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The universe goes white-hot, ice-cold and back again in one single moment, swirls of color painting the void's nothingness as everything comes to be.
The Sun is all smiles and warmth, shining brightly against the nothingness that surrounds him, a golden halo of sunlight atop the crown of his head.
The Moon, meanwhile, is seemingly cold and distant, mouth set into a calm line, a silver halo like moonlight upon his head.
They come into existence together, at the same time as everything else, but bound together by their domains.
Everything was nothing, and then it was everything, all at once.
Yet, despite the creation happening around them, the Moon only has eyes for one.
Paying no heed to everything happening around him, Taehyun observes intently as the Sun smiles warmly as the world spawns into being.
The Sun, the Moon muses to himself, is beautiful.
A few moments pass.
The Sun looks at the Moon's direction, and eagerly greets him, slightly waving at his counterpart.
"Hello."
And the Moon answers back, just as eager.
"Hi."
The two speak in unison, and realizing this, embarrassment colors their cheeks.
"Nice to meet you."
The first bout of daylight breaks.
The Moon is harshly pulled away from the Sun as chaos boils over and gives way to order, and everything rights itself to how it is.
—
"So, pining away again?" Air asks the Moon in lieu of greeting, having spotted the silver-haired deity sitting upon a cloud, staring at something far away.
"Shut up, Gyu." Taehyun doesn't even look at him, still focused on the horizon.
"You're far too easy to tease," Air laughs lightly, and his grey hair is caught by the wind when he flies away, dodging the strike aimed for him by the Moon.
Taehyun follows him, aiming strike after another at his still-laughing best friend.
"Too slow, moonlight!" Beomgyu mocks Taehyun, smug.
The Moon grumbles in response, disconnected phrases like "should've stayed still" and "been a century since I last managed to catch you off-guard" the only things discernible from his muttered tirade.
Still grumbling annoyedly, the Moon sits down again, and Air sits down with him.
"That was fun," Beomgyu cheerfully says, "I managed to dodge you again!"
"We're still at a stalemate."
"Doesn't matter!"
"Then tell me how you keep dodging me."
"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."
They continue exchanging playful barbs with each other, but eventually a comfortable silence settles between the two as they look upon the stars.
It's a beautiful night.
A silence broken by Beomgyu hollering, "Catch me if you can, slowpoke!" as he flies away again, with Taehyun in hot pursuit after he was broken out of his reverie.
In what felt like mere seconds, the Moon and Air had gone from the midst of nighttime to the edge of twilight in their game of tag. It would've been fine, since Taehyun was still technically in his domain.
Unfortunately for him, though, the Sun just happened to be nearby, conversing with Light on the edge of dawn.
Looking over was Taehyun's first mistake.
Momentarily distracted, he misses the jump from cloud to cloud by a considerable amount, and he ends up falling directly onto a tree, his silver, black and white palette stark against the tree's brown and green.
"Hey, you ok?" Air flies down to where the Moon had fallen, slightly worried about his best friend.
Taehyun's mouth is set into a stern line and a blush colors his cheeks, the knowledge that the Moon and Sun may not always be able to talk to each other, but they can see each other resounding in his head.
"Why do you even choose to jump? You can just fly, you know that right? It's much more safe than jumping."
Taehyun only grumbles in response, so Beomgyu asks him, "What?"
Taehyun says, louder, "It's more fun than flying, okay?"
"Ugh. Why do you need to worry me so much, Tyun?"
"I heard a disturbance." Suddenly, a figure clad in green walks out of the nearby forest, looking straight at the two.
"Hello," Beomgyu turns around and greets, "We're sorry for disturbing you. This one fell from a cloud."
"It's no matter!" The person pauses, before uttering as if in a daze, "It's you."
"Is there a problem?" Taehyun asks, tone clipped, his annoyance bleeding over onto his speech.
"Oh no, I just realized, you're the Moon and Air, right? I really must thank you, Moon, the moonflowers make the forests look much more vibrant!"
"Oh," the two deities, who had both tensed up in preparation for a conflict, say in unison.
