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out-of-jams · 5 years ago

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Press Play || knj

Summary: You didn’t mean to. Didn’t intend to fall in love with a dying man.

Pairing: Namjoon x Reader.

Word count: 9k

Warnings/Genre: Fluff, alluded smut, cursing, angst, character death.

All of my works are purely fiction. Everything I write is my intellectual property and therefore belongs to me. ©out-of-jams. Do not copy or repost without permission.

| | Masterlist | |

Beep. Beep. Beep.

With a sigh, you shifted on the uncomfortable chair’s hard plastic. It creaked beneath your weight in protest, as if judging you for the powdered donut pressed to your lips. The obnoxious beeping from the heart monitor belonging to the patient behind the curtain next to you continued on, blaring loudly over the annoyance wafting off you in waves.

You hated hospitals, hated everything about them. From the sterile smell of disinfectant, to the unnecessarily bright walls and fluorescent lighting, and all the way to the way the stench of disappointment hovered right on the precipice of hope. The sound of footfalls could be heard from outside the door of the room, left half-open as if to try and air out the reek of hopelessness.

Another breath of hot air left your lips as you attempted to relax further back into the chair that apparently had some sort of vendetta against your numb rear. The crinkle of the plastic wrapped mini donuts was the only sound that could be heard over the beeping of the heart monitor behind the curtain. The white sheeted bed to the left of you was empty, the covers drawn down messily.

Somewhere in the cold building they called a hospital was your sister, hooked up to the same machine that was trying to save her life, only to pump deadly chemicals into her bloodstream. She’d left you alone thirty minutes ago, practically stiff arming you into staying behind while she got treatment. Soohee, your sister, absolutely refused to allow you to see her in what she liked to joke was her cyborg form.

Even though the joke made no sense, you didn’t have it in you to refuse anything that came out of her mouth. Especially when that request came at the cost of you not having to witness her skin turn a sickly, pallor white while the machine at her side filtered her body with the white hot fire that they called medicine.

While your tongue flickered across your lips to collect the white powdered sugar at the corner of your mouth, you hand stayed busy absentmindedly scrolling through your Instagram feed. It was right as you were liking a vacation picture of some old highschool acquaintance that the door to the room swung the rest of the way open. Just like the chair under your ass, the door protested at the movement.

You were going to ignore it, you really were. You knew it couldn’t be your sister, seeing as how she still had a little ways to go to finish her treatment. But a flash of silver caught at the corner of your eye and refused to let go. So there you were, the final half of your last powdered donut pressed to your parted lips, that you saw it. No, not it.

Him.

He shuffled through the door in a pair of white slippers the same shade as the boring walls, with one hand holding on to the IV pole wheeling along beside him. Dressed in a pair of comfortable looking black sweatpants and a baggy grey hoodie, the boy’s attention was somewhere over his shoulder. You couldn’t make out any facial features from the way he was turned, but his mop of messily styled silver hair caught the fluorescent light almost teasingly. His tan skin that poked out from the sleeves of his hoodie looked a little pale, the veins in his hand standing out as it grasped onto the IV pole.

“Really, don’t worry.” Even without seeing his face, you knew that his voice matched him perfectly. It was deep, but with a rasp to it that made it soft around the edges. “I’ll be fine.”

Somewhere outside of the room someone responded. Your ears couldn’t make out who it was or what they said, but the slightly high pitched lilt of the voice told you it was female. A nurse, probably. Or a doctor. Whatever, that wasn’t really what was important. What was important, however, was the scratchy chuckle that flowed from the boy’s mouth like water.

“Promise.” He lifted his free hand in a wave, jokingly shooing whoever was on the other side of the door. “I’ll ring if I need anything.”

The nurse, or doctor, or shaman, or whoever the hell it was, must have taken the boy’s word because his hand reached out to draw the door back to its half-shut position. You really should have averted your eyes, or politely looked away or something as he finally turned, but you couldn’t bring yourself to move.

You didn’t believe in love at first sight or in soulmates or whatever mumbo-jumbo bullshit people liked to put their faith in to feel less lonely. Attraction at first sight though? You definitely believed in that. It was hard not to. Especially when your eyes caught the dark brown ones of the boy standing in the doorway.

Almonds. That was your first thought. Almonds that had been left out to sit in the sun for too long and now radiated warmth. He may not have had long eyelashes that brushed gently against the apple of his cheeks or whatever stupid bull that was written on the pages of romance novels. But god, he didn’t need them anyway.

Your second thought was of the perfectly shaped slope of his nose right above plush pink lips. And the natural golden, sunkissed hue of his skin that should have clashed with the color of his hair, but somehow didn’t.

His ears were pierced. Small silver hoops dangled from his earlobes, catching the light. Not all men could pull of the whole pierced ear thing without looking like a giant, raging douchebag, but somehow he managed to make it look soft, handsome even.

The boy stood frozen in the doorway like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, eyes wide and lips slightly parted in surprise. He must not have been expecting to see you there. Not when the room was normally empty or at the very least usually had the curtains around the few occupied beds drawn closed in a semblance of privacy. He must have been new. You’d never seen him before.

“Uh,” the sound left his lips as he blinked slowly, short eyelashes dark against his skin. “Hello.”

God, he must have been freaked out by the weird ass girl with powdered sugar clinging to her lips with the staring problem. But it wasn’t like you could help it. Not like it was everyday that you got the privilege to lay eyes on a boy--no, man--who looked like he could grace the cover of GQ magazine.

His voice snapped you out of your silent analyzation and you gave your head a light shake to bring yourself back to the present. You lifted your fingers in a little wave with the hand still holding on to the mini donut, powder flaking off onto the hard tiled floor. “Hey.”

He gave an awkward smile at that. Either he didn’t know how to respond or didn’t have the desire to. Because that was the end of that short conversation. With a small nod of his head, the man shuffled further into the room, the squeak of the wheels of his IV pole trailing after him.

Your eyes dropped from him at that point so that he didn’t think you were some sort of weirdo. But you couldn’t help but glance at him out of the corner of your eye while you pretended to scroll through Instagram again. It wasn’t like the beach photos from Gabby’s vacation four months ago could spark your interest anyway. Especially not while the first splash of radiant color that you’d seen in that dreary hospital shambled towards the bed right across from you.

How cliché.

It would have been at least, if the man’s slipper hadn’t caught on the edge of his IV pole. With a yelp of surprise, the man stumbled forward, free arm pinwheeling in attempt to regain his balance. Whatever backwater physics he was trying to pull failed him and down he went, sprawling across the full-sized mattress with limbs splayed in the most undignified manner you’d ever seen.

He’d somehow managed to drag the pole down with him. It rang loudly as it fell half-onto the bed and the floor, the bag of fluids swinging wildly. One of the man’s slippers left his foot with the fall to take shelter underneath the metal bed frame.

The deathly silence that overtook the room was brief, but voluminous.

“Are you okay?”

You shot to your feet, almost empty donut package forgotten as it fell. The soles of your shoes scuffed against the tiled floor as you raced over to his side of the room. You stopped at the foot of his bed, hands awkwardly hovering over his prone form.

