Work Text:
One of the core laws of physics states that matter cannot be created or destroyed.
It lingers, lasts. When stars collide, or burst into millions of shards of light, it perseveres.
It travels through space, finds companionship in the weight that the universe has orphaned. Like a stray dog—floppy ears, a desire to be substantial to someone; for the absence of its company to sting like a mug just a little too warm.
Matter, Sieun finds, is an awful lot like sleep.
It’s constant, relenting. It grabs his hand, forces his feet to drag with its stubbornness. It presses kisses to his eyelids, rubs his back, hums him into defensiveness. It shows the body love through a gentle period of silent restoration.
His throat would close around another stubborn pill, not quite slipping down his throat. One that should’ve held his hand, led him to shake the harmonious hand of rest.
When his will ran out of hydrogen fuel, contracting under the weight of gravity; it expanded, clung. When sleep didn’t follow him, it grasped to a guardian just out of reach. He followed the rules, solved the equations—the function didn’t click.
Sleep, Sieun finds, again—is an awful lot like grief.
Grief visits like a nightmare. It overstays its welcome, scavenging his fridge, turning to him with a playful scowl when it remains empty. It presented itself like comfort, familiarity. It’s beautiful, crushingly so. It presents itself like the darkest parts of love.
Sieun let his guard fall. He let it sneak into his life, press its thumb to his chin, and its fingers to his mouth. He let it draw doodles on his worksheets, slugging an arm around his shoulders. It became so common—out the window of the bus, at his door with an order someone waits for—he nearly forgot that it wasn’t friendly at all.
Matter, sleep, grief—are an awful lot like Suho.
In a way, he finds Suho in everything. From Gotaks blindingly blue hoodie, Bakus companionship and charm—the boy with glasses that takes the punches a little too familiarly, like someone Suho had fought for—he comes in a lot of different forms.
That realization is Sieun’s least shocking discovery.
He watches everything, all the colors in his life, grab sleeps hand. They blur together—he watches them fade with a windbreaker to his chest, listens to the watch search for a pulse, replaced by wires and steady beeps that ring in his ears.
Even when he couldn’t look into his eyes, they were all he could think about. His face appeared in the windows of passing cars, puddles under his sneakers.
Sieuns most terrifying realization, however?
Love is an awful lot like Suho.
Love is scary, obsessive. It’s written as a softer thing than Sieun feels it. It wracks him with a devastating obsession—the idea that going a moment without him is a fate that torments him more than the years spent without him.
He didn’t think he could miss him more than he did during the borderline suicide-inducing despair he trudged through in the seasons without him. Now that Suho was back, however, being without him for a moment felt like the noose was actively tightening. Seeing his face, looking into his eyes—Sieun knew that he would forget his own name before he’d ever forget Suho.
Sieun is always accumulating information. His mind craves and collects different stimuli so fiercely that most can feel it—at least, according to Suho. He wondered if he felt it; the full emotion and analysis that came with Sieun’s gaze.
Cracking his dry eyes open—not yet glistening with the moist that light draws from them—he expected to see Suho asleep next to him. Whether it was from the warmth he felt—with Suhos body acting like a radiator, spooned against him—or from their tender routine; he finds himself falling into a methodical flow.
He had long believed he was incapable of finding that again. He spent his life with structure, and he used to believe that Suho would disturb that forever. To his most vulnerable contentment, he was wrong—something he never thought he’d be happy about.
Suho, in all of his wisdom, had his face shoved into a pillow.
Sieun felt the corners of his lips curl up in a light smile. The awkward position that Suho seemed so comfortable in was warm, gentle. Their legs lie tangled—sewn together, intertwined. He rolled closer, as impossible as that may seem, and tried to fall back asleep himself.
Suhos mouth was parted slightly, arm hugged around Sieuns waist, even in sleep. His fingers pressed to the skin beneath his shirt, featherlight. He breathed against his hair, his own scattered against the pillow and falling in his eyes. His other hand rested against his chest.
