Yoongi focus

"Sugar?" Yoongi asked when they sat down in the pilot seats. Sitting in those places was more a habit than a necessity. Bang was navigating the ship. But they did not know what to do, so they just stared out of the one window the ship possessed.

"You look like you're made of sugar," Taehyung explained nonchalantly. Then his eyes grew big. This kid sure had a wide range of facial expressions. "Do you taste sweet, too?" the younger asked and jumped up to walk over to him.

"Lemme have a lick," he said and leaned down with his tongue hanging out.

"Oh, hell, no!" Yoongi shouted and tried to push the V off who looked like he would salivate on his uniform any second. "Get a grip, man!"

The other laughed and showed his rectangular grin when he straightened up again and went back to his seat.

"I'll call you Tata," Yoongi decided and Taehyung looked confused.

"Why Tata?"

"It sounds alien-like," he replied.

"Of all the names you could have chosen, you decided to go for Tata?" the younger blurted out disappointed.

"It sounds cute and a little weird. And you are cute and a little weird." Yoongi shrugged.

Was that a blush on Taehyung's face? Astounded he looked at the young man. The cocky pilot who always had an answer for everything was blushing. Madly. Yoongi chuckled.

"I thought Vs had a perfect poker faces. You sure you're a V?" he asked playfully.

Taehyung frowned and turned towards him. "Where do those biased images come from?"

"Your planet is a fucking utopia for players and people with money and time to spend in casinos. At least from what I heard." Yoongi had not been to many other planets, though he had been on several missions, so he only could rely on what he had picked up back in school.

"Well, that's true," the younger agreed and nodded seemingly in thought, "But we're just the people behind the surface. We protect our colorful realm by watching out for cheaters, not by cheating. At the age of four -wait, that's like six years in AE- I could tell who's a hustler by one look, and with -um- ten I was better than any of them and blew their cover whenever they tried to betray us. But those damn Switchers always ruined the fun." Taehyung seemed still agitated by that fact.

"What are Switchers?" Yoongi asked curious. He never had heard of those.

"Those people are the ones born with a poker face. Literally. Those dudes can choose to feel. Isn't that crazy?" Excited coffee eyes stared at him and expected him to agree. Talking about his home planet seemed to make Taehyung beam with energy. He really must love V.

But what the younger had said just now itched on the back of Yoongi's mind. It strangely reminded him of himself. But that contradicted with his medical data which classified him as purely human. The system could not have made a mistake, could it? He just overreacted. He never had willingly turned off his emotions. He just sometimes happened to not feel.

"Tell me more about V," Yoongi asked. He never had heard much about the money planet and his colleague seemed to like talking about his home.

As expected, the boxy-smile lit up the tanned face, and Yoongi bit back a smile. How had someone this energetic and jittery become commanding flight officer? It was unbelievable.

"Okay, where do I start? Um... oh, what most people don't know is that only about 10 percent of the people on V are actually Vs. The other residents are 80 percent tourists and another 10 percent humanoids." The coffee-eyed had rested his feet on the piloting panel and let his head hang over the backrest of the seat. "I never heard of any government, and I never voted for any political party, so I guess there is none. We're reigned by the banks. If you think about it, it's only logical. Money is what makes my planet breathe, so obviously it's controlled by super computers and bankers."

"You sound like that's not scary," Yoongi interrupted. How could one trust a system that's reigned by money? It sounded cruel.

"Why would that be scary?" the boy asked with big oblivious eyes.

"Don't know. Why would banks be nice and employ people when humanoids are so much cheaper?"

Taehyung suddenly began to laugh and rearranged his body in his seat to look straight into his eyes. "But that's where you misunderstood me. We don't work for the banks, we get paid by them to work against them."

Yoongi blinked confused. This made absolutely no sense.

He must look really dumb right now, because Taehyung laughed even harder. "Look. What's the worst thing that can happen to a bank?"

Yoongi thought for some seconds. "Getting robbed?"

"You're smart," Taehyung mocked him and provoked him to give the younger a death-stare. "But can you also tell me how one would rob a bank on a planet that does not have physical currency -at least I never saw some."

Yoongi felt treated like a child and almost would have pressed his lips together to show that he would not play this stupid game any longer, but then he realized that this would be even more childish than Taehyung's behavior, and he answered defeated, "By hacking the system, I guess."

"Bingo!" Taehyung shouted, "So, to be up-to-date and always on their toes, they pay us for hacking them and showing them the errors in their bot-walls. And that's the reason why I was bored in university and decided to do something more fun. I've known how to disassemble and assemble a PC basically since I'm born. Graphic cards and CPUs have been my toys. And I started my first DDoS attack on my -gimme a sec- twelfth birthday, so... yeah, now you know how we make money."

Yoongi's eyebrows snapped up at the last sentence of the V. "And you tell me not to be prejudiced?" Yoongi asked in awe. "You're a fucking cliché!"

