Archive of Our Own

It’s colder than a goddamned witch’s tit.

The asphalt is sticky with old kitchen grease that’s been leaking from a 55-gallon steel drum for over three days. The mammoth of a dumpster is close to overflowing with fat trash bags and has more garbage surrounding it still. It’s been mostly just syringes and the occasional crack spoon left behind among the junk, but today there’s a makeshift dildo too—a glow stick wrapped with material around it several times to increase the girth, topped with a condom.

Impressive, Jimin muses. Maybe it’s a good thing his dickwad of a manager doesn’t allow smoke breaks after all, because he’d never get to witness such pinnacles of human ingenuity otherwise. To be honest, there are probably slightly better smelling places he could have snuck off to light up. But definitely no places where the risk of being found out would be as low as here—the back alley of the restaurant he worked at that is also coincidentally the site of three stabbings just this month.

Under normal circumstances, Jimin would take being caught with a smoke in his hand by some tightass over having to get his nicotine fix next to feces the size of his forearm any day. But getting fired from his fourth job in a span of two months has forced him to be a lot more cautious and circumspect than he’d like to be. He really is beginning to lose his edge. Turning into some sorry little soyboy because why the fuck else does he squeal like one when he comes upon the man standing on the other side of the dumpster? Taking up his favourite fucking spot, no less.

It’s not the manager, the guy doesn’t have nearly enough neckbeard to be it. Jimin’s shoulders deflate in instant relief. He doesn’t look to be a mugger or a dumpster diver either—it’s far too early in the morning for both those things to happen anyway. And wow, maybe the sense of relief should have accompanied this realization, and not the one that could’ve still resulted in this place becoming a site of four stabbings in a month. Can repeatedly listening to middle-class women with equally ugly variations of the same asymmetric bob complain about too much meat at a fucking BBQ restaurant give you brain damage? Jimin is beginning to think very much so.

The guy isn’t one of the restaurant staff, clearly. He wears a button-down, pressed slacks, and a solid-color tie, all neat, boring, and professional. And well, what do you know, he’s got a lighted cig tucked between his lean fingers. Jimin throws a glance up at the half shabby office building they share the alley with. At least his manager has an actual reason for banning smoke breaks no matter how witless it may be: He wants to promote a “fresh” and “clean” image for the restaurant, and seems to think seeing someone smoke or smelling someone reeking of it could put customers off their meal (nevermind the rat droppings on the floor, lids of containers, trays, and pretty much every surface imaginable in in the kitchen). Those corporate big cheeses though, they’re just plain blood-sucking psychopaths who delight in human suffering. Jimin won’t be a bit surprised if some fat fuck in a $1000 dollar custom suit is sitting in one of those offices right now beating his meat to the thought of this poor bastard freezing himself half to death just to have a smoke out of sight. Jimin can empathise with that. Hell, he’ll even forgive the guy for occupying his designated secret spot.

His fingers are numb from the cold by the time they dip into the pocket of his pants. He pulls out a cigarette stick from the half-empty pack easily enough but scrambles around for his lighter.

“Shit,” he hisses. Tie-guy shoots him a glance, his brow quirking up every so slightly. He didn’t react to Jimin’s presence with the same sudden bout of hysteria that Jimin did his, but he hasn’t been ignoring it altogether either. Which kind of sucks, actually. Jimin sincerely hopes he isn’t opening the doors to any awkwardly polite small talk when he gives in and says: “Hey, man, got a light?”

“Yeah,” the guy answers like he was expecting it. He produces a cheap-looking plastic thing from his pocket and brings it to the tip of the cigarette Jimin has got tucked between his lips. Never fucking beaks eye contact as he flicks his thumb down and the flame leaps up to lick at the wispy curls of tobacco. And damn, the heat in the guy’s gaze could give his shitty lighter a run for its money. Oh yeah, Jimin knows what he is.

“Jungkook,” the guy says, withdrawing his lighter-holding hand. Jimin is kind of still trying to wrap his head around the fact he is about to get hit on on a Monday morning in a murder location next to a loaded dumpster.

Eh, it’s happened in worse places. He’ll take ill-advised flirting over small talk any day.

“Jimin,” he returns, taking a slow drag and puffing out smoke.

“You come here often, Jimin?”

Jimin snorts loudly. “Seeing as I work here, yeah, I come here often.”

“Ah, at the restaurant?”

Jesus fucking Christ. Jimin internally shakes his head. Tie-guy—Jungkook—is lucky he’s kind of cute, because he’s clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

“Mhmm.” Jimin gestures offhandedly at his uniform that’s got the hideous and very large restaurant logo emblazoned right at the breast. “I’m a server, in case that still needs to be said.”

