(no subject)
Title: Under the Stars, I Feel Myself Slipping
Pairing: V/J-Hope[This is what i originally had]i’m feelin minseok/soup rn idk why old exo members fic or maybe hyunsik/ilhoon from btob tbh this is more like a short story at this point. fuck it, young!obama/jackson wang nah suchen always suchen or hobi/v idk ugh what a struggle
Rating: PG-13
Genre: something, aliens, basketball,
Warnings: [spoilers]someone dies ooooo plot twist it's rap monster fucker gets all the raps anyways
Summary: Hoseok’s wandering finally leads him in the right direction. ft. Namjoon and Yoongi for like 3 seconds
Focus, focus.
The view became clearer.
Zooming deeper, deeper; the dark eyes reflected the sky with the same wonder that the vastness evoked. There was something about it, the black engulfing the sky, hardly any stars left to twinkle in the eyes of the hopeful. There was something that filled the boy with fear and hope, a feeling that had lingered in his stomach since he first viewed the cosmic wasteland. But today, today was different. The dormant feeling was stirring. He felt queasy and nauseous as he adjusted the telescope. Queasy, nauseous and wonderful.
He took a step back, squinting. Suddenly, his heart was in his head, pumping through his thoughts. A single white streak glared across the sky and he pushed his eye into the scope, following the glow as it fizzled into the abyss.
He heard himself suck in the air, sweeter than anything he had ever tasted. He felt himself floating, gliding through his own euphoria: It was real, the comets were real, everything he had read about was real.
--
It was in the third year since the world turned bleak. He had been sitting in his house, dozing over homework when his father opened the door. His voice was so soft, a placid tone to the panic rising in his stance.
“Come on, it’s time to go.”
Without asking further, the boy pushed a few essentials into his backpack: A blank notebook, the school yearbook, his stuffed dog, a few candy bars, and his gameboy, equipped with pokemon. It was zipped and bobbing against his back as he descended the stairs. It stopped halfway as the boy froze. His parents watched him, their faces aged with all sorts of adult emotions he could barely understand.
“It’s time to go,” His father repeated, taking his hand.
A thirteen hour car ride later and he was without parents. A boy, wandering the barren highway with one untied shoe and a drained juicebox in one hand, his gameboy and three candybar wrappers discarded from his stock. He clung to his thoughts and the memory of the smiling, sunshiny days and tried desperately to scratch out all the dangling feet and crumpled children he had witnessed giving up their own journeys.
He sat, shoulders shuddering against the empty rubber of a tire, through his tears praying that God was still watching him.
--
He sat, grinning so hard his face hurt, silently thanking whoever made the stars smile at night. His eyes were wet as he remembered it was the first time in years he had felt this surge. His cheeks ached, his chest was pumping, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was energy, warmth bubbling up inside of him. It was a way to fill him in a way his lack of food could not. A wordless contract to reassure: he would live, not merely survive.
His celebration was interrupted by an eruption a few metres away. It shattered his concentration, shaking his eyes and heart. He felt his knees knocking, buckling, as he raised himself. Wisps climbed through the air from the hole in the ceiling of a nearby trailer. Fingers wobbling almost as he was shaking them, he pried open the door.
Smoke tumbled out, engulfing him and he fought to regain what little fresh air he had left. Fanning furiously, he squinted through the smog. As he turned his head towards the inside, a patch of illumination dulled into darkness. A shadow lifted up, its movements human, cautious. The boy mimicked the shadow, widening his stance.
Soon, two dark eyes were gazing at him. They looked tired, aged, more so than the face that held them. The boy looked back with a jovial curiosity, sensing a familiarity in the figure’s face.
It lifted itself up, pushing up on unseen arms, and stepped into the clear air. The remaining wisps tumbled around it, clearing the way in a style the boy had only seen before in the faint memories of science fiction. It, too, was a boy.
His eyes were wide: black and twinkling with whirls of reaction and stardust seeming to flick off his eyelashes with every glance. His first words were not, rather, the first noise he made was a cough; the boy felt himself seize up, fear clenching his chest. The boy shook his head, flecks of dust caught the light dripping from the skylight: those too, seemed celestial. His hair caught the glow too - a vibrant auburn. A fire in the dark. The word beautiful isn’t a word he would apply to many things, but this person was one.
