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He’s running.
The world is a technicolour blur of sound and sunlight around him, and he’s running. In the only way he knows how. To the only place he knows where to go.
Sieun is running home.
His friends are keeping a steady pace behind him, the quick, heavy sounds of their footsteps pounding in tune to the thumping of his heart in his chest. He’s moving so fast he can barely see where he’s going. All he knows is the feeling in his chest, the magnetic pull of true north calling for him.
Sieun’s legs burn. His lungs are about to collapse. He has this funny feeling like he’s running backwards through time, like every step he takes sheds another day off of the year he’s spent stuck in endless, horrifying limbo. He’s 16 again. The past is flooding his eyes and ringing in his ears. He hears Youngyi sobbing on the phone, poor Suho, he hears sirens and Beomseok’s hollow you should understand me, too, and you must be his friend, Sieun and see you tomorrow and most of all he hears that voice. His voice, his birdsong.
Yeon Sieun. Come home.
When he finally reaches the entrance to the hospital, he’s worried he might collapse right there on the pavement. Baku reaches him first, panting heavily and clumsily coming to a stop beside Sieun.
“Where,” he gasps, bent over with his hands on his knees, “is he?”
Gotak and Juntae come bounding in right after, crashing into one another in their hurry to stop so suddenly. They all have the same open and expectant look on their face, like this means as much to them as it does to Sieun.
Sieun doesn’t say a word, just starts moving again. He’ll be in the garden, the nurse had told him on the phone. His grandma took him out for some fresh air. He has no fucking idea where the garden is, but there’s that feeling in his chest again, that pull that tells his feet where to go. He pushes past patients and nurses alike. He’s desperate now, almost crazed with urgency. He might vomit if he doesn’t slow down but he can’t and he’s running he’s running he’s still going he’s almost there and—
And.
Suho.
Quietly, almost without notice, that dark, festering hole in Sieun’s heart closes itself up. Finally, it sings. Finally. His whole body burns with warmth. Oxygen deprived and half delirious, he’s almost worried he might melt through his clothing, the ground, he’s so warm. After a year in the cold, he’d forgotten how overwhelming the heat can be. How much the sun demands to be felt. And here is his sun, just a short distance away from him, and Sieun can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but stop and look because he’s there.
Suho is there.
He’s perched in a wheelchair in hospital garb, a grey hoodie thrown on over top—my hoodie, he realizes, and his heart gives a painful lurch in his chest. Suho is turned away from him, still unaware of his arrival but it’s okay because all Sieun wants to do right now is look.
Suho’s hair is longer, curling softly at the base of his neck and around his ears. The dark strands are blowing softly in the wind, and Sieun’s hands twitch with the urge to reach out and touch, to run his hands through Suho’s hair and imprint the feeling of its new length into his skin.
He looks smaller, thinned out after a year of his muscles atrophying slowly and detrimentally. It breaks Sieun’s heart a little, but he grits his teeth and tells himself it’s fine, it has to be, he’ll build it all back. Sieun will make sure of it. He’ll give him back everything he lost, even if it kills him.
The warm, honey-golden April sunlight pools around Suho as if it’s magnetised to him. It gives him a soft, ethereal look, like he’s glowing from the inside out, and Sieun has the sudden, deranged fear that this is all just happening inside his head. He’s still sat on the bench beside the basketball court, he’s sure of it. Any second now Gotak will throw the ball too heavily against the net so that it rattles loudly and Sieun will snap out of it. Just one more minute, he thinks desperately, just let me pretend for one more minute.
And snap out of it he does. But when Baku’s warm hand lands gently on his shoulder and gives him a shake, he’s still looking at the same thing. He’s still seeing Suho. He blinks, once, twice, but the image doesn’t change.
You’re real. His heart thumps so hard he’s really starting to worry he might die before he makes it to Suho at all.
“Go on,” Baku says quietly. Sieun can hear the smile in his voice. He’s so grateful to have him here, all of them, at his back, keeping him steady and pushing him forward.
Sucking in a breath, Sieun forces himself to take a step forward. Then another. And another. And then, amazingly, inexplicably, Suho turns his head and oh.
His eyes. He never thought he’d see those eyes again. Awake. Looking at him. Sieun’s knees want to give in. He wants to fall to the floor and sob until his lungs give out. He wants to rip up the grass and scream and scream and scream but he can’t because Suho is looking at him.
He has the same inexplicable look in his eyes, soft and fond, like nothing has changed, like a year and an eternity and a completely different life haven’t passed between them. Like they’re still just Suho and Sieun.
Sieun watches, frozen, while Suho drinks him in. It’s earnest, almost hungry, the way he looks at Sieun from top to bottom, like he’s afraid to miss something. The force of his gaze takes Sieun’s breath away. He’d pictured this moment a thousand times, in a thousand ways, driving himself to madness. Nothing could’ve prepared him for the actuality of it, the surging in his blood at the sheer amount of want that spills out of Suho’s stare.
He gets that feeling again, like he’s going to overheat and burn up. Icarus tumbling to the ground with his wings on fire.
Suho opens his mouth to speak. For a second, Sieun is deathly afraid. He’s not sure what he’ll do if Suho doesn’t remember, if he has to watch his pretty, chapped lips mouth the words who are you?
“How’s it going?” And there’s his voice, low, raspy from disuse, but still his voice. That voice that Sieun would follow anywhere. Eurydice trailing Orpheus out of Hell. This time, no one will look back. This time, they go home.
“Good,” Sieun says, or tries to say. It’s more of a soft huff, because he can’t quite get his throat to unstick itself. Can’t quite remember how to form words. Suho’s eyes are smiling at him, so he thinks he understands.
