Baekhyun glanced at the sofa before sitting down beside the visibly eager young man and folding his hands in his luminescent lap. He looked over at Chanyeol expectantly, but the latter found that he once again had no idea what else to talk about. It was as if all the questions he had spent so many hours pondering had suddenly vanished now that he actually had the chance to ask them. As the young man observed Baekhyun perching apprehensively on the edge of the couch, a thought occurred to him, and he finally opened his mouth.

“If you can walk through things, then how come you’re not falling right through the couch?” wondered Chanyeol, a look of quizzical amazement plastered across his face.

Baekhyun chuckled.

“Honestly? I’m actually just floating above it right now.”

Upon finishing his sentence, Baekhyun started to slowly sink farther and farther into the fabric of the sofa, its cushions wrapping around him until he was swallowed up to his waist, his feet and legs having disappeared completely. He laughed again at Chanyeol’s shocked expression, and effortlessly pulled himself back up into the illusion of a normal sitting position.

“Does that tickle?” giggled Chanyeol, bringing his knees up to his chest to hug them as he marveled at the glowing man.

“Not really,” shrugged Baekhyun. “I guess I don’t feel much of anything, really.”

“I felt you…” Chanyeol mumbled.

“Excuse me?”

“I…”

Suddenly realizing how awkward that must have sounded to Baekhyun, Chanyeol frantically waved his arms as he tried to explain what he meant.

“No! I mean - when you walked through me earlier, it was like I was getting electrocuted! I felt like there were billions of tiny shocks traveling though my body.”

“Interesting,” murmured Baekhyun.

The shorter man lost some of his concentration as he contemplated Chanyeol’s confession, and without realizing it, he started to slip back into the folds of the sofa.

“Uhhh… Baek?” drawled Chanyeol.

“Oh, whoops.” The other man realized he was disappearing into the furniture, and quickly pulled himself out. “Gotta be careful about that happening; sometimes I forget to keep my feet from going through the floor.”

Chanyeol hadn’t thought about that, but he supposed that it made perfect sense. It wasn’t as if Baekhyun could choose what he wanted to pass through or not when the entire world was probably nothing more than a huge, wide-holed sieve to him.

“Why bother making it look like your feet are on the floor if no one can see you?” Chanyeol questioned. “Why not just fly everywhere?”

This earned him another smile from Baekhyun, and the taller man felt his heart flutter slightly. The latter was radiant as he sat just above the couch - and in more ways than one. His soft bluish light seemed to flicker and shimmer as Baekhyun laughed, but the twinkling quickly faded into an expression of sorrowful, bitter nostalgia.

“I guess it’s because it feels more… normal,” theorized Baekhyun. “I’ve always tried to act as normally as I can, ever since I died. It makes me feel less alone.”

“Well, you don’t have to be alone anymore,” assured Chanyeol.

The line sounded cheesy, but he couldn’t help wanting to care for the young man huddled in front of him. Baekhyun looked so small and vulnerable - and despite his earlier confidence that had bordered on cockiness when Chanyeol confronted him the first few times, the latter could tell that there was a lot of longing for genuine acceptance that hovered just underneath Baekhyun’s steely exterior.

“Thank you,” whispered Baekhyun.

Chanyeol almost didn’t hear the other man, but Baekhyun looked up at him with a small smile that told Chanyeol just how grateful he was. The two men settled farther into the couch - or, just above the couch in Baekhyun’s case - and began to speculate about why exactly Chanyeol was able to see the dead man, who apparently should have been totally invisible.

✵

Almost an hour later, they hadn’t advanced past their initial hypothesis that it was simply an unexplainable fluke in the universe. Baekhyun had asked if Chanyeol was able to see any other ghosts, and the latter responded with a question of his own.

“Are there a lot of you guys all over the place?” he wondered, a deep crease forming between his flat eyebrows.

