Beyond Repair (Min Yoongi)

47. Home Again, Home Again

The Bangtan Boys drove their own vehicles and received an undercover police escort back to their apartment, just to be safe. Namjoon and Seokjin drove the separate cars and Officer Park saw them into their home, confirming their contact information before she left so she could call them with any updates regarding the court proceedings. (And now that he had gotten not one but two decent nights' sleep, as well as an assurance that Lee Daejung was behind bars and would remain as such for the remainder of his waiting period until the trial, Namjoon wouldn't let Officer Park leave before he had the chance to personally, profusely apologise for lashing out at her for something he knew wasn't her fault.)

Before they left the hospital, a doctor had given Yoongi's 'caretakers' a list of things that he was not allowed to do while on the painkillers he'd been prescribed to take as needed for the next week or two. Yoongi couldn't perform strenuous physical activities or exercises (as if he'd ever done that unless his career was in jeopardy), drink alcohol of any kind (which he already couldn't do because of his other medications), become pregnant or nurse a child (physically impossible), or operate heavy machinery (which Yoongi knew referred to driving cars and the like, but he always pictured himself driving a forklift whenever the phrase came up).

Aside from a precious few exceptions, such as climbing stairs, using the toilet, or bathing, the doctors' orders dictated that Yoongi be wheelchair-bound and remain so until he had completed two weeks of physical therapy at home. He hadn't been given a wheelchair that he could use by himself—the back was too high and got in the way of his shoulders too much for him to comfortably push the chair forward—which meant Yoongi now had to rely entirely on his housemates.

It should have been something he was used to, by now, but he still felt useless. Even more so when he discovered, on his first night home, just how much the others had been impacted by his second kidnapping.

He'd just noticed little things, at first, about everyone else in general. They were all too quiet. No one ate normal amounts of food at mealtimes. The others rarely joked or played anymore. All the exercise Holly got was from playing fetch in the living room because no one was willing to leave the home, even just for walks around the neighbourhood. Hugs and kisses between certain members grew few and far between, not because the love or passion had faded but simply due to a lack of energy. Yoongi recognised it because he could relate—he knew first-hand how quickly anxiety could sap one's energy, leaving them feeling hopeless and exhausted.

And then there was the matter of how differently everyone was acting, individually.

Hoseok and Taehyung were practically inseparable, and oftentimes, when Hoseok seemed upset—or even just too deep in thought—Taehyung would drop whatever he was doing to drape himself across Hoseok's lap, whispering things Yoongi couldn't hear while squeezing Hoseok's hand as if they would both shatter if he let go. Seokjin and Jungkook seemed closer, too—if there was ever a moment when one of them looked ready to cry (which happened all too often, nowadays), the other would tug him by the hand, off to some random bedroom, and then silence would overtake the whole house as soon as the door shut behind them. Even Namjoon was behaving oddly; he'd distanced himself from the group, not enough to raise alarm but enough to raise suspicion that he was suffering more than he was willing to let on.

It was small things like that, that Yoongi had noticed on his first day home, that made his stomach pool with dread and anxiety that something was very, very wrong.

But then day became night, Yoongi couldn't sleep, and he heard the crying.

He hadn't even been sure he'd heard anything, at first. But then, there it was again—a sound that felt foreign but also all too familiar.

He could identify his friends' voices even through the walls. It had started with Hoseok, and that had been bad enough, but then Namjoon's sobs had joined the mix, and then Jungkook's. Yoongi had wanted to go check on them (fuck the doctors and their wheelchair rules. As long as he had something to lean on, Yoongi could walk by himself, thank you very much), but when he'd tried to get out of bed, Jimin had plastered his whole body against Yoongi's back like some kind of touch-starved octopus. Even if he'd had the heart to pry himself out of Jimin's arms, Yoongi knew that Jimin slept too lightly these days for any escape attempt to be successful—if Jimin had actually been asleep, that is.