A/N: This is really long, it's weird and it has no .. in short, I have no clue why you should read it.

But this is Chansung lost in time, looking for something to hold on to and finding Junho, only to lose him again. Can they stabilize when everything is fleeting?

I.

Time travel hadn't been invented. It had been thrown on man like a yoke to bear whether you were strong enough or not, regardless of age and weight and wisdom. What was even worse, mankind had lost the anchor of linearity, where time is an unbroken line that you move with or jump along.

Now, time was jumbled and broken, and whoever had been stuck to time when it cracked, was now thrown back and forth over the continuum, unable to linger or take root. Yes, for any other species it might have been liberation, the escape from the prison of seconds - but to man, it was losing the very essence of stability.

It was falling asleep in your childhood bed and waking up 200 years later, it entailed being flung through your life without being able to build any stable relations. Not even the hint of freedom did anything to dull the fact that existence was pure and utter chaos. For a while, there was nothing else. But man is a cockroach, impossible to quell, no way to stifle what wants to live.

Chansung had been in his twenties when chaos erupted. Theoretically, he still was, as time neither threw him forward or held him back. He was simultaneously naively childish and anciently wise, having seen more than he'd bargained for and still just a fraction of what was supposed to become his life. At first, he'd been as thrown off as anyone else by the carpet disappearing under his feet, tumbling with his soles up and his head down, until another paradigm had been imposed on him.

”Do you want me to show you something new? Are you tired of traveling?” he'd been asked by one of the passing acquaintances – temporary friends were the only kind he stood to make under the circumstances – and knowing the moment could be torn from him at any fraction of a second, he'd hurriedly said “Yes.”

“I've found there are stable floaters.” “I think I know how to become one.”

At the time, Chansung had known the man only as Taecyeon and they had met once during his timeline. Perhaps other life spectra would have pinned them down as longstanding friends, perhaps not. There seemed to be something implying they would meet again. “Can you make me one?” Chansung had asked and no sooner than he'd gotten the answer “Maybe”, had time ripped them apart again, the moment stirred and forever gone.

It had taken another five seconds or ten years before their roads crossed again, Taecyeon still looked the same, Chansung had another layer of gray over his cornea but it was hard to spot without standing still and really focusing. And that was damn near impossible to achieve anymore. “Are you ready?” Taecyeon had asked without formalities, his hands forming a dome over Chansung's head even before he'd spoken “Yes, I've waited.”

He never could quite figure out the mechanics behind his changing life conditions, but from thereon after, Chansung was a stable floater, one that could navigate space without yearswings or slippery seconds. Not that he could control the movements of light and progress, he wasn't a god for 's sake, but neither was he falling as freely as before. From that moment, he'd been encased with a thin coating of adamant resistance, a bubble that kept him grounded.

It had taken some time to master, to keep the shell around him appropriately thick and see-through, but eventually he got a hang of it. He ran into Taecyeon more frequently and started to make sense of the world again.

*

“Hey, do you think there are others like us?” Chansung asked Taecyeon as they sat watching a sunrise and a myriad of people flashing them by. “I know there are” Taecyeon said, his attention nailed to the colors of the sky as if he'd never seen anything as vibrant before.

“Have you met them?”

“Where do you think I go when I'm not here?”

Chansung had never left his line since he'd been stabilized, now at the point where it started to get boring to remain in the same pace for longer than a day. “How many do you know?” he queried, pushing Taecyeon hard in the shoulder as he refused to re-focus and stop staring at the sinking sun.

“In a minute” Taecyeon said, “Do you know how rarely I get to watch time pass without feeling any pain.”

So Chansung waited, darkness sank on them. Above his head, the black void of night spread and widened. There were stars but he didn't want to look up.

“I know a few” Taecyeon finally replied, taking note of the curious shiver in the air around Chansung, “And I know you will ask me if I can take you to them.”

“Well, can you?”

“Can you accept to let go of your security, to toss everything in the air and devote yourself to regaining control?”

It was a serious question, as metaphysical as it sounded. Before answering, Chansung made sure his core was solid, his mind was set. Yes, he wanted to try, he even missed being launched from one year to the next, to see something unexpected. He'd forgotten all about how much it hurt the human body to traverse the flows of time.

“Yes” he said, “I think so.”

“Brace yourself. We'll look for them.”

Taecyeon rose to his feet, he closed his eyes and he reached his open palms against the sky. “You do like me” he said when Chansung remained unfazed and immobile, “And be sure to keep your bubble intact.”

With Chansung hesitant but eager to obey, Taecyeon clasped their hands together and took a few deep breaths, grounding his spirit in things other than solid earth and simple air. Having taken heed and made it clear what distance he wanted to cover, he let his feet leave the rocks and shot into space.

Bringing Chansung with as a marveling passenger.

“Are we outside of time?” the less experienced asked as he regained his breath, the gushing wind against his face slowing down and then coming to a complete halt, “Where are we?”

“We can't be outside of time” Taecyeon chuckled like it had been a foolish question and not a justified concern for someone who'd ended up in complete blackness, what seemed like a nothingness, a vacuum free of rhythm and logic. “We are in the black.”

“I have no clue what the black is!” Chansung exclaimed and his heart was racing, his eyes trying to focus, his mind infinitely more scared than the first time he'd been dislodged from time. This wasn't the jumble of moments, it was the complete lack of them.

“This is the place to reset and take aim. From here you can control where you go. This is time travel controlled.”

“We are in control?” Chansung wailed and traced his hands back and forth over his head, making sure it was still there and not in a million pieces, “Cause I sure don't feel like being in anything but in need of rescue.”

“It's just space” Taecyeon sighed and patted the younger one's shoulder, “Get a grip of yourself. Find your center and all that yoga bull. Maintain your bubble and start looking for where you want to go.”

“But where do I even look?”

Taecyeon pointed downwards, towards the celestial body that Chansung had all but missed despite it's enormous volume. Earth from above, eerie and beautiful and moving at a thousand miles per second. 'Scary ' Chansung thought to himself and squinted to make any sense of the ants far below. 'What am I even looking for.'

“Find something that isn't moving.”

“But everything is moving.”

“Look until you see something that doesn't.”

Not an easy task to distinguish the pin that stands still, among the bobbing heads zapping back and forth and disappearing at will. Finally Chansung found something that seemed to be stationary.

“There” he said and tried to point but Taecyeon had already found that same spot and a dozen more, used to sorting information and well aware of the dangers of lingering.

“So let's go” Taecyeon said impatiently, “We don't have all the time in the world.” “Or I mean, we do..” he corrected himself with a grin of sorts, “But we shouldn't stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Our bubbles will suffer. All of us will suffer. And not even this is worth cracking your shields for.”

“What happens if they break?”

“If they fail, there will be disorder again. We would dislodge from time and end up like we were. It could take forever for me to find you again.”

There was a creak in Chansung's skull and his breath got lodged in his throat. “But you would eventually find me, right?”

“Hopefully.”

Taecyeon spun around and grabbed Chansung's hand again, just a precautionary measure to get him used to mastering flight on his own – and so they soared through space to find their destined point in time.

II.

“Uuuuuh hh” Chansung groaned as he collapsed on the ground in an age he had very little previous knowledge about. His mouth was dry, his mind was throbbing, his stomach objected to being crammed in his ribcage and he had a dull awareness that his forehead had hit something hard. “I don't feel so good” he mumbled, “Did we land wrongly?”

“You put your feet down like a penguin on absinth” Taecyeon scoffed and dragged Chansung up by the fabric of his jacket, causing another wave of pain and nausea. “But that's not why you feel like .”

“No? Enlighten me.”

Chansung swallowed and rubbed his temples, trying to regain normal function at least to his lungs and tongue. A glass of water seemed like a vessel of perfection – he blinked, he moaned, he had to throw up. Everything spun.

“Feel better?” An unfamiliar voice asked it softly and followed by lean fingers gently tapping Chansung's neck, asking him to stand up straight and open his eyes. “Mmm” the man in a daze hummed in return, cursing the cramps in his gut and praising the cool bottle that was placed in his hand. Fifteen gulps later, he opened his eyes to a friendly face, a sharp jaw, brown eyes with true concern.

“I'm Minjun. How are you?”

“Recovering.” Chansung made a face and tried to get rid of the lingering taste of bile in his mouth. “Why am I feeling so hungover?”

“It's not the landing, he's right” Minjun told him, handing over what looked like a painkiller but tasted minty when Chansung pressed it against his palate. “It's your vulnerability to the black. You stayed too long for an unaccustomed floater.”

It took all the strength Chansung had to remain standing, although his knees felt weak and unstable. “Is this permanent?” he stuttered and inhaled deeply to have cool and fresh air fill his belly.

