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“Ranker Khun Aguero Agnis has passed the test. Congratulations!”
“Ranker Jyu Viole Grace has passed the test. Congratulations!”
Everyone wakes up, eventually, cursed or not. When Bam has his golden eyes swept over them in one go, he can tell they have collectively decided not to ask him about the curse, the lantern, or the Administrator. No one looks too shaken or worse for wear, that’s enough for him; Bam clasps a hand over his right arm—the same arm that had morphed into a blade.
The same blade that had pierced Khun.
It all comes flooding back into his mind in a moment of abominable recollection. The expression that Khun had made when it happened, when Bam hurt him.
Gentle. Like he meant it to be private, genuine, and gentle.
As though Khun still thinks so incredibly highly and dearly of Bam, that he’s the only person in this world deserving of love.
Love is gentle. Love is the most violent act because gentleness isn’t born from nothing. One is the utmost gentle person when they have got used to writhing alone, when they have gone through unspeakable cruelty, when they choose to caress someone with bloodied knuckles and calloused fingers.
“Hey.”
Bam thinks he’s tearing up all over again; maybe it’s why his eyes are fighting so hard to make out blue hair, even bluer eyes, a smile that’s meant for him and no one else.
“I promised to be here when you wake up, right?” Khun spreads his arms wide open—just like in the dream—not for Bam to run another sword through him but to welcome him home. Not to face his fears but to confront how Bam has been struck with such overwhelming adoration for so long that he never said it aloud, at all.
Silence is a rising level of water at their feet when Bam says nothing back. Khun’s heart jolts in his chest, like a thorn has grown out and pricked it until it bleeds out. He’s mad at me? “Bam, I’m–” There’s an apology lingering on the tip of his tongue but impending fear runs rampant in his mind—the last time he had apologized to Bam is not something to recall right now.
His breath is caught in his throat. Locks his jaw. No, he needs to say it.
Khun doesn’t have another chance to go at a second attempt because Bam is already grabbing his hand and pulling him flush against his chest. One arm around the waist, the other hand curled up on his neck, tangled into threads of blue hair. Bam slumps against his shoulder, godawfully ragged. Exhausted. “Please don’t ever,” he mumbles. “Don’t ever make me do that, ever again.”
“I’ll try,” Khun manages a chuckle, his arms coming up to wrap around Bam’s neck. It’s real; everything is so potently him. From the fabric of his jacket to his scent and those cosmic eyes.
“Blue Turtle was being so mean!!” Rak protests out of nowhere. “Let this leader teach him a lesson for bullying you, Black Turtle!”
Shibisu bursts out laughing and the tension hung upon their heads like a guillotine is lifted instantly. Anak doesn’t bother to smack him; instead, she just sits and leans against his legs with Laure already falling asleep at her feet. Endorsi mutters something indignant, looking away but flinches when Hatz shifts closer to her. Shibisu gathers them all to huddle against each other despite Hatz and Anak’s grunts of opposition against physical affection.
Endorsi doesn’t push them away—they all need this right now.
“What do you guys think about resting for a few days?” Khun initiates, to everyone’s surprise. Perhaps he has finally learned how to relax after climbing so high and going so far.
A few days of peace in your arms? I need it terribly, Bam thinks and keeps the silly thought to himself. “Let’s do it,” he pulls away to face Khun and agrees with a small smile. “After that, I can blow up any skies that you want me to.”
“Please don’t,” the rest of the team choruses in exasperation.
It all makes Khun laugh, wholeheartedly. “Listen to you. Here I thought you weren’t so versed in romance.”
They wander the area for a while until Rak finds a cave full of artifacts. It’s been centuries since someone has passed the floor test so these items must have arrived with their owners before the Administrator even grazed this place.
Rak starts playing with a rusty spear. Hatz is meditating somewhere in the corner. Shibisu is very enthusiastic when it comes to helping Endorsi dig for any jewels or treasures. Anak has joined Laure in his sleeping bag because she’s small enough to fit and not disturb his beauty nap—yes, Laure has had his character development, sharing his sleeping bag.
Khun is already bored out of his mind. He would have looked up an inn or hotel for them to stay at but this floor is absolutely hopeless. All thanks to its Administrator who has successfully locked every single individual on this floor inside the world of dreams; hence, no civilization. Therefore, there’s no place to stay. Khun wants to groan just thinking about having to lend the team his lighthouse for them to sleep in.
“Well, aren’t you having fun,” Bam chuckles and takes a seat at his side; he doesn’t have enough stamina to play catch with Rak anymore.
