There were whole galaxies beneath his skin, stars shining through his irises, shimmering like fairy dust along the fine hair of his arms, swirling infinite in his smile.

Chanyeol thought that he could spend forever getting lost in his eyes, counting the stars into constellations, words whispered into his lips, across his skin, spiraling somewhere into his heart.

If Baekhyun was the universe Chanyeol was a black hole, void and dark and pulling at Baekhyun’s light.

They were, in short, no good for each other. His fingers curled firestorms across sheets, sparks igniting in his heart and on other, more flammable materials. The first time it happens, they’re left with the acrid smell of singed hair, pink handprints blushing along Baekhyun’s hipbones, holes like cigarette burns in the sheets, a five pointed star, the after affect of fingertips on fire.

Baekhyun is not terrified, not really. He had sort of expected it, to be honest. Chanyeol was nothing if not a conflagration, whirling like a firestorm across people’s lives; hot temper, warm smile, skin on skin contact that set his blood on fire in more ways than one.

If Baekhyun was sunlight, gentle, warming, setting flowers into bloom and kissing skin golden, Chanyeol was magma core, seething molten under the surface, erupting to destroy flowers just starting to unfold, setting the world in monochrome, grey against grey against black.

They didn’t know just what would happen, what it meant to be the fire bringer. The first time they wake up to smoke curling under the door, clouding against the window, it’s all shouting, twelve boys trying to stamp out a fire that had an unending source, trying to stop their home from going up like matchsticks.

They made Baekhyun move out after the fifth one. Chanyeol watches him, sad eyes following Baekhyun’s hands as they pack away the pieces of their lives, running fingers over coffee stains on desks, memories of late night laughter that turned into something that was a lot less light and a lot more heat burning a blush across his cheeks.

He doesn’t complain when he has to start wearing long sleeves and pants in summer, even when it’s always so hot he feels like each breath is desert wind, dry and brittle across his tongue. He pretends not to notice the dark circles that grow, sinister, under Baekhyun’s eyes, unable to sleep because it’s too cold in the room, even with two roommates and a comforter in the middle of summer, because he’s used to gentle warmth flickering at his back, slung lazy across his waist.

Baekhyun tries not to notice that way Chanyeol’s smile breaks, crumbling into itself the way shells of buildings collapse, hollowed out, charred, with a cloud of coal dust and an earth-shaking crash. He pretends not to care when Chanyeol doesn’t lean so close, pulls his hands away, under the table, into sleeves, like his touch was poison.

He forgets, a little bit, the way his touch sent lightning arcing through his nerves, hot and flashing and beautiful.

He lingers somewhere at Chanyeol’s periphery, as he goes up in smoke, because Chanyeol needed contact the way Baekhyun needed starlight on moonless nights, and the way he was being closed off, compartmentalized, was smothering him, turning him cold, wasting him away like fire in the vacuum space.

Baekhyun was nothing if not determined, and he knew that they belonged hand in hand, hearts on fire, burning each other up in the most beautiful way possible. Chanyeol had nothing if he didn’t have Baekhyun, but he was willing to give him up if it meant he wasn’t left with handfuls of ashes, embers blinking out as they scattered to the wind.

But they were like atoms in the heart of the sun, slamming together, making fire and light and letting spring settle into flower buds, silver in the morning light, setting sunburns into bloom across sun kissed skin. They were nothing if not elemental, and Baekhyun knew they’d burn each other up, bursting outward in light and color and flame. Chanyeol thought it would end there, blackness of space and dead worlds turned to charcoal and inky night. Baekhyun, though, knew the explosion wouldn’t end them, not really. It would send gold and silver racing across stars to gather in dust clouds, phantasmagoric and ethereal until it settled into new stars burning to light.

His skin is a whisper, feather light across Chanyeol’s and Chanyeol knows they shouldn’t do this because nothing good ever came from fire but Baekhyun’s lips coax him into submission, and somewhere at the back of his mind, he begins to realize that one can’t exist without the other, that fire and light were two things bound inextricable, winding them betwixt stars pinwheeling to the end of all things, and the beginning of something new.

And he figures that if Baekhyun was the Big Bang, white fire unfurling outward, creating as it unwound, he was the catalyst, exploding everything into being, momentum forcing them outward into infinite blackness, illuminating the far reaches of forever.