Blue {DoTae} | complete

Thirteen: The end of the world

This chapter includes descriptions of dissociation and panic attacks, as well as references to his father hitting him. Please take care if any of those things upset you. I want to put an extra warning here to make sure.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Somehow, that pure happiness lasts.

Doyoung rolls out of bed each morning to see a sweet message or two from Taeyong. Sometimes even a little video. He squints at the tiny digits of the time they were sent, but decides to not confront the idol over why he is awake at half past five every morning, too overjoyed and excited by the prospect of the two of them growing closer as each day passes. In fact, he almost mourns how he's never awake at such early hours in the morning to chat with him in real time. Taeyong seems to message him in just about all of his free moments, as does Doyoung between assignments.

With each message he receives, his body is drawn a step closer to the surface of the murky water he's been drowning in over the past however many years. Each message serves as a breath of air to support his exhausted lungs.

The people around him can't stop commenting about his lifted spirits and the inerasable smile that accompanies him wherever he goes, whether that's off to college in the morning or out of a difficult exam, the other students' more downcast faces making Doyoung positively glow.

Doyoung still talks to himself in the bathroom in the evening, but nowadays the repeated conversations are entirely centred around his gigantic crush.

"Taeyong said that I'm funny, that my jokes make him laugh and cheer him up." Doyoung whispers, lips decorated with a silly grin as he drags a finger through the condensation on the mirror. His smile grows even wider when he sees his reflection.

He can recognise himself. He's twenty-one-year-old Doyoung, with aspirations to go far in life and who will go far in life because he has Taeyong's support, Taeyong's air to breathe, Taeyong's love to relish in.

Taeyong hasn't exactly told him that he loves him yet, but Doyoung is sure the day will come.

"He keeps flirting with me. I'm sure he does." Doyoung continues. He tilts his head to the side a little, letting a bang of damp hair fall down over his forehead, then he grabs a towel to dry his torso before slipping on his pyjama shirt.

Call him insane, but Doyoung is sure that he's going to meet Taeyong, and they're going to fulfil the classic, cliché friends to lovers fanfiction trope he's read about countless times over the years of being a fanboy. He's sure he's insane, anyway. Perhaps it's a case of sad dependency: a chance to get close to someone and fall in love now that he has the chance, just because that's what his subconscious has been craving for so long. Doyoung can't help but smooth the wrinkles out of his forehead with both his hands, turning his frown back into a smile. The mirror has steamed up again by now and he reckons he really should brush his teeth if he doesn't want his parents shouting at him.

A sudden burst of inspiration convinces him to work on an assignment that was only set this morning, and it must be the first time in a while that he's completed anything so early. Doyoung slams the textbook shut as soon as he's completed the final question and ticks the task off his to-do list, satisfied with the extra half an hour of free time he's earned, then dives under his duvet to scroll through funny tweets from fans for a while before he picks up the book he took out from the library. He's only read the first chapter so far, and it was so gripping that he's now easily sucked into the mythical world created by the author, following the adventures of the characters and laughing and frowning along with them.