Chapter Text
Yoongi walks back into the building's warmth, stamping the snow from the bottom of his loafers. He doesn't bother to remove his coat, but he stuffs his gloves in its pockets.
His shoes still squeak a bit on the tile. He isn't listening, but the quiet sounds of one or two ongoing conversations, punctuated by someone's laughter, naturally float around him as he crosses the lobby towards the rented hall where he's sure the handful of lingering guests are still casually congregated, near the front, waiting.
Yes, they're waiting for him to return, but he pauses before walking in, pauses as soon as he glimpses the scene on the other side of the doorway, where something has changed. Something very odd.
When Yoongi left, about twenty minutes ago, to shovel the pathway and clear the guests' cars of freshly fallen snow — filial diligence and humility shown off to perhaps stoke envy in his father's friends — Jungkook was... well, Yoongi doesn't remember specifically where Jungkook had been (a lie. He's been watching him all night.) But he imagines him in his usual position, standing quiet one step behind his mother, trying to make himself small enough to, impossibly, avoid notice.
But he isn't there anymore. Now Jungkook perches — now he's been placed — perpendicular across Yoongi's father's lap. Yoongi's breath catches in his throat, the chill in his limbs suddenly forgotten.
Jungkook sits ramrod-straight, his posture almost too rigid to be considered 'perfect.' An arm is slung heavily across his tense back and the hand — Yoongi's father's hand, god, what — that grips his shoulder is not, in Yoongi's perception, friendly, but controlling, as if holding Jungkook in place. Not that Jungkook is trying to go anywhere. His legs are stretched out so that only the toes of his shoes nudge against the floor. His hands, folded in his lap, barely fidget with the folds and ruffles of his dress.
The way he's dressed could easily be passed off as the personal style of an adult with eccentric taste, but Yoongi knows better, knows that Ms. Jeon has shoved him into these same special-occasion outfits from the second he learned to walk, and she's kept it up as if it's still cute. (As if she couldn't tell she was mandating a routine humiliation, as if she never detected the derisive secondhand embarrassment of those like Yoongi who used to be her son's tangential peers.) The skirt's hem falls modestly at the knee, as always. Now, the last two centimeters of it are slightly displaced, rumpled where the ends of Yoongi's father's fingers have slipped underneath to hold the bare skin of his knee instead of resting his hand over the fabric...
That's wrong. Yoongi knows there's something wrong with that.
And his mother is standing right there, she's continuing her conversation with them, for god's sake, like nothing is out of the ordinary, when really, ah. When the other man chatting with her is standing behind Jungkook's back and... Yoongi can't see clearly, but this gentleman has at least one of Jungkook's ears — the long ones, the rabbit ones, uninherited, strange — in his hand.
The pale grey ears are, yes, difficult not to notice, and the grotesque fascination that results is inevitable — never goes away, actually. They're also a psychologically sensitive subject, an emotional sore point, and as far as Yoongi knows (although he hasn't questioned this assumption, which was impressed upon him as a grabby and curious little child before he could properly form memories) totally off-limits.
Here he is, though, this random man — and Yoongi's father, probably, some minutes before — touching them. Actively petting them, one hand still and the other stroking back and forth, glancing down with every other word exchanged, failing to maintain his etiquette when the biological marvel-abomination right there in his grasp is so vastly more interesting than the conversation at hand.
Yoongi must be missing something, right? He's been gone for twenty minutes. Everyone here knows something he doesn't. At the same time, it doesn't take a genius to detect and understand Jungkook's discomfort. It's obvious — his lack of enthusiasm, the strained tension in his obedience, the inherent humiliation of his position — so why... they're just doing it anyway?
They're just doing it anyway. Okay. Yoongi surprises himself with how quickly he clears the hurdle of disbelief.
He's been standing here more than half a minute, he thinks, and no one has noticed him. Not until now, as Jungkook's wide eyes — stress, desperation easily read in their darkness — lock onto him, cast him a silent plea. Help me.
