Work Text:
VCR done. Artists in position. Lights up. Music on. Wink at the camera, and sing. It was a routine you knew so well and yet it never even strayed towards the word ‘boring’. You loved it every single time as you heard the screaming of the fans, the light sticks bobbing like a sea of supportive blue bubbles and rippling at every move you and your members made.
The choreography was painstakingly easy. You and your sisters could do so much better but at least this way, you could focus on your vocals and your facial expressions without getting out of breath so easily. And it meant you could scan the crowd, searching for a single face shrouded in darkness as every light in the building was focused on you.
One face. Your boyfriend’s face. Jungkook’s face.
It was too dim to see the grin you knew he was sporting but as you turned to face the back of the stage, the camera zoomed in on the world-famous Bangtan Boys and there was a particularly shrill shriek from the crowd as the lens captured the sparkle in Jungkook’s eyes.
The sparkle that was there every time he watched you perform, whether it was as he sat in the corner of your dance studio to watch you practise or just laid sprawled across his bed, laughing at the goofy poses you struck with a mostly-empty wine bottle clutched in your hand. It was a special sparkle, one that spoke a thousand words.
You’re beautiful and I love you.
It instilled a kind of warmth inside your chest that compared to none other. A kind of warmth that blossomed and bloomed and bled through your entire body to encompass every extremity and fuel you to perform harder. Like this stage would be your last.
No one at that award show knew that it nearly was.
The music was too loud to hear the shot, and therefore the force of the bullet burrowing into your stomach was even more of a shock. And it burned. It burned white hot like a million glowing fire pokers scorching your skin as it dug further and further to reach your insides.
You didn’t even remember hitting the floor but it was rock-hard against your back, and one of your members was cushioning your head, screaming your name and begging you to stay awake.
There was movement everywhere. Blurred figures wherever you looked. Hands on your body, pulling your own away from the sopping material clinging to your abdomen.
You looked down, craning your neck to be able to see, and felt a silent whimper of terror bubbling up your throat at the sight of your trembling fingers drenched in scarlet. Someone was pushing down on your abdomen, shouting orders both to you and the people around you that you could neither hear nor understand.
You got shot.
You got shot.
With a gun.
Like … An actual gun.
“Oh my God!” you screamed as the realisation finally hit you full force, the true extent of the pain following close behind. It hurt so bad. “Oh my God, I’m dying!”
A man told you that you weren’t, that you were going to be fine, that they were getting you to a hospital, and all you wanted to tell him was to shut the fuck up. He wasn’t the one lying on a stage in front of a crowd of thousands with a bullet in your body. You were the one who was dying.
“Jungkook …” you whimpered, sticky fingers crusted with your own blood reaching up to fist in the shirt of whoever was leaning over you. “Jungkook … Jungkook …”
But no one was listening. They were all too trapped in their own little worlds of panic to notice that yours was an entire universe. The fear was crippling, the pain was unbearable, and you wanted Jungkook.
You wanted Jungkook so badly that it hurt worse than the gunshot. You wanted his arms around you and his nose nestled in your ear and his lips brushing your scalp and you wanted him and only him, not these noisy people around you making scary sounds as if you weren’t lying right in front of them, tainted and terrified.
You wanted Jungkook.
Everything was blurry. And burning. Everything was blurry and burning and there was a bullet in your body and blood on your blouse and why were there so many B’s? Why wasn’t Jungkook here? Why wasn’t anyone taking the pain away?
Why wasn’t anyone doing anything but shouting and screaming and now there were arms around you that heaved you off the floor and the scream of agony you had intended to make was drowned out in the collapse of your throat.
The man holding you was running, jiggling your body as he moved and causing you to screw your face up in a pathetic attempt to hide from the aching and the sizzling and the way your intestines seemed to be on fire.
You wanted to pass out. You couldn’t understand why you weren’t passing out? That’s what people did when they were shot. They passed out. And then they weren’t in pain anymore. So why did you have to be? Why wasn’t unconsciousness beckoning you into its warm embrace and instead abandoning you to suffer in your shell of torture? Why?
Back on the floor. Your eyes were barely open at this point, lids too heavy to lift, limbs too leaden to move. And now your head was hurting, too. Were you shot there as well? Were you dying now? Was this what dying felt like?
You didn’t want to die alone.
The face above you was suddenly shoved aside and another took its place. The eyes were wide and petrified, the skin was paler than the lights that were popping at the corners of your vision, and the hands were gripping you in places you could no longer feel. Everything felt numb and the world was closing in so you couldn’t even hear what those lips were saying.
