01. (taekey) you, me, and the sky
title: you, me, and the sky
author: allyouhaveisme
pairing: Taekey
genre: Fluff of a sort, I think
rating: PG?
first fanfic! and it's a disastrously rarepair, taekey! woohoo enjoy.
-
The clouds are particularly soft today, the boy with auburn locks muses, his feet sinking into the white fluff easier than is typical. Probably because of the rain from the day before. They are young, newly-formed, vulnerable; in a few days they will be heavy and tough. Eventually they will disperse, saying their goodbyes to him as they plummet towards the ground in a torrent, splashing and flowing in waves.
Taemin stops then, bending down to sweep out some dirt from a cloud. It is likely younger than the others; it is so thin he is almost falling through, and barely big enough for him to stand upon. He feels briefly like he can relate to this, but shakes himself out of it, and moves on.
It is not until much, much later, when Taemin has walked for what seems like forever, that something catches his interest. As he scans the endless expanse, a brown speck makes its way into his vision. Curious, the boy lithely turns to make his way towards the dot.
As he walks he is rather confused, and even as he nears it his mind is throwing up endless questions - what was it and however did it get up here? The clouds swell and fall beneath his steps, gently bringing him towards his destination.
When Taemin is finally close enough to make out the identity of the mysterious object, he cannot do much but stare. In this haven he knows there are no humans, and the only other beings around have the same job as him. They ghost over the infinitely white terrain, caretakers of the sky. It is almost strange, but Taemin has known only this existence. The figure before him does not belong in his structured world; carefully, he approaches.
He - Taemin figures it’s a he - is unmoving, half-buried in the mist. Hair the colour of burnt sienna partially obscures high cheekbones and long eyelashes. He is decidedly good looking, clothed in what Taemin knows (from peering through the clouds sometimes) are human clothes, albeit more fashionable than is probably standard. Bemusedly he drops to the ground, a safe distance away, and watches, duty forgotten.
-
He doesn’t know how long it is before the human awakes. But when he does, Taemin is there, eyes carefully watching his every move.
Of course, he notices Taemin immediately, and instead of being shocked, he merely stares. His gaze catches that of the other, who does not back down in response; neither blinks in the stare-down that follows.
It is Taemin who first breaks the silence.
“Who are you?” he asks, voice cracking slightly.
The human with the sharp features seems to consider his situation before he replies. It is slow, wary. “Kibum. My name is Kibum.”
His response is met with a tiny, almost indiscernible smile. “I’m Taemin!” he offers, seemingly warming up to Kibum. Then he cocks his head in question. “Why are you here?”
Kibum looks away, downwards, towards earth. “I fell upwards.”
At first Taemin is surprised, mouth falling open in an “o”. Then he smiles instead, getting up, holding out a hand to the stranger (to the sky, to him).
“Come with me.”
-
The two of them converse lightly as they walk, and Kibum learns that Taemin is in fact younger than himself, has always been up here, and isn’t really human or angel, more like something in the middle. He also learns that Taemin loves milk (they - whatever they are, he isn’t really sure - - can go to earth sometimes, only he’s not allowed to yet, so he gets his Jinki-hyung to get it for him) and that part of his job is to shape the clouds.
Kibum’s mouth quirks upwards in interest when he hears this. “You mean if I see a chicken-shaped cloud, that’s your doing?”
Taemin laughs at this, eyes twinkling in mirth as he meets Kibum’s confused gaze. “No, that’s Jinki-hyung,” he explains, “All he ever thinks about is chicken.”
-
Later, Taemin lets Kibum watch as he fluffs a cloud into shape. It is an enjoyable process: The younger, brought up in the sky, does it with no small amount of glee, pulling and pushing bits of cloud together. He decides to make it a duck, making quacking noises as Kibum watches in some amusement.
“Wanna try?” Taemin is an inviting flurry of big smiles and agility and messy hair, and although Kibum can’t say he really knows what he’s doing, he finds himself consenting.
To his surprise, it isn’t half as easy as it looks. Kibum finds himself tripping over his own feet in the soft, pliable not-quite-ground, and letting wisps escape more often than not. Taemin teaches him how to mould shapes so that people on earth can see them, laughing with and at him when he fails to do so.
