[infinite] all that glitters

[akaanee]

all that glitters
woohyun/sunggyu ; pg ; fantasy, romance ; 4.6k~ words
Sunggyu spins dreams into children’s sleep, fills their nights with hope and wonder, and lets himself crumble apart for Woohyun because the dreamsand isn’t made for mending hearts. Sandman AU. Written for infinitesanta 2012 holiday exchange.



all that glitters.

There’s a light dusting of snow on the ground, a soft blanket of white covering the pavement in irregular patches. The night is young but the street ahead is dark, beams of yellow street lamps only covering a radius of two meters from where it stands. It’s only started snowing a few hours ago, but the ground is slippery already. Sunggyu doesn’t need to worry; his feet floats twenty centimeters above the ground, fine, golden sand trailing along in his wake and then disappearing to nothingness.

He hums a cheery tune, but even if he decides to sing out loud nobody will hear anyway. He hears crying from above him, and looks up to see the silhouette of a woman bouncing a baby in her arms from behind a curtain, and the baby’s loud cries pierces the night. Sunggyu frowns, lips turned downward, upset, and then propels himself into the air, right outside the window. He floats straight through the glass, as if it is never there in the first place.

The mother of the baby is looking a little lost, strands of her hair falling over her eyes as she desperately tries to calm the child. Sunggyu sighs and floats closer, and neither of them sees him.

He reaches out his hand, and grains of sand appear at his fingertips. Sunggyu sprinkles the golden, almost powder-like sand into the baby’s eyes while he sings an old tune, and the child quiets immediately, round eyes blinking in wonder. Sunggyu can see the dreams he creates for the baby reflected in her eyes, faces of her parents, her grandmother, the milkman who comes every day and plays peek-a-boo with her.

Her mother almost collapses with relief as the baby falls back to sleep, and she places her back in her cot, kissing each of her chubby cheeks before exiting the room. Sunggyu gives her a two-fingered salute as the door closes behind her, but she doesn’t see, of course she doesn’t. He turns back to the baby sleeping soundly with the sand creating dreams above her head, morphing into shapes of a rainbow and a horse and some dogs chasing their tails. He smiles as he taps a finger to her little nose, before he whooshes away out of the room and into the moonlight, the dream sand enveloping his entire form like waves.

One night as Sunggyu’s doing his rounds distributing dreams to children, he passes by the low window of a basement room, the light from inside it flickering. He pauses, curious, and floats down to the window to peer inside.

There’s a man sitting curled on an old mattress in the room, knees drawn to his chest, and he’s watching the flames of an old oil lamp quiver in it’s shade. His eyes are half-lidded and sad, heartbreakingly so, and his right cheek press to his knee as his head loll sideways in a sigh. Sadness is an everyday occurrence though, so Sunggyu shrugs and went on with his rounds.

But when he passes by the window again seven hours later, the man is still sitting crouched in the same position, though his oil lamp had died out, and the room is bathed in almost-darkness. The light of the moon hit’s the man’s face on his right side, and he looks eerie, skin almost translucent. There are what looked like wetness running down his cheeks, and Sunggyu bites his lip, hesitant.

His sand isn’t supposed to be used on adults, it is purely for children and he doesn’t know what effect it will have on grown-ups, but he guesses it wouldn’t hurt to try. Sunggyu clicks his fingers and the sand comes to his fingertips, and with a few flicks of his wrist, comes alive in the form of a girl in a summer dress, and he urges the dreamsand through a crack in the window towards the man. The golden sand dances around the man’s head, where it disperses into sparks of light and then disappearing into nothing. A few moments later, the man yawns and falls back into the mattress, asleep.

Sunggyu smiles, and feeling pleased, takes off into the night.

When he returns the next night, eager to see the improvement of the man, he is shocked to see that the melancholy that lingers in his eyes hasn’t disappeared, if not, it had worsened. The man has once again lit his old lamp, sitting on the same lumpy mattress, and intrigued, Sunggyu slips in to find out for himself what is wrong with him.

