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Yoongi first sees him when he’s taking out the trash. It’s probably a good thing that he doesn’t put too much stock in first impressions.
It’s late, very late, actually, and Yoongi is the last one awake. The hours trickle by as he sits with his sketchpad open, the windows of the studio gradually fading to back around him. Eventually, when he realises that he should probably sleep before the sun comes back up, he stretches, shakes out the ache from his hand, and rises.
But before he leaves, his eyes land on the overflowing trash can in the corner of the room. He almost ignores it, but then he flashes back on Namjoon’s endless lectures about cleanliness, and he resigns himself to it, moving to tie up the bag and take it outside. The studio is a hole-in-the-wall apartment, with a dozen other outlets either side, and there’s nothing out back but a narrow alleyway with a few dumpsters. Yoongi doesn’t exactly spend a lot of time out here; he’s reminded why as he steps outside, and the smell of garbage hits him, making him wrinkle his nose.
In his haste to get the task done as quickly as possible, he almost doesn’t see the huddle on the other side of the dumpster.
Just as he’s turning around to go back inside, Yoongi spots it.
At first, it just looks like a lump of clothes. But as his eyes adjust to the dark, they rearrange it into a person. Somebody is sheltering beneath the brick overhang. Yoongi squints, and he makes out a mop of dark hair poking out from the blanket they’re wrapped up in.
Yoongi is struck with sudden uncertainty. He’s a city kid; he’s seen plenty of people sleeping rough before. But not on his own turf. Well, Namjoon’s turf. Yoongi is just the guy who sleeps in the attic while he’s being trained. But he’s been here almost a year now, and over the last few months, Namjoon has trusted with locking up at night.
Namjoon never gave him any ground rules about shooing away hobos, though. Yoongi gazes at the sleeping figure cluelessly, wondering what the hell he’s supposed to do about this.
As he debates, the person shifts. The blanket slips, exposing a young, boyish face, and eyes closed deep in sleep.
He doesn’t wake up, though. And Yoongi doesn’t make any effort to wake him.
No: he isn’t going to take it upon himself to disturb the kid. Instead, he turns away, and finishes his usual routine, locking the doors, then the windows, then double-checking all of them (he loves the store, he loves the artists, but nobody loves the neighbourhood), before heading upstairs, to the apartment above the studio. Hobi is already fast asleep on his side of the room. Yoongi crashes down onto his mattress and kicks off his jeans.
A strange thought flashes across his mind when he lies down. His side of the room faces the alleyway. Technically, he’s only metres away from the kid who’s sleeping outside, in the cramped space reeking of garbage. Discomfort twinges in his chest at the thought.
But, like he’s already decided, it’s really none of his business.
Yoongi turns over, punches his pillow into submission, and thinks no more of it.
The second time Yoongi sees him, it’s during the day.
He works shifts at a fast food place to pay the bills while he’s still training, and when he’s free, he shadows Namjoon, Jin and Hobi in the studio.
He’s been here for almost a year now, and part of him is itching to start tattooing people already, but he knows better than to complain. Everybody said it would be a painstaking training process, that he would want to tear his hair out along the way. But Yoongi has never been the type to back down from something he’s started, and he genuinely wants this. So it’s cleaning, and more cleaning, and drawing and drawing and drawing until his hand aches, and his designs finally start to look like something that someone might pay to have on their body.
When he slips out for a smoke in the afternoon, he’s long since forgotten about the kid from the other night. A thousand other things have crossed his mind since then.
It catches Yoongi off guard to see him there again. The same dark blanket as before, in the same spot.
Yoongi stares for a moment. He can see the kid much clearer in the daylight, and for a moment, he’s caught off guard. He didn’t expect a rough sleeper to have such an angelic face.
Once again, the kid is sleeping.
Or, he was sleeping, before the crash of the door makes him jolt awake. His eyes shoot open, his arm jerking out of the blanket so quickly that Yoongi steps back instinctively, half-expecting a weapon or something. But there’s nothing, only a weakly curled fist, and bleary eyes that blink around the small space wildly, searching for what woke him.
Despite everything, Yoongi can’t help but notice what a pretty pair of eyes they are.
Yoongi holds up his hands apologetically.
“Sorry. I didn’t see you.”
The kid’s gaze finds him, and his brow draws together in a frown. His eyes roam over Yoongi, taking in the lighter in his hand, taking in his appearance, making the connection between the sleeve on Yoongi's arm and the building he’s sleeping outside of. Yoongi sees him let out a breath, and untense slightly, his fist uncurling and falling to his side.
Yoongi thinks about going back inside. He doesn’t blame the kid for being on edge. But, he reminds himself, this is his space. And he might as well do what he came out here for.
He moves to the back wall, giving the kid space, as he starts to roll up a cigarette, resting the packet on his knee. He knows it’s a bad habit. He doesn’t even smoke that much, but he just can’t seem to shake it completely. At least the smell of garbage isn’t as bad as it was the other night; the dumpster has probably been emptied.
There isn’t a lot of space in the alleyway, but it still manages to fill with an awfully thick silence. Yoongi can feel the kid watching him. He wonders what he sees that merits such an intense stare. The only things that are really remarkable about his appearance are the things that he’s done to himself. His hair is amber at the moment, although the colour is fading, and he has a few piercings on each of his ears, and the tattoos trailing up his left arm, the only ones that are visible in the shirt that he’s wearing. His right arm is still completely bare. He has the sense to save some space.
After a couple of minutes, he dares to glance back over at the kid, who looks away quickly.
He’s probably a few years younger than Yoongi. He has bedraggled hair (bedraggled everything, actually) and dark circles under his eyes. He doesn’t exactly look dangerous. Tired, more than anything.
Impulsively, Yoongi offers out the cigarette. He’s not really sure why he does it. He just can’t stand the silence anymore.
For a moment, the kid doesn’t move, looking at it like Yoongi is offering him a live grenade. But then, he reaches out and takes it.
When he tries to hand it back, Yoongi finds himself shaking his head.
“Keep it. You look like you need it.”
Maybe it’s not exactly the most responsible thing to do, pushing his bad habits onto a kid who clearly isn’t in the best place in life. But he doesn’t really have anything else to offer.
He’s going to head back inside when his eyes land on a paper coffee cup on the floor beside him.
“You want that filled up?”
The kid glances down at the cup like he’d forgotten it was there.
Then he speaks for the first time.
“I can’t pay you,” he says. He has a voice that matches his face. Young. A little rough around the edges.
“I didn’t ask you to,” says Yoongi evenly. The boy still looks doubtful. Yoongi rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll take the cost off my wages. It will probably come to, ahh, maybe a hundred won?” He sucks his teeth. “It’ll be a stretch, but I don’t think it will bankrupt me.”
Something twitches in the boy’s lips. His face lightens for a second. When Yoongi holds out his hand this time, the boy passes him the cup.
Nobody in the studio gives him a second glance as slips inside again and fills it up from the coffee maker. He adds one of Jin’s fancy sugary mixer things and stirs it in. The kid seems like he would appreciate it, and it will piss Jin off when he finds out that someone else has used one, so it’s a double win.
The kid blinks when Yoongi returns to the alley and hands him the coffee, as if he didn’t really expect him to come back.
“Thanks,” he says, after a beat.
The cigarette is smoked down to a stub. The blanket has slipped from his shoulder, revealing a hoodie underneath, and a glimpse of collarbones. Yoongi averts his eyes. He doesn’t want the kid to mistake a simple favour for anything else.
“Anytime,” says Yoongi, and then there’s nothing left to say, so he retreats into the studio once again.
A strange, almost tight feeling lingers in his chest as he goes back to work. Jin calls him over to the other side of the studio, where a pair of girls want to look through his designs, and then Hobi is doing colouring, and although Yoongi’s seen it a dozen times, Hobi’s colour work is so stunning that he would never complain about watching it once more.
Once again, like most nights, he’s the last one in the studio. He hasn’t forgotten the kid out the back. He feels the extra presence all day, lingering like a ghost in the corner of his mind. That night, when he’s packing away his sketchpad and doing a final sweep of the surfaces, he lets his mind run over the possibilities. It’s early summer, but the nights can still get cold. Maybe he could offer to bring the kid another blanket?
But when he goes to take out the trash, there is only an empty space beside the dumpster, and Yoongi’s offer dies on his lips. The kid has clearly moved on somewhere else for the night.
Yoongi is not an optimist by nature, but he finds himself hoping that it means that the kid has somewhere better to go.
Yoongi looks out for him this time, but he doesn’t see the kid again for a while. So long, in fact, that he’s beginning to think he’s scared him off.
But eventually, he appears in the alleyway again.
This time is different.
It starts raining at some point in the afternoon, and by evening, it’s a downpour. They’re lucky that they had a delivery of supplies arrive earlier that day, because the roads are clogged with rainwater, bringing the city to a halt. Namjoon wears a scowl all day, bitterly complaining about all the cancellations they’re going to have. Only Jin manages to soothe his bad mood, muttering suggestions in his ear about making the most of being stuck inside that Yoongi definitely doesn’t want to hear.
He throws a condom at them when they unsubtly head for the stairs. It hits Namjoon in the head, and makes Jin howl with laughter.
The two of them have the second floor, right above the studio, while Yoongi rooms with Hobi in the attic. Or at least, he usually does. Hobi’s text comes through not long after: he’s visiting friends out of town, but because of the rain, he won’t be back until at least tomorrow.
For tonight, it looks like Yoongi is on his own.
He takes the opportunity to appropriate the best space in the workshop, settling down on Hobi’s plush leather chair and opening his sketchpad under the pale light of his lamp.
The book is chunky and heavily used, the pages dogeared and dented. The first few pages make him wince a little now, although they were his pride and joy a year ago, with their slightly wonky outlines and questionable distribution of proportions. But as the pages progress, his style has evolved into confident, clear black lines, sweeping across the pages.
He tries to push down the twinge of bitterness that they’re not meant to be on pages; they’re meant to be on skin.
He knows, logically, that he can’t rush into it. He’s marking somebody’s body, after all. If he makes a rookie mistake, somebody has to live with it forever. Namjoon is an incredible artist, and a good teacher; he’ll let Yoongi start on people when he’s ready.
But that doesn’t stop him from itching with impatience.
He doesn’t know what he’s drawing tonight; his hand moves across the page without thinking. The quiet of the studio is broken only by the soft scratch of the pencil against the page, and the sound of the rain crashing down on the streets around him. He watches as a head and shoulders take form on the page. Light touches brush in strands of hair. But when it comes to the face, Yoongi pauses, realising that he doesn’t know what features to fill in.
At a loss, he stretches out his legs, and goes to check on the rain.
As soon as he opens the back door, the cold air hits him. Yoongi tries to avoid the rainwater dripping down from doorframe. He’s fishing his cigarettes out of his pocket when he notices the movement in the corner of his eye.
