Archive of Our Own

(Around Jisung, a city glows with early evening. It takes a single glance at the shape of the buildings, the lay of the signs, and the fried chicken restaurant sitting on the next corner to recognize that it’s their city. Their street, actually, if he’s being precise. The entrance to the dorm is just ahead. 

Above him, the sky is vividly pink-purple-orange. The clouds, massive and billowing, look like they’re on fire. 

Jisung has never seen a sunset like this. Jisung's never seen anything like this.

(That makes him pause.)

(Why?) 

Oh, he thinks a moment later, because there’s not much else to think when you wake up in someone else’s dream. 

(His hands are what give it away. When he flips them over, they go slightly blurry at the edges.

An old trick—one he hasn’t had to use in a while—but it still works.)

Jisung lifts his head. On the road, the traffic lights cycle neatly, cars following close behind. Red. Yellow. Green. Turning on an easy rhythm.

The pace of it all is too slow to be Mark—who dreams in smash-cut compilation clips—and too fast to be Jeno’s, which oscillate mostly between amorphous musings and the distant worry he forgot to put on pants that day. Too visual and continuous to be Chenle’s—whose dreams are mostly thoughts and concepts—and not nearly saturated or bouncy enough to be Donghyuck’s. 

And, unlike Jaemin’s, well. It’s comprehensible, for one.

Process of elimination. Jisung arrives at the same answer, that, from the moment he saw those burning clouds, he’d instinctually, inherently, known. 

Oh, Jisung thinks, because what else is there to think when you find yourself in the dream of a person you—

A person who—

A person you’ve—

Oh.

His stomach flips. There’s a sudden burst of motion like he’s been shoved, but the kind where it’s hard to tell if he’s moving or if it’s the rest of the world moving around him. Not quite against his own volition, but not quite with it either. 

The sidewalk now advances under his feet. His sneakers hit the edge of each paver in that same steady rhythm. Red, yellow, green.

The fact that he’s being carried off is not what surprises him—that part’s actually pretty common. Dreams, he’s found, tend to have a current, flowing downstream from one event to the next. And usually, he just goes along for the ride.

This is is different. This feels like it wants Jisung specifically. 

A dance, a waltz—a hand on his shoulder guiding him across the ballroom floor, making sure he hits his marks.

Gentle, yet resolute. 

Soft, because it knows it will not be denied.

That makes Jisung’s palms extremely sweaty, which, frankly, he didn’t even know could happen here. He wipes them off on his pants reflexively. Is shocked when it actually works. 

Jisung wriggles his fingers. The edges lose their definition.

The dream leads him away.

As it does, Jisung can feel it—the intention in what is shown to him, which parts are being emphasized. They’re moving towards their dorm, something he’s done a million times before, but it is only on this millionth and first that he’s finding it kind of beautiful, and beautiful in this quiet kind of way.

Up above, the sky darkens fully. On the ground, people pass him by, their background chatter soft and rolling. A breeze brushes across his face.

It’s simple. Subtle. A small, ordinary moment that someone decided was worth their time to compose. It reminds him of that one part in every sappy drama Jisung pretends he doesn’t watch where the main leads walk side-by-side in the cool night air, hiding small smiles when they take each other’s hands. 

The colors a little crisper. The stars a little brighter.

Just life, but a little sweeter.

(Jisung likes it.)

((Jisung likes it too much.))

Time accelerates, bending in that weird, liquid way it does in dreams. The sound fades out first; everything else follows. The details fall away and take Jisung with.

When it all settles again, he’s inside their apartment building, already at their door, already holding the handle. The metal is cold in his palm.

He’s entering the passcode. He’s swinging it open.

It’s all so very mundane, until it’s not. The stream becomes a whirlpool and Jisung has reached its center. 

(Renjun, Jisung thinks.) 

((He is always thinking of him.))

There, sitting on the couch, is Renjun. Renjun, who perks up when he sees Jisung coming in through the door, and lays his head on top of the backrest to smile both soft and brilliant at him. 

Jisung’s heart hits his ribs so hard he thinks there might be permanent damage. His mind digs up an ancient memory of sitting in his second-grade classroom and being cold-called to answer a question he definitely doesn’t know how to solve.

This feels a little bit like that. In dream-land, Jisung doesn't expected to be called on. He’s an observer. An extra. Sometimes he’s so far out in the periphery that he never comes across the dream’s owner at all.

It’s rare enough that he does. Rarer still that the dreamer recognizes him as him, as Jisung, instead of faceless barista #2.

And even if they do, it never lasts. Dreams are volatile. The moment it shifts, Jisung will be forgotten. The slate is wiped clean.

But here?

Here, Renjun looks at him. 

Here, Renjun knows him.

Jisung is dizzy with it. It doesn’t help that it’s been so long that Jisung’s forgotten how it feels to be near a dreamer in their own dream. It’s like gravity—they hold more weight, more mass, more presence than the rest. Everything converges here.

Renjun is stable. Solid. Real.

(Jisung is not. Jisung isn’t sure how many more G’s of this gravity he can take.)

Seconds pass and nothing changes. In dream-time, that is an eternity.

Renjun remains perfectly at ease through it all. He simply holds Jisung’s gaze, eyes gleaming, expression expectant. As if he’s excited to see Jisung. Has been waiting for him. 

But—expecting what? Waiting for what? 

Renjun notices the hesitation. Tilts his head so it squishes his mouth into a pout, his cheek farther into the cushion. His hair fans out against the fabric, bangs brushing lightly across his temples.

Well? he seems to say.

The dream prods at Jisung. 

Jisung balks. Stays exactly where he is, completely frozen. He can’t move, or think, or even breathe, really. Not when Renjun looks like that. Not when Renjun looks at him like that.

Hair silken. Mouth pink. Eyes watching. 

Jisung is screwed. Jisung is so screwed. Jisung has never been more acutely aware that resolving the feelings from when he was fourteen (and fifteen and sixteen and—) by metaphorically shoving them under his metaphorical bed was not really resolving them at all. Which is to say, he’s extra fucking screwed.

Renjun’s brow furrows. The dream pushes again, and this time doesn’t take no for an answer. A couple of stumbled steps and Jisung is hovering over Renjun, arms braced on either side of his head, close enough that Jisung only has to dip down or Renjun tilt up for their noses to touch. Jisung is two seconds away from cardiac arrest.

Renjun blinks up at him through his lashes. Jisung is one second away from cardiac arrest.

“Is everything alright?” Renjun asks, a little like he already knows it’s not and he’s trying to figure out why.

He shifts, just slightly. His oversized shirt falls loose around his collarbone. 

Uh, Jisung thinks. His mouth goes dry. Was…was that on purpose?

His fingers dig into the fabric, trying to hold onto anything that isn’t bare skin, the line of Renjun’s neck, the divots where it meets his chest. His head spins so fast it’s starting to make him sick. Renjun doesn’t do this. Renjun doesn’t act like this. Not when they’re awake. Not towards him. 

Maybe this is all a big mix-up. Maybe Renjun doesn’t even know it’s him. Maybe Renjun was dreaming about some other dude sexily kabedon-ing him against the couch and Jisung accidentally slipped and fell into the role instead.

“Hey,” Renjun says, hand darting up to grab Jisung’s cheek. Jisung jolts, atomic collision. “Park Jisung,” he says, and Jisung has to fight back a squeak. Okay, he knows. “Hyung asked you a question.”

“I—um—” Jisung squeezes his eyes shut. He’s pretty sure this is word for word how he responded that day in second grade. “Sorry, what was the question again?”

“Look at me first.”

Jisung does, but not very well. He tries really hard to focus on the space between his eyebrows instead and hopes that Renjun can’t tell the difference. 

Renjun's gaze traces carefully over him. “I asked if you’re alright?”

(Not at all. The longer Jisung stands here, the more aware he is of how small Renjun is beneath him. How he could cover him entirely if he wanted to.)

Jisung nods vigorously. “Never been better.”

“You sure?”

(If Jisung got closer, leaned in, pressed down on top of him—would anyone be able to tell that Renjun was even there?)

“Positive.” 

Renjun doesn't look entirely convinced, but he says, “Okay. Good.”

Then, just as Jisung is about to let go of the breath he’s been holding, Renjun turns to the side. His face pinches together for a moment, like he’s embarrassed to do what he’s about to do. But he must want it more than he doesn’t, because he keeps going—almost shy when taps his own cheek, flushed a light pink. 

Here, he seems to say. His eyes flutter closed. 

What, Jisung thinks.

What?

The world bursts into flames.

Jisung’s thoughts come to a grinding halt. His body, though, doesn't get the memo. Before he's even aware of it, he's moving towards Renjun, or perhaps the dream is moving Renjun to him, but the distinction doesn’t matter. Nothing except for the fact that it brings his mouth in a gentle press against Renjun’s cheek really does.

His skin is warm. Intoxicatingly soft. It gives slightly under the pressure, the way Jisung can only imagine it would in real life. 

The self-awareness comes crashing back in. Jisung lurches away like it burns.

Renjun smiles, pleased, eyes still closed. Fire burns, but fire also melts, and Jisung sees that and melts. He did that. He made Renjun happy. And as easy as that, all his other thoughts slide away once more.

Jisung is so lost in it that he doesn’t even register Renjun getting up onto his knees and leaning over the back of the couch. He does not register the touch at the back of his neck nor in his hair nor Renjun pulling him in the same way his dream does, gentle but undeniable, whirlpool gravity, to slot their mouths together.

Fire burns and it melts and it burns. Renjun moves first and Jisung moves second and then everything snaps. Jisung has been hungry for so long that all it takes is a single lick of flame on his tongue to remind him that he’s starving. 

He dives forward. Takes on that fire until he drowns. Wet glide, the graze of teeth, the quiet noise of surprise when Jisung clambers gracelessly over the couch and presses Renjun into it. Their bodies meet in a blazing, sinuous line.

Renjun kisses back, matches Jisung’s fervor head-on, and still it is not enough. Jisung breathes, and there is Renjun. He tastes, and there is Renjun. It is everything he has ever wanted and still, it is not enough. 

It will never be enough for Jisung, but he’s the one that breaks away first, light-headed, panting. 

Oh god, he thinks. He’s going to pass out. This is flying. This is the altitude sickness that comes with it.

(Jisung li—)

((Jisung lik—))

Renjun laughs breathlessly beneath him. His cheeks are flushed, mouth dark red. It’s hypnotic. “Excited today, aren’t we?”

Heat rushes to Jisung’s face. 

(There’s nowhere to run, no way to play it cool. A single mouthful of Jisung’s desperation was all Renjun needed to know exactly how long and how badly Jisung has wanted for this.)

The best Jisung can do is bury himself into the crook of Renjun’s neck in a poor attempt to hide it. 

Renjun laughs again, moving to pet the back of Jisung’s head affectionately. His voice, though, lilts dark and mischievous at Jisung’s ear. “And in more ways than one, hm?”

Before Jisung can process what he means, Renjun worms his other arm between the crush of their bodies and grinds the heel of his palm into Jisung’s crotch.

Jisung makes a pathetic, broken noise. He sees stars. 

When Renjun does it again, Jisung collapses fully onto him.

He’s worried for a second that he’s hurt Renjun, but everything blinks out of existence when Renjun slips his hand into Jisung’s pants and wraps it around his cock. Renjun captures him in another kiss, grip firm, stroking slow, right on the serrated border between bliss and torture. 

