“Are you nervous?” Zahra asks, standing next to him at Willow Street’s bar.

It’s packed tonight and there’s a different kind of energy crackling throughout the room that has nothing to do with his social anxiety--everyone hovering near the low platform that’s been brought in for the open mic performances. Jiyong casts her a brief glance, but his eyes are continuously drawn back to the empty stage.

“Why would I be nervous?”

“You get to see your boy perform for the first time,” she answers, excitement in her voice and the width of her smile. “And, knowing Seunghyun, it’ll probably be super sappy now that you’re together.”

He almost scoffs. It’s still bizarre, thinking of them as a couple. It doesn’t feel right. Doesn’t suit them or what he thinks they are to each other. Which is something he also tries not to think about too much, because it always sets his insides ablaze with too many things. Good and bad.

“If he does, I think embarrassment is higher up on that list,” Jiyong sighs. 

Embarrassment is probably inevitable, actually. Seunghyun’s performance is supposed to be a gift. For him. He swallows down a fresh wave of panic at the reminder, swaying when Zahra nudges him obnoxiously with her elbow.

“What, public confessions aren’t your style?”

He rolls his eyes and doesn’t bother answering, just sips at his beer and keeps staring at the lone stool and mic stand. Several people have already had their turn, most of them musicians. He tries to imagine Seunghyun there, sharing himself with a room full of strangers, giving away his magic with dancing fingers and nimble words.

Something had changed after their role reversal last week. Something that Jiyong is still having trouble understanding. Or accepting. He thinks he’ll always struggle to be kind to himself, and admitting that life has handed him something special instead of the usual pile of might jinx it. So he doesn’t want to, despite not being able to ignore the way their dynamic has shifted and settled into a new configuration. One that feels a lot less amorphous.

Is he nervous? Not exactly. But he was only on the receiving end of Seunghyun’s verbal witchcraft once before, and he wasn’t--

Jiyong stops that thought, downing most of his lager in an attempt to silence it, but he fails, like he always does.

I wasn’t in love with him then.

In love. A feat he never thought himself capable of, and yet…

Wide-eyed, he drops his gaze to the floor, remembering the ache in his chest when Seunghyun had squeezed his hand. Remembering the certainty in that deceptively simple gesture.

“Jiyong?”

Zahra is nudging him again. Jiyong blinks and looks up.

“Huh?”

“Your favorite bartender has a question for you,” she teases.

He turns around, and then almost instantly regrets it, because Seunghyun is a bit disheveled and sweaty and so absurdly perfect in his imperfection that it kind of pisses him off.

“Do you want another one before I go up?” Seunghyun asks, adjusting his glasses. A nervous tick.

“Oh.” Jiyong looks down at his empty beer glass, then slides it across the counter. “Sure.”

Seunghyun studies him briefly before shifting his attention to the tap. A fresh pint appears in front of him. Jiyong registers the music and the constant chatter around him--knows he is surrounded by unfamiliar people--but when Seunghyun leans over and into his space, it all falls away.

“You good?”

Jiyong lifts his eyebrows, because he’s not the one about to go on stage in front of a crowd of strangers. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” Seunghyun laughs slightly, smiling. “I’m good.”

“Are you just saying that to make me feel better, or are you actually okay?” he asks.

With a sure hand, Seunghyun reaches out to take one of Jiyong’s, pushing their fingers together. It’s unsettling how much he’s grown used to the sensation. Like his hands are more comfortable with themselves than he is.

“I know I’ve made it a habit to say things to make you feel better, but I’d never keep something like that from you.”

Jiyong swallows thickly, acutely aware of the world at his back. Zahra at his side, politely ignoring their moment. And here he is, staring into Seunghyun’s ever-heartfelt eyes trying not to feel anything with too much depth. Which is somewhat hampered by the return of the ache in his chest.

“Got it,” he answers lamely, trying to laugh off his sudden awkwardness.

