(for darkyulate) Anhelo
For: darkyulate
Title: Anhelo
Genre: angst, romance, space!au
Rating: NC-17
Warning: mpreg
Length: 5,008 words
Notes: A huge thank you to the mods for letting me join this exchange and for being so understanding. I also have to apologize to my recipient; I made a small mistake with the prompt but I'd already written the story so I hope you can forgive me. Thank you so much to A for beta-ing, I really really appreciate you tremendously. Thank you to tlist for being there and listening to my panicking. Finally, thank you to that special person for always being with me. I'd send you a heater if I could.
This story was written to the soundtrack of Interstellar as well as Soothe this Pain by Ásgeir. Please see the end of the story for story notes.
now
When Jongin opens the front door the house is dark. "Kyungsoo?" he calls his husband's name, hoping against hope but - there's nothing. Heart sinking, he lets his coat slide off his slumped shoulders to fall with a breathless sigh on the floor. He steps haphazardly out of his shoes, one shoe trailing behind the other as his quiet footsteps traverse the bamboo floor. I picked it out for you. But the house is cold and silent; he can't see his breath floating in front of his face but maybe that's because his eyes are misting instead.
He goes to the kitchen first. The bright white cabinets are grey in the shadows; somehow it feels like everything is showing its dark side tonight. His hand brushes a stray water glass on the island; it falls to the floor with a sharp crack, Jongin's heart finally breaking. He doesn't bother to pick up the pieces as they lie there, faintly glittering to match the single tear sliding down his cheek. He walks over to the window instead.
The light on the roses is cold, though he can't see the moon through the dome of the space station. White and yellow blossoms. Please remember me. There's a shadowing of blue at the edge of his vison and he turns slowly. A single blue rose stains the night. The unattainable.
"Can I let him go?" Jongin asks the night, the moon on the broken glass, the velvety blue darkness.
The night doesn't answer.
go gentle
childhood
Jongin wasn't happy about leaving Alpha Centauri Bb -he was used to living inside, with the safety of a dome overhead; the endless air stretching up to the stratosphere scared him.
"You'll get used to it soon, dear," his mother reassured him, before leaving for another charity dinner, pearls and pink silk and the lingering smell of quince blossoms in her wake. Jongin only watched her leave, arms aching to be hugged like when he was smaller and she'd taken the time to tuck him onto her lap and read him bedtime stories about Earth and the Sun and sky. It always seemed like a fairy tale. The truth was lonelier than he had thought.
Jongin spent his days in the library instead, not in the modern section with its conference rooms and screens and holograms but in the historical archives. Back home he'd had so few paper books, but Earth wasn't a designated UNESCO heritage site for nothing. He buried himself in the comforting smell of paper and dust, books that didn't live forever but decayed slowly, over centuries, despite the molecule-thin gloves he had to wear to turn the pages. I want to touch.
Jongin was reading a book of old poetry, the words falling like diamonds off his tongue to hang, glistening, in the air, when he saw him. Black hair, soft skin, and eyes so intense as he glared at a book.
Golden in the heyday of his eyes,
Jongin couldn't stop looking.
His trips to the library became just as much about seeing the boy as reading the books, his reading interrupted by frustrated sighs and unconscious pouts, the intense eyes always seeming to be searching for something.
...simple stars
Jongin finally gathered his courage to ask.
"Excuse me, are you looking for something?" His voice wasn't really shaking, it wasn't. Tell yourself that.
The boy looked up, surprised. His eyes narrowed for a moment before he realized that he didn't know Jongin.
"I'm looking for roses," he said. "I want to grow some."
Jongin was confused. "But you can buy them anywhere."
The boy glared at him. "Those are synthetic. I want the real kind. The kind that used to grow."
Jongin looked at him in amazement. "But those are practically extinct and only trained gardeners even try to grow them."
"I don't care." The boy set his lip and turned back to his book. Jongin could see now that it was an old rose-growing handbook, the pages stained with dirt. It looked...it looked like it might work.
...happy as the heart...
Kyungsoo was his name. Kyungsoo with his hair like shadows and his eyes like constellations. Jongin felt that, if anyone could make a miracle, it would be Kyungsoo. They always met in the library after that, leafing through books and books of old garden references. They were going to start as soon as the solstice break came, winter turning into softness and warmth.
"Your house has a nicer garden," Kyungsoo told him. Kyungsoo sprawled on his bed, looking at heirloom seed auctions on his phone, black hair like shadows between the the folds of the white sheet. Jongin felt like his heart was going to explode. He bit his lip instead and balled his fingers into fists of tee shirt.
"Let's plant them here then," he said, "my mom's never home anyway." He looked at his knees, skin showing through the shredded fabric.
Kyungsoo picked peach roses. Jongin secretly liked the yellow ones with the red tips, but he only saved the listing. They marked the date of the arrival of the seeds on their calendars and set a reminder.
And then the war started.
Flashing into the dark.
Jongin and his mother were called back home, the hovercopter coming in the night and Jongin only had time to send a frantic they're making me leave to Kyungsoo before being whisked away in the night. He never even knew if the message made it.
no lightning
now
He leaves the kitchen, cold fingers trailing along the white walls. His shadow is too tall in the dark, always looming. A history he can't erase. The bamboo turns into soft white carpeting as he crosses the threshold of their bedroom, the place he feels so lost. So alone. Countless nights lying next to someone who doesn't love him, as he traces dream-fluttering eyelashes with a longing gaze and doesn't sleep. Home is not where the heart is.
"I want you so much," he tells the white curtains flapping in the artificial breeze, the white bedspread, the eleven pink roses in a porcelain vase on the nightstand. The wind whispers his longing to the night.
...crying how bright
wedding night
Kyungsoo watched him, sitting on the edge of the bed in the silk robe that Jongin had carefully picked out, waiting.
Jongin stood in the doorway, cold and paralyzed in his matching robe, and wanted to be anywhere but here; Kyungsoo's eyes were an enigma. My husband. The thought made him feel sick.
"I love you so much!" he wanted to scream but he couldn't, because Kyungsoo didn't love him. Kyungsoo didn't even recognize him. He was the husband Kyungsoo had never asked for. He looked at the floor, at his bare toes half hidden in the white carpeting.
There was a gentle cough. Jongin looked up, startled. Kyungsoo was smiling at him. At his husband, not me, he reminded himself.
