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Suho takes to Sieun’s friends like a duck to water.
Which isn’t surprising, really; everybody loves Suho. He and Baku immediately get into the stupidest shenanigans, Gotak joining them more often than not as they exhaust themselves trying to reproduce moves from animes -be it fighting or basketball. The only thing that stops them from dying their hair purple, same colour for both, is Gotak laughing at how stupid they’d look painted like two dumb Teletubbies.
Baku is an important factor in Suho’s recovery, always eager to go through exercises with him, which sometimes isn’t so good, cause both of them have a smidge of competitiveness. More often than not, they ask Sieun to play referee, which he never does and Juntae ends up doing with genuine enthusiasm. It’s in those kind of moments Sieun can’t believe Suho woke up.
Suho is different, though not as obviously as one would expect. The Eunjang band can’t notice the little changes as they never knew him before, but Sieun can. He spends most of his time watching Suho, anyway, albeit the reasons vary from an irrational fear of him disappearing into thin air to an inability to stop looking at him, so filled with life and brightness. Thus he sees the small shifts that indicate something happened. Sees how Suho withdraws into his own thoughts sometimes, his hand rubbing at his temple or pressing into his thigh where wounds still ache, not only physically.
Sieun always keeps an eye on him, but certain demons can’t be fought.
Sieun himself has undergone change. He’s quicker to smile, quicker to accept affection, especially from Suho, as if refusing a hand on his shoulder would mark the end of this dream he’s been in since his friend woke up. Only a few weeks have passed, not enough to adapt to this new reality.
His mother spends time with him, lives with him, asks after him. It’s all he has ever wanted for 18 years.
Sieun hates it.
Though a part of him is grateful for her being part of his life, it does feel too radical. Going from one obligatory dinner a month where she mostly talked about her job and looked at her phone without inquiring about him at all beyond the question of grades, to having her in his life 24/7, it’s simply too much.
Suho waking up does change things.
The comments about fighting stop, for one. About his friends, too. She has long since given up hope that he would study overseas, but now that he is better and nearing the beginning of college and adult life, she does seem to consider the option of her leaving for the job she had lined up in the US.
Which is good, obviously.
But it also feels like she believes Suho waking up cancels everything that happened. She starts fading into the background like she did before, and Sieun knew that overwhelming attention couldn’t last. She could not keep up the pretence to be interested in her son, and Sieun has known that all along. He is glad to have more freedom, less of that judging, concerned gaze on him.
Still.
Sieun loathes feeling like this, glad and disappointed, angry and sorry for himself like a child.
He hates feeling like everyone disappears.
He hates knowing Suho will disappear, too. Once they graduate, and Sieun will have no one anymore, his friends having moved on to better things, Suho having a job to hold onto. And Sieun. Probably far. Most certainly alone.
But that’s a problem for another time. For now, he will selfishly take everything given to him.
And he will do his damn best not to lose it.
That said, there are necessary discussions to have and events to explain.
Although Sieun would rather throw himself out of the window, he knows Suho will -probably already has- found out about what he did after he was injured. He has been kind enough not to mention the uniform, the transfer of schools, but Sieun does feel his gaze sometimes, lingering on the Eunjang colours, jumping between Sieun and his friends.
He ponders for a day, two, and takes the opportunity when it presents itself in the form of his friends’ absence, a walk -on crutches- for Suho, and their eventually sitting down on the park’s stone steps so he can catch his breath, crutch laying at his side.
Suho hasn’t been very vocal about his frustration with the length of recovery. Yet again, he’s doing extremely well with it, quicker than anyone expected.
“Do you still think about it ?”
It’s an abrupt beginning, but there is no kind way to broach the topic. Besides, Suho doesn’t seem all that fazed, head tilting towards him with a hum, bronze in the grey weather.
“Which part ?”
And Sieun can’t say the words.
“At the gym,” is all he can manage, quiet despite the flatness of his tone.
“Ah. Sometimes. Difficult not to once you realise how close you were to die. Especially when you’re stuck in a hospital bed most of your days.”
