Archive of Our Own

To be fair to himself, Jungkook is growing. And stuff. He's seven years old and the markings on his wall say that he's at least an inch taller than six months ago, which is - a lot, okay. It's an inch.

But Seokjin is - Seokjin is like an adult. He's like five feet tall. That's - that's something.

Next to him, Jungkook should feel small. Young. Immature. And he does. But somehow it doesn't matter because Seokjin still smiles at him, still plays baseball with him in the streets, and still - likes him. Somehow.

They don't live next door to each other. The exact gap between his house and Seokjin's is hard to define because it's random and unimportant, not quite across the street and not quite two houses down. Jungkook has known him since he was a little kid. Seokjin has known him since he was eight.

They don't go to the same school. Their parents aren't best of friends. Seokjin is the tallest kid on his street, and he's Jungkook's only friend, and that's about as far as it goes.

Jungkook in his old, worn shorts - not because he doesn't have other pairs but because no living force can get him to change them - splattered in mud and grass and nothing good. He doesn't even reach Seokjin's shoulders, but he throws the ball a whole lot higher than him. And Seokjin, in his jeans with holes he put there on purpose, in shirts he's ironed but somehow never look it. He throws okay. He isn't great, but as Jungkook's only friend, he has to make do.

Seokjin has a lot of friends. Jungkook's mom says it's because he's a sweet kid. Jungkook's dad says it's because he's a good fellow. Seokjin himself says it's because he's worldwide handsome, and Jungkook thinks he sort of sucks.

Seokjin has a lot of friends, and he walks home with them sometimes, and Jungkook watches with his muddy face pressed to the window and wonders if he'll ever be as tall as them all. If he'll ever be as cool.

Then Seokjin will spot him at his window and wave, grinning his weird lopsided grin, like Jungkook is cool already. And Jungkook will grin back, or duck if someone else spots him, or stick his tongue out, if he's in a mood.

Seokjin is his best friend. He's tall and weird and Jungkook's best friend.

He'll catch up to him someday.

/

At nine years old, Jungkook is proud to say that he can hit a home run - if it means hitting the ball over his roof and crushing something on the other side.

The point is that Seokjin can't catch it. So technically he's hit a home run.

"You know what," Seokjin decides, staring in dismay in the direction of the ball's disappearance. "I don't even like baseball."

"You have to!" Jungkook says, running from base to base. The bases are just shoes set up at regular intervals. What they're playing is barely baseball. Jungkook doesn't care.

"I really don't," Seokjin decides. He sits right there, on the ground, in the middle of the street. No one really drives here, so anything is safe.

Jungkook slows down before he makes it to the next shoe-base. "You just don't like losing," he supplies.

"Yeah, that too."

"...what do you want to play, hyung?" he asks, because he needs to be nice to the only friend he has. No one else will play with him.

"Let's play sit-in-one-place-forever."

"...that's no fun."

"It's funner."

Jungkook comes to stand in front of him, making a face. Seokjin is unaffected.

"I know," Seokjin says suddenly, waving at him to sit down next to him. "I'll show you how to turn on street lights."

"...huh?"

"See those?" Seokjin says, pointing at the unimpressive lights to the side of the street. It's almost evening, not yet dark, so the poles aren't really doing anything besides being poles.

"You can't turn them on," Jungkook says, because he knows some things about the world, thank you very much. "The government does."

Seokjin raises his eyebrows. "Really?" he says. "You think the government would bother with a bunch of buttons when they have things like hunger and poverty?"

Jungkook doesn't quite follow, but the expression on Seokjin's face tells him that the government wouldn't bother at all. He frowns, confused. "Then who turns them on?"

"We do."

"...no we don't."

"Not always," Seokjin agrees, checking his watch for some reason. "But we can. The lights turn on when you need them to." He pulls Jungkook in a bit closer so he can point at a light and ensure that they're both looking at the same one. "Now we're going to stare at that one, okay? Keep staring and ask it to turn on."

"Turn on, turn on, turn on," Jungkook repeats dutifully, staring as hard as he can.

"You can ask in your head," Seokjin says.

Turn on, turn on, turn on, Jungkook repeats.

They sit like that for a while, Jungkook concentrating harder than he ever has in his life, Seokjin seeming rather amused for someone who's said that the lights would turn on and hasn't yet delivered.

