Archive of Our Own

This place is dark and loud, and has only grown more so as the show has started behind him. It smells of bodies and makeup and liquor. It feels like a den; a raging hibernation in the depths of this city, where people call each other as if they are family.

Sieun runs a finger down the cold condensation on his glass. He watches as neon lights refract through it, colouring the half-melted ice globules pink, then acid green. 

“Unnie!” ten people seem to scream behind him as a new song starts. “Unnie! You’re so pretty!”

Perhaps they are. Family, he means. Perhaps that’s why this place, which is about as far outside Sieun’s comfort zone as he can plausibly imagine, feels just like anywhere else. He imagines that if he laid down right now across the empty bar stools to his right, he’d be able to sleep just as leadenly as he does in his own studio. 

Sieun runs through his earlier thought process - the one that had made him stand on the subway platform as four of his trains had come and gone, then turn and come back up - and it doesn’t really help because it wasn’t logical then either. He can no better put into words what exactly he’d intended to do here now than then. Thus, cue forty minutes of sitting in silence as people revel around him.

He wonders if he should have dressed better. He’d come here straight from his project site, and gone there straight from the library. Everyone seems to come here with friends, so maybe that’s it. It is easier to start a conversation with someone if they don’t seem like a blatant loner. Lower risk; you have someone else to direct your attention to if they turn out weird, or your own friends to fall back on. Or maybe it’s just the vibe he gives off - don’t talk to me - which admittedly, is one he has doggedly cultivated for twenty-three years and which he has rarely regretted, all factors in life considered.

It’s tipping heavily into regret right now, though. 

The feeling has been growing within him for the past six months ever since he got out of the military. 

He’d spent the vast majority of his life fine in the silence. It’s the companion with whom he spent his childhood and adolescence and has taken many names over the years, all of which are positive. Diligence. Maturity. The one that people seem to land on is focus. It’s a word as brilliant in its power as it is in its emptiness, and it has littered every conversation and report of which he is a subject.

Sieun was like that in the military, too. His seniors had taken an instant liking to him. His liberty had not been a hard thing for him to relinquish because he’d never formed a respect for it in the first place, but on top of that, how amazing that they found someone so capable. After basic training, Sieun had been assigned to a GP where he’d kept his head down, ignored everything that wasn’t an order, and passed a terrifyingly peaceful seventeen months. 

Every iota of himself had folded into the model that they had wanted and in many ways, it had been so much easier than real life. He had been fed when the canteen opened, had slept when the lights switched off, and had had the when, where, and why of the rest of his minutes set out without needing a single ounce of his own input. He never had to consider the value of whatever menial task he was doing because it was not his problem. Once, he had stood staring at the distant North Korean guard post and committed the veritable thought-sin of wondering if he’d been born on the wrong side.

Then towards the end of his service, his sergeant had asked him very nicely if he would consider becoming non-commissioned. It occurred to him that if he did and didn’t get promoted too far, he would probably never have to make another decision in his life. 

Sieun had said no almost instantly, and it had surprised him almost more than the sergeant. 

Coming back to university had been brutal. 

People had congratulated him on his upcoming freedom and he’d nodded once or twice, just to get by. He’d endured two hours of his taxi driver’s cheerful chatter about everything he’d done after he’d gotten out of the military; he’d proposed to his girlfriend, married, considered his dream of opening a business but let it go because a better dream had arrived - he was going to be a father - this is the start of everything, kid. So much is going to come at you now, you’re not even gonna know where to start!

Sieun had arrived back at his childhood home where no-one was waiting. 

He’d stood there by the shoe rack, eyes running over the neatness of the place, his young face in the small pictures, the years of his life printed into thin paper certificates and glaring at him through their glass. 

Then he’d lay down right there on the entranceway floor in his uniform, and slept until he physically could not anymore. 

In the subsequent days, everything felt like a fucking trial. There were small things, like having to decide what and how much food to buy for one, or select which classes and manage the resulting schedule. There were big things, like the fact that his childhood was over and everyone’s around him was too, but they were starting to have dreams and goals and people and he didn’t, and that actually mattered now because according to national statistics he still has approximately six decades of living to fill. His mythological focus had paled in the face of that reality.

Yeon Sieun is currently an engineering student at Yonsei University. Sieun chosen his course for its absence of emotion and reverence for answers and before the military, that had been fine. In the days since, he has crushed himself back into every inch of his old established routine and has felt, with no little horror, that he has long since outgrown it. He just hadn’t wanted to realise. 

His hours in the library have become distracted; he’d found himself looking up and watching every hushed interaction happening around him. He’d observed the smallest details in random people - the store clerks, the person in front of him in the supermarket queue, the classmates in his most recent team project - she slept badly last night, she’s worried about her kid at home, he’s excited for a date with his girlfriend. 

The difference is not that he cares. He always has. For as long as he can remember he has noticed far too much of the world, drinking in every slipped shade of its colour and watching it as it fades into the grey of his own. 

The difference is that suddenly, he thinks he might now want to care, and Sieun simply does not know what to do with that at all. Every habit and ingrained reaction of his life was born from the assumption that he doesn’t. 

Last week, Sieun had received an award for being the only one not caught out by the trick question on the mid-term paper. He had genuinely considered texting his parents, except his mother is somewhere in America consulting on the Korean academic system and his father is somewhere in Busan at a guest coaching rotation. His fingers had hovered over the text keys and, hilariously, that’s probably when he accepted that he had to do something.

Something. He doesn’t know what. Just something, something to fill the gaping hole inside him. It seems only to grow by the day, marching on like a decreed punishment, forcing his body evermore outwards from safety.

And at this moment, sitting alone at the bar, Sieun just really wants someone to talk to him.

Then again, it’s not as if he’s making much of an effort himself. He thinks he probably exhausted all his untrained autonomy for the day on coming here in the first place. He hasn’t said more than a sentence in the last hour, that sentence being to order, and he hasn’t looked at anything other than the glass in front of him and the bottles of alcohol that line the bar wall.

He imagines turning and starting a conversation with the first person he sees behind him. The most basic of social functions. 

He realises, irrespective of his desire to push himself, that he’s never going to do that. At least not today. Then realises he should go.

This was a stupid idea. 

Sieun puts his cap back on and reaches for his coat and backpack. 

He’s just getting up when someone’s hand places a full glass next to his empty one. It has a lemon wedge and everything; the carbonation is still popping.

It’s the bartender. He’s standing right in front of Sieun, still holding the empty Coke bottle in his free hand, and he’s smiling slightly. His smile is soft, and lovely.

“I didn’t order that.”

“I know,” the bartender says easily. “I thought you were keeping me company, no?”

Sieun stares. 

Company. What. No.

The man shrugs as if accepting his expression for an answer. 

“Well, stay long enough to drink that. If you want. The fizz is gonna go out now I’ve poured it and I can’t exactly give it to anyone else.”

“I’ll pay for it,” Sieun says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

The bartender’s face goes through a series of microexpressions that he really cannot read. It occurs to Sieun that that might have been rude.

“You’re quite interesting,” he says eventually, with another smile.

Then he takes the empty glass, waves a hand at the full one as if to say, your choice, then goes to the sink to start washing up. 

Sieun slides back into his seat, still watching him.

Another song is starting behind him, along with hoots and hollers as the MC introduces the performer.

The bartender is young. Probably around his age. And he’s not the one Sieun ordered from when he first came in; he’d noticed some commotion, some shift switch, a while ago but he hadn’t looked up when it was happening. The man has tousled black hair, two silver cuffs on one ear, and a baggy fit that would drown Sieun if he wore it, but which hangs off his frame like he’s just come out of a pictorial. 

Sieun watches as soap foam splashes onto his Apple watch. He clicks his teeth and wipes it absently on his shirt near his collarbone. Sieun sees that he’s sweating slightly. His skin is gleaming, even in this dark light. That’s also when he realises just how handsome he is.

He blinks, then looks back down to his glass.

It’s hot in here. How irritating that, even with his hoodie, Sieun is feeling that only now.

The man finishes washing up, considers if there’s anything else to do, then simply goes to stand with his back against the alcohol wall. Sieun can see him through his periphery. Right, there really isn’t much going on. There’d been some truth in him saying that he was keeping him company. Apart from refills, it’s mainly been just them two in this part of the room for the past ten minutes; everyone’s watching the show.

