Chapter Text
Jin was used to pre-recordings. They were usually the time of day where the maknae line saw fit to unleash their mischief on any unsuspecting victims, so he'd learned over time to keep his guard up. Namjoon was usually exempt from their games as they seemed to respect that he had duties as leader - however, if Jimin was feeling particularly persuasive, it had been known for Namjoon to end up involved. Somehow, they never seemed to get in any trouble for it. Namjoon was weak for their innocent, 'who - me?' doe eyes. Realistically they all were.
Jin himself was still very much at risk from them. Currently they were backstage in the dressing room, meaning it was the perfect time for their antics to unfold. Fortunately, today they were targeting Yoongi - or trying to, anyway. Yoongi liked to think he was some sort of formidable being (when in actuality he was harmless) and Jungkook, despite having no reservations around his hyungs nowadays, was always reminded of that one time Yoongi had actually managed to terrify their maknae just after debut and as a result tended to step back from their activities a little when Yoongi was the one in question.
"Tae-yah," Jin called softly, when he saw the younger try to slip away towards the doorway. Taehyung send him an exaggerated pout and he quirked an eyebrow - he'd been doing this far too long to fall for that. Taehyung stepped back into the room, the silent conversation having been conveyed already, and back over to where Jungkook and Jimin were hounding Yoongi, who had curled himself up on one of the sofas and was choosing to completely ignore them.
He was observing, ready to step in if they took anything too far - however harmless the smallest hyung may be he did admittedly have a short temper and if he snapped, it might have an effect on the rest of their day - when his phone began buzzing in his pocket.
"I'm going to step out a minute," he said, nudging Hoseok who had been quietly settled beside him, and pointing to his phone as he picked it up. It was a signal that it was Hoseok's turn to watch over the misbehaving maknaes, though he already knew it wouldn't be much use as the younger was always reluctant to upset any of the other members when disciplining them.
Sliding out of the room unnoticed, he lifted the phone to his ear and settled back against the wall in the empty corridor outside. "Eomma!" he said, hearing the smile in his own voice. It had been a little while since he'd had the chance to speak to his family, given his busy schedule at the moment after their comeback.
He was greeted by an unnaturally long silence on the other end of the line, and it allowed time for a heavy feeling to settle in his stomach. "Eomma?"
"Jin... I'm sorry," his mother's voice sounded loaded with emotion and he felt a stab of white hot panic run through his blood. Something wasn't right. "I'm so sorry. It - it's your grandmother, Jin-ah, she's... she died this morning. I'm so sorry."
Her voice broke down and he heard her start to sob down the phone but he couldn't bring himself to comfort her. He couldn't bring himself to speak. Couldn't make himself move. He could feel the stinging in his eyes and the dampness on his cheeks and the salt in his mouth but he didn't know how to do anything about it. He slid down onto the floor, clutching the phone like a lifeline, while his mother's broken voice rose out of it from a distance. The sound of his own sobs met his ears and he let himself drown in them.
Distantly the door beside him opened and somebody tumbled out. He didn't look up. he heard a voice, panicked, Jimin's maybe - "Hyung?" - but it was fuzzy to his ears, white noise roaring past his brain like crashing waves, barely aware of anything but that and the overwhelming feeling of pure sadness.
Seconds later he was aware of several others. Their voices melded together, jumbled and twisted, and he was too inside his own head to try to make any sense of their words. He felt his phone being tugged from his hand and gripped harder at the cool metal, his only tether to his family, to home. Hands slid up onto his shoulders, rubbing in gentle circles. He felt himself being lifted and then placed, he thought, in someone's lap. He tucked his head into their shoulder and sobbed into it, his entire body shaking with the force of his grief. There were more hands smoothing through the small hairs at the back of his neck.
He felt like he was underwater, drowning in his own thoughts, and the voices around him were swimming past but not enough to ground him. His hands scrabbled across the floor and finally met material, someone's sleeve maybe, and he twisted his hands around it, the pain in his knuckles from the tightness of his grip jerking him back to reality a little. He took several heaving, gasping breaths, barely managing to choke them out past the force of his sobbing.
"Breathe, hyung, you're okay," Taehyung's deep voice reminded him, and he remembered when Taehyung had lost his grandma, remembered how their roles had been reversed just a few years back, and positively wailed into the nape of the younger's neck.
It was around half an hour later before Jin's tears had ceased enough for him to feel stable enough to raise his head off Taehyung's shoulder and pull his legs in a little tighter where he was sitting on the other boy's lap. They were still sprawled in the middle of the corridor, he was able to gather, as he raised a trembling hand to roughly wipe away the onslaught of now silent tears from his eyes. Apart from Taehyung he could only see Yoongi and Hoseok crouched down beside him - his hands were still entangled in Hoseok's sleeve and he let it go gently, pulling his hands further towards his chest.
Yoongi reached over and swept his hair from his forehead, the strands sticky with sweat. He let himself lay all of his weight onto Taehyung's chest, not having the energy to raise his tired body from where he was lying, and still trembling too much to trust his legs to support him.
"Hyung," Hoseok started sympathetically, and Jin forced himself to close his eyes. He couldn't meet Hoseok's eyes, couldn't look at the concern and sympathy in his face, without being reduced to tears again. Yoongi's hand was still in his hair, smoothing through it the same way you might with a small child.
The buzzing in his ears had faded, now, still present but less overwhelming than it had been. His face felt sticky with tears and sweat. The trembling of his hands and the light feeling throughout his body where he was gasping for air past his stuttering breaths was enough to tell him that he was still crying. He let himself sink into the feeling of the hand in his hair and the feeling of Taehyung's chest moving steadily with his breaths underneath him, and allowed the blissful ignorance of unconsciousness slide over his senses.