And then, suddenly, the street light turns on.

Jungkook stares in awe.

"See?" Seokjin says, smug. "They turn on when you ask."

It's very cool.

/

When Jungkook is ten, his feet are finally big enough for his brother's cast down roller blades.

They're a bit ugly, with broken laces and bright orange wheels, but Jungkook scrubs them clean and pretends they look awesome. Seokjin threads new laces through the holes because Jungkook is too excited to think it a genuine problem, and he's barely finished tying them before Jungkook is standing up, bracing his arms against the wall, wobbling in every direction but grinning too wide.

"You're going to fall," Seokjin tells him, more amused than worried. If anything he's probably waiting for Jungkook to fall so he can point and laugh for the next three years.

"I'm skating!" Jungkook insists, wobbling a few inches and nearly falling face flat. It's hard to hold onto a wall, it turns out. They're kind of flat.

"Yeah, no," Seokjin says. He's wearing sneakers himself - he says he's fully capable of putting one foot in front of another and doesn't need to roll, thank you very much. He keeps staring at Jungkook, still probably waiting for him to fall.

Jungkook doesn't fall. He doesn't do much else either.

"Okay, crash course," Seokjin starts, rubbing his hands together. Then he pauses, with a wicked grin. "Get it? Crash course?"

Jungkook groans. "Go away, hyung," he decides.

"Okay, okay, crash course," Seokjin starts again, and then cracks up once more. Jungkook tries to kick him. It's not the best idea. He wobbles too much and nearly topples, and stops himself with this weird spider man hold on the wall.

"Rule number one," Seokjin says, "Is don't wobble."

"Thanks, that helps a lot."

"Don't mention it. Rule number two, forget that you have feet."

"...what."

"Forget you have feet. From now on you have rolls. I mean. Wheels."

Jungkook just stares at him. Why are they friends. Why are they anything. How can Seokjin still be so damned taller than him when his brain clearly hasn't grown at all.

"It's good advice, okay," Seokjin says, looking a bit put out. "It's how I was taught. You pretend you're a machine with wheels. Move like a machine with wheels. None of this ugly human feet nonsense."

Jungkook stares some more. Then he stares at his feet. I'm a machine with wheels, he tells himself, because as crazy as Seokjin sounds sometimes he's usually sort of right. No more ugly feet. I'm a machine with wheels.

He moves one foot forward. Wobbles a bit. Brings the next foot ahead as well.

"That's it," Seokjin says, encouraging, even though Jungkook has accomplished next to nothing. He holds out both his hands for Jungkook to take. It's an effort, to let go of the wall and change targets, but he manages to grasp Seokjin's hands at last. They're larger than his, firmer, and he holds Jungkook steady on his unsteady feet.

"A machine with wheels," Seokjin says, tugging him forward gently.

"A machine with wheels," Jungkook repeats dutifully, trying to follow him.

He makes it quite a few feet without falling on his face, hands held strong in Seokjin's grip. He forgets about the terrible crash course joke. He forgets that he should be doing this with his brother but that his brother wasn't interested. He's a machine with wheels and he can roll and Seokjin who is stupidly taller will hold him up.

/

At eleven years old, Jungkook is the proud owner of his own lousy telescope.

"It's a toy," Seokjin tells him, every time Jungkook waves it in his face. "You can't see shit with it."

Seokjin is the kind of person who says shit every chance he gets when he's out of his mother's earshot. Jungkook tried it a couple of times too, but his friend just hit him over the head.

"You can see the whole world," Jungkook insists, holding the telescope up to his eye. The sky is dark, and he can see the moon. A little bit bigger, a little bit whiter than it looks without the telescope.

"That's the moon," Seokjin deadpans.

"...you can see the whole world and the moon," Jungkook corrects.

"You can't see a thing," Seokjin repeats stubbornly, because he's older and does experiments with lenses and stuff and is always prepared to make speeches about it. He grabs it out of Jungkook's hands and holds it up to his own eye, his face squishing up in concentration. "See, you can barely see through those windows."

"...you're not supposed to look through windows."

"But it should be possible, yeah?" He adjusts the setting on the side, rolling the lenses out further. It clearly does nothing, because Seokjin hands it back, frowning.

