chap 16 - Irrevocable
The sound of a door slamming echoed through the room and it was loud enough to make him open his eyes widely. For a few seconds he stared at the white ceiling overhead and then he felt them wanting to close again and it took him a great effort to stop this from happening. He felt a little strange, not exactly awake nor asleep but rather trapped between both and he knew if it wasn't for his aching body he might just be able to fall unconscious and get a little peace but it wasn't going to happen right now. Jungkook let his eyelids reach half-mast and then he forced them to stay that way, not closing a fraction more. Who had just left the hostel room? Taehyung? He didn't know because he couldn't lift his head right now to check, everything was too sore to even imagine being able to do so.
Jungkook knew that he was lying on a bed because he could feel it underneath him, the covers against his fingertips and the mattress under his head. He was in the hostel room because his friend had dragged him back here of course, because there had been an accident. Yet he struggled to remember anything more than the sight of a road in front of him and then the most horrible jarring sensation. The impact hadn't hurt at first, rather it had just shocked him, but when he had come back down on the hood and slammed his ribs on the metal there had been a flare of pain as the air had escaped his lungs. Then the car had still been ploughing forward so the momentum had made him roll right over the roof until he had hit the tarmac, head bouncing off it so hard that his vision had went black for a few seconds. The pain had taken a moment to kick in, his brain in too much shock to register what had happened until Taehyung had rolled him over and started cursing hysterically.
He was pretty sure that he was missing quite a bit of skin on his face because there was a horrible stinging sensation on his chin and one of his cheeks; just like how scraped knees felt. If the grazes were bleeding he had no way of telling because he didn't want to move and try and touch them to find out. He didn't think he could lift his arm right now because his shoulders and ribs were hurting too much and he would just wait until someone else cleaned his face for him, like Jimin had after he had gotten into that fight of all of those nights back. He didn't think anything was broken but he had no way of telling. It didn't hurt when he breathed, which was good, but moving was enough to make his ribs throb in pain and that wasn't the most reassuring sign. Broken, maybe not. One of them could be fractured but that was something he would rather not think about right now. Fractured ribs required treatment, treatment required money, and there was nothing more than a handful of coins in his jeans pockets.
Jungkook stared up at the ceiling, which was blurred from his eyelashes getting in the way and distorting the view, and then something moved suddenly and he felt fingers on his brow; soft warm fingertips.
"Kookie?" Seokjin asked in a quiet voice.
"Hmmm?" he managed to reply, moving his tongue in his mouth to press it against the roof and make the sound rather than say an actual word.
"Stupid question I know, but what's hurting right now?" His friend's fingers moved along his brow slowly and he stuck his tongue out to wet his lips before attempting to speak.
"Ribs most...ly, and my shoulder." He asked him which one and he hesitated as he tried to figure out where the pain seemed to be radiating from. "Right shoulder."
"Do you think you can sit up?"
"...Maybe but I don't think I wanna." At this remark he heard the softest laugh, possibly from Hoseok, and then hands grabbing hold of him. He was dragged up into a sitting position and the pain was so sudden that he couldn't help a groan of pain coming out of his mouth. "Fuck, fuck, that hurts."
"Does it hurt to breathe?" Hoseok asked as he shifted on the bed. Jungkook made a noise to deny this and the boy sighed in relief. "Then we don't need to worry about punctured lungs at least, I think..."
"My head feels punctured right now..."
"Looks like you hit it pretty hard on the road," Seokjin said as he leaned forward to examine his face, eyes moving along his hairline to likely look for any cuts. "Let's play a game. How many fingers?" The man held his hand up in front of him and Jungkook squinted at it for a moment.
"Two fingers and a thumb, nice try tricking me."
"Still as witty as always I see, not even a car can stop that." Seokjin lightly grabbed his head between his hands and turned it from side to side slowly. "Does that hurt."
"Nu-uh, my head hurts 'cos it bounced off the fucking road but I can see just fine, it's not blurry or anything like that."
"So far so good," his friend said as let go of his head. "Now comes the painful part. Definitely your right shoulder? Not both?" Jungkook thought this over for a moment before rolling his left shoulder, wincing slightly as he did.
"No, the left is OK. I can move it but my ribs hurt a little when I do. What're gonna do? You're not gonna pull on it are you?"
"No, I'm going to try rolling it and moving it. Just to make sure it's not broken or dislocated, OK?"
"I didn't know you were a doctor..." Jungkook muttered and his friend gave him a wry smile.
"No, but I did a first aid course in college so just let me try it," he argued that it would hurt and he sighed. "I know that it will hurt but it would hurt even with a doctor or a cute nurse checking so just let me try it. You've got Doctor Jin and nurse Hoseok to check you over instead, I'm sure he's much more cuter than the ones in the hospital."
"Pft," Hoseok snorted, "yeah let's go with that."
"Why does that sound like a line outta some kinda porno?" Jungkook asked as his friend got to his feet and leaned over to grab hold of his upper arm firmly but not roughly. "Honestly, I'm sure that it's fine you don't need to-ow!" Seokjin straightened his arm out, holding it level with his shoulder, and there was an eruption of pain in his shoulder as a result. "That fucking hurts!" The man ignored him and instead started folding his elbow and straightening it once more. He asked him if that hurt. "Not my elbow no, but my shoulder...I think I tore a muscle, I don't think it's broken."
"Hmm, you might be correct. How bad is the pain?"
"Bad, but like a really bad torn muscle pain. Maybe...seven outta ten?" Seokjin moved his hands along to his shoulder and he slowly rotated it. Jungkook bit down on his tongue until he stopped this, willing himself to not whine too much for fear that they really would think he had broken something.
"I couldn't do that if it was broken without you screaming, I think you have torn a muscle, maybe a ligament."
"What about the ribs?" the other boy asked.
