Archive of Our Own

when jimin wakes up, he smiles. the grin stays on his face even as he stretches, a quiet groan falling from his lips until he relaxes back onto the mattress. he doesn’t have anything particular to smile about, he knows, knows that today is just any other boring day of his life.

just like any other day he has to wake up, do his bathroom stuff, get dressed, grab an easy breakfast, and head off to his classes. at the very least he picked later classes this semester, so at least he doesn’t have to roll out of bed at the ass crack of dawn. either way, he figures it’ll be an easy day.

that’s okay, though. jimin likes easy days, enjoys how he can kind of just coast along and exist quietly from day to day. it’s not a terribly exciting life, but it’s one that he’s happily settled into.

just like he’s settled into this bed.

with a small giggle to himself, jimin rolls over and prepares to leave the warm confines of his bed, having shifted over toward the wall at some point in his sleep. before he gets up completely he stretches one more time, across the bed this go around, a high pitched noise already bubbling in his throat.

his hand hits something, which isn’t terribly odd. he has a habit of moving his pillows around in his sleep, and he also has a cat. this something, however… it doesn’t feel furry or soft, which gives him pause.

jimin cracks open his eyes, and then he screams.

the thing in his bed blinks blearily and rolls over to look at him. no, not a thing. the man. the man in jimin’s bed where he certainly shouldn’t be. the man’s gaze turns worried and then he pushes himself up, almost into a push-up position before pausing, his brow furrowing.

he looks down at himself, at his creamy pale skin and very naked body, and goes, “oh.”

jimin screams again.

“okay, no more of that,” the man decides, finishing sitting up and leaning over to touch jimin. his palm goes over jimin’s mouth with the intention of silencing him but it just makes jimin cry out again, wrapping his fingers around the man’s wrists.

his back hits the wall, his head tilting back and bumping into it, and at the same time as the framed photo above him starts to fall, jimin thinks, ’STOP.’

everything goes silent suddenly, but jimin doesn’t really notice it until the man in front of him makes a soft noise in the back of his throat. jimin gasps, muffled, upon realizing. the soft singing of the birds outside has stopped, and it’s so strangely quiet. there’s no cars honking, no talking from the streets below. but the main thing that throws jimin is…

the frame is floating in mid air.

it’s still touching the wall, technically, but not in any way like it’s supposed to, the bottom half of it inches away from the drywall. somehow it’s just… floating there, instead of falling on top of jimin’s head like it should have. he reaches out with a tentative hand to make sure, touches the corner of the frame with his fingers and watches as the frame slides to the side as if it were under water.

the man removes his hand from jimin’s face and hums. “a time witch, then. interesting.”

jimin’s gaze snaps back over to him. “i’m sorry, a what?”

then the frame falls to the bed, and all the sounds of life outside his little apartment rush back into being. it seems louder, now, louder than he remembers it being. it just goes to show just how silent it was only a moment ago, how the quiet noises just kind of fade to the back of your mind after a while.

with a frown, the very naked man pushes himself off of the side of the bed. he almost stumbles for a moment before glaring down at his legs and standing up very straight. jimin watches as he takes a few steps that look almost tentative, then the man nods.

unfortunately jimin doesn’t notice the nod, or the weird way he’s walking, because for the third time in only a couple of minutes he feels like he’s losing his mind. because the naked man has a tail. and not some fetish buttplug, either. an actual tail, jutting out of where his tailbone should be. the fur is black and long, and it looks very soft, swishing just slightly.

“who the hell are you?” jimin asks when he finds his voice.

when the man turns back around to face him jimin immediately looks up towards his face, cheeks pink with trying to avoid seeing the man’s naked crotch, but his breath catches in his throat at the sight of two cat ears twitching their way free of the man’s unruly black hair. he reaches up sleepily and runs his fingers through it, blinking slowly at jimin.

with a soft smile he says, “i’m yoongi. you tend to call me sugar, though. happy birthday, i guess.”

jimin stares. what in the actual fuck?

his mind is reeling, honestly. first of all, his cat’s name is sugar. his very not-naked-man cat. the cat that has been with him literally his entire life. second of all, if this man really, god, was his cat, then why wasn’t he currently still a cat? why was he walking around jimin’s bedroom butt ass naked? and third of all…

“it’s not my birthday,” he finally says. why his mouth decided to bring that up first, he has no idea. maybe it’s the easiest one for his brain to comprehend right now. yeah, that’s probably it. “if you’re sugar you should know it’s not my birthday.” sugar has been with him for all of his birthdays, and surely if his cat had human intelligence it would remember his birthday, right?

the man- yoongi, frowns for a moment and then nods slowly, thoughtfully. “yes, your birthday is supposed to be in a couple of days. very odd, but it’s definitely your twentieth birthday today.” he steps over to the calender next to jimin’s desk, fingers running over the ‘13’ that has yet to be crossed out. there’s a little cake sticker a few days down, marking what should be jimin’s birthday. “are you sure your birthday is later?”

jimin scoffs. “why would i not know my own birthday? actually, why the hell does my birthday even matter?”

with another hum, a sound that’s much more akin to purring now that jimin has spotted the other feline features, yoongi sits down on jimin’s desk chair. he winces, thinking that he’s definitely going to have to wipe it down next time he wants to sit there, and thankfully yoongi crosses his legs so that jimin doesn’t have to… see anything.

“if it weren’t your birthday i would still be a cat.” at jimin’s blank stare, he continues. “a witch comes into their abilities on their twentieth birthday. that also means that any familiars, previously trapped in their animal forms, have access to the magic within the bond to shift.”

this is the second time that yoongi has mentioned witches. “i’m not a witch,” he says.

yoongi raises an eyebrow at him, leaning back in the chair and putting his elbows on the arm rest. “okay, how did you stop time earlier?” alright, so maybe the cat man has a point. “i know your parents aren’t witches, which is odd, but that’s an issue for another time.”

when yoongi stands up his hand travels down, towards his crotch, and jimin looks away quickly, his face flushing. he hears a scratching sound and glances back over to see that yoongi’s hand is on his stomach, running his nails over the skin there, and not down at his… yeah. “you have to get to class.”

jimin looks over at his bedside table and crawls over the mattress to get to his phone, hitting the button on the side so that it lights up. his alarm is indeed about to go off, and he has the habit of setting it back as far as he possibly can. with a sigh, he turns off the alarm before it can ring and pushes himself off the bed.

“i’m going to take a shower. you… put on some clothes, please.”

yoongi looks at him sleepily, his tail lightly moving from side to side. “i’m gonna turn back into a cat, actually. have a nice day at school.” before jimin can reply he feels a tug in his stomach, and then there’s an audible poof and purple smoke bursts from where yoongi was just standing. he waves his hand in front of his face and coughs, and when he blinks his eyes back open his cat sugar is on the floor where yoongi had just been standing.

for a good minute jimin just stands there, watching sugar as he licks the fur on the top of one of his paws. his gaze drifts over to his bed, strongly considering just going back to sleep. no, no, jimin. he pats his cheeks with his palms hard enough to sting and lets out a deep sigh. time to shower and head to class.

try as he might, jimin doesn’t take in a damn thing during his classes. it all goes in one ear and right out the other because he’s just too focused on everything else that happened this morning. he should be paying attention, he knows, because this material is undoubtedly going to be on a test he’ll have to do later, but he’s paying so little attention that he’s thinking he should have just stayed home.

at one point one of his classmates even leans over and asks him if he’s okay. it’s not totally uncommon for the guy to talk to him, as he seems quite friendly, but it’s probably the first time that jimin has heard his voice sound worried. jimin is usually peppy and happy, of course, not typically quiet and contemplative. his classmate gives him a pat on the shoulder and tells jimin that he’ll share his notes, which is definitely appreciated because he hasn’t written literally anything all day.

yoongi said his parents aren’t witches, which makes sense. he’s never seen anything even remotely witchy from them, even if all of his knowledge on the subject is from books and tv. he would have noticed something, surely, but when he thinks back he just can’t think of anything. so if he is a witch -and he’s still not entirely positive about that, regardless of him apparently stopping time- where did the abilities come from?

is it possible for them to just… appear? or did they have to be passed down through a bloodline? is someone else in jimin’s family a witch? his parents have never been particularly close to their family but he’s met aunts and uncles and cousins before, and he’s drawing a blank.

and where exactly did yoongi come from? yes, he said that he’s jimin’s cat, but where did sugar come from? as far as he’s aware sugar had always been there. he remembers asking his parents about it as a kid, wondering where they got him, and they shrugged and said that he showed up at the door one day and wouldn’t stop meowing until they let him in. a stray, then, except he wasn’t, was he?

god, it’s all so confusing. he definitely should have stayed home and asked some more questions, classes be damned. by the time jimin starts to head home he’s exhausted from thinking all day, and not from the thinking one would usually do at school. even so, he has to pry more answers from yoongi, has to figure out what’s going on.

before he gets there, though, he pulls his phone from his pocket. he has a few minutes from the walk from his bus stop to his apartment, so he finds his mom in his contacts and dials her. she picks up quickly, as she always does, and he can’t help but smile at her bright greeting.

“hey, mom.”

’are you calling about coming to visit for your birthday?’ she asks, lightly teasing. it was originally in the plans to go home, but with his classes he decided to skip out this time.

he chuckles into the phone, quietly so as not to bother the other people on the sidewalk. “no, i’m afraid not. i actually wanted to ask, um…” he’s not really sure how to word his question. she’s going to think that he’s absolutely insane, isn’t she? how could she not, really.

’ask what, sweetheart?’

jimin takes a deep breath and then questions, “is there any reason that my birthday would be wrong?”

there’s a silence on the other end of the phone, so deep and sudden that he pulls his phone from his ear to check to make sure the call is still connected. it is, and he gulps. “mom?” his voice is shaking, just a bit, his heart suddenly dropping into the pit of his stomach.

when his mom finally replies it sounds… off. almost a forced brightness, her voice too tight, as if she’s smiling hard on the other side of the phone. ’of course not, jimin-ah! what a silly question!’ she laughs into his ear, but it’s a laugh he’s never heard from her before. ’oh, i have to go, your father needs my help! bye, love you!’

the line goes dead without jimin even having a chance to reply, and he stops in the middle of the sidewalk to stare down at the screen, his mom’s contact picture still lighting it up. that was… his mom has never acted like that before. she almost sounded… scared?

someone bumps into jimin’s shoulder, making him remember that he’s in everyone’s way. he apologizes automatically even though the person is already much ahead of him and then he starts walking again, his phone held tightly in his hand. this just further confuses things, and he realizes that yoongi may not have all the answers, after all.

thankfully it only takes him a few more minutes to get home, and after putting his shoes away he heads into the living room as he usually does, to put his backpack on the coffee table. usually the backpack goes there so that he can take out any textbooks needed for his studying or homework, but that’s definitely not going to happen today.

jimin pauses in the living room upon seeing sugar, curled up right in the middle of the couch. the cat almost seems to be napping, but his tail is flopping slowly down onto the cushion, so he’s likely just relaxing. with a sigh, jimin puts his backpack on the floor against the side of the couch instead, sitting on the couch with the intention of asking the cat some questions.

but then sugar pushes himself up, chest to the couch and butt up in the air, and crawls the few inches between them until he’s pressing himself into jimin’s lap.

jimin yelps and grabs sugar, pushing him away, and if he didn’t know any better his cat is now glaring at him. “i am not cuddling with you!”

sugar’s tail lashes out, and jimin tuts, holding the cat back when he tries once more to get closer. “it’s weird now, okay? just…” he sighs. “can you turn back into your… human form, or whatever? i have more questions.” the cat almost seems to sigh, ears drooping, and jimin should really be careful what he asks for because there’s a poof just like this morning, and the couch cushions sink with extra weight.

the smoke seems to clear faster this time, at least, and for a moment jimin wonders if he has to be concerned about the fire alarms eventually going off. those thoughts quickly screech to halt when he realizes that yoongi is once again naked in front of him.

“fuck, god!” jimin slaps a hand over his eyes and leans his head back onto the couch. “please, go put on pants.”

he can practically hear the pout in yoongi’s voice, even though he can’t see it. “i don’t like pants.”

jimin almost drops his hand to glare but catches himself at the last second. “i don’t care! pants, now!”

there’s a huff of air, scarily close to jimin’s face, and then yoongi gets up off of the couch. jimin hears him stumble again once he starts walking, but there’s no crash or sounds of pain so jimin keeps his hand over his face until he can tell that yoongi’s no longer in the living room.

his arm drops back down to his side with a flop as he sighs, not sure how he’s going to survive this whole thing. at least when yoongi pads back into the living room he’s wearing pants, a soft pair of jimin’s pajama bottoms. honestly he should have asked the guy to put on a shirt too, as his chest is also quite distracting, but jimin is pretty sure that’s a lost cause.

“do you always have issues with the walking thing?”

yoongi plops down onto the couch with a grunt. he’s still sitting in the middle, which means he’s pretty close to jimin, but they don’t touch so jimin does his best to ignore it. “i’ll get used to it soon. it’s just hard the first few shifts, after being a cat for so long.”

interesting. that makes sense, though. “are you… usually not a cat for so long?”

when yoongi looks over at him he has a curious look on his face, one that jimin can’t quite place. “no. it’s most common for witches to get their familiar a few years before they come into their powers, in order to let their bond form a bit.”

“what? but i’ve had you for twenty years?” jimin’s brows furrow, and this time yoongi looks away from him, avoiding eye contact.

“it’s… less common, but a familiar can appear earlier if their witch is in danger. if something magical happens, familiars have enough raw power to try to save their witch.”

his words are said quietly, almost as though he doesn’t want jimin to hear them at all, but jimin clings to them even though this is just raising even more questions. “but i was a baby! what danger could i possibly have been in?”

yoongi glances back over at him. “i’m not sure,” he mumbles. “nothing ended up happening but i was already summoned, so i had to stay.”

for a few minutes they sit in silence, jimin thinking through things. could the reason that he was in danger connect to why his mom had sounded scared on the phone earlier? what could she possibly be hiding from him, and why?

