#after neglecting my writing for so long I feel rusty af

[sparrowmoth]

The Lips You Haven't Met • [AO3]

A/N: Flashfic prompt fill written for the Wesper Fic Club discord. Thissss one is a snack sized divine!Jesper/mortalWylan AU... <3

Prompt (from @waterloou): Write a fic inspired by Tamino's "The Longing." (I've noted the specific lyrics that inspired me on AO3.)

CW: Implied/referenced parental abuse

Only ever in dreams, but Wylan has seen him. Has touched him. Has known him. He is not merely some ghost of a thought or a memory or desire—though Wylan does want him, does remember, does think… that maybe…

And it might be madness.

But he thinks, because the world is so vivid in his dreams of the young man—Jesper. Pretty name. He thinks if he could find it, that soft place in the woods, he might find Jesper also. He thinks if he could find it, find a place even so near enough to call out from a distance and see who would respond—

It might be real. Not just a dream.

It might be Jesper’s lips he’d meet, at last, and not some mercher boy afraid to love him—not so much they never touch. Their hands are cold compared to Jesper’s. Their hands, though real, though never doubted—physical and present on him—their hands aren’t warm and soft like Jesper’s.

Jesper, who he dreams of.

Jesper, who he wakes to find might never have existed.

And so, and so—because he must know—Wylan goes into the woods that night. He does not sleep. He wanders. He passes through the aspen, eyes downcast as not to meet theirs. He passes over leaves and roots and over deer trails cutting left and right. He doesn’t know where he is going. He knows exactly where he’s going.

One of these is true.

“Wylan!” someone calls out as he steps into a meadow, and he startles at the sound. Jesper’s name has almost left his lips when he sees the lantern, hears the crunching boots, realizes—that’s his father’s voice. That’s his name being called out in anger—

Wylan runs like a deer through the moon-drenched meadow, never sure as he is now that someone is calling and it isn’t his father. He just needs to run. He just needs to get there. Where? He doesn’t know.

But he finds it—collides—with a warm, open chest, and two arms wrap around him and a voice whispers, “Shhhh,” as he’s wrenched down to the ground and pinned like prey between the bushes—

He looks up into the face of who he thought so long a dream.

Now, he knows they are a god.

Jesper smiles at him, and it is radiant, despite the shadows thick around them. He is real and heavy and present, with Wylan light as air. He can feel his spirit rising—then, sinking like a rock as raging footsteps draw much nearer—and his name is all but snarled—

Jesper’s smile is no less radiant, but the edges have grown softer, like the end of summer daylight. He seems to sink down into Wylan, seems to push them both down, down… into a sky that shouldn’t be there—a dark sky full of stars, the air as buoyant as the water—

Wylan doesn’t want to wake from this.

Jesper promises he won’t.