Archive of Our Own ^beta

A gunshot crashed like thunder through the streets, but the streets were outside, past the doors and windows that protected an apartment in which everything and everyone was bulletproof.

The light flickered overhead for a moment, and Seokjin let out a heavy sigh.

“Jeon Jungkook, how many times have I told you that you can’t use the television while the microwave is in use?” Glaring at the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, Seokjin turned the stove off and moved the large pot off the burner.

“Does it matter? You can’t take a child away from his toys so easily.” At the dining table right behind him in the cramped space, Yoongi flipped through his newspaper, lazily skimming over the contents of the day’s news.

“I thought you were done, hyung,” their youngest’s voice flittered into the kitchen from beyond the doorway, coming closer and closer until Jungkook popped his head through to glance at Seokjin. “I still can’t understand why the two can’t be used together, though.”

“Simple explanation?” A new voice joined them, and all eyes turned to Namjoon, who came shuffling over from one of the bedrooms, clearly having just woken up from his afternoon nap. “The electrical wiring in this place is shit. The breaker for the south side of the kitchen and the north side of the living room is the same.”

“So… if we move the TV to the other end of the living room, it’ll be okay?” Jungkook asked, eyes bright.

“Hypothetically, yes.” Turning around, Seokjin carried his big pot over to the table, setting it down on a folded rag. “Hypothetically. Because there is no way in hell we’re moving the living room around. There’s barely enough space as is, and if the TV moves, then the couch has to move, and if the couch moves, the table has to move, and if the table-”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Jungkook rolled his eyes, on the receiving end of a sharp glare for interrupting his elder. “No redecorating the living room.”

“I’m glad we’re clear on that,” Seokjin said, and then nudged his head at the cabinets lined next to him. “Now. Make yourself useful and set the table.”

“Why me?” Jungkook whined loudly, heading for the cabinets regardless. Chuckling, Namjoon gave him space, instead sitting on a stool next to Yoongi, who still hadn’t looked up from his extremely riveting crossword puzzle.

“Because you’re the youngest.”

“Can’t Jimin help me?” Jungkook continued whining, despite pulling some bowls out of the cabinet.

“He’s still sleeping,” Namjoon informed him, shaking his head. “He came back later than usual today… around eleven this morning, I think.”

“Heavens forbid we disturb his beauty sleep,” Jungkook rolled his eyes, and began setting the table for seven.

“Ah.” Noticing his actions, Yoongi lifted his gaze up just for a second to glance towards him. “I forgot to say. Taehyung isn’t going to eat with us. He’s on a run right now, in Yongsan. You know those ones always take a while.”

“His loss.” Taking away the seventh bowl, Jungkook stowed it away, and instead pulled out the utensils.

“Where’s Hoseok?” Seokjin asked, bringing the rice to the table as well. “I thought he would be coming back for dinner.”

“He shouldn’t be too long now,” Namjoon answered dismissively, clearly unworried.

“Well at this rate, we’ll start without him.”

Just then, there was the telltale rattling of the hardwood floor, the rhythmic rumbling that indicated that someone was climbing the steps to their second-story apartment.

“Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Yoongi grumbled, finally folding his newspaper away. “Alright, let’s eat.”

A key jingled in the lock on the front door, and soon enough, it swung open with a creak to let Hoseok in.

“Oh, it’s so cold out there,” he complained lightly, dropping his bag by the door. “Hello, everyone!”

“You’re in time for dinner,” Seokjin called back to him, sitting down. “Tae’s not coming, so just lock the door behind you.”

“I’ll be right there,” Hoseok answered, and turned to the door. He locked the handle, the door, and then clicked the deadbolt before slipping his running shoes off and heading inside, dropping his scarf and jacket on the couch on the way to the kitchen.

“How come Tae’s not here?” he asked lightly, squeezing past Yoongi to get to the cabinet tucked in the corner of the room. He opened it and knelt down, revealing three glass jars, each filled with colourful bills and coins.

“He’s on a run in Yongsan,” Seokjin answered, helping himself to some rice. When he began to help himself, the others did as well.

“Oh.” Hoseok couldn’t help but laugh. “He’ll be there for a while. Maybe Jimin will have to go tap him out.” Pulling out a few crumpled bills in his pocket, he stuffed them into one of the jars, and then tucked them back into the depths of the cabinet. Rising, he pulled over the nearest chair, and sat down.

“Who am I tapping out…?” Quiet footsteps padded down the hallway from one of the bedrooms, and Jimin appeared around the corner, yawning.

“Taehyung,” Hoseok repeated, helping himself to dinner after Namjoon was done. “He’s in Yongsan.”

“I’m headed to Hongdae tonight,” Jimin shook his head, sitting down between Hoseok and Namjoon. “It’s Friday, and there’s no way I’m missing out on a Friday in Hongdae.”

“Pick a club and stay there,” Hoseok recommended, blowing steam off of his food. “It’s too cold to be outside all night.”

“I’ll see what I’m working with when I get there,” Jimin assured him, helping himself to some rice. “Hyung, what are we eating?”

“Leftovers soup,” Seokjin answered, blowing on his food as well. “I threw in everything we had, so I’ll have to pick up some groceries tomorrow.”

“Is there cabbage in there?” Jimin asked, helping himself to some of the meat in the soup.

“Yeah,” Seokjin sighed at Jimin’s pickiness. “It’s 7PM, though. You still have time.”

“I can’t risk looking bloated on a Friday, hyung,” Jimin just laughed, giving up on the soup. “I’ll just have rice, and eat when I come back tomorrow morning.”

“Jimin, you have to eat something,” Seokjin frowned, glancing over at Jimin’s meagre portion. “Especially if you’ll be drinking tonight.”

“I know better than to drink on the job, hyung.” Not swayed by the elder’s disapproval, Jimin stuffed his cheeks with plain rice.

“Unless they’re really ugly…” Jungkook muttered between two bites, and thankfully, that seemed to break the tension slowly rising between them.

Sighing, Seokjin backed down, just as Yoongi berated Jungkook for being crass to the sound of Jimin’s honest laughter.

The floor shook again to announce the arrival of someone up the steps, and they all turned to the door, staring quietly until a key jingled in the lock.

“It’s Tae. I’ll get it.” Standing from the table, Namjoon went from the door and unlocked the door just as the handle began to click.

“Why did you lock me out?” Taehyung’s trademark whine filtered through the door, just long enough for Namjoon to undo the deadlock.

“We thought you were going to be out much longer tonight,” Namjoon simply explained, letting in the younger man.

“At least I get to eat dinner with you guys,” Taehyung replied, rubbing some colour back into his pale cheeks. “Gosh, is it cold outside or what?”

“It’s definitely cold,” Hoseok answered him from the kitchen. Soon enough, Namjoon had redone the deadlock, and he and Taehyung strode into the kitchen.

“Oh, yum! Smells good!” Taehyung cheered, falling down on the last remaining chair and immediately helping himself to the soup. “Thanks for the food!”

“Enjoy.”

“How come you’re back so early, Taetae?” Jimin asked, slowly working on his bowl of rice. “It’s Friday. Shouldn’t you be out until at least midnight?”

“Nope.” Taking a bite out of his food, Taehyung slipped his hand into his pockets and fiddled with its contents. “My stock ran out.” And, pulling out a number of yellow and green won bills in a neat, thick stack, he slid his earnings onto the table, and kept eating.

There was silence, and then, Jungkook began to laugh.

“Well…” his laughter died down, and his eyes rested on the stack of money once more. “It’s Friday, after all.”

Long ago, when they’d just began sorting this mess out, they’d all agreed that they wouldn’t talk about work inside the walls of the apartment. It was naïve- back then, they’d still had the luxury of being naïve.  

Needless to say, nobody enforced that dumb rule anymore, especially when Jungkook walked in through the front door, looking like someone had decided to paint violent colours across the pale canvas of his body.

Hoseok looked up first, and his gasp drew attention to Jungkook, who tried to duck his bruised face into his hoodie at the attention.

“How’s the other guy looking?” Yoongi grunted, glancing up from his notebook to appraise the damage on Jungkook’s face. Meanwhile, Hoseok stood up to actually go to him, although Jungkook stopped him by shying away from his approach.

“I wish I could say he looked worse than me,” he grumbled, ducking towards the kitchen, still trying to hide his face.

“Well, you can’t win them all, right?” Yoongi sighed, putting his notebook down and twisting on the couch to watch him retreat, with Hoseok at his heels.

“Wish I could,” Jungkook grumbled, and headed straight to the freezer to pull out a frozen steak, which he immediately stuck to his swelling right eye.

“Hey…” Pulling a chair out for him, Hoseok sat down and watched Jungkook hesitantly do the same. He winced as he finally sat, looking highly uncomfortable. “You okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” the youngest replied quickly, averting his gaze.

“You’re not fighting for another few days, I hope,” Hoseok said bluntly, reaching out to Jungkook’s head. Jungkook stopped him, but a steady glare broke his resolve, letting Hoseok pull the hood off of him to expose his entire head.

“No. The next match is this weekend.” Jungkook winced when Hoseok touched the side of his head, where an abrasion through his hairline was sluggishly bleeding.

“This is worse than usual. What happened?”

“Hyung…” Averting his gaze again, Jungkook pursed his lips tightly. “I… I don’t…”

“Kook-ah,” Hoseok insisted firmly, running his hand down to his jaw, and tilting it lightly to get a view of all the bruises on Jungkook’s neck. “Please. Some of these look serious.”

“Listen to your hyungs, you stubborn brat.” Finally joining them, Yoongi came striding in through the doorway, carrying a small backpack that the two others immediately recognized as their first aid pack. “When Hoseok asks you a question, you’re supposed to answer it.”

“Don’t want to talk about it,” Jungkook insisted, watching Yoongi calmly pull out some gauze, and don grey nitrile gloves. Hoseok did the same.

“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost, Kookie.” Sighing, Hoseok reached for Jungkook’s hoodie, and pulled down the zipper, helping him out of his clothes. “That’s not what’s important here. Just tell us what happened so we can help.”

“I…” He seemed to hesitate a little longer, but when Yoongi’s hands fell on his body and began palpating for broken bones, he relented with a heavy sigh. “Fine… It was a one-on-one, as usual, but… someone put enough money on the other guy to get him a crowbar.”

“What the hell…” Yoongi hissed, nodding to Hoseok once he made sure nothing was misaligned in Jungkook’s spine. At his signal, Hoseok tugged on Jungkook’s shirt, pulling it off of him to better see the damage underneath.

“Isn’t it bad for business, to have one fighter with overwhelming odds on his end?” Hoseok frowned, immediately palpating Jungkook’s bruised collarbones, easing up when Jungkook let out a soft hiss of pain.

“It’s supposed to increase the throw-ins on the other side. If the other fighter is given an advantage, you’re more likely to throw money at your fighter to make sure you don’t lose your bet,” Jungkook explained, pulling his arm away with a light cry when Hoseok touched his swollen elbow.

“It looks sprained,” Hoseok simply informed him, continuing with his physical while Jungkook lightly cradled his elbow to his chest. “Anyway. Doesn’t make sense to me. What did you get?”

“Nothing.” The youngest sounded entirely bitter about that. “By the time anyone considered putting money on my end, I was getting beaten up so badly that they figured they’d cut their losses for this match.”

“You’ll get him next time, Kook-ah,” Yoongi assured him, pressing a wad of gauze to a superficial wound on his back, although his expression remained grim. “Just… let’s be glad it’s not worse. You could’ve gotten seriously hurt.”

“Whatever…” Huffing, Jungkook turned his eyes to the floor, wiggling his feet to get the numbness out of his toes. His left knee had taken quite the hit from that crowbar, and he still felt the aftershocks in his entirely leg. “I’ll just train and get better. And with time, nobody will ever be able to beat me ever again.”

“You say this like you’ll still be doing this in a year,” Hoseok let out an unsteady laugh, shakily dropping his hands on Jungkook’s thighs once he finished his assessment. His hands gripped the fabric of his sweatpants, below which their youngest was undeniably hiding more injuries. “Kookie…”

“It’s not like I’ve got anything else out there for me.” Pushing Hoseok’s hands off his lap, Jungkook stood, causing Yoongi to step back as well. “Doesn’t matter. I’m going to shower, and then I’ll dress the injuries that haven’t closed. I’ll be fine from here.”

Neither of his hyungs seemed ready to let him go, but they didn’t say anything to him either. Jungkook could take care of himself, as he’d painfully, so painfully demonstrated countless times before. A part of them still wished that he’d let them in, but the more realistic side told them that watching his retreating back was all they could do for him.

“Kook-ah,” Yoongi called behind him as he turned into the hallway, and Jungkook stopped mid-limp to listen, despite not turning to face him. “Tell me you at least got the other guy good.”

“Well… if he values his looks, he won’t be grinning for a little while.” With an amused snort, Jungkook retreated to the bathroom. Yoongi exchanged a glance with Hoseok and then let him go, turning his eyes down to the bloody gauze he still clutched in his gloved hand.

“That’s our boy.” He let out a deep sigh, and snapped his glove off over the gauze.

The most difficult part of the job, in Seokjin’s opinion, is knowing that a patient cannot be saved.

This realization comes in many forms. It comes in the bloodied lines of a limp hand hanging off a gurney. It comes in the space between the dropping numbers on the monitor. It comes in the loud voice of someone refusing care. It comes in the expressions of the frequent flyers in the emergency department. It comes in the silence of ventilators and IV pumps. It comes in the soft, sad gratitude of people that Seokjin knows he will see in the emergency again.

Nursing is an art that Seokjin has learned to love in the 5 years he’s done it. At first, when he had been forced at gunpoint to pick an avenue for his increasingly bleak future, he’d chosen nursing because he’d figured that he’d make the best out of a shitty situation. He’d actually thought, naively, as naively as a traumatized 17-year-old could, that if he became a nurse, despite his life being owned by someone else, he would be able to save people’s lives.

He’d been wrong, and he’d learned that from very early on.

“Stretcher two is a 25-year-old male, two GSWs to the abdomen and one to the right leg, dropped out of a car outside the hospital,” Seokjin’s nurse colleague gave him the shift change report, and both of them glanced at their patient, lying in the stretcher facing the nursing station in the monitoring area. On the screen, his vital signs looked passable -not great, but definitely could be worse-, so Seokjin looked back to the other nurse to finish taking report. “Definitely part of a gang, but so far, he hasn’t said a thing, and we can’t find any identifiers on him. The bullet in his thigh is still in there, but it’s far from the artery, so it’s not bleeding much for now. One of the abdominal bullets is lodged in his fat, but the other one went through and bruised his spleen. He’s awaiting surgery, but we’re just hoping his spleen doesn’t rupture in the meantime.”

“I’ll take it from here,” Seokjin nodded, letting out a heavy sigh. “This is going to be a heavy one.”

“Hey, Jin-ah…” she glanced uncertainly at the patient, and then directed her uncertainty to Seokjin, pursing her lips. “Whatever happens… if anything happens… it won’t be your fault.”

“I know.” He’d learned.

“Good.” Satisfied, she put a hand on his hair and smoothed it out gently before rising to leave. “Take care.”

“You, too.”

Seokjin watched her go with a smile, and then turned back to his patient.

Considering Seokjin’s four other patients, he actually had very little time to spend with his gunshot victim, other than to try and get a few words out of him, and to give him pain medication. His vital signs remained stable, so Seokjin almost forgot about him.

Of course, until, inevitably, two tall men came right through the doors to the monitor, and strode right up to the nursing station with grave expressions on their faces.

“The nurse for the guy in bed two. Who is she?” one of them asked, a burly guy with several telltale scars on his knuckles. Seokjin overheard, and decided to spare the terrified nurse at the desk, grabbing the man’s chart before approaching.

“It’s me.” He enjoyed the momentary frown on the man’s face before the man stepped up to him. “Are you family? Friends?”

“We need to see him. Come with us.” Completely avoiding his question, the men strode over to Seokjin’s patient, which didn’t give him much choice but to follow.

“How is he?” the second man asked, turning one of the IV bags around in his hand to inspect it. “He’s getting all these pain meds?”

“He’s on a fentanyl drip for his pain, yes,” Seokjin nodded calmly, albeit he did clutch his chart to his chest almost subconsciously. “He’s been in and out of consciousness, hasn’t been able to say much to us yet. He’s probably weak from blood loss.”

“And the bullets?”

“Two are still in him. They’re waiting for the operating room to open up to take him upstairs for surgery,” Seokjin answered.

“And he hasn’t spoken to you yet.” It sounded more like a statement than a question. Seokjin nodded.

“Any chance these pain meds are making him loopy?” the second guy asked, nudging his chin at the drips hanging from the IV pole.

“The fentanyl might be making him a little bit sleepy, but-”

“Then stop it.”

A cold sweat broke on Seokjin’s neck. He took a deep breath, trying not to make it seem like a sigh. In the busy, loud emergency room, he suddenly felt so far away, isolated and alone.

