ix.

Feinberg was born with a ravenous thirst deep in his guts.

It’s an insatiable thing, gnawing away at his organs, thrumming just beneath his fingertips. It’s why he chases and chases and chases; burnt footsteps in his wake and his wings carved by thunderous flaps. He’s always running for something, even as the dawn breaks and he’s weakened by the very nature of what he is. He needs something. Yearning is too gentle a word; speaks of something more delicate and mush than the jagged teeth in his throat. He burns and blazes and bolts for phantoms of something bigger than himself, than the world. 

He keeps it all tucked away in his gums, when needed. It’s not fun to be around someone as starved as Feinberg and it’s a thing he’s learned—also a thing he silently dealt with by keeping that part of himself buried beneath epidermis and silently growling stomach. 

The company he finds himself with right now is one of those occasions. It’s another MCC, and his team is alright, the nicknames he gets are funny. Still.  Pragmatism is a practice Fein lives by and the observation that these guys are more lax than not is a part of that. It isn’t underestimation, no. It’s simply a statement. He doesn’t say it because he’d be a dick if he did, but there’s a faint taste of copper in his molars. 

(None of them hunger, is the crux of it all. He accepts the fact with well-practiced neutrality.)

Fein splits off from the main group while he waits. He keeps the comms up, with his own mic muted in favor of muttering nothings to himself. He prowls and hops and something clacks in his bones, the back of his head hums a cacophany of excitement need adrenaline focus hungry hungry hungry starving—

He spots a blip of light from the bushes. 

It’s a bit away from the main event area, and maybe that’s what makes it so tantalizing for Feinberg. The perimeter is knitted with a barrier to keep the contestants from walking out, but there are always frays. He traces the edges with a delicacy that doesn’t belong on his roughed up hands, but he’s nothing if not careful, and less so anything if not determined. Soon he finds a ripple in it all, a bit off the ground that he has to hover with his wings, and he grasps— pulls—

The air shivers when he breaks the threshold. It’s fine, he has time to spare. Fein is a lot of things but he’s never late. The voices in his comms glitch out a bit—he reaches towards it and turns on his mic. “I’m gonna be right back in a bit, guys,” and that’s all he says after the resounding affirmation. 

It’s weird, Fein realizes belatedly, to go this far without reason. But his hand is already on the foliage so there’s no backing down, really. He pushes it away and sees—

(a star)

(he blinks)    

someone. 

Suddenly he’s a deer in the headlights. Suddenly he’s back in elementary being chastised by the teacher. Suddenly he’s a figure in folklore stories of men walking in on beauties ascended from heaven wrapped in ivory feathers—because the absurdity of the situation is overrided by how pretty they are. The warning signs written in the sand washed away, gently, coaxingly, as the tide and seafoam combs over it. 

Fein watches the way their hair sways like it’s the crystalline stalagtites in the caves he dwells. Moonlight drapes itself over their skin—shoulder, little bit of collar area—Fein locks onto it with tempered something bubbling in his skin. Predator. Worshipper.

“Hey,” the stranger speaks, breathed out ever so gently. Fein blinks away a fuzz crawling at the back of his head.

“Yo.” It’s both a snapclickshut and low hum of serenity all at once. He’s never felt so fucking high strung and calm all at once, “What are you doing here?”

He’s grasping at—something. Words, some goddamn control, common sense. The stranger answers: “I wanted to watch,” and he’s slipping at the cliffs.

A million different things rush by his head. A sudden perfectionism surges within him, he’s not stupid so as to downplay the importance of words but Feinberg was never known to be a good speaker. He feels like he has to, now.

He shoots them down as they come— Weird spot, no? Yeah but not illegal. What was that glowy shit? Not really his business. You’re really pretty? Not saying that.

“Who’re you supporting?” He speaks instead, like some muscle he accidentally set off. His eye twitches a bit. It’s not jittery— he’s not jittery, it’s just that he feels the need to say something quick and something not stupid so that was the first thing that came to mind. He supposes.

Their lips pull into a grin so impossibly warm. There’s an answer in there. Fein is watching a universal fact unfold as the leaves and moon and stardust sing a name on the stranger’s tongue they refuse to actually say. It’s strong and sure enough that it mutates to the same mundane commanding truth as the sky is blue and grass is green and Fein is hungry.

He doesn’t understand the choir’s language. He bites on the frustration until his teeth crack.

“You looking for a good luck charm or something?” They suddenly speak up, and the moment is gone. Fein’s head is blank for a moment—happens stupidly a lot around someone he just met—before it kicks back up. There’s an amused lilt to it, sounding of why-are-you-here, and yeah, the more he thinks about it the more it makes sense for Fein to not be here, so whatever.

“I don’t need it,” It isn’t projection, when he says it like a fact. He chases and blazes and he’s good at it.

“I believe that.” There’s no reason for them to, yet they do. And there’s no reason for Fein to wholeheartedly trust that they mean it, he just does. It feels as natural as blitzing through a thundering storm when you’re Fein—as breathing itself when you’re everyone else. “Have you ever wished on the stars?”

Fein holds back a scoff, “No. Why should I?”

The stranger shrugs languidly. The rattling part of Fein suddenly worries he said the wrong thing—and it’s weird to be so concerned about right and wrong social answers when he’s the way he is—all stamped by the gentle sway of galaxy dust that seems to waft around the stranger. He feels as if he’s looking at a piece of The Universe Itself. The primal roots of his muscles are being cradled in its hold.

“Why not? It’s something new.” Yes, small animal in Fein’s brain chitters, yes yes yes it’s new of course . The edges of his eye twitch as he tries to quiet it down. “Here, try it.”

Fein watches as they unclip a star from their hair. Oh, he watches. Everything is so crystal clear now and his mind is goddamn enraptured with every little detail his eyes see. The way brown locks curl on golden clumps of stars, curvature of their moonlight-kissed arms, the crescent half-lid of their eyes, knuckles hidden by their armwarmers and nails painted black-blue-yellow. Time passes like a thousand millenia. He feels a supernova in his guts and heat-death by the tips of his fingers and the remaking of The Universe in every inch of this stranger.

He doesn’t know when, but his palm is upturned. The stranger places the star—star clip—in his hand. Warm. Sheens of something more subtle than the shine of enchantment Fein is used to.

