Chapter Text
“Hey,” Jungkook said with a smile, “stop messing around.”
A flurry of melodramatic sounds came from across the table, and he took another bite of food. Shook his head. He refused to get sucked into one of Yoongi’s games. The last time he had heard sounds like that and jumped to his feet, Yoongi had laughed and said something about being gullible, 'in a cute way'. So Jungkook swallowed, ready to tell Yoongi off, when the sound of a chair falling and plates breaking finally commanded his attention. His eyes flicked up to see Yoongi, his hands tight around his neck, eyes wide. The rapper let out a few pitiful coughs, then silence. Tears ran down both sides of his face.
“H- hyung--,” he stammered, dumbfounded. The chair cracked against the floor as Jungkook stood. The back of his neck grew hot. He ran to Yoongi, who collapsed into his arms. “Namjoon!” Jungkook called out towards the bedrooms. Yoongi took a fistful of the boy's shirt between shaking fingers, eyes red and wet. Jungkook held him, but... he didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to do. The rapper's face paled; he was damp with sweat, and growing heavier.
“Fuck!” Jungkook let out desperately, “Namjoon!” his pitiful scream echoed throughout the dorm.
Yoongi knew he was nearing a limit. Hadn’t the members all been trained for a situation like this? He tried to wriggle out of the magnae's grasp, thought if he could make it to a chair he could save himself, but Jungkook’s grip was too tight on his shoulders. He was stuck. Yoongi looked up to the magnae's face, tried to plead silently with him to do something, to fucking hit him, throw him against a wall, anything. But Jungkook was frozen, and before long Yoongi's grip--on Jungkook, on reality--began to falter. The world spun. Everything was light. Warm. Like beach sand covering his body on a sunny day.
Jungkook looked down, “Yoongi, fuck! What--” his hands shook, “what do I do?!”. Yoongi's slack jaw hung open, eyes only able to muster a hazy focus. Tears dragged lines down the rapper's face. His neck was red, scratched up. Every passing second he was grew heavier and heavier, until eventually his hands fell from Jungkook's shirt, and his knees gave way. Yoongi's head fell against Jungkook's chest.
He was letting go.
Was this really how he was going to die? He was so warm, so numb. It wasn't anything like what he saw in the movies. He wasn’t scared, he had no energy to be. Actually... it was kinda nice, he supposed, dying. Like going to sleep, except with a little bit more yelling, a little bit more panic. But, was he really going to die over some shitty take-out lamb skewers? Surely there were better ways to go, but in the moment, he couldn’t think of any. The light, and along with it, Jungkook, wandered further and further out of his reach.
“Someone fucking help me!” Jungkook screamed, throat aching.
A door opened--finally a door opened--and Hoseok entered the kitchen. It took him a few seconds to survey the situation, but when he realized that Yoongi was unresponsive he acted without hesitation.
“Oh my God,” he exclaimed, rushing forward. He looked Jungkook in the eyes, “why didn’t you do something!?"
“I--” Jungkook began, tears collected behind his eyes, “I--” he stammered.
Hoseok ripped Yoongi's body from away from Jungkook, nearly faltering before started the Heimlich, “why didn’t you do something, Jungkook!” he screamed.
Hoseok punched Yoongi between the shoulder blades, and he was thrown out of the darkness. Yoongi was nauseous, vision swimming, cold creeping across his back. He knew he shouldn't like it, but there had been a strange sense of safety within the darkness, something... welcoming. His eyes fluttered open for a second. Jungkook was crying, that much was clear. Yoongi tried to reach out for him, but his hand was no longer under his control. Hoseok delivered delivered a powerful blow to his back, and just like that the darkness returned. Yoongi had trusted them, the members. He had trusted them with his life.
