Chapter Text
When they met, nobody could have predicted the bond they formed as a group. Their ages varied, social status, personalities, everything seemed to point against friendships ever forming between them. But as fate would have it, or maybe something stronger, the seven boys who found themselves running away from everything, seemed to run straight into each other.
The elders were in high school already, soon to move on, the youngest ones barely out of middle school, yet there was undoubtedly a force that brought them together that was stronger than the walls their ages put between them. The place that they met became their place, a place where they could go to escape what they tried to run away from, even if only for a little bit.
Jin and Namjoon found the abandoned building before the others, had drug in the first mattresses and pillows that would build the foundations for their place. Nobody remembers when they met each other, except that it was a long time ago. Nobody wants to. When they first found their place, they sat together in the space for hours sometimes huddled under blankets, not saying a word. Just sitting, trying to stay warm in the increasingly colder nights, when it was just the two of them.
Yoongi came next just a few months later, stumbling like a lightweight into the building with a half empty can of beer in one hand, and promptly tripping over a thrown aside pillow before he seemed to notice that there were people there in the space. He had blinked emptily a few times, and there had been few words shared before he passed out onto a musty mattress. He could hold his alcohol a bit better now, a fact proven by the fact that he could no longer remember what it was that had been spoken that first night, his drinking having long erased that memory from Yoongi’s mind. Jin remembers, but doesn’t say.
With Yoongi’s arrival he brought the metal barrel they used as a fireplace, which he always lit with the silver lighter he kept on him. He doesn’t remember where he got the lighter or the barrel now either.
It was a significantly longer amount of time, months, before Hoseok arrived, but only followed a week later by Jimin. Hoseok had arrived dramatically, stumbling onto their meek gathering place all loose limbs and stuttering. He rubbed his eyes furiously trying to wake them up it seemed, before grumbling something about “going for a walk and losing his way” where he then proceeded to literally collapse to the ground, fortunately landing on a pile of blankets that had been discarded where his feet were. Jin had dragged him to the mattress, watching him worriedly, until he woke up, and they discovered Hoseok was the bubbliest and brightest person out of them all. He seemed to fumble himself to their place at strange intervals, and it was through his strange arrivals and sleeping schedule that they discovered he was a severe narcoleptic. Sometimes they’d find him there first, already asleep on a mattress, or sometimes he’d arrive in different stages of awakeness after others showed up. Either way they found it was best to let him sleep, because sometimes they could wake him up, sometimes they couldn’t. When he was awake, he had a smile that glowed brighter than their fireplace.
When Jimin arrived it was to try and escape the pouring rain, and he often showed up with wet hair. They took turns making up stories on what river he’d dove into to save a drowning kitten, or what room of his house the leak was in. He would laugh and hug himself as he tried to warm his chilled bones by the heat of the fire. He carried a lighter too, and sometimes he’d contribute to the blazing heat. If not with the lighter, then with scraps of lined paper he’d fish out of his pocket. Sometimes there would be hints of writing on them, but most of the time the paper was devoured by the flames too quickly to be read. He never said what was on the papers. Or if they were even his.
Jungkook and Taehyung arrived together, just a pair of miscreants that had met somewhere in the streets and decided to pair up together. Taehyung would become the most frequent occupier of their place, and it seemed to the other boys that he was always running from something, but they never asked what it was he was trying to escape. Jungkook would slowly spend less and less time aimlessly wandering city streets and more time lounging on the couch he and Taehyung had drug to their place. They brought lots of furniture that nobody bothered to ask the source of. They didn’t ask many questions anymore.
It wasn’t until after they concluded that no other strange young boys would join their circle, a year later, did they start to inquire into the lives of the boys around them, and soon a nearly accidental family was born in the delinquents of the abandoned building. They all soon realized that whatever had drawn them all together intended to keep them together, and nobody questioned the strange sense of fate that drew them to the building.
On the day that Jungkook and Taehyung made the building their home, Jungkook was only barely 16. Taehyung and Jimin were both 18, Namjoon and Hoseok 19, Yoongi was 20, and Jin was already 21. Now, Jungkook was freshly 19.
Things were never awkward between them, as if somehow they’d all already known each other and were only old friends getting together for lunch to talk about their days. Hoseok started falling asleep on whoever occupied the couch the same time he did. It was often Yoongi. Jin and Namjoon shared seats, Jungkook and Taehyung floated between whoever had an open seat, or whoever they wanted to lean against for comfort. Sometimes they’d show up with bruises and black eyes, busted lips or bloody noses from run-ins with the wrong people on the streets and they would sit by Jin so he could patch them up. For Taehyung, it was when his father had had too many bottles of beer that night. Yoongi would often bring similar bottles, and every time, Taehyung would stare at the bottle for a long second before turning his head away and ignoring it the rest of the night. Yoongi would pretend he didn’t notice, and part of him felt guilty until he’d drunk enough of the beer to take his mind off of it.
Jimin never seemed to offer more than jokes and bright smiles in their time, however. Except for the nights he’d arrive soaking wet, crumpled papers in hand, and no smile to be seen in his pale features. He’d simply curl up closest to the fire to let the flames dry his clothes, fueling it with the contents of the papers he’d never read out loud. Jungkook would offer a blanket, and eventually he’d learn to bring a towel to have on hand, and then the night would continue, if not a tad bit quieter.
They learned a lot about each other in those first years, sometimes without even speaking. And they opened up to each other. Nights filled with empty silences soon turned to nights filled with gregarious hoots and hollers, laughs and jovialness that floated up into the air with the embers of their fire.
At one point, Namjoon started to show up less frequently, and around the time he started filling gas tanks for dollar bill tips, he began to show up with a cigarette held loosely between his lips. Jin would haggle him like a loving mother would do, haranguing him about the effects of smoking. Namjoon would just sigh and agree, and take another drawl of the cigarette, and that’d be the end of the conversation.
These were the things that soon became familiar to the boys through the years. The joking and drinking, the smoking and snoozing, and the blood and bruises they sometimes carried to the circle with them. Always by the light of the fire they’d find the comfort in each other’s broken souls, and it was by this fire that their little family was born.