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“hyung! hyung! we saw the cutest boy in the park today!” taehyung is yelling from outside, waiting with their bounty while jungkook pushes open the heavy metal door of the abandoned train car they call their temporary home. yoongi is asleep inside. shouting doesn’t rouse him, after his late night, but hoseok still tells taehyung to quiet down.
the smell of pizza fills the small space as soon as the door is opened, and every single one of them begins to salivate. it’s been forty hours since any of them have eaten, and months since they’ve gotten their hands on a pizza.
the boy is momentarily forgotten when hoseok finds the food still a little warm, and jungkook tells the story dramatically. the scent so strong, it drug them away from the playground, across the pond, towards the holy grail - the gazebo. he weaves a fantastic tale of high stakes and perfect stealth, rambling on until all that’s left of their lunch (and dinner, and tomorrow’s breakfast, probably) is a few slices for the hyungs, when they get back.
jungkook’s always been a liar. taehyung whispers that a kind woman gave them the leftovers from her daughter’s birthday party when she found jungkook secretly crying over the hunger pains he refused to admit he felt. the only truthful part of his story is that they were at the playground. taehyung wanted to swing.
eventually, hoseok, content with the food in his belly and warmth of the shining sun as he and the younger boys kick a half-deflated soccer ball back and forth across the old tracks, remembers to ask, “what about that boy you saw?”
“oh! i think he said his name was jimin,” taehyung glances at jungkook, who nods a confirmation, “he was so tiny, and he didn’t have much on. we were pretty sure he was like us, but, he was smiling. i gave him some pizza since he looked hungry. he was really nice, i like him.”
“if he’s like us, why didn’t you invite him down?”
“we did,” jungkook answers, “he said he’s better off alone.”
hoseok scoffs. none of them are better off alone.
x
hoseok’s wandering through the woods at the edge of the park, hoping for a lost wallet or forgotten picnic or maybe some hidden porn, just for something to do.
he hears the commotion before he sees it, a frantic rustle and an apology, nearly drowned out by angry voices.
following the sound, he finds a young boy, under-dressed in ripped jeans and a thin sweater and ratty sneakers. he looks like hoseok, but newer. there’s still that innocence you only keep until you’re thrown into the real world for a few weeks.
hoseok thinks he looks young, probably much younger than he actually is. watching him get hassled,(hoseok doesn’t get involved unless it’s one of his boys) it’s like looking at taehyung or jungkook. there’s a strange familiarity about him, his round cheeks and bright eyes and shaky smile and stammered excuses, even though hoseok is positive he’s never seen the boy before.
he’s not sure how, but a quiet voice tells hoseok that this is jimin. taehyung didn’t talk about him for that long, or describe him particularly well, but he knows.
experimentally, he calls, “jimin?”
immediately, he shrinks away, away from the new voice, before peering around the side of his harasser to offer hoseok an adorable look of shock.
“uh… yes… hi.”
the two men bothering him, “friends” of yoongi’s, he recognizes, turn to see who’s interrupting.
“ah, hoseok, what are you doin’ round these parts?” one asks, sounding less embarrassed than hoseok thinks someone who was about to fight someone who looks a bit like a toddler should.
“just out,” he replies, airily, waving a hand vaguely towards the open air. as much as he fears he’s going to have to fight them, two on one, he does a good show of being bored with the interaction.
“we were just asking this kind young man if he’d like to do some work for us.”
hoseok knows exactly what kind of work they were offering and it makes him fucking sick.
“yoongi’s already got him helping out,” hoseok lies, easily. later, he’ll tell yoongi to mention jimin, to back it up. for now, he just wants them to leave.
they don’t look like they believe him, but the name drop is enough. yoongi may work for them, but he’s a scrappy little fuck when he wants to be and it’s better not to chance it.
once they’re gone, jimin mumbles, nervous, “thanks for that.”
“next time,” hoseok instructs, harsher than he should be with someone he just met. he just wants to get through to the kid, the first time. with taehyung, he had to remind him over and over that the streets were the streets and no one loved you there. taehyung had given him a doe-eyed look and asked, totally serious, ‘you love me, don’t you hyung?’. there were rare exceptions. but, not for everyone, “tell them no. hit them. fight. don’t let people push you around.”
“i didn’t want to be rude,” jimin murmurs.
“what if they were going to hurt you?” hoseok asks. if he hadn’t come along, he chooses not to say, they would’ve.