It can’t be, he thinks, because the thought of anybody out here in this storm is crazy.
But then he leans forward, peering around the dumpster—
And it is.
It’s the kid again.
Fucking hell, Yoongi thinks.
The blanket is gone, is the first thing he notices. The boy has his hood pulled up, and his arms are wrapped so tightly around himself that he’s practically a ball, squeezed into the alcove.
“Hey,” says Yoongi, raising his voice over the sound of the rain. “Hey!”
The kid hears him the second time, raising his head and meeting Yoongi’s eyes.
And Yoongi can’t remember the last time he saw someone looking so utterly fucking miserable.
“Don’t you have anywhere to go?”
The kid doesn’t answer. He looks down for a moment. Then, he starts to pull himself off the floor, reaching into the dark crevice behind him and pulling a backpack out of the darkness.
When he gets to his feet, Yoongi realises what he’s doing.
“Whoa, whoa!” Yoongi moves without thinking, darting out into the alleyway. “I didn’t mean that you had to leave!”
The kid pauses. There aren’t any streets lights back here, only the lights of odd windows here and there in the block, but Yoongi can still see the tired incomprehension in his face. He pushes his hair, soaked with rainwater, back off his face.
“What, then?”
Yoongi doesn’t know what to say. It’s not like he’s never passed homeless folks on the street before, in all kinds of weather. But this is different. The kid is practically on his back doorstep.
And – damn it. He looks so young, and so bad, that Yoongi’s chest aches with sympathy.
“It’s not a good night to be out,” he says, pointing out the obvious as he stalls for time. “Is there really nowhere you can go?”
It’s a stupid question. If the kid had anywhere to go, he would be there tonight, of all nights. He draws his hoodie tightly around himself as he shakes his head. Yoongi can’t help but notice that he looks awfully skinny.
“Shelter?”
There have to be homeless shelters in the city, don’t there? It’s Seoul.
“Nearest one’s two miles away.”
Fuck.
“You lost your blanket.”
“Yeah.” He can practically hear the kid’s teeth chattering. “Look, are you going to make me leave or not?”
“Of course not,” Yoongi says without hesitation. But then, he doesn’t know what to say. Is he really just going to let the kid sleep out here in the pouring rain?
The kid is pulling at the straps of his backpack. As Yoongi deliberates, his eyes wander to the doorway, and a wistful expression crosses his face.
“Fuck it,” Yoongi mutters. Namjoon will kill him, but his mind is already made up. In all honestly, it was made up as soon as he saw him out here. “Do you want to come inside? Just for the night? Or until the rain stops? I can’t let you into the studio, but my room is on the top floor…”
The kid looks at him sharply. Then, a wariness enters his eyes.
“No,” he says, edging away from Yoongi, “No, I’ll be fine out here.”
“No, you won’t. You’re already soaked.”
The kid bristles. Yoongi winces, realising that he needs to be more tactful. He understands the kid’s reluctance; Yoongi could be any kind of weirdo.
“Look,” he says, measuring his words, trying to think through the cold rain that’s seeping into his hair and shoulders. “It’s not exactly a – a five-star hotel, or whatever. But it’s warm and it’s dry. I’m not making you do anything, okay? But if you stay out here, you’re going to catch sick.”
Hell, it’s a pretty big risk on Yoongi’s part too. The kid must be on the streets for a reason, after all. He looks innocent enough, but Yoongi knows that appearances can be deceiving. Yoongi also knows, however, that he won’t be able to sleep knowing that the kid is down here, wondering what kind of horror show he might find when he comes out in the morning, if Yoongi leaves him out here in this storm.
The kid looks as torn as Yoongi feels.
Yoongi is about to give up when the kid finally gives in. Yoongi sees the moment that temptation wins out against caution.
“Okay,” he says, in a very small voice, “Okay. But just until the rain stops.”
Yoongi lets out a breath of relief.
And then he realises that he now has to get the kid inside, and figure out how this is going to work.
Yoongi holds the door open and steps aside for him to pass. His guest steps into the building, with the air of someone walking into a lion’s den, and hovers next to the staircase, making himself as small as possible in the corner as he drips rainwater onto the floorboards.
He jumps when the door shuts with a final cold blast of air, and the rain is muted to a harmless patter once again. Yoongi makes quick work of turning the lights off and firmly locking the inside studio door.
Then, he pauses. “I’m Yoongi, by the way. Min Yoongi.”
A tiny hesitation, then, “Park Jimin.”
He seems to shrink even more as Yoongi moves to lock the back door.
“Sorry,” says Yoongi, “But I really have to. My boss would skin me alive.”
Jimin nods his understanding, although Yoongi thinks he sees curiosity trickle into his eyes. Sure enough, as he follows Yoongi up the creaking stairs, he asks,
“Your boss?”
“Ah,” says Yoongi, “Yeah. I’m only a trainee. Namjoon owns the place, and runs it with his boyfriend. And there’s another artist too, he usually rooms with me, but he couldn’t get back tonight because of the rain.”
“A trainee,” Jimin echoes.
Yoongi can’t quite tell what that is, in Jimin’s voice. He wishes he could see his face, but the staircase is too narrow and rickety to glance around.
He holds his breath as they pass Namjoon and Jin’s floor. Luckily, nobody stirs inside. He doesn’t know how he’d explain this to Namjoon. He’ll think of something, when he’s gotten Jimin inside.
They ascend the final stairs into the attic, and Jimin steps up into his home.
Yoongi sees him looking around, taking it in. It’s not much, in all honesty. It’s a little bare, with open rafters and some unattractive bundles of insulation foam, but it works for them. There are some clothes scattered across the floor that he probably should have picked up a few days ago. He stoops to sweep the aside now, even though it’s ridiculous that he should feel self-conscious of that in this situation.
When he straightens back up, he sees Jimin biting his lip. Yoongi can practically feel the anxiety vibrating off of him.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
Jimin looks at him quickly.
“Are… are you going to get in trouble for letting me in?”
Yoongi shakes his head.
“Don’t worry about it. Namjoon and Jin were fucking like bunnies earlier so they’re probably passed the fuck out. When the rain ends, I’ll let you out before they even know you’re here.”
Some of the tension seeps out of Jimin’s shoulders, but not all of it.
“I…” He tugs at his sleeves. “It’s just, your stuff is so clean… and I’m…”
Homeless, Yoongi reminds himself. And formerly sleeping next to a dumpster.
“Do you want to use the shower?” he asks, and then adds, so Jimin doesn’t get the wrong idea, “There’s a lock on the door.”
Jimin’s relief is visible. He nods, and follows Yoongi to the bathroom.
The patter of the shower mingles with the hollow sound of the rainwater on the roof as Yoongi settles down on Hobi’s mattress rather than his own. The did rock-paper-scissors when Yoongi moved in, but Hobi won his rights to keep the window space. Yoongi gazes out over the rooftops, at the darkened outline of the city, grey against black, peppered with lights, and wonders what the hell he’s doing. This is a stranger, a person he knows nothing about, and Yoongi has invited him into an apartment that isn’t even his. This is definitely not one of his brighter decisions.
And yet he can’t bring himself to regret it, even knowing how insane it is.
He glances over his shoulder when he hears the bathroom door opening. Jimin steps out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam, scrubbing at his wet hair with a towel. He’s dressed back in his clothes, but his shirt is sticking to his damp skin, and there’s a flush in his cheeks.
Something rushes through Yoongi.
Instantly, he shoves it far away. The last thing he wants is to confirm Jimin’s fears about him being a creep.
“You can have my bed if you like,” he offers, gesturing to the other mattress.
But Jimin shakes his head firmly. He folds the towel and places it on Yoongi’s mattress. But then he backs away, settling instead on the floor beside the stairs.
“I’m going to stay awake,” he says. “But thank you.”
“Okay,” Yoongi shrugs, knowing not to take is personally. “But the offer is there.”
Jimin gazes at him, his knees drawn up to his chest. For a long while, Yoongi has the feeling that Jimin is on the verge of saying something.
“You’re a good person, Min Yoongi,” is all he says, eventually. There’s such sincerity in his voice that it almost makes Yoongi uncomfortable.
Yoongi doesn’t really intend to sleep either, doesn’t know how he could sleep with a stranger in the room, a mysterious stranger that he knows nothing about and that he really shouldn’t trust. But once he lies down, suddenly his eyes are heavier than he anticipated, and Jimin’s presence bothers him less that it should.
When his eyes open again, it feels as if only minutes have passed, but sunlight is streaming into the attic.
The rain has stopped.
Yoongi sits up, and his eyes instantly land on Jimin, slumped against the opposite wall, head lolling, fast asleep.
Oh, says something in Yoongi’s chest.
Yoongi forgot to set an alarm. He was supposed to get Jimin out before anyone woke, but he can hear footsteps downstairs. Instead of waking him, however, Yoongi takes the blanket from his bed and drapes it over Jimin’s sleeping form.
“A friend stayed over last night,” he tells Namjoon when he goes downstairs. “He was caught in the rain.”
Over the next few weeks, Yoongi finds himself smoking more than usual.
He also finds Jimin in the space behind the studio more than before. Not every day, but as the weeks progress, it becomes every other day. Jimin has taken to perching on the wall that runs down the back of the alleyway, his legs swinging freely down below.
And Yoongi has taken to joining him.
Something must have changed, because Jimin is no longer silent and suspicious.
The boy can fucking talk.
He talks like it comes as easily to him as breathing, so animated that he’s like a different person, as he rambles to Yoongi about everything under the sun. It’s trivial things mostly, though. Little anecdotes, like how he keeps seeing an alley cat hanging around out here – has Yoongi seen it too? – and how his hair was that colour once, but he thinks it suits Yoongi better.
And Jimin likes asking Yoongi questions. Strangely, it doesn’t annoy Yoongi as much as it should. Jimin makes Yoongi tell him the sleeve on his left arm, and the tattoos that are almost visible at the collar of his shirt, trailing down his chest. When Jimin asks, smirking, if he can see the full piece, Yoongi rolls his eyes and swats him. Jimin pretends to be mortally wounded, and Yoongi finds himself fighting down a smile.
Something about Park Jimin is very endearing. And Yoongi is not easily endeared.
The one thing Jimin hardly talks about is himself. Yoongi can only sketch the very broadest strokes of his background. He’s nineteen. He’s from Busan. His dialect slips out sometimes when his voice rises. But whenever their conversation strays into anything that’s more personal than that, Jimin goes quiet very quickly.
Yoongi doesn’t pry. He’s not going to force the kid to relive whatever things have happened to him, things that he clearly doesn’t want to talk about. He’s homeless; Yoongi doesn’t doubt that he’s seen his fair share of shit.
