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Yeon Sieun, for some reason, reminds Suho of time.
He’s inescapable. He pushes on fearlessly, knowing there’s nothing that can stop him. Suho fixates on him the way everyone else does on time. He hates that there’s never enough, not when there’s so much to see and experience.
And, in the same frustrating way people can’t simply possess time, Suho can’t simply have Sieun.
He did. Once. Still does, but it feels like he’s been away for too long. Like his presence has gone from how it should be—inevitable, necessary—to a suggestion. Maybe Suho will want to meet his friends, or come by his school, or hang around the apartment when Sieun’s dad leaves on work trips. Before, there was no option. Suho would go where Sieun wanted him to, drawn in by some curiosity he still hasn’t figured out fully.
Now, Sieun offers him space. Gives him a choice. Suho has never asked him to. And it gnaws at him, that idea that Sieun is depriving him of the one thing that had been a constant all this time. They used to understand each other, and have a sort of unspoken expectation that ran underfoot and colored each of their interactions.
It took work to create it and almost none at all to undo it.
They do the same things they did before—eat and talk and spend hours together just existing. They’re older now, so things had to change. Sieun’s in university. Suho isn’t. He’s still playing catch-up with everyone else their age. Trying to figure out what the new slang is hurts his brain as much as it does to try to remember how to hold a pen properly.
Sieun is patient with him. He doesn’t bring up the past, but it hangs over them like a dark cloud anyway. Suho has a phone filled with all of the messages Sieun sent him, like a personal diary, and sometimes he scrolls through them all and thinks of how he’d reply. He stops himself because it might not be what Sieun wants. Sieun has grown and changed and Suho should leave this one thing alone.
When he woke up from the coma, it was to a whole new world. One that outgrew him. Suho’s just one person. Why would anything—or anyone—ever wait for him? He's miserable enough that he has a kinship with the old appliances lined up on the curb on garbage day. They both were once needed, but now they’re no longer new nor useful.
Suho doesn’t mean it. Not quite. He likes that Sieun has new friends. Friends he can joke with, freer with his thoughts and emotions than the last time Suho knew him. It’s easier to pull a smile for him, and while it stings every time it happens, Suho’s grateful he’s allowed to witness it at all.
Still, an uneasiness settles into the dark pit of his stomach when he watches all of those simple, familiar interactions. He’s an outsider, not privy to the inside jokes no matter how much one of them will try and fill him in. He knows a different Sieun than the one who sits there, the very center of everyone’s attention and affection.
Suho doesn’t need to be included. He can accept that he’s with the group but not really a part of it. He doesn’t feel sorry for himself. But it feels like pity when Juntae makes space for him in their plans, or when Hyuntak and Baku clumsily try to find some sort of common ground with him.
He tried distancing himself. He’s always tired and sore these days, so it’s not a stretch of the truth. But Sieun looks at him funnily every time he mutters out the words, all furrowed brows and downturned mouth, and it sours Suho's tongue the same way a lie does.
Self-sabotage. That’s what he’s doing. But it’s not because he feels undeserving. It’s the exact opposite. He had it once, all of Sieun’s singular attention, and now its loss makes him crave it even more.
But that doesn’t feel right. It feels like he’s stretching the definition of friendship to its limits. He supposes it’s what he and Sieun have always done. Friend has never felt enough, not when paired with Sieun’s name.
“Hey, Ahn Suho. Are you listening?”
He isn’t. Suho stays silent and manages to answer Hyuntak’s question anyway. He huffs and starts repeating himself, but Suho’s attention has already been stolen by Sieun. He’s not even doing anything. Just sitting there. Next to Suho.
Stupidly, he wonders if Sieun does it because of lingering nostalgia, or because it gives him a better vantage point to see all of his other friends. He presses his chin to his palm and pretends to be utterly engrossed in whatever Hyuntak’s saying, but each laugh he forces out is beginning to leave behind this empty gape inside of him.
It’ll be time for them to leave soon. It’s easy for them to get bored of one place and seek out another. Suho’s probably too sensitive about it, attributing more to it than he should each time they pay the check and slip back outside to find somewhere new.
They’re doing it again now, and Suho lingers forlornly by the door. He’s staring inside at the table they once occupied, telling himself he’s not thinking very hard about it or anything else, when something nudges up against his hand.
He startles, and looks to see Sieun’s hand, buried within the pocket of his hoodie. The fabric is detergent-soft and worn. He doesn’t know if it’s the same hoodie he used to wear to school, the one that Suho would stare at from the back of the classroom and wonder if he’d ever be able to touch.
