Archive of Our Own ^beta

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

“Changmin?”

He starts, slamming his book shut, but the voice calling him is gentle, young, a student instead of a teacher. If anything, the navy polyester pants of the student uniform should give it away.

“Changmin?” the voice repeats, and he finally lifts his head, breath stuttering and dying in his throat. A pair of sparkly brown eyes peers down at him, dark hair ruffled and messy from who-knows-what, cheeks flushed pink and shiny from the heat outside. “What are you doing here?”

“In the library?” After a moment, Changmin finds his voice, though rusty and raw. “I can’t be in the library?”

The other boy laughs, sitting down across from him, leaning against the bookshelves. Carefully, he notices, as if in pain. “No, but you’re in the darkest corner. Can you even see the words? Your eyes are already bad enough, aren’t they? You shouldn’t make it worse.”

Changmin doesn’t respond, only looks at him. The dimness does take a toll on his eyesight, but that’s not the point. “Are you hurt?” he asks abruptly, seeing the boy wince as he stretches his legs out in front of him. “Yunho, don’t dodge the question.”

“I’m not!” But he flips his bangs to the side, eyes sliding past Changmin to the blank white wall he’s sitting against. “It’s not that bad.”

He mutters something else (it sounds vaguely like “and that’s hyung to you”), but Changmin’s already set his book aside and crawled over, fingers tugging at Yunho’s pants legs. Yunho stills, quiets, allows him to assess the torn skin on his knees.

“You need to go to the nurse.” Changmin looks up to find Yunho’s eyes trained on him. The childish sparkle is gone, replaced with something else. Something calmer, deeper, but no less genuine. His lashes are long, and his eyes are half-closed, curving slightly at the ends. Suddenly, all thoughts fly out of his head, and the only word that Changmin can think of is ‘pretty’. He snatches his hands away as if burned, face flushing with heat. “Y-yeah, the nurse.”

Yunho hums, watching Changmin scramble back to his wall. “I should,” he says slowly, reaching around to grab the bookshelves to pull himself up. “But Changminnie, my knees hurt so much.” He pouts, putting on a shameless show of fake pain. “I don’t think I can get there on my own.”

He’s sure his face must be bright red as he shoves his backpack onto his back and throws one of Yunho’s arms around his shoulders. “Fuck you,” he hisses, but the other boy just laughs. It doesn’t help that Yunho’s body temperature is naturally higher than most people, nor the fact that he just came in from playing soccer. No, Changmin’s not going to think about that, he’s going to ignore the way Yunho presses against him, the way the heat permeates through two sets of clothing, the way his breath puffs right into his ear. He’s going to close off his mind to everything regarding Jung Yunho. Head empty, no thoughts.

But he stays with him when the nurse slaps his knees with iodine, holds onto Yunho’s shoulders as he tenses in pain. He doesn’t do it because he’s worried or anything, god no. Changmin, unfortunately, is a good student and classmate and needs to make sure that Yunho doesn’t do anything stupid, like run away from the nurse, because he definitely would. Oh yeah, Changmin knows Yunho well enough to know that. His grip tightens on Yunho’s jacket, smooth polyester underneath his fingers. Maybe he knows him too well.

“Why am I the one taking care of you, though?” he grumbles after the nurse sends them off. Yunho rolls down his pants, taking care not to touch the large bandages over his knees. “If anything, you should be the one taking care of me.”

“You’re not even hurt!” Playful indignation colors Yunho’s voice, and he jumps up, latching his arms around Changmin’s neck. “Come on, Changminnie, I’m your hyung, you’re supposed to be nice to me.”

Changmin rolls his eyes. “Can I not have you as a hyung, then?” He detaches Yunho from himself, and they fall into step together. “I’ll go get another hyung to beat you up.”

“No, you can’t do that! And besides, no one would want to beat me up.”

“Jaejoong-hyung would.”

Yunho stops, a hint of actual annoyance on his face. Sunlight streams through the windows, striking gold into his eyes. The flaming leaves on the trees outside rustle in the wind, like real fire against the deep blue sky.

“Don’t compare me to that pretentious asshole.” His voice has lowered by half an octave. “I may not be a great person, but I’m at least better than him.”

