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The sky is spilled ink, no moon, no sun, just raining gold. He’s surrounded by flowers, like they’re growing right from him, hyacinth and iris and rose. They don’t prick his skin or make him bleed. He’s no flesh, all bronze and marble.
“Minho?” The gold glitters down like tears, like slow rain. His voice is warm, musical, a breath of air, but he hears it with new ears. He breathes with new lungs, writhes with a new body, grows deep underneath the ground, he’s the fruit of the fungi, toadstool to Gods. He’s the poison this time.
He breathes, tasting nectar. “Kibum,” he says.
The sun rises and the lyre plays and he feels his body turn, iron flooding back in, burning like gasoline.
~•~
Minho is a prince, back straight, beautiful, far away, even to a God. Kibum can sing and he can play and he can admire, but Minho can dance and he can listen and he can love. It’s envy at first, a man who walks around, closer to the universe than the Gods will ever be. A man who is admired but never prayed to. A man with blood that runs through his veins, red and metallic, pushed by a beating heart.
He can hear it from across a room, across a castle, from up in the sky while Minho stands firmly on the ground. A pulse. The rush. Minho’s in particular, and he doesn’t know why until he chases it.
Dripping in silver, Taeyeon would not even look up. Her shine comes from within, and Minho is just a man, and she is a Goddess. And they are two archers pulling their bows in different directions.
Kibum snaps his arrow in half, barreling to him at full force.
~•~
It’s painful, then, becoming human. The flowers and fungus and burrowing roots release from him like they’re being torn. Like they’re being burned. Like he’s born again, forced from the womb.
“You fell,” Kibum breathes, pulls Minho close, a man, for just one moment a God.
God of Rose, of Thorn, of the green that Kibum stands on to wake up the sun, carry it across the sky. With his passion, with the way the vines recoil, God of Fire.
For one moment: Kibum, a man, red blooded, heart beating, far more painful for veins that had only ever held ichor. A heart in his own chest, an echo in Minho’s ears, far away.
Gold dust flaked off his skin, left gashes and holes, deep burns from fire, and they patch themselves back up right in front of him. Skin growing over itself, shining, healing.
The sky is still black.
~•~
Kibum is music and light. He fingers his lyre and Minho, who lays on his broad back in the flowers, face warm, curls his hands in the grass. The sun shines above, he hardly has to push it along.
It moves easily when he loves. Most things do.
It moves with Kibum’s breath and his hips and his tongue. It moves with Minho’s gasps, first breaths of a God, the ash of what could burn itself into myth. It stings and his lungs glow golden bright, resolutely human, worshiped by a God – that must be something.
Minho is a man, no one prays to him.
But this is more than prayer, more than worship. Kibum burns candles at the altar of his chest, blows the billowing smoke between their lungs, like it will get them blissfully high, like they can float together to the top of the mountain, just for a moment.
This is more than anything in the world. This is the closest to humanity he has ever been, will ever be. This beating heart belongs to him. And whatever lives inside Kibum’s marble chest is Minho’s.
~•~
Feeling slowly comes into Minho’s arms and legs, and he’s peeled away from the earth, chest to Kibum’s ear. The beat of it ricochets against the trees and the grass, the bones of the python.
The flowers and their thorns still don’t touch him. They do him no harm, cradle his body like they’d saved it. Quiet acknowledgement of just a single moment of godhood. Respect. They’re hot, burning, but his skin is the last thing to come back, maybe it never will. Snow from the top of the mountain.
“What happened?” He asks, though Kibum had just told him. Words are syrup in his mouth, leaking out the corner of his lips, cold like marble. It’s like he’s already up on a pillar.
Kibum doesn’t hear him, doesn’t answer, just holds his chest against his ear, a conch shell that echoes the heartbeat of the ocean.
~•~
The God of the Sun doesn’t touch the ocean, but he longs for it. His sister pulls it towards her all she wants and the lyre in his hand is the closest he’ll ever be.
He owns fire, though. It must be why Minho burns. Why the flowers that cushioned his fall cradle and crackle against him. Why gold floats up like hot black ash between them. Why it glows in the air when he forgets to move the sun.
He knows it will happen, somehow, before it does. Kibum can hear it inside his chest, whispering like a threat. The wind will push him further than he can reach, and that’s all.
He knows that it happens but nothing about after.
So when he stands there, arm out, God of Healing, and watches Minho fall, eyes wide, just a man, he doesn’t know what will happen next.
Minho falls back a prince and he lands a God. Kibum watches his heart stop beating, watches the flowers come up to cradle him, burning him red and black. He thinks it might be Taeyeon, protecting his heart.
Because suddenly he has one. It quakes and breaks and the weight of the sun is suddenly too heavy.
But it’s not her. It’s Kibum who grants it to him. Like the strike of Zeus, his outstretched hand, desperate devotion, won’t let another Icarus drown. Won’t let another Daedalus hold him under. Won’t let the man he loves go.
He doesn’t realize what he’s done until they both hit the ground. Kibum collapses to his knees, the weight of his body too heavy for anyone but a God to hold up.
But Minho is a God for a moment for him, so the ichor doesn’t stop flowing. They exchange humanity and godhood like vows. Minho’s beating heart in Kibum’s chest is kept safe until he comes up for air. And Kibum’s immortality lights a match, hollows Minho out until all the fallen parts burn away.
Fire tests gold. A God and a man who can’t be another Greek tragedy. Who won’t let each other.
~•~
Night fades away when Kibum inhales with the sky, pulling the sun to the center of his chest where Minho’s heart had been for a short time. A piece of it stays in there. Minho can feel the piece of it that stayed but he doesn’t miss it.
He keeps a piece of it too, fire in his chest and at his fingertips. He keeps the flowers that bend to him like they’re reaching. Like they need him to reach back.
Kibum kisses him and he tastes like ash.
He cries and it tastes like salt.
Kibum’s hand doesn’t leave Minho’s chest, not for a long time after. Like his beating heart might stop or disappear, or that he might have to hold onto it again. Two bronze hands cradling a living breathing thing.
Kibum is greedy. He admires humanity so much that he lets himself fall in love with a man.
Minho is greedy too. He loves a God so much he nearly becomes one.
And they’re both immortal and neither of them are. They float in between states, keeping each other away from harm. Growing like vines around each other, flowers blooming in radiant gold. Iron and ichor bleeding together.