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xxx
Sieun has thought a lot about when Suho would wake up from his coma: when, how, what he would say, what he would do,...if Suho would remember him. He wonders if he even wants him to.
The reality is that Ahn Suho wakes up on a rainy day. Sieun stops in the middle of a mud puddle as he takes in the news, palms flat against his side, grass squashed underneath his sneakers. His umbrella rests against his shoulder and he’s listening to Grandma’s voice through the phone as the rain hammers down around him. Water falls from the tips of the foliage, a mixed paint of green, gray, brown, concrete wet. His own reflection is cracked with each droplet as they break the mirror of the puddle. He doesn’t have a raincoat, and his hair is matted with water, cold wind scattering across the open road.
It’s the end of winter. Too cold to be out in just a hoodie and white uniform shirt, but Sieun doesn’t seem to care. Grandma’s voice is small through the rain, and he’s only able to pick up a few words:
Woke up. Conscious. He’s okay.
“Okay,” he says, and swallows a lump down his throat. It’s probably not the time, but the gnarly creature inside him is impatient, angry, and he wishes he could give it something else. He already feels like he owes it. “Grandma, does he…remember?”
What happened. Who. Beomseok. Him?
“Not everything, dear,” she murmurs. “Only what matters.”
Sieun stares down at the puddle.
“He asked where you’ve been.”
"Ah," Sieun says. There's a miniature waterfall coming from the overflowing drain and a river washes across the driveway, and Sieun thanks her before hanging up. The water trickles down the back of his neck, and his shirt feels like a second skin, but it’s the most alive he’s felt since three months, five weeks, seven days, nine minutes ago.
Thunder booms again, rumbling, shaking through Sieun. He stands in the puddle for a few seconds longer, and then he is walking back home, sneakers squelching against concrete.
xxx
It’s been raining for a week, and it’s still raining when Sieun finally arrives at the hospital on Sunday. Flickering between a monsoon and a drizzle, the roads are starting to flood, and normally Sieun would be holed up at home with his stacks of homework—but he has stalled long enough. He just hopes Suho would be too dazed to notice his still bloodshot, red rimmed eyes.
Ahn Suho is propped up on the bed. His blanket pools in his lap, one hand holding an orange juice box, TV droning on and set to a sports channel. Rain is hammering down, white background noise, and Suho sniffles and turns to the door when he hears it open.
His juice box pauses in the air.
“Yeon Sieun,” he croaks, barely a husk of a voice, like sandpaper against the grain. “You…look like shit.”
Last and first name. Sieun really isn't getting away from him anytime soon. He closes the door and steps inside.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like shit.” Suho frowns, but his eyes are bright as Sieun sits down on the stool next to his bed. “What’s that?”
Your favourite, Sieun almost says, then remembers it might be better if Suho finds out himself, and sets the bag on the bed-desk. It’s still warm despite the downpour, Sieun has made sure to pack it snuggly in his backpack. Suho pulls the seolleongtang takeout bowl out, and for a moment, just stares at it, like he’s frozen in time.
“Suho,” he calls. His voice comes out wrong, too ragged, too rough though, so Sieun clears his throat and tries again. “Hey, Suho.”
Suho’s eyelashes flutter. He shifts a little, looking up, forehead furrowed.
“Ahn Suho,” Sieun repeats, because his mouth wants to taste the word, feel the shape of the name again.
Small, squinty eyes snap up to dark, bigger ones. There is a moment of something quiet and miraculous, in which they watch each other silently, and Sieun forces himself to stay still, not reach out.
“Thanks, Sieun-ah,” Suho finally says, and Sieun can’t help it anymore, the tears prickling at his eyes too insistent to hold off, and there he is crying again, water drop rolling off the tip of his nose, falling, glistering.
xxx
It’s not cosmic, but it’s eerily similar. Finally Sieun feels like he can breathe properly again—knowing Suho is doing the same thing without the need of a respirator. The give and take of the universe. All the bully bastards back in Byuksan are disciplined and transferred away. The assholes in Eunjang are leaving him alone for now after he stabbed their leader in the leg and caved another’s face in with a Physics book. Suho doesn’t know, of course, he shouldn’t have to.
The give and take of the universe. After another three weeks, Ahn Suho is discharged from the hospital. He pops up on Sieun’s doorstep right next weekend. But his Dad is home, this time.
“Your friend is here.”
