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paper moon, make-believe stars

✧ — Summary: Eunji never dreamed of weddings or promises or eternity, but Saeyoung did—and at the precipice of forever, she remembers a long-forgotten wish. It’s not too late to see the stars.

✧ — Pairing: Saeyoung x Eunji (CMC)

✧ — Rating: T

✧ — A/N: I wrote this for the @nostringsdetached zine, and I’m honestly prouder of it than just about anything else I’ve written. Eunji isn’t me, but there’s a lot of me in her—and so I feel like the fic is intimate and personal in a way that’s new for me. I’m so excited to be able to share it!

Check out the absolutely stunning artwork by Vacorn that accompanies this fic here.

Certain moments, Eunji thought, were suspended in time—as if everything that had led up to them, and everything that would follow, spread out in all directions around her like ripples on clear water.

If she were a different kind of person, tomorrow would be one of these moments: an inflection point in the trajectory of her life. But Eunji was who she was—and because of this, she was focused not on the day that was coming but the day that was already here.

For her, it was never the thing itself that felt important, but the moment before the thing arrived. It was about the fire in someone’s eyes right before they tell you to get out; the silent air in advance of a storm; the heart-shattering stillness that always seems to precede a kiss.

She felt it then, standing in the middle of the unreasonably large kitchen for which she’d developed such an inexplicable fondness: the sensation that time had stopped; that her past, present, and future were all somehow converging into one single moment of transience.

“Huh,” she said out loud.

Her voice echoed strangely off of the industrial appliances and stone countertops; she’d frozen, she realized, in the middle of brushing sauce onto the filleted fish spread out on the cutting board before her. Shaking her head, she drew a knife from the rack beside her and started to slice a lemon into neat, juicy wedges.

Just then, she heard a familiar knock: two gentle taps on the wooden door frame that connected the kitchen to the even larger living area. He had started doing this ages ago, when she’d told him she couldn’t stand the way he was always appearing at her side without warning. He was silent without meaning to be, for the very same reason that Eunji was alarmed when he took her by surprise: when you’ve lived your life one way, it is not so easy to make changes. It takes time; it takes compromise.

The knocking was one such compromise. He could not, perhaps, re-train himself to make more noise as he moved around the house—but he could let her know when he was coming. Still holding the lemon slices, she turned halfway to peer over her shoulder at him.

Saeyoung stood in the doorway, a lopsided grin on his face, one hand positioned to knock again. There was something about him—a sort of buzzing on the very surface of his skin that told her that he, too, felt the coalescence of time. She set the knife aside and opened her arms; he catapulted himself into them, nuzzling her shoulder—begging to be petted.

So she obliged him, tangling a hand in his disheveled curls. He made a low humming sound that was almost a purr.

“What are you making?” he trilled, his breath warm on her neck. With a hand that was still slightly sticky from the lemon juice, she brushed his bangs off his forehead and kissed the skin just above his eyebrow. He did taste a little bit like lemon, now.

“Who knows?” she said, shrugging—and she felt it in her whole body when he laughed. “I’m experimenting.”

“Only you,” he murmured. He drew back to look at her, and his hands fell automatically to her waist. She inhaled deeply, letting the familiar spicy-sweet scent of him envelop her.

“Only me what, baby?”

“Only you’d insist on doing the cooking tonight,” he said. “We could’ve gone out, or—” He leaned around her to eye the sauce-slathered fish spread over the cutting board. “It looks delicious, though. Whatever it is.”

She laughed and pushed him gently out of the way; he whined as she turned her attention back to the fish.

“It makes me calm,” she said. He chuckled and wrapped both arms around her waist, his scarred fingers skimming over her skin.

“What about the thought of everybody we know all in one place is making you not calm?” he teased. Eunji sighed, arranging the sliced lemon on top of the pieces of fish. He rested his chin on her shoulder and she wiggled her lemony fingers in his face.

