Work Text:
Hands clawing into the bomber jacket hugging him back, Minsoo’s throat tears into a sob. He throws his head into the other’s chest and lets the silence overwhelm them both.
“Don’t look,” Jaewon whispers, and oh how soft he can be when he’s afraid. His voice, silky and gentle in every breathy inhale he takes, trembles; a chill run downs Minsoo’s spine at the sound of it. Despite the other’s best efforts, despite Jaewon grinning into his shoulder, and despite Minsoo’s eyes clenched shut, Jaewon failed and continuously fails. Nervousness bubbles beneath his skin as Minsoo swallows whatever words originally sat on his tongue, and suffocates on the bubbling despair that throws him back into tears.
“It’s cold,” the boy of silver hair chokes out in a mumble amidst his sobbing. He swears he can hear Jaewon chuckle bittersweetly into the crisp air.
“It is.”
The puff of breath brushes against Minsoo’s ear momentarily. The warm air sends another sorrowful shiver through him, and his body violently shakes with the effort to still himself. His eyes are a dam holding back a flood only by clenching them tightly, in which his fingers dig deeper into the jacket.
In Minsoo’s head, a constellation of stars sprawl around them. It’s a familiar world he’s built in his head when he needs a breather from the real and the broken, far away from reality’s demons. Far away from the now. A place built on the palettes of twilight and evening beneath bleached clouds. If Minsoo wanted to, he could dare to reach out. Grab one of the twinkling whites in the sky, bring it back, and hold it out for someone to see. In fact, sometimes, in this dream state, he did. And, every time he returned with a starry piece of Canopus, he handed it over to someone. Every time, he was rewarded with a beam of light emerging from a face of warmth and familiarity.
“For the stars to be lonely, they would have to stop shining,” the face would declare every time, without fail. “The fact that we are together here means we will never be alone, now and forever.”
He knows that, at one point, he could have recited every detail of that person’s face, from the red tipped hair to the wrinkles when they smiled. But the memory is lost to time. Like someone took an eraser and blurred the face, or took a marker and ran so many lines through that perfect grin that the person hardly looks human anymore. He’s left with a blur of promises and faces that blend together in a dull reflection of the twilight sky.
Ever so slightly, the stars around him dim.
“Are your eyes shut?”
Reality sets in. Minsoo takes a shaken inhale and mumbles an incoherent yes into the jacket. A hand rubs his back in a gentle pattern that he absentmindedly processes as Jaewon’s doing.
“You promise me?”
He can’t tell, but Jaewon’s voice sounds distant somehow. His words sound miles away. Either that, or Minsoo’s head is underwater and every other sound is a blubbering, bubbled mess that’s hardly coherent. Minsoo watches the star he used to grasp backpedal further into the sky. Then, it flickers. One moment, it is a vibrant glow, the next it dims and disappears. Staring at the sight coils a snake of dread in his stomach.
Yes, his eyes are still shut. The star wouldn’t be there if they weren’t.
“You—you don’t trust me ?” His own voice dies in his throat as a wave of deja vu washes over him. Nauseating nervousness clumps in his throat. “Of course they’re shut. I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t lie to you.” His fingers loosen their grip on Jaewon as a desperate, hovering temptation tells him to look.
He ignores the urges.
At first, Jaewon says nothing back. But, rather than hesitate any further, he quickly shoves himself off of Minsoo and utters, “Forgive me.”
Instantly, Minsoo springs his eyes opened. His body spins headfirst into the bottomless abyss below. Blackness engulfs his surroundings with triumphant success. Minsoo doesn’t even notice he’s screaming until his lungs remind him with a burning ache, and even then, he barely takes the time to breath before throwing all of his energy into moving back upwards. Jaewon smiles from the top of the void, his smile complacent and accepting.
If he could just reach that hole at the top. If his fingers could grasp that ledge.
He needs more time. Five minutes longer. Maybe just one more minute, if that’s all he’s allowed. He’d take a second, even.
Why.
“Wait—stop, wait !”
Why did Jaewon never follow him?
“…please. Don’t leave me here.”
Alone.
Every star burns out.
Every, except one that once belonged to Canopus some time ago.
Months have passed since that nightmare began; yet, despite many sleepless nights and pills and desperate sobbing, his dreams are wracked with the same recurring theme. Jaewon leaves. Minsoo is left with a consuming, empty darkness.