The boy had never seen anyone like this before, but then again, he had hardly seen anyone in the preceding years. It was nice, he thought, to possibly have possible human contact again, but at what cost? Would this new person end up, as many before, abandoned? The boy didn’t want to have to fight again. He didn’t want to pass a friend, crumpled like a discarded wrapper, on the side of the road. This boy - if he was a human being - seemed to be made of starlight: he’d hate to see another star burn out.
The figure opened its mouth, what came out resembled gargles. They sounded vaguely syllabic, much like the boy’s own language, but sounds that he had never heard come out of a human mouth before. He felt his own mouth form an “o”, and quickly closed it just before the creature cleared its throat.
In his language, the first thing he understood was an apology. In a voice resembling a horn’s alluring murmur, they continued.
“I’m your guardian angel, Hoseok.”
“Are you sure you’re not, um, an alien?” He paused, collecting his thoughts and trying to calm his heart.
The ‘alien’, as they agreed to be called, introduced themself with a single tone - a noise the boy couldn’t vocalize very well, instead pronouncing it “V”.
“Ah, ah, close.” The alien’s mouth curled up in an attempt at a smile.
“You could call me…” The alien looked up and the boy marveled at the flexibility of their face. “Taehyung, if that’s easier.”
The boy agreed, and immediately prodded the alien with questions: where it came from, why it was here (in such a desolate place nonetheless), what he could do to help, and other things that popped into his head. But, their one answer was
“I’m your guardian angel.”
“What does that mean?” Frustration began to peak in his voice.
“When your time is done, a guardian angel comes to take you back. I’m your guardian angel!”
The boy felt a lump chest, he swore it was the size of the moon.
“I’m going to die then?”
Taehyung let out a loud, hearty laugh. The boy couldn’t help but smile along, the astral charm was infectious, albeit terrifying.
“Everyone dies, Hoseok. But your time isn’t right now, don’t worry.”
Eventually, the two found their way out of the trailer. The sun was a faint glow behind the clouds. It was always just a glow, a glow reminding him that the sky would never again be blue, the light would never again warm his skin, but the alien in front of him had the absent stars present in their eyes and the suns’ heat in their firey hair. Even if he had only known them for a few hours, Hoseok felt a kinship with the alien. He felt as if his empty days would be filled with everything now that there was sunshine with a skip in their step to follow him through the empty land.
The two walked for hours, as Hoseok normally did. They crossed a few bridges, dug through the seats of open abandoned cars (unfortunately, again, to no avail), shuffled through ghost towns, all things Hoseok had done to survive previously. During this time, the boy tried to explain to the alien about what had happened, what he understood about what had happened. About how the sky was dark since his dad came to him that one day, about how his parents had been separated from him, and how he’d been living off whatever packaged food he could find (and the one time he could only find vitamin pills so he had them for three days before he found dry noodles).
As they wandered through a parking lot, his words were a cluster, skipping consonant over vowel as he tried and tried and tried to work out for himself what had happened but only ended up talking himself into further incoherence until he worked himself into exasperation. He stopped, eyebrows furrowed and eyes focused on the ground as he squinted, tunnelling through his mental labyrinth to find an answer, at least one answer, to all the questions he had invented trying to explain his life thus far to the little alien. That’s when it hit him: he felt the tinge of moisture against his eyes, frustration pinching his temples until drop after drop hit the dirt below.
And then there was a hand, rubbing circles against his back, and a soft humming.
“Do you remember that feeling… baby, baby, tonight…”
Hoseok dabbed his eyes with his sleeve. “Taehyung?” He blubbered, looking up at the alien’s starlit face.
“Yes?” Their eyes were warm and dark, Hoseok felt his chest swell with a sense of comfort.
“You said… you were an angel right?” He sniffed, smiling through his tears.
“I think I believe you now.”
Taehyung grinned, appearing as more of a loving grimace than anything else.
