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“Look at us,” Mingi laughs. “We’re really pretty, aren’t we?”
They’re gathered by the mirror in their bathroom— all eight men crammed into this small space, trying to make room where room is nonexistent. Hongjoong brought his tubes of lipstick and Yeosang had eyeshadow palettes leftover, and never in their combined timeline of lives did any of them think they’d be doing this.
But the world was ending in seven days, and what’s a little makeup in a crowded bathroom in comparison to that?
“I think we are,” Yunho’s laughing, covering his mouth up like he always has when he laughs too hard. Boisterous and happy and weightless, despite the way the glitter beneath his eye is sliding down in tracks of gold and onyx. Mingi had been the one to put it on him, and his touch so delicately had coerced tears from the taller’s eyes.
Hongjoong’s in the tub, completely unafraid and looking rather tired. Seonghwa’s right behind him as they sit, allowing the smaller to pool his body into a small scooped up shape on his lap. He’s holding him tightly around the abdomen, letting the bubbles meld them into one as they watch their friends laugh and cause an uproar to hog the mirror.
“My turn,” Yeosang’s smiling gently, pushing the two pillars aside to get a look at his own. San is yelling something, and Wooyoung behind him is following— and there’s something so perfectly broken about this moment that Hongjoong starts to cry on Seonghwa’s bare shoulder and Yunho’s sitting atop the toilet lid, following him in sobbing as Mingi tries to coax him down.
There’s a melancholy mix of tears and laughter— some coexistent within the same noise from the same person. At some point there’s the loud smack of lips as Wooyoung starts pressing his lipstick color to the mirror in little kisses, and San follows the devilish behavior by writing their names out with his slowly melting tube. Their bathroom mirror ends up covered in pigments of differing shades, some a ruby red and others teetering towards a mahogany.
There’s bodies on the floor, the ridiculousness taking over as they sit upon the tile and recount their small affair with all of the broken makeup supplies they’d accidentally destroyed in their roughness. Eight bodies pouring over still, spilling all they’ve got in a small bathroom.
But the world is ending in seven days. No amount of tears or chaos would change that in the long run.
The news had come rather abruptly.
Television stations were talking about it quickly— the impending end and the uproar of the oceans; the overturn of everything as anyone had ever known it. Some accompanied it with pleas for salvation and redemption, and others simply stated it as the incoming weather. Perhaps a sense of apathy had grown among news reporters and weather forecasters. They had been the first to know, after all.
All eight of them had been piled in their living room, shoveling breakfast into their mouths as Seonghwa had made it. Yunho had the habit of shifting their meals towards the front of the television as opposed to on the dining room table, but no one seemed to mind. They talked just as much in front of the TV as they did surrounded only by one another for entertainment. It was a natural thing they drifted towards— that sense of togetherness that’d bonded them tightly.
So they sat there, mid-chew and slowing on the sip of their drink, flicking through channels that all reported the same thing.
The world was ending on a specific date of the following week— it’d be crushed to smithereens and more than likely follow with a self implosion. A blast that would leave it shrunk down to a small core. The pit of the earth left over to rot and die away in the universe.
San had been looking for his socks when they mentioned that. And Jongho was still helping Seonghwa serve the last of the orange juice.
Just like that, the world was starting to end.
“There’s six days left,” Yeosang murmurs, crossing away the date on the calendar with a small sticker. It was a habit Seonghwa had formed, having had so many leftover sticker sheets from his small escapade of decorating polaroids. He still had a large stash— all of which were being used now in an attempt to calm down his inner frenzy, as he took photos of even the smallest bit of dust and pinned it to the wall. Sometimes the younger ones catch him in the small sliver of the open doorway to his and Hongjoong’s bedroom, crying beneath his breath as he pins another polaroid to the wall and tries to commit it all to memory. Hongjoong would hold him, whisper sweet nothings into his ear about how fleeting things are meant to be— that that was the nature of the world, and Seonghwa could not keep it all to himself no matter how much he tried— and his tears would dry long enough to take a couple more photos.
Seonghwa was becoming more and more hysterical by the day, even taking photos of garbage.