This is it. Jisung is dying. There is pressure building in the pit of his stomach and his head and everywhere else and then there is a noise from somewhere far away, sharp and brittle and then it is daylight and he’s jolting upright in bed, gasping, shuddering, heart pounding, pulse on his teeth.)

It takes him a few moments for him to realize that sound is his alarm going off.

He silences it. 

The world is no longer operating under dream time, but the seconds feel like minutes feel like hours all the same. Jisung sits in the noiseless morning and holds the scene in his head, glowing radioactive, until it starts to hurt.

When it does, he boxes it up. Deep breath. Cellophane tape. Cardboard beneath the bed frame.

(What isn’t real doesn’t matter. What will never be real will never matter.)

He glances over. Across the room, Renjun is curled up on his bed, still and peaceful.

Jisung watches for another few seconds to make sure before carefully swinging his legs aroun—

It’s wet. Sticky.

Jisung goes rigid. A total, all-consuming mental spiral materializes behind him.

And then Renjun begins to stir. He’s yawning. Stretching out his arms. Awake. Awake.

He’s awake and exactly one wrong move away from seeing that Jisung’s c—

Jisung flails onto his feet faster than he has ever done anything in his entire life and careens into the bathroom.

“‘Sung?” Renjun calls blearily after him.

Bang. The door slams shut. His chest is heaving, his hand already lunging out to turn on the shower. He strips and leaves his ruined clothes in a pile on the floor. Gets in immediately after.

(Maybe he can wash himself down the drain if he’s fast enough.)

((He can’t. The water is freezing.))

Total, all-consuming mental spiral: 1.

Jisung: 0.

🌌

Jisung feels dirty, even after the shower. The dream clings to him like a film, sticks to his corneas and the insides of his eyelids so that every time he blinks, he sees it. No matter how hard he scrubs, it doesn’t come off.

He avoids Renjun for the rest of the day. It makes him feel bad, but being close to Renjun makes him feel worse. And with the rest of the tour right around the corner and long days in the practice room and always someone else who wants Renjun’s attention, it’s easy to do so. 

When they finally head home, it’s in exhausted silence. If Renjun notices the distance that has expanded between them, he doesn’t say anything. 

🌌

At a little past one in the morning, Renjun pokes his head past the threshold of Jisung’s room and asks if he can sleep there again tonight. He’s in his pajamas. His eyes are already half closed.

Jisung’s panic tells him to refuse, but the rest of him that wants to give Renjun everything, always, is already nodding. Renjun crawls into his bed along the opposite wall.

It’s always like time traveling into the past when Renjun sleeps over. The arrangement is still the same as it was before the others had moved out.

That first night, after they’d gotten all of Renjun’s stuff set up in Jeno’s old room, had felt odd. Uncomfortable almost, to not have someone else’s steady, quiet breathing smoothing out the darkness. Jisung had tossed and turned in the stifling emptiness for hours. 

The next morning, Renjun had giggled lightly and poked fun at their matching dark circles. Huddled together over breakfast at their kitchen table, they’d bought a new queen bed for Renjun’s room and then went to move his old one back to where it was.

So even now, it’s not an uncommon occurrence for Renjun to pop in and do what he’d done for years prior. When the others ask, Renjun simply says it helps him sleep better.

And previously, Jisung would’ve agreed. His room (any room) feels more like home when Renjun is in it. 

Tonight, though, long after Jisung hears Renjun’s breathing even out, Jisung is still wide awake. 

The stick-on stars they’d put on the ceiling still glow faintly. Everywhere he looks, in all the spaces in between, is a replay of what happened last night.

Burning like the sun.

🌌

Jisung wakes up the next morning after an uneventful, dreamless night. Despite the fact that nothing happened, he doesn’t feel very well-rested. He checks his hands and his surroundings carefully. His sheets are clean. Renjun is snoring.

There’s nothing else to do. He gets up and gets ready for the day.

🌌

Jisung wakes up the next morning after an uneventful, dreamless night. The grogginess falls away more quickly today. He only flips his hands over three times instead of five. His sheets are clean. Jisung can hear Renjun moving about in the next room over, likely getting dressed. 

He gets up and gets ready for the day.

🌌

Jisung wakes up the next morning after an uneventful, dreamless night. His sheets are clean. Renjun is moving about in the next room over, humming the melody to a Chinese song that he often plays in the morning. Jisung hears it coming through the walls. He doesn’t understand the lyrics, but to Jisung, it means things are normal. Routine. 

Normal is good, Jisung tells himself. Routine is good.

He gets up and gets ready for the day.

🌌

Jisung wakes up the next morning after an uneventful, dreamless night. Renjun is still sleeping across the room, form round and curled up under the comforter.

Straddling the line between consciousness and unconsciousness, Jisung imagines himself going over and draping himself over Renjun and holding him tight until they fall right back asleep. It’s not like they have any schedules today. He totally could.

He awakens fully when Renjun’s alarm goes off. Renjun groans and flails blindly at his phone. Whatever Jisung was thinking about slips away.

He gets up, walks over to Renjun to hit snooze for him, and goes to get ready for the day.

🌌

Jisung goes to bed one night after a long, exhausting day. Renjun is presumably already asleep in his own room.

That night, Jisung dreams. It is not excruciatingly, hypnotically clear the way Renjun’s was, and it doesn’t make him question what is real and what is not, but it is enough.

Hands, lips, burning touch, and the heat of Renjun against him.

Jisung wakes up. He is so hard that he is leaking into his underwear. 

Jisung hates himself and he’ll hate himself even more in the morning, but he bites down on his pillow and takes himself in his hand and imagines that it is Renjun’s wrapped around him instead. 

When he comes, his teeth leave imprints in the shape of Renjun’s name.

🌌

So, Jisung thinks, staring at the back of Renjun’s head during practice, and then anywhere but when Renjun even looks like he might turn around.

So, Jisung thinks, eyes glued to the floor as he trails Renjun at an awkward, too-far distance into the elevator and down the hall.

So, Jisung thinks, throwing open the fridge door and sticking his head in when Renjun pours himself onto the couch, back arching, mouth shaped around a groan as he full-body stretches.

Inside, there are two beers, a half-used container of chili paste, and an apple that’s been in there for at least a month. This is about right. They leave again in a couple days anyways.

Jisung opens the drawer with the apple in it. Shuts it again. The plausibility of what he’s doing is dropping with every passing second. 

Honestly though, the apple’s a pretty good representation of his brain right now if he thinks about it. Just a piece of month-old fruit rattling around in a space too big for it.

“Ji?” Renjun asks, voice floating over the cool air and stainless steel. “Did you want to order something? There’s like nothing in there.”

Jisung doesn’t. Jisung isn’t hungry in the slightest.

“Sure,” Jisung says, still in the fridge, because there’s a tiny, horrifying voice in his head that worries he’s going to pop a boner the moment he sees Renjun laid out pliant across those cushions, hair mussed and shirt riding up over the curve of his waist. He can’t risk it. Absolutely not.

Renjun hums in agreement and finally, finally, Jisung hears him shift to get up again. 

Jisung breathes a sigh of relief. Belatedly, he decides to grab the beers too. Maybe it’ll make it look more like he actually wanted something from the fridge and less like he wanted to be swallowed up by it.

On soft feet, Renjun pads over to their kitchen table. He pulls his phone out as Jisung joins him.

“Fried chicken?” Renjun asks, scrolling through the delivery app.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Renjun echoes. He taps at the screen. “I’ll just get the usual then.”

Jisung nods. His fingers drum restlessly against the tabletop; his hands search for something to do. He ends up taking the nearest thing—one of the beers—and rolls it between his palms a couple of times before he pops the tab. Crack. Hiss. Renjun’s gaze flickers over momentarily at the sound.

And, well, now that it’s open and they’ve both acknowledged that it’s open, Jisung is realizing it’s going to be weird if he doesn’t drink it. Which is a problem. Everyone knows Jisung has a pathetic alcohol tolerance and even more pathetic tipsy behavior to go with it.

Jisung takes a sip anyways. He’s so, so screwed.

“Wait,” Jisung says, realizing when Renjun navigates to the checkout screen. “The cheeseballs.”

“Ah, right, I keep forgetting.” He finishes placing the order. “I’ve been wondering though—do you even like them? I feel like I end up eating it all every time.”

Jisung shrugs. (His grip tightens on the beer can. Ingredients, he reads, because he has nowhere else to look.) “Not really? They’re okay, I guess.”

Renjun raises an eyebrow. 

(Water. Barley. Rice. Hops)

“But you do,” Jisung finishes.

There’s a moment of silence that goes on for long enough that it sticks in Jisung’s throat. He hurriedly takes another swig to try and wash it down.

A beat later, Renjun snorts. He bumps his knee against Jisung’s under the table and Jisung has to fight to keep himself from startling out of his chair.

“Aw, my Jisung-ie is thinking of me,” Renjun teases. And it’s exaggerated, light-hearted, but it’s also warm and fond and lovely in a way that knocks Jisung over and pins him to the ground. Like if sunlight was as heavy as it was sweet, and he’d been standing outside on a brilliant summer’s day.

Jisung swallows hard. Renjun goes back to scrolling through his phone. 

((They are still touching knees under the table.))

Jisung empties the can. (12 oz. 150 calories.) His other leg bounces up and down. 

Their food arrives soon after. Jisung jumps to collect it from the door and begins unpacking it from the bag. Anything can be a distraction if you try hard enough.

When it’s all on the table, Renjun opens the flaps of the chicken container, finds the biggest drumstick, and hands it to Jisung. When Jisung doesn’t take it immediately, Renjun gestures at him again until he does.

(One morning many years ago, a new trainee shows up from somewhere called Jilin, China. The boy has a bright laugh and a nice voice and a crooked tooth in his pretty smile and even though he complains about it everyday, offers Jisung his favorite jellies and lets him eat his entire bag by the end of the week.

Jisung thinks nothing of it until one morning, he wakes up and realizes that this is what it means to love and he never wants to be without Renjun’s again.)

Jisung thinks of it now as he takes it. He doesn’t say thanks. Thanks feels too small. Thanks feels wrong, even though it’d technically work—like putting a circle shaped block through the square shaped hole. Jisung just holds onto his drumstick in one hand and sets the box of cheeseballs in front of Renjun with the other. Renjun gives him a knowing smile and digs in. 

Jisung wishes he could do the same. His stomach churns.

Hey, Jisung tries in his head. About that wet dream we had together…

Every cell in his body recoils. Not a chance.

He sighs, resigned to watch Renjun eat out of the corner of his eye while he pretends to be occupied with something else. All things considered, it’s not the worst thing in the world. Renjun’s happy and he’s eating well and Jisung likes when that happens. 

But then Renjun starts popping the tips of his fingers into his mouth to suck the grease off and suddenly it’s a lot harder to pretend he’s not looking. Has he always done that? 

Stupid, Jisung berates himself, trying to tear his gaze away. Stop it.

(Jisung doesn’t. Jisung can’t.

It’s chicken and frying oil and less-than-perfect table manners, but all he can think about is the sheen on Renjun’s lips and how he licks it away and the way he looked that night under Jisung, mouth parted, dark, and wet.)

