a/n: slight trigger warning--mention of suicide attempt

Chanyeol liked to hold him close, bodies shivering together in the night. Baekhyun didn’t mind, just like he didn't mind when Chanyeol presses kisses to his lips in broad daylight. He’d never been one for public displays of affection, much less cuddling, but here at the end of the world, he figured it didn’t count if there was nobody around to see it.

He had always wondered how it would all end—disaster, war, and plague being the most likely candidates. He never could have guessed that one day he’d wake up to half the world turned to ashes, entropy speeding up, catalyzed to sudden decay. Baekhyun isn’t entirely sure why he was spared. He jokes that it was the fact that his soul was, in fact, spotless. Chanyeol always laughs at that, saying that he must have been pulled along in the wake of his perfection. Baekhyun smiles when Chanyeol says this, kissing him soft and sweet and slow because things like that fill Baekhyun up with love until he feels like if he doesn’t do something about it he’ll overflow, bursting at the seams, bleeding out his love for Chanyeol.

What he doesn’t say is that he’s afraid the opposite is true—that he’s left because his soul’s anything but pure—it’s more dishwater grey, turned dim with months of self-abuse; spotted by quick s in dirty bathrooms with men he doesn’t know, flecks of black that come from throwing up in back alleys, self hatred cutting out the pieces of his heart bit by bit until there’s nothing but dark loathing and liquid fear flowing like bile through his veins; that his soul’s cut in half, sown back together wrong, leaving scars as thick as the ones on his wrists, memories of bathroom tiles running red with tears, spirit killing emptiness pouring out of him, being replaced with ever growing darkness. What he doesn’t tell Chanyeol is that he is terrified that he dragged him down to this circle of Hell, tainting the only good thing he ever had in his life.

The worst part, he thinks one night as they lay side by side in the starlight, is that he can’t bring himself to regret it. Even if this was Hell or Purgatory or something in between, he was glad that he wasn’t alone, that Chanyeol, who was more perfect than he could bear, was with him and not blowing away like dust in the wind. He figures this turned his soul another shade of black, slowly going the color of coal dust, and he wonders if one day it’ll ignite, burn him up from the inside out until he’s just more ashes in a world already set ablaze.

° ° °

Chanyeol likes to tell him that it’s okay like this. He kisses Baekhyun under the trees that sway with summer breezes, leaves shivering like whispers in the air. Baekhyun lets his fingers slide under the hem of Chanyeol’s shirt, tracing over smooth skin, palms flattening out over Chanyeol’s rapidly beating heart, eyes fluttering shut, something more than lust or love burning in his veins as Chanyeol breathes his name across his lips. He whispers that they have forever, that they have all the time in the world, and Baekhyun laughs, head tipping back, eyes turning to perfect slivers in his face, agreeing even though he can’t help but think that forever meant nothing when they had nothing to begin with.

° ° °

He’s not entirely sure how infinity works or if they belong to the endless universe instead of to the world that decays around them. It seems sometimes, like they’re ghosts, trailing invisible, untraceable through a world that seems all too indifferent to their lives.

When Chanyeol’s not with him he wonders if this is a fever dream, nothing more than a fantastical other world conjured up by his mind. He thinks it’s called the uncanny gap, that space where everything is sort of familiar but just different enough to make you feel like crawling out of your own skin.

One day, when he’s lazing in someone else’s bed, looking out at the broken skyline that he could never have afforded when everything was whole and good, he wonders if anything exists when he doesn’t see it, if it vanishes upward in trails of grey smoke when he closes his eyes. It’s thoughts like this that terrify him the most because if it’s true then where does that leave Chanyeol when he leaves to get supplies or when he falls asleep in his arms, because the thought of being in a world where Chanyeol isn’t there, even for a moment, makes him wish the world would just swallow him whole, black abyss and fiery core melting away what he was until he was nothing but light, streaming back to whatever star Chanyeol came from.