“I, uhh…”

“Stop the fentanyl, or I’ll rip this IV out myself,” the man threatened, putting his hand on Seokjin’s patient’s elbow, who groaned at the contact.

“There’s medication to help his blood pressure in there, ripping out the IV will just cause him to crash right here, right now.” Seokjin swallowed heavily.

“Then in that case, it’s a really good thing that you’re going to stop the pain meds.” As the man spoke, the burly one slowly moved his hand to the back of his waistband, making absolutely sure that Seokjin tracked his every move.

He did. And he knew exactly what was going on.

“Alright.” Shakier than he’d like to admit, Seokjin leaned over the patient, and put the fentanyl pump on standby. “There.”

“Good. Now wake him up.”

“It’ll take a few minutes for the drug to leave his system, I can’t-”

“Wake him up. Now.” And just like that, the burly man pulled the gun out from his waistband, and pointed it straight at Seokjin’s abdomen.

He’d never, never get used to the all-consuming terror he felt at these times.

“I’ll… I’ll do my best…” His heart pounding against the chart he clutched, Seokjin turned to the patient, and began pushing his knuckles into his sternum.

It was never like in the movies, where someone saw the gun and screamed, and suddenly everyone began to panic. It was never that easy. Truthfully, nobody paid attention to Seokjin in the busy department; not his colleagues, nor the patients, nor their families. The gun was low enough to be hidden by the stretcher, and Seokjin felt like he could cry.

He never did, though.

“Hey… Hey uhhh… wake up. Wake up, please.” His hands shook, and in that moment, Seokjin might’ve been rougher with his sternal rub than he probably intended to be.

It really wouldn’t matter in the end.

His patient woke up rather easily, the opiates leaving his system quickly enough to tip Seokjin off. Groaning, he eventually roused to Seokjin’s painful ministrations, and swatted his hand away from him.

“Man… what the fuck…” he moaned in pain, hissing and freezing as soon as he tried to move. “Fuck… Fuck, that hurts!”

“This isn’t even the beginning,” the lean mobster grunted at him, and suddenly, Seokjin’s patient was wide awake, and paler than ever.

“Oh, fuck.” He stared at the two men for a second, and then let his head fall back down on the pillow. “Fuck, fuck!”

“Say something else, why don’t you. Like where you hid the fucking money,” the mobster suggested in a tone that didn’t leave much room for negotiation. Despite the attention being off of Seokjin, he didn’t dare move, and watched the situation unfold with bated breath.

“I don’t know what you’re-”

“Don’t bullshit me, man. We both know you stole the money, and dumped it in a cache when you realized you were being followed. Where is it?”

“I… I don’t…”

The burly mobster turned to Seokjin so quickly that his heart did several aerial acrobatics in his chest before settling.

“Which leg is the bullet in?” he asked, waving his gun at the patient.

“Ri-right, his right leg,” Seokjin stumbled over his words, but it didn’t really matter, as in a second, his patient was howling in pain, scrambling to take the mobster’s heavy hand off his right leg. Seokjin flinched, and closed his eyes for a few seconds.

At this point, at least, more people had turned to them, and were overlooking their situation. Hitching whispers proved that perhaps the gun had been seen as well.

“Jin…?” One of Seokjin’s braver colleagues, a young woman who was well-aware of the gravity of the situation, threw him a look. “Is everything okay?”

“It’ll be fine, noona,” Seokjin nodded stiffly, not daring to take his eyes off the patient, or move too abruptly. “I’ll be fine.”

“Tell me where it is!”

Increasingly, the ruckus made by Seokjin’s patient was garnering serious attention, and the nurse in charge looked ready to pick up the phone to alert security.

Seokjin hoped that she knew better than to do that, especially in an emergency this full of high-strung, panicking people.

“It’s in the dumpster by the park, right at the edge of our territory!” Finally, the dreaded confession came, and as the pressure on the man’s wounded leg diminished, so did his screams, until he was only whimpering and crying, covered in cold sweat. Seokjin mindlessly leaned over and silenced the alarms going crazy on the man’s heart monitor.

“You better fucking hope it’s still there, or I will personally pay some of your family a visit,” the lean mobster hissed, and through the patient’s whimpering, Seokjin dared to hope that this would have a happy ending.

“Let’s go.”

He was wrong to hope.

Seokjin saw the bullet before he heard it, which was strange to say, considering it all happened so fast.

He blinked, and his patient’s sweat-soaked face was covered in blood, gurgling violently from the bullet hole he now sported between his eyes.

The department erupted in screaming, people wailing and crying and running, and the nurses trying to keep the calm amongst it all. The men simply walked right back out, as if they’d never come in here in the first place, and Seokjin watched them go from where he slid to the floor, his knees unable to support him any longer.

His patient’s heart monitor began to ring urgently, indicating that his patient no longer had a heartbeat, but Seokjin barely heard it through the ringing in his ears. His chart dropped from his hands, papers scattering all around him, and Seokjin leaned his head against the stretcher so that his entire body didn’t slump over to the ground. If he hadn’t been more removed, he certainly would’ve let himself get trampled by the people rushing to evacuate the ER.

He knew he couldn’t save this patient from the moment he saw him, and yet still… Still, it hurt a lot more than he thought it would.

Seokjin was good, though. He was a good nurse, a great nurse. And sometimes, being a great nurse was only possible if he stopped caring for his patients.

Hands closed upon his arms, and he felt himself get pulled up to his feet, steadied. Through the vertigo, he saw his colleagues rush to help him move away, and scrambled to hold on to something so he wouldn’t fall.

He put his hand on the stretcher, and felt the seeping blood crawl onto every inch of his skin as if it belonged there. For all Seokjin knew, it did.

The nurses laid him down in an empty stretcher and put his feet up, leaving cold compresses on his face so that he could recover from the nausea welling up in him. The world did not stop spinning even as he laid down. His hands kept shaking and shaking, even when someone took his bloody hand and squeezed it tight.

“Noona,” Seokjin gasped, his voice breaking. “Noona, I…”

“You’re okay, Jin-ah. Shh… you’re okay. You’re okay.”

“I know,” he croaked out, and felt his lungs seize. “I know. I always am.”

And finally, he cried.

That night, he stumbled into the apartment, hair still damp from the hour-long shower he’d taken at the hospital, and headed straight to bed. Nobody asked him any questions, and nobody stopped him.

But when he inevitably woke up in the middle of the night, shaking and nauseous, he shrunk back into the arms holding onto him, and clutched tightly onto the person in his bed.

This time, it was Jimin. Next time, it would be Namjoon. Or Hoseok. Or Taehyung.

It didn’t really matter. Whoever could do it usually did it. It was never really an issue.

Besides. These things happened often enough for everyone to get a turn once in a while.

If Namjoon’s mother was still alive, he would’ve liked to ask her if he’d popped out of her vagina with a tablet in his hands. Never mind that tablets didn’t exist back then.

On some days, Yoongi would swear that his proficiency with technology was super-human. Namjoon disagreed- he was good at what he did, he knew that, but it wasn’t anything worth calling him a genius for.

But the people who hired him only did so because his reputation preceded him, so if he could make money off of calling himself a genius, he would.

Namjoon had been programming for so long that he could probably take down a firewall in his sleep. Jungkook always liked to look at him with sparkling admiration in his eyes, insisting that he was ‘such a cool hacker’, but Namjoon really didn’t like to be reduced to that term.

He preferred being called a freelance programmer. It wasn’t a lie.

If someone needed a firewall breached, or a file decrypted, or a back door installed, he could do it. If they needed surveillance footage or bank records or text conversation logs, he could provide them. If they needed eyes or ears anywhere in Seoul, he could do it.

All anyone needed to do in order to get his attention was to enter the letters ‘RM’ on a search engine, and Namjoon would know.

The rest was history; he’s track the IP address, identify his client, do some research to try and figure out what kind of job he’d be given, and finally, send correspondence to his potential client using one of his thousands of burner e-mail accounts. The money would always find itself back to him through the network of accounts he’d set up offshore, and he’d always pull it out as soon as possible in cold, hard cash.

As much as Namjoon loved technology, and technology loved him, he would never again trust his screen to keep him perfectly safe.

Not after it landed him in the prison that his new life had become.

Lost in thought, Namjoon didn’t notice when the door to his office creaked open loudly, rusted metal squeaking unpleasantly and finally dragging him out of it.

He didn’t need to worry, though. The door to his office was locked with biometrics; biometrics that only he and one other person had registered.

“Aren’t you ever going to oil this thing?” Yoongi said gruffly, closing the door behind him as he entered Namjoon’s office. The door made a beep as it locked behind him.

He liked to call it his office, but in reality, all his equipment was set up in an old shipping container by an almost ancient, abandoned shipyard. The container had been there since he had first discovered it at the young age of eleven, and by the age of thirteen, as he’d met Yoongi and began to commit petty crimes by his side, he’d moved all of his equipment into it. It was the best cover he could ask for.

Even as he’d gained fame and money in the ten years he’d been operating as ‘hacking genius RM’, he’d never considered moving out of the ratty container. His equipment by itself was state-of-the-art, and disgustingly expensive, so he liked the idea of hiding all this gold behind a dingy exterior. Nobody came around these parts but the unfortunate homeless. In his ten years, Namjoon had seen a grand total of three cops patrol the area.

“Suga to RM, do you copy?” Yoongi called out again, snorting amusedly at his own joke, approaching when Namjoon finally swiveled around on his chair to look at him.

“Really? Code names?” he chuckled, watching Yoongi drop a plastic bag of something that smelled amazing on a console that had cost him an arm and a leg. “I thought we were on first-name basis already. You wound me.”

“What if someone is tapping our conversation?” Yoongi teased, pulling out two containers from the bag, and holding one out to Namjoon. “You never know; the walls might have ears.”

“They do,” Namjoon laughed, accepting the container. “My ears.”

“Isn’t tapping your own base of operations a bit overkill?”

“You can never be too careful.”

“Rightfully so,” Yoongi conceded, and opened up his container. Steam wafted out of it appetizingly, so Namjoon followed his move.

“So why did you come here?” he asked, putting the lid on his ridiculously expensive keyboard that lit up. “Bearing a gift of street-side tteokbokki, of all things?”

“Jin-hyung sent me to get you,” Yoongi simply answered, dropping a rice cake in his mouth and licking the sauce off the pick. “He’s upset that you haven’t been home in a few days.”

“You know I’m perfectly equipped to live here, Yoon.”

“He doesn’t.”

“Right.” Busying himself with eating. “Thanks for the meal, hyung.”

“Meal?” Yoongi snorted. “Don’t let Jin hear you. I only bought this to work up your appetite so you’re more willing to come home with me.”

“I’m working on something, so I can’t,” Namjoon shot him down immediately, blowing on one of the scalding rice cakes. “But thanks for the food, again.”

“What is it this time?” Yoongi asked casually, striding up to glance at one of Namjoon’s numerous open computer screens. A few of them had some sort of coding program running on it, and the other one had a paused video of a cat cuddling a fox. “Anything interesting?”

“Low-profile work that I’ve been meaning to clear from my queue for a while.” Namjoon shrugged, turning to glance at his screens as well. “And cat videos.”

“Is it important enough for you to risk Jin’s wrath for another night?”

Namjoon visibly winced at that, but popped another rice cake into his mouth.

“He’ll forgive me in the end.”

“He always does,” Yoongi agreed, and sighed before falling silent.

The two of them ate, not talking to one another but also not ignoring each other. Their relationship had long since been based on presence, just the mere existence of two souls in close proximity. It didn’t help that for much of their earlier days, Namjoon had only been the voice in Yoongi’s ear, and Yoongi had only been the face on Namjoon’s screen. That was just the way they’d grown to love each other.

“I was archiving old case files yesterday,” Namjoon finally began speaking again once his tteokbokki was finished and he was tired of futilely attempting to lick the sauce off the sides.

“Good old memory lane,” Yoongi grunted, slower on finishing his portion. “Did you go through anything worth remembering?”

“I revisited our first commercial break-and-enter,” Namjoon chuckled fondly at the memory. “Remember? You were only fourteen, and I was thirteen. It was the first time we’d tried something more than stealing during open hours.”

“I remember,” Yoongi scoffed, pushing the few rice cakes left around with his pick. “It took you three tries to disarm the security system. I was ready to high-tail it out of there and never speak to you again.”

“But the payout was worth it.”

“Who knew that there are people out there who would pay a literal million won for an autographed SNSD album,” Yoongi laughed, finally handing his tteokbokki remnants to Namjoon, who immediately worked on finishing them.

“I knew,” he hummed, and Yoongi rolled his eyes.

“I’m still waiting to find out what you don’t know, Joon.”

A pleasant silence settled between them as Namjoon finished the second portion of food, and then discarded the containers into his overflowing trashcan. If he was to spend another night in his office, he seriously needed to clean up a little.

“What else did you revisit?” Yoongi asked quietly, fondly glancing at Namjoon. At moments like these, Namjoon was reminded that Yoongi was young, too. He was reminded that they’d grown up together, the closest thing to family for one another.

And they still were, albeit a part of a much larger group as well.

“Our only fuck-up,” Namjoon admitted, locking gazes with Yoongi. Surprisingly, the latter’s expression didn’t darken as usual. Instead, he gave him a sad smile.

“We can’t forget that one, huh?” he said, and Namjoon immediately agreed.

“It’s the reason we’re in this hell from which we can’t escape. Hard to get over something like that.”

“Don’t you find it funny?” Yoongi took a deep breath and leaned against Namjoon’s work desk, pushing aside the strewn papers so he could sit. “We were kids. We were kids who made an innocent mistake, and now we’re living the rest of our days in chains because of it.”

“We should’ve just gone to prison, hyung,” Namjoon joked, although Yoongi didn’t quite smile at that.

“No.” His answer was firm, unhesitating. “At least here, I can still be with you.”

“Keep it up and I might just start to believe that you’ve really got emotions somewhere in your cold wasteland of a heart.”

“Shut up.” Now that drew a genuine scoff of amusement from Yoongi, who shoved Namjoon playfully just to hear him chuckle in return.

“Seriously, though,” Namjoon picked up where they’d branched off. “It’s crazy how everything went to shit because of one mistake.”

“Maybe it was karma,” Yoongi shrugged, clearly not believing himself. “We’d been at it for two years already when we got caught stealing from the mafia.”

“I didn’t know that man was part of the mafia,” Namjoon defended himself softly, and Yoongi just gave him a placating expression.

“I know, Joonie. I know. I’ve heard you apologize more than enough times for it,” he assured him, though both of them knew it already. It was a topic rehashed and revisited and reworked a hundred thousand times already. They never, never figured out what it was exactly that went wrong. “Besides, I’m also to blame. I did agree to go around the city to pull out all his savings from ATMs. Showing my face on those cameras was probably more of a downfall than them tracking the money leak back to your IP address.”

“I guess we’re both to blame,” Namjoon shrugged, not affected by the emotion of those memories anymore.

It had been eight years since they’d been brought in to start repaying their debt to the mafia. Eight years was a long time to spend wondering where it all went wrong, so the two of them had decided not to think about it anymore.

“We learned from it, though,” Yoongi presented on the bright side of things. “We have never gotten caught since.”

“Yeah, because I’m anal about erasing our trails, and you could silence anyone you wanted with a swipe of your hand,” Namjoon huffed, turning to his screen. “Anyway. At times like these, I just… need to do some simple things. Code a phishing scam, monitor someone’s cellphone, redirect some wire transfers… the basics, you know.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s crazy. I’m being paid so much money to do this work, and yet…” Namjoon chewed on his lower lip anxiously. “It’s not even close to how much money we owe to the mafia.”

“A lot of your earnings to towards your fancy biometric lock system on your disgusting shipping container,” Yoongi rolled his eyes as if stating the obvious. “Plus, the mafia’s interest rates are higher than Citibank Korea’s. They’re designed for us to spend the rest of our lives working towards a goal we’ll never achieve.”

That didn’t seem to help Namjoon relax at all.

“Isn’t it unfair, hyung?” he finally asked, glancing up at Yoongi. Insecurity shone bright in his eyes, an unusual look for the usually-collected young man who more often than not acted as the brains behind all of their operations. “We were just kids…”

Yoongi wanted to tell him that they still were kids. The words never left his tight throat.

“What’s done is done, Namjoonie,” he sighed, shoving his hands into his jacket. “Believe it or not, there are worse people than you and I out there, and we’re unlucky enough to be the dirt under their shoes. So… we just make do. We play by their rules until the day we can make our own.”

“If that day ever comes.” Namjoon hung his head in a rare moment of hopelessness.

“Hey.” Unwilling to lose Namjoon to the familiar anguish rearing its head, Yoongi left his spot at the desk and approached his best friend, clapping a hand heavily down on his shoulder to ground him. “Don’t go down that train of thought. You know it leads nowhere nice.”

“I’ve already accepted that this is real life, and not just a nightmare…” Namjoon’s voice broke slightly. “It took me years to realize that I am awake and living my days. But I just wish… I just wish I could go back to dreaming. I wish I could close my eyes and go far away from here, somewhere where you and I and everybody else can just… breathe without being afraid.”

