trying to gain his favor and yet this happens; you pushing him away and putting up your walls. And Asher makes sure to remind you of that.

“Isn’t the whole point of you being here to gain his favor?”

He stops you in the middle of the hall when you’re heading back to the guest room.

“Why?” He asks, genuinely curious, maybe even with a bit of genuine concern in that tone.

“Maybe I’m tired,” you say in a quiet voice.

“Of?”

“Of trying to be likable.”

He hums, considering the answer with his arms crossed over his chest and leaning against the wall. “And that young bodyguard of yours,” he brings up Yeonjun, “he may be a kid but don’t you think he deserves punishment for failing you?”

“No.” You reply easily and Asher raises a brow.

“You won’t punish him?”

“I don’t blame him.”

He watches you as if you were a strange being, like you weren’t making sense, though there’s a bit of unease that marks his features, some sort of disturbance that troubles his thoughts and you realize that you’ve said too much so you start walking again.

“My people aren’t allowed to act unless I tell them to.”

But Asher doesn’t want to leave it with just that. “You wanted my uncle to hurt you?”

“Nobody wants to get hurt willingly, Asher.”

“Then what is it?”

You’re talking too much.

“It is none of your concern, that’s what it is.” With that, you pick up your steps and walk into the room before he can push you any further.

Jungkook is in there when you walk in, and although being left in a room with just him should trigger some sort of response, surprisingly you don’t tremble that easily and perhaps that’s due to the fact that somehow, in some way, your body just knows that Jungkook doesn’t pose any threat to you. Perhaps because somehow, in some way, you’ve learned to put some trust in him in just the slightest way through the times he’s spent acting as your guard.

It’s been a little over a month.

Mingyu came here prior to your meeting with Alexander and surprisingly you didn’t need him as much as you thought you did. You think that’s because Yeonjun managed to calm you down well, despite his perpetual fear in the beginning. He picked himself up in time, after all, and was there for you by mirroring what Mingyu would have done.

Maybe in some ways, your right hand man has trained all the Reapers in how to respond to you when he isn’t around.

He took Yeonjun away for something, though right now you aren’t too concerned about it.

“..Kook.”

You feel tired, you feel drained, and that’s why you’ve managed to only call Jungkook by a shortened name.

He’s responsive at the first call, despite how quiet your voice is, and when he sees that you’ve given him permission to come in close contact with you, he doesn’t hesitate to walk over to you.

“Do you need something?”

It’s odd the way you feel some sort of relief he’s as responsive as he used to be all those years ago. Maybe because a part of Jungkook will always remain the way that he always was, maybe that’s why you’ve learned to associate him with a figure that you can put a bit of trust in.

“When are they coming?”

“They?” He tilts his head and when you reach a hand out towards him, he takes it in order to help you because you feel your legs are weak in the knees.

“Namjoon. Them.” He takes you to the bed so that you can lie down.

“In a month or so,” he replies. “You said as much time as you need to gain Alexander’s favor but the latest would be in a month.”

You’re already winning so what’s the point in waiting? 

It’s been a month, over a month.

You just want to go home already.

“Can you call him?”

Jungkook looks for his phone. “What for?”

“Tell him to come earlier,” you say, body turned over towards him, cheek against the pillow, eyes drowsy. “In a week. I don’t…Karl has…I want him dead.”

For a second his thumb hovers over his phone to look back over at you and there he finds, the little girl he’s seen holding her walls up so high not even a plane can cross over, beginning to crumble in just the slightest way.

You look exhausted.

The makeup does not hide the bags under your eyes, it doesn’t hide the exhaustion, how drained you are over all of this. And maybe a part of that is due to your insisting to stay awake when you needed sleep but a big part of it is the mission itself.

Every mission is a little different from the other, but Jungkook has come to know that every one of them involves someone who has sucked all that sweet girl energy out of you. They’ve all done you wrong and it can’t be easy. It can’t be easy having to face all of them one by one, trying to deal with it all, trying to rid of them, and ultimately as a result, hurting yourself in the process.

“Kook?” Your eyes went closed for a second but upon his silence, you open them up again in order to look up at him, and due to your exhaustion, he finds the pretty girl he once loved all those years ago with the smallest voice as if calling out for him in a sense of help.

“I-I’ll call.” He’s flustered, slightly, but hits the call button with his thumb and walks towards the bathroom. “Stay awake, alright? I won’t be away for too long.”

He closes the door behind him to start looking around for something just as Namjoon picks up on the other end.

“Jungkook?”

“Y/N wanted me to tell you to come earlier.”

“Earlier?” It’s surprising on his end because just the night before, you told him to stick to the original plan. “Did something happen?” Of course something must’ve happened for you to change your mind so quickly.

In some ways you’re just as stubborn as he is, so he knows you aren’t someone who will change your mind that easily.

