Chapter Text
Hoseok likes the dark.
He likes dark, stagnant, warm places that make sweat bead up on your forehead and evaporate slickly into the thick humidity of air. Like this one. He likes to stay until the room forgets he’s there; absorbs him into its silhouette and its stillness. The corners that call to his instincts are the ones where creepy-crawly things congregate.
Hoseok is one of the creepy-crawly things, too.
“He doesn’t do much,” Miyeon says. The door to his new bedroom had been closed behind his social worker as she and the group home’s mentors stepped into the hall a few moments ago, but solid wood isn’t enough to hide her words from Hoseok’s keen ears. He presses his shoulder blades against the wall, unconsciously bracing in case they decide to come back. Not that they’ve hurt him yet, but…well. Just in case. Always, just in case. “Don’t be discouraged if you can’t get him out of his room.”
“Most of our newcomers need some space, arachnid or not,” someone says. It’s a deeper voice. The wolf hybrid, Hoseok thinks. “We’ll do our best to take care of him while honoring that.”
“Yes, right. Good.” Miyeon pauses, hardwood creaking underfoot as she shifts her weight. “I should say as well, Hoseok-ssi has been…resistant to this change. I think some part of him was still holding out hope for a permanent owner to claim him—“
“I’m sorry for interrupting,” the other hybrid says, “but we’d prefer to hear his feelings from him directly, when he decides he’s ready to share them. For now, would you like some tea? Coffee? You have a long drive back, I’m sure.” They shuffle off to the kitchen, and all is quiet except the crickets outside and the distant thump of footsteps from another bedroom nearby.
They probably knew that Hoseok was listening and wanted to speak freely. It doesn’t matter; he can guess what they’ll ask. If he’s venomous. If he’ll be offended when they ask him to stay away from the children. If he’ll make a mess building webs all over the house. If he’s willing to stay out of sight. If he’ll attack the others staying here. If he has a record. Why nobody wants him.
Nothing they can think of would sting. It used to, when he was 9 years old and full of hope. When he was convinced that one of the endless foster homes would turn out to be his forever home.
But there are no forever homes for hybrids like Hoseok. He’s 23 now with no one to claim him, aged out of foster care and sent to live out the rest of his days in a group home with hybrids just like him—old, difficult, damaged, unwanted.
That’s the part that stings, he thinks. The fact that even in a house full of rejects, he’ll still never belong.
***
Hoseok doesn’t move at all that night, or sleep. He sits, and stares, and wedges himself deeper into the corner to avoid being swathed in the beams of light as sunrise finally sneaks around the gaps in the curtains.
He doesn’t often allow himself to indulge in instinct, but this is one he’s never quite learned how to suppress. The waiting, and the stillness. It’s what most of his foster homes preferred, anyway: that Hoseok was neither seen, nor heard, nor acknowledged. And if the other ones were unsettled with him hiding silently in the shadows—well, there wasn’t anything he could do. Put a spider in the living room to keep your eye on it and it’s still going to act like a spider, no matter how much you wish it wouldn’t.
His eyes burn with exhaustion. He’d hardly slept at all this week, too scared of his birthday coming, and the uncertainty with it. Going to a new foster home has always been an experiment in how much rejection Hoseok can take.
In the beginning he found these transitions exciting: a fresh start. Now, he knows better. Hybrids like him don’t get lucky. They don’t find a perfect family. They don’t get adopted. They’re tolerated at best, and despised at worst. They’re passed around the system until they’re 25 or deemed a hopeless case, and then they end up in a place like this, and they stay there for the rest of their miserable lives. Hoseok is only 23, but he’s been a hopeless case for a long time. He’s only surprised it took Miyeon this long to give up on him.
Footsteps echo down the hall, and Hoseok tenses, hoping they’ll pass by his room. They don’t. Whoever they belong to stops outside his door and knocks, a quick but confident three raps against the solid wood between them.
Hoseok doesn’t move. He’s not sure why. Maybe he’s angry. Maybe he’s scared. Maybe he already knows that he’s a monster, and he’s tired of everyone reminding him. Maybe he’s still sore from the last family hurting him. The reason doesn’t matter. He’s fucking tired, and he’s not getting up.
Another knock comes, and a voice this time: “Hoseok-ssi? I just wanted to let you know that breakfast is ready. You’re welcome to join us, if you’d like.”
No response. The wolf hybrid sighs. “Listen, I’m sure you need some time to process, so you don’t need to come out, or let me in. I’ll leave you alone. But I just wanted to let you know that you’re welcome anywhere in the home except for other people’s bedrooms, and all of the food in the kitchen is fair game when you do get hungry. I’ll be in the office most of the day—the room down the hall with the sliding door. Feel free to come find me if you have questions, or want to talk, or need anything.”
Hoseok knows better than to take him up on that. It’s always better to stay out of sight. The less they remember you’re there, the less of a burden you are—the less they resent you.
There’s a pause before the wolf speaks again, but it feels obligatory. As if he already knows that Hoseok isn’t going to give up his silent treatment. “We’re happy to have you here, Hoseok-ssi. I hope you’ll feel welcome.”