"How do you want to do this?" he asked softly. I want you to love me. But that wasn't an option. Jongin didn't know what to do, so he was both relieved and furious at himself when Kyungsoo stood up from the bed, the memory foam still indented from his contact like a hidden yearning, and crossed the floor, footsteps falling muffled on carpet, to raise his mouth to Jongin and kiss him. Jongin both wanted to jump back and run away and never ever stop kissing him, but his traitorous body decided for him, sighing out a wordless confession as his mouth decided to open and his tongue to gently caress Kyungsoo's mouth until the sweet lips parted for him and their warmness mingled. Kyungsoo pulled him backwards to the bed, lying down quietly, the sheets rustling gently. He guided Jongin's mouth to his neck, moaning softly as Jongin sucked on the soft skin and nuzzled at the warmth there, before taking his husband's tentative hands and placing them on his chest, the fingers slipping between the folds of silk to brush the velvety skin. Jongin shivered, starting to grow hard, and reflexively pulled back -
"Don't," Kyungsoo said, his words soft but his eyes strangely dark. "This is our wedding night, it's okay. We're doing this anyway."
Jongin wanted to run away, bury his head in his arms and cry, beg his father to not make him do this, but that wasn't an option. Instead, he choked back the tears and swallowed his heart, tracing Kyungsoo's ribs with his fingers and running a warm tongue over the vertebrae of his neck as his husband looked out the window at the domed sky, filling his eyes with the stars. Jongin felt him growing hard against his leg and allowed a hand to creep down, fingers wrapping around the length and caressing it; Kyungsoo's eyes flickered shut and Jongin allowed himself to pretend.
Just for now, I'll be loved.
He left Kyungsoo's neck, ignoring the soft protesting moans and sliding down to part the robe and wrap his lips around the head of his husband's shivering cock, the skin warm and soft as he sucked it, running his tongue around and resting his hands on Kyungsoo's beautiful thighs to steady himself as he took it down, the head bumping the back of his throat as he finally allowed his eyes to tear. He felt tentative hands on his head, the fingers spasming but Kyungsoo was being such a gentleman; Jongin wanted him to work his fingers through it, to scratch his scalp lightly with his fingers, pull at his hair until it hurt, but he knew that if he got up to say it he wouldn't be able to anyway. I can't ask anything of you. So he continued to suck and run his tongue around the hardness, tracing the thick vein underneath and bobbing his head to swallow him down and then rise to nibble at the head again, tonguing the slit, until Kyungsoo's fingers were spasming uncontrollably, still resting gently on his head. It was was the worst pain Jongin had ever felt, for the hurt to sit in his chest like a heavy weight while he was surrounded by such softness and warmth.
He let himself slip just a bit then, driving himself as far as he could manage until Kyungsoo bottomed out down his throat; Jongin couldn't breathe at all but he swallowed instead and felt Kyungsoo's muscles tense before he came in a long warm line down Jongin's throat - he had to pull himself off or risk actually choking but he swallowed as much as he could and then cleaned the rest off gently with his tongue as his husband lay boneless on the white sheets.
Jongin sat there then, between his husband's legs, tasting cum on his lips and feeling his own hardness curving up towards his stomach as his fingers trembled and he didn't know if he could keep doing this, but Kyungsoo's eyes looked at him, gentle yet intense in their questioning, and Jongin managed to take a kind of rasping breath, hoping he could pass the catch in his throat off as the result of amateur deepthroating as he crawled carefully around Kyungsoo's foot to the nightstand, his eyes catching the red of the six roses there and darting away as his fingers found the condoms and lube.
Fingers slick, he nudged his husband's knees up gently with the backs of his hands before tentatively inserting one shaking finger, gaze trained on the expression in Kyungsoo's dark gaze as the single digit slid in through the soft, tight ring of muscle and into the warm darkness. Kyungsoo took a deep breath and there was a moment's pause before he nodded softly. Jongin crooked his index finger, working it around gently to loosen the tightness; he leaned forward to leave soft trailing kisses along the insides of Kyungsoo's thighs before slipping in a second digit, waiting a breath before scissoring the fingers, curling them to find that spongy bundle of nerves and press. Kyungsoo moaned, the sound going right to Jongin's trembling cock and he bit back an echoing moan, teeth breaking skin as he slid a third finger in and brushed them again and again past his husband's prostate until Kyungsoo managed to grasp his shoulder with a spasming hand, gasping, "enough".
Jongin reached for the condom then but Kyungsoo stopped him, Jongin looking up, startled.
"We need an heir," Kyungsoo said matter-of-factly, as Jongin almost stopped pretending, the tightness back in his throat and the scratchy warmth behind his eyes as he fought to blink and nod. I'm just the person you had to marry.
His fingers shook for all the wrong reasons as he slicked himself up and gently guided his cock to slide into his husband, the skin against skin so intimate, so wrong. He waited for Kyungsoo to get used to the feeling before gently beginning to slide in and out, making sure to press against the spot that coaxed the deepest moans from his husband's throat, the sound a beautiful music in Jongin's ears, a song that wasn't for him. He was just a bystander, collateral damage of the heart. Each thrust worked at the cracks in his splintering heart until the last, soul-crushing time. Bottoming out in Kyungsoo, skin against skin and joined so closely together, Kyungsoo almost groaned as he came, shooting white all over his stomach in a delicate stream, Jongin's heart fracturing into a million pieces. His heart shattered as he pumped warmth deep into his husband until he was drained dry, head full of tears that he couldn't shed.
He gave Kyungsoo one last kiss on the knee before gently pulling out. Kyungsoo maintained his position, clenching slightly even though he was still fluttering post-orgasmically, and Jongin could tell that he was serious. He blinked rapidly as he first cleaned the cum off Kyungsoo's stomach with a wet cloth and then got a pillow from the head of the bed and carefully rolled his husband over onto it so that the soft skin of his backside rose slightly into the air but he could relax limply into the mattress, everything safely inside. I am just a means to an end. Jongin let one single tear trickle down his cheek as he pulled the blanket up over his husband so that Kyungsoo wouldn't catch a chill, before slipping out to the bathroom with the excuse that he was sticky and wanted to wash up.
He finally let himself collapse onto the floor of the shower, scalding water hitting the skin of his back, wracking sobs torn from his chest and stomach as he poured his aching chest out on to the floor - watching it trail away with the water down the drain where it disappeared from view.