“Hey,” Renjun says, jostling their knees together again. It sends an electric jolt through Jisung’s system. “Why are you just looking at me? Is something wrong?”

“No–no it’s just—“ The words fly out of his mouth, a flock of birds startled from their roost.

“You just—“

(I just—)

“You just—look…really nice, hyung,” Jisung finishes, quiet, sloppy, weak. A truth, but without courage to back it up, it falters. Falls short. 

Renjun’s smile grows a tick wider anyways, preening in that way he does when he doesn’t want anyone else to think he’s preening. “Ah, really?”

The answer to that as far as Jisung is considered is yes, always, but Jisung doesn’t trust himself to speak anymore. He nods instead.

Really. 

Renjun’s smile fills out completely. He elbows him and fishes another prime piece of chicken out of the box. “Still,” he says. “You should eat.”

Renjun sticks it out in front of Jisung, and where his arm goes, the rest of him follows. He wiggles the chicken at Jisung teasingly, angles it a bit like he wants to feed it to Jisung directly. And as he does, he leans in, cutting shapes out of the negative space between them. 

There are many things he could do here. He could turn away and say he’s not hungry. He could take it with his hands. He could be a normal person who doesn’t think this hard about eating fried chicken simply laugh it off.

Jisung chooses to hesitantly tip his head forward. He takes a bite. 

(He makes literal the way Renjun has always had him eating out the palm of his hand.)

Meat tears from bone and Jisung’s eyes flicker to Renjun’s, Renjun’s to his. They catch each other there, midair. Voltage, capacitance, zero resistance—what remains of the emptiness fills with charge. 

Neither of them have moved, but Renjun is suddenly way, way too close. It is hard to breathe. Jisung sees Renjun in flashes—neck, lips, curve of his cheek—like a dream, like their dream, too good to be true. A single spark and it all burns down.

Jisung’s heart pounds.

And then the moment passes.

It’s unclear who wakes up first, whether it’s Jisung who pulls back and takes the rest of the offering with him or Renjun who laughs and coos at him for being cute before handing it over, but the point is that they do.

Renjun continues on like nothing happened. Perhaps to him, nothing did.

(Jisung is relieved. He knows how to handle nothing. Nothing is safe.)

((Every part of Jisung hurts. Why couldn’t it have been something?

When it comes to Renjun, nothing is safe.))

Their conversation turns to tomorrow’s schedules after that, easy and swift. Jisung chews and swallows and lets Renjun’s current pull him along, no different than when they were both asleep. His words wash softly over him.

They finish eating and clean up as they always do. Renjun tosses the garbage, Jisung wipes down the table. Renjun disappears into his room to shower. Jisung goes to his own to wash up for the night.

Through the walls, he hears the sound of running water. Renjun’s singing too, but it’s faint.

Jisung closes the door behind him quietly behind him. Sinks down to the ground against it.

Holding his hands out in front of him, he flips them over. 

They stay clear.

Jisung knocks his head back and stares up at the white ceiling lights for just a while longer.

🌌

(They’re at the kitchen table, boxes of fried chicken open between them. Renjun is laughing and waggling a drumstick in Jisung’s face, cutting shapes out of the negative space between them.

No time has passed at all; the entire continuum folds and feeds back into itself.

Jisung blinks. Jisung leans forward and takes a bite.

Renjun doesn’t let go. Renjun stays close. He makes a pleased sound and pats Jisung’s face as he chews and swallows. Aigoo. Good boy.

It rushes immediately to Jisung’s head. 

He can’t take his eyes off the way Renjun can’t take his eyes off him—dark and glinting, black diamond, obsidian fracturing under the light.

“You should finish it,” Renjun hums, handing what’s left of the piece over.

Jisung accepts. Salt on his tongue, grease on his fingers. “What about you, hyung? You…you should eat too.”

Renjun shakes his head. “I’m not hungry anymore. I already had all those cheeseballs.” He pats his stomach, a little demonstrative gesture.

Cute, Jisung thinks instantly, dazedly.

He’s so, so cute, even when he’s lying.

Because Jisung knows what hunger looks like. What he sees on Renjun’s face is not the lack of it. 

Jisung finishes the chicken off and puts the bone into their designated trash bag—each movement sticky, heavy. Renjun’s gaze presses down on every square inch of Jisung’s skin, like bodies on bodies.

Jisung can’t look at him.

Jisung is looking instead for a napkin to wipe his hands with when Renjun catches him by the wrist. His fingers just barely miss making it all the way around.

They lock eyes this time. Renjun is smiling. Sharp. Mischievous. Dangerous.

“Here,” he says simply. With a gentle pull, he guides Jisung’s hand to his mouth, pink tongue darting out to lick at the pad of Jisung’s index finger. 

Jisung can’t process it. He combusts. He incinerates. He feels like Renjun’s stabbed him and he must look like it too, because Renjun bursts into laughter, bright, loud, and full. He doesn’t let go, though. Instead, he kisses the tips of each of Jisung’s fingers in turn, butterfly light. 

“I know you were watching me earlier,” Renjun murmurs teasingly. “Wanted it so badly to be you, didn’t you?”

Yes. No. Jisung doesn’t know. Jisung can’t think. Jisung’s imagination never made it this far. This isn’t like Renjun. This isn’t like them. They don’t—

“Cute, Jisung-ah,” Renjun laughs, suddenly soft despite the way his breath ghosts hot over Jisung’s hand. A shudder rips through Jisung at the sensation.

Renjun seizes on it.“Oh? You like it that much?”

No. Yes. Yes. Yes. Jisung nods, a tiny fraction of the full movement. He wants it. He cannot help that he does.

Renjun laughs again and then without warning, takes two of Jisung’s fingers properly past his lips. The inside of Renjun’s mouth feels as good on his hand as it did on his tongue, all wet, plush heat. He gets to the top, popping off for a single moment, suspended there—Jisung’s heart stops—before sinking right back down.

The stab wound gets bigger. All of his organs are going to fall out of his chest. Renjun seems to know this, eyes curved and glittering like a knife, like he likes the way he can flay Jisung open and take his heart out whenever he pleases.

Jisung’s fingers, the ones against the flat of Renjun’s tongue, twitch. His other hand clenches into a fist on the table.

The boundary where skin meets empty air blurs.

Jisung’s eyes widen. 

There.

He sees it. Suddenly everywhere he looks, he sees it. The way all the colors shine against each other just right, the lighting diffuse and ethereal, the shallow depth of field, so that everything else blurs into the background, so the focus is only Renjun and Jisung and hunger and heat. And he feels it too, that riptide current that draws him to Renjun from the inside out, though he is no longer so certain whether that is the dream, or just him.

It feels wrong. It is wrong. Jisung shouldn’t be here.

But then Renjun hollows his cheeks around Jisung’s fingers and Jisung—

And Jisung—

Jisung is human, which means he is weak, which means he has been thinking about Renjun and something like this day after sleepless night ever since that first dream and ever since he was fourteen.

Jisung shoves the table away with a clatter. He reaches out, heat-seeking, Renjun-seeking, and when Jisung finally finds him, Jisung pulls him onto his lap and their mouths collide. His hands dive under the hem of Renjun’s shirt, running endlessly up and down and over Renjun’s back, stomach, chest, all of it burning infrared.

When they settle on the litheness of Renjun’s waist, and Jisung finds they go all the way around the way Renjun’s can not, even on his wrist, Jisung is almost blinded by how much of Renjun he can hold at once. He squeezes tight. An act of violence, an act of reverence, an angel in his encircled in his halo and then within his rifle’s scope. Renjun breaks away from the kiss to groan. 

“Ah, Jisung,” Renjun says, voice quivering, a gasp past Jisung’s ears. Jisung eats it up. The hunger only gets worse. “Your hands are so big. It’s like—it’s like you’re everywher—”

Jisung kisses him hard. He keeps going, kneads circles into the sides of his torso, the jut of his hip. Renjun lifts his arms up, a silent command, and Jisung obeys, slipping his shirt off of him. Cotton falls, the curtain raises. His vision fills with skin and more skin and he can think of nothing but the need to taste it all.

He starts at the underside of Renjun’s jaw and works his way down. Renjun whines, writhes. Jisung is dizzy, dizzy, dizzy.

The lower he gets, the less either of them can stay still, until Renjun is fully rutting against him, hard, sloppy, and desperate.

“It feels—so good, Jisung-ah,” Renjun pants. “You’re so big. So big everywhere.” Renjun rolls his hips meaningfully. Then, like he can’t wait any longer, his hands are at the zip of Jisung’s jeans and pulling Jisung’s achingly hard cock out of his underwear. He wraps his fingers around it, and just like with Jisung’s wrist, doesn’t make it all the way around. Jisung can’t think too hard about that—he will never make it out of here alive if he does. Without letting go, Renjun draws back off Jisung’s lap and sinks to his knees between his legs instead.

Jisung can only watch him do it. His mind is completely empty at the sight before him. It doesn’t fill until Renjun starts to take Jisung towards his mouth.

This is exactly what he wants and it is also what he doesn’t. Jisung shoots forward, chest heaving, to stop him.

“Jisung?” Renjun’s eyes are wide, his pupils are blown. Something flickers behind them, but Jisung doesn’t know what. A flash of lightning in the clouds, Jisung’s name said like the rustle of dry leaves in a pre-storm wind.

Trembling against his own restraint, Jisung gently removes Renjun’s hands. Pulls him back up and back onto his lap. He is careful, because though Renjun is not fragile, he is precious.

Jisung gets his own grip around Renjun’s wrists. Gives those butterfly kisses right back, pressing one to each of Renjun’s fingers before placing Renjun’s hands onto his shoulders. Jisung wants him to hold on, but for whose sake, he doesn’t know.

“Let—let me,” Jisung says, so quiet it is almost soundless. “Let me take care of you, hyung.” 

Jisung reaches slowly to where Renjun is tenting in his shorts. There is a wet spot at the front of it. 

Jisung pauses, hovering. 

Jisung waits, hesitant.

He looks at Renjun. Asking.

(Pleading.)

“Please, Jisung.”

Jisung tugs the elastic of his shorts and boxers aside. Renjun’s cock comes free, flushed and beading at the tip. And maybe Jisung is crazy, but his first thought is that it’s as pretty as the rest of him.

Jisung reaches out and wraps his hand around both of them.

At first touch, Renjun shakes from head to toe. Jisung bites down so hard on his own cheek he nearly draws blood. 

He—he—he just needs a moment.

He doesn’t get it.

“Sung,” Renjun whines, airless and thin. “Move. Jisung, move.”

Jisung will. Jisung does. Jisung tightens his grip and strokes upwards. The world shatters.

It’s like nothing Jisung has ever felt before, so good it nearly hurts. It’s like nothing Jisung has ever heard before, the sounds that Renjun makes now. High, reedy, sweet, even around the way he has pressed the back of his own hand to his mouth to try to muffle his cries. Up and down, Jisung pumps them tight. Renjun’s back arches, his noises get louder. He is beautiful. He is everything Jisung has ever wanted and Jisung—

(And Jisung li—)

((And Jisung likes—))

His climax crashes over him, tidal wave, on the next stroke. He comes hard, spilling white over both of them.

(((And when he does and everything else simply ceases to exist, Jisung can think only this: 

Jisung likes him. Jisung likes him so much. 

