Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sieun's life used to be measured in a steady rhythm of counted breaths. In thirty-two minutes he walked to school, which gave him another twenty-eight to study before people started walking through the door. Seven minutes to finish a meal, two minutes to solve an equation. In four minutes he could read a page on a book and categorize important information, then memorize it.

Then came disruption, an insistent noise—like fireworks set off mistakenly and untimely—in the form of Ahn Suho. 

Sieun lost count of many breaths after that. Routine stopped being home-school-cram school-back home; it became friday night motorcycle rides, running at 5 in the morning before he was barely awake, or a few more minutes in silence in a dark classroom, watching the steady rise and fall of Suho's chest as he slept on top of school desks and couldn’t see Sieun staring. 

Routine wasn’t a routine at all, but living became as erratic as the sounds of Suho speeding away after dropping him off home at night, as lively as Suho looked when the sun started peaking through the gray Seoul skies in the morning and he would turn around to make fun of Sieun for his lack of stamina. Golden, alive, care-free.

"You're so warm-hearted," Suho had told him once, in a better mood than anyone should be after waking up in a hospital bed. "Your face, your eyes, the way you are... It's awfully strange."

Sieun hadn't been able to stop himself from smiling at the sheer ridiculousness of that. He found out once he started, he couldn't school his face into something neutral, not if he kept looking at Suho's surprised face.

"Just eat your food." Had been his only reply, his thoughts too clouded by unbearable fondness to say anything else; mostly for Suho, but also for Youngyi and Bumseok. He could have said something else, back then, just anything. 

Just sleep well, rest and don't get hurt. Stop fighting my battles with me. Find yourself a better friend.  

He thinks a lot could have been avoided if he had just kept to himself. Counted, measured breaths, steel-like focus on nothing but what was expected of him. 

Now there's only silence, except for the beeping staccato of the machines Suho is hooked up to. Everything feels like a terribly distant memory, and the loneliness and regret often threatens to drown him as it pours from his eyes every time he lays eyes on Suho’s unconscious form. He can’t seem to stop crying these days. Youngyi hasn’t contacted him in weeks, and Bumseok… He doesn’t want to think about that anymore. 

In one way or another, his life is back at the starting point—except he now counts the passage of time in the breaths Suho still weakly takes.

He reaches out a hand to rest it gently above Suho’s chest—something he always does in the absence of nurses or Suho’s grandmother—to feel, just for a few moments, if he’s still alive. He watches him just like he used to do in the mornings before class, except nothing is the same at all. Suho doesn’t wake up and smile at him, thanking him for not turning on the lights. Instead, Sieun is the one who thanks him for being stubborn and hanging on. His voice echoes in the room, unanswered. 

– 

It takes about two weeks for his school transfer process to be finalized. They tell him he’s lucky he’s not getting sent to a juvenile detention center, but lucky is not a word he would use about himself, ever. The only reason they’re not effectively wiping him out from existence is because he holds proof of what they did to Suho, and he regardless of their relationship, he still has both parents who would, in the very least, notice it. 

He feels nauseous at the thought, not because he holds any attachments to his school, but because that means he won’t be able to visit Suho at the hospital as much anymore. When he tells Suho’s grandmother this, she seems relieved more than anything. 

“I appreciate that you’ve been coming, but you need to take care of yourself, too.” 

“I’ll still come on weekends,” He reassures her, “And I’ll call.”

“You’re just a child, Sieun-ah. They’ll do what they can.” Her lips tremble as she says so, and she reaches out to pat his hair the same way he sometimes sees her do to Suho. It's gentle in a way he's not used to.

He knows Suho has doctors and nurses at the press of a button, but that doesn’t make him feel any less responsible. Do they care that Suho only has his grandmother, who’s not at an age someone can be at a hospital at all times? Do they know his favorite food, or that he hates waking up to the curtains open, or how to tell him about everything that happened? 

‘I can’t leave him,’ He doesn’t say, because she knows that even better than Sieun himself. ‘He has no one else.’ 

“I’ll come.” It’s final. 

She pats his hair again, heavy sorrow in her eyes. “I’ll ask them to call you if…” 

If he wakes up. He swallows down more tears, and doesn't let them fall. She doesn’t tell him it will be okay, and that Suho will wake up. They both know she can’t promise that.

–

High school boys are disgustingly predictable, but at least when he ties Choi Hyoman up with the straps of his backpack, then proceeds to lash out the palm of his hand on his face over and over again only on his first day in Eunjang High School, they leave him alone. At least for the time being. 

–

To say that the days pass like a blur does not mean that they go by any fast, but that’s the only way Sieun can explain the emptiness of watching the passage of time after all that’s happened. Everything is out of focus and strangely still, but the days drag on as if each one of them won’t ever end. The world around him keeps moving and not sparing a single thought to Ahn Suho, and Sieun wants to break something, everything, out of pure frustration at the unfairness of it all. 

He wonders if Youngyi thinks of Suho as often as he does.  He wonders if Bumseok has started feeling any regret at all, if he gets any of the same nightmares that come to Sieun whenever he manages to sleep at all night; or if he lies awake as it dawns on him how badly he ruined their lives. 

He wonders, too, if anyone has ever felt like this before—split in two, half of him working on autopilot, and the other half lost in his own mind, a hand on his phone at all times, waiting for a call that doesn’t come. 

Life has managed to become even more meaningless than before he met Suho.

–

It takes Suho thirty-seven days to wake up. 

The call comes in the middle of class, immediately heard by Sieun despite the cacophony of the classroom around him. His heart seizes in his chest at the familiar name on screen, and he picks up without a second thought. 

“Grandma.” 

There’s a few seconds of silence before her voice comes through, “Sieun-ah… You must be in the middle of class, but I wanted to tell you. Suho, my boy… He woke up.” 

Despite how hard he had wished to hear these words for the past few weeks, it’s hard to fully process it when it finally happens. He’s up and out of his desk before he even realizes, uncaring for the eyes that fall on him as he walks out of the room. 

“I’m coming,” He says, already mentally calculating how long it’ll take him on the subway to get back to Seoul and to the hospital. Maybe he could take a taxi. 

“Oh, child, don’t come. He’s… He’s already asleep again, he was only awake for a few minutes. I just wanted you to know.” Her voice trembles with much of the same conflicting emotions Sieun can feel bubbling up inside of him. Fear, relief, confusion. 

There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach at realizing he missed Suho opening his eyes. Alive, still, just as stubborn as he always was. Suho is alive , he woke up, and Sieun wasn’t there to see it. 

“I’ll come as soon as I can,” He decides, because he can’t miss it a second time, he needs to see it for himself. It’s not that he doesn’t believe Suho’s grandmother or the doctors, but it’s a hard concept to grasp when none of them even knew if it was gonna happen. Suho hadn’t been getting worse, but he also hadn’t been getting any better. He was always a fifty-fifty with the odds. 

“You don’t need to, child. He’s… We don’t know when he’ll be awake next. The doctors said it will take a while for him to be awake for any longer than a few minutes, and maybe not even for a few more days. Just come on the weekend.” 

Sieun knows it’s true. He has researched, over and over again, everything to do with traumatic brain injuries and the aftermath of being in a coma. He knows that the first few days, most patients wake up for only a few moments at a time. He knows, also, that the time-frame for coma patients to have the best recovery outcome is two to four weeks. Suho’s been unconscious for five. He doesn’t want to think about the after-effects.  

He wants to argue, but he knows it’s easier to just show up than to try and convince anyone that he should be there. They might not even let him in in case he comes when Suho’s grandmother isn’t there, but it’s a risk he’s willing to take. 

“Please call me if he wakes up again.” 

“I will, Sieun-ah. Go back to your studies.” 

It’s only after he hangs up that he notices the wetness in his eyes, the relief he feels only enough that he can breathe easier than he has in the past thirty-seven days, but not nearly enough to stop him from considering ditching everything and making his way to the hospital on a Tuesday morning. 

He stands in the empty hallway until Seo Juntae comes outside to ask if he’s okay. He’s a weird kid who keeps trying to ask about Sieun’s well-being even after witnessing just how easily he beat up Choi Hyoman on his very first day in Eunjang High. 

“Hey, Sieun, are you okay? The teacher is asking to call you back inside, but if—” 

Sieun looks at him and finds concern in his eyes. It might look real, but he can’t begin to trust it regardless. 

He nods, “I’ll go back inside.” 

He only registers the whispers and jokes on the back of his head. He can hear someone talk about ‘Sieun’s braindead boyfriend’ and follow it up with a snicker, and he realizes the rumors must have traveled all the way from Byuksan to try and get a rise out of him. None of them matter, anyway. All he can think about is seeing his best friend.

The following days, he misses a couple more times when Suho wakes up. One in the middle of the night on Wednesday, when even his grandmother wasn’t there, and he hates to think about him waking up alone. The other one is on a Friday afternoon, right before cram school starts and half a day before Sieun is supposed to go to him. He decides enough is enough, and barely thinks about the consequences as he takes the subway to Seoul, and only stops by his house to change. 

– 

Suho’s grandmother doesn’t look surprised at all when he shows up at the hospital at the end of the afternoon, when visiting hours are nearly over. He wasn’t even supposed to get in, but no one had been paying that much attention, and without his school uniform he doesn't stand out nearly as much. 

He convinces Suho’s grandmother to go home and take a much needed rest, and doesn’t know what she says to the nurse in charge of Suho for her to allow Sieun to stay in the room alone with Suho overnight, but she only spares him a glance when she comes in to check on him a couple of hours later. She’s seen him before several times. 

“Don’t get me in trouble,” She says, but keeps it at that, “Press this button immediately if he wakes up.” 

He pulls out some of his textbooks if only to give him something to do other than stare at Suho, but his eyes keep looking up at his unconscious form from where Sieun is curled up on the small couch on the corner of the room. He tries to keep himself busy, replies to the text his father sent him a couple of hours before, then goes back to try taking notes about some History subject or another. 

He’s hyper-aware of any noise, scared that he might miss it if Suho calls for him. The sky outside goes dark little by little, and it makes Sieun think of how many Friday nights like these he spent with Suho before, sitting on the back of his motorcycle with his hands on Suho’s waist, holding on a little tighter than he should have. He even got away with hooking his chin over Suho’s shoulder sometimes, and only half of it was excusable by the lack of space or how fast Suho was making a delivery.  Suho had never made fun of him for it at all, or even called him out on it – he was even more tactile than Sieun ever had the courage to be, always with an arm around Sieun’s shoulder, or pulling him everywhere by the hand. He would touch Sieun’s face for no reason other than he could, and ruffle his hair with such affection that it had embarrassed Sieun to no end. 

Nobody had touched Sieun in any way that wasn’t supposed to hurt except for Suho, not in a long time. His father kept a loving but awkward distance, and his mother... Well. Suho was his first real friend, the first person to stick by him without expecting him to be anything other than himself. He finds the impulse to reach out and touch the boy in front of him nearly unbearable. 

–

Forty-one days and thirteen hours. That’s how long it takes between the last time they saw each other and the moment Suho wakes up in Sieun’s presence, late into the night.

Sieun only realizes he’s fallen asleep when he hears the soft groaning that certainly didn’t come from himself, and he’s up and alert in a matter of seconds. Suho’s blinking confusedly, movements slow and heavy, and it’s several seconds before his eyes meet Sieun’s. He can’t quite understand the wave of bottled up feelings that crash into him the moment that happens. He lets himself look for a second, searching for something, anything in Suho’s sleep-heavy eyes, and reaches out to put his hand over Suho’s chest. 

“It’ll be okay,” He says, even though he’s the last person who could promise Suho that, “I’ll be here.” 

He presses the button on the side of Suho’s bed to call for the nurse, his eyes never leaving Suho’s. There’s no spark behind his best friends’ eyes, no recognition, no anger, no happiness; only confusion. He knows, logically, that Suho couldn’t just wake up and be himself again, smile and make a joke about how they should stop getting into fights; but the guilt embraces him one again, as hard and familiar as ever. 

It feels right to have him awake, but it feels immensely wrong to see him so broken.

The nurse rushes him out of the room merely a minute later, and no matter how much he wants to argue, he knows he could just as well get kicked out of the hospital considering  he wasn’t supposed to be there anyway. 

He watches from the door as Suho’s checked over. A doctor puts a light in his eyes, checks his vitals, motor functions. 

“Do you know your name?”

He nods, “Suho.” 

“Age?” 

“Seventeen.” 

“Do you know what year it is?”

It takes Suho a second to answer that and Sieun holds his breath. 

“It’s 2022, right?” 

Sieun breathes out a sigh of relief. 

“That’s good, Suho-ssi. Do you know where you went to school?” 

The pause, this time, is even longer. Sieun can’t see him clearly with the doctor and nurses surrounding him. 

“That’s okay,” The doctor says, “You’re doing good. We’re gonna take this slow, but you’re doing good.” 

Sieun doesn’t know what he expected, but the relief he felt only moments before is short-lived, and the sinking feeling in his stomach makes him nauseous all over again. 

“Do you remember waking up before?”

This time, Sieun can see a nod. 

“Very good, you can rest now. You did very well.”

As the room starts to empty out, the nurse allows him back inside the room. 

“If anything at all happens, call for me again. Don’t push him too hard to speak and don’t talk about upsetting things, or you’re gonna have to leave. He’ll probably be asleep again in a few minutes. We’re going to call his grandmother. If he’s awake for longer tomorrow, we’ll run a few more tests.”

Sieun nods. He wants to ask more, but he knows this is all he’s going to get before Suho’s grandmother comes the next day. 

Alone in the room again, Sieun doesn’t know what to say. Suho looks at him with much of the same confusion he did before, although he seems to be trying hard to say something. 

“Are you thirsty?” Sieun settles for, instead. He doesn’t want to upset him. 

Suho takes a long moment to reply, but eventually nods his head. He takes a cup of water to him, and tries to stop his hands from trembling as he holds Suho’s face as gently as he can in one hand and the paper cup in the other, helping the boy drink water in tiny sips. 

He doesn’t drink much at all, but it’s something. Sieun’s glad to be doing something, even more glad that Suho is awake at all, even if he can see his eyes are already drooping.

Sieun puts the paper cup in the trash, and when he turns back to Suho he realizes he’s almost asleep again. 

“You…” Suho says, not without great difficulty from the looks of it. Sieun’s heart seizes in his chest. He had thought he’d never talk to Suho again after that day. “You…?” 

“Sieun.” He says, ignoring the voice in the back of his head saying that it would be much better for Suho if he didn’t know Sieun at all. 

“Yeah… Sieun,” Suho mumbles. “You’re so…”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence before falling asleep again. Sieun is almost proud of the way he holds his own until Suho closes his eyes, and only then Sieun lets the tears fall freely from his own.

He sits beside Suho’s hospital bed and holds his hand, and cries so hard that he’s scared he’s going to choke and drown in the storm of his own tears.  

– 

It takes them a few days to determine what Suho remembers. 

He remembers his grandmother, his name, his parents’ names and what year it is. He remembers that his favorite color is red, that he owns a motorcycle, and his part-time jobs. 

He doesn’t remember Sieun’s name, but he says he remembers, albeit vaguely, that they’re close. He doesn’t remember school, or any of their classmates' names. He doesn’t remember how what happened to him actually happened, although he seems to remember someone did it to him. He doesn’t remember the fighter, or the guys from school, and doesn't even remember Bumseok. They don’t tell him, either. 

The doctor tells Suho’s grandmother that the process of recovering his memories might be very slow, and it might not happen at all. They’re not yet sure how much of it is brain damage and how much is being suppressed as a reaction to traumatic events. 

Suho is, apparently, a miracle with how much more damage he could have sustained and seems to not have done so. 

–

Sieun abandons all pretense of going to cram school at all, and starts spending much more of his days in Suho’s hospital room, which is only allowed because contrary to all odds, the nurses seem to have taken a liking to him and how much he cares for his friend. Sieun learns that from Suho’s grandmother. 

For the next few weeks after Sieun has seen him awake for the first time since the attack, Suho is much more lucid than when he had first awakened. Sometimes, he’s as bright as he was before, and he makes jokes while watching TV with Sieun and his grandmother, or strikes up a conversation with Sieun trying to guess names and situations they’ve been through before that are as ridiculous as he can come up with, just to make Sieun laugh. They bicker about how bad Sieun is at guessing murder mystery movies. Those are the good days. 

The bad days have Suho frustrated with needing help to walk, still not quite stable on his feet, or even simpler tasks like holding his chopsticks or a spoon. Then there's the headaches that have Suho shaking in anger and Sieun in fear of the doctors finding some more damage that they might have missed in his other exams. Suho yells at him once, when physical therapy seems to not be progressing at all, and cries in frustration at the missing pieces of memory that still haven’t found his way back to him. 

“Why won’t you tell me?” 

“I’m sorry,” Sieun says, swallowing past the lump in his throat.

“Were we even friends?” 

Sieun’s heart constricts in his chest. “Yes.” 

“Most days, I don’t even remember your name.” Suho says quietly, deflating from all the frustration into an exhausted, slumped form. Sieun knows he didn’t say it to hurt him. He knows, and yet. 

“Sieun.” 

"Yeah, Sieun…”

That day, they don’t talk again for the rest of the afternoon. 

– 

A few days later, they’re eating dinner in Suho’s room mostly in silence, and Sieun takes some kimbap from the food he had packed for himself and puts it onto Suho’s sad looking plate of hospital food, something he has been doing whenever they eat together, just to try and dispel the discontentment on his best friend’s face.

“This food sucks so bad,” Suho pouts, but immediately swallows a piece of kimbap. It should be unbecoming of him. It doesn’t mean it is. “Ugh, I’m craving ox-bone soup.” 

Sieun stills with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth, but doesn’t say anything. 

“You should bring me some again.” 

Sieun is hit so heavily by shock that it takes him way too long to notice the little smile playing on Suho’s lips. He tries not to let his own voice tremble, but it comes out as shaky as he feels. 

“You remembered?” 

Suho smiles a little more openly, but he looks shy. “I might have remembered it as soon as I yelled at you that day, but I was embarrassed about doing that so I didn’t say anything, sorry.” 

Sieun wants to hit him. He wants, even more stupidly, to hug him. “What nonsense are you talking about? You should tell me these things.” 

Suho grimaces, “I know, but you were doing the kicked puppy face and I didn’t want to upset you more.” 

“I don’t do that.” 

“Yes, you do,” Suho counters, rolling his eyes, “It’s ridiculous. All the nurses talk about it, too. ‘Oh, Suho, your friend is so cute.’ It made me feel like we had a married couple's fight.”

Sieun can’t help it. It’s really so stupid, and it reminds him too much of the past, but he’s helpless to the smile that blooms on his face at Suho’s antics. He had missed him so bad it ached like hell, more than any physical pain ever had, but he doesn’t know how to tell him that. He doesn't know how to even begin to explain to Suho how hard he feels things when it comes to him. Sieun barely understands it himself. 

“You’re a dumbass.”

“There you go, there’s a smile. Now you look like a happy puppy.” Suho smiles at him again, bright in a way that fully reaches his eyes, in a way he hasn’t done ever since he woke up. Sieun’s heart fills with so much fondness and hope and relief that it shows on his face, he thinks, from the way his cheeks get sore from trying to contain his smile.

“Fuck off, I’m not bringing you anything.” 

He makes a mental note to bring Suho ox-bone soup the very next day. Somehow, he thinks Suho knows he will. 

Chapter Text

It used to take a long time for things to get to Sieun—weeks, even months of unrelenting provocation to get the slightest reaction out of him—and even then, barely a raise of an eyebrow or a huff. Things like that didn't matter to him, and that drove everyone else crazy, the way his soul seemed unbreakable. Back then, they couldn’t hurt Sieun because he didn’t have Suho. 

Now, there’s a nervous sort of energy simmering underneath his skin everyday, ever since that day. It hasn’t gone away, the twitching of his hands, the restlessness, the itch to tighten four fingers around his thumb and descend his fist upon something—anyone—with a reckoning force. He’s constantly on edge, needing someone to only give in an inch on a bad day for him to hit them back with a mile. 

High school boys are pitifully predictable, with inflated egos and reputations that rarely ever precede them, and they always give an inch. So when Choi Hyoman corners him on the bridge underpass outside of school to look for his revenge with two other boys it tow, Sieun doesn’t run—even if he’s outnumbered.

Instead, he calculates. He’s still usually smaller than most of the delinquents who try to mess with him, and he imagines that has to come out of some misguided notion that height equals abilities. He’s stronger now, and more importantly, he’s angrier. He’s livid. 

