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Space. The final frontier. To go where no man’s gone before. It’s a lot less impressive than people would think.
Well, that’s a lie.
Sort of. Like anything else it can lose its luster. Space can look bland and repetitive when you’ve spent so many years in the stars. It really is just like anything else in a way. Just takes a change of perspective for you to remember just how grandiose it is.
Like jettisoning in an escape pod to nowhere.
Things look a lot different when it’s just you, a pod, and the universe at your fingertips.
“You okay?”
Oh, and a coworker.
“Yeah, thanks Seungkwan.”
Seungkwan offers him a saddened expression before he’s slipping away.
It’s been like that since they were lost, he’s sad to say. The engines of their little pod gave out fairly quickly, and as they careen through empty voids and shoot past universes they’ve sort of just become a little too upset for normal conversation.
Or at least that’s what Wonwoo tells himself.
When it’s just you, a luxury escape pod, and a man you thought you were in love with as you floated gently amongst the stars, careening to an eventual death with nothing more than each other to cling to, well, it sort of makes the whole being in love thing harder. He tries to ignore it, but after the first two days it was almost impossible.
There wasn’t much to really take his mind off of things. The thrusters were broken beyond repair so incredibly early on, and with the inability for them to stabilize to be able to attempt external repairs, they’re really kind of fucked. Plain and simple. No way off, no way home.
There isn’t even anything he can think to tinker with or upgrade. It’s a luxury pod after all, and it was just by sheer chance that that sun-demon-thing cornered them there before jettisoning them off. There’s enough food and water and air to outlast them, enough space for them to both have their own rooms, even a little area to sit and make merry.
It’s unfortunate that they haven’t been able to find merry at a time like this.
Wonwoo readjusts his glasses before he realizes something that makes him snort. Time is sort of meaningless to them right now, and well, if it makes him laugh he can only hope it pulls some reaction out of Seungkwan.
The younger man is in the kitchen when he finds him, babysitting a pot on the stove. There are machines that will do that, cook for them and clean for them and do basic maintenance for them, but Seungkwan turned them off within the first three hours of their floating. Said this was how he grew up, doing it all by hand. It makes him feel a little bit better despite it all.
(Wonwoo, forever the engineer, still makes Seungkwan let him run the machines every night while they sleep. It helps to keep them in working order, just in case there comes a time they need them. Even at times like these, Wonwoo wants to leave no one stranded. Not even the silly little bots.)
“Seungkwan,” he says softly so that he doesn’t scare the other man, receiving a gentle hum for his troubles. “You know what I’ve come to realize?”
“What?”
“My eyes could deteriorate more, but these are the last pair of glasses I’m bound to have.”
Seungkwan stops stirring, stiffening with Wonwoo’s words. It’s the exact opposite of what he wished to happen.
“How will you stare at the galaxies we pass when your glasses no longer work?”
“Nothing compares to seeing you.” The words slip out, but Wonwoo can feel no embarrassment for them. Instead he watches as Seungkwan’s ears redden, tension ebbing from his shoulders like heat from a star, before he scoffs.
“Flirt,” he accuses. Wonwoo lets him have it; he’s right, after all.
But what use is it to be careening towards nothing with someone you love if you can’t spend your days making them understand how deep your affection goes?
“I just really wish I could tell my mom,” Seungkwan says over dessert. It’s a mud pie, something Seungkwan’s mother used to make back before he decided to go off world. The money was better, he said. Life insurance too. But with it came the risk.
“Tell me about her?” Wonwoo asks as delicately as he can from across the table. Seungkwan’s face takes on this crestfallen sort of expression as he stares wistfully out the window.
“She’s a great mom. Always called and texted, sent mail and presents. Would sing on our birthdays, even if she just got the recorder. I still have one of those messages,” he says, his smile now choked as tears begin to fall from his eyes. He does nothing to stop them.
“She sounds wonderful.”
The conversation dies there, but it continues to stick with Wonwoo. Wonwoo, a man with hands that need to tinker and create, a brain that never slows down for a moment, not even as they melt through time and space at a breakneck snail's pace.
Seungkwan wants to talk to his mom.
Wonwoo can do that.
Time is hard to understand as you drift without a tether. The distress signal seems to do nothing even as they careen through the cosmos, just a streak of light in the sky going terribly out of control.
All that’s to say, Wonwoo thinks it’s been about two weeks of him working away before he drops the device in front of Seungkwan. It looks reminiscent of one of the “modern” first cell phones, a Nokia he thinks it was called, but he thinks he did it.