Jisung likes him and loves him and has liked and loved him for so long he does not remember a time or a version of himself that matters that did not.)))

Jisung lunges forward into another kiss as he takes Renjun alone back into his palm. Everything is Renjun now. Jisung jerks him off fast and hard, no warning, no mercy.

And Jisung wonders, does it feel the way it looks? Jisung’s hand is big enough to blanket him entirely—nowhere to go, nothing but pleasure. It looks obscene. Jisung wants to see him fall apart.

“Come on, hyung,” Jisung whispers. “Please. Please. For me.”

Renjun wails. Jisung presses another kiss to the corner of his open mouth and then Renjun is coming too.

Everything goes white, then black.)

Jisung wakes up to his room and a ceiling filled with faintly glowing stick-on stars. It’s dark. Quiet in a way that feels like judgment, last breath before an execution. His sheets are a mess.

For a while, there is nothing besides his own ragged breathing. 

Then he hears the distant sound of running water through the walls.

🌌

They don’t talk about it the next day. Renjun jumps a bit when Jisung brushes by him in the kitchen but other than that, he seems pretty normal. He greets Jisung. Smiles at him like he’s his most favorite person in the world.

And what a privilege it is to be Huang Renjun’s most favorite person in the entire world. How many people would kill for that title? Normally, Jisung would bask in it. Maybe even gloat about it, just a little, to whoever happens to be around.

Right now, it just makes him feel nauseous. When Renjun brushes by him, he lurches so hard he nearly gives himself a concussion against their cabinetry.

🌌

They don’t talk about it the next day either. Jisung actually has a good excuse for this one, because that day happens to be travel day and travel days are always kind of hectic. Today’s travel day is especially hectic, because it’s only after he walks out the door that he realizes he can’t find his passport. Which means they’re stopped on the side of the road, right next to the car they were supposed to be driving away in about five minutes ago. 

Jeno has sprinted upstairs to see if he left it on the counter or the kitchen table. As for him and Jaemin, they’ve dumped the entirety of Jisung’s backpack out onto the ground and are pawing through it like a couple of hungry rats through garbage.

It’s no use. They turn over everything twice and find nothing. Jeno comes back sweaty, but empty-handed. Their manager tells them to just get in and that they’ll figure it out at the airport. Jaemin solemnly helps him shovel everything back into his bag. Defeated, they climb back into the—

“Oh,” Jisung says, staring down at his passport, resting right on the seat he’d been sitting in before the whole fiasco. “It—it must’ve fallen out. Of my pocket.”

The quiet that follows is oppressive. He thinks he sees Jeno facepalm. 

Their manager wordlessly thrusts his arm out towards Jisung.

Jisung meekly places his passport into his hand and doesn’t make eye contact for the rest of the trip.

🌌

Their flight today isn’t very long, but it still feels endless. He’s seated next to their manager, probably as some sort of punishment, but all he can think about is Renjun. From where he is, one row back and across the aisle, he sees him even when he’s not trying to.

When they’d been waiting for rest of the passengers to board, before the roar of the engines had made it impossible to hear anything else, Jisung had picked up on bits and pieces of his conversation with Jeno. Something about reminiscing. About nostalgia. A joke about how far they’ve come on this tour and since they first rolled down that red carpet on a set of light-up hoverboards.

Jisung knows they don’t mean anything by it. Renjun tends to be sentimental like that. Jeno tends to go along with wherever the conversation takes him. They move on from the topic quickly.

But now, an hour or so later, Jisung still hasn’t. He’s still thinking about the way they were when they’d all first met. How much they’ve changed since then and how, despite that, the past remains immutable.

No matter what he does, or who he is now, the version of Jisung that fell for Renjun first will always be fourteen and chubby-cheeked and coconut-haired. The little brother. Forever maknae.

If Jisung had known back then, he would’ve tried to grow up faster. If Jisung had known, he would’ve tried to give up on Renjun earlier.

If only they had met now and not when Jisung was five-foot-four and dressed in knee-high socks every other week, maybe things could have been different.

They are flying, literally, and all Jisung can think how much it’s going to hurt when he hits the ground.

🌌

They arrive. They sleep. They wake. They perform. They repeat.

Turnaround times are tight. Each hour leading up to the concert is frenetic; each hour after passes by so quickly it feels nonexistent.

Jisung doesn’t necessarily mind. It’s busy, but being busy means it’s easier to ignore The Renjun Problem and the related fact that it’s actually entirely A Jisung Problem. He goes out and sight-sees, wandering down foreign side-streets he doesn’t know if he’ll ever find again. He lays in his bed and scrolls through webtoons and NASA articles until he falls asleep or they have to go rehearse some more. 

Being busy also allows him to gently keep his distance from Renjun. When Renjun talks about all the places he wants to see and asks who wants to go with him, Jisung lets someone else volunteer first and waves him off as they part ways.

Jisung watches him disappear—over the horizon, around a corner, into a car—and heads in the opposite direction.

(He convinces himself that this is what he wanted.)

🌌

Jisung stares up at their ceiling, newly adorned with a bunch of glow-in-the-dark stars.

It’d taken most of the night to get to this point—Jisung up on a small step-stool, arms stretched out over his head, while Renjun directed him what to place where—but Jisung thinks it turned out well. From where they lay on his bed, he can make out all the constellations they were trying to recreate.

And Jisung likes it. He really does. Which makes the weird melancholy welling up in his chest feel even weirder.

“Hyung?”

“Hm?”

His eyes trace repeatedly over the Big Dipper. The three points of Orion’s belt. Suddenly it doesn’t feel like such a good idea to ask. He almost just shakes his head never mind, but it escapes him at the last moment, before he can pack it away.

“Do you ever really want something you can’t have?”

Renjun tilts his head, lets it bump into Jisung’s shoulder as he mulls it over. “Yeah. I do.”

“Though,” he continues, “sometimes I wonder if I’m just getting in my own way. Like I actually can, and I just think I can’t.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Renjun hums contemplatively. “Why do you ask?”

Above him, a ceiling full of stars that are beautiful, but not real. All the real ones are out of reach.

Jisung shifts slightly, so he can stack his own head on top of Renjun’s. He wishes they could somehow be closer. “No reason.”

🌌

Jisung has a dream. There is Renjun and Renjun’s smile and Renjun with his arm looped around Jisung’s own, pressed into each other as they walk down a street to nowhere.

Jisung. Jisung. Jisung.

Jisung never likes his name as much as he does when Renjun says it.

When he wakes up, it is to a sense of loss. He misses Renjun immediately, even though they’ve seen each other almost everyday for months now. They’ll see each other in an hour, tops.

Even so, it’s getting harder and harder to face the mornings. To leave the place he has the one thing he cannot have anywhere else.

🌌

There’s another set of flights. Departure, arrival, and then they’re pulling up to the grand entryway of a beautiful hotel. 

Jisung can’t find it in him to really appreciate any of it, besides that the air conditioned lobby is a blissful reprieve from the summer humidity. As they get closer to the front desk, the tenseness in him only grows.

He’s supposed to room with Chenle for the next three nights. It’s Jeno and Jaemin, Mark with their manager, and—

Off to the side, Donghyuck and Renjun bicker playfully together. Their conversation is free, easy, and unabashed. Renjun smacks Donghyuck in the shoulder for something. Donghyuck clutches it and laments that he’s mortally wounded.

Jisung loves Donghyuck as much as he loves anyone else in Dream. That will never change. 

Sometimes, though, it’s hard to see anything but how fundamentally different they are. 

Donghyuck, who says what he wants, does what he pleases, and trusts his own intuition. Jisung, who can’t do any of that. Jisung, who looks at Renjun and thinks about all the things he wants to say and ends up running away about it instead.

Jisung’s grip tightens on his backpack strap. Before he knows what’s happening, he’s walking over to Donghyuck and tugging him away by the arm.

“Hey!” he says as he stumbles after Jisung. “Wha—”

“Switch rooms with me.”

“What?”

“Switch rooms with me.” Jisung repeats. He claps his hands together and bows his head, like a prayer. “Please. Hyung. Come on.”

Donghyuck huffs. “Tell me why first. I need a good reason if I’m going to let you have Renjun all to yourself.”

Jisung’s mind races. Donghyuck’s the one he needs to answer, but his gaze drifts automatically to Renjun, who is watching them curiously. “I…”

He hesitates. He didn’t think this through. Wasn’t he trying to avoid Renjun? When was the last time he was even alone with him? What if things are awkward now? What if this just makes it worse?

“Okay, fine,” Donghyuck says, startling Jisung back into reality. Donghyuck’s expression is fairly neutral, but his eyes bore into Jisung. He looks at Jisung like he can see right through him. “I’ll switch. But you only get two nights. And you owe me.”

“Wait—I—”

Donghyuck gets an arm around his shoulder and steers them back towards Renjun.

“Welcome back,” Renjun quips, an eyebrow raised. “Either of you going to tell me what that was about?”

Donghyuck just grins, and steps aside to present Jisung the way a host would introduce a game show contestant to the audience. “I’m pleased to inform you that our darling Jisungie is going to be your new roommate.” 

“Ah?”

“Don’t miss me too much,” Donghyuck says, already sauntering away towards the others. “I’ll come back for you, my love.”

Renjun makes sure Donghyuck hears him gag before rolling his eyes. When he looks up at Jisung though, his face softens. “I’m curious. Why’d you want to switch?”

Jisung’s first instinct is to say no reason, but before he can listen to it, the truth comes out instead.

“I don’t know. Guess I just missed rooming with you,” he says. He tries to sound casual, but the nonchalance is probably not very convincing if the way his ears burn is any indication. Curse the residual Donghyuck energy in the air, making him do things like openly expressing his feelings.

Renjun smiles a small smile anyways. “You know what? I did too.”

🌌

Their room is nice. There are two queen sized beds, each made up with more decorative pillows that Jisung has ever seen at one time. A flatscreen TV, flanked by two large pieces of abstract art, is mounted above an entertainment console. Off to the side, in front of the windows, are a daybed and a large ornate loveseat.

More than any material luxury, though, is the comfort that Renjun brings. Neither of them say much, exhausted from the day’s travel, but Jisung thinks they don’t need to. It’s not at all awkward, as Jisung had feared. Their quiet is soft and warm—as easy his and Donghyuck’s noise had been. Renjun is humming that same melody, that same song, as he unpacks the essentials.

This means they’re okay. They’re good. Everything is back to as it was. 

Jisung tapes down his metaphorical boxes one more time to be sure, and pushes them as far back under his metaphorical bed as they will go. 

He doesn’t need them.

🌌

Jisung is already half asleep in his bed when he hears Renjun get out from the bathroom. Still, he manages to mumble a “Good night, hyung.” It’s what they do.

A few moments later, there’s the lightest of pats on the top of his head. It feels really nice. Jisung chases it upwards.

“Good night, Jisungie.”

Jisung’s eyes are closed, but he likes to think he can hear the smile in Renjun’s voice.

🌌

(Weight. This is the first thing that Jisung feels. It is alive, pressed against him, not like it has to be, but because it wants to be.

Heat. This is the second thing that Jisung feels. Draped over his shoulders, along his chest, down, down, down—

Jisung stiffens. Every muscle kicks like he’s doing a full-body pop. Renjun whines into his neck, quiet and trembling.

