Work Text:
Like a stain. Like a picture
Like a crack, right down the middle
Like a memory. Just like that.
“What do you see when you sleep that frightens you so, child?”
Halmeoni admonishes the same way she’d lather a balm on Suho’s work injuries: pressing but gentle, hoping to seep the cream into the skin and vanish the hurt almost instantly. This he only realizes now, years after Halmeoni no longer nags at him in this hushed voice, when Suho has to look after her too.
But when he was younger and Abeoji was away for work and Eomma forgot to call, and Suho would thrash himself awake in the middle of the night, and the rustle of his sheets and the echo of his deep, panting gasps were loud enough to wake his grandmother up in the cot next to his-- Halmeoni would chide in whispers, the wrinkles on the plush of her hand soothing along his back and through the bangs plastered to his forehead. She would allow Suho to turn on the star-shaped light his father had plugged into the wall, “just for you,” he’d said. Just for Suho. The shine would scare away the things that scared Suho in the first place, was the belief.
When he’d calmed down enough and his throat wasn’t ice-dry from all his heaving, then Halmeoni would ask the question.
Suho would shake his head because he couldn’t remember. Or maybe he did, but didn’t want to speak of it, afraid to be calling those somethings to come out of the woodwork and. Suho doesn’t know. And-- something. Anything.
The hours would pass and Halmeoni would be bone tired, yawning right next to his ear. She’d have tucked him under the bolt of her jaw where she’s strongest, most fearless and fast. Come to think of it, Halmeoni’d been younger then, not as frail and sickish as now, less mellow but still loving. She’d wrap herself around his small body and hum for the two of them a song of blessings. Blessings bestowed upon them for they know love and love knows them, and all those things that mar and ail and disfigure don’t belong where they are. Suho would feel heavy-- and he would inspire and exhale-- and he’d believe that.
Eyes closing once again, mind full of trips on murky waters and imitation Digimon cards exchanged in playgrounds and stolen pinches of tteokbokki, Suho would drift to sleep somewhere new where he couldn’t see the hauntings from before; instead, he’d dream of a cooling feeling and the burst of lemon zest in the summer.
Nothing like before.
Nothing like the dark he expects to encounter years into the future-- years into the present -- when he wakes up from the most fitful slumber of his entire life. It’s never been like this, his dreams. All Suho did was run towards something, chase after someone, and always miss it-- miss them.
The thing about waking up from this long dream is he’s waiting for the fear to set in when his eyes open against his every wish. Suho longs for a little more sleep-- knows that he could turn his dream around if he just. If he could just focus. He’d search for Halmeoni’s buzzing voice in the old files of his memory and find it, tucked in some corner of it; then would come her cold hands, running along the length of his back, coming up to root through strands of hair for a bug-- the bug to pick out. The dream would change course then, he’s sure of that, if only he could—
Darkness doesn’t come but the disquietude presents itself almost instantly. All around Suho: light and noise and movement and this long screech that makes his heart jump. Where is this? If he tries to move, he feels stiff. The sensation reminds him of the dried-out flies he’d find on the dumpsters in the back alley of the chicken house under the sweltering summer sun. His mouth feels that way too. Suho tries to produce a pool of saliva under his tongue and finds it taxing. He wonders again-- where is this?
A door slides open:
In rushes a woman in a white coat-- a doctor-- his doctor?-- followed by some nurses. She does things to Suho, like informing him with no subtle amount of amazement that he’s woken up from a long, deep sleep, and shining a light in his eyes and letting her nurses pull at the things he’s hooked to-- he takes special note of the oxygen mask they take off his face.
Only after all of that does the doctor speak to him expecting an answer. She first smiles at him like she’s proud of Suho for doing something when all he did was dream and… tells him. Tells him that it’s been over a year, almost two, since he was last awake-- except for that day, a week ago, when he started convulsing. He’d opened his eyes for a brief moment, just for the nurse by his bedside to see them roll back into his head, but the doctor-- Dr. Yoo doesn’t tell him those details, Suho just reads between the lines. And then she asks, “How are you feeling?”
