#ironically for bleach the ghosts are only metaphorical

[the-narwhals-awaken]

Bloody Hearts Bingo Day 2

Prompt: See Ya, Whump | Ghosts won't stop bothering them till they're properly put to rest

For all that Kisuke pretended he had not a single care in his life, his regrets weighed him down quite a bit. The thing was, they were far fewer than most presumed.

His career in the Onmitsukido- long, bloody, characterized by him applying every scrap of genius to the art of killing people as quickly or as slowly as he pleased- was merely a step on his path to where he was, an inevitability that had been directed by people who at least cared for the collateral and a useful way to develop a sense of control over his and Benihime's sadism and vicious curiosity. The only things he considered 'regrets' from that time of his life were the times he'd been sloppy, mostly just considerations about the things he'd done before he'd grown wise and skilled enough to know better. There were a few hints at being so bound to the Shihouin, about how he'd been so desparate to keep Yoruichi that he'd nearly sworn some very unwise oaths, but those were almost-regrets, things that he couldn't really bring himself to regret despite how unwise they were.

The incident with the Visored was almost one of them, for it was one of his largest mistakes and one that he had not yet been able to put right. However, that was more for the sloppiness that led to it and the sheer clumsiness of letting so many bystanders get caught in a situation that should have been resolved much quieter and quicker. Betrayal was difficult to see, especially since Kisuke had hardly been welcome in many social situations and thus had no idea of typical behavior for any of the parties involved, and he refused to regret the Hogyoku itself, the culmination of years of research and innovation, pushing the boundaries between what could be and what was till they flexed and gave way.

No, Kisuke only had three regrets that lingered, three ghosts of his past that haunted him no matter how he attempted to exorcise them. The only way to exorcise them was death, but even Kisuke- bloody-handed Kisuke and his Crimson Princess- could not kill so freely, not without work to ensure that worse things would not arise.

The first and oldest of his ghosts was his father. Kisuke had never known him, not properly, but he had been created with purpose and abandoned it, sent down to the Seireitei to learn in ways that could not have happened while he dwelt with his mother and never returning. His father lingered, bound and broken and bleeding, and his almost-corpse kept atrocities turning, kept the gears of the worlds jammed and necessary progress from happening while also ensuring that histories were forgotten, crumbling into ashes. Kisuke had been born to kill his father, his King, and though he knew he would be hated for it he still sought to do so.

The second of his ghosts was his brother. Another relative Kisuke had never known, most of the way dead for most of his life and only beginning to properly recover around the time Kisuke had been exiled. Cursed and bound and driven mad, hurt by the Shinigami even worse than their father had been, Kisuke had mourned the brother he'd never known and grimly prepared for the one he had. Part of him yearned for the chance to have another akin to him, who would understand the drive to remake the world, the urge for more, the way that even hiding they were never quite what they were pretending to be. The rest of him hated him, just a little, for all that he'd had that Kisuke himself never did- memories of their father when he still lived, pieces of him by his side, loyal allies and appreciation and audalation and all the social things Kisuke had convinced himself he didn't need. Part of him still wanted that appreciation for his work, though, or at least any sort of positive attention for being who and what he was. Kisuke was already bound to be kin-killer, at the end of things, and he would let his brother rest from his cursed, maddened state, freeing him and ensuring his own loneliness.

The third of his ghosts and the only one he felt no guilt over planning to kill was Aizen. The guilt curled a little stronger around him because part of it was Kisuke's own fault. Part of it was Aizen, of course- Aizen had stepped onto his path long before Kisuke had gotten involved, and would have stayed fixed on his attempts to reshape the worlds to his will. Still, Kisuke had assisted him on his path- pushing him towards his own Hogyoku, letting him get a hint of the Throne and its curse, gently diverting some suspicion and attention away from his work, distracting Shinji from a few of his suspicions. Part of him would always consider- what if he hadn't? What if he'd realized that Aizen had gone mad, that his perception of the world as it was (so crucial for illusionists) had shifted a few vital degrees, that he was no more a functional candidate to at least stabilize things after he killed his father than his father was to maintain the worlds as they should be? He'd gone mad in his own way, lost in his own worlds, and for that and for the crimes he continued to commit Kisuke would ensure he died.

Despite everything he said about cultivating them for themselves, for the chance to look at four unique specimens (and that was true, in a large part- just not as much as he'd like) Kisuke knew that part of why he'd taken a liking to Kurosaki-kun and his friends was the chance to turn them at his ghosts. Aizen first, of course, simply because he was the most immediate threat, but his brother was hardly alone and Kisuke knew he was no match for him face-on- one did not become a warlord capable of matching and nearly beating Yamamoto in his prime without being unskilled in all manners of weaponry. It would take a great deal of power to reach his father, too, tucked away in his Palace and guarded by his last living kin, and though Kisuke refused to admit it even to himself unless it was the dark of night and he was alone in his labs, the children could serve as replacements- and do it gladly, if Kisuke played his hand right. He refused to admit it, and yet kept pulling the strings- no option was too far, in the end.

[sherlokiness]

Aegonys : They had canon boatsex. They're in love.

"Beneath her coverlets she tossed and turned, dreaming that Hizdahr was kissing her … but his lips were blue and bruised, and when he thrust himself inside her, his manhood was cold as ice."