This is a dream. Jisung doesn’t need his hands this time to tell. He chains them instead to the arms of the loveseat they’re sitting on, digs in like it will save him.

Around them, the hotel room opens up to the glittering night. The walls bleed into glass bleed into the sky, an atrium floating amongst the clouds. Everything blooms and twists with wildflowers—all of which move as one, as if they’re breathing. The air smells of jasmine and honeysuckle.

And even if they were somewhere completely mundane, Jisung would still know, because this would never happen if they were awake. Everything else, up to a point, had been within the realm of what real-Renjun and real-Jisung would do.

Renjun makes another wounded sound and shifts minutely, back, then forth. Every nerve in Jisung’s body immediately frays apart, exposed like an open wire. They scream at him to do something, anything, but he won’t. He won’t. He won’t.

Not with Renjun in his arms, sheathed tight around his cock. He is drowning in a shirt he’s stolen out of Jisung’s luggage, bare legs folded on either side Jisung’s hips. There is a flash of silver as Renjun starts to squirm—the frame of his glasses winking in the hazy light.

Jisung’s ears ring. His head is stuffed with static noise. He can’t tell if he’s going to pass out or pass away. He thought—he thought they were done with this. He was supposed to be good. He was supposed to be okay. He was supposed to be moving on. 

(Will he ever be able to move on?)

He should tell Renjun now. Wake himself up. There’s no way he can do this again. No way he can lose Renjun to the daylight, keep falling and falling and crash-landing at terminal velocity every time he wakes up.

But how, he thinks, as his hands come up against his will to drag up Renjun’s thighs, dimpling where his fingers press in. He feels crazed. Deranged.

How can he give it up? How can he not want this—Renjun wanting him, taking him, his skin feverish and silken. 

Is falling not just flying before you hit the ground? Can he not just pretend?

“Jisung,” Renjun pleads, and without warning, clenches and grinds down hard.

It is an involuntary response, action and reaction. Jisung bucks up into Renjun uncontrollably. Renjun lets out a noise that is going to haunt Jisung for the rest of his life and collapses into him.

“I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

His words shatter into the heated air between them when Renjun lifts himself up and then comes crashing back down. The air leaves Jisung’s lungs all at once. His hands fly to Renjun’s hips to keep him still.

“Hyung,” Jisung pleads, strangled. “Hyung—”

“Why did you apologize?”

Jisung can’t see Renjun’s face the way it’s pressed into his shoulder, but he can feel the way his glasses dig into his skin. Renjun rotates his hips in a tight circle and grinds down again. It tears a moan out of both of them. 

“Do it again,” Renjun says. “I liked it.” 

Jisung’s dick twitches where it’s buried in Renjun. He burns.

Renjun draws away slightly, leans back so he can look at Jisung properly. His eyes are both glazed over and hungry, both predator and prey, ocean whirlpool beneath sheer ice.

“I said I liked it. Did you not?”

Jisung did and Jisung does but it’s torture all the same. None of it makes any sense.

He can’t have Renjun and he can’t let him go. Jisung has tried so hard in both directions, and he still fails every time. 

Jisung inhales sharply. On top of him, Renjun has gotten impatient, has started rocking his hips. Jisung’s grip on his sides turn bruising. It feels so good and it feels so bad that he can’t tell if this is a cruel kind of sweetness or a sweet kind of cruelty.

“Do you not?” Renjun asks again, teeth grit around a moan, panting as he picks up the pace, starting to ride Jisung properly. Jisung’s eyes roll into the back of his head. He jerks up again, thrusts into him hard. The flowers around them writhe and bloom. The scent gets thicker. The stars turn in their places. The entire sky moves.

“I do. I do,” Jisung chokes out, snapping his hips upwards. He doesn’t even know if Renjun is listening anymore, the way he fucks himself back onto Jisung, reduced to a string of ah-ah-ah, freshwater pearls on a thread. It is impossible for Jisung not to meet him, not when Renjun melts the way he does, his own cock hard and drooling between them. 

The pressure builds and it is absolutely overwhelming, but this time, Jisung feels it in his head first. Behind his eyes, more than anything else.

“I do,” Jisung repeats. “I do but—why, hyung?” he asks, and if it sounds desperate and petulant, maybe that’s because it is. His vision blurs. “Why—why does it have to be like this? Why does it have to be here?”

Jisung’s voice finally breaks on that radioactive mass of hurt and want that has been sitting under his bed for so long that it has poisoned him. “Why only here?”

Jisung slows to a halt. He wants, but he can’t do this anymore. He can’t live with only half of Renjun, the part that exists only at night and in their heads. Jisung wraps his arms around Renjun and presses him close. When the sun rises, he will have to let go.

Renjun stops moving too, realizing something is wrong. “Jisung?” he asks.

“What did you mean by here?” Renjun tries again. His tone shifts into something softer, gentler, concerned.

“Jisung…” Renjun says, taking his face in his hands and turning it up ever so slightly, so Jisung has no choice but to look at him. “Here?”

Jisung’s chest tightens. “Here, hyung.” His throat closes. “Why only here?”

“Here,” Renjun echoes quietly, thumb tracing a track of wetness down Jisung’s cheek.

“Here,” Renjun suddenly says, eyes widening in alarm. “Jisung,” he says, as if he is just seeing, recognizing Jisung for the first time. “Jisung!”

Electricity arcs across the sky above them. The atrium explodes.)

Jisung wakes up.

🌌

Jisung likes Renjun. Jisung loves Renjun.

Jisung puts this in (boxes in (boxes in (boxes))) and it does not work.

Jisung holds in his hands, after they have burned through all the layers in between, a pair of facts that are, and have always been, completely uncontainable.

🌌

Thankfully, there’s another concert to give the next day. Another stadium full of cheering fans to focus on. They are busy. He is busy. It can’t be running away if it’s his job, right?

When he’s on stage, he forgets everything. It’s when he is off stage that is the problem. 

As he sits in a van with Mark, Chenle, and their manager on the way back to the hotel, he wishes he didn’t have to return to being Jisung the person, because Jisung the idol is good at what he does. Jisung the idol doesn’t have to think about how he is ever going to face Renjun again.

🌌

“So.”

“So,” Chenle drawls.

“Yeah.”

“So you can’t stop dreaming of Renjun and creaming your pants because of it.”

Jisung groans and buries his head in his hands. “That’s not what I said.”

“But that’s what you meant,” Chenle shoots back. He sighs. “Just tell him, man. What are you gonna do? Keep waddling to the bathroom every time you wake up? Wash your sheets on the daily? You’re never going to get past this if you don’t.”

“Seriously, why do you have to put it like that?”

Chenle shrugs, leans back into the mountain of pillows piled up near his headboard, and throws an arm over his eyes. “I just call it like I see it.”

If only it were that simple. There are a million what-ifs swirling in Jisung’s head, and from what he can see, they all end badly. 

The loudest one, though, is relentless—he understands now why it’s cliche, why everyone in romance movies is saying it all the time. The worry is loud, but it comes out small, timid. “But…what if I lose him?”

“You won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“You won’t,” Chenle says more firmly. “Renjun loves you—all of us—too much to let that happen.” He wiggles his free hand in Jisung’s direction, the ring on his finger shiny and bright. “You know how he is. We’re practically already married to him.”

Jisung fiddles with his own ring, twisting it around a couple times. 

“And be real, aren’t you losing him like this anyways?”

Ouch. It’s not that Jisung doesn’t logically understand everything that Chenle is saying—he does. Understanding, however, doesn’t make it easier. It doesn’t make him braver. It doesn’t make him any less scared.

Chenle lets hand fall back to the bed with a muffled thump. “I get it, though. It’s hard.”

Jisung sighs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

🌌

Jisung eventually gets kicked out. You can’t hide forever, is all Chenle says before he unceremoniously slams the door in his face.

It’s a long, arduous walk back to his and Renjun’s room; Jisung paces in front of it until he can’t put it off anymore. 

He takes a deep breath to brace himself and walks in. He dies instantly.

Metaphorically, sure, but he doesn’t think he’s that far off from the literal sense either. The immediate spike of dread that drives up through his stomach into his heart feels pretty lethal. That moment you find out you’ve made some catastrophic, irredeemable mistake—that the button you pressed by accident starts the end of the world.

This catastrophe is sitting in a very particular loveseat in a very particular corner of the room. He is draped in a very particular shirt pilfered from Jisung’s luggage and wearing a very particular pair of silver-framed glasses. For one suffocating moment, Jisung thinks his legs are completely bare before he glimpses of a pair of black shorts peeking out from beneath the hem. Renjun’s stare is unrelenting. Jisung has to tear himself away from it to breathe.

Hands. Hands, Jisung forces himself to think. He jerks them out in front of him, flips them back, forth, back, forth. 

(Renjun’s hips shift back, forth—)

Clear. Clear, clear, clear.

Then why—

Renjun stands up in one hard motion.

Jisung has no fight instinct, only ever flight or flight, but the question now is whether it should be towards or away from Renjun. 

Renjun answers for him and closes the distance in two cutting strides. Jisung has nowhere left to go. His back flattens against the door.

Relentless stare, whirlpool gravity—the apocalypse has arrived. 

Renjun reaches forward. 

Watches Jisung’s reaction. 

Studies him, takes him in, takes him apart, observes the way he flinches and folds in on himself, and then simply…stops. His arm falls back to his side.

A test, Jisung realizes, and one he’s just failed. Hypothesis, experiment, data. Renjun draws his conclusion. Jisung would’ve never reacted like that to this had he not been where he was last night. 

As quickly as it started, it ends. Renjun puts a neutral, respectable amount of space back between them.

“I’m going to bed,” he says and does exactly that. Gets under stiff covers without another word and turns on his side, away from Jisung.

The air turns cold.

Foreign country, foreign language, foreign everything. Renjun is here, but for the first time, none of this feels like home. 

Jisung stays motionless where he is for too long. If there had been no concert to perform tomorrow, no fans to let down, maybe he would’ve stayed there forever. A belonging that’s left behind and never retrieved, something that was someone’s before it rolled away beneath the bed to collect dust for the rest of eternity. 

But there is a concert and unless something big has happened on Twitter, there are still fans, so Jisung turns the lights in the main room off and steps into the bathroom to shower and brush his teeth. He doesn’t have a single thought throughout the whole process. It’s not that he isn’t thinking; it’s just that it all cancels out, destructive interference. For him, the end of the world comes quietly.

When he’s done, he gets into his own too-stiff, too-starched bed and waits for the extreme bodily exhaustion to take over and shut him down. It is the only way he can fall asleep these days. Yellow light seeps in from the always-lit corridors. Muffled conversations passthrough the walls.

“I’m sorry,” Jisung hears, right before his eyes finally close. “I didn’t know.”

🌌

(Jisung wakes up into their room at home, sitting on the edge of his bed. The atmosphere is soft, comforting, if a bit melancholic. It is raining outside. The ceiling lights are off in favor of their bedside lamps. There is a Chinese song filtering from somewhere—one that Jisung doesn’t know the words or meaning to, but has heard Renjun sing or leave in the background on occasion. 

It’s all a little hazy: the light, the colors, the quality of the lines and edges, what happened before this. It feels like a dream, and for once, in the traditional way. Ephemeral. Fleeting. The world drifts, cloud-like, beneath his hands and feet.

And across the room, in much the same position Jisung had left him in the hotel, curled up into the wall, is Renjun.

