Chapter Text
Yoongi watches Jungkook out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the inevitable. They’ve been on the road for about fifteen minutes after they picked up dinner, and Jungkook has yet to give in.
He’s fighting it hard, though.
They all see it, see how Jungkook’s knee’s constantly bouncing, even as he shovels fries in his mouth, how he’s taking off his hoodie even though it’s freezing on the bus. He’s trying to force himself to stay awake.
Silly boy.
It takes thirty minutes before jungkook finally cracks, yawning wide enough to make Yoongi irrationally worried about his jaw.
---
He tries to hide it, pretend it didn’t happen.
He’d have a better chance of hiding a girlfriend, in all honesty. Jin and Hoseok both laser-focus in on it, immediately asking if he’s tired, telling him he should sleep, that he needs to save his strength for tomorrow. Taehyung joins in loudly - he’s young but even he’s worried about Jungkook.
Jimin says nothing. He does go to the back, lays out another blanket and pillow for Jungkook, moves Jungkook’s backpack to the row opposite so he has to sit together with Jimin and Taehyung.
Jimin is getting good, Yoongi realises.
---
He’s only been with them about four months, but he’s fitted in perfectly. Jungkook likes Jimin. Well, he likes winding him up and running rings around Jimin, but that’s how Jungkook shows love to most people. Jin knows that very well . Jimin gives as good as he gets though, and it’s nice for Jungkook to have someone who… isn’t as placid as Taehyung is.
He watches Jimin work, the way he’s neat and efficient, choosing blankets for each of them - pink for Tae, red for Jungkook, blue for himself, matching pillows laid gently on the three chosen seats.
Yoongi approves.
---
Jimin was a surprise - a sudden addition to their group, decreed by management and appearing in the door two days later. There are times like this when Yoongi feels that they found their missing link. He’s hot-headed and passionate, prideful and quick to give out a sharp word but there’s a depth there that Yoongi appreciates.
Jimin comes back to the group, doesn’t say a word, but he catches Yoongi’s eye, shrugs. Jimin’s heart is big, and Jungkook has his hands all over it, even after such a short amount of time. Yoongi can’t blame him.
He’s just the same.
---
But he does with them all, Yoongi thinks, as he watches Jungkook be hassled into finishing his food, and then Taehyung takes his hand, leads him up to the back of the bus, to where Jimin laid out everything so neatly.
Jin is fussing - he lays down another pillow for Jungkook, insists on swapping the blankets out for another blue one he claims is warmer (Yoongi doubts it but Jin won’t be dissuaded) - and even Hobi tells Jungkook that he’s looking peaky, and he should sleep, going as far as to check Jungkook’s temperature with a hand on his forehead.
---
Namjoon pushes Jungkook’s own hoodie back into his hands, tells him he shouldn’t have taken it off because now you’ll be cold, Jungkook-ah, and that’s being foolish with your health! Yoongi distinctly remembers having the exact same conversation with Namjoon about staying warm weeks ago; he refrains from commenting. Just.
Jungkook looks thrown by the flurry of attention - he clearly didn’t expect such an overreaction. He isn’t going to get away from it, though.
Yoongi props his chin on the fabric of the headrest, watches as Jungkook protests - I can do more study! - and Jimin tries to reason with him.
---
Unfortunately for Jimin, that’s the wrong thing to do. Jungkook’s reached that point where he can’t be reasoned with - it goes in one ear, out the other - and he just gets more and more wound up in resisting. Jungkook is stubborn as a mule. He can dig his heels in like one, too.
“But you need to sleep!”
“I need to study.” Jungkook shrugs off Jimin’s hands. “I have notes to go over. Teacher said I should listen to the tracks for Monday, too!” He did. He also said that Jungkook should do it tomorrow, but that part isn’t mentioned.
---
He doesn’t need to study - he’s been studying every day for the last two weeks, and even Jungkook needs a night off.
“Don’t be stupid!” Jimin is a little too hot headed sometimes, says exactly what’s on his mind; Yoongi can see the moment that Jungkook hears it, sets his jaw, shakes off the arm on his shoulders. “Jungkook-ah!”
“Jungkookie…” Tae chimes in.
“I’m fine.” He says, resolutely, reaching for his backpack so he can get his notebook out, review the notes the dance masters gave him. “I have to do this - it’ll only take a couple of hours.”
Liar.
---
“Jungkookie, you should rest.” Jin tries to reason with him.
Namjoon puts down his shake, leans into the aisle. “It’s important to get sleep, too.”
