Work Text:
Note, cat form for each boy: Jungkook, Taehyung, Jimin, Hoseok, Namjoon, Yoongi and Jin.
Light and stinging, the scratch on your hand makes you jerk back, eyes narrowing. “Yoongi!” you exclaim sharply, but the small, scrawny black werecat pointedly turns his back to you, obviously unapologetic. Taking a deep breath – it’s getting late, and you just want to sleep – you gesture with the needle, trying to be convincing instead of just frustrated. “Yoongi, you need this, and you’re not going to chicken out, right? I know it hurts but the virus has been going around to all the cats that hang out by the Sanctuary, and you’re outside so often…”
For a long moment, you think he’s going to ignore you, but then, just as you’re about to give up and go get Namjoon, he stretches out in an annoyingly haughty motion and ambles closer to you, giving his white chest a quick lick. Hiding the sigh of relief, you frown at him. “Don’t scratch me again, okay?” His head bobs, small ears twitching in short acknowledgement, and without fuss you finish administering the vaccination. Of course, he makes no sound – he’s been through far more than a shot, as his ripped-up ear proclaims – and once you’re done the werecat brushes against you in mute apology before leaping off the table and trotting away.
You’re done. Thank the gods. Today has been a nightmare. Between filing the insurance renewal papers, training two temporary people and getting the werecats their shots, the hours have flown by. Without Sun-hee, the work’s been piling up, and with her on vacation for another month, it’s not going to get any easier. Your arms are laced with scratches – one courtesy of Yoongi, but mostly from Jin, who ended up being pinned down by Namjoon before you could give him the vaccination, yowling and protesting the whole time – and yawns keep slipping out. At least it’s pretty much over. You just need to do your final rounds and then you can go to sleep.
Namjoon’s room is the first stop. The boy is sprawled out on the bed in his pajamas, reading a thick book, and when you glance in he smiles, brief and a little bit teasing. “I saw Yoongi go by. You got him to co-operate?”
“Eventually,” you sigh, holding up your hand to show the thinly bleeding mark. “You need to remind everyone that being in cat form is not an excuse for rudeness, Namjoon.”
The tall boy laughs. “Yoongi doesn’t need an excuse to be rude, Y/N.” Seeing the beginnings of a scowl, he quickly becomes more serious. “I’ll let them all know. Promise. But I do wonder, sometimes, how much of that is just our instincts showing through. With Jin, he was panicking, and it’s interesting to consider -”
“Goodnight, Namjoon.”
It’s too late for one of his hour-long debates. Moving down the hallway, passing by several much-abused scratching posts, you look into Jin and Yoongi’s room. Jin ignores you – he’ll be sulking for days, probably – and Yoongi is curled up in his cat form, so all you say is, “have a good night,” before moving on. Jungkook is in the room he shares with Taehyung, playing on the computer, but the latter isn’t on his bed, and a quick glance underneath shows he’s not there, either.
“Oh, he’s out,” Jungkook says as you rise, pausing his game and turning to face you. It’s amazing to you that he can get so involved in the computer that even his enhanced hearing isn’t enough to distract his attention. Occasionally his dark eyes flash green if the bedroom lights hit them just right, but you ignore that. It’s not Kookie’s fault he can’t completely control himself yet. It’ll come soon enough. Honestly, you’re more worried about Tae.
“Again?” you ask, gaze going to the open window that Taehyung undoubtedly climbed out of. “Did he say when he’ll be back?” Out of all of them, the second youngest of the Sanctuary has a habit of wandering away, sometimes for days at a time, and you can’t help but bite your nails until he returns. Werecats might be stronger and faster than regular humans, but that certainly doesn’t mean they’re invincible. And given the current turbulence with the Purity movement, you’d rather they all stick closer to home.