“Stiff.” There is no other answer Suho can think of, except-- “Dry.”
Dr. Yoo grins at him, writing on her clipboard. “And emotionally?” She has this condescending veil on her face, the look of her reminds Suho of Halmeoni and her cushioned berating.
But he’s as honest as he can be without having the time or the drive to process the situation at hand. “Doc, I’m fucking confused.”
“A coma will do that to people, yes.” She keeps smiling at him, keeps jotting stuff down on his chart. “Can you tell me your name?” It occurs then to Suho that she hasn’t addressed him as anything yet, so he tells her his name. And the year he supposes it is after being told he’d been a vegetable for over a year. And yes, he can point to the right and left and forward, and his eyes open and close on command, and his sense of direction is as good as it was before the coma, and. And. “Do you know what happened to you?”
Suho falls silent at the question. Try as he might-- there are only flashes of movements and bursts of sounds. He thinks he remembers blobs of faces. That’s it. So he shakes his head in negation. The movement jostles memories of being socked in the face, voices raving about it, then silence, a slip-- no, a pull-- and a thud. He still can’t make out a single face.
Quickly scribbling the new answer on paper, Dr. Yoo then asks, “And before that, what’s your last memory before the incident?”
That’s shockingly easy. Mostly because it’s a feeling, that sentiment of dread that something was going to happen, whether good or bad. He remembers two sad eyes and a bruise and a promise, and the sound of a door not closing, the thought that those eyes must have been watching him walk away. See you tomorrow, he’d said.
“I went to my friend’s house.” That’s what it all boils down to, the points of interest for Dr. Yoo.
She twists her mouth like she knows something he doesn’t while writing down his answer, then comes a condescending frown. “Allow me to be frank with you, Suho. I had little hope that you’d wake up, even after the seizure. Especially after. Coming up to two years on life support… I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see you awake, finally. You had a lot of people waiting for you.” He doesn’t know why she’s telling him this, thinks she probably shouldn’t have, but it’s already out there so all Suho can do is take the words in.
“One last question,” she says after checking over his body again and repeating some of her repertoire to him. “What’s your friend’s name, the one you visited?”
Another easy answer. Something scary in a different way. The face he’d wanted to see when he opened his eyes, like a surprise, or a promise, because it is tomorrow in a way.
He looks behind the doctor, hoping, wishing, never expecting but just kind of…
“Yeon Sieun,” he says, aching and aching and aching.
Dr. Yoo leaves after telling Suho his grandma’s been informed of his awakening, so she should be here soon. The door closes in front of her lame, sad smile, and Suho is left there-- unmoving and dry and aching, like a dumpster fly in the summer.
Halmeoni comes bearing a seaweed broth neither of them is sure he can eat, but Suho manages to ease her into the idea of a little rule-breaking. He chokes around the persuasion, the realization of two missed birthdays dunking into his stomach less like a punch and more like-- like someone yanking his feet from under him, sneaking. It’s a sinking feeling. An annoying feeling. One he pushes down with big uncontrolled gulps of miyeok-guk.
She doesn’t live in the same house anymore. Turns out Abeoji started to forget to send money just like Eomma forgets to call Suho since she left, and his father’s number keeps going straight to voicemail according to Halmeoni, “So it’s best if I just leave him alone,” she reasons. Suho imagines his poor tiny grandma being homeless, taken forcibly from the comfort of the house she grew roots in, and whatever lick of respect he had left for his dad vanishes. It opens space for that feeling of impotence he used to get when the fridge was more than half-empty and Halmeoni’s little garden wasn’t growing any vegetables.
“This house is better, you’ll see. It is smaller but the soil is more fertile, my beets have never been this sweet, child!” She’s enthusiastic about it, but Suho knows her the same way she knows him: skirting around her secrets enough to know when she’s hiding one, and he finds it in the subtle downturn of her smile, a copy of her grin when Abeoji left them. “Should I grill you some and bring them here, hm? What do you think?”
