Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Are you done?” he heard Taehyung whisper in his earpiece.

Jimin nodded soullessly, hoping his friend would see it from one of the little cameras hidden in the room.

“Yes, he’s gone. You can come in,” he said out loud, aware of the tiny microphones concealed somewhere in the windowless hotel room.

Why would anyone want to stay here, he wondered as he looked around. The lack of windows made it hard to tell if it was day and night and the brown walls, paired with a heavy blood red velvet bedcover thrown over a huge king-sized bed that occupied most of the space, made the room look somber and unwelcoming. Kinda like a bedroom in a 70s vampire horror movie, he thought.

He was still half undressed when Taehyung opened the door but neither of the two boys were bothered by that anymore. As soon as the taller brown-haired boy walked in, Jimin started to pick up his stuff, starting with the shirt he’d thrown on the other side of the room barely twenty minutes before.

“Are we really going to let him go like that?” Taehyung said, reaching under the bed to get one of the microphones. “I mean, it’s not like I’m dying to hear you have sex with that gross dude or that I want to listen to any more of his disgusting dirty talk but…”

“I’m not done with him yet,” Jimin replied, picking up his jacket off the back of a huge velvet chair in the corner of the room. “There’s something he’s not telling me.”

“And you think you can’t get him to talk without revealing who you are?” Taehyung said, stopping to count the small mics in his hand. “He seems dumb enough, but he’s probably not that slow. If he has even a hunch that you might be spying on him, then everything will fall apart. And it could get dangerous for you.”

The two boys took one last look at the room, checking they hadn’t left anything behind, before they turned off the light.

“Don’t worry,” Jimin said, locking the door behind him. “I know what I’m doing. I just need to see him one more time, to find out if he knows more. And then, we can take him out.”

Taehyung pouted as he pushed the button to the elevator.

“Fine,” he muttered. “I just don’t want to sit through any more of that dude’s dirty talk. I seriously don’t know how you managed to keep your composure the whole time.”

“Oh, next time you’ll probably have to sit through worse than that,” Jimin said, laughing when he saw his friend pouting even more.

If seducing people was an art, Jimin was both the artist and the masterpiece. Especially when it came to seducing his gang’s enemies. Making them fall for him was as easy as breathing, the tricky part was always to make them talk without revealing his identity. From the moment he had officially become a member of the Bangtan gang, he had also become their hidden weapon. No one could know who he was or what he looked like or none of his missions would succeed. He was their best kept secret, even if the other gangs were aware of his existence by now, his face was still a mystery to them. And he’d always found a way to get to them, directly or indirectly. A relative, someone who had worked with his target closely or not, a stranger that somehow had key information… There was always someone somewhere Jimin could work on. And he knew by now that his missions were crucial to the gang’s success because there was no better spy than him.

Expect maybe for Taehyung. Taehyung, just like Jimin, looked nothing like a spy. He was possibly one of the friendliest looking people Jimin had ever met. The first time they’d been introduced, he couldn’t believe the lanky boy was part of a gang. It became even more puzzling once he’d gotten to know him. Taehyung was bubbly, sometimes a little bit childish when he played around their common house. Children stopped to talk to him on the streets and their parents would nod, smiling warmly as they saw the tall, skinny man playing with them.  But Taehyung was also very smart and he picked up new things very quickly. He’d taught himself basic hacking skills, had learned how to use and repair his own material and improvised himself as Jimin’s partner in crime in their spying activities. He was also quite skilled with a knife, something he’d learned during his days – or years – living on the streets, which had proved to be quite useful the rare times where things had turned south in the middle of a mission.

Jimin was immensely grateful towards Taehyung. Not only for being his second pair of eyes and ears, nor just for saving his life a couple of times, but because Jimin had found friendship in Taehyung in a way he would have never expected. Jimin hadn’t had friends in a long time when he’d entered the gang. He’d had co-workers, acquaintances, people he felt he could somewhat trust to not want to ruin him, but he hadn’t had anyone who he felt he could be vulnerable to. Looking back, Jimin even wondered if he’d ever had someone like that before Taehyung. Before the gang. He was thankful for the time when Taehyung had listened to him cry himself to sleep almost every night for a year, whispering reassuring words in the smaller boy’s ears. He’d felt grateful when the boy had done his best to make him feel welcome, to show him he was useful to the gang even if some – one – members hadn’t agreed at the time, to show him this was where he belonged and that his life wasn’t over. He was grateful to Taehyung for being his best friend and loving him unconditionally at a time where Jimin wasn’t even sure he loved or cared for himself.

“Jiminie!”

Taehyung’s voice snapped him back to reality.

“Were you daydreaming again?” his friend added, a small smile on his face. “Anyway, we’re here.”

Jimin looked around as Taehyung was busy parking in the familiar underground parking lot right by their house. One of the most important rules of the gang that all the members had to abide by was to live and share one single house that would also double as their headquarters. It wasn’t such a difficult rule to follow since the gang was composed of only seven members. They’d had to move out a few times already to make sure their location remained a secret and also because the number of members had grown quite rapidly. Even after two years in this gang, it always amazed Jimin how much they were able to do with only seven members. Most of the other gangs in towns were huge, some ten times bigger than Bangtan. And even if Bangtan was probably never going to amount to any of the bigger gangs around, they were skilled enough to rival against them. Plus, they had enough external allies on their side to help them when necessary. Still, it was amazing, doing the work of thirty men with only seven. Other gangs weren’t trained the way we were trained, Jimin thought as he entered the house. And they don’t have what we have. They don’t have the best killer in town.

Jimin had barely stepped into the house when he was smothered into a hug by a slightly taller black-haired man.

“Jiminiiiiiiiiie!” the man screeched into his ear before releasing him. “I’m glad you’re back safe and sound!”

“Hobi!” Jimin said with a smile. “I’m glad to see you too.”

“So, how did it go with that ugly dude? I forgot his name… Anyway, that motherfucker at least had the pleasure to get some of Park Jimin before he died, that’s a better death than most of us can hope for,” Hoseok said while laughing.

“Actually he didn’t get much,” Jimin replied.

“Dead in a hotel room and he didn’t even get to have sex with you?” Hoseok said dramatically. “A tragic ending.”

Jimin laughed, his boyish voice spreading around their living room while he gently pushed his dyed silver hair out of his face.

“No, he’s not dead,” he said. “I need a word with Namjoon.”

“You need a word with all of us,” Hoseok said, suddenly serious. “That changes our plans too. Anyway, Namjoon’s out so we’ll have to wait till he gets back to decide on what to do next. In the meantime, let’s have fu- Taehyungiiiiiiie!”

One thing that never failed to amaze Jimin was how fast Hoseok’s mood could change from serious and focused when it came to missions to his bright, playful personality which, just like Taehyung’s, was in no way, shape or form in correlation with the lifestyles they’d chosen to live. Taehyung was greeted with the same screeching and hugging than Jimin a minute before as soon as his head popped out of the door. Jimin smiled fondly as he watched the two men excitedly greet each other as if they hadn’t seen each other in months. Well, I guess it’s been three days…. His thoughts trailed off somewhere else.

“Hoseok?” Jimin said, cutting off the two men in their embrace. “If you’re back at the dorm, then that means…”

“Nah, Jimin,” Hoseok replied with a knowing smile that Jimin didn’t know how to interpret. “Yoongi’s still out. He left with Namjoon a few hours ago.”

“Oh,” Jimin said. “Okay. I just wanted to know who was home.”

“Sure.”

“Where’s Taehyung?” said Jungkook as soon as Jimin stepped into the boy’s room.

“Hello, Jimin. Nice to see you, Jimin. I hope you and Taehyung’s mission went well,” Jimin replied sarcastically. “You brat.”

“Yeah, that too,” Jungkook said, looking a bit apologetic.

“You whipped child,” Jimin added, ignoring the other boy glaring at him. “Anyway, Taehyung is here, yes. We both got home just fine.”

“Good,” said the young boy. “Seokjin’s home too.”

Jimin took it as his cue to leave the room.

To say that Jimin and Jungkook had gone through some shit together was an understatement. In fact, Jungkook might have been one of the first person he’d felt he could trust during what he called his ‘in-between life’. The life he had before he’d joined the gang and found his place but also the one he’d had post… post-normal life. And yet the two hadn’t been friends at all during this dark period of their lives.

Jimin had just turned sixteen the day he ran away. He was tired of it all, of his homophobic mother and his abusive father, of the insults, the fighting, the constant beating. He’d left as soon as he had enough money and he was old enough to work, not hesitating one instant. But in a few months, it had all fallen apart again. The plans he had made – staying at each one of friends’ house for a few weeks at a time, spending the little money he had on cheap, disgusting hotel rooms and washing people’s cars to get money – had eventually crumbled too and he’d found himself on the streets with no money, no job and no experience to find a decent one quickly enough. That was how he’d ended up at the The Red Room.

The Red Room was an illegal strip club located in a small alleyway not far from the city center. Jimin had walked past it looking for shelter one night and after three days without food and drinking out of public fountains, he hadn’t hesitated one second when he saw the sign on the window saying they were hiring a bartender. Jimin had no experience behind a counter, nor had he been old enough to work in a strip club but he was hired immediately, without anyone asking where he was from or why a sixteen-year-old was roaming the streets by himself. There were two things he’d learned quickly in this new life. First, how to make just about any drink that existed on planet earth. Second, to never trust anyone that walked or worked in an illegal strip club. Especially not the drunk customers, to which he frequently had to remind that he was not one of the strippers and no I don’t want your money unless you’re buying another drink. He’d also learned not to feel offended by said customers calling him a slut when he refused their advances – the irony – and later not to feel anything anymore.

It was at The Red Room that Jimin had met Jungkook. He’d been working there for less than two months but it had already felt like a lifetime. Once night, as he’d gone in the alleyway behind the stripclub to take out the trash, he’d almost jumped when he’d seen something move right next to the trash containers.

“What the fu…” he’d screamed, until he’d managed to get the silhouette of a young boy. “What the fuck are you doing here, kid? Go home, it’s like… 3 am.”

To his surprise, the boy hadn’t looked intimidated by him in one bit. Quite the contrary, he’d stared at Jimin up and down and scoffed.

“I work here,” he’d replied, trying to look tough.

“What the hell are you talking about, you’re like… twelve,” Jimin had replied, scoffing back.

“I’m fourteen!” the kid had shouted defensively. “Anyway, I know who you are. You’re the new bartender. The customers always talk about you. They said you were pretty but I guess they were too drunk to see straight.”

“Why are you here?” Jimin had replied, ignoring the insult. He was used to insults. “What’s a fourteen-year-old kid doing in a strip club?”

“I help clean the rooms upstairs. The ones you and the strippers sleep in.”

“Okay but,” Jimin had said, dumbfounded. “Why are you here? Why don’t you go home to your parents or whatever?”

“I have nowhere to go.”

For the years that had followed, Jimin had done his best to protect Jungkook as much as he could, not because he’d wanted to but because he’d somehow felt like he had to. He’s a kid, he’d kept telling himself, forgetting that he’d been a kid himself. No one else will protect him here. And yet Jungkook hadn’t been easy to deal with. The kid had wanted none of his help. In fact, he’d made sure to let Jimin know he despised him at every chance he had. Yet, Jimin had kept trying to protect him, from customers, from their bosses, from the other strippers. All that to be rewarded by glares and insults from the then smaller boy.

When he’d joined The Red Room, he’d promised himself it would be a temporary solution. Yet, two years had passed and he was still there, making barely enough money to leave and certainly not enough to take Jungkook with him. He’d told himself when he’d walked in that he wouldn’t sink as low as the strippers that worked there but he’d learned to know them and respect them as time had gone by. And one day, life had handed him another opportunity he’d known he couldn’t pass by.

He’d been busy cleaning the place, a few hours before it would open, when one of the strippers had passed by.

“Hello Jimin. Heard about the new guy?”

“The one that joined a week ago?” he’d answered, not looking up from the table he was cleaning. This was just small talk. A way to make life more bearable for anyone that worked there. “Yeah, I’ve seen him strip a few times. He’s awkward but he’s a decent dancer.”

“He left this morning.”

“What, already?”

“Yeah. Stripping’s not for everyone, you know. Anyway, now there’s a vacancy.”

Something had clicked in Jimin’s mind. Strippers would make twice the amount of money he’d made as a bartender, plus they got extra money from what the customers would give them on stage. Jimin had learned how to dance when he was younger, and he had been pretty good at it. At this point in his life, he had been more than aware that he was attractive to other people. The customers had never failed to remind him every single night since he’d joined. And he’d just turned eighteen, meaning he was old enough to have a man’s body but young enough that he could satisfy some untold desire in some of the disgusting men that chose to spend the night in this filthy place. He hadn’t hesitated twice. Even years later, he could remember the look of disgust on Jungkook’s face the first time he’d gone on stage. And yet, the younger boy hadn’t hesitated twice about taking his place as bartender either.

For two more years, Jimin had kept working at that place, thoroughly counting his money every single night. I’ve learned to live with half of that, he told himself every time as he hid half of his pay in a different place in his room every month. Sometimes part of his savings would get stolen, by his boss or by one of the strippers. He had no one to complain to so he’d just kept going.

He’d been just a few months away from turning twenty when he’d gathered his money one morning and decided he had enough. All he’d had to do was walk out. No one would look for him. No one had cared about him. He’d be replaced in a few days. He still remembered passing by Jungkook the day he’d left, with his backpack – the same one he’d run away from his parents’ house with – full of his stuff and how he’d hesitated for a second. But the younger boy had looked away, as disinterested as always, and Jimin had left, swearing never to step into a place like this again.

Yet, it had only taken three months for him to come back. Every night as he’d closed his eyes since he’d left, the image of the fourteen-year-old boy standing in that alleyway had come back to haunt him and guilt had filled his stomach, his veins, his lungs until he’d become incapable to sleep. Not even when he’d joined the gang two months prior, and had rediscovered again what it felt like to sleep in a warm bed and eat decent food, had he managed to get Jungkook out of his head. So, he’d gone back and he’d taken the boy with him, surprisingly easily. Jungkook hadn’t protested but he hadn’t talked. For the first two weeks he hadn’t uttered one word, to Jimin or anyone else. But Hoseok had still accepted to keep him.

“We only take stray cats anyway,” he’d said.

Hoseok had been the one in charge of recruitment back then, or so it had seemed. He’d been the only one to accept new recruits and Namjoon, leader of the pack, trusted him enough to not contest his judgement.

Two weeks after Jimin had brought Jungkook, the young boy had assisted to his first meeting. The gang all met in the living room at least once a week – another important rule – to discuss the progress on their current missions, future ones and anything else that mattered. As always, Jungkook had stayed silent, the same look of disdain that had occupied his face back at The Red Room. Once the meeting had ended and everyone had left, Jimin and Jungkook had found themselves alone in the empty living room.

And for the first time in a while, Jeon Jungkook, eighteen-year-old and still homeless, parentless, lifeless, had opened his mouth.

“I didn’t think you could become even more of a slut”, he’d said, the venom on his tongue audible in each syllable. “But sleeping with people for a gang? Even for you that’s low. You’re truly a whore now.”

And for the first time in forever, for the first time since he’d left his parents’ house four years before, Jimin had snapped. With a strength he hadn’t known he possessed, he’d grabbed the now taller boy by the collar and pushed him against the nearest wall.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, manchild?” he’d screamed, their faces only a few centimeters apart. “What did I ever do to you, apart protecting you for years to get nothing in return? How the fuck do you think you’re still alive and well right now, and not drugged up in some other strip club somewhere? What did I ever do to you that I need to support your insults, your constant disdain, as if I don’t hate myself enough but I need to have some kid judging me constantly? I get it, you don’t like me. So why did you follow me here then?”

Jimin had felt the blood pumping in his veins, his rage getting to his head and making it hard to see properly. And yet, his anger had dropped suddenly when he’d seen the look on the other boy’s face switch with no warning, his judging gaze disappearing all of a sudden. And the improbable had happened.

Right in front of him, the boy he’d known for four years had burst into tears.

“Thank you, Jimin.” Jungkook had said weakly, in between two heavy sobs. “Thank you for everything.”

Jimin knocked three times on Seokjin and Namjoon’s bedroom. The two men were the only ones who shared a room in their latest house. Jimin didn’t know how long they’d been dating – four, five years maybe? – but the two were certainly a team when it came to leading the gang.

“Jimin!” Seokjin said brightly when he opened the door. “Did everything go well?”

“Yes, everything went well, except I still need more time to work on that guy. Do you know when Namjoon will be back?”

“Oh. Namjoon and Yoongi said they’d be back before midnight. I guess we’ll have another meeting then.”

“Okay. Cool,” Jimin answered with a small smile, waving at the other man.

Seokjin started to close the door when Jimin spoke again.

“Oh, Seokjin?” he said hesitantly. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure?”

“The mission… Hoseok and Yoongi’s mission… Did it go well?” he asked. He could hear his own voice wavering and he didn’t know why. It was common place for them to ask how things had gone when they came back from a mission. They looked out for each other, it was their only way to move forward.

“Yoongi’s fine,” Seokjin had replied with a fond smile.

“That’s… not what I asked, but good,” Jimin replied.

“I know but…” Seokjin stopped talking for a second, visibly hesitating to say something and deciding otherwise. “You’ve already seen Hobi, I presume from the screaming earlier. So, I’m telling you, Yoongi’s fine.”

Jimin nodded, ignoring the warmth growing in his stomach. He’s always fine anyway, he thought. He knows what he’s doing.

“You’ll see him… Them. You’ll see him and Namjoon later tonight,” Seokijn added.

Jimin walked in Yoongi’s empty bedroom. It only took him a few seconds to locate the blood-stained clothes left on the back of a desk chair. He picked them up delicately, not worrying about staining himself – they’d been here for hours – and opened the window to get rid of the smell of dried blood. Yoongi didn’t need anyone to look after him. He was clean and kept his things in order, as could testify his spotless bedroom. But Jimin couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand seeing his members’ blood-stained clothes, even if he knew it rarely was their own.

I just don’t like blood, he used to say. Makes my head turn. It wasn’t entirely wrong. That was why he’d chosen poison as his main way of getting rid of the men he’d seduced into their downfall once he’d gotten all the information he needed from them. That and the fact that blood leaves stains and Jimin couldn’t leave any traces of his killing behind.

But the truth was that he didn’t like to see his members as killers. It was ridiculous, given that killing was an unavoidable part of what they did and Jimin himself had killed too many men to count in his two years in the gang. But he just couldn’t see them as killers, not when they’d welcomed him with open arms and given him a family for the first time in his life.

And more than anything, he couldn’t stand to see Yoongi as a killer. Yoongi, a man known around town for his ruthlessness long before he’d even joined the gang. Yoongi, quite possibly the most skilled killer this city had ever known. Yoongi, the coldest person Jimin had ever met. And yet no one had ever made Jimin feel warmer, not even Taehyung.

Chapter Text

Jimin had been sat on his bed for almost an hour, nervously playing with his own fingers. His nerves had made it difficult for the boy to do anything other than stare at the wall, unable to stop his mind from overthinking.

Unplanned meetings always turned him into a bundle of nerves. It was easy going to the gang’s weekly meetings, in which he had nothing more to do than say that everything went to plan and wait for his next mission with Taehyung. But when things went a different way, and he needed a little bit more time, it made the twenty-two-year-old boy feel like a kid called in the principal’s office. He hadn’t done anything wrong but it was always difficult to take initiative, even after two years in the gang.

When he’d joined the gang, Jimin had gained not only a home but also meaning to his life. Something to do with himself that was more than just surviving; people to care about, who cared about in seemingly equal measures. But it had also given him a responsibility that had been hard to deal with, especially after years of surviving by and for himself only – with the exception, of course, of the tall kid that now lived in a room right next to his.

His missions with Taehyung were not just important, they were crucial to the life of the gang. He’d understood that much from the start, and that was the main reason why he’d been allowed to stay. The pieces of information the two boys brought back every time allowed the team to plan better and to gain grounds over the other gangs – and even sometimes to get rid of unwanted third parties, as most of Jimin’s victims disappeared soon after he was done with them, or else the boy’s identity would have been compromised.

But no one had taught the two boys how to become spies. Neither Jimin or Taehyung had done anything like this before joining the gang. There were no spies in Bangtan before them. Before Jimin, Taehyung’s activities were mainly hacking into things, and he’d self-taught himself some spying skills along the way. The two boys had been thrown into this new job with no warnings, no one to guide them and they’d developed their own work methods and made their own rules. And for Jimin it had been a huge change. Back at the Red Room, he used to do everything he was told on the job but, as soon as his shift ended, he had to answer to no one and his life would become meaningless to the world again – including to himself. Once he’d joined Bangtan, he was given such influence that he was always afraid to mess up. His actions mattered to others, and so did his decisions.

The young boy was taken out of his reverie by a brief knock on the door that almost made him jump. A few seconds later, a familiar head popped out of the doorframe.

“Jimin,” Taehyung started, a small grin at the corner of his lips. “I know you’re the king of overthinking everything so I came bearing gifts.”

The taller boy sat down on the bed next to his friend before handing him a small bag of colorful gummy candies.

“It’ll be fine,” he continued, briefly taking Jimin’s smaller hands into his. “All you have to do is tell them that you need more time, that’s it. It’s been a while since we’ve made a request but it’s nothing we haven’t done before.”

“They’ll ask why,” Jimin whispered before putting a red crocodile-shaped candy in his mouth. “They always ask why.”

“And then you say that you didn’t get enough information and you think the ugly dude was hiding even more stuff and you think you can crack him which is exactly what you told me yesterday after you let the weasel go.”

Jimin exhaled loudly. He knew the meeting would go just fine as always but the thought of his own decision being at the center of discussions was enough to make him nervous.

“And if they start to ask too many questions, you know I’ve got your back,” Taehyung said before throwing several candies into his mouth. “Always.”

Twenty minutes later, Jimin was sat in one of the white sofas in the middle of their living room. Taehyung was sat on his right, still eating candy, while Jungkook was busy playing games on his phone right next to him. Seokjin was sat on an armchair a few meters away. He’d made tea for everyone as always, even though he was usually the only one who ended up drinking it. Still, Jimin enjoyed holding the cup in his hands while they all waited for Namjoon to arrive and start the meeting, the warmth spreading through his body and helping his nerves calm down.

On the living room’s second sofa, placed just in front to mirror the one the three boys were occupying, Hoseok was busy trying to convince Taehyung to give him some candies – to no avail. Next to him, an all too familiar round-faced, black-haired man was slouching on the white sofa, blankly staring at his phone.

Yoongi had come home late the previous night. Jimin was just about to call it a day when he’d heard footsteps in the room right next to his, signaling the presence of his enigmatic housemate and fellow gang member. Jimin never knew what to make of Min Yoongi. It wasn’t that the two boys had a conflicting relationship, or any reason to. But from the very beginning, while Yoongi had seemed relatively indifferent to Jimin’s addition to the gang, the twenty-four-year-old boy had been quite vocally opposed to the position that was given to the younger boy, including what his missions entailed. Jimin could recall long nights of heated discussions between Yoongi on one side and Namjoon, Seokjin and Hoseok on the other. He’d just sat there, feeling like a child for the first time in a long time, watching other people weigh on his fate while Taehyung – whom he’d known for a total of three weeks at the time – had held his hand until the other boys were done.

