Work Text:
Around 600 light years away from the Earth, there is a star that burns a blinding red, pulsating wildly like a human heart, shining brighter than its neighbors in the night sky. The star has been growing, evolving so rapidly that it’s expected to explode as a supernova within the next hundred thousand years.
Hyungwon heard about it from Changkyun once, in one of those rare moments where the youngest had enough beers to break out of his introverted silence and spiral into a full science-y spiel on the snoring dorm’s living room floor.
Hyungwon didn’t really think much about it at the time but he thinks about it now, head plastered face-down onto his studio desk at two a.m. on a Frida– oops , Saturday. There is nothing but the whir of the air conditioner in the room and his occasional sighs, but Hyungwon swears he can hear the gentle pitter-patter of the rain against the window, even though the studio is supposed to be soundproof. He is a mere three hours away from his deadline and this strategy of waiting until the last minute for panic to kick in used to work for most of his previous songs, but it sure as hell is not working now.
Contrary to what he hoped for, there are no verses magically floating in his head. There are no words miraculously stringing themselves together to form the best song he’s ever made. Instead there is the vague memory of random facts about this red supergiant in a constellation far away, and the image of a boy who holds his heart tightly, surely – immutable as the burning of Betelgeuse, but even more so on days like these when he has nothing else to distract his mind with.
Around 61 kilometers away from Seoul, there is a star that burns brighter than anything Hyungwon has ever laid his eyes on.
It’s only been five weeks since Minhyuk enlisted, and Hyungwon misses him. Bad. Minhyuk is supposed to graduate from basic training in a few hours but only his parents will be allowed to attend the ceremony, so Hyungwon has to make do with missing him and trying not to break down from doing so and doing lyricist things which, again, is not working.
The studio lights flicker for a split-second and Hyungwon jolts awake, suddenly reminded of the deadline that looms in the near distance. He rubs the drowsiness from his eyes and fixes the sunflower lamp that just flickered. The lamp was a gift from Minhyuk. The thought – like most of his other thoughts about Minhyuk – makes him smile.
“I don’t get it,” Minhyuk had said when Hyungwon asked him to paint the lamp for his studio. “Your fascination with sunflowers, I don’t get it. They literally don’t even have a scent.”
And Hyungwon just smiled because of course, of course, the sun would never understand why a creature of the earth would dedicate its whole life seeking his warmth.
It ended up being a debate on the color yellow, and the best-smelling flowers, and how Hyungwon’s opinion doesn’t count because he’s a loser with rhinitis, and how Minhyuk’s opinion doesn’t count because he is simply a hater who hates. And the debate ended (or well, not really ended) with them making out on Minhyuk’s bed, giggling and touching and touching and trying not to be too loud lest they get kicked out by Kihyun for the fourth time that week.
Hyungwon misses him. He misses Minhyuk’s smile, and Minhyuk’s softness, and he misses the way he can never seem to escape Minhyuk’s orbit. And he wonders, does his sun miss him too? Does a blazing bright star also dream about the human that watches it every night?
The clock ticks, the AC whirs on, and Hyungwon realizes it’s almost three in the morning, and Minhyuk is still gone.
It dawns on him that there is no getting out of this. They will be apart for 510 days (and even more since he also needs to enlist soon) and it will be lonely, but he will survive. Stars burn, and the sun shines, and Minhyuk will come home because that’s what love does. It comes home.
And Hyungwon? Hyungwon will wait and be still and steady - because that's what love does. It stays.
But for now, he picks up his pen and writes.