"They look as though they belong together. Val was clad all in white; white woolen breeches tucked into high boots of bleached white leather, white bearskin cloak pinned at the shoulder with a carved weirwood face, white tunic with bone fastenings. Her breath was white as well … but her eyes were blue, her long braid the color of dark honey, her cheeks flushed red from the cold. It had been a long while since Jon Snow had seen a sight so lovely."

Yep. Dany and Ghost belong together. Because she has dark honey hair and blue eyes. And like Ghost, Dany belongs to the Old Gods. Winterfell belongs to the Old Gods.

"Lemore has been washing you with it. Some say it helps prevent the greyscale. I am inclined to doubt that, but there was no harm in trying. It was Lemore who forced the water from your lungs after Griff had pulled you up. You were as cold as ice, and your lips were blue. Yandry said we ought to throw you back, but the lad forbade it."

And Jon is for sure not a lying crow who's gonna drown in an innocent man's eyes.

"Longclaw seemed heavier than lead in his hand, too heavy to lift. The man kept staring at him, with eyes as big and black as wells. I will fall into those eyes and drown. The Magnar was looking at him too, and he could almost taste the mistrust. The man is dead. What matter if it is my hand that slays him? One cut would do it, quick and clean. Longclaw was forged of Valyrian steel. Like Ice. Jon remembered another killing; the deserter on his knees, his head rolling, the brightness of blood on snow . . . his father's sword, his father's words, his father's face . . ."

"Do it, Jon Snow," Ygritte urged. "You must. T' prove you are no crow, but one o' the free folk."

Not gonna drown in the sea either. Even though that drowning of eyes is the only drowning that doesn't talk about falling in love.

"You have your mother's eyes. Honest eyes, and innocent. Blue as a sunlit sea. When you are a little older, many a man will drown in those eyes."

"I will fall into those eyes and drown."

It's like a perfect puzzle. Manhood was cold as ice? Oh boy. Good luck forging Lightbringer, a fiery sword, with that.

Aegonys: He says she's special!

"Oh yes. Gorgeous beasts."

"You're not like everyone else."

"Not all your enemies are in the Yellow City. Beware men with cold hearts and blue lips. You had not been gone from Qarth a fortnight when Pyat Pree set out with three of his fellow warlocks, to seek for you in Pentos."

"Blue lips speak only lies, isn't that what Xaro told you? Why do you care what the warlocks whispered? All they wanted was to suck the life from you, you know that now."

"Crows are all liars," Old Nan agreed, from the chair where she sat doing her needlework. "I know a story about a crow."

The sex was foreshadowed. Good for you. Pick the man who's a liar with blue lips who's gonna have sex with Dany.

1. Jon, metaphorically drowned, a King and a Crow.

2. Euron, an iron born with literal blue lips, also called "King Crow." He has one blue eye and one black eye.

3. Tyrion. He literally drowned. He checked both the blue lips and cold as ice bit.

Jon drowned in black eyes and blue eyes. Oh wow. That's some coincidence there.

[lovsy-archive]

Sequence [vi]

sequence masterlist

masterlist

chanyeol x reader genre: angst word count: 7.9k

EVER AFTER

01.17.17

The weight in the air had finally settled, coating your skin like a thin mist glazing the petals of a rose on a morning in the winter. It no longer clung to your throat, like molasses sticking to the inside of a mason jar, and no longer made your head feel light as you gasped for your lungs to inflate deep within your chest. The face pressed against your stomach, alongside the breath fanning against your skin, made the skin buzz, your nerves blossoming into butterflies, Monarchs as they danced along the bones of your ribcage.

It had taken longer than you’d wanted, the strenuous journey spanning over months of crippling and agonizing pain, air ripping at your throat as you sobbed helplessly into a sweater he’d forgetfully left behind. All of this, eventually- finally, gone. You could breathe. You could exist. You could live your life without the constant numbing reminder of his absence, without the thought of him no longer caring about you eating away at your brain and liquidating all of your insides. You no longer felt like you were playing a game of Russian Roulette, the barrel of the gun pointed at your temple no longer being held by Park Chanyeol, the trigger no longer seconds from clicking, your life no longer seemingly bordering a thin line of existence.

Despite this freedom he continued to consume you just the same, but it was no longer a consumption of your inhibitions and motivations to thrive, to exist. Now, instead, lying in his embrace as the sun broke across the darkness of the sky, it was the consumption of your love, of the words on your tongue and the air settling deep in your lungs.

You’d thought a lot about it, about the way you felt while he was gone and the sudden wave of trauma that crashed into you the moment he returned, the moment he walked through the door of your apartment and back into your life. It triggered everything, every emotion you kept welled inside of you, every memory you had tried to desperately ignore, flooding back like a merciless tsunami- you being the small, underpopulated island it chose to consume whole. Your close friends had told you, promised you it was just a phase, that it would make you stronger and more in love, that distance makes the heart grow fonder. They even went as far as to tell you that the second Chanyeol got home it would be like nothing ever happened, like no pain ever existed.

You’d been forced to think about the way your life with Chanyeol had been ripped from your grasp, despite how vehemently you tried putting it behind you- your family’s constant anticipation of a baby gnawing at your mind, phone calls towards you from great aunts always completely gushing about how they couldn’t wait until Chanyeol got home so you could finally expand your life. All this did was make you feel like you’d be better off ripping a hole in your insides, that it would burn less than the incessant reminder that you couldn’t be a family, couldn’t be what you always wanted to be.

