Work Text:
“Yujun-ah. Do you think we’ll make it through tonight, or should I just cram this entire thing tomorrow and hope for the best?”
Seeun asks the question a little too casually while scrolling on his phone, mindlessly pressing Like on whatever mildly interesting tweets he sees. Yujun—head resting on Seeun’s lap, his own phone in his hand—doesn’t really respond with anything other than a miniscule shift of his shoulders, something that’s maybe passable as a shrug. Anyway, Seeun’s used to it. He knows that Yujun has a penchant for being a little distracted sometimes, so he doesn’t really mind.
“How far have you gotten with your stuff, anyway?” Seeun asks again, expecting an actual answer this time around now that he’s already broken their minutes-long silence. He glances up at the time on his phone—11:43 PM—and sighs in discontent. “Damn, it’s not even midnight. How am I even gonna get this done?”
When Yujun still doesn’t answer after a good five seconds, Seeun finally spares a glance down at his lap to try and figure out what might be so interesting on Yujun’s phone that it’s taking up all of his attention—but the sight that Seeun’s met with certainly isn’t what he was expecting, and it makes all of the gears in his brain switch up instantly, all at once.
Yujun’s eyes are closed, his brow relaxed and unfurrowed, his still-unlocked phone left forgotten and teetering off the edge of his open hand, already partially balanced onto Seeun’s other thigh.
It’s not a sight that Seeun has never seen before—but it never stops gripping his heart in all of these ludicrous ways, making him want to just reach out and touch.
And Seeun can. He can reach out, because of course he can. Yujun has been his best friend for as long as anyone can remember, and there’s nothing foreign about the weight of Yujun’s head in Seeun’s lap, Yujun’s steady breaths against Seeun’s knee, Seeun reaching out to pet the wavy brown of Yujun’s hair. There’s nothing new about Yujun staying into the late hours of the night at Seeun’s house, in Seeun’s bed, the two of them studying with different levels of diligence until they decide it’s time for a well-deserved break. Seeun has seen this scene countless times before, with Yujun finally peaceful after a long day of working a little too hard, no more lines on his forehead and his textbook forgotten on the foot of the bed, next to a half-eaten bag of chips. (Seeun makes a mental note to put that away later.)
And there’s nothing new, either, about the way that Yujun makes Seeun feel. When Seeun’s hand travels down from Yujun’s hair to the exposed skin of his shoulder, Seeun’s palm covering the curve almost completely, Seeun notes how cool to the touch Yujun’s skin feels, wonders if he should have offered him a hoodie to wear over his old, black tank top. Instinctively, Seeun pulls him in a little bit closer—just enough not to startle him awake—and then, his own phone discarded somewhere on the pillows, Seeun’s other hand reaches for Yujun’s phone, taking it gingerly out of Yujun’s open palm. Seeun locks the screen without looking, focusing instead on rubbing light, soothing patterns on Yujun’s shoulder, in sync with Yujun’s breathing, and eventually, his own. Yujun has been so tired, lately; Seeun is just glad to see him still sleeping peacefully, unplanned as it may be.
As it usually happens when it comes to Yujun, Seeun feels a sudden wave of protectiveness coming over him, making him pull Yujun in even closer, and, god—god, what Seeun would give if he could just make sure that Yujun would sleep as peacefully as this forever, and be content and unburdened whenever he wakes up. He’s sure it probably won’t be that comfortable when Yujun opens his eyes and realizes he’d fallen asleep accidentally— on Seeun, at that—but Seeun will tell him to go back to sleep like he always does, or at least give him enough time to blink himself gently awake. Yujun deserves to rest after all the work he’s been doing for school—going above and beyond for classes he doesn’t even really like, and even picking up the slack for group projects that don’t really feel like group projects—and frankly, if Seeun could chew out everyone giving Yujun hell this semester, then he would. But Yujun is just so kind, so pure-hearted and warm, he has so much to be reasonably frustrated about but he refuses to be mean, and really, the world doesn’t deserve him. Seeun has no idea by what grace he’d been granted the great luck of being Jung Yujun’s best friend, but he must have done something extraordinary in a past life, surely. There just aren’t many rewards greater than how easily, how warmly, how often Seeun gets to hold the person he loves.
Just as Seeun is letting go of Yujun to take the blanket and attempt to drape it over his sleeping form, something vibrates in Seeun’s hand. He does jump a little bit, but thankfully, Yujun doesn’t stir—and when he raises the phone in his hand to look, Seeun sees an incoming call from Yujun’s mom.
Seeun looks back and forth between the screen and a peacefully sleeping Yujun resting on his thigh, now covered haphazardly with a blanket and cradled in Seeun’s soft hold. He answers the phone after just two more rings, bringing it up carefully to his ear and answering as lowly as he can, “Hi, Eomma. It’s Seeun.”
“Seeun-ah?” Yujun’s mother asks in a melodic voice at the other end of the line, the cadence of it familiar, so alike to her son’s. “Is Yujunie still with you? It’s getting a bit late…”
Seeun pouts, fond. He looks down at Yujun again, still rubbing slow circles into his now-blanketed shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Eomma, he’s here. He just fell asleep,” Seeun answers politely, smiling as he talks. Yujun’s mother treats Seeun like her own son, too, after all, and the same goes both ways, for Yujun when he’s under Seeun’s roof. “Should I tell him to go home, or…”
“Oh, that’s okay! As long as he’s with you…” she says, her voice lowering in a whisper as well, even if she knows Yujun can’t hear. “Is that alright? Can you let him stay over for tonight? We can pick him up in the morning.”
“Of course,” Seeun answers dutifully, hand traveling up to Yujun’s hair yet again. This time, Yujun nuzzles into it, body curling up more under the blanket. Seeun pushes down the quickening pace of his heart to answer into the phone, “I’ll take care of him, of course.”
“You always do,” comes the resolute response from the other end of the line—and Seeun’s chest floods with this unprecedented, unparalleled contentment. It lingers and spreads, even as Yujun’s mom concludes with, “Good night, Seeun-ah. I’ll see you two tomorrow, okay?”
“Good night,” Seeun just says, still in a daze. After a few seconds of silence, Yujun’s mom drops the call—and then Seeun is left with the same, gentle silence from earlier: just the boy in his arms and the night deepening outside his window, and everything that lets Yujun sleep peacefully, knowing that this house feels like home.
Seeun pulls Yujun in closer for real this time, and Yujun, yet again, leans into the touch. Seeun breaks into a wobbly smile, and then closes his eyes.
Yujun reaches for his hand. Seeun can turn the lights off later.