“You know,” The alien started, using a low voice for added drama. “I said to myself,” They made the noise that Hoseok assumed was their real name. “You be a good boy even if this kid is a real downer. Keep him up until the end!” The alien stuck a finger in the air dramatically.
Ah, Hoseok thought, the alien was a boy. He wanted confirmation, even for just thinking.
“And I,” The boy chuckled, “And I said to myself ‘Keep yourself up! Even when you’re a real downer!’” The two broke out into a fit of giggles, topping on top of each other in the dirt.
Hoseok gasped. “Taehyung, you’re so heavy!” The alien rolled off of him, still shaking with laughter.
They sat there until their sides hurt, panting and tearing with every joke. The sky was quiet now, the darkness a comfortable blanket rather than a bleak void as it had been.
The boy let out a sigh. He thought of all the things he could say to fill the silence, but nothing came. It was comfortable, the quiet. He felt safe with Taehyung there, as if there wasn’t anything in the world that could hurt them. It was a lovely swell with each breath, just the two of them, thoughts and feelings intermingling in the night. He wanted this to last forever, to eclipse the years before of loneliness and tragedy and just to be at peace.
Finally, he spoke.
“Thank you,”
Taehyung looked at him, eyes and smile wide.
“Hm?”
“Thank you for everything, you’ve made today the best in years, really.” Hoseok felt tears stinging at his eyes again, but he blinked them back. “I didn’t know I could feel this kind of happy anymore. I thought I would be stuck with the ‘found food’ happy or the ‘no armed people around’ happy, but now I remember the real happy. It’s…”
He searched for the right words, anything that could be possibly less cheesy than what he was about to say. Hoseok decided to just go with it.
But Taehyung put a finger over his mouth.
“I’m saving you,” He grinned again. “You were about to be really, really corny.”
“But you make me happy,” Hoseok protested from behind the finger.
“Ah, there it is.” Taehyung’s face faltered. It was weird, seeing his smile fade. It was a bit wrong.
“Don’t be like that!” The boy protested. “It’s not a bad thing.”
“It’s just, I’ll miss you,” Taehyung smiled.
Hoseok stopped for a second, taking in everything. After a few moments of nothing, he asked “What? I’m not going anywhere.”
Taehyung sat up, and leant over Hoseok. His expression was warm, but there was something else there; was it pity?
“I’ll miss you when you’re sleeping.”
The boy decided not to question it. Instead, he smiled, closing his eyes as Taehyung pressed his lips to his forehead. He felt safe as he felt the little alien’s fingers intertwine with his own. He could feel the stardust tinged hair against his neck; Taehyung was so warm. His rumbling stomach or numbing headache were nothing now that Taehyung was there. All of the pains of daily life, all the fears and reasons for his heart to sink were gone now, turned black as he closed his eyes, letting his unconscious mind paint pictures of a better world.
--
It had been weeks since they had come across anything resembling civilization. As they rounded a hill, the shell of a parking lot came into view. Old cars sat all over, still parked and filled with still-bagged items, once considered new in the eyes of the shoppers.The two boys walked in with their bats at the ready. There was silence. No sign of life anywhere.
“Maybe someone else got here first?” The smaller boy said, kicking a door closed when he found nothing of use inside. “I don’t even see any people.”
The taller boy stepped forward, pushing back his bleached hair as he rounded another car. He let out an exasperated cry.
“We got another one, Yoongi.” He sighed, leaning over a figure curled up next to a tire. It was a boy, dirt caked on his face and hands and morbidly skinny. He had one arm out as if it was reaching, no, holding onto something when he was finally taken away. However, there was a smile on the boy’s lips: his face was peaceful.
“I think this one couldn’t get food on time, poor kid.”
The taller boy nodded, leaving to continue their search. Yoongi stopped, for a second he thought he saw something twinkle in the corner of his eye. The only thing in he could see was the boy: still there, still stagnant. Frowning, he turned back around and headed off to meet his partner. He didn’t see the stardust on the boys fingertips, shimmering against the grey light. It was as if the stars were trying to peek through, but now there was no one to watch the comets crash against the sky.
