Friday, 10:00 PM
Taehyun has been stressed out for several days now. His chemistry teacher had demanded a specific work that required lots of research and infinite pages of detailed information. And there's nothing wrong with it, not until you look at the deadline: the assignment has to be done in less than a week, otherwise, he won't pass that class. Almost all of his classmates were freaking out and trying their best to finish the project, but nothing could be compared to the effort the blonde was putting into this task.
He had spent four days making intensive research on the work's weird topic and one day organizing the information and presentation. Everything was going south: Taehyun only had a few hours left till the end of the assignment and there was still so much to do. He was currently sitting on the sofa with his laptop on his lap and his fingers were typing aggressively on the keyboard. Every second mattered so he decided he would torture his eyes and spend the entire day looking at the computer instead of enjoying a Friday night out like he normally would.
Beomgyu had watched Taehyun all week. He didn't intend to, but his attention would always make its way to Taehyun and when he saw the blonde boy dragging his feet while walking around the house with a tired expression on his face, he figured the younger hasn't been sleeping or eating properly. And it was obvious that the university was the culprit of his terrible state. Beomgyu knew Taehyun was a perfectionist and had the best grades in his class, so if a teacher gave him an almost impossible task, he would do anything to succeed.
"Taehyun can we go sleep now?" Beomgyu asks calmly.
"No." Taehyun shortly answers, his eyes piercing the screen while his hands danced on the keyboard.
Beomgyu sighs. All he wants to say is "This is not good for you. Your assignment doesn't need to be perfect" but he doesn't, because that would be weird. They hate each other so why would Beomgyu even care about sober Taehyun? With slow steps, Beomgyu walks up to the door.
"I'll be back in an hour. I want you sleeping when I get back." Beomgyu says in a loud tone, however, Taehyun doesn't bother answering back.
He drives to the nearest convenience store, a place he knows so well because it used to be his refuge from all those sad sleepless nights. He doesn't remember when he started to come to this place but recalls the cozy feeling the worker transmitted and since then they've been having late-night tea together from time to time. After parking in the desert parking lot, Beomgyu enters the store and happily greets the person behind the counter.
"Long time no see, Wooyoung."
"That's supposed to be my line..." The brown-haired boy answers with a smile as soon as he hears Beomgyu's voice, his hand reaching the younger's shoulder to give him a sympathetic pat.
"I see you haven't left this shitty job," Beomgyu says with a hint of sadness in his voice, as he knew Wooyoung's true dream was to become a professional dancer and not to work in a stupid convenience store.
"I got no choice, gotta pay my bills... I haven't seen you for so long, I kinda missed you."
"You're such a liar..." Beomgyu rolled his eyes and Wooyoung just smiled in his direction.
"Tell me, are you here to shop or to have tea with me?"
"Tea, obviously."
Wooyoung chuckles and gestures to Beomgyu to sit outside while he went to grab the things. When they were both comfortably sitting on their chairs with a cup of tea in their hands, Wooyoung decides to question the younger.
"You haven't come here for two months now. Have you figured out a way to fall asleep? I can see you haven't those extreme dark bags under your eyes anymore."
"I did," Beomgyu smiles and takes a sip of his tea "Only on Fridays tho. But I think it's starting to make an effect in general because sometimes I go to bed and it doesn't take more than two hours until I fall asleep..."
"That's nice!" Wooyoung says excitedly. "And what's your method?"
Beomgyu scratches the back of his neck "It's a weird one, and I don't have an explanation for why it works, you know?"
"I'm all ears." The older says softly.
"So basically I found myself in a situation two months ago where I had to sleep next to this person because they have difficulty falling asleep in a new place. And I had to hug him. And after a few minutes, I blacked out. And it's been like that every Friday now because we made a deal..."
"That's impressive! Does that mean you can only sleep with someone by your side?"
"I wish but no. It's just him. I've tried with other people before. It's only with him and I don't know why it happens..." Beomgyu says shyly.
"Hmm, maybe it's his scent?"
"He smells like my laundry because we all share the same washing machine and soap."
"The shampoo...?" Wooyoung tries again.
"He and Soobin use the same one. It cannot be the shampoo."
"Maybe his energy?" Wooyoung tries to guess. "You know, maybe you feel safe around him and your brain trusts that feeling so it automatically rests and goes to sleep... I don't know, I'm no scientist!"
Beomgyu doesn't think too hard before answering "I don't feel safe around him. He's the person I'm most afraid of in the world."
"And why is that?" The older asks, confused.
"Because he makes me feel things." Choi tries to express the loose ideas that swam inside his mind.
"What things?" Wooyoung asks, genuinely interested.