In a typical Seunghyun move, he pulls Jiyong’s hand closer to press a kiss to their linked fingers. It’s so disgustingly sweet that Jiyong crumples forward onto the counter to bury his blushing face into his other arm, turning just enough to glare up at his grinning abuser.

“Sometimes I think you actually want me to die.”

“Honey, you’re up!” Val calls.

Seunghyun’s grin falters briefly as his fingers slip free of Jiyong’s grasp. “Saved by the bell.”

And then he’s gone. Jiyong considers spending the rest of the night hugging the bar counter instead of watching Seunghyun’s performance. But Zahra keeps smacking his arm, so he it up and turns around, attempting--probably unsuccessfully--to prepare himself for the emotional trauma about to be inflicted upon him.

On the stage, Seunghyun squints against the glare of the lights and adjusts the microphone stand. Jiyong can actually feel the energy in the room change slightly--humming just a little bit louder. The audience knows what to expect. He definitely doesn’t, even after the last two months. It has him swallowing thickly and then the flutter ricochets right through his stomach as Seunghyun tosses a smile out into the crowd and sets the stool off to the side.

“Evening, folks,” Seunghyun begins, wiping his hands on his jeans as he scans the packed bar.

Everyone claps and hollers. He’s pretty sure Seunghyun is blushing.

“Enough of that,” Seunghyun says, chuckling. He pushes a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath. “Now, before we get this show on the road, I just wanna let you all know that I’m gonna be doing something a bit different tonight. Apologies if it’s not what you came for, but them’s the breaks.”

Jiyong has no idea what that means, and the flutter suddenly twists in the pit of his stomach. Especially when Seunghyun’s eyes glance over in Jiyong’s direction before settling back on the audience.

With a roll of his shoulders, Seunghyun settles into his own body and takes the mic out of its cradle. The transformation is subtle, but Jiyong notices. Just like he notices the way Seunghyun’s everything starts to speak just before he does.

“When I was a boy, my dad used to take me out at night to see the stars. I remember the moment he first told me to look up. It wasn’t like anything, because it just was. A boundless blanket of the deepest indigo, a cast of color I couldn’t even name at the time, because I was only six. But I felt it, here--” Seunghyun pauses to press a hand to his stomach. “That tug of vertigo to sail face-first into an enormous, sparkling void that was hanging right above my head. I was terrified and transfixed, rooted to that spot in my back yard, wondering if I stared long enough, would it stop feeling like the stars were going to turn into teeth and come down from the heavens to eat me.

“They didn’t, for the record.”

A ripple of amusement passes through the crowd and Seunghyun continues, free hand gesturing in the air around him, fingers telling their own version of the story in tandem.

“But the feeling of falling upward remained, even as I grew a few feet closer to the mysterious marvel in question.

“The terror, thankfully, had turned into curiosity at this point. An all-consuming compulsion to fill my head with as much knowledge as humanly possible. Imagine twelve year old me, fingers still thick with baby fat, scooping ineffectually at the waters of that starlit ocean and stuffing whatever I could carry into my pockets. Imagine fourteen year old me, arranging with painstaking accuracy, every major constellation and even some of the minor ones on my bedroom ceiling. The walls, the windows. You know those plastic glow in the dark stars. It took weeks and every precious penny of my allowance. And yet…”

Another pause. Seunghyun paces the small stage with lazy steps, always peering back out into the crowd, addressing them like close friends. He draws them in with every charming tilt of his lips; the boyish twinkle in his eye. Jiyong can’t look anywhere else.

“And yet, I still couldn’t figure out what made me care so much. All those facts and figures tumbling around in my brain that explained how and why and where. None of them seemed to hold the answer to the paralyzing euphoria I felt when I looked up.

“Why do we romanticize a blazing ball of gas? Why did we, as humans, feel compelled to play connect-the-dots with these bright spots in the sky and then breathe them full of life? Full of stories. Gods, monsters, heroes. A different tale for every civilization that ever existed on this solitary rock and chose to tilt their heads back for a few damn minutes.

