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Namjoon has always been an avid reader. When he was little, his mother used to run her finger beneath the lines of words as she read to him, tracing them to life, and later, when he was a bit older, he would too--feel the words come to life beneath his finger as he spins them about his lips.
Until one day, he read and read, spun and spun, traced and traced till the words danced right off the page, danced into the air in front of him, stepping to the music of his voice. That night, he sat on the floor of his room with the world's greatest thinkers and philosophers and played chess.
Namjoon won.
That gave him something to think about for the next decade or so. He still thinks about it now.
And since then, he'd sometimes find himself reading things to life, only when he gets too buried in the book that he ends up pulling the story up and out. People might call him a perv but the real reason Almost Transparent Blue left such a deep mark was that he'd accidentally read a group orgy out of the pages, right onto his own bed and the mess it left took way too long to clean, and he couldn't shake the sight of pale thighs wrapped around hips, lips and lips on lips, fingers and hair and--
Namjoon shakes his head. This is why he never reads out loud anymore.
Then one day, he picks up a book with a navy cover, about a boy who dreams in lights and stars and how much he wants to be a human boy, to understand human emotions, to taste and feel as humans do, and really, Namjoon doesn't usually read this kind of stuff, but he picks it up anyway, and he reads it. And he reads it again, and then again.
And then, he reads it out loud.
"Seokjin," the boy says, smiling, reaching out a hand that's solid enough for Namjoon to take but only for a little while. It'll be minutes before he starts to fade, and then Namjoon will have to keep reading to keep Seokjin from fading back into paper and ink, back into non-reality.
"Namjoon," Namjoon says, resisting the urge to say I know.
"What is this place?" Seokjin looks around--his skin is made of shifting skies, his eyes full of moons and stars humans might never get to see. There's a universe in his chest and Namjoon wants nothing more than to reach out, reach in, and skim his fingers through the galaxies.
"My room."
"It's... finite."
Namjoon laughs, "Course it is. Most things here are."
Seokjin frowns a frown that stretches across his dimensions, right to the edge, reaching a finger out to run it along the wood of Namjoon's desk, "That's no fun."
"Actually, it makes things more fun."
Seokjin's finger sinks through Namjoon's desk and Namjoon lowers his eyes to the pages, reading a paragraph and then the next, till Seokjin is solid again. Till he isn't fading anymore.
"How so?" Seokjin asks, plopping down on Namjoon's bed.
Namjoon laces his fingers over Seokjin's pages, "Cause having limits gives us something to fight for, something to work toward. Being constrained frees us from the constraints of freedom itself."
Seokjin laughs, "You're not making any sense."
Namjoon shrugs, grinning as well--he likes Seokjin, and the way he laughs like stardust, "A lot of people tell me that."
"They must not know a lot about you," Seokjin says, and Namjoon falls quiet. Oh, a voice in his head goes, oh, a voice in his heart goes.
Oh.
"No, I guess they don't."
"But I don't really either," Seokjin says, light as light itself, heavy as the dark of The Great Beyond.
"Do you want to?" Namjoon asks.
Seokjin blinks and he's starting to fade again, so Namjoon lowers his eyes to the book and reads till Seokjin is all there.
"Do you want me to?"
For a moment, Namjoon doesn't answer. For a moment, there is silence, the kind of silence that rings across infinities towards other infinities. The kind that finds rest and respite where infinities overlap, in the space between. And then, he starts talking. At first, about nothing at all, about how he wishes he could spend more time doing the things he liked--music, reading--and less time on things that really don't mean much to him personally--school, studying. His own stories are interspersed with fragments of Seokjin's story, paragraphs that Namjoon reads out when Seokjin starts to fade and it takes longer and longer and longer till Namjoon dozes off in his chair, a piece Seokjin's story still on his lips and Seokjin smiles, pulling the blanket off the bed to place over Namjoon's body.
He spends the rest of the night sitting there and counting the stars that shine across Namjoon's lips.
Namjoon wakes up the next morning to an empty room and Seokjin's book on the ground, one of the pages bent out of shape from where it had fallen and he almost yelps, reaching down to snatch it up, smoothing his hands over the bent page. Its morning, and he has to go to school. The book weighs heavy and light in his hand and for a second, he considers taking it with him just so he'll have its weight to keep him steady but then he thinks of the rush of voices and the flood of bodies and the torrent of words that don't live like Seokjin's words do and he puts the book back down, smoothing a gentle hand over the cover before slinging his backpack over his shoulder and heading down stairs.
He comes home to just made rice and dinner time conversations that linger warm against his skin but he's buzzing when he finally makes it back up to his room and tosses his backpack on the ground, picking up Seokjin's book and reading till Seokjin is there again.
"New stories?" Seokjin asks, eyes full of something like stars but so much more.
