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“I think he might be dying,” Taehyung says, wincing as the sound of a sneeze echoes loudly through from the lounge. Seconds later, it’s followed by a hacking cough that makes Taehyung’s ears hurt and his chest ache in phantom sympathy pains. The sound rattles through the air, his enhanced hearing picking up the wheeze in Jungkook’s lungs.
“No,” Jimin replies though his eyes are wide and worried, “come on we just—we just turned him to stop that from happening.” He turns to look at Seokjin, who is parsing through a book with intense concentration on his face, brow furrowed. “Hyung, it’s not possible for him to die, right? We turned him!”
“I haven’t turned anyone in a long time,” Seokjin points out and for a moment, the air is heavy with a melancholic grief. Reverent silence hangs between them for a moment, broken by another loud ACHOO from the lounge. “Besides, if he truly was dying, you would know, Tae-yah.”
“I would?”
“You’re his sire,” Seokjin affirms, “it’s just something you know.”
Taehyung thinks about this for a moment and nods, closing his eyes and trying to feel for that part of his chest where he’s sure his soul still sits, connected to his coven by their blood bond and to his precious Jungkook by the fragile, growing bond to his fledgling. It flutters like a butterfly in a hurricane, and the harder Taehyung tries to grab it, the less of it he can feel. Panic grips his chest. His socked feet skid across the floor as he runs back through to check, with his eyes, that Jungkook is alive and breathing.
***
Jungkook is, in fact, doing both of those things. He’s doing them pretty well considering he feels like his lungs are stuffed full of cotton wool and his brain’s about to leak out of his nose. He’d sort of hoped that, when he was turned into a vampire, he’d be immune to this kind of bullshit. But no, here he was feeling like death warmed up (pun absolutely unintended), with yet another blanket being wrapped around him. At this point, he thinks it won’t be the cough that finishes him off but the fact that his coven are actively trying to boil him alive.
“Here,” Taehyung murmurs softly, pushing the hood of Jungkook’s hoodie back and pressing a gentle kiss to his sweaty hair, “drink this.” He’s pushing a warm mug into Jungkook’s hands and the smell—coppery and rich—makes his stomach churn. He swallows past the nausea and bile that climbs up his throat which makes him cough violently again and it’s only Taehyung’s quick reflexes that catch the mug before it goes flying and takes all the contents with it. “Yah! Kook-ah, you have to—just breathe, okay? It’s alright.”
Taehyung’s voice has taken on a slightly higher pitch in panic. It’s not an unpleasant sound, but Jungkook definitely prefers the low, dulcet tones of his voice normally. He tries to say as much, to tell Taehyung to calm down because he really is okay when another spasm catches him, air hitting the back of a dry, scratchy throat and suddenly he’s slumped forward, shrugging the blankets off and trying to catch his breath.
Someone thumps his back. Hard. Momentarily winded, he wheezes with his hands gripping his shins, knowing that compressing his lungs probably isn’t helping but he can pretend that getting tiny and small makes this whole situation less embarrassing, right? Right.
“That’s for someone who’s choking,” Jimin chides and from behind Jungkook he hears the soft, sheepish sound of Namjoon apologising. Huh. Namjoon. That would make sense as to why all of his internal organs feel like they’d just been rearranged by a single smack. Even after several hundred years, Namjoon didn’t know his own strength and while he’d been consciously holding back before Jungkook was turned, he seems to have forgotten that until the bond settles and Jungkook’s transformation is complete, he’s still fragile.
“Shit, sorry baby,” he murmurs, hand resting at the back of Jungkook’s neck and squeezing once. It makes Jungkook want to go boneless, but he’s busy trying to suck air into clogged lungs so he just waves a hand in blithe acceptance of the apology.
When he can finally breathe without setting himself off again, he lifts his head and rubs his hand underneath his nose. Gross. A tissue appears in his peripheral and he thanks the random hand (strong fingers, large palm, Yoongi-hyung maybe? Gods is everyone here to witness his descent into disgustingness?) and blows his nose with it, scrunching it up into a ball in his fist.
“‘m just gonna go lie do—” he stands, a little woozy and unbalanced, blankets sloughing off him and tangling around his feet. Taehyung and Yoongi (yep, everyone is here, this is so embarrassing) catch him with strong hands on either side of him and he can’t even focus on how nice it feels because he’s one second away from passing out or throwing up and right now.
