#it's like a beautiful giant marble statue with a bruise | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stepgazz · 4 years

Text

//warmest days//lee jeno//

you love the sun; it soaks you with life. you love the light; its purity drowns you in hope. but they’ve never held you as lovingly as the cold, in the dark.

angst, fluff

(kind of) enemies to lovers

5.8k words

Your hand dangled off the open window, the swift summer breeze licking around your fingers. The sun veiled your face like a golden mantle, shimmering off of your earrings as they swayed, clicking melodically. The car rumbled down the road, wafts of a heavy, floral scent filling your lungs. The sky itself turned into a mirror under the simmering heat, and you looked up into it with a deep gratefulness in your heart. You hadn’t felt this warm with happiness in a long time.

Jaemin firmly held the stirring wheel with his left hand, rambling sweetly about how excited he was about the trip. His girlfriend was seated next to him, in the front, holding his right hand in hers while smiling at his ardent babbling with adoration in her eyes. Every time he looked over to her, Jaemin’s face would scrunch up with even more excitement.

Watching them, your heart would tremble with joy: for their love, for the amazing days ahead, for the beauty in all of these good feelings. You smiled widely at how full your chest felt, so heavy with life.

You could imagine what was happening in the other car, where the other boys were stuffed: Jisung and Chenle screaming the entire time as Mark drove and Donghyuck teased him endlessly. You could almost hear the vehicle vibrating with their laughter. The thought of Renjun fleeing from the chaos and deciding to move to your car, just so he could sleep for a bit, made you chuckle to yourself. The poor boy had dozed off on your shoulder, his face finally relaxed after continuously cringing at the soap opera happening in the front seats. You looked down at him affectionately, slowly coming to the conclusion that there was nowhere you’d rather be than right there, right then.

And as you peeled your eyes away from Renjun, they met Jeno’s.

Jeno wasn’t warm. He’d never felt warm to you. Jeno was scarily stoic and intimidating, you’d never seen any other face of his. The guys always claimed he was nothing but a gentle giant, but to you, he was rough and distant. Terribly cold.

Meeting his gaze was usually a bad sign. He had that power: scolding with his eyes only, shooting icy, half-a-second long warnings that made your veins feel frozen. That’s all he ever did, though; warn. His gestures were defensive, cautionary; that shield of ice was never low. That resent in his guard seemed to state his feelings towards you clearly and you never stepped past this line he was obviously drawing.

So, as you met Jeno’s eyes, you were taken aback. He seemed to have been looking for a bit, before scoffing at the contact in your stares and returning to his cold corner, his temple lifelessly pressed to the window. You remained locked to his image, following the sharp angle of his clenched jawline up the contour of his profile. Long, dense eyelashes casted a dramatic shadow over his eyes, seeming to repel the pleasant touch of the sun. Tension squirmed beneath his skin and you watched it carefully, with dangerous interest. When he wasn’t menacing, Jeno looked noble and handsome. Distant and cold in a beautiful way, like marble statues and huge, stone castles.

You turned to your own window, embalmed in the rich light, and closed your eyes to the loving exchange in the front seats. The breeze brushed your skin ever so lightly, summer staining your face with peppered, sunny kisses.

***

When you finally stopped at a gas station, the soft atmosphere turned chaotic almost instantly. Chenle jumped out of the car with a screech, running to the bathroom as Jisung calmly followed. Mark was rubbing his eyes, practically begging Haechan to drive instead. He gave in, not failing to mention that he was doing so for his own safety, not for “you three dumbasses”. Jaemin stretched with a content sigh, opening the door for his girlfriend, who thanked him for driving carefully with a peck. Despite the disgusted groan from Renjun (who was barely awake yet still outraged by them), you found it really sweet. And apparently, so did Jeno.

He sat with his arms crossed above his chest, a faint smile fluttering on his lips as he watched the pair. While he didn’t seem like the type to show tenderness, you’d heard Jaemin often call him a softie. So, as much as you kept your distance, the idea of seeing that side of Jeno often kept you awake.

