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Khun does not know when it first began: Bam coming into his room at night and just laying beside him, without saying a word. He’d say he’d had a nightmare or two. Excuses, excuses — as Khun would soon learn.
“Khun, is it okay if I stay here?” he had asked. His hair was a mess, long strands framing his face as they escaped from his hair tie. Khun’s fingers itched to brush them away.
Of course, Khun wordlessly relented. He thinks he could not have said no if he tried. He scoots up against the wall and unfurls his blankets. Making space for someone who is to come.
It started like this: sweet and simple. They would merely sleep beside each other, both seeking comfort in the warmth of another because the world, as everyone knew it, grew cold at times. For Bam, it was solace that was attainable, and for Khun, it was something he never knew he needed.
On that first night, there was nothing but silence. There was an obvious space between them, like they were both afraid to touch the other. Khun clutched at his side of the blanket, wondering what was it that made Bam come into his room in the middle of the night just to fall asleep beside him. Soon enough, Khun grew accustomed to hearing Bam’s steady breathing, finding himself matching it to his own. He would fall asleep this way, gently, like a new home was just built for him.
The next morning, he found Bam outside his room, going about as if nothing had happened — and maybe nothing really did.
They shared a smile, one that only the two of them understood.
The second time it happened, Khun was on the verge of falling asleep. There was a soft knock at the door. Khun opened his eyes, settling them on the other side of the room. The moon casted a soft glow, bathing everything in cool tones. The night breeze wafted through the window, like an eerie whisper in the dark.
He got up, but not before already pulling his pillow closer to the wall, already anticipating warmth.
Bam stood outside his room, fists raised as if to knock. “Khun, can I-“
“C’mon.” Khun quickly beckoned him inside before he could even finish. He turned around, leaving the door wide open. Bam clutched his pillow tightly in his hands, standing in the doorway like he was too embarrassed to come in.
“What are you so afraid of?” Khun made out. “I don’t bite.”
“N-Nothing.” Bam says, stepping through the threshold. He turns to slowly close the door, like he’s stalling for time. Khun watches this performance with great interest. Bam had changed since they first met on the second floor of the tower. His hair was now longer and his softness now had a sharp edge to it, but Khun noticed that his eyes never changed. They remained hopeful, and without doubt, even here under the moonlight where it was just the two of them.
“I just thought you might have wanted to be alone,” Bam blinks as he settles himself beside Khun. Khun looks at the empty space between them, wonders what would happen if he were to move closer and fill it up.
“It’s okay, Bam,” he says, his voice a little rough. He coughs to clear his throat. Bam doesn’t look at him, back turned and body curved towards himself like he was trying his best to seem small. Khun wanted to ask what was wrong, but at the same time, he was afraid of Bam getting up to leave.
Khun did not want to lie to himself. He thought about the other night, when Bam first came over — it was the best sleep he’d had in a while. Perhaps this made him selfish, but then again Bam sought him out first. Maybe this — whatever this was — would be good for the both of them.
It was on the fifth night that Khun learned the reason behind Bam knocking on his door. At this point, Khun slept closer to his side of the wall, regardless if Bam came knocking or not. Making space, making space, making space.
“Aren’t you going to ask why I’ve been coming here?” Bam asks after a long moment of silence. This question startled Khun, who was busy running battle simulations in his head. He abruptly turned to face Bam, who was already looking at him with wide and glassy eyes. They were a few inches apart and Khun finds himself digging his back against the wall. What was he so afraid of?
“Not if you don’t want me to know,” Khun swallows. Of course he wants to know — it drove him crazy.
“I was thinking of what was up there. The tower.” Bam continues after a pause. “Is it really so great that you would leave someone who would risk anything for you?”
Khun knows he was talking about Rachel. Khun had his own reasons for climbing up the tower: he longed to be the one in charge, to have power unlike he ever had before. To take the name he had been given and make it better. It now seemed silly, come to think of it.
“Are the stars really worth it?” Bam’s eyebrows are furrowed. Khun, for once, is afraid to give him an answer. He was afraid of hurting him.
“I hope they are,” is all he says.
On the seventh night he came, Bam looked a little brighter, less solemn. Even his knocks sounded surer.
“Come in,” Khun called out. He waited for the familiar dip of the mattress as Bam settled himself beside him — a little closer this time.
