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THE 1ST LAW: A BODY IN MOTION STAYS IN MOTION UNLESS ACTED UPON BY A RESULTANT FORCE
They're sitting by the Han River when Yeon Si-eun tells Ahn Su-ho he likes him.
"I like you," Si-eun says. No inflection of any sort, tone riding the thin edge of almost bored.
Su-ho doesn't even glance at him as he finishes off the dregs of the beer that the barbecue place owner pretends he doesn't snatch. "Your jokes need a bit of work, Si-eun-ah. But at least you're making them now, congrats."
It doesn't even bear ruminating over. Yeon Si-eun, liking him. Yeon Si-eun, the guy who looks mildly annoyed whenever he's around Su-ho, even if he knows he's faking it.
"I'm not joking."
Now Su-ho looks over. Si-eun's fiddling with the tab of his own can, finger sliding round and round the curve of it, Su-ho wants to warn him not to cut himself on the edge. The city lights reflected on the river reflect back in his doe eyes, making them look even bigger and darker, glassy. Making them look, if Su-ho didn't know him better, almost wet. His knees are pressed to his chest, he swivels his foot back and forth, carving a half-moon in the dusty dirt ground. He's uneasy. He's being real?
Su-ho is a guy who generally always has something to say but Korean may as well be a foreign language. Jagged pieces of thought float in his mouth, but none of them are the right shape to connect to each other.
"Um," he begins eloquently. It makes himself cringe, he licks his teeth and tries again. "Uh. This is you, not the beer?"
An even worse response, exemplified by the way Si-eun's can crackles as he clenches it. Suho would, at this point in the conversation, prefer lead in his temple to the aluminium in his hand. "I'm not a lightweight."
Straying from the point is even less like Si-eun. The air is humid and thick with his disbelief, Suho's thoughts spin out of his head like he's hitting a particularly sharp drift. All of a sudden, he's aware of the way his shirt clings to the sweat on his back, that he smells like charcoal and meat, the cool ground solid beneath him. More than that, aware of Si-eun; that he pulls his arms even closer to him, that the line of his jaw sets in something resigned, eyes cast downwards.
So. Si-eun likes him. "Okay," Su-ho croaks thinly. "Why?"
Si-eun shoves his sneaker into the little ditch he's created. "Why do I have to say. I just do."
That's more Si-eun-ish of him. Still, though—it's normally easy for Su-ho to riff off of the little Si-eun gives him, but he feels like he's been sat in front of a piano and told to play Chopin. And Su-ho's not into the classics.
"Okay." Like a damn broken record. "Then, why are you telling me?"
Stilling at that, Sieun turns to look at Su-ho for the first time since he confessed to him. He's wearing that expression he gets sometimes, lips pressed together and eyes slightly hooded, when there's a lot on his mind and is trying to pare his words down into something rational, something efficient.
"The law of inertia," he says, like the words have only barely escaped his body. "There's no point in liking you endlessly. Might as well do something about it. I just need—I just need an answer."
An answer? What is Su-ho supposed to say to that? The words go in one ear and out the other. His mind won't make the logical connection between anything Si-eun tells him. "I don't—I don't get it, Si-eun-ah."
Su-ho can't look at those eyes anymore, he scrubs a hand through the back of his hair and watches the river pulse in front of him. Lazy, up-and-down waves. Then, he hears Si-eun stand up abruptly, hears the jerky rustle as he slings his bag over his shoulder. A mumble: "I see. "
Su-ho steals a glance; Si-eun rubbing his cheek roughly, too roughly—a red flush lingers where the heel of his palm had been. "I'll see you tomorrow."
When Si-eun's footsteps fade out of earshot, Su-ho himself stands up and dusts himself off, the thin skin of dust on the ground leaving a cast on his dark pants. With a start, he realises that Si-eun had thrown away his empty can for him.
:::
Si-eun's voice haunts him on his ride home, ringing loudly over the sound of the motorcycle engine. I like you, I like you, I like you, said in the same sort of tone one would use to say it's stir-fried pork for lunch today, or I have cram school until ten.
It messes with him so much that Su-ho, even as long given up on his scholastic ability as he is, looks it up after the second hour of lying sleeplessly in his bed. Newton's Law of Inertia. A body in motion stays in motion unless a resultant force acts upon it.