The way he emphasizes friend makes one of Sieun’s eyes twitch. He stands up from his study desk and comes out of the room, and Suho is really there, chatting up a storm with his Dad.
“Oh, hey bookworm,” he smiles, a guard securely wrapped around his left knee, and a backpack slung over his shoulder. “I need a tutor.”
Sieun only looks at Suho’s feet, fearing that he might fall. “You said I’d be a sucky teacher.” Suho definitely doesn’t remember he’s said that before.
A shrug. “You owe me.”
xxx
Sieun doesn’t know what the debt is called; doesn’t even know what to do to really repay it. Because the weight is heavier than anything else he’s ever had to carry—the image of Suho still, unmoving is seared into the back of his eyelids and the helplessness that has drowned him day after day is impossible to forget.
It’s a weekly thing. Every Saturday when Suho drops by after another physiotherapy session, Sieun just goes into the cupboard and pulls out two packets of instant ramyeon and boils the kettle. He leaves the pot on the stove and gets back into opening his notes and textbooks—splayed out on the living room table now so Suho can read them too—inhaling the steam, inhaling the arid air of the AC.
Suho, coming out of his shower, slightly dripping, all skin and muscles, his gaze something sharp that punches straight through the walls Sieun builds around himself. Their hands brush when Sieun passes him the biggest hoodie he owns, and Suho’s skin is hot.
xxx
Against all odds, something else happened.
Wooyoung came to apologize when he got the news. Sieun only knows after it’s already happened and Suho tells him about it.
“He said sorry for the video too.”
Sieun’s pen freezes in his grip. “The video?”
“Yeah, I asked if he had it but he said it’s deleted forever.”
“...Did he say anything else?”
Suho shrugs. He rolls onto his side so he's facing Sieun, and their eyes meet. Sieun in his desk, Suho in Sieun’s bed, perched on his arm to hold their gaze. His face is almost a little blurry at this distance, smooth, tanned skin, mouth a thin line.
“He was walking with a crutch. His ankle was broken.” He finally says.
"...Sorry," Sieun replies. It almost overflows. His ribs hurt, but he’s not sorry for Wooyoung.
"Yeon Sieun,” Suho sighs. He reaches out and tugs at the shoulder of Sieun’s hoodie, fixing it from where it has been slipping down his shoulder. “What would you do without me?"
xxx
“I’m going.”
“I’m going too.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Sieun shuts his eyes, and refrains the urge to scream. He’ll never hit Suho, but sometimes the impulse is just too insistent to hold off. Especially whenever Suho gets like this—not getting off his back.
“There’s nothing in Eunjang, Suho.” He says, for the hundredth time. “In a year I’ll be gone from that hellhole. And I’m still doing okay there.” Except Hyoman is gathering his buddies, that Sieun knows. He’ll be damned before he lets Suho even have an inkling about it, though.
“Then why aren’t you letting me see it?" Suho retorts, before a dumbfounded look passes his face. “You got a girlfriend there or something?”
Sieun stares deadpanned at him. “It’s an all-boys school.”
“There’s other schools around.”
“Ahn Suho.” Sieun repeats, and nurses at his temples. “Why are you so persistent about this? I already told you the truth. I’m fine.”
“I know you.”
It catches Sieun’s breath in his throat. Exhaling through his stuffy nose. It’s maddening nowadays, the simplest parts of Suho. Sieun is frustrated underneath the front he puts up—it’s like there’s a destination in front of him in the distance that keeps moving away from him in tandem. Cat and mouse, playing catch up, a ceaseless game of tag. Like a waltz that never ends, or two people dancing around each other and never together. It’s mostly his fault, he knows.
But Suho almost died.
When he doesn’t seem to come up with a response, Suho just sighs and stands up to walk away. He’s talking again, something about what’s for dinner to divert the topic because he knows Sieun; knows he’s still uncomfortable. His voice echoes from the wooden door, pitched and careening into Sieun’s conscience. There’s a twinge of anger to it, pulled out thin, and it viciously tears into Sieun.
He shuts his eyes and lets his head fall on his desk, wondering when he started to feel like he can’t breathe anymore.
xxx
Sieun learns. It’s something new, can never be found in textbooks, can only be felt. What it is like to be possessive. What it is like to have desire, to want something only for yourself. To wrap his arms around it and never let go.