“Dial your mom’s number,” he instructs as Seungkwan keeps blinking at it, either confused or frozen Wonwoo can’t tell.
“But it won’t connect.”
“Take a gamble on it this time.”
“Wonwoo-”
“Gamble on me.”
That’s what finally does it in the end. It’s not without protest, of course not, but the protest is soft and quiet even as Seungkwan picks up the device. Slowly, hesitantly really, Seungkwan types in the numbers, reading them back a few times before he finally hits that little green phone button.
It rings for long enough that Wonwoo feels like a dick. Maybe he should have tested it more, or maybe he should’ve started smaller, or-
His panicked thoughts get cut off by a hitch in Seungkwan’s breathing. “Mom?”
Seungkwan begins to cry, talking to his mother as he does. Wonwoo figures he can go and renew the distress signal, and he leaves Seungkwan to his mother.
“She said thank you.”
“I’m sorry?” Wonwoo says as he looks up. He had been tinkering with something meaningless yet again, just trying to keep himself busy. There’s not a lot of things to do while you careen through the sky. Keeping busy is the hardest of all.
“My mom,” Seungkwan says softly. “She told me to tell you she said thank you.”
“Oh,” Wonwoo lets out more than he says, some sort of soft subconscious reaction that just slips out. “Um, I mean, yeah sure. Happy to help.” He doesn’t bother to look up until the device is held into his field of vision, impeding his work. Seungkwan takes in his confused expression and Wonwoo swears he looks a little heart broken. He can only wonder why.
“Do you have anyone you want to call?”
Oh, well, that would do it. Wonwoo just shakes his head, gently pushing the phone away from him before he goes back to tinkering.
“I’m good. You keep it, tell your mom to call whenever she wants.”
Wonwoo knows that Seungkwan is looking at him with a sad expression but he just continues to ignore him. They have forever to get into it after all.
The stars rush past at dizzying speeds as Wonwoo stares out the window.
So much life out there, living their daily lives as usual. Wonwoo never thought he’d envy them while he was up here, going where no man’s ever gone before, but that’s before he began to spin out for eternity.
One of the robots is a seamstress and another is a laundry bot. Both of them are Seungkwan’s favorites, now that they can survive in clean and comfortable clothing. New ones, too. A luxury they haven’t had since last port city.
Wonwoo lives in baggy clothes, pants and sweaters that he only ditches when he has to go play in the engine room.
Seungkwan still dresses up. Jeans and nice shirts and things that fit and look classy and cool. Sure, he still comes out for breakfast in lounge clothes, but he always seems to have an air of luxury about him that has Wonwoo looking at him even more than usual. It’s nothing that he thought was even possible.
“We should have a party!”
The days have been long. Time is nothing. Space is all around them, suffocating them. Squeezing like a boa constrictor without a care, just crushing its prey as it must, as it always will.
All that’s to say is Seungkwan’s sudden outburst is unexpected, at least to Wonwoo, for how long they’ve been on this ship.
“What would we celebrate?” He asks, rather than killing Seungkwan’s dreams in a oneshot. It feels too cruel, especially with their inevitable fate surrounding them. Seungkwan just huffs as if he’s annoyed, but Wonwoo can see through it. Easily, actually. It’s what happens when you live in solitude with only one, single other soul. You learn them intimately, intrinsically, biblically.
“I dunno, something. Anything! C’mon Wonwoo,” he’s pleading now, and Wonwoo has to give it to him - there’s no way he can say no to that.
“Pick a theme, Seungkwan,” Wonwoo says softly, smiling at the other man as his face is practically split with the force of his grin. “We’ll have a hell of a party.”
Seungkwan rushes him, tugging him into a hug before he squeezes, almost vicelike. Wonwoo does everything he can not to melt into the embrace, but it doesn’t matter. He still turns to goo in Seungkwan’s arms, ready to make his home there.
They do have a party. Seungkwan lets him give the bots some tasks, and soon they are in one of the halls with countless decorations and food fit for a crowd.
Something about it makes Wonwoo incredibly sad.
It might be Seungkwan. Seungkwan, drunkenly dancing as they spiral throughout the stars. Seungkwan, who looks like he’d be perfect at a high end ball. Seungkwan, a man filled with dreams and love and laughter. Seungkwan, who is trapped spiraling to his death but still dances amongst the stars.
The tragedy isn’t lost on Wonwoo. In fact, it never leaves him alone.
“D’ya think they’ll catch us?” A drunken Seungkwan half slurs. Wonwoo tries but fails time and time again to understand what he could mean.
“Who?”