Su-ho mouths it to himself, I like you, and doesn't gain any more clarity from it.
THE 2ND LAW: THE ACCELERATION OF AN OBJECT IS PROPORTIONAL TO THE RESULTANT FORCE ACTING UPON IT
Si-eun has an impressive ability to act as if whatever irritation that befell him the day before hadn't actually happened at all. It was admittedly disconcerting at first, watching him swing between impaling assholes with pens and swinging desks to placidly studying at his desk. With what may or may not be the same pen. Even more disconcerting is the fact that Su-ho got acclimated to this tendency at all—it shows a lack of self preservation, maybe, that he hangs around this loose cannon of a man. But self-preservation isn't a trait commonly found in MMA fighters, former or not, so sue him.
This is to say: for all that Si-eun plays at level-headedness, Su-ho is one of the privileged few to know that his psychological whims are more like a pendulum. A heavy, unwieldy pendulum, but it makes his swings all the more extreme. So he is a little unsettled when everything is—totally normal when they return to class. Si-eun nods at him when Su-ho wakes up in the middle of class. They sit together in lab, Si-eun shakes him awake when they need to move to PE...
However, no matter how valiant their joint effort is, the remnants of their conversation even after a night of stewing still lingers, the smell of grilled meat stubbornly clinging to one's clothes. Like trying to hold a conversation with someone who has food stuck in their teeth, trying to figure out an opportune moment to let them know.
But what even is normal, Su-ho muses to himself on the bleachers as he watches Si-eun take his time running the last lap. It's a pleasant time and place for introspection, he's gently buzzed from the run and the afternoon sun unspools his tight muscles. Beneath him, Si-eun clinging to the tail of the group, giving him one of his looks when Su-ho shoots his customary finger heart.
What's normal in the context of their relationship. There's a good chance that when they hang out, someone walks away bruised or bleeding—not normal, judging from the inexorable glare of their homeroom teacher the next day, but everyone he knows has been getting into it recently. Their conversations are practically one-sided, a state of affairs that always draws him a sympathetic glance from waiters or the patrons at the neighbouring pool table whenever Si-eun is inclined to join him, but they mesh well together, Si-eun's reservedness tempering the rush of Su-ho's mouth such that it has the time catch up to his brain. They work.
Before all of that, though. Su-ho even having this relationship is abnormal in and of itself. He's never had a problem finding someone to talk to but he is, at heart, a solitary creature. A bird of prey flying soundlessly over his peers, only swooping in as needed.
The same is true of Si-eun. The only one who meets him at the same altitude.
Normal isn't really a useful metric for them.
Su-ho only realises he's staring into space when Si-eun materialises in front of him. "Fuck!" Su-ho swears, jumping backward. "You're a fucking ghost, Si-eun-ah."
Si-eun rolls his eyes a little less further back than when he's actually annoyed. The effect is dampened further by the fact that he looks as if he just outran death. "What ghost appears in the middle of the day."
He takes a seat next to Su-ho, and—yes, this is what gives. Something has to, after all. Si-eun is sitting just slightly, slightly farther away than usual. A miniscule, imperceptible amount.
"Why should they only exist at night?" Su-ho replies, trying for snarky despite the strange, knotty sensation clawing up his stomach. He picks up the water bottle Si-eun had left at his feet, holds it out to him.
"Thanks—hey."
In some attempt to lift the veil of the utter bizarreness between them, Su-ho lifts the water bottle upwards, out of Si-eun's reach, trying for a grin. Si-eun's face pinches in that endearing way, and he stretches upward vainly, finger just grazing the plastic.
"Just a little further, Si-eun-ah," Su-ho teases. The words taste like rubber. He leans even further back, perched precariously on the edge of the stone ledge. "You can do—shit!"
Si-eun lurches towards him, and Su-ho falls back with the sudden movement. Catches himself just before he cracks his head, wants to say what the hell, man! only for the words to die in his throat as he realises Si-eun's leaning his body above his, knees ominously bracketing his thigh.