Eventually, you decided on your own, after hours of being your own lifeboat, that love is the only thing that can effectively kill you, but force you to be alive to feel it. You’d be pummeled, crushed into the ground like the dirt beneath the sole of someone’s heels, and you would be alive. It would overwhelm you, it would assault every sense you could experience like an atomic bomb going off right at your feet, and it would force you into nothingness.

But you would survive it, and you would feel it.

All of it.

And it was this fact that kept you grounded, continued to push yourself to take advantage of the good moments, to cherish the times where you didn’t feel broken, or like you were grasping at straws to stay upright. You’d been through it all, experienced the worst of it as you hugged yourself at night, cried to yourself before bed, and reminded yourself that you were stronger than the weakness threatening to pull you under. Through this, you found yourself, and you found the way you would no longer let anything break you.

The way the morning crept over you was different, warmer, optimistic in essence as the sun peeked through the clouds and illuminated the corners of your darkened apartment. After weeks of snow and slush, you’d decided it was metaphoric, the way the sky parted just for the light to beam down onto you, to cast a golden glow onto the back of the man sleeping in your arms. His skin reflected the rays, sending them bouncing across your white walls and shining into your eyes, where your eyelashes fluttered gently against your cheek, welcomed and appreciated. You could feel the way his breath tickled your skin, the strands of hair sticking up against his head and brushing into your collarbones, waves of aftershocks tingling down your spine.

Finally, you could feel content. The weight of his body on you no longer pressed into you vindictively, the skin flush against yours no longer feeling like an iron had been scalded into your flesh. The smell of burning skin no longer blistered your nose, the feeling now appreciated, comforting as it remained. You let your eyes flutter shut, let your body mold into his, let your breath settle deep in your lungs and let your chest open into his embrace. Running through his hair, your fingers worked nimbly, gently as they tugged at the ends of the thick chunks and watched as they stood straight up, malleable from damage and bleach. He stirred beneath you, remnants of the morning settling into the wrinkles in his forehead as you continued to massage his scalp. A groan vibrated against his chest and rattled into your pelvis, his body positioned between your legs, as if they’d been built to slot there by nature.

“How are you always up before me?” His voice was thick with fatigue, gravelly and deep as if he’d been yelling for hours on end. It was a delectable sound, his morning voice, one that you’d craved for months, one that you’d regretfully missed out on during the entirety of his absence. Your lips curved upwards at his question, a smile pressing into your cheeks as you fought it off, his words flowing across your skin like honey. Silent, you ghosted the tip of his ear, letting your fingertips graze his profile as his eyes remained shut, arms wrapping tighter around your waist.

“You’d sleep until desert if I let you, Park Chanyeol.” Your tone held no force, mockingly playful and scolding as you tugged gently on his ear, which was now red with the blush that spread across his body. A grin consumed his features, the morning no longer evident on his face as he pressed his chin into your bare stomach. You keened, wiggling out of his gasp at the roughness of the stubble adorning his face, your skin likely growing red and irritated as he burrowed himself into you.

“No,” you began, squirming beneath him, brows sewn together as you pushed your palms beneath his jaw as a barrier, “no way. Go shave. I’m not doing this again.”

He laughed. That loud, time altering laugh that consumed every drop of blood in your veins and absorbed every ounce of oxygen that expelled from your lungs. Simply, you’d missed it, desperate to hear the sound again and again, on repeat and echoing in your ears for the rest of your life. You would do anything to hear it, to be reminded of the joy that overwhelmed his body as he tried his best to control his limbs. You could feel his heart beating against your hips, his body shaking softly with the remaining jolts of laughter as you brought your hands back into his hair, threading your fingers through the strands at the nape of his neck and tugging his head playfully.

Everywhere, in every young adult novel, every rom-com that aired on any television station, you’d been taught that you take the things you have for granted. The age old motto you don’t know what you have until it’s gone, the constant reminder to cherish the things in your life, because they’re variables, replaceable, inconsistent in essence.

In time, though, you learned that this was a lie.

You learned that, by the instinct of human nature, we know exactly what we have. We love what we have, our hearts swell over the people in our lives, over the affections we are showered in, cherishing the moments we are given and holding them close to our hearts as they beat in our chests to the rhythm of our partner’s. It’s not that we didn’t know the things were were given, did not reminisce in them enough, took them for granted. Rather, we never expect to have to go through the loss of them.

No, by nature, we expect the happiness to stay in our lives, to be irremovable and to hover in our chests just like an organ we need to survive. This, this concept of irrefutable love and presence, is what catches us by surprise, what takes us by the throat and cuts off the oxygen fighting its way to our lungs: when the thing we had is ripped from our grasp. That’s where life gets you.

When you lose it all.

And that was exactly how you had been forced to feel, two months ago, when Chanyeol was metaphorically and literally taken from your grasp, whisked from your embrace and hidden in the shadows away from your love.

Now, though, you found yourself indebted to him. Now, you were replenished, put back together by the simplicity of the way he pressed his lips into the skin of your stomach. And despite the stubble, despite the growing redness blushing across where he’d kiss, you couldn’t manage the thought of a better place than there, with him against you, with him with you.

“I really,” he said, mumbling against your skin as he re-positioned his body and nuzzled his face deep into the crook of your neck, “really don’t want to shave.”