By the time he pays any attention to what the boy in the middle is talking about, he’s already worked himself up enough that any fear or remaining self-preservation instinct is pushed too far back in his mind to be remembered. He sees red—his fingers twitch with the need for violence. 

“Look at him,” The one in the middle chuckles with feelings, as if just looking at Sieun is hilarious to him, “He’s shaking, dude. That’s the little bitch that did this to you?”

Hyoman scoffs from beside him, “Only because he uses the most underhanded tactics, man.”

“You disgusting meatheads,” Sieun murmurs, unable to stop himself, his cheeks burning in what he’s sure they would mistakenly assume is shame or fear, but is in reality of unadulterated rage, “You’re double my build and a good head taller, you’re in three, a fight couldn’t even start on equal grounds to begin with… And you call my tactics underhanded?”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say, is it?” The one in the middle chuckles, “Weren’t you tough, huh? Where’d all that go?” 

“You’re gonna eat shit.” The third one says, and strikes almost immediately with the back of his hand, which is their second mistake—losing only, of course, to underestimating him. 

Sieun ducks fast enough to avoid most of the impact of the first slap, only feeling the cut of one of the guy’s rings on his cheek before he ducks down, enough to pull at the hem of the boy’s pants. He doesn’t even need to use much force with how unexpected it is, it’s as if Sieun pulls the ground from underneath his feet. He falls prone to the ground as easily as if Sieun had double his strength. Sieun puts a foot on top of the idiot’s chest, stepping hard to keep him from moving, and his fist descends into the guy’s face with all the pent up fury he could muster. 

It happens so fast that it takes the other two a good few seconds to react. 

“You fucking dipshit!” Middle guy yells, eyes wide with shock as he advances onto him. Sieun can’t dodge from the punch to his stomach, but it gives him the perfect opportunity to double over, hands reaching for the dirt and grabbing a good fistful. 

He doesn’t give the guy a chance to push him further down. He’s smaller, and that makes him much more agile in pulling himself up. Though his aim is not that trustworthy, he’s close enough to throw the fistful of dirt on the guy’s face, a good portion of it inevitably getting in his eyes. 

“He threw dirt in my fucking eyes!” He screams uselessly, since Hyoman is cowardly staying back. Sieun, however, is as thorough and diligent in his violence as he is in everything else. He reaches for the guy’s hair and tangles his fingers on the strands, holding his head down forcefully as his other fist connects with the guy’s face twice, and his neck once, before Sieun lets him fall to the ground, unable to see and gasping for air.

Hyoman starts stepping back as soon as their eyes meet. 

“Who the fuck are you?” He asks incredulously. 

For him, Sieun has something special. Dogs don’t learn something only the first time you teach them, he remembers. They have to be trained by action-reaction. Fear is also learned.

Sieun pulls his own belt loose from his pants, twisting the strap on his hand on a makeshift whip, the metal buckle right at the end. Before Hyoman has any time to react, Sieun lashes him straight on the face, the belt buckle drawing blood from his forehead. 

“Didn’t I—” 

A hit. 

“Tell you—” 

Another.

“To leave me—”

Another.

“Alone?”

He punctuates his sentence with a lashing, though most of them hit Hyoman on the sides of his forearms or face as he protects himself as best as he can with his arms pressed together as a shield.

“Do you know why this is happening to you?” Sieun asks, his voice disturbingly calm, even to his own ears. “Because you’re a pathetic, predictable scumbag. If you make a scene like this again, I’m going to gouge your eyes out.” 

They don’t come after him as he walks away—as Sieun knew they wouldn’t. More than the hurt, they’re too shocked and too humiliated to do so. Sieun, on the other hand, is elated. He’s satisfied. He knows they have nothing to do with what happened to Suho, but people like them are always one and the same, and getting revenge on most of the people who actually were involved had never felt like nearly enough. Suho was worth a thousand times more than any of them, and he had almost lost his life. 

Sieun feels vindicated. He feels righteous.

Suho, of course, doesn’t need to know that. He doesn’t need a reminder of what happened to him and why it was Sieun’s fault in the first place, not right now. Inside the walls of the hospital, Sieun is a completely different person, because Suho deserves a different person—with him, Sieun is patient and kind and calm. With Suho, his hands are never meant to hurt. 

Suho doesn’t need to know about who he is at Eunjang.

–

“Guess what.” Suho starts.

“What?” 

“Got my phone back.” 

Sieun tries not to freeze at that. Realistically, he knows that it’s not like Suho will see it. It’s not like anybody would have sent it to him, not when they thought he was practically dead. It’s not even like Suho can just search his name up online and it would come up—Bumseok’s father had effectively made sure that it wouldn’t ever come to that.

“What for?” 

“What do you mean, what for? It’s my phone.” He looks at Sieun confusedly.

“I don’t know, wouldn’t that affect your memory? Or your brain, or something.” Sieun makes it up on the spot, unable to look up at Suho. It’s hard to hide things from him these days. They don’t have a good track record resulting of hiding things from each other. He keeps his eyes on his textbooks, huddled on the sofa on the corner of Suho’s hospital room that has weirdly become a lot like a home, pretending to be much more invested in his studies than he is.  

Suho shrugs. “I don’t know, but I guess the doctors didn’t see a problem. I told the therapist that I was going stir crazy and stupid with the lack of things to do, and she said we’re taking things slow like I’m some sort of invalid, which you know I hate, but I guess in the end she talked to my grandma.” 

“How does that help with the stir-craziness, though?” 

“It doesn’t,” Suho looks at him weirdly, “But it helps with the memories, I think.” 

Sieun swallows down around nothing, an irrational anxiety on the pit of his stomach. “Did you find anything that helps?”

Suho seems to consider him for a few moments, and the anxiety only grows—but then he smiles. “Some pictures. I haven’t really gotten through all the texts yet, I seem like I bothered you a lot throughout the day.” 

Sieun shakes his head. “You didn’t bother me.”

“I guess I really only talked to you and the girl, right? Youngyi.”

Sieun looks at him, really looks at him, searching for any trace of recognition. “Do you remember her?” 

Suho shakes his head. “At first I thought she might have been my girlfriend, but then, wouldn’t she be here? We seemed close, though… Maybe she’s your girlfriend.” 

Sieun really can’t hold back the sigh he lets out. “No, she’s— no. She’s not.” 

“My girlfriend or your girlfriend?” 

Sieun glares, surprisingly annoyed by the fact that he couldn’t be completely sure. Suho used to spend a lot of time with Youngyi when they weren’t together. “Neither.” 

The boy chuckles from his bed, finding that much funnier than it should be, then mumbles, “Well, I could've found that out from my camera roll.”

Sieun doesn’t understand what he means. He thinks of all of the pictures Youngyi used to take with them or of them, or make them take of her. If anything, that should’ve caused more doubt than clarification. Not that it matters, in the end. Youngyi has basically become a ghost. 

“What does that mean?” 

“Nothing,” Suho smiles, “But anyway, why hasn’t she come? Is it because I don’t remember?” 

Sieun hurts for him. He wants not to blame Youngyi, not to resent another one of the only friends he’s ever had, but it’s hard not to when he thinks of Suho losing one more person in his life. He shakes his head. 

“Youngyi moved away.” 

“Ah… Well, I guess we must not have been that close, then.” He smiles it off, but Sieun has no idea how he feels about it. “What about Bumseok? I mean, I could see I stopped talking to him but it’s not like I remember who he is or why.”

“Bumseok moved too.” It’s hard to even say his name out loud without a storm of emotions crashing through him. Anger, regret, sadness. He knows this, and Suho realizes it too, if the way he looks at Sieun is anything to go by. 

“Was it because of what happened to me?” 

Sieun nods, unsure of what else to say. 

“Was it really that bad that it had our friends moving away and you moving to another school? I mean, I know I was attacked, I’m not stupid and I have these nightmares, but since I don’t actually remember…” 

“It was pretty fucking bad, Suho,” He sighs, then quieter, he confesses, “Sometimes I’m glad you don’t remember it.” 

Silence falls in the room, and Sieun can only think about Suho having nightmares the same way he does. He felt stupid before, like a young child who acted tough but was still scared of everything when alone at home. He would never think of Suho as anything but brave. 

“I didn’t want to upset you.” 

“I know, I’m not upset.” Sieun says immediately. “It’s your right to ask. It’s just…”

“I know.” Suho smiles. He pats the side of his bed, a sign for Sieun to go sit with him. Shakily, Sieun complies. 

They sit side by side in Suho’s bed, arms and legs brushing together. Stupidly, Sieun thinks he might cry for a moment. It feels like this sometimes, when Suho touches him—like his whole body is one big, exposed nerve—and yet, Sieun constantly wants to touch, to reassure himself Suho is real and alive and awake. 

It’s hard to even look at him without feeling overwhelmed. 

“You’re my best friend.” Suho lightly bumps his shoulder against his, going against whatever else Sieun thought he’d say. He smiles, too, as if it’s as simple as that, final and incontestable. "And you're kind of a cute texter."

“I’m your only friend.” Sieun rolls his eyes. 

They both know it’s not a joke, but it makes Suho laugh regardless, and it warms Sieun up inside. He holds his gaze on Sieun’s face for a few seconds, his cheeks raised by the grin that makes him look even younger. 

“Hey, what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

Suho brings a hand up to his face, his palm gently cradling his cheek, thumb brushing the skin under the cut Sieun himself forgot was there. 

“This.”

Sieun wants to squirm, unsure if it’s because of the skin-to-skin touch, or the attention Suho is paying to something Sieun did not mean for him to see. 

“It’s nothing.” 

“Sieun-ah…”

“It’s really nothing, don’t bother. It’s taken care of.”

Suho looks like he wants to say something else, and it’s clear he gets unsettled when the words don’t come to him. He drops his hand and Sieun misses it immediately. 

“I don’t— Just don’t get hurt, okay? I don’t like it.”

“You don't need to worry about me.” Sieun tells him firmly. 

Suho doesn’t have to know. 

–

Park Humin is a weird one. Sieun starts to think that maybe the pent-up anger in him is so strong that he starts attracting more delinquents than usual, but Humin doesn’t want to beat him up for simply existing without bowing down to him.

As weird as it sounds, he wants to befriend Sieun. It’s an entirely alien concept.

It’s different from the way Juntae had approached him at first, out of some misguided sense of protectiveness for the new kid who looked easy to bully turned into misguided admiration. It’s even more different than Jin Gayool, who really only seemed to find Sieun at the wrong place and wrong time and had decided that they had some sort of kinship for it. 

Park Humin, in his own words, likes Sieun for his guts. 

It’s curiosity that gets him and the boy who’s always under his arm, Go Hyuntak, to join Sieun and Gayool on that same bridge underpass against some no-name idiots from another school called Yoosun High, who had all apparently really only come for Humin, but ended up committing the same mistake as everyone else to think Sieun was easy prey.

It’s a weird sort of admiration and sense of camaraderie that makes Humin invite him to eat and play pool with them after they successfully beat-up the group enough to send them running. Most of them came out unscathed, except for Hyuntak, who has a deep red bruise on his cheek. 

“Come on, I’ll even pay for some food,” Humin gives Sieun a friendly grin, throwing his arm around Hyuntak. “It’ll be fun.”

Sieun considers it for a moment, and despite his distrust, he can’t help but want to. He wants to not be so lonely when Suho can’t be around, to not have to shoulder every single problem on his own. He misses Suho, and he misses Youngyi, and even though he truly hates him now, he misses who he thought Bumseok was. He misses having friends. 

He can’t, though, because he knows himself. He shouldn’t be friends with people who have the same knack for violence as him just because they seem to not want to confront him for no reason. It would be like throwing gasoline into a fire. 

“I can’t,” He finally refuses, “I have to go study.” 

It’s partially true. It would have felt wrong, anyway, to not go see Suho because he compromised on going to cram school at least twice a week, only for him to ditch it for people he barely knows. 

Humin seems confused at his answer, but Hyuntak just shrugs it off. Sieun doesn’t wait for a reply, just turns around and leaves. 

– 

The next time he sees Suho, he’s greeted with a blinding smile, and it’s obvious he’s in a very good mood. It’s a good look on him, the fullness of his cheeks slowly returning, a soft sort of glow in him. Sieun is entirely too distracted for a second, feeling warm all over at having that directed at him, his heart doing a funny little twist inside his chest. 

“Hi.” 

“Hey,” Suho greets him back, “I missed you.” 

Sieun is so surprised it takes him a good few seconds to fully process the words. It’s not like he didn’t know Suho probably missed him being there—even though they still text most of the day even when Sieun can’t come by the hospital, but it’s not something he expects Suho to just blurt out. They don’t do this, they just know. 

“It was only a few days, sorry.” 

“It’s okay, I was just bored,” Suho shrugs, but he seems shy about it himself. “Come on, let’s go on a walk. They upgraded me from being allowed to walk around inside the hospital to the hospital garden so I can finally get some fresh air.”

They make their way to where Sieun can only assume is the garden, where Suho must’ve been before in the days he wasn’t able to visit. It’s a slow walk, but Sieun doesn’t mind, and he knows better than to offer Suho the support of his arm—there’s nothing Suho hates more than being treated like he’s badly injured, even though he still very much is.

They’re comfortably silent as they pass through the hallways, although it’s uncommon for Suho not to be talking a mile a minute. Sieun can tell there’s an excited energy emanating from him, but he probably doesn’t want to be heard by the nurses. 

“What?” Suho asks when he notices Sieun staring. He hadn’t even noticed it himself. 

“Nothing, just curious about what you want to tell me.” 

“How do you even know I want to tell you something?” Suho asks, sincerely puzzled. 

Sieun shrugs, unsure himself of when paying attention to and knowing Suho has become so second-nature to him that he doesn’t need to ask things like these anymore. Suho is the same, even if he doesn’t realize it. “I just do.” 

The garden is a small but pretty space, an escape from the suffocating walls of the room. There are some benches and tables, and trees that make it look more like a park and less like a sterile, lifeless hospital. At the very least they put him somewhere decent. Sieun knows Suho’s grandmother could never have afforded this if not for the fact that they had to pay for all his medical expenses if they wanted to get away unscathed with Bumseok almost killing him. 

They walk around in silence for a few moments, slow enough and close enough that their hands even accidentally brush against each other a couple of times. Sieun would be embarrassed, but the garden is mostly void of patients, except for one or two elderly ones accompanied by nurses.

“So, what is it?”

Suho smiles down at him, and despite how bleak of a day it is, he shines in the barely-there end-of-afternoon sunlight. “I think I’m being discharged soon. Not sure how soon, but maybe… A week? Or something like that."

He stops in his tracks to look at Suho. “Really? Already?” 

“They said I’m making good progress. I’ll still have to come by the hospital for treatment and stuff, but yeah. I’m gonna be able to go home, sleep on my own bed… I genuinely can’t remember the last time I slept there, and that has nothing to do with my memory.” 

Sieun can’t help the knot that forms in the pit of his stomach. It’s not that he wants him to be stuck in a hospital bed, but the thought of Suho going back home and then subsequently going back to school puts him on edge. 

“Are you going back to school?” 

“Is that really your main concern? I told you I’ve been trying to read some of your notes, but my head’s still not—it’s frustrating.” He laughs it off, but it’s humorless. Sieun knows how much he hates it, how angry he gets about the now constant fog, the confusion. 

“No, that’s not what I mean, I’m just wondering. They shouldn’t send you back there.” 

Suho gives him a weird look. “They’re not. I don’t think I’m gonna be able to be back that soon, but even then… It’s not like I’m going back to Byuksan. Why would I, if you’re not there?” 

Sieun tries not to show too much relief. “Good, that’s… Yeah. Just, when you have to go, pick anywhere else. Pick somewhere quiet.” 

The look Suho is giving him only intensifies, and Sieun is completely at a loss of what about any of what he’s saying is so alien to Suho. “What the hell are you talking about, ‘pick somewhere quiet’?

“Huh?”

“Of course I’m going to Eunjang with you, you asshole.” Suho says the words in pauses, as if Sieun is really stupid. 

Sieun feels nauseous. “No, you’re not.” 

“And why the hell not? You said it yourself, you’re my only friend. Why would I go somewhere only to be alone? I’m just going to Eunjang when I have to go back to school.” 

He says it like it’s final, an impulse decision he can’t turn back on, except he can. He will. Sieun thinks of how many more guys there are like Hyoman in his school, and many more much worse than him in all of the schools in Yeongdeungpo. He thinks of how many times he’s gotten into fights himself with barely over a couple of months there, how the teachers and counselors pretend even less to care about how many students leave their classrooms covered in cuts and bruises, how often some of them end up in the hospital. 

There’s no way in hell Sieun is letting him go somewhere even worse than Byuksan—letting anyone put their hands on Suho ever again. 

“Why would you go all the way to Yeongdeungpo? Suho, you’re not going to Eunjang just because I’m there, it makes no sense. Just pick somewhere close.” 

All traces of Suho’s previous good mood vanish at his resistance. Instead, emotions Sieun can’t read at all cloud his expressions. He seems to take a while to gather his thoughts before speaking again.

“Why did you? Why did you pick Eunjang? Also, why are you so reluctant about this, do you just not want me there?” 

‘No!’ Sieun wants to say. ‘I don’t want you somewhere you’re going to get hurt again because of me! And I didn’t pick Eunjang, I was thrown there. You can do better,’. He doesn’t, of course—that would involve admitting to Suho he’s been getting into fights, that he’s having trouble after trouble again, that he can’t seem to stop attracting it even after what happened to him. 

Suho doesn’t have to know.

“I didn’t pick Eunjang,” Sieun sighs. “Trust me. Just… It’s just a bad school. Just pick somewhere good. Your grades are still good, you can get into somewhere better. Just not Eunjang.” 

“Yeah, message received.” Suho scoffs humorlessly, his demeanor entirely changed. “Anywhere but Eunjang.” 

Something about the way he says it feels too wrong, as if Sieun has majorly fucked something up by trying to protect him. His stomach hurts with anxiety, but it’s not like he can do anything about it without telling the whole truth, knowing how badly that would go. 

The mood is thoroughly soured by that point. It doesn’t take long for Suho to want to go back to his room. The silence as they walk back is anything but comfortable this time, and Sieun can’t help but want to reach out and apologize, but for what? 

“You should go home. It’s getting late.” Suho says quietly, not looking at him.

“Are you sure?” Sieun doesn’t mention the fact that it’s a friday, and the scheduled nurse is lenient enough that she  usually lets him sleep overnight on fridays. 

Suho nods, “Yeah.” 

“Should I come tomorrow?” 

“I don’t know. You don’t have to.” 

“Okay,” Sieun says, unsure of himself. “I’ll come.” 

Sometimes when he leaves, Suho will give him a hug, bury his face on the crook of his neck, wrap his arms around his shoulders in a gentle squeeze. Not every time, but sometimes. 

Certainly not this time. This time, Suho barely looks at him. 

Chapter Text

One week. That’s all of the peaceful time Sieun gets before the cycle resets and starts all over again. The first sign is on a random morning, when an abrupt cold sensation shocks the top of his head and down the strands of his hair, previously too warm due to the sun. A sugary sweet liquid runs down his face and onto the pristine whites and blues of his school uniform.

“Hey, bitch-boy,” The voice comes from above him, from a window on the first floor of the school building. The guy with long, bleached-yellow hair waves an empty Coke can at him, his unfamiliar face sporting a cocky smirk. “Aren’t you the one from class 2-5 that thinks he’s the boss now?”

Sieun doesn’t respond. He knows it’s something to do with him and his posture—the way he seems unaffected, not threatened—and that’s what paints a glowing red target on his back. 

Sieun doesn’t think his mistake the first time was reacting, all those months ago. In fact, he thinks it was not reacting as much as he should have, not handing out well deserved retribution. For most of the boys that surround him, the only reasonable and understandable language is violence. It’s a vicious cycle Sieun can’t break out of himself, not alone. So as much as he tells himself he wants to be left in peace, Sieun has no other choice but to comply with his environment.  

“What, you got nothin’ to say?” The guy turns to his friend to share a laugh. “Don’t piss me off, yeah? Don’t go thinking that just because you beat Hyoman’s loser ass you can walk around with your head high. I might just kill you.”

The words are so familiar to Sieun that it borders on pathetic. Nevertheless, it doesn’t fail to rile him up, doesn’t stop the anger from bubbling up to the surface. Still, he says nothing. It’s no use retaliating with words. 