“did i… take you from another witch?” he eventually asks. yoongi makes a soft questioning noise when he looks at him, so jimin adds on, “otherwise you wouldn’t be my familiar until a few years ago, right? so did i, like, steal you from someone?”

yoongi smiles, and then he flops over so that his head is in jimin’s lap. jimin yelps, hands flying up and ready to shove the guy away, but then he sees the happy twitch of yoongi’s ears as he pushes his face into jimin’s stomach and he finds himself faltering.

he and sugar constantly cuddle, the cat almost always touching him in some way. they even sleep right next to each other, sugar curled up in jimin’s arms, a comforting weight and heat. jimin’s face heats at the thought that he’s been technically cuddling a man his entire life, and embarrassment curls in his gut at the realization that sugar, yoongi, has seen him… go through things. puberty things.

“no, you didn’t steal me, jimin.” yoongi nuzzles more, and a soft purring starts up from his chest, just enough for jimin to feel it. “when a witch is born their familiar is… set aside, so to speak. we wait until it’s time, in a sort of limbo state. this was the first time i’ve been summoned so early, though. but i’m glad. it’s strengthened our bond even more.”

clearing his throat, jimin has to ignore the twitching of his fingers, his body begging him to run his hand through yoongi’s hair. “our bond?” he questions instead. yoongi had mentioned it earlier as well, he knows, but jimin admittedly wasn’t paying a lot of attention at the time.

“a bond grows with both time and affection,” yoongi explains. “the stronger the bond between a witch and their familiar, typically the stronger the witch is. it’s why older witches are usually stronger.” he pulls himself back from jimin’s stomach and opens his eyes into slits, looking up toward the witch’s face through his eyelashes. “we’ve been together since you were born, and we’ve grown quite close. therefore, our bond is strong.”

jimin feels his cheeks and ears heat up, and he can only hope that yoongi doesn’t notice it. he’s not sure why, but the familiar seeing him embarrassed or shy matters to him. “o-oh.”

yoongi’s tail flicks up against his body with enough force to make a thump. “can we stay like this for a little while longer? or do you have homework to do?” he asks, his lips forming more of a pout than they naturally are.

“no, no homework.” he lets his hand fall into yoongi’s black hair, careful not to disturb his ears.

***

for almost a week, the two of them live in harmony. mostly.

jimin still has to fight to make yoongi wear clothes, and he also starts finding a lot more cat hair around the house, some of which are almost as long as the hairs on jimin’s head because yoongi’s tail is bigger when he’s in his human form. he ends up teaching yoongi how to use the vacuum cleaner, though jimin isn’t sure if the familiar was lying about never having used one before.

apparently there’s spells to be able to clean up messes, but considering that jimin knows literally no spells and he didn’t grow up with books to learn things about witches, for now they’re stuck.

jimin’s “birthday” comes and goes without too much fuss, which isn’t totally out of the norm. typically he goes back home in order to celebrate, but since he didn’t do that this year there wasn’t anyone to celebrate with. he has some friends, but they’re not really close enough yet to do much other than offer a ‘happy birthday’ at school or a text message. yoongi did give him a hug that left jimin red and sputtering, but that was it.

with a large sigh jimin plops back down onto his pillow after leaning over yoongi’s body to check the time. he woke up before his alarm again today, and thankfully it’s a friday. the last few days in class have certainly been easier than that first one but he was still looking forward to a few days to recuperate. he spent most of the previous weekend looking up witches on the internet and asking yoongi strange questions.

speaking of… he rolls over onto his side to look at his familiar, who’s in his human form and is sleeping soundly, curled up on his side with his hands between his thighs. his tail is still and is wrapped around toward his front, the tip almost touching the belly button on his soft stomach. although it feels a little strange to admit it, yoongi is cute, especially when he’s sleeping. he’s also been sleeping in his human form much more often than his cat one, though jimin hasn’t asked why.

honestly it would be really nice to just lie here for hours, to have a lazy morning where he could doze in bed with his familiar next to him. no responsibilities, no learning to be done, no worries over who he is or where he came from.

jimin’s eyelids start to droop, but they open wide when he’s startled by yoongi suddenly looking right at him. the man hums and removes his hands from between his legs to grasp the sheet right next to jimin’s shoulder, using it to help scooch over until there’s only centimeters between them.

yoongi is smaller like this, back arched from where he’s curled up, his ears twitching sleepily. jimin holds his breath as yoongi’s forehead bumps against his collarbone, his soft black hair tickling against the skin around the collar of his shirt.

“you’re using your magic again,” yoongi grumbles, and jimin shivers.

“w-what?”

fingers wrap around jimin’s wrist, but they don’t move his hand anywhere, instead just holding on. “time is stopped.”

surprised, jimin pushes himself up higher with his elbow to see the clock on the bedside table, the movement causing yoongi’s head to slide down toward his armpit. the familiar makes a soft noise that sounds almost like a whine and readjusts until his face is in the crook of jimin’s neck, but he’s not paying much attention.

because the clock reads the same time as it did before.

jimin had definitely been lying there thinking for at least a few minutes, and who knows how long he dozed before yoongi woke up. it wouldn’t be completely weird if it weren’t for the fact that jimin hasn’t been able to use his magic since that first day, which was also completely by accident.

“how?” jimin whispers. now that he’s aware of the almost deafening silence, he’s almost afraid to speak too loudly, to disturb the quiet.

his breath hitches in his chest when yoongi speaks, his sleep-roughed voice directly against his skin. “your control is probably looser when you’ve just woken up. you allow yourself to want things, and because you’re not really thinking about it, it happens.” the last few words are muffled, yoongi’s lips touching jimin’s neck.

jimin’s eyelids flutter as he takes in a stuttering breath. part of him wants to push yoongi away, to tell him to go sleep on the couch or just crawl out of bed himself and start getting ready for the day. the other part of him wants to put his hand into yoongi’s hair and pull him closer, press them tightly together until their bodies are lined up.

god, he shouldn’t be having these thoughts about his familiar. surely that was weird?

and as much as jimin would like to lie there and ignore everything, he does have to actually get up. he sighs and nudges yoongi away from him, who rolls onto his back and pouts up at the ceiling. “okay, we really need to figure stuff out. i can’t keep accidentally stopping time.” the bed creaks as jimin crawls over top of yoongi’s body to get out of bed, trying desperately to ignore the fact that the man is only in jimin’s boxers and that they’ve been pushed up obscenely from his rolling around.

“i have to go home.”

yoongi’s ears perk up on the top of his head, sitting up on his elbows to follow jimin with his eyes as he moves around the room, getting clothes to change into and packing a backpack at the same time. “you have classes today.”

jimin snorts. “i think my classes are the least of my problems right now. i need to find out what’s going on, and both of my parents either ignore me or change the subject when i try to ask.” he shoves an extra change of clothes into his bag, plus his phone charger and laptop. “busan’s only a few hours by ktx, and if they answer my questions i’ll be back tomorrow. if not…”

“if that’s what you want. you have a duffle bag, right?”

the question makes jimin pause, looking over at yoongi who’s now standing next to the bed and stretching, his back arching with it. he quickly averts his eyes. “why?”

“because i’m coming with you, obviously,” yoongi replies.

he spins and looks at yoongi with wide eyes, his backpack hanging from his fingers. “absolutely not!”

yoongi’s tail starts swishing through the air as he narrows his eyes. “and why not?”

“you’re half cat, yoongi. even if you could somehow manage to hide the bulk of your tail and ears, you still have sharp nails and teeth. besides,” he adds, cheeks reddening, “i’m not bringing a man home, especially not when i’m trying to have my questions answered, not get asked them instead.”

for a moment yoongi just looks at him. “ignoring that bit of telling information, you can’t make a trip without your familiar. i’m going with you.”

“i go to school every day without you!”

yoongi steps forward, startling jimin who steps back until he hits the chair at his desk. it doesn’t stop yoongi’s advance, the man not pausing until he’s only inches from jimin’s body. “i allow you to go to school without me because it’s close enough that i can get to you in time if you’re in danger.” jimin tries looking off to the side but yoongi grasps his chin between his fingers, pulling his head back until they’re making eye contact. “you’re a baby witch, jimin. one that can’t control their powers. there are things out there that you should be scared of, that i can protect you from.”

shoulders tensing, jimin looks down toward yoongi’s neck. what exactly should jimin be afraid of? this is exactly why he needs to go and look for answers. “i still can’t take you like this,” he mumbles.

“take me as a cat, then.” yoongi releases jimin’s chin and steps back, putting enough space between them that it feels like jimin can finally breathe. “put me in a bag or something. i’ll be fine.”

the alarm goes off, causing jimin to jump in surprise, his heart beating wildly in his chest even though yoongi just barely glances over at it. at some point jimin must have stopped unconsciously using his magic.

“fine,” jimin replies, though his voice is just slightly shaking. “don’t complain about being cramped, and no meowing. you’ll get us kicked off the train.” he turns around quickly, putting his backpack up on the desk and looking through needlessly, just to give his hands something to do.

he hears a door click, and when he looks over his shoulder yoongi is gone from the room. the shower starts moments later, and jimin’s palms meet the desk, leaning against it as he sighs.

***

thankfully yoongi -sugar- didn’t get them kicked off the ktx, and within a few hours they’re in busan. jimin texted his classmate to ask him to take good notes during the classes they usually have together, that way jimin doesn’t miss out on anything. usually missing class wouldn’t be something that jimin does, always trying to keep his attendance up and do well, but this is much more important right now.

it’s kind of funny. jimin has always read those young adult novels where the teenagers find out something big about themselves or the world and then stop going to school because ‘there’s more important things than school.’ he’s always find those situations to be kind of silly, but now he’s living in one.

within seconds of knocking on the front door of his parent’s house, the one that he grew up in, jimin is being yanked inside. the brief look of shock and worry that flashed over his mom’s face upon seeing him didn’t go unnoticed, and it makes jimin even more nervous than he already was.

being here is important, of course. there’s questions that need to be answered and right now this is the only place he can think of to get those answers. that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to bring it up, though.

“sweetheart, this is such a surprise!” she looks back toward the kitchen and jimin follows her gaze to his father, who hasn’t yet managed to get the look of guilt off of his face. just what do they have to feel guilty about? what the hell is going on?

jimin takes off his shoes quickly and puts his backpack down on the floor. all three of them startle at the meow that comes from it; somehow in the past two minutes jimin had completely forgotten that sugar was in his bag.

“did you put your cat in your bag? jimin, that’s so awful!”

his mom rushes forward to bend down and unzip the backpack, and sugar leaps out immediately. though he turns as if to run to jimin, his mom still grabs him around the stomach and picks him up to hold him, ignoring his squirming.

she makes faces at the cat and kisses his head, and when jimin gets a look, sugar’s eyes are scrunched closed. it almost makes jimin laugh, seeing how sugar clearly doesn’t want to be babied, but he doesn’t want to end up getting off track.

sugar melts into his arms easily when jimin takes him, his nose digging into the side of jimin’s neck and his paws on either shoulder, as if trying to hug him. the closeness causes jimin’s heart to beat quickly in his chest, because even though he’s a cat right now it’s still yoongi.

“he was fine, i promise. but i came for a reason. can we sit down or something?” he looks towards the couches pointedly, and after a moment his mom nods and ushers him over. both of his parents pick the other couch to sit on, a couple of feet between them on the cushions, reminding jimin of when he’d do something wrong growing up and end up getting scolded for his actions.

this time it almost feels like it’s reversed, however. there’s an odd aura about his parents, palpable enough to make jimin wonder if there actually is some sort of aura that he’s now sensing because he has his powers.

sugar starts purring against his chest, and jimin feels some of the tension in his body melt away.

“i asked before and you avoided actually answering,” jimin starts, his eyes trained on his mom. “why is my birthday wrong?” he rephrases the question from what it originally was, considering that she had dodged it before. this way, she knows that he knows that his birthday isn’t his actual one, and isn’t just guessing.

she looks away from him, off toward the windows at the front of the house, and then makes eye contact with his father, who hasn’t said a word since he walked in the front door. he’s always been closer with his mom but there’s no real reason why his dad should be giving him the cold shoulder like this unless something was wrong.

her mouth opens, and for a brief moment it almost looks as if she’s going to give a bright smile and call him silly again, but whatever she sees on his face must change her mind because her lips push into a thin line and she drops her gaze to the coffee table between them.

“i’m sorry we never told you, sweetheart. but… we don’t know your exact birthday because you were adopted.”

sugar’s purring stops, and jimin’s eyebrows furrow. “wait, what?”

he wasn’t really sure what to expect, of course, and now that it’s out there him being adopted should have been an obvious answer, but… for some reason he had just never considered it before.

“who… who are my real parents, then?”

jimin’s father winces, likely at the word ‘real,’ and while jimin wants to take that particular word back, should have used ‘biological’ instead, it’s too late now. “we’re not really positive,” he answers.

before jimin can question them, his mom speaks up again. “you were left on our doorstep when you were only a few weeks old, if that. so we kind of just guessed when you were born.” she searches his face for a few long seconds, then asks, “how did you know it was wrong?”

jimin snorts and tightens his hold on sugar, so caught up in his thoughts that he barely even registers sugar’s rough tongue lick across the skin of his neck. “you’re sure you have no idea where i came from?”

even though he’s clearly dodging the question neither of his parents call him out for it. “i had a friend,” his mom says, her words slow as if she isn’t sure she should be saying them, “and she was pretty far along. she and her husband disappeared about a month before we got you. we always wondered, but… we never saw them again, so we just let it go.”

just let it go? “what? how did you just… take a baby? i have a birth certificate! it has your names on it! i went to the doctor growing up-”

“i was a nurse, sweetheart. and we did look for them, i swear.”

his father puts his arm up on the back of the couch as if in an attempt to comfort his wife, but with the feet of space between them his fingers barely even graze her shoulder. “they had truly disappeared, and there was only so much we could do without giving it away that you weren’t actually ours.”

jimin forces himself to breathe slowly, releasing sugar with one hand in order to bury his face in his palm, trying to collect himself. after a moment he stands, wincing when sugar’s nails dig into him from trying to keep a hold of him.

