you don’t want to relive the conscious hours of your day, however short they were, so you try to force them out of your mind. still, you’re left with the acute feeling of emptiness, the one that plagues you, taunts you. 

you achieved nothing today. you’re a failure. you’re worthless.

realistically, you know that having a lazy day doesn’t define worth or success or anything else. realistically, you should be proud of yourself for having had the energy to even get out of bed this morning to make an actual breakfast, to attend class, to return a book you’d checked out from the library. realistically, you did simple things that felt like the most difficult obstacles you’d ever faced, so that has to count for something.

and you want to feel that way. you know you should find some comfort in knowing that despite it all, you still managed to accomplish something today, no matter how small and simple it was. but it’s not enough, it doesn’t feel like enough. your to do list feels insurmountable, a mile long with homework and projects and appointments, and instead of working on them, you decided to slack off, sleeping and dissociating for longer than you’d been awake. the echoing you’re worthless sentiment plays on loop for so long, you’re starting to think the voice is right.

so there you sit, hunched over your lap, staring at the bit of duvet that peeks through your legs. you don’t register that you’re crying until your eyes have welled so much that tears are splashing on the backs of your hands. the release of emotions, ones you’ve been bottling up and keeping on lock for who knows how long, should feel cathartic, getting them out of your system, and it does, but more than anything, it makes you feel so…

pathetic. you’re pathetic.

what could you possibly be going through that has you this stressed and strung out? school? you’re only taking 15 credit hours. work? it’s part time and all you really do is sit around and chill. there’s simply no reason for you to feel like this, to be so anxious and depressed all the time that you feel like you’re suffocating and nothing can save you. no reason. pathetic.

you don’t know how long you sit there, crying silently because the tears keep coming and you don’t know what you can do to stop them. your hands are awash in salt and liquified sadness. you suppose it doesn’t really matter, though, because at this point, you’ve spent nine and a half hours staring into the void, so what’s a little more? besides, maybe if you cry enough, you’ll somehow lose that little voice in the tears too and wouldn’t that be lucky.

so you cry. and you cry. and you cry. and it doesn’t heal you or make you feel completely whole again, but when your eyes have gone completely dry, you’ve exhausted yourself to the point that you don’t feel that overwhelming pressure of not being enough for anybody, anything, yourself. but maybe even worse, you just feel numb. sure, you’ve temporarily cried the depression and anxiety out of your system, but you replaced it with true, genuine nothingness.

so now, you sit. and it’s a repeat of the last nine hours, eyes unwavering from where your hands rest in your lap, fingers loosely intertwined. you know you should eat something, drink some water, maybe take a shower. you really want to change into some more comfortable clothes, but you just can’t bring yourself to get out of bed, to tear your gaze away from your hands. you know you should do these things, but you can’t, you don’t want to, you never want to.

the knock at your bedroom door scares the shit out of you and you startle, head jerking so quickly that you feel like you almost pull a muscle. lee jihoon is standing in the threshold, his eyes wide and uncertain, a takeout bag in one hand and his keychain in the other. he looks a little breathless, his shoulders heaving with the effort of regaining air. somehow, even disheveled and looking a little horror villain adjacent being backlit by your hall light, he’s still the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen in your life.

and you don’t deserve him. you know that, everyone knows that.

“what are… what are you doing here, jihoon?” you ask, inwardly cursing yourself for how broken and watery your voice sounds. you swore you’d cried yourself dry, but there are still remnants of your tears and it makes you feel like a child who just got done throwing a tauntrum.

“you haven’t been answering your phone. i was… worried,” he answered. he keeps the distance between you, making home in the doorway. the plastic bag rustles quietly, white noise that cuts through the tv static in your head.

“sorry. i was… napping.” it’s the most unconvincing, feeblest lie you’ve ever told in your life. even if it’s partly true, it doesn’t matter when you’re sure you look like a mess, tear tracks and bloodshot eyes. there’s no hiding it in the slightest.

