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When Yoongi gets hospitalized for the first time, Namjoon floats around his room like a mourning ghost till Yoongi tells him that he'll pull the IV out of his own arm if Namjoon doesn't fucking stop pacing right the fuck now.
"Only if you stop almost dying."
"I'm not dying--it's appendicitis."
"Tubes are feeding things into a giant needle in your arm--you're dying."
"We're all dying."
"Ew, stop stealing my lines."
"Stop saying that I'm dying."
The second time Yoongi gets hospitalized, Namjoon makes himself a bed on the white chairs with no cushions ("Don't do that. Your boney ass will be bruised as fuck if you sleep there." "Then give me one of your pillows." "Hell no--these are my pillows." "Then bruised ass it is.") and sleeps louder than the entire floor. Yoongi considers throwing a pillow at him but he knows that Namjoon'll just wake up, grin that sleepy grin of his (you know the one, Yoongi knows it too well, where his dimples dig into his cheeks like two tiny cups filled to the brim with words he might or might not say), take the damn pillow and use it before falling right back asleep and the next morning, he'll wake up with that goofy grin (not the sleepy one anymore, no, but the goofy one that makes his entire face look round and strange and like his eyes have made permanent homes too high above his cheeks, too close to his brows, lips drawn up so far Yoongi always fears his cheeks will pop right off) and say see? you can't say no to me.
Namjoon has a way of making Yoongi eat his words.
They always taste a little more sour the second time round, Yoongi thinks, watching Namjoon snore up the next great storm from his place on the makeshift bed of propped up chairs, his limbs just as awkward as the angles of the chairs, facing each other but a little too far to allow for Namjoon's limp noodle form to dangle between them somewhat-maybe comfortably, nonexistent ass hanging in the negative space from one chair to the next.
He thinks this while rolling his eyes and sinking further back into his kingdom of pillows (Namjoon had coined the phrase that afternoon, sitting there, reading a new book because he always had a new book to read; the bastard inhales books like breakfast-lunch-dinner all in one, buffet of words that he just can't get enough of and Yoongi can't quite get enough of Namjoon reading either because--that's irrelevant right now, isn't it? Yes.) and closes his eyes and falls asleep to the rhythmic pulse of Namjoon's snores.
When Namjoon gets hospitalized for the first time, Yoongi frowns too hard the entire time he sits there, watching the nurse take all the numbers down, numbers that are supposed to stack up to something that resembles the Kim Namjoon he knows but they don't.
Kim Namjoon doesn't get sick, even if Kim Namjoon gets tired. Deadly tired. Kim Namjoon pulls through, no matter what. Kim Namjoon spreads himself too thin among the canvases of their bodies, tries too hard to catch all their worries, insecurities, doubts anger sadness/regret/love/hate/can'tcan'tcannot's with his hands that are not big enough no matter how hard he tries and has Yoongi mentioned that he tries too hard?
Because he does.
"I'm not a try-hard."
Yoongi grins something savage. "They call me--baepsae--"
"Shut the fuck your mouth."
"I can't, it's my line next--"
"I will literally shove this pillow down your throat."
"Oh~ getting kinky are we?" Yoongi says, exaggerating his customary drawl, hiking an eyebrow in perfect imitation of Namjoon whenever he catches sight of anything maknae line are doing, ever, "but you still can't one up that one time Hoseok made me--"
"Holy shit--nurseeeeeeee--"
Yoongi throws one of the pillows on the couch at Namjoon's face, "He shoots and he scores!"
Namjoon grabs it and adds it to his kingdom of pillows.
"More minions for my kingdom, brilliant."
"If you say minion one more time."
Namjoon grins, that grin, that one, and Yoongi can't think. There is no thinking, relating, contemplating, associating when Namjoon grins like that. Only bubbles in the pit of his stomach and a strange sensation in his chest as if his heart and lungs tried to trade jobs for a day, his body pulsing with air, blood swelling and falling with every breath, threatening to spill over.
Yoongi stays, for that grin, he tells himself. Yoongi stays, to keep his best friend company, he tells himself. Yoongi stays; be brought the Minion Movie on DVD and he kind of sort of really hates himself for it, hates himself for knowing exactly where it had been on Namjoon's jungle of a desk, hates himself for having made sure that all the scattered notes and fine tipped sharpies are exactly as he found them because he knows (and he doesn't really hate himself for it, not really) that Namjoon works well in organized chaos, works well when things are orbiting around him at their own pace, seemingly totally random and strange and entirely non-cohesive (read: Every Single Bangtan Member) because he likes being the thing that keeps them going, the mini supernova that makes them all stay in their varying array of discordant orbits.
