Chapter Text
“So, Sieun-ah, who were those friends…” Suho took a minute to breathe. “…you were with the other day?” he asked as he laid under the cheap hospital blanket. The AC was eating away at his skin, and the blanket wasn’t doing much to help. Sieun’s hoodie that Suho was wrapped in was doing plenty, though.
“Seo Juntae, Park Humin, and Go Hyuntak,” Sieun responded, the bright hospital lights making a halo behind him. He was sitting next to Suho in a plastic chair, the one his hoodie had been left on, with one hand over Suho’s blanket.
Sieun was close enough to touch, and Suho would be using that fact to its full extent if it weren’t for his weak arms.
“That’s good.” Suho smiled, slowly removing his hand from underneath the thin sheet. “Are…they good to you?” He wasn’t scared, his brain wasn’t hesitant at Sieun’s reaction. There were good people in the world, and he knew it because Sieun was in front of him still breathing and still smiling. But his tongue hesitated to form the words as if it forgot how.
“Yes, very,” Sieun replied.
Sieun went on to describe his friends. He started with Seo Juntae, explaining how their first time meeting had been less than a good impression, but he was really very polite. Then he moved to Park Humin and how loud and obnoxious he was, but equally kind. Then he got to his last friend.
“And Go Hyuntak, he reminds me of you,” he said, shifting in his chair to be even closer to Suho.
“Yeah, why is that?” Suho strained his lungs to ask immediately. His heart sank deep into his chest, brushing against his lungs and ribs. It was a deep stretch, burning his insides. He cherished the pull in his chest that hadn’t been felt in years, and he loved the sight that came to accompany it. It sank deeper, stretching out further.
Even when Suho was gone, it seemed Sieun had been looking for him, just like how Suho looked for Sieun in his dreams. Only, Suho was able to find Sieun in his coma, he had Sieun there to accompany him. Sieun had to resort to someone who couldn’t amount perfectly to Suho. His poor Sieun.
“Well, most obviously he looks like you, you know. He was the tall one with short hair,” Sieun explained, and Suho could vaguely picture the boy he was talking about. He had been more focused on Sieun at that moment in the plaza rather than the faces of his friends. He managed to grow a vague image in his mind, nonetheless.
“He’s strong, not very intelligent—”
“Hey!” Suho interrupted with all his breath, his heart setting even deeper into his now hollow chest. He allowed himself to laugh this time despite the pain.
“Let me finish,” Sieun sighed, though his tone was more asking than demanding. Suho allowed him to continue. “He knows martial arts, but instead of MMA he only knows taekwondo. He uhm…” Sieun hesitated for just a moment, “he got into fights. Though that was before I knew him. He’s very caring, protective. He’s like you.”
“But your…dear Ahn Suho is better, right?” Suho knew the answer when he asked.
“Yes,” Sieun replied instantly, as if he had thought of that question before. Maybe it was the mattress he was laying on or the gray hoodie around him, but Suho felt a strange sense of comfort from that, the fact Sieun knew no one could compare to Suho.
“I saw you in Hyuntak quickly, I think you would, too. You should meet him, all of them.”
“I would like that,” Suho smiled, gripping the thin hospital blanket with shaky hands.
“I would, too,” Sieun nodded as he reached out for Suho’s hand.
Suho reached back for Sieun, or at least tried to. His hand fell limp on the blanket like a sack of rice, missing the other boy’s hand completely.
Sieun didn’t react, his face was calm like always as he placed his hand atop Suho’s.
Suho knew Sieun would never look down on him. Even now, Sieun had made sure to help position him upright so their eyes were level. Regardless, he felt embarrassed.
The doctors told him when he woke up that he wouldn’t be the same, but he refused to believe all his strength could truly wither away like that. He wasn’t just anyone, he was Ahn Suho. MMA champion. An athlete. He was strong, and he couldn’t fathom how that would change. To Suho, it felt like no time at all had passed between laying on the floor of the boxing ring and laying in the bed of the hospital.
…
Suho opened his eyes to the same cold, sterileness of the boxing ring—only this was wrong.