"Fuck you Jung Hoseok," Jungkook groaned as he closed his eyes. The pain from Seokjin checking his shoulder had made him feel nauseous and the idea of him doing the same to his ribs was enough to make him feel a little lightheaded.
"Don't swear at your nurse," Hoseok retorted as he got to his feet and climbed off the bed to cross the room.
"I don't really know how to check them," Seokjin said after a moment, "and I don't want to go prodding around and risk hurting him. What does it feel like to you Kookie? Does anything feel broken?"
"Dunno, I don't think they're broken 'cos...when the car hit me I didn't hear a crack or feel anything like that. It felt like getting punched really hard, winded me badly, but that's it. I think I'm OK."
"You're one lucky kid if that's the case."
"Lucky's my middle name," Jungkook said as his friend finally let go of his shoulder and instead sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. He could feel his eyes on him but he just kept his own closed and listened to the sound of the other boy rooting around in a bag across the room. "Where's Tae?"
"He left a few minutes ago," Seokjin explained. "Didn't say where to or why, just that he needed to go. I think he was upset and he needed to clear his head."
"Don't you mean get drunk?" Hoseok corrected as he came back over to them, the sound of his bare feet rustling against the carpet. Jungkook opened his eyes just in time to see him hunkering down in front of him, bottle of something very familiar in hand. "Because we all know that's what's going to happen." He eyed the bottle of antiseptic and saw that there was quite a bit missing from the last time he had seen it clasped in Jimin's hand. Where had it all gone? It was a considerable two inches perhaps, and it was very noticeable. He couldn't recall anyone else using nor needing the antiseptic except him but he didn't really have the time nor energy to ask the others about it.
"He was already drunk...kinda," Jungkook said as he watched the boy unscrewing the cap. The scent wafted out of it and hit them all in the faces. "I mean we were both uh...we had a couple of beers you know?"
"At 1pm in the afternoon?" Hoseok asked as he dabbed a scrap of bandage roll into the solution, the material soaking through with the murky liquid. Though the question was supposed to be surprised he saw nothing akin to it on his face or in his voice.
"Yeah," Jungkook said in a quiet voice, "fucking stupid I know but...but I couldn't find any work and it pissed me off. I bumped into Tae and he already had some cash and that made me feel even worse so we took a break and-"
"When was this?" Seokjin asked suddenly and he paused, mouth hanging open and thoughts suddenly stuck in place. "What time was it when you bumped into Tae?"
"Uh...maybe 12pm, I think? No watch, I just know I'd been looking for like three hours when I bumped into him. Why?"
"How much did he have? Did he tell you?"
"He said ummm...100,000...I think. Can't remember, my head hurts too much right now." He let this hang in the air for a moment before once again asking them why they wanted to know but neither of them replied. Jungkook tried to figure out why but before he could even attempt to Hoseok dabbed at his chin with the antiseptic as he felt himself taking a sharp intake of air and jerking back away from his hand. It had just been a brief second of contact and yet his skin was burning from it, enough to make tears of pain start welling in the corners of his eyes.
"Just let me clean your face Kookie, I'll be quick I promise."
"How many times do I have to say that it hurts before you'll both listen to me?" Jungkook practically whined as the boy shifted to once again dab at his scraped chin. He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth at the pain but didn't move away this time. His fingers rolled up into fists but a few seconds later he felt something against the back of his right hand so he flipped it over and entwined his fingers tightly in Seokjin's. He probably squeezed tight enough to hurt him but the man didn't make a sound or try and loosen his grip. Hoseok quickly cleaned his chin and along the side of his jaw before moving to his left cheek and dabbing the soaked bandage against the grazes there too. It took a couple of seconds and then he announced that he was done. Even though that was the case he still felt a horrible stinging in the cuts that would take some time to stop hurting.
"See, not that bad at all, right?"
"Hoseok, if I could move right now I'd fucking kick you," Jungkook groaned, lifting his left hand up to rub at his eyes roughly, feeling tears wiping off on his skin as he did.
"Well, when you feel better you get one free kick," Hoseok said as he bundled the soiled bandage up and tossed it into the small trash can by the door. "How does that sound?" He agreed that that sounded good and the other boy smiled at him.
"Do I look wrecked?" Jungkook asked suddenly, thinking about his faded bruises that were still in place, the raw mark on his lip from the skin healing over that was stubborn and wouldn't go away. Though he hadn't caught sight of the grazes yet he was willing to bet that they were hideous and impossible to miss, certainly not slight cuts like the ones on his knuckles.
"Want me to sugarcoat it?" Seokjin asked with a soft smile. He shook his head and the man grimaced. "It's looks pretty bad right now." Jungkook sighed because he had expected this exact answer and he contemplated reaching up to try and feel the damage because he couldn't get to his feet to check his face in the bathroom mirror right now, stopping himself only because he knew that Hoseok would nag at him for it. He would probably claim that he needed to clean the grazes again because his filthy fingers had touched them, and he would rather avoid having that shit near his face for a few hours if he could help it.
"It feels pretty bad."
He felt both of his friends' eyes on him and he waited to see if either of them would say something or whether it was up to him. He was still thinking about the way Seokjin had interrupted him in the middle of his account to ask about Taehyung, about how that had been enough to distract away from the important matter at hand. He hadn't even finished talking about what had happened and neither of them had asked so he thought that he should wait until later, until they remembered or his other friends barged in and demanded to hear the full account. He didn't want to have to tell it over and over, repeating what had happened once was enough to make him feel like curling up into a ball so the longer he could avoid it the better. What was it about Taehyung that had caused them to both want answers? When he had left the hostel this morning he could remember the boy sitting on the bed by the window in his own world, not moving and barely even blinking, seemingly waiting for the bathroom to empty out so that he could get cleaned up without tripping over cast-off clothes and towels. Had anything happened in the time that he had been gone to make them want to know his whereabouts or what he had been up to? Had his head and body not been aching so badly he might have considered trying to ask them further, to try and get an answer out of them, but right now he really didn't want to start any trouble, especially if doing so would get his friend into trouble of some kind. Taehyung had told him that he had been working for the cash and he was going to believe him until given a reason to not believe, and if the cash had been gotten through stealing then he didn't really care either. They weren't really in the position to start complaining about where their funds came from and if it meant Taehyung had lifted more shit to sell then he didn't care. Jungkook had done his own fair share of stealing in the past, best to not throw stones in glass houses. Whatever Taehyung had done he had done with them all in mind and he thought that that was reason enough to leave it all alone and not press any further.
