#thistledown stranger
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Do you know thistledown stranger? I'm confused if they are just an anon who sends you their writings or if it's a roleplay or what
do we know each other? somewhat. not in person, if that's what you mean? from what they've said we live on different continents but i do always answer as myself, earnest as my nature dictates lol i don't know how else to be! so no, it's not rp we're just two people :3
THAT BEING SAID. if we were rping i think we'd be space probes (below) or agents in a time war <3
#thistledown stranger#< by proxy#anon#tbh they are my only anon and i enjoy their company dearly bc i think inside me is a little girl who cried out unloved unloved unloved#every moment of my life
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Calla wasn't exactly sure how long she had been out. There were times when she thought she might have woken up, but her memory was fuzzy and she had been too exhausted to make an effort to properly wake.
She wrinkled her nose, feeling rays of light scorch into her bleary eyes. Squinting, she raised her head. The movement made the world around her spin, and she quickly ducked back down and squeezed her eyes back shut, groaning.
Something shuffled nearby. She wasn't alone.
Calla jumped and stumbled back, unable to move her legs properly. She tripped over her own paws and yelped as the figure approached, peering at her on the ground.
"Oh, hello. I was a bit afraid you wouldn't come to!"
Calla snarled and curled in on herself, fur raising. A sharp ache pounded in her skull as she forced herself to focus on the intruder.
A mink twice her size stared back at her, stunning green eyes standing out from dark, rusting black fur. The stranger's small ears twitched, and they smiled. "You're looking at me, that's good, that's good! You tried to talk to me an hour ago but fainted pretty quickly."
Calla bared her teeth. "Wh-who," she paused to hack, and the mink startled a little. "Oh! Yes! Water. Hold on," they said, running out of sight. By the time Calla composed herself, the mink was back with a canteen of liquid. She eyed them suspiciously.
"I am not trying to poison you!" The stranger raised her paws up, looking somewhat offended. "What would I gain from bringing some strange, potentially-dangerous stoat back to my nice, safe village just to kill them? Nothing! Now, drink."
Calla took the canteen from them with shaky paws and began to drink slowly, glaring at the mink all the while. That is, she was drinking slowly until she realized how thirsty she was and immediately downed the whole container in seconds.
"See? Normal water. Now, what were you saying?"
Calla cleared her throat, regaining her vicious expression. "Who are you, and where have you taken me?"
The mink smiled again, little, blunt fangs poking out from under their whiskers. "Fable. My name's Fable. And this," she gestured to the den's entrance, "is Thistledown village. I'm one of the doctors here."
Thistledown. She recognized the name, but it was farther away from anywhere Castor had let her go in the past. "...And why am I here?"
"We found you knocked out a few brooks away. You had fallen spine-first onto a jagged boulder. Honestly, you're lucky to be alive."
That's right. The last thing she remembered was breaking free from Castor. Which was a stupid thing to do, all things considered, but she had been practically sentenced to torture anyways. It was either run or have the wolverine leader Lazlo tear her limbs off.
Speaking of which. Calla turned around and checked herself. No paws or digits missing. Ears still intact. Tail's still on. But...
"Hey Fable?"
"Hm?"
"Why can't I feel my hind legs?"
Calla flailed, attempting to get a better look at her back. Fable turned to her. "You probably can't move them, huh. Try twitching something. If you can still move them even a little bit, I can help you relearn. You're not the first animal around here to fall out of a tree."
Calla caught herself hyperventilating, and attempted to regain control as she focused on her feet. Relief flooded in her veins as she was able to get her joints to jerk a little. It was the tiniest of movements, but it was something.
#original character#original story#writing#ocs#mustelids#metanoia writing#this takes place at the very beginning but writing bits will be all over the map#they also may not always be quite as long hahaha
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You know. You know the tales, the legends. You know not to give your name to a beautiful stranger. You know not to walk the paths between winding roots, especially on a full moon. But his hair is spider silk, thistledown. His eyes are strange pools of silver. His skin is pale, shining like a beacon, smooth as petals but marred with scars. His footsteps are silent, his smile is sharp. He reaches out his hand and cocks his head, soft hair shifting to reveal pointed ears. You can hear the music. You can hear the laughter. You know that you might not return and you take his hand anyway.
The moon is bright tonight.
YOURE. KIDDING.
This is so beautiful I just choked ✨✨✨ holy cow you have wowed me!! Thank you so so much for this. I am in love!
Holy cow a literal poem. This gave me chills.
Smooth as petals but marred with scars. 😳 so beautiful
You know that you might not return and you take his hand anyway.
Visually STUNNING 💕
Thank you so so much 😭
#beautiful#I am blessed#thank you so much#harry potter#draco malfoy#drarry#harry potter x draco malfoy#harry x draco#harry/draco#my art#draco
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Haven Gallery presents 'Thistledown', a mini solo art exhibition by Adam Oehlers, featuring a collection of new watercolour paintings, ink drawings and shadowboxes that explore the natural world, including recent illustrations created for 'A Stranger’s Tale', a narrative work of fiction by Nataša Xerri, whose characters and settings echo Oehler’s timeless tales of imagination and adventure.
Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the exhibition will only be available on view at the Haven Gallery website.
The art show will be on display from Saturday May 2 until May 31 2020.
#Art#Adam Oehlers#Natasa Xerri#Haven Gallery#Exhibition#Art Show#New Contemporary Art#Contemporary Art#A Stranger's Tale
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synopsis of a calendar
summary: in which we ignore jae’s pollen allergy and give him a flower shop, and younghyun’s a college student doing his level best to understand why his calendar predicts his future.
pairing: jaehyungparkian
genre: fluff
length: 15k. i’m so sorry. it might be better to read it on ao3.
ao3: [x]
notes: i started writing this in like 2016 and i finally finished it and i feel so goddamn successful. most of my stuff is t for teen only because of swearing and this isn’t any different. find me on twitter @hihenlo!!
january
on the ninth day of january younghyun finds himself on the street, staring up at his apartment with his bags in his hands, trying not to cry because he knows the tears will just freeze and make him colder. for all he had suspected his girlfriend was cheating on him, he never expected she would be the one to kick him out of the apartment. but he was too stunned by her announcement to put up much of a defense; she seemed almost proud of what she had done, and so he packed his things and left per her instructions, and now he has nowhere to go.
he supposes maybe he could crash with sungjin, but the grad student has enough on his plate with his studies to worry about younghyun.
with a sigh younghyun lets his knees give out and he sinks to the curb to pull a thicker jacket out of his bag. it won’t be enough, not without somewhere to go, but it’ll be better than nothing. he sits, shivers, thinks, and once he starts to lose feeling in the tips of his ears he settles on sungjin, tells himself he’ll just be a quiet presence in the flat without being a distraction or a problem.
picking up bags with stiff fingers is no easy task but he manages, huddles further into his jacket, and begins the twenty-minute walk to sungjin’s part of the city.
he’s maybe halfway there when he passes a tiny flower shop, the display in the window somehow still bright and blooming despite the cold. he doesn’t know much about flowers, but he knows sungjin’s boyfriend does, so younghyun looks for the name of the shop so he can remember to bring sungjin back here, but just as he sees “thistledown” in looping gold script one of his bags slips off of his shoulder and his reflexes are not quick enough to catch it.
he groans and bends to pick it back up, and then the door to the shop opens with the tinkling of a bell and younghyun looks up to see a young man standing in the doorway, concern in dark eyes.
“you okay?”
“f-f-f-fine,” younghyun stutters, nearly biting his tongue with harshly chattering teeth.
“i mean, obviously you’re not. come in for just a minute to warm up. you’ll be an ice cube if you stay out there any longer.” if this is some sort of marketing ploy, offering warmth to a freezing stranger, younghyun has to admit it’s effective, and so the shop worker slings younghyun’s bag over his own arm and leads younghyun into the shop. “i’m jae. you?”
“y-y-y—”
“never mind. tell me in a minute when your teeth stop chattering.”
younghyun expects jae to have a place to sit in the shop itself, but instead jae leads him up a spiral staircase hidden behind the counter and several stands of trailing vines to a cosy little apartment above the shop. he throws a few blankets at younghyun, helps him take his bags off of his shoulders, and bustles about making a cup of tea in the tiny kitchen as younghyun curls up in an armchair and surveys the place.
“here.” a warm mug is held out to younghyun, and he reaches out but his fingers are so stiff he thinks he’ll never be able to hold it properly, until a pair of warm, slender hands wrap around his own and keep the mug steady as younghyun warms his fingers.
jae seems content to wait, studying younghyun with steady eyes, and finally younghyun regains enough feeling in his limbs to lift the mug to take a sip, and with the way jae’s hands linger for a moment he thinks maybe jae will hold on even as he drinks, but a second later he lets go and lets younghyun do it for himself. the tea is fragrant and sweet and, most importantly, warm, and jae flashes a hint of a smile when younghyun sighs appreciatively.
it appears jae’s not much of a talker, as they sit in silence until the tea warms younghyun’s insides and his teeth settle a peace treaty and stop attacking one another. “i—i’m younghyun,” he says, as soon as he can, only a little bit of a stutter left in his voice, though he’s not entirely warm yet.
“so, younghyun-ssi, what were you doing looking all the world like a puppy kicked out of its home and left to freeze to death?”
“my girlfriend kicked me out. i was going to stay with my friend, but it’s a bit of a walk and i didn’t have time to grab my proper coat when i left.”
“who’s this friend? and how far would it be from here to walk? any longer in this weather and i think i might find you tomorrow like an ice statue at a wedding—a very nice one, i might add.”
younghyun swears the flush in his cheeks is entirely due to the cold and definitely not because jae is cute, soft edges and slender fingers and a sprig of tiny white flowers tucked behind his ear that emphasize the sparkle in his brown eyes. “park sungjin, he lives like ten minutes away.”
“park sungjin, grad student? music composition, dating im jaebeom?”
younghyun nods, surprised. “you know him?”
“we were in undergrad together. i dabbled in composition and had a few classes with him. he’s kinda busy to end up with a roommate, as far as i know.”
“i just...thought i would be quiet,” younghyun mutters. he realizes now it does maybe sound a little dumb, when he’s a music major and needs space to compose and practice, but he doesn’t really have other options. before he can voice this jae sighs, something in his expression that might be embarrassment, and fiddles with the flowers behind his ear.
“you could stay here for a bit, if you like, just until you find another place.” as soon as he finishes speaking he stands, grabs younghyun’s empty mug, and bustles about the kitchen pouring more tea, leaving younghyun blinking in shock behind him.
“wh—why would you do that for me?”
“jin has mentioned you a few times. you are the kid he’s arranged guitar pieces for, right?” younghyun nods. “so i know you’re not a bad kid, and jin would be disappointed in me if i left you to freeze, and i have an extra bedroom that right now is just a storage place for a few flowers, and it wouldn’t be a problem, really. we can talk to sungjin tomorrow and see if he could make it work with you, so it might just be for tonight.”
younghyun sees jae’s hands freeze, when he has nothing else to do, but dithers about for a moment refusing to turn around until he has to, and there’s maybe a bit of a blush on jae’s cheeks as he meets younghyun’s gaze. “that would be nice, jae-ssi. if it’s no trouble for you, and i’m not really going to be here during the day so i’ll be out of your way when the shop is open.”
the extra bedroom is small, but the various succulents that line the windowsills and bookshelves make it cozy, just as the rest of the apartment is. “these are the succulents i have to keep a closer eye on in the winter,” jae explains. “i can move them into the dining room if you don’t want them in here—”
“they’re fine,” younghyun says. “they’re great.”
jae offers a small smile and ducks out of the room, and younghyun ignores the idea of unpacking his bags because he’ll probably be out of the apartment by tomorrow night, but he does reach into one pocket of one of his bags and pulls out a little paper calendar, eight days of it crossed off in red ink.
january is daphnes, according to the little note at the bottom of the picture, petals covered in frost, and younghyun sighs and digs a black pen from his bag, and a minute later a tiny flower adorns one corner of the square for january ninth, an x over the blank space.
something in him dreads talking to sungjin; he hasn’t been in the apartment over the flower shop for longer than two hours, and yet he can see himself staying here, finding a home amongst flowers and winding staircases and mugs of fragrant tea.
february
younghyun finds he’s rather gotten used to the flower shop. It takes two weeks for jae to find the time to talk to sungjin, and he doesn’t tell younghyun the details of the arrangement but the fact of the matter is younghyun stays in the little apartment above the shop, biking the five minutes to the university campus on jae’s bike and returning between classes to sequester himself away in a spot jae carves out near the counter of the shop, a table and chair set up as a study space hidden among the pots of cacti and other succulents. younghyun’s found he quite likes succulents, and jae’s let him take over taking care of the ones in his room.
his calendar is filled with flowers, and the delphiniums that make up the february page tuck themselves quietly among the plants in his room.
no matter how much he typically likes the plants, though, he’s frustrated enough he’s considering breaking a few pots, because he managed to forget for a bit about the idea of electives, and the psychology test he has tomorrow morning is kicking his ass. for the life of him he can’t remember the difference between explicit and implicit memory, much less the sequence of the peg-word system, and an hour ago he found it ironic that he can’t remember things about memory but now he’s seething, flipping through his notecards with increasing ferocity.
jae’s been by a few times to deliver fresh cups of green tea, though younghyun still prefers the chrysanthemum brew in the little jar beneath the counter.
an influx of customers came in recently, as it’s days away from valentine’s, and so a gaggle of giggly high school girls are clustered around jae blushing their way through asking him for flowers for the boys they want to confess to. younghyun thinks he’s going to throw his textbook at the girls if he hears one more simpering laugh at a pitch high enough to shatter his eardrums, because for all he’s learning about memory he sure can’t remember anything, not with the way jae’s eyes light up as he tells the girls about the different flowers, the way his long fingers move so deftly to pluck stems from the arrangements and collect them into a new bouquet. jae looks like he’s glowing, blond hair backlit so he appears to have a halo.
younghyun tells himself the only reason he cares about these details is jae seems to be having a grand old time and younghyun is most definitely not; it has nothing to do with the fact that the girls are the ones taking up the florist’s time rather than younghyun.
with a sigh of frustration he gives up, lets himself fall forward until his forehead meets the middle of his textbook, beats a rhythm into the table with his free hand—the rhythm of the song he’s working on for his performance final. he wonders if maybe sitting there with his head on the textbook will help his brain absorb the information by process of osmosis. but he didn’t get any sleep the night before, and he was composing through the whole morning, and it doesn’t take long before he can barely force his eyes open, so he doesn’t, and a minute later all of the noise of the cafe fades away.
“younghyun?” the hand shaking his shoulder is gentle, cool fingers smoothing the hair away from his forehead as he slides his way into consciousness.
“mmph?”
“i let you sleep until i closed the shop. come upstairs with me. you’re too exhausted to keep studying like this.”
younghyun scrubs at his eyes and shoves himself to his feet, sways just a little before gathering up the scattered notecards while jae stacks up his books. they tramp their way up the spiral staircase until jae can force younghyun onto the couch.
“here’s the deal: you’re going to take a nap for twenty minutes, and then i’ll wake you up and help you study, and then you’ll go to bed at a decent time so that you’re well-rested for the test tomorrow.”
and that’s exactly what happens; the couch is surprisingly comfortable, and younghyun sinks his way into it until jae shakes him awake and hands him a cup of tea and quizzes him ruthlessly on his flashcards, and then just after a dinner full of more vocab terms and descriptions of experiments jae shoves younghyun into bed and sits on the floor.
“what’re you doing?” younghyun mumbles, already curling the blankets around his shoulders.
“making sure you don’t spend another two hours on your phone. you’re ready for the test, so sleep so that you’re awake for it.”
younghyun wakes the next morning to see jae’s familiar form still curled up on the floor, an extra blanket wrapped around him, and he laughs softly. it takes just a minute to drape another blanket over him and lean down to smooth some of the hair out of his eyes.
“thanks, hyung,” younghyun whispers, and he grabs his bag and a bite to eat and slips his way out of the shop, feeling more prepared for the test than he’s felt for any other.
march
as spring creeps its way into the air life creeps its way into jae; it’s not necessarily a sudden change, but as new shipments of color arrive for white day the same color inches into jae’s cheeks. he’s vibrant, somehow, and though he barely tans his cheeks hold the slightest hints of pink as he bustles about arranging the new bouquets and the sunlight brings out the sparkle in his eyes when he ventures outside of the shop to set up signs and a few outdoor displays.
boys blush their way into the shop with notes on their phone of a girl’s favorite flowers or turn as scarlet as the roses as they stutter out a response when jae asks what they want the bouquet to mean. men are more confident from years of getting the same bouquet, more assured in their emotions, and as younghyun studies he thinks he likes them better.
when the shop’s not too crowded, it’s apparent jae prefers the blushing boys who allow him to wander the shop and explain the meanings of different blooms and give him more freedom to play with looks or weave flower crowns with nimble fingers.
jae laughed when he saw younghyun’s calendar this month; the purple lilacs that adorn it are said to symbolize the first feelings of love, which jae thinks is fitting for the current customers.
it’s on one of these days that younghyun meets jaebeom, when he comes in for flowers for sungjin.
the weather is shifting, but it’s also getting rainy and younghyun has to bike to and from school and consequently has woken up with a cold after getting drenched the day before. he’s only got afternoon classes today, so he drags himself out of bed late, picks at his breakfast until his scratchy throat protests too much for him to continue, and wraps himself in a blanket cape, scuffing his way down the spiral staircase with his hair still a mess.
jae meets him at the foot of the stairs, worry in his eyes. “younghyun—you look awful. are you okay?”
“thanks, hyung.” younghyun’s voice sounds like wolverine took his claws to his vocal cords, hoarse and scratchy and needing too much effort to get out audible sound. “bad cold, i think.”
a new man appears behind jae, strong features intimidating until he grins at something on his phone. his eyes widen when he sees younghyun and suddenly there’s a strong hand pressed to younghyun’s forehead and broad shoulders blocking his view of the rest of the shop as the stranger fusses over his tired eyes and stuffy nose and what is apparently a fever.
“jaebeom,” jae laughs, “you’re scaring him.”
it’s true that younghyun’s eyes are wide and he’s leaning back away from the stranger’s touch but he isn’t scared, more surprised; it’s been years since he’s had someone who fussed over him like this.
“you should be in bed,” jaebeom says. “have you eaten?”
“y-yes.” younghyun glances to jae for help, and the florist smiles.
“i’ll take care of him. tell minji to fix up your usual and take care of the shop for a while while i get younghyun settled.” jaebeom nods, though he lingers before leaving, clearly wanting to continue to take care of younghyun. “back upstairs we go,” jae says, and marches younghyun back to the little flat, hands cool on younghyun’s too-hot skin as he settles the young man on the couch. “i’ll make some tea to help your throat and grab your laptop and books if you want.”
younghyun nods, every muscle in his body aching while he does what he can to remain as still as possible and relax. he watches jae bustle about the little kitchen, blond hair in his eyes as he hovers over the teapot, dark eyes focused and serious as he prepares a mug and teabag, the pink peony tucked behind his ear bringing out the slight flush in his cheeks.
when jae approaches younghyun and he’s faced directly with the soft smile gracing jae’s lips and the halo of white and pink that frames jae’s face and the sparkle of gold and compassion in jae’s eyes he thinks his heart jumps a bit in his chest. he accredits it to his cough and brushes it off as he sips at the tea in silence for a moment.
“i’m sorry about jaebeom, before,” jae murmurs. “he just wants to take care of everyone.”
“it was fine, hyung.” younghyun smiles, pokes at jae gently.
jae looks up and returns the smile, seemingly relieved, and younghyun is struck by how beautiful jae really is. he’s ethereal, more so when surrounded by his flowers but even here it seems like he glows softly, harsh edges softened by petals and ribbon and the kind of shine in his eyes that only comes from doing something you really love. it’s so much more than just his appearance; he’s kind and gentle and sweet with the little girl that comes in every day after school because she says the shop is magic, and jae gives her a different flower each time, or weaves her a flower crown if he’s not too busy. he helps anyone who comes in, calm and soothing just through his mannerisms and the softness he exudes with roses in his hands and soil brushed across his cheek.
“i’ll grab your things,” jae says, still soft. “and you’ll call wonpil or whoever to get notes, but you’re not going to class, not like this.”
there’s something in younghyun’s chest, a tightness, as jae stands. his heart may skip a beat when jae brushes his dark hair away from his feverish forehead to press a brief kiss there with cool lips that are gone as quickly as they arrived, and he may hide his blush in a tissue when jae returns to pile his laptop and a few books next to the cup of tea.
“i’ll just be downstairs if you need me.” with that jae is gone, younghyun’s lungs aching with the absence of the warm presence. he groans, thumps his head back onto the arm of the couch, and fumbles for his phone.
wonpil’s contact name is the first one that pops up, and he keys out a message and closes his eyes, throws the phone back onto the coffee table so he doesn’t have to see the response.
pil, i think i might have a crush.
april
“hyung, i’m leaving!” younghyun calls, already on his way out the door with wonpil tugging on his hand.
jae looks up from where he’s packaging a little cactus. “be safe!”
younghyun’s “i will” gets lost in the whirlwind of wonpil shoving him into the car and hitting the gas before younghyun has put his seatbelt on; they’re already late for their final recital preparation, and dowoon is going to be pissed. their final grades depend on this, considering how last practice went, but wonpil says there was an ungodly amount of traffic from the university to thistledown that no amount of panicking could fix.
wonpil screeches into the parking lot of the little studio half an hour past when they were supposed to start rehearsing, and the two scramble for their studio.
“dowoon, sorry,” younghyun gasps, and dowoon looks up from his drum kit and sheet music to fix younghyun with a glare. he might be the oldest in the trio, younghyun thinks, but by no means is he in charge, no matter what others might assume; dowoon can be terrifying when he wants to be, when he’s filled with that single-minded determination to make a song the best it can possibly be.
the next forty-five minutes he gets lost in the haze of familiar notes and the usual ache that works its way into his left wrist, but by the time their lunch break rolls around he’s exhausted, flopping onto the floor next to wonpil and dowoon. he’s just taken a bite of food when dowoon turns to him and says, “i hear you have a crush on a certain florist.”
younghyun chokes on his rice. “where did you hear that?”
wonpil smirks. “guilty.”
“that wasn’t—i don’t—you weren’t supposed to tell people!”
“i only told dowoon, and it was only because i wanted his advice about talking to you.”
“talk to me about what, exactly?” younghyun is hunched over his food as though that will protect him, chopsticks clenched firmly in his hands.
“about making a move,” dowoon says. “why don’t you? it’s been almost a month since you mentioned it to wonpil.”
“i live with him,” younghyun replies. “i can’t exactly ask him out and be wrong about how he feels and make things awkward and not have a place to live anymore.”
“but how do you know he doesn’t reciprocate the feelings?” wonpil shifts forward to study younghyun intently.
“because he’s straightforward most of the time and he would tell me if he felt like that and...i don’t know, but i swear to god if either of you breathe a word of this to him because you want to get it over with i will beat your ass.”
the other two laugh; it’s an empty threat and they know it, but the fact that he’s making it means he’s relatively serious about not wanting to mess it up.
“you must really like him.” dowoon’s softening a little bit, eyeing younghyun with the gentleness usually only reserved for his dog.
“god, you have no idea.” this startles a laugh out of younghyun’s friends.
“our younghyunie’s fallen hard, i see,” wonpil teases, and younghyun ducks his head into his knees in a vain attempt to hide his blush.
“he’s just so soft and kind and helpful,” he replies. “it’s like he radiates.”
dowoon laughs. “you should have seen him in college, according to sungjin. three cups of coffee a day, still that weird mix of sarcasm and friendliness, intimidated most of the underclassmen and made more than a few of them cry with his critiques. pretty sure at least half of his classmates were terrified of him.”
“what changed?”
“he opened thistledown. he loved music, still does, but after a while it became more something he was good at than something he loved. said his grandmother had a flower shop and taught him everything she knew, so working in one reminds him of home.”
that’s fitting, younghyun thinks, because the geraniums that make up the april page of his calendar mean comfort, and thistledown has become so much more than just his place of residence over the past few months. he relaxes almost instantly upon stepping into the shop even after a long day, and the winding maze of flowers is more familiar to him than the path to campus, even as jae changes the displays almost daily. more than that, though, jae is home, now, his easy smile and nimble fingers and aura of calm that envelops younghyun like the hugs jae doesn’t really like to give.
“you do realize we’re going to give you as much shit as possible until you say something?” dowoon grins that grin that means nothing good will come of this, and younghyun sighs.
“i know. just, please, let me tell him on my own terms.”
“that’s fair,” wonpil says, and then they all look up as the timer on dowoon’s phone rings to signal the end of their break from practice. “ready to go again?”
may
the third week of may is finals.
younghyun’s not too worried about most of them, but his guitar instructor has decided to make the final a competition between all of his classes. students are still graded individually, but the top three get bonus points, plus prestige, and younghyun is itching to perform.
they’re allowed to invite whoever they want to fill the seats, and wonpil is already promising to drag sungjin and jaebeom away from domestic life and terry didn’t really take any persuading.
of the people younghyun cares about, this leaves only jae, but younghyun has put off asking him for as long as possible. he wants jae only to see the best show younghyun can give and he’s been struggling with the ending of his solo, and the idea of inviting jae to see such a failure has younghyun’s hands shaking any time he approaches the florist.
but may is dandelions, and younghyun has taken to seeing the calendar as something of a prediction for the month, since things have been fairly accurate for the past four months, so he has a bit of confidence that he’ll figure out the song.
he’s still nervous when he approaches jae about it, leaning over the counter so he can hide his shaking hands as jae finishes wrapping up a bouquet for a customer.
“hey, hyung,” he starts, and jae looks over, and younghyun trips over his words as he finds himself the subject of that soft brown gaze.
“yeah?”
“i have, um, there’s this thing—it’s for one of my finals, and—”
“the recital thing?” younghyun nods. “wonpil’s been talking to me about that for a week now. wanted me to go, but i’m not sure that’s really my scene. and i’ve told minji she can have the day off that day so she can go see her sister perform so i’m not sure who would run the shop that day.”
younghyun’s lip is caught between his teeth, brow furrowed. he doesn’t quite know how to vocalize it, but something in him needs jae at that performance, especially with how much time he’s spent worrying about asking him. “please?” he does what he can to widen his eyes and pout a little, the way jae always says is cute. “it would mean a lot to me if you were there.”
there’s a moment of hesitation; younghyun can see jae wavering, his face scrunching as he considers his options. “how much?”
“i think if you were there i could win.” he tries not to cringe, not with how ridiculous of a statement that is.
“a good luck charm?” jae’s smiling just a bit, the little grin he gets when he’s teasing, and younghyun relaxes.
“something like that.”
“if it’s that dire, i suppose i could close the shop for a day. it is a thursday, after all.”
“you mean it?”
“you had better win, is all i’m saying.”
younghyun can’t stop the grin from spreading across his face, and he shakes his hair out of his eyes as he dashes away with a “thanks, jae!” tossed over his shoulder. the laughter that chases him out the door keeps him grinning even as he bursts through the door of the studio.
a week later he’s sitting backstage with wonpil and dowoon, instruments in hand, when younghyun panics. “what if he didn’t come?”
“he did. you know he did, too, considering he wasn’t awake when you left. means he didn’t open the shop.” dowoon is calm, unflappable, eyes dark with stage makeup.
“i know, but still—”
“he’ll be here.” wonpil smiles softly. “he doesn’t back off on his promises, and he said he’d be here.”
before younghyun can voice any more of his anxiety the music for the previous song ends, and a stagehand pauses for a moment as the lights dim, and then in the blackout she’s waving at them to get onstage. there’s a split second after the lights come up before they start their song, and in that beat younghyun’s eyes fall on a familiar figure in the second row, blond hair lit faintly by the lights on the catwalks overhead. their eyes meet and jae gives younghyun a thumbs-up, and then the music starts and younghyun can’t really see jae anymore, not with the lights blinding him and his focus entirely on the chords.
but just knowing that jae is there makes younghyun relax, feel the music the way he’s supposed to, the way he has trouble with when he’s uncertain. as the final note echos into silence he finds jae’s eyes again, reveling in the smile jae flashes.
they get offstage in the blackout, thumping each others’ backs and giving fist bumps, and wonpil reaches over to ruffle younghyun’s hair. “i told you he’d come, dork.”
“yeah.” younghyun is too happy to argue as they return to the green room to wait for their next performance.
his solo is last, a particularly tricky latin-inspired thing that keeps his fingers and his voice moving constantly, shows off the range in his tone, gives the spotlight to the flare of his falsetto and the precision of his hands.
the stagehand waves him onstage again and he finds his spot in the darkness, takes a breath in the moment of silence before the lights come up. he knows the song like the back of his hand, but the ending few measures are tricky, and he goes over it briefly, then thinks of jae. jae is here, watching, encouraging no matter what happens or how younghyun performs, comfort and honeysuckle wrapped up in a person, and younghyun relaxes.
the music starts and he knows this is a good performance—a great one, even, every note exactly as it should be, exactly as he envisions it, and he hardly has to think as he sings. there’s no more hesitation before the ending, just flawless execution in what feels like a single breath, and then he’s finished and blinking in the heat of the stage lights as cheers erupt from the audience.
