"Yah, RM is back!" someone yells as soon as the man leads Jeongguk into a large group house. "Did you get the sushi?"
"No, I forgot," the man - RM, apparently - replies. "But, uh... I brought a friend." RM adjusts so Jeongguk stands in front and slightly off to the side of him, and puts his hands on Jeongguk's shoulders. "This is Jeongguk. Jeongguk, this is... Well, everyone, I guess." Jeongguk's eyes scan the room.
"I'm Suga," the person who had yelled greets cheerfully, and he begins to point around the room. "J-Hope is over there." Jeongguk follows his eyes towards a red-haired man lain on a couch, glasses perched almost to the point of falling off, reading a book Jeongguk doesn't care to place. "And V and Jin are both playing video games in the corner." Jeongguk continues to scan the room until he falls onto the two men sat criss-cross on the floor, both desperately shoving one another as they yell about a game. Apparently, the lilac is beating the blond. "And Jimin is in the bathroom right now, you'll meet him in a second."
Jeongguk blinks and looks straight forward once more, again, lost in his mind, thinking about cars and blood and the cut on his leg and focusing it all towards the tan coloured wall just above Suga's blue hair.
"I don't like playing video games with you," one of the men on the floor claims, dropping the controller and shoving the lilac. "You cheat."
"Jin-hyung, I do not!" the lilac responds, and the blond - Jin - stands up walks off to the hallway. The lilac - V - turns around on the floor and spots the new person in the room. "Ah, you! You play?" Jeongguk finds himself shaking his head, and V turns to another victim. "Uh... J-Hope?"
"No," J-Hope says, promptly and stoically, not removing his gaze from the book. "Namjoon-ssi, no sushi?"
"No," RM - Namjoon - replies. "Didn't have time." Namjoon snaps his fingers and holds up the candy Jeongguk had once been eating. "Got some Chews, though." J-Hope looks up at that and immediately catches the bag thrown his way, eating them as he goes back to his book.
Jeongguk watches all of the exchanges with an almost utmost surprise. He hasn't ever seen this much personality in one room.
"Hey, Jeongguk, you okay?" Namjoon asks him, and as if on cue, Jeongguk shakes his head that no, he isn't. And it's probably the first time he's told the truth in a while. "What's wrong? Do you need to sit down?"
Jeongguk lets himself be led towards the couch next to Suga and he limps as he does so, his head spinning and hurting and his lungs feeling a little constricted with all of the new information, the new people, the new everything.
"What's wrong with your leg?" Suga asks as Jeongguk sits down, and Jeongguk gulps. "Uh... Can I look?"
Jeongguk makes no move of protest as Suga leans down and starts peeling away at the material of Jeongguk's sweats, which had plastered to his wound. As soon as Suga pulls up enough, the blood seeps right back out.
"Aish," Suga curses, pulling the sweats back down. "Jimin can fix that, he-"
As if on cue, someone's head pops out from behind the hallway's wall, blonde hair bouncing.
"Did someone call me?" he asks curiously. "I heard my name."
"Uh, yeah, Jimin, could you maybe...," Suga gestures generally to Jeongguk and his leg, "help this kid out?" Then Suga puts a hand on Jeongguk's shoulder and adds, as an afterthought, "I mean, if that's okay with you. Jimin's good and it looks like it hurts. He can fix you up at practically warp speed." That earns a chuckle from Jimin.
"Hyung, I'm not a fuckin' miracle worker," he chortles jokingly. "But, uh, yeah. I can help you out, kid."
Jeongguk, without any kind of conscious impulse, actually nods, and he feels himself being helped back to his feet and walked off somewhere else. A bathroom, and he's sat onto the closed lid of the toilet seat.
"What's your name, by the way?" Jimin asks as he bites his lip in thought. "I'm Jimin. Or Chim, Jiminie, whatever you'd prefer. If you're younger than twenty-five, you're free to call me your hyung, too. Or oppa, if you...prefer that." Jimin smiles up at him and then it fades slightly as he goes back into thought. "So... This leg?"
Jeongguk finds himself watching Jimin as he pulls up the sweats and watches the cut pull open from the loss of its binding material. He asks every now and then as he prods, "Does it hurt?" and Jeongguk doesn't answer, so Jimin doesn't go much further than that.
"Well," Jimin huffs, turning to the underside of the sink and pulling out a medical kit. "Good news: It's not infected yet. Bad news: It's long and it's deep, so you're going to need stitches." He watches Jeongguk, almost waiting for a reaction, but Jeongguk doesn't give one. "Um... What'd you use? Just a normal knife, or something...bigger?"