“Awww, is Nono jealous?” Haechan slurred, puckering his lips at the boy.

Jeno’s smile faded instantly as he pretended to throw a fist in Donghyuck’s direction, who flinched apologetically. A slight chuckle left your lips before you realized, which made you instantly turn to Jeno. To your surprise, he resumed to a breathy laugh, curiously detached. Its calmness sparked something in your chest.

Chenle and Jisung returned from the bathroom beaming with energy, which made Mark whine in exhaustion. Everyone laughed at the black-haired boy as he pressed his palms against his face, defeated. With despair, he pleaded:

“Renjun please switch places with me.”

“No way, never. I slept like a baby the whole time; I’m not going back into that hellhole. I barely got out!” He pointed at the empty car, which looked just as tired as the driver. “Sleep there with your crazy kids.”

Chenle looked over, deeply offended, but Renjun didn’t bother to notice. “Plus, (Name) is a great pillow.”

You smiled towards Renjun when you felt him pat your shoulders proudly.

“Poor (Name) couldn’t move an inch because of you.”

The sound of Jeno’s voice rung in your ears when you heard your name. You turned to look at his face, which was washed in the orange glow of the sunset, and you saw a sly smile curve his lips. His black hair fell in velvety waves over his forehead, standing up in places where he had run his fingers. His eyebrows were raised in Renjun’s direction, who stammered under his gaze.

“Oh, um��you couldn’t?” his voice gave away genuine remorse, which made you puff with a giggle.

“It’s fine, you were okay!!” you reassured him by rubbing his arm as the others laughed.

“You almost drooled on her shoulder!” Jeno pointed at you, meeting your eyes while his were coiled into demilunes. You couldn’t remember the last time he smiled in your direction, let alone when you made eye contact.

Renjun apologized again, earning even more laughter through his embarrassed rambles. He eventually concluded that it was better to switch places, which made Mark almost yell with relief. The group kept talking in the gas station parking lot as vehicles came and went, bumbling by like bees. The sun was setting rapidly and the sky was growing more and more bruised with darkness, which soon made the boys decide to “set sail once more”.

But before you could all settle back into the cars, Mark stopped and called out for Renjun, who groaned and spat a “WHAT” at him.

“What if we let Donghyuck sleep with those two and we share a room?”

And to that, Renjun’s face lit up while Haechan’s instantly darkened.

“Those three won’t sleep anyways, it’s perfect!!” Renjun exclaimed with glee.

Havoc ensued, nonetheless. You watched the boys point fingers at each other alongside Jaemin and his girlfriend. Behind you was Jeno, with his elbows resting on top of the car and his chin digging into the meat of his forearms, the same gentle smile hovering on his mouth. Their voices, growing more and more frustrated, filled the haunting silence of the gas station parking lot, reminding you once more of how vividly alive you were feeling, deep inside your ribcage.

“Okay, guys, let’s just decide the rooms, okay?” Jaemin began, making reassuring gestures with his hands towards Renjun and Haechan, who were at each other’s neck already.

“Mark is right. Him and Renjun share a room, because they’re both tired and Mark needs to rest in order to drive.”

The guys whose names were said howled at each other in content.

“Chenle, Jisung and Haechan share a room. I think it’s fair for all of us.” Jaemin eyed the three boys, the youngest ones cheering around the eldest, who was reduced to sulking silently.

“Haneul and I have a room for ourselves. Isn’t that right?” He smiled at the girl, who nodded with a loving expression.

And before he could say it, it dawned upon you.

“And Jeno and (Name) share a room, and that’s it. Now, everyone to the cars.”

Your heart dropped into your stomach with sickening speed. The look on Jeno’s face showed the feeling was mutual.

“We were supposed to share a room!” Jeno boomed towards Jaemin, who signaled him to bring the volume down. “Haneul and (Name) were supposed to share a room!”