“Far from it” Minjun smiled, “This is just your adrenaline plummeting. Your brain on crack. This is gonna pass if you rehydrate and rest for a bit.” “But beware. Don't be up there for too long. No one can handle a complete void for very long.”

“You can” Taecyeon broke in with unmistakeable awe in his voice, “You have perfect control.”

“It took me a long time.” “And I still can't stay there forever.”

“I won't ever go back” Chansung lamented, in all the torture of an extreme drinking binge, without any of the pleasant rushes of alcohol. “This is too much of a price to pay.”

“Oh please” Taecyeon called him out, “I said the same my first time. That same night I was already back.” “The temptation will be too great, trust me.” “And Chansung – it'll get better with time. Just learn to steel yourself and navigate quickly.”

“Can I lie down?” “Is there a bed in this century and epoch?”

“Some things never change over the eras.” Minjun draped the staggering traveler over his shoulder and signed at Taecyeon to take the other side. “Let's get you to sleep before you'll be receptive to reasoning.”

“He's a hopeless kid” Taecyeon sighed as they towed the worn Chansung through an average door of an average house. Keeping track of the years had lost its point, but it was somewhere around 2200, same mess as everything else after man had lost control. Nothing new was being built, nothing old was really aging. Chansung didn't care. The sheets in the bed smelled of lemon and cotton and he fell instantly asleep, thinking his head might very well explode before his eyes would open again.

Au contraire, when he woke up and found he was still in the very same place, both time- and spacewise, and did not have a blasting headache – Chansung felt freer than ever before. Unchained. Hungry.

Damn, his stomach was growling.

“Is there any food?” he yelled out without addressing anyone I particular, “Can I have noodles and eggs?”

It took him a while before his olfactory receptors caught up with the rest of his seemingly reborn conscious but when they did, Chansung couldn't help but notice the breakfast plate next to his low bed, right there on the floor, still warm and glistening with butter and broth.

He ate it all in less than two minutes. No, he inhaled it all in one minute 54, to be precise with time in an age where it mattered absolutely nothing. “Is there more?” Chansung called out with the last bites still in his mouth, somewhere between still starving and just peckish but definitely ready for second servings.

“Damn how he eats” Minjun replied from what Chansung assumed was the kitchen, “Doesn't he have a bottom?”

“Not sure” Taecyeon said and the sound of plates indicated the kitchen wasn't quite on the rocks yet. Well that might change if Chansung stayed.

“You were once a hopeless kid as well” Minjun told him and the low bicker continued for a bit before both appeared in the door with plates and glasses. “You had breakfast” Taecyeon said and replaced Chansung's empty bowl with a full one, “Have lunch as well and then we'll talk.”

*

“Your color has returned” Taecyeon remarked as Chansung had left his eating and picked up conversation although it was still with slight confusion. “Your appetite too” Minjun filled in and grinned at Taecyeon's “Not sure, he usually eats even more.”

Chansung ignored the snide remark because when sated, food was actually very low on his list of priorities. Not as acute as finding out WHAT THE HAD JUST HAPPENED. It seemed his life was just one brutal surprise after the other recently. Being thrown out of time – yes okay, he'd accepted that. Regaining some control – okay fine, great. Now traveling into space by will and then returning to the moment of his choice--

Trippy.

“Excuse me” he said and put his hand up to silence his babysitting friends, “But where am I? And why?”

“We're not quite sure” Taecyeon seemed utterly unbothered by the whole debacle. “At least not if you mean in the traditional sense of time questions.” “He's right” Minjun agreed, “It can't be defined.” His face was serious as a smart grandpa telling his grand-kids about the great enlightenment of his youth. Chansung was far from impressed.

“Whatever” he sighed, “Define it some other way then!” “Don't treat me like an idiot.”

“He did rise with me” Taecyeon said to Minjun, a low whisper that did nothing to prevent Chansung from hearing but everything to make him understand it was private. “He did find a spot that didn't move.” “He didn't pass out.” Minjun added, “He did eat everything I had in the fridge.”

“He can handle it” they agreed and turned their faces back at the thirsty boy with eyes like saucers, desperately wanting just to know, to map out reality and make his mind accept it. “I can handle it” he confirmed, “Time is broken, how much worse can it be.”

“Yes, time is fleeting.” Minjun took the tone of a professor and Taecyeon stayed silent. “In lack of years and months, we have to find other markers. You have to learn to navigate by use of beacons. Keep on trying and you'll learn to navigate.”

“Can't I just stay here?” It wasn't exactly apple pie easy for Chansung to process his new possibilities.

“You can.” “But you won't.” “You'll get tired of being stuck in boring moments or with boring people, and you'll remember you can actually leave.”

Fair enough. Chansung had seen his share of depressing eras.

“And when that happens, what is a beacon?”

“It's something stationary. Not in time but in the void of it. In space.”

“Can you be more precise?” Chansung was getting annoyed, maybe this was one of those moments he would have enjoyed sprinting from, just leaving and landing a couple of centuries away. Then again nothing is safe space if you're running from more experienced travelers.

“These stationary points are human presences. It's awareness disconnected from the shackles and made to float free. That's the unmoving points in the masses of crawling ants. Where everything else is teeming without purpose, those remain in their spot.”

“It sounds neat” Chansung nodded but still had no idea what it meant, “But can you stop with the gibberish and give me an actual, physical example?” He could always aim for the spots that held still, but without knowing what they were, it seemed more like a recipe for disaster than an anticipated remedy.

“Yes” Minjun prided himself with a smug impression, “I am a beacon.” “Taecyeon is starting to become stable enough as well.”

III.

Through the maze of black and dense, Chansung was a superior pilot, a master of the elements, one who moved regardless of such pity notions as physics, a god in the flesh! He crashed into a suddenly appearing tree for the second time that week.

Okay, perhaps he was still learning.

At least he was an avid student, itching to learn to the point that he'd lost track of Taecyeon and Minjun and everyone else he'd ever known. Granted, he could have counted them on the fingers of one hand, and it should have meant each one mattered all the more – but then and there in the marvel of exploration, he'd cut them free.

Not that he was solely alone and never met anyone, quite the opposite. He constantly ran into new people, from all the varying historical periods, gathering their shards of knowledge with the curiosity you can only maintain for short periods of a time. Just like Minjun had predicted, he got bored quickly. He landed in the wrong place – that tree in the middle of nowhere being a grand example and gifting him with a sharp headache thereto – or among the wrong people or just closed his eyes in the black and didn't even aim.

The freedom he'd been given just adding to his impatience.

When he shook his head, bark fell into his eyes and it hurt to blink. ing trees.

“Care to explain where the heck you've been?” an annoyed voice snarled and made Chansung the spot, a dull pain shooting from the tip of his nose and all the way to the bone.

“How do I even define the answer” he snapped back as he met with Taecyeon's inquisitive eyes, “I've been here and there and everywhere.” “And nowhere.” “Possibly somewhere too.”

“Don't get smart with me.” “I mean, why haven't you checked in with me. And not with Minjun either. You want us to put up wanted posters?”

“And where would you put them? In the black void?” Chansung grinned, he was starting to realize just how free of reference points he could be, regretting for a second that he'd stayed to nurse his headache but then rather happy to be reunited with someone more of an equal. Recently it had become increasingly clear that the people he ran into daily were just mere shadows of humans, so shattered by the lack of consistency that everything else began to unravel as well.

“I said not to get smart with me.”

“Well I didn't listen.”

Chansung smirked despite the tension it brought to his temples, forever a brat. “But honestly, it's nice to see you. And honestly part two, how would you even find someone you're looking for in this mess?”

“Yeah I know” Taecyeon sighed, “It's just luck.” “Minjun would have found you sooner but in the end it comes down to accidental flukes.” “Although the impact you had on that tree was visible through at least three dimensions.”

They caught up quickly, not because there was little to tell but because words to explain it at proper length weren't available. Done with chatter about weather – mostly dark, empty and chilled – and formalities, Chansung jumped right into the existential crisis he'd been harboring in the back of his mind just waiting for a stable point to unleash it at.

“So” he said, “I have tried to keep steady and follow my own pace, and I have tried jumping back and forth in no particular order, and I attempted to follow just one point and stick with that through the web.” “But it's all a blur no matter how I do.”

“Well what did you expect?”

“I don't know, I'm new at this.” “I just want to know what the point is?”

“Oh, the meaning of life?” Taecyeon pulled his facial features together, a taunting serenity falling over his gaze. “You think I could just tell you?”

“It would be freaking nice if you did.”

Taecyeon sighed at the kid and his ill-conceived expectations of life and friendship. “Damnit if I know” he replied, “Maybe you lack a destination?”

“Feels like I have way too many. Wherever I look there's something more interesting on the horizon, but when I get there..”

“Same problem.” “A thousand goals is just another way of saying you lack the one that stands out.”

