#this has been your daily reminder that val LOVE W O R D S

[infinites-chaser]

MLQC Dictionary Prompts: 'ephemeral' + comfort + kiro (I hope this is how it works aaaa, I love your writing!)

e·phem·er·al. adj.

(from the ancient Greek, ephēmeros. lasting only a day.)

he’s sprawled silly across her lap, the two of them about to fall from the couch from their fit of laughter when he realizes: he will never see this smile of hers again.

not this one. not this exact one, her head tipped back, eyes crinkled crescent moon shut, hair springing joyful and free from her slept-in bun, her thighs warm under his head and barely covered by the old hoodie of his she’s taken to wearing around the house as hers.

this is a moment that will fade, he realizes. soon, he won’t remember why they were laughing in the first place, won’t remember the particulars of the way the light through the window kissed her dimples, caught the edges of her dark hair, and spun it into gold.

much as he’ll try to capture it again in memory, in song, he’ll never have this again. not this smile.

not this laugh either. not the look in her eyes when her laughter’s finally subsided, and she brings her gaze back down to meet his. the love, the tenderness, the emotion he tries to best to capture in lyrics, the feeling that goes beyond words— the weight of it knocks the breath from his lungs even as she catches hers.

he’d heard once— in a science podcast that minutes later savin had demanded turned off— that the world our minds experience is already past, the present lost in the time it takes a feeling to travel from eyes, from nose, from lips, from ears and hands to brain,

and he wonders, briefly, bitterly, if this is what it means to love: to always lose. to be stuck in a moment past, forever chasing the footsteps of the present, no thought spared for the future. knowing it’ll still all slip like sand through his fingers in the end.

he wonders if this is why he’ll look out across a stadium of fans and always see cameras and not faces upturned in his direction, phones swaying to the melody, their flashlights poor substitute for starstruck, loving eyes. wonders if the crotchety old critics who scoff and say things like “put down your phone, live in the moment!” are the ones who’ve had it right all along.

how can you live in the moment, he wants to ask them, knowing it’s going to end?

how can you fault someone in love for wanting a moment to last forever? for wanting remembrance less faulty than memory, something physical, something to hold?

but, what makes moments like these special? what makes us want to hold onto them more than the rest? is there some unspeakable beauty known only through living it, breathing it, trying forever to live it again, in spite of how transient, in spite of how fleeting? or perhaps is it beautiful because of its temporary nature?

he could command the first. try and search for that je ne sais quoi in a memory brought to life again, unnatural, forced. love not given warm, given freely but demanded, cold and heartless. the thought makes bile rise in the back of his throat.

he decides it must be the second, or something approximating it.

because when he thinks about it, maybe love is not meant to be lived clinging onto past moments, onto the glitter and glamour of a first meeting made sparkling, made magic by the tragedy of it all, the thought prickling in the back of both your minds that no matter how enchanting this conversation is (this connection, this world created of just the two of you), it, like all beautiful things, like all moments, is meant to end.

love is not built on frozen snapshots from the past, on connections made once, remade into a reality larger than life by folding and unfolding a memory’s polaroid until your mind gilds over the worn edges and creates an idea of a person, an expectation that living, breathing humans, perfect in their imperfections, could never hope to become.

love is a choice, he thinks. (he concludes. he chooses.) love is knowing that a single moment may be a tragedy from the start, in how transient, in how fleeting. love is knowing that one day, this will inevitably end. (their time together. this happiness. their concert, this song they share.) knowing, and choosing the present moment and the moments to come anyways, despite the endings to come, despite how futile it all may seem because what’s one moment, perfectly preserved, against a lifetime more, no matter how messy the memory ends up, no matter how blurry and flawed?

he will never see this smile of hers again, he thinks. not this one.

not this exact one, not her with her head tipped back, eyes not quite shut, hair falling free and playful from her messy bun, her thighs soft under his head, half-covered by her old hoodie, the one he thinks was once his, the hoodie she’s taken to wearing around the house as hers,

but what’s one smile against a lifetime’s worth?

.

.

.

(love is a promise. love means maybe you won’t get to keep every memory perfectly, but instead, you’ll share many more to come.)

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i liked the look of the definition first and didn’t wanna disrupt the flow of the ficlet aaaah but BASIA <333 thank you so much for this ask you’re the loveliest and ephemeral is just?? such a beautiful word that i think about far too much thank you for giving me the chance to explore it and muse about it through kiro’s eyes <33 hope you enjoyed !! ^^ ps love your writing toooo

(and special thanks to @aliaisreal again for masterminding the whole prompt meme it’s absolutely my favorite thing right now anyone and everyone pls feel free to send a word + genre/character my way <33)