Chapter Text
“I made this place for you. A place for you to love me.
If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is.”
— Richard Siken
Before everything came down to Suho’s reckless actions, he at first contemplated how: a) the AC in Sieun’s bedroom sucked and he should’ve taken a sleeveless shirt if he meant staying in that room for the rest of the evening, b) fuck geometry, this subject was torture, and c) Sieun’s new layered hairstyle with wispy bangs matched his face shape well, giving a stronger allure to his eyes, but the more Suho looked, the more the room got hot for some unfathomable reason.
They were lying on the floor of Sieun’s apartment, which he began renting at the end of his first semester in university. Their friend, Juntae, followed Sieun back to Seoul’s bustling environment once both of them were accepted into medical school last year. However, Gotak and Baku stayed in Yeongdeungpo, the former deciding to focus on a job as a martial arts instructor — something Suho aimed to follow suit in — and the latter had his mind set on investigating the disappearance of Baek-jin. Not death, because he still couldn’t accept that word.
While others judged him for not moving on, Suho understood it all too well.
He, too, wouldn’t accept the word ‘death’ being associated with Yeon Sieun in any way whatsoever. Even thinking about that idea brought him immense annoyance.
But all things considered, everyone had their own paths to walk on. Suho’s life had been moving on quite well. And he felt ecstatic that, following all those long months of physiotherapy, grieving over the things he’d lost and the friend he left alone, he managed to both get his mobility back and see Sieun every day. Well, although on Fridays they met solely for the purpose of Sieun tutoring him on his upcoming High School Equivalency Examination, Suho knew how to appreciate an opportunity he was given.
“What’s up with you today?” Sieun’s voice cut through the silence of the apartment’s living room. He turned to Suho, then blinked in that slow pace of his, demanding an answer. “You’re staring.”
“Huh?”
“I repeated this part twice. If you don’t understand, I need you to tell me, but you haven’t said a word and just kept looking at me. You haven’t even made a joke… that’s your record time.”
“Damn, you’ve been tracking me like this?”
“You’re staring,” Sieun repeated, ignoring Suho’s words. “It’s creepy.”
Nights like this, hot and cloudless, he indeed couldn’t avoid glancing at Sieun. The sweat on his forehead did something to his stomach, bringing a hesitant but energetic ache. Kind of troublesome, but good. A good troublesome. When moonlight reached Sieun’s face, casting shadows over his eyelashes in a gentle manner, that feeling intensified.
With that new hairstyle to boot, he looked like something mystical and out of reach.
Really. Who could focus on some stupid geometry?
“It’s just—” His fingers brushed Sieun’s bangs.
Sieun reacted at the same time, fixing his hair, and Suho’s hands dropped. “Is it… is this not good? I haven’t paid much attention to it. Se-rin said it’d make me look younger. But I don’t know if I like it or not.”
Remembering Yoon Se-rin was a task in itself. Suho took some time to assimilate the name with the person he had seen — she was probably Sieun’s upper classmate, with dyed pink hair and piercings. From what Sieun had told him, she had been torn between the medical school her parents wanted her to attend or pursuing hairdressing, her true passion.
“Younger?” Suho huffed, a bit discontent on having a stranger’s name pop on their private conversation. “Sieun-ah, are you not young enough? Tell me you talked back.”
“She didn’t say it offensively. She just said… that I looked like a burnout office worker and father of three.”
Sieun blinked, non-expressive. Like a burnout office worker and father of three.
That sparked a chuckle out of Suho, who couldn’t resist the urge to pinch his face, leaving a faint red mark on its trail. It was a shame that becoming a university student caused Sieun to lose some weight and his face grew more mature, those round cheeks he had in high school present no more. Suho kinda missed it.
“Is she blind?” he questioned. “You looked good before, and you look even better now. But you should stop seeing these people, really, they’re all tasteless. How dare she compare you to an office worker?”
“But to a father is okay?”
A tilt of his head and a narrowing of his eyes. Typical and demanding.
Suho hummed. “My Sieun-ah would be a good father.”
Either Sieun agreed with this statement or not, he didn’t retort, but he did punched Suho on the shoulder. Worth it. He was glad for whatever time, albeit filled with papers and exercises, that they had together, and whatever touch. This past semester, it became harder to find Sieun free. His schedule grew heavy as if he truly had a corporate job, and in the moments he had no random disease to research or skeletons calling his name, Suho was stuck with supplementary classes.