“Now, now, you know I can’t go with my girlfriend somewhere and not sleep in the same room as her—”

“THEY’RE DOUBLE BEDS!”

You thought your heart was in your stomach before, but now it fell to your feet. You weren’t only sharing a room, but the bed also. Something felt awfully chilling on your back.

Jeno barged into the car and shut the door with a thud, holding his forehead into one of his palms. You looked up at Jaemin; he sighed with annoyance before opening the door for Haneul, who hopped in elegantly. Mark stared at you, probably thinking you would get murdered that night. He took his own seat, separating you and the frowning boy. You got in as well, gulping at how cold you were feeling, all of the sudden.

You stared out the closed window the remaining length of the ride.

***

The motel didn’t look as ragged as you had initially thought it would: the building was tall with yellow, glowing windows like a bunch of friendly eyes. The dry flower beds in front of it only gave it some more charm, their dull beige highly contrasting the cozy maroon of the bricks. Other various plants sprouted through the cracked pavement, leading up to the main entrance, which seemed to welcome your anarchic group. You liked the earthy smell of its yard as it replaced the scent of the arid, concrete road.

As pleasant as its hearty quiet was, you didn’t get to enjoy it for long: the guys poured of the cars with bursting bags and started rambling once more about the rooms. You had your own backpack slung over your shoulder, holding the strap tightly as the boys zoomed past you and towards the check-in desk.

Jaemin handed you the key to your room with a reassuring smile. You examined the silver object, turning it over in your palms as you began going up the stairs: this little thing would lock you and Jeno in the same room overnight, and the thought made you squeeze it in your fist, as if it would crumble.

Suddenly, someone tugged at your rucksack. Your head snapped to look behind you, meeting Jeno’s glare as he wordlessly slipped the strap off your shoulder and tossed the object on his back.

“I got it—”

“What’s our room?” he cut you off.

Jeno held the eye contact stubbornly, like he was trying to make you stammer. The word “our” caused your hand to clutch the key even harder.

“25. 3rd floor.”

“See you there.”

And he sped up the staircase, disappearing past the corner of the next flight. You stood on the steps, baffled, as the rest of the group diffused around the mute motel.

***

You rubbed your eyes with the pads of your palms: they were burning with fatigue. Your entire body felt tacky with sweat as you sat on the single chair in the entire room. It wasn’t bad for a motel; you could manage a single night as long as you had a power outlet and a bed.

“Oh, the bed.” The thought came back to you unexpectedly. You were stressing a bit too much over that.

Your slight panic was disrupted by the bathroom door swinging open, Jeno walking out of the shower followed by a cloud of steam which tumbled into your small, already suffocating room.

“Okay, this is how we’re going to do this.”

You looked up and gasped a bit. Jeno stood before you, drying his damp hair with a towel. A black pair of shorts rode low on his hips while his upper body was fully exposed: waterdrops trailed down his clavicles, leaving glossy traces on the skin as they trickled further. His chest tightened with every breath between his ribs, which defined fine lines where they intersected with muscle. He truly resembled one of those beautiful sculptures; the ones that made you wonder what gorgeous creature could have instigated its creation.

But those pieces of art are as cold as their marble makes them. That’s their only flaw: they’re frozen through the meat of their own self, cursed to never feel warmth again. Therefore, Jeno fit the description well.

“You stay on your side of the bed and I stay on mine. It’s big enough for us to sleep away from each other.”

You couldn’t pretend his words weren’t hurtful. As much as you’d love to, you couldn’t hate Jeno back. He never gave you a reason to. On the contrary, when he wasn’t talking to you or minding your presence too much, Jeno was pretty sweet. Not only was he really funny (which was quite the unpopular opinion in your group) and kind, he was a genuinely pleasant person. He had a respectable, trust-worthy ambiance. Jeno felt intense in a lot of ways.

You liked Jeno more than you were willing to admit. But he never liked you back.