Suho is watching Sieun. 

He sees him bring the glass slowly to his chapped lips and take the tiniest sip. He feels the littlest bit gratified, and another bit concerned. He’d been holding the Coke bottle to try to signal reassurance, but the guy really should have asked anyway. You shouldn’t drink anything in a public place which you didn’t see being poured. Suho wonders how old he is and whether this is his first time out. 

He has a face that gives very little away - he could be his age, or younger, or on his thirtieth round of resurrection and rebirth and remember every second of what came before. Suho honestly can’t tell anything about him, other than that he is out of place here and, judging from the contours of that unholy-sized backpack, that he is still a student. 

It’s unusual. Suho is terrific at reading people.

Sieun lifts his head, sees that the other’s eyes are still on him.

The bartender doesn’t say anything though. He seems to be waiting. 

They look at each other for long enough that Suho thinks he could probably count his lashes. There are lots and they are long; sweeping, like a doe’s. His eyes are beautiful, the type that could say a million things in a single second. The reason Suho keeps looking though, is because they don’t. He wonders if this man has spent a lifetime using them only for staring. Look, don’t touch. He wonders if they are the same.

Suho wants to smile again, but he doesn’t want to push him either way. He’s not being egotistical - Baekjin likes to tell him that his smile is a fucking trap. Tells him to stop breaking his customer’s hearts, he’s trying to run a business here.

Eventually, Sieun swallows. Conversation always bothers him but he rarely feels nervous when talking to strangers, which means that he cares about this quite a bit, and that does bother him. He has to remind himself that that’s not a bad thing.

“Is this place yours?” he asks.

Stupid question. The bartender grins.

“No. It’s her’s,” he says, pointing a finger over Sieun’s shoulder.

He turns back to the runway for the first time. It’s lined with a cram of bodies, all shouting as a queen dressed in brilliant black parades up and down its length. The part of the song she’s lip-syncing to right now is languorous, mournful, but her grin is so apparent that it feels more like a celebration.

“I’m just covering today,” the bartender continues, as Sieun turns back. “I don’t even work here, actually. I’m friends with Nina and her boyfriend, so when she feels like being part of the show I come in to help. Nina,” he repeats, pointing to the massive fluorescent sign above the bar with her name. 

“Oh,” Sieun says, feeling vaguely embarrassed. He supposes that should have been obvious. He wonders if everyone knows that, and whether it’s therefore similarly obvious that he’d searched up gay bar on his maps app an hour ago and simply entered the closest one.

“Are you tee-total?”

“What?”

“Your drink,” the bartender says, louder now. The song is approaching the bridge and it’s loud enough that Sieun can feel it through his feet. “I was wondering, it’s rare.”

Sieun shakes his head. “I don’t like the taste.”

I have an addictive personality.

“What?” the man says now. He’s crossed over from the back of the bar and is close enough that Sieun can smell him. He smells like mint. He turns his ear to Sieun.

“I - have an addictive personality.”

He leans back, nodding like this makes complete sense. Which is impressive because Sieun's the one who said it and it doesn't make any to him.

“Me too,” he says, but Sieun is more reading it from his lips than he is hearing it. “I-” A little crease forms between his eyebrows. He gestures at his ear - I can’t even hear myself speak - and Sieun nods.

He seems to consider, then waves Sieun closer. Do you mind? he mouths.

Sieun doesn’t. Still, it jolts him when the man curves a hand round the shell of his ear. His breath is warm as it hits his skin. 

“Do you wanna talk? We can go outside.”

He looks at Sieun, staying close as he waits for an answer. Sieun can see the veins beneath the fragile skin under his eyes. In the flashing lights, his irises are amber, onyx, topaz. 

They scan Sieun’s face, which is completely and utterly unreadable at this moment, because he is following the man’s every movement as if they are his own and is reckoning with a sudden, terrifying urge to lean closer. The space between them feels hollow, like something that must be filled. Mint, beauty spot. Apple lips and a tiny old scar, white splitting the border of the red. His own breaths begin to feel thin.

Sieun looks back up to those eyes. His thoughts seem to be floating, unloosened and free.

How absurd. to meet two jewels on a Thursday. 

The silence must stretch too long because the bartender straightens up. Cool air seems to rush in between them, except nothing is cool in this place, and Sieun feels instantly light-headed at the gap - pulled towards, even as he himself straightens too, and away.

Or not, the bartender mouths.

He’s smiling again, but it’s different. It’s kind, in that distant way.

In that second, Sieun makes a decision that feels, for once, completely his. He does not like this distance. He looks towards the stairwell, back, then nods.

The bartender grins.

“Baku!” he yells suddenly, to someone behind Sieun, and it’s so loud he almost jumps out of his seat. It certainly knocks his surroundings back into him, noise floods - has it always been this loud? - and it occurs to him that the man probably could have yelled just fine this whole time. He seems to have lungs made of steel.

“Baku! Come do the job you’re paid for!”

It’s directed at a tall man standing at the back end of the runway - the one who’d been behind the bar when Sieun came in. He’s filming Nina in the throes of her final chorus and is wearing an ear-splitting grin. The bartender yells again, and he hears this time. He gestures massively between Nina and his phone, wearing a mortally offended expression. He mouths SHUT UP.

The bartender suppresses a smile.

He mouths whoops to Sieun, then turns to grab a receipt from behind him and a pen. He writes something on it then shows it to him.

We’ll have to wait a bit. Until she’s off stage.

Sieun nods.

He scribbles a bit more.

My name’s Ahn Suho

Sieun holds his hand out for the paper and pen, ignoring the fact that his heart is suddenly, insistently, racing. Suho’s fingers brush his as he hands them over.

Yeon Sieun.

It’s nice to meet you.

They don’t end up talking that night. At least, not out loud.

Nina stays on stage for long enough that it becomes apparent that she has absolutely no intention of coming off - she alternates between MC-ing and joining in on the other girls’ performances. As such, and judging from one capitalised text sent to Suho’s phone (FRIEND, LEAVE ME BEEE), neither does Baku.

Suho and Sieun continue passing receipts over the bar counter. Suho dips in and out, attending to customers as they come. Even if he doesn’t work here he’s clearly a fixture. Sieun sees many people greet him like an old friend and several hug him over the counter.

It’d actually be very possible for the two of them to talk most of the time because the music is only too loud during the choruses, but they both seem to realise they have found a rhythm this way and keep it. 

Sieun, for his part, is relieved. He can take his time this way and not feel like anything that will come out of his mouth will ruin the choice that he has just made. Suho is similarly relieved, because Sieun is staying. Also, because the more time he spends opposite Sieun the more he realises that he really does not want to fuck this up. 

He likes how slowly they both end up writing as the room continues to clamour around them. He likes watching him and feeling himself being watched as they think in turn - Sieun tends to look away when their eyes actually meet. He likes even more when something calls him away, and he returns to a question or an answer waiting for him on the bar. He loves that Sieun leaves things crossed out, rather than scribbled. Sieun’s handwriting is very pretty; his own is a scrawl. He is thinking about stealing the receipts after Baekjin logs them, because - no, don’t finish that thought, it’ll embarrass him.

You said you don’t work here. Can I ask what you do?

Me and Baku - that massive one up there - we have a vintage shop over in Mullae-dong. Actually, he owns it, I just work there

Do you like it?

Clothes? Yes, a lot, when I was younger. Now, just sort of. Baku? Definitely. It’s great working with friends. You should visit sometime. What do you do? 

Student. Engineering.

Suits you. I could tell by your backpack but wasn’t sure what it was for. Do you like it?

Sort of. Did you study Can I ask what age you are?

23. Did military straight out of high school. I met Baku and Baekjin - that’s Nina - there, and have been working ever since. You?

23. I’m turning 24 next month. I finished my service recently and came back to school.

Is that why your hair’s so short?

No, that was last summer. I just found that I liked it this way. There’s less to take care of.

Lucky you can pull it off. I looked like a peeled egg. Did you like it there, then? The military, you seem like someone who would

Yes. I don’t really say that though because it’s not actually I don’t know where you’re getting that from. I’m pretty sure I don’t look like someone who would. So if I say I liked it it surprises people, they tend to assume I’m a raging patriot.

I see. I thought about becoming a non-com for a lot of my service

Really? Really. 