He wonders what it would be like to touch Suho, to sit behind him on his stupid scooter and cling to his waist again. Suho can’t ride it anymore—just another in a hundred of things he’s lost. Instead he tries to find some semblance of his old life through other habits. They go jogging early in the morning every weekend—birdsong in the trees, city cries echoing from afar. Suho tries to pick up MMA again by asking Sieun to be his partner, avoiding using his still slightly limp left leg, and Sieun hits the pavement sometimes, because he refuses to strike back. His hands scrape against the concrete ground, hard rock against soft flesh.
“Sit still,” Suho would say, and Sieun wouldn’t hear it. He’s staring at Suho’s hands, the thick jut of his wrist, the deft way his fingers work as he applies a bandage on Sieun’s hand. Want is learned. Sieun knows this now. The want is so strong he can reach out and touch it, and then he does—the hand that isn’t in Suho’s hold, lifting up to brush his fingertips over Suho’s hair.
If Suho feels it, he doesn’t say.
xxx
Sieun fails his first ever mock national entrance exam, and he’s so angry about it that he ends up splitting his knuckles against a punching bag in Eunjang’s rec room. Suho is waiting in front of his house when he gets back. It’s almost 7pm on a Friday.
He doesn’t ask when he notices Sieun’s hands—just goes into the house with him and starts opening up an order of fried chicken he bought on the way.
“Does it count for anything?”
“No,” Sieun says, but that’s not the point.
“It still matters to you, right?”
“No,” because it doesn’t. Sieun remembers the last time he felt like studying meant something, and that was before he crushed a training weight on Wooyoung’s leg, or slammed Youngbin’s face into a desk. But it’s different now. Now, he cares because he knows Mom will be disappointed, Dad will frown, and he’s already on thin ice with them lately.
Suho hums. “You don’t have to tell them. You don’t have to tell anyone. It’s a practice exam. It’s not even the real thing. You don’t owe anyone anything.”
Sieun looks up, and Suho is facing him, standing against the lamp light just so that he looks like a titan looming over. There’s a slight snowflake on his nose from standing outside too long, and Sieun reaches out to brush it off. “You don’t get it,” he says, dropping his hand just as quickly. “I failed.”
“And? You’ll fail plenty more.”
“It’s not like that,” Sieun shakes his head. “It feels like…”
“Like the world is ending?” Suho offers.
The world is ending, but not in the way Suho thinks it is. The world is ending because when Sieun looks at Suho now it feels like he’s just got sucker punched to the chest—it’s like he’s glass, one knock and it’s over. It’s like he’s haunted, because this is all he can think about: Suho’s eyes, Suho’s smile, when’s the next time he’s going to see Suho again, and if he’s real. Breathing and moving and living.
Sieun has never felt like this before.
“No,” Sieun says. “Not that.”
Because how could Suho understand?
“Well, high school isn’t the world,” Suho says, and leans down just so. Sieun can almost feel his breath against his face. “In a year it won’t matter. At least that’s what I tell myself.”
A drumstick is placed on a plate pushed in front of him. Sieun looks at it, feeling his stomach lurch. He’s not even hungry.
"Are you going to college?" he asks instead, tentatively. Maybe they could go together. Suho’s only missed a semester so far, and the principal agreed to let him off until next year, so he’ll only be a grade slower. Sieun can finish his national entrance exam and enroll first, and they’ll meet again when he’s a sophomore.
Suho shrugs, still standing against the light, his eyes aglow. “I don’t know. Hey, let’s go take a walk after this,” he eyes the food. “Or grab a beer. Or both. Let’s just have some fun.”
And then he is offering a hand again, a splitting image of that day in Byuksan—only now his hair is slightly longer, his gaze more stern, and there’s something else that looks softer than Sieun would want to dig into.
"You look dreadful," Suho says after a moment of silence. He reaches out to lay the back of his hand against Sieun's cheek, and Sieun's eyes flutter shut. "Maybe we should just stay home."
"Here?"
"Yeah," Suho says. He moves his hand away from Sieun's face, but the imprint lingers. "Where else?"
xxx
The rumors about him from Byucksan floated over to Eunjang, and Sieun doesn’t know what exactly was passed along, but the dust has settled for now. When Hyoman catches his eyes at school he’ll hold his gaze, then look away. But Sieun knows this isn’t the end. He can be off to college and with a job, and they’ll still follow. There’s an entire system behind this kind of violence.