He thinks it sounds delicious, but not as good as the soups she makes in the wintertime. It’s spring now-- he looked out the window and it seems like the weather is nice enough for a walk. What he wouldn’t give to sit by the river with a drink in hand and the birds chirping above him at this time. What he wouldn’t trade for—
Two bright brown eyes glaring at him in the coldest blue of the morning, assessing. Not weak; untrained. Keep your fists here. Chin tucked.
Suddenly Suho wants thunder.
“Halmeoni…” he starts but doesn’t know how to lead it to where he wants. “Who found me?” is what he lands on.
She looks somber at that. “I believe it was Beomseok who brought you here.”
One of the blobs. Beom-seok. Something Beomseok. His friend Beomseok. Bile burns its way up Suho’s throat; he swallows it down.
“Beomseok-ie,” Suho repeats and it’s off. He decides he never wants to say that name again. “And-- um, was he-- when he found-- just--”
Halmeoni places her hands-- her plush and wrinkled and cold and once-upon-a-time-covered-in-balm hands-- over his, and squeezes. “Your Sieun visits you every day, child,” she murmurs pliantly, but there is something she isn’t telling him.
So Suho prods, “Where is he then?”
“It’s only been an hour since you woke up, don’t be impertinent.” She squeezes again, this time playful, but he won’t drop it. Suho finds her eyes and insists and resists and persists until she breaks. “Suho, you just woke up.”
His heart rate spikes. “It’s bad news?”
“It’s mild news.” Halmeoni sighs, long-suffering. “He-- when you convulsed, the hospital couldn’t reach me. Obviously your father didn’t pick up either. Since he’s here every night, the only other number they could call was your Sieun’s. A truck ran him over while he was on the phone and--”
“What?” Suho leaps forward, as if he had enough strength to get out of bed. For Sieun, wherever he was, he would. He could.
“He is okay, Suho, I talked to his mother.” Despite the reassurance, Suho remains sat up until Halmeoni pushes him to lay back down. “He’s already back to school. It wasn’t severe, but he has to take things slow right now, meaning no more late night visits,” she explains.
He sighs. “Does he know I’m awake?”
“I will call him in a bit.” Halmeoni thumbs at his knuckles. “I didn’t want to presume that you would-- that you’d be okay enough to remember. He wouldn’t be able to take it.”
Neither would Suho. Somewhere inside of him, he knows if he forgot Yeon Sieun, a part of him would miss him. The very core of him would ache, just like this-- even more.
He glances down at the empty container of seaweed soup, imagines it’s warm ox bone broth and an out-of-place emotion burrowing its nose into the barest corner’s of Suho, fitting in.
If he forgot Sieun, the absence would linger: Suho would still remember.
What do you see when you close your eyes that frightens you so, child?
Sieun opens his door and he doesn’t look good. He’s missing the bite in his eyes, the color to his cheeks, and there’s a bruise. Suho hasn’t seen him this small since-- it hasn’t been that long, actually, a month, give or take. Most of that month, Sieun has spent posturing: widening his stance, fist coming up to his face. This is not the Sieun that does that. This is a Sieun Suho only knew from a distance, so standoffish and growing inwards.
But it’s that apprehension when Sieun stares dead into the middle of Suho’s face, that avoidance-- it turns Suho’s stomach the same way Abeoji’s anger would, because it was unpredictable and it fed into Suho’s own. All it would take was a spark to light that fire, one eating Suho from the inside, untamable.
It’s not sickness. It lacks the urge to form fists, but Suho still feels it for what it is: rage.
“See you tomorrow,” he tells Sieun and lets that blinding rage be his guide. Everything around him pulses, and the door doesn’t close behind him. The silence is stifling, punches him right on the gut.
Then the rage pulls him forward. And kicks him right on his jaw. And then there’s darkness. And there’s that thud.