Now who’s the surprising one. I think more people do than they’d like to admit. It’s not that I loved it there or anything. Just. You know

This is my first time somewhere like here.

Somewhere - gay bar? Bar? Drag show?

Everything. I don’t really go out much.

What did you mean, when you said you had an addictive personality?

I don’t really know. I didn’t mean anything serious. I just tend to go all in when there is something. It feels It’s actually just been studying all my life, which is I know sounds odd. It is. So I think if I tried stuff that’s actually meant to be addictive, it could be bad.

That’s - hmm. not addiction then. Obsession maybe?

What’s the difference?

Well, you're still choosing to do it if you get what I mean. Even if it doesn't feel like you are. And then it’s not really a good or bad thing it’s probably just what you need the most in your life at that moment. Maybe it just means you take things very seriously

You're quite. Positive. What did you mean then, when you said you had one too?

Same as you actually, not good with words either. If something gets me I want to face-plant right into it, that kind of thing. Although it’s never been something as helpful as studying

What, then?

Good things, I try to find good things. Food, music, movies? Lots of movies, recently. And places. I mean they’re kinda useless, they don’t have anything to do with what I do. But I always feel lucky when I find them

Do Do you Is it alright to use so many of these receipts? The stack on the spike’s getting low.

Yeah it’s fine Nina won’t care. And I’ll write smaller. Do you live around here?

No. I was here for a case study project. I live alone up in Seodaemun. I go to school there too, so I’m mainly north of the river. What about you?

I live with my grandma, up in Seongbuk 

I grew up there too. I suppose we missed each other at school then.

Must have I’m guessing you’re really clever like a science school type? Not to intrude but there’s not one bad uni in Seodaemun

I guess You seem smarter.

Oho. Think again. I spent most of my time sleeping at school

That’s not what I meant.

Aha yeah okay then, I guess I'm not too bad

Your ear cuffs are nice. Did it hurt?

Not really, they’ve got this great gun that just sort of zaps it in there. It hurt a lot after though, so every time it did I just took myself to a mirror and was like yep, they're still hot. Worst part was my grandma, she almost killed me like five separate times after she saw them

In a good way or bad

Good, good, she's great actually. I mean if she really wanted to she could have taken them out when I was asleep, I sleep like a dead thing. But she just whacked me a bunch of times with her slipper. So she's great.

Are your parents around?

No. They moved away when I was little then passed shortly after. Don’t say sorry or anything, it was a long time ago and it doesn’t hurt. They were great though, too. You?

I have parents. They divorced when I was younger and we don’t talk much. They are both very busy.

Do you have any hobbies?

No. I’ve never had made time for them.  

But you’ve decided to now. You’re trying new things, that’s why you’re here, right?

Right. I think I came on a pretty good day.

I don’t come here every day. More pop in and out, depending on whatever, it’s close to our shop after all. I can be here tomorrow, though.

Bold of you to assume I meant you.

What else would it be, your Coke?

They don’t sell the glass bottle ones in the supermarket. 

Oh how hilarious I am wheezing. So. Tomorrow?

Can’t. I have a project meeting then, we’ll probably work into the night. The deadline’s Sunday so I’m not that free. Speaking of, I should get going. There’s something tomorrow morning too.

Sunday! Is nothing holy anymore?

No.

Can I get your number, then?

For the next three days, Sieun remembers every word that they had written. And it’s not great.

He overthinks every element of his overthinking until the lightness he’d left the bar with feels like a sopping weight on his chest. It had been all fine, but maybe not, why had they been writing, who does that in a bar, what the fuck had he even been saying?

He searches Ahn Suho up and finds an Instagram page with fifty-five thousand followers. Sieun categorically does not care about such things; he does not care that Suho seems to have massively downplayed his job - he is a model - nor does he care that the ring around his story is always pink - Sieun can’t see it anyway, he will not be making an account. Nor does he care that he feels worlds away from this person on his screen, so happy, easy, and surrounded by friends.

He tries to remember how he’d felt at the time. 

It hadn’t felt ridiculous then, the writing. It had felt special. A choice that the two of them had made. He remembers the way his eyes would rush along Suho’s script, the changes of topic or the quiet implications that he would wonder were intentional. His gaze would flick up and catch Suho watching silently, a wry smile on his face.

But right now, it is just so much easier to click on the numerous tags in Suho’s photos and think this is all very fucking embarrassing.

Sieun really met him at a bad time. He isn’t ready for this shit. He should have been asking his barista of several years how her day was before he jumped into the goddamn deep end. 

On Sunday, he is sitting alone in the library and running on his second near all-nighter. He had volunteered for far more work in the group project than should have feasibly been his and his teammates had leapt at it because they knew it meant higher marks. 

Right now, he is staring at a sixteenth black and white GPR radargram scan on his computer, knowing he still has fourteen more left to analyse, and he is not thinking about that at all.

Instead, he is considering drilling a hole in his skull.

Suho had asked so many questions. Sieun hadn't.

Food, music, movies. Places. Good things. Not people though, he hadn’t mentioned people. 

Do Do you Do you think you could find me?

Well.

He opens a new tab and starts searching up nearby hardware stores, because the alternative is slamming his laptop shut and flinging it bodily across the room.

Sieun’s phone buzzes and his heart stutters, then drops. It’s an email from his professor, reminding the class of the deadline tonight.

Two days ago, he’d switched from his treasured Airpods to an old pair of wired earbuds, because Siri kept reading the damn notifications out and it’s never him. 

The only thing he ever listens to while studying is white or brown noise, but somehow right now, the worse sound quality is royally pissing him off. Static, disrupted.

Sieun tugs the buds out with enough force that his ears pop, then drops them onto his open notebook.

He hates this.

[Sent Saturday Night]

ASH: you remember that guy

PHM: who

PHM: YES. YES I DO

PHM: the one you fought baekjin for the receipts for lmfao he wasn’t even gonna read them

PHM: i did tho dont hate me but ㅠㅠ child where the fuck was yoru rizz

PHM: it was like you were trying to pass a test i-

PHM: i mean cute tho

PHM: like. No ok i take that back it was genuinely very sweet

PHM: So

PHM: whats up

PHM: dude come back

PHM: are u mad at me

ASH: no

PHM: IM SORRY WHATS UP

ASH: nothing jesus

ASH: literally nothing

PHM: ohhhhhh as in nothing nothing i seeee thats something

ASH: what are you on about

PHM: so he hasn’t texted you

PHM: just text him then

PHM: oh shit was the number fake???

ASH: no

ASH: i mean i don’t think it would be havent tried

ASH: he’s busy. Like, super

PHM: no ones too busy to receive a text be real

PHM: he might be too busy to send one tho

PHM: altho you said he was shy didnt you

ASH: hes not shy

PHM: for all u know he couldb e waiting for yours, like first move

ASH: i searched him up

PHM: ha

ASH: he’s like

ASH: idk

ASH: idk

PHM: errrrrrrm okay

ASH: i figured he was clever. But like, did you know we have national olympiads. Do you know what an olympiad is

PHM: nope

ASH: yeah neither do i thats the point i’ve quite literally never seen so many pictures of a child with trophies

ASH: and there was an article mentioning him like last week on the yonsei website 

ASH: yonsei, man

PHM: and that means something bc of what

ASH: he’s intimidating, okay

PHM: dont tell me you think hes out of your league bc hes BOOK SMART

ASH: bro you know i barely made it through high school

PHM: in that case WHAT AM I

PHM: i feel like im being used

PHM: 99 iq bastard lets just all kill ourselves why dont we

ASH: dont play that card everyone knows why baekjin loves you

PHM: exactly? Apply that to yourself you idiot

PHM: literally everyone you meet loves you too. Man i bet if we did a poll at the club youd come out on top of both of us

ASH: no nina would

PHM: yeah she would

ASH: if she didnt itd only be bc the two of you insult ppl with how cuffed you are

PHM: rmbr what baekjin told you

ASH: what he tells me a million things every time i see him hes idiom jesus

PHM: in the military

ASH: i am aware

PHM: evidently youre not

ASH: it’s not just he’s smart like

ASH: its just everything

PHM: you said he seemed to like you too, right?