“What am I supposed to—?” Fein looks up and sees no one.

He takes a deep breath.

Disappointingly mundane, his mind remarks at the scenery. The air of mystique and serenity and the subdued of everything goes away so quickly it almost feels like a hallucination, if not for the constant tingling of the star— clip, nestled in his hand.

He traces the edges with his thumb. He thinks of victory, of rush, of domination.

(He thinks of thirst and hunger and growling stomach.)

I.

So his team doesn’t win.

It’s fine, you can’t have everything in life. He gets top five individual placement so he has more than most, but, you know.

The motions of the aftermath is one he weaves through almost on autopilot. He chats with his team, chats with others, discusses some games and briefly looks over the stats. Slowly the number of people in the area trickles lower and lower, until he calls it for the night and bids his goodbyes as well.

He finds a cave to settle in. The night still goes on that it’s his active period, but he wants to rest for a while. He’ll get active once dawn breaks anyway. It always, usually, happens in the day—the deserts, the gunpowder, the void, lightning, the world. And everything else beyond that. It’s bad for the bat side of him that begs to be outside of the sun, but the core of Feinberg will prowl in restlessness, he knows this.

He can’t rest now though. Because someone’s outside.

He doesn’t care that much. Even so, it’s still annoying. His fingers card through his hair as he trudges up to the mouth of the cave, muttering, “What do you want?” 

“Nothing much,” the voice answers, and his mind shoots awake.

It’s the stranger. It’s the found-in-a-clearing, moonlight-kissed stranger. They’re leaned against the stone at the side of the cave’s entrance, already looking at Fein as he straightens up so quickly his spine protests.

“Oh,” he says, intelligently, “It’s you.”

“It’s me. Hi.” They give a wave and Fein already feels his legs wobble. He needs his shit together— “Am I interrupting?”

Kinda, “No.”

—and he’s doing fucking stellar at it, clearly.

They take the answer as a go-ahead to get comfy. Usually Fein would be mildly irritated by it, but for some reason he doesn’t mind it. If he were crazier and let the neurotic part of his brain speak, he’d say it feels right. He’s stuck staring while his mind races to find something to say—surely there’s something to say? Silence feels like a goddamn torture right now, when all he’s doing is looking at curly hair and brown eyes and exposed shoulder.

“I think you left your hairclip.” he blurts before his mind can even grasp the sentence. It catches up a few beats later, and he’s scrambling to fish it out. Pats down all of his pockets—doesn’t find it. “... Fuck. I lost it.”

What do you expect, when you give something to an event participant? There’s a lot of movement done, y’know. It’s what his mind naturally thinks but it all shrinks at the stranger’s raised eyebrow. Amusement audible in their voice, “It’s okay. I hope it’s served its purpose then.”

Fein stares at them. What purpose? is obvious in his eyes, before he remembers. “Well, I didn’t win, so I’m not sure about that.”

Then they laugh. Head tilted back, mouth slightly wide open, sounding of notes that glide through the chill air. Suddenly the world narrows to pinpricks; the soft of their neck, the underside of their jaw, gum peeking out behind lips. He’s going to die here.

“I don’t think you wished for victory, Feinberg.”

Feinberg. That’s his name, yep, yes, all staccato’d and lilted through the stranger’s voice. Feinberg. Fein-berg. He feels so damn dizzy but he has to reel it all in and force it into a tightly tied cobbled thing of a mind that hopefully works.

“What do you mean?” He can barely say the words.

The stranger laughs again, soft. Fein squeezes his eyes shut and hopes they don’t notice, “How do you think I’m here with you now?”

Feinberg learns how the world ends. It ends with nighttime crickets, with soft cold breeze and a million different epiphanies that The Universe sings but he can’t hear. He can start to feel around the silhouette, though. Feinberg learns that’s how the world starts. No bombastic big bang. It simply begins in the shape of a stumbling fawn trying to learn how to take its steps.

He still can’t grasp at the answer fully. Change it, change the topic, change it, change it.

“What’s your name?” His mouth feels like it’s about to fail. His hands are clammy and there doesn’t feel like there’s enough fucking oxygen in the world.

They hum, peering outside before answering—something like, “I think you can still see it,” mumbled beneath their breath. Fein waits. He’s never good at it but he feels as though he can wait until the ground crumbles and his heart is fossilized, chirping to the beat of the cosmos. The stranger raises an arm, points at a clump of stars, “That one there. Couriway.”

He leans out to look. A constellation. Of course. 

Couriway, his mind chitters. Couriway, Couriway, Couri-way. Shaped like a wing. Northwest of the night sky. He can count roughly fourteen stars that make up the constellation.

When he looks back at Couriway—the person (person?) —he finds them already staring back at him. It takes all the willpower to not look away immediately. He’s not used to the instinct of shrinking in the face of someone, so he doesn’t, but oh if it doesn’t feel weird .

Of course. He feels stupid for not getting it before—how can someone not know that the sky is blue and grass is green? Couriway is a star. Constellation, cosmos, Universe Itself—what have you.

“I do have to leave soon,” Couriway mutters.

“Why?”

“Dawn’s about to break soon. I can’t stay in the sky forever, y’know.” Oh, of course. It’s something Fein should’ve noticed as well. The sky hasn’t bled sunrise yet but his internal clock says it will soon. “Or at least, not in this sky.”

“Will you be back?” Like a drowned man desperate for air. It almost comes out as a choked thing, the frays of his mind trying to hold back and fighting a losing battle for common sense and normalcy. Couriway smiles at him and another thousand soldiers die in the war.

“If you know how to wish for it, Feinberg.”

II.

So it becomes a ritual.

In the sense how miracles only work sometimes. Fein was never someone who really believes in anything—he abides by The Universe, learns of Its rules and the ripples in It. Nothing much else.

It’s not a routine, which irks Fein a bit. He’s systematic in what he can, so when ink blots the sky and he looks at the moon thinking tonight, tonight, tonight and is met with nobody it sets something in him off-kilter. It’d be manageable if it was consistent, this day and this day of the week with the rest being silent—instead sometimes he gets days in a row then nothing then another visit. Like a strand of hair he can never fix.

It’s been about a week and a half. He tried not to think about it too much, because he had an event coming up. Now, though, that it’s finished, he thinks about it—kind of? It’s sizzled down to more of feeling like something’s missing.

