the stars, they shine for you tonight

             It takes an hour for Luhan to finally wake up, a sixty minutes gone by with Minseok out in the cold with nothing to shield him but a layer of covering fit for a season seven months ago. He thinks of calling and apologizing until his heart caves in, but he knows Minseok never leaves home with his phone - it’s all in his head, he’s already packed the damned thing in his back pocket in his imagination but really, it’s never left the bedside cabinet.

             So Luhan yanks down all the parkas he can find in their joint closet and hurries out as fast as he can with guilt bubbling up in his gut. The goose-feather coats fall one by one as he runs across the living room, but he grips the last firm in his arms as his heart thuds loud in his chest. He doesn’t know where Minseok might be, doesn’t know if he’s safe, if he’s imagined walking back home already but is actually stuck in a bathroom fifty miles away. The tears are coming back again but Luhan swallows them all down, begging and hoping with inaudible mumbles that Minseok hasn’t gone very far.

             He rounds the block twice before moving on to the next one, calling Minseok’s name until his throat feels dry and the sides scratch against his vocal chords. There are so many thoughts in his head that Luhan thinks he can finally compare with the amount in Minseok’s - who first thought of time, who first realized that stars could be so far away, who first proposed that constellations can be made by connecting two twinkling lights in the sky that stay suspended in the same place at a specific time, every twelve months? Who figured out that the cluster of nebulae right above them is most definitely the same one that has been there last year and will be there the next, the year after that, and the year after that? Where is Minseok and what is he doing? Is he okay? Is he broken already? Is he too late?

             Luhan searches until his shirt is sticking to his back with sweat even in the dead middle of winter, until he has asked every single person in the neighborhood if they have seen Minseok to which they point in a continuous circle with a sad falling of smiles. His tears have crystallized and they have melted on his warm skin, but still there is no Minseok and his heart - he wonders if it’s still there even if it’s pounding deadly beats into his ribcage because he’s never felt so numb in his life.

             Hand clutching the coat tightly in his fist, Luhan retraces his steps and runs home, uncaring about the fact that he is wearing nothing but a shirt in negative weather because Minseok, where is Minseok - he must be freezing right now, must be so, so scared.

             And then like a lie, he finds him.

             Minseok is curled up into a ball at the foot of their apartment building, rocking himself back and forth as he shivers. He hasn’t left home at all; he’s just been asking for Luhan’s permission to come back in.

             He hugs Minseok tight, covers all his sorrows with his arms and breathes so many apologies into his ear that his breath runs out, and when Minseok looks up, there is such a sad smile on his face that Luhan feels the air get out of his lungs again.

             "Luhan, you're back," he says, and the younger nods as he wipes the tears glistening down his face because he hasn't shed enough tonight, not even close.

             "I'm so sorry, Minseok," he says again, and he has never meant anything he has said in his life more than this.

             "Sorry? Why? We're you not able to find the cotton candy?" Minseok asks, and there is a gunshot in Luhan's chilled ears. "It's okay, we can just go buy some later at the market!"

             Luhan smashes again, this time into fine particles of dust that slip through his slender fingers when he tries to gather them up. "Minseok, what are you talking about? Tell me, where are we right now?"

             He replies with an answer that seems so obvious in his head. "... We're at Lotte World, Luhan."

             "No, Minseok, we're not at Lotte World," cries Luhan, and he hurts because the smile on Minseok's face is so fake. It's fake because his heart knows but his mind doesn't, and for the first time Luhan realizes why they say listen to your heart and not the stupid thing used only for balance stuck on the top of your body because the mind, it lies; it lies so, so well. "Minseok, listen to me. We're in front of our apartment and you're freezing cold. Let's go in, okay?"

             They do, and when Minseok steps inside their home, he collapses on the floor.

             He's sick with the common cold, the doctor says. Minseok is out for three-fourths of the day and all the while, Luhan threads his fingers into his boyfriend's and kisses the back of his hand twenty times over, watching the rising and falling of Minseok's temperature as he nurses him back to health. It's a Sunday so he doesn't have work, but he's worried about Monday, about Tuesday, about the many days that will come after because how will he face Minseok when he eventually wakes up? What will he say?

             But as the silent hours go by, Luhan takes a look at Minseok and the small, blissful grin on his face and the worries soften until they become flimsy nothings and he's back at square one. Square one, the very base of their relationship, not the gestures of care that Luhan shows Minseok, not the kisses they plant on each other's lips on their living room couch, but something much more simple, something so pure and so definite that Luhan cannot understand how he ever thought such a horrid thing about his lover.

             Minseok mutters Luhan's name in his sleep, each letter mulling over so beautifully on the slopes and curves of his lips and like a routine, Luhan knows - Minseok is dreaming again. His own eyes are closing and he fights with everything he's got, but Luhan is tired from lack of sleep and the harsh beating the winter weather has done unto him as well. So he takes one last loving glance at Minseok treading peacefully on clouds of stardust and wonders: how could he ever think of leaving? How could he ever let go of this vagabond when Luhan is the tent he carries, the telescope he uses to navigate his way? He wonders just as much as Minseok does in the span of two days, wonders infinitely more.