Jungkook smiles reassuringly, a hint of fangs showing. Another slip up, but you’re not going to harp on it. “He didn’t eat supper tonight. He’s just hunting. I made him promise to be back soon.” You suppress the urge to wince. With the flurry of things happening, you hadn’t even noticed Tae hadn’t had anything to eat. Well. You suppose that’s part of the reason why you had the restless boy room with Jungkook; for all that he likes to immerse himself in games, the youngest of the werecats is very good at being both observant and protective.
“Okay. Thanks Kookie, and don’t stay up too late.” He nods, but you know the second you turn your back he’ll be playing the game again, probably for several more hours. Getting any sort of discipline from the boys is like trying to put water in a bucket with a gaping hole; you can pour and pour, but at the end the bucket is pretty much just as empty as before, albeit a little wetter. Frustrating, but at least they’re getting older, getting a grasp on their animalistic impulses. There’s less straight up ignoring going on, and Namjoon’s proving he can make them do things if he’s inclined to.
Another sigh slumps your shoulders, and you head for your room, not bothering to check in on Jimin. Your quick routine sees your teeth brushed and pajamas on, and you’ve just shut off your light and crawled into bed when, as expected, there’s a rapid patter of little paw steps in the hallway outside. Seconds later an incredibly short, stocky shape barrels into the room, and you can’t help but laugh as Jimin skids to a halt at the edge of the bed, staring up at you with an imploring expression. The jump is a little high for the munchkin’s diminutive legs, but you’ve seen him do it before.
“Don’t be lazy, Jiminie,” you chide softly, patting the covers next to you. “You can make it.”
His oversized ears flatten in disappointment, but after a moment the chocolate brown werecat backs up, dramatically wiggles his bottom in preparation… and then leaps. He barely makes it, scrabbling at the side of the bed in a desperate attempt to heave himself over the edge, and you take pity on him and haul him up the rest of the way. Instantly, completely unembarrassed, his little body begins to rumble with blissful purrs, and he curls up in his accustomed spot against your back after pushing his nose against you – his way of saying goodnight. The munchkin werecat doesn’t always sleep with you – and sometimes you shut the door in his face – but tonight it feels nice to slowly drift to sleep, the steady thrum of his happiness a relaxing balm to the stress of the day.
Not seconds, but maybe minutes or hours later, the doorbell rings.
You’ve barely roused yourself from your stupor before Jimin is shooting off the bed, landing with an ungainly thump and then rocketing for the door. His body is beginning to change, thickening as his fur disappears, and as he rounds the corner and out of sight you yell, “Put some clothes on first!”
It wouldn’t be the first time one of the werecats forgot that particular social nicety before they opened the door to a stranger.
Groggy, trying to wake up and barely conscious enough to wonder who the heck would be calling at – at – a glance at the clock shows it’s two in the morning – you throw a baggy blue sweater over your pajamas and stumble down the stairs. Everyone’s already up and in a frenzy of interest, some of them transformed and some not. Jimin (thankfully) did pull on jeans and a t-shirt, and you have to swerve around the lightly colored Snowshoe cat that is Jin, narrowly avoiding kicking him. Wow. You wouldn’t have heard the end of that. Namjoon is in his human form, and as soon as he catches sight of you he flings open the door.
“What are you -” Abruptly he falls silent.
Frowning and blinking hard, still half-asleep, you come forward, beginning to feel the first stirrings of anxiety. It isn’t easy to make Namjoon halt mid-sentence, and if it’s enough to set the normally relaxed werecat on edge, it’s enough to concern you. “Who is it?” you demand as you wade through the curious onlookers. “Who -”
You fall silent, too. Set on the porch is a threadbare basket, covered by an equally worn blanket, and underneath the blanket something is moving. Even as tired as you are, it’s not hard to understand what’s going on, and instinctively you glance down the long, winding drive that leads up to the house. There’s no one that you can see, which means they must have dropped their burden and either circled around the Sanctuary or sprinted back the way they came. You hesitate for a moment before bending down and picking up the card that’s set against the basket, and a quiet squeak comes from underneath the blanket.
You flip open the card. It’s white, with no distinguishing features, and it simply reads, His name is J-Hope. He deserves better than where I found him.