“Or…I could sleep on the floor?”

His change in tone made you realize how your face had dropped at his previous instructions. You shook your head, clearing your thoughts, then answered:

“No way. We’ll fit alright.”

Jeno met your eyes and nodded. There was thankfulness in his look.

“I’ll go see what the rest are up to while you shower, then we can go to sleep.”

You watched the black-haired boy pull a white, transparent t-shirt over his head and slip his trusty pair of glasses on his nose. On his arms popped veins while he ruffled his hair, settling the messy, moist locks into a combed-back quiff.

Something almost made you stand up and stop him from leaving. Something almost made you tell him he looked handsome like this, disheveled and relaxed. Something almost made you ask him to stay.

“Lock the door behind you.”

And he did as he walked away.

You fell asleep before he returned, in a bed half cold.

***

That coldness haunted your dreams.

You woke up to a completely dark room, with your lungs rapidly emptying of air then desperately sucking it back in. Chilling sweat pooled in beads on the back of your head.

You pushed your fists against your forehead, calming yourself down. You’d dreamt of something bad, something you couldn’t quite remember after opening your eyes. With each passing second, the nightmare floated further away, allowing reality to settle back inside your head.

The room was too big, too frigid for you to feel any safer. You missed the sun, drenching you in its spell of happiness so generously. You missed the breeze, that breath of summer carrying your exhaled moments to another soul. You wanted to open the window and wait for dawn right there, with your mouth agape and your skin screaming for heat.

But you sat between those white, ageless sheets and gasped like a dying animal in the winter. The air was still and empty, haunted by your nightmares, and the nightmares of other travelers before you. In the dark, everything seemed dead for long.

“You okay back there?”

Jeno’s voice was raspy and deep, but it sounded comforting in your frenzy.

“I had a nightmare.”

Your skin crawled at the word.

Behind you, there was silence, then a shift. The bed creaked under the moving weight as Jeno turned to face your back with a groan. You could feel him exhale deeply into the back of your head before lifting his arm.

His fingertips grazed against the throbbing skin of your temple, tracing down your cheek, then the side of your neck, shoulder and arm before lifting his hand and fluttering his fingers, as if he was shaking off water drops. He kept drawing this outline with an unexpected gentleness, growing more confident each time.

“My sister used to do this to me when I had nightmares. She’d tell me she was taking the bad thought from my head and guiding it away.”

Your body was limp under the contact. The spots he was touching felt excessively sensitive, yet every time his fingers left your skin, it ached for his feeling.

“It always worked.”

It really was working. In fact, there weren’t any thoughts left in your head as he traced your sides time after time. Air seemed to be enough once again, the dark wasn’t as dense anymore. And you wondered how you felt hot all of the sudden, when his cold hands were caressing you.

Was it really Jeno, behind you? Was his presence this human? Was his skin truly soft and his scent this pleasant? Nothing had ever felt this exhilarating with him. There was nothing but ice in his attitude when it came to you, so this new stance was bewildering. He had been hiding this tenderness from you and he would hide it again the next day, like a wound he was embarrassed about, but had to tend at night. Your heart couldn’t take the thought of Jeno being this kind to you once, then never again.

Your hand acted on its own, grabbing his while it traced the side of your arm. The tendons tensed his palm beneath yours, almost making him pull away. But he kept it on you, even flattening it on the skin.

“Why do you hate me?”

The words felt bitter on your tongue as you spat them. Jeno sighed behind you, a waft of warm air brushing against your neck.

“I don’t hate you. Go to sleep.”

He tried pulling away again, in order to turn his back to you, but you pressed down on his hand.

“Don’t lie.”

“Go to sleep, (Name).”

“Please, Jeno.”

His fingers dug into your meat at the sound of his name. You turned to lay on your back, the contour of his body winding next to you. You stared up at the celling, refusing to look at him. Still, you could feel his stare in your temple, burning holes into your head.