“What do you guys want to do today?” Wooyoung asks them, a smile on his lips that comes easily as he welcomes San into the crook of his neck. They have an unspeakable bond in a way that’d go down to their bones— but Yeosang knows, as he gazes at them, that everyone does. They’re just the most shameless about it.
Maybe it was time to start being shameless.
“What about a date?” Mingi pipes up from his space on their couch, his lips rubbed tight with the stain of last night’s lipstick. He clung to it rather violently, so much that Hongjoong relinquished one of the plush scarlet shades so that he could carry it with him. Everyone’s certain he’s still got it deep in the pocket of his buttoned pajama set, but there was nothing wrong with it. If Mingi had found out— tragically belated, in life— that he loved lipstick more than any of them did, then that wasn’t a problem. He’d just have to make the most of it.
“An eight-way date?” San quirks a brow, as if to say— what difference does that make of the way we spend our days now? Wooyoung laughs in a strangely understanding agreement, as if he can read exactly what part of San’s expression says what.
“No,” Mingi rolls his eyes, “a date with one another. One on one. Four couples.”
How ridiculous, Yeosang wants to comment. Why would we do that?
But in truth, idol-hood was tiring, and they loved one another more than they could ever be allowed in the limelight. Now what was stopping them was no longer existent.
They could have anything they wanted.
“Yeah,” San breathes. Something eager brims over with the tears in his eyes, as if he’d been granted his last wish here and now. Maybe he has, Yeosang thinks. San’s leaning into Wooyoung’s side with more tears spilling over— pouring hotter and quicker in rivulets. Wooyoung holds him through it as he breaks down piece for piece, bearing all of the issues that Yeosang had seen quietly rustling beneath his skin their entire career, but had never wanted to point out.
Ah, he thinks bittersweetly, so it took this much just so you could finally be happy?
“I think that’s a good idea,” Yeosang laughs. “But how will we decide who goes with who?”
Mingi makes a funny face— something screwed up in confusion before he’s bursting into laughter.
“There’s nothing stopping you,” he says behind an amused grin. “It’s not a buddy system.”
“I know,” Yeosang frowns. “But I’m asking—”
“Sangie,” Wooyoung coos from behind him, holding San deep into the crevice of his neck and stroking his bubblegum-colored hair with reverence. “You’re in love. It’s okay now.”
But— Yeosang thinks. Nothing follows it.
What’s the point of protesting?
“It’s always been okay,” San sniffles quietly. “But now, you’re free.”
Right, because the weight of the world that’s always been on their shoulders is now dying away. There’d be no world to weigh on them soon enough.
They take Mingi’s suggestion and share it through the house with a fluttering heart shared in eight pieces between them. They love one another, they know it, but there are loves scattered about that are special. Loves that are behind closed doors and in between the small space of tubs. There’s the combinations of love so fulfilling, it’s emptying them out one by one as they suddenly disperse into pairs.
Seonghwa watches his younger members filter through the hallway in different clothing and different pairs. He sees the blush on their faces and the bright looks in their eyes. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world that fills him with as much completion as watching his young family give way to the love inside of them. It’s not an all-consuming fire, but instead a comfortable warmth that sparks a series of fireworks to disperse across their plain white ceiling.
Wooyoung and San are desperate as they hold hands— a gentle toughness that’s consistent with their back-and-forth need to bicker through things. It’s a steady challenge with neither winners nor losers, but carries all the excitement of competition either way. Seonghwa has watched them fall together and fall apart repeatedly since the beginning, never worried for them that any time would be the last. There’s always been a sense of finality to their pairing; once they came together, parting was never destined to be permanent.
He wonders, perhaps, if there’s a next life. If there is, they’d surely find one another.
Yunho and Mingi are next. Not an unexpected pair, but to a point somewhat mind-boggling. What Yunho and Mingi had for one another, they usually had in excess towards the majority of the world. It was hard to think of them as “in love” because in-love was different from "in love." They’d given and given and given to everyone in abundance so often, that it was hard to believe a love from them could feel anything but platonic and safe.