Evidently, from the way the world turns spotty and grey and the ground comes rushing up to meet him along with the underwater sounds of alarm from his coven, passing out is the one that wins.
***
Jungkook isn’t sure how much later it is that he opens his eyes again. He’s laying in his own bed, dark canopy threaded with warm-coloured fairy lights (courtesy of Jimin, who didn’t let anyone at the Academy tease him about his fear of the dark) swimming into focus. They’re too bright for him right now, though, muted as they are, and he fumbles to turn them off to save his poor, light-sensitive eyes. He aches all over, like he’s run a marathon or spent too long at the gym, his muscles are hurting all over in groups he’s pretty sure aren’t meant to hurt at the same time and he feels even more crappy than before.
He pushes himself upright, stuffs another two pillows behind himself so that he’s not lying flat on the bed and then flops backwards, rolls onto his side and tugs the sheets up over his head. He’s sweating but he’s freezing and he can’t blame it on the Transformation. There’s still a way to go before he’s fully turned, before the last of his human weaknesses are purged from his system, so to speak.
Still, he hasn’t been sick in forever and he thinks, as his eyes drift shut again, it’s incredibly fucking unfair that it had to happen now. He’ll sleep it off, and in a few days, he’ll be right as rain. Or something. Hopefully.
***
“You should search on Naver.”
The advice seems obvious in retrospect but Hoseok’s always managed to have somewhat of a level head when the others are busy in their feelings one way or another. He’s their sensible sunshine, as excitable as the maknaes but as solid and dependable and sensible as the older coven members when he needs to be.
“Why didn’t we think of that?” Taehyung asks, smacking his forehead with an open palm as he rushes over to the desk and opens his laptop. “Someone tell Namjoon-hyung he doesn’t have to go to the library anymore, the Internet will give us the answers that we need.”
The former youngest watches as Seokjin tilts his head to the side, eyes unfocusing just for a moment and then a soft smile curls his lips upwards. “There, done. He’ll be back shortly, he’s making a stop off at the market to get something for Jungkookie to eat for dinner, and also to see if they’ve got any of those cakes you two love so much.”
Taehyung smiles and says a quiet thank you, already navigating to Naver.
“What should I search for?”
There’s a flurry of suggestions, so in the end Taehyung decides to type in the list of symptoms that he’s seen from Jungkook over the past couple of days and presses enter to search.
***
Naver, as it turns out, is the worst place possible to search for answers as to the health conditions of humans. It isn’t that it’s been such a long time since any of them have been human that they’ve forgotten what it’s like, it’s that none of the six Bangtan Clansmen have ever been human. They were born into their lives, never changed from one thing to another, so sickness of this type was as alien to them as anything.
It also meant that, despite their collective ages being over a millennium, they were quick to believe the first thing they’d read as it came up at the top of the search (which means that it’s the most reliable answer, right?).
There’s absolute silence as they browse through the collated symptoms and the only sensible conclusion that this very reliable website has drawn is that Jungkook is in mortal peril. Taehyung lets out an alarmed cry and it’s only Yoongi’s firm hand on his shoulder that keeps him still and stops him from running to his fledgling.
“That doesn’t sound good, hyung,” Jimin murmurs, taking over scrolling from an increasingly distraught Taehyung, his other hand resting on his soulmate’s thigh, squeezing softly. “Maybe we should take him to a hospital?”
“This says it might be in his brain,” Yoongi reads over Taehyung’s shoulder. “Inflammation of the cerebrospinal fluid? That doesn’t sound good. Do you think the Embrace might have done this?”
Taehyung swivels round, alarm turning to grief and guilt. The Embrace was difficult for human bodies to handle. Since it happened so rarely (they’d had to petition for Taehyung to be allowed to turn Jungkook, after all, and likely only granted permission due to the status of their coven as a whole—thank you Kim Seokjin) there were more horror stories than success ones.
“Yah,” Seokjin chides, cuffing Yoongi upside the head and then reaching for Taehyung’s jaw to draw the distraught vampire’s attention. “Don’t frighten him like that. You didn’t do this with the Embrace, darling. But if Jungkookie really is sick, we might have to get in touch with a magic coven to help us heal him.”