It’s okay. He’ll wait for it, and when it does come, he’ll be ready. He has to.
xxx
High school ends just like that—Suho and him on the sidewalk, sunlight faded, no wind, only cars jamming up the road and dogs barking in the back of pickup trucks and the buzzing of people and shops. Suho waited for him at the bus station when he got back from Eunjang. Suho smacking his ass when he walks past and giving a wink, cracking a grin that’s all tooth when they reach the intersection where they’d part to go back to their own homes. Suho to his grandma and Sieun—alone again.
It’s the last day of school.
“Congrats on passing hell.” Suho announces. The two of them walk over to sit in front of their usual convenient store, Suho taking off his bag and dropping it on one of the plastic chairs. “Soju on me, Yeon Sieun. I know you want it.”
“I have to study later.”
“Then drink now and study later. C’mon, don’t be a buzzkill. I’ll help you study, ‘kay?”
If by study he meant sprawling on the floor with his face glued to his phone while Sieun goes through notes at his desk—“Did I ever need your help?”
“Hmmm?” Suho turns back to him. “Well, let’s see…” he trails off, pupils moving up and down. Sieun stares at him while he does it, hand flexing around his bag strap, and then Suho shrugs and looks away, shifting through the bills in his wallet. “Of course you did.”
His whole life is like this. Broken into fragments, like someone tore up a playbook and Sieun is left to find every piece and try to glue it back together. Try to work out what the fuck it all means. But now there’s something whole. Something in the sharp tip of Suho’s tooth, in the crook of his smile, in the way his fingers feel wrapped around Sieun’s wrist, tugging him along, until Sieun can barely feel the drum of his heart, the breath his lungs try to take. It’s like his mind is ripped into two—one end stuck on the ground and the other floating up into the sky.
“I needed yours.” Suho says back, and Sieun blinks, because it’s such a sudden left turn it gives him whiplash, little dots breaking out in front of his vision like white flashes.
(Sieun shuts his eyes. This is how his brain works now. Everything revolves around Suho. He feels delirious. Sick.)
Want is a terrible disease.
“I want dried squid.”
Suho’s smile is playful, sunset gleaming on his face. “You got it.”
xxx
Summer passes by in a blur. Passes by in days with the brutal Seoul heat beating down on the two of them. Sometimes three, when Suho’s grandma is resting at the house when Sieun drops by.
No one warned him it would be this hard.
Still. Sieun learns. He has to. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it—though Sieun thinks maybe he wants to repeat it. Seventeen was the worst year of his life but eighteen—he thinks he can do eighteen forever. Every day spent with Suho is another day warning him of the time they’re running out on. University is a different kind of hell, Sieun has heard. He wonders if they’ll still have time to meet up once he leaves. Sitting on the balcony of Suho’s house as the two of them ignore the chill of winter, or the bugs of summer, and stare at the puncture marks of the stars in the sky. Suho still hasn’t talked about where he’s planning to go, resting easy with another year left. Sieun doesn’t know how to ask him. He knows Suho would tease the shit out of him for worrying. But how could he not? After everything.
There's a whole world out there. What if it swallows Suho up again?
What if—Suho’s hands feel cold like a corpse, held tight in Sieun’s. All those sleepless nights in the hospital. Staring and wondering. Hoping and despairing. There's no one there early in the morning before class anymore, and he's sitting alone at his desk again. The warmth behind him gone and nowhere to be found.
What if this is it?
So Sieun doesn’t ask. He just settles with remembering Suho as he is. Believing in the power of the universe; in his absolute knowledge that they’ve gotten this far, that Suho is alive and awake and healthy even after everything that happened; in Suho’s stupid couple joke. It’s so stupid. He’s stupid, but Sieun trusts him a stupid amount too. It’s the one thing he knows will never change, all things considered.
xxx
The end falls on a Friday afternoon—the two of them sitting on the floor in Sieun's bedroom. The curtains are drawn and the air is sticky and outside the cicadas drone on, some kind of lament. The radio is playing, but there's not much else here. Just the buzz of the bazaar on the ground, the sunlight beaming into the room.
Just Suho. Just Sieun.
“I passed,” Sieun says, because it’s finally come true. His entrance exam result pops up big and bright on the screen. Flying colours, the way his Mom would say, and isn’t this just perfect? SNU is finally just around the corner for his parents, after all.
