Work has been brutal.

After a solid few days of pounding the pavement and beating some heads in, Taehyung feels like he could sleep for a month. Fatigue weighs heavily on his shoulders. Weariness battles with necessary alertness, drawing his muscles tight like a compressed spring. Exhaustion pulls at his feet, and they drag. He nearly falls asleep in the taxi but manages to dig money out of his pocket and walks the two remaining blocks to an unassuming but pretty modern apartment building.

The back entrance opens directly to the stairwell and rear elevator. He doesn’t like being in such close quarters, but Taehyung doesn’t think he’ll make it, if he takes the stairs.

His reflection reminds him his shirt is ruined. The blazer, buttoned closed, hides the worst of it, but no amount of baking soda will help. That’s what he gets for wearing white. It’d be better to just dye the whole shirt red.

At the tinny ding, Taehyung stumbles into the hall and fumbles in his pocket for the key. The door opens silently, and the lights are off. No one greets him.

He lets the door close behind him and tiptoes upstairs to change and stash his weapons and holster. A shower sounds fantastic; he’s itchy from the dried blood.

His reflection tells him he looks better than he feels. What a joke; he’s starting to lie to himself, now, too.

After scrubbing his skin pink and turning the hot water to cold, he feels a bit more awake but is still tired and hungry and touch-starved for gentleness, so he tiptoes back downstairs, peering over the bannister into the living room.

Yoongi—sweet, grumpy, reliable Yoongi—is comfortably spread across an armchair with his feet propped up on a low coffee table facing the window. Only the inner, sheer curtains are drawn, but the window faces east, so less of the sunset penetrates the room.

Taehyung sneaks up behind the armchair as quietly as he can, expertly avoiding the noisy floorboards. They’re a good feature to have, in case intruders manage to find out Taehyung’s greatest weakness, but they serve as something of a game to his own mind. One false step, and Yoongi will wake up. Probably look at him with a sour frown and a complaint of the elderly being woken too early, although it’s close to dinner time, and they’re not far apart in age.

He manages perfectly tonight. His socks collect tumbleweeds of loose fur, white sticking out against the black and orange Naruto pattern. Holding his breath, he looms over Yoongi, leaning down and further around to peek at him.

When they were younger, Yoongi didn’t sleep in public. He might put his head down or close his eyes and tilt his face to the sun, but he didn’t really trust anyone enough, even the innocuous stranger, to nap in the open.

Taehyung, on the other hand, could conk out anywhere and even in the most ridiculous places. Tossed in a dumpster? Time for a nap. Punched in the nose hard enough to knock him off his feet? Good time to play opossum and nap. Yoongi reading a book? Excellent time and place to lean into him and nap.

Now, many years of building trust and love together, Yoongi lets down all his walls and guard. Taehyung does, too, shedding his pinched frown and steely stare and becoming more like the boy Yoongi had met when they were teenagers, goofy and openly affectionate.

He slips around the chair to kneel in front of it, folding his arms over the end of the chair arm. Yoongi’s fingers brush his sleeve and pull away; Taehyung worries he’s waking up, but the man shifts, inhales slowly, and sighs as he settles again.

His phone vibrates in his back pocket, but he ignores it, resting his chin on his forearm.

As Yoongi sleeps, Taehyung takes the opportunity to just observe. The laugh lines around his eyes and mouth aren’t as prominent, making him look younger and softer. His hair falls from its forehead-revealing style, sweeping over his eyebrows. He slouches in the chair with his head tilted back.

Such a lovely, pale throat. There’s a flit of an idea of how easily Yoongi could be killed and never know of the danger, but Taehyung sweeps it away before his imagination strays into his nightmares.

Min Min the cat, a rescue from one of Taehyung’s more sulky, soul-searching nights, stretches in her sleep and rolls onto her back in the little cradle of Yoongi’s thighs. They look very comfortable and relaxed.

Deliberately slow, Taehyung rises on his knees and holds either chair arm for balance. Min Min opens her eyes as his shadow falls over her, and she purrs in greeting but makes no move to get up.

It takes a moment, but Yoongi finally responds to the soft kiss and breathes a deep sigh.

Taehyung doesn’t pull away, nuzzling the corner of Yoongi’s mouth. “How's your neck?”

“A little stiff.”

“Your stomach?”