After a bit of warming up Kibum is considerably better, and the two of them move systematically over the mounds, stopping every now and then to make this one fluffier, or to shape another celestial rabbit.
It is far, far brighter above the clouds than below, but it also gets dark faster, Kibum realises, as the sky progressively turns purple and then inky-black. The blinding white of the day is gone, a different charm altogether in its place. Where it was brilliant and stunning it is now subtly soothing, drawing him into the protectiveness of the dark. They end up lying side by side, somewhat exhausted from the day’s activities.
“Kibum-hyung,” Taemin is again the one to breach the quiet. “Did you really...fall upwards?”
He finds it strange, the suffix, mildly awkward, stumbling from chapped lips. “I don’t know,” he confesses, “I think so. Makes the most sense, doesn’t it?” Or maybe not, he thinks, but this place defies common sense, so why not defy gravity as well?
He is met with a chuckle in reply. “That’s strange. It’s never happened before.” Taemin rolls over to face him. “Maybe you’re special.”
The suggestion is absurd at best. Kibum raises his eyebrow in evident skepticism, opening his mouth to object, to tell Taemin he is probably a little bit mentally unsound from his life spent away from safe oxygen levels. Instead, however, what comes out is a
“Yeah, maybe.”
No more words pass between them, lying there in the quiet until they drift off into the solace of sleep.
-
In the morning, oddly enough, Kibum is the first to wake, pushed into consciousness by the light of the sun. Under its gentle rays he watches the younger boy sleeping, eyelashes casting shadows over his child-like features. He is peaceful, almost completely still, the rise and fall of his chest only barely perceptible as he breathes. It hits Kibum that he has never seen anything quite as close to perfect, as he finds himself drawn towards Taemin.
Then large, brown eyes flicker open, coming to rest directly on Kibum’s hazel orbs. Taemin smiles sleepily, rubbing his eyes as he pulls himself up to sit cross-legged.
“Morning, hyung,” he greets hazily, voice fuzzy from sleep. “Sleep well?”
For a moment Kibum wonders how he can be so accepting, so comfortable - it hardly seems as if they had met only yesterday. He shifts a tad awkwardly. “Yeah. They’re soft, them clouds. Good for, uh, sleeping.” Kibum is used to being in control, knowing what he’s doing, so it confuses him, this whole stuttering and not quite being sure of what’s going on thing.
Thankfully, Taemin agrees heartily, before getting to his feet and stretching. His mouth opens wide in a yawn which ends abruptly in a grin, like he has remembered something.
“You know what,” he exclaims, happiness coming off him in waves. “Jinki-hyung should be back by now!” He squints at Kibum. “Come on, you guys should meet. I’m sure you’ll like him.”
Again, Kibum finds he cannot say no. So he (graciously) allows himself to be dragged by the hand as Taemin rushes towards somewhere to find his Jinki-hyung, all the while wondering what this guy was like, for the might-be-angel to adore him so much.
Soon enough, he finds that he is no longer being pulled along, and ventures to look upwards. He finds that he is face to face with someone he can only describe as... dorky. Kibum quirks a perfectly trimmed eyebrow upwards, letting his mouth think for him.
“So this is ...Jinki-hyung?” Incredulity seeps into his words as he cocks his head, eying the person opposite warily.
Said person grins goofily in reply, rubbing the back of his head. “Yeah...and you are?”
Taemin cuts in. “Jinki-hyung, meet Kibum-hyung! Kibum-hyung, meet Jinki-hyung! He’s older than you, so you have to call him hyung too.” His expression takes on a certain determination, and Kibum finds himself smiling slightly before he can really help it.
“Nice to meet you, Kibum! I’m Jinki - oh wait, you already know that, don’t you, Taemin told you about me so it was actually quite silly for me to tell you my name when you just, I mean,” Jinki pauses, trying to gather his thoughts.
He gives up. “Hi?” he offers weakly, extending his hand to Kibum.
Kibum stares.
Jinki starts waving his hand up and down, communicating his intention of a handshake. The scene can only be described as goofy.
Kibum snorts in amusement, and only manages to shake Jinki’s hand briefly before starting to shake with laughter. As he does so the other two watch him in confusion, baffled as to his sudden outbreak.