Yet as they’re pressed together in the corner of the kitchen, murmuring things to one another and grinning widely while Yunho draws the shape of Mingi’s lips in the shade of the tube Hongjoong had given him, Seonghwa curses himself for not understanding his adopted child-like friends quite as much as he’d promised himself he would. It made sense now. The joint showers and the long nights in the bath house. The way Mingi would find Yunho in the midst of unfair competition and on nights where the darkness was somehow just a tad bit too dark— when there was no one left and yet somehow, Mingi was always waiting for Yunho and Yunho would wait an eternity for Mingi to leave his studio.
Seonghwa understands that their love lives in every gesture— and even in loving the world as much as they do, they still love one another more.
Yeosang and Jongho are a pairing he nearly sobs seeing, with the way they hold one another by their pinky fingers and exchange shy smiles. He’d overheard some of the commotion this morning— some of the way the others had laughingly teased Yeosang for not exposing his own love. But the way Seonghwa sees it, perhaps he hadn’t truly known it was there.
Their love was by far the most quiet— unknown to the rest of the world, and even to themselves sometimes. But seeing it now, seeing it flourish gently with a resounding heart-thump as they hug one another tightly and Jongho does his best to completely hide away Yeosang’s frame from the sight of the dying world, Seonghwa feels complete. He knows they do too.
They’re the last to leave, tying their laces quietly and slipping their conjoined hands into Yeosang’s jacket pocket because Jongho will do anything— follow Yeosang anywhere if he so much as alludes to it. He lets the soft jet black hair wade his way through the entrance in front of him, their shoulders bumping together softly as they make sure to lock the door behind them, Seonghwa watches them go with a softhearted wave that isn’t really meant to catch their attention; and it doesn’t, because Jongho’s eyes remain stuck on Yeosang’s cat-like smile even through the small light of the doorway that shrinks into nothing.
“Seonghwa,” Hongjoong’s calling for Seonghwa, having watched him stand there as he bid the couples farewell in their pairs. They wanted their dates to be outside, to feel the joy of sitting in the great big eyes of the outer world and not have a thing to say about it. That was freedom. Not the ability to do everything they’d ever wanted, but to do what made their hearts happy and face no repercussions for it. So long did they sit with consequences looming over them for every move— for everyone in the world to judge whether they liked it or not.
And now, they would only have to worry about one another.
“My love,” Hongjoong tries again, tugging at Seonghwa’s shoulder and getting him to turn around.
There’s tears in his eyes, he knows. Hongjoong coos at him as he wipes them away and holds Seonghwa’s face steadily between his petite hands— ever delicate despite the way his callouses could scrape up some of Seonghwa’s now-tender skin.
“You’ve always been just like a parent, huh?” He snorts through it, an amused grin taking over his features. There’s a certain warmth pooling in his eyes that causes his smile to falter step for step, and Seonghwa can hear everything in between being spoken through it alone.
“They’re my boys,” he whispers. “They’ve always been my boys.”
I know, Hongjoong says back with his eyes. He leans upwards the slightest bit for Seonghwa to follow down, meeting him halfway as they rest their foreheads together.
“You’ve been a good father-figure to them,” Seonghwa says shakily, breathing in and out with staccato sighs. “They needed a leader like you.”
“It works because we’re a good team,” Hongjoong laughs. “We’ve always been a great team together— especially you and I. They needed a kinder father...that’s what you were to them.”
Seonghwa laughs at that; at the notion that he and Hongjoong were their fathers. In a sense, they were all many things— a brotherhood and unspoken lovers, sons and their fathers and friends with a bond that runs deeper than the blood in their veins. Like a coven, or a pack, or family in whatever sense family existed. They’ve always been many things.
“We’ll always be a team,” Hongjoong says when he pulls away, wiping the new onslaught of tears Seonghwa’s letting free. “I promise.”
Seonghwa nods to that, catching Hongjoong in a soft kiss that tastes like the ocean and the clouds together in one.
He’d never get to be a real father— never get to have children with Hongjoong, much as they’d fantasized on the quiet nights of such a reality. But this is more than enough.
He’s lucky to even have gotten this much.
Wooyoung’s watching San play in the snow when the whispers start.
People claim they can see it— that meteor coming down towards them slowly. They’re pointing in the sky as the sun starts to fade, and he can’t help but look up.