Besides, he doesn’t like it when Jimin turns so solemn. Yoongi finds, for some reason, that he likes it when Jimin smiles. He likes it a hell of a lot, actually. Jimin has a smile that lights up his whole face in a way Yoongi has never seen before. When Yoongi is leaning over his sketchpad, or leaning over a grill flipping burgers at work, he’s finding his brain is stuck on Jimin’s smile, or replaying the last conversation they had, like a stupid broken record.
Yoongi doesn’t know what’s wrong with him.
At least he has one thing to take his mind off the illogical distraction that is Park Jimin – Namjoon is finally letting him start working on skin.
“Your designs are getting plenty of interest, hyung,” he says, nodding at the space behind the desk, where some of Yoongi’s sketches are pinned up alongside the other artists’, “And you’ve been here long enough that I think you’ve learned all there is to learn.” Then Namjoon’s face creases. “I just wish…”
“You wish what?”
“Well, it’s not a great idea to just start taking customers straight away, hyung. It would help if you had someone to practice on.”
Yoongi frowns.
“I’ve practiced on myself enough times.”
It’s true: Namjoon might not have let him have any customers yet, but he can’t stop Yoongi from doing whatever he likes to his own body. He’s spent many nights up in the attic, adding new ink to his body, mostly on his thighs, whenever he got the itch and couldn’t shake it.
The latest addition is a pair of black wings on his wrist. Jimin noticed it yesterday, grabbing his hand and exclaiming loudly. When he asked what it meant, Yoongi replied that it didn’t really have a meaning, except that he was bored, and he liked the design. He tried not to let his voice shake too much from the electric shock that went through him where Jimin touched him skin.
Namjoon, however, doesn’t take that as an answer.
“It’s not the same,” he says. “You need to get used to the feeling of doing it on someone else, without being able to feel it yourself.” Yoongi opens his mouth, but Namjoon cuts in quickly, amusement flashing across his face. “And before you tell me about giving your fifteen-year-old friends stick-and-pokes in your mom’s basement, that’s not the same either.”
Yoongi scowls, but doesn’t argue on that one.
Namjoon’s look turns ponderous. “When I was starting out there was an old stoner down the street who let me practice on him.”
“Well, I’m fresh out of old stoners. Any other ideas?”
“Keep thinking.” Namjoon claps him on the shoulder “And let me know if you find someone.”
It’s Jimin who suggests it.
Yoongi laughs, and then he realises that he isn’t kidding.
“No,” he says immediately. “No way in hell.”
They’re sitting together on the wall again, cross-legged, and Jimin’s eyes are full of a dangerous earnestness.
“Why not, hyung? It’s a way of paying you back what I owe you.”
Yoongi has generally come to appreciate that Jimin is pretty smart person, but that’s the most stupid thing that he’s ever heard, and he doesn’t hold back from saying so.
Jimin bristles in indignation. “Why?”
“Because I let you sleep inside once when you would have caught pneumonia if you’d stayed out here. You don’t owe me anything. And even if you did, you should never get a tattoo as any kind of – of repayment.”
Yoongi is pretty firm in his belief that you should never get one for another person at all. He’s had a few arguments with Jin about that.
Jimin folds his arms stubbornly. “What gives you the right to decide what I put on my body?”
“Nothing,” says Yoongi evenly. “But I’m the one with the needle, honey. You can’t make me give you anything that I don’t want to.”
Stalemate. He sees Jimin’s resolve waver.
Then Jimin sighs, and drops his arms.
“Look,” he says, a serious note entering his voice, “I’ve wanted one ever since you started telling me about yours. I want to know what it’s like.” He pauses, then shakes his head. “And honestly, hyung-nim, do you really think a few tattoos is really going to make my life that much worse?”
He laughs, but there’s no amusement in it. The sound tugs at Yoongi’s heartstrings. Jimin’s eyes, fixed upon the brick wall beneath them, are painfully heavy.
“Don’t say that,” Yoongi finds himself saying. “It… this… it won’t be forever.”
The words sound flimsy, useless, even to his own ears. What is he even talking about? Yoongi knows next to nothing about Jimin’s situation. He doesn’t even know where he sleeps, or how much he gets to eat. He’s been meaning to offer him food, even to offer him to stay another night, but it’s never felt like the right time. Somehow, they’ve entered this little bubble of oblivion in which Yoongi doesn’t really think about the fact that Jimin is living on the streets. Jimin is good at distracting him – maybe distracting himself – from that fact.
Maybe his situation is worse than Yoongi thought, if the scepticism on Jimin’s face is anything to go by.
“Look,” says Yoongi. “I don’t know how, okay, but things will improve for you. You’ll… you’ll get back on your feet. Trust me.”
Yoongi just knows, in his soul, that things will improve for Jimin. In his mind, there is no other option. If there’s any justice in the universe, Jimin’s life will get better. And he knows that he can’t let Jimin do something so permanent, because of something that has to be temporary.
He doesn’t know if his words have any impact. Jimin is looking at him curiously, his head tilted slightly. It’s the kind of look that makes Yoongi’s stomach flutter, that makes him aware of just how close together they’re sitting on this dingy back-alley wall, their thighs practically touching.
Then Jimin shakes his head abruptly, and a gleam of mischief enters his eyes.
“Anyway,” he says. “When are you going to give me my tattoo?”
Try as he might, Yoongi doesn’t manage to talk him out of it. The most he can do is convince Jimin to go away and think about it, refusing flat out to do anything straight away. But he’s found a strange creature in Park Jimin: fiery and wilful and even more stubborn than Yoongi himself, and Yoongi has a feeling that his mind won’t be easily swayed.
Jimin is sneaky in his pestering. He doesn’t talk about it constantly, like Yoongi expected. No, he’s much worse. He drops it into conversation every now and then, catching Yoongi off guard.
Will I be the first person you’ve ever tattooed, Yoongi-hyung?
Is your boss going to watch when you give me my tattoo, Yoongi-hyung?
Never if. When.
He’s a sly bastard, and it’s making Yoongi want to kill him and kiss him all at once.
That’s another thing Yoongi has virtually given up on. He’s tried long and hard to suppress his hopeless attraction to Jimin, but it’s no use. The boy is fucking magnetic. Yoongi is convinced that he could make the entire world fall in love with him with a single smile. The first time Yoongi hears him laugh, throwing his head back like an actual goddamn angel, Yoongi almost falls right off the wall.
The only thing he can do is try to hide it, try not to stare when Jimin laughs, try not to let it show that he wants to kiss his beautiful lips, his cheeks, his everything, so much it’s ridiculous.
It’s not getting any easier.
Yoongi gives in on a breezy Sunday morning. They’re sitting in the attic today. Yoongi invited Jimin inside for the first time (well, the second time) when the other artists were out one day, and since then, they’re spending more and more time hanging out in Yoongi’s room rather than beside a pile of garbage, whenever Yoongi can be sure that they’ll have the room to themselves.
Jimin uses the shower sometimes too. And the last few times, he’s borrowed Yoongi’s clothes. If Yoongi makes food, he’s gotten into the habit of making at least two portions, and there is a fourth toothbrush beside the sink now.
Neither of them have really said anything about it. It’s just kind of happened.
It’s been two weeks since Jimin made his offer. The time was meant to be for him to think on it (and hopefully change his mind) but Yoongi has actually ended up doing a lot of thinking himself. And he’s come to the realisation that he’s actually not in any position to dictate what Jimin does with his body. He doesn’t know what Jimin does or where he goes when he’s not spending time with Yoongi, but he’s seen enough to know that Jimin’s life definitely isn’t a picnic.
If this is something positive for Jimin, then fuck it. Making people happy is one of the biggest reasons that he’s doing this whole thing.
“Are you still thinking about it?” Yoongi asks without preamble.
Jimin sits up quickly.
“Yes,” he says, not needing to ask what he means. “I still want it, Yoongi-hyung.”
“Okay. But I have conditions.”
Jimin nods eagerly, straightening up and facing Yoongi like an attentive student. He’s distractingly cute, with his ruffled hair and excited eyes.
“You stay here for a month after I do it.”
Immediately, Jimin stiffens. Yoongi sees a little of his old defensiveness come down over his eyes, his hands tightening around the blanket.
“Why?”
“Because I’m not going to give you a tattoo if you can’t do the aftercare. If I do practice on you, you need to clean it every day, and you need to apply the right kind of lotion. I’m not letting you get an infection from something I gave you.”
“Well… I can come here to shower, can’t I?”
“Yeah, of course you can. But if you’re here every day anyway, it doesn’t make sense for you to be sleeping on the street.”
Jimin is silent for a moment. He can’t deny that it makes sense.
“What about Namjoon?” he asks. “And the others?”
Yoongi shrugs. “I’ve already told Namjoon that you’re a friend. I’ll say that you got kicked out and need a place to crash. He probably won’t mind.”
Namjoon is more chill than most people about strangers sleeping in his attic. Yoongi would know. And Namjoon trusts Yoongi, and Yoongi trusts Jimin. But, as Jimin’s silence continues, as he chews nervously on his lip, Yoongi finds himself wondering if Jimin trusts him.
“I get that you might not, uh, feel comfortable sleeping around other people…”
“It’s not that,” Jimin interrupts. “It’s just that… I don’t know how I can repay you, for everything you keep doing.”
“You don’t need to repay me,” says Yoongi, for what must be the hundredth time since he’s met Jimin. “But for what it’s worth, this is pretty much the biggest favour I could ever ask for.”
He reaches out, brushing Jimin’s fingers gently with his, in what he hopes is a reassuring gesture. (He’s not quite brave enough to take his hand properly.)
“And if you’re having second thoughts, I don’t blame you if you don’t want to do it anymore…”
Immediately, Jimin slides his hand under Yoongi’s, turning his palm upward so Yoongi’s hand is grasped gently in his. His touch is warm and soft. Yoongi’s head feels a little light, but Jimin’s voice is firm with certainty.
“I’m not having second thoughts,” he says. “I’ll do it. And I’ll stay here, if that’s what needs to happen.”
Yoongi breathes out. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
Jimin is so goddamn close to him. Yoongi wants to hold onto him, to pull him closer, to kiss him, so badly that it’s pathetic. He can feel the thousands of nerve receptors where their skin is touching, all of them screaming Jimin Jimin Jimin… and Jimin is still gazing him with those impossibly warm brown eyes, not making any effort to move away…
Yoongi forces himself let go first. He draws back, and Jimin quickly looks away, and the moment is broken.
This is a bad idea, says a voice in Yoongi’s head. Yoongi has lost count of how many times the voice has told him that, since this thing with Jimin, whatever it is, began.
He knows it’s probably right. He knows that this probably isn’t going to end well.
He still has no intention of listening.
They’re still lazing on Yoongi’s bed, later that day, when they are discovered.
