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yeoldontknow · 4 years

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Sheltered Hearts: 4 (FINAL)

Author’s note: for @iq-biased. i hope you all enjoy the last part in this series as much as i enjoyed writing it! Paring: Yoongi x Reader (oc; female) Genre: enemies to lovers; vet!au; angst; romance; fluff Rating (this chapter): PG Warnings (this chapter): angst; some discussion of surgery but nothing graphic; a sick doggo who deserves so many kisses and is a good boy; a very soft first kiss; a very soft yoongi :( someone hug him Word count: 7.5K

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Talia’s hands tremble when you reach out to hug her, the strength in your joints equally as unwavering as the strength of your gaze upon your fingers. For now they are clean, gloves discarded and with them Casper’s blood, but that does not change where they have been, does not erase all that they have touched. You hold her gently, instinctually used to soft touches and gentle movements; lingering in a place and time when any pressure, too hard or too coarse, would cause malleable sinew to sever. The relief in her breath against your shoulder is immeasurable, perhaps her first genuine exhale in hours, but you remain silent, altogether still too aware of your hands, haunted.

‘He’s recovering,’ you hear yourself whisper, though you are unsure of the purpose of this statement. Is it to tether you to the earth? To reassure Talia? You cannot say for certain. It erupts from nowhere, a confident murmur, dawning in the center of your chest and desperate to greet the air within the same second. It is unprompted and likely unprofessional, but it matters, brimming over from the place where emotion latches onto blood.

Dr. Hague stands behind Yoongi, observant and encouraging, as he details Casper’s rehabilitation plan, voice bright and clear with sunlight nestled into the corner of his words. Even without looking at him, you can hear he is smiling, that boyish yet professional expression he wears when he is proud, still love-drunk from the concept of recovery. She breaks away from you, hanging on his every word and forcing herself not to celebrate too soon.

Casper will be held for several days in observation, the first three days the most imperative when infection or rejection can set in. Should he come out of these days unscathed, he will then be transferred to recovery therapy and then spend five weeks on lead, unable to freely play. It will be hard, he advises, and Talia nods, prepared to try to understand, chewing at the only question love ever allows to settle in a space like this:

When can I see him?

You don’t wait for her to ask the question, air in the room becoming thin and altogether too stale for your liking. Pulling off your surgical cap, you turn abruptly, moving through the waiting area to push your way through the doors and out to the parking lot. In the field across the street, the sun has just begun to set, blood on the grass that illuminates the earth like wildfire. A single breath is not enough to contain this, you think, a moment of fierce victory and delicate, unfathomable frailty. It could snap, this sense of pride and pleasure, one white blood cell rejecting the next would bring this moment to an endless, perpetual night.

Breathing deep, the smell of the wild flowers finds its way to you, a Spring evening that will eventually fade and fade until other victories and other failures render this moment painfully ordinary. Breathing deep, you cling to this feeling, the understanding that Gods never marvel at their miracles - the knowledge that surgery is not the act of playing with fate and instead is the summation of human suffering, a desperate plea to continue in life’s brief and limited smallness.

All things live, all things die, and it is a blessing to be present at both.

The clack of the door closing breaks your thoughts, but you do not open your eyes. You want this moment to last a little longer, regardless of who sees you, aware that these kinds of successes look almost the same as defeat, brutal and unforgiving. Yoongi’s presence lifts the hair on your arms to standing, an energetic cascade of safety and understanding. He moves behind you, drifting from your right to the center of your back to your left and off, somewhere away from you and carried by the doppler effect of his even footsteps.

He doesn’t speak, and even in this silent awareness that you are being observed you don’t feel pressured to speak with him. Yoongi lets you be, allows you to continue, uninterrupted, and lets you stand in the ever lowering sun, the warmth from the day giving over to a cool breeze, demanding nothing from you. He lingers at the edge of your awareness, a watchful satellite ensuring you are whole and that, if you do break, you do not break alone. When you finally open your eyes, your turn to face him, hands at your sides too full of blood and swollen, now, with excitement.

Leaning against his car, now in his street clothes, Yoongi stands, arms crossed and expression placid, watching you with a whisper of a smile. Liberated from his scrubs and hugging himself in a thin burgundy hoodie, he no longer is the surgeon or the doctor or the student battling for recognition. Instead, he is simply Min Yoongi, young and handsome and magnificent, watching you as though you are the fading light of the earth, intent on memorizing all your nuanced shades.

