Chapter Text
Seokjin was a man who enjoyed being normal. He went to college for four years, suffered grueling all-nighters for procrastinating too long, and graduated with honors in business. Not long after graduating, Seokjin found a job in a government office with full benefits and a salary that let him afford a medium-sized apartment in the city. When he wasn't working, he exercised and went on lunch dates with his boyfriend, Hoseok.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Then after a year of normal office-working, exercising, and dates, Hoseok was dragged into a portal to another world.
-----
Seokjin and Hoseok had met in college. They'd been roommates in their freshman and sophomore years, and then next door neighbors in their junior and senior years. Though they loved each other, both were painfully awkward and thus neither made a move until senior year. Or, Hoseok's friend made a move when Hoseok asked her to confess to Seokjin for him. There was a lot of confusion, Seokjin thinking that Hoseok's friend was confessing to him, then thinking that she was confessing about loving Hoseok before finally realizing that Hoseok was confessing to him through someone else.
He sent an angry text in response. They had their first date that night.
And they'd been dating since. Hoseok was a dance instructor, and he usually got home a little after Seokjin. He was also an abysmal cook, so Seokjin cooked dinner. That night, Seokjin made an easier dish. He was exhausted from a week of overtime, so he wanted to just eat dinner and go to sleep.
As Seokjin was bringing dinner to the table, Hoseok hugged him from behind. “What's for dinner, sweetcheeks?”
Seokjin giggled. No matter how tired, he always appreciated Hoseok's cuteness (and ridiculous pet names). “Just a stew.”
“Ah, you must be tired, then. You didn't have to make dinner, you know.” Hoseok nuzzled Seokjin's neck as he put the pot on the table. “I could have made something.”
“I'm not sure I'd survive that again.”
Pouting, Hoseok gave a gentle push to Seokjin so that he would sit down and let Hoseok dish out the meal. But then a stranger entered the dining room. He was an odd mixture of modern and ancient - hair bleached blonde, ears covered in piercings, but wearing brightly colored clothes from a couple centuries earlier. And he was carrying a sword.
Before Seokjin could exclaim 'what the fuck,' the stranger was coming toward them.
Seokjin jumped out of his chair, pushed Hoseok away and grabbed the nearest object, the pot of stew, and threw it at the stranger in a panic, burning his hands in the process.
This was a bad idea, because the stranger easily dodged it and kicked the table up toward Seokjin, hitting him in the head with enough force to make him dizzy. As he slumped to the floor, head and hands throbbing, he heard Hoseok yelling at the stranger and saw a bright light appear in the middle of the room in his fuzzy vision.
Over Hoseok's yelling, Seokjin thought he heard the stranger mumble an apology, and then Hoseok's yelling stopped. When Seokjin finally shook off his dizziness, he was just in time to see the stranger walk into the bright light with an unconscious Hoseok. They disappeared, and Seokjin didn't think; he ran stumbling into the light.
-----
Seokjin landed hard on his front. He was in a dark, roofed forest, unnaturally quiet and calm, surrounded by trees that blocked his sight so that he could only see a few feet in any direction. The forest floor was covered in flowers - tulips, daffodils, and carnations in all different colors, some that Seokjin thought didn't happen naturally. And Hoseok was nowhere in sight.
He looked around in a panic, wondering where he should go, if Hoseok and the stranger were even close. Then he heard faint talking and rustling to his right, so he tried to quietly check it out.
Traversing through the thick branches quietly proved difficult. Several times, Seokjin broke a branch or rustled some leaves loudly, and he stopped, worried that whoever was ahead would come rushing out of the trees to attack him. Yet no one did, and Seokjin safely reached an area less populated by trees where he could better hear the voices. Seokjin hid behind one of the trees and examined the clearing up ahead. A few feet ahead of Seokjin was a camp with a fire, a tent, and three men. Seokjin was immediately suspicious by the look of them. Their clothes were similar to those worn by the stranger who had taken Hoseok, the only differences being that their clothes were frayed and adorned with knives, swords, and in the case of the shortest one, a bow and arrows.
As soon as Seokjin decided to wait and watch for any sign of Hoseok or the stranger, someone grabbed him from behind, locking his arms against his body. Seokjin struggled for a moment, and then his attacker brought a knife up against his throat.
“Who the hell are you?”
-----
Hoseok woke on a bed much more comfortable and much bigger than the one he shared with Seokjin. The room he was in was also much larger than their bedroom, the walls adorned with wallpaper in swirling golds and silvers. Besides the bed, there was a dresser, a long mirror on the wall, an end table with a strange lamp, a desk covered in papers and musical instruments, and an ornate wooden chair at the desk where his kidnapper was sitting facing away from him.
Oh fuck. His kidnapper.
Without thinking, Hoseok yelled as loud as he could, jumping out of the bed and grabbing the weird lamp to use as a weapon. Remembering Seokjin's folly earlier, he did not throw it, instead holding it above his head to crash it on his kidnapper's head. But the man turned around, calmly waved a hand, and the lamp flew out of Hoseok's hands and across the room. Hoseok stood dumbfounded for a moment before trying to run around the bed and out of the room.