Invisible, like me.
...grieved it on its way
now
Jongin turns his back to the white bed, the roses, the whispering night, and slips out of their room where they have never been together; they've only been two strangers lying side by side, staggered breathing and heartbeats never matching up. The bamboo is cold under his feet as he makes his way to the office, Kyungsoo's office, hoping against hope for a note or something; the room is cold, window wide open as the wind stirs up the white papers scattered on the floor. They're all blank. Jongin bends down mechanically to gather them up into a neat pile, setting them on the edge of the desk, but a gust of wind billows in and they escape their rigid order and cascade with a hushed sigh back onto the floor.
Jongin is about to turn away when a flash of something catches his eye and he stops, frozen.
There's a single platinum band sitting on the middle of the desk. Jongin looks down at the matching one on his finger.
Semper fidelis.
...frail deeds...
marriage
After the war ended - whole planets lost, colonies destroyed, industries crumbled despite the brevity - the United Star Alliance and the Post Andromedea Union signed a treaty of armistice. Both sides had lost as much as the other. There would be no retribution here.
Jongin was sent for by his father, guards arriving at the university unannounced, and a quiet message sliding over his screen giving him barely a moment's warning.
your childhood is over
On the authority - command - of his father, he was summarily graduated with an honours degree in universal literature, rather than the doctorate he'd been working towards. Instead, he'd been given an exhausting crash course in politics and economics and everything he had been allowed to neglect, safe in his own safe little forgotten world of words and paragraphs and the shadows of trees, while stars were exploding.
Now the sky was dark.
Alpha Centauri Bb had been mostly spared, but Alpha Centauri Cc was a smoking ruin, the surface covered by a nuclear-active mess that it was proposed might even endanger passing ships. It was hard being home and living in a dome because his birth planet was too hot, at 1200 degrees Celsius surface temperature, to be habitable, even with the slow terra-forming process which had been negatively affected by the arms race. As a person of peace and quiet, poetry and flowers, Jongin felt like a bird in a burning cage.
The majesty and burning...
He thought about Kyungsoo all the time. Life in the relatively small space station planet orbiting WISE 1049-5319 had been quiet, the bright flashes in the sky a remote possibility of death, his only concern the boy with the stars in his eyes. Where are you? But there had been no way to find out. Jongin had kept his vase of artificial roses by his bedside, the pale light filtering through the veil of ivy growing around his window turning all the colours green. What does a green rose mean? He looked through scans of old books, fingers itching to touch the paper like he'd been able to back on Earth. I hope that, wherever you are, you're growing roses.
Jongin had always hoped, but he never really expected to see Kyungsoo again. The rose that, in an attempt to pluck it from the stem, only leaves you with red staining your finger and a scar, memory engraved on skin. And now that the war was over, he was entirely under his father's control. A puppet on steel strings.
your marriage partner has been decided
He had always known he would be married off to political advantage. The United Star Alliance might have emerged with a superior economic position and was again prospering, but the political situation, despite the armistice, was still tentative. He was informed that he would be marrying the eldest child of Post Andromeda Union's Lady Chancellor, rather like cattle being herded off to market, Jongin thought, remembering similar themes in pre-interstellar literature.
A pale girl with limpid eyes, he dreamed sometimes at night, tossing and turning as the sun burned the sky outside the thin dome that kept him from death. She'll cling onto me forever. No one remarked on his ragged fingernails if he kept his hands busy with screens and pockets.
...the sea tumbling in harness
Taking the intersystem ship to meet his fiancée, Jongin clutched onto the armrests with white fingers and wished with all his heart please let it be someone I can like, even a little. As he walked down the white corridors of the spaceship, the echoes of feet all around him, he tried to remember to breathe. But when he saw the person waiting for him, the breath caught in his throat and crawled back down to lodge itself like ice in his unshielded heart.
"May I present to you, Lord Kai, the Chancellor-Elect D.O., your future husband." The guard nodded as Jongin bowed deeply, the gesture perhaps too lingering as he frantically worked to control his expression before looking up. Kyungsoo was looking at him; his eyes as big and intense as ever, but there were spaces between the stars now. I wonder what horrors your eyes have seen.
Jongin couldn't think, his head an implosion of thoughts and hopes, and it was all he could do to take out the simple yet costly platinum band. If I had known it was you... He presented it to his fiancé with hands that still managed to tremble, despite the fact that he was biting his lip so hard he tasted rust. Kyungsoo looked at him and smiled, his face friendly and his eyes curious.
You don't remember me. He dropped his hands away from his fiancé's lingering touch, eyes following the shadows his fingers made on the floor, blocking the light.
...last light breaking
The ring on his finger felt like the final nail in his coffin, a permanent reminder of something he would never be able to have. Kyungsoo smiled at him as they stood next to each other for the official ceremony.
"Are you alright, Kai?" His fiancé, almost-husband, asked, brow wrinkled in concern at Jongin's pale face. That's not my name.
"I'm okay, D.O.," he managed to choke out, the jagged fingernails of the hand Kyungsoo couldn't see digging into his palm until he broke the skin.
"You can call me Kyungsoo," the older one grinned, nudging him with what appeared to be affectionate camaraderie. Jongin only nodded and blinked back the sudden rush of wetness to his eyes. I can do this. He didn't look at his father, sitting behind him in the first row, or his mother who had declined to leave the safety of her refuge space ship. I have to do this.
He didn't see how he could.
...might have danced...
now
Jongin backs out of the office like he's seen a ghost. The ghost reminding him that he is not part of Kyungsoo's life at all. He's learning to run an empire while Kyungsoo has a younger sister for that; he has his research and his correspondents and a world where Jongin has never belonged.
And now I guess I never will.
The last door on the left is closed. He doesn't want to open it, but he does anyway. Why do we always do the things that cause us the most pain? Jongin sometimes wishes he'd never fallen in love at all.
The door swings open with a soft sigh, the room shadowed, silhouettes of a mobile spinning gently above a small bassinette. The pain in his chest coalesces into a burning agony. Everything he has ever wanted, ever dreamed, but set on its head so that every joy is only heartbreak. He imagines Kyungsoo's eternal eyes on a tiny face with his nose and the image stabs at him until he's sure he must be bleeding.
