Chapter Text

It was an awful fight. He never had one as terrible as that. His father slammed the table whilst his mother cried in the corner, telling the two to calm down. His brother meanwhile chose to leave the house in hope to flee the battle raging between the two Mins. It was about the same problem. Always. About how Yoongi wanted to be free, to leave their hometown and be what he wanted to be. And it always about how his father wanted him to stay. That or enlisted himself into the army and then stayed. His father prospect about a fine future seemed to be a really dull one.

“I won't acknowledge you as my son if you go and pursue your worthless dream as an artist”, his father had said.

“Then I regret to have called you a father,” he retorted, before slamming the door shut behind him and left his house.

Here he was now, walking down the alley alone. Almost midnight. He'd been wandering the neighborhood for a good one hour or so. He had nowhere to go, he realized. Bolting out of the house without any money in his pocket was stupid. Going to Namjoon's place was a wise thing to do right now. But then his family would definitely look for him there, and he realized he couldn't ask the Kim to lie about his existence if his mother came knocking on their doorstep with a worried look in the middle of the night. The same goes to his other friends. His family knew with whom he'd been spending his time and to whom he would ask for sanctuary if such things like these ever happened.

Yes, all except one. His family wouldn't guess he'll be there. Just for a night, he assumed. And that was the reason how he found himself knocking on Jimin's house, telling himself over and over again that this was okay (because of course Yoongi always had his pride to maintain).

He could hear a low mumble of, "who the hell choose to come in this hour" behind the door before a puzzled Park Jimin greeted him.

"Yoongi-hyung?"

Maybe this was a bad idea after all. Maybe he should just find the nearest bench and crawled there until the sun rised, fidgeting under the cold mountain wind. Or maybe he should just go home and apologize. Or maybe his other friends. He did have other friends. Maybe Ikjae would want to accept him, though he knew it would be thousand times more awkward than this.

"I-,"

Jimim curled his eyebrow. Yoongi clenched his fist, still thinking that maybe turning around right now was the best decision after all. But then he sighed. He was here after all, wasn't he. He was here, asking for help to a person he once thought was weird. To someone he teased constantly. To someone like Park Jimin.

"-need a place to stay for the night," he said with a sigh. "I just had a fight with my parents. They would know where to look for me if I went to Namjoon's place or the other."

Jimin raised his eyebrow. He couldn't read the boy's expression. Maybe he would get kicked out after this. Who knew.

"So yeah, I need your help," he added. Yoongi didn't know why but that sentence seemed like a confession of defeat. At least it sounded like that to his ear.

There was this moment of silence before Jimin finally said a, "Yeah, no problem. Halmoeni wouldn't mind."

Just as easy as that he had found a place to stay the night in the least place he had expected himself to be. The only thing rolling in his head was how he owed Jimin some gratitude and how this actually hurt his pride a bit. A small price to pay, he thought, instead of a cold feet and oozing nose and even a greater loss. The thing Yoongi missed however, was a smile that rose on Jimin's face and a slight blush that the boy desperately tried to hide.

+.-.+

"So you lived with your grandmother?" Yoongi asked.

"Yeah. She was the only living relatives that I got. So after Seoul-," Jimin paused. Yoongi always knew. Or rather, he had grown to realize, that every time Jimin mentioned anything about Seoul, he would enter this quick moment of nostalgia, gazing into nothingness that was his old bitter memory of the place. "-my parents sent me here," he said.

The house was small and nice, with very little things decorating the place. Jimin's grandmother was nowhere to be found, but he said that the old Park was already asleep and he didn't want to disturb her.

There were still a few rooms left, with the exception of Jimin's and his grandmother's but sadly they were filled with boxes and stuff, Jimin said. The offer was using Jimin's bedroom and the said boy would hit the couch. Yoongi quickly retorted to the idea, saying that the couch was more than he could ever get and it was just perfect for him. They spent quiet a time discussing who gets the couch and who gets the room (Yoongi even gave out the idea of using the bahtroom instead if Jimin kept on insisting) until they reached the simple decision to just drag an extra bed from the other room to Jimin's.

