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Doyoung doesn’t wake up when there is knocking at his front door. Doyoung doesn’t wake up at the sound of his front door opening and closing and the deadbolt clicking into place. He does, however, wake up when Taeyong knocks firmly but kindly on his bedroom door and calls his name. He stirs, mumbles something confused and incoherent, and then Taeyong is opening the door to his bedroom and stepping inside to regard the pitiful sight that is Doyoung, curled up like a crawfish under messy covers at almost five o’clock in the evening.
“Hey,” Taeyong says. “How are you feeling?”
“’m fine,” Doyoung mumbles groggily. He doesn’t bother to lift his eye mask yet, content in his darkness.
“Did you ever get what you need to take your preventative med? You mentioned something the other day about needing something else for it.”
Doyoung inhales and shifts, the blankets tickling his chin. “A sharps container. It was supposed to be in my pickup order. But I can put it in something else for now. Just haven’t done it yet.”
“You need to. You’re already two weeks behind giving it to yourself. You can use a can or something.”
Doyoung had already thought of that. “Yeah, I know. I’ll do it.”
There’s what feels like a pause from Taeyong. “I texted you several times and called you twice today.” He doesn’t sound accusatory, just…observational.
“Oh,” Doyoung says, and now he slides up his eye mask until it rests on his forehead, blinking several times before squinting. It’s five o’clock in the evening in January, so the light is dim, but it’s still enough to hurt his head and eyes. Then again, his head is always hurting. “I didn’t hear it. Maybe it’s on mute. I’m sorry.”
“You haven’t looked at it?”
“No.”
“You’ve been sleeping all this time?”
Doyoung makes an affirmative noise. He can’t really see Taeyong—he hasn’t reached for his glasses and doesn’t feel inclined to—but he knows well the expression Taeyong’s likely wearing. It’s one he wears a lot, especially when it comes to Doyoung. Especially here lately.
It’s silent for a bit. “What have you taken?”
“Migraine med. Eight hundred milligram ibuprofen.” This is routine. Doyoung has a migraine, takes his pills, still suffers. Tells Taeyong, his mom, and his brother what he’s taken when they ask. Lies, sometimes, without even realizing it. It never matters that much, anyway. He still hurts, and he still doesn’t get through the month without running out of his meds even when he takes them conservatively.
Today isn’t bad, though, migraine-wise—or at least it’s better than it has been for the past two days. It’s everything else that hurts, body and otherwise. It’s the emptiness.
“You have to get up and accomplish something, Doyoung,” Taeyong says, not unkindly. “I don’t mean anything big or extensive, just…one small thing a day till you can do more. It’ll make you feel better to accomplish something. Not because you need to be successful or competent, but because you already are, and you’re worth the energy it takes to take care of yourself.”
Another pause while Doyoung processes that.
“I know you don’t have the capacity for much right now,” Taeyong continues softly, always aware of the volume of his voice around Doyoung. “But if you just took a shower every day, did your skincare, a.m. and p.m., brushed your teeth, and made sure your hair was clean once or twice a week, I think you would feel better.”
Taeyong says it so mildly, so nonjudgmentally, so full of love, that it’s impossible for Doyoung to take offense. Still, Doyoung can’t help but disagree.
It’s all so…hopeless.
Maybe not absolutely. Maybe not in the grand scheme of things, the big picture, in consideration of all the moving parts and how much better things could be with policy changes and cultural shifts and decolonization and dismantling capitalism—Doyoung’s not stupid. He knows.
But in his world, where he’s forced to exist and operate in a tiny box, where he doesn’t have the resources to thrive rather than just survive, where the very infrastructure of his environment has made it clear he’s not wanted, not needed, not valued—it’s hopeless.
He doesn’t have the energy to make the necessary steps to tackle the big picture, to be an advocate and activist. He doesn’t have the energy to take the necessary steps to his bathroom to take a fucking shower.
“You’re a person, Doyoung.”
That’s kind of the problem.
“You deserve to be here.”
Doyoung thinks of his overflowing sink, of the countertops on either side of the sink cluttered with dirty dishes. He thinks of the molding oranges in his fruit bowl, of the weeks-old takeout leftovers in his refrigerator.
“You deserve to be here,” Taeyong repeats. “You deserve to take up space. You don’t need to prove your worth—you’re already worthy simply because you are here and human. You don’t need any other reason than that.”
Taeyong is a blurry, shadowy figure across Doyoung’s room, and Doyoung is a pathetic sack of painful skin in a bed.
Doyoung agrees with Taeyong on an intellectual, abstract level. Yes, Doyoung is a human being, and that should be enough. But at every moment of every day he feels like he’s dry drowning. At every moment of every day, everything is bright and painful and harsh and clanging, blinking feels like pressing down on a bruise, and simply standing feels like a full body stretch. He’s dragging body and soul around, and he’s so goddamn tired of it.
