you'll only get your wings wet

he finds him under the moonlight, the sickly paleness of it turning his robes white. they're not white, shouldn't be white, were never white. this isn't real; he died years ago. yet he can't help the pain welling up in his heart. he misses him, misses him beyond reason and comparison, should not be so overjoyed to meet him again, even in a dream, a projection of his past self.

'baekhyun,' the projection calls, turning around, a gentle smile on his face, and baekhyun's heart twinges painfully. 'baekhyun, baby, why are you ignoring me?'

'i'm not.' he steps away slowly, never making eye contact. 'you're fake. you're not real. you're just a projection of my mind. you can't hurt me.'

the projection shakes his head, but its smile turns sharper. 'baekhyun, baby, no. i would never hurt you. i'm real, you want me to be, so why should i be fake? come, come to me again. we can have the life we never had.'

'go away, yixing.' he feels his breath coming shorter, feels the panic bubbling in his chest. 'go away!'

---

'how was it? what'd you think?'

his vision shakes. baekhyun bolts up, heartbeat thudding frantically in his chest. 'oh god,' he whimpers, clutching his head, drawing his knees to his chest. 'oh, god...'

'shh, it's okay, it's okay.' strong arms encircle him, and fingers comb through his hair. baekhyun presses himself into the strong chest and clutches onto the thin shirt in front of his face. 'hey, baby, it's okay. i'm here.'

baekhyun sniffs, wiping his tears away, and curls up in yixing's embrace. 'don't leave. don't leave.'

'i won't. i would never.'

---

he sits with the projection on the edge of a building, legs dangling off the side, looking deep into the void of the night. baekhyun focuses, and the stars shift in the sky above, forming shapes that never existed in the real world.

'how have you been?' he asks, and the projection shrugs, shaking his hair out of his eyes. 'no, don't tell me. i don't want to know.'

'how have you been, baekhyun?' the projection looks so much like yixing, talks like him too, acts like him and even smells like him. it makes baekhyun dizzy and his heart hurt, but he can't let the projection know that, though it probably already does. there's no hiding from his own mind.

so he tells the truth. 'i miss you.' he looks down at the street, at the rushing lights far below. 'i want you back, but i don't know if i do. are you happy? am i happy? do i want you or do i want your love? i used you. i'm sorry.'

'it's not your fault,' the projection says, because it's what baekhyun wants to hear. 'it's just life, and what life throws at us, we must take. you were only doing what was expected of you, or the only way you knew how to deal with it.'

---

'deepdiving isn't as bad as you think it is,' yixing explains, wiping off a silver needle. 'hm, you want an interesting ride or a less tiring one?'

baekhyun raises his head, trying to peer at the iv drip that yixing wheels in. 'um,' he says. 'what do you want?'

yixing laughs, briefly running his fingers along baekhyun's jaw. 'silly. this is your ride, not mine.'

'fine, then the less tiring one.' baekhyun lies back, closes his eyes, mentally prepares himself for the sharp pain of the needle sliding into his vein. 'ah, .'

'shh.' yixing's fingers brush over his eyelids softly. 'it's okay. i'll be with you.'

---

'do you remember this?' the projection asks, pushing open the door to the house. 'do you remember the soft yellow that i desperately wanted to paint the kitchen but you insisted on the sky blue? because you said it matched my aura, but i still wanted yellow for you.'

'so we compromised,' baekhyun whispers. the light grass green of the room hits him like a meteor to the heart, and suddenly, the pain overwhelms him more than he can stand. he can almost see two figures, younger versions of himself and yixing, chasing each other around the kitchen table, screaming in mock-fear and laughing until their sides hurt from all the breathlessness.

'so we did.' the projection's eyes are soft as it looks at him, at baekhyun who's bent over in the kitchen that's not even real, ghosts of the past dancing around him. 'does it hurt you, knowing that the past is gone?'

it does. it does, and the projection knows that. there's no point in answering, and baekhyun doesn't bother. he closes his eyes, presses a hand against his chest, and lunges, leaps at the projection and they fall backwards, slamming against the grass-green wall, and baekhyun slams their lips together, hard enough to taste blood, and the projection's hands slide up his back, underneath his shirt, pressing them even closer together, and baekhyun moans.

it's wrong, it's a sin, he shouldn't be doing this. but in this moment, baekhyun doesn't care.