Jimin is sprawled out beside him, probably more relaxed than Yoongi has ever seen him. Yoongi has one earphone and Jimin has the other, and it’s his turn to choose the music. Yoongi listens to his vocal-heavy indie stuff loyally, even though it isn’t his kind of thing.
It’s probably because of the music that they don’t notice the footsteps on the stairs, not until they hear the soft, “Oh”, and both of them shoot upright. Namjoon is lingering on the top stair, blinking at the two of them.
“Namjoon-ah,” Yoongi says quickly. “This is Jimin.” Yoongi can feel how Jimin has suddenly gone tense beside him. “He’s the friend that I was telling you about.”
Is it Yoongi’s imagination, or does something flicker through Namjoon’s eyes when they slide over to Jimin?
“Hey, Jimin,” Namjoon nods, and if he is thinking something else, he doesn’t vocalise it. “We’re getting takeout, if you two want to join.”
Jimin glances over at Yoongi, who shrugs.
“Sure. Be down in a minute.”
When Namjoon has descended out of earshot, Jimin speaks.
“Are you sure you want them to meet…”
“Yes,” says Yoongi, firmly.
Jimin still looks hesitant, lingering a few paces behind Yoongi as they make their way down to the floor below. Jin and Hobi are sitting on the floor, a board game open between them, and they both shoot Yoongi and Jimin easy smiles. Neither of them look surprised that Yoongi isn’t alone.
Yoongi steels himself in anticipation for the obvious questions – Who is he? Where did you meet? Why is he here?
But they don’t come. Yoongi doesn’t know if it’s tact, and if the others know something that they shouldn’t, but nobody asks. When they sit down, Hobi is raving to Jin about some movie, and he pulls Jimin into the conversation as if they’ve known each other for years. Yoongi sees the spark come back into Jimin’s eyes as he starts to talk, his voice small at first, but gradually becoming loud and confident again.
By the time the food arrives, it doesn’t feel like Jimin is a stranger at all. Yoongi steals glances across at him when he can, and there is a soft tug beneath his ribcage when he sees Jimin laughing at his friends’ jokes. A sigh of relief within him, quelling a fear that he didn’t even know he had.
Yoongi hasn’t breathed a word about Jimin’s idea to anyone so far. He’s barely breathed a word about Jimin at all. But when him and Namjoon are washing the dishes later that night (they drew straws; they lost), he brings it up for the first time.
It doesn’t go as smoothly as he hoped. Yoongi winces at the crash as Namjoon drops the plate he was holding in the sink.
“What the fuck, Yoongi-hyung?”
It’s a hiss, not loud enough for the group on the other side of the room to hear, but still outraged.
“You told me to find someone!”
“Yeah, but not…” Namjoon’s eyes drift over to where Jimin is yawning, resting his head sleepily on his hand. “I thought you’d know better than to ask someone like him.”
“What the fuck do you mean by that?”
“I know where you met him, hyung. Do you think I didn’t see him sleeping out there as well?”
Yoongi blinks. That… is not a thought that ever occurred to him.
Suddenly, he feels very stupid for assuming that he was the only one.
“He’s vulnerable,” Namjoon continues, “And you’re offering him a lot. Do you really think that’s okay?”
“Jimin offered,” says Yoongi, rising on the defence. Namjoon is saying exactly what he’s been saying to Jimin for the last two weeks, but now that he’s suddenly on the receiving end of the speech, he can see what bullshit it is. “Fuck, Namjoon-ah, do you really think I’d take advantage of him?”
Something shifts in Namjoon’s face.
“I… I didn’t… that’s not what I…”
“I made him wait weeks before I agreed. I made him think about it. I made sure he was sure.” Yoongi glances across at Jimin. “I know he’s vulnerable,” he says. “But he’s not a child. He can make his own decisions.”
“Alright,” says Namjoon, taking a step back and holding up his hands. “Alright, I hear you.” He glances back over at Jimin, then back to Yoongi, and looks a little ashamed with himself. “I’m sorry, for suggesting that.”
Yoongi exhales.
“No,” he says. “I understand.”
He understands that it doesn’t sound like an awfully healthy idea at first glance.
But whatever it is, it doesn’t feel wrong.
“One more thing,” says Namjoon.
“What?”
“Does he know how you feel about him?”
Yoongi’s mouth falls open.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“How do you—”
“The way you look at him…”
Namjoon shakes his head. A smile twists his lips as he turns away, cutting Yoongi off before he can get a word in, even if he’d been able to find any.
By the time they finally run out of conversation, it’s well past midnight. Jimin is half-asleep already. He rests his head on Yoongi’s shoulder, making the warmth in Yoongi’s chest glow again. He cards his hands through Jimin’s hair softly, and Jimin doesn’t pull away, but makes a mumbled, sleepy noise that makes Yoongi’s insides melt a little.
“You’re staying the night,” Yoongi tells him, and he just nods in sleepy agreement.
It’s only when they get upstairs that Yoongi realises this might be an issue. Hobi’s bed isn’t available as a spare tonight, like the last time Jimin stayed over. Even tired as he is, Jimin’s eyes shoot open when Yoongi goes to lie down on the floor. He shakes his head, and petulantly folds his arms.
“You’re not sleeping on the floor.”
“Neither are you.”
They stare at each other for a moment, before accepting the only remaining option.
The mattress should be big enough for two. Jimin takes one side and Yoongi keeps to the other.
But their sleeping selves don’t really take their wishes into consideration.
Yoongi wakes with soft hair tickling his nose, and legs tangled up in his own. He doesn’t manage to dislodge himself without waking Jimin up, but Jimin isn’t annoyed. No – Jimin laughs, his eyes crinkling at the edges, his head falling back down onto the pillow, and Yoongi feels as if pure sunshine is washing over him.
He gives Jimin his first tattoo later that day.
He expects another waiting process to begin, after he realises that Jimin now needs to choose a design, but Jimin is one step ahead of him.
“I have an idea,” he says, “Can you draw it for me?”
Yoongi pushes down the nerves that tingle through him. “I can try.”
The design that he wants is fairly. Yoongi sketches the little music note in a few minutes, to Jimin’s enthusiastic nodding.
“That’s it! That’s exactly it.”
“Are you sure? I can draw a few different ones and you can choo—”
“No, that’s the one I want. Can I get it now?”
Yoongi splutters. He’s constantly amazed by how a homeless kid can be such a spoiled brat.
They have to wait until the afternoon, as Namjoon has to supervise him, and he’s busy all morning. Jimin makes a thing out of it, sighing dramatically, complaining that he’s waited weeks already. Jin looks on with amusement. Whipped, he mouths at Yoongi, and Yoongi tears out a page of his sketchbook to crumple up and throw at him.
Jimin turns quiet, however, when it’s finally time. When he asks Yoongi where he’s supposed to sit, Yoongi turns, instinctively, to Namjoon, but Namjoon just shrugs, leaning against the wall.
“It’s your call now, hyung.”
Yoongi takes a deep breath to calm himself. It works, for long enough to get Jimin seated, to settle down on the stool beside him, to set up the equipment. Yoongi has done these processes a thousand times before, pouring out the ink, slotting the fresh needle into place.
Jimin’s wrist feels so incredibly delicate when Yoongi takes it in his hand. Yoongi is pretty sure he’s never been so careful with anything in his life as he presses the violet trace of the design onto his skin.
“Last chance to back out,” he says quietly, meeting Jimin’s eyes.
But Jimin gives Yoongi a smile. Small, and trusting.
“Why would I back out?” he returns, and settles down into the chair.
Perhaps the responsibility should make Yoongi freak out. But instead, all of his nerves suddenly drain away, solid determination replacing them. Jimin trusts him, and so Yoongi will do this right. Letting Jimin down isn’t an option.
Yoongi’s hands are steady as the high-pitched buzz of the tattoo gun fills the studio.
It doesn’t take long, in the end. After a couple of years of only practicing on himself, it’s strange to see the needle leaving a black stain on someone else’s skin, without being able to feel it. Less than ten minutes later, Yoongi is wiping away the last of the excess ink and pressing a film cover onto the finished product.
Jimin twists his wrist under the light, his eyes wide.
“It’s perfect,” he says, voice full of genuine awe. “Thank you, hyung.”
Yoongi shrugs, heat rising to his cheeks at the awe in Jimin’s voice.
He doesn’t expect Jimin to launch forward and literally attack him. He blinks stupidly as he suddenly finds warm arms around him, and Jimin’s chin nestled into his shoulder. He returns the embrace a little clumsily, his brain suddenly having gone fuzzy, his heart beating stupidly fast.
“You’re welcome,” he mumbles into Jimin’s shoulder. “You’re welcome, Jiminie.”
When Yoongi goes to his shift at work later that evening, he’s pretty sure that he’s never burned so many burgers.
It’s only been a day, but it feels like the most natural thing in the world, when he returns that night, to slip into bed beside Jimin, to curl up beside him, to trace the outline of Jimin’s beautiful face with his eyes until his eyelids grow heavy and fall shut.
Jimin wakes first, this time, stretching and yawning and waking Yoongi in the process. Yoongi’s eyes blink open heavily, and the first thing he sees is Jimin, his hair tousled, giving Yoongi a sleepy smile.
“Morning, hyung,” he says.
“Mmmm…”
Yoongi has never been a morning person. He blames it on his sleepy brain, not quite woken up, that he doesn’t even think before leaning over and kissing him.
As soon as their lips connect, Yoongi realises what he’s done, and instantly pulls away.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out, bolting upright.
Fuck. Fuck. He’s just ruined everything, he’s confirmed Jimin’s worst fears about him—
“Fuck, Jimin, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
Before he can get another word out, however, Jimin is stopping him. He’s sitting up in bed beside Yoongi, and then his hand is cupping Yoongi’s face.
And he doesn’t look scared, or angry, or offended.
“You don’t have to apologise,” he says.
And then Jimin is leaning in. Jimin is kissing him.
Jimin is kissing him.
Yoongi’s brain blanks. It’s too much for him to process. Yoongi is so shocked that it takes him a full few seconds to react, to kiss him back, but when he does, he feels Jimin smile into it.
Happiness crashes over Yoongi like a tidal wave, taking all his words away. Jimin likes him too. Jimin wants this too. He can’t even think; he’s so fucking happy. And Jimin looks as happy as he feels, his grin stretching from ear to ear.
They face no comments when they head downstairs hand in hand, but Namjoon can’t quite his smile by ducking behind his coffee cup, and Jin openly beams.
They fall into a new routine. This one involves a lot of lying on Yoongi’s bed, and talking, and kissing between the talking, until they’re out of breath.