Jungkook holds it up to his eye again, looking up at the dark. It can't make the dark bigger than it is, but it feels that way to him anyway. "I think it's cool," he decides, because it's his telescope. It's cool.

"You think a lot of things are cool, Jungkookie," Seokjin points out.

"That doesn't make them any less cool."

There's a sound behind them - muffled voices from inside the house. Seokjin's parents are shouting at each other - there's the sound of something crashing. A short shriek and a muffled apology. Both he and Seokjin pretend they don't hear a thing.

"The thing is," Seokjin says, voice completely unaffected. "They don't sell the cool stuff to kids. They think it doesn't matter how far we can see as long as we see something."

"But we do see something," Jungkook says, turning the telescope towards Seokjin's face. It makes him look like a blob. "You look like a blob, hyung."

Seokjin snatches it away from him and whacks him on the head with it, too lightly for it to hurt. There are more angry noises from indoors that they ignore.

"There's lots more to see," Seokjin says, shutting the telescope like it's completely pointless. "It's all out there."

"Like aliens?"

"I guess," Seokjin hums. He points up at some of the stars in the sky. "You see that?"

"See what."

"The lights."

"...the stars?"

Seokjin shakes his head. "The lights. You think they're all stars, but how do you know?"

/

When Jungkook is twelve, Seokjin gets a part time job at an ice cream store.

He doesn't give Jungkook free ice cream. Jungkook doesn't see the point to him working there if he doesn't give him free ice cream. He makes a point to ask for it every day, stopping by the shop with his skateboard tucked under his shoulder, baseball cap pulled backwards on his head because that's what the cool kids at school wear it like.

"No free food," Seokjin says, every time he enters. Then he reaches out and pulls Jungkook's cap back around so that it's covering his eyes like it should.

Every time he enters.

"I'm broke," Jungkook says, trying to look pitiful.

"You don't even earn," Seokjin deadpans.

"I do chores and stuff."

"Chores and stuff," Seokjin repeats, his voice pitched just slightly off enough for it to be mocking. There's another boy behind the counter who Jungkook knows is one of his friends from school. He doesn't know how he knows this.

"Give the kid an ice cream," the boy says, since he asks so often it's probably getting on his nerves.

"Give the kid an ice cream," Jungkook repeats.

"Shoo," Seokjin says instead, waving him away. And while Jungkook likes annoying him he isn't a total brat, so he usually shoos when he's told to.

He skateboards around the area until Seokjin comes back, and then they sit on Seokjin's front porch and Jungkook tells him about school and Seokjin tells him about school and they both tell each other about how much they hate a lot of things. Jungkook wonders why his brother never hangs out with him and Seokjin wishes his father was never around.

He tells Jungkook about constellations that don't exist, spaceships that he swears are right there out of sight. He tells him that the entire sky could be an illusion and that it might crack and show them the truth someday.

He points upwards and says look, and tells him of things Jungkook can't see.

Sometimes, if the timing is good, and if the stars are aligned just right - then Seokjin will go back inside and bring him a bowl of ice cream. It's never a lot, and always vanilla - neither of them really likes vanilla - but it's still sort of the best part of Jungkook's day.

/

The trouble starts when Jungkook is thirteen.

He doesn't leave his house on the final day, opting instead to stand at his window and watch Seokjin's house in growing numbness.

I'll come back in the summer, Seokjin told him, over and over. I'm not dying, Kook-ah, I'm just going to college.

It's what his brother said to his mom a year ago when he left. Jungkook hasn't seen him since.

Seokjin is piling stuff up on top of his car - cardboard boxes and a mattress roll, all of it dull and boring and not like Seokjin at all. He catches Jungkook staring once and tries smiling, tries waving, but Jungkook won't go downstairs. Nothing can make him.

He's not going to say good bye.

He stands there for maybe an hour, maybe longer. Neither of Seokjin's parents come out to help him load the car. It should make Jungkook guilty enough to go and help him, but it doesn't.

He's going to be alone.

Finally, when Seokjin is done, and he's finished tying his things down and covering it up with a sheet just in case it rains, he turns back to Jungkook again. Then he sighs and starts to cross the street, over to Jungkook's house.

Jungkook ducks under the window.

It's stupid and not effective at all, because Seokjin rings the doorbell half a minute later and his mom lets him in with all smiles and warmth because everyone loves him, and another minute later Seokjin is standing at the door of his room.