An awkward silence hangs in the air as they stare at each other. The sun sets ever lower, golden light turning steadily amber, and finally, Changmin lowers his eyes. “You’re not a bad person,” he says somewhat stiffly, scuffing his shoe against the tile floor. “Sorry.”

Yunho doesn’t say anything, and after a while, Changmin looks up again. “What did you want me for anyway? In the library,” he adds quickly, so as to not seem rude. “I don’t think most people would specifically seek out someone like me.”

“Well, I do.” Yunho’s voice still holds a sharp edge, but his face has softened. He continues in a quieter voice, looking out the window. “I wanted you to help me with something.”

Help him? Involuntarily, Changmin’s eyebrows rise into his bangs. Perfect student Jung Yunho needs his help? With what, being a loser?

“You’re good with physics, right?”

---

If mathematics is the structure of the universe, then physics is the building blocks of it. Slightly simpler, not as much abstractness, but still very, very basic, and in Yunho’s perspective, very, very hard. He lets out a groan, plastering himself on the table facedown, and Changmin looks up from his own homework.

“What now?” he asks, slightly exasperated. “It’s not that hard.”

Yunho mumbles something that sounds like ‘not to you’, and Changmin bites back a sigh. It’s true that few sophomores take physics, but that has nothing to do with whether or not the subject is hard. Well, okay, maybe it’s got a little bit to do with it, but that’s not the point. Changmin’s not some child genius. He just likes physics, which is certainly different from his classmates, most of whom are seniors taking the class to fulfill their last science requirement.

The nature of force is simultaneously complex yet simple. It acts upon an object to change its state of motion. There are four known fundamental forces in the universe: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force.

“Isn’t gravity caused by warped spacetime?” Yunho speaks up, twirling a pencil between his fingers. Changmin’s surprised; he sits behind Yunho during class, and the boy never seems to be paying attention to anything. Yunho catches his eye and grins. “I used to watch a lot of Cosmos.”

Ah, Sagan. He can imagine a young Yunho sitting slack-jawed and starry-eyed in front of the TV. The thought brings a smile to his face, and he ducks his head quickly, but not before Yunho sees.

“Yah, brat.” He slaps his head lightly. “Just tell me how to do it.”

“Hyung, you have to understand the concept first.” Changmin scoots his chair around the table, snatching the pencil from his hand. “Look, force is equal to mass times acceleration, but it’s also the derivative of momentum, dp/dt, because what’s momentum equal to?”

A pause. “Mass times velocity.”

“Exactly!” He scribbles down the equations. “P equal mv and F equals ma equals dp/dt. Now you should be able to plug in the given values.”

Yunho does, but he still looks slightly lost. “Changminnie,” he says, flipping the page slowly. “How are you so smart?”

He’s really not. Heat creeps up Changmin’s face, and he tries to casually shrug off the compliment. “I just like it.”

“You like this shit?”

He sounds so disgusted, the feeling mirrored through his expression, that Changmin has to laugh. “Hyung, just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean other people don’t.”

“Well, yeah, but...” Yunho shrugs, putting his chin in his hands. “It’s so boring.”

Warm sunlight falls onto the desk, illuminating the dust motes floating in the air. Yunho’s eyes are gentle, and he looks older, wiser than his age, fingers tapping out a soundless rhythm on his cheeks. Dust falls onto his hair, showering him in light, and for a moment, he looks like a god.

Changmin doesn’t believe in a god, but he thinks he could believe in Yunho.

He opens his mouth, finds no words to say, and closes it again. Yunho smiles, shifts, and the moment is broken. Changmin clears his throat, feels his face burn with something more than just heat from the sun, and looks down at the papers scattered on the desk. “You liked Cosmos.”

Yunho laughs, leans back in his chair. “Cosmos is Cosmos,” he says, stretching lazily. “It was meant to be interesting.”

“Cosmos is physics.” Changmin doesn’t know why he’s so desperate to prove his point. “Physics is interesting once you understand the concepts. You have to realize that physics is our entire world, life, the universe, everything, it builds us and rules us and is the very nature of our existence. Everything is physics, math. You playing sports, me doing music, the marks of our pencils on paper. Everything is physics, it’s all around us, it is us, everything we do is physics, we couldn’t live without it, wouldn’t exist without it.”