"A damn cool one," he added when he saw the younger's face. Now the boy looked satisfied. "But if I'm not mistaken, your E II profile reads military service. What does a place without cash need an army for?"

The young pilot looked at him like he was stupid. "Not having physical money, does not mean there are no crimes. We just don't have something like the police you have at Earth II. At V the military is the same as the police. We give you a ticket for wrong parking and we raid your drug lab, if you don't produce drugs for the right people." Yoongi needed a moment to completely understand the last sentence, but Taehyung just rambled on. "Now that I think about it, we're more like a police special force. I guess E II called it military service because the training is similar."

"Did you just imply you sell drugs to the visitors?" the older asked shocked. He could not let this fall under the table.

"Give the people what the people want," the younger said with a grin and shrugged. "That's how money works."

"This sounds like a damn dystopia. Does it look like one, too?" Yoongi rasped out as a response. A picture of those always clouded, always rainy, always acidly glowing cities with ragbag-build apartment blocks next to aseptically glowing glass sky scrapers occupied his mind.

"Oh, now that you mention it... Bang?"

"Yes, officer Kim." The uncle-voice was so confusing.

"Do you have some pictures of V?" the alien asked the AI curiously.

"Of course, officer Kim. Would you like me to display them on your screen?" Bang asked politely. A military AI sounding like a nice receptionist in a hotel was somehow bothering Yoongi. 'Would you like to have a prospect of sights to the city map? Or maybe a flyer with all cafés in the vicinity?'. He slightly shook his head.

"Yes, please," the young pilot said and leaned forward in anticipation. The man must really miss his planet if he was that eager to see some images. But when the pictures showed, he looked disappointed. "Is that everything you have?" he asked the AI in a sad tone.

Yoongi stood up to have a look at the other's screen.

His idea had been completely wrong. This really looked awesome. He never had seen a more colorful place. "Does it look like that everywhere?" he asked astounded.

"Yep," Taehyung said proud. "Our whole planet basically is one big city."

Yoongi's eyebrows almost hit his hairline. How was that possible? He had thought that Earth was pretty futuristic and advanced, but V topped everything he ever saw. But it also looked like it could be unhealthy.

"How do you breathe? Like, does a planet not need trees to live?" he asked doubtingly.

Taehyung again chuckled. "I saw my first tree when I visited Earth. You think a planet with such a blossoming economy can't invent a technology to clean their air?" He looked up to him over his shoulder.

That sounded logically. The cities must have grown over several hundred years what gave them enough time to think about the oxygen question. He nodded in approval.

"How come you look so plain when your planet is so damn colorful that my eyes hurt even by looking at the pics?" Yoongi asked amused. In the gray turtleneck and with the ash-brown hair, Taehyung looked almost boring. Except for the stunningly symmetrical face and the tanned skin, which he found very attractive.

The younger sighed. "Don't mention it... My mom thought I should look normal when I go to Earth II, so she made me change my hair color back to natural. You wanna see a pic from before? I had crimson hair."

Yoongi nodded, and his colleague wiped over the smart panel on his right arm to find something in his personal gallery. He was left-handed, Yoongi realized, and all the useless facts on lefties popped into his mind. The reversed brain-halves, the shorter lifespan...

"Look," the V said and tapped his arm against the intelligent glass of the piloting screen. A photograph of a red-haired Taehyung popped up and Yoongi's mouth fell open.

"This looks amazing!" he blurted and looked down to his colleague. "You should do that again."

The younger looked up to him. "Like you with your white hair?"

"That's natural," Yoongi corrected him and smiled. Many people had made the mistake to think he had bleached his hair, so he was already used to correcting them (if he cared though).

Now it was Taehyung's turn to stare open-mouthed. "Are you sure you're human? 'Cause for all I know you're not old enough to have white hair."

Yoongi shrugged his shoulders. He had white hair since birth, and doctors had called it an anomaly, so who was he to think differently? Of course, he had thought about it often as a child. Why would he have white hair when his brother's had been black? Now that he gave it another thought, there had always been bottles of hair dye in the bathroom. He had assumed that his mother had used those, but since his dad was gone those were gone as well. This was getting suspicious.

"You look like you're thinking really hard about something," Taehyung stated.

"How... no forget about it," Yoongi said and was about to go back to his seat when a hand closed around his wrist and pulled him back.

"Tell me. Teambuilding, remember?" the alien said.

"Will you always pull the argument of teambuilding when I won't talk to you?" he asked half amused, half concerned.

"Yes, and if it doesn't work, I'll use my title to make you talk." The V grinned smugly.

This man was unbelievable. With a defeated sigh, he tried to pull free his wrist, but in the short time he had taken to think of a retort, his colleague apparently had found some interest in his hand. He stared at it as if he had never seen something more fascinating.

"Look!" the younger demanded and held their intertwined fingers in front of his face. "This contrast is amazing!"

"What do you-"

"Like a caramel milk mix," the younger interrupted him.

