Chapter Text
It’s mid-September when Jeongguk’s alarm goes off at its usual 8:15 and IU’s Jam Jam starts playing from his phone. He feels strangely calm for someone who can’t open his eyes—there’s a weird pressure over them, so he can move his eyes under his eyelids, but he’s worried about forcing them open. He’s worried about moving at all, really. He doesn’t even know how to explain the feeling—he’s laying on his back and the force on his face is heavy and furry, over his eyes and tickling the bridge of his nose. The longer his alarm plays for, the more shuffling he can hear coming from the conjoined bathroom. Water shuts off and the door clicks open.
“Oh my god,” Taehyung says, his voice muffled. “You’re a closet IU fan.”
“I’m not closeted,” Jeongguk snaps, but he feels his cheeks heat up nonetheless. “That doesn’t matter right now. What the fuck is on my face?”
“Oh. That’s Muffins.”
Jeongguk furrows his eyebrows. He feels the thing on his face shift ever-so-slightly. “Muffins.”
“Yeah, Muffins.” Taehyung reconfirms this as though it’s one of the most natural facts in the world. “She was scratching on the window last night, so I let her in. Makes sense since it’s getting colder now.”
“Muffins are food,” Jeongguk says. “It does not feel like there’s food on my face.”
“That’s because she is a cat. Muffins is a cat. And your movements are waking her up.”
Jeongguk feels for the shape of the cat in his mind but wills himself to stay calm. Do not send this animal through the ceiling, he tells himself, because there are people that live above you, and they wouldn’t appreciate that.
“Why,” he says, out loud, “in all the parallel universes that must exist beyond ours, do I have to have a cat curled up over my eyes in this one?”
“I don’t see the problem,” Taehyung says—and no, of course he wouldn’t see the problem, because he isn’t the one that has a cat on over his eyes. He also doesn’t have his powers tied very, very closely to his emotions. “Don’t you have telekinesis? You can lift her off and put her on my bed if she’s bothering you that much.”
Taehyung does not attend Jeongguk’s telekinesis lessons with him. He doesn’t know Jeongguk was specifically told not to move living things, especially animals, because it could increase their heart rates. So: it’s not like he can’t move the cat, but he shouldn’t, and he’s trying really hard to be a good student.
“Just don’t leave her in midair to land on all fours,” Taehyung continues. “Cats in general hate that. Muffins just likes sleeping on people in general, so it must be because you sleep on your back. I’m too restless for her.”
“Right,” Jeongguk says, sarcasm dripping from his words. “So I ended up in this situation because of the way I sleep.”
It isn’t that Jeongguk dislikes animals—he doesn’t even dislike cats—but it’s just always been the nature of things in his world. It’s how this universe works, or how the world spins. Unlike the announcement of Muffins arriving in their dorm room, the relationship he has with animals is a fact of life.
Cats. Do. Not. Like. Jeongguk.
When he was a waddling little toddler, his mother had the most docile Siamese that had ever graced the planet—rather, that’s what everyone thought before the cat left a short, deep scratch on Jeongguk’s cheek. It required three stitches and a lot of lollipops. If you look hard enough at his left cheek.
When he was in high school, walking home after classes, the neighbourhood alleycat hissed at him every chance it got. Jeongguk even left it cat treats once, but moments after he felt the alley he heard the box topple over. He turned around to check on the alleycat, but all it did was walk over the ruined cat treats. Its stubby little paws squished them right into the ground.
He hears the noises of Taehyung brushing his teeth and takes the opportunity to not be a good student, because who knows what will happen if he tries to move Muffins on his own. Calmer now, his mind reaches for the cat’s body. Steady. It’s all about control. The weight slowly lifts off his face, and as gently as he possibly can, he lifts her over to Taehyung’s bed. The cat is floating in the middle of the room with her legs pin-straight when Taehyung catches what Jeongguk is doing for the mirror.
He makes a noise of indignation. With his toothbrush still in his mouth, he says, “Don’t’chu dare.”
Jeongguk’s gaze breaks away from the floating cat. He stares into his roommate’s soul through the bathroom mirror. With IU still singing about making her sweet in the background, he drops Muffins with the same amount of care he would give a rotten acorn. Muffins hisses when her feet touch the floor. She darts onto Taehyung’s bed, curling into herself and glaring at Jeongguk with pure malice—he can feel it without looking at her.
Taehyung drops his toothbrush into the sink with a clatter. “You heartless monster.”
Jeongguk’s face doesn’t react to the insult. A wave of cold air hits him when he throws his covers back and climbs out of bed. “I don’t like cats.”
Muffins hisses at him.
“Accurate,” Taehyung says to the cat. To Jeongguk: “They don’t like you either.”
“I’m gonna be late for class.” Jeongguk ignores the occasional hiss from Taehyung’s side of the room. He slips his laptop under his arm and throws his backpack over his shoulder, ignoring Taehyung’s nagging comments on how he should compromise with the Muffins as he leaves the room. He doesn’t allow himself to exhale—remember, stay calm—until he’s in the residence’s elevator.
It’s not Jeongguk’s fault he didn’t know what to put down when the roommate forms were emailed out. The last question he had to answer was: Are there any requests on what you would like us to avoid when pairing you with another student?
In the moment, he wasn’t able to think of anything. He had no problems with snorers, partiers, stoners, smokers, sleepwalkers, gamers, music majors, drama majors—on second thought, maybe not drama majors—the list was endless. In the end, he had settled on answering with “no mind readers or x-ray vision.”
The last thing he expected was for Kim Taehyung to be an animal whisperer.