Stupid. Then, and now. He lets a smile pull at his mouth and jerks his chin up towards where Hyuntak and Baku are bickering and Juntae is fruitlessly trying to calm them both down.
“You’re falling behind, Sieun-ah,” he jokes, Sieun’s name falling easily off his tongue.
Familiarity. He has to reestablish it.
Sieun’s eyes have always been expressive. Even when he won’t vocalize his thoughts, or tries to hide his feelings, his eyes have always given him away. He’s entirely defenseless, and Suho averts his gaze because it feels invasive to look at him like this.
“Suho—”
“I’m tired,” he says, and he is, but not in the way Sieun probably thinks. “I’m gonna head home. You go ahead, Sieun-ah. Have fun.”
Sieun doesn’t need his permission. He never has. But it gives him a false sense of control to give it anyway.
He hopes Sieun will leave him like this, nod and mutter out a goodbye before he rejoins their friends. But he doesn’t. He stands there with Suho, not looking back at them once, even when Suho hears them calling their names. Together. It feels like—
“Let’s go.”
Where, Suho’s brain screams, with me? Or with them?
Sieun decides for them both, walking in the opposite direction of his friends. Suho looks back, and they’ve just kind of stopped in place. Panic wells inside of him. He reaches unthinkingly for Sieun’s arm, just to get him to stop for a moment, but Sieun doesn’t. He doesn’t brush Suho off, either, and now he stumbles to keep up with him.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re tired,” Sieun says, a non-answer.
He continues on. Sieun and his friends conveniently plan things around Suho’s house when they involve him in their outings. He’s tired, like he keeps saying, so they’re probably being considerate. He doesn’t know who decides they do things this way, but he selfishly hopes it’s Sieun.
Now, though, it feels suffocating. The area has changed in small, subtle ways that just further emphasize how much he's missed. The swings at the park have new, exposed spots where the paint has peeled off. The laundromat down the street has more cars cluttered around it than he remembers. No one else notices it, going about their day, mindlessly walking past, all too absorbed in their own lives to care about something as unimportant as an extra trash bag. But Suho sees it all, every single thing that reminds him that time has left him behind.
It's frustrating, feeling like he's still an immature boy running after Sieun. But he doesn't dislike it fully, not when doing so has an ability to turn his overactive brain off. It’s not doing it now. Not as well as it usually does. Suho digs his fingers into Sieun’s arm, still clutched in his hand, until it has to hurt.
“Stop. Hold on, Sieun-ah.”
Sieun does. They’re in the middle of the sidewalk. It’s not all that late yet, so people are still milling around, and they’re getting weird looks from a few of them. Sieun doesn’t give anyone passing a second glance, but Suho’s suddenly so self-conscious of how he must appear to them all. Like he has no purpose in life other than to chase after Sieun.
He swallows. It’s not that far from the truth.
Sieun’s eyes. He has to avoid Sieun’s eyes. But he can’t, it’s too late, and he meets them. They’re soft and kind and Suho’s stomach lurches violently. He can taste the soup he had at the restaurant, mixed up with the bitterness that comes whenever he remembers that Sieun used to look at him like this back then too.
“Suho-yah?”
He thinks he can see it, his name in Sieun’s texts, flashing across the back of his eyelids when he blinks. He doesn’t know when they naturally slipped into calling each other like that, tender and soft. Most friends do it. It doesn’t mean much. But it’s charged with something the second it comes from Sieun’s mouth.
Suho shakes his head. Today was supposed to be good. He saw Sieun. He saw Sieun’s friends, though they insist they’re Suho’s too. But he has to keep a little distance. He can’t get too close. They’re not meant for him to have. None of them are. Especially not Sieun.
“Suho-yah,” Sieun calls for him again, and his hand ghosts over the one Suho has wrapped tight around his arm.
“Sorry,” Suho pushes out, snatching his hand back. “Forget it. You’re right, I’m tired.”
It’s a mindless babble of words. Sieun blinks at him until the last syllable dies out, and the muddled, ambient noise of the world closes in on them.
Empty. His hand, and everything else, is too empty now. He looks at Sieun and thinks of time again. He wishes he had more. He doesn’t know how to get it, or even if he should.
It’s starting to rain. Tiny spots darken the shoulders of Sieun’s hoodie. Suho watches as one particularly fat droplet pelts his cheek, rolling down the curve in the same path a tear would.