“Anyone,” Seungkwan says wistfully, his glazed eyes glued to the window on the other side of the room. “D’ya think anyone’ll catch us before…” He trails off, his eyes fluttering as exhaustion must try and take over him.
“Before what, Seungkwan?” Wonwoo asks, though he regrets it immediately.
“We crash.”
Honestly, no. Wonwoo thinks the only thing that may catch them is a stray planet’s gravitational pull and they’ll hold each other as the pod is ripped apart and their bodies reach terminal velocity upon reentry if they aren’t first burned to ash.
“Yeah, Seungkwan. Someone will catch us.”
Lying has always been easier than the truth. Now is no different.
“Fuck, hangovers suck,” Seungkwan groans as he slides into the seat next to Wonwoo the next day. Well, as much of a day as it can be without a sun to turn around.
“You want me to get the cook to make you some soup?” He asks softly though his eyes never stray from the teleportation device he’s been tinkering with for the past few days. There’s no real shot in hell that it’ll work, but Wonwoo’s starting to get a little desperate.
Maybe not for himself, but definitely for Seungkwan. He deserves more than a fate like this.
“Soup would be good.”
Wonwoo finally sets down the teleport and gets on that.
Food is faster than it should be when Wonwoo has the bots make it. It still gives him a few moments to figure out what he wants to do, what he wants to say, but in the end it’s practically a fruitless endeavor. All he wants to do is get Seungkwan home.
“Here,” he says softly as he slides the bowl in front of Seungkwan. “That should help you feel a little better.”
“Thanks.”
Wonwoo waves him off, burying himself in his teleporter once more. His tinkering isn’t doing much besides showing him his inevitable end.
There’s no way he can extend the field beyond one person, nor the jump rate to greater than one. If he does it, makes it work, gets it all going, it won’t be for him. He’ll send Seungkwan home to the family that he desperately wanted to call, to the one he still calls daily to check in. Seungkwan will live a long and wonderful life and Wonwoo will be left to spin out amongst the stars.
“You’re awfully into that,” Seungkwan comments, his voice still exhausted and pained. Wonwoo just hums.
“Just trying to see if I can do something.”
“What?”
Wonwoo shakes his head. He doesn’t want to get into a fight about it. “Don’t worry about it.”
Seungkwan’s eyebrows furrow, but he lets it lie. Wonwoo is grateful even if he just lets the silence linger.
Growing tired of the ship is easy. Child’s play, even. There’s only so much one can do as they jettison out of control out here. Seungkwan isn’t familiar with the inner workings of the ship so he can’t toggle with controls or the computers the way Wonwoo can. He has no ability to tinker and nothing really to keep his hands busy.
It’s to no one’s surprise that he cries often, and heavily too.
Guilt begins to build in Wonwoo’s gut as he overhears another phone call that ends in sobs, awakens to the sounds of Seungkwan having another jarring nightmare.
Sure, floating to your death in space isn’t good for anyone really, but it’s clearly something all sorts of terrible for Seungkwan.
Seungkwan who thrives at parties. Seungkwan who is at home amongst a crowd. Seungkwan who wants nothing more than to make people around him laugh. Seungkwan who was born to entertain more than just the likes of Wonwoo.
It doesn’t take him very long to vow that he’ll get Seungkwan home. Every time he hears Seungkwan cry, the vow simply becomes more and more urgent.
As of now, it’s pressing on him so tightly that it feels as though he’ll burst.
Wonwoo takes to not sleeping, really. Seungkwan sleeps far more than normal.
This is what it has come to, here in the stars.
This is how it shall end.
What more could it ever be?
“Hey,” Seungkwan says softly, making Wonwoo startle.
It’s the first time they’ve spoken in days.
“Hi,” Wonwoo rasps, his voice sticky and rusted with its lack of use.
“We should have a real dinner again.”
Wonwoo blinks at him, taking in the saddened expression but noting that Seungkwan’s eyes are not red and puffy. His head tilts on its own accord as he looks up at Seungkwan.
“Are you feeling any better?” He asks rather than demanding Seungkwan tell him everything he wants to know this instant. The smile he receives is worth his lack of knowledge, far dimmer than ever before but truly on the path to becoming one of Seungkwan’s absolutely brilliant smiles.
“Yeah. Just needed a few days to,” he gestures around a little wildly, not bothering to use his words to explain what Wonwoo already knows.
A few days to cope. To grieve. To hold a funeral for yourself while your heart very much still beats.
If he’s honest, Wonwoo expected it to both happen sooner and last longer.
“Then yeah, let’s have dinner.”
Seungkwan smiles at him, a touch brighter than before.