"I can't believe I got hit by a fucking car..." Jungkook muttered to break the silence that had fallen over the hostel room for several minutes. For a few seconds this just hanged in the air and then he heard Hoseok starting to laugh, saw his shoulders shaking slightly as he tried not to do so out of the corner of his eye. But it was useless and he just ended up clapping a hand over his mouth to try and suppress the sound. Seokjin tried his hardest to keep his expression neutral but he saw the way he pulled his lips in and then Jungkook couldn't stop himself from snorting laughter. It made his ribs protest with a sharp stab of pain. "Ah, don't make me laugh, it hurts!" Yet he found himself laughing even more and it was so painful that he fell back against the bed. "It really fucking hurts!"
"Hoseok, I need you to do a massive favour for me," their eldest friend said as he shifted to get off of the bed. The boy asked him what curiously as he looked at him, still grinning but managing to control his laughter. "I need to go get food and I need you to watch over Kookie. I know we have like the tiniest budget left but we also have no food... which is a massive problem right now." Jungkook explained that he had already had something to eat so he didn't need to worry about him and Seokjin practically sighed in relief. "OK, that makes it a little easier I guess. I'm afraid it can only be the cheap shit but you understand, right?"
"Don't worry about it," Hoseok said with a soft nod. "Don't worry about the food or Kookie, I'll see to it that he doesn't run in front of another car."
"Don't you mean crawl?" Jungkook muttered and his friends laughed at the remark.
"I'll only be a few minutes, I'm sure that you can handle him. Now if it was Tae I'd doubt it."
"Oh I can handle Tae too, don't worry about him." So Seokjin collected his boots from the floor and proceeded to knot them tightly, checking his jeans pockets and pulling out just a few bills and a palmful of coins. The man sighed wearily at the sight and shoved them back before crossing the room and opening the door, calling out his goodbyes as he closed it behind him. They both said theirs and then Jungkook finally lay back down on the bed with a groan of pain.
"God, I'm so fucking glad he's gone. I was scared he'd start poking my ribs or maybe play them like a fucking xylophone."
"Don't give me any ideas," Hoseok said as he shifted to cross his legs up on the bed in front of him, just a few a few inches of cover between them both. "I've always wanted to learn to play an instrument."
"You'd have to knock me unconscious first, and the way I'm feeling right now...I'm not far from it."
"Try to not pass out on me," Hoseok said, "because if Seokjin comes back and sees you lying there he'll think you died and blame me. I can picture it now." And Jungkook could too, the mental image of their friend stepping inside and dropping a convenience store bag on the floor, hands on his hips as he loudly complained. Yes, it was fitting enough to make him laugh under his breath, wincing slightly at the pain. "Kookie?"
"Hmm?"
"How exactly did you end up getting hit by the car?"
"I told you, I was running after a thief and I didn't see the stupid car and I ran right in front of it." He turned his head slightly to look at his friend but the other boy wasn't looking at him and rather at the bed covers as if they were more interesting. "Some dick grabbed a woman's purse and I just...I couldn't help myself and I ran after him. Fucking stupid I know but..."
"No, you were trying to do the right thing. It wasn't stupid at all."
"It feels pretty stupid right now."
"And Tae?"
"Tae was...uh...I'm pretty sure he was chasing after me." For some reason this made Hoseok laugh to himself and he wasn't sure why exactly. "He was yelling at me to stop I think, and I'm pretty sure he yelled about the car too but it was too late for me to stop." Jungkook paused for a moment and thought his words over in his head before deciding to say them out loud. "Tae did everything he could to help me, you know? He might've been drunk yeah, but he helped me. He thought he was doing the right thing and I think that he did. I dunno what I would've done if that happened to any of you, I don't think I would've been able to carry any of you back here. I would've freaked out probably, and ended up letting the ambulance and police show up and get us into even more shit."
"Why do you feel the need to defend Tae all of a sudden?" Hoseok asked quietly as he finally looked at him.
"Dunno, 'cos you and Seokjin seemed to...well earlier on you were asking questions like he was in trouble or something, like he did something wrong and I just thought-" the boy asked him what he meant by that and Jungkook paused before clarifying. "Seokjin asked a lot of questions about Tae and the money he had made." Hoseok made a soft noise under his breath at this, as if he suddenly remembered this. "Why?"
"He was probably wondering how the hell Tae made 100,000₩ an hour." This time it was Jungkook's turn to be confused and he asked him what he was talking about. "Tae left the hostel around 11:30ish and you said you bumped into him around 1pm so that's an hour and thirty minutes allowing room either way. That's a lot of cash to make in that time, don't you think? Maybe that's why he wanted to know?"
"...I guess," Jungkook said after a moment of thought. "Does it matter?"
"I don't know," Hoseok shrugged. "It's too hard to get answers out of Tae these days he's very...volatile."
"I thought you said you could handle him?"
