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In front of Kun is a pastel landscape, made up of soft teal skies and calm lavender seas meeting on the horizon; white, luminescent sand and willowy purple trees. The reports didn't lie when they described the beaches of Planet QK-0209 as possibly the most pristine in the entire discovered universe.
All this breathtaking view and yet, Kun found it hard to look at anything else but the figure running past him at full speed from their ship to the shore.
Kun felt an easy smile stretch on his face as he watched Johnny send sparkling white sand flying when he skidded into a stop abruptly, just a step away from the licking waves. Johnny must have wanted to run into the clear, lavender-hued waters before realizing that he still had his complete uniform on. Kun laughed when Johnny turned to look at him approaching at a slower pace while zipping down his jacket.
“Well, there went my plan of immediately jumping into the sea as soon as we landed,” Johnny pouted, huffing dramatically. He met Kun halfway, a few meters from the wet sand.
“You should’ve planned it more carefully. We could redo it and I’ll even record it for you for the video log,” Kun offered, sitting down to properly fold his uniform and unlace his boots.
“Nah, you know I like my video logs unscripted and authentic,” Johnny said with a grin. He stood in front of Kun, looming tall and blocking the sun.
Kun sat in his shadow, smiling up at Johnny and folded his jacket for him, setting it beside his own on the sand. Johnny pulled off his boots easily because he never laced them properly these days, and Kun arranged them neatly beside his smaller ones too. Soon their trousers joined the neat pile, and Johnny bent down to pull Kun to his feet, dragging him to the water with a strong grip around his wrists. “Come on!”
Kun planted his feet into the sand. “Wait, wait, wait. You can go in the water first. I’ll grab the camera, okay?”
“Okay, whatever you want,” Johnny shrugged playfully, and Kun noticed the way Johnny uncurled his hands around his wrists slowly and took unhurried steps backwards, letting their palms and fingers brush until the distance separated them. Kun turned and ran back to their ship.
Kun shivered when the leftover coolness from the air-conditioned ship hit his bare legs and lower arms. The metal flooring was cold under his feet and he quickly tiptoed his way to the cabin where they kept most of their everyday necessities. Kun piled into his arms towels and sunblock before heading to the cockpit where Johnny’s camera was still plugged in its charger.
As he reached for the device, Kun’s eyes landed on one of the panels that showed the current date and time. Friday, 15 December, 4045; 10:30 AM local time. It suddenly hit him that it had been two years since the war ended; a year since he and Johnny decided to take the ship and explore the galaxy together. And they’d arrived at QK-0209, their sixth destination in their travel plans.
It hadn’t felt that long—while the years following the end of the war felt slow, bumping into Johnny in an arboretum in Neo Seoul a year ago felt like yesterday. Kun could still vividly remember Johnny in his civilian clothes—a simple white T-shirt, dark jeans, the long surgical scar on the inside of his left forearm. He had squinted at Kun from behind his thin-rimmed glasses before a look of amazement had taken over his face, and Kun had been pulled into a tight hug smelling of coffee and cherry blossoms.
Thinking back on it, Kun had been slightly surprised at how tight it was—how Johnny had wrapped his arms around him in a secure, warm hold. How it felt almost desperate, the way Johnny buried his face in Kun’s shoulder.
A year later, Kun still wondered why, but he never knew how to ask, because on that same day was when they both made the decision to take up the Forces’ offer of lending their Explorators for their soldiers to use.
"I think the Forces is going somewhere with this whole 'rediscovering yourself' thing. We get to fly again, too. And if we decide not to have anything to do with them by the end of it, they're letting us go. Nothing to lose, eh?" Johnny had said with a smile Kun couldn't fully understand. But he fully understood what Johnny was saying, and a sense of clarity had washed over him. It was like his thoughts–which had been all over the place but not at the same time, after the war–had finally clicked together, as if Johnny had been the missing piece all along.