“I don’t hate you and I mean it.”

“Then why are you like this to me? What did I ever do to you?”

You weren’t even angry. Deeply frustrated maybe. There was an entire side of this man that you’d never get to see for some reason and it killed you to know that.

You liked Jeno too much to ignore him.

“I couldn’t hate you even if I wanted to.” He mumbled into your ear. You could tell he regretted saying it right away.

You were thinking the same thing.

“You know how we practically had to beg the company to let us go on this trip, because of our…image?”

Jeno started tracing from your shoulder down to your wrist with his fingers, breathing into your ear after each word like it hurt him to say them.

“You know how Haneul can barely walk down the street, now that people know about her and Jaemin?”

You nodded, still not knowing where he was going.

“You know how we decided to sleep in the middle of nowhere, in this motel, just so we wouldn’t run into anyone who knows us?”

He paused. The silence sprawled out over your chest like a dead, poor thing. His breathing sounded faster than normal, but your ears were ringing too badly for you to tell.

“I didn’t decide to hate you.”

Jeno propped himself up on his elbow, enough so he could look down at your face. Behind him, the window glowed ghastly, like a mouth full of smoke. The dirty light coming from the distant, white street lights lined Jeno’s imposing silhouette with silver.

“But I’ll hate you if I have to, because I can’t afford to hurt you with my real feelings.”

Your heart felt heavy for a reason you couldn’t name. His stare fell upon you like an invisible weight and you shuddered under it. His voice was twisted with an ambiguous emotion, ignited by something that seemed to deeply trouble him.

“Then what do you really feel?”

You turned your head towards his. As your eyes grew used to the darkness, shapes started gaining contour. So did his face as you could make out the bold line of his eyebrows, angling downwards to define his nose. Truthfully though, you didn’t need light to make out his face: time after time of carefully analyzing his expressions resulted in his perfect portrait getting inked into your mind. From the pretty mole near his right eye to the deep cupid bow dictating the form of his lips, you could trace them virtually, even in pitch black darkness.

So, you could imagine the blank look on his face, contrasted by a grave glare you could almost feel picking you apart.

Jeno sighed, almost pained.

“What I’m trying to say is—”

“What do you feel?”

You looked where you knew his eyes were. In the soft shadow draped over his face, you could see the sparkle in his gaze, holding yours.

“Those people will hurt you and I won’t be able to protect you. They’ll say bad things about you.”

“Jeno.”

“I can’t let them hurt you. I love you so much that I need to hate you.”

Time froze.

Maybe because all of the cold he’s ever shown you was evaporating with each word. Maybe it was all spreading in the air, icing over everything in the room, including the dripping seconds. His stare was burning, so were his words. So were his fingers, as they held your limp palm.

“Love is a strong word.” Your whisper came out shaky, as if your body was succumbing to the biting cold of winter.

“I know what I said.”

Jeno’s palm felt up to your cheek with gentleness, leaving explosions of tingles on its way. He cupped your face and held it like he had finally found something he’d sorely missed.

“I tried so hard to hate you.” You hiccupped the words, but there were no tears on your face. “I turned myself inside out trying to hate you, because you were so cold. You were so distant and-and indifferent. You were so far away but I couldn’t hate you no matter how hard I tried!”

The boy listened wordlessly, rubbing circles into your cheek to assure you he was still there, with you. You emptied your lungs of air, so tired of the tension they had been enduring while you spoke.

“I couldn’t hate you back. I couldn’t.”

Then there was a pause, as long as a thought.

“I’m so scared of what could happen to you if I showed you the truth.” Jeno talked so lowly, you almost thought a ghost had spoken from within the walls. You placed your own hand over his, holding it tight.

“Please don’t push me away again.”

And he didn’t.

Instead, he brought you closer, flattening his lips onto yours. Your mouths molded perfectly, within a second, like they knew how. His heat struck your body like lightning, trapping you under his clutch. As you kissed him, the back of your eyes stung with tears; of relief, you figured, when you realized that beautiful statue you admired with guilt had come to life before you, drenching you in a warmth you’d never felt before.