“i’m… going to go. i need to think-”

“jimin, no, stay the night!” his mom jumps up from the couch, her hands out but not touching him. “it’ll be quite late by time you get back, and you must be tired from the trip here. just, sleep in your room and you can leave in the morning? after breakfast?”

feeling what seems to be sugar nodding against his neck, jimin sighs. “fine, i’ll leave in the morning.” he doesn’t add that he doesn’t think he’ll be staying for breakfast, but he walks past his parents and grabs his backpack before heading for the stairs.

he can hear his mom and dad whispering to each other, clearly talking about him, but jimin just needs to get away from them for right now. as soon as he opens the door sugar jumps from his hold and onto the floor, barely waiting for jimin to close the door behind him before turning back into his human form with a poof.

arms wrap around him, just as tight as jimin’s hold on sugar minutes earlier, and jimin can’t even bring himself to shy away from yoongi’s naked skin. instead he lets himself fall into it, tucking his head in the crook of yoongi’s neck, though he keeps his arms down by his sides.

“i’m so sorry,” yoongi mumbles against the side of his head. “it was always a possibility, but i honestly just assumed the magic skipped your parents in your family.”

jimin shakes his head. “i just… i have other parents out there somewhere? i don’t understand why they’d leave me, especially if they’re also witches.” he tries to keep his voice down, remembering that sound travels easily through his childhood home, but it’s hard with how upset he is.

he pulls away from yoongi, who lets him go rather easily and watches as he sets his backpack down on his empty dresser and digs around for the clothes at the bottom. he tosses a pair of boxers toward yoongi, and it must be a testament to how visibly upset jimin is that he doesn’t even complain, just puts the underwear on before sitting on the side of the bed.

“with how powerful your magic is, and knowing that you were indeed adopted, it’s a good bet that both of your parents are witches, yes.” jimin is silent as he changes clothes, determined to go to sleep even though it’s not even dark out yet. “i was summoned because you were in danger, even as a baby. it stands to reason that your parents were in danger, too.”

jimin looks over sharply, his eyes wide. “what do you mean?”

yoongi hesitates before replying, his mouth hanging open for a moment. “there’s not a lot of reasons why a baby would be in danger, let alone a baby of witches. but if your parents were in danger, and that in turn put you in danger…”

“so they might have left me to… protect me.” jimin sits on the side of the bed next to yoongi, his body curled in on itself. “surely they were also powerful, though? what could have scared them so much that they’d leave me?”

“i… we should talk more tomorrow, once we’re back home.” when jimin turns to fight him on it, yoongi startles him by running his hand through jimin’s hair, pushing it back off of his forehead. “we shouldn’t risk talking too much here, unless you want your parents to know about me.”

although he is desperate to learn more, yoongi is right. eventually his mom will no doubt come by his room and hover outside of his door to try to tell if he’s asleep or not, and he could easily make an excuse for his voice, saying he’s on the phone, but it would be more difficult if yoongi were heard.

and he’s not sure if he wants to tell his parents about him being a witch, yet. honestly, even with yoongi being able to turn into a cat right in front of him he’s not sure that they’d believe him, especially considering that he can’t seem to do magic on his own yet. no, them finding out would just further complicate things right now.

“okay,” he mumbles, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. yoongi’s hand doesn’t fall from him immediately, but after a few moments he moves away from jimin and climbs into bed properly, his tail curled around his thigh so that he doesn’t end up kneeling on it.

once yoongi is lying down jimin follows, pulling the covers up over top of both of them and curling up on his side facing his familiar. the sun is just now starting to go down, which means that if this were a normal day jimin would probably be getting up before the sun is back up, but with how exhausting everything has been he’ll likely just stay in bed until it’s a more reasonable hour.

it takes a few minutes for yoongi’s breathing to start evening out, his chest rising and falling even slower than it usually does, but as soon as jimin shifts forward yoongi’s eyes open. jimin hesitates, his fingers twitching, but asks, “is it… can you hold me? please?”

yoongi’s eyes soften, and then he’s moving forward without wasting a beat, wrapping his arm around jimin’s back and pulling him in. he tucks jimin’s head underneath of his chin, the hand of the arm he’s still lying on curling into the front of jimin’s shirt. when yoongi’s tail flops over his hips jimin finally relaxes into the hold, breathing shaky.

he can’t remember the last time he cried, but yoongi was probably there for that, too, just in a different form. he imagines that he might have wanted to hold jimin just like this, to keep him close and safe while he let out his worries.

***

they don’t end up staying for breakfast, which upsets jimin’s mom but he doesn’t think that he can stomach sitting at the kitchen table and pretending that nothing is wrong for half an hour while they eat.

he does tell his parents that he isn’t angry, just upset and that he needs time, and he gets the names of his parents’ friends from twenty years ago, intending to do some internet searching on the train. whether he’ll find anything remains to be seen, and jimin honestly doesn’t expect to, but it’s worth a shot at the very least.

the trip home feels even longer than it had the first time. when he left yesterday he was nervous about bringing all of this up to his parents and worried that they’d continue to lie to him. now he almost wishes that he still felt nervous, because there’s just a ball of dread in his stomach. he’s curious as to what yoongi has to tell him and also kind of wishes that he just hadn’t gone down this road at all.

although he always would have wondered, he could have easily just ignored all of this. could have taken his mom’s word for what it was and just told himself that yoongi was wrong about the birthday thing. he easily could have lived his entire life celebrating his birthday on the wrong day and kept his curiosity to himself.

that wouldn’t have been fair, though. not to himself, and also not to yoongi, who has spent jimin’s entire life waiting to be able to talk to him and guide him. he doubts there’s much that the familiar could have done to teach him if jimin refused to see things for what they really were.

yoongi changes back into his human form as soon as they walk through the door, jimin barely closing it behind them before he’s up in a puff of smoke. jimin doesn’t even bother to wave it away anymore, used to the slightly odd smell at this point and instead just watches as yoongi stretches after being cramped up in the bag for a few hours.

“pants,” jimin says before yoongi can get a word out, feeling slightly amused as yoongi’s mouth snaps shut into a pout. he does as he’s told, though, both of them going into the bedroom. yoongi puts on the bottom half of some pajamas while jimin unpacks his backpack, putting the laptop he ended up not using on his desk and putting the wad of clothes into the laundry basket.

he’d done a bit of searching on his phone while on the train but hadn’t really found much, as he had expected. there was an article dated a little over twenty years ago about the couple that had mysteriously disappeared but it wasn’t front page news and had barely even mentioned their names. there was no further information about where they came from, who their next of kin was, nothing.

jimin’s only hope at this point is that yoongi knows something that can help, and they head back into the living room and plop onto the couch. since yoongi turns towards him, back against the arm rest and legs curled up, tail in hand, jimin does the same opposite of him. his socked feet touches yoongi’s legs as he stretches them out and leaves them there.

“remember how i told you that there’s things you should be afraid of?”

not really how jimin expected this conversation to start, but jimin blinks and nods.

yoongi looks off to the side with a sigh before continuing. “witches fight sometimes, it isn’t uncommon, and there’s also hexes and spells that can really do some damage, especially to an untrained witch. while that applies to what i said to you, it also isn’t the main thing that i’m worried about whenever you leave the apartment."

jimin’s brows furrow. it makes sense that there’d be issues amongst witches, as well as spells that could hurt someone, but as far as jimin is aware of he’s never even met another witch.

“you’re a time witch, and a powerful one at that. even if you don’t know enough about magic to really use it it’s still there inside of you. beings with magic can feel others with magic, though they typically can’t tell what type of magic that is, but with you having little to no control it would be easy for you to accidentally use your magic in public and in front of another witch.”

“and that would be a bad thing? shouldn’t i want to meet other witches? to learn, build a community, stuff like that?”

yoongi smiles at him but it’s a sad smile, almost pitying. “if you were any other witch i’d say yes. but because time witches are so rare and powerful it’s not uncommon for them to be hunted down in order to steal their magic.”

eyes widening, feels his heart starting to race. he wasn’t aware that magic could be stolen. “and you think that could happen to me?”

“with how inexperienced you are, yes. it would be hard for you to protect yourself.” yoongi’s hand moves to rest on jimin’s foot, squeezing it. “but it’s not just the stealing of magic, jimin. the ritual performed to do so also kills the witch.”

that’s… awful. now he more understands why yoongi didn’t want him going to busan alone. it could also explain… “do you… think that’s what happened to my birth parents?”

for a long few moments yoongi is quiet, but jimin knows that the answer is yes. why else would yoongi have brought this up now? “if they were strong then it’s likely. even more so if one of them was also a time witch.”

jimin leans back further into the couch, which pushes his feet up into yoongi’s lap but the familiar doesn’t say anything, just holds them. he feels yoongi’s tail wrap around his calves as he puts his arms over his face, trying to just breathe.

it makes a terrifying amount of sense. if his parents had known that they were in danger, that they were being hunted for their magic, then they may have left jimin at the friend’s house in order to protect him. tears prick at his eyes. they didn’t just abandon him, they were saving him and he had no idea.

“is that-” he interrupts himself to sniff, trying to keep from actually crying. “is that why you were summoned so early?”

yoongi’s hands on his feet feels nice, gives him something to concentrate on. “i wouldn’t be surprised.” after a minute he adds, “i was in the in-between for a while, but i know of one witch that’s definitely still alive and might have some more information.”

jimin’s arms fall from his face and he looks at yoongi with hope in his chest. “really?”

“mmm. even if he doesn’t, he can probably teach you a bit more about your magic.”

pushing himself up to sitting, jimin pulls his feet from yoongi’s lap to stand up off the couch. “we should go now!” he pauses. “unless you need to, like, contact him or something?”

yoongi stands as well and shakes his head. “i wouldn’t even know how to get into contact with him anymore, other than just showing up. we can head over now, he doesn’t live too far.”

once yoongi gives him the address they decide to take a taxi over, that way yoongi doesn’t have to deal with being shifted on a crowded train or bus. he decides to stay in his human form, shoving his tail in a pair of sweatpants and pulling a bucket hat on over his ears. he can’t do much about the sharp canine teeth or his longer nails, but if the taxi driver notices either of those they’ll probably just brush it off to yoongi being weird.

jimin does feel bad about showing up unannounced in the middle of the day but he’s also desperate to learn more about what’s going on. and since yoongi reassured him that it’s alright he supposes that it’s fine.

they get to the address after about half an hour, the taxi taking them right to the door, and jimin spends a good few seconds just looking at the house. it’s pretty, and much less modern than most of the other houses on the street, or the city for that matter, with a lot of plants and vines covering it. if it weren’t for the fact that it’s so well cared for he’d almost think that it was abandoned and the city was just leaving the greenery to grow wild.

yoongi ushers him forward with a hand on the small of his back, and as soon as jimin goes through the gate he shivers, magic washing over him. he looks over at yoongi, a little worried, but the familiar nods to show that it’s alright and heads past him to the door. it’s the first time that jimin has felt magic that isn’t his own or yoongi’s, and it’s an odd feeling.

after yoongi knocks on the door they stand there, jimin shifting awkwardly while yoongi just slowly rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. after a a couple of minutes he looks over at yoongi, worried. “should we come back later?”

yoongi waves him off. “they’re here. it’s just a big house, so it’s probably taking them a bit to get to the door.”

a big house? jimin looks over to the side in confusion. the house actually looks smaller than any of the other ones around it, tucked between two larger buildings. he can’t see how far it goes back but it can’t go back that far, and it only has two storeys.

the door finally opens and all jimin can do is stare.

“oh, this is a surprise.” the man’s voice is deep, deeper than yoongi’s is, and jimin sucks in a quick breath when the man turns to yell back into the house, “yoongi is here!” he looks back toward them and eyes jimin for a moment before stepping back, opening the door so that they can walk inside. “this is your new witch?”

yoongi nods, taking jimin by the wrist to get him to move. he doesn’t let go even when the door gets closed behind him. “this is jimin. jimin, this is namjoon, the familiar of the witch we’re here to see.”

when jimin looks back namjoon is watching him, and jimin knows he’s being a little rude but he can’t help but stare. he thought yoongi was otherworldly, but this…

namjoon’s bright yellow eyes stare at him, almost seeming to glow, as if they have a fire behind them. when he nods in jimin’s direction horns peek out from his hair, curled against his skull and mostly tucked away.

“n-nice to meet you,” jimin manages to get out as namjoon moves to walk in front of him. yoongi tugs at his wrist again and jimin walks automatically, following them deeper into the house. wings move minutely in front of him, rather large things that are pulled up against namjoon’s back, likely to keep them out of the way. his tail drags along the floor, thick and covered in scales.

trying to look anywhere except the familiar in front of him, jimin turns his head to look at the actual house as they walk, realizing that the house definitely is bigger than it seems. the hallway they’re walking through is wide enough that even if namjoon’s wings were completely spread out the tips probably wouldn’t touch the walls, and the ceiling is up so high that it would take a firetruck’s ladder to reach.

he quickens his pace so that he’s closer to yoongi, leaning over to him to whisper, “how…?”

yoongi glances over at him and hums. “it’s seokjin’s doing, namjoon’s witch. you’ll understand better once he explains his magic.”

jimin nods even though he’s still highly confused, and after another minute of walking namjoon finally steps into an open arched doorway. he walks across the room to stand behind a man sitting at a table, but the man quickly gets up and meets them halfway to pull yoongi into his arms.

“yoongi! it’s so good to see you again! it’s been ages.” the man pulls back from the familiar to smile at jimin, and jimin is struck by how handsome he is. puffy lips are pulled back in a happy smile, pink hair falling into bright purple eyes. he almost looks as otherworldly as namjoon, even though he doesn’t have any mystical features aside from the eyes.

he sticks out his hand and jimin takes it quickly in his own. “i’m kim seokjin, an old friend of yoongi’s. you must be his new witch.” he takes his hand back to go sit back down at the table he was at when they entered the room, gesturing toward the other chairs. “please, sit.”

they both move forward together, and even though there’s no longer any need for yoongi to hold onto him he doesn’t let go, instead moving his hand downward and entwining their fingers together as they sit. “yes, master seokjin, this is jimin. he just came into his powers a little over a week ago.”

jimin looks over at yoongi, confused about the use of ‘master,’ but nods toward the other witch. “i’m really new and i have some questions, if that’s okay? yoongi said you might be able to help.”

seokjin nods in response and then turns his head over his shoulder, reaching behind him to grab at namjoon’s sleeve and tug until the familiar sits down at the table with them. he seems to manage just fine even with his tail and wings, and jimin figures that even the furniture was picked with him in mind.

“first of all the main reason we’re here is, well… do you happen to know of any time witches that were around about twenty years ago?”

the look that seokjin suddenly gives him is sharp, but it softens into curiosity after a brief moment. “ah, so you’re a time witch, then? i knew of a couple around… i’d say sixty odd years ago, now?” he looks over to namjoon to confirm, but jimin leans forward in his seat in surprise.