He barely remembers the last spring he experienced.
Before Suho slept for over a year, the country was marking its coldest autumn days to date. He hadn’t been bothered by it. Fall meant he’d get to wear his jacket often, not many people would notice--and therefore, comment on--his repeated t-shirt wears or if he still wore his school uniform to deliver chicken. He was sweating less too, back then, except for when he had to climb up the stairs of those ancient buildings-- or buildings left to perish by the landlords with broken down elevators, like Sieun’s.
Spring had been a slightly warm, cool-breezy affair. That’s all he remembers.
This year, he sees the cherry blossoms shedding their flowers and swaying with the calm gusts of wind, and he feels the pollen tickling his nose and the bugs crawling up the wheels of his chair. And Suho knows he’s committing this day to memory. That bright thing in the sky in its most gentle form, soft and forgiving, and the clouds surrounding it. The cheerful singing of birds as they fly over his head, never too close to graze him but never far enough for Suho to not try to see their colors-- brown and gray and some black and white.
Crashing his eyes into Yeon Sieun’s gaze, one year nine months and one day after the last time.
He nearly can’t believe it. There he is: older and taller and wider, and still Sieun. Suho can just tell. Clever Sieun is still clever and docile and good, and he’s standing ten feet away from Suho in complete silence, just staring, waiting.
Suho has so much he wants to say, but everything feels inadequate, like every sentence he can think of isn’t good enough to utter. In the end. In the end he just keeps drinking Sieun in, the darker tone of his hair, the fullness of his face-- it settles something he hadn’t been aware was loose and makes him ask, “You been all right?”
There’s a breath that’s more like a gasp. Sieun’s whole face opens up and suddenly Suho can’t remember-- no, he knows well enough why he was so afraid, and so angry, and the light in Sieun’s eyes is a good reminder.
“Mhm,” Sieun says.
He feels pinned in place by the intense look Sieun’s giving him. Then Suho looks behind Sieun and feels threatened. “Who are those guys?”
“My friends.” Sieun says it so sweetly and securely that Suho can’t feel anything other than warm, proud. Right in the middle of his chest.
He manages a smile. “Must be awesome.”
And Sieun-- if Suho ever forgot Sieun, if he closed his eyes and had to live in a world where he kept running from something again, he would still chase after Sieun, who smiles at him the way he once did-- over ox bone broth next to a hospital bed, with an unfamiliar feeling cracking Suho right down the middle.
That unfamiliar feeling that burrows further down here, today.
Abeoji woke up at four in the morning to grab the bags he’d left by the door and move to another country where he could make a lot of money. Suho had gotten a kiss on the top of his head, Halmeoni had gotten a hug; both of them had been left behind.
That first morning was awkward, just the two of them. Halmeoni used to let Suho get away with everything, grab his hand when he jumped into the big puddles and shake her head at him fondly. She would chide her son for being so rough with Suho, jut her chin up when Abeoji would get derisive with her, and Suho would hear all of it. “What son, mmm? The one I keep looking after?” Halmeoni loved to ask Abeoji that. She would scowl and raise her voice and for only a minute, Suho would see where that anger he and his father share came from.
But that first morning was spent over shared kimbap and traded cucumber slices for carrot sticks, in complete silence.
Suho would keep calling for his father out of habit, abandoning his plans of sparring to get rid of the built-up energy in favor of bug-catching in the garden, and Halmeoni kept needing somebody to grab things from the tallest cupboards. They both would ignore the other’s slip-up politely, until that routine became the old routine and they created a new one for only two people instead of maybe-three. Suho would climb chairs and grab onto the shelves to pass Halmeoni the fish sauce and she would walk him to the nearest park just so he could, at least, kick a ball with some kids. Sometimes, though, sometimes they would call for him again-- adeul in a long-suffering sigh, abeoji like a song sung at the top of a hill--and they’d have to go back to old habits of ignoring and silent longing.