True, Chansung had no idea what he was pursuing. At first, he'd chased the romantic idea of absolute control, of becoming so experienced that he could bend time and space along his own continuum. Gradually finding that it lacked a point per se, as he'd always had his own unbroken timeline even through the worst of disorder. The difference was just how much it meandered around other lines, the stable floaters that refused to jump, the travelers that erratically came and left like him, and the wanderers that still lacked a rudder. He was lonely.

“It seems I can't hold on to anyone I meet” Chansung admitted, his growing frustrations exploding at the moment of realization.

“Have you even tried?” “With the speed you're moving, how would it be possible for anyone to hang on.”

“It seems you came to give advice?” Chansung wiped his nose and it bled from the landing, but he didn't care. The taste of answers masked the one of iron. “So what is it?”

“There's just one thing I can tell you for sure.” “Slow down.”

IV.

Sometimes the most solid advice can lead to the worst of complications. Chansung had no idea he was headed for extreme trouble of course, in fact thinking he was mobile enough to move out of the way of any approaching disaster. He couldn't have been more wrong.

It's when you move the most erratically that you run the greatest risk of crashing into difficulties.

Chansung had slowed down considerably. Not completely cause he was still restless, thirsty for experience or just easily blasé, ever harder to impress. He spotted some beacons and didn't really bother to make friends, figuring that would just lead to him being stuck when all he wanted was to roam free. While in the black, he came to recognize a few stable floaters, mostly from afar but at least he memorized their ways. Grounded himself in things other than personal whims and his wicked powers.

Sometimes he had flashes of black when he streamed with time, spending a long while trying to figure out what that meant before realizing it was flashes of his own death. Of not being. That is also part of time even if it seemed possible to fend off for the time being.

'Now for finding someone to ride with' he told himself more than once as he ascended, always chickening out before he'd even taken aim. Oh but when you give trouble the chance, it will find you.

To Hwang Chansung, it presented itself in the form of a slender boy with messy hair, making it impossible to identify as anything but harmless. It didn't even hurt as they bumped into each other back to back, Chansung in the process of charging his energy to rise, the other coming back down from above.

“Excuse me.”

Chansung twitched, it was the first human voice he'd heard since.. well, since what felt like a long time. “No it's my fault” he humbled himself, if he wasn't rancorous towards trees, why would he be towards actual animate objects.

“It's probably the both of us” the vibrating traveler mused and eyed Chansung up and down, trying to pinpoint who he'd come across. “How's my bubble, does it look okay?”

“You must be new. You should know the only one who can assess your field is you yourself.”

For reasons he couldn't report neither then nor later on, Chansung took the slightly larger but absolutely freezing hands in his and guided them over the disheveled locks, judging by the relieved look on the face of the other, that everything was just fine.

The bubble of stable time had become a second skin for Chansung, not something he ever thought of to check or control. In the beginning, he'd often ran his fingers over the slick, iridescent coating that was clearly making all the difference but remained near invisible. If he kept his sanity in control, his journeys into the black brief and his impacts with trees to a minimum, Chansung had found there was nothing to worry about. Sometimes the shell would get too thick, effectively slowing everything down around him, and then he would concentrate on diluting it with the power of his will. At other times, it would grow too thin, causing a Gaussian blur that required he rested.

For a long time, he'd paid no attention to this and grown to take it for granted, suddenly made aware again at the unexpected meeting.

“Rough landing?” Chansung asked and backed away in sudden remembrance of his own sick days, thinking that the face under their combined palms seem rather pale and greenish. “I don't have much to compare with” came the answer. Despite the bluish, feeble tint of his lips, he spoke with a soft grace far from how Chansung had lost control of his stomach after his first trip.

“I'm Junho” he said and if Chansung had known all their coming history by then, he would have forgotten it quickly.

*

It turned out Junho had lost his guide, that much was obvious, and that he had a hard time making sense of just about anything under the sun (or above it for that matter). “For how long have you been stable?” Chansung asked but had just as soon realized it was a meaningless question in the absence of solid time references. “How stable are you?” he rephrased instead, finding that it was still redundant as the shaken expression on Junho's face said all that words couldn't.

“I was left like this right after fluctuations stopped” Junho pitied himself while Chansung was still trying to define the stir in his gut – so far he'd excluded nausea and hunger and didn't know which theory to try next – the both of them equally awkward when it came to actual human contact. Being flung over the years in silence will easily make you an introvert.

“Dude, you really are new” Chansung grinned and scrunched his nose, “Fluctuations haven't stopped. We're just exempt.”

“Everyone else is still moving?”

“Not everyone else but yes, pretty much.”

“This is so much worse than I expected” Junho pouted, his third or fourth moodswing in the short time Chansung had known him. “How do we even keep being human when everything is ed like this?”

“Still brooding on that one.”

“What's all the-” Junho pointed upwards with his features now scared and curious, never one and the same expression for very long. Chansung wasn't even sure why he paid so much damn attention to the shifting face, not like he would usually study such mundane things as lips and eyes. For some reason this one was different, perhaps it was the residual naivety, the painfully obvious terror, or maybe he was still watching for signs of suddenly erupting sickness. At any rate, he failed to answer the question on account of paying little to no attention to sound.

“- all the black?”

Junho finished his question almost inaudibly, clearly not sure if he wanted to hear the answer or not. And Chansung wasn't certain he wanted to give it, for reasons of what it might spark in the other, and how it would make him feel to take on that responsibility.

“It's the place to reset” he said and made himself ready to take flight, “Don't linger there. Look for what doesn't move. And slow down.”

That was all, what else could he say but repeat the advice he'd been given.

“Will we see each other again?” Junho asked and it wasn't just to be nice but another brief effort to make sense of the world, to investigate where the boundaries were set.

“If you learn how to get up there” Chansung angled his palms towards the sky and reached back, “We might.”

V.

“What does your bubble feel like?”

The question surprised Taecyeon, not because of its content but due to the questioner, a long-awaited Chansung with question marks in his eyes. That kid, he only showed up when he wanted answers or dinner, draining his host of both in no time at all.

“Why do you ask?” he countered and greeted his junior with a hug, a human warmth to the contact that nothing else in the world could provide. Even if it was brief, it was necessary. You can't live in emptiness, or alone, or always on the move, Taecyeon was beginning to get that.

“Does it feel glassy? Or gelatinous? Does it take a milky tone when it's cold?”

“I don't know” Taecyeon drawled, for the first time in forever running his hands over the casing around his head, it sparkled very discreetly but only at contact with his own skin. “I guess it feels warm to the touch, glossy, sometimes like there's a thin coating of oil that I can smudge.”

“Oh so it's not just me” Chansung sighed in relief, wiggling his way out of Taecyeon's hands, their fingers snagged together for seconds that felt too long. “It really does change with the weather?”

“Maybe. Or with the frame of mind of the bearer. Or just.. random swings.” Taecyeon smirked, he was way happier than justified to see the little brat, the growth of stable relations pretty much the only thing to measure time by. “What else is new?” he queried, “Would you like to eat? I have rice and fried beef.”

“You know the answer is yes.” “And nice house, are you settling now?” Chansung turned more serious as he stepped over the porch he'd landed on and ventured inside. “Taecyeon” he said, “Have you turned into something of a beacon while I was gone?”

“Working on it.” “What else is new?” Knowing Chansung had selective hearing, he repeated the question in suspicion the answer would be more interesting than normal. “I think..” Chansung admitted with a defeated sigh, “I think I met someone.”

Just as soon as he'd said it, he inhaled defensively and denied “No no no, I don't mean like that.” Taecyeon still chuckled, amused and silly at first and then like ha ha ha, even worse of a taunting maneuver.

“Well, how exactly do you mean it? Was she hot?”

“I mean just.. someone who seemed interesting.”

“What's her name?”

“He said his name was Junho.”

Taecyeon snickered even more, he didn't judge, he wasn't surprised, he just relished in the rare quality amusement.

“His name is Jun-ho” he said with dripping sensuality, parting the name to give it more impact. “What is Junho like? Is he still like me, or young and wild like you?”

“Nothing like you” Chansung scoffed, tapping his fingers at the kitchen table to make clear he really wanted his food, or nothing else would spill from his lips.

“Good” Taecyeon nodded and put two pots down in front of his guest – why bother with plates - “In all seriousness, good.”

*

When Chansung ate, he was quiet or mumbling at best, able to carry a conversation if he had to but rather not. With someone as close as Taecyeon, he didn't bother to give it any effort. Especially since, man, the rice was spicy and the beef was tender and the sauce enveloping it all was beyond heavenly. If anything, Chansung was one to appreciate good flavors when he found it.

That was one thing. Not the only thing about him that breathed dedicated passion. What he wanted, he wanted bad, and what he wanted bad, he pursued. Just that it took him unnecessarily long to decide at times.