For a while, you are content to linger in this silence with him, observing him with the same unfettered focus. Eyes wired, the dimming light catches his irises, making him appear as though he glows from within. Thin lipped, he no longer appears severe in this light, instead he is curious and mercurial, hungry for the truth of things - the truth of you. The last strands of light hold tightly to his hair, lighting him on fire, burning the edges of his aura.

‘How about that diner?’ he asks with a gentle nod of his head towards his car, recalling his earlier suggestion.

The rumble in your stomach at the suggestion makes you giggle, though you are unsure if it is food you desire or if it is him, moments alone with him to truly see who he is when he does not have to fight to be seen.

Yoongi orders pancakes as though it would be a sacrilege to eat anything else at a diner, unbothered with the pretense of looking at the menu. In the pale fluorescent light, a pink blush settles on his cheeks, teased to life either by the rush of blood beneath his cheeks or the soft reflection of the red vinyl seat. You feel his eyes on you as you scan the menu, his inquisitive stare taking its time handling your frame. Gripping the edge of your seat, your eyes glaze over, scanning the words and the pictures, idly wondering why you bother with such false shows of interest when, much like Yoongi, you know you will order the waffles - something slightly different, but similar enough in its texture and form that you begin to see Yoongi as your mirror image.

His gaze remains trained on you even after the waiter has departed, arms folded, again, across his chest in a congenial display of interest. You’re not used to such unbridled attention, the kind of focus that comes from learning a person rather than witnessing them. The steel in his features has disappeared, rendering him soft and human and altogether too sincere for your liking, but the stillness in his focus tells you he is disassembling you. Fidgeting in your seat, heat crawls along your skin, joints tense and tongue heavy against your teeth.

You watch him too, watch the way his head cocks slowly to the side, a small smirk pulling at his lips. Watch the way he lets himself be painted by the light, different now to the sun and do the red and pink and blue kaleidoscope of the sky but equally as mesmerizing. No one is meant to be offered a metamorphosis in this kind of light. No one is meant to become beautiful, but he is. Of course he is.

Tearing your eyes away, a small act of desperation, you think, you glance around the diner. People are scattered, the empty spaces between occupied tables perhaps larger in number than those seated altogether, but you are glad for the quiet hum of life and motion. Thursday evening, and you would not say this particular location is prone to a rush hour, but it’s peaceful, a reminder that the weather turns, hearts beat, and lungs breathe.

A reminder that some things do not change even if the way you are feeling about Yoongi is.

‘I’m realizing,’ he announces, calling your attention back to him with his smooth, low drawl, ‘that we have only spent time together in the context of work.’

‘You’re just realizing this?’

‘No,’ he admits. ‘But I’m saying why haven’t we? In five weeks, amidst everything, why haven’t we?’

It’s not an unfamiliar question, one you have been mulling over for days at a time. At the clinic, things have changed - even before Casper’s surgery, the way you move around Yoongi has shifted not unlike the planets around the sun. But then, it is not just you who has been altered, moved by this sudden unified desire to help. Yoongi, too, smiles more - the kind where his teeth are on full display and for one, precious moment, he is not afraid of being himself; laughs louder; allows the creases at the center of his eyes to form without worrying he is being unprofessional.

In the past several weeks, you have found more reasons to be beside him, more reasons to ask for his advice, found yourself craving the very concept and theology of more - not necessarily love or a crush, but the threatening start of one, the thunder of your heart just a little louder when he laughs. Some days, it is no longer Dr. Hague’s praise you crave but his, as if he has any bearing on your success, as though a word of approval from him holds more weight than any paper rewarded to you by the nature of your own hard work - as if hours spent challenging him are as valuable as hours alone in a lab, giving over and giving in, allowing yourself to become better because he requires it.

Clearing your throat, you let your eyes wander over his easy smile and his cool, collected demeanor. ‘I don’t know,’ you shrug, a casual display of nonchalance. ‘You never asked.’

Yoongi chuckles, unfolding his arms as he leans a little closer to the table. ‘You didn’t ask, either.’

Cocking your brow, you feel yourself smirk, pulling at his words the same way he pulls as yours. ‘Are we calling a truce?’

For a long moment, Yoongi considers your words, mulling them over as his cheeks inflate with air. Folding his arms on the table, he regards you in a playful contest, the diner becoming little more than a boardroom for your false negotiations. Mirroring his position, you rest your arms on the table and narrow your eyes. Chewing at the inside of your cheek, it takes work to swallow the smile you want to offer him, the sort of smile he so badly hides at the corner of his mouth.