Jisung does what he did not earlier and makes his way over. Each step is as if he is floating, until he is laying quietly at Renjun’s side. It’d be hard to tell that Renjun was even there underneath the mound of blankets if not for the warmth he gives off.

“Hyung?” he tries. “You…you alright?”

He doesn’t exactly expect a response, but it still kind of hurts when he doesn’t get one. This is not Jisung’s forte. This is not something he’s good at. It’s always been Renjun reaching out to him to help untangle his knotted thoughts.

Jisung supposes that’s part of the problem. In the waking world, they slip into the same roles that had formed around them so many years ago. It’s hard to break the mold when what they have is safe and good and all they have ever known. When Jisung searches for the right words, he comes up with nothing.

But, he thinks, reaching out hesitantly, maybe he can at least do this. 

He sets his hand on Renjun’s shoulder. Begins to pat it in a quiet, steady rhythm. One that melds into the patter of the rain, into the bassline of that song that Jisung realizes is now playing on repeat.

It is a bit melancholic, but it’s also soft and comforting and for better or for worse, Renjun’s presence—his warmth and his scent—always makes Jisung melt a little. Even asleep, Jisung is tired. Tired of being scared, tired of fighting himself down every time Renjun laughs or smiles at him and then again when Renjun laughs or smiles at someone who is not him.

He lets his eyes close. He feels his pulse slow. He feels Renjun’s slow too. 

It’s nice, in a way. To know that when their heads don’t quite align, their hearts still do.

“I’m sorry,” Jisung hears again. Renjun’s voice is thick—with tears or shame or embarrassment or something else entirely, it’s hard to tell for sure. The blankets twist like he’s tightening his grip on them. “I really didn’t know.”

Jisung keeps patting. Triplets, a cadence of threes within threes.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

“It’s okay.” Jisung says it for Renjun, but he wants to believe it so badly himself that it might really be for both of them. “It’s okay, hyung. It’s okay.”

“I didn’t even think it was possible.” Renjun murmurs, long and drawn out. Defeated. “Part of me still doesn’t think it’s possible. But here you are again.”

The dream blurs momentarily, then lapses slowly back into focus, like it is sighing too.

Jisung keeps patting. There are so many things he should say.

Jisung keeps patting. Their breathing evens out.

Jisung keeps patting. They’re both asleep.)

🌌

((Jisung wakes back up to their hotel room. It’s dark outside. The overhead lights are on.

Jisung blinks at them. He could’ve sworn he turned them off earlier.

Renjun shifts, hand coming up unconsciously to curl in the loose fabric of Jisung’s sleep shirt.

Jisung blinks at him too. He could’ve sworn Renjun had gone to sleep in his own bed. He could’ve sworn that there was another bed when they first got here, instead of the one king-size they’re laying on now.

Not that Jisung minds. Things are cozier this way, like the world itself is smaller. Just their warm, well-lit room, and the two of them wrapped up together in the night.

There is a song playing from somewhere—one that Jisung can’t name, but knows. He looks around for the source. A speaker, maybe, or Renjun’s phone. He doesn’t find it. There’s not a lot in the room. Their bed. A lounge chair in the corner. Two pieces of art on the wall: a set of blue, blocky abstract paintings hanging on either side of an analog clock.

“Jisung?”

Jisung turns. Renjun is sitting up now, eyes big and bright.

“Good morning, hyung.” It is not morning, but Jisung says it anyways. He wants to. To get to wake up next to Renjun and be the first to see him and talk to him and welcome him to each new day.

The lighting changes, brightens to a daytime white. A perfect cerulean sky floods in through the window.

Jisung glances back over to the clock, right next to a large photograph of northern lights over a winter landscape. “Oh. Hyung, we’re going to be late.” He takes Renjun’s hand, small and warm within his, and stands up. “We should head out.”

Renjun seems surprised. He doesn’t get on his feet to follow Jisung, though he doesn’t let go either. Wonder and amusement bleed into each other across his face, mixing like watercolor. Jisung isn’t sure why. Did he say something?

Carefully, Renjun asks, “Late to what, Jisung?”

Huh. Jisung pauses. Thinks. That’s a good question. It was definitely something important. Something to do with Renjun and him.

A flash of silver. A ring that Jisung twists it around his finger. Renjun loves you, someone tells him. You’re practically already married. 

It comes back.

“Our wedding,” Jisung tells Renjun, tugging Renjun up. He smooths down his suit pants with his other hand. “We can’t be late to our own wedding.”

Renjun looks at him incredulously for a moment before bursting into laughter. Jisung smiles, because he likes when Renjun is happy, even though he’s pretty sure he wasn’t trying to be funny. But Renjun laughs loud and he laughs hard, eyes squishing all the way shut.

When they open again, Jisung thinks he must’ve been right regardless. Renjun must love him in some capacity if he’s looking up at him like this.

Still, they’re really going to be late if they don’t get a move on. Another look at the clock says they’ve already lost another couple hours since—

Jisung frowns, eyes catching on the big charcoal portrait of Renjun off to the side. That’s strange. He feels like he would’ve noticed that before. 

“Hyung,” he says, pointing to it. “Has…has this always been here?”

Renjun is definitely biting back another laugh. When he says, “Not quite.” His tone is so fond that it nearly pins him to the ground, heavy and sunshine-sweet.

It crosses his mind that Renjun might be playing a prank on him, but there is something about this all that feels kind of familiar, and in an odd sort of way. Like a phantom urge to check something, but he can’t remember what. That he turned off the stove? That he has his wallet?

“Jisung,” Renjun says. “Can you look at your hands for me?”

Jisung’s first thought is why, but his second thought is okay, because he’ll do anything if it’s Renjun asking. Jisung brings up his left hand, still interlocked with Renjun’s right. Jisung likes the sight of them together, even though it’s kind of blurry at first glance. He should probably have their manager make him an appointment and get that checked. He tells Renjun as much while he rubs his eyes. The haze goes away.

This time, Renjun really does laugh again. “Maybe try your other one?” 

“Okay.” Jisung says, bringing his right hand out. And, well…it’s certainly his hand. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to be looking for. “Is there something I should see?” He flips it over in case Renjun meant the backside and oh—

He’s waking up all over again. A dream. He’s dreaming and—

“Good morning, Jisung.” Renjun says wryly.

And Renjun’s here too.

They are silent in the aftershock. Renjun is waiting for Jisung’s reaction. Jisung is waiting for his brain to produce an appropriate one.

All he gets though, is the urge to lean forward and poke Renjun in the shoulder, so Jisung does. He’s solid. Stable. “Hyung. Is that really you?”

The corners of Renjun’s mouth quirk upwards. He nods.

“Oh,” Jisung breathes out. “I…didn’t know that could happen.” And they’re still holding hands, Jisung realizes with a start. He abruptly lets go. Misses the way Renjun’s expression changes when he does.

“Sorry,” he stammers, struggling through the humiliation. What was he even talking about? Marriage? Their wedding? “It’s—I’m not used to this. Which, like, sounds crazy, but sometimes, I’ll wake up in other people’s dreams. Instead of, you know, this. The other way around.” It comes out rushed, panicked, smashed together. A confession that leaves him all at once because his body physically couldn’t take holding onto it any longer.

 Renjun looks away, ears flushing. 

“Not that I try to!” Jisung yelps, waving his hands frantically. “I don’t, I swear. It just…happens. Ever since I was young. I can’t control it.”

“Yeah,” Renjun says, not quite meeting Jisung’s eyes. His expression is inscrutable. “This”—Renjun gestures to everything around him—“is all new to me too.”

He hesitates. 

In his mouth is the weight of something irrevocable. Jisung feels it pressing on him as if it were his own.

But between the two of them, Renjun has always been braver. When he stands at the cliff’s edge, the sea miles and miles below, wave crests breaking white, he opens his arms and splays his fingers out so he can feel the wind through them. He is also scared of falling, but he wants to know what it’s like to fly more. 

“I can though,” he says. “Control things, I mean. Not here, I don’t think. But I can control my own dreams.”

Renjun steps off the side. Releases it and crushes the breath of Jisung’s lungs. His stomach turns. It’s vertigo and motion sickness and altitude sickness and all the sicknesses. The ground disappears below his feet.

Renjun can choose to dream of anything and he chose to dream of Jisung.

When Renjun speaks again, there is a touch of bitterness in his words, salt in the ocean air where Jisung should’ve been. The levity from earlier is gone. “I’m sorry, Jisung. I never would’ve done all that if I’d known you could end up in them.”

Outside the window, blue sky, white clouds. Inside his head, violent storm of thoughts. Jisung latches onto the closest one, the easiest one, just to have something to say. 

“I’m sorry too. I should’ve told you.”

Renjun laces his fingers together in his lap, wrings them together. Jisung wishes that he were still holding them instead. He shouldn’t have let go.

“Why didn’t you though?” Renjun’s voice is raw, strained now. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Time is weird in dreams. They watch the sun go down and come back up again.

“I didn’t know how,” Jisung finally says. Two layers out from reality, inside his head, inside Renjun’s head, and he is still scared. Renjun has already taken the first step for them, given him his word, and he is still scared. 

“Ah,” Renjun says. Flat, empty, hollow. It’s what he deserves.

It’s because I like you. It’s because I like you too much. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want it to stop. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t say anything because I was—am—too scared. 

I’m sorry.

“Can you teach me?” Jisung asks instead. It’s not what he should say, but it’s all that will come out. He is afraid if he stops talking to Renjun now, he will never be able to again. He has to start somewhere. He has to start. He swallows around the lump in his throat. Says, “Can you teach me to control my dreams?”

There is a rustle as Renjun shifts on the bed. It’s followed by a long, heavy silence.

“Well, I think most of it comes down to realizing that you’re dreaming in the first place,” he says after a while. “So you’re basically already there.” Renjun points at Jisung’s hands. “That trick where you check them? I do something similar. I count my fingers, and if I find it’s hard to get the right answer, then, you know. Probably dreaming.”

Jisung brings them out and flips them over for good measure. It is kind of hard to make out ten when they all blur into one another. 

“And then?”

“I don’t know really. For me, I start imagining what I want to do or see and it just sort of happens. It took some practice before I could get things super clear, but that’s about it.”

“Why?” Renjun asks. He’s cautious. Wary. “What did you want to do?”

There are lots of things Jisung would like to do. Most of them, he does not have the courage to say aloud.

“I’d like to see the stars,” he replies, finally looking back at Renjun. I’d like to see them with you.

Day turns to evening. Pink, purple, orange. Renjun’s face takes on the colors of changing sky. It reminds him of that first dream they had together. Jisung wonders if that’s his doing or Renjun’s. Jisung wonders if Renjun understands.

Renjun makes a contemplative noise. “Then I guess I would start by—oh—whoa—”

The ceiling disappears. Night spills out above them in its place, heavy ink across heavy paper. Stars fill the expanse, thousands, millions, more than Jisung has seen or even thought possible. Like every single one from the universe over had decided to meet here today. There are so many that the air itself glitters. He worries if inhales in too hard, he might accidentally breathe a couple of them in. Black turns to silvered indigo.

Jisung stares in amazement. “Wow,” Renjun breathes out, materializing beside him.