“How are you gonna send a kid to do a job like this?” Yoongi had roared in their leader’s face, not one once of fear on his features. “If he fails even just once, he’d get us found out. He has no experience at all.”

“We’ll send Taehyung with him,” Namjoon had replied patiently. “He’s already done a few spying jobs. And we can still brief them beforehand, then test them on small missions first.”

“Great,” Yoongi had snorted cynically. “Let’s send two kids together.”

“Taehyung has experience, you can’t deny that,” Namjoon had continued. “Plus, we need someone to do this job, you know it. We can’t do any spying ourselves anymore, we’d get recognized sooner or later.”

Eventually the older boy had come around – or more like given up, as it wasn’t exactly his call to decide who would hold which position in the gang in the first place. After that experience, it had been difficult to see the black-haired boy as anything other than… intimidating. Not that Yoongi was ever directly hostile towards Jimin, or that their relationship was ever particularly tense. But it just… was. It hadn’t taken long for him to get close with anyone else in the gang. Taehyung had welcomed him with open arms, Hoseok had been the one who’d convinced the rest to let him stay. After hearing as much of his story as the young boy was willing to share at the time, Namjoon and Seokjin had taken care of him and done their best to find him a place not only in their home but in their organization, so that Jimin could fit in just right.

But things hadn’t gotten any better with Yoongi. There was still a wall between him and the older boy, the origin of which he was unable to explain. They weren’t hostile, nor did they ignore each other but they were nothing more than two people who shared a house and a job. They were never friendly the way Jimin was with the rest of the team. And yet, for a reason he could not explain, it was difficult for the silver-haired boy not to consider him family like the rest of them.

The most disheartening part of it all for Jimin had been to see Jungkook, the boy he’d brought here just a few months after himself, grow closer to Yoongi than Jimin could ever dream of. Jungkook, who’d grown quite tall and was physically very strong, had been deemed perfect to carry missions similar to those Namjoon, Yoongi and Hoseok would do. The young boy had been trained by them, accompanying them whenever he could until he was deemed fit to become a full member of the gang and to operate on the same level as the others. Jungkook still didn’t have the background and the drive that the older boys had to kill without any second thoughts just yet, nevertheless torture someone, so he’d become some sort of bodyguard for the others. It had meant that he’d worked with Yoongi a lot more than Jimin ever would, and the boy had to admit he felt slightly jealous.

The oddest part in all of this was that, over the two years since he’d joined Bangtan, Jimin had found himself starting to feel a weird attraction for the mysterious black-haired boy, despite feeling slightly – no, deeply – rejected by the other’s complete lack of attempt to become friendlier with him. It’s just curiosity, he’d told himself. And maybe a little bit of childishness, not getting what he wanted making him desire it even more.

“He doesn’t like me,” Jimin had said to Hoseok one time.

“Don’t worry, Jiminie,” the older boy had replied. “Yoongi doesn’t open up easily, he’s like that with everyone at first. You’ll get closer eventually.”

But two years had passed, and when Jimin had come to the realization that most of what he knew about the black-haired boy – even his goddamn age – he’d learned from the other members and not from him. And that was the point where he’d just decided to give up entirely. He had a home, people who cared about him, and more freedom than he’d ever had before. Don’t be greedy, Jimin, he’d thought, not everyone is going to like you.

“Why are we here?” Yoongi asked when Namjoon finally stepped into the living room. “Weren’t we supposed to meet at the end of the week? Did something happen?”

“Well… Yes, sort of,” Namjoon said, before explaining the whole situation in detail.

As grateful as Jimin was towards Namjoon for summing up the situation as best as he could and for taking Jimin’s party without asking too many questions, hearing the rest of the members discuss his own decision while he’s sitting right there made him feel like a child again, and he felt his nerves slowly creep back in, his chest feeling a little tighter.

“So that… just puts everything we planned behind until Jimin meets that guy again, and we’re not even sure when that’s going to happen?” Yoongi asked again, and while it didn’t sound judgmental, Jimin could feel the uncertainty tainting the older boy’s voice.

Jimin was looking down at his feet, trying to avoid the other members’ looks. He wished he felt more empowered to stand his ground but he couldn’t help feeling like a fraud somehow. Maybe I just haven’t thought this through, he thought, they’re more experienced, they know better.

“It does put us back for a little while but…” Namjoon started, visibly unsure on how to continue.

“But if Jimin thinks it’s better to do so, then I think we should listen to him,” Seokjin finished for him, speaking for the first time since the meeting had started. “After all, we use the information he and Taehyung bring us almost religiously, don’t we?”

“Does he think it’s better?” Yoongi said. “Do you, Jimin?”

Jimin looked up suddenly to see every head in the room turned towards him – with the exception of Jungkook, who hadn’t stopped playing with his phone, completely disinterested in his surroundings. While the others were sending him encouraging looks, what caught Jimin’s attention was the man sitting on the other couch right in front of him who was looking at him straight in the eyes, his face unreadable.

Oddly, Yoongi’s unwavering stare didn’t make him cower, quite the contrary.

“Well…” he started, searching for the right words. “I think so. If there’s anything more I can get that could be useful for the future, I think I should do my best to get it. I know it changes our initial plans and it might make things a little complicated for the rest of you, but I think… If we look at the bigger picture, it’s in everyone’s best interest.”

To his own surprise, Jimin had spoken quite confidently. Maybe if I want to stop feeling like a fraud I need to stop acting like one first, he thought. Silence took over the vast living room as everyone seemed to ponder over the boy’s words.

“Okay,” Yoongi said after a minute, and just like that, everything was settled. “It’s a risk for you more than for us to be honest, so it’s your call.”

“I can make a new schedule for all of you and we can settle the details of what to do next once Jimin and Taehyung come back from their next mission,” said Seokjin, looking over the notes he had taken from their previous meetings.

The meeting clearly over, everyone started going back to their own business and Jimin felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest. The boy stretched quickly, his muscles unclenching now that all signs of tension had left his body. He was about to walk back to his room when he heard someone call out his name softly.

“Jimin,” Yoongi repeated once the boy was looking at him. “This time, you guys get rid of the dude once you’re done. There’s no delaying twice.”

And with these words, the black-haired boy left Jimin standing alone in the living room.

After what felt like an eternity, Jimin was starting to feel whatever patience he had left slowly leave him. This one is taking a hell of a long time to come, he thought while another fake moan left his mouth, I should’ve just slipped poison in his drink when I still could. But Jimin liked a job well done, and given that he had to delay everyone else’s schedule to finish his, he’d tried to get everything he could out of his target. The problem was that Jimin’s missions almost always ended the same way; with some guy thrusting inside him for what felt like forever and it was unpleasant. There was only so long he could lie on an uncomfortable bed, thinking about his plans for the rest of the evening or what his next meal would be, before he was bored again. He’d been lying there pretend moaning for almost twenty minutes and, if he’d been less of a coward, he would’ve reached for the small gun Taehyung had carefully placed under his pillow before the two had entered the room about half an hour earlier and freed himself from his misery. It wasn’t that he was afraid of getting caught – the other guy seemed completely oblivious to whatever Jimin was doing at the moment – but the thought of a freshly dead corpse dropping onto him was just a tad more unpleasant than his current situation, and it was enough to make him consider it twice.

He was wondering if he’d ever experience good sex again – or if he even had before, it was hard to tell when his sex life had now been entirely reduced to this – when he heard the door violently opening. Before he even had time to react, he heard a gunshot and his target’s body dropped heavily onto his. Yuck. And the guy was still inside of him as well.

“Taehyung, if I knew you were going to do this, I would have spared myself ten minutes ago,” Jimin said, cringing at the sight of the bleeding bullet hole on the man’s forehead just a few centimeters away from his face. Despite how much bloody wounds still repulsed Jimin, he had to admit Taehyung’s shot was impressively clean and precise for someone who rarely ever used a gun.

“Not Taehyung,” replied a familiar deep voice that was, shockingly, not Taehyung’s.

Jimin felt all the blood in his body rush to his cheeks as he recognized the owner of that voice. While he’d always been quite comfortable with his body – he was a stripper for almost two years after all – being caught in the middle of the act by another member of the gang, someone that was neither Taehyung, his partner in crime, nor Jungkook, who’d accompanied the pair once or twice before, felt like a huge invasion of privacy, even when the guy he was having sex with was nothing more than a liability turned into a fresh corpse. And out of everyone, it had to be the person he was the least close with. Just when he’d thought this mission couldn’t get any worse.

When he pushed the dead guy away from his body, sitting up on the bed trying not to feel too self-conscious about his own nakedness, he had the pleasure of seeing that Yoongi had had the decency to turn away, leaving him space to put some clothes on.

“Get dressed, I’ll explain in the car,” Yoongi said. “Do it quickly before anyone wonders about the gunshot.”

No one wonders about odd noises in crappy motels like this, Jimin thought. This is why we come here to finish these jobs. But then Yoongi wouldn’t know, would he. He’d probably never fucked someone in a lousy hotel room just to shoot them afterwards.

“Taehyung, go home by yourself if you don’t mind,” Yoongi said, as the three of them reached Taehyung’s car. “Jimin will go home with me.”

Jimin had to admit he wasn’t thrilled about being alone in a car with Yoongi. The motel they’d ended up in was outside of town – which was convenient if you wanted to get rid of a body swiftly, without too many eyes looking – and it would take at least an hour for them to reach home. It had been a long time since the two men had sat next to each other alone and Jimin was too tired to suffer through an awkward conversation. He’d figured there had to be a reason for Yoongi intervening in a mission that didn’t concern him in the slightest, especially that late – it was well past midnight – and this far away from home.

However, the first ten minutes of the way back home were spent in complete silence. Jimin did not mind, he could feel his eyelids get heavier, slowly closing. He was on the verge of sleep when Yoongi finally opened in his mouth, his voice almost making Jimin jump off his seat.

“See Jimin, this is why we don’t delay missions,” Yoongi said, his voice low.

“What are you talking about?” Jimin answered, sleep still weighing on his eyelids. He was exhausted, and not in the mood to read between the lines.

He looked out of the window and realized they were still out of town. The interior of the car was almost completely dark, but thanks to the pale light of the moon seconded by the car’s headlight, he could still decipher the features of the man next to him. He could see the man’s pale and veiny hands holding the wheel tight, a sign of a certain tension, as he drove faster than necessary on the empty road. Jimin looked up to the man’s face, his black hair falling into his eyes, the expression on his boyish features still unreadable. Despite the light tone he’d just used, there was no sign of amusement on his traits.

“The man you just…” Yoongi spoke again, his voice trailing off as he seemed to hesitate. “The man I just shot. We’ve had intel from someone outside the gang that he talked about you to someone else. They informed us straight away, and we should be able to take care of the other person without getting into too much trouble hopefully but if that person talked to anyone else about you… Jimin… It…”

Is he trying to protect me? Jimin thought for a brief second.

“… could put the entire gang in jeopardy,” Yoongi continued, his voice measured as if he was talking to a child. “Which is why we stick to the plan always, so that these kind of situations don’t happen.”

He didn’t know whether if it was because he’d just had a long and awful day, or if the exhaustion was starting to get to him, or if it was the fact that he was still shaking from havign a fucking corpse drop onto him less than an hour ago – which he was sure was not something that was getting to Yoongi, who had surely seen hundreds more corpses than him, most of them probably made by himself – but Jimin couldn’t help but feel irritated by the mere notion of the other boy getting him into a car just to lecture him. Yoongi wasn’t entirely wrong, if someone even had the faintest idea of what Jimin was doing with the other guy, it could have serious consequences on the gang and it was something to take care of as briefly as possible. But to blame it on him? For a decision that Yoongi himself had agreed to without much questioning just a few days before? Before he could stop himself, Jimin felt his exasperation take over his sleep-deprived brain.

“Do you,” he started, and in the midst of all the very conflicting emotions that were going through his head at the same time, he found it difficult to phrase his thoughts properly. “Do you think I’m a child? Why are you lecturing me over something we all agreed on a few days ago? Do you really think that’s what I want to hear after you just dropped a fucking corpse onto me – for reasons I understand, sure, but… still, is that the only thing you wanted to tell me?”

“I’m not lect-“ Yoongi tried to say but Jimin wasn’t listening anymore.

“I understand the haste but this guy wouldn’t have left the hotel room alive anyway,” Jimin continued, not paying attention to the other. “Just like all the other ones Taehyung and I have taken care of before.”

“Did you now,” Yoongi replied simply, and it most likely wasn’t intended to belittle him but the calm voice the older boy kept using despite Jimin’s obvious agitation only served to make his anger rise even more.

“You really think I’m weak,” Jimin snorted in disbelief after a few seconds of silence. “Just because I’m not like you and Hoseok, or Namjoon, or even Jungkook! Just because I don’t shoot people in cold blood, or torture them, or whatever you guys do on your missions. Just because I don’t have the same background as you and I’m not comfortable with the sight of ugly, bloody, disgusting corpses – yes, even after two years working in a gang. Just because of that, you think I’m some weak, fragile little boy.”

“That’s not… I don’t…” Yoongi stuttered, which was new, but Jimin didn’t miss the way his voice sounded just as composed as before. “I don’t think you’re weak.”

“Then quit treating me like a child,” Jimin added bitterly. “I don’t need your condescending bullshit right now.”

“Jimin, I-“ Yoongi started, only to be cut again.

“Just drop it,” Jimin added quickly turning to the window as he felt tears start to gather in his eyes.

His emotions always got the best off him, and that was why he could never do what Yoongi, Hoseok and Namjoon did. He was easily swayed by his changing heart and often found it hard to think straight. But he didn’t want the older boy to see that. He was tired of being babied. Maybe he really was the weakest link of the group, but he’d struggled for years to get to where he was now and that in itself should be a testament of his own, personal strength – regardless of how it compared to the other members’.

He noticed that they’d passed the edges of the city and would be arriving soon. The car remained completely silent for the rest of the way home, the tension palpable in the air. Jimin was just concentrating on getting his mind clear but it was difficult, and he could feel a headache creeping due to the lack of sleep and the sudden agitation.

“Are you okay?” Yoongi asked as he turned into their street, in the same emotionless tone that drove Jimin insane.

He didn’t find it within himself to respond, worried that his voice would crack and give away his current state of turmoil.

As soon as Yoongi was done parking the car, Jimin opened the door, murmured some vague version of “thanks for the ride”, and fled to his room before the other could say a word.

Later at night, Jimin was lying on his bed staring at the ceiling. Despite his advanced state of exhaustion, sleep wouldn’t find him. The sudden rush of emotions, especially of anger, had made his mind go wild and he was having difficulty calming down. He wasn’t even mad at Yoongi anymore. The man was doing nothing else than the other members hadn’t done before. Everyone babied him – Namjoon speaking for him during meetings was a prime example of it. He admitted that it was partly his fault, he invited it at times, and that was why he’d never complained. But when it came from Seokjin or Hoseok, he knew it came from a good place – they worried about him. When it came from Yoongi’s cool, indifferent voice, it sounded down right condescending. And the fact that the two boys weren’t even close made it even harder to swallow.

He didn’t like to hold a grudge, but if Yoongi was gonna keep treating him as nothing than a coworker than so be it. It didn’t mean he would let himself be walked all over – not again, not ever – by the other man.

He still felt slightly bothered by Yoongi’s words when he felt the darkness start to envelop him, sleep finally coming after what felt like hours of lying motionless. Yet, before he fell into deep slumber and finally put an end to this long day, his wild mind reminded him of something that had occurred a while ago.

It had been seven or eight months since he’d joined the gang, he couldn’t tell exactly. One night, as he’d laid in bed thinking, he’d heard the faint sound of his bedroom door opening very slowly as if someone was trying not to wake him up, followed by the muffled sounds of footsteps on the hardwood floor. Someone had slipped into his bed behind him quietly. He’d turned around slowly, expecting Taehyung, who’d sometimes joined him when he’d had a bad dream – although he usually did so much more noisily. His heart had jumped when he’d realized who was lying just a few centimeters away from him.

“Can’t sleep,” Yoongi had whispered, his eyes already closed. “And your bed is big enough for two.”

It hadn’t explained why he’d chosen his bed over Hoseok’s or Taehyung’s, which were just as big as his, or how sleeping next to Jimin would help him find sleep, but Jimin hadn’t asked any questions. He’d just turned away from Yoongi again and let sleep get to him, trying to ignore the unusual presence behind him. It was on this night however that, for the very first time, he’d felt a strange urge to get closer to the warm, unmoving body right next to him.

The next day, he’d woken up to a cold, empty bed. He’d almost believed he’d dreamed all of it until he’d seen the crease on the other side of the bed, a clear sign of another presence next to his. But when he’d bumped into Yoongi later in the day, the man had gone back to his detached, unreadable self and the incident was never brought up. Jimin had done his best to forget about it, trying his hardest to pretend he didn’t feel affected in a way he could neither describe nor explain by the older man from this point forward.

Chapter Text

To say that Jimin was bored was an understatement. Since his last mission, it had been decided, without his approval of course, that, for his protection, he was to stay out of all missions until the situation was fixed. In other words, he was forced to stay home, stuck between those four walls, until everyone who knew and had spoken of his existence had been dealt with. It was a long process – to find out who knew, to take care of them, to get rid of them.

They had voted on this issue at the last meeting – 6 votes against 1, his own vote being the only one against it, of course – and before Jimin knew, he was being imprisoned by his own friends.

“You are all trying to baby me again,” Jimin whined, pouting at Seokjin as the older man was sat in front of him at the large dinner table in their kitchen.

“No, we’re trying to keep you alive,” Seokjin replied, not looking up from the papers he was busy filling in.

Ultimately, he knew they were right. This situation was difficult for everyone. It slowed down the others’ work, changing all their plans as they had to take care of it as swiftly as possible. It was better for them if Jimin stayed out of the way in the meantime, so they didn’t have to play bodyguards for him at the same time.

Still, when everyone else was outside, he was bored out of his mind.

“Is this always like this for you?” Jimin continued. “Do you not get bored when we’re all out?”

“I’m not always home,” Seokjin said. “And when I am, I have plenty of things to do.”

Jimin spent most of his time with Seokjin now. The oldest member had a completely different role from the others. From the beginning, he’d stayed out of the violence and the confrontations. Rather than partaking in the action, he kept the rest of the gang on track. He was their accountant, their manager, and Namjoon’s right-hand man in making the important decisions. In a lot of ways, he was the one who kept it all from falling apart. He’d grown up in this world – the violence, the rivalry between gangs, the way it teared up families. He knew it all, and it was odd for Jimin that he’d fled all of this years ago just to come back to it, but the man seemed to find comfort in helping them somehow.

“I’ve seen enough of it with my own eyes for a lifetime,” he’d once said. “Now I’m just trying to keep you all alive.”

Jimin loved to spend time with Seokjin. The man still found time to listen to his worries despite the amount of work he had to deal with and was always a good shoulder to cry on when necessary. It wasn’t always easy for Jimin to let himself be vulnerable given their occupations, even in front of his closest friends, and especially after growing up in an environment where he felt like he couldn’t trust anyone. He was grateful to have him by his side.

“I’m grateful to have you keeping me company,” Seokjin said, smiling even though he was still staring at his papers.

Seokjin had been the first one to notice his foul mood following his last mission. He’d sat down with the boy the following day, recalling the events that had taken place and letting Jimin get it out of his chest. Sometimes, Jimin felt like he was the weakest link in the gang, the delicate one that didn’t truly belong. He felt like he shouldn’t have been so shaken up by what had happened – it was far from his first time dealing with a corpse. Hell, he’d killed a lot of people in the past. He should have been used to this by now. Seokjin didn’t seem to agree.

“It doesn’t make it easier,” Seokjin said in a soothing tone. “It’s not your job to be doing this. This is why we have the others. It’s Yoongi and Hoseok’s jobs to keep a straight face in those situations, it’s Namjoon and Jungkook’s jobs to do the dirty work. It’s not yours. This is why we have Taehyung come to these missions with you. You know how to do your job, and it was bad judgement and inconsiderate of Yoongi to intervene before you were done and without consulting Taehyung first.”

Jimin sighed. He was right, but still, he felt like the ugly duckling of the bunch, the one who couldn’t walk straight and struggled to keep up. He wished he was just a little bit stronger.

“And frankly, I don’t think any of us would enjoy having a fresh corpse dropped on us mid-intercourse,” Seokjin continued. “If anyone wants to pretend otherwise, they can come to me and we’ll find out.”

He was grateful once more for the man’s understanding. Still, he could not find the courage to bring up what had happened later in the car, and how it had affected his mood the following days too. He felt childish to still be annoyed after several days, it irked him to see how easily he could be affected by the smallest things. It shouldn’t have been a big deal if Yoongi didn’t like him, if they weren’t close the way he was to the others. None of them had chosen to live in each other’s presence, they were merely here, doing what they had to do. They barely even worked together. It shouldn’t have been an issue, and he did his best to forget about it.  

After a few days, Jimin found himself completely alone again. Even Seokjin was out running errands for the next few days, and deprived of the older man’s company, the house just seemed too big. He tried to stay in his room, but he couldn’t help walking around aimlessly from one room to another. He wished he’d had a hobby growing up, something he could put his mind to when work was slow, like painting or playing the piano. He hadn’t, however, grown up in an environment where he was encouraged to develop any personal skills other than studying, keeping his mouth shut and looking pretty. Still, even Jungkook could draw and this kid wasn’t exactly the poster child for healthy childhoods either. He was jealous. He’d have to ask the kid to teach him some day.

 A week passed, and he started to wonder when he would finally be able to go out again. The others hadn’t said in their last meeting, and he wasn’t fully up to date with what they were doing – it was already difficult to keep up on a normal day, even more now that he wasn’t involved. He’d found himself walking towards the kitchen for the third time since he’d woken up three hours ago. The problem with being at home all the time was that he knew the content of the fridge and the cupboards by heart and the element of surprise was gone. He knew he’d leave empty handed, because he knew he was only trying to satisfy his boredom, but his feet still carried him there as if they didn’t know exactly what he was doing.

To his surprise, however, he wasn’t alone in the big house on this day. How he’d gone three hours without noticing the other man’s presence was a mystery, but then Yoongi had always been the quiet type. And yet, there he was, sitting at the dinner table with a half-finished sandwich, mindlessly scrolling on his phone.

They hadn’t talked at all since the… incident. Even during meetings, Jimin usually stayed silent as he wasn’t involved, and he was merely there just to be informed of what was going on in the gang. He had to admit too that, although it was difficult to follow the coming and goings of all six members, he also felt a little bit disinterested. Since he was out of work, Taehyung worked with Jungkook instead and he felt a little left out. It wasn’t jealousy per say, but at times, hearing them share their stories when they came home every evening made him feel… distant. He knew he had no right to feel that way, and it was childish of him, but it just fed his insecurities about being in the gang in the first place. The others did just fine without him.

Still, despite his insecurities, he still had some pride left. Seeing Yoongi sitting there nonchalantly, not even looking up when he’d clearly heard the boy coming in the kitchen, irked him to no end. He’d told himself he wasn’t mad anymore, but just remembering the older man’s disdain their last conversation, the way Jimin had felt belittled when he was being lectured as if he was a three-year-old, made his blood boil again.

“Why aren’t you with the others?” he said, still standing on the doorway, not bothering with greetings.

“I hurt myself in my last mission with Hoseok,” Yoongi said, still not looking up from his phone. “As you would know if you bothered to listen during meetings.”

Jimin could not help but be on the defensive. He seriously wondered if this man purposely tried to get on his nerves.

“I do listen!” he said, letting his annoyance show in his voice a little too much. “Excuse me if I’m not smart enough to remember everything.”

Faced with blatant silence and ignorance, Jimin just sighed before walking out of the kitchen. One minute and he’d already had enough. He vaguely heard Yoongi mumbling about why he’d walked in the kitchen if it was just to leave straight away, but he didn’t bother responding.

He spent an hour or so working out to distract himself, then showered, and he felt better afterwards. Working out helped his mind settle, it made him feel calmer somehow as he put his agitated thoughts aside and focused on his body for a bit. As he felt less on edge, he went out of his room again. He was already being imprisoned in their house for God knows how long, he wasn’t going to stay confined in his bedroom out of unfounded fear for his fellow gang member.

Unsurprisingly, he found Yoongi sat on one of the sofas in the living room. This time, the man turned around as soon as Jimin set foot outside of his room, somehow drawn by the noise. Jimin was just about to walk passed him when the black-haired man spoke.

“Bored?”

Jimin stopped, looking at him with curiosity.

Beyond the fact that they just didn’t seem to get along, there was something about Yoongi that unsettled Jimin. Aside from the disdain, from the way Yoongi seemed to find just the right way to push his buttons, Jimin still found himself strangely drawn to the man and he could not explain why. He’d felt it for the first time on that night when Yoongi had joined him in his bed, just to ignore him the next day. It wasn’t masochistic, nor self-inflicted. Jimin was not in love, nothing of the sort. But somehow, when the older man acknowledged his existence, he felt his resolution to just move on with his day melt a little bit.

“Yes,” he said, realizing Yoongi was really waiting for an answer.

“Good, so am I,” Yoongi continued as if it wasn’t unusual for them to even be talking. “Let’s play a game.”

Jimin wanted to refuse but curiosity took the best off me. What’s the worst that could happen? He wanted to know how long Yoongi would keep this act up. More so, he wanted to know where this would lead.

“Truth or dare,” the other man said.

They were both sat on the floor now at arm’s length of each other, on both sides of the coffee table, despite the two empty sofas.

The choice of the game was surprising, but not totally unexpected. They weren’t friends having fun during a sleepover. They barely knew each other despite living in the same house for years. Jimin could already tell there wouldn’t be a lot of dares.

“Truth,” he replied, eyeing Yoongi with a mixture of curiosity and caution.

He still was unsure what the other man expected to come out of this. Surely this couldn’t only be his way to pass the time…

“Who in the gang would you say you’re the closest and the least close to?” Yoongi said, his features as composed as ever.

Jimin rolled his eyes at the obvious question. Was this a joke?

“As if you don’t already know the answer,” he sighed. “I’m closest to Taehyung, least close to you. Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” Yoongi replied, visibly unbothered by Jimin’s obvious annoyance.

“Why do you hate me?” Jimin asked, not bothering to hide the bitterness in his tone.

He was tired of tip toeing around Yoongi. Sure, it was his doing, his own apprehension towards the older man, but he felt somehow as if the black-haired man in front of him was enjoying this. It was Jimin’s own twisted mind at work surely, making him overthink everything as he always did, but at that moment he was well and truly pissed off. If Yoongi wanted to play with him, then he was going to give him a run for his money.

“I don’t hate you,” Yoongi replied in the same even tone, which only contributed to annoy Jimin even further.

“Then why do you always act all cold around?”

“You only get one question each turn, Jimin,” the man said.

“But-“

“Play the game or don’t play at all.”

There it was. That same condescending tone.

“Fine,” Jimin said, gritting his teeth. “Your turn then.”

“Truth or dare,” Yoongi said.

“Truth.”

“Why did you go back to get Jungkook if you two weren’t close?” Yoongi asked. He then added, looking at the dark look on Jimin’s face: “A genuine question, not a judgement.”

It still rubbed Jimin the wrong way. Everything Yoongi did seemed to rub him the wrong way. Focus, he told himself. You’re doing this to yourself, he’s doing just fine.

“Because I’m not a fucking monster to leave a child in such a shitty environment by himself. I know a gang isn’t ideal either but at least he has people looking out for him now. Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Why are you always so cold around me?”

He might as well get the truth out while they were at it.

“I don’t treat you any differently than the others.”

“Bullshit!” Jimin heard himself shout. “You’re either condescending, plain cold or act like I don’t exist. What did I ever do to you? I don’t expect everyone to love me, but that’s beyond the point of plain indifference.”

“The gam-“ Yoongi tried to say but he was cut off immediately.

“Fuck the game,” Jimin said, but his voice sounded a little bit calmer this time. “Just answer me.”

For the first time since the start of the game, the room was silent. It was heavy, uncomfortable, but Jimin didn’t care. He was too much on edge now, too invested, and he just wanted to get an answer. And so he did.

“I… just don’t know where to stand with you,” Yoongi replied, looking away, breaking eye contact for the first time.

If Jimin hadn’t known any better, he would have thought the other man was unsettled.

Yoongi didn’t speak any more and the silence stretched out for another minute.

“Your turn,” Jimin said eventually.

“I thought you didn’t want to play anymore,” Yoongi replied, and when he looked up, he still sported his usual composure.  

“It’s your turn,” Jimin insisted.

“Fine,” Yoongi sighed. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Why do you never speak during our meetings?”

It was Jimin’s turn to sigh.

“Because I do my job separately from yours, because I struggle to keep track of all of the things you do, of your lingo, of all the names and places I should know by now. Because I’m not smart enough to follow all of the gang’s plans. I’m not quick witted like Namjoon, I don’t have Seokjin’s good memory to be able to remember everyone’s missions and plan accordingly. So I keep my mouth shut and only speak when I’m concerned. Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Why did you come to my room all these years ago in the middle of the night even though we weren’t close then and we’re still not close now?”

Yoongi was stunned to silence, once again avoiding Jimin’s eyes. At first, Jimin thought the man might not remember, and that he was trying to figure it out, but as the silence dragged along, it almost felt like a confession of guilt.

“I told you then…” Yoongi said eventually. “I couldn’t sleep…”

“Okay but why not Hoseok then?” Jimin said, and he had no idea where that sudden courage to ask all these personal questions came from. “When you two are a lot closer?”

“I don’t know… I…” Yoongi started stuttering. “Fine. Because I woke from a shitty nightmare that night and… for some reason, your presence calms me down. Satisfied?”

It was Jimin’s turn to be stunned into silence. Confusion looked odd on Yoongi, it was unlike him to stumble over his words almost painfully, as if the man dreaded to use the wrong ones. It didn’t suit the image Jimin had made of him in his head.

“You have nightmares?” he heard himself say, realizing as it passed his lips that it was a stupid question.

“Yes, I am a human being,” Yoongi snorted.

“But… you kill people for a living,” Jimin continued, his brain-to-mouth filter suddenly gone missing.

“So?”

“People are terrified of you.”

“Good, it means that I’m doing my job well,” he replied with a smile that Jimin didn’t know how to interpret. “Truth or dare. Are you scared of me, Jimin?”

“Sometimes,” Jimin replied honestly, because Yoongi had been nothing but honest until then. “Sometimes I am.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Yoongi said, and while it did not sound comforting in the slightest, at least it seemed sincere. “I’m never going to do anything to you.”

“Because of your loyalty to the gang?” Jimin asked again. He had to know.

“Because contrarily to what you seem to think, I don’t hate you,” Yoongi replied.

Yoongi seemed to struggle a bit to stand up, but it was a clear sign that the game was over. As the older man disappeared into his room, Jimin remembered him saying he’d been hurt earlier as he witnessed him dragging his leg a little with each step.

The next day, the house was quiet again when Jimin woke up. As he sleepily walked out of his room, he found Yoongi in the kitchen again, apparently trying to reach for something up in a cupboard but he was clearly struggling. Jimin noticed the way his right leg didn’t seem all that stable and he remembered the man mentioning an injury the day before.

“Let me help you,” Jimin said.

Yoongi turned around, visibly startled to see him, but he regained his composure almost immediately.

“I’m fine,” he said, turning back around, but Jimin was persistent.

He joined him in a few steps, pushing Yoongi’s hand off the cupboard.

“What do you want?” Jimin asked. “That cup?”

“Yup,” Yoongi groaned, but he still let him.

He mumbled a thank you when Jimin handed the cup to him, and they both sat down in front of each other. They were silent, not uncomfortably so, but not in a way that suggested familiarity either. They’d probably never eaten together without someone else being there, Jimin realized, which was odd for two people who’d lived together for so long.

“How bad is it?” Jimin said eventually.

He’d always hated long silences, they made him uncomfortable. Somehow, his mood had done a complete 360 from the previous day. He hadn’t learned much from their little game of truth or dare, Yoongi always replying with short, concise answers that only gave him more questions. However, he felt like it had given him some peace, Yoongi’s honesty feeling almost like an apology for his careless behavior on their previous conversation in the car.

“What is?” Yoongi asked, looking up from his phone.

Jimin wondered what he spent so much time looking on it.

“Your leg,” Jimin said in between two bites of cereals. “How bad is it?”

“Ah. It’s a scratch,” Yoongi sighed. “I’ve had worse, but you know Seokjin. This man will force you to stay in bed for a week for a cold. I’m glad he’s not here to nag at me, at least. But the others are not on life or death missions so they’ll do just fine without me.”

Jimin didn’t miss his confidence when talking about his place in the gang. Yoongi knew how crucial he was to the others, he knew how good he was. But then why wouldn’t he, Jimin thought.

“Still, it must hurt,” he said again, just to be polite.

“I’m fine,” Yoongi said. “This will be healed in no time.”

Jimin got lost in his thoughts again for a few minutes. He was wondering if he was the only one who still felt like he didn’t truly belong. He was curious, not out of self-pity, but purely because he wanted to understand where his insecurities came from. Was it only because of his own shortcomings that he felt like a fraud, or was it just the way he’d been built, to be constantly unsatisfied with himself? To need constant validation?

He didn’t know from whom he wanted to get that validation, he certainly didn’t understand why he’d expected Yoongi to give it to him at that instant. He was unsure whether he could push for more honesty. They weren’t playing anymore, and they still weren’t anywhere near friends.

It doesn’t hurt to try, he thought.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said, breaking the silence. “You don’t have to answer.”

“Shoot,” Yoongi said, lifting his head to look at the boy.

“Do you ever… get scared of being killed when you’re in mission?” he spoke hesitantly. “Do you ever have moments where you think that maybe this could be your last one?”

Yoongi thought for a second before answering.

“Scared? Not really,” he said first.

As expected of him, Jimin thought, but the other man continued.

“I don’t get scared, but I’m aware it could happen. There’s a rush of adrenaline that happens though, in that situation, and it keeps me going no matter how bad things turn.”

“Ah, I get that too,” Jimin said. “When I know the person I’m flirting with is particularly dangerous and I could get found out at any time. It does keep you going. Somehow it makes me a better liar too.”

Yoongi nodded pensively.

“I never saw it like that. I don’t know how you… keep your composure in that situation,” the older man said. “That must be a tough job.”

“It’s not the worst part, to be honest,” Jimin continued, smirking. “The part where I sleep with them afterwards isn’t always a lot of fun either.”

“Ah, right,” Yoongi said, pensively scratching his neck.

It was obvious the topic made him uncomfortable, but it was what Jimin did for a living. It wasn’t exactly new information. Although Jimin remembered in the back of his mind that Yoongi was never truly in favor of having someone doing this job in the gang. It was a long time ago, though. And he’s not exactly a model of virtue, to give himself the right to judge me for whoring around.

“It’s a job,” he continued. They were just making conservation. “I prefer that job over yours, if I’m honest.”

“It’s mutual, then,” Yoongi smirked.

“It’s even an alright job as long as no one drops a fresh corpse on you while you’re having sex,” Jimin added.

He enjoyed having the upper hand. It happened so rarely, to see Yoongi look like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Ah, yes,” the older man said. “Sorry about that.”

It wasn’t much, but it seemed sincere enough and Jimin would accept that as closure.

“Apologies accepted.”

“Jimin!”

Before he could turn around to greet his friend, Taehyung had already jumped from the doorway towards him, successfully making Jimin lose his balance, both falling on his bed. It was a common occurrence every single time his friend came home. It was usually a sign he’d had a good day, so Jimin never complained.

“Taehyung,” he tried to say, although his voice came out muffled because his friend was still on him.

“Jimin, I have so many things to tell you!” his friend said excitedly. “We saw a friend of Hoseok that’s super into hacking and stuff and he taught me so many new things, it’s so cool, I’m like, almost a pro now, and then we taped a hotel room to help for Namjoon and Hoseok’s mission, and honestly you should hear them, they’re so badass, honestly I never thought Hoseok could be so cool but if you heard him during a mission, he’s so threatening, wow, you would never guess he could be like th-“

“Taehyung, please get off me before you start a monologue,” Jimin laughed, as his friend obliged.

“I’m sorry,” Taehyung said, before starting off again.

Taehyung was the kind to get excited over all the little things, and it was endearing to see, especially given the not so pretty jobs they all had to do. He would listen patiently to his friend’s stories even though they did not always make a lot of sense as he went from one thing to another in a matter of seconds. A constant theme in Taehyung’s stories recently however was Jungkook. It shouldn’t have been surprising, given that the two always worked together at the moment, Jungkook working as his temporary bodyguard as Taehyung taught him a few tricks here and there. And it wouldn’t have been surprising if it weren’t that the way he talked about the boy seemed to have changed recently, less of the I’m proud of Jungkook because he’s a 12 years old tone that they usually used about the boy, and more of the I’m proud of Jungkook because… he didn’t know exactly. He just knew Taehyung spent a lot more time talking about how “handsome and cool” Jungkook was as his bodyguard than he usually did and this had to mean something.

It was a little odd for Jimin. Even though he was proud of seeing Jungkook grow up into the adult that he was – something he would never admit in front of the boy -, he couldn’t completely stop remembering him as the fourteen-year-old he’d first met behind The Red Room six years ago. But then Taehyung had met the boy much later, at a completely different time.

As Taehyung kept rambling about their latest adventures of the afternoon, Jimin couldn’t help but smile. Jungkook wasn’t much a talker, he certainly wasn’t as talkative as Taehyung, but Jimin was neither stupid nor blind. He knew the kid had had feelings for the brown-haired boy for years, and while he’s done nothing but tease him all this time, thinking it was none of his business, he was glad to see there might be a chance they weren’t unrequited.

“So, when are you going to tell him?” he said, because above all, Jimin loved teasing his friends.

“Tell him what?” Taehyung said, genuinely confused.

“Ah, never mind…” he laughed.

The two boys turned around simultaneously as someone knocked on the door.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Seokjin said as he opened the door. “We’re having an impromptu meeting in the living room. There’s a bit of a change in the plans going on right now. We need you to join us, if you don’t mind.”

The two friends managed to squeeze themselves on a sofa next to Jungkook. The first ten minutes were simply Namjoon recapping everything that had happened during the last few days, mostly for Yoongi’s sake. Jimin started tuning out a bit. He had no idea how they managed to follow all these intricate plans, never mind make them. They were so many gangs and so many names to remember, and they had to know which gang was close to which other gang, and who hated who, and it was just too much. He supposed he had to be there with them for it to start making sense. He could hardly remember all the people he’d fucked in the last six months. Jimin always followed the good old rule of “never trust anyone outside of the gang, be careful even with our allies” and it had worked perfectly fine for him until then.

He started to pay attention again when he noticed the change of tone in Namjoon’s speech.

“And that’s where the change comes along,” their leader said. “We’re getting closer to solving the whole situation with Jimin. We only have one man left to take care of.”

“Does that mean I’m finally going to be able to see the blue sky after all this time?” he sighed dramatically for effect, although he was truly relieved to learn this might not last too much longer.

“Hopefully,” Namjoon smiled at him apologetically. “But until then, we have to take care of this guy. Now we have his name, we know who he is. We know for a fact that he knows about you, Jimin, so we can’t let you go until we get rid of him.”

Jimin sighed again, sincerely this time.

“And?” he said.

“And we will, problem is: we have no idea what he looks like,” Hoseok continued. “We had a plan already, we knew how we could get him to come to us, but how do we know for sure it’s him? If this guy knows about you, that means you’ve probably seen him at some point.”

“Most likely, yes,” Jimin said. “When Taehyung and I started our last mission, I was introduced to a lot of people. It happens often to be honest, but usually they’re just quick greetings and people forget about me the next second.”

“Well, he didn’t, and he should have, for his own sake,” Hoseok said, smirking. “Now that’s where the change comes along. None of us will be able to identify him except you. If we want to be done with this situation, we don’t want to go around killing the wrong guy otherwise this will never end.”

“Hang on,” Jimin said. “Am I creating you more trouble because of this? You going around and shooting these people when it wasn’t planned in the first place surely is going to have consequences. I don’t want you to get more trouble just to protect me.”

“Nah, don’t worry,” Hoseok laughed. His ability to talk about murder with the lightest tone never ceased to amaze Jimin. “These people didn’t carry us in their hearts anyway. They might not even know it’s our doing, and if they do, it won’t make a huge difference. Sooner or later, we would have crossed their paths anyway.”

“If you say so,” Jimin mumbled, unconvinced. “So, what is the change of plans then?”

“We,” Hoseok continued. “Take you with us. You and Taehyung. We need a spy, and we need someone who can identify that dude on the spot, so we can move quickly. If we get that guy where we want to but we let him go by mistake, it’s over. We’re never getting him again.”

“In other words,” Namjoon said, still smiling gently at him. “You’re going back to work. Just a slightly different kind of work.”

“Don’t worry, you will be watching things from a distance, the way Taehyung usually does with you,” Hoseok spoke again. “But you’ll get a taste of what it’s like on the field, for once. You get to see what we do.”

“Wait,” Jimin asked. “Who is ‘we’? I suppose I’m going with you Hoseok, but it cannot be the entire gang on one single mission.”

“No, it’s not,” Namjoon said, “you’re going with the usual duo. They work well together, just like you and Taehyung.”

“You’re going with me and Yoongi,” Hoseok said, a small smile appearing at the corner of his lips.

Jimin’s eyes vaguely look at Hoseok, unfocused, as he took it all in. He wasn’t entirely sure how it would feel to see his friends as the killers they were, although he’d known it would happen sooner or later. He didn’t have much choice – this was the reality of the world he lived in. It would be hypocritical of him to try to back out of it when he himself was the cause of deaths of so many.

It’s not my job to care, he reminded himself. He liked that detachment. He needed it, they all did.

As he turned his eyes towards the black-haired man sitting next to Hoseok, he found Yoongi’s posture to be, despite his relatively small frame, almost predatory, as if he was already looking forward to this, his cat-like eyes dead set on Jimin.

“Now that’s what I call good news,” Yoongi said in that low tone of his.

For some reason, your presence calms me down.

Chapter Text

Jimin was getting his ass royally kicked by Jungkook, and frankly, he didn’t know why he’d expected it to go any other way.

“Give me a minute,” he managed to slip in between two intakes of air.

He was lying on the worn out gym mattresses, sweaty and out of breath, trying to remember why the hell he’d agreed to do this. The tall kid standing over him nodded and kindly handed him a bottle of water.

Granted, he hadn’t done this in years. It wasn’t his first go at learning self-defense and all that jazz that Seokjin had made mandatory for any of them regardless of their respectful positions within the gang, but his actual first-hand experience had been, well… limited. There had been a few times where things had turned south, and he’d had to use his fists here and there, but his opponents were rarely a fair match. Jimin’s conquests were rarely men of the field, which meant they were either twice as old as he was or not in the best shape. For his usual missions however, his main range of skills were seducing people, getting whatever he wanted out of them, sleeping with them and then slipping an unfortunate poison in their drinks. Anything more violent he delegated to Taehyung or Jungkook.

“This isn’t exactly your job,” Taehyung had told him when he’d started whining after Jungkook had whooped his ass for the third time in a row.

And the boy was right, but that didn’t prevent him from giggling from the corner of the room every time Jimin fell back down, hitting the mattress hard.

“Stop snapchatting videos of me!” Jimin groaned as his friend laughed openly, his phone very obviously focused on him.

“Hoseok wants to know how you’re doing,” Taehyung replied cheerfully.

“Badly,” he groaned again, standing up slowly. “And I thought I was in good shape.”

“If you were better than Jungkook, he’d be out of work.”

It had been Hoseok’s idea to have Jimin train a bit with Jungkook in preparation for their next mission. Since he’d never really been on the field, his last self-defense session had happened… years ago. Long enough he could barely remember it. His gym sessions were rarely this confrontational. Still, Hoseok had insisted that, while Jimin would be perfectly safe, it was never bad to be careful.

“This isn’t going so well,” he whispered, a bit demoralized after not feeling like he was getting much better after almost three hours.

“Don’t worry,” Jungkook said, barely out of breath. “Hoseok and Yoongi would never put you in a situation where the enemy could get close to you. It’s just in case… You know, it’s all good to have a gun to defend yourself, but your opponent is likely to have one as well, so it would be helpful just to learn a few tricks to disarm them and put yourself to safety. Besides, you are doing well given you haven’t done this in a long time.”

Jimin pouted, only partly convinced, but nodded anyway.

“What Jungkook is trying to say while remaining humble is that the likelihood of you having to fight someone on his level on such a mission is low, so you getting your ass kicked by someone so skilled right now doesn’t mean you’re not progressing. Also, Hoseok said you were doing well too.”

Jimin rolled his eyes as he caught the kid in front of him blushing for a second at the casual compliments from the other man sitting at the corner of the room.

“Let’s just do this for another thirty minutes or so, okay?” Jungkook said. “And then we’ll head back home.”

“Yes please, Seokjin is already threatening me to not be late for dinner because he actually bothered cooking something nice since we’re all home for once.” Taehyung said, still filming the two going at it. “I’d get my ass kicked by Jungkook over Seokjin any day, and so would you.”

It was unusually crowded for once, the otherwise wide kitchen suddenly turned small from having to fit seven grown men around the same table. It wasn’t so unusual to have them be home at the same time, but they still had different schedules and went in and out at different times. It had become a habit for everyone to just feed themselves at whatever time was preferred for them, or just to join whoever was already in the kitchen, and they would usually eat in little groups of three or four at a time.

But this time Seokjin had declared that, since he’d arranged their schedules to match on this night, they were all required to attend this family dinner just like old times.

“And no complaining allowed,” he’d said firmly, sending a very pointed look towards Yoongi, “otherwise you’ll find yourself homeless in no time.”

Empty threats, but they were enough to keep everyone in line. After all, he was the one who ran it all.

Jimin’s hands were trembling slightly as he helped set down the table. They had one full day left before the mission and his mind was going in all sorts of directions. He could not help being nervous – he hated being out of his element. He was the only one unused to being in this kind of conditions really, Taehyung had worked on spying missions not dissimilar to this one before Jimin had joined in years ago. He knew he had no reasons to worry – there was no bloodbath planned, only negotiations and discussing other matters to cover up the spying job. Still, he felt desperately helpless, knowing he was the key element but also the one to be protected at all cost.

He could not focus on the ongoing conversations because of the unnecessary noise filling up his brain with questions he could not answer. His eyes fixed blankly on a random kitchen tile as he concentrated on one voice at a time, first Hoseok’s than Namjoon’s, then whoever was talking at the time, attempting to clear out his mind. He almost got there when he was interrupted by a kick under the table, strong enough that it was easy to guess who it was from.

“It’ll be fine,” Jungkook said from the other side of the table.

And he smiled, and in that moment, he looked so terribly child-like despite the height and the muscle mass that Jimin felt sorry this was the only life he’d been able to offer him as a way out of hell.

Taehyung was finishing setting up his material and making sure everything worked as Jimin recalled all the information Yoongi and Hoseok had told them the day before. They’d had a reunion, only the four of them, in the evening to make sure they knew exactly what they were getting into.

“Now, the way this is going to go down is simple,” Hoseok had started. “We’re supposed to meet two dudes in a disaffected hangar uptown. We’ve met some of their people there before, we know our way around and so do they, so we’re not trying to be too clever and to play tricks, okay? We’ll drop you and Taehyung off an hour before to set everything up. Be quick. Then we’ll put you in this little room far away from where we’ll be meeting them, and you’ll stay hidden under a table and only look through the camera. Yoongi and I will leave, and then we’ll come back for our meeting to avoid any suspicions around us being here too early.”

Jimin and Taehyung had nodded, taking it all in.

“Now, these people aren’t supposed to be our enemies, alright?” Hoseok had continued. “We know one of them has talked about you now, so clearly he’s become too dangerous to let him walk around, but these are people we’ve worked with before. We don’t want this to turn badly, we’re here for a chat, and then Jimin has to identify one of them as someone he’s met before. We already have a vague idea of who it might be, a very tall dude with a balding head, but look at the both of them just in case. Now for the technical stuff: one camera, one mic, that’s it. They won’t be looking around but we’re not taking chances.”

Jimin hadn’t known if he’d been the only one finding the atmosphere growing incredibly tense in the living room, but he’d never seen Taehyung looking so serious in preparation for a mission before, so he’d supposed this was quite an important moment for the both of them.

“And just to make things clear,” Hoseok had gone on. “You two stay where you are the whole time until we come and fetch you. Make as little noise as possible, stay hidden under the table only we’re coming to you. You do not move, whatever happens.”

“Whatever. Happens.” Yoongi had insisted, speaking for the first time since they’d all sat together. “Let’s make that crystal clear. And I’ll have Taehyung be the only one to hear our conversation through the headphones for safety. No offense Jimin, but you look like the kind to freak out easily.”

He had felt a little offended nonetheless, handling his nerves being at the heart of what he did – he was still a spy after all, able to get his ways with people without any threat or violence. But then he’d had to remember that Yoongi had seen Taehyung in action before but not him.

“Any questions?” Hoseok had finished. “Taehyung, your only mission is to make sure Jimin has a clear view on both of the people we’re meeting tomorrow. Jimin, focus on trying to identify the guy. Like Yoongi said, you shouldn’t worry about the conversation. We’ll have Taehyung set the mic at a distance so we’re not even sure what he’ll hear will be very intelligible anyway. This shouldn’t take too long, fifteen to twenty minutes at worst, so just make sure you get him. Is this all clear?”

The two boys had looked at each other and nodded in unison.

And it had now been half and hour since Hoseok and Yoongi had left. The older men had told them to remain silent as soon as they’d left, in the unlikely event that the men arrived before the time planned. Taehyung would communicate through his phone, typing out words to pass the time, but Jimin was still oddly nervous and only nod politely.

They’ll be back soon, Taehyung typed out in his notes, don’t worry.

Right as Jimin nodded, his friend straightened himself and pressed the earphone tighter in his ear. Noise. Someone was coming in.

Taehyung placed the little screen in between them carefully. After a few seconds, Jimin could see four men entering the building by the main entrance. He recognized Yoongi and Hoseok quite fast. It was clear the two men were casually trying to bring the guests closer to where the camera was located. Jimin was impressed – if he hadn’t known better, this would have looked like a casual exchange between friends. Without any sound, he could tell the atmosphere was relaxed, almost as if they weren’t in a secret hangar talking about illegal stuff. He could even tell Hoseok was laughing at times.

After a minute, they got close enough that Jimin could start telling the two strangers apart. It didn’t take him long to identify the man he’d already met. He remembered flirting with him in a bar at the end of a mission a year or so before, to no avail. He was surprised to learn he was not supposed to be the enemy – he’d shot his shot blindly the first time he’d seen him without knowing who he was because he could have still told he was someone important, and his presence at the bar while he was on a mission had seemed an odd coincidence. But Jimin had not gotten anything out of this man, and he’d forgotten about him soon after. He realized he didn’t know his name, but surely Hoseok and Yoongi did. He also came to the realization that he was not the man they had described to him the day before – he was a bit shorter than what he’d expected, had a full head of hair. Jimin’s eyes then looked back to the other stranger, and understood.

Oh, he thought, they got it wrong. Well, as long as we know who it is…

He finally lifted his eyes off the screen to signal to Taehyung he’d identified him but was faced with his friend staring at the wall in front of them instead, as if he was listening intently to what his earphone was giving him. Taehyung had completely abandoned the screen in his hand. It was clear he could hear much more than Yoongi and Hoseok had planned.

There was a look painted on the boy’s face that Jimin could not identify – something between shock and surprise, his eyes wide but focused, as if whatever was being said was more than the casual conversation Jimin had thought was happening. Yet, when he looked back at the screen, he only saw more laughter and friendly pats on the back.

Eventually the conversation came to an end, and Yoongi and Hoseok escorted the two strangers outside. They disappeared for a few minutes off the screen, and Taehyung took the earpiece off. Jimin sent him a look trying to understand, but Taehyung only shook his head.

Did you identify him? He typed out.

Jimin nodded.

Good.

Then Hoseok and Yoongi came back to fetch them.

“Mission’s a success on our side,” Hoseok smiled, giving the two boys thumbs up. “We’ll talk in the car. You guys did great.”

Jimin wasn’t sure exactly what they’d done, but he was glad everything had gone according to plan.

On the way to the car, as Hoseok and Yoongi were leading the way, Jimin shot a glance towards his friend walking beside him.

“What was that?” he whispered.

“What? Oh, the conversation?” Taehyung said absent-mindedly. “Nothing, just casualties.”

Jimin could tell Taehyung was lying. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise – he was a spy, it was his job to carefully retain information and judge who he could reasonably give it to. It was certainly not the first time he’d kept something from Jimin – if he didn’t volunteer information coming back from a mission he’d done separately, Jimin wouldn’t ask him. Still, it made his heart pinch to hear him flat out lie on something they’d worked on together.

Get over yourself, Jimin, you’re a grown up, he thought. He’s just doing his job.

Once in the car, everyone remained silent for a while. There was an ease in the air, it felt almost like they were coming back from an outing as friends and not something that they all considered their jobs. Oddly, the only one that didn’t seem as calm as the others was Taehyung. Since they’d left the hangar, he’d been watching outside the window quite intensely in silence, as if he wasn’t completely there with them, oblivious to the atmosphere in the rest of the vehicle. Not quite tense, but pensive.

Eventually, it was Hoseok that broke the silence.

“So! How did it go?” he said brightly. “Did we get it right? Did you identify him?”

“No…” Jimin responded, a bit startled by the sudden noise. “I mean… Yes... I did identify him, but you didn’t get it right? I don’t think?”

Jimin felt something change in the air as Yoongi’s eyes, who until then had been fixed strictly on the road in front of him as he drove them home, slowly met Hoseok’s gaze in a manner that breathed incomprehension.

“Wait…” Hoseok said after a few seconds of silence, and the atmosphere was now growing unexpectedly but palpably tense in the vehicle.

So much that Taehyung had turned his eyes away from the window for the first time since they’d left and was now listening as well.

“When you say you identified him,” Hoseok spoke again carefully, almost as if he was talking to a child. “Which one was it?”

Jimin could physically feel some kind of twisted anticipation in the air, as if everyone wanted him to reply but no one wanted to hear the answer at the same time. He even caught Yoongi give him a little glance in the rear-view mirror before settling his eyes back on the road.

“Well,” Jimin started. “The short one in the leather jacket, that was standing next to Yoongi the whole time? It was him. I’ve never met the other guy, I’m absolutely certain it’s the short one. I met him in a bar, maybe a year ago, and he wasn’t my mission, but I still tried to get something out of him this day and it didn’t really work and…”

He realized he wasn’t really being listened to anymore as Hoseok and Yoongi shared another quick glance together. A second later, the car swerved slightly as Yoongi lost control for half a second, before Hoseok almost jumped to straighten the wheel.

“Be careful!” he shouted. “Don’t get us killed, we’re almost there.”

The older man’s eyes were back on the road, but he didn’t seem any calmer.

“Shit… shit,” Yoongi muttered, so low Jimin barely heard it. “This was not supposed to happen.”

Chapter Text

It was his second winter without a home, but the cold hit him just as hard as the first one. There was only so much money he could spend on warm clothes and new matches to get him through the night. He got ripped off, on every single one of the meagre “jobs” he could find every week to make a little bit of cash, but then anyone who eagerly decided to illegally hire an obviously homeless fourteen-year-old even for a day was hardly going to be straight with the law.

The empty hallway of the disaffected building he’d settled in a few months before had been invaded by drug dealers and he’d had to move again. It was a crowd he’d rather avoid, especially when all he had to defend himself was a small pocket knife he’d stolen from his last stay in a foster home two years before. It was his second night in the little woods that bordered the city – but he knew he could not stay. It wasn’t his first stay there and he knew he had to remain as hidden as possible, meaning he couldn’t even put his tent up to protect himself from the November wind that was freezing his bones. He wasn’t afraid of having to move somewhere else – he was mainly scared of people asking him what he was doing here, or worse, trying to help him. It was also a popular place for joggers, so he knew he would only be able to catch a few hours of sleep before he had to pack up and hunt for a new long-term place to stay again.

But those places were hard to find. A wandering, homeless fourteen-year-old attracted attention – and all he wanted was to be as invisible to others as he could. He could not even rely on begging. He had tried at first, thinking he could somehow survive on the sympathy of others. He’d found out soon enough that people were either too suspicious of young people asking for money or they became dead set on helping him get out of the streets, which wasn’t a good outcome either. People could never be trusted, not fully. They had good intentions maybe, but he didn’t survive on good intentions. Good intentions didn’t fill up his stomach and protect him from the cold, despite what the strangers who pitied him may have thought. Good intentions had gotten him to move from one foster home to another, feeling like he was being abandoned again every single time as his new temporary parents led him out the door like he was a package to be sent out, until he’d reached his final destination. Two years prior to this day, when he’d decided to take starvation and homelessness over the beating and degrading of his last foster family, he’d come to the decision that, if this was the only life people with good intentions had to offer, he would rather pass on that.

Yoongi cuddled tighter in his dirty blanket as another gush of wind moved the bushes he had settled into. He closed his heavy eyes, hoping the cold wouldn’t prevent him from finding sleep. He’d spent the entire day trying to find a new place to stay, to no avail, and he was exhausted.

He was woken up the next day by noises of someone passing by and he remembered the joggers. He stretched out lazily, hoping to yawn the tiredness out of his system.

“Good morning,” he heard a man’s voice say way too close to him, startling him awake.

As he opened his eyes, he spotted a young man crouching only a few meters away from him. He must have been only four or five years older than him, sporting a worn-out leather jacket and looking as disheveled, but not nearly as dirty, as Yoongi must have looked at the same instant.

“I’m going to move straight away,” Yoongi said after a few seconds, thinking it may have been someone trying to nicely relocate him before the cops showed up.

“I’m not asking you to do that,” the stranger replied simply.

“Then I’m not asking for your help,” Yoongi retorted, crossing the second thing off the list of what people said to him on a daily basis.

But oddly as Yoongi looked back at him, he realized none of the stranger’s behavior, from his posture to the smirk on his face, reflected the usual pity or disdain he would get from passersby’s. If anything, the man looked amused by the situation.

“Don’t have much to offer on that front either,” the stranger replied again. “Although I would have loved a hand back then. I was in your shoes only a year or two ago. But I was mostly here to ask for yours.”

“My what?” Yoongi said, trying not to let the panic show in his voice.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone would rob him of one of his previous items he’d spent so much effort earning or stealing, but they usually did it when he was asleep and left before the morning came.

“Your help, dummy.”

Yoongi was startled for a second, but did his best not to lose his composure.

“Still not interested.”

The look on the stranger’s face disappeared for the first time since they’d started talking, the smirk vanishing off his lips. There was something new in his eyes too, nothing like pity but something in between incomprehension and acknowledgement that Yoongi couldn’t quite identify.

“You’ll starve, stray kitten.”

Ignoring the odd nickname from someone he’d just met, Yoongi scuffed sarcastically.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“As you wish,” the stranger replied after a few seconds, but he was visibly displeased.

He stood up as if he was about to leave but stopped abruptly to look for something in his pocket.

“Here,” the man said, handing him what was obviously money.

“Why would you give me this if you know what it’s like to starve?” Yoongi said, staring at the shiny 50 bucks in his hands.

“Because I can make twice as much as this in a few hours, despite having been in your shoes only a little while ago,” the stranger said, the smirk right back in place.

“Then why do you need my help?” Yoongi asked, genuinely curious.

“Oh, I don’t need it, really,” the stranger replied as he finally started walking away. “I could use some company though.”

“I’m sorry but I won’t do it.”

In the two years or so he’d spent in the gang, he’d never refused a mission, not even once. He’d asked for adjustments, little tweaks in the plans here and there as no one knew how to do this job better than him, other than maybe Taehyung, but he’d never flat out refused. There was a first time for everything, as people said, and as could have been expected, it wasn’t going down well with the others.

“Jimin,” Hoseok tried to explain nicely for the third time, exasperation starting to peak through in his voice. “I don’t know what’s making you react this way, but whatever it is, we really need you on this. This is not something we can easily pass on, we need specific info and we are only guaranteed to get it in this place, at this specific time and only you out of all of us has the skills to do it.”

“If you need anything more to help you make this easier, you can always ask, you know,” Seokjin said softly. “If you want Jungkook to accompany you two for extra protection, you know this can be arranged. But Hoseok is right, sweetheart, we don’t have much choice here.”

“I still won’t do it,” Jimin said and he clenched his fists as he felt his throat get tighter, glancing over the small business card placed on the table again.

“I’m sorry but,” Yoongi intervened, his tone a little less sugarcoated than the others. “We don’t have much time for this. We need to do this. We need you to do your job, as we all do here. There’s only so much we can discuss in situations like these.”

Jimin was trying his best to keep his composure but soon the tears were threatening to spill and his breath started to get shorter and – oh god no, he did not want to have a panic attack, not here, not now, not- no

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice dangerously close to breaking, “I can’t. I can’t do it.”

As he swiftly escaped to the safety of his room, he had just enough time to catch Jungkook, who rarely ever paid attention during meetings unless his name was spoken, reach over the table to pick up the business card Jimin had left behind.

He lied down on his bed for what felt like an eternity trying to calm his nerves, to settle his breathing back to a normal rhythm but, despite his efforts, he felt it coming. So he let the wave crash over him, he let the knot in his stomach burst out, anxiety filling up his lungs and unease crawling through his pores. He felt his chest tighten with every new intake of air, and the headache that crept in as his head filled with too many words but also not enough for him to regain control of himself. He welcomed that emptiness, and how he simultaneously felt full to the brim, as if his organs could burst at any time, because he knew deep down it would not last.

Eventually it died down, and as terrible as he felt afterwards for what seemed like an overreaction, he could not have ignored that gut feeling that shouted at him to never go back to that place. The little red and black business card, with the familiar lettering spelling The Red Room in bright, blood red letters, was enough to bring him back to that ugly place he was in only a few years ago. It wasn’t just the place itself – it was the feeling it conjured, helplessness and vulnerability harshly blended together to form some of his ugliest memories. It brought him back to the kid he used to be, the one who worked day and night just to get his money stolen from the meager place he called his bedroom back then, the one who smiled at sleazy businessmen who looked at him like a piece of meat. It brought the hopelessness back to him, that overwhelming feeling that this was it, this was his life and there was nothing else for him out there.

Rationally, he’d been in much more dangerous situations since he’d joined the gang – and had done things he wouldn’t have allowed himself to think about just a few years back. But there was a special kind of safety that had been offered to him as he’d joined in, the kind that didn’t come from the four walls he lived inside of or the gun he carried around with him, but from the people he’d surrounded himself with. It was the fridge that was never empty, and those who left messages on it saying they were out of milk. It was the people who knocked on his door in the morning to see if he was awake, and the ones who told him about their day without him asking. It was the idea that he was allowed to say no, and that his words were heard and respected and weighed upon, and that they generated discussions, nor orders. It was something he hadn’t had for a long time – even longer than he’d spent since he’d run away from home.

Some time after he regained himself, he heard a knock on the door.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,” Seokjin said softly as he stepped inside the room after Jimin had told him to come in.

Jimin sat up on the bed to make space for the other man.

“Jungkook explained,” Seokjin continued while smoothing out Jimin’s hair in a soothing but almost mechanical manner. “I’m sorry, we should have guessed from your reaction. I don’t want to give anyone excuses, because I do believe we’re at fault for not being more patient here, but since neither him nor you have ever told us the name of that place, we never made the connection, you know? In any case, please know none of us meant to hurt you.”

“It’s alright,” Jimin replied, letting the other man tuck his hair behind his ears and caress his cheek softly.

Jimin always struggled with reconciling the Seokjin he knew – the responsible, caring, protective and attentive person he’d grown close to – with the man’s past. He couldn’t imagine that growing up in this lifestyle as Seokjin had would have forged him such a character, he would have thought it would have made him harder, much more mission-focused and yet he might be the least out of all of them to be willing to place their lives after their missions. But then Jimin realized that he didn’t come from an affectionate background either – yet he was never short of love to give to his members. And a second later, he came to the realization that maybe it was why Seokjin had left his family behind and decided to remove himself from any fight or confrontation, choosing instead to look over them. Maybe he cared too much to make rational, detached decisions in situations where those he loved were in danger, so he’d decided to ensure that they were safe, and healthy, and cared for, and that they never had to worry about scheduling, or buying supplies, or finding places to heal their wounds and their sorrows that were both secure and discreet. And maybe that thought, however hypothetical it was, made Jimin’s heart burst with love for the man in front of him, traces of his previous anguish almost completely erased from his body and mind.   

“I just…” he continued, after getting lost in his thoughts for a few minutes. “I don’t want to be a burden on you guys, I really don’t. But at the same time, I cannot…”

He stopped, not finding the right words to express himself without conjuring back the suffering and the anxiety.

“We’ll find a way,” Seokjin said soothingly after Jimin stayed silent for a minute. “Like we always do.”

Jimin gladly let himself be pulled into a quick hug, and after reassuring his friend a million and one times he would be okay, he was alone again.

He stayed sat up in the same position for a while, staring outside of the window that overlooked his bed. He didn’t know how long he remained this way, buried deep in his thoughts in a way that, for once, was neither anxiety-ridden nor painful. Long enough to watch the sky change colors, bright blues turning into pastel pinks, and he knew the stars would soon start peaking out when someone knocked twice on his bedroom door, first shyly than with a confidence that was almost familiar.

He didn’t bother turning around as he shouted to come in, knowing already who to expect – as caring as the others could be, it was expected of Taehyung to drop by sooner or later after Jimin felt unwell in any way. Yet, it was very unlike Taehyung to close the door behind him and remain silent, as if asking for permission again to move further in and to speak. In fact, had it been Taehyung, Jimin would have been tackled to his bed at least thirty seconds ago into an uninvited but very much welcomed cuddle.

Thus, Jimin turned around to find, instead of his tall and dorky best friend, a scrawny-looking Yoongi standing by the closed door as if he had to be welcomed to step in – like vampires, Jimin thought – his posture as apologetic as he’d ever seen him before.

“Oh,” Jimin only said.

He looks smaller without layers, Jimin thought as he glanced over the man once more. An odd thought given he must have definitely seen Yoongi wearing a thin short-sleeved shirt before. There was something about the man’s posture however that changed the way Jimin perceived him, something much less nonchalant than what he was used to. Yet, he couldn’t tell if this was new on Yoongi, or if he just hadn’t paid attention before.

“I hope I’m not… bothering you,” Yoongi said slowly in that low tone of his, that was both in complete contradiction with and perfectly matched his soft and round features.

“You’re not,” Jimin replied. “It’s just… Frankly, I was expecting Taehyung.”

The other grimaced in a way that was oddly endearing.

“He will probably sneak in later, but Seokjin said we should leave you alone for a bit,” he said. He stopped for a few seconds before speaking again. “Now you may have noticed I am not always the best at following orders…”

“That I have,” Jimin giggled.

They were silent for a few more seconds before he gestured the other man to come closer.

“Come here,” he said softly, scooting over to the left to leave space for Yoongi to sit next to him, right where Seokjin had been earlier.

And despite the similar setting, the difference in atmosphere was visible. They were sitting close to one another, in a way that should feel somewhat intimate, but the distance could be felt in the air, turning into an awkwardness that lingered on Jimin’s skin.

“I just came to apologize,” Yoongi said, and he was staring at the window, right where Jimin’s gaze had been only a few minutes ago. “I spoke too fast and too harshly and it was inconsiderate of me.”

Jimin had expected these words to come out of his mouth since he’d seen the other man right by the door, yet they still felt nice to hear. Just plain old nice, and it was enough.

“Apologies accepted,” Jimin replied, just as simply.

“I’m trying to be less of… that, with you,” Yoongi continued, but he still was not looking towards Jimin and the boy wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that.

“What do you mean?”

Yoongi stayed silent for a minute, his eyes seemingly focused on the waxing crescent moon that reflected in his dark eyes, as they sat in growing darkness, the sky’s pinks turning into deep purples.

“Less of an asshole, I guess,” he finally spoke again.

“You and I not being close does not make you an asshole,” Jimin said, and he believed it, he really did.

He did not want anyone, much less Yoongi himself, to believe that, as much as their interactions had been more conflictual than anything else recently, it was due to anything other than the complete lack of communication between them. It was difficult to build a relationship on emptiness.

“Hmm,” Yoongi replied vaguely, turning away from the window and towards Jimin for the first time. “It is odd, though.”

Was it? Jimin was starting to understand that the lack of closeness between them had been the result of a long series of occurrences where they just did not function in the same way – and yet, they had both expected the other to conform to their own expectations. He did not know how Yoongi functioned exactly – but he understood the situation was just as similar on Yoongi’s side. And thus he could not continue pretending like the distance that had settled between them was only on the other man’s part.  

“Did Seokjin ask you to apologize?” Jimin said, giggling to himself because he enjoyed the tiny bit of power he had over this conservation.

“No, he did not,” Yoongi replied defensively, glaring at him for a second but it was playful. “But when Jungkook explained, I… I realized I never really heard that story. Your story. I mean, I know the gist of it, I remember the first time you walked in here.”

