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Published:
2016-10-17
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Adopted Puppy Love

Summary:

Jin volunteers at an animal shelter when a boy comes in just as he was closing up, determined to adopt a dog. At first, Jin just wanted to go home, but after Kim Taehyung whole-heartedly interviews every dog in the shelter, trying to find just the right one, Jin can't help but find it endearing.

Notes:

Inspired by the OTP prompt: “I work at the shelter and you spent 2 hours picking out just the right dog and at first I wanted to just go home but this is really cute.”

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

“Okay, that’s the last quarantined kitty for the day, I’m heading out!”

“All right. I just have finish these last two cages, then I’ll close up.” Seokjin carefully closed the cage door on a very perturbed white cat named Tofu, waving goodbye to his coworker. Over the summer Jin had begun volunteering at the local animal shelter on his mother’s insistence, but about two weeks into his time volunteering there had been a virus outbreak among the nearby cats, and instead of merely being a part-time volunteer, Jin's help had become indispensable. He loved animals, and he was bored enough to not mind the dirtier aspects of it, so the ladies that worked the shelter saw him as a godsend, an angel sent from above. The fact that they also found him attractive was - he hoped - just an added bonus.

Jin had never been really good at handling people on a regular basis, and all through school he tended to just go to class, do his work, and go straight home. Since it was his last year of high school, his mother had started to seriously worry. It wasn’t that had no friends - he just didn’t hang out with them as much as his mother would like, and her attempts to get him out of the house had resulted in him applying at the shelter.

He didn’t take long to finish cleaning the cat cages and replacing their water and food, giving Bbyong, his personal favorite tortoiseshell cat, a loving pat. She mewled at him and pressed eagerly up against his hand, continuing even after he had closed the door on her. It was sad, really, how so few people appreciated these animals. Most of them had been in homes once, but were abandoned (Tofu had actually been abandoned due to the dark colored spots she had developed in her fur as she had grown older, no longer as pure white as she had been as a kitten. It never failed to appall him how petty some people were).

“I wish I could just take all of you home,” he mused, reaching a finger into a cage with the quietest of the cats, a black male cat with green eyes. The little tag pinned to his cage marked with his last medical check up and the name Jungkook. The cat blinked its dark eyes at him, his tail flickering in acknowledgement before he rushed to the door to meet Jin’s hand. The other cats, jealous of any touch or attention, crying out all the while. “Well, I should go home, babies. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

He leaned down to offer a goodbye Eskimo kiss to Bbyong, when the door opened, the little bell above the doorjamb singing out the arrival of a very last-minute customer. Jin turned to see a boy in a bright red sweater standing in the entrance, his lips pressed together in a tight look of determination. His eyes were puffy, like he had been crying, and he looked over at Jin as though a little lost.

“I’m here for a dog,” he said, as though Jin was going to challenge him, hands at his side and clenched into fists. “I won’t leave without one.”

“Oh, well, we were actually about to close. Is there any way you can come back tomorrow?”

The boy shook his head, and looked like he was about to cry again, so Jin relented, biting back a sigh. The paperwork alone would take almost half an hour, and he technically wasn’t supposed to sign off on adoptions until he finished another month of work at the shelter, but he’d been given unofficial leave to do so, nonetheless. So he decided to just roll with it.

“Okay, let’s go into the back, then,” he slipped the keys off their hook behind the desk, locking the front door before they headed into the back room. The heavy scent of wet dog fur washed over them the instant they entered, the cool concrete echoing their footsteps amidst the cacophony of barks. The whole stretch of the dog kennel was one aisle of concrete with two sets of cinder-block stalls, one on each side. Each stall was closed off with a chain-link door and varying levels of complexity to their locking systems (some of the dogs were really good at escaping and needed extra security) and a rolling door at the back of each that could be opened to allow the dogs to a fenced-off running area outside. They had been closed a lot earlier lately, due to summer ending and it getting dark earlier. Jin wished he had time in the day to walk each of them as long as they liked. Cats were cute, but dogs were his weakness.

The sweater boy went directly to the first dog on the right, crouching down to peer into the cage at the chihuahua. “Hello,” the kid greeted, his boyish voice breaking comically. Obviously his voice was in the middle of dropping. “My name is Kim Taehyung. Are you my dog?”

Jin smiled. He waited by the door, as Taehyung went up and greeted every single dog they had, taking his sweet time asking questions of each like, ‘Do you like tomatoes?’ or ‘You don’t bite old people do you? Because I live with my grandparents,’ or ‘What are your thoughts on wool?’ and a heartbreaking, whispered, ‘Will you promise to always love me, even if I’m weird?’

45 minutes later, Jin was looking at his watch, wondering if the boy was ever going to make a decision. He had been holding ‘interviews’ with each, but he kept coming back to the white puppy in the corner that his coworkers thought was a jindo. Jin knew that was the one that Taehyung wanted, as he kept hesitating a little longer next to the puppy’s cage each time, but he seemed determined to give the others a fair chance.

