everything that byun baekhyun knows to be reality falls apart in a matter of seconds.

he doesn't notice anything else around him. he doesn't remember the punchline of the joke he told just moments ago that still has chanyeol laughing, leaning into him with an arm around his neck. he doesn't feel the way that his expression drops, because his stomach is caving in on itself so rapidly that it's forcing itself into his throat. something like panic settles across his skin, spreading over every inch of his existence and there's an ocean raging inside his head, so loud that all he can hear is the crashing of waves in his ears. he can't breathe. his lungs don't work anymore and it's a miracle that he's even still standing because he's forgotten how his legs work, jolting to a stop in the middle of the crowded hallway.

he doesn't notice the confusion. he doesn't hear the guy cursing at him for tripping him up, doesn't hear chanyeol's voice, low and insistent. chanyeol is saying his name. he's repeating it over and over again and asking if he's alright but baekhyun doesn't hear any of it because he is looking at the boy standing across the hall and to the left. he is looking at the boy with the small frame, the boy who's name he hasn't heard even once, the boy with eyes that are so wide it seems impossible. he is looking at the boy and the boy is looking back at him. they are looking at each other. and he is glowing.

//

baekhyun has known chanyeol since he was fourteen years old. he was too tall and too loud and too stupid, and that made him the perfect best friend. he was fifteen when chanyeol stared at him in a way he had never seen before, terrified and excited and unsure all at once. chanyeol told him he was glowing, and baekhyun never questioned it. it was easy to accept, and from that moment on his reality became theirs. he allowed himself to fall into the comfort of knowing that this was meant to be. he reveled in how lucky he was to find his soulmate at such a young age, at all of the time they could spend together, in the fact that he didn't have to spend any more time worrying whether or not it would happen.

baekhyun is twenty years old and everything has fallen apart. he doesn't know what the worst part of it is, but he's pretty sure that it's chanyeol. chanyeol who accepts everything too easily, who is sitting next to him on the too-small bed in his dorm room. chanyeol with fingers on the back of his neck and the rest rubbing slow circles over his lower back because it's the only way to help him breathe normally again. chanyeol is the only person who has ever known about his anxiety. he is the only person who has ever witnessed one of baekhyun's panic attacks, even though he's never told him that every time the taller boy brings it up he kind of wants to laugh because what he saw is nothing like what happens on the bad days.

today is a bad day. today is a very bad day because everything that baekhyun knew was stable in the world has fallen apart underneath his feet. he's fallen underground and there's no way to get back up, even though up is right here, soothing him with a low voice and trying to convince him to come back to reality. he doesn't want to. he doesn't ever want to resurface because he had painted a perfect picture of what his reality was, what it should be, and now it's torn to shreds and there's nothing to start over with. he doesn't know how to paint anymore, and even if he did his fingers are shaking too much to hold a brush.

//

chanyeol accepts everything because he has to. he has to, and that's a lesson he learned before he was six years old. back then, he wasn't as easygoing. he didn't understand that fate isn't something you can change, and he fought with all he had against things that couldn't be reversed. he was destructive. he doesn't regret it, because it gave him control.

it gave him control over the fire that rages inside of him. taught him how to quiet it to a slow burn, although he can never put it out. he doesn't want to anymore. but he chokes down flames whenever he closes the door to baekhyun's dorm room behind himself and walks away.

he hasn't spent a night alone in years. it feels foreign and strangely familiar, even though he can't sleep. he sits on the balcony of his too big off-campus apartment and watches the flickering life in his hands, the way it illuminates but never burns. like light. he laughs to himself because hindsight is 20/20 and they should have known that fire and light were never meant to be together. two things so bright would only burn out in the end.

//

kyungsoo spends his lunch periods in the library because no one else ever thinks to do the same thing. he hasn't stepped into the cafeteria even once because there are too many people in one place and even the thought is enough to make him feel sick to his stomach. it isn't that he's afraid of people. he tells himself that, over and over, every day. he isn't afraid of people but goddamn he told his parents transferring over into a school like this a few months into the year was a horrible idea. discovering just how different he is was bad enough.

it hasn't been a week and he can't even count how many things he's ruined. he wants nothing more than to sink into the shelves, fall into the pages of one of these books and disappear forever. the thought is tempting, almost overwhelming every single time he remembers the boy in the hallway. the boy who isn't too much taller than he is. the boy with a loud laugh and an eyesmile that seems contagious. a smile that disappeared the second he saw him. he was glowing, and kyungsoo hasn't seen him even once since he took off down the hallway, refusing to look back.