Stupid question. Sieun wraps his arms around his knees, brings his chin to rest on top of them. Suho himself is leaning back on his elbows, one leg bent and the other stretched before him to rest.
The picture of quiet confidence. It is more attractive than it has any right to be in such a situation.
“But I shouldn’t. You shouldn’t, either.”
The intervention takes him by surprise, as Suho is still not looking at him, and Sieun doesn’t think -really hopes- that he didn’t give the impression of being burdened by the event. He is, but that’s his own problem to deal with.
“It happened,” Suho keeps going. “I’m here. No use dwelling on it.”
Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem convinced by his own words. Sieun knows he can’t move on, not yet. It’ll take a whole lot of time -and a whole Suho, recovered.
Remains the original matter at hand.
A shaky breath he hopes Suho can’t hear, and then Sieun finds the courage that evaded him for so long.
“What I did. After you… What I did to them.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I don’t regret it,” he says, fingers tightening to a white-knuckle grip on his bones as he struggles for words. “I don’t. But I want you to know, you should… I’m so sorry, I…”
“Sieun-ah.”
The tone makes him look up.
Since he woke up, Suho has been talking to him softer. He has been more gentle with his affection, though he remains his boisterous self.
He looks soft as ever now, hair down and lips parted on a small, anchoring smile. His eyes, God how Sieun missed those eyes. The way they follow him everywhere. Suho’s hands are freshly calloused when one lays on Sieun’s forearm, leaning into his space like he has always done, except the atmosphere seems charged, heavy with things unsaid and waiting to be spoken aloud. Sieun isn’t sure he can.
“You don’t have to explain,” Suho breathes, and this time Sieun understands.
Still, he lets his gaze jump from eye to eye, searching for the answer to a question he never dared ask.
Do you forgive me ?
Sieun has never been known for his ability to lie. Once Suho wormed in the most private confines of Sieun’s mind and heart, there was no way out. He has learned his expressions, he has learned to read him like Sieun never thought possible. And he is a better liar, used to putting on a front for others.
He doesn’t now, though, face open to Sieun’s gaze. It seems so easy to do on him, moulds his features so genuinely.
“You never need to be sorry to me,” he tells him in a whisper. “Not for anything.”
But I do, remains on his tongue, unable to get out because the sound has gotten stuck along his throat.
Sieun blinks back tears, the past year’s weight sinking onto his shoulders, bending his spine, his nape, making it hard to breathe.
“I should have told you,” he says, almost a sob.
He’s unsure if he’s talking about what happened or why it did.
“Stop that,” Suho chides, but he squeezes Sieun’s forearm, slides his grip to his shoulder right up to his neck.
With a little pull, he brings Sieun’s forehead to rest on the curve of his shoulder. And Sieun has always known, intimately, terribly, that he was safe with Suho. That he would do anything to protect him, and that nothing could ever reach him as long as their friendship held strong. That’s the reason he went to Beom-seok in Suho’s stead.
He has missed this sense of safety as well as the certainty that accompanies it. Ever since Suho went into a coma, life has been like walking a tightrope; a missed step and the empty would await beneath. Now, he has found his axis again.
Breathing is easier when the warm scent of Suho’s skin fills his nostrils with each inhale, when his strong body holds him up so effortlessly, as if he could do this all his life.
“I’m proud of you.”
Suho says it nonchalantly, light in tone and attitude, but the words still hit Sieun right in the chest.
“What’s there to be proud of ?”
With an exasperated shake of his head, Suho pushes Sieun’s face away, and then ruffles his hair.
“Just take the compliment.”
He does. Sieun is not good with words, or with friendship, but he does take the compliment, and is more grateful for it than he could hope to express.
Having Suho back, Sieun wonders how he could ever have kept on going without him. It feels easy as breathing to hear him laugh, to watch him stuff his face, to be on the receiving hand of jokes and nicknames Sieun wouldn’t be caught dead having.
The scarcity of their meetings is hard to deal with at first. They have no choice but to meet at the hospital, after Sieun’s classes and according to both visiting hours and physical therapy sessions. Afterwards, it becomes easier to see each other more frequently with his release from the room, but it remains difficult, considering Suho’s inability to walk freely and the distance to his home. Finally, the most expected upheaval happens.