“i don’t want to hurt them,” jimin shrugs like it’s nothing. like he’s not the first kid in history to rather get smacked around than stand up for himself.
hoseok’s a little afraid of how genuine he is.
x
there’s a boy curled up in the space between the dumpsters behind the building where jin sometimes gives cigarettes to desperate teens for way too much money or in exchange for food. jin doesn’t smoke but he always wishes he had four dollars to spare on a badly rolled cigarette.
it’s cold. too cold for jin to be out in a couple sweaters and the worn winter jacket he spent two hours digging through mall dumpsters for. too cold for a kid to be curled up between metal in nothing but a hoodie.
he doesn’t know him, the boy, but he watches him sleep for a few minutes. jin is shocked he can rest, his body visibly shaking against the winter wind. it’s the only thing keeping jin believing he’s even alive.
jin needs the coat. he knows he does. he knows he’s going to freeze his ass off and he’d never do this for anyone but his small pack of friends - brothers - but he can’t stop himself. there’s a foreign pull, the need to care, and even as he tells himself he’s an idiot, he’s pulling off his only top layer to tuck it around the sleeping boy. he leaves two dollars in the pocket, the most he can spare.
just as he expected, yoongi starts to lecture him on proper attire (even though yoongi is huddled up between hoseok and jungkook in nothing but a t-shirt) and demands to know where the hell his coat went.
“there was just some boy,” jin says, tossing the hamburgers he bought out to everyone in the train car, “i had to help him.”
he describes the boy, and as soon as he mentions his childish face, hoseok mumbles, “that’s jimin.”
jungkook laughs, a little, but nothing’s funny, “everyone has to help jimin.”
jin asks why. they shrug. no one’s sure.
x
yoongi comes back later than usual, huffing and puffing and mumbling about stupid kids. namjoon and jungkook are walking up behind him, returning from using the bathroom. there’s just enough moonlight for jungkook to notice the shiny, dark bruise swelling around yoongi’s left eye and the dried blood caked across his lips.
“what happened to you?” namjoon frets a little, poking at the injuries with cold fingers which only hurtsmore, and jungkook peers nervously from over his shoulder.
yoongi sighs, heavy, and says, “there’s just something about jimin that makes you want to protect him.”
x
taehyung’s eating when jin comes back, and there’s a bag full of fruit sitting in the middle of their little home. it looks like it’s new from the store, jin decides, eyeing it suspiciously. none of them really earn money, but especially not taehyung. he’s more of a scavenger. work is hard to find in their part of town and he’s a little too young and a little too flighty and not jaded enough for the kinds of jobs he’d be offered. rather, he’ll wander through town with jungkook, looking pathetic enough to get handouts or, occasionally, coming across something worthwhile on accident.
but, he doesn’t steal. every other word out of jungkook’s mouth is a lie, but he doesn’t steal. yoongi deals with the “bad” guys, even by their standards, but he doesn’t steal. jin feels like a desperate father more days than not, but, he won’t steal.
even kids like them have morals.
the fruit looks stolen, too good for someone to offer up, too expensive for any of them to bother buying.
“tae,” he starts gently, trying not to sound accusatory, “where did this come from?”
“jimin.”
“jimin?” jin asks, incredulous, thinking about the freezing boy by the dumpsters.
“yeah,” he nods towards jin’s old coat, dropped carelessly on the floor of the car, “i don’t know how he knew it was you, but he said thanks.”
“didn’t he want to stick around?”
“no,” taehyung shakes his head, looking put out, “he didn’t want to hang around, and he said he’d already eaten a lot. i asked if he stole them, too,” he gives jin a knowing look, “but he said he did some work, and they gave him a lot. i don’t know if he was lying, or not, but i don’t think so.”
“yeah,” jin agrees, “he doesn’t seem the type.”
everyone on the streets lies. no one says thank you. no one returns anything. if you get something, it’s yours, and you keep it until you can’t.
apparently, not jimin.
x
hoseok returns home to find the door hanging open, letting light in. jungkook is the only one inside, wrapped up in a new, thick blanket. when he sees hoseok, he lifts up the edge and gestures with his chin for hoseok to join him.
“where’d you get this?” hoseok doesn’t question it until he’s safely underneath the heavy comforter, warmer than he’s been in weeks.
“jimin.”
“really? jimin gave it to you?”
“i ran into him at the park earlier, again. he had it, and gave it to me. thanked me for the few times i’ve shared food with him,” jungkook explains.
