Chapter Text
There's beeping.
A steady beat pulsing in the back of his ears.
It shakes the world around him, changes the shapes of the clouds, and tints the light cast upon his mother's hands. She runs gentle fingers through his void-black hair. He keeps his head down, soaking in the feeling of her gentle caresses. She's humming a song he can't quite make out. It bounces along in an odd rhythm, weaving between the steady beep, nipping at his foggy thoughts.
His lap is a multi-colored swirl. Her hand drifts down, warm—foreignly warm, a warmth he hasn't known in orbits—touch cupping his cheek. Her pealing laughter feels like wind chimes echoing from across some far-off way.
He can feel her smile. She is made of pink blossoms and lavender blooms. She smells like wet rocks and fresh ferns. Joon is still a boy, a stumpy, stubborn child, and she is his whole world. He has yet to tower over her nor learn to leave her behind.
The beeping hasn't stopped. He basks in her presence, in her warmth. The rightness of her whole being, until he blinks and she is beckoning Joon with words he cannot understand. She cocks a pastel-painted face, all hues and impressions instead of a person. Jingling laughter runs through him like water when she stands. Mom? he mouths, but the word never leaves his lips. Maybe because it's not his own? Eomma? he tries this time, but the word is still stuck behind his teeth. He frowns. He's still a boy. He's not supposed to be without her.
Beeping. It's an intrusive noise. Joon rises to his feet, legs shaking as they bear his weight, and he follows her with a desperation only children have, blindingly charging into the tunnel she has cut into the sunset-colored cloudscape encompassing them.
Eomma? It still doesn't work. Eomma? More beeping. Beeping loud enough to interrupt his thoughts and her lilting voice. More, and more, and more beeping. Enough with the beeping, he thinks, and his voice is lower. His strides grow longer with every step, frame stretching, and figure contorting as he gets older. The cloudscape starts to shift around him, beginning to press in with hardening walls as the world starts to dim at his heels. Joon walks faster, but the bright path his mother has created only gets further away. She is like a memory of a smudged painting.
It's getting darker. The beeping won't stop. A thousand, thousand whispers drown out the last remnants of her laughter.
The tunnel grows tighter. The dark at his feet claws up its walls, splintering his route into a maze full of dark alleys and twisted corridors that hiss instead of hum. Without her, he is swamped in a darkness he knows he shouldn't touch. He chooses his route blindly, armed with a desperation that only comes with age. The dark herds him into a dead end. Hardened cloud-made walls press in at all sides, and the last flickers of a guiding light fade out at the foot of the impassable wall before him. The last touch of color leeches from his world, casting his surroundings into a darkening grey.
He can't let the dark reach him; he'll never see her again if he does. Joon's breathing is erratic. Night closes in on the alley. It shifts its bulk until there is no longer a chance of escape. He can feel the dark smiling. A rabbiting pulse decorated with beeps and whines is all he can hear.
Newborn night hefts itself forward, and there is a new weight on Joon's hip. The dark jolts closer, sluggish, crawling nature gaining speed. Its limbs climb the tunnel's walls, spidery tendrils bulging as it swallows the space where Joon had once stood. He can hear his breath shake his lungs, but faces the dark with a hardening resolve. He will not succumb to it. Not again. The yawning void stretches wide, closing in on him. Beeping. Beeping. Beeping. Echoing from all around. Namjoon raises his hand, wearing gritted teeth. The abyss lunges.
Gunfire illuminates the dark.
─── ⋆⋅⭑ ✧ ⭑⋅⋆ ───
He jolts upright and wakes to a world of blinding white.
Shifting shapes quake in his vision as his head spins. His throat burns like he's been swallowing acid, and a burning ache pulses through every bone in his body. The run-over and wrung-out-to-dry sensation clinging to all of him makes even the act of opening his eyes painful.
A sore, hurting wheeze claws its way out of his throat when Namjoon goes to breathe. He blinks through the fog clouding his vision to take in the swaying room.
Heavy overhead lights are stamped into the ceiling in rows, all glowing bright enough to burn his corneas. Glass apparatuses are scattered throughout the room, stacked on shelves mounted to the steel-plated walls. There's a medicinal tinge to the sanitized smell in the air. A mechanical buzz hums from all around. Directly across from Namjoon, a humanoid man stares him down from a small bench. He carries a gun and wears eyes made of iron. The barrel of his gun is leveled at Namjoon's head.
Like a death knell, the beeping that had haunted him throughout his dreams grows louder, faster. Piercing resonance rings in time with the hammering pulse of Namjoon's heartbeat. Namjoon doesn't recognize him, and he's not dressed in the rank-specific garb Namjoon is used to seeing when he wakes.
Who is he? Namjoon thinks. What's happening? Panic climbs up his throat, choking his next breaths even as he tries to keep them steady. He's shaking all over, a hazy combination of adrenaline and something foreign, mixed with his blood, muddies his thoughts. The fog is slow to clear, but by the burning glare on the stranger's face, Namjoon can tell that whatever he'd done has gone poorly. Incredibly poorly.
This is bad.
This is so bad.
Handcuffs rattle as Namjoon reaches for the frame of the hospital bed, and the ex-pilot realizes he's strapped to the bed he's in, tubes of unknown substances pipe out of the wall behind him and into his body, all shifting with him as he trembles. His breathing gets faster because, what is happening to him? What did he do? What are they going to do to him?
He doesn't know where he is; he can barely split his dreams from reality. He has no idea what's going on. The dead-eyed, scowling xenos observes Namjoon with a slow blink. His dark gaze traps Namjoon to the bed, and Namjoon racks his brain for what could have landed him here. What did he do? What did he manage to screw up?
Something's gone terribly wrong. Command won't be happy about it. What if this is it? he thinks. Are they finally going to dust him? Namjoon takes in his aching body and the pulsing pain clinging to every move. He hazards a glance at the bruising on his arms, shaking as he tears his gaze away from his onlooker. The bruising's not as bad as he expected; he's definitely been in worse shape, but the sluggish speed to his thoughts is something he's only felt because of pain medication. He's in a medical bay, on pain meds, receiving actual treatment. He's so fucked.
The stranger cocks his head, inhaling sharply before he shifts. The xenos drags himself out of a hunched over position, sitting upright, and his gaze narrows further. The over-bright lights meet the dark, distinctly alien color of his irises, and the glittering color expands, slitted pupils contracting thinner as his lips curl. Dark purple hair is stark against his pale, faintly iridescent skin. The beeping in Namjoon's ears grows louder.
He doesn't know this man. He doesn't know where he is. He can't even recognize the model of the ship from this angle. An odd frosted glass bisects this room from another space, clearly an add-on since Namjoon can see where the glass oddly splits a chain of outlets from its other half beyond the glass. Namjoon can't think of any of Gujihanna's models that would be permitted to do that. Did they put him on a carrier? Are they shipping him out? What did he screw up that was that bad? What are they punishing him for? A flickering notion floats through his thoughts, and for a moment Namjoon recalls that he's supposed to be… done? The idea quickly vanishes.
Namjoon scrambles for the memory to come back. He racks his brain, flinching in the cot when the stranger suddenly calls out. His gravel-drunk tone switches a light on in the confused deckhand's brain.
"Seok-ah!" the xenos barks. His voice is low and husky. "Your patient's awake!" His curved-accented common prickles at the back of Namjoon's mind.
He knows that voice.
He recognizes it from the docks.
The spaceport. Eprosseii Spaceport. After his mission. Oh.
Oh no.
Oh no.
The stowaway's—shit stowaway—memory comes back in vengeful flood. The dread dripping down his spine turns from a dribble to a rapid.
Faded memories of a strange ship serving as a beacon in the dark to a desperate mind. Blurred thoughts of bloody hand prints and a strange, poisonous kind of weaponry embedded into him, clogging all grasps for logic. The crew he'd scrambled to hide from. His wound getting worse. He'd been abandoned (they'd abandoned him) and been left to follow the instincts of a dream.
His observer fixes him with a long, snarling look. He shifts his hold on his gun. Namjoon is so fucked.
At least he's not on that stupid fucking planet.
On the other side of the frosted glass, between the mounted shelves stacked full of unfamiliar medical supplies, a shape jolts. A blurry figure slides across the glass until a door Namjoon hadn't noticed opens.
The stowaway's heartbeat manages to pick up again, pounding faster and faster. His head spins, a new swell of dizzying nausea overtaking him. The beeping, pealing, plaguing, brain-numbingly irritating sound from his dreams gets louder and louder. Staccatoed breaths hitch faster, cracking into wheezes and broken gasps that rock his chest. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
A head pops out the door. Dark hair hangs politely above two-toned eyes and a calm smile. The newcomer closes the door behind them and locks eyes with Namjoon. Their unblinking stare sinks into the stowaway's skin.
Namjoon licks his lips. There's acrid on his tongue. When he swallows, it's dry. What did they put in him? What are they going to do?
"You're up!" the newcomer says, smiling. His gaze doesn't leave Namjoon's. The warm energy he radiates is disconcerting. Namjoon shrinks back into the cot. Where am I? he wants to ask. He has no place asking. He's an intruder, a stowaway. Many vessels would gut him for far lesser crimes. Instead, Namjoon just stares. He can feel his gaze wanting to bounce between the glaring, armed watchman and this new smiling person, whose unrelenting grin is making the hairs on Namjoon's skin rise, but it doesn't. He just keeps his eyes on the newcomer as the new xenos navigates the room with ease, drawing Namjoon's focus like a moth to a flame.
"I wasn't expecting you to be up for a few more hours, but Jin-hyung's pretty hardy, so I don't know why I wasn't expecting you to be," he says. "Of course, Jin-hyung's not usually dosed with mercury." There's confusion on Namjoon's face, an emotion he normally wouldn't be so blatant about, but the choking nausea in his stomach has suddenly ground to a halt in response to the new stranger, who continues to move around in some sort of practiced routine, unfazed.
He crosses to a small sink and washes his hands. Namjoon's stuttering breaths slow into a steady rhythm. "I'm Hoseok," the man says. He scrubs hard enough at his wrist around that the skin reddens. Something warm blooms on the back of Namjoon's tongue. "And that," he nods toward the armed figure on the bench who's pressing a hand to his face, "is Yoongi."
Namjoon breaks eye contact to look at Yoongi, who meets Namjoon with a sharp sneer. Namjoon jolts back reflexively. The handcuffs rattle as he moves, their metallic jingling mimicking distant, dream-made laughter. Hoseok clears his throat, shaking out his hands to dry in the medical bay's temperate air. Droplets scatter in Namjoon's direction. The newly increased beeping coming from the medical nonsense surrounding Namjoon slows back down again. Hoseok takes a second to turn to their observer, fixing him with a pointed look. The new xenos' demeanor doesn't falter, but something about him seems to pause for a moment before Yoongi shrinks back, leaning further into his hand.
What is happening right now?