Granted, that solidified one of the reasons Suho disliked his own studies.
“You’re not paying attention,” Sieun sighed.
“Sieun-ah, why don’t we take a break? Let’s talk about your hair again, alright?” Suho whined, brushing off some strands of Sieun’s hair again, light as a feather. His head fell on the coffee table. “You can tell me about your experience at the hair salon and I’ll tell you about this idiot in my class — nineteen years old, a wanna be bully—”
“You won’t sleep on my bed with grades like this.”
His mouth sealed off instantly, almost on instinct.
On Fridays, they had a routine. Sieun would tutor him, and Suho would sleep over. The apartment had no second mattress, and his inner demons had, on the first day, told him that Sieun’s bed seemed much more comfortable. So he had laid down on it, not even waiting for Sieun to tell him to choose, pretending to be ignorant of these pleasantries. Since when had they needed these formalities with each other anyway?
After showering, his esteemed tutor had looked at him sprawled in his place. And used to Suho’s antics, he only pursed his lips before laying down as well. Every Friday after that, they kept this routine; if Sieun’s irritation was ever piqued over waking up to a clingy Suho, he never complained. That shouldn’t be used as blackmail material on anyone, but it certainly worked on him.
Because Suho liked sleeping on Sieun’s bed.
He really, really liked sleeping on Sieun’s bed.
Together, with their shoulders touching, most preferably. With his feet warming Sieun’s cold ones. Alone while Sieun studied also worked, since his scent still lingered on the sheets. The thing was: he couldn’t afford to lose this privilege.
“You play really low,” Suho clicked his tongue, “you know that?”
Sieun didn’t seem to care for his sentiments. “I worry for your future.”
“Who cares for my future? I just wanna eat and sleep with my Sieun-ah.”
“Get a high school degree first.”
What would be on his list of requests after that? A university degree just to be beside him for a few hours? Damn… that man really had Suho laying flat and pliant in the palm of his hands.
He dragged out a long “ah,” raising his head again and opening the geometry book despondently. “Alright. You’re too superior for me now, I get it! You’re upping your game too far off, so I have to catch up, right? And we can’t have us that far apart, because you can’t be without me, I see it. I see it, Sieun-ah!”
Sieun elbowed him on the waist, a light smile playing on his lips.
Suho focused on the subject for the rest of the evening, listening to Sieun’s teachings. Geometry and physics. Then math, because this goddamn thing still existed after his coma (why, anyway?). None of which Suho understood, but he found his pleasure in making jokes about the name of mathematicians, in taking in the melody contained in Sieun’s voice and counting each moment Sieun scratched his ear, as if he was bothered by his new bangs, or how his eyes would avert in slight embarrassment for fretting over such a small thing. He did that eleven times. It was always cute in its own way.
Before long, evening turned into late evening and they ceased their studies. Sieun ordered some food online after a discussion with Suho over who was paying (Sieun won, because he was merciless and knew how to take things from Suho), so they went to the bedroom, waiting for their meal while trying to pick a film to watch on the laptop.
Turned out that picking something they both liked was harder than deciding whose wallet should suffer.
While Sieun had no personal preferences, Suho disliked every modern comedies’ summary. They browsed the catalogue twice. Turned out that in both instances, he had a monologue to spill over how he already knew the MC for this drama would die, or that said family was dead in the plot twist. The science-fiction section was too fantastical for their own good, whereas the romance one, at last, sounded all too cliché.
“All of this is boring! This, right here?” Suho pointed at a newly-released feel-good film with a grunt. “Bullshit. Who wouldn’t notice that this man has been pretending to be a woman for so long? And this?” he pointed at another option, an apocalypse story with an odd, exaggerated quirky poster. “So unrealistic. It’s not like people could confess their love in the middle of the end of the world. Sieun-ah, let’s just lay down and talk about your project instead. What was it about osteogenius again?”
“Osteogenesis,” Sieun corrected him, closing the streaming tab. “It’s the process where humans start growing bones. We’ve all been through that during birth, but it continues to adapt as we grow.”
“Isn’t that much cooler? Tell me about it.”