As soon as the doctors declare him fit for regular physical exercise, Suho gets a job. His old job as a waiter, actually, where he’s welcomed with teary eyes and biting words. He does give up the scooter for now, opting to get readjusted a bit before risking it. It sits in the garage at his grandmother’s house.
His boss recommends him to the coffeeshop next door, and so Suho works there in the morning, and at the barbecue place in the evening.
“It’s a nice balance,” he tells Sieun while this one is holding his feet, hands wrapped around his ankles.
He’s touching naked skin, which is annoyingly distracting. Suho keeps on speaking without noticing.
“Grandma doesn’t like it, of course, but I told her I would go insane if she forced me to watch one more talkshow while peeling garlic.”
It’s almost as if Suho was never hurt at all, with how easily he goes through a 100 crunches, his face coming up too close to Sieun’s every time, minted breath washing over him as he exhales.
Sieun hums.
It’s only when Suho finishes his reps and has trouble getting up, huffing and frowning at his own impotence, that the remaining echoes of his injuries become impossible to ignore. It hurts to see him, usually so effortless, lose balance as he walks to the bench, not even noticing Sieun observing him.
Sieun is all too familiar with the consequences of school violence. Baku’s haunted gaze as he rubs a finger over his busted knuckles, Juntae flinching away from a reaching hand, Gotak, unable to play when thunder rumbles in the distance and his knee starts aching. And Suho, most of all, Suho having physical therapy, Suho having to grab the back of a chair when he gets up too quickly, Suho’s left knee buckling under too much weight when he carries carts at his job.
Sieun is not unaffected, either, no matter how hard he pretends to be. First, the insomnia hasn’t stopped simply because Suho woke up. When he does manage to sleep, it is often plagued by nightmares, or memories. He doesn’t know which are worse.
For at least the third time in the same minute, Sieun catches Suho rubbing at his knee. His face betrays nothing, but that’s meaningless; it’s not unusual for him to hide pain or discomfort, especially from Sieun. Which he hates, by the way, but that’s another matter altogether.
He lets a frown pull his brow down, and addresses Suho a critical glare.
“Did you have physical therapy ?”
“This morning.”
Goddamnit, he thinks, doesn’t say. Instead he does something that has Suho whooshing out a breath; he gets on his knees. Before either of them can think this through or comment on it, he hooks a hand around Suho’s knee, fingers splayed to hold as much of his leg as he can.
After prodding a few places to check where to put pressure, he starts digging his digits in the hard muscle. Suho makes a choked noise in the back of his throat that does things to Sieun.
He bites the inside of his cheek. Careful not to look up and meet Suho’s wide eyes, he keeps working at the muscle squeezing and pressing his thumb between nerves, the left occasionally jumping under the touch. Focusing on the sole goal of bringing him relief, Sieun goes up, up, digs into his thigh. He is more cautious around the place he knows Suho still feels his old injury, brushing more than pressing. Though he tries not to let his mind wander, part of him is patently aware of their position, the heat beneath his palms. The thick material of the sweatpants does nothing to hide the shape and hardness of his thigh, not when Sieun is actively pawing at it. Despite the undeniable rush of desire tingling at his groin, the situation is more about intimate comfort than anything else.
It is hard to remember that when he drags his gaze up, and is met with Suho’s pink cheeks, teeth biting at his lower lip.
“Better ?”
His voice is hoarse. It’s too late, but he clears it nonetheless, unsure where to look.
“Yeah,” Suho answers back, a croak more than anything, so Sieun doesn’t feel too bad about his own inadequacy. “Thanks.”
It comes a bit too late, a noticeable missed step, but Sieun nods. He’s still looking up from his knees.
Only when Suho’s leg spasms in his hands does he realise he’s still holding on.
Slow, deliberate, he lets his grip fall, and gets to his feet as if nothing happened. His heart is beating too quick in his chest.
“Don’t overdo it,” he commands sternly. “It’s counterproductive.”
As if in a trance, Suho nods, tight-lipped and wide-eyed.