“You did?!” Suho echoes, and hooks his chin over his shoulder to peek at the computer screen. “Of course you did.” He makes a low whistle, and Sieun tries to nudge him off with a shrug, except Suho is ridiculously strong, and annoyingly persistent. “Congratulations, bookworm~ I always knew you could do it.”
“What are you doing?”
A pair of arms circle around his waist. Sieun visibly sucks in a breath.
“It’s called a hug, you heartless punk.”
“You’re heavy. Get off, Suho.”
“Will you miss me?”
There he goes again. Sudden and violent. The shift of topics comes so fast Sieun is at a loss for words again. He turns his head back to look and has to hold his tongue as Suho immediately holds his gaze, and there's a second suspended between them—fine and pointed, like the tip of a knife, everything sharpened by the hazy summer day.
There’s a moment, and then Suho breaks it. He reaches out, delicate, and cups the side of Sieun’s jaw in one hand. He searches his face, and when he’s sure Sieun doesn’t move away then—touch of sun, eyes of the star, warm and bright—Suho leans in and kisses him.
It’s a long kiss. Mouths pressed together, and Sieun’s insides surge up like a windstorm, gusts of air rattle against the railings of his heart. Suho’s lips are unbearably soft and Sieun has to grip his hands on the table edge just to stop himself from coming up to hold Suho by the neck. To pull him closer and slip into nothingness. The world stumbling away, everything tumbling away until only them remain.
He’s waited for this for so long; wanted in the way that you can only want someone when you’re seventeen. When it consumes your entire being; when it becomes a part of you, and it’s all you can think about.
The world ends when Suho pulls away, and Sieun takes another moment to open his eyes, only to find Suho is still staring at him—hair shadowing the soft furrow of his brows, fire in his eyes, burning, searing. It’s all Sieun can see. It’s what he’s always been seeing since the beginning, isn’t it? Suho, all bruised up yet still chatty, throwing jabs after jabs at him. Suho, brave but reckless, hiding anything to protect him.
Suho, coming out of a fight, all sweat and adrenaline, his gaze something sharp that bursts the membrane around Sieun’s lungs, and for a terrifying second Sieun can’t breathe.
Then Suho breaks into a breathless grin.
“Did you like it?”
“...No.”
“You should’ve told me.”
“You pressed on my mouth.”
Suho pauses at that, and for a millisecond there’s something akin to panic passing his face, before it disappears just as quick and his gaze lasers in again. Bright. Wolfish. The way he knows he’s won even before stepping into the ring. Sieun wants to wipe it off his stupid face.
“You didn’t push me away.”
“Shut up.” He does, this time, elbowing Suho off in the process as he pushes himself to move. He goes for a punch to the lip too, just to be thorough, but Suho evades it easily, laughing all the way.
When they sit back on the floor, Suho slides an arm over and wraps it around his waist. Sieun ignores him, ignores the way he’s almost halfway into Suho’s lap, the way no number on the screen makes sense anymore; ignores the tremor of his wrist, the louder drumming of his heart.
xxx
“I broke Youngbin’s finger.”
“You broke Youngbin’s finger?”
A shrug. “You smashed Wooyoung’s ankle.”
He says it so casually, like it’s just another Tuesday. A casual trade. Except Sieun knows to both of them an eye is for an eye. They’re sort of awful for each other.
You should never know how far I can go for you.
For a moment Sieun could just stare. Suho has a can of beer in his hand, leaning back on the couch. In this lighting of his house—not a muddied mess of shadow and gold, not the city fading around them, not the hospital room where Sieun had to look at him still and unmoving in between whitewashed sheets—Suho looks beautiful. He’s lively and gentle, and time has only been kind to him, despite all those injuries and trauma, because there is still that spark of youth, but it’s like he has let it grow to a flame. Flickering, bold. No one could probably ever contain Suho.
"When?" Sieun asks.
Sieun has a lot to think about when Suho leaves later. He still doesn't know what he's going to do. This is new learning, too.
“After I went to your place and you tried to hide your arm from me. Before—"
He cuts himself off, and Sieun looks at him in silence, but they both know what Suho meant. Head tilted slightly to the side, and then understanding is silently passed, and Sieun doesn't comment on it. Instead he says:
"I'm sorry."
Suho with his heart of glass, with the wildfire in his eyes.
“What for?”
"Just," Sieun says, “everything.” He can't offer anything more.
An eyebrow raises. The can is set down. Suho puts it on the countertop and slides off the couch until he’s on the floor with him, and here in Suho’s space everything coalesces.