“there’s a reason,” terry says as the musicians meet friends in the house, “that they chose you to go last.”
younghyun looks to jae to see a nod and smile of approval. “it was a beautiful performance.”
younghyun grins his thanks, accepts sungjin’s slap on the back, and then the musicians are whisked away to get results from their teachers. third place goes to a boy with a beautiful classical piece, a piece the lighting designer had worked wonders on. second is a girl younghyun had been mesmerized by, her voice sinuous and flowing around the gentle notes teased out of her instrument. when they call younghyun’s name for first wonpil is cheering the loudest, but it’s jae who gets him into a hug first, surprisingly strong arms wrapped tight as he grins down at younghyun with that sparkle in his eyes again.
“couldn’t have done it without you,” younghyun says.
“good luck charm?” jae lets him go, smile never dropping.
“good luck charm.”
june
something is different after the performance.
younghyun is just confused, because he doesn’t think he’s changed, but jae avoids him as much as possible for a while, and they rarely speak. conversations, when they do happen, are short and terse, and where younghyun thought they would be in each other’s company more now that he’s not in school, jae finds new ways to invest himself in work and be busy any time younghyun wants to talk.
some time mid june younghyun realizes he misses jae. he misses their easy banter, sarcasm playing well off dorkiness, misses jae’s easy smile when younghyun comes downstairs in the morning, misses the way jae’s face softens as soon as he gets upstairs to the little apartment after a long shift. he misses jae always wanting to check up on where younghyun is going, misses careless teasing about jae sounding out the hangul in his business emails because he still hasn’t quite gotten the hang of reading in korean, misses gentle smiles and rare hugs and the way jae’s eyes light up when he gets talking about music theory now and again.
younghyun thinks he shouldn’t have to be missing these things, not when they live in the same apartment, but something is wrong with their relationship and he doesn’t know how to fix it because he doesn’t know what’s wrong. he’s hoping desperately it’s not that he’s let his feelings show too much and scared jae off, because he’s been trying so hard to keep that hidden to avoid this exact situation, but he doesn’t know what else it could be.
during one of their practices for an upcoming performance he complains about it to dowoon, who laughs at him. when younghyun pouts, wonpil takes pity on him.
“i’m sure it’s not you, younghyunie. maybe he’s wrestling with feelings of his own! maybe he realized he likes you finally and he’s trying to figure out how you feel as well!”
younghyun scoffs at that: of all of the pastel college girls and candy-sweet boys who trip their way into the little flower shop, younghyun is the least likely to be chosen. what does he have that those others don’t? he wasn’t even good enough for his past girlfriend, and she made his shortcomings very clear when she kicked him out in january.
after a week or so more of the awkwardness, though, the little voice in the back of younghyun’s head starts to whisper that maybe wonpil was right. maybe that is the reason jae keeps looking away whenever there’s a threat of eye contact, why he blushes a little when younghyun pulls out his exaggerated aegyo, why there’s more gardenias than ever around the apartment.
jae told him, when he asked, that gardenias represent joy, but younghyun did some of his own research and found that they can also mean secret love. he fumbled his phone out of his pocket the second he discovered this and texted wonpil frantically to try to puzzle out the likelihood of this being meaningful.
wonpil just told him he should ask jae out and discover the truth once and for all, and ignored younghyun’s sad emojis.
there’s no way younghyun has the confidence to make the first move, so he’s starting to content himself to never figuring it out and spending the rest of the time he stays in the apartment over the shop with jae avoiding him; no more late-night chats sitting on the floor with mugs of chamomile tea jae says helps with cramping and tired muscles, no more excited sparkle in jae’s eyes as he shows younghyun the new batch of succulents he’s got for the shop.
it’s as he’s on his way out the door, headed for rehearsal, that jae calls out to him from behind the counter. it’s a slow day, and minji has taken over pruning and replacing wilting blooms with fresh ones, so jae doesn’t seem to have much to do. the flower crowns he’s weaving are likely for himself and minji, and he seems bored with even those.
but younghyun hurries over, barely able to bite back a smile at the fact that jae is the one who instigated this conversation. “what’s up, hyung?”
“i just—” jae stops himself, slender fingers picking at the stems of the daisies he’s weaving together to stand out in minji’s dark hair, and younghyun thinks he sees the beginnings of a flush across jae’s pale cheeks. “i was wondering if, um, you might like to go on a date with me.”
younghyun can’t think. he isn’t sure if he’s breathing right. he thinks his heart might have stopped. there’s no way in hell he heard jae properly.
“can you repeat that?”
“would you like to go on a date with me?” jae is more confident now, squares his shoulders and meets younghyun’s gaze properly for the first time in three weeks.
“i—yeah, yeah i think that’d be pretty cool,” younghyun breathes, and jae’s face splits into that familiar bright-eyed smile.
“i’ll see you after rehearsal, then.”
“y-yeah.” younghyun books it from the shop, stumbles into the studio in despair. “wonpil, wonpillie help i said it would be pretty cool what on earth have i done?”
dowoon just laughs, wonpil orders him to wear that one pair of ripped jeans that show off his legs, and they start practice and younghyun does his best to focus. if he slips up a few more times than usual, well, no one really begrudges him that.
even exhausted as he is he practically sprints home, checks his phone every two seconds to see if jae texted him with their plans. finally, finally, this might be real and not just another one of his shitty dreams that are only shitty because they’re dreams and not reality. jae smiles when younghyun races up the stairs and slams into the apartment.
“go shower and get dressed, and then we’ll leave.”
“where are we going?”
there’s a mischievous glint in jae’s eyes. “it’s a surprise.”
younghyun sighs, but he’s not going to get any more information out of jae; the florist is incredibly tight-lipped when he wants to be.
twenty minutes later he finds the apartment empty, so he goes downstairs to find jae by the counter, busy with something behind the counter. jae freezes for a second when he sees younghyun, eyes raking up and down younghyun’s body without a word. younghyun crosses his arms over his chest, a little uncertain, until jae smiles softly.
“you look wonderful.”
it’s nothing special, just a black button-down striped with white, that one pair of ripped black jeans tucked into loosely-tied combat boots, but when he sent dowoon a snapchat of it dowoon sent back “boyfriend material” as the a-okay, and his advice has paid off.
“i’m ready to go when you are.” he scuffs the toe of his boot into the floor, eyes jae nervously. there’s still time for jae to turn around and say it was all one big joke, reveal a hidden camera and laugh as younghyun’s life crumbles around him.
but all jae does is grab a cooler from behind the counter and ask younghyun to grab the blanket, and they pile the stuff into the car and younghyun has pieced together that they’re having a picnic. it’s sweet, and very much jae, who doesn’t particularly like making a big deal out of displays of affection.
the drive is silent—a little awkward, maybe, nervous, but also familiar. younghyun is relaxing a bit, falling into old patterns now that jae is speaking to him again.
the park jae picks is small, out of the way but pretty, and at this time of day is almost entirely empty. younghyun immediately understands why jae loves it, because the grass is covered in patches of wildflowers left to grow freely, covering the park in splashes of color.
they spread their blanket by the little pond and jae pulls bento boxes from the cooler and they eat and chat and it’s immediately familiar, but different in its own way because now they’re allowed to flirt more openly and call each other cute. younghyun takes the opportunities he gets to poke jae’s nose and jae pinches younghyun’s cheeks in retaliation and it all just feels right. like this is where their friendship has been headed for months and this is the only logical progression of events, and younghyun loves it.
halfway through eating jae reaches into his bag and pulls out a flower crown, only it’s so different from what he was making earlier because it’s made of succulents, with the occasional sprig of baby’s breath tucked among the green, and it’s perfect. younghyun can’t stop grinning as he leans over to let jae nestle it in his hair. when he looks up to meet jae’s gaze he finds the elder speechless for the second time in the span of a few hours.
“hold still.” obediently, younghyun freezes as jae pulls his phone out and takes a picture, and then he poses ridiculously and lets jae take a few more. finally he pushes jae’s phone aside and stands, walks over to the place where the wildflowers start blooming in earnest.
“show me how to make one, hyung!” jae follows him and they forget their food for a while as jae helps younghyun pick flowers and weave them together so they fit neatly. when younghyun fumbles with the small stems jae places slender fingers over his and helps him, and they look up at each other at the same time, faces inches apart, and grin bashfully.
there’s no kiss, not yet, but younghyun thinks he wants to, and if the way jae sighs when they move apart is any indication, so does he.
younghyun crows in triumph when he laces the last bits of the crown together, and he sets it in jae’s blond hair carefully. this time it’s his turn to be at a loss for words, because the purple of the violets and white of the viburnum serve only to accentuate how ethereal jae is. he looks like he’s glowing, even in the semi-darkness that has fallen as the sun set, and younghyun forgets how to breathe again.
they take turns taking pictures of each other, laugh and relax in each other’s company the way they used to, and for the first time in june younghyun is truly happy, content with jae tucked into his side as they stargaze.
they’re lucky they don’t see a shooting star, younghyun says when they begin to pack up, or they’d have to wonder if they had accidentally gotten sucked into a drama without their knowledge, with how cheesy that date was. jae’s smile turns a little sardonic when he murmurs something about how he doesn’t think dramas would ever have two guys fall in love, so younghyun winks at him and laces their hands together.
“that’s why i said it’s a good thing we’re not in a drama.”
as he crosses days off of his calendar now he laughs about the gardenias that make up the month’s page. it’s no secret, their love, not anymore, and there’s nothing but joy.
july
younghyun knows jae is going to absolutely freak if dowoon has to carry him all the way into the shop. jae’s worried enough as it is from getting a text from younghyun saying they were on the way to the urgent care place nearby because he tripped down the stairs and did something awful to his ankle trying to protect his guitar; he doesn’t want to make it even worse.
but truth be told his wrist is still aching too much for him to use his crutches properly, and he’s tired from practice, and the brace around his ankle is frustratingly tight around the swelling, so he relents without too much of a fight and relaxes into dowoon’s arms.
jae is waiting anxiously by the door, arms outstretched as though to take younghyun from dowoon, and then seems to rethink that idea and merely flutters around them as dowoon makes his way up the stairs. it’s a bit awkward of a movement, considering how tight the spiral staircase is and how much younghyun has to tuck his feet in to avoid hitting the railing, but they make it work somehow.
before too long younghyun is nestled on the couch, his bad ankle propped on a pillow, and jae’s hovering.
dowoon seems to understand something of the glances jae and younghyun are exchanging and doesn’t linger, merely relays the doctor’s instructions and gives younghyun one last “rest and get better” and disappears back down the spiral staircase. younghyun makes a mental note to thank him, because this leaves jae free to kneel next to the couch and run a hand through younghyun’s hair and plant quick, anxious kisses to his cheeks.
dowoon’s tact is always appreciated, now more than ever. throughout the whole ordeal, from the second the pain flared in his ankle and he knew he was going to have to stop rehearsing to the waiting in the urgent care place to the irritation of the brace on the drive home, all younghyun wanted was jae’s careful attention and gentle fingers. there’s a softness to jae that he can’t find anywhere else, and he relaxes as jae tucks an ice pack further around younghyun’s ankle.
“you’re an idiot,” jae says, but his quiet tone betrays his words.
“injuries are part of life, hyung.” younghyun offers a tired smile. “clumsy as you are, i thought you knew that.”
“i do. doesn’t mean i’m not going to freak out, though. as your um. boyfriend.” the last bit seems tacked on as an afterthought, but younghyun clings to that.
“is that what we are? boyfriends?”
jae shrugs, ducks his head a bit in the way younghyun knows means he’s embarrassed. “i figured so, considering the dates and kissing and all that.”
this makes sense. it does. somewhere in younghyun’s brain there is a reasonable voice telling him he knew this was coming, had been thinking about it himself. but the rest of his mind is fixated on the flush of happiness in his cheeks and the lightness in his chest to hear jae give him such a title.
“boyfriends,” he repeats, and he can’t stop smiling, not when jae is giving him that cute shy grin that appears whenever something like this happens. younghyun wants to pull jae closer and give him kisses. he wants to tell jae how much this means to him, but he’s always been better with his hands than with words.
he grabs jae’s shoulder, tugs him against the couch and shifts to be as close as possible without falling off of the furniture, but in doing so he swings his legs to the side—the wrong side. his ankle slams against the back of the couch and he hisses in pain. jae wriggles out of his grip to fuss over repositioning the pillows and getting the ice pack settled once more around younghyun’s injury, muttering “idiot” over and over to himself even as he frets and smooths younghyun’s hair out of his eyes and ensures that the pain isn’t too bad.
“i’ll get you those painkillers,” he says, and younghyun nods; his ankle is still throbbing. as jae leaves younghyun pouts a little and wriggles further into the cushions and tries to focus more on etching jae’s little smile into his memory than on the pain in his wrist and the itch of the brace around his ankle. it’s not a hard thing to remember, not when jae walks up the stairs two days later and younghyun greets him with “my lovely boyfriend!”. much to younghyun’s delight this sparks that same embarrassed smile, and younghyun beams with pride.
the blush on jae’s cheeks matches the red carnations for july: commitment. younghyun is starting to think he got his calendar from a fortune teller.
august
an important thing to know about younghyun: he does dumb shit when he’s flustered. it’s how wonpil found out about his crush on jae, how jae found out about his crush on jae, and despite his boyfriend’s calming presence it never really has gotten better.
somehow, then, younghyun really shouldn’t be surprised things are going to go wrong when he sees her.
it’s the jacket, first. (his jacket, he thinks, eyes catching on the familiar worn leather, the rose patch ironed on to the left sleeve.) his jacket, why is someone wearing his jacket—and then he looks higher and sees the face he spent months memorizing, sees the waterfall of black hair he used to brush out of her eyes, and he short-circuits.
she’s here, she can’t be here, not when he’s out with jae, not when he’s moving on and forgetting.
so younghyun does what he does best: something dumb. he reaches for jae, snatches at jae’s sleeve and whirls him around and kisses him, and if he wasn’t already short-circuiting he sure would be now. a million years in the future, a billion kisses from now, he still wouldn’t be used to the warmth, the familiarity of kissing jae.
there’s no time for this, though, no opportunity to melt into the kiss the way he wants to, and he backs jae into the doorway of the coffeeshop they were passing, turns his back to the stream of pedestrians and tries to blend into the wall.
jae, however, is not one to enjoy being manhandled, and shoves at younghyun’s chest until younghyun has to take a step back and refocus the fireworks in his stomach. “what the hell?” it’s not that jae’s mad, exactly; younghyun knows what the flames of jae’s actual anger sound like, and this isn’t it. but he is annoyed, and his eyes spark. “not that i mind kissing you, but don’t you generally give a guy some warning first?”
