Oneshots - |Changki/Kikyun|

It's okay

Hello my lovelies!

I hope all of you are doing fine! This is a short little oneshot I was so inspired to write by two songs, Tom Rosenthal's "It's okay" and "I Want You In My Dreams", inbetween all the longer projects I am working on.

I hope you enjoy reading! <3

Much love, Aki

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Changkyun is okay.

The sun was shining today, and so were the faces of girls and boys, standing in front of him, smiling, laughing, crying, happy tears, their faces blindingly bright.

He ate lunch, more than he'd eaten in a while, because their schedules are tight and he promised to keep an eye on his weight, but today he was hungry and it felt good to eat. His stomach his heavy and he feels the sense of fatigue that only comes with food, that envelopes you like a warm, fuzzy blanket, makes you want to lie down and sleep, sleep, sleep.

He slept a lot yesterday. They got home early and he took a shower and put on his pyjamas and crawled under his blankets like he was searching shelter from the world. He didn't even dream. It doesn't happen often that he wakes up without a single blurred picture in front of his eyes, still dazed from sleep.

For the first time in months, he's sitting in the van without being hungry or tired. Normally, it's the latter, but today he's so enthusiastic and energetic that even the fact he stood up in the early morning hours is not making his eyelids threaten to fall down.

It are those days that are dangerous. When he is at his lowest, sleep-deprived and starving, he has plenty of other things to focus on. But now, now he's sitting here, in that leather car seat, feet occasionally taping against the piece of carpet beneath his soles, and the only thing that could distract him is the sunset outside of the window.

It's not summer anymore and not autumn yet. It's a kind of Indian Summer, with long days and warm nights and the smell of sunflowers and honey in the air, like it carries the hidden coldness that will soon follow, trying to lure everyone into the darkness. It's the time of the year when the sunsets and sunrises are golden and peach, and the sky stays painted with clouds in orange and purple for quite a while even after the sun has appeared and disappeared completely.

The world outside of the car window is rushing by like a movie that you put on fast forward. He can see patterns and colors, and it feels like the time is jumping, transforming and returning back into its original form. He has to think about all the time he has spent here, and about all the time he might have left, and where he should put the cut between then and now and here.

The glass of the window is cold against his cheek, but the sky looks warm. The clouds resemble cotton candy, and wants to reach out and grab a part of them, feel them between his fingers, taste them between his teeth. If he closes his eyes now and lets himself fall back, his body might melt into the seat, become one with the world around him and all that he has ever seen.

It's quiet in the car. It doesn't happen often, only when everyone is so tired and exhausted that they can't even get themselves to talk about the day and all they have experienced. Changkyun can hear his own finger knocking on the glass lightly as he blinks, willing the nostalgic feeling in his chest to go away.

It's not like things have always been this way. They have been different for quite some time, some pieces overlapping, like variables that change and stay the same. He feels nostalgic, nostalgic about the time that's running and about how things will change. He knows they will and sometimes, it makes him feel relieved. Other times, it intensifies the suffocating feeling in his chest.

There is always a point in every span of time when he has to turn his head and look at him. It's almost as inevitable as breathing, like it's a reflex. There is always a certain point when his fingers start twitching to reach out, and if he wants to suppress it, the only way to do it is to look.

He looks all the time. Looking is okay. Looking is something he can do.

Kihyun's sleeping with his head leaned back, falling forward with every bump in the road they drive over. Maybe he's just dozing off, his eyelashes fluttering and hair falling in strands upon his forehead. He has buttoned his shirt up so that he won't be cold, and his phone is laying somewhere next to his thigh, fingers still touching it ever so lightly.

This is the moment Changkyun would reach over, move the phone and Kihyun so that his head would be resting against Changkyun's shoulder, and he can almost feel the phantom weight on his bones. He'd run his fingers through Kihyun's hair and whisper in his ear, sleep, sleep and I'll stay and love you like nobody has ever loved you before.

His fingers are taping against the glass. Bum, bum.

Looking, looking, he thinks. Looking is okay. Looking is all he might ever be able to do.

The last sunstreaks are painting palettes of yellow and gold on Kihyun's cheeks and neck, and the air smells like a field of flowers at night. There are worlds out there, just outside the window, separated by a thin piece of glass from the world that exists here, right where he is sitting.

If he could stop the time, he thinks, he'd live in this world for just a moment, just a moment in a world of two people, because there is never a world of only two people for him.

There's this longing in his chest. It's nagging and turning and crawling up his spine at the most unfortunate moments, and his body listens to it like an obedient child. When it comes to this, he isn't an adult. He feels like a newborn.

It's like the longing for staying somewhere you used to spend a lot of time when you were younger, or imagining the taste of your favorite meal on your tongue, or seeing a picture of a place you're dreaming to visit by accident when you're looking for something else.

It's like he has experienced all of this, like one long déjà-vu, like a neverending sunset in a neverending summer.

"I love you."

He doesn't say it. He tells himself he cannot miss something that has never happened. He moves his lips and smiles and doesn't say a word as the paint streaks on Kihyun's skin change like he's smearing them with his fingertips. The colors look a lot more beautiful on Kihyun's lips than his own lips would ever.

He knows the van will arrive at some point, but the time is rushing and turning and evolving and at least there is one moment in time in which there are Kihyun and him, and he can look at him, and imagine his looks were his hands.

God, they'd carress his face. They'd carress every millimeter beneath their fingertips, treat it with care, mix the colors, change them, love them. His fingers on the glass wander higher, until they block the light, leaving traces of grey shadows on Kihyun's face.

He touches his cheekbone, his cupid's bow, his chin, the tip of his nose. A grey shadow ghosting over his skin, soft, there in one second and gone in the next.

Changkyun can feel his hand starting to tremble, the familiar electricity working its way up his spine. He smiles, bites his lip as he looks down. His hand falls into his lap.

The world outside is rushing by, and the sun is setting low on the horizon, shining through trees and bushes like the light of a caleidoscope. He closes his eyes, wills the feeling to go away, but it doesn't. It really never does.

He might not be with him today. And not tomorrow, either. Maybe not in one, five, ten years. Maybe not in this life. Maybe not in the next.

But maybe, maybe, some day, somewhere and at some point, those streaks of paint will be replaced with his fingertips, and so it's okay.

He moves his hand, lets it fall off his lap, lets it meet the leather of the seat and lets it wander further, until he can feel Kihyun's pinky against his, just a light touch.

Just enough to be a coincidence.

Changkyun is okay.