You were happy

Pt8

Taehyung's head felt like it had been lit up with firecrackers, his fingertips going to his temple only to cause him to grind his teeth. He could feel the fresh petals of purple blooming across his temple from where that asshole had pistol whipped him to the ground. His hands dug themselves into the concrete, shakily holding him up into a sitting position until the world stopped spinning. His eyes locked to the pool of blood on the asphalt, seemingly growing larger as he watched even though your body had long since been carried away by Jungkook.
He shoved himself fully to his feet to take off at a jog, nearly tumbling face first back to the ground before he managed to get a foot under to steady him. Satisfied with his ability to be on his feet he booked it the rest of the way to the restaurant-trying to forget the last few minutes playing on an endless loop in his head.
"No!" The scream had torn at everything in his throat-it had ripped at his vocal chords until he sounded as if he was going through puberty a second time. He was watching hopelessly as the man with the gun aimed it at your running back-the other cursing obscenities under his breath. Taehyung had reacted on instinct, trying to knock the gun away before it could harm you, but he'd failed and the shot echoed through the streets anyways. His head snapped to you.
Everything was in slow motion-he didn't even feel or hear himself screaming until he was forcibly cut off.
All he saw was a small flare of blood burst on your back and your body lurching forward to the ground. He felt like he had been the one shot, doubling over to hold his own gut. He barely even heard the snarl from the man next to him before he was on the ground with a massive headache.
He'd finally stopped screaming though; his throat burned with the need for water and he let out a small groan of pain. The sirens weren't helping the angry buzz throbbing his brain but it caused the angered men to flee the scene and spare his life.
It allowed for Jungkook to cross the distance to you. It allowed for you to be carried away to safety as Taehyung fought off the black dots in his vision.
By the time he finally managed to make his way into the restaurant he saw the manager furiously making her way through the panicked crowd with a package of hopeless napkins-towards the spot where Jungkook and Jimin leaned over you. That was where Taehyung went, jerking his head to the door when Jimin looked up at him.
"Police. Ambulance. Outside." He grunted, feeling blood drip down his head.
For once Jimin did as he had said.
Taehyung's eyes were on you and only you. Everyone else in the room had long since disappeared from his view, even Jungkook. It was only you. It had always been only you.
He watched your dangerously pale and sweat-coated face tilt to spot him and in an instant-just like that-he lost every last atom of oxygen in his lungs. He dropped to his knees next to you, his hands wavering above you like he was afraid to touch you. If he did you would disappear in a puff of smoke and he'd wake up on your couch cradling a bottle on his lap. You made a noise, a soft whimper that he could barely recognize as his name.
He wrapped you into his arms instinctively, holding you close to his chest. He didn't care if he became smeared with your blood, he didn't care if the whole damn world ended right there-he was going to hug you.
The very second your skin made contact with his arm you crumpled in on yourself, folding into a small package against his chest. You sobbed into his neck, letting him shield you from everything- from the people, from the men, from Jimin, from yourself. He held onto you even as your body shook with sobs, your fingers digging into his shoulder to pull him closer despite the pure agony burying itself into your gut. He held you even though you stunk. He held you even though your hair was matted and strung with dried blood. He held you even though you were both bruised in visibly and in places that people could never reach. He didn't care.
You were back where you had always belonged.
You coughed into his chest, your body seizing in a way that had him peeling you from his chest to get a better look at you. Worry trembled his lip and shook his hands as he snatched the napkins from the poor restaurant manager. He pressed them against your stomach, watching his tears further soak the remains of your dress. His free hand brushed your sticky hair from your forehead.
"Hey." He whispered on a vibrating breath. "Hey, it's going to be okay-you're safe now. It's going to be okay."
He felt a sob sneak past his throat as your bloodied thumb attempted to brush away the tears on his cheeks like he used to do to you when you were drunk and whiny. "Why are you crying?" It was a croak of pain.
But it was something you had always done, you had always cared about others before you'd cared about yourself. So he had been the one to care for you more than anyone else.
He'd done such a crummy job.
He pressed harder against your wound, wincing when your eyes widened and your head tilted back on a shock of a groan. "Stay with me okay?" His tears fell against his hand on your abdomen. "You are not leaving me, not after all of that. I just got you back."
"This is all a dream, right?" Your voice trembled, so soft he could barely hear it past your own breathing. "I'm going to wake up in that room." His was sobbing at the sight of your own tears, at the way your face contorted into absolute terror in your attempt to steel yourself for your false reality. "If this is a dream then kill me please. I want to die." His head ducked at your words, teeth grinding on a choked whimper. "I can't go back there. I don't want to go back there."
