For as long as he can remember, Kris has dreamt of flying. In his dreams, he resides in a land made of clouds, where fire is pleasant, and flying feels a lot like breathing; easy, but necessary. And every time without fail, these dreams become nightmares. Without him ever noticing, the clouds disappear from beneath him but the fire catches him, and flying feels a lot like suffocating; desperate, but failing. He always wakes up the moment before he makes impact with the ground. It used to scare him that it felt so eerily realistic, but he now credits the feeling of nostalgia to the fact that it’s recurring, and a masochistic part of him yearns for the dream every night before he drifts off to sleep.

Sometimes he wonders why he craves the sky when he knows all too well what it feels like to fall. He knows the answer though. It’s the same reason he plays with his lighter while he chain smokes after school when he knows all too well what it feels like to burn from the inside out. Because he knows he’s fated for silent oblivion, and he despises that.

Regardless, he drags himself out of bed morning after morning – the nightmares have such impeccable timing that he’d long forgone alarm clocks. He faces the monotonous days with an equally apathetic attitude, until they blur together and he couldn’t tell one day from the next if he tried.

---

“Hey man, can I borrow your lighter?”

Kris holds it out wordlessly, his shirt sleeve riding up slightly on his arm to show several burn marks on his wrist.

“You gotta be more careful with that thing,” Yixing mumbles as he takes the proffered object. Kris just grunts in response. He can’t find the words within him to tell the other that the burns are no accident. He has no vocabulary to explain how the scorching heat feels like going home.

Yixing is the closest resemblance Kris has to a best friend in his life. They sit together on the curb just around the bend from their high school, having formed an unspoken relationship of sorts. Kris smokes cigarettes for the sake of smoking while Yixing smokes blunts to get high. Kris isn’t one to judge; weed is much lighter baggage than what he’s carrying.

“Aww . I’ll see you later,” Yixing says, getting up and extinguishing his joint under his foot. A fat raindrop hit Kris in the head right before he gets the chance to ask. He waves goodbye as the other boy jogs away. Kris leans back on his arms, tilting his head up to the sky and blowing out a lungful of smoke. Something about the rain is calming, almost therapeutic. He also feels safer when the clouds look angry and grey, because it means there are no gaps in the sky. He wonders idly if he’s going insane for thinking things like that.

“Kris.” He hears a voice surprisingly close to him. When he brings his head back down, he sees a boy his age standing about a metre away.

“Do… Do I know you?,” Kris asks hesitantly. The boy barks out a laugh and Kris shies away.

“Do you know me?,” the boy echoes rhetorically. The question brings Kris back in time, until he feels nostalgia for things he doesn’t remember, and sentiments for this boy he’s never met.

“Who are you?,” he whispers in awe as flashes of half-developed memories come flooding back into his mind. A woman’s smile. A vast forest. This boy. Flying. And falling – no, plummeting. But the more he grapples at the thoughts, the further out of reach they get. It’s infuriating.

“The question should be who are you?”

Normally, Kris would roll his eyes and walk away. A stranger asking him random questions? Yeah, no. But something feels amiss in the most delicious way, and that alone keeps him rooted to his spot. Suddenly he’s wondering, who is he? Who is he really? And for once, this isn’t about pathetic hatred of his miserable life, but about an innate knowledge that he is something greater. 

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A/N: I strayed slightly from the excerpt in the foreward, but it felt necessary. I actually kind of strayed from my originaly plot idea in general... But I like where this is going a lot better, and I hope you guys will like it too ^^ And I apologise for my longfic writing style! It's some weird combination of J.M. Barrie's writing style and kpop fanfic author writing style hahaha. Hopefully it won't be too long until my next update~