Chapter Text
Beautiful morning light filtered between the old buildings of a lovely little lane. Several small live-in shops lined clean cobblestones, The path was barely the width of a single large carriage, clearly designed for foot traffic and window shopping. However, not a customer was to be seen, just a few owners sweeping their front steps or adjusting outdoor signs. The lack of customers was probably for the best as a muffled shatter of glass and a dull yelp floated down the lane and brought with it a sense of foreboding only the other residents of the street knew to beware.
“Kim Namjoon!” a yowling voice shattered the peaceful morning calm with the bang of wooden shutters bouncing off bricks, “Five times! In a week! And it’s only Wednesday!” Once the commotion seemed to be well contained the other early shopkeepers dared a few snickers before escaping back to their shops. Their fear was less that they worried the potions shop would finally fall to its less than graceful owner’s frequent accidents, but more self preservation, lest the famously grumpy cat familiar Yoongi turned his ire on them for taking amusement in his near daily suffering.
Eventually the door of the potion shop slammed open as the cat himself stepped out, clad from head to toe in skin tight clothes that matched the midnight hue of his hair. In his hand was a clinking sack of what sounded like the aforementioned broken glass. His cat ears flicked atop his head as he groaned against the bright dawn, his tail swishing back and forth in annoyance. Mornings were the most unfortunate time to run into the cat, if he happened to have been woken up so early, but his hissing was the worst of it. Truth be told, the cat was too lazy to ever truly bat a claw in someone’s direction, and more often than not he could be found judging people from his perch on the balcony of the second floor flat. As he walked out to the street he even looked up at his usual space as if to ensure his spot had not been claimed by another bird’s nest in the night.
Behind Yoongi’s fully black-clad form the potions master Namjoon himself appeared in the doorway. He muttered, “Sorry, Yoongi…” over a glowing bundle of rags, clearly the remains of an unfinished, and now ruined, potion. But even the shame of being scolded by his own cat couldn’t ruin his handsome features as the sunlight kissed his golden skin and highlighted his perpetually silvery hair.
The pair passed down the narrow sidewalk to the communal garbage at the end of the lane, dumping the rags and glass in the magic-proof lock bin. Despite Yoongi’s grumbling about Namjoon’s impossibly horrible clumsiness, the man couldn’t help but pull a small smile, a deep dimple accenting his face. The source of his dimple’s appearance was the one lone person left on the street, the newly moved in baker currently bent over his outdoor chalkboard.
Before them was, in Namjoon’s opinion, the most perfect ass he’d ever laid eyes on, as perfect as two freshly baked buns. Not that he’d admit it. Never out loud, but his staring was more than loud enough for Yoongi to notice and smack the back of his head. Namjoon’s yelp alerted the man to straighten up and watch them. The most handsome face in the world sat atop wide, statuesque shoulders. His figure tapered down where his apron cinched tight around a slender waist, flowing perfectly over the delicate curve of his hipline. Long legs rivaling Namjoon’s own stretched past the flour-dusted apron, but his’s eyes were brought back up to the impossibly full lips currently smiling directly at them.
As they got closer Seokjin waved cheerfully at the two. “Good morning Namjoon, Yoongi!” The black cat’s eyes narrowed to slits momentarily as he glared at the annoyingly bright smile accosting him so early.
“Morning, Seokjin…” Yoongi at least tried not to squint, though he failed in not mumbling his greeting.
“Good morning! Seokjin!” There went Namjoon’s attempt at being calm and collected, though his and everyone else’s calm had already been ruined by his earlier catastrophe. How he hadn’t burned that shop to the ground was an ongoing mystery to the neighbors, but it was quickly being replaced by a new mystery. The baker Kim Seokjin, who was currently chatting up Namjoon’s annoyed cat without so much as a crumb of fear (if you asked Namjoon) on his gorgeously beautiful face (if you asked anyone with working eyes).
And Seokjin had no reason to fear, as the baker’s own familiar stepped out of the shop, a huge and muscular rabbit familiar. Clearly capable of slam dunking any one of them into the cobblestones with a single hand, it couldn’t be ignored that his sturdy frame was topped with the most precious baby face. It was obvious he was much much younger than Seokjin, and was still a growing boy despite his already frightening stature. But there was one other thing that drew their attention to the tall boy.
“Hey! Seokjin! If you don’t get back in here the macarons are gonna crack.” His complete lack of respect for his owner.
“Ya, Jungkook! You know those macarons will never crack! And if they do it’s because YOU went in there! Bet you even closed the oven completely and let hot spots develop!” Seokjin absently waved goodbye to Namjoon and Yoongi as he turned away, swatting Jungkook with the hem of his apron. “And respect when your elders are talking!” Seokjin ordered, continuing to rant about lazy meringue technique and proper oven ventilation as he marched back into the still closed bakery.