‘At work?’ he says, finally.

You nod, resolute in your role and your intent.

‘Never.’ He falls back into his seat, reclining into the cushion with his eyes full of promise and mirth. You wait for him to speak, somehow hanging on every word, relieved that this rivalry can continue as is, uninterrupted and unchanged, yet still expectant. ‘But outside of work,’ he continues, slowly, his wide smile blossoming, ‘I’d like to be friends.’

Everything about Min Yoongi is infectious, the light in his eyes a dangerous glimmer that demands your surrender. Taking a deep breath, you prepare your words, aware that your acceptance of this offer is a commitment not unlike love, yet carrying with it the potential to last longer, eternal, the purest form of connection that could exist.

‘I can do that.’

The arrival of your food ceases all conversation, the growling in your stomach a reminder that you have not eaten since before Casper’s surgery. All morning you had felt uneasy, not nauseous and not queasy, but unable to shake that you were standing at the precipice between fantasy and reality. The statement of wanting to be something is entirely different than the process of becoming, said so long and so often throughout your life that you had almost forgotten that the experience of growth is just as important as the commitment to the desire. And so you had not eaten, certain that the comfort of a meal would distract you from the weight of importance.

Taking your time arranging your plates of eggs and bacon, gathering your napkin and utensils, you greet your waffles with an enthusiastic smile. Glancing upwards, you find yourself laughing at Yoongi and his childlike glee. He falls into his meal the same way he falls into surgery, with diligence and an edge of impatience, as though the plate itself carried a seduction he found irresistible. Hands idle over your fork and knife, you wonder if this is the enthusiasm with which he falls into everything he desires, unbridled though careful, unsatisfied until he has born witness to and tasted it all, with a fidelity of devotion large enough to cradle the sun.

He cuts into his pancakes with diligence, holding his fork and knife with surgical delicacy as he makes elegant cuts, shaping his pieces with precision. You’re sure it’s just a habit, something he can’t quit after so long of learning to be careful, but you feel the onslaught of your sudden similarities in the center of your chest, a weight becoming harder and harder to disregard.

‘What you did for Casper was impressive,' he announces, penetrating your thoughts with the cool tones of his voice. 'The foresight required to make that kind of suggestion...to invent something…’ His words evaporate as he chews, glancing from his pancakes to his bacon and back again, unsure which deserves his attention more. Swallowing, he nods, assuming you have already agreed with him. ‘Remarkable.'

The magic of the moment is broken by the implication this is an unusual occurrence, reminded now that, had you been more vocal, more demanding and less angry that the clinic already had a rising star, there would have been more chances, more opportunities to prove this kind of medicine is not a miracle. Briefly, the sterilized antiseptic scent of the graduate school lab hall floods your synapses. All the bones you watched break, only to be put together by someone else; all the innovations, the universal mystery of 3D printing no longer so out of reach; all the advances humanity makes simply because they want to, and because they can.

What you did for Casper, you think, was not as much impressive as it was the morally correct thing to try. Long ago, you decided magic is real and magic is man made. Magic is the decision of recognizing something is broken and taking the initiative to fix it.

Casting your attention to your waffles, you grip your utensils with the same tender reverence as Yoongi, hands giving pause to make your first incision. ‘It wasn’t really,' you murmur with a shrug.

Yoongi halts his movements and swallows, blinking at you momentarily bewildered.

‘No?' he snorts, disbelieving. 'Tell that to Talia. That dog might walk again, with all four legs mind you. That never would have happened without you.'

Humming, you nod in mild agreement. ‘I mean sure, objectively, it is.'

Dropping your shoulders, you consider your words, wondering how anyone could explain the way careful hands and cold metal can create structure - not necessarily life - but still something vital, necessary, and powerful just the same; the offer of a new life, created and manifested simply because you want it to be. How could you ever, you wonder, explain that you are not bringing someone back to life, but adding to the concept of it, extending it- challenging, not death but, life itself.

‘But,’ you continue, meeting his eyes once more as you decide on a worthy enough explanation, ‘you have to understand that’s the standard for orthopedics, this kind of specialty.’

He eyes you expectantly, hands poised and still, knowing that there is more - so much more you want to say - and leaves you the absolute freedom to say with, unhindered.

‘In our surgery labs, you should see what you can build. What you can make with your own two hands.’ Relaxing into your seat, your mind races, remembering. ‘It’s a fusion of all the sciences really - bones and soft tissue, metal and construction. You’re not trying to resurrect - yeah, sometimes it can feel like that, but that’s not the point. We aren’t bringing someone back from the brink - we’re pushing them over the limit and ensuring they survive.’

