[ ! ] angst warning.

                  He’s startled awake by someone whacking him across the head and the violent shaking of his shoulder.  “WAKE THE UP!” Hoseok’s voice is heard, though he can’t immediately process it; everything is spinning. Where is he? What’s happening?

                  “Jimin!” His vision starts to clear and he can see Namjoon kneeling in front of him. “Come on, we need to get to the hospital.”

                  “… Hospital…?” Jimin sits up and tries to steady himself. He finds that they’re in the backyard, by the pool. People are gathered around them, murmuring amongst themselves. It’s eerily quiet; he realizes later that it’s because no one’s playing the deafening dubstep anymore.

                  Hoseok is standing beside them talking to a couple of men in uniform. He turns to them and says, “they’ll only take two of us in the ambulance. Jim’s going, so—”

                  “You can go,” Namjoon replies, helping Jimin onto his feet. “I’ll clear everything out here, you two get to the hospital.”

                  “Y’sure?”

                  He nods gravely. “Positive. Go, quick. I love you guys.”

                  “We love you too, mate.” Hoseok grabs Jimin’s wrist and leads him through the house and into the driveway, where the ambulance is waiting.

                  After climbing in and pulling seatbelts over themselves, Jimin finally asks the big question.

                  “Where’s Tae?”

--

                  Jimin always assured himself that Taehyung could not die, no matter many stairs he tripped over or how many falls he took. The idiot survived a hit to the head when they were at a baseball game, when one of the players whacked him with a bat. He fell down a whole flight of stairs a week ago and only got away with a headache. In eighth grade, someone ran into him with a bike and he still lived to make it to class on time.

                  Taehyung is invincible.

                  So despite the fact that they were roaring down the street in the back of a cramped ambulance, Jimin knows he won’t die. Despite the fact that the paramedics were barking orders at each other, plugging his best friend into different machines, and despite that he was lying limp across the stretcher, he knows Taehyung won’t die.

                  Hoseok is seated across from him, clutching his hair while tears slide down his face. He is petrified while Jimin is blank in comparison; his lips are pressed together in a firm line as he stares at the body. He expects Taehyung to sit up soon, laughing as he always does, and then they can go home to play another round of Smash. But he doesn’t.

                  The ambulance stops outside the hospital and they hoist him into the emergency room. Jimin has the sneaking suspicion that Taehyung wants this joke to last a little bit longer, so he’s willing to humor the guy for as long as he wants. Even if it takes forever, he’ll wait for Taehyung to get up, to walk, to open his ing eyes. He has to, because he won’t die.

                  Some nurses direct them into the waiting room. He takes a seat in the corner, and even from there he can hear the doctors shouting from down the hall. Jimin thinks the acting is top-notch.

                  Instead of sitting down like he’s been told to, Hoseok paces across the room rather incessantly. He in a sob every couple seconds, sometimes stopping to check the time. He looks at Jimin. “D-Did you call his mom?” he asks, voice falling apart from the seams.

                  Jimin says that she’s probably working.

                  Hoseok stares, glowering at him like he’s a total stranger. “… What’s wrong with you?” He stomps over and grabs Jimin’s collar, lifting him out of his seat. The other patients and staff erupt in panic. “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! OUR FRIEND COULD BE DYING IN THERE, DON’T YOU CARE?!”

                  Jimin coughs, “h-he won’t die. Taehyung won’t d-die. He can’t.”

                  He’s shoved back into his chair before Hoseok slinks away, scoffing. “… I’m callin’ his mom.”

                  Every minute feels like an hour.

                  The clock rings midnight when a nurse steps into the room, a frown marking his face. “Park Jimin? Is there a Park Jimin here?”

                  Jimin looks up, the slightest glint of hope flickering in his eyes before it dies out for reality. His heart is racing. His hands are clammy, and he take it upon himself to wipe them against his pants as he stands, as if he was going to meet the queen. “Y-Yes?” he answers, hearing his sound die out.

