The Broken Dancer

The Secret Room

Jimin woke with a start.

For a disorienting moment he couldn't place himself - the ceiling above him too close, the shadows softer than the familiar darkness of the club's auction rooms. His heart leaped into his throat, panic already sparking like a match against dry tinder, until the rhythm of his own breathing caught up with him. It wasn't the auction chamber. It wasn't the gaudy, suffocating cage his father paraded him in every night. It was his room. The place no one ever entered.

And then he felt it.

The heaviness at his side. The warmth at his back. His body, usually wound tight as a wire, was heavy and loose in ways that didn't feel like him at all. The ache of vigilance - that constant bracing - was strangely absent.

Jimin turned, careful and small in movement, and froze.

Yoongi.

Asleep.

His hair was mussed, his features softened in slumber, lines of tension gone. There was something almost boyish about him like this, stripped of the sharpness Jimin had come to expect. He shouldn't be here. It was wrong - a breach in the unspoken rules of this place, in the cage Jimin had built around himself. No one was supposed to see this room. No one was supposed to cross this line.

And yet... it felt right. Too right.

A shiver crawled down Jimin's spine as his thoughts tumbled, panic sharpening. What if someone found them? His father prowled the halls like a warden; the staff whispered everything they saw. If anyone discovered Yoongi here, Jimin knew exactly where the punishment would land - on him. Always him.

But a darker, quieter fear rooted deeper: what if Yoongi left? What if Jimin woke tomorrow, or the next night, and the bed was empty, the air cold, this fragile breach closed forever? What if this was just a fluke, a mistake Yoongi never intended to repeat?

The panic pressed against his ribs, warring with something far more dangerous: the almost desperate pull to clutch tighter, to keep this warmth tethered at his side. His body knew before his mind admitted it - he had slept, truly slept, because Yoongi had been there. He hand't had to fight the shadows alone.

Jimin curled his fists into the sheets to stop himself from reaching out. The urge was violent, instinctive, clawing at his chest: Don't leave. Don't disappear. He swallowed hard, the words burning the back of his throat, but he bit them back. If he said them aloud, they might shatter everything.

Yoongi stirred then, shifting slightly, and Jimin held his breath as if the air itself might wake him. The older man's breathing evened again, calm and steady, and Jimin let himself watch. Just for a moment. Just long enough to etch the sight into memory - Yoongi, here, in this impossible sliver of safety.

It was terrifying. It was intoxicating.

And Jimin had no idea which feeling would destroy him first.

The scrape of fabric and the faint hitch of breath told Jimin before he dared to look - Yoongi was waking.

Jimin's body went rigid. He should have moved, should have rolled away and pretended to be asleep, should have done something to rebuild the walls he'd already let crumble. Instead, he stayed frozen, eyes fixed on the cracks in the ceiling, listening as Yoongi shifted on the mattress. A yawn, small and unguarded. The rustle of fingers rubbing at tired eyes.

When Yoongi's voice finally came, it was low and rough from sleep.

"...Morning."

The word was so ordinary it almost startled Jimin more than anything else had. Ordinary had no place in his world. And yet here it was, offered to him like a fragile gift.