“Not as many as you would expect,” admitted Baekhyun. “I’ve only seen a handful of other ghosts myself, and I’ve had a couple of years to go looking. We don’t all turn into ghosts, apparently, when we die.”

“I guess not then,” muttered Chanyeol. “No one like you.”

He was about to ask next how Baekhyun had become a ghost in the first place if not everyone who died was similarly fated to walk the Earth as an invisible, glowing apparition - but before Chanyeol could, his cellphone buzzed loudly. Chanyeol apologized, and leaned over to look at the device, which was sitting on his end table next to an ugly green lamp he had inherited from his aunt.

“It’s Kyungsoo,” he sighed.

The overly helpful, younger man had texted Chanyeol to let the latter know that he had secured the medicine, and was on his way back to the apartment to drop it off along with more soup.

“Who?” wondered Baekhyun as the phone buzzed again, signaling that a second message had arrived.

“You’d better call Joonmyeon,” the text suggested. “He’s pissed that he hasn’t heard from you yet.”

Chanyeol groaned loudly as he sifted through the contacts on his phone, looking for his older friend’s phone number.

“Kyungsoo is the friend I was with at the movie theatre with yesterday,” explained Chanyeol. “He and our other friend, Joonmyeon, think I’m coming down with something - and now they’re both getting mad at me for not checking in with them.”

“Sorry,” apologized Baekhyun. “I didn’t mean to keep you from doing something you were supposed to get done.”

“It’s not you,” laughed Chanyeol. “I was disobeying their orders already when I left the apartment earlier today.”

The young man started blushing, and tried to hide the flush of his cheeks behind his phone as he continued to press buttons and swipe at the screen.

“I was actually on my way to try to find you,” admitted Chanyeol sheepishly. “But you kind of managed to find me first.”

Baekhyun stood up, not even trying to disguise the wide smile that crossed his faintly glowing face. Rather than walk over to the door, he began to descend directly through the flooring, which made Chanyeol snicker again before quickly pushing himself off the couch, dropping the phone back onto the cushions as he looked down at the rapidly disappearing Baekhyun.

“Wait; will I see you again?” he asked anxiously.

Baekhyun smirked as he answered before his head slipped completely through the glossy planks of wood.

“Of course.”

Chanyeol couldn’t help but grin to himself after the other man had left. He found his cellphone, pressed Joonmyeon’s mobile number, and held the speaker up to his ear just as the doorbell rang. It was Kyungsoo, and he let himself in as Joonmyeon picked up the phone, immediately nagging Chanyeol about the importance of health and checking in with friends, and a variety of other things that Chanyeol only half listened to as more soup was stuffed into his smiling mouth. He was sure that he must look insane to Kyungsoo - which would only confirm the younger man’s suspicions that Chanyeol was terribly sick - but he couldn’t care less.

All that mattered was that Baekhyun had promised that he would be back, and Chanyeol couldn’t wait to see the other man’s cerulean-veiled face again.

✵

Baekhyun did indeed return the next day, and the day after that as well. In the back of his mind, Chanyeol worried that he himself was becoming somewhat of a social recluse as the weeks wore on and all he could think about was spending long hours talking with Baekhyun. He was careful never to let on to his friends that he had a growing obsession with the vibrantly glowing young man, but Kyungsoo had commented on several occasions that Chanyeol should really try to get out more.

In any event, as far as the younger man was concerned, Baekhyun had been nothing more than a feverish hallucination of Chanyeol’s that had vanished along with the tall man’s supposed sickness, and Chanyeol didn’t give the former any reason to think differently. Chanyeol, however, had become completely captivated by Baekhyun’s charmingly shy yet often feisty personality, and he was surprised with how quickly the other man seemed to have grown smitten with him as well. Chanyeol’s initial attraction had been mainly physical, and although he still found Baekhyun to be very handsome, the taller man discovered that the short ghost was also an extremely interesting and verbose conversationalist, which certainly made their discussions more pleasurable.