The wind rustles the chimes hanging in the window and they sound like tears.
...fierce tears...
this morning
Jongin lay beside his husband in the bed, watching him sleep, the gentle raising and lowering of his chest with each breath, the soft swelling of his stomach. His fingers ached to touch, his fingers were hovering over the silk before he remembered himself, tearing his hand away. He rolled over instead, only listening to the sound of Kyungsoo breathing. He didn't sleep very much anymore, not when Kyungsoo was sleeping and he could pretend, under cover of darkness. Pretend that you love me.
A dark as deep
Jongin woke to the sound of retching from the bathroom, the sound less frequent than during the first three months. The first time he had rushed over to the small room, hovering over his husband, Kyungsoo's pain and discomfort twisting his stomach with guilt as he tried to be helpful until finally Kyungsoo had looked up at him. "I'm okay by myself," he'd said, the words hitting Jongin like a blow to the stomach. Kyungsoo had even smiled, face drawn, before grimacing and turning back to the toilet. Now, instead of trying to soothe his husband, Jongin stumbled over to the washroom in the hallway, making sure the door was locked before he let himself fall apart.
He was used to it by now, used to rebuilding his composure before turning out the light and leaving the small white room with the mirror he never looked at anymore. The door clicked shut behind him.
Your breath was shed
Kyungsoo was smiling at the island in the kitchen, feet dangling from the stool as his legs peeked out of his robe. The robe Jongin hadn't touched since that time; the only time. He was sipping from a glass, the sun catching the prisms and casting rainbows over Kyungsoo's hands. His eyes were a little shadowed but that was all.
"Are you okay?" he asked Jongin. Jongin only nodded, going over to the cabinet for a mug. He'd only started drinking coffee eight months ago and he still couldn't get used to the taste. His mouth was filled with bitterness.
"I have to see my father today," Jongin said, sitting at the other end of the island. His feet couldn't reach the floor either.
Kyungsoo nodded. "I have a meeting later," he said, pressing the tips of his fingers to his temples, the veins on the backs of his hands standing out. Jongin wanted to say something but he felt like he didn't deserve to. "I left you some supper in the refrigerator," Kyungsoo said, smiling, "but I'll be back before you get home." I don't deserve anything from you.
Kyungsoo was still in the kitchen when Jongin stopped to say goodbye. He hummed, looking at the screen of his phone, his protruding belly making his perch at the counter awkward, but he didn't seem to mind, smiling at something Jongin couldn't see.
My love...
"Goodbye," Jongin said softly, not wanting to intrude into Kyungsoo's private happiness. But his husband heard him anyway, lifting his gaze to smile at him, eyes crinkled.
"Be safe," he called.
Jongin was too good at pretending.
...blinding sight
now
Standing there in the dark, his husband gone, Jongin doesn't know what to do. I can't let you go, I can't. But he's never had him to begin with, and the baby only makes everything worse, Kyungsoo saddled with a responsibility he'd never asked for. Jongin is picking his jacket up off the floor and sliding his bare feet into cold shoes before he has time to change his mind. The last shuttle leaves in twenty minutes. Maybe there's still time. I know you don't love me but I just want to make sure you're okay. I'll take all the responsibility for this. He thinks about the political shitstorm and his head aches, but if it's for the one he loves, he can take the fall. He swallows, blinking a few times and taking a deep breath. Behind him, the empty house echoes with silence.
Jongin's hand is on the door handle when it opens outwards; he's briefly blinded by the light over the door. When his vision clears, he can't move. He's completely forgotten how.
Kyungsoo is standing on the doorstep, a single rose in his hands. A real rose. The petals are velvety in the dark, yellow with red tips. Friendship turning into love.
"You...you..?" Jongin doesn't know what to say, he doesn't know how to shape into words the twisting mass of pain and confusion in his chest, threaded through with a daring, brilliant hope.
"Jongin," Kyungsoo says, only one word, but it splits the night apart. Jongin. My name.
"Do you...?" He almost can't bear to ask.
"Of course I remember you," Kyungsoo continues, grinning. Jongin's legs are shaking and he grips onto the door frame for support.
"You...remember?" His voice is barely a whisper over the rustling of leaves as the wind rises in a surprise gust, warm air between the chill.
"I thought you'd forgotten?" Kyungsoo wrinkles his forehead. "You always seemed so conflicted about our marriage, ever since you walked into that room."
"No..." Jongin breathes, the panicky feeling bubbling under the surface, an old destructive friend. "But I thought you didn't remember."
Kyungsoo laughs, his face curling up into happiness. "You should have said something!" His face is warm, his eyes bright and full of stars. He's so beautiful, standing there in the light, and the start of something warm and soft plants itself like a seed in Jongin's chest as Kyungsoo hands him the flower.
"I love you," he says, finally, the words like a balm to his tattered throat as he grips the stem of the rose tightly. There are no thorns.
"I love you too," Kyungsoo says, "I always have." He steps through the open door, letting it fall shut behind him. There, in the dark, he rests his hands on Jongin's shoulder and reaches his face up to meet Jongin's mouth in the sweetest of kisses.
It feels like the first time.
There's a soft fluttering against Jongin's stomach, and he looks down in surprise. Kyungsoo follows his gaze and smiles in amusement.
"The baby is saying hello," he says. Jongin's eyes fill with tears and he doesn't even try to blink them back as he sinks to his knees, letting himself touch the swelling of Kyungsoo's belly for the first time.
"Hello Baby," he whispers against the surprisingly firm skin, his hand resting gently on the surface. There's another gentle nudge, as the baby says hello back. The grief and the joy and the yearning pour out of his eyes in a cleansing waterfall as he kneels there on the ground, Kyungsoo sinking down to wrap his arms around his husband, humming a soothing lullaby into the softness of his hair.
"I love you," Jongin has to say again, so many words that he's held back for so long.
"I know," Kyungsoo reassures him, pulling his husband's head down to rest on the cool fabric covering his shoulder. Between them, the baby flutters its happiness.
End notes: The title Anhelo means "yearning" in Spanish. Excerpt texts are by Dylan Thomas and as follows: Do not go gentle into that good night*, Fern Hill*, A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London*, Poem [Your breath was shed]*. Semper fidelis means "always faithful" in Latin. The meanings of the colours and numbers of roses, as well as the thornless rose, are all drawn from this page.