Instinct takes over, and Sieun reaches out and places a hand on Suho’s chest, right above the casing of his heart, and it’s like the contact is the catalyst that proves it all to be real. Suho is no longer a shadowed cutout, no longer washed in grey. He’s full of life and full of colours, warm beneath Sieun’s touch, eyes glittering. And although the morning is long gone—it’s almost midnight—but Sieun knows in that instance he wants to see Suho in every light there is. Sunset orange, fluorescent blue like when they used to drive through the streets after dark. Morning and night, restaurants, classrooms, snowed in, heat waves.
“Me too,” Suho says, and Sieun leans forward, resting his forehead against Suho’s chest and breathing in the smell of the fabric softener and something distinctly just him. Breathing out, looking up, pressing in. As if they are made to fit from even the scapula, the clavicle, vertebrae by vertebrae.
(He hopes they are.)
xxx
Like everything else they douse into—a battle, a fight—the next time Sieun opens his eyes he’s already in his room, breathing roughly, Suho staring at him wide eyed and flushed to the tips of his ears, not flaring any better. The fact almost makes him smile. Except there are much more crucial matters at hand.
Matters such as: Suho’s gaze is heavy on him. For a second Sieun is frozen like a prey that’s been outrun. But beneath the exhilaration and his rabbiting heart, he feels anticipation. He wants this so bad. Dad is gone. The night is long. Should they just take this chance? Not knowing where to go, how to start?
Desire compels him to step closer, Suho following the motion with his head going up. With all of the attention, Sieun wonders if the alcohol could be dictating their actions, then decides fuck it. Weighted breaths are taken, then a short distance to cross to end up between Suho’s spread legs. First time for everything.
“What are you doing?” Suho says lowly, the sound grating against his own throat.
“Standing.”
At this angle, Sieun can see so much more. The smooth expanse of Suho’s neck is bare, curving down the dips of his collarbone, and the urge to lean forward and press his mouth there almost takes over. They’re so close in a room with so much space.
Suho looks with a glint in his eyes. “Between my legs?”
“Yeah.” Sieun throws back, a little breathless.
Suho licks his lips, dropping his head to laugh a little. Sieun feels the breathy chuckle through his shirt and it makes him weak.
Bravery in a bottle is dangerous. “So?” Suho challenges.
“What?”
His vision fills with short lashes and small, sharp, amber eyes. Sieun feels dizzy, but he lifts his hands to grab the sides of Suho’s shirt collar, fisting into the fabric. Suho’s lips part and he’s leaning in closer.
His voice is hedonic, a drawl like slithering cold ice down Sieun’s back. “What do you want, Sieun-ah?”
Sieun bends down to kiss him as an answer.
It’s only their second time, but the ignition is unlike any other. It helps that Suho’s response is immediate and kind, applying gentle suctions on Sieun’s bottom lip, exhaling slowly through his nose, tasting of alcohol and heat—sweet and fizzy and blissful. When Sieun chases after the taste, Suho’s hands climb up to cradle his jaw, pulling closer.
Suho always kisses like it means things. The slow presses turn into making out, more languid and wet. They separate briefly, hot breaths and hooded eyes, before Suho surges forward again, insistent and impatient. When Sieun presses closer in return, Suho moves one hand to rest on his back, the other going up behind his nape, angling them to deepen it further. He parts Sieun’s lips and licks into his mouth, swift and heady. The pressure is bruising, but Sieun responds just as eagerly. He loses himself, focusing on Suho’s hands—his shoulders, the sharp cut of his face and the way his lips are moving just how Sieun likes it.
He has a grip on Suho by the front of his shirt, sinking teeth into his bottom lip. Eventually, Suho falls back on the bed and takes Sieun with him. They crawl on it together, Sieun settling his knees to either side of Suho’s hips, and Suho lays down on his back.
There’s nothing—Sieun learns—nothing worse than temptation draped on the person you’d die for. Suho props himself up on his arms, long legs laid out in front of him and torso curving slightly. Sieun can see so visibly the outlines of his chest tapering to his waist, the lines all leading to one spot that’s being straddled under Sieun’s hips.
