Fire On Fire [TK]

(15) As you are

"And you say that you're not worth it
And get hung up on your flaws
But in my eyes you are perfect
As you are
As you are"

❀

- V -

It was almost May.

Which meant June was a month away.

Which also meant their debut was only a month away.

Practice. Record. Vlog. Eat. Sleep.

That was all running through their minds.

Sitting on the wooden floor, Taehyung stared at the mirror in the practice room. He looked like he was about to audition for a role in a zombie movie. Jimin sat hunched over next to him, and he looked like he had already been cast for the role.

Yoongi was running on roughly 8 cups of coffee a day.

Namjoon had been gulping down energy drinks like water.

In his periphery, Taehyung could see Seokjin struggling to keep his eyes open and Hoseok slapping himself from time to time to keep himself focused.

The maknae sat in a corner, looking like he would crawl under a bed at any moment and fall asleep so that nobody could find him.

"If I just eat coffee powder, will it help?" Seokjin asked, eyeing the coffee in Yoongi's hand.

It was six in the morning, and they had already been practising for the past hour.

"You can try hyung", Yoongi replied monotonously, twirling his mug in his hands.

Taehyung stood just a few feet away from Seokjin. He saw how the elder was constantly pushing himself and how much his role was in taking care of all seven of them.

Hell, they would have died of starvation if Seokjin had not stepped up to cook for all of them almost every day.

For which, Taehyung was eternally grateful.

He remembered Namjoon telling him a few months back that Seokjin was the youngest in his family. And now he was thrust into a makeshift family where he had become the eldest.

Being an elder sibling had its own responsibilities. Although Taehyung spent the entirety of his childhood away from his siblings, he still cared for them in ways someone only with younger siblings could imagine.

So, Taehyung tried. Tried to help out Jin whenever he could. He would silently wait near the kitchen whenever he cooked, maybe provide some funny anecdotes, he always made sure to wash the dishes since he could never help in cooking. He always looked back at Jin to see if he was comfortable wherever he was.

And sometimes, when Taehyung did not know how to help, he could think of doing the only thing he called himself good at.

Giving out hugs.

Hugs make everything better, his halemoni used to say.

And so, in his little quest for a whiff of happiness, he surged forward and wrapped his arms around Jin's torso, hands clutching the elder's stomach.

There. That would fix it.

Except he did not take Seokjin's recent shoulder injury into account.

Thus the the situation probably went the opposite way of what Taehyung had planned.

His sudden hug startled Jin, who shrieked and moved his leg upwards, causing Yoongi's coffee to spill over him and Namjoon standing beside the latter, resulting in a series of shouts, groans and chaos.