Confused he looked at their hands. And then he understood. Taehyung was talking about their skin color. He rolled his eyes. The boy had the attention span of an ADHD child. But, oh well, how could he have forgotten? Vs were naturally ADHD people. It was in their DNA. And it was the reason they were such excellent space force pilots.

He used the distraction to not answer the question. Instead he replied to the younger's question. "Very beautiful, but how long do you want to hold my hand?"

The other lowered their hands again and stared at them for a moment. It really looked good, Yoongi had to admit. But the thought left his mind very fast when Taehyung suddenly licked over the back of his hand.

"What the fuck, Tae!"

The brown-haired crunched his nose. "Doesn't taste sweet." Then he let go of his hand and grinned slyly. "Can I touch your hair?"

"No! What's wrong with you?" Yoongi almost shouted and took some steps back to get out of the other's range. He wiped his hand on his pants. This man was totally crazy.

Taehyung got up, too, and walked closer. "But it's naturally white! I want to know how it feels."

Yoongi began to run around the bridge, trying to flee from a weird alien that apparently had taken a strange liking into him. "Stop it, you weirdo! This is not cute!" he shouted while he ran around his pilot station. He would suck at the fitness test, he realized. His breath was already coming short, and he had the feeling to suffocate. How had he managed the entrance test of the Academy?

The steps behind him unexpectedly stopped and he spun around. In the middle of the cockpit stood a slightly exhausted Taehyung who had tilted his head at him. What was wrong now? A very, very dark smile spread on the V's face and Yoongi suddenly felt very small and very weak.

"I served five years in the military, raided several drug labs and traitorous underground networks, almost knocked down one of the biggest banks on my planet in the age of twelve, and after telling you all this you still think I'm hurt when you say that I'm not cute?" the young pilot growled in a voice so deep it seemed to vibrate through Yoongi's chest.

Shocked he stared at his colleague. "Well... um... I'm..."

But then the other looked away and put a finger to his chin in sudden thought. The tension broke and Taehyung seemed only half as big as before.

"Well, it kind of bothers me," the alien admitted. "I don't know why, though."

Hell, those mood swings! What was next? Aggression again? Cautious but relieved about the broken tension Yoongi walked back towards his seat. He would have to spend much more time with the younger to get used to this.

His relief was replaced by shock again when a strong arm slung around his neck from behind like it was about to choke him and a hand ruffled through his hair.

"So fluffy! This is amazing," Taehyung said behind him while his hand ran through his white hair.

A whine left Yoongi's lips before he could hold it back, and he let himself fall against the chest behind him. He admitted defeat. If this day had taught him anything, it was that his colleague was unbelievably clever in getting what he wanted. He closed his eyes and let the alien play with his hair. It even felt nice, so why not?

"What was the question you wanted to ask?" Taehyung brought up the topic from before.

Yoongi chuckled. Lesson learned: Always obey to the alien. Though having his hair played with was not bad either. Maybe he would keep disobeying just to see how long he could stand up against the younger.

"I wanted to know what Switchers look like," he answered and waited for a response.

But what he got, again, was not what he expected. The hand stopped stroking through his strands and he was turned around by his shoulders to meet wide coffee orbs in an excited face.

"So that's the reason!" Taehyung shouted, making him twitch. "Your reaction to Ancient. That's the reason why."

"You lost me somewhere between listening and understanding. What are you talking about?" Yoongi asked confused.

"Sugar, you're a Switcher!" Taehyung revealed, "When you asked, it hit me. Switchers have white hair and pale skin, even those ebony eyes. Well, they're not as attractive as you, but you're a half-breed after all. The reason you did not react to Ancient was because you decided not to feel."

"But I didn't decide that," Yoongi disagreed. It just happened sometimes, and sometimes it did not. He never changed it willingly.

"Maybe it just happens when your emotional stress level would become too high?" Taehyung mused. "After all, you're half human, too."

"Tae, stop. I was tested human." This conversation was becoming ridiculous. As if no-one ever would have found out that he was half-human.

"By whom?" the younger asked.

"Stop being so fucking persistent," he hissed and shook off the hands that still rested on his shoulders.

"Why do you hate this idea so much? Is it something bad to be a crossbreed? Is it too alien?" the V said, and his voice was stained with anger and hurt.

Yoongi kind of felt sorry for him, but at the same time he was still pissed that Taehyung was this stubborn about it. He had been pushed around by the V for the last hour and it was tiring him. And moreover, the ugly thought that this might be the explanation why his father had left them ate at his mind annoyingly. He needed time to think about this, but Taehyung's energetic persona was suffocating him right now.

And then it happened. The heaviness lifted from his mind and chest, and his head was clear again. White. This blankness was soothing after the last happenings and he sighed relieved. He knew that this confirmed his colleague's theory, but he did not care. He did not care about the younger's hurt expression either.

"Officer Kim," Bang's voice sounded through the room, "Dr. Kim is waiting for you."

"You should go," Yoongi said calmly.

The other's jaw clenched visibly, but he only balled his hands into fists and left the room.

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