The harsh fluorescent lights still buzzed obnoxiously into his eyes, but this time it was blinding against the clean white of the room he was in. As his eyes adjusted, he finally understood. He was in a hospital room.
If he was here—if he lost, what about Sieun? Was he okay? Did Beomseok come after him, too?
He tried to get up but his body refused to listen to his brain. It felt like he was strapped down to the stiff hospital bed.
His heart began racing, thumping hard into his ribs at the sheer strain he was putting on his muscles.
He kept pushing. A machine started beeping faster, louder. His legs still didn’t move, so he tried again. He had to find someone to ask. The constant beeps picked up, splitting his ears with a painful sting, but he couldn’t lift his arms to protect them.
Footsteps thumped down the hallway—perfect. If Sieun was okay, that would probably be him now. Suho couldn’t imagine a world where Sieun would leave Suho’s side after something like this.
Suho’s heart sank at the sight of the blue scrubs of the nurse. She came in and made eye contact with Suho. Her eyes went so wide her eyelashes must’ve touched her eyebrows.
“Si…eun,” Suho groaned, the noise barely sounding like a name.
The nurse completely ignored his request, instead rushing to the red call button situated on the wall and slamming her fingers into the red plastic.
More and more nurses came in, filtering in and out of the room, each to perform a different task. Sieun, he had asked. He had been asleep for two years. Sieun, he had asked. His grandmother was on her way. Sieun, he had asked. He wanted to say more, to put a where is or a is he okay in his sentence, but the words refused to form.
The nurses probably thought he was just speaking nonsense with the way his words were pushed out all at once, all on top of each other like how the conversations of various medical professionals mixed together. He kept pushing it out, Suho never was one to give up easily. The sounds never made it out in the right order, though, none except for Sieun. Maybe his brain was too overloaded with being incapacitated for two years, despite the fact it hadn’t even felt like a second.
Eventually the right nurse came in to aid him, one who recognized the name of the boy who came in everyday to sit at his bedside. She told Suho as much, and said she would find someone to contact him. Suho nodded eagerly, smiling so wide his face cramped.
His grandmother arrived at the hospital before the doctor could even begin a full debrief on what had happened to Suho, and what would need to be done. Tears ran down her withered face when she saw him, and Suho would be lying if he said he hadn’t cried, though less of his tears fell.
There were a million different tasks for his grandmother to do. Forms to sign, doctors to talk to, treatments to be registered for. It was almost convenient—for Suho, not his grandmother.
Suho’s tongue started listening to him and he could finally get words out, though barely.
“Outside…t…see Sieun,” he had said. Enough nurses had slipped out of the room by then, and his slow leak of words could just rise above the beeps of the hospital machines and murmurs between the doctor and his grandmother.
The doctor agreed, mostly on the basis that sunlight was good for a boy who hadn’t been outside in years.
His grandmother stayed inside to continue speaking to the doctor while a nurse helped Suho out of bed. Suho couldn’t move much of his body, really only his face and the tips of his fingers, so it was a slow ordeal. A nauseating pink paraded its way onto Suho's cheeks as the nurse lifted his limp body into the wheelchair and positioned his stiff legs onto the footrests.
“It’ll be cold, is this your jacket?” the nurse asked, lifting the gray hoodie that had been left on a chair facing his bed.
“Sieun’s…I can wear it,” Suho muttered. Sieun had come to see him. So often, in fact, he’d forgotten his jacket and had yet to come back for it.
The entire ordeal took longer than Suho wanted, he was worried Sieun would make it to the hospital before he was able to get outside. He didn’t want their meeting to be somewhere so…stiff. The room was too mundane, too colorless. The only furnishings were Suho’s bed, machines on top of machines, and two chairs. The only hues besides gray came from the colorful scrubs the nurses wore. If it weren’t for all the machines, life would’ve looked unsustainable.
Suho had no idea where Sieun would be coming from, but he knew he’d be close.
“Grass…” Suho mumbled like a toddler, pointing his fingers to the ripe green ahead of him as the nurse wheeled him out into the courtyard. The sunlight was shining even brighter than the harsh fluorescent lights, burning holes into each of his eyes.