Jeno had been lying to you, trying to keep you safe. In the process, you fell for him anyways, which almost made you laugh into the kiss. But only hours before, it broke your heart to even look him in the eyes. Deep down, you knew you would’ve done the same if you were in his place.

The black-haired boy pressed his forehead to yours, tearing his lips away with a slick sound. His fingers grazed the side of your neck, then slipped over the edge of your shoulder to rest on your arm. Hot exhales soaked into your skin and you couldn’t bring yourself to rip away from his presence.

“I don’t want my life to ruin yours.”

You listened to his whispering with worry, as it sounded so broken with emotion. His tenderness was making you melt into his hold, but his words were curdling your blood.

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Then I’ll be your little secret.”

You supported his face between your hands, your fingertips accommodating to the soothing sensation of his skin.

“And I’ll love you in secret, until we figure out a way. It’ll be the two of us. I’ll be your secret.”

Jeno chuckled quietly, you barely heard it. But you could tell there was a smile on his lips: he was relieved, too.

“Just promise me I’ll wake up tomorrow and you’ll still love me.”

All he could do was connect your lips again.

His head moved against yours, digging further into the kiss with a ravaging hunger as the tip of his nose poked your cheek. Your hands curled into the black, messy locks behind his ears while your mouth swallowed his heavy breathing like you were suffocating. As he propped himself on top of you, you gasped at the shift in weight, allowing him to slip his tongue in and meet yours.

The sounds of a languid, sloppy kiss filled the still-frozen air. He gulped down the mix of your saliva, sucking the exhales out of your throat. Jeno’s taste stained every corner of your mouth: the more you felt it, the sweeter it got. That intensity he radiated poured out of him endlessly, through his every gesture. It spilled over the edges of his being and soaked yours, overpowering your senses.

The flame of the moment dimmed slowly as your eyes grew heavier with slumber. You guessed so were Jeno’s as he enveloped you in his arms and fell on his side, his chest flushed to yours in a scorching touch. He held you so tightly you wondered if he could feel your heart squirm inside your ribcage.

Jeno unstuck his mouth from yours, breathing heavily into your hair. Your forehead found its place between his collarbones, separated from his skin only by that thin, white t-shirt that looked so good on him. You nestled into the warmth of his torso, aching to get as close as possible to the man you uncovered that night.

That Jeno that had been hidden away from you with an intention purer than imagined.

“You’re so warm.” You murmured into his sternum.

His laugh blew air onto the top of your head, followed by a heartfelt kiss.

You fell asleep with his lips pressed to your hair.

***

You felt around blindly with your hand, flattening the cool wrinkles of the sheets next to you in your search for Jeno’s heat. Your eyes fluttered open with panic when you couldn’t find any trace of him.

But you looked in front of you through squinted eyelids and found him sitting up next to you. The window behind him shone with blinding sunlight, outlining his frame like an orange aura, seemingly made of newfound affection. The sun had finally rose to save you from the dark, but you’d found shelter in Jeno nonetheless.

You blinked and groaned at the rays attacking your poor, sleepy eyes. You settled with your hands sprawled above your head, still admiring the boy which was now smiling at you.

Jeno sat cross-legged next to you, supporting his weight on his hands, behind him. You trailed with your gaze up his arms, watching the veins snaking up beneath skin and guiding you to his wide shoulders that stretched imposingly. His Adam’s apple bobbed with a muffled chuckle as he noticed you intensely concentrating on him. As you reached his face, a loving smile had formed on your lips as well.

“This t-shirt looks really good on you.” You managed in a drowsy voice. His laugh made your cheeks flush every time.

“Good morning to you too.”

You stretched again, your whole body shaking at the release of tension. Jeno inched closer to push some stray strands out of your face then kept his fingers tangled in your hair, petting it with adoring delicacy.

