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It’s bad tonight.
Suho is already on edge by the time he steps through Gotak’s front door. The music is loud and bad, grating along the edges of a migraine that has already been building for hours. Someone has cracked a window, and the air drifting in smells faintly like rain and cigarette smoke, cold enough to raise goosebumps on his wrists where his sleeves ride up.
He isn’t sure why he came. He can admit that much to himself, even if he won’t say it out loud.
Sieun had barely spared him a glance in the glow of the TV light when he casually mentioned he was going to the end of season party for the basketball team. He hadn’t even asked if Suho wanted to go. Fifteen minutes later Suho had managed to pull himself together enough for them to head out anyway, leaving the quiet comfort of Sieun’s apartment behind like it was something he didn’t deserve.
Sieun disappears almost immediately.
Suho watches as he slides into place beside Baku and Juntae on the couch like he’s always belonged there. They make space for him easily. Baku claps him on the shoulder. Juntae nudges him with his knee. Gotak shouts from the kitchen that someone is stealing his beer.
Baku leans in to say something that makes Sieun roll his eyes, his mouth twitching in that almost-smile he pretends not to have. The one Suho had to work so hard to earn all of those years ago.
Suho watches from the kitchen doorway and feels something twist in his chest.
He could go over there. He knows that. They’re his friends too, after all. They’ve made that clear. They went with him to therapy when Sieun couldn’t. They visited. They brought food. They’ve been patient with him when he was slow and irritable and embarrassed by his own body.
Still, when Sieun leans into Baku to hear him over the music, when he laughs with his head tipped back, Suho feels a sharp, unreasonable irritation. He feels sidelined.
He tells himself it’s stupid, but he can’t shake the feeling.
He’s been aware of the way things have been changing for weeks now.
They’ve stepped back. Stopped hovering.
It shouldn’t bother him. It means things are normal. It means people think he can handle it. It means he’s not being watched like he’s about to fall apart every time he stands up too fast or reaches for a cup with a hand that sometimes still shakes in the mornings.
But it feels like something is still off-balance.
Even Sieun can’t be bothered anymore.
When Suho first woke up, Sieun was everywhere. In the chair beside his bed. In the hallway arguing with doctors. In their kitchen making tea at two in the morning because Suho woke up disoriented and couldn’t get back to sleep with the dark pressing in on him.
Sieun had counted pills, kept track of appointments, worked out treatment plans with physical therapists when Suho got stubborn. He still does.
But now, Sieun sleeps through the night.
Now he leaves the apartment without triple-checking if Suho wants him to stay.
Now he laughs at something Gotak says without looking over to see if Suho is included.
He doesn’t orbit Suho anymore. In fact, the whole world seems to be going on without him. Again.
Suho wanders into the kitchen.
The girl he ends up talking to is someone he vaguely recognizes from school. Nothing about her stands out from the rest of the partygoers. He simply started talking to the first person who smiled at him, because smiling is easy and the kitchen is crowded and it’s better than standing in a doorway feeling like a ghost.
She smiles often. She laughs at his jokes. When he leans closer, she leans back just enough to keep the space interesting.
He lets himself enjoy the control of their back and forth. The clarity. There are cues. There are reactions. It’s so simple. You say something, someone responds.
He glances toward the couch.
Sieun is still there. Baku says something and gestures toward the kitchen. Juntae looks over too, following his line of sight.
Gotak snorts and shakes his head.
The girl laughs again, and Suho realizes he has missed what she said.
“Sorry,” he says automatically, smiling. “What was that?”
She repeats herself. He nods and plays along. He lets the conversation carry him. He angles his body just right, makes a point of touching her wrist when she hands him a drink. He lets his shoulder brush hers. He laughs hard at something that wasn’t funny. She swats at his arm and calls him ridiculous.
Suho lifts his cup and takes a slow drink. The liquid is too sweet. When he lowers it, his gaze meets Sieun’s for half a second. There is no accusation in it. No question. Just recognition, observation, as if he’s noting the weather. Then Sieun goes back to his conversation.
Baku gets up and crosses the room a few minutes later. He stops beside Suho, takes a beer from the counter, and doesn’t bother lowering his voice.
“You’re being stupid,” Baku says.
Suho doesn’t look at him. “About what?”
Baku nods vaguely toward the couch. “You know he can see you, right?”
“So?” Suho frowns. “I’m not doing anything.”
It’s true. He doesn’t owe Sieun anything. They don’t belong to each other. There are things you are allowed to do when you aren’t in a relationship, even if you live together, even if you share a bed more nights than you admit, even if people ask questions and you both answer with the same rehearsed line about recovery and convenience.