The nurse went back inside, leaving Suho with a bracelet to press when he needed assistance. He felt like a dog.
So, Suho was left to wait, and wait and—
He didn’t have to wait long until he heard grass crunching beneath feet.
He turned his head slow and methodically, worried it might topple over if he didn’t put enough focus into the balance.
Sieun, Sieun, Sieun. The sight made his dry eyes cease to sting.
He looked even better than the memories. A soft, plump face, delicate eyes, hair that tickled his eyelashes.
“You been alright?” Suho asked, straining his lungs to say it all at once.
“Mhm,” Sieun hummed with wet eyes.
He was so focused on Sieun, he barely noticed the three boys standing behind him. The four of them all had matching uniforms. Dark blue, though, not Byuksan’s uniform. Surely they were new. They were like one big mass to him, one person all together. He didn’t notice how one seemed a little stretched out and taller than the other two, or how they seemed to look alike, or how they shared a haircut.
He combed through his brain, trying to remember if he knew them, but their faces didn’t line up.
The memories were hazy. They flickered back and forth like a mirage, leaving Suho to reach out and try to swat at each image, just trying to figure out memory from dream. They filtered through his hands, dissolving and melting back through his fingers. He couldn’t grasp where the past transitioned into his dream.
Suho had only just woken up, the memories of his past were still dripping into his brain.
Drip. He, Sieun, and Beomseok were all friends. Then Youngi, too. He knew their faces, he knew Sieun was the boy in front of him. He could never forget that face, no matter what happened to him.
No injury was enough to erase the imprint those eyes had made on his brain—the way they would pout when the rest of his face stayed flat, the way they would linger on Suho, the way they held not just all of his life, but all of Suho’s life. Those were the eyes he was staring into. Those big, dark eyes that no other man could possess.
He remembered Beomseok’s face, as well. It gnawed at the base of his brain, begging to be remembered. As unfortunate as it was, just like Sieun, he couldn’t forget his face. He remembered the way the glasses stopped glaring in his face, the way his face melted down, the way those wide eyes dissolved into nothing.
Looking at the boys ahead of him, none of them possessed those dull eyes, either.
Drip. He fell in love with Sieun. Eyes, face, body, and all. His ability to care and his inability to show it. The fact he’d allow Suho to always bother him. The violent hot flame that would spread in Suho’s chest when he got Sieun to smile.
He was waiting for the drip containing Sieun’s love for him to finally slide down. His smile, his eyes, it wasn’t enough. He needed a memory concrete, an action other people could see.
Drip. Beomseok stopped being their friend. Because he wasn’t being respected, or something like that. Jealousy or love. The dreams were conflicting. The drop was splitting into different gaps and boiling off.
Suho wasn’t sure when he had time to dream in between then and now, in the single second when his eyes seemed to close. Regardless, they rushed back, overflowing in his mind, pushing the true memories out.
Drip. He fought a guy named Wooyoung. Suho didn’t know—didn’t recall how he managed, but Wooyoung won.
Suho still had memories from after that moment, though. Or maybe before, otherwise they were only dreams. He sifted through them.
Beomseok apologized to him—dream.
He kissed Sieun—memory, he hoped. Suho would be lying if he said Sieun didn’t appear in every dream, but he also appeared in every memory, so he would allow himself this one.
The brakes on his bike failed and he crashed—memory.
Sieun stabbed someone with a pen—memory.
He delivered food for his grandmother. She told him to be safe—dream.
Youngi got a job working with him—dream. No, memory.
Sieun made new friends…memory? Dream? Maybe a little bit of both, the image swirled in his mind.
It was exhausting to think about, to look through everything, so he landed back on Sieun’s eyes.
It doesn’t hurt to ask, he supposed.
“Who are those guys behind you?”
“My friends,” Sieun said.
His. Okay, that’s fine. Good, actually. Sieun made new friends, separate from Suho. He didn’t go back to solitude, that’s good. He had a right to somewhat move on, it had been years.
“That’s awesome,” Suho responded, smiling.