The Galaxies Behind Your Eyelids (Xiuhan)

the stars in your eyes

A/N: Hi! I'm back with another short story! It's been quite a long time now, I guess. This was originally a one shot, but I'll update frequently so it won't be a long time of waiting, really. Thank you to everyone who's interested in reading! 

Minseok didn’t believe in the term “God” like they had billions of years ago. He believed there might have been something, but he didn’t believe that there was some kind of invisible force up in the skies watching the every movement of all people on Earth; it was as simple as that. It was something he had learnt in school a long time ago, about gods. The religions people believed in, the ones that had millions of followers and so much money spent worshipping them it was ridiculous – they were long forgotten, only preserved in ancient books for the sake of learning from old mistakes. God was something people believed in billions of years ago because they could not explain how the nature worked. And even when they realized, they still believed. But science won as religion and the disputes-turned-wars left the world in ruins and the remaining humans had to build it all up from the rubble again. Religions were relics of the past. And they were the humans to live on after. As much as Minseok would like to think so, they did not have souls. Born to live and born to die, as simple as that.

Humankind had been living on earth for billions of years, and if there was a God, he would’ve rescued them, that was Minseok’s opinion. He would have saved the Milky Way from crashing with Andromeda, the inevitable destruction. He would have done something. The life tree that was pictured in so many cultures might not have been the Earth, but the universe. And if it so, the Earth was just a tiny, withering leaf growing on the lowest branch. Minseok wouldn’t deny there wasn’t something out there. He just knew they wouldn’t be saved.

It was four o’clock in the morning, but no one could sleep. Minseok wondered if there was anyone on Earth or other planets in the Milky Way that was sleeping now. Maybe there was, but not as he knew of. How could someone sleep the last three hours of their lives? In three hours Andromeda, their neighbor-galaxy, would crash into the Milky Way. Both galaxies would be completely destroyed in a huge explosion that couldn’t even be scaled, reduced to nothing. The best professors and researchers in the world had already predicted what would happen. First, there was going to be a loud boom. Then nothing for a couple of seconds, like the world had stopped. One would not be able to hear anything, because the loud boom would destroy everyone’s hearing. And in the end, the sky was going to be flaming red, like a sunset, except bigger and redder. It would illuminate the sky like fireworks - the last, beautiful goodbye. And then? Nothing. Everything would be reduced to an empty space, destroyed within milliseconds. There would be no trace of the human existence left. Complete oblivion.

It was simple thoughts Minseok had had since forever. He knew them in and out, as they appeared with even intervals. But there was no need to churn on that now.

Instead, he looked up at the person he treasured more than anything in the world. Luhan. If he was going to die, it seemed like a good end to do it while looking at Luhan.

Minseok sat in the sofa, Luhan in a chair. They were facing each other with a small, brown coffee table in between them, their thoughts reflected in their eyes. Minseok studied Luhan’s features like he didn’t know every little detail already, seeing the same, strong gaze mirrored at himself.

For a couple of moments, they just sat there. Eyes like oceans and thoughts like widespread nebulas, reflections upon their lives and themselves coming and going before they were even fully formed. With any other person, it would have been strange. Minseok would have avoided their stare and wandered off. But with Luhan, that wasn’t the case. They were two halves of a whole, and the invisible, silvery threads that bound them together made it natural. There was this old legend from humankind’s early days about how some god had split humans into two, and left them searching for their other half. If Minseok were to believe any myth, he would want to believe in that one.

If Minseok had been any more poetic, he would have written a poem about Luhan. Maybe a whole book on him. About his smiles, the ones that were the brightest during the summer when they relaxed in the meadows back in Minseok’s hometown as the wind grazed the grass and the sun was just a source of warmth and not their end. About his eyes, deeper than oceans, concealing so much Minseok didn’t know but didn’t care about. The stars that lit up in them when he talked, about he galaxies behind his eyelids and the nebulas that were his thoughts. And the supernovas when the two crashed together, he’d dedicate whole chapters. But all he ever did, was smile and hope he could transfer it all though his actions. To say Minseok had never been a person of many words was wrong, he was just not someone of many spoken words.