Khun decides to humor him. “Can’t you tell, I’m having the time of my life,” he cheers monotonously, picking at a random stack of tattered books. His fingers reach for one that doesn’t have a title just to further his display of sarcasm. A journal, he realizes belatedly.
“That doesn’t look like a book,” Bam is quick to point it out, too.
Khun mindlessly flips through it just for confirmation. Two different handwritings. Ink pens. A keepsake of some sort. “It’s a journal. Someone wrote it in a very old language, though,” he says and shuts it close, ready to put it back.
“Do you know how to read it?” Bam’s question halts his movement entirely.
Khun clenches his fingers around the spine of the journal to steady his grip. “Yeah? Not the whole thing but it’s similar to something the Khun family had me learn.”
“Maybe you can read it to me? If it belongs to someone from the outside, we can know a thing or two about the stars,” Bam says jokingly. Innocent and harmless. Many years ago, Khun would have grimaced because the stars would remind Bam of Rachel, the cave, and how he never wanted to be so alone all the time.
Now, Khun reaches for his hand and holds it tightly. “Sure, why not,” he smiles, ignoring the tug on his heartstrings.
That night, Khun and Shibisu end up having to multiply their lighthouses before expanding them in size just so no one will have to sleep without a roof over their heads. No one gets to complain unless they want to cuddle with a grizzly bear.
Bam walks right into Khun’s main lighthouse after washing up in a nearby river because it’s been coded to grant him full authorization to enter anytime and anywhere—something that he will always be eternally grateful for.
Multiple holographic screens surround Khun like a cage, glasses hung upon the bridge of his nose and ruffled shirt; the sight carves the faintest lines into Bam’s forehead. He’s about to take some drastic measures because Khun’s workaholism has always been at an alarming rate until Khun presses a key and bellows into his microphone, “Endorsi, forget your ten-step skincare routine for one second because Hatz is outside right now. He might want to give you his virginity.”
Khun turns off his microphone, the silence falling flat and so does Hatz’s heart rate. Bam stares in disbelief at one of the screens where Hatz has ceased pacing back and forth in front of Endorsi’s cabinet like a madman—the poor guy looks like he wants to sprint off a cliff at record speed. Furious. Appalled. Flabbergasted.
To be fair, Hatz is sort of madly in love with Endorsi.
“Khun!” Bam feels the need to yelp as Khun laughs his heart out. He has always known that Khun gets some sort of twisted amusement out of tormenting people but the atrocity never fails to surprise him every day.
“That was my break time and that is the end of that,” Khun concludes with a clap of his hands. His fingers are quick to close the tab where Endorsi is yelling bloody murder at him before pulling up something about the next floor test. “You can go ahead and sleep first.”
Bam stares at the futon in the corner blankly; it has been there for a while because Bam has a constant dire need to have a place to hide and he always ends up falling asleep. He doesn’t tell Khun that he sometimes does so on purpose because the blanket smells like Khun. With a soft thud, Bam flops himself onto the cushioned surface.
“Can’t you go to sleep with me?”
“Not right now, Bam. There’s nothing about this damned floor aside from fucking volleyball and I-”
“Can you at least come here? I’ve missed you.” Bam insists, round eyes and arms extending forward. After that, his jaw is defensively tight like he’s afraid he might have said something wrong. Regretful. It reminds Khun of when they were high up in the sky with him spreading his arms wide open for Bam to go through with the curse.
Never does Khun think Bam will someday dabble into the art of guilt-tripping. Eventually, Khun yields and joins Bam on the futon, having Bam engulf him completely from behind like a sloth—it’s endearing in a way, how Bam can be openly clingy with him once Khun lets him know that everything is okay.
It’s warm, overwhelmingly warm with Bam’s arms around his waist and Khun doesn’t want to bet on the fact that it’s because of the firefish. Khun does his best to concentrate on the holographic screens while Bam is nothing but unhelpful when all he does is nuzzle his nose into the gaping hole of Khun’s collar.
This isn’t the first time this has happened yet Khun can’t stop feeling like he’s about to implode at every minuscule touch.
From a side angle, Bam can see where blue lashes are knocking against the transparent lens and the faint dark circles beneath cobalt irises. A hand reaches out to graze the thin wire on the bridge of his nose, hooking a finger around the metal to drag it down. Just enough for blue eyes to look at him.
“Bam, I swear-”
Without warning, Bam turns him to the side by his chin and leans in to close the gap between their lips, his other hand still resting softly on Khun’s stomach. At the kiss, he feels Khun stiffen in surprise. To his relief, Khun then grows weak and completely surrenders to the affection. Something lifts off both of their chests—the weight of the day’s events.