“Joonie…”

“I’m tired and I’m hurting and I’m afraid, hyung,” Namjoon rubbed at the bridge of his nose, a motion that Yoongi recognized as Namjoon’s tic when he fought back tears.

“Put it in the lockbox, Joon-ah,” Yoongi murmured, dragging his hand from Namjoon’s shoulder to his hair, and running his fingers through the pastel pink strands affectionately. Namjoon curled up on himself a little more. “Put it all in the lockbox, because maybe someday… we’ll go to the place you want to dream of.”

“Yeah.” Namjoon nodded stiffly, swallowing heavily before looking up at Yoongi. A small smile fell upon his lips, which gave Yoongi his cue to step back. “For now, it’ll be good enough to live with everyone. Life may not be a dream, but… it’s good enough when we’re all together.”

“Now would be a really good time to agree to come home with me,” Yoongi suggested wryly.

And Namjoon laughed, because really, he needed to laugh about anything he could still find funny these days.

“Alright,” he gave in, and grabbed his backpack off the floor, putting his computer into sleep mode. The screens faded out, leaving them both in near-total darkness, and Namjoon only knew where Yoongi was because his relationship with Yoongi was one of simultaneous existence.

“Come on,” Yoongi beckoned him through the darkness, and Namjoon followed, because he would never let Yoongi go where he couldn’t follow.

The funny thing was that Taehyung hated drugs. He hated them with a passion as fiery as the goddamn sun, and yet there he was, kneeling on the ground to rifle through his backpack before pulling out a brown paper bag.

“Show me the money,” he insisted, clutching tightly onto the bag. In the dim moonlight, he saw the teenagers in front of him counting their money.

He really hated drugs, but boy, did they make his life easy.

“Here. It should be all there.” One of the teens handed him the wrinkled bills, throwing furtive glances around him. As if Taehyung would’ve picked a drop point that would be easy to find by the cops.

“Alright.” Quickly counting his money and finding it conclusive, Taehyung handed the paper bag to the young man, who hesitated only a second before snatching it away and shoving it into his jacket. “That’s your order. Three grams of coke, seven milligrams of Ativan, and five of ex- only the pills with the skull and crossbones design, like you asked.”

“Thanks, man,” the teen nodded stiffly, glancing around again. Taehyung hoped this kid never got busted- it would honestly be a miracle.

“Hey, V.” At the sound of his code name, Taehyung turned to one of the other kids accompanying. “You carrying any weed?”

“Of course. Never leave home without the basics, right?” Taehyung teased. “I’ve got bags of three, five, or ten. How much do you want?”

“Give me a five.”

“Modest.” Grabbing the cash, Taehyung made a mental headcount of his profits on the sale and handed the small plastic bag to the kid. “Now, unless anyone else is pitching in, I’ve gotta jet.”

“Thanks, V. As usual.”

“Any time. You know where to find me for your next order.” Taehyung slung his backpack over his shoulders, and turned around. “Later.”

Stepping back out onto the streets, he surveyed his surroundings. When he deemed it safe, he pulled out his earphones and popped them in, playing music as he walked to his next drop-off.

The next drop was made at a house, a gruff-looking man quietly paying him his money for a surprising amount of hallucinogens. It briefly made Taehyung wonder what it was about this world that this man did not find satisfactory, enough so that he’d rather spend his nights in places that would never exist. 

But he could answer that all by himself. This world had nothing but rotten people and missed opportunities to offer. This peculiar client, the smart bastard, had found a way to paint his trash gold.

He headed to his next -and last- delivery. One he always dreaded.

His last client was notorious, not just to him, but to his higher ups as well.

They loved her. Taehyung… Taehyung pitied her.

He climbed the steps to a nice-looking apartment, the railing repainted since the last time he’d been there. He thought the glass on the door had been changed into a fancier design, too, but he didn’t care enough to remember.

He knocked on the door, three times, and then waited a second before knocking two more times.

The door swung open so violently that Taehyung almost flinched.

“Oh, oh god… oh god, you’re here.”

Ah. So she was in a sobbing mood today. Better than the psychosis, in any case.

“I’ve got the usual,” he announced, and stepped in to be able to close the door. This deal always took way too much time to be safely done on the front porch.

She let him come in, watching him walk with a reverence usually reserved for gods.

In a way, he was her god. He had the power to control her entire life, right there, in his backpack.

“Please…” Her voice was raspy, as if she’d been screaming, or crying, and her thin, bony fingers grabbed Taehyung so tightly that it hurt. “Please, I need it… I need it…”

“And I need the money. You know how this works.” Trying not to pull away, Taehyung took her arm off of him.

“Okay, okay… okay, it has to be here… I left it here…” Stumbling back, she began to look around her, throwing drawers and cabinets open to find her money. She never remembered where she kept it. It always gave Taehyung time to watch her.

Her entire body shook with the effort of every step, her fingers trembling and knocking against everything she touched. Her hair was long, but thin. Brittle. Dull and dried out. Her skin was ashen, almost grey, and stretched over her bony prominences. She was emaciated, collarbones jutting out from underneath a large shirt, and when she bent down, Taehyung realized she wasn’t even wearing underwear. He averted his eyes, but he could still hear her heavy breathing, her whimpers, her whispered pleas to whatever god had not forsaken her yet.

He hated this. He hated her.

“Oh god, I have it, I have it.”

“Alright, give.” Firmly, he held out his hand, and she dropped the neatly stacked bills in his palm. She probably arranged her money when she wasn’t in terrible withdrawal. Good foresight, really.

“Quick, quick! Hand it over, come on! Come on!” she rushed him, scratching at her scarred elbows as if trying to ease the cravings that had taken control of her brain.

Taehyung counted the money, and his heart dropped to his shaking knees when he realized that it wasn’t complete.

“This is enough for eight amps of heroin,” he began, swallowing heavily. “You ordered ten this time. Remember?”

“Ten…?” Her pupils, already pathologically dilated, made her eyes seem black, a sort of childish wonder floating in the void. “Yes… yes, I need ten. I need ten amps. Give them to me!”

“You only paid for eight.”

“I need ten!”

“Then you gotta hand me the extra. You know how it is.” Taehyung sighed, and averted his eyes. “You’ve been at this for years. You know how it goes.”

“Please…” her voice broke, and, desperate, she pulled a drawer open, and grabbed a needle. “Please, I need them…” Her eyes wide, she advanced towards Taehyung, needle in hand.

And yet, Taehyung was not afraid. He felt many things at the moment, but fear was not one of them.

He was her god. To her, he was her only salvation. And she would never, never do anything but crawl at the feet of the only man who could save her.

“I’ll pay you, I promise,” in a breathy whimper, she fell to her knees in front of him, and grabbed his waist. “Please, anything, I need that heroin, I’ll do anything for it.”

“Whoa, whoa…” Scrambling away, Taehyung practically threw her hands off of him and backed into the door, heart racing. This was new. She’d never really invaded his personal space before.

He really didn’t feel so good anymore.

“Please!” Her screeching was too much. Taehyung still felt her skinny fingers gripping on his sweater for dear life, still felt her weight on him, still heard her pleas ringing in his ears. He couldn’t do this anymore.

“Fine! Take them! Take your ten amps!” Grabbing the paper bag out of his backpack, he practically shoved them at her, and watched as she backed off immediately, mesmerized.

His hands shook so badly as he tried to get the door that he almost forgot to warn her.

“Next time, I won’t be lenient. If you don’t have the money for ten amps, you’re not getting any at all,” he threatened, although his voice shook too much for him to be believable.

He was the word of god, though. He didn’t have to convince her of anything; he breathed, and she believed.

“Yes… yes, oh thank god, yes…” Not even looking at him, she sat down, ripped the bag open, scattering the ampules, and grabbed one. The needle shook in her hand.

Taehyung didn’t even announce his exit. He threw the door open as fast as he could, and stepped out, closing it behind the sound of her slapping her arms to find a vein.

He didn’t realize he hadn’t stopped shaking until he was two blocks down.

He couldn’t even breathe properly. It rarely happened for him to lose his composure these days, and he hadn’t lost it this badly in a while.

He picked up his cellphone, and dialed the first number in his history.

Namjoon picked up after two rings.

“Tae, is everything alright?”

“Hyu…hyung.” His voice broke in the middle of the word, and on the other end, Namjoon began to move.

“Where are you?”

“Jung District. I… I just made a drop.”

“I’m tracking your phone. I’ll come and get you. Don’t move.”

“Hacking into my GPS, seriously, hyung?” Taehyung let out a watery laugh that didn’t quite sound believable. “Fine. I’m here.” He didn’t think he could walk another step, anyway.

“I’m on my way.”

Namjoon did have his driver’s license, although that was all that could be said about his driving. Whether or not he could actually drive was a topic of heated debate on drunk nights at the apartment.

The thought of home made Taehyung feel simultaneously relieved and sick. He just wanted to go home and take a shower, scrub her presence right off of his body, and maybe fall asleep against Jungkook on the couch. And yet, the thought of going home, to a place of warmth and safety, when people like her had nobody and nowhere to call home, made him feel sick.

Life wasn’t fair, he knew that better than anyone. But still. Still. He made her into this. Once upon a time, she had been a functional, if not slightly depressed member of society, but his higher ups had pushed and pushed and pushed, and… Taehyung had turned her into this.

This monster.

This soulless monster.

A honk drew Taehyung out of it, and when he glanced up, he saw Namjoon in the car parked across the street.

He jumped across the road without looking, because really, truly, what is there to lose?

“Hyung…” Slipping into the passenger seat in relief, Taehyung’s entire body sagged as soon as his butt hit the cushion. “Thank you. For picking me up.”

“Any time you need me, Tae,” Namjoon promised, and pulled into the street. It took Taehyung a moment to buckle his seatbelt.

They drove for a little while to get out of the small streets, and when Namjoon turned onto an avenue, Taehyung sighed. Namjoon took it as his cue to start asking.

“Something go wrong with your deal?”

“Yeah.” Many things had gone wrong. Taehyung felt disgusting. “I gotta pay for two amps of heroin from my own savings.”

“That sucks. Why?”

“Long story.” Her pleas echoed in his skull, bounding off his bone and sinking sharply into his brain, and Taehyung doubled over, holding his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Are you sure? You’re really upset.”

“Of course I am…” Taehyung mumbled, catching his breath before sitting back up. Namjoon was looking at him, although his eyes should’ve been on the road. “Hyung… You and everyone else keep telling me I’m innocent, but… what if I’m not?”

“None of us are innocent, Taehyung. Nobody is.”

“But what I’ve done… isn’t it worse than anything?”

“It’s not just about handing out drugs, Tae, is it…?” Namjoon asked, ever-observant.

“I’m feeding their addictions, aren’t I?” Taehyung explained, chewing on a fingernail. “It’s because of me… I show up at their doors and in alleys and reaffirm the control that these drugs have over their lives. They can’t get free because every week, I have to go back and clamp these handcuffs back on them. And they thank me! They pay me for it!”

Her cries and her hands ghosted across his body.

“They worship me for it.” His voice came lower than a whisper.

“Their behavior is not on you,” Namjoon insisted.

“I wish I didn’t have to hear them thank me for killing them.”

“To them, you’re helping them live.”

Her collarbones, her spine, her ribs, her elbows… All her bones pushed so harshly against her thinned skin that Taehyung could hurt himself on them.

“That’s no way to live.”

Namjoon said nothing, and took a turn. The streetlights flashed past them, illuminating Namjoon’s face, and Taehyung saw nothing on it. Not a sliver of judgement, not a hint of disappointment.

Taehyung felt like he should at least be a little bit disappointed.

“I’ve made slaves out of these people…” he murmured, watching Namjoon’s reaction. “They bow to everything I tell them because I hold their lives in tiny brown paper bags. They have no choice but to do as I say because otherwise, they’ll be shaking or hallucinating for days and days on end. Their lives are in my backpack, so the only thing they have left to control is their deaths, and… too many of them have been pushed that far already. And it’s all my fault.”

Namjoon still had no reaction. Taehyung felt a bit disappointed himself.

He wished he could get yelled at. Hit. Spat on. Insulted. Anything to indulge in this guilt that ravaged his insides like an expanding tumour. But Namjoon did nothing. He did nothing but listen.

“But Tae.” Finally, he spoke, and Taehyung leaned in to listen to him. “Aren’t you a slave as well?”

“Huh…?” Taehyung asked dumbly, not following. “But I don’t… I’m clean.”

“You say you’re terrible because you hold people’s lives in your hands, and give them no choice but to follow you or die. Right?”

“That’s what I said, yeah.”

“But isn’t that how it is for you, too?” Namjoon asked, and instantly, immediately, Taehyung knew he was right.

Namjoon was right.

“I… I don’t…”

“Your life belongs to the jopok, doesn’t it? The mafia bosses, they’re the ones with your life in their hands, they’re the ones who tell you to do what you do, or die. So in the end, aren’t you a slave as much as these people you say are?”

“I still carry some responsibility…”

“Maybe so. But only a small part of it. See… the only good thing about being a slave is that you have a master that will take responsibility for your actions,” Namjoon explained calmly, slowly but surely taking Taehyung home. “Maybe not in a court of law; the higher-ups would never take responsibility for you, or me, or any one of us. But right now, in this car, between you and me… it’s okay to push all this guilt, all these burdens on your masters.”

“Is it?” Taehyung chuckled mirthlessly, glancing outside. Seoul glanced back at him with vibrant lights and vibrant life, as if telling him that everything would be okay.

“It is.” Namjoon assured him, and put a hand on his knee, squeezing tightly. “So just leave it to them. Let them feel guilty, let them feel heavy, let them feel like they’ve committed atrocities that strip them of their humanity. Because truly, Taehyung… if you can still feel guilt inside of you, then you are innocent.”

“Maybe just for now…” Taehyung acquiesced, tired and too worn out to keep fighting this battle. Namjoon was right. He bore some guilt, but for now, he could leave most of it on the shoulders of those who held his leash. “Thank you, Namjoon-hyung. Really.”

“I’m here for anything you need, Tae,” Namjoon assured him, and pulled his hand away. “When is your next drop? Maybe Hoseok can come with you.”

“Over the weekend I’m only doing flash sales in Itaewon. My next round of drops is on Wednesday, and even then, I only do the districts south of the Han River. I only come back in these parts of Thursday.”

“Let’s see if Hoseok can come with you on Thursday, alright? So you don’t have to face this client on your own next time,” Namjoon suggested.

“Alright,” Taehyung agreed, if only as a temporary truce.

Both he and Namjoon knew very well that this client was only one of the dozens of broken shells that Taehyung dealt with in this line of work.

Normally, Jimin always came back before noon, because he liked to sleep in the afternoon before going back out the next night. It felt strangely paradoxical for Jimin to hide when the sun rose to its highest, because everyone could agree that his smile rivalled the warmth of that same sun.

He had a routine, and he stuck to it. It was one of the few things he could still control, and he took it very seriously.

In which case, of course, a break in that routine never went unnoticed.

Yoongi sounded the alarm first that afternoon, when he tiptoed into the bedroom to get a change of clothes, and immediately ran back out without consideration for noise.

“Did Jimin come back this morning?” he asked to the only other occupant in the apartment, Jungkook, who was sprawled across the couch with a comic book in his hands.

“I didn’t see him.” He glanced up from his comic book to search Yoongi’s face. “Why? He isn’t asleep?”

“If I asked you that question, he clearly isn’t,” Yoongi clicked his tongue, pulling out his phone. “Did he say he would be going out somewhere?”

If they were any normal group of friends, neither of them would’ve made a big deal about it.

But they weren’t normal, and they had known Jimin for much too long to believe that this was a normal situation.

“I’ll call Tae. You ask Jin-hyung; if anyone knows, it’s him,” Jungkook suggested, sitting up and mimicking Yoongi in checking his phone.

Yoongi dialed Seokjin’s number so fast, the pads of his fingers hurt.

He picked up on the fourth ring.

“What’s wrong?” Immediately, Seokjin’s voice rose. “You never call me when you know I’m at work. What’s happened?”

“Jimin didn’t come back last night,” Yoongi reported to him. “I take it he hasn’t told you anything about that?”

“No, he hasn’t.” Seokjin’s voice sounded tight on the other end. Voices and yelling filtered in from behind him in the moment he went silent. “Call Namjoon. Start looking. He said he would be trying out Gireum last night.”

“Alright.” Glancing at Jungkook, who’d already hung up on Taehyung and was now frowning at his cellphone, Yoongi knew they’d hit an obstacle. “I’ll keep you informed.”

“Please.” Seokjin let out a heavy sigh. “Please find him.”

“Of course.” Without another word, Yoongi hung up, and met Jungkook’s eyes. Jungkook pursed his lips at him gravely, holding his phone to his ear.

“Jimin’s phone is going straight to voice mail,” he said, giving up and stowing his phone away. “Tae doesn’t know anything; he was all the way in Gangnam last night.”

“Call Joon,” Yoongi ordered, heading for the front door. “I’ll drive.”