He was tall. So tall that his legs hung halfway off the bed and dragged against the floor. His lips were parted in surprise as he gaped at the IV pole like it’d insulted his mother. Like he couldn’t believe what just happened.

“Blink once for yes, twice for no.” Your concerned voice must have snapped him out of the confused daze he’d been left in, because he blinked once and lifted his eyes to you. “Ah, I’ll take that as a yes then.”

“Yeah. I’m..,” he cleared his throat awkwardly. “Yeah.”

“Nice to meet you, Yeah.” The corner of your lips perked in amusement at your own joke, eyes trained on him as he scrambled to sit up. “Sure you’re okay? Need me to call someone?”

“I’m okay.” He finally regained his balance to sit up properly, feet planted firmly on the floor: one slippered and one bare. His slendered hands reached out to return the IV pole to its proper upright position. Though he kept his eyes averted from you, likely in an attempt to hide the heated pink blooming across his cheeks.

“You sure, Yeah?” You crossed your arms across your chest. The fabric of your denim jacket did little to chase away the cold air conditioning that the hospital somehow insisted be blasted on high at all times.

“Namjoon.” His voice sounded muffled as he bent over to retrieve the lost slipper underneath the bed.

“What?” The tilt of your head couldn’t be helped as you stared down at him in confusion. A golden ring on one of his fingers caught your attention as he slipped his footwear back on.

“My name.” The man finally looked up at you, a small smile tilting at the corners of his plush lips. “It’s Namjoon. Not Yeah.”

“You sure?” The expression on your face was deadly serious, mouth pursed. “I think Yeah kind of suits you. Very unique.”

The man, Namjoon, lifted a dark eyebrow in response. His smile grew in amusement, forcing the two dimples on his cheeks out of hiding. “You saying I’m unique?”

Namjoon’s warm eyes glistened teasingly and now it was your turn to feel warmth blossom across your face and down your neck. You cleared your throat. “Well, you sure know how to make an entrance, that’s for sure.”

Eyes widened in shock at the words that just spewed from your lips, you clamped your jaw shut. Why the universe had cursed you with the sarcastic humor of a bitter 90 year-old widow, you had no idea. But wow, talk about putting your foot in your mouth. With an internal cringe, you waited with bated breath at the offended look that was sure to overtake his face.

Namjoon groaned, both hands covering his face in embarrassment. He didn’t explode in anger however. A chuckle left his lips and he shook his head back and forth like he could wipe the memory from his mind. “Please pretend you never saw that.”

You sucked in air through your teeth jokingly and shrugged in fake apology. “Sorry, no can do, dude. It’s seared into my brain. Cursed to forever play on repeat.”

“Talk about embarrassing.” Namjoon’s voice was muffled by the palms of his hands.

“Nah, don’t worry about it.” You leaned your thighs against the metal bed frame, hands finding the pockets of your jacket. “I’ve seen worse here, trust me.”

Those seemed like the magic words, because Namjoon finally freed himself from the cage of his fingers and lifted his eyes back to yours. His dark eyebrows shot into the messy bangs that shifted with his fall and now fell across his forehead. “Worse? What could have possibly been more embarrassing than what just happened?”

“Well,” your tongue ran across your lips, eyes raising to the white ceiling in memory. “There’s this old woman in one of the rooms a few doors down. I’ve heard some of the residents call her Crazy Shorts Cathy, but between you and me, I think that’s kinda rude.”

“Crazy Shorts Cathy?” Namjoon interrupted your story with a snort of amusement. “Why do they call her that?”

“Trust me, once you see her, you’ll know.” You nodded sagely, a smile gracing your lips as you reached up to twirl a piece of your hair around a finger absentmindedly. “But anyway, back to the topic at hand. So, Crazy Shorts Cathy had surgery a little while ago. And afterwards she was so doped up on anesthesia that she was somehow convinced that she was a medieval knight.

“Poor woman tried to joust the nurses with an IV pole. Caused a huge commotion in the hall. Like, there were doctors and nurses everywhere trying to wrestle the pole from her without opening her fresh stitches. So many casualties. Too many. May they rest in peace.”

A loud laugh left Namjoon, filling the cold room with warmth. It didn’t sound like bells, or windchimes or some other stupid romantic simile. No, Namjoon’s laugh was a roaring, throaty ha-ha-ha! Like it couldn’t leave his lips without forming each syllable perfectly.

“What?” His eyes were wide in disbelief, staring up at you with shoulders shaking in laughter.

Your own ugly, obnoxious laugh joined his, sounding more like a squeaky toy than anything else. That only seemed to spur his amusement further until no sound left him, just quiet intakes of air as he completely lost himself. Namjoon was bent over at the waist, elbows braced against his knees and eyes squeezed shut with mirth.

“That can’t--” He had to pause in order to get the breath to speak. “That can’t be true.”

With teeth biting into your bottom lip to try and contain your giggles, you shook your head. “It’s not.”

“What?” Namjoon lifted his gaze back to you, eyes shining with unshed tears of glee. He pointed a finger at you and tried his hardest to give you a stern look, but the silent laughter shaking his chest gave him away. “You lied!”

“Ah.” You pointed your own finger back at him. “But I made you feel better though. Just don’t tell Crazy Shorts Cathy that I’ve been soiling her name.”

“Oh, so she’s real?”

“She most definitely is.” You nodded in fake seriousness.

A short silence overtook the room once again. But instead of being filled with awkward air, it was comfortable, infused with a homey warmth that threatened to chase away the chilled ice of the air conditioning.

“Hey.” Namjoon’s voice had sobered and he leaned back on the bed on his hands, head tilted back to look at where you still stood at the foot of the bed. “You never told me your name.”

You simply shrugged one shoulder in response. “Maybe I’m the mysterious type.”

He snorted, silver hoop earrings glinting teasingly. “Mysterious people don’t go around telling people that they’re mysterious. That kind of goes against the whole ‘mystery’ thing.”

“Does it?” You wiggled your eyebrows playfully, slowly shuffling backwards and towards your abandoned hard plastic chair.

“It definitely does.” Namjoon sat back up properly at your retreat, a frown pulling down the corners of his lips. “Where are you going?”

“That’s a mystery, Namjoon.” You were almost there, feet away from your sister’s bed.

“Ah, of course.” He nodded knowingly, as if you’d just told him the answers to the universe. “Whatever you say, Sugar.”

That halted your feet. “Sugar?”

Namjoon hummed and shifted himself on the bed so that he could lie down properly, even though the bottoms of his slippers still hung over the bed. Long-legged giant that he was. “That’s what I’ll call you.”

Your eyebrows drew together in confusion, head tilting to the side like a dog waiting for a command. “Why Sugar?”

He tapped the corner of his mouth and his eyes glinted with amusement once again. Your own widened as you quickly reached up to brush away the powdered sugar still clinging to your face.

God damnit. Talk about embarrassing yourself. “Please pretend you never saw that.”