Already Jin and Jungkook are nosing curiously at the hamper, and behind you Yoongi’s voice comes, detached. “I could track whoever left him. If you wanted.” The offer proves he’s very much interested, whatever his voice sounds like, and when you turn to look at him his eyes glint yellow, an obvious sign that he’s preparing to transform. You shake your head.
“No,” you say quietly, reaching out a foot to nudge the smoky black Maine Coon from the basket. Jungkook allows himself to be pushed away, reluctantly, but in a few more years you might not even be able to manage it; he’s already bigger than Jimin and Yoongi. Jin evades your foot and returns to sniffing, and you give up on him for the time being.
“Just be gentle, okay?” So saying, you reach down and carefully draw the blanket away from the shape quivering underneath. And find yourself biting at your lip to keep back a cry.
The werecat – and he is, without a doubt, a werecat – is covered in scabs, his short, light brown fur split by dried streaks of blood and dirt. Some of it hides in the thick black swirls throughout his pelt, but even without that, he’s thin – far, far too thin – and his intelligent green eyes are both afraid and filled with pain as he crouches lower into the basket. Before you can move, Jin makes a sickened sound that no real cat could produce and leaps into the small space. J-Hope cowers, shivering, but the other werecat simply nudges against him, a purr rumbling in his throat.
The sight makes a lump rise in your throat, and you swallow it with difficulty. “It’s okay,” you find yourself murmuring, reaching out a hand, “we’re going to -”
But the sandy brown feline shrinks away from you, letting out a clipped mew of distress, and with a sudden crunching, warping noise you abruptly find yourself surrounded by the boys, all of them in cat form, slipping out of the clothes that form puddles around them. Namjoon noses your hand away, staring at you firmly in a way that screams “We got this. Get lost.”
“Fine, fine,” you mutter, straightening. “I’ll get some of the formula we were using for Tae and open the First Aid kit. Bring him in when you think he’s ready.”
You turn, ready to go back in the house, and what you see makes you freeze. A blonde boy stands just at the edge of the werecats, his bright blue eyes curious as he stares down at them gently grooming J-Hope. Noticing your gaze, he grins, lifts one hand in a casual wave. “Hey Y/N,” he says obliviously, as though there isn’t a very somber and serious situation right in front of his nose. “Looks like we’re getting a new housemate!”
Another sigh comes from somewhere close to your heart, the late night grating on you as it doesn’t the werecats. Your hand rises to press against your nose, eclipsing the boy from view in a slow, weary facepalm. Yes, this was turning out to be a truly horrible day.
“…Taehyung?” your strained whisper slips from between your fingers. “Where are your clothes?”
---
Days pass. With Jin’s constant reassurance, you’re able to untangle J-Hope’s pelt, clean and bandage the worst of the cuts and get him to eat, but you can’t persuade him to transform out of his feline form. Coaxing by Tae and Kookie, ordering by Namjoon, even mild bullying by Yoongi yields no results. And though the wiry werecat shows no sign of lashing out at anyone, he becomes so terrified at any attempts to get him to change that eventually you tell everyone to stop trying. There’s no point in traumatizing him if he’s comfortable as he is.
J-Hope proves to be adventurous in the most cowardly way possible. He creeps through the house with green eyes that never stop moving, at least one of the other werecats always shadowing him, and the slightest noise sends him skittering for the room he shares with Jimin, to hide under the bed. But, minutes later, every time, you see his nose poking out, shortly followed by a long, trembling body. For all his fear, he can’t seem to suppress his curiosity, and you take great pleasure in watching him grow bolder in his exploration. It’s even more amusing to see him warm up to the other werecats, tentatively sharing Namjoon’s bowl, tumbling around with Tae, sleeping between Jin and Jimin or curled up on Jungkook’s lap while he plays video games. You even see J-Hope reach out and give Yoongi’s tail a tug… although that incident isn’t likely to be repeated any time soon.