In a rare show of seriousness, Jungkook shot up from the couch and went to the kitchen. He squeezed into the tight corner and opened the cupboard, pulling out one of the jars with money and grabbing all of its contents. He left the jar on the counter as he hurried back to the living room, stuffing the money into the back pocket of his jeans. Yoongi was already ahead of him, opening the door, and Jungkook followed him closely.

As they locked the apartment and hurried to the car, Jungkook made the call to Namjoon, who always picked up on the first ring.

“Yes?”

“Hyung,” Jungkook began gravely, sliding into the passenger seat. Yoongi started the car immediately, and pulled into the street. “Jimin didn’t come back. Jin-hyung says he was in Gireum last night, and Yoongi-hyung and I are on our way to look for him.”

“Let’s see… For starters, tell Yoongi to reduce his speed. You’ll be stopped by a police officer before you get anywhere, at this rate.”

The plain humour allowed a small smile to crawl onto Jungkook’s lips, and he turned to the driver while Namjoon began typing away in his ear.

“Namjoon-hyung says you should slow down,” he relayed, biting his lip as not to laugh when Yoongi glared murder at him.

“Yeah? Tell Namjoon to fuck off.”

“That’s not very nice of him,” Namjoon clicked his tongue on the other end, typing audibly. Jungkook always imagined his office to be one like in the movies; with twelve screens on the wall and tablets and keyboards strewn around. And a swivel chair. Always a swivel chair. He hoped he’d be able to see it some day; Namjoon’s office was one of the world’s best-kept secrets, and only Yoongi knew where it was located.

“So?”

“Luckily, the location services on Jimin’s cellphone are still active,” Namjoon informed him. “I’ve marked his exact location on my GPS map, and I’ll send a screenshot to Yoongi’s cellphone. It’s still in Gireum.”

“Good. Next?”

“Next, I’m going to access the surveillance cameras on the Gireum police station front. Though they won’t have caught a glimpse at Jimin, I’ll start there to investigate the circuit of street cameras, and I’ll try to pull out feeds from the cameras most likely to have caught his face, based on his cellphone location,” Namjoon explained, still typing furiously as he spoke. “What timeframe am I looking at?”

“Tae said they rode the train together, and separated around 10:30PM. That’s the last time he was seen,” Jungkook answered, clutching onto the seat when Yoongi made a sharp turn to run a yellow light.

“Then I’ll filter the footage from there and keep an eye out. I’ll try running my new face-recognition algorithm, but it’s still in its beta mode, so I don’t guarantee it’ll work.”

“I didn’t know we could do that,” Jungkook whistled in appreciation. “Damn, Namjoonie-hyung, you really are a top class hacking genius.”

“I prefer the term ‘freelance programmer’. It’s more accurate,” Namjoon chuckled on the other end. “It’s a pain, honestly. I’ve only made 3D models of your, Jimin’s, and Taehyung’s faces so far, so you’re the only three I can input into the algorithm for now.”

“Is it because we’re so handsome?”

“No, it’s because you’re unreliable and always getting into trouble.” Namjoon snorted in amusement at the sound of Jungkook’s offended whine.

“Namjoon, we’re almost in Gireum,” Yoongi suddenly announced loudly, loud enough for the hacker to hear them on the other end. “Where do I go?”

“Park the car facing the station and get on foot to start looking. I’ll keep you updated on what I find.”

“Copy,” Yoongi nodded, steeling his eyes.

Jungkook followed that same look in his eyes, and couldn’t help but feel admiration for his hyungs’ teamwork.

Unsurprising, considering they’d been partners in crime for ten years.

“Alright, we’re on foot,” Jungkook announced, pulling out earphones from the glove box and plugging them into his phone before popping them in. “And you’re in my ears. Lead on.”

“I’ll be on the line, but follow the map on Yoongi’s phone for now. I’ll check the street footage.”

“Alright.” Turning to Yoongi, Jungkook glanced down at the map on his phone. “Is it far?”

“A block and a half,” Yoongi grunted, beginning to walk. Despite how he felt, however, he walked at a good pace, not slow but not visibly rushed either. Jungkook followed him; he was the one who knew how to blend in, after all.

They walked past the small crowds, weaving in and out between the people out on their every day errands, and who most certainly were not out searching for a friend gone missing. On the outside, they looked like normal people, too; Yoongi liked to carry the façade of a steely young man, and Jungkook looked like a total brat ignoring the world with earphones to block everything out.

They turned into a smaller street, and from that smaller street, turned into a dead-end alley. One of the windows on the building next to them carried a sign that advertised ‘a woman for every man’, which made Jungkook wonder why Jimin would even try this place at all. He’d ask him when they found him.

When.

“He’s clearly not here, so he must’ve dropped his cellphone,” Yoongi grunted, fearlessly engaging into the alley. It was blocked off by buildings on three sides, and only had cardboard boxes and stacked broken chairs to liven it up.

“We’re looking around the target spot,” Jungkook informed Namjoon, who acknowledged with a hum.

“I know, I’m following your phone’s GPS as well. Keep looking. I’ve got a 40% match on my algorithm, which is as good as it’s gonna get, so I’m going through the footage manually. It might actually be him.”

“You’d think it’d be easy to find a dude with orange hair around these parts.”

“Security cameras are in greyscale,” Namjoon supplied unhelpfully.

“Shame.” Jungkook kicked a cardboard box out of boredom, and glanced at Yoongi, who had his phone in his hand but was glancing around him expectantly.

He was about to ask what he was doing before a vibration pattern suddenly erupted from the boxes stacked next to him.

“Oh man, hyung. You’re too smart for this world,” Jungkook huffed, grabbing the boxes one by one and trying to figure out which one held the vibrating cellphone in it. On his third shot, he found it, and opened the box to find Jimin’s cellphone screen lighting up with Yoongi’s incoming call. “Got it.”

“Let’s see if he’s written anything important in it,” Yoongi suggested, hanging up. The call screen disappeared, and instead, Jungkook was left to look at the phone’s background.

It was a selfie of Jimin, Seokjin and Hoseok, all posing together, all grinning like fools and basking in the sunlight.

Jungkook’s heartstrings pulled, so he clicked it off.

“Namjoon-hyung, can you unlock Jimin’s cellphone?” he asked as Yoongi arrived by his side and clicked the phone on. His expression fell -but only subtly- when he, too, saw the background that was much too bright for their current situation.

“I’ve just gotten remote access. Let me try and unlock it,” Namjoon hummed, and the screen lit up in Yoongi’s hand again, although now, a PIN began to input.

“This is scary, hyung,” Jungkook huffed, watching the PIN backtrack and re-enter several times. “Can you do this for all of our phones?”

“And laptops.”

“I can’t believe you.”

“It’s for your safety,” Namjoon insisted. “Trust me, Jungkook-ah, I’m the last person who wants to look through all the dick picks you’ve probably taken with your phone.”

“There’s only, like… three of them on there, so it’s not even that bad,” Jungkook grumbled, glancing at the screen. The PIN re-entered on its own, and this time, the lock screen faded, giving way to the home screen.

“I’ll check for tracks,” Yoongi volunteered, immediately tapping at Jimin’s phone. Close enough for the microphone on Jungkook’s earphones to catch his voice, he continued. “Joon, keep watching the feeds.”

“I’ve been at it since you first asked, but alright,” Namjoon hummed on the other end, and let out a heavy sigh. “Let’s keep going. He shouldn’t be too far from here.”

“We’ll find him,” Jungkook reassured them both, trying to address the insecurity that neither of them verbalized. They didn’t say anything, but Jungkook knew they saw through him.

“Here, in his notes,” Yoongi ended up turning the phone to Jungkook to show him. “He’s done his research about the area. Demographics, active hours, hotspots… I think he’s got a few hotels written down as well.”

“Well done,” Namjoon commended, though truly, they all mentally praised Jimin for being so thorough. Nobody was more dedicated to their work as Jimin was dedicated to his. “I’ll look up the hotels. I’ve got a 60% match on one of the tapes and I’m pretty sure that’s him.”

“Namjoon-hyung is trying to triangulate Jiminie’s probable location,” Jungkook simply reported to Yoongi, and snatched the phone from his hands. He closed the notes, and opened the camera, snapping a lightning-fast selfie of himself (with a ridiculous expression) and of Yoongi (with a murderous expression), and chuckled as he worked fast on setting it as Jimin’s background.

“You’re wasting time,” Yoongi grunted, but didn’t move to stop him.

“Nothing better to do until Joonie-hyung gives us our orders.” Satisfied with his crop, Jungkook set the picture as the lock screen, and handed the phone back to Yoongi. “Besides, Jimin is going to get so mad when he gets this back. It’ll be hilarious.”

Yoongi couldn’t say anything against that. Tapping his foot nervously, he waited on Namjoon’s word.

It came about a minute and a half later. With a decisive exhale, Namjoon’s voice filtered back into Jungkook’s ears.

“Alright, I’ve narrowed it down to the most probable location. On the tape, he was headed northwest on the street, accompanied by his client, and there’s only one hotel in that general direction. Try that one. I’m sending Yoongi the map.”

“We’ve got our target,” Jungkook indicated to Yoongi with a nudge of his elbow. “Northwest.”

“Let’s go.” Yoongi’s phone buzzed in reception of Namjoon’s map, and Yoongi pulled it out to follow it. Jungkook fell on his heels immediately.

They weaved through the crowds once more, now in a more hurried walk. Jimin felt so close, and yet they still had to be careful not to look suspicious. It was killing them both, and Namjoon as well. Jungkook couldn’t even begin to imagine how Seokjin and Tae felt being left in the dark, and how pissed Hoseok would be when they inevitably told him what happened.

“Jungkook,” Namjoon spoke up again as they nervously stopped at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for their turn. “Don’t tell Yoongi because he’s already worried for Jimin, but…”

Jungkook’s heart clenched. He didn’t want to hear what Namjoon had to say, but he had to hear it.

“He’s out of it, completely.” Namjoon sighed, and paused for a moment. “On the surveillance tape. It recorded him around 2AM, and he’s barely conscious, leaning on this guy and hardly even walking on his own. It looks like his client’s grip is the only thing keeping him up.”

Jungkook sucked in a sharp breath, and it went unnoticed in the noise of the crowd.

“He won’t be alright when you get to him,” Namjoon warned.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jungkook fiercely replied, biting out the words with an aftertaste of anger and worry lingering in his mouth. “Update the others. We’re almost there.”

“I’ll text them. Focus on finding Jimin.”

Jungkook nodded to thin air, and saved his breath for navigating the busy city streets.

A corner here and a corner there, and Yoongi finally stopped in front of a run-down, two-story hotel that looked outdated from the last century.

“This is the one,” he confirmed with a glance at his phone, and stepped inside without further ado, Jungkook hot on his heels. As they approached the front desk, his heart began to make itself known in his chest.

“Welcome,” the woman at the desk greeted them kindly as they got closer. The lobby was empty, not a single noise aside from the sounds of the street past the door. “How may I help you today?”

“We’re looking for someone who came here late last night. Young adult male, orange hair, accompanied by an older man,” Yoongi described, straight to the point. It clearly made the woman nervous.

“Oh… well, hotel policy forbids me from disclosing-”

“Check for a man who rented a single room between 2AM and 3AM,” Jungkook demanded, pulling out a 50,000 won bill from his back pocket and slapping it down on the counter. “Do it.”

“Oh.” She hesitated for a second, glancing around the lobby to make sure it was indeed empty, and furtively pocketed the bill. “I’ll, uhh… I’ll check, just give me a second.”

“Hurry,” Jungkook added half-heartedly, though he knew that at this point, it didn’t matter how many seconds they shaved off.

The woman clicked and typed on her monitor for a minute or so, scrolling until she caught something with her eye.

“Uhhh…” she turned to them and gave them a nervous glance. “Room 204 is the only rental that fits your criteria. It’s already checked out, though.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Turning on his heel, Yoongi immediately headed off.

“Print a copy of the reservation details for me,” Jungkook demanded.

“I, I can’t, I could really get in trouble for a breach in privacy!”

“I won’t ask again.” Although his young age still cursed him with a baby face, Jungkook knew he could look intimidating when he wanted, and he sure hoped he looked intimidating at this point. He pulled out two crumpled 10,000 won bills and slid them onto the counter as well, and the woman sighed hopelessly before accepting them.

“Please don’t come back here,” she groaned, reaching over to the printer to retrieve the paper being printed.

Jungkook was gone without another word the second the paper touched his hand.

He glanced at it briefly on the way up the stairs to the second floor, where he found Yoongi lockpicking door 204.

“Where were you?” he grunted, carefully maneuvering his lockpicking tools into the lock.

“I got a name,” Jungkook announced, folding the paper and putting it in his other pocket. “For Hobi-hyung later.”

“Nicely done,” Yoongi simply offered, and pulled on his tool just enough for the lock to click. “Alright, go.”

Jungkook twisted the knob and threw the door open.

“Jimin!?” he called, both of them bumping shoulders as they rushed into the room.

The bed remained unmade, and empty.

“Damn it,” Jungkook swore softly, but jumped back when Yoongi leapt across him to throw the bathroom door open.

He was right.

Jimin laid limply in the bathtub, completely naked and tangled up in his own limbs. From the doorway, it was impossible to tell if he was still breathing.

“Jimin!” Rushing to his knees, Yoongi leaned into the tub and checked for a pulse on Jimin’s neck while Jungkook watched helplessly.

“Jungkook? What’s going on?” Namjoon asked through the earphones, but Jungkook found his voice frozen in his throat.

If Jimin died, he wouldn’t know what he’d do.

“Jungkook!”

And as he watched Yoongi turn Jimin onto his back to check again, the possibility became very, very real.

He wanted to cry.

“I’ve got it,” Yoongi finally sighed out, pulling his hand away from Jimin’s neck and putting it in front of his mouth. Jungkook saw the way he was shaking, even if his voice and demeanor seemed composed.

“Oh, thank goodness,” he gasped out, his chest hurting from having held his breath for so long. “Namjoonie-hyung, he’s okay. He’s alive, he’s okay.”

The only response he got from the other end was a long, shaky exhale.

“Okay. I’ll call Jin-hyung. Get him to the hospital immediately,” Namjoon ordered, getting back to work as soon as his composure was regained. “I’m cutting comms with you for now. Will you be alright?”

“We’ll be fine,” Jungkook assured him, because really, the worst was over. “Thanks for your help, hyung.”

“Of course.”

The tone jingled in Jungkook’s ear to indicate that Namjoon had hung up.

“Jungkook, get Jimin to the bed,” Yoongi ordered as soon as Jungkook pulled the earphones out of his ears. “I’m heading back to get the car, and I’ll text you when I’m outside. Get him dressed, try to wake him up. I assume Jin knows we’re coming?”

“Namjoon-hyung is informing him right now,” Jungkook answered, switching places with Yoongi to hold onto Jimin.

His skin was so pale it shone yellow in the dingy bathroom light. Yoongi had checked his pulse, but somehow, Jungkook felt like he needed to check again.

“Okay, I’ll be back in ten minutes, tops,” Yoongi assured him, and lightly patted his shoulder on his way out. “Jungkook, he’ll be okay. We’ve got him now. He’s going to be fine.”

“I know,” Jungkook replied, but he didn’t.

Instead, as Yoongi left in a sprint, he worked on getting Jimin out of the tub.

Jimin wasn’t heavy per se, but he did have his fair share of lean muscle acquired in his spare time spent dancing, and Jungkook felt comforted by the weight he gathered in his arms. He was even more comforted when Jimin groaned at being jostled around, his expression twisting into a pained grimace as Jungkook carried him out.

“Hey, Jiminie,” he murmured, mostly to fill the silence as he stumbled to the bed. “It’s me. It’s your Kookie. You’re okay now. Yoongi-hyung is coming to get us, and we’re going to go see Jin-hyung. You’re going to be okay.”

Jimin shifted in Jungkook’s arms, and he ended up gently laying him on top of the covers and smoothing his hair back. He tried not to look at the bruises around his neck, his lips, his jaw, his wrists, not to be affected by the violent bite marks on his collarbones, shoulders and thighs. He tried.

He loved Jimin too much to let any of it get to him.

“Hold on, I’ll grab your clothes,” he continued, and left Jimin to make quick work of grabbing the few articles of clothing tossed around the room. He swung by the bathroom and wet a hand towel before walking back with everything in tow. When he returned to Jimin’s side, the latter seemed to be making effort to open his eyes.

Taking it as a good sign, Jungkook began cleaning him up and dressing him, throwing worried glances at his expression every time he let out a noise. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to take care of Jimin after one of his working nights, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but this one was definitely the worst.

“Hey Jiminie,” he called softly, zipping up his jeans with some difficulty. “Hey, come on. Wake up. I need your help to dress you.”

Another groan escaped Jimin, and finally, he opened his eyes. The numerous pinpoint bruises around his eyelids moved with him, and Jungkook felt terrible for unconsciously thinking of them as stars imprinted on Jimin’s skin.