Your fingers threaded themselves through his air, like a second nature as you relished in the soft, barely-there pressure of his lips against the veins in your neck as you held him. If someone would have told you months ago, on the day you held your phone to your ear and your doctor’s voice rang loud in your head, vision going black with exasperation, that you would manage to feel so light, so breathless with him pressed against you, you would have laughed. It all seemed so distant at the time, the idea of happiness, the tranquility you felt in his arms, in your bed, in your home.

Feeling his hands grazing your ribcage brought you back to the present, callous and rough as he pushed his muscles into it, the weight of him feeling comforting, no longer making you burn with discomfort but instead tingle with want and adrenaline.

“You have to bubs,” you said softly, words barely reaching an audible level, nearly gasping as he began to scrape his teeth against your collarbones and seemingly expel the oxygen from your lungs, “it’s making me itchy.”

And so he whined, and keened, and nibbled at your skin, until you were left suppressing moans into his shoulder. It went on for awhile, longer than you thought you could handle without turning into a puddle of mush, as the burn in the pit of your stomach increased with each breath that fanned across your neck, with each graze of his teeth against your skin. It was something you craved, something you dined on now that he was in your arms: the way your body reacted to him. It was vehement, uncultured, and uncontrolled. Without his touch, you had turned cold, mind separated from body as your days stretched into weeks which multiplied into months. Now, you were whole. You were you. And you were on fire beneath him.

“What if,” he began after a long moment, his voice no longer laced with the remnants of waking up as he held himself propped onto his elbows to look down at you, “you did it for me?” His cheeks hung down against his face, gravity working against them and making them appear swollen and puffy, in addition to the fatigue still lingering in his complexion. He grinned down at you, a toothless smile as he brushed your cheekbone with his thumb and began kissing every part of your face: your eyebrows, your nose, your cupid’s bow, your jaw.

The smile that flooded your features pinched at your cheeks and shut your eyes so tightly you could practically see stars in your field of vision. Your stomach churned, like you were being touched for the first time and the boy above you was your first love. In hindsight, Chanyeol was not your first love, but he was your last.

“What if I cut you?”

He shrugged his shoulders, only slightly as he kissed your lips slowly, languidly, lovingly, and then pulling away. “Consider it karma.”

The way the sun crept through the blinds of your bathroom window cast a stream of gold onto Chanyeol’s skin, your legs wrapped around his waist as he led you inside. Setting you down, your knees wobbled slightly beneath you as you regained your balance, using Chanyeol’s thigh as he sat down on the counter to steady yourself. His skin was soft and warm, the stubble textured over it as you rubbed shaving cream across his face. His legs dangled off the side of the counter, so long they nearly touched the floor as you positioned yourself directly between them, his hands holding tightly onto your hips as you focused on the way you covered his skin. You could hear his breathing, feel the pulse of his heart in his fingertips as he squeezed the flesh of your sides, see the way his eyes fixated on your movements, dialing in on the way your lip caught between your teeth in concentration and pulling your body closer into him.

Everything around you was warm, buzzing with serenity as you focused on gliding the blades over the soft structure of his face. You felt loved, appreciated as his hands slid under your shirt- his shirt, warm and caressing against your skin. Despite the temperature your body radiated, despite the heat emitting off of your skin, his hands were hot, burning against you, leaving behind trails of goosebumps in their wake as they ghosted the sides of your ribcage.

Gently, softly, you led the razor drag across the curve of his neck, caressing his jugular, the skin becoming exposed as you removed the shaving cream from it. He swallowed, his adam’s apple bouncing in his throat as his tongue swiped out to lick his lips, head tilted back but eyes fixated on your every move. Bringing your lip between your teeth, your eyes narrowed slightly, rinsing the blade off in the sink beside you and letting it drag across the arches of his skin, dipping into the slight curve of his cheekbones and exploring the indents of his jaw.

His hands stayed on you, glued to your hips, firm and squeezing as your fingertips ghosted his neck, keeping his head tilted in position with no real force guiding them. The tension floating in their air was pliant, evident as it seeped into his skin and took on a different hue, absorbing the vividness of the room and adapting to its colors. Your eyebrows drew together in concentration, finding a way, any way to distract yourself from the words you could see sitting on the tip of his tongue, the furrow in his brow a spotlight on the thoughts bubbling incessantly behind his brain. Your stomach clenched in anticipation when his mouth parted open, when his breath left his lungs and fanned into the space just above your head.

“I’m sorry.”

His voice rang deep in your ears, made the muscles in your hand twitch as the blade froze centimeters away from his jaw. You knew what they meant, the weight they carried behind them as they floated through the air, like rain clouds soaked with water, waiting to flood the anticipating land beneath them. Your morning had been tranquil, dreamlike, not a care to be found as you left lingering touches against each other’s skin. You’d wished he hadn’t of said anything, stayed silent as he enjoyed the way your fingers grazed his skin softly, the grip your left hand had on his thigh to keep you steady as you outlined the bones of his jawline.

But he hadn’t.

And your head spun, and your knees wobbled beneath you as you dug your fingers into the flesh of his leg to stay upright.