“It’s important to study, Rapmonie-hyung.” It’s probably the tiredness talking, but Yoongi can hear a hint of insolence in that tone. Judging by Hoseok’s eyebrow, so can he. “They said I should do it tonight.”
“You already did.” Namjoon lets the tone thing slide, sounding gentle. “For hours. It’s time to stop.”
“I have to.” This is getting them nowhere.
Yoongi makes a choice. “Jungkookie.” He says, waiting until everybody turns to look at him.
---
“I’m not tired.” Jungkook says. Hoseok opens his mouth, obviously ready to tell Jungkook all the ways in which he clearly is tired, but Yoongi puts a hand on Hoseok’s shoulder.
“Thirty minutes.” He says, calmly. “If you’re still awake in thirty minutes, then we’ll see.”
“What use is that?” The insolence that was there with Namjoon is almost gone - almost - but not quite.
“If you’re not tired, it’ll rest your mind.” Yoongi shrugs. “And then you’ll be able to study again with a fresh look. You’ll get more out of it.”
“Yoongi-hyung - “ Jungkook is wavering
“Try it. For me.”
---
“...Promise?” Jungkook looks at him, eyes narrowed.
“Yes.” Jungkook won’t even make it to fifteen minutes, he’s pretty sure of that much, but Jungkook seems mollified by the apparent compromise. He allows Taehyung to pull him into the middle seat, Jimin laying the blanket down over him, too.
He sighs and grumbles, makes a fuss the way only a teenager can, movements sharp and huffy because he doesn’t want to sleep. Quietly, Jin shushes Namjoon and Hobi, taps his watch. Tae goes quickly, able to sleep in seconds, and Jimin follows not long after.
Jungkook resists to the bitter end.
---
He fights sleep - keeps resolutely wrenching his eyes open, keeps shifting in place, trying to make himself deliberately uncomfortable, because then he won’t slip under. But the blanket is so soft, and the heating on the bus is blowing hot air over him.
He was already teetering on the brink; Jimin’s hand in his hair, the food in his belly, the warmth of Tae pressed against him send him over the edge into deep, dreamless sleep. Inevitably, he just slides down, down, down, until his eyes close, and his breathing evens out.
He’s out cold in under five minutes.
Finally.
---
Suga turns around, shaking his head.
“You....” Hobi sounds amazed.
“Told you.” Namjoon moves in the seat on the other side of the aisle, puts his feet up. “Suga-hyungie is good.”
“What?” He says, reaching for the fries in Jin’s paper box. He hates this kind of fast food - greasy, cheap, nasty but it’ll be hours before they get home, and lunch feels like a distant memory. “I thought teenagers were supposed to enjoy sleeping.”
“He’s not a normal teenager.” Jin looks down at his hands, and then shares a look with Namjoon, and Hobi. Yoongi knows that look.
“What?”
---
“We talked. This morning. While you were showering.” The only time they had to themselves for this entire two weeks without a manager wedged up their asses was an hour in the morning, before the sun was even properly risen. For them to have spoken - at length, judging by the look on Jin’s face - it must have been important.
“About what?”
“About that.” Hobi slips into the seat next to Suga, leaves his headphones dangling around his neck. “He’s getting worse. Quickly.”
“He is.” Yoongi doesn’t admit to anything else. He wants to know where this conversation is going first.
---
“You have to do something.”
“Why me?”
“Because look at him.” Jin points over his shoulder at the slumped over figure in the back of the bus, small, pale faced and exhausted.
“And I’m somehow the solution for… that?” Yoongi takes another sip of his chocolate milkshake, pulls a face. They were out of coffee - how, he doesn’t know - and the milkshake is not a great substitute at all. “How?”
“He doesn’t listen to us.” Jin passes the napkins over to him, shakes them impatiently when he doesn’t move.
“He listens to you. Only you.” Joon says, softly.
“Yeah, right.”
---
“He does.” Hobi nods. “The rest of us he nods along, says whatever he thinks we want to hear but…”
“But then he’ll go right back to working himself to the bone, staying up late, pressuring himself into doing more and more and more.” Namjoon is right. They’ve all seen it.
Yoongi eats another cold fry, considers whether he could stomach the long walk between where they are here, and home. It’s only...two hundred miles? Maybe he could hitchhike.
“It’s not healthy. ” Namjoon says, honestly.
“He doesn’t listen to me.”
“He does.” Hobi shakes his head. “He heeds you.”