“Stories give meaning to things we don’t understand. Even if it’s made up and has absolutely no ing legs to stand on. Because myths don’t need legs. Only wings in which to send our imaginations soaring up into the ether. And I love those myths. They’re ridiculous and magical and a testament to our dedication as an entire species to escape the dredges of everyday existence.

“So it makes sense, doesn’t it? Our infinite love affair with the universe. That constant and inescapable drive to give ourselves meaning. We search for pieces of ourselves in the stars, because we are made of the same things. We search for pieces of ourselves in each other, because we all share that atomic, cosmic composition. 

“It took me a while to understand this was the reason why the concept of the universe scared the out of me as much as it inspired fascination. The sky was full of endlessly spiraling galaxies, but so was I. Nebulae floated, gigantic and ghostlike, in the nothingness of space--birthing new stars within their massive, interstellar dust fingers. But so was I.

“I had countless undiscovered planets inside of me, surrounded by equally unknown moons, but I was too busy looking up to notice.

“Do you? Notice, I mean. Or is your view too clouded by debris to see past these obstacles of your own making?” Seunghyun asks, addressing only Jiyong now, his gaze cutting through the murk of the bar to find him. “I used to have the same problem. A sky full of satellites and space junk where no light traveled in or out.”

Jiyong’s breath catches in his throat. Heat prickles violently under his skin. The moment hangs between them, then Seunghyun smiles gently and turns away, except his words are still meant for Jiyong’s ears alone.

“The day we met, though, it was honestly kind of hard to look at you, because I could see your astral rays pushing through tiny cracks in the armor you’d hidden inside of. You were incredible, standing there at the window, a web of pinpricked lights. 

“I wanted to know you. To fall into orbit around you for as long as you’d let me. And when you did, I felt it here--” Seunghyun presses a hand to his stomach, fingers clenching in the fabric of his t-shirt. “That tug of vertigo to sail face-first into your celestial ocean. To discover what galaxies swirled within the black coffee depths of your eyes. What stories had been written by your constellations. Where you had been on your interstellar travels.

“It shouldn’t have been a surprise, y’know? To see so much of myself reflected back at me, but there you were. An entirely new universe, not so different from my own.”

Again, Seunghyun’s gaze easily picks him out of the crowd. Rooted to the spot, Jiyong feels the ache in his marrow.

“I couldn’t tell you how many revolutions I’ve completed since that first day. Only that the highlight of the journey so far, is bearing witness to the moment a satellite drops away, releasing another solar flare out into the ether, setting the sky on fire. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I get to bask in the glow.

“It’s warm, the glow, and so blinding in its brightness it leaves no room for shadows. I hope one day you’ll stop looking up long enough to see just how bright you are. I hope one day you’ll feel that terror at the infinity housed within you. And I hope, most of all, that you let my revolutions continue, so we fall upwards into that boundless blanket of indigo together.

“Because when I’m with you, I’m more than the sum of my parts. I’m six years old, staring up at the heavens--not filled with fear, but with awe and possibility. I’m twelve, allowing those galactic waters to flow freely through my chubby fingers. I’m fourteen, pressing plastic stars to my ceiling in no particular order, letting them make their own meanings.

“I’m twenty-eight, standing on a stage in front of a crowd of strangers, so I can say this…” Seunghyun’s mouth twitches into a broad grin that he fails to repress, very clearly trying not to laugh as he schools his face into a calm expression. “Oh, rubber duckie, you’re the one. You make bath time lots of fun. Rubber duckie, I’m awfully fond of you.”

In the confused silence that follows, Jiyong smothers a delirious giggle behind his hands. There’s some awkward chuckling, then one person starts to clap, spurring the rest of the room into a round of applause, but he doesn’t really hear it. Seunghyun startles at the noise--smiles, bows, waves away the hollers of appreciation--like he forgot the other fifty people were even there. Jiyong watches this all happen in a strange daze, everything drifting around him in slow motion. He knows Zahra is looking at him with wide, excited eyes, but he honestly can’t process very much right now. Just the pounding of his own heart against his ribs. The rush of blood in his ears. A world, underwater.

Then it’s a messy blur of pink and hands on his shoulders, guiding him through the packed bar and out onto the blessedly quiet sidewalk. Cold nips at his cheeks, clarity returns.

“Sorry,” Seunghyun says with a huff, scratching at the back of his head and looking down at his feet. “I know that was a lot. I’m ridiculous.”

An understatement, if there ever was one. Jiyong wants to say something--anything. But he’s not even sure he can find the words after all the ones Seunghyun just carefully placed at his feet. 

Although maybe he doesn’t need them. Maybe he can just reach out and grab Seunghyun’s shirt to pull him in. It seems to work, because Seunghyun moves into his space without resistance, hands lifting to Jiyong’s arms, face pressed into Jiyong’s hair. A familiar arrangement.

He breathes and it feels like the first real breath he’s taken in the last twenty minutes. Chilled air fills his lungs. Seunghyun’s thumbs rub at the insides of his elbows. Jiyong smiles, which is all it takes for him to start laughing again.

“I can’t believe you ruined that with the rubber duckie song.”

Seunghyun scoffs. “I didn’t ruin it, I elevated it to a higher form of art. Obviously.”

The tremors in his stomach are the only thing keeping him from tipping the emotional scale in the opposite direction, but it’s a fine line and his balance has always .

Jiyong hits Seunghyun on the chest lightly. “God, why are you like this?”

“Wait. You-- you’re not mad at me, are you?” Seunghyun asks, sounding panicked, and he moves to tilt Jiyong’s head up.

He lifts both eyebrows. “Do I look mad?”

Even without the very obvious tears in his eyes, he’s pretty sure he just looks like someone trying not to have an emotional breakdown. Seunghyun frowns and presses both hands to Jiyong’s cheeks.

“No.”

Ugh. Jiyong can’t even deal with Seunghyun staring at him like that. From across the room, while he’s having an out of body experience, is one thing. Not up close where there’s no escape from all those cosmic rays. He groans, pushing forward to hide his face in Seunghyun’s shoulder.

I love you, Jiyong thinks, wrapping his arms around Seunghyun’s waist and holding him as tightly as he can. Despite all the reasons he wants to disagree with all those words at his feet. He doesn’t know if there’ll ever be a time when he won’t. But the flutter still sloshes around in his stomach, reminding him that, against the odds, Seunghyun sees all of those reasons and loves him anyway.

City noises drift and fade in the distance. Muffled bar chatter, a constant din in the periphery. The faint tinkling of moths hovering around the streetlight overhead, bumping into the glass.

Seunghyun squeezes him back and starts to sway them from side to side. Then comes the singing, low and gravelly and vibrating through him from every angle.

“Rubber duckie, joy of joys. When I squeeze you,” Seunghyun croons off key, crushing Jiyong in his arms until Jiyong legitimately giggle shrieks. “You make noise! Rubber duckie, you’re my very best friend, it’s true.”

He can’t breathe again, but this time it’s because there’s too much laughter fighting to escape at once.

Rubber duckie, you’re so fine

And I’m lucky that you’re mine

Rubber duckie, I’d like a whole pond of

Rubber duckie, I’m awfully fond of you

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Rain slants against the windows, clinking against the panes in the kind of off-kilter rhythm that has Jiyong spacing out more than he’s concentrating on anything. His mind’s been wandering into some strange places after the open mic night at Willow Street. Strange, because he’s never wandered these paths before. And strange, because he catches himself smiling so often now.

Jiyong looks out at the gray, clouded sky from his spot on the couch, computer balanced on his leg. He leans against the armrest and sighs.