"Jungkook-aah," he drawls, and his voice is so different, so wrong. "Don't make me sad."

Jungkook frowns. He keeps his face pressed against the wall, eyes squeezed shut. He's not going to say goodbye.

"Come on," Seokjin tries. "It's only a few months."

It's years, Jungkook's mind corrects. It's literal years - and that's if Seokjin ever comes back, to the disaster of a place he calls home.

He doesn't want him to go.

He can't let him go.

"Here, I brought you something," Seokjin says, sitting next to him to lean against the wall. Jungkook feels him settle down, blocking some of the light. He keeps his eyes firmly shut. Seokjin puts something down on the floor between them with a small clink. Probably a bowl of food. It's always been easy to bribe him with food.

Not this time.

"Jungkookiiie," Seokjin tries again. He actually sounds upset.

"I don't want you to go," Jungkook mumbles into the wall. It hurts. He's scared he might cry, and then he really will be the uncool kid that Seokjin never should have befriended.

"I don't want to go either," Seokjin says. "You're my only friend too."

"I'm not," Jungkook hisses, "I'm not."
Seokjin is oddly quiet. They sit like that for a while, in the silence, putting off everything that needs to happen.

Seokjin pats him on the head, once, twice, before pressing something into his hands. Jungkook opens his eyes in surprise - it's a small glass jar, the size of his palm. Something is buzzing quietly inside.

He chances a look up at Seokjin, and is startled that - his eyes are red. He looks so tired. So sad.

"It's a firefly," he says. "I caught it a while ago - you can't keep it in for long, okay? No longer than a day or it'll get sad. When you let it out all the other fireflies will come out to see it, and the entire sky will light up."

"You've seen it?"

"Of course I've seen it. Fireflies attract each other, where one appears, the others follow."

Jungkook stares at the jar in his hands, trying to distract him from what's happening. The small bug buzzes pitifully inside.

He's never seen more than one firefly at a time.

Before he can say anything Seokjin pulls him into a hug. They don't hug often, not like this - they usually do headlocks and back hugs and piggy back rides for no reason. But now Seokjin pulls him close and buries his face in his hair, and Jungkook can feel his hands trembling. Can hear his shaky breaths. He's scared that Seokjin is crying.

He holds him back, fisting hands in his shirt, and he hates that he couldn't be older.

/

He lets the firefly out in the middle of the morning, when no one can see its lights. When he can't check, for the last time, if Seokjin is making fun of him or not.

He lets it out and turns away, not looking up at the sky even once, and imagines that if he'd waited till night - the entire world would light up. That all of the fireflies he never knew existed would appear and dance across the sky, that for a moment everything would be alive, every tiny bit of the universe. That everything would be okay.

But he's too scared to see. Too scared to make sure.

And Kim Seokjin, with all of his promises that things are always better than what they are, is already across the country.

/

At fourteen years old, Jungkook tries his hand at graffiti for the first time.

He thinks it would work a lot better with an accomplice. He spends so much time looking over his shoulder that his art isn't half as good as he'd like it to be. He's got paint splattered in places that should have been clean, and the spray can is half empty because it leaked in his back pack - if he gets caught, there's a whole lot of evidence that Jungkook can't hide.

It's okay though. His hands are shaking but it's okay. This is how people make their points at his age, he thinks.

He draws a giant blue circle and puts a purple spiral inside it. The trick is to be vague, he's figured. Draw stuff no one understands and they'll look at it a whole lot longer.

He draws a whole bunch of abstract stuff, tries to wipe the paint smears off his arms, and then makes a run for it, heart beat so fast it nearly kills him.

He likes to think Seokjin would have been his accomplice, but he knows he wouldn't have. Seokjin would have whacked him a couple of times with the spray can and then donated the paint to the next graffiti artist he saw.

Seokjin would have, had he ever bothered to come home.

Jungkook can't blame him.

His parents have seperated at last, and his mother moved somewhere halfway across the country - the only person left here for Seokjin to come back to is his father. Jungkook knows better than anyone that he'd never come back to his father. And he can't blame him.

So instead he sprays obscure artistic patterns on the walls and runs for it.