They just stare. Drinking each other in. Somewhere in the near distance, a bird sings and quiets. Somewhere else, another one sings back.
Suho’s eyes flit behind Sieun. “Who are those guys?”
Oddly enough, Sieun is taken by surprise. After months of telling Suho about his friends in messages, he’d somehow forgotten that Suho wouldn't know them, that they’d be strangers to him.
“My friends.”
Something changes in Suho’s expression at that. He looks suddenly lighter, less weighed down, as if something he’d been worrying about had slipped away from off his shoulders. Just awoken from a coma, and Suho still has the gall to worry about how Sieun is doing. If he was alone.
Sieun missed him so fucking much.
“Hmm,” He hums lightly. “That’s good to see.”
Silly, Sieun thinks. Why are you worrying about me? And he suddenly can’t take it anymore, standing so far away. Something in him snaps forcefully and he’s moving again, almost tripping in his urgency to close the distance between them.
When he gets there, he can’t help it, he leans down and throws his arms around Suho’s neck. Suho lets out a soft oomph from the force of it, and Sieun starts pulling back in horror, afraid he’s hurt him. But Suho just wraps his arms around Sieun’s waist and pulls, so that Sieun falls heavily into his lap.
“Suho-yah.”
“Hi.” Suho says, breathless. “I missed you.”
And Sieun breaks. The sobs tumble out of him without control, loud and ugly and more than a little embarrassing. He buries his face into the warm crook between Suho’s neck and shoulder, trying and failing to quiet himself down. Suho’s arms tighten around him, almost painfully, like he’s trying to fuse them together until there’s no difference between where Sieun ends and Suho begins.
“I thought–I thought you’d never–” Sieun chokes. He can’t get the words out. His throat burns.
“Yah, how could you think that, huh?” Suho’s voice, right next to his ear. “You know how much I love to sleep. It was just a long nap, that’s all.”
“You–you weren’t–I couldn’t reach you–” Nothing makes sense. Words are falling out of his mouth without thought or coherence but somehow, Suho knows. He always knows.
“It’s okay.” He chokes out. “Sieun-ah. I’m here now.”
For a while, they just sit like that, wrapped around each other like interwoven threads. Sieun feels tears start to drip onto his neck, slipping down and soaking into his shirt collar. His heart feels raw and heavy with the effort of both breaking and stitching itself back together.
Eventually, Suho’s hand comes up to tug gently on Sieun’s hair. He lifts his head, and the sight of Suho’s red-rimmed eyes and tear-streaked face starts Sieun into fresh tears all over again.
Suho lifts both of his hands to cup Sieun’s face gently. They shake as they do so, in a nervous, hollow sort of way, like a bird with broken wings.
It’s too much. Sieun is so tired, suddenly. He’s half scared his nervous system is going to force him into deep sleep again.
“So pretty,” Suho murmurs. His skin is soft and warm on Sieun’s face, fingers light and twitchy. “Even when you’re crying like a baby.”
“Fuck off,” Sieun spits out in a choked garble.
Suho laughs and pulls him in and oh god. How did he go so long without hearing that laugh? How did he survive at all?
“I’m sorry,” Suho’s thumbs brush carefully under his eyes to wipe his tears away, laughter still bubbling in his voice. “I won’t make you cry anymore, okay? Promise.”
But there’s a dam inside Sieun that won’t close or stop or cut off. A year’s worth of tears rushing forward to be let out. He knows he’s being embarrassing, that he’s making everyone around him uncomfortable, but the sobs keep wracking out of him. He doesn’t know how to stop.
“Yah, Sieunnie, you’re breaking my heart here.”
And Sieun can’t have that, can he?
“Okay,” He chokes himself off, leaning back to wipe his nose on his jacket sleeve. “Okay, I’m sorry, I’ll stop now.”
Suho tugs him in again, gently, until their foreheads knock together. Like this, all Sieun can see is Suho. The pretty curve of his mouth. The soft peak of his nose. Those eyes he dreamt about and was afraid to death he’d forget. His world down narrows to this boy in front of him, this part of him he thought he’d lost forever. His heart beats a steady rhythm. Suho Suho Suho.
“Hey,” Suho whispers, and his breath blows softly against Sieun’s mouth. His skin tingles. “Your friends are staring at us.”
Sieun jolts his head back in surprise. He’d forgotten. “Oh,” he chokes out.
Sheepishly, he turns around and sees his friends standing where he left them, a few paces away in the green grass. Gotak is leaning up to whisper something in Baku’s ear that puts a wolfish, cheesy grin on his face. Juntae has a look on his face like he’s holding back laughter. Great, Sieun thinks, his face flushing red, I can’t wait to hear about this later.
Clearing his throat, he extricates himself from Suho’s lap. When he stands, Suho’s hand snaps out to grip onto his sleeve tightly, like he’s afraid Sieun might disappear. Sieun carefully puts one of his own hands over Suho’s and squeezes. I’m here.
His friends come bounding towards them like puppies, all smiles and fondness and excitement. Sieun is surrounded by so much love, he thinks he might start sobbing again.
“Hi!” Baku shouts. “I’m Baku. This is Gotak, and Juntae,” He swings an arm around each of them excitedly. “We’ve heard a lot about you, Ahn Suho!”
“Too much, actually.” Gotak coughs under his breath.
Suho turns towards Sieun, a smug grin on his face.
“Oh?”
Sieun turns his head away indignantly. The tips of his ears are bright red. Laughter bubbles up from all around him, his past and present melting together like liquid gold. He listens to them all, Baku, Gotak, Juntae. Suho. Feels them all around him like planets orbiting the sun.
Home, he thinks. Finally.