"Hatred. Annoyance. Rage. Anxiety. And this irritating feeling inside my stomach from time to time..."
Wooyoung is definitely taken back by those negative words. "What irritating feeling?"
"I don't know! I can't even explain it. It's just there when I look at him sometimes. And I can't ignore it!"
"Maybe that's the feeling of safety I was talking about earlier, you know?" Wooyoung takes the last sip of his tea. "But that doesn't make sense because you also said you feel hatred towards him. You confuse me a lot, Beomgyu."
"I'm sorry, it's just different with him. He awakes something in me and then I find myself bickering with him and sometimes even fighting..."
"I see you can't understand that feeling and neither can I. But the truth is, if he is helping you sleep then he must be good, right? Maybe your head doesn't allow you to think that way, but your heart acts on its own. And it's telling you that it is okay to let your guard down next to him. "
"You don't know anything that you're saying, do you?" Beomgyu raises an eyebrow in his direction.
"Nope, but it sounds right in my head."
Beomgyu laughs "I still hate the shit out of him, tho."
"Yet he scares you the most out of everything in the world."
"Touché" Beomgyu takes his last sip of the tea and gets up. "Thanks for listening to me. I hope you'll find a way out of this lonely shithole."
"I will someday." Wooyoung smiles. "I got a few hours left, you should go sleep now."
Beomgyu smiles back and waves goodbye in Wooyoung's direction. When he arrives at his car, he feels lighter and glad he talked with someone about his situation. He thinks about Wooyoung's ideas while he drives back to the dorm, how Taehyun was always this irritating bastard in his eyes but after that night he became less annoying and more approachable. When Beomgyu gets out of the car, he's immediately greeted by the pitch-black sky and the cold breeze that dances against his face: It's time to go to sleep.
Back at the dorm, Beomgyu looks at his watch: 11:02 pm. He gets in and closes the door slowly, the silence tricking him into believing he's making a lot more noise than usual. And when he looks at the sofa, he's surprised to see no sign of Taehyun, just his laptop on the top of the table.
Weird, he thinks to himself. He takes a closer look at the laptop (Taehyun still has the terrible habit of leaving it without any password and with a timer of thirty minutes to prevent the screen from going black) and finds a Word document with lots of pages and very information, however not completed. It was like the work has been left out close to the end as if Taehyun wasn't able to handle his perfectionism and would rather not deliver the assignment and beg the teacher for one extra day than to deliver something he finds awful and incomplete. Beomgyu takes a better glance at what was written and smiles when he sees what the project is about: the connection between chemistry and a specific potential medical plant Beomgyu has made a project about last year. He looks at the name of the teacher and lets out a bitter laugh. I always hated that man.
Shrugging, Beomgyu walks up to his room and changes to his night clothes, not bothering to go to the bathroom, as he knew Taehyun was sleeping and it was very dark for him to see anything. When he gets to his bed, he notices something weird: Taehyun was laying in a very curled position, hugging his knees underneath the blanket. Carefully, Beomgyu gets closer to him and his heart skips a beat when he sees the blonde's red and wet face.
"Have you been crying?" Beomgyu whispers, even though he knows perfectly that Taehyun won't wake up from his heavy sleep.
The peaceful and angelic sleeping face Taehyun was showing was a cover to all the intense rivers of tears he had cried twenty minutes ago because he felt totally defeated. Everything went terribly and he was too exhausted to finish the assignment, so he just accepted his failure and gave up. It took him much courage and headaches to finally leave the work and crawl to Beomgyu's soft bed.
Beomgyu watches the sorrowful face in front of him and instantly gets that strange feeling inside his stomach he told Wooyoung about. Maybe it was because the blonde looked so vulnerable and Beomgyu felt empathy towards him, or maybe because the ravenette had suffered from that demon teacher in the past, but he decided to leave his room and finish Taehyun's assignment.
Listen, he wasn't an expert in chemistry but had enough information about the plants and access to Taehyun's intense research to finish the work in time. And that's what he did for the last forty minutes, he made use of his writing skills and finished the last part of the project flawlessly, consulting his assignment from last year to change some of the vocabulary to a more scientifically accurate one. And at 11:48 pm, Beomgyu sent the final work from Taehyun's email account.
After stretching for some seconds, Beomgyu goes back to his room and lays next to Taehyun, his arm automatically finding its way underneath the blanket to wrap itself around the sleeping boy's waist and face against his hair.
"Everything will be alright" He whispers and kisses Taehyun's nape, a drowsy feeling taking over him right away. "Goodnight..."
NOTE :
hello there, i'm gonna be busy with my studies for the next few days, however, i'll try to update this story because it's the only source of happiness i have right now (don't worry, i am exaggerating). hope you'll have a nice week!