“Never thought I’d see my mom back in this country,” she said, feeling a familiar rumble of anxiety, like a little beast crouching behind her ribcage. The beast was always there—but since she’d picked her mother up from the airport three days ago, it had felt bigger and fiercer than usual. “I’m trying to imagine her—and my dad—and all of our friends…” She shuddered, taking a fistful of the spice blend she’d already made and dusting it over the fish. She was over-seasoning, she thought, but the anxious creature in her chest insisted that her hands needed to be busy. Saeyoung’s fingers tapped insistently against her hips, and she wondered if she’d picked this habit up from him: the need to be constantly in motion, her hands active when her heart was troubled.

“I know,” he said. He held her a little tighter.

And this was one of the very first things that she had loved about him: Saeyoung never offered platitudes—he wouldn’t say don’t worry so much or everything will turn out fine. Eunji had spent her whole life striving for a sort of perfection—in her behavior, her work, her relationships—that was not only unattainable but also harmful. Saeyoung never asked this of her.

He knew what it meant to rifle through endless versions of yourself till you found one that fit—to create a phantom that you barely even recognized in order to fill the expectations the world had set for you.

Eunji twisted in his arms so she was facing him, holding her spice-soaked hands out to the side so she wouldn’t get them both covered in seasoning. There was a special place on his chest for her head: if she turned to the side, her cheek fit just right, and she could hear his heart. She felt it echoing—somehow as much inside her own body as it was in his.

“What are you scared of?” he asked.

Merging, she thought. Existing in a space with people who knew different and almost irreconcilable versions of her. Navigating the perilous waters of family (old and new and found). Giving this beloved boy the kind of day she knew he’d dreamt about (even before he knew he was allowed to dream).

“Not scared, really,” she said—a half-truth (and the way he huffed, breath ruffling her hair, showed her that he knew—as he always did when she told a lie). “I never fantasized about things like getting married and having a wedding. But you did.”

Saeyoung laughed in the quiet way that still, after all this time, she was the only one who got to hear.

“If you’re worried about fulfilling all of my fantasies…” He pulled back so she could see his face and wiggled his eyebrows at her. She rolled her eyes and kissed the tip of his nose, and then she left his side—went to the big cabinet by the stove where the pots and pans were stacked perilously high (chaotic, always on the verge of falling apart). Just like me, she thought.

She pulled out a big roasting pan, and Saeyoung hopped up onto the counter, somehow making space for himself among the ingredients. Eunji almost scolded him, as she usually did when he got in the way of her cooking.

But he had a funny look in his eyes—that sort of strange sheen that told her there was something he wasn’t saying—so she let him be.

“My parents,” she said, “haven’t seen each other in ten years and might literally kill one another tomorrow.” She shook her hair back off her face and wiped her hands on a paper towel. It wasn’t fear of her parents’ animosity that had put that look in his eyes, she knew—but she wasn’t going to press him to tell her what he was thinking. He would say it when he was ready.

This was another thing she’d learned long ago: if she pushed too hard, he would hide himself away—if she was patient with him, he would always get around to telling her what was on his mind. It was a delicate tower made of tissue paper, their honesty: new to them both, fragile and pieced together with promises kept and broken—with secrets whispered late at night and a patience that was born of deep, unwavering devotion.

“That would be memorable,” he said. In a moment of inspiration, Eunji grabbed the aluminum foil; Saeyoung raised his eyebrows. “What, are you gonna make armor?”

“Armor wouldn’t be a bad idea,” she told him. “But it’s for the fish, goofball.”

She wrapped each piece of saucy, soupy fish in a little boat of foil, lining the edges with slices of lemon. He watched her attentively—as if committing it all to memory: the way she folded the foil over the fish, the way she nibbled her bottom lip as she arranged the food in the large roasting pan. He did this often: gazing unabashedly at her as she did unremarkable things—like he was capturing each moment and filing it away in the recesses of his magnificent mind.

“Was that something you always wanted, then?” she asked. He hummed curiously as she put the pan in the oven and set the timer—a tiny little robot hamster (his design, of course), which perched on the edge of the stove and squealed when the time was up. “A wedding slash battle,” she clarified. He giggled.