“it’s not—”
“i thought we agreed to some rules about this, younghyun,” jae sighs, and as he runs a hand through his bleached hair the fireworks in younghyun’s stomach fizzle into sad bits of ash.
“hyung—”
“younghyun?”
the two syllables are like an anchor for younghyun’s heart, yanking it down, down, down out of his chest. slowly, he turns, as though if he waits long enough to look at her she’ll go away. but she’s still standing there when he looks up, her eyes oddly amused. “it’s been a while,” she says, and he fumbles with a reply. “i see you’ve been doing well without me,” she adds, before younghyun can get anywhere close to replying.
he thinks maybe he’s blushing, or the heat in his face is rage—he can’t quite tell. “you were doing just fine even with me,” he manages to bite out, and behind him jae’s breath stutters in recognition.
“she’s—”
“yeah,” younghyun says. “she is.”
“moon hyerim,” she says, offers her hand and a sharp-eyed smile and a little bow to jae. “a pleasure to meet you.”
“i wish i could say the same.” jae returns the handshake, but only the slightest bit, and he drops her fingers like they burned him.
“younghyun’s been telling you bad things about me, then.”
younghyun flinches, but straightens when he feels the warmth of jae’s hand on the small of his back. “what kind of good things would i tell him?”
her eyes narrow, her long red nails flashing as she adjusts her glasses. “oh, i don’t know—when you wrote love songs for me, when you told me i was your moon and stars, when i got that internship and you prepared that whole picnic on the roof for dinner that night, that kind of thing?”
“i—i don’t—” younghyun isn’t usually this flustered. something about hyerim has always thrown him off, however, and it’s only accentuated by seeing her so suddenly.
“the funny thing about all the stuff you just mentioned?” jae steps forward, his shoulders brushing younghyun’s, and their fingers link almost secretly. “all of that revolves around you, so i’m not all that inclined to believe they show your good side. hyun doing stuff for you doesn’t make you a good person, it makes him one.”
her eyes narrow further, dart down to where their intertwined fingers have slipped out from behind jae’s back. “oh, younghyun,” she sighs. “did my breaking up with you hit you that hard?”
“what—no.” younghyun jerks his hand behind his back, but the way jae squeezes his fingers pulls some of the fire from the bottom of his stomach and back into his lungs. “i came out to you two months into our relationship so that we could both talk about being in love with chris evans, don’t pretend like that’s something that only existed for those conversations.”
the heat in his chest is different now; it’s not the snap-fizzle-pop of the fireworks he gets with jae, it’s the smoldering burning fury of when she would come home late from work or studying or whatever lie she came up with that week. if younghyun crumbles to ash in these flames it won’t be the pleasure he finds in breaking apart under jae’s hands and jae’s lips and jae’s pianissimo-soft eyes. he’s ready for a fight, now, the fight he never really got to have before she dumped him and his bags in the hallway outside the apartment.
maybe it’s the way his hands clench, maybe it’s the way he draws in breath sharply, maybe it’s the way the fire cracks behind his ribs so loudly he thinks jae has to be able to hear it, but jae tugs at their hands until younghyun stumbles a step back and behind him.
“breathe,” he hisses, and then turns back to hyerim. “i wish i could say it was nice to meet you—but it really wasn’t, and i’m not in the habit of lying to people. now, younghyun and i have places to be, so. try not to bother us again, yeah?”
before younghyun can protest he’s being pulled away, his last glimpse of hyerim one of her staring after them over the frames of her fake glasses, head cocked inquisitively.
“hyung,” he complains, when they’re a block away. “i can fight my own battles.”
“clearly you can’t.” jae raises an eyebrow at him. “i thought we’d talked about boundaries.”
“i know, i just—i panicked, but i got over it and—i’m sorry, i know—” he runs his free hand through his hair, tugs at the longer strands falling in his eyes. “i’m sorry.”
“i know you are, but it still wasn’t okay with me. when we get back to the shop, why don’t we talk about some things you can do differently if we see her again?”
there’s a steady warmth in younghyun’s stomach now. it’s not the fire from before, just glowing coals that fill his belly with contentment, knowing jae cares enough to work at communication.
“after can we make alfredo and watch ghibli movies?” mostly he wants to prod jae into making up meanings for the flowers in kiki’s delivery service, so he can ignore the anemones on his calendar, ignore the tugging in his gut from being reminded of his abandonment in january.
“if you want to cuddle,” jae says, a smile tugging at his lips, “you just have to ask.”
“bold of you to assume i wanted to cuddle? i just want good food and soft movies.”
“fine, then, i guess we won’t cuddle?” jae pulls his hand free of younghyun’s and makes use of his longer legs to create a bit of distance between them.
younghyun hurries to catch up, latches onto jae’s arm, and peers up at him with an exaggerated pout. “can we cuddle tonight, hyung, pretty please?”
jae laughs, reaches down to ruffle younghyun’s hair. “i thought you’d never ask. now come on, we’ve still got shopping to do for fall semester, and if we don’t get it done today you’ll complain all next week when i say i’m busy.”
september
alstroemeria is for friendship, so it makes sense that wonpil’s wide eyes are what first tip younghyun off that there’s something wrong.
he realizes what the issue is when he turns to see hyerim slip her bag off her shoulder and put a hand on the back of the chair next to him. “is this seat taken?” he blinks in surprise at her. “thanks,” she says, before he can answer, and sits smoothly.
wonpil nudges him, raises an eyebrow in her direction, and just generally looks confused. younghyun’s not surprised she’s in the class—they’re both music performance majors (that’s why they started dating, to begin with) and the class is a common one for fourth-years to take. he’s more surprised she’d sit next to him, though the glint in her eye tells him she’s not there to be friends.
“can we help you with something?” wonpil leans around younghyun to pin her with a glare, and younghyun has to admit wonpil can be scary when he chooses to. but hyerim just smirks at younghyun.
“what have you been up to this summer break?”
she knows what he did. it was made pretty clear at the end of their conversation in august, so he knows she’s goading him—he just doesn’t know what for.
“i spent a lot of time with my boyfriend,” he replies, since he doesn’t yet see a reason to lie.
“a boyfriend?” she sounds scandalized, her voice a little too loud to be normal. “oppa, you left me for a man?”
some of the other people in the class turn to look at them, and younghyun starts to realize her plan. “i didn’t leave you,” he hisses. “you kicked me out of the apartment so the guy you cheated on me with could move in.”
around the room, a few eyebrows raise. there’s a weight on his chest, knowing she’s trying to air all their dirty laundry to the public, to his friends. it’s like he’s atlas, staggering under the weight of the world—under the weight of societal pressure, of fear and judgment—and scarlet nails are digging into his back trying to make him drop that weight directly onto his chest to crush his ribcage.
“also,” wonpil says, rolling his eyes, “you realize you’re at an arts university in 2018? you really think people are that shocked that bi people exist?”
a bit of the pressure eases; he sucks in a breath, and though more heads turn the gazes he sees when he glances around seem more sympathetic than anything.
“of course they exist,” hyerim says. “that doesn’t mean what they’re doing is right.”
“but your cheating is?” jaehyeong’s a row behind them, and he scoffs when hyerim whips around to glare at him. “i’m not sure you’re the epitome of moral righteousness yourself, if i’m being honest. are you sure you have the right to critique younghyun’s life?”
there’s a muffled laugh from somewhere in the class, and hyerim’s eyes narrow. “there’s always a reason for cheating, though. i wasn’t getting what i needed from younghyun, maybe because he was only interested in men—”
“the reason for cheating,” wonpil says, “is that you’re a major bitch with commitment issues and an inability to see when someone is actually good for you.” he glances to younghyun, searching for something in younghyun’s face, and with a start he realizes wonpil wants the go-ahead to have this fight, is looking for reassurance younghyun doesn’t want to battle this out himself.
to be honest, younghyun’s still trying to breathe properly, trying to find a way to balance the pressure that doesn’t strain his muscles, so he thinks he nods faintly. all he can think of is the honey of her voice the first time he heard her sing, the taste of her strawberry lip gloss, the way she tossed his guitar out of the apartment door without a moment for the memories of him caring for it, the crushing weight of knowing she’d cheated and thought herself the victor.
somewhere in the back of his mind he hears wonpil continue: “we’re not middle-aged conservative assholes, and unlike some people i could name, most of us have a sense of ethics. you don’t have very strong grounds for your argument that younghyun’s relationship is the one morally unjustifiable.”
a hand—younghyun thinks it’s jaehyeong’s—touches his back softly, simultaneously grounding him and pulling him out of the cracks in the floor that this weight is forcing him down into. “hyerim,” jaehyeong says. “i don’t think you’re going to get much sympathy here. it might be better for you to stop now.”
younghyun breathes. hyerim begins to bite back, but before she can the professor walks in, apologizing for the delay; a meeting about performance schedules ran late, she says. hyerim’s mouth snaps shut, and the hand on his back squeezes his shoulder once before being replaced by wonpil pressing his arm against younghyun’s, and younghyun breathes.
the weight is still there, and remains when he walks back into thistledown jae notices immediately something’s off. he tugs younghyun upstairs, sits him on the couch, peers worriedly at him.
“hyerim’s in my seminar,” younghyun says breathlessly. giving voice to the words steals the air from his lungs, bears down on overused muscles. “she was—she was trying—”
“breathe,” jae says, slender fingers coming to rest over younghyun’s own. “she can’t touch you.”
“it’s—the problem is she was trying to touch you.” still, some of the weight eases. “before class she was trying to start all kinds of shit—i don’t know, rumors, insinuating dumb things, and it just—” he sighs. “it reminded me of stuff from our relationship, and i’m stuck in this weird combination of missing her and hating her.”
“what happened? you said trying, so did something stop her?”
“wonpil and jaehyeong, mostly,” younghyun says. “called out some of her hypocrisies, that sort of thing.”
“good.” jae is looking at him so seriously, and it somehow adds to the pressure that leaves him gasping. some part of him knows he loves jae, enough that everything in him wants to never let him down, and this seriousness seems like something younghyun has every chance to fuck up. “younghyun,” jae says again, “breathe.”
reflexively younghyun gasps, and the press against his lungs lightens. “it’s like—i know she’s a bad person, and she shattered my heart into a billion pieces and almost broke my guitar, but i really did love her, and i think i miss that.”
the emotion in jae’s eyes is one he knows, but giving name to it makes it tangible and he’s not sure he can do that. “you miss being in love?”
“no!” younghyun’s eyes widen, and he reaches desperately for jae; his boyfriend’s hand tangles with his easily. “i’m—i’m in love now, with you, obviously, and that’s great and wonderful and obviously i can’t miss love in and of itself—but i miss being in love with her sometimes, i think.”
jae nods, eyes soft. “i get that. is there any way i can help with that?”
“just—” younghyun considers. “i think i just need to make new memories with you and associate the feeling with you instead of her?”
“i can do that,” jae says, and he looks like he’s already scheming. younghyun breathes. “if you need anything,” jae continues, “just tell me. if something reminds you of her and you want me to not do that thing, i will. if you want to do something specifically because it reminds you of her but this way it’s associated with me, we’ll do that. you don’t have to deal with these feelings on your own.”
it’s like there’s a second pair of hands joining his, a second set of muscles straining under the weight against his chest, but it’s so much easier when the work is split between two, and the pressure lightens considerably.
younghyun breathes.
october
looking back on it, younghyun probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was by the events of the halloween party.
after all, hyerim hadn’t lightened up, no matter how much his friends laugh her off, and he and jae did pick a rather obvious costume. but hindsight bias is something his psychology course from last semester made him intimately familiar with, and they’d said they wanted to do a ghibli thing, and the second younghyun walked in the door with his hair dyed silver jae got excited, and younghyun is terrible at telling jae no when he’s excited about something.
so here they are at this halloween party that’s a weird mix of university students and some people who recently graduated and still have friends within the student population, and younghyun has to admit jae makes a great howl. he’s tall enough that when he has the costume on and he’s playing the character he has this air about him, especially once he weaves a crown of delicate pink and white rosepink and sets it in his sandy hair. (they match the white daffodils on youngyun’s calendar, the symbol of new beginnings.)
younghyun’s busy adjusting his dark teal waistcoat as they walk into the party to notice hyerim and her boyfriend where they stand near the door. but the party’s less of a party and more of a hang-out-and-drink-together sort of thing, with a playlist of pieces the partygoers wrote themselves on more as background noise than anything, so it becomes difficult not to notice hyerim. more specifically, it’s hard not to notice the loose white shirt and distinctive pink coat that hangs from her shoulders, hard not to notice the way her boyfriend’s hat looks eerily similar to younghyun’s own.
jae just squeezes his hand reassuringly and tugs him away to to talk to jaebeom and sungjin over by the couch. watching jae fall into easy conversation with his friends helps younghyun relax, and he joins in the banter quickly enough and soon forgets about hyerim.
maybe an hour or so in (younghyun kind of expected it to happen sooner) the playlist gets switched off and a few people bring out their own instruments and start coaxing friends to play. an aggressively friendly guy younghyun knows from his health and wellness course last year drags jaebeom and sungjin to the little performance space, despite their protests, and younghyun laughs. jackson is stubborn when he decides he wants something to happen, so jae’s friends aren’t going to wiggle out of this, and sure enough, they start setting up for a few songs.
jae grins fondly at them before turning to younghyun. “i’m gonna go get something to drink,” he says. “want anything?”
younghyun shrugs. “can’t vouch for how good the beer is, so—if they’ve got any kind of juice, that’ll do.”
with a nod jae slips away toward the kitchen and younghyun shifts his attention to the music; jaebeom and sungjin sound like they’ve been singing together for years, and their voices blend beautifully over the acoustic guitar sungjin plucks at gently.
he’s torn out of his appreciation for the music when someone sidles up to him and long pink nails come up to clutch at his arm. “trick or treat,” hyerim says, eyes glinting from behind the high collar of howl pendragon’s jacket.
for a moment younghyun is frozen, caught off-guard—she does look nice, the high-waisted black pants making her legs seem longer than ever, and the pink and gold of her jacket sets off her dark hair and eyes beautifully.
but there’s a brief pause in the music, a lull in conversation, and he hears jae’s laugh from the kitchen, loud and bright and filled with memories of sunshine, and he steels himself. “you’re all trick, hyerim, you know that.”
she smiles. “surely that’s not true, not when we were so happy together.”