“wait, sixty years?” when he looks to yoongi the familiar just gestures vaguely. “you barely look past my age,” he says.

seokjin smiles, though he tries to hide it behind one of his hands. “ah, dear, i’m quite old.”

“but how? unless…” jimin sucks in a sharp breath. “are you a time witch, too? can we live forever?”

yoongi taps against jimin’s arm with his free hand to get his attention. “master seokjin isn’t a time witch. he’s a space witch.”

at jimin’s confused look, seokjin waves his hand over the table they’re sitting at. light pink tendrils of smoke seep out of his hand until it obscures their vision of the wood entirely. when it clears, a tea set is in its place. “space witches can move objects in and out of existence, as well as expand spaces. like this house, for example. it’s much larger on the inside than on the outside.”

he pours the tea with gentle movements and then hands jimin and yoongi both a cup. “the house itself also technically exists outside of time and space. nothing inside ages, including myself.”

“so that’s how you still look so young…”

“yes, indeed.” seokjin gives a small smile and sips at his own cup of tea slowly before continuing. “however, to answer your other question, yes. if a time witch is powerful enough they can stop time when it comes to their own body. they can still die if wounded, but will not age. the last two time witches i knew had stopped their aging.”

so if those were jimin’s parents, who knows how old they really were? and if they were that powerful… how powerful was the witch that was hunting them?

“do you happen to know their names?” he asks quietly.

the names that seokjin gives him are different than the ones he got from his parents the day before, but he supposes it might make sense that they would go by different names when living in different places, especially if they were trying to hide.

“it’s not uncommon for powerful witches to hide, but they usually still have some presence in the community. these two… i’m sorry jimin, but i very much doubt that they’re alive.”

feeling the urge to cry, jimin has to look down at the teacup in his hand to keep himself together. yoongi squeezes his other one in an attempt to comfort him, but very little would be comforting right now.

seeming to realize that jimin is done for the time being, yoongi leans forward and clears his throat. “have you heard of any magic stealers recently? we’re thinking that maybe jimin’s parents were forced to abandon him to keep him safe from the witch hunting them.”

seokjin’s expression turns thoughtful, and then he looks over to namjoon, who has been sitting quietly, just listening. “we were told of one a while ago, but i haven’t had any updates on them for a while. do you remember the name?”

“kim seyoon,” namjoon replies.

with a snap of his fingers seokjin turns back to jimin and yoongi. “yes, that’s it! i have no idea if that’s the name she’s currently going by, but i could ask around, if you’d like?”

“that would be great, thank you.” yoongi nudges jimin with his shoulder but the witch only nods, his gaze still downcast. after a second yoongi sighs. “would it be alright if we come back and you can perhaps teach jimin a bit? he grew up in a completely magicless household and has very little control of his magic.”

“yes, of course, i’ll do what i can. it’ll be nice to have visitors more often,” seokjin says before chuckling. “namjoon will show you out, but,” he reaches across the table to place his hand over jimin’s, still wrapped around the teacup. his touch is light, gentle, but has a spark to it that causes jimin to look up at him. “even if you grew up without magic you are still a witch, dear. you have a whole community here behind you, if you’d like it.”

jimin manages to smile this time, though it’s thin. “thank you.” when namjoon stands up he does the same, bowing toward seokjin in both thanks and goodbye. the tea in the cups are left mostly untouched, and he hadn’t said much, but he hopes that seokjin didn’t find him terribly rude during the whole ordeal.

the walk out is quiet and just as long as the walk in, but namjoon bows politely when he opens the front door for them. “you are welcome back any time,” he says, his tail curling around to touch yoongi’s pants leg as they leave.

they keep quiet until they get home, not wanting to end up saying something that would sound odd to the taxi driver, but that’s fine because jimin needs the few minutes to try to get his thoughts together anyway. even though they hadn’t been there for very long he still learned a lot. the fact that he could potentially make himself live forever is something that he’s going to have to think about at depth at a later time all on it’s own.

as far as his parents go, even though he expected them to be dead, it still hurts to have seokjin say that it’s likely true. a part of him was still hoping that maybe they were still in hiding, that they just hadn’t been able to come for him but would as soon as it was safe. a naive thought, of course, but one that he had still been holding onto.

“i’m guessing you want to look up kim seyoon, so i’ll make us something to eat,” yoongi announces after the door closes behind them. he pulls his hat off to free his ears and reaches down the back of the pants to pull his tail out, leaving it to rest on the hem, pushed down far enough to not be uncomfortable. it means that his entire ass is dangerously close to being out, but jimin doesn’t have it in him to complain right now.

instead jimin settles on the couch and pulls his phone out, bringing up an internet tab right away. just like with his parents he doesn’t expect to find much, especially considering that kim is such a common last name, but he’ll try anyway.

by the time he finally gives up, having searched for the magic stealing witch and the other names his parents had gone by that seokjin gave him, yoongi is finished with making a simple dinner of bowls of ramen and rice. they eat at the coffee table in the living room, getting a few bites in before jimin says, “i didn’t find anything.”

yoongi glances over at him with a frown. “i’m not terribly surprised. witches have had to get better and better at hiding over time.”

jimin sighs and pushes his ramen around in the bowl. “i know, i didn’t really expect anything either. i just really wanted to find something, you know?” he glances over when yoongi’s tail touches him arm tentatively, and when he gives the familiar a soft smile he scooches over on the couch until their thighs are touching.

they eat the rest of their food in silence and take their dishes to the sink when they’re finished, jimin washing them since yoongi cooked. yoongi stays in the room though, hovering around like he usually does.

“we can go back to seokjin’s tomorrow if you’d like. it’d be better to start learning as soon as possible.”

jimin nods before remembering something. “oh, right. why did you call him master?”

the expression on yoongi’s face is confused, almost cute, before he seems to realize what jimin is talking about. “ah. familiars call witches older than them master, even if it’s not their witch.” he shrugs. “it’s tradition, i guess.”

“i see…” jimin places the last dish on the counter to dry and then glances over. “does that mean you should be calling me master?”

yoongi pouts. “technically we were born at the same time,” he says, but after a second his lips pull up into a smirk. “that is, unless you’re into that? do you want me to call you master, jimin?”

he takes a step forward toward jimin and jimin squeaks, darting away to the other side of the kitchen. “no!” he grabs a random kitchen towel to dry his hands off, his face red as yoongi laughs at him and heads back out into the living room.

eventually he follows yoongi out, his lips formed into a pout but yoongi doesn’t even glance at him, all of his attention on the small television in front of the couch. yoongi had been pretty impressed with how far technology had come since the last time he’d been summoned, though he wouldn’t tell jimin exactly how long ago that was.

they laze around for the rest of the day even though jimin knows that he should be working on homework or looking more into magic. he just doesn’t have it in him right now, too worried about the past and the future to actually do anything. yoongi seems to understand though, curling up next to him on the couch much like he used to do in his cat form, purring when jimin finally lets himself card his fingers through his hair.

***

“you’d be surprised how much magic isn’t spells and is just feeling,” seokjin says, gesturing to the items in front of him.

they’re standing in an almost empty room, a table in front of them with a random array of items laid out. some things vaguely makes sense, like what jimin guesses is a potion even though it’s in a mountain dew bottle, and an array of stones. other things…

he eyes the broom. “can we… fly?”

the look that seokjin gives him is so pained that jimin can feel it. “no, jesus. you’re going to try to break the stick in half.” well that makes more sense, but jimin pouts anyway. it’s not his fault he has no idea about any of this. all he knows about witches is stuff from television and netflix.

“so right now you’re just going to concentrate. try to gather up your energy on doing something. spells are great, but you still have to be able to call upon your magic to use them.” he looks at one of the stones on the table and within a split second it’s dust, having crumbled with just a thought.

jimin eyes it warily and tries to do as he’s told. every time he’s used his magic so far it’s been by accident, and he hasn’t managed to do anything except stop time. yoongi told him he’d be able to do other things once he got the hang of it, but he hadn’t really thought about it until seeing seokjin using his own magic.

it takes jimin an embarrassing amount of time to do so much as make anything on the table wiggle, let alone break apart. seokjin tries to reassure him that it’s alright, that it takes time and practice, but even he’s conjured a comfortable looking armchair and book out of nowhere, flipping through the pages while jimin struggles.

after what feels like hours, jimin groans. “how long have i been at this? i’m so tired.”

seokjin hums and flips one of his pages, not even glancing up. “time isn’t real.”

jimin looks over at him to scrunch his nose but then he realizes that seokjin is right. this entire house is outside the realm of reality, and time doesn’t pass by. which means that he could spend what he thinks is days in here and when he walks out it’ll be the exact same moment that he went inside.

still, though, he’s tired. “you know, yoongi has been with namjoon for a while. i should probably check on them.”

“yoongi has known namjoon for a long time, he’s fine.” after a couple of minutes, all of which jimin spends glaring at the bottle of mountain dew on the table, seokjin speaks up again. “ah, was that you trying to use your familiar as an excuse to leave?”

jimin sniffs and scratches at his nose. “that’s… not not what i was doing…”

for a moment seokjin just looks at him, then he sighs and closes his book, standing up from the chair. they both disappear with a gentle shimmer, as if they’d never even been there in the first place. “i suppose i’ll let you go, then. however…” when he places his hand on jimin’s shoulder it feels heavier than it should. “you should continue practicing, jimin. you need to be able to protect yourself if you’re going to be looking for a magic stealer.”

seokjin’s right, of course, and jimin does know that. he should be pushing aside his boredom and tiredness in order to continue learning, to do his best so that he knows that if something happens it won’t end up killing him. but he’s been alright so far and they don’t even know who kim seyoon really is, or where she is, for that matter. it could take months, maybe even years, to find her. so they have time, right?

yoongi gives him a bright smile as soon as they make eye contact, padding over and wrapping both of his arms around both of jimin’s to rub his head against jimin’s shoulder. it’s such a cat-like action that it surprises a laugh out of him, and he pets his hand through yoongi’s hair. he supposes that this is technically the longest amount of time they’ve spent apart since his birthday besides school, and that’s if his training today didn’t take more than a few hours.

“alright, let’s go home. we can come back tomorrow when i finish classes.” he looks over toward seokjin, who has made a home next to namjoon on one of the multiple couches in the room. “if that’s okay?”

“of course it is,” seokjin replies with a smile. “do try to practice a bit more tonight, jimin,” he says again, and jimin huffs quietly but gives him a nod.

they pause at the door so that yoongi can stuff his tail away and put his hat back on, having gotten comfortable at some point during the day. “how long we were here for today?” jimin asks, half just wondering out loud. he found out pretty quickly that his phone is totally useless while in the house, both having no service and the time on the screen frozen in place.

the same taxi that dropped them off is still outside to pick them up, and jimin realizes that they must look insane because to everyone else’s eyes they’ve just walked inside of a house and immediately walked back out. they get inside anyway and give the driver the address back to his apartment, and then yoongi says quietly, “about eight hours.”

jimin looks over at him with wide eyes. “eight?!” he knew that it felt like he was there for hours, but he hadn’t actually expected it to have been that long. damn, he spent eight hours practicing and could barely nudge any of those items that seokjin laid out for him. he sighs and yoongi takes his hand in his own, likely sensing that his practice didn’t go too well and wanting to comfort him.

since time doesn’t pass while at seokjin’s house it’s still early when they get home. jimin is still tired though, after eight hours of standing and concentrating on his magic, so he decides to try to take a nap even though it might mess up his sleep schedule. for once yoongi doesn’t join him right away, claiming that he wants to do some cleaning and grooming of his tail.

whatever works for him. jimin takes off everything except for his boxers and climbs into bed, burrowing down into his blankets and pillows until he’s comfortable and then he’s out like a light. yoongi joins him maybe an hour or so later, slipping quietly underneath the blankets and pressing close.

the next morning jimin sorely regrets deciding to take that nap, because he ended up rolling over again and again every time he woke up and just went back to sleep until his alarm for class went off. since he ended up sleeping so long he still feels exhausted and ends up with a headache, and he goes to class with a lot of grumbling.

his classmate/almost-friend isn’t in class today, so jimin tries his best to pay attention in order to take a good set of notes so that he can share them later, but it’s hard to concentrate with the headache he has. he probably should have taken some advil or something before leaving the apartment earlier but he hadn’t thought about it, and it’s too late now so he just has to power through.

it’s barely half an hour later that he’s glaring at the clock, willing it to move faster, when it explodes.

the students closest to it scream and move out of the way from the falling pieces of glass and plastic and the entire class is disrupted as people start loudly talking over each other.

“what happened?”

“did that just explode?”

“did someone hit it with something?”

“don’t touch it!”

“it’s fine, it probably won’t explode again.”

jimin holds his breath and looks around warily, trying to see if anyone is looking at him instead of toward the clock. although no one seems to be paying attention to him he still pushes himself down further into his chair, his heart racing, because he did that. he finally managed to use his magic. sure, he hadn’t meant to, and okay, he was thinking about fast forwarding time, not making it explode.

but still, he used his magic!

maybe now when he visits seokjin’s later he’ll be able to actually break the broom handle or one of the rocks. the rocks are way smaller than the clock, so surely he could at least do that? it’s progress, and though he shouldn’t have made said progress out in public he’s still excited about it.

jimin feels energized when he leaves class after it ends, heading toward the bus with a pep in his step that he hasn’t felt in weeks, not since he first learned about being a witch. it’s a nice feeling, a sign of things finally looking up, and he’s smiling and waving at someone from one of his classes last semester when suddenly everything stops.

one second the wind is blowing, students are talking and laughing as they walk across campus, birds are chirping and flying through the air. the next second, silence. the friend he was waving to is frozen, their hand raised and their eyes mid-blink. the person next to him, walking the opposite way, appears to have been trying to grab one of their books as it fell because it’s floating, a look of surprise over their face.

“finding you has been a pain in my ass, you know.”

jimin whirls around at the voice and comes face to face with a woman. she looks to be in her mid fifties, her long black hair streaked with grey and a few wrinkles on her face. she’s holding a glowing purple orb in her hand, smoke swirling around inside of it. his eyes snap back up to her face as she takes a step forward toward him.