He cleans himself up in the bathroom as best as he can, but even Sieun himself has to admit he looks pitiful, hair and clothes dripping, a clear indication something was done to him. Juntae immediately looks worried when he walks into class with barely concealed anger and takes his seat beside him. 

“Sieun?”

He doesn’t reply, trying to take controlled breaths and not lash out on him. Juntae had done nothing but try to help him. 

And then, he has an idea. 

“Juntae.” He calls after several minutes of painfully awkward silence. “You once told me you know a lot about the guys in this school.” 

“Yes…?” Juntae replies, unsure. “I went to middle school with a lot of them, and the others… They’re bad, Sieun. Like, really bad. You should try staying out of their way.” 

Sieun ignores the advice. “Blonde guy, long hair. From class 3-1, I think. You know him?”

Juntae’s eyes widen. “Oh no, Sieun, that’s… That’s Jin Taeoh, always walks around with Jang Suchan. They’re bad news, Taeoh is awful, he’s sadistic. He even beat up a teacher once just because he soiled his designer bag. Please don’t get involved with him.” 

“I’m not getting involved with him,” Sieun grits out through his teeth. “He’s getting involved with me. ”

Something flickers in Juntae’s eyes, something almost fierce under the obvious fear instilled into him from his years of knowing these scum. It gives Sieun pause with how familiar it is. “This is serious, he’s not Choi Hyoman. Do you know how many people transferred schools because they couldn’t take being tortured by Jin Taeoh?”

“Don’t worry about me, Juntae.” 

The boy sighs, clearly frustrated. “You’re going to get hurt, Sieun.” 

It sounds a lot like he hates the idea of it. 

It’s only later, alone with his thoughts as he walks to cram school, that Sieun realizes where he had seen a similar look before and why it felt familiar. Juntae, who barely knows Sieun at all, feels protective of him—it’s not because he thinks Sieun is weak, or that he wants to be close to Sieun because he has something to gain, but because he cares about his well-being and wants to be Sieun’s friend. 

In an environment even worse than Byuksan, with people just as bad and even worse than Youngbin and Beomseok, Juntae is alien. That part of him reminds Sieun of something good. Someone good.

–

Sieun doesn’t know how to fix things with Suho. Things become awkward, stilted for a while after that one conversation. Suho tries to smile through it sometimes, but Sieun knows him too well to see that it never reaches his eyes. 

Sieun doesn’t know what to do or what to say to make it better. He hasn’t felt this at a loss since before Suho woke up. 

They don’t text nearly as much the following days, either. Suho used to be the one to start most conversations, but Sieun always replied to him within minutes, seconds, even. Now whenever he texts all he gets are dry, one worded replies. 

He knows his best friend is upset, but Sieun would rather have him get over it, no matter how long that takes, than to give in and see him hurt again. Just the thought of it is enough to steel his resolve. Suho has been through enough fighting when he didn’t have to. He would’ve never been so hurt if Sieun hadn’t let him know he was hurt. 

Sieun knows Beomseok is to blame, but he’s not free of blame himself, either.

And if Suho found out he only got worse? There would be no hiding if Suho went to Eunjang. He would know how badly Sieun’s hands shake with anger underneath his desk when anyone tries to mess with him. He would know how Sieun claims to want to be left in peace, but jumps at every opportunity to dole out punishment as he sees fit. He would know how Sieun sees the same faces from Byuksan in different people every time he gets blood on his hands and feels vindicated , no matter how little that lasts.

Suho would know that even though he asked Sieun not to get into any trouble, he goes back to school and does just that—bites the bait and lets them get to him. He would know that deep down Sieun is not a good person. That he’s angry all of the time he doesn't spend with Suho. 

Then Sieun would lose him too, because Suho is good, and he would want to protect him even though Sieun doesn't need protection. Sieun would be helpless to the target that would paint on his back once again.

He can’t ever let that happen. It’s selfish, and he’s untrustworthy and a liar, but it’s the only choice he has. 

–

The text comes after two whole days of silence between them, the longest they’ve gone without talking after they met and after Suho has woken up. Sieun barely has the chance to walk to the subway station to get to school when his phone vibrates in his pocket. He thinks it might be his father telling him training is going to run a little longer and he won’t be back home for a few more days. It’s unlikely that it’s his mother. 

수호

going home finally

He’s almost surprised. Stupidly, he wants to smile, even though he knows nothing is fixed. He can’t help the relief that washes over him that Suho still wants him to know, that he hasn’t fucked everything up so completely that Suho would just stop talking to him. His fingers tremble as he texts back.

시은

right now?

수호

eung

Sieun looks at the entrance to the subway station and back to his phone, as if he’d get a divine sign to tell him what to do. In the end, he knows it’s barely a decision at all. He pockets his phone and doesn’t warn Suho he’s skipping school to see him. Later, he’ll tell him he just forgot about it. First, he needs to grab something important at home.

–

To say Suho looks surprised when his grandmother opens the door to their tiny apartment to let Sieun is an understatement. He blinks, confused, as if he can’t quite figure out why he’s there. It hurts a little.

“You shouldn’t skip school,” Grandma berates him lightly, but she beckons him in. “But I’m glad you’re here. At least today I can feed you both properly. All you eat is kimbap.” 

Sieun gives her a small, tentative smile in thanks. He knows better than to argue with her over it, and he’s thankful she even came to care for him at all. 

“You really shouldn’t skip school.” Suho repeats after her, and turns around to walk back into what Sieun assumes is his room. 

Their apartment is small, much smaller than Sieun’s and his father’s, but looks much more lived in. They have pictures all over the cramped living room of Suho and Grandma, and of the two young people who were Suho’s parents holding a much younger Suho. Some decorations, some trophies Suho must’ve won back when he had time for school sports, a blanket sewn out of mismatched pieces of cloth that Sieun imagines Grandma must’ve done herself. Sieun hadn’t paid attention to any of it the first time he’d been there. 

“Are you gonna stay there?” 

That’s as much of an invitation he’s going to get to follow Suho into his room, so he trails after him.

The room is small as expected. Sieun doesn’t have enough time to be surprised by its tidiness, because he immediately comes to the realization that of course it would be—Suho has been at the hospital for weeks now, and even before that he was barely home at all. 

There are some decorations, a sunset lamp, and a pin board with pics of his family, motorcycles and places Suho has talked about wanting to visit, and pictures of… Them. One of Suho with Sieun by his side—he doesn’t remember that one, didn’t even know it was taken—where he’s looking at his phone while Suho makes a peace sign at the camera, an arm thrown around Sieun’s shoulder. One he knows was taken because he had been very embarrassed about it—where he’s leaning his forehead in between Suho’s shoulder blades and Suho has his head thrown back, leaning on his—and it’s not because touching Suho is embarrassing, but the way Sieun feels too intensely about it certainly is. 

There’s one single picture of them with Beomseok, and the only reason Sieun doesn’t feel like ripping it out of there is because he’s still dazed at the discovery. 

“Why are you smiling like that? Stop it.” Suho whines from where he’s sitting on his bed, and it’s only then that Sieun realizes he’s smiling at all. 

“Nothing.” Sieun answers, but the smile keeps growing against his will, no matter how hard he tries to suppress it. 

“Don’t make fun of me.” Suho complains, but he looks sheepish, the tips of his ear turning red and his cheeks flushed at being caught. “I don’t even remember putting those up. I have a brain injury, you know?”

“I’m not making fun of you. I didn’t say anything.” He tries to control his face because he doesn’t actually want Suho to think he’s making fun of him. He doesn’t know how to explain that it makes him happy, the fact that Suho thought he was important enough to put pictures of him alongside his family and the dreams he swore he was too realistic to have. 

“Whatever… Besides, how come you’ve never seen it before?” 

Right. Suho doesn’t really remember that much, still. “I’ve never been here before.” 

“Oh…” 

“I mean, I have, but not inside your room. It didn’t feel right.” Sieun explains. He doesn’t know if Grandma has told Suho of the shameful day she brought him over because she was scared of how lifeless he had been, how utterly unresponsive. Sieun didn’t tell her at the time, but she must’ve known he missed Suho so much he had wanted to die that day.

“Well, you’re here now, so don’t just stand there awkwardly.” Suho mumbles, but Sieun can still tell he’s being uncharacteristically shy. He probably doesn’t remember that he’s always been openly affectionate. 

It’s up to him, then, to make sure Suho doesn’t feel self-conscious by doing something even more emotional. 

“I brought you something.” 

Sieun brings his backpack to his front and opens the zipper, gingerly taking the item out of it as if it’s something precious. It is to him. He passes it to Suho—the pink rabbit hand warmer he had used as a pillow to sleep on for most of the year and was so attached to. It was a peace offering, and no matter how much Sieun had gotten attached to it himself, it was still Suho’s. 

Suho takes it and stares at it confusedly, completely silent. 

“It’s yours, you left it at school.” Sieun explains lamely, belatedly realizing Suho probably doesn’t even remember it at all. “I took it home after you got admitted to the hospital.” 

Suho doesn’t say anything for a long moment, only stares down at the pillow—or at least that’s how it feels like to Sieun. He wants to say that it’s fine, it was stupid of him, it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t remember, Sieun just thought he should have his stuff. 

“This is stupid.” Suho takes the words out of his mouth and sniffs, and oh God, Sieun hates himself for making him cry. He had never even seen him cry before. “Why am I crying about this? This injury is making me stupid. I remember this.” 

“It’s not stupid, it’s fine,” Sieun takes a step towards him, unsure of what to do next. “It’s okay. You’re allowed to feel things.” 

“I know, it’s just that this injury is… It’s like everything is too much. I’m sorry, I didn’t thank you. I’m glad you kept it for me. I’m sorry for ignoring you, too.”  

“I was going to bring it when you woke up, but…” He says instead, unsure of what to do with Suho’s apology. But what? What excuse could Sieun come up, really? ‘Sorry, I kept it because it was the only thing I had left of you when I wasn’t entitled to anything else. Sorry, I kept it because every time I wanted the ground to swallow me up whole when you weren’t awake I clung to it like a lifeline?’ Now that’s stupid. 

“It’s okay, it just triggered a memory.” Suho mercifully cuts him off. “You asked me once why I chose this one.”

Sieun allows himself a smile. “You told me you were allowed to have layers and like cute things.” 

“Like you. ” Suho smiles back, though his eyes still glimmer from the tears. “You called me a shameless idiot and walked off on me.”

“I was correct, as usual.” 

They stay in a silence that’s more comfortable than before for a few moments, and Sieun feels so much for Suho he can only hope it doesn’t show too obviously on his face. 

He could never even begin to describe all his feelings—happiness, surely, but relief too. Comfort and safety. But the hardest of all, how could he begin to tell his best and only friend that he misses him even when they’re together? That even with Suho right in front of him, he feels a hole in his middle—somewhere in his chest, maybe on the top of his stomach—like a pulsing, living thing. Like hunger or divine will, demanding him to be closer, to touch and listen and make sure he’s happy.  

“Yah, Yeon Sieun,” Suho mumbles, then repeats himself. “Don’t just stand there awkwardly.”

He extends out his hand for Sieun to take, and it makes Sieun wonder if his hunger was so loud this time that even Suho could hear. Sieun puts his backpack somewhere on the ground and takes the offered hand, not expecting Suho to pull him into a hug, nor for him to go so pliant and willingly. 

It’s an awkward position, maybe the most awkward it could be for the first time they actually hug like this. Suho pulls him into his chest and wraps his arms around him so tightly that Sieun ends up half-sitting on his lap. The pillow is still in between them and the position is certainly uncomfortable, but Suho buries his face into his neck and exhales shakily, and Sieun can do little else but the exact same. 

The nearly unbearable warmth that takes over him is instant, shocking him into silence. He inadvertently tightens his arms around Suho, and his best friend does the same. The scent of his hair is familiar—Sieun had been devastated when it had finally worn off of the pink pillow after the first few days he had it. Sieun breathes him in, still not believing it not to be some sort of dream where he gets to do what he wants only for it to be taken away in the morning. He had a lot of those, when Suho was still in a coma.

The only reason he doesn’t cry is because of Suho, who needed this moment more than him. 

“Is this okay?” The question comes after a few seconds of neither of them willing to let up on their hold even a little. Sieun makes an involuntary, shameful noise on the back of his throat before he realizes that even though he wanted to, he wasn’t the one who asked the question.  

“It’s fine.” He replies, and stupidly, because he doesn’t want Suho to be scared of how badly he wants this all the time, he adds, “Just don’t get used to it.”

Suho chuckles wetly where his face is hidden in a place between Sieun’s neck and shoulder, tucked there so tightly that it has to hurt some of the bruises still sore on his face. “Sure.” 

“Suho…” Sieun murmurs, scared to break the moment and have Suho let go, but he continues when Suho makes no indication of doing so. “I’m sorry, too. About everything, even the things you don’t remember. You don’t have to apologize to me, but I just want you to trust me that Eunjang is not good for you. Just trust me on this.” 

Suho hums. “Okay. I’ll try.”

It’s not solved, Sieun knows. They’re not nearly done talking about this, but neither of them let go for what seems like forever. Sieun lets himself bask in it, feeling for the insistent emptiness inside of him being filled for the first time, the hunger being sated. 

–

It’s almost easy to forget how bad things are in Eunjang when he’s with Suho. It doesn’t last, of course, as most good things tend not to in Sieun’s life. 

Jin Taeoh predictably decides Sieun is an easy next target, someone he can push around and torture into submission for… The fun of it? Sieun is not sure. He starts small and indirectly, scaring other people into doing things in his stead, just inconvenient enough to try and rile Sieun up. A missing pen case, water being dropped all over his notebooks, trash being thrown around the classroom right as he and Juntae are finishing their cleaning duty.

“Why are you letting him get away with this?” Juntae asks him once when they’re leaving school side by side, after a particularly annoying day where Taeoh sent a student to draw an X with a permanent marker on the back of his school uniform. 

“With things like this, you need to wait.” Sieun tells him simply. “You need to study ahead.” 

He can tell Juntae doesn’t particularly understand his thought process, but he says nothing else to that. Instead, he passes him a plastic back with two small unlabeled bottles inside. 

“Here… The marker won’t come off your uniform with regular laundry detergent. Just use this at home.” He blushes as he explains himself, inexplicably shy about being more helpful than they both know Sieun deserves at all. “I have some experience with this.”

In that moment more than ever, Juntae reminds him of Suho.

Sieun nods to him. “Thanks.” 

Juntae speaks again before he can leave. “Sieun, by the way, from what he’s known for… Taeoh really doesn’t do anything if he doesn’t have something to gain from it.”

“You think someone’s getting him to come after me?”

Juntae seems reluctant to speak his mind, but talks anyway. “It’s just… I’ve known these people for a while. You really have no idea how deep this goes, not just in Eunjang but all schools in the district. Something weird is going on, Sieun. I heard about what happened on the bridge underpass the other day with the delinquents from Yoosun High… How you, Park Humin and his friends demolished the guys from there.” 

“You think this is about the guys from Yoosun High? Jin Taeoh is targeting me for what, revenge for them? Are they friends?” Sieun doesn’t understand. What happened on the bridge underpass was just a case of him being at the wrong place and wrong time. They had said it themselves they wanted Park Humin, not him. 

“No, I don’t know… I just think it’s strange that all of that would happen in such a small period of time with all of Eunjang’s best fighters. You, Park Humin, Jin Gayool… You were all there, weren’t you?” He seems uncomfortable, but Sieun can tell he knows what he’s talking about. Juntae may not be skilled in fighting and walk around in fear most of the time, but he’s observant and intelligent in such a way very few people are. “Even Go Hyuntak, who everyone knows is attached at the hip with Park Humin, got beat to a pulp the other day after school by this guy from Yoosun. Park Humin is livid.” 

“It’s like they’re trying to rile all of us up.” Sieun says. 

Juntae nods. “You see why I think it’s weird. I just don’t know why Yoosun would start something out of nowhere.” 

Sieun has nothing to say to that. He feels in over his head with how much more complicated things are than in Byuksan. He finds himself thankful for Juntae, and glad Suho isn’t around to get involved in any of it. 

“Just be careful going around alone, ok? I know you can hold your own, but even you have your limits.” 

Sieun nods, knowing by now that it’s useless to tell Juntae not to worry. He seems to be worried just about all of the time they spend together, which is now most of the hours Sieun spends in school. “You too. If they beat up Go Hyuntak to get to Park Humin…” 

Juntae seems confused. “Nobody thinks we’re friends.” 

“Good. The less they know the less likely they’ll try shit with you.” It’s as good an admission of friendship as Sieun can give him, but it only seems to confuse him more. Sieun doesn’t have time to explain it, anyway. He means it, that it’s better if people don’t think he’s close with anyone. Nobody else has to be collateral damage for the shit he gets into. 

–

Sieun’s opportunity comes on a rainy day. It’s really all thanks to Juntae how simple it is to put his plan into action. He thinks about the story of Taeoh beating up a teacher because of something as unimportant as a designer bag, how he seemed to want to rile up others by taking their personal belongings. 

In between classes, Juntae turns to him to ask his usual question, even though he knows Sieun never says yes. 

“You want anything from the vending machine?” 

This time, Sieun accepts it. “A coke.” 

Juntae expectedly looks surprised, but only nods and leaves the classroom. 

It’s easy for Sieun to walk into class 3-1, and even easier to spot the overly expensive school bag on top of an empty desk, which was much more commonly found in Byuksan, but stands out sorely in a place like Eunjang. Nobody dares disagree with him when he says he’s come to take Jin Taeoh’s bag because he was told to—they all seem terrified of the guy. 

Sieun has timed it perfectly as he waits, standing up by his desk. Juntae never spends too long on the hallways, and he comes back in less than five minutes with a coke can in his hand. Not two minutes later, the door to their classroom opens again with a forceful push. 

“Are you fucking insane? Have you finally lost your fucking mind?” Jin Taeoh predictably bursts into the classroom with Jang Suchan in tow, red in the face with anger at his recently discovered missing bag. It’s pathetic, really, how little it takes for him to lose it when his own tactics are turned on him. 

“Are you here for this?” Sieun asks as he walks towards the windows, pulling the curtain aside to reveal one of the glasses pushed open, Jin Taeoh’s backpack propped outside, soaked in rain. 

Taeoh goes impossibly redder in the face, eyes widening in disbelief. “Do you have any idea what you’re messing with? Do you know how much that costs?” 

Sieun can’t help the snort. It’s crazy, really, that someone like this is so blinded by his materialistic shit that he thinks anyone else would care. It’s too easy. “Yeah, but I thought I’d clean it for you, since you’ve been so nice to me recently.” 

Sieun gingerly grabs the backpack by a strap and shakes it out the window.

“Suchan, go outside. This lunatic is going to fucking drop it, go get it.” 

Sieun thinks it won’t work for a second. He can see the pride and reluctance in the other guy’s face at being ordered around. In the end, though, people like them always cave. Jang Suchan leaves Jin Taeoh and Sieun to their own, just like Sieun planned. 

“Listen here, you fucking—”

He gives Taeoh no time to finish his sentence, carelessly dropping the bag down. The seconds he takes to react impulsively and charge after Sieun are all he needs to step aside and dodge from being tackled. Sieun immediately uses a chair to throw at him, the iron and wood descending on his back with a loud crack. 

For all he’s feared by others, Jin Taeoh is as easily predictable as every other lowlife scum Sieun has ever encountered. His ego is too big for his own head, and he’s too confident in his reputation. The higher the pedestal they put themselves in, the higher the fall.

The next time he tries to attack is out of pure desperation, and Sieun only has to remember one thing that has worked before. He reaches for the curtain and uses it to wrap around Taeoh’s face tightly, effectively cutting off his vision as he flails around. Next, Sieun reaches for his unopened can of coke. 

It’s mocking, he’s aware, almost cheap. But in order to put people like these in their places, he has to be ever crueler than them. He has to strip them off of the one thing they care about the most—their image— and to utterly humiliate them so they don’t humiliate anyone else. 

He raises his arm and descends the can down on Taeoh’s face. Once, twice, he loses count. The blood starts soaking through the green curtain not too long after, and even after the can slips from his hand, Sieun keeps repeating his motions with his closed fist, almost as if he’s in a trance. He hears nothing and sees nothing but the covered face in front of him. 

Sieun doesn’t stop when he hears the groans and coughing, doesn’t stop when the curtain has a dark stain of blood the size of an entire face. The guy is Youngbin, Jungchan, and Taehoon. He’s Beomseok. He’s Choi Hyoman and his friends, he’s the other scum from Yoosun that Sieun beat up on that same bridge underpass. They’re all the same. Every single one of them is like Jin Taeoh. 