He settles on the mattress beside the man, crosses his legs, and rests his head in his hands. Sunggyu prides himself on being able to read emotions well, as he hangs around children whose emotions shows clearly on their faces. There’s something akin to deep, aching loneliness etched on the lines of the man’s face, along with a hint of disappointment and self-hate. Sunggyu blinks quickly in surprise. He has never seen so much negative feelings in one human before.

In the end he takes pity on the stranger and conjures up his sand to put him to sleep, shapes it to the same girl like yesterday. The sand-girl dances around his head and burst into glitters that rain on the man’s crown, and his eyelids droop.

Sunggyu was about to nod in approval when the man suddenly shakes his head quickly and slaps his face with his hands, and he sounds like he’s keeping himself from sleeping.

“No.” Sunggyu hears him mutter to himself, running his hands repeatedly through his hair and rubbing his eyes wearily. “No, no, no.”

“Hey!” Sunggyu shouts indignantly, but he goes unheard, as always. He frowns unhappily when the stranger gets up to the bathroom, and the sound of splashing water is heard. A moment later he’s back, face wet and cold water dripping into the front of his shirt. Sunggyu conjures up more sand this time, enough to put ten children to sleep (just to be sure), and doesn’t bother shaping them into anything before dumping them all on top of the man’s head. That should give him a good night of dreamless sleep, Sunggyu thinks, humming happily to himself as he arranges the man’s body on the mattress after he passes out from the sand.

He’s out of breath and exhausted by the time he reaches the moon after he’s finished the rest of his rounds, but that’s okay.

When Sunggyu’s made sure the man is deeply asleep the next night (he’s too stubborn for his own good and wouldn’t sleep), he puts his hands on his waist and huffs, staring contemplatively at the man’s face. What could possibly be causing him such misery that makes him reject sleep? It doesn’t make sense, people usually sleep to escape reality, where everything is numbed and hazy.

Sunggyu quickly zooms out of the room and makes his round of sprinkling dreamsand into children’s eyes, and merely skims over each of them. He’s back in the basement room in record time, and hesitates at what he’s about to do. But then Sunggyu shrugs, just this once, he thinks. Just to sate his curiosity.

He opens up a portal to the man’s dreams, and deftly slips inside.

It’s dark and misty inside, and he couldn’t see a thing. He did put the man to dreamless sleep after all. But Sunggyu doesn’t like this, isn’t used to this bleakness, so he holds out his right hand, palm up, and clicks his left hand above it. Fine golden sand trickle down to form a pile on his palm, and Sunggyu conjures up an image of a cozy city cafe with the winter scenery outside in his mind. He blows away the small mound of sand and they glitter as they leave the surface of his hand, only to start forming the said cafe around him, blooming into the images he has in his brain.

He blows in little details he missed out before as he walks around the cafe in search of the man whose dreams he invaded. Sunggyu’s a little out of breath; he’s used so much of his sand for the night on one man already, and it’s starting to take a toll on him. He blows his bangs away from his face and wipes sweat from his brow, ducking under the marble counter to step behind the till.

A moment later the man steps in, the bells ringing above his head as he enters, bringing with him a flurry of cold air and some snow that flutter by his legs. He looks cute, Sunggyu thinks, flashing a bright grin at the man’s direction. He’s all bundled up in a thick woollen scarf and a dark burgundy coat, hands stuffed to his pockets. However his eyes are still empty and sad like in real life, and Sunggyu’s smile dims a little.

“Hi there!” Sunggyu greets him cheerily, and the man returns his smile back somewhat hesitantly.

“Hi,” the stranger replies, voice quiet and guarded. He squints at the chalkboard menu hanging behind the counter a moment, seeming to consider what drink he’s going to get, although Sunggyu already knows what he’s going to order anyway. “Can I get a, uh, soy latte on decaf, please?”