“Jiminie,” he breathed, dropping the see-through shirt he held in his hands and scooting over to sit by his head. He gently put his hand on Jimin’s cheek and caressed his face with his thumb. “Hey… you’re awake.”

“Kook-” Jimin rasped, his voice escaping him. He let out a few breathy coughs to try and clear his throat, but his voice remained rough. “What…?”

“It’s 1PM, and you weren’t home, so… we came to get you,” Jungkook simply explained, letting Jimin fill in the gaps by himself.

It seemed to take him a moment.

“So tired…” he groaned finally, and closed his eyes, going limp. Jungkook tried to get his racing heart under control.

“No, don’t sleep yet, Jiminie. Yoongi-hyung is coming to get you and we’re going to the hospital to get you checked out.” Putting his arms around his shoulders, Jungkook pulled Jimin up into a sitting position, which he assumed with an unhappy groan.

“Kook… What happened?” he rasped, leaning heavily against Jungkook.

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember… getting off the train in Gireum… Heading for the bar…” he trailed off, and let out a heavy sigh. “I feel terrible.”

“Are you gonna be sick?” Jungkook asked, rubbing his hand up and down Jimin’s back worriedly.

“No. Just feel like it.” Jimin cleared his throat a few more times, to no avail. “Man. Haven’t gotten… this fucked up in a while.”

“What were you doing here? Everyone knows Gireum is as shady as it gets.” Trying to draw more words out of Jimin, Jungkook worked on getting him into his shirt. It didn’t provide him with much modesty, but at least it kept his injuries out of plain sight. His bruised neck, though… there wasn’t much to be done about that.

“Bosses ordered it,” Jimin rasped, making genuine effort to put his arms through the shirt holes. “They’re expanding territory. Sent me to pioneer it.”

“Don’t you ever come back here by yourself, alright?” Jungkook seethed, hating every second of this conversation. “If they ever make you come here again, ask for an enforcer to accompany. If they won’t give you one, Hobi-hyung will definitely come with you.”

“I don’t…” Jimin stopped himself, and glanced up into Jungkook’s eyes. He was clearly in pain, but also clearly more lucid than Jungkook gave him credit for. It broke his heart. “I don’t… want you guys to see… me…”

“We’re in this together, Jiminie.” Finishing up with his shirt, Jungkook smoothed out Jimin’s hair, and pulled him to his chest. “We love you. We love you so much. And seeing you in that bathtub like that… Yoongi-hyung is never going to talk about it, but… we couldn’t even see you breathe. He couldn’t find your pulse the first time he tried. We were…” He cut himself off, a ball heavily weighing on his vocal cords. “God, Jimin… What if we’d lost you…?”

“I’m here,” Jimin assured him, his voice raspy and his body bowed against Jungkook’s, but somehow, his words were more grounding than anything else.

Jungkook put his face in Jimin’s hair and breathed in deep, smelling sweat and cologne and smoke, but he closed his eyes and gripped him tight- just not tight enough to bruise.

They remained as such for a few minutes, stuck to one another for the assurance that they were both okay, until Jungkook’s phone vibrated.

“It’s probably hyung. He’s waiting outside with the car,” Jungkook quietly explained, glancing at his phone. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“Yeah,” Jimin nodded, and tried to get up.

“I’ll give you a piggy back ride,” Jungkook smiled lightly. “You’re getting your strength back but you’re still exhausted. I’ll let it slide this time.”

Jimin looked like he wanted to protest, but gave in when his knees shook at the thought of standing.

“You’re so kind,” he grunted sarcastically, sliding bonelessly onto Jungkook’s back.

Jungkook ended up doing most of the effort as Jimin’s limbs flopped uselessly down his front, and, trying not to be too worried, he carried Jimin out. As promised, Yoongi was waiting right in front of the hotel, with the door open already.

“Jimin,” he breathed, and Jungkook watched him exhale in relief when Jimin opened his eyes at the call of his name.

“Hyung,” he rasped, and the frown slid right back onto Yoongi’s face.

“You’re going to be fine,” Yoongi assured him, even if Jimin hadn’t asked, and they all knew that Yoongi needed to hear that the most.

“I’ll sit with him in the back,” Jungkook volunteered, getting Jimin off of him and into the seat with Yoongi’s help. Jimin tried to help, but really, he couldn’t do much.

When he slumped against the seat, Jungkook slid in next to him, and Yoongi jumped into the driver’s seat.

“Jimin, what happened?” Yoongi asked sharply, glancing into the rearview mirror to watch Jungkook buckle Jimin in. The latter leaned against him, putting his head on his shoulder.

“Can’t remember…” he mumbled, and Yoongi had to strain to hear it as the car began to move.

“Did you take something at that bar?” he asked, straight to the point, and looked up again to see Jimin grimace as heavily as he could muster.

“Fuck no.”

“Then your client must’ve slipped you something,” he deduced, watching Jungkook stabilize his swaying posture. “You’re seriously dosed right now.”

“Fuck,” Jimin swore shamelessly, his eyelids fluttering open to glance before him. To Yoongi’s absolute horror (and rage), his eyes looked wet already. “Fuck. This complicates everything.”

“What do you mean?” Jungkook asked softly, rubbing comforting circles into Jimin’s side.

“If I can’t remember…” Jimin patted his pants clumsily and sighed. “Fucker didn’t even pay me. Don’t know if he used a condom… gotta get tested again… I must look like shit… I can’t work like this… My voice is disgusting… My ass genuinely hurts, it hasn’t in years…”

“That’s enough,” Yoongi interrupted his rambling, and when Jungkook glanced to the front, he saw that his hands were a bloodless white from gripping the steering wheel so hard. “All of that can be fixed. I don’t want you to worry about all that.” The car lurched to a stop as Yoongi avoided running a red light, and turned to look Jimin straight in the eye. “Damn it, Jimin. The only thing that matters is that you’re still here. Everything else can be fixed.”

Jimin looked right back at him, chewing on his lip nervously, and then looked away.

“I’m disgusting,” he ended up muttering, almost as if challenging Yoongi to fix that.

Jungkook tightened his grip around him, and Yoongi wordlessly turned back to the road.

Jimin didn’t cry, but they both wished he did.

The ride ended up in silence all the way to the hospital, where Yoongi parked in a specific part of the loading docks that he knew very well. He sent Seokjin a quick text to announce their arrival, and then headed to the back seat to help Jimin get back up on Jungkook’s back.

He was doing a lot better, although he still felt sick and still fell in and out of sleep. Whatever he’d gotten must’ve been really strong to last this long.

Yoongi tried not to wonder what would’ve happened if they hadn’t found Jimin in that bathtub.

Jungkook carried Jimin in through a door, and ended up stepping right into the radiology wing of the emergency department. Across the room, a swinging door fell open, and Seokjin rushed in, looking panicked.

“Oh, thank goodness,” he breathed out just like everybody else, and hurriedly made his way to Jimin to press a fierce kiss into his hair. “Jimin. Jiminie. Can you hear me?”

“Jin-hyung.” Opening his eyes, Jimin let out a genuine smile at the sight of his oldest hyung’s worry. “I’m okay. Yoongi-hyung took good care of me.”

“Hey, remember who’s carrying your heavy ass,” Jungkook teased, mockingly dropping Jimin a few inches, just to hear him rasp out a laugh. The worry lines around Seokjin’s eyes didn’t quite smooth out.

“Come on. You know where we’re going,” Seokjin motioned them over, and the four of them stepped out into the hallway.

Nobody really paid them any attention, and Seokjin used his keycard to unlock a door that indicated that it was restricted entry.

Inside, a single stretcher stood against the wall, with standard medical equipment and a heart monitor at its side. The room itself was dark, and small. A pharmacy cabinet stood in the corner.

Jungkook unhesitatingly laid Jimin onto the stretcher, and Seokjin helped him get comfortable.

“I’m going to get you plugged on the monitor, Jimin. I let the doctor know you’d arrived, so she should be here any second,” Seokjin explained, tugging Jimin’s shirt off. Jungkook watched him take it off, strangely bitter that his hard work had been for naught.

“Sorry for being a bother…” Jimin groaned, but relented, closing his eyes to rest.

On the third sticker that Seokjin stuck to his chest, his breath suddenly caught, and his eyes flew open in panic.

“Jimin?” Yoongi was at his side in a second, grabbing his hand tightly.

“The money,” he gasped out, looking at Yoongi desperately. “This is going to cost so much money, we can’t… I’m not worth…”

“Stop right there, Jiminie,” Seokjin ordered in a tough voice, sticking his last sticker a bit forcefully. “I won’t let you continue down that line of thought. You are absolutely worth the world, and no amount of money will ever be too much to make sure you’re okay.”

“This is what the third jar is for,” Yoongi reminded him softly. “Times like these are the reason we keep it full. So that we don’t need to worry about money during emergencies.”

“It’s not an emergency…” Jimin protested, glancing away in shame. “I just… messed up a little.”

“You could’ve died.” Yoongi’s voice was sharp, and it echoed into the silence that filled the room afterwards.

The conversation stopped right there, and they all idly watched Seokjin set Jimin up on the monitor and get a set of vital signs. By the time he’d inserted an intravenous catheter in the crook of his elbow and had drawn up blood for a rainbow of plastic tubes, the door opened to let in an older woman in a doctor’s coat.

“Doctor,” Seokjin acknowledged, stepping to the side as she approached. “This is Park Jimin. 21-year-old male, presenting with retrograde amnesia and lethargy after extended loss of consciousness.”

“When did this start?” she asked, her sharp eyes looking over Jimin’s half-exposed body.

“Had sex last night,” Jimin rasped out, swallowing heavily. “They found me passed out in the tub.”

“So I’m consulting for date rape,” the doctor stated bluntly, turning to face Seokjin. “When you said we were expecting a patient in the Red Room, I expected the usual. A gunshot, torture victim, abused housewife, you know the works.”

“This has to go under the record. Not even the bosses can know about it.” Seokjin looked up at her pleadingly. “Please. He can’t go through the regular system.”

“You know I never ask,” she conceded, then turned back to Jimin, who was glancing up at her nervously. She looked him over appraisingly for a few second before she continued. “500,000 won.”

Jimin visibly winced at the large number, but Jungkook was already working on smoothing out the bills in his back pocket.

“I need 40,000 more,” he announced as he finished counting, handing the stack of organized bills to the doctor. She began to count as Yoongi and Seokjin looked through their pockets for the rest. Jimin had closed his eyes and looked absolutely mortified, although he could just have passed out again.

“Here’s 37,000,” Seokjin handed the doctor whatever money he and Yoongi had managed to pull out. “I can give you the rest in coins if you like.”

“Forget it,” the doctor rolled her eyes, pocketing the large amount of money. “Take it as a gift for not bringing me in for another messy mafia case.”

“Thank you.” The boys all let out a collective sigh of relief, and glanced at each other as if to find comfort in their presence.

“Alright, nurse Kim.” The doctor pulled out her stethoscope and looped it around her neck. “Start working him up. Metabolic panel, CK, and blood count, serum osmolarity and ethanol, blood and urine tox screen, HIV and hepatitis antibodies, swab for syphilis, urine for chlamydia and gonorrhea and a rapid mono screen.”

“On it,” Seokjin nodded, grabbing his tubes full of blood and heading to the counter to get started.

“Give him 0.4mg of naloxone and run a litre bolus of saline,” she continued to speak, palpating Jimin’s neck where the heavy bruising was. Jimin flinched, but didn’t otherwise move. Yoongi’s hand may or may not have tightened around his.

She checked his pupils, asked him a few questions, and auscultated his lungs while Seokjin prepared the tests and gave him his intravenous medication. She finished her physical exam by making sure he didn’t have any serious bodily injuries, and then retreated.

“Run all the tests and get back to me on the toxicology report,” she asked of Seokjin, going for the door. “So far, nothing terrible has come up, but the labs will confirm it. Titrate some oxygen; he’s hypoventilating, probably due to a mix of depressed consciousness and airway injury from severe asphyxiation. Patch up his injuries and get him a tetanus shot.” She finally turned to give Jimin another unreadable look. “You never know. Some people will do anything when they’re given too much power.”

Despite the clouded look in his eyes, Jimin managed to laugh.

In the end, Jimin’s urine came back positive for an industrial amount of benzodiazepines, so he got a dose of reversal agent and slept the drugs off for a few hours while Seokjin rehydrated his battered body. By the early evening, he was able to walk out of the hospital, the same way they came in, with the promise that he’d get most of his STI test results in a few days. Seokjin stayed back to finish his shift, promising them dinner as a group when he got back later that evening.

Yoongi drove them back to the apartment, and although Jimin was wide awake after his treatment, he still didn’t say anything. Nobody pushed him to, either.

As soon as they entered the apartment, Taehyung and Hoseok ran up to welcome them.

“Jiminie,” Taehyung breathed out in relief, clutching Jimin’s hand to drag him inside. “I was so scared.”

“I’m fine now, Tae,” Jimin assured him, his voice still slightly raspy from being choked. He willingly leaned into Hoseok when his elder guided him to the couch with an arm around his waist.

“I’m so sorry nobody found you earlier,” Hoseok sighed, sitting down right next to him.

“It’s not that bad-”

“Jimin,” Hoseok cut him off sharply, and Jimin fell silent. At the door, Jungkook and Yoongi were conversing in low tones, throwing them worried glances. “It was a horrible experience that you never should’ve gone through. I’m so thankful that you’re back with us now.”

His honesty felt a bit uncomfortable to Jimin, who squirmed in his seat.

“I, uhh…” He glanced up at Hoseok shyly. “Thanks, I guess. I’m sorry I worried you. I think I’ll reduce my curfew for a little while, just until I work through this incident.”

“Good idea,” Taehyung nodded. “We’re with you every step of the way.”

“I know.” And when Jimin smiled, he smiled genuinely, with everything he had. It honestly hurt to look at him sometimes; him and his strange innocence that never allowed him to indulge in the pain that others routinely inflicted upon him.

And so, the boys suffered in his stead, watching Jimin blow off every night, every traumatizing experience, as if suffering felt benign to him.

“Seok-ah,” Yoongi called, catching their attention all at once. His face was set in an impassable frown, and behind him, Jungkook fidgeted lightly with a piece of paper. “Can I talk to you?”

“Sure.” His expression must’ve tipped Hoseok off, because he gently turned to Jimin and smoothed out his hair. “Go take a shower and get some more rest. We’ll wake you up when dinner’s ready.”

“I’ll come with you,” Taehyung volunteered immediately, pulling him up. Jimin nodded and let Taehyung lead him off, though his eyes remained on Yoongi’s and Hoseok’s grave expressions until he lost them from sight.

It was easy after that to melt into Taehyung’s gentle hands as he cleaned up and lied down in his bed for a quick rest. Although he’d slept for the most part of the day, he still felt beyond exhausted, and dozed off as soon as Taehyung’s arms wrapped around him.

When he woke up, it was to gentle shaking and the call of his name.

“Hobi-hyung.” He didn’t even need to look up to recognize that voice. He could probably identify all six of his housemates even if all his senses were taken away from him.

“Welcome back, Jiminie,” Hoseok whispered gently to him, letting him wake up on his own terms. He sat down on the side of the bed, and Jimin sat up against the wall behind him, noting that Taehyung was nowhere to be seen. In fact, he and Hoseok were alone, and the darkness outside the small window tipped Jimin off as to the late hour.

“What’s up?” Jimin asked, clearing his throat to get rid of the lingering rasp.

“I wanted to talk to you about what happened to you,” Hoseok answered calmly, putting his hand on Jimin’s knee and rubbing circles into his bare skin. “More specifically, about the man who did this to you.”

“I don’t remember him, hyung.” It was the truth. “The doctor said I was probably started off with GHB in my water, and throughout the night he slipped me Valium pills. I really don’t remember anything.”

“That’s okay.” Hoseok’s tone was so steady that it may as well have been. “Jungkookie was smart and got me his name. Namjoonie tracked him down.”

“Oh.” Jimin knew exactly where this was going. “And…?”

“How much did you charge him?” Hoseok asked, never pulling away from Jimin, never breaking eye contact.

“Considering the consumer demographics of the area, I was going to charge a little less than usual. 100,000 to 120,000, depending on what he asked for,” Jimin recalled, picturing his cellphone notes in his mind’s eye. Without fail, he always researched his areas of work and came up with a game plan. After so many years of doing what he did, it seemed like second nature.

“Okay.” Finally pulling away, Hoseok stood just a bit, just enough to be able to pull his wallet out of his pocket. He sat right back down and opened it out, pulling out several 50,000 won bills. “Here’s 200,000 won.”

“What?” Jimin blinked down at the money in confusion. “Hyung, what…?”

“I may or may not have paid the guy a visit in his disgustingly high-end apartment in Seocho.”