It became clear that what Kun needed was a friend, a familiar presence willing to stay longer than a few stolen half-hours of catching up. Someone who wasn’t already moving forward, already on their next agenda. Ten was like that, despite everything they’d shared—the cockpit of their ship, each other’s beds—he was restless, ready to move again so soon. And Kun didn’t blame Ten for not having the patience to wait for him to figure his life out after the war, but it hurt, because the fact remained that he was left behind.
Johnny was easy to be around; Kun had known that he was outgoing, the type of person whose laughter came easy and echoed even in loud places. Kun remembered the way he always turned around to find the source of the voice in the academy cafeteria, and later, in the space stations where they happened to be based. It was admirable how Johnny almost always had a smile to spare each day, even when times were rough.
Still, experiencing Johnny’s seemingly boundless energy firsthand, and not from across a room, was new and sort of overwhelming at times. But despite that, Johnny had the same pace as Kun. Johnny’s enthusiasm wasn’t driving him to flit around, to busy himself—it was spent to live his life to the fullest each day, and Kun really appreciated that. He didn't mind when Kun took his time planning their trip, didn't rush him when Kun wanted to stay two, three more days in one place.
Thinking back on how their journey began made Kun realize the warmth that settled on his chest. A steady, calm feeling. Kun ran his eyes over some of the printed pictures they had stuck on the empty spaces of the controls, random pictures to remember by their previous destinations. Kun’s favorite shot was Johnny standing tall on the edge of a cliff of a colony town, against the backdrop of a thousand twinkling stars.
Looking at the broad expanse of Johnny’s shoulder in the picture made Kun feel even warmer, and he hurried to exit their ship with the camera and towels. In the ocean, Johnny was swimming back closer to the shore.
Kun raised the camera, first taking pictures of his own toes in the sand, kissed by the elusive sea foam, then of a hexagonal piece of shell beside a stringy seaweed-like plant nearby, before finally of the horizon, the meeting of soft teal skies and the lavender sea. Kun watched through the lens how Johnny waded in the shallow water, the black ID tattoo on his tan shoulder blade a stark contrast to the soft pastels of their surroundings.
Johnny turned, looking straight at the camera, and Kun’s breath caught in his throat. He took snap after snap of Johnny slowly rising out of the water, exposing more and more of his previously submerged body, and Kun thought it was unfair how Johnny managed to stay in shape despite being on vacation. Kun, although he wasn't lazy–he was the one in charge of the cleanliness of their ship, after all, while Johnny did maintenance–without the rigorous daily training regime of the Forces, found himself unsure of taking his shirt off around Johnny these days. It was a silly thought, he knew, but it had been on his mind.
Maybe I should switch to maintenance , Kun mused, trying to distract himself from following drops of water sluicing down the dip of Johnny’s hipbone and avoid getting more insecure about his own body. He lowered the camera to check the pictures, but then a large, damp hand pried it away.
“Say Johnny,” the taller man sing-songed, snapping away even though Kun hadn’t readied his expression. “Come on, Kun!”
Kun shook his head, but Johnny’s playfulness had always been contagious. And Kun was especially susceptible to it. “Johnn yyy !” he humored him anyway, letting a wide smile spread across his face, trying out different angles. "Why are you so close? Are you taking pictures of my pores?"
Johnny's eyes twinkled with mirth, leaning even closer with the camera out of the way. "Yes. Pictures of your cute little pores. This vacation is doing wonders for your skin!"
Kun shoved the older man. "Oh, fuck off. My skin has always been better than yours."
"True, that," Johnny agreed easily, as his finger lightly scratched at a small bump near his chin. Kun wanted to poke it, wondering if his light stubble was prickly. "Enough pictures! You have to get into the water, Kun! The seabed is amazing !"
"Really? Do we need goggles?" Kun perked up, fingering the edge of his T-shirt, wondering if he should take it off.
"Nah. The water doesn't sting your eyes after a while. We landed on a super great spot. It's seriously amazing," Johnny said as he made his way back inside the shallow water after placing the camera on a safe spot on the sand.