“I’m not opposed to it.”

Eunji went to the sink (Saeyoung dropped a kiss to her shoulder as she passed him). It was as she was washing her hands—steam and suds rising all around her, forming soap bubble spirals before her eyes—that she remembered.

How could she have forgotten?

“Saeyoung,” she said slowly. She felt him spring to attention beside her.

“Yes, princess?”

She watched the steam from the hot water unfurling before her: twisty-turny. A whirlpool, she thought—or a spiral galaxy.

“Do you remember what you said to me when we’d only known each other a couple of days?” “I said a lot of things to you back then,” he said, laughing. “Did you have something specific in mind?”

God, it felt like a lifetime ago.

She’d been more alone, back then, than she’d ever been before: she’d felt like a stray animal, sleeping curled around herself and hissing at anyone who got too close. And how was it, she wondered now, that she’d known right away that this strange, silly, brilliant boy was just like her? She’d heard it in his voice the very first time he’d called her: oh, she’d thought. He’s just looking for somebody to hold his hand.

“You wanted,” she said (letting the hot water rush over her hands, loving the way it sounded—like rain, or wind, or a heartbeat), “to get married in space. Do you remember that?”

For a moment, he didn’t say anything. So she turned the water off; let her hands drip; looked at his face.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “I, uh…I was thinking about that too.”

Of course he was.

Eunji felt, as she looked at him, that she could see the ghost of the child he’d been once: painfully bright, full of fantasies of the future he believed he could build for himself. And she could see the boy he’d been when she’d met him, too: ready to run away without looking back; obsessed with finding a place where no one could reach him.

She also saw the man he was now: every bit as bright as the child he’d once been, and just as full of fantasies as the boy who she’d fallen in love with in the first place. The Saeyoung she knew now was strong—but the small boy who’d dreamed of flying through the stars was there, too.

She could do this for him, she realized. She couldn’t possibly control how tomorrow would unfold—but this she could do. She could do it with her own two hands.

“It’s not too late,” she said. “Let’s get married in space, baby.”

Saeyoung peered into her face like he thought he could unravel her mind if he just stared hard enough.

“I may be a genius,” he said slowly, “but even for me, twenty-four hours isn’t enough time to figure out how to get us onto the space station.”

Eunji went to him (still sitting on the counter) and laid a hand on his thigh; he squirmed contentedly—delighted, as always, simply to be touched.

“Not literally,” she told him. “Trust me.”

Suddenly, she felt full of energy. She darted from the kitchen and Saeyoung padded patiently after her; she led him down the long, dim hallway to his office, turning on the overhead light as she threw open the door.

This room was wonderful, she thought: full of him. There were odds and ends on every surface: diagrams and broken pencils and gears and wires and a half-built bird robot that screeched when she got too close. If she didn’t know him better, it would’ve been hard to find what she was looking for—but she understood the pattern of his chaos.

“Ta-da!” From beneath a precarious stack of metal sheets, she pulled a bin of colored paper: something she’d never once seen him use, but which she knew he’d acquired at some point for a project he’d either never started or already finished. He waited, eyes wide, as she dug through the desk drawer; there was tape here, and string, and wire in various shapes and sizes. “Help me!” she said at last—and he sprang into action, a wide grin spreading across his face. He’d caught on, she thought—as she’d known he would.

“Got it, commander,” he sang, giving her a breezy salute.

And before she knew it, he was piling the strangest assortment of items into her arms: long bits of wire and scraps of metal and tangled cords.

“Saeyoung!” She could hardly see over the pile of mismatched objects; he laughed at the sight of her and scooped most of them back into his own arms.

“That’s enough,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do before your oven timer goes off.”

Eunji’s heart shivered. He never hesitated; she adored this perhaps most of all.

“Lead the way,” she said.

So he led her back to the kitchen, and they sat side by side on the floor, their strange pile of tools spread out around them. Saeyoung took up a length of wire and began bending, twisting, shaping; Eunji looked around at the items they’d gathered.