He stops suddenly, embarrassed. Yunho watches him, something deep and unreadable wavering in his eyes. “I know,” he says simply. “The law of universal gravitation. We are all attracted to each other. Iron can only be formed in the cores of dying stars. We are made from stardust.” He pauses, smiles, faint crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. Changmin can’t look away. “It’s interesting stuff. It just depends on who you’re learning it from.”

He stands, gathers his papers, and leaves with a smile. “See you tomorrow, Changdol.”

For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.

Their friendship starts early in the year. Their physics teacher, unfortunately, is not very good at his job. No one listens in his class, and the information they learn might as well be empty air. Changmin, thankfully, knows his physics, well enough to teach himself and almost well enough to teach others as well. He takes meticulous notes, writes and rewrites them in his free time, traces them over in different colors, memorizes them until he can’t get them wrong.

And then he goes and explains it to Yunho, who’s noticed his high grades and made it a habit to come to him for anything he doesn’t know.

“Changminnie, how do you do this? Changminnie, what’s circular motion? Changminnie, how do I do this with friction? Changminnie? Changminnie?”

To his surprise, he doesn’t mind explaining, whether it’s in class or afterwards. Sometimes Yunho asks him to stay behind, sometimes he invites him to his house, other times they both agree to go to the public library. They grow ever closer, and Changmin learns that Yunho is going into law, because that’s what his parents do and he hasn’t ever known anything else. In return, Changmin reveals his deepest dream, to become a writer and publish a book, and Yunho promises to read it once it comes out.

Yunho’s the star of the soccer team. Changmin hides himself in the darkest corners of the library. Everyone knows and likes Yunho. No one seeks out Changmin unless it’s to ask for help. Attention swirls and thrives around Yunho. Changmin’s used to going around alone. They’re so different, so unlikely to become friends in the first place, that Changmin can’t help wondering what deity reached its finger down to bring them together.

“Maybe it’s a warp in spacetime,” he tells his best friend one day. “Maybe he’s the warp. He’s so bright, everyone gathers around him. He’s a star in human form. You can’t help being attracted to someone like that.”

Kyuhyun is less than impressed. “He’s just a pretty boy who happens to be good at kicking a ball around. You said it yourself, he doesn’t know the last thing about physics.”

“I didn’t!” Changmin flushes, lowering his voice even though they’re in his room with the door locked. “I said he wasn’t interested in it so he doesn’t even try.”

Kyuhyun hums, tapping his pencil on his chin. “So maybe he’s a massive object in regards to the plane of spacetime. Say he is. So what? We’re about as far away from him as we can be, I think we’re safe.” He leans back, lifting the front legs of his chair off the ground. “I mean, think about it. He’s the type who’s definitely going to join a frat and party his guts out, and you, Shim Chwang? You’re going to have zero social life at college if I’m not there for you.”

Changmin punches him on the shoulder. Kyuhyun yells, flailing for a split second, and lets the chair drop to the floor. “But am I wrong?” he says with a grin, turning back to his math homework.

Changmin bites back a sigh, running harsh fingers through his hair. No, Kyuhyun’s not wrong. Yunho is definitely the type to join a frat and get drunk every night. Meanwhile Changmin, if he’s even going to go to the same college as him, would stay as far away from alcohol as he possibly could. They’re not on the same level; they’re not even from the same world.

How do worlds collide in this universe? Changmin feels himself falling, slipping beyond the event horizon, orbiting the star that is Jung Yunho, gaining velocity until the speed and friction tear him apart on the atomic level. What would he become then? What would he be to Jung Yunho but another jet of light in his accretion disk?

Changmin’s in too deep, past the point of no return, unable to resist the pull of Yunho’s gravitational force.

---

Jaejoong approaches him one day when Yunho’s not around. Probably doing his duties as the best soccer player in the entire school. At first, Changmin doesn’t even notice; he’s too invested in the blustering storms of Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship to notice much else. By the time he finally looks up, Jaejoong’s almost on top of him.

“What are you reading?” the older boy asks, sitting down in the desk in front of him. Changmin instinctively backs away, bringing up his book to cover his face. “Hey, wait, are you scared of me?”

