Chapter Text
It's been approximately one hour and twenty minutes since Jungkook clumsily stumbled into a mildly popular Italian restaurant, running late for a blind date, and now here he is, pasta sauce around his mouth and feeling himself fall a little bit more in love with every word that's coming out of Min Yoongi's mouth. The current topic of conversation is dogs, and it has been ever since Jungkook dumped himself on the wooden chair at their table and blurted out, "is that a dog,” and having realized that he blurted it out, hastily followed it with, “on your cardigan I mean.
And it was indeed a little white embroidered smiling dog on his black woolen cardigan. Then Yoongi did this super endearing tilt of his head while tucking a dangling piece of hair behind his ears and intentionally hiding a slight pink blush, Jungkook felt his heart swoop a little, and the rest is history. Admittedly, Yoongi did most of the talking (about dogs, about his family’s dog Holly, about this dog rescue shelter he volunteers at, about the types of dogs out there) while Jungkook nodded energetically while stuffing his face with Spaghetti with Meatballs and Mushrooms with the grace of a starving man encountering an All You Can Eat Buffet.
In his defense:
1) Park Jimin is a Menace and had only told him he had a blind date when he had wearily entered his car after his shift at the coffee shop, where he thought he was getting picked up to go to the blessed safe haven that is his apartment (“You’re late,” Jimin had said, lips pursed. “To what?” he had replied, like a fucking idiot.)
2) It was a long shift and he really was starving because he was planning on buying a big ol’ pizza overstuffed with ingredients like meat and mushrooms and anchovies and more meat, and eating it in private.
3) He managed to also talk about dogs during some brief moments when food wasn’t occupying his mouth and had inputted some opinions about dogs and anecdotes about his own family’s dog Cloud, that made Yoongi smile, so he’s rocking this date, actually.
4) Min Yoongi is actually a magic being?? Probably?? So it’s like, totally reasonable to get flustered. Totally. That voice was made to slaughter men and Jungkook’s doing a great job of not melting into a puddle of goo.
He has to go excuse himself to go to the bathroom at one point to have a mini breakdown on how he’s gonna convince Yoongi he’s cool and dateable, and also to clean his face thoroughly, and maybe a little bit to fix his hair a little bit into that one style that makes him look really hot, opposed to the messy hair of Work Stress that he had before. It’s fine, everything is under control.
Then he gets back to the table and finds out that Yoongi had paid for the entire meal while he was gone, and everything is very not fine. Seeing that he had also left a big tip is the breaking point, really. Yoongi’s already extremely hot, extremely cute, extremely sweet, and knowing that he’s a decent human being puts him extremely out of Jungkook’s league.
And so Jungkook flexes his biceps a little more than usual. He doesn’t know what else to do.
It’s not even working, Yoongi’s eyes never stray down to his body. Jungkook’s in despair.
“Do you want to take a walk and digest a little?” He says casually, hoping that it’s not too obvious that he’s trying to extend the date, “I think there’s a park nearby?”
“Sounds good,” Yoongi replies, and they start gathering their things to set off, and it’s only when Jungkook steps through the restaurant door that he remembers that it’s cold as ass outside. When a particularly strong stray wind blows through him and his thin windbreaker, chilling him to the core and taking any hope he still had with it. “On second thought,” he says, backing up through the door to escape that cruel, cruel wind, and actually backing up right into Yoongi, “oh god, sorry about that, I think an indoor activity would be nice. A movie maybe?”
Yoongi, all bundled up in a beanie, a big scarf and oversized dog cardigan over a thick sweater, stares at him for a long moment and then smirks. “Awww,” he coos, “scared of the cold?”
“No,” Jungkook lies.
“It’s totally okay if you are,” Yoongi continues, eyes mirthful, and completely ignoring Jungkook. “I mean, anyone dressed up in only a white tshirt and jacket when it’s the middle of winter would be cold. I’ve heard that people put on these things called layers and scarves and hats to protect against the cold, but y’know that’s just what I’ve heard, who knows if that’s reasonable or not.”
“That sounds completely absurd,” Jungkook says straightfaced, and he can actually physically feel his ears heating up and turning red, but that’s not going to stop him from cracking jokes.