“Oh god.” Jimin groaned, hiding his face in his hands. “You didn’t have to…”

“I wanted to.” Hoseok’s gaze was steely. “Jimin. Every single day, I’m sent to beat up people who have slighted the mafia is some tiny, insignificant way. I’ve beat up fathers in front of their children, threatened store owners in front of their customers, shot and cut and punched more people than I can count, just because the mafia wants absolute control over everything. I’ve hurt all these people who don’t deserve to be hurt on a daily basis, so when someone comes over and thinks they can get away with hurting someone I love, I can’t let them get away with it. I’m an enforcer. If I can hurt innocent people for a living, I sure as hell can hurt the guilty ones, too.”

“I’m sorry for making you so angry,” Jimin murmured, eyes downcast.

“Jiminie, no. I’m not-”

“I know. You’re not angry at me,” Jimin assured him, gently taking his hand. Hoseok linked their fingers tightly without hesitation. “You’re angry at that man for what he did to me. And you’re right. I should probably be a little bit angry myself. But… I know how much you hate being an enforcer. Every person you beat up also breaks off a piece of you. I wish I hadn’t contributed to that.”

“You haven’t,” Hoseok promised gently, bringing their interwoven fingers up to Jimin’s face to caress his smooth cheek. “If there is one thing I’ll never regret doing, it’s fighting to protect the people I love. As long as I do it for you, or for anybody else in this house, I don’t lose any part of me in the process. So I would do it again, and again, and again, as many times as you, or any one of you need me to.”

“I wish I knew what I’ve done to deserve someone like you to look out for me,” Jimin laughed gently, letting go of Hoseok’s hand. “Okay, hyungie. I believe you. Thank you for protecting me.”

“Any time you’re out on the streets, or even if you’re making house calls, if you want me to come with you I will do so without fail,” Hoseok promised him, finally letting his signature bright smile slide back onto his face. “For now, here. This money should do.” He ruffled the forgotten wad of bills in his other hand.

“What did you do, anyway? Just waited for him to open the door and punched him in the face?” Jimin sighed, looking at the money as if it would bite him.

“I told the guy that the mafia wanted retribution for harming their property, and got 400,000 out of him for my ‘lenience’. Indulged a few punches, just to make him rethink his choices next time,” Hoseok explained, pushing the money into Jimin’s hands. “This 200,000 is yours. The rest, I’ll put into the third jar to start filling it up again.”

“Hyung… the higher-ups don’t know about what happened to me today. They don’t care, and you know they’ll only care when I stop paying my part of the dues,” Jimin frowned, although he did fold the money into his fist.

“And that bastard doesn’t know any of that, so I suppose it’s a win-win if nobody talks about it again,” Hoseok shrugged, and reached to take Jimin’s free hand. “Except you. Jiminie, you went through something terrible. I wish I could’ve been there for you.”

“These things happen, hyung. You and I know that better than most people on this planet,” Jimin smiled softly, placating. “I’m upset because I can’t restart work until I get my tests back and until these ugly bruises fade, but I’m not upset because of that man.” His smile faded, and he glanced down at the money in his hands. “I’m never going to give another person the power to dictate how I feel. This is my life. I’ll be happy on my own terms, and I’ll be sad on my own terms.”

Hoseok drew him into a hug, and Jimin melted into it with his face pressed against his collarbone.

“You’re stronger than anyone gives you credit for,” Hoseok murmured into his ear, and drew back to look into his eyes. “Jimin. We love you. All of us, no matter what, we’ll always love you.”

“I’m glad,” was all that Jimin could say, and he fell back into Hoseok’s embrace.

They parted a few minutes later, just because the smell of food wafting in from the kitchen was becoming impossible to ignore.

“Let’s go eat,” Hoseok said, standing up.

“I’ll be right there,” Jimin promised, heading to his side of the dresser to get some clothes.

He got dressed lazily for once, considering that he wouldn’t be working for the next few days at best, and walked out into the hallway. By the time he reached the kitchen, he could hear the loud voices of his housemates -his best friends, his family, his brothers, his soulmates- overlapping as some sort of argument took place.

“Jiminie!” Taehyung called him as soon as he walked into the kitchen, all eyes turning to him. “If a tomato is a fruit, then isn’t ketchup technically a smoothie?”

“Why are you like this?” Jungkook groaned, putting his face in his hands.

“Quiet down a little bit,” Seokjin interrupted, bringing napkins to the table. Jimin noted the take-out boxes strewn around and figured that none of them had the time nor energy to cook today. He didn’t blame them. “Jimin, sit down so we can eat.”

“Give me a second, I’ll be right there.” He had something else to do beforehand, something important to tie up the loose ends of what happened today.

He walked out of the kitchen and to the entrance, where all of their house keys were dropped into a bowl on top of a table. He opened the drawer of the table and pulled out a single key on a black lanyard.

He walked back towards the kitchen.

“Jimin?” Namjoon was the first to pay attention to him. “Are you-” His voice fell through when he saw the black lanyard swaying from Jimin’s clenched fist.

Silence fell across the entire room, and though Jimin did not stop to acknowledge the inhabitants of the kitchen on his way back to the bedrooms, he knew that their stares followed him.

The key unlocked a lockbox, which was hidden in the tight space underneath Seokjin’s bed. It took a minute to tug it out, but once he had it in his hands, Jimin blew the dust off of it and opened it up.

Wads and wads of cash came into view, neatly stacked and ordered. Jimin let himself bask in the sight of all that money, let himself feel relieved and free at the confirmation that it was still there, just waiting for the day it would be used.

Jimin didn’t expect it to be anytime soon. Maybe even never. But just in case they made it, that money would be there for them.

Jimin stowed his newly-earned 200,000 won neatly in the box, and committed the money to memory before he locked the box again, and shoved it tightly under Seokjin’s bed.

After returning the key to its rightful place, he joined the dinner table finally, where all eyes went to him for only a second before turning back to the food.

Unconsciously, they held a minute of silence for what Jimin had just done.

And then, just as the silence began to turn awkward, Jungkook said that ketchup wouldn’t be a smoothie until Taehyung drank a whole glass of it with a straw.

The jars had been Taehyung’s idea.

It was a simple system, implemented two years after the boys began living together. Their circumstances brought all of them closer, so that by the end of those two years, trusting one another so much came like second nature.

“They can be like savings for all of us,” Taehyung had suggested, dropping a few bills into an empty jar of pickled radish. “Like, we all throw in our spare change, and buy ourselves something nice at the end of the year.”

The system had refined itself throughout time, until they’d settled on three jars, each with its own purpose.

The first jar was for gifts. The money saved up in that jar would be for buying presents for birthdays or special occasions. It started when the boys had saved up to buy a camera for Seokjin’s birthday, and had continued on to help buy Jungkook a gaming system and Hoseok new dance shoes, amongst others. It would usually stay pretty empty, until a birthday came up and it suddenly began to fill up.

The second jar was for household necessities. The money they pitched into the second jar was for their monthly rent, renovations, furniture, or any other expense for their common wellbeing. It helped fix the leaky faucet that the landlord couldn’t be bothered to care about, or buy a new television when a round of enthusiastic gaming between Taehyung and Jungkook caused an unfortunate accident. It always remained at a steady level, topped up whenever money was fished out of it.

The third jar was for emergencies. Whether it was for medical treatment, bail, or protection, the money in the third jar would stay untouched unless something major came up. In which case, no expense would be spared, like for when Hoseok got shot, or Jungkook was arrested. The jar always stayed full- always. Looking at an empty third jar made everybody anxious.

The jars were the main collective savings the seven boys had for their group.

The lockbox was another story entirely.

And it was Yoongi’s story to tell.

It had been a long time coming, and everyone could feel it. But when it finally happened, nobody knew what to do.

They thought they’d been ready, but it was harder than expected to watch their friend die. He'd been eighteen years old at that time.

Namjoon was the one who’d found Yoongi, lying in his bed, and seemingly sleeping at first.

But when he’d shaken him gently to wake him up, Yoongi had flopped lifelessly onto his back, and Namjoon had immediately been assaulted by the sight of his ashen skin and unmoving chest.

He’d yelled for help, yelled as hard as he could, but Taehyung and Jungkook were the only two other people in the apartment, and they had frozen up upon running in as well.

Namjoon had tried his best, ripping Yoongi’s shirt open to try and listen for his breathing, and Taehyung had immediately spotted the patches stuck under his collarbone. He later said he would’ve recognized them anywhere; fentanyl patches, the same ones he sold to his richer customers. Yoongi had taken them from his own backpack.  

From there, it had felt a lot easier to help, despite the all-consuming guilt hovering over the entire party. Taehyung had taken the reigns, familiar with the treatment of opioid overdose (an unfortunate expertise required in his line of work). Whilst Namjoon had given Yoongi rescue breaths, Taehyung had injected his thigh with the naloxone he always carried in his work backpack, ironically stored behind the rows of morphine ampules. By the time the ambulance that Jungkook had called had made it, Yoongi had begun breathing on his own again, albeit much too slow.

Seokjin had been absolutely devastated when he’d prepared to receive his new patient in the trauma bay, only to see Yoongi being wheeled in with a distraught Namjoon at his side.

But Yoongi had made it, to his absolute horror, when he’d woken up to Taehyung’s loud sobbing about an hour after being admitted into the emergency.

He’d never admitted to intentionally overdosing, but he’d never denied it either.

Seokjin had ended up paying the doctor to discharge Yoongi without getting psychiatry involved, and they’d taken him home all together. From then, they’d taken turns watching him all day long, at least until he opened up to them.

On day six, he spoke up, though arguably, it wasn’t by choice.

It was Jungkook’s turn to watch him that day, something that Yoongi saw as insulting at best and demeaning at worst, considering that he was four years older than him. The younger boy was a child, literally, and Yoongi didn’t like being under his nervous scrutiny.

He’d do anything to get away from his obvious side-glances and poor attempts at giving him his space.

“I’m going to shower,” Yoongi announced, getting up from the couch where he’d been reading the newspaper. Jungkook looked up from his book shyly, and twitched in his seat. “Don’t follow me.”

“Um… okay.” Jungkook seemed unsure, but Yoongi couldn’t care less. He’d known the kid for two years now, and he’d always seemed anxious and withdrawn. He was tired of having to deal with him on top of everything else.

Their unfortunate circumstances did have a part to play in his demeanor but that didn’t matter either. Yoongi just needed to get away from his scrutiny, from everybody’s scrutiny.

He locked the door to the bathroom, even if he’d half-heartedly promised not to lock it anymore since the boys brought him home from the hospital almost a week ago. He just needed some time to be on his own, really. Throwing his clothes off, he stepped into the shower, and immediately surrendered to the lukewarm spray.

He didn’t waste his time thinking. He’d done enough thinking, from the moment he’d woken up in the hectic emergency room where Seokjin worked as a patient attendant, and where he’d soon start working as a nurse once he graduated nursing school. He’d never stopped thinking, trying to come up with answers to every question he was asked, every repeated ‘why?’ that the boys would take turns directing to him. And he’d never found an answer good enough to give them.

So he stopped thinking. Bracing his hands against the yellowed tiles, he let himself feel.

And he felt, his emotions as tumultuous as a hurricane as they cascaded out of every pore in his body along with the lukewarm water. Yoongi let himself be angry, so angry he felt like his head would explode, and he let himself feel sad, anguished enough for his chest to tighten painfully with held-back cries. He let himself feel hopeless, because in the last six days, nobody had acknowledged his need to feel hopeless, just for one minute, just for one second. He needed to indulge in this hopelessness, just a little, just to prove to himself that he hadn’t tried to kill himself for something unjustified.

He let himself feel, open and raw, and let his pain swirl down the drain, hoping never to see it again.

(He knew not to expect too much, though).

The water had turned freezing by the time he stepped out, unaware of how much time he’d spent in the shower. He toweled himself off lazily and threw the same clothes back on, struggling with his skinny jeans over his damp legs.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, he almost tripped over Jungkook.

Jungkook, who’d been sitting right in front of the door, stood up immediately, eyes wide and worried.

“Hyung,” he exhaled in relief, which pissed Yoongi off immediately. “You’re okay.”

“Why the fuck wouldn’t I be?” Yoongi grunted, shoving him out of the way to head back to the living room.

“Well, the… the door was locked, and you said you wouldn’t lock it anymore, and you didn’t answer when I knocked, and you were in there for almost an hour,” the kid stumbled over his words as he rushed to explain, but Yoongi was already seeing red. “I-I was worried so I texted Namjoon-hyung-”

“Why did you even think that was necessary?” Yoongi whipped around to glare at Jungkook, who blanched under his scrutiny. “Damn it, you stupid kid! Take back what you told Namjoon.”

“I-I texted back when you came out, bu-but he said he’s coming anyway-”

“Fuck!” Unable to hold in his frustration anymore, Yoongi punched the wall next to him. Jungkook stopped talking, rightly so, and looked shocked. “Fuck you, fuck Namjoon, fuck every single one of you!”

Storming his way into the living room, Yoongi kicked the coffee table and grabbed an old cup of water off of it, throwing it at the wall. It bounced right off and clattered onto the floor, water dripping into a puddle. It did nothing to ease his anger. 

“I’m leaving!”

“Yoongi-hyung, no!” And suddenly, Jungkook’s hand was on him, spinning him around, and Yoongi couldn’t take it anymore.

He was so angry, he wanted to hurt. It didn’t matter if he hurt himself or hurt someone else. He just needed to externalize all this pain he felt festering inside of him.

He threw Jungkook’s arm off of him violently, harshly enough for the young boy to stumble away from him, and screamed.

“I can’t do this anymore!” Doubling over under the weight of his feelings in his chest, he let out another long-drawn scream. “I can’t live with you people hovering around me, treating me like I’m fucking broken or something!”

“Hyung, we-”

“Don’t you fucking dare say you care,” Yoongi interrupted him, running a hand through his hair madly. “Who am I to you, huh!? I’m no one! We’ve lived together for two years because it’s convenient, because you and I have guns to our heads every single fucking day, but you don’t know me. Nobody knows me!”

“Namjoon-hyung-”

“Stop it with Namjoon!” His arms tingled numbly, so Yoongi relieved the pressure by dragging them across the table, throwing off everything on it- Jungkook’s book, his newspaper, the cold cup of coffee, his cellphone. “He’ll get over it! He’s got a life ahead of him, and I won’t be responsible for holding him back. Not him, not anyone else. I just… I just need to get out of the way, so why won’t any of you fucking let me!”

He covered his face and clawed at his cheeks, stumbling back when Jungkook barreled straight into him, tightly holding onto him. His hands twisted in his shirt with the sheer effort of holding onto him, and Yoongi couldn’t help but throw his head back, laughing drunkenly.

“Don’t you dare say that, hyung!” Jungkook yelled right back, his voice cracking- from pubescence or emotion, Yoongi couldn’t tell. “Don’t you dare think you don’t mean the world to me, to all of us!”

“Rich,” Yoongi scoffed, trying to look at Jungkook’s pinched expression but unable to pull away from his tight embrace. “Two years, Jeon Jungkook. Two years. You think you can know someone in that time? You think you know me, huh?”

“I know enough,” Jungkook insisted, never relenting. “I know you’re hurting and I know that you will do anything to make it stop, but don’t you think for a second that hurting yourself is the answer!”

“Don’t patronize me!” Letting out a grunt of effort, Yoongi threw his weight against Jungkook, and the two of the stumbled back until Jungkook slammed into the wall, his head smacking back hard enough for him to let go of Yoongi.

While Jungkook hissed in pain and tried to dispel the spots in his vision, Yoongi stumbled back, half-satisfied and half-disbelieving of what he’d done.

“You think you understand what I’m going through?” he challenged, reveling in the grimace of pain on the youngest’s face.

“I understand more than you think,” Jungkook grunted out, cracking his eyes open to glance at Yoongi. “You, me, everybody else… we’re all stuck in the same situation, aren’t we? And we can’t get out. The mafia’s got us on leashes like dogs, and we won’t live to see the day where we get to run free again. So yeah, I understand. I may not relate to all this pain rotting your insides, but I understand, and I just want you to know that I can’t lose you like this. We can’t lose you, Yoongi-hyung.”

“You’re just a kid,” Yoongi huffed, catching his breath. “You think you understand what pain is, but you don’t.”

He saw the exact moment where something clicked inside of Jungkook, and although he saw it coming in the stumble of Jungkook’s forward motion, he couldn’t avoid the punch that he aimed straight at his cheek. Yoongi’s head snapped back and he lost his balance, falling over and narrowly avoiding hitting his head on the floor by catching himself on his hands. Above him, Jungkook towered over, his expression now fuming.

Yoongi licked his lips, bloody from his dripping nose, and grinned wildly. He needed this. He needed this so much.

Jungkook grabbed him from his shirt shoulders and pulled him up roughly, although he steadied his stumbling form with his hands on his upper arms.

“Age doesn’t matter, hyung,” Jungkook insisted, looking on the verge of tears. “I was ripped away from my old life, too, forced to live the rest of my days under someone else’s terms. I’ve done things I can’t be proud of, things I never would’ve done if I wasn’t coerced into them. So yes, I understand your helplessness, because I feel helpless, too, and I want it to end, too… Just not like this…”

“Have you ever killed someone, Jungkook?” Yoongi asked out of the blue, licking blood off of his lips and glancing up at him through his sweaty bangs. He grabbed Jungkook’s wrists to steady himself. “Because I have. Two people.”