He likes being the sun, even if he's not the sun.
But, and Yoongi might have written a lyric or two about this, he is the sun.
Yoongi knows because he's found, in his many years of knowing Namjoon (and not hating himself for knowing like he's always done before), years of passing glances at the words that drip from Namjoon's fingertips into lines that almost always seem to bleed through the page no matter how good the pen and how bleed-proof the paper, that Namjoon has compared him, Min Yoongi, to the moon.
When it comes time for Yoongi to leave, he looks back and rolls his eyes and sighs like the weight of the whole world is resting on his shoulders and Namjoon sighs back as if he knows, as if he's saying just one? I've got six--ante up baby.
Yoongi clears his throat. "Don't die, please. Thanks."
"I'm not dying--it's a sprain."
"You have tubes coming out of both your arms and a machine that reads your heartbeats--you're dying."
Namjoon smiles. Just smiles, no special word attached and that's just the thing that makes it so special. Namjoon's smiles, plain and simple, are hard to come by. A smile without point or burden these days is always hard to come by.
"We're all dying."
Yoongi bites his lip. Yoongi tugs on his long sleeves. Yoongi breathes in and Namjoon breathes out.
"This is the part where you either starting singing Baepsae again or you tell me to stop stealing your lines--c'mon hyung, you know how these things go."
"Don't. Die."
"I'm not dying."
"Because we need you."
Silence. Namjoon sinks into his kingdom of pillows.
"Oh... that's new."
"What do you mean that's--fuck you I'm gonna be late."
"Go, shoo--don't wanna keep you from the biggest broadcast of the year."
"I'll text you when we get there."
"Uh huh."
Yoongi fiddles with his phone the entire way to the Gayo stages. Namjoon is on Snapchat, bored out of his mind it seems.
You can't do this again, Yoongi snaps him a picture of just his shoes. A second later, Namjoon's reply comes as ???????
Yoongi rolls his eyes for the nth time that day with this whole hospital thing.
You guys will be fine without me comes Namjoon's snap, his face is too close to the camera, his angling all wrong.
No. is all Yoongi replies to which he's met with another string of ????????????
"Two minutes!" someone calls down the hall.
Yoongi sends a picture of everyone making for the door, his own cheeks blazing as he types out the words he's all too glad he doesn't have to say in person dumbass, butterflies can't fly with a broken wing.
And then he throws down his phone and hurries after everyone else.
He comes back to ew. don't ever say that again.
Then don't ever almost die again.
I'm not dying.
Yoongi grins. Namjoon sends another snapchat; he's grinning too, and he's still got the angle all wrong, face too close to the screen with the words we're all dying typed across his chin.
Yoongi takes a screenshot and tells Namjoon that he should watch his back on his birthday, which is still nine months away, but it never hurts to start prepping early.
That night, Yoongi dozes in the hospital chairs, a pillow tucked under his ass, a neck pillow curled around his shoulder, cheek pressing into it at an odd angle but he says it's comfortable, refuses the pillows Namjoon offers him ("Wouldn't want to take away from your minions." "Say minions one more time, hyung."). He dozes to the sounds of Namjoon's sharpies on paper, the sk-sk-sk of skin on paper like heartbeats in the life of the lyrics that Namjoon must be writing.
He'd wonder what Namjoon was writing about except he knows that he'll see it eventually, even if it's not immediately, not soon, not in the near future--eventually, because that's just how it works.
"Yoongi-ah," Namjoon's voice is an echo across the sea welling beneath the metal of the chairs and table legs and bedsprings. There is salt in the air and the moon hangs low in the sky outside, breath wide and soft, tickling Yoongi's cheek in just the way Namjoon likes. No clouds--just sea and salt and sleeping air.
"Hm?" Yoongi grunts, peering at him through lashes girls have told him they'd kill for; Namjoon told him none of them were worth it.
"Can you read this over and tell me what you think?"
"You know what I think," Yoongi says, closing his eyes again and shifting in his almost-but-not-really-makeshift-bed.
Namjoon rolls his eyes. Yoongi hears him.
"Yeah, but I want to know what you really think--"
"You know what I really think."
"You're so full of bullshit I literally want to flush you down the toilet. You drag me outta bed all the time to look over your stuff--"
"If you weren't dying already, I'd kill you." Yoongi pulls himself out of his almost-not-really-bed and stumbles over to Namjoon, grinning stupid wide up at him, yellow paper beneath his sharpie stained fingers peppered with lyrics, scratched out, clawed up, etched in, written down, thoughts like butterflies caught on the page, pinned down by the point of his pen.