"I lied. I can barely even handle Jimin these days and he's hardly a handful. Handling him used to be like handling a elementary school kid but I don't know...maybe it's not you that are all changing, maybe it's just me." The room went silent and he didn't want to say something stupid to break it. Did Hoseok really think that they had changed that much? That he couldn't control any of them? Jungkook didn't feel that he had changed that much at all and yet it seemed that he was unable to see his own changes and developments. Now that Hoseok had put it that way he felt almost guilty for causing trouble these past couple of times, especially the fight from the other night. If the boy felt that he was getting too much to control he could only imagine what his older friends were thinking.
"I'm sorry," Jungkook said eventually. "I'll stop causing so much shit."
"Trust me Kookie, everyone is worried about you but-"
"But it's Tae," he finished for him, "isn't it? You all think he's outta control." Hoseok didn't reply to this but he didn't need him to, all he needed to see was the way that he dropped his eyes to study his hands in his lap instead; as obvious an answer as a shout.
Jungkook didn't really register the fact that he had fallen asleep but he must have because when he next opened his eyes the hostel room was dark and someone was rapping on the door hard. The door was locked and there was only one set of keys so everyone else had to knock to be let into the room. Right now he had no way of telling but the knock was frantic and there was only a few seconds between each attempt before another series sounded; knuckles against the wood. He couldn't even sit up never mind get up to answer it so he just waited to see if anyone would wake up and answer it on his behalf. After five such knocks he felt the bed shifting and then someone getting up to answer it. He must have been sharing the bed and that was also something he had only just registered. The sound of a lock scraping back, metal against metal, and the door swinging open.
"Oh hey Yoongi," Seokjin said in a sleepy mumble. He could almost picture him reaching up to rub at his eyes, perhaps to fix his vest sleeve that he liked to sleep in or pull down on the wrinkled lengths. "I'm glad you're back right now...shit."
"Hey, you OK?" There was a slight pause before he started reeling off questions. "What happened? Is Hoseok alright?" Though Yoongi also sounded half-asleep there was something in his tone that sounded alert, likely because the thought of something bad happening was enough to send his pulse racing and wake him right back up again.
"Hoseok's fine, it's Kookie."
"What the fuck happened?" Jungkook heard the rustling sound of movement, undoubtedly his friend pushing his way inside the hostel room. He took a deep breath and attempted to sit up, even when it made his ribs ache just as badly as earlier. "Was he in another fight? Did he get the shit kicked outta him again?"
"No, he was in an accident. Tae brought him back here a few hours ago. He was hit by a car."
"Fuck me," the other man said in breathless disbelief.
"He seems OK though, I mean physically he's busted up pretty bad but nothing broken that we could find. He's going to be out of action for at least a week though."
"Course he is, he got hit by a fucking car." The incredulous tone in Yoongi's voice was enough to make him grin and he managed to finally sit up. He dropped his head to stare at the covers because it felt too heavy to hold up, slumped over forward even though his ribs didn't like the position at all. "Where's Tae? And Jimin?"
"Still out, Joonie's still out too," Seokjin explained. "Might still be working but I doubt it, I hope they're all on their way back here."
"Oh I don't need to worry about him, he'll be fine out there but it's getting late now. I hope the kids aren't working too." Yoongi shifted to look across the dark hostel room, the only light coming in from the window across the room, and he seemed to notice that he was awake, squinting at him slightly. "Hey, you OK Kookie?"
"Not really," Jungkook muttered and he heard his friend laughing under his breath before he moved across the room to get to the bed, sitting down in the edge beside him slowly as if to not disturb him in any way.
"You trying to fight cars now, huh?" Yoongi joked and he rolled his eyes in response. "I think they're too big for you."
"Well, Hot Wheels are too big for you," his friend reached over to ruffle at his hair roughly and he grinned at him.
"Seriously, how are you? Anything hurting right now?" So Jungkook explained that his ribs were aching really bad and that he was pretty certain that he had torn a muscle in his shoulder too but he wasn't sure at all. As he spoke he saw Yoongi's eyes moving along his face to examine the grazes. He only just finished talking when Seokjin moved to sit down on the bed again with a loud yawn. "If anything gets too bad or you think you need medical attention then just say it," the man said in a low voice, "and we'll get you to a hospital no matter what, OK? Don't lie about anything hurting, we'll find the cash somehow right?" Seokjin made a noise in agreement.
"I won't."
"Christ Kookie, a car? How the fuck did you manage to get hit by a car?"
"I know, I wasn't looking where I was going," Jungkook said with a soft laugh. "Talk about fucking stupid."
"When Jin opened the door I thought for sure that it was someone else, y'know? That something had happened with Hoseok or probably Jimin 'cos that kid's always busting his ass somehow, but not you. I gotta say I'm fucking surprised." Yoongi glanced across the room to study the other boy, Hoseok curled up in the other bed under the covers seemingly asleep. "Talk about dodging a bullet. Nothing broken, not even a finger?"
"Nu-uh," Jungkook said with a head shake, "just some torn muscles and a real sore head but nothing broken at a-" before he could finish this however Yoongi moved forward suddenly and he felt his arms going around his neck, pulling him into an embrace that he had not expected at all from his friend. His jacket sleeves brushed around his neck, the polyester material smooth on his skin and then he felt his hair against his cheek. "Nothing broken," he finished lamely. Jungkook could smell cigarette smoke coming from his clothes so strongly that he could taste the tobacco on his tongue. Then, just as quickly as he had hugged him, Yoongi broke the contact and sat back on the bed.
"Hoseok?" he asked, glancing over at Seokjin as he did. The other man explained that he was alright to his knowledge, that he hadn't touched a single pill and had been headache-free all day long, eating a light lunch and resting for most of the time. "Good, good, at least he's not looking for 'em right now but he will soon enough. We might need to...confiscate 'em before then. Remove the temptation."
"I thought of that too but then I thought it was a bit...much. It's like we don't trust him. I think it might upset him to find out that we did that."
