Yoongi watched, eyes narrowing further and eyelids almost falling shut when the overhead lights seemed to brighten for a second and his head throbbed, as the two exchanged hurried words that were mouthed too quickly for his brain to keep up with. He could feel a yawn slowly work its way up his throat, and, this time, he didn't fight it back down.
—•—•—•—•—•—
He must have nodded off at some point, cause next thing he knew, he was being jerked back to his senses by the sudden loud music that had started playing from the speakers mounted onto the wall less than a meter away from him. Despite the music not being played at as high a volume as it usually was – which he guessed was the other members' attempt at being considerate of him – the sound still grated at his ears and made his head pulsate with a newfound strength that was harsh enough to send flashes of white rapidly crawling across his vision.
Through the slits of his barely raised eyelids, Yoongi saw as the others started getting up from the floor and into formation. A part of the rapper felt dejected that none of them had approached him and told him to get into position as well, but, unsurprisingly, that bit of himself was miniscule in comparison to part of him that was grateful for having been left alone, as he now had time to try and get control over the pain that was traveling through his veins like a forest fire.
By the time Yoongi had managed to finally raise his head properly for the first time since the blinding ceiling light had been turned on, the six other members had already gone through two songs and were about halfway through a third one. His eyes still scrunched up in pain at the brightness of his surroundings, his stomach continued to turn with mild nausea, and he would much rather to go back to sleep even though his slumber wouldn't help his condition in the slightest, but at least things were bearable and he didn't feel like he was about to keel over.
At first, everything looked fine to him, all the members were hitting the steps perfectly, even Seokjin and Namjoon, who sometimes didn't know how much power they should use during a specific move or what emotion they should embody and put into a choreography for the dance to look right, were doing really good as far as he could see from his position, but as the six got further towards the end of the song – he blamed his brain for not noticing it sooner – it finally registered that Jungkook wasn't hitting the sharp moves in the choreography with the same energy and enthusiasm he usually put in when performing, and that Seokjin, Namjoon, and Hoseok were all forgetting moves and letting their gazes drift away from their own reflected figures in the mirror. The only ones performing somewhat like normal were Jimin and Taehyung, but even those two seemed to be having trouble with keeping their focus on themselves.
Being exhausted and unable to put their all into the choreography when they danced wasn't an unusual thing when they were as close to a comeback as they currently were, but with their stamina it still wasn't something that happened until they were at least a couple of hours into practice, so seeing all of them like this, tired – and very obviously distracted by something he himself had yet to set his eyes upon – less than 10 minutes in was concerning.
He couldn't make himself take his eyes off of Jungkook after seeing how the youngest was barely managing to stay on beat as the song progressed. He knew that the others had noticed as well – they had to, it should be impossible not to have with all the times the maknae was in the center of the choreography – but nobody – not even Hoseok, the one who would usually start a song over if anyone made as little as a single mistake – was saying anything or doing anything other than shooting the youngest singer a glance or two in the mirror whenever the maknae would make another mistake.
By the time the speakers rang out the last note of the currently playing song, Yoongi had pushed himself up onto his feet – with the help of the wall behind him, as the muscles in his legs hadn't been strong enough to get him up without the assistance of an outside force – and begun to make his way over to the others, who had yet to move out of the ending position even though the song was over, so he could join them for the next track.
The rapper could feel several pairs of eyes on him as he made his way behind the six others, but instead of looking up and making eye contact with any of them, he kept his gaze fixed on the reflection of his own shoes in the floor to ceiling mirrors and waited for the next song on the list to play.
Luckily for Yoongi, the beginning instrumental began a second later, which forced the rest of the members to tear their attention away from him so they could get into the start formation. His eyes caught Hoseok's for a short moment when he let his gaze shift to the younger male in front of him, but he was quick to avert them once again and put his focus back onto getting his legs into position.
For a split-second, Yoongi was sure that he was going to end up on the floor when his right knee bent too much and he was sent falling, but then there were hands on his arms, and he was being pulled back up. The rapper raised his head, ready to open his mouth and say 'thanks' to whomever the person who'd helped him was, but then the first shift of the song happened, and his body started moving on its own, following the choreography that had slowly been programmed into his muscles over the course of the last several weeks.