It was Jimin’s turn to grimace. He too had a clear memory of the first time Hoseok had brought him here, disheveled and miserable, feeling incredibly small around those unfamiliar faces that he knew nothing about, except that they all worked in Hoseok’s line of work. Which, frankly, was anything but reassuring.

“And because I do not know your story, I feel like I might have made a lot of assumptions about you,” Yoongi continued, his full attention turned to Jimin this time.

Yoongi’s eyes looked almost predatory to him, as he felt the two dark orbs glaze over his features. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought about them that way, but this time it was less about the man’s intentions and more about the way he focused deeply, intently onto Jimin. Yoongi’s tone was the same as always – low, and slow, and sometimes it was a bit hard to decipher his words – but his eyes were expectant, and maybe even a little hopeful.

And something in them obliged – no, encouraged – Jimin to comply.

And so, he told his story – bits of it, whatever he felt like sharing. He told it in no logical order whatsoever, just letting the words flow out of his mouth in waves, not entirely sure if all – or any – of it made sense. Yoongi listened, patiently, without saying a word nor asking questions. They were a lot of questions to be asked, Jimin was aware he was not the best storyteller at that moment, leaving huge holes in places he did not wish to go back to and making rich, complex stories turn into incomplete ones. But he was glad Yoongi was letting these holes exist – because that was where Jimin’s insecurities lied and he wanted to keep those to himself, for now at least.

At some point, Jimin felt his eyes prickle with tears. It did not show in his voice, as it was a mere physical reaction to his body going back to the person he used to be in all of these stories, and he did not feel sad nor upset. The tears did not spill either, yet Yoongi must have spotted them because he reached out to him, his hand swiftly but gently seizing Jimin’s smaller one. His thumb started to trace circles over the boy’s skin, in a manner that seemed natural and instinctive, yet not once had Yoongi’s eyes left Jimin’s face.

Jimin, however, had stopped talking mid-sentence, gasping a little bit at the unfamiliar gesture. It felt awkward, truly, but not because it felt bad. The simple gesture just felt much more intimate than they’d ever been before – it was Yoongi closing the distance for the first time, physically but not just. It felt more intimate than the time the older man had stepped into his room in the middle of the night, unannounced, and slept next to him. Because this time they were interacting together, not just existing in the same space.

“Is this okay?” Yoongi asked because of Jimin’s reaction, a flicker of doubt appearing in his pupils.

Jimin took a deep breath, looking at the other man’s hand that had turned still, waiting for his approval. It was awkward, but soothing, he decided.

“No, it’s fine,” he said, and went back to his story immediately.

Jimin’s words became more incoherent at this point, him roughly recalling stories that had no connections whatsoever to one another. He wasn’t sure if he was still talking to Yoongi, or to himself – letting things out that he had kept in and forgotten about for a long time. The other man was still listening however, helping him finish sentences where Jimin seemed to be struggling. Eventually Jimin just stopped. There was no clear ending, the words just stopped coming and they both sat in silence, Yoongi staring at Jimin and Jimin staring at the moon. The room was now completely dark, only the light coming out of the natural satellite allowing them to distinguish each other.

“Thank you,” Yoongi whispered eventually.

Jimin felt exhausted, and he wanted to sleep but he also felt content. He felt as if a lot of energy had been sucked out of him – but more bad than good. Spring cleaning, he thought, is always useful.

“I have a question,” Jimin said shyly after a few minutes of peaceful silence, his hand still sitting warmly inside Yoongi’s now still one.

“Go ahead,” Yoongi said, his eyes no longer fixated on him but looking vaguely outside the window.

“Will you ever… tell me your story too?” Jimin whispered, because it was a heavy question.

If Yoongi didn’t know a lot about Jimin’s past before this evening, Jimin’s knowledge of Yoongi’s was… minuscule. Almost insignificant in comparison. And Jimin was not stupid nor naïve – he knew the man had made it that way, wrapped himself in as much secrecy as he could over the years, voluntarily shutting himself out from others.

“Maybe,” Yoongi sighed. “Probably. All in due time.”

Silence settled between them again for a minute, but Yoongi was the first one to break it this time.

“I do owe you a little part of it at least,” he said. “Since it will come up soon enough, anyway.”

“What’s that?” Jimin replied.

He was curious, but he understood it was a territory he had to tread on carefully. After all, Yoongi had given him the same favor just now.

“The man at the hangar,” Yoongi said, his eyes focusing back on Jimin and they were serious this time, something unsettling that the boy could not quite identify appearing inside of them. “The one you recognized.”

“I take it you know who he is?” Jimin asked carefully.

Yoongi laughed quietly, and it sounded both sarcastic and sad.

“That I do,” he said, pausing for a second. “His name is Moon Seojun.”

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you!”

Yoongi propped up from the couch he was slouching on. A cake, way too big for the two of them, with a big candle that said ‘16’ standing at the center, was approaching him and for him, this was a vision out of a movie.

“You’re alright, kitten?”

Yoongi had been eyeing the cake in awe for a whole minute, mouth agape, and he knew it must have looked comical from the other man’s point of view, but this was enough to get him a little choked up.

“Seojun, you shouldn’t have,” he whispered, his eyes still not leaving the cake.

“It’s just a cake, Yoongi,” the other laughed, but he was not mocking him.

“I’ve never celebrated my birthday before,” Yoongi pouted.

“Make a wish,” Seojun said, sitting next to him on the couch.

Yoongi closed his eyes. Life had changed now. He had a gun that he’d learned how to fire sitting somewhere in his bedroom, a small but cozy apartment that they lived into and money that they never seemed to run out of. There wasn’t much he could ask for – this was not an ideal lifestyle, they weren’t filthy rich and they put themselves in danger once in a while, when it was necessary, but that was much better than anything he could have hoped for when he’d run away from home all those years ago.

So Yoongi just briefly wished for the both of them to stay healthy and alive for as long as they could and to not run into too much trouble. He opened his eyes and blew the candles out. Next to him, Seojun clapped.

“I don’t really have a sweet tooth,” the man said, still reaching for one of the strawberries lying on the cake. “But I know you do. This is all yours, kitten.”

“All mine?” Yoongi laughed. “This cake is huge! This will last for days.”

“Good, then neither of us has to bother with groceries.”

Yoongi made a mental note that Seojun was turning twenty in two months, and he should remember to give him something. Anything, really. He would have given him the world if he could but alas, that didn’t come without consequences.

“Thank you,” Yoongi whispered.

“For the cake?” Seojun replied, already on his second slice of cake despite ‘not having a sweet tooth’.

“No,” Yoongi replied, but he was getting a little choked up again, so he just kept on eating silently.

For not letting him sleep outside, alone and vulnerable. For not giving up on him even when he was rude, distrustful and unwilling to help him turn their lives around. For teaching him how to defend himself and who to trust and be wary of. For teaching him what friendship, then family was supposed to be.

They didn’t have much but, for the first time in what felt like forever, Yoongi was no longer alone nor lonely.

Chapter Text

The park hadn’t changed one bit since the last time he’d came. Jimin could still spot the same lake filled with little armies of ducks following each other around and swans leisurely sat on the side of the water. He’d used to come here often when he’d first joined the gang two years prior and it had felt all too overwhelming. There was the same playground with new children swaying off the same old swing and sliding off the same rusty slides. He looked at them from a distance, and he looked at the golden retriever rolling around in the freshly cut grass and the small chihuahua who sprung off as soon as its owner released it from his leash. He felt perfectly content aimlessly watching people living their lives, even though part of his mind was still stuck at home. He’d felt like he needed some space and had decided to sneak up discreetly to avoid worrying anyone – which, he realized in retrospect, would have probably done the exact opposite, but he was almost certain Seokjin had spotted him leaving and yet hadn’t tried to stop him.

The house felt stuffed. It was overflowing with too many actions and so little words. He could tell the others were busy trying to compensate for Jimin not partaking in the Red Room mission. He wouldn’t let himself feel guilty about it, but despite how the members tried to keep him out the loop, he could not pretend he couldn’t see how agitated it made them to have to change a well thought out plan last minute. At the same time, the results of Jimin and Taehyung’s previous mission were still hanging in the air. There had been no further discussions about it since they’d first come back – none that Jimin had been a part of at the very least which was… unusual. Everything went as always in the house, but there were unspoken words, elephants in the room that threatened to turn into conflict at any time.  Jimin found it difficult at times to stay around and pretend he couldn’t see it happening.  

That night where they’d talked for hours in Jimin’s room, Yoongi had remained vague about his past, and the man he had identified earlier – Moon Seojun, he had said – as if he wanted Jimin to know, but he himself didn’t know exactly which line not to cross when discussing his own life. Moon Seojun, as Jimin had understood, was someone from Yoongi’s life before the gang. More than that, he was someone Yoongi trusted. Maybe too much so, which ultimately made him a liability. Trusting anyone outside of your own members was always a risk. Jimin had even been taught when he’d joined to doubt anyone’s intentions, and to keep a close eye on those who called themselves their allies – everyone had their own motive, ultimately.

“Seojun was never part of anything – no gang, no alliances, nothing,” Yoongi had explained that night, while they were still sitting in the dark, Jimin’s fingers still lazily lingering inside the other man’s hand. “Through all the time we’ve spent together, he never changed one bit. The only team he’d ever had was me - we made deals with people we worked with because we had to, and then that was it. We owed them nothing afterwards. It was an easy way to live at first, although you do end up making enemies despite yourself – no one will believe in your neutrality. You’re either with someone or you’re against them in this lifestyle – as you know.”

“But what makes you think he would be on our side now?” Jimin had asked. “Even though you two know each other, I assume you haven’t been in contact in… a while. As you were surprised I’d even crossed his path before.”

“He’s not on our side,” Yoongi had replied simply. “But he’s not on our enemies’ either. Every job he does is for himself, he’s just making transactions with others.”

“And what if his job this time around is to take me out?” Jimin had then asked. It was nothing but speculations – and sometimes it surprised him too, how unalarmed he was about the possibility of someone being out to murder him.

“Why would he be?” Yoongi had said. “You may not see it this way, but to other gangs you’re a urban legend, Jimin. People know we must have a snitch or two going around gathering information for us, but they have no idea how and why. I know it may have seemed like we were in a dire situation – having you stay home for weeks – but this was just damage control, it needs to be done. We’re not protecting you here – not yet at least, hopefully not ever. We’re protecting the mere concept of you. The day that the actual knowledge of your existence goes out into the world – then you’ll be in real danger.”

“But until then you’ve been doing damage control by eliminating the potential threats, right?”

“More or less,” yoongi had replied, nodding absentmindedly.

“Then wouldn’t it make sense to… do the same even in this case?” Jimin had then continued as he’d seen the other man flinching despite the obscurity. “I’m just trying to understand. It’s not my place to make these decisions anyway.”

Yoongi had sighed deeply.

“Personal feelings aside…” Yoongi had started in a tone that lead to believe that personal feelings were still involved. “This might cause more harm than good. He may not be an ally to anyone, but he’s well-known by a lot of people. He managed to build himself a reputation as the handy man you can count on when you need any outside help. His death would not go unnoticed, simple as that. The reason he has survived so long while remaining neutral is because he’s skilled and useful. Everyone wants to keep him around, because they might need him sooner or later. If someone murdered him…”

Yoongi had trailed off a bit, and while his tone remained somewhat even, the pale light of the moon betrayed his facial expression just enough that Jimin could tell personal feelings were definitely involved.

“If someone was to murder him,” he’d started again, “others could take it as a threat or a warning.”

Jimin had nodded pensively, taking it all in for a minute.

“Then if you have it all figured out, why are you and Hoseok keeping this a secret?”

“Joon doesn’t see things in the same light,” the black-haired boy had replied, his eyes searching for something in the wide star-filled sky. “He knows him, you know. Not personally, I mean, but he knows who Seojun is.”

Yoongi had paused again for a minute, his eyes finally stopping on something in the darkness. The stars were still unaligned, but he seemed to have given attention to each and every one of them before choosing which one would give him strength. 

“When Seojun and I… parted ways, I became a different person. I’d been alone before we met, and then solitude had meant survival. Except this time around, I had gained new skills to defend myself, and survival no longer felt like enough. In a short space of time, I became… ruthless, to say the least. I didn’t expect the sudden surge of loneliness, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. Lonely was not a word in my vocabulary before I met Seojun – you don’t experience loneliness when being alone has always been your version of normal. Once he wasn’t there though, I became purposeless and unable to trust anyone all at once. Looking back, I realize that maybe I was never cut out for aloneness – which is odd, given that I’ve spent most of my life forcibly alone – but I need someone to pace me.”

It was odd indeed, how Jimin had always expected the opposite of him – in the gang, Min Yoongi had seemed to him as someone who needed the most space. But once again, he realized that this was just him projecting his own expectations onto someone that, until recently, felt like only one step further than a stranger.

“That’s the person I was when I met Namjoon,” Yoongi continued. “A lonely, vengeful, unforgiving, miserable creature who was blindingly ran by his own anger. The things I told Joon about my past then… they weren’t untrue, but they were tinted by my own feelings at the time. I see things differently now – with time, I’ve come to accept that there was a lot I didn’t understand. But… Joonie and I simply don’t see eye to eye on this.”

Jimin nodded compassionately, his fingers curling a little tighter around the other man’s in a way that he hoped was comforting. There was a lot that remained unsaid, a lot of blanks left to fill – but this was already more than Jimin could have asked for and so he let it be.

“But surely… you can’t keep this a secret forever?” He’d spoken again after a few minutes of silence. “It will come up soon enough.”

“Sure, it will,” Yoongi had said, “but I need more time to think.”

Jimin was taken out of his reverie by his phone ringing furiously in his pocket. The sun had not started setting yet, but soon it would and most of the children - and dogs - had gone home.

“Hello?”

A phone call from Jungkook was a rare enough occasion that Jimin was truly intrigued, as well as slightly scared. On most days, he was lucky if the boy even read his texts, never mind answering them.

“Hey… um, I hope I’m not bothering you,” Jungkook said hesitantly, “but could you… come home as soon as possible? Please?”

“Is something wrong?” Jimin asked, concerned by Jungkook’s low tone, as if the boy was trying to be as discreet as he could, and then he noticed. “Hey, what’s with all the noise behind you? Are you home?”

“Um… listen, there’s uh… a conflict right now,” Jungkook said, still in that whispery tone. “From the things Yoongi said I suppose you’re aware of what sparked it. I don’t expect you to walk in and magically solve it because it seems quite… personal but I think it would be better if everyone was there right now.”

Jimin went home as fast as he could. The park was only a five-minute walk away from where they lived, but it felt like a lifetime this time around. If it was indeed what he thought, he wanted to be there, even though he knew his presence would not make a single difference. Still, he cared too much about his friends not to worry.

As he opened the front door hurriedly, he was greeted by the well expected sight of Namjoon and Yoongi standing on opposite sides in the living room. What struck him instantly however was how tense the atmosphere was. It was almost palpable, the animosity heavy in the air as he’d barely taken one step inside. No one even acknowledged his presence as he closed the door behind him, everyone’s attention clearly occupied somewhere else.

Jimin scanned the room quickly. Hoseok was standing next to Yoongi almost protectively, while next to Namjoon was Seokjin – both looking back and forth between each other and the two men with concerned looks. They were visibly tense, but there was no hostility in their expressions – only worry, which told Jimin that they were not involved in whatever conflict had broken out but simple moderators. They looked however, if anything, completely overtaken by the events. Taehyung and Jungkook seemed to have found refuge in the hallway that led to the bedrooms, their heads barely peeking out into the living room as they watched the scene unfold with worried eyes.

It was Yoongi that Jimin heard first, although the conversation had clearly started long before his arrival.

“…I’m sorry, but I would expect you to trust me given how long we’ve known each other,” the shorter, black-haired man said, not shouting but visibly angered.

“I don’t see why I should risk jeopardizing the entire gang out of trust,” Namjoon replied, and there was none of the man’s usual patience in his tone nor in his posture. “I can’t make decisions purely on personal feelings, and neither should you!”

This is going much worse than I thought, Jimin thought. There was venom in their leader’s words, a virulence that, in Jimin’s ears, should not belong in the man’s voice. He understood what Yoongi had meant when he’d said they could not see eye to eye on this – this was not new. This was an old conversation, one that had surely been left aside to rot for years, and old wounds were being savagely reopened in front of everyone’s eyes. As the conversation continued, Jimin understood that all rational thoughts were being left behind as the animosity took over.

“You know this is bigger than this, Joon,” Yoongi snarled. “You treat this as if this is just a temper tantrum I’m throwing.”

“Oh, is it not?” Namjoon scoffed contemptuously. “Is that why you decided to keep this away from me like a child? And you’re the one talking about trust.”

Jimin felt tears slowly creep up inside his eyes. It was an awfully cruel reaction from a man he knew to be kind and composed, especially when discussing the possible murder of one of Yoongi’s… friends? Jimin admitted that despite it all he did not know much. He wondered how much had been said before Jungkook had felt the need to call him for them to be at each other’s throat, spewing words that they would never have said otherwise, letting emotions take the better of them. He wanted to shake them up, tell them they were being ridiculously, tell them this was not how coworkers, friends, brothers solved conflict. He wanted to run up to them and shout at them that this was not the way to protect one another, and yet his feet stubbornly remained planted into the ground, paralyzing him into a helpless spectator.

“You’re being cruel,” Yoongi replied and his tone turned even lower than usual, “you’re being unjustly cruel and letting past emotions blind you on this decision when you know very well I’m right.”

“Oh, I’m the one who’s blinded? Why do you insist on defending someone who abandoned you overnight?”

“Namjoon, that’s enough,” Seokjin intervened, his voice filled with frustration, but he did not seem to hear him.

“You’re the one looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses and misplaced nostalgia because it’s your only way of coping with the idea that the one person who promised you the world and who was supposed to protect you still betrayed you and disappeared without a word.”

The room went silent, and unbearably cold as his words weighed in the air, and Jimin could see instant regret on Namjoon’s face, the knowledge that he had crossed a line painted over his traits. Yoongi, however, would look almost comical had the situation been different. It was as if the rage that was animating him just a few seconds ago had been drained out of him. He was standing there, his face between stunned and horrified. The few seconds of silence that followed their leader’s words felt heavy on Jimin’s spine, and it was Yoongi that spoke again, all determination and anger vanished in his voice.

“Well,” he said, taking a few steps back protectively, “enough has been said.”

Before anyone else managed to take a grip of the situation, he walked past Jimin, who hadn’t moved further into the room since he’d walked in and disappeared through the front door. At first, it seemed as if no one was going to chase after him, but before he could think it through, Jimin found himself crossing the doorstep again. He vaguely heard someone calling after him – most likely Seokjin – but he didn’t turn around. He could feel his phone ringing furiously in his pocket less than a minute after he’d walked past the door – but he didn’t bother checking it. He was too busy trying to catch up to Yoongi’s fast pace.

At first, he followed him at a distance, no thought being paid to what had motivated him to do this. The sun was slowly setting, the sky painted in delicate hues of pink announcing the upcoming obscurity. Jimin’s eyes did not leave the other man for one second. It was only when Yoongi turned into a busy avenue that Jimin started running, apologizing hurriedly to the few people he accidentally pushed aside.

“Yoongi,” he shouted, almost out of breath as he reached the other man’s level and grabbed his shoulder. “Yoongi, wait, it’s me! Jimin!”

Yoongi turned around and stopped in the middle of the avenue to look at him, prompting a few complaints from passersby in a hurry.

“What are you doing here?” he said, with misplaced concern as if he should be the one worrying in this situation. “Jimin, go back home. You’re not involved in this.”

“I’m not leaving,” Jimin said stubbornly.

“You don’t even know where I’m going,” Yoongi said.

Jimin shrugged childishly. He’d made up his mind.

The other man rolled his eyes dramatically before turning around and continued on his way, but he did not complain when Jimin joined him. They walked in silence for roughly half an hour before Yoongi came to a stop in from of a small apartment building. He pressed down the code knowingly and held the massive front door to let Jimin in. As soon as they were inside, he sprinted up the stairs as Jimin struggled to keep up with his pace, up to what he counted to be the third floor. Yoongi pulled out a key out of his pocket, and swiftly opened the door to the last apartment at the end of the narrow corridor they’d just crossed.

“This is a hideout where Joon, Hoseok and I come to occasionally after missions, either because we need rest or because we have more work to do before we can go home,” Yoongi explained as soon as Jimin closed the door behind him.

Jimin vaguely remembered Hoseok mentioning such a place here and there. It was a simple, modest apartment clearly made for only one person. There was a small open kitchen on the side of the main room, which was otherwise furnished with nothing more than a sofa bed and a small television. From the front door where he was still standing, he could spot a bedroom, a bathroom and… that was it.

As Jimin observed the apartment, Yoongi took off his coat, carefully removing his gun from his inner pocket before throwing it over the sofa.

“Why did you follow me?” he asked tiredly as he sat down next to his coat.

Jimin wasn’t sure why either. He’d walked out of the door without thinking, and something had compelled him to keep going. He felt out of place all of a sudden, realizing Yoongi had come here to find peace and quietness. It had not completely dawned on him yet how much of a messy situation this was, yet he felt a little dizzy trying to organize his thoughts. But then he looked up, and as his gaze crossed Yoongi’s weary but expectant eyes, he felt churning in his stomach, but not unpleasantly so, and he could just barely feel his heart beat just a tad faster in his rib cage, only just noticeably so.

And suddenly he knew the answer. It came to him as an evidence, as if it had been staring him in the face. But it was the wrong answer – not just now, in this moment, but also in any scenario where they had and would end up alone, only the two of them. So instead of saying it out loud, he let his truth sink deep inside of himself and came up with the answer closest to it.

“I just didn’t want you to be alone again.”

Chapter Text

Jimin lied down on the unfamiliar bed, unmotivated to get up. Yoongi had insisted the night before for the younger man to take the bedroom while he used the sofa in the living room. Jimin had protested, but to no avail, the older boy had had his mind made up. Yoongi had looked so worn out that Jimin had given up in the end, doing whatever he was told. He’d had a short night, belatedly feeling uneasy with his impulsive choice of following him there. They’d barely talked the night before, Jimin leaving the other man space as he understood this was an unplanned, uneasy situation. He’d seen the two friends argue before, but it had never escalated like this. He knew Yoongi cared about Namjoon a lot, and vice versa. And while Jimin had a natural instinct of wanting to fix things and bring them back in order, he understood this was beyond his control. He could not interfere between the two, especially when he did not have same knowledge on the topic of argument as they did.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand. It had been buzzing all night, but he’d ignored them, letting the messages pile up. He looked at them for the first time.

Seokjin – 9:36 pm

where are you?

Seokjin – 10:12 pm

I wont tell Namjoon I promise

Seokjin – 11:42 pm

please jimin reply

if you don’t pick up at least send a text just so I know you’re alright

Seokjin – 1:46 am

You don’t have to say where you are just let me know you’re safe

Seokjin – 2:08 pm

I won’t even tell Taehyung if you don’t want me to. pinky promise

He felt bad for ignoring Seokjin. He was usually always keeping an eye on them, and Jimin knew he would be unable to fully take sides on this decision. Jimin also understood that he wasn’t only asking after him – he was his way to get to Yoongi as well.

Jimin – 7:39 am

i’m with yoongi

His phone buzzed again so fast it made him jump a little.