“Shibisu was making a lot of noise outside,” Bam says. Khun raises his eyebrows in question. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Right,” Khun nodded. “And I don’t suppose you just find comfort in being here?” he teased.
Bam pulls the pillow from under his head and throws it towards Khun’s direction. Even under the moonlight, his spreading blush could be seen.
“Your room is nicer than mine.”
“Our rooms look exactly the same, Bam.”
“It-It just feels nicer.”
“Okay, Bam.”
Khun is lying on his back, resting his head on his arms above him. Bam, despite his desperate attempts to keep his dignity intact, doesn’t turn away from him.
It’s only when Bam falls asleep like this that Khun realized Bam did not really have a reason to come into his room this time.
On the tenth night, Khun finds it in him to close the distance between them.
Khun no longer had his back pushed against the wall, instead his head was comfortably laying on the edge of his pillow. His fringe touched Bam’s hand, which was resting comfortably between them.
Oh, and Bam — Bam, whose shoulders eased, a smile forming on his lips, looked content. Happy. Like he was waiting for Khun to do this after all this time.
Much to Khun’s surprise, Bam let out a soft chuckle. “Your eyes are really blue.”
Khun self-consciously blinks. “Oh,” is all he says.
And they talk the whole night, even as the sun slowly inched up in the sky. They talked about what they’ve been through, about life before, about their friends. They wondered about the tower, the guardians, and the creatures that roamed about it. They laughed about silly things, like Yeon Yihwa’s cooking skills, or the lack thereof.
Bam is a bright person — Khun had always known that. Perhaps that was why he reached out to him in the first place, like a flower yearning for the sun.
And if Bam was the sun, Khun would soon learn that he was Icarus.
Falling.
Falling.
Falling—
Khun pitied himself, if he was being honest. He hated how selfish he was for wanting Bam to stay a little longer each time he came over. But, as always, he had elsewhere to be. Bam was destined for greater things, things far better than to hold the hand of an ambitious man who did not know when to give up.
I could learn, Khun wants to tell him. I could learn to unclench my fists and settle somewhere beneath the sky. Only if that means that you are there, too, Bam.
Khun Aguero Agnis learned to love the Twenty-Fifth Bam in the spaces between midnight and the sunrise, in the shadows of crumpled sheets and at the bottom of a false night sky.
Dawn, as Bam liked to call it. Khun would rather say: when it’s only you and me.
In truth, he’s not quite sure what it is, but he knows that every time his fingers wrap around any part of Bam -- his hands, arms, neck, waist -- his chest does that thing.
It was a while before Khun gained any courage to touch Bam. It was soft presses here and there, perhaps a hand carding through his dark hair. Khun found that once he began doing all this, it was very difficult to stop.
And more importantly, Bam would let him. He would smile wide every time Khun would brush his fingers against his cheek, like a spoiled child who got what he wanted. Khun figures out that if there was anything Bam wanted, he would give it to him.
He would very much burn the world for Bam.
Can I have this? Would that be all right?
Khun Aguero Agnis was a selfish, selfish man.
It did not take long for Bam to come straight into Khun’s room instead of making his way into his own. Sure, Endorsi and the rest may have questioned it at one point, but Bam simply gave them a vague look and a slight shrug. They knew not to press the matter any further.
Bam nuzzled against his pillow, long before Khun even stepped foot into bed.
“Made yourself at home, huh?”
“My pillow smells like you,” Bam comments offhandedly.
Something squeezes at Khun’s chest, making it temporarily hard to breathe. Bam always made him feel like this, almost like clockwork, a routine.
“Well obviously,” Khun climbs into the sheets, albeit a little clumsily. “You’ve been leaving it here for days.”
Bam says nothing, instead, he buries his face into the pillow. Khun finds himself smiling fondly at this. Bam has long since cut his hair — he looked almost exactly as he did when they first met, except he’d grown into his features a little more. Nicely, at that.
“I don’t want to leave,” Bam says suddenly, his voice muffled by the pillow.
“You don’t have to,” Khun replies. “Just stay until morning.”
“I mean,” Bam raises his head to breathe. “We’re going to have to part ways again.”
Oh. Khun feels his heart sink. To get to the top, you must know what you are willing to lose.
