Work Text:
You were sitting at the dining room table in the dorm ,that you share with your boyfriend Jisung and three of his group mates, typing furiously on your laptop. You had several assignment deadlines all due within the next couple of days, including your 2 year long thesis. After 4 long years of university, you were finally graduating, if you managed ro get all your assignments in on time and your thesis submitted.
You’re not sure how or why you’re so behind on your studies. Sure, you weren’t the most organized person, but you you always did a little bit of work that way when you inevitably had to sit down and work on whatever assignment you procrastinated, you were ready to go. You pride yourself on “working well under pressure” despite it giving you major anxiety and a few minor panic attacks. Your thesis, despited being the culmination of your entire university experience, was no exception to that. You had done your research for your topic. Most of the first year you started working in it was spent collecting articles and data and saving it for later when you would actually start writing. You were supposed to start writing in January. But you kept pushing it off since the submission deadline wasn’t until April.
That’s how most of the semester went when you realized that none of your professors cared about when you got your assignments in. As long as you turned something in, and it looked like you put effort, you got an A. Unlike your assignments, your thesis had to be read and approved by academic readers before you could submit it and you had only emailed them twice the whole semester with 2 half asses drafts. You decided to pull several all nighters last week to get a complete 60 paged draft roughly two weeks before the deadline so you would have time for revisions. You managed to email it to them exactly a week ago today, now you were anxiously waiting for your feedback. The problem is, they were taking too long and the thesis is due Monday. Normally, they would email you back 1-2 days after you email them a draft, even with your longer papers. It scared you to think that they’re taking 7 whole days this time, leaving you roughly 5ish days to work on revisions, not counting the turn around time for them to send you more feedback. While waiting, you pulled even more all-nighters to catch up on your other assignments that got neglected of the past few weeks.
Jisung had been good with leaving you alone the past few weeks while you worked. All of your roommates were. Hyunjin mostly stayed in his room like normal, only coming out every few hours to eat and socialize before returning to his room. Changbin is gone most of the day, either working out or exploring the out world. The few time’s he’s been home he tried to stay quiet and out of your way. Chan also spends a lot of time either in his room or at the studio. He even offered to let you use his room to do your homework in while he’s at the studio so the others were less likely to bug you. Jisung, being a bit more needy than the other three men, stayed near you most of the time. Like reading manga at the table while you worked or watching something on his computer either at the table next to you on the floor. He also makes sure you eat and get some sort of snack. He often would have to come beg you to get some sleep, promising to wake you up at a certain time so you could get back to work. Right now, he’s at the convenience store getting lunch for the two of you.
Taking a break from writing, you check your email for the 15th time today. Seeing an email from your academic advisor at the top makes your heart drop. You waste no time opening the email, eyes quickly scanning the words. Making sure you were reading everything properly, you re-read the email.
“Hey, how are you doing with your homework?” Hyunjin pats your head as he walks by, finally leaving his room for the second time today.
“Everything is okay,” You mutter back, finally opening the comments that your readers left on your paper.
Hyunjin stares at you for a second. He knows that you definitely didn’t answer the question he asked. He debated if he should press you or continue on like nothing happened. He knew you were stressed, all of your roommates did. So he brushed it off as you being too engrossed in your assignments and continued on to the kitchen to make himself something to eat.
“Everything is okay,” You mumble to yourself.
Everything is not okay. Your advisors had completely torn your paper apart. You knew there were issues with it, it was only natural that you hadn’t written a perfect complete draft after multiple sleepless nights. You expected it. What you hadn’t expected was being told that your paper was so bad that there would be no way for you to fix it in time for the Monday submission deadline and you would instead have to work on it over the summer. It’s not good enough. You’re not good enough.
“Everything is okay,”
“Did you say something?” Hyunjin calls from the kitchen. He was debating if he should just give up on the idea of making something to eat and just order food.
You could feel your heartbeat getting faster at the notion that everything not being okay, like it would beat out of your chest at any second. You can feel your hands becoming cold and clammy. You slowly wipe your hands on you pant legs, trying to calm yourself down. If you don’t do something—anything to calm down, you’re going to have a panic attack. You need cold water. You quickly stand up, legs feeling like jelly, and make your way to the kitchen.