“This is one opportunity you should not let slip you by” Taecyeon repeated for the fifth time over, not quite sure the message had been delivered. “You had fun vagabonding around I'm sure, but now you slow down.” “I told you already.”

“Well look at you, you slowed down so much you became stationary. Ew. I don't want to grow moss.”

“At least I'm growing something.”

“My stomach is growing.”

“It is not” Taecyeon leaned over the table to make sure, “That monstrosity is still freaking concave despite you eating triple portions.”

“I really should find him again, shouldn't I.”

“That isn't a question.”

“Is there a point to living in pairs that I'm not aware of” Chansung blushed at himself for even forming such an stupidly sounding sentence, “I mean.. thinking about time. Not just.. I'm.. we don't need to have the talk okay.”

“Don't make me choke on my own saliva” Taecyeon guffawed with his entire body, the shaking laughter just making Chansung redder, “You are what? Two years younger than me? I trust you don't need me to school you.”

“I really don't.. I will ask later. Maybe.” Chansung buried his face in his hand, rubbing the back of his nose with the flat of his palm in an instinctive effort to hide. “Goddamn I was just asking if it makes any difference in the black if you're two or not. Perfectly valid question!”

“You're asking the right things, I'll give you that.”

Taecyeon leaned over to push Chansung's hands away and look him in the eyes, making sure he was in fact present and not in his own world of fantasies or frivolity. Sure that they'd connected, Taecyeon continued with emphasis, “I just can't give you the answers yet.”

VI.

Having traveled in circles for tens of revolutions, Chansung was beyond frustrated over how hard it was to find the subject of his initially very casual manhunt. At first it had been of minor importance, a side-quest in the pursuit of general wisdom or happiness, or at least so Chansung told himself. The longer he kept going without even coming up with a plausible way of finding Junho again, the more significance it gained. Like a child that isn't allowed to play with exactly the toy he wants – Chansung was starting to get rebellious.

Angry. Frantic every now and again. He learned to surf the verge of the black, edging the zone in between while surveying everything that moved and some of what didn't. It turned him moody, thrown from peacefully waiting on the vast meadow that earth comprises, to scouring every dust freckle in the known universe (or trying to), to hammering his fists against his skull (well literally), resorting to a low growl of only consonants as yet another turn around his axis was deemed fruitless.

It was in that kind of fragmented imbalance that he came upon his first dual bubble, a conjoined couple that would set everything else in motion.

Already from afar, Chansung spotted something unusual about the movements to his peripheral left, not just one stationary spot but two residing in the same shell. It was two humans, floating together.

It was intriguing.

“Hello!” he shouted over the absolute silence, highly uncharacteristic of him to attract that kind of attention but curiosity is a willful motivation. “Hey, excuse me! Can I ask you something?”

Like synchronized swimmers, the two came closer, pointing at the ground below as a more convenient meeting point. Chansung followed them like birds in a flock, in formation, at a narrow distance, feeling like a kingfisher following two swallows.

Realizing a tad too late that he should have set aside a small portion of his attention to the landing as well.

“Ouch!” the darker stranger frowned, followed by “Are you good? Your nose seems.. broken.”

“It isn't..” It was. “It doesn't even hurt.” It did. “You caught my interest, I want to know who you are.” No lie there.

They were Nichkhun and Wooyoung, the latter with mocha brown hair and deep eyes, the leaner one almost blond and with a martial lightness to his gaze. Immediately after introduction, Chansung began interrogating them without breathing, “Why are you two?” he asked and tilted his head with his eyes with his entire focus, with an impatience that wasn't very productive. “Why do you travel together, does it work better? What have you seen, is this something I could do as well?” Despite not getting any answers, he kept going. “How did you get your bubbles to blend together?”

“Aren't you curious” Nichkhun mused, “Which question do you want answered first?”

Chansung noticed they moved together, stood together, even when they stepped apart there was this bond, barely noticeable but definitely present. “Are you in love or something?” he asked bluntly and with an involuntary sneer.

“Well aren't you rude” Wooyoung giggled, clearly not as much offended as taken aback by the total condor, “What's it to you?”

Chansung sighed and succumbed to the most solid piece of advice he'd ever gotten. 'Slow down' Taecyeon told him across whatever distance laid between them and he started over. “I'm just trying to make sense of the world” he said, his eyes flickering over the space between the two, wanting to distinguish the shade of the air and how it differed. “I have heard there is something changing when you connect? Is there another level you can go to?”

“It's much nicer to be , for one” Nichkhun grinned and Wooyoung pushed him in the shoulder. Even as they split further apart, there was a strand of something stretching out, a clear visual marker of kinship that Chansung never saw before. The second passed and he burst into a bubbly snicker, a laugh much younger than his actual age, or his fictional one – anyway, it was unexpectedly childish. “Who said anything about ?” he snorted, a tug in his stomach, one thing leading to another.

“You should answer serious when he asks serious” Wooyoung reprimanded his fairer companion, still with glee in his eyes but that didn't mean he took everything lightly. “We don't even know him” Nichkhun replied under his breath, hesitation brewing amongst his predilections for playfulness. “It's unlikely we ever will unless you're honest.” “Or if you start talking about us .”

“I beg to differ. Didn't you see his interest sparked?”

“Maybe I don't want him taking too much interest in you.”

They bickered like Chansung hadn't been there, back and forth until Nichkhun flexed his bulging bicep and glared at the dumbfounded observer, his eyes widening not just because it was a damn fine arm but because the tension and lack of tension between the duo was something he instantly knew he'd always wanted. What was even more, he had a suspicious sense that there was another layer, a function of reality that was majorly different for them as compared to himself.

“Just freaking answer” he pleaded, well it was an urgent matter not because time was running out – it never would, or so he thought – but because he didn't want to spend eternity unenlightened and alone.

“We have a greater field, okay” Wooyoung tried being pedagogic but it wasn't his forte and he came off as less of a scholar and more of a quack. “We float more securely, we surf on time.” He made a wavy gesture with his hand and it was super lame.

“But alas, we are stuck with one another” Nichkhun broke in and it was one part dead serious, one part the same old bickering.

Either way – to Chansung, it sounded wonderful.

VII.

A medium-sized bug had nestled itself into Chansung's long, black hair. If not for the fact one of the legs had tickled a particularly sensitive spot of his scalp, he might have jumped with it several times, heck who knew for how long it had lived there. As Chansung scratched at the little nuisance, it only sped up and entangled with the strands, running up and down hairs and between them.

'Damn your perseverance' he cursed in silence, his fingertips gentle but thorough as he wanted to catch the vermin alive. It was slippery and nimble, and had a lot of hair to hide in. Easily tripping from the root to the tips and down Chansung's spine, where his black met milky skin. Finally he caught the beetle as it ventured a bit too close to his temple where the locks were not as thick.

It was a tiny mint leaf beetle, a multichromatic green creature that had no natural place in the outskirts of the atmosphere, just where the black begun and faded into complete charcoal. Chansung let it crawl over his fingertip, pondering to flick it into helpless weightlessness but too mesmerized by the shifting colors to actually do it.

“Little guy, what should I do with you?” he queried, sweeping his hand back and forth to watch the membrane wings buzz and then retract again. Seconds were nothing to rely on, but his heart beat one thump after another and that was something to tell the time by. Perhaps the only reliable source left. The beetle crept and rested, swiftly running out of control as Chansung angled his hands and tried to keep it tame.

Just like him. Much like he spun his own thread between decades and places, weaving with other fates and lifelines, a long while back having lost track of anything else but his own current footing.

Nevertheless, time passed. It was nothing to count on, but it didn't stand still. The Chrysolina raced erratically to its own pace and time didn't stand still. From above, Chansung saw it so clearly and yet in complete blur, finding the concept of time altogether impossible to grasp or even approximate.

Time is its own dimension. If it could be controlled, what about the other three? Chansung thought perhaps that wasn't the right number of axes but that was beside the point. The open question wasn't how many dimensions were needed to describe the universe, but whether they could be controlled or not. Escaped even. Like always when he brooded, Chansung spaced out and forgot about the task at hand, currently being his winged friend and it's journey along his body.

When something tickled the thin line of hairs on his stomach, he snapped back into the dimension of his own present time, flinching at the sensation of miniature feet treading his skin. “That's a private area!” he scolded the unknowing insect, damn why was he even conversing a species so far from mammalian.

“Just fly” he said with sudden irritation, made aware of how unplanned his own life had become, “Spread your wings here and let's never meet again.”

His intentions came to nought as he flipped the beetle into hollow space, watched it float for a few moments, and then became completely still. Frozen for a short while before it twitched every so gently and fell back the way it had come from.

Without a sound or seeming effort, landing right back on Chansung's elbow.

VIII.