Sunggyu nods, pushes some buttons on the till and receives the man’s money. As he’s about to leave to mix the coffee, he stops in mid-step, one foot in the air. “Can I get your name, please?”

The man looks up at him, head tilted to the side. And then he smiles softly, looking nothing like his miserable self back in real life. His smile is so lovely, Sunggyu notes, and despairs over how he doesn’t smile like that in reality.

“Woohyun,” he says, and oh, even his voice is lovely.

Woohyun in this dream is somewhat different to the Woohyun that’s sleeping in the lumpy mattress back in that small basement room. He’s-- well, not more happy, but rather, less sad. Although the lonely, melancholic feeling still lingers in his aura, carried into his subconscious from reality. Sunggyu likes this Woohyun better. At least he always has the tiniest hint of a smile on the corner of his lips, while the other Woohyun is just downright unhappy.

At five thirty pm, when the cafe is mostly empty, Sunggyu slices a piece of apple pie into a small ceramic plate and heads to Woohyun’s table. He’s reading a book, one hand holding the paperback open while the other stirs his second cup of latte idly. He’s taken off his coat, and underneath he wears a cream cashmere sweater that seems to reflect the light from the yellow lamp of the coffee house, giving him a soft glow.

Woohyun looks up when the small plate is placed on the table, and gives the grinning Sunggyu a confused look.

“I didn’t order this.”

“I know,” Sunggyu nods. “Don’t worry, it’s on the house. I thought you might need some sugar in your systems.”

Woohyun is silent for a moment. Sunggyu wonders if Woohyun actually dislikes sweet food and he shifts his feet uncomfortably, starting to feel embarrassed. But then Woohyun sighs and slips a bookmark into his page, and picks up the fork.

“Thank you,” Woohyun smiles for the second time that day, and Sunggyu’s heart flips.

The next night Woohyun learns his name, stuttered out by Sunggyu who trips over his own shoes when Woohyun asks him to join him on the table. Sunggyu sits down on the opposite chair hesitantly, thinking that he’d gone a little too far with his meddling, but then Woohyun smiles faintly and the thought is pushed to the back of his mind.

They have meaningless chat all afternoon, and when it’s time for Woohyun to wake up, Sunggyu tears down the world he created and exits through the portal before the real Woohyun wakes.

Sunggyu wouldn’t have enough time to rest before he has to go out and distribute dreams again, and he’s exhausted by holding up Woohyun’s dream-world, but he stays anyway to watch Woohyun wake, rub his eyes sleepily, and head to the bathroom, his skin not so gaunt and pale anymore.

And this goes on for many nights, this little routine of theirs. Sunggyu can’t help himself, it’s like there’s this magnetic pull to slip into Woohyun’s subconscious and at least check up on him, see that he’s doing well. Though every time he wants to leave early, Woohyun always looks disappointed, so Sunggyu ends up staying for longer than he initially intended to anyway.

The dreams seem to be doing good to the real life Woohyun as well. He doesn’t look so melancholic anymore, with color returning to his skin and smiles now genuine. Although Sunggyu never knows what was the reason behind Woohyun’s depression in the first place, he’s glad that he’s getting better.

But the same can’t be said for Sunggyu.

The dreams he creates for Woohyun and the world in it drains him of all the energy he has, exhausts him until he is left empty and hollow every night because the dreamsand isn’t made for adults. The dreamsand isn’t designed to mend the souls of grown-ups but to ensure that children won’t end up broken in the future.

Sunggyu loses a lot of weight very quickly, is constantly out of breath, and he doesn’t even have the power to fly back to the moon once he’s done, opting to sit in a corner of Woohyun’s basement room until it’s time to head out again instead. Woohyun will be alright now, he knows. Woohyun’s subconscious will spin good dreams for him again and Sunggyu should go back to the children who don’t have that ability yet, who relies on him to give them a good night sleep.

But every time he stumbles out of the portal, tired and panting, he’ll see Woohyun wake with a smile and greet the world with his laughter, and Sunggyu can’t find it in him to leave.

