Fault lines tremble underneath my glass house but I put it out of my mind long enough to call it courage to live without a lifeline - earth : sleeping at last

Yoongi collapses onto the floor of the dance room, breaths heavy from practice. Their recording had ended five hours earlier but they had immediately returned to the dance room to review and perfect the mistakes they had made during their recording. They needed to be their best for their fans, but today, not even thoughts of Army could lighten the atmosphere. Yoongi feels the sweat drip from his forehead to his ears muting the outside world even more than the distance his mind had already traveled from the present.

Hoseok.

He didn't know that dance practice could change so much with the absence of just one member. It was like they were trying to have a birthday party, without the person whose birthday it was. The dance rooms were Hoseok’s dance rooms. These are the rooms that Hoseok danced day and night in, this was his home more so than the dorms they all lived in, or the stage they all lived and died for. The dance studio to Hoseok was what the recording studio was the Yoongi. A place where they could put their guard down, let their minds wander, and truly be themselves. Hoseok had worked the hardest to perfect routines quickly in order to help everyone else catch up and even choreographed dances for fun when he had time. His sweat had been sown into the grains of the wooden panelling and the beats of his feet had been pounded into the glass walls. But Hoseok had stopped coming to the practice room recently. Now, more often than not, Hoseok was the first to go to sleep, burrowed into his blankets, barely talking to anyone after practice. He just seemed tired, it was unusual, but maybe he was just tired, was what Yoongi always thought. It was always loud with Hoseok around. His unnecessary enthusiasm and unwavering energy was something Yoongi never thought he would miss. It was also something he never thought would be gone.

A quiet tension weaves itself over the practice room like a web and everyone lays tangled in it's embrace. It tugs at everyone, creating fault lines in the form of wrinkles. It shows itself in the fatigue and lack of concentration as they run through their choreography for the nth time. There were careless mistakes being made and they hadn’t been able to get through the choreography once without a single mistake.

"Yoongi?”

Yoongi winces as he uncovers his eyes too quickly and blinds himself with the studio lights up above. He struggles to push himself off the ground and furiously rubs his eyes trying to erase the sunspots from his sight. He looks up to find his manager hovering over him, looking slightly godlike in the shadow of the lights and the sunspots surrounding his head, and godlike he is because he fulfills Yoongi’s wish.

"I think you’d better go check up on Hoseok. I don’t know if what I did today was the right thing.” Yoongi scrambles to his feet and his eyes furrow. The right thing? “I’ve been with you guys for a long time now, I know something’s wrong with Hoseok and I feel like this may have been a poor decision on my end.” Yoongi’s eyes widened and he started to speak but was interrupted as his manager patted his head. “No, I haven’t told management yet but if this gets worse I think his health should come first. I’ve said this before and it’s not going to change now. You guys are like my little brothers, my dongsaengdeul, it hurts me to see you guys exhausted and worried.”

Yoongi runs out the door yelling a “thank you, hyung! I owe you a meal!” and to be honest a lot more than that, as he leaves.

The door chimes echo in the practice room as one more member leaves their imaginary stage.

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"You’re staying here today.”

Hoseok blanches at those four words. He knows what they mean, he knows the words and their definition, but he doesn't understand. Staying… at the dorm? Why would he do that? They have a performance today. And then they have to practice. And then he has to work on his solo piece. What?

The other members freeze as they hear the simple words come out of their manager’s mouth. Yoongi looks back and forth between their manager and Hoseok, his mouth going dry as he sees the blank look on Hoseok’s face. Namjoon makes a move to try and reason with their manager but swallows hard with one pointed look of dismissal from him.

"Get yourself together, Hoseok. You’re only human, I understand, but you need to be more than that to be J-Hope.”

Hoseok exhales a small “oh” and slowly walks away to his room, unaware of his surroundings. He sinks onto the bed that smells so much like Yoon