“your burst of magic was small yet strong,” she muses. he backs up from her, almost stumbling, his fight or flight reflex telling him to run. “i think with the addition of your magic i’ll finally be able to stop it!”

her laugh grates against his ears, high pitched and crackly, and he sucks in a sharp breath and finally turns and runs. it’s a weird feeling, to run with time stalled around him. it’s almost like running through water, except it’s less about the resistance and more about the feeling of something surrounding him. he can feel himself pushing through the wind, can feel it shifting around to let him through.

he doesn’t get very far before he feels something like electricity hit him in the shoulder. he cries out and falls forward onto his hands and knees, getting his bearings for a moment before touching his hurt shoulder. there’s blood covering his fingertips when he pulls them away and he feels tears start to form in his eyes, the pain beginning to make itself known.

“just be a good boy and lie there, okay?”

this has to be the magic stealer that he was warned about, kim seyoon, who he had trained yesterday to protect himself from. he almost wants to laugh, now. he pushes himself up to standing, trying to ignore the voice in the back of his head screaming that this is the witch that killed his parents. although he’d love to kill her, he knows that he has no chance, not right now, and that his priority has to be getting away.

there’s another burst of pain as he’s hit with magic again, but this time it spurs him forward and he sets off running once more. she follows him at a slower pace, almost like one of those stupid horror movie killers, but with how blurry his vision is getting he doesn’t think that it’ll matter too much. he ducks behind the first car he sees and presses the palm of his hand up against his wound, the pressure making him grit his teeth.

the sound of seyoon’s footsteps is surprisingly loud in the utter silence of their surroundings, and his mind races as he considers his options. he knows damn well that he can’t win in a fight but he also doesn’t think that he can get very far until he passes out from either blood loss or the pain itself.

he presses his good shoulder against the car to give himself leverage to peek over the hood, his bottom lip pulled into his mouth as he gnaws at it in thought. seyoon sees him and the grin that crosses her face is chilling, sending shivers down his spine. he raises his hand and concentrates harder than he ever has, hard enough that the sudden pain it causes in his head eclipses the pain in his shoulder.

for a moment seyoon looks almost amused, but then a burst of magic shoots out of jimin’s hand. it flies through the air at a terrifying speed, barely even visible, and though he had been aiming for her head the magic bolt hits the orb in kim seyoon’s hand instead.

she screeches, and then yoongi is grabbing him by the shoulders, pulling him up and running. he follows as best as he can, yoongi tugging at his arm every time he stumbles and falters, and after what feels like hours but was likely less than a minute they stop behind a building that jimin can’t recognize.

“jimin? jimin, look at me!”

jimin grunts and opens his eyes, not even realizing that he had closed them, and blinks yoongi’s worried face into focus. “that’s… that’s kim s-seyoon,” he gets out, and yoongi doesn’t even look annoyed at his obvious conclusion, instead just nodding and shoving something into the palm of his hand.

“hold onto this, you hear me?” he takes jimin’s hand in both of his own, closing it into a fist around the stone. “don’t drop it and don’t move from this spot. not an inch, jimin, i mean it.”

yoongi certainly sounds more serious than jimin has ever heard him, but jimin isn’t even sure if he could move if he tried. when yoongi lets go of his hand a wave of nausea rolls over him and he hits the wall right behind him. not having the energy to hold himself up he lets himself slide down the wall, his world spinning but keeping the grip on the stone yoongi had demanded he hold onto.

he isn’t sure when he had passed out but he wakes when he’s jostled, someone picking him up in their arms like they would a child, his legs on either side of their waist and his head against their shoulder. he blinks quickly in an attempt to clear his vision, pushing his head back to look at who has him but he’s pushed back down by a gentle hand to the back of his head.

“shh, it’s okay. you’ll be alright.” the voice is quiet but it sounds almost like seokjin, and when he turns his head to the side he sees yoongi standing close to them, his hands fisting the front of the hoodie he has on, tears in his eyes. “sleep,” seokjin whispers, and with a soft touch against the side of his face he’s out once more.

***

when jimin wakes up he’s instantly hit with a wave of nausea, turning onto his side and leaning off of the bed to throw up on the floor. there’s a distressed noise and then yoongi’s voice calling for seokjin. the bed dips when yoongi crawls up onto it, settling down near the headboard and pulling jimin’s shoulders and head into his lap.

“you’re okay, jimin. breathe.” his voice is soft yet still has tinges of worry in it, and jimin blinks the wetness from his eyes.

the door to the bedroom they’re in opens, seokjin and namjoon both walking inside. seokjin is by his side in a second, snapping his fingers and making the puke on the floor disappear. “you’re awake,” he notes, pushing the palm of his hand underneath of jimin’s bangs to feel his forehead. “i’m sorry for the nausea, i’m not too adept at healing magic.”

“the witch,” jimin croaks. his throat hurts, his words dragging along the inside like broken glass.

yoongi’s tail wraps around his arm, his grip on jimin’s shoulders tightening. “she was gone by the time i managed to get master seokjin there. i’m so sorry i didn’t get there sooner.”

jimin looks up towards yoongi and is surprised to see that the familiar is crying, fat tears running down his cheeks slowly. he makes a soft noise in the back of his throat, ignoring the bit of pain it brings, and covers yoongi’s hands with his own, tangling their fingers together. “no,” jimin says, wincing but continuing anyway, “you saved me. thank you.”

a small bottle of something warm is placed on jimin’s chest, and he lets go of one of yoongi’s hands to grab it before it tumbles off of him and onto the floor. he looks up at namjoon with a question in his eye, but seokjin is the one that says, “it’s a healing potion. i didn’t want to give it to you earlier because you were unconscious. it should help with the lingering pain in your shoulder, as well as your throat from throwing up.”

well that definitely sounds like something he wants to drink, then. yoongi helps him sit up but stays behind him, pulling jimin’s body between his legs and having him lean back against his chest. noticing that jimin doesn’t seem to want to let go of yoongi’s other hand, seokjin reaches out and uncorks the bottle so that jimin can actually drink it.

the potion goes down surprisingly easily. jimin had expected that it would taste foul or bitter, as most potions are typically described in media, but it’s actually quite pleasant, with an almost floral taste. he drinks the entire thing and hands the empty bottle back off to namjoon when the dragon reaches out for it, blinking his suddenly heavy eyes.

seokjin stands and smiles down at him before running his hand through jimin’s hair gently. “a lot of healing magic works while you’re sleeping. i’ll come back later.” before he gets leaves he looks over his shoulder. “don’t worry about the magic stealer for now; you’re safe here. rest, and recover.”

the door closes behind him almost silently, and for a moment it’s quiet in the room before yoongi awkwardly scooches down the mattress with jimin still in his arms. “i’ll be here when you wake up,” he promises.

jimin whines but doesn’t fight yoongi as he basically manhandles him into a sleeping position, jimin ending up on his front on top of yoongi’s chest. “i don’t wanna sleep again.”

yoongi laughs quietly, but it sounds almost pained. “you weren’t sleeping, you were unconscious.” he runs his palm down jimin’s spine, petting him in a way that reminds jimin of how he’d pet sugar. “sleep.”

with a grumble, jimin burrows closer against yoongi, not having it in him to care right now that he’s being held so closely. “kay,” he mumbles, even that simple word slurred as sleep takes him.

once jimin is asleep yoongi’s hold on him tightens, his face pushing down into jimin’s hair in order to just breathe him in. his heart is still beating so fast it feels as though it’s going to burst, his eyes still wet despite the fact that he’s no longer crying.

it was close. if he had been even a minute later jimin could be dead right now in the parking lot of his university, and no one would have even seen it happen because they were all frozen in time. if he hadn’t of grabbed that invisibility stone from one of seokjin’s shelves yesterday he would have had nothing to hide jimin, would have had to try to fight the magic stealer and die trying.

jimin makes a soft sound in his sleep that sounds pained, and yoongi’s heart skips a beat in worry. his witch soon relaxes back against him and all yoongi can do is hold onto him and promise himself that he’ll never let jimin out of his sight ever again.

by the time jimin wakes up yoongi is no longer underneath of him, doesn’t even seem to be in the room, and he sits up and rubs at his eyes to get the sleep out of them. he feels much better than he had earlier, even better than he had when he woke up this morning, actually, all signs of nausea, tiredness, and pain from his shoulder gone.

there’s a window in the room and it appears to be dark outside, but jimin isn’t entirely sure how much he can trust that considering that time doesn’t pass here. he has no idea how space magic works, or how seokjin has this house in particular set up, so seokjin could just make it appear to be night whenever he sleeps or actually have the real sky show through the windows.

regardless, since he doesn’t know he has no idea how long he’s actually been asleep for. considering that yoongi is no longer with him he figures is must have been a while, though. he pushes himself out of the bed and stares down at himself when he immediately realizes that he’s wearing pajamas that aren’t his own.

they must have changed him, which makes sense. his other clothing was likely bloody and dirty. he mourns the loss of his clothes as he steps over to the door, looking both directions of the hallway the bedroom is in.

jimin has never been to any of the other ‘wings’ of seokjin’s house. he’s only been here a few times, after all, and each of those times he had either namjoon or seokjin himself leading the way to either the sitting area or the room seokjin made for training. it means that jimin wanders aimlessly for a little while, taking random turns and keeping an eye out for anything that could point the way toward the main parts of the house.

he’s not really sure why seokjin’s even has the house this big. if it’s typically just him and namjoon in the house why would they need dozens of bedrooms and bathrooms? he walks by multiple kitchens and even a theatre room, for god’s sake.

after what feels like ages of walking he finally hears something, the sound just barely there, but he follows it. he ends up in a kitchen that actually has people in it, seokjin standing in front of a stove with an apron over top of his clothes, namjoon settled on a stool at the kitchen island reading a newspaper, and yoongi thumbing through a thick book while sitting at a table off to the side.

even though he hadn’t made much noise both familiars immediately glance over at him, and yoongi drops the book onto the table and rushes over to jimin. his hands ghost over jimin’s body and worry tinges his features even though he’s sure that yoongi would have checked him over before he left the bedroom.

“how’re you feeling?” he asks, his usually narrow eyes wide.

jimin takes yoongi’s hands in his to stop him from fussing, giving him a grateful smile. “a lot better. better than i’ve felt in days, actually.” when he glances over toward seokjin he finds the witch looking at him while he stirs something in a pot. “that potion worked wonders, i definitely have to learn how to make it.”

seokjin chuckles. “simple potions are relatively easy to learn, but mastering them is another thing altogether. it’s rare to find a witch that actually excels in all types of potions, instead of focusing on one type.”

though jimin is curious to learn more he decides that a lesson on potion types can wait for another time and walks over to the kitchen island, leaving a seat empty between him and namjoon so that the familiar doesn’t have to reign in his wings.

“how long was i asleep?” he leans forward on his elbows, almost knocking into yoongi, who is pressed up next to him and completely ignoring the stool he could sit on. “is there any news on the magic stealer?”

“you were asleep for almost thirty-two hours.”

namjoon places the newspaper down and adds, “there’s no real news on kim seyoon. some other witches and familiars felt strong magic in the area but by time they went to investigate it was gone.”

jimin blinks in shock, his eyes darting from yoongi to seokjin. “i slept for that long?”

there’s a pat to his hand which turns into straight up hand holding as yoongi decides to just curl his fingers around jimin’s palm and hold on. “you took quite a bit of damage, you needed time to recover. besides, it’s not like time moves here. you could have slept another three weeks.”

“thank god you didn’t. yoongi would have truly lost it,” seokjin teases. he turns the stove off and pulls bowls out of the cabinet above one of the counters. “he was already worried out of his mind as it was.”

yoongi clears his throat and tries to change the subject away from himself, his cheeks red. “anyway. once you feel up to it you should probably practice some more. namjoon can keep in touch with the community to get a bead on the magic stealer.”

jaw tight, jimin nods. “i definitely need to train. i don’t want to be caught off guard like that again.” bowls of stew and rice are placed on the island in front of them, and jimin automatically reaches to pull some closer to himself. he hadn’t really thought about it earlier but he’s almost ravenous. “if that’s alright?” he asks, remembering last second that this isn’t his house.

seokjin pats the kitchen island in a manner that makes jimin feel like he would have patted him on the head instead if he didn’t have to reach over everyone’s food to do so. “i would have strongly suggested it had you tried to leave, actually.”

while they eat jimin can’t stop thinking about how close he was to death. the witch had said that his burst of magic was strong, so she must have found him because of him accidentally blowing up the clock in class. had she already had a general idea of where he was, or was the burst so strong that it stood out to her regardless?

he hopes that it’s the later, personally. that means that he is strong, and that hopefully once he actually learns how to use his magic he’ll be able to protect himself the next time, maybe even win the fight.

once they’re all finished jimin announces that he wants to start training right away, and namjoon waves them off, saying he’ll clean up the kitchen from dinner. yoongi, unlike last time jimin trained, follows them, apparently deciding that he’s going to keep close to jimin. that’s fine, though, jimin is finding that he feels much safer with yoongi around.

“oh, right! i blew something up today!”

seokjin turns slightly to look at jimin as they walk, his eyebrow raised. “oh?”

“it’s, uh…” jimin clears his throat, embarrassed. “it’s why seyoon found me, i think. i was in class staring at the clock and it randomly exploded.”

for almost a minute it’s silent, the only sound being their footsteps as they walk through the hallways. when they get to the training room seokjin finally says, “i suppose it’s good that you managed to exert that much magic. you need to be careful, though. even if there weren’t witches trying to kill you, uncontrolled magic can easily hurt the humans around.”

jimin follows seokjin into the room, holding the door open for yoongi and then letting it fall closed. “right, of course.” he hadn’t even really considered that, to be honest. but seokjin was right; he could have hurt someone else in class, by either the magic itself or by the glass flying.