Yoongi will, he'll step in, but let him just... look for another moment. It would be better for him to pick up more context. It would be better for him to discern what this is, exactly, that Jungkook wants to be rescued from.
The way his ears are now being touched, surely it doesn't hurt him, right? The one in that gentleman's hand doesn't look much different from the other, free one, but for how it lies pliantly draped against his flat palm. It's difficult to see what's going on from such a distance, but as the man, with mesmerized interest and complete concentration, traces the pad of his thumb around its outermost edges, Yoongi can theoretically imagine the soft texture of fur beneath his finger. He's always wondered about the underlying structure, though: how solid, or how malleable? How flimsy, or how cartilaginous...
Ms. Jeon, perhaps following Jungkook's gaze, turns to look over her shoulder. Yoongi jumps to attention, striding forwards as if he'd never stopped, clearing his throat.
The second group of guests — the more inebriated set, in their own jovial bubble of normalcy — pays him no mind. Ms. Jeon, though, smiles at him as if his return is welcome — he doesn't know what's going on in her head. Keenly sensing a moment of transition, the standing man responds to the redirection of her attention by taking a little step backwards, casually bringing his hands back to his own pockets.
"The cars are ready." Yoongi keeps his voice neutral, a little deferential, and he tries not to stare his father down too blatantly. The spell suddenly broken, the older man's hands have leapt away from the body in front of him as if burned. He looks like he knows he was doing something wrong, and Yoongi enjoys the sudden influx of shame in his eyes — even though it's not derived from guilt, but from being caught. "The storm's lightening up a bit. I cleared the sidewalk."
"Thank you, dear. We've got a rather long drive ahead of us, haven't we?" Ms. Jeon smile flicks from Yoongi back to the other trio. Jungkook looks at her blankly, and she finally takes mercy. "Darling, would you go fetch our things?"
When Jungkook starts moving, breaking his posture's avoidant rigidity in order to physically extricate himself from the undignified position, Yoongi reflexively averts his eyes. Jungkook sliding down from his father's lap — he doesn't want to witness it. And Jungkook knows how to be quiet, so Yoongi can't tell when he finally flees. He keeps his head down.
"Ms. Jeon," the second man intones, his tone a carefully dry performance of awe and charm. "What a splendid creature you have under your wing."
Yoongi takes that to mean the creature is gone. (Surely they wouldn't say that to his face — but what does Yoongi know?) He turns back the way he came, symbolically breaking himself off from the conspirators' orbit; but he's also dragging his feet, listening closely, both afraid and eager to overhear the rest of what they have to say.
"Jiyoung-ah." Their relationship is not that close, but Yoongi's father chooses to wield his relative familiarity like a chess piece. "You mean to say that for two decades I've had the softest fur known to man just an arm's length away? We could have been doing this all along."
Fine. Not the worst comment he could have made. Ms. Jeon offers a polite laugh. "Ah, there are some pleasures I like to keep for myself."
Yoongi shivers in the lobby's residual cold air before hurrying down the hall further into the building's depths. His shoes are still squeaking. He follows the metaphorical scent with mainly the destination in mind, not deeply considering what he will find there or what he intends to accomplish.
The coatroom is nearly empty, but it's not a comfortably enclosed space. He stalks past, propelling his way into the bathroom instead.
It's the right place. Regarding the opening door with bright, attentive fear, Jungkook's defensive stance unfreezes and loosens as he recognizes who's come in. "Hyung."
So, Yoongi's retained that title even after years of no conversation — it bolsters his ego. He walks forwards a little, fascinated that Jungkook doesn't flinch away from him. To be fair, the other is deeply fixated on re-grooming his ears. Jungkook has pulled one down next to his face, not looking at himself in the mirror but inspecting it out of the corner of his eye. "Are you okay?"