For someone who couldn’t be considered academically gifted, Suho’s studious side actually emerged in occasional moments. To be specific, it emerged with Sieun laying side by side on the bed with him like that, laptop forgotten, his voice low and relaxed as he went on about whatever he had been focusing on in university. He found that, if Sieun explained anything to him, he might not understand it all, yet he’d for certain be willing to listen from beginning to end.
His former teachers would be enraged over this. The often sleepy Ahn Suho adored each of his Sieun’s lectures over any subject. But at that moment, Sieun stopped mid-speech, unwilling to continue.
“This is not what we agreed on,” he said, taking off his socks as he put his laptop on the desk for a moment, then laying down next to Suho again. “You said it before: we study 60% of the day and relax the other 40%.”
“I’m super relaxed right now, I love to hear you talk. Even if it’s about something completely weird and I can’t understand a single thing of, I’d gladly be your listener. You’re my favourite podcast.”
Sieun didn’t budge, making no comment over the joke, “We don’t need to watch any comedies. And if you’re not interested in romance or drama, let’s pick something else.”
One of the films they considered was a recent, famous melodrama of sorts. The poster showed a man and a woman sitting on a bench, holding an umbrella while rain poured down. Suho just knew that one of them would leave the other in the end and they’d only see each other after years apart. How awful.
“I like romantic comedies, I really do. I watch them a lot with halmeoni, but they have to be done right,” Suho sighed. “These modern ones are so bad! They can’t capture the charm of a man of a 90s show, alright. They’re always too fast, and they don’t put enough emotion into the scenes. How can anyone go through that for over two hours?”
Sieun blinked. “What charm are you talking about?”
The word ‘charm’ in Sieun’s tone of voice sounded, for some reason, quite enticing. Suho was a moth, crawling closer to Sieun’s light, something inside him fluttering as he watched the other boy’s long eyelashes.
“The way they approach the person they’re interested in is completely different. Like us right now,” he cleared his throat, gesturing to the minute space between them. Their shoulders touched, but their heads were still settled in a respectable gap. It felt both too sparse and too small. “Take this distance between our bodies. It would still spark something between the main character and the male lead… it’d be intense even if weren’t not touching. And when they touch, it’d be a big thing. One of those big, sparkly things. You don’t see that in modern romance anymore.”
“And how would they approach?”
“Huh?” Suho muttered, confused.
“How is it different in approach? How would they close the distance?”
Sieun’s head turned to Suho’s side. He was still expressionless per the broader evaluation, because that was Sieun’s usual state, but his eyes were somewhat interested, lacking the emptiness in which he stared so intently at other people and filled with a calm glint instead. To Suho, that gaze meant the world.
His mouth felt a bit parched too. He didn’t know what to say much, so his body acted and spoke on instinct, “They watch first, observing the person’s movements. Then they… pull a subtle gesture, like this,” Suho’s hands, that lay on his stomach, found their way to Sieun’s grip on the sheets, “to make sure that the other believes they’re safe.”
Suho hadn’t touched Sieun’s hands before. At least, not like this. He had, instead, looked at it a little too much out of the corner of his eyes when they were close. He liked to watch Sieun browse his books, his index finger creasing slightly as he inserted its tip between pages. Sieun started bumping his pen on the desk nonstop whenever he thought hard about a subject, his eyebrows furrowing a bit while Suho ached to touch him.
He longed to stroke his fingertips with his own. To cease his bumping pen by placing his big hands in Sieun’s small ones. Sometimes, he’d wonder if Sieun’s hands were cold like his feet or warm like his heart. Would it be as soft as his cheeks? Would he feel bothered by Suho’s calloused palms?
That night he had this desire fulfilled. Sieun’s hands were soft and warm. He didn’t seem bothered by the feeling of Suho’s skin either, merely stating, “That’s less intense than you make it seem.”
“For now, only. The charm is in the caressing.”
Sieun massaged the back of Suho’s hands with his fingers. “This kind of touch?”
Suho’s eyes didn’t leave Sieun’s. The touch sent an electrifying wave throughout his whole body, still, he didn’t move his gaze even a centimetre, afraid that with a minimal distraction, Sieun would disappear and he’d discover that all of this had been a hallucination prompted by his coma.