There is, in fact, a brightly shining star that’s trying to rival the sun.
“San-ah!” He calls to his lover, who’s been forming eight little snowmen in a patch of free ground at the park. “Sannie, c’mere!”
San’s running to him, his large jacket bouncing up and down with the padding trying to keep up the speed of his lithe body. There’s a flush to his cheeks that rivals his hair, working its way around the tip of his sharp nose and around the outer edges of his curious eyes. Wooyoung smiles at him in wonder— at such a beautiful and trusting boy falling into him so easily, offering his cold gloved hands for Wooyoung to take the moment he’s within reach. Going to him as the change of seasons, easily and expectant and with no refusal.
Wooyoung points up to the star, telling San to look.
“Looks crazy,” San shrugs, before turning back to Wooyoung like he was expecting him to say something else.
“It’s going to be the thing that kills us,” Wooyoung mutters back, smiling despite it.
He can’t tell if it’s because the moment doesn’t feel real, or if it’s because he simply doesn’t care. This thing was going to kill them. This shining star was going to take his life away from him forever.
I should be angry, he thinks. Shouldn’t I?
“It doesn’t look all that bad,” San says aloud, laughing when he looks back at Wooyoung with an easy smile. “I don’t know...I’m not worried, for some reason.”
Despite everyone else having shed tears once or twice for the matter— San and Wooyoung had never shed tears over dying. They shed tears over one another, over their members, over the world— but never for their own lives. There was something more melancholy about the things they loved suffering, than them suffering themselves.
The truth is, when Wooyoung sees San, he doesn’t think he can care.
“It doesn’t really bother me either,” he shrugs, sighing as they take up a cold seat in the snow at a clearing by a frozen pond. “I don’t see the point in freaking out, I guess.”
“Me either,” San hums, leaning his body down to rest his head in Wooyoung’s lap. “I’ve still got you, and you’ve still got me— so what’s there to worry about?”
Maybe that’s what it is, Wooyoung thinks belatedly. He had all of his members, and his family was fine at home, and San was here, in his lap, looking sweet and soft and loved.
What was there to cry over?
“We’ve accepted it,” Wooyoung comments.
“We have.”
“Is that normal?”
San closes his eyes and shakes his head, enjoying the feeling of Wooyoung’s gloved fingers worming their way through his hair, despite how sodden they’d become from the soaking of the cold snow melting through the fabric. He looks content, like a lazy cat with nothing to focus on but the blazing warmth of the sun.
“I think, maybe, we’re supposed to freak out—” San pushes his head up more into Wooyoung’s hand, demanding a firmer scratch along his scalp which he preens at receiving. “But we’ve got everything under control, and we’re happy, so why lose our minds? We can’t change what’ll happen just by being upset with it. All we can do is take it as it comes, which is what we’ve been doing.”
Wooyoung nods silently to that, staring up at the star in the darkening sky and only finding himself smiling.
“Yeah,” he says reverently. “Yeah, we’ve been doing just fine.”
There’s an incessant thrumming to the way Mingi’s been moving all morning, his lips constantly smacking together and his leg bouncing beneath the table during breakfast. He’d said next to nothing, then blurted a lot of words in succession— an endless cycle of jittery nerves that only settled once he’d made his way to the couch and made his suggestion to Yeosang. He was fortunate enough to have Wooyoung and San there, who were living proof of his idea carrying with it a weight that had been going largely denied.
He doesn’t know what to do— has taken to fidgeting with his lipstick tube that Hongjoong let him keep from the night before. Something about the way it darkened his plush lips gave him confidence he didn’t quite understand having— much less from something as simple as a pigment on his face. He’s worn makeup a thousand times, has learned to battle with it so that it covers his acne without giving him more, but it’s never done this much for him. He doesn’t even dislike what others might consider blemishes; is indifferent to the majority of everything on his face, so long as he’s being smiled at and treated kindly.
But Yunho— Yunho makes him want to be pretty. Yunho makes him want to swipe his lipstick over his lips again and again and again, just so that he can ask that redundant question and hear Yunho’s laugh as he nods along. So that his brain can supply the struck-dumb idea that Yunho finds him pretty, finds him beautiful, wants to love him as much as he loves everything else in the world.