"No. No no no no. This isn't a dream. Y/N." He shifted his hands to cup the back of your head as your neck slowly lost the will to hold it up. He tried to smile at you, tried to keep you there with his voice cracking and pleading. "This isn't a dream. Listen to my voice okay. It's okay, just listen to me." He let every tear fall freely, unable to hold back his cracking smile. "Please just stay with me."
The police finally kicked open the restaurant doors with the first responders in tow, but you had already fallen limp in his arms. He was still pleading with you to stay as they gently removed his hands from you and carefully lifted you onto a gurney.
They allowed him to cling to your hand as they cinched you in tight and cranked the gurney up to its full height.
"Please." He was pleading, he didn't know if it was to you or to the medics. He watched them slip a mask over your head. There were too many people to count, all of them buzzing around you-trying to separate him from your side.
He clung to your hand like a life-line, refusing to leave. "Please." He whispered again as they started wheeling you and he attempted to follow. "Please let me go with her."
They let him.
Jungkook felt Jimin follow the trail of people leaving with you, his eyes trained on Taehyung as he climbed into the ambulance and claimed your hand as his once again. At least someone was with you.
Someone was by your side. You weren't going to wake up alone.
He sighed a small breath of very little relief.
"You're not going to speak to her-not today." Jungkook said to the man behind him, even though his eyes were trained on the ambulance speeding around the corner.
"I know. But I think I should at least know if she survives...." He refused to finish his sentence, his eyes boring holes into the spread of blood staining Jungkook's shirt. "Please tell me she'll survive."
~.~
When the two boys finally veered the corner to the emergency room waiting room they were greeted by the sight of Taehyung.
Taehyung didn't even look at them, his elbows dug into his thighs with his hands clenched tightly together in the imitation of a giant fist. He looked haggard and broken, like a man who'd finally gained the world only to watch its pieces fall through his fingers like sand.
"Tae." Jungkook sighed heavily, catching his breath from all the running.
The man looked up, his gaze settling on Jimin. Jungkook had never seen pure anger before; he had definitely never expected to see it rear its head on Taehyung's face. The man who smiled through everything, the man who had barely ever cried, the man who had hurt so much but still exuded an aura of absolute love was glaring with rage. If one could bottle a look in liquid form, this one would be the deadliest kind of poison.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Taehyung didn't move, reveling in watching the other 95 liner switch from foot to foot. "Do you think she wants to see you?"
"Taehyung." Jungkook warned softly-his mistake. "He knows he can't see her today."
"Does he deserve to even know? When the hell has this bastard ever cared about her-huh?" The anger was now easily misplaced. Jungkook eyed the gauze taped to his hyung's forehead and the dark circles pulling down his bottom eyelids. "He thinks that just because he claims to be her best friend he gets to swoop in and be the savior. What the fuck have you done for her, huh?" Spit flew from his lips. "Why does she matter now, huh?"
I'm your girlfriend, not her-so why does she matter now Jimin?
"Because I love her." His voice wasn't weak anymore and he'd finally stopped shifting and cowering under Taehyung's anger. He stared his own friend down with the finality of his declared realization.
The simple act of the doctor bursting through the emergency room doors snapped all the tension in the air and captivated the attention of all three males in the room.
She looked to Taehyung, her eyes glued to the pages of her clipboard. "She's stable." She glanced at his reaction. "She's lucky the bullet was low enough to avoid anything major. A few of the fragments were awfully close and she had lost more blood than we would have liked, but the surgery was a success." He flipped a page over the edge of her clipboard. "As for her other injuries, they are.....quite extensive."
"How many-how bad are they?" Taehyung knew you weren't out of the water yet, he knew there was no point in asking if you were going to be okay. Even if you were alive and breathing you weren't going to be okay for a while, no one in this room was going to okay. Not for a long time.
"Well, we'll have to fix up some of her ribs, break and reset one of her legs as well as her wrist-they weren't left to heal properly, and she's definitely not stable enough to perform the surgeries currently. When we do those we'll probably also have to take a peek at those knee caps of hers. She's got some deep bruising and a smattering of horribly stitched scars and gashes that we will also have to attend to later. You can see the number of physical abrasions and bruises yourself."
He pushed to his feet, the doctor practically becoming a goddess before him. "Can-can I see her?" He ignored Jungkook and Jimin shifting closer behind him, realizing if he caused a scene the chances of him being allowed into your room were slim.
The doctor nodded to him, waving her hand towards the doors. "Follow me."