Sometimes Kim Namjoon catches him. Jungkook doesn't know anything about him except that he's the kind of person who is extremely disappointed by Jungkook's existence but also feels sort of sorry for him and never sends him to the police.

"This isn't good, Jungkook-ah," he says each time, frowning, holding one of Jungkook's arms in his hand. Keeping him from running.

This isn't good. Like that wasn't the point.

"Sorry, hyung," Jungkook says, with zero emotion. But he doesn't meet Namjoon's eyes because the disappointment might make him want to change.

In the end, Namjoon always lets him go. And Jungkook comes back. And his obscure paintings never have any meaning besides to exist.

/

He's still fourteen when he gets caught by someone besides Kim Namjoon, and that makes things a whole lot scarier.

He's spray painting the wall behind a row of stores, with a little more talent than usual, when someone turns around the corner. The back corner. The corner that leads away from the main road. The corner that was supposed to be Jungkook's exit.

The only other way out is into the main road, and he can't run out into the main road like this, that's asking for trouble.

The other boy watches him, a scowl on his face, judgement in his eyes. Jungkook doesn't know how to run.

It's over. It's all over. He's going to die.

"Seriously?" the other boy says, still scowling. "I just repainted that a month ago."

Jungkook's grip tightens on the spray can. Maybe he could spray it at the boy's face and run for it? But if he gets caught then he'd be down for assault and damage of public property, and what would he do then?

The other boy starts towards him, and then pauses, recognition dawning on his face. "You're - Seokjin's little brother."

Jungkook stops. "Seokjin doesn't have a brother."

The boy snaps his fingers. "You are that kid. I knew it."

"What?"

There's an awkward pause, Jungkook's heart beating too fast. The spray can in his hand too obvious to hide.

"The kid he would call his little brother. What the heck are you doing here?"

Jungkook stares at him. Stares at the graffiti on the wall. Wonders how to explain.

"I'm doing this for a friend?" he decides at last.

It's so stupid an excuse that neither of them knows how to react.

Finally, the other guy sighs, rubbing his face with a hand. "Come on," he says, waving a hand at him to follow him. "You need to get out of here."

Jungkook doesn't know why he follows him. How someone with such a frown could be harmless, or why he was suddenly trying to help him instead of arrest him. But he mentioned Seokjin, and Jungkook thinks - he's seen him before. He's seen him walking with Seokjin on the streets, eating at his ice cream store.

So he follows him. He hands over his spray can when the boy asks for it, and doesn't argue when he tosses it into the trash.

The boy's name is Min Yoongi.

/

Min Yoongi isn't his friend, not exactly.

He lives around the corner, at the end of the next street. His house is painted a horrible yellow and he doesn't seem to want to live there anymore than Seokjin wanted to live in his. He doesn't play baseball with Jungkook, or help him with his homework. He's just sort of there.

But for Jungkook, that's something - so too often he finds himself at Min Yoongi's fence, skateboard under his arm, waving a hand at the open window.

And Yoongi always comes out. Sometimes scowling, sometimes barely awake, unshaved and still in his sleep shorts. He should be starting college this year but he's taking a year break. To do what, exactly, Jungkook isn't sure.

It turns out he barely knew Seokjin. It turns out that a lot of people, all the people who Jungkook thought were Seokjin's friends - barely knew Seokjin.

"But he was your classmate," Jungkook argues, when Yoongi tells him this. "You guys ate ice cream together."

Yoongi gives him a weird look. "I don't think that should make us friends."

"You walked home together from school."

"We lived nearly on the same street."

"But - " Jungkook falters, because he doesn't have a lot of arguments. He can't understand how anyone could be near Kim Seokjin and not be his friend.

"He didn't have enemies, if that's what you're worried about," Yoongi says. "He just...didn't trust people a lot."

"People like you?"

"People like anyone."

"He trusted me."

Yoongi gives him a careful look. It's hard to read him, Jungkook hasn't got the hang of it yet. "He did," he agrees. "That's there."

/

Yoongi doesn't believe a lot of things.

He doesn't think fireflies can light up the sky. He doesn't think the stars can be anything besides stars. He thinks the earth is the only world left and that it's going to die and that there's no such thing as utopia.

Min Yoongi looks up at the sky, and he sees the sky. And that's something that Jungkook can't understand.

It's something he doesn't like.