“Echoing with emptiness.”

“And your love life?”

“Not too active.”

“Anything else bothering you?”

“Yeah, who are you?” Taehyung laughs against his lips. Most times he’s with Yoongi, they’re listening to vinyl albums or watching foreign movies of a bygone era with familiar problems, quoting scenes back and forth.

“From top to bottom: Min Kim Tae Hyung.” He punctuates the syllables with kisses. Min Min slips away with a haughty look and raised tail, disliking the gross affection caging her in.

“Oh.” Yoongi takes Taehyung by the waist and pulls him close and kisses him again. “I thought you felt familiar.” Grace Kelly to Yoongi’s Jimmy Stewart, Taehyung does feel a little bit of a princess while sitting on his lap.

“Sleep well?”

“Just now, yeah. Didn’t sleep much the last few nights.”

“Work?”

“Worry. My boyfriend hasn’t contacted me for three days.”

Taehyung plays with the hair at the back of Yoongi’s head. “Don’t feel bad. Mine hadn’t, either.”

“Sometimes I wonder what he’d do if I wasn’t around anymore.” Taehyung’s smile falls to a frown, and his hand stills. Yoongi squeezes him in a hug but continues his off-handed musing. ”He could focus solely on his business and associates and not have to spare a thought to the old man in a mid-floor apartment with their bratty cat child.”

“Please don’t, Yoongi. Hyung—I am sorry.” He takes Yoongi’s hand and holds it tight, as though all his earnest feelings could be transferred with the pressure. “I just...I got busy. I don’t know if I could keep doing what I do without you.”

“Maybe that’d be a good thing.” Yoongi runs his thumb over Taehyung’s hand, watching the gentle dance of the curtains over the air return vent. “It could make you an honest man, if I left.”

“I’d rather be dishonest and in love than honest and lonely.”

Sophocles wrote, ‘All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.’ Yoongi thinks about it, sometimes, but he’s not sure he agrees. Taehyung isn’t proud. He’s incredibly humble, for a criminal, and he’s still very much aware that what he’s doing is illegal. An honest crook.

Yoongi isn’t entirely sure if it’s wrong, though.

He lifts Taehyung’s hand and kisses his fingers, holding them to his lips with silent reverence. In the dying light, he can’t clearly see, but he feels spots of smooth, new skin and sighs. “You were scratching, again.”

Taehyung smiles crookedly. “I can’t help it. They were itchy.”

“If you’d leave the scabs alone, you wouldn’t scar as much.”

“I kinda like scars,” he admits flippantly. “I think they’re pretty, sometimes.”

“And sometimes not.” Yoongi releases Taehyung’s hand and brushes aside the hair that always falls over his right temple. A scar runs along the hairline, a souvenir from a long-ago fight that he nearly didn’t walk away from.

“Any gray hair I have is because of you,” Yoongi says. A long time ago, he dyed his hair. Eventually, he’d had every color of the rainbow and a few in-between colors, as well, but he’s long since stopped the bleaching and coloring and allowed his natural black to grow in. It’s glossy and even softer than it looks.

They feel the vibration of Taehyung’s phone, trapped between a cheek and a thigh. He shouldn’t ignore it. Kissing Yoongi’s forehead, Taehyung gets to his feet and goes to another room. He doesn’t close the door all the way; Yoongi can hear his side of the conversation.

“What’s up, Jiminie?” His tone changes, lowering to nearly a whisper. “...I deliberately said not to do that. ...Apologies are appreciated, but they don’t change anything. He’s still new, but that much should be obvious. ...No, don’t kill him, yet. Wait for me. ...Just keep him locked up until tomorrow. I don’t feel like coming back tonight.” He hangs up and turns the phone off. Min Min pushes the door open wider and rubs around his ankles. He jumps when he turns around and sees Yoongi leaning against the doorframe.

“Are you staying for dinner?”

Taehyung smiles. “If you’ll have me.”

“You sure you don’t need to go back to work?”

“It can wait. I trust Jimin. There’s a new guy that has ideas of his own, though. I don’t like that, but I like him. I’ll be sad if he has to go.”

“Do what you have to in order to survive.” Taehyung had ideas, too. It’s how he nearly got scalped and earned a place near the top of their organization. He’s learned to be wary of people like him.