No matter how far Chansung went and how soon he got there, he felt the target of his search was always an antipodal point on the other side of the earth, whether on the actual surface or levitating above. It's a myth that antipoles always attract no matter what, most oftenly the completing parts are forever kept apart. That's the case for night and day, for minus and plus, and for some people that really need each other.

The vastness of the globe in all four spatial dimensions was becoming painfully clear.

“Why didn't I fit him with a GPS tracker” Chansung mumbled to himself and the beetle still clinging on to his hair, “I find the most interesting thing in the known reality, and I misplace it? Has there ever existed a bigger fool than me.”

The bug wouldn't say. Probably it was just waiting to be reinstated in its natural habitat. When Chansung finally acknowledged his need for sleep, landed in a sun-warm park in the midst of a city and sat down to close his eyes – it hopped off and climbed over a rock. Zap zap, timelines diverging.

Little did either of them know that Junho was strolling right by, looking for any little kiosk that would sell him a cherry lollipop, his blood sugar threatening to cut off all access to his brain if it wasn't raised within minutes. Plus there was something y about candy on a stick that made Junho feel just a little more secure, like less of a failure for still maundering planlessly. He couldn't remember half of the scarce advice he'd been given and still seemed to forget more as he went along.

At least the bonbon was good.

When Chansung woke from his brief nap, Junho had already left the time and place, hovering somewhere above in a manner that was totally unnatural for a human and yet had become everyday practice. Starting from the same point of origin, it just so and finally happened that when Chansung took flight, he ended up not far from who he'd been searching for so long, that he almost missed the platinum blonde and his stretched-out tongue.

Is it really? Can it be him?

'Junho' he exhaled and his breath spun in the front of his mouth, gyrating his tongue to the point of pain. Only then did he realized he hadn't actually spoken, but just willed for the other to notice him. It wasn't so easy to call out, when everything seemed to depend on how he said it, cut the name, turned the letters, made it feel and echo.

How could he not have noticed before? The way Junho's almost white, short hair created an illuminated halo around his face in the backlight of an unknown source of glowing rays. How young and naive he appeared with the lollipop stick in the corner of his mouth, his eyes half-lidded and searching for things he couldn't name or define. The air around him oozing of things that Chansung weren't. That he had never tried to be or hoped to become, which was a strange thing to be attracted to – because how could he even pinpoint them? Let alone have a reason to want them so bad. “Junho!” he called and this time it came out with sound.

“Yes?” the blonde asked and he floated closer, the physics behind it poorly defined, “Do I know you?”

No, he hadn't forgotten the boyish face with the hardrock, flowing hair, but he had a thing for playing hard to get. Make people work for his attention.

“Chansung?” the darker presented himself with a tone that said, you should know.

The distance between them narrowed. Balancing between the feeling of being strangers and of knowing each other well, they both fell under the same spell. It's an utterly human quality to suddenly crush on another, more rare that it is reciprocal from the get-go. And then there are those moments that we barely get once in a lifetime, even if that line is twisted and looped to span over all that ever existed.

As they approached each other, everything around them melted away and left them utterly alone, both looking up and holding each other's eyes, everything below and above gone – just two people in a universe of space and stars.

The complete lack of color and movement had never been as obvious, or as meaningless. From out of nowhere sprung the urge not to blink, to keep staring into the black orbs right across, to stay in the feeling of how alive that spot of absent color was. Stars went from tiny white specks to glowing string lights of an outdoor party, making the backdrop glow under circumstances where it didn't really matter.

“Oh, Chansung” Junho said at last, surprised over how much more confused over seconds he could still become despite it all. “Oh, Junho” Chansung mirrored, paying no attention to whether it sounded silly or overly dramatic or totally gay.

“Did you want something?” Junho questioned, eyes straying to Chansung's plump upper lip, just for a split moment, to see what it looked like, not that he cared, what would it matter, he had no plans of touching those lips, there was no reason he should even look there, all his senses were stuck in limbo. Did you want something? No, not something. Everything. ing everything.

“Yes, I was..” Chansung stuttered, unsure what he wanted, exactly what he had looked for. The plan had been clear up to this point – find him, through all the stages of time, find him! - but then it was blank. Perhaps he never really expected to get past step one. “You were..?” Junho naturally asked, you can't just space out in the middle of conversation without being noticed.

“I was just looking for you.” Without coordinating his eyes with his hands, Chansung slipped his fingers across the volatile air, dancing the distance and slipping gingerly towards Junho's elbow, finding a place there and a trail to follow, until suddenly he got stuck on the lingering lollipop, forgotten between Junho's fingers and almost slipping away before Chansung so gracelessly glued himself to it. He shook his hand but the stiff sugar didn't detach. “Eeeh.. sorry, let me get that.”

Junho's fingertips brushed against Chansung's wrist, it was nothing, barely a spark, it felt like atoms rearranged. Actually, it was just the sticky cherry torn from skin and brought between Junho's lips to savor the flavor and save it from being wasted, lips expertly wrapping around the red sphere to it dry. Chansung knew cause he was watching, studying the blend of mix and red, of artificial maraschino bleeding over delicate flesh, staining it, a hint of tongue, a sight for gods, something to see, a mesmerizing display, Chansung wasn't sure why his vision had become so tunneled.

“You were looking for me?”

“I think so.”

“Why? Did you leave something of yours with me?”

“I don't know.” It was a dumb answer but it was true. Junho's tongue was red, they were both in dizzy cloud of having stayed in the air for too long, Chansung's eyes found no rest. “This is no place for talking” Junho said, “Let's land” Chansung replied, “Just go right down.”

Too focused on each other, they didn't exactly aim. They fell. They tumbled. They kissed. The ground approached.

IX.

Junho woke up with what felt like a fever, an acquired weakness and fire around his forehead. For once, time had felt like before the rupture, not because it had slowed down or sped up but because he'd been in a state of mind where the tick of seconds never mattered anyway. Just the resonating ring of racing corpuscles, of being a warm body and not much else. He wiggled his toes to slowly re-surface, finding that his sole rested against Chansung's calf and cool cotton.

So, they were in a simple bed, had they crashed through the ceiling? Junho had no idea how these things worked.

“Chansung?” he whispered, giving it his best effort to orientate himself, sunlight banging through the windows, clashing against skin like the particles had been physical. Through his travels, Junho hadn't stabilized like he was supposed to, but rather gained perplexity and pain, making less and less sense of his place in the world.

Except in that moment. Lying face down on a mattress he didn't own but felt belonged to him. With no idea of how he got there – the back of his conscious reminded him that this is the sign of dreaming, but he ignored it – but with every intention of staying for as long as possible. Chansung didn't wake up, still an irregular but slow breath flowing from his lips against Junho's shoulder.

“Chansung!” Junho yelled loud as he lost control of his vocal cords, waking the other up with a start and a facial expression of what the , did you light something on fire?

“Why are you up!” Chansung howled back, the words cracking as barely half his fibers had woken up yet.

“I don't know!”

“Well go back to sleep!”

“But I want to go home!”

Chansung had no answer for that. What was even home anymore? He had his abandoned houses, his outdoors overnight beds, he visited Taecyeon and Minjun, but he had no home. None of the floaters did, even the beacons keeping more than one stable point. “Home?” he said unsure, “And where is that?”

“Oh it's just.. right around..” Junho's face contorted with discomfort, that sneaky feeling of something being wrong, attacking him from the front, going for his throat where his heart had just nested. “I don't know” he admitted with defeated valor, “Where is yours?”

“We don't have homes” Chansung said hesitant, not long ago he'd showed this boy part of the beauty of the world, and now he would have to unveil the suffering of it as well. “Don't you have anyone to teach you these things?”

“Still no one.” It hung in the air between them that Junho should let his shivering lips ask if Chansung could be that one, and that Chansung should say he'd try – but one didn't dare to inquire and the other had not enough guts to take on the responsibility. They just both sat up in bed, looking at each other until it became too tense and the connection was broken. Fingers fumbled to braid, taking back the closeness or at least faking it as much as possible.

“I'll take you to Taecyeon” Chansung said when palms connected and he was rushed with a surge of empathy, wanting to help and claim, to make Junho a part of his world in every way. “Maybe he knows someone who can be assigned to you. Perhaps he has advice.”

*

Leaving the shared space wasn't easy, no smooth way of slipping apart once having started to map out the pattern of blue veins and velvet borders between skin and hair and surroundings. Stalled by the common lusting for a pace other than the clock, ignorance prevailed while days rushed by. Not days in consecutive order, just the change from light to dark, the two unfazed by being thrown over vast spaces.

Until Chansung noticed the tremble around Junho's radiant glow, how not just his hair vibrated with the motions, but the air as well, molecules bursting and making a faint popping sound as they broke. “Junho” he said and his hands were firm and harsh around the smaller shoulders, “We should leave. You are falling apart.”

“I'm not falling apart” Junho protested, “I'm fine right here.” He was hiding, but it felt good.