Sieun clenches his hand once, twice, trying to chase away the heat burned into his palm. It’s no use.
Oddly, it’s Sieun’s idea.
His mother being out of town for a week means going back to the loneliness of his apartment every night. Maybe he should be glad of it. He’s not.
Most of the times, opening the door and finding only dark silence behind it only sends him back to before. There’s no need to define that looming before.
So on the third day, a Thursday, Sieun comes home; doesn’t bother to turn on the light as he goes to his room, and promptly drops his bag. He sits on the foot of his bed for a while, the quiet whirring of the fridge the only audible thing in the apartment, feet flat against the floor, eyes adjusting to the dark.
Then he picks up his phone, and he sends a message to the group text he was “forced” into a while ago now by Baku. The answers are immediate, and overjoyed, and one very simple “who are you” from Suho that makes him smile in the intimacy of his empty room.
Sieun lets himself fall back onto the bed, eyes almost blinded by the brightness of the screen as he brings it up too close to his face.
His heart skips a beat when Suho’s name appears.
Months of sending vain messages to the contact name, and never receiving an answer, has turned this mundane thing into an extraordinary one. Every time his screen lights up with an incoming text from Suho, it seems surreal.
U good ? That a cry for help ?
Sieun is glad no one is home to hear the fondness in his huff of laughter.
I just thought it would be a good thing.
The second he sends his answer, his phone begins humming to the unfamiliar ring of a call coming in. Sieun stares at it for a second.
Presses on the green button.
“Are you having an existential crisis over there ?”
His voice sounds just that shy of distorted, but strong and present in a way most things aren’t these days. Sieun closes his eyes, presses the phone harder against his ear.
“Why did you call ?”
“You ungrateful bastard,” Suho scolds, but he sounds amused despite himself, so Sieun doesn’t bristle. “Don’t pretend this isn’t wildly out of character.”
“The apartment is empty. I figured it would be good to give some peace and quiet to Baku’s dad, for once. No one is using it anyway.”
There is a pause, filled with something Sieun can’t discern and Suho doesn’t give voice to, and it remains incomprehensible. When Suho speaks again, there’s no trace of it in his tone.
“So you’re sacrificing your own peace and quiet ? Be warned, the moment they know you’re alone there you won’t be able to go to the bathroom without a gaggle of ducklings trailing behind you.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
Regret digs its claws in the instant those words leave his mouth. But he has been trying… He has been trying to be better at this. Friendship. Accepting the terms themselves and letting them take shape, both in his mind and out loud.
“No, it doesn’t,” Suho eventually says, so soft Sieun shuts his eyes tighter, imagines him in the room with him, laying at his side and whispering in his ear, the warmth of his breath on his ear shell.
What he wouldn’t give for him to be here right now.
The worst thing is, he knows he could ask. He could ask, talk to him about the emptiness and the irrational fear of people disappearing into thin air, the nightmares of Suho slipping through his bloody fingers, about his mother being but a shadow on the walls, and Suho would drop whatever he has on his plate and come running.
Sieun can’t allow that, of course.
“But it does feel like a radical jump.”
Unsure how to address that, and still a bit lost in the tangles of his thoughts, Sieun simply hums. He lets the silence stretch until he understands Suho is not gonna let him off the hook as he usually does, not about this. With a sigh, Sieun eventually gives the only answer he can at this point:
“I’ve never done things by half.”
False bravado as a defence mechanism, something he learned from Suho.
“That’s true.”
Again, too soft. Too genuine. His heart is constricting in his chest to the point of wondering if he has a medical issue.
“You’ll come, then ?”
Why does he feel so anxious of the answer ? Why does it have him holding his breath ?
“Of course, wouldn’t miss it for the world. I have to see the look on your face when you get invaded by those hooligans.”
“You’re one of the hooligans.”
“I’m different.”
Yes, he is. His tone is confident, even though he stays silent after that. Either to bathe in the lack of rebuttal, or to kick himself for saying it.
Sieun dearly loves all his friends, of course, yet Suho will always be special.
Suho is not only his first friend. He is Sieun’s first love.