Title: Anhelo
Genre: angst, romance, space!au
Rating: NC-17
Warning: mpreg
Length: 5,008 words
Notes: A huge thank you to the mods for letting me join this exchange and for being so understanding. I also have to apologize to my recipient; I made a small mistake with the prompt but I'd already written the story so I hope you can forgive me. Thank you so much to A for beta-ing, I really really appreciate you tremendously. Thank you to tlist for being there and listening to my panicking. Finally, thank you to that special person for always being with me. I'd send you a heater if I could.
This story was written to the soundtrack of Interstellar as well as Soothe this Pain by Ásgeir. Please see the end of the story for story notes.
now
When Jongin opens the front door the house is dark. "Kyungsoo?" he calls his husband's name, hoping against hope but - there's nothing. Heart sinking, he lets his coat slide off his slumped shoulders to fall with a breathless sigh on the floor. He steps haphazardly out of his shoes, one shoe trailing behind the other as his quiet footsteps traverse the bamboo floor. I picked it out for you. But the house is cold and silent; he can't see his breath floating in front of his face but maybe that's because his eyes are misting instead.
He goes to the kitchen first. The bright white cabinets are grey in the shadows; somehow it feels like everything is showing its dark side tonight. His hand brushes a stray water glass on the island; it falls to the floor with a sharp crack, Jongin's heart finally breaking. He doesn't bother to pick up the pieces as they lie there, faintly glittering to match the single tear sliding down his cheek. He walks over to the window instead.
The light on the roses is cold, though he can't see the moon through the dome of the space station. White and yellow blossoms. Please remember me. There's a shadowing of blue at the edge of his vison and he turns slowly. A single blue rose stains the night. The unattainable.
"Can I let him go?" Jongin asks the night, the moon on the broken glass, the velvety blue darkness.
The night doesn't answer.
go gentle
childhood
Jongin wasn't happy about leaving Alpha Centauri Bb -he was used to living inside, with the safety of a dome overhead; the endless air stretching up to the stratosphere scared him.
"You'll get used to it soon, dear," his mother reassured him, before leaving for another charity dinner, pearls and pink silk and the lingering smell of quince blossoms in her wake. Jongin only watched her leave, arms aching to be hugged like when he was smaller and she'd taken the time to tuck him onto her lap and read him bedtime stories about Earth and the Sun and sky. It always seemed like a fairy tale. The truth was lonelier than he had thought.
Jongin spent his days in the library instead, not in the modern section with its conference rooms and screens and holograms but in the historical archives. Back home he'd had so few paper books, but Earth wasn't a designated UNESCO heritage site for nothing. He buried himself in the comforting smell of paper and dust, books that didn't live forever but decayed slowly, over centuries, despite the molecule-thin gloves he had to wear to turn the pages. I want to touch.
Jongin was reading a book of old poetry, the words falling like diamonds off his tongue to hang, glistening, in the air, when he saw him. Black hair, soft skin, and eyes so intense as he glared at a book.
Golden in the heyday of his eyes,
Jongin couldn't stop looking.
His trips to the library became just as much about seeing the boy as reading the books, his reading interrupted by frustrated sighs and unconscious pouts, the intense eyes always seeming to be searching for something.
...simple stars
Jongin finally gathered his courage to ask.
"Excuse me, are you looking for something?" His voice wasn't really shaking, it wasn't. Tell yourself that.
The boy looked up, surprised. His eyes narrowed for a moment before he realized that he didn't know Jongin.
"I'm looking for roses," he said. "I want to grow some."
Jongin was confused. "But you can buy them anywhere."
The boy glared at him. "Those are synthetic. I want the real kind. The kind that used to grow."
Jongin looked at him in amazement. "But those are practically extinct and only trained gardeners even try to grow them."
"I don't care." The boy set his lip and turned back to his book. Jongin could see now that it was an old rose-growing handbook, the pages stained with dirt. It looked...it looked like it might work.
...happy as the heart...
Kyungsoo was his name. Kyungsoo with his hair like shadows and his eyes like constellations. Jongin felt that, if anyone could make a miracle, it would be Kyungsoo. They always met in the library after that, leafing through books and books of old garden references. They were going to start as soon as the solstice break came, winter turning into softness and warmth.
"Your house has a nicer garden," Kyungsoo told him. Kyungsoo sprawled on his bed, looking at heirloom seed auctions on his phone, black hair like shadows between the the folds of the white sheet. Jongin felt like his heart was going to explode. He bit his lip instead and balled his fingers into fists of tee shirt.
"Let's plant them here then," he said, "my mom's never home anyway." He looked at his knees, skin showing through the shredded fabric.
Kyungsoo picked peach roses. Jongin secretly liked the yellow ones with the red tips, but he only saved the listing. They marked the date of the arrival of the seeds on their calendars and set a reminder.
And then the war started.
Flashing into the dark.
Jongin and his mother were called back home, the hovercopter coming in the night and Jongin only had time to send a frantic they're making me leave to Kyungsoo before being whisked away in the night. He never even knew if the message made it.
no lightning
now
He leaves the kitchen, cold fingers trailing along the white walls. His shadow is too tall in the dark, always looming. A history he can't erase. The bamboo turns into soft white carpeting as he crosses the threshold of their bedroom, the place he feels so lost. So alone. Countless nights lying next to someone who doesn't love him, as he traces dream-fluttering eyelashes with a longing gaze and doesn't sleep. Home is not where the heart is.
"I want you so much," he tells the white curtains flapping in the artificial breeze, the white bedspread, the eleven pink roses in a porcelain vase on the nightstand. The wind whispers his longing to the night.
...crying how bright
wedding night
Kyungsoo watched him, sitting on the edge of the bed in the silk robe that Jongin had carefully picked out, waiting.
Jongin stood in the doorway, cold and paralyzed in his matching robe, and wanted to be anywhere but here; Kyungsoo's eyes were an enigma. My husband. The thought made him feel sick.
"I love you so much!" he wanted to scream but he couldn't, because Kyungsoo didn't love him. Kyungsoo didn't even recognize him. He was the husband Kyungsoo had never asked for. He looked at the floor, at his bare toes half hidden in the white carpeting.
There was a gentle cough. Jongin looked up, startled. Kyungsoo was smiling at him. At his husband, not me, he reminded himself.