“I’m sure Hoseokie won’t mind going, the noonas over in the Busan hedge community love him.”
Hoseok smiles politely as though he doesn’t hate going there. The women of the hedge community are lovely, but they’re obsessed with trying to set him up with eligible vampires in the area. Or sirens. Or fae. Whatever their flavour of the decade is on the rare occasion he has to go and see them. It helps that he’s never once been sarcastic to them, not like Yoongi was, and they aren’t intimidated by (nor slightly jealous of) his power in the same way that they are by Seokjin’s. They won’t let Namjoon within a hundred yards of their home due to his propensity for breaking things, and though they’ve never met Taehyung or Jimin, the sheer flirtatious chaos the two of them carry around with them everywhere would be the downfall of both the hedge community and their coven. It doesn’t matter how many times Hoseok explains he’s bonded, they honestly don’t seem to care.
“I’ll go if I have to, but shouldn’t we try a human hospital first?”
“Human hospitals are barbaric, Hobi-hyung,” Jimin says knowledgeably. “They’re positively medieval with how they treat people.”
“And what would you know of medieval treatment, Mini?” Seokjin asks with a slight tease in his voice despite the severity of their concerns.
“Just what you constantly reminisce, hyung,” Jimin shoots back breezily, ducking away from the playful swat of Seokjin’s other hand. “But seriously. This says if Jungkookie doesn’t get medical attention immediately then he’ll die.”
Taehyung, who can’t have that happen, is on his feet and out of the room before anyone can stop him. The others follow, phones in hand, ready to call whomever they need to in order to save their newest baby.
***
“Hyung,” Jungkook says, looking up from where Hoseok has gently pushed him back onto the bed, a wet flannel over his forehead and a thermometer stuck under his tongue, “I’m fine, really it just—” He coughs which hurts more than it has any right to and knocks the thermometer out from under his tongue. Jimin clucks and tries to jab it back in. He's managed to convince them he doesn't need a hosptial, but only beacuse he said he'd refuse to let them into his room if they took him there.
“It’s already high,” he says, looking at the number. His brow’s creased in concern and his plush lips are pouting and it has no right looking as cute as it does. He’s being a menace, and Jungkook just wants to sleep this away and maybe take some painkillers and something to bring down his fever. “How much higher is it going to get?”
“Jimin-hyung,” Jungkook tries to argue, complaining when Jimin grabs his jaw and eases his mouth shut to keep the thermometer in place. “Mmph!”
There are too many eyes on him, Jungkook feels his chest squirming with the wrong kind of embarrassment. It craws over his skin and he spits the thermometer out petulantly, ignoring Jimin’s indignant squawk, turning his head away when the vampire tries to put it back in again.
“I’m fine,” he argues, batting away worried hands. Taehyung and Jimin are flittering around him, and though normally he doesn’t mind being the centre of their attention—he thrives on it, in fact—right now it feels cloying and embarrassing and— “Honestly, guys, both of you just stop. Please?”
Taehyung’s fingers smooth through his hair, cradle the back of his head and tip it back gently. Jungkook feels himself go boneless, letting Taehyung move it. His head hurts, he feels tired and hungry and his throat’s sore.
“Tell us what we can do to help you, baby,” Taehyung murmurs, lips against Jungkook’s temple. “We checked with, uh—”
“Naver,” Hoseok says softly, standing beside Namjoon and Seokjin at the foot of the bed as Yoongi puts another blanket over Jungkook’s legs, smoothing it down.
“What?” he asks, slightly grumpily at being caught out caring, “I heard someone day once starve a fever, feed a cold. And you need to keep someone with a fever warm.”<
“…how long ago was this information?” Jimin asks.
“Does it matter?”
“If he’s got a fever, the last thing he needs is to be warmer—”
“He,” Jungkook interrupts loudly, which makes his chest seize painfully and forces an escalating series of coughs out of him that has Taehyung rubbing at his back and Namjoon spilling half the pitcher of water Seokjin had conjured for him to drink, “is right here and I’m not into you talking about me like I’m not here when no one’s naked.”