He doesn't let Jungkook go around damaging public property, but he does let him wear his baseball cap backwards and swear out loud when his parents aren't around. He lets Jungkook tag around to the ice cream shop and buys him pistachio ice cream, which is the only flavour so far that Jungkook has detested more than vanilla. Then he takes him out to buy lamb skewers, which Jungkook would give his life for, so all is good.

Yoongi has a brother, too. He says they're even friends.

Jungkook wonders where his own brother is now.

Sometimes he looks at the moon and he thinks of Seokjin instead. And Yoongi tells him that he could very well do that without looking up at the moon at all.

Jungkook sort of understands why he and Seokjin weren't friends.

Apparently the reason Yoongi isn't in college yet is because he can't afford it - he's taking a year off to get his finances right. He works a hundred different odd jobs and Jungkook tags along to whichever ones he can - to the local cafe and the mechanic shop and a supermarket. When Yoongi delivers food for a restaurant Jungkook offers to take half his job, and Yoongi lets him deliver the orders that are close enough for him to take his bicycle.

It makes him feel like he's helping.

Yoongi is always tired, always exhausted - always internally counting how much he made that day and how much of it is going to disappear by morning once his dad gets a hold of it. He doesn't believe that he'll go to college the next year either. He thinks he might not ever go.

"I'll be stuck here forever," he says, staring at his ugly yellow house from on Jungkook's front porch. They don't ever sit in front of Yoongi's house. Yoongi says they shouldn't risk it.

"You won't be," Jungkook says, because Yoongi works too hard for good things to not happen to him.

Yoongi shakes his head. "It's not going to be possible," he says, and he doesn't sound upset, or disappointed. Just certain. "I need to be here. I can't trust either of them on their own."

He's talking about his parents. Jungkook doesn't know what's wrong with Yoongi's family, and he never dares to ask.

He wonders why so many people are so unhappy when they deserve so much.

/

Jungkook never does figure out if Seokjin was lying about the fireflies. He never dares to check.

He doesn't dare to check until Yoongi's birthday.

He hasn't seen the older boy in a while, since he's so caught up in work and running errands. The sounds emanating from his house are scarily similar to the sounds from Seokjin's old one. Sometimes Jungkook hears Yoongi's voice as well, piercing and sharp and so done, so fed up.

He's angry and messed up and he wants to leave, but he doesn't dare because he's scared of what will happen if he does. When he sees the sky he sees dark. He sees stars. He sees the same thing he sees every day.

For Yoongi's birthday, Jungkook decides to show him fireflies. Because if there's a chance that they're out there, if there's a chance that Seokjin was right - he thinks Yoongi deserves to see them.

This is easier said than done.

Catching fireflies, it turns out, requires things like focus. Tact. Stealth. Jungkook has none of this. His plan of action is lying in wait in his backyard for a firefly to appear and then zoning out and forgetting what he's there for.

When he shakes himself back to the present, there are no fireflies to be found.

He tries setting up his backyard with all the optimum conditions. He turns off all the lights that he can turn off without his mom throwing a fit. He brings a bucket of water with him because he's heard fireflies like water. He makes a pile of wood because he's heard fireflies like those too.

Then he lies in wait.

It takes many, many days. Jungkook doesn't think it'll work at all. He comes close a couple of times but he just isn't fast enough, too much hesitance in the way he reaches out with the jar to actually catch anything.

Yoongi finds him like that once, when he drops by to investigate why Jungkook isn't out on his front porch trying to annoy him anymore.

"What's that?" he asks, nodding towards the jar in Jungkook's hands.

"Nothing?" Jungkook says uneasily.

Yoongi cocks an eyebrow. "Okay," he says, and that's that.

So the mission continues.

He probably looks really suspicious, stalking his own backyard in the dark. The mosquitoes kill him every day and his parents have given up on telling him to get inside already, and Yoongi has decided that he's just doing one of those teenager things, like he isn't a freaking teenager himself. But Jungkook perseveres, because he knows that this is something that Yoongi needs to see.

He needs to see that things can be better.

He finally catches one three days before Yoongi's birthday. Three days isn't a bad amount of time to keep a firefly in a jar, according to the internet, but it's still morally a bit screwed up, so instead Jungkook takes it and dashes over to Yoongi's house the very moment he gets it.

