Strawberries and Cigarettes

Chapter Nine

Yoongi was sat on a stool behind the counter of the shitty gas station, cigarette hanging haphazardly out of his mouth, a few of the fiery red embers falling onto the counter, decorating the glass of the lottery tickets in a black and grey snow. He was writing down something in a tiny journal, and any customer that walked into the store could see the dark circles and bags under his eyes.

He was bored, tired, and lonely. He had picked this shift up last minute in order to pay for tickets to some concert for Tae's birthday gift, and Jungkook some new shoes for christmas, seeing as he had worn the same old sneakers for the past two years.

He groaned as he ran his pencil across his old and torn leather notebook, he had it since he was 14. It was filled with photo concepts, poorly shaded drawings, and some pretty depressing song lyrics from a phase he and Hoseok had gone through around 16.

Yet right now his pencil was just running up and down the crease of an already filled out page. The words scribbled in the margins telling a story of his old worn piano. He was so focused on the dark gray strip in the center of his pages that he didn't notice the convenience stores bell ring as someone walked in.

He tunned in after the person had already passed the counter, and he listened to the faint footsteps pad against the tile of the brightly lit room and towards the freezers. Ignoring it as best as he could, Yoongi spat his cigarette onto the ground, stomping out the last burning sparks of the "cancer stick" as Christian had called it.

For a few seconds, Yoongi managed to forget about the other person in the store with him: until there was a cup and some proteins bars sat on the counter above his notebook. Yoongi looked up with a groan, freezing for a second when he saw the boy in front of him.

There stood Park Jimin, drenched head to toe in what Yoongi could only assume was sweat, hair pushed back off his forehead, a powerful mixture. The youngers shirt was pasted to his oddly muscular chest, the thin athletic jacket not doing much to hide it and- and he had on tights.

There was a cute, sweaty, disheveled, straight Christian boy in front of him and fuck.

"Hi, thank you for coming to Kyles Kwicki, will this be all?" Yoongi said, managing to keep his calm, despite all the blood slowly moving from his head and flowing to his- well, you know where.

Jimin shook his head, and pulled his wallet out of his backpack, which was swung over one shoulder.

"Don't worry about it Park, it's on me." Yoongi said, putting some of his own tip money into the cash register, not giving Jimin any time to object.

Jimin, now frozen in his spot, weakly shook his head no. Without making eye contact he laid a wad of cash down on the counter.

"I can't let you do that." Jimin muttered weakly, keeping his eyes locked anywhere but on Yoongi.

Puzzled, Yoongi's face wrinkled, "Not going to argue with you, but i'm also not giving you your change, pretty."

Jimin just shrugged, tiredly picking his things up from off the countertop and turning on his black dance shoe heels to head out the door.

"Wait, it's cold as balls out there, are you walking home?" The elder asked, already pulling off his jacket. Without waiting for Jimin to answer he walked around the counter and slipped his worn black jacket over Jimin's shoulders. "Put it all the way on kid." he ordered.

"But-"

"Yes I hate you, don't let this go to your head, I just don't want my brother sad because his headass friend went and got his cute ass pneumonia" Yoongi said, cutting the younger off.

Jimin simply nodded, putting on the jacket fully. The two stood there in silence for a moment. Jimin was going to say something, but stopped himself. So instead he muttered "Thanks, bye now," and quickly walked out of the door with his head down, a light dusting of pink settled into his cheeks. And for some reason, Yoongi couldn't help but smile.

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Welcome to corona, we have started three fics, finished one, and edited none :) - Zepp (031620}