They're not touching, but Su-ho feels—very warm—of course he's warm, it's summer—Si-eun's hair has strayed from its usual neat placement, it tickles Su-ho's cheek. And those damn eyes of his, they devour all light, sharp as a needle-point; Su-ho feels like those dead butterflies that rich people pin onto canvases for display. Like Si-eun's assessing him.
Primly, Si-eun plucks the bottle out of Su-ho's grasp.
Dizzy—heat stroke, maybe—Su-ho watches dumbly as Si-eun unscrews the cap and drinks half the bottle in one go. The line of his throat flexing, like the river waves, up and down.
Su-ho closes his eyes and promptly flops back onto the bleachers, mentally replaying the same conversation that's been haunting him since the night before.
:::
Su-ho watches Si-eun study through lunch, as he always does.
He flips through immaculately printed flashcards between bird-bites of rice, lips moving slightly as he mouths the answer to himself. Su-ho knows this well: when his expression stays neutral, he’s got it correct. When his eyes narrow slightly, a rare occurrence, he answered the question wrong, and he briskly puts the card at the back of the pack.
Si-eun sits up when he’s about halfway through, gaze straying and catches Su-ho's. He eyes him in a way that Su-ho knows means what's up?
Two thoughts come to Su-ho, unbidden: He really needs some chapstick. Is that how he looks at someone he likes?
The sudden idea shocks him out of his drowsy reverie, pure lightning in his veins. A reality that’s still new to him. His hands and feet feel numb; despite his limbs basically being disconnected from the rest of his body, he manages a shaky wave, to which Si-eun raises his eyebrows and returns to studying.
Su-ho thinks of those postcards he used to have fun with when he was a child, the thick, shiny cards that change image when they're tilted. Lenticular prints. This situation feels so similar—like he's discovered an entirely new side to Si-eun. A new side to himself, as well.
:::
Yeon Si-eun had been a revelation to Ahn Su-ho. A quiet kid with principles strong enough to provoke such a violent response from him when bothered, even if the main one was leave me alone—it was curious. It made Su-ho want to do nothing more than probe the edges of it, see just how sharp the point of his internal compass was.
Su-ho himself wasn't familiar with that kind of resolution. He sympathises with the notion of wanting his space, but he enjoys living free, could never imagine holding himself to the standards that Si-eun does. Could never imagine that kind of commitment—he quit MMA, never held down the same part time job for more than a couple of months, even chooses to do multiple at once rather than take more shifts. Only talked to girls for as long as they held his interest.
It's not as if Su-ho thinks he has any sort of deficiency, much less that Si-eun could fill it—he’d never let the edges of himself blur like that, the world’s too harsh not to stay sharp, the same being true of Si-eun. But it's true that Si-eun's been a bigger force on him than he ever thought he'd be: seeing his commitment to his studies, to his friendships, even to winning a fight—it in turn makes Su-ho think, maybe there's more to life than he previously thought. Maybe there's more to life than just getting through it.
:::
Yeong-i has it out of him in approximately ten minutes.
After she's heard it all, she stares at Su-ho for a long, long time, somehow managing a pointed expression while polishing off the frame of the grills.
Finally, she says, "You're a bit dense, aren't you?"
Su-ho blinks. "That's rude?"
With a flourish, Yeong-i whips her towel upwards and catches it in her palm, so the fabric falls over her wrist like a flower. "Well, you're friends with Si-eun, so I assume you can take it."
Su-ho flops into a seat, watching as Yeong-i moves to the next table. His shift isn't until tonight, but he comes early to keep her company sometimes. "No arguments there."
Yeong-i rolls her eyes so hard Su-ho can only assume she's intimately familiar with what the front of her brain looks like. "Anyway. The point. Let's get to it."
"The point," Su-ho drawls. "Is that Si-eun-ah told me he liked me and now it's weird."
There must be a particularly nasty mark, because Yeong-i starts scrubbing hard. "Sure. But you're missing something."
"Do tell, Yeong-i-yah."
"I mean, you never gave Si-eun an answer."
Su-ho stares at Yeong-i for a long, long time. She finishes polishing off the grills, people live and die, the sun engulfs the solar system. Only when the universe is on the brink of finally collapsing in on itself does Su-ho barely get out a "What?"
