Namjoon lounges in the back of his limousine, tumbler in hand and music low, perfectly temperature controlled. The soft fabric of his suit clings to his shoulders and knees, simple yet elegant. He sits alone in the deep hours of the night, barreling through a similarly dark space. They are free of the city.

A phone call full of low, urgent words interrupts his solitude. A tap has the privacy window sliding down. The chauffer is a faceless silhouette, thrown into relief by the green light of the dash. His hair is getting long, poking from beneath his hat and covering the tops of his ears in a distinctly unprofessional manner. He’ll make sure to notify the man’s superior when they return.

In the meantime, instructions flow from Namjoon’s mouth, but his eyes are far flung, staring through the windshield and into the space beyond.

A dome of blackness envelops the limo, cuts the road from the earth, has them careening into an empty space in which no stars survive. At any second he expects that weightless feeling of his stomach floating into his throat as the they roar off a precipice and into the night sky, a silent comet swallowed and extinguished in a wink of headlights.

A sea of lights twinkle in the distance, lonely blurred buoys yearning for notice or blinking in warning. No road connects them to him or each other, but still they call, pushing back against the all-encompassing night. Humans are tirelessly persistent, bludgeoning nature back by force and staking their ground.

Darkness flows around the pinprick lights, crushes into the limousine, bleeds through inky windows.

The partition slides up, motor expensively silent, breaking Namjoon’s line of vision. He slumps back into the leather seat and takes an absent sip of whiskey gone warm from the heat of his hand. The soft blackness of the limo cocoons him, tries to convince him he is the biggest thing, the most vital and alive. Through black-tinted windows, the endless sky is invisible. But it hovers, just out of reach, waiting for him to step outside so it can slump its full weight on his shoulders.

Namjoon plucks at the dark cuff of his suit jacket.

The night will not crush him. He will be soaked up, bled out and dispersed, returned to the blackness from which he came.

It waits.

-

Namjoon wakes up.

Thunder crashes outside the window and crackles through the house. The ceiling creaks like old bones and the glass of the window jumps in excitement, rattling in its frame.

Lying still, Namjoon blinks slowly. Silence whines in his ears in the lull between rumbling thunderclaps. The room is entirely dark except for the occasional flicker of lightning that sneaks into his peripheral vision through the bedroom window.

Rain is rare in Sarkosa.

Namjoon strains to hear the patter of raindrops on the roof or window. Thunder rumbles again, like its revving up to a grand finale. It’s not raining. The storm is here with aggression and gusto, but the beating, cleansing rain is not.

Namjoon is suddenly irrationally afraid that the night is going to pour through the window and suffocate him, drag him out and drown him.

He yanks the blanket over his head and closes his eyes, seeing more darkness and more darkness, and he breathes slowly.

Thunder crackles through the air. The window rattles.

It doesn’t rain.

-

Even when the sun is down, it’s hot. Deep, smoldering heat settles over the desert like a blanket, unbroken by a breeze. The night sky is a blue deep enough to touch, a low velvety note that rumbles up through your chest and into still air. As the clock ticks toward midnight, the sky ripens into black plum frosted with an acidic orange from the lights of the city. A million stars blaze in friendly clusters, like so much confetti sown by an impossibly huge hand.

The moon is a silver spotlight that throws shadows, every object a frozen burglar caught in the act. Namjoon sits on his deck, feet tucked beneath him. Sweat tickles his underarms and the nape of his neck.

Moonlight bounces off the shiny smooth surface of the button that turns and twists in his restless fingers. The colors are dead in such low light; pink and blue now gray on gray.

I’m here now. What are your other two wishes?

Namjoon remembers those pinprick lights, each an island sending signals into the void. Out in the desert, there aren’t any lights. Sky meets ground uninterrupted and they roil together, inseparable and devouring.

In his backyard, the moon shears heaven from earth and the orange city lights never stop screaming. The plum darkness is light on his shoulders. Heat prickles across bare arms and up bare legs. There’s a lamp on deep in Seokjin’s house that leaks warm, yellow light through the window. Stars stud the dome above. Its endless expanse is cut and choked with roofs and eaves and the warm metal button in his hand.

Namjoon wishes for rain.

He pictures it, each warm raindrop throwing up the smallest cloud of dust, soaking into the starving earth and whisked away by roots and clay. Rain crescendos until it’s a constant buzz and everything’s wet, wet, wet, pooled up around land so dry its forgotten how to drink. It would plaster Namjoon’s hair to his head, wash the sweat from his body, and fill his mouth with the water and dust of Sarkosa.

The button flashes as it careens through the air, propelled by a flick.

He catches it.

I wish.