"You'll have to ignore him. He's usually better than this," Hoseok smiles. He approaches the bed, grinning widely. His gold eyes seem to gleam. Namjoon stiffens, but doesn't flinch. Hoseok looms over the cot. Concern, discomfort, and fear mix in the stowaway's gut, but the combination is thin. As Hoseok navigates a careful hand through the mess of tubing behind Namjoon to flick a switch, the stowaway watches him placidly.
"We usually don't have rats," Yoongi snarks. As he speaks, the beeping, beeping, beeping ringing in Namjoon's ears stops. And all that's left is the rhythm of his heartbeat, steadily, calmly pulsing under his skin in time with the last echoes of the cardiac monitor. Hoseok grimaces when Yoongi's words sit heavy in the new silence. He leans back to shoot the purple-haired man another look, his hands still poised over Namjoon placatingly.
Namjoon runs his tongue over his lips again. He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't want them to change their mind about helping him, or at least not immediately killing him, but it's been so long since he hasn't woken up completely afraid. The fear that had been clogging his throat seems to have finally broken down. For once, being in a medical bay doesn't make him feel like he's going to shake out of his skin. He's calm, and he doesn't know how to respond to that, to the person causing that. To the person who could make everything worse and but chooses to smile instead.
Hoseok's grin is warm and waiting. He tilts his head and shaggy wine-red curls shift around black horns their gold-capped tips catching the light. The last trepidation in Namjoon's chest dissolves and the stowaway opens his mouth without realizing it. His voice tumbles from his lips without the usual, carefully curated intention he usually puts in his words.
"I'm sorry," he mutters, unused voice cracking as he speaks. A distant part of him wants to cry, but it's quickly shushed silent by a lulling presence. Hoseok perks up at Namjoon's voice. "I didn't mean to cause trouble, I just needed…" he trails off as the xenos' gaze washes over Namjoon, and the weird, off-kilter calm he seems to exude hits Namjoon again, dulling generations of flight impulses into something more breathable. Namjoon can see the slight quiver in the way Hoseok's pupils dilate, boring into him, and belatedly he realizes he's felt this before. He's just used the sensation, trying to drown him into submission rather than gently sweep him off his feet.
His apology dries out on his lips. "You're Kiviuq?" Namjoon asks, and he wants to be angry, but he can't. Abruptly, Hoseok pauses, startled, and the forced tranquility, the Kiviuq's thrall—a pheromone-induced serenity that makes Namjoon's insides feel like their melting when he spends too long under it—warping the air between them, stops.
Suddenly, Namjoon can feel his body allowed to panic again.
"Huh," the Kiviuq says brightly. Yoongi's stormy expression grows darker.
"I'm calling him," he says. It's some callback to a previous conversation Namjoon wasn't present for. Or maybe he was. His brain is still full of cotton, and Hoseok hasn't been helping. He hasn't been around a Kiviuq in a long time. He put it on his mission docket minimums. Who else–what else is on this ship? What are they going to do to him?
Hoseok waves Yoongi off, but the gun-wielding xenos reaches for something at his waist anyway, slitted eyes never leaving Namjoon's. Namjoon looks back at Hoseok. His pulse is loud again, heart begging to break out in his chest, punch through the bed frame, and burrow through the floor. It'd probably leave him for the void if Namjoon couldn't help it.
"Most people don't pick up on that," Hoseok states, in lieu of the obvious unasked question. Namjoon's nails are biting into the palm of his hands. If he keeps going, he's sure he'll draw blood.
"I've been thralled before," Namjoon responds. "Not many species have that kind of ability. Fewer do it well."
Kiviuq are often sought out for their skill and almost universal subjugation, despite how dangerous it makes them. Namjoon hates how susceptible he is to it. Hoseok takes a moment to stare blankly at Namjoon. His pupils don't stretch, but the predator's look still burrows into its prey, evaluating. Then he cracks a lopsided grin that feels less formulated than his previous smiles. The thin taste of pheromones Namjoon hadn't noticed building in the back of his throat is suddenly tacky, forcing the stowaway to grimace as he swallows down some saliva to clear the feeling.
"I'll keep that in mind," he replies, easily. Namjoon feels watched.
Yoongi's watch rings, a hologram popping up in response to whatever message the man had sent. Hoseok tears his gaze away from the stowaway. He looks to Yoongi expectantly, who replies to him with a nod, and then Hoseok pivots back to Namjoon. Their obvious familiarity makes Namjoon's skin itch.
"Our captain's on his way," Hoseok says. "He stopped by earlier, but you were still asleep. We would have paged him sooner, but I didn't expect you to be up so early. Luckily, Yoongi is overcautious, huh? Or we probably would have found you wandering around bleeding all over the ship." He laughs, but his attention doesn't stray from the stowaway. The sudden focus on Namjoon's current circumstances has the ex-pilot tensing in their cot.
His nails bite further into his hands. The skin starts to give. A monitor ticks up, and a metallic smell cuts through the sanitized air. Hoseok shoots a hand out to grab Namjoon's wrist without looking away from his face. The stowaway freezes. His pulse roars louder, suddenly aware of all the instincts he's been scrapping against since the xenos walked in, but all the Kiviuq does is fold one hand over Namjoon's own and gingerly pry his fingers apart.
"Please don't," he says. The handcuffs rattle as he pulls back. "You'll undo all my hard work if you hurt yourself."
"Sorry," Namjoon murmurs absently. Adrenaline has been dribbling into his blood ever since he woke. It's been a slow stream, responsible for his thunderous heartbeat, and hurried breathing, but when Hoseok pulls back, his unexpected hosts' canines catch the light. They shine under the fluorescents, undoubtedly sharp and long as the man cracks a smile. And suddenly that feeble stream turns into a flood.
