the stars, they shine for you tonight

             Sometimes, Luhan looks at Minseok and feels his heart shatter into so many little pieces and scatter into so many unnoticeable directions that he does not know how to find the fragments again even if he tries. There are mornings when he pulls away from Minseok's embrace and asks his boyfriend if he has brushed his teeth, and every time, for two blank seconds, Minseok thinks. Luhan watches as his eyebrows crease into the softest of arches, the little gears in his head turning as he ponders and ponders for an answer that should undeniably be there. In the end he nods, but when Luhan has given Minseok his cup of milk and has headed to their shared bathroom to run his fingers over the thick bristles of Minseok's toothbrush, he finds that they are dry.

             The problem lies in Minseok's seemingly perfect head, in the little wrinkles of his brain that are too many to count. For someone past childhood and teen years gone by, Minseok has an unusually vivid imagination. It is, in fact, so bright and so luring and so real that often, he cannot distinguish whether he is carrying out his ideas or simply thinking them. So when Luhan goes back to the dining table, he brings with him the toothbrush and lets Minseok feel the tips dragging sharply under his digits. A frown takes a familiar journey across Minseok's pale forehead and then it clicks.

             "I've been thinking it again, haven't I?"

             And a sharp prick comes and goes in Luhan's left chest every time he has to nod, but the way Minseok's eyes droop reminds him of the reason he is still here, by Minseok's side. His boyfriend needs him like a child needs a nurturing mother, and Luhan doesn't have the heart to leave - not when those lips cascade over the tallest of mountains in his sleep, not when those arms feel so unmistakably right by his fingertips when they drift away in oceans of dreams so real they couldn't ever be called mere figments of desire.

             Some nights, when Luhan has almost let his body be taken by Hypnos into a darkness so open and free, Minseok stares into the ceiling with eyes so bright that Luhan feels slumber crawling away from his side of the bed as fast as it does for the body to his right.

             "What are you thinking about?" Luhan asks, and he wonders how so many things could fit into a head as petite as Minseok's.

             A gentle cloud of silence blankets them both as the clock on the wall marks the seconds passing by - tick, tick, tick. Minseok takes a breath of air before turning his head to Luhan and smiling.

             "Don't you ever wonder who first started keeping track of time?" he asks, and there are constellations in his orbs, a whole universe that Luhan has never been able to step foot into. "It's an interesting thought, really. Don't you ever wonder who was the first to become conscious of this element called time - the first to figure out there's an invisible something that just never stops going? This... continuous 'thing', you know, that determines why the sun sets and rises, why night falls and morning brightens. It must have been so overwhelming to realize that there's a force keeping track of the length of minutes and hours this world has existed."

             There is an elf inside Minseok's head, and it never stops working. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, it is cranking and cranking and cranking mini gears in Minseok's brain and it never rests, never gives Minseok a moment to breathe and to stop to take a look at the hands attached to his own body. If Luhan is not there, Minseok skips breakfast because in his dream, he has already eaten a toast with eggs and sausages and even though he wakes up, he doesn't really, because he is moving his body in his head all day long. He never realizes a thing until Luhan comes home and reminds him that his stomach is so empty it sounds like a gong when he slaps it.

             "Minseok," Luhan says, and he draws a line of dots on his arm, the one by his side of the bed. "Go to sleep."

             And he does, but in his dream he is traveling to places hidden in the corners of the Earth and when he wakes up in the morning, 8AM sharp, he tells Luhan of all the adventures he has trialed through during the nine hour span that they have closed their eyes and slept.

             It's especially hard for Luhan when he has had a long day at work, when his boss has thoroughly yelled at him in his face for getting the scanning wrong because his mind keeps swimming back to Minseok at home, if he is doing okay, if he hasn't set the house on fire already. It takes too many tolls on his heart and his soul and his body when he tells Minseok to come eat dinner and the response is "I already did!" only to be rebutted when he clambers to the kitchen to see a meal yet to be touched.

             He screams that day because he is so frustrated with Minseok, with everything, and there are tears in his eyes that well up too easily from being trapped in their ducts for so long. Minseok is frozen in fear and he feels the world crash and shake and crumble in his ears because he is so mangled inside.

             "I-I'm sorry, Luhan, I really am," he says, but Luhan can't see the sorry in his eyes because his vision is clouding over with hot tears.

             "What is saying 'sorry' going to do for me? What's the point when you always imagine doing in your head but you never actually do them? What's the ing point when you don't even know if this conversation is real or not, Minseok?!"

             And there might be tears in Minseok's eyes but Luhan doesn't know, doesn't know a single thing any more.

             "M-Maybe I should carry around a recorder with me all day or something so I know what I've said and what I haven't said. Maybe I should-"

             "It's not that, Minseok. It's not that anymore," a tired Luhan replies, and he's shaking so horribly. "It's just that I hate feeling like a mom all the time, like I'm dating my neighbor's premature son or something because I can't go a single minute worrying if you got a meal in or not when I'm gone!"

             He regrets it the moment he says it, but Minseok has heard already and it's definitely not in his imagination.

             "... I'm sorry for being such a burden," is the last thing he says before taking his thin summer jacket from the couch to his left and rushing out the door.

             Luhan's head rings with so many red warning signs that he crashes to the floor and grips his head between his knees as he cries.