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“Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction.”
-- Antoine de Saint- Exupéry
It has to be nearly 3AM on a Wednesday. Maybe even closer to 4AM now. It’s almost too cold to be sitting outside like this. No. It is too cold to be sitting outside like this. It’s early March and spring has yet to come. The wind is sharp and chill and easily breaks through the material of Taehyun’s windbreaker. He hasn’t eaten anything since dinner so he’s kind of hungry and he didn’t get a chance to sleep much so he’s got a bit of a headache. He’s uncomfortable. The ground is hard and cold beneath his back and he should have worn gloves but Kai insisted and Taehyun, as gruff as he tries to act, never can put up much of a fight.
Especially when Kai smiles at him.
And, boy, does Kai have a nice smile. He doesn’t even have to try too hard. Just an upward quirk at the corner of his mouth, exposing a sliver of white teeth, and Taehyun will do anything.
Anything.
So here they are. Side by side. Laying down on their backs and staring up at the wide night sky.
It feels a little childish to do so. To sneak out of the house in the wee hours of the morning to gaze up at the stars.
There’s not even all that much to see!
Or, rather, there’s nothing to see tonight that wasn’t there yesterday or the night before or the night before that.
There’s nothing to see tonight that Taehyun hasn’t already mapped and labelled and studied and memorized and been quizzed on.
He knows these stars. He knows this universe.
Or so he thinks.
Above them, the moon is out and bright and full, but wispy white clouds blanket most of the stars. Covering them as if tucking them into bed. All that the two of them do see are barely-visible pinpricks of scattered light. Some of the stars have an icy, bluish tint. Some spark yellow. Just the tiniest bit. Everything’s dull and almost hazy as the city glow smears too much orange into the black, like spilled paint across a canvas.
And yet, Kai still finds joy in it. He still finds awe and wonder. It’s held in the light in his eyes.
Taehyun turns his head to gaze at Kai’s profile, distracted by his friend’s surprised gasp.
“Did you see that,” Kai asks, raising a finger to the heavens.
“Yeah,” Taehyun lies. Because the only thing he’s been looking at is the sharp slope of Kai’s nose. The jut of his chin and the slice of his jaw.
“I think it was a falling star,” says Kai, open-mouthed and amazed. “Did you make a wish?”
“Always,” Taehyun answers. He only ever wishes for the same thing. He only ever hopes for one thing. An impossible thing. An impossibly tiny little thing in comparison to how large and massive and unknowable the universe is.
But still he wishes.
“What did you wish for,” Kai questions.
Taehyun huffs. “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”
“You’re right.” Kai groans in frustration. He shifts a little on the grass, bends his leg a bit. His knee collides with Taehyun’s shin and Taehyun can’t even bring himself to slide away.
Even this is enough, he compromises.
“I wonder if there will be another one,” Kai mumbles. He lowers his hand to his chest, belly rising and falling, rising and falling as he breathes. As he exists as this miniscule speck of dreams of stardust.
He looks so happy like this, Taehyun decides. So content . Just laying there with his head on the grass, tiny little twigs trapped in his curly, light brown hair.
Taehyun puts his attention back on the sky.
He knows the stars. Knows the solar system. Knows the galaxy. But he still isn’t bored of it.
He wants to sit out here in the dark with his best friend until the sky changes color with dawn.
He wants to follow the North Star to the tip of the world.
He wants Kai at his side.
It’s almost silly, Taehyun thinks, to be out here shivering trying to name constellations and wish on falling stars with his best friend, but he also knows, deep down, that a night like this will sear itself into his heart and, ten or twenty years from now, when he hasn’t thought of this moment in forever, he’ll be out grocery shopping or topping off his car at the gas station or something and he’ll randomly remember the exact outfit Kai was wearing tonight. He’ll perfectly recall something minor and fleeting Kai said. His heart will thrash in his chest as he remembers the exact burning sensation the sound of Kai’s laughter causes in him.
He’ll remember it perfectly and maybe it will ache a little. Like it does right now.
He’s in love. He knows he’s in love.
Kai shifts next to him. He moves ever so slightly closer. He sits up a tad. Leans over. Reaches out.
Taehyun almost panics. He thinks he’s slipped into a dream.
Kai’s hand presses into the softness of Taehyun’s belly for a moment and he looks into Taehyun’s face with amusement and concern. “Aren’t you cold?”
Taehyun can’t even speak. Can’t even breathe.
Then Kai pulls the zipper of Taehyun’s jacket up and up and up, until his knuckles lightly brush against Taehyun’s chin.