Namjoon tries to keep his breathing steady, but he can't stop the panic from rising in his chest. It's a thick, sickly feeling, swamped in the knowledge that he's trapped here, somewhere, with no one looking for him. Alone and abandoned, again.
Hoseok pulls free one of the many bags attached to the tubes feeding into Namjoon, and the stowaway jumps. His vision swims. His body jerks, startling a noise out of the Kiviuq. His head pulses, brain starved of oxygen from his broken breaths. A new tinny beeping plays in the background, accompanied by a flurry of activity. Hands move in a flurry at the corners of his vision. Namjoon tries to focus on his surroundings over the mounting fear. He can't panic right now. He needs to keep tabs on the gunman, on the doctor, meet their captain. He has to ask about his stuff; he needs to contact Command. He has to keep his head above water. He can't panic.
He cannot panic.
But he can't stop the little voice in the back of his head from whispering louder and louder at every empty grab he makes for control. It sounds like the worst whispers of his missions, the hissed comments in the mess line, and the laughter that echoes. Every. Single. Time. He wakes in the medbay. Always bloodied, always bruised, and always alone. You're so helpless. They keep you broken on purpose, for your own safety. You know they won't forgive you for fucking up again, right? You know your kind aren't supposed to be this far out? You know you're lucky, right? You're lucky they want you. You're lucky you haven't been replaced. You keep acting like your time isn't running out, and it's making me tired, RM. You deserve this, RM. Keep talking, I dare you, RM, but know that one day you're going to land yourself in trouble and we won't be there to pull your sorry ass out of it. Maybe then you'll realize how kind this place has been to you. No one else wants someone like you. No one else would keep you.
And there's some part of him that swears he knows better, but he's been drowning in these waters for so long he can't remember what surface even looks like. He's just been trapped in their dark, waiting for his clock to run out, and now he's landed in place they'd promised he'd be. Where they told him he should never go. There are no more guardrails in place. He's going to die here.
His chest is heaving, his lungs burn, and he's overexerting his body, scrambling to sit up, but he can't lie here and wait for death. He needs to try something. Maybe his captain will forgive him if he begs hard enough. Maybe she'll turn around. He can take a few more years on his contract if she saves him. He can do it again.
He's begging out loud for someone who isn't there. His voice is hoarse, and his throat is burning. His ribs ache as too fast breaths strain his lungs, but he can't just let this happen. He's suffered so long for this to be how he dies. And he-
Warm hands. A calming presence brings everything in his brain to a screeching halt. A gentle touch presses against his chest, arms wrap carefully around his middle and pull him down, down, down into a plush warmth. A smiling face dances in his vision, carefully taking his palms and examining the familiar scars that broke open again, before they could even scab up.
Cotton fills his head and static downs out every torrent emotion, leaving him with only ease; floating idly, pliantly, relaxing artificially against his will. He knows what this is. He's been bracing for it since he first understood the doctor's gaze, but that doesn't mean Namjoon has the power to stop it. The spiral he's been in collapses. The circled drain, plugged by thick pheromones and static. Someone is speaking to him. All he can do is blink. His eyes fix on the ceiling, gaze blankly intercepting everything that passes between him and the hospital-white lights. Hands touch monitors and wires. Vials of fluid pour into tubes. He hears laughter and can't stop his tears.
He hopes they'll forgive him when he wakes. He never wanted this. Memories of a purple commn light blinking on his hip, flicker through his fuzzy thoughts, mocking, and when his hands start to shake, someone does him the kindness of shushing them back into silence.
Control of his body comes in waves, and pain, in turn, exists in flickers. Everything is muted by cloying, cloudy, calm. Sometimes he can feel his hands, flex his fingers, and curl his grip away from Hoseok's touch, but the awareness sparks an ache in his chest that steals his breath away, and once one broken wheeze is stolen from his lungs, the haze returns. Namjoon falls back to floating, hearing and seeing without the ability to process any of it. Sometimes there's clarity without pain, but those moments are fleeting and far between. Each time he finds them, he finds more tears soaking his cheeks.
Time passes slowly under the control of being much more suited to the universe than he.
"I wonder what calendar system he uses. He looks about our age. What do you think? Norillium? Vak'oras? Arayic Imperial?" Hoseok asks. He receives low chiding noise in response.
"Not important, Seok-ah. Can you just hurry so we get this over with?" Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Like a mantra. Namjoon did that, now what? He's helpless to escape this haze.
"You thralled him?" Someone new.
"He keeps panicking. It wasn't safe for his vitals while I'm still trying to cleanse the mercury from his system." A sigh. The noise is obscured by the unwavering fog in Namjoon's mind.
"Alright, well, if you can get him stable enough where it's safe for him to come up, call me again. We need to figure out what he's doing here, Hobi."
"I know, hyung." Namjoon had a hyung. He wonders where he went.
Something touches Namjoon, and then something else smashes. "Seok-ah!"
"I'm fine. I'm fine. I just wasn't expecting him to still be responsive this far down." A snarl.
"I just want to be done with him. Hyung should have let me shoot him when we first found him."
"Yoongi," he says, like he's scolding a small child. Namjoon misses being small. He misses his eomma. He's glad she can't see what he's become.
"Where do you think he's from? Aren't his kind forbidden from being this far off-world?"
"Running probably. I mean, they shot him, so I doubt whatever got him here is normal on his planet."
"Maybe," he trails off. "I'll have to ask Jin-hyung when he gets back. Do you know the course status yet?"