This particular day was rainy and dismal, so Chanyeol didn’t have to worry about Kyungsoo bugging him to go outside, and was free to sit around uninterrupted with Baekhyun. That was exactly what he was doing at two in the afternoon, when suddenly an idea popped into his head.

“Hey, hold still,” Chanyeol commanded, interrupting Baekhyun’s monologue about all the food he missed being able to eat. “I want to try something.”

“Why? What’re-?”

Chanyeol cut the older man off, taking the latter by surprise as he brushed a hand lightly over - and through - his cheek. Baekhyun leaned into the fluttery touch, and Chanyeol experienced the same swimming tingles throughout his arm as he did on the first day that the shorter man had walked straight through him.

“What was that?” gasped Baekhyun.

“I know you’re not exactly… real in the physical sense,” replied Chanyeol. “But I really do like you, and I just wanted to - I dunno - be closer to you.”

Baekhyun placed his hand gently over Chanyeol’s, resting pretendly on the back of the couch, as he smiled up into the taller man’s eyes. The feathery touch sent tickling waves up Chanyeol’s entire right arm, but he didn’t dare move his hand a centimeter for fear of scaring the other man away.

“I really like you, too,” whispered Baekhyun. “And not just because you’re the first person who’s actually been able to see me in decades… You’re kind, and funny, and a good listener, too - you’re always happy, and seeing you honestly brightens up my day.”

Baekhyun was blushing, and Chanyeol saw with amusement that the other man’s cheeks were actually tinted a light purple beneath the bluish glow. The older man curled his ghostly fingers so that they passed through the back of Chanyeol’s hand, and another shock traveled up to the latter’s elbow. It was intoxicating, the sensation of Baekhyun’s fingers on and in his skin - and Chanyeol couldn’t help but laugh as the electricity reached his shoulder.

“You can’t feel that at all?” he asked, pointing at their half-overlapped, half-enveloped hands with his almond eyes.

Baekhyun closed his own lids, concentrating hard before he finally answered.

“Maybe,” he said at last. “I can’t tell. But it seems… different, somehow, compared to how it used to be.”

The shorter man removed his hand, and Chanyeol immediately missed the exhilaration of his gentle caress.

“Can you see through your eyelids?” he asked randomly. “I mean, you know, since you can walk through walls and stuff…”

“No,” giggled Baekhyun, and his jingling laughter sent a different set of tingles down Chanyeol’s throat and into the pit of his stomach. “I’m totally solid to myself.”

He pinched the skin on his arm to demonstrate this.

“It’s your world that’s a little bit less-than-real to me.”

Chanyeol pondered this for a moment before straightening up on the couch. The faint sound of soft raindrops slamming against the window pane was the only thing that filled the otherwise silent apartment for a moment as he took a breath, preparing to make a bolder move than he had ever made before.

“I wanna try something else.”

Holding his breath, Chanyeol leaned forward, inching closer and closer until there was no more space left between his and Baekhyun’s slightly parted lips. The kiss was chaste and innocent, but the intense electricity that radiated through Chanyeol’s head was close to ic. His eyes were closed, but the younger man could still detect a slight blue glow at the corners of his lids.

After a moment, he pulled away, and looked down at a very flustered - but smiling - Baekhyun.

“I definitely felt something that time…” the older man murmured.

✵

A couple of days after their first feathery kiss, Baekhyun and Chanyeol were back in the latter’s apartment, lounging on the couch like they always did, as Chanyeol played with Baekhyun’s bangs. Or, at least, the area where Baekhyun’s hair would have met the young man’s pale forehead if Chanyeol were actually able to touch him. Still, though, it might have been his imagination, but Chanyeol could swear that every once in a while he was actually able to feel the strands slipping through his fingers as if they were tangible.

