Family Ties | JJK

34: Never Leave Me

**

You wake all of a sudden, light flashing across your vision, pain building quickly, disorientated, you cry out in pain.

'Don't hurt me please, don't. Stop. Stop... I said stop!'

Jungkook pulls you into his arms quickly, rocking you softly, your head buried in his chest.

"Shhh, shhh baby girl, I'm here, Sh Y/N you're home, you're safe, it's not real, it was just a nightmare.'

Jungkook's heart knows that's a lie, it was not okay, it was far from it, and all he can do is rock you.

His voice gently calms you and your erratic breathing softens slightly, curling up tightly in his embrace you have to remind yourself where you are.

You came home last night, bleeding and delirious.

Flashes of your ordeal assault your vision and you remember in terrible detail everything that had happened.

Reaching up to touch your face you groan in pain at the sore skin around your cheek, raised and lumpy, a jagged cut runs across your cheek.

It hadn't been a nightmare.

You hadn't realised you had begun to cry, a guttural preen emanating from deep within your heavy chest until Jungkook is murmuring in your ear, stopping your rising sobs.

'Hey... Hey, listen to me, I'm here, focus on me, my voice,' he talks and talks, about nothing and everything, just trying to keep you grounded, keep you breathing.

'I'm here, I'm here and you're here with me, were home, Y/N, home, here, together, please, baby.'

**

He carries you to the bathroom oh so delicately, like at any moment you might break... But he didn't need to worry, you were already broken.

He puts you in the bath slowly, with only your bloody T-shirt covering you, floating around your thighs, turning the water pink. You feel nothing at first, your body numb, and lifeless. But slowly as you submerge into the water you begin to feel the warmth licking across your skin, warmth started to run through your veins, you begin to feel alive.

'Just relax, I'll wash your hair, you'll feel better, I promise.'

Breathing out a long breath you feel like it is the first time you had breathed since the night, your body had been tense and wounded for hours.

Jungkook softly cleans you, removing every trace of dried blood and dirt. Cupping his hands he lets the warm water trickle over your body, murmuring soft words of comfort.

'Sh, almost done, relax, I'm here.'

You began to feel yourself unwinding, you weren't okay, you were far from it... Perhaps you wouldn't be for a long time. But it was a start.

'The blood has almost gone, you're nearly there, you're safe.'

Here with Jungkook, you're safe.

**

Time seems to have stopped, surrounded by the soft lapping water, eyes closed, letting Jungkook's voice wash over you.

But eventually, he turns his eyes to your messy face.

'Let me stay, just to help you with your cut, and then I'll leave you,' Jungkook sighs and looks at you with wide doe eyes full of sorrow, 'I know you probably want to be alone, so let me help, and then I'll leave. I know you don't want me. I won't fight against that anymore.'

Of course, he would think that, when had you ever let him in, you always had to be strong, you always had to be you... And that was your biggest weakness.

You groan in discontent but you can't bring yourself to speak, not yet. Laying further down into the swell of the warm water hugging your curves.

He doesn't wait for you to say he is wrong, the old Jungkook, full of hope and strength that he could change you, could make you love him.

He was gone.

So instead, with a bitter twist of love in his chest at the broken face before him, he slowly cleans your wound.

It stings a lot. But you welcome the pain, a reminder that you are alive.

At first, Jungkook simply takes a soft cloth and dips it into the water, trailing it across your puckered skin, over your neck, ears, chest, face, and all around the cut.

But never across your open wound. Instead, he cleans you, any other time it would be too exposing and erotic, but this morning it was only painful. When his hand touched bruises under the skin you hiss and close your eyes.

'Y/N this is going to hurt...

I'm sorry.'

He begins to wipe at your cut with antiseptic, it immediately burns and itches against your inflamed skin, you jerk your face in reaction. Tears brim and fall from your lashes, eyes still screwed shut you let them fall, releasing your pent-up emotion.

'Almost done, I'm so sorry, just hold on a bit longer.' Jungkook's hand comes up to cup the other side of your face, tender and soft and completely contrasting the sting emanating on the other side.

Anticipating the pain is almost as worse as when it comes. Now you know the hot burn that is about to sizzle across your cheek, white-hot and furious.

Tensing before your eyes fly open when a soft warm kiss is dropped onto your collarbone. You see Jungkook softly kissing the parts of you not covered in blood. Where your skin has broken and bruised he kisses around them, your scared and surprised until he says, 'You can do this'.

And suddenly he is pouring saline on your wound and pressing a gauze on top of the burning liquid, locking in the healing antiseptic pain and all.

Your gripping the sides of the bath, a guttural moan beginning in your chest and rising in your throat. Breathing heavily you asses the pain, after the first few seconds it diminished quickly so that you can end your groaning. Caught up in the pain you almost miss Jungkook turning away from the bathtub. His words from earlier echoing in your mind-

I'll leave. You'll want to be alone. I know you don't want this. I won't fight against that anymore.

And all you can think is no, god no, please no. Don't go.

He starts to leave. Rising slowly from his kneeling position next to you, turning away and instinctively doing what your heart tells you, without letting your mind argue, your hand moves out to catch his wrist as he turns. The light pull is nothing to him, but he stills at your touch.

'Stay please.'

The words, broken and small, hang in the air of the fragile morning.

You were so close to falling apart, you needed Jungkook to fix those wounds too, the ones not on your skin, but on your soul.

You needed Jungkook. Because you weren't sure you could do it yourself this time. You were too broken, too hurt, too scared- Scared to come back to reality, for fear of what was waiting for you when you did.

You just needed him, his steady presence, reminding you, keeping you grounded, stopping you from falling apart. Because it took seconds to break, but months to put yourself back together.

You knew from experience.

And maybe, a small part of you realised, you had needed him a long time ago- Before all of this, back when times were better, but you hadn't let yourself, and you had hurt him.

You hurt him so much, you knew that. So you wouldn't blame him if he left.

Jungkook breaths softly, turning back to you carefully, guarded.

'I'll never leave.'

**