The rabbit spared one last bright smile to the pair, all bunny teeth and not a shred of shame at his own behavior, before disappearing behind the heavy bakery door.
There lies the crux of the mystery, Namjoon pondered as he and Yoongi returned to their own shop and set about remaking the lost potion. Magic users like Namjoon had the ability to call familiars to themselves and make even the most fearsome animal docile and sweet. Cats were easy to take on because they often loved the mutual benefit of being praised and pampered for only a fraction of their powers, of that Yoongi assured him when he agreed to bind himself to Namjoon. Other animals were either too strong, too willful, or too timid, and rabbits were definitely in the last category. Except Jungkook seemed to be both of the first two categories combined, and wasn’t as lazy as a cat. In fact, they’d often seen the rabbit in the front of the shop kneading dough behind the counter for hours at a time.
Which presented the second issue. “Yoongi, did you..”
“Nope.” Yoongi started almost angrily grinding herbs in a mortar, pounding the pestle like he was trying to break it. “Stared him dead in the face and there wasn’t even the tiniest trace of magic on him.” Namjoon tried to focus on the balance of the minerals on the scale in front of him but Yoongi was hard to ignore when he got like this. “Not even in the flour on his apron!” He grumbled as he worked, but it was clear he wasn't done as he tossed the pestle in the wash basin and all but shoved the bowl of pulverized herbs at Namjoon’s chest. “And what’s more, that brat doesn’t even seem to be good for anything but flexing his muscles to attract more customers. They aren’t even infusing emotion boosters or something boring like that into the sweets!”
Yoongi yanked his hood over his head in irritation and for a moment it looked as if he was simply crouching to tie the laces on his boots, but the solid black form slowly stretched a long, furred back before looking back up at Namjoon with the giant green eyes of an enormous black cat. “I hate useless magic users like that. I’m going back to sleep,” swiftly Yoongi started to leap up the spiral staircase at the back of the shop, “and hope I won’t be woken up again because you can’t stop staring at Seokjin’s ass long enough not to finally burn the shop down.”
Namjoon spluttered and flustered, but his denial died on his tongue. Yoongi was right, Namjoon had been staring out the window at Seokjin bent over the sandwich board outside the bakery when he dropped the potion bottle. He was just casually swaying his hips to an unheard melody, completely unaware Namjoon could even see him from his work table in the shop cater-cornered to his own.
But now was not the time for the well proportioned baker’s frame, they still had the second issue to deal with. A rabbit as strong and willful as Jungkook would have taken a particularly powerful magic user to tame him, and yet… Kim Seokjin didn’t seem to even be a magic user himself. The man was up before the crack of dawn hand-making his breads and sweets for the day and didn’t seem to have the slightest trace of magic on him, no matter how much Yoongi squinted and glared at him. The rabbit was never seen doing anything other than manual labor and customer service work. If the rabbit had a sixth sense or ability, it didn’t seem to be anything other than huge muscles.
And while the sweets were good and the breads always perfectly risen, they didn’t have any magic on or in them either. That Namjoon can attest to himself as he frequented the little bakery more than most, though he would swear up and down it was to investigate the sweets for magic, and not to just stare at Seokjin’s backside as he loaded bread loaves onto the shelves behind the counter. Nothing but delicate delectables and enough sugar to ruin a child’s milk teeth in a single moon.
A tinkling of bells suddenly pulled Namjoon out of his thoughts of sweets as a small calico cat familiar let himself into the shop. “Good morning, Namjoon,” his sweet voice chirped, “Hoseok made you a warding charm against breaking glass.” He handed Namjoon a small red cloth package across the counter, which he unwrapped to be a beautiful blue star shaped glass charm. This was one of Hoseok the charm maker’s more expensive specialties as he used a significant amount of magic to form the glass without a professional glassblower nearby.
“Thank you Jimin, it’s perfect. How much—“
“It cost nothing.” Jimin interrupted. “Hoseok is just worried about you, as usual. Besides, you’re across from us, so we’d have to evacuate if you caused a bigger accident.” His voice was light and soft, as if he had only just woken up. As if on cue he gently rubbed one eye with the back of his hand, still half wrapped in his long sleeves. The scene was cute enough to melt anyone’s heart, but none more so than the usually-acidic and fellow feline Yoongi who appeared on the counter as if he had never left the storefront.
Yoongi’s paw reached out to Jimin’s face just as his fur began to fluff up and shudder as he seemed to fall forward off the counter. In a moment, the large black cat landed on booted feet in his usual human form, Jimin’s cheek gently nuzzled against his outstretched hand, cat ears laid flat against his three-colored hair. “You don’t usually wake up this early, Jiminie. Sorry if this idiot woke up the whole lane.”