When they look at each other again, Jisung can see, literally, the heavens reflected in Renjun’s eyes. The same must be true for Renjun. A sense of wonder blooms between them, sunburst inside Jisung’s chest.

At the core of it is an old, familiar feeling. In the real world, on the very rare occasions that Seoul is clear enough and they haven’t already collapsed out of exhaustion, he and Renjun will trade out their ceiling for the real deal. Steal away to the rooftop of their building to catch a glimpse of the stars setting down over the city.

On those nights, Renjun is almost invariably wrapped in a blanket, smiling as he tells Jisung stories of his grandmother telling him stories of the great beasts that officiate the night sky. 

Jisung knows them now by their western names too—Aries and Pisces and Pegasus and Perseus—but he knew them as the Azure Dragon of the East and the Vermillion Bird of the South first.

He can see them now. It should be impossible to pick them out of the sheer number of others, but somehow, he knows exactly where to look. They shift together as if they were alive. Black Tortoise of the North, White Tiger of the West. The entire sky turns on an axis, constellations rising and falling with the season. Summer, fall, winter. Then spring back into summer and the cycle begins anew.

“Hyung,” Jisung says. He is awestruck, reverent. “This is incredible.”

Renjun sounds equally as entranced. He is beautiful in the starlight, dusted in its glow. “I don’t think it’s all me. I didn’t picture it like this, not exactly.” He pauses. “And this is your dream, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” One level up is a room in the rain, a soft song playing through the walls. It feels so distant. “But it’s inside of yours.”

Their lines of sight click together again. An action small enough that it’s happened some indefinite, infinite number of times, rising ever since they met and the thought that Renjun was pretty for a boy had first pinged around his head. 

Xingxing, Renjun had decided to call him not long after that. Little star. Renjun thinks it’s cute, and Jisung goes along with it instantly, because it makes him go a bit gooey in the head and in the heart when he hears it carried on the melody of Renjun's voice.

Jisung thinks about that now, to all those fan comments he’s seen of Renjun, how much they like to say that he holds stars in eyes. If only they could see him now. If only they knew he did not merely have the stars, but that he was them. And how lovely it is to be looked upon by a star and have him think of you as one too.

Jisung stretches his arm upwards. In another world, it would be towards Renjun, but this is close enough. “They’re so big. It’s almost like I can touch them—”

The dream shifts and folds like a paper crane.

He and Renjun go from standing beside each other to laying down side-by-side. The universe expands, blows up a thousand-fold to meet them. Galaxies that were a previously insurmountable distance away now hover a hairs-breadth from the the tips of their noses.

Renjun gasps. Jisung stops breathing entirely. 

Water, Jisung thinks. It’s as if the sky has turned into an endless lake—they stare into the glass surface of still water, all the planets and celestial bodies suspended in the depths beyond. It is beyond beautiful.

“Incredible,” Renjun murmurs, raising his hand towards that liquid boundary. “Oh!” he exclaims. The darkness ripples outwards, everything on the other side temporarily distorted. When he pulls back his finger, it's as black as the space around them, coated in it, iridescent oil-glazed.

Jisung laughs in delight and reaches out. His hand makes contact. Slips through. It’s cool on his skin, feels like moving through something pure and abyssal. An ocean chasm that has not been touched since it formed billions of years ago. Jisung keeps going, as far as he can. 

There’s a particular star that he wants. Stretch, reach—he manages to cup it in his palm. 

When he pulls it back, like Renjun with his finger, he wears the universe on his arm. His skin swirls with a collection of nebulae. 

He hands the star—Sirius, the brightest in the night sky—to Renjun, the brightest in his sky. It’s given like a promise. It’s taken like an oath. The remnants of space that Jisung had taken with him run down over their fingers and wrists.

And Jisung—Jisung is usually not brave or brash or bold—not one to make the impulsive decisions, but here, as the darkness deconstructs him, he finds it easier to not have to hold himself back from what he wants.

He plunges upwards into the water, that ocean abyss, holding his breath, eyes shut tight on instinct. 

But then—gravity reverses. Everything turns upside down, or maybe it simply becomes right-side up, and he opens his eyes again. He thinks this might be human instinct too, to want to see and feel and fall, to be curious and wondrous and excited in the face of the unknown.

He inhales experimentally. It doesn’t hurt. It feels good. He doesn’t have to think about it all. 

Jisung breathes and it is like taking first breath, being reborn. It is realizing all this time before, that he was not fully alive.

And he sees Renjun there, on the other side of that impossible boundary, eyes so, so bright, a growing smile on his face. Full-hearted and earnest his wonder. 

Jisung heart twists and his stomach flips with everything he suddenly wants to say. This is not his forte, not his strength.

But what Jisung can do instead is this: he can keep Renjun company when he’s upset—lay down next to him on his bed, tell him it’s okay as many times as he needs to hear, and pat him on the shoulder until they both fall asleep. He can notice when Renjun perks up and says it’s good!  when he tries a cheeseball from that new fried chicken restaurant and quietly add it to every order they place from there after that. He can let Renjun hug him and tackle him and pull on his cheeks whenever he pleases, even if it’s inconvenient, even if it makes his face kind of sore afterwards, because the way Renjun laughs when he does it will always be worth it. 

Jisung can do this: he reaches out a blurry hand, one that now contains black holes, asteroid belts, planetary systems and all their moons, and offer it to him.

And when Renjun takes it like he’s been waiting lifetimes for Jisung to ask, Jisung can laugh, grin, hold him tight, and pull, pull, pull. 

They float there for a moment afterwards, suspended in that deep, cool space. He feels nothing but where he holds Renjun. He sees nothing of their original bodies. Where do they begin? Where does the universe end?

These questions are irrelevant, because they are one and the same. They are part of it. No more. No less. The universe doesn’t need to justify its existence; it simply does.

Somewhere, on a far, far away blue and green little planet, Jisung had danced so much that it became how he expressed everything. In the times when words could not come, he would speak in the movement of his body to a rhythm. 

He squeezes Renjun’s hand, wherever it is, whatever it is made of, to the beat. In triplets, a cadence of threes.

I’m sorry.

I was scared,

To say that,

It’s because,

I like you.

I like you. 

I like you.

Until they fall asleep once more.))

🌌

(((Jisung awakens as a star and on the other side of the universe, Renjun does too. They are light and fire and nuclear fusion. Jisung has no mouth, but he still has something to say. Once he had held onto it, radioactive, and let it poison him. Now, it is his core. What keeps him burning.

Maybe, if Jisung were not Jisung, he would have been able to say it out loud. Announce it to the world, shout it in the streets so everyone could hear. But Jisung is Jisung, and he thinks, as he reaches across distance unfathomable, one that will take his light billions and billions of years to cross, that this is okay. That courage can be soft, and courage can be quiet.

He does not need everyone to hear it. He does not need anyone except to Renjun to understand it. Sound doesn’t travel well in a vacuum anyways.

Jisung finds him, his hand, the place where their photons cross, and he takes it. He squeezes it three times, and tells him that it means this:

“I like you.”)))

🌌

((Jisung wakes up, floating in infinite space like cool water, the surface a thousand miles away. He feels nothing but Renjun’s hand, still in his, and he squeezes three times. And he says, shouts, as he swims in Renjun’s bright, silver-lined eyes, that it means this:

“Hyung! I like you!”))

🌌

(Jisung wakes up. They are side-by-side in Renjun’s bed. It is raining outside. There is a Chinese song playing through the walls. He pulls Renjun closer to him, buries his nose in his hair and finds his hand, warm and dry beneath the covers.

He squeezes three times and murmurs softly into his skin that it means this:

“I like you so much.”)

🌌

Jisung wakes up. Renjun is still asleep in his own bed on the other side of the room, facing away from Jisung.

For a moment, he can’t remember where he is.

What he does remember, though, is this: he lifts his hands in front of his eyes and flips them over. 

They stay clear. He can count all ten fingers. He is awake.

He clasps them together and squeezes three times, just to feel it.

Jisung smiles to himself.

He gets up and gets ready for the day.

🌌

Nothing much happens between him and Renjun for a while after that. Their reality comes at them fast, their schedule bursting. There is a rehearsal to get to, sound and lighting checks, makeup and hair, and then thousands of people to perform to. Time is weird in dreams, but sometimes it feels weirder in real life. He’s in a car, then wandering around the green room, then he blinks and he’s suddenly doing what he lives for.

The only thing louder than their music in his ears is the screaming that fills the air. He sings, raps, dance. He runs around stage and picks up bungeoppang plushies to put on his head and when the time is right, yells for everyone to make some noise! because he knows now that expressing that you love something, someone, tastes like freedom. 

And in between silently bickering with Chenle about their choreo in the middle of performing said choreo and blowing kisses to the audience followed by immediately regretting blowing kisses to said audience, he catches glimpses of Renjun. It is quick, and in the midst of so much joyous noise, it is quiet. Their lines of sight click together perfectly and Renjun’s eyes curve, and without saying a word, he tells Jisung I hear you. I understand.

It is a grand astronomic event, planetary alignment, one that makes Jisung feel like everything has changed. It is a mundane occurrence, that even with an endless array of cameras pointed at them, Jisung doesn’t think anyone will manage to capture it. 

And it is both, because though he continues on in his orbit and Renjun in his, he knows that they will inevitably meet again. Renjun will laugh and hug him and Jisung will laugh and let him while his heart pounds into his throat, because that is just what they do.

Jisung looks Renjun in the eyes for the infinity-plus-one’th time—glittering tonight not with stars, but an endless sea of neon green lights—and thinks, yeah, if anyone can truly be mated by the universe, it’s got to be them.

🌌

That night, after they’ve done their traditional post-concert live and come down from the adrenaline, they’re corralled into a couple vans and shuttled back to the hotel. Renjun is in the other car with Mark, Jeno, and Jaemin.

Which leaves him with—

“Hyung, come on, please,” Jisung says to Donghyuck. He’s not whining. He’s not. “One more night. I have something to talk to him about. It’s important.” 

Chenle giggles from his seat in the front. Jisung would lean over and elbow him or something if his hands weren’t occupied jiggling Donghyuck’s arm around to punctuate his mature, reasonable request. 

“Ay, Jisung Park,” Donghyuck complains. He throws his limbs out in exasperation. “I already said no. You literally room with him in like, two days!”

“It's three days—”

Donghyuck crosses his arms and sniffs. “That’s it then. I’m not sacrificing any more of my precious Renjunnie time—”

Jisung makes a face.

“—for you. And besides,” Donghyuck says, accusatory, swiveling around to point at Chenle. “You snore like a bear. Be honest, were you doing that on purpose? I swear it didn’t use to be that bad.”

Jisung can’t see him, but Chenle definitely rolls his eyes. “Sorry,” he drawls. “It’s just that I have so much extra talent in me that my body resorted to storing it in my sinuses.” 

He turns in his seat, completely deadpan, to stare Donghyuck down. “I guess you can’t relate.”

This is the verbal equivalent of setting off a stun grenade. A really absurd stun grenade. There is nothing but uncomprehending silence for the next few seconds.

Then Jisung bursts into laughter. Donghyuck just groans.

“Seriously, these kids.” He twists away dramatically to sulk into the car door.

With one hand, Jisung rubs him comfortingly on the thigh. He leans forward and discreetly fist bumps Chenle with the other.

“Hey! I can see that!”

