It didn't happen right away, but you love Hoseok with all your heart. Your first thought in the morning and the only thing on your mind before you sleep, and you'd do anything to keep it that way.
Even if it hurts.
Hoseok knew he'd had a pretty ideal life growing up. Never having been a target for bullies like you were when you were kids. Getting to wake up and go to bed each day with two loving parents and an annoying but equally loving sister.
He didn't have to forge his parents signature to go on field trips, nor did he need to cover up bruises in the morning before school.
You would come to school sometimes with barely pencil and paper in your backpack and sit under the maple tree near that edge of the playground during lunch time so you didn't get teased for not having anything to eat.
Hoseok would stare at the note his mother would always wedge between whatever fruit she'd cut into cute shapes that morning and his favorite cup of strawberry yogurt, and then he would stare at you.
Wondering why you didn't have a cute lunchbox like him and the other kids in his class.
Why you never wore dresses or short sleeved shirts during the blistering summers. Why you never talked to anyone, no one, including the teachers.
Instead you just sat by yourself with your sketchbook filled with black and white drawings. Drawing until your black colored pencil whittled down to nothing but a small nub.
When he saw Kai and his friend's picking on you, he decided that day that he would be your friend, protector, the one to share his star-shaped pears with you.
Whatever you needed him to be.
He watches your chest rise and fall as you lay in the hospital bed. Your slow breaths and the subtle fluttering of your eyelids as you dream help ease his frazzled nerves.
You look so small laying there connected to all those wires and tubes. He can't cry anymore, there aren't any tears left in him.
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Losing Yoongi and today, almost losing you, it's almost too much for him to bear. It's not like he was ever a strong and fearless kind of guy. But he can't remember a time where he felt so helpless and weak, unable to protect the ones he loved when they really needed him.
"I'm sorry, duckie. I..." He takes you hand in his, mindful of the IV laying across your knuckles, "I should've gone with you. I'm so stupid." The image of your blurs as tears prickle at his eyes and he runs his fingers across the calluses on your palm.
"Should've been there for you, you a-and Yoongi."
He cradles your palm to his cheek as his shoulders shake. He lets the tears fall, not having any strength to wipe them away in case you happen to wake up.
He graduated with honors, got a paid internship with one of the top entertainment companies in the country, had a beautiful life and all of that meant nothing.
It meant nothing when he couldn't be there to protect the ones he loved.
Hoseok knew he had a pretty ideal life growing up, but he wondered what had he done in this life or maybe one past that had suddenly brought him so much misfortune.