"Hyung's said they're looking for a debris field, so if he's got any trackers, there shouldn't be anyone to pick the signal. And why would hyung know about him?" His tone crawls with disgust.
"Well, hyung's a runner too, so…"
Eventually, Hoseok brings Namjoon up enough where the stowaway can taste the bile on his tongue and feel pheromones in his blood, but the thrall doesn't stop, just keeps him on the edge of reality. The effect leaves him slightly more placid than when Hoseok had first set his gaze on him, and even if the man had truly pulled back the thrall has never been an easy thing for Namjoon to purge from his system.
But Hoseok pulls back enough where Namjoon can think. He knows hours have passed, he can feel the lost time sticking to his skin, but he can't feel himself panic. He's just… uncharacteristically calm. And he wants to be angry about it, but Hoseok's still smiling. His gaze is far beyond something a human could make, so Namjoon can't. He breathes in even breaths, his heartbeat slow in his ears.
His hands are laced together in his lap, now wrapped in gauze. His fingers twitch mildly from bone-deep weakness. He looks up from a horizontal position in the cot, hazarding a glance at the xenos, armed and staring Namjoon down with only malice in his gaze, and the stowaway feels nothing.
Hoseok shuffles some papers on the corner of the cot where he sits. The room is quiet apart from the buzz and beeps of machines. Idly, Namjoon's fingers drop to the blanket draped over the bed, and he rubs the threads between his fingers. Namjoon glances at Yoongi to see the xenos bristle at the action, but he makes no moves. He still has a hand over his mouth. Then Hoseok sighs.
"My pack gave me this before I first ventured off-world. It was supposed to be a good luck charm while I was at school. I never technically finished, so who knows if it actually works, but I like to keep it with me. It's usually here in the medbay, as long as someone hasn't stolen it for their nest." He shoots a look at Yoongi, who fails to respond, his unwavering attention solely focusing its ire on Namjoon. Hoseok clasps his hands together and turns his body away from the wall to face Namjoon directly. His vibrating pupils begin to slow. "I say all that to say, we don't mean you any harm here." Yoongi scoffs, and Hoseok ignores him. "I know this situation is uncomfortable, and I know you're afraid, but we aren't trying to hurt you." The vibrating stops, yet there's still a film on Namjoon's tongue that won't leave even after he swallows.
"Our captain is coming to figure out whatever comes next, and he's asked that I break my thrall on you to do so, and I will, but I need you not to panic." Something flickers in Namjoon's chest. "You're too weak to stand, so please don't try to run. The ship is well out of the range of the spaceport, and everyone aboard can remotely disable flight commands if necessary." He cocks his head, glittering gold meet the flat brown of Namjoon's dilated gaze."We aren't going to hurt you, we just want to figure this out."
He waits for a response from Namjoon, some symbol of awareness, long enough that it makes Namjoon want to squirm under. Until the stowaway takes a breath as deep as he comfortably can, and gives Hoseok the smallest of nods, never once managing to break away from the man's watch. Hoseok grins again; there are no teeth to his smile. He looks to Yoongi and then nods, and the purple-haired xenos taps something on his watch, and then all heads turn to the medbay door, and watch as it slides open.
─── ⋆⋅⭑ ✧ ⭑⋅⋆ ───
He's human, Seokjin thinks. He'd known it from the moment he first saw the man draped over Taehyung's shoulders, a delirious, begging form. He'd been reminded of it when Hoseok worried about him running a fever in the medbay bed, and Jin had murmured that his kind, their kind, red-blooded xenos, run hot, yet Hoseok had still administered something to bring his temperature down. He'd faced it again this morning, when he watched over the stranger's body while their resident medic and mechanic left to help Tae handle their ongoing engine problems, but it truly hits now.
Now.
He's human, Jin thinks, and it should be exciting, but that only makes this so much worse. He's propped up on the medbay cot, shaking. Wires and IVs stretch out of him like the tendrils of a solar flare. Monitors and machines hum quietly, their low noises only broken up by their intruder's laboured breathing. Jin thought Hoseok might have been wrong that night, almost four day-cycles ago, when Jimin's scream had first rang out across the ship and the crew of Bangtan was handed a dilemma they'd thought no one would ever be sacrificial enough to try.
For a moment, he might not have been; just a trembling figure covered in blood, murmuring frantic sorries and broken pleads for his eomma, but he'd been too humanoid to be anything else. Still, there'd been a whine between the wheezing. A hiss breathed in the seconds before the bloodied stranger in their airlock dove face-first towards the ground. When Taehyung scrambled to catch him and pulled the stranger upright, a noise had torn from his throat. A forgotten siren song buried itself in Jin's bones, and in that moment, maybe, for an unlikely minute, the two had more in common than the ability to bleed red.
But his crew needed more than conjecture and Jin's lonely, long-suppressed instincts, so he left it to Hoseok to call the man human, and the Bangtan's captain did his duty and charted their ship a path through the stars.
Now, Jin stands just outside the medbay, watching the quaking stranger raise his head to face what lies beyond its doors.
His skin is marred purple with bruising, reddened scrapes are scattered across his face, and his eyes are a deep, rich brown, like fresh turned soil, the kind dark enough to promise new growth. Seokjin looks at him, and he's sure. He's human, he thinks, and he crosses the doorway.
The stowaway flinches as Jin enters the room. The medbay air tastes like disinfectant and the heady, honey-sweet remnants of Hoseok's thrall. It's thinner than it had been a few hours ago when Hoseok had first put their intruder under. Jin hadn't been shocked to find the stranger staring blankly at the ceiling, unresponsive, pliable, and smelling of syrup after Yoongi cancelled Jin's plans for questioning over their private line. Something about the human's circulatory system meant his panicking could pull whatever he was poisoned with to his heart, and Hoseok has never been inclined towards sedatives. It wasn't a surprising outcome, but inconvenient for its time.