He felt his arms move sluggishly, performing a move that should have been fluid but ended up looking shaky and too choppy to fit in with the other members' graceful movements, and then he was turning away from the rest of the group on legs that felt strangely disconnected from the rest of him.
The room still felt like it was spinning around him after he finished his turn, but there was nothing he could do about it. If he were to stop moving, the others would stare at him and he would disrupt the practice.
The rapper was too distracted by his own thought to notice that he wasn't slowing himself down like he was supposed to do, so instead of landing on the floor in a cushioned fall, the second eldest ended up dropping harshly onto his right knee. Even though the pain in the joint was on the edge of being worse than the throbbing in his head, the producer felt compelled to continue on.
He wasn't able to lift himself off of the ground like the choreography called for when he had to shift onto his other knee, and his arm movements looked sloppy in the few instances he managed to make himself gaze up into the mirror, but no one had said anything or puffed to him even though he'd caught a few of the other members gazes when he'd looked up.
He kept his eyes on Taehyung's knee when the younger reached out towards him with his left hand so he could grab on for the next part of the choreography, and he didn't raise them even when the other's cold hand slipped into his own significantly warmer one and cooled his palm to a temperature where it didn't feel like his skin was about to melt of.
Next thing he knew, the second youngest had pulled him around so both of them were turned to the left, and then the palm against his disappeared and he was watching the singer run towards Hoseok – who had already made his way to the side of the room and was leaning against the wall.
The only reason he in the following moment managed to quickly make his way behind Jungkook – who was the only other person left standing in the middle of the room – was his legs, as the two limbs had pretty much started working on autopilot at this point.
When Jungkook started moving again, arms and legs moving in smooth yet strong motions as he made his way to the left, he brought his own arms up and let his mouth move to from the words he was rapping on the track. Everything went okay for the first second, but then he seemed to hit a wall. Trying to remember how each different syllable was supposed to be formed as well as every single choreographed move he had to make, was too hard, so he was forced to stop mouthing the lyrics.
He and Seokjin made eye contact when he turned to the right and slowly made his way across the floor, but both of them were quick to look away again, with the eldest redirecting his gaze towards Namjoon, who was standing right beside him, and with he himself casting his eyes to the floor and turning his body towards the mirrors.
The first thoughts that went through his head when he turned back around to face Jungkook, wasn't about how his head was swimming, about how his legs felt like they were being weighed down with bricks, or how he could feel his heart hammering away in his chest as if he'd just downed several cups of coffee, but about how pale the maknae looked under the blinding ceiling lights, and about how the younger male was visibly shaking as stood, right hand extended towards him, in the middle of the room and tried to keep himself as still as possible.
The maknae's hand was surprisingly warm and clammy when he reached out and wrapped his own hand around it – perhaps even warmer than his own burning skin – and when he looked up at the younger's eyes, he was met with the sight of unfocused brown irises that seemed to be looking at nothing.
The two of them spun past each other – both of them with their right foot raised off of the ground – and the only reason he didn't end up falling to the floor in the following second when the youngest accidentally bumped into him, was because his body instinctively lowered his right foot back onto the floor before disaster got the opportunity to strike.
Before he knew it, he was standing by the walls with Hoseok's arms wrapped loosely around his waist, and Namjoon, Jimin, and Taehyung were the ones who were out on the middle of the floor. Through the loud music and his ragged breathing, he quietly thanked the younger male for catching him before he could slam into the wall by giving him a slight nod and a pat on the shoulder.
He could feel the other rapper's wide-eyed gaze on him when he pulled himself out of the younger's grasp and leaned against the wall with his shaky arms wrapped around his stomach, but he didn't look up.
He thinks he at some point heard Hoseok ask if he was fine, but he wasn't sure whether the words had actually left the 94 liner's mouth or if his condition had dived so far that he had begun to hallucinate, so he just faintly nodded his head and spent the following 15 seconds on trying to deepen his breathing so the oxygen he was drawing in through his slightly parted lips would be pulled all the way down to his lungs instead of being cut off with a gasp before it had even gotten the chance to travel halfway down his throat.
