Blue {DoTae} | complete

Fifteen: Nothing ever goes to plan

The house is eerily quiet. Doyoung pads across his room, not wanting to wake his family, holding his breath because each footstep seems too loud for there to be capacity to make any extra noise. He slides into the chair at his desk with a controlled exhale. A slither of morning sunlight creeps in through the curtains to land straight on the plastic bag of green beads he reaches for. It rustles, then the beads clatter across his desk when he tips it up, his entire body freezing in fear for a split second. He scrambles to collect them up.

Doyoung curses before beginning to slot the beads back onto a new length of blue thread. At some point between that breakdown when he ripped the bracelet apart and now, his mother must have scouted the beads from his bedroom floor while he was at college one day and dropped them all into a bag for him, her motherly instincts suggesting that they're significant in some way to her son. And they are. With how unstable his life seems to be at the moment, he needs the bracelet as a coping mechanism, as both something to ground him and like a gift from Taeyong, given that it was his idea. And the original is better than the second one he made. It just is; his brain tells him so in that way he can never ignore or disagree with.

He slides the restored bracelet onto his wrist and curls back up in his bed. The sheets are cool again and he gratefully sinks under his duvet, eyes drooping as his head tries to take the opportunity to sneak an extra hour of sleep before his mother breaks into his room to yell at him to move his ass.

Nevertheless, an itching under his skin pulls Doyoung towards his phone, and the bracelet slides up his arm with a slight tickle when he unplugs the device and switches it on. The first app he opens is the notes. His to-do list is long. Blinking his sleep away as best he can, he scrutinises the many assignments and chores he must do, plus the Taeyong content he needs to catch up on. After the detention, he really needs to stay on top of it all. His mind immediately begins to create a plan of action, detailing every hour of his day with which tasks he should work on and when. Doyoung chews on the inside of his bottom lip. These plans never last. Whether it's down to him getting too sucked into an activity or something else coming up, he never sticks to them and it frustrates that voice in his head that always strives for perfect routines.

But he mentally agrees to follow it anyway. It shuts the voice up for a while, so both parties win.

Next up is twitter. Doyoung realises he hasn't tweeted for a few days, but after closing his eyes and analysing exactly how he feels, he decides he doesn't have much to vent out, other than his tension with Sicheng. He woke up early (ten past five might be a little too early, but it's something) so he'll be wide awake by the time he reaches college; he came to a resolution with his mother yesterday; he had a video call with Taeyong and they gave each other strength. The elder might even like like him. That thought leaves Doyoung giddy.

Bypassing his own account, he types Taeyong's name into the search bar.

He jolts upright.

Now he wishes he didn't just type his name into the search bar.

Even the searches alone pull Doyoung's throat tight, as though each letter forms another strand of a string that cuts off his breathing and makes his head turn fuzzy.

Taeyong gay

Taeyong dating

Taeyong boyfriend

Wishing it to be a cruel figment of his sleep-addled imagination, he taps on the first one.

He's faced with a whole stream of tweets that are filled with hate for the idol, people claiming he should be kicked out of the company, that his contract should be terminated, that he should face the consequences of not only dating, but of dating a man. Some people are even suggesting he should never show his face in public again. But nowhere can Doyoung find the original tweets that caused all this chaos. Nowhere can he find any proof for the claims.