“that’s the thing, though, you obviously weren’t happy with me,” younghyun says. “why else would you—”
“nice costumes!” he’s not entirely sure how bang chan got into this party, considering he’s a second-year, but he does have a lot of friends in higher years, so younghyun lets that go. “i love howl’s moving castle, and you make such a cute couple!”
chan’s tipsy at best, a slight shine to his eyes, but he’s far from drunk and incapable of realizing what he said was wrong—it’s just that hyerim doesn’t correct him. he’s not in their friend groups, really, so there’s not really any way he’d know their backstory, but hyerim smiles that smile she gets when she wants to dazzle someone.
“thank you,” she says, honey-sweet, and then looks to younghyun for his reaction. he knows what she wants; she wants him to be flustered, to be caught up in emotions from their relationship, to fall back into loving her.
but he and jae have talked about this, and he’s getting better at distancing himself from those feelings, so he just smiles apologetically. “we’re not dating, chan,” he says. “i’m here with my boyfriend—he’s in the kitchen, i think.”
“oh!” chan’s eyes widen. “i didn’t mean—i’m sorry for assuming—”
“it’s fine,” younghyun says. “i understand why you’d come to that conclusion, but my howl is getting drinks, and her sophie is—somewhere.” he tugs his arm out of hyerim’s grip so he can adjust his hat and inwardly he grins at the anger brimming in her eyes. “we broke up in january, so—”
“oh, january’s when we met,” jae says, and younghyun turns to see jae standing behind him. jae smiles petal-soft and hands younghyun a cup of what he discovers is apple juice before turning to chan. “i’m jae, younghyun’s boyfriend. are you by any chance bang chan? jinyoung was telling me about this second-year with a gift for production, said he’s australian.”
chan grins up at jae. “that’s me! would you happen to be park jaehyung? the professors talk a lot about your final project—blood, right?” almost before jae admits to the statement chan’s pestering him to play it, and finally jae relents.
when jaebeom and sungjin finish their song it’s jae’s turn to settle into the seat and balance the guitar on his thigh and get a feel for its strings. he starts playing and it’s not that the room goes silent, not exactly, but the only thing younghyun can hear is jae, his voice sunshine-warm and golden.
younghyun’s also a musician, though, and maybe halfway through the song he finds his fingers unconsciously plucking bass chords, and he’s picking out places his falsetto would blend flawlessly with jae’s softer, more acoustic tone, and by the second chorus he’s wondering about the way wonpil’s voice would add variation and depth to their harmonies. he’s itching to drag jae to the studio and have wonpil improvise on his synth, let dowoon improve on the subtle drums in the background of the piece. (because they’ve heard it already, of course they have—the professors use it as an example constantly, a reputation it deserves.)
the last note fades out and jae might blush a little at the applause he receives, and when he sets the guitar down and adjusts his jacket on his shoulders and returns to younghyun, younghyun can’t help but stretch up to press a kiss to a cheek dusted pink.
“we should play together some time,” he says, and jae nods.
“i’d kind of forgotten how much i missed that.”
younghyun threads their fingers together, smiles up at jae, and when the next performer starts up he pulls jae with him as he begins swaying gently to the music. “i’d be happy to remind you.”
november
the third time hyerim misses class younghyun starts to get worried. wonpil suggests that she’s sick, and younghyun shoves away the knowledge of her almost-impeccable immune system and the time she caught a minor cold and kissed him to prove she was fine and ended up getting him sick as well and agrees, but he doesn’t really stop worrying.
when she skips two more classes in a row he talks to jae about it, and jae laughs softly.
“you’re too good of a person, hyun,” jae says. “she broke your heart, and you seem like you’ve moved past it, and yet here you are fretting over her ditching class a few times?”
“she’s still a person.” younghyun sighs. “she’s still a person, and i used to care about her, and—i don’t know, it just used to be so natural, to worry about her when things like this happened, and it’s a hard habit to break.”
“i get that.” jae finishes wrapping a bouquet and ties it neatly with blue string, hands it to the young man on the other side of the counter. “what do you want to do about it?”
“i don’t know,” younghyun says over the clatter of the register drawer bursting open. “i guess if she’s still not in class on monday i might go to her apartment.”
“just take care of yourself first,” jae says, as he gives the young man his change and waves. younghyun nods and goes back to the sheet music he’s checking over for saturday’s studio session with wonpil and dowoon.
ultimately his choice is made for him.
they’ve been at the studio for somewhere around two hours, adjusting chords and harmonies and goofing off, when there’s a knock at the door. younghyun glances at the others, but they both shrug; none of them were expecting visitors.
“come in,” younghyun calls, and the door swings open. hyerim stands there, but it takes him a second to realize it’s her—she’s in sweatpants and one of his old ratty hoodies and her hair’s a rat’s nest. she’s too careful about the reputation she’s cultivated to ever let herself out of her apartment looking like this, so something has to be wrong.
they’re all frozen for a moment, a tableau of awkwardness as wonpil and dowoon try to figure out who she is and what she might be doing here.
“younghyun,” she wails, and then she’s throwing herself through the doorway and into his lap, and he has to set his guitar to the side hastily to avoid her crushing it, and she’s crying. sobbing, really.
he’s not completely sure what he’s supposed to do in this situation, but wonpil stands suddenly.
“we’ll just...leave you to it.” before younghyun can protest wonpil grabs dowoon and yanks him out of the room, and younghyun is left alone with a crying ex-girlfriend and uncertainty.
hesitantly he puts his hands on her back, tries—and mostly fails—to run his fingers through her knotted hair in the way he knows she likes when she’s being comforted.
“what’s—um, what’s wrong?”
she sobs. “chinhae—chinhae broke—he broke up with me.”
he’s really not sure what he’s supposed to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything, just hands her tissues from time to time and lets her cry. why would she have come to him? they hadn't had many conversations (any, to tell the truth) since she kicked him out of the apartment, and he knows she has other friends. he’d figured she would go to those friends when she had a problem, not him, but here they are. and he was worried about her, so at least he got to see what was going on, it’s just that now that he knows the issue he’s even more confused about why she came to him specifically.
hyerim makes it pretty clear, however, when she calms down some. she sits up, shifts her head from the damp circle on his sweatshirt, and turns to look at the sheet music.
“your final project?” she asks, voice hoarse.
he nods, because what else is he supposed to do? he’s helpless, to an extent, to deny her things at the moment—his head is too filled with memories of this same situation, of days he knew he should be wrapping her up in blankets and singing softly until she fell asleep.
she snatches up the papers, scans them, and he winces when a stray tear drips onto one of the handwritten measures. “sing it for me?”
when she shoves the music at him younghyun sighs, knows he has to do something about the situation. as caught up in his head as he is, he recognizes the potential danger of the situation, if she’s trying to get him to do what he used to when they were dating. he takes the papers, says, “i really don’t think i should.”
she pouts, childish, blinks up at him with puppy-dog eyes that used to win him over instantly. “please? i don’t have anywhere else to go, oppa.”
“we both know that’s not true.” he’s trying to be gentle as he starts to push her off his lap, but she clings to him with something like desperation.
“oppa, please.” she never used honorifics with him, not unless she was trying to manipulate him; usually it was light-hearted manipulation, buying her ice cream or letting her pick the movie or taking a break from studying to cuddle with her, but other times it was more serious, and he knows this is one of those times. she wants something from him, and the more she wheedles and presses herself against him he starts to understand what.
“it’s a song about me, right?” she’s grasping at his sweatshirt desperately. “you wrote it for me?”
“no, hyerim,” he says, working to pry her hands away. “you broke my heart, and you have—had another boyfriend. why would i still be writing love songs for you?”
“but it is!” the longer this goes on, the more he thinks the feverish light in her eyes is from something more than her emotions. “it has to be—the first line, that’s when i threw you out, but you were still thinking about me! you still love me, i always knew it!” she stretches up, then, with more than just her hands. his head snaps back to avoid her searching lips, and then he can smell the alcohol.
it’s three in the afternoon, and two years’ worth of a relationship means he knows she doesn’t like to drink during the day, but here she is with flushed cheeks and soju on her breath and a plan, apparently, to get back together with him.
it hurts, somehow, because he knows if she’d done this in february he would have thrown himself back at her just as furiously, but she’s nine months late. it hurts because he’s happy with jae, now, and it’s just like her to pick the time he’s finally moved on to want him back. she’s always been this selfish, he knows, and knowing her half of this is orchestrated to make him love her again. he’s always been quick to check up on people he’s worried about, so it wouldn’t shock him in the slightest if her absence from class was mostly to get him to come to the apartment.
this realization further hardens his resolve, replaces his memories of her smile during performances with jae’s sunshine grin. he does shove her off of his lap, then, pushes away his concern she might have hurt herself.
“hyerim,” he sighs, “the song isn’t for you, will never be for you. it’s for jae, my boyfriend, who i’m not planning on breaking up with for you. i know you’re upset, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to throw yourself at me. this isn’t ever happening again.”
she blinks up at him with the doe eyes he fell in love with, but he purses his lips and stands and offers a hand and eventually, reluctantly, she takes it and pulls herself to her feet.
“i just want you to know,” she says, “that i still love you.”
“no, you don’t.” younghyun is firm as he guides her to the door. “you want a rebound, and you want it to be me because you know how to manipulate me—used to know how to manipulate me.”
she hovers in the doorway. “younghyun—”
“goodbye, hyerim,” he says. “i’ll see you in class on monday.”
there are white tulips on his calendar this month, and while he’s never really liked them (she does, he remembers—he bought her some after her spring recital in third year) they’re flowers for forgiveness, and somehow he knows he does forgive her.
wonpil and dowoon are wide-eyed and hesitant when he beckons them back in, but he gives them a reassuring smile.
“she’s just upset, but she’ll be fine in a few days. now,” he says, clapping his hands and reshuffling his papers, “let’s hurry up. i have a date with jae tonight, and i need to look much more presentable than this.”
december
christmas day dawns sunny and crisp, snow dusting the sidewalk and making the string lights in the display window glow like stars. younghyun is the first one awake, and he hums carols as he makes breakfast and plugs in the lights on the little tree they dragged up the spiral staircase and decorated haphazardly.
the smell of bacon is likely what wakes jae up, and he comes stumbling from the bedroom with mussed hair and the dumb rudolph pajama pants younghyun teases him about.
(the room younghyun stayed in originally has become his study, after one particularly eventful night in october.)
he putters up to where younghyun stands at the stove and wraps his arms around younghyun’s waist and sighs with contentment as he drops his head onto younghyun’s shoulder. “smells good, hyun.”
“it’ll smell even better if you go get coffee brewing,” younghyun offers, but jae shakes his head without removing it from younghyun’s shoulder, digging his chin into the tendon in a way that feels rather pleasant.
“hot chocolate.” he drops a kiss on younghyun’s neck and untangles himself to move to a cabinet, and younghyun has to set his spatula down and breathe for a minute, surprised by the sudden affection.
“are you awake enough to go without coffee?” he flips the bacon and turns to study jae, who’s pulling milk from the fridge.
“it’s a tradition,” jae explains. “mom started it when we wanted to drink something warm with mom and dad on christmas morning but were too young for coffee, and it stuck.”
younghyun smiles softly; he knows jae misses his parents in the states, and he may or may not be saving the money he gets from busking to get plane tickets as a graduation present.
when jae approaches the stove to start heating the milk they bump hips and smile at each other, a habit they’ve picked up from countless mornings cooking together. jae’s eyes reflect the multi-color christmas lights, dark irises dancing with sparks of color.
“i’ll sort the presents while you finish that,” younghyun says, turning to shift the bacon and eggs onto the plates he’d set out earlier. “don’t skimp on the whipped cream.”
“wouldn’t dream of it,” jae says, and younghyun grins over his shoulder as he walks into the living room.
they’d agreed to use different wrapping paper to make gifts easy to distinguish, and in a few minutes younghyun’s got two small piles on the couch and jae’s carrying two steaming mugs to the coffee table. he drops a kiss on younghyun’s lips as he sits down, mouth sugar-sweet from stolen marshmallows. younghyun turns the old stereo on to play christmas carols as they eat with their hips and thighs pressed against each other, shoulders brushing when they bring their forks up to take a bite.
the silence is comfortable, familiar, easy; as much as he’s anticipating the excitement wonpil and dowoon will bring, and the steady chatter of sungjin and jaebeom, when they go have dinner at sungjin’s apartment, he doesn’t want to lose the serenity of this moment.
he trades his fork for his phone and snaps a picture of jae, who glances up at the last minute with his mug halfway to his lips and laughs, and younghyun grins back and takes more pictures, a stop-motion of sunshine and sugar and affection. in retaliation jae raises his own phone, and younghyun yelps and raises a pillow to his face for self-defense, but he’s laughing.
when they finish eating they clear some space on the coffee table and turn to presents. they each got the other a few little gag gifts, and younghyun ends up with a stuffed chick and a pair of socks decorated with succulents and bacon-strip band-aids while jae delights in the tiny violin and the rubber fox whose eyes pop out when he squeezes it and the american flag socks. without hesitation they both tear the packaging on their new socks and slip them on and laugh, and then they move to the more serious gifts.
jae gestures for younghyun to start, so he struggles momentarily with the wrapping paper before revealing an apparel box. “is this why i found you in the closet inspecting the tags on all my jackets?”
“just open it,” jae says, but he smiles fondly and doesn’t deny the accusation.
when he lifts the lid younghyun finds a leather jacket, so like the one he left at hyerim’s apartment he thinks for a moment jae went and stole his jacket back. but he looks more closely and rather than the rose patch on the original this one has cactus pins on the collar and a patch ironed onto the left sleeve of calcifer from howl’s moving castle.
“she likes my spark,” younghyun murmurs, as he traces the dancing cursive beneath the fire demon.
“i sure do,” jae says, and he winks when younghyun glances up, startled. younghyun huffs out a laugh and sets the apparel box to the side so he can reach forward to press his lips to jae’s, lick the chocolate from jae’s upper lip, and he smiles into the kiss.
“thank you, hyung,” he whispers.
“i haven’t even opened yours,” jae says. “hold off on the kissing, or i’ll get distracted.”
with another smile and one last quick kiss younghyun moves back to let jae open his gift. it’s nothing as flashy as a leather jacket, but jae seems to understand the significance of the cd he finds under the wrapping paper.
