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In the dying starlight, perched against the furthest bedroom wall, Mujin thought he could see straight into Donghoon’s soul.
He understood then why Donghoon keeps that part of himself locked away from everyone around him, why even at his calmest it can barely be seen. Its frailness startling. He shouldn’t be seeing this—and yet. Mujin’s eyes burn holes into Donghoon’s relaxed side, hoping only that they don’t scar too bad.
Donghoon’s soul shines even brighter than the stars ever could, capturing all the luminescence of the sun and the calm of the moon, passing specks of the same light onto everyone he meets. Oh, but Donghoon could be dark, and his darkness was no less marvelous than his light, but in that very moment Mujin saw the light and thought, though scary a thought it was—
—I want to give this man the world. The sun, the moon, and all the stars.
In that moment, Mujin realized he would never be happy with solely possessing Donghoon’s body—so long as the soul roamed wild and free, so far out of his reach, he would be restless. The body was right there, overlooking the balcony on the edge of the world. He could touch it, if he wanted, though a fine line it was between warmth and fire whose might would forever burn Mujin’s fingertips. He could touch, and even be touched in return, but he would never feel the true warmth underneath. The thought paralyzed him.
All it took was a look, and there it was—burning and twisting inside his chest, like it was there forever, growing and growing in power like poison ivy, and only needed the final spark to be set loose. An explosion, by all means, but it was something truly precious to behold: better than most things they have, better than most things Mujin can imagine. Even at the cost of Mujin’s own soul, he knew then that he had to keep Donghoon’s.
“Come to me.”
They are the words he speaks, but not an order. Stretching his thighs out, knees lax, Mujin hopes for nothing, dreams of everything.
It should’ve been startling, to name the feeling in his heart, but Donghoon looks back at him then with a shake of his head, smile illuminated from beneath the last dying embers of his cigarette, dressed in one of Mujin’s finer gowns, and, with an almost audible click, it all made such simple sense. Not to let the perplexion show, Mujin did the only thing he knew he could: smiled, truly, mirroring the gesture of the man that first taught it to him.
“Are you not going to offer me one?”
Donghoon shrugs, an easy smile on the half of his face not befallen by shadow.
“You shouldn’t chase things that don’t serve you, Choi Mujin.” he says, a puff, then, the smoke dying mid-air before it ever reached Mujin, “They are the ones that kill you.”
He taps the last black dying embers into the dish beside the window, the only one of the five therein that ever bore witness to his lips. In death, he wears no smile.
Donghoon’s cigarette would die but he will have another, on and on, so long as Mujin is there to strike the base embers. For now, it had to be enough to think himself as cancerous and loving as the smoke going down Donghoon’s larynx, settling deep within his lungs as something not even the finest surgeons could cut out.
He knew it wouldn’t last, then, for Donghoon wasn’t so different from the smoke itself, but not in the way Mujin thought himself to be. Donghoon lingered—his fragrance bewitching every one of Mujin’s senses, his laughter kissing Mujin’s wounds better, his entire person always there until it wasn’t, cleared away with the wind for better or worse.
That’s the gamble Mujin had to take, though not entirely willingly—that as much as he could otherwise hope, at any given corner Donghoon could be there or gone without preamble. It wasn’t something he liked and yet there it was, the crown jewel of his martyrdom: that Mujin’s presence alone would never sate the spark in Donghoon, not with strike and strike countless, and endless dying flames. But it was fine, then, because he was right where he’s supposed to be, and everything made sense, in a way that it never before had—with Donghoon, Mujin could be calm.
He could simply be air, if only for now, not fire.