“Your bubble isn't how it should be.”

It really wasn't, even Chansung could see that. While he'd never be able to trace his fingers over the metaphysical contraption, he could see the ripples, the aftershocks of trouble, spreading from Junho's head and affecting the entire room.

“I'm sick aren't I.” He was terrified, well aware of the crackle in his skull, the tinnitus-like sough that permeated every blank space of silence. “Do you know what's wrong with me?”

“There's something unstable about you” Chansung soothed them both with an attempted vanilla sweetness, just that dark flakes broke through his manners. “I can't tell what it is.”

“Maybe my field wasn't passed right?”

“I'm no expert. Could be that your training wasn't enough.”

“It's okay” Junho sighed, “I'm used to being flawed.”

Nothing could have been further from the truth. He was angelic, the spun locks framing his face an absolute sheer shade of blinding light, his eyes narrowing when he felt joy, lips full and prone to pursing under stress. Furthermore, he was gentle, loving in his movements, hard to approach at first but eternally loyal once devoted. Not that he would follow someone he just met to the end of the world – though Chansung hoped he could be dragged along – but he was someone who'd wait for your return, someone worth the trouble

“It's not you” Chansung summed up all his explosive emotions, a protective pang in his gut as he saw the overcome expression ading Junho's body limb by limb, “Just the stability of your bubble and we'll fix that. We'll make it right. I made it and I'm utterly hopeless, trust me.”

“In what universe are you hopeless” Junho mumbled, finding his clothes and his shards of courage, “You're goddamn perfect like a marble, Roman god.”

“Lies” Chansung chuckled and reached over to push Junho in his chest, making him fall slowly backwards over the wooden floor, tripping from a standing position and losing his footing, continuously stumbling further and further. He kept falling beyond what was reasonable, possible, what could have happened in the normal. There was a louder bang like a whip had been cracked, Junho's face and unprotected against the ruthlessness of the elements.

“Don't go” Chansung gasped, “Don't go!”

But they weren't really going anywhere, time just wasn't moving with them any longer.

X.

There was no point of origin and no track to follow, Chansung was just left alone as he stood, Junho having fallen through the cracks and vanished. They were separated by an unknown and varying distance, everything pointing towards the destruction of Junho's bubble and his free-fall through time, the worst form of being lost that could ever be though of.

'The GPS tracker' Chansung cried to himself while scurrying to stitch up a plan, 'Should have planted one.' But what good is a device like that to forces stronger than nature, no matter how closely he could have followed the boy, it would still have been almost impossible to jump along. To take the hairpin turns and withstand the pressure. 'No, I couldn't' he despaired, 'I'm alone again.' 'Forever.' “Forever!” he said loud and nothing had ever been scarier.

A meeting point. What would be a logical one? If time moves in circles, should he go back to where they had already seen each other? No, he couldn't risk crossing his own thread, maybe it would snap or get tangled. How would Junho fall? There was no way of telling.

In desperate need of guidance, Chansung know he needed Taecyeon, to lean on and learn from or at least to have a chest to bawl his eyes out against. There had to be a solution, something he hadn't discovered yet, because if there was nothing.. his heart raced, it was too much.

Barely dressed, he stood on tiptoes, reached up and took to the skies. Why waste any time.

*

The black was no longer as monolithic and impermeable, though still with the same saturated darkness. At first, Chansung couldn't figure out what had changed, just a shift in the caress against his skin, a vague smell of cold.

And then it started to snow. The void of nothing filled with flakes of white, far above the stratospheric zone where clouds can form. Yes, it was flakes and forms of white, but they weren't crystals or formed by vapor. Chansung tried to catch one on his tongue but his skin repelled them, every approaching star taking a detour around his head, his bubble, his curious thirst.

It was a downpour, but not of snow. Shards of anti-time, the white contrast of black, fell towards Chansung's head and it made absolutely no sense at all. Instincts said it was something to remember, to ask about, a beautiful form of absolution that he'd come to desire.

*

“Taecyeonnie!” “Are you here?!”

A small, golden puppy came running with its tail wagging, prancing happily almost all the way to Chansung's feet before yapping twice and yawning as widely as his jaws allowed.

“Cheot-nun!” Taecyeon called as he came rushing, the dog turning around happier than ever, completely unaware of the heartbreak right in front of him.

“First snow?” “You named him first snow?”

“Oh yes I did, yes I did, oh I did little Nunnie” Taecyeon played with the pup that had promptly laid on his back to be cute and innocuous. “Why, does it mean anything?” his owner asked as he looked up, the look on Chansung's face enough to answer the question and say a thousand things more that Taecyeon already knew.

“I lost Junho” Chansung blurted out, all his energy draining off as his mind caved in and his body collapsed into a pile of useless muscles, “And it snowed.”

You are supposed to meet under the first snow, not be separated by it. They were meant to pass the downpour together and arrive hand in hand to scratch the furry belly. Not end up in different corners of existence and have no way of communicating. Chansung cried, violently and with the fervor of passion having soaked through mind and matter.

“It didn't snow” Taecyeon said calmly, his embrace enshrouding the poor er on his doorstep and the puppy whining between them, “And you didn't lose Junho.”

The dog jumped against them, no regard for the gravity of the matter, it climbed over Taecyeon's knee and put it's paws everywhere, any patch of bare skin and without warning biting his master's earlobe. “Ouch” Taecyeon yelped and cautiously pushed the tiny paws away.

“I did lose Junho” Chansung whimpered and sunk even lower, the dog his arms and hands where tears have left salty stains, “He lost his stability and disappeared in the oceans of time. Do you know how much space that is to browse?”

“Me if anyone.”

“So do you know how to get him back?” Chansung sniveled, wiped his nose with the side of his carpus.

“Me if anyone..” “Actually, we better ask Minjun.”

*

“Did your hair get blacker?” was the first thing Minjun said as he appeared on cue, frozen before Chansung's sad appearance, closely studying the messy locks. “I certainly don't think so” Chansung answered, eying a strand caught between his fingers. “I'm sure” Minjun countered and it was clear it carried some meaning to him, something that made him wrinkle his brows and part his lips with worry.

“So we have trouble on our hands” he simply stated and met with Taecyeon's gaze to confirm. “Let's get to it.”

“There's someone I need to find” Chansung pleaded, “He's not a stable floater. He comes and goes. Bring him to me.”

“I can't” Minjun lamented, “Not yet.”

It was clear he didn't want to say more before he'd found the weighted words or waited for what Chansung would ask, unstable ground between them for good reasons that Chansung had a hard time mapping out.

“But what am I waiting for” he complained, still sobbing, “Will I even ever find his trail?”

“Where there is black, there must be white” Minjun said and Taecyeon nodded, what the kind of reality were they on to, Chansung thought, what was the dimensions he'd missed – “If you want to ever leave this chaotic realm, you must be two.”

Something clicked in Chansung's mind. “A couple” he noted, like Nichkhun and Wooyoung, a dual shell, so there was a function beside the carnal privileges.

Where there is Chansung, there must be Junho, he thought, and then began his frantic search.

XI.

“What are you doing here?” Nichkhun squalled, the tone of his voice clearly indicating that you shouldn't have come.

“I'm looking for the blonde!” “White hair, charming face, easily offended?” Chansung wanted to add splendid as well but bit his tongue.

“Well, did you get lost?” Nichkhun asked and his concern seemed to only increase, “This is way beyond where you should be as a new and alone floater.” Yes, Nichkhun was not on his own, like always Wooyoung seemed attached by the neck, just half a step behind although his attention was clouded by earphones and a monotonic beat.

“I figured the only way to find someone who is lost, is to get lost yourself?”

“Bad plan. This is the outskirts of where time can even be controlled, you really shouldn't linger here.”

“So why are you here?”

Nichkhun smirked, throwing a glance at Wooyoung who had acknowledged the company with a nod but was still emerged in the melody drumming from his ipod. “Privacy” the Thai answered, “No one rarely comes here, so we go.”

“Okay, great and all” Chansung frowned, tears still lining the inside of his eyes, “But I really, really need help with tracking him down. He lost his stability.”

“Oh.” If Nichkhun had been troubled before, it was nothing compared to the gloomy glow of his eyes as he grasped the full gravity of Chansung's quandary, nudging Wooyoung to redirect his focus and draw from his opinion as well. “We were gonna be alone” Wooyoung hissed as he freed one of his ears, “And now he comes to join?”

“Be nice” Nichkhun clenched his teeth and bumped his fist into Wooyoung's shoulder, “He has a real problem and why shouldn't we help when he came all this way.”

“The problem is he came all this way” Wooyoung pouted but softened quickly when Chansung came closer, his upper lip trembling, eyes swollen, all his face showing what a dark place he was at. “How did you end up here?”

“I drifted. Where is Junho? Do you know?”