If Changmin’s being honest, he’s more intimidated than scared. Jaejoong doesn’t have the best reputation with the students; rumor goes, he’s familiar with the local gangs and even beat up the school bully in his freshman year.

Plus, Yunho hates him, and Changmin trusts Yunho’s judgment.

He’s never said what for, though, and Changmin’s not exactly sure he wants to know. But it would be helpful in situations like right now, when Jaejoong’s leaning across the table to peer into Changmin’s rapidly-darting eyes.

“Hey, chill.” Jaejoong offers another smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes and makes him look more like a doll than a human. “What book is it? I can’t see the title.”

Changmin really does not want to talk to him. “Wuthering Heights,” he says shortly. Then he props the book up on the table and hides his face, pretending that the sun shining through the windows on his left bothers him. Unfortunately, Jaejoong does not take the hint.

“Wuthering Heights,” he repeats, hooking a finger over the top of the book to drag it down. A stab of panic runs through Changmin’s chest, and he takes out his phone, hiding it underneath the desk. “What’s that about? I’ve never read it.”

“Uh.” Changmin’s finger slips. He wipes his fingers on his pants and types in his passcode again. “Heathcliff is an ass. Catherine died. Years later a tenant finds out the secret from the housekeeper.” Blindly he taps for the phone app. “Shit gets exposed. Dark, scary, sad.”

For a terrifying moment, Jaejoong doesn’t move, and Changmin’s heart leaps into his throat. His finger trembles, hitting the screen of his phone without meaning to, and a dial tone rings through the empty classroom. Changmin leaps up.

“Oh, sorry, I have to take this,” he bluffs, but Jaejoong’s arm flashes out and grabs his wrist. His phone falls to the ground. Changmin doesn’t dare look at it; instead, he meets Jaejoong’s gaze, trying to gauge just how fucked he is. The upperclassman’s eyes are dark with anger, and he twists his hand, bringing Changmin to his knees with a strangled yell.

“Jung Yunho.” The setting sun casts sharp shadows on Jaejoong’s face. “The sweetheart of the entire school. What were you calling him for, hm, Changmin? You thought he could save you from the big bad monster?”

He twists his hand again. Tears spring unbidden to Changmin’s eyes, and he grits his teeth.

“I told you, he called me.”

Jaejoong’s bark echoes off of the walls. “I’m not dumb, Changmin. I know a ringtone from a dial tone. You called him, didn’t you? You called him because you were afraid of me. You thought he could save you.”

Was that it? He hadn’t meant to call Yunho—it was an accident, and in this situation, anyone would do—but does a part of him wish to be saved by him? Changmin doesn’t know. He doesn’t have the ability to think about it right now. He tries to tug his wrist away and fails miserably.

“Let go.” His voice cracks in panic. Jaejoong smirks and pulls sharply. Unprepared, Changmin loses his footing and falls, stumbling into Jaejoong’s chest. An arm comes around his back and he struggles against the hold. “Fuck, let go!”

“Hm? Let go, you say?”

“Let him go, you motherfucking—”

A hand grabs the back of Changmin’s shirt and yanks him away. He crashes into the edge of the desk behind him. The impact hurts, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on the pain. Yunho drives his fist into Jaejoong’s face and Changmin jerks forward, screaming, as Jaejoong fights back. More hands hold him back, and he thinks he recognizes the voices of a few of Yunho’s friends.

Then Yunho’s hands are on his face, gently swiping over his cheekbones. The sky outside is dark, and he has no recollection of what’s happened. Bruises bloom on Yunho’s face, but he smiles as if nothing’s wrong. Jaejoong is gone, and so are Yunho’s friends. 

“Changdol,” Yunho whispers. “Are you okay?”

Maybe it’s the way he says it, or maybe it’s the way he looks into his eyes. Something within Changmin breaks, and he falls, knees giving out beneath him. Yunho catches him, like he knew he would, and Changmin buries his face in his chest, clutching his shirt like a baby.

No tears come, though he trembles like a leaf in the wind. Yunho holds him tight, arms steady and warm, hair soft against his face. He smells like strawberries, like freshly laundered linens, like sunshine and grass, and gradually, Changmin looks up.