Just like that, Kai slips away. He rests back on the grass and turns his gaze back up to the sky.
Beside him, Taehyun is left in shock. He stares at the side of Kai’s head and tries to breathe. Tries to calm his restless heart. He had thought-- He had thought! Taehyun squeezes his eyes shut and wills away the fanciful, stupid idea. The hollow little pipe dream he’s carried with him all these months. All these years.
Taehyun opens his eyes and is almost angry at how calm and tranquil Kai looks, as if he’s totally unaware of the damage he’s just caused.
Or is he aware?
Does he know?
Taehyun turns his head and looks back up at the sky.
Kai is like a star. Bright and brilliant and so terribly far away . Burning with light so intense that it crosses the entire length of the universe. He has a heart so massive and full of happiness that Taehyun can’t possibly attempt to comprehend its size.
Taehyun is in love.
And it excites him. It thrills him.
“I’m really glad you came out here with me tonight,” Kai says.
Taehyun turns his head and discovers that Kai is already looking at him. The moon glitters in Kai’s eyes and casts delicate shadows across his mouth and nose.
Their faces are closer together than Taehyun is prepared for and he hurriedly looks back up at the sky, swallowing hard, gulping, choking. Does Kai know ? “You thought I was going to say no to looking at the stars?” He laughs it off. “I’d never say no.” And it’s a lie. It’s both the truth and a falsehood. Because Taehyun’s kind of sick of looking at stars. Kind of sick of learning their names and their distance from Earth and their relative mass and size. He’s kind of sick of learning about what they are made up of and how densely packed they all are and how they’ve lived for so long already and will continue to live on for so much longer.
But if Kai asks him to, he’ll look up at them. He’ll watch them. Name them. Line them up and count them. Drag them down from the sky.
If Kai asks him to.
But Taehyun has to admit that he is still amazed by how humans will never get to see stars how they are. Only how they’ve been . It amazes him how the universe can be so vast that something as fast as light still takes forever to cross it. It amazes him, and scares him, that even something as fast as light still won’t reach the end .
What a terribly great distance. What a wickedly unknowable size.
Just like the distance between Taehyun and Kai.
Taehyun turns his head only to go stiff with surprise when he realizes that Kai is already looking at him, or, more likely, that Kai hasn’t turned away from him since he last spoke.
Taehyun wonders what he’s been staring at. Taehyun wonders what he sees.
Does he know ? “What is it,” Taehyun questions.
“You just look so happy,” Kai responds. And there’s that smile of his. That itty bitty flash of teeth between his pink lips.
Taehyun feels such a great stir in the pit of his gut that it is a miracle he doesn’t lean forward and kiss the man. “You look happy too,” Taehyun says instead.
Kai says, “Always.”
Always.
Everything is so big. So large. So vast and expansive yet Taehyun still managed to be snagged by Kai’s gravity. Drawn into his orbit.
No wonder falling in love with him was so easy.
It was almost meant to be.
Taehyun looks away hurriedly. Away from Kai’s twinkling eyes and starlight smile.
There’s no way Kai doesn’t know.
Taehyun is so obvious .
He looks back up at the sky full of stars and knows that there are probably airplanes and rockets and satellites within his view as well. Beyond those, there are asteroids and planets and their own family of moons. Saturn and her rings. Galaxies and their suns. Stars that are so massive that he can’t even wrap his head around their size even though he knows the math by heart and has seen the diagrams.
There are so many mysterious things out there. So many wonderful things that they can observe.
But there are also things they can’t observe. Things humans will never get to see because everything is constantly moving, constantly expanding. The very fabric of everything stretches farther and farther away.
Always.
There are things on the very edge of what is known that they will never get to study and record. Things too fast for light to reach. Things that have long, long, long since moved farther away than is observable.
And Taehyun wonders if love is like that.
Ever expanding. Ever growing. Full of light and mysteries. But full of unexplainable space.
He wonders if he’s waited too long to see the edges of it. The boundaries of what they could have together. He wonders if he’s waited too long to bridge the gap. Or if the gap has always been uncrossable. He moves as fast as light yet will never catch up .
Kai is right next to him, right there, but he exists beyond the sphere of inaccessibility. Forever lost to human perception.
“Taehyun,” Kai exhales. His voice is soft and low and thin. There’s nothing there and yet there’s everything there.
Taehyun rolls over towards him.
Kai is closer than ever. Warm. Solid. Bright.
Taehyun can’t stand it anymore.
He reaches out a hand, cups Kai’s cheek and crosses the width of the universe in a single breath.