When he finally thinks he’s had enough, he pulls a permanent marker out of his pocket and uncaps it with his thumb. He marks an X on Taeoh’s white school uniform, much like the one Juntae so helped him get rid off, and releases the curtain to let Jin Taeoh fall to the ground. 

It’s only after he’s done that he realizes Taeoh’s friend is back and watching with a terrified look on his face.

“Was it worth it, all for the scum of Yoosun? Are you their lapdog?” Sieun asks Taeoh, resisting the urge to spit on the boy lying on the floor. 

“Yoosun?” Taeoh grunts through the pain, his face already an ugly mess or cuts and angry bruises and blood. “No, man, listen—Kim Pilyoung.” 

That’s all he gets out before groaning in pain again, but that’s all Sieun needs. He points to Jang Suchan.

“You. Take your friend and get the fuck out of here.” The coward doesn’t need to be told twice. 

Sieun picks up his chair from the ground and returns it to his desk in silence, sitting down and refusing to meet Juntae’s eyes. What would he see there? Fear or admiration? He doesn’t know which one is worse. 

His hands shake as he hides them under his desk. If Juntae sees it, he says nothing. Sieun makes a mental note to ask him who the fuck is Kim Pilyoung.

Chapter Text

There’s a bone-deep tiredness that overcomes him after a fight, after riding the high of righteousness and feeling like he accomplished something. It never lasts long enough and it always leaves him feeling desolate—like a failure, as if no matter how hard he fights, it’ll never be enough. 

He knows it’s true, because what happened to Suho can’t be undone, but it’s as though he can’t stop. He thinks back on science books and reading about some species of sharks that need to move at all times in order to get oxygen. If a great white stops going, it dies. If someone tries to keep it in a tank, it hits its head against the glass until it dies of stress or injuries. Sieun has the suffocating feeling that something just as terrible would happen if he stopped.

It’s an ill-thought-out decision to still go see Suho after what he does to Taeoh, but Sieun only realizes it much too late. He goes to him without a thought, because he’s the only person Sieun wants to see when he gets like this. 

Suho makes it better. Seeing him alive and breathing and talking, smiling at him in the way that makes his cheeks color and rise and his eyes squint. He makes things so much better.

It’s past 8PM on a Friday when he rings the doorbell. He has the code, both Suho and Grandma had insisted he got it, but he still feels weird about using it. They don’t push, but they do remind him every now and then that he’s welcome to let himself in.

“I thought you were only coming tomorrow?” Suho smiles at him exactly like the way Sieun likes the most when he opens the door, despite being a little confused. He’s right that Sieun was only supposed to be over on Saturday. 

He shrugs in response, “Dad left early. Two weeks, this time.” 

It’s not a lie, anyhow. Little had really changed after he enrolled in Eunjang, except his commute was three times longer. His father felt guilty, and he made sure Sieun knew he didn’t think he did anything wrong and made an effort to ask him how he was, but his job was still his Job and years of distant parenting didn’t change so quickly. He was still alone at home most of the time he spent there. 

It’s just not the whole reason. 

Suho gives him a sympathetic nod but says nothing, and trails behind him as Sieun enters the apartment. 

He greets Grandma in the living room, and she pats his head with affection he rarely thinks he deserves. It makes him happy, though, warm. She barely bats an eye at him being there all the time or arriving at late hours. They treat him like he belongs there.

“Are you staying the weekend, child?” She asks him. 

“If it’s not a problem.”  He sees that it pleases her. She likes it when Suho isn’t alone.

“Never a problem for you to keep each other company. Just try not to stay up too late.”

“Should we leave your stuff in my room and go to the convenience store to stock up on snacks, then?” Suho asks him expectantly, and Sieun can tell he’s brimming with nervous energy, probably anxious to go outside. 

They soon leave his scarcely packed overnight bag in Suho’s room, made heavier only by his computer. He never ends up using the shirts he packs, just grabs whatever Suho throws at him, even though he always blushes when the comment about how cute he looks in his oversized clothes inevitably comes.

He follows him outside, and Sieun pointedly doesn’t look at where his motorcycle is parked and dusting in the parking lot. It’s a touchy subject for Suho, still, that he can’t drive it anymore. 

The weather outside is particularly chillier, and it makes them walk closer together, practically pressed side by side. It’d be a hassle if they were in any more hurry or any less in sync. Sieun shoves his hands in the pockets of his coat, hands twitching with the urge to reach out and hold.

“You should wear heavier coats.” Suho mumbles, sounding more worried than annoyed, but mostly an awful lot like he’s stalling. “You’re always cold these days.”

Sieun snorts, but humors him anyway. “You just want me to wear your clothes. What’s that about, anyway?”

He can’t quite explain the satisfaction he feels, bordering on delight, when Suho immediately flushes all the way to the tips of his ears, stuttering over his protest. “Yah—What are you—I’m worried about you and you’re making fun of me?”

It’s nearly impossible to stop the laugh that rips through him, like it comes all the way from his chest. It startles Sieun almost as much as it does Suho. He doesn’t even remember the last time he laughed like this, let alone over something that really shouldn’t be that funny. Maybe it’s just the Suho effect, or maybe he’s finally losing his mind.

Suho stares at him with an expression Sieun can’t quite understand. 

“You’re so—I don’t think I’ve—” He tries twice, then shakes his head in frustration, but his expression doesn’t harden at all. Sieun never presses when this happens, when Suho stumbles as he tries to work through his words. 

“I like your laugh.” Is what he decides on. 

It’s Sieun’s turn to blush, his smile freezing on his face and warmth spreading under the collar of his shirt with what has to be embarrassment. So much for always feeling cold. 

He groans, “You’re so embarrassing.” 

He’s saved from further stuttering by their arrival at their destination, and Sieun walks past him and into the store in a hurry, if only to stop Suho from saying anything worse.

They browse through the aisles, Suho picking up everything he can, his appetite finally slowly going back to its normal state, which is still more than Sieun could ever say for himself. It’s good to see him being more and more like his old self as the day passes. 

“Here, your favorites.” Suho shakes two bags in front of him—mini pretzels and honey twists—with a self-satisfied grin on his face. 

Sieun looks up at him, almost self-conscious of how telling his eyes must look in that moment with overwhelming fondness. Suho likes doing this sometimes, throwing offhand remarks to show he remembered something new, but not wanting to make a big deal of it. For Sieun, it would always be a big deal, but he would let Suho do as he pleases.  

He blinks slowly and it’s a silent question, ‘You remembered something else?’, and Suho’s answer is his grin widening, ‘Yeah, of course I did, finally.’

“Ok, hold these, all we’re missing is drinks.” Suho rummages through the fridge on the back of the store, piling up cans on the crook of his elbow. “What do you want, fruit drinks? Coke? Actually, maybe we should just get something warm—” 

It’s a small thing, but it makes Sieun freeze nonetheless. It shouldn’t, really, but he can’t help it when Suho waves the can of Coke at him—the feeling of invisible walls closing in on his body. The memory of, just the day before, beating someone up hard enough to stain his classroom curtains with blood, exactly like the time Suho had stopped him from crossing a line with Youngbin. He crossed that line this time and Suho doesn’t know. He will cross many more lines in the near future. He can’t let him find out.

“Sieun?” His voice snaps him out of it, and Sieun tries not to jump. Instead, he shoves his bruised hand deeper in his pocket. “You went far away, there. You ok?”

“Fine.” Sieun nods. “Just get me milk tea.” 

Suho eyes him like he doesn’t believe him at all, but lets it go. Sieun wonders how he always seems to know when he’s lying or omitting. He knows he’s not a bad liar, and most people he knows would call him unreadable. It’s never the case with Suho. Maybe it comes with being his best friend, the first person he ever truly opened up to. It’s a strange thing, for someone to be simultaneously your strength and your weakness. 

–

For a second, the fight leaves him entirely the moment Suho takes his hand in between his. It’s already late into the night, and Sieun leans heavily into Suho’s side, having been exhausted all day. He’s ready to turn off his laptop and fall asleep as soon as the movie they’re watching ends. 

The warmth of Suho’s palms cradling his hand is enough to disorient him for a moment, too accepting of the type of contact he has to stop himself from initiating with Suho all the time. It feels good to have his hand held, if only for a second before he notices why it’s happening in the first place. It takes a few moments for him to fully compute Suho’s thumb, delicately tracing the skin underneath his bruised and scraped-raw knuckles. 

He had done his best to clean his hands of the blood afterwards, but had cared little to use any bandages at all. There are angry, irritated shades of red and purple around the bumps of his bones, way too obvious once the oversized long sleeves of the shirt he’s wearing—Suho’s—rise up and he lets his guard fall. It was stupid to think Suho wouldn’t have noticed it throughout the weekend in the first place. 

He tries to snatch his hand back as a reflective action, but Suho doesn’t let him. He keeps his hold firm but gentle until he’s sure Sieun won’t pull back. 

“Are you gonna tell me what happened?” Suho’s voice is soft, like he’s dealing with a wounded animal. When Sieun doesn’t reply for what feels like ages, he gives the back of his hand what can only be described as a caress and lets go. “I’ll be right back.”

Sieun can tell he’s walking around the apartment trying to make as little noise as possible to not wake up Grandma. His laptop tells him it’s already twenty past midnight.

Suho comes back inside the room with a bowl of water in his hands and a box. 

“Scoot over.” Sieun closes his laptop and gets it out of the way from where it previously sat in between them, making space for Suho to sit much closer, their legs pressed together.  “Give me your hand.”

He balances the bowl of water on his lap and waits. Sieun is helpless to do anything other than comply, no matter how shameful he thinks it is. 

“How fresh are these?” He asks. 

Sieun swallows hard, but there’s no point in lying. “Yesterday.”

Suho hums. “This might hurt a little, sorry. I’ll be as careful as possible.”

He submerges Sieun’s hand in the warm water, and it has him holding back a hiss at the sting. Suho keeps his promise, however, and washes the skin around at the four almost identical open wounds with such care that makes him shiver. 

He works silently and methodically and doesn’t push for answers. Maybe that’s what makes Sieun’s eyes sting with the sudden want to cry and his throat close up with the need to say something. 

“He deserved it.” Is what he settles for. 

To his credit, Suho doesn’t react in any way Sieun expected him to. He places the bowl on the ground and starts to dry Sieun’s hand with a clean, soft piece of cloth. He nods to signal that he’s listening, but says nothing to that. 

“This one is gonna sting really bad for a few seconds, but it’s to help with the healing. It will feel better immediately after.” He sprays a translucent liquid directly onto the wounds that feel more like alcohol, and Sieun can’t help the barely audible noise that escapes him.

With the quietness and intimacy of the moment, it could as well have been a scream. 

“Sorry, sorry.” Suho grimaces at him, giving his fingers a tender squeeze. “I’ll just wrap it up now.”

Sieun feels his eyes starting to water as soon as Suho looks down again, and he has to hold his breath not to give him any signs of how close he is to tears. It’s pathetic that Suho, who went through hell and back and sustained injuries that will have a lifelong impact in his life, is sitting there taking care of Sieun’s stupid injured hand—something he inflicted upon himself—and treating it like Sieun truly deserves the care and the sympathy. It’s unfair, it’s selfish, and it’s insulting to him. 

Still, despite knowing all this, Sieun lets him continue. He wraps the bandage around his hand and tapes it firmly, but not too tight. 

“It wasn’t for nothing.” Sieun finds himself saying, ashamed of the way his voice trembles. Suho keeps holding his bandaged hand in between his. “I didn’t beat him up for nothing. He deserved it. He’s an awful person.”

“Did you beat him up too? Oh Beomseok?” Out of all the things Sieun expected to hear as an answer to that confession, that was at the bottom of the list. He feels as though his whole body has been doused in freezing cold water and shakes ever harder.

Suho winces like he didn’t mean to say it, and traces his thumb over the uncovered skin under the bandages. 

“I thought I was having a nightmare the other day, but I knew it was different when I snapped out of it. It just felt—I just knew it was real.” He answers Sieun’s silent question of ‘Did you remember?’. As selfish as it is, this is the last thing Sieun wanted him to remember. “I know he’s the one because I remember his face the most, but I know there were others. I remember little else, though. Barely flashes.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Suho huffs, but it has no heat behind it. “I was trying to piece some things together. It’s tricky to figure out what’s a real memory and what’s not.”

“I wish—” ‘I wish you didn’t remember that.’ “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” Suho tells him firmly, but Sieun wants to tell him he can’t know that yet. “And you didn’t answer me. Did you?”

Sieun lets out a shaky breath after what feels like minutes of silence. “I went after the others. Everyone else. Him, I couldn’t— I tried. In the end, I couldn’t.”

“He was our friend.” Suho’s voice is unbearably understanding. Oh Beomseok doesn't deserve understanding nor sympathy from him.

“No, I don't think—He never talked to me. I tried, for him.” Sieun shakes his head, trying to bury down the mess of complex feelings he had about Oh Beomseok, trying to stop it from bubbling over. Suho doesn’t let go of his hand. “And with you it was an obsession. We were his friends, but he wasn’t ours.” 

Suho takes his time digesting that, but Sieun knows he fully believes him. It was something Suho himself had said to him once, before everything went down and Sieun was still trying to reach out to the other. 

“I remember very little of him… I don’t miss him.” Suho frowns as he admits that, but then his voice and face soften, and his fingers draw invisible patterns on Sieun’s hand. “I missed you. Even when I woke up and barely remembered your name, I knew you were mine—my friend.”

Sieun turns his palm up and laces their fingers together. It’s hard to push the right words out and say exactly what he means—that life was much more terrible without Suho in it, that he didn’t know how to be alone anymore, that he missed him so bad it was suffocating, like it had been killing him inside. 

“I thought I was going to—” Sieun sucks in a ragged breath, unable to stop the tears this time, hiccuping the rest of his sentence out. “Lose you. I thought—” 

It hadn’t been a simple nightmare. Suho had almost died, he could have never woken up, and the realization of that still hits him like a fresh laceration to his heart every time. 

Suho takes no time at all to pull him into his chest, untangling their hands only to wrap Sieun in his arms. He doesn’t have the strength to be ashamed of how needy he sounds when he makes a pitiful noise and lets himself sink into the embrace, his arms wrapping around Suho’s middle and his face hidden on his neck. 

“I’m here. I’m sorry—I know you’re gonna say I shouldn’t say that, but I’m only sorry you were alone. You didn’t lose me. You won’t, I promise.”

Sieun desperately wants to believe it. He will make sure it’s true. He presses himself even harder against Suho, and he knows it must be uncomfortable, but it’s terribly painful to let go.

“Look, I wasn’t going to ask you if that guy deserved it. I know you wouldn’t throw hands with someone for no reason, you’re not a fucking delinquent, you’re nothing like those people. I just—I worry. And don’t fucking tell me not to worry.” Suho holds him tighter, a hand coming up to hold the back of his neck.

“Should I just let them get away with it?” Sieun asks indignantly, but it’s muffled by the way his mouth is hovering above the collar of Suho’s sweatshirt, his lips grazing skin. 

“That’s not what I’m saying, but how do you think I would feel if something happened to you?” Suho sighs and he sounds fragile, terrified. “I just wish you could talk to me about it. I can tell something’s wrong, you’re hiding things. I don’t want you in danger. I’d go crazy if I lost you, too.” 

“I asked you to trust me.” Sieun mumbles, wondering how much he could get away with, if Suho hates the feeling of his lips against the bare skin of his neck too much. If he does, he doesn’t say, doesn’t even pull away. “I swear you won’t.” 

“I trust you with me, I trust you with everything—but I don’t trust you to be good to yourself.” Suho says with heartbreaking honesty.

“You—You’re gonna have to be good to me, then.” Sieun stutters, feeling himself flush all over at the momentaneous lack of shame, thankful that his face is hidden. “Until I learn.” 

The hand Suho has on the back of his neck gives him a reassuring squeeze, his fingers accidentally dipping under the collar of his shirt. “I’ll always be good to you.” 

Sieun doesn’t know if he can be any good to Suho, but he knows he won’t ever let anyone put their hands on him ever again. He’d do anything for him to have a healthy, happy and peaceful life. 

They hold each other like that until they’re too exhausted to be up. Suho drags him up to brush their teeth and get all the snack wrappers out of his bed—more like a mattress on top of a bamboo mat—and into the trash. They turn off the lights and sneak under the heavy blankets, and Suho makes no ceremony of lying down with his back to the wall and facing him. 

In the dark, Sieun reaches out almost automatically to repeat an old habit. He puts his bandaged hand over Suho’s chest, palm pressed flat, feeling his heartbeat. This time, he isn’t unconscious and hooked to any machines. Suho puts his own hand on top of Sieun’s as he feels the rhythm of beats that are now steady and strong, and then brings Sieun’s hand up to his mouth. Sieun is not sure if he dreams the way Suho kisses his fingers, and he’s out before he can think about it, too exhausted to find out.

–

“And you’re sure that’s the name he said?” Juntae asks, with a complicated expression on his face. “I mean, it does make sense…”

Sieun waits. “Well?” 

Juntae shrugs. “They’re in the same class, one year above us. Pilyoung is rich, and everybody knows Jin Taeoh is obsessed with wanting to appear rich. If Kim Pilyoung wanted to use someone like him to get to you, all he would need was to give him things in return.” 

Sieun resists the urge to rub his eyes in frustration. Having a name is not enough, especially when it’s a name he doesn’t recognize and has no idea what they could have against him. “You said this could be about all of us. Does he have anything against Park Humin or his friends?” 

He seems to consider it for a moment. “Not that I know of, but everybody knows Humin used to get in fights a lot in middle school, nobody wants to mess with him… It’s just, you know, if someone wanted to take over the school they would definitely target him. But Pilyoung doesn’t really ever fight, he would certainly lose to him… And to you.” 

“Take over the school?” Sieun huffs. It’s infinitely deplorable to him that these kids think themselves so tough and still manage to act more juvenile than middle schoolers. 

“I told you, this goes deeper than you think. School is just a tool for them to intimidate other people and run it like a gang. There is a gang, made up of all of the other five schools in the district except Eunjang. It’s called the Union.” Juntae doesn’t give him any indication that he’s anything less than serious. 

“So if he wanted to join this ‘Union’, he would have to take over the school for himself. Meaning Park Humin, his friends and I.” 

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Juntae seems nervous, like something else is bothering him. 

Sieun shrugs. “I guess. Then all we have to do is take him out.” 

“I don’t think so, because… See, Yoosun and Eunjang have history. A guy named Bae Jihun runs Yoosun High, he’s part of the Union, meaning the guys you fought under the bridge were all sent by him. Bae Jihun and Park Humin hate each other.” 

“So he’s going to come after him either way. All he needed was a reason, and Kim Pilyoung gave him one.” Sieun grimaces, then takes a deep breath. Everything is so goddamn complicated, and he’s involved in it with no way out. 

“And now because of what happened in the bridge underpass he’s going to come after you too. You have to be careful,” Juntae reaches out and shakes his arm as he says it, and Sieun is stunned by how much he actually cares.  It seems like he realizes what he’s doing right away, because he lets go like he’s been burned and a furious shade of pink takes over his pale face. “Sorry.” 

Sieun waves him off. “So I guess I just have to wait and prepare.” 

Juntae shakes his head. “You could tell Park Humin, you know? You could team up.” 

He considers it. Park Humin did try to be friendly to him on several occasions, and he and his friends came to his aid when he was outnumbered. Sieun just doesn’t trust his interests of friendship to be anything other than getting one more number to fight. He said it himself, he liked Sieun for his guts. 

For now, he discards the idea. He likes to fight his battles himself. 

–

It’s easy to tell when something’s off with Suho by the way he greets him when they see each other. Sometimes it’s about a lost, barely pieced-together memory. Sometimes is when he hits a block in his physical therapy, a tremor in his leg or hands. Sometimes it’s his lack of trust in his own mind and how frustrated he gets when he still blanks before speaking, or forgets what he’s doing halfway into doing it. 

It happens farther and fewer times in between these days. His recovery is steady and sure, but it still happens. Sieun rarely ever asks and never pushes, because he knows Suho will tell him eventually. 

This time, though, the anxious energy comes off of him in waves. He’s disquieted as they walk through the mostly empty park, already late in the afternoon. Suho barely pays attention when Sieun talks, and he doesn’t even realize how far away his mind is.

Sieun gives him time, but the tenseness in the air gets to him. “Are you okay?” 