Yoongi makes an annoyed tutting sound, but Jungkook can see the glimpses of a smile even though he tried to duck his head and hide it. “Yah,” Yoongi complains while untangling himself from his massive scarf, “you should really take care of yourself better.” He holds it out for Jungkook to take, which he does even though half of his body is shocked that something this cliche is actually happening to him. In real life.
He dazedly shoves the scarf around his neck and instantly gets assaulted by the smell; he’s being beaten in a back alley by citrus, put in a chokehold by apples. Unconsciously, he takes a deeper sniff and his body untenses with the physical ease of dough getting absolutely pounded by several industrial machines. “This scarf is magic,” he says dreamily, “warm and toasty. I’m keeping this forever.”
Yoongi’s face twists weirdly, like he can’t decide whether he’s amused or affronted. In the end, he just huffs and bravely strides out into the cold. He turns midway, walking backwards and raising his arms, taunting Jungkook. “C’mon! It’s only going to get colder, the sun’s already set.”
They were in that in between state when the lampposts were already turned on even though it was still bright enough to see without them. Since it was winter, the day would swiftly become the dark of night. Jungkook hurries after Yoongi and together, they make their way down the streets, bathed in the warm glow of the lights, soft chatter trailing after them.
-
Forty minutes later they arrive at a dog shelter. They had actually been in the park for a brief moment, enjoying an extremely slow, calming walk until Yoongi got an urgent text from a sick volunteer that summoned him there. Jungkook came along too, because he would never pass up the opportunity to pet some dogs.
“I’m really sorry about this,” Yoongi apologizes for the fifth time, while fishing out his keys, “I’ll drive you home right after this, I just need to refill their food and water, and give medication to some of them.”
“It’s no problem, really,” Jungkook insists, “just show me the goods and I’m good.”
“The goods?” Yoongi’s lips quirk up.
“The doggos,” Jungkook says solemnly. Then he leans in and fake whispers, “The puppers.”
“We don’t have puppies around these parts,” he fake whispers back, “it’s not our specialty.”
“Oh? I thought you talked about helping out with a puppy earlier on? Something about being so excited that he fell over with the force of his wagging.”
“Oh yeah, Happy Bottom! He’s kind of an exception, we do have puppies sometimes but it’s pretty rare cause we mainly take care of older dogs. We don’t have any right now.” Yoongi triumphantly holds up a keychain with a skull and a “fuck you” cat charm attached to it, and then quickly opens the door to the shelter.
They’re immediately greeted by the muffled sound of excited barking. They walk further into the building and the barks get louder and louder, until Yoongi stops to open another door and then the barking is almost deafening. Yoongi’s face instantly transforms the second the second he sees the dogs and it’s so openly adoring that Jungkook is a little taken aback.
Some of them are in stacked in portable dog homes, the majority of them are in a big enclosed fenced area. All of them are alert and standing as close to the door as they possibly can, the fenced dogs tumbling around and knocking into each other in their eagerness to greet them. One of them topples over and Jungkook’s heart takes 0.2 seconds since entering to completely melt.
There’s a variety of dogs surrounding them, a good amount of them looking like they’re mixed with only a small portion looking like they could be purebred. (They’re not, Yoongi tells him later on, all of the dogs there are mixed or have vague lineages because they were rescues.) Taking a brief glimpse, Jungkook sees that there’s a chihuahua, and a terrier in the dog homes closest to them, and that there are two large dogs, a golden retriever and a samoyed, that are making the fence enclosing them creak alarmingly with the force of their enthusiasm. They’re standing giant in a sea of smaller dogs. Jungkook is charmed by literally all of them and his right hand itches to pet them and make them content.
“Wow,” he says in awe.
“Yeah,” Yoongi replies, still looking all types of fond. He leads Jungkook to the big fence enclosure and opens it, letting Jungkook climb in and get affectionately enveloped by a dog mob. He quickly closes it before any of them can make a break for it. “Ah, ah, ah,” he suddenly says, having spotted a terrier biting and pulling on Jungkook’s shoelaces, “Banjo, stop.” Banjo immediately stops and heads over to receive some pets from Yoongi from the other side of the enclosure. “Good girl,” he coos, voice sugar sweet and Jungkook has to look away because they’re being too cute and he honest to god can’t handle it.
