Pretty | Yoonmin (DISCONTINUED)

forty seven

"Come on honey, you're doing good."

Taehyung steadied Jungkook's protruding hip bones between his palms, pressing against his brittle form as Jimin guided his pasty legs into a pair of spider-man pajama pants. The seeping haziness, glossy eyes, and shivering bones that made up the younger's body might have convinced Taehyung that his sweet Kookie was turning to little more than a detached consciousness and a scattered mind. But the shuddering breath coating his punctured lips in varying hues of panic was proof of Jungkook's aching presence in the body that had become his cage.

It was somehow both comforting and frightening, knowing that Jungkook's full consciousness had returned to them, even if only half aware of itself. On one hand, his eyes resembled the familiar pools of melted toffee and coffee bean that Taehyung was used to rather than that god awful pit of pitch blackness and carved out vessels. On the other, Jungkook was much more vulnerable to another all consuming wave of panic, hence the endless trembling of his weakened muscles and the quickened exhales.

Taehyung hoped and prayed that his anxiety would leave Jungkook alone for the rest of the night. He'd already exhausted himself, suffering through not only the storm of back to back, breath taking, paralyzing fear, but also the lurch of his painfully empty stomach, the rise of bile at the back of a raw and aching throat. Through tears and sounds of soft, helpless weeping, Taehyung had managed to hold his hair away from his face as Jungkook coughed out vomit, tears soaking his cheeks, lips gasping, lungs bruised with the force of each hurried breath.

The panic attacks blurred together, the retching relentless and horrible, and Taehyung sung softly through a shredded voice, arms holding shaking Jungkook as he cried and cried and cried, hopeless and useless. Taehyung was surprised he had not keeled over yet from fatigue, surprised any of them were still standing.

Over Jungkook's shoulder, he could see Hoseok watching them with uncharacteristically heavy eyes, his pretty caramel lashes weighed down by a numbing exhaustion, kept apart only by his sheer determination to see Jungkook safe.

Taehyung almost wished Hoseok would cry. He'd been so strong for so long, for hours and hours and hours into the cool, amethyst morning, for both Taehyung and Jungkook and then sweet Jimin. He had been so strong and so steady for them all, holding out warm hands and warm arms for Taehyung and Jungkook to cuddle into, all without a single support beam for himself. He wished Hoseok would stop watching over them hollowly, a vague, twitching smile resting painfully on drowsy pink lips, fingers limp and shoulders pressed tight over a sunken chest. He wished Hoseok would let himself rest. For just one moment.

"There you go bubba," Jimin praised, all delectably honeyed words murmured through heated, drawling lips. Jungkook sighed as Jimin dragged his pajama top over his fit, yet sickly colored torso. "You did so good, I'm so proud of you Kookie."

Jimin, though strained and equally tired from the night's events, was just as gentle and tender as he had always been. He was butterfly fingers and fairy glitter sprinkled along the fuzzy slopes of a hearth heated figure. Taehyung wasn't sure where he'd come from, how his soft heart had survived through storms thick and thin, through trauma that ran deep as the ocean, nor how he'd maintained the ability to remain strong and guiding through the toughest of turbulence. He rubbed his delightfully searing heat into Jungkook's frigid arms, melting the shards of impaled ice embedded in the seams of his chilled skin, and Jungkook relaxed slowly beneath his touch.

Jimin and Taehyung guided Jungkook onto the mattress of one of Yoongi's many extravagant guest rooms, slightly stiff from years of disuse and smelling of freshly used laundry detergent. Taehyung settles down behind him, the both of them sitting on the edge of the bed as Jimin brushed stringy raven hair from Jungkook's  face and pressed another kiss to his forehead.