ASH: i didn’t say that

PHM: guess i saw it then. You wouldn’t hv seemed so happy if you didn’t feel that

PHM: bro. this is not like you, you’re worth everything n you know that

ASH: not you getting serious

PHM: one of us had to i can feel ur fucking moping through the screen

ASH: not moping

PHM: yes youre not your e anxious. which is worse bc that shit has no business being anywhere near you, okay

PHM: YOU ARE GREAT

ASH: I AM GREAT

PHM: YOU LIKE HIM

ASH: LETS NOT GO THAT FAR

PHM: AND HE LIKES YOU

ASH: [a completely irrelevant sticker]

PHM: come on man

PHM: no offense to him but someone who chooses to sit alone for an hr at a drag show is not exactly someone who has his shit together

ASH: that is offensive

PHM: he was probably really glad u talked to him

ASH: i think so

ASH: i mean even so. idk. im feeling so much shit rn its really stupid

ASH: i dont even know him like ok seriously it was all fine

ASH: more than fine

ASH: i know

ASH: i hate overthinking i feel like a fucking washing machine

PHM: [video]

PHM: i cut that part just for you

PHM: ignore Nina lol 

PHM: at the back, he’s writing

PHM: and look at your face

PHM: i’ve got my own damn receipts

PHM: where are u you replaying it or what

ASH: thanks man

PHM: anytime

PHM: loser

[Sent Monday Morning]

NBJ: Hey. Minho asked for that guy’s number, the one you were talking to at the bar last week. He noticed him too, said he was his type. He likes quiet people.

ASH: What

ASH: When

ASH: Where

ASH: When did he ask

NBJ: He didn’t.

NBJ: Get your shit together and text him. You are better than this.

On Monday night, Sieun’s phone buzzes with a text.

ASH: How was your deadline? Would you be free for lunch tomorrow?

He watches as the screen fades to black. Then he taps it, and it’s still there.

He waits to feel scared. But most of the fear that comes has is directed at how fucking fast his mood has changed.

It takes Sieun twenty minutes of near-stillness to send one word back.

YSH: Sure.

It’s six minutes past one on Tuesday afternoon. They had agreed to meet at one.

Suho turns to Juntae.

“I’m gonna kill myself,” he announces.

Juntae doesn’t look up from the lemons he’s slicing.

“Suho, can you chill.”

It’s seventeen past. 

Juntae has finished prepping drinks garnishes and has moved on to polishing the glasses for this evening’s service. It’s a completely redundant task because no-one cares about watermarks in this place.

“Okay,” he says. “Maybe kill yourself now.”

[13:25]

ASH: i think im getting stood up

PHM: shit

ASH: he hasn’t texted either

PHM: oh

PHM: well

PHM: icl i didnt see this happening

PHM: its acc v chill today i’ll close up early we can go watch a movie?

Sieun’s classmates stare at him.

They have never seen him talk so much or so quickly. There’d been an abysmal technical problem with the auditorium projector just when Sieun’s team had been due to start. IT had been called and had not been able to fix it, then the entire class had had to move to the free auditorium in the neighbouring architecture faculty and boot up everything there. By the time they’d begun they were over twenty minutes late.  

Right now, the professor is trying to direct her post-presentation questions at Sieun’s teammates, because the entire thing has been a bit too perfect and she suspects that they don’t actually know half the material in their slides, but he’s leaping on her words the second they leave her mouth and answering every point to a very succinct T. Eventually she gives up, partly because she no longer has anything else to ask and partly because her surprise at this, too, is outweighing her determination for academic integrity. 

The moment she says thank you, Yeon Sieun literally sprints out the door. He doesn’t even stop to get his things from his auditorium seat. 

Every eye follows him, several mouths agape.

“What on earth happened to him?” someone says from the back row.

The professor nods before she thinks, catches herself, then coughs.

“Next - er. Next team.”

This is so fucking stupid, Sieun thinks.

It was always going to be tight, but he’d seen the presentation order after he’d agreed 1pm with Suho and he thought it would work - his structural professor is like that, she doesn’t let anyone overrun. Even more stupid, he’s left his phone in his backpack and despite having looked up the place several times beforehand, he cannot remember the route in his panic. He remembers the name though and he doesn’t think twice when he stops people three times on the street to ask. 

Five minutes later, he bursts through the door to a dimly lit establishment, still panting from the stairs he’s just run up from. Everyone turns to look. 

There’s a very sparse pattering of patrons at this hour and two people standing behind the bar. (Suho's phone pings with a text from Baku - avatar's showing?)

Suho takes in his state. His flushed cheeks, bright eyes. His loose t-shirt is stained with water drops and his hair is glistening - he has no jumper, no coat, no anything, it’s early March and raining outside.

Sieun stares back.

“Sorry,” he pants. “I-” then he coughs, because he does not exercise and his lungs feel like fucking thinned balloons.

The person next to Suho guffaws.

Suho gives him an extremely violent look. The man returns it with an equally unapologetic grin, holding up the knife in his hand as if to say, well.

Suho stares at Sieun for a little while longer then, seeming to realise that everyone else is doing so too, comes out from behind the bar and beckons him over to a doorway - the start of another staircase. As Sieun crosses past the bar, the other man - he’s young, thin, with small features - gives him a dazzling smile and two thumbs up. Sieun resists the urge to jump out a window.

“Come on,” Suho says to Sieun, when he’s close enough that he can smell the rain.

They go up the stairs and stop by a metal door, through which Sieun can hear Japanese rock music and two voices.

“Turn that shit offff, oh my god.”

“No.”

“You’ve had the aux all morning-”

“One second,” Suho says. He pushes open the swinging door. It’s a kitchen, in which stands a man in a blue hoodie and another with browline glasses. 

“Oh, hey!” Blue Hoodie says brightly. His eyes land on Sieun behind Suho. “He came?”

Glasses man comes forward too, looking very unimpressed. “Why’s he wet.”

“Do you have clothes here?” Suho asks, ignoring them both. “Warm ones.”

“I’m fine,” Sieun tries to input, but actually he’s not. He’s starting to cool down and it’s kind of fucking cold.

“I do,” drawls the glasses man.

“Not yours.”

“What’s wrong with his?”

“Smoke. Okay, fine, do you have blankets?”

“What do we look like, a hotel?”

Suho rubs his temple then lets the door swing shut, before pushing it open again and adding, “And don’t come up. I know you’re gonna piss me off - I’ll come down to get stuff.”

“What stuff!!” they both shout, as Suho starts to lead Sieun up the second set of stairs.

It’s topped with another door, but this time of rich brown wood. Inside, there’s a single, small, izakaya room. A long low table stretches down from the opposing window and two wooden seating benches line its sides. One golden bulb with a wicker light shade hangs from the ceiling.

Suho picks up the dark grey denim jacket lying on the left bench and holds it out to Sieun.

“I’m really fine.”

“You’re shivering.”

“I’m not.”

He is.

“You didn’t need to run, you could have called or texted.”

“I didn’t have my phone.”

Suho stares at him.

Sieun presses his lips together. He’d spoken without thinking. He takes the jacket then puts it on because really, he’s lost all fucking pretense now, and slides onto the bench on the right side.

“My presentation overran in school. By the time it finished, I was already really late. All my stuff was up in the back row, so I just. Kind of left.”

He pushes his hands through the too-long sleeves and waits, his face calm but his heart thumping from much more than the remains of his run. It’s not every day that you open a conversation with a grand statement as to how desperate you are. 

Whatever. Is he mortified? Undoubtedly. But what’s done is done. 

He honestly hadn’t expected Suho to still be waiting here half an hour on. In fact, Sieun had been convinced he’d never see him again - his brain has a flair for the disastrous and that one o’clock deadline had seemed blacker than law. It had ticked into one-past and he’d thought - he’s gone. That’s probably when he’d started absolutely machine-gunning his speech.

The thing is, on the opposite side of Sieun’s mortification coin, there is certainty. He’d spent last night and most of this morning flip-flopping like a freshly caught fish - does he want to do this? He doesn’t, he does, he doesn’t, he does. 

So. Yeah. Thank fucking god for that projector because it’s pretty much slammed his answer into his face. His shirt is still wet with rain beneath the jacket, as is his hair.

He had really wanted to be here.

Suho, on the other hand, does not answer straight away. Instead, he turns to face the corner of the room.

“Are you - alright?” Sieun asks his back.

He sees Suho nod.

“Just thinking.”

Holy shit, he thinks.

Well fuck, Sieun thinks.

Eventually, Suho turns back around and slides onto the bench opposite. He’s wearing an odd, dazed expression. It’s almost as if he’s spacing out, but his gaze is entirely focussed on Sieun. 

Suho traces him - the jacket he’s hugging around himself, his eyes, which look back steadily, determinedly, the drop of rain, or perhaps sweat, still trickling from his eyebrow - and it’s so much it feels like he should not be seeing this. It can't be meant for him. In daylight, Sieun is so, so beautiful.

“You’re insane.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Completely.”

“I don’t mean to be.” 

“You should. It’s a compliment.”

“What is this place?” Sieun asks, because he really wants to change the subject now. Also, that’s on his mind almost as much as his lingering embarrassment. It’s become apparent that Suho had more friends in Sieun’s university district than Sieun has had in his entire life (not hard, because that number is a round nil).

“Oh. That hyung down there, the one next to me in the bar, his grandparents owned this place. It used to be a coffee house but he refurbished it into a dive bar. I know him through the rude one in the kitchen, he was Baekjin’s high school classmate. This,” he waves a hand around the room, “is their private dining room. I knew no-one was gonna book it for lunch, so I asked. Thought you’d prefer somewhere like this.”

Sieun does. He doesn’t know if the door was built in a certain way or something, but it seems to have completely blocked all sound out. It feels like they’re in a floating little box, away from everything. Just the two of them.

But equally, that means it’s just the two of them.

“I do,” he manages.

“Are you hungry? After that sprinting.”

Sieun’s not, but he nods.

“Is there anything you don’t eat?”

“No.”

“Same, I’ll go downstairs and order then, and bring some drinks for us too. Water, and Coke again? Right. If I just text them they probably won’t hear over the music. I’ll be back in a second.”

In the kitchen, Suho asks Gotak for his favourite dishes, pretending very much as if Seongje is invisible and his snarky comments are mute. He does not have the brain space for a single ounce of bullshit right now. Then he grabs a deep metal food prep tub and goes down to the bar.

“No suicide today then?” Juntae asks.

“No need to. I’m gonna die in that room.”

Upstairs, Sieun is sitting with his head on the table, his face turned towards the window where he can read the opposite building’s karaoke advertisements through the streaking water. 

The summer before he’d enlisted he’d been to several final rounds of internship interviews conducted in acidly bright rooms and by certifiably sadistic people, and Sieun had barely broken a sweat. But without Suho the rain is now the only thing he can hear, and he is starting to get nervous. Very.

He cannot talk for shit. 

If he’d spent his life trying to, he would probably have learnt skills for that too. He’s a prodigy in everything else, so why not that too? But no one had ever expected it of him, so he hadn’t.

He wonders how much Suho would still like him, if they spent the next hour eating in complete and utter silence.

Sieun presses a hand to his forehead, breathes in deeply, and - oh. 

Smells mint.

The jacket is surprisingly soft for the material and thickness. It’s well-worn. Sieun looks at the cuff for a second, which ends halfway up his palm. He’d only realised it today, but Suho is almost an entire head taller than him.

Sieun brings it to his nose and breathes. He keeps it there until the sweet clarity begins to grow sharp.

After the CSAT in his senior year of high school, Sieun had spent a few weeks absolutely poaching his brain in a series of existentialist texts. He doesn’t remember exactly where he got the idea to do so nor what half the books had said, because they’d been translated from French and seemed to have been written with the express intent to confuse.

But there’d been one passage in an essay about free will that had seemed revelatory to his tired mind. Essentially, the author had written that everyone alive has absolute free will, because you can just kill yourself at any time. By just existing, you are making that one ultimate choice day after day, second after second. The certainty of death, liberating the absurdity of life - jump after, now now. He remembers that because it had made him feel a little better about graduating and going to uni, and he’d spent a long time thinking on how fucked up that fact was.

Sieun sits back up and puts both hands down into his lap.

His heart thumps in his chest, in time with the pattering rain. 

He is literally on a date.

You are an idiot, he tells himself. 

If he fucks this up, he fucks it up. It’d be more surprising if he didn’t but that’s fine. He’s here, Suho’s here, time will pass in this room the same way it does anywhere else, regardless of how neurotic he decides to be about it. He still hasn’t asked busy today? to his barista, and he’s not going to get a chance to do so before Suho returns.

Sieun is going to talk and spend time with a person that he likes. 

Right. Now.

When Suho returns, holding a tub laden with drinks, cups, plates, and cutlery, Sieun smiles at him.

Suho seems to misstep, tripping over something (thin air), and straightens quickly as the cutlery clatters around in the tub. He tries to smile back and is sure his face is burning just as much as the slap Juntae had just given him on his back - have fun, he’d said.

They set the table together.

“I like this,” Sieun says softly, as he sets down a pair of chopsticks for Suho’s side. “It sort of feels like we're getting ready for a home cooked meal.”

“Ha,” says Suho.

“What did you order?” 

“Oh - um - oh.” They both sit back down. Sieun is calm now and Suho is conducting a WWE wrestling match in his own mind - HAVE FUN, the audience screams. 

“Not much - well, a bunch of stuff. Gotak - the other one in the kitchen - he’s like some culinary genius, he’s obsessed with food but he’s always experimenting new stuff, so sometimes it’s great and other times it’s a bomb. Like, I’ve eaten so much terrible food in this place - but no, I mean, he is actually very good. But I thought it was probably better to go with something safe, so what I mean to say is-” Suho cuts off. He is very aware that he is rambling like an idiot, that he has no idea what he means to say, and that Sieun is now staring at him.

Suho had had utterly too much faith in himself. 

“Shabu shabu,” he concludes pathetically, reaching out to pour some water for them both. Water hitting glass has never sounded so offensive.

Sieun accepts his glass in silence and drinks slowly.

Then, he says, “I’m nervous, too.”

“What?”

“You. Make me nervous, too.” He looks away, to the wall behind Suho. “Thought it’d be good to get that out of the way.”

Suho stares at him. His eyes are bright. There’s pink staining Sieun’s cheeks and tinging the bridge of his nose. It’s so suffocatingly perfect it looks like an artist has painted it on - God, Michelangelo, Hirokazu Koreeda, kill him now - he makes this person nervous? 

“But,” Sieun continues, “I did run here. Through rain. Does that make it better?”

Suho shakes his head, once, jerkily.

“No. Makes it worse.”

“Oh. I see.” Sieun bites his lip so hard the pink goes white, and Suho realises he’s trying very hard not to smile. “Sorry, then.”

“You should be,” Suho says weakly.

Sieun looks back at him. They lock eyes.

That is the first time he ever hears Yeon Sieun laugh. Suho will live the rest of his life for that single, immortal sound.

It’s four years before their first date. Suho is nineteen.

His unit has just completed a particularly gruelling seven-day long FTX with flying colours. That’s seven nights spent in waterlogged tarps, whamming down cold rations from bags, sprinting through woods as if they’re actually running from something, and staring silently through gun sights until the cheek weld feels just like that - welded.

Suho’s squad of twelve had roundly demolished the other ones they were pitted against. Practically all credit has to go to Baekjin, their young sergeant, who seems to have been born to fight and lead. The rest goes almost equally to their private first class Baku, who is a fucking human tank, and Suho himself, who has emerged as the best young shooter in their company - possibly their battalion. 

But the entire exercise had been so roundly abhorrent that winning or losing is not really the point - upon their return to base, their captain had arranged for a unit-wide barbeque. 

The spring air is rich and heavy with charred meat. Suho has spent over almost two hours grinning and joking with everyone else and his uniform is starting to fucking itch. As he makes his way out from the gathering, it calms. Soon, it’s just the normal base smell of old rain on gravel, fresh mud, and rusted metal. The chatter fades enough that he begins to hear the wind in the leaves.

He’s looking for Baekjin and Baku. Well actually, just Baekjin, but they come as a pair so Suho knows he’ll find Baku there too.

Baekjin and Baku are around four years older than Suho. They enlisted together under the companion scheme and are coming to the end of their time here. Suho only got here four months ago but despite the seniority and age gap, he and Baku had clicked in his first week here. Baekjin tolerates him, which is a spiritual achievement in itself.