It almost makes him feel a little bad about what he’s planning, but he pushes it aside.
“Any idea where we are?” Seungkwan asks over dinner, his eyes glued to the windows. Wonwoo only shrugs.
“Besides space, no. I don’t even know if we’re in the same universe anymore.”
Seungkwan snorts as he shakes his head. “I thought this was your domain,” he teases.
“I was never very good at navigation.”
“Well,” Seungkwan muses, smiling softly at him, “I guess we can decide together. Like there,” he points to a strangely neon blue planet. “We’ll call it Goop.”
Wonwoo raises an eyebrow. “Goop?”
“Goop. And its moon will be named Glorp.”
Wonwoo shakes his head even as he smiles. “As you wish, Seungkwan. As you wish.”
It’s another week before Wonwoo’s heart freezes, dropping everything in his hands.
He did it.
He actually did it.
He can’t believe how sad that makes him.
If there’s anything that Wonwoo wants to do before he sends Seungkwan home, he wants to be honest. Seungkwan deserves to know how he feels, and even if he hates it for him, it won’t matter. He won’t be trapped here all that much longer.
Doing it is harder. Wonwoo keeps trying to say it but keeps getting tongue tied every time Seungkwan as much as smiled at him.
Those smiles should be illegal.
He still hopes that he can brand them into his brain.
“You’re acting weird,” Seungkwan says after a few days, raising an eyebrow in that elegant sort of bitchy way that he’s long since perfected.
Wonwoo figures there’s no time like the present, taking a deep breath before he lets the words spill from his mouth as sloppily and violently as they’ve wanted to. “So, um, I’m actually in love with you and it’s been killing me not to tell you.”
Seungkwan begins to smile even as Wonwoo feels his cheeks burn, sweat dripping down his back. “Yeah, I know.”
Everything stops. His organs, his breathing, the vessel they’re imprisoned in. What?
“What?”
Seungkwan shakes his head, moving to stand. He takes Wonwoo’s limp hands into his own and squeezes them, smiling at him knowingly even if he’s blushing too. “I know, Wonwoo. And I love you too.”
Wonwoo just blinks at him. “What? How?”
“Does it matter? I’ve loved you for longer than you’d believe.”
“Same,” Wonwoo says immediately before he cringes. “I mean, me too. I mean, I have too-” He cuts himself off as Seungkwan laughs, focusing on the sound and joy in his face and praying that he doesn’t start crying.
Wonwoo finally gets control of his limbs again and wraps Seungkwan into a hug, burying his face in his messy hair.
He can’t believe that it went like this. He can’t believe he’s going to let it all go.
“I’m just sorry that we didn’t tell each other sooner,” he mumbles, squeezing his eyes shut to try to hold back his tears.
Seungkwan hums softly, squeezing his middle. “Why’s that?”
“‘Cuz.” His next breath shakes. “We’re trapped out here. We didn’t get to do anything that we wanted.”
“Wonwoo, silly silly Wonwoo,” Seungkwan starts, pulling back far enough so that he can cup Wonwoo’s cheek. “We have the rest of our lives together. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
When his tears finally fall, Seungkwan wipes them away without a word.
“Dance with me.”
It’s one of the new little things that Seungkwan has started doing since they both confessed. He’ll turn on a song that Wonwoo has never heard of and grab his hands, pulling him away from whatever he had been doing to slow dance in the middle of the room.
Wonwoo’s never sure he’s loved a silly little thing more.
They spend every waking moment together, and every sleeping one curled together.
Wonwoo has never been happier.
Even though they’re jettingsoning in space, spinning out in the world’s worst burn out, Wonwoo is so happy.
Seungkwan is everything he’s ever wanted and more. Sunshiney and sweet and passionate and funny and so so so full of life that it’s hard to imagine that they’re trapped in a frozen metal tube.
It sort of makes him feel guilty that he’s keeping him there.
“You know,” Seungkwan whispers into the space between them, the air thick and heavy with sleep, “I think this is the best ending I could have ever had with you.”
“Don’t say that,” Wonwoo protests immediately, refusing to open his eyes.
“It’s just you and me and the stars, Wonwoo. I don’t think I could ever want anything more.”
Seungkwan loves him so brightly and vibrantly that Wonwoo feels like he’s drowning in technicolor.
Wonwoo loves him back as best as he can, quiet and soothing and forever constant.
He just wishes it would save them in the end.
He wishes it meant more than it does.
Wonwoo’s checking their trajectory for shits, really. Seungkwan is on the phone with his family and Wonwoo likes to give them a little privacy whenever he can.
It’s honestly just an accident he finds it. A coincidence. A moment of chance.
