specks of silver
Author:
timingspacesPairing/Members: Sehun/Jongin (SeKai)
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: definition
Length: 2100~ words
Summary: Sehun realizes that dreams can only be reached by painful realities (or not reached at all).
(entry for 
aideshou challenge 10)
[a/n: i forgot to change my userpic /cries]
i.
It’s four in the afternoon, with both the full moon and the sun somehow hanging in the sky amongst the clouds, when Sehun first catches sight of him. Staring at the fairly tall figure lying on the gravel, he feels it—the sort of indescribable pull—similar to the way the moon revolves around the Earth. Everything about him is flawless: the way his body is built, the way his face is structured, the way his dark hair falls just above his eyebrows and over his tanned skin. Sehun thinks he’s a work of art that should be preserved.
So past the sound of sirens, past the chatter of bystanders, the crushed pieces of metal scattered across the freeway, and the deep red that covers his face and body, Sehun can’t help but just stand there and admire what he tries to imagine his forever.
ii.
Sehun likes staring because it’s harmless. He stares at what he wants to observe until he can almost feel the burn in his eyes and blinks and stares again. When the window is open and a breeze blows into the side of his eyes, he blinks more than usual, but he doesn’t really notice.
Sehun stares and stares, even though the person he’s staring past looks in his direction, startled. It’s all he allows himself to do.
He hears them talk about chills and ghosts and flickering lights in hospitals before they cry over broken hopes and dreams and the unbelievable accuracy of their slumbering friend’s three-pointers. It floods and flushes out of Sehun’s ears like the sounds of the IV drip and heart monitor as they leave, but, even when the door clicks shut, Sehun’s eyes never leave the boy.
Staring is something that doesn’t cause Sehun pain, but he knows he’ll regret it later on.
iii.
Sehun has always lived, but never dreamed. Each time he closes his eyes, the darkness that consumes him doesn’t send his mind to realms beyond those he normally sees; it’s always been pitch black. But he doesn’t wish to dream. Dreams are too hard to find and too hard to complete, Sehun thinks, because everyone who dreams dies.
Sehun’s already died once dreaming of two hands that could have interlocked as well as two pairs of lips and limbs that could have roamed far beyond milky skin—and once is enough. Dreams and wishes get crushed along with the meteoroids that make shooting stars. Jongin’s is no exception.
Broken dreams make broken dreamers but Sehun hopes Jongin only ever breaks his leg.
iv.
“Jongin.” Sehun hasn’t said anything in a long time, but he likes the way the name slips off his tongue, through his teeth, and into the constant drone of hospital machines. He repeats it again, “Jongin.”
Why does Jongin keep sleeping? It doesn’t make sense to Sehun because the cuts and bruises covered by bandages are the only things the hospital treated Jongin for—other than his broken leg. He’s just sleeping. There’s nothing wrong with his MRI; he just hasn’t woken up yet, the doctor told his friends earlier today.
“Jongin,” Sehun repeats, a bit quieter this time. Sehun hopes that there really is something wrong with Jongin’s brain. A concussion, a brain tumour, hemorrhages—anything but simply sleeping.
Sehun hears footsteps from outside the door, and a light flashes through the gridded glass.
“Kim Jongin,” Sehun whispers one more time. His voice cracks at the last syllable, wishing he didn’t take the long route to his house the day he saw Jongin.
When the door opens, the silver-haired boy is no longer seated on the windowsill, and the security guard can only see the refraction of the full moon through the windows and onto the white bed sheets.
v.
Sehun’s hair doesn’t grow. It’s been a long time since it had turned silver from the tips to the roots, just like his pale, nearly translucent, complexion. His lips are a pink that almost blends in with his skin and his eyes—his eyes are a light blue that keeps getting cloudier with his age.
Jongin’s opposing appearance always surprises Sehun when Sehun’s eyes wander away from and back to Jongin. His hair a brown that’s almost black, skin a cappuccino he wants to taste, lips rich pink, and Sehun imagines his eyes to be a deep brown he’ll want to dive into—if he ever gets the chance to even glance at them.
But that would be impossible. He won’t ever get the chance because the bandages have yet to be removed, the MRI’s haven’t changed, and Jongin still slumbers his days away, putting his life on hold until it’ll fast-forward when he wakes up.
The doctors have labeled him as comatose, but Sehun knows much better. Comatose patients grow, heal and age as their friends and family talk to them, hoping for the possibility that their thoughts will be heard. Jongin can’t be comatose.
Jongin might be able process what he hears, but his hair doesn’t grow and his muscles don’t become weak. Sehun still wishes for Jongin to be sick, to be dying, instead of being put on pause.
Sehun, contrarily, also wishes to keep Jongin forever, but Sehun’s forevers have always ended with decimals rather than infinities. Sehun already knows that Jongin can’t be his and he can’t be Jongin’s but when he closes his eyes, he imagines his hands submerged in pools of caffeine.
(His forever has already ended before he opens his eyes again.)
vi.
“Jongin,” Sehun whispers from his seat on the windowsill before leaping down next to the mattress. He walks closer to where Jongin’s right arm has rested for the past month and kneels down.
Sehun watches the rises and falls of Jongin’s chest through the covers. His eyes move from his chest to his shoulder, down the contours of his toned arms to the calloused hands and fingers Jongin had used to shoot and pass and pave the perfect path towards the day he’ll be able to represent his country.
Sehun places his hand inches over Jongin’s forearm and can already feel the warmth burning through his skin. He closes his eyes and imagines his hands covered in Jongin, but when he opens them, they aren’t.
A pale hand moves to Jongin’s palm and, as it hovers over the patterns that carve through Jongin’s hand, Sehun can already tell that his hand would fit perfectly into the darker one, that Jongin’s fingers would wrap around Sehun’s hand as well as foam clings onto almost every surface—but foam is all Sehun ever touches.