It’s still enough to bring him, apparently.

Fein is tinkering with stats and screens, seed queue vaguely set up for the moment dawn breaks, when he feels a presence beside him. “Hey,” Couriway says, “How was Blockwars?”

He jolts only a little. Being around Couriway still frazzles him—it’s all the mystified air and glittering dust, surely—but at the same time, some primordial part of Fein expects him to be there. Two puzzle pieces slotted against each other. The moment he tries to examine the feeling, it quickly disappears.

“I mean, it’s fine. Didn’t get to the finale but third place is like, okay.” His brain switches to going a mile a minute, the games replaying through his head like a cog, “It’s just like— unfortunate that Battle got picked as the last game cause none of the other guys were big on PVP. And, like, we didn’t do enough comms for Tomb Titans and just a buncha other small stuff…”

And he goes on and on. The movement on his hands is a thing he doesn’t think about, switching between perspectives and footages while giving his comments, critiques, everything. It’s what happens after events.

Couriway chimes in every once in a while. In the back of his mind Fein notes that he also has a fair bit to say—is it because he watches, or something else? He can’t figure it out from the look in his eyes.

His mind screeches to a halt.

Why is Couriway here? Why does Fein feel so comfortable ranting on and on to him? Why does he not mind? Fein is overly-critical at best and a tilter at worst, he knows this, so why do Couriway’s responses slot in so well? Call and response. His stupid complaints are a goddamn orchestra and Couriway’s additions felt like they were notes finally drawn in.

Something surges in his molars. He needs— he needs what?

He needs to know.

“How the fuck do wishes work?”

It goes like this, sometimes. Couriway will appear before him and somewhere along the line Fein questions. About so many things—the grandiose, the miniscule, the unimportant, the mundane. Sometimes Couriway will throw some his way too, really conversational, remarks of how Fein’s day went. In the back of his mind there’s no way Couriway would’ve known that he didn’t get thunder, or that he fell into a ravine in that one temple. He doesn’t question that .

The subject of his wish—if he were to take a goddamn gander—hums. Then shrugs, “I dunno.”

“What do you mean you don’t know.”

“Hey!” Couriway raises his hands in exaggerated defeat, flustered and incredulous. It’s startlingly human and Fein doesn’t know what to think about that, “You think the stars know how wishes work?”

Fein rolls his eyes, jabbing a finger in Couriway's direction, “You’re what they wish on, no?”

“Yeah, but we’re not a bureaucracy.”

He lets a laugh bubble out of him. Something about it should feel wrong, that he witnesses a star get so bumbling. Blasphemy, his blood tells him. He is made of soil and milk and Couriway is made up of stardust and void. It’s a thing so contrasting that some inherent part of Fein always feels like he’s at the mercy of Couriway, at the mercy of The Universe. But it feels correct, laughing with him, teasing him. It feels like it’s what everything was made for.

It lulls. Fein watches Couriway’s eyes trace through the world around them. The clouds, the moon, dirt and stone fingertips. He looks over the scenery before them; an expanse of spruce forest. Fein sees the way he mulls on something in the shifts of his jaw, “Wishes are all about want, Feinberg.”

Fein wants too many things.

It clicks really easily, when put like that. Fein wants victory. Fein wants world record. Fein wants excitement and thrill and the chase—it’s too many things. Of course The Universe can’t handle the insatiable nature of Feinberg. He picks and tears at the skin of each world, stomach churning, want want want, until all the layers decorate the ground and he still hungers. 

He feels the need to say something to that. He can’t.

“‘M sorry,” is his shot in the dark. He doesn’t know who it’s directed to, if anyone.

“It’s okay,” Couriway says. His stomach is frothing and burgundy coats the dips of his fingernails—it’s not. “I like that about you.”

He doesn’t say anything for the rest of the night.

III.

“So your constellation—you, whatever—is a wing.”

It’s gotten better and worse since that night. On one hand, he worries less about wanting the right thing for the day. The cogs of his mind quiet down, and some days he’ll wake up with a sure feeling that tonight is it. It’s peace in a way. On the other, sometimes the stretches of time they don’t see each other get longer. One or two nights longer. It’s still too many.

Couriway raises an eyebrow at him, “Mhm, you’d be right.”

“Tell me about it.”

It’s a thing that sits near his left ear—the stars shaping into a feathered wing. And sure, Fein will confess he sometimes gets distracted looking at it. Who the fuck decided it should bob when Couriway moves his head anyway? Terrible design. Horrible and not fucking cute at all.

“Well, I used to have them, for one.”

Fein blinks. “You what?”

Couriway nods, reaching down to pluck a golden daffodil by his feet, “Like an avian. Golden colored. I had to do care—preening, I mean—twice every week.”

His brain short circuits a bit. Proceeds to kickstart in full gear in an attempt to conjure up the image. He’s seen avian hybrids before—tries to plaster the wings he sees on them and paint it yellow. Runs through different feather shapes and types and bolts on the label Couriway’s feather. Makes him lightheaded. Tries to imagine Couriway preening—okay, fuck, he should stop.

(They both have—had—wings. That’s, something?)

(What something, dumbass? Focus.)

“I,” words, words, words goddamnit, “I wouldn’t’ve thought. It’s not there anymore.”

“Do you think I was always a star, Fein?”

Does he? The thought never occurred. Couriway is Couriway—constellation in the sky, figure who talks to him in the nights he wishes right, whatever. It doesn’t matter much to Fein. He tries to trace the idea in his head—Brown mop of hair, golden wings sprouting from his back and the sides of his head, stardust and galaxy waft gone. Would he still wear blue and gold? The latter suits him.

(In the back of his mind, something whispers amethyst allium purpur cracks-in-crying-obsidian.)

“I can’t see how someone or something could become one,” he settles with.

“When The Universe loves you, you could.”

Couriway hugs his knees, heel perched on the mossed fallen tree they’re sitting on. He nestles his chin in the dip, eyes closing, “When your wings are charred and your skin is peeling and you know this is the end, The Universe could. If It feels your finality with it.”

It’s an unfinished sentence. And something else, he does not say.

The fluttering of his eyelashes is nothing short of divine for a moment, when Couriway opens them to look at Fein. “I flew into the sun, and in return It made me into a star.”

Flew into the sun. 

