#not to mention fire prince!junhui bc maj and i are atlab hoes?

[chocosvt]

⚬ pairing: minghao x fem!reader | celestial!au. ⚬ word count: 5.7K. ⚬ warnings: reader intoxication. ⚬ genre: fluff, angst, romance, spice.

— ✧✎ synopsis: minghao is a celestial guardian birthed from the stars. he’s sent to earth to protect you, though he is forbidden from certain aspects. he cannot fall in love nor act on his desires, which becomes increasingly difficult when he meets you.

— ✧✎ a/n: i just;;,,, luv this concept for him;;,,, enjoy!!

Minghao came into existence as one single star scattered amongst billions took its last, feeble breath, invisible plumes of hydrogen and swirling red soot finally caving in on itself, producing a  supernova that momentarily bathed the black universe with light. His limbs fabricated from clouds of stardust, hair twined with distinct, golden-brown strands that gleamed beneath the sun, and his eyes possessing their own galaxy that shifted between dark violets and misted ivory. For a few years Minghao remained in the black gap of a neuron star, allowing his body to fully form before he’d be sent to the blue planet below him.

Planet Earth.

While Minghao came to be in a very aweing and surreal manner, you entered the world bawling and fussy, set on a soft blanket whilst doctors examined you behind surgical masks hiding half their face. Well, obviously you couldn’t remember that, it was what you’d heard from your parents.

But what you could remember was a certain tale relayed to you before bedtime, a sheet pulled up to your chin and a soothing voice lapping at your ears until the palette surrounding you sponged into darkness. You remembered falling asleep to the fable of a celestial guardian, an angel pieced together by flurries of space dust and ice shards belonging to beautiful comets. The birth of a human signified the birth of a celestial guardian, specifically created to protect that human and act as the unseen force guiding them back to morality. You were told you had a celestial guardian. As a child you believed it, yet as you grew those hopes started to dwindle.

It seemed completely absurd that someone could emerge into existence through outer space, through a dying star, and remain in its black cavity before being called to Earth. The absurdity steadfastly remained in your mind. The celestial tales were all made with the intent to appease a child’s mind.

But that was before you met Minghao.

The first time you ever laid eyes on the boy was during the springtime, a little while after you moved and switched junior highs. It was a decision you harboured great disdain for, forced to leave all your childhood friends and abandon the memories captured in your glossy photographs. Every few nights or so you would stay awake with nothing but your desk lamp on and sift through the photos beneath hazy light, tucked between your duvets. The gentle warmth they imbued in your chest made it easier to sleep. However, on that one spring morning you were not feeling particularly warm at all.

It was lightly spitting as you walked to school, the baby pink sky hidden by a thick covering of clouds that rolled on for miles, like a succession of tiny foothills. Tree leaves rustled together quietly, a mild breeze carrying nectary scents through the air, fresh blossoms and honeysuckle. In the beginning you thought it was a plausible assumption you’d make it to school in your sweater, though the universe had a knack for proving you wrong. In seconds the pale grey clouds began rumbling and spluttering, fat drops of rain splashing the earth and wetting your forehead in cold thumps.

So you started to run, darting as fast as you could go down the sidewalk, hearing your sneakers snap against the cement, feeling the vibrations course up your legs. The rain only hardened until soaked clumps of hair stuck to your face, the once peaceful rustling that emanated from the trees then replaced by an incessant gushing sound. A crosswalk was nearing, but you didn’t see it, not even the yellow lights piercing through the bullet rain, signaling a car speeding directly toward the street you were about to run across. You didn’t stop, you determinedly pressed onward; failing to take note of the approaching vehicle until it was too late.

Or so you thought.

You crashed into something, though it was not the hard, smoothed metal of a sedan, it felt softer, more sinewy, and it squirmed as your hands darted to clutch anywhere to stable yourself. The car didn’t bother halting. It whipped around the corner, tires churning up a wave of grey rainwater. It took you a few minutes to calm down and steady you heart that bounced against your ribcage, like a basketball to a gym floor, lungs feeling stitched from tissue paper and on the brink of collapsing. It wasn’t until a hand brushed your damp, cold cheek that you faced what had caught you.