He genuinely doesn’t know if he’ll ever think of himself the way Seunghyun does, but at least he can be proud of himself for deciding not to fight him on it. There are better ways to expend his energy than an argument he won’t even win.

Jiyong huffs slightly and shakes his head, turning back to his laptop screen. Like finding the perfect form of payback for the years Seunghyun shaved off his life with that performance.

He glances at the unopened box sitting on the other end of the couch and when his nth attempt to distract himself on the internet goes south, he snaps his computer shut. Jiyong checks his phone. He was going to wait until after dark to set up his surprise, but he doesn’t know if he can wait that long. Even if Seunghyun isn’t off work until ten. Jiyong scrubs at his face. He’s terrible at this. He wishes he could go for a walk. Shake off all this weird energy.

“ it,” he announces, listening to impulse as he gets up from the couch and snatches the box.

He grabs his keys, tucks the box under one arm, pads out into the hallway on bare feet, taking the stairs two at a time. It always feels wrong going through Seunghyun’s front door instead of through the window, but it’s so gross outside, he doesn’t care. He’ll probably have to get used to it once it starts snowing. Although he has a pretty solid hunch that even a blizzard wouldn’t stop Seunghyun from clambering through his window in the dead of winter.

Smiling at the absurd image, Jiyong finds the right key on his ring, then lets himself inside and shuts the door. He strides directly into the living room, full of more purpose than he’s ever been filled with about anything. Another first. He should start keeping a log, honestly. Just for posterity.

Jiyong laughs to himself and scans the walls, looking for an outlet. He spots an empty one to the right of a narrow bookshelf in the far corner, next to the bathroom. It’s perfect. He grins.

If this doesn’t end up being my single greatest contribution to the world, he thinks as he sets the box down on the floor, pushing the sleeves of his hoodie up to his elbows and getting to work.

Then he’s failed a hell of a lot more than he originally thought.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Seunghyun

[Sent Dec 15 10:21PM]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seunghyun

[Sent Dec 15 10:21PM]

YOU

Seunghyun

[Sent Dec 15 10:22PM]

ARE IN SO MUCH

TROUBLE

Jiyong almost drops his phone, the nervous excitement coursing through him so intense that it’s compromising his basic motor functions. He tries to type in a reply, but his fingers are so damn jittery, like they’re going to fly right off his ing hands.

[Sent Dec 15 10:23PM]

i have no idea what you’re

talking about

Seunghyun

[Sent Dec 15 10:23PM]

GET YOUR LYING UP

HERE RIGHT NOW AND

TELL ME THAT TO MY

FACE

Jiyong seriously laughs so loud that he surprises himself.

Seunghyun

[Sent Dec 15 10:24PM]

I ING HEARD THAT YOU

Which only serves to make him cackle a bit harder. If not for the kitchen counter holding him up, he would crumple to the floor in a useless pile of crazed, adrenaline-soaked limbs. Nothing makes him feel more insane than uncontrollable laughter. It used to be so hard, and now? Now it’s like he’s possessed, some raging joy demon bubbling up from the hellish depths of his emotional repression. Jiyong gasps for air and wipes happy tears from his eyes, marveling at the wetness on his fingers. Logically, they shouldn’t feel any different than any of the tears he’s shed before, but they do.

“JIYONG.”

The bellowed shout echoes out into the alleyway, bouncing off the bricks.

“Oh, ,” he wheezes, stumbling out of the kitchen on his way to the fire escape.

Rain still falls from the sky in fat droplets, but he doesn’t spare it much thought as his bare feet hit the metal grate. When he looks up, he finds Seunghyun hanging out of his window, wet hair plastered to his face. Jiyong snorts.

“Yeah, sure, laugh it up,” Seunghyun calls, scowling.

For a split second, he wonders if he screwed up. His heart skips an anxious beat at the possibility and Jiyong’s amusement yanks itself out from under him like the proverbial rug. He jogs up the last few steps, meeting Seunghyun at the window.