Dinner is takeout. Taehyung is wary of any delivery, but Yoongi is lazy and doesn’t want to cook if he can avoid it. They compromise—Yoongi answers the door, and Taehyung stands behind the door with a gun.

Just in case.

The worst that’s happened is a delivery girl tried to get flirty. It didn’t go anywhere; she saw Min Min, started sneezing, and thanked him for the business as she booked it down the hall.

Yoongi closes the door behind the delivery man and hands a bag to Taehyung to carry into the kitchen. Forgoing bowls, they pass boxes back and forth and eat in silence at the wobbly table with a folded bit of cardboard beneath the short leg. Yoongi says as long as it works as a table, he doesn’t intend on replacing it.

Taehyung’s always loved watching Yoongi eat. He focuses solely on the food. There’s no room for conversation, and he often doesn’t notice the attention.

It’s another opportunity for Taehyung to just relax and observe and let his mind wander a little bit.

“You have sauce on your face.”

Yoongi looks up, eyes wide then screw up with embarrassment—Taehyung’s barely touched his food; he’s obviously been staring, again. Even with his mouth full, Yoongi complains and gestures with his chopsticks in a way Taehyung knows means eat. Their friend Seokjin is the same way. He was probably a grandmother or auntie in a past life; food is the reason to life and the peacemaker of all conflict.

If only it was that easy. Taehyung would invest in a restaurant farm.

“Let’s take a bath after we eat,” he says, offering a piece of chicken he’s cleaned the sauce from to Min Min. She sniffs it, takes it delicately with her teeth, and drops it onto the floor to investigate further. “I already showered, so you can’t complain about sitting in my soup.”

“How romantic.”

“We could open some wine. It’d help you sleep.” Yoongi’s always been the type to get sleepy after a drink. Add the warmth of a bath, and Taehyung will probably have to carry him to bed.

“Does this mean you’re spending the night?”

“I was kinda planning on the whole weekend. If you want me.”

“I always want you, Taehyung.” Yoongi pushes his chair back and gets to his feet with a sigh. “It’s so rare, now, that I’m allowed that.” The comment is soft, meant for his own ears more than Taehyung’s, but Taehyung hears it and stares at Yoongi’s back.

Once upon a time, all of this would’ve been a distant dream—Yoongi, his work, the apartment, even Min Min. Taehyung was just a weird kid with a crush, an alcoholic father who’d throw empty bottles at alley cats, and a devious mind beneath a ditzy smile and false forgiveness.

They used to neighbors and made an odd pair. A depressed insomniac and a scared kid with blood he could never clean off of his hands.

Taehyung eventually found family and acceptance among other street kids. Yoongi spent a few years in a rehabilitation program after trying to set fire to a subway and admitting his fascination with the major tragedy of their generation. Although not allowed outside contact, they found one another again after his discharge. It was like something in them silently agreed to wait.

And while Yoongi stopped protecting himself, Taehyung adopted the responsibility. Quiet and unnoticed until settled, like a cat curled on a corner cushion, they accepted their roles without comment or question. Yoongi's safe in their nondescript apartment building. That's Taehyung's priority.

Like the rest of the apartment, the bathroom is spacious. Unnecessarily so, in Yoongi’s opinion, but the large tub affords both men ample room.

He has half a mind to try getting handsy as they strip, but Taehyung decides to let his exhaustion keep his hands to himself.

They never were shy with one another. Taehyung’s fond of seeing their differences; his natural tan compared to Yoongi’s desirable fairness. His muscles against Yoongi’s softer, yet still skinny, build. His multitudes of scars and Yoongi’s smooth, repaired flesh.

Min Min curls around the door once they’re in the water. Her tail falls into the shape of a question mark, and she sniffs their discarded clothes before claiming Taehyung’s pants as a bed.

Unlit candles offer mild scents of lavender and jasmine. They don’t burn them at all; they just smell nice and add to the classy aesthetic.

For the very purpose of drinking in the tub, there’s a corkscrew kept in the bathroom. Taehyung opens a sweet, imported wine and pours them both a glass. “I still don’t know what makes a wine good,” he remarks, passing a glass to his recumbent boyfriend.

“Sweetness, acidity, alcohol content,” Yoongi draws his toes along Taehyung’s thigh, “body…”

“I’ll take your word for it, hyung.”