“It’s okay, I’ve got ya.”

Once you’d matched the voice to the name, you were left to stutter nothing but incoherent fragments into the cooling air, knuckles jamming upward from the thin skin that covered them as you clutched into his rain jacket. His touch caressed your cheek for another blissful second before it fell away, hands coming to gently grasp your elbows and unstick your tight hold from his clothing. He didn’t look real. His complexion was willowy, completely unmarred and silken. He had flushed, garnet red lips tilted in a tender smile, with rounded eyes that seemingly glistened in burnt honey and crystal.

You were still shivering, hardly paying attention to the rain that started to calm. Before you could even get a greeting out the boy was shifting off his plastic raincoat.

“You’re freezing,” he told you, like you were numb to the bitter splotches seeping through your clothes, “I don’t mind getting wet, take this, dear.”

Swallowing the thick lump in your throat, you simply held his jacket, looking clueless.

“I- I don’t need this, I’m fine,” You responded meekly. The boy made a tsking sound and shook his head.  

“And that’s why you’re shivering right? C’mon, just wear it. I haven’t noticed you around here before. Are you new?”

Deciding you were too shaken from nearly getting flattened into a pancake, you nodded and slipped the jacket around your body, feeling the tiniest surge of heat ignite in your limbs.

“I’m new,” You concluded, “Who are you?”

“Minghao.” He announced his name with an underlying pride to which you silently agreed on, it was a very pretty sounding name, delicate, like the porcelain boy himself.

“Well, Minghao, I’m [Y/N]. Thank you for saving me from becoming a pancake,” You murmured half-heartedly, staring off down the road where the car had come roaring out of. Coy laughter bubbled over the gentle patter of rain, the boy brushing his brown fronds back whilst smiling at the wet cement.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with that guy. He clearly doesn’t understand what a stop sign means.”

You gave a happy scoff, “I tried to outrun the rain, but I’m soaked anyways.”

“It’s okay,” Minghao said, setting out his hand, “I’m sure theschool will have dry clothes for you.”

Gingerly you set your hand in his, face succumbing to a molten heat, but heart glowing with immense gratitude that he was being so kind and welcoming. For the first time that morning your voice was laced with actual contentedness, pondering the possibility this beautiful boy could have been attending your school all this time, right under your nose.

“You go here?”

Your chest deflated when Minghao shook his head.

“I’m homeschooled,” Minghao said, but immediately darted to comfort you when he noticed your face indent with hollowness, “I like to hang around though, you can find me pretty much anywhere.”

“Will you still be here when I walk home then?” You teased, the skin near your eyes crinkling finely in laughter. Though it was very transient, akin to a shooting star flaring white across a cobalt sky, you caught Minghao staring at your interlaced fingers. You looked too, wanting to gasp at the slight, cream-like shimmer reflecting on his skin as the clouds began wisping apart, leaving sunshine to percolate through in goldish webs. However, you contained the gasp and instead glanced at him fondly whist he spoke.

“I’ll gladly walk you home every day if you want me too, [Y/N].”

There were a few rules that came with being a celestial guardian. It was nothing fancy or difficult to remember, and there was no ancient rule book with a thousand pages made from space dust. In lieu of those complications, the rules were rather simple, and every celestial being had to memorize them before accompanying their dear human on Earth. Minghao learned his rules quite quickly, wanting to leave his neuron post in the vastness of the galaxy in order to see you, hear you, touch you. Just as there were repercussions to a human breaking a set rule, there were also repercussions to celestial beings who strayed from righteousness.

Rule one: Do not expose your celestial abilities or position. Rule two: Do not rebel on Earth. Rule three: If you fall in love on Earth, do not act upon it.

Minghao never fretted over breaking any rules. They seemed easy to comprehend, follow, concretely withhold. When his body was busy fabricating high up in the cosmos his starlight brothers and sisters would capture his attention with tales of those who’d broken the rules and experienced the harsh reality of being ripped from planet Earth, returned to residence at your neuron star, left to idly watch your companions who zoomed throughout the galaxy in fulgurate flashes. Earth became permanently banned from contact.

