disclaimer: heavy descriptions. not totally rated m but i'll still say ! a long chapter to compensate for how long i've been gone!

shoutout to manlylulu & floralnori for being one of my biggest motivations in finishing this series. you guys are one of the only reasons why im very dedicated to finishing this. it gets better!!! not my writing but kyungsoo will get better :-) this is a promise! 

It has been suggested that the universe is a mass expanse of galaxies and dark matter, woven together to create multitudes of incomprehensible energy in the gargantuan cosmos. Earth floats, tiny, inside a galaxy swallowed by a supercluster; pieces here and there held together only by gravity. Kyungsoo sits on the brink of his own chaos, small and insignificant, trying to keep his shattered heart from falling apart—the boy who held it together now far away and forgotten. This is him hurting and healing—like the universe creating new stars; an attempt to birth a new life after a bright and disastrous supernova.

The road to getting over a boy seems so trivial in the grand scheme of things but how is something as piercing as love meant to be evaluated? Kyungsoo feels it as sharp as the wounds on his bare skin—pain he wanted to compare—so wouldn’t that make it justifiable? Love is not, therefore, something intangible. It is as physical as the skin you feel with a smile when the dawn breaks and, if you’re lucky, the ring that envelopes your cold, shaking fingers as you receive it from your person - their knee to the floor and heart on their sleeve.

“Sweetheart, if you’re going in here, you’re going to have to show a little skin,” a man miles above Kyungsoo teases.

“Right,” Kyungsoo stammers, blunt, “Sorry.”

Kyungsoo fumbles under a glowing sign, flickering under loose wires. He takes off a jacket and then a vest; a scarf. By the time he is done, pieces of him are scattered all over the floor and he is nothing but a measurement of innocence and unblemished skin.

The boy gets given a gentle smile and a tip of a hat; so out of place within the scent of smoke and and wonders what kind of love the man gets to foster such genuinity. Kyungsoo wonders if he goes home, after guarding two big, black doors just until you can just see a solar flare past the horizon, to a wife and two kids--his wife now up and preparing breakfast as he gives her a kiss before he rests.

The image makes him sick. That kind of love doesn’t exist.

Kyungsoo says nothing more and steps inside, doors once again closing abruptly behind him just as it had for the guy previous. Unsurprisingly, the first thing that hits is how anchoring the air is against somebody’s shoulders--not just the atmosphere but the feeling one gets when he’s somewhere he really shouldn’t be. Narrow shoulders feel it all the way until soft legs prop himself up on a leather chair, feet off the ground and elbows resting heavy on sticky, marble countertops. He knows he needs to get out. There is an array of uninviting scents and loud noises but there is really no place that he feels a part of, now, so any roof is good enough.

Kyungsoo really doesn’t remember the last time he’s been to the club this many times a week, but the past few weeks had been so undeniably hollow that his mere hobbies are no longer enough to pass the time. Work is a distant memory, his absent prayers at night dedicated to how kind his boss is for letting him take the leave, and university is nothing but a mass sweep of unattended classes and textbooks gathering dust.

Jongin not only had been the reason for his happiness, but also the reason for his motivation. A person that contributed more than just one abstract pull on his heartstrings. Kyungsoo went through a period of “the great unknown”, Baekhyun liked to call it; a period filled with a mob of curiosity, and very little study, as he argued for his quest on finding things that actually matter. He had sailed across oceans and read maps along unmanned trails, eyes always capturing moments of tranquility as he blinked away uncertainty tucked in his lashes. This was him learning. Experiencing. Failing classes, too.

--

He (personally) met Jongin not long after he received his threat of expulsion “for non attendance and failure to obtain adequate grades”. Kyungsoo remembers the plastic concern in his parents’ eyes when they had gotten called to meet the principal, excusing themselves just a few minutes short of the end of the meeting with “other things to attend to”. It was a punishment and a reward at the same time--the son of two corporate parents. The sweet comes in the form of indulgence to do whatever he wants with little consequences but then the bitter, so prominent and vile, is that they really had no time to care.

He was a fresh faced fifteen year old boy, back slumped against a corkboard outside the principal’s office, alone, his nails digging in his palms as he fought back the pain behind his eyelids. Loneliness wasn’t a good word for it; loneliness is bitter to the bone, it’s crisp in its demeanor. No, it was not loneliness but a disappointment. A rejection. A grief. A loved child but, then, not really.

His train of thought crashes on a voice that stops it on its tracks.

“How the hell do you almost fail? Eighth grade is hardly-”

“That’s none of your business, Kim,” Kyungsoo interrupted without looking up, knowing already who it was just by the cockiness that tinted his voice, “What are you doing here?”

“Got caught sleeping,” Jongin laughed, “Hardly an expulsion worthy act.”

Kyungsoo looked up just so Jongin could see him roll his eyes.

He knew of him. Jongin was not a boy hushed and kept in secret and for someone who despised the social construct of ‘fame’ in its hierarchy, you can only imagine the sneer he blows whenever the dancer as much as smirks at his direction. Jongin does this at the halls, buttons undone devilishly low and hair uncombed and dewy. At the age of fifteen, he had news anchors following him left and right for that target on his back named ‘Dance Prodigy’. Kyungsoo had never seen the justifications in it, but then again he had never mustered a slither of interest.