A week before the FTX, Baekjin had returned from his last leave. No-one else had really noticed a difference in how withdrawn he was - he doesn’t talk much in the best of times. Suho had watched him and the way Baku, cheerful as always, seemed to have been leaving him space, and had known something was up. He’d thought that it might be the stress of the upcoming exercise, but Baekjin has never deigned to stress about such things - he knows he could have led them in his sleep.

When the exercise had begun, Baekjin had suddenly roared back to life and roundly terrified everyone he came into contact with. It had been effective and brilliant, honestly, but sometimes in the quieter moments, Suho had found himself watching him and thinking something terrible had happened.

Since they’ve returned to base today, the pair of them have been absent. 

He is worried.

“Full?” Baku asks, when Suho finally finds him. He’s standing alone outside the boiler room near the barracks.

“I ate like, half a pig. Shouldn’t be possible.”

Baku grins then, seeing the question on Suho’s face, tips his head lightly toward the window.

Through the dim orange light, he sees Baekjin sitting on an overturned crate. There’s a near-empty cigarette carton on the floor next to him, alongside the remnants of what he’s already smoked. He’s staring at the wall, another lit cigarette between his fingers.

Suho blinks.

“He’s going to hotbox himself in there.”

“Yep,” Baku agrees.

“You’re not going to stop him?”

“Nope.”

“Are you guys okay.”

“Very much so.”

“Really.”

“Yep.”

“Should I leave?”

Baku just smiles again in that easy way of his. But it looks a bit strained. 

Actually, it never feels like the three of them are keeping anything from each other, but it’s mainly because when you live in such close quarters and you all do the same thing everyday, there’s not much to keep. There’s clearly a lot that’s exclusively between Baku and Baekjin, but Suho has always understood that and doesn’t touch it more than he needs to. Suho has slotted in astonishingly well between them - less of a third wheel and more of a weirdly oversized adopted child. 

Perhaps this is one of those things he shouldn’t touch.

“I can hear you guys,” comes Baekjin’s quiet voice from inside. “You can tell him.”

Suho looks through the window but Baekjin’s still staring at the wall.

“You okay?” he calls.

“Fantastic.”

He looks back towards Baku, who’s watching the window now too with a little crease between his eyebrows. 

“I don’t mind,” says Baekjin. “It might help to be honest, to hear you two talk about it. Pretend like I’m not listening.”

Well. Now Suho actually doesn’t want to be here.

Baku looks like he suddenly doesn’t want to either - he runs a hand over his short hair, hesitating. Suho pulls out his own carton and lighter and hands them towards him. There are some laws in the military and nicotine addiction is one of them.

Baku lights one and takes a long drag.

Then, through smoke, he says, “Baekjin dropped out. On his last leave.”

Suho stares at him. Really, he wants to say WHAT THE FUCK - Baekjin is in his penultimate year of an undergraduate economics course at Korea University and from what Suho knows, is a certified academic weapon. He’d thought his plan was to go back, graduate, then barrel into law school.

“Yeah,” Baku says, seeing the look on his face. “But it wasn’t for something bad. It wasn’t for something bad,” he repeats again to the window, a little louder.

“Shut up. I said pretend like I’m not here.”

“There’s a bar,” Baku continues. “Somewhere where we used to go a lot. A lot a lot. Basically the owner’s moving away and she wanted someone she could trust to take over.”

“Aren’t you-” Suho starts, then stops. He doesn’t want to get too realistic, but so much of his life has been ruled by money and age and numbers, and the implication is pretty crazy. “Aren’t you guys twenty-three?”

“Baekjin - worked - a lot in high school. Has a shitton saved up and she offered a great premium, he’ll have enough left over to redecorate the place and everything, anything he wants. Actually, she’s been thinking about moving for the past year or so. But it only got serious in the past few months or so, someone else was interested in taking it over too.”

“O-oh. So-”

“Yeah. He signed the papers during his leave.”

“Did he really have to drop out?” asks Suho weakly. If Baekjin’s regretting it now then that’s not a helpful thing to say, but holy shit he can’t let that go. From an objective standpoint he is - was - on the path of being a minted legal god. Suho doesn’t know, being a bar owner is not exactly on the same-

“It’s Nina’s.”

“NINA’S?”

Suho almost shouts the name. Two bird in a nearby tree spring into frightened flight.

“Nina’s?” he repeats.

It’s not the most famous gay bar in Seoul, but that’s certainly why it’s one of the best. It’s also one of the oldest and almost mythical. It’s been passed down for decades, with whoever owning it taking the name. Suho hasn’t been to it - he’d whisked himself off to the military when straight out of school - but he’s read the name countless times in his adolescent forum lurking.

“So you know it.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“People who aren’t ragingly bent.”

Suho gives him a look and Baku snorts.

“Can I come?” Suho asks immediately, all thoughts of adult choices and back-up plans absolutely obliterated from his mind. He imagines this is the reaction straight people would have to someone owning a Rolls-Royce Phantom. “I-” he looks between Baku and the window, “Nina, he’s gonna be Nina now, that’s fucking insane?”

“See?” Baku calls.

Baekjin doesn’t reply.

“He does,” says Baku, smiling genuinely now. “It’s big.”

It is. The place is a fucking legacy. It’s been a community hub for as long as there’s truly been one in Seoul, and in Baekjin’s hands-

“That’s insane,” Suho repeats. “Like. Fantastically so.”

Baku nods.

“Actually, I worked there from high school to the military. Baekjin used to perform there a lot too, at nights. Both our phones have been going fucking crazy, ever since people found out he was taking over.”

“Right? That’s - oh.” Suho cuts off, remembering where they are - namely, feet away from a very silent, unenrolled Baekjin. “Oh. I guess it’s not something you can commit halfway to.”

“He wouldn’t have signed if he didn’t know that. It’s what he wants. More than anything, hell, when he heard someone else was seriously interested I thought he was going to have an aneurysm. He probably would have sold me off if that’s what it took.”

Suho tries to look as if he gets it now, although he doesn’t really. If Baekjin has enough money, enough ability for a hundred people, and if this is what he wants to do, then what’s the issue? Forget uni. Is he being naive? Who knows, all Suho can feel at this moment is how he himself has never wanted to do anything with his life. He’s as envious as he is awed. “Did he - really like uni?”

“No.” Baku takes another drag of his own cigarette. “It was never for him. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s just a lot, right now. He needs some time.”

Suho nods, slowly. “I guess it’s scary.”

There’s movement, finally, in the boiler room. They both turn to watch as Baekjin stands up and starts walking to the door. Suho can’t see his face.

Should I not have said that? He mouths at Baku. 

Baku shakes his head incrementally. “No, it’s probably good.”

Baekjin emerges, smelling like an ashtray.

“You smell like an ashtray,” Baku observes. Baekjin ignores him, looking at Suho with an unreadable expression on his face. 

“I am scared,” he says bluntly, and Suho immediately thinks that Baku was wrong about him being wrong, he clearly fucked up. Baekjin is not scared of shit.

Baekjin turns to Baku. “Can you head back? I want to talk to Suho.”

“Not me?”

“I talk to you too much. You have nothing more to offer.”

Baku clicks his teeth. “Love you, too.”

He stubs out his cigarette on the wall and starts to walk away. 

Suho resists the urge to leap after him. Because of rotas and the like he has naturally spent a lot of time with Baekjin alone, but never talking much. He gets the sense that Baekjin is comfortable with him, at least, more comfortable than he is with anyone who isn’t Baku - but he can’t say he isn’t fucking intimidating one-on-one. He’s sort of like a very impressive brother-in-law; someone you trust inherently because someone you love loves them, but not someone you understand. And Suho has never seen him in a mood like this.

“Erm,” he starts, nervously. “You want to talk to me?”

“What year were you born again?”

“2006.”

“Then yeah, I want to talk to you.”

Suho doesn’t see how that has anything to do with anything. He watches as Baku disappears into the barracks with a wave. 

“You confuse me,” Baekjin says. “Sometimes you seem like you’re very old and sometimes very young. You remind me of Baku when he was your age. You have the same instincts. You smile and talk to everyone but it feels like you’re not really saying anything at all, like the more you talk the more you disappear, and I think that you know that but I’m not sure. I can’t tell when you’re pretending and when you’re not.”

“What the fuck,” says Suho.

“What.”