You just knew that it was Jungkook. And you imagined it was, “I love you”. And you closed your eyes. Because now that Jungkook was here and Jungkook had you and Jungkook had told you he loved you, you could go to sleep. Just for a little while.
Or maybe just forever.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
You saw him out of the corner of your eye, pushing open the living room door with his tired face contorted into an expression of confusion, but you were still laughing hysterically. Your hand was clapped to your mouth, tears of mirth streaming down your cheeks and your entire body rocking backwards and forwards as your throat emitted those strange squeaking sounds.
“What are you doing?” he asked, the hint of a grin playing over his face as he watched you. “What’s so funny?”
You couldn’t speak. You were too lost in the realm of hilarity to form syllables and so you scooped up the phone that was lying in your lap and pulled out the headphones, letting the video play at full volume.
Give it to me, be nervous, the one to end it all
We are bulletproof, we are bulletproof, bulletproof
The name is Jungkook, my scale is nationwide
I pulled all-nighters at practise rooms instead of school
When you guys partied, I gave up my sleep for dreams
You thought you were going to die. The knife between your ribs was so sharp that it felt like it was cutting into your air supply, but it was a good kind of pain. Because you were looking at him. Him and his eyes stretched so wide they could have fallen right out of his skull and him with the tip of his ears blossoming into a bright red.
“Turn it off,” he groaned, covering his face with his hands and turning to the wall so he could bang his head into the plaster. “I sound like I swallowed a tank of helium.”
You were still laughing as you obediently ended the video and straightened up from the sofa, padding across the room to rest your hands on his back and your forehead between his shoulder blades.
“You sound cute,” you giggled, snaking your arms around his middle and squeezing in the way you knew made him screech. “You were so young. My little bulletproof boy.”
Jungkook let out an overly dramatic wail of embarrassment that only increased in decibel when you started trying to rap along to his part.
“The name is Jungkook and my scale is nationwide, yo, yo, yo!”
He twisted around, eliciting a squawk of surprise from your mouth as his tree-branch arms ensnared your body. Your head was pulled into his chest and a huge hand ruffled your hair, disturbing the messy bun and leaving you looking hilariously dishevelled when he finally permitted you to surface.
“Don’t mess with me,” he threatened in mocking reply to your scowl as you tried to fix the bird’s nest he had created atop your head. “You do not want me to bring up your debut song.”
There was a brief moment of silent confrontation between you before you huffed in defeat, your shoulders slumping and your face burying itself in the crook of his neck.
“Touché …” you mumbled into his collar, the frozen tip of your nose countering with his warm skin. “My little bulletproof boy.”
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
The world came back to you in broken sentences and fragmented sounds. You could hear the voices both of strangers and people you recognised but no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t put any names to the faces you couldn’t see.
Your eyelids were too heavy and the pillow that seemed to be absorbing your head was just so comfortable that you remained in its fluffy embrace, floating in that sliver of space between consciousness and oblivion and vaguely listening to all the noises that were going on around you.
“…love…”
“…miss…”
“…better…”
“…please…”
The voices were different – some lower, some higher, some softer, some laden with emotion and fatigue – but they all seemed to be saying the same thing. Time was one endless space and even if you’d wanted to, you weren’t sure you would be able to tell who was where and when.
But there was love. In every whispered sentiment, every squeeze of your heavy hands, there was an inordinate amount of desperate affection and adoration. You had a feeling that these people meant the world to you and that made you want to open your eyes and claw your way out of whatever chasm of darkness had encompassed you. But you couldn’t. You were too tired.
And then somebody started singing.
You didn’t know when the soft melody had started drifting through the air that smelled strongly of chemicals and disinfectant and you had no idea which direction it was coming from, but it was beautiful.
There were hitches in the phrases and some of the notes seemed to be too high for the teary voice to reach but they didn’t stop, and you didn’t want them to. You wanted them to keep going forever and maybe at some point, you would be able pry apart your eyelashes and find the owner of the most gorgeous – gorgeous but devastated – rendition of your favourite song.
I hear the faraway ocean across this dream, over the horizon
I’m going to the place that seems to be getting clearer now
Take my hands now, you are the cause of my euphoria
Euphoria, take my hands now, you are the cause of my euphoria
Euphoria, close the door now
“…When I’m with you, I’m in utopia,” you finished, croaky and constricted and horrendously off-key, but considering how every single body part seemed to have been crushed by a hammer, you were reasonably proud of yourself.