“I’m sorry, I thought--”

“Oh my god, just--”

Seunghyun takes hold of him with both hands, then hauls them into his apartment and onto the floor in a damp heap. Jiyong grunts, elbows smarting.

“Ow.”

“You ing deserve it,” Seunghyun says.

“How is this any worse than what you did to me?” Jiyong groans, flopping onto his back. It’s dark, save for the swirling mass of stars rotating slowly over the walls and the ceiling.

“Because! It is!” Seunghyun nearly yells. He looks over at Jiyong with wide, pleading eyes. “Listen. You can’t just randomly decide to plant an entire ing universe in my living room, okay?”

Jiyong’s mouth twitches. “Why not?”

“You upstaged me!” Seunghyun whines.

“Seriously?” he asks, leaning over to stare down at Seunghyun with the full power of his arched eyebrow. “Do I need to repeat your own words back at you?”

There’s a pause where Seunghyun opens his mouth, obviously intending to argue the point, but nothing comes out. Jiyong watches a colorful nebula pass over Seunghyun’s face. He’s just about to reach out and chase it with his fingers when Seunghyun clears his throat.

“We still haven’t talked about that, by the way.”

“A little on the nose, don’t you think,” he says, gesturing vaguely at the blanket of space covering his arms, his chest, his legs.

A planet glides smoothly across the curve of his hip and before he can look back up, Seunghyun’s hand is in his hair, dragging him in for a kiss. It surprises another laugh out of his lungs, makes his toes curl against the floorboards. Jiyong rolls over onto Seunghyun to kiss him harder and Seunghyun reciprocates by tightly wrapping both arms and legs around Jiyong like a star-speckled octopus.

“You didn’t ask first,” he mumbles, grinning.

“I love you,” Seunghyun replies in a rush.

Jiyong pulls back. “What?”

“I love you.” Seunghyun’s adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, his eyebrows scrunched and halfway up his forehead. “I love you and I’m in love with you.”

He blinks. The merry-go-round of galaxies pass slowly in his periphery, trailing across Seunghyun’s moderately panicked expression. Jiyong feels his heart skittering against his ribcage. There’s no itch under his skin, no fear pulling at his insides like taffy. Just the giddy thump-thump-thump, because there isn’t room for anything else.

Jiyong doesn’t have something clever or sweet to say in response, either. Even if his brain was functioning normally and not overflowing with endorphins, he wouldn’t. He didn’t know how he was going to tell Seunghyun in the first place, anyway, and now here this is, stealing his thunder all over again.

He laughs softly, biting into his lip, gaze dancing over Seunghyun’s face. The words just kind of...spill out of his mouth on their own.

“Yeah,” Jiyong says. “Me too.”

Seunghyun smiles so wide his eyes transform into crescent moons, his fingers brushing through Jiyong’s hair, looking at him like he doesn’t need the novelty lamp to think Jiyong is made of star stuff. He already knows that. Just like he still doesn’t know if he’ll ever see it himself. And that’s ok.

“Now that I’ve said it, I probably won’t stop,” Seunghyun laughs.

“You might break me if you do,” Jiyong answers wryly. He’s only half-joking.

Which doesn’t deter Seunghyun at all, because why would it.

“I love you.”

He shakes his head. “Seunghyun.”

“I love you so much,” Seunghyun says again anyway, pulling Jiyong back into his arms and rolling them across the floor.

His throat feels tight, heart still beating too fast in his chest.

“If I say it back, will you shut up?” he asks, grunting under Seunghyun’s weight pinning him down.

“You don’t have to.”

Jiyong glances away. “I want to.”

Even though he might fly apart in the process.

Sliding off to the side, Seunghyun frowns a little and drops his head into his hand. “You really don’t have to, I promise I’ll try to keep my amorous declarations to a mildly gross minimum.”