The two of them stare at the person in front of them, before Beomgyu blurts out, "Wait, are you Nature?"
Nature blinks confusedly at them—especially Beomgyu—before answering, "I- Yeah, I am. Wasn't that obvious?"
A beat.
"We've been working together for however long now, and you don't know what I look like?" Nature asks Air.
Taehyun and Beomgyu don't answer, both looking somewhere else apart from Nature's confused face, embarrassed.
The Moon elbows Air, shooting the deity a glance.
Noticing the awkwardness hanging in the air, Nature waves goodbye. "Well. Um, I guess I'll head back into the forest now. See you later!"
—
"Hey, Kai," Taehyun greets the black-haired deity, jumping down from the clouds he so often observes the world upon.
"Ah, Taehyun! How have you been?" Nature answers, smiling brightly at the Moon.
"As good as you can be, I suppose."
Nature grimaces at the Moon's frown, knowing why the deity is frowning so.
He sees it in the way Taehyun looks longingly at the far distance, towards the places where daytime ruled. He sees it in the adoring glint in the deity's eyes whenever the Sun is mentioned. He sees it in the way the Moon sometimes cried in heartache, for a love he didn't know was requited.
Kai wants to tell him that the Sun loves him too, he really does, but he's bound by chains woven from trust, from promises—binds that he cannot break.
Despite that, his heart aches to see his dear friend hurting, so without warning, Nature drags the Moon toward the forest, hoping to cheer him up, even by just a little.
Taehyun startles for a moment before he finds himself in the midst of a dark forest, verdant trees and blooming flora all over the surroundings. His moonflowers glow silver against the forest's darkness.
(Taehyun remembers creating the silver flowers. He'd gotten flower seeds from a few nymphs that he encountered, and then infused them with the moon's essence. He then asked Beomgyu to spread the seeds around.)
(The flowers were only to bloom at night, but would shine brightly regardless of the time. If Taehyun were to be honest, he'd created the flowers partly so that the Sun—and everyone else—could see something of his creation, instead of staying in the hush of nighttime where daylight couldn't reach them, because light and dark don't mix; but it was mostly because of curiosity, wondering what flowers of the moon would look like, and his moonflowers hadn't disappointed.)
Taehyun's hand dangles outstretched in front of him as Kai lets it go.
"Ta-da!" Nature exclaims, turning to the still reeling Moon.
"Huh-"
"C'mon, Taehyun! You don't want to miss the fireflies, do you?"
With that, Nature ushers the Moon into a grassy clearing, where fireflies fly around, like vivid lights against the forest’s shadows.
It's beautiful.
The fireflies' light show reminds Taehyun of stars in the night sky, floating around in the dark clearing. A soft smile makes its way onto the Moon's face as he's reminded of warm smiles and golden halos. His mouth forms the words, as sweet as honey and as silent as a breath: I love you, I love you, I love you. He doesn't even notice that tears are dripping out of his eyes until Kai points it out.
"Why are you crying?" Kai asks him, eyebrows scrunched up in worry.
"These are happy tears, I swear!" Taehyun answers, hurriedly wiping his tears.
The two of them spend a while in the clearing watching the fireflies, a smile on the Moon's face and no trace of the frown he'd previously worn left.
—
While sitting on a cloud, the Moon spots Light zooming around, and centuries' worth of memories slam back into place, dizzying Taehyun for a second before despair creeps in, again. He'd nearly forgotten.
(And perhaps that was for the best.)
The two of them had some… history, to say the least—once the best of friends, they grew apart as time went on, and Taehyun still doesn't understand why.
(Why does he still call it growing apart? Yeonjun went to a meeting with Void one day and came back distant, until they just simply didn't talk anymore.)
They aren't enemies by any means, no, but they are basically strangers—strangers, except with shared history; strangers, except they once spent every bit of time they could in each other's company; strangers, except they once trusted each other with their most guarded secrets.
Strangers, indeed.
Taehyun doesn't hate Yeonjun, not by any means, he was just baffled.
(He vividly remembers stumbling to their hideout in a stupor and crying until his lungs nearly gave out when he realized Yeonjun had left him. He'd felt so alone. Perhaps the darkness should've just swallowed him whole way back then. It would have been easier.)
Unbidden, envy and bitterness also come to the forefront of the Moon's mind—Light just seemed to move on so quickly, onto different confidantes, almost as if they hadn't been friends, hell, brothers since the universe was young, when the two of them crossed paths by pure chance and took to each other as though they'd known each other for millennia already.
(Perhaps it really is true, that light and darkness don't mix. He used to disbelieve the proverb, because the one he considered a brother was Light itself, and they were alright, weren't they?)
Sometimes, the silver-haloed deity finds himself feeling envious of Light—of how easily he was able to wash his hands of Taehyun, of how little it seemed to have an effect on him.
Whereas he spent centuries drifting alone before he and Beomgyu met, before the Air deity found him and practically adopted him into being his friend.
Now, Taehyun is aware that his cold and distant ensemble isn't exactly helping him, but that was simply what he is, dictated by the universe when he first came into being.
So what if Beomgyu insists that he's not the frigid person he thinks he is? The universe has practically slapped him in the face with it again and again, and what power do they mere deities have to defy it?
"Hey, Tae- ah."
Air stops at the Moon's side, before asking, "So, him again?"
"Hm."
Beomgyu sighs and pinches his nose, worrying about the mood that Taehyun is in, before tugging on the deity's arm to stop him from tracking Light with his eyes.
"C'mon, you won't get him to explain by trying to burn him with your eyes," Beomgyu pulls Taehyun along, deep into nighttime, before stopping and fixing the Moon with his eyes.
"You can't live like this, Tyun," Air starts. "You- you don't deserve this."
The Moon wants to talk to him, to refute him or agree or something, but the words get stuck in his throat, held in place by the thoughts that are creeping back into his mind. So instead, the Moon bids Air a hurried goodbye before flying away into the distance.
Later, when everything is calmer, Air would sit with the Moon, and ask him, staring up at the night sky, "Is it hard?"
"Is what hard?"
"Y'know, loving from afar, feeling in silence—like you do."
"...I don't know," the Moon would answer after a while.
"Huh?"
"I meant—how would I know whether or not it's hard? Well, for Light, it's hard. I've told you a million times already, right?" An affirmative hum. "It still stings."
Taehyun continues, "For the Sun, though, yes, I've loved him for so long it feels like there isn't a moment where I didn't, but I've only ever loved him from afar, it’s all I know."
"Hm."
That night was one of the few they spent mostly in silence, spent in the other's company with no need for words.
—
Millennia pass, and everything changes and stays the same.
The Moon thinks about the moment he first laid eyes on the Sun, the same moment he fell in love with the golden-haired deity—though he did not know it then—and a bittersweet smile is brought to his face.
(He looks on from the edge of twilight as the Sun rules over daytime, bringing light and warmth to the world, and his eyes soften in unending adoration, only tempered by the millenia he's spent pining and falling only deeper in love.)
(How he wishes he were human, to feel sunlight beaming down on him, to know that after the night's cold, the day's warmth will always be there to welcome him. How he wishes he were human, that morning will always come for him.)
"Hello, Taehyun."
The Sun stands in front of the Moon, grinning brightly as the two cross paths, their domains eclipsing once again.
The two deities talk and dawdle in the time that they have bound together—rather than apart—by their domains, simply enjoying being in each other's presence, to feel to other right by their side so tangibly that they can be sure that they are real, that they aren't going anywhere.
Taehyun tries not to fall apart at the seams whenever the Sun smiles at him in that familiar way of his—cupid's bow lips upturned in a warm grin and eyes turning into crescents, cheeks forming dimples from his smile.
Taehyun doesn't know how long he's spent pining after the unreachable star that stands before him, and although his heart aches because of it, although he knows that he will never be able to fully reach out, he doesn't stop, can't bear to stop, for the Moon loves the Sun in silence—so close, yet so far away.