He never actually feels the searing warmth Jongin could provide no matter how he begs himself to because it’s all he deserves; he’s already taken so much from Jongin and to take more of what Jongin has and the things he loves would be too cruel—even if Sehun only takes out of love.
vii.
Jongin’s been put on hold, but, even after he picks up again, Jongin can’t die. Jongin’s too precious, too rare, for Sehun to let him just pass the world by without being preserved or leaving any trace whatsoever.
But Sehun—Sehun’s already passed the world by hundreds of times without leaving a trace. Sehun’s been preserved for far too long and Sehun wouldn’t mind taking Jongin’s place. He wants to take Jongin’s place because from here on out, Sehun already knows the decades will pass like months and before it feels like a year has passed, Jongin will be gone.
“Jongin.” Sehun wants Jongin so badly that he trembles when he closes his eyes and all he sees is Jongin. Jongin, Jongin, Jongin—everything is about Jongin; how good Jongin would look in a jersey, how many points and assists Jongin would make in a game, how hard Jongin would practice, smiling, enjoying what he loves. And at the end of it all, Sehun can almost see Jongin playing as one of the nation’s starters.
But Sehun’s in the way, always in the way, standing in front of the door to the building, wanting to see him, wanting to say good luck to him just once, wanting to touch him just once.
And when Sehun opens his eyes and sees Jongin sleeping in front of him, the Jongin in his mind is still trying to open the door he thinks is locked. He can never get in or out unless Sehun moves aside.
Sehun has to leave.
viii.
Sehun’s close. He’s close enough to feel the air coming out of Jongin’s nose, close enough to count the pores of his tanned skin, close enough to feel so much of Jongin’s heat that he feels himself nearly sweating.
His hands are pressed against the mattress around Jongin’s head. He’s strong enough to hold himself up, but his arms still tremble as he lowers himself closer, closer, closer—no matter how close he gets, he can’t feel Jongin.
Sehun’s eyes look away from Jongin’s lips to his eyelids and, for just a moment, the skin flashes a milky white that Sehun can’t help but be reminded of.
His whole body reacts. Jongin keeps getting further and further away even though he gets closer and closer in his mind, and he can’t feel Jongin.
He whimpers as the tears fall, but Jongin’s face remains unmarked.
ix.
When Sehun’s hair was silver but still dark brown at the roots, he saw a boy whose chestnut hair could never be nearly as golden as his heart was. Sehun watched him day and night—do you need help planting these, sir? I can help you get water from the well, miss—but the day Sehun decided to confront the boy, bandits stole away the smile Sehun wanted for himself and surrounded it with embers.
“Luhan,” Sehun would say night after night, waiting for him to wake up. He didn’t understand—he had dragged Luhan out of the house before any flames could even graze Luhan’s skin, but Luhan continued to sleep, and sleep—and sleep.
“Luhan,” Sehun would whisper in his ear before kissing his temple, echoing throughout the cave within the mountains that peaked above Luhan’s destroyed village. Sehun would trace Luhan’s face—eyes, nose, cheekbone, jaw, lips—gently ghosting over the perfect features of his milky skin, and Sehun assumed consent from Luhan.
And even though Luhan kept on sleeping, Sehun was happier than he had ever been.
But months grew into years and decades and Sehun grew impatient waiting for Luhan to wake up. Why won’t he wake up? Why? Why? Sehun would repeat night after night instead of the name he loved to say.
Sehun’s hair had already turned silver from the tips to the roots and he had been tired of waiting, tired of repeating the same name as he repeated the same actions over the same person. Luhan was breathing, Luhan kept living, but he kept sleeping and ignoring Sehun and Sehun hated it.
More than just a few decades had passed and they still looked as young as they were on that night many years ago until the night Sehun stopped touching Luhan, stopped saying his name, stopped staring at him.
But when the next night came and Sehun wanted to give him one last glance, his hair had grown to his feet, silver from the tips to the roots, and his golden heart dulled until it didn’t exist anymore.
(This wasn’t supposed to happen, but it’s bound to happen again.)
x.
“Oh Sehun,” he tries to tell Jongin as white begins shooting through his vision. The pain rips through him as he tries to stand and falls on his knees again, but he manages to stand, hunched over.
Sehun can only imagine, for the last time, what it’s like to sleep for such a long time. As he watches Jongin’s shallow breaths, he wonders how many worlds Jongin has visited during the amount of time Sehun has taken this world from him.
He continues hovering over Jongin and sees his fingers curl, eyelids closed, but moving, and knows that it’s almost his time. But Sehun doesn’t want to go. Not yet, not when he hasn’t yet seen Jongin play, not yet when he hasn’t even touched him, heard him talk, looked him in the eyes, no, it’s too soon.
Sehun doesn’t know if the pain he feels is from the blade stuck in the middle of his chest or the emptiness he feels from what he won’t be able to achieve or see or be a part of. Sehun wants to cry, he thinks he’s crying, he is crying; his vision is clouded and he feels the droplets falling from his eyes to Jongin’s face, but Jongin’s face is dry.
Sehun once dreamed that he would be able to look at Jongin’s eyes and smile, but he only sees a pool of brown through his tears before everything turns black.
xi.
“Where am I?”
a/n: phew finally done with this—hope you liked it~ it was inspired by the Greek myth of Endymion in which the moon, whom they call Selene, falls in love with Endymion (he has different roles depending on the poet). Endymion becomes immortal, but he sleeps forever under the gentle touches of the moon. Taeyeon's OST for Mr. Go, "Bye," helped out with writing this as well. And thanks to baeksicles who stayed with me for hours as I endlessly complained about my writing and formatting /shot. i promise i'll write that layhan eventually