"How do you want to do this?" he asked softly. I want you to love me. But that wasn't an option. Jongin didn't know what to do, so he was both relieved and furious at himself when Kyungsoo stood up from the bed, the memory foam still indented from his contact like a hidden yearning, and crossed the floor, footsteps falling muffled on carpet, to raise his mouth to Jongin and kiss him. Jongin both wanted to jump back and run away and never ever stop kissing him, but his traitorous body decided for him, sighing out a wordless confession as his mouth decided to open and his tongue to gently caress Kyungsoo's mouth until the sweet lips parted for him and their warmness mingled. Kyungsoo pulled him backwards to the bed, lying down quietly, the sheets rustling gently. He guided Jongin's mouth to his neck, moaning softly as Jongin sucked on the soft skin and nuzzled at the warmth there, before taking his husband's tentative hands and placing them on his chest, the fingers slipping between the folds of silk to brush the velvety skin. Jongin shivered, starting to grow hard, and reflexively pulled back -
"Don't," Kyungsoo said, his words soft but his eyes strangely dark. "This is our wedding night, it's okay. We're doing this anyway."
Jongin wanted to run away, bury his head in his arms and cry, beg his father to not make him do this, but that wasn't an option. Instead, he choked back the tears and swallowed his heart, tracing Kyungsoo's ribs with his fingers and running a warm tongue over the vertebrae of his neck as his husband looked out the window at the domed sky, filling his eyes with the stars. Jongin felt him growing hard against his leg and allowed a hand to creep down, fingers wrapping around the length and caressing it; Kyungsoo's eyes flickered shut and Jongin allowed himself to pretend.
Just for now, I'll be loved.
He left Kyungsoo's neck, ignoring the soft protesting moans and sliding down to part the robe and wrap his lips around the head of his husband's shivering cock, the skin warm and soft as he sucked it, running his tongue around and resting his hands on Kyungsoo's beautiful thighs to steady himself as he took it down, the head bumping the back of his throat as he finally allowed his eyes to tear. He felt tentative hands on his head, the fingers spasming but Kyungsoo was being such a gentleman; Jongin wanted him to work his fingers through it, to scratch his scalp lightly with his fingers, pull at his hair until it hurt, but he knew that if he got up to say it he wouldn't be able to anyway. I can't ask anything of you. So he continued to suck and run his tongue around the hardness, tracing the thick vein underneath and bobbing his head to swallow him down and then rise to nibble at the head again, tonguing the slit, until Kyungsoo's fingers were spasming uncontrollably, still resting gently on his head. It was was the worst pain Jongin had ever felt, for the hurt to sit in his chest like a heavy weight while he was surrounded by such softness and warmth.
He let himself slip just a bit then, driving himself as far as he could manage until Kyungsoo bottomed out down his throat; Jongin couldn't breathe at all but he swallowed instead and felt Kyungsoo's muscles tense before he came in a long warm line down Jongin's throat - he had to pull himself off or risk actually choking but he swallowed as much as he could and then cleaned the rest off gently with his tongue as his husband lay boneless on the white sheets.
Jongin sat there then, between his husband's legs, tasting cum on his lips and feeling his own hardness curving up towards his stomach as his fingers trembled and he didn't know if he could keep doing this, but Kyungsoo's eyes looked at him, gentle yet intense in their questioning, and Jongin managed to take a kind of rasping breath, hoping he could pass the catch in his throat off as the result of amateur deepthroating as he crawled carefully around Kyungsoo's foot to the nightstand, his eyes catching the red of the six roses there and darting away as his fingers found the condoms and lube.
Fingers slick, he nudged his husband's knees up gently with the backs of his hands before tentatively inserting one shaking finger, gaze trained on the expression in Kyungsoo's dark gaze as the single digit slid in through the soft, tight ring of muscle and into the warm darkness. Kyungsoo took a deep breath and there was a moment's pause before he nodded softly. Jongin crooked his index finger, working it around gently to loosen the tightness; he leaned forward to leave soft trailing kisses along the insides of Kyungsoo's thighs before slipping in a second digit, waiting a breath before scissoring the fingers, curling them to find that spongy bundle of nerves and press. Kyungsoo moaned, the sound going right to Jongin's trembling cock and he bit back an echoing moan, teeth breaking skin as he slid a third finger in and brushed them again and again past his husband's prostate until Kyungsoo managed to grasp his shoulder with a spasming hand, gasping, "enough".
Jongin reached for the condom then but Kyungsoo stopped him, Jongin looking up, startled.
"We need an heir," Kyungsoo said matter-of-factly, as Jongin almost stopped pretending, the tightness back in his throat and the scratchy warmth behind his eyes as he fought to blink and nod. I'm just the person you had to marry.
His fingers shook for all the wrong reasons as he slicked himself up and gently guided his cock to slide into his husband, the skin against skin so intimate, so wrong. He waited for Kyungsoo to get used to the feeling before gently beginning to slide in and out, making sure to press against the spot that coaxed the deepest moans from his husband's throat, the sound a beautiful music in Jongin's ears, a song that wasn't for him. He was just a bystander, collateral damage of the heart. Each thrust worked at the cracks in his splintering heart until the last, soul-crushing time. Bottoming out in Kyungsoo, skin against skin and joined so closely together, Kyungsoo almost groaned as he came, shooting white all over his stomach in a delicate stream, Jongin's heart fracturing into a million pieces. His heart shattered as he pumped warmth deep into his husband until he was drained dry, head full of tears that he couldn't shed.
He gave Kyungsoo one last kiss on the knee before gently pulling out. Kyungsoo maintained his position, clenching slightly even though he was still fluttering post-orgasmically, and Jongin could tell that he was serious. He blinked rapidly as he first cleaned the cum off Kyungsoo's stomach with a wet cloth and then got a pillow from the head of the bed and carefully rolled his husband over onto it so that the soft skin of his backside rose slightly into the air but he could relax limply into the mattress, everything safely inside. I am just a means to an end. Jongin let one single tear trickle down his cheek as he pulled the blanket up over his husband so that Kyungsoo wouldn't catch a chill, before slipping out to the bathroom with the excuse that he was sticky and wanted to wash up.
He finally let himself collapse onto the floor of the shower, scalding water hitting the skin of his back, wracking sobs torn from his chest and stomach as he poured his aching chest out on to the floor - watching it trail away with the water down the drain where it disappeared from view.