In the end it was around midnight when he laid his head against a pillow, gazing into a ceiling that was not his own. They spent quiet some time dragging the extra bed from the other room only to realize that the doorway was too narrow. It took a few lift, push and pull (and a hell lot of sweat) before they managed to get the bed inside. A series of laughter and teasing was included (not so far from "you're sure that abs was not some drawing of a sort if you couldn't even lift something as light as this?" followed by a "yeah, said the one who earlier scream 'my back, my back' the moment we lifted the bed").

"And who came for my help?"

"For your information, you're my last option. I regretted coming to your door now, you know?"

"You're cruel, hyung."

"And you're just plain stupid, Park Jimin."

Jimin was lying on the bed beside him with eyes wide open. Though the light was turned off he could just easily suspect so. Funny. The first time Park Jimin came into his life, he wouldn’t ever think that they would end up like this. The first few times he held a proper conversation with the boy, he thought over and over about what to say, fearing that whatever it was would drive the boy to tears.

"Thank you, Jimin-ah," he said.

Today was hard. His father's word was still echoing on his ear. He called him a bastard for pursuing his dream. He called him a bastard for becoming something that he was. Something that he is and will be.

"I don't know where else to go."

And only slightly did Yoongi revealed that kind-hearted person behind his pride. Behind his mockery and harsh words that escaped his mouth.

"It's okay, hyung. I never got anyone to come and spend the night with," Jimin said back.

“Not even during kindergarten? Don’t you ever have a sleepover? Geez, such childhood you have,” mocked Yoongi.

“I-, was busy most of the time,” Jimin said, suddenly sounded so sad. But he always did that. Sounding so sad, every time the topic of Seoul and his past came to the surface. “I went to a catholic private school in Seoul. I didn’t have much time for playdates.”

Yoongi scoffed. This was the part of Park Jimin that he loathed. “Then you have plenty of that for now.”

He didn’t have to see it, but he knew that Jimin was smiling.

+.-.+

Hoseok was doing sommersault in the air and Taehyung got a body of a pig or so he was dreaming before he heard a loud ringing on his ear. Yoongi woke up to a series of screaming and yelling. It took him a few moments to gather his thought and realized that he was sleeping inside someone else’s room and not his. He just had a huge fight with his father last night and he had gone to Jimin’s instead. That bit of information entered his brain almost too slowly.

This time it was another yell that completely woke Yoongi up from his trance. He jolted up from the bed and raced towards the door, thinking that it was his parents looking for him, that they finally managed to track him down to Jimin’s place. But another yell, high pitched and clearly filled with anger, proved him that it wasn’t someone’s that he was familiar with.

“It’s not what you think it is!”

That was Jimin's scream. There were two voices in the background. A woman and a man. Faintly far beyond that Yoongi could hear one soft voice, trying to mediate the two fighting fronts. It was Jimin’s grandmother, he guessed.

“And here we are thinking that you’re being better. We don’t make you leave Seoul for this,” the woman yelled. It was probably Mrs. Park screaming.

“You kick me out of Seoul because you’re ashamed of me!” Jimin screamed back as loud.

Yoongi never heard Jimin yelled before, nor hearing the boy being this angry. Yoongi just stopped there behind the door with one hand on the knob, knowing that he should stay inside. Thing was he thought how this arguments wasn't his to be heard.

“We send you here for your own good.” This time it was probably the father.

“And what? I can’t have a friend at all? When will you be satisfied, huh? Will you be happy then if I entered an all-girl school? Is that what you want?” Jimin said mockingly, still not lowering his tone down.

“Park Jimin, don’t you dare speak to your parents like-,”

“What kind of parents destroyed the life of their own son? Are you content with that?”

The next thing he heard was a slap. He couldn’t be wrong, because he sure knew how it sounded when his father slapped him as well. The next thing that followed was silence, no voice coming out whatsoever, until he heard Mr. Park raised his tone, slow and demeaning.

“It’s you who destroyed your own life, Park Jimin.”