All the lights in Yoongi's house are off. It isn't that late at night - maybe around 10PM. Jungkook doesn't know how to wake him up.

He bends down and picks up a rock, shifting it in his hands.

Don't ever throw rocks at someone's window, literally everyone he knows has told him.

Jungkook raises his arm and tosses it anyway.

It hits the window with a loud clang, loud enough to make Jungkook wince and duck in case someone comes running, but clearly not loud enough to wake up Min Yoongi.

He waits a moment before picking up another rock. He's just about let it fly when the window suddenly opens.

There's a moment of panic, with Jungkook trying not to let the rock go but losing his grip out of momentum and then the rock is sent flying wildly in the wrong direction. It hits a wall with no effect.

He looks up at Yoongi, who looks decidedly unimpressed and a bit ready to climb down and throw every rock he can find at Jungkook's head.

"I didn't kill you," Jungkook announces, in case that might make peace. "And also!" He holds up the glass jar.

Yoongi looks even less impressed. "The hell, Jungkook," he hisses into the dark.

"Please come down?" Jungkook tries. "I'll show you something cool."

They stay like that for a moment, like a really bad rendition of Rapunzel, with Yoongi scowling at him from the first floor and Jungkook having no princely qualities whatsoever.

Yoongi's face disappears from the window, and a moment later he's there at the front door. He looks exhausted, hair a mess, marks on his face from sleeping too long in one position. He looks worried when he shuts the door behind him - he sneaks out at night all the time without his parents knowing, but somehow he worries about it anyway.

Finally he joins Jungkook at the fence. "What," he says, still extremely unamused.

Jungkook holds up the jar again. "Happy birthday, hyung!"

Yoongi blinks at the jar. Blinks at him. "It's...not my birthday," he says at last.

"...yeah, but I caught one today and I can't keep it for that long, so I thought I'd let you have it early."

Yoongi blinks again, like he doesn't understand what's happening. He keeps staring at the jar.

"You got me a birthday present?"

"...yeah."

Yoongi stares at it some more, then stares at Jungkook in some kind of wonder. Jungkook gives him a sheepish grin.

Yoongi climbs over the fence easily, because opening the gate makes too much noise, and they stand there together, out on the sidewalk. Jungkook is almost as tall as him now, maybe just an inch shorter. He can't catch up to Seokjin but he can catch up to Yoongi for now.

"It's a firefly," Yoongi says softly, staring at the glass jar.

"It'll light up the whole sky," Jungkook tells him.

"It can't," Yoongi says. His fingers are shaking a bit, Jungkook can't tell why.

Jungkook makes a face at him. He sits down at the edge of the curb, patting the ground next to him for Yoongi to sit. Yoongi sits carefully, pulling his legs up against himself in the cold.

"Here," Jungkook says, handing him the jar. "Let it out."

Yoongi stares at it for a moment. It's a tiny pinprick of light in the jar, almost like it's afraid to be there. Afraid to light up. His hands are terribly gentle over the lid as he opens it, and then he holds it up to the sky.

It flies out, a single light in all the darkness.

And Jungkook thinks he sees the rest. He thinks he sees them light up the entire dark - all those tiny pulsing lights of life, too small to make a difference, yet somehow making the most. He thinks he can see them if he looks hard enough, if he tries to believe that they could be there.

"Can you see them?" he asks Yoongi, because - he doesn't think he can. He thinks he's known this for a while.

Yoongi hesitates. There are lights in his eyes, as he stares up at things that don't exist to him. "No," he admits. "I don't."

Jungkook laughs a bit. "Then what are you looking at?"

"I don't know," Yoongi shrugs. "I just think it's beautiful."

Jungkook looks up, and tries to see the world as Yoongi does. Tries to get rid of all the lights that might be stars, the fireflies that aren't real. The alien spaceships and planets and worlds out there that might not even exist.

He tries to see the sky without that extra bit of hope, with just a single firefly in the sky.

"Maybe it's because you know they're there," he says.

"Maybe," Yoongi hums, still staring straight up. "Or maybe it's just beautiful already."

They watch it until it fades out of sight, taking its pinprick of light with it. The sky is dark again, with nothing left to see. It's freezing and neither of them are dressed for the cold, and neither of their parents know where they are, but they sit together in the dark and the silence and somehow -

-the dark is still beautiful.