To get to the top, you must know what you are willing to give up.
I’m not ready to give this up, Bam.
“I just found you after all these years,” Bam says like he’s testing the waters, like he’s not quite sure of what to say.
“And you will again,” Khun reassures him. “Find us, I mean.”
So for now, is it alright if you stay?
“You make it sound so easy, Khun.”
“It is.” Khun says, one part arrogantly, one part desperately. “I told you before, Bam. I’m gonna get us to the top, now matter the cost. Cheap, dirty tricks and all.”
There is a silence that cuts between them. It’s tangible, and Khun is left to stew in the feelings inside his chest. He’s not quite sure of where they stand, of what this means. He’s used to certainties, predicting everyone’s next move like he’s read it from a book beforehand. He understands the way people work, but there is Bam, who is like nothing he had ever expected.
“Hey, Khun?” Bam calls out in the slight darkness.
“Mm?”
“Is it okay if I stay until morning?”
“Of course.”
“Khun?” Bam says again.
“Yes?”
“Can you move closer?”
“Okay.”
“Khun?”
“I’m here.”
A pause. “Can I kiss you?”
They are a couple of inches apart. Khun could feel Bam’s soft puffs as he breathed out. There is a vulnerable look on Bam’s face, one that was mixed with longing. He was putting all of his money on the table, crossing the line that even Khun himself did not dare touch.
Khun feels time stop.
He takes a few seconds to look at Bam, to really look at him. To count each of his lashes that brushed against flushed cheeks, to watch his hands, balled up in fists like he was ready to take on a fight (and with Khun involved, who really knew if they were to break out into one), to look into his eyes like he did for nights on end — what made them look so different at this moment?
And before he even realizes, he is already reaching out into the darkness, clutching desperately at Bam’s shirt, before pulling him close, closer, until their lips meet.
Yes, is his answer. By the gods, yes. Yes to this, to all of it — the dirty, the push and pull of want and need, to songs left unsung because there is some kind of bravery in words that our hands sing.
Khun feels Bam melt into him, the way his hands tangle themselves in Khun’s hair, or the way his lashes would flutter as Khun tilted his chin to deepen the kiss.
They’re full of bony elbows and noses that would clumsily collide. A laugh here and there, roses forming on their cheeks. There were averting glances always on the verge of meeting, hands that wound up together tightly and the shape of the mouth that, if you turn your head the right way, resembled a smile. They were kids again, who knew nothing of the world they were about to enter -- the kind that does not permit love in the midst of chaos.
But, Khun thinks, I will make it happen.
Because Khun Aguero Agnis is selfish, arrogant, and will get what he wants when he sets his mind to it.
Because this is Bam, who is the sun, who is the first to ask if he could stay. This is Bam, whose eyes knew no doubt, who he would take to the top of the world, even if that would mean to destroy it along the way.
It is a moment before Bam lets go of Khun. The group was saying their goodbyes, having to part ways to further their journey up the tower. Unfortunately, this meant that Khun would have to fill all the space in his bed by his lonesome, making space for someone who is no longer there. At least, for now.
“Hold on any tighter and we might be fused together.” Khun comments jokingly.
Bam buries his face deeper into the crook of Khun’s neck. It tickles.
“Why did this day have to come?” Bam asks quietly, face still obscured from view.
“It was bound to come.” Khun says, like he’s brave, like he isn’t hurting deep down. “We’ll see each other soon.”
Khun thought it was impossible, but Bam’s grip seemed to get tighter.
“Stupid train,” Bam mumbles. Khun laughs. “Don’t die until I see you again, please.”
“What a funny thing to say,” Khun pats his lover’s head. “Of course, Bam.”
“I won’t say it now,” Bam finally looks up, his eyes a little teary. Something stings at Khun’s eyes but hell would freeze over before he admits that.
“Say what?”
“Find me soon, Khun,” Bam says as he untangles himself from Khun’s arms. Khun feels quite empty. “Then I’ll tell you that I love you.”
Then Bam is gone, whisked away by greater things yet again.
“Are you coming, Khun?” Wangnan asks. There is a ship that sails above, waiting to take him elsewhere.
“I am,” Khun answers, and he heads off to the great unknown.
I’m coming, Bam.