“I-” Suho sort of knows that Baekjin is like this. He’s blunt to the level where he operates completely on his own social norms and good enough at everything that everyone else just has to accept being steam-rollered. But he’s never spoken this much to Suho before, and certainly not about him. “I never realised you noticed me so much.”

“Well. You are around.”

“Sorry?”

“No, I didn’t mean that. I like you and Baku likes you. Don’t think any different.”

Consider him steam-rollered.

“I - don’t know what you mean though,” he says, feeling like he’s trying to keep up somehow. “I don’t pretend with people.”

“Alright. Like I said, you remind me of Baku.”

“He doesn’t pretend with people either.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t anymore. What you see with him is what you get. But,” Baekjin shrugs slightly. “I just don’t feel like the same goes for you.”

“This is such a weird conversation.”

“Right. I get that a lot.”

“And - like - why are we talking about me right now? I thought you were the one going through a mental crisis?”

“Yeah, sorry. It’s probably because I am going through a mental crisis. So I had the sudden urge to put you through one, too.”

“Well, that’s just great,” Suho mutters.

“You can go back if you want,” Baekjin says.

“What, and leave you here to stew in that brain of yours?”

A corner of Baekjin’s mouth quirks.

Suho huffs. Then he pulls out a cigarette and lights it for himself. He doesn’t offer Baekjin one because the man already has an entire carton running through his bloodstream, and besides, Suho is feeling mildly miffed. 

But he is also feeling slightly - he doesn’t know. Whatever the opposite of disgruntled is. Gruntled. Were Baekjin an animal, Suho imagines that he’d be a very rude cat who categorically does not find humans interesting enough to interact with. Unfortunately, there is definitely something in being noticed by him.

“Alright then,” Suho says. He watches as his cloud of smoke dissipates into the night air. “Let’s go. Mental crisis.”

“What do you want to do when you get discharged?”

“Jesus.”

“You said let’s go.”

He did.

“Work, obviously,” Suho says. “There's the debt and it’s just me and my Grandma. So earn money, pay that off.”

“That’s not that obvious.”

“It very literally is, it’s a shitton of debt.”

“No, I meant everyone works. Everyone needs money. I’m asking how you’re going to do that.”

“Does it matter? Whichever way keeps the bank away, how about that.”

“You are smart and capable enough that that could mean a thousand things. You’re acting as if you don’t have a choice.”

“I don’t.”

“Alright.”

Suho puts a second cigarette between his lips and takes a long drag. His brain buzzes.

“Talking to you is like being whacked with a stick.”

Baekjin nods easily. “Again, you can leave.”

“You’re gaslighting me somehow, I know it,” Suho mutters. 

He stays anyway, because he is a damn good friend.

He doesn’t know, okay. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t have anything he wants to do, not really, and he’s known that for a long fucking time. He started working at fifteen because of the debt and he hated it back then but when he was about to graduate he realised he might like it, or prefer it, because at least then he knew he had something that he had to be doing, but then it’s like Baekjin said, he couldn’t exactly keep his routine of just working whatever teenage job in his free time and sleeping at school during the day because now everything is free time and even if the end point was set it was up to him to decide how to spend it, except he didn’t want to, and that disappointed him so much that he ran off to the military and now he’s here.

“See. I told you you don’t talk when it matters.”

Suho glares at the ground. “Who does?”

There’s a long pause.

“A lot of people run here. I mean, it’s our twenties. I did too.”

“No you didn’t, Baku told me why you enlisted.”

The two of them had always intended to join together. Baku had been deferring his enlistment date by re-sitting the CSAT whilst Baekjin got his degree, but he’d been doing such an absolutely abysmal job of it that after only his second re-sit the MMA had suspected that he was engaging in fraudulent evasion. So Baekjin had taken a break.

“Baku thinks it was all because of him because he likes to feel bad about things. But when he realised he had to enlist, I felt relieved too. So relieved that I couldn’t tell him for a while, then when I did, it was too late, he already thought it was his fault. But I had no idea what I was doing in that uni. Honestly.”

“Weren’t you top of your class.”

“And?”

“It’s annoying to empathise with people like you.”

“But you are.”

“I’m not. I want to chuck you into a river right now.”

Baekjin doesn’t answer for a while.

Eventually, he says, “I said I was scared, didn’t I? Look.”

He holds both hands out to Suho and it takes him a second to realise they are shaking. They are shaking badly enough that the thin shadows they cast on the ground are trembling too.

He looks back up to Baekjin, who seems to be watching him for a reaction.

“It’s not the nicotine. It started when I signed those papers and hasn’t stopped since. That’s three fucking weeks.”

Suho doesn’t know what to say.

Baekjin puts both hands back into his jacket pockets and turns to look at one of the ancient barrack lights. 

“It's good, Suho,” he says, quietly. “I’ve seen you watching me and I know you were worrying, but the reason I haven’t been saying shit is because I thought if I opened my mouth I’d spontaneously fucking combust.”

“How is that - a good thing?”

“Because I’ve never felt so scared about myself in my life. Only ever about Baku, how he is, what he’s doing, where he’s going, and in itself that would have been more than enough for ten lifetimes. I’ve never given a shit about myself, not really, but now,” he raises a shaking hand. “I think I might.”

Suho opens his own mouth, then closes it.

“Am I confusing you?” Baekjin asks.

“No,” he replies immediately. “You’re depressing me.”

“Thought so.”

Suho laughs then, once, because Baekjin is ridiculous. He sinks into a crouch near the ground and puts his head in his hands. He laughs again but it’s more of a groan. 

Okay, so this is great, turns out Baekjin is doing great, Suho is so technically happy for him, but-

“This conversation is the most stressful fucking thing that’s happened to me since I got here. What are you, Buddha?”

“Actually, the reason I wanted to talk to you is because you pissed me off today.”

That catches Suho utterly off guard.

“Me? What did I do?”

“I saw Captain Lim talking to you on the ride back.”

“What?”

“He asked you if you’d thought about becoming non-com. You said you’d consider it.”

Suho stares up at him.

“I - and what’s wrong with that?” Baekjin just stares back, until Suho is the one that looks away.

“I wasn’t serious,” Suho says to the ground. It’s a lie and he knows it. 

But sue him, it’s nice to be undoubtedly good at something for once, even if that something is shooting people. For a second, it had felt like he was twelve again, his Coach smiling at him and telling him he could make it. He was new. Uninjurable. And whilst he doesn’t particularly like anything in the military, he doesn’t hate anything too much either. It’s fine here.

Suddenly, Suho feels fucking exhausted.

“I’m not like you,” he says, quietly. “I don’t have stuff waiting for me on the outside, I don’t have things or people, I don’t have whatever it is that you - I can talk and smile, and shoot, apparently - and so what. If it pisses you off, so what. It pisses me off more.”

Baekjin doesn’t answer. 

Then he crouches down next to Suho. He hears boots scraping as Baekjin settles himself crossed-legged on the ground, and it only makes him feel worse.

“Can we stop now?” Suho asks. 

“If you’d met me a few years ago,” Baekjin replies, ignoring him completely, “you would have hated me.”

“I hate you now.”

“No, I mean you really would have. You’re a million times better than I was at your age.”

“You are four years older.”

“Do you look at a fifteen-year old and think you are the same?”

Suho drops his cigarette stub and presses his fingers against his eyes. He can feel a headache coming on.

“You treat me like I have something, I don’t. Or at least, not by myself. Every part of me that’s good and strong is because of Baku. I was terrible, before. He gave me all of this.”

“Great. You just called me a fucking gay virgin.”

“I did not. You did.”

Despite himself, Suho feels his lips quirk. 

"Baku's the most important thing that ever happened to me. And I met him entirely through coincidence."

He sighs, then sits himself down on the floor so he is cross-legged like Baekjin.

"You'll find something, too. You know it won't be here, though."

A few minutes pass in silence.

"How did you know? That I was thinking about it seriously."

"Because when you do, you don't talk at all. Then when we got back here, you went straight for anyone you could find and started yapping like a maniac."

Suho presses the stub of his cigarette into the dirt.

“You know, I never did get why Baku loves you so much.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah. I still hate you, but you’re pretty cool.”

He feels Baekjin watching him and when he turns, he sees him smiling. Baekjin rarely smiles, although he should a lot more. He has some ridiculous dimples.

“Do you feel better now?” Suho asks.

The smile turns into a grin. 