It is the first time that he has laughed since he arrived in the sky, and it’s liberating. Taemin smiles, too, and begins to laugh, a clear, ringing sound that echoes in the space. Jinki joins in, and soon the area is made small, cosy.
As his sides start to ache from the effort Kibum can’t help but wonder again about how he got here anyway, and whether there was any purpose at all to him falling into the sky, if it was fate that he met these people, if he will ever get back home -
if he really wants to.
-
The days fade and blur together until it is difficult for him to discern the difference between each one; Kibum thinks he will forever remember the days drenched in sunlight, traipsing across the rolling white. He grows accustomed to the oddity of the atmosphere, how it is freezing even under harsh sunlight, and how the clouds are a terrain of mystery in the night.
He wonders about home.
Jinki is somebody he would never imagine meeting, clumsy, ridiculous, merry-go-lucky. And Taemin -
Taemin has grown on him in the strangest way, to the point where he cannot imagine not having met this adorably odd character -he is so much more than Kibum would have guessed. Occasionally he, too, feels sad, and tells Kibum of his loneliness. He wants to visit the world below, he says, but until the day he is allowed to (the sky has jurisdictions on these things) he is bound up here. Jinki brings him things sometimes, but they only feed the loneliness.
Kibum understands, in a way, because he, unlike them, was born of the ground. And yet as he listens to Taemin and watches as Jinki visits the earth every now and then, he feels a pang of melancholy. He misses his best friend, Jonghyun, who is perhaps the noisiest guy you will ever meet. He misses going to school and doing well in his classes with a nonchalant sort of pride. He misses many, many things, but he cannot find it in himself to go back.
Jinki has offered before. “You know, Kibum”, he had said, carefully, eyes trained directly onto his. “I - I can take you back, if you want. I’m allowed to go down once every month, or something” -Jinki could never remember these things - “and it shouldn’t be wrong at all if I’m returning you to, you know, where you belong.”
Kibum had thought he would have agreed instantly, thankful to return to the ground, and all the things he missed so dearly. Something stopped him from agreeing. He had not declined per se, but, biting his lip, only answered, “Not now.”
Jinki’s confused expression had beggared an answer. “I want to spend more time with you guys,” he had explained, a half truth in all its entirety. “And if I go back down...I’ll never see you and Taemin again, right?”
Jinki had looked away, to the stars. “Yeah, probably, I guess.”
“Then that’s that for now.”
Kibum knew it was only a matter of time. What he hadn’t said was that he had a conviction that he had been sent here to do something before he went. And what it was, however, was a different matter altogether.
-
Taemin plops down next to him, plucking at the tufts of cloud absentmindedly. The wisps dissipate into the atmosphere, leaving behind a bit of emptiness.
“Hyung,” he starts, “can I ask you something?”
“You already have,” he points out drily, “but go ahead.”
“Don’t you miss everyone you knew on earth? You have a family or something, right, surely you miss them. And you have friends, don’t you - why don’t you want to go back?”
Kibum doesn’t answer for a bit. “I don’t know,” he answers at length, “I feel like there’s something I’m supposed to do.”
Taemin considers this. “Then, hyung,” he ventures, “Can I tell you something?”
“Shoot.”
The expression on the younger’s face makes him smile a bit, because he looks so hesitant.
“Ah, I don’t know how to say this...”
Kibum snickers just a little, but sobers up when Taemin shoots him a resentful look.
He takes a deep breath, and the words spill out in a torrent - “Kibum-hyung, I really don’t want you to go, and I know you’ll have to eventually because you don’t belong here and then you won’t ever come back ever again and it’ll be lonely with just me and Jinki-hyung but I just thought you should know that I like you. A lot.”
It hits him then, like the many airplanes they see slicing through the clouds daily. He figures out what he’s supposed to do.
Kibum tilts his head lazily to face Taemin, and kisses him.
It is slow and very, very hesitant and altogether too brief for his liking, but as Kibum pulls away there’s a shine in Taemin’s eyes which stirs something deeper inside him. It feels something like curling up next to the fire when it’s cold outside and facing the sky in the falling rain and reading a really, really good book, amongst other feelings he doesn’t really understand, but it feels right and that’s all that matters.
