GUYZ THIS IS SEKAI JUST SAYING. Trying to get back into writing after awhile is weird and I feel rusty.

Prompt from here.

            Sometimes, Sehun dreams. He dreams of swirls of colors, of flashes of dark creamy skin like milk chocolate. Of a long forgotten smile tinged with shyness before it fades away with the other images. He has reached out to them before, tried to grasp each color in his hands, but they all run through the spaces of his fingers like sand.

            When he wakes up, it is with a bittersweet hollowness in his chest as he struggles to catch his breath. He doesn’t even have a name to associate with this person he’s dreaming of; all he knows that all of these dreams revolve around one person only, and that he needs to find that person.

            “Reincarnation,” Junmyeon says. He looks amused, mouth curling almost into a sneer. If it had been anyone else but Sehun (he is Junmyeon’s precious little dongsaeng after all), he would’ve laughed in their face already, “is an antiquated concept that is full of bull.”

            Sehun slouches a little, fingers tapping mindlessly at his bottled 100% purified mineral water. He would be lying if he said that he had not expected that same exact response from his hyung.

            Kyungsoo lays a calming hand on Junmyeon’s inner elbow to stop him from launching into an intense speech about how logic and science is the way to go. “Anything is possible,” he says, “Sehun-ah, if you think you are dreaming about a past life, you could be right.”

            Junmyeon still looks highly skeptical.

            Do Kyungsoo’s family owns a store of old books (real books. The rare kinds with paper that crumbles underneath your fingertips) full of myths and stories that toe the fine line between fiction and reality. To this day, Sehun still has not figured out why Kyungsoo and Junmyeon are together when their beliefs are on the opposite sides of the spectrum.

            Sehun nods a little dejectedly at Kyungsoo’s answer, tangling his fingers into the artificial grass that they’re sitting on. Grass is supposed to be green, he knows from textbooks, but he doesn’t even know what green looks like. All he sees is the shadows that each strand cast on the other, varying in their gradient of shades. Noticing things like this always make his insides throb for his colored dreams again.

            He doesn’t tell anyone, not even Kyungsoo and Junmyeon, about how his dreams are filled with colors because they would look at him with envy and disbelief. Humans are never born with the pigments in their eyes to see colors anymore. There have been many scientific studies on how this exactly happened, some pointing out the increased levels of this chemical that might’ve caused the inactivation of this gene, while others call it natural selection - nature telling us that the practicality for seeing colors is no longer needed.

            Still. Sehun glares at the black and white and in-between greys of the grass in between his fingers. Still. He hates waking up in the morning knowing that something is empty within him but not knowing why.

            He is on a school trip, lagging behind the group, when there is a burst of bright color on the edges of his vision. He stops walking. Huh. How did he not realize that this is a dream? Only in his dreams does he see colors, except this time it feels like he can practically taste this particular color, one that lingers in the back of his tongue like the sharp tangy flavor of a tangerine. Someone bumps into his shoulder, and he winces because he’s surprised to actually feel pain. It takes a few seconds for him to realize that this is reality after all, and he finally moves. He power-walks (no running in a museum exhibit! The high-tech cameras are watching your every move) to the direction of where the warm color is coming from.

            A kind of painful anticipation is crawling into his chest and he hears husky laughter (creating yet another one of these color bursts) before he actually sees him. Just another ordinary boy with his group of friends from a different school’s field trip. Someone he would’ve passed by on the streets without a second glance except there is something suffocatingly familiar about the flash of his teeth when he smiles and the timbre of his voice.

            The boy endearingly covers his mouth when he is laughing and he twitches as if he feels a pair of eyes watching him intently. Sehun shivers when their eyes meet, and there’s recognition in the other’s eyes that proves to Sehun that he’s right. He’s found (wow, how cheesy does this sound?) the person of his dreams.

            The familiar stranger elbows his way from his friends’ circle, and they send him a curious look before conversing amongst themselves again. Sehun feels his palms clamming up when each step brings them closer.

            “Hi, I’m Jongin,” the boy says, and this time, Sehun sees the world in a flickers of this color that reminds him of the deep bottoms of an ocean. He tries not to blink because seeing colors in the real world brings the slight onslaught of tears to the corners of his eyes. It’s more gorgeous than anything his dreams have suggested to him before.      

            Sehun swallows, and says, “Hello. My name’s Oh Sehun.”

            Jongin blinks in apparent surprise, and then laughs breathily. “Wow,” he says, “that was. Wow.”

            “You see the colors, too?” Sehun blurts it out without thinking. Oh , hopefully Jongin doesn’t think he’s insane for suggesting that he could see in colors. Thankfully, he receives an eye-smile.

            “Yeah. They’re beautiful.”

            It only takes a few weeks for them to be attached at the hip. It only takes a few more months for Sehun to become so accustomed to his world of twining colors that he panics when Jongin’s family is going away for vacation.

            “What are you doing?” Jongin has stepped into his room, only to be greeted by a blanket-covered lump on his bed.

            Sehun responds by burrowing his head further into the pillow. “If I don’t leave, you don’t have to go away tomorrow.” He has his childish moments at the strangest times.

            Jongin pulls at his blanket with limited success, because Sehun has gripped it even tighter. “You’ve become spoiled by me, haven’t you?”

            The taller responds with an immature kick before curling back into a ball.

            “Sehun-ah.” Jongin is patting where he thinks Sehun’s head is. “I’ll be back before you know it. I don’t like spending time away from you either.”

            Finally, Sehun’s head pokes out from his cocoon so that only his narrowed eyes appear. “Who said I like to spend time with you?”

            Jongin only grins evilly, and takes that moment where the other’s guard is let down to tackle him. “Gotcha!” He wrestles the blanket away from him, and somehow it becomes a wrestling match before Sehun plays a dirty card and bites his bicep before pinning him down.

            “Foul play,” Jongin grumbles in the face of the smugness rolling off his Sehun. For some reason, his mind has started to work against him and tacks on a possessive his everytime he thinks of the other boy. He grows quiet when he notices that Sehun’s shoulders have become tense and his eyes have taken on a subtle smoulder that skitters invisible fingers down Jongin’s spine.

            Sehun hesitates, but Jongin urges him forward by hooking his hands around his neck. He has never found someone other than Sehun who can pull the corners of his heart the same way he pulls on his lips insistently. Jongin has lost count of the amount of times that they have tangled their limbs together (naturally, so naturally) like this but it feels exhilarating each time. He can taste the colors on Sehun’s tongue, can feel each shade’s texture by running his fingers through the other’s coarse hair.

            They pull away inevitably and Sehun clamps his arms around Jongin and snuggles closer because he is a clingy bastard like that and Jongin does not mind at all. One would’ve thought that their dreams would’ve stopped now that they’ve met each other, but they haven’t. Sehun is glad because they would be the only way to help him get through the upcoming week without Jongin temporarily.