"No." The furrow in Jungkook's brow deepens, his nostrils flare, and he works his jaw. "I don't understand how she could, she let them..." With more urgency and abandon, Jungkook runs his hands over his fur, harshly flattening it down, maybe not so much fixing it as trying to regain a sense of ownership. "She's never..."
She hasn't? Some pleasures I like to keep, she said. "But she treats you like that, herself. In private."
"She's my mother. She has a right to do so."
He switches to the other ear. Yoongi watches him in the mirror. The material under his hands does look, still, too-soft, too-pretty. Slightly darker than his fingers, but starkly pale against his hair, his ears are made to seem most naturally lovely in contrast to the grotesque fantasy of pink decadence that he's wearing.
How much did the men touch, earlier? What percentage passed beneath their invasive hands? (How did that conversation even come about?)
"Is there anything I can do?"
"No... Get everyone to leave, I guess," Jungkook mutters, but Yoongi cuts in, stepping closer.
One of his hands is already traveling through the air. "No, I mean. Let me help."
Jungkook pauses, throwing him a confused look which turns to alarm as Yoongi's reach extends, extends. He jumps back, but Yoongi, unsurprised, is already pressing towards him again — he's not done yet. His fingertip only just managed to graze what, to his weathered skin, felt like nothingness; and that isn't enough.
"Hyung, I said I didn't-"
"No, hey, it's okay." Now that he has the end of Jungkook's left ear pinched between two fingers, he's not paying much attention to the appeasements absently leaving his mouth. He's only intent on transitioning from the two fingers to all five. "It's okay."
"No, can you-"
Yoongi can confirm that Jungkook's ears are soft, yes. Unrealistically, miraculously so. And they're floppy — at least down here at their endpoint — without much underlying structure. Cold, as if they need little circulating blood.
One of Jungkook's hands has encircled Yoongi's forearm, applying a little pressure towards nudging it away, but it's more of a suggestion. Like he thinks his words will be more effective. "Cut it out. Stop."
Yoongi closes his fingers around Jungkook's ear and yanks, experimental and punishing. Jungkook emits a strangled noise, a yelp that trails off into a secondary whimper, and his hand falls to cover his mouth. It stays there, a tiny, useless shield.
It's like he shrinks. All the more convenient.
Jungkook squints down at the ground, and Yoongi gently pats the side of his head before opening his fist and smoothing down the bit of Jungkook's body that he'd crushed. "See?" he murmurs, again. "It's okay..."
It's more than okay. Traveling from end to root, undoing Jungkook's work of laying his coat neatly in one direction, his fingers dig in to examine the texture of each individual centimeter. Now that he has the liberty to explore them, really, everything matches how he'd hoped the ears to be. Soft, soft, soft, fluffy and light, and as he gets down to the base, warm, rigid. A fascinating feat of science.
"Are they both the same?" he asks. Jungkook says nothing.
Yoongi has to take another step in, crowding himself closer against the sink. His thumb traces back and forth, carving into the junction of Jungkook's ear with his skull. The transition from fur to human hair is perplexing, interesting, but he's distracted by the scent, lovely and floral, that drifts upwards from that point of contact. His shampoo? "Why do you smell so-"
"Please." Jungkook's interruption is quiet, and it makes him pause.
Please. That's nice. That deserves acquiescence. Right? He's begging for it.
"Please, hyung."
Having made up his mind, Yoongi raises both of his hands in a gesture not far from surrender. And after a brief moment of doubt, Jungkook is darting back from where he stands, is skittering in a wide arc across the room, out of the radius of Yoongi's reach.
He doesn't turn his back on him, and he doesn't make eye contact. He recognizes which is the more ferally unpredictable of the two animals. Yoongi can't disagree. An unfamiliar, tumultuous exhilaration swirls in his chest and twists around his guts.
At the door, Jungkook musters enough anger to have the last word, hissed through his teeth, simple and to the point. "Fuck you." And then he's gone.
As if he can escape that easily. Yoongi smells flowers on the tips of his fingers, satisfied; but if he's lucky, this will not be the last time.