Blue Collar Cuffin' - Jikook

Cocoa Butter Kisses

WARNING:
Long Chapter, sorry!!!

- Vio
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"Us." Jungkook said curtly. "They gambled their kids." Jungkook said, his voice cracking with anger and some other emotion Jimin couldn't name. "I was ten and Jieun was twelve, we didn't know anything about it then."

"That's....God Jungkook that's awful-"

"He was sick, Jimin. It wasn't his fault. He needed help and I couldn't -"

"You were just a kid."

Jungkook shook his head. "My dad never held Jieun's mom to the debt. Never. He wasn't serious about it. He was a good man, a good dad."

Jimin reached up and wrapped his arms around Jungkook, holding onto him tightly. "I know," he murmured, "I know."

"For him it was the idea that excited him. The very definition of gambling their worlds. He never had any intention of following through on his victory. But Jieun's mom couldn't live with the guilt. She...took her own life. Then my dad got into a really bad car crash last year and everything he's ever won or lost fell onto me. Jieun showed up at my door two days after he died and challenged me to a game of cards. She put all of her mom's wins and losses on the table and I did the same with my dad's. I don't why - I just remembered how lost Jieun looked. I mean, she looked as broken as I felt so when she offered a game...I don't know. I don't know." Jungkook trailed off, shaking his head.

"And you lost." Jimin said, realizing. "That's....God Jungkook...that's so fucked up."

Jungkook laughed, actually laughed. "Thanks for your sentiment Chim."

"No really, that's ... Jungkook I'm so sorry. Can you get out of it? Is it the debt binding?"

"I tried, once." Jungkook said. "She showed up to a party I went to. I refused to humiliate myself; she wanted me to beg for her on my knees. I explained how we had no real debt to each other, that it was just a stupid game our parents had played and one game of cards doesn't change that."

"How did she take that?"

"Badly." Jungkook swallowed, he ran a hand down his face. "I've never told anyone this, Jimin. You can't tell anyone. You can't."

"I won't, I promise."

"Jieun waited. She didn't yell or make a scene, she's more clever than that. This is all a game to her, Jimin. She's patient. I thought I'd won after telling her off. This was after months of degrading myself for her enjoyment and I thought I finally won. Yoongi reached out to me a couple months after my dad died, offering me a job and a place to stay. It was like someone had thrown me a landline made of gold. This party was the first time I got to see him in years, it was supposed to be the night I escaped Jieun, escaped everything. I'd get a new job, a new home, a new life. She turned that landline into a noose."

"She's smart, Jimin. She only shows up around people I know when she knows it'd be in her favor. Yoongi, in fact, has only seen her twice, even if he refuses to remember it. The first time was at that party. She waited, observing how I hung around him, laughed with him, treated him like my family, and caught on that Yoongi was important to me. And she watched how Yoongi would look at the goofy extroverted kid with enough energy to single handily power half of Seoul. It took me forever to figure out why I recognized Hoseok at your apartment, Jimin. It's an intense thing, when Yoongi loves someone."