Invisible, like me.
...grieved it on its way
now
Jongin turns his back to the white bed, the roses, the whispering night, and slips out of their room where they have never been together; they've only been two strangers lying side by side, staggered breathing and heartbeats never matching up. The bamboo is cold under his feet as he makes his way to the office, Kyungsoo's office, hoping against hope for a note or something; the room is cold, window wide open as the wind stirs up the white papers scattered on the floor. They're all blank. Jongin bends down mechanically to gather them up into a neat pile, setting them on the edge of the desk, but a gust of wind billows in and they escape their rigid order and cascade with a hushed sigh back onto the floor.
Jongin is about to turn away when a flash of something catches his eye and he stops, frozen.
There's a single platinum band sitting on the middle of the desk. Jongin looks down at the matching one on his finger.
Semper fidelis.
...frail deeds...
marriage
After the war ended - whole planets lost, colonies destroyed, industries crumbled despite the brevity - the United Star Alliance and the Post Andromedea Union signed a treaty of armistice. Both sides had lost as much as the other. There would be no retribution here.
Jongin was sent for by his father, guards arriving at the university unannounced, and a quiet message sliding over his screen giving him barely a moment's warning.
your childhood is over
On the authority - command - of his father, he was summarily graduated with an honours degree in universal literature, rather than the doctorate he'd been working towards. Instead, he'd been given an exhausting crash course in politics and economics and everything he had been allowed to neglect, safe in his own safe little forgotten world of words and paragraphs and the shadows of trees, while stars were exploding.
Now the sky was dark.
Alpha Centauri Bb had been mostly spared, but Alpha Centauri Cc was a smoking ruin, the surface covered by a nuclear-active mess that it was proposed might even endanger passing ships. It was hard being home and living in a dome because his birth planet was too hot, at 1200 degrees Celsius surface temperature, to be habitable, even with the slow terra-forming process which had been negatively affected by the arms race. As a person of peace and quiet, poetry and flowers, Jongin felt like a bird in a burning cage.
The majesty and burning...
He thought about Kyungsoo all the time. Life in the relatively small space station planet orbiting WISE 1049-5319 had been quiet, the bright flashes in the sky a remote possibility of death, his only concern the boy with the stars in his eyes. Where are you? But there had been no way to find out. Jongin had kept his vase of artificial roses by his bedside, the pale light filtering through the veil of ivy growing around his window turning all the colours green. What does a green rose mean? He looked through scans of old books, fingers itching to touch the paper like he'd been able to back on Earth. I hope that, wherever you are, you're growing roses.
Jongin had always hoped, but he never really expected to see Kyungsoo again. The rose that, in an attempt to pluck it from the stem, only leaves you with red staining your finger and a scar, memory engraved on skin. And now that the war was over, he was entirely under his father's control. A puppet on steel strings.
your marriage partner has been decided
He had always known he would be married off to political advantage. The United Star Alliance might have emerged with a superior economic position and was again prospering, but the political situation, despite the armistice, was still tentative. He was informed that he would be marrying the eldest child of Post Andromeda Union's Lady Chancellor, rather like cattle being herded off to market, Jongin thought, remembering similar themes in pre-interstellar literature.
A pale girl with limpid eyes, he dreamed sometimes at night, tossing and turning as the sun burned the sky outside the thin dome that kept him from death. She'll cling onto me forever. No one remarked on his ragged fingernails if he kept his hands busy with screens and pockets.
...the sea tumbling in harness
Taking the intersystem ship to meet his fiancée, Jongin clutched onto the armrests with white fingers and wished with all his heart please let it be someone I can like, even a little. As he walked down the white corridors of the spaceship, the echoes of feet all around him, he tried to remember to breathe. But when he saw the person waiting for him, the breath caught in his throat and crawled back down to lodge itself like ice in his unshielded heart.
"May I present to you, Lord Kai, the Chancellor-Elect D.O., your future husband." The guard nodded as Jongin bowed deeply, the gesture perhaps too lingering as he frantically worked to control his expression before looking up. Kyungsoo was looking at him; his eyes as big and intense as ever, but there were spaces between the stars now. I wonder what horrors your eyes have seen.
Jongin couldn't think, his head an implosion of thoughts and hopes, and it was all he could do to take out the simple yet costly platinum band. If I had known it was you... He presented it to his fiancé with hands that still managed to tremble, despite the fact that he was biting his lip so hard he tasted rust. Kyungsoo looked at him and smiled, his face friendly and his eyes curious.
You don't remember me. He dropped his hands away from his fiancé's lingering touch, eyes following the shadows his fingers made on the floor, blocking the light.
...last light breaking
The ring on his finger felt like the final nail in his coffin, a permanent reminder of something he would never be able to have. Kyungsoo smiled at him as they stood next to each other for the official ceremony.
"Are you alright, Kai?" His fiancé, almost-husband, asked, brow wrinkled in concern at Jongin's pale face. That's not my name.
"I'm okay, D.O.," he managed to choke out, the jagged fingernails of the hand Kyungsoo couldn't see digging into his palm until he broke the skin.
"You can call me Kyungsoo," the older one grinned, nudging him with what appeared to be affectionate camaraderie. Jongin only nodded and blinked back the sudden rush of wetness to his eyes. I can do this. He didn't look at his father, sitting behind him in the first row, or his mother who had declined to leave the safety of her refuge space ship. I have to do this.
He didn't see how he could.
...might have danced...
now
Jongin backs out of the office like he's seen a ghost. The ghost reminding him that he is not part of Kyungsoo's life at all. He's learning to run an empire while Kyungsoo has a younger sister for that; he has his research and his correspondents and a world where Jongin has never belonged.
And now I guess I never will.
The last door on the left is closed. He doesn't want to open it, but he does anyway. Why do we always do the things that cause us the most pain? Jongin sometimes wishes he'd never fallen in love at all.
The door swings open with a soft sigh, the room shadowed, silhouettes of a mobile spinning gently above a small bassinette. The pain in his chest coalesces into a burning agony. Everything he has ever wanted, ever dreamed, but set on its head so that every joy is only heartbreak. He imagines Kyungsoo's eternal eyes on a tiny face with his nose and the image stabs at him until he's sure he must be bleeding.