“can i sit?” the worry from his eyes has started bleeding into his voice and you feel yourself back on that edge, teetering on the very fine, precarious line between being at least a little okay and falling back into the mind-numbing sadness headfirst. he wants your consent, he wants to know it’s okay to approach and be close because he cares.

it’s an obligation.

it’s not, you know that. if he felt obligated to be here, he wouldn’t look so concerned as he crosses the room, wouldn’t have a bag that you recognize as the takeout bags your favorite restaurant uses, wouldn’t be sitting said food and keys on your dresser before closing the distance between you. he hesitates once he stands before you, gaze carefully studying your face intently. if it was an obligation, he wouldn’t be wrapping his arms around your shoulders and pulling you into his body, cradling the back of your head as you press your face tightly into his abdomen.

the tears come back in full force, no concrete reason as to why. the hard, solid wall of that suffocation is pressing back in again, but on top of that, you feel a kind of relief you’ve not had in a while, the overwhelming kindness of being loved by someone. there are inklings of those thoughts, but with jihoon’s heartbeat under your ear, the strength of his chest, you make an effort of blocking it out. it’s the most you’ve felt at home in a while.

and you know it’s love, real genuine love, because jihoon doesn’t say a single thing the entire time, even when your tears most certainly have soaked through his hoodie and started bleeding into the shirt underneath. no, he holds you securely against him as if he’s trying to hold every piece of you together because you can’t do it on your own anymore and even if he can’t keep you all together, he can pick up the stray shards after.

eventually, his voice finds a crevice and slips in through the cracks, all soft and love and everything good in the world. it’s like he’d been born to be the personification of compassion and giving and love.

“we don’t have to talk about it, but you know… i’m always here for you. when you need me. i’m not going anywhere.”

you nod against him, your hair catching on the rough fabric of his sweater. somewhere, out of the tightness of your throat, you choke out a thank you, keeping your fingers twisted up tightly at his back. you don’t want to move, not yet, not when this is the safest you’ve felt in a long while. being in his arms, it reminds you that you haven’t seen him for a bit, your schedules not lining up to allow for anything as simple as a facetime call. and maybe this is what you needed.

you know jihoon isn’t going to cure you because contrary to the fairy tales and the contemporary romances, all the harlequin novels, love isn’t the remedy for all things. it isn’t going to balance out the chemicals in your brain or take away all the stress you feel weighing down your shoulders just about every waking second. it’s not some miracle treatment, even if it feels pretty damn close to it.

but even if it isn’t, it feels like a good start. so far away from home, from friends and family, you always feel a little stranded, out of your depth here in the big city. you don’t have the comforts of a home cooked meal that your mother and grandmother helped make from scratch, none of the security of being in a place you’re so deeply familiar with, so intrinsically connected to. 

jihoon helps, though. he always has. an anchor in otherwise tumultuous waters, he grounds you in a way that nobody else in the entire population of seoul can. some of his other friends who have essentially adopted you come close (wonwoo will always be your most cherished of them), but they will never set your heart and mind at ease the way their producer does. not when he has all of your favorites memorized, not when he writes songs meant for your ears alone, not when he shows up after a day of radio silence with takeout in tow and unlimited physical contact to give, even when you both know that he isn't a physically affectionate person.

“you don’t have to weather these things alone, okay? but i’m not going to push you to talk about things you aren’t ready to talk about.” he breathes in deep and you pull back from where you’ve been nestling your cheek against his sternum, electing to look up at him. his eyes are still all soft and warm, welcoming, home. “but we are gonna do some hard things, alright? and i’ll be there every step of the way if you want me to be.”

your eyes well with tears again, a testament to how much you can cry while being what you can only assume is incredibly dehydrated, and even through the tears, you see jihoon start at the sight of them, the gears of his head practically visible as they kick into overdrive. but you smile and shake your head, trying to tell him not to worry about it without speaking (the lump in your throat would make it entirely impossible for you to get the simplest whisper out at this point).