Kun was waist deep in the water when he caught Johnny looking at him with a bemused look. "What?"
"You're not going to take that off?"
"No. Why?"
"Eh. Just more laundry for you to do," Johnny said with a nonchalant shrug. Kun wondered what that was about as he tread deeper into the water.
When Kun could no longer keep his head above water with his full height, he followed Johnny's example of dipping his head underwater completely. He blinked several times to get rid of the initial sting. When his vision cleared, he almost couldn't believe his eyes.
It was otherworldly, the way the daylight penetrated the surface of the ocean and cast light on the ocean floor. There were schools of translucent fish with flowy fins that flitted in zigzag in tandem with the colorful plants sprouting from clusters of rocks and corals in foreign shapes and textures. It was as if someone put the softest filter on everything, turning Kun's world into pastel hues, but the outlines of everything was vivid. This was no dream.
Johnny came into view, waving at him and spreading his arms wide. Kun could hear the "Ta-da!" in his close-mouthed smile. Johnny with his black hair and shorts stood out in the lilac water. He then pointed at something and gestured for Kun to swim closer.
What Johnny wanted to show him was almost hidden in the underwater vegetation. The sway of the stringy plants revealed glimpses of what seemed to be a family of sea creatures Kun could not name. They were heart-shaped from above, with round-edged yellow scales, huddled together and slumbering. The smallest opened its two big eyes in a slow blink, and Kun cooed, bubbles coming out of his mouth.
They came up for air, swiping back hair that got into their eyes. Exchanged wordless smiles, then dived back in to explore the small ecosystem together, swimming side by side and pointing at things the other might have missed. Kun found that he really liked the way Johnny's hair floated underwater.
They swam back to shallow water when their fingertips turned pruny. Then they heard a distant splash behind them. Further in the ocean, a huge creature broke the calm of the water. From the distance, Kun could tell that it was gigantic and very old, and along with fascination came fear. He instinctively stood closer to Johnny, gripping his elbow, but their eyes were glued to the majestic being emerging from the sea.
Maybe dragons weren’t just myths after all, because he was seeing one with his own eyes. It was as if all the colors of the planet came from the multicolored, diamond-shaped scales that covered its nape down to its sides, merging into wing-like fins that reminded Kun of stained glass. Those wings stretched and the beat of them caused ripples on the water, so big they almost reached Kun and Johnny on the shore. With a trill that echoed all around them, it took off into the sky, water raining down from its fan-shaped tailfin, sparkling.
"It's… it's the rumored ancient creature of this planet," Kun heard Johnny breathlessly say. "We don't know its name yet. But reports said it’s as old as this planet.”
Kun couldn’t find his words so he only squeezed Johnny’s elbow harder, eyes still locked on the slowly disappearing form until it was swallowed by the clouds. Even then they were still struck silent, overwhelmed, their skin tingling with an equal mix of fascination and fear and that one familiar sensation they had almost forgotten—the feeling when they remembered how tiny they were, how insignificant in size compared to other forms of life in the universe.
And it dawned on Kun once again, how he got here. From his earliest memory, laying wide awake in his bed and staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling. Him in his mother’s embrace, listening to lullabies in the language of his ancestors, feeling the longing in them. His father’s stolen video calls, how Kun could make out the grease on his cheek and the ships in the hangar behind him. Growing up, studying to be a botanist but ending up spending half of his life in barracks and training grounds and VR simulation rooms because the war took his father away.
Kun remembered the bitter taste of grief, the consuming anger and need of revenge. How he wanted to do it all, but his mother had raised a gentle-hearted man. The near-endless questions over his decisions, feeling like he was never enough, not fierce enough to be where he was. That he’d sooner be burnt out than to see the end of the war. Kun remembered his friends, keeping him sane. Ten, a channel that helped bring out the passion and drive in him—but also a reminder that Kun couldn’t rely on someone else forever.