“Did you know? You’re one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Anyone else would have punched me halfway through this conversation.”

Suho makes a fist; Baekjin offers his cheek.

“You’re insufferable.”

“And you aren’t,” Baekjin says easily, and Suho can feel another whallop coming. “So stop treating yourself as if you are.”

I don't.

“I won’t.”

“If I ever see you thinking about letting yourself rot here again, I will attack you.”

“Okay,” Suho says, and he’s smiling now, too. “I'll let you.”

Baekjin nods, and some of the last tension he'd been carrying seems to dissipate from him.

He takes out his very crushed carton and pulls out his last cigarette. Baekjin puts it between his lips and then stops, staring down.

Suho stares too.

Baekjin’s hand is pale and still in the orange light. He clenches it once, then unclenches it slowly, like a fan, one finger at a time.

“Well,” he says to his open palm. “When I was sitting in that room, I was telling myself everything I just told you. Isn’t that funny? Life only works, when you care about other people.”

“He sounds insane,” says Sieun, when Suho finishes telling him this. They’ve been in the room for nearly two hours now, and the broth pot stands empty between them. 

Mercifully, they’d both pulled themselves together pretty early on. There’s been plenty of stops and starts but between them, they’ve run their way through what seems like every subject under the sun. 

Sieun doesn’t think he’s ever known so much about a person. It’s not how much Suho says, although it's mainly been him talking. It’s that somehow, he’s made Sieun want to do so too. Suho knows when to pull back, when to press. He has never made him feel weird about the things he says or thinks. It’s astonishing how easy this is. Sieun feels like he could stay in this room forever. An old instrument, played by his words, his expression, and his smile. 

Suho, on the other hand, is both comfortable and very much not. He thanks god for all the bullshit he’s done in his life, because every time there’s been a silence he’s whipped another story out and barreled them down it. He thinks he’s doing an alright job of looking calm, at least, and somehow Sieun seems to find him interesting. But holy shit. He hasn’t been able to hold Sieun’s gaze for more than a few seconds at a time.

“He is, completely,” says Suho. He knows they'd like each other. “Would you like to meet him? Properly?”

Sieun pauses, then shakes his head.

“Alright. Let me know when you do. You’re pretty similar, actually, in the way you think.”

“I think you’re overestimating me.”

“If you say so.”

“You really love them, don’t you?”

“Who, Baekjin?”

“Yes, and Baku. I like it when you talk about them. It’s different to when you talk about anyone else.”

“Is it obvious?”

“No, it’s not, really. You just sort of. Look different.”

Suho grins. 

“Yeah, I do. I love them both, obviously, but also them together. Sometimes when I’m having a really shit day, I go and plonk myself between them. Eternal third wheel behaviour, whatever. But you’ll get it if you see them. It sort of just, reminds you what’s good. And -” he pauses, seeming to choose his words. “Well, I’m pretty closed off as a person.”

Sieun frowns.

“I talk a lot, right. But I didn’t realise until one of them told me, I think it’s kind of pathological. Like if I stop talking, something bad will happen, cause then it’s just me, right? What I do helps, I always have to be around people, making connections. Oh, but it wasn’t just Baekjin, I got 99 percent E in my MBTI and knew something was fucked then.”

Sieun has never done his MBTI but is self-aware enough to know he’d undoubtedly get the same in I. 

He considers this information. He likes a lot when Suho is talking. He likes it, perhaps even more though, when he’s not. 

Not in a bad way. It’s just that, with Suho, their few silences feel anything but that. They are edged with soft expectation. Shaded full, with comfort and glances and hope. To Sieun, who has spent a life lost in his own silence, that difference is indescribably precious. He realises now that Suho has never let the pauses go on for too long. He’d been grateful for it at the time - it had felt like Suho was leading - but now, he feels a little - bereft. Like Suho’s missed something.

He gets an idea.

“Let’s stop talking.”

Suho’s face falls almost immediately. “What?”

“Let’s stop. Right now. Like an experiment.”

“OH,” says Suho, then frowns. “Oh?”

“You said you feel like something bad will happen. I don’t, so let’s see.”

“That’s-” starts Suho, but then Sieun gives him a very calm look and he shuts his mouth.

Silence falls.

It’s very easy for Sieun - there’s truly and naturally nothing he wants to say - but he sometimes has to close his eyes because as he keeps watching Suho he keeps wanting to smile and that might mean he will laugh, and Sieun is nothing if not committed to this experiment. He doesn’t know what exactly he’s trying to do, or whether he’s trying to prove a point. Mostly, he is just very, very curious.

Suho, on the other hand, is clearly having a very difficult time. He keeps opening his mouth then closing it, his gaze flutters around the room, his fingers start to tap on the table, his knee, against each other. He keeps smiling too, but it’s a what the fuck are we doing smile, which means he’s not getting it.

Sieun waits until his eyes fall back onto him, then mouths, stop moving.

Suho does.

Sieun settles slowly back against the wall, now. He takes him in for what must be the thousandth time today. 

He’s dressed in dark colours again, in grey jeans that match the jacket Sieun’s currently wearing and a black long-sleeved Henley shirt. It's a relaxed fit, but the ribbed material stretches anyway at his biceps, the plane of his chest. The angles of his shoulders. His hair is lightly styled from the shoot he’d come from in the morning. The two top buttons of his shirt are undone; Sieun looks at the plain black necklace he’s wearing. Then his eyes focus on the collarbones beneath it.

How can this be silence? Sieun thinks. 

True silence gives nothing, offers nothing, it only consumes in that soft, dissolving way, until one day you look down and realise that half of you is gone.

Sieun’s eyes travel down, then quickly up to meet Suho’s.

Suho is no longer smiling, which Sieun likes. It feels genuine. But his expression is unreadable aside from its intensity; he keeps their eyes locked.

This cannot be the silence they both know and fear. That one does not teach you how to want. It does not make you aware of every scrap of fabric that is currently touching your own body, nor of the air going in and out of your lungs. It does not make said air thick. It does not make you real.                                                                                                                                                                             

See? It’s not always bad.

Suho tilts his head slightly, as if he’s heard him.

Okay, Sieun thinks. That’s enough.

“Can you come over here?” he asks.

Suho’s expression doesn’t change but he stills imperceptibly. Almost like he’s stopped breathing.

Sieun looks down at the empty bench next to him, then at the table grain, waiting. Maybe he won’t come. That’s fine too, he tells himself.

But Suho does. 

He sits himself down like a statue almost half a foot away from Sieun, facing resolutely forward.

“You’re quite far away,” Sieun observes.

Suho slides himself towards him until he feels the denim of his own jacket, pressing up against his arm. He cannot not feel much else now, apart from pain in his eyes because he probably has not blinked for about a minute.

“Thanks,” Sieun says quietly.

Has Suho ever told anyone? That he wants to be cremated? Too late now, he guesses. 

“Are you -” that came out a croak, nope, try again. Suho squeezes his eyes together and swallows. “Are you sure you haven’t dated anyone before?”

“Why do you ask.”

“Because. You terrify me.”

Suho’s eyes are still closed, but he feels Sieun turn to look at him. His gaze is burning a fucking hole through his temple, right into his brain - he doesn’t have to see, he can imagine already the sight, because Sieun's eyes have changed today. That's why he can't look. They speak of a million things, a mind that feels a world. And Suho doesn't know if he's ready. 

“I asked you to come over here because I was starting to feel dizzy. I thought I might jump over the table if you didn’t.”

Suho hears the rustle of fabric.

Then, the press of soft lips, against his cheek.

“Thank you,” Sieun says. “For talking to me in that bar.”

Then he watches as seconds pass, one, two, five, before at around second eight, all the stillness seems to go out of Suho in a snap. He drops his head into his hands and makes a very odd sound.

The shell of Suho’s ear is a flaming red. Sieun wants to touch it, to see how warm it is, but he doesn’t.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” Suho says against his palms, and he realises they are shaking.

Like Baekjin’s.

“No, I’m not." His voice is muffled. "I like you so much, Yeon Sieun."

I like you so much I don’t know what to do with myself.

Sieun reaches out and traces a thumb over the curve. It's surprisingly soft, like velvet, upon cartilage.

He can hear Suho swallow.

Sieun wants this to be his. He wants to spend a lifetime being heard, too.

"Date me, then."