                  “Please come with me.” The nurse starts turning down the hall without waiting for him. “He’s been calling for you for the past half hour.”

                  He glances at Hoseok, who gives him a shaky nod. “H-He’s awake?” Jimin swallows, his chest tightening to a degree of unbearable pain. He can barely walk. The floor is blurring under him, turning into a mess of tiles beneath his feet.

                  “We’re not sure how much longer he has.”

                  Right past a flimsy curtain, he can see the hospital staff surrounding the bed as they proceed with recovery. They move as Jimin steps in, parting enough room for him to stand by Taehyung’s side.

                  He notes the small spurts of steam fogging his oxygen mask. He’s wired to several machines, all making obnoxious sounds as they record his progress. His hair is still damp; it sticks to the pale skin of his forehead. A blanket is spread across his body, and Jimin thinks about how cold he probably is.

                  “… T-Tae?” he speaks, gripping the mattress with frail fingers. “H… H-Hey.”

                  Taehyung doesn’t respond. For a while, he hears the doctors and their assistants bustle around them. They garble words in a language he can’t understand. If he listens closely, he can hear Yoongi shouting from outside, begging the nurses to let him in. At some point, Hoseok can be heard intervening.

                  The timing is off, but he begins to wonder if anything was worth it. All those months of terrible planning only led to this, and they didn’t even manage to achieve their end goal. Seokjin is probably still running amok somewhere, while they’re confined to this tiny little space, holding onto the end of a frail string. It’s completely unfair.

                  He slides his hand under Taehyung’s and holds it, gently lacing their fingers together. At this movement does the boy finally open his eyes, a fleeting moment that catches everyone else by surprise. Jimin isn’t all that shocked, because he knows Taehyung won’t die.

                  Taehyung’s gaze jumps around the room before it finally lands on him. He doesn’t look away, and it feels like he’s using up all the energy he has left to squeeze Jimin’s hand. His lips move, slowly but surely, mouthing the words, ‘Park Jimin’.

                  Jimin leans in, biting his tongue to avoid losing himself. “Tae.” He can feel his eyes water. He keeps blinking, sniffling. “… Th-The party was fun…”

                  He mouths again, ‘Park Jimin’.

                  “T-Taehyung…” Jimin breathes. “… R-Rabbit shoes, don’t forget…”

                  The guy’s lips curl slightly, a glimpse of a smile on his worn face.

                  “W-We promised, Taehyung… We promised that we’d never leave each other. Th-That’s what rabbit shoes is, right? We promised. S-So don’t… don’t leave me.”

                  Taehyung blinks slowly. The doctors become a little more hectic. The room gets a little noisier, but Jimin can’t hear anything other than his friend’s silent words.

                  His mouth moves to read, ‘I love you’.

                  Was it worth it?

                  He can feel himself breaking from the inside out. “T-Tae, you promised, you can’t die…” he sobs, tears falling from his eyes. “You can’t, you can’t l-leave me.”

                  The boy blinks again and again, until his eyes no longer open. His breaths become faint, until air fails to escape his throat. Jimin holds him with both of his hands, crying his heart out for the greatest person to ever enter his miserable life has left him.

                  As he presses the cold skin of Taehyung’s fingers against his lips, Jimin knows that for as long as he dared to live, he will never meet anyone who would fill this gaping hole in his heart. He’ll never have anyone who will support him as much as he needed them to, and he’ll never find anyone who meant so much to him that dying was impossible for either of them, because they couldn’t be without each other.

                  “… G-Goddammit, I love you too…”

                  Jimin will never again see such a radiant orange gracing the head of someone he called a friend.

I did plan to have him pass away since the very beginning, so I'm ... I'm sorry ;;;; ; ; ;
tho I planned for this before the prologue came out so when I saw the part where V jumped into the ocean I was like, 'damn there goes my originality'
uhg I'm crying
anyway, the last chapter is up next ! thank you for patiently waiting and putting up with my ;  u ;