---
“He does not.” Yoongi’s not scoffing at them but… Jungkook does not heed him. It’s taken some time to pull him out of his shell - Yoongi still has vivid memories of Jungkook crying because he couldn’t bear singing in front of other people - but the older he gets, the stronger Jungkook’s independent, defiant streak is coming out.
Only sometimes, of course.
Jungkook’s a good boy at his core, kind heart and big doe eyes, first and forever. He might rough and tumble with Tae, run rings around Jimin and Jin, but he’s still sweet.
He shrugs. “I’m not his keeper.”
---
Namjoon raises an eyebrow. “Who was it who made him go to the doctor with the flu? Wasn’t me, Hobi, or Jinnie-hyung.”
“I -”
“Who was it who put him in your coat, marched him onto the bus, and then rang the managers to tell them where he was and why he would not be coming to practise? For three days?”
“That’s -”
“It wasn’t me, hyungie.” Joon is right. “He hid it from me for a week that he was ill.”
“He didn’t want to disappoint you.”
“But he didn’t hide it from you.” Joon raises an eyebrow, directly challenging Yoongi.
---
He couldn’t hide it. Yoongi heard the crying in the bathroom when Jungkook was trying to not throw up from coughing so hard; that had been that. Jungkook thinks illness and injury are weaknesses, overcome through strength of will and endurance, ignored until it brings him to his knees. Yoongi disagrees. His method involved force feeding Jungkook chicken soup with ginseng, wrapping him in four blankets, and taking enough pills to sink a battleship. Either way, the cold went away after three days of treatment.
Yoongi may or may not have made the soup from scratch.
He will admit nothing.
---
“So?”
“When I tried, he thanked me kindly for my consideration but carried on with his dance practise, coughing like he had the plague.” Jin steals Namjoon’s vanilla milkshake. “He was very polite but…”
Hoseok nods along. “Insistent. Same with me, trying to get him to leave the studio. Or get him to come home from the gym.” He shrugs. “Even when he’s not ill, it’s the same thing. He’s polite and dutiful, but he’s fixated. He just… won’t leave.”
“The only people he listens to are the managers. And that’s only because they could bench him.” Jin says, sadly.
---
“I can’t bench him, though.” Yoongi lacks the power of management, and that’s being kind. He’s as much a pawn in their games, their plans, as Jungkook is. He’s lucky if he gets three meals a day, and five minutes down time between meetings, classes, and assignments from the label.
“No… but he still listens to you.” Namjoon tilts his head. “All I ever get is Yoongi-hyung told me this, Yoongi-hyung said that.”
“Suga-hyungie is so cool.” Hobi smirks. “Suga-hyungie is the best. ”
“You’re lying.”
“Are we?” Jin is still deadly serious.
“You’re the oldest.” Yoongi says.
“And he’s Jungkook.”
---
He has a point. Jungkook loves Jin, with all his heart. And his fists. And his mouth. Jin’s target numero uno for Jungkook and it’s only getting worse.
“He used to bow to you.” Yoongi still remembers those days, when Jungkook was tiny, and shy, looking around with big eyes and clinging to Suga’s shirt with one hand as he took notes from the management with the other.
“Those days are long gone for me.” Jin rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, they are.”
“But he comes when you tell him.” Namjoon stares, steadily. “He stops when you say. He heeds you.”
---
“You saw him, Yoongi-hyung. He wasn’t… Jimin couldn’t have got him to sleep. Not Tae, not even Jin or even me, or Rapmonie.” Hobi props his chin on his knee. He suddenly looks so very tired, serious in all the wrong ways. “He loves Joonie.”
“If we had tried it, we’d still be arguing about it.” Joon is right. Jungkook has a stubborn streak a mile wide. “But for you… all it took was some words, and he just…gave in.”
“He trusts you, hyung.” Namjoon tugs on his earring. “He listens to you. We need you to make him stop.”
---
“He’ll grow out of it.”
Jin glares. “When? Before he dies of a heart attack or after?”
“Three Red Bulls before we even started. And he stole my coffee which he hates .” Namjoon is right. Jungkook has yet to acquire the same taste for bitter, black coffee that Yoongi and Namjoon have learned to survive on over the years - none of the others like it but Jungkook avoids it like the plague. “He barely slept last night, and he’s getting by on two, three hours… Maybe four. If we’re lucky.”
“It’s not -”
A noise from the back of the bus.
---
They all freeze, turn to stare up the bus aisle, scared to breathe. Jimin sighs, twisting in his seat; thankfully, he still sleeps on. The other two are gone - completely in the depths of slumber.