“are these—”
“songs i wrote.” younghyun nods. “my day is my final for my recital prep, and it’s—” he coughs, a little shy. “it’s for you.”
jae’s eyes flash up from where he was reading the tracklist, gleaming with excitement. “you wrote a song for me?”
“i’ll play it for you,” younghyun says to his hands, “if you want.”
“if i want?” jae grabs younghyun’s hands, raises them to his lips so he can kiss younghyun’s fingertips. “of course i want! i would love to hear it, hyun.”
with a relieved smile younghyun reaches around the couch to pick up the guitar he’d placed there earlier, and he settles it on his knee and plucks an experimental chord, clears his throat, and hesitates.
“you don’t have to,” jae says softly. “i’ll hear it either way, but you know i’ll love anything you’ve created, especially when you made it for me.”
“i—” younghyun’s voice cracks a little. “i know. thank you, hyung.”
he brushes his fingers over the body of the guitar, grounds himself in the wood and varnish he knows as well as he knows himself, and then sets his hands for the first note.
jae gives him a reassuring smile, but when younghyun starts playing the smile turns into amazement. as he moves through the achingly-familiar measures and notes he wrote and rewrote and agonized over younghyun pulls confidence from the glow in jae’s eyes and the complete stillness of jae’s constantly-moving hands, and he pours every bit of love he’s felt into his voice.
the song is of sunshine and red x's on white calendar pages and a steadiness as constant as the earth’s rotation, and he wants—needs—jae to feel it.
the last note rings into silence and then jae’s surging forward, pausing to set younghyun’s guitar aside as gently as possible, and then continuing to tug younghyun into a kiss. his hand cups younghyun’s cheek and younghyun’s fingers tangle in jae’s hair and their hearts beat against each other where their chests press together, and for all the love younghyun pulled from himself to put into the song he knows this is jae’s way of returning it in kind, and for a while he forgets they’re separate people.
the need to breathe, unfortunately, arises after a while, but they refuse to separate very much; younghyun’s arms stay around jae’s neck, and jae’s hand slides down to rest against younghyun’s bicep, and their eyelashes brush when they blink.
“younghyun,” jae murmurs, breathless, “i don’t want to say i’m happy you got your heart broken, but you’re the best thing to ever happen to me, unfortunate meeting aside.”
“well,” younghyun says, just as quietly, “you know what they say. the best blaze burns brightest when circumstances are at their worst, and you know how much i relate to sophie hatter—”
“i respect your love for ghibli, but did you really have to ruin my moment?” jae groans, but he’s smiling, and younghyun’s struck suddenly by how much he’ll do to keep that smile on jae’s lips.
red roses, he notes a few days later as he crosses out the last day of december, are for devotion and love, and nothing could better describe the way his year has gone. he caps the pen, sets the calendar in a drawer, and pads into the living room to drop a kiss on the top of jae’s head and join him in the blankets he’s swathed in, and they watch the falling snow bring with it the new year and promises of new beginnings.
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“There were, then, these two first feelings, indefensible and indisputable. The world was a shock, but it was not merely shocking; existence was a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise. In fact, all my first views were exactly uttered in a riddle that stuck in my brain from boyhood. The question was, “What did the first frog say?” And the answer was, “Lord, how you made me jump!” That says succinctly all that I am saying. God made the frog jump; but the frog prefers jumping. But when these things are settled there enters the second great principle of the fairy philosophy
Any one can see it who will simply read “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” or the fine collections of Mr. Andrew Lang. For the pleasure of pedantry I will call it the Doctrine of Conditional Joy. Touchstone talked of much virtue in an “if”; according to elfin ethics all virtue is in an “if.” The note of the fairy utterance always is, “You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say the word ‘cow”’; or “You may live happily with the King’s daughter, if you do not show her an onion.” The vision always hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden. Mr. W. B. Yeats, in his exquisite and piercing elfin poetry, describes the elves as lawless; they plunge in innocent anarchy on the unbridled horses of the air --
“Ride on the crest of the dishevelled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”
It is a dreadful thing to say that Mr. W. B. Yeats does not understand fairyland. But I do say it. He is an ironical Irishman, full of intellectual reactions. He is not stupid enough to understand fairyland. Fairies prefer people of the yokel type like myself; people who gape and grin and do as they are told. Mr. Yeats reads into elfland all the righteous insurrection of his own race. But the lawlessness of Ireland is a Christian lawlessness, rounded on reason and justice. The Fenian is rebelling against something he understands only too well; but the true citizen of fairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all. In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone. This is the tone of fairy tales, and it is certainly not lawlessness or even liberty, though men under a mean modern tyranny may think it liberty by comparison. People out of Portland Gaol might think Fleet Street free; but closer study will prove that both fairies and journalists are the slaves of duty. Fairy godmothers seem at least as strict as other godmothers. Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command -- which might have come out of Brixton -- that she should be back by twelve. Also, she had a glass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world. I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal I can remember a shudder. I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.
Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on not doing something which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do. Now, the point here is that to me this did not seem unjust. If the miller’s third son said to the fairy, “Explain why I must not stand on my head in the fairy palace,” the other might fairly reply, “Well, if it comes to that, explain the fairy palace.” If Cinderella says, “How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?” her godmother might answer, “How is it that you are going there till twelve?” If I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the conditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the gift. He must not look a winged horse in the mouth. And it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible as the towering trees. For this reason (we may call it the fairy godmother philosophy) I never could join the young men of my time in feeling what they called the general sentiment of revolt. I should have resisted, let us hope, any rules that were evil, and with these and their definition I shall deal in another chapter. But I did not feel disposed to resist any rule merely because it was mysterious. Estates are sometimes held by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick or the payment of a peppercorn: I was willing to hold the huge estate of earth and heaven by any such feudal fantasy. It could not well be wilder than the fact that I was allowed to hold it at all. At this stage I give only one ethical instance to show my meaning. I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion’s) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind. The aesthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things. The thistledown made them weep; a burnished beetle brought them to their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.”
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I’ve kiiinda been binging on fic over the past week or so as I’ve been reintroducing myself to fandom and well...guys...guys? Y’all are some awesome writers and creators, can I just say that? I have waaay too many favorites out there to put on a single list and make it in any way a reasonable length, but for now, here are some really good ones:
Tolkien
May it be an Evening Star by SunflowerSupreme
Elrond has always been fated to outlive his twin, but perhaps fate had stolen Elros away at a younger age, even before they had left the care of their foster family.
Alright so, this fic has only just begun and I’m already weeping? But you know, like in the best way possible. So, like the summery says, the basic premise is that it’s an AU where Elros dies while he and Elrond are still in the care of Maglor and Maedhros. There are some really sweet scenes in there, along with alot of angst, and I’m just really loking forward to seeing what happens next!^^
Spirit of Fire by lotrfan
I recently did a series of 100-word drabbles about Maedhros (No Flame Burns Forever). It was a good exercise so I thought I would try a similar idea with Fëanor as the central character....So here is a series of 100-word (occasionally more than 100 words!) drabbles from the point of view of Fëanor, starting in his childhood and progressing to his death (and perhaps Mandos if inspiration strikes.)
I really love the take on Fëanor that this fic has, and especially the relationship shown between Fëanor and Fingolfin, in all of it’s complexity. The scene where Fingolfin releases Fëanor from his exhile, just before the Darkening is probably my favorite though, it’s shown me an interpretation of that scene that I hadn’t really thought of before, and has changed how I read that part in the book. But yeah xD, all of the glimpses we get into Fëanor ‘s relationships with others here are great.
Laying the Foundation by lotrfan
Elrond and Erestor lead the survivors of the defeat at Eregion to a new home, which will eventually become Rivendell.
I love Erestor. For all that is is a minor characters in the books, Erestor has become one of my favorite characters, and I really love the Erestor in this fic. He is basically the exact Erestor of my headcanon, right down to his history with the Fëanorians. He is bitter and snarky and blunt and fantastic. His relationship with Elrond here is great as well. I suppose I have a bit of a weakness for that kind of friendship and the ‘loyal seneschal and their lord’ thing, (see also: my love of all things William of Lanchester and John Uskglass related) but yeah, I feel this fic really nailed everything between Elrond and Erestor here perfectly. this was great.
Goodbye, Káno by doodlebutt
One of the most angsty things I have ever written. Short, painful, made me say "fuck you" to myself at the end.
This fic hurt. You should read it.
...Okay need a bit more than that to go off of? xD Yeah, alright so as you can probably guess by the title, it’s about Maglor looking back on his lost family, being the last one remaining. And that last line...alright just read this thing, it’s painful and wonderful.
Nine Fingers and Fiddler’s Green by Prackspoor
I love a good Sauron Redemption fic. So, These both take place after the War of the Ring and center around Sauron. fiddler’s green is the prequel, and in it a weakened and nearly destroyed Sauron encouters Tom Bombadil, who brings him back to health and helps him move on from thousands of years of Dark Lording. Yeah, you can just imainge how their interactions go xD it’s really amazing. This fic is just so creative and I love all of the ideas in it.I don’t want to give too much away, but..yeah, you should just go ahead and read this for yourself.
Nine Fingers follows the Hobbits, returning to the Shire just after the War of the Ring, wherein they encounter a certain someone...It’s also fantastic. The hobbit’s voices are done beautifully, the imagery in frodo’s dream in fantastic, and there’s just a subtle creepyness and suspense in this whole thing that I love.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
The “a stranger around here” series by OfShoesandShips
This series, man. THIS SERIES. I loved these fics, they were amazing. Just...The Raven King! He was pulled off so well in these stories. I love how he interacts with the other characters, I love his flippancy and pride, I love the roughness of his accent, I love how he still maintains that air of mystery and magic and power...just yeah he was perfectly done. My favorite in the series is probably “nothing here that’s sacred” because Black Joan and John Uskglass is always a winning pair in my books and she is wonderfully written in here as well, but really all of the fics in this series are awesome. read them.
Invasion and Inscrutability by redletters
When the Raven King was six or seven, he was left in a small dark house in Faerie for about a year.
Okay, so if you haven’t noticed by now, I love all things involving the Raven King. John Uskglass is one of my favorite characters in a book filled with awesome characters, an I’m always hungry for more stories about him. This fic basically has everything I’m looking for in a Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell fic. It’s a story about a part of the Raven King’s history, it has that same sort of sense of humor that I loved in the original novel, it’s vision of Faery is awesome, and The Characters are portrayed *wonderfully* I love the relationship it establishes between John Uskglass and the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair here and I could not ask for anything more in a fic (expect for maybe more of it xD)
Two Lives by Alona
A king and a child explore fairy magic.
Okay, the imagry in this fic is so good. Everything in here just has that same mysterious sense of magic that the magical moments in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell had. We get to see more of Stephen, or rather, the King who was formerly known as Stephen, settling into his new realm, and we also get to see a Yuong Raven King exploring his own magic. I love the parallels drawn between the two of them and I just really love this fic.
Persistance of Vision by Blurhawaii
In his line of work, possessions fell in and out of his hands daily. Books were rare and books on magic far and few between, but stories, stories were tangled words that didn’t need to be written in ink. He had heard spoken tales of other worlds over bridges and under archways, subtly different in appearance until suddenly you found you were in too deep. With a dash of ego, he had always assumed he would know the difference but the moment John Childermass crossed the threshold of The White Horse the dull itch under his skin became a bone deep vibration, and the ethereal thing he was searching for moved tangibly closer.
It has Childermass in it, and it has John Uskglass. You already know the fic is going to be great based on that alone. xD But no, The characterization here is really awesome, and between the language, the imagery and tone of the story and the footnotes, it feels like I’m reading a scene from the book. It’s really great^^
Deliver Me In a Black Winged Bird by Lanna Michels
William of Lanchester returns to England.
Okay, so even without John, I just seriously love how William of Lanchester is written here. He is just...yes this is a man you can imagine standing up to the Raven King and getting into a fight that leads to a falling out that lasts for years with him. And even more importantly, this is a man you could totally imagine reconciling with the Raven King afterwards.I love this fic, it’s probably one of my favorites on the list, and i just love the relationship between John and William that it portrays.
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Runes In Thistledown
alright, here are all of my notes on runes, completely unedited. just tossing them out there right now since i feel like i need to post more original content. i probably won’t post directly from my notes again, though, since tumblr doesn’t save the formatting.
kind of a mix between sigils and tarot cards, with maybe some actual runes thrown in there? time to research!
there are 32 runes, each with a positive meaning, a negative meaning, a neutral meaning, and a domain. they can be placed in different patterns and then flipped over to give a new meaning.
they’re usually used for divination and to bring a certain effect to a place. they’re also carved on wooden discs where readings are done as a form of currency.
every rune has a dot above it. if the dot is above the rune, then the meaning is positive. if it’s below, then the meaning is negative. if it’s to either side, it’s a neutral meaning.
the domain is the overall theme.
there’s a lot of debate over whether they can be called the positive meaning, the neutral meaning, or the negative meaning. some say that they should be called the beginning, middle, and end. some say they should be the left, the middle, and the right. future, present, and past are also debated. most people have one they interpret it as, but some switch between interpretations.
in my notes, for the most part, they’ll be called the first slot, the second slot, and the third slot.
bone and breath, for one reason or another, are rarely pulled. they’re seen as the most powerful runes, and it’s customary to pull a second one out if you pull either of them. if you pull both, then no matter which meaning you get, it’s said that the gods are watching you and are waiting for what you do next.
runes in order, with bonus commentary on why i chose everything.
Number - Name - Positive Meaning - Neutral Meaning - Negative Meaning - Domain
1 - Bone - Stability - Centre Of Structure - Instability - Structure
Bones kind of hold you up and support you, people refer to the core of something as its bones… That was kind of my thought process.Stability is always a good thing, so that went to slot one. Slot two is kind of like the heart of a tree trunk, or the centre of the bone, or something like that. I’m not quite sure how to explain it.
2 - Silver - Wealth - Financial Support - Greed - Economy
3 - Dusk - Welcome End - Neutral End - Unwelcome End - Endings
4 - Dawn - Welcome Beginning - Neutral Beginning - Unwelcome Beginning - Beginnings
5 - Death - Positive Change - Neutral Change - Negative Change - Change
I haven’t done too much research on tarot cards, but from what I do know, the death card has more to do with change than actual death, and I figured that it was a nice change from other things.
6 - Treasure - Nonmaterial Gifts - Material Gifts - Loss Of Belongings - Belongings
This one and ‘Silver’ were kind of similar, but I figured that coins are used more to represent wealth and the economy, and treasure chests and treasuries were more associated with material belongings.