“Who is Junho?”

“The blonde. I'm looking for him.” “To get this..” Chansung swept his hand across the air, from Nichkhun's shoulders to Wooyoung's head, “.. this double bubble thing.”

“Are you sure about that?” “Do you even know what it's good for?” Nichkhun tilted his head and kept his voice down, like the matter was so delicate it had to be treated with care and silk gloves. “No” Chansung admitted and leaned in towards the circle of trust, the three of them forming a ring in the middle of fleeting space, a union of trust about to get to the core of it all. “I just want to be with him. And I heard that if I found him, maybe we could be freed from time. Let out of this cage.”

Looking right into Nichkhun's eyes, Chansung soon realized that he was on to something.

“Is this true?” he wanted to know, “Is there something else other than stabilizing?” “I thought we were supposed to be stuck with the ing randomness of it all.” He was angry, and no wonder.

“There is another level.” Nichkhun and Wooyoung came even nearer and huddled up with their arms around Chansung's, the both of them speaking at each other from then on. “There are ways of transcending.” “If you grow your field slowly.” “If you combine forces.” “If you're brave enough.” “If you're strong enough.” “If you really want to.”

They paused and spoke together.

“If you're two.”

Chansung digested the information – it went quickly since he'd already known on some level – and then he interrupted himself with how many unending questions he had. “Does this work with anyone who has a shell?” he asked, “Or are just some bubbles prone to melting?” “Where do you go when you leave the black?” “How does this help me locate Junho?” He fell silent as the question hurt. “And. Can you two leave?”

“Of course” Wooyoung beamed like he was proud of himself, “It would be easy.”

“And why don't you?”

It was silent. Nichkhun looked flustered. How to explain?

“We don't want to” he replied and it made absolutely no sense to Chansung. If given the chance, he would have jumped the wagon in a heartbeat, never afraid of change or the unknown but rather tired of the cluttered jumble of years and days. “You don't want to?!” It was hard to believe for someone who could only hope for that kind of liberty. “Why?”

“I don't want to go there, outside of time” Wooyoung spoke up, his voice shrill as he hit a patch of panic, “Are you crazy? It's scary!”

“It's peaceful.”

“We don't think there's any way back.”

“Well, good.”

“It's dangerous.”

“What else is new.”

The bickering came to a halt, Chansung staring Wooyoung down and the other way around, both realizing that they had met a match that couldn't be persuaded. Their stances were opposite and deemed to diverge.

“Okay” Wooyoung surrendered, “When you find him, connect to him and don't let go.”

Chansung nodded, he was ready. Even if it would take half of forever to complete the search. Nichkhun looked worried but he sided with Wooyoung in encouraging the wild ambition.

“You have a long way to go” he said with care and concern, “What are you still doing here?”

XII.

Running against the clock was turning out to be hard work. Chansung jumped as much as he could, trying to cover all the extensive human ground and failing miserably. Even if he no longer suffered from his rookie hangovers, he wasn't made for the black, the emptiness, the incomprehensible infinity of lacking a permanent spot to stand. No human was.

At the speed he traveled, not even beetles could cling on or have survived. He went from the middle ages to the distant future, to the bleak 90's, reached back to dinosaurs and the creation of man, he rose into space again and again and there was nothing of what he wanted anywhere along the scale.

Junho was there. He knew it. Sometimes he caught a whiff of that warm hair, indicating he was closer than usual. At other times, he felt so far apart that his heart split into its halves, aching in both sides of his ribcage.

Regardless, he kept going without rest.

Little by little, more and more of his inside turned a charcoal black, for lack of other things as he never rested and barely saw anything but the complete lack of earthly activity. Sometimes when he spiraled downwards, he saw flashes of life, his own or previous persona he'd lived as. He'd once been a normal boy too, keeping appointments and being late, coming back home to his mom making pancakes. All that seemed so very far away.

He floated. He fell. He fainted. It was all black.

*

Junho felt like he was trapped in a tumble dryer on high heat and with a violent spin. At first he couldn't orientate himself in any direction or dimension, not even sure if his eyes were open or not. Everything felt jumbled, from the way his body aligned with itself, to the scattered thoughts of his fragile mind and the moving fragments of his memories. Disorder had taken charge.

Finally he came to a rest, his left ankle twisted and his stomach doing somersaults, the motion sickness seeping into every pore until he heaved. There was a moment's rest, just long enough for him to realize he'd been thrown from the steady pace of time.

Flustered and at a loss for answers, Junho tried picking up his phone to check what time it was, fully aware that where he'd gone, clocks would misbehave but still.. he needed to see for himself.

Indeed. Clocks had crashed. Even as Junho stood firm against the ground, the numbers flickered, indicating it was midnight when in fact the sun was up. He called the speaking clock and got no further, as the robotic voice kept changing its mind, in constant disagreement with what the display claimed. He was bewildered, broken, alone.

“What do I do, what do I do” he repeated to himself like a mental patient, fingers fidgeting, heart racing, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, anxiety a big, sticky cloud in his chest.

What was there to do. Something flipped inside and around him, and off he went. Back and forth. Up and down. Without any more control than a stone sinking into the ocean, or a leaf blowing from a tree towards the ground.

For a while, he kept going. Tumbling. Spoke to no one, even when he was allotted a longer window between jumps. Giving up on it all, he closed his eyes and spread his arms, accepting his ill-fated destiny, embracing it even. Until -
“Hey! How can you live like this!” “Don't you have any sense of dignity!” The voice was sharp and taunting, close by but carrying an unfamiliar Doppler effect of varying pitch.

“No” Junho wailed, not even opening his eyes although he felt the human presence, “For now, this is all I can do.”

“Choices are not something that snows on us” the voice objected, “You gather your strength and you reach. Don't give up, keep grinding.”

Keep grinding? What was Junho, a peppercorn? He didn't say anything more.

“I'm Jaebeom” he was told, words breathed into his ear, “And you're lost.” “Let's change the latter and keep the former.”

“I'm Junho” the dizzy one cawed, one eye squinting and the blurry lines enough to make out a face, “And yes I am lost.” “Are you a floater?” He opened his other eye too, trying to make focal points converge and form the necessary pattern, “Can you share your bubble?” He was zapped again. Sighing at how he'd lost the hope of this answer too.

“No” came the same voice, “I'm not.”

They were at a different spot and space, but still joined together. As far as Junho knew, that wasn't supposed to happen, even stable floaters had to hold on to each other not to get lost in the rough winds.

“How are you still here” Junho croaked, fully awake although every inch of his body ached, “Are you some time rebel?”

“It seems I am” Jaebeom sneered and snapped his fingers in front of Junho's face to make a sassy point. “And if I can, who says you wouldn't be able too?”

XIII.

Chansung was bleeding from a laceration in his scalp, banged against the invisible walls and the most real rocks as he found no rest for his weary flesh. His body was coming apart, at first just a mere vibration shaking his chest and then stronger oscillations tearing at his layers. In the moments he was aware, he felt like puff pastry drying up, flaking from the inside towards his paper skin. What little control he had left, he focused on not breathing in the blood trickling from his forehead, turning over so it would drip towards the ground.

Only that there was no ground and no downwards, no gravitation. No nothing except the black and the free fall, the last shreds of holding together quickly fading into the background.

And then he let go.

*

Junho was trying, he really was. Once as a child he'd learned how to breathe steady and chase hiccups away, holding the spastic contractions at bay by taming his lungs and making them thick and stiff and immune to diaphragm twitches. The idea of combating the forces of time was basically the same, just hold your breath and keep steady and hope you don't smash into a brick wall.

It hurt. Stung his alveoli like a sandstorm had gone through his nose.

But it wasn't just for him, and it wasn't just for Chansung. It was for what they could achieve together if he found a way.

He strained a bit harder and the Mandelbrot fractals thinned out. At least he stopped rotating around his own axis, straightening out and toughening up. Reaching for a thread and a string and a rope, a hawser by which he reeled himself back into the center of space. A hollow point from which to start.

*

Having let go of everything including his swimming hope, Chansung fell like a rag and didn't even register the wall of soft and pliant human he'd crashed into. “Uuuuh hhhhnng” he groaned like in his days, just a faint sound to show he was still alive and not much meant as communication. “Chansung!” a trembling voice yelped in front of him and everything changed. His uuuuuh went to “Uh!” to “Uuuunho” and after a few gags and coughs it came out like it sung in his mind.

“Jun-ho!”

Yes, they had raced and fled with absolutely no chance of ever converging again, for how vast are the seas of seconds if you include all that ever has been. Yet, here they were, having clashed together in an average asphalt street in an average city block in a not-big, not-small city somewhere around the millennium shift. Startled. In disbelief. Shaking their heads to get rid of the travel dust and the drought.

Together.