Yeong-i glares at him in a way she could've only learned from Si-eun. "I don't want to give you all the answers, because this is your crisis to handle," she says, flicking her hair behind her shoulder. "But maybe things would be less weird if you. You know, actually responded to him instead of leaving the poor guy hanging."
It's not like Su-ho doesn't know this somewhere in the back of his mind. But this is Yeon Si-eun, here—diligent student Yeon Si-eun, goddamn lunatic Yeon Si-eun, the person who takes up most of Su-ho's mind whether it's staring at his back all through class or thinking about places to drag him out to after ten o'clock Yeon Si-eun. He's not just someone who confessed to Su-ho. He's not just someone you give a response to. How is Su-ho supposed to give any kind of answer when he's busy trying to cling to the ground as the entire world topples off its axis?
He kind of has to, though, doesn't he. Su-ho is an expert at letting things be. Left behind MMA, the only thing he could confidently call himself good at; never been the upstanding type either, only really fights for others when it benefits him and even then fights dirty—however, the thought of flying on his own again, returning back to his nocturnal life just as he was getting used to Si-eun's stout companionship is just... just…
Su-ho doesn't vocalise any of this to Yeong-i, but she must get it anyway, because she leans on the table next to him and thumps his back the way one would hit the fan remote to get it working.
"Hey," she says, too patiently to the guy who's bothering her during her shift. "It's good that you're thinking about it this hard, you know? It means that you value him a lot. You're close enough that I think you guys will be fine no matter what happens."
It's a strange angle to be sitting in, Yeong-i above Su-ho. He's not used to looking up at her; eyes so dark for such a young face, her mouth set in a serious line. It's easy to forget that Yeong-i has been through just as much as him and Si-eun. She’s experienced as much of the world as either of them.
Burying his head in his hands, Su-ho groans. "It's so fucked up." Whines, more like. "You should've heard the way he said it. I like you, like he was telling me his fucking coffee order. What the fuck."
Yeong-i snorts, leans her arm on his head. The weight is comforting. "Well. That's definitely your Si-eun."
THE 3RD LAW: FOR EVERY ACTION THERE IS A REACTION EQUAL IN MAGNITUDE AND OPPOSITE IN DIRECTION
So Su-ho thinks about it for the rest of the week. He takes a customer's order and realises when he gets back to the kitchen that he has no clue what they wanted because he only heard Si-eun saying I like you. His motorcycle swerves through traffic and he swears he hears the chorus of honks sing I like you. The worst of all: eating lunch with Si-eun, or walking together after school—holding eye contact, and remembering the bright-dark of his round eyes as he said I like you.
Sometimes, when he's feeling brave and only in the dark of his room, Su-ho tries saying it back.
Despite it all, Su-ho doesn't really have any concrete intention to, well. Address anything. But as the week passes by, and he watches Si-eun, and they eat together, and he watches Si-eun, and they play games together, and he watches Si-eun—his own feelings start to come into focus, like shaking a polaroid and watching the picture bloom into clarity.
It's really quite simple when he thinks about it. There's no one else Su-ho looks at as much as he looks at Si-eun.
:::
Even a studying machine like Si-eun gets distracted, Su-ho notes with mild interest. They're in Si-eun's apartment, because he'd deemed that they’d wasted too much time at karaoke on a beautiful Saturday, and Su-ho had tagged along like a dog on an invisible leash.
Hypocrite, he idly thinks. He'd felt a bit bad, for yanking Yeon Si-eun The One-Percenter off of his path to academic success, but seeing him scroll through his phone, textbooks abandoned, well. Not a hint of remorse remains at the prospect of bothering him a little.
From where he'd made himself comfortable (lying down on the hardwood floor) Su-ho raises his leg and pokes Si-eun's thigh with his foot. "Hey."
Si-eun eyes him from above. "What."
"What are you looking at?"
"Nothing."
Su-ho hums lazily; Si-eun rolls his eyes and goes back to his screen.
Rookie mistake, when there's a Wild Su-ho on the floor lacking in enrichment. In one fluid movement, Su-ho hooks his ankle under the feet of Si-eun's roller chair and flexes his foot so the chair spins, turning Si-eun towards him.
"What?" Si-eun asks, voice a little sharper.