---

the world that yixing dreamed up is cotton-candy pink, soft and fluffy and altogether wrong. there's something not quite right here, though baekhyun can't tell what. he brings it up to yixing, who only smiles and nods.

'yes, it's a diseased world,' he confirms, beckoning baekhyun forward. 'it's a hidden crevice of my mind, some twisted part of it that i don't understand and likely never will. it'll kill me someday.'

'don't say that.' a shiver runs down baekhyun's spine, and he glances back, only to see nothing but cotton-candy clouds and a faint pink light emanating from beyond. 'you'll be fine.'

yixing hums, and a dagger materializes in his hand. 'get ready. it's coming.'

'what's coming?' baekhyun asks, but even as his words fall silent, he feels the distant rumble of thunder, and electric blue lightning flashes in the rose-pink sky. gaudy, intense, much too out-of-place for this place of softness. wordlessly, he manipulates the dreamstate and summons his own saber. 'how bad?'

'bad.'

---

'i built a city of you.' they walk along the edge of the ocean that didn't exist until a few moments ago. 'i built it up and tried to tear it down but you wouldn't let me. what do you want from me?'

the projection remains silent, and baekhyun turns, back facing the sea. 'yixing, i love you, but i have to let you go. i want to let you go, but i can't. how can i? tell me, how can i let you be?'

'don't.' the voice is yixing's, but it's diseased, slick with an oily sweetness that causes goosebumps to erupt on baekhyun's skin. 'don't leave me.'

the parallel of his own words, thrown back at him in the cold wind blowing through his hair, almost makes baekhyun waver. but he shakes his head. 'no. no, yixing. i can't, i have to. you're not real. i hate you, and i hate myself for hating you. i blame myself, but i have to let you go.'

he leans back, nothing but the wind breaking his fall, and succumbs to the ocean.

---

it happened too quickly for baekhyun to comprehend. one moment, he was standing with yixing on top of the impossible pink clouds, and the next, he was falling through the night, pink sky blurring into dark velvet blue, as the roar of a monster chased him to hell. but a voice saved him, a desperate yell that snapped him out of his paralyzing fear, and baekhyun regained control of the dreamworld and morphed to grow wings and save himself, seconds before hitting the ground.

'you never die in a dreamworld,' yixing had said, but baekhyun isn't sure what would happen if yixing succumbed to his own darkness. he needs to find him, needs to find the desperate voice that saved him from a terrible death, needs to save yixing from the darkness of his own mind.

where can he be? amongst the swirling, tooth-rottingly sweet clouds and the hellish, frostbitingly cold night, baekhyun weaves through, between one world and the next, searching for the boy who needed to confront his inner demons.

---

the water is cold. cold and salty and cold, and baekhyun opens his mouth to breathe but the pressure of the water pushes air bubbles out of his mouth and they rise, silvery-green in the odd underwater light, and he swallows water, chokes. is death supposed to be painful? did yixing suffer when he retreated into his own mind?

baekhyun doesn't want to know. tears blur his vision and mingle with the water from the ocean. he doesn't know how he can still see, doesn't know why he isn't dying, but honestly, he doesn't care. he lets out a breath - more bubbles float to the surface - and closes his eyes, relaxes, lets himself sink to the bottom of the ocean.

he blames himself, for yixing's death, because he was there. he could have done more, but he was scared. he stood by and watched as the monster dragged yixing away, fighting and cursing and spitting fire, and stood there until the very last second when yixing screamed his name and then he lunged, dove, desperately trying to grasp onto yixing's hand but his fingers slipped away and then he woke up, the boy next to him eerily still, and baekhyun pumped his chest and breathed into his mouth and kissed him, over and over and over again until the sun fell down beyond the horizon.

and then he cried.

i can't seem to let go of you