the message is clear enough. it's the same one he's been receiving his whole life. it shouldn't sting. he knows that it shouldn't but it does, more than the ankle he twisted near the music hall after hours. the hands that pushed him blur together, the same ones he's felt before, and he never says a word.

he's spotted by another boy he's never seen before, all wide eyes and nothing else when suddenly he's no longer alone. the fear starts to skip along his veins, but this boy doesn't push him or run away or look at him like he's the worst thing that's ever happened. this boy smiles and sits down next to him, offers him half of a homemade sandwich and refuses to stop pressing it into his hand until he takes it. he never says a word, but the boy's presence calms his nerves and the momentary press of his fingers against kyungsoo's ankle takes the pain away.

//

for someone who always longed to be the center of attention, baekhyun surprises himself with just how long he's able to stay by himself. he turns off his phone and takes a self proclaimed vacation from classes, wrapping himself up in sleep and an alternate reality where none of this is happening. he lays on his bed and stares at the ceiling, imagining that it is an ocean and he's stuck at the bottom. water is flooding his lungs. he chokes every time he breathes, watching the light dance across the surface. he's drowning, and he knows that he has to try to swim.

when he first comes up for air it's because he's sick of driving himself crazy. he's sick of his own alternate reality and he wants a new one, so he goes to the person he knows can give him exactly what he needs.

no one knows how it started and no one questions where it comes from. luhan shares and that's what matters. that's what lands baekhyun on the floor in luhan's dorm room with his legs propped up against his bed and colorful pills on his tongue.

"i don't want to talk about it." that was the first thing he had said when luhan opened the door, and he isn't going to push it. he's content to lay on the faded carpet next to baekhyun, solving a rubix cube that hangs above their heads without using his fingers once. they burst into laughter, loud and stupid, when it falls and hits him in the face. baekhyun laughs until he can't breathe, and luhan doesn't tell him that he can see the wide eyes that are stuck in his head.

//

yixing believes that what he has is a gift. he's believed that ever since he was nine years old and his brother broke his arm. before their mother got there it was like nothing had happened, and he started keeping the secret that he knew would change everything eventually. it isn't a bad thing. it never has been, and his mother made sure he knew that even when she hugged him goodbye in the crowded airport. korea was more accepting of this and the school in seoul was the best in the world. she loved him and he was so lucky and so precious. he's never forgotten that, and he wants to make the best of what he has.

the language barrier is nearly impossible to break through and it takes two weeks for the school to assign him a private korean language tutor. when he shows up for their first meeting he expects a professor, not a tall, thin boy with bleached hair and an untucked shirt. a month later yixing is certain that his tutor is the best thing that ever happened to him. he spends his weekends tagging along with his group of friends, drinking and smoking and really relaxing for the first time since he left china.

sehun gives him nicknames that make him feel warm all over, almost as warm as he feels when he looks at him for too long. without a doubt he's the most beautiful thing yixing has ever seen, and he wishes he had the vocabulary to tell him that sometimes he swears he's glowing. but sehun wouldn't believe him. he breaks yixing's heart a little more every time he drinks a little too much, takes one too many pills, ends up sick and scared and honest in a way that he never allows himself when he's sober.

yixing wishes he could heal insides too.

//

baekhyun bounces around between the people he knows are the farthest from chanyeol. he doesn't want to see him because when he does it's like an anchor, a chain winding tight around his ankle that sends him back to the bottom all over again. it's ironic that the only thing he can compare him to now is the pressing suffocation when he was always so warm. he can't think about it, just like he can't think about the boy with the big eyes. the one he glowed with.

he finds out that luhan's new roommate knows him. he finds out that his name is kyungsoo, and the syllables twist and jumble together in his throat, so unfamiliar that all he wants to do is rip them out. but he can't. no matter how many times he digs them out, no matter how hard he rips and scratches and screams it's there forever.

it's been three months since they glowed when he approaches him, anxiety threatening to drag him under and fingers busying themselves with the loose string inside of his pocket to keep himself from screaming. instead he speaks softly, in a quiet voice he wasn't even sure he possessed. he doesn't know kyungsoo. he doesn't know anything about him, and yet his words are unexpected and completely deserved when they reach him.