Baku lets out a long breath that suggests he doesn’t have the energy to argue and walks away.
Suho watches him return to the couch, where he says something to Sieun. Sieun shrugs his shoulders in response, like it’s nothing. Like it isn’t even worth a comment.
That, more than anything, makes Suho continue.
He lets her lean into him when she laughs. He doesn’t mean anything by it, he tells himself. He just wants to see.
He keeps waiting for something, anything, to snap.
Nothing does.
Suho’s head aches from the noise and from the effort of pretending he is having more fun than he is. He says goodbye to the girl with an easy grin. She asks for his number. He hesitates for a fraction of a second and then gives it to her anyway, because the point he was trying to make has nothing to do with her at all.
When he reaches the door, Sieun is already there, jackets in hand.
“Ready to go?” Sieun asks.
Suho huffs as he pulls his jacket on. “Are you?”
“Yes.”
Sieun thanks Gotak for hosting. Gotak squeezes Suho’s shoulder. A barely there touch, as if he’s testing whether the bone will give. Suho hates that gentleness more than he hates the pain.
When they leave, the music is still ringing in his ears, his head thick with the remnants of noise. His leg aches from standing too long, a dull throb deep in the joint that physical therapy hasn’t managed to erase. He can already tell tomorrow will be worse, the way his body always punishes him later for pretending overexertion didn’t cost anything.
The air outside is cool. The walk home is slow, partly because of Suho’s leg and partly because neither of them rushes. They walk side by side, enough space between their shoulders for someone else to fit there. The street is damp from earlier rain, the sidewalk shining under streetlights. Somewhere down the block, a dog barks once and then stops.
Suho breaks the silence first. “You looked comfortable.”
“I was.”
The answer is simple. It’s truthful. It shouldn’t irritate him.
It does.
Sieun looks ahead at the crosswalk light, hands in his pockets. “You don’t need an invitation, you know.”
There it is. Calm. Reasonable. Impossible to push against.
Suho shoves his hands into his pockets to hide the way his fists clench. His nails dig into his palm, a small pain he can control.
“Really,” Suho grits. “That’s great. Good to know.”
Sieun hums like he doesn’t want to argue, like this is a conversation that can be set down and picked back up later when Suho is less difficult.
The crosswalk ticks down. The little white figure changes to red. They wait. A car passes, tires hissing softly on wet pavement. Suho can feel the migraine pulsing behind his eyes, steady as a metronome.
They reach a quieter stretch of sidewalk. Streetlights buzz overhead, insects flickering around the halos. Sieun adjusts his pace slightly when Suho’s stride shortens. He doesn’t comment on it, doesn’t ask if he’s okay. He just matches him as if running on auto pilot.
They walk another block.
It’s humiliating how fast it happens. One second Suho is mid-step, the next his balance is gone. His toe snags on an uneven seam in the concrete. His weight shifts wrong. His bad leg doesn’t recover the way it used to. His body lags behind the command to correct. The world tilts, and for a flash of a second, he’s back in that sick, drifting place between sleep and panic where he used to wake up and not know where his hands were.
Sieun’s hands are on him immediately, steadying him before he can go down.
His palms are warm through Suho’s jacket. His grip is firm, practiced, the way it always is when he’s making sure Suho doesn’t hit the ground.
Suho hates how much relief he feels in that split second, like his body recognizes safety before his pride does.
He straightens, breath coming in short bursts. His heart is hammering too hard for a stumble.
“I’m fine,” he says too quickly.
“Okay,” Sieun replies.
Sieun’s hands drop as soon as Suho is steady. He steps back half a pace, giving Suho room again, as if he’s afraid to stay too close to something fragile.
That half-step is the last straw.
Something in Suho fractures, fast and harsh.
“Why do you always do that?” Suho demands.
Sieun blinks. “Do what?”
“You catch me and then you back off like you’re clocking out.”
Sieun’s expression shifts slightly, but he stays calm. “You said you were fine.”
Suho laughs, the sound brittle. It comes out too loud in the quiet street. “That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
The calmness in his voice grates. Suho can hear his own breathing, uneven and angry. Everything is too much. The wet shine of the sidewalk under the streetlight, the way his knee still feels loose after the stumble.
“How quick you are to leave,” Suho continues, voice rising. “Like you can’t get away from me fast enough. At some point you took it upon yourself to decide whether I need you or not.”