Loss Of Belongings obviously went into the third slot, as people don’t generally take well to losing their stuff and would consider it to be negative.
Gifts are a more positive thing, so I decided to put that into the first and second slots.
Now, people in our society generally see nonmaterial things like hope, friendship, and happiness to be more important than nonmaterial things, so nonmaterial gifts went into the first slot. In universe, people probably have a more open interpretation of ‘Nonmaterial Gifts’ and may interpret it as things like favours or general affection as well. The God Of Runes, however, meant things more like the aforementioned hope, friendship, and happiness.
The second slot went to ‘Material Gifts’. It’s more of a neutral thing. People typically appreciate nonmaterial gifts, people typically don’t appreciate losing their belongings, but material gifts are more of a case by case basis. You like some, you don’t like others. This gave it the second/neutral slot.
7 - Candle - New Things Through Chaos - Chaos As A Concept - Loss Through Chaos - Chaos
Candles were chosen for chaos due to the uncertain nature of their flames. How long they will burn for, how high they will burn, how brightly they will burn. This is all hard, if not impossible, to predict. Chaos, by nature, is impossible to predict.
Some people find it hard to find good things through chaos, some people find it hard to find bad things through chaos. This is more of a YMMV, so I went with typically positive and typically negative things. Gain and loss. Chaos itself, with people’s divided opinion on it, went into the second slot.
8 - Twine - A Deep Friendship - Brief Interactions With Strangers - Broken Bonds - What Ties You To Others
No deep meaning here, I just thought of how twine connects things or wraps things together, and I figured that I could use it as a metaphor for what binds people to each other.
Deep, long lasting friendships full of trust? Usually seen as good things. So bam, slot one done.
The loss of said deep, long lasting friendship that was previously full of trust? Usually seen as a bad thing. Bam, third slot done.
Truth be told, the second slot is kinda ‘eh’ for me. Nothing really ties you to strangers other than brief interactions or familiarity with them. But hey, a bond’s a bond, so it earned second slot.
9 - Rag - Extreme Trust In Others - Awkwardness Between People - Isolation And Distrust - Touch And Trust
I thought of ‘Rag’ as a rune name first, and later, I thought of ‘Touch And Trust’ as a domain. I didn’t have many names without domains, and I didn’t want to add any more, so I figured out a way to connect rags to trust. This caused me to think of the rag exchange tradition. A few towns have a tradition where people will exchange rags or pieces of cloth to show extreme trust in each other. This is because the person is willing to ruin something of their own just to show affection for the other person.
Touch and Trust go well together since you don’t really want a stranger touching you, and you, or at least I, prefer to have people ask before touching.
Coming up with slots for this was easy enough.
10 - Face - First Impressions - A Stranger’s Point Of View - Perception Based On Rumours - How Others Perceive You
People tend to judge each other based on their cover, or rather, on their appearance. It seemed perfect to me that the ‘Face’ rune would have a domain based on perception and first impressions.
11 - Belonging - New Community - Current Community - Old Community - Community
I got ‘Belonging’ from a generator, and my thought process went from belonging to belonging in a community. This works for the towns too, and I figure that people could use the Belonging rune for advice on moving homes or towns. Something like that.
12 - Voice - Justice - Being Of Equal Footing - Abuse Of Power - The Power Exchange Between People
13 - Wind - Travel On Land - Travel Somewhere New - Travel Through Water - Travel
14 - North - Preparation Towards The Future - Eagerness Towards The Present - Fear Of The Future - The Future
15 - East - Providing Aid Via Technology - Spread Of Technology - Loss Of Technology - Technological Advancement
Towns like Iron and Lake are more east, and they tend to have more advanced technology than the towns in the west, though everyone’s at about the same level. I feel like there’s a plot hole here, but I’m not gonna push it too much.
16 - South - Growth From The Past - Ambivalence Towards The Present - Focus On The Past - The Past
17 - West - Discovery Of Magic - Divination - Disbelief In Magic - Magical Advancement
18 - Grow - Plant Growth - Water Levels - Landform Movement - Change In The Natural World
19 - Crowd - Admiration From Others - Individuality In A Crowd - Holding Others On A Pedestal - Self Compared To Others
20 - Partner - Unconditional Love And Support - Support And Partnership - Romantic Abuse - Romantic Relationships
21 - Bead - Taking Care Of Yourself - Apathy Towards Appearance - Focus Solely On Appearance - Vanity
I chose the name ‘Bead’ first, and then I figured vanity since beads are usually on fancy clothing and jewellery and stuff. So nothing too deep here.
22 - Smoke - Simple Illusions - Distractions - Lies - Distraction and Illusion
This comes from the phrase ‘Smoke and Mirrors’. At the least, I think it’s a phrase. I don’t have Internet at the moment to check. It’s also a minor reference to the God Of Smoke And Beauty. Their appearance is different to everyone, which is sort of an illusion, so it fits, somewhat.
23 - Mask - Great Ambition - Things You Will Become - Unreachable Goals - Goals For Self
This was originally similar to ‘Face’, and I realized that too late. Stubborn as I am, I didn’t want to change the rune name, so I came up with another domain. Maybe it should have been something about lying to yourself, but I thought more along the lines of “the mask is the face you want to have, and what you want to be, so it can represent that.”
24 - Scratch - New Information - Rediscovered Information - Lost Information - Information
25 - Laughter - A Simple But Relaxing Happiness - An Unremarkable Happiness - Finding Joy In Suffering - Finding Joy In Life
26 - Dance - Individuality Via Appearance And Personality - A Mix Of Individuality And Conformity - Conformity Via Appearance And Personality - Self Expression
27 - Shout - Personal Strength - A Definite Result - Cowardice - Confidence
28 - Oil - Creation Of Masterpiece - Creation Of Art - Disappointment In Creation - Creation
I don’t have a lot to say on this other than a generator and cooking oil.
29 - Game - Joy Through Play - Balance Of Time - Procrastination - Joy And Play
30 - Cross - Experimentation - Overlap - Distinction - Objects Interaction With Others
31 - Selfhood - Elation In Self - Self Reflection - Loneliness - Self Identity
32 - Breath - A Sense Of Being Exactly Where You Need To Be - Being Suddenly Aware Of Everything And Everyone Around You - Knowledge Of All Things And All People - The World As A Whole
This originally had another name and domain that I’ve completely forgotten at this point. Point is, it didn’t have the completion and conclusion that I wanted for the runes. I decided that the domain, ‘The World As A Whole’, was a good theme to play around with, and it somewhat connects to the ‘Structure’ theme from the first rune, if you squint a bit. You kind of have to reach for it, but it’s there.
So I played around with a lot of different names. Crown, Gilded, and Prism were a few that I remember.
I wanted to tie it in with ‘Bone’ a bit more, though, and for some reason, ‘Breath’ just seemed to fit. Everything needs structure and bones, if that makes sense, and everything breathes somehow, if that makes sense.
Anyways, the slots for this don’t really follow the positive-neutral-negative thing. They just kind of are.
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Thistledown - Midsummer Bedlam 18 — Top Hat, Doors, and Herons
Thistledown – Midsummer Bedlam 18 — Top Hat, Doors, and Herons
It is time to return to the world of Thistledown and whilst Bedlam and her friends are held in thrall of the stranger and his machine, Bob the hummingbird is diverted on his mission towards the pond where colours appear to have faded to black and white.. join Field Yewwasp as the mystery deepens.
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to you, for a moment, just to you.
that burning lover never recognized a single reference I made. you and I, we speak to each other in coded poetry and we decipher nearly all of it at a glance. the surgeon’s wife with her chapped hands, the peach song, triassic cuddle, red and blue me and you over and over web weaving richard siken kintsugi poetry that eats you back love as a dog love as a cat just crush me mary oliver!! with the flat of the knife, as garlic, as love. what would I do, to have so many of your words in me they leak out my fingernails, to be so coated my friends could read your name on my cheeks.
you live on the same continent as my first lover. I breathe, I breathe, and I wonder why it should be him and not me. the burning one crumples to ash and I know these letters are not much more substantial. we could leave it to the summer, if that’s easier. I’ll never know your face under my hands. maybe it’s better to chalk it all up to the romanticization of a stranger. frame it as a gustav klimt moment, lock me away into the box of people who wouldn’t understand you if you spoke only in french. I would catch every fifth word perhaps, amour, you know the nouns were always my strong suit.
if we say goodbye in winter, you picked a good month for it. decembre and its endings, you know. I see them everywhere. I’m always mourning some life or another. I wonder what you mourn, how you think. is your mind a maze of words words words, poetry and language and song? I imagine one of those grand bells, bejeweled on the inside. I fit a ruby pebble from my meteorite to the wall, and it is tiny beside the emeralds but please take it anyway. please imagine me, hands soaked in river water and promise I can’t fulfill. I braid the gossamer and the thistledown and the nettle, stinging and filament too fine to wend together, but when you write letters into the grey anything is possible. that apartment in the city and every home after it, the garden and the wallpaper. keep me-! and for a moment you do.
I am pressing every kiss to your neck. I’ve been waiting since childhood and still I know I will never grow up to your lips. come down, come down… not rapunzel, then, another tale. I don’t stop talking, never stop talking. someday one of the stories to pass on my breath will be yours. I will speak your name (I know it, e, what a traitor I am to know your initial and never give you mine) and I will keep your voice soft in my ear every time I read je t’aime. I will think of the thousand parallel lives we are not living together. I will remember the orange you could not peel for me. I will eat ivy for the rest of my life so that I might become it next time for you, so that you might eat of my leaves and I will finally know what it is to live in your mouth, however briefly.
(- not too romantic, that part; ivy is mildly toxic and should not be consumed by either one of us. violence and poison and sickness down to the soul, however, poets are no stranger to these. you and I get no story beyond the one we write. ocean vuong tells the whole thing in a sixteenth of the words that I use, and far better. you and I, you and I, you and I, beats echoing into each other ever softer until the cave itself forgets we are there. read me in the next cumulonimbus and remember.)
i haven't slept and the rain won't stop before the sun rises and then settles back down to sleep and i think i want to stay in this moment that you wrote to me for a long while
isnt it the greatest thrill to find such a complementary soul? all i ever wanted when i was 10, 11, 12 (brief respite when i was 13 and then it drowned me more than ever) was a best friend. i wanted a friendship like anne found in dianna, i think i would have done anything. i still would, if I'm honest about it - and of course i am. i think there was something wrong with me when i was born i dont know how to make people love me (and stay) / hello i am a cat what is my existence, what is that? why it and not me, please can you look at me and love me too
these are substantial to me. i met a friend from chicago online more years ago than i can remember and we wrote back and forth and called and i sent them silly birthday presents and we grew up and applied to uni and college and now i hope to visit them in the foreseeable future. i can tell this is going to be a long response and im sorry. how can we lose when we're so sincere ! people also ask: where else can i put it down. lets exchange hands and yes, multiplied by 1 everything is the same but a process has happened. we would have each other's hands.
i used to have a gustav klimt poster on my wall, my first moving out purchase. i couldnt keep such a box closed my dear, my rattlesnake. i was always bad with nouns, i prefer the doing, the clever games to fit detail upon detail into a single latin conjugation - i could teach you, if you like? please let's intertwine our red strings together further. i want to be difficult to leave. i want to be easy to leaveif that's what you want. tell me what to do what to believe in, won't you? ill ask so well
i traverse the llandscape of your mind this winter, frostbitten and tentative but i will leave a trace nonetheless that only you will find, and you will burn it to ash lest another agent discover it, won't you? in this timeline or the next. my thoughts are getting muddled i think you will still understand i think you'll still understand what I'm trying to have you understand
i would cry for the sake of your hands, my love. all the nettles but i fear the swans will remain that way forever.
you kiss the back of my [neck] and i want to cry, only the sun has come this close, only the sun. i am so stricken with desire for the tenderest of gestures right now that i occasionally wonder what i would give up to lie beside someone afterwards
always bring your notebook, never stop writing. always keep talking there is space in the world for your words and there is a vacuum here devouring itself anticipating them in earnest. you have my name, my face, my city and a multitude of my confessions.
a sixteenth sounds beautifully poetic,i wish i knew whether you refer to something specific or just want to conjure semiquavers
write soon, here or at the email. eat well <3
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someday, things will be different.
someday, the ghosts will move out. we'll pitch them off the cliff into such sharp rocks that even the filament is dashed to pieces, and we will leave their graves well-decorated by the seaside, and the cottage all covered in flowers and rot. nature will reclaim it without us.
then we will move to the city for a few years. (it's what the young do best.) and these years will be filled with trains and neon and heartbreak outside movie theaters and making up on the swings in the park at three am. I will kiss you in the rain and you will twirl your umbrella over us so our angels can catch the flying water on their tongues. you'll do my eyeliner like the girl in the picture, and I'll pull you in just to mess up your lipstick and smear it all over both of us. I'll leave dandelions pinned by post-it poetry on the apartment door, so that even when you and I have odd hours, my words can still carry through part of your day. you'll teach and I'll take up a hundred little odd jobs while claiming I'm "still finding my passion".
then we will move out of the city, because it smells and people are rude and I've been finding less kindness in the busstop strangers lately, but really it's just because we're not so young these days. we'll find a new favorite cafe and spot for dinner, and both of these places will be far more affordable, and we'll be saying we should have done this years ago. I'll get antsy like I do and drive out to every surrounding town and take you on adventures through them, and you'll find even more things than I did to love. we'll adopt an animal and grow native plants in the garden and I'll be so frustrated that first year after two-thirds of them die off, and then I'll plant a million more of the third that didn't. we'll visit my sister in the spring (by then you and her will be quite familiar) and she'll ask if we're happy, and we'll say yes. we'll stir up petty little dramas because really nothing's been wrong between us for a very long time, and sometimes it's fun to play-fight and let somebody win so the other one can "make it up" to them.
then we'll live happily ever after. the blanket you made us will grow old in our closet. every letter we ever wrote to each other is kept in the same shoebox in the shelf above it. our library is filled with poetry and real-life webweavings form the wallpaper and we write on everything because we're just horrible with it, ink perpetually smeared on the sides of our hands because we simply never learn and after fifty years we've decided we really shouldn't bother with learning better at all. I'll know every line of your hand.