When Minghao was released from his post he was confident he’d never break a single rule or test them in any way. However, as the celestial boy commenced his face-to-face relationship with you, a very icy fear began curling up from the depths of the stardust in his stomach, a fear he might be close to breaking the third rule. He wasn’t one-hundred percent sure if it was love, but what else could it be? Minghao figured he should be safe as long as he didn’t act upon the feelings of ardour glinting timorously in his chest, though each time the boy met with you, that scheme seemed harder to maintain.

You’d grown together, maturing from the moment you nearly rammed into that silver car speeding down the street, spraying clouds of cold rain in its wake. It scared you sometimes, just thinking that if Minghao hadn’t blocked you your body could be sealed mere feet below the earth in some lacquered coffin.

“How does this look?”

The boy heaved himself onto his elbows as he lay sprawled on his back across your bedspread. Immediately he felt his heartbeat lurch into his throat, the raucous echoing that pumped against his adam’s apple only worsening. He found it difficult to breathe, difficult for his amber eyes to concentrate on just one part of your body as you slid from the bathroom wearing a dress, a very rare feat he hadn’t seen since prom (a night both you and Minghao both attempted to forget as your date ended up cutting ties an hour before the after party. He remembered having you sniffle into his chest for hours, until he induced slumber through sweetly humming and rubbing his thumb against your temple).

As much as Minghao yearned to supress the cranberry burn flooding his cheeks, he was unable to, the boy instead sitting up properly and admiring the adorning garment. It was a mute shade of white with lace imprints and rather sheer long sleeves, remaining snug against your upper body until it reached just above your hips, the fabric then becoming a bit looser and floating gracefully at your thighs. There was a slight embarrassed sheen brushed across your face, and Minghao didn’t hesitate to increase your flustered posture.

“It looks beautiful,” Minghao said, titling his head to the side and beaming at you with his thoughtfully quirked lips, “You’re beautiful, [Y/N].”

You nearly choked on your own laughter, “Thank you, Minghao. Even though we both know as a friend you have to say that.”

Minghao rolled his eyes, feeling his arms stretch back behind him over the cool linens, “Even if I have to say it at least I mean it,” He cooed in a droll. You dismissed his response by insinuating an eye roll to copy his own, sparing a glance at your full-length body mirror from your peripherals. Meticulously you examined your figure, smoothing hands along the stomach of the dress and pulling at the floating hem. It had been awhile since you’d worn a dress, yet it was something you’d wanted to wear since seeing the item through a window in the mall. At last there was a proper occasion for to wear it to, a friend’s formal party to celebrate her birthday.

“I’m not sure about the sleeves,” You said, pulling at the sheer, lacy material before eyeing the same patch that decorated the chest, “Maybe I should put my jacket over it.”

“Do whatever you want,” Minghao called, “I think the blue jean one would look nice.”

You opened your closet and began picking through the hangers, a smile jumping upon your lips once you spotted the jacket Minghao was referring to. Carefully you took it down from the hanger and threw it over your body, taking a few seconds to adjust the sleeves and straighten out the few crinkles. You appeared more confident whilst gazing into the mirror, giving a tiny pose that engendered Minghao to scratch his collarbone, the air feeling stuffier and heavier, sharp enamel piercing delicately into his lower lip as his eyes couldn’t repress from staring.

“How’s it look now?” You questioned. Minghao rose from your bed and made his way toward your dresser, looking for the car keys to drive you over to the birthday event. However, just before he waltzed right between you and the mirror, the boy made sure to swiftly glide his hand down your waist, squeezing your hip lightly before a smirk trudged across his mouth.

“Beautiful,” Minghao said, sharing a fleeting moment to glance deep within your eyes and examine how the pupils dilated with black ink. Within those few seconds you returned the opportunity, searching his rich irises for their signature threads of silver and gold. It always marvelled you how his eyes could be so enrapturing, as though tiny pieces of the Milky Way were cut from the sky and set to dry like paper-mâché in his eyes. Those seconds were quickly stolen away, Minghao grabbing the keys off your dresser and jingling them hurriedly.

“Ready to go?”

“I am now,” You announced, toeing on some flats and flicking off the bedroom light, all whilst feeling your heart slam into your ribcage.

Minghao didn’t have a home on Earth. He didn’t return to an apartment, a motel, or any kind of residence that kept him sealed inside, away from the sky. If anything the sky was his home. He found comfort in climbing the grassy hilltops at night, stretching his body across the tall glades that rippled in navy blue beneath the darkness. The grass tickled lightly at his skin, the individual strands even whispering amongst each other as the breeze made them rustle together. The best nights, his favourite, happened when there wasn’t even a single cloud in the sky, allowing him to clearly examine all of space’s jewels as though he were a gemologist.

There was always a pang of homesickness buried deep within him. Minghao cradled a covert forlorn toward his starlight siblings that glistered so luminously in the surrounding black tides. He missed his liberty in space, being able to zoom from crater to crater that indented the moon’s cinder-like surface. He missed staring down upon the beautiful planets, gazing into their different surfaces, some cold, misty, containing ice crystals that floated around his head akin to frozen rain droplets, others possessing arms of scarlet fire that twirled and violently curled before the heat fell back down to the planet’s rocky surface.

He missed having a celestial body, getting to exist as a shimmering little orb. His human body was fine too, but it prohibited him from doing the many things he could do as a celestial.

It was another night for Minghao. He was sprawled across the soft ferns that pushed up from the earth, arms wrapped behind his head whilst he blinked in ponderation toward the night sky. For a moment he let his head fall to the side. Minghao stared at the moon-bathed ferns fluttering beside him, thinking about large area of space around his figure as he lay upon the hill. A blue feeling echoed in his chest. He came to recognize the feeling as loneliness. Minghao missed you every moment he wasn’t with you. Just as he missed his place in the sky, he missed your presence.

You didn’t require protection constantly. It was important you experience some instances of heartbreak, instances of panic, for it taught you valuable lessons that words or pictures never could. Aside from that, Minghao was frightened to spend such quantities of time with you. He felt his heart grow fonder, softer. He feared the day he couldn’t hold back, your laughter too much of a melodic intoxication, your concentration too beautiful, the manner in which your lips gently shaped as you spoke too alluring. He groaned in frustration, turning over in the grass so that his cheek pressed to the cool earth, his heart of stardust existing merely as powder as it pumped in his chest.

The rules he once claimed utter confidence over now tackled his control. What was so awful about acting on his love? Why couldn’t he be with you the way he wanted?

Minghao rolled over onto his back, arms and legs spread out like a starfish. He heaved a deep sigh and began searching the satin black sheet above for the moon. For a few seconds he struggled to find it, brows slumped into a furrow until a dusty glow appeared in the top corner of his vision. Clouds were drifting in front of the moon, long, wispy tails of them that feathered out over lone stars and constellations. Minghao frowned. He didn’t like how tattered the clouds were, how they increasingly shrouded across the sky until the moon-bathed grass slowly lost its hue to blackness. Minghao felt uneasy. He got up from the grass and wandered the hills toward the side of the road. He’d walk back into town.

When the familiar street shops surrounded Minghao on either side the apprehension in his gut started boiling down, though he could not evade another glance toward the sky to see how the moon still remained blanketed in scraggly clouds. As desperately as Minghao willed for his stomach to stop churning altogether, he was slowly but surely sensing that it came with an underlying prelude. He breathed a bit stiltedly and shoved his hands in the pockets on his jacket, continuing down the street whilst thinking that this nagging feeling could have something to do with you, despite him not knowing your whereabouts tonight.

Though Minghao came to realize as a celestial guardian, there was no blatant signal that alerted him his human was in danger, it was more of a draw, a raucous sense that never quieted. It was how he saved you from getting flattened that spring morning. Minghao’s musing was soon interrupted by a booming voice that reverberated down the street, engendering his eyes to stop tracing the cement at his feet.

“Are you coming?”

“Y-Yes, I just need a second.”

Minghao squinted at the two figures stepping outside from the bar. His heart dropped to the soles of his feet as he recognized you to be one of them. Still dressed in your work attire, you looked slightly wobbly whilst clutching onto the other figure’s arm, trusting him to guide you down the street not exactly rife with many people. Clearly you’d had a drink or two, and just by hearing the tender yet strained cadence of your voice Minghao could tell that you’d been crying. He’d comforted you enough times to know.

“You live on the concession, right? The man asked, sounding completely sober.

“Yeah, I do… But, I don’t know, maybe I should wait,” You replied rather slowly, sluggishly, blinking at him with milky eyes and a confused aura. The man tugged at your wrist, slightly jerking you down the street.

“Wait for what? C’mon, [Y/N], you already agreed to let me take you home,” He urged with impatience.

“I can’t really remember, I think the concession is that way though..? I just can’t remember… I think I should sit— “

“This way is shorter,” He nearly spat, clearly begrudged by your hesitance and that while the alcohol also fogged your reason, it fogged your decision-making too. His intentions were obvious. Minghao stalked hastily down the street, a shout kept ready like a bullet on his tongue.

“I need to call someone… Where’s my phone…”

“You’ll be home soon, let’s just go alri— ,”

“[Y/N]!”

Minghao called, his slight breathlessness greeted by your disarrayed, wide-eyed expression and the emboldened tension chalked onto the man who harshly gripped your wrist. It took a few seconds for your coalescing vision to become sorted, the world around you no longer splotched together in messy swabs of paint. Minghao smiled with all his teeth when your face filled with light, nearly tripping over your own feet to wobble into his arms. The man was still holding your wrist, creating an awkward air as he refused to release his ironclad suction to your skin. Minghao felt your face nuzzled in his neck, his refreshing aroma of light citrus and cotton very soothing for you to inhale in lieu of the man’s musk.

“I was walking her home,” He quickly spieled, more concerned with assuring his intentions rather than being inquisitive on Minghao’s appearance. However, Minghao saw straight through the man as though he were transparent.

“You can let go of her now,” The celestial boy said lowly, “I know where she lives and it’s definitely not that way.”

The man released his hold on your wrist. The second your arm dropped you were wrapping both limbs around his neck, holding onto Minghao’s tangibility and feeling his warm skin against your cheek. Getting shouted at by your boss the entire day didn’t exactly fill you with joy and giddiness, though the sight of Minghao, whether you were intoxicated or not, always managed to imbue pure comfort throughout your body, allowing your muscles to relax when they were unconsciously tensed. You were afraid to let go of his neck in case your legs gave out. However, Minghao had his arm around your waist, making you feel protected for the first time that night.

“It’s just a shortcut,” The man stuck to his initial lie, “Bye, anyways.”

“Wait,” Minghao said sharply.

“What?” The man squawked, and it was evident in his face he just wanted to escape.

“Give her phone back.”

Minghao watched with disgust reflecting potent in his irises as the man rifled through his pocket and forked out your phone, all whilst holding that irritating snarl on his lips that Minghao would just love to have meet with his fist. But he calmly inhaled, realizing it was his duty to protect you, not get another man’s blood on his knuckles.

“Forgot she gave it to me,” He grunted.

“I bet she forgot you took it off her too,” Minghao rebutted, not taking his piercing gaze off the man until he disappeared around the corner at the end of the street. Once his figure blipped from view Minghao released a pent up sigh and tilted his head back, staring at the black sky, the silver moon that gleamed in observation without a single cloud to blotch its rays. He felt your ginger breath against his neck and Minghao smiled as your sleepy faced lifted from his shoulder, your lashes feathering drowsily and words still pouring out rather slurred.

“Are we going home now?”

Minghao nodded, “Yeah. Well, I’m going to take you to your home.”

Immediately a frown tugged at your mouth, your arms tightening around Minghao’s neck.

“No,” You whined in protest, “Stay with me tonight, please, Minghao.”

The boy’s porcelain cheeks started glowing. He supposed he would have to stay in order to help nurture your possible headache tomorrow morning. You took Minghao’s silence as his refusal, leaving the celestial boy’s whole universe to be spun upside down when you shakily grabbed fistfuls of his jacket, pulling him down slightly to kiss his jaw.

“Please,” You begged once more, stumbling so that Minghao had to loop his arms around your waist to stabilize you.

“Alright. I’m going to stay, okay?” He said, giggling with remnants of ardour beneath his irises.

You smiled triumphantly, “So now you can walk me home like in my high school days. It’s like nothing has changed!”

Yeah, Minghao thought, nothing has really changed, minus the fact that I’m quite possibly in love with you.

Do. Not. Break. The. Third. Rule.

Well, it was a little too late for that. In fact, it was far too late for any glimmer of hope to suffice, that Minghao hadn’t gone against the simple rules set by his celestial ancestors, that he hadn’t gave in to the intoxicating binds set by romance, love; the intense and domineering emotion reeling in his chest far too puissant for him to ignore. It was impossible for him to interrupt the euphoria that skimmed akin to electricity through his veins, Minghao completely lost in each sensation and pressurized touch against his ivory skin. He just knew that in lieu of despising it, he craved it, desperately canted for more.

His head pushed back against the pillow sitting rumpled on your bed, granting you a shimmering plane to trace your lips across, collecting his natural taste on your tongue. Minghao’s fingers pinched tighter into your hips; hard enough to leave bruised indentations as your teeth just grazed his ear before soft, open-mouthed kisses were leaving splotches of faded pink down his neck. Any reason or rational thinking flew out his head when you began suckling at his collarbone, a whole sea of stars eclipsing before the boy’s closed eyelids, rippling against a black canvas. Minghao decided he needed to retaliate, a squeak elicited from your throat as the boy flipped you over, now holding you down at the lap.

His hands quickly searched the bedsheets until they found your own, fingers interlocking and brought to rest above your head. Your lips eagerly parted to welcome his kiss, Minghao continuously pecking at your mouth until you couldn’t bar back your soft giggle and allowed him to make a slow descent down your neck, feeling a pleasurable wetness swirl at a sensitive region. He disconnected one of his hands that cocooned with yours, using it to push down the shoulder of your dress and expose more skin for the outside moonlight to twinkle upon as it rained through the windowpane.

Yes, it was another occasion where you’d been wearing a dress, with a similar lace pattern and floating hem, except the colour was black, holding the utmost elegance and drawing Minghao into your beauty like a moth to a flame. The circumstances on the other hand were much different. It was not to attend a birthday dinner, or a prom party, you’d chosen the dress for a date, the initial plan to greet the sweetheart boy at the restaurant, though he’d shown up to your house unannounced, early, to pick you up.

It didn’t truly hit you until Minghao had yet again reassured you of your beautiful looks that night, something nuzzled deep inside your heart snapping, realization flowing throughout your veins and preluding the first clash of your lips as you both cleared the room to make the connection. The taste on his tongue was so light, refreshing, like a gust of peppermint that gave rise to the infinitesimal hills prickling along your skin. A part of you knew it was horribly wrong to be kissing this boy, extracting hedonism from the manner in which his fingers pushed up your bare thighs, leaving invisible smears of coal in his path.

Yet you couldn’t stop, you were coalescing into a euphoric world where it was just you and the sensation of Minghao’s lips suckling along your skin, creating a map of each place where he’d burned you with his starry touch. Before the situation could further transpire, you shared a breathless moment, his forehead resting against your own with a hand drifting up your thigh, soon seeking tender placement on your cheek.

“I’m in love with you,” Minghao said seriously, through the caving movement of his lungs. The rules were humming distantly in his mind, but primarily shadowed by the glisten in your eyes and how you blinked up at him as though he were your entire universe. However, Minghao couldn’t take it anymore. He needed you to know his feelings. Without thought your hands cupped the boy’s rosy cheeks, bringing him down onto your lips for a more roughened kiss. There was a thin film of saliva Minghao had to wipe away from your swollen bottom lip when the contact broke, his honeyed eyes glassy and in awe of your breathless state.

“I love you too,” You confessed, “So much,” except you weren’t suffering from any embarrassment or bashful qualities; you knew it was the truth. Minghao smiled and sat back on your waist, admiring how the spools of moonlight cascading through the window bathed you in a silver gleam, engendering him to ponder your beauty as a celestial being, kept in his arms among the stars above. You admired him too. His ivory skin aglow, the golden-brown fibres in his hair beaming softly, as though they were powdered with sparkling particles from the sun. The longer you stared, the more you thought he embodied all the qualities of the cosmos.

“I’m sorry for interrupting our date,” Minghao apologized sheepishly, running a hand through his hair. You half sighed, half chuckled.

“I think this is far better than waiting an hour for mediocre food at a downtown restaurant,” You replied. Minghao stiffened when he saw your frown.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s just,” You began, fingers ghosting over a wet patch on your neck, “I’m going to see my parents tomorrow and I don’t know how they’d feel about all these marks.”

Minghao heaved a sigh of relief, his blood that ran with the breath of a supernova calming as it surged beneath his flesh, “But they look so pretty on you,” He cooed, using his fingertip to turn your head from side to side, examining his pristine work.

You giggled, “Yes, I know. Yours look pretty too. I’ll just use some concealer work to cover them for the time being.”

Minghao grinned lopsidedly in response, his hands sitting on your ribs and lightly squeezing to remind himself that you truly existed, that you weren’t fabricated from the death of a star as it spluttered on its last wisps of hydrogen and helium. He realized a human’s flesh felt different from a celestial’s flesh, it wasn’t as smooth and pearly; it was more textured, warm, leaving Minghao to muse over his luck of getting to protect you. Protect. At that moment Minghao’s love-laced grin fell flat from his face, his head twisting to stare out the window and inspect the rounded moon.

Your brows pinched together, gently heaving yourself upward to stroke a hand down his arm.

“What’re you looking at?” You questioned, following his gaze to the luminous night sky.

“I broke a rule,” Minghao responded, sounding vacant, eyes lined with an increasing fear that glinted unevenly. He repeated the phrase more sternly, panic building in his throat until you cupped his cheek and urged him to calm down with gentle strokes to his under-eye.

“I broke a rule.”

“What does that mean? What rule, Minghao?” When you took your hand from his cheek, you swallowed a surprised grunt at the silvery residue sticking to your fingertips, how it felt like a smooth, glistening powder when you rubbed your index finger and thumb together. Your face darted up to the boy on your lap; how he stared at the silver painting your hand with such potent horror you felt your stomach curdle inward. Your mouth opened but then immediately closed as no words came to formulate on your tongue. Minghao took his hand and ran it through his hair, a heavy gasp torn from your chest as a similar golden tint littered his skin.

“W-What’s going on?” You stuttered, feeling your heart pump in stilted modicums, a clammy film veil your hands. “Minghao, what is that?”

He didn’t respond, he just stared at you intently, in complete focus, as though he were attempting to analyze each and every one of your features for future recollection. Confusion and dread were swirling in your stomach like a hurricane, head beginning to blip with feelings of dizziness, as though you’d just stepped off a whirring ride at the carnival.

“Minghao.” You repeated, attempting to shimmy out from underneath him, however, the boy suddenly grasped your face in his delicate hands, forehead bumping against your own with his lips so plump and beautifully dappled in shades of rose. He kissed you until your lashes fluttered shut, until the breath swimming in your lungs had been completely dried up; until the addicting pressure against your mouth had you raising a hand to tangle in his chestnut locks. There was a delayed moment where the boy broke the kiss, though he mumbled something breathily against your cheek, a cold shiver wracking down your spine like the slip of an ice cube.

“Just know that I’ll always be in love with you, [Y/N], always.”

And as your hand resumed reaching for his silken tresses, it did nothing but slip through empty air, the weight in your lap vanished, the soft warmth against your cheek evaporated, and your dark bedroom stark of a single presence save for yourself. You sat without words, in utter perplexity, shakily turning your head to stare out the window as the sheer, alabaster dust floated through the moonlight. High above in the sky lay a new star, blinking from its post, almost as if it were attempting to converse with you through morse code. In that moment your childhood fables became true.

But so did the realization that your first love had been taken away from you, that your first love was a boy who came from the stars.

✎ a/n:  im so sorry the only thing i can do is create angsty endings these days BUT I SWEAR FLUFF IS SOON TO GRACE THIS BLOG. also this is the second time ive written minghao as giving neck kisses like.. hm. tht is a whole other discussion!!

→ masterlist.

→ bloom | previous fic. woozi angst.