Baekhyun’s head was floating just above Chanyeol’s knees as the shorter man hovered in a stretched-out position above the couch, and occasionally the former’s head would brush against the latter’s legs - sending pulses of energy all the way down to Chanyeol’s toes. Neither man was saying anything, for once, as each took pleasure simply from being present next to the other.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, and Chanyeol lifted himself off the couch to answer it. Curious, he poked his head around the barrier before opening it to see Kyungsoo, who stared up at Chanyeol with a hopeful - and yet slightly annoyed - look in his eyes.

“Park Chanyeol, what kind of hyung are you?” accused Kyungsoo. “I feel like I haven’t heard from you in days. Joonmyeon’s worried sick; he says you haven’t even left your apartment for a week.”

The younger man pushed past Chanyeol and headed directly to the kitchen, where he started making himself a mug of tea.

“Are you sick again or something? What have you been eating? Do you need help? Medicine? A professional intervention?”

Chanyeol couldn’t focus on the assault of rapidly thrown questions, and his head was spinning as he took a seat at the kitchen table. Kyungsoo looked down at him expectantly with his hands on his hips, and Chanyeol glanced over at Baekhyun, who was standing awkwardly in the corner of the room.

Of course his friend couldn’t see the invisible man standing with them in the apartment, but that didn’t make things any less uncomfortable for Chanyeol as he struggled to find any words to say.

“Well?”

“Uh, sorry,” stuttered the tall, awkward man. “I’ve just been busy for the past couple of weeks.”

“Busy doing what?” wondered Kyungsoo. “Are you selling drugs to stupid teenagers on the street corner at night or something? I never see you out during the day.”

It was true that Chanyeol didn’t leave his apartment often during the daytime, as he was usually busy entertaining a certain cerulean young man for most of the afternoon. Virtually all Chanyeol did was visit with Baekhyun and sleep, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually seen Kyungsoo or Joonmyeon in person. Chanyeol felt guilty - in the back of his mind he had known he would eventually have to leave to go to work, or school, or some sort of social event sooner or later - but he had been enjoying taking his month off from life to just spend time with Baekhyun. Kyungsoo tapped his foot as he awaited an answer, and Chanyeol snapped out of his own thoughts to give him one.

“Um, nothing much, I guess.”

Chanyeol rubbed the back of his head nervously as Kyungsoo finished brewing his tea, throwing the used bag into the garbage before setting his cup on the table to cool.

“I haven’t really been up to anything.”

“Well, that’s no fun,” laughed Kyungsoo. “We should go out and do something, then. Do you want to see another movie? I can ask if they’ve cleared the theatre of any glowing blue ghosts.”

The younger man was clearly joking, but Chanyeol looked over at the corner of the kitchen to see Baekhyun with his arms crossed, the downward corners of a frown just visible on the other man’s turned-away face. Chanyeol wanted nothing more than to go over and comfort him, but to do so would mean looking like he was talking to an empty spot of the room, and Chanyeol didn’t want to give Kyungsoo any other reasons to worry about him.

“I can’t right now,” Chanyeol excused himself. “I’m… kind of busy.”

“Doing what? Nothing?” Kyungsoo gestured around at the vacant apartment, eyeing Chanyeol suspiciously. “You’ve been acting really weird for the past few weeks, Yeol. What the heck is up with you?”

“I told you: nothing,” Chanyeol spat, the words coming out a little more forcefully than he had meant for them to. “Please leave me alone. I want to be by myself right now.”

Kyungsoo’s expression of concern turned to one of spite.

“Fine,” he relented, marching toward the front door. “Sorry I bothered to care, Chanyeol. Obviously you don’t.”

“That’s not what I-”

Chanyeol was cut off by the loud slam of a door as Kyungsoo exited the apartment, leaving the former standing in the middle of the doorway between the kitchen and living room. The young man groaned as he ran his fingers through his messily parted hair, exhaling heavily through his nostrils. He turned around to face Baekhyun, but the older man was nowhere to be found.