It’s a strange feeling, this buzzing whirlwind of thoughts and feelings that are filtering on a cycle. Yunho had been on and off crying, but Mingi’s not sure for what. He knows , deep down he knows how much the two of them love the world in its entirety and will mourn the loss of everything— and yet, it still doesn’t seem enough to justify the way Yunho’s eyes have fallen on him repeatedly with longing trapped inside of them.
So he makes the suggestion, and it goes accepted, and the moment the words catch onto Yunho’s ears he’s rushing against Mingi’s body and backing him away into the corner of the kitchen counter, where the long runs of granite converge.
“I’m sorry,” Yunho mutters despite pressing his lips to Mingi’s without asking. He doesn’t need permission— never has and never will— but he always looks guilty the moment he takes anything he’s deserving of. “Sorry— if I wasn’t the one you wanted to go on a date with—”
“Who else would it be?” Mingi laughs, knocking their foreheads together roughly and listening to Yunho groan as he rubs at the reddening spot only a second later. “Dummy, it was always going to be you.”
It has always been you, since we were sloppy and clumsy teenagers in the dark in your bedroom. It was going to be you the moment you came to my school and spent too much money on me for lunch. It’ll be you, when the world is falling apart around us and everything is dying.
And in that moment, Mingi thinks he understands Yunho’s tears a little better. There’s something in the realization, that they are soulmates in this life and will be in every one that ever follows— that breaks him down inside.
“I’m sorry,” Yunho says anyway. Mingi knows what he’s apologizing for.
“There’s no time to be sorry,” he laughs shakily, clutching Yunho’s hands between his and tugging him closer. Letting Yunho cage him in, because he’d rather be trapped here for life than ever wander somewhere else.
Where would I even go? He asks himself. It’s only ever going to be you.
“Just love me now,” Mingi smiles. “Love me now, and you can make up for it in the next life.”
“You promise you won’t be mad?” Yunho’s smiling against his lips, pressing together in soft repetitive pecks that are just meetings of their flesh. It’s not enough and yet provides sensory overload, and Mingi thinks for a second that he’d take anything Yunho would give him in any life.
“I can’t be mad at you,” Mingi hums. “I’ve never been able to be mad at you.”
“Even when we fight?”
“I’ll get mad at the entire world before I get mad at you.”
Yunho accepts it— takes the answer readily and keeps it deep in the confines of his rib bones as he begins to descend his hands from Mingi’s grasp to the curvature of his body. He’s grappling here and there, committing it to memory with as much earnestness as he’s ever shown, and traces back up to land on the small silk pocket of Mingi’s pajama top.
There’s the little lipstick tube left in there, when Yunho presses his hand down to feel the steady thump of his lover’s heart.
“You kept this on you?” He whispers, dipping his long fingers into the pocket to retrieve the slender black stick as Mingi nods with a flush. He’s not embarrassed— tells himself exactly what Hongjoong had when he’d given it to him.
“There’s nothing wrong with feeling pretty in it.”
“There isn’t,” Yunho responds as though he were talking to him. He’s smiling easier now, a soft and loving glint in his eyes that only increases as he uncaps the small stick and rolls the pigmented product up with a gentle twist. “It looks good on you.”
“Makes me look pretty?” Mingi prompts— wanting to know, wanting to be good for some strange reason. A bubble is set to burst in his gut, but all he can focus on is Yunho and his ruddy puffed up cheeks.
“You’re always pretty,” Yunho laughs. He presses the lipstick to Mingi’s laugh-shaped mouth and holds him steady by the hip. “You’ve always been the most beautiful boy I know.”
That’s you, Mingi wants to say. It’s you who deserves the world’s love, who deserves its acceptance.
“There,” Yunho whispers when he’s done, pulling away to stare at Mingi’s plush lips that had been glossed and hydrated with the scarlet color atop it. Yunho kisses him passionately, holds him with a firm grip that translates to his presence— lets Mingi know he’s here and would never go anywhere else— and it’s enough. It’s steady. It’s calming.