It's not hard to keep an eye on him; it seems like wherever you are in the house, he’s bound to appear sooner or later. He doesn’t get under your feet like some of the others do. Despite seeming to enjoy wild chases and wrestling, he’s so painfully aware of where you are that his antics never end in collisions with your legs. The way J-Hope watches you, suspicious, wary, confused, makes it obvious what his story is. You don’t want to make assumptions until he can tell you himself, but it’s hard not to imagine what brought him battered and flighty to the Sanctuary’s doorstep.
Not everyone registered the werecats in their care when the Protection and Equality laws were rolled out. Not everyone was convinced that their ‘pets’ should be given as much say in their lives as their ‘owners.’ Tae is a result of one such case, and he was rescued and brought to the Sanctuary before things could go too far. Yoongi simply showed up one day by himself, starving but too proud to beg, and you never learned his story. The rest were sent your way by owners who, upon accepting that their cats were just as human and intelligent as they were, also realized that they weren’t ready or willing to take care of them.
Most werecats have at least a little bit of sadness in their stories, and you have a feeling J-Hope’s has more sadness than most. And, a little more than a week after finding him, you’re proven right.
After four years of working at the Sanctuary – ever since a charity organization opened it – you’ve become good at moving quietly about the house. The werecats startle easily, and as amusing as it is to see Namjoon break a plate or Yoongi bristle to twice his size when you accidentally scare them, it isn’t very pleasant for the boys. So, you’re softly walking down the hall, arms loaded with laundry – it’s Jungkook’s turn to help, and he’s probably busy turning the first load pink (again) – when you hear an unfamiliar voice coming from Jin’s room. You freeze in instinctive alarm – the voice is hoarse and male – but Jin’s soft tones quickly chase away the fear.
“…mean they never let you change? Ever?”
“No. I didn’t – they only let me when there were guests. To show off, I guess. Other than that, I – no, hyung.” You’re pretty sure you know who the scratchy voice belongs to, and despite the seriousness of the conversation, you can’t help the slightest of smiles. If J-Hope is comfortable enough around the oldest of the werecats to be human, and use that close form of address, it can only mean good things for his stay at the Sanctuary, and that’s a comforting thought.
Jin makes a tsking noise. “Purists.” From his mouth the word is a curse. “…But Hobi-yah… this place is different. Here, cat, human, it makes no difference. We are what we are no matter what shape we take. Y/N knows that.”
“So you’ve said…” J-Hope sounds anything but convinced. “I just – I don’t know how to believe it. After what they…” His words trail away like he doesn’t have enough to finish his sentence, and it abruptly occurs to you that you’re eavesdropping on a conversation that’s supposed to be private. Flushing, your curiosity not enough to overwhelm your guilt, you tiptoe back a few paces and then stomp down the hallway, eager to give both plenty of warning.
By the time you reach Jin’s room and glance inside – your guilt isn’t strong enough to prevent that – J-Hope has resumed his feline form, fidgeting on the bed next to Jin. The latter smiles gently – apparently, he’s forgiven you for the vaccine shot – and nods as you pass by with a wave for the werecats. You’re a little disappointed, if you’re being honest; you’ve wanted to see what J-Hope looks like ever since you got him cleaned up. Awkwardly bending down to scoop up a sock you dropped, you resign yourself to forgetting about it for the time being.
With seven boys in the house and your co-worker’s replacements barely trained, there’s plenty of things that need doing, and, soon enough, forgetting is exactly what you do.
---
It’s late again, and you’re exhausted, but at least Sun-hee’s going to be back the day after tomorrow. The temps are doing the best they can with their six hour shifts, but there’s nothing like having someone with you full time to get the To Do list finished. Your fingers are aching – you’ve been typing emails for the last few hours, trying to drum up some more funding to fix the back porch and maybe do some landscaping for the backyard, not to mention vary the meals a little – and you stretch in one luxurious motion. From the corner of your eye you can see J-Hope, nestled on the other unclaimed and worn out armchair, and he looks wide awake. At least he can be in alone in a room with you now, but, despite knowing he speaks with the other werecats, you and he haven’t had an actual conversation yet.
Which doesn’t stop you from trying. “I don’t know what to make for dinner tomorrow,” you complain. Whether you’re talking to the too-bright laptop screen or J-Hope is a matter of debate. “Jin’s talking about using the last of the salmon, but we need to save that for when Sun-hee gets home, as a welcome back surprise. There’re hotdogs in the freezer, but…” It’s not exactly an appealing prospect, but there’s not much else to eat in the house. You can’t go shopping until the next cheque comes, especially since you tend to buy in bulk, and you’ve got about thirty dollars to your personal name right now.
“…How do you feel about McDonalds, J-Hope?” you mumble to the screen, eyes getting heavier by the second. A few more emails and then you’re going to have to turn in for the night.
“Hoseok.”
For one long moment, the reply doesn’t register… and then you pause, your mouth open, caught halfway through a yawn, your eyes darting over to where the werecat is still sitting in the armchair. Except now he’s taller. A lot taller. And (thankfully) covered with the blanket that had been draped across the top. The dark-haired boy is observing you cagily, but maybe your expression is just too ridiculous, because abruptly his full lips twitch and then curl up into one of the widest smiles you think you’ve ever seen. It doesn’t last long, but even as you swivel to face him and the smile runs away, some of the brightness remains, shining in the laugh lines embedded around his mouth.
You stare at him and finally remember to blink. “Uh… what?”
“Hoseok. My name – it’s Hoseok. My own – the people who had me before called me J-Hope.” He shifts restlessly, his motions long and stilted under the old blanket. “I don’t mind it, sometimes. But I thought you should know that my real name is Hoseok.”
Now it feels like you’re blinking too much. “Oh. That’s… okay. Okay. That’s good to know.” There’s an awkward pause, and he looks at his hands, long, elegant fingers twisting uneasily around each other. You scrabble for something to say. “So… did Yoongi ever catch you after you grabbed his tail?”
Again that smile, accompanied by a surprised, energetic laugh that immediately has the nervous shock easing from your stomach. Hoseok stops himself too soon, but his grin lingers and he tosses his head in something awfully close to pride. “Catch me? Yoongi hyung doesn’t have a hope of catching me, so he doesn’t have a J-Hope, either.”
“I heard that.” The irascible call from Yoongi drifts down the stairs as you simultaneously wince and grin at the truly horrible pun.
Hoseok ducks his head as though remorseful, but you can see he’s still smiling, delighted with his word play. There’s something about his smile that just makes you need to smile as well, and abruptly you shut your laptop. The emails are going to have to wait. J-Hope looks up at the sound, suddenly wary again, but you give him a deliberately casual shrug. “Well, I hope we can talk some more later, Hoseok.” What a dumb thing to say. “I’m going to bed now, but as I’m sure Jimin can tell you… my door’s always open.”
You get up, still feeling rather flustered by his sudden decision to talk to you, and are halted at the foot of the stairs by his uncertain yet warm voice. “Y/N? Thanks for waiting for me. I – I’m really happy to be here.”
Your smile won’t seem to go away despite how tired you are, and as you give him a last wave and then head up the stairs, you find yourself looking forward to tomorrow. Paying bills or buying salmon or vacuuming up yet more fur, at least you’re going to have another person to talk to. It still hasn’t left by the time you get into bed, and you’re even in a good enough mood to hoist Jimin up straight off the floor. As he presses against you and begins to purr, you slowly start to fade into sleep.
A soft, slight sound brings you closer to consciousness. The bedroom door creaks open a little more and careful feet pad across your bedroom floor, and then you feel a weight leap up onto the bed near the end. Jimin lets out a sleepy mew of greeting, and you recognize the soft murmur Hoseok gives in reply. And, unable to stay awake despite the surprise of your newest visitor, you fall asleep with one werecat pressed to your back and the other curled across your feet, and you couldn’t have been any warmer.