You aren’t entirely sure when you became so hungry - for food, for life, for Yoongi - but it does not escape your attention how painfully emphatic you sound. Nothing, you think, has ever been so important for him to understand, so important for him to feel.

‘I have no interest in playing God,’ you continue, quieter now but just as determined. ‘Not the way you would in cardio or…’

‘Oncology?’

He offers it almost like a challenge, and, perhaps, on a different day, long before you truly could say you knew him, you would have felt as though there was no way to escape the unintentional insult he means to force on you. Instead, you see the way he watches you, considerate and gentle, fully aware this is not a slight at him or his choices, managing instead to leave you room to breathe in the space of accepting his statement.

‘Yeah.’ You hold his gaze, smiling as though you cannot help it, as though smiling at him is the most natural and wonderful thing - made for it, you think, made for the wonder of his pleasure.

Yoongi smirks, watching you intently, eyes alive with something that makes him look playful and joyful, content to be sharing this moment with you; honored, if only because you decided to let him in.

‘Makes sense,’ he says with a shrug, leaning forward once more to return his attention to his pancakes.

Bewildered, you cock your head to the side. ‘What does?’

‘Why you were resentful before.’ Yoongi reaches across the table, taking the syrup from beside your glass, pouring more over his pancakes and letting it spill onto his bacon. ‘About working here.’

Your jaw falls open, mock offence mixing with genuine abjection. ‘It’s not that I was resentful,’ you begin, asserting that you were neither ungrateful nor bitter. ‘It’s just hard to rationalize how badly you want to help, and how much you know could do, with the limit of your role.’

Even as you say the words, you know they are little more than platitudes you tell yourself - have been telling yourself - to rationalize the level of dejection you experienced. It seems like ages ago, moons upon moons having passed, a dying age when you accepted your stagnancy and put the blame on Yoongi, choosing him as your scapegoat simply because he took control of his life with both hands.

Cocking an eyebrow in your direction, Yoongi laughs, amused and disbelieving. Pointing a strip of bacon in your direction, he refuses you the comfort of your placating sentiments.

‘You were resentful,’ he states plainly.

The mischievous glimmer in his eyes is infectious, your cheeks warming with a sheepish blush that has you giggling. ‘Okay, maybe I was,’ you concede. ‘All the typing and filing is wearing out my perfect hands.’

Eyeing you through his lashes as he cuts more of his pancakes, he considers you for a long while, as though you are a mystery he is only just beginning to solve.

‘You did good,’ he says eventually, words gentle and voice full.

The genuine affection you find in the statement catches you off guard, chest tight as your heart stumbles over its natural rhythm. More and more, he has become tender - someone who offers support in the form of silence when you need to be heard; someone unafraid to give encouragement or honesty when you need it most; someone who, after everything you have seen from them, from their strength to their arrogance to their dedication, is nothing more than a boy with a heart too big to be contained in the cage of his sternum.

Now, with the lights reflecting the neon of the diner and putting the rainbow in his blonde hair, skin pink and warm and eyes almost brutal in their kindness and their candor, Yoongi is a vision - one you do not think you will ever stop admiring.

‘You did, too,’ you murmur, cheeks hot with a blush of embarrassment. You wish you could be loud, unafraid of him hearing just how much it means to you, but softness is what he has pulled out of you, a compassion for people rather than animals you thought had vanished long ago emerging from deep within.

You want to be as confident in this expression as he is, but the fragility of your tenderness is not unlike a fawn, keeping you close to Yoongi so that you can learn.

‘So here is what I know about you,’ he begins, biting down on his bacon strip and breaking your thoughts. ‘You’re smart, passionate, competitive as hell.’

‘You say that like it’s a threat,’ you laugh, cutting into your waffles, the thickness of the atmosphere diluting down to one of amicable comfort.

‘It’s not a bad thing,’ he laughs. ‘In this profession you need that edge. Life doesn’t wait.’ Swallowing, he takes a sip of his water through the straw, lips forming a soft circle that makes you melt, eyes wide and focused on yours. ‘But,’ he continues, ‘I’m still trying to make sense of you.’

Pouting, you grimace. ‘You mean you’ve spent all that time looking at me and that’s all you’ve figured out?’