"Hmm, good point." Yoongi shifted on the bed slightly and Jungkook just looked at him, still a little taken aback by the sudden embrace. "We'll just need to keep a constant eye on him if possible." His friend started gnawing on his lower lip and Seokjin asked him how the day had went for him. "Nothing as shocking as getting hit by a car, I'm afraid my day's fucking boring in comparison."
"Work?"
"Don't ask me how I did it but I managed to fucking bluff about being able to ride a moped," Yoongi said, and to Jungkook this sounded like the complete opposite to a boring day already, "and so for today I worked as...a pizza delivery guy."
"How the fuck did you even do that?" Jungkook asked in a mixture of awe and confusion. The man shrugged with a grin, the movement making even more cigarette scent waft to hit him in the face. "How did you deliver them? I don't even know what city we're in right now."
"I followed the road signs," he explained and for some reason this made Seokjin laugh as he lay back down in the bed, shifting to lie on his side and get comfortable. "It wasn't that hard at all really, the hardest part was trying to not get caught by the police without a license but I managed not to. Dunno how, I was sitting like this the entire time." Yoongi held both hands out in front of him, elbows cocked to mime riding a moped, and he sat bolt upright. His expression was so flighty that Jungkook couldn't help but snort laughter, especially when he started sliding his eyes back and forth.
"Talk about lucky..."
"Look who's talking," his friend retorted. "After that I cleaned dishes like always, I'm a real expert at that."
"It's just like Seoul," Jungkook said and a moment later he sighed in agreement. Yoongi looked physically drained, like he did most days and nights. He didn't know how the man managed to keep going when he never seemed to be resting, never seemed to get more than a couple of hours of sleep a night and spent his waking hours slaving away or nervously pacing. He hadn't even thought about how the days on the road had affected him because he always seemed to be running on empty even when they were back in Seoul, yet here he was wondering about just how well he was coping with it all: the hours on the road, the constant stress and troubles that they kept seeming to get into. Maybe he was wrong for assuming that his older friends were dealing with it a lot better than he and the other boys were? Maybe they were just better at hiding it then they were?
"Don't remind me of Seoul," Yoongi muttered as he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled a packet of cigarettes out. He was likely eyeing up his twentieth one of the day but he wouldn't blame him for needing one after everything that had just happened. If he had found out one of them had gotten hurt then he likely would have needed to smoke too.
"You think we can get back there by coach?"
"Doubt it," he replied without missing a beat, "I made 43,000₩ today and I worked like...eight solid hours or so. That's just gonna cover the cost of this hostel room and food. That's not gonna go on a single ticket. We're saving up for the tickets but we gotta buy food and rent this room out too. Unless we have a fucking miracle I don't think we're gonna make a lot of cash here at all." Jungkook asked him what would happen if they didn't and he slipped one of the sticks into his mouth before searching for his lighter. "We'll have to move on...which would've been alright but, well you're not exactly fit for walking right now. Are you?"
"Dunno," Jungkook replied with a shrug, really only raising his left shoulder as he did. "I haven't tried even tried walking." Yoongi lit the stick and breathed a lungful of smoke out with a sigh. "But if we need to move then we need to move, I'm not gonna slow the team down."
"Kookie, twisting an ankle fucking around is slowing the team down. Not being able to walk 'cos you got hit by a fucking car is not," his friend pulled the stick free and saw him eyeing it. He held his hand out and Jungkook was about to accept it when Seokjin's voice sounded and made him jump.
"Don't touch that," the other man said groggily, not quite awake but not quite asleep either. "You busted your ribs up. I don't think smoking will help them get better." Yoongi grinned at this and pulled his hand away before he could even try and grab the cigarette, placing it back into his lips out of reach just to piss him off.
"He's right, what you need is rest." The man took a drag on it and breathed it out of his nose. "I'll wait up for the others so get some sleep Kookie."
When Jungkook opened his eyes he did so grudgingly because he didn't want to be awake. Being awake meant being in pain and that was something he very much wanted to avoid but it was useless trying to pretend that he could. If he didn't wake up on his own accord then something else would wake him up anyway: a slamming door, his friends talking as they got ready to leave the room, Seokjin turning in his sleep and making the bed shift. It was probably better to wake up now and save himself the trouble of missing anything, even if it meant pain and having hundreds of questions directed at him as a result. And so he opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds, listening for any sounds and hearing nothing more than light snoring coming from across the room. He turned his head slightly to look at the sleeping man and sure enough Seokjin was still asleep, lying on his side with his face turned away from him so that he could only see the back of his head, his sleep-tousled hair. Good, his friend really needed the rest after the stress he had put him through yesterday. After studying his hair for a moment he turned his head to look in the other direction, at the door and window across the room. He did not expect to see Jimin lying just a few inches away from him.
The boy wasn't lying on the bed because there was no room but he was sitting right at the side of it so that he could fold his arms up on the slight section of spare mattress. At some point in his sleep his head had cocked on a slight angle and when he woke up his muscles would likely ache just as much as his: stiff neck, sore arms and legs and back from sitting slumped forward like that. Why wasn't he using the other bed? Or at least lying on the floor in a more comfortable position? The longer he looked at him the more he figured out why he was and he felt a smile on his lips. Jimin was sleeping right beside his bed like a relative on a hospital visit, not wanting to move from the side of the bed just so that they could keep an eye on whoever they were visiting. The boy had likely been told about the car accident yesterday by Yoongi upon getting back to the hostel and he could easily imagine him running right over to him, eyes wide as he checked him over and the series of rapid questions he would have fired at their friend, voice squeaky like it always got when he was a little scared.
"God, you're such a dumbass..." Jungkook muttered as he looked at the boy's face. His mouth was open ever so slightly and he looked rather peaceful, but soon enough he would be awake and tired just like everyone else, even if he forced an expression on his face to make them think otherwise, to try and keep up the positivity shit that Namjoon liked to preach. Speaking of Namjoon...