The bliss is gone quickly, though, and Kibum frowns, with a very sudden realisation: He has to go back.
Taemin cocks his head in questioning at his expression, almost afraid.
“I have to go back to earth,” he tells him.
“Why?”
“...I think there was a purpose in me being sent here.”
A nod tells him to go on.
“And that purpose, I think, was to find you.”
The younger’s lower lip trembles a bit. “But - if you say that’s true - then why do you have to go now? After you found me? It’s not fair, hyung - -” his voice cracks in dismay.
Kibum presses his forehead to Taemin’s, speaks into his eyes. “It’s not the end, remember? In a few years’ time you’ll be allowed to visit. At least we have that.”
Taemin smiles sadly, like the universe hasn’t given him a star he’s forbidden to hold. “Okay, hyung.”
-
The next morning they stand at the edge of a cloud, looking down below. The buildings resemble ants from there. Kibum, fortunately enough, doesn’t have acute acrophobia. The fear he feels, however, is of an entirely different sort altogether.
Taemin comes towards him, pulling him into a tight hug before pressing something into his hand. “Don’t forget me, hyung,” he whispers, “I’ll see you someday.”
Kibum nods his assurance, too numb to reply properly. “Someday,” he echoes.
Jinki approaches them, his expression soft like he knows. “Are you ready, Kibum?”
He steps away from Taemin, tucking whatever it is into a pocket for safekeeping. “Yeah.”
“Let’s go, then?” Jinki grabs his arm, and the last thing he sees is a blurry figure waving goodbye from above.
-
He falls.
-
When he comes to the world is foggy, confusing. Blearily, searching for any source of stability, Kibum reaches into his pocket and feels something.
He takes it out of his pocket, and finds himself staring at a smiley cloud-shaped charm. Written on it neatly in permanent marker is “maybe you’re special.”
Taemin, he thinks, a smile spreading on his face, and knows he will not forget.
end (owari)
ah, truthfully, i think it might need a bit of tweaking, but other than that i'm happy :) comments are beautiful things! thank you and byebye!
author: allyouhaveisme
pairing: Taekey
genre: Fluff of a sort, I think
rating: PG?
first fanfic! and it's a disastrously rarepair, taekey! woohoo enjoy.
-
The clouds are particularly soft today, the boy with auburn locks muses, his feet sinking into the white fluff easier than is typical. Probably because of the rain from the day before. They are young, newly-formed, vulnerable; in a few days they will be heavy and tough. Eventually they will disperse, saying their goodbyes to him as they plummet towards the ground in a torrent, splashing and flowing in waves.
Taemin stops then, bending down to sweep out some dirt from a cloud. It is likely younger than the others; it is so thin he is almost falling through, and barely big enough for him to stand upon. He feels briefly like he can relate to this, but shakes himself out of it, and moves on.
It is not until much, much later, when Taemin has walked for what seems like forever, that something catches his interest. As he scans the endless expanse, a brown speck makes its way into his vision. Curious, the boy lithely turns to make his way towards the dot.
As he walks he is rather confused, and even as he nears it his mind is throwing up endless questions - what was it and however did it get up here? The clouds swell and fall beneath his steps, gently bringing him towards his destination.
When Taemin is finally close enough to make out the identity of the mysterious object, he cannot do much but stare. In this haven he knows there are no humans, and the only other beings around have the same job as him. They ghost over the infinitely white terrain, caretakers of the sky. It is almost strange, but Taemin has known only this existence. The figure before him does not belong in his structured world; carefully, he approaches.
He - Taemin figures it’s a he - is unmoving, half-buried in the mist. Hair the colour of burnt sienna partially obscures high cheekbones and long eyelashes. He is decidedly good looking, clothed in what Taemin knows (from peering through the clouds sometimes) are human clothes, albeit more fashionable than is probably standard. Bemusedly he drops to the ground, a safe distance away, and watches, duty forgotten.
-
He doesn’t know how long it is before the human awakes. But when he does, Taemin is there, eyes carefully watching his every move.
Of course, he notices Taemin immediately, and instead of being shocked, he merely stares. His gaze catches that of the other, who does not back down in response; neither blinks in the stare-down that follows.