"why would i want to talk to you?" baekhyun can't think of a single reason.

//

jongin has never had a boyfriend. the closest thing he's ever had is sehun, and he would never in a thousand years think of him as anything other than a best friend. anything else is a waste of time. anyone he puts effort on could disappear. there's no hope for a future without glowing, and there are better things to focus on in the meantime.

he's seen chanyeol around once or twice. he knows him vaguely, a guy that's too tall and too loud, who wears too many hats and has an annoying boyfriend. he's ditching class with sehun, passing a joint back and forth underneath the stairs when he finds out that chanyeol does not have a boyfriend and wonders why he wants to get to know him so badly.

avoidance isn't something that he has to think about. it's easy, and no matter how many times he literally disappears right in front of him, chanyeol doesn't stop trying. it takes two weeks for sehun to convince him to stop being an idiot and he finds out that chanyeol is actually nice to be around. he loses track of the time he spends with him until before he knows it he's fallen, and he's pissed off and desperate all at once because he's never needed something more than air like he does when chanyeol looks at him.

chanyeol touches. his fingers are impossible to predict and jongin wonders if that's how he gets his energy because chanyeol has to be touching someone at all times. it starts to get under his skin and he snaps. he pushes him away when all he wants is to pull him closer. it drives him crazy over and over again until he corners him and explodes, delirious and saying things that are stupid and impossible.

nothing is impossible when chanyeol kisses him, slow and deep and when his fingers spread along jongin's skin he can feel a fire working through him that he thinks will burn forever.

//

sehun isn't jealous. there's nothing for him to be jealous of, really. he's happy. why wouldn't he be happy for jongin? jongin his best friend, jongin his partner in crime for so many years he's lost track by now. jongin who finally glowed with his boyfriend, his soulmate. jongin who he hasn't seen in a week.

he isn't jealous, but he swallows down the bitterness and chases it with beer because he was always under the impression that they were supposed to be skeptical together. at least there was someone else who didn't want to prescribe to supposed fate so quickly, but now it's almost like he doesn't have anything left.

almost. because then there's yixing.

yixing the chinese exchange student who still trips over his words and asks too many questions and makes him laugh with his awkward pronunciation. yixing who tags along with him to parties and drinks and smokes like anyone else, who yells at him when he ditches class and tries to convince him that his grades are important. yixing who glowed the very first day that he met him, when they were reviewing the hangul alphabet and he hadn't even learned how to pronounce his name yet.

he still doesn't believe in it. he can't believe in something that's obviously so broken since his parents scream at each other almost every night and he's been watching them fall apart for as long as he can remember. the idea of loving someone so completely is terrifying, even when he's drunk and he can't remember all the things that he's scared of.

fate means nothing even when he has pills and alcohol and yixing on his tongue, fingers digging in and begging him to staystaystay and he never remembers everything in the morning.

//

it's been six months since baekhyun has been to a party. he associates them with chanyeol's house and everything about that is still too complicated to consider, but he agrees when the venue is different. no one tells him he's going to be there, and he's torn between killing them and breaking down when he sees his tall frame, unmistakable snapback falling off of his head because he's laughing too hard to keep it balanced.

he waits for it to happen. he waits to drown, to go under again, but he doesn't. he doesn't and instead he laughs, because it isn't chanyeol that's suffocating him. it's something else entirely. everyone is already ed up and luhan approaches him, offers a bag of what he calls candy, smiles and kisses his cheek and out of the corner of his eye baekhyun can see everyone else. his gaze catches on a shock of bleached hair, on sehun who's chasing candy with vodka and maybe they have more in common than baekhyun would have ever thought.

everything is too loud and too overwhelming. nobody notices when he slips outside to get away, sitting on the curb with a joint and a bottle of sprite. he doesn't remember where it came from or how long he spends drinking it and contemplating the sky but it tastes better than the burn of all the mistakes he'd be making otherwise. footsteps sneak up on him, so quiet he doesn't even hear them until it's too late. a voice that's familiar but belongs to a stranger winds around him and pulls him out of it, back to reality.

"sprite's my favorite." he turns and sees wide eyes looking back at him, a smile that's unexpected in every way. it feels like breaking the surface. finally, it's a breath of fresh air.