“This afternoon, uh…” Jungkook hesitates, not sure if it’s okay to relay him the news but something tells him you probably expect Jungkook to not stay silent about it to the boys. They share everything with each other after all, and if you really cared, you wouldn’t have let him anywhere near you after what happened. “Karl, you know, after touching her when she felt uncomfortable?” He did mention the incident a few weeks ago to Namjoon already. “Well, Y/N took up his invitation to tea in order to catch up and stuff and I assume she pissed him off.”

Somehow, Namjoon expected that. After all, you hinted at doing something reckless during your call with him. 

“I’m not sure what happened exactly because I wasn’t there but Karl hit her.”

“What?” There’s some shuffling on the other end. “What do you mean hit her?”

“Not just once. She has bruises as a result.”

“Bruises?”

“I should get back to her, she might fall asleep but I’ll catch up with you later.” He doesn’t wait for Namjoon’s reply before cutting the call off and returning to your side out of worry that leaving you alone for too long won’t be good, and the fact that you might have actually fallen asleep on him.

Surprisingly you’re still awake, though your eyes are as droopy as they were when he left you.

“Can you turn over on your back?” Is the first thing he asks of you and you obey, turning over. The bed dips a little when he takes a seat beside you and that’s when you feel he begins to take your lashes off.

“You know there’s a lot of processes that go into taking off makeup, right?” You tell him when he takes the other one off.

“I know, bub, I’ve done it before.”

Right.

He’s helped you before.

“So just stay still, yeah? You don’t have to do anything.”

You listen to the lure of his voice, as soft as the way he used to speak to you all those years ago, and let your eyes close as he begins to swipe the makeup wipe over your face. It’s gentle the way he does it, almost as gentle as Dasom, and although he’s a little clumsy and isn’t as fast as she is, he does his best during it all.

When the makeup wipe is done, you feel your hair pushed back and a band coming over to keep it out of the way, then some sort of cloth on your chest and tied behind your neck.

Warm water walks over your face. Bits of it, not too much, not too little, so that you don’t get too wet anywhere else, and then the feel of soapy foam begins to rub in circles all over your face. The massage feels nice and you almost feel your consciousness slipping away but you keep awake to the touch of Jungkook’s hands.

About a minute later, he soaks a washcloth into water and starts to wipe the cleanser off you so that you don’t have to sit up and wash it off with water yourself.

It takes a moment but eventually, he gets it done, and then you feel a wet cotton pad swipe over next.

Something about all of this, the steps he memorized either for you from the past or the fact that he now does it himself regularly, feels rather domestic and just…soft.

And in your sleepy and tired state, you feel anything but uncomfortable, lured in with the feeling of basking on top of clouds with your head bathing under the warm sun with light little pitter patters of rain sprinkling over you.

You don’t know why you enjoy this so much despite how different it feels from when Dasom does it for you, but knowing that your trust is beginning to leak outside of Reapers somehow brings a sort of comfort you never thought you’d feel.

It’s a little frightening because trusting is always scary, especially for people that had once broken it, but for some reason, it just…feels right.

Somehow.

And maybe that’s because you know they were never at fault in the first place, that they were just forced into making an unwanted decision. 

Jung Hoseok would probably be in the same position as they were were he to realize the truth all those years ago. If he hadn’t gotten hurt on that mission. If he hadn’t been forced to lay on the infirmary bed in order to recover. If he hadn’t stood away from the six of them.

Even still, as you’ve said it plenty of times before, just because someone doesn’t mean them doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt.

In the safe space that they provided you, you were kicked out of your own comfort and forced to return to the hell you thought you had escaped.

“Why do you not cry?” His voice keeps you awake and when you look up at him through your lashes, eyes feeling quite dreary and heavy, he finds himself pausing in his ministrations as he stares down at you who’s looking up directly at him.

“Why do you ask that?” You return a question, voice just as soft.

Jungkook’s eyes trail down your face. “Karl…he…” he didn’t see what happened but the aftermath of it is right before his eyes. “And Leehyun and…..” He presses his lips together. “You have..so much to cry for.”

“...Do I now?”

“Is there nothing left?” He asks, a hand brushing back small strands of hair that tries to block your eyes.

You don’t nod because you’re too tired to move so you nod through a blink. “It’s all dried up.”

From the water that he used to clean your face, a drop falls from your lash and trails down your cheek, mirroring what a teardrop looks like, and then you say, “But…if I knew how to cry……do you think you deserve to see them?”

He doesn’t reply but you have your answer.

He doesn’t feel worthy.

This Jungkook and the Jungkook you once knew long ago are the same in the way they always feel unworthy of something. No matter how many times you can assure him, he will always think there is something he can do better, that he is undeserving, that he can never be enough.