Tonight Sunggyu is trying something new. After he puts Woohyun to sleep, he slips into Woohyun’s dream and constructs the same basement room as in real life, adds in the little details so that everything looks the same as it does in real life. He then checks his reflection in the mirror, and frowns at his hollow cheeks, at the bones of his wrist jutting out of the skin, as if to tear out of it. He huffs and covers himself up with the sand, disguising the changes.

A moment later Woohyun walks in, holding a DVD box in his hand. He grins sheepishly and rubs the back of his head, looking apologetic.

“Sorry, turns out my neighbour Sungjong got it,” he says, waving the DVD case around. Sunggyu laughs a little, reaching out for the bowl of popcorn on the table.

“It’s alright,” he says, and scoots over on the sofa to make room for Woohyun after he’s finished setting up the movie. They’re watching an old romantic-comedy, and Sunggyu’s stomach flips a little in excitement; he’s only ever seen this kind of thing before, and to experience it firsthand would be fun. The two finish the popcorn between them ten minutes into the movie, laugh at it, and drink their brightly colored slurpees in one go. Sunggyu gets a brain freeze.

So it’s only after a while that he realizes Woohyun’s staring intently at him, a small smile on his lips, the expression gentle. He’s completely changed, Sunggyu thinks. So different from the Woohyun he first met, the one with deadened eyes and blank stares, who refuses to sleep and surrender to the blissful numbness of dreams.

“I really want to kiss you right now,” Woohyun says, very softly and slowly, like he’s trying to put meaning into each and every syllable, like he’s lacing his emotions into every letter. Sunggyu’s breath hitches. He tries not to think about how Woohyun would forget his face when he wakes up, his name and voice and even the dream, and pushes back the thought that tells him that this isn’t even real in the first place as he cups Woohyun’s face with his hands and kisses him deeper.

The next day, as Sunggyu settles down to another corner of Woohyun’s room to avoid the sun from the window (he’s more of a child of the moon, and never quite liked the sun’s harsh rays), there is a knock on the door. Three raps upon the wood that has Woohyun looking up from the pan he’s sizzling some sausages in. He opens the door and exclaims loudly, “Sungjongie!”

Woohyun gives way to a young boy, who, in Sunggyu’s opinion, is very pretty indeed. His hair is neatly styled to the side, shirt primly tucked into his jeans and his shoes a shiny black. Though he looks somewhat thin and underfed, his cardigan almost hanging off his narrow shoulders, his smile is wide and infectious, spreading warmth around the room.

“Hyung, how are you?” he asks, hugging Woohyun briefly, and then depositing the plastic bags he’s carrying into the counter. Sunggyu cranes his neck interestedly as he pulls out some vegetables, chicken, and more food. Woohyun is staring at him as well.

“I’m... fine? But, uh what are these for?” He scratches the back of his head, gesturing at the food laid out on the counter.

Sungjong turns to him, frowning. His judging stare continues to pierce Woohyun as he reaches for a cutting board and a knife. He looks a little ridiculous, and Sunggyu snickers from his place at the corner, amused.

“Fine? Are you sure?” Sungjong asks again, peering into Woohyun’s face. His frown deepens when Woohyun laughs instead of answering his question, probably wondering if Woohyun has finally descended into insanity.

“I’m alright, Sungjongie,” he answers finally, voice soft as he ruffles the younger’s hair.

Sungjong stays stiff for a while longer, and then his body relaxes, before he crashes into Woohyun’s chest, almost sobbing. Woohyun chuckles as he winds his arms around Sungjong, tucking the boy’s head under his chin. Sunggyu smiles at the heartwarming sight, settling more comfortably into his corner, as he curls his legs into his chest.

“I’m so glad, hyung,” he hears Sungjong’s muffled voice, and his voice is thick, like he’s crying. He probably is. “I’m going to scrap that poor excuse of a dinner you’re making and cook you a grand feast, just you wait.”