His kidnapper stopped him by tackling him to the ground, and as Hoseok yelled and struggled, his kidnapper spoke, “Prince Seokjin, would you please calm down? I'm not going to hurt you!”
Hoseok froze. “What did you call me?”
The man on top of him huffed good-naturedly, and let some of the pressure off Hoseok. “I know that it sounds strange to you, Seokjin, but you are a prince. And I brought you here because you weren't safe in that world anymore. They found a way to travel there. I had to get you out before they got to you.”
Hoseok was about to yell at the man, tell him that he wasn't even Seokjin, that that was his boyfriend who the kidnapper had thrown against a wall, but then Hoseok realized that telling him that he wasn't really Seokjin could get him hurt or killed. Worse, his kidnapper would then go after the real Seokjin. So he said, as not-suspiciously as possible, “Seokjin, yes, me, the prince who is Seokjin. That's me. Wait, prince?”
As the man slowly got off of Hoseok and helped him to sit on the bed, he chuckled and said, “Yes. You're a prince from another kingdom, but my family sent you to that other world with your parents when you were a baby. I was only a baby when it happened, but I'm going to protect you now. I'm Prince Yoongi of the Min Kingdom. And you are Prince Seokjin of the Kim Kingdom.”
This guy was fucking crazy, and there was no way Hoseok was going to tell him that he wasn't really Seokjin. Honestly, his boyfriend better appreciate what he was doing for him. And call the police as soon as possible because he really loved Seokjin, but he wasn't ecstatic about staying with some delusional kidnapper.
Prince Yoongi (“Just call me Yoongi. I'm not even the heir to the throne.”) explained the workings of this world to Hoseok. This was a world of magic, he said, and he was a sorcerer, like most of the members of his family. Though he could use a variety of magical styles, he enjoyed magic through music the best. Most other forms of magic exhausted him.
Hoseok stared at Yoongi blankly during his explanation, fed up with his kidnapper's crazy talk. He cut Yoongi off in the middle of an explanation of Seokjin's supposed magical talents to say, “Magic isn't even real, Yoongi.”
Yoongi gave him an unimpressed look. “You've seen magic already, Seokjin. How can you deny it?”
Hoseok scoffed. “When have I seen magic?”
“The portal I brought you through? When I made the lamp fly across the room?”
“Okay, I was a little freaked out when those things happened, so the first one could have just been the light from a door opening. And the second one,” Hoseok paused, trying to think of a legitimate explanation, “you probably just knocked it out of my hands. With a lot of strength.” Hoseok wasn't sure if he believed himself. “I mean, probably?”
Yoongi chuckled again. Instead of replying to Hoseok, Yoongi held out his hand to his mouth and whispered something in time. Then he held his hand out above Hoseok's lap and smirked as flower petals appeared under his hand to fall into Hoseok's lap until they were overflowing.
Hoseok looked from his lap to Yoongi's face several times, mouth open in shock. Then his eyes rolled back and he fell back against the bed, unconscious.
-----
The attacker brought Seokjin to the camp with the other three men. Apparently his noisy moving had alerted them after all, and they'd sent their leader out to deal with the threat. Seokjin's attacker told him that his name was Namjoon, and the other three were Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook. And they wanted to know exactly what he was doing sneaking up on their camp.
The men had tied Seokjin's hands behind his back and made him kneel in their tent, towering over him during their interrogation.
“I wasn't trying to attack you or anything. I'm just looking for my boyfriend,” Seokjin pleaded.
Namjoon looked like he didn't believe him. “And why would your boyfriend be wandering around in the Forest of the Damned?”
“The forest of the what?”
The youngest, Jungkook, snorted. “Don't act like you don't know exactly where you are. You better start answering our questions truthfully, or you're gonna regret it,” he said, advancing on Seokjin.
Namjoon pushed him back, rolling his eyes, and Jungkook pouted.
“Jungkook is right. No one comes into this forest with good intentions.”
Seokjin scowled. “So why are you here?”
His four wardens were silent for a moment, a moment in which Seokjin realized he had said something very wrong.
Namjoon was on him the moment after that, grabbing his collar and roughly pulling him to his feet. “What's your fucking game? Why were you spying on us?”
Seokjin struggled to get away. “I really wasn't. I'm not lying. I just want to find my boyfriend! He was kidnapped!”
Namjoon threw him to the ground. “I really don't believe you.” Turning to the others, Namjoon said, “You three wait outside. I'll get the truth.”
The other three left the tent slowly, groaning and complaining that they couldn't be around for the fun part.
Seokjin was getting very nervous, wondering what these people were willing to do to get their version of the truth. Namjoon was gathering things from a satchel near the tent's entrance, so Seokjin took that time to pull his tied wrists around his legs to his front. He got to his feet as quietly as possible, and started to move toward Namjoon.