“Were you awake for long?”

“Maybe 10 minutes. I just like looking at you.” He sounded genuine, yet amused.

You covered your face with your hands, slowly realizing how messy you probably looked: you could tell your eyes were swollen and your cheeks puffy just by touching them. The purple crescents beneath your eyes were definitely obvious, too. You croaked out a slurred “shut up”, scrunching your nose at the sound of your own voice.

He laughed again, heartily. All you could think of was how much you loved hearing it.

“Yesterday we were in the car and you were sticking your hand out the window like a little kid.”

“What about it?” you teased.

“Your face was glowing in the sun and your earrings were clattering and you were smiling so widely and…” he exhaled heavily, in a daze, “…you were really pretty.”

You listened, speechless. Remembering how you accidentally met his eyes almost gave you goosebumps. Then, you recalled admiring his face in the harsh, natural light with a heavy heart, as if you weren’t allowed to, while Renjun sat between the two of you, deep in slumber. Was the thought of you what had made him clench his jaw?

Jeno plopped besides you, snickering at his head bouncing on the pillow. You couldn’t stop smiling as you placed your palm on his cheek, curving it around his mandible, feeling his pointy chin and velvety lips.

Touching his face like this, feeling his features beneath your fingertips so vividly for the first time was making your vision blurry with happiness. With his shield shed, Jeno felt familiar and safe.

You kissed him lightly, just to make sure he was real. His lips were soft and welcoming, savoring the caress of your mouth against his. Before you could pull away, he moved to trickle more loving pecks down your chin and neck, sucking pale, violet blooms into your collarbones and shoulders. His eyes connected the moles stamped onto your skin up to your face, meeting your stare before diving into another kiss. You’d drown in his love happily, you thought, as you looped your arms around his neck.

You whispered against his mouth, stroking his cheek with the knuckles of your fingers:

“You’re the most beautiful person I know.”

***

You sat on the side of the bed and watched him pull a clean, black t-shirt over his head. The muscles on his back tensed, tightening against his shoulder blades and curving into the dip of his spine. His hair was fluffy, bouncing at every move. Jeno ruffled the locks into a casual look, then slipped his glasses onto the tip of his nose, pushing them up using his middle finger. You’d told him he looked cute with them, so he decided to replace his contacts with the traditional alternative, just for you.

You got up and straightened out your clothes with your palms: a baby blue dress, as pale as the simmering sky, flowing down your body and stopping just above your knees. Its lack of sleeves exposed your collarbones and the fading bite marks on them, but Jeno had been careful enough to make them as light as possible. The urgency with which he made them showed he wasn’t fully satisfied, though.

He walked over to you and grabbed your waist, his fingers molding to your shape with yearning.

“How do we do this?”

Jeno’s eyes looked for yours with attentiveness, waiting for the relieving sound of your voice.

“If you’re not comfortable with the guys knowing yet, it’s alright. I trust you.”

“But what if I’ll want to hold your hand?”

You’d never seen Jeno pouting before, but the sight was memorable to say the least. You giggled and held onto his shoulders, following the movements of his lips curling into words with your gaze.

“You can do whatever you feel comfortable doing, Jeno. I’m not scared of anything when I’m with you.”

And you meant it. The dark and the cold, hatred and silence: Jeno had freed you of all of those, even though just days before he seemed to be built out of them. Jeno showed you the beauty in them, despite how heavy they made your heart. They no longer scared you, somebody had taught you there can be love behind all of them.

“I trust you.”

***

You looked in the mirror into the backseat, watching Jaemin and Haneul cuddle into each other subconsciously as they slept. Both of them looked tired that morning: after some noise complaints from Mark and Renjun, you figured why. The latter boy was also in the back seat, squeezed into the corner and fast asleep with a repulsed expression frozen onto his face as Jaemin leaned onto him. His girlfriend was cozily curled onto his chest.