Couriway had wings and chose to soar the skies to the sun. Golden meets golden, one destined to melt the other. Fein finds that his mouth is rooted shut, mind blitzing and blanking at the same time. He knows flight. He knows of whizzing through the air in the beating heat of the desert, fighting exhaustion and instinct— so then—

“Why?” he mutters. It’s equal parts reverence and fear and confusion.

“Because,” there’s a blip of hesitancy before Couriway picks it back up. It sounds like a story he’s told many times in his head and seldom through his mouth, “Because I met someone who was so brilliant they reminded me of it. And I watched them, performance after performance, perfect fierceness in everything they did. And I couldn’t keep up.”

“So you flung yourself into the sun?” He can’t help the accusatory tone from leaking out. The idea is absurd to him.

“No.” Fein sees the whispers of defensiveness, all quickly smoothed over in the next second, “I just set my sights on something else.”

Fein can’t wipe the frown off his face no matter how hard he tries. He chases for a lot of things—the sun will never be one of them. Moreover, who could possibly indirectly be responsible for Couriway wanting to in the first place? Someone so good he finds solace in burning himself alive? Until he mutated to something far from what he was?

(Fein’s stomach does not growl. Fein’s teeth do not itch.)

“... Do you regret it?”

He’s asking too many things behind those words. About flying into the sun. About forgoing your life. About choosing, accepting, to become something far grander than you.

(He wonders if anyone mourns for him. Surely someone, right?)

(... His head hurts.)

Couriway takes a moment too long. “It’s peace,” he offers. Fein doesn’t know which question he’s answering. In Couriway’s mind it has to be enough. It isn’t for Fein.

It’s as if he can feel the hunger or taste the rust in the air, because Couriway unfurls. He takes Fein’s hand in his, guides it to his back. Fein gets a chance to hitch a breath before he understands what Couriway wants him to.

It’s underneath cloth, cloth Fein knows could not possibly be made by human hands, but there’s a warmth. No, warmth is too gentle and mundane of a word. He feels the core of a star—sun , he thinks—command a low note throughout Couriway’s body. Intense and serene at the same time. He does not touch skin but his mind can map the furling cracks in flesh of where it burnt. His finger traces around the shoulderblade, down, down, until he senses a shiver when he hits a small clump. Not flesh. Feathers, just a few. Used-to-be-wings.

Fein’s own bat wings twitch and flick like a reflex. As if it’s mourning on his behalf. As if wanting so, so badly.

(He imagines, in another world, flying around the world with Couriway. He imagines watching him get devoured by the sun.)

IV.

So what, if he’s fishing for some friction.

It’s an average run. He has more tridents than shells, which like, okay, sure, fine, whatever —trouble comes when his nether portal leads him into a cave with no entrance and an immediate dong. No milk. Because of course.

Fein screws his eyes shut. It isn’t the worst thing ever, but god does he want a reprieve.

“Tough luck, huh?”

He opens his eyes. Speak of the devil, he supposes.

Couri is before him, leaning forward to Fein a bit. If he tries, he can grasp at the tingling sensation in the air between them. He’s looking up at Couri, which means he’s floating a bit off the ground, a fact Fein is convinced he does so he doesn’t feel short. He only mentions that sometimes.

“Happens,” he shrugs. His shoulders are already heavy, “My fault for blinding near a monument in a fuckass cave, I guess.”

Couri laughs. It’s a development of sorts, that he can join Fein in worlds that aren’t hubs or nothings or inbetweens. Sometimes he visits during parkour practice, sometimes Fein can feel the knowing tingle at the hairs on his neck when he’s spectating a ranked match he’s doing, the likes. 

Sometimes he visits during runs like these. Fein fiddles with the settings on his interface to get ready to look at The Wall again, “Care to join me for the next seed? This one’s a dud.”

He feels the frown rather than sees it. Not a shift in cosmos-kissed air around them, more of heart-gut-fingertips feeling. “I don’t mean to sway or deter you,” Couri says, “but if you reset I won’t be there for the next one.”

Fein stops to look back up at Couri.

It only takes a fraction of a second to figure out why that is. If Fein resets and starts a new run, he’ll want too many things. Not the wrong things, no, but when Couri is in front of him all the rest feels wrong. He makes this epiphany and Couri looks—not proud, not really, but his smile is so overflowing with something he can’t name that it makes Fein dizzy, so he settles with proud.

He believes it. That Couri saying that wasn’t meant to stop him from leaving this world and never looking back. The situation is downright rancid, the lethargy starts to settle into his bones, but if he were to pick restarting or staying with Couri, well. A no-brainer, really, they both know this. The answer’s written on the walls in bleeding red ink. The sun rises in the east, sets at west, Fein will stay for one constellation in the sky. Couri looks almost sorry, which makes it worse somehow.

Fein accepts his fate with a groan.

He slinks down against the cold cavern walls, letting the fatigue slink through his entire body. Respite comes when he feels a warm hand on his shoulder rubbing small circles. When he leans into it, he blames the lack of energy.

He doesn’t mourn when Couri pulls away. Instead he watches as he reaches to his left ear and plucks a star out of his miniature constellation. Brightens, impossibly, once he sets it down on the floor before them. A torch, makeshift from the cosmos itself. 

The star’s light glints off of Fein’s trident. He catches Couri staring intently at it.

“What, never seen a trident before?” His lips pull into a smirk. He doesn’t have enough physical energy, so banter it is.

“Not really never,” Couri answers, startlingly sincere, ”It just doesn’t come by often for me.”

All of Fein’s cocky bravado clams shut. The one speaking before him isn’t Couriway, the constellation. It’s Couriway, the player, the person, the human-before-it-all.

He doesn’t know Couri’s life before celestial ascension, but he knows a runner when he sees one. They all go through life with a need, cracking and tailoring the world before them in the name of time, because of love. They adore and love The Universe so much they’ll commit destruction and unravelling and clinical breakdowns of all that makes up their existence. 

They always chase. It’s in their nature.

(Hunger, in its own way.)

If Couri runs random seeds or Ranked, then of course he wouldn’t encounter tridents. His answer implies he has, though, so maybe the former? Even then the likelihood is still small—the kinda thing Fein’d see in clips circulating titled some shit like crazy lucky speedrun moments.  