Their flight path, float path really, finally has a destination.
There’s a dying star nearby. Screaming into the silence of space, collapsing in on itself as it finally burns itself to death. It’s loud and messy and painful, so incredibly painful.
But the most important part is that it’s throwing a gravity field. A big one.
And they’re about to be caught in it.
This is how the end comes. Wonwoo’s read a few pages ahead and he doesn’t know what to do with the devastation cracking throughout his chest. He feels like someone tore him open and let him spill out, his body a husk as the rest of him dead.
“Are you okay?” Seungkwan asks when Wonwoo stumbles into the main area. His heart drops as he still somehow manages to smile, sure that he looks super shaky.
“Just tired,” he manages to mumble, stumbling towards Seungkwan and collapsing into his arms.
Wonwoo wants to tell him. He doesn’t know how.
Wonwoo spends as much time as he can with Seungkwan. He’s practically glued to his side, a barnacle that won’t let go until someone shaves him off.
Wonwoo still hasn’t told him. He’s not sure he ever will.
He does manage to find time to slip away and pray for a miracle, checking their trajectory every day and crushing his spirits just as much.
They creep closer every day to their inevitable doom. Wonwoo just cries whenever he has a moment alone.
There are only two days until D-Day when Wonwoo finally builds up the courage to do it.
Somehow he manages to hold back his tears as he crawls into bed, slipping the teleport onto Seungkwan’s wrist. He presses a long kiss to Seungkwan’s forehead and feels him stir underneath his lips, not bothering to move until Seungkwan hums softly.
“Morning, dork,” Seungkwan teases. Wonwoo finally pulls back, cupping Seungkwan’s cheek and running his thumb over his cheekbone.
“Have I ever told you that I love you?” Wonwoo asks, desperate to keep the emotions out of his voice.
Seungkwan laughs softly, opening his eyes to look at Wonwoo with his lovingly liquid gaze. “Yeah, but you could tell me more.”
Wonwoo leans down to kiss him softly and thoroughly, savoring the moment as his tears finally streak down his cheeks. Seungkwan makes a concerned noise in the back of his throat but Wonwoo pays him no mind, kissing him until they’re both breathless.
“I love you,” he whispers into Seungkwan’s mouth, his fingers curling around the device on his wrist. “I love you more than words.”
And with that, Wonwoo hits the button.
Seungkwan disappears out from under him, leaving only his sleep mused blankets behind. Wonwoo curls up into them, clutching at his chest as he feels as though he’s just ripped his heart out.
He cries for hours, desperate and alone, so terribly alone.
Wonwoo expected the phone to ring a little sooner than this. He barely manages to crawl out of bed to grab the device, curling back up under the covers as he answers the phone.
“What did you do?!” Seungkwan cries, his heartbreak so clear and fresh in his words that Wonwoo just cries even harder. “Bring me back, goddammit! Bring me back!”
Wonwoo chokes on a sob, forcing himself to breathe for a few moments so that he can finally speak. “I can’t.”
“So come here! Come to me!” Seungkwan sobs out, making Wonwoo sob even harder.
“There was only one teleport,” he whispers in a broken voice, feeling Seungkwan’s broken sob shatter throughout him.
“Then why?”
“We got caught in the gravity field of a dying star,” Wonwoo whispers, his voice whispy and shaking. “I don’t have much time left but I needed you to be okay.”
Seungkwan sobs again, even harsher this time. “No, no no no,” he begs but Wonwoo can only squeeze his eyes shut.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he whispers, ignoring as what sounds like an alarm as it begins to scream somewhere else in the ship.
“Wonwoo, what’s that? What is that?!”
“You are so brilliant and radiant and so full of love, Seungkwannie, I couldn’t just let that all go to waste,” he says, ignoring Seungkwan’s desperate questions. “Besides, you have your family again. I know how much you love them.”
Seungkwan sobs painfully as another alarm begins to blare somewhere else inside the ship.
“I’m not sorry I sent you home,” he whispers, ignoring how his voice breaks, “but I am sorry I didn’t say goodbye.”
“Wonwoo, please-”
But Seungkwan’s voice cuts out as the phone in his hand shorts, every alarm that could be sounding pounding throughout the walls of the ships. Wonwoo sort of wishes he could’ve gotten the bots out too, but at least he got Seungkwan out.
Seungkwan who deserves more than an end like this. Seungkwan who deserves a life and a family. Seungkwan who deserves a future.
Wonwoo curls up, wrapping himself in the sheets that still smell like the love of his life and closes his eyes.
At least he got to land among the stars.