His snores were soft, gentle. His hands reached out for Sieun, finding him in the dark of night—or the earliest hours of the morning—like it’s the most natural thing he’d ever done. Sieun reaches up, tucks the soft hair away from his sleeping features. The sleeping boy smacks his lips happily in response, tongue clicking against his teeth.
Sieun’s heart swells. He feels a bigger smile threatening to take hold of his features, and he lets it. Hesitantly. It’s a fondness that holds his heart captive, and it’s a tender feeling that Sieun used to believe he was too detached to feel. He didn’t think he’d ever feel the urge to say the words that now came naturally with Suho’s presence—I adore you. with all that I am, and all that I ever will be. With all of my body and soul; you are the personification of my destiny—eternity, definitely. You are my life.
He presses a kiss to Suho’s head, feels his strong arms wrap tightly around him as he shifts. It’s simple, complicated, the way his heart leads him back to Suho. It’s overwhelming, everything—too much. Just right.
He wants to take a bite, decipher his every want and desire. He wants to sleep at the foot of Suho's bed, just for a chance to be on it. He wants to be the sunlight that kisses his sleeping face every morning, to learn how to cook so he can make him breakfast. To nurture him, care for him. To fuss over every consequence of his being—and to roll his eyes when Suho, inevitably, subverts his own needs.
He wants to wrap him in his arms, feel the way Suho comes to him as a patron saint of touch—soft sunlight, the wag of a dogs tail. He wants to put their things together, use Suho’s soap when he runs out, to wear him everywhere—coming home to his arms, smelling where his own had gone. He wants to choose him, unrehearsed, every day; to find his hand, one in a world of billions, choose it like the earth chose the sun.
He doesn’t say that, though. He doesn’t say anything. The words I love you are so heavy, so natural, but they underestimate the depth of his sentiment. Words always fall shy of what he feels.
Yeon Sieun doesn’t accept a failure to understand something. He doesn’t know defeat, doesn’t understand falling just shy of the mark. He doesn’t know how to succeed in any way that isn’t entirely, all encompassing. He loves like that, too. He shows it through actions, through showing up, eager to wrap the souls of anyone who stepped too close to what was his around his wrists—to crush, destroy. His brows wouldn’t furrow, face wouldn’t tighten. He’d come to Suho, covered in a horde’s worth of blood—fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness.
Suho, like a saint, would cradle his face in his hands—grab a shovel. He’d say something stupid, face lighting up, eyes crinkling with the force of his laughter. He’d wash Sieuns hands, look beneath the foreign skin and blood under his nails, to find him. He’d ice his throbbing knees as he knelt before an altar of damnation, promise to follow him to hell if it meant he’d hold his hand.
Sieun, in his twisted glory, would speak up softly. The simplest of words, painted with affection and intimacy, in a way that always means come closer. He’d rest his head on his shoulder, feel their souls fit together, the way he’d always known they did. He’d kill every poet—take each one’s place in turn, to ensure that every strand of love is written to Suho.
Suho shifts in his arms, one eye opening softly. His eyelashes bat again Sieun’s cheeks. He mumbles something, groggily—voice heavy with sleep, and pulls Sieun closer. He presses his nose into his neck, smiles against his skin.
Morning dew dampened the branch tapping at the window, a bird humming its tune as it built its home—right outside of theirs. Crickets chirp in a symphony, giving Sieun a little taste of what it means to be with someone good. He gets to love him simply, without pride or poison—a way in which there is no separation between their beings, the kind of intimacy that links their touches to the same origin; so intimate that when Sieun falls asleep, Suho’s eyes close instinctively.
They’d have to get up soon, drag themselves into the bathroom—brush their teeth side by side. Suho would make breakfast, Sieun clinging to his back as he stirs the pan, savoring the weakness he allows himself in the mornings. For now, though, they lay wrapped up in each other. They were ignoring their responsibilities, Sieun ignoring a paper he should be getting to.
He wouldn’t have it any other way.