Your eyes scrunched at the voice, despite how gentle and soft it was. You tried backing further up against the wall but you couldn't, you were pressed as flat as you could be while still being inaccessible to Jimin.

"Y/N..." Jimin whispered, hand still palm up, stretched as far as possible towards you, yet still, to him, so far away.

You found your voice amidst your falling tears, "No. Can't."

Jimin peered at you through squinted eyes, trying to adjust his vision to the darkness to see your face.

"Why can't you?"

It was a single word, uttered through a sob, but it broke Jimin's heart all the same.

"Scared."

"Of what?"

"You."

Jimin's whine tore through the silence that you'd shrouded yourself in, and there was nowhere to go as he wriggled his arm even closer, having to squeeze himself half under the bed to do so.

"Please don't be afraid of me! I would never hurt you, I swear. None of us would. I know that because I'm a tiger that I seem scary, but I promise that I'd never hurt you! I swear on my life. What about me scares you?"

You thought about it, realizing that you'd mostly just been conditioned to react to more powerful hybrids with fear.

"Power. Claws. Fangs. Eyes." You listed out the four things that made your heart beat the fastest about Jimin, especially stressing the last one. Eye contact had never been rewarding for you. Making eye contact with a hybrid, especially one as threatening as Jimin was like asking to be torn apart. You just wanted to leave.

"Why eyes?"

"They just give you more power over me."

Jimin furrowed his brows, "How?"

"Because if I look you in the eye, that's a challenge. And I could never win in a fight against you. You're too powerful."

"Y/N, I already told you that I don't take eye contact as a threat. And, I know this is serious, but have you seen me? I'm tiny, the worst I could do to you in a fight would be to kick you in the shins."

You breathed out a laugh at that, though tensing up afterwards, you hadn't meant to let your guard down. Jimin only smiled, seeing that your hand had inched closer to his slightly. You hadn't noticed.

"Do my eyes scare you anymore?"

"Yes."

"But you haven't seen them yet. How do you know?"

"I just do. Eyes always scare me."

"Why don't you look at mine and see if they do? What if they don't, and you never know?"

You sighed, "You're tricking me."

"No! I promise, I'm not. Here, I pinky promise." Jimin's hand curled in on itself, leaving his tiny pinky extended towards you. You looked down at your own hand, slowly sliding your finger over his and curling it around his.

The light from Jimin's smile could have lit up the whole space under the bed.

You glanced up at his eyes at first, seeing kind brown ones staring back at you. They didn't look like the eyes of someone that would hurt you, but you could never be too sure.

"Were they scary?"

"No..."

"Will you look at me again?"

"Why?"

"So that you can conquer your fear."

"But I don't want to. I just want to leave."

"Why don't you come out and eat a little bit, and after that you can see if you still want to."

He curled his pinky tighter around your own, tugging it gently towards him so that both of your arms were half bent. You squeezed your eyes shut, though let him hold your entire hand and pull you closer to the edge of the bed. You wriggled all the way out from under the bed, sitting upright with your back against the bed.

Your eyes stayed glued to the floor as Jimin scooted over to the door, swinging it half open and sliding the plate of fruit inside, shutting the door again after. He slid back over to you, pushing the fruit plate in front of him and holding up a grape. You gently took it from him, examining it and making sure that it wouldn't be like the sour one from earlier before finally eating it. You hummed at the tweet taste, softly thanking Jimin for the fruit.

He grinned at your newfound acceptance of him, this time holding out a cherry.

"Is it gonna be sour?" You just barely looked him in the eyes for a moment but it made his grin grow ten times wider.

"No, it's sweet. Seokjin said you didn't like sour stuff."

You shook your head, taking the cherry from the palm of Jimin's hand and popping it in your mouth.

"There's a pit in it, so when you swallow the cherry, don't swallow the pit. Here, take this, spit it out onto there." Jimin handed you a napkin, and sure enough your teeth closed around the cherry, sinking through the sweet fruit and meeting a hard pit in the center. You quickly separated cherry from pit, taking the napkin and discarding the pit inside of it.

"Did you like the cherry?"

You nodded, a tiny drop of cherry juice running down your chin. Jimin cooed, reaching out slowly so as not to scare you and using his thumb to wipe away the red stain. You blushed, but didn't flinch, quite proud of yourself for being so brave around the tiger.

You heard footsteps approach the door and both of your heads turned to face it, the knocking that came on the door ruining the moment between the two of you. Jimin sighed, standing and smiling sweetly at you when he saw your ears flapped down in fear.

"It's okay, if you're not ready, I won't let anybody in."

Jimin strode to the door, planting himself firmly in front of it and opening the door just a crack. You heard Jimin sigh and address someone, then saw a face peek through the crack in the door and watched as their eyes met yours. It was the dog hybrid.

"Taehyung, they're not ready yet."

There was a whine, "I just wanna apologize! I feel bad."

"But they're really scared right now. The best thing you can do is to wait."

"Jimin, please let me in! I promise I'll behave. I won't be too loud, or energetic, or-"

"Taehyung-"

"It's okay."

Both hybrids went silent at your soft voice, then two faces were staring at you in amazement.

"Y/N, are you sure? You don't have to say yes, he's not going to die if he doesn't get to see you right now."

You looked back up at Taehyung, seeing the dog hybrid's eyes wet with fresh tears and sighed, "it's okay. He can come in."

Hi loves! I hope you like this chapter, and I'm sorry if it ended somewhat awkwardly, but I just wanted to make sure that I could pick up the next chapter with lots of inspiration, so I had to give myself a strong jumping off point. Thank you for waiting so long for the update, and I'm so sorry that it's taken me this long to get back to writing for you all. I love you all, and I hope you're having a wonderful day!!