Seokjin – 7:40 am

Good please stay safe

Jimin – 7:41 am

we will

pinky promise

Jimin sighed, slowly rising up from the bed. He knew he had to come out of his cave at some point and face Yoongi, knowing that none of the things he could say or do would make things easier for the older boy and he was, essentially, intruding while the other had left to find peace. He sighed again, getting up to find something that would hopefully fit him in the small closet. Most of the clothes were obviously spare change for when his members stayed there unexpectedly, and he was just hoping he would find something that would fit. He’d slept in a pair of sweatpants that was slightly too wide for him that he knew belonged to Hoseok and hoped he could find something else for the day since he’d left without taking anything but his phone with him. After a few minutes, he spotted a plain black t-shirt and a simple pair of jeans that seemed like they could fit him. He put them on and headed for the living room, feeling nervous.

He opened the bedroom door to find Yoongi still asleep on the sofa. He’d heard the man pace back and forth until late at night and had assumed he’d had a rough night too, but it seemed sleep had found him early in the morning. Jimin knew it would be better to just get back into the room and wait for him to wake up, but something made him stay anyway.

Yoongi looked different asleep. Surely, there would have been a time during the few years he’d spent with the gang where he’d seen the other member asleep, but in that moment, he could not remember it for the life of him. Outwardly, the older boy was the same as always, but there was something changed about him that Jimin could not pinpoint. Something made him look vulnerable. Jimin never thought of any of his members as vulnerable – not even Jungkook, not since he’d joined in and had been trained by the others. But maybe it was because he was unused to seeing Yoongi loosen up in front of him to even be in this situation seemed odd. He would always keep this façade of certainty, unwavering in front of the others. Even the time when he’d sneaked into his bed, the man had disappeared long before Jimin had opened his eyes again, leaving him uncertain of how whether he’d dreamed it or not.

In that instant however, Jimin felt as if he was back to that night when they’d spent hours talking, plunged into the obscurity of his bedroom. For a brief second, he felt the same pleasant agitation in his stomach as he looked at the older boy as he had the previous night. He wanted to curse himself, as these were the wrong feelings to have in such a situation, but he did not have time to dwell on them as the other man started stirring in his sleep, as if on the brink of waking up.

Jimin quickly did a few steps into the room, looking away as if he had not been staring for the past two minutes. An uncomfortable silence fell over the room after they exchanged a quick hello, replacing the peaceful quietness from just a few minutes ago. Jimin stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, unsure of what he was supposed to do or say as Yoongi disappeared in the bedroom to change.

The younger man scanned the room for a few seconds, his eyes stopping on the kitchenette in the corner of the living room. Should he be making breakfast? But wouldn’t that be intrusive as well? He did not know what the proper etiquette for this kind of situation was. In fact, no one had ever taught him etiquette. His only example for etiquette was Seokjin on the rare occasions he’d seen the older man interact with anyone who did not belong in Bangtan, and even he often seemed out of line.

Before he had time to overthink the situation, Yoongi came out of the room, fully dressed and walked straight towards the door.

“Let’s go out,” the older man said.

“Go where?” Jimin said, dumbfounded but still obediently putting his shoes on. “We didn’t even have breakfast.”

“Exactly, there’s nothing to eat here.”

They walked for a while in silence again, but the soothing sound of the city slowly waking up made up for it. Jimin could hear cars driving past in the distance and birds tweeting away but the narrow streets they’d taken were completely empty. He followed Yoongi without asking questions, as he seemed to know where he was going. Eventually they reached the city’s small marina, a place he hadn’t been to in years. He’d loved to come here when he’d first joined the gang. He would sit on the many wooden benches and watch the water dance in slow, controlled motions in between the boats. He’d brought Jungkook here too once, as the younger boy had told him once he’d never seen a sea nor a river. It had been a long time however, and he was surprised to see how the small, almost bare dock had grown into a beautiful marina, and how the number of boats had tripled.

Yoongi stopped in front of one of the boats before entering. It served as a small but nicely decorated restaurant. Jimin did not have much time to admire it as Yoongi nodded to the waiter as if he’d been there before and crossed the main room to go outside, on the platform of the boat where there were also tables, fully set waiting for clients. Unlike the inside of the ship where a few people were already having breakfast, they were completely alone on the platform. They both looked at the sea pensively for a few minutes. Yoongi eventually broke the silence.  

“The more I have you around me, the more I think this life was not made for you,” the older man mumbled in his usual low tone.

Jimin tensed for a few seconds, his old insecurities of being perceived as weak despite all he’d endured in his short lifetime crawling up, but he decided to hear him out.

“Why is that?” he replied.

“I just don’t think that’s the life you’d want. Nor the life you deserve,” Yoongi said a little bit louder this time.

“Well,” Jimin started, touched but also confused by the sudden concern over his – admittedly unintended – life choices. “Isn’t that the case for all of us? Is that the life you would have wanted for yourself, had you grown up in a different environment? If you had encountered different people and had other options, surely you would have chosen something else too. That’s how I feel about myself, but not everyone gets to make these choices.”

He looked at the seagulls circling above them, some plunging down to the water in hopes to find a fish.

“Still, for me, this is the best I could have hoped for, given the circumstances in which I grew up. And sure, it is far from perfect and rosy – but there’s things I have now that I wouldn’t give away for the world.”

He was looking at Yoongi straight in the eyes now, and he only just realized then that he was holding the other man’s hand and squeezing it. He did not remember seizing it, nor knew why he had done so, but now that he had it, he was unwilling to let it go. He needed Yoongi to know. He could not find the strength to say the exact words out loud, as he was unsure if they even fit in their situation - not their physical location, nor the place they’d put themselves in since the previous night, but whatever relationship they’d built over a short period of time. He was not sure these words were allowed in that context, nor if they even made sense to himself just yet. But for some reason, he felt the need to let Yoongi know how much he cared about him in that instant – and that was the only safe way to do so.   

Under the soothing sound of the waves slowly caressing the sides of the boat, gently rocking it from left to right, he thought he heard Yoongi say “I’m glad to have you too” but he did not let his mind dwell on it for too long, although his heart was not immune to the other man’s words.

He untied his hand from Yoongi’s as the waiter walked towards them, ready to take their order. He let Yoongi choose for him too, distracted by the sound of his phone buzzing in his pocket.

Taehyung – 9:18 am

don’t forget you have a mission with me and jk at 11

“Shit,” he said once the waiter had left. “I’ll have to leave after breakfast.”

“Is something wrong?” Yoongi asked, visibly worried.

“No, I just forgot I had a mission planned today. I’ll come back afterwards.”

“You don’t have to,” Yoongi said after a few seconds.

“I will.”

Jimin popped a pill into his mouth discreetly as the 40-something-year old man in front of him was busy paying for their lunch. It should be enough to keep up appearances that he someone wanted this man anywhere near his own naked body in the next twenty minutes or so. He’d collected enough information during the meal – he could just leave now. Find an excuse and go home. But he knew this would not be professional, nor very smart of him. He needed to ensure he could come back to this man if he ever needed him in the future. More importantly, he had to entertain the man’s belief that he was someone else. That he was nothing more than a pretty boy who was here to do what he was told. He had never met this man before, but he already knew he would slip up some cash under the bedsheets after it was all over – as they all thought that was what he was after. At least they were not stupid enough to believe he slept with them because he wanted to.

He was on his fifth fake moan when a familiar thought crossed his mind. He always counted, as meticulous as he always was in every task he undertook. Too often, and it sounded unnatural. Not often enough, and they started asking questions. He was on his sixth when he tried to fight the thought, knowing that it would leave him with the same sense of emptiness in his chest as it always did, and his seventh when he realized it was hopeless.

As he lied on the bed of a familiar hotel room, a man he barely remembered the name of going down on him, he wondered once again what it would feel like to have sex with someone he genuinely cared about. For him, sex was numbness. It was something he did with disinterest, as if he was in charge of his own body but still lent it to someone else for an hour or so, while his mind went somewhere else. It wasn’t that he lacked in sensation or desire, and the pills were strong enough that sex was not, purely on a physical level at least, completely unpleasant. But there was something about the setting where it always took place. There was something about the way he despised the men he slept with for the way they considered him, as someone who they believed they were taking advantage of, and about the fact that he was too good a liar to let his true feelings show for even one brief second. There was something about how it felt staged – and it always was. His best friend had gone into the same room an hour earlier, had hidden cameras and microphones all over the place. He’d paid for the room in advance and bribed the receptionist, so she wouldn’t say a word when someone else walked in using the same key. There was nothing spontaneous, nothing enticing in this scenario. So beside himself, sex with anyone but himself had grown into something unexciting. Not repulsive per say, but so dull it was almost off-putting.

He was on his nineteenth moan when he saw it, and it took him out of his long-winded reverie and back to the present in a second. On the ceiling, right above the bed, almost hidden by the hem of the heavy curtains, was a camera. It was small, not unlike the ones Taehyung used. But he knew instinctively this was not Taehyung’s doing. His friend would not have put this here – it was too obvious, staring him right in the face.

He wanted to do something to signal to Taehyung that something was wrong. But his mind went blank as he tried to come up with a sign discreet enough for the other man not to notice.

A chilling thought came to him. He knew if this man had done anything out of line since the second they’d walked in, either Jungkook or Taehyung would have barged in and shot a bullet straight through his head, no questions asked. Nothing assured him that whoever had put the camera there would not do the same to him if he did not behave as they expected him too.  

He was trapped.

Chapter Text

It had only been two days, and yet, being back at home already felt strange. Jimin kept fidgeting in his room, on self-imposed isolation this time, waiting for new instructions while keeping up appearances that nothing had gone awry again. He felt vulnerable, a new target on his back for the nth time in the past few months. He had worked hard for two years to earn his place in the gang while remaining a shadow to the world, a secret joker card that they had carefully played for years, perhaps even abused at times. It felt unsettling finding himself in this spot so soon again, the possibility of imminent danger still faint but impossible to ignore.

Somehow, his mind was simultaneously more at ease than the first time around despite his constant worry that things needed to be fixed soon or he would lose it. The lingering tension at home was enough for him to overthink, however, especially since the outcome of his last mission only added another layer of unnatural silence in the house.

Jimin kept repeating to himself that he had taken the best possible decision given the circumstances, asking Taehyung and Jungkook to not mention what had happened to the rest of the gang for the time being. In the current climate of tension, where everyone was simultaneously walking on egg shells and pretending they were unaffected by the absence of one of their own, Jimin felt as if this was something he had to resolve by himself. Well, not quite by himself, but on his own terms at least.

After the man had left on that fateful mission, Jimin had done his best to hide how shaken he had been by the whole ordeal while recalling what had happened to his two friends who had waited for him in another room. Taehyung had apologized profusely, genuinely remorseful for not checking the room properly beforehand – they had been running out of time as Jimin had taken quite a while getting to them from the restaurant where he’d had breakfast with Yoongi. He had slipped up, sure, but Jimin had been too busy overthinking the entire situation to focus on his friend’s apologies. He’d brushed them off, insisting instead that they kept their mouths shut about it despite their complaints.

 “I need to talk to Yoongi,” he’d said eventually. “Please wait for me in the car, I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

Yoongi had picked up the phone almost immediately. The words he had said to Jimin that one night, when they had spent hours talking on his bed, kept ringing in his ears. “The day that the actual knowledge of your existence goes into the world – then you’ll be in danger.” Unsurprisingly, he took the situation very seriously, offering to investigate on his own while Jimin stayed in hiding until they knew for certain who they were dealing with. And without fail, he’d asked Jimin to go back home and wait until Yoongi contacted him again.

Jimin could not pretend it hadn’t stung a bit, even though he knew the elder made the right call. Even while keeping it a secret, he would be safer at home surrounded by people who could protect him than out and about with Yoongi. Still, as selfish and foolish it was for his mind to focus on such trivial things during these troubled times, their relationship had most certainly started to shift recently and it was a feeling that he did not want to let go. Being around Yoongi was slightly addictive and the little time they had spent alone had left him on a high, suddenly aware of feelings he did not know he was capable of experiencing anymore.

Maybe I’m just addicted to attention, he had first tried to convince himself but the thought had sounded shallow even to his own ears. He’d received an unhealthy dose of attention every single day back at the Red Room and was more than fine with leaving those days behind. 

Days passed, time running unnervingly slow as he waited for Yoongi to contact him again. The situation at home remained less than ideal – no one had mentioned Yoongi since he’d come back, with the exception of a worried Seokjin asking if the other member was okay. The rest of the time, it was business as usual, for others at least. Thankfully Jimin had not been assigned any new mission yet, and while his friends had both kept the incident a secret, he suspected Taehyung of having a hand in that. His friend hated lying to their members but he would not hesitate to do so if it meant Jimin could remain safe a little longer.

The lie had only strengthened the obvious split that had formed so quickly he found it almost frightening.  Jimin, Taehyung and Jungkook on one side, Hoseok and Namjoon on the other, and Seokjin perpetually stuck in the middle. They were not arguing – that would have been better in Jimin’s opinion, at least they might have made some progress this way. No, they were simply ignoring the situation at hand, speaking only to make small talks while each side plotted separately. No one wanted to make the first move, and Jimin refused to be the one trying to patch things together for once, especially when he had other things to worry about. Like the fact that someone had filmed him during a mission and could reveal his identity to the world any second from now. Until he heard from Yoongi again, he would stay out of everyone’s business.

An entire week passed since the incident, and Jimin’s patience was running thin. He trusted Yoongi, he really did. If there’s one thing he could count on, it was that every single one of his members was skilled at their jobs, and Yoongi was one of the finest ones out there. But the mental stress he was under, accompanied by a restlessness he could not shake off, were starting to get the best of him. Staying home and doing nothing was frustrating to say the least. He also tried to damp down the guilt he felt over promising Yoongi he would come back after his mission and yet leaving him alone, once again. Sure, the elder had been the one to insist that he should remain with the others out of safety, but late at night, whenever he felt tired and emotional, he wondered what would have happened if he had ignored his precautions and ran to him. Eventually, it was enough to make him cave in, his fingers moving faster than his brain as he typed, knowing that the other man would still be awake at this hour.

Jimin – 1:03 am

I told you I didn’t want you to be alone again and yet here we are

Min Yoongi – 1:05 am

I am not alone

Jimin stared at his screen blankly in surprise, but he didn’t have time to process the information before Yoongi was typing again.

Min Yoongi – 1:06 am

Sorry for being silent this is taking longer than I thought

Are you okay?

Was he okay? It was a fair question to ask, he supposed. He had been through a lot lately and they hadn’t talked in a while after all. But he foolishly believed Yoongi was too busy to be concerned over him, and while the thought of the other man thinking about him was pleasant, he was a little more worried about whether his prolonged silent meant something about his safety.

Jimin – 1:07 am

I’m fine, business as usual

I mean not “as usual” since I barely go outside but you know

Are you?

Min Yoongi – 1:08 am

I am

Thanks for worrying

I just need a few more days and this will all be over soon

Just wait for me a little longer, okay?

Jimin dropped his phone on his pillow, his hands immediately reaching for his already blushing cheeks.

Wait for me. Not wait until I get in contact with you, nor wait until I have news for you. No, wait for me.

He was too far gone already.

In the week that preceded him contacting Yoongi, Jimin’s dreams played out the same way almost every night. He would spend the first half of the night wandering around an odd, hazy but never unpleasant dream that he would hardly remember later. Until something shifted and his peaceful night was haunted by nightmares after nightmares, ones that left a bitter taste in his mouth long after he’d awaken.

The nature of dreams and nightmares changed every time, but there was one transitory scene in between that remained the same throughout his entire week. In one split second, he was taken back to that motel room, the camera above him the first thing to appear in his vision and the disgustingly wet sounds of what was happening on the lower half of his body the only sound that plagued the room. This time he was not fake moaning, nor panicking, nor thinking of finding a way out. He found himself motionless, numb and tired, completely devoid of any feelings or sensations, as if this was happening to someone else and he was forced into an unwilling spectator.

This one night after he contacted Yoongi, he fell asleep in the late hours of the morning. Once he reached that transitory dream, he could immediately sense something was different however. The room was exactly the same, down to the patterns on the bedsheets and the half empty bottle of water on the nightstand sitting next to his brand-new watch he’d left there before getting into bed. The location had not changed, and yet everything else was different this time.

First, the camera was no longer there. Second, he felt overcome by an unprecedented sense of safety that he could hardly describe, his hand nestled in the hair of whoever was pleasuring him, his body taken over by waves of unfamiliar warmth and pleasure, vastly different from what he was used to at work. He let it happen, for once not trying to claw his way out of the nightmare that inevitably followed. In one moment of clarity, as he felt he was coming undone, he realized there had to something else, for his unconscious to turn this scene from an unwanted vision to.. this, whatever it was. And as he started to come, both in his dream and in the comfort of his own bed at home, he crossed eyes with his partner for the first time and woke up immediately.

Yoongi.

Two more days passed until Jimin got a text from Yoongi asking him to meet him at the hideout the following day and to come alone.

“You can tell Taehyung where you’re going, if it puts your mind – and his – at ease. But otherwise, if you can sneak out or make this discreet it would be for the best. I don’t want anyone searching me – or asking too many questions – just yet.”

Jimin was absolutely planning to keep the secret of Yoongi and his’ whereabouts – Taehyung not included – but he also wanted to make it very clear where he stood in this ridiculous squabbling. He had a bit of a flair for the dramatic, and if he could have as many eyes on him as he left, the more he liked it. It was time for them to stop pretending it was business as usual when two of the founding members of the gang refused to even talk to one another. He intended to make it as obvious as possible that he was meeting with Yoongi without outright telling anyone where he was going.

He did not know why, but somehow despite the looming target on his head and the unfamiliar instability of the past few days, he felt bolder and more confident than he could ever recall. He wasn’t exactly happier than usual – he would have much better preferred going back to not feeling like he was potentially facing danger every passing second of his life and having his six only friends communicate like grownups as they used to. But he definitely felt more carefree than he ever had. Maybe it was because some of his fears had come true and yet the world hadn’t fallen apart just yet.

Maybe it was because, despite it all, despite the mistakes he had made, despite the fact that his existence alone now put all of them in danger, everyone still had his back in their own way.

Yoongi, who worked ceaselessly over fixing this situation, making Jimin’s security his priority over mending his crumbling friendship with someone who might have quite literally saved his life in the past – Jimin did not know exactly, but he could only assume from the few vague stories he’d heard about the two meeting.

Taehyung, who kept all of Jimin’s secrets and never left his side.

Jungkook, who would happily accept to be Jimin’s bodyguard 24/7 if he even just implied that he felt unsafe.

Seokjin, who never failed to check on him and try to hear his side, even when he did not agree with the rest of the gang.

Even Hoseok and Namjoon, who had been a little bit more distant lately, the two trying desperately to pretend that they did not want to ask him about Yoongi despite the fact that they clearly were dying to do so.

Or maybe he felt empowered because keeping secrets meant he could make his own decisions, for once. He could hardly remember the last time he took the lead in doing anything, aside from leaving the Red Room and getting Jungkook out of that hell of a place.

“Infatuation makes people feel dizzy and powerful sometimes too,” Taehyung said cheekily when he’d asked him if, in the middle of this entire mess, it was appropriate for him to be experiencing such a sudden high in confidence. “Doesn’t it?”

“Right, tell me about it,” Jimin scoffed. “You’re one to talk.”

He’d seen his friend sneak out of Jungkook’s room late at night lately, and had yet to tease his friend about it as this had been months in the waiting, but he planned to do so as soon as his mind cleared out. He understood them not wanting to make a big announcement of them dating in the current situation of events but he felt as if he could at least be kept in the loop, given that he’d spent months pushing the two in each other’s arms.

“In all seriousness,” Taehyung said, very happy to change the subject. “Tell Yoongi I miss him. It’s messed up that we’re all separated like that but I guess this can’t be fixed until he finds out who’s doing that to you.”

The next day, he walked into the living room at five in the afternoon sharp, his head held high as he walked past the rest of the members. As he reached the door, he could feel Hoseok and Namjoon’s eyes but no one said a word.

“Please be careful and stay safe,” Seokjin then said before he left. “Keep your phone with you.”

He turned around and briefly looked at everyone in the eyes one by one, each of their gaze dropping instantly as he reached them, except for Seokjin. They all knew where he was going, or more accurately who he was going to see. 

“Will do!,” Jimin replied with a smile and stepped outside. 

Jimin had not expected for Yoongi and him to fall in each other’s arms the second the man opened the door – despite how fast he’d developed feelings for the other man, he was still not oblivious to how little time they had actually spent alone together, given how long they had been living under the same roof. What had not expected at all however, although perhaps he should have because Yoongi had told him he was not alone, was to completely forget about them reuniting the second he saw the man standing behind Yoongi.

He’d met him before – twice now, once a long time ago during a mission, the second time during that fateful spying job that turned the gang upside down and put Yoongi in this position. He recognized his features instantly, before Yoongi even bothered introducing them, and suddenly felt very alert, his body tensing despite himself as he shook the stranger’s hand.

Moon Seojun.

He wanted to blindly trust Yoongi, he really did. He could not deny however that it felt somewhat significant meeting someone that was important enough to Yoongi to involuntary cause such havoc inside their tight-knit group. It was odd to Jimin, because he and Jungkook had no one outside of the gang. These five people were their whole world now – and for a while, he had assumed the same about the rest. He’d learned soon enough that it was not the truth, that many of the alliances they had formed came from long-term, sincere friendships and camaraderie. But he had not known much about Yoongi’s past until recently, and he had foolishly assumed that meant he was in the same position as himself. He had obviously been wrong, although Yoongi’s situation could still hardly compare with the rest of the members’.

He’d met several of Hoseok’s friends in the past – all people from the same business of course – and even knew the names of most of Seokjin’s family members despite the elder not meeting them in years. But he’d never heard of Seojun until quite recently, and as tempting as it was to believe it was only because of his lack of closeness with Yoongi, it might also be because this man was more than a simply an old friend to him – perhaps a specter carrying memories once precious, now turned into wounds too painful to reopen in the presence of others.

Jimin fetched a chair as the two men sat down on the couch, facing him. There was something about the way they sat next to each other – a slight awkwardness, close friends turned to strangers. It was part of Jimin’s job to read people, to be aware of body language and what it could mean for the conclusion of his missions. Yoongi was the one who looked the least at ease, despite the fact that, as Jimin could only guess from the text he’d sent him, the two men had already met at least once in the past week. Perhaps it was just odd for Yoongi, seeing two worlds that weren’t supposed to meet colliding – someone from a past he barely spoke about meeting someone from a very shaky present. Yet, he was not the only one to appear uncomfortable. Seojun was trying to give off an air of carelessness, and Jimin did believe the man to be quite confident and possibly skilled enough to be. But his gestures were still careful, as if he could fully grasp the importance of the situation at hand. Because it mattered to Yoongi, surely.

It was Seojun who spoke first despite being the odd one out in the situation – or so Jimin thought at first, but realized later on that maybe he’d the one intruding. The man brought his attention on a laptop placed on the coffee table that separated the sofa from the chair where Jimin was sitting. When he opened it, a video popped up full screen, set on pause and Jimin was very thankful when the man in front of him did not hit play. He felt sick instantly, seeing a film of himself from that one night, with the footage thankfully cut to his waist so he was not too exposed. He noticed Yoongi respectfully looking away from the screen and he was grateful that the two men were doing their best not to startle him as Seojun turned the laptop back off, once it was clear everyone was on the same page as to what they were about to discuss.