Yoongi leaves Jungkook to his own devices (read: trying to pet ALL the dogs) and makes his way around the room, checking the food and water bowls, and replacing them if he needed to. He carefully put some medicine into the food in some bowls and made sure they ate it, or otherwise fed it to the specific dog directly by playing games and tricking them. He came over at one point to give Jungkook a bag of treats to feed his playmates, which delighted Jungkook because some of them did tricks like shaking hands and standing on their hind legs for extended periods of time, and one just get headbutting him in the side until he gave them one. Yoongi also opened the cage doors and let the dogs go outside to a small yard area and let them do their business. When he opened the fence gate, all but one of the dogs immediately rushed out, the only remainder being a beagle comfortably settled in Jungkook’s lap and looking very pleased about it.
Yoongi plops down next to him and leans in to pet them. “Her name’s Coco,” he says, voice soft.
“Coco,” Jungkook echoes warmly. Coco’s ears twitch but her eyelids remain closed in that manner that suggests sleepy contentment. The room’s pleasantly warm, but Jungkook feels especially warm, hyper aware of the heat of Yoongi’s body leaning casually into him, and the steady heat of Coco in his lap. There’s a slight breeze coming from the door leading to the outside, and it trickles in slowly, like the dogs slowly entering the room again, one by one, and the occasional two at once. They make their way over to the two humans, demanding attention, which they give freely and in excess. Yoongi names them as they come in, and Jungkook tries to remember them even though he knows it’s futile.
“We can leave now, if you want,” Yoongi suggests after all the dogs have come in.
“Nah,” he replies lazily. “I like it here. Besides who’ll give,” he looks at the samoyed he’s petting and realizes he doesn’t remember her name (something related to the sun?), “Sunshine here the love and attention that they deserve,”
“Sundae,” the other absently corrects. “And I will, obviously.” He taps the ground and calls her over. Sundae, the betrayer, immediately bounds over and tries to lick Yoongi’s face. He laughs while moving his face away, but Sundae is persistent and almost knocks Yoongi over.
“I’ll miss you baby,” Yoongi says, face practically buried in her deep white fur.
“Did someone adopt her?”
“No, it’s just that she’s been here for awhile and we don’t have enough resources to be able to keep her right now. She’s going to either be transferred to another shelter, or be fostered by someone.” Yoongi sighs heavily and wistfully strokes the top of Sundae’s head. “She’s one of my favorites. If I had the space I would definitely adopt her, but I don’t have a yard and my apartment’s small. I’m also too busy to give her the attention and exercise she needs.”
“I can adopt her,” Jungkook blurts out without even realizing it and surprising himself. “It’s just. I have a backyard and my landlord’s fine with pets. My roommates and I have actually been talking about getting a dog, and Sundae seems perfect.”
“Are you sure?” Yoongi asks doubtfully. “Samoyeds are a lot of work.”
“Yeah, just let me check with them.” Jungkook takes out his phone and snaps a selfie with Sundae, and by extension, Yoongi, in it.
and they were ROOMMATES
You
[img126.png]
thots?
BBQ sauce on my taetaes
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!! ! ! !
PERFECTION????
namjoonie tunes
cute!!
wait
did you mean to write thoughts or did u just call us thots
You
so mission: adopto a doggo is a go?
namjoonie tunes
Rn???
Are u actually already signing the papers??
…...its a yes from me tho
BBQ sauce on my taetaes
YES!! ITS A DOG-GO.
GOGOGO. HURRY I WANT MY NEW BABY HOME BY 11
btw whos the cutie with you
[eye emoji] x10
namjoonie tunes
[eye emoji]
Jungkook slips his phone back into his jacket pocket. “They’re super cool with it. In all ways except officially, that dog is now ours for life.”
“Okay, if you’re sure,” Yoongi says, still doubtful. Admittedly it’s a reasonable concern because it’s so sudden but in the grand scheme of Jungkook’s life, it doesn’t even rank in the top 20 of Impulsive Things That He Might Regret. One of notorious fame being that one time he had the urge to go hiking at 2am and almost died on a mountain that he’s never even heard of before.
Yoongi’s voice breaks him out of his self reflection, “I can’t let you adopt her right now though. We need to do a background check first.”
“No problem! I’ll come back another day with my roommates and we’ll sort it out.”
And so, on their very first date, Jungkook has his heart stolen and set on adopting one (1) dog into his life.
(And maybe one human too.)