° ° °

Sometimes he wanders, lets himself walk away from the steady breaths at his side, from the soft lips that mumble his name as he closes the door behind him. He tells himself it’s because he likes being alone, always has, always will. He tries to ignore the voice that tells him that Chanyeol’s better off without him, that he never deserved the person that was Park Chanyeol to begin with.

Chanyeol always goes after him, though, voice booming through the empty shells of rusting cars, until they find each other in the ruins of themselves, crashing into each other’s arms, silhouetted against the bones of cities and broken bridges and lakes burning with sunset.

Chanyeol holds him so tight that their hearts fly in unison, tears hot against Baekhyun’s neck, voice broken as he confesses that he was afraid that this time was it, this time Baekhyun was turned to ashes too and Chanyeol was alone in the smoldering ruin of their dreaming world.

Baekhyun runs his fingers through Chanyeol’s hair, kissing away his tears, saying that they’ll have each other until the end of time, until forever runs out. He says that if they can survive the end of the world, they can get through anything else. And for a moment, he lets himself believe it.

° ° °

Chanyeol’s I love you’s are simple, sweet. He says it for the first time when they’re twenty-one, the sounds of the city turning around them. Baekhyun is entirely sure he loves Chanyeol too, but he doesn’t say it back. Instead he takes Chanyeol’s hand into his own, fingers sliding across palms, lacing together, and Baekhyun pretends that ten fingers and two hearts are enough to keep them together.

Baekhyun never did tell Chanyeol that he loved him. Chanyeol gasped it into his skin as they pushed against each other, coming together in stranger’s beds. Baekhyun felt his heart surge out the words, and he held Chanyeol closer, kissed him harder, but never said them back. He’d loved other people, you see—friends and family—but love never did anything for them. Love didn’t change the fact that he had to watch them die before his eyes, withering away like flowers in darkness, his touch like winter mornings, cold and dark and unable to do anything to stop them from falling to the ground. So he never said it to Chanyeol. Instead, he wrote love letters with his fingertips across Chanyeol’s skin. He sang adoration into lullabies when Chanyeol woke up, screaming, haunted by people vanishing, crumbling like pillars of sand before the waves. He calculated the curve of Chanyeol’s lips, counted his eyelashes, measured the beating of his heart. Because Baekhyun didn’t have much faith in love, but numbers never lied, and maybe if he could translate them into binary, they could live forever.

° ° °

Baekhyun was one hundred percent sure that he was in love with Park Chanyeol. He loved his laugh, his stupid long limbs that left him tripping over Baekhyun and everything else, and he loved the way he would hold him close at night, eyes closed, noses touching as they whispered stories to each other; dates that would never happen, weddings they’d never plan, children they’d never have.

In the futures Chanyeol spun, they were always happy, with a two story house, a dog, and sometimes a daughter that followed them around the park that they’d live next to.

He thinks that’s what he loves most about Chanyeol—his future always had sunny days and soft kisses and Byun Baekhyun.

Of course, when they first got serious all those years ago, talking about things like marriage and family and till death do them part, they never imagined that their eternity would look like this. He supposed they were a bit like light; the moment you pinpointed their direction, you lost track of how fast they were going, time wheeling around them, spinning endlessly onwards, and if you tracked their velocity, you lost their position in space. He was okay with that though, with not knowing where things would take them. He was anything but perfect, but their world had never been perfect either, and he supposed that what they had now was an Eden of sorts, a paradise unto themselves.

He thinks that maybe he’d never go to sleep unafraid, that he’d always linger at the edge of dreaming and waking, worried that when he came back from dreams he’d find himself with nothing more than the memory of loud laughter and bright smiles and the finest coating of ash along the creases of his palms, finding that everything he’d ever loved had burned away in the night.

But he figures that’s what love is, uncertainty and fear and longing wrapped up in hope and silver linings, packaged conveniently in flesh and blood and heartbeats keeping time. And he thinks that maybe forever means a whole lot more when it means they have each other.

° ° °

Sooo did you like it? Not like it? Something? Let me know what you think! Thanks lovelies *kisses*