And he can feel it wash over him now, heat at his collar, his socked feet flexing in the air, stomach churning in a way he has come to appreciate for what it is. He is Sieun’s first love, and Sieun would rather be his last.
A part of Sieun regrets ever allowing the idea of friends to take root as soon as he opens the door on the screaming group. Various plastic bags are brandished in his face, a few clinking suspiciously, Baku pushing his way past as a conqueror invades the lands he just won.
So. Strong start.
Stronger follow up, friends moving around the place like they own it, getting food out of the bags on the kitchen island and, after lots of bickering, on the coffee table; bottles get stored in the fridge, and Sieun blinks at how many appear and disappear. An elbow jabs him in the ribs, and only then does he turn his attention on Suho, still hovering beside him at the threshold.
He looks good. As always. But the hair, barely-wet from a previous shower, a bit messy at the back, the relaxed slope of his shoulders underneath the usual jacket, the socked feet as he toes off his shoes, the yellow light of the apartment shaping a golden crescent moon at the edge of his irises, it all makes him look soft. Soft enough to touch, to hold, to worship. Sieun does none of those things, evidently.
“Regretting it yet ?” Suho taunts him, but his mouth is smiling and his eyes are crinkled and Sieun would let his place be destroyed before turning away from that sight.
“We’ll see.”
With a playful scrunch of his nose, Suho passes by him to let Sieun close the door. When he turns back, the guys are already settling around the coffee table, foregoing sofa and chairs in favour of sitting on the ground, bickering and slapping hands that creep towards the bags of chips. Suho places a bottle that Sieun hadn’t noticed on one side of the table as they join the circle. It’s At Sieun’s raised brow, Suho shrugs and sits down with some groaning.
“Wasn’t sure you drank alcohol.”
Sieun stares down at him. They have never drunk together, that’s true, though Suho has taken the occasional beer in his presence, but Sieun was goaded into it by the misfits currently trying to kill their livers.
The thought that Suho remembered. Brought something to be sure he could drink. His stomach is a mess of feelings and butterflies climbing up his throat.
“Perfect transition !” Gotak screams -way too loud, making both of them jump. “Never have I ever tried soju !”
From where he’s pouring beer and soju in worryingly unequal proportions, Baku snorts.
“Everyone here has, you moron.”
“You try it, then.”
Easy challenge, more easily met. Sieun barely has the time to sit down as well, on Suho’s left and besides Baku, before this last slams a glass before him and smiles something wicked.
“Never have I ever smoked weed.”
Everyone drinks, Sieun excepted. And from there it’s simply a downward spiral.
They do steer clear of the fighting, avoiding questions such as who has already broken someone’s nose, etc. Gotak makes good use of his personal knowledge of Baku’s worst shames, and gets asked stupid things in return that make them both gulp down soju like water.
Sieun knows how to weaponise his inexperience, and to get the others drunk quickly, though none of them need any help in that regard.
“Never have I ever cheated on a test,” he announces when it’s his turn.
Surprisingly, Suho doesn’t drink. At their questioning glances, he shrugs and leans his weight back on his hands.
“Why would I ? I never needed good grades.”
“Amen to that,” Baku says, raising his shot glass in a toast. “Never have I ever smuggled alcohol in school.”
“That was involuntary !” Gotak defends himself with wild gestures that almost knock the glasses off Juntae’s face. “I didn’t know it was alcohol…”
“Still counts. Drink up, buttercup.”
Sieun’s lips tilt in a smile at the nickname before he manages to push them back down. Not that any of them would notice, as distracted as they are. Sieun is also distracted, albeit for a very different reason.
Suho is warm at his side, close enough to touch, his posture making their knees almost knock together. His shirt has followed the momentum, too, and is leaving nothing to imagination as Suho is stretched backward like this, the elegant arch of his body exposed to Sieun’s greedy eyes. Sieun’s hand is burning with the need to lay over his jeans-clad thigh. Just lay there, without further intentions, simply resting on Suho as if he has the right.