Jungkook shifted on the bed slightly, flexing his muscles to try and ascertain just how bad they felt today. Just like yesterday there was a horrible ache around his chest and stomach and he knew that the act of sitting up would be incredibly painful so he took a deep breath and forced himself to do so. There was a horrible few seconds of agony and he gritted his teeth and managed to not make a sound with great effort, and then he was upright and didn't need to worry about moving anymore. He shifted again so that he could rest his back against the wall because there was no headboard, and took a few quick breaths to calm his heart down. The pain had been enough to make it start beating a little too fast and his limbs felt strangely heavy as a result, as if he was exhausted. It was likely his brain's way of trying to trick him into not moving.
He dragged his eyes away from Jimin and instead looked across the room to locate the others. He saw Yoongi lying on the settee, looking very uncomfortable because it was small, arms and chest hidden from view under his jacket blanket. He had his head propped on one of the arms and it looked to be stiff and unyielding. Jimin wasn't the only one that was going to wake up with sore muscles, that was for sure. A few feet away from the settee he could see a pair of legs and he followed them to see Namjoon lying on the floor. There was a pillow under his head and he didn't look that uncomfortable at all judging from the fact he was lying on his stomach. He could also only see the back of his head so he quickly looked away to check out the opposite bed. Hoseok was lying in it just like he had been last night, on his back so that he could at least see his profile. The covers were down by his hips and in his sleep his tee had rolled up to reveal his stomach, which he could see rising and falling slowly with each breath. Taehyung was not lying in it with him but rather at the very bottom of the bed. He studied this for a moment as he tried to figure out why. Taehyung was curled up so that his knees were up against his chest, bare skin clashing against the black of his band logo tee. He didn't have his arms around them to keep them in place but rather one spread out along the bed and the other up by his face. He looked to have fallen asleep with his thumb in his mouth. He hadn't seen him do that in many years now, perhaps as far back as elementary school and for some reason he found it both telling and also jarring. Dark hair messily over his face to cover most of it, he could tell that he was drunk, that he had stumbled in at some ridiculous hour completely wasted, and Jungkook wasn't entirely certain if he was the reason why.
It seemed obvious enough to claim that his accident was the reason but he knew better than that. Taehyung didn't need a reason to get wasted he just needed a little time and lots of cheap booze. If anything the accident had finally validated his drunkenness for once and he would be able to get away with it: a near perfect plan. Jungkook knew that he had been waiting for a chance to really get drunk for a few days now and he had finally gotten his wish. The other boy had went too long sober, or only slightly intoxicated, and he liked to spend his days at least mildly intoxicated before ramping it up to eleven. A can of beer or perhaps a few sips of soju every now and again wasn't enough and he wouldn't really be that surprised if he found out that his friend had been sneaking out of a night to drink more freely; without their watching eyes and disapproval to slow him down. He felt bad for assuming that he would but he knew Taehyung too well and that meant he also knew all of the horrible little flaws. Taehyung had quite a few of them, no more than most people, but his were a lot deeper than most and they were the type to leave great scars in their wake.
Almost as if he felt his eyes on him Taehyung shifted in his sleep, making several sniffing noises as he moved his head. One of his eyes opened a crack before shutting again and he fell right back to sleep. Jungkook glanced back at Hoseok and studied him for a moment. Had Taehyung perhaps curled up on the bottom of the bed to save disturbing him, not wanting to climb into the bed beside him and risk waking him up? If he got back late and the boy was asleep it made sense but that required drunken Taehyung having enough sense to think of something like that. Had he maybe climbed into the bed after all only to get kicked out by Hoseok? Perhaps because of his terrible habit of drunken kisses? He didn't know and he wasn't going to ponder on it, that was between Taehyung and lover boy and no one else but if Hoseok were to talk he would listen. Possibly out of bored curiosity, possibly because it might give him a little more insight into Taehyung.
"Hmm..." Jungkook turned his head just in time to see Jimin shifting on the bed, scrunching his face up as he stretched his arms forward. His hands knocked against his thigh and the boy opened his eyes to look at him, sleepy brain slowing his reactions down considerably. "Oh...Oh Kookie you're awake." The boy declared before sighing in relief.
"Uh-huh, I'm awake alright, try to not wake everyone else u-"
"I could barely sleep last night," Jimin continued over him, voice not loud at all but sounding so in the quiet room, "'cos I was so worried about you Kookie. Hit by a car, I mean shit...you know?" Jungkook made a noise in agreement in the hopes of him slowing down or perhaps making a little more sense. "So I sat here just in case you woke up 'cos I wanted to make sure you were OK but then I fell asleep I guess..."
"Good, you deserve the rest after yesterday," he said and at this Jimin sat up fully, groaning as he tried to straighten his stiff back out. "You worked hard, you all did except me and-"
"It's not like you could work after the accident," the boy said, twisting and turning on the spot to loosen his back. "So don't say shit like that Kookie, you needed to rest after it and you still need the rest now."
"I don't, I feel like I need to go for a walk." Jimin laughed softly at this remark but he wasn't joking. He really did want to get out of bed and try moving around, trying to gauge just how bad he was and if he could move should they need to head out for some reason.
"What you need is for Tae to steal you a wheelchair." Jungkook scoffed at this but a few seconds later felt a smile on his lips. It was rather funny joke and he couldn't get mad at Jimin for automatically assuming that he was in a bad state, after all the boy had only just gotten to talk to him.
"How was work, huh? You find anything?"
"I did, helped working in a mechanics. Well actually I kinda just cleaned cars but I did help out with a few things."
"Course you did, you can fix anything right Dumbass?"