“it should be easier for him to do the stuff you asked of him last time, right?” yoongi asks, standing next to them kind of awkwardly, holding onto his tail and running his fingers through the fur. all the the stuff from before is still on the table in the middle of the rather large room, ready for jimin to once again attempt to break them.

this time seokjin smiles at them. “yes, now that he knows he can do it at all, he’ll have a clearer image in his mind.” seokjin summons, or wills into existence, jimin isn’t quite sure what it is he does when things appear out of nowhere, the chair from last time, plus one for yoongi. they’re farther away from the table this time, as if seokjin is making sure they’re clear of the blast radius, which gives jimin hope.

when seokjin waves towards the items he steps up closer to the table and eyes the things on the table. there’s nothing really close to a clock, but the clock was also bigger than all of these things. he decides to focus on the broom stick, his brows furrowing as he concentrates.

jimin tries to remember how he had felt when he blew up the clock. tired, definitely. aggravated by how slow time seemed to be moving, as if the clock was taunting him. this broom hasn’t done anything to him so it’s a little harder to feel anything negative towards it, but he builds the irritation and anger he feels toward kim seyoon up in his chest until he can almost feel it as something physical.

it takes long minutes for anything to happen, during which jimin actually does start feeling aggravated toward the broom stick because it isn’t doing anything, but he finally hears a crack of wood. he sucks in a sharp breath and closes the foot of distance between him and the table, reaching out and grabbing the broom to see.

there’s a crack more towards the end of the handle that hadn’t been there before. it goes almost all the way through the wood, stopping maybe half a centimeter away from it being totally severed. he looks over his shoulder to grin at seokjin and yoongi, and they both smile back.

“that’s certainly progress,” seokjin says. he crosses his legs and flips the page of the book he’s holding.

though yoongi doesn’t say anything, the look in his eyes makes jimin feel warm. he goes back to looking at the broom in his hands, taking a deep breath and setting it down on the table before taking a few steps back.

it takes him a few hours, he thinks, to do anything more than crack any of the items on the table. by the time he manages to actually break something there’s mountain dew all over the place from the bottle leaking, and tiny shards of stones and gems in the puddles. he manages eventually though, a plastic ball exploding with enough force to make him jump back from the table, the popping sending his heart racing.

“i did it!!” jimin spins around, throwing his hands up in excitement. when another item on the table explodes he yelps and stumbles forward. he barely manages to catch himself before falling on his face and shoots a sheepish look over to yoongi, who’s already out of his chair and halfway to jimin with his hands outstretched. “i’m good, i’m good.”

he definitely wasn’t expecting another one of the things to blow up. when he looks he finds that it was one of the stones, now turned to dust on the top of the table.

seokjin puts his book down and joins jimin, waving his hand and somehow managing to both put all the mountain dew back in the bottle and fix the crack in it at the same time. “any strong emotions can make using magic much easier.” he looks at jimin with a smile. “including excitement.”

jimin nods. that should make things a bit easier, at least, because he’s pretty sure that the next time he sees kim seyoon he’s going to be pissed.

although jimin had thought he’d done quite a bit of training already, seokjin claps his hands and fills the room with thousands of bubbles, all floating around and bouncing off of each other without popping. “now it’s time for you to try to stop time!”
jimin lets out a groan.

***

honestly, it probably shouldn’t be much of a surprise when they finally do fall together, but despite the touches and the looks, despite the bond that they have, both magical and otherwise, for some reason jimin had never imagined that it would actually happen.

he had thought about it, of course, in his more weaker moments, but had always been ashamed afterward. yoongi is his familiar, has watched him grow up and is quite literally tied to him. it makes jimin think that maybe his attraction to yoongi is wrong, but maybe it’s just inevitable. maybe it’s because they’ve been together so long, because their magical bond is so strong, that they feel more for each other than just a witch and his familiar.

whatever it is, when yoongi finally touches him, his fingers brushing against the skin of jimin’s hip where his shirt had rode up, jimin’s breath hitches in his chest and he thinks, ’here it is, this is it.’

he just knows, somehow, what the situation is about to turn into, despite having never been in this situation before. in tv shows and books the moments right before a sex scene is usually heated, the characters either frustrated with each other or desperate, a flurry of grabbing hands and quick breaths.

this is… calm.

yoongi’s fingers inch down to the hem of jimin’s underwear and stop, hesitant, and when jimin tilts his head up to look at him he locks eyes with yoongi easily, the familiar already looking down at him. they had already been pressed together, jimin’s head tucked securely underneath of yoongi’s chin, intending to hold each other in their sleep as they have been since that trip back to busan.

searching his eyes, jimin slowly moves his face towards yoongi’s, his lips falling apart slightly. yoongi’s gaze seems to be locked on his lips, and jimin watches his pupils dilate when he darts his tongue out along them. jimin pauses, still just unsure enough to not want to end up embarrassing himself by throwing himself at the other man, but then yoongi closes the gap between them and presses their lips together.

it’s not jimin’s first kiss, but it might as well be.

maybe it’s the magic that runs between their bond but jimin swears he feels actual sparks between them, bursts of power that are just small enough to not distract from the feeling of yoongi’s lips on his. the kiss starts off as chaste as can be but it isn’t long before jimin is capturing yoongi’s bottom lip between his own, reaching forward in an attempt to grab onto something but his fingers just meet skin, yoongi never wearing a shirt to bed.

yoongi almost jolts at the first touch of jimin’s fingers on his skin, and he pulls his head back until jimin releases his lip only to go back in, licking along the seam of jimin’s lips. yoongi doesn’t sweep his tongue in quite yet, instead continuing to lick and nibble until jimin finally pushes his hand into yoongi’s hair to pull him into a proper kiss.

their tongues meet each other in jimin’s mouth, wet and slick but so good. yoongi’s hand leaves his hip in order to throw the blankets off of them, the air under the covers already getting too hot with the addition of their magic, and jimin hurries to take yoongi by the wrist to put his hand back on his waist, only a bit lower this time.

he pulls away from the kiss, his breathing a little heavy, and pulls his lower lip between his teeth before releasing it to speak. “yoongi,” he starts hesitantly, his grip still tight around the other’s wrist. “is it okay to… want you?”

yoongi kisses him again, a faint brush of lips before rolling them so that jimin’s on his back and yoongi is hovering on top of him, his knees on either side of jimin’s thighs. he dips the tips of his fingers down past the hem of jimin’s boxers, his other hand roaming up jimin’s ribs under his shirt. the nuzzle against his face takes him by surprise, the action soft and very cat-like.

“are you worried because i’m your familiar?” he asks quietly, his lips brushing against jimin’s cheek.

jimin hopes that yoongi can’t feel his cheek heating up, but also knows that it’s probably futile. “it’s just… you’ve been with me my whole life, and you’re literally bonded to me. what if i’m, i don’t know, taking advantage of you?”

there’s a huff of breath against his skin, yoongi trying to keep from outright laughing, and then the familiar pushes himself up enough so that jimin can actually see his face. “if that’s the case then an argument could be made that i’m the one taking advantage of you.” his thumb sweeps over jimin’s skin, meant to be a comforting gesture, but it skates right under jimin’s nipple and he finds himself sucking in a quick breath. “relationships between witches and their familiars are uncommon, but not unheard of. but do you feel that this is wrong? that the bond is forcing you to feel this way?”

jimin shakes his head immediately. if anything, touching yoongi feels right, at least after he pushed away his worries over if his stomach should be erupting into butterflies each time, stopped feeling quite so bad each time he caught himself watching yoongi half naked throughout the apartment.

“then it’s okay,” yoongi says, his words muffled against jimin’s lips. “i want you too, jimin.”

now that he has permission, jimin wraps his arms around yoongi’s middle, pulling him firmly against his body. yoongi’s leg slides between jimin’s thighs as they kiss, a firm pressure against his crotch that causes jimin to blush again. he runs his hands down yoongi’s sides, lets one of them continue downward until he brushes against yoongi’s tail, sticking out of the hole he cut in the boxers he claimed as his own.

yoongi shivers when jimin grasps the base of his tail, pulling away with a lick to jimin’s lips before chuckling quietly. “my tail is sensitive,” he mumbles, his eyelids fluttering.

for a second jimin’s grip loosens, but then he decides fuck it, going down yoongi’s tail a few inches, his fingers running through the long fur. yoongi kisses down the side of jimin’s face, not pausing until he gets to the crook of jimin’s neck. he nibbles against the skin there, worrying it between his teeth, and this time jimin is the one that shivers.

“i don’t really… know what i’m doing,” he admits.

yoongi chuckles. “i know.”

jimin’s face heats even more and he has to keep himself from letting go of yoongi’s body in order to cover his face. of course yoongi knows, yoongi knows just about everything about him. he’d know for sure if jimin had ever had sex before because jimin likely would have came home and excitedly explained it outloud, not expecting his cat to be able to understand. it’s what he did for his first date, his first kiss. yoongi knows it all.

a hard bite against his neck causes jimin’s breath to hitch before whining quietly, yoongi’s tongue hot as it licks over the slight mark. “i can show you,” he says, moving barely a centimeter down and kissing there, as well. jimin is fairly certain that his neck is going to end up bruised to hell by time the night is over. “would you like to me to show you what to do, jimin?”

the next bite comes at the same time that yoongi presses his thigh more firmly against jimin’s crotch and this time he moans, letting his head tilt back to give yoongi more access to his neck. “yes,” he answers breathily, his legs falling open a little more even as he tightens his grip around yoongi’s tail.

yoongi continues moving down jimin’s neck and when he hits the collar of jimin’s shirt he pauses, removing his hands from jimin’s body entirely to push himself up into a sitting position. jimin bites his bottom lip to keep himself from asking for yoongi to keep touching him. fingers grab at the hem of his shirt and then pull it up and off of him, leaving jimin’s hair mussed as it falls off the edge of the bed.

he doesn’t go back to touching jimin right away, instead awkwardly crawling over jimin’s body in order to get to the nightstand and randomly pull the drawers open in order to find something. he ends up with some lotion and brings it back over with him, leaving the drawer open. jimin isn’t sure how long that lotion has been in here, or what it’s been used for, but he’s thankful either way.

“this will have to do.” yoongi moves back over to where jimin is, leaning down to give him a quick kiss. “i know this is new to you, but do you have a position in mind?”

jimin thinks about it. he’s seen porn before, of course, but that’s not an amazing source for sex education. he does, however, kind of want to see yoongi while they do… whatever they’re about to do. so he says, “can i start on my back? then maybe… o-on my stomach?”

yoongi smiles at him and nods. “sounds like a plan.” he scooches down so that he’s between jimin’s legs, putting the lotion down carefully to make sure the pump doesn’t get pressed down by accident. when he leans down to kiss at the skin just above the hem of his underwear jimin blushes but lifts his hips up off the bed, a clear sign to take them off.

although he’s excited he’s also still a bit nervous, so he’s not very hard yet. yoongi doesn’t seem to be too worried about that though, pulling jimin’s boxers down his legs gently before taking his own off, struggling a bit because he takes them off while still kneeling on the bed. his own cock isn’t totally hard either, just chubbed up a little, and jimin finds that he can’t stop looking at it.

noticing him looking, yoongi pats jimin on the side of the thigh until he looks up, their eyes meeting. “you’ve seen it before,” he says, obviously amused.

jimin scowls at him and crosses his arms over his chest even though he knows it isn’t the sexiest move. “yeah, because you still don’t like wearing pants. i’ve never, like, looked at it, though.” his pout grows when yoongi laughs at him.

yoongi takes jimin by the wrist and guides his hand down toward his crotch, holding it there for a second before jimin takes his cock in hand. “it’s nothing to be scared of. it’s just like yours.” the ears poking out of yoongi’s hair twitch but jimin isn’t paying much attention because his focus is back on yoongi’s crotch.

it is just like his, actually. they’re about the same size, not overly long but a little on the thicker side. the soft skin is pinker than jimin’s is, but that’s likely because yoongi is paler in general, his nose and elbows and knees commonly a cute shade of pink. he moves his hand upward, similar to how he had with yoongi’s tail earlier, and is surprised that he can feel it hardening in his grip.

he’s definitely touched himself before but it’s a little different to be touching someone else. he appreciates how calm and slow yoongi is, though, truly showing him instead of just pushing him down and having his way with him. after a few seconds he swipes his thumb over the crown of yoongi’s cock and then lets go, even with hearing the pleased sigh that yoongi lets out.

“you can touch me too,” jimin says, opening his legs a little more. he’s blushing of course, but he wants yoongi to touch him, too, wants to know what it feels like, especially now that he’s no longer worried about this being wrong somehow. yoongi groans, the sound deep enough that it surprises jimin, and slides the palm of one of his hands underneath jimin’s thigh in order to press his leg up and to the side.

jimin lets himself be maneuvered, his own hands lying uselessly at his sides while yoongi just looks at him, his eyes roaming from where jimin is completely exposed to jimin’s pink face and back down again. “you’re so pretty.” jimin makes an embarrassed noise and hides his face behind his hand but yoongi quickly grabs it and moves it away, pressing it down into the mattress right next to jimin’s head.

“you shouldn’t have to hide during sex,” yoongi says quietly, leaning down and pressing a kiss to the inside of jimin’s leg, the one that he has a hold on. his teeth graze jimin’s skin as he lets go of jimin’s hand in order to pump some of the lotion into his own.

figuring that he should probably make it a little bit easier for the familiar, he brings his leg up so that his foot is flat on the bed and close to his ass, stretched away from his body. yoongi makes a soft sound, apparently appreciating either the gesture or the new view, or maybe both, and then a wet finger rubs against his asshole.

it takes him by surprise for a moment but jimin relaxes his body right away, his breathing steady even with his heart beating quickly in his chest. when the finger starts to press inside yoongi kisses his leg again, sweet presses of lips against skin. “if it’s too much, let me know,” he says, but jimin shakes his head.

“it’s okay,” he replies quietly. yoongi presses in more, going slowly until he can’t get any further inside. jimin takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment before letting it out. it doesn’t hurt, is instead just a little uncomfortable, but less so than what jimin had expected. maybe it’s because he’s relaxed, or maybe it’s because he feels ready for this. whatever it is, he’s thankful for it.

yoongi fingers him slowly, pulling out every so often to add more lotion since it’s not really the best lubricant for this sort of thing, and it doesn’t take long for them to both get fully hard, jimin panting softly while yoongi stretches him. he waits until jimin’s insides are soft and pliant around his fingers before pulling them out, jimin moaning at the drag.

they both tense when yoongi presses the head of his cock against jimin’s hole, his hand wrapped around the base to keep himself steady as he begins to push inside. it’s definitely larger than yoongi’s fingers, at least the amount that he used, but besides a slight twinge it feels fine, just a little weird.