Namjoon simply propped himself up on the wall behind his bed. “Sorry, no can do, Sugar. It’s seared into my brain. Cursed to forever play on repeat.”

You groaned, foot stomping against the floor in protest at his mocking words. How dare he. “I cannot stand you.”

His plush lips parted to give a retort, but Namjoon was abruptly cut off as the door to the room swung open. Your attention was immediately pulled away from the adonis across the room and to the girl that stumbled through the door.

Whatever fire that Namjoon had ignited in the room with his presence disappeared with the entrance of your sister. Her pale skin seemed even more sickly underneath the ugly fluorescent lights. The top of her head was covered with a pretty pink, sparkly scarf, as if the bright pop of color could somehow chase away her sickness. And the grey sweats and matching sweater she wore that drowned her tiny frame did nothing to help either.

Soohee sent you a shaky smile once she caught your eyes. She dragged her own IV pole behind her as she slowly shuffled inside. You met her halfway, arms extended to wrap around her and guide her back to her bed.

“I’m fine, really.” She tried to reassure you, but the weak, frail way her voice left her throat told you otherwise. Soohee followed without further protest however, and let you tuck her into bed until the covers were pulled up to her chin.

Your fingers brushed the end of her scarf away from her face with gentle fingers. “You should get some sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Soohee rolled her eyes, but let them slip closed anyway. Her treatment always seemed to suck the energy right out of her until only a lifeless shell remained.

With a sigh, you leaned back once more into your uncomfortable chair. Your eyes flickered up to glance at Namjoon, only to see him with his head on his pillow and a book open between his propped up knees. The cords of white headphones flowed from his ears and connected to his phone in order to give you a semblance of privacy.

As you distractedly thumbed through Instagram once again with eyes glazed over, you couldn’t help your thoughts from circling around the man across the room.

Silence greeted your ears as you slowly pushed the door open. It let out a squeak and you grimaced at the sound, turning your gaze to glare at the rusty hinges. You’d think that someone would have fixed that already, but alas, noisy doors weren’t exactly a priority in a busy hospital.

Your eyes lifted to scan around the room, the curtains around all of the beds were closed, shielding the residents from view. The tips of your boots creased as you tip-toed into the room, slowly closing the door behind you. Whether the occupants were awake or asleep you didn’t know, but it was the thought that counted at least.

The charms on the bracelet clasped around your wrist shook as you reached up to brush back your sister’s curtain. All of the lights above her bed were shut off and you could just barely make out her figure underneath the pile of blankets on her bed. As you shuffled to your normal seat, you couldn’t help but reach out to gently brush your fingers against her prone form.

The time on your phone read that it was only 3:37 pm. While that wasn’t exactly prime time for sleeping, you knew your sister tended to take frequent naps due to the exhaustion that constantly overtook her.

Your jeans hit the cold, plastic chair as you slid the bag on your back to the floor at your feet. You tried your best to muffle the sound of the zipper in order to pull out your laptop. There was a seven page English paper just begging to be written. Well, the paper wasn’t begging, but the 11:59 due date definitely was. And of course you hadn’t even started.

It wasn’t until the small digital clock in the corner of your laptop read 4:53pm that you finally heard a noise other than the clicking of your laptop keys. Your fingers paused, hovering over the keyboard as you heard the sound again.

A curtain sliding open.

You tried your best to ignore the feeling of...something pulling at your chest and set your laptop carefully on your chair once you stood up. The soles of your boots squeaked as you snuck over to the curtain and peered out. Across the room stood the very person that had been unrelentingly having a one man show in your thoughts since the day previous.

Namjoon stood next to his bed, hands patting the pockets of his Adida joggers in search for something. A grey beanie was on his head, unknowingly matching the same shade of his hair until both blended into each other. The too-long sleeves of his red hoodie hid half of his hands from view as he continued to search for whatever it was that he’d lost.

A noise left the back of his throat as he finally located the wallet that he pulled out from in between his bed sheets. He slipped it into his pocket and turned abruptly, coming to halt as he caught you peering at him from behind the curtain. Your eyes widened in surprise, having not expected him to turn so quickly. And once again, you felt the burning heat of a blush spread across your cheeks.

Namjoon’s mouth quirked up at having caught you. “Hey.”

His voice was quieted in an attempt to not disturb anyone. But god, someone really should have told him that he was shit at whispering.

Your hand rose on its own accord, fingers wiggling in a wave. “Hey.”

Namjoon slowly made his way over to you with his hands in his pockets, this time wearing actual shoes instead of hospital slippers. “How long have you been here?”

“A while.” You finally slipped free of the curtain separating the two of you, head tilting back in order to maintain eye contact.

He hummed and jerked his head towards the door in silent invitation. “You hungry, Sugar?”

“Maybe you should wear a bib.”

Namjoon glanced up from his tray of lukewarm hospital food to give you a dry look. But you only raised an eyebrow in response and glanced pointedly down at the barbeque sauce stain that now graced the fabric of his hoodie. The piece of chicken that he’d speared onto his fork was barely hanging on for dear life, threatening to take a nosedive onto the wood table at any moment.

“Maybe you should take your own advice, Sugar.” Namjoon smirked at the feigned insulted look on your face. His deep, raspy voice threatened to drown itself in the loud chatter of the hospital cafeteria and you had to lean a little closer to hear it clearly.

People were scattered throughout the room, queuing behind glass covered food and seating themselves in the tacky chairs and booths. Whoever designed the cafeteria must have been going for a 70s-disco-meets-retirement-home look. It took all you had to keep the high school lunch-esque pepperoni pizza down.

Why hospital food had to be as depressing as the atmosphere, you had no idea.

“I came here to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now.” The cardboard, plastic free straw of your chocolate milk was pressed between your lips.

“Uh-huh.” Namjoon shrugged. “Then I rescind my invitation.”

With a fake gasp of anguish, you slammed your container of choco milk down onto your tray, just narrowly missing the edge. “But then who will I grace with my clever, astounding wit?”

He tilted his head side-to-side as if contemplating your question. With a hum, Namjoon finally, finally saved the piece of chicken on his fork by shoving it into his mouth.

“Crazy Shorts Cathy.”

Namjoon just had to say that right as you were taking a sip of milk. He did it on purpose and you knew it.

You couldn’t help the snort of laughter at his stupid joke, which of course, caused the milk to get caught in the back of your throat mid-swallow. A yelp left your lips at the cooling sensation of milk shooting from your nose. Coughing, you covered your face with one hand and hastily reached over for a napkin from the pile in the center of the table.

Namjoon’s obnoxious ha-ha-ha! drew curious onlookers and you hurriedly attempted to wipe up your embarrassment before it could further stain your non-existent reputation. The silver haired man was bent over, elbows and hands supporting his weight against the table as he laughed himself into hysterics.

“You did that on purpose!” You dropped the used napkins onto your tray and glared up at him. Or you tried to at least. It was hard to stay mad at a man that laughed like a happy baby.

“Maybe you should wear a bib.” Namjoon only slipped harder into laughter at the unamused look on your face.

