Don't Leave Me Behind || Namjin AU

Chapter Seventy- Eight. Just Your Imagination

Warnings: swearing, violence, mention of mental illness and death, mental breakdown, etc.

Namjoon silently entered the kitchen, his surroundings as quiet as death as it was deep into the night. Around two or three. The silence around the whole house told him that the rest of the men were asleep, and he was the only one who was awake.

He took careful and soft steps towards the fridge, eyes fixed on the pill bottle on top. As he went to stand in front of it, the moonlight coming in from the window beside him shone over his whole self, the dark shadows of the window pane falling on his outstretched hand as he went to take the bottle.

But before he could hold it, another hand, a much paler one, appeared beside his and snatched the bottle out of his grasp.

Namjoon let out a shout of shock before spinning around to see who it was, to find Yoongi standing across him, perfectly still, a hand holding up the pill bottle. His pale complexion made him look like a ghost in the moonlight, and his void expression made him even more frightening.

"What do you think you were doing?" Yoongi whispered, slowly raising an eyebrow.

He looked too calm for a situation like this. Too collected and unreactive for the tension that loomed over them in the atmosphere as Yoongi's question was greeted with quietness as Namjoon looked at him, having recovered from his shock and was now coming up with a way to answer him.

He wasn't going to lie anymore. He'd not lie this time. He didn't care. He will gladly go wherever they'd send him now once they find out how gone he was. How he was never recovering again.

"I can't take this anymore," Namjoon whispered in response, looking straight into his best friend's eyes.

For a moment, both Namjoon and Yoongi seemed to see a flash of their past, when they first met in kindergarten and clicked immediately despite the fact that they were completely different. They remembered how they talked about how they liked boys despite being so young and wanted to grow up to find the perfect prince of their life. And how they'd still be best friends forever when they grow old, and then they pinky promised.

They rememebered running from bullies in middle school, laughing as they managed to escape without getting beaten up after successfully insulting them. They used to test their limits and stand beside one another.

Yoongi and Namjoon had always thought they'd remain inseparable, and yet, they were here now. Fighting constantly and having no trust in each other.

It was heartbreaking for both, and despite Namjoon being too miserable and in pain and Yoongi too frustrated and angry, both of them felt the sting of not being able to keep their pinky promise that they made so excitedly and happily, two little five-year-old and seven-year-old who had no idea that reality wasn't like anything they dreamt about.

And now, twenty-three years later, as they looked at one another, two grown men who'd gone through the worst, they understood how innocent and naive they'd been.

"What's going on here?"

The lights of the kitchen were switched on and Hoseok and Jimin appeared at the entrance, but Namjoon and Yoongi didn't avert eye-contact.

"What do you mean you can't take it anymore?" Yoongi asked quietly, his eyebrows knitted into a frown.

"I won't fucking do as you tell me," Namjoon snapped, Yoongi's calmness frustrating him. "I'm not a kid anymore. I can make my own decisions and do what I want to. Stop controlling my life."

Yoongi stared at him, a pang of hurt stabbing his chest though he made no show of it.

"Hyung? Why are you all awake?"