Keeping an unfazed countenance, he disentangled his hand, initiating a trail of feather-like caressing along Sieun’s arm. Delicate, quivering. Sieun’s shiver could be felt by him.
“This kind of touch,” he explained.
“I’m not sure this is right. It’s making me itchy.”
What a teaser. It didn’t seem to make him itchy at all, but Sieun’s lip tightening was noted by Suho, thereby he moved his right hand back to interlock it with Sieun’s while his left one patted the other boy, taming his messy hair. Then he pinched his reddening ears, fondling his neck in the middle.
“What about now?”
“Now, it’s okay,” Sieun murmured. “And what happens after?”
Suho had watched a lot of films before, this hasn’t been a lie. Some of them with his halmeoni and some others, admittedly, alone. However, watching these kinds of scenes couldn’t make a professional out of anyone, so Suho remained ignorant of what else he was supposed to say or do.
On the other hand, he didn’t want to stop here. There was something growing between them, and again, it just felt right. It felt like something he’d been craving for ages, like a candy he’d been denied in his childhood and only now could have a taste of; his insides were in turmoil while he rambled his way through the situation.
“After he feels the tension is enough… he grabs the person’s hands. It’s not hand-holding. It’s more like hand-grabbing. It’s not supposed to feel that sweet yet, okay? It’s like… to check if the connection is okay. Then, when you least expect it… they go for the kill—”
Abrupt like an animal, Suho turned his body over, topping Sieun.
In that position, he took a mere moment to grab the medical student’s arms, putting their hands together and dropping them onto the pillow, stretched above Sieun’s head. His hands were easily trapped by Suho. Without fighting back, Sieun stood no chance, letting himself be taken into his possession. Suho’s strong legs wrapped around Sieun’s waist, caging his body beneath his.
Then Suho committed the mistake of looking down, and he stared, in a daze, at Sieun’s expression.
Sieun was looking at him, soft and patient. Not romantic, but not non-romantically either. He didn’t play the expected part, for his eyes weren’t wide, shy or scared, they remained the opposite of what they were meant to show on one of those TV shows. He was as calm as ever, neutral in the face of danger and keeping the glint on his irises in a way that both confused and excited Suho.
“For the kill?”
His breathing quickened. “Hmn.”
“What does that mean?”
That could mean a lot. It could mean Sieun had no choice but to let himself be entrapped, encircled, protected by someone else. It could mean Suho could do whatever he wanted, but if he let those thoughts get the best of him, he didn’t know if he could ever regain sobriety. Some time ago, he had discovered this hungry little darned beast inside of him whenever he had time alone with Sieun. Whenever he couldn’t distract himself.
He wanted to do to him things that weren’t appropriate for best friends.
Damn, it wasn’t appropriate to be talked about out loud with anyone.
That day, that darned thing was getting out of hand. A beat passed between them, then two beats. Something, or someone, had to give in.
“It means that’s when the male lead leans over…” Suho’s tone of voice dropped, and he did exactly that, lowering his head towards Sieun, his will to fight against such an intense desire loosening itself, “and now that he has his person in his hands, he feels their scent and waits for a signal… so he can brush their lips together.”
In the aftermath of these words, it was Sieun who made a move.
He stretched his neck a bit, chasing after Suho’s lips.
Without any haste or reservations — he gave himself willingly. When they touched, a faint electric spark ran through his body, sending shivers down his spine. Sieun’s lips were sweet, like milkshake and strawberries. Like when you take an ice cream on a scorching summer day. Like youth and memories. They weren’t dry dry at all, making the kiss something smooth as well as fragile. It lit him up from the inside out with the same force of a collision of stars.
“Like this?”
“Hmn,” Suho couldn’t feel his hands anymore. He could only feel his heart pounding, his legs further intertwining with Sieun’s and the overwhelming urge to just take this man whole. “That’s when he doesn’t hesitate anymore,” he concluded with a whisper.
Then Suho lost it. He fell right into the pit, unashamed.
He kissed Sieun, having become decisive, heavily embracing the moment their lips locked together. It was guileless, because Suho never kissed before, and he’d a certainty that Sieun didn’t either, but it was all-encompassing, fierce where it was supposed to be sweet. It was their first too, but a first that seemed like their hundredth. And at the first small space Sieun gave, Suho took it.
