Chapter Text
Friends can kiss each other.
Suho has seen it happen before. Hell, it has happened to him once, before Sieun did.
He had barely turned eighteen. Someone was bothering Yeongi, refusing to take no for an answer, and unable to understand that maybe—just maybe—women could not be into men. He knew types like that—self-absorbed and misogynistic pricks, the type of guy who only respected women if a man was standing behind them.
It made Suho’s blood boil, and he had no choice but to step into his big, adult shoes. He slid his arm around Yeongi’s shoulder, ignored the look of pure shock she gave him, and said, “Hey, baby”.
The man scoffed, clearly unamused by his theatrics.
It was expected. Suho was not a good actor. He could not lie for the life of him, too fussy and squeamish about the whole thing.
He doesn’t remember much from that night, but he recalls kissing Yeongi to avoid making a scene. It was nothing more than a peck on the lips that lasted less than five seconds. Still, it earned him a punch on his stomach, and he lost track of how many times he brushed his teeth and washed his mouth afterwards. The guy left, and he and Yeongi spent the rest of the night avoiding each other’s gaze.
That was something they had sworn to take to their grave.
So, truly, really… friends can kiss each other.
Suho did it to save a lesbian in distress, which caused him nightmares for days, and Sieun did it for—Sieun kissed him. Period.
And five seconds later, he kept playing ‘Never Have I Ever’ as if it were nothing. As if kissing Suho meant nothing. As if it were only a way to shut him up and kill the joke he had been dragging on for too long.
It was not romantic. It couldn’t have been. And surely there were worse things in life than kissing your pretty best friend.
Like having a wet dream about said best friend—or dreams, he corrects himself.
This, too, will be something Suho will take to his grave.
He thinks it is okay, then.
Sieun kissed him, sure. But nothing has to change. Sieun can pretend that Suho didn’t try to deepen the kiss, and Suho can pretend that the taste test of Sieun’s lips didn’t fuel his curiosity.
“Never have I ever,” says Seongje through slurred words and eyes half closed. “Called someone the wrong name in bed.”
Suho is the only one who drinks.
He doesn’t answer any of the questions thrown his way.
June fades into July, and something changes.
Baku and his boyfriend are somewhere south, and Juntae is focused on leveling up his rank on League of Legends. Yeongi, apparently, has a crush on a girl and is making her job to take said crush on dates every other day. Suho doesn’t know where she gets the money for it.
Hyuntak and Seongje are camping, but he really doubts that they will survive more than one day in the wilderness. And Sieun… Well, Sieun is M.I.A.
Five nights ago, Suho had rung the doorbell at Sieun’s house and waited. More than fifteen minutes passed without him hearing even a door closing inside. He assumed Sieun wasn’t home and left.
Last night, he repeated the same pattern. But this time his chest was much too heavy with something he couldn’t seem to understand. He thought the same thing that he did five nights ago: Sieun wasn’t home.
As he was leaving, he heard something clattering inside. Suho had half the urge to ring the doorbell again, or simply punch in the passcode he knew by heart. He was about to do this when he chose not to.
If Sieun was inside and he had heard Suho, it could only mean that Sieun was clearly avoiding him.
Why? Suho did not know.
He tried to remember if he had done something wrong, forgotten a special day, or done anything else that could make Sieun get mad at him. He remembered nothing. There was nothing, and nothing had happened that could lead Sieun to ignore him.
He sighed, stepping away from the door. He hoped that Sieun was simply in his Do Not Disturb mode, which he hadn’t had yet this year.
Suho took his phone out of his pocket, opened the messages app, and texted him:
Before he even got inside the elevator, he had a reply:
Suho took a breath and nodded. With another breath, he sucked it up and left.
Sieun would come back to him eventually.
Suho just had to remember how to function without him in the meantime.
Two weeks later, things are back to normal.
Their weekly meetings resume, and there is a mutual consensus: no one wants to know what Seongje and Hyuntak did in the mountains.
If they killed a bear or partaken in any sort of public indecency, they can keep the knowledge to themselves, for they are ultimately prohibited from ever speaking about it.
They gather at Baku’s place. It is the first time that Suho sees Sieun after the kiss. The first thing he notices when they meet again is that Sieun has gotten skinnier. His pink cheeks lack the roundness they once had, and his jaw and collarbones are more prominent. Sieun’s lips remain chapped, plump, and pale at their corners.
He doesn’t even think before offering Sieun his lip balm, grinning as he prompts him to take it, which he does.
As Suho watches Sieun slide the stick across his lips, he smiles softly when the faint shade of pink begins to paint Sieun’s mouth. Pressing his lips together, Sieun tests the texture before applying another layer. He absently nods in approval when he catches the scent of the lip balm.
“It’s cherry-flavored,” Suho informs, as if Sieun did not know.
He nods again before passing the balm back to Suho. “I know. It’s good.”
And if Suho licks his lips after, suddenly too aware of what Sieun’s lips would taste like, they do not talk about it. Sieun does not even notice.
It means nothing, really.
Right?
Wrong.
It is definitely not fucking right, and there is something very wrong with Suho—utterly and fundamentally.
The first time it happened, he had assumed that it was okay.
He was horny, he hadn’t gotten off in a while, and he couldn’t not think about how it felt to wake up with Sieun pressed against him. It was a natural reaction; he didn’t need to make a big deal out of it.