But the accompanying smile slowly slipped from your face as his laughter turned into coughing. And then the coughing turned into vicious hacking, until the hands that once braced himself against the table now clung to the edge to dear life.

“Namjoon?” You questioned, concern lacing your tone as worry began to take over as his coughs ceased to end.

He shook his head, reaching out to grab up a handful of napkins to press against his mouth. Leaning across the table, you laid a hand on his one that was still grabbing at the table, eyes wide and panic catching in your throat. “Namjoon!”

The man shook his head once again, attempting to take deep breaths to stop the coughs from racking his frame. You were about two seconds away from jumping up from the table to try and help him somehow when he finally stopped. The coughs turned into wheezing and then finally ceased altogether.

“Namjoon?” His name left your lips once again. You tried to catch his eye, but he averted his gaze to a flower print booth across the cafeteria.

“I’m fine.” Namjoon’s voice came out scratchy, the normal rasp accented into something deeper. He took a deep, shuddering breath and moved the now crumpled napkins away from his mouth.

“You sure?” The knit of your brows spoke of your concern for him, lips parted and voice quiet.

“Yeah.” He sent you a weak smile, finally lifting his gaze to yours and dropping the crumpled up napkins onto his tray. “What were we talking about?”

It wouldn’t take a genius to see it. The same look that sometimes graced your sister’s eyes shone in his. A pleading, begging look for you to just forget about what happened and move on. To ignore what you’d just witnessed as if that would somehow erase the memory from your mind.

A smile that didn’t meet your eyes lifted your lips. “Crazy Shorts Cathy.”

“What are you reading?”

Namjoon glanced up from where he was lounging across his bed, back pressed up against the headboard. His warm eyes met yours as you sat on the end of his bed, legs folded under yourself. Your fingers had paused on the keyboard of your laptop, lips pouted in a desperate attempt at drawing the man into conversation.

“You already asked me that.” Namjoon flapped his book and raised an eyebrow. His plush lips lifted in amusement as you huffed and leaned your head back to glare into the ceiling. “Three times.”

“Amuse me.”

“Paper that rough?”

You finally moved your harsh glare from the ceiling and to the man across from you. Eyes softening unknowingly, your shoulders jerked up in a half-assed shrug. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Namjoon chuckled in amusement, now raising both eyebrows to give you the look. His bullshit detector look. You’d been on the receiving end of it a multitude of times throughout the month that you’d known each other.

A mumbled response left your lips accompanied by a put upon sigh.

“What was that, Sugar? You’ll have to speak up. Couldn’t hear you over all that grumbling.”

With a stretch of your leg, your kicked at his thigh playfully with a socked foot. “I just don’t understand why a 10 page paper is necessary. Who gives a flying fuck about why some stupid author transformed his stupid character into a cockroach.”

“Stupid author?” You didn’t even have to open your eyes to see the look he was giving you.

“Sorry,” though the grin that overtook your face negated your apology. “Did I offend thee, thine book nerd?”

Instead of receiving a verbal answer, you felt the tickling pressure of Namjoon’s fingers against the bottom of your foot. With a squeal, you jerked your foot back out of his range.

“Hey! You know I’m ticklish, you traitor!” You ignored Namjoon’s laughter to send him a glare instead. Who cared if it lacked heat? It would get the point across anyway.

He merely rolled his eyes before placing his bookmark into the spine of the book and slipping it closed. The glossy cover hit the end table next to his bed and he reached out a hand to wave you over.

“Come here.”

“All the way over there?” You really hoped the sarcastic tone of your voice drowned out the loud pounding of your heart beating against your rib cage. Hoped that it hid the butterflies that took flight in your stomach.

“Yes, all the way over here.” Namjoon wiggled his fingers in invitation. “Or do you want to keep writing your paper?”

The lid of your laptop closed in response to his question and you shifted to your knees to slowly crawl your way to the head of the bed. With the mattress dipping at your weight, you settled on top of the rumpled blanket and leaned your back against the wall to mirror him.

While you’d been friends with Namjoon for weeks, that was the closest you two had been in proximity to each other. If you shared the same bed, you’d be at one end and he’d be at the other. Not side by side. Not so close that the skin exposed by his short sleeved shirt brushed against yours. Not so close that you could smell the scent of fresh laundry that wafted off of him.

You weren’t sure whether you wanted your sister to wake up from her nap or not. Weren’t sure if you should be feeling how you were feeling. Weren’t sure whether the frantic beating of your heart was from the way Namjoon’s voice caressed your eardrums, or if it was from fear.

“Here.”

Held in between his slender fingers was one end of his earphones. The other was already pressed into his ear closest to you. You took his offer without hesitation, pushing the bud into your ear until half of the white noise in the room disappeared.

“What are we watching?” You asked, eyes tracking as his thumbs flicked across the bright screen of his phone held up between you.

“Not watching.” Namjoon opened up Apple music and didn’t even pause to read over the song titles like he could navigate his playlist blindly. “Listening.”

“What are we listening to then?”

His thumb finally stopped on whatever song it was that he was looking for. Seeing him move to look at you out of the corner of your eye had you turning to meet his gaze. His almond eyes shone with something, something, before his dimples revealed themselves with a smile.

“Just listen.” The warmth of his voice blended in with the gentle, melancholy song that drifted in from your end of the earphones.

You slipped your eyes closed in an attempt to block out Namjoon’s soft, soft, soft look and concentrate on the harmonizing vocals. At least that’s what you told yourself. Your head found his shoulder, bringing with it the scent of his warmth.

And if his cheek pressed onto the top of your head and his breath ghosted the baby hairs brushing your forehead, well, at least your eyes weren’t open to witness the heavy sigh leaving his lips.

But you could feel it.

You could feel it.

Something.

“I’m so sorry for ever doubting you.”

The disbelief in Namjoon’s tone was almost palpable. You leaned back into the vending machine behind you, back pressed to the glass and shoulders shaking as you held back a laugh. Namjoon’s expression mirrored his tone, dark eyes wide and mouth gaping.

You hummed, unscrewing the cap of your iced tea to take a sip. “I told you. But you didn’t believe me.”

“I-” Namjoon’s voice stuttered in his throat as the topic of you conversation passed by once again.

With long salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a low ponytail, the short woman pushed open the door across from the alcove of vending machines. She looked normal, sounded normal, hell, even smelled like normal flowery perfume. But the knee length shorts covered in a multitude of rainbow colored horses spoke otherwise. The door shut behind her, taking both her perfume and loud shorts with her.

“Holy shit.”

Pushing off of the vending machine, you reached up and closed Namjoon’s gaping mouth with a finger. His wide eyes flickered over to you as you leaned in close as if telling him a secret. You told yourself that you didn’t care when his gaze moved to your mouth for the briefest moments. Told yourself that he didn’t lean his head closer to yours. Told yourself that you didn’t want to close the distance and see for yourself if his lips were as soft as they looked.

“If you want.” Your lowered voice brought Namjoon’s attention back to your eyes. “I can buy you a pair.”