Over the following weeks, Yoongi rubs lotion into Jimin’s wrist, making him scowl as he insists that he can do it himself (but Yoongi has quickly figured out that he likes it when Yoongi does it for him). It scabs up in the first week, which bothers Yoongi. He frets that he’s not taking care of it properly, or that he did it wrong. Jimin just shrugs, and accepts it. It’s scary to see how much he trusts Yoongi. Or perhaps he has simply dealt with worse than a scab on his wrist that is gone after the first week, anyway.
Jimin has taken to stalking him at his other work, hanging around the restaurant when Yoongi is on the till, nibbling at the fries that Yoongi slides his way when his manager isn’t looking. Nobody will give Jimin a second glance any more, though. He doesn’t exactly look homeless anymore. His clothes aren’t quite so shabby anymore (because they’re Yoongi’s) and he doesn’t have that wary look in his eye anymore, and he he isn’t quite as skinny as he used to be, to Yoongi’s relief.
One day, while the restaurant is quiet, Yoongi hops over the counter and joins him in the booth where he’s sat. He’s leaning over something, drawing, his brow furrowed with concentration.
Yoongi peers across at it, trying to make out what it is. He can see arms and legs.
“What is it?” he asks.
“A dancer,” says Jimin, not looking up. After a moment, he leans back and pushes it away with a frustrated noise. “I can’t draw. You’ll do it for me, won’t you?”
“Huh?” says Yoongi, then realises what he means. “Another tattoo?”
Jimin nods, adding another experimental line to the sketch. Yoongi leans across to see it properly. It isn’t that bad, considering it’s on a paper tissue.
Yoongi recreates it when he’s back at the studio. Sweeping black limbs rise into the arms that are raised above the dancer’s head. He draws and redraws, until the lines of the dancer’s body are both powerful and graceful. When he shows it to Jimin, he nods. He’s being uncharacteristically quiet, and it’s unnerving Yoongi, but he doesn’t comment on it.
Instead, he asks, “Where?”
Jimin lifts his shirt and points to a spot on his ribcage. “Here.”
“That’s a pretty painful place, Jimin-ah.”
Jimin just shrugs.
Yoongi stares. He wants to ask, but there’s a part of him tells him that this is clearly something personal, and maybe Yoongi shouldn’t pry into it.
And so Yoongi doesn’t ask. Not then.
Because he’s an idiot, he decides to ask when he’s actually giving Jimin the tattoo, a few days later, when the studio is empty and they’re alone.
Yoongi drags the needle slowly across his skin. It must hurt, but Jimin never makes a sound, which is almost worse, in a way, than if he did. Yoongi finishes one leg of the dancer, then the other, then pauses before starting on the torso.
“Can I ask…”
Jimin looks up.
“The music note, the dancer… is there a theme?”
Jimin is quiet for a moment. His hands fold and unfold.
“Dance was the only class I was ever good at in school,” he says eventually.
Yoongi scoffs. “Not the only one, I’m sure.”
But Jimin shakes his head, a wry smile curling his lips. “I’m not exaggerating, hyung. It was the only class I passed when I took my finals.”
“… Oh.”
“My parents weren’t very happy about that.”
Finals. School. Parents.
Yoongi’s mental map of Jimin’s background is rapidly rearranging itself to fit these new pieces of information. He tried to concentrate on what he’s doing, dipping the needle back into the ink.
“No?”
“Nope. They told me to pack my bags and be gone by morning.”
It takes all of Yoongi’s training for his hand not to slip. He pulls straight back, releasing the foot peddle. The buzz of the gun cuts off, leaving a ringing silence upon the studio.
“Well,” Jimin continues, oblivious to Yoongi’s shock, “It was my dad, really. He was never pleased with how I did in school. My mom never cared so much about grades. She used to come to all of my dance performances…”
“Your parents kicked you out.”
Jimin blinks. “Yes?”
“Your parents kicked you out because you failed your exams.” The gun clatters down onto the desk, harder than it should, but Yoongi doesn’t care. “What the fuck, Jimin-ah?”
Jimin sits up, frowning. “What do you mean, what the fuck?”
“That’s… fuck…”
Yoongi can’t even form the words. He can’t remember the last time he was this angry. His blood is boiling. He flashes back to those first weeks that he knew Jimin, when Jimin always looked scared of everything, when he looked like a gust of wind could knock him over. Yoongi thought he didn’t have a family. The way Jimin shut off all conversation about them; he thought they were dead, that something had happened to them.
But no – he has a family, a family who live in a home.
A family who treated Jimin – his Jimin – like shit.
“It was my fault,” Jimin is saying. “I should have studied harder. I was never a good student.”
“That’s such fucking bullshit.” Finally, Yoongi finds his tongue. “I can’t believe they did that to you. Fucking assholes. Who does that to their goddamn kid?”
Yoongi isn’t an idiot; he’s aware of the terrible things that can happen to someone who doesn’t have the security of a home.
Now, however, Jimin’s eyes fill with indignation.
“Don’t insult my family,” he says, his voice turning harsh. “You don’t know anything about it.”
“I think I’ve heard enough to know what kind of people they are.”
Jimin jerks away from him. Before Yoongi knows what’s happening, he’s swinging his legs over the other side of the chair, making to leave.
Yoongi’s heart clenches. Jimin is angry with him. Jimin is leaving…
Yoongi’s eyes fall to the unfinished pattern on his ribs. A lump enters his throat. This is exactly what he feared would happen.
“Let me finish, will you?” He wants to be more tactful, but he’s never been good at finding the right words. “Come on, you can’t leave with it only half-done.”
Jimin stops. For a moment, Yoongi doesn’t think he’s going to comply.
Then, with visible reluctance, he lies back down on the chair.
There’s nothing but cold silence as Yoongi finishes the tattoo. He takes a deep breath, and wills it to cool his emotions for long enough that he can complete the design, concentrating on nothing but the pattern of lines that he needs to fill in.
It doesn’t feel like he’s making art. The sound of the gun grates like a wasp’s buzz, and the lump in Yoongi’s throat is only growing.
As soon as he’s finished applying the saran wrap, Jimin is off the chair.
“I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.”
He doesn’t wait for Yoongi to point out that it’s barely eight, and they haven’t even eaten yet. He’s gone, and Yoongi’s head is in his hands, wondering how it went wrong so quickly.
Yoongi stays up late that night, later than he has in a long time. When he eventually goes upstairs, Jimin is curled into a defensive ball on his side of the bed. Yoongi feels like shit. He feels like shit as he goes to sleep, and he feels like shit when he wakes. They don’t wake tangled together for once. Even unconscious, Jimin’s stubbornness prevails.
When Yoongi glances over at him, his eyes are instantly drawn to the fresh ink staining his skin, and awful guilt winds through him.
This was bound to happen. They never should have played with something so permanent.
No – Yoongi shouldn’t have. Yoongi should have known better.
He pushes himself out of bed, unable to stand being there any longer. When he glances at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he realises that the amber colour has long faded from his hair. It’s washed away to a stringy, bleached white, his roots dark and uneven.
Almost unconsciously, Yoongi reaches into the cupboard above the sink, and rifles through the half-finished bottles of products before he finds what he needs, then turns on the tap and settles into the routine. The hum of the tap is comfortingly familiar, and Yoongi breathes out some of the tension in his body as he tips the powder into a bowl and starts mixing.
He hears footsteps in the attic a while later, when he’s bend over the sink, washing the bleach out of his hair. When he straightens up, he sees Jimin’s reflection staring at him from the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
His morning voice is soft and scratchy. Yoongi lifts the bottle for him to see.
“Want to help?” Yoongi asks, fully expecting a refusal.
But after a moment, Jimin nods, and steps into the bathroom.
“Tell me what to do?”
Yoongi pauses. It’s a request, not a demand. Jimin’s voice quiet and a little uncertain.
Yoongi knows an olive branch when he sees one.
“Okay,” he says, and gathers up what he needs.
They sit cross-legged on the wooden planks of the attic, Jimin holding the hair dryer for him while Yoongi mixes the dyes. It’s a pastel blue colour, this time, that’s been sitting on his shelf for a month or two.
When they go back into the sink, Yoongi hands Jimin the pot of dye. Jimin’s fingers are gentle as they massage the blue into Yoongi’s hair, carefully spreading the colour from root to tip. Glancing in the mirror, Yoongi sees the concentration on Jimin’s face, his eyes not leaving Yoongi for a minute.
“I think we’re done,” he says eventually, when the dye is almost gone.
Jimin, who has probably done a better job than Yoongi could have done, nods, and strips off the gloves.
“I like the colour,” says Jimin, as they sit back down on the bed, waiting for the dye to dry.
“I’m glad you approve,” says Yoongi. It’s barely even sarcastic. Not for the first time, he wonders what Park Jimin has done to him. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have gotten angry. I just…”
I hated the thought of anyone treating you like that. I hated how you just seemed to accept it.
“I understand that you didn’t like me disrespecting your family,” he says, with a lot of self restraint.
Yoongi can’t imagine what it might be like to have a family like that. He probably doesn’t visit home as much as he should, but he still calls every week. When he was painting the bleach into his hair, he thought about how much he might miss those conversations, if he didn’t have them, and he thinks he can understand why Jimin got so defensive.
It must hurt. Maybe more than Yoongi can imagine.
“It just made me angry,” says Yoongi, “That anyone would think badly of you. That anyone would do something so shitty to you.”
“My family isn’t shitty…”
“But what they did was,” says Yoongi. “Come on, Jiminie-ah. If it was me, you’d say exactly the same thing. They left you on the street. Anything could have happened to you out there…”
“I don’t need you to give me a lecture on how much it sucks to be homeless,” says Jimin flatly.
Yoongi concedes, knowing that he’s right. Jimin hasn’t spoken about it much, but occasionally something will slip out. He’ll mention the first time I got my stuff stolen or the first time I almost got beat and Yoongi will lose hours of sleep as his brain flickers through horror-movie scenarios of what might have happened if Jimin hadn’t run fast enough, how he might have never even met him.
He’s terrifyingly protective over this boy.
“How can you not be angry?” Yoongi can’t help but ask.
Jimin pauses. “I was. A little… But it was my fault. I should have been a better student… a better son.” He shakes his head. “I don’t blame them for not wanting me around anymore.” And then he glances at Yoongi. “I don’t even know why you want me around, to be honest. I’m just… I’m just not much of anything.”
Yoongi physically feels his heart crack in two. Without thinking, he reaches across, grabbing Jimin’s hands, squeezing them tightly. Jimin blinks, startled.
“Jimin – that’s so untrue. You’re so many things, Jiminie-ah.”
Jimin is looking doubtful. Yoongi tries to summon all his words.
“You’re funny. You’re a good friend. You’re so many things, Park Jimin.”
You’re magnetic, Yoongi thinks. You draw every eye in the room. You’re like the brightest star in the sky.
“You’re going to do such great things,” he says. “I just know you are. One day, when you leave—”
Jimin whips his hand away like he’s been burned.
