Jimin kindly offered him an early display of his persuasive capacities as soon as they walked into the apartment building.

 

"C'mon Jimin. Just get inside the elevator." Yoongi pleaded for the umpteenth time, albeit to no avail.

 

The small hybrid refused to step anywhere near the cramped, odd box. He shook his head negatively, then looking away from it because as everyone knows, if you can't see it then it can't see you.

 

"Look, it's perfectly fine." The older insisted, walking inside and closing the door, then opening it again. "See? We get in here then press this button so it takes us up to our story."

 

Useless still, the cat wasn't convinced. Defeated, Yoongi walked back out.

 

"Fine, let's just take the stairs." He sighed, already dreading the idea of climbing the steps to the eight floor.

 

Never in his existence, at least at this address, had he ever used the damn staircase. Well, he was about to. He was about to get the most physical exercise he ever had in his whole lifetime.

 

Of course it didn't take more than twenty steps and two floors for Jimin to simply stop walking and stare up at Yoongi slightly ahead of him with round, innocent eyes.

 

"What?"

 

"I's tired." He mumbled, sitting down in the halfway up the staircase.

 

"Well, had we taken the fu-, the frea-, the elevator..." Yoongi rolled his eyes, holding his cussing.

 

He watched the hybrid yawn, hash brown ears laying flat on his head as he did. Yoongi didn't want to see it as endearing but somehow he couldn't brush that notion aside.

 

Ugh. Stop.

 

Deciding the day had already been long enough, despite it barely being eleven in the morning, he walked back down to the boy's level and nudged his shoulder.

 

"Hey, get up. Let me help you."

 

Jimin didn't seem bothered nor excited by the prospect of such amount of physical contact, simply getting up and already outstretching his arms, as though being carried had always been a given.

 

Yoongi would've turned around so he could climb on his back, but the hybrid was fast to wrap his tiny arms and legs around both his neck and his waist, then rest his chin on his shoulder.

 

Trying not to think too much of it, the older locked his own two hands together under his rear end to provide support and started walking upwards once again.

 

By the fifth flight of stairs, Min Yoongi was no more.

 

His soul had abandoned his body, he swore. His stamina had fled his limbs. His will to live was a foreign concept. He panted and wheezed, discreetly of course, while the unbothered hybrid hummed some song to himself and balanced his legs back and forth at his sides, making it all the more difficult to keep his pace.

 

"J-Jimin-ah, don't you w-want to w-walk a little now?" He huffed, not even sure why it sounded more as a suggestion rather than an order.

 

"I's tired." He reasoned at his ear. "Much tired."

 

If Yoongi wasn't fighting for oxygen and trying to ignore the shiver that ran up his spine at the whispered words, he would probably have told him that it wasn't "much", but "very".

 

However, Yoongi was edging on passing out, so he saved his one last breath.

 

It took him long enough to get to the eight floor, but he did, between climbing one step and making a pause, then back at it. Then again, for some reason, he didn't have it in himself to put the boy down and make him use his legs.

 

He decided to endure it either way, deep down accepting it as a sort of personal punishment.

 

Albeit it not coming near as close to what he knew he truly deserved.

 

As he climbed the final step, he decided God exists and He is in the shape of his apartment door. Never had it looked so beautiful, in all its scratched and old glory.

 

"We're... Here..." He panted, bending his knees slightly, hoping with all his might that Jimin got the idea.

 

The hybrid did, unwrapping his limbs and standing before the older, who now looked inside his pockets.

 

As Yoongi put the key in the lock and turned it around, his brain started working at the speed of light, a turmoil of q