"But the pay was pretty shitty, I'm gonna go work there again today and hopefully get a little more. This coach thing is gonna be hard but I think we can do it, you know?" There was the positivity that he had been thinking of, so completely different to Yoongi's opinion on the matter last night that it was almost laughable. Had they finally disagreed on something? Taehyung would never believe it if he told him that. "I mean, I hope we can."
"You wanna get back to Seoul?" Jungkook asked, shifting slightly to get more comfortable. Jimin shrugged at the question but his expression revealed that the answer was likely no; the boy was just talking about the coaches because everyone else was and he wanted to follow the trend.
"I do..." Yoongi muttered from across the room, shifting to sit upright with his legs folded up on the settee cushions. He didn't even have his eyes open but he cocked his head in their direction. "So I can finally sleep in my own fucking bed."
"I thought you didn't sleep?" Jimin remarked with a grin and the man reluctantly climbed off the settee, opening his eyes to give him a glare as he crossed the room to get to the bed.
"Very funny," Yoongi said as he roughly messed up the boy's hair. Jimin made an annoyed noise but that smile still stayed on his face. "You OK?"
"Yeah I guess," Jungkook said after a moment, "I feel the same as yesterday, no better and no worse." The man hunkered down at the side of the bed so he could get closer to eye level with him, folding his arms on the mattress just like Jimin had done last night in his sleep. "I don't need the hospital, I just need rest."
"Good, you can rest all you want kid," Yoongi said as he studied his face, eyes lingering on his grazes. "Do they hurt?"
"Uh...not really, only when Hoseok douses my face with antiseptic like aftershave." The mental images this conjured was enough for both his friends to wince and he laughed at them. "Do they look painful?"
"Really painful," Jimin said with a nod.
"Hey, you'll thank me when they don't get infected," Hoseok said as he rolled on the bed to look over at them with a sleepy expression on his face.
"Thank you nurse Hoseok," Jungkook replied and the boy sat up slowly and reached up to rub at his eyes. "How's the head?"
"No headache," Hoseok replied in a groggy voice, "but that's because I've taken no pills of course. But don't worry about me Kookie, worry about yourself."
"I can do both." The boy suppressed a yawn and looked at the sleeping boy on his feet for a moment, no doubt wondering how he could move without disturbing him. "Actually I kinda need the bathroom and-" Yoongi shifted to get to his feet and he leaned over to try and help him get off the bed. Jungkook swung his legs over the side with only the slightest of twinges but standing upright was enough to make his ribs throb in pain. As soon as he was on his feet it didn't hurt so bad, just when he contracted his muscles in the process of standing up. His friend instinctively swung an arm around his back but he didn't really need it, he thought he could walk just fine on his own. So he let him walk him to the bathroom and he stopped to lean against the doorway.
"You OK?"
"Yeah, just a little uh...stiff." Jungkook attempted to shrug his hoodie off but it was too hard to do with his busted shoulder so Yoongi reached over to help him, delicately pulling the material down so that the jacket landed on the floor. It revealed his arms and sure enough there were quite a few bruises starting to appear on them, especially around the elbow area.
"That's not surprising..." Yoongi muttered and he reached down to grab the lengths of his tee because he couldn't grab the neck right now. Lifting his arms to get the tee off was pure agony but when it was done it was done and he let his breath out in a ragged groan. "Shit Kookie." Jungkook dropped the tee on the floor and then looked at his body. His ribs and stomach were covered in mottled bruises, so many that he couldn't see his skin underneath them all; deep blue and purple mottled patches from where the car had slammed right into him. On certain ribs there was more than just bruises, he could see red specks over them that looked even more hideous. There was a scrape just below his ribs that stretched along to near his navel and he thought it was from the windshield wiper when he had rolled over it. "You look like-"
"Shit," Jungkook finished with a soft laugh, "I look like shit."
Taking a shower and getting cleaned up proved itself rather difficult but he did so without any help. He felt surprisingly better as a result which was likely because the heat of the water made his aching muscles relax, and though getting dressed again meant having to stretch and bend down at least he only had to do it once. It wasn't like he was going out today, that was most certainly not allowed. His reflection in the bathroom mirror showed deep grazes along his left cheekbone and chin, not enough to bleed but rather just have the skin all torn up. It looked bad but it would heal up soon hopefully. He slipped into clean underwear and a tee before limping back into the other section of the room. Everyone else was awake and they all bombarded him with questions just like he had expected, so he answered them as well as he could. Yes, his ribs hurt but no he was okay, no, he didn't need to go to the hospital he just needed rest, so on and so forth. After they were all finished getting dressed they left the hostel room as a small group, leaving him and Hoseok and Seokjin in the room once more. But not before he managed to sneak a few cigarettes off Yoongi whilst the eldest showered.
Jungkook had just lit the first one up when Seokjin walked into the room, towel around his shoulders, and he paused with the end of a match hovering in front of the stick. His friend took a moment to notice, instead crossing the room and humming under his breath to collect something from the coffee table. When he came over to him he seemed to detect the scent of smoke and his eyes shifted to latch onto the cigarette.
"...Seriously?" He sighed as he lifted his gaze to look at his eyes. Jungkook grinned around the stick when he caught sight of the bottle in his hand and he groaned: the antiseptic. Seokjin must have bought some cotton wool yesterday because he had a handful of balls in his other hand and he dropped them on his lap as he sat on the bed beside him.
"What? I really wanted one."
"Your poor ribs," his friend said as he tipped the bottle onto one of the cotton balls and let it soak into it. Jungkook breathed his first lungful of smoke out with a soft cough, wincing slightly as he did and Seokjin gave him a knowing look. Then he lifted the wool ball and dabbed it on his chin lightly. The contact stung just like he expected, possibly hurting more than his aching ribs. He let him clean the grazes thoroughly as he slipped the cigarette out and waited for him to finish so he could carry on smoking it. When he pulled the cotton wool away he looked at it to see that there was no blood because the grazes weren't deep enough.