“What…?”

“One last year; a man selling information to outside sources.” A bitter laugh escaped Yoongi. “It was my first. They knew it, and they made me put the gun to his head. They made me listen to him begging, screaming, promising, and they told me that I could die in his stead if I hesitated longer.”

“Hyung…”

“I should’ve accepted it, but I was scared…” Yoongi swallowed heavily, and made a move to throw Jungkook off, to no avail. The younger boy was strong, to his credit. “Imagine that. Being scared of death, and then looking for it only a year later.”

“And the second one…?” Jungkook asked, watching the blood dribble down Yoongi’s chin rhythmically, onto the hardwood floor.

“A week ago.” Yoongi’s voice sounded pinched. “A guy who’d attacked a mafia member. Same thing. People will always say the same things when they’re about to die. I killed him.”

“You didn’t have a choice…” Jungkook softened up, and Yoongi took his chance.

Grabbing his arms, Yoongi threw him off, and shoved him violently into the couch.

Jungkook tripped over his own feet and fell, hitting his ribcage right on the edge and crumbling over to clutch his side in pain.

“I know I didn’t have a choice, Jungkookie,” Yoongi scoffed, wiping the blood off his face with the back of his hand. Through the haze of agony over his eyes, Jungkook peered up to see the sad smile on his face. “But I did it, and it was easier this time. And I realized… I realized that this wouldn’t stop. I forgave myself the first time, told myself it wouldn’t happen again, but it has… and this means that it’s going to keep happening. I’m going to keep having to listen to these people beg and plead for a life that was never mine to give in the first place. I’m no different from the fuckers holding our leashes- they’re pointing their guns at us, and I’m pointing my gun at someone else, someone just as innocent as you, or any one of you.”

“Hyung, you’re innocent, too,” Jungkook bit out, throwing his head back when taking a deep breath sent sparks of pain jolting up his spine. “You have to forgive yourself- you’re innocent, too.”

He heard the skid of Yoongi’s feet on the floor before anything else, and opened his eyes wide, wider and wider when he saw Yoongi suddenly grab one of the wooden chairs around the coffee table, and throw it. He flinched for a second, but felt guilty for it because Yoongi’s face was twisted in anguish, not anger. He never would’ve thrown it at him.

Instead, he threw it at the wall, where a small mirror hung innocuously from a nail.

In a deafening thunderclap, the mirror shattered, and the pieces rained down onto the floor next to Jungkook. Jungkook just looked up at Yoongi the entire time, shocked and speechless and perhaps a bit afraid, but only afraid for Yoongi, not of Yoongi.

There were tears in his eyes as he retreated towards the door.

“Damn it,” Yoongi sniffled, his shoulders hunched as if the fight had left his body. “Damn it, I hate that you’re making sense.”

“Hyung…” Jungkook called out weakly, still too shocked to move. “Where are you going?”

“Out.” Yoongi answered briefly. When he turned to look at Jungkook once more, the latter saw the wet smears on the corners of his eyes. “Namjoon will make sure you’re not seriously hurt. Don’t come after me.”

“Hyung, what I said-”

“I’ll think about it,” Yoongi cut him off, grabbing his jacket and opening the door. He said nothing else as he exited, not quite slamming the door behind him.

Jungkook did not find it within himself to move from his spot at the couch. Clutching his bruised ribs, he stared at the wall, hoping for some sort of answer.

Namjoon arrived about fifteen minutes later, running in and kneeling by Jungkook, asking where Yoongi went. Jungkook had no answer for him, and Namjoon seemed to know it, because he helped him up onto the couch and put a plaster on the small cut on his cheek. Then, they sat in silence, and waited for Yoongi to come home together.

Seokjin came home before Yoongi, which turned out to be an advantage, because when Yoongi walked in just before midnight, hands in his pockets and looking burdened with the world, Seokjin was there to coax him to the kitchen table with the promise of a cup of tea.

On the way there, Yoongi exchanged glances with Jungkook, but said nothing to him.

Namjoon was already at the table, patiently waiting. He said nothing to Yoongi, either, but scooted his chair so that Yoongi could pass to the one next to him. He sat quietly at the table while Seokjin made his tea, not even moving to touch it when it was presented to him. Seokjin sat across from him, undeterred, and crossed his arms on the table.

Yoongi made himself comfortable, feeling like he would be here for a while.

“You know,” Seokjin started, eyes on the tendrils of steam from the tea. “Jungkook looks up to you. He really does.”

“Kid better read comic books instead. He’ll find better role models,” Yoongi muttered lowly.

“He’s fourteen years old,” Seokjin shook his head, as if he understood something Yoongi didn’t. “He doesn’t need an idol; he needs someone who is raw and real, someone who will show him what life is really like.”

“I’m not a very nice person,” Yoongi replied, shrugging. “Look. I get it. I made a mistake, I shouldn’t have hit him, and I’ll pay for the mirror in the living room.”

“I don’t care about that,” Seokjin said, glancing up at Yoongi, who pointedly avoided his stare. “I want to know what’s going on with you.”

“Nothing.”

“Min Yoongi, six days ago you attempted suicide by overdosing on euphoric drugs, you’ve been withdrawn ever since, and today you had a fist-fight with the youngest, most gentle soul in our group.” Said like that, of course it sounded bad. Yoongi winced lightly.

“Didn’t mean to. He was just… overbearing,” he admitted finally. “All of you are. I just… need to breathe a little.”

“Can you understand that we’re all worried for you, then?” Seokjin asked. “Can you understand why we’re worried?”

“Yeah. I understand.” And he couldn’t promise them that they shouldn’t be. “I just… hate all this coddling. Like taking your eyes off of me is gonna land me in the tub with cuts all the way up to my elbows.”

“Will it?”

Yoongi swallowed heavily.

“I don’t know.”

That was the truth.

“Okay.” Sharply inhaling, then exhaling, Seokjin leaned back into his seat. “That’s okay.”

“What?” That was unexpected. Yoongi snapped his head up to look at Seokjin’s impassive expression in surprise. Glancing at Namjoon showed a sliver of surprise in his expression as well. “What do you mean, ‘that’s okay’?”

“Well… We’re hardly going to heal you of your depression in our lifetime, as much as we want to,” Seokjin explained. “The only person who can truly and entirely get rid of your depression is you. We’re only good for supporting whatever you choose to do.”

“Don’t say it like that…” Yoongi’s throat felt tight. “I’m not throwing my life away. I wanted to die because I can’t live with what I’m going to spend my life doing.”

“And what’s that?”

“Killing people. I can’t live knowing that once became twice, and twice will surely become three, then four, then ten, twelve, fifty…”

“It’s a shit situation, I admit it.” Seokjin looked like he knew that he was putting it lightly. “And you’re so strong for having made it this far. But please. You can’t let it end here.”

“It’s in my head,” Yoongi admitted. “It’s always there. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, at any moment in the day, it’ll pop up and ask me if I really deserve to be alive.”

“Who’s asking you that?”

“I dunno.” Yoongi shrugged. “Some voice. Me, probably. A part of me, at least.”

“And you talk to this part of you when it shows up to criticize your life choices?” Seokjin asked lightly, pushing the mug of tea towards Yoongi, who finally took it in his hands.

“Of course. I tell it to shut up, but it always comes back. And the other day, it just… it was screaming. Screaming at me, so loud…” Yoongi’s hands tightened on the mug, and he pulled away when he burned himself. “It was right. It was right, and it made sense. So I gave in. Stole fentanyl patches from Taehyung’s backpack and went to sleep.”

“Are you angry that I saved you?” Namjoon finally asks in a tight voice, not meeting Yoongi’s eyes. It said a lot about the guilt he’d been carrying these past few days.

“I don’t know,” Yoongi parroted, sighing at Namjoon’s downcast expression. “It’s not that easy, Joon. Part of me is exhausted, accepting that I failed and that I have to live knowing that. Part of me is glad, because, I don’t know… maybe I did rush into it. And part of me is in so much distress, wound so tightly that it feels like it could snap at any moment and send me spiraling again.”

“I’m sorry,” Namjoon simply offers in a quiet tone. “I’m sorry for not being able to see all that. Sorry for saving you, and sorry for letting you get to the point where you needed saving at all.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Yoongi bumped his shoulder lightly with his own, and if anything, that seemed to brighten up Namjoon’s expression a little. “You’ve done a lot for me, and I don’t think I deserve all that.”

“How about this?” Seokjin jumped in again when their side conversation died down in mutual guilt. “The next time the voice in your head comes back to yell at you, I want to talk to it.”

“Come again?” Yoongi frowned.

“I’ll talk to it,” Seokjin repeated calmly. “The next time you feel like you’re being led back into that dark place, come and see me. No matter where I am, what I’m doing, what time it is… No matter what, just come and see me. We’ll work through whatever’s hurting you together. If you get tired of fighting the hopelessness inside of you, tap me in and I’ll take over, just until you feel strong enough to come back.”

“Me, too,” Namjoon immediately added, hesitantly touching Yoongi’s forearm. “You can come to me, too. You’re my best friend, Yoon. I’ve known you since before we got into this mess, and I know you’re stubborn enough to think you can do this on your own… But you don’t have to. You don’t have to be alone anymore. You’ve got me, Jin-hyung…”

“And me!”

The new addition to the conversation surprised them all visibly, and all eyes turned to Jungkook, who shied back through the doorway at the attention.

“How long have you been there?” Yoongi frowned at him, although it didn’t seem to deter Jungkook. With his little plaster across his cheekbone, he stepped back into the kitchen, wringing his hands nervously but still standing tall.

“You have me, too, hyung,” he continued without answering his previous question. “Umm… if you want. I know I’m young, and I don’t know a lot of things, but I… I can’t sit by and watch you get hurt, even if it’s by yourself. So… I’m not very good at talking, but if you need me to…”

“Jungkook,” Yoongi stopped him, looking over him and keeping his eyes on his injury- the one that Yoongi gave him. He waved him over, and like an obedient puppy, Jungkook came, apprehensive.

When he stopped next to him, Yoongi stood up, ignoring the light flinch that Jungkook let escape at the sudden movement, and put his hand on Jungkook’s head.

“You shouldn’t worry about your hyung,” he mumbled, running his hands through Jungkook’s hair softly. “I should worry about you, not the other way around.”

“But I…”

“That being said…” Yoongi sat back down. “I thought about what you said before I left.”

Namjoon and Seokjin exchanged confused glances, but Jungkook nodded in understanding.

“You’re not right, but you’re not wrong,” Yoongi continued. “As time goes on, and I do more and more horrible things, I’ll be less and less innocent. But like a parabola, I’ll never hit zero. So… I guess that counts for something.”

“Parabola…?” Jungkook cocked his head at the figure of speech, confused.

“Aish, give him a break. He hasn’t even finished high school yet,” Namjoon laughed softly. “Our baby Jungkookie. A parabola is a function that always gets closer and closer to zero, but goes on infinitely without actually crossing the axis.”

“I see.” He really didn’t. “Well… I’m glad.”

“We are, too,” Seokjin said, and reached across to put his hand on Yoongi’s. “All of us are rebuilding our lives from scratch, into something we never thought they could be. But the good thing is that we’re together. Nobody will understand your pain like someone who is living it. So please, Yoongi. Rely on us.”

“I’ll try.” It was the best promise that Yoongi could make, but it seemed to be enough for now. Leaning back and crossing his arms, he huffed a bit dramatically. “I guess I’ll have to get used to being handed money for killing people.”

“That’s what they’re making you into? A hitman?” Namjoon asked, half-joking, half-serious.

“Whatever they want to call it, I hate it,” Yoongi huffed, finally drinking some of his tea. “All the money I’m ever going to make is going to depend on someone else’s death. It’s bound to make me wanna die, too.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Seokjin jumped in, drawing light laughter from Namjoon.

“You’re full of those today.”

“What about this?” Seokjin started animatedly. “I have a lockbox. It belonged to my mother and she used to put her jewelry in it. You need a key to open it, and it’s this nice, wooden box, maybe about this big…”

“Your point?” Yoongi rushed him, though a small smile played on his lips.

“It’ll be like the jars,” Seokjin concluded lightly. “We’ll all pitch in money and save up.”

“What’ll it be for?” Jungkook asked curiously.

Seokjin did not hesitate.

“Running away.”

The good mood was sucked out of the kitchen like a vacuum.

“Running away?” Yoongi scoffed. “Like any amount of money will let us get away from the bastards that have our lives in their hands.”

“I’m serious,” Seokjin insisted. “Whenever you’re feeling terrible, any of you. If something has got you down, if you’re hopeless and feeling guilty, and all you have to show for what you’ve done is money, then put the money in the lockbox. On the worst days, where you feel like you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing for nothing, just take the money you’ve earned, and put it in the lockbox.”

“Turning hopelessness into an investment for a better future,” Namjoon rephrased. “I see.”

“There’s no obligation. For all we know, that money could go untouched for our entire lives,” Seokjin added, being realistic. “And it won’t be used for anything else. If this place burns, then the lockbox burns with it. And it’ll only be for the lowest moments. When you look down at your pay and remember what you’ve done to earn that money, if you can’t live without yourself… instead of hurting yourself, just put the money in the lockbox and forget about it. And maybe one day, we’ll be able to find something better out there, and we’ll use all the pain we’ve locked away to fuel our new beginning.”

“Locking away my feelings, huh?” Yoongi took a sip of his tea. “Sounds like something I could get behind.”

“Not what I meant,” Seokjin laughed, and it drew a smile from Yoongi as well.

“I know. It was easy.”

“If we leave…” Jungkook piped up suddenly, drawing attention to him. “If we leave one day… we’ll still be together… right?”

Silence fell on them for a moment, and they each thought about Jungkook’s important question.

It felt easy to give either answer. Realistically, they couldn’t know. Realistically, if someone was given a way out, would he abandon the others? Would the others resent him? Would he give up his chance at freedom for other people?

That answer was a heavy no.

But the lockbox would be their escape. It would be an object of hope, stuffed chock-full of their pain.

In which case…

“Yes,” Yoongi promised softly, gently. “We’ll run together. This is all we can do anyway. All we can do is love each other.”

It had started on a cloudy night.

All seven of them had found themselves in a dark basement one way or another. Some of them had looked more afraid than others. Some of them had fought more than others.

Regardless, they had all ended up in a line in front of several men armed to the teeth with guns and knives. Too many weapons to threaten a bunch of teenagers with, at any rate.

“You seven are here because you’re no longer free men,” the man at the front had announced, as bluntly as that. “Either you, or someone in your family owes the mafia something; money, information, betrayal, it doesn’t matter. And you’re here to repay that debt.”

“How much?” Yoongi had dared to ask, drawing a grin out of the man.

“More than you’ll ever make in your entire lives.”

Jungkook had cried, only twelve years old and terrified out of his wits. Seokjin had immediately run to hush him, rocking him back and forth. Yoongi had grabbed Namjoon’s hand, and had squeezed tight enough to bruise. Taehyung had shut his eyes tightly, his expression giving away that he knew exactly why he’d ended up here. Jimin had fallen to his knees in shock, and Hoseok’s gaze had gone far away, further than any of them would ever go ever again.

They’d been dumped in their apartment that night and had been promised a visit the next day.

The visit had come two days later, two days that they had spent afraid and starving, basking in no other comfort than the presence of strangers who were hurting just as much.

They’d been separated and taken away to be assigned to their new lives. Some of them had gotten the choice to work for the mafia, or with the mafia. It didn’t truly matter; at the end of the day, as long as they made enough money to keep up with their dues, their direct higher-ups didn’t care what they did to earn it.

And that’s how it began. In a run-down apartment with seven kids who were murdered and reborn into the underworld, growing up with nothing but themselves and each other.

Depending on which day they were asked about it, they would either agree or disagree that it would end as such as well.

“I’ve got a job.”

The announcement was made as they all cuddled together in the living room, watching a horror movie on the TV. Hoseok was hiding under the covers and Jimin was teasingly trying to coax him out. Taehyung was trying to keep Jungkook from stealing his popcorn, and Namjoon had leaned his head onto Jin’s shoulder to probably fall asleep through the movie.

Of course, Namjoon was the first to react, although all he did was open his eyes, and glance cautiously at the rest of the boys.

The rest of them all turned their eyes to Yoongi, who bore the weight of their sudden anxiety as usual.

“An actual job, or like… a job job?” Jimin finally ventured to ask, looking like he would burst at the seams.

The others did, too.

“A job job,” Yoongi confirmed grimly.

On the TV, the woman in the movie screamed loudly as whatever was chasing her caught up and tore into her. Jungkook hit the mute button.

“When?” Seokjin asked, turning to face Yoongi a little better.

“I got the notice a few days ago. I’m leaving by the end of this week.”

“You knew?” Seokjin turned to look at Namjoon, who was still stuck to his side.