A bout of laughter shakes him awake. Loud and impossibly alive, Suho is throwing his head back, throat pulsing in time with his laugh. Sieun wants to taste the melody of it with his mouth, trace the notes taking shape on his lips, swallow the sound into himself and keep it nestled there safely.
Maybe he’s had too much to drink.
“Never have I ever kissed a girl,” Juntae says, and Gotak rolls his eyes as he brings the drink up to his mouth, taking a huge gulp.
Baku and Suho follow soon, Sieun remaining still, his fingers clenching around his glass.
He knows Suho has, of course. Look at him. Most girls in high school were sending him DMs, leaving things at his desk, asking him up to the rooftop. And although he sometimes complained about it after they became friends, he must have accepted a few advances.
“Very well, smarty pants,” Gotak starts, turning his eyes to slits with a menacing smile.
Juntae seems to regret his choices.
“Never have I ever kissed a boy,” he says, victorious, his finger already pointed in Juntae’s face as he blushes and pushes his glasses up.
Everybody -bare Sieun, in true fashion- hoots and whistles when Juntae takes a shy sip, looking away from Gotak. Baku yells at Gotak that questions are supposed to be something you haven’t done, and Gotak shrugs, looking all too pleased with himself as he scoots closer to Juntae, and drinks as well.
Baku knocks his glass back, Suho takes a slow sip, and Sieun seizes the opportunity to discreetly drink.
The effort is wasted; Suho’s eyes snap to him. Both questioning and astounded, his voice is thin when he wonders :
“Sieun-ah ?”
The trio is busy fighting each other about… something, he supposes, so Sieun turns his upper body to Suho and raises an inquiring brow, wordless.
“Alright,” Juntae suddenly exclaims, cutting short what Suho was about to say and drawing their attention back.
The mischievous glint in Juntae’s eye doesn’t bode well for any of them. And indeed, he tilts his chin up with anticipating pride, and declares grandly :
“Never have I ever kissed Baku.”
“Fuck you,” Gotak says good-heartedly, finishing his drink as Baku laughs, sharing a look with Sieun before going back to annoying his friend.
They don’t notice when Sieun brings the glass to his mouth. Suho does, though, his gaze having remained on him the whole time. Through rapid blinks, he glances between an oblivious Baku jabbing his elbow into Gotak’s ribs and an impassible Sieun. It’s not hard to keep a straight face, because Sieun isn’t sure how he should behave right now.
Does he owe Suho an explanation ? Was he supposed to take that secret to his grave ? Suho has kissed boys, too, he drank. Sieun is not asking him for receipts. Though he does want to, kind of. Who and when and how far did it go. Was it before or after they met.
It wouldn’t change a thing.
Suho gets quiet after that, eyes lost in the empty more often than not. They keep changing games too fast to ever get through the rules, Baku and Gotak fighting so loudly Sieun makes a mental note to apologise to his neighbours tomorrow.
His attention keeps drifting to Suho, though. All the way until this last grumbles an inaudible excuse, stands up, and leaves the room.
Sieun hears the sliding door of the balcony open. He forces himself to remain seated, and is soon rewarded with Baku’s hand punching at his shoulder then tugging at his arm.
“What ?” He grumbles. His friend packs a mean hook.
“This !” Baku exclaims.
He tears poor Juntae’s phone from his hands, earning a yelp, and brandishes it into Sieun’s face, who avoids a broken nose by recoiling as fast as his reflexes allow.
“We don’t get the rules.”
Gotake laughs, sluggish, and falls against Baku’s side.
“You don’t get the rules, beluga brains.”
“Fuck all the way off,” is snapped back.
“Do you really need the rules ?” Juntae speaks up shyly. “You don’t follow them anyway.”
“There’s my genius,” Gotak coos, doesn’t seem to mind the blush that sparks on Juntae’s face as he leans back into him, poking his cheeks with weird noises.
Something in Sieun tugs. Aches. Envy, maybe. Affection for his friends. Who knows.
He takes another sip of his water, and feels good about his choice as he looks at the messy group before him.
His apartment is suddenly a very different place.
Suho has gone out on the balcony a while ago, and Sieun keeps looking over his shoulder hoping to see him reappear.
