Unfamiliars - themarmalade(AO3)

Chapter 1

On edge and waterlogged, today he's careless. Maybe there's a spot of mud he slipped in when he leaps or maybe the rain in his fur weighed him down just that much. He falls, with the fleeting thought that cats aren't supposed to fall. He scrambles to catch his claws on the stony edge all the way down but the sides of the canal are smooth and pitiless.

The water envelopes him in a flash, cold and swift. He flails, frantic for anything to latch onto. Terror grips his mind at the thought that he may die as just some street cat, never to be Min Yoongi again. But his claws find cement, a little ledge to pull himself up on to.

He stands there shivering, looking like a drowned rat. Almost was a drowned rat, he realizes. Relief floods his body but then he notices, he's trapped here. Shit.

The walls of the canal tower steep above him and he's mad all over again that if only he was his normal human self...

God damn it, I'm a cat! He steels himself. Who better to defy physics than a cat. He eyes a crack in the cement slope about seven feet above. It was about half way up the wall, and he figures he could use that crack to propel himself up the rest of the way.

He shakes the water from his fur and wiggles down before he springs up. He reaches the crack easily enough, but the wall is too rainslicked and Yoongi too shaken from near death and the cold sinking into his bones. He tumbles back down the wall, just barely managing to save himself from careening back into the swiftly flowing water.

He doesn't have it in him to try again after that. He sits on the narrow ledge, watching the people hurry along the sidewalk above him, oblivious. He tries not to be bitter. Everyone is hunched under colorful umbrellas just trying to get home, of course they don't see him. It doesn't stop the utter loneliness hammering him along with the cold rain.

An hour later, the rain finally lets up and the sun dares to peak through the clouds before it starts it's descent below the horizon. The panic has started a slow settling into his bones. What if I can't find a way out? What if I starve here? Do cats get hypothermia? Worst of all, an older and more constant dread: There's no one to look for me.

His stomach twists uncomfortably. He's gonna have to call for help and hope to god a sympathetic cat lover walks by. He hates this, hates the dissonance between the voice that's his and the high pitched meow that comes out. He hasn't spoken besides a hiss in six months.

There's a row of small, older apartments that line the other side of the canal, houseplants and laundry littering the balconies. He fixes his gaze on the crackling cream paint and tries to ignore the feeling of degradation that grows with every pitiful yowl and mewl he makes.

No one's even looking at him. A sob catches in his throat, but he has no other options. So thirty minutes pass, and an hour, and his voice is hoarse but he doesn't stop. The sun is setting and he's terrified.

Something drops beside him with a thwack! He startles and looks up to see a head poking through the railing above him.

"Kitty? Oh thank god, you're still here," the man says, fiddling with the ends of what is apparently a rope ladder. "I went all the way to the hardware store to get this ladder. It woulda been just my luck that you'd disappear before I got back."

A flashlight shines in his face and he scowls away. " Poor kitty," the man coos. "You're soaked. Okay, I'm gonna come down now, don't be scared, okay?" He was speaking in the most overbearingly soothing voice and Yoongi has to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

"Christ, this is terrifying, I hate heights," the voice sing-songs through clenched teeth, still trying not to spook Yoongi as he climbs down the steep slope. "Hoseok, don't you dare fucking slip," the guy chides himself. Yoongi can hear the tight shake in his voice and is a little touched that this guy is doing all this for some dingy grey cat.