Su-ho can feel the corners of his lips turning upwards. "What are you looking at?"
Si-eun kicks his ankle. His feet don't quite reach the floor in this chair, so he has to shuffle off the seat to do it. "A nuisance on my floor."
But the ass still isn't actually looking at him. What's on that screen that has Si-eun so enraptured? "Si-eun-ah," Su-ho entreats. The ceiling fan turns around and around above him, the blades blurring into a greyish circle. It hypnotises him into a hazy zen. "Come lie on the floor. Sitting at a desk all the time is bad for your back."
"I'm not interested in criticism on my spinal health from the guy who spends half the day on a motorcycle."
Snorting, Su-ho lifts his leg into a perfect right angle and rests his foot on Si-eun's knee. Bone under heel, he can feel the twitch of his kneecap—Si-eun's glinting pupils darting to the point of contact, up Su-ho's calf, back to his phone. Just because he's feeling a little mean, a wild thing in his limbs, Su-ho digs his heel in, watching Si-eun's lips tighten, a muscle in his cheek jumping.
As sure as the school bell, Su-ho hears it for the nth time. I like you, Si-eun had said. There's no one Su-ho looks at as much as he looks at Si-eun. Who could blame him for wanting Si-eun to look back?
There's a little thrill in watching Si-eun's face crumple, his nose and cheeks wrinkling in a way that, paradoxically, makes him look even younger. Indeed, a face that—betrays nothing of the strong grip that suddenly wraps around Su-ho's ankle.
A frankly embarrassing noise comes out of Su-ho's mouth. Such grip strength from someone who'd only held pens for the past seventeen years, who'd have thought? Six spots of heat suffusing into Su-ho's skin, the planes of Si-eun's face remaining as dispassionate as always. Half-enthralled, half-terrified, Su-ho is practically helpless as he feels the hand inching north from his ankle, up his calf and—
–presses hard.
"Hey!" Su-ho squawks. A smarting sensation he imagines to be similar to a gunshot rips through his leg, the groan that leaves his throat is entirely out of control. Si-eun had somehow targeted a particular knot in his muscle and is either discovering a passion for physiotherapy or on torturing Su-ho. "Yeon Si-eun, you fucking maniac—"
It's like he’s pressing directly into the bone, white clouds his vision as Si-eun works his fingers into his calf, his fingernails slightly pinching his skin. Through the agonising blur, he sees the corners of Si-eun's moon eyes crinkling despite his otherwise blank expression, and Su-ho thinks, with jarring clarity, Yeon Si-eun likes me.
Before he knows it, Si-eun lets go, and Su-ho yanks his leg towards himself, sitting up and rubbing his palm over his throbbing calf. There are faint red imprints where Si-eun's fingers had been. "What the hell," he gets out, voice more shaky than he'd like to admit.
Si-eun levels him his customary composed gaze. "The soleus muscle is prone to knots, Su-ho-yah." The line of his mouth creases mirthfully in a not-quite smile.
"What would I do without you," Su-ho bites out. A small puff of air escapes Si-eun's nose, but he—turns to his fucking phone again.
Su-ho lets out a chuckle of disbelief, flopping ungracefully back to the floor, but doesn't push it. There are some battles that aren't worth fighting, especially when the floor is so nice and cool on his back, and his opponent is one deceptively ruthless motherfucker...
At least, he doesn't intend on pushing it until he sees it: Si-eun's arched lips, tipping out of its set frown.
It's faint. A barely-there curve, only noticeable to someone who spends as much time looking at Si-eun as Su-ho does.
Though that's the whole issue. Only Su-ho had ever been on the other end of that smile.
A block of ice settles in his stomach while fire licks his hands, cheeks, legs. Su-ho's pulse, a flurry of jabs pounding against his breastbone, his blood a whitewater rush in his veins. Had the room always been this stuffy? The ceiling fan whirs at maximum speed above them, though, the gentle hum of the blades roaring in his eardrums. His tongue—heavy and entirely out of his control, as he sits up on his knees and says–
"Who the hell are you talking to?"
Si-eun blinks owlishly. "What?"
"Who are you talking to," Su-ho distantly hears himself saying. His voice may as well be completely disembodied, but he can feel his mouth moving.