“The man you met was someone I worked with as well,” Seojun said, addressing himself mostly to Jimin. “A man that is not so dangerous himself – as I’m sure you established during your own investigation. He’s someone who makes reckless deals, and I truly do not think he’s the root of the problem here. He was either followed by someone else or hired to place the camera. I tend to believe the latter – he’s greedy enough to do anything if it pays enough and stupid enough to hide the camera in plain sight. It was easy hacking into his system and finding the video, this fool does not take many precautions.”

“So how did you even know to hack him specifically?” Jimin asked. He wanted to believe the man’s every word, and trusted that Yoongi’s silence meant that he had already heard and checked this story before, but he also needed to know every detail of it until he was certain to be in good hands.

“Oh, I didn’t,” the man said, smirking in a way that could be either threatening or friendly depending which way you looked at it. Jimin chose the latter. “I just keep track of people like him every once in a while, because once you make the mistake of working with someone this imprudent, you have to be careful that he won’t leak info left and right, on purpose or not. Anyway, I came across the video – rest assured that I didn’t click, it was pretty self-explanatory. I saved it, because I remember every face I meet. We met before.”

They did, a while ago, in a bar while Jimin was carrying another mission. He had been curious because the man had stood out from anyone else who had an interest in him. They all carried themselves like they owned everything around – he walked around like he could read everyone. And as unsettling as it was, it had intrigued Jimin at the time, although he eventually had had to lose interest as his target for the night had walked into the bar.

“I didn’t think much of it to be honest, I saved pretty much everything he possessed that had someone I knew, or should potentially know, and called it a day,” Seojun continued. “But then a week ago Yoongi called me. And he doesn’t call me very often these days, or at all, so I figured it must be important.”

He went on to talk about how he felt confident he could trace the lead to find who exactly had commissioned the man to film Jimin using this man and many other of his contacts.

“Why should I trust you?” Jimin said eventually, cutting the man in the middle of his explanation.

“Don’t you trust him?” Seojun replied, pointing to Yoongi.

“I do. But why should I trust you?”

Yoongi tensed visibly but he still stayed out of the conversation, and Jimin was thankful for letting him find his footing in this new dynamic. He had hardly met anyone new in years – not anyone that mattered. He needed to make up his own mind.

“What makes you think you will find whoever that person is before they find you?”

“Jimin, I know everyone,” Seojun says, and it startles him a little bit to hear his name said in this way, as if he’s the one who’s owed explanations. The one in control, for a change. The one who must be convinced. “It’s my job to keep intel on everyone – who leaves which gang, who joins which organization, who’s working solo, who stabbed who’s back. If I didn’t do it well, I would have been killed a long time ago. I know how to cover up my tracks while chasing a lead – it won’t be as easy as hacking into the other guy’s system, sure. But it’s doable. I know everyone that matters… or so I thought, I guess. I didn’t know you, until recently, that’s why the video caught my attention.”

Jimin sighed, not sure if this was flattery or if it was sincere, but it felt somewhat validating to know that even somehow in this position, who supposedly knew everything, found him a mystery. 

“I’m not sure I matter,” he said nonetheless.

Seojun turned to Yoongi for a brief second, seemingly amused.

“You do if you work with these guys,” he said, pointing to Yoongi. “Everyone knows them. Hoseok, Namjoon, Yoongi – I hear their names whispered around twice a week at least, on a bad week that is. Yet no one knows you. That’s what you want in a good spy.”

“What do you get out of all of this?” Jimin said, trying not to give in to the compliments even if the man in front of him seemed sincerly impressed. “I am assuming, from what I know, that you work with a lot of people and you take something out of it each time. What is it, now?”

The man looked at Yoongi again and the two seemed to have a silent conversation for a few seconds.

“Well, materially, nothing,” Seojun said eventually. “Frankly it is not for you that I’m doing it – although I am pleased to meet you, I feel like I’m meeting a walking myth right now. But I have been waiting for this one to contact me of his own volition for a long time,” he pointed towards Yoongi, “and since you matter to him, I’ll do what it takes not mess things up a second time.”

Yoongi looked pointedly at his shoes, his hair covering half of his face, in what Jimin believed to be an attempt to keep control over himself and not draw much attention. Jimin understood it as validation that the other man’s words were truthful.

“What now?” Jimin asked, starting to feel a little more at ease.

“Well, that’s a good question,” Seojun said. “A very good question, since we already disagree on how to proceed. I suggested you get the rest of your gang involved. Not only would it be safer for you, but realistically, it is not a situation we can handle on our own forever. Even if we find out who’s involved, it is not just you they are after. They either already know who you’re affiliated with and intend to make a move or they will find out soon enough and figure out what they want to do with that information.”

“And I suggested we keep to ourselves until we know more,” Yoongi spoke for the first time. “As wise as Namjoon can be, he can also be awfully stubborn and if he finds out you’re involved in this”, he pointed to Seojun as he spoke, “he will find a way to spin the narrative in his head to convict you again. And trust me, he’s sharper with a gun than anyone you’ve ever met.”

“I believe that,” Seojun replied calmly, and it always amazed Jimin how people like him, Yoongi or even Hoseok could discuss the possibility of being murdered with such indifference. “And I don’t plan to die anytime soon, so we’re going to go with Yoongi’s plan for the moment.”

“Which is?” Jimin asked.

“Seojun is going to investigate on his own for the time being to avoid raising too many suspicions,” Yoongi said. “And he’ll contact me as soon as he finds anything. I’d rather you two avoid having any direct contact for the moment, so if there’s anything you wish to say to the other, please let me know.”

After they were done agreeing to this simple but cautious plan, Seojun announced he had to leave to start making a few phone calls here and there and that he would keep the both of them informed promptly.

When the man left, Jimin’s apprehension and nervousness over what was to come crossed the door with him. Founding himself alone with Yoongi for the first time in a while, the blooming confidence he had developed in his few days of reclusion seemed to slowly seep back in.

For a few minutes, silence took over the room, a peaceful kind that Jimin attributed to the other man still thinking over the exchange they’d just had. Yet, when Yoongi broke the quietness, it was to say something miles away from their current problems.

“Do you have to go?” Yoongi said before Jimin made any move to leave.

“You’re the one who told me to stay home,” he replied matter-of-factly. If Yoongi wanted to play dumb, then he had met his match. Jimin was willing to keep the act going if it meant their relationship was going somewhere – he was yet to be convinced it was, however.

“I know,” Yoongi said simply, and here it was. That fake nonchalance, or so Jimin hoped it was not real, because simple words like these gave him a little bit of hope that he had not been the only one longing from the past week or so. And yet as always, Yoongi’s words stopped there, right on the precipice of the unsaid settled between them. He never said a lot, never fully letting go of the mask of perfect disinterest he’d worn around him for years, much to Jimin’s frustration. Jimin had felt the shift coming, but he still needed to hear it. He needed to be certain. But he supposed he was asking for too much for the moment.

“Taehyung said he missed you,” he said casually, standing as he started gathering his stuff and slowly moving towards the door.

“Only Taehyung?” Yoongi replied in a very even tone. And there it was again. Little hints followed by silence. All he wanted was to pull on that thread until Yoongi let loose. To get the words out of him.

Jimin cocked an eyebrow, staring at the other man straight in the eye and pulled his best fake giggle, the one where he threw his body backwards charmingly that he only reserved for the men he targeted. He knew what he was doing – this was familiar territory. He knew how to seduce men; it was his job and he did it well. He was also well aware that, unlike his targets, Yoongi would see right through him because he knew Jimin. But maybe Jimin wanted him to. Maybe he felt a little emboldened – maybe he was even a little desperate.

Still, at the end of the day, Yoongi let him go once again, wishing Jimin a disappointing “goodbye, see you tomorrow”.

And so Jimin decided he did not feel like going home immediately, not today, not when he felt seemingly on top of the world and six feet under. He felt like he deserved it – after all the shit that he suffered through, after enduring a job that most would not even consider doing, after trying to always be patient and kind and available to everyone else, never causing trouble, never speaking too loudly. He deserved to have a little fun.

And maybe he was, truly, a little desperate.

He found a bar that he’d never set foot in, as far away from home as his feet would carry him, chose a guy that wasn’t drunk and looked decent enough among the ones that gravitated around him, and texted Taehyung the address of the hotel he ended up in just in case, a habit he’d taken out of every mission he’d done, regardless of whether his friend was involved or not.

Except this time, it wasn’t work. Every step of it looked like work – from the moment he set his eye on this man to the moment they got into bed – but it wasn’t work. Because for the first in forever, he felt like he could let go of control for one second without fearing for his life. He felt like he could let loose, that he could stop counting how long someone was inside him before he wanted to crawl out of his own skin and felt like he could step out of the door any time he wanted without any consequence.

And maybe he was doing this out of desperation, maybe he felt like it was the only way to get what he wanted without thinking of anyone but himself – he could deal with the depth of his unexplored feelings and wonder how a lifetime of self-hatred played in this sudden boost of confidence later.

Maybe this one-night stand wasn’t exactly what his heart and body desired. But if he didn’t care, who else would? This stranger was a good enough replacement for what he couldn’t get just yet.

For now.

Chapter Text

D-Day – H-1

Jimin was running.

He was running full speed ahead towards a part of town he hardly knew but had countless stories about. In this moment, he was surrounded by nothing but endless fields and an empty road lined with potholes. Soon, the landscape would change from unlabored land to abandoned hangars, whose decaying facades could be seen from miles away. But he wasn’t there yet, no, not yet. He had been there once – that one undercover mission with Taehyung, Yoongi and Hoseok that had changed everything. He remembered enough. He’d barely seen the outside of these pseudo abandoned buildings – which everyone in his field of work know were frequent hangouts for gangs, to do all sorts of… exchanges – but he remembered which way he went in and the numerous rooms they’d snuck in. But he had never thought he would go there of his own volition. These were the sort of places that people like Namjoon, Hoseok or Yoongi usually frequented. Not him. He always operated with the upmost discretion.

But silence and prudence were not on the menu today. On this day, he came as himself – without the pretense that accompanied each of his mission, the makeup, the hair, the thinly veiled performance of confidence that usually painted his features. On this day, he was running, his lungs ready to give out at any moment but his legs pushing him forwards despite the pain, a mixture of adrenaline and fear running through his veins like a natural painkiller. He believed he was headed in the right direction – or more so, he clung on to the idea that he must be. He did not have time to be lost today.

He was unmasked, unprotected, armed with nothing but the gun he’d been given years ago by his fellow members as a welcoming gift. It was foolish, to say the least. He only had vague plans of action he was making up along the way, his brain scrambling to come up with every possible scenario that could arise once he got there. He did not have the experience for such a hands-on mission – if he could call it that - nor the knowledge to even envisage how to proceed in unforeseen situations such as these. He just knew that he had to be there on time, or he would regret it for the rest of his life. It was not in his habit to prepare for the worst, alas. Unlike the people he lived with, he had the privilege of not ever having to think of these dire situations. But they came to him anyway – they hadn’t stopped coming, lately, somehow, the misfortune clinging to him like second skin.

Jimin had desperately been trying to reach each and every one of his members on the phone since he’d left. In vain. At any other time, they would have picked up without hesitation, but things had been so quiet at home recently, with missions remaining few and far between and the ever-growing tension keeping everyone apart. No one expected that Jimin would need them today, when he’d been kept out of missions for such a long time. Still, he kept pressing their names on the screen one by one, and each time he reached their voicemails, he pressed someone else’s name again without even looking at the screen, burying the ever-present dread in his stomach.

After what seemed an eternity, a familiar voice came through the phone, a flicker hope during this endless race.  

“Jimin? Where are you?”

“I think… I…” he tried to speak, but he was panting instead, his lungs howling for a break. He stopped dead in his tracks, so he could get the words out without coughing up his organs. “It’s Yoongi. I think he’s been kidnapped.”

***

D-12

Jimin woke up sore and empty from his escapade of the previous night. He did not regret it per say, but he felt slightly foolish for risking being recognized by any unfriendly passerby in the midst of the constant chaos he was in. Still, even if the booming confidence from yesterday seemed to have vanished into thin air, he still felt a certain high from the sense of control he’d acquired the night before, reveling in the sensation that, for once, he’d made a selfish decision based on impulse only. Something he hadn’t allowed himself to do for a long time. At least since he’d started to live on survival mode, years ago, when he was still a teenager.

He got up hazily, looking around the room where he’d scattered the clothes from the previous night. After a quick stretch to erase the soreness out of his aching muscles, he slowly crept up towards Taehyung’s room. As he opened the door quietly, expecting to see his friend fast asleep as the sun was just starting to rise, he was greeted with a sight he had not foreseen. Jungkook all snuck up next to his friend in the bed either.

Once he’d digested his initial surprise, he had to admit it was only a matter of time before he walked in on the two someday. He was just glad they were both clothed and asleep.

“Taehyung,” he whisper-yelled, as he made his way towards the two sleeping figures. “Wake up!”

It was still relatively early in the morning, as he guessed by the soft rays of sunlight that dimly peaked through the window and the raging headache that suggested he’d only had a few hours of sleep.

“Taehyung!” he said, again more forcefully this time while he approached the bed and attempted to sit on the very little unoccupied surface he could find.  

Jungkook was the first to wake up, one eye opening and closing lazily in his daze, as he tried to figure out who the intruder was. Once his eyes crossed Jimin’s, he blushed furiously, sitting up straight at once as if he’d just been electrified. He suddenly appeared wide awake, as if he hadn’t been in deep slumber just a few seconds ago.

“Ah! Uh… Jimin…” he said, visibly flustered. “What are you doing here? I’m… uh…”

“Save your excuses for someone else, kid. I wasn’t born yesterday and I could not care less what you and Taehyung do in private.”

Jungkook nodded cutely, almost childlike, as he looked at Jimin timidly.

“I need to speak with your… uh… boyfriend?” Jimin continued. “So, if you could give us some alone time… please.”

Jungkook blushed some more, but he did not correct Jimin’s choice of word, which the elder noted silently, as he quietly left the room.

As soon as the door closed again, Jimin started to furiously shake Taehyung, who he knew well enough to assume to be feigning his slumber at this instant. His best friend moaned and groaned and complained vehemently about how early it was, until he finally gave up, sitting slowly on his head with a false air of misery on his face. His bed hair was comical, peaking out in every direction, but Jimin held his laughter as he decided to spare his kind friend as he ripped him off of his precious sleep on a day off. After a minute or so and a never-ending eye-rubbing session, Taehyung seemed to finally grasp who was sitting in front of him. Within seconds, Jimin was engulfed into a smothering hug that almost made them both fall off the edge of the bed.  

“Jimin! You’re back!”

Before his friend had time to quiz him on his disappearance of the previous night, Jimin started to retell the events of the day that preceded his reckless escapade – starting with the findings that Yoongi and Seojun had told him about and their desire to draw out a plan before moving forward. Taehyung frowned at the mention of the man who’d caused the rift within their group, and frowned some more when Jimin insisted his friend kept it all to himself, again, including from Jungkook. He then went on to recount what had happened afterwards, once they’d been left alone – how clingy Yoongi had gotten but how easily he always let Jimin go, leaving him uncertain of where the two were currently standing. He continued with the details of the rest of his night  – but still kept to himself how the first part of his evening influenced the rest of it -, earning himself an admittedly well-deserved slap on the arm from his friend for his carelessness.

Taehyung then reached for his hand softly, visible worry in his eyes as he looked at Jimin.

“Are you sure this is right?” he said, keeping his voice down to make sure no intrusive ear would catch his words. “Shouldn’t we all be involved, in case things go wrong? I know you trust Yoongi and his friend but… I can’t help but worry that someone is going to find one of you and, if it turns south, none of us will know until it’s too late.”

“Don’t worry,” Jimin replied, his voice just as hushed as his friend’s. “They know what they’re doing. Besides, I’m sure Yoongi knows that we’ll have to involve Namjoon and the rest eventually. It’s just that if we tell him who’s working with us now… well, it might not go too well, and we can’t waste more time focusing on these two’s petty argument right now.”

Jimin remembered suddenly that he was supposed to meet Yoongi again today, and it filled him with glee, an uncontrollable giggle passing through his lips as he told his friend. The warm feeling still reminded him of his insecurities towards the situation, as he was unsure where to stand with the other man. Were they flirting, or were they still acting as colleagues of some sorts, throwing away the little moments they’d had together in the past few weeks? Were they even friends? He was still unsure, and while the lingering ambiguity in between them stung a little, his desire to see Yoongi remained stronger than his uneasiness towards him.

“You’re in love with him,” Taehyung said matter-of-factly, almost amazed at the bubble of happiness that seemed to surround his friend as soon as he mentioned their fellow member’s name.

It was the first time that these words were spoken out loud, even if they had lived in Jimin’s mind for quite some time and had long felt too precious, too fragile to be said aloud for a while. But this time, he let them be, accepting them as his truth and deciding his feelings were real enough for him to trust them.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “I guess I am.”

The rest of his day was spent waiting and waiting for Yoongi to contact him, as they hadn’t set a time or place to meet the day before, only to find himself disappointed when he received a text saying they’ll have to meet another day.

D-10

Jimin decided he had to find things to do around the house to occupy his busy mind. He’d spent his past few weeks focused entirely on two subjects: Yoongi, and the unnerving knowledge that someone was after him. He figured the two topics triggered emotions too strong for him to continue letting them occupy his every thought any longer. He often found himself slipping into survival mode for brief periods of time, his mind going from the elation that the mere thoughts of other man brought him to the perpetual dread that the make-believe peace they all currently lived in could burst at any time.

He found himself rediscovering some activities that used to occupy his days when he’d first joined the gang. He had been in training back then, and had had a lot of free time as he’d not been capable of helping out with missions just yet. At that time, his mind was filled with a lot of conflicting emotions that he did not know what to do with – anxiety, anger, and a strong desire to erase his past from his memory. Mundane activities had helped him switch his focus off situations he had no control over and channel his unspent energy onto other things. He found that that these activities still helped him today as he pricked himself with a needle three times trying to learn how to sew again and almost burned his hands trying out new recipes.

When he wanted company, he snuck into the living room and spent the rest of his afternoon helping Seokjin with his daily dutied, like accounting or checking nothing was missing around the house – the elder’s “grocery” list ranging anywhere from butter and milk to spare ammunition. He remembered, as he took a look at the complicated spreadsheet his friend used to keep track of their expenses, math used to be one of his strong subjects at school back – when he still went.  He promised himself to continue helping his friend from now on, as it was clear using numbers felt more like to Seokjin than to him.  

The following day, he asked Jungkook to go back to self-defense training and Taehyung happily came along. Despite being thrown around multiple times by his younger friend, Jimin could feel himself improving and he enjoyed the challenge. He made a mental note, as his muscles ached after just a few minutes of activity, that he should train more often. He’d been slacking around the house for too long and felt like his body needed a little bit of action again.

As per usual, Taehyung did the least amount of exercise possible and spent most of their time at the gym laughing at the pair, while eagerly filming Jimin falling to the floor in defeat once more.

“You’ll thank me one day,” Taehyung said, giggling. “When you become as buff and as strong as Jungkook, you’ll look back at these videos fondly and laugh with me.”

This time, Jimin was fairly certain his friend kept these videos just between the three of them. Not that any of their friends would care to look at them.

At night, as he passed by Seokjin and Namjoon’s bedroom, he often heard Seokjin and Namjoon whispering vehemently to one another, a contained argument that seemed to find no resolution. Sometimes, Jimin’s ears would catch Yoongi’s name within their murmurs, usually followed by a silence that meant more than words could tell. He’d always walk away then – this was not his fight to fight, as he always reminded himself, and he refused to play the middleman. He felt like one way or another, if he tried to defend Yoongi or meddle with an argument that did not concern him, he would step over several people’s boundaries, starting with Yoongi’s. He understood that certain feelings had festered before he was even around, and while he still believed that not reaching out to their ostracized member was a failure on their part, he made a point to remain silent about the whole ordeal until someone on either end decided to take responsibility.

D-7

With each day passing by, Jimin became increasingly more present around the house, as he stopped spending his days alone in his room waiting for an update. He slowly started to grow closer to Hoseok again, even if the slight distance that had developed between them had not quite disappeared yet. It was tough to accept, as he realized a few weeks of unspoken feelings had caused such a rift within the group that he somehow felt like he was relearning how to spend time with his friend. He felt like he was as responsible as the rest – his silence on the matter was a choice as much as theirs.

He knew that Hoseok sometimes attempted to mediate some of the most heated arguments Namjoon and Seokjin could have. He’d hear him try to clear the air between the pair, when they thought the rest of the members were not within earshot. He also knew that Hoseok still very much cared about Yoongi. In fact, each conversation they had, he could tell the other was dying to ask about him. But he never did, and thus Jimin never told. 

Jimin realized he still had built-up resentment towards Hoseok – for not going after Yoongi, for not trying to make him stay, for “picking a side” – if any of them were doing such a thing. But he felt, in this moment, that this was not entirely fair and he decided to let it go, as they slowly went back to talking about mundane things, mostly, and things that mattered, sometimes.

They complained about the damp and rainy weather, unbelievably cool for a spring month. They talked about going out to get some food all together soon – but never defined exactly who “together” meant. Hoseok complained about how some close friends of him – members of a gang called the Trumpet Creepers that Jimin had met once in passing – had stopped replying to his texts lately and how he wanted to get back a book he’d lent one of them two months ago. Jimin complained that the book he’d lent to Taehyung was most likely sitting right there, in his bedroom, but that he was worried about what scene he might walk in on if he came in unannounced. They both laughed and wondered when their two friends would officially announce their relationship.

Jimin was just thankful for these peaceful days.  

D-5

Jimin pricked his finger with the needle again, trying to balance the fabric he was using to sew and his phone buzzing for the first time in days. Yoongi sent him the address of a restaurant and told him to meet him there in an hour. He tried, as always, to manage his expectations – and failed.

He was surprised to find Yoongi alone at this meeting. Although the other man had never mentioned Seojun meeting with them in the text, he’d assumed for some reason that this was something alike a business meeting, and thus that the other man would be there. And it was a business meeting, of some sorts, as he had to remind himself while he stupidly looked over the clothes he’d thrown on earlier as if it mattered. This is not a date.  

Once he approached the table and their eyes crossed, Jimin could tell his joy of meeting Yoongi again was shared, but in true Yoongi fashion, the man recomposed himself almost immediately and Jimin decided not to let himself get carried away either. They still had bigger fish to fry.

Yoongi explained to him over a shared pizza that he did find a lead, but Seojun and him were still unsure exactly which… entity or organization they were looking at. Sometime between the main course and dessert, Yoongi slid a piece of paper with a bunch of handwriting on it across the table, which he then described as a list of names of people they believed to be suspicious. He asked Jimin to look at it closely once at home, going through each of the names carefully, and write down whoever he recognized. He told him to take his time doing so, as it would help them move forward and draw out potential suspects.

They walked home silently, the noises of the city surrounding them, an unlikely soundtrack for a movie Jimin had never wanted to star in. He missed not being at the center of an unrehearsed investigation, but it was not as if his life before this incident had been without danger either. And, as tragically thoughtless as it sounded, it gave him a reason to stay close to Yoongi at this time.

