It’s a quick in and out thingy, right?

 

Yeah. Don’t know why they even asked us to do it.

 

When is the next recruitment batch ready? I swear to god this manpower shortage is just stupid.

 

Well, talking about shortages, it seems that we have one of our own right here.

 

He’s been doing this more and more often and to be honest I don’t know if I should be mad or worried.

 

Worried. Definitely. He’s not the type to fall asleep before a mission.

 

Hey. Hoseok. Helloooo. We’ve arrived man, will you please wake up?

 

He could hear it all.

 

It was a weird phenomenon, really. His body shutting down completely, eyelids heavy, limbs not functioning, but his ears and to an extent the rest of his senses (aside from his sight) still working their best to send in signals as if he was awake and was actively listening to the banter of his crew members.

 

He felt like a recording machine. Something inanimate who can only receive, but not respond.

 

‘Maybe this is what it feels like to have sleep paralysis.’

 

Hoseok quickly found out that with the reappearance of his lucid thought, he could finally regain the control of his body. Ignoring the excited chatter that was still going, Hoseok took his time to slowly straighten up himself, as he found that he’d slumped over the hardware table over the course of his slumber.

 

“Did you have a nice dream?” Yoongi’s sarcastic laughter was cut short with a loud yell of profanities when he pulled the zipper of his repairman jumpsuit uniform-slash-costume too fast and accidentally pinched the skin of his belly. “I hate this thing…”

 

‘Serves him right.’

 

A tiny cat stretch was all it took to get Hoseok up on his feet, a half smirk on his face as he pulled his own zipper and felt it catching onto his cotton undershirt, “I’ve been telling you to wear something under that and you never listened.”

 

“Unlike you, I’m not a hypochondriac.” One quick quip and a pat on the arm later, he was gone. Just like that. The only thing telling a sighing Hoseok and Seokjin, who was shaking his head in a mixture of distaste and fascination, that Yoongi was not just going out of the van to stretch his legs, was the fact that he absentmindedly slung his tool bag over his shoulder before he sauntered away.

 

A tool bag filled to the brim with cameras and bugging devices. Things that do not belong in a bag of your everyday electrical repairman.

 

“Should I be mad or worried?” Hoseok sighed as he took a quick glance at Jin. The hope that he could get some sort of mental support was thwarted when he saw that the expression on Jin’s face was something akin to a curious surprise.

 

“Mad… definitely.”

 

Although, before he could inquire any further regarding his peculiar expression and the tinge of hesitation in his answer, Seokjin had swiveled on his chair and gave all his focus to the row of monitor propped on the interior wall of their beloved ‘Electrocity’ van.

 

They were only given two options anyway. Town sanitary officers or electric repairman. Hoseok always thought he looks good in jumpsuits so of course, as a sensible leader of his crew, he chose electric repairman.

 

“Oh, Hoseok,” Jin called up to him right before he closed the doors of the van with a nudge of his . Glancing up, Hoseok saw that he was leaning as far as he could on his swivel chair without the risk of toppling over and giving himself a painful head concussion, “we were talking about going to the usual place after this. Do you wanna come?”

 

He didn’t tell Jin of the nagging, sharp pain up his right nasal cavity which he knew would lead to a very annoying migraine. He also didn’t tell Jin that he’d much rather spent the rest of his night high on paracetamols, because he didn’t want Jin to start running his mom mode on him. Besides, who could refuse an offer when it was delivered alongside that bright smile of his? You don’t need to be attracted to males to admit that it was dashing. “Yeah why not, that sounds fun.”

 

Alcohol, my friend. It fixes all your maladies.

 

_ _ _ _ _
 

 

Hey. Can you hand me the screwdriver? Hoseok. Screwdriver. Hey!

 

His vision started to refocus after a vigorous shake of his head, and it immediately zoned in on a frowning Yoongi.

 

“Screwdriver.” Yoongi demanded with his upturned palm shoved right underneath his nose.

 

“Right. Sorry.”

 

As he’d predicted, what was once just a minor inconvenience had slowly turned into what felt like a painful drill shoved right up his nose. His left ear was ringing and he might not even be able to find his point of balance if he wasn’t leaning against the metal ladder that Yoongi was perched on.

 

“I only need to install two more of these, you can go if you want.” Yoongi being Yoongi, he never bothered to look at the person he was talking to, especially when the content of his speech contains any shade of good will. And thus, when he ‘offered’ (more like urged, when you take into account the sharp, final tone in his voice) Hoseok to go back to their mobile mini-HQ ahead of time, his attention was directed on trying to screw the audio bug inside the business conference room’s fire alarm casing.

 

“Don’t worry, I’m good.” He wanted to give Yoongi’s leg a few reassuring taps, but when Jin’s voice came blasting out of his earpiece, Hoseok had to ignore all the things happening around him and scrambled to pull the damned thing out of his ear. He only caught the start of Jin’s worried “what’s wrong” before he threw the earpiece on the ground.