“I don’t think-”

“Chanyeol, please…” You sounded desperate, your head falling to look down at his lap as your eyes squeezed shut. You swallowed down the lump in your throat as the headache came on, his words triggering the flood of anxiety and heartbreak to course through your veins and pound against the inside of your skull. It was over: the fighting, the heartbreak, the words, the explanations. You wanted to move on, to live your life with Chanyeol like you did before, as best as you could, to be absorbed into the fantasy that you so desperately clung to. Instead of acknowledging him, you detached your hands from his skin, ignoring the way his grip on your hips tightened as you rinsed the blade in the sink to your left and ignoring the ferocity of the heartbeat in your chest.

“I wouldn’t be able to survive the loss of you.”

Your mouth went completely dry, brain hammering against your skull as you looked up at him, eyes open and blown out, not daring to blink, not daring to miss a moment of expression that detailed his features. You couldn’t help the way your lips parted open, your breath fanning against his face and his grip on your body firmer, your hands trembling as you put the razor down and grabbed onto his knees for balance.  The words were thick in the air, like unintentional knives splitting into your skin and letting your insides pool to the floor beneath you. You stammered, your response begging to come out but getting stuck, lodged in your throat like you’d swallowed it whole.

You didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to feel as Chanyeol told you the sentence you’d yearned to hear since you met him. For weeks, for months you’d felt he could go without you, that he could exist just as simply if you weren’t there, that his life would remain just the same even if you were no longer a daily part of it. And now, he was giving you what you needed, breathing into you the words you’d looked for for so long, bringing back the color in your skin and mending the cracks of your heart.

You could only think of one thing to say, only one thought plaguing your mind at the idea of living a life without him beside you.

“You won’t have to.”

His hands left your hips, left your body for only seconds before cupping your face, dragging you slowly into him and pressing his lips onto yours, like it was the only thing left in the world to do. It was deep, resonating inside of your chest and burning into your bones as it blurred the line in your brain between real life and fantasy. It felt like something you’d only dreamt about in the past weeks, the layers being peeled back of love and heartbreak, unravelling against his touch. You could feel the burn in your nose, your eyes welling at the way his hand slid beneath your jaw and pushed his mouth further onto you, like you were too far away, like any distance between you was like an axe wedging you apart. Your body gravitated forward, flush against his hips as you wrapped your arms around his neck and sighed deeply into his touch.

“I love you,” he muttered as your lips detached, immediately finding their way to his neck as you dragged them against the bones in his jaw. You pushed your body onto him, your chest tight against his own as his fingers dug deeper into your skin, bruises of his hands sure to be left in the wake of his grip the moment you’d wake up the next morning. Everything, every moment, every second spent away, melted away, nonexistent. You were there, pressed against him, not enough room for a breath of oxygen to pass through your bodies, teeth biting marks into his neck and nerves vibrating in your body at the feeling of his groans beneath you.

“And you’re mine,” he said, breathless as he slid his hands up your neck and tilted your face towards his own. His forehead rested against you, his hands brushing the wisps of hair covering your eyes and tucking them behind your ear. You watched his mouth, his eyes, the way his tongue lapped at his lips and felt the way his breath fanned against your skin, hot, impatient, grotesque in passion. He was like a painting, cheeks swollen and flushed with passion and fatigue, eyes tired and glossy as his eyes blinked slowly, like the muscles of his eyes were so overcome with love they struggled to stay open. “Forever.”

The metal on his finger secured that. The binding of your heart to his confirmed that. The string attaching your wrist to his locked that away and threw the key into the ocean.

You were his, forever.

Your lips found his neck again, pressing gently into the skin between breaths as you panted against him. “It’s you,” you said, mouth hot and urgent against his veins,”it’s always been you. Always will be you. It’s only you.”

And it was true. It had always been Chanyeol, could never manage to be anyone but Chanyeol. He was everything you were, everything that made you a person, everything that kept you in place and everything that shone light onto your shadows. The thought of loving anyone but him was excruciating, sending shivers down your spine, the thought of him pressing his lips onto anything but your body was mind numbing, making your legs go weak and your arms wind themselves tighter behind his neck, pulling him closer into your body. Closer to home.

You’d decided, a long time ago, that you never really could move on from Park Chanyeol. You could try, and you did, but it wouldn’t work. It would never work. You tried in those months away, in that period of time where you thought you had been long since forgotten on the other side of the world, waiting for him in a bed he would no longer want to come home to, in an apartment that would become unfamiliar to his senses. You tried, desperately filling your days with work- busy work, anything to keep you occupied, to keep your brain from wandering into the way his fingertips burned into the flesh of your hips as he panted from above you. But it never worked, nothing ever did.

He consumed you, in the fullest way possible, until his heart beat in sync with your own and his breath poured directly into your lungs as he inhaled it.

The sun, still trapezing through the blinds of your window, left his arm warm, hot to the touch as your fingers clung onto it, wrapped around it like it was your anchor keeping you steady. You’d needed it, the way he felt, the way his hands ghosted your lower spine, dipping only slightly into the hem of your underwear as you bit down on his collarbone.

His phone ringing behind him did nothing to deter you, your mouth not daring to separate from his skin, only his hand- his right not his left, detached from your body as he reached backwards to find the noise. Raising his phone to his ear, he tiled to head to the side, his answer coming out more as a gasp when you dragged your tongue along the underside of his throat. His voice was thick, laced with gravel, like he’d swallowed down pounds of gravel moments before speaking into the receiver.

You could only faintly hear the voice from the other side of the call, though it seemed much louder than usual as it rang in his ears, and it seemed to be important in the way Chanyeol’s grip on your body faltered and his muscles tensed beneath you.