Baku is the first to fall asleep, right there spread out on the couch, his shorts riding high on his legs, still in his jacket, one sock missing. Gotak chortles as he draws an approximation of whiskers -they’re too wavy-, and then he falls asleep right there as well, one leg thrown over Baku’s torso. Sieun shakes his head, and goes to get enough blankets for them all. He throws one over the sleeping duo, biting back his amusement at the way they curl together under it. He does take a picture. Nobody needs to know that.
When Juntae, blinking sleepily behind his glasses, starts to clean up, Sieun waves him away.
“You can grab the bed, if you want.”
Juntae shakes his head, rubs at his eye.
“It’s ok,” he whispers as not to wake up the guys.
He doesn’t think anything could wake them up, to be honest.
“I’ll sleep here,” he tells Sieun, pointing at the mattress they previously unrolled in a rare bout of foresight.
Maybe he should fight him on this. But the sound of a room with Suho alone sounds… Good.
If only the man himself would come back to share said room.
“Ok,” Sieun simply says. “I’m going to find Suho.”
“Yeah,” Juntae smiles, already getting down on the roll. “Good night.”
With a nod, Sieun grabs what he can, and what’s most likely to be knocked over, from the living room and tidies up in the kitchen.
Finally, he goes to the balcony.
Suho is standing there, looking out into the dark. He’s not smoking -he never did, always saying “an athlete must protect his lungs” and punching Sieun in the arm when he answered with “why do you talk so much then ?”-, just looking away. The light from the inside corridor shivers on the glass when Sieun opens and closes the sliding door behind him. Suho doesn’t turn.
“They’re asleep,” he starts with, because he doesn’t know what else to say, isn’t sure what the problem is.
When that earns him a sole “mmh”, Sieun buries his hands in the pocket of his hoodie and comes join him at the railing.
There is nothing to see, to be honest. Dozens of lights, if that. It is pretty late, and the neighbourhood is mostly residential. Sieun turns his attention back to Suho’s profile. Leaning his elbows on the railing, he’s dressed in a simple black shirt, rendering him almost a ghost in the darkness of night. Almost intangible.
The insane urge to reach out and check he’s well and truly here rises in Sieun, but he clenches his fists and resists. A part of him wants to ask if he’s ok. A bigger part knows Suho will talk when he wants to.
And he does.
“You surprised me. Inside, I mean. During the game.”
That’s a very odd place to start. Sieun would like to enjoy the idea of him surprising Suho, for once, but if this is the result, he’d rather choke on glass than do it again.
“When ?”
Suho exhales sharply through his nose, his lips twitching as if he’s willing them into a smile that doesn’t want to appear.
“You and Baku.”
A pause, as Sieun is waiting for an explanation. When he sees that’s the extent of it, he moves a bit closer, blinking.
“What about me and Baku ?”
Another exhale.
“I didn’t know you two were… you know,” he trails off, and Sieun doesn’t, so he just tilts his head. “I understand why you wouldn’t date Young-yi now,” Suho chuckles.
As far as chuckles go, it’s a badly faked one. The sound grates on Sieun’s ears.
He’s still not looking at Sieun. It’s starting to set his nerves alight with anxiety. Sieun doesn’t like not understanding things, and though he now realises the event that set Suho off, he still has no idea of the reason itself.
It is frustrating, but Sieun pushes the negative emotions down, unwilling to taint this moment.
“It was after Na Baekjin’s funeral,” he starts explaining, and that gains him Suho’s undivided attention. Sieun hate himself a bit for the thrill that rushes down his spine at that.
“He was drunk, and he tried to hide it, but he was sad. He was just… I was there. He didn’t want to kiss me,” he adds, because he can’t say it didn’t mean anything when it clearly meant something to Baku.
Not in a romantic sense, not towards Sieun. But it clearly was quite important. Sieun never asked after his relationship with Baekjin henceforth. Could see the shimmering reflection of it in his own history with Suho.
“That’s worse,” comes the unexpected comment, blurted out without restrain.
“How ?”
“You’re not… you’re not some replacement. You’re not less than that asshole was, or… I mean, if someone kisses you they should want to kiss you, not some memory of a dead guy.”