 

In his panic, Hoseok used the flimsy ladder as a point to push himself away from the source of pain. His instinct ignoring the logic that because the pain came from within him, there was nowhere he could’ve escape to. It left poor Yoongi to hang onto the curtains with his dear life, while his feet were desperately trying to regain balance on the wobbling ladder.

 

“Oh ! I’m sorry,” even when his eyes had began to water from the deafening din of his tinnitus and the growing blind spot dancing at the edge of his vision, Hoseok immediately rushed to Yoongi’s aid and planted both points of the ladder firmly back on the ground.

 

Yoongi didn’t waste any time to calm himself before he spout his next command, which was why he ended up sounding much more exasperated than what he must’ve intended, “Hoseok. I’m serious. Go.”

 

He knew. From that split second of Yoongi looking at him straight into his bloodshot eyes, Hoseok was fairly sure that he found out that he was still standing only because of his sheer willpower.

 

Being stubborn (and his ego yelling at him to never admit that he was not feeling well), Hoseok shook his head.

 

He should’ve admitted that Yoongi was correct from the get go, when the minute motion of his head alone was enough to send his vision swimming, as if someone dipped a paintbrush in his brain and swirled it around with vigour. But still, he was not willing to move from his spot. Even if he only serve as Yoongi’s stabiliser for the rest of the night, he didn’t care. So be it.

 

“Honestly, you being here only hinders our progress. Go.”

 

He always knew what to say. One thing that always wins over anything in Hoseok’s list of priorities is his team’s progress. Yes, even over his ego that tells him to maintain his strong image. A control freak like himself, who probably had a timetable etched permanently at the inside of his eyelid, should’ve known better.

 

“You’re right,” he found it easy to chalk his oversight to the still nagging pain of his headache, “should I send Jin to help you tidy up?”

 

To that, Yoongi only rolled his eyes in response, “he’ll only make everything worse.

 

Oh, one more thing, Jin is waiting for you with a bunch of medicine. Goodluck.” Hoseok could only scoff at the sing-songy twang that rode at the end of Yoongi’s warning.

 

He didn’t have much to say about that, really.

 

_ _ _ _ _

 

With his vision riddled with multicolored static and a sense of balance that made him feel as if he was walking on water, it was by pure luck alone that he managed to drag himself back to the van.

 

By the time he managed to close the door behind him, he was nothing more but a heap on the floor.

 

He didn’t want to be a source of worry for Jin, no, of course not. But his firm hand clutching onto his shoulders and giving them a soft shake was enough to send Hoseok yowling out in pain.

 

He heard Jin trying to ask him if he’d done anything weird, recent injuries, eaten strange things. And to that he could only answer with an intelligible groan.

 

Hoseok just wanted to be left alone, not being helped up to lay on the work table, which was quickly and frantically turned into a makeshift bed with a swipe of Jin’s arm. He just wanted to be left alone and sort out the source of his pain.

 

‘This is not right.’ His lucid thought came and went less and less frequently, but when they did come around, it was still accurate. Hoseok was trained to withstand pain, torturous training session with a sole goal of increasing his pain threshold.

 

Headaches should be the least of his problem. It should’ve felt just like an annoying tap on his head.

 

But this? The pain and nausea that made him wish he could dug his fingers deep into his eye sockets and tear his brain out? It’s not right at the very least.

 

“Yoongi, did anything happen to him recently?!” Even with the chaos in his head, Hoseok could still hear Jin’s voice without any trouble. The sound of him rummaging through the first aid box cabinet and cursing when he heard Yoongi’s answer of ‘no hyung, nothing.’

 

Just when the ringing in his ears grew to a point where he was sure the minute vibrations would’ve melt his brain at any moment, it all stopped.

 

The pain, the disorientation, the noise.

 

All that was left was his thought, panicking inside the cage it found itself being trapped in.

 

“Jin…” he felt his hands moving to his utility belt, to the big pouch that normally would’ve housed any other item needed to complete the job of an electric repairman. But he was not an electric repairman, and thus said pouch was housing his discreet handgun, “Jin something is wrong.”

 

Jin was ignoring him, as always, in the moment of panic he would be fixated on trying to do something useless. In this case, having an argument with Yoongi as to what went wrong with their leader and what should they do to help him. It’s always been a good thing that he was not much of a panicker, but once he does panic, it would essentially be the end of the world for both of his field agents.

 

Jin was having his back on him and Hoseok felt himself being pushed further and further away in his own mind. Until in the end was just a shell, an audience watching a movie titled ‘my life’ from his own two eyeballs.

 

Everything was silent and loud all at the same time when Jin expressed his loud relief as he relied to Yoongi that Hoseok was able to sit straight and had stopped out in pain.

 

The smile on his face turned into a confused frown, then to a horrified gasp when Hoseok calmly walked to the panel and turned off their communication channels.

 

His fingers were wrapped tightly around his handgun.

 

Everything was silent and loud all at the same time.

 

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A/N: 
:D :D I love writing this LOL