“When I…”
Fuck. The one time Yoongi tries to be eloquent, and he fucks it up.
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“You want me to leave.”
“No! Of course I don’t want you to leave. Ahh, fuck, I’m not good at this…”
Jimin is staring at him uncertainly. Yoongi shakes his head, tries to clear his thoughts.
“I don’t want you to leave, okay? That’s the last thing I want. But… look. You’re gonna want to leave, sooner or later.” The lump in his throat is back, trying to stifle the words, Yoongi swallows, and forces them out, because they need to be said. It needs to be acknowledged. “You’re going to move on to other things. Better things. You’re going to find something better than this…” find someone better than me “… and you’re probably going to regret that all of this ever happened.”
His lips twist, bitterly. He becomes aware that his fingers are brushing the skin of Jimin’s wrist, the musical note that’s almost healed. He pulls away. Jimin isn’t his to touch. He never should have been, and he probably won’t be for much longer.
“And you’re probably going to hate me,” he adds in a whisper, for taking advantage of you when you were vulnerable.
“Min Yoongi, that is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard.”
Jimin looks… affronted?
“How could I ever hate you? You’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever met.”
He might as well have punched Yoongi in the head, with what those words do to him.
Yoongi tries to reason with himself, to fight down the surge of emotion those words bring. He tries to remind himself that Jimin is a nineteen-year-old with a crush.
But Jimin is persistent, sitting up straighter and looking him right in the eye.
“You’re wonderful, Yoongi-hyung,” he says loud and clear. “Hey, listen to me. I mean it. You’re sweet and you’re kind and you’re so selfless. You don’t let it show, but you are.” His eyes are so honest. Yoongi wants to pull away, but Jimin’s earnestness is pulling him in. “You never assumed the worst about me, when you could have. You put your dream on the line to help me. You’ve done so much for me, and you didn’t have to do any of it.”
Yoongi opens his mouth to argue, but Jimin cuts him off.
“And don’t you dare try to brush it off, because if you do that, you’re saying that none of it mattered. That saving my life didn’t matter.”
Yoongi has no other option but to shut his mouth.
“You’re wonderful,” Jimin says again, making Yoongi’s heart actually fucking flutter. “I don’t deserve you. But if for some reason you want me… well, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
There are so, so many things that Yoongi wants to say to him.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” is the only thing that his brain will provide. Because it’s true. Jimin is the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on, in every way. He’s the once piece of art that Yoongi knows he will never grow tired of looking at.
They kiss then, and the last of the tension in Yoongi unwinds, like a soft sigh. Jimin wants him. Jimin isn’t going to leave him.
And Yoongi knows he would be happy doing nothing but this, for the rest of his life. Doing nothing but kissing Jimin, memorising the press of his lips under Yoongi’s, and learning the folds of his body.
“I think we need to wash the dye out now,” says Jimin when they break apart, and Yoongi laughs, and everything is right with the world.
Yoongi barely smokes at all anymore. Strangely, he doesn’t miss it, which is not how addiction is supposed to work. He still feels the chemical pull, but it’s so weak, so hollow. He’s filled up with something else, something warm and whole and wonderful, the strongest rush he’s ever felt.
His art is evolving. His style has always been classic, restrictive, bold black lines with occasional, meaningful touches of colour. But his latest designs are different. They’re a little softer, more gentle on the eye. More subtle. Yoongi finds himself putting more care and detail into them that ever, forgetting his old conviction that less is more, and tracing fine, intricate patterns.
Jimin’s fingers trace the drawings that are pinned to the sloping rafter above their bed. They linger for a long time on one particular design.
“They’re so beautiful,” says Jimin, and turns to Yoongi. “What’s inspiring you?”
“You,” says Yoongi, without a moment’s hesitation.
“Where did you used to sleep?” Yoongi asks one night, keeping his voice low. Hobi is asleep on the other side of the room.
Jimin shifts to face him.
“Shelters,” he replies, “If there was space. Mostly doorways or benches if there wasn’t.”
Yoongi’s chest aches. He can’t imagine what it might be like, being cold and scared and hungry all the time. Jimin isn’t so scarily skinny any more. Yoongi remembers the first time they drifted together in the night and he realised he could count Jimin’s ribs beneath his shirt.
He has a feeling that there’s a lot Jimin isn’t telling him. He has a feeling that it will come out, in its own time. Yoongi doesn’t mind. It’s not like he doesn’t have baggage of his own.
“My biggest regret is that I didn’t help you sooner.”
Jimin gazes at him with a strange, strange look in his eyes. He reaches out, gently, and brushes the blue hair out of Yoongi’s eyes.
Yoongi thinks he is going to say something important, but after a moment, he only says, “Cuddle?”
Jimin likes cuddling. Jimin likes being the big spoon, even though they’ve determined (after recruiting Namjoon, Jin, Hobi and three customers in the studio, and holding an official vote) that Yoongi is taller.
But Yoongi isn’t really capable of denying Jimin anything anymore. He shifts onto his side, letting Jimin curl up against him. Yoongi would never admit it, doesn’t know how he would even try to find the words to express it, but he feels different, somehow, to how he did before. As if the pieces of him have shifted, as if he is made up of more than he used to be. He used to be Min Yoongi, but now, now he feels one half of something else. It’s only with the soft weight of Jimin pressed against him, with Jimin’s arm draped over his shoulder, with Jimin’s fingers clasped loosely through his, that Yoongi feels whole.
(And Yoongi has lost all the old arguments he used to have with Jin, about whether love really exists. Even if he would never admit it.)
It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It’s probably surprising that it didn’t happen sooner. They’ve been sleeping together every night, spending almost every day together, making out regularly for weeks.
It’s not the first time that Yoongi wakes up hard when he’s sleeping with Jimin, but it’s the first time that Jimin reacts to it. They’re lying together in bed, Yoongi is just drifting awake, when he hears a stifled laugh, a soft “Oh” from above him, and he realises.
“Aish,” he curses, sitting up and moving to detach himself, his cheeks a little red, “Sorry.”
But Jimin stops him. He sits up too, making the bed creak, and then all of a sudden he’s straddling Yoongi. The press of his thighs either side of Yoongi’s, his ruffled morning hair, the way that Yoongi’s shirt is slipping off his shoulder… it’s not helping with the situation in Yoongi’s underwear. He’s so attractive that it hurts.
“You don’t have to go,” says Jimin. “I mean, I can… if you want to…”
He bites his lip, glances down.
Oh fuck.
Yoongi chokes on air.
“You—” Yoongi tries to think clearly, tries to use his brain even though his dick really likes what Jimin is implying, “You don’t have to—”
“I know,” Jimin interrupts him. “I know, hyung. I want to.”
That breaks the floodgate. Yoongi launches forwards and kisses him hard. His hand slides into Jimin’s hair; his tongue sears. And Jimin’s hands are on him too, moving quickly from his cheeks to his waist, panting into Yoongi’s lips. Yoongi’s breathing becomes rougher as Jimin’s hands go further down, pushing down his underwear. Jimin kisses him insistently as his hand closes around Yoongi’s cock, tugging at the thread of his arousal, dragging a moan from him so loud that he should probably be embarrassed, but he can’t bring himself to care.
He finds himself hissing, his fingers curling around the blanket, curling in Jimin’s hair, as Jimin’s hand works up and down his length. He doesn’t know how it feels so much better than his own, maybe just because it’s Jimin. And Park Jimin does ridiculous things to him. Things that don’t make any sense, things that Yoongi has long since stopped questioning.
The little tease knows what he’s doing to Yoongi, because a sly smile spreads across his face.
“Do you like that, hyung?” he murmurs in Yoongi’s ear. “What about if I do this…?”
With those dancer reflexes, he disappears below the sheets. Yoongi only has a split second to realise what he’s doing before his cock is surrounded by wet heat, bringing a stream of curses from his lips. When Jimin pulls off, and comes back up, his lips are wet and flushed and grinning.
“Not very polite, hyung,” he taunts.
And then he ducks back down again, and Yoongi loses control of all his profanity filter.
Jimin’s four weeks have long since expired, but nobody has acknowledged it. It’s strange to think that he was ever supposed to leave at all. It’s become so natural to see him laughing at Hobi’s jokes in the morning; running to the store for Namjoon when he’s too busy to go himself; helping Jin cooking in the evenings.
The next design that he asks for doesn’t come as a surprise to Yoongi. He’s seen Jimin’s eyes lingering on it enough times. But it does makes something swell in Yoongi that Jimin picked one of his designs, this time.
“Back of my neck,” he says, handing Yoongi the paper.
“Are you sure?” Yoongi asks, like he always does, and like always, Jimin nods.
Yoongi is especially careful, this time. The design is fine-lined and intricate. Yoongi has drawn butterflies in the past, in his old style, but this one is different. It’s more detailed, more realistic. The wings aren’t quite symmetrical, but he finds that it doesn’t bother him anymore. It’s beautiful in a way that his old butterflies were not.
“I used to see butterflies sometimes back home,” says Jimin, resting his chin on his folded hands as he lies on his front.
“Some of them only live for a day,” says Yoongi, the fact rising to his mind. He read that on some website, when he was searching for a reference picture. “They really don’t last for very long.”
“They’re so beautiful, though,” Jimin sighs.
“Yes,” Yoongi agrees. “So beautiful.”
It takes a long time, many pauses to wipe away the excess ink, many times where he forces himself not to rush into starting another line, to sit back, to take his time, to be careful. He realises that this is exactly what this practice was for. Yoongi has given himself a lot of half-botched tattoos in the past, hidden away on his thighs where no-one can see, and he doesn’t really care that some of them don’t look too great.
Yoongi always been reckless with himself, but Jimin – Jimin is different. Jimin is something precious, something that Yoongi has to be careful with. Tattooing Jimin is like chiselling glass. He’s taught Yoongi to be sensitive in entirely new ways.
When he’s finally done, the studio is well past closing hours, and they’re alone once again.
Yoongi sits back, exhausted, and then reaches across for a mirror to show him.
The way Jimin’s eyes shine when he sees it makes all the work worthwhile.
Jimin says nothing. He simply leans forward, closing the distance between them in a way that now seems as natural to Yoongi as drawing breath, and presses his lips to Yoongi's.
It starts gentle, but Jimin doesn’t pull away after a moment. No: he kisses Yoongi deeper, and Yoongi’s tongue slides into Jimin’s mouth. His hand trails the familiar curve of Jimin’s body, and suddenly, all of his tiredness gone.
Before long, Jimin’s mouth is hot and needy again his. A whine escapes his lips, and Yoongi feels him shifting, pulling Yoongi down, pulling their bodies together. His legs closing around Yoongi’s waist, sending a rush of arousal through Yoongi, so strong that he groans.
But he breaks away, even though his body screams at him in complaint.