Another pause followed before Yoongi heard a series of footsteps, running back towards the second floor. The door of the room burst open and Jimin came running back inside with tears running down his red cheek. Jimin looked broken. The boy took one look at him and for a moment Yoongi thought that he would break just like that, falling to pieces. Oddly enough all Yoongi thought about doing was stepping forward and had his arm around him, trying to keep the pieces that made a Park Jimin from falling apart.

It was another yell, calling out for Jimin that woke the two of them up.

“Hyung, let’s go,” Jimin said, pulling Yoongi’s wrist towards the window.

“What?”

“They don’t know you’re here. Or maybe they do. I don’t know. Either way we have to go, now,” he said, moving towards the window and taking both his feet outside, standing on the ledge.

“Whoa, whoa. Like now?”

“Yes, hyung. I’m sorry but we got to go now,” Jimin said, hovering himself on top of the ledge and trying to make his way towards a particular tree that stood right next to the house.

Yoongi cursed under his breath but complied, hopping out towards the window and mimicking everything that Jimin did. The boy made it look so easy, hopping from the ledge towards the branch, tilting his body sideways and dangled his arms towards the trunk. It was right when Yoongi was reaching towards the branch did Jimin’s parents finally found their son’s room empty. At that point Jimin was telling him to hurry up, the boy already on the ground. This would surely be so comical if Jimin wasn't taking this situation seriously. Here he was having a sleepover in a friend's house and treated like a one night stand instead, trying to run away from possible angry housewives. Climbing down a tree was certainly not a specialty of Yoongi’s but at least he managed to get through it safely. The moment he reached the ground, Jimin pulled on his wrist again and the both of them started running.

They didn’t stop for a constant five minutes which was practically all in favor to Jimin’s doing. He was the one leading Yoongi to god knows where, not giving any intention to stop. At that point Yoongi’s whole body was aching. It was early in the morning and he had forced his body to run an entire length without a proper warmup. Not to mention the path of Seongcheon-gil wasn’t the smoothest one. Yoongi, having socks on, still found it painful to run. Jimin, on the other side, had gone deaf over his words and advice that they should be stopping.

It wasn’t until he yanked Jimin’s hand with a sharp and gave him a yell did the younger seemed to wake up from his trance.

“Jimin, stop!”

And Jimin did.

And only when he did, did Yoongi see Jimin’s face. He was crying all along, his shoulder shaking. Soft whimpers were coming out of his lips. He looked so broken. His hair was still a mess Yoongi reckoned he wasn’t prepared for the encounter as much as he did. The boy’s cheek was also red, a reminiscence of the slap he took from his own father. Jimin was standing in the middle of the road with nothing but an oversized tee and shorts. At least Yoongi was wearing a sock and only then did he realize that Jimin’s feet were bleeding.

“Your feet are bleeding,” Yoongi said, bending down so he got to see them clearly.

Jimin just muttered a simple ‘oh’ and let Yoongi checked on them. The boy probably didn’t even realize it as he was running.

“We have to go somewhere. Probably to Seokjin’s house. He can-,”

“No,” Jimin said.

“We have to treat that, okay? And we’re in the middle of a freaking road with nowhere to go,” Yoongi said as he stood up, trying to be as rational as he could be. They might don't feel it now, but later, standing on the road with nothing but shorts and t-shirts in the middle of the mountain’s wind, they would almost regret not finding a shelter.

“Please, hyung,” he said again, almost pleading. “Just let me-,”

Jimin couldn’t seem to find the ending to that sentence. But somehow Yoongi knew what the boy needed.

“Okay,” he said softly. “But we still need to go somewhere.”

+.-.+

It was a Saturday which meant that the school was closed. Ever since they’d been preparing themselves for the championship, the gym was practically reserved for the seven of them. They even got the chance to use it on Sundays. What Namjoon told him and not the others was how he hid the key behind a certain pot of plants right next to the gym.

He brought Jimin to the gym with the said boy riding behind his back. He certainly didn’t let the younger set his foot on the ground again after all the blood and cuts. The younger simple complied, not uttering another words and let Yoongi piggybacked him all the way towards the gym. He’d been excruciatingly quite he didn’t even seem to shed any tears anymore.