As they reached the man’s apartment, Yoongi sighed loudly.

“I wish I could walk you home right now, to make sure you get there safe.”

You can, Jimin thought. Nobody will say anything at home if you do. But his mouth said something else instead.

“At least I got to walk you home for a change,” he said, and Yoongi laughed quietly at his words.

“I’m not sure anyone’s ever done that before,” he replied. “Or if anyone ever thought I needed protecting.”

“Who said it’s about protecting?” Jimin smiled.

Soon after, they were waving goodbye again.

D-4

Jimin stared at the list of names blankly for hours but none of them rang any bells. Some names sounded vaguely familiar but he was unable to pinpoint if he’d ever known any of these people or if he’d just heard similar names in passing. After a while, his mind started playing tricks on him the longer he stared at the list, every single name sounding weirder and less familiar the more he read them. He realized he did not know a lot of people’s last names anyway – it was not that necessary an information to remember to take someone to bed and learn all their secrets - and settled on putting squiggly lines under the ones that seemed familiar enough. He sent a picture back to Yoongi of the paper with his own markings, apologizing for the lack of clear results.

He received no response on that day and just moved on from the cursed list.

D-3

Faced with silence again, Jimin decided to text Yoongi first for once, wondering if he got the list just fine. Yoongi thanked him briefly, letting him know he still had more poking around to do and needed to pull on a few more threads before he could give Jimin any substantial update.

Jimin – 8:56 pm

Be careful

Min Yoongi – 10:34 pm

As always

Jimin knew it was for his own safety that Yoongi was keeping everything so hushed right now and disclosing as little as possible about his progress, but that did not mean he had to like it.

D-2

Jimin spent the day working with Seokjin while the others were out. He enjoyed doing tasks that required him to use his brain for a change, something he did not have to do since he’d left school a long time ago. More so, he felt grateful discovering the amount of work his friend did while they were usually all busy with missions. Their schedules were always planned like clockwork because of Seokjin’s precision and patience in fixing everything behind the scenes. Jimin found himself in awe at all the things he never realized was being done for him, and a little bit ashamed for only appreciating it now.

While he took notice of his phone remaining silent again throughout the day, he tried not to think much of it. Yoongi came to him whenever he had concrete progress, or something to ask of him. He had to trust that things were going well, or else he’d have been warned by now. There was not much he could do for the time being, except waiting and keeping himself busy in the meantime.

Seokjin asked him about Yoongi at least twice – but only simple questions about the man’s wellbeing as to not put his friend in hot water, and Jimin was more than happy to reply without feeling like he was overstepping boundaries. 

Dinner came with a “surprise” announcement from Taehyung and Jungkook. Everyone around the table cheered for them as they revealed their relationship, the entire table demonstrating their horrendous acting skills as they pretended to be taken aback by the news.

Jimin sent a text to Yoongi telling him the news once they were all done eating. He got a simple smiling emoji in return. A bit too concise a text, even for a man of few words, but he guessed it meant he was busy still, despite the late hours.

D-1

His day went by excruciatingly slowly. Everyone went in and out of the house, until they all disappeared to go on separate missions and he knew he was not going to see anyone until the next morning. He found himself restless and nervous for a reason he could not explain. He should have learned how to occupy his own time by now, but his usual activities did not suffice to calm his nerves.

His mind went on an anxiety trip, focused only on the way being left out of missions made him feel – useless and aimless - rather than the rationality of the situation – the risk of being murdered, or worse, used as a leverage for someone to get to his friends. At times like these, his reasoning found no place for subtility, it was all black and white – even if not going on mission was ultimately his job, even if no one had forced him, even if it was for his own good, even if this situation was much bigger than just him and his feelings.

He no longer expected to get daily updates from Yoongi these days – but he was still longing to hear some, especially after the fiasco of the list that added to his lingering guilt over not being particularly useful and just waiting around. Ultimately, Yoongi was sacrificing his time and safety to help him. And while it only came naturally for any member of the gang to watch each other’s backs, the circumstances made it a little less like a regular security hazard and a little more like risking someone else’s life for his – a callous trade-off he would have rather avoided.

He sometimes wondered if Yoongi would have made peace with Namjoon if this had not occurred. If the situation had not been so urgent that it allowed Yoongi to brush it all under the rug and not think about their fractured relationship and how to mend it without throwing their misplaced egos out the window… An impossible feat, Jimin believed, but he also knew there were part of their shared history that he did not know enough about to understand why they so easily split over a single argument. He knew Yoongi was never the best with words nor showing his true feelings, and given the fact that he’d been the one to run away, he had not expected him to do the first move. He also knew that Namjoon could become absolutely stubborn once he’d convinced himself he’d done the ‘right’ thing, even though Jimin believed it was the lack of trust more than the poor choice of words that had hurt Yoongi the most.

With this in mind, Jimin sent Yoongi another text, just checking on how the other man is doing, before falling asleep.

D-Day – H-2

Jimin was ripped away from a peaceful dream, something from another reality where they all knew one another but worked in a much less somber business, from the annoyingly insistent commotion of his phone furiously buzzing on his nightstand. He found several calls from a number he did not know. On most days, he would have turned off his phone and gone back to bed, but something about the insistence of the caller, the early hour and the fact that everyone was still out working missions told him he should pick up.

The panicked voice that filled his ears the second he answered the call confirmed him that he made the right choice. It took him a few seconds to figure out who this voice belonged to and a few more to comprehend what was being said frantically in his ear.

“Jimin, are you home? Are you safe?” Seojun almost shouted the second he picked up the call, not waiting for Jimin to answer his questions before continuing. His tone was distressed and urgent, as if he had too much to tell and too little time to do so. “I came to check on Yoongi this morning, okay? Because we’ve been in contact pretty much every single day recently and I knew he was pulling on certain threads a little bit too much despite my warnings these past few days. So, I thought, I have to get to this kid before he makes more himself more enemies because this isn’t his thing, spying, getting information, that’s usually your thing, I guess, and he isn’t used to digging around in people’s dirt. Anyway, I got here ten minutes ago – and the door was wide open, and I knew something was wrong immediately, and of course there was stuff all over the room when I came in as if there was a fight and… oh God… I have eyes on everyone, I usually see these things coming…”

Seojun seemed to regain control over his thoughts on the other side, giving Jimin a few seconds for his brain to catch up to what had not been said yet, the fear of the inevitable slowly creeping up from his stomach to the rest of his body, the dread running like poison through his veins and chilling his blood.

“There’s no one there, Jimin. His phone is there, all his stuff is there – including all his weapons - but he is not and I knew immediately he would not have just gone out of the door like this, unarmed and without any means to contact either of us. So… I… I don’t know, I remembered everyone he’s told me about in the past few days and I did what I usually do and managed to intercept a phone call from someone he thought was suspect and I think… I think I know where they took.”

“So why aren’t you on your way?” Jimin said, and he did not mean it accusingly but in his own anxiety-ridden tone, it came out that way anyway.

“If I leave, and someone else comes back, they’ll find you. They’ll find stuff about you, and not just you, the rest of your gang as well. The door is wide open and they just have to walk in and find all the stuff he was researching about,” Seojun replied more calmly somehow, and Jimin did not understand how that explained why he was not already running to find his kidnapped friend that he partially raised and introduced into this violent world they lived in, if he indeed knew or even had an inkling about where he was at this very moment. Until Seojun spoke again. “You know, when we started all this, he made me promise that, if something ever happened to him, I’d make sure no one can get to you.”

Jimin found his mind stuck in between two choices at this very instant. Either let the paralysis that had started to take over his body continue its course, leaving his entire being to the mercy of panic and hopelessness, or let the tiny flicker of hope left somewhere in his grief-stricken heart guide him instead. Somehow, the thought that something bad could have happened to Yoongi already, and that something worse could still be yet to come if no one moved, prompted that small gleam of hope to grow and grow, his adrenaline kicking, his muddled thoughts turning into an improvised plan of action.

“I’ll go,” he said, fear still very much present in his voice but now mixed with an unprecedented assurance. “Just give me the address.”

“Are you sure? I don’t think it’s a good idea, Jimin. Isn’t someone more experience with you? Can’t they go inst-“

“Please,” he was almost whining into the phone now, trying desperately not to let the anguish take over him again. “I’ll call the others. I’ll find a way. But I have to go, I can’t just stay there and wait… I have to go… I have to be there….”

Seojun conceded, warning him that he should not go there alone without someone who knew what there were doing as it could very much be a trap. Jimin was only half-listening, until he heard the address. He knew the place, more or less, he’d been there once before. It was quite far from where they lived, and all their cars had been taken by the other members, but he figured out he could get there in less than two hours if he ran fast enough.

Two hours… It might not be long enough but that was the only shot he had for the moment.

Jimin ended the call, telling Seojun to stay and guard the apartment and to call him immediately if someone else showed up. He dressed himself in record time, tucked his gun into his belt, searched the house promptly for extra ammunition, closed the door and ran.

*

H-1

Jimin stopped running to catch his breath when he heard a car slowing down next to him. His hand immediately went up to his gun, ready to fire right away, when he recognized the license plate of the black sedan next to him. One of the tinted windows rolled down and Jimin saw that it was Seokjin behind the wheel.

“Get in, quickly,” his friend told him.

He found Hoseok at the back, one leg bouncing up and down nervously, and Namjoon in the passenger seat. Their leader’s face is painted with worry and it was not a good look on him.

“You took your time,” was all he managed to say, still panting as he slid on the backseat next to Hoseok.

“Jimin,” he said in a weird tone laced with anxiety, guilt and worry as soon as Jimin closed the door behind him. “I’m sorry, I…”

“Now’s not the time, Namjoon,” Seokjin cut him before he had time to go on. “And besides, Jimin’s not the one we need to apologize to. Right now, we have to figure out what we’re going to do when we get there.”

Jimin had enough time along the way to think of several plans of action, including what he would do if he had backup – his best option, frankly. He never took charge during missions before, instead letting his fellow members tell him what to do, but for once he felt it was legitimate for him to give orders.

“I know an alternative entry to the main hangar – the one Hoseok and Yoongi made Taehyung and I go through the last time we came here. I’ll go in this way, and I’ll try to sneak in. I remember the corridors and most of the rooms on this side of the building well enough to find places to hide along the way if needed. In the meantime, Hoseok and Namjoon should get in the main entrance.”

“Make as much noise as we can”, Hoseok said, catching up to Jimin’s plan. “Be a distraction to your presence, while you look around for him.”

“Exactly. Seokjin, I think it would be better if you parked far enough that they can’t see us come in, somewhere in the fields where the tall grass can more or less hide the car, and just stay there as a watchman. Just look out for any other car passing by, in case they call for any backup. For all we know, they could have spies lying around and they already know we’re coming.”

Seokjin nodded.

“Is it safe for us to split up and for you to go on your own?” the older man asked. “Do you feel confident in this plan, Jimin?”

Jimin appreciated the way his friend tried to comfort his own worries without doubting his leadership. He often felt inadequate even being amongst them, but maybe he had hidden qualities he himself had been unaware of. He still wished he did not have to be in such a dire situation to find out about them.

“Nothing is safe in this situation,” he said, surprising himself once again about how leveled and poised his voice stayed despite how shaky he felt on the inside. “But I believe it’s the best shot we’ve got. Seojun intercepted a few calls and texted me more information about what he thinks is going on inside. It’s not much and might not be accurate but it’s worth noting, still.”

He noticed a few reactions from his friends this time around, namely Hoseok grimacing after hearing the name of the man who caused the rift in their group and Seokjin raising an eyebrow towards Namjoon. He could not catch their leader’s expression, however, his face still turned away from Jimin.

“He believes there are four or five people inside at the moment and has not heard anything about potential backups coming,” he continued regardless, reading through the many texts he’d received since he’d left.

“Four or five people…” Namjoon said, speaking for the first time in a while. “Nothing we can’t handle.”

“Right. He says they seem to be talking to their leader – whoever he is – mostly and they don’t say much about their intentions, they talk about such things as a ransom or a confrontation but in vague details. Nothing seems decided. None of them seem to believe we’re after them yet, from what they said they think we still haven’t found out he’s missing because he was isolated.”

He scrolled through more messages, lots of it just bits of information that Seojun seemed to write in real time that did not help them much. Until something caught his attention.

“Oh. From their conversations, he believes Yoongi is still alive. At least, from what he told me ten minutes ago.”

They all nodded somberly, and no one made any comment until they arrived close enough to the hangars that Seokjin could park according to Jimin’s plan and they could act out their plan.

Soon enough, Jimin found himself crawling around through the tall grass. He believed it would take him at least a quarter of an hour of dragging himself through the dirt to reach the hidden entrance. He silently prayed to no one that he did not cross anyone’s path once he’d go inside, as between the hours of running and this, his physical condition was not the best. Still, his aching muscles managed to push him further and further somehow, until he could see the broken vent he had to reach. He took a minute to catch his breath than ran quickly towards the vent, climbed up the wall using the windowsill and inserted himself down the vent, feet first. Just a few meters into the narrow passage, he found the same trap that Hoseok had showed him his first time around and slid down the hole, gracefully falling into an empty room.

He looked around quickly before crouching down to avoid being seen. The room was furnished like an abandoned office, just like all the ones who lined the sides of the hangar, if he remembered well. They all had large windows that gave into the long corridor that followed this side of the hangar. He knew that, at the end of this corridor, there was a door somewhere that should lead to a much wider, much emptier room. If someone was bound to be hidden away, it could be there as, without the broken vent, it would be an extremely difficult part of the building to reach without being seen by going through the main entrance. He just had to place his bets on this.

As soon as he started crawling again, he heard gunshots in the distance, coming from other side of the building. A sign that Hoseok and Namjoon had gone in and been seen. He did not have time to spare a thought for his fellow members, choosing to trust them to stay alive as he always had. He continued to crawl, his clothes getting ashier as they rubbed against the dirty floor and his arms aching from the strain. His skin started to bleed around his forearms from encountering all kinds of little things left around on the floor – nails, screws, old pens, clips and all sorts of other office supplies left around long enough that most of it looked old and rusty.

Eventually, he reached the final room, which he believed would be the closest to the door he was looking for. He stopped behind the door for a second, peaking in through the windows to check no one was in the corridor.

A sudden noise caused him to jump to the floor quickly, hiding behind the nearest desk. The sound of quick steps resonated through the corridor as someone ran past the room he was hiding in. When he heard silence again, Jimin got up again, tentatively looking through the window again to find the corridor empty. From the direction the sound was travelling in, he could guess someone left the room he wished to rejoin and ran towards the other side of the building. The side where Namjoon and Hoseok had gone in.

Good, he thought. Their distraction was working.

He left the office quickly before someone else arrived, and walked through the corridor quietly but swiftly until he reached what he hoped to be the door he was looking for.

He expected the door to be locked or jammed shut as he reached for the handle, one hand on his gun just in case, but it opened without effort.

He expected an alarm to go off or someone to jump towards him as he pushed the door open, but everything remained perfectly quiet.

He expected to find at least one of the kidnappers in the gigantically vast, empty hangar as he went in but no one was there.

Except in the middle of the room, a man sitting on a chair, unconscious, tidied up around the shoulders, the waist and the ankles, his clothes rumpled and bloodied.

Yoongi.

Jimin’s heart started to beat disturbingly fast as he recognized him.

If there was a camera lying around or someone waiting to trap him behind the door, they would both be fucked as he forgot all reason entirely and ran towards the man without thinking twice. He ran his hand in front of the man’s mouth as soon as he reached him, sighing with relief as he felt him inhale against his skin.

His heart sank again as he realized which condition Yoongi was in. His face was riddled with thin little cuts, clearly made with a fine knife, and on his temples, neck and chin appeared shadows of what he could only guess would soon become bruises. His skin and lips had cracked at several points, little red pools adding to a pitiful picture.

Jimin realized the damage was even more serious as his eyes reached the rest of his body, his clothes darkened in several spots by the blood that had spilled, suggesting they were deeper cuts underneath.

Before he could even think of how he was going to carry Yoongi out of there without causing more pain, before he realized that there were still in a dangerous place, within enemy territory, Jimin reached for Yoongi’s face delicately, trying to avoid any bruised or cut skin and bent down towards him, leaving a soft kiss on the man’s forehead. He felt an immense sadness after seeing someone he looked up to and cared for so much, someone that had always looked as strong and reliable as a mountain to him, seem so vulnerable and weak. As relieved as he was to have found him, he realized suddenly that he could very much lose them all – a fact that he’d known but barely considered, as he was used to them coming home safe and sound, with a few scratches and injuries at most.

The sudden touch startled Yoongi into waking up, his eyes darting around him, panicked and alert until he saw Jimin. His eyes widened as he looked at the younger man standing in front of him.

“Jimin,” he said in a weak voice, wincing the cuts and injuries all over his face and torso seemed to manifest themselves. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here!”

Jimin began to untie the ropes that surround him.

“I’ve come to find you,” he replied, keeping his voice voluntarily calm as to not startle the other any further. “Turns out you do need protecting after all.”

“Are you alone?” Yoongi asked worriedly. He was still looking around the room, waiting for someone to appear at any time.

“No, I’m not,” Jimin replied. “I need to secure an escape that doesn’t rough you up even more.”

He started to text Seokjin, asking him to get closer to the building.

I’ve got him. I’ll have to squeeze us both through a window, can’t go through the vent. Tell the others we’re leaving.

He reached for Yoongi’s body without waiting for a reply, carrying him bridal style.

“You’re lighter than I thought,” he said quietly, trying to keep the atmosphere still light despite the situation. Yoongi laughed softly with the little strength he had.

Jimin could tell the walk out of the room and through the corridor was not without pain for the other man as he saw Yoongi biting his already bloody lip.

“I’m sorry, this part will hurt even more,” he warned him as he walked across the room he’d been hiding in minutes ago and opened one of the windows that gave into the outside of the building. He spotted Seokjin’s car fifty meters away from where he was standing and waved quietly for him to get closer. Squeezing them both through the window was a challenge, and he heard Yoongi grunting as his arms and chest grazed the edges of the window. As soon as they were out, Jimin ran towards the car. He could hear noises in the distance, and the occasional gunshot, a sign that their two members had already taken the fight outside to make a quick escape. Jimin reached for the door handle, carefully placed Yoongi in the middle of the backseat and sat next to him.

“I’m going to move closer to Hoseok and Namjoon,” Seokjin said as he closed the door behind him. “As soon as I stop the car, let’s open the doors so they can get in quickly and we’ll get moving immediately.”

Yoongi leaned heavily onto Jimin as Seokjin started the car again, driving roughly in a way that could not be comfortable for the wounded. He stopped at a corner of a building and Jimin reached over Yoongi to open the door on the other side of the backseat, as Seokjin did in the front.

Less than a minute later, Hoseok and Namjoon appeared out of the corner, running in full speed towards the car. They reached it just in time for a man to appear out of the same spot, sprinting after them as well. As soon as they closed the door, the man stopped dead in his tracks, reaching for his gun and aiming for the now full vehicle.

“Time to book it,” Seokjin said, turning the car around violently and driving in full speed out of the parking lot that surrounded the old hangars. The man fired and missed a couple times before he disappeared into the distance.

“No one hurt?” Seokjin asked.

Everyone shook their head except Yoongi.

“Yoongi, are you okay?” Namjoon asked from the passenger seat, turning around to see the roughed-up man sprayed over, taking up most of the space on the backseat while Hoseok and Jimin were just squeezed onto the doors on the side. Their leader glanced at Yoongi’s visible injuries, the guilt and worry drawing lines on his young forehead.

“I’ve had better days,” Yoongi replied softly, brushing off his concerns with one hand. “Let’s talk later.”

He continued to lean heavily on Jimin, his eyes closed, until his head leaned forward and found the younger man’s shoulder. Soon, Jimin could hear him inhaling and exhaling softly as he’d fallen into slumber again.

Meanwhile, Seokjin was taking small dirt road after small dirt road across the fields, avoiding the obvious highway to try to get the man off their tracks, had he had time to reach a car and decide to follow them. Eventually, they reached an unknown village and Seokjin was able to slow down, trying to avoid any suspicions from locals, and tried to find his way home without taking busy roads.

Jimin stared outside the window the whole way through, endless fields replaced by little shops and charming rural houses, children happily clutching their parents’ hands on the sidewalk and old couples crossing the road when the sign turned green.

The fatigue of this long, strenuous day seemed to finally catch up to him, his mind clouding and eyelids getting heavier and heavier until he leaned against the window and let his eyes close.

We’ll get home safe, he thought, and before they even reached the city, he fell asleep too. 

*

Much later into the evening, Jimin was crouching down in front of a shirtless Yoongi, who was sitting uncomfortably on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor as Jimin reached for the cotton pads and disinfectant under the sink.

Jimin had decided for all of them, as they’d arrived and found Taehyung and Jungkook waiting for them worriedly in the living room, that Yoongi had gone through enough for the day and that they would wait until the next day to discuss what had happened and what they should do next. Their wounded member had not even woken up while Seokjin had carried him out of the car, into the house and laid him on his bed. Jimin had let him sleep into the afternoon to recuperate a little.

He’d let himself lie down too after texting a recap of their successful escape to Seojun, choosing not to participate in the hushed conversations that went down in the living room. His muscles had ached from head to toe from overstimulation and he’d enjoyed the comfort and quiet of his bedroom much more than usual in this moment. He knew that soon enough there would painful conversations, explanations to give and difficult decisions to make, especially since the others were lacking the context that both Jimin and Yoongi had. But he needed his mind to stay calm, stormless for just an instant. He’d closed his eyes and dozed off for a little bit, his imagination roaming free as he had once again dreamed of better days.

He had woken up later in the evening feeling dizzy but rested and crawled into Yoongi’s room, waking the man up to disinfect his wounds.

The cuts that lined his stomach, chest and forearms were ugly and surely painful, but they were not as deep as Jimin had feared and he was certain they would not take longer than a few weeks to heal completely.

Yoongi gritted his teeth as Jimin started applying the disinfectant on the wounds, breathing in through the pain slowly as the other cleaned them off as delicately as he could. It was an awful sight to see, but Jimin tried to center his thoughts on the relief he felt at Yoongi being here – not only with him, but back in the house, where he belonged.

“You sir will have to lie down for a couple of days at least,” he said as he noticed grotesquely hideous bruises were started to appear as well in between cuts and on his neck and face.

“Great,” Yoongi laughed despite his discomfort. “My favorite activity.”

“Tell me if it hurts,” Jimin said, even though he already knew it did.

Yoongi nodded but said nothing as he continued to endure the pain, peaceful silence taking over the dimly lit bathroom.

Jimin was almost done when Yoongi pushed his hand delicately from the wound he was treating. Before Jimin had time to look up and ask why, Yoongi leaned towards him, pressing his lips onto his softly but with a hint of desperation. The kiss was sloppy, until Jimin went passed his initial surprise and remembered to kiss back. He leaned into it some more, dropping the dirty swab in his hand to reach over Yoongi’s neck, steadying the other man’s growing fervor, eager to deepen the kiss once Jimin allowed him. Soon, they found their own rhythm between Yoongi’s longing hunger and Jimin’s tenderness. Steady, quiet and sincere. Like they’d always been.