Suho shakes his head as if just snapping out of deep thinking. “Hm? Yeah, fine.”

“Come on, what’s wrong?” Sieun asks again, softly bumping his shoulder into Suho’s. 

Suho lets out a sigh, but still doesn’t look at him. “Grandma got a call today.” 

That could be a number of things. It could be from the doctors, it could be from Oh Jiwon’s lawyers, it could even be Youngyi. 

“It was, um… School.” Suho answers his unasked question after a few moments of silence. “They got wind of me being awake and the new principal wanted to know if I still plan on coming back for second year. He said they would accommodate me even if we're months into it, but I think he just feels guilty.”

A weight settles in Sieun’s stomach at the thought of it. “And will you?” 

“Of course not, I told you that before.” Suho says. They slow the pace of their walking, and Sieun can’t tell he’s not done. “I just wish you would tell me.” 

“Tell you what?” Sieun doesn’t need to ask, but he does it anyway. It’s almost a perfect replay of their conversation before Suho’s discharge from the hospital, and he hates doing this—he hates denying Suho anything. For a naive moment,  he wishes it was easier.

“Why don't you want me to go to Eunjang?” Suho shakes his head. “And don’t give me bullshit answers, that Yeongdeungpo is far or that it’s a bad school. Just give me the truth.” 

“Why are you so insistent on going to Eunjang?” Sieun mumbles, halting to a stop to look at him. “Suho, seriously, just—” 

“No, don’t do that, because if this is because you don’t want me there, then fine. Just tell me if I’m being too much, I can take it. But if it’s not, then I don’t understand. I can’t do anything anymore, I can’t ride my bike or go back to my part-time jobs, so I can’t even have this—you?” 

He finally stops to look back at Sieun, really looks at him, and the expression on his face makes something inside of him crack. 

“It’s not that. I just don’t want you to throw your future away.” Sieun tells him in a voice that sounds shaky even to his own ears. “I just want to protect you.”

“That is bullshit.” Suho laughs without any humor behind it. “What about your future? What about you? If Eunjang is so awful, then who protects you?” 

“I can’t—there’s nothing I can do, Oh Jiwon made sure I wasn’t accepted in any school in Seoul after what I did, but you can do better for yourself. Besides, I don’t need you to protect me. Trying to protect me is what got you here in the first place.” Sieun shakes his head. He needs to be unmovable in this. He needs to. 

“You can’t be fucking serious, you don’t need protection? You’re not invincible, Sieun! You think I don’t know you’ve been getting into fights, that I can’t tell you’re in trouble?” Suho takes a step forward, and Sieun can’t contain the sharp intake of breath he takes when Suho reaches out to cup his face in his hand. He lets himself melt into the touch, if only for a second.

“Stop treating me like I’m made of glass and stop pushing me away. Let me be there for you.” 

He leans down, resting his forehead against Sieun’s, and that’s all it takes for his eyes to start watering. It’s a lose-lose situation—he can be with Suho and make him a target, or he can push him away and keep him safe. 

“I’m sorry.” Sieun can barely say the words through the heaviness in his chest, as if his ribcage is closing in on his heart—it feels physical, it hurts harder than any blow he’s ever taken in a fight. 

“Me too.” Suho gives him a sad and lifeless smile, so much different than the one Sieun adores, the one he hopes for and the one that makes him feel like everything is fine as long as Sieun has him.

He doesn’t stop Suho when he turns around to leave and he doesn’t follow him either. The gut-wrenching guilt of disappointing the person he cares about the most in the world threatens to drown him. It’s hours before he goes back to his empty home, and the only words they exchange are text confirmations they both got home safe. 

Suho doesn’t call or text after that. Sieun didn’t expect him to.

–

It’s rage that has him seeking out Park Humin—towards the world and the unfairness of it all, towards the past, Oh Beomseok and his obsession, and everything he did to someone who was only ever good to him. Towards himself, for letting down the same person.

Suho and Juntae were right in saying he’s not invincible, but Sieun starts itching to take his feelings out on something. If they want to get them all together he needs Park Humin and his friends in on it. They need to put an end to this. 

“They hang out on the rooftop. No one really goes there but them, if you wanna find them.” 

“You’re coming with me, come on.”

Juntae follows him with anxious hesitance. 

None of them pay any attention to when Sieun and Juntae find them on the school’s rooftop. Jin Gayool sits on an old, beat up chair while playing on his phone and smoking a cigarette. That’s not what catches his attention, though. Instead, right next to him on an equally old couch, Park Humin and Go Hyuntak sit so tangled up in each other that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. 

Sieun tries not to flush at the way he sees Humin pressing a kiss to the corner of Hyuntak’s mouth. 

“Does it still hurt?” Sieun can barely hear Humin ask, but he can see fingers gently tracing one of the bruises one could see even from afar, stark against Hyuntak’s fair complexion. 

“It’s fine, I told you a thousand times.” Hyuntak pushes his hand away. “Don’t be annoying.” 

“You know I can’t let this go, right?” Humin asks. “Not when it’s you.” 

Hyuntak pushes away from him and stands up, voice loud enough to be heard more clearly from where they’re standing—watching the scene with no intention of intruding, but no way of interrupting. Sieun feels the conflicting urges to look away and keep watching. There’s an intimacy between them that’s awfully familiar, as is their argument. 

“No, this is exactly why he—” Hyuntak stops in his tracks the moment he sees them. “Hey, what are you doing here?” 

Sieun can only hope he doesn’t look red in the face, schooling his expression into something neutral. “I need to talk to you. It’s important.” 

“Yeon Sieun,” Park Humin jumps from his seat and offers him a friendly smile, throwing an arm around his—boyfriend? Hyuntak doesn’t push him off. “To what do I owe the honor? You know, you’re a really tough guy to befriend. And you, you’re Seo Juntae, right? We went to middle school together.”

Juntae nods, still more nervous than he should be.  

“I don’t have the best track record with people approaching me in this school.” Sieun says a little more harshly than intended. He tries not to wince at himself, considering he’s there to offer a hand in, what, partnership? He’s not sure. 

“They tend to be like that, yeah.” Humin laughs, but there’s more annoyance than humor in his tone. 

It’s only now, when he’s not worried about fighting anyone in the immediate moment, that he really pays attention to them. Humin is tall, towering above Hyuntak, Juntae and Sieun himself. He’s tan and good looking, both of them are, and there’s something compelling about the way they look like the opposite of each other—Humin seemingly friendly and warm, nothing like what Sieun expected, and Hyuntak striking and intimidating despite being smaller, with sharp angles and a closed off expression. 

“A bunch of weird fuckers, really.” Humin completes.

“That’s why I need to share something with you that I think you should know. About the guys from Yoosun and Kim Pilyoung.”

Jin Gayool finally looks up at that, eyes partially hidden under a mess of dyed dark green hair. “What about that idiot? He’s been pissing me off, lately.” 

Sieun looks at Juntae, urging him to speak up.

“It’s, um… I think he might be the one manipulating Yoosun High into attacking you guys.” 

They let him explain, thankfully, without any interruptions. They don’t doubt him, either, because Juntae is good at observing and good at logic. Park Humin recognizes that. It helps that he’s been scared of most of those guys for as long as he can remember—Sieun can tell he’s been the target of their abuse before. He knows everything he knows because he’s learned how to mostly avoid them. It’s not the reason Sieun befriended him, but it’s certainly helpful.

“Kim Pilyoung is such a stupid fuck,” Hyuntak growls out, turning to speak directly to Humin. It’s understandable, Sieun thinks, considering how he was the one who’s gotten the worst of it so far. From closer, Sieun can see the amount of bruises he still has. “Fucking hell, fuck. They’re trying to bait you. Goddamn it, you can’t let them get to you. Not again.” 

It’s only then Sieun realizes—Go Hyuntak, who’s covered in ugly shades of yellow and purple, a bandage still on the bridge of his nose, a cut on the corner of his upper lip, is angry not because he was beaten to a pulp, but because they did it to get to Park Humin. 

The situation is too uncomfortably familiar to Sieun. He averts his eyes when Humin leans down to kiss the tip of Hyuntak’s nose. “No, I’m the one who can’t let them get to you. This is never going to stop if I don’t put an end to this shit with Bae Jihun and Kim Pilyoung.”

“Don’t do that in front of people.” Hyuntak mumbles and pushes him away, but Humin only chuckles fondly, pulling him back into his arms. 

“You do that in front of me all the time, it’s fucking disgusting.” Jin Gayool interjects. “Let somebody else suffer for a change.”

The whole interaction gives Sieun a weird, fluttering feeling in his stomach. He almost confuses it for nausea, but he knows that’s not it—it’s a strange anxiety, a craving. He thinks of Suho immediately, wonders how weird it would be to be like this with him, but finds that he doesn’t have to wonder. They touch each other in a similar way, they act with each other in a similar way. Even their arguments are eerily similar to the one they were having before he interrupted.

Is this what he wants, to kiss Ahn Suho on the lips? To be able to reach out for him even in front of strangers, without fear that he’ll get rejected? But then again, when has Suho ever rejected him?

It gives him a headache. 

Park Humin snaps him out of his crisis when sighs, but when Sieun looks at him there’s a smile on his face that seems too calm, even after learning what he did. “We should go out to eat right now. I’m hungry and we need to discuss this outside of this school.” 

For once, Sieun doesn’t reject the offer. He doesn’t want to, not only because they really need to discuss and plan being grouped together in one big targeted attack, but because he’s selfishly, strangely captivated by Park Humin and Go Hyuntak. So then, he goes with them. 

In the worst possible timing, his phone vibrates in his pocket just as he’s about to enter the dingy arcade café, Suho’s name on the ID caller.

“Hey.” 

“Hi.” Sieun replies, with the same anxiety from before making his hands shake, the fluttering feeling in his stomach more recognizable now. Sieun misses him already.

“Can you talk? I just really need to—” 

“Yah, Yeon Sieun, aren’t you coming in? I’m not letting you get away from us again like the day from the bridge underpass.” Park Humin chooses that moment to throw an arm around him. 

“Really, dude, this needy pest has been talking about it for weeks.” Hyuntak tells him, seemingly unbothered by the display and mostly fond of his boyfriend. 

“Sieun?” Suho calls on the other end of the line. “Are you busy?” 

He really has no choice as Park Humin and Go Hyuntak drag him inside. “Yeah, I’m sorry, I’ll call you later, okay? I promise. I—I miss you.” 

There’s a moment of silence that lasts a bit too long before Suho replies. “Yeah, sure. Have fun.” 

He hangs up before Sieun can say anything else. 

Sieun realizes this really, truly can’t go on. He sympathizes with Park Humin. He needs to stop pushing Suho away. He needs to stop hurting him, and most of all, he needs to be the one to reach out first before Suho fully gives up on him. But for that to happen, he’s going to put an end to this. If he wants to have Suho with him, Eunjang needs to be safe.

Chapter Text

Becoming closer to the boys from Eunjang comes with an overwhelming set of different emotions for Sieun. On the surface, there’s the difficulty he finds in trusting people, and it’s hard to imagine himself ever fully trusting someone again after Oh Beomseok. Then there’s the weird warmth he feels when he’s included in something—remembered—even when he refuses them. They don’t seem to hold his priorities against him. There’s the protectiveness that he tries to ignore at the thought that anytime now, they could get hurt. 

And the strangest of all is the familiarity he feels while watching Humin and Hyuntak. 

He doesn’t even realize how much attention he pays to them, at least not for a while. Not until he’s obvious about it. 

“Hey,”  Humin approaches him after school one day, his usual friendly smile on his face. “Let’s go get something to eat. I have to get one more stamp on my fried chicken coupon so that my next one is free.” 

Sieun almost automatically refuses, but when he thinks about it, he has nothing else he needs to do right away. It’s an afternoon he has no classes in cram school, no scheduled time in a study room, a day he would usually reserve to meet up with Suho after his physical therapy. Except he hasn’t been meeting up with Suho much lately. 

“Sure.” Sieun accepts, much to Humin’s obvious surprise. “Is Hyuntak coming?” 

Humin raises an eyebrow at him, and Sieun feels a weird twist in his stomach even though he can tell it’s mostly playful. “Nah, just the two of us today.”

“I just asked because I know everybody else is busy.” Sieun feels the need to explain himself. 

Humin laughs then, loud and cheerful. “Relax, I know you. You don’t have to explain yourself to me. Let’s go, hyung will treat you.”

“We’re the same age.” 

It only makes Humin laugh more. Sieun figures he seems genuine enough about it, but it does little to abate the uncomfortable feeling in his guts. Not distrust, and almost certainly not directed at Park Humin, but at himself instead. 

He follows Humin mostly in silence as they walk, and finds himself thankful that the place is nothing fancier than a food truck at a park not too far away from Eunjang. He lets Humin place their order, and he’s not surprised that they even get free sodas from the owner ahjussi with it. That’s just how charismatic Park Humin is. 

“Come on, try it. It’s the best place in Yeongdeungpo, it’s gonna blow your mind.”

“All chicken tastes the same.” Sieun tells him, but reaches for the container on their table anyway. Surprisingly, Humin is right. It is better than any chicken he’s ever tasted.

“It’s delicious.” Sieun tells him honestly, and it pays off when Humin gives him a wide, proud smile. 

“See,  I told you. I’m not all muscles, I know things.” His smile dims a little, face turning into something a little more serious. To someone less observant than Sieun, it would hardly be noticeable. “I thought you needed a little cheering up.”

“I’m fine, though.” Sieun says almost automatically, a well rehearsed answer to just about anyone and anything, one he barely thinks through before repeating. 

“You know,” Humin says between one mouthful and another, “I know we haven’t been close for very long, but… I care about you. We all do. I can tell that something has been bothering you lately and I won’t force you to talk about it, but it might do you some good to just vent.” 

Sieun wants to outright refuse, but something about Park Humin is too welcoming to do so. There’s nothing malicious about his opening that Sieun can detect. Besides, if anyone would understand the complicated feelings he has about Suho and his safety, it would be him. 

It’s hard to get the words out, but Humin keeps his word and doesn’t press, seemingly happy to sit in comfortable silence if that’s what Sieun wants. It’s nice to have someone like him. Sieun realizes with stark clarity that he’s happy about making friends again. He wants Suho to have this, too. 

“I have this friend—my best friend,” Sieun starts after several minutes of silence, just as they’re finished eating. “His name is Ahn Suho.” 

Once he starts, he finds out words just come spilling out. He tells Humin about everything—about Suho and how they met, about Oh Beomseok and how close the three of them became. He tells him about how he turned on them over jealousy, and how hard he tried to reach out to Beomseok with no success. He tells him how badly he failed Suho when he should’ve protected him, how he was on the brink of death and Sieun went after every single person involved, and that’s why he ended up in Eunjang. 

He tells him about the suffocating period of time Suho was in a coma, and how he only woke up by a miracle, by being strong and stubborn. He even tells him about Suho wanting to attend Eunjang, and thankfully doesn’t have to explain why that scares him. Humin understands. That’s comforting. 

“That’s a lot.” Humin says sympathetically after Sieun falls silent, slightly embarrassed by just how much he’s said, everything he’s been bottling up just spilling out with an ease he didn’t expect. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. It’s so fucking unfair.”

Coming from anyone else, these words would’ve angered him, would have appeared disingenuous and dismissive, but he can tell Humin means it. “Yeah. It’s really unfair.” 

“Sorry if it’s not my place to say this, but you and him remind me of Gotak and I—or, well, you know…” He scratches the back of his head, hesitant to make the comparison, but Sieun gets it. “If something like this happened to him, I don’t know what would happen to me. Every time something happens to him because of me I go crazy with guilt.” 

Sieun swallows hard, nodding along with the sentiment. “I think he thinks I’m treating him like an invalid or that I’m ashamed of him, but the thought of someone putting their hands on him again makes my blood boil. Is it that crazy that I don’t want him to go to a school like Eunjang, especially with the mess that’s about to happen?”

“You know I understand, but Sieun… You know he must think the same about you, right?” 

“I know, but—” 

Humin shakes his head, “Listen first. You know, once I got beat so badly defending Gotak in middle school that he had to carry me on his back to the hospital. I broke my arm, had to go to physical therapy for months, and he still feels guilty about it. He still has a hair-trigger about anyone so much as saying something bad about me in front of him. But you know what? I’d do it again and much worse. He would do it for me too, no matter how much I wish he wouldn’t. That’s just how it is, man. When you lo—when you care about someone like this, they’re your everything. So wouldn’t it be better to just stick together? You can’t stop him from taking care of you like you want to take care of him.”

Sieun lets the words settle in his mind, and no matter how much he wants to disagree, he knows Humin is right. It would be better to just not let Suho out of his sight. He couldn’t guarantee he would be safe in any other school, either. Besides, Sieun wants him close—he misses him every moment they’re not together.

“I guess you’re right.” Sieun sighs. “Thanks,  Baku.”

“You should talk to him. Don’t leave him in the dark.” 

“Yeah, I know. But you have to agree that right now is the worst timing.” 

Humin groans, “Those fucking Yoosun bastards. It’s fine, I’ll find a way to deal with it, we shouldn’t act out first. Let them come, and after it’s over you can get your boy to come here. We’ll be friends!” 

Sieun tries not to flush an embarrassing shade of red over having Suho being called ‘his boy’. 

“You and Suho becoming friends sounds like a nightmare to me.” 

“What a liar, you love me, we’re such good friends now, you can’t take it back. Does he play pool? We can even go on double dates and shit.”  

Sieun freezes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“Oh, come on! Sieun-ah, seriously? Gotak says I’m clueless about these things, but if even I can see it—oh, is that why you zone out sometimes when you see us? Because you want Ahn Suho-ssi to—” 

This time, Sieun can’t help the way his face grows hot almost immediately. Having friends is actually horrible.  “Shut up. Don’t say another word.” 

“I’m sorry— ouch, don’t kick,” Humin runs after him as he leaves the table. “Come on, don’t walk so fast, I’m so full I can’t keep up. I promise I’ll stop teasing you.” 

Having friends is the worst. Sieun is never telling anyone anything ever again. 

–

Sieun is not expecting it at all. A few days go by after his conversation with Humin that had managed to make him simultaneously give him a clearer head and more anxiety, but he’s working on building courage to talk to Suho. Taking the first step is hard when he knows he doesn’t deserve it, knows their last actual conversation hurt him, but he’s also aware he can’t clear things up if he doesn’t try. 

He’s not ready to face him yet when Suho shows up in front of Eunjang.

It becomes part of Sieun’s routine to walk with his friends after school until they have to go in different directions. Humin insists on it in case any of them get jumped. 

“I got my boys, I got nothing to worry about!” Humin throws his free arm around Sieun’s shoulders. Sieun tries to shrug him off, but he’s a lot taller and stronger, so it feels not too different from trying to move a tree log. 

“I’m sure Hyuntak loves that.” Sieun says before he can stop himself. Humin only laughs it off, Hyuntak rolls his eyes and snorts. 

“Gotak knows he’s number one in my heart. You can be number two.” 

“Not Gayool?” 

“I’m good.” Gayool says, holding a hand to stop Humin from coming any closer. “Don’t touch me.” 

“Aw, I just have a lot of love to give, man. Don’t be like that.” Humin tries to pull both of them into a hug.

It’s in between deciding if he should elbow him on the side or duck before he’s suffocated in between him and an even taller Gayool that Sieun sees him. 

For a second he thinks he might be hallucinating, simply because it makes no sense for Suho to be leaning against a wall in front of his school. There’s no reason for Suho to be in Yeongdeungpo at all. 

It’s surprising he doesn’t trip on his own feet and falls with the way he freezes while the others keep walking. Humin takes his arm off of him, and everyone looks back at him with equally puzzled looks.

“Everything okay, Sieun?” It’s Juntae who asks first. 

“I have to go.” Sieun barely mumbles, eyes fixated on Suho, who’s watching the whole scene from across the street. 

Sieun fiddles with the sleeves of his coat to distract himself from his nervousness as he approaches him. Suho looks… Suho looks good. He has a heavy jacket on to fend off the chilly weather that Sieun has never seen before, and he hasn’t cut his hair the usual way. It grows so fast—it’s longer and brushed back in a way Sieun can only describe as pretty. Sieun feels a pull of longing in the pit in his chest at the sight. He missed him so much and it hadn’t even been that long. 

Suho doesn’t smile when he stops in front of him. 

“What—what are you doing here?” 

It’s the wrong thing to ask. Suho pulls a face, tongue poking the inside of his cheek the way he does when he’s truly upset. 