“Of course,” Namjoon nodded calmly, apparently not as conflicted as everybody else. “I’m the one who’s helping him prepare, as usual.”

“How long are you gonna be gone?” Taehyung asked, nervously putting popcorn in his mouth, though he didn’t chew it.

“Why are you asking? You gonna steal my things?” Yoongi teased, trying to lighten the mood.

“Your bed is more comfortable than mine,” Taehyung offered weakly, his smile not quite convincing.

“Four months,” Yoongi said, and a collective gasp went across the room.

“That’s a lot of time,” Hoseok frowned. “You’re usually only gone a week, at most a few weeks.”

“The guy is high profile,” Yoongi simply offered as an explanation. “It’ll take much longer than usual to get close.”

“Who is it?” Jungkook asked nervously.

“You know I can only tell you after it’s done.” Yoongi let out a bitter laugh. “Besides. This one will probably be in the news.”

“Hyung, it’ll be too dangerous,” Jimin breathed, eyes wide. “Please. Please reconsider.”

“I can’t decline this one. It’s a direct order.” Yoongi pursed his lips. “I’m going to be very careful on this one, okay? I’ll be gone for a long time, and we won’t be in contact, but Namjoon is helping me with intelligence work, and he can at least tell you if I’m alive or not.”

It didn’t seem to help. Jimin looked on the verge of tears.

“You’d think that’s something to be happy about,” Seokjin sighed, rubbing his face tiredly.

“I’ve been at this for a long time,” Yoongi continued. “I’ve got a team operating with me to get in, get out, and cover my tracks. I’m not going in blindly, and I’m trusting all my intelligence to Namjoon. I know it sounds scary…”

“Aren’t you scared?” Jungkook asked, eyes wide.

Yoongi sighed.

“When I said I’d answer all your questions before leaving on a job, this isn’t what I meant,” he grumbled, ruffling his mint hair uncomfortably. He’d have to dye it for the duration of the job.

“Are you?” Taehyung pressed nervously.

“Of course I am,” Yoongi conceded. “I don’t know what else you want me to say. Of course I’m scared, but this fear is going to keep me on my toes. It’ll help me come back to you guys in the end.”

“We’re scared, too.” Hoseok’s words were sincere, and most definitely spoke for everybody in the room. “But we trust you. So promise you’ll come back.”

“I promise,” Yoongi said immediately, fiercely.

They couldn’t do anything but believe him.

It was always like this, every time Yoongi got a job. He didn’t get them very often, once every couple of months or so, and usually, they were low-profile hits. But assassinations, formally set up hits with infiltration and extraction plans? They could all count on one hand the number of times that Yoongi had done those in the eight years they’d been together. It was stressful for everybody, and rightfully so.

They had their routine, however.

Every time Yoongi left for a job, they battened down the hatches, and rode out his disappearance as best as they could in anticipation for his return.

Yoongi left at the end of the week as promised, only taking a backpack with him. As usual, they all saw him off at the door. Yoongi said his goodbyes to each one of them individually, and tried not to stick too long. Last time he did, Hoseok had burst into tears and had refused to let him go.

Yoongi didn’t want to see how much pain he was causing them by leaving.

But he didn’t have a choice. And it was in his best interest and in their collective interest for him to stay as far away as possible from them in the months he would be gone. Any leak outside the hit team could compromise the operation, and all of them knew it. It hurt to leave them, but Yoongi could find comfort in the knowledge that they understood why he had to cut them off, and that they wouldn’t hate him for it when he returned.

When.

With that thought in mind, he closed the door behind him, and descended the steps to their dear, ratty second-floor apartment, away from home.

The rest of the boys stayed back and tried not to stare too long at the closed door. The only comfort they could find was in Namjoon, who usually was in league with Yoongi during his jobs to provide him with all the intelligence and IT support he needed.

Life went on without Yoongi.

“He’s alive.”

Taehyung slept in his bed every night that it hadn’t been claimed by someone else. The dinner table always had an empty chair at its end.

“He’s alive.”

There was nobody to patch up Jungkook when he came back from one of his ring matches, nobody to let Seokjin cry over a cup of tea after a bad day, nobody to sleep holding onto Jimin when he felt worthless.

“He’s alive.”

Namjoon gave them a status report once a week, not that it made a difference when it said nothing on how Yoongi was doing- physically, mentally, emotionally.

“He’s alive.”

No matter how much they asked, Namjoon never told them anything else, although he, too, looked like he was dying to fill the gap left behind by his best friend.

Three and a half months in, Namjoon did not come back home for several days. They all called him to try and get him to come back, but the only person who knew where his office physically was had disappeared temporarily.

So they had no choice but to wait; afraid, worried, anxious. Two chairs remained empty at the dinner table.

And finally, Namjoon showed up one night, deep circles under his eyes, his pink hair washed out and flat, his normally tan skin paler than the white shirt he wore.

“He’s…” He hesitated. “He’s still alive.”

None of them slept that night, listening to Namjoon tapping away at his laptop at the kitchen table, praying not to hear any more news at this point.

Finally, four months and three days later, Namjoon was able to give them all the information they wanted. He texted everyone to show up for a meeting at the apartment, and once they were all there, finally let himself smile.

“It’s over. Yoongi’s coming back.”

“Alright!” Taehyung cheered wildly, Jimin and Hoseok joining in on his enthusiasm.

“When?” Seokjin asked, a wide grin on his face. “We have to make sure to prepare. It won’t be easy for anyone, especially not him.”

“Don’t be such a downer, Jin-hyung,” Jimin protested. “We’ve done this a hundred times before; his homecoming will be fine. Better than fine. We should have a party this time! He’s been gone for so long!”

“When did you say he was coming back?” Jungkook turned to Namjoon with a wide grin, only for it to fall when he noticed that Namjoon was only looking at their enthusiasm with a sad smile. “Namjoon-hyung?”

“He’s not coming back just yet,” Namjoon answered his silent question. “The hit is over, but they hit a roadblock during extraction. He’s in a hospital in Daejeon right now.”

“Hospital?” Suddenly, the mood plummeted. The cheers quieted down until there was nothing but silence left- again.

“What happened? Is he okay?” Seokjin pressed worriedly.

“He’ll be fine,” Namjoon assured them. “The extraction involved faking his death in a gunfight. He spent a few hours too many lying down in the rain, and got bronchitis.”

“That’s not too bad.”

“He continued the extraction plan by hiding in the forest for a week, so his bronchitis worsened into a pneumonia.”

“I can’t believe this,” Seokjin groaned, dropping his head in his hands. “He literally spends four months flawlessly integrating into a man’s life so he can kill him, and then messes up by getting sick during the extraction. Incredible.”

“It wasn’t flawless,” Namjoon shook his head. “His cover was busted during the second month, so he had to eliminate a witness. He’s… he’s not happy about that.”

“When can we see him?” Hoseok asked hopefully, storing the new information in the back of his mind to address later.

“He’s being discharged tomorrow hopefully, and will be on the first train back.” Namjoon gave them a small smile. “He says he misses you guys, and that Taehyung better not have slept in his bed.”

“Jimin slept in it more often than I did,” Taehyung defended himself, getting a smile out of everyone in the room.

Finally, exhaustion settled over them and it seemed like a good place to stop things. Any more information and they would get worried over nothing. Besides, when Yoongi came back, he’d answer any questions they had.

He’d promised not to shut himself out when he came back from these things. It was still a work in progress, but with every gentle word, with every gentle touch, they pulled him more and more out of his shell. They’d have to wait and see what Yoongi needed this time.

“Alright,” Seokjin clapped his hands, and stood from his seat. “Let’s not let our minds stray too far. Who’s staying for dinner?”

“I’m on house calls tonight.” Jimin shook his head. “I should start getting ready.”

“Which way are you headed? I’m making batch deliveries tonight, I’ll come with you,” Taehyung suggested, getting up and stretching.

“I’m on standby for a deal happening in the neighbourhood, but I’ll try to stay as long as possible,” Hoseok agreed. “If all goes well, they won’t even need me.”

“I’ll stay.” Jungkook raised his hand as if he was in class, although he hadn’t been to school in a long time.

“I’m heading back to the office to monitor the news and do some damage control,” Namjoon shook his head.

Despite it all, Seokjin seemed satisfied.

“Alright everyone, get going.” He clapped again, and everyone vacated to their activities.

It was a lot easier to do this time, when they knew they’d be getting Yoongi back before the weekend.

It was a routine that was, somehow, easy to fall back into. Yoongi coming back from one of his hits would always be a bittersweet time. For all the burdens he brought back with him, the elation of being back amongst his family always seemed to triumph.

And so, even before Yoongi stepped into the apartment on the afternoon of the next day, he knew what to expect.

The confetti was a new touch, though.

“Welcome back!”

Yoongi flinched when the confetti popped loudly, his heart skipping a beat, although it settled when he reoriented himself to where he was; namely, standing dumbly at the entrance of their apartment while Jimin and Taehyung vigorously showered him in sparkles. Past the entrance, the rest of them stood around in the living room, a large, obnoxiously bright banner hanging on the opposite wall to welcome Yoongi back. Somewhere in the commotion, Hoseok punctuated the laughter and excited cheering with party whistles, and Yoongi rolled his eyes just as many pairs of hands fell on him.

“Yoongi-hyung, we’re so happy you’re back!”

“We heard you made it, we’re so relieved.”

“We missed you so much it almost hurt!”

“Jimin slept in your bed more often than I did!”

“Alright, alright, let me breathe,” Yoongi huffed, amusedly swatting away all the hands scrambling to touch him. He knew that the other boys needed it- the physical reassurance that he was there, in the flesh-, but he was exhausted and just glad to be back.

“It’s good to have you back.” Seokjin guided him in with a hand on the small of his back once he’d taken his shoes off. The backpack he’d left with was nowhere to be found, and he wore clothes that none of them had ever seen before. As usual, Min Yoongi went for overkill when trying to disguise his identity.

“Thanks,” Yoongi smiled lightly. From the side, Namjoon appeared in front of him, a tight smile on his face.

“You’re home,” Namjoon stated the obvious, and Yoongi laughed lightly, delving into a short bout of coughs as a consequence.

“Yeah.” Extending his hand, he took Namjoon’s without hesitation, and let himself be pulled into a one-armed hug by his partner in crime. “Thanks for making sure of it.”

“Always.”

“Don’t you dare steal him for yourself, Namjoonie-hyung,” Taehyung protested after a few seconds, ripping Yoongi away from Namjoon to push him onto the couch. “We’ve got so many questions. And Jin-hyung made so much food, you wouldn’t believe it!”

“Tae, it’s been five minutes and you’re giving me a headache,” Yoongi grumbled, no bite behind his words, and didn’t push away the youngest three who fell at his side on the couch.

“So… is now a good time to announce that I bought tequila for the occasion?” Hoseok offered with a placating grin, knowing to expect Yoongi’s subsequent chuckle.

“Hobi, it’s only 4PM,” Seokjin said, not that it really mattered. Hoseok had already pulled out two tequila bottles from the paper bag dropped by the coffee table.

“It’s midnight somewhere in the world, hyung!” he offered as a simple explanation, and popped the top off of the first bottle. “This one is for Yoongi. Cheers to always coming back relatively unharmed and uglier than when he left!”

“Hey!”

“Honestly, hyung,” Jungkook snorted, running his hand through Yoongi’s jet-black hair and earning himself a slap on the wrist. “Black? It makes you look like a ghost.”

“Mint green isn’t exactly conspicuous for a cover, you know,” Yoongi huffed good-naturedly, taking the bottle when Hoseok passed it to him. He took a long swig from it and winced when he put the bottle down, frowning. “Ugh. Gross.”

“We’ll dye it right back to the way it was before,” Jimin insisted, twirling a piece of his hair on his finger as he leaned his weight into Yoongi’s side. The bottle came to him next and he took a generous sip before passing it to Taehyung.

“Did your cover involve you losing so much weight?” Seokjin chided, bringing a bowl of chips in from the kitchen and putting it on the coffee table. “You look like you haven’t eaten in weeks!”

“Pneumonia does that,” Yoongi shrugged, leaning forward to pop a few chips in his mouth. “I’ll put the pounds back on in no time with the way you’ll probably feed me in the near future.”

“Do you think I’m your mother, Min Yoongi?”

“You sure act like it.”

That drew a laugh from everybody present, and the bottle of tequila made its rounds, back into Hoseok’s hands.

At that point, Namjoon tapped at his cellphone, and music began to play from the wireless speaker perched on the windowsill. As the comforting sound of Yoongi’s favourite hip-hop tracks began to fill the air, so did their loud voices, screams and laughter.

The apartment felt more alive in that frozen moment in time than it had in the past four months combined. As the clock ticked forward, the boys ticked back, recounting their past few months and laughing over their adventures, updating Yoongi on every tiny detail he’d missed because they knew how big the void inside of him would be. And Yoongi drank it all up; their stories, their smiles, their alarming quantity of alcohol- because he knew.

He knew he wouldn’t give any of this away for the world.

The evening was spent getting prepared for the night. One bottle of tequila turned into two, and then some vodka was thrown into the mix, and the coffee table ended up being littered with empty bottles of whatever they had lying around in the apartment- gin, Midori, Soho, Schnapps. After Jungkook broke a glass, they switched to red cups, and their antics began to look a lot less crazy, and much more childish.

They were children at heart, after all- children who’d never gotten to live their childhoods, and who were doing their best to compensate.

Yoongi ended up getting his hair bleached and dyed back into mint green, Hoseok promising that he was sober enough not to fuck it up and ending up spreading bleach over the hallway wall. Taehyung slipped and bruised his elbow on the floor where Yoongi’s and Jimin’s enthusiastic cheers had created literal puddles of booze on the hardwood. Namjoon ended up belting the lyrics of his favourite song using their electricity bill as a megaphone to make sure everyone heard his voice crack on the high notes. Seokjin filled up a balloon with all the confetti littering the floor and popped it, Hoseok almost knocking the table over in his excited attempts to kick up the confetti raining back down on them.

They didn’t stop, only pushed further and further. When Yoongi left to wash his hair dye out in the bathroom, the party moved with him, and the confetti somehow came with. Jimin ended up being thrown into the bathtub filled to the brim with lukewarm water, spilled drinks and hair dye, splashed and splashing until he was soaked to the bone. Only then did Taehyung and Yoongi jump into the tub with him, drawing laughter and squealing from the others who tried to avoid getting wet as well.

They took it to the streets then, because it didn’t seem right to celebrate being alive without breathing in the nights of Seoul. And when they stepped out, drunk on elation and high on relief, they stumbled through the streets, laughing and screaming and running, running, running.

They ran, through the streets of Seoul, through the dark alleys and through the verdant parks, away from the people who’d never know them, who’d never understand why they found happiness in something as simple as running together.

They stopped only to catch their breaths and then ran again, laughter between each heavy pant. They stopped long enough for Taehyung to spray-paint Seokjin’s outline (and then over him) on the side of a building, just long enough to leave a proof of life for the entire world to see, and then ran again, scavenged paint crusted under their nails. They ran, under the orange glow of the lampposts and around the white glow of headlights, weaving through cars and drivers that honked and swore at them for celebrating life so intensely.

None of those people understood what it meant to feel forever young. Alcohol had long left their systems, but they didn’t stop- not yet, not while they still lived and breathed and ran.

Daylight began to peek over Seoul’s horizon when they stumbled into a photobooth and took pictures, barely fitting in the frame. In the pictures, they were awkwardly pressed all over one another, or making faces, or caught in the middle of saying something, but they looked happy.

It would have to be enough.

By the time the respectable folks had come out to stumble mindlessly along towards their regular jobs and regular schools, the seven of them finally made it back to the apartment, back home- although home had been with them all along, in the lamp light and spray paint and the abandoned soccer ball they’d kicked into the Han river. 

Throats raw and hips aching, they’d fallen into bed, unable to reach a compromise on who slept where and therefore ending up in a pile of blankets and limbs on the floor.

Dirty, sweaty, aching, exhausted, there was nowhere else they would’ve wanted to be, clutching onto one another, legs tangled, elbows and knees painfully pressed into abdomens and backs, chests heaving with fading laughs and whispers worth the world.

They fell asleep, and the sun cast its rays through the grimy window, illuminating the lingering smiles on each of their faces.

When Yoongi would wake up crying later, they would hold him and let him sob. When he would shakily recount the horrifying details of his most recent hit, they would wipe his face and rock his body. When he would inevitably admit his terror, his guilt, his existential agony to them, they would hold his hands and promise him the only thing they could truly promise- to be by his side forever. When he would ask Namjoon to put a part of his earnings into the lockbox, they would all open it together, lock it together, and bury it back under the bed together.

It would always be the same thing, every time Yoongi came back with another death to his name, as if it took a life lost to realize that they still had theirs. They could run all they wanted, but they always had to come back, if only to pray that one day, they wouldn’t have to return at all.

But that would be for a future near, not quite the present.

For now, indulging in their unfortunate bliss, heavy hearts shoved into the lockbox, they tangled their fingers together and ran far away in their shared dream.