“Are you really here?” Chansung blinked and it ached to move even the tiniest eyelash, “I thought you'd forgotten about me.”

“You're lucky you ran into someone who will be loyal for a hundred years.”

“Hasn't a hundred years passed by already?”

“You miss my point.”

They breathed. Talking was strenuous, not just because there was more salt and dust than saliva in their throats, but because human interaction had been scarce and far-between for what felt like decades.

“What is the point?” Chansung was still dizzy, his red fingertips scraping against the harsh tarmac, fumbling over pebbles as he wanted, wanted, to reach something that was Junho. Finding a hem of his shirt and then crawling closer.

“The point is not how much time passed” Junho said and finally felt like fully catching his breath, “The point is I spent all of it looking for you.” It hurt to move but they hugged, still seated on the side of the dry road, things and sights flashing by but none of it important. As Chansung drew his fingers through Junho's hair, he knocked against his bubble and felt it was still strong despite his fears. Perhaps it was the head inside it that had been the problem.

“Isn't the main sentiment that you actually found me?” Chansung croaked, he wept, exhausted tears falling like velvet ice on Junho's neck.

“Not sure who found who.”

“Don't think I care.” “Can we lie here for two months and just.. brood?”

“Do you mean breed?”

Chansung had to laugh and although it made him choke and gasp, it was good, it was a rare sparkle of happiness in times of constant dusk. “I did not mean breed” he chuckled and pecked Junho's cheek, nuzzling his neck, drinking the scent of his dirty skin, “But now I can't think of anything else.”

In the midst of odorless space, the last thing on Chansung's mind had been to notice how bland it was, void of anything but his own traces of sweat and shattered lust. Here, in the arms of a warm human, he quickly became submerged in the scent of Junho's hair, the stupid hot vibe from his carotid artery, every half-inch of his shoulders as the shirt slipped to the side. “You smell good” he said and Junho giggled at the tickle against his flesh and his feelings.

“I do not” he objected, “I smell like space crap and asteroids and some creek I fell into yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Wait here now. “Do you even know what yesterday was?”

The divisions of time no longer there, how could one tell days apart, or sort them even.

“I don't know” Junho drawled, “It just began making sense again.” He Chansung's cheek, tasting tears and dust and soot from ink-stained places a human should never visit. Despite all that, what he primarily caught on his tongue was Chansung's own warmth, a high pulse surging against him.

“Nothing makes sense to me” Chansung sighed and leaned against the wet touch, “Never leave me again.”

Their fingers were braided, their hearts close. Their noses flat and pressed to one another, a shared space and pocket of air.

Like a new cell splits apart, so did the bubble around Chansung's head wrap around them both.

XIV.

“I am so tired” Junho howled as Chansung rolled off him, sweat seeping from one set of pores and into another, tongues heavy with salt and seconds stuck together like honeycomb hexagons.

“No wonder” Chansung panted and swept his hand generally over their bodies with a significant, languid motion, “Me too.”

“No” Junho snorted as he caught the sound of what he'd said, “I didn't mean this lactic acid in my abs, I meant in general. My mind. My heart. I'm not even sure how much time has passed or how old I am.”

Chansung couldn't be either, and it wasn't just the breath stuck in his throat making his chest feel tight and his lungs constricted, the air inside him starting to contract claustrophobia, something he could take control over but had to fight against. “All that time I looked for you made me exhausted as well” he admitted, a harsh kind of muscle fever still lingering and not quite going away despite how much he laid down.

Some forces are too great to fight against. Time had twisted them both and it felt painfully permanent.

“What are we going to do?” Junho asked, he was quieter now, asking carefully like you do when approaching a topic that burns your feet, makes your heart rate race, something that's not quite comfortable. “I heard there are pockets of space where no one really goes, should we settle down there?”

“No. Those aren't places to live.” “Not good ones.”

“I'm starting to think there aren't any good places to live.” Junho pouted, he had always easily lost hope and the only reason he now regained it so quickly was the soft skin on the insides of Chansung's forearms. His fingers traced a bulging vein that slowly retracted, back and forth in a trance of warm prints. “Are there?” he asked after nondescript silence, undetermined in space and weight.

“It tickles” Chansung giggled and his chest shook joyfully for once, letting it pass before he suggested softly, “Didn't you hear? There might be a way.”

“I don't want to die” Junho whispered, as far as he knew that was the only exit - “It's not that bad.”

“It's bad enough not to be good enough for you.”

Chansung felt anger rising, not for his own damn flesh and how battered it was, but for the delicate limbs, the white, satin skin, for what Junho was and how he didn't belong in the dark grit and endless dirt. “But I would never suggest death, it's a coward's way out.” “If it's even possible.” Who was to say they wouldn't warp back into time and life, forever unable to control their own destiny.

“Let's be brave instead” he said and tried to convince himself more than Junho, not yet having realized they had become much more equals than he'd counted with. “If we grow our fields, we can escape.”

“Into where?”

“Out of time” Chansung said, he hesitated, it was an abstract notion, “Wherever that leads into.”

“Are you sure about this?”

Chansung tried to smile and be plucky, reaching for assertiveness but just managing a cough and an ice cold shiver down his midline. No, he wasn't sure. No, he'd never been more afraid of anything. “Yes” he mewled and paused, “No. It sounds completely ing insane, doesn't it.” “Maybe we will just spin in eternal circles, or fall head first for millenniums.” Junho drew his breath but had little energy left to run without a plan.

“So let's try.”

*

“I've been thinking, what do you think will happen to us?” Junho asked, they had stayed in one and the same spot for very long , gaining a bit of strength and a lot of misgivings. “I don't know” Chansung replied, his eyes closed, breathing slow, the zest and zing of his life put on hold and bottled up. “Maybe everything just turns black?” Junho suggested, it was a scary thought and an offer of peace at the same time.

“I think it's more likely to turn white.”

“Maybe time finally stops.”

“I never thought of it that way. If it does, I guess we'll never know.”

“I hope the moment freezes and then we stay like that.”

“What if it's a moment when your nose itches.”

“I'll be so damn pissed” Junho pursed his lips, picked a pear from the table, everything had succumbed to slow-motion movements. “But if it's really a moment that never changes, I guess I wouldn't be annoyed for very long.”

“No, just for eternity.”

Junho sighed, pondering about time so bad. “I hope it's a better second” he said, “I wish it's the moment I wake up in sun and you're still sleeping.” He broke the fruit in two parts, the fibrous structure interspersed with a few green veins just like blood vessels under skin. Time shows the same pattern, with spots of denser life running through the slices. “If time freezes, it should be when I turn over towards you and you scrunch your nose in your sleep, cause my breath is cold against your upper lip.”

Chansung smiled. Okay, it was a nice idea.

“So I'll be asleep forever, is that your idea of perfection?” “You want me quiet and not moving, should I take offense?”

“In all fairness I want us both to be still.” “For once.” Junho lowered his voice and added, “But particularly you. God, I listened to your voice forever now.”

“You like it.”

He did.

*

Through the bickering, their fields expanded one millimeter at a time, a gruesome process to wait for while longing, neither of them sure exactly what they were craving to get to. But then one day, Chansung decided he felt ready, or at least he knew he couldn't wait any more, and he poked at Junho and said “Today.”

“What are we looking for?” Junho asked with eyes already turned towards the sky, he'd wanted to stay sanguine and confident but lately found himself just longing for the black. To really rest.

“Something white?”

“But there's only black void up there.”

“That's why we're looking for the white.”

Junho sighed and rose to his toes, ready to launch himself into pure ing insanity. “You make no sense” he mumbled, “I guess that's to be expected.”

*

The black was dense, impenetrable, colder than Junho remembered it. He entwined his fingers tighter with Chansung's and they floated without rest, dismissing the ringing in their ears as the air got thinner. For ages, there was nothing. Not a speck of light or diluted darkness.

Then there was a flake.

A single snow crystal.

It landed in Chansung's long hair and Junho studied it until another fell, melting on his own cheek.

It wasn't cold but it left a wet mark.

“We follow these” Chansung whispered not to upset the balance, “We're almost there.”

The white shards were hard to find at first, more closely clumped a minute later, flocking around their heads and swirling upwards, sideways, in every direction away from the source.

“A door?” Junho scoffed, it really was a black door ajar, from which light sprung and broke into pieces. “Did we black out or is it really going to be this cliché?”

“We're finally leaving” Chansung replied and watched the bright matter stick to his fingertips without melting, “So if it's a door, then we walk through the door.” “So normal” Junho sneered, grouchy towards the end but then again why would something like the edge of time change your personality. “We're going together” Chansung remarked, “What else matters.”

Precipitation increased from the source of the light on the other side. They pressed closer together, clinging to the beat of human pulses in a sea of incomprehensible chaos, the intensity of the storm rising to the point where nothing made sense. It snowed more and more.

Until everything was white.