Yoongi nods with an affable smile, but he does not allow you the comfort of teasing deflection. Instead, he folds his arms on the table and regards you with a tenacity that feels weighted, too heavy for the jovial, easy comfort you have found yourselves in. ‘I think that’s all you let people see.’

Had you not known him to be incisive, the direct comment might have startled you - months ago, you would have been insulted. Now, you find you have to stop yourself from swooning. In the days and weeks you have spent learning Yoongi of your own accord, he has been doing the same - only, he makes it clear he has been watching, witnessing you, and you, usually so careful and professional, find that you want him to see you. You are desperate for his eyes on you, his eyes watching you in the morning after your coffee; his eyes, studying your lips and your skin in the sun, basking in the post-surgical bliss that comes with risk; his eyes, learning the way you move when you do not know you are being watched, when you do not know that you are wanting him to watch you, or wanting him altogether.

Months ago, you’d have been upset, but now you are relieved, yet still uncertain he has done you justice. You deserve more, you think, than just idle watching. You deserve to be consumed.

‘Then,’ you begin, placing your utensils on the plate and leaning forward, mirroring his posture, ‘maybe you’re not looking hard enough.’

His eyes widen, sparkling as they take you in, his smile brilliant and combating the light - every sliver of it, natural and unnatural, demanding he power the universe. ‘Seductive,’ he announces, gleeful. ‘Like a little imp.’

Chewing the inside of your cheek, you take a slow, shaking in hale at the way he lingers on the word seductive, clinging to the S as though he is reluctant to let it go, to let you go. The world shifts on its axis in the aftermath of his sentence, and you both are aware of it. He waits for your reaction, impatient in the way his joints seem to tense around his fork, unblinking in his desire for your response. Tongue heavy against your teeth, you smile, lowering your gaze and regarding him through the thickness of your lashes, watching the pink swell of a flush creep up his neck.

Yoongi is not ensnared but he is waiting for you to hold onto the moment, to clutch it with both your greedy fists, coming to him like the snake in Eden, ready for you to bite.

‘If only you knew,’ you offer, coquettish and dark.

Yoongi tips his head back against the seat, pleased and reassured that you are just as unforgiving in your lust and flirtation as you are in competition. A vibration has commenced in your nerves, the humming in your skin a foreboding sense of vulnerability and the expectation that these exchanges will continue - somewhere, somewhen, not in the clinic but elsewhere, created by your own accord, because you both wish them to be so. You can feel it, and you are sure he can too, though it is still young - a warm, threatening heat that whispers its demands for you both, not yet large enough to consume you.

But it will. You want it to.

Yoongi smiles, and you smile back, letting it take root deep within your soul, its reach far more sweeping than you ever let this kind of expression reach. Yoongi smiles, and the earth moves, and nothing, you know, will ever be the same.

It continues like that for a long while, days and weeks passing with you watching Yoongi and Yoongi watching you, a silent contract that promises you will kiss one another's thoughts before you will kiss lips, these exchanges somehow more intimate and tender than the exchange of skin to skin. The clinic notices the change, the shift from rivalry to competitive understanding to a friendship that borders, tauntingly, on the barriers of romance. Your colleagues watch you both with smiles tucked into the corners of their mouths, knowing everything because you neither hide nor deny anything at all, rejoicing in the sensuality that comes from the force of finally living.

Day in and day out, you trace the bones and the bodies of the animals that come to you, the end to your service at the clinic looming ever closer, a date you deny but do not dread if only because it means you will have him, all of him exactly as you want him. There was no discussion of your eventual transition from friends to lovers, something as inevitable as the movement of the sun over the earth's horizon, but you felt it. In the way he smiled and the way he waited behind you, watchful and awed, you felt it. Somehow, some when, on a night or a day when you both felt comfortable, placated by one another's presence and more alive than you had ever felt simply because he was at your side, you both had decided it would be so.

But not yet.

For a long while, you hold hands through your surgical gloves, fingers touching fingers for the briefest of moments, only to break apart as quickly as you had come together, choosing the airs of professionalism over the airs of romance; evenings spent beneath his parent's peach trees, reading medical books and medical research, pretending your toes do not touch, that the warmth on your skin is from the blanket and not from his skin. In those moments, he is pink - pink as the blossoms and pink as your blush, breathing in unison and waiting, almost too impatiently, for the thrill of being young and being in lust.

The danger of these feelings is that they always feel immortal, immune to the wear and tear of life itself, a blessing that endures. In these sentiments, you are invincible - but the are dangerous because they are more fragile than your own soft tissue, than the supple muscle of your beating heart. They are dangerous because they always end, and when they end, you are always left bereft.

