Chapter Text
Seokjin
Seokjin had agreed remarkably quickly to join the pack. Well why wouldn’t he? The fae, Hoseok, might be poisoned words in the shape of a man, but he was certainly right. A fledgling would grant him centuries to occupy himself with. A pack, with plans, machinations and enemies? Well that could last millennia.
And so, he’d called the neighborhood Kodama, a friendly older man with white rimmed glasses and eyes that gleamed of eternity, who’d laughed and joked as they’d all cut their palms, pressed bloody hands and swore binding oaths to be a pack.
And Seokjin felt only the thrum of mine. Mine. Mine run through his veins like wildfire.
Jungkook had gone to bed in the aftermath, and Seokjin could feel the pack piled around him on silken sheets. Seokjin had left him sated enough that he could be with them for a few hours, although it might be painful, before the pull drove him back to bloodlust.
And so, Seokjin wondered, when he’d given them their space and privacy, the unwanted intruder who’d forced himself upon their pack, why did the djinn walk towards him on velvet clad feet in the twilight.
“Jimin,” Seokjin said, and he knew the djinn's amber eyes could see the reddish gleam of the blood in the crystal decanter that he’d placed silently by his side. “What can I help you with?”
Jimin tilted his head, and Seokjin could see the open shirt, the long stretch of pale skin and golden hair that Jimin wore like a shield.
“Jungkook said something interesting,” Jimin said with a smile, his lips open slightly, and Seokjin knew he’d practiced it dozens of times in the mirror, the fragrant mix of innocence and passion.
“What did our fledgling say?” Seokjin questioned.
“That you killed the vampire who turned him,” Jimin murmured, coming closer, one hand tracing at the remaining buttons of his silk shirt with a manicured hand, golden chains tracing his fingers.
“You need not undress to get what you want, I’m likely to give it to you anyway,” Seokjin said with a smile, as he watched the practiced smirk fall from Jimin’s face.
“You’re an ancient,” Jimin murmured, and Seokjin could hear the difference in tone, the sweet silken song replaced with something harsher, the endless gleam of desert sands.
“Ancients don’t kill. They revel in the chase. Hoseok once made a man dance until his feet were just bone, until he clawed out his own eyes. That man is still dancing in a faerie circle, endlessly caught in a paroxysm of pain. Yoongi once tore a man’s skin from him and made a cloak of it. He still wears it. Namjoon has a living man trapped in a bottle, endlessly gasping for air, dying and reborn in an instant. And Taehyung... To speak aloud what he did to the last person to harm a tree would be too horrible to mention.”
Seokjin smiled, “And what did you do, djinn, when you escaped your lamp? Did you burn those men alive from the inside out? Did you turn their dreams into ash in their mouth?”
Jimin pouted a bit, “I’m still hunting them,” he murmured begrudgingly, his eyes shrouded, “some are quite wily.”
“A pity,” Seokjin said, “you should make a throne of their bones.”
“That’s kind of you to say,” Jimin added with a smile, “but you’re avoiding my question. This vampire. You knew him?”
“No,” Seokjin said with a shake of his head, and he reached with one delicate hand to sip the blood, his lips stained red. “A late aberration of a court in Singapore. He’d been abandoned by his maker. He found his way to Seoul half mad. I will apparently receive his maker’s ashes in a box by tomorrow. Their coven leader was quite apologetic, but well…She really doesn’t want me to find her guilty for her coven’s crime.”
“And Jungkook is protected by you now?” Jimin tilted his head, a golden god shining under a crescent moon.
“Yes,” Seokjin said, his words an oath-cut promise, “as you all are.”
“Then you wouldn’t kill him, certainly not so quickly,” Jimin said triumphantly, “and that coven leader is foolish to send you his maker dead and not alive. You’re going to kill her and hers now.”
“Oh yes, certainly,” Seokjin agreed pleasantly, “I have to set a standard, you certainly seem to understand that. But if I’d told Jungkook the truth, well, he might want to speak to him. To understand. And there is no understanding. Only bloodlust and cruelty. I would not want him to think vampirism is what this creature has become.”
“So he’s in the house,” Jimin asked with a tilt of his lips.
“Buried in the back garden, six feet deep, with blessed silver through his limbs and a mask of the same covering his screams. Starving, pleading, begging, ravenous until all he has become is madness and a desire for death's sweet embrace. I’m still deciding what to do to him after that.”
Jimin bit at his lip, but his eyes were bright, “Taehyung’s trees always need fertile soil.”
“I will ask him,” Seokjin agreed pleasantly. “Thank you. Did you need anything else?”
“No,” Jimin shook his head, but his eyes were pensive. “You can join us in bed next time. And I’ll leave you to your dinner in the meantime.”
Seokjin watched him leave, the djinn a gleaming golden god, under the silver moonlight, as he tasted blood, ice-cold, the sweet tang of bursting red pomegranates seeds and crackling fires on a wintery night under his tongue.