He’s right in front of him. Close enough to touch, to brush away the moisture on his cheek. It wouldn’t be all that weird. Sieun wouldn’t care if he touched him like that. Something holds him back. Something tells him he can’t.
Still, Suho stares at Sieun and wonders if it’ll be an imposition, trying to fit himself back into the space he once occupied by his side.
Sieun starts walking again. Suho knows he’s leading him home, and it’s fine. They don’t need to talk anymore. There’s something inside of him, dark and lonely, but Sieun is still physically here and he tells himself there’s no reason to feel this way.
He’s acutely aware of it anyway, that the precious time he has with Sieun is coming to an end. It’s dramatic, he’s sure. They see each other nearly daily. They text often. Sieun’s better at that, at finding memes and reacting to the Instagram reels Suho bombards him with because his thumbs get frantic when Sieun doesn’t respond quickly enough.
Suho ducks his head and pretends he doesn’t notice it. It’s an unnamed thing, but not an unavoidable one, and he should at least be thankful he’s kept it locked up for as long as he has. Sieun doesn’t know. And if he does, he’s merciful enough to not make it obvious.
It’s here, though, threaded into the words Suho says, in the way he tries to center himself in Sieun’s orbit, just for a moment. Just enough to ease the ache in his heart and the weariness in his bones, to give himself something to cling onto and hold to his chest so he can say that it’s his and his alone.
He can’t recall if he’s always been this overwhelmed, or if it’s the sort of thing that builds and builds until it becomes unmanageable. His head swims as he looks at Sieun’s back, as his mind hurries through all of the memories that keep them tethered to each other.
It’s raining harder, and they don’t have umbrellas. Their shirts are soaked, and by the time Sieun has gotten them to Suho’s apartment complex, their teeth are chattering. Suho stares at the tremble of Sieun’s jaw and the shake of his shoulders and wishes there was a way to keep the entirety of him to himself.
He wants to apologize again. The words feel fitting. Sieun doesn’t know what he’s thinking, and he can’t, but Suho’s guilty about it all the same. He’s never felt like this before. Not about anyone else. Only ever about Sieun.
“You’re okay now,” Sieun murmurs, nearly drowned out by the rain that floods the streets and batters against them.
Suho’s fascinated by the way Sieun’s lashes fan his cheeks, and how his chest rises, slow and steady as he breathes, and even the way his lips move to form all of the words Suho tries to brand onto his brain.
“Yeah,” Suho whispers back. He doesn’t entirely feel it, but Sieun makes him think that he can.
He reaches forward, drawing Sieun’s hood up over his head. It’s useless, the cotton dampened with water, but he pulls the cords in tight until the only thing he can see is Sieun’s face and his wet bangs, clumped together on his forehead.
“Get home safe,” he says. The backs of his teeth throb and there’s a buzzing in his veins, electric and terrifying. “Text me, Sieun-ah.”
He doesn’t let go yet, fingers knotted up in the ties of Sieun’s hoodie. The pressure is cutting off the blood flow, and they look pale and pathetic. Then Sieun closes his hands over his, taking the space as if it’s his to have.
Suho thinks a series of horrible things, the worst being that if he could, he’d give Sieun every part of him until only his soul remained. And then that, too, would be Sieun’s. He’d fork it over, give himself up entirely, if it meant Sieun would just stay. Not in the past, nor in this weird present they’re both struggling to navigate. But definitely somewhere else. A new pocket of the universe no one else has explored. Somewhere only theirs.
“Get some rest,” Sieun tells him. Suho bites the tip of his tongue just so he doesn’t mention that he can’t, not when Sieun isn’t near. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He doesn’t seem to think of the time when it felt like there wasn’t a tomorrow. Where it felt like one day, without warning, Suho would slip through his fingers and go somewhere Sieun couldn’t follow. Suho, though, thinks about it often. He can’t decide if it would’ve been better or worse.
He blinks and stares at Sieun, and it burns, his eyes and his skin and the realization that there’s always going to be some kind of distance between them.
“Sure,” Suho croaks. “See you tomorrow.”
It feels flat. But Suho can’t get anything else out. Sieun nods like he knows, and he keeps his hood up where Suho left it, shoulders hunched and braving the cold as he makes his way home. Suho watches him go and imagines an alternate world, one in which he can dedicate his life to closing the gap between himself and Sieun.
He's not brave enough to do it now. But maybe, just maybe, Sieun will wait for him until he is.