🌌

Back at the hotel, Jisung stops by Donghyuck and Renjun’s room to pick up his stuff, only to find all of his luggage conveniently exiled to the hallway and Donghyuck standing in the doorway like a bouncer. 

“This is what you get for disrespecting your elders,” Donghyuck says, making a shooing motion. “Go away now.”

From inside the room, Renjun tiptoes and waves over Donghyuck’s shoulder. “Good night, Jisungie.”

Warmth unfurls in Jisung’s chest. “Good night, hyung,” he says to Renjun. “Not you,” he says preemptively to Donghyuck, right as he starts his don’t fraternize with the enemy! spiel to Renjun.

Jisung rolls his suitcases down the hall. He’s followed by the sound of offended scoffing and Renjun’s laughter the whole way there.

🌌

Jisung flops back into bed. Across from him, Chenle does a last scroll-through of his phone, face lit up blue in the darkness.

“So,” Chenle says, not bothering to look up from his screen.

Jisung already knows where this is going. It’s truly incredible how much smugness he can pack into a single syllable. “Yeah, yeah. You were right.”

Chenle clicks off his phone, tosses it on the nightstand between them and himself flat onto the center of his mattress, spread-eagle. “Ah,” he says loudly, like he’s just downed a particularly refreshing drink. “Music to my ears.”

Jisung throws one of his many extra pillows at him. “If only you’d take your own advice.”

Chenle chucks two of them right back. His aim is devastatingly accurate. Is that a side affect of the basketball? Do those skills transfer?

“Okay! I get it!” Jisung says when a third one hits him square in the face.

Jisung dumps the rest of the pillows onto the floor; Chenle lets out a snort and picks up his phone again to set an alarm for them both tomorrow morning.

Once Chenle has lapsed into (admittedly obnoxious) snoring, Jisung thinks about it more. He hadn’t noticed it before, but just like blurry hands and whirlpool currents, now that he has, it’s impossible not to. Jisung hadn’t said anything more after the ceasefire, and neither did Chenle, but they both knew that it was thanks and you’re welcome and good night anyways. 

Turns out, love takes on many forms. Courage comes in many kinds. He’s definitely not good at all of them, but that’s okay. He does what he can. He tries.

Jisung looks up at the ceiling and imagines that it disappears.

🌌

Jisung is jolted out of a deep, dreamless sleep by Chenle’s phone blaring at max volume.

They have exactly forty-five minutes before they need to leave for the airport. Jisung invariably spends the last fifteen of them panickedly searching for his passport while Chenle lounges around and does nothing but occasionally chime in with a reminder of how little time he has left. At some point, their manager and Mark show up to help him tear apart the room. Reinforcements.

Mark is on his hands and knees looking under the entertainment console and their manager is flinging back the heavy curtains when Jisung finds it.

“Wait where?” Mark asks. He’s still on the floor and slightly dusty from it. Their manager’s head whips over, fixing him with the most intense stare Jisung has ever seen.

Jisung feels himself shrivel up. He sort of wishes he actually did lose it, so he wouldn’t have to say what’s next.

Their manager takes a step forward. 

“My pocket,” Jisung yelps. “It was, um, in my pocket. Again. But the other one.”

“Nice,” Chenle says. “Two minutes to spare.” He gets up and wheels his suitcase out the door. 

🌌

Donghyuck immediately bursts into applause when Jisung gets into the car. Jisung ignores him the rest of the way to the airport. 

He daydreams instead about rolling down the window and throwing all of Donghyuck’s stuff out it.

🌌

“Hyung,” Jisung overhears Renjun say to Mark. The two are standing in front of him as they queue to board the plane. “Do you think we could switch seats for the flight?” 

Jisung’s heart skips a beat.

“Oh, um, yeah,” Mark says instantly, before he’s even had time to process the request. It’s probably because Renjun is looking up at him, eyes big and round, the way he does whenever he wants something. Jisung highly doubts Mark would’ve refused otherwise, but like this, it’s effectively impossible to. 

“Yeah. I guess,” Mark says again, once his brain has caught up. “We can do that.”

So when they finally shuffle in, Jisung finds himself lowering into the aisle seat next to Renjun. 

“Hi hyung,” he says. It’s simple. The way it’s always been.

Renjun turns from where he’d been observing the runway and smiles. He must’ve changed at some point. Jisung is pretty sure when they’d left, he’d been in a sweater and a pair of black slacks instead of his current hoodie and shorts. He looks cozy. A bit sleepy. He’s already got his headphones in. 

“Hi Jisung,” he says. It’s fond. It’s lovely. Renjun says it the way he always has, and it runs Jisung right over. The sun passes through the window and lands warm on the sides of their faces.

From a few rows back, Donghyuck voice rings loud and clear over the general chatter. “Seriously? You?”

Mark sighs a particularly long-suffering sigh. There’s a clatter that must be him shoving his suitcase into the overhead bin. “Just shut up, man.”

Renjun looks at Jisung and Jisung looks at Renjun. They share a smile.

🌌

A movie plays on Jisung’s seatback screen. There’s a cheap pair of earbuds plugged into it. Jisung wears the right, Renjun the left. They’re maybe halfway through and Jisung’s certain neither of them could say what it’s about.

Renjun has been nodding off since they started, if he isn’t completely asleep by now. Jisung has been distracted precisely because Renjun has been nodding off. His head leans heavy on Jisung’s shoulder; the rest of him presses into Jisung’s side. His warmth is exigent. Jisung has done little but think about it and watch the little ribbon with miscellaneous information scroll along the top.

Cruising altitude: thirty-nine thousand feet. Outside air temperature: -60 ° F.

Jisung reaches for Renjun’s hand where it’s folded up on his lap. Before he makes it all the way there, though, he hesitates. Pauses at that impossible, invisible boundary. He realizes now that it’s made of fear.

On the other side of it lie planets and nebulae and galaxies. On the other side lies the brightest star in the night sky. Him. Them.

Jisung breaks through. Jisung laces their fingers together.

He squeezes. Once. Twice. Thrice.

The engines keep rumbling. The movie keeps playing. A flight attendant starts asking the first couple rows about snacks and drinks. 

Jisung slips away.

Renjun does not let him get far. Renjun tightens where Jisung had loosened. Renjun holds him firm. 

Renjun squeezes back.

Once. Twice. Thrice.

The engines keep rumbling. The movie keeps playing. The flight attendant gets to Jisung and asks him if he wants anything. He takes a granola bar for himself and a pack of those cookies that Renjun likes so he can put it in his bag for later.

They are a long ways from the ground. It is sixty degrees below freezing outside.

But even though Jisung still can’t quite look down, and the windchill is colder than he ever thought possible—even though he is still scared of falling—he has done it.

They hold steady at cruising altitude. Renjun is warm.

🌌

The final notes of the concert hang in the air as they stumble off the stage, high off the rush of performance, the sweat drying on their faces. The stadium is still screaming their names. The roar of his pulse in his head is deafening.

In this moment, Jisung is invincible. He can do anything.

He catches Renjun by the shoulder and pulls him aside in the hallway and holds his hands tight as he tells him this:

“I’m sorry. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want it to stop and I didn’t know how to tell you that. I was so scared. I thought I would make things weird and lose you.”

Infinity plus one. Infinity plus two.

“Guys?” Mark calls out from ahead. “You coming?”

Renjun just smiles. Turning his head, he yells back, “We’re coming!”

🌌

Jisung is sprawled out on his bed, hair still damp from his own shower, when Renjun steps out from the bathroom.

The next few minutes are quiet. Renjun putters around, plugging in his phone, choosing his outfit for tomorrow, setting out and patting in his skincare. Jisung just tries to figure out how to say what he wants to say.

It’s not until Renjun flicked off the light and peeled back his own covers in preparation to get under them that Jisung finally manages to blurt out: “Hyung, do you want to sleep with me? I mean—not like that. Unless you want to. But I just meant, like, next to me. In the same bed. Or something.”

Which is objectively horrible, the way getting a dry chicken salad because you panicked when the waiter asked you what you wanted is horrible. But Renjun just laughs, quiet melody in the night, and diverts his course to Jisung’s bed instead. He crawls in. Tucks himself right against Jisung’s chest and racing heart.

“Sure, Jisung. I’d love to sleep with you. We can even do it in the same bed. Or something.”

“Hyung,” Jisung whines quietly, nuzzling into the top of Renjun’s head. He is perfect. “Don’t tease.”

Renjun just smiles and tilts his head back so he can place a peck on the underside of Jisung’s chin. “Good night, Jisung. See you in a bit.”

“Good night, hyung.”

🌌

(Jisung blinks. Renjun is asleep, tucked against the curve of his chest. All is quiet and still around him. 

At first, he thinks he has come back to after dozing off. But he has learned by now to pick up on the signs, even the ones that are less obvious.

It’s dark, but the colors remain more vivid than they ever have. The blues are bluer, the shadows deeper, the moonlight that filters in through where they didn’t close the blinds all the way like glitter in the air and molten silver where it cuts a swathe across the carpet. Time moves like a mist, diffuse and amorphous. Everything feels a little softer, a little sweeter. There is a whirlpool current pulling him in towards Renjun.

“Hi hyung,” Jisung murmurs.

Renjun shifts, tilts his head back again. This time, there’s no kiss. Only his eyes looking up at Jisung, impossibly bright.

“You’re early,” he says, a half-smile drawn across his lips. “I should’ve told you I’d see you tomorrow.”

Jisung shrugs the best he can with the weight of Renjun still on top of him, his own smile growing. “I couldn’t wait.”

“And for what, exactly?”

Jisung presses a soft kiss onto Renjun’s hair. “This.” Another one to his forehead. “And this.” His temple. “And this, probably.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Renjun laughs. “That tickles.”

Jisung doesn’t stop. He pulls himself upwards, repositions them so he can lean over Renjun and keep going. The corner of his eye. The bridge of his nose.

“Hyung,” Jisung breathes out. “I…”

Renjun looks up at him. Waiting, expectant. The half-smile has turned into a full grin, blinding, like he holds Sirius between his teeth.

Jisung swallows hard. Focuses his attention on the apple of his right cheek. The curve of his left.

And finally, his lips.

“I like you,” Jisung says against them. He can’t wait any longer. “Hyung, I like you.” Another kiss. “I like you so much.” Down his chin, and along the line of his jaw. “I like you so, so much.”

Renjun gets a hand around Jisung’s neck and pulls him in. When they break apart, considerably more out of breath, Renjun says, fire in his words and radioactive in his conviction, “I like you too.”)

🌌

Jisung wakes up to the sun streaming through that one gap in the curtains. Renjun has an arm thrown across him, wrapped around the width of Jisung’s chest. He is still fast asleep, and snoring lightly.

“Good morning, hyung,” Jisung whispers. He brushes a stray lock of hair away from his forehead. 

There is a stretch of silence as he weighs out the words, holding them in his mouth. Then he lets them go. 

He says, into the morning light, into Renjun’s warmth: “I like you.”

Simply because he can. Simply because it’s true. It’s finally here—no more layers of indirection, nothing else in between. It feels good to hear it.

Jisung can’t resist one more kiss to the top of Renjun’s head before he extricates himself. 

He’d stay longer, but, well, he kind of needs another shower. Renjun probably will too, when he wakes up. 

And the sheets…

Jisung resolutely turns towards the bathroom. That’s a problem for later.