“We need to fix it, somehow.” Hobi says, bluntly. “We can all see it.” Apparently, Jungkook has picked up some bad habits from somewhere, and it’s starting to show in all the worst ways. “He’s struggling,”
“Okay, fine.” He concedes that they’re right. “But what makes you think he’ll listen to me about this?” Yoongi waves a fry, tries to keep his voice low. “Hmm?”
---
Namjoon says nothing, just drops his gaze, smirks a little.
“Shut up.” Yoongi crosses his arms, defensively, over his chest. It’s not a secret, what he does - it can’t be, they live in a one bedroom apartment - there is no room for secrets - but it’s still… different. Unusual. The others are getting used to it, and it’s not a problem, per se; they just don’t talk about it. They don’t draw attention to it, they pretend it doesn’t exist most of the time.
Yoongi wishes they would ignore it all the time, so they wouldn’t be having this conversation.
“Asshole.”
---
“Language.” Jin grins, but it’s the manager’s voice coming out of his mouth. They’ve all been told to cool it with the language, get out of the bad habits now, before they debut, and Yoongi is... struggling with that.
“So you think he’ll listen to me?”
“I think actions speak louder than words.” Namjoon shoves half a cold burger into his mouth. “He’s always pretty tired after you… take care of him… so… make it happen.”
“Make it happen?”
“Make him tired. Get him to a place where he can sleep, and he’s not exhausted.”
“I see.” He does. Unfortunately.
---
“Management will notice, Yoongi.” Jin rubs his forehead, his mouth tense. “And we can’t… there’ll be no coming back from that.”
“We debut in months.” Namjoon drops the elephant in the room on them all. “But that means… if they think he’s not going to make it, he’s out. I don’t want that.”
“I know.” Namjoon and he know, perhaps more than anybody else, how close they are to debut. Months is being generous.
“He needs to sleep, Yoongi.” Hobi sighs.
Yoongi has insomnia but he’s always had it. He’s learned to live with it through the years, painfully well.
---
Jungkook’s insomnia is part stress related, and part the insane pressure he puts on himself to perfect things. Even when he’s home, he’s drilling himself on the routines, headphones on, in the hallway or even outside, in the stairwell, to get it that little bit more perfect.
It’s now sliding into his sleep pattern, and they all got to see it up close at the training camp. He’s been drinking coffee, living on energy drinks, wiring himself up to make himself stay awake during the day so he can train by himself at night, when he should have been sleeping.
---
He nearly fell asleep during their media training. He struggled to function during their sessions in the gym because he had stayed up so late practising by himself in the dance hall. He barely ate, preferring to use the hour long lunch break to rehearse a new section of choreography or a section of his vocal lesson.
Yoongi is grateful that the last part didn't last long, at least. Jin cottoned on to Jungkook’s plan four days in and insisted on bringing Jungkook food, watching him eat. Jin doesn’t tolerate skipping meals.
Jungkook didn’t try it twice.
Neither did Jimin.
---
But the pressure is increasing, and Jungkook is already starting to buckle again. Over the last few months, Yoongi’s milk has helped , but this sleep thing is a manifestation of something else - a need to control, Namjoon thinks, or a new obsession, like Hobi suggested a few days ago.
Yoongi thinks Jin’s opinion is closest of all - Jungkook can’t say no, so when expectations pile up, when he’s drowning from the weight of other people’s demands on him, Jungkook doesn’t reach out for help.
He just tries to push through, make it better by himself.
Even if it kills him.
---
The training camp was supposed to be another step in their plan to launch.
They were joining another group of trainees - mostly from Big HIt, but a few from other, smaller companies - as prep for the final debut. They needed to round off those rough edges - they were all now in the elite group of not just mere trainees, but pre-debut trainees. There is a certain level of prestige that followed them now, a halo of so close to making it that Yoongi could almost taste it.
But that meant more work, grinding it out for their possible future success.
---
It’s been two weeks of hell, if Yoongi is honest with himself.
Every day was dance training, rap lessons, writing classes, music lessons for those who could play, media training, lessons on etiquette. All the tiny, stupid things that Yoongi had always assumed was something that idols ‘picked up’ or ‘knew naturally’ turned out to be actual lessons, that someone in a suit taught for a living.
He didn’t exactly want to go, but he wasn’t asked.
Nobody was. The classes were pre-decided by someone much higher up the food chain. All they could do was yes, sir, and go.
---
But whereas Yoongi at least got to enjoy some parts - the piano lessons were cool, and he didn’t really mind the writing classes - Jungkook had not fared so well.