They ended up inside the storeroom, cooped up next to piles of flattened out balls and dusty mattresses, trying to avoid anyone who might venture inside the gym and found them there. Jimin had his back against the wall. His expression was hard, eyes glaring and mouth sewn shut. Yoongi didn’t ask him any question, instead finding a bottle of water one of them had left behind on their practice before and tried to tend to Jimin’s wound by simply pouring it over his feet. He remembered about a box of first aid kit located somewhere in the gym halfway through before he got it and managed to pull out a bottle of alcohol, some cotton and bandages.

“This will hurt,” he said, as he soaked the cotton in alcohol and tried to clean the cut.

Jimin let out a hiss and nearly jerked his feet away. However he managed to stay still even after Yoongi got to bandage both of his feet with very little knowledge of first aid that he had. Seokjin was certainly more suitable for this job, even (and most importantly) to consoling people. Yoongi’s wasn’t the best on mending hearts. He was good at making people feel like , not the other way around.

When he was finished, he just sat there in front of Jimin, waiting for the boy to say something. He even thought about walking away, and he finally chose to do so, standing up and heading towards the door, when Jimin stopped him.

“No, hyung. Please stay,” he said.

Yoongi looked back at Jimin. The boy was putting a smile on his face. It was that kind of a weak and pathetic smile, one that annoyed him as much as a cry. He walked back and sat right next to Jimin on the floor, leaning his back against the wall.

“I’m sorry,” the boy said softly. “I know you hate hearing me say that but I truly am.”

He already got tons of comeback to say, words of consolation that he thought would cheer the boy up, jokes and indecent humor that certainly wouldn’t fit the situation as he had ran out of ideas, before he realized that silence was probably the best thing that he could give right now.

“I don’t know that they’re coming today, my parents.”

He could feel that Jimin was about to cry again. Feel. How could he feel something that wasn’t his to feel?

“Halmeoni woke me up today as they car arrived in front of the house. Halmeoni, she knew and she understood me. She's the only one that did. I ran downstairs. I said that I just had a friend sleeping over. They got mad then. I shouldn’t have said that. We got into an argument and-, here we are,” he said, laughing too ironically at the end of the sentence.

He didn’t have the heart or even the right to ask, but everything about Seoul, Jimin’s unspoken past and the bits of arguments that Yoongi heard today told him that everything were never fine with Jimin. He meant, what kind of parent forbid their son from having someone coming over? Maybe it was a Seoul thing to do, Yoongi didn't know. Something happened there, that much he knew and it destroyed Jimin, whatever that was. Funny, but after spending times knowing Jimin and seeing the boy cried, only now did he realize how broken he was.

“I’m a horrible person, hyung. Back in Seoul I-,”

Yoongi waited for the story, waited for the veil to unravel itself upon the mystery that happened back then in Seoul, but Jimin stopped, as if he realized that he shouldn’t talk about it himself. ‘Everything’s sad back at Seoul’, he still remembered the words vividly. The younger took a deep breath before continuing.

“I know I’m stupid. I’m so stupid. It’s all my fault, hyung. I always mess things up,” Jimin said, bringing his hands towards his face and broke into tears again. He got both of his palms covering his eyes and just as easy as that his shoulder shook again.

“It’s all m-my faults. I’ve destroyed my own life. I-i know you h-hate hearing me c-cry but for this once p-please let me-,”

“Stop it, Park Jimin,” he said, turning towards Jimin and did the only thing that only a Min Yoongi would do. He grabbed both Jimin’s hands by the wrist and pried it off from his eyes, trying to stop the boy from crying. He tried to avoid Yoongi’s gaze instead, looking at the ground and kept on crying. Sure, Jimin would ask him to be there, probably hugging him as he cried his heart out, but Min Yoongi wasn’t that kind of person.

“You sure are stupid. You’re one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met in this world. You’re pathetic, you cry all the time like a baby and you always take something the wrong way,” the words just coming out of Yoongi’s mouth without him even thinking, but somehow it sounded as true as it was to his ear. “But you don’t mess things up. Sure you did something awful in Seoul but who cares. You’re not there anymore. You’re here now and as far as I see it, you’re the best thing that has ever happened to this goddamn place.”