Sieun doesn’t answer immediately. He looks at Suho the way he did in the hospital, when the machines were still louder than his voice. Measured. Careful. As if anything too sudden might break something fragile.
Then he says, quietly, “I stopped fussing because you hated it.”
“I hated you treating me like just another project,” Suho snaps.
“You’re not a project,” Sieun says, still quiet.
The words should help. They don’t.
The frustration that’s been simmering inside Suho for weeks spills over, hot and messy.
“Don’t act like I’m stupid,” Suho continues. “I can’t run like I used to. I can’t even walk home from a party without tripping. My head still blanks out sometimes and I have to pretend I meant to pause. Everyone looks at me like they’re waiting for something to go wrong. And you—” He gestures helplessly, the motion too sharp, pulling at his shoulder. “You’re just fine.”
“I’m not fine,” Sieun says calmly.
“You act like it.” The words come out before Suho can soften them. “You’ve got friends. Baku, Juntae, Gotak. You lean on them. You laugh. You make plans without me. You don’t even blink when I’m flirting with someone right in front of you.”
There it is.
He hadn’t meant to say it that plainly. He can feel the heat on the back of his neck as soon as it’s out.
Sieun studies him for a long moment. There’s no anger in his face. Just focus. “Is that what this is about?”
“It’s about everything,” Suho snaps. “It’s about not knowing where I stand. It’s about feeling like I’m the only one who is still—” He cuts himself off, because if he says still trying he’ll sound pathetic.
The words hang there anyway.
“I cared,” Sieun says.
Suho scoffs. “You didn’t show it.”
“I don’t perform jealousy.”
“Maybe you just don’t feel it.” The sentence comes out sharper than Suho intended, but he can’t seem to stop. “Maybe you just don’t feel anything.”
Sieun’s jaw tightens slightly.
Suho sees it and presses harder, because he’s desperate enough to mistake a line being crossed for proof of life.
“You got used to not needing me,” he says. “It was easier without me. And you just moved on like nothing even happened. Like you weren’t the whole reason I—” Suho stops.
For the first time, something cracks through Sieun’s composure. Not anger. Not defensiveness.
Hurt.
It’s subtle, but Suho feels it immediately. Feels exactly where he landed. The bruise neither of them have dared to poke at.
There’s a stillness in the air that wasn’t there before. Sieun’s eyes harden, his expression wiped clean into practiced distance.
Suho hates it. He wants to take it all back so badly it makes his stomach twist.
But momentum carries him.
“You restructured your life without me like I never existed,” Suho continues, reckless now. “Maybe I just don’t fit into it anymore.”
“That’s what you think?” Sieun asks quietly.
The quiet is worse than shouting would have been. It’s so controlled it makes Suho feel out of control by comparison.
“I don’t know what to think,” Suho fires back. “You don’t react. You don’t get angry. You don’t get jealous. I trip and you catch me and then you brush me off like you’re afraid of being attached to someone about to die.”
The word lands between them. It seems to echo in the air long after it’s left his mouth.
Die.
Sieun doesn’t flinch. He stays silent, face unreadable. That almost makes it worse.
For a second, Suho thinks he’s finally going to get it. The argument. The raised voice. The reaction.
Instead, Sieun just looks at him.
And then he turns.
He doesn’t storm off. He doesn’t say anything final, or hit back just as hard, even though Suho knows he could. He just turns and starts walking, footsteps measured on the wet sidewalk.
The absence of a fight hits harder than any shout would have.
Suho whispers a curse. He runs a hand through his hair, fingers catching on damp strands at his forehead. His leg throbs. His head pulses. For a heartbeat, he just watches Sieun’s back getting farther away, the space between them widening like it has all night.
Panic clears Suho’s head in a rush.
“Hey—” He moves without thinking, ignoring the violent protest of his leg. The pain shoots up his calf and into his knee, bright enough to make his vision spot. He catches up in three uneven strides and grabs Sieun’s wrist.
The contact is firm, desperate.
Sieun stops.
“Let go,” Sieun says.
Suho does. Immediately. His fingers open like they’ve been burned.
For half a second, he thinks Sieun is going to keep walking away anyway, that this will be the moment Suho finally pushes too far and there’s no coming back from it.
Instead, Sieun whips around.
“What do you want from me?” Sieun asks.
Deadly calm.
The streetlight cuts a clean line across his cheekbone. His eyes are steady. His hands are at his sides, but his fingers are clenched tight, knuckles pale against the dark fabric of his sleeves.
“Nothing.” The word falls out too fast. “I didn’t mean it. What I said. About it being your fault. About me dy—”
“You did,” Sieun cuts in. “You knew exactly where to aim.”