Namjoon groaned in exasperation as you leaned back onto the heels of your shoes, hands clasped behind your back, eyes wide and expression innocent.

“Let’s leave the crazy shorts to Crazy Shorts Cathy please.”

Your laugh echoed down the hospital hallway, drawing glances from some of the passing nurses. But you ignored them in favor of the fake annoyed expression that crossed Namjoon’s face. For the soft smile that graced his lips. For the way his tongue caressed your name to pull you back to the hospital room.

For the way your heart pounded a tattoo into your rib cage.

“Joon.” Your voice was whispered, stretching out across the nonexistent space between your bodies.

“Hm?” Namjoon’s sleep filled hum filled the darkness encompassing the room. The curtain hiding the two of you blocked out the light from underneath the hospital room door. Soft breaths could be heard from the few occupied beds in the room, accompanied by the beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor hiding behind another curtained section.

The blanket thrown over the both of your shoulders shifted as you turned onto your side. Barely, just barely, you could make out Namjoon’s profile in the dark. The soft slope of his nose turned a little in your direction as you moved.

“Why..,” you took a breath, voice fading as you tried to find the words that failed you.

Namjoon’s fingers trailed a line of fire against your shoulder, his thumb drawing light circles onto your skin. The sound of his heartbeat was calming and you slowly inhaled his comforting scent, the soft cotton of his shirt caressing your cheek.

“Why?” He prompted. You felt the deep rumble of his chest more than you heard his actual words.

“You never told me.” The fingers of the hand thrown across his waist plucked at his shirt helplessly. “Why you’re here.”

Silence.

The beeping of the heart monitor.

A sigh.

“Sugar.”

You shook your head as much as you could with your limited range of movement. The fingers of your hand fisted the material of his shirt, bunching it in a way that you knew would wrinkle. “No. Don’t coddle me.”

“I’m not--”

“You are.” Your nose met the soft skin of his neck, the warm breath of your words causing him to shudder. “We’ve known each other for six months. You know you can tell me anything.”

Namjoon’s fingers halted their movement against your shoulder. He let out another sigh, turning his face and burying it into the top of your head. “I can’t.”

“Why?” If your voice broke, neither of you mentioned it.

“Because, Sugar.” He threaded his fingers into your hair, burrowing themselves in the glossy strands. “I don’t want to ruin this.”

“Please, Joon.” The words were more of a shaky exhale than anything else. “Please.”

Namjoon’s chest shuddered. His nose buried itself further into your hair, his lips brushing the crown of your head. The silence was stifling, lingering so long that you thought he wouldn’t respond. Thought he would deny you of the one answer that had been tormenting your mind for months. That had been mixing fear into the euphoria that churned your stomach.

But finally, finally his voice met your ears. And you’d never wished for someone to take back words more than right then, in the darkness pressed to his chest.

“Cancer. Lung cancer.” Namjoon’s fingers tightened in your hair to where it was almost painful. But you couldn’t complain, couldn’t move away. Forced to face reality. “Terminal.”

“Joon.”

“Sugar.”

“Why don’t you do chemotherapy? I’ve never seen you go. You’ve never--”

“Sugar.”

“It could help. It could--”

“Sugar.”

The hitch of your breath brushed the skin of his neck and your fingers tangled themselves even further into his shirt. As if that could somehow force him to take the words back. Force the reality back into something else. Anything else.

“It won’t help.” Namjoon’s lips pressed to your forehead and they lingered before he pulled away. But only so he could pull you harder against him. “It won’t do anything. I’m too far gone.”

“How long?” You weren’t sure if you wanted to know. But you needed to. Had to.

“A few months, maybe. At least that’s what the doctor says.”

Not even the beeping of the heart monitor could drown out the cries that fell from your lips. The salty tears that left a trail of anguish down his neck. The sound of your heart slowly breaking.

The soft scritch-scritch-scritch of pencil on paper filled the room. It was almost masked by the hard beat that bled from the speakers of Namjoon’s phone.

“Stop corrupting my little sister.” Your voice was filled with amusement as you looked up from the book open on your lap. Something that you normally wouldn’t have read, but did so at Namjoon’s insistence.

The gray haired man sent you a smile, dimples revealing themselves. It was bright in the room for once. The curtains spread across the window looking outside that were normally closed were pushed open to let in the sunlight. It filtered in, bringing its warmth with it.

Namjoon shifted in his hard plastic chair, amused eyes throwing you a look that said not my fault. “Hey, she’s the one that told me to put this on.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t have to listen to her.”

“She can make her own decisions, thank you very much.” Soohee didn’t look up from the sketch pad settled across her lap. The pencil in her hand continued to move as she drew the portrait of the main sitting in a chair at the foot of her bed.

“She also has taste.” Namjoon didn’t even try to hide the cheeky smile he sent your way.

“You saying I don’t have taste?” You narrowed your eyes at the man as the opening sound of another 2Pac song flowed from his shitty phone speakers.

Namjoon’s eyes creased into half-moons as a blinding grin graced his lips. The white of his teeth was almost blinding in the sunlit room. Or maybe that was just Namjoon himself. You didn’t know. “You said it, not me.”

“Hey!” You looked around for something to throw at him, but failed to find anything that wouldn’t accidentally break his perfect teeth. So you settled for crossing your arms across your chest instead, pout overtaking your features. “Bully.”

“You love it.” Namjoon teased, slouching further down in his chair in an attempt to get comfortable.

“Stop moving!” Soohee ordered, slapping a hand to her sketchpad in exasperation.

“Sorry, sorry.” The man apologized, his warm eyes moving back to meet yours.

You couldn’t avert your gaze. Couldn’t move. Didn’t want to.

Only hoped that the look in your eyes expressed all of the things that you couldn’t.

“If you could be anything in the world, what would it be?”

Namjoon hummed in thought, his face so close to your own that you had to close your eyes to avoid going cross-eyed. It was dark yet again, the curtain around his bed drawn to a close. You liked to imagine that it could stop time. That the flimsy material hanging above your heads could freeze you in that moment forever.

“A rapper.”

“A rapper?” You opened your eyes in disbelief, mouth falling agape. “Really?”

He shifted, fingers tapping out an imaginary beat against your hip. “Yes really.”

“Hm.” Your own fingers traced nonsensical shapes against the skin of his exposed collarbone. “Wouldn’t have expected that.”

“Is it really that far fetched?”

You paused in thought, tongue flickering out to wet your lips. “Nah, I guess not. I could see it. You get all poetic sometimes.”

Namjoon’s breathy laugh fanned against your face. “What would you be?”

A small shrug lifted your shoulders. “I dunno. I’d like to travel, even though that’s not really a career.”

“Where would you go?” His hand moved from your hip and upwards, his thumb caressing the apple of your cheek. Your eyes slid closed on their own accord as you leaned into his touch.

“Anywhere. Everywhere.”

“That sounds nice.”

You smiled. “Yeah. But only if you came with me.”

“I’d like that.” Namjoon’s thumb drifted to your bottom lip and you shuddered at the feeling of his skin against yours. "For you to take me with you."