You walk straight past Hyunjin, who was now finishing ordering himself food, and grab a cup from the cabinet. He pays little attention to you as he focuses on the menu, debating if he should just order dinner as well. He doesn’t see your hands shaking as you take the cup to the sink and fill it with ice and cold water. He doesn’t even look up at you until the combination of your sweaty, shaking hands and the heaviness of the cup makes you drop it, shattering it across the floor.
“Everything is okay,” You can’t even get a cup of water.
Hyunjin rushes to get the broom while you drop to the floor and start picking up the shards of glass. Your heart is beating even faster now, you can feel it in your ribcage, and now you’re breathing quickly.
“Y/N, I got it, move,” Hyunjin playfully pushes you away with the broom except, you don’t budge. Instead your chest tightens and your breathing quickens even more.
“Y/N? Chan hyung!” Hyunjin drops the broom and come next to you as he watched you cut yourself on a piece of glass and still try to clean, finally understanding that everything is not okay.
Chan rushes out of his room at the sound of panic in Hyunjin’s voice. He stops when he sees you sitting on the floor, hyperventilating and holding glass in your bloodied hands while Hyunjin slowly rubs circles on your back. He kneels down on the other side of you and carefully pulls the glass shards out of your hands.
“What happened?” Chan doesn’t take his eyes off you.
“I don’t know! She dropped the cup and started having a panic attack.” Hyunjin says, standing up.
“Where’s Han?” Hyunjin hands Chan a towel for your hand. The cut isn’t bad enough for you need stitches, but it is still bleeding.
“He went out not too long ago.”
“Call him, now. Y/N, hey, let try to take a deep breathe…” Chan now focuses al of his attention of calming you down.
The boys know you’re prone to panic attack, especially when you were stressed. They also know that the only that Jisung is the only one who is able to calm you down if you weren’t able to stop the attack from happening in the first place.
“…Don’t panic, but you need to come home now…It’s Y/N, she having a panic attack…Chan hyung is with her right now but it seems really bad this time…Yeah, okay see you soon. Hyung, Han said to try that 333 thing.” Hyunjin slides his phone back in his pocket before picking up the broom again and trying to clean up the broken glass.
“Yeah, right, okay, um… Y/N, can you tell me three things you see?” Chan was now sitting right in front of you, hand on your wrist stroking a finger back and forth trying to calm you down a bit.
“Everything…is…okay,” You choke out, tears now falling down your face. Chan starts to worry more now. In all the times he’s seen you have a panic attack, he’s never see you reduced to tears. He quickly shares a look with Hyunjin who was now done cleaning the glass and getting a mop for the water.
“Yeah, you’re right everything is okay. Why don’t you just tell me three things you can hear instead?”
“Can’t breathe,” Your breathes become shorter as the pounding in your chest gets even stronger, practically blocking out all outside sounds.
“Let’s just take one deep breathe. Can you do that for me? I’ll do it with you, c’mon,” You try to follow Chan’s lead and take a deep but choke instead and start crying harder.
“Hyung…” Hyunjin softly calls out. He’s one of your best friends and he hates seeing you in distress like this.
“Yeah, I know. Just go wait by the door so you can let Han in when he get here. Y/N, it’s okay. Let’s try that again but slowly this time.” Chan was no longer concerned that you were having a panic attack, but that you might actually make yourself pass out this time. He slight moves his body so that he could catch you if you were to go down.
A few minutes later, Jisung runs into the dorm out of breathe. Hyunjin points to the kitchen and takes the bag that was in his hands. Jisung quickly kicks off his shoes and rushes into the kitchen where you were now full on sobbing on the floor. He wastes no time sitting in front of you and cupping your face.
“Sungie?” Your tearful eyes meet his concerned ones.
“Hey princess, what’s going on?” His thumb swipes over your cheek, briefly breaking the flow of tears. Chan finally gets up from the floor and leaves the two of you in the kitchen alone. He sits with Hyunjin in the living room, making sure to keep an ear out in case he was needed again.
“Everything is okay,” You repeat. At this point, you weren’t sure if you had been telling everyone else that everything was fine or if you were trying to calm yourself down.
“Everything is okay, let’s try to focus on your breathing so that everything can be even more okay.”
“I—I can’t, it hurts. Like my chest is going to explode. I think it actually might this time.” Jisung’s left hand leaves your face and gently lands on your chest with slight pressure. The fact that he could feel how hard your heart was working worried him. He quietly decided that he couldn’t calm you down in 20 minutes, he’d call for help.