✵

“Baek?” Chanyeol called. “Baekhyun, where’d you go?”

He searched the kitchen and sitting room, but the luminescent man wasn’t anywhere; Chanyeol was totally alone. Defeated and saddened, he slumped his way back into the kitchen, and sat down at the table as his head swirled with confusion.

Why did he leave?

“Baekhyun, could you please come out?” Chanyeol begged into the empty air.

“I thought you said you wanted to be left alone.”

Baekhyun came drifting gracefully down from the ceiling directly above the table, resting in one of the rickety wooden chairs as he gazed coolly at Chanyeol. The younger man was immediately relieved, and reached out to touch Baekhyun’s arm, which the latter pulled swiftly away.

“Is that what I am to you?” Baekhyun asked, hurt. “‘Nothing much?’ Is that all I am?”

“What?” stammered Chanyeol, taken aback. “No; Baek, why would you say that?”

“Because that’s what YOU just said, you jerk!” Baekhyun yelled, snarling up at the taller man as he maintained what Chanyeol now knew was the illusion of sitting in his seat.

Chanyeol leaned back in his own chair, his face blank and expressionless as he dumbly repeated the words over and over in his own head. Was that really what he had said? He certainly hadn’t meant it like that.

“I was just trying to get Kyungsoo to leave us alone,” he defended. “You know I don’t think of you like that.”

“Then how do you think of me?” sobbed Baekhyun forcefully. “It’s okay; there really isn’t any other way for you to feel - I am nothing. I’m a ghost.”

“You’re something to me,” Chanyeol insisted, pleading with his eyes as his hands grasped at the table in front of him. He was desperate to reach out to Baekhyun, but unable to for fear of being denied again. “You’re everything to me.”

“But that doesn’t mean anything!” shouted Baekhyun, and Chanyeol felt something sharp dig into his chest. “Yeol, I’m still nothing. No one can see me except for you, and I don’t even know why you can.”

The older man’s hands were clenched into fists, and Chanyeol could see Baekhyun shaking as he struggled to keep his own hands on the table. Finally, however, the younger man couldn’t take it anymore, and he reached across the surface to Baekhyun’s cheek.

“Don’t touch me!” shrieked Baekhyun shrilly. “You can’t touch me.”

The vibrantly glowing man swung his arms out as he said this, knocking into Kyungsoo’s abandoned mug of steaming tea as he did so. Rather than pass through the cup as he normally would, however, Baekhyun’s hand actually connected with the object - brushing it off the table, and sending it clamoring to the floor, where it spilled with a large crash.

Chanyeol stared dumbly at the broken chunks of ceramic and the growing pool of amber liquid. Baekhyun was quiet, too, and the younger man looked up to see the other boy’s mouth agape.

“Did you just…”

Baekhyun didn’t answer, instead quickly grabbing Chanyeol’s hand with his own slender, shaking fingers. Chanyeol’s eyes widened. The other man’s shining hand was solid; as real to Chanyeol as his own appendage was as Baekhyun gave it a firm squeeze, truly feeling his touch for the first time.

Not a moment later, the sensation was gone, and Baekhyun’s hand fell through Chanyeol’s wrist, sending the now-familiar of electricity up his long arm. Chanyeol didn’t know how to respond to what had just happened - nor was he actually entirely sure about what had even occurred - so he whispered to his shaken companion instead, trying to comfort them both from the shock of being able to touch each other for the first time.

“I’m sorry…”

✵

The next morning, Chanyeol awoke to an empty bedroom - as always - and slammed a fist down on his alarm clock before rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, his mouth open wide to yawn loudly. He reached for his glasses, which were perched on his nightstand next to the clock, and pushed them over the bridge of his nose before blinking rapidly to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

Standing at the foot of his bed - where a moment ago there had been nothing but vacant air - was Baekhyun, who was in the middle of a sentence that had just now started to reach Chanyeol’s ears.