"Captain," Yoongi drawls sharply, as the door whooshes shut behind Jin. His gaze is weary and dark when Jin meets it.
A part of Jin wants to remind his eldest bondmate that he was not required to stand guard around the clock at their intruder's wake. Especially since, as Hoseok had informed them from the jump, it would be a miracle if the man managed to sit up on his own, let alone climb out of bed and go on a rampage through the ship. But Jin keeps his mouth shut, simply nodding as he walks past.
He doesn't need another round of their ongoing argument where he has to remind his lover, once again, he's still angling for a third, less actively hostile option, that's not trapping their stowaway in the airlock to be interrogated, or shooting him where he sits and sparing them the supply costs of a seventh body. The weapons specialist has yet to find the light in Jin's reasoning.
Jin ignores the irritated growl bristled by Yoongi and slides into the chair empty at Hoseok's desk.
Yoongi shifts his gun towards the stowaway's head, and the human clenches his hands into tight fists. Jin notes the bandages wrapped around his palms. They're a new addition to his dressings. Jin frowns. Hobi's mouth forms a line, and Jin recalls Hoseok's overly-fatigued complaint that Yoongi keeps making their intruder's panic episodes worse. He watches the weapons specialist switch the setting on his blaster from stun to shock, and resists the urge to sigh. It's too obvious if he sighs, but the captain does assuage himself with the knowledge that he was going to do this anyway. Yoongi snarls at the human. Jin might as well do it now.
"Yoongi, love?" Eyes that shine like the darkest of glaciers find Jin with a glare. "Would you mind checking on Jiminie for me? You know how he gets about these things, I think he could use the company." His lover stiffens.
"Captain," Yoongi says disbelievingly.
"I would appreciate it." Jin's wearing a genial smile, the one he knows Yoongi hates. The one that makes Yoongi feel like his mate is corralling him, because that is exactly what Jin's doing, he's corralling him. Seokjin is about to have a very uncomfortable conversation, and he wants to have it now with as few interruptions and unnecessary pains as possible, so he needs to eliminate any threats from the room. Unfortunately for the man who wants to shoot Jin's unwilling participant, he counts as a threat, so he's being corralled.
"You need me here," Yoongi protests carefully. He won't risk a fight in mixed company. They both know better than that. Which means Yoongi knows he can't win.
"I need you with Jimin. I can handle here."
"Hyung."
"Yoongi-yah." A silent conversation rings hot in the air.
"Seok-ah isn't armed."
"I am," Jin replies. He's not above pulling rank. As much as Jin is Yoongi's mate and longest confidant, at this moment, he's his captain, something they agreed to long ago. "Please," he purrs, and it's a tense moment as they both think about what comes next. Something medical beeps. Then there's a swear, and Yoongi hisses underneath his breath before he storms out without another word.
The door whooshes shut, taking some of the lingering notes of thrall with it. Papers stir in the gust started by hydraulics, but it does little to clear the sticky feeling gathering on Jin's skin.
Hobi sends him a grateful look before he pops off the medbay cot and takes Yoongi's place on the bench. He marks something down on his tablet, tracking the slight change in the readings displayed all around the room as the medbay door audibly locks. Then the medic gives his captain a nod, and Jin clears his throat, directing the stranger's attention to him.
"So, RM, I hope you're feeling better," Bangtan's captain starts. "I know this is probably not where you were expecting to wake, but hopefully you don't mind that Hoseokie took the liberty of patching you up." Somehow, the stowaway has managed to get paler.
"You know my name."
"You're on my ship," Jin returns, pointedly. He's not a threat to the intruder, not yet, but the stowaway doesn't need to know that. "But I will return the courtesy. I'm Kim Seokjin, captain of the Bangtan." RM doesn't move. He hardly even breathes. Hoseok shoots Jin a look, and Jin pivots his approach. "I don't know if Seok-ah told you, but I'm the one who gave you the blood transfusion after we found you." A process Jin hopes he never has to repeat anytime soon.
"Blood transfusion?" RM dares to reply.
"You were bleeding a lot when we found you," Hoseok pipes up. "Your synthetics weren't holding very well. They were providing pressure, but not enough to effectively staunch the wound. You passed out right after we found you, though I doubt you remember all that. Anyways, luckily for you, Jin-hyung is another ferro-hemo type; I was able to convert his blood into something you'd be able to process. It's not perfect, but it definitely turned out to be a better match than expected." Hoseok doesn't smile like Jin expects him to when recounting all the hard work he's done over the past few days, but Jin still sees the proud set of his shoulders.
RM's head lolls against the pillow, turning back to face Jin. His eyes are still cloudy from thrall, but he manages a few sputtered sounds before words fit in the stowaway's mouth.
"You're iron-blooded?" RM asks. He seems exceptionally scared but is still surprisingly polite. It almost feels like a reflex rather than an active choice the human is making.
"I'm Lehari," Jin explains, and RM's eyes go wide.
"What are you doing out here?"
"I could ask you the same thing, human. I thought your kind weren't supposed to leave your colonies."
He twitches slightly. A direct movement rather than the constant trembling, Hoseok said to ignore. A spark flares in RM's eyes, but all the human does is swallow, his almost stalking gaze suddenly annulled to watching his hands flex in his lap. Jin frowns slightly, yet Hoseok doesn't look surprised. He needs to ask the medic what he's noticed once they're behind closed doors. For now, Jin will let it go.