A week later another friend Woohyun comes over, face sleepy as he drops a bag of Chinese take-out on the counter. By now Sunggyu’s so weak he can barely keep himself sitting propped up against the wall, thin chest rising and falling irregularly in shallow breaths, but he can see that this friend is very handsome, smile charming and pretty eyes that disappear to crescent-moons when they scrunch up in laughter.

Woohyun looks surprised to see him, but he shakes his head as though to clear his thoughts and immediately begins poking around the plastic bag. He takes out two boxes of lo mein noodles, exclaiming delightedly while his friend pulls out two cans of coke from the fridge.

“Hey thanks, Myungsoo!” he says, humming happily as he busies himself transferring the noodles into plates. Myungsoo watches him putter around the kitchen with his head tilted to the side, fondly, an expression that looks like relief on his face and he’s smiling softly at Woohyun’s cheerful disposition.

He’s really changed for the better. Sunggyu smiles along with Myungsoo although the pull of the muscles on his gaunt face is rather painful.

“You’re better,” Myungsoo says, and Woohyun stops at the statement, like he’s thinking, before he runs a hand through his hair and exhales a shaky laugh.

“Yeah, I am.”

“I thought I was going to die with guilt.”

Woohyun scrunches his nose at that, poking Myungsoo on the chest with a chopstick, mood playful again. “What happened between us is in the past. We don’t-- we won’t work out, anyway. Let’s not get back to that.”

“I’m still sorry for putting you through that mess,” Myungsoo sighs, twiddling his thumbs. “It’s so selfish of me, I’m sorry for suddenly breaking up with you like that--”

But before he can finish his sentence, Woohyun had pushed Myungsoo’s plate of noodles towards him and sauntered off with his own to sit on the lumpy mattress, and turns on the television, as though he didn’t listen to a word Myungsoo just said. Myungsoo stares after him, a little dumbstruck.

“Hyung?” he calls out weakly, and Woohyun pats on the space next to him, already munching at his own dinner. Sunggyu watches with amusement as Myungsoo walks meekly over with shuffling steps and drops to the mattress, jostling Woohyun beside him.

Myungsoo plays with his food as Woohyun keeps shovelling the food down his throat, looking uncomfortable. Sunggyu almost feels sorry for the poor boy. But eventually Woohyun swallows down the noodle in his mouth, and wipes his mouth delicately with a tissue before he speaks.

“There is nothing to be sorry about,” Woohyun says, slowly. “We’re bros, yeah? And we’ll keep it that way.”

Sunggyu chuckles at Woohyun’s words, filling himself brim with affection for the man, even when his light laughter turns to coughs that makes his chest hurt. Myungsoo is tense for a while, and then slowly unwinds, shoulders slumping and nodding vigorously as his appetite seem to return and begins eating finally.

“Why are you here anyway?” Woohyun asks later, as they’re lounging on the mattress with their empty plates on the floor and their stomachs blissfully full, watching an old rerun of Come to Play. Myungsoo turns to him, frowning confusedly. “I mean, it’s Friday night. Why aren’t you with your boyfriend getting trashed in some bar or something?”

Myungsoo shrugs, the smile returning to his handsome face. “For old time’s sake,” he replies easily, and Woohyun chuckles. “And also because Sungyeol is busy tonight. I don’t know, he has this annual company party, or something.”

“Fair enough.” Woohyun nods, as they return their focus back on the show. It’s eight pm, and some children will be going to sleep now, so Sunggyu crawls over to the window to start delivering dreams. The short distance of change in position makes him heave for breath and knees tremble. He can’t fly out to distribute the dreams anymore, and sends them out from Woohyun’s room instead.