Yunho smiles, softly. “Are you okay? It’s time to go home.”

He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. He clears his throat, stands on his own legs, and tries again. “Are you?”

His voice is rusty with disuse, and Yunho’s eyes curve prettily under the harsh fluorescent lighting. “Yes, of course.” He taps Changmin’s nose once. “Come on, time to go home.”

Home? Where is home? With his parents and sisters, of course, but walking underneath the great vastness of the void of night, staring up at the stars in the stretches between streetlights, Changmin thinks that home may have gained a new definition.

Yunho grabs his hand—his fingers are warm in the cold autumn night—and points out a large W in the sky. Cassiopeia. “That’s my favorite. It’s the easiest one to remember.”

“What about the Big Dipper?” Changmin takes a step closer. The orange light of the streetlamps washes over them. Their shadows shorten, disappear, elongate, melt into the darkness. “Isn’t that the easiest one for most people?”

“There’s Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.” Yunho’s still holding his hand. He doesn’t seem to want to let go. Changmin doesn’t want him to let go. “Too much work differentiating between them.”

“But there is a difference.” They stop in front of the gate of the apartment complex. Neither moves, and neither extracts their hand. “The Little Dipper has the North Star in it.”

An odd expression rises on Yunho’s face. The right side of his face is mottled in purple and green, and carefully, Changmin brushes his fingers over the bruises. Yunho smiles, touching his hand briefly. Then he lets go, leaving Changmin grasping at nothing.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Changmin.”

He grins, waves, and disappears into the night. Changmin is left standing in front of the wrought-iron gate, staring blankly at the darkness. Above, Cassiopeia twinkles, and a little ways away, Ursa Minor. The Little Dipper. Polaris, guiding him home.

But where is home?

Home, Changmin thinks, pressing in the passcode with a series of electronic beeps, is with Yunho.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

“Changminnie, I’m bored.”

He doesn’t even bother to raise his head. “You’ve barely started.”

“But I’m bored!”

Changmin doesn’t reply, continuing to make notes in the margins of his paper. Yunho pouts, reaching across the table to grab his wrist. “Changminnie, please?”

Changmin’s hand freezes in the middle of writing the number nine. He hopes that Yunho can’t feel him trembling. “What?”

His voice comes out colder than he’d meant. Yunho blinks but doesn’t move his hand. “Tell me about physics. What you like about it, why you like it.”

Why he likes physics? Changmin finally looks up. Yunho’s eyes are round, bright with genuine curiosity. Though the air in the library is cold, Yunho’s hand is warm, and he looks out the window at the bare trees shaking in the wind. The sky is overcast, likely to snow soon, and he wonders briefly if Yunho would play in the snow with him.

“I want to know how the universe formed,” he says quietly. “I want to know how and why and what was there in the beginning and how everything else came along. Physics is the foundation of the entire universe, and learning physics means learning the world. I want to find the ultimate truth.”

He shakes his head, laughing slightly. “It’s stupid, but I want to know everything. There’s such a craving inside of me, a sort of hunger, for this kind of knowledge. It’s impossible to learn now, but maybe I can contribute to it. Maybe I can, I don’t know, maybe future generations will build on my work and I’ll have indirectly contributed to finding out the truth.”

Changmin’s cheeks flush with heat, and he lowers his head. Yunho’s silent, and he can’t help glancing up at him. His mouth hangs slightly open and his eyes are opened wide. Changmin sees himself reflected in the deep brown of Jung Yunho’s eyes and looks away. For a long moment, the only sounds around are those of the heater and other people whispering.

“Wow,” Yunho finally says, letting go of his wrist. “Wow, Changmin, that’s amazing.”

If it had been anyone else, those words would have felt fake and condescending. But it’s Yunho, and Yunho’s always genuine. He means every word he says, and Changmin has no doubt that he does think his ambition to be wonderful. Absently, he rubs his wrist where Yunho’s hand had been, secretly mourning the loss of warmth.