“Yeah?” Your question ghosted against his thumb. “Where would you wanna go?”

“Mm. Seoul.”

“Korea?”

“Yeah.”

“Why there?”

“My parents were born there. I think I’d like to see it. See where they came from.”

“I think I’d like to see it to.” Your breath hitched when his head shifted against the pillow, breath mingling with your own.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Soft.

Namjoon’s lips were softer than you imagined they’d be as they pressed gently against yours. He tasted of the strawberry chapstick he loved to use. Tasted of hopelessness, of heartbreak turning bitter on your tongue. You threaded your fingers through his hair and pulled him closer, pressed your lips harder against his.

His kiss forced the thoughts from your mind. The feeling of his hand sliding up your shirt extinguished the cold rush of despair from your veins. His shirt hitting the floor buried the soul crushing anguish. The feeling of skin-on-skin spoke of desperation. His mouth on yours stifled the moans that threatened to escape your throat as he made you feel what neither of you could say aloud.

The darkness swallowed up the heat of his gaze as the curtain shielding you from the rest of the world stopped time.

“So, I’ve been thinking.”

“Wow, that’s a surprise.”

Namjoon snorted at your sarcastic reply, lips pressed together to try and hide his mirth. But the happy gleam that sparked behind his eyes gave him away. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted.”

“If this is you trying to get into my head, think again.” You mumbled distractedly, shuffling around the cards in your hand. The fact that you didn’t even need to look up to see Namjoon’s eye roll was scary.

“Like I even need to. You’ve lost the past five rounds.”

“Shut up!” Tongue in cheek, you glanced up to see his amused expression before looking back down at your cards. “Got any 3s?”

“Go fish.” Namjoon smirked at your groan of exasperation, ignoring your mumbled you’re cheating. “As I was saying. I was thinking.”

“About what, cheater?”

He paused before answering, eyes lingering on you as if gauging your response to what he would say next. “I want to show you something.”

Looking up at him over the tops of your cards, you wiggled your eyebrows. “Yeah? Like what?”

Namjoon gave a deep, put upon sigh that only you could pull from him. He jokingly called it annoyance, but you called it an accomplishment. He shook his head at you, the purple of his newly dyed hair clashing violently with the orange shirt he had on. Why that man chose to dress like a chic hobo with no fashion sense was beyond you.

“You know what? Nevermind.”

“No! Tell me!” The cards in your hand dropped to the table between you and you leaned forward, hands outstretched to grab onto his forearms.

The two of you were in one of the lounges in the hospital’s ICU. The other chairs were empty, leaving just the two of you together. You would go there together sometimes to escape the boring white walls of the rest of the hospital. At least here someone had thrown up brightly colored wallpaper. Even if it didn’t match the ugly polka-dotted upholstery of the couches.

Whoever the interior designer of the place was really needed to be fired.

“No, now I-” Namjoon cut himself off, a hand pressed to his lips to try and stop the sudden coughs from forcing their way out. They overtook him, his wheezing, violent coughs.

“Joon!” You stood from your chair in alarm, rushing around the small table separating you. Knees hitting the carpeted floor painfully, you kneeled in between his legs, hands coming out to rub at his shoulders.

Namjoon bent at the waist, wet coughs hacking their way out of his throat. His forehead met your shoulder and you raised a hand to run through his hair. “I’m here, Joon. I’m here.”

You didn’t know how long his attack lasted, but it was too long. Too long that he was without breath. Too long that he sat there coughing and wheezing and shaking. But like everything, it eventually came to an end. And Namjoon sat back, swiping a hand across his lips and smearing blood.

“Joon.” Your voice came out choked. Alarmed. The red on his skin didn’t belong there. Shouldn’t have been splattered down his chin.

“I’m okay, Sugar. I’m fine.” But Namjoon’s voice didn’t sound okay. Didn’t sound fine. His breath shuddered as he inhaled, like his lungs were protesting against the intake. “I’m okay.”

He wasn’t.

“This one’s a favorite.”

“You’ve said that about all of them.”

“Duh. That’s because I mean it.”

“They can’t all be your favorites.”

“Yeah, Joon? Says who? You the favorite police?”

“What even is that?”

“Exactly.”

Your fingers flipped the page, eyes reading over the words penned into the white spaces. Namjoon’s neat handwriting stared back up at you, the poetic lyrics drawing you in, pulling you deeper into his thoughts. His hopes. His dreams. His fears.

“Let me see which one you’re reading at least.”

Jerking the leatherbound journal out of Namjoon’s line of sight was harder than one might think. The tall, long-legged giant had height on you. But you managed, somehow. “Nope. Now let me read in peace.”

His sigh harmonized perfectly with your laughter.

Namjoon’s dry stare bore so deeply into you that you swore you could feel his gaze in your soul. He rolled his eyes skyward as if asking the divine why he was forced to deal with you.

“Why?”

“You don’t like them?” You pouted, kneeling onto the mattress of his bed to peer up at him with puppy eyes. Your lips met the soft skin of his cheek. “Don’t want it?”

Namjoon sighed as you kissed your way across his jaw, stopping just before you reached his lips. “Want me to take it back? My gift that was so painstakingly difficult for me to get?”

“For fucks sake.” He rolled his eyes yet again, ignoring your your face will get stuck like that. Namjoon turned his head and captured your lips in a chaste kiss. “I’ll keep it. Happy?”

“Will you wear it though?” It was hard to contain your giggle, even between the pecks he littered onto your mouth.

“Don’t push it.”

Your giggles turned into full blown laughter, eyes landing back on the ugly, rainbow colored cat printed shorts drooping in his grasp.

It was raining.

That much you could remember.

The icy droplets had poured from the sky suddenly as you hopped out of your car and rushed into the hospital. It pelted your skin, drenched your hair, dampened your clothes. But you didn’t feel it. Didn’t care.

The white tiled floor squeaked underneath the soles of your shoes as you ran straight past the reception desk. The white painted walls blurred together as your chest heaved with the effort of running. You knocked into a nurse. Or a doctor. Or a shaman. Fuck, you didn’t know. Didn’t care. Didn’t stop to check.

It wasn’t until you saw the familiar door. Until you flung it open with so much force that it bounced into the wall and ricocheted back towards you. Breath leaving you in pants, your eyes stared, stared, stared at the empty bed. At the curtains drawn neatly back as if taunting you that there wasn’t enough time. That there had never been enough time.

Your feet were glued to the floor, stuck as if you could rewind time if you didn’t move. As if reality wouldn’t come crashing down on you.

Movement caught your eye and you whipped your head around to stare at the small frame of your sister. She stood by her bed, hands grabbing at her own curtain like a lifeline. Soohee stared at you, eyes filled with a sadness that you didn’t want to see. That you refused to accept.

“When?”

“Last night.” Her voice was small, but the words were obnoxiously loud, filling the room with dreadful silence.

“Why?” You may as well have been screaming, but the question barely even left your lips. The room was cold. So cold.