It happened, and it was a dream—only a dream—he would forget eventually. So he shrugged it off, blamed it on his wild and very fertile imagination, and kept living.
The second time, though, rubbed off on him in a confusing way—no pun intended.
His body felt too hot, and his mind was too foggy when he had awakened, barely realizing the mess on his sheets and on his shorts. He took a long shower, and he spent the entire day with his earphones plugged in at maximum volume.
Even so, the image of a flushed Sieun crying under him kept replaying in his mind the entire day, engraved in the back of his eyelids—a too clear movie of how Sieun looked, the movement of his hips, and the things he had said. No matter how hard Suho had tried to brush it off, he still felt the softness of Sieun’s skin under his fingertips and the taste of his mouth in his tongue.
Too vividly.
When the night had reached its peak, Suho was too tired to keep fighting it. After he finished his shift, he went to the nearest convenience store, bought two packs of ramen and a few beers, and took a cab to Sieun’s place.
He knocked on the door and said “Delivery” as he had done the first time he went there. When Sieun appeared, wearing sweatpants and an old league’s t-shirt, his mind finally felt at peace.
They ate, drank, and watched a movie. Everything was normal, and his Sieun—the real Sieun—was nothing like the one in his dreams. Still, Suho could not shake the resemblance of Sieun’s lips to the actor’s in the movie they were watching.
The movie ended, and once he woke up—next to Sieun but not pressed against him—Suho pretended his chest didn’t deflate with the distance between them. He brushed off the disappointment in his head as an idiotic, foolish thing.
The dream lingered for a few more days, but eventually, it passed.
Suho tried not to think about what having such lewd dreams about his best friend would make of him, or what Sieun would think of him if he had known—but he would never know.
Suho did not like lies or secrets, but this one he would die to keep.
He swore he would.
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and all of a sudden, Sieun was into dating people he knew nothing about. People who weren’t even his type, according to Yeongi, Juntae, and Baku. And even Sieun himself.
It was fine, really.
Sieun should date. He should go out on dates, kiss people—not a lot of people—and be happy, loved, and cherished for everything he was worth.
But if he had been asked, honestly, Suho thought Sieun could date someone more like… Him? His type? Sieun’s type—or at least, what he assumed it was. A quiet, nice guy like Suho. Kind, and not that smart, but maybe with a good sense of humor to make up for it.
Someone who knew how to make Sieun laugh. Someone who knew what Sieun liked to eat, and that he liked to watch documentaries and films based on true events. Someone who knew that sometimes he fell asleep listening to podcasts—true-crime podcasts—and wouldn’t be weirded out by this.
Sieun deserved someone who knew when and how to hype him up. When to respect his need for silence and quietness, and respect his space. Someone who would be kind to him, listen to everything he felt too conscious to say, and take his time with him.
If he had been asked, Suho would have said that he did not think that Kang Daniel was that person. He was genuinely surprised when he heard that what started as a first date was evolving into a fifth, but wait—why the fuck would it be in Sieun’s house?
Suho knew how to sniff out scoundrels, and he vehemently knew that Kang Daniel was one of them. He was sure of it—
Until he was proven wrong. Kang Daniel wasn’t evil; he was just a guy who fell victim to Sieun’s charm.
Nevertheless, Suho was happy that it didn’t work.
He was happy that Daniel had scurried off from Sieun’s house as soon as he had seen Suho. He was ecstatic that Sieun’s clothes, neck, hair, and lips were still in their usual state: pristine, unmarked, and untouched.
After that night, everything went back to normal.
Sieun never mentioned Kang Daniel again, and Suho’s place in Sieun’s lap was still his.
They met weekly, more often than not. Once with their other friends, and one night or two, it was just the two of them. They drank and played stupid games—because apparently, turning twenty-five was not enough to fully develop Seongje’s frontal lobe.
Suho was already too numb with all the alcohol running in his veins. He could not stop staring at how flushed Sieun was, and the way he kept licking his abnormally reddened lips.
He could not stop thinking about the fact that Sieun had a crush on one of their friends (whom he assumed was Hyuntak), fallen in love, and gotten his heart broken. All without telling him.
But it was fine, really.
Sieun could keep secrets if he wanted to.
Suho kept some things to himself too, even if nothing entertaining had happened to him this year.
He was out of ideas when he repeated his already run-down joke, “Never have I ever kissed someone this year”, which he knew was no longer funny—fuck it, it was pathetic. But the next second, Sieun was calling him a liar and kissing him. He was leaning in at the same time that Sieun was backing away, telling him to shut up and—
Fuck. What the actual fuck just happened?
But it is fine.
Truly, it is fine. He swears it is.
Sieun drank another dose, said something Suho never processed, and just like that, it was over.
Done.
Friends can kiss.
And Sieun can avoid him. Suho knows that, just like he needs his homeopathic dose of his best friend, Sieun sometimes needs a week away from humankind. He gets overwhelmed easily.
At least Sieun still replies to his texts and says that he missed Suho too.
And when things are back to normal—normal-normal—Suho can share his lip balm with Sieun. He can pretend that he does not think about the taste of his lips, cherry, and something sweeter, it seems.
Nothing changes. It doesn’t have to.
So why the fuck does he keep dreaming about Sieun?