Blue {DoTae} | complete

Twenty-five: Vicious cycles

Doyoung feels lonely.

His parents talk to him more, he has video calls with Taeyong on the daily, and Jungwoo has visited several times over the past week to check up on him, but he still feels lonely. Trapped in a cycle where every day is exactly the same. With everyone hovering around him, afraid to let him out of their sight for even a brief second. The voices tell him that the attention isn't out of love, but just an obligation.

He didn't know it was possible to feel so lost in the centre of so much attention.

"I understand how you feel." Taeyong's smile freezes on the screen of Doyoung's phone, then when the internet catches up his expression has saddened, eyebrows furrowed in pity, and Doyoung hugs the cushion tighter to his chest as he sighs.

He's curled up on the sofa in the living room. His mother is cooking dinner, Jeno's holed up in his room and his father is nowhere to be seen. The man has been rather stiff since collecting his son from Japan. There's an inescapable, unshakeable tension whenever the two of them cross paths through the house, but Doyoung can't pluck up the courage to speak to him. His mother keeps reminding him that his father doesn't quite seem to understand how mental health works before spewing all kinds of facts and figures that she's uncovered during her long hours of research.

Doyoung is grateful that she's doing her best, but it still feels patronising when she asks him how he's doing, if there's anything she can do, if there's anything bothering him.

He almost wishes he could return to college.

"It's just frustrating." Doyoung huffs. He hears Taeyong hum in agreement through his tangled earphones.

Since talking to the police about what happened, they haven't seen each other in person. Doyoung is unofficially grounded, and Taeyong's managers are livid, extending his hiatus to four months. Doyoung hasn't dared to open twitter to assess the situation once the company released the news. He's barely even touched his phone besides to call Taeyong.

"I don't know how I'm even supposed to fill all this time." Taeyong laughs, but it clashes with the sorrowful music coming from the depressing romance movie he has on in the background. Doyoung watches him lay his head back on the sofa and wishes he could be there with him, snug in his arms. He shouldn't have taken his presence for granted.

"I've been given a month off. The college say it's to help me spend some time to myself, but it's just driving me mad." Doyoung runs his teeth along his bottom lip, not quite biting down on the cracked skin.

His to-do list is bare, and suddenly his routines have all been thrown out the window, knocked upside down, and he doesn't know what to do with himself all day. The voice disapproves if he mopes around the house. It also disapproves if he does some singing or painting, berating him for not being talented enough. Whatever he does, he finds himself on edge, paranoid with all his senses alert, awaiting the inevitable onslaught of a new routine. Doyoung ran ten laps of the garden this morning before collapsing on the bench outside. He counted to seven hundred-and-eighty-six before his mother came into his room to offer him a cup of tea. He declined, then shouted at himself for pulling at his hair, earning yet another round of concerned advice from his mother.

She keeps telling him to take breaks. To find the right coping mechanisms, to sleep well and keep himself busy to take his mind off things. But all he can think of is how it's all wrong. Doyoung hates the thought of his classmates learning, his seat empty. Hates the way his mind keeps floating away, distracted by nothing but the promise of quiet, preventing him from getting anything done no matter how hard he grits his teeth and hisses at himself to focus.

His hands always tremble.

He counts everything.

He washes his hands that extra time, just to be sure, until he does it wrong and has to take a shower to erase his mistake, tears blending in with the dull thrumming of the water.