Beyond Repair (Min Yoongi) [UPDATED]

10. Burning Up

When they'd gone to bed, everything had been normal—well, what Jimin assumed to be the new normal, anyway—and when they fell asleep like that, it was almost too easy to pretend nothing had ever changed.

Like the reason he and Yoongi were sharing a bed was because they had stayed up talking late into the night, as they'd done so many times in the past, and not because Yoongi couldn't seem to make it through until morning without hurting himself if Jimin wasn't there. Like they were both sleeping fully clothed due to the chilly autumn weather rather than Yoongi's panic at any touch of skin aside from his hands and face. Like Yoongi cuddled close to him because he simply felt affectionate, not because he felt he would die if not in constant contact with Jimin throughout the night.

Subconsciously, though, despite the pretense of normality Jimin used to help himself fall asleep at night, Jimin was constantly waiting to be awoken in the same way he had been so many times in the past week. He was sleeping lighter, barely dreaming, ready to wake up at any given moment. Even in his sleep, he had come to expect Yoongi to start trembling against him, face already wet with tears, either barely breathing or sobbing for whatever was haunting his nightmares not to hurt him.

But this time, when Jimin woke up and rolled over, prepared to wake Yoongi up and talk him down from another panic attack, he was met with empty sheets.

It was only after he threw the blankets off his body and jumped out of bed that Jimin heard the god-awful sounds coming from down the hall, and his stomach plummeted. He followed the noise to the bathroom, outside of which he found Holly lightly scratching at the door and whining. The door was closed but not locked, and when he turned the knob to peek inside, Jimin's heart clenched.

There Yoongi was, kneeling in front of the toilet, the leg of his cane clutched weakly in one hand as he brought up everything he had managed to eat the previous afternoon.

Min Yoongi didn't get sick. Unless there was something seriously wrong, such as his appendicitis a few years back, Yoongi had never been sick in the entire time Jimin had known him. However, according to Namjoon, the doctors overseas had warned them to expect sickness. Because now that Yoongi had come out of Survival Mode and his body wasn't constantly under the stress of keeping him alive through such grave injuries, his strained nervous and immune systems were going to struggle to adjust. Jimin had had no idea it would be this bad, though.

Yoongi came up for air shortly after Jimin arrived. Trembling fingers reached for the flush handle, but once the water started swirling, Yoongi gagged again. Jimin couldn't blame him; the water swirling only amplified the acrid odor of bile and partially-digested food. Jimin had to hold his hand over his nose until the toilet finished flushing so he wouldn't start gagging, too, and he wasn't even entirely in the room. He didn't want to think about how much stronger the smell would be if his head was hanging directly over the toilet bowl like Yoongi's was. When the retching stopped, Yoongi gasped for breath and slumped forward, resting his forehead on the cool ceramic of the toilet tank.

"Yoongi?" Jimin called out, swinging the door open the rest of the way and taking a slow step into the room.

Yoongi hadn't seemed to notice Jimin's presence until then, but after hearing Jimin's voice, his eyes snapped open, his head shot up, and an expression of unmistakable terror spread across his face. He scrambled to his feet, visibly wincing at the pain such sudden movements must have caused, but he didn't use his cane—not the way he was supposed to. Instead, he propped himself up on the nearest wall and held his cane out in front of him with both hands, wielding it like a staff.

Despite the unspoken threat in the gesture, Jimin hardly feared the man before him.

Yoongi's whole frame was shaking with the effort it took just to stay upright. His bloodshot eyes were wild and unfocused. His hair was matted to the side of his head, his skin pale and glistening. His shirt was plastered to his heaving chest with sweat and stained down the front from when he apparently didn't make it to the toilet in time.