Khun is breathless when Bam pulls back, dizzy from awestruck adoration.
“Don’t be scared,” Bam tells him and he knows Khun is listening very attentively because of those glossy blue eyes.
“Really? Are you really telling me that when six other idiots are within the vicinity and they can absolutely be snooping on us right now?” Khun tilts his head, lips arching to mask his nervousness—Bam thinks he’s testing him.
With a huff, Bam lifts Khun and turns him around so they are now face-to-face. It does nothing to ease Khun’s blazing nerves when it didn’t take Bam so much as a shred of effort to pick him up like that.
“I just want to kiss you. I won’t go further than that.”
Khun flushes with an amiable shade of blush. Does he dare tell Bam that he doesn’t want them to stop at just kissing?
Bam’s hands find his face, cool against his hot skin, and he cradles Khun’s cheeks before squishing them together. “I want time with you. This life alone isn’t enough,” he repeats what he has already said in the world of dreams just for it to feel real, for Khun to know that he means it with every living fiber in his body.
However, Khun stops him when he tries to lean in again. “Do you know that you are deserving of love? Do you know that you deserve to be loved by someone gentle and not someone who’s always at the top of a hit list, who has his life in jeopardy the second he walks out the door?”
“Khun,” Bam almost pleads, a pained look seeping into his golden eyes. “You have loved me all along with the kind of gentleness that you don’t offer to anyone else. You were the one who took my blood-soaked hands in yours and you held me until I believed that I am not what the world wants me to be. You are the utmost gentle person I could have ever asked for. The least I can do is blast out the skies for you. You are my person, are you not?”
Love is gentle. Love is the most violent act.
Khun gives him a little smile, that signature raise of his lips, “I am.” His cobalt eyes are slowly closing as they disappear completely behind the shadows of his blue lashes as he leans in.
It’s his way of saying it’s okay to get close. So Bam pulls him impossibly closer, hands gravitating toward the tapers of his waist. He kisses Khun like Khun is his and his alone to keep, to cherish, to devote all of his reverence to. What he doesn’t know is that it makes Khun feel all weak in the knees as Bam tries to steal every breath from his lungs with his tongue nudging past his lips. There’s a sort of familiarity of Bam hushing him and another heartbeat thumping in sync with his own. Bam swallows every doubtful thought until Khun complies with two arms latched around his neck. If Bam ever lets go, Khun thinks he will collapse in utter shambles.
Goosebumps rise on his skin when Bam trails kisses along the line of Khun’s jaw before he pulls back to admire between labored breaths.
If there’s one thing Khun has always known, it’s that he has always wanted to kiss Bam from that day on the floor of tests. And if there’s something Khun wishes he had known earlier, it’s that this boy who has called him his only person will always kiss him back.
“I don’t think this life alone will be enough for me, either. Your fault for planting that seed in my head,” he confesses with a lopsided smile that reaches his eyes.
Bam thinks and has always thought that Khun is the prettiest when he can smile without a care like this. Then, a crazy thought occurs to him—Bam wants to take the blue moon as his North Star even if it’s not real, that way he won’t have to bother with the entire universe out there.
Unless Khun wants Bam to get him the stars, or any planets, he will happily do so.
“I’m sorry?” Bam laughs cluelessly, pressing another kiss to the corner of his mouth. He pushes Khun's glasses back up with a gentle tap.
A lightbulb goes off in his head. “Hey, didn’t you promise to read me that journal we found earlier?”
Khun flicks his forehead because Bam knows that Khun can never say ‘no’ to him and he’s definitely taking advantage of it more than usual. Nonetheless, Khun can’t help his smile.
“Fine, but don’t you dare fall asleep if it’s boring. That thing is ancient.”
“I won’t,” Bam promises.
Date: ??/??/??
Is the moon a star?
Perhaps not.
Is the night even real?
It is, right here.
For in your darkness, I find my light.
In my presence, you find your grace.
Is the moon a star, or just a muse?
Is the night even real, or are we deceived,
By these mundane, mortal eyes?
Bam falls asleep halfway through the poem and Khun is so tempted to pinch his nose for the audacity. It’s fine, he supposes because there will be time. If Bam said that this life alone wasn’t enough, he would find a way to meet Khun in the next one, and the next one, and the next one.
If the night has claimed the blue moon as its North Star, there’s no reason for them to separate or hurt alone anymore.
Khun looks down at his left hand to see Bam’s fingers clamped around his ring finger. It’s empty, for now, but not for long.