It was as if he was shot through the stomach, the way he choked on the air he swallowed down and froze. You could’ve sworn, in that moment, you could feel the way his heart dropped into his lap, as if it was sutured on the outside of his body, hanging limp by a single string that was cut by the man speaking into his ear. You could feel the tensing in his jaw as the voice rang in his brain, the way the blood seemed to stop flowing in the vein your lips were pressed to. His hands dropped from your sides, his body retracting harshly from your touch, shoving past you as his feet planted onto the ground and stepped forward.

You could feel it instantly, the pull away from you, the way his being was ripped from you once again despite him being only inches from your touch. His shoulders were locked in place, his hand in a fist at his side as the other one squeezed his phone to tightly his knuckles shone white with force. Your mouth as dry as you watched him, your breath locked deep in your throat as he bent down, his knees cracking against the strain as his head dropped into his hands and he rubbed the back of his neck.

“What do you mean I’m off the album?”

Your nose burned at the sight, at the image of the man you loved so helpless, so small as he crouched into the ground, his voice breaking- with rage or with sorrow you couldn’t manage to decipher, hands trembling and speech stuttering.

There was no way they would take him off the album, no way they could afford to remove the main producer from their work. Yet, seeing the way he was, the way tears welled at the base of his eyes and the way his fingers dug into his eyes, you were scared. Scared that he would lose it. Scared that he would lash out.

“I know I left but-” He stopped, his words no longer forming on his tongue as he dropped his legs out from beneath him and sat on the floor of your bathroom. He looked lost, helpless. You stayed frozen in place, not knowing what to do as he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. His face contorted, eyebrows furrowed deep and nose scrunched into the bottom of his forehead, like he was trying to hold back the tears that threatened to spill onto his cheeks. “There’s no way…”

He hung up the phone, let it drop to his side, and pushed his face into his hands. You wanted to speak, wanted to console him, say something to break the silence creeping steadily into the air, but you couldn’t. The words got stuck on your tongue as you touched your neck, letting your fingers ghost over the mark he had left behind and felt the burning sensation flood over your body. It all felt so distant, despite the fact that it all happened only moments before, only minutes prior to the phone call. The sun was gone, disappeared behind the clouds like you wished you could, leaving the room dark, cold, a perfect description of the atmosphere that hung sullenly against the wallpaper, like a framed painting up for display.

His shoulders began to shake, long gasps for air ripping through his throat as he cried, fingers digging so deeply into the sockets of his eyes you were convinced he could see galaxies within them. Your knees buckled beneath you, dropping to his side and ignoring the throbbing that coursed through your veins at the impact with the floor. Your hands flew to his head, his fingers clinging onto your shirt the second he felt your touch as he cried into your side. He sobbed into your body, latching onto your skin as if it was the only thing keeping him from losing himself completely.

Your nose burned wildly, air stuck at the base of your throat as it competed with your heart that had felt like it lurched from your chest and into your mouth. It was over, just like that. The serenity of your life was crushed, shattered to the ground like a mirror and left there for anyone to step on, to become apart of the infliction and become swallowed whole by the pain. You were nothing but a bystander, an accomplice to the pain, yet you were just as broken, just as fragmented by the deafening blow.

The sun outside was no longer smiling down at you, no longer warming your skin, instead shying away, behind the clouds like it was afraid of the things it would see if it remained visible to your wandering eye. Just like that, with one phone call, with forty-seven seconds of speech, everything was lost. Everyone was lost, including Chanyeol. Especially Chanyeol, as he rocked back and forth in your embrace. Your hand circled his back, shushing him into consolation as your fingers threaded his hair and massaged into his scalp.

There was nothing else you could do, nothing you could say, no other way to help him but to be there, to let him exist in your arms, to give his soul to you, even in its darkest times.

And then suddenly, just as the sun had disappeared, the storm hit, head on. Chanyeol’s shoulders stopped shaking, his tears stopped flowing down his cheeks and he sniffled as he lurched from your touch, like you were a flame and he was gasoline, like you were waiting to ignite him, to burn him alive.

“This,” he started, pointing his finger at you and lowering his gaze, “is all your fault.”

He stood up, your hands dropping into your lap and the throbbing your knees becoming evident from the pressure you’d endured while holding him in your arms. You stared up at him, speechless, unable to form thoughts at the look that burned into your face. He was certain, venom behind his figure as he stared at you incredulously, like he’d just put the puzzle pieces together and discovered you were the reason for everything. You did nothing, said nothing as he waited, on bated breath, for you to reply, to defend yourself, to do anything. You stood up, on shaky legs, and stepped backwards, towards the counter and away from him.

“I knew I shouldn’t have left,” he said, hand scrubbing across his face as he spoke into the air, “I knew the moment I stepped onto that plane it was over. God, how stupid am I? How selfish are you? As if you couldn’t have lasted a few more weeks, a few more months without me. My work, my career, you knew it was weak. You knew how important it was to me. It’s like you did all of this on purpose.” He looked at you, like he’d just had a revelation, and stepped forward. “Like you ignored me just to have me come crawling on my hands and knees back to you. Is that what you wanted? For me to lose my job? To ruin the one thing I had going for me?”