“Yah, I’m still right here.” Namjoon scoffed as he left the cats to paw at each other. He turned to look for a good place to hang the charm so it would cover the whole shop. Dried herbs threatening to fall from their haphazardly strung up bundles and boxes of various magical compounds delicately balanced in towers crowded the two men in the small workspace.
Wait… two men?
Namjoon suddenly collided with the body and watched as the charm flew out of his hand and careened to the floor. Luckily it landed squarely in the palm of the man he ran into, likely the effects of the anti-broken glass warding on it as the two quickly righted themselves.
“Careful!” The brown haired man sighed as he handed back the charm.
“Taehyung,” Namjoon breathed a sigh of relief, “You can’t just apparate in here, it’s dangerous.”
“I can see that.” Taehyung quipped with a boxy smile, looking at the messy shelves and cluttered workstation. “Let’s put it up there,” he pointed to the bare rafters in the ceiling, “so it’s out of the danger zone.”
As he and Namjoon set to climb the counter to hang the charm, Yoongi announced loudly, “Jimin, you should make sure the door closes behind you,” he cast a sideways glance at Taehyung, “or rats will get in.”
“Rats?” Taehyung frowned at the black cat. “I didn’t see any rats in here.”
“I did,” Yoongi teased, “One big one named Kim Tae—”
“Yoongi, don’t tease people.” Jimin’s soft voice cut through the bickering, somehow silencing Yoongi with a tiny hand on his shoulder. “If he apparated here that means he saw something bad was gonna happen, right?”
“Something bad almost happened because he showed up.” Yoongi scoffed, always ready to bicker with Taehyung for any reason at all. The cat was so suspicious of the fortune teller for the very reason that none of them were actually sure fortune telling was Tae’s magic. The man seemed lost in his own thoughts most of the time, and the few times he could be found it was almost never at his own shop on the corner across the lane from the bakery. The fortune telling shop never kept regular hours and the fact that Tae could apparate made it seem that his magic was more in line with the illusionary sorts rather than anything divination related. The fact that Yoongi, who’s sixth sense was towards identifying different kinds of magic, couldn’t parse what kind Taehyung was using only made him irritated and he loved directing that irritation right back at the poor man.
“But it didn’t!” Tae cheered, passing the hammer back to Namjoon as he hopped off the counter, giving Jimin a pat on the head as he skipped past. “Now everything is fine, and this morning’s mishap won’t happen again, right?”
“I should hope not!” a voice boomed from the doorway, loud and bright, “I like my shop where it is, I don’t want to move if you blow this place up!” All eyes were on the newest entrant to the shop, a slender man with a heart shaped smile that shone like sunlight.
“Hoseok, you’re late to the ‘let’s make fun of Namjoon’ party,” Yoongi quipped dryly.
“At least make up a better joke than that.” Namjoon grouched, head in his hands as he leaned over the counter drearily.
“Late?” Hoseok laughed, “I was up with the sun, even before the crash, and I set right to work making that charm! I spent all morning on it!” He posed proudly with his chest out, dimples poking into his full cheeks from the size of his smile.
“You are the sun, you mean.” Taehyung suddenly blurted out, startled when everyone turned to face him. “I… didn’t mean to say that out loud. Oh hey look, a customer at the charm shop!” All eyes looked out the window where, sure enough, a young girl stood looking confused at the open sign but the closed door.
“Ah! We need to go!” Hoseok suddenly grabbed the back of Jimin’s shawl, dragging him out of Yoongi’s hands and towards the door. “Bye, Namjoon, Yoongi!” he called as the door banged closed behind them.
“He could at least say bye to Taehyung too.” Namjoon wondered as the two skipped back to their shop.
“Tae’s gone already.” Yoongi grunted, sprawling himself in the window of the shop where the sun was hitting just right. Sure enough, the fortune teller was nowhere to be seen.
And just as surely, Yoongi was already gazing out across the way, watching Jimin flit around his own shop. The cat, hardly larger than an overgrown kitten, was making tea as usual for the girl who came in. Only they knew that Jimin’s famous teas were simply an excuse, a guise for getting closer to the patrons to use his ability to decipher their emotions. He could then inform Hoseok on which type of charm would be best, even if the customer themselves were confused about their feelings. But Namjoon knew all too well that Yoongi was only focusing on how Jimin’s shawl had slipped from his narrow shoulders after being towed away by his owner.
Like owner, like cat, Namjoon thought as he turned his attention back to the mysterious bakery. Unfortunately Seokjin wasn’t in sight, and his own sigh mingled with Yoongi’s as Jimin disappeared from the shop front. Somewhere behind a stack of books a clock chimed out nine times, signaling it was time to turn over the sign for the potion shop to open for the day.