“just keep breathing,” yoongi tells him, placing the palm of his free hand on jimin’s stomach, right next to his dick. it rises and falls with every breath and jimin forces himself to relax again. he can feel the difference immediately, yoongi able to slide in a little easier, going until his hips brush up against jimin’s ass.

yoongi’s head drops, his mouth falling open on a groan and his ears twitching wildly. even though jimin is completely relaxed around him he still waits a minute before moving, pulling out slowly until he’s barely inside and then pushing back in with a faster thrust.

jimin gasps at the feeling, his hand brushing against yoongi’s as he puts it underneath his cock and against his stomach. even though he can’t feel yoongi through his stomach, the familiar not being large enough for it, if that’s even possible, he feels full enough that he should be able to. it’s almost overwhelming, even more so once yoongi starts thrusting in earnest.

a particularly deep thrust causes jimin to jerk and moan, his leg almost falling from his grip from how sweaty he’s getting. the sound of his whines joins the slapping of skin on skin, loud and lewd in his ears but jimin doesn’t care, letting the noises fall from him. once his hand slips on his leg again he reaches out to touch yoongi’s chest, asking, “can i t-turn over?”

yoongi nods and pulls completely out and jimin squirms at how suddenly empty he feels with not even the head of yoongi’s cock holding him open. yoongi helps him to roll over, pressing against his back as if ready to push him into the mattress but jimin pushes himself up onto his knees, legs shaky. “like this,” he breathes, turning his head on the pillow so that he can hopefully breathe easily.

there’s a groan behind him and then both of yoongi’s hands cup his ass cheeks, pulling them apart from each other just so that he can look. it’s embarrassing for sure but jimin thinks he kind of likes it, likes being looked at and wanted. he nibbles on his bottom lip when yoongi leans down far enough that jimin can feel his breath against his hole.

“next time i’ll take more time to show you this,” he says, and before jimin can ask what he’s talking about he’s licking a stripe up along jimin’s ass crack, the flat of his tongue dragging over his rim. jimin cries out with it, surprised, and then moans when yoongi relocates his mouth to bite at the supple flesh of one of his cheeks. “goddess, i wanna mark you up so bad.”

“do it,” jimin whines, using his elbows to push himself up further. “want you, yoongi.”

yoongi curses softly before he puts himself over top of jimin, chest to back and slowly pushes his cock back inside. once he’s all the way in his lips fall naturally at the top of jimin’s spine, and he mouths there before moving to suck at the patch of skin next to it.

jimin’s eyelids flutter, his mouth falling open so wide that he can feel drool seeping out the corner and onto the pillow underneath him. it feels much fuller like this, yoongi’s cock pressing even deeper than before and on the first thrust his whole body tenses, pleasure sparking up his spine not unlike the magic he had felt earlier when they kissed.

“that’s-” he can’t even get it out, left panting as yoongi fucks into him deeply, going at a slow pace but with enough force to punch the breath out of jimin’s lungs each time. he fists the sheets and tries arching his back to get yoongi impossibly deeper, his mind in such a haze that he doesn’t even register the pain of yoongi’s teeth against his skin, leaving mark after mark.

the pleasure is just so overwhelming, unlike anything he’s ever felt before, then yoongi’s hand reaches around his waist to encircle his leaking cock and his body shakes with a dry sob. it’s almost too much, yoongi timing his strokes with each push and pull of his hips, stars erupting in jimin’s very soul with every deep thrust.

without the biting it could almost be classified as gentle, a slow love making that fills their hearts just as much as their bodies, but it’s with the last hard bite to jimin’s neck, deep enough that jimin is sure yoongi broke skin, that he finally comes with a cry.

he spills right against yoongi’s waiting hand, some stray spurts dripping down onto the sheets. yoongi thrusts a few more times into the sudden tightness of jimin’s body before he reaches his own release, digging his nose in the crook of jimin’s neck as he groans. his soft ears touch jimin’s face with each spasm of yoongi’s body until he finally pulls back and out.

jimin can feel the come dripping from him even before yoongi’s searching fingers glide over his rim, and he whines quietly as he clenches his insides in an attempt to keep it from spilling out.

“do you feel okay?” yoongi touches him lightly, running his hands over the top of jimin’s thighs and his lower back, and jimin nods sleepily into his damp pillow.

“mmm, fine. tired. kinda took it out of me.”

yoongi chuckles and then plants both hands down onto the mattress next to jimin’s body so that he can hover over him, leaning down to press a kiss next to one of the many bite marks on the witch’s back. “you did beautifully. we should wash up, though.”

with a groan, jimin puts his hand up to his face. “i really don’t wanna get up right now,” he complains.

“washing up after is part of my lesson.” his tail swishes over jimin’s leg. “maybe you can ask master seokjin about a spell for it, later.”

that gets jimin’s attention. he pries his eyes open to look up at the familiar as best as he can considering he’s still on his stomach and yoongi is over top of him. “there’s a spell for that?”

yoongi laughs again, though this time it’s covered by jimin’s groaning as he pulls the witch up by the hips. “there’s a spell for everything.”

they go to sleep soon after they wash up, the two of them taking separate showers because jimin was just a bit too shy to shower with yoongi, and they sleep on the clean bedding yoongi had put on the bed while jimin was in the bathroom.

when they wake up it’s morning, or at least there’s sunlight coming through the window, and jimin can’t help but blush as he makes eye contact with yoongi, who’s been watching him for god knows how long.

“how long have you been awake?” he murmurs, resisting the urge to shove his face down into the pillow.

yoongi purrs, his tail coming up to flick jimin’s hip. “not too long. you’re pretty when you sleep.”

embarrassed, jimin turns over onto his stomach and practically smothers himself with his pillow, muffling a whine. he hears yoongi laugh before he feels a large hand on the back of his neck, yoongi turning his head so that he can lean forward to press their lips together.

jimin sucks in a sharp breath, for some reason surprised, but melts into it, his eyes closing as he pushes a little closer. the kiss stays gentle, their lips just brushing together for a little while, and then yoongi is pulling away.

“we should check to see if that witch got back to namjoon yet.”

yoongi’s right, though jimin doesn’t really want to get out of bed yet. they’ve been at seokjin’s for a while, the days all blending together, and jimin has been practicing for hours and hours by this point in hopes of getting stronger before they found kim seyoon.

then yesterday one of namjoon’s contacts finally got in touch with him, letting him know that she was spotted somewhere. jimin isn’t entirely sure how the channel of information works considering that time is stopped inside of the house, but when he asked, seokjin basically waved him off and said, “it just works.”

when they finally get to the kitchen, always the first place they go to whenever they wake up since seokjin seems to practically live there, jimin is unsurprised to see that seokjin is cooking at the stove. he is, however, surprised to see namjoon up by the counter, bent over and breathing fire on a tray of what looks like croissants.

“oh, um… what’re you doing?”

namjoon glances over at him but seokjin is the one who replies, “he likes for the butter to go on top after they’re already cooked, so he melts it himself.”

jimin blinks slowly. “oh.”

humming, seokjin flips the pancake in the pan he’s holding, another thing that causes jimin some confusion. although seokjin typically cooks all types of food for lunch and dinner, he usually sticks to korean food for breakfast. when he puts the pancake on a plate and moves to grab a different pan, jimin sniffs. smells like eggs.

“anyway, you two seemed to have a fun night.” seokjin says this just as he would say ‘lovely weather we’re having today’ and jimin freezes, his ass halfway on the stool at the kitchen island.

“i- what?”

seokjin looks over his shoulder and raises his eyebrows at him a few times. “we felt the magical bursts. i assumed you two had sex, but maybe i’m wrong…”

“no, i can still smell it on them, they slept together,” namjoon says, apparently finished with melting the butter.

while jimin finishes sitting and buries his face into his arms, yoongi just snorts and grabs a croissant off of the counter before joining jimin. “anyway, have you heard back from that witch, namjoon?” yoongi pats jimin on the back of the head until he finally looks up, then presses a piece of the pastry against his lips.

“yes, actually.” namjoon walks around the island to sit on the same side they are, likely not wanting to get in seokjin’s way with his wings. “i have the location she is at. she apparently fled there after her attack on you.”

jimin feels his stomach roll. this is it, then. now that they finally have the location for her, they can do something about it. he shifts in his seat, his eyes jumping around to everyone in the room. “am- am i strong enough yet?”

they clearly know what he means, and seokjin turns to place a plate of food on the island, pushing it across to in front of jimin like usual, always feeding jimin first. “on your own, no. but with all of us we should be able to kill her.”

oh. jimin looks at the older witch with wide eyes. “you’re going to fight, too?”

the look that seokjin gives him says ‘duh,’ but he still nods and says kindly, “of course we are. magic stealers are a danger to us all.”

that makes jimin feel… a lot better, honestly. he was kind of expecting this entire time that he was going to have to fight kim seyoon by himself. with yoongi, of course, since the familiar definitely wasn’t going to be leaving his side any time soon, let alone with him putting himself in danger, but for seokjin and namjoon to leave the safety of their house…

“wait, namjoon is coming, too?” he looks over at the dragon familiar, his eyebrows furrowed. “is that… safe?”

he doesn’t mean because of the magic stealer, of course. but he’s never seen namjoon leave the house before. the dragon hadn’t even been there, as far as he can remember, when seokjin showed up to save him and bring him back to the house after he was attacked. he kind of just assumed that namjoon couldn’t leave the house, either because he’s literally tethered to it or because his animal features are too hard to hide.

“i will be fine. seokjin has prepared a spell that will cause the humans to look right past me.” namjoon takes the plate that seokjin pushes towards him, his clawed fingers immediately ripping one of the croissants in half.

when seokjin finishes giving everyone their food, yoongi going right for the pancakes on his own plate, he joins them at the kitchen island, settling in across from them. “the spell can’t be used for long periods of time, but it should be enough for us to get to where the magic stealer is and kill her.”

there’s that word again. kill.

for some reason, jimin had kind of assumed that he’d… he doesn’t know, incapacitate her? imprison her somewhere?

but now that seokjin has said it, he supposes that killing her does make the most sense. she’s clearly powerful, and has time magic. jimin isn’t even sure if it’s possible to suppress someone’s magic, and if she’s as powerful as he thinks she is, there’d be no way that they could keep her contained otherwise.

now he’s even more relieved that they’d be there to help him. if seokjin had said that jimin and yoongi were to go alone, then that they’d have to kill seyoon… jimin isn’t entirely sure that he’d be able to.

“so… i guess this is it, then? we fight the villain?”

yoongi takes jimin’s hand in his own, squeezing. “yeah. we fight the villain.”

right before they walk out of the door of seokjin’s house, seokjin stops namjoon with a hand on his arm and pulls him close. jimin watches with wide curious eyes as they both lean in and kiss, and jimin thinks, oh.

he hadn’t particularly thought about it before, but that makes sense. they only have each other, after all, in this house that doesn’t allow time to pass. how many people have they seen die over the years? jimin isn’t even sure how old they are, he figured it would probably be rude to ask, but since familiars are animals and there are no dragons around…

even if they hadn’t really ‘liked’ each other to begin with, after what’s likely centuries of being together… jimin looks over at yoongi, and he definitely gets it. the bond that he feels with yoongi, from their twenty years together as owner and pet and then from the weeks they’ve been together as witch and familiar… if he does get powerful enough to stop time on his body, to live forever, he can’t imagine how deep their bond will end up running.

jimin is about to look away from the two when their lips start glowing a faint purple, and then namjoon’s whole body seems to shimmer for a ‘blink and you miss it’ moment. when they separate seokjin sees jimin watching and explains, “the spell we talked about earlier. it should last long enough.”

did that mean that they only kissed in order to do the spell? were they not together, then? jimin looks at yoongi, but all he gets is a smile in response. he’ll have to drag it out of him later, because there’s no doubt in his mind that yoongi knows.

there is no taxi out front when they leave the house, which makes jimin wonder just how seokjin and yoongi got him here after he was attacked. maybe there’s more to being a space witch than he thought, or perhaps they had taken a taxi but just let it leave before taking jimin inside, who knows.

they don’t get one to go to wherever kim seyoon is, since namjoon’s wings and tail would surely end up getting in the way. there’s actually not really a good way to get namjoon across the city, and when jimin asks how they’d managed before, seokjin just shrugs and says that last time namjoon had to leave the house public transportation wasn’t used as often.

a bus turns out to be the best bet, with the two witches and yoongi taking the very back seats so that namjoon can stand in the aisle between them and be out of the way of others. thankfully they don’t have to make any transfers, the bus taking them fairly close to their destination, and when they get off jimin looks around.

“this is… pretty public.”

they’re basically smack dab in the middle of seoul, with tons of people and cars out on the streets. seokjin takes a slip of paper from out of his pocket and looks over the address written on it before pointing to a tall office building down the street.

“that’s where she is, apparently.”

how were they going to fight a witch in the middle of an office? and why is she in an office to begin with?

jimin frowns but follows seokjin and namjoon as they start heading toward the building. “do we know what floor she’s on?”

namjoon shakes his head, but seokjin says, “once we get inside all of us should be able to feel her magic. she was gone by the time i got to your school, but yoongi said that her magical aura was fairly strong.”

well that was an understatement. jimin shivers when he remembers just how her magic felt, especially when it shot through his shoulder. yoongi seems to notice because he takes jimin’s hand in his own and walks a little closer, giving him a worried look that jimin smiles and waves off.

“as far as fighting her here goes… we’ll have to see. if she’s around a bunch of people we’ll have to either draw her out or wait until she leaves and follow her.”

hopefully they don’t have to follow her, because jimin isn’t entirely sure that they’ll be able to if she gets in a taxi, not without namjoon potentially getting discovered. and although they could certainly just go back home and stay inside, giving jimin more time to train, until they find out where she went, jimin is anxious to get this done as soon as possible.

he wants to get back to his life, whatever the hell it looks like now. he wants to be able to go to school without being worried that he’s going to be hunted down, wants to walk home in peace. he also wants to get justice - or maybe it’s revenge? - for the murder of his biological parents.

the office building that seyoon is apparently inside of has security as soon as they enter, but seokjin smooth talks their way through. either that or he performs some type of magic, but jimin is fairly certain that the security guard didn’t even see the rest of them, too focused on seokjin’s handsome face as he waves them through.

they pause next to the elevator, and seokjin looks up toward the ceiling with furrowed brows. “she’s definitely here, but i’m not sure which floor she’s on.”

shrugging, yoongi reaches out and hits the ‘up’ button for the elevator. “guess we’ll just have to go up until her aura gets stronger. i can’t feel it yet.” he looks over at jimin, who shakes his head.

