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Sometimes Yuta touches Sicheng just to make sure that this is real - that Sicheng really is this close to him. It's just that sometimes it all seems too good to be true, and Yuta finds that good things are rare.
He admits it one morning when it’s just the two of them in Sicheng’s bed. Sicheng shifts the tiniest amount to make room for him in the single bed, and then they lie still, listening to footsteps in the apartment above the dorm, like they're waiting for something.
Yuta can't tell exactly what Sicheng might be waiting for. Yuta is waiting for Sicheng to make the first move, but he doesn't. Instead, he watches Yuta carefully from under his eyelashes, like he's calculating how long it will take Yuta to give into temptation and touch him. He knows Yuta too well, but that’s okay. Yuta is at peace with it all.
He reaches out and takes Sichengs hand, thumb stroking at the pulse point on Sicheng’s wrist softly.
He feels no familiar pulse at first, so he moves his thumb, presses more firmly and waits until he can feel the beat below Sichengs skin. “Definitely alive.” He grins. “I'm just making sure you're really here.”
He says it like its a joke, because it is a joke, at least partially. Most of the time.
Sicheng contemplates this. Says, “Maybe this is a dream, though. Can you be certain we're real?”
Yuta raises an eyebrow. “You should pinch me so that I can be sure.”
Sicheng shakes his head. “I won't do it.”
“Ah, that’s what you’d say if this was a dream.” Yuta smiles. “If you weren’t real, you couldn’t pinch me.”
He leans in closer and whispers, “I’m onto you, Dream-Winko. Can’t fool me.”
(This is ironic, of course, because Yuta feels like a fool every time he wishes for more).
There's a bang from somewhere outside of their warm cocoon -it’s probably a car backfiring in the street below, or a chair knocked over backwards in the kitchen by one of the other members. It’s nothing to worry about, they know that, but it startles them regardless, and Yutas grip on Sicheng tightens for a quick second.
Sicheng’s smile turns into something even prettier, then, because he is laughing now; it’s a silent laughter, the sort that shines in his eyes and the pink of his cheeks and shakes his chest an amount so tiny that Yuta wouldn’t be able to tell if he weren’t pressed as close against him as he can be.
It’s the kind of smile that makes him look even more beautiful that normal. Because thats possible. Yuta marvels over this fact every day, because Sicheng is always beautiful but sometimes he’s more.
Yuta lets go of his wrist and lets his touch wander, absentminded fingers trailing up Sicheng’s arm slowly, tickling the soft skin on the inside of his elbow, reaching as far as he can before the damned t-shirt Sicheng is wearing gets in his way.
He tries to take his time. And, it’s a cliché, Yuta knows, to feel like he’s memorising every inch of him - but he’s also found that it’s near impossible to not become a cliché when he is this in love, and honestly, Yuta stopped caring about being a stereotype a long time ago. Fuck it all, he doesn't care, even if he knows that he should care more, maybe he should be being more careful, maybe he's going to end up unhappy and disappointed and another type of cliché all together.
(Maybe none of this is real at all.)
It feels real, though; warm skin under his fingertips, a curious gaze watching him, intense and unreadable as ever. Yuta’s hand stills at the side of Sicheng’s neck, and he nips Sicheng’s earlobe between his finger and thumb. “Cute,” he says.
Sicheng has that fond look in his eyes that Yuta hopes is love, but he doesn’t dare ask, just in case it isn’t, and he’s wearing the lazy half-smile, mouth turned up at one corner, that makes Yuta want to kiss him in public sometimes, when he shouldn’t be thinking about that (but he always is).
Sicheng reaches down, between them, then, and pinches Yuta’s thigh with his own thumb and finger, once - apprehensive - and then a second time, harder. His hands are warm from being under the duvet all night, but it hurts a little regardless, in the way a pin-prick does, just for a fraction of a second, but it’s worth it. Sicheng’s touch always is.
"You asked me to do it,” Sicheng says when Yuta flinches. He's obedient like that and it's hot and it's frustrating, and it just makes Yuta love him more. If that’s possible.
“So we are awake after all,” Yuta murmurs and relishes the sting of Sicheng’s touch as he slides a hand over the soft hairs at the back of Sicheng’s neck. Sicheng keens into his touch, eyelids fluttering closed, and if Yuta could stay in one moment forever, he thinks that maybe it would be this.
Yuta sighs quietly then, presses his forehead against Sicheng’s and whispers “I wish…”
They stay like this, nose to nose, until Sicheng whispers, “What are you wishing for?”
But Yuta doesn’t answer, because he isn’t sure how, or why he even said it. He wishes a lot of things - for Sicheng to love him, for Sicheng to want him, for Sicheng to always be there. For this to be real, always.
“It won’t come true if i tell you,” he says, and then he waits, as patiently as he can (and it’s difficult, so difficult), for Sicheng to kiss him first. He always waits for it, like it’s a sign that Sicheng feels exactly the same if he initiates anything more. It’s not, though. Yuta has fucked enough people he didn’t love with every fibre of his being to know that it means nothing at all really. But it might mean something, and he’ll hold onto that for as long as he can.
Sicheng kisses him, and Sicheng lets Yuta ball his free hand into a fist at the hem of his shirt and to tug it over his head, and he lets him kiss the hot skin underneath his clothes.
He closes his eyes and smiles and says, “more,” and he makes soft breathy noises that tear Yuta apart. The sort that make Yuta sure that, even if all of this ends, it won’t matter, because these moments are tangible. They’re happening, right now and no one can take that away from them.
Yuta wears the tiny bruise on his inner thigh from Sicheng’s pinch as secret a badge of honour and he marvels at it later, stares down at his thigh as he showers. Maybe it’s fucked up that he likes that it left a mark, he thinks. But maybe he's fucked up by falling in love with someone he wasn't meant to, anyway. And maybe Sicheng loves him back, and maybe he doesn't, but he's still there, on quiet mornings, wearing a look of pure warmth that Yuta is almost certain is love, and that will have to do.
“I hope the wish you made comes true, hyung,” Sicheng says, days later, when he should have already forgotten about the throwaway line. And he really means it, Yuta can tell. Sicheng's hair is mussed up from rehearsal and his mouth is soft and Yuta reaches out and smoothes down his hair, just because he can, and thinks about how beautiful he is.
And, for now at least, it’s still real.