It ends on the hottest day of the summer, mid-day in August with the sun high in the sky and no clouds to cover it. Yoongi had come to work early, the air conditioning of his apartment broken and the sweat on his neck lingering in a tantalizing shimmer. You watch him scribble notes from a medical lecture onto a thick pad of paper from your seat at your newly earned desk in Dr. Hague's office, a small table with a computer and too many charts and notes scattered across it to be remotely organized, too warm to focus.

You are meant to be writing a pathology report for a cat with a broken femur; you are meant to be running labs and inputting charts for Dr. Hague's review. And you will, you tell yourself you will, but only after you memorize the way the contour of Yoongi's cheek seems to catch the light, golden and bronze and almost too ethereal to belong to man.

The phone to Dr. Hague's office rings, making both you and Yoongi jump. He laughs at himself, sheepish, and you laugh with him, though something in this moment makes your stomach drop, your skin slick now with a sense of dread that refuses to leave you. If he feels it too, Yoongi does not let on, reaching for the phone with a confident hand that does not shake as he pulls it to his ear. It's almost inevitable, the way you start to grieve, though you are unsure why the sadness in your chest has begun to spawn like spores. You are grieving, but for what you cannot tell, you can only sense that you are supposed to by the way Yoongi's brows furrow and his lips drop into a frown, cascading downward, almost sauntering lower alongside the trajectory of your heart, before he expresses his acknowledgement and hangs up the phone.

Without a word, he drops his notepad to his deserted chair and moves past you, knowing you will follow hot on his heels, and you do, rising after him with fire in your veins and an ache in your chest, knowing. Somehow, knowing.

In the clinic waiting room, Talia sits with Casper at her feet, pale and lost. Eyes downcast, she is dark, gaze unfocused as she breathes almost too quietly, so far away from you and this moment she does not lift her head on your approach. You and Yoongi halt your steps by the reception desk, simply watching. Hands fisted at your sides, you feel as though you knew, as though you might have always known that they would be back, that somehow it would be different - another day, another war, another reminder that you are human and humans are not meant to solve the problems of mortality.

It's Dr. Hague who breaks the silence, moving past you and Yoongi with somber footsteps as he calls her name. Talia raises her head, eyes no longer simply dark but wet, attempting a hopeful smile as she rises to her feet.

Before she speaks, you know what she will say, certain you do not want to hear it and, conversely, certain that you must. It will be the fire, you think, the fire that will insight another battle out of you, another way to win the day and, perhaps, even the war.

'The vet,' she manages, voice broken and uneven and so terribly small. 'They said his cancer came back. It's in a different part of his leg...worse now, I guess.'

Her words leave you bitter, as though you have been pressed and completely released of your youthful, jovial glow. In the aftermath, you are hardened and battle-born, angry and lost, the tears threatening to burn at your eyes because you saved him. You saved him once and you will do it again, the sheer force of this sentiment vibrating down through your joints, your fingers, deep into the atoms of your blood. You saved him and you will do so again.

The very nature of your will is unflinching, uncompromising as you take a deep inhale, readying yourself. Turning to your side, you expect to see Yoongi, the blood beneath his skin ablaze with the same relentless passion for victory, but he is not there. At your side, there is nothing, just the long tails of his lab coat as he departs from the room altogether.

Bereft, he departs from the clinic with ferocious speed, your own tongue running dry as you struggle to fathom words and reason for his sudden absence. Talia looks to the door, your eyes meeting at this central point, bewildered yet somehow unified in understanding. If she could leave her skin, departing from this moment with a completeness that leaves no discernible trace, you imagine she would. And so it is unfair, you think, for Yoongi to have the liberty of escape.

Gingerly, you follow him, reminded of the day when he followed you, orbiting around you in the evening sun as he watched and waited. The difference, you suppose, is not the circumstance as much as it is the timing. He gave you space, distance, minutes with just yourself to collect and gather your thoughts; and so you are too soon, almost cruel in your interruption. It washes over you, the understanding that to feel something, anything, is a pain that defies the simplicity of language but to be witnessed in the state of that emotion is an act of unmaking, an unforgiving vulnerability.

But right now, you need him just the same as he likely needs you; consumed, at once, with the need to remind him that the experience of defeat only matters in the actions you take in the aftermath.