“You know, I think I wanted to be a scientist too, when I was younger.” Yunho turns to look out the window. Small flakes of snow fall from the gray clouds above, and he presses his nose against the glass like a child. His breath fogs the glass, and Changmin feels his lips curving upward.  “Carl Sagan really made physics sound like such a simple thing, such a simple, beautiful thing. ‘The sky is made by life,’ he said, and I believed him. I still do.”

The sky is made by life. The greatest part of human existence was spent over the dying embers of the campfire. On a moonless night, we watched the stars. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality.

“I wondered, as a kid, if I could see the Milky Way from my backyard.” Yunho laughs, pulling away from the window. A spot of condensation remains on the glass, and Changmin reaches out to wipe it away. “I still want to see it. I want to see everything, the galaxy, shooting stars, a night full of constellations.”

His eyes are distant and glazed over, and though he’s smiling, he looks sad. Changmin’s heart lurches. “I’ll take you,” he blurts out, and continues before he has a chance to feel embarrassed. “I’ve never seen them either. All I’ve ever seen are a few eclipses.”

Yunho looks at him with such intensity that he wants to dive underneath the table to escape from his piercing gaze. “We can go together,” the older boy says quietly, taking his hand. Changmin starts, but Yunho’s grip tightens. “You’ll see more on your own, but I want to see the stars with you. You’ll go far, Changminnie, I know you will. Just, please don’t forget about me.”

He looks so serious, so sure, that Changmin can’t help leaning in. He closes his fingers around Yunho’s. Their heartbeats sync, their foreheads touch, and Yunho smiles, breath warm against his lips.

“Hyung, how can I ever forget about you?”

---

“Gravitational waves are real, you know. They’ve detected them already. So gravity really is a fundamental force, except they still haven’t found any gravitons.”

Yunho looks up from his computer, blinking hard. “How do you actually understand this stuff?” He points to the Wikipedia article. “How do you read through all of these words and understand what it means?”

Changmin shrugs, balancing a pencil on the tip of his finger. “I don’t get all of it. It’s heavy stuff, but the concept is pretty easy. Mass travels through spacetime and disturbs it. The fabric of spacetime ripples and sends out waves that sometimes can be detected from Earth. That’s the general gist.”

There’s a long pause. Then Yunho closes his computer. “Changdol,” he says, plopping his head into his hands. “You should go into theoretical physics. Become the next Feynman. Or astrophysics and become the next Sagan.”

“Me?” Changmin looks across the table. Yunho has a gentle smile on his face, and his eyes are half-lidded in a way that makes him look like a fox. He can almost see a bushy tail waving lazily in the air. “What about you?”

“Hmm? What about me?”

“You could become the next, next…” Changmin doesn’t know any famous lawyers. “The next whatever you want to be. You’re good at everything you do.”

Yunho rolls his eyes. His cheeks are squished up, and Changmin wants to poke them. He swallows. “Not everything. I’m not good at physics.”

“But you could be. You try hard at the things you like and if you tried hard in physics too, you could really be the next Einstein.” He swallows again as Yunho’s tongue darts out to wet his lips. “Y-you really could.”

The other boy laughs, dipping his head. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Changdol. I’ll keep it in mind in case I ever want to change my major.”

He’s so attractive. Changmin can’t help being attracted to him. He’s so bright, so kind, so warm and so perfect in every single way. Who wouldn’t like him? Who wouldn’t fall irrevocably in love with him? Half of the entire school is in love with him, most of the girls and even some of the boys. It’s not weird that Changmin likes him too, it’s really not.

But it does hurt, just a little, when he sees the prettiest girls hanging over him. Kwon Boa, Bae Joohyun, Kim Taeyeon… And then there are the boys. Lee Donghae, Kim Minseok, Choi Siwon…

Compared to them, Changmin is a mess. A weak, nerdy, average-looking sophomore. He can’t compare to anymore, especially not the prettiest people in the senior class. 

But Yunho comes back to him, and he keeps coming back. It’s usually for physics, but sitting in the library, or in the classroom, or in Yunho’s living room that smells like cinnamon and sugar, it always turns into something more. A heartfelt conversation, a gaming session, a joking competition. Yunho makes the boringest things seem infinitely interesting.

“Changmin?”