RM knits his fingers together in his lap, wincing slightly as he does.
"Does it have anything to do with the bounty on your head?" Jin asks. RM's head whips up.
"Bounty?" he repeats, slowly. A new kind of horror flickers in the stranger's eyes, and something buzzes loudly from the mess of machines RM is hooked up to. Jin waits for Hoseok's sign to slow down, but his mate makes no such move, instead tapping something on his holo-pad and then displaying a hologram into the medbay air.
Gridded blue lines distort the image, but the message is clear. A man, clearly RM, though a notably younger version of him, scowls at the empty air he hangs in. He's beat up and bruised, much like his counterpart watching from the cot. The hologram's lip is split in the same spot it's healing on RM now. Static text sits in bold, framing the top and bottom of the mugshot. Wanted Alive. R-M. Notorious Criminal and Suspected Pirate. Wanted for Grand Crimes and Treason Against The Eprosseii Embassy. Reward: 50,000 credits.
It's excessive; the description they've given him, and the price attached to his name, puts him on the upper end of currently active Eprosseiian bounties. They must really want him. Jin leans back in his chair.
"I do try to keep tabs on who's aboard my ship in the odd chance we've taken on a passenger. Luckily, this showed up on my radar not long after you did, funny huh?"
RM swallows. He barely tears away from the hologram to face Jin with a somber stare.
"What now?" he says. There's a rumble to his voice, unexpected for a trapped, dying man. Jin thinks the last of Hoseok's thrall may be finally wearing off.
"I don't know," the captain grins. "You're still here, so obviously I don't plan to throw you to the Embassy just yet."
"Yet." Jin wonders how far down this repetition thing runs.
"Yet," he replies in kind. "It depends. The price on your head is pretty big, wanna tell me about it?" Jin's smiling. He can't help the fact that he's smiling. Thank the heavens above that Yoongi's not here. He couldn't bear another hissed comment asking, what could possibly be so amusing about this situation? But Seokjin can't help it. He's having fun.
Hoseok only rolls his eyes at Jin's expression. He makes no moves to shut the hologram down.
RM seems to mull over his answer for a moment before settling on, "Heresy." Jin smiles wider.
"They don't put 50,000 credit prices on heretics," he rebuts.
"I'm their favourite one." That buried spark flickers briefly under the fluorescent lights.
"And just what heresy did you commit that makes you so expensive?" Hoseok adds from the bench. RM's head rolls back to face him. His fingers trace the weave pattern of the blanket draped over him.
"It's the Eprosseii," he answers. "Pick anything." Fair enough.
Seokjin uses the moment of stolen attention to try and determine whether the human is being coy with them, but it doesn't look like it. Obviously, he's lying. Jin's not an idiot, but the man's not trying to play games. RM shivers when Hoseok flashes his teeth. He's still scared.
Silence lingers in a long moment. Jin cocks his head. A timer goes off on Hobi's watch, and the medic stands to adjust something within the tubing running to RM. The human tenses as Hoseok draws closer, breathing visibly, picking up, but he makes no moves to fight, just watching anxiously, like this scares him more than the questioning. Huh. Curious. Seokjin breaks the quiet.
"And all that heresy led you to my ship for no particular reason?" This makes RM flinch, jerking back abruptly enough that Hoseok makes a chiding noise, grabbing onto the only IV in use that isn't part of the room but instead free-standing. Hobi keeps it from toppling, a pulse of honey spiking in the air automatically trying to calm his patient and prevent further damage, before he reels the instinct in.
"Be careful," Hobi bids. Then he moves the stand closer, increasing the slack on the IV line. RM nods. His hands curl into tight fists. Ah, Jin thinks. He's so glad Yoongi's not here.
"I didn't- it was an accident- I never. You weren't supposed…" he falls silent, chest heaving despite how quiet the stuttered words were. "It was never supposed to be you. I wasn't thinking. I can barely remember how I got here."
"You had your own ship," Hobi asks, but it's not really a question. RM nods anyway. "And then you didn't." RM nods again. "Did the Embassy find it?"
"No, it just…" he trails off, gaze fixed in the middle distance. Then he clears his throat with a brief shake of his head. "Either way, I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to get anyone pulled into my situation. I was just looking for an exit. Please don't give me to the Embassy. Please. I promise I'm not trying to cause you trouble, Captain. I’m only looking for a way off-world. I’ll pay whatever the price." The confession feels like a prayer.
"You know if I turned you in, I could probably get ten times anything you could offer?" RM's throat bobs. Jin raises his brows genially.
"I'm aware."
"And you're still asking."
"You're my only option, and you haven't killed me yet."
"Yet."
"Yet," RM agrees.
For a moment, Jin sees his mates in this man. Scared, lonely, and desperate. Willing to do whatever to get out of the clutches of one horror, even if it means handing himself over to another. Jungkook was like that. Jungkook would probably love RM. If things had gone better the first time around Jin suspects he probably would have ended up a pirate too.
Seokjin closes the shared commn link displaying the wanted poster. He sighs.
"If I tried to turn you into the Embassy now, I imagine they'd take the ship in for habouring alongside you. The habouring clause would likely lead to us being charged as accomplices, and my mate would murder me for getting us restricted from this end of the galactic quadrant, and ruining his reputation."
"And for being caught," Hobi interrupts.
"That too." He drags manicured nails over the smooth surface of Hoseok's desk. The wood is from Kiviut. It was a hard thing to find so far from his mate's home world, but Jin did it anyway. It's got a warmth to it the flora on Lehari's never knew. Hoseok would hate to loose it, and Jin would despise losing him.
