It is simple until it isn’t anymore. It becomes routine, familiar, habits and mechanisms and one day your body takes over and your hands do their own things. It’s not that hard of a concept to grasp though, still Mingyu has never been the smart kid and he guesses life decides its own fate and there is nothing he can do about it. The thought is strange, but Minghao has been settling inside his ribcage, making a home out of his heart.

‘Do you ever wish you never jumped on that plane?’

There’s the ghost of a smile behind the cigarette burning between his red lips. Most days he doesn’t have much conversation, or perhaps he does and Mingyu isn’t worthy of it, but tonight isn’t like most days. Something about satellites getting out of orbit and birds flying higher than ever– he doesn’t know, but Minghao is a firm believer of anything out of this world, unexplainable, so he doesn’t question it either. His eyes speak though, and it’s just enough for Mingyu.

He offers a lopsided smile, reaches for the cig. ‘Don’t really matter anymore,’ he says, smoke filling his system.

Nothing ever does, around Minghao and the brightness of his finery.

They’ve been sleeping everywhere they find convenient. Crashing in the backyard of the rich, or hidden away in the dim streets of downtown Los Angeles, trapped souls within the invisible walls of heaven. Minghao doesn’t mind, he never does, but at times Mingyu misses home cooked meals and his bed’s warmth. For now though, it’s just 2 a.m on a monday morning and they’re smoking their lungs away on the sidewalk because sleep never comes before sunrise. The rest is meaningless.

Lips closing around the cig, Mingyu points at the boy’s exposed chest (he’s only wearing tight-fitted jeans, ditched his shirt somewhere behind the dumpsters two blocks down after a homeless lady puked all over it), asks; ‘Where’s that baby from?’

Locks of dark, untamed hair bounce when Minghao gives a short and warm laugh. Mingyu’s meant to ask him about the scar on his ribcage for days, ask him why a twenty-two years old kid with so many breathing issues stubbornly set his mind on chain smoking as much as he does.

‘Ain’t it obvious?’

It’s not, like so many secrets hidden inside each curve of his body. Mingyu doesn’t comment on it. Instead, plays mindlessly with his hole-filled Vans’ laces, watching the delicate figure, the strange mixture of hard muscles and soft skin, taking in every detail, every faded line of the body. The scar is there, thick and pink, contrasting against tanned skin of his ribcage. There are tiny sparks of life in Minghao’s eyes when he answers.

‘I don’t do sappy life backgrounds on the… what,’ he counts over chalk-covered fingers, laughter bubbling in the back of his throat, ‘fifth date? Sixth?’

‘Fair enough.’

Minghao shrugs, fishing a new cigarette from the pack beside him. A car passes, quick flash of light, a reminder of life’s strange ways of making people meet and fall in love. Minghao falls silent, the newly lit slowly burning away between his fingers. The golden anklets softly clatter when he moves to loosely wrap his arms around his knees.

He says, voice lower than usual, a bit of something sad tainting his words. ‘They cut half of my right lung out and filled it with… well, whatever they used.’ He runs a hand over the bits of scarred flesh, and Mingyu follows the move with his eyes. ‘This badboy’s been with me ever since.’

He hums, inhaling some more smoke. A pair of battered, worn out lungs they have, the both of them. He’d told him. About the disease eating him up from the inside, life’s personal gift to him because God, or whomever the else somehow reigned above the clouds decided his life wasn’t enough already.

When Mingyu had asked him if he was going to die, Minghao looked at him funny before dropping on his knees to him off. That’s the whole ing point of life, dontcha think, Bambi?

The cigarettes, they don’t help. Still, he’ll be okay, somehow, but Minghao…

He opens his hand. Minghao’s bony one fits just right inside of his. ‘I meant it, y’know.’

Come back home with me. I can help, he offered. Added, as an afterthought: my mom probably hates my guts but she still is the best ing cook in the country.

Minghao, with faded stars in his eyes, refused. Came up with answers Mingyu has forgotten, something about their astrological signs clashing and battling, and now his bottom lip quivers slightly: it means what it means. He plays with the rings around the other boy’s fingers wordlessly. Mingyu is silent as Minghao’s mind loses itself outside the limits of reality. He doesn’t mind the quiet in such a vibrant city.

Minghao lets go of his hand. ‘I killed every remaining fairy tales I believed in the second I decided to strangers in their cars instead of doing chemio.’

‘Fairytales…’ Mingyu blows smoke out of his nostrils, glances at the stars high above, pondering. And I don’t believe in them either, he thinks, but he knows they would be both lying. ‘There’s none, back home. You’d like it lots.’

A place where reality is just what it presents itself as. He’d meet the people, fall in love with the sky and sing for the homeless kids. Yeah, Minghao would ing love it, if only such place still existed for him. On a summer night, Mingyu burnt every bridge leading back home, hoping the fire would light his way bright enough to not get lost in the black sea of regret ahead of him.

He crossed continents to get away from non-existent demons, because he needed something, anything not to live an ordinary, colorless life, to keep him alive and breathing. He’s okay with his decision, but sometimes guilt sets heavy inside his chest until he can’t breathe alright anymore.

Not tonight, though. Minghao claps, laughing. He’s grinning pretty and youthful, daring Mingyu to live one more day just to see what happens.

‘That’s just sad,’ he says, then adds, with a small motion of his hand, ‘but like, I’m all good. This wonderful ing right there makes up for my cancer anyway.’

A smile splits his face too, ear to ear. Minghao giggles, and Mingyu thinks falling in love with a Chinese e miles away from home is just what was supposed to fall into place for him.