“No,” Jimin pants, trying to pull him back. “Need you…”
The words do insane things to Yoongi. He wants to shove Jimin down onto the table and fuck him senseless. But he uses the last remaining bit of sense in him to shake his head.
“If we fuck in the studio, Namjoon will murder me.”
Jimin whines again, so pitifully that Yoongi laughs.
“Hobi is out tonight, though,” he grins.
“Then what the fuck are we waiting for?”
Yoongi laughs louder as Jimin grab him and pulls him towards the stairs.
When they’re in the attic, Jimin shoves at his clothes, clumsily, messily, as they stumble towards the bed.
“Need you too,” Yoongi pants, “Need you so much, fuck…”
Yoongi drags Jimin’s shirt over his head and his lips find the sensitive skin between Jimin’s neck and collarbone while his hands work open his pants. Jimin lets out another whine, high and needy, sending another rush of blood straight to Yoongi’s cock. He throws Jimin’s pants half way across the room when he finally manages to get them off, and then Jimin is sucking in a sharp breath as Yoongi drags his hand down the length of Jimin’s cock. Little breathless noises fall from Jimin’s lips as Yoongi builds up a rhythm, and he presses his lips to Jimin’s once again, stealing his moans, tasting them.
“I love you,” Yoongi breathes, “So fucking much.”
“Please, hyung,” Jimin gasps, his eyes squeezed shut, “Please, please, please…”
Yoongi gives him what he needs. Jimin clings to him, muffling his cries into Yoongi’s shoulder, as Yoongi pulls him through it, until Jimin has gone weak in his arms. And Yoongi is still touching him, still worshipping him, still stroking his cheeks and pressing kisses to his neck and murmuring praises into his skin, showering him with all the love he deserves and has never had.
In hindsight, Yoongi should have known that it would all fall apart. He is a pessimist by nature, and he should have known that everything had gone so right, so far. Too right. He should have known that he had taken more than his fair share of good from the world, and that the world would was due to right itself.
But when it happens, it is so quick, and so cruel, that it leaves Yoongi stunned.
About a week after the butterfly, Jimin leaves the studio in the morning.
“There’s just something I need to take care of,” he says at the door. “I’ll be back tonight.”
Yoongi doesn’t question it. It’s not like he owns Jimin; he can go wherever he likes, and he doesn’t spend every waking hour at Yoongi’s side. If he needs to do something, then Yoongi trusts him to get it done.
It feels so natural when he kisses Yoongi goodbye, a brief touch of their lips and a little smile, before heading off down the alleyway.
Except Jimin doesn’t come back tonight.
Yoongi has a long day, a full shift at work, and he falls asleep as soon as he gets back and crashes onto their bed, even though it’s barely evening. Namjoon promises to let Jimin in when he arrives.
But when Yoongi wakes, Jimin’s side of the bed is still cold, and his chest is suddenly tight. Something is wrong.
“Jimin left again?” he asks Jin when he goes downstairs to make coffee.
Jin looks up. Frowns. “No? I mean, I didn’t see him go. I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning.”
Yoongi’s heart skips several beats.
“You mean you didn’t see him come back yesterday?”
Jin shakes his head.
Yoongi turns away. Bites down on his nails. Stirs his coffee, but his stomach is churning too hard to even think about drinking it.
“Yoongi-ah… I’m sure he’s fine.”
Yoongi doesn’t reply.
“Can you text him?”
“He doesn’t have a phone.”
It’s one of the things they’ve been meaning to do, get Jimin a phone. (“I had one when I left home,” he’d told Yoongi, “But it got stolen like a week later.” His eyes had smiles ruefully. “I wasn’t very good at being homeless, to begin with.” And Yoongi had smiled too, because that was all in the past now, wasn’t it?) Fuck, they were going to do it yesterday, but his boss had been complaining that he wasn’t picking up as many shifts as he used to, and made him work a full day.
He wishes he’d told his boss to fuck the job, and gone with Jimin.
“I’m sure he’s okay,” Jin says again, his voice incredibly gentle, like Yoongi is some kind of frightened animal. “He’s a smart kid. He can take care of himself.”
Yoongi just nods.
And then Yoongi waits.
And waits and waits and waits. He tries to distract himself, but he can’t. The hours trickle by, morning turns into afternoon, afternoon turns into evening. Yoongi paces holes into the floorboards, waiting for Jimin to come back.
Jimin does not come back.
By the time Jimin has been gone for forty-eight hours, Yoongi is a mess.
He’s supposed to have a shift at the restaurant, but he has no intention of going. Namjoon pulls him aside anyway when he makes his way downstairs.
“You’re not working like this,” he says flatly.
Then his face softens, and he pulls Yoongi into a tight hug. Yoongi is so numb that he barely feels it.
“We’ll find him,” Namjoon promises quietly. “He can’t have gone far. We’ll bring him home.”
“He doesn’t have one.”
“Yes he does. He’s yours. He’s ours. We’ll find him.”
First, they made calls. Namjoon does most of the talking. They ring up every hospital in the city, give his name, describe him over and over again. But Park Jimin hasn’t been admitted into any of them.
Next, they put their jackets on (because it’s cold; is Jimin out in this cold?) and go around the shelters in the city. It takes two whole days, and a lot of travelling through shitty parts of town, and Yoongi distantly knows it’s bad that he doesn’t give a single shit about the dangers. Curious eyes follow them when they ask about Jimin. There are a few people who know who he is, but nobody has seen him in months.
“I thought he found a better place,” says one woman.
Yoongi feels sick.
“Don’t give up, okay?” says Namjoon, when they return to the apartment. “He could be fine, right? It could be something… you know, something completely harmless…”
But he trails off. Yoongi sees him reaching for comforting words, and sees him failing to find any. There aren’t any.
This is Jimin’s good place. They are.
Yoongi is.
Jimin doesn’t have any good alternatives.
After a whole week of radio silence, Yoongi finally breaks.
It’s a sock, a fucking sock, that breaks him. He finds it in his bed, remembers the way Jimin slipped it off one night as he curled up against Yoongi, and he crumples like a paper doll. Hobi comes charging up the stairs when he hears Yoongi’s literal howl.
“He’s dead,” he sobs into Hobi’s shoulder. “He’s dead and it’s all my fault.”
Hobi is usually good at soothing; he knows how to say the right thing at the right time, in a way that Yoongi never has. But Yoongi doesn’t even hear his words, because he knows the truth, what all of them have been thinking but none of them have been saying.
There isn’t any reason that Jimin would leave of his own choice. Not when they’ve been so fucking happy.
Jimin is gone. The city has swallowed him up, like it does to so many people who are living on the fringes, people who don’t leave traces.
Jimin is gone, and a gaping hole is being torn in Yoongi’s chest. Someone is taking an axe to his heart and bludgeoning it, over and over and over again. Yoongi buries his face in Hobi’s shoulder and cries, cries until it feels like he has cried out all his insides, and then cries again, cries so fucking much, because nothing will ever be able to fix this.
Yoongi does not emerge from the attic again until November.
Eventually, one morning, he finds himself staring at the rafters of the attic above him. He feels like a very different person to who he was, when he gets back up.
The conversation halts when he comes down the stairs. Namjoon’s voice falters, a very loud silence settling upon the studio.
But then, it continues. Hobi prods Namjoon, and he clears his throat and picks back up on whatever he was saying, and no comments are made, except for Jin asking Yoongi if he wants a drink, like he’s just come back from a trip to the store, not like he’s been isolating himself for weeks.
Yoongi nods, and takes a seat at the back of the studio. He drinks in the familiar sounds: the muffled noise of traffic from outside, the blare of a siren from somewhere in the city, the low chatter of voices. He takes a sip of his coffee, and wonders how he’s ever supposed to feel human again.
Jimin is gone, and yet Jimin is everywhere. He’s in the bathroom, chattering at Yoongi from the toilet seat while Yoongi is in the shower. He’s in the studio, moving like a ghost in the corner of Yoongi’s eye while Yoongi tries to focus. Yoongi has stopped taking out the trash, because he can’t help but look for a huddle on the other side of the dumpster, and every time there isn’t one, it feels like he’s been punched in the throat.
The whole apartment is full of snapshots of Jimin, that jump out at Yoongi wherever he turns. His jokes, his stories, his beautiful lilting voice, ringing in Yoongi’s ears.
More than anything, he’s in Yoongi’s bed. Sometimes Yoongi thinks he feels hair tickling his nose when he’s drifting awake, soft skin against his, weight on the other side of the bed. Sometimes he thinks he catches that faint, light smell, the scent of Jimin’s bare skin, and it feels like he’s being gutted all over again.
The first tattoo he does for someone who isn’t Jimin is for a girl. She has long blonde hair and sharp makeup and no interest in conversation, and is different from Jimin in every single way. The design she wants is one that he never would have chosen. Words with vines surrounding them.
Yoongi still has to shrug off the sense of de ja vu when he sits down in the chair again, and gets to work.
Despite Namjoon’s intense look of concern, it doesn’t turn out catastrophically. In fact, it goes so fine that even Yoongi is surprised. Although maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s a skill, after all, one that he’s spent years honing. His hands know what to do, even if his heart isn’t in it (even if he doesn’t know if he has a heart to be in it, anymore).
Three more customers later, he gets the couple. Initially, he thinks about refusing. He doesn’t believe in couple tattoos; he never has. But in the end, he really just doesn’t have the energy to care.
He can admit that their design is tasteful. A matching pair of birds on opposite shoulders: a ‘J’ and a ‘T’. For all that their design is subtle, though, the couple themselves are sickeningly sweet. They’re young, probably barely out of school. First loves. The older one goes first, and his boyfriend loyally holds his hand from the other side of the chair, murmuring low, comforting words that Yoongi doesn’t listen to, so they can’t make his chest hurt.
They beam when their designs are finally done, and Yoongi even manages to force a smile onto his face as he sees them out.
“Are you okay?” asks Namjoon, when they’ve paid and gone.
Yoongi nods.
“Good,” says Namjoon, and gives him a small smile, “You’re doing really well, hyung.”
Yoongi just nods again. Somewhere, buried deep beneath all his hurt, pride flickers inside of him. He realises that he’s got what he wanted: he’s a real artist, he’s making a living, he’s making people happy. Maybe one day, it will bring him the happiness he thought it would, too.
The next day, Yoongi opens his sketchpad for the first time in months. It’s almost full. A few more pages and he’ll have to start afresh.
He brushes through the designs – some of them so juvenile he can’t believe he ever made them – and sees his art evolving. When he reaches the final dozen or so pages, he pauses. His fingers trace the patterns. Anyone can see the difference in these ones. They’re the best things he’s ever drawn, a cut above everything else in the book, so detailed and so intricate.
When he reaches the very last page of designs, a lump enters his throat. His fingers touch the page, brushing the intricate wings.