He goes down, perching over Suho and reconnects their lips again. Hands slide down his sides and Sieun moans a little. Suho only smirks against his mouth, so he tries to kiss it away with as much force as he can muster. His hands travel down too, settling on the chest he’s been staring at the entire night. The solid, hard plane is breath-taking and he drops his head to map open-mouthed sucks onto that long neck, relishing in the way Suho groans unabashedly, the vibrations pulsing through him like heartbeat. He doesn’t care if anyone can hear them. The image of Suho, head thrown back and mouth parted, eyelids fluttering, will forever be branded on Sieun’s memory.
Dad gone. Long night. Sieun makes up his mind, and now he just wants clothes off. When he hastily tugs on the tee, Suho bursts into a breathless chuckle that makes his insides heat up. Eyes liquid, pupils blown, he holds Sieun’s stare as he reaches behind his neck to pull the shirt off, baring skin and well-defined muscles. MMA has done him good, and Suho going back to training lately only adds the cherry on top. It makes Sieun burn as he freely roams his eyes over everything. All the soft and hard lines. The once smooth expanse of skin under Suho’s neck now splotchy with clotted blood marks like fallen rose petals.
Suho watches him. Under the recessed lights his gaze is impossible to digest, but then he’s surging forward, caging Sieun in with his arms. “You look pretty.”
Sieun barely can utter a retort when he feels lips graze the shell of his ear, and then teeth to the side of his jaw. It makes him sensitive, pulling a gasp as he falls into broader chest, feeling Suho acutely against him, half-hard.
Suho has moved onto his neck, filthy in a way that Sieun is learning he specifically saves for only behind closed doors. The discovery intoxicates him. When Suho’s teeth graze the point of bone on his shoulder Sieun huffs out a curse harshly, a breath more than an audible word, and Suho is enjoying it, biting and sucking harder. A hand wanders over his shirt and then under it, smoothing a cool palm over his stomach and raising goosebumps along its trail. It keeps going, making its way down and finally palming him through his pants. It breaks a sob out of Sieun’s throat, flushing out his brain in favor of pleasure.
“I mean it, Sieun-ah,” Suho grouses, mouth wet against his skin. “You’re so fuckin’ beautiful, especially right now.” It makes Sieun embarrassed to hear it, but he’s basking in the compliment, warmed all over.
He can only quiver in reply; tries to bury his face into Suho’s neck. But Suho pulls back to smile luminously at him, dropping a loud kiss to his cheek. Everything is skin and plastered shadows of tangled limbs.
He’s bursting at the seams. Suho snipes away at his resolve, tearing him down slowly. Sieun’s shirt is lifted, hot skin shocked by the cold of the air. Lips trail over all of his soft spots, Suho’s fingers moving on a new landscape he’s excited to explore. It pulls all kinds of noises from Sieun, unrestrained and whimpering, until Suho comes up to kiss him and whispers against his mouth to be quieter or the neighboors will hear. Sieun’s breath stutters out in annoyance. He could slap Suho for real sometimes. The minx that he is. They both know neither would give a damn if anyone heard.
His shirt is off, discarded somewhere on the floor. Suho looks like a dream, undoing his black jeans, gazing at Sieun like he’s all that matters. It makes Sieun ache somewhere inside his chest, still the same as he was three years ago. He will always come undone for Suho.
Just as hurriedly, they’re back to kissing again, but this time Suho takes it slow, soft and then insistent. He teasingly tugs on Sieun’s lip, careful and sweet, hand giving his dick a squeeze over his pants, and a shot of ecstasy heads Sieun’s south so quick he almost doubles over.
“Shit, are we doing it?” Suho pants right into his ear, breathless and hurried and hypnotic. “Can we do it?”
There are stars in his eyes, misty and alluring. And then Sieun is bowled over by the realization that he’s in love with Suho, more than he should, more than he ever will anyone else. It clouds his inner voice, tethering his rationale on a ten-storey ledge. He used to need lines, structure, reason. Now—now, Sieun grips a shoulder.
The pressure startles Suho. He looks up with a clouded gaze. “What? What’s wrong? Did I—”
“No, you didn’t—” Sieun interrupts him immediately. “I’m just…” He bumps their foreheads together and shuts his eyes. “Hold on.”
They pause, Sieun inhaling the air he’s lost like a fish out of water. He can still feel Suho’s weight under him, moving away a little now, leaving some space between them.
There’s warmth—hands on his face, and when he opens his eyes Suho is staring right back, his pointer smooths over Sieun’s cheekbone, and the light seems to spill from the seam of his lips, just for a moment.