She couldn’t imagine how to use most of these things—but she knew what she could do. Grabbing one of Saeyoung’s pencil nubs (always nubs—she’d never once seen him use a whole, new pencil), she started to doodle star shapes on a piece of thick, shiny paper. She wasn’t particularly good at drawing—but she’d spent enough time staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling above their bed that she could make a reasonable approximation.

For a while, they were quiet. Eunji cut out her paper stars; Saeyoung was using pliers now, doing something Eunji didn’t understand with the piece of wire and an electrical cord. Eunji doodled Saturn—it was a little lopsided, but she thought it looked alright.

“Do you wanna know,” Saeyoung said suddenly (in that quiet voice he used occasionally—the one that meant this is just for you and me), “why I thought about all that stuff so much?”

“What stuff?” Eunji cut out her little Saturn and taped a string to the top of it. She held it up to the light: it dangled like a mobile; if she squinted, it almost seemed to shine.

“Going to outer space,” he said. He had done something to make the wire in his hand light up—it was glowing a warm gold, and it reminded Eunji of the way the stars looked out here: soft and almost impossibly close. “Running away to the farthest galaxy and never coming back.”

“Yeah,” she said. She decided to make a full moon (and perhaps it would just be a white blob, but she would know what she meant by it). She traced a circle on a piece of cardboard. “Tell me why.”

Saeyoung stood. She waited as he crossed to the living room and returned with one of his laptops. She waited as he booted it up—waited as he typed, too fast for her to follow. From amidst the pile of items, something started to shine.

“I thought,” he said slowly, “that I wasn’t made for this world.”

Oh, Eunji remembered this: the way his voice had sounded in the early days when he’d called her late at night. He had spoken, with counterfeit cheer, of how undeserving he believed himself to be—and even then, she’d wanted to rip the stars from the sky and give them all to him.

“The only time I felt safe,” he continued—calloused fingers flying over the keys (the glowing orb in the middle of the room changed color, casting glitter across the ceiling)—“was when I closed my eyes and imagined myself in another galaxy. Somewhere I couldn’t do anything bad, and no one would ever find me.”

Eunji could still picture how he’d looked the very first time he’d allowed her to hold him: eyes wide as the full moon she’d just cut out of cardboard. You look like no one’s ever held you before, she’d told him, shaking her head (tearful, heart full). He’d laughed an empty laugh that had told her more than he ever could have said in words. She’d squeezed him tighter.

“I used to fantasize about floating on my back on the ocean,” she told him now. “In my imagination, I’d close my eyes and drift farther and farther from shore. Then I’d open them to find there was only water on all sides: no land, no people, just me all alone in the waves.”

“That’s a much scarier fantasy than mine,” he said. His typing paused, and she glanced up at him: the orb he’d been programming reflected glimmering specs of light onto his face. He looked, she thought, almost otherworldly like this—sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, his body covered in sparkling wires.

“It’s the same,” she said. She crawled to him; he set his laptop aside and opened his arms, and she folded herself into his lap.

“When you told me you wanted to take me to the space station, was that your way of making me part of your fantasy?” she asked.

“You’re too smart for your own good,” he said, chuckling. No, she thought. You are.

Eunji remembered the very first time she’d realized he didn’t want to run away anymore. She’d woken in the middle of the night and gazed at his sleeping face on the pillow beside her: his breathing had been slow, and he had been smiling.

“Let’s hang the stars,” he whispered in her ear.

So they did. Saeyoung climbed back onto the counter to drape his glittering wire over the cabinets; Eunji passed her paper stars up to him, and he taped the strings to the ceiling—perching precariously at the very edge of the countertop, cackling as she watched him with wary eyes.

“Don’t you dare hurt yourself today,” she warned. Her arms were full of cardboard planets.

“I may not be in the kind of shape I was when you met me, but I can still take care of myself,” he crowed; he was crouching on top of the refrigerator now, hanging his glowing orb from the tallest shelf. It cast light over the entire room; the paper stars seemed to spring to life.

“If you say so, danger boy.”

Saeyoung leapt to the ground. Eunji winced, but he landed—as always—on the balls of his feet.

