Chapter Text
Being a university student away from home is, by itself, a challenge. Fresh fruit and clean shirts every day become rare privileges and no one really bothers with tying their shoes anymore. Did you know you can reschedule a final if your elbow’s so badly injured you can’t write? Yoongi does.
And really, being a music university student is just the same, but with worse hours. He’s used to staying at the studio until 7am when he gets a melody that won’t stop spinning around his head, another beat his fingers keep moving to no matter how tired his body is.
One slight problem with all this - money. Weird hours might work for Yoongi and Namjoon, familiar to their bubble of song writing and studio time at 4am on three cups of coffee (on Namjoon’s behalf, at least), but no convenience store can adjust shifts to Yoongi’s liking on such whims.
This is how he finds himself giving into a little voice that sounds suspiciously like his mother (“Marie’s oldest daughter has the cutest 4-year-old, i swear you’d love them?”) and looking for babysitting jobs.
This is how his life as a low key university student ends.
“Hello?”
“Hi, I’m, uh. Calling about the-” he takes a steadying breath, he’s got this, “babysitting job?”
“Oh hello dear! Min Yoongi right? Carol told me you were considering it, but knowing you I didn’t hold my breath on it.” The old lady laughs then, and even though she’s right, he can’t help the prick of hurt it brings. It’s not his fault his people skills are closer to a hermit than the average twenty-one year old, but it’ll be fine. He can be delightful when his music time is at stake.
Voice as soft as it’ll go through his sore throat, Min Yoongi is reborn. “Well, I’d love to meet the little beansprouts, they sound like a lovely time!”
He’s never had someone fawn over him so quick, with so little effort.
✦
Taehyung is five years old (as he repeatedly states, nearly shoving his splayed fingers on one hand right into Yoongi’s eyes as if to prove his point) and his black hair is permanently pushed over his eyes.
Jimin is a few months older, but twice as chaotic. Where Tae is a pure ball of energy until he drops on the spot and takes a 3-hour nap, Jimin is steadily using his energy with maximum effectiveness, only napping briefly when Tae happens to start his sleep schedule nearby.
It’s a vision, the two kids who are more often than not just a blur around the apartment cuddling each other and their matching dinosaur plushies.
Jeongguk is his latest responsability, and by far the easiest. Not that that means much around here, but he’ll take what he can get. The youngest kid, three and a half, has just recently begun his quest to ask as many questions while awake as possible, and Yoongi’s taking the blunt of it. It’s not his fault, he knows, that his parents are barely around to clarify just why there weren't whales when Jeongguk was at the beach last summer, and that makes him soften around the edges almost instantly.
Tae and Jeongguk, Yoongi soon discovers, are a terrible combination. While Jeongguk makes Tae slow down, he also gives him a chance to talk more, which means Yoongi listens to at least 4 bird or alien related theories a day, to Jeongguk’s awe. Jimin likes the train stories. Tae’s got plenty of those as well.
Jeongguk is sometimes quieter, specially on Wednesdays when the two other kids are picked up way earlier and Yoongi ends up dragging him from his shared apartment to the library because as forgiving as the old man with the studio might be towards him and Namjoon, as lenient as if they were his own sons, his teachers aren’t quite as nice. Times like this he’s the one asking Jeongguk questions, curious about the drawings jeongguk keeps making that feature one or more references to music. Jeongguk merely replies that he likes Yoongi’s songs.
After talks with Mrs. Jeon, over tea and some cookies that Hoseok bought for the occasion, anticipating (and rightly so) that he’d forget all about proper meeting etiquette, they agree that she really cannot make it fast enough to get Jeongguk before dinner on Wednesdays.
His friends quickly get used to the small boy perched over the couch, humming quietly as to not disturb the adults and body swinging along with the tunes, steady on time. They start to keep a few building blocks and a couple of blankets on the bottom drawer, along with drawings in black and white and a big messy ‘Jeongguk’ at the corner.