(- we would have to come to an agreement about how to handle the spiders. you'll probably want to leave the city before I do. I'll use "we're young and queer" as an excuse for everything even up into those fifties and charm you into agreeing with me.)
the cottage covered in flowers, Still Life With Tomato Plant and Sword, an artists' haven on a cliff surrounded by jagged rocks but still the temptation to cliff dive. tombstoning is such a peculiar name for a sport, don't you think?
i have so often the trains and heartbreak and moving to a new city, i know i can hardly go a day without moaning about it - to whom do i have to kneel and pray to receive the warmth of equally returned love. I'll do your eyeliner but the last time i purposefully brough an umbrella with me on a trip was the summer before uni when i was scared this friendship was going to spark out in the next few months of living hours apart and i thought the least i could do would be to have an umbrella to hold over us two (i got very rained on - held it almost exclusively over them, but that can be our secret)
i have to keep reminding myself im just the receptacle to store these snippets of poetry you write because i read them and imagine them, invisage them so desperate to uproot from this life into that. maybe we're in America - would you take me to my first drive in movie if i smiled up at you just so? green thumb? i know what makes your heart ache but not if you prefer cats or dogs
ill draw us a map of all the places we hold dear, I'll have been collecting ticket stubs and receipts for us since before there was an 'us' in your heart to begin with
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sorry to alarm you- when I first found your blog I thought you were someone I knew. you had just posted about lex, and I had an account, so I pulled up yours just to make sure. I have an ex-friend who had a few sideblogs she followed me from, and I thought I had them all blocked but you were so similar, I wasn't sure. I was really trying to keep her out of my life, that's the only reason I checked. I can't remember how I knew your lex handle, I think it was in a screenshot you posted? I don't even have the app anymore, I miss when it was blue and then they added profile pictures and it became Not Something I Liked.
sorry if that's weird! I can stop writing if you want. I've never met you, the perfume stays in your lungs it has never known mine. also sorry for the flood. this has not been an easy time and sometimes I overflow onto other people. (you don't have to answer this btw I just didn't want you to be worried it was someone you know)
huh this is so interesting !!! that's totally fine please do keep writing if you want to - just had a strange moment where i had to confirm somehow you weren't who i thought of for a second, but even reflecting after i posted that i knew it was completely unfathomable. i think i do remember posting a sc now!! i actually had lex uninstalled for ages after a mediocre nsa relationship from it but got it again in the hopes of seeing you there :') obviously i wouldn't know... it's led me to a local book club and we're meeting next weekend at a lesbian bar to talk about how to lose the time war- i wish ever so much you could be there
apologies again for slightly freaking out, and for this not being on the more poetic side - haven't slept and wanted to answer this as soon as i saw it <3 love you, stranger
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you know you’ve been here before. you know you’d do it again.
people do this all the time. we like to hear each other’s thoughts. tell me what you believe in, is it what I believe in? are we the same? let’s sit here with a stick and draw out for each other all the lines that make up how your being is separate from mine, how your living is not my own. tell me what to love. let me disagree. I bite gently, most of the time.
I don’t know how people do this. it’s all departing trains, right? forever on and off and left at the station, balancing on in-between platforms and wondering how long you’ll have to hold this place.
come, build with me. let’s sketch out a room for you and I to sit in. (I know, I know, a room cannot hold all this, not a girl not a voice not a void not a god, not a single letter. the stroke of your pen for a comma and the pillars would come crumbling- but let’s build it anyway.) we should have a green couch. if not a carpeted floor, then at least a rug, let me have someplace soft to lay. we’ll hang that glass thing by the window, I can’t tell you what it is but the things it does to the light are the things you do to language translated into color. see yourself, catching on my sleeve? what else do you bring for our space?
they are building up in the ceiling. I can hear them muttering among themselves when it is very late at night, repeating and asking and telling. every audio note you do not send crowds over my head, and it’s like a birthday party where someone tugs a string and they all come cascading down at once. then I wake up in the lack of the cacophony and I read your letter and you are saying rather than rather than and I bite back rather than. it is a shame, that I have so often been such a gentle thing where I have wished to be a ferocious one. I love like an alley cat, demanding and skeletal, but I can wear the coat well of domesticity. I’ll be the thing that is held if I can also be the thing that is kept.
we could do it, couldn’t we, find a place for the voice notes. sit in the dusk at the sleepover that never began and listen. if I knew morse code I would tap it all out to you, you would feel my fingers at your wrist running antithetical to your pulse just to deliver a sentence.
(- in our neighbor timeline, we met over lex, of all things. it was small and ordinary, how many stories are there of people meeting over dating apps? and we just kept going out, I guess, and getting closer, and it was all so perfectly regular, we could have been anyone. what a relief that was.
people do this all the time.)
i think i've loved you before back when we were dinosaurs i want to stay in love in this life and the next one i think we've already met somewhere on another planet i loved you before !!!!
if my beliefs are not so different to yours im sure i could morph them almost efortlessly to whatever you'd prefer. would i really? maybe. perhaps that's not the best. i swear i'm staunch with my morals except for when i need someone to want me back. the life lines of how you and a pet differ; you and a childhood neighbor; you and your first best friend. i'm sorry, you're right, we don't have to think about that now.
departing trains and trains are angels aren't they? how do we live through so many varied goodbyes, i can't keep doing this, i can't continue with this (keeps going on and on and on, things fall apart and the centre cannot hold but it does, it DOES, because there is no other option). this is all so fucking pretentious but i will keep going, monkey at a typewriter 2023: an earnest odyssey. i will never be a poet but i will try say enough to make my friends feel loved (if i wake up at 6.59 and tell you i love you i will have done enough with my day and killed noone in the process)
green couches and fractals of kaleidoscopic language dancing up and along the walls and i promise there is space for an alley cat here, too. i could want you however you want to be, this unconsciously melding into the rest of our lives
i actually do have lex! just reinstalled it after a few months, completely just because of this i wonder what settings i'd need to change for you to find me. what a relief that would be
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this is what it feels like, to love as a young woman. someday I’ll be saying oh, I would’ve done anything for you back then.
I will look at the moon and hope you are seeing it too. even now, I am wondering; because didn’t we grow up within a few hundred miles of each other? didn’t we look at the sky when we were young? did you know orion better than I did? so many summer nights in the garden, I know you too sat in the dirt as a child. I can still see it beneath your fingernails. tell me our fingers curled over the same root, eyes spinning in the same sky. the light touched both our faces at once, I am so sure of this.
it is raining here. the same rain is falling on you across town. if I wanted to, I could drive to you, be there before the hour is out. next year this will not be true. in five years this will not be true. I wonder if it ever again will be.
I have always been someone acutely aware of what they have while they have it. when I need patience, I call on my future self, or sometimes the past. I will miss this. remember when I was so cold, and all I wanted was to be warm? this summer heat is a blessing. it is an act of love, to be so warmed by the sun your vessel cannot contain it. but there is danger in this. what would they say, of the boy who romanticized heatstroke. I was once so lonely and hoped desperately for a friend, and now I have someone I can call upon. someday again I will be so lonely. forgive this trespass. forgive the sunburn. the love is coming both from the sun and the vessel; to let it burn you is to let it love you. the act of oversaturation, is it a worship or a succumbing, perhaps both in a submission?
but it is autumn now. I have been holding this scar since july, and I know it healed wrong. it was treated the best I could, but it was only my hands staunching the flow. my feet were soaked for weeks, trekking through the same spill, and what was the use in cleaning it up when I was still bleeding. the floors have been dry for a while now. I am different when I share a space with you. I would not let you burn me now, and I am so guarded against it I feel we have both lost something.
but it is autumn now. I love you like a person. we bake something that smells like cinnamon and cuddle up to become the soft things on the couch. in the winestain nights it hardly seems to matter, your transgressions or mine. I hold your hand in this moment and you press your lips to my temple. does it matter what happened in between? I love you, I love you.
(- gossamer stranger, I wish flowers grew beneath my hands like they once did in the garden. I churn up handfuls of dead leaves from the earth, and I adore them- the skeletal, the garnet, the yellow spotted with brown, the brittle paper crunch- but I miss being able to grow something sweet. not sweet-rot death, but breathing.)
i would've done anything for you back then, and i am a dog at your door waiting for you to ask something, anything at all for me now so i can prove the same
in my childhood home my mother called us many nights ago to go to the park across the road to see the supermoon, i wonder how many people around the world were looking with us
you and i, thistledown, i wish we had grown up within mere miles of each other. though im very alone and very far away from where i grew up, something about being flung together, flung out of space!, makes for the closest of friends
if you could identify him, you knew orion better than i. perhaps you can teach me. perhaps i will keep that dream between the two of us. i wish i could write to you and you only.forgive me for wanting more than this, always wanting more. i try not to i promise, i know that in sending these asks i am placed firmly into the role of Void, of listener or confessional booth but i am only human, i can't help but desire. forgive me !!! please, forgive me
tell me the light touched both our faces at once, tell me we never get used to this?
90% of the time we spend with our parents is over. the stark decrease in time with friends, with anyone, after school is jarring and perplexing and and and. heartwrenching truly i don't know how everyone does this. all lights turned off can be turned on / i'll drive, i'll drive all night, i'd call your mom etc (normal about this)
"our skin blisters and peels and still we tip our faces towards the sun" i wont ever sacrifice the hope of joy for the very real, tangible consequence of longlasting pain lol. laughing out loud
it is autumn, yes. i was about to say i have held these same wounds since september 2002, but i fear i could pinpoint with much greater precision the years or months these formed. no matter. i am enamoured with your sentence: "the floors have been dry for a while now" and i feel i must think about it for even longer to understand. i do want to understand, badly.
i love you like a person, stranger. these winestain nights tempt me badly, i wish to be there to a painful extent. please take me with you next time; how many stars to the right and...? i beg you take me with you, take me away from here !
jealously, selfishly, i want to be important to you as you are important to me. once i answer these i wonder when you will respond, though your responses are public and aimed at one who is not me - maybe i blame this tendancy on my being human but that would be too generous. i like you dreadfully, i like how you write, how you structure and transcribe your feelings.
have you eaten today? please do, i want to peel and slice fruit for you. please know what i mean by this.
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I wanted to ask your opinion on small things. what should my new phone background be? which earbud do you prefer when we share? would you rather do the dishes or the laundry?
then I blinked and I was you- or you were me- and we were reflecting into each other endlessly. I pressed my mouth to the glass and knew I could come no closer. you are the voices in the hallway and I am the footsteps in the living room.
we are not well-sheltered things. someone steals into your house and pries up your floorboards, claims they are searching out your heart. I can see you running after them down the hall, bloodied bird in your hands- “here! it is here! look, it is right here, take it!” in the next day’s grey, the tire tracks are already catching the worst of it from the morning rain. I see you sitting in the window. the baseboards are all pulled apart behind you. the porch is kicked in, the roof hangs half in the yard, and the first thing you repair is the door. tell me what tense to tell the story in.
I am sorry they drew up an ocean between us. in my next life I promise to be the ivy growing over your window, curling gently over your worst summers and hurricane winters.
I close my eyes, rest my head on your arm. it’s funny you dreamed of me- I haven’t been sleeping much these days, I say.
let’s pretend for a moment that I get to tell you the small things. I would say I’m about to take a trip with my friend to the city I used to live in. I would say I put the windows down earlier when I was driving on the highway and it was raining a little, and I didn’t expect the smell of petrichor from a highway but it was lovely. I would say I was thinking about your letter and I had to hold it to my lips for a moment, pause over the kitchen sink, before the water washed your words from my ribs. I keep them in my hands, you know, I keep everything there.
I picture you packing your life away into two neat squares, folding further and further down until you can slide them in your pockets. I imagine it’s awfully heavy. for as long as you can walk with them, I can hold your hand. my life will hang around my neck in a locket, and it will weigh me down just as much, and someday our knees will buckle and we will collapse into grass and sand and say oh, thank you for stopping by, all of this will unfold back over me now and bury you beneath it and it’ll all just be a weighted blanket over your memory. we will make each other quite cozy, I think. we are the type to tell a story well.
(- if I didn’t tell it to you I think you could guess it anyway, the sleep deprivation is all over the scatter of these thoughts. but they designed airports to help your brain fly right over most things, lift up up up and take you away, let you look down into all the lives you do not live and let you be doubly grateful for all the love you might’ve missed in this one…)
your new phone background... well, something that makes you happy, a pet, a person or a happy memory frozen in a snapshot, a colour or poem you especially love, but be careful to not become unconsciously indifferent towards it from over exposure
i would use the right, i would do whichever you dislike more (but secretly i like the laundry and ironing) you're asking me for little opinions and I'm hearing tell me what to do what to love what to wear what to believe in
i did dream of you, i wish i couldve woken up and told you immediately, sent you an audio note with voice heavy from sleep, tell the story in the past only if you can promise it won't come to an end
my life is sprawling onto hardwood floor from two small, tightly packed squares, i have jade on a chain around my throat and even if you missed some love in this life it is still all around i swear we can make this life so good, there will be so much love you won't be able to see beyond it
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I was in the river when the myth was born. I saw her in the blood of achilles, a flash of red in the warrior’s eyes, blue snatched up by the swollen lips of patroclus even in death. franz to milena, zelda to scott, every stitch of lover’s ink bound up in cerulean and scarlet. they hover at our cliff’s edge even now. jared to sarah- have you read the last love letter from an entomologist?
when I reach for your hand, I will not miss it.
trade my place, be my body. I will walk your street and be jostled by your strangers. you will tend my plants and keep the peace in this mind. gasp with me-! a sharp intake, and we are breathing with the same lungs. darling, when I bite into my knee you will feel it with me. perhaps we will invent a new scar. perhaps we will mark each other, to find the other better in the next life.
be my best kept secret. be the myth that all the wishing flowers know. lover, they will forget me, and know my name only by the common letters locked into yours.
(- perhaps in the last strand, we left each other and spent the rest of our lives committing those petty crimes, to be reborn as the bee and the mayfly. I remain the shattered body, giving over to love every tiny inch, that you might know the sting of me in your hand. forgive the pain, the thistle in the heel of your hand; it is the only prayer they taught this form to make.)
i read it last night upon seeing this and could have wept. in return, darling: rubber gloves, ritalin, goldfish crackers, band-aids, magnetic buttons, custard powder and baking soda both; products of love to the point of invention
my lungs are two lakes and i do not remember anything from before i was ten except i remember you
they cannot forget you because i will not let them and did you know that magnolia trees existed before bees did? did you know that for hundreds of years worker ants in the desert stay out of the nest at night so as to seal the entrance, and then must separate and make a final pilgrimage away from home lest they draw a predator to the others?
all this to say - all this to say nothing at all and everything at once. i forgive the pain of course, will look upon the scar in wonder. in reverence
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