Tao's POV, present

Sometimes I remember things from my Earth home, weird things that don't matter and shouldn't affect me at all.

But they do affect me.

I feel it in straight in my heart as I think about the door to my room that's too big for it's frame and grates against the wood each time it's opened. I can feel it when I think about the broken yellowed doorbell that Luhan still hadn't taken down even after another twelve years of hanging uselessly outside his house. I can feel it as I remember Suho's incredible collection of books that I used to let myself get lost in when the lab work got to be too much to handle. I even felt it when I tried not to remember the rancid cooking my dad made that filled the house with it's awful stench. I remember these things about my home and maybe even miss them, but I do not want to go back, not if it meant leaving Kai.

Kai is my new home. Anywhere he is, I want to be, because I love him with all my heart and couldn't bare to be apart from him again. He is my whole world, my whole galaxy, my beautiful shining star that's stuck firmly in the forefront of my mind at every moment of every day.

I will not leave him just to experience the familiar sights and sounds of the place I grew up in. I can live in a completely foreign environment just for him.

And completely foreign is an understatement. This was a whole new planet. Nothing here was quite like Earth.

At the same time, nothing on Earth was quite like anything here. There were amazing sights and sounds that I knew I would never get used to, no matter how long I stayed.

Adjusting to this place was like being thrown into a pool of ice cold water and trying to wait it out, completely submerged, until the body took measures against dying of hypothermia. First, the blood would be less focused in areas where the veins were closer to the exposed skin, creating a numbing sensation in the extremities. Next, the diverted blood kept the vital organs warm, regulating the internal body temperature with the human's natural need for reestablishing homeostasis.

This is what I was doing. I stopped focusing on the fact that I was millions- trillions (who even knows?) of light years away from home, numbing myself into believing that I was a tourist in an amusement park with my coworkers and best friends. I diverted all my attention on finally being within touching distance of the boyfriend I hadn't seen or heard from in years, keeping my heart warm with memories and thoughts of spending the rest of my life right by his side. My state of homeostasis was the comfort in feeling Kai near because he was my new normal. All these years I had been in a constant state of imbalance, but now... I'm at peace.

I'm at peace in an alien world full of alien things and crazy alien species that wanted to eat me. It was odd, but true.

I'm at peace here, visiting an alien's home.