The truth of that makes Suho flinch.
He swallows, throat tight. He can taste the party’s cheap alcohol on his tongue and the sick shame rising behind it.
“I was just—” He exhales harshly, breath fogging faintly in the cold air. “I was trying to get you to say something, do something. Anything.”
“Why?” Sieun asks. There’s no sarcasm in it, which makes it worse. “To prove I have feelings? That I’m not some sort of zombie? You got what you wanted.”
The steadiness in Sieun’s voice makes something in Suho’s chest cave in. A car passes, headlights washing over them and then sliding away, leaving them in the buzz of the streetlight again.
Suho sees Sieun fully now too. The way Sieun’s shoulders have drawn in slightly. The way his hands have curled like he’s holding himself in place, keeping everything contained behind his ribs.
Suho knew exactly what he was doing.
The months in the hospital. The waiting. The careful distance so Sieun wouldn’t collapse if it happened again.
Suho went straight for it.
He opens his mouth and finds nothing ready.
“You think it was easier?” Sieun asks. His voice is still steady, but there’s something under it now. “You think I just moved on and decided I didn’t need you?”
“That’s not what I—”
“You said it.”
The hurt in his expression is restrained, controlled, and that restraint makes it worse than if Sieun had yelled.
“I rebuilt because I had to,” Sieun continues. “Because if I didn’t, I wasn’t going to survive.”
Suho feels the anger drain out of him, replaced with something uglier. Shame. Regret. The sudden awareness of his own cruelty, sharp as the migraine.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Sieun says, softer now, words rough around the edges. “You forced your way into my life. You taught me what it felt like to not be alone, and then you disappeared. And then you came back. And no one told me what to do with that.”
“I know,” Suho says, and it sounds small. “I know that.”
“Do you?” Sieun’s eyes don’t move from his face. “You don’t get to carve at me just to check if I’ll bleed.” He pauses, and Suho can see the effort it takes to manage his next breath. “So I’m asking you again. What do you want from me?”
The street is quiet around them. Somewhere, water drips from a gutter. Neither of them looks away.
Suho’s hands are shaking slightly. He flexes them into fists and then forces them open again, like he’s reminding his body who’s in charge.
“I still feel like I’m trying to catch up,” he admits. “I’m scared that I need you more than you need me.”
Sieun is quiet for a moment. A car passes at the end of the block, the sound distant. The tension in Sieun’s jaw is visible in the streetlight.
“You do,” Sieun says.
The admission is blunt. Honest.
Silence stretches.
Sieun exhales slowly. “That doesn’t mean I don’t care. It means I know what happens when you build your world around someone who doesn’t care where they end up. I can’t do it again. I can’t live in constant fear anymore.”
“So that’s it?” Suho asks, bitter slipping back in despite himself. “You’ve put me in the same box as everyone else.”
Sieun’s mouth curves faintly, but there is no humor in it. “You still want me to prove something.”
Suho shakes his head, frustrated with how wrong his own voice sounds. “I want you to notice.”
Sieun’s jaw shifts almost imperceptibly. “I always notice.”
The words are firm, not raised.
Suho forces himself to meet his eyes. “You didn’t tonight. I kept waiting for you to react. To get angry. To say something. And you didn’t.”
“I noticed every time you looked at me to see if I’d react,” Sieun says. “I noticed that you laughed louder when I didn’t. I noticed that you kept moving so I’d have a clear view.”
Suho goes still, shame hot under his skin.
“I noticed when you hesitated but gave her your number anyway,” Sieun continues. “I noticed that you kept checking if I was watching the entire time you did.”
Suho’s throat tightens. He looks down at the wet shine of the sidewalk because it’s easier than looking at Sieun’s face when he’s this precise.
“So you just don’t care enough to do anything about it,” Suho says, quieter now, but still stubborn.
“What did you want me to do?” Sieun asks, still calm. “Walk over and pull you away? Start a fight? Claim you in front of everyone?”
Suho doesn’t answer.
Sieun’s expression softens, just a fraction, like he’s choosing not to twist the knife even though he could. “If you want me to say I didn’t like it, I can say that. I didn’t like it. But I am not going to compete with strangers to keep you.”
“I’m not asking you to compete.”
“It felt like you were.”
Suho drags a hand over his face. His palm comes away cold from the night air. He hates how tired he suddenly feels, like the anger has been holding him upright and without it he might crumple.
“I thought,” he says slowly, words careful now, “that if you got upset, it would mean…”
“What, Suho?” Sieun presses. “That I still love you?”