When their tongues slid together, Suho’s entire body shook. At that point, he wanted to make a stupid joke, to throw a meme at his Sieun and say he was having a transcendental moment, because he was, he had never felt this before, but that’d mean they’d have to stop, and he didn’t want that for even a second.
He kissed him deeper, longer and more intensely, until Sieun was gripping the sheets again, melting in his hold, dropping a low moan that went straight to Suho’s lower body.
He went stiff for a second, resulting in a brief separation.
Sieun’s lips were moist and pinkish, and he was also a bit breathless. His hair had been ruffled, his eyes were dazed. While Suho had his left hand locking both of Sieun’s hands, he then let the other one move to Sieun’s waist, wandering his body. Following this, Suho leaned down to kiss him again.
He’d gladly die in Sieun’s arms, embracing him until they were out of air, cherishing all of his small sounds, and engrain his low, subtle moans into his chest. Amidst these muddled thoughts, they were pressed to each other, as close as two people could be on a medium-sized bed, and Suho’s knees started parting Sieun’s legs, placing his body between them. His pants tightened along with the rhythm of their mouths, gradually growing heavy as his contact with Sieun’s skin turned more audacious.
Unrestrained, he left a bite on those lips, always having the last word, never close enough to his own. His hands lowered further, diving beneath Sieun’s waist, savouring and tracing the shivers he tried to hide. For that, he punished him with another light bite, and Suho kept touching him, his fingertips smoothly crossing his chest and reaching—
Out of a sudden, there was a sharp knock on the door.
It crashed on their heads like a drumming order. At the same moment they stopped the kiss, Suho accidentally biting Sieun’s bottom lip in his surprised jolt, and then they were looking into each other’s widened eyes. Sieun lay on the bed panting, cheeks turned an attractive shade of pink and hair all messed up, with a couple of strands sticking to his forehead.
He looked gorgeous, worked up after bearing the weight of Suho’s body, mouth and fervour. If they hadn’t been interrupted… maybe Suho could’ve kissed his neck, all the way to his collarbones too. They were a lust-inducing sight in itself. Then his pale lower skin…
“I need to…” Sieun’s voice interrupted his deviating thoughts, “I need to take it.”
Take it. Right. Of course. He’ll—
Take what? Suho’s brain went blank.
“Hah?”
“Take the delivery.”
“Oh.”
Suho took a while to identify the words, associate them with the situation and dutifully remember that they had ordered some food a while ago. Because they were supposed to be distracting themselves with a film during the wait. Not kissing Sieun like he was some thirsty animal.
Fuck, what just happened? Where had his consciousness been just now? Who did that to their best friend? Who was he, to take part in such a thing and attack Sieun?
For his relief, the other boy seemed unperturbed after fixing his hair and recomposing his breathing. He said nothing about their moment, the crimson mark of a bitten wound growing on his bottom lip the only proof to Suho that none of this had been a wild summer dream. Sieun very calmly got up from the bed, proceeding to glance at Suho’s lower body for a second.
“You… you should take a shower,” he said.
“Alright. Yeah… I’ll—”
“The clothes you left last time are in my second drawer.”
Simple as that, he was gone from the room.
Suho heard his steady steps, the door opening and the sound of a card reader. He stood there, awkward and unsure, the pressure on his pants leaving him uncomfortable on the bed but yet not enough to clear his head about how the hell he should act.
A minute passed. Suho whispered a low “damn”, rushing to the shower. Once he felt more sober and his body wasn’t burning, he left the bathroom, getting dressed in a minute. Sieun seemed to hear him from somewhere in the apartment, showing up at the door to say, “Suho? Are you done? Let’s eat in the kitchen.”
Suho’s head was in a mess. He still wanted to kiss this boy. He wanted to push him to the bed again, and finish what they started. He wanted to show Sieun what the male lead in a film could do to the other character in ways categorized for adults rather than general audiences. He wanted to touch him more, until he looked all reddish again, muttering Suho’s name, but he also wanted to have his friendship forever, and he knew that in doing so again, it’d be ruined beyond repair.
“Sure. Yeah, okay,” he cleared his throat. “I’m going!”
Damn. He knew this day would come.
Yeon Sieun had broken him.