And then there was Johnny. Oh, there had always been Johnny. Right from the start, on Kun’s first day in the academy. The friendly second-year recruit, tall, encouraging, helped Kun settle in the barracks. Everybody’s friend, the older brother, the moodmaker. An all-rounder who, despite not the best pilot in the ranks, always got their backs. Johnny had been there, flitting in and out of Kun’s inner circle.
And now Johnny was here. He had Kun’s back when he was drifting and unsure. Why was Johnny here?
When Johnny turned to face him, there was almost a childlike wonder and excitement on his face. His eyes sparkled, not unlike the water around them, not unlike the stars beyond the pastel clouds. He was smiling so wide at Kun, laughing and pulling him into a sideways hug with a warm arm around his shoulder.
And as overwhelming as the wonderment thrumming through his veins, Kun really wanted to kiss Johnny's beautiful smile and have a taste of him.
Kun cupped Johnny's cheek and pulled him down. Perhaps the way their mouths crash a bit painfully against each other wasn't perfect, but Kun couldn't find it in himself to care, not when Johnny's lips were so soft.
Kun pulled back when it finally registered to him that Johnny was frozen. The arm Kun had around his waist slackened, and Kun almost didn't want to open his eyes. But then a cool palm was on his cheek.
"You kissed me," Johnny said, breathless, once again. "I can't believe–"
"I'm sorry," Kun rushed to say.
"No. Why are you sorry? Would you kiss me again? Please?"
Kun swallowed, a part of his brain wanted him to take a breath and figure out what was happening. But Johnny's brown eyes were so beautiful and hopeful, pulling him in with a gravity Kun didn't dare resist. So Kun kissed him again, softer, a bit unsure. This time, Johnny was ready for it, and he kissed back as soon as their lips touch.
It was—like something in Kun clicked. Like Johnny was once again a missing piece he didn't know he needed in his life. It was that moment of clarity again. There was a calmness that washed over him; but at the same time, there was an undercurrent of desire under his skin. It burned brighter when Johnny pulled him close, closer still. Kun raised to the balls of his feet, digging them into the sand, secure in Johnny's strong arms around him, kissing him deeper.
Johnny licked his mouth open, the swipe of his thumb on Kun's jaw a gentle inquiry for permission. Kun welcomed him easily, shuddering when Johnny ran the tip of his tongue on the roof of his mouth. Kun let out a moan when he felt Johnny's palm sliding under his shirt, caressing his lower back, the dip of his spine. Kun pulled away, stopping Johnny with a hand around his wrist when he made a move to touch his hip and the front of his body.
"What's wrong?" Johnny asked, his breath labored, fanning across Kun's cheek.
"I–my body… it's not–" Kun struggled to say, shutting his eyes tight, clinging onto Johnny despite what he was saying.
"Shh, Kun… you're beautiful. Have you seen yourself? You're the prettiest boy I've ever seen since the academy."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. There's never been anyone else ever since I met you."
Kun could feel himself tear up, but his cheeks hurt from smiling. Johnny too was smiling, peppering kisses across his face, his ear, down to his neck.
"I love you, Johnny," Kun said, and this time the words came easy. "Thank you. Thank you so much."
"I love you, too. And thank you . Thank you for letting me be here with you."
They finally ran back to the shore when a sea breeze reminded them that they were still wet and pruny. On the shore they dried themselves, then dried each other's hair, laughing like a pair of fools. Giddy, lovesick fools. Hand in hand they walked back to their ship, Johnny bumping into him sideways just to pull him back close.
Later that night as they prepared to fly to find a settlement, Kun found Johnny setting up the camera on the dashboard of the cockpit. Johnny waved him over and pulled him unceremoniously into his lap, wrapping his arms around Kun's waist and digging his chin into his shoulder.
He said to the camera, "Hello and welcome to the first episode of Johnny and Kun's honeymoon trip across the galaxy!"
And Kun laughed out loud, free and unrestrained, ready for another journey, this time with a forever partner by his side.