When he pulls away, the lipstick is smeared across their mouths and drifting to the corners of their smiles— and it’s perfect, just like Mingi had always fantasized it would be.
It was always going to be the two of them, in the end.
Yeosang leads Jongho to a small restaurant, where they’re sat at a table and given a menu written in cursive with prices too high for them to make this a normal occurrence.
It can’t be, Yeosang reminds himself as he tries to slow his mind down. Nothing could become normal with the small amount of time left.
“Do you like anything on this menu?” Jongho’s pointing to some of the dishes, listing their names and ingredients and studying it with a furrowed brow that Yeosang admires for so long, he doesn’t answer him.
“You’re really handsome,” Yeosang thinks aloud, snapping his mouth shut as he immediately glances down at his menu and pretends he hadn’t said a thing.
Jongho, though, only looks at him fondly.
“As are you,” he comments back lightly, watching the way Yeosang turns pink. There’s no makeup on his face, and with his skin bare, Jongho can see the exact moment in which his pale white tinges down to meet the red of the small strawberry mark near his eye.
“You’re really handsome,” Jongho says anyway, admiration dripping from the cracks of his voice as he gazes at Yeosang with longing.
It pains him, to some small degree, knowing that a reality in which he and Yeosang are together has become so limited. It’s a short-lived fantasy, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to take the utmost advantage of it.
“Thank you,” Yeosang says softly when he glances up. His strong demeanor is exchanged for an honest shock— light upon his features as he worries his bottom lip between his teeth, still a little shy with receiving such open affection. In truth, Jongho has always been bold— but it’s a different sensation to be bold towards someone he loves like this. There’s a new form of power and trust in being allowed to really love Yeosang, as opposed to teasing or commenting in passing.
“We should order something,” Yeosang whispers kindly, his voice still deep despite the way he tries to keep the bass away. It’d always amused Jongho to no end, that when they were seen together and their voices were heard on separate occasions, people assumed their tones to be switched to better accommodate their appearances. But nothing in the world has ever made Jongho as happy as having an equal sense of exchange with Yeosang, following him obediently even if it made the older shy. That was part of his way of showing love, and Yeosang had never denied him— denied himself, often, but never did he deny Jongho.
They eat in silence, stealing away passing glances and small words of gratitude towards their meal and the presence of one another. It feels unhurried and appreciated— a long, drawn out slosh of gentle waves that lap at their feet and carry them into a state of permanent calm. There’s nothing to worry over. There’s no need to race against the sun in the sky, even as it begins to set while they poke softly at a shared piece of a bittersweet dessert.
“This has been—” Yeosang takes a breath in, something like a hiccup passing through his windpipes and making him sing with the soft gasp of lemon and cream. Jongho’s responding smile is one of genuine mirth, watching Yeosang dim a shade of pink that leans towards a vibrant red.
“A pleasant evening?” The younger attempts to finish for him, after moments of waiting in the silence with bated breath. Yeosang seems too quietly embarrassed, radiating his warm glow, to do anything but nod in agreement.
“Very.”
Jongho follows Yeosang everywhere— would do it repeatedly from this life into the next, if he so asked. Something about the wild flowers that decorate Yeosang’s smile, and the ocean that hides in his tone, and the way he shines— reminds Jongho that as passing as every star in the galaxy is, it shines no less brightly. Impermanence could kill no sense of importance. No amount of dying suns and rising crescendos in the ocean waves could destroy what Yeosang is.
And Jongho follows him outside, because he would follow him anywhere— but right now, this is the only place Yeosang is leading him.
They travel down a long road from the restaurant’s path, taking to a colder scenery that envelops them in sudden nature and leaves the rest of the world quiet. A walk, Yeosang had muttered quietly when he offered his hand. Jongho had said nothing, but his fingers spoke enough as they clung to those little porcelain digits like a lifeline.
“Sometimes I forget,” Yeosang hums, “just how much I love nature.”
“It’s calming, isn’t it?”
Yeosang quirks a corner of his lips at that— something brushing past the lobe of his memories and playing a picture behind his eyelids— but whatever it is leaves as quickly as it comes.