His hands are sluggish when he reaches for his shulkers. He still musters up enough energy to put the two down, pushing it towards Couri with his leg. “Look around, man. Eat your heart out or whatever.”

Couri lets out something between a snicker and a scoff, “The infamous Feinberg Inventory Management.” 

He rolls his eyes. It’s good that watching doesn’t demand much of him, even if Fein’s heartbeat is uncomfortable within his ribs. Couri picks them up one by one: skulls, elytras, the other trident Fein got. He combs through the items like it means more than what they are—handles them with such delicacy it makes some part of Fein sick. It makes some part of Fein hunger. 

“Have you ever gotten any of those in a run?” Fein asks.

Couri turns to smile at him. Fein grits his teeth in advance, “Aren’t you getting enough of them?”

No, no. It’s wrong. Voice too soft, crinkle in his eyes too flighty—he’s back to being a thing lightyears away, as if he’s not in front of Fein, all tangible and real. He squints between the celestial torch and Couriway. Soon they start to look the same and Fein hates it. He hates this stupid run. He hates being in a cold cave and being so weak and so cold. He hates the person (star. star. star) in front of him being so warm— too warm; not human, not human, not human.

He’s not human. He’s something impossibly far away.

“Do you think if I flew close enough to the stars,” Fein rasps out, voice too weak to convey the vindication in those words, “The Universe will make me one too?”

Couri raises an eyebrow. “Can you even?” Purposefully flighty. There’s a lilt at the end that makes Fein sick , “We’re lightyears apart. Definitely a lot more fanfare about it.”

I know. I know. I think about it so much, it hurts.

“I’m so fucking sick of having to wish you here every time,” he confesses in clipped exhales. Fein needs to punch the apologetic look off of Couri’s face. “… We could’ve just met when we were both players.”

Something flashes in Couri’s eyes, “I don’t think it would’ve made much of a difference.”

“Oh sure it fucking would have. You’d be a human and not—“ something that comes sporadically, when I want you always, I want you, I— “like, a star. Or whatever the fuck.”

“Why are you so focused on this? It’s something that’s passed so long ago. It doesn’t matter now, Feinberg.”

Catharsis, Fein thinks. The word forms itself in his head when he sees the crease in Couri’s brow, golden glow flickering out. He wants, so bad, to cut into skin and see red blood. Wants, so bad, to crush the glitter-specks that hover around him. Imperfectly human is what Couri deserves to be, every instinct of Fein screams, tinted in cruelty and love in equal measures.

(He thinks of cutting open Couri’s stomach. He thinks of finding beating heart and spasming muscle and a fountain of blood. He doesn’t think of a core of a sun. Stars go supermova—they don’t become mangled bodies. Human capable of bleeding and rotting. That’s what Couri is and Fein needs to see it.)

(His mouth waters. He feels sick.)

His nails dig into a crack. He’s trying to force the illusion apart, to rip the space between soil and sky. Couri flew himself into the sun and Fein needs to drag him back down with teeth and claw.

“Because I think it’s stupid to throw out everything you have for the sun.”

Couri freezes before him. Fein almost thinks it’s a reset, that the cracks will smooth over, and he’ll smile at him with that sickening too-soft look on his face. All fuzzed at the edges and so, so far.

Then he laughs.

It’s the world’s funniest joke and Fein doesn’t get the fucking punchline. He watches through half-lidded eyes the gum peeking through his lips (canines, he thinks he sees), feels the sounds echo around the cave and lodges itself into his ribs. It’s—not viciousness, no, but it bites. Something sharp and festering sinking into his heart. Couri chokes on it and Fein revels in the idea of suffocation and stuttering lungs.  

“Okay, fine. You wanna know why I flew into the sun?”

Yes. Yes yes yes, he raves, maggots dripping from his claws and ready to feast on flesh. He needs, he’s desperate, show me your beating heart and batting wings, show me.

“Fein,” It comes out as a wheeze tinged with mania and desperation and defeat, “I burn.”

Couriway—

hungers.

The realization crashes down all at once. He’s chasing something always at the periphery of his vision. He runs after things he can only taste the cusp of, and that fuels him more than anything. He wants something nigh impossible. He’s like Fein in more ways than he thought. 

Fein hears the sound of churning, and for once it might not be his stomach.  

It’s everything and nothing at the same time. It’s victory, a part of Fein screams, countered by is it? It’s so obvious. Of course the sky is blue. Of course the grass is green. Of course Couri is a star; of course he hungers.

Of course he wants. Needs. Yearns. It’s been there from the start.

Fein chases the lightning—is it any different with Couri and the sun? He’s well-acquainted with wielding it from his tridents, but he still has scars from when he first felt the thrum of Channeling, powerful crackwhipboom by his fingertips trailing to his arm. Couri’s body is sun-kissed then sun-mauled. Lichtenberg figures and solar flare scars, the two of them.

(In a way, Couriway is better than Fein. He’s achieved what Fein cannot—grasp at the hair-sliver possibility of it all. Held onto it until his knuckles bled.)

(Then why does he look like he’s still starved?)

(Fein’s mouth is dry.)

“... Do you think if I flew close enough to the stars, The Universe will make me one too?” He repeats.

Couri doesn’t answer. Time stretches long enough that Fein thinks he’s not going to, long enough that the fatigue lifts itself from his muscles one strand at a time. “Never,” Couri eventually mutters with downcast eyes, “Because you already are one.”

V.

So in the end, it doesn’t really change much.

It should, Fein thinks. He mulls on it the following day, then night, until they meet again and again and again. It should, because that revelation was undeniably the most human thing about Couri. It’s supposed to satiate a hunger Fein has, of what Couri is and isn’t. Selfish beyond understanding, to want a divine being to be sullied by flesh and chittering veins. The Universe whispers it to him sometimes, the stars belong in the sky. Couriway belongs there. He doesn’t, Fein knows this.

(Since when?)

It’s getting both easier and harder to be around Couriway. 

He finds there’s an inherent comfort, being with him. His eyes always land on Couri even when he’s supposed to be focusing on something else. Like muscle memory. Like a magnet imbedded in him since birth. He finds that sometimes, when he’s watching Couri, something squeezes in his heart; bleeds of deep blue. 

“Sometimes I get sad when I look at you,” Fein blurts out one night. 