Si-eun's lips part in confusion as he glances between Su-ho and the phone screen, no doubt running an analysis in his head. Shit, can’t he just fucking focus on Su-ho. "Why? What's wrong?"
"What's so interesting about them that you won't even look at me?"
"What," Si-eun says, sounding concerned, but vexation rises in his tone like oil sitting on water. "are you going on about?"
Everything's so hot. Si-eun's throat, mere inches away from Su-ho's knuckles. The fan whirring uselessly, his thin shirt against his back; a sick, feverish sensation thrumming underneath his skin. As if Su-ho is divorced from his physical form, his consciousness only watching in muted mortification as his body stands up on humiliatingly shaky legs and leans himself over Si-eun's chair, hands fisting in the collar of his hoodie.
"If you say you like me," Su-ho says, voice cracking childishly, "why won't you do anything? Why are you acting like everything's fine?"
Si-eun's gaze hardens at that, but something's broken down in Su-ho's chest, the words flooding out of his mouth like water over a riverbank. "I don't get it at all, Si-eun-ah. Just give me something."
Like a few minutes ago, Si-eun's hand wraps around Su-ho's wrist, but the grip contains something far more vicious. His face is shuttered like the very first time Su-ho met him, that cold expression. As if Su-ho meant nothing to him. "Give you something?" he spits, face just as twisted as Su-ho’s. "I did. At least I had the guts to confess to you. You're too much of a coward to reject me!
The words crackle like TV static in Su-ho's ears. His hands feel less numb, but there’s still a riptide in his veins, his stomach, his head, voice tasting odd and salty on his tongue. "Reject you?” He starts. The word barely fits in his mouth. “When did I ever reject you?"
Si-eun scoffs, an uncharacteristically messy sound from him. "Don't play dumb. You didn't answer. You didn't even look at me!"
Su-ho didn't look?
What's Si-eun saying?
Su-ho does nothing but look.
"Yeon Si-eun, you're the biggest idiot I know," Su-ho says. Before he can think too hard about it, he puts his hands on Si-eun's jaw and kisses him square on the mouth.
Su-ho's kissed girls before and, in all fairness, walked away pretty much unmoved. But this kiss—barely registers as a kiss. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation would be more accurate, if it weren't for the fact that neither of them were passed out. Si-eun's lips are as dry as they look, it's like kissing a damn textbook.
Ahn Su-ho is kissing Yeon Si-eun.
Just as the thought registers, Su-ho suddenly becomes coherent of what his body is doing. He pulls away as if he's touched a hot iron, slaps his hand over his mouth with enough force to make him wince. What the fuck did he just do?
"Shit," Su-ho gasps, "I'm sorry, Si-eun, I don't—"
"Ahn Su-ho," Si-eun says. He grabs his shirt in a nearly comedic inversion of their previous position. Those eyes of his are just endless, they choke Su-ho of all air. "You're one to talk."
Su-ho barely has time to run those words back in his head before Si-eun—before Si-eun is kissing him again.
The collar of his shirt strains painfully against the back of his neck as Si-eun pulls him down to crush their lips. Su-ho's young, fitter than average, but something in his back protests when he has to lean down over Si-eun—however, it's hard to take much notice when he's kissing Yeon Si-eun. What a life.
Su-ho grabs Si-eun's face again, coaxes his head so that they slot together more comfortably. It's hot, everything is so hot—Si-eun's cheeks under his palms, his mouth. His lips are really so dry, Su-ho will have to fix that, he opens his mouth to slick warmth and to his utter elation, Si-eun meets him there, parting his own beneath him.
Speaking of comfortable, there's a perfectly functional bed right behind them. Clumsily, Su-ho rotates the chair and wraps his arm around Si-eun's back so he can push them onto the mattress. They tumble inelegantly, entwined together, Si-eun's teeth coming unsettlingly close to Su-ho's tongue—but no matter, Su-ho will just continue—
Until suddenly, the warm body underneath him lurches forward. Su-ho's nearly dormant MMA instinct has him dodge intuitively, only for Si-eun to utilise their joint momentum to flip them around, so Su-ho suddenly finds himself staring at the ceiling, as well as an endearingly mussed Si-eun. Distantly, he thinks of that day on the bleachers, the flex of Si-eun's white throat.