As Taehyung quietly went into each cage, sitting with each dog for a few minutes and getting to know him, Jin watched with a feeling that started as amusement and then blossomed into curiosity. One of the smaller dogs tried to gnaw at his shoelaces, making him laugh, his voice crackling and a sweet smile overwhelming his face. “Aw, maybe you’re my dog. It’s so hard to tell.”

Jin was very torn. On one hand, he was really tired of just sitting there, waiting for the boy to make a decision. He wanted to go home. On the other hand… the boy was so determined to pick the right one, as if it was the most important decision in the whole world, that he had to admire the kid.

Taehyung went back to the jindo’s cage, letting himself in and crouching in the corner, watching the dog as it bound energetically over to him. The puppy was only a few months old, but she was growing fast, and no matter how small or fluffy, a dog throwing herself eagerly at your face was bound to hurt either way, as Taehyung soon learned. Jin jumped forward as the boy cried out, rubbing at his nose, which had taken most of the impact. A little stream of blood started to drip, staining the back of the boy’s hand.

“Are you okay!?” Jin asked, closing the cage door after himself as he bent to inspect the boy’s nose.

Taehyung just beamed up at him. “He’s the one!”

Jin arched an eyebrow, “W-what? How does almost breaking your nose mean that's the one?”

“He wants to be blood brothers with me.” Taehyung wrapped his arms around the dog, his face buried in the pup’s white fur as it wriggled excitedly around him, licking his face. Jin shook his head, chuckling.

“Are you sure? You won’t change your mind?” he teased. Taehyung frowned, shaking his head and making his bangs fall into his eyes.

“No! He’s mine now.”

"Even if I tell you she's a girl?"

Taehyung's eyes widened for a moment, looking down at the white pile of fur, then nodded. "I don't care, we're still blood brothers!"

“Okay,” Jin laughed, petting the dog and suddenly tempted to pet the boy, too. He was just too cute. “Let’s go do the paperwork and pick out a collar and leash for her, how about that?”

The boy nodded, awkwardly picking up the dog to carry to the front, but Jin suggested they just use one of the temporary leases hung by the door, given that she was already pretty big and wouldn’t appreciate being lugged around like a sack of potatoes.

“What are you going to name her?” Jin queried, genuinely curious.

“Soonshim!” The sweater boy grinned, kissing the dog on the head.

“It’s cute,” Jin smiled. They went and picked out a collar and leash, and Jin walked Tae through the more boring aspects of filling out adoption papers. But they hit a snag when he rung up the transaction. Taehyung pulled out crumpled up bills out of his pockets and laid them on the counter alongside his jar of money, and even though Jin counted it up twice, he was still just a little short. Taehyung’s face crumpled, and Jin patted him on the shoulder.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’ll cover it for you. The collar and leash will be my present for you two. You and Soonshim need each other, you know. She’s a special dog.” Jin wasn’t sure why he did it, but he reached out and touched the boy on the head in a gentle gesture of reassurance. "She usually doesn't like strangers, so you have to be patient with her." Jin wasn't sure whether he should tell Taehyung about how the dog had been picked up after a drunkard had tried using her as a football, and it had taken Jin weeks to get her used to him.

Taehyung’s eyes lit up with unbridled joy, and he bounced a little on his heels, Soonshim giving a little bark as she rubbed her nose at the back of the boy’s knees. “Ah, thank you so much! I really really appreciate it! Soonshim, we’re officially brothers! I mean, uh-siblings!”

Jin chuckled, handing him the paperwork to sign. “Soonshim likes being walked a lot. She has a lot of energy, so you have to keep up with her. And make sure you get her her shots regularly. We can do some of them here, and it’s generally cheaper than at most pet clinics.”

“I will! Soonshim, let’s go home!”

Seokjin let them both out, Soonshim almost tripping the boy as she was running around him and biting at the ends of the huge red sweater, both of them looking positively giddy. Jin leaned against the door jamb and watched them go until he could no longer see them in the fading light. The boy hadn’t needed to say anything, really, for Jin to recognize a kid who didn’t fit in, a kid who was lonely and desperately needed a companion. It was something he could relate to, for sure. After a moment, Jin’s eyebrows furrowed, and he laid a hand against his chest, finding his heartbeat racing much faster than usual. That was strange.

Looking back a year later, when Jin looked over at Taehyung and Soonshim curled up together on his lap asleep, Jin realized that that day, Taehyung had fallen in love with his puppy, but Jin had fallen in love with a sort of puppy, as well.

Notes:

My first Tae/Jin fic!

It doesn't have any 'action' in it, but I think it was quite cute and pure. It reminded me of many memories from when I used to volunteer at a shelter. (´｡• ω •｡`) Bangtan supports adopting rescue animals, so if you're thinking about getting a pet, please consider it~ I hope you enjoyed the fanfic!

 

EDIT: I didn't find out until like months after writing this fic that Soonshim is a girl, and finding out some of her backstory, so I edited parts of that in so it's correct!~ Haha I feel kinda stupid. Holly is a boy and Soonshim is a girl. OTL These boys and their dogs, ISTG.