Pairing: V/J-Hope[This is what i originally had]i’m feelin minseok/soup rn idk why old exo members fic or maybe hyunsik/ilhoon from btob tbh this is more like a short story at this point. fuck it, young!obama/jackson wang nah suchen always suchen or hobi/v idk ugh what a struggle
Rating: PG-13
Genre: something, aliens, basketball,
Warnings: [spoilers]someone dies ooooo plot twist it's rap monster fucker gets all the raps anyways
Summary: Hoseok’s wandering finally leads him in the right direction. ft. Namjoon and Yoongi for like 3 seconds
Focus, focus.
The view became clearer.
Zooming deeper, deeper; the dark eyes reflected the sky with the same wonder that the vastness evoked. There was something about it, the black engulfing the sky, hardly any stars left to twinkle in the eyes of the hopeful. There was something that filled the boy with fear and hope, a feeling that had lingered in his stomach since he first viewed the cosmic wasteland. But today, today was different. The dormant feeling was stirring. He felt queasy and nauseous as he adjusted the telescope. Queasy, nauseous and wonderful.
He took a step back, squinting. Suddenly, his heart was in his head, pumping through his thoughts. A single white streak glared across the sky and he pushed his eye into the scope, following the glow as it fizzled into the abyss.
He heard himself suck in the air, sweeter than anything he had ever tasted. He felt himself floating, gliding through his own euphoria: It was real, the comets were real, everything he had read about was real.
--
It was in the third year since the world turned bleak. He had been sitting in his house, dozing over homework when his father opened the door. His voice was so soft, a placid tone to the panic rising in his stance.
“Come on, it’s time to go.”
Without asking further, the boy pushed a few essentials into his backpack: A blank notebook, the school yearbook, his stuffed dog, a few candy bars, and his gameboy, equipped with pokemon. It was zipped and bobbing against his back as he descended the stairs. It stopped halfway as the boy froze. His parents watched him, their faces aged with all sorts of adult emotions he could barely understand.
“It’s time to go,” His father repeated, taking his hand.
A thirteen hour car ride later and he was without parents. A boy, wandering the barren highway with one untied shoe and a drained juicebox in one hand, his gameboy and three candybar wrappers discarded from his stock. He clung to his thoughts and the memory of the smiling, sunshiny days and tried desperately to scratch out all the dangling feet and crumpled children he had witnessed giving up their own journeys.
He sat, shoulders shuddering against the empty rubber of a tire, through his tears praying that God was still watching him.
--
He sat, grinning so hard his face hurt, silently thanking whoever made the stars smile at night. His eyes were wet as he remembered it was the first time in years he had felt this surge. His cheeks ached, his chest was pumping, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was energy, warmth bubbling up inside of him. It was a way to fill him in a way his lack of food could not. A wordless contract to reassure: he would live, not merely survive.
His celebration was interrupted by an eruption a few metres away. It shattered his concentration, shaking his eyes and heart. He felt his knees knocking, buckling, as he raised himself. Wisps climbed through the air from the hole in the ceiling of a nearby trailer. Fingers wobbling almost as he was shaking them, he pried open the door.
Smoke tumbled out, engulfing him and he fought to regain what little fresh air he had left. Fanning furiously, he squinted through the smog. As he turned his head towards the inside, a patch of illumination dulled into darkness. A shadow lifted up, its movements human, cautious. The boy mimicked the shadow, widening his stance.
Soon, two dark eyes were gazing at him. They looked tired, aged, more so than the face that held them. The boy looked back with a jovial curiosity, sensing a familiarity in the figure’s face.
It lifted itself up, pushing up on unseen arms, and stepped into the clear air. The remaining wisps tumbled around it, clearing the way in a style the boy had only seen before in the faint memories of science fiction. It, too, was a boy.
His eyes were wide: black and twinkling with whirls of reaction and stardust seeming to flick off his eyelashes with every glance. His first words were not, rather, the first noise he made was a cough; the boy felt himself seize up, fear clenching his chest. The boy shook his head, flecks of dust caught the light dripping from the skylight: those too, seemed celestial. His hair caught the glow too - a vibrant auburn. A fire in the dark. The word beautiful isn’t a word he would apply to many things, but this person was one.