In any case, Su-ho blinks. He thought they were having a perfectly good time, but Si-eun's lower lip is jutting out in an even more prominent pout than usual.
"Give me an answer," Si-eun raspily demands.
All of Su-ho's higher thought processes have abandoned him. "Um," he manages to get out intelligently. "What?"
Si-eun's eyes narrow, but it's hard to take it as much of a threat when pink blooms from his face downwards. How far down does it go, Su-ho wonders idly. "You still. Haven't given me an answer."
"Si-eun-ah, what—"
"Just tell me you like me, asshole," Si-eun all but hisses.
Su-ho can't help it. He bursts out laughing, Si-eun growing, for the first time, visibly furious, an image far divorced from his brisk composure at the river. A vivid satisfaction swells up into his chest, spilling into the rest of his body like an overfilled cup—finally, some emotion out of Si-eun. Su-ho likes him both ways, would like any manner of Si-eun, but it's fascinating seeing all the ways emotion can play on his normally impassive face.
The words leave his mouth easily, Su-ho's gotten plenty of practice over the last week. "I like you, Yeon Si-eun."
Like he's boneless, Si-eun's body goes slack over his, a solid weight on Su-ho's thighs. His face is angled downwards, what a shame, Su-ho presses his thumb underneath his chin, tilting his head up. Su-ho didn't think it was possible for Si-eun to get redder, but he always surprises him. And Su-ho’s sure he's not doing any better.
Once he's said it, saying it again feels even easier, giddiness overriding him. "Yeon Si-eun, I like you. I like you so much."
"I get it, quit it," Si-eun gripes, swatting Su-ho's hand from his chin.
"Oh, yeah?" Su-ho grins, he can't stop grinning, probably won't for the next year, for the rest of his life. "It's three to one now, by the way. You owe me two more I like yous. Oh, four to one, now."
Si-eun rolls his eyes a little less further back than he would if he were actually annoyed. "In your dreams, Su-ho-yah," he says, as he takes Su-ho by the jaw.
:::
Su-ho's mouth makes it to Si-eun's collar when he finally remembers to ask. "By the way, what were you actually looking at on your phone?"
Si-eun, clearly displeased with the interruption, looks at Su-ho like he's an idiot. So not much different from the usual, the only empirical difference being that his shirt is rucked halfway up his torso. "I'll tell you later."
Shaking his head, Su-ho groans. "It's been bothering me since we've got here, just tell me."
Si-eun huffs, but stumbles off the bed—slightly unsteadily, Su-ho notes with pride—and retrieves his phone, flopping back onto the mattress once it's in his grasp with none of his usual primness. He taps on the screen, then holds it above Su-ho's face. "Happy now?"
Taking up the entirety of his screen is a collection of pictures sent to his messages. Su-ho takes the phone and clicks on it to find countless photos, some from earlier, when they'd first met, as well as recent images. Images of just Si-eun or Su-ho, or of the two of them, or with–Yeong-i?
Su-ho clicks out of it to check the contact name: indeed, written as boringly as one would expect of Si-eun, Yeong-i.
Su-ho's face burns for what feels like the millionth time that day. That, or it just never stopped to begin with. He'd flipped out over this?
"Yeong-i wanted to clear out her storage," Si-eun says, plucking the phone from Su-ho's weakening grasp and setting it on the ground, where it can't be knocked off the bed by other activities. "Was it as interesting as you hoped?"
All of it at once runs through Su-ho's head—his outburst, yanking on Si-eun's collar like some melodramatic K-Drama character, his childish voice crack—unable to bear the weight of his embarrassment, Su-ho rolls over, buying his head in the pillow. It smells like what must be Si-eun's detergent.
The smugness rings clear in Si-eun's tone when he asks: "Are you okay, Su-ho-yah?" Su-ho feels Si-eun lie down next to him; he then threads his hand through Su-ho's hair, rubbing small circles onto his scalp before coaxing his face out of the pillow.
Si-eun is a sight to see. Hair completely out of place, cheeks pink and lips ruddy. Despite his mortification, Su-ho means it completely when he says: "Never been better, Si-eun-ah."