Yoongi sips his wine and slips lower into the water, leaning his head back onto the edge of the tub. His eyes close. Taehyung appreciates the shadow of his eyelashes on his cheeks.

“Don’t fall asleep, or I’ll have to carry you.”

Yoongi scowls flatly, a trademark look of mock annoyance. “Whatever. What are those muscles for, if not to carry me and obey my every whim?”

Taehyung hums and downs the rest of his drink. He’s never been the sipping and savoring type. “Good point.

“So are you gonna come over here, or should my muscles and I come over there?”

“Hold my wine.” Yoongi passes his glass and stands on his knees to shuffle between Taehyung’s knees. He hovers for a moment, hands on the edge to cage Taehyung in, and just looks at him. Admires his features. Drips clusters of suds onto his chest.

“You gonna kiss me?”

“You think you deserve it?”

A lesser man would take offense. Taehyung just smiles and tilts his head back. “Of course.”

Their mouths taste like alcohol but sweet. Yoongi turns around and sits against Taehyung’s front, accepting his offered glass and apologizing to Min Min’s tail as she flees from the water sloshing from the tub.

Taehyung refills the glass and slides them lower in the water. Goosebumps rise along his cool arms. He wonders what his crew is doing. For the most part, his business runs itself. He really only needs to be present or intervene when something needs to be signed, someone needs to learn their place, or somebody needs to disappear. Lately, the problem has been thugs running around alone or in small groups, terrorizing businesses. It works to Taehyung’s advantage, in a way, because he is paid to keep the thugs away.

But they are damn annoying and everyone is often better off if the thugs are dead.

Accidents do happen in the alleys and back streets.

His right-hand man is also his best friend and knows just as much about running things as Taehyung does. They’ve been together since the beginning and has really been the only constant person in his life aside from Yoongi.

Patient, kind, forgiving Yoongi who became everything their childhoods were not.

“Think much harder, and you’ll hurt yourself,” the man in question mumbles. Leaning his head back, he kisses Taehyung’s jaw. “And if we stay in here much longer, we’ll prune.”

Taehyung takes Yoongi’s arms and hauls him to his feet. He doesn’t have to lift him out of the tub, at least, and his boyfriend is compliant in putting on the fluffy bathrobe and drying his feet on a mat so he doesn’t just drip all the way into the bedroom.

Following after rubbing himself dry with a towel, Taehyung pulls on tiger striped pajama pants and plugs the hair dryer into an outlet.

Sitting cross-legged before Yoongi, he aims the hot air and watches with a fond smile as Yoongi keeps his eyes closed but moves his head to dry more evenly. He doesn’t function well when cold.

When suitably dry, he falls backwards and yawns.

“You gonna put clothes on?” Taehyung asks, drying his own hair. Min Min slinks passed the door, peering inside with quivering whiskers at the noise.

Yoongi grunts, half-asleep.

Once the dryer is off and put away, the cat tiptoes inside and hops onto the bed. She sniffs Yoongi’s fingers, drags her face over them, and drops onto her side next to his arm.

Taehyung turns the lights off. His side of the bed is largely taken up by Yoongi, sprawling like a starfish on a rock, but he doesn’t mind and tucks an arm and a leg over him.

The robe is fluffy and soft, making hugging Yoongi even more delightful.

Soon, it’s just the sounds of their slowing breaths and deep purrs.

Taehyung can relax.

---

a/n: Written for the Min Yoongi fic fest. (prompt no.11 Everyone is scared of mafia boss taehyung but no one sees how sweet he is when he goes to visit his tiny cute bf Yoongi.)

It ended up rather Taehyung-focused, but Yoongi is the driving force behind his actions. And it honestly would've been pretty boring from Yoongi's perspective. A lot of sleeping. Embracing the rock life. Without some force (i.e., Taehyung or a hungry Min Min) acting on him, he's not about to move.

I very nearly titled this Danger Stays the Weekend. Still like the sound of it.

When I watch Hitchcock movies, I have to watch all of my favorites, or I just don’t feel complete. The back-and-forth bit is a reference to the 1954 Jimmy Stewart/Grace Kelly thriller, Rear Window.

Another reference is to the 2003 Daegu subway fire, an incident that killed nearly 200 people and lead to greater subway safety features and regulations.

I'm not sure why I named the cat Min Min. I knew a dog named Min Min, though.