How Jimin comes to that conclusion so easily, Jeongguk doesn't know. He still doesn't answer, so Jimin continues to talk as he cleans and prods and fixes.
"When we were a little younger," Jimin starts, wiping a wet cloth down the sides of the fatless skin on his calf, "J-Hope did this kind of stuff. Y'know...cutting and everything. It actually... It never got to this point, but he had a lot on his arms. I was the only person who knew how to take care of it, and so I have some experience in this type of... Y'know," Jimin gestures, "this." He moves on to antiseptic. "He... We got him to stop. Jin-hyung and him had a lot of talks and now he's a lot better than he was before. We just try not to...provoke him or trigger him or anything. Y'know. Just in case."
Jimin spends a few more long moments cleaning the wound before he gets a thread and sterilised needle from the kit and begins threading it through the wound, back and forth like he's sewing a pattern on cloth. The cloth being Jeongguk's skin.
He hardly feels the thread go through the dead skin, but watches as the wound slowly begins to close up on itself until all Jeongguk can see is a line covered in black thread.
"There," Jimin says, pausing as he looks over his work. "Good as new. I'll wrap it up really quick and then, later on in, like, a couple weeks, I can look again."
Jeongguk blinks at the implication that he'll be back here. Back with these people, as if they've welcomed him into their life without question.
Jimin pulls out gauze and, carefully, wraps it round and round Jeongguk's leg until the line of black is replaced with a deep tan colour.
"And here," Jimin adds, pulling out a black pen and scribbling something on the top. "For comfort."
Jeongguk can hardly read it, but he thinks it says, We Love You - Dr. Park Jimin.
Jeongguk can't help but think about how much of a lie it is.
He wasn't permitted to leave the bathroom until he got a proper hair and skin washing, and a change of clean clothes and clean teeth. He gets a look at himself in the mirror before he leaves and he almost - almost - thinks he's looking at someone else.
When he leaves the bathroom, V catches him and promptly gasps.
"Wow, you look great!" he compliments. "Jimin did the works on you, didn't he?" Jimin comes up behind Jeongguk and nods for him. "Anyways, you want to play?" V gestures to the game, currently in a single-player mode.
"No one wants to play with you, Taehyung-ssi," J-Hope pipes up, book page turning. He adjusts to pull his long-sleeves to his wrists again. "You always beat everyone." V - Taehyung - opens his mouth to retort, and yet Jimin clears his throat and Taehyung snaps his mouth shut once more.
It seems like Jimin hadn't been joking about provoking J-Hope.
"Hey, man," Namjoon pipes up, walking in front of Jeongguk and holding out a shiny, new-age cell phone that Jeongguk doesn't know how to use. "If you want, you can put your cell phone number in. Y'know, to keep in touch and all." Jeongguk stares at the bright screen and his eyes burn, having never actually looked at a touchscreen phone this closely before. He doesn't even own a TV, much less a fancy cell phone.
Carefully, Jeongguk prods his fingers into the keypad and inputs his number into the cell phone - or at least what he thinks is his number - and stands stoically once more.
"Got it," Namjoon nods, looking over. "And I'll send you everyone's number."
"Except mine," J-Hope says. "I don't have a cell phone."
"Right. J-Hope thinks cells are some part of the new age brainwash or whatever." Jeongguk turns and J-Hope is glaring at Namjoon.
"My name is Hoseok," he growls, and Namjoon winces.
"Sorry, Hobi."
"No. Not Hobi. Hoseok." Namjoon sighs.
"Right. Hoseok, right. Sorry, Hoseok. I'll remember next time, Hoseok." J-Hope - Hoseok - frowns tightly at Namjoon before he lets out a rough sigh and returns to his book, dropping the issue. Namjoon goes back to Jeongguk, lowering his voice, "Best not to call him anything but Hoseok. He gets pissy about it, doesn't like nicknames."
"I heard that." Namjoon rolls his eyes and shakes his head. He's about to comment again when Jeongguk turns and heads for the front door.
"You're leaving?" Suga questions as Jeongguk's hand reaches the door handle. "You just got here!"
Jeongguk almost speaks back as he glances behind him, but loses the motivation halfway to thinking of a response. Instead, he turns, and opens up the door.
"Hey, hey, hey," Namjoon stops him from stepping all the way outside, holding him by a shoulder. "Hold on, just... You're going to be okay, right? No...jumping into traffic?" When Jeongguk doesn't answer, Namjoon steps outside with him. "'s alright. I'll walk you home, okay?" He takes Jeongguk's hand in his, like they had done going to Namjoon's house, and squeezes it, trying to be reassuring.
"Ah, you'll be back," Suga comments as they step further down the threshold. "They always come back."
Somehow, Jeongguk very highly doubts that.