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His hair shifts just slightly against his temples, the softest stirring from the wind coaxing at him, imploring him to come and play. A part of him, the part still filled with boyish fantasies and the desire to take flight into the world without care on concern for himself, insists that he listen.
The stars hover above him, flickering and beckoning in turn, and in the repressed corners of his mind he feels a warmth spread through his chest and tingle through his toes. He wonders what would happen if he were to jump from the ground - is almost convinced that gravity doesn't apply here - and the wind coaxes again.
Seunghyun sucks in a breath and flexes his fingers, knuckles chilly against the air, and he takes a step onto the next patch of grass, feels the ground fall out from beneath him, and for a brief moment, sheer terror consumes him. Darkness surrounds, broken only by the gradually brightening luminescence of starlight, and he is not entirely sure which way is up before he is steadied with an easy hand around his wrist, a figure materialising into being before him.
“Watch your step.”
Seunghyun smiles, feels a little more steady on his feet, even as he looks down and sees no support beneath him. His eyes then trail from the fingers around his wrist, up and across a slender arm, following it over a bony collarbone and coming to settle on blue eyes, watching him with unguarded curiosity.
“I did,” Seunghyun finally replies, feeling as if he is standing in honey, liquid and warm and all encompassing as bliss washes over him in gentle waves. It's as if the breeze is coaxing him again, but this time, it is the figure before him that whispers into the space surrounding him.
“Yet you took the step anyway.”
“You're too cryptic, Jiyong,” Seunghyun teases the figure, voice slow and languid as he allows his eyes to drift closed, “I never know what's going on in these dreams.”
Even without sight, or perhaps especially so, Seunghyun knows Jiyong is watching him with soft adoration across his otherworldly features.
“Dreams?” Jiyong asks, voice lilting with amusement, and Seunghyun shivers at the barest caress across the palm of his hand, before Jiyong's voice is drifting, moving with its host. “I've told you before that this is real. You're sleeping, yes, but it's the easiest time for the stars to reach you. What drives you to believe otherwise?”
“You can't be real,” Seunghyun replies simply, little more than a murmur, and his eyes remain closed. “I've never met another person like you in my life.”
And Seunghyun hasn't. Nobody like Jiyong. Nothing quite like the being that greets him near nightly in his slumber and speaks to him for hours on end, never losing interest in the words Seunghyun has to say. Jiyong insists that he is real, that he is a part of the galaxy surrounding them in much the same way that Seunghyun exists in his own day to day living.
Jiyong, he says, is made of stardust, and Seunghyun is inclined to believe him.
To believe he is real, however, is not a step Seunghyun is yet willing to make.
“I'm not a person,” Jiyong reminds, “so that makes sense.”
“None of this makes sense,” Seunghyun huffs a laugh, eyes opening once again and meeting the glitter of Jiyong’s.
“Maybe you just think too hard,” Jiyong replies, and Seunghyun allows himself to drag his gaze along Jiyong’s face, revels in the flush of colour on Jiyong’s cheeks, just beneath the glitter.
“You're beautiful,” Seunghyun breathes, and Jiyong chews back a shy smile, but not before a brilliant flash of teeth and gums.
“You flirt.”
But Seunghyun means it. He means it so very much.
He drags his fingers across Jiyong’s palm, and Jiyong shivers and sways into Seunghyun’s space. Seunghyun presses his nose against Jiyong’s cheek, breathes him in, and he can inexplicably taste ozone on the air.
“I wish you were real,” Seunghyun confesses into the air, and Jiyong sucks in a sharp breath as Seunghyun presses his mouth to the rise of Jiyong’s cheek, before turning and catching parted lips with his own.
There is the softest sound, somewhere between a sigh and a moan, and Seunghyun can recognise it, tastes it in the smile that presses into his. The wind is beckoning again, coaxing directly from Jiyong’s lungs, and Seunghyun decides to listen as he drinks from Jiyong’s mouth and holds him close. Jiyong pulls his mouth back, just enough so that they still share breath whilst he takes both of Seunghyun’s hands in his own. Seunghyun can see the shadows from bright red hair, cast deep across the blue of Jiyong’s eyes. Gold shimmers before him, and he can feel the shift of sequins against him as Jiyong presses closer.
“You are remarkable,” Jiyong murmurs, and Seunghyun rests their foreheads together, before the star is curling his fingers over Seunghyun’s palms, forcing them to clasp together. “I am real, Seunghyun, and I will see you soon enough.”
Seunghyun makes to protest, knows this for the familiar wake up warning that preludes his lurch back into consciousness, and he holds Jiyong close, even as the redhead begins to drift away on the wind.
“Wait for me…” Jiyong’s voice carries on the breeze, and Seunghyun’s heart aches at the same time his lips tingle with the remnants of their phantom kiss. He promises, at least in his mind, that he will wait until the end of time if need be.
As consciousness comes back to him, however, his body curled beneath his quilt, he wonders if he's losing his mind.
He stretches, and that's when he realises that he is holding something in his hand. His fingers uncurl, and with them, any doubt that had lingered within his mind. A garnet, in the shape of a star, sits nestled amongst the lines of his hands.
He raises it to his lips and brushes a kiss against it, as a smile curls at his lips and ozone teases at his tongue.
He opens his bedroom window, and the wind beckons that he play.