“He didn’t want you to see it.” You could have sworn you saw her move, inching her way over to you. But you weren’t sure. Couldn’t see past the blurring of your vision. “Said that he didn’t want you to remember him that way.”

“That’s bullshit! It’s bullshit and you know it.” You were screaming now, hands clenched in the damp fabric of his hoodie drowning your frame, as if holding something of his would bring him back. “Why didn’t you tell me. Why?”

“I’m sorry.” You couldn’t see her. Couldn’t see anything. Nothing but darkness. And it was cold. God was it cold. Why was it so fucking cold? “I’m sorry.”

The headphones pressed over your ears and buried into your hair drowned out the sounds of city life. Around you people shuffled, brushing against each other as they hurried to their destinations. But you stood still, eyes glued to the silver device resting in your palm. It’d taken you a long time to hunt one down.

But you’d been determined. He’d always said you were obnoxiously stubborn.

The thought brought a small smile to your face, the sharp twang in your chest reminding you that it’d been real. That he’d been real. Your fingers ghosted over the plastic warmed by the time it’d spent in your pocket.

A family rushed past you, the youngest child almost ramming into you. But you ignored it, blocked it all out. Instead, you took a deep breath, eyes closing to brace yourself. The voice of your sister rang in your ears as if she was standing right next to you, voice carried by the wind.

He left this for you. Said he’d wanted to show it to you someday.

With one last inhale, you opened your eyes once again to gaze down at the device in your hand. The black cassette tape rested innocently in the slot of the small cassette player. Written messily across a piece of gray duct tape was one simple word: Mono.

And beneath that, scrawled on another piece of tape that looked newer than the one above it.

Take me with you.

Your thumb hesitated over the play button.

He made it for you. Spent hours holed up in one of the hospital lounge rooms. Writing out the lyrics. Recording on some equipment he borrowed from one of the nurses. Your sister had said as you stood on the front steps of your shared apartment. Her short hair had been on full display, likely her way of showing the world that she was in remission. He’d want you to listen.

Eyes looking back up to the sidewalk in front of you, at the storefront signs written in foreign characters that you couldn’t understand, you paused.

The streets of Seoul were busy.

You took a deep breath and stepped forward.

And pressed play.

#bangtanarmynet #bts #bts fic #namjoon #namjoon fic #original got deleted

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elsewhereuniversity · 8 years ago

Text

Your senior year roommate calls herself Clarity. She’s very small and rumpled and distant, and she goes for long walks in the forest south of campus when she’s frustrated. You aren’t friends, but you coexist peacefully. It’s enough.

The creature on your co-owned Walmart futon isn’t Clarity.

It looks like her. Enough to fool a casual observer, certainly. Enough to fool someone who hasn’t been soldering sterling silver for six hours. But you have, and the truth of silver lingers, and the Thing That Looks Like Clarity is sprouting delicate flowers from the skin of its bare shoulders.

It’s sitting cross-legged and perfectly, terribly still, tracking your eyes as you take all this in. When you sigh and set down your backpack, it says, “Hello, smith. There didn’t seem to be any sense in pretending.”

“Jeweler,” you say, and, “I go by Florence, these days. What should I call you?”

It blinks, languid and slow. “I’m not here to usurp. I’m a… placeholder.”

“It’s still confusing as shit, my guy.”

It considers this at length. Finally, with the air of one who has just solved a great puzzle, it says “Claire. We will know, the two of us.”

“Works for me. Nice meeting you, Claire.”

And that seems to be all there is to say. Your roommate’s been stolen by the Fair Folk, you’re living with a changeling, and there’s not much you can do about either of these things. You scroll through Instagram until it gets tired of watching you and wanders out into the hallway.

So that’s Claire.

Three nights later you wake up shivering, because it’s November and Claire has neatly lifted the screen out of the window. You can hear the clink of glass just beyond - it’s climbed out onto the slanting roof of the dorm.

“Fancy meeting you here, darling.” It doesn’t turn its head when you gingerly settle beside it. The affectation is stilted and awkward and antiquated in its mouth.

“Do you want to maybe come off the roof?” you ask. “You’re starting to sway.”

It sighs. It looks less like Clarity in the moonlight, although whatever Sight you pull from silver has faded by now. It’s a small girl still, close-cropped hair a dark purple, nose elegant, mouth wry – but the knobs of its spine are far too sharp, now. The thready tendrils of climbing vines are pushing themselves from the skin of its forearms. It has eyes like holes in the universe, and it’s drinking like it’s trying to fill up the incomprehensible wasteland behind them with straight gin.

When the silence draws out for too long, it offers you the bottle and says, “Elderflower infused. Freely given.”

You hesitate, because at the end of the day you’re a smith and you Don’t Deal With The Gentry. But this day’s only twenty minutes old, and something about the moment seems important. You nod, take a swig, hand it back. It’s cloyingly sweet, and the kind of strong that makes your breath catch in your chest. Claire smiles all teeth, but there doesn’t seem to be any actual malice in it. It might just be that it hasn’t quite figured out how mouths work.

“Do you really need the whole bottle, though,” you say, when you can talk again. It looks at the sky (has it looked away from the sky at all?) and smiles, and smiles.

Claire seems to take place-holding as a personal challenge, typing Clarity’s history essays with thick gloves on so it can touch the electronics. You know Clarity is gone, and some of Clarity’s friends know, and Clarity’s boyfriend has gone missing (you last saw him setting out for the forest with a backpack full of obsidian and caramel creamer cups, and you hope he finds her). But outside of this subdued inner circle no one else seems to have picked up on how much sharper Clarity is now. It seems pleased about this, the few times you mention off-handedly how well it’s fooling people.

The pair of you fall into something that’s not quite friendship, something that very carefully has no give and take at all. If you were smart you’d let Claire be, honestly. If it was smart it would let you be. But there’s a kind of mutual morbid fascination, if there’s anything. Claire demands you show it every new Snapchat filter, and recoils at the soldering iron, and calls you darling like your chosen name is something dangerous to speak. Claire has two settings, and they’re euphoria and a kind of wistful rage. Claire sighs over the silver rings you make and tells you that something will take your eyes, one day, and that maybe Claire will be the one to do it.

And for your part… on the nights when the air is fresh and the moon is neatly halved and Claire’s pupils are blown wide with something that smells like honey, it says things like ‘when I die I’ll come back with green eyes’ and ‘I’ll make wings like Icarus, what a lovely story, and mine will work better, I’ll get all the way to the sun’, which isn’t how it’s supposed to go, and it could break your heart if you let it.

Sometimes Claire goes to the revels. It never asks you to come along, which you suppose is as close to friendship as it’s possible to get, with the Gentry. Sometimes it comes back barefoot, or with mottled bruises down one side, or with a shadow that is more violet than it should rightly be in the morning sunlight. Wordlessly, you find one of the mason jars full of rosewater that have become such a staple of your dorm room. Your skin stings where your fingers brush.