“Hm?” Changmin tunes back into reality. The late afternoon sun washes over them, highlighting brass-toned strands in Yunho’s hair. He’s transfixed, watching the light strike gold into Yunho’s eyes. They’re clear, guileless, yet filled with worldly wisdom, and a sudden pain seizes Changmin’s heart.

He wants this moment to freeze in time, wants it to stay perfect and unbroken in his heart, wants a snapshot of the way Jung Yunho looks at him and wants to remember the way his heart stutters a rhythm in his stomach, releasing all the butterflies. Nothing, in this moment, matters more than the knowing gaze that Yunho fixes upon him, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Changmin,” he repeats, slowly, quietly. “I think I’m in love with you.”

The cosmos is within us. We are made of starstuff.

Nothing changes, yet everything changes. The world moves on, continues as it was meant to be, but to Changmin, the world is cast in a new light. Beauty explodes around him, from the concrete flower pots on the balcony to the way the trees sway in the early spring wind. The sky is perpetually overcast in a constant of about-to-rain, but it doesn’t matter, nothing does.

Changmin is in love.

He can hardly keep the smile off his face as he walks into class. It’s been months, but the emotions overwhelm him every time he sees him. Joy, pride, appreciation, thankfulness, oh-how-can-this-man-be-mine, the-universe-gifted-me-with-him, lovelovelove and more, forever, eternal, I’ll-never-get-over-him.

In short, he’s whipped.

Kyuhyun judges him very hard, every day, and makes sure that he never forgets it. “You get a boyfriend and forget your friends, do you, traitor?” he grumbles, throwing an eraser at him when the teacher’s not looking. “Whatever, it’s not like you hung out with us before anyway.”

“I so did,” Changmin hisses back, chucking the eraser back. “I still hang out with you.”

Kyuhyun rolls his eyes. “Yeah, when you’re not busy explaining every single topic of physics to your boyfriend. Which is what you’ve been doing this entire year.”

Changmin opens his mouth to retort but finds that he cannot. It’s true; he has indeed spent most of his free time during the year explaining physics to Yunho. They’ve talked about a lot of stuff, too, not just the topics covered in class. He closes his mouth.

It’s not his fault, not really. If Kyuhyun knew Yunho—really knew him, took the time to become friends and genuinely understand him—he’d understand. There’s something irresistible about him, an aura that naturally draws people to him. Everyone wants him, everyone wants to know him. It’s just the way of the world, how the person named Jung Yunho works.

He shines so brightly, even in the midst of a crowd, so that anyone can immediately pick him out. It’s like this when Changmin goes to watch his soccer games. Even from his spot at the very top of the bleachers, he can find Yunho on the field with just one glance. He doesn’t even need to try. His gaze just gravitates to him.

“It’s your gravity,” he explains to Yunho one day, as they’re laying on Changmin’s bed, tangled together in a mess of limbs. He reaches up to run his fingers along his jawline. “Your distortions in the fabric of spacetime. There’s no way we wouldn’t be able to detect them.”

“Is that some underhanded jab?” Yunho laughs, leaning in to kiss his forehead. “Something about me being too massive?”

“No!” Offended, Changmin sits up. Yunho’s hand remains around his waist, resting against the softness of his stomach. “I was being serious. Everyone and everything spirals around you like the accretion disk of a black hole. Past the event horizon, the point of no return. It’s only a matter of time before they fall for you completely.” He breathes in deeply. “Like I did.”

Yunho’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks. Slowly, he pushes himself up to a sitting position and places a hand on Changmin’s leg. The heat burns through the denim of his jeans. “But I’ll only ever let you in,” he says quietly. His other hand comes up to caress Changmin’s cheek. “You’re the only one I’ll ever spaghettify, Changdol.”

He tries, he really tries, but in the end, Changmin can’t hold back his laugh. He falls against Yunho, knocking him back onto the bed. “What the fuck was that?” he demands between giggles, grabbing Yunho’s shirt to drag his mouth down to meet his own. “Fuck, I love you. Please never change. And stay with me.”

Yunho’s lips are soft against his neck. He can feel the boy’s smile as he replies, “Always. You are the iron in my core, my pale blue dot in the endless void, my extraordinary evidence of everything that’s right in the world. You are my everything. I love you.”

And Changmin believes him.

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.