“Your turn,” he said.

And then his hands were on her hips and—before she could protest—he was lifting her; she stretched a hand up to reach the ceiling, and the cardboard moon swung from its string like a pendulum.

“Don’t drop me,” she gasped.

Saeyoung laughed. “I’ve got you, starshine.”

Eunji hung the moon in the very center of the room.

Then: a shuffling of footsteps in the hall; a heavy sigh. Eunji tried to twist in Saeyoung’s arms, but he held her too tightly.

“What,” said a quiet voice, “are you doing?”

Saeyoung turned, setting Eunji on her feet. Just as she had suspected: Saeran was standing just outside the kitchen, his expression unreadable as he took in the mess of glittering lights and paper stars.

“We’re making space!” Saeyoung declared. He spread his arms wide, as if to say be proud of me.

“I can see that.”

Eunji took Saeyoung’s hand and smiled an apology for his exuberance. Saeran, she thought, would surely retreat to the other side of their massive home—shaking his head, perhaps, at the idiocy of trying to turn the kitchen into a planetarium.

But he didn’t.

“We’re getting married right now,” Eunji said quietly. Saeran raised his eyebrows.

“I get that neither of you has any sense of time,” he muttered, “but you’re getting married tomorrow, actually.”

Eunji laughed—she couldn’t help it. She was sure that she saw a hint of a smile on his lips: he was teasing them, she thought. That was new.

Saeyoung must have noticed it too, because he had stopped breathing.

“We’re doing it now, then again tomorrow,” Eunji said. “Wanna come to our first wedding? You’re the only one who’s invited.”

Saeran didn’t answer her right away, but he took a few halting steps into the kitchen. Under the artificial moonlight, the brothers looked more identical than ever, Eunji thought: tousled red hair and star-bright eyes.

Saeran leaned against the counter and crossed his arms.

“If I have to,” he said. Ah, but there it was again—a ghost of a smile on his pale face. Eunji grinned.

“Saeyoung,” she said, turning to him and lifting a hand to his cheek. “Our family’s here. Marry me now, okay?”

He looked into her eyes and she thought she saw the whole galaxy reflected back at her: effervescent and endless and expanding.

“I’m ready,” he said—in that quiet, breathless voice that was just for her.

“Sorry we couldn’t do it in space for real.”

“I don’t wanna go to space anymore,” Saeyoung said. His voice was hoarse; he squeezed her hands like they were the only thing tethering him to this planet (and they were—they had been). “Not when everything that matters is here.”

“On earth?” Eunji asked. Saeyoung shook his head.

“No,” he said. “In this kitchen.”

Eunji threw her arms around his neck. The paper planets danced overhead; his heart seemed to echo the song of the stars.

“Love you,” she whispered; his hand was in her hair, and he was drawing her close; she tasted the future in the still air just before he kissed her.

“I will love you,” he said solemnly, “until the end of the universe.”

“And after that?”

Saeyoung beamed.

“Then I’ll just love you more.”

He kissed her. And Eunji had always loved the moment before—had preferred dreams to reality, anticipation to satisfaction. But the thing itself, she thought now—whispered words, or the wind in her hair, or a kiss so tender the world stopped turning—was not nothing, after all.

Saeran made a sound and time moved forward again; Eunji turned to look at him and was surprised to see a certain quietude in his eyes.

“Are you married, then?” he asked.

Eunji looked at the bright cardboard moon—at her silly lopsided planets—at Saeyoung’s eyes, which held a fire brighter than all the stars (real or make-believe).

“Yeah,” she said. “I think we are.”

Saeyoung took her hand—but he was looking at his brother.

Merging, Eunji thought again. Coalescing.

She had never dreamed about marriage. She had been scared of its permanence—terrified of the togetherness, the tenderness, the very idea of forever. And Saeyoung had pictured fleeing into the emptiness of space: a fantasy of infinite solitude.

But here they were, with the family they’d fought for. Time spread out in all directions around them.

The paper stars shimmered overhead.

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