"RM," he addresses. The stowaway manages to sit up a little straighter against the pillows. "You are incredibly lucky that this ship is not in the business of selling people. At this moment, the risk of you being here has yet to outweigh the risk of turning you in. But the fact that you have not been sent out the airlock we found you in is a kindness. One, I am more than willing to revoke.
"If you start trouble here, know whatever the Eprosseii Embassy wants from you will be the last of your issues. My priority on this ship will always be my crew. Now, I am not a naive man, and so I don't expect us to get along perfectly, but as long as you are here, you will follow my orders and the orders of my crew, and you will learn to like it, because we are doing you a favour by letting you keep your life." The ship's captain speaks slow and calm, unflinching through every syllable, his dark gaze staked on the human as he makes sure their intruder absorbs every word. "Do we have an understanding?"
"Yes, Captain," the words are fluent from practice. "I'd expect nothing less."
"Good." Jin wipes the shadow off his face and replaces it with his usual charming smile. "So where are we taking you?"
RM stares are Jin for a moment, watching his warder in a silence Jin can't quite put a name to. RM glances at Hoseok who's busy unplugging one machine and turning on another. Something with bellows breathes to life. The doctor is unfazed, the patient evaluates his next move, before he finally allows his face to pinch, soil-brown eyes fall back on Jin, looking almost ashamed.
"Ymir."
"Ymir?" Hoseok gasps before Jin can. Jin can't quite keep the grimace off his face. The tips of RM's ears redden. Jin notes the fact that his do the same when he's particularly flustered. Strange. He thought that was a Lehari thing. Then again, he hasn't met many—any—humans.
Ymir's not a bad planet for them, technically speaking. It's far out from their current destination—a stray asteroid belt a little too close to the Embassy for his liking, but Hoseok and Tae are still patching up their engine problems, so it's fine enough for now. The Bangtan's current trade route does, however, take them through Ymir's system, though he won't stress the ship by actually trying to get onto the planet. He imagines the stowaway will be fine with the Bangtan just getting him close. Someone's always ferrying the lost to Ymir.
"I can do Lanayru," Jin offers instead. The planet is much closer to the ice planet's sun; much more Jin's speed. The stowaway brightens.
"Done," RM says without hesitation. "How… how much?"
Seokjin puts his teeth away. Part of him wants to be cruel, the core part of him that will defend his lovers with tooth and tail if it is the last thing he ever does. But, Jin reasons, he's having fun. Against all odds, the man Jin is willing to kill at moment's notice, without a single lick of regret, has been fun. Hoseokie's made no reservations about getting into RM's personal space to care for him, so he's clearly alright with their little intruder. Plus, he can always change his mind later. Or push RM out the airlock himself.
"15,000 credits." The human blanches.
"Okay."
─── ⋆⋅⭑ ✧ ⭑⋅⋆ ───
Namjoon doesn't know what he was expecting when he was informed of the captain's arrival, but it wasn't… him. Captain Seokjin left not long after the end of their negotiations, striding out of the medbay, off to tell the crew of Namjoon's new plans. There'd been fewer knives and threats with intangibly thin, veils than Namjoon is used to, which was nice. But the man, the Lehari, also never stopped looking at Namjoon.
The captain, though smiley and so at ease it was off-putting, had spent the better part of their talk staring unblinking at Namjoon. His piercing gaze had taken what little mobility Namjoon had and swiftly pinned it to the bedspread. His attention never wandered, solely and completely focused on his newfound passenger like he was on a quest to get under Namjoon's skin. A wild grin had spread wider and wider across the captain's face with every word Namjoon forced through his teeth, only stopping when the captain promised the end of Namjoon's life if he screwed them over.
Namjoon shivers as he thinks about it. Hoseok lifts his head from where he's been slowly pairing down the number of machines Namjoon's hooked to.
"How are you feeling?" he asks.
"Fine," Namjoon lies. His stomach is full of lead. At least they don't want to kill him for now. Or at least, Hoseok and the captain don't have plans. He expects Yoongi will slaughter him in his sleep, once Namjoon's credit transfer goes through.
"Let me know if that changes," Hoseok says.
"I will," Namjoon returns. He will not.
There's more padding around from the medic, casual ministrations resuming as Hoseok is caught up in the process of Namjoon. Namjoon is Awake, awake now, though too scared to get in the medic's way.
They're taking him to Lanayru, he thinks. Once he gets to Lanayru, he should be able to get a ride to Ymir and track down Gujihanna's emergency base. He'll send a distress call, pray it will get an answer, and dread what they'll do to his contract. Maybe they'll just leave him out to die in the snow. He wouldn't be surprised. A voice that tastes suspiciously like Namjoon's captain reminds him how low on chances he's already running. Maybe he deserves to die there, but that might mean he made it off the spaceport for a reason, rather than his own poorly planned dumb luck.
Right as his head starts to hurt from thinking too hard, there's a knock on the medbay door.
"I brought dinner!" a voice cheerfully shouts. Namjoon recognizes it. Hoseok makes a fond noise and steps away from his duties to unlock the door.
"Tae-yah, I asked you to wait until I called," Hoseok says as the door whooshes open.
"I know, hyung, but Yoongi was getting all wound up about you being in here alone, so I thought I'd do you a favour before he tries to convince Jin-hyung to let him come back," someone says. They push through the door despite Hoseok's squawk of protest and set a covered tray down at the end of Namjoon's cot.
"Hi!" he says, "I'm Taehyung!"
And Namjoon swears he remembers the hands that caught him when he first fell here.