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Hoseok was tending to his plants in the greenhouse, minding his own business. To be fair, Hoseok wasn’t the best at always paying attention to his surroundings, and he was easily startled on a good day. But then again, Hoseok lived and worked with noisy, loud, chaos seeking witches, so he usually heard them coming.
Hoseok had just finished tending to their array of succulents, and was going to get a pair of shears to gather some flower heads that Seokjin had requested when -
“Ahhh!” Hoseok screamed and let out a long string of curses. He would deny it, but he fully jumped a foot in the air.
“Sorry Hobi,” Yoongi was standing there. Calm as can be, like he didn’t just scare the living daylights out of Hoseok. “I thought you heard me coming in.”
Hoseok was still trying to get his heart to slow from the frantic beating caused by the scare. “I know you can turn into a cat, but that doesn’t mean you have to act like one when you’re not in that form.”
Yoongi just shrugged. “I’m just checking in on the flowers that Jin hyung requested.”
Hoseok let out a breath, his heart finally slowing down. “Yeah, I’m cutting them right now.” He started walking towards the shed for shears. “Make some noise next time you come in. You scared me half to death.”
…
“YOONGI!” Seokjin yelled quickly throwing a freezing spell over the potion he just spilled. The oozing bubbly mess from his cauldron came to a standstill from where it had been spreading over the countertop.
“Hi Hyung,” Yoongi smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted to check if we had any more flu potions in stock.”
Seokjin took a few calming breaths looking forlornly at his spilled potion. He wasn’t too far into the process, but it was still a pain to have to re-start. What a waste of ingredients.
“If there is none on the shelves, then we’re probably out of stock.” Seokjin waved a clean-up spell over the spilled remains of his potion and righted his cauldron. “If you take their name down and address we can deliver some to them by tomorrow morning. Or if they can wait around an hour I can have another batch done.”
There was a grunt of confirmation from Yoongi as he walked back to the main section of their shop.
“And don’t sneak up on me next time!” Seokjin yelled after him.
…
Taehyung and Jungkook were huddling in the living room of their apartment above the shop. Everyone was still busy with their duties so this was the perfect time for some scheming.
“I think he hides his presents in his closet,” Jungkook whispered. “Yoongi’s not like Seokjin that can just stick things in another plain of reality. They have to be in the apartment somewhere.”
“I’ve peaked in his clothes though,” Taehyung whispered back. He has a faraway look in his eyes like he was trying to think really hard about what he had seen. “I don’t think I saw any presents.” He paused and made a questioning hum. “But then again, I couldn’t get a long look. They might be there.”
The point of a present was supposed to be a surprise. But Yoongi had been teasing them all week about his superior gift giving skills and wouldn’t even let them guess what the present might be. It was still soooooo long to Christmas, a tiny peak wouldn’t hurt. What Yoongi didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Jungkook and Taehyung looked at each other, a knowing look in each of their eyes.
“So like, everyone is busy for the next little bit,” Jungkook started.
Taehyung smirked “and Yoongi said that I could borrow a sweater from his clothes the other day.”
“I did, did I?” Yoongi's voice came from behind them causing both boys to jump up from where they had been sitting on the floor scheming.
“Hyung!” Jungkook laughed nervously. “When did you get here? Nice weather we’re having.” More nervous laughter came out of Jungkook while Taehyung elbowed him to be quiet.
Yoongi raised an eyebrow at them, looking unimpressed. “You weren’t planning to sneak into my room to look at your presents, were you.”
“No, definitely not,” Taehyung said, sliding a nervous look over at Jungkook. “Why would you even think that of us? We’re just having a normal conversation. Not about presents at all.”
“Mmmhmm,” Yoongi hummed, turning to the kitchen. “Since you’re both not busy you can help me make dinner.”
The two boys walked to join their hyung in the kitchen. “I didn’t even hear him come in,” Jungkook whispered.
“How can he be that silent?” Jungkook whispered back.
“More secrets?” Yoongi asked, suddenly behind the two boys causing both of them to jump.
“No hyung!” they yelled and they quickly walked the rest of the way to the kitchen. How could they possibly scheme under these conditions?
…
“I don’t get how he can be that silent?” Hoseok complained to Namjoon and Jimin as they were sitting around Seokjin’s bar as the eldest finished cleaning up for the day. “I swear he’s like a ghost, you don’t know he’s there until he makes his presence known. I never hear him when he enters the greenhouse.”
“He made me spill a whole potion the other day because I didn’t hear him approaching my counter,” Seokjin frowned. “I usually have a 2nd sense for someone coming up to the counter. I don’t know how I missed him.”
“Maybe you were just distracted that day?” Jimin offered.