“Sieun?” Suho says.
Sieun wants to hold him, wants to disappear into his arms. “I love you.”
He did when he was seventeen. He does when he’s twenty. And he’ll probably still do when the time stops. When the world ends.
There’s a beat of silence, painfully stretching across between them. When Sieun feels brave enough to return his gaze, Suho is intently staring off the edge of the bed. His chest rises and falls, expanding and contracting, and his breaths can be heard. Sieun braces himself for an answer, any answer. Whatever Suho says now, he knows it will hurt.
“Yeon Sieun, I’ve struggled to live for a long time.” Suho finally admits, swallowing. His eyes waver, fearful. “But now when I’m with you, I feel like I’m just living. Is this normal? I don’t know.”
Sieun is knocked down, chest constricted.
It’s quiet again. Suho is biting his lip, fiddling with something that’s on his mind.
Sieun hesitates to ask. “What’s wrong?”
“This isn’t good.”
“What?”
“I don’t think I can be without you now.”
It breaks a laugh out of Sieun, honest and genuine, and he does, leaning down and pressing it against Suho’s skin, smiling into the crook of his neck. Outside, people are talking. He can hear the clinking of bottles and the buzzing of vehicles. The city lives on.
Inside, deep down, Sieun scrambles for some explanations. He seeks it out in his bones, trying to flip through all the events of tonight and years ago, sorting through his haywire emotions and attachments. But the truth is, he always has and always will look at Suho, and vice versa, and that’s why they’re here. There’s no logic to love.
They’re magnetic, pulling towards each other no matter what, even if there is something holding them back. Neither of them expected reciprocity—hoping for the bare, physical minimum and ending up with more than they can take. The time and place are all wrong. Violence will always prevail. This universe isn’t the right one for them.
Still. He'll reach for Suho anyway.
xxx
University sucks in ways high school can never match up to, but Sieun can’t say he hates it as much. Suho can make as many homicide jokes as he likes now that Sieun is going into Law, but they both know it’s the Police Academy that really shows you how to murder. And get away with it.
Still, life is good.
They don’t ‘move in’ together, the way Suho makes fun of with quoted hands all the time. He’s subjected to a tight dorm life at the Academy as a requirement, yet still manages to camp at Sieun’s place every weekend. Something about needing to stick with pretty little geniuses in order to break into the detective industry. It’s noble, but they both know Suho is mainly here to get into his pants, all things considered. Not that Sieun ever says no, anyway.
It's:
Suhos hips stutter against his and Sieun pushes against him—breathes his name into his mouth, digs fingers into the expanse of his back. It’s dirty and messy and raw—the headboard hits the wall and Suho pins him to the mattress—but it’s them. It’s Sieun gasping and moaning, hair haloing around his face. Suho groaning and panting, pale moonlight on his back. It’s them against the world.
Suho always falls asleep afterwards, and it takes Sieun a while to extract himself from the sheets and the heavy limbs tangling onto him. A while longer to find his phone—discarded face down on the floor, stuck between his boxers and Suho’s windbreaker. He checks his emails, ignores them, takes a shower, and comes back to sit down on the edge of the bed and stare at the screen at his missed notifications.
A call from Mom. A text from Dad. Nothing has changed, on their end. And Sieun still doesn’t know if it’s for the better, or worse. Maybe someday he can tell them about himself, Suho, or the dark creature gnawing at his insides. The way it’s hungry for violence and justice. He can’t promise his fists won’t be tainted with blood again, but law seems like the reasonable first step. They’ll just have to see how it goes.
Beside him, Suho stirs. Rolling over, blinking sleepily, and Sieun realizes this could be the rest of his life. He could wake up to this every day; this boy who has somehow captured his heart and soul. This boy who smiles at him like he’s seeing sunshine for the first time in his life, like he’s found Sieun alone at his desk, blood on his fists and sweat dripping down his shirt. Knocking down his front door and checking on him.
Just like: Suho reaching a hand out and laying it on top of Sieun’s. He squeezes at his fingers, and shuts his eyes.
"Come back to bed," Suho murmurs. "I like it better when you're in it."
Sieun looks back at his phone, before setting it away on the nightstand. He comes to lie down, and Suho wastes no time, dropping an arm around his waist and pulling him closer until they’re snug against each other again. It’s almost suffocating, but it’s okay. He’s here, and Suho’s here.
The world can wait.