Couri levels him with a raised eyebrow. “That’s kinda rude,” he says, neutral, but Fein can hear just a bit of offense to it. “I don’t really need pity, Fein.”

Oh, he knows. Fein hates being pitied more than he does Twitch Rivals time management. The conversation still rings in both their ears despite some time having passed, a fly incessantly buzzing in his ear. An open wound that can never close. Neither of them talk about it. It changes everything and nothing at the same time.

Still, it’s not that.

“I’m not pitying you for— for that,” The hunger, he means. The constant need of something, of being insatiable no matter what you have. The itching of teeth. “It’s just…”

Just what? That he looks at Couri and the back of his eyes start to sting? That there’s an invisible thread inside his body that wants to inch closer and closer to him? That the nights where he doesn’t come he gets restless, goes into a slump, it’s wrong his mind says, like he’s lost something?

He doesn’t finish the sentence.

The air lulls to silence. It isn’t awkward, just palpable. Happens more nowadays. There’s a viscous muck, subtext and paragraphs he can’t even read, that permeates between the two. Couri feels distant in these moments. Well-practiced neutrality and deflection—it drives Fein insane . 

“I still run, y’know.”

It’s something of an olive branch. It’s something of placating. Fein kisses the fish hook before he bites into it. 

“You do?”

“Yeah. Not like you guys do, with The Wall or eloes, ‘cause, well…” Couri scratches the back of his neck, eyes veering off to the side. “There’s only so much I’m allowed to affect. I can do singleplayer worlds, just not anything too fancy. So I scour the ones that have been abandoned and I complete them. The ones deemed unoptimal, or undesired, or terrible—which most are, honestly. No one really wants a mesa spawn with no trees or ocean for three minutes.”

Fein blinks for a moment—that’s a lotta sentimental fancy words. He pieces together what all that meant in actual terms, “No Reset?”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t deserve the soft smile Couri gives him for something as simple as that, Fein thinks, but he’ll take it nonetheless. “I’m planning to do one hundred thousand of ‘em.”

Fein hums, “… That’s a lot of no resetting.”

Couri barks out a laugh, just a little wry, “What else am I supposed to do? There’s nothing much to do up there,” he gestures to the night sky, “and you’re practically one of the only reasons I come down.”

It doesn’t make Fein’s heart stutter. “What about the others?”

He barely catches the look that flashes across Couri’s face, something a mixture of pain and longing and desperation. It happens more nowadays, “Who others?”

Fein gestures vaguely upwards, “The stars.”

“Oh.” It sounds like disappointment, though he isn’t sure why, “… Rarely are people like me, y’know.”

Couri plucks one of the shining dots from his constellation, holds it in his palm until it’s a warm and bright that doesn’t hurt his eyes. Hurts his heart instead, “Something enough to burn but not enough to blaze. That’s the reason I am what I am. So there’s not a lot of company, honestly.”

Fein thinks. “How about we do duos?”

“What, you want to get treasure’d for three times and triangulate a two-thousand block blind? I never thought I’d see the day.” He laughs at that, and bites down on the fact that he’d do all that and worse, more, for Couri. “I don’t think we can, though.”

A sinking feeling plants in his stomach, “Why do you say that?’

“Fein,” Couri’s speaking in that patient—grating—tone, like talking to a child, “I never do anything with you.”

Fein is reminded of those stupid English ‘tricks’. If you put emphasis on every word, they have different meanings! I never do anything with you. I never do anything with you. I never do—

He chews on the lightning that crackles in his mouth. Couri is correct—because of course he is—Fein doesn’t remember him doing much of anything ever. He never throws the trident. He didn’t mine Fein out of the cave. He never walks with him; always floats. His touches come in tap-tap flutters, his words always staccato’d and snipped in a way no human lungs could. There’s a reason the runs he does where Couri visits are still technically eligible, because he’s not a Player Two.

It’s always fucking something. I can’t be here unless you want me the most. I can’t fly with you because I flung myself to the sun. I can’t have known you before I chose to destroy all that I am.

(The Universe coos in his ears. The cacophony irritates him.)

“Don’t you fucking say that,” said through gritted teeth. Fein is so goddamn tired. It’s all a celestial joke—that he’s given something that’s everything to him and yet not allowed to take and take and take . He is given perfection incarnate that he can touch, wile away the nights with, but never to simply be. He just wants. He just wants. 

Couri opens his mouth and Fein’s hand flies to grasp at his wrist before he can say a word. Grips, tight, as he marches out of the world. There’s not a trace of hesitancy as he navigates the servers and realms. The air smells burnt, his mouth waters. He reaches where he wants to and does not doubt that Couri will still be behind him—because he wants, wants, wants him to be here. More than anything.

(His grip is still tight. In the back of his mind, he hopes to pull away with blood on his claws.)

“… The practice server?” Couri mutters from behind him. 

The MCCI sign blares before them in bright, saturated colors.

“You’re coming to do parkour with me.” 

He feels the panic more than sees it, “Fein, you know I can’t. It’s always day in that section. I—“

“Do you think I’m fucking stupid?” He whirls around in one quick movement, blue eyes meeting gold-brown, “The stars don’t stop existing just ‘cause the sun is up. I don’t have object permanence issues, asshole.”

It isn’t what he means, they both know this. The skies formed in worlds are rudimentary and squished down to a simple thing; much less in the pocket that they’re going to. It’s more of a painted ceiling. A set.

Pity, is what Couri looks at him with. Fein hates it. He wants to scream and yell and claw until those brows aren’t knitted, until he isn’t looking at Fein like what he’s doing is impossible. His hands rise up—it’s so easy to grab him, to touch him. They land on Couri’s shoulders and Fein squeezes; Fein crumbles .

“I just need you to be here,” he rasps, head falling to the dip of Couri’s collarbone, “I need you to be here. Please.”

“… I’m here.” He feels Couri’s nose brush against the crown of his hair. Words muffled, repeats: “I’m here, Fein.”

The thrum of a sun’s core reverberates throughout Fein’s bones. “Are you real?”

Couri doesn’t answer.

“Please.” Fein has never been a begging man, but he’s willing. Oh, he’s willing. He’ll go on his knees if he must and pray until all the world’s oxygen is depleted, spent on the most important little dots in the sky, if he needs to. He needs to. “Please, you have to be real. Put your feet on the ground. Walk with me—really walk with me.” It’s a plead as much as it is a command.