It is Taemin who first breaks the silence.
“Who are you?” he asks, voice cracking slightly.
The human with the sharp features seems to consider his situation before he replies. It is slow, wary. “Kibum. My name is Kibum.”
His response is met with a tiny, almost indiscernible smile. “I’m Taemin!” he offers, seemingly warming up to Kibum. Then he cocks his head in question. “Why are you here?”
Kibum looks away, downwards, towards earth. “I fell upwards.”
At first Taemin is surprised, mouth falling open in an “o”. Then he smiles instead, getting up, holding out a hand to the stranger (to the sky, to him).
“Come with me.”
-
The two of them converse lightly as they walk, and Kibum learns that Taemin is in fact younger than himself, has always been up here, and isn’t really human or angel, more like something in the middle. He also learns that Taemin loves milk (they - whatever they are, he isn’t really sure - - can go to earth sometimes, only he’s not allowed to yet, so he gets his Jinki-hyung to get it for him) and that part of his job is to shape the clouds.
Kibum’s mouth quirks upwards in interest when he hears this. “You mean if I see a chicken-shaped cloud, that’s your doing?”
Taemin laughs at this, eyes twinkling in mirth as he meets Kibum’s confused gaze. “No, that’s Jinki-hyung,” he explains, “All he ever thinks about is chicken.”
-
Later, Taemin lets Kibum watch as he fluffs a cloud into shape. It is an enjoyable process: The younger, brought up in the sky, does it with no small amount of glee, pulling and pushing bits of cloud together. He decides to make it a duck, making quacking noises as Kibum watches in some amusement.
“Wanna try?” Taemin is an inviting flurry of big smiles and agility and messy hair, and although Kibum can’t say he really knows what he’s doing, he finds himself consenting.
To his surprise, it isn’t half as easy as it looks. Kibum finds himself tripping over his own feet in the soft, pliable not-quite-ground, and letting wisps escape more often than not. Taemin teaches him how to mould shapes so that people on earth can see them, laughing with and at him when he fails to do so.
After a bit of warming up Kibum is considerably better, and the two of them move systematically over the mounds, stopping every now and then to make this one fluffier, or to shape another celestial rabbit.
It is far, far brighter above the clouds than below, but it also gets dark faster, Kibum realises, as the sky progressively turns purple and then inky-black. The blinding white of the day is gone, a different charm altogether in its place. Where it was brilliant and stunning it is now subtly soothing, drawing him into the protectiveness of the dark. They end up lying side by side, somewhat exhausted from the day’s activities.
“Kibum-hyung,” Taemin is again the one to breach the quiet. “Did you really...fall upwards?”
He finds it strange, the suffix, mildly awkward, stumbling from chapped lips. “I don’t know,” he confesses, “I think so. Makes the most sense, doesn’t it?” Or maybe not, he thinks, but this place defies common sense, so why not defy gravity as well?
He is met with a chuckle in reply. “That’s strange. It’s never happened before.” Taemin rolls over to face him. “Maybe you’re special.”
The suggestion is absurd at best. Kibum raises his eyebrow in evident skepticism, opening his mouth to object, to tell Taemin he is probably a little bit mentally unsound from his life spent away from safe oxygen levels. Instead, however, what comes out is a
“Yeah, maybe.”
No more words pass between them, lying there in the quiet until they drift off into the solace of sleep.
-
In the morning, oddly enough, Kibum is the first to wake, pushed into consciousness by the light of the sun. Under its gentle rays he watches the younger boy sleeping, eyelashes casting shadows over his child-like features. He is peaceful, almost completely still, the rise and fall of his chest only barely perceptible as he breathes. It hits Kibum that he has never seen anything quite as close to perfect, as he finds himself drawn towards Taemin.
Then large, brown eyes flicker open, coming to rest directly on Kibum’s hazel orbs. Taemin smiles sleepily, rubbing his eyes as he pulls himself up to sit cross-legged.
“Morning, hyung,” he greets hazily, voice fuzzy from sleep. “Sleep well?”