That was then, when Suho was a child, and now Suho is older and stuck on a routine that no longer can be his. There is a lot to get used to now that he’s back in the world of the living.
Halmeoni walks him through the maze of the new-to-him house she’s been living in for the past year to help him adjust. Suho feels enclosed by the place, sees his childhood fridge in a strange kitchen and the artisanal windchimes Halmeoni grew up with hanging from a door he’s never opened before and wants to cry. He doesn’t. The beets in the garden have sprouted beautiful green tops, and Halmeoni will grill them for dinner tonight.
“Come,” she calls. “This is your room. Hm, what do you think?” Halmeoni is timid in her smile as she unlocks the door, Suho can’t think of a day where he’s seen her be this small before.
It’s closet-sized and not bare. She somehow got his mattress into the room and placed it in the corner of the window wall, where it looks like the sun won’t beam him awake first thing in the morning. He’s got a weak thing of a desk pushed against the adjacent wall, full of cards and deflated balloons, and his school bag, empty.
Suho walks towards the table and picks up a card. Get well soon, Suho-ya! -Haein from 3-E:), it reads. He can’t remember a Haein from 3-E, couldn’t be able to tell if it’s a girl or a guy were it not for the kiss staining the corner of the paper. He drops it back to the desk.
This is his room now. These are walls that haven’t seen him at his worst-- at his best-- during his moodiest days; Suho doesn’t know what the feel of them is like against his aggressive knuckles, they have not been marred by the dents of his anger yet. He hasn’t felt shame under this here ceiling, staring at it with a soaked pillow, uncomfortable underwear, rumpled sheets, questions floating. He doesn’t know where that crack in the paint is from. He has never looked out this window either, hasn’t closed its curtains in annoyance or stared at the pane in wonder before.
But this mattress-- right side sunken in from holding Suho’s weight all of these years-- this mattress has seen everything and more.
It’s all Suho can do to swallow the lump in his throat, find Halmeoni’s restless gaze-- and smile. “It’s great, Halmeoni. Thank you.”
“Baaaaa-kuuuuu. Ba-ku. Baku.”
Next are Sieun’s new friends.
“You do know he doesn’t have brain damage,” angry-not-Baku tells Baku.
Not-Baku-but-with-glass-and-small chimes in. “A lot of people in vegetative state can have brain damage, actually.” He stares happily at angry-not-Baku, and Suho really wishes he could remember their names.
He also wishes he could find his place in the conversation, one that isn’t: “Mm. Not me, though.” That cutting note that stops whatever flow they had going on. It’s not like him to feel so out of his zone, and for a moment, just a brief second of discomfort, he wonders if this is how Beomseok felt.
“Right. Not you,” Baku smiles obnoxiously while the two not-Bakus shove pickled radishes in their mouths. “Either way. I’m Baku. These are Hyuntak and Juntae. And you are more beautifuler up close.”
Suho remembers them standing behind Sieun, smiling all happy for him. He remembers the sickening feeling of he abandoned me before the realization of he came to get me hit him right after. Even though Suho missed the last almost two years of Sieun’s life and he wouldn’t get them back-- even though Sieun couldn’t give either of them the last year and some months of Suho’s-- Sieun came to him. The same Sieun that would do his best to keep Suho further than arm’s length in the beginning, the same Sieun that stood in the early morning weather with him in just a shirt and sweatpants with his loose fists held up and that bite in his gaze-- the same Sieun that pleaded with his eyes and Suho said see you tomorrow to and the same Sieun that Suho left--
He sits next to Suho today, empty hand brushing against Suho’s chopstick one, in his usual silence.
“You are so stupid.” Hyuntak frowns at Baku, effectively popping Suho out of his bubble. “Stop fishing for compliments and eat your food. Sorry about him,” he says to Suho. “He’s a handful.”
Baku gawks at him. “You have your hands full of my balls.”
“Whoa!” Juntae gasps, scandalized and wide-eyed, while Hyuntak and Baku pull each other’s ears. Turning his scarred gaze to Suho, he meekly says, “I apologize for their behavior. They… they are usually like this, but you get used to it, I promise!”