“…mind that I let myself in, but I wanted to apologize again for getting angry yesterday. I’ve been doing some thinking, though, and I might have an answer about how-”

“How the hell did you get here?” Chanyeol interrupted.

“What do you mean?” asked Baekhyun. “I just passed through the front door, like I usually do. But now that you mention it, even that felt different than usual. It was like I could feel the wood around me as I walked-”

“That’s not what I meant,” Chanyeol cut him off again. “I mean that when I woke up, you weren’t here, and then all of a sudden you just appeared out of thin air!”

“That’s strange,” agreed Baekhyun. “I don’t think I can do that - plus I’ve been standing right here for a good ten minutes, waiting for you to get up…”

The older man continued to speak, but Chanyeol only caught bits and pieces of what the other was saying. Instead, the young man was focused on removing his glasses, which made his vision shift to a semi-blurry, empty room - and then replacing them, which allowed him to see and hear the glowing boy in front of him, the latter’s slightly azure sheen twinkling brilliantly in the early morning sunlight.

“Baek!” Chanyeol screamed, filled with excitement that felt like it was in danger of bursting through his head and spilling out his sides. “I figured it out! It’s the glasses - wearing these glasses is what allows me to see you.”

Baekhyun stopped talking to consider what Chanyeol had said.

“It makes sense,” continued the overexcited, taller man. He leapt out of bed to stand beside Baekhyun. “I saw you for the first time right after I got my new lenses, and I never see you at night when I take them off to sleep-”

“That’s ’cause I don’t stalk you from the corner of the bedroom like some creepy weirdo,” reminded Baekhyun, but Chanyeol ignored him as he continued spasming with delight.

“And just now, when I wasn’t wearing them, I couldn’t see you at all,” he finished. “Isn’t this great? We’ve figured it out! Everything makes sense now!”

He beamed down at the older man, who smiled amusedly at Chanyeol as the boy continued to chitter. Baekhyun put a hand on the taller man’s shoulder, and spoke calmly despite his own apparent happiness.

“Yeollie, there’s something I wanted to tell you,” reminded Baekhyun, making Chanyeol blush at both the pet name and his own overexcitement. “I think I know why I can touch things now.”

✵

Chanyeol glanced down at Baekhyun’s glowing hand, which was resting solidly on the taller man’s shoulder. The feeling was somewhat short-lived, however, as the older man’s hand slipped slowly through Chanyeol’s arm almost as soon as the former had finished his sentence.

“Well, sometimes, at least…” added Baekhyun.

“Let’s hear it, then,” encouraged Chanyeol. “I’m all ears.”

He grinned supportively at the shorter man as the latter twirled his thumbs, not quite sure how to phrase whatever it was he was trying to say.

“It’s… well, it’s you, Chanyeol.”

The younger jumped back as if shocked by an electric wire. He didn’t understand what Baekhyun had meant, but the other man hurried to explain in an attempt to demonstrate how he had been able to interact with both the cup of tea and then Chanyeol himself.

“Ever since I met you - ever since I started falling for you,” Baekhyun corrected. “I’ve felt… stronger. I can’t really describe it, but it’s like I’m becoming more and more a part of this world every day - and I really think it’s because of you. You’re giving me strength somehow that is manifesting as actual, physical energy.”

“That makes sense,” agreed Chanyeol, even though he was only half-certain that he even understood what Baekhyun had said.

The shorter man smiled, and grasped Chanyeol’s hand briefly before the moment was over and his fingers passed through.

“...Well, I guess we can only hope that I’ll keep getting stronger.”

Chanyeol nodded as he went off to the kitchen, smiling, to make himself breakfast. He felt good that they had gotten some closure at last about some of the mysteries that surrounded their relationship. Not only was Baekhyun becoming increasingly able to interact with the physical world, but understanding each other better made his connection with the older man seem all the more real to Chanyeol.

It was later that same day, however, that Chanyeol fainted for the first time.