The words fall from Sieun’s mouth so easily. They don’t tremble. They don’t present as a confession offered on bent knees. It’s matter-of-fact, as if it’s been true so long it doesn’t require drama.
Sieun looks at Suho for a long moment. The streetlight catches in his eyes. “I loved you before. I loved you when you were gone,” he continues. “I loved you when the doctors wouldn’t promise me anything. I loved you when I had to learn how to go home alone. I don’t need to get angry at a party to prove that.”
Suho feels his throat close.
“You keep testing me,” Sieun says. “You’ve been doing it for weeks.”
Suho doesn’t deny it. He can’t.
“You push at me,” Sieun continues. “You pick fights about nothing. You flirt in front of me. You snap when I give you space and snap when I don’t. You keep trying to find the line.”
“I’m trying to figure out where I stand,” Suho admits, voice low.
“You stand here,” Sieun says, almost impatiently. “With me. Living in my apartment. Sharing my bed even though we’re long past insisting it’s out of convenience.”
Heat rises to Suho’s face, bright and embarrassing.
“I almost lost you,” Sieun says finally. “For months, my entire world was waiting for a phone call that might end it. I still stayed. I don’t need to prove anything else to you.” He takes a deep breath. “If you want me, say that. Don’t make me chase you to prove it. Don’t try to make me panic so that you can feel secure. And don’t ever say my life was easier without you.”
Silence stretches between them.
A breeze moves through the street, lifting the ends of Sieun’s hair slightly, tugging at Suho’s jacket collar. The cold makes Suho’s leg ache more, like his body is finally catching up to the fact that he ran on it when he shouldn’t have.
Suho hesitates, then reaches out and grabs the front of Sieun’s jacket, not roughly, just enough to keep him there, to make sure he doesn’t turn away again.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“I know,” Sieun replies.
“I don’t want you to walk away,” Suho says.
“Then don’t make me,” Sieun answers.
Suho steps closer without thinking. His leg protests again, a deep, angry pulse, but he ignores it.
“I need you,” he says.
Sieun doesn’t flinch. “I know.”
“I hate that you don’t need me the same way.”
Sieun’s expression softens slightly. The practiced distance fades back into something more human. “I don’t need you to survive,” he says. “I choose you.”
“Still?” Suho asks, hating how small the word sounds.
“Yes.”
Suho reaches for Sieun’s hand, tentative. Sieun lets him take it.
“If you want reassurance,” Sieun says quietly, “ask for it. I love you, but I won’t keep letting you hurt me.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“You were trying to get a reaction,” Sieun corrects. “You just didn’t care what kind.”
That’s true enough that Suho can’t argue. He can feel it in his teeth, in the way his stomach still twists when he remembers the look on Sieun’s face right before he turned away.
Suho huffs out a faint, self-conscious laugh. “Baku called me stupid.”
Sieun shrugs. “He wasn’t wrong.”
Despite himself, Suho smiles. It doesn’t fix anything, but it loosens whatever has been wound so tight inside of him.
He looks down at their joined hands. He pulls his phone out, thumb stiff with cold.
Sieun watches, but doesn’t ask.
Suho scrolls once, finds the new contact put into his phone tonight, and deletes it. The screen goes blank again, reflecting the streetlight.
“I didn’t want it,” Suho says.
“I know,” Sieun replies.
Suho hesitates. Then he steps fully into Sieun’s space this time—not grabbing, not demanding. Just closing the distance that had been left open all night, like he’s choosing it on purpose.
Sieun doesn’t step back.
That matters more than anything else that’s been said.
They stand there for another second under the streetlight, neither rushing to move. Somewhere nearby, water drips again, steady and slow. Suho’s head still hurts. His leg still aches. None of that disappears.
Then Sieun adjusts his grip slightly, threading their fingers together instead of just holding on.
Suho exhales slowly.
“I need you to say it sometimes,” he admits.
“I just did.”
“No.” Suho shakes his head, embarrassed by how earnest he sounds. “Not in an argument.”
Sieun studies him for a moment, the calm in his face gentler now.
“I love you,” he says again.
Suho swallows.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “I love you.”
“I know,” Sieun replies, and for once it doesn’t feel like distance. It feels like certainty.
This time, when they start walking, Suho leans slightly into Sieun’s shoulder. He can feel the warmth through layers, the steady presence. He lets himself take it without apologizing for it.
And Sieun lets him.
They keep going, footsteps in sync on the damp sidewalk, the streetlights stretching long shadows ahead of them toward home.