Suho feels like he’s made of plastic when he smiles back. “Can’t wait,” he says. Juntae goes back to eating his food, using the other two as his live entertainment, and Suho lets himself breathe out.
Until there’s a knock of a knee against his, and he turns to find Sieun staring at him. What is it? Sieun mouths at him.
Mm. Nothing.
Sieun pushes. What is it? Sieun never pushed before.
Suho swallows down a lump. I’m serious.
The thing about only knowing Sieun for a month before the coma is that Sieun also knew him for a month. And the thing about a year-long coma is that Suho missed every lesson on how not to be somebody Sieun knows like the back of his hand.
Sieun drops the topic and a piece of chicken thigh on top of Suho’s half-empty bowl of rice. “Eat,” he says out loud, deep and commanding and familiar, like stacking cans of soda in a fridge.
“You eat,” Suho says, unable to keep the smile off his face, as he shoves a chicken leg in Sieun’s mouth. The consequential grin comes with a blush and that’s enough for Suho to find his footing again, to regain that comfort he’s been missing.
There’s no getting used to Sieun today. He’s the same boy he’s always been.
Fighting with Abeoji was always rough because it was unpredictable.
Suho liked the days where he could step out barefoot to the backyard and feel his toes digging in the dirt as he waited for his dad to come out of the house. The sun would lick sandpaper-like over his skin and leave his cheeks flushed, infused with summer, and Abeoji would turn on the hose to refresh the two of them. Then in a pool of mud, they’d wrestle.
Abeoji had this boisterous laugh and he’d growl as he tackled Suho into a mud pile. “Just like the pigs,” he would say before snorting like one, and then the wrestling would evolve into a tickling match. Abeoji attacked the ribs, Suho always went for the armpits.
Sparring was different because Abeoji took it seriously. When he threw punches at Suho, it didn’t feel like a joke-- he’d remind Suho of the rabid dog they’d watched the neighbors put down before, salivating and craze-eyed. The difference between his father and Kuki was that the dog wanted to bite; Abeoji waited to be bit. He’d say, “Come on, kid. Show Abeoji what his son is made of,” and taunt Suho forward, sneering at the hesitation in his step. “Be a man , Ahn Suho. Or did I raise something else?” For some reason-- there was that trenchant clap and ridiculing smirk-- and for some reason it made Suho jump. Like Kuki.
Charging fist-first toward his father, Suho would yell like a Spartan and Abeoji wouldn’t care. He’d laugh until it stopped being funny, and he’d jab and kick at Suho until Suho felt tears coming out of his eyes. No amount of begging to stop or calls for a time-out would be enough, Abeoji would just say, “What? You think a fight stops just because you cry ?” and push him hard. Panic would spread through Suho but above all, there would be rage. That anger that comes with knowing better and being unable to do anything other than worse. He’d keep punching and jabbing and scratching until the match turned into something serious, until Suho started to say things he didn’t mean to say and hear things he wasn’t sure Abeoji really meant. He would still be crying, just wounded and hurt in every way possible, and then Halmeoni would come out of the house and reprimand Abeoji.
“He’s a child , Sooyeol. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Suho would see his grandma’s sweet hand clench by her sides, the fire in her eyes.
Abeoji would still be incensed. “He’s a child now and a man always. He needs to know how to fight like that-- like a real fucking man!”
Suho would run back inside the house and slip into Halmeoni’s cot, hide under the thin blanket and hope they would stay outside long enough for him to fall asleep.
He doesn’t have anywhere to hide in Sieun’s bedroom, which is also new. Not that Suho ever got to see Sieun’s room at his father’s place, but he supposes it couldn’t have been that different from this one-- except maybe for the pictures.