even now, the thought of getting out of bed to eat, to shower, to change clothes feels daunting. you’ve got him right here wanting to help and they still feel so incredibly formidable that it puts you on edge, but he’s here and you’ve done so many things with him. there is trust and history and love here; he has seen every part of you down to the most unstable, most vulnerable of them all and not once has he ever judged or implied that he feels that it’s tiring having to care for you when you can’t do it yourself.

rather, jihoon has always taken a soft spoken kind of pride in it for the both of you. he has always set aside everything, pushed things off and canceled on people, when he knows you need his support. and he’s always been there through every single step. he’s never given the indication that he is anything short of the most dutiful, caring person in the history of the world.

so you let him help you out of bed, keeping one of his arms hooked around you for support. you let him sit you at the coffee table in your living room and you let him feed you from takeout boxes, laughing in tandem when his chopsticks don’t want to cooperate and he drops noodles all over the table. you let him help you into the shower and you let him go through your shower routine for you so that you don’t have to expend energy you don’t have. 

and after all of that, he still insists on helping. he helps you into pajamas and once you’re nestled in bed, he disappears into your main living area, cleaning up dinner and finally switching your laundry from the washer to the dryer. he does the things that you hadn’t accounted for in your day, the chores that you hadn’t designated spoons for.

and even still, after all of the tidying up is done, he crawls into bed next to you and beckons you toward him. he sets aside his preferences and lets you rest against him, soft bodies leaning and pressing into each other, melting so that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. your head rises and falls in time with his breathing, his heartbeat under your fingertips, his arms heavy against you as they keep you anchored against him.

"hyun?" you ask quietly, testing the waters. he doesn't react much, but he shifts against you, his fingers tightening in your shirt. "do you want to lay down?"

taehyun nods then, just a bit but it's noticeable. you try to accommodate him as best you can, knowing he (likely) doesn't want to let go yet, but you have to turn off the stove. to meet both needs, you let him keep his arms wrapped around you, but this time leaning against your back rather than your front. you take it slow, your feet shuffling together towards the kitchen.

with that taken care of, you move to the living room, the couch much closer than your bed. you get situated, leaning back against the cushioned armrest, and taehyun follows suit, slotting himself between your legs and his face buried against your sweater. he hasn't returned to tears yet, but you can feel the way his breath and shoulders shudder against you.

it is so very clear that he isn't ready to do much of anything still and who are you to push him into anything other than this? you don't need to know what caused this, whether it's a combination of things that happened over the week, at least not now. if taehyun deserves anything, he deserves silence and as much physical comfort as he needs.

his breath seeps through your sweater, thick as it is, warming you from the outside in. as much as he's taking comfort from you, you're diverting just as much from him. you've had a difficult week too, but not so much that you felt that things were too insurmountable to handle. still, holding him like this, you realize how much you needed this. as much as you'd like to be the one being held, getting to comfort him and crowd him against your body to share your heat and softness is therapeutic in a way you've never thought possible.

without thinking, you bury one of your hands in his hair, letting your nails drag gently across his scalp. he shivers against you, which suggests tension, but instead, he melts even further into you, his cheek pressing so tightly against you that you're certain he'll have the knit patterns imprinted into his skin for hours after.

but you bristle a little at the way he reacted to your hand in his hair, unable to stop yourself from smiling to yourself. you want to entertain him on this, so you keep your hand tangled in his hair, smoothing your fingers through the strands gently, smiling when he sinks further and further into your embrace. you can feel as the tension in his shoulders burns away, the muscles getting looser and looser the longer you let your fingers linger in his hair.

eventually, after what you assume is at least an hour, taehyun finally speaks, voice scratchy with a lack of use and tears still caught in his throat. he's quiet, apologizing for ruining the night, and you jump at the chance to tell him he has nothing to apologize for, that things like this happen sometimes and mental health is nothing to ever feel apologetic about. instead, you hold him tighter against you and ask if he still wants to have dinner, promising to order dessert too because you think he deserves it.