Chapter Text
“We were dazzling – resplendent in the night’s sky. We lit up the city with our passion; every street was kindling for our fire. But the problem with stars is that they die in the end. And we were no exception.”
Those words, though repeated a thousand times, still taste dulcet on your tongue. They are delicate things, but they make you feel at ease – repeating the mantra till it throbs through you. This way you won’t forget what you are. It reminds you of the fleeting seconds you spent with him - Min Yoongi, your star boy, a sky away from you - it reminds you of the dalliance you had, great and glorious, it will repeat, it has to.
But you know better than to truly believe that. His star shining, defiant, on the other side of the dark-drenched sky, the star you’d dreamed of for a thousand years – his light is all but faded from existence now. He’s only a small speck on your horizon, and you’re disillusioned. If you could just reach out to him, with shining, shivering limbs, stretch your fingers towards the constellations that map his direction, and show that you’re more than this, would it be alright then?
Of course, you had known the dangers, known it would end this way. But when the moon had turned her smiling face upon you, called you from the deep indigo of night, and whispered, “My dearest star, how would you like to be human, just for one night?”, you had answered with fervour, “I want it. I want it.” But having a body was more difficult that you had realised. It made you vulnerable, able to bruise and to bleed. It allowed things like ‘love’ and ‘longing’ to circulate, heavy and desultory, through your veins. And worst of all, truly, it made you nothing more than dust, moulded into the shape of a person. One touch could break you, and blow you away on the wind.
Still, on that night, with your shining new body, firm and compact, you felt stronger than diamond. In the quiet street where you stood, gazing up at the empty space in the sky where you once sat, you could almost pretend you were human.
Along the street, you heard the moon whispering with the wind – “He’s here on Earth. The one you’ve been watching.” – so you stepped out on unpractised legs, and ran, following the faint trails of star dust and hydrogen atoms.
And there he was, sitting on the curb outside a closed café, still radiating flecks of light, which broke off from him and dispersed on gentle zephyrs.
“It’s you.” Not the best line to begin with, but it was all you had.
Startled, he whipped around to face you, body pulsing with light. Then he relaxed, and the light softened as he disassembled out of a star and into a person. Paler and duller and a lot more tangible. He left the street in darkness.
With his bright image still burned onto your retina, you reached out to him in blindness, and felt his hand fall into yours. That touch! The touch! What it was to be held onto, to be solid , to feel – the stimulations in every cell nuclei along your skin was almost too much. You almost snatched your hand back. But you held on, held closer and let yourself melt into him.
“I’ve waited a long time for this,” he whispered.
“Me too.”
And then, as your sight came back, as you adjusted to the dusk, you made out his eyes shimmering, just before he closed his lids, and leaned into you, pressing his lips flush with yours. And just like that you were under his dominion. His every movement rocked like a wave through your small, mortal body – you worried that you might just die on the spot. But you stayed alive, your heart kept pumping – quicker, quicker – and you began to return his movements, wondering if he felt the same way when you pushed your tongue against his, when your teeth scraped his bottom lip. All those years! All those years, burning away in the sky, providing light and little else – you had just been existing. This – this was living.
And when he parted from you, it broke you. But he only wanted a chance to breathe, and a chance to ask, “Shall we go somewhere more peaceful?” Suddenly aware of the taxis passing on the street, and of the stray cats watching from the rooftops, you nodded.
So he led you by the hand, past darkened windows and deathly still side-streets, scouring for somewhere where the two of you could hide away and exist together, and at the end of a disused alleyway, you managed to find a cheap hotel, and when you discovered that you needed to pay, he pulled out a few strands of his hair, and watched them turn back to stardust, shimmering on his fingertips, and the hotel owner gave you a funny look, but accepted it as payment, and showed you to your room.
In the damask of veiled street lights, your star boy poured himself out for you, deific and delicate, like liquid gold, and the two of you slipped back to the brink of your own existence – almost shattering into stars again, but the air in your lungs was hot and deathless and it kept you living, breathing, kept you human.
All night you kept this up, almost exploding to dust, dying a hundred deaths by his touch. You were deaf to the outside world, blind to the light that crept between the curtains and under the sheets.
As the dark sky drained away, descending into the light of dawn, your star boy whispered in your ear “We’re dazzling. We burnt up the city with our passion. But as we live and breathe now, we know all stars must die.”
And with his words still dancing on your eardrums, the first damnable rays of sun struck out across the bedsheets, and slowly, softly, you dissolved back to stardust. In the blinking of an eye, it was done, and you and your star boy were separate again, locked in place across the deep dark depths of space. Back to watching, and wondering what the two of you could have been, if only you weren’t star-crossed – you and your dazzling star, Min Yoongi.