Youngyi poses the closest to the camera, flashing a peace sign; there’s an eye mid-blink peeking from the upper right corner and Suho recognizes it, wishes he didn’t. In the back, it’s him and Sieun, smiling shyly at the camera. Another photo: just Sieun and Suho, one that Youngyi took during one of their after school outings so Sieun and Suho are still in uniform. He remembers that day vaguely, just flashes of running around the city trying to find a decent sushi bar to satisfy Youngyi’s cravings and shut her up. What he remembers most is the exhaustion and the overwhelming warmth of Sieun’s forehead pressing on the knob under his nape, the touch of the back of his head against the top of Sieun’s, and the exhilaration of-- the moment. The casualness. How at peace Sieun sounded with his heavy breathing against Suho’s shirt.
He remembers closing his eyes to the sky. And a thud. And a thud. And a thud.
Three thuds he’s been trying to fight since before then. Three thuds he’s trying to fight now-- like real men do.
He clears his throat, moves on to another corner of the room. “Is it better here?” Suho finds an edge he can drag his finger across, only stopping when he notices the pink pillow he used to bring to school leaned against the wall. Thudthudthud. “Than at your abeoji’s, I mean.”
“My mom is here so that’s different,” is Sieun’s reply, which means nothing to Suho other than no, no it’s not better here but it’s not worse either. “Want to play?” There’s a Switch on Sieun’s hand. The answer is a very enthusiastic yes.
Abeoji wanted Suho to be a fighter so that when somebody tried to mess with him, Suho would let them know to think it through. All that focusing on when to kick, how to jab and duck, what parts to punch-- it made Suho an awful strategist. Now he’s sitting in a bed with Yeon Sieun like it’s normal when it’s not, and they are so close, and Suho has to fight this.
“Hey. What’s up with you?” Sieun asks him after a while.
Suho’s been shifty, he knows, and he keeps staring at the side of Sieun’s face like he’s going to find a new freckle there-- like he’s finding the right spot, the right angle for something. “Mm. Nothing,” he says like usual.
“Really?” Sieun pauses the game and grabs the remote from Suho, who lets go easily. “I’m not doing this again.” That’s a jab.
Duck: “What are you talking about?”
“I ask what’s wrong and you say it’s nothing when something is clearly bothering you.” Sieun frowns. “Since you woke up you’ve been-- I mean. I understand it’s hard for you because you-- you missed so much but-- and I get that! But--” He throws a punch: “You don’t tell me things. You’re cagey. You weren’t before.”
So Suho, through the cry in his throat and over the thudthudthud he can’t ignore, keeps fighting it. “Sieun. I’m serious, it’s nothing, just… adjusting, is all.” He clears his throat, finishes him: “You wouldn’t understand.”
A silence they didn’t know before blankets the room. It’s like the hush that falls over a match when one of the fighters stays down for too long, when the referee fusses and the coach comes in. Suho supposes in this scenario he’s the fighter that stands tall with his bloody face and swollen lips over the loser. He has to watch the unresponsiveness and force himself to be proud of it. This is the prize he won-- the money and the hurt. It’s unsettling like nothing else.
Sieun never stays down for long. He twitches. He fights back in a way Suho never did and never will.
He stares wet-eyed at Suho with this pinched look on his face. Says, “No, Suho. I don’t understand what it’s like to wake up two years in the past,” with utmost tranquility, right between the thin gap between his teeth. It sounds like a warning bark.
Here comes the bite.
“But I know what it’s like to live every day for two years wondering about you. If you’ll wake up; if you’re okay wherever you are. If you remember me.” A tear falls, his or Sieun’s, Suho doesn’t know. Maybe both. “I wasn’t asleep with you, Suho; I was next to you, asking for forgiveness and hoping you’d at least open your eyes. I was always right. here -- alone. Waiting for you. Do you understand that?”