“you should’ve told him to keep it,” hoseok chides.
“i tried. he said he had another one,” it’s one of the few moments that hoseok trusts jungkook’s word.
“did you believe him?”
“no.”
“why’d you take it?”
“you know how we all want to take care of jimin, hyung?” hoseok nods, “i think he wants to take care of us a little too.”
x
the rule of the train is kids eat first. it’s been their rule ever since jin found seventeen year old namjoon starving behind a burger king and decided they’d be better hungry together than hungry alone. jungkook was always the first to be full, and then taehyung, then namjoon and hoseok, and finally, yoongi and jin. yoongi sometimes got food on the job, and if he couldn’t sneak it out to bring home for everyone, he’d forgo meals for a couple days to make sure everyone else was fed.
recently, jimin had wormed his way into taehyung’s level of the food chain, if they knew where he was when they had something to pass around.
namjoon’s the one out on a food run. they’d collected a fortune that day, a whopping twenty three dollars, and they were planning on eating big.
their plans were ruined when namjoon came home with a weak bag of food, enough to fill the youngest and a few scraps for the eldest.
“i’m sorry,” namjoon apologizes, soft and frantic, “i just, i saw jimin on the way there and i asked him if he wanted to eat and he just started coughing. i think he was really sick? so, i ended up buying him medicine. i know i shouldn’t have. hoseok, you can have my sha-”
“he’s fucking sick?” yoongi interrupts, angrier than any of them can remember seeing him since that time some kids from a nearby school were picking fights with jungkook cause he was a little dirty and a lot poor, “where is he?”
namjoon, confused, mumbles that he’s down by the old bridges, hiding underneath, last he saw.
yoongi mutters, “that fucking punk” and storms out of the car.
x
finally, jimin’s line becomes more honest. when yoongi finds him, snot staining his upper lip, choking on air, jimin makes the mistake of telling yoongi, “you guys don’t need me weighing you down” instead of “i’m better off alone.”
yoongi snorts, “that’s ridiculous,” he drags jimin into a loose headlock, pulling him onto his feet and up towards the street with a gentle grip, “if anyone’s dragging us down, it’s jungkook. he’s still afraid of the dark. he’ll face down the barrel of a gun,” yoongi doesn’t like to think about why he knows that, “but kid won’t pee by himself after eight p.m.”
jimin giggles. yoongi smiles. he hasn’t heard a sound so pure since he last saw his baby brother.
“really,” yoongi continues, casual, “if you come stay with us, it’ll just be easier. i won’t have to come find your sick ass, and taehyung won’t have to run around town all night trying to feed you. it’s for the best.”
jimin doesn’t say anything, but, after a few feet, yoongi feels jimin’s arm wind around his waist.
x
“welcome to the lost boy’s club,” jungkook says dryly, feet danging off the side of the train car from where he’s perched on top, as yoongi half-carries jimin up to the door.
“stop fucking calling us that or i’ll lock you out,” hoseok calls from inside.
“this piece of shit doesn’t lock,” jungkook counters.
namjoon leans outside to give him a dirty look, “don’t talk like that. get in here or i’ll give jimin your dinner.”
just like that, jimin’s part of the gang.
x
that night, namjoon attaches himself to jimin’s side. he curls his body entirely around the younger’s, weaving his legs between jimin’s so they’re one over, one under. throwing an arm across jimin’s chest, he pulls him in close and pillows his head against jimin’s bony shoulder even though it hurts his cheek.
he tells hoseok, quietly, that it’s just because he’s worried that jimin’s going to get sicker in the night, or try to run off.
in the morning, he admits to taehyung that there’s just something comforting about having jimin close by.
x
the next night, with namjoon’s confession, taehyung presses in close to jimin, wrapping himself around jimin’s front like a koala while namjoon spoons him.
x
word spreads quickly, and by the fourth night that jimin’s joined their makeshift family, they sleep like pack dogs. yoongi lies against the back wall of the car, and jimin uses his thigh as a pillow while sandwiched between namjoon and taehyung. fitting himself in the minor space left by jimin and taehyung’s legs, jungkook hugs himself to jimin’s thigh while he sleeps. halfway on top of him, hoseok lies across everyone, a heavy, comforting weight.
it’s the first time in years they’ve all gone to sleep feeling warm, safe and happy.
jimin may think he’s just an unnecessary weight, but, really, he’s the glue holding them all together.