Crouched against the back of the clinic, Yoongi holds his head in his hands and trembles, small and shy, defenseless as though he naked and raw. You approach him cautiously, footsteps careful as you train your eyes on the curve of his back, catlike and poised to withdraw at a moment’s notice. He looks as distraught and desperate as you feel, gripped by the fear and the remorse - the magnitude and the full breadth of it - as he takes long inhales, demanding that the air itself grows claws within him.

Stepping forward, a twig snaps beneath the soles of your shoes and he bristles, aware that he is no longer alone. Your gaze departs from him, searching other points of interest, sheepish as you bite the inside of your cheek. The silence is deafening, the breeze refusing to rustle the leaves and the birds refusing to sing. Time moves slowly in this space, inching ever forward and yet you seem detached from it, waiting and waiting and waiting.

‘I know it’s wrong,’ he announces suddenly, alarmingly clear toned for a man so broken. ‘It makes me a bad doctor.’

Softening, you are drawn to his side, leaning back against the clinic as you keep your eyes forward, not wanting to upset him further should your presence be a discomfort. ‘What does?’

‘Attachment,’ he spits, resentful that the very concept could exist. ‘In oncology we learn it in year one. You don’t get attached. You’re not God. You can’t save every animal. This kind of thinking will do you in.’

‘Then,’ you try, keeping your voice low and soothing, ‘why this dog? Because it was special?’

Yoongi shakes his head. You can hear the rustle of his hair as he moves, the sound making your chest constrict in affection.

‘It’s not just this dog,’ he retorts sharply.

‘No?’

‘It’s every dog.’ Behind the bitterness and distress, you hear the truth - the anguish of heart that knows too much benevolence, too much affection; the pressure of a heart too willing to love. ‘Every dog and every cat and every rabbit. Each time, I love them.’

‘You have to love them, Yoongi.’ Lowering your gaze to his crouched form, you keep your words calm and even though their meaning is tenacious in its ardent determination. ‘You have to love them enough to take the risk, and you have to love them enough to do what’s morally right - even if that means letting them go.’

‘I know it’s stupid.’ He continues, as though he did not hear you at all, as though you had not spoken. ‘Day one, they say it will make you a terrible doctor. Thinking like this will break you before your career even starts.’ Rising to a stand, he wipes his palms over absent creases in his trousers before he, too, leans against the clinic, arms folded and chin tucked against his chest. ‘Want to know the truth?’

‘Tell me.’

‘I think human doctors have it easier,’ he explains. ‘You’re not going to love every patient. Some are assholes, and some aren’t very good people. Hell, depending on the case you might not want them to live - they might be a goddamn criminal.’

‘It’s easy not to get attached to people,’ you agree with a nod.

‘Fuck, I don’t even like people very much.’ At this he turns to you, worried and wide eyed, uncertainty tainting his features. He looks to you as though you can help him understand, pleading and so endearingly lost. ‘I don’t do this,’ he whispers. ‘Letting people in…,’ his voice fades as he turns away again, walling off one fear for the next. ‘You don’t get that choice with animals,’ he continues, clear toned and persistent. ‘No animal exists or acts out of bad intentions.’

Looking out over the horizon, you watch the early afternoon sun cast its golden rays over the grass, dappling the field. Something in this experience for him is two-fold, the fear of risk wrapping itself around separate, yet not altogether innocuous, events and ensuring they can no longer be parted. A smile pulls at your cheeks, bemused that you had been learning to trust and breathe through the same fear as he, learning to surrender to someone other than yourself.

And so you offer the same lessons to him, if only because you find the easiest way to fight your battles is by looking in the mirror.

‘I don’t think this is stupid.’

‘No?’ he breathes, turning to face you once again. ‘Because I’ve not even started yet, and I can already feel it ending.’

You’re unsure if he is referring to his feelings for you or his career, though you are confident it does not matter. All risk is risk, regardless of the direction.

‘It’s not stupid,’ you repeat, shaking your head. ‘It’s human. I don’t think any vet truly understands why someone becomes a people doctor. People suck.’

You finish with a shrug of your shoulders, a non-committal sign of agreement you hope informs him that people do suck, but he is the exclusion. Always the exclusion.

At this, Yoongi laughs, casting his gaze downward to his feet as his tell-tale blush wanders across his neck and into his ears. Encouraged, you continue.

‘Even the worst animal has a reason for being, well, the worst,’ you explain. ‘Lots of times, it’s people who made them that way. People and their bad habits and their neglect and their inability to understand or care.’

