Namjoon was there the night Niko was born.
It was raining. The hospital lights flickered. His mother almost didn’t wake up. Namjoon pressed both hands to her chest and breathed strength into her lungs. Just enough. Just in time.
When the nurses placed the tiny boy in the blanket, Namjoon whispered his first promise:
"You will never face this alone."
He kept that vow even when Niko forgot what safety felt like.
Seokjin took charge of Niko’s body.
Feverish nights. Wounds that wouldn’t clot. Asthma attacks that turned lips blue.
He stood beside cribs and school desks and bathroom floors, holding Niko’s pulse in his hands. When Niko’s heart slowed at age six during a seizure no one expected, Jin shocked it back with a single touch to the chest.
No one ever knew.
But he did. He always knew when it was slipping.
Sometimes he’d cry when it stopped. Sometimes he’d scream. But he never let it end.
Yoongi watched over Niko’s sleep.
That meant more than stopping nightmares.
It meant fighting off the kind of thoughts that whispered in the quiet hours: You’re not enough. You don’t matter. Disappear.
From age nine, Niko began to sleep less. Fear of the dark? No. Fear of his own mind.
Yoongi lit candles in his dreams. Showed him stars. Gave him tiny moments of peace, just enough to trick the body into resting. Sometimes, that was all he could do—buy him time. Slow the descent.
Niko never understood why he dreamed of warmth when the world felt so cold.
Yoongi did.
Taehyung watched Niko’s emotions.
He kept joy in his pocket. Released it in sparks—a puppy in the park, a classmate’s kind word, the glint of light through a rainy window.
When Niko turned twelve and stopped laughing for almost a year, Taehyung scattered small wonders in his path. A stranger calling him brave. A song playing at just the right time. A random compliment on a day he nearly gave up.
Tiny lifelines.
Invisible threads of beauty
Jungkook guarded his instinct to disappear.
He was the one who made Niko flinch before stepping into the street. The tug in his chest when the bridge looked too easy. The burn in his throat when the pill bottle stayed open too long.
At fifteen, Niko swallowed too much and closed his eyes.
Jungkook forced his lungs to scream.
Paramedics said it was lucky he vomited in time.
Jungkook didn’t call it luck.
He called it intervention.
Jimin watched his heart.
Not just the physical one—the one that still ached from things no doctor could treat. The one that broke quietly after abandonment, bullying, cruelty in words that scarred deeper than fists.
When Niko couldn’t cry, Jimin cried for him. When he couldn’t love himself, Jimin whispered love into the spaces no one saw.
At seventeen, after the worst heartbreak, Niko collapsed on a bus bench and said nothing for hours.
Jimin sat next to him. Just breathing.
That was enough.
Hoseok watched his light.
Not happiness—light. His essence. The fragile flicker inside that meant I am still here.
And when that light dimmed—when it almost went out—Hoseok covered it with his whole being. Protected it with everything he had.
During a panic attack at twenty-one, Niko stopped breathing. For a full minute, the world tilted. His chest froze.
Hobi forced air back into him, invisible hand on his ribs. Forced rhythm into a body that forgot how to function.
No one else saw.
But he did.
Because that was his job: keep the soul from breaking, even when the body tried to quit.
Now?
Now Niko is older.
Exhausted in ways no nap can fix. He smiles sometimes, but only with his mouth. He walks, but with lead in his legs. Some mornings, he wakes up and doesn’t remember how to keep going. Sometimes his heart still stutters, skips, stops.
Sometimes, when no one is looking, he just sits, fingers twitching, unable to move.
He thinks it’s weakness.
They know it’s survival.
And they are still there.
Every second. Every breath.
Holding the line between life and loss.
They’ve been doing it since day one.
They always will.