Along with extensive time with the singing tutors - he had three hours a day, most days, second only to Jin - Jungkook’s dancing was named his biggest fault. Their management had decreed it, so it was deemed so. He was assigned more dance classes to hone his skills - capitalize on what he learned in America - build his repertoire of hiphop and street dance beyond where it was already.
Jungkook had no choice.
---
Along with Jimin and Hoseok, he was expected to carry the weight of the dancing expectations of the group. The dance masters always emphasized how important it was for Jungkook to be exact, to strive not to just be on the beat, but to move with it, to always flow with the music.
Jungkook took every lesson to heart, every criticism as a personal rebuke, a challenge to overcome.
He didn’t need to. But he can’t let it go, and Yoongi… Yoongi knows it’s a bad habit that he’s picked up from somewhere.
Jungkook and he are too alike, sometimes.
---
These last two weeks have been ugly. And eye-opening, too, for everybody.
It’s also absolutely unsustainable. He seriously cannot do that when they get back home. Yoongi knows they have maybe another few months before debut. Maybe. They have to figure out something before then.
Being an idol is isane. Being an idol, on the brink of debut, with school and everything else that’s still going on is insanity , concentrated . Everything is more stressful, there’s more pressure, everybody wants a hundred and ten percent but isn’t willing to give them the time to give it. Every day is the same.
---
Jungkook can’t survive without sleeping. He can’t. It’s not possible. Yoongi won’t let him. He cares too much to let Jungkook do that to himself.
“Okay, fine.” Yoongi takes another fry, dips into the barbeque sauce that Hoseok holds out for him.
“So you’ll do it?” Jin passes Namjoon a napkin, points to the mark of red ketchup on his chin. “You’ll… do what you do, for him?”
“I’ll figure something out.” That’s Yoongi’s job. He figures things out, moves things around, plans and works at it until they have a solution.
He hopes he can do it this time.
---
“We care about him, hyungie, a lot.” Namjoon rubs his hands on his thighs, a frown creasing between his brows. He looks much too young for this kind of stress. “We love him. He’s ours.”
“He’s too good to burn out this quick.” There are times when Yoongi forgets that Hobi’s seen a lot of trainees over the years, mentored a lot of people in dance. “He’s special.”
“He is.” Yoongi doesn’t disagree.
“We can’t… we can’t do what you do.” Jin speaks too fast, his ears turning red. “But… you can. You can help him.”
“I understand.” He does.
---
The bus settles down - Hoseok sits on the opposite side of the aisle, headphones in, reading. Namjoon and Jin drift to the back, so they can join the youngest in sleep. They talk very little; but Yoongi watches as Jin automatically guides Namjoon to a seat, the way he spreads the blanket over both of them. Jin takes care of people, too.
He does it well.
Yoongi can’t sleep. His brain is working overtime. He stares out of the window, into the blackness. It’s been a long two weeks, and a terrifying insight into their futures if everything goes right.
---
He’s suddenly very aware that they need Jungkook to debut - he’s a powerhouse, their shy maknae, but he also fits. In their group. After months - years - of building the group, adding people, removing people, changing their music style, flipping between rap-centric, pop, and idol-status, management have decreed them as a unit.
Jungkook is going to be their sub-rapper, he’s assigned as a core part of the dance line, he’s going to be a vocalist, and although Jin is their visual… they’re all supposed to have that it quality. That’s a lot of pressure.
They already have a name.
Bangtan Sonyeondan.
---
Yoongi absently plays with the cord of his hoodie, tucks a hand underneath his shirt to check. He’s not full - not yet - but he knows the others are right.
He has a sway, a strange hold over Jungkook that not even Namjoon can come close to. That’s saying something - Jungkook looks at his RapMon-hyung like he hung the moon and the stars, would do anything for him, is happiest when Namjoon pays him any attention at all.
But now that Yoongi nurses him, ever since that first, awkward feed… Jungkook and Yoongi’s relationship has changed.
Yoongi hopes it’ll be enough.
---
God, he hopes it’ll be enough.
He needs to get it right. They’re this close to success, to finally tasting the sweet success they’ve worked so hard for. It’s taken blood, it’s taken sweat, and oh, so many tears, and they are within inches of debut. They’re not going to stop now but Jungkook is in danger of falling behind. The management will notice any sign of weakness. And they won’t hesitate to get rid of Jungkook if they think…he’s not strong enough.
They have no mercy and they’ve made it very plain: only the best and the brightest survive.