“Well, you’ve been avoiding me so…” 

“I was going to come over on the weekend.” It’s not a lie as much as it’s an exaggeration of the truth. 

Sieun wanted to go over on the weekend, he planned on going, but he couldn't be sure he would've had the guts to. 

“Were you? Should I just go, then?” Suho makes a noise between a laugh and a scoff with no humor behind it. Even if Sieun didn’t know him like the back of his hand, he would’ve been able to see how upset he is. 

Sieun reaches out, hand wrapping around his upper arm to stop him from moving away. “No, it’s just—I’m sorry. Let’s just get out of here and talk.” 

Instead of listening to his pleading, Suho looks behind him at where Sieun’s friends are still waiting, watching them curiously from across the street. 

“They’re waiting for you?” 

Sieun tries, “Yeah, but—”

“Is that why? You don’t want them seeing you with me?” 

“What? No, Suho. Please.” Sieun sighs, giving Suho’s arm what he hopes is a reassuring squeeze, looking up at him and willing him to look back. “Please. Let’s just talk somewhere away from here.” 

Suho tears his eyes away from the other boys to look at him for a moment where it feels as if time is frozen. Sieun doesn’t know if Suho finds whatever he’s looking for in his eyes, but he can tell the exact moment when anger and frustration melt away from him and he deflates into something softer, if not a little defeated. 

“Alright, fine. Where do we go, then?” 

It seems that’s the moment his friends decide to approach them, Humin calling out for Sieun as if he had a hunch about what the whole conversation was about. Considering how much Sieun told him, it’s very possible he does. Sieun doesn’t know how to signal for him to take it easy, but surprises himself by realizing he trusts him.

“Hey, you’re Sieun’s—Suho, right?” Humin smiles at him, either unaware of or not caring about the tension in the air. 

Everyone else seems just as surprised as Suho that Humin knows his name at all. 

“Yeah,” Suho gives him a tight smile, one Sieun knows for a fact is not real. “Sieun didn’t tell me any of your names at all, so sorry.” 

Sieun tries not to wince and mumbles his way through introductions. His friends are very bad at hiding surprise and curiosity. 

“I’m just going to walk Sieun to his cram school, so you guys can go ahead without him.” Suho tells them. 

Humin jumps at the chance.

“What? Aish, you came all the way from Seoul, you’re like the only person who can make him skip studying. Do you play pool? We should go play pool.” 

Suho, surprisingly, seems to be at a loss for words at Humin’s friendliness, especially considering how openly hostile he had been with him just a moment earlier. 

He looks at Sieun as if asking for confirmation, because regardless of how upset he is with him, he would never force him into a situation he would be uncomfortable in. 

“Yeah, we should go. I’m already ahead in today’s subjects, it won’t hurt to skip.” Sieun answers Suho’s unvoiced question of ‘Is it okay?’.

“‘Course you are, edgy genius. Come on, then.” Hyuntak rolls his eyes and bumps their shoulders together as he passes him. 

Suho hesitates before he falls in sync with Sieun, and they walk several steps behind the others, only close enough to not lose them out of sight.

“They seem ok.” Suho nods at them, a little unsure. “Are they nice to you?” 

“It hasn’t been long since we became close, but yeah.”

“How did you become friends?” Suho throws the question at him with a strange pause in the middle as if he’s deciding whether it’s even worth asking. As if he’s already expecting to be shut down.

Sieun remembers he’s supposed to be telling him things, not keep him in the dark. “We fought some guys together.”

Suho snorts incredulously. Sieun doesn't know how much of it it’s surprise that he’s actually getting a straight answer. “Is that how you meet all your friends?”

It takes him a second to understand. Then he realizes Suho has gained another memory back. He looks up at him.

‘You remembered?’ 

‘Yeah, of course I did.’

Suho gives him a small smile. Realer this time, although it’s a reserved little thing, just a small curl of the corners of his lips. 

“Not Juntae, he’s in my class.” Sieun points out after he snaps back to the present. “He was the first. The rest just came together.” 

“You seem close to Humin.” Suho mentions. Sieun doesn't fully understand why he’s picking on Humin out of all of them, but he figures it’s because of how intimidating he might look at first. 

“He reminds me of you a little.” Sieun says before he can stop himself, and notices how tense Suho becomes next to him even though he tries to hide it. 

Without deciding on a reason, maybe to clarify something that doesn’t even need clarification or to gauge Suho’s reaction, Sieun adds, “Humin and Hyuntak are dating.” 

Suho seems to take in the information as his posture softens. “Ah. Cool. That’s cool.”

“Is it?” It’s out of Sieun’s mouth before he can stop it. 

He’s not sure why. He trusts Suho and he knows he would never judge. It would just be nice to hear it. 

“What—why wouldn’t it be? Unless it upsets you or you like h—” 

Sieun blanches. “No, it’s fine. It is cool. It’s—good for them.” 

“Oh. Yeah, yeah.”

The awkward silence lasts only for a moment before Suho speaks up again.

“What about that one?” He points.

“Gayool?” Sieun asks, and then, to try and be funny, “Are you asking me if he’s dating anyone?”

Suho rolls his eyes, but the corners of his mouth curl up again. “Don’t act stupid. I’m asking you what’s his deal.” 

“He’s just quiet at first. We’re not that close, like I said, it hasn’t been long.” 

It’s the truth. Getting to know people is a more complicated process for Sieun than for most people. He doesn't tend to ask questions and people don’t seem to think he would care. 

Only Suho had ever been different. But Sieun is trying, for his friends.

“Is that why you didn’t tell me about them?” Suho asks, a little more confident now that Sieun is not dodging al ofl his questions.

“I didn’t know we were going to be friends. I didn’t want to be, at first. It’s hard to trust anyone after…After him.” 

Suho sighs, then confesses with overwhelming sincerity, “I don’t really have anything against them, you know? I just felt like—I thought you were done with me. I know you care about me, but I thought you started seeing I don't fit in your life anymore.”  

“Now you’re the one acting stupid. You’re my best friend.” Sieun shakes his head, contrasting tugs of guilt and longing working overtime at his heart. 

‘You’re mine’ is what he wants to say, but doesn’t. He doesn’t let Suho interrupt and continues, “I’m sorry. I’ll tell you everything. I wasn’t lying when I said I was going to come over on the weekend, it just felt wrong to do this over the phone.” 

“Good thing I came here, then.” 

This time, when their hands brush as they walk and Suho reaches out to gingerly touch the tips of his fingers, Sieun doesn’t pretend it’s nothing. He reaches back with a light touch of his own, wanting more than anything to lace their fingers together. He knows he can’t, really, the streets are very much public and very crowded, but it’s enough to let Suho feel that he wants to. 

“I’m glad you’re here. I missed you.” Sieun tells him sincerely, and it’s easier than he thought to just come out with it. 

“Wouldn’t have to miss me if you weren’t so fucking stubborn.” Suho scoffs, but his fingers are still purposefully brushing Sieun’s, so he figures it’ll be fine. 

–

It’s a trend with Sieun that once he finally lets go and starts talking, his words just stumble their way out his mouth, rushing to be let out after being held in for so long. 

They sit on an outside table despite the cold air, secluded enough that someone would have to really want to peek to see them. His friends go inside and give them space, Humin dragging them when they try to get Suho to play pool. 

He exchanges a look with Humin before he goes inside, and Humin mouths ‘Talk to him’ in the least subtle way possible. He might as well have screamed it, really. 

“I’m happy for you,” Suho says suddenly. “That you found them, I mean. I don’t want you to think I’m not.” 

Sieun’s heart softens so quickly he thinks he might be melting inside, his nervousness mostly washing away at the reminder that this is Suho. No one cares about him more than Suho. Even if Suho hates what he did, he will not hate him. 

“I understand, you don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’m the one who has a lot of explaining to do. I just don’t know where to start.”

“You can start by telling me about the first fight. I know there has been more than one, I know you. I also know you wouldn't do it unless you had a reason to.” 

So he braces himself and does exactly that. He tells him about Choi Hyoman first and how he made the mistake of thinking Sieun was an easy target, as well as everyone after that. Jin Taeoh, who even though he had nothing against Sieun himself, still did what he did on someone’s behalf. 

He tells him about the anger he feels constantly eating away at the back of his mind, convincing him it’s not enough and it’ll never be enough to sate his longing for righteous violence. 

He tells him how hard he shakes after he gets home, locked away in his room with thoughts of how he crossed Suho’s line again, how terrified he was of disappointing him. 

Then he tells him about Yoosun and Kim Pilyoung and how there are probably more people out there who they don't even know but have it out for them, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike. 

He finally lets Suho know about the mess he’s gotten himself into little by little, and tells him that’s why he’s so scared of Suho attending Eunjang, or even being in Yeongdeungpo at all. 

He says as much as he can force himself to push out, hands shaking under the table from partially relieving so many of the destructive feelings of the past few months. He tells Suho he still feels like he can’t stop and he thinks not even Suho can’t stop him now. Then he waits. 

Sieun waits for the inevitable disappointment he’s going to see in Suho. 

Instead, the first thing that comes out of him is, “I’m sorry.” 

“What?” 

Suho doesn’t follow that with ‘but can’t be friends anymore’, nor ‘but I need time away from you.’

“I’m so sorry, Sieun-ah. For everything. For everything that’s happened to you, you didn’t deserve it.” 

Sieun’s heart breaks one more impossible, painful time. 

“It’s not your fault.” 

“It’s not yours either. And who am I to talk about what lines to cross or not? I went after all of them before you did. I broke Youngbin’s hand because he broke yours, lined up half of our classmates on the school’s rooftop and punched answers out of them. I have half a mind to go looking for these assholes in Eunjang myself.” Suho says it all in one rushed breath, a sort of desperate pleading coloring his voice.

“I didn’t know that.” Sieun whispers. 

“We’ve never been very great at telling each other these things, have we? Point is, there are no limits anymore between the two of us, so it doesn't matter. I’d do anything to protect you. I’m only sorry that it’s because of me that you’re getting hurt.” 

Sieun looks at him in utter disbelief, then drops his gaze to the table, unable to hold eye contact with how heavy his guilt weighs on him.

“I’m not—you shouldn’t say that. Don’t say things like that. You’ve done enough and look at what happened. I’m never letting that happen ever again.” 

Suho sighs, his shoulders slumping, revealing his exhaustion. He looks at Sieun as if willing him to look back, and when he doesn't Suho reaches out to gently turn his face towards him, fingers under Sieun’s chin. 

It reminds Sieun of a day a long time ago at a park at 5:30 AM, when Suho had told him to run away from a fight and not get hurt. 

“That is on Oh Beomseok. He was past the point of your help and past the point of seeing reason. There’s no blame on you when you could've ended up the same way I did and just a couple of days before me, if Youngyi hadn’t stopped you. You think I didn’t find out about that? Sieun. It could've happened to any of us.” 

“Maybe. But I can’t get over that it happened to you. I can’t. I’m angry all the time and I’m sorry all the time. My life was miserable before you and I don’t want you to be taken from me again. So I’m sorry. I’m sorry but I can’t help feeling like this.” 

Suho smiles at him, real and caring and something else Sieun can’t quite place, one hand moving to cup his face, thumb tracing a line on the apple of Sieun’s cheek. Sieun shivers.

“Sieun-ah.”

“Hm?” Sieun hums, trying not to let his eyes wander down from Suho’s eyes to his lips. 

Sieun has the earth-shattering realization that he wants. He wants.  

He thinks of Humin kissing the tip of Hyuntak’s nose that one time and his stomach burns with how much he wants to do the same to Suho. 

He wants to kiss his nose and each of his closed eyelids and the corner of his jaw. He wants to know what it feels like to press their lips together and find out if Suho’s are as soft and warm as they look. He wants to turn his face and kiss the center of Suho’s palm, then kiss his fingers like Sieun dreamed Suho did to him that one night. 

He wants to press his face on the crook of Suho’s neck and smell the scent of his shampoo, then kiss the smoothness of his nape. He wants to kiss the tiny, hidden mole Suho has behind the lobe of his right ear that he probably doesn't even know he has, because he can’t see it and Sieun has never told him it’s there, has kept it to himself like it’s his and not Suho’s. 

He wants to kiss his chest, right on top of his beating heart, and his ears and cheeks are set aflame at the thought of Suho ever letting him.

He wants it so much his ears ring with it. 

“Let’s stop apologizing to each other. Every time you apologize I’m going to apologize back, so let’s just stop. There’s nothing to forgive but I forgive you. You forgive me too. I’m not even asking you to get over it, because I can’t let go of what they did to you either. So let’s live with it and find better things to say to each other and say them. No hiding.” Suho doesn’t ask, he tells him, no space for discussion. 

Sieun realizes he would really do just about anything for him, and a tiny piece of something clicks in its right place in his chest.  

“Alright.” Sieun breathes out. “I’ll try.”

It’s a miracle he doesn’t blurt out something stupider, like ‘Kiss me’ or ‘Can I kiss you?’ . 

“Good. Now let’s talk about Eunjang.” 

Sieun finds himself too tired of resisting something he wants, too distracted, too soft and malleable in Suho’s hands to fight back. 

Sieun nods. “You should go to a cram school before you join, for at least a month. Come to the one I go to. With me. So you can catch up. I’ll help you.”

It’s an obvious excuse to keep Suho away from the Eunjang a little longer, so on the nose that Suho rolls his eyes. But it’s a compromise. They can compromise. It’s not that expensive, and Suho can spare some of the hush money Oh Jinwon paid Grandma to take care of his education.

It’s not perfect and Sieun hates the idea of Suho attending Eunjang still, but he also doesn't. It’s selfish, he’s selfish, but he wants Suho close. 

He remembers what Humin told him about how it would be better to be able to keep an eye on him, anyway. 

“Okay. Yeah, okay.” Suho accepts it, because he knows it’s as good a deal as he can get. “You can turn me into a nerd like you.” 

He drops his hand from Sieun’s face, and Sieun has to make a conscious effort not to reach out and put it back himself. 

He scoffs to cover it up. “Your grades were good even when you slept through entire classes and you didn't even study properly. Don’t act like you’re not smart.”

“How dare you accuse me of having brains?” Suho shakes his head. “I have a brain injury, you know? Don’t expect too much from me.”

“You’re recovering from a brain injury faster than normal people do. You can’t fool me.” 

They share stupid little smiles. Sieun wants to reach inside of himself and get a hold of his pathetically erratic heart. 

“You know that’s no reason to let you off the hook, right?” A voice comes from behind them, revealing Hyuntak. “Brain injury is not an excuse to be demolished at pool. Come play already, we need to judge you before you join the group.” 

Suho nods, much friendlier this time. “Alright. If I have to.” 

Sieun follows him, and whispers to Suho. “He’s really bad, just like you.” 

Suho and Hyuntak protest almost at the same time. 

“Hey! I told you I was going easy on you!” Suho looks devastatingly betrayed.

“What? Just because you’re a freak that has a calculator in your brain it doesn't mean I’m bad!” Hyuntak huffs. 

Sieun smiles, relaxed for the first time in a while, even if only for one afternoon. 

–

Routine becomes something familiar and strange at the same time.

Suho signs up to the same cram school as Sieun. They only have English twice a week in the same class, but that’s alright. They meet up before it starts and get something to eat. They have the same free day every week, so they hang out with Sieun’s friends if they can. They go to their separate classes and when it’s over, they make their way back to Seoul together. 

Sieun gets off the subway before Suho, so sometimes they stay a while at the station with the excuse of waiting for it to get less crowded before they head home. Sometimes Suho gets off on his stop and goes back home with him if Sieun’s dad is not there, just to make sure Sieun eats dinner. Mostly, though, on school nights, they just video call. They don’t even say much, just study together. 

If it’s a Friday, Sieun will go back with him to spend the weekend with him and Grandma. They balance their Saturdays and Sundays in between studying and exercising, only one of those being Sieun’s idea. On weekend nights they watch movies or go to the arcade. They sleep on Suho’s bed. Suho likes to tangle their legs together and wakes up with an arm thrown around Sieun’s middle. 

It’s good. It’s almost perfect, too quiet and too comfortable. There is one and a half weeks left before Suho’s first day in Eunjang and Yoosun and Kim Pilyoung are dead silent. Sieun doesn't like it, neither do the others, but they can’t do anything about it. 

–

Once a week, Sieun has a class in cram school that ends forty five minutes later than his and Suho’s last English class. Suho always waits for him, but Sieun knows he doesn’t like leaving Grandma alone for too long, so he makes sure he knows it’s an option to leave without him. 

Suho scoffs at him. “Yah, you know I’ll just wait, don’t start with me. I’ll just eat something and go over my workbooks so you don’t nag at me later.” 

Sieun tries not to smile too hard. He wants to kiss him. “Alright. It won’t be long.” 

“I’ll be at your classroom door on the dot. If you stay too long I’ll drag you out.”

–

Forty-five minutes later, Suho isn’t there. 

It’s strange. Suho always makes sure to wait for him at the door. Even when their classes end at the same time, he finds a way to be there. For a second Sieun thinks he misunderstood him, that he said he would be waiting for him at the café across the street where they usually grab something to eat, but he’s not there when Sieun looks for him either. 

Maybe he’s gone home. But he would've texted, right? 

Sieun tries not to let the weird feeling on the pit of his stomach take over. 

He checks his phone. There are no texts from Suho, but a handful on the groupchat with his friends. 

바쿠 36 min ago

has anyone talked to gotak

서준태 34 min ago

no sorry

진가율 27 min ago

not since school

why??

바쿠 25 min ago

cant reach him

didnt show up to football

The nauseating feeling only grows. A foreboding that something is wrong. It’s hard to avoid it whenever Suho is out of his sight. He tries to breathe through it, to no avail.

Then, with perfect timing, his phone pings with a text.

수호 now

Yeongdeungpo-gu Park, Singil [📍] Open location with Maps

better hurry 

Sieun is only allowed a few seconds of confusion before his phone pings again. Attached underneath, a picture that sends Sieun’s brain into overdrive—Suho with a bleeding gash on his cheek, sitting on the ground with hands behind his back, right next to a Go Hyuntak in no better shape, with a swollen shut right eye. 

All Sieun sees is red. How dare they put their hands on him, on them. Sieun might really kill someone this time. 

He barely registers Humin’s equally distressed texts before he takes off running. He needs to get there no matter what. He can’t let this happen no no he can’t not Suho not again he can’t—

–

Sieun can’t tell how long it takes for him to get to the location on the map. His ability to count time is lost to the fog that takes over his brain. Anger and fear. Dread. Scorching rage.

He doesn't even know how many of them are there. His only certainty is that his friends are coming to help. 

Sieun is going to kill someone. He’s going to kill them all. 

–

“Ah, so it is true after all. All you have to do is get their little boyfriends and the great Park Humin and Yeon Sieun will appear like magic. I love this trick!” 

Sieun doesn't care to listen. Suho’s eyes fall on him and Sieun accesses the damage. Suho smiles. He’s awake he’s alive he’s hurt–

“You’re a piece of shit, Jihun-ah. Can’t even fight alone? You’re bringing Hyungshin guys into this too? You’re such a pussy.” Humin spits out.

There are seven of them. Two holding Suho, another two holding Hyuntak. Sieun recognizes Kim Pilyoung in the background, smoking a cigarette as he watches with a satisfied gaze. Another two guys are leaning against a pillar. 

On Sieun’s side, there are only Baku and Gayool. Baku can take two of them down, Gayool too. Sieun has to do it too. That leaves one of them, and Sieun can tell Kim Pilyoung can’t fight—if he could, he wouldn't leave it to others to do his dirty work. They can do it.

Bae Jihun pulls on Hyuntak’s hair forcefully and laughs. “You’re a stupid motherfucker, Baku. I got your guy again. It’s just so easy, you know he always attacks first if we say shit about you?” 

Humin growls, “Let them go and fight me, Jihun.”

“Ahhh, right. This guy right here, real feisty too. You Eunjang fuckers are so easy it’s laughable. All we have to do is follow you.” It’s one of the guys holding Suho who interjects it, looking directly at Sieun, taunting. “I don’t believe we’ve met, Yeon Sieun. I’m Lee Sehan from Hyungshin High… Did you know you beat up my cousin on a bridge underpass?” 

“Your cousin shouldn't have gotten in my way, then.” Sieun shoots back, even though he’s barely computing what’s happening. There’s bile rising up his throat, burning. He might throw up.

All he can think about is Suho. All he sees is how Suho struggles against the hands holding his arms back. He gets a kick on the back of his knee when he tries to free himself. He gets a punch on the stomach, too. Sieun sees the air leave Suho and his body tenses up even more. 