The crowd of glimmering, golden tigers and lions and bears, horses, birds, glide out of the open window towards each children, roaring and neighing and screeching in unison. They don’t shine as bright as they used to anymore, the glow of the dreamsand in which they are made of a little dull and dim but it’s alright, they will do. The dreamsand without him to guide them are slow, and they sometimes get lost, but what can he do? Sunggyu feels bad for putting the children second in his priorities list, but then he hears Woohyun laugh at something that happened on the tv and his chest aches, because he knows he can’t just pull away. It’s not as simple as that.

“What brought the change, hyung?” Myungsoo asks Woohyun, after they’re done doubling up in laughter on the mattress. Woohyun’s remaining chuckles slips past his lips before he heaves a huge sigh and puts on his thinking pose: legs crossed, elbows resting on knees and cheeks puffed out. He looks so ridiculously cute Sunggyu wants to poke his cheeks and kiss him, if he could.

“Have you ever had one of those mornings, when you wake up and think, well, life’s gotta move on! and then the realization will just hit you hard?” Woohyun answers after a while, but Myungsoo shakes his head. “Like, when you were sleeping, there’s this dream that you don’t even remember, you don’t remember what happened in the dream, what you did, who you met, but... in the morning it makes you realize that this is my life, and I’m not living it?”

In his corner, Sunggyu laughs and covers his face with his hands, but tears are streaming down his face, the salty liquid dripping into his open mouth and lap. He’s done it, he pulled Woohyun out of his misery with the price of his existence, with himself, but that’s okay. It’s Woohyun, beautiful, brilliant, wonderful Woohyun so it’s okay. Sunggyu really wants to kiss him right now, his whole being is aching for the feel of Woohyun’s lips on his own even if it’s just a dream.

Myungsoo clearly still doesn’t understand, but he’s also clearly glad that Woohyun’s okay now, that he’s back to his old self. Woohyun is still talking, but at this point, his voice had gone soft, his eyes gentle, and the corners of his mouth are lilting upwards in a tender smile.

“Dreams like that... makes me realize that maybe I can love again.”

“I love you.”

Woohyun says the words to his lips, spills them into Sunggyu’s mouth until he feels light headed and giddy from the feeling, breath catching in his throat. Then he repeats them again. Again and again and again until Sunggyu has to pull away from the kiss to slow down his frighteningly erratic heartbeat.

Woohyun’s already leaning closer again, so Sunggyu quickly stutters out, “I know.”

He barely has enough strength to hold up tonight’s dream, and the world around them is showing it. Woohyun’s basement room is slowly disintegrating, the wallpaper giving away to golden sand, the paint on the door peeling, though dream-Woohyun doesn’t seem to notice it. Just one more night, Sunggyu had prayed as he constructed the dream with what power he has left. Just one more.

“I’m so in love with you,” Sunggyu chokes out desperately, and Woohyun’s smile, the kind of smile that brightens up the entire room is worth it. It’s worth the sacrifice.

Sunggyu stumbles straight out of the dream at dawn, panting and his whole being aching. Before he left Woohyun’s subconscious he leaves some of his things behind, his bracelet, his watch, and quickly sketches a smiley face on a post-it note to stick in Woohyun’s mirror. Later, when he wakes up, Woohyun wouldn’t remember Sunggyu, but he’ll wonder if the smiley on the post-it is real or just a part of his dream. Later, when he’s asleep, he’ll see the note on the mirror with the tiny S scrawled on the corner, and he won’t remember Sunggyu then either, but that’s alright. Because now he can have good dreams even without Sunggyu’s help.

Present time, Sunggyu’s heaving on the floor of the basement room, body trembling, and Woohyun’s sleeping figure is raised a little above him on the mattress. He thinks he can see Woohyun’s smile in the dark.

His body is crumbling away into golden sand, like weary rocks that has been battered by the sea for many, many years, and he succumbs to the feeling. His last thought is Woohyun’s smile and laughter, and how they brighten up a room better than his sand does, better than the sun itself.

A gentle breeze whistles in to the small basement room of a certain Nam Woohyun, lifts away the pile of fine, golden sand on the floor, and carries it back to the moon.