The boy had never seen anyone like this before, but then again, he had hardly seen anyone in the preceding years. It was nice, he thought, to possibly have possible human contact again, but at what cost? Would this new person end up, as many before, abandoned? The boy didn’t want to have to fight again. He didn’t want to pass a friend, crumpled like a discarded wrapper, on the side of the road. This boy - if he was a human being - seemed to be made of starlight: he’d hate to see another star burn out.
The figure opened its mouth, what came out resembled gargles. They sounded vaguely syllabic, much like the boy’s own language, but sounds that he had never heard come out of a human mouth before. He felt his own mouth form an “o”, and quickly closed it just before the creature cleared its throat.
In his language, the first thing he understood was an apology. In a voice resembling a horn’s alluring murmur, they continued.
“I’m your guardian angel, Hoseok.”
“Are you sure you’re not, um, an alien?” He paused, collecting his thoughts and trying to calm his heart.
The ‘alien’, as they agreed to be called, introduced themself with a single tone - a noise the boy couldn’t vocalize very well, instead pronouncing it “V”.
“Ah, ah, close.” The alien’s mouth curled up in an attempt at a smile.
“You could call me…” The alien looked up and the boy marveled at the flexibility of their face. “Taehyung, if that’s easier.”
The boy agreed, and immediately prodded the alien with questions: where it came from, why it was here (in such a desolate place nonetheless), what he could do to help, and other things that popped into his head. But, their one answer was
“I’m your guardian angel.”
“What does that mean?” Frustration began to peak in his voice.
“When your time is done, a guardian angel comes to take you back. I’m your guardian angel!”
The boy felt a lump chest, he swore it was the size of the moon.
“I’m going to die then?”
Taehyung let out a loud, hearty laugh. The boy couldn’t help but smile along, the astral charm was infectious, albeit terrifying.
“Everyone dies, Hoseok. But your time isn’t right now, don’t worry.”
Eventually, the two found their way out of the trailer. The sun was a faint glow behind the clouds. It was always just a glow, a glow reminding him that the sky would never again be blue, the light would never again warm his skin, but the alien in front of him had the absent stars present in their eyes and the suns’ heat in their firey hair. Even if he had only known them for a few hours, Hoseok felt a kinship with the alien. He felt as if his empty days would be filled with everything now that there was sunshine with a skip in their step to follow him through the empty land.
The two walked for hours, as Hoseok normally did. They crossed a few bridges, dug through the seats of open abandoned cars (unfortunately, again, to no avail), shuffled through ghost towns, all things Hoseok had done to survive previously. During this time, the boy tried to explain to the alien about what had happened, what he understood about what had happened. About how the sky was dark since his dad came to him that one day, about how his parents had been separated from him, and how he’d been living off whatever packaged food he could find (and the one time he could only find vitamin pills so he had them for three days before he found dry noodles).
As they wandered through a parking lot, his words were a cluster, skipping consonant over vowel as he tried and tried and tried to work out for himself what had happened but only ended up talking himself into further incoherence until he worked himself into exasperation. He stopped, eyebrows furrowed and eyes focused on the ground as he squinted, tunnelling through his mental labyrinth to find an answer, at least one answer, to all the questions he had invented trying to explain his life thus far to the little alien. That’s when it hit him: he felt the tinge of moisture against his eyes, frustration pinching his temples until drop after drop hit the dirt below.
And then there was a hand, rubbing circles against his back, and a soft humming.
“Do you remember that feeling… baby, baby, tonight…”
Hoseok dabbed his eyes with his sleeve. “Taehyung?” He blubbered, looking up at the alien’s starlit face.
“Yes?” Their eyes were warm and dark, Hoseok felt his chest swell with a sense of comfort.
“You said… you were an angel right?” He sniffed, smiling through his tears.
“I think I believe you now.”
Taehyung grinned, appearing as more of a loving grimace than anything else.