A fine needle.
Skin under his hands. Heavy, shuddering breaths.
Please, hyung…
He turns the page too roughly, skipping back several pages.
And then Yoongi halts. He stares down at the sketch that he has landed on.
He’d forgotten about this.
A head and a pair of shoulders. A hoodie.
Unfinished. No face.
Yoongi is trembling as he reaches for his pencil.
He draws him from memory alone. He recalls the curve of every eyelash. Every crease in his skin. The curve of his jaw and the soft swell of his lips. He draws and draws, shading and erasing and fixing, until finally, his pencil comes to a stop.
Jimin smiles up at him. Yoongi stares. For all this time, his mind has been filled with images of Jimin hurting, Jimin lost, Jimin in pain. He’d forgotten about that smile, the smile that made him fall in love. He thinks back to all their conversations, all the time they spent together. He remembers Jimin running his hands through Yoongi’s hair, spreading dye through them with such care. He remembers the feeling of Jimin stroking his hand so gently.
Yoongi closes his sketchbook, and lets out a breath that he has been holding for a long, long time.
Yoongi lost his job at the burger place when he stopped showing up for work, but he doesn’t really need it anymore. He’s making enough here.
When he wakes that morning, he feels lighter than he has in months. He only needed two coffees to get out of bed. He’s on his second session with a girl. She wants an elaborate lion, and it suits her. She tells him about her college course (theatre and design) as he carefully applies the yellow ink to her shoulder.
She has just left when there’s a knock on the back door. Yoongi doesn’t think too much of it. Sometimes the neighbours like to complain about where they leave their trash, or about playing music too late.
Yoongi opens the door—
And all of the breath leaves his lungs.
He stumbles back.
I’m hallucinating, he thinks. He’s seeing things, even so long after, when he thought he was just finally starting to get better.
The hallucination looks so much like Jimin that it’s unfair. Even after all these months, how does Yoongi’s brain really remember him in so much detail, to recreate him like this? To imagine the hairs falling into his eyes, overgrown? To imagine the wideness of his eyes, his lips parted as he stares at Yoongi? Has his mind conjured the detail of that bruise on his cheek, the way his skin is grazed?
“Hyung?”
That’s—
That’s Jimin’s voice. That’s Jimin’s voice, high and light, full of choked emotion.
That’s Jimin.
Yoongi surges forwards and grabs him, and it’s only when Jimin is in his arms again that it hits him: this is real. Jimin is alive.
Yoongi’s face is buried in Jimin’s neck, his arms wrapped around him. Distantly, he can hear raised voices, voices full of alarm, and he feels the wetness prickling his eyes, but he doesn’t care about anything else but the boy in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” Jimin is gasping, and Yoongi can hear that he’s crying too. His voice almost makes Yoongi’s knees give out. He never thought he’d hear that voice again. “I’m so sorry, Yoongi-hyung. I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry…”
It’s too much. Everything is a blur of chaos around him. There are exclamations, and apologies – why is Jimin apologising? – and the ground is trembling beneath him, or maybe that’s Yoongi, trembling with shock. Yoongi doesn’t understand, doesn’t know how this can be real. All he knows is that he’s holding onto Jimin so fucking tightly, and he will never let him go again.
Later, they find themselves in the attic, sitting on Yoongi’s bed. It feels so much like the dreams that have plagued Yoongi, the dreams in which Jimin is back for a moment, only to be snatched away again, that he clutches Jimin’s hand, to make sure he doesn’t leave again.
Jimin sits cross-legged. His eyes run over everything in the room – the rafters, the floorboards, the bed, the walls, everything.
And then, finally, his eyes turn to Yoongi. They’re full of some complicated conflict that Yoongi can’t decipher. He feels exhausted, emotionally, and they haven’t even started talking yet.
“I’m sorry,” Jimin says yet again.
Yoongi opens his mouth, to say that it’s alright, but he stops.
It really isn’t, he realises. It isn’t alright.
When he says nothing, Jimin bites his lip, looks down, before starting to explain.
“You… you have to know that I didn’t mean to just leave like that.”
“Then why did you?” says Yoongi, before he can stop himself. His voice comes out cracked.
Jimin still isn’t looking at him. Yoongi sees him take a few deep breaths before beginning.
“The morning I left,” he says eventually, “I went to pick something up.”
“Pick something up…?”
Yoongi’s throat tightens.
Jimin never told him much about his time on the streets…
“No,” Jimin says quickly, “I don’t mean like that. It wasn’t – it wasn’t drugs or anything like that, I swear, hyung. It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it?”
“I had a locker. In the city. I put some of my things from home in there when I came here from Busan. I swear, hyung, I only meant to fetch some things and come back here. But when I was on my way into the city… someone saw me.”
Yoongi has spent months dreading the someone who might have been responsible for taking Jimin away from him. His stomach is churning. Suddenly, his eyes are drawn to the graze on Jimin’s cheek.
“Who saw you?”
“My uncle. I used to come and stay with him sometimes when I was younger. He lives in Seoul. I came here when my parents kicked me out because I didn’t want to go to a city that I didn’t know at all. I was never that close to him, but… he saw me, he grabbed me. He said my parents were worried. He said they wanted to know I was okay… my mom…”
Yoongi’s brain is whirring as he tries to picture it.
Jimin drops his head to his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice muffled, pained. “It’s so dumb. I… I went with him. I let him drive me back h-home.”
“You went home?”
“I wanted to tell you where I was, that I was okay, but I. I didn’t know your phone number. I never needed it. It’s so fucking dumb… and they didn’t trust me to leave so soon after I’d come back. I didn’t know what to do.”
They.
“Your parents,” says Yoongi. “You went back to your parents?”
The parents who kicked him out. Who made him think he was nothing.
Jimin wipes his eyes with his sleeve.
“Yeah. They… they seemed really happy, at first. Th-they said they didn’t mean it. When they told me to leave. And it was okay. For a while. But then…”
“But then?”
“My father saw the tattoos,” says Jimin in a very small voice. “He, uh. He didn’t like them much. And when they found out where I’d been staying… they didn’t like that very much either.” Jimin’s eyes drop. “They’re still ashamed of me. We had a fight this morning. I left and got the first train back to Seoul.”
Jimin scrubs at his eyes, harder than before.
“He didn’t want me. They didn’t want me. And I thought about what you said – how you… how you said you l-loved me.” He glances up at Yoongi through his eyelashes, as if checking to see if that love is still there. “I realised I had a better place to be.” A pause. “If you still want me.”
“Jimin,” says Yoongi.
He wants to say that yes, of course I want you, I’ll want you until the stars fall out of the sky. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.
But it’s not that simple. It can’t be that simple. Yoongi’s head is still reeling. He holds his head in his hands as he tries to calm his thoughts, his emotions, to get them into some kind of order.
When he finally speaks, his voice is hoarse, and he feels as if he’s run a marathon, he’s so exhausted.
“When you left,” says Yoongi, slowly and carefully, “I wasn’t okay.”
Jimin blinks.
“You weren’t okay?” he echoes.
Yoongi shakes his head.
“I thought you were dead,” he admits.
“You thought I was…”
“What was I supposed to think, Jiminie? You were homeless. And you just… you just disappeared.”
Jimin’s eyes are round with horror, like a child realising the insect they’ve stepped on had been a living thing.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean to… I didn’t mean to do that to you…”
“You just disappeared,” Yoongi’s voice cracks. “You just disappeared, Jimin. I thought someone had taken you… and done awful things to you…” He wipes at his eyes roughly. “I was… pretty bad. For a long time.”
“I’m sorry,” says Jimin, his cheeks wet again now. “I’m sorry. I thought about you… every day. I wanted to come back. But… my family… and being back in my family home… I never thought I’d have it again. And I thought…”
He trails off, his eyes slipping away from Yoongi.
“You thought what?”
“I thought you might be better off without me.”
Yoongi’s fist clenches at his side.
“Jimin,” he says, “Jimin.”
Part of him wants to scream. He wants to demand to know what ever gave Jimin the impression that Yoongi would be better off if he were gone.
But he knows. He knows it’s not something he said, or something he did. He knows Jimin has issues, that Jimin doesn’t see himself like Yoongi sees him.
And he knows that Jimin can be careless. He’s known that for a long time. Like when he threw his takeout container at Hobi without checking it was empty first. Like when he left the tap running that one time, and it almost flooded the attic.
He knew that Jimin can be careless, just like Yoongi can be tactless.
Suddenly, it feels as if a weight has been lifted from his chest. It’s not something new.
Isn’t it something they can learn from? Grow from? Or at least try?
“I love you,” says Jimin again, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “And I’m sorry.”
“I know,” says Yoongi. “And I forgive you. But… it has to be different this time, Jimin-ah. We have to do it properly, this time, if we’re going to try again.”
Jimin nods, vigorously.
“We do.”
And then a small smile breaks through Jimin’s teary face.
“I bet you’ll love that, hyung. Because you love doing things conventionally, right?”
The look on Yoongi’s face must say it all, because Jimin laughs aloud. Yoongi’s heart almost stops at the sound.
He’s right, though: absolutely nothing has been conventional about their relationship, from the moment they met. He can understand why people like Jimin’s parents must have hated it.
“I’ll try,” he says. “For you.”
Jimin’s smile stretches from ear to ear.
“Does this mean we’re going to go on actual dates?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of communicating like a normal couple… I don’t know. What kind of dates do you want to go on?”
“Will you take me to the movies?”
“Depends on what you want to see. If your taste in movies is as bad as your taste in music, you can go by yourself.”
“How am I supposed to do that? I’m homeless.”
Jimin grins, then it falls a little. Yoongi realises he needs to clear something up.
“You’re not homeless, Jimin-ah. You have a home here, for as long as you want it. Whether this – you and me – works out, or not. This is your home, okay?”
Jimin blinks, once, twice, and Yoongi can see that he doesn’t understand.
“Do you think I was the only that was cut up when you left? You’re their brother too, Jiminie.” And now, Yoongi sees the realisation seep in. His family might have rejected him – again – but he has another one, right here. If he wants it. Oh. “As soon as you go down those stairs, Hobi is going to hug you for, like, a week.”
Jimin’s eyebrows go up. “Is that going to make you jealous?”
“You know damn well it is.”
Jimin laughs again, and then his expression sobers, although the smile lingers on the corners of his mouth.
“We can do this, hyung,” he says, and there is that earnestness that Yoongi missed, that radiant energy. “I know we can. I’ll do better this time. I promise.”
“So will I,” Yoongi says in return, because he knows that Jimin is not the only one to blame. There were things that he could have done, things he could have made more clear, that could have prevented this whole mess.
But he believes the same as Jimin: they can do better. They can make it. He knows they can, in his soul, like he knows that the sun will rise.