“me neither."

they all pile into the elevator once it comes, and thankfully no one tries to get in behind them. for a moment seokjin looks at all the floor buttons as if contemplating something, then he reaches out and slides his hand down the entire panel. all the floors light up, and he shrugs as the doors close and they head upward.

on the third floor the doors open again, someone wanting to get on, but they step inside and see that all the buttons have been pressed, give them a weird look, and get right back off. jimin doesn’t blame them, really.

at floor eight, yoongi speaks up. “i can feel her now.”

seokjin hums and nods, his eyes trained upward, above the doors. “it’s definitely getting stronger.” he turns and looks at them one at a time, his eyes searching theirs. “are you ready?”

jimin breathes out shakily but nods. “don’t have much of a choice at this point, i guess.” he gets a smile in return that screams ‘no, sorry,’ and bounces a little where he’s standing, his hands flexing.

while he probably could have done more training, he’s practically mastered blowing stuff up at this point. focusing on one specific thing is a little tricky but as long as kim seyoon isn’t surrounded by other people that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. he hasn’t been able to completely get used to controlling time yet, only being able to stop time for a little while and rewind time by a couple of seconds, but it’ll have to do.

he has the others here with him, after all. it’ll be fine.

right as they get to floor twelve seokjin’s body tenses and he nods as the doors open. “this is it.” they get off the elevator slowly, the doors attempting to close on them. the floor seems… empty. under construction, actually. there’s plastic everywhere, cans of paint and whole sections of wall that’s just boards and insulation and wiring.

“well at least we don’t have to watch out for other people,” yoongi whispers. half of them jump at a loud noise from down the hallway, and they inch in that direction, seokjin going first.

it almost feels like a scary movie, which is stupid both because this is real life and because it’s literally in the middle of the day and the entire floor is bright as hell, but it’s just so quiet, save for the beating of jimin’s heart that he’s pretty sure the others can hear.

“you brought the time witch to me. how sweet.”

jimin sucks in a sharp breath at kim seyoon’s voice, just as rough and grating as he remembers it being. she steps out a few yards down the hallway from them, an angry and yet cocky look on her face.

her gaze flicks to jimin’s shoulder, clearly expecting the wound that she dealt to still be there, scowling once she realizes it’s been healed. “so you got yourself a magic daddy. no matter.” though she’s not holding an orb this time, the magic around her hand crackles right before she thrusts her palm out.

they just barely dodge the blast of magic, jimin yelping as some of the magic seems to almost reach out for him as it passes, licking against his arm. it singes his shirt where it touched it, just a few inches away from where she had injured him before.

seokjin sends a blast of magic back, and jimin sees the look of surprise on seyoon’s face as she ducks out of the way. the blast takes out the entire wall behind her, pieces of plaster hitting the ground. seyoon scowls again.

“i don’t know who you are, but my business is with the ti-”

jimin explodes the glass in the door next to her, and she screeches as some of the shards cut into her. her next blast of magic is shot wildly, not aiming at any of them specifically, as she turns and goes around a corner, running from them.

yoongi grunts. “really? all that talk and she’s running?”

they follow after her at a slightly slower pace, not wanting to get caught off guard when going around the corner, but once they get there she’s gone. seokjin just shakes his head and keeps walking, though, his shoulders pushed back confidently. “you can’t hide from us,” he calls out. “you have so many different magics inside of you that your aura is messy, chaotic.”

there’s no response while they continue down the hallway, offices on either side of them. jimin can feel her magic too, though, an almost physical thing in the air. he wonders if it’s because the magic of his parents recognizes his own, but that’ll have to be a question for later.

one of yoongi’s ears twitch, his hat having fallen off at some point while dodging blasts, and he grabs jimin and yanks him down toward the floor right as a door explodes next to them. he grunts as he’s cut, and when jimin looks up he sees that namjoon has protected seokjin from the blast with his wing, the glass bouncing right off of his skin and dropping to the floor.

jimin doesn’t even get to ask yoongi if he’s okay before his familiar is saying, “i’m fine, i’m good, go!” and pushing and pulling at jimin to get him back up to their feet. there’s another explosion almost immediately but jimin yelps and throws his hands out this time, and then blinks when the explosion just… stops.

there’s glass and pieces of a door frame suspended in mid air, tightly packed and just waiting to cause damage. “i can’t keep it stopped for long, go!”

they hurry down the hallway until seokjin turns and rips a door off of its hinges with his magic, a faint purple outlining the door. he sends a blast of magic inside the office room right after, and jimin hears a grunt from inside, then another explosion.

jimin skids and bumps right into seokjin’s back, looking around him to see inside of the room, but only sees a large hole in the wall. there’s another explosion, down an office this time, and seokjin tsks. “she’s just going through the walls now.”

“there’s too much glass here.” jimin looks over at yoongi, who’s bleeding from a few cuts but otherwise looks fine. “one of us is going to end up getting really hurt.”

namjoon reaches out and grabs seokjin by his shirt, the fabric tearing lightly under his nails. “seokjin,” he says quietly. the witch looks at him for a moment and then sighs deeply, nodding.

“alright.” seokjin turns around and looks at jimin and yoongi, his face as serious as jimin’s ever seen it. “i need you two to distract her. i have to perform a spell, but it’ll take me a few minutes and i can’t do it while chasing her around the floor.”

jimin gulps and looks at yoongi, who has a grave look on his face. he nods, though. “alright. we’ll do what we can.” he takes jimin’s hand and pulls him around the two and down the hallway, toward where seyoon was fleeing.

“don’t die!” seokjin calls after them, and jimin almost laughs.

they’ll try.

seyoon got pretty far ahead in the handful of seconds that they spent talking, but jimin isn’t sure if she’s trying to actively run from them or is trying to set up some sort of trap. she seems a bit too full of herself to think that far ahead, though, too sure that she’d be able to stop them on her raw power alone.

eventually they come across a door that’s wide open, and when jimin peaks around the corner he sees that there is no hole on the wall leading to the next office, so this must be the last one she blasted into. her magic feels closer, too, so they keep going.

they catch up to her once they turn the next corner, and she has a look of frustration on her face as she turns around. jimin expects her to send a blast of magic at them again but instead she sends a literal fireball instead.

jimin yelps and tries to stop time for the fireball but only manages to slow it down a fraction. “ah, fuck.” he sucks in a deep breath, only having a split second to decide if he wants to throw himself toward the ground of off to the side, but then yoongi’s jumping in front of him.

the familiar’s hands are stretched out in front of him, his palms facing seyoon, and jimin watches as the air in front of him seems to shift. jimin almost screams when the fireball gets too close, but right before it hits yoongi’s skin it seems to bounce off of something and then turns, flying back toward seyoon at a normal speed.

seyoon curses and ducks away from it, but jimin uses the moment to his advantage to blow up another door. the glass hits her point blank, sinking into her skin as she cries out. blood drips along the ground as she tries to run, holding onto her right arm. she must either not know any healing magic or just isn’t capable of healing herself during a fight, because she just lets herself bleed.

“hold onto each other,” namjoon’s voice comes out of nowhere. jimin turns around to try to find the dragon familiar but there’s nothing there, and when yoongi grabs onto him everything goes black.

it takes a moment for jimin to reorient himself, but even when he does he has absolutely no idea what’s just happened. “what…?” he looks around wildly in confusion, and he sees kim seyoon doing the same just a few yards in front of him.

her gaze goes past jimin, and then she says, “you’re a space witch?” there’s actual fear in her voice. it’s the first time jimin has heard her sound anything other than smug, but seyoon looks and sounds scared.

they appear to be in some type of void of nothingness. the floor under his feet is flat, and he can see everyone else fine so it’s not actually dark, but everything around them is black. he can’t see any walls or ceiling, can’t tell how far the nothingness goes. is this what seokjin means when he says he can bring things in and out of reality?

seyoon pushes out her good arm, the air crackling around it as she gathers enough magic for a blast, but namjoon shoots past jimin, his wings flapping, and grabs her. she screams as his claws dig into her arms and releases the blast but it shoots off wildly to the side, hitting nothing.

yoongi runs to join namjoon, holding onto seyoon’s bad arm so that namjoon can shift behind her and hold her more firmly. although yoongi isn’t as strong as the dragon familiar, he does just fine keeping her from moving.

“there’s nothing here for you to manipulate, kim seyoon.” seokjin walks up to her at a leisurely pace, and at first jimin thinks that he’s just being smug but with a better look he realizes that seokjin looks exhausted. still beautiful and poised, but clearly tired, bringing all of them here into this void clearly taking it out of him.

jimin hurries to follow seokjin, stopping just inches in front of seyoon. for a second they all just look at each other, and then seyoon scowls. “you don’t have the energy to perform the magic absorption ritual here.”

shock appears on seokjin’s face, and then he laughs. “you mean the magic stealing ritual? no, that’s not what we’re going to do with you.” he sobers, his expression falling into a blankness before he steps back, leaving jimin up close.

now that she’s right here, jimin isn’t even sure that he wants to talk to her. he had assumed that they’d just kill her as soon as they could, but now… he takes a deep breath. “did you kill two time witches about twenty years ago?”

despite clearly being outmatched, seyoon smirks. “you mean your parents, little witch?” jimin winces as she laughs in his face. “i sure did.”

jimin already knew that, of course, but having it confirmed still feels like a physical blow. he stumbles back a step, his eyes already tearing up, but then kim seyoon continues, her tone annoyed.

“unfortunately they had given you most of their magic, and then hid you. they were weak by time i found them, and even with their combined magic it wasn’t enough for me to do anything more than slow down my body’s aging.”

“so you were after me for… the rest of their power?” he asks, more empty than surprised.

seyoon snorts. “of course i was, child. if i took your magic too i’d have been able to stop my aging completely, maybe even reverse it. i’d be all powerful,” she adds, her eyes becoming shiny and almost crazed.

jimin’s heard more than enough. he looks away from her, tears finally falling, and seokjin places his hand on his shoulder. “do you want to…?”

he shakes his head. “no. i don’t think i can bring myself to.”

as he steps back so that seokjin can move forward, his hand outstretched, seyoon screams and starts to thrash in the hold of the familiars. “you stupid child! you should take my power!” her screaming turns into cackling laughter. “i’ll live on in you for the rest of eternity!”

jimin meets yoongi’s eyes for a second before turning away from the scene completely, unable to stomach watching what’s about to happen. “no. no more magic stealing.”

kim seyoon screams again, but this time it’s a scream filled with pain.

***

they go home, afterwards. jimin’s home, not seokjin’s. the older witch and the dragon familiar come with, and although they don’t say why, jimin is pretty sure it’s because they want to make sure that he’s okay.

if they did ask, he’s not entirely sure what his answer would be, to be honest. he avengened his parents, got justice for all the witches that kim seyoon has killed in her lifetime. but he also killed for the first time in his life. he may not have dealt the last blow, but he was privy to it, had stood there and allowed for it to happen.

it had to, of course. not only was seyoon crazy, she was also way too strong to be allowed to live, and power hungry. even if they got her to promise to stop hunting jimin, she would have continued killing others in order to add to her power. what they did was necessary, but jimin isn’t sure that that makes it right.

there’s also the problem that there’s more magic stealers out there. though they’re apparently rare they do still exist, and since time witches are rare it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility for jimin to be targeted again. he’ll have to train more, to get stronger and more in tune with his magic in order to protect himself in the future.

seokjin will help with that, he knows. he’s been a massive help so far, and jimin knows that he’ll have to find a way to repay the elder witch in the future. not right now, though. right now he just wants to… rest. to breathe.

jimin all but collapses onto the couch as soon as they step foot in his apartment, letting one of the others close and lock the door behind them. it’s almost funny, how out of place seokjin and namjoon look in his space, tutting around and looking around at various items.

he’s not completely surprised, though. the inside of seokjin’s house is almost castle-like, filled with expensive looking and pristine items, besides all the plants and the books. there wasn’t even a television anywhere in the house, which jimin supposes makes sense considering that phones don’t work there, so if they did have a tv it would be showing the same things over and over, probably.

namjoon in particular looks interested in the television, and it reminds jimin so much of the first few days with yoongi that he starts laughing.

yoongi looks over at him with a small but confused smile, which quickly changes into concern when jimin’s laughter turns into sobs, his whole body shaking with the force of them. “ah, jimin,” yoongi whispers, shuffling close on the couch and wrapping his arms around jimin’s waist, pulling him up and into his lap.

none of them say anything, just let jimin cry into yoongi’s neck as the familiar strokes his back. he feels an additional hand touch his hair. when his sobs finally subside into quiet tears and sniffles, seokjin gets up from next to them.

“we’re going to go, then.” he touches jimin’s hair again lightly before heading toward the front door, namjoon following behind him. before he turns the knob he looks over at jimin with a sad smile. “you’re welcome at my home whenever you like, jimin. you’re family now.”

“wait, hyung!” jimin pushes himself out of yoongi’s lap and rushes to seokjin and namjoon, throwing his arms around both of their waists in order to hug them. namjoon feels hot under the palm of his hand, even through his clothing, but jimin just squeezes tighter. “thank you. both of you.”

seokjin pats him on the back, and he even feels namjoon’s tail brush against his leg. drawing a deep steadying breath, jimin finally pulls back from them, letting his hold fall and stepping away.
“of course,” namjoon says, bowing his head slightly. “you have helped us make the magical community safer for all of us.” his eyes flicker over to seokjin, who nods, much to jimin’s disbelief.

“namjoon is right. thank you, jimin.”

when they leave, jimin locks the door behind them and lets out a breath. the floorboards creak and he turns, jumping a little when he finds yoongi standing only a foot away from him. “they thanked me,” he says in awe.

yoongi reaches down with a small smile, sliding their palms together and entwining their fingers. “they did.” he leans forward and brushes his lips against jimin’s teary cheek in a soft kiss. “you’re going to be a big deal amongst witches, jimin. i can already tell.”

jimin isn’t entirely sure what to do with that information. he hadn’t set out for any of this to happen, he just wanted to know what happened to his parents. but having a community, a place to belong… it sounds nice.

“you wanna take a nap?”

when jimin chuckles it comes out a little watery, his hold on yoongi’s hands tightening. “only if you promise to be next to me when i wake up.”

yoongi grins, his eyes sparkling. “of course.”