~.~
Taehyung rushed through your room door as the doctor continued her path down the hall to another room after her mini-mission was over. Jungkook had done the wonderful job of blocking Jimin from entering and instead closed the door behind Taehyung so the man could have some privacy.
Well-sort of privacy, your room had a wall that was mostly made up of one way glass that Jimin had taken to pressing himself against in an attempt to get closer to you. They couldn't hear anything past the glass though, so there were still some things left in secret.
Taehyung fell into the chair beside your head, his hand instantly finding yours and engulfing it in both of his. Your head tilted weakly to look at him, the smallest hints of a smile pulling up the corners of your lips. You looked like you were still living with the aftereffects of Hell in your bones: bruises dotted every available scrap of skin while cuts littered the darkest purples, the bandage wrapped around your middle was still leaking fresh blood and your thin limbs looked like they would be unable to move on their own. He wanted to take them all from you; he wanted to be lying in that bed in agony if it meant that you wouldn't be hurting anymore.
But that wasn't the way the world worked, so he could only furrow his brow and bite his tongue as your frail hand shook in his.
"I'm sorry." He whispered, bringing your hand to his lips as he pressed his forehead against your good wrist. "I'm so, so sorry Y/N." You watched his shoulders shaking, water leaking through the webs of your fingers cradled in his hand.
"How is any of this your fault?" Just hearing your voice breathed some life into him, he hadn't heard it in so long. He thought he was never going to hear it again. "What happened..." Your voice was a weak croak, shaking as you swallowed. You focused on the tiled patterns of the ceiling instead of him, lost in a nightmare that you had been forced to accept as reality. "it wasn't your fault. You're good; you've always been so good. How could you ever think that this was your fault? It was me-I-"
"Don't do that." He cut you off, his eyes boring through the frame of his bangs to meet yours as you pried them from the ceiling. "Do not blame yourself for what that creep did. You are not to blame, no matter how drunk you were. Monsters like him want you to blame yourself, make you think it's all your fault when it's not. You're safe now. I've got you and I'm not going to ever let go." He squeezed your hand, licking his lips as he saw the slightest hint of peace slipping into your eyes.
The peace was quickly engulfed by tears that rolled thick and heavy down your bruised cheeks. Every tear cut into him and broke the hastily glued together pieces of his heart.
"Where's Jimin?"
He attempted to rein in his anger at hearing such a cursed name being uttered by your lips-but even his once even temper couldn't be controlled now. The only thing that kept him in check was the fact that you were crying once again because of that asshole.
And your tears were more important than his anger.
"You don't need to see him, not right now." He reached a hand up to your cheek, gently wiping away the tears gathered under your eyes.
You pressed your lips together, shaking your head softly. "I don't want to." You leaned into his touch, your sobs resurfacing with renewed energy. "I bet he didn't even look for me." He was helpless, watching as the tears fell past your trembling lips. He tried to wipe them away; he tried to catch them before they dripped onto your hospital gown all to no avail. For a minute there he almost forgot about Jungkook and Jimin watching behind the glass. He hoped that asshole was watching.
If he claimed to love you then your words would hurt like no other. Taehyung wasn't about to clear his name anymore, he wasn't about to let you keep believing in Jimin for the sake of keeping your heart intact.
It was time you got over him, it was time you finally saw the man for what he was-even if he was changing with the loss of what you were.
"I bet he forgot about me." Taehyung brushed his thumb along your cheek. "He was probably happy to have me out of the way." He frowned at your attempted smile, his thumb going down to press against your lips. "I bet he was with his girlfriend, being happy in their little obnoxious bubble."
He chuckled with a sad smile. "They were pretty gag-inducing weren't they?"
You choked back a laugh at his attempt at cheering you. But the laugh failed quickly and miserably, your body shuddering with uncontrolled sobs. "I want to hate him Taehyung."
Taehyung sighed, that sad smile firmly engraved onto his face. "I want to too." But I can't, we both love the same girl after all. We're in the same predicament-we're both useless fools.
Jimin fisted his hands and pressed both them and his forehead against the glass in front of him. He had to force himself not to pound on the glass, not to scream and shout until they let him into your room. Like Taehyung he knew if he caused a problem he would never be allowed to see you.
All he could do was stare at you and watch Taehyung hold you, sit next to you, and care for you. Jimin could only watch as your last bit of love for him was drained from you via your tears easily wiped away by another man's thumbs.
He couldn't even get past Jungkook to say you were wrong. He couldn't even tell you that he thought about you every day, that he also wanted to murder the men that did this to you, that he broke up with Hana for you.
"I love you." He chuckled against the glass, envying Taehyung's thumb on your cheek. "I'm such a freaking idiot, but I love you."