No. They can’t, they can’t, Sieun is going to—

He wants to beg. Please don’t hurt him. Not his head. His desperation doesn’t mix well with his wrath.

Stop it. Don’t mess with Suho. Don’t mess with Suho. Enough is enough. 

He has to think. There’s a trash can. It’s metal. 

Beomseok-ah. Stop this.  

All he needs to do is incapacitate one. Take on the other as the shock sets in. He can do it.

It was Oh Beomseok. I didn’t do anything. We only had a sparring match.

Sieun is quick. He’s not blind with rage, he’s hyper focused. They have to let him go. 

Right. I don’t care.

They’re taller. Stronger. But they have Suho, and Sieun is faster. Smarter. Angrier.

Protect your chin. Look at their shoulders.

He trusts Baku. He trusts Gayool. They have his back. And Sieun—he needs to make them let Suho go. 

I don’t know why. You have to understand me, Sieun-ah.  

His ears are ringing. He attacks.

He can’t breathe. The cacophony of sounds grows louder. His body doesn’t feel like his body. It doesn’t hurt when they hit back, it doesn’t feel like much of anything. He hurts them.  

It’s hard to grasp at any resemblance of control when all he can think about is hurting them, and he hurt them he does. He’s conscious of very little—pulling a plastic bag over someone’s head and hitting. They might be suffocating. Sieun doesn’t care. He doesn’t check when the guy falls to the ground, motionless. 

The one who hit Suho is in his range when he catches him, the boisterous sound of metal hitting against bone registering in Sieun’s head. Sieun dents the trash can lid with the effort it takes to raise it, then descend it on his face, over and over again. Red stains gray. Sieun only stops when he falls. He reaches for the scissors in his back pocket. He had learned to keep it there ever since Wooyoung. He wouldn’t miss it this time. They’re sharp enough that they go in easily, almost halfway through when he sinks it on Sehan’s shoulder.

Then Kim Pilyoung, he’s a coward. He steps back when Sieun steps forward. He begs. He apologizes. Sieun hates cowards. Sieun hates people who get others to do their filth the most and then hide. He loathes them. His rage burns so intensely he feels numb.

Why? Why did you do it?

I don’t know why. You have to understand me, Sieun-ah.

It’s easy to kick him to the ground. When he falls, Sieun follows, sits on his chest. Then he deals his blows. One for each labored, harsh intake of breath he tries to take. He feels the skin of his knuckles break but doesn’t feel it sting, only tingle—not from pain, but from the compulsion to do more. It feels as though he’s watching himself from a distance. 

Is it even happening at all? It’s hard to tell. Suho left his house only a few hours ago. Youngyi had called. Suho’s eyes were closed and he was hooked to machines. The beeping gave Sieun a headache.

When was that? Just a few hours ago? 

His tongue tastes like iron. He doesn’t remember being hit. Maybe it’s somebody’s else’s blood, it has to be. It’s not like it matters, anyway. 

There’s so much of it in his hand’s and dripping from the face under them that Sieun doesn’t even remember who it belongs to anymore. 

Wasn’t it Oh Beomseok? No. Sieun let him go. Maybe it’s Wooyoung. Taehoon. It could be Jungchan. Or Youngbin? He did this more than once to him. It feels like it’s happened before.

But hitting is not enough, not this time. What if they get Suho again? Sieun’s hands reach for his neck instead, wrapping around it. He presses with all of the strength left in him. 

He can vaguely hear a voice calling his name. It’s distant, and then it’s not. Is he having a nightmare? He’s had a lot of those lately. 

“Sieun-ah. Baby, stop. Hey, come on, I’m okay.” It’s soft and pleading and familiar.  

Suho is awake? Suho is awake. Sieun got there in time. Suho should be taken to a hospital. Sieun knows he hates it, but it’s necessary. 

“You’re here.” Sieun breathes out in relief. His hands slacken their hold, then drop entirely. He doesn’t care about the coughing. He didn’t remember Suho was there. “You’re here? I got here in time?”

“Of course you did. You have to stop now, Sieun. Okay? Let go. Come on, we need to get you to a hospital. Come here. Let me help you.” Suho reaches for him. Sieun lets himself be pulled up and into his arms.

He’s there. Solid and warm and real. There’s a gash on his cheek. Sieun’s eyes water and it’s hard to breathe. “They hurt you. I told him to stop this. I told Beomseok to stop.”

“I’m okay. Lean onto me.” Suho murmurs. Sieun can hear Suho telling someone to take their friends to a hospital, too. Sieun wants to scream. Why does he care? They hurt him. 

“Does it hurt?” Sieun reaches for the cut on Suho’s face. His fingers are red. “Oh, sorry. I got blood on you. It’s not yours?” 

“No. That’s okay. It’s not mine.” 

Suho holds him so gently it’s almost painful. Sieun wonders if he imagines the kiss pressed to his sweat-damp hair. Everything feels so strange. 

“I’m tired.” Sieun mumbles, his eyes closing without his permission. He buries his face in Suho’s neck. It’s very warm. He smells nice. 

“You first. At the hospital. I’m just tired so I’ll be okay. I think I’m having a nightmare.” Sieun says. He wants to laugh, for some reason. It doesn't feel real at all.

“Hold onto me. Hey, Sieun, stay awake and hold on to me.” Suho speaks against his ear. Is Suho holding him up? That’s embarrassing. Sieun laughs this time.

He wants to tell him it’s fine, really. As long as he got there in time. He’s not even hurt at all. 

He’s not sure he gets the words out. 

–

The insides of his mouth feels like dry cotton. Consciousness comes and goes a few times before it stays. He feels fingers carding through his hair and lets out a hoarse noise that hurts his raw throat. 

“Sieun?”

It takes great effort to open his eyes, and an even greater one to adjust to the pure-white brightness of the room. 

“Hm.” Sieun hums as an answer. 

“You’re awake?”

“No.” Sieun says. He hears a chuckle. It’s warm. It’s Suho.

It takes some effort for him to sit up on the bed, and his head pounds and his vision doubles for a few moments, but he gets a hold of himself when Suho brings him water in a paper cup. He gulps it down in one go while Suho rubs his back. 

Then he looks at Suho again. He has a bandage on his cheek, much like one Sieun has had before. There’s bruising around it, but it doesn’t seem so bad. Sieun still hates that it’s there at all, but the relief that he’s mostly unharmed overrides everything else. 

He tries to remember what happened and it comes in flashes. After getting to the park, everything gets fuzzy. 

“Did I freak out?”

Suho laughs, a bit incredulously. “Did you—fuck, Sieun. Really.”

Sieun holds out his hand. He wants Suho to hold it and he does. 

“Are you okay?”

“Am I okay? I’m fucking fantastic. You’re the one in the hospital.” Suho shakes his head. He sounds angry, but not with Sieun. Then the anger turns into worry, and that is for Sieun. “How are you feeling? You gave me a huge fucking scare. You’re back with me? It’s like your mind went away. I have never seen you so out of it.”

Suho’s thumb caresses the back of his hand. 

“I’m here. I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry I scared you.”

Suho shakes his head. He brings Sieun’s hand up to his lips, lips softly kissing his fingers above his freshly tied bandages. Oh. Sieun realizes that he hadn’t dreamed Suho doing this before.  

“You didn’t scare me. I was scared for you.” Suho says. 

They stay silent for a while, until Sieun breaks it.

“I think I need help.” He confesses. He knows it’s true as soon as it leaves his mouth. He can’t lose it like that again.

Suho nods. “Whatever you need, it’ll be okay. We’ll be fine. And if anything happens, I won’t let you go too far.” 

“What about everyone else?” 

Suho gives him a smile. He lets Sieun’s hand down, but doesn’t let go. “You have good friends. Humin and Hyuntak got fixed up and are waiting outside, but it’s not so bad. Gayool doesn't have a single scratch on him, that gangly fucker, so he went with Juntae to get pizza and try to sneak it in for us.” 

Sieun smiles. “They’re cool.” 

“Yeah. They are.” The warmth that spreads all over Sieun when Suho agrees with a smile of his own is almost overwhelming.  

“What about those—”

“They went to another hospital, agreed to not say anything, they know they’d be in trouble too. Everyone is—well, alive. Much worse than any of you, though. I didn’t get involved much, I was too worried about you, but Humin seemed to have made some sort of agreement for them to leave Eunjang alone for now.” 

Sieun trusts Humin, but he doesn’t trust them. Though for now, he lets go. It has to be enough.

“Did the hospital call my parents?” 

Suho nods. “Your father is still in Daegu. Your mother didn’t pick up. They said you can stay in observation for now and they’ll let you go tomorrow.”

Sieun nods. He didn’t expect much different, but it’s good he at least saves himself from a lecture from people who don't really care. 

“Did you carry me here?” The question stumbles out of his lips before he realizes, the memory of Suho’s arms tight around him flashing into his mind.

Suho gives him a strangely reserved smile. His cheeks redden so quickly Sieun wants to laugh. “You blacked out on me. I was terrified. You said–” 

He stops himself. 

“What did I say?”

Suho shakes his head. He’s embarrassed, Sieun knows, but he doesn't relent. Suho gives in, because he always does. “You said I—you said I felt good? And smelled good. You sounded delirious. Then you passed out on me.”

“You called me baby.” Sieun says. He’s not even sure it happened, but the memory sticks out more than anything else that happened that night. 

The way Suho’s ears turn an even more vivid shade of red is enough of an answer. “Shut up.”

“Your ears are red.” Sieun adores him. 

Suho whines. “You’re awful. I’m leaving, have fun with your friends.”

Sieun grabs him by the jacket. Maybe it’s the surge of courage after almost losing his mind, maybe it’s how it’s suddenly so clear to him that Suho feels the same, but he feels emboldened by it. There’s nothing that matters more than this. 

“Lean down.”

“What?”

Sieun huffs, frustrated, pulling on his jacket. “Lean down.” 

Suho does. He leans until they’re face to face. Sieun takes a deep breath. 

He puts his hands on Suho’s shoulders. “Sorry if my mouth tastes awful.” 

He doesn’t give Suho time to dwell in his confusion. Instead, he pulls him even closer and presses their lips together. He feels Suho freeze for only a second before he practically melts into it. His lips are so warm, even softer than Sieun even expected. 

The chaste press of lips is enough to make him tingle all over, but when Suho tilts his head and parts his lips, it feels like they’re burning—a good kind of burn, like the sun is slipping through his mouth and into Sieun’s, blazing all the way down to his chest, then to this stomach. 

Sieun tries to copy his rhythm, moving his lips around Suho’s, the kiss turning a little wet when he catches Suho’s full bottom lip in between his. A small noise spills out from between them, bordering on anguished, and Sieun has no idea which one of them it came from, not with the way he hears his own heartbeat in his ears.

His hands move up from Suho’s shoulder so he can bury his fingers through his hair—it’s so long now, Sieun kind of loves it. It gives him a good grip. He wants to pull him as close as possible with how good it feels with one of Suho’s hands cupping the back of his neck and another one resting on his thigh. Sieun had no idea kissing felt like this.  

He’s almost dizzy by the time their mouths unglue from each other’s. Suho catches Sieun’s bottom lip in between his with a tiny little suck that has Sieun’s toes curling, and gives him a peck before pressing their foreheads together.  They inhale and exhale hard and warm in each other’s spaces, catching their breaths with great difficulty. 

“Gross. I think I had blood in my mouth.” Sieun grimaces. He doesn’t feel gross at all. It’s hard to stop himself from pulling Suho back in, so he settles for a gentle tug on his hair. 

Suho kisses his cheek and doesn’t pull away to speak, lips grazing the skin of Sieun's cheek. “I don’t care. I want to do it again.” 

Sieun wants it too. He’s about to, really. He wants it so bad he can feel goosebumps on his arms. 

Then a voice interrupts them.

“Can you please stop being disgusting? Pizza is getting cold.” It’s Gayool who stands at the door, next to a Juntae who’s red in the face. 

Humin jumps from behind him. “We need to come in before the nurse gets back and realizes there’s way more people here than the two the room allows.”

Hyuntak slips into the room first, “Untangle yourselves. Have some fucking decency.”

He’s not embarrassed in the least. He eats with his friends and with his—with Suho. He doesn’t know what Suho is, but he’s Sieun’s. 

There’s a weight lifted off his shoulders. Sieun feels good. They’re safe, sitting on Sieun’s hospital bed, pressed side by side. Suho reaches out to wipe the corner of his mouth with a napkin and their friends mock gag. 

Humin gives him an approving smile. Sieun feels truly happy for the first time in a while. 

Chapter Text

“I’m Ahn Suho. It’s nice to meet you all.”

It’s only out of practice that Sieun manages to keep the smile off his face. Suho looks nice in the light blue uniform. His hair is still long, and Sieun suspects it’s because he knows Sieun likes it—and he likes that Sieun likes it. He looks good. He looks really good.

“Please take a seat, Suho-ssi. Class will begin shortly.” The homeroom teacher waves him off, not caring too much about whether he does it or not, leaving the classroom once again. 

Suho smiles at him, unable to hide it as he walks towards him. “Is this one taken?”

“Yes, actually. My friend just went to grab something from the snack bar.” 

Suho pouts. God. “Aiiish, so unfriendly, the people in this school…”

Sieun sighs and motions for the vacant seat behind him. On purpose or not, Suho bumps into Sieun’s desk hard enough that his pen case falls on the ground. 

There’s a collective gasp amongst his classmates. Sieun looks at his pen case pointedly, then directly at Suho. It’s really, really difficult to stop himself from smiling. He smiles so much now, it has yet to stop feeling weird on his face.

“Oh, sorry, Sieun-ssi. I’m terribly sorry.” Suho bends down to pick it up, carefully depositing it back on his desk, staring so hard that Sieun is sure their classmates are weirded out. Sieun realizes that regardless of whatever gossip has managed to reach Eunjang, they still don’t know Suho is his Suho.

“Just don’t do it again.” 

“Right.” Suho snorts. “I’m sure we’ll be very good friends, Sieun-ssi.” 

–

It’s like the earth rights itself on its axis when Suho joins Eunjang. Sieun knows he had several reasons to hate the idea, but it’s difficult to remember them when Suho is around all the time like his own personal sun. 

There’s happiness in seeing Suho happy that Sieun had never thought he would feel before him. 

Sieun knows it didn’t use to feel like this before, not even in Byuksan—as if he’s swallowed a ball of fire just by looking at Suho going about his day. Smiling, eating, making friends with his friends. Suho is blinding. It warms Sieun up entirely, leaving him tingling with the need to pull him close, to touch and feel him there.

He knows with as much clarity as he could possibly have that he loves him. It’s an inextricable part of him, an undeniable fact, an immovable truth. The earth is round. There are 206 bones in a human body. Time never goes back, only forward. Sound doesn’t travel in space. Yeon Sieun loves Ahn Suho.

And it’s easy, so easy to just reach out for him. Sieun is allowed to. Suho probably wants him to. 

He walks over to him as they make their way to the abandoned annex building behind Eunjang. 

Humin had told them to meet him there after class for a good surprise. Knowing Park Humin, it really could be anything. 

“Hey,” Sieun tugs on the sleeve of Suho’s jacket, then dips his thumb under the fabric to caress his bare wrist. 

“Hey,” Suho smiles down at him, turning his hand and lacing their fingers together instead. Sieun squeezes back, keeping his hold a little tighter. 

“How was your first day?” 

“I heard a guy named Yeon Sieun runs our class.” Suho leans in to whisper in mock-fear. “Some of our classmates think he might kill me because he glared at me. But other than imminent death, it’s been pretty good.” 

“Hm, I’m sure you were terrified.” Sieun deadpans.

“And I was! He’s so pretty but so scary. Maybe he has a thing for me, you know?” He sighs, a touch too dramatic. “I can only hope.”

Sieun tries not to blush and fails miserably. “You’re very annoying.”

“Maybe so,” Suho nods, then pulls him inside the building. “But I think I’m right.”

It’s a dark and dusty building, but Sieun can see light and hear noises coming from a room on the second floor where their friends probably are. None of that matters when Suho pulls him closer, letting go of his hand only to get both of his on Sieun’s waist.

“What? You don’t think I can get pretty boys to like me?” He leans down, a playful glint visible in his eyes even in the dark.  

“Plural?” Sieun scoffs, if only to hide how embarrassed he is at being called pretty. 

He’s heard it before in ways that were way less than flattering, spit out with disgust and mockery. Not from Suho, never from him. From him it feels right. It feels good. 

“God, you’re cute.” Suho lets out a quiet, almost disbelieving laugh, and brushes their noses together.

“Shut up.” Sieun says, but his eyes flutter and close the moment he tilts his head up and their lips touch. 

Kissing is new. It’s good, much better than Sieun ever thought it would be. It has only happened a handful of times in between the chaos of Sieun getting discharged from the hospital and Suho making preparations to start in Eunjang. The novelty has yet to wear off, and Sieun doesn’t think it ever will.

There’s nothing that can possibly be better than the way Suho leans into it and lets escape a satisfied little sigh. The hands that almost immediately tighten around Sieun’s waist. The way his breath stutters into the kiss when Sieun’s buries a hand in his hair. 

Ah , Sieun thinks, there’s that feeling again. Swallowing the sun. 

There’s no fluency in the way their lips move against each other’s, but the exploration always seems to pay off. 

Sieun likes to suck on Suho’s bottom lip and likes the noise he makes. He likes when Suho parts his lips with his tongue and licks into his mouth. It’s weird. It should be gross, but it leaves Sieun’s breathing heavy and erratic.

Today’s new scientific result of exploration is the way his own breath gets caught in his throat and his skin breaks out in goosebumps when Suho sneaks his hands under his shirt, fingers dancing across the bare skin of Sieun’s waist. 

He’s done it tentatively before when they hugged, but never like this. He pulls back from the kiss and Sieun has to hold back an embarrassing whine.

“Is this o—”

Sieun doesn't let him finish his question. He impatiently pulls Suho back down into another kiss, one hand on his hair and the other one on the back of his neck, his own fingers exploring the bare skin under his collar.

Suho pulls back once again, chuckling when Sieun huffs in frustration, but then he walks them two steps back until Sieun’s back hits the buildings’ closed entry door and they’re entirely pressed together.

“Sorry,” Suho says when the action results in a thump, not sounding apologetic in the least. He leans down to lock their lips together again.

Sieun is half decided to get over his own self-consciousness and put his own hands under Suho’s shirt too before the door on the second floor opens. 

“Sieun? Suho?” It’s Hyuntak who calls, but the darkness combined with them being behind a pillar obstruct his vision of them. They separate with a small, wet noise and Suho softly kisses his cheek before moving his lips to his ear.

“Shh,” He shushes quietly into Sieun’s ear, the heat of his breath less than helping, making Sieun shiver. He knows Suho did it on purpose when he feels him chuckling in his ear. Sieun runs a hand down his chest to pinch his stomach. 

“Mean,” Suho murmurs, barely holding back a hiss. 

Hyuntak seems satisfied they’re not there yet and Sieun hears the door clicking shut. 

“You’re a menace.” Sieun huffs.

“Hmm, whatever you say.” Suho pecks his lips one last time. “Let’s go up.”

“Wait, you look stupid,” Sieun reached up to try and tame his hair back into acceptably messy as opposed to post make-out messy. It only kind of works.

He knows it’ll likely be obvious anyway. Suho’s lips always get red and puffy in a pretty kind of way after they kiss. It’s all sorts of telling and embarrassing, even worse with the way it makes Sieun want to kiss him even more. Ugh.

Suho grabs his hand again and up they go.

–

The room is surprisingly clean, but more surprising than that it’s that it’s a fully functioning room. Sieun recognizes the beat-up couch from the rooftop, still as old but slightly repaired and cleaner this time. Another couch, newer but still a few years past brand new, and bean bag. There’s a mini-pool game on the table in the middle of the room with a full set of six matching chairs, two of them occupied by Juntae and Gayool. 

The walls have shelves that were definitely already there before, but which now have a few books and even a couple of potted plants. There’s a football and a basketball, and strangely, a guitar. 

“I had no idea there was a place like this in school…?” Sieun mutters.

Humin smiles at them, wide and proud. “I went through a great deal of exploration and adventures to find this place.”

“He broke in,” Hyuntak rolls his eyes fondly from his place on one of the couches. “It’s been abandoned for years. But yeah, he found it.” 