“Figures.” Jungkook’s lips twist into something that’s supposed to look like a naughty smirk—Jimin infers from the context. Instead, it makes Jungkook’s round cheeks even rounder, his front teeth sticking out slightly. “They wouldn’t keep a pretty thing like you hidden away in the back, working the line,” he purrs, looking at Jimin from underneath his lashes.

It is only Jimin’s unerring sense of decency that stops him barking out a laugh right in Jungkook’s face. The guy can’t seriously be fancying himself as some discount-store Don Draper while looking like Alvin The Fucking Chipmunk. Ah, but Jimin is feeling unusually charitable today so he’s willing to focus on the ways Jungkook’s clumsiness could be considered more endearing than hilarious.

“Coming on a little strong there, aren’t you buddy?” he drawls around his cig. “How do you even know if I’m—”

“Gay?” Jungkook finishes, without missing a beat. “I saw you eyeing the glow stick dildo earlier. True pinnacle of human ingenuity, isn’t it? The exact type of thing that giant fish evolved limbs for all those years ago. ”

Huh. Jimin is about 20% more intrigued by the guy than he was five seconds ago.

“Into you, is what I was going to say,” he contradicts Jungkook on principle anyway, making a show of rolling his eyes. And he hates rolling his eyes. “How do you even know if I’m into you?”

“Easy.” Jungkook smiles. It’s more genuine this time and a lot more charming than it has any right to be after all his blundering. “ ‘ Cause I’m being a dick and you haven’t told me to fuck off yet.” He flicks his cigarette butt to the ground, stamping it out before turning to the office building. “See you around, Jimin,” he says nonchalantly, making toward it in a lazy stroll.

Jimin stares at the cigarette butt flattened pitifully against the greasy asphalt and almost judges Jungkook for being a littering degenerate before remembering he has done the exact same thing for the past two weeks in a row.

*

He comes upon Jungkook again on Tuesday. Same time, same place, same reason—outwardly, anyway.

Except Jimin doesn’t startle and Jungkook—well, Jungkook is loafing by the dumpster with a half-spent cig in his hand almost like he is waiting for Jimin. Jimin takes in the black formal shirt that hugs Jungkook’s biceps rather tightly and the chinos that fit snugly around a round, clearly well-worked ass, and decides the gesture is more charming than creepy.

He has his lighter on him this time but asks Jungkook for his just because.

The slant of Jungkook’ gaze is shameless as ever as he obliges. The little flame kisses the tip of Jimin’s cigarette.

“So, you wanna fuck?”

The corner of Jimin’s lips curl into a smirk. “Thought you’d never ask.”

*

“Your place or mine?”

Whichever one is closer should be the right answer, seeing as neither of them own a car. It’s seven in the evening—not terribly later but a good whole hour later than when Jimin agreed to meet up with him (through no fault of his though; a waitress recently got fired and another got hit by a truck so needless to say there have been some scheduling issues).

Jimin is no mentalist, but he’ll hazard a guess and say a guy willing to spend an hour kicking his heels in the cold in hopes of getting, at best, mediocre sex, would be willing to do a fair bit more.

There is an absurd irony in the fact that Jimin has been living on ramen and mayo sandwiches for four days straight despite working at a restaurant. But it would take one look at the kitchen and another one at Jimin’s bi-weekly paycheck for someone to no longer find his food choices either absurd or ironic. There is a cafe though, two streets over from here that rigorously keeps up with the health codes. Jimin knows this because he worked there as a line cook for a grand total of two days before getting fired for trying to use his bare arm as a mixing paddle.

His stomach groans and begs for a meal that doesn’t have the nutritional content of cardboard. So really it is nothing Machiavellian (or whorish) of Jimin when he laughs and says: “At least buy me dinner first.”

Jungkook’s brow raises a fraction. He looks like he can’t quite figure out whether Jimin is joking or not.

“I know a nice place not far from here,” Jimin presses, not-so-subtly, pretending to be oblivious to Jungkook’s confusion. “Not quite my idea of a perfect first date, but it’ll do. And they do the two-for-one menu on Tuesdays, so there’s that.”

Jungkook doesn’t answer for a moment and Jimin wonders if maybe he’s been a little too heavy-handed in his approach. Whatever. If Jungkook thinks it low of Jimin to try to use him as a meal ticket (well himself, technically), then Jimin can think the same of Jungkook for being a horny, stalking creep.

But then Jungkook shrugs like he honestly doesn't care one way or another, and suddenly Jimin has a much more lenient appraisal of the guy again.

“A’ight.” Jungkook kicks a small stone, watching it skitter across along the street in four ricochets. “Lead the way, I guess.”