Jeno was driving. An image came into your mind, watching his left hand tighten around the wheel. The memory of the other couple cooing sweet nothings at each other in the front seats caused a mindless chuckle to slip from your lips. You felt Jeno turn to look at you, surprised by your sudden laugh, but you stared out the open window as the aromatic breeze whipped wildly inside your hair. The sun cupped your face with reassuring warmth; it reminded you of the boy besides you.

But you were the one to be surprised when you felt his right hand clasp yours, bringing it up to his mouth to press a lingering kiss to it. His eyes were focused on the road before him, but his smile showed his heart was with you. You entangled your fingers with his instinctively, Jeno placing your conjoined hands on your thigh. You guessed he had been thinking of the same thing as he looked into the back seat through the mirror and chuckled to himself.

But you could only stare at the gesture of love, resting in your lap. After all, holding your hand was the only thing he could worry about as he spoke to you that morning.

You were both taken aback when a husky voice, riddled with disgust, spoke from right behind you.

“Not you two as well!” Renjun whined, discouraged.

***

#nct #nct dream #jeno #lee jeno #jeno fluff #jeno scenario #jeno oneshot #jeno angst #jeno fanfic #nct ff #nct fanfic #nct fluff

158 notes · View notes

spookyspaghettisundae · 3 years

Text

Awaiting the Thirteenth

The warrior looked over his comrades but did not dwell on the sights and sounds and smells for too long. One of them had wet his loincloth, the other smelled of feces. The chorus of their pained groans and cries pierced the empty blue sky.

Removing the serrated arrowheads from their flesh had left them bleeding profusely, and the few minutes left in their lives would soon pass without grace. How unfortunate that they would not make it, one might say.

Cowering behind a tall boulder, the single only uninjured warrior tried to spot where the sharpshooter stood exactly. Deadly rain in form of arrows had hailed upon them from the old tower jutting out of the rocky ravine. And the archer hid. He hid well.

Muttering that he would be back to save them, the warrior ducked between other jagged stones and approached the tower with more caution. His dying comrades protested and begged for help, but he uttered an empty promise of return.

Greed and a selfish drive for survival kept his mind on the prize. And mourn not for those he left behind, for they would have done the same.

Where stone proved too low to guarantee cover from more arrows, the warrior crawled through the dirt and gravel like a worm. It took him underneath stone jutting out over a ditch and allowed him to near his goal with painful slowness. By the time he reached the yellowed sandstone walls of the old tower, he was caked in dust, closely resembling a ghost, far removed from the labored sounds of pain from his dying companions.

He hugged the walls with his back, his dagger drawn. Craning his neck to watch and await a sign from the archer, such as him poking his head out of any of the narrow windows lining the tower’s face, the warrior slowly paced around the tower to find a gate, or portal, or another passageway.

But no form of entrance had shown itself by the time he circled fully around the entire foot of the tower. Confusion marked his face like many brave adventurers before him. How difficult it was for him to imagine a place not built for such a common man.

He sheathed his dagger and began his perilous climb, finding many a hold in the crumbling stonework.

Stifling his own grunts as he took a small eternity to ascend half the tower’s height, he chanced upon a window wide enough for him to clamber inside.

His blade emerged again from his side, gleaming with the bright rays of sunlight pouring in through the open roof. Ready for the vicious archer who had shot down his companions with such ease.

Holding his breath, he could hear no foe within the tower’s premises, only his own racing heartbeat, pumping blood through his ears and making his entire body thrum.

But the archer awaited here, kneeling before the altar in prayer, muttering incomprehensible babble. Surrounded by statues of the agents of Old Ones, shaped in unpleasant ways to display their many wings and spidery limbs and bristly thorns that appeared so alien in this world and its clueless denizens. The archer truly hoped for blessings of the uncaring Old Ones, or for emissaries such as those depicted in the obsidian sculptures to finally arrive by his side, oblivious of what purpose this tower served or how his prayers always landed on deaf ears.