“Hey, we did have to carry our old couch and also, like, deep clean so much dust.” Humin sighs exaggeratedly. “But it was worth it, right? We even got this cool table from another room.” 

“So it’s like a make-out room.” Gayool says.

“What? No! It’s a chill room, man. For us to hang out here instead of the rooftop.” Humin protests. 

“Even if it was, it’s not our fault you don’t have anyone to kiss. It sounds like a you problem.” Hyuntak taunts.

“It’s not a—I mean, maybe a little. But Sieun can study here, and since Suho said he still gets migraines sometimes he can just rest here. You know the school infirmary sucks, Gotak has been there many times.”

“Fuck off.” Hyuntak says, then acquiesces, “Does suck though.”

“What if they find out and lock us out?” It’s Juntae who asks. 

“Ah, but I hustled the keys from the janitor and made us all copies.” Hyuntak announces proudly. “It’s not like they would care either way.” 

Suho looks at Sieun as they discuss. There’s a silent conversation that happens in the split of a second. Sieun feels warmth spread in his chest. His friends—their friends—doing something like this for their comfort. No questions asked, wanting nothing in return.

“So what do you think?” Humin asks, and all four of them look at Sieun and Suho expectantly.

Suho speaks first, and Sieun knows that nobody else will notice the little crack in his voice, but Sieun does. 

“It’s really cool, Baku.” 

“It is,” Sieun agrees. He thinks, stupidly, that he wants to cry. He won’t, but he wants to. Because they did this for them, for Suho. They thought about him, they care about him. Suho deserves all the good things that good people can do for him. “It really is. I like it.”

Sieun can tell it makes them happy. It makes him happy too. 

“I brought everyone drinks,” Juntae pulls out a bag from under the table, a little embarrassed. “Just to celebrate Suho’s first day, I guess.”

“You’re the best, Jun.” 

“You’re a life-saver!” 

Juntae hands Suho a can of redbull. “I’m not sure I got it right…?” 

Suho gapes. “How did you even know?”

Gayool waves him off. “Don’t even ask. It’s like his weird superpower, he knows everybody’s drink of choice in his head.” 

Sieun watches as Suho engages in an animated conversation with Gayool, Humin and Juntae.

Hyuntak waves him over to the couch to talk about a drama Sieun has to see because, according to him, the main character is just like him. 

It’s really hard to think of a time when he didn’t have this. It doesn't matter anymore, either. He would fight to the end of the world to keep it.

–

The thing about his father barely being home most of the time is that Sieun gets used to having Suho around or being over at his.

So when Sieun’s father is home, he insists Sieun should stay home as well—out of some idea that they should bond and spend time together, as if that ever happens—and that also stops Suho from sleeping over. 

Sieun tries not to be bitter about it, he knows that he now sees Suho for the better part of the day every day, but it’s different to just be at home with him, away from prying eyes, comfortable. 

He parts ways with Suho on the subway and goes home, dreading having to go out for dinner with both his parents. It’s a thing they do, now. To ask how his therapy is going without really wanting to know, to keep him in check in case he has another breakdown sends more people to the hospital. 

It’s exhausting. 

It’s even more aggravating to arrive home and find his father’s suitcases packed and ready to go in the living room. 

“It’s an emergency, sorry, I’ll have to go.” his dad sends him an apologetic look when he sees Sieun is home, then promptly goes back to his phone. “No, sorry, it’s just my son. It’s fine, I’m ready to go.” 

Sieun sighs. He heads straight to the shower, trying and failing to stay as long as he can and walk out to his father already gone. 

“Hey, go change. Your mother is still picking you up for dinner.” 

“Aren’t you going now?”

His father sighs. “I’m sorry, there was a mix-up with the dates, they just now realized I’m supposed to be in Busan tomorrow morning. But you’re still going to meet your mother, hurry.” 

Sieun does as he’s told. 

Dinner with his mother is much the same. She’s as cold as always, asks questions she doesn't care to hear the answers to, tries to prod him into picking what he wants to do in college as if he hasn't told her a million times he hasn't decided. He knows it disappoints her. It hurts, still, but not as much as it did before.

She drops him off at home not too long after. 

His house is empty and cold, and at this point it’s too late into the night to tell Suho he can come over. 

He’s too annoyed to study and too tired to do anything else. It’s better if he just sleeps it off early. 

–

His phone rings a couple of hours later, nearly 11 PM. Sieun wakes up almost immediately, the sleep he had fallen into fitful and uncomfortable and not hard to disturb.

“Hey,” He picks it up without looking at the caller ID. He knows it’s Suho.

“Did I wake you?” 

“It’s fine, I wasn’t sleeping well.” Sieun reassures him.

“Sorry,” Suho’s voice is low and quiet at the end of the line. Sieun immediately knows something is wrong. “How was dinner with your parents?” 

“With my mom. I got home today and my father was packed up to leave. It went as usual,” Sieun murmurs. He wishes Suho was there. “What’s going on?” 

Suho is silent for a few moments, and all Sieun can hear is his breathing. He gives him time. 

“Just a nightmare.” 

Sieun really wishes Suho was there. He’s very irritated with his father all over again. “You want to talk about it?” 

“No, I just wanted to hear your voice.” Suho says. His voice breaks a little at the end and Sieun’s heart follows suit. He’s about to get up and just go, uncaring of the fact that he shouldn't be out so late, just to make his way there. 

“Is your father gone already?” Suho asks before he can say anything. 

“Yeah. Do you want me to—” 

Suho interrupts him. “I’ll come over. Can I?” 

“You don’t have to ask. Just come.” 

“I’ll see you in twenty.” 

Sieun tracks his location the entire time he’s on the move. It’s almost muscle memory now, to do it whenever they’re not together. Sieun still has a hard time not having eyes on him or at least knowing where he is. He knows it’s not healthy, but he thinks he’s justified.

Suho gets there in exactly twenty-one minutes. 

“Hi.” Sieun breathes out in relief when he opens the door.

Suho walks straight into his arms, head falling into the crook of Sieun’s neck. “Hi.”

“Bad night?” Sieun asks, pushing the door closed and wrapping his arms around Suho’s waist.

“Yeah. You too?” Suho murmurs the question, voice a little shaky and tired, so unlike his usual. 

Sieun tightens his arms around him. “Hm. The same, I guess. Glad you’re here.”

“Me too.” 

Sieun wonders if this is normal. It had only been a handful of hours since he saw him last, and it would have been just a few more before he saw him again on the weekend. And yet, here they are, clinging to each other like it had been torture. 

He realizes he doesn't care about normal. They’ve been through too much to be okay with being separated. Besides, they’re the only people who understand this part of their lives. They’re the only people who can give each other any comfort when it comes to this. 

“Wanna go to sleep?” 

“Yeah. I’m really tired.” Suho admits, stepping away from their embrace. 

“You did tell Grandma you were coming, right?” Sieun asks as he leads them to his bedroom. 

“Yes, of course.”

His bed has probably gone cold in the time he was waiting for Suho in his living room, but that’s okay. It’ll be warm again soon enough.  

Suho opens the drawer where Sieun keeps some of his clothes and takes out his favorite ones to sleep in. Sieun crawls into his bed, exhaustion settling back into his bones, but now without all the anxiety. He buries his face into one of his pillows and lets himself close his eyes. 

“Turn off the lights when you’re done.” He murmurs.

Suho practically drops his full body weight on his back when he crawls into bed with him. Sieun lets out a huff, the air leaving his chest all at once.

“Are you trying to kill me?” His slurred protest sounds weak even to him. 

“Sorry.” Suho says, not sorry at all. He noses at his nape and plants a kiss there, then another, then another. Sieun likes him so much it’s embarrassing, and the satisfied noise he lets out is outright mortifying. 

Suho moves as if to get off of him, but Sieun grabs his arm. “Stay. It’s nice.”

“Hmmm, ‘kay.” Suho hums sleepily, adjusting himself so that he doesn't actually suffocate him, but managing to stay half on top of Sieun like his own personal heater. 

“Suho?” Sieun asks.

“Hm?”

“You’re doing great. You’re here and the worst is over. I’m proud of you.” Sieun says, his voice so quiet it’s almost a whisper. 

There’s so much more he could say. ‘You’re everything. There’s nothing you can’t do. I love you. I feel like I willed you into existence, and existing was miserable before you. Wherever you go, you carry half of me with you. I love you like hunger. I love you.’

But it's too late into the night and they're too tired, and Sieun is not yet sure how to. He knows he will, someday. Most importantly, though, he knows that Suho knows.

Suho doesn’t give him a reply, but he tangles their legs together and tightens his hold on him, and the fact that he feels safe enough to fall asleep so quickly is enough of an answer.

–

Once they get past their initial awkwardness, Suho and Humin get along like a house on fire. 

They’re similar in a way that only enables one another. They’re friendly and caring and sweet. They’re loud and competitive and straight up shameless. They gang up on Gayool and embarrass Juntae to no end. 

Hyuntak sits down next to him to watch them have an animated argument in the bowling alley, each accusing the other of cheating. 

“One of these days they’re going to get us kicked out of public spaces.” Hyuntak sighs, but he’s smiling with barely concealed fondness.

“I don’t know if it’s better or worse when Gayool is with us, but at least they antagonize him instead.” Sieun points out. 

Hyuntak hums in agreement. “Gayool can join dates when he actually starts dating someone.” 

Talking with Hyuntak is surprisingly comfortable. Behind the rough front he puts on he’s caring and attentive, and he knows people better than all of them. Sometimes, Sieun feels like Hyuntak sees right through him. Maybe it’s the similarities they share, too.

The next thing he says comes out in a much lower voice. 

“Don’t ever repeat what I’m about to say, but this is nice. I like that our boyfriends get along no matter how embarrassing they are.” 

Sieun can’t help the way he blushes. 

“What?” Hyuntak asks, immediately noticing it.

Sieun shrugs, “I don’t think I’ve ever called him that.”

Boyfriend. It’s not really a word he has thought about when thinking of Suho. Suho is just… More. He’s just his. That’s the best Sieun can do to describe him. However, he can’t deny the way the word makes him feel something fluttering in his chest. 

Oh. Suho is his boyfriend. 

“Why not? Isn’t that what he is?” 

“I guess.” Sieun murmurs. “Yeah. I guess he is.” 

Hyuntak stares at him for a few seconds before pulling a disgusted face. “You’re just gross, do you know that? Ugh. You act all edgy and tough but you’re so mushy inside. It’s making my teeth hurt. I can’t believe I ever thought you were cool.” 

“You thought I was cool?” Sieun asks him with genuine surprise.

“I know, right? I guess I was crazy. You’re clearly worse than Baku and Suho together.” 

Sieun bumps their shoulders together and feels himself warm up at the smile that breaks out on Hyuntak’s face. “I guess you’re a little cool, too, Gotak.” 

He gets so immersed in his conversation with Hyuntak that he only notices Suho and Humin are staring when he looks back at them.

“Yah, yah, stop flirting, what the hell,” Suho walks over to their table with Humin in tow. “What are you giggling about?”

“Oh, Suho, did you know Hyuntak had a little crush on Sieun when he came to Eunjang? He thought he was so cool.” 

Sieun turns to Hyuntak with what he can only assume is an incredulous expression. It’s like the two of them are always on the same wavelength, having silent conversations and completing each other’s thoughts. Like they share a brain. It’s slightly terrifying. Hyuntak only kicks his boyfriend playfully in return. 

Sieun looks at Suho and gives him a small smile. 

‘Can you believe our friends?’

Suho smiles back, wide and blinding. 

‘They’re such idiots.’ 

“Who’s flirting, now?” Humin playfully pushes Suho. “Ah, young love, fresh romance. Come on, let’s take a picture.” 

Hyuntak grabs the nearest phone on the table as Suho and Humin force them apart to sit in between them. Sieun recognizes the phone case as Suho’s.

Sieun doesn’t know how else to pose, so he hooks his chin over Suho’s shoulder. Suho puts a hand on his thigh. It’s weird, still, to be so touchy in front of other people, but not as much when it’s with people they trust.

Hyuntak snaps a few pictures, then promptly has Suho unlock it so he can send them to himself. 

“Oh my god, Suho. You’re such a loser.” Hyuntak laughs as he messes with Suho’s phone. “Sieun, you need to run. He has so many pictures of you. He’s a stalker!”

“What? Let me see.” Sieun untangles himself from Suho to reach for his phone. Suho tries to snatch it before he can, but Sieun is faster.

“Oh no, he’s going to kill you someday. He’s a stalker!” Hyuntak taunts, and Sieun grabs Suho’s phone to see for himself.

Suho’s folder named ‘♥️’ has exactly 243 pictures. A lot of pictures of Sieun by himself, a lot of pictures of them together. Sieun’s heart does a funny twist in his chest. Suho really, really likes him. 

“What, can’t I find him pretty?” Suho pouts and his ears are a blazing red. “Is that a crime?” 

“Stalking is a crime, weirdo.” Hyuntak shows him his tongue. 

“Babe, I have pictures of you. Probably even more.” Humin almost perfectly mirrors Suho’s pout. “Do you think I’m a stalker too?” 

Hyuntak huffs. “Yeah, I knew you were one. Birds of a feather and whatnot.”

Sieun raises an eyebrow at Suho. “Is that why you knew you weren't dating Youngyi?” 

He watches Suho—his boyfriend, oh god—turn an even darker shade of red before he covers his face and groans. “You’re so evil.” 

“You had a crush on me, that’s so embarrassing.” Sieun provokes him, but he sits back down and pries Suho’s hands away from his face. “Stalker.” 

“We’re dating, you bully.” 

Sieun wants to kiss him because yes, they are. So he does. It’s only a little peck, Sieun himself blushing at the way their friends make fun of them for it—as if they’re not much, much worse—but it’s worth it. 

–

“You’re overdoing it.” Sieun comments. 

Suho has an apron on and everything. He bought him containers and labeled them. There’s a bigger variety of vegetables, perfectly cut and very colorful, that Sieun has even seen in his kitchen before. Maybe in his life.

“No, I’m not. I had to intervene.” Suho huffs as he stirs something in a pan. “If you’re only going to eat microwaved shit for dinner it might as well be real food.” 

Sieun tuts, but his heart practically overflows. It’s such an odd feeling, to be cared for so much by someone. Sieun is usually the one who likes buying him food he craves, but Suho is taking it a step further and cooking for him. Worse than that, he’s meal-prepping for him. God.

“Hmm, okay,” Sieun hums, and there’s no reason to stop himself from walking over to Suho and sneaking his hands under his shirt. He rests his forehead in between his shoulder blades. “You don’t have to, though. You know that, right?” 

“But I want to.” Suho says, and Sieun might not be able to see it, but he knows the exact facial expression he’s making. Fond exasperation. “I like to know you’re taken care of.”

It’s a bit absurd to hear that when all Sieun himself worries about is that Suho is taken care of.

“So we’ll just take care of each other.” 

“Cheesy.” Suho says, but Sieun can see, even from behind, his cheeks rising up from a smile. 

The smell of homemade food makes Sieun’s stomach grumble. It’s still a bit before the food will be ready, but that’s alright.  

He kisses the nape of Suho’s neck and disentangles himself from him. “I feel like I should help.”

“No, just sit pretty and let me do this.”

–

Suho groans and pushes his workbooks away, rubbing at his temples before laying his head on his arms. They’re sitting at the table in their little hideout in the annex building, most of their friends having left already an hour or so before. 

“My head hurts.” 

His voice is muffled by the way he hides his face in his arms. 

“We should go, then.” 

Suho shakes his head. “No, you can finish up. I’ll just rest here for a bit.”

Sieun studies his book. It’d be another half hour before he could finish it, but Suho is stubborn enough to insist they leave only after he’s finished. Sieun makes a decision to get up and turn off the lights, leaving only one of them on.

He pulls at Suho’s hand until he gets up with a groan, then pushes him towards the couch. 

“Rest here. I’ll be done soon.”

“Nooo, stay here.” 

Sieun concedes, grabbing his book from the table and settling down on the couch. Suho lays his head on his lap, immediately closing his eyes. 

It’s impossible to resist reaching out to brush his hair away from his eyes. Absentmindedly, his fingers brush through the soft, dark strands. He rubs soothing circles on Suho’s temple to try and ease some of the headache away, then smoothes the frown between his eyes with his thumb.

Suho’s breathing eases out after a while, his face relaxing. Sieun doesn't even touch his book. All he can do is sit there, happy to ease the boy he loves into a few minutes of sleep. 

–

수호♥️

i have a surprise

there in 10 min

The text comes as Sieun gets ready to meet him at the station so they could go see their friends. Their second year of high school came to an end just that morning, and they had all insisted on celebrating in Seoul, in a picnic at sunset on the Han river. 

It’s probably important if Suho insists on meeting up at his house before going, so Sieun waits for him in front of his building. 

He’s looking at his phone, texting everyone else to assure them that they’re on their way, so he hears it before he sees it. The roaring of an engine.

He looks up in shock, seeing the familiar motorcycle, Suho sporting a new acqua green helmet.

He’s as good as glowing when he parks. Personal sun.

“So, do you like it?”

Sieun is at a loss for words for a good few seconds, just staring in awe and confusion. He thinks he looks so much like before, but then realizes that’s not true at all. When he takes his helmet off his hair is longer, his cheeks are more colorful, he looks so much happier. He doesn't look like before at all. He looks much, much better.

“I got the okay to drive again. They had to run a bunch of tests and I can’t do it everyday or too long distances for a while, but I can do it.” Suho laughs, beyond himself with happiness. 

Sieun adores everything about him. He would give just about anything to see him like that all the time. 

Suho hops off and opens the storage where he used to put his deliveries on, pulling out the familiar red helmet. He walks over to Sieun and, in a too familiar gesture, puts the helmet over his head.

“You’re cute.” Suho says.

Sieun wants to reply ‘I love you.’ He thinks he might cry if he tries. 

“Let’s go, our friends are waiting.” Suho says again.

Sieun pulls him by the hand when he starts to walk back to his bike. He pulls the visor of his helmet back up, cradles Suho’s face between his hands and pulls him down. It’s difficult with the helmet on, but he manages to kiss him on the lips. It’s a quick, small little thing, but Sieun feels like he would’ve burst into a million pieces if he didn't. 

It seems impossible to love someone this much. He knows how young he is, how people would look at him if he tried to explain, but none of that matters. He loves Suho like a vital piece of him.

“Yah, don’t do that,” Suho complains. “My heart is fluttering, you can’t distract me like this before I drive. Have you forgotten about my brain injury?”

Sieun rolls his eyes. “You have to stop saying that. It’s been almost a year.”

“I’m very sensitive.” Suho pouts.

He hops back on and waits for Sieun to do the same, pulling his new helmet back on. 

“Hold on tight, baby.”

Sieun does. It feels freeing for both of them.

–

The picnic is a loud, messy affair. All around them, students are celebrating the end of the school year with their friends, drinking and laughing.

Their own friends are doing much of the same. Hidden slightly far away from them, Suho presses him against a tree. It helps that the night has already fallen. 

Their lips move against each other’s with the laziness of two people who have all the time in the world, and the familiarity of two people who have done this for a lifetime. 

“Oh,” Suho breathes against his lips. “Forgot to tell you.”

“What?”

“I think—it’s not certain yet, so don’t get too excited, but I think I might actually try and go to college. I’ve been talking with grandma and with the money from the deal and the money I saved up from my jobs I think I can try. Maybe.” 

Sieun can’t help the smile that breaks out onto his face. “Whatever you want. I’ll help you with whatever you need. Have you thought about what you wanna do?”

Suho seems a little embarrassed, or like he thinks Sieun might get mad at him for it. “Not yet, I just know that I want to make money and it’s a bonus if I don’t hate it. Have you?”

Sieun shakes his head. “It’s fine. There’s still time, right? We’ll figure it out together.” 

“Yeah. Together.” Suho kisses him again, and again, and again, fingertips dancing on the bare skin of his arms.

Their friends get impatient and call them back to play a game or another. 

Sieun thinks about how much his life has changed. It’s not perfect, not anywhere near it. He still has problems with his anger and therapy sometimes feels like it makes him feel worse than it should. 

His relationship with his parents is rocky on its best days and absolutely cold on its worst ones. Every now and then, someone still tries to pick fights with him and his friends at school. He still doesn't know what he wants to do with his life at all.

But he has his friends, people who are loyal and thoughtful and caring. He has Suho, the boy he loves and who loves him back like it’s something unconditional and it’s unthinkable for him not to. He has Grandma, who treats him like he’s family. 

Most importantly of all, he has time. They’ll figure it out.