             When he opens his eyes again, he is in someone's embrace. There is a slow, steady thumping by his ear and a familiar warmth spreads over his cheek.

             "Minseok?" Luhan calls groggily, lifting his head just a little so that he can look at his boyfriend.

             "Shh, go back to sleep," Minseok says, and he kisses him gently on his forehead. "You have a fever."

             There is a faint throb in his temples, Luhan realizes, and he does feel a little overheated. He sighs deeply and closes his eyes again, letting Minseok run his fingers through his hair.

             "What were you dreaming about?" Luhan asks, nose tickling Minseok's firm chest. "You were mumbling a lot in your sleep."

             "I was?" chuckles Minseok, and a smile spreads across Luhan's flushed face with every shake of his shoulders.

             "Yeah."

             "I was... dreaming about a lot of things. I always do."

             And it's such an obvious answer: of course Minseok dreams at light speed each time he submerges into darkness; his brain moves so fast his body can't keep up, after all.

             "This time, I was drifting - in space, actually. Do you know how black holes work? How they literally just everything in and never let anything escape?

             "I thought maybe I'd like to get close to one, just enough that I don't get vacuumed in but I can still see everything that goes on in it. You know, for observation's sake. So I let myself float, away, away, away."

             Minseok nudges the warm body in his arms and smiles when a pretty face looks back up at him.

             "I stood three feet away from the entrance, craned my neck so far I could feel my muscles strain. But I couldn't see anything - I guess some things are just meant to be kept secret, no matter how hard you try to look for the clues. It was a little disappointing, and I did get in eventually, but that part wasn't all that bad, truth be told."

             "Minseok, I'm sure you wouldn't have said that if you got into a real black hole."

             And suddenly, Minseok shifts in their bed and he is hovering over him. "How do you know? I might have loved it. The rush is so scary, Luhan - scary enough that you feel unsafe. But after a while, you just kind of suspend there in absolute nothing and it's really such a relaxing place to be. See, listen, Luhan: sometimes, you just have to imagine. Where is the fun if you let the ending of all your stories be written by someone else - someone ordinary? Sometimes, I think I do all the imagining for the both of us."

             Luhan wants to argue, but lips are pressing softly against his own and Minseok breaks away right when Luhan is about to bring him closer.

             "I think about a million things each day, Luhan. There's never a moment when my brain isn't thinking. You know, right? You know how I blank out, how I always wake up with so many new ideas in my head that I can't even put them all into words.

             "But that feeling is so nice, like you have a little piece of the whole world in your hands: a chunk from Arizona, a shard from Beijing, China. There's so many possible answers to every single question, even... see, even something as simple as two plus one! Don't you ever wonder how math came to be, Luhan? How two just comes out of nowhere and most definitely becomes a three when number one comes along - it's so strange, how people just think of some things and it explains how everything in this world works. Don't you think so?"

             "... Minseok, why... why do you like thinking so much?" Luhan asks, letting Minseok's fast words spin a little in his head. Minseok's forehead meets his own and a thumb brushes lightly over his cheek to say "look". His eyes shift up two inches and there it is again, the whole universe twinkling in those orbs, so many different galaxies and galaxy clusters passing through his soul, piercing holes that leak infinity, that leak so many more Earths.

             "Because every time I close my eyes," comes Minseok's quiet reply, tickling every part of Luhan's body, "there's you.

             "Sometimes, I dream that I'm off to Spain - I'm boarding a plane, and the second right after, I'm getting into a cab at the airport in Barcelona. Other times, I dream that I'm twenty years in the future, thirty years, maybe even ten years back. But you know what's the same about every single dream?"

             Their noses touch and Luhan's pulse rings fast in his ears.

             "You're there."

             So Luhan lets his constellation stay suspended in the sky, watches as Minseok shakes hands with Orion and Taurus, with Aries and Capricorn. He watches them talk, watches them make conversation over the strangest of topics that beings like Luhan cannot understand. But he knows now, where he stands in Minseok's ever-spinning night sky. He is not beside him, not behind him where he is in earshot of their confusing jumble of words, but instead, he is right below, gazing up at how brightly Minseok shines because sometimes, beauty is greatest when observed in untainted silence. There is no need to understand the way it gleams and shimmers in a light so invisible it couldn't possibly be there - all Luhan needs to do is let it sink into the deepest parts of his heart, where Minseok has left his imprint.

             And so Luhan continues to let Minseok drift, allows him to be a collection of stars in a perpetual landscape of nothing and everything. He remains his stargazer, and when a shooting star falls and kisses his forehead a thousand goodnights, he thinks there is nowhere better in this world than the spot Minseok has chosen for him right here, quiet in his arms.

             "Thanks for loving me," whispers the most beautiful set of hydrogen and helium gas Luhan has ever had the chance to meet. He responds with a kiss, because Minseok makes love easy - always has, and always will.

 - e n d -

A/N: idk what this is, tbh.
it just kind of.. happened? first xiuhan fic, idk how this ship works D: