Justin’s mouth crashes into his and he tastes himself on his tongue. He tastes like bittersweet promises. Like a remedy for some condition, he never knew he had.

Justin is the sunshine. Brian has always been a shadow. Cast from the confines of a body that demands worship in order to retain some sense of permanency. They come together in the last remaining light of day. They cling together in the night. Dawn always brings their doom. It’s like a constant dance, reaching out, falling away. Brian is always finding ways to chain himself to the star at the center of his universe. He is scorched. He is ashes in the mouth of the sun. He is only happy when he’s burning.

Brian is a black hole. Justin tells him he is the moon. He tells him he is brilliant. If there is anything within him illuminated it is only a reflection of Justin’s blazing sunlight. Justin is a constellation. A billion suns. A galaxy built around Brian’s swirling blackness. He wonders why the stars only burn so brightly in the dark.

When he spills himself all over Justin’s lips, blue eyes gazing up at him through long, tear-soaked lashes, he wonders why the sun would want to swallow down the shadows. He wonders why the stars would beg to taste the night. He threads his fingers in his hair and prays to a God he doesn’t believe in that he will always remain at the center of this. That he will always be in this place he doesn’t belong with someone he wouldn’t deserve in a thousand lifetimes.

When Justin tells him that he loves him more than he’s ever loved anyone or anything, when he says the words with so much sincerity that it stings, they lodge themselves beneath his flesh and begin their excavation. They are white hot, and they burrow down beneath his ribcage and hollow out a space behind his lungs. Brian has swallowed them now, has accepted them as his own, and he is nothing but ash on Justin’s pillowcase but he feels more alive than he ever has before.