In turn, his eyes settle into something more somber.
“Yeah,” he says. There’s a certain muted amusement to the way he watches a butterfly timidly drift past them. “The world is both loud and quiet.”
“It’s dependent on where you’re at,” Jongho comments. Yeosang’s hand lifts without thought, towards the butterfly. But he doesn’t dare touch it, even as it comes close. It comes within the distance to perch atop his finger and be snagged between his fingers if he so wanted— but his hand is lowering before it even gets the proper chance, and it continues on its way with fluttering wings.
He had denied himself often— but never someone else.
“It’ll all be quiet soon,” Yeosang murmurs. He’s not sad, Jongho knows. He’d never been sad about it since they figured it out. If anything, he had taken it in stride and accepted it the way he did everything else: fearlessly, wholly, and with a sense of dominance that allowed nothing to control him. Despite how weak others had perceived him to be, Jongho had never once seen Yeosang waver. In his decisions— in his finality, he was resolute. Always.
“It’ll be really loud before then,” Jongho responds lightly. He could see the picture as a ghost in the air around him. The screaming and pleading and tears of it all. Some would probably spend their last moments laughing and singing to feign ignorance, but it’d all be noise nonetheless. Anything to cover up the silence. Anything to fight it off and to say ‘we are here’ until nothing was left to say that anymore.
“Did you know—” Yeosang tugs him along, and they pass by a grove of wintered trees before he settles his fingers tightly between Jongho’s and stops them in their path. “That a caterpillar can be in the cocoon for up to a month?”
Jongho laughs at that, somewhat befuddled by the sudden factoid before asking Yeosang to continue.
“But the average adult lifespan of a butterfly is about two weeks,” he says weakly.
“Why so short?”
“Maybe that’s how nature intended it,” Yeosang wonders aloud. He looks up at the sky, stars hidden by the branches of the surrounding trees. The world is white and yet somehow dark, blanketing itself a shade of indistinguishable gray that resembles a mist of ash atop everything. “Maybe the most beautiful things are fleeting.”
Jongho takes a single glance down at their hands, conjoined and warmed in one another’s hold. He looks up at Yeosang’s dark eyes; sees how they’re desperate to catch even the slightest hint of a falling star within them. Silently, despite being unshaken, still somehow pleading for a form of mercy.
It’s a shame, he thinks to himself. The most beautiful things are always so quick to die.
As the days pass by, they end up with less comfort and a broken semblance of sanity that’s slipped beneath the shaking earth.
The ground is loud, around them. Hongjoong has always been sensitive to light and noise in a way most cannot understand. It’s what makes you a good producer, Seonghwa had once said. Because you are a part of the earth and it is a part of you.
Such a reality was bone-crushing now. Who could stand to feel connected to reality when it was fraying apart so violently around them?
He sits in the dark of his bedroom at night, watching the moon through the window that lays far at the foot of their bunk bed. It lets the light fall atop Seonghwa’s sleeping form beneath him, as he leans over the edge dangerously and bends to the point where the ground is on the ceiling and his blood is flooding into his ears like the constant sound of an impending tsunami.
It doesn’t bother him as much as it would have before— having this week-long headache that feels as though it will never leave him. Sitting in the dark, evading even the moonlight, knowing nothing in the shadows except for Seonghwa’s illuminated, gentle form— that’s all he’s managed to understand of the world, these past few days.
He’s got his headphones in, the headache finally alleviating enough at this hour to dare his brain to intake more. He knows it’s greed that makes him bend so roughly to drink the sight of Seonghwa in. He knows it’s an unquenchable thirst that continues to haunt him, when he pulls up his audio files that he’s stowed away of their noise. The noise that belongs solely to them. Hundreds to thousands of little soundbites that encapsulate their lives as a whole picture in parts. Fragments astray as they try to mold themselves together from clip to clip, stringing and sewing a dramatic reality that was composed of only beautiful things.
Wooyoung and Seonghwa singing in the kitchen— Yunho’s excited shouting during a game, Yeosang’s lilting lisp as he tried to call upon someone to help him. San’s adamant pouting denials; Mingi’s voice reading aloud one of Hongjoong’s books to send Jongho into slumber. Jongho’s own light breaths as he slept curled in Hongjoong’s lap— one of the very few moments in which he’d show vulnerability.