Careful and nauseated, Suho inches closer on the bed. He notices a shake in his hand when he reaches up to wipe his own tears away and convinces himself it’s the adrenaline of the match, the anger that he-- he lost. He lost and he has to admit it. But he doesn’t have to say it to anyone else, it’ll be a secret of his own, something else to keep close. Close like Sieun next to him on the hospital bed the first time, ox bone soup spilling in a plastic bag and the thudthudthud seeping through the very skeleton in Suho’s body, rattling it. You are so warm : Suho thought it. Then Suho said it-- vexed. The eyes the voice the spoon and the napkins. And that thud.
He sniffs, taking in the sight of Sieun tearing up with the same slow permissiveness he did in the hospital’s field. “I-- I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” Sieun all but spits out all his hurt in that sentence. “I want you to talk to me.” He’s pleading, voice wavering halfway through; Suho’s never heard him like this, not with him.
The view strikes him breathless too. Suho saw Sieun for the first time after two years of having his eyes closed and being dried up in fear and the first thing he felt were his lungs expanding and deflating in relief. He felt that sigh working its way out of his throat, felt himself turn it into an exhale and a brief smile. Some sort of instinct whispered to him a warning of carefulness, to choose fight over flight. He got it when he looked at Sieun’s grown-up face and took in the breadth of his shoulders and the tight apprehension in his eyes, when Suho blinked, in that darkness-- thud.
And he forgot why when he opened his eyes again and Sieun-- shy and alight in the blossoming spring weather-- dared to smile back at him. This tiny imperceptible grin that Suho’s thought about an immoderate amount of times since then. And thud. And thud. And thudthudthud.
That day Sieun sat next to him for only a minute, his new friends loitering somewhere in the yard, and briefed him on everything he’d missed-- the important notes of it at least. And he said with no small amount of satisfaction, “The Union’s down. No more fighting for us,” happy while Suho struggled to understand if that us included him as well.
“So can you please just-- talk?” Sieun begs. “Say anything. Whatever you want. I’ll listen.”
He decides today that it does.
Suho closes his eyes for the duration of a sigh. When he opens them again, there’s no sharp pain to his jaw or the feel of his feet swept under him or the frightening obscurity that shakes the very foundation of him. There is just Yeon Sieun, who left his grey sweater next to Suho’s hospital bed one day and never took it back, looking at him-- waiting for him, just as he does. Yeon Sieun, who needs to know: “I’m tired of fighting, Sieun-ah. I’m so tired.”
“You don’t have to!” Sieun hurries to say, eyes lighting up. “Like I told you before, the Union--”
“No, not just that.” Feeling indulgent and brave like his Halmeoni’s grandson who reaches the tall shelves no matter what, Suho finally takes Sieun’s hands in his own. They’re cold. He remembers them being cold in the cafeteria that first day, accidentally brushing his knuckles against Sieun’s trying to steal a piece of kimchi from his tray. Same boy he’s always been.
Sieun sits stock-still.
“I’m tired of fighting myself.” He squeezes Sieun’s fingers once-- twice-- three times, to the rhythm of the feeling that’s been simmering in his chest. “Do you understand that?” Suho asks. And it’s his turn to wait.
The answer is simple. It’s right there on the new wall Sieun stares at when he’s bone-deep exhausted from studying. The wall that covers him like a fort on his moodiest days, his saddest days; the wall that’s heard him whisper and laugh, and maybe even yell and cry and moan. The wall Suho and Sieun are pinned to, right there between friends and family in different frames. It’s a new wall, Suho supposes, but it already knows so much about Sieun that Suho didn’t have the opportunity to learn. The only thing he’s got left is to uncover it.
So he lifts the veil. Waits for Sieun to admit it.
He squeezes Suho’s fingers back. “I do.”
(Leaning in, Suho watches as Sieun’s eyes flutter closed and only hesitates to do the same for half a beat.
The press of their mouths together, how easy it was to find the right fit-- the feel of Sieun’s stuttering sigh against his Cupid’s bow-- how Sieun’s hand shakes in Suho’s, the blunt ends of his fingernails digging into the palm-- this relief right here. That’s what Suho will see the next time he closes his eyes, and it won’t scare him at all.)