He tsks, his own lips twitching despite his attempts to flatten them. He’s well aware that he doesn’t have to, but the words feel like they’re going to burn a hole clean through his chest if he doesn’t let them out. Or something close to them, at least. Like walking, he tells himself. Forward motion, just verbal.

Jiyong’s eyes flicker from Seunghyun’s face, to the ceiling, to his own hands laying on his stomach. It’s never easy to look at that face, even when he isn’t about to get real. It’s even more of a challenge when the star lamp has turned him into a literal space boy, so he stares at a random spot on Seunghyun’s shoulder and tries to remember what it was he wanted to say.

Oh, right.

“I, um-- I guess I should start with the part where I didn’t even think this was possible.” Honestly, Jiyong didn’t think anything was possible. “But you seem to be really good at destroying things. Like all the expectations I had of myself.”

“Sorry for interrupting, but that was all you,” Seunghyun says.

He sighs.

“It definitely wasn’t.”

“Uh, no.”

Jiyong shakes his head and reaches over to dig his fingers into Seunghyun’s sides, making him squirm and cry out. “I’m sorry, you’re wrong.”

“What are you talking about?  I’m never wrong,” Seunghyun giggles and then whines and flails onto his back. “Jesus christ, stop.”

“Are you ticklish, Seunghyun?” Jiyong asks innocently, trying to slide his hands underneath Seunghyun’s shirt.

Seunghyun makes a pained face. “Nope! Nope. N-Not me. It’s-- It must be someone else.”

He laughs when Seunghyun slaps at his arms, but it’s not enough to fight him off--fingers terrorizing vulnerable ribs until Seunghyun can’t breathe. It’s as good an opportunity as any.

“Thank you,” Jiyong says, leaning over to press a kiss to Seunghyun’s flushed cheek. “I love you,” he adds. “And you’re still wrong.”

“Well, I’m never gonna forgive you for showing me up,” Seunghyun pants beneath him, red-faced and beaming, glasses askew.

Jiyong shrugs, pushes the wet mess of Seunghyun’s hair off of his forehead.

“I think I can live with that,” he says. “I mean, I kinda knocked it out of the park.”

Seunghyun yanks him in and presses a firm kiss to Jiyong’s mouth.

“You didn’t ask,” Jiyong says, giddy laughter taking up residence in every single one of his atoms. “Again. I’m starting to think that was all bull.”

“It wasn’t bull!” Seunghyun answers. 

He looks ridiculous with his glasses still tilted halfway off his face, so Jiyong sets them on the floor a safe distance away. Hopefully. Seunghyun steals another kiss and his insides shake apart a little more, dispersing until he feels uncharacteristically light. Like he really is made of stardust.

“Definitely bull.”

“Okay, then, ,” Seunghyun huffs, nudging Jiyong’s nose playfully. “How’s this for a question?”

Warm lips brush his own. Jiyong shivers.

“Can I kiss you until the day I die?”

He smiles and a memory flashes through his mind. The pink-haired stranger outside his window, haloed in sunlight--changing his life with one, deceptively simple question. Jiyong didn’t know that at the time, of course. Just like he has no idea what tomorrow might throw at him. Or next week. A month from now, a year. Five years. Jiyong has never been certain about anything. The world less so. But if the last seventy-nine days have imparted any wisdom into his useless, pea brain, it’s that taking a chance can yield unexpected results. It’s that he has more than just emptiness inside of him. It’s the happy weightlessness in his bones telling him he doesn’t always have to keep moving.

It’s the startling realization that he can do this and still be a mess and it doesn’t even matter. He’s not alone anymore.

“Yeah,” Jiyong replies, tears stinging his eyes until he can’t see, heart thump-thump-thumping. He lets out a strained laugh and smiles. “I’d like that.”

He’s not alone, he thinks. He’s wonderful.

a/n: if you'd like to ride this feels train with me into the sunset, please do me the honor of listening to david bowie's rock n roll suicide