But unlike idiots who simply say “I don’t deserve you” and go about their days after breaking your heart, Jungkook says it and steps up to do what he can to try and prove to himself that he can be someone deserving.

He always did all that he could and when there came a point when he looked as if he could finally come to terms with being at peace with his love for you, it was ripped away from him all too soon and now he’s back to square one, trying to prove himself.

Even if it isn’t in the form of love.

Jungkook will always care.

But even still,

“I still hate you.”

It comes out soft, it comes out quiet, and a little timid and a little brave, but you hadn’t meant for it to come out.

If you were wide awake, if you weren’t in such a vulnerable state, you would have never spoken those words to him. But because your consciousness is on the verge of slipping away, you speak them out loud for him to hear.

“I know.” And he replies in the same voice, the same softness, quiet, and timid, and brave.

He doesn’t leave your side even after those exchanges uttered unto each other and you fall asleep next to his presence, next to his comfort, next to his warmth.

.

.

.

Jungkook wasn’t there when Taehyung said he witnessed you sleepwalking but he said that it wasn’t the sort of sleepwalking you’d see in a normal person. He said you looked like a ghost more than anything, and that at times, you’d just stand still in the middle of the room and not move an inch.

No, not a ghost. A corpse.

And now here he is, after endless refusal to sleep and finally allowing your eyes to stay closed, he witnesses what Taehyung had meant.

A corpse standing still in the middle of the room, blanket over her shoulders, eyes staring up at the dim sky outside the window, blank and without any hint of life in them.

He watches you from a distance, a furrow in his brows, with his tongue bitten back and his fists clenched by his side.

Subtle anger lies in his heart, brewing, not at you but towards the world that has made you into the sort of person you are today. Or maybe it had always been this way, maybe you had always been hurting and he just never noticed, maybe it was always like this all along and maybe, perhaps, they made it worse when they left you all alone to fend for your own self.

Feeding you to the wolves.

He’s angry not just at the world but at himself and Jungkook knows that if the truth were to ever leave your lips about what actually happened to you, about all the things that you’ve gone through, he knows that this hatred he feels right now is only but a small fraction waiting to build up before it all breaks into the tiniest little pieces.

Shattering in the way he had broken you.

Shattered.

The world can only do so much but he encouraged it by standing by, by letting it all fall down onto you, by letting himself be convinced that you’d be fine, that everything would be alright.

But nothing turned out alright.

In the days and months and years that followed your absence, they returned to how things were, returned to loving one another, accepting one another, forgiving one another. But in those days and months and years, he can only imagine what sort of events you had to face.

While they had each other, while they always had each other to lean on, did you have anyone by your side?

The Reapers may be one thing, supporting you and giving you their utmost loyalty, but did they ever hold power over the things that happened to you in the way Namjoon could have handled it? In the way he would have handled it?

“Y/N?” You don’t answer him when he calls out to you but he expected that so he walks on over to where you’re standing.

You’re as still as ever, and he approaches with a careful, watchful gaze, hesitant when he reaches a finger over to you. 

A small touch to the blanket, just over your shoulder, and when you don’t freak out or move away from him, he puts two fingers. 

Then another.

Then another.

And when you don’t react to his hand, he proceeds to place a hand on your head and press it towards his chest.

You don’t resist.

“Come on, let’s head back to bed, yeah?” And understanding that you’re okay with him even in this lifeless state of yours, because he knows your body is capable of telling the people you trust and don’t trust apart, he puts his other hand under your knees and picks you up to carry you over back to the bed.

You comply well with him despite your unresponsive self, and when he tucks you back in with the blanket pulled over your chest, he looks back to see your eyes staring straight toward him. Empty yet lonely.

Vacant.

Not at him but through him, and his heart aches a little at the sight.

“You’re alright now,” Jungkook whispers. “You’re alright.”

If Hoseok had been here, would he have been able to do a better job looking after you?

Jungkook wishes he could have been better.

💜💜💜

The Way Of A Criminal: Chapter 5

Genre: Mafia!AU, Criminal!AU, Angst, Romance

Pairing: OT7 x Reader

Characters: Normal!Reader, Gangster!Namjoon, Gangster!Seokjin, Gangster!Yoongi, Gangster!Hoseok, Gangster!Jimin, Gangster!Taehyung, Gangster!Jungkook

Summary: Your father was a stranger, you never knew who he was and what he did. But one day, someone knocks on your door, informing you of his passing. Now, you learn more about him, his life and the legacy you are expected to continue with the help of his 7 executives.

Story warning(s): This story will contain depictions of violence, blood shed/gore, death, mentions of abuse, smoking, alcohol drinking and gambling. This story is fictional and has nothing to do with real life events or the actual members of BTS. Please read at your own discretion.

Chapter warning: Incident of stalking and the topic/ threat of potential suicide is brought up.

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