Seokjin shook his head. “I can never hear him when he approached the counter.” Seokjin let out a long breath as he finished wiping off his counter and moved to start putting away the plates and pans he had left out to dry. “That was just an especially bad day. I swear he turns into a cat just so he can sneak up on us to scare us.”
They were silent for a moment, all thinking about Yoongi’s weird silent power.
“Well,” Namjoon started slowly, “why do you do something about it?”
“Like what?” Hoseok questioned.
“We need like a Yoongi alarm to let us know when he’s around,” Jimin joked, causing all of them to laugh.
“Yeah,” Namjoon laughed, “like collaring a cat.”
Seokjin and Hoseok passed a look between them. Like collaring a cat. That wasn’t the worst idea.
“Dinner’s ready.”
Seokjin and Hoseok let out a shriek and Namjoon and Jimin whipped around, clearly startled.
Yoongi already was moving back upstairs as they all were still recovering from his sudden appearance.
“Maybe hyung does need a collar,” Namjoon groaned.
…
It was Christmas morning and for once the shop was closed. There was still a lot of prep for the inevitable rush that tomorrow would bring, but for now, the seven boys were just happy to be able to spend this time together.
All the presents had been given out when Seokjin looked over at Hoseok. Smirking, he pulled one last present out of his pocket.
With a grand gesture, in an overdramatic show of theatrics, Seokjin presented the box to Yoongi.
Yoongi looked at the box confused. “You already gave me a present?” Yoongi gently shook the box and he could hear a faint tinkle from inside.
“It was a last-minute present from all of us,” Seokjin explained. “But we thought of you and knew it would be perfect.”
Yoongi looked around at his 6 friends, they all had matching smiles on their faces that he couldn’t quite read, but he knew to be suspicious of. Cautiously he unwrapped the present, fully expecting something to jump out at him or cover him in glitter. (Seokjin was particularly fond of that prank once he invented the spell for it.) Instead, he pulled a delicate looking bracelet from the box with a variety of charms hanging from its silver chain.
“They all represent you,” Namjoon explained.
“I’ll help you put it on hyung,” Jimin offered, holding out his hand for the bracelet. He made quick work of fastening the bracelet to Yoongi’s wrist, but Yoongi could tell that he would need help getting the thing on and off his wrist.
Looking closely, Yoongi noticed a cat charm, a small music note, a basketball, a dangling 7 and a tiny bell all hung on loops on the chain around his wrist. He could hear the tiny tinkle of the bell as he moved his wrist back and forth as he examined all the charms.
Looking up to smile big at his friends, Yoongi felt the love of these 6 other boys swell in his heart. How lucky he was to have them. How lucky he was that they were seven.
“Thank you,” Yoongi said, making sure to look at all of them in turn. “It’s beautiful!”
“We’re glad you like it,” Taehyung said.
“Of course I do,” Yoongi said, looking down to admire the bracelet adorning his wrist. Then he looked back up at his friends and smirked. “This has nothing to do with me sneaking up on you guys over the last few weeks, does it?”
He had been noticing that they had all been pretty jumpy around him recently, and while he didn’t do it on purpose he found it amusing the way they could never hear him enter a room. He would deny it to anyone who asked, but he may have also purposefully tried to be more quiet on one or two occasions. Taehyung and Jungkook deserved to be scared for plotting to sneak a peak at their Christmas gifts.
Yoongi could read the guilty looks on all his friend’s faces. “I mean, we genuinely wanted to make you something,” Hoseok started to explain, “but I can’t lie and say that had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
Yoongi let out a laugh and shook his wrist letting the bell jingle. “I really do love it.” He looked around at all his friends. “And I really don’t mean to keep sneaking up on you.”
“It was this or getting you a cat collar,” Jimin joked. “We thought this was better than Namjoon’s suggestion.”
Namjoon turned red, “That was a joke! We weren’t going to get you a cat collar.”
“Although,” Seokjin interrupted before Namjoon could start a whole long speech. “We charmed it so it would shrink down and stay on your limb when you do shift.”
“Really!” Yoongi looked excited. “That’s so cool!” He then shifted into a sleek black cat, the silver of the bracelet standing out against the black of his fur.
That’s how they spent the rest of their morning. Yoongi in his cat form, accepting head scratches and pets from his friends. A tiny tinkling was heard whenever he moved from person to person.
Over the next few days, he got used to the tiny chimes of the bell as he moved. He knew that if he asked they would help him take the bracelet off and he didn’t have to wear it. But he genuinely loved the gift. And after a while, his brain turned out the noise as he moved.
What he didn’t get used to was seeing his friends turn to smile at him whenever he entered the room.
Yeah, that would never get old.