* ♪ – quiet when i'm coming home, and i'm on my own
joomi doesn't know if it's better or worse that he still sees jinyoung every day.
it might be worse. somehow, going home with him most days for just a couple months was enough to become something he has to unlearn. some part of him still waits, at the end of every training day, to not have to go home alone.
there's something exhausting about it: the constant expectation and disappointment of going home by himself. when he gets home it's almost always dark, sua in her room, whether she's asleep or awake doing something. he usually just takes a shower and goes straight to bed these days; he needs at least an hour to stare blankly at his ceiling before he can manage to get any sleep. he stays as late as he can at training, too, so desperate to postpone the reality of sleeping alone for as long as he can.
it's pathetic. that's how joomi feels: pathetic. even knowing why jinyoung is distant – even understanding it, he's still pathetic. he's still pining and sad and he thinks he would be fine if he could just hold his hand again. he doesn't even need to fall asleep with him like he used to. he'll take anything.
it's just that he can't help but think about him when he's trying to fall asleep alone. he's being dramatic. he tells himself that over and over, but still can't shake the feeling of being so completely and utterly alone. he tries to remind himself: even if he doesn't have jinyoung, he has the dead calm boys, and ren and dohyun, and other friends that matter to him, but...at the end of the day he's still alone. he's always been alone. it's nothing new, and he was fine for years by himself. why is it different now?
he thinks of that night after next gen, when jinyoung tried to bake away his emotions and they awkwardly sat on the couch together with cupcakes in the oven, and he asked him if he could hold his hand. joomi said something then, about how in his saddest moments, he would've really liked someone to hold his hand. maybe that's it, then: two months of always having someone to hold his hand like he always wanted, without knowing he always wanted it. now that it's gone, he feels it.
tonight, it's like an extra weight on his chest, crushing. he stares at his ceiling and doesn't know if he's ever felt so empty or so stupid. somehow, closing his eyes makes it worse. he can't breathe, and he feels like the only person alive in the entire world. he sits up in his bed, hoping that will fix something. it doesn't.
i don't want to be alone, he thinks to himself. ren or dohyun would probably be fine with him calling them and going over, but he feels bad, and he doesn't want to take a fucking train or bus at fuck-o-clock in the morning while on the verge of an emotional breakdown.
sua is here, though. god, he doesn't want to bother her, but he also feels physically incapable of laying here by himself any longer. so he slips out of bed and out of his room, then just sort of awkwardly stands there in the hall outside.
he could just sleep on the sofa instead. that sounds slightly less terrible, but he really just wants to sit with someone. he doesn't know if he even wants to talk. he just wants a concrete reminder that he isn't alone in this world.
he runs over what to say in his head, and stands outside of sua's bedroom door for far too long. eventually, he gathers the courage to open it.
"sua..." he calls. "i'm, um...kinda going through something right now...and i just...don't want to be alone, i think. will you just...come sit with me for a while?" he is so pathetic. he trusts sua, though; he doesn't think she'll say no.