The wind rustles the chimes hanging in the window and they sound like tears.
...fierce tears...
this morning
Jongin lay beside his husband in the bed, watching him sleep, the gentle raising and lowering of his chest with each breath, the soft swelling of his stomach. His fingers ached to touch, his fingers were hovering over the silk before he remembered himself, tearing his hand away. He rolled over instead, only listening to the sound of Kyungsoo breathing. He didn't sleep very much anymore, not when Kyungsoo was sleeping and he could pretend, under cover of darkness. Pretend that you love me.
A dark as deep
Jongin woke to the sound of retching from the bathroom, the sound less frequent than during the first three months. The first time he had rushed over to the small room, hovering over his husband, Kyungsoo's pain and discomfort twisting his stomach with guilt as he tried to be helpful until finally Kyungsoo had looked up at him. "I'm okay by myself," he'd said, the words hitting Jongin like a blow to the stomach. Kyungsoo had even smiled, face drawn, before grimacing and turning back to the toilet. Now, instead of trying to soothe his husband, Jongin stumbled over to the washroom in the hallway, making sure the door was locked before he let himself fall apart.
He was used to it by now, used to rebuilding his composure before turning out the light and leaving the small white room with the mirror he never looked at anymore. The door clicked shut behind him.
Your breath was shed
Kyungsoo was smiling at the island in the kitchen, feet dangling from the stool as his legs peeked out of his robe. The robe Jongin hadn't touched since that time; the only time. He was sipping from a glass, the sun catching the prisms and casting rainbows over Kyungsoo's hands. His eyes were a little shadowed but that was all.
"Are you okay?" he asked Jongin. Jongin only nodded, going over to the cabinet for a mug. He'd only started drinking coffee eight months ago and he still couldn't get used to the taste. His mouth was filled with bitterness.
"I have to see my father today," Jongin said, sitting at the other end of the island. His feet couldn't reach the floor either.
Kyungsoo nodded. "I have a meeting later," he said, pressing the tips of his fingers to his temples, the veins on the backs of his hands standing out. Jongin wanted to say something but he felt like he didn't deserve to. "I left you some supper in the refrigerator," Kyungsoo said, smiling, "but I'll be back before you get home." I don't deserve anything from you.
Kyungsoo was still in the kitchen when Jongin stopped to say goodbye. He hummed, looking at the screen of his phone, his protruding belly making his perch at the counter awkward, but he didn't seem to mind, smiling at something Jongin couldn't see.
My love...
"Goodbye," Jongin said softly, not wanting to intrude into Kyungsoo's private happiness. But his husband heard him anyway, lifting his gaze to smile at him, eyes crinkled.
"Be safe," he called.
Jongin was too good at pretending.
...blinding sight
now
Standing there in the dark, his husband gone, Jongin doesn't know what to do. I can't let you go, I can't. But he's never had him to begin with, and the baby only makes everything worse, Kyungsoo saddled with a responsibility he'd never asked for. Jongin is picking his jacket up off the floor and sliding his bare feet into cold shoes before he has time to change his mind. The last shuttle leaves in twenty minutes. Maybe there's still time. I know you don't love me but I just want to make sure you're okay. I'll take all the responsibility for this. He thinks about the political shitstorm and his head aches, but if it's for the one he loves, he can take the fall. He swallows, blinking a few times and taking a deep breath. Behind him, the empty house echoes with silence.
Jongin's hand is on the door handle when it opens outwards; he's briefly blinded by the light over the door. When his vision clears, he can't move. He's completely forgotten how.
Kyungsoo is standing on the doorstep, a single rose in his hands. A real rose. The petals are velvety in the dark, yellow with red tips. Friendship turning into love.
"You...you..?" Jongin doesn't know what to say, he doesn't know how to shape into words the twisting mass of pain and confusion in his chest, threaded through with a daring, brilliant hope.
"Jongin," Kyungsoo says, only one word, but it splits the night apart. Jongin. My name.
"Do you...?" He almost can't bear to ask.
"Of course I remember you," Kyungsoo continues, grinning. Jongin's legs are shaking and he grips onto the door frame for support.
"You...remember?" His voice is barely a whisper over the rustling of leaves as the wind rises in a surprise gust, warm air between the chill.
"I thought you'd forgotten?" Kyungsoo wrinkles his forehead. "You always seemed so conflicted about our marriage, ever since you walked into that room."
"No..." Jongin breathes, the panicky feeling bubbling under the surface, an old destructive friend. "But I thought you didn't remember."
Kyungsoo laughs, his face curling up into happiness. "You should have said something!" His face is warm, his eyes bright and full of stars. He's so beautiful, standing there in the light, and the start of something warm and soft plants itself like a seed in Jongin's chest as Kyungsoo hands him the flower.
"I love you," he says, finally, the words like a balm to his tattered throat as he grips the stem of the rose tightly. There are no thorns.
"I love you too," Kyungsoo says, "I always have." He steps through the open door, letting it fall shut behind him. There, in the dark, he rests his hands on Jongin's shoulder and reaches his face up to meet Jongin's mouth in the sweetest of kisses.
It feels like the first time.
There's a soft fluttering against Jongin's stomach, and he looks down in surprise. Kyungsoo follows his gaze and smiles in amusement.
"The baby is saying hello," he says. Jongin's eyes fill with tears and he doesn't even try to blink them back as he sinks to his knees, letting himself touch the swelling of Kyungsoo's belly for the first time.
"Hello Baby," he whispers against the surprisingly firm skin, his hand resting gently on the surface. There's another gentle nudge, as the baby says hello back. The grief and the joy and the yearning pour out of his eyes in a cleansing waterfall as he kneels there on the ground, Kyungsoo sinking down to wrap his arms around his husband, humming a soothing lullaby into the softness of his hair.
"I love you," Jongin has to say again, so many words that he's held back for so long.
"I know," Kyungsoo reassures him, pulling his husband's head down to rest on the cool fabric covering his shoulder. Between them, the baby flutters its happiness.
End notes: The title Anhelo means "yearning" in Spanish. Excerpt texts are by Dylan Thomas and as follows: Do not go gentle into that good night*, Fern Hill*, A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London*, Poem [Your breath was shed]*. Semper fidelis means "always faithful" in Latin. The meanings of the colours and numbers of roses, as well as the thornless rose, are all drawn from this page.