Seokjin snorts as Taehyung and Jimin both choke on nothing at Jungkook’s bluntness. The fledgling is still fussing, trying to breathe properly having sassed them all into silence.
“I just want to sleep it off. I’ll be better in a couple of days. It’s a human thing. Or a…post human thing?”
“What if it’s in your brain?” Jimin asks, settling on the other side of the bed to where Taehyung is gently petting slow, long circles along his childe’s back. “Kook-ah, Naver said that it—”
“Naver doesn’t know my body like I do,” Jungkook points out, leaning to the side into Taehyung’s chill. His sire lifts his arm so Jungkook can snuggle into him, which is exactly what he does, turning his face to press a warm nose against the cool skin of Taehyung’s neck. “I just need to sleep it off.”
Taehyung hums softly, rests his chin atop Jungkook’s head. “You can’t fault us for worrying,” he says quietly, “it’s been a long time since we’ve had a human around.”
“‘m not human anymore,” Jungkook grumbles, poking Taehyung’s thigh until the vampire leans backwards against the headboard so Jungkook could cuddle in properly, slinging an arm and leg over Taehyung to keep him still. “But I just need to rest. That’s all.”
“Do you promise?” Hoseok asks softly, reaching forward to gently squeeze Jungkook’s foot through the blanket that Yoongi had piled on. Jungkook doesn’t answer immediately, already drowsy from feeling dreadful and being close to his sire as he basks in the sensation of their connection. “Kookie?”
“Mm?”
“Do you promise you just need to sleep it off?”
“Mm, oh, yeah,” Jungkook responds with a little nod, fingers idly flexing and playing with the soft fabric of Taehyung’s shirt. “‘s all I need. 'll be right as rain tomorrow.”
***
It wasn’t all he needed. It wasn’t at all. Four days later, the cough is worse, and his chest rattles with each inward breath. He wakes Yoongi as he tries to sneak out of the bed while his lungs rattle and crackle like someone dunked popping candy into a dish of water. Strong arms around his waist support him the twenty steps to the ensuite, and in the bright artificial light, Jungkook looks paler than the palest of his vampire hyungs.
“I’m fine,” he says, as Yoongi holds him upright when his legs won’t support him, shivering and shaking.
“I’m fine,” he says, sitting under a hot shower, shivering even though he can see the steam curling around him.
“I’m fine,” he says as Taehyung’s fingers rake through his damp curls and Jimin retakes his temperature and wails so loudly that he has to hide from the spike of pain the sound shoots through his temples.
Two hours later, when he’s flopped over Taehyung’s lap with his eyes screwed shut, he mumbles, “I’m not fine,” and hopes that it’s only Taehyung that can hear him.
The answering we know from downstairs tells him otherwise.
***
“Yah, Kook-ah, stop trying to walk around,” Yoongi chastises as he scoops Jungkook up in a bridal hold three days later, cradling him against his chest and lifting his chin to tuck Jungkook’s head underneath. “It’s really no trouble for hyungs to help you until you’re better. You really scared us, you know.”
Jungkook wriggles until Yoongi’s arms tighten around him holding him so firmly that he can hardly move. He doesn’t hate it as much as he says he does, in all honesty there’s something reassuring about being held so firmly. It’s like sitting under a weighted blanket, or being wrapped in a hoodie that’s two sizes too big. Even though he’s taller than his Yoongi-hyung, Yoongi can still make him feel so small.
“I’m sorry,” he says with a little pout, voice still a little rough and raw. “I didn’t think I could get sick anymore.”
“We didn’t either,” Yoongi admits with a sigh, wetting his lower lip and bouncing Jungkook slightly as he walks away from the fledgeling’s room and towards the large, ornate lounge area. “It’s been such a long time since we’ve been around a human and you—”
“I what?” Jungkook asks, watching the dust motes dance in the sunlight that carves through the curtains that keep the worst of the day away from the big arch window. He knows the curtains are for his sake: the others don’t need to be protected from the sun yet but until he finishes his turning, there’s every chance he might get seriously hurt by the sun. Or not. They don’t actually know because none of them has turned a human in a very long time, and Seokjin swears down that he would have remembered his last Siring if it hadn’t been for the Trials that had robbed him of his memory of that period due to the undue stress he’d been put under trying to stay alive.