Funnily enough, Kyungsoo found himself linger on Jongin’s eyes a little too long. If he tilts his head just a little, and the sun hits it perfectly by its side, it glows. Gold. Not like the gold you see on tacky displays in jewelry stores, gold like a coffee cup with just the right amount of milk and foam. His eyes glow like warmth and satisfaction first thing in the morning. Kyungsoo realises too late before he bowed his head in apparent disinterest.

He couldn’t see it, but Jongin let out a frown, “Seoraksan.”

“What?”

“The mountain peak,” the dancer pointed at the pamphlet clawed in between nails and a right palm. Kyungsoo had planned to visit here soon, but that looked a little bleak considering his circumstances, “Have you been?”

“I’d like to.”

Jongin smiled, “Me too.”

The silence wasn’t really awkward, but it wasn’t all that comfortable either. Like the mere moments before a kiss for the first time; there is doubt of reciprocation, definitely, but there’s also a slight tenderness. A longing. A sheer anticipation painted as beads of sweat and a soft tingle on trembling lips that just begged to be touched.

It still hadn’t dawned on Kyungsoo why the boy was even talking to him much less how he found himself scooched just by his side. This bench was made for two people, yes, but the closeness left a tingle in his stomach he couldn’t explain at the time.

Kyungsoo dismissed this as a bubbling stomach bug, and sighed in defeat, “What do you want, Kim? Seriously, I may not look busy but I quite enjoy being alone.”

It comes off in the worst tone possible and he says this fighting back a curl on the sides of his mouth. Attempting to sound threatening with a boy whose smile glows as bright as his eyes right beside him makes it hard. He didn't realise but a smile crept up on his own heart shaped lips despite his best efforts.

It was rare to find people who shared the same curiosity and he wondered always if it was he who was rotting in excess rumination; carving the acceptance, deep, that he would never find anyone to share his thoughts with. He had never been...fond of Jongin but their similar interest had left sparks of intrigue and a sudden want to know more about him.

But then again, Kyungsoo had never been a man of many friends, and dare he start now.

“I could help you, you know.”

Kyungsoo scoffed, jokingly, “I don’t need your help.”

“There’s no need to act so valiant,” Jongin rebuked, “I’m also doing this for me.”

“We’re not friends for me to be doing you a favour,” Kyungsoo snapped.

“I want to be.”

Kyungsoo felt a pang in his heart. Those words were foreign considering his track record on sociality. Jongin did one of those things again where he forced Kyungsoo to raise his eyebrows in curiosity.

“I’d do it in exchange for you to...take me with you. On your adventures, sometimes,” Jongin sighed, running slender fingers through his hair, “Man, I’m sick and tired of living in this ty routine. I just want a break from it all, you know? And then I saw you outside the window from where I was--walking outside, on your way to the gate with that map and I just had a feeling you were going somewhere.”

There was a hint of enchantment in his vocal chords, charmed to make everything that comes out of his mouth sound as if Kyungsoo’s exists were fresh from a fairytale, “I want to go with.”

Of course, for a boy who so gallantly had his life together, it was not obvious the sacrifices behind it. His head pulsated as he struggled to relate--he wasn’t a boy of tight schedules.

“Anything else you want me to say? ‘You’re amazing, Kyungsoo’, ‘You’re spectacular’...” Jongin says, “You’re cute?”

Ah, there it was.

The singer couldn’t help but slightly chuckle at the statement; his demeanor quickly dissipating with Jongin’s quick, and dumb, attempts to lighten the mood.

Kyungsoo let out a breath he did not know he was holding. Without much thought and with the scent of fascination on the boy that is Kim Jongin that still lingered strong and immobile underneath his nose, he agreed. Amidst his thought, he didn’t expect the arms around his neck with spasms of gratitude that flew by his ear; the tingle in his stomach transferred as blood furnishing his cheeks as he whispered his own quiet, unmissable thanks.

Unbeknownst to them at the time, their...arrangement was a success. They had found appropriate times to put their plan into action. Jongin tutors in exchange for an epic, escape-like adventure. Kyungsoo found himself, not long after that, planting a drive in the pit of his stomach to make Jongin proud just to relish the smile that sends the familiar shiver up his spine, and then back down again, settling wonderfully chaotic at the base of his stomach.

Jongin was his saviour that day. And the rest of the days following.

--

A star in the middle of a small solar system. Kyungsoo, a lone planet around it. What used to be rogue became so beautifully cared for. Given a home. Energy. Warmth.

His heart floats broken inside his chest, but Kyungsoo has (at least) unmistakably made effort to put them back together. Like cold ceramic surrendered to gravity when it fell, there are pieces that can be picked up and collected and, amongst the turmoil, rough sand of ceramic dust. As insignificant as they look, the scattered dust are evidence something broken can never be itself again. Molecular pieces of something that has shattered will always be left sadly to be swept up, as if it didn’t once serve purpose on the beaut