His voice bellowed across the apartment, each word feeling like a punch to the throat as you listened on, continued to accept his assault towards you despite the soreness of your flesh. Your entire world stopped, shifted on its axis as he yelled at you, towards you, into you. You felt like you were on a roller coaster, being forced through loops that made your neck snap backwards as whiplash fogged your ability to think consciously. Every day you felt this, felt the unwavering rotting within your body, the slow, excruciating deterioration of your chest as he spit acid into it. Nowhere could you manage to escape it, manage to be free of the grip he had on you and free of the way he scrambled your heart in his hands and left you by yourself to bleed out.

“Please,” you said quietly, the words in your throat feeling like knives as they escaped, “don’t blame this on me. It’s not my fault, don’t make it my fault.”

He laughed. No longer was his laugh the one that you were desperate to hear, no longer was it the one that made you feel as if everything in the world fell perfectly into place. His hand didn’t slap against his thigh, his nose didn’t scrunch against his forehead and his mouth didn’t open wide. Now, it was bitter. It was cold and detached, mocking as he tossed his head back. A shiver racked through your body at the sound, your nerves completely frayed at the distance that was put between you by a simple laugh, a simple gesture. You’d almost felt as if everything had grown dark, like the ceiling above you had adapted to the tension in the air and turned a dark grey color. In your eyes, your world had dimmed, his laugh bringing forth the shadows and cornering you into them.

“I should be able to live my own life, you know.” He didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop until the pent up aggression was expelled. Pouring it directly into your mouth wasn’t necessarily his intention, but you were there, and he’d felt as if you were the reason for all of his problems, in the moment.

So you were his target.

And he aimed, and he shot, and every word pierced directly into your chest.

“I shouldn’t have to worry about you being here when I get back. You’re my wife.”

“You’re not allowed to downsize me, Chanyeol.” It wasn’t obvious where you found the courage to speak, where the words came from and how they managed to slip from your dry, cracked lips. But somewhere they were, and they came out with rage and vindictiveness in every syllable. “You can’t just stand up and tower over me and make me feel small, make me feel like everything that happened was less important, less valuable than your job.”

“You’re not less valuable. That’s not what I’m telling you.” He sounded tired, like he was beating a dead horse with a stick every time he opened his mouth to speak. “What I’m saying is that you would’ve been fine. The pain would have been just the same whether I came back when I did or if I had waited a few months. The pain was pain, and you would’ve been fine.”

Screaming wouldn’t help. Yelling at him, into him, wouldn’t help. Collapsing to your knees and crying into the palms of your hands wouldn’t help the way you felt as if your chest was turning inside out, as if he had reached his fist through the space between your ribs and tightened it around your heart. He was being gross, passive about what you went through without him, his body language nearly waving you off because he didn’t think what you had been going through was enough. Almost as if that it wasn’t bad enough for him to have to come back earlier than he was supposed to.

It spun you like a top. The day before, hours before, he was begging you to forgive him. He was apologizing into your skin for making you live without him, to suffer without him for the way he left you behind in the stark reality of your life in his absence. Now, standing before you, he was belittling you, belittling your pain, making it seem unimportant compared to his career, unworthy of his time and nonexistent in terms of his consolation.

“The things I felt were not staying up and listening to sad music as I cried into my pillow…” It was coming out. Every emotion you’d ever felt, every word you’d kept inside of you because he was trying to make it better, flying out of your mouth before you had the chance to clamp your hand over it. “The way I felt was not eating ice cream in place of my feelings. It was not looking at pictures of you and feeling a pang in my chest because I missed you. It was breaking down in the middle of the street because every person who passed by was you. It was being fine for days, busying myself for hours on end until my muscles were sore, and then suddenly I could feel your hands on my waist and your lips biting at my neck and it was like I was underwater choking for air. I was not in pain, Chanyeol. I was drowning. And if you hadn’t come back when you did I would have sunk down too deep to be able to come up for air.”

He didn’t say anything, didn’t move. It was like his brain was stuttering, relapsing his words, his eye nearly twitching as he watched, waited. You knew he was out of line, he knew he was out of line. The way the sun passed in and out of the clouds knew he was out of line, like it was waiting for the moment he finally spoke to come out from hiding. His career was important, his career was a part of him that he’d never want to lose, and you knew that. But the both of you knew that the ring tying each other together, the binding that was so deep it was cutting into your bones, held far more weight.

It was a lapse. A lapse in judgement and a moment where he’d forgotten what his life was about, what was crucial to him. He could go without the album, he could go with a break from touring. It would suck, and he would feel deprived, but nothing he could feel in that situation could compare to the emptiness that would tear at his insides if he ended up losing you.

“Sometimes I’m just so mad at myself,” you said softly, your eyes not leaving his as you spoke, “mad for falling in love with you. Everything that falls has to break sometime.”

He rubbed his hands over his face, shoulders unlocking and dropping forward as he signed into his palms heavily. “I’m still mad. Still pissed off and frustrated as hell. I won’t do something stupid like kick you out because of it, but I need my time.”

You could hear the snark in his voice, the underlying judgment behind the sentence referring to the times you’d forced him to leave, left notes for him to be gone and pushed him through the threshold of your apartment and into the hallway. He was stronger than you, and it was something you were far too aware of, but the acknowledgement of it on his end did nothing but spur on the ache in your chest and the throbbing against your skull.