They also find it’s quite relaxing to be able to sit on the floor and hear about Jeongguk’s latest imaginary world of dinosaurs and monster trains (he’ll thank Jiminnie for that later, Yoongi thinks) when everyone’s so tired of the same track they feel like yelling.
✦
He discovers that making time for the kids, every Wednesday and Friday at 4pm (the time at which their schools let out and coincidentally, the afternoons he has free of classes) is not so much a burden after the second month.
✦
Namjoon is digging into a caramel sundae, making a mess on his face so big Yoongi thinks somehow he messed up his schedules and is still babysitting, Hoseok slinging an arm periodically around his shoulders as he talks about the new dance classes he’s been invited to teach.
Yoongi is also periodically shrugging said arm off himself, but his “Stop fucking touching me.” doesn’t have as much bite to it as he means to. It’s three weeks to finals, and his friends are the only thing keeping his thoughts in his head and on sheet music instead of shaking hands too late into the morning.
The day isn’t sunny enough to be uncomfortable on his tired eyes, but it’s warm for spring and it seems as if half the town thinks the same, bright smiles and breezy clothes all around them.
Yoongi’s lips are curving too dangerously into a smile when he’s stopped. There’s a flash of orange and suddenly his legs are being held onto by two kids covered in ice cream, smudging against his jeans with grins so wide he thinks it’s gotta hurt. They’re in their kindergarten bright orange smocks and it’s a pain in his eyes.
“Uncle Yoongi!” Jimin’s two front teeth have just fallen out, and he’s sporting the look with a type of singular satisfaction only fitting of him. There’s also ice cream all around his lips, and a particular spot of strawberry topping that makes his heart skip a beat for looking too much like blood.
He needs to start getting more sleep otherwise he’s gonna worry himself to the ground over these kids and, shit, he’s still pressing against Namjoon’s whole body in a half-assed attempt at hiding.
“Uncle?” Namjoon’s eyebrows are so far up that his bangs hide them.
“Yoongi?” Hoseok finishes the mockery with ease, hand automatically going to ruffle the kid’s hair.
“Hi, Taehyungie, Jiminnie. What’re you doing here?” He notices their parents standing a ways off, talking excitedly as the close friends he’s known them to be. It’s part of the reason Tae and Jimin are so unbearable together - they’ve never known to be apart from the other.
“Mum promised ice cream this week, since tooth fairy didn’t show up,” he frowns a bit at that and Yoongi’s laugh is short but very much there and Hoseok feasts on the rare wonder of it, “and Taehyung just got shot!”
Shock is an understatement for the expressions of the three friends.
“Sh-shot?” Namjoon’s voice is low, as if he’s more scared of the word than the occurrence itself.
Taehyung’s beaming as he, dragging Jimin with him, latches off Yoongi’s leg. The latter realises he hadn’t been feeling his feet for the past fifteen minutes, at least, and there’s a buzz as feeling returns to them. Whoever says kids aren’t dangerous clearly hasn’t handled these two and their blood flow restriction skills.
“Here!” His tiny arm is proudly on display, an Iron Man bandaid covering a too-big portion of it. “Mum said I was really good, too. You still have to kiss it better, though.” Jimin’s eyes scrunch as he nods along with Tae, leaning over to peck the bandaid and beckoning Yoongi to do the same.
Yoongi risks a look at Namjoon and Hoseok, and immediately regrets it. While they’re also endeared and finding this extremely cute, Hoseok’s phone is out and ready and he just knows he’s gonna be blackmailed for years to come. Goodbye, laundry shifts. He senses a lot of dish-washing in his near future.
When Taehyung squeals in delight as he tickles his side as he kisses his ouchie and a phone camera goes off, Yoongi can’t still quite bring himself to regret his choices.
✦
He ends up walking up to their parents, a sleepy Taehyung by his hand and a Jimin on his shoulders (“I’m an adventurer! Fear me!”) with bared teeth and mimicking binoculars with his hands. He spends a bit explaining adventurers aren’t to be feared, and that he should consider being a pirate instead. The kid takes this in stride and immediately switches to yells of ‘Arr!’ and a single monocular made with two chubby and small hands staring into the distance.