"You shouldn't be doing that," Hoseok said as he stepped inside from the bathroom and moved to sit on the settee. He rubbed at his damp hair roughly with his towel before tossing into onto the coffee table. Jungkook ignored him and instead took another drag on it. The other boy shook his head at him and looked at Seokjin and he could only shrug. "You're as bad as Tae..."
"Hey, at least I'm not wasted right now. Pretty sure he was still drunk when he left earlier."
"He came in with Namjoon," Hoseok explained as he crossed his legs up on the settee cushion, legs bare because he was just wearing underwear rather than his jeans. "Pretty late I think, woke me up. Good thing Namjoon found him or he'd probably be passed out in the gutters somewhere." Seokjin asked him if he was really drunk and the boy scoffed. "Is water wet? Yes he was drunk, on vodka I think."
"Better than cheap beer for getting drunk fast, especially on an empty stomach," Jungkook remarked as he took another drag on the cigarette.
"He climbed in bed with me rather than use the floor but I ended up pushing him away because he was...talking nonsense and he wouldn't sleep." The boy cocked an elbow on his thigh so that he could rest his chin in his palm. Their friend asked him what kind of nonsense and he sighed. "Something about real friends and subways, I don't know, he was so fucking drunk I couldn't understand what he was saying..."
"So that's why he was sleeping on the bottom like a pet dog." Hoseok shot him a look at this but Jungkook just held his gaze and didn't look away. It looked like there was another reason but he didn't want to say it.
"Does your head feel better today?" Seokjin asked him as he turned to look at him, squinting through the cigarette smoke.
"Yeah, doesn't hurt at all."
"Do you remember what happened?"
"I got hit by a fucking car, that's all I really need to remember." Yet Seokjin was looking at him like he was expecting something more and he knew that he had told him everything from yesterday so why was he pressing for more. "I got hit trying to get a woman her purse back from a thief, that's what happened. I had like...two cans of beer but I wasn't drunk just a little tipsy is all. That might've been why I was hit I dunno, all I know is that I got hit."
"Why did you want to chase after the thief so badly Kookie?" Jungkook held his gaze as he asked the question before looking over at the other boy. Hoseok didn't say a word and just raised an eyebrow slightly at him. "I mean, I understand why you did it but it's just-"
"Do you want the truth?" For a few seconds the hostel room fell silent and neither of his friends seemed to know what to say to break it, but then Seokjin broke it by quietly saying that he did. "Then you need to listen to this story, the whole of it." Jungkook took a deep breath and then let it out in a sigh before telling them about the wallet incident all the way back in Gyeonggi, about how he had stolen the cash in it because they had needed it and even though he had known that it was a bad thing he hadn't been able to stop himself. He told them about how, when he had seen the man running off with the poor woman's purse he had thought about that stupid wallet and had been unable to stop himself from chasing after him. It wasn't him trying to do a good deed to make up for the bad, it was a stupid guilty impulse that had taken over. Both of them listened to this silently and didn't interrupt once and he felt so very stupid admitting to it all. When he was finished he waited for one of them to break the silence and after a minute the eldest did.
"Thank you for being honest with us," Seokjin said in a soft voice.
"Are you mad at me?" Jungkook asked, staring at the pitiful remains of cigarette stick between his fingers. He didn't want to look at either of them and see anger or disgust on their faces.
"Not mad no, just worried about you."
"You've been carrying that secret with you for...nearly a week," Hoseok added. "Why didn't you tell us about it?"
"'Cos I thought you'd all be pissed off with me for...for stealing the cash like that. When I didn't need to."
"There must have been a reason," Seokjin remarked. "So what was the reason?"
"In the wallet there was..." Jungkook paused to think his words over before continuing. "There was a photograph in the wallet of two little kids, a boy and a girl. The wallet was a man's, it was a photograph of his kids and I told myself that...that it was wrong to take the fucking cash but I took it anyway. I took it 'cos we needed the cash after that hostel owner robbed us, and 'cos I told myself that I had a family too and we needed the cash." He raised the cigarette to take a drag on it before stubbing it out on the side table. "But my shitty excuse didn't work 'cos I still feel guilty about it all, and my guilty subconscious made me run out in front of a fucking car." He shifted on the bed to look over at Seokjin. "That's what happened, OK?"
"OK," their eldest friend said with a slow nod.
"Do you have a reason for the fight?" Hoseok asked suddenly and the question caught Jungkook off guard. For a moment he couldn't seem to think of a reply as he searched his brain for one. Eventually, doing so only because the room had went awkwardly silent, he gave him an answer.
"I...uh I dunno," he said with a sigh, "I dunno why I got into that fight."
"You said the guy jumped you," the boy said and he felt his gaze on him even though he didn't look up to check, the weight of his eyes substantial.
"He probably did," Jungkook muttered under his breath, "but I don't really think that's the truth. I think I probably started it, like I always do."
He started gnawing on his lip as he thought it over, finding that he really couldn't remember what had happened. It was because his anger had taken over, like always, and rendered everything else useless. Jungkook knew that he had a problem, a problem with his anger, but he didn't really know what to do about it. He once again thought about how he wasn't the only one with problems, about Taehyung and Yoongi, Hoseok and the others who he didn't have a clue about. What was happening to them all? Had this been happening all along but they hadn't even realised, blinded to it all because of their day to day lives and only able to see it clearly now that they had started this stupid adventure? Had it all been lying under the surface like a malignant tumour or had it only really started recently? He didn't know but he felt that the latter was probably the case and that was even more worrying. What was going to happen once the stupid adventure stopped, if it ever would? Was everything going to go back to normal or was it going to be irrevocably different after everything that had happened?
For some reason he couldn't seem to shake the idea that the worst was still yet to come despite everything that had happened already.
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