Against his will, Sieun feels himself flushing some, the heat under the collar of his shirt climbing up his throat and cheeks. Suho has straightened up, his hands tight around the railing, and Sieun looks at them as he resists shifting his weight from foot to foot. God, but Sieun isn’t used to feeling flustered.
“When you talk like that-” he cuts himself off with a shake of his head, mentally slamming a door shut and straightening. “You shouldn’t talk like that.”
“Well” Suho shrugs, a tentative smile emerging, “you know I never do as I should.”
Ah, and his eyes are finally on him, unmoving, unshifting. Glittery like stars on the ocean’s surface. Sieun reaches for Suho’s arm, unsure of what he’s going to do; probably lead him inside so they can go to sleep and blame this on the late hour and the alcohol.
“I got your texts.”
Sieun freezes mid-movement. An irrational kind of panic takes hold of his guts, and he looks for anything to become a distraction, knowing perfectly well they need to have this conversation.
He has no goddamn idea what to say, though.
Apparently, Suho isn’t waiting for an answer.
“They’re the first thing I did on waking up. I immediately wanted to call you and then…”
And then all those confessions. All those apologies and fears and shame, all those shadows of his day-to-day, the regrets he could never utter out loud but laid out on a screen. His feelings, bare.
Sieun feels faint; like he hasn’t since he was a child. And yet he can’t move, can’t speak.
“All those things you said…” Suho starts, interrupts himself with a long breath. “I wish you would say them to me now. I wish you would tell me…”
What ? Sieun has so many things to tell him.
Suho drops his head backwards, and breathes out into the air. Sieun remains frozen, the fear having melted away but uncertainty locking his body in place.
Suho looks so stunning under the moonlight.
“I was so lonely before you,” Suho chuckles to the sky. “Then I saw you and I just… Is it stupid to say it was a coupe de foutre ?”
“It’s coup de foudre,” Sieun corrects on impulse, and Suho snorts, letting his head come down to look at him.
Before he can speak to mock his nerdiness, Sieun grabs at his face with both hands and kisses him.
Though he makes a startled noise, his hands immediately surge to his waist.
This is the only way to tell you, Sieun thinks, setting too quick a rhythm, desperately trying to convey what he can’t with words. If the way Suho kisses back, slowing him down but readily responding, is anything to go by, he understands. The grip at his waist squeezes when Sieun locks his arms around Suho’s broad shoulders, pressing closer. Their noses mash together and Suho tilts his head, and the kiss is suddenly so much better Sieun manages to settle and hand over the reins. His heart is kicking into his chest like it’s going to fly out, and from beneath the safety of his eyelids, his eyes burn with emotion. Sieun digs his nails into the soft fabric of Suho’s shirt, anchoring himself as the kiss becomes wet, gliding into something sensual, as if they’ve got all the time in the world.
Maybe they do. Maybe Suho won’t leave. Maybe he’ll be the one that stays.
Letting himself be kissed like that, urged to tilt his head that way and press his hips closer, it’s easier than he would have ever expected. But then again, it always was easy to give himself over to Suho’s care.
He must think Sieun needs to breathe -which, he doesn’t, not if it means having Suho part with him and deprive him of the weight of his mouth.
Heavy breaths brush wash over his cheek, and Sieun can’t help it, he needs to see Suho almost as much as he needs to kiss him again.
Besotted. That’s the first egregious word that comes to mind. Even in the darkness of the night, the light from inside betray the flush high on Suho’s face, the swell of his lips, the slow blinks that reveal eyes blacker than the cotton of his shirt. Even if he didn’t look like that, the tight hold he has on Sieun’s waist would be enough. Even with the hoodie between their skins, there is no denying the strength behind the grip, the few spasms that make his fingers dig harder.
They’re just staring at each other, taking the impossible in, until Suho huffs out a surprising, breathless laugh. It’s Sieun’s new favourite sound, and he wonders how it would feel being poured into his mouth, being shaped in the crook of his neck.
“Coup de foudre, uh ?”
His pronunciation is atrocious, so Sieun kisses him again.