“Y/N?” that voice whispered, disbelief lathering broken syllables, and now you knew for certain who it was that was clutching your hand as if you would disappear if he let go. You knew because he was the very first person you would have expected to be by your side when God gave you back the gift of consciousness.
Your eyelids somehow managed to dislodge the honey-coloured crystallised nuggets that were gluing your lashes together and the hospital room came back to you in a rush of bright white and pastel blue.
And Jungkook.
“There’s my bulletproof boy,” you hummed, lips stretching softly even though his face was crumpled and flushed and crusted with tear tracks as even more continued to forge their way down his cheeks.
“Don’t call me that,” he whimpered, shaking his head and pawing at his eyes with the hand that wasn’t permanently welded to yours. “Don’t ever call me that. Not after … Not after this.”
You frowned slightly in confusion before the memories hit you like a pickup truck.
The gunshot. The screams. The looming faces. The pain. The terror. The overwhelming, crushing, undeniable sensation of dying. The darkness that closed around you as you fought for breath in a chest that was collapsing in on itself. The blood that frothed in the corners of your mouth because of the bullet that was lodged in your gut. The gunshot.
“Oh …” you whispered, staring blankly down at your stomach.
Your body was covered by the thin papery gown and the baby blue blankets that were tugged right up to your chin but now that you were shuffling uncomfortably on your sheets, you could feel the dressing taped to your abdomen: the proof of the metal cylinder they had carved out of your torso.
“I thought you were going to die.”
Jungkook was sobbing and you don’t know what made you do it but suddenly your hand was curling around the back of his neck and you’d pulled his head down onto your chest. He buried his nose in the polyester hanging loosely off your skinny frame with his entire body trembling uncontrollably.
“It was so bad,” he continued, words distorted in the way he was smothered against you, but neither of you were prepared to let go at that moment. “They said to prepare ourselves and … and … and … There was so much blood, Y/N. It was all over me and no matter how many showers I have, it feels like it never comes off and I can’t forget that it was your blood and … I thought you were going to die.”
You had no words. Never, not once in three years of dating, had you seen Jungkook cry like that. He was inconsolable, incoherent and heartbreakingly innocent in the way he wailed into your body as you stroked the back of his head and tried to whisper words of comfort.
Later, you would ask yourself why you had been the one comforting him when it was you who had suffered the trauma. But in that moment, your one and only priority was calming the storm of relief and anguish that was raging inside your boyfriend’s body.
“Hey, look at me, baby,” you murmured, gently levering him back into a sitting position so you could get a clear sight of his snotty nose and puffy eyes.
To anyone else he probably looked pathetic and ugly, but to you, he was still beautiful. Because he was always beautiful.
“It’s okay,” you told him, hands cupping his face even as his quivering fingers reached up to cling to your wrists. “I’m right here. I didn’t die. And it’s okay.”
But he was shaking his head, eyes screwed shut as whatever memories he had suffered through tormented his thoughts with cruel and merciless determination. And the only thing you could think to do was to try and make him laugh.
“Bulletproof Boy?”
He hiccupped in weak response, wincing at the distasteful nickname.
“Bulletproof Boy? Gunshot Girl is calling you.”
It was an insensitive stab at humour, you knew that, but insensitive humour was the best kind of humour when used in the correct situation, and it felt like the sun shone a little brighter when Jungkook let out a wet chuckle, a splurge of snot shooting out of his nose before he managed to swat it aside.
“Gunshot Girl wants to tell Bulletproof Boy that she loves him and that she’s never leaving him.”
“Y/N, that’s not funny,” he moaned, but he was still smiling even though his lips were still trembling and you weren’t done yet.
“Gunshot Girl wants to tell Bulletproof Boy that, even though he’s bulletproof, she’d still take a gunshot for him any day.”
And finally Jungkook joined in.
“Bulletproof Boy wants to tell Gunshot Girl that, because he’s bulletproof, he’d take all the gunshots for her.”
You were too weak to lift your head so instead, you brought his hand to your face and brushed your lips against the softness of his skin, closing your eyes as he bent over you and kissed your cheek.
Tears were forgotten. They would return, but for now, they were forgotten.
“Your members are outside,” he mumbled as your foreheads rested together. “They haven’t moved from that waiting room since you were brought in. Do you want me to get them?”
“Not yet,” you whispered back, reaching up to forage through his hair with a hand that still trailed an IV along with it. “Gunshot Girl wants to stay with Bulletproof Boy a little longer.”
Jungkook nodded minutely, the traces of a smile gracing his lips as he nuzzled into the crook of your neck. “Okay, Gunshot Girl.”