“You’re very important to us,” Yoongi settles on saying with a pinched frown on his brows. “It frightened us that you might have been dying and there was nothing we could do about it.”
“You could have taken me to hospital,” Jungkook reasons, which gets him dropped unceremoniously on the couch. His surprised yelp garners no sympathy until he takes a deep breath in wrong and it catches at the back of his throat causing a coughing fit.
Taehyung’s in the room in a second, somehow holding a cup of hot water and lemon juice with just the right amount of honey in it, sweeping himself into a position behind Jungkook where he could cling to him like an octopus without hindering the fledgeling’s breathing.
“If you’d told us you needed to go, we would have done,” Yoongi says as Taehyung nuzzles into the back of Jungkook’s neck affectionately.
“Really?” Jungkook asks, completely sceptic.
“No,” Yoongi admitted after a moment, “We would have just braved the Busan hedge witches.”
“Hobi-hyung hates them,” Taehyung says with a chuckle.
“He does,” Hoseok’s voice carries through from the other room, “but he loves his Jungkookie enough that he’d brave them a hundred times over. But also, please don’t make me do that. I really don’t want to have to fend off another marriage proposal. The last one was really hard to resist; it came with a griffin.”
“Oh no,” Yoongi deadpans, “how could we ever compete with a griffin?”
Jungkook, however, perks up immediately and turns to look at the empty space where Hoseok’s voice had come from.
“Griffins are real?!”
***
“Taehyungie-hyung?” Jungkook’s voice is gentle as he stands at the door to the library, rocking his weight from foot to foot as he waits for Taehyung to acknowledge him. He knows he doesn’t need to announce himself really; there’s a gentle warmth in his chest and a gentle buzz at the back of his mind that’s been there since Taehyung turned him. He knows it’ll get stronger once he’s finished his Transformation, after the Embrace has taken full effect and he can’t wait. Right now he can feel Taehyung, and the tiniest, faintest whisper of the rest of the coven.
“Yeah, Kookie?” Taehyung looks up from the book he’s reading and folds it, stretching his arm out and shifting so there’s room on the ornate couch for Jungkook to come and sit with him. “What is it?”
Jungkook, helpless as a moth to a flame, gravitates over to the couch and sits down on it, sinking into Taehyung’s side and nosing against his sire’s throat, closing his eyes and breathing in slowly. Taehyung’s fingers sink into his hair, carding through it gently.
“Baby?”
Jungkook hums, “‘m hungry.”
“Really?” Taehyung asks, failing to hide the enthusiasm. Jungkook knows that’s the first time that he’s asked for food since before he got sick, and it’s definitely a sign that he’s better. He barely coughs now and he feels pretty excellent, honestly. “That’s good. Do you want Jin-hyung to cook something for you or do you want—”
Jungkook’s shy as he mumbles “you” against Taehyung’s throat, and Taehyung feels the scrap of baby fangs against his collarbone where his shirt’s been peeled back a little.
“Aah,” he hums and presses a kiss to the top of Jungkook’s head. “Gentle then.”
Taehyung tips his head to the side and feels Jungkook’s nose slide along his throat before the pinch of fangs in the place they’d taught him to pierce to feed. The connection hums in intensity, a rush of affection and warmth and love love love as Jungkook partakes in the comforting act of feeding from his sire, and Taehyung’s arms come around him, encouraging the younger to straddle his lap for a better angle (and better cuddles).
Later, when he’s sated and Taehyung’s idly rubbing circles up and down Jungkook’s back as the fledgling dozes on his lap, he smiles brightly at Yoongi when he drops in to check everything’s okay.
Their baby certainly seems better, so perhaps everything is.
***
“You might be wondering,” Jungkook says, a few weeks later as the coven are gathered around in their lounge, sprawled over various surfaces, “why I’ve asked you all here.”
Jimin snorts a little and Seokjin gives him a little cuff upside the head for laughing at the serious look on their maknae’s face. It’s hard for them all not to coo, and Jungkook can feel the warmth of their unbridled affection: after his bout of illness the Transformation has been smooth and he’s almost completely done with it, the last aches of teething are almost gone too but with the completing change comes the coven bond and he can’t say he doesn’t love it.