As simple as that, Jimin just stopped. The shake and the sobbing simply stop. Yoongi didn’t even know whether he had said the right thing or not, but Jimin then slowly lifted his head. His eyes were still red, his chubby cheeks wet but there was something more there. Jimin stopped crying and he just looked right into Yoongi. He just looked and they stayed like that, with Yoongi’s hands still encircling Jimin’s wrist.

Yoongi thought about Jimin, about how he first came into the town that he hated and he didn’t find the sentences he uttered before to be wrong. He thought about seeing Jimin for the first time, crying inside the classroom and thinking how much of a creep that person would be. He thought about seeing Jimin cry in happiness at the initiation night and thinking how weird it was. He thought about Jimin thinking that he hated the boy and then went to care instead. He thought about Jimin blending in with his friends and he did give them the opportunity to win the trophy this year, to be the best ing team in the entire Gangwon province, thus exactly would be the best thing that would happen to this place and Yoongi’s life in it. He thought about last night, winding up in front of Jimin’s door because he simply didn’t have anywhere else to go.

And somehow he suddenly thought about the stars.

Albeit it was Park Jimin that sat beside him, he couldn’t help but to feel like he was seeing stars, or at least his heart pound the same way it did whenever he lifted his head up to see the scarlet sky above.

Right then he realized that he was still holding Jimin’s hands on his own. He quickly let them go in a realization that led to awkwardness, before Yoongi then turned his head sideways again, diverting his gaze from Jimin and leaned back towards the wall behind him. That weird tension was finally lifted from his shoulder and Yoongi sighed, telling himself how all his words and thoughts earlier sounded so stupid.

He let out a sigh and they returned to sitting in silence again.

Uneasy silence always seemed to be the only thing that parted them both. Remembering about a scene not so different from this, Yoongi slowly chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Jimin asked, still sobbing quietly.

“Nothing,” Yoongi said. “Remember, brat,” he continued, still not looking back at the younger. “This doesn’t mean that I care about you.”

Upon hearing that, Jimin let out a chuckle as well.

“I know, hyung. But thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“For my feet too.”

Jmin pulled his feet towards him, trying to examine the work that Yoongi had did on them on such short notice and with very little knowledge as possible. At least Jimin’s feet were now bandaged up tightly. Almost too tightly, even.

“On second thought, I think I’m going to take that one. This is horrible, hyung. I can’t even seem to wear shoes with this.”

“Hey, don’t complain. Who said earlier about not wanting to go to Seokjin’s,” Yoongi returned with a scoff.

Jimin giggled and he was just thankful that the boy was no longer crying.

“Tell you what, I’ll give you a piggyback ride just like before to make up for that busted feet,” he said almost too nonchalantly.

Jimin made a hyperbolic kind of gasp, clearly pretending.

“You’ll do what for me, hyung?”

“Shut up, brat. We can’t manage to lose you before the match. We need that feet and your ability to win the game.”

“So is that the only reason why you guys are so nice to me? Because I’m good at basketball?”

“Correction. Because you’re better than Namjoon and we clearly need to switch him anyway. If say, Namjoon was better than you, we wouldn’t be warming up to such a weird, new brat at school.”

“You’re so mean, hyung.”

Yoongi laughed. Jimin was better and he too felt better. He found it funny. How could someone else's happiness be his at the same time?

The thought of home suddenly hit him. At one point they needed to go back home. Jimin to his, maybe his parents were still there, and Yoongi’s to his own. He didn’t know how much of his father could he still take. He shook his head slightly, trying to get rid of the horrible thoughts corrupting him from the happy moment he so rarely got. 

Next to him, Jimin slowly lowered his head towards his shoulder, leaning on it. Yoongi didn’t brush it, letting the boy’s hair prickled his neck and jaw. He let himself felt the radiating warmth next to him as he slowly closed his eyes.

“You’re a liar, hyung.”

He raised his eyebrows, waiting for Jimin to give him the explanation he was clearly waiting for.

“You do care.”

And for once, Yoongi didn’t correct him.