You watch Claire closely, at times like these. You aren’t sure why. You think you want to see it vulnerable, but it never quite softens the set of its jaw, the angle of its shoulders. You know it’s stupid to worry about it, but you do, you do. Claire’s too proud, dangerous proud, the kind of pride that means someday it won’t be coming back from whatever trouble it’s looking for.

So sometimes, when you hear the hunting horns, when the smell of apple blossoms curls from the snowy fields and Claire’s eyes start to look like burned-out viewports to a bombed-out world, you tug the creature onto the roof and try not to notice how it’s much heavier than it really should be, for its apparent size. Claire sits still on the roof, watches the spaces between stars for hours without blinking, and you watch Claire. It would all be very teen-movie, except that there are the spider-leg fingers and the moss creeping over its exposed ribs and you’re reminded more often than not of how alien it is, this monster that you’re living with; that power to this girl-shaped thing is true names and the ability to break good things without caring. Despair comes in moments like that, and when Claire says things like, “Lets find the marble palace that the crows told me is hidden in the library,” you agree without thinking because god help you but you love the way it smiles when you say, “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“We won’t die,” Claire assures you. “Not like this. That would be boring.”

“Boring,” you repeat.

“Extraordinarily so,” Claire confirms, as if to remove any doubt that’s arisen. You press your palms to the grit of the rooftop and wonder when this will fall apart. But Claire is very close and warm and there’s an entire lost world in it somewhere, and that’s why you haven’t given up yet.

Or wait, it’s the smile Claire gives you, which is bright and lovely and fascinating as a fractured mirror.

“Let’s roll out, darling,” Claire announces, swinging back into your room, radiant and uncaring, and no, this is why.

You find the marble palace in the library, and the eternal summer backstage at the theatre, and the series of waterfalls that pour through the mirror world you can get to through the laundry room. Lost weekends, all of them, gone in a matter of hours, but Claire’s hand is firmly in yours and you both set foot back onto safe ground untouched and giddy, full to the teeth of wonder at the hidden things.

One night, early in May, you stumble out of the music classroom where you’ve found an entire forest of jeweled trees. You’ve saved one single oak leaf, a paper-thin thing made of copper, set with the most delicate seed pearls along each seam. Claire pressed it into your hands and told you to never let the sunlight touch it.

Now, on the short-clipped grass of the quad, it’s late Sunday night and you have a paper to write and a project to finish and the mist that’s never quite gone entirely has buffed the distant river to a mirror-shine, and Claire says, “Clarity has won her game.”

It takes a second to parse its words, and then your stomach drops out. “You don’t have to leave, we can – ”

Claire says, “I am a placeholder and you will graduate in two weeks.”

“Come with me,” you say, before you can think better of it. “I…we can find somewhere you can live too, we can…”

Claire’s face is blank as the moon. It’s probably the worst thing you’ve ever seen. “God, darling,” it says. “I couldn’t do that to you. Neither of us could live like that.”

It’s not your choice. You know it’s not. It doesn’t make it any easier.

“You can write to me,” you say instead. “Or email or whatever, I know you know how to use a computer. Or tell the crows, or something. There’s got to be some way to talk to me, if you need to.” You hesitate. “Will you be okay? Are you okay?”

Claire hums something tuneless, stares into the night sky. The shoulders of its shirt writhe. Finally violets push through, like the black fabric is nothing more than cobwebbing. It says, “I think this was never supposed to happen. I think there’s nothing I could have done to change it. I want to …” Its throat clicks. “I would stop everything, if I could. I would stay here and watch the sky.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” you say, because you’re a smith, and you know. Real things, true things – they end. It’s part of the whole deal. You tell Claire so. And then you tell it that if it wants to stop and watch the sky you can do that, for now. There will always be sky, and endings can be pushed back.

“Darling,” Claire says, and for maybe the first time since you’ve known it, it turns its eyes away from the stars to look at you instead. “Florence, oh. If you were mine I would keep you,” and it hurts, god it hurts, so maybe it’s love after all.

“I am,” you say, stupidly. “I could be.”

The first time you kiss Claire, it’s just a brush of lips against the corner of its mouth. It stops moving, stops breathing. You’re shaking, suddenly. This won’t fix anything, you know this by now. But then Claire is moving in a rush, snarling a hand into your hair and kissing you hard and desperate. You can feel teeth, and you’re flush against Claire’s sharp angles, and it’s glorious-

And just as suddenly, Claire takes a shuddering breathe, and then another, and it shoves you back. You stumble, almost fall.

“You can’t be anything,” Claire hisses. You think it would be crying, if it could. “You’re leaving.”

Suddenly you’re just as angry, the gut-punch of loss and fear turning vicious inside you. “So are you! No one’s making you fuck off back to the Elsewhere–”

“You were going to leave since I met you!” Claire shouts. “And I knew and I was good and you’re free, you can go! This is what you want! I can’t…I didn’t want…” Its face is caught half-snarl, half sob, a tangle of emotion you want to smooth away or maybe punch. Its cheeks are blotchy and there are ruins behind its eyes and you think you might regret this, later. No one was ever supposed to see Claire like this.

“I can’t,” Claire repeats. Its voice is a boneyard. “Darling, I can’t. I just…”

The anger leaves as quickly as it came. You feel as hollow as a reed. “I’m sorry,” you say, because one of you ought to. Damning words, to the Fair Folk, but no words are as dangerous as the ones you’ve already said. “It’s okay. It will be okay.” No part of that was not a lie, but Claire takes it as the peace offering it is, and when you cross to the wall of the music building and sink down to the ground, shoulder blades against the cool concrete, Claire follows you down. It leans over to brush at your cheek and you register the track of your own furious tears. It’s a poor attempt at an apology, as sweet as it is empty. You don’t acknowledge it, and after a few seconds Claire draws back.

You watch the stars move, and in the morning you go home. You go home alone. You go to grad school on the other side of the Atlantic and go for long walks in forest and think about Claire. You go for short walks and wonder why the night sky makes you so sad these days. You forget.

The last time you see her, you are twenty-six, and Claire is sitting beside you, radiant with poppies. There’s a half-moon overhead and the mist has rolled over the garage roof where you’re sitting. When you breathe it in you remember. This isn’t the first time you have remembered. It will be the last.

“Florence,” it says, and frowns. “That’s not your name, now.”

“Claire,” you say. “That’s not right anymore either.”

“I’ve missed you,” it says. Its eyes are green in the halflight. You want to say I love you, but you don’t know if that’s right anymore. You settle for, “I missed you too,” and add, “Be safe.”

“That would be exceptionally boring,” it says, and smiles like it’s holding a knife in its teeth. “But you know where to find me, darling. If you were mine…”

The mist rolls back out soon, and it takes Claire with it. You feel salt-scourged somewhere deep in your chest. This isn’t what you imagined, but then very few things have turns out the way you imagined. In the end Claire can’t stop and sit with you on rooftops, can’t stop at all, nothing ever really stops until it ends. You know this. So you lie back on the roof and watch the sky move sideways by yourself.

#original #changelings #stories #romance #claire #i haven't written anything is SO LONG you guys

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