He frowns a little at the snickering and his lips press out into a pout that he knows Taehyung wants to kiss due to the way his face softens. “Jimin-hyung I’m trying to be serious here.”
“I know, Kook-ah,” Jimin says with a smile, “hyungs are listening.”
Jungkook eyes him for a moment before he just nods. “I—I wanted to say thank you for looking after me so much when I was poorly, and I’m sorry for worrying you, but—”
“It isn’t like you can—”
“—when I’m trying to tell you somethi—”
“Hyungs had it covered and we were—” Seokjin continues, railroading over Jungkook who keeps trying to speak.
“—I appreciated how well you took care of me though it—”
“—so worried about you, precious, you really need to let us do more for—”
“—hyung!”
Jungkook’s uncharacteristically loud shout silences Seokjin’s rapid ramble and he blinks at the fledgling a few times before he just folds his hands in his lap patiently and waits for the apology he knows is coming. After all, he was the eldest, and no one is allowed to shout at him.
To his credit, the fledgling stands his ground, an unhappy frown on his brows even as his ears go pink at having had to be so loud.
“I’m trying to tell you something and you keep talking over me,” he complains, seconds away from stamping his foot but his hands make little fists at his sides before he crosses his arms over his chest. “Just like you all did when I was sick. I was trying to—”
“You were—” Seokjin interrupts again but then catches himself and mimes zipping his lips which makes Yoongi snort next to him.
“I was trying to tell you that I’d be okay in a few days, even though it was probably really scary, it was just the flu or something. I really wasn’t dying.”
“Does that happen often?” Namjoon asks, after waiting for a moment to check that Jungkook has finished speaking. He does glance over at Seokjin, but their coven leader just lifts his shoulders and gestures to his mouth that he had mimed zipping up with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
“Which part?”
Namjoon’s brows furrow and he beckons Jungkook over, legs spread. Their baby hesitates for a second but he’s never been one to say no to cuddles, so he walks over and perches on Namjoon’s thigh, letting the vampire cuddle him close and press a kiss to his hairline.
“Both: you getting sick and us talking over you.”
There’s genuine concern in his voice, and a soft rumbling from the others, a tug in Jungkook’s chest that feels like discomfort and alarm. It makes his breath quicken for a moment, pulse pound in his ears.
“I—”
“Be honest, bunny,” Hoseok says gently, his own brows creased. When Jungkook opens his mouth to argue, he quickly adds, “We don’t want you to think that you have to let us talk over you out of politeness just because you’re the baby.”
“It’s not because I’m the baby, hyung,” Jungkook tries lamely but Jimin reaches over Namjoon to pinch Jungkook’s thigh and he yelps a little. “Ow! Jimin-hyung! It—okay, so it happens sometimes but it’s not bad, I promise. If I really want to say something I get it said. And I guess… I used to get sick a lot? Before Taehyungie-hyung bit me. But since I got turned I’ve only been sick twice and the second time was the one just gone.”
“You’ve been sick before?!” Seokjin asks, forgetting that he’d decided he was going to be silent. “What? When? How sick were you? Why didn’t we know about this?”
Jungkook wrinkles his nose. “It’s nothing, hyung, I was fine, I wasn’t too sick, just a little under the weather? I felt rough, had a headache and no appetite but something that happens when I get too stressed. And humans get sick all the time, it’s just… part of being human I guess? Not a part I’m going to miss, honestly. But if it happens again, please, hyungs, promise me you’ll just ask what I need instead of going onto Naver? That will always end up with you thinking I’m about to die for real. The internet’s full of scary things like that.”
Jimin nods sagely. He’s been watching Jungkook and can see the younger’s discomfort at being the centre of attention like this, so smirks mischievously as he says, “It’s also full of cat videos. I caught Yoongi-hyung fifty videos deep into—”
“Yah, you brat,” Yoongi interrupts, leaning forward to throw a pillow at Jimin as Seokjin bursts out into a squeaky laugh and Namjoon just cuddles Jungkook closer until Taehyung gets jealous and plops himself down on Namjoon’s other thigh.
Jungkook, for his part, settles where he is and watches his coven with the warmth of their affections for him curling in his chest, right where his heart is, and knows he’s finally found the place that he belongs.