“You’re safe here. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He reassures you. Your eyes start to wander around the kitchen, remembering everything you had to get done today.
“I broke a glass…and I still have so much homework to get done.” Your breathing quickens yet again and you cry even harder.
“Hey, just look at me. Forget everything else. The glass is already taken care of and we can worry about your homework a little later. Right now, I just need you to touch my hand. Can you do that for me?” His right hand leaves your face. He holds up next to him, like he’s awkwardly waving hi, and waits for you to touch it.
“Ji, I can’t,” You whimper.
“Yes, you can. I know you can. Just listen to my voice. Take a deep breathe in and when you touch my hand, let that breathe out. Okay?” He slowly takes a deep breathe in and you follow suite. Your shaky hand meets his steady one and you let out the air you were holding in.
“Good girl,” He moves his hand to a new position, “let’s do that again.”
You repeat your actions, taking a deep breathe in and letting it out once you touch Jisung’s, until your breathing becomes less labored. His left hand never leaves your chest, acting like a weight blanket with the amount of pressure he was adding. He was afraid to actually put a real weighted blanket on you in your current state.
“Feel a little better?” Jisung asks, still continuing to have you follow his hand. You just quietly shake your head yes. Your breathing had regulated and your heart had slowed down to a normal pace.
“Can you get up?” You shake your head yes again.
“Okay, let’s get you up so we can take care of that hand.” Jisung gets up first and helps pull you up. He leaves out a hand for you to take. Instead you grab his sleeve and allow him to lead you out of the kitchen.
The two of you walk past Chan and Hyunjin who were quietly talking on the couch. Jisung quietly gives them a look of appreciation and that everything is good before taking you to the bathroom. Once inside he helps you sit on the counter, careful to make sure you don’t see yourself in the mirror. Worried that if you saw the state of yourself, you might start panicking again. You had calmed down significantly, but you were still crying and that worried him.
“Do…do you want to talk about what made you panic? It’s okay if you don’t.” He pulls out the first-aid kit and starts cleaning your cut.
“I”m not good enough,” You simply choke out.
“What makes you say that?” That’a one of the things you love about Jisung. He never jumps to reassure you when you doubt yourself, he tries to understand why you’re feeling a certain way first.
“My thesis is shit and my readers say there is no way for me to fix it in time for submission on Monday so I’ll have to do it during the summer. And I don’t know what that means for graduation next month because we’ve already booked the venue for the dinner and my family already bought their tickets and booked their hotel rooms and if I tell them I can’t graduate anymore then they’ll be disappointed and I’ll be proving them right about every decision I’ve ever made—”
“Breathe, Y/N, just breathe…” He doesn’t even look up as he wraps your hand with a bandage.
“Everything is falling apart, Ji.” He cleans up the first-aid kit and then grabs a clean wash cloth from under the cabinet, wetting it with water from the sink.
“Let’s just take everything one step at a time, okay? You already caught up with all your late work, right?”
“Yeah,”
“And you were just trying to get ahead on your last few assignment?”
“Yeah,”
“I’m sure they’ll still let you walk at graduation and just hold onto your degree until you turn in your thesis. Tomorrow, I will help you contact your school to figure that out. Today, let’s just focus on getting you better. You haven’t been sleeping much the past couple of weeks. Let’s just take the rest of the day to rest.” Jisung takes the washcloth and wipes your face, cleaning the tears.
“But Jisung, I can’t—”
“How about we take a small break and you take a nap? And then we can go from there? I know how much it drains you when you have a panic attack.”
“Okay, just a nap.”
“And lunch, you also need to eat too. We can eat in our room if you want. I got some gimbap and ramyeon.”
“Okay, food and a nap.” Jisung takes you back to your shared room and sits you on the bed. He wraps you in the weight blanket that you two use when one of you are feeling anxious. He kisses your forehead before leaving the room for a little bit.
When he comes back he’s carrying two bowls and the bag he had earlier. He carefully sets the food on the table that you bought so you could work while in bed before sitting down in front of you. He watches as your still shaky hands grab the chops sticks and fail to get any noodles before he slowly offers to feed you.
“Do you want me to help you with your homework? I know I’m not the best with school stuff but I’ll try to help you any way I can.” He says, taking a bite of his own food.
“I think I’ll be fine after some rest, but can you just sit with me later while I work maybe?”
“Of course, anything for you, jagi.”