After hours of silence, you and Chanyeol keeping distance between each other as you went throughout your day normally, you’d retreated to your room and gotten dressed in silence. In the living room, you could hear the sound of the radio humming and the microwave buzzing, the smell of leftover chinese food wafting through your apartment. Normally, it was a familiar feeling, knowing Chanyeol was in the kitchen heating up dinner, getting ready to watch a drama with you curled into his side, drinking beer just before bed. Now, all it managed to do was make you angry, annoyed that he kept the routine so intact despite you being detached from it. If anything, you’d wished he just fell asleep, or ate cold pizza, or scrolled through his phone until his eyes burned.

Anything except to go on with his life as if your absence did nothing to deplete it.

With a sliver of hope in your veins, an ounce of wishful thinking overtaking your senses, you’d hoped the sound of your door cracking open was Chanyeol coming in with remorse, coming in to curl up into your side and kiss your skin until the both of you promised to try harder, to love deeper, and to forgive each other. With your body laid against the headboard, your breathing stuck in your lungs as you watched him move across the room. He said nothing, glanced at you not even once as he slipped his shirt off and found a clean one in your dresser. You watched him, watched the way his muscles flexed beneath his skin as he slipped the fabric over his body and forced you to look back down at your book as he approached the side of the bed.

Only he didn’t bother touching the blankets, didn’t bother getting into it, and still didn’t bothering looking at you as he picked up a pillow and tucked it under his arm. Walking towards the door, he stopped just as his hand touched the handle, and looked over his shoulder.

“I’ll be on the couch.”

And it burned. The way he walked out, the way the door clicked behind him as he padded back down the hallway and made a bed out of the loveseat in your living room, stung in your chest. It was as if he’d caressed your neck, pulled you close to him, and began to cut off the oxygen from reaching your brain. You felt scrambled, disappointed as you pulled the blankets up to your chin and squeezed your eyes shut to avoid pathetic tears of desperation to roll down the sides of your temples. You’d eventually fallen asleep with a pounding in your head and a ringing in your ears, the emptiness next to you making it impossible to find any warmth despite the blankets you had thrown across your body. Hearing his snoring from the living room made your bones ache, made you force yourself to stay laying down instead of walking out there and curling into his chest.

When morning had rolled around, your eyes cracked open, dry and crusted over from the night of uneven sleep. Every muscle in your body felt sore, as if you’d ran a marathon while sleeping and forgot to stretch yourself out beforehand. Metaphorically, the back and forth between you and Chanyeol, the constant fighting could be compared to that, thrown into the state of arguing with no precedents leading up to it. You were tired, overwhelmed by the feeling of wishing he wasn’t sleeping on the couch, so you wouldn’t feel as if you had to tiptoe into the kitchen for your coffee before going to work.

He was awake when you walked out, sitting on the bar stool with a cup of coffee in his hands. His hair looked tamed, as if he’d tried to push it down against his head when he’d woken up that morning. He wasn’t aware of you, didn’t notice you standing in the doorframe as you watched him, watched the way his lips pursed as he took large drinks of the liquid, as his eyes fluttered shut at the steam that rose into his face. You noticed another cup sitting on the edge of the counter, filled to the brim with what looked like coffee with cream, a contrast to the black coffee Chanyeol usually drank.

You stepped forward, your sock covered feet padding against the linoleum and making your movement silent until you were reaching for the cup right in front of Chanyeol, making him sit up straighter and nod his head towards your hands.

“Cream and sugar.”

Nodding slowly, you let the cup slip between your fingers and lifted it to your mouth, thankful for the way it blocked your eyes from Chanyeol’s and letting the liquid burn the tip of your tongue as it went down your throat. You could feel the tension in the air, the unspoken words hanging over his head like a neon sign reading I’m Sorry, the coffee in your hands being the beginning to a long and messy apology that you didn’t have time to indulge in.

It was obvious the two of you always said more than you had time to think about, that the words that left your mouths most of the time were things that should’ve stayed unspoken, but the fault in the two of you lied in the fact that you were both too stubborn to admit any of it.

He watched you as you drank it, eyes grazing over the way his shirt hung against the middle of your thighs, licking the bitter taste of coffee off of his lips as he gripped the mug in his hands tighter. He’d had you the day before, had you in his arms just hours before, yet he missed you. Craved you. Longed for the way you writhed beneath him and said his name as he let his tongue work marks into your neck.

You could feel his gaze, feel the burn in your skin as you set the mug into your sink and began walking back to your room. You tried your best to ignore his presence as you got ready for work, letting the coffee steep in your bones as you collected the things you’d need for the day. He stayed silent in the bar stool, watching you, analyzing everything you did as if he would need to know for the future. You could feel him, his eyes fixated on your body as you pulled a coat over your arms and adjusted the collar at your neck.

Walking passed him, the sound of your heels echoed through the kitchen, splitting the otherwise silence in half and creating a background noise to hide the sound of your heart beating erratically in your chest.

Taking a water bottle from the counter next to your fridge, you threw your purse over your shoulder and turned on your heel, walking passed Chanyeol and into the hallway. Just as you passed by him, before you could get any further, his hand caught your wrist, pulled you into him, and pressed his lips to yours, sweetly, for only a second, before he let go and turned back to his coffee.

His shoulders fell forward, swirling the liquid in his mug and ignored the stare you had glued onto the side of his face. Your head spun, mouth parted open, hand nearly reaching up to your lips to touch them as your muscles clenched in your stomach.

“Be safe.”

↫  previous chapter | next chapter ↬