Then he’s gone, footsteps creaking on hardwood, and the smooth slide of a heavy wooden door.
Hoseok listens as the rest of the house wakes up. Teasing voices in the kitchen, socked feet sliding across the floor, the rustle of papers as someone zips up a backpack.
He doesn’t join them for breakfast. They won’t want him there, and he doesn’t want to suffocate under the inevitable cloud of uncomfortable silence that will follow him from room to room when he tries to belong a little bit too earnestly for their liking.
So he doesn’t. He stays. And he listens. And he wishes.
***
Hoseok has been in the corner for 32 hours when Seokjin stages an intervention.
“Hello,” he says, after swinging the door open with a thud and scaring the shit out of Hoseok, who didn’t hear him coming. “My name is Seokjin, and you’re Hoseok. Nice to meet you.”
Hoseok blinks. The first thing that comes out of his dumbfounded mouth is, “You’re the one who’s been leaving food outside my door.”
“Oh, so you did notice?”
“I…yes?” Hoseok really was planning on keeping quiet, but this hybrid—a snake, he thinks—has startled words right out of his throat.
Seokjin shakes his head with a sigh. “Honestly, you’d think it all has poison in it or something, with the way you’ve been avoiding my plates.”
“It’s not…” Hoseok swallows, scrambling for damage control before the snake thinks his behavior was an insult. His throat is so dry that he nearly chokes. He hasn’t had any water since before he arrived. “It smelled good. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re an amazing cook. Please don’t take it personally. I—sorry.”
Seokjin softens, entering the room and shutting the door behind him. “I know, Hoseok-ah. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats breathlessly.
“Hush now,” Seokjin says, sitting cross-legged in front of him. “Hyung was being dramatic.”
Hoseok fidgets uncomfortably. This feels like a trap. All of it does. Bringing Hoseok food, acting as if he would ever be allowed to call his seniors ‘Hyung,’ sitting so close. Is Seokjin mocking him? Waiting for him to mess up, to punish his misbehavior?
“Take a deep breath,” Seokjin instructs. “In, and out.”
“I—”
“Do it, please.”
Hoseok takes a breath. His wide eyes never leave their target—Seokjin’s hands. They’re folded carefully in Seokjin’s lap, long crooked fingers starkly pale against dark denim. He keeps waiting for them to move, to grab him. To check for palps or legs or teeth or—
“Our job is to keep you safe and healthy and happy,” Seokjin says.
“Okay,” Hoseok says. It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming after that, and he’s right.
“You can’t stay in your room forever,” Seokjin says gently.
Oh. They’re going to make him go out and meet the others. “I—it’s safer if I stay here.”
“I don’t think that’s true. Are you going to hurt anyone?”
“No,” Hoseok says.
“Then you think you’ll get hurt?”
Hoseok finally drops his gaze away from Seokjin’s hands in favor of staring at the floor. It’s not hard to guess what will happen. It’s what happens every time. He’s still sore from the last home, where his ribs never really healed right.
Seokjin asks, “Hoseok, have you been hurt by foster families before?”
Hoseok shifts back, further into the corner. There’s not really anywhere to go, but he can’t stop the instinct. He feels trapped. “Only when I deserved it.” Which was always, he doesn’t add.
Seokjin doesn’t seem to like that answer. He takes a deep breath, and lifts his hand to run through his hair—Hoseok flinches at the movement, eyes slamming shut to brace for the blow.
It doesn’t come. The only thing that he sees when he opens his eyes is Seokjin’s somber expression. “I need you to know,” Seokjin tells him, “that you didn’t deserve it. There is no excuse for abusing a hybrid.”
Hoseok doesn’t know how to tell him that the last family he’d been placed with said the exact same thing. It wasn’t ‘abuse,’ they said, but they still hurt him. They still hated him.
But Hoseok knows better than to be a problem this early on. So he nods obediently, and tries not to flinch again when Seokjin just sighs.
“I promise you, Hoseok-ah, no one here is going to hurt you. And it’s okay if you don’t believe me yet, but what’s not okay is keeping yourself locked up in here all day for the rest of your life. You’re not eating, you’re not drinking. We’re worried,” Seokjin says. “I’m worried.”
Something defiant overtakes Hoseok, and protest fumbles past his lips before he can stop it. “The wolf told me I didn’t have to come out. Was he lying?” It’s accusatory, and rude, and he wishes he could take it back the second he says it.
But Seokjin just smiles. “No, no. Namjoon is a terrible liar. He was telling the truth. But I’m here to tell you that needing alone time and privacy is different from neglecting your health. I’m sorry, I truly am, but neither of us is going to allow you to starve.”
“I’m sorry,” Hoseok says. He’s not sure what for. Causing trouble? Backtalk? Being here? Being himself?
“Someday,” Seokjin tells him, “you’re going to learn to stop apologizing for things that aren’t your fault.”
Hoseok nods in agreement, because he knows he’s supposed to.