For a moment Kibum wonders how he can be so accepting, so comfortable - it hardly seems as if they had met only yesterday. He shifts a tad awkwardly. “Yeah. They’re soft, them clouds. Good for, uh, sleeping.” Kibum is used to being in control, knowing what he’s doing, so it confuses him, this whole stuttering and not quite being sure of what’s going on thing.
Thankfully, Taemin agrees heartily, before getting to his feet and stretching. His mouth opens wide in a yawn which ends abruptly in a grin, like he has remembered something.
“You know what,” he exclaims, happiness coming off him in waves. “Jinki-hyung should be back by now!” He squints at Kibum. “Come on, you guys should meet. I’m sure you’ll like him.”
Again, Kibum finds he cannot say no. So he (graciously) allows himself to be dragged by the hand as Taemin rushes towards somewhere to find his Jinki-hyung, all the while wondering what this guy was like, for the might-be-angel to adore him so much.
Soon enough, he finds that he is no longer being pulled along, and ventures to look upwards. He finds that he is face to face with someone he can only describe as... dorky. Kibum quirks a perfectly trimmed eyebrow upwards, letting his mouth think for him.
“So this is ...Jinki-hyung?” Incredulity seeps into his words as he cocks his head, eying the person opposite warily.
Said person grins goofily in reply, rubbing the back of his head. “Yeah...and you are?”
Taemin cuts in. “Jinki-hyung, meet Kibum-hyung! Kibum-hyung, meet Jinki-hyung! He’s older than you, so you have to call him hyung too.” His expression takes on a certain determination, and Kibum finds himself smiling slightly before he can really help it.
“Nice to meet you, Kibum! I’m Jinki - oh wait, you already know that, don’t you, Taemin told you about me so it was actually quite silly for me to tell you my name when you just, I mean,” Jinki pauses, trying to gather his thoughts.
He gives up. “Hi?” he offers weakly, extending his hand to Kibum.
Kibum stares.
Jinki starts waving his hand up and down, communicating his intention of a handshake. The scene can only be described as goofy.
Kibum snorts in amusement, and only manages to shake Jinki’s hand briefly before starting to shake with laughter. As he does so the other two watch him in confusion, baffled as to his sudden outbreak.
It is the first time that he has laughed since he arrived in the sky, and it’s liberating. Taemin smiles, too, and begins to laugh, a clear, ringing sound that echoes in the space. Jinki joins in, and soon the area is made small, cosy.
As his sides start to ache from the effort Kibum can’t help but wonder again about how he got here anyway, and whether there was any purpose at all to him falling into the sky, if it was fate that he met these people, if he will ever get back home -
if he really wants to.
-
The days fade and blur together until it is difficult for him to discern the difference between each one; Kibum thinks he will forever remember the days drenched in sunlight, traipsing across the rolling white. He grows accustomed to the oddity of the atmosphere, how it is freezing even under harsh sunlight, and how the clouds are a terrain of mystery in the night.
He wonders about home.
Jinki is somebody he would never imagine meeting, clumsy, ridiculous, merry-go-lucky. And Taemin -
Taemin has grown on him in the strangest way, to the point where he cannot imagine not having met this adorably odd character -he is so much more than Kibum would have guessed. Occasionally he, too, feels sad, and tells Kibum of his loneliness. He wants to visit the world below, he says, but until the day he is allowed to (the sky has jurisdictions on these things) he is bound up here. Jinki brings him things sometimes, but they only feed the loneliness.
Kibum understands, in a way, because he, unlike them, was born of the ground. And yet as he listens to Taemin and watches as Jinki visits the earth every now and then, he feels a pang of melancholy. He misses his best friend, Jonghyun, who is perhaps the noisiest guy you will ever meet. He misses going to school and doing well in his classes with a nonchalant sort of pride. He misses many, many things, but he cannot find it in himself to go back.
Jinki has offered before. “You know, Kibum”, he had said, carefully, eyes trained directly onto his. “I - I can take you back, if you want. I’m allowed to go down once every month, or something” -Jinki could never remember these things - “and it shouldn’t be wrong at all if I’m returning you to, you know, where you belong.”
Kibum had thought he would have agreed instantly, thankful to return to the ground, and all the things he missed so dearly. Something stopped him from agreeing. He had not declined per se, but, biting his lip, only answered, “Not now.”