Silence blankets them. Fein feels his head start to cloud and he isn’t sure if it's because of Couri or because it’s Couriway . He feels so tangible beneath his fingers, his forehead pressed against his torso, but also. But also. Humans aren’t meant to breathe stardust. Humans aren’t meant to clutch and plead at burning celestial objects.

Then, a shift. The cosmos threads siphon away little by little. The glitter dust that surrounds them lifts until none remain. Fein almost blinks awake, suddenly aware of the world and not faraway skies. The overwhelming warmth deep in Couri’s ribs fades; turns, slowly, to a beating thing. It’s mimicry. Blasphemous, to imitate flesh in such a way. It doesn’t have the rhythm that a heart does, nor does his chest rise and fall in breath, but it’s enough. Please, Fein begs, it has to be enough.

Couri’s feet plant themselves to the ground, with weight this time. “I’ll try,” he offers. Relents, almost. Fein raises his head to look at him and gets a small smile, tired and bumbling on soft lips. Couri’s hand brushes against Fein’s—tingles, “Come on. I’ll be right behind you.”

It isn’t the first time, technically. They’ve met up here before while Fein was practicing, although it’s a bit of a stretch, because it always happens in the small shudders of inbetweens in switching realms. In that blip of void sometimes Couri will greet him. They’ll chat for a bit, and Fein will emerge in the real world where it feels like no time has passed.

He’s never mentioned the fact that he’s always so uninvolved, but he’s sure he noticed it. Somewhere in the back of his mind.

When they take their first steps in, Fein feels his hand squeezed for a moment. It’s still there, warmth in his clammy palms, so that’s all that matters. He spares one quick glance back before pulling up the menu and transporting them to the Parkour Warriors section.

Relief crashes down on him when he feels Couri’s presence behind him still. 

Fein looks back to see him nearly curled in on himself. Couri watches the surroundings as if the brightly colored concrete and props will throw him back into the sky. “So,” he tosses out, purposefully unfinished.

Fein tilts his head to the course, “So you’re here. And not evaporated from the fact that it’s day.” He lets himself break out into a grin, relief turning into adrenaline, “You’re still a speedrunner right? Keep up.”

And he lets go. He hears a yelp as he bolts to the stairs, followed by a protest, followed by footsteps. Come on, come on, come on. The winds rush by his face and he’s never felt so alive doing the same course he’s completed for years.

He doesn’t reset. When he falls, he lets it, until he comes to and tries again. He’s not playing for time, despite who he is, because Couri is with him and real and there’s nothing else that matters in the face of that fact. There’s a fear that if he goes back to the beginning, rushes to where he left off, there’ll be no one there.

He won’t let it. He wants, he wants, he wants.

They go through the motions. Fein fights off the trigger finger reflex to restart for the sake of speed, stalls more in the checkpoints when Couri is too behind. He teases him about it, and they fall to their usual rhythm of back and forth, but he can see the hesitancy. Being forced out of your humanity into something only able to look behind the glass does things to your skill, Fein reckons. He’s trying, though. His feet has to drag themselves to the ground when it gets too light, and sometimes it wavers, but he’s there and real.

The end gets closer. Fein hops up to the finishing platform and listens to the final jingle go off in his head, grin hooked on his lips. It’s a terrible time, horrible, if anyone else saw they’d make fun of him for at least a week. He sees the mop of brown hair emerge from below and decides it doesn’t matter.

When Couri finally lands on the red concrete, he’s almost knocked back down by Fein launching himself at him. He laughs—so loud and careless and imperfect—squeezing Fein for a moment before they both peel back. “I can’t believe that worked.”

Of course. Fein is very good at wanting.

“And you’re fucking stupid for thinking you can’t.” The smile is so painfully audible in his voice. Fein takes a deep breath, reels in all the adrenaline and joy and tucks it in a crevice of his heart. He knocks his head towards the throne, “Come on, just get on there and get your time already.”

Couri falls silent.

The apocalypse’s trumpets come in how he chuckles, how his eyes crinkle with unfathomable mirth. It’s soft, too soft. The way he looks at him is so happy and full of love, it feels like mourning. “You always manage to do the impossible, huh, Fein?” Couri muses. The world crumples in on itself. “I’m glad I did do something with you. Way to prove me wrong.”

It’s always something. “You can’t finish,” comes from his throat pressed, deliciously saturated colors blaring in his eyes.

Couri shrugs, eyes veering off to the side, “We can restart. And I can do it again with you, I’m sure. Hell, we might even get a passable time.”

“You can’t finish.”

“And it’s fine.” He means it, Fein knows it, all it does is just twist the knife deeper. “You got your time and I got to do the course with you. It doesn’t matter what happens in the end, right? Because it’s about you.” 

And what you wished for.

“But I’m not doing it for me,” it aches, everything does, hurts and stings and— “I’m doing it for you.”

To starve and never be fulfilled. To live with a half-filled stomach, to always live with an ache buried in your guts. To be real enough but not in a way that matters. To be lost and cannot be mourned. To be enough to burn, but not enough to blaze. It’s ironic tragedy, it’s a cosmic fucking comedy.

“You—“ Couri stops himself with a hitch, squeezing his eyes shut. Fein watches the way his chest rises and falls in deep breaths; doesn’t know if its mimicry or not, “… Just drop it. There’s so little way you can help me with this.”

He gestures to the entire place, “In a way, Players are more untouchable than any divine thing in the code, you know.” Couri’s face is carefully neutral, almost flippant if Fein hadn’t known him enough. “This whole place is, more than most, tailored for Players. I’m not one—not anymore—so I can’t.”

It’s always something. 

What, he wants to say, that all you are here is a prop? That your role is virtually the same as the checkpoints, the blocks, the false sky and neverending void—to serve the player its one purpose? That you’re nothing more than a thing, several dots in the sky, just an element to a backdrop? That you’re here, everything about you is the way you are, only because I wished for it?

(It’s true, The Universe sings to him. He wants to plug his ears.)

There is a blaze in his eyes, all-consuming, all-burning. It drills embers into every inch of Couri—pragmatic is always what Fein is, surely there’s a solution. An answer. Fein needs, he needs, he needs—

(He wants to cry.)