“You know,” The alien started, using a low voice for added drama. “I said to myself,” They made the noise that Hoseok assumed was their real name. “You be a good boy even if this kid is a real downer. Keep him up until the end!” The alien stuck a finger in the air dramatically.
Ah, Hoseok thought, the alien was a boy. He wanted confirmation, even for just thinking.
“And I,” The boy chuckled, “And I said to myself ‘Keep yourself up! Even when you’re a real downer!’” The two broke out into a fit of giggles, topping on top of each other in the dirt.
Hoseok gasped. “Taehyung, you’re so heavy!” The alien rolled off of him, still shaking with laughter.
They sat there until their sides hurt, panting and tearing with every joke. The sky was quiet now, the darkness a comfortable blanket rather than a bleak void as it had been.
The boy let out a sigh. He thought of all the things he could say to fill the silence, but nothing came. It was comfortable, the quiet. He felt safe with Taehyung there, as if there wasn’t anything in the world that could hurt them. It was a lovely swell with each breath, just the two of them, thoughts and feelings intermingling in the night. He wanted this to last forever, to eclipse the years before of loneliness and tragedy and just to be at peace.
Finally, he spoke.
“Thank you,”
Taehyung looked at him, eyes and smile wide.
“Hm?”
“Thank you for everything, you’ve made today the best in years, really.” Hoseok felt tears stinging at his eyes again, but he blinked them back. “I didn’t know I could feel this kind of happy anymore. I thought I would be stuck with the ‘found food’ happy or the ‘no armed people around’ happy, but now I remember the real happy. It’s…”
He searched for the right words, anything that could be possibly less cheesy than what he was about to say. Hoseok decided to just go with it.
But Taehyung put a finger over his mouth.
“I’m saving you,” He grinned again. “You were about to be really, really corny.”
“But you make me happy,” Hoseok protested from behind the finger.
“Ah, there it is.” Taehyung’s face faltered. It was weird, seeing his smile fade. It was a bit wrong.
“Don’t be like that!” The boy protested. “It’s not a bad thing.”
“It’s just, I’ll miss you,” Taehyung smiled.
Hoseok stopped for a second, taking in everything. After a few moments of nothing, he asked “What? I’m not going anywhere.”
Taehyung sat up, and leant over Hoseok. His expression was warm, but there was something else there; was it pity?
“I’ll miss you when you’re sleeping.”
The boy decided not to question it. Instead, he smiled, closing his eyes as Taehyung pressed his lips to his forehead. He felt safe as he felt the little alien’s fingers intertwine with his own. He could feel the stardust tinged hair against his neck; Taehyung was so warm. His rumbling stomach or numbing headache were nothing now that Taehyung was there. All of the pains of daily life, all the fears and reasons for his heart to sink were gone now, turned black as he closed his eyes, letting his unconscious mind paint pictures of a better world.
--
It had been weeks since they had come across anything resembling civilization. As they rounded a hill, the shell of a parking lot came into view. Old cars sat all over, still parked and filled with still-bagged items, once considered new in the eyes of the shoppers.The two boys walked in with their bats at the ready. There was silence. No sign of life anywhere.
“Maybe someone else got here first?” The smaller boy said, kicking a door closed when he found nothing of use inside. “I don’t even see any people.”
The taller boy stepped forward, pushing back his bleached hair as he rounded another car. He let out an exasperated cry.
“We got another one, Yoongi.” He sighed, leaning over a figure curled up next to a tire. It was a boy, dirt caked on his face and hands and morbidly skinny. He had one arm out as if it was reaching, no, holding onto something when he was finally taken away. However, there was a smile on the boy’s lips: his face was peaceful.
“I think this one couldn’t get food on time, poor kid.”
The taller boy nodded, leaving to continue their search. Yoongi stopped, for a second he thought he saw something twinkle in the corner of his eye. The only thing in he could see was the boy: still there, still stagnant. Frowning, he turned back around and headed off to meet his partner. He didn’t see the stardust on the boys fingertips, shimmering against the grey light. It was as if the stars were trying to peek through, but now there was no one to watch the comets crash against the sky.