And Hongjoong cries. He cries as if the world is ending here and now— because experiencing such intimacies within these little butterfly keepsakes truly makes it feel like it is. Hongjoong watches the world through everyone’s eyes one at a time, finding hundreds of new feelings awake and alive within them, still hungry to be explored but never would be. The world is ending for all of them multiple times, in many different ways. Small explosions that led to the death of each little thing, one by one, right from between their fingertips.
And the world beneath him is loud— anguished, begging for a little more time, screaming in the plea for mercy.
Seonghwa awakens to Hongjoong, curled like a wilting flower, sobbing atop his sheets.
He doesn’t say anything, climbing up to the top bunk and laying beside Hongjoong in the small space, curling his body around him and trying to hush him to sleep.
The world snaps along Seonghwa’s body in choked sobs and strong tremors. It curls to the other side and nuzzles deep into Seonghwa’s chest. It cries for everything— everything it’s never accomplished, promises it can no longer keep— and he holds it still.
The world was a part of Hongjoong, after all.
There’s only twenty-four hours left, they all know.
But it’s a comfortable silence that follows them. It’s normal, if anything. There are more kisses, and looks of warmth— couples have disappeared for nearly hours on end all week— but nothing changes between them. They’re not particularly afraid. Not enough to let it shake them and change who they are at their core.
They talk briefly about the afterlife— about the possibilities of salvation from God and the benevolence of fate. It’s not a conversation anyone takes to heart with a burning passion, but it’s spoken with reverence and sincerity nonetheless. San attempts to tame the most curiosity, curled into Wooyoung’s side with his eyes shining in a mix of sadness and confusion. Wooyoung had patted him steadily, whispered something hushed and light in his ears, and briefly Seonghwa and Yunho had spent a moment in the kitchen wondering if not believing in anything was making this harder for him— but the question was quick to dissolve when he had smiled at Wooyoung the way the sun was shining. A parting gift before it was set to implode. The least they could offer one another now was respite.
They settle in their living room, with the blinds of every window in the apartment open wide so that all of the sunlight could pour in. They’re sat huddled around the coffee table, determined with their board games and blankets laid about to make the most of it. They play games and sing songs— are merry and reckless, and for a time desperate with heated touches that others try to ignore. But it’s just like them, even in a time like this. It’s a shoddy but successful attempt at normalcy.
“An hour left,” Yeosang whispers. It pops a bubble.
They go around the room in turns, laughing to the point where it draws tears. They tell their secrets and spill their stories, apologizing for useless things that hold no weight and brushing past the need to tease. They accept each other in all their flaws as they continue to drink in the last remnants of reality, filling themselves up and getting drunk on it until it’s all gone.
“Always together,” Hongjoong says in the closing ten minutes. It feels like a play is ending— like a show’s final credits are rolling and the cast is set to say their goodbyes before it goes off air. A pocket in time and space that would seal itself shut after today, and the rest of the universe would continue to move on forward.
“Always,” Seonghwa echoes, bringing his hand towards the center of their coffee table. Hongjoong rests his own atop it.
“Of course!” Mingi chirps, eyes a muddy brown that was continuing to liquify as his cheeks stained with tears. He slaps his hand down with a resounding smack that makes them laugh wetly, watching as the others follow in the movement with more poise or timidity— whichever way it came.
They tremble like that, holding their hands on top of one another.
“Eight makes one team,” Hongjoong says as steadily as he can. It’s as put-together as they were on their first day of debut.
“And one family,” Seonghwa smiles.
They exchange grins across the room and watch the moonlight outside of their window begin to brighten up, a shining spotlight only furthering its reach second by second as it comes closer.
There’s tears, and hands held, and goodbyes exchanged with nothing but gratitude lacing them. It’s noisy and uncoordinated— rushed with the threat of no time left. Despite that, it serves to be enough. It has to be.
The world becomes a pebble in the infinite landscape of space, floating endlessly. Their small ending of hurried happiness would amount to nothing in comparison to that.