Something in his eyes makes Couri crack. Fein sees a millennia worth of emotions seep into every faucet of him. “Wish for it,” he mutters. A command as much as it is a plea.

Fein thinks of the sun.

A thing that hangs in the sky. A thing that’s worth burning, dying, to-be-desecrated for. A thing that beats exhaustion into him at the start of runs, always the desert, always the day; a thing that is a part of The Universe. A thing that exists, reflects itself, in someone’s very being, somewhere. A thing that is a star.

Feinberg is a speedrunner. He’s used to tearing and ripping at the Universe with Itself as a weapon in the name of love.

He closes his eyes. He thinks about hunger. He thinks about stardusted-laughter and everything beyond that. He thinks about waiting, waiting, waiting. Burning core morphing into a beating heart.

(He thinks about someone inching closer to the sun. If he tilts his head right, it looks like a freefall.)

Something,

pulls-shifts-sings-crackles-wails

shivers in the air. He hears a sharp inhale and opens his eyes. Above Couri’s head sits a name. A Player’s nametag, taped and glued by silly string and desire. It’s a mixture of letters and the symbols seen in enchantment tables, the ones he can make out only say C…ri..w..y, five letters worth more than every tome ever written from the beginning of time.

For a moment, Couri looks at him like he’s everything.

Then he bolts. Primality woven into his muscles, like he’s chasing something. Like he’s racing against the world itself, teeth and nail ready to claw. Like there’s a timer always ticking in the back of his eyes. Like he hungers. Fein feels like he’s not supposed to be seeing him like this. Fein feels like it’s the only correct way to see him.

The Universe                      ripples.

He passes a threshold. All at once, the air crackles in a million different directions to a million different scenes—eclipsed sun, star charts, worlds and worlds and worlds, golden feather, last goodbyes that never were, cold night breeze, amethyst-allium-purpur-cracks in crying obsidian, flesh and dust being pulled in two directions,

Couriway            falls.

Fein

(remembers golden feathers inbetween couch cushions, a seat next to him still warm,
purple dress shirts in the laundry, misplaced glasses by his desk,)

(blinks)

surges forward to catch Couri before he hits the ground. He hears a heartbeat, rushed. He hears a churning stomach. From his torso bursts something, tense and tight, for a moment Fein thinks it’s a supernova—

■■■■■■■■ completed the full course in 17:34.398!

—only to shield away the mirage coins that spray his face accompanied by the iconic brring! jingle.

They both heave, Couri now splayed on the plush of the throne. The text above his head flickers, first into gibberish, then until it’s gone entirely. The exhales of the two intermingle, and Fein feels his head be clouded by stardust again. Couri’s body beneath him grows lighter. Two heartbeats, one of them fraying to desert-heat.

Couri exhales one last time, like an illusion ending.

(Please, not yet, stay, a small part of his mind weeps. Tired. He means it in more ways than he can fathom.)

“I finished,” Couri says, lilted at the end. His brown hair falls so delicately when he tilts his head.

“You did.” Fein takes a glance at his comms, ignores the glitched out text for a name, “You did. With a dogshit time, too. Come on. We’re getting you a better time.”

He laughs, and they restart. They chase and chase and reset in the name of who they are at their core, and when Fein looks back to see Couri gone, he chews on the grief and swallows it.

VI.

No one is surprised when Fein is amongst the first to the sign-ups.

Everyone expects him to be there, the way everyone expects him to be excellent. It’s never been a pressuring thing to him. He chats with familiar faces, throws jabs at ones he’s close to, and soon finds himself with the paper form and pen in his hand. He writes down his information like a well-trod path.

Who would you like to be teamed with? it asks.

He thinks of a glowing hairclip in his hand. Northwest of the night sky. Shaped like a wing. Fourteen dots that connect to each other and sits near the left ear. 

Feinberg makes a wish.

—

He goes to team announcements as more of a formality, really.

Fein isn’t the first, but certainly isn’t the last in the growing crowd festered at the board. He navigates between people easily due to the fact that they part the moment he comes close. His eyes scan through the teams one by one, noting the composition on some and actively voicing thoughts on others. They let Fruit team with Purpled? Crazy.

Finally, he lands on the one he’s looking for.

Blue Bandits. Feinberg, Fulham, C—

“Fein.”

He doesn’t need to turn around. He still does anyway. Who else would be on his team, by his side, if not him?

Before Fein is something far grander than perfection. Couri stands, almost sheepishly, in front of him—same in the ways that matters but different. Couriway, text reads above his head, letters just a bit swirled than the rest. He’s not wearing his usual outfit, with the impossibly comfy-looking arm and legwarmers and exposed shoulders; instead a black vest and dress shirt tinted with the night sky itself. Gradient of blue and purple, and if Fein looks closer, specks of star-glitter. Black gloves, yellow tie—matches with golden crown and the singular wing near his left ear. You can’t have it all back, Fein supposes.

(This is right, the instinctual part of Fein says . Why did I ever think anything else was?)

(It’s different.)

(Different is fine, he thinks. It’s still right.)

“Couri.” Fein breathes out. As if reverent, as if completely expected. 

“How,” he chokes on something amidst his laugh, “How the fuck did you manage this, you maniac?”

Fein breaks into a grin. He feasts on the victory—he’s gotten world records, he’s won by the skin of his teeth, yet this, the one standing before him, triumphs all that. “I wished for it.” Then, softer: “You told me to.”

Couri launches himself at Fein, arms wrapping around his body.

His mind takes a moment to catch up before he finally reciprocates, laughing into the crown of Couri’s hair. He slots so well together, in his arms. Something primal within him wails in relief, as if a missing piece of a puzzle has finally clicked into place. Beating heart chitters by his own. He has the urge to cry, to hold on tighter and never let go, to never lose Couri again, he has to—

(blink.)

Well. He has to win the event, of course.

“Come on, we’re meeting up with the team and practicing.”

Couri yelps as Fein drags him out of the crowd, approaching the hub’s exit, “Already?”

“You’re not gonna bottom frag in Overspleef,” he teases with a roll of his eyes. Like it’s muscle memory.

Couri scoffs behind him, then chuckles, and slowly his steps skip so that he’s next to Fein. He takes one glance at Couri right before they leave and is greeted with a grin so, so warm. Real and reachable and undeniably existent. 

He has a prize to claim.