Sitting at a desk with papers as company and a clicking pen as music, Minsoo now supplies himself with increasing fear as he indulges in his dream book once again. His fingers flips through the crumpled pages, hands shaking with a gentle kind of stress. It’s the kind of panic that seeps into his bones and plants intolerable toxins in the nape of necks. It’s the kind of panic that rots in the throat and latches onto the tongue without any plans to be spoken. It gives adrenaline in anxiety, fear in silence. Still trembling and still panicked, he grabs a pencil and desperately underlines letters that have no real connection. Even though he knows it doesn’t make sense, the pleading in his head and the screaming in his heart push him to move forward. Push him to dig for something beyond what the eye can see. Surely he’s missing something.
There must be more.
He wouldn’t leave without more.
Each movement is feverish and disjointed.
The page crinkles beneath his fingertips, and his eyes trace a new tear within the writing. Within the same instant his eye spots the rip, the pencil falls from his fingers as he goes flying from the desk. The book sits with a tear in the title page and a smudge on the cover. Minsoo stands across from it, panting with unregulated breath as the distance increases the frantic glow in his eyes.
There must be more .
The dream persists, night after night. A sickening certainty sinks heavy bags into Minsoo’s eyes. He can make Jaewon stay, he just needs more time.
Outside, the world shouts in patterned pops of red and blue. His distress halts momentarily as his attention diverts to the window. Fireworks, Minsoo muses, watching a colorful spark dance from further in the neighborhood. New Year’s eve.
A star sparks in his eyesight as the red and blue explodes.
And suddenly, his throat closes.
Minsoo clenches his eyes shut and takes a ragged breath, loud cracks and the crumpling of paper between his fists popping through the air like a wildfire. His knuckles grow white in a dizzying effort to keep himself grounded, but his fingertips feel as though they’re dipping into air.
“Don’t-“ his voice comes out ragged and desperate, “don’t leave. Please, I-I can’t. I can’t .” He gasps heavily as his hands claw at the wall. His cheeks feel ugly and wet, and the world spins beneath his feet, dancing and twisting the chair and floor. Swaying and tripping over himself, Minsoo settles against the wall for balance.
The star. It’s always that, when the star explodes, Jaewon leaves him. Fated and written amongst paper and pen, he will leave him. He will, he will, just like everyone else did.
Just like everyone else will .
He doesn’t even hear the door creak. The fireworks sing too loudly, and the ringing persists in his head.
“Minsoo? Are you in here? O-Oh, oh my god-”
The voice cuts out. Minsoo doesn’t dwell on it, tossing his hands to his head as though that could slice away the loud. As though he could block out the noise that rings heavily in his ears.
“-hear me?”
His stomach tosses and churns, and he can’t tell which way is up or down, so he chooses to clench his eyes shut. A hand grasps his shoulder, gentle but firm.
“-soo, can you hear me?”
Minsoo throws his arms around whoever touched him. Sobbing into their chest, he hugs them tightly. They don’t even flinch, and instead wrap their own arms around him. The hug is soft and warm, and everything that Minsoo wants to keep close. It’s Jaewon, in every perfect smile and comfort. His closest friend. The one who will soon go away and never return and Minsoo can’t deal with-
“Is the star gone?” he whimpers aloud. How familiar this scenario feels. Nostalgia kicks the wind out of his lungs, making his voice meek and hushed. “Will you leave now?”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jaewon murmurs, carefully prompting Minsoo to sit down on the floor. Minsoo obliges immediately as he wilts into Jaewon’s side. Jaewon gently brushes a hand through Minsoo’s hair. “Listen to me, alright? I’m not leaving you.”
Minsoo rubs the rest of the tears, leaving pockets of underlining red below his eyes and tear stains tracing down his cheeks. He stares at Jaewon for a moment, as if to see any lies. But, the longer he stares, the more genuine Jaewon seems from the tip of his head to the hand brushing through Minsoo’s hair.
“You-” he starts.
A firework pops, and Minsoo whips his head around to the window as a collection of bubbling fear burrows into him. He has to see if that’s the star. What if that is the one that will send Jaewon away?
His attention diverts quickly when Jaewon grabs his hands. He glances back at the other boy with newfound tears threatening to spill. His throat readies itself to scream final goodbyes.
And, despite everything, Jaewon smiles. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise,” he whispers. “Where else would I go anyways?” He pulls up his hands, Minsoo’s fingers interlocked with his, and laughs. It’s a gentle, genuine laughter, and it floors Minsoo entirely. “Now let’s get out of here. This is a poor place to party for New Year’s eve.”
When Minsoo stands up, for the first time in months, he looks at his papers without fear. The notes are just notes from some stupid dream. The circles mean nothing, and the underlined words have no more purpose than the coffee stains on the table.
Perhaps, a time will come where Jaewon does leave, but that time isn’t today, and it isn’t tomorrow either.
For the first time in months, as fireworks explode into the sky, Minsoo smiles.