But he suddenly turned around when Seokjin was only halfway across the tent. Seokjin froze as Namjoon stomped over to him and pushed him back to his knees. Seokjin winced. He was going to be bruised everywhere after this.
Namjoon kneeled in front of Seokjin, charcoal pencil in hand. He grabbed Seokjin by the hair and made him bare his neck, forcing a shocked gasp out of his captive. Then Namjoon took the pencil and drew a complicated, jagged symbol from Seokjin's neck to his bottom lip.
When he was done with his drawing, Namjoon let go of Seokjin and stood above him.
“Why were you spying on our camp?”
Though he was shaken up, Seokjin glared, and tried to answer with an annoyed (but probably trembling) 'screw you,' but what came out of his mouth was much calmer. “I wasn't.”
Namjoon asked the next question before Seokjin could wonder about his loss of control. “What are you doing in this forest?”
Again, Seokjin answered as if someone was robbing the words from his throat, “I'm looking for Hoseok.” Seokjin blanched. “Hey, what's going-”
“What's your name?” Namjoon interrupted.
Immediately, “Kim Seokjin.”
Namjoon laughed humorlessly. “Let me repeat that. What's your name?”
Again, “Kim Seokjin.”
Namjoon glared at him. “I don't know what kind of training you have to be able to block my magic, but I'm tired of all your lies.” He kneeled again and pushed up the sleeve of Seokjin's sweater. Then he pulled out his knife, holding the blade against Seokjin's upper arm.
Stuttering, Seokjin answered, “That's really my name. I don't know how to prove it to you, but I'm not lying.”
Namjoon took a moment to trace Seokjin's arm with his knife, making Seokjin shiver in anticipation and fear. Then he said, “If you're really Seokjin, you can prove it by singing for me.”
“What?” Seokjin asked, taken aback.
Namjoon started to prick the skin of Seokjin's arm, drawing blood, staring Seokjin straight in the eyes the whole time.
So Seokjin started to sing, a little too fast at first, something his mother sang to him as a child. It wasn't a lullaby he'd ever heard other kids sing, and he'd kept it to himself, liking that he shared something special with just his mother. He really hadn't meant to sing it then, but he had always hummed it to himself when he was nervous or afraid. He hated that it was something he shared with someone as nasty as Namjoon now.
Namjoon, meanwhile, was floored. Seokjin's voice was washing over him, making him feel stronger physically, mentally, and magically. He had always thought the prince with the magical voice was dead along with his parents – the stories told about him merely fairy tales invented to sooth a grieving royal family dealing not only with loss but with a failing country. People searched for the singing prince of course, many of them magic-users like Namjoon, but he'd prided himself on being logical. Why search for someone who had probably died as a baby?
And yet, here he was. Singing for Namjoon with a trembling voice.
Slowly, Namjoon snapped himself out of his stupor. He quickly moved the knife away from Seokjin's arm and held up a hand, saying, “You can stop now.”
Seokjin stopped immediately, scowling at Namjoon but still trembling slightly. “So what was that for? To prove that you're in control or something?” Seokjin slumped, exhausted from the events of the day. “You didn't deserve to hear that.”
Realizing that Seokjin had grown up in another world where he apparently didn't know of his talents, Namjoon understood that he couldn't know how much his words hurt. Still, he agreed that he didn't deserve to hear something so beautiful.
“I'm sorry.” Namjoon said.
Shocked, Seokjin's head snapped up to look at Namjoon. “What?”
“I didn't believe your story. I'm sorry.”
Namjoon grabbed a damp cloth from a bucket near his satchel and used it to wipe the charcoal from Seokjin's neck. A small smile graced Seokjin's features. “Does that mean you're gonna let me go?” Seokjin asked eagerly.
Suddenly, Namjoon looked very uncomfortable. The harsh leader of a group of bandits disappeared, replaced by an awkward young man. “I didn't say that,” he mumbled, finishing his cleaning and throwing the rag behind him.
The smile disappeared quickly. “Why? I'm not a threat to you! Please, I just want to find my boyfriend!”
“We'll help you find him, but I can't let you look for him on your own. It's not safe for you out there, so you'll stay here with us. We can protect you.” Namjoon seemed like he was pleading with Seokjin to understand him, but Seokjin was livid. After everything Namjoon had put him through, he expected Seokjin to politely accept his offer to continue holding him prisoner?
Well, he could play that game.
Seokjin took a moment to look like he was thinking over what Namjoon had said, then he replied with a reluctant, “I guess I have no choice.” No choice but to play along until he had a chance to escape. “Untie me?” Seokjin asked, holding up his wrists.
Relieved and unaware of Seokjin's plan, Namjoon grinned, pulling his knife back out. “You'll be safe with us, Prince Seokjin.”
As the cut rope fell to the ground, Seokjin asked in an exhausted, slightly whiny tone, “Prince?”