Hoseok’s eyes were on Jungkook again, intense. What if they hadn’t been at the dorm? What would’ve happened then? The magnae's throat tightened, eyes watered. He watched Hoseok try to revive the limp body before them, Yoongi's body. The tips of his fingers went numb, but his palms were sweating. He wanted to vomit, wanted to run away, but he was rooted to the spot. This-- none of this was real. Ten minutes ago Yoongi was wiping sauce from the corners of his mouth; ten minutes ago Yoongi was breathing. Now, the rapper's eyes were dull, his hands unmoving. Skin gray. Lips purple.
This wasn't real.
"Get Namjoon!” Hoseok shouted, desperate.
Jungkook scrambled down the hallway, chest heaving. His hand shook around the door nob as he thrust open Namjoon's bedroom door, nose running, vision blurry, "Hyung!"
The leader stirred, eyes squinting against the light, “Jungkook, what--”
“He's choking,” Jungkook shouted, hands flying into the air, “fucking--!” A moment later, he ran back out of the room.
When Namjoon finally caught up with reality, he threw himself out of bed. He arrived in the kitchen to see Hoseok lowering their bandmate to the floor, saw Hoseok place an open palm on the center of his chest.
"Hoseok--"
The dancer whipped around, voice hoarse, “call an ambulance!”
Jungkook couldn’t handle it. Yoongi wasn't responding. Nothing seemed to be working. The air in the kitchen was suffocating, despair tangible and thick. Jungkook fell to his knees. Why couldn't it have been him on the ground instead? He could've made it. No matter what happened, he would have been alright. Why did it have to be Yoongi?
Jungkook brought a hand up to cover his mouth. He choked back a few sobs, tried to slow down his breathing, but it was useless. Mucus ran. Tears fell.
Suddenly, a loud pop. Namjoon wretched, and Jungkook looked up. Hoseok pressed up and down on Yoongi’s chest, an unnatural divit present where it hadn't been before. Yoongi's sternum gave way.
Hoseok didn’t stop.
Jungkook saw stars.
He could have done something…
This was his fault.
Yoongi was unresponsive for three minutes before the paramedics arrived. Three minutes without a pulse. One-hundred and eighty seconds. Dead. A volley of of questions flew through the air:
“Is he going to be okay?”
Can you save him? Please! Save him!!
“What’ll happen to him when he wakes up”
“Can we please go in the ambulance with him?”
“When can he come home again?”
“Which hospital is he going to?”
None of them received a satisfactory answer.
Hoseok was denied his request to ride along in the ambulance, something about cardiac arrest used as explanation. All he could do, and all the others could do, was to watch with sunken eyes as Yoongi was wheeled down the hall by the paramedics. "Let's go," Hoseok announced, grabbing a pair of car keys.
The others understood. Dressed silently.
Only Jungkook, who had slunk back to his own room after a weird pop rang out, was spared such a sight. He couldn't bear it, couldn't get it together. As soon as he entered his room and locked the door behind him, he shoved his earbuds so deep in his ears he thought they might get stuck. Jungkook tried to escape. He fell on to the bed, curled into himself. His chest ached, heart pounding, just minutes away from snapping. Tears stung his eyes. He was suffocating, melting, disintegrating. Was there really anything left of him? Could he let himself be turned to dust? Wouldn't that be easier?
A knock at his door brought him back into the room. The doorknob wiggled. He tugged out an earbud.
Namjoon’s tired, muffled voice made it through the door, “Kook, we’re going to the hospital.” He rattled the knob again, this time with more strength, but Jungkook remained motionless. “Kook?” A few more knocks sounded against the wood before nameless voices called Namjoon from down the hall, "we'll be back, Kook. It's going to be alright," he said before walking away from the door.
Jungkook fell back onto his bed, shoved the headphones back in. So long as he didn’t hear otherwise, Jungkook would assume everything was okay, would be able to believe that this whole mess wasn’t his fault, would be able to say that Yoongi was awake and fine and healthy. As long as he didn’t hear otherwise, he could pretend the eerie silence that fell over the dorm was due to the late hour, and not because of…
Jungkook turned the volume up. As long as he didn’t hear anything--anything at all--he was fine, and Yoongi was fine.
It… wasn’t his fault.