Yoongi tugs the page out from beneath Namjoon's palms and shakes it out; the butterflies stir, the waves ebb, pull back. He lowers his eyes to the page and begins to read--there's a line about the sky and the sea, something about forevers. First drafts always suck. He looks over at Namjoon, how is chewing no his lip. There's a line in there about mistakes and shorelines and thunderstorms in the summer and Yoongi opens his mouth to speak but all that comes out are butterflies.
"You're reading too much poetry."
"You gave me a poetry anthology for Christmas."
"You asked for--"
"Yeah, but you didn't have to get it for me."
"This sucks," Yoongi says, waving the paper, tugging a frown down over his brows.
"Okay, so it's not that bad. Awesome."
"Sucks," Yoongi repeats, but he's nudging Namjoon over with a knee, shuffling onto the bed that's clearly not made for two people (hospitals are particular about that kind of thing, apparently), leaning back into the kingdom of pillows, their shoulders, hips, arms, elbows tucking into each other, skin folding over skin.
"Yeah whatever, at least I don't rip Kendrick Lamar."
"That was one time."
"Or Hit-Boy."
"At least I don't write songs based on click-through links on Wikipedia--"
"Or Eminem."
"--lonely, lonely, lonely whale--"
"You're going to wake the kids upstairs."
"That's the deaf and hearing disabilities ward."
"Exactly."
"Fuck right off."
"So, I'm still not wrong."
"I'm going to suffocate you," Yoongi tugs at the pillow behind Namjoon's head; Namjoon laughs--
The sea swells and the air tastes like sunrise. Yoongi slumps back into the kingdom of pillows and lets the water wash over them both, the sound of Namjoon's laughter in his chest, bubbling through him, like love, like breathing.
Namjoon's toes curl under the thin sheets and it occurs to Yoongi that it's cold in this room, the only light coming from the bedside table, machines blinking behind it like eerie sentinels to dreams that never get the chance to be nightmares before the drugs steal your memories.
"Go to sleep," he says, reaching across Namjoon's entire body to flick out the light, settling back down with his body still dangerously close to the edge of the bed. Beneath the covers, he feels Namjoon shift, curl his body around Yoongi's. This is not the first time it's happened, nor will it be the last, but it is one of the only times Yoongi ever feels like the hyung between the two of them.
He feels the thoughts racing through Namjoon's head settle in the dips of his collarbones, collect in the indents of his dimples. He feels Namjoon's breath even out.
"Thanks for staying with me, hyung." He adds the honorific like an afterthought. Yoongi almost wishes that he'd left it off.
"What's your favorite poem from that anthology?" Yoongi stares at the ceiling, thumb tracing words into the skin of Namjoon's back, having wrapped an arm around him sometime between turning out the lights and usual exclamation point body of Namjoon had curled into a question mark next to Yoongi, round enough for him to trace the lines, smooth his fingers over Namjoon's edges till he's sure Namjoon can feel the answers bubbling right beneath his skin.
"Haven't got one yet--didn't finish."
"Pick a random one."
"You want me to recite one for you?"
"Yeah."
Namjoon clears his throat and Yoongi closes his eyes, watches the words paint themselves behind his eyes, the way Namjoon's voice gives them weight and color and the power of memory. He lets them drip into the seconds of his past, his present just this and Namjoon and the words, maybe the way the moonlight falls across the sheets settling over their bodies like a layer of stardust.
Maybe that.
"Are you asleep?"
Yoongi breathes out and grunts, "No, I'm dying."
He hears Namjoon smile.
"We're all always dying."
"We're all living too."
"Nah, only some people choose to live."
And maybe it's because they're lying next to each other in a hospital bed, but Yoongi thinks that there's something much too heavy about the concept to really dig into at the moment, not when he can smell the vanilla of Namjoon's hair conditioner, or the tang and musk of his cologne, which always lingers on everything he touches. Not when he can hear Namjoon's heartbeat and knows that Namjoon can hear his.
"Which one are you?"
Namjoon hums. "Whichever you choose." And he must be getting sleepy, Yoongi thinks, because Kim Namjoon is only ever this cheesy when talking to fans, about fans, or when he's teetering on the edge of falling asleep. The worst is when he's talking about fans when sleepy, but this isn't the first.
"I just said I was dying."
Namjoon makes a noise that sounds like a laugh but softer, slower, almost like a purr, and Yoongi feels Namjoon curl an arm around his middle, shift so they're both comfortable enough to fall asleep. Yoongi lets Namjoon be big spoon.
"Go to sleep, hyung. You were always a shit liar."