Sidelong, he looks at you through the curtain of his eyelashes, lips pulling into a small grin that gives your heart wings. ‘I see this furthers your point that people suck.’

‘It does,’ you giggle, unable to help yourself and the way you softly swoon at the sight of him, boyish and young and learning to try. ‘But that’s not my main point.’

‘Then what’s your point.’

‘My point is…’ Your words fade, carefully choosing your words, aware that this is the pinnacle, the moment between now and tomorrow, the moment of change that ensures everything is different. And you, just as guarded and so full to the brim, ready to learn to love, tell yourself you are prepared. This is for you as much as it is for Casper as it is for him. ‘We learn this too, but in Ortho we call it something different. For us, it’s failure to rescue. For us, it’s not about who failed less or who failed more. It’s merely who rescued more, that’s the separation. In surgery, things will go wrong - you cannot take a risk without the probability of failure, otherwise it isn’t a risk. You have to be ready for it, the failure, because it is naturally inevitable. The difference between triumph and defeat, rescue and failure to rescue, is what you do after it.’

Yoongi regards you intently, eyes glimmering not unlike the sun at dawn, watching you with enough attentive vigilance you feel valuable, important, the single most important thing in his small universe at this moment. It’s an odd feeling, the knowledge and acceptance that you matter, that you matter and that you are wanted. The world spins, and you feel it, the lightheaded dizziness that comes from the motion of things rather than the lack making you root your feet to the earth, emboldened.

‘Obviously, you continue, chest full and impassioned, ‘you became a vet to save animals, we all did, but this is the moment you take to heart and try to rescue again. And when you get like this...you have to talk about it with somebody.’

‘Ugh,’ he groans with a soft chuckle. ‘People.’

‘With me,’ you offer, leaning to nudge his shoulder with yours, watching as he tucks his bottom lip between his teeth. The very sight warms your blood, heat wandering down your spine and into your core.‘I wouldn’t say I’m people.’

‘Oh, right,’ he nods, the flirtatious candor in his voice just as raw as his emotions. ‘A person.’

‘I’m serious!’ you laugh, allowing yourself the moment of mock offence and amorous teasing. ‘What do you normally do, go home and drink the night away to forget this?’

‘Well,’ he nods with a grimace, ‘you’re not wrong. Can’t usually forget though. I remember every single one I’ve failed.’

Reaching forward, you take a hold of his right hand, letting your thumb graze over the knuckles. It’s so unlike you, so unlike your careful distance and professional stoicism, but the risk of it is a thrill that sends an electric shock up your arm, breath shuddering in your lungs at the feel of his soft skin. Almost immediately, his grip tightens over yours, holding what he can of you with an unwavering stare, demanding that you feel just as much, that you feel just as vulnerable and exposed. Like this, you let the pad of your thumb explore the ever warming expanse of his hand, learning the smooth texture until you are certain, if demanded, you could remember and explain it in such detail all the world would feel it too.

‘Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?’ he murmurs, breaking the moment with a shallow breath.

Cocking your head to the side, you smile impishly, just as he knew you were, and are, all those weeks ago. ‘What, that your heart is the size of a house?’

‘I meant that I cried,’ he laughs, ‘but yeah, that too.’

Breaking from his hold, you turn to lead him back to the clinic, grinning as you offer him a wink. ‘One of those secrets is safe with me, but I won’t tell you which one.’

‘Wait!’

Yoongi reaches for you once more, pulling with such force that you collide into him with a huff. He’s faster than you, somehow three steps ahead and prepared, holding your face with both hands as he presses his lips to yours, skilled and soft and ensuring his gratitude cascades down and down into your soul. Instinctively, your arms wind around his neck, fingers coming to toy with the hair at the nape of his neck, deepening the kiss as you step closer, close enough you’re certain there is no air between your chests, certain that it would not dare separate you. He hums against your lips, a deep roll of thunder through your opens that has you opening for him, his tongue dipping in for one brief caress against yours before he departs entirely, separating, once more, as though he had not been there at all.

But you feel him. Oh, do you feel him.

Catching your breath, you lose yourself in the honey of his gaze, waiting for the rhythm of your heart to return to its normal pace. But you do not relinquish your hold, and nor does he let you go, both of you gripping one another as though seeking purchase during a fall.

‘I’ll keep both those secrets,’ you whisper, lips still wet and tingling with the force of him, ‘if you come back in and find a way to help Casper.’

Yoongi smiles, a wide gummy expression that makes you feel, yes, you are indeed falling. ‘Deal.’