When it was time for all of them to get back on the floor, he had managed to get a couple of puffs of air past the blockage in his throat and the muscles surrounding his esophagus didn't feel as tense as they'd previously been, but getting to that point had left his feeling lightheaded. The tips of his fingers were tingling, and as the corners of his vision were submerged in black, he started to regret having brushed Namjoon's offer of going back to the dorm aside.
The chorus felt like it dragged on forever, and his thighs burned with each move despite this part of the choreography being fairly simple and easy compared to the rest of the song, but at least his current place in the back of the formation allowed him to briefly watch Jungkook who, at that moment, was front and center.
The bridge wasn't supposed to be as bad, but his knees were protesting less than 2 seconds in, and his legs started hurting more and more the longer he stayed semi crouched. For a moment, he genuinely thought that the two limbs were going to give up on him before they moved to the next part of the choreography.
To his own lucky, his legs didn't end up buckling underneath him, but him getting his breathing under control ended up having all been for nothing, cause the obstruction in his throat had returned and his breathing had been reduced to a wheezing that sounded awful even to his own ears. Despite Seokjin being the only one who was standing behind him – and therefor also being the only one of the others who was able to look at him without having to turn his head – it felt like everyone was staring at him.
Hoseok's verse began and he watched as Jimin and Jungkook turned their heads to the left and both seemingly began to shrink in height. Before he knew it, he was moving as well, and, once again, he thanked his barely functioning brain and exhausted muscles for following along with the choreography and getting him where he was supposed to go even though he couldn't get rid of the growing black spots in his vision and even though he had long since lost his sense of balance.
Rather than seeing the others moving to the walls, he vaguely heard as several pairs of bare feet slapped against the wooden flooring. If Hoseok hadn't grabbed his right wrist in the moment that followed, there was no doubt that he would have ended up following Taehyung when the singer turned around to join the four others.
The other rapper's touch sent a bolt of lightning up to his brain and jolted his memory into remembering that he was supposed to turn around to face the younger male and rip his arm out of the other's grip.
His own verse went by rather quickly, with him stumbling around on the floor, arms waving around, in a fashion that fit in surprisingly well and, if you asked him, almost looked planned, as if it was an actual part of the choreography. The six others must have had that exact same thought as well, 'cause no one said anything or sent him as little as a single worried gaze.
The others joined back in when they hit the pre-chorus, and all of a sudden it was as if all of his luck had been used up. First, he was accidentally hit by both Namjoon and Jungkook. Then, he ended up dropping too harshly onto the floor because his arms were too weak to soften his descent. And finally, when they were supposed to flip themselves up onto both of their feet, his right foot slipped onto its aside and slid away from its original position on the floor. He was barely able to keep himself quiet when the sharp pain in his ankle worsened without warning.
His vision only continued to get filled with more and more splotches of black as the seconds passed, but he didn't want to say anything, 'cause if he did, everyone's attention would be on him and then practice would be ruined. They didn't have a lot of time left to get all of the choreographies for the album completely memorized, and him opening him mouth would only result in precious time being wasted.
The seconds ticked and suddenly they were halfway through the chorus and his head was tilted towards the floor, eyes shut tight and lips parted as air entered and left him in whistle-like wheezes, and his left hand was on his chest, gripping the front of his shirt hard enough to turn his knuckles white, for more reasons than it simply being a part of the choreography. He couldn't breathe.
He doesn't know how he managed to make himself continue on, both with the stinging pain that had gradually begun spreading from his ankle, and with the feeling of heaviness that had laid itself over him like a weighed blanket, but he somehow did, and he wasn't going to question how.
The end of the song was seconds away. He just had to get through these next few seconds and then he could sit back down in the corner or go to one of the break rooms. Why did it felt like his throat was closing up?
When he raised his hands towards the ceiling and the song neared its final note, he all of a sudden found himself incapable of questioning how strange it was that everything he was seeing was black when he knew he was supposed to be staring directly up at one of the lights in the ceiling.
—•—•—•—•—•—•—•☾☀︎︎☽•—•—•—•—•—•—•—
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Next chapter will be up on January 28th