Jinki’s confused expression had beggared an answer. “I want to spend more time with you guys,” he had explained, a half truth in all its entirety. “And if I go back down...I’ll never see you and Taemin again, right?”
Jinki had looked away, to the stars. “Yeah, probably, I guess.”
“Then that’s that for now.”
Kibum knew it was only a matter of time. What he hadn’t said was that he had a conviction that he had been sent here to do something before he went. And what it was, however, was a different matter altogether.
-
Taemin plops down next to him, plucking at the tufts of cloud absentmindedly. The wisps dissipate into the atmosphere, leaving behind a bit of emptiness.
“Hyung,” he starts, “can I ask you something?”
“You already have,” he points out drily, “but go ahead.”
“Don’t you miss everyone you knew on earth? You have a family or something, right, surely you miss them. And you have friends, don’t you - why don’t you want to go back?”
Kibum doesn’t answer for a bit. “I don’t know,” he answers at length, “I feel like there’s something I’m supposed to do.”
Taemin considers this. “Then, hyung,” he ventures, “Can I tell you something?”
“Shoot.”
The expression on the younger’s face makes him smile a bit, because he looks so hesitant.
“Ah, I don’t know how to say this...”
Kibum snickers just a little, but sobers up when Taemin shoots him a resentful look.
He takes a deep breath, and the words spill out in a torrent - “Kibum-hyung, I really don’t want you to go, and I know you’ll have to eventually because you don’t belong here and then you won’t ever come back ever again and it’ll be lonely with just me and Jinki-hyung but I just thought you should know that I like you. A lot.”
It hits him then, like the many airplanes they see slicing through the clouds daily. He figures out what he’s supposed to do.
Kibum tilts his head lazily to face Taemin, and kisses him.
It is slow and very, very hesitant and altogether too brief for his liking, but as Kibum pulls away there’s a shine in Taemin’s eyes which stirs something deeper inside him. It feels something like curling up next to the fire when it’s cold outside and facing the sky in the falling rain and reading a really, really good book, amongst other feelings he doesn’t really understand, but it feels right and that’s all that matters.
The bliss is gone quickly, though, and Kibum frowns, with a very sudden realisation: He has to go back.
Taemin cocks his head in questioning at his expression, almost afraid.
“I have to go back to earth,” he tells him.
“Why?”
“...I think there was a purpose in me being sent here.”
A nod tells him to go on.
“And that purpose, I think, was to find you.”
The younger’s lower lip trembles a bit. “But - if you say that’s true - then why do you have to go now? After you found me? It’s not fair, hyung - -” his voice cracks in dismay.
Kibum presses his forehead to Taemin’s, speaks into his eyes. “It’s not the end, remember? In a few years’ time you’ll be allowed to visit. At least we have that.”
Taemin smiles sadly, like the universe hasn’t given him a star he’s forbidden to hold. “Okay, hyung.”
-
The next morning they stand at the edge of a cloud, looking down below. The buildings resemble ants from there. Kibum, fortunately enough, doesn’t have acute acrophobia. The fear he feels, however, is of an entirely different sort altogether.
Taemin comes towards him, pulling him into a tight hug before pressing something into his hand. “Don’t forget me, hyung,” he whispers, “I’ll see you someday.”
Kibum nods his assurance, too numb to reply properly. “Someday,” he echoes.
Jinki approaches them, his expression soft like he knows. “Are you ready, Kibum?”
He steps away from Taemin, tucking whatever it is into a pocket for safekeeping. “Yeah.”
“Let’s go, then?” Jinki grabs his arm, and the last thing he sees is a blurry figure waving goodbye from above.
-
He falls.
-
When he comes to the world is foggy, confusing. Blearily, searching for any source of stability, Kibum reaches into his pocket and feels something.
He takes it out of his pocket, and finds himself staring at a smiley cloud-shaped charm. Written on it neatly in permanent marker is “maybe you’re special.”
Taemin, he thinks, a smile spreading on his face, and knows he will not forget.
end (owari)
ah, truthfully, i think it might need a bit of tweaking, but other than that i'm happy :) comments are beautiful things! thank you and byebye!