It’s not that he wants to die: it’s that he doesn’t want to exist—or at least not as a corporeal being. He thinks it would be nice to be a cloud, maybe a blanket of fog over a still lake in Scotland or a lily pad in Monet’s pond in Giverny. Something other than human, something that doesn’t require any real maintenance, something nature takes care of, and if she doesn’t, it’s not that big of a deal.
Of course there’s a whole ecological aspect to that, too, and a larger philosophical conversation to be had around those ecological observations and implications, and essentially what it all boils down to is that matter cannot exist in a vacuum, and Doyoung, as a thing that has mass and takes up space, matters.
And god, isn’t that a cosmic joke?
“I’m not trying to make you feel bad, Doie. I just…I hate seeing you like this.”
Silence descends again; Doyoung is too weary to nod or speak. His chest rises and falls, an easy tempo against the complexity of what that movement represents.
“If I turn the shower on, would you get in? You don’t have to wash your hair—just bathe.”
Doyoung considers it. He hates having others do things for him, detests feeling helpless and useless and needy, but he hasn’t showered in over a week. Maybe he could if some steps were eliminated.
And it’s Taeyong. If anyone is allowed to take care of Doyoung, it’s Taeyong.
“Okay,” Doyoung agrees quietly.
Taeyong makes a tiny sound like he’s been taken off guard but recovers quickly and says, “Okay. I’ll turn it on now.” He disappears into Doyoung’s en suite. The initial spitting sound of the shower being turned on floats through the open door, and a small, warm light begins glowing. Taeyong must have turned on the vanity lamp Doyoung keeps in there for extra bad sensory days.
“Water’s hot,” Taeyong comments softly as he exits the en suite. He crosses the room to Doyoung’s dresser and gently opens a drawer.
Doyoung grabs his glasses and gingerly makes his way to the shower. Once in, he stands with his back to the showerhead, lets the hot water beat down on him, and loses all sense of time and space. He comes back to himself when his knees buckle from weakness, and he washes up as quickly as he can without agitating the dizziness at the edges of his consciousness. He doesn’t wash his hair, not wanting to tempt fate any more than necessary.
Taeyong left a change of clothes on the vanity—a pair of old boxers worn soft from many washes, fleece joggers that had once belonged to an ex, a long-sleeved KASA t-shirt that covers his knuckles, and a pair of fuzzy polkadot socks his laundry had absorbed sometime in college.
Once dressed and bespectacled, Doyoung follows sounds and smells to the kitchen.
Taeyong has washed all the dirty dishes, even the ones on the counter, and is tying up a garbage bag. He straightens when he sees Doyoung. “I was just about to come check on you.”
“Disassociated in the shower.”
Taeyong nods. “Do you think you can eat? Your bread’s still good—I can make you some toast.”
Doyoung fairly collapses into a chair at the kitchen table. He feels like he’s been working 7 12s in a 200° warehouse and comes home at 8 o’clock every night to solve algebra equations until bedtime.
Taeyong putters about quietly, unobtrusively, and it’s comforting. He sets down a cup of tea and a plate of buttered toast in front of Doyoung and doesn’t wait to watch Doyoung reach for it.
Feeling queasy, Doyoung nibbles on the toast at first, but the tea helps, and soon he’s taking full bites.
Taeyong comes back from taking out the trash. “Want me to wash your hair?”
“How?” Doyoung asks blankly.
“In the sink,” Taeyong says.
Doyoung glances at the sink but can’t see into it from his vantage point.
“I washed it out when I did the dishes.”
Doyoung says nothing to the hair washing, but Taeyong brings shampoo, conditioner, and a fresh towel into the kitchen anyway. “Are you able to bend over the sink?”
Doyoung swallows his last bite of toast and dithers. “Kinda dizzy.”
“I think your counters are low enough you can sit and lean back. I can use the sprayer.”
Doyoung acquiesces, not having the energy to put up a fight. Also, it feels weird for his body to be clean but his scalp to feel like the wet, rotting leaves at the bottom of a pile. He wrinkles his nose at the thought and gets into position for Taeyong to wash his hair.
The warm water feels sensuously good on his scalp. The more it saturates his hair, the more human he feels. The more human he feels, the more he thinks he doesn’t deserve it.
Taeyong washes Doyoung’s hair tenderly. Emotion wells up in Doyoung’s chest and gathers behind his eyelids.
As if Taeyong senses how much this means to Doyoung, he applies more pressure—still gentle but more intentional, lightly massaging the incredible tension all over Doyoung’s head.
Doyoung’s tears spill over, run down his temples, fall into his ears. He cries silently with no change in expression, and Taeyong doesn’t comment on it.
When Taeyong’s done, he squeezes the excess water from Doyoung’s hair without tugging on the strands, then blow-dries it.
Doyoung doesn’t remember a time he’s felt so cared for.
Later, after Taeyong convinces him to inject his preventative migraine med and tucks him into clean sheets, Doyoung thanks him quietly.
“Of course,” Taeyong says, like it’s never occurred to him to do or be anything else. “I love you, Doie.”
“I love you, too, Yong.”