And so Namjoon recounts his day, the drib and drab and droll of it all but Seokjin listens with a quiet rapture that can only be attributed to the expanse of night, how curious it must be to see the day, knowing that it can only ever catch glimpses at dawn and dusk, through the rose-colored lens of sunrise and sunset.
It goes on for a while like this. It goes on till Namjoon has almost memorized the entirety of Seokjin's story, from the first word to the last.
Then one day, Seokjin isn't smiling and Namjoon can feel his heart thudding out of sync, "What's wrong?"
"I just don't understand," Seokjin says, shaking his head.
"Don't understand what?"
"How people are the way they are."
"What do you mean?" Namjoon's moved to the ground next to Seokjin and Seokjin reaches out to take Namjoon's hand. It's a simple gesture but it leaves Namjoon feeling too full and too empty all at once.
"I've always wanted to know what it's like to be human, but I don't think I can ever get there. You are made of such finite things, and I am nothing if not the opposite," Seokjin heaves a sigh, "but you hold so many infinities in your hands and still you reach for more. I think that's the true limitlessness of humans, a kind of limitlessness that I don't understand--the want for more. How can people be satisfied, but also never quite satisfied?"
Namjoon laughs and tries not to drown in the feeling of Seokjin's skin, skin stitched from the universe's dreams, dipped in time and painted in lines and dimensions Namjoon might never understand. And yes, he can use definitive here because even though Namjoon hates definitive (never, never, never) that's all Seokjin is and Namjoon is okay with that.
"That's how humans work. We're terrible and mysterious."
"Mysteriously terrible and terribly mysterious," Seokjin says, and Namjoon laughs again. His fingers feel like. Just Like.
And Like. And Like.
Honesty.
Omens.
Metaphors.
Eternity.
Just the one eternity.
"You should read a different book," Seokjin says.
Namjoon sighs, "I know, but I don't want to."
"You should," Seokjin presses on, "because there are other infinities who want to learn too."
"But I don't want to teach those ones." Namjoon leaves out the ending, lets the silence fill it up. I just want you. Just you. Just.
"You don't have to read them out loud," Seokjin says, and Namjoon quiets. He'd forgotten that he has a choice, that he's always had that choice.
"Are you tired of being here?" Namjoon asks, finally, and it's Seokjin who laughs this time.
"No, but you might be soon, and I'd like to remain in your good books, I think."
Namjoon almost doesn't catch the book joke but he does, he catches it by the tail end and grins as Seokjin gives his hand a squeeze.
Silence. It stretches in taffy-soft seconds, glistening in sugar, fleeting and sweet.
"Come back to me," Seokjin says after a while, with a bright, bright smile, "and I'll be different then. So you can read me all over again."
Namjoon blinks. "How will you be different?"
Seokjin tilts his head, "Stories change every time you read them. Stories change with the person who reads them, then when and where and how. You forget that we're also finite infinities--and I guess that's the difference between you and me. I'm one infinity pressed into finite world of pages while you're a finite being born into a world bursting with infinities."
Namjoon crinkles his nose and looks down to where their hands are connected, "You sound like those philosophers I read out once."
Seokjin beams, "Then I guess I'm getting proper good at being human."
Namjoon nods, almost sadly, "Yeah, you are." And he decided right then and there that tomorrow, he's going to pick up a different book. He just doesn't know which yet. That night, he falls asleep with Seokjin's hand in his, wrapped in their finite, their infinities, the beginnings of their endings, twisting and twining into something more.
Namjoon wakes up to Seokjin's book on the ground by his hand. The cover is open; there are new words there, penned in ink like the type but not quiet. They are more alive than that.
It reads--one day, when you write your own story and read it out loud, you'll find me there between the words and sentences because that's where I belong. I am the space between words that gives them the weight to be, and the dark of the universe that gives stars their bright to shine. I'm the infinity surrounding your finiteness that gives you the freedom to be--so go on and be. And you don't need me for that anymore.
It isn't signed, but who else can it be?
Namjoon smiles and traces his fingers over the words. They are warm and fresh, but when he flips through the book, expecting to find all of Seokjin's familiar words there, this story, Namjoon draws a blank. Literally. The pages have gone and completely and totally blank. He sits, for a moment, mortified, flipping furiously back to the first page with Seokjin's words. The only words he has left of Seokjin anymore.
And again, he runs his fingers across the words, across the page that feels like Seokjin's skin.
He spends the whole day at school fidgeting with his pen, scribbling down what he can remember of Seokjin’s story into the margins of his notebook and when he finally gets home, sits through dinner, he comes back to his room, brimming with empty and quiet. It feels so full of them it might burst.
Namjoon opens Seokjin's book and reads over the lines again, not out loud, just to himself, his palm against the blank and warm of the page.
It feels like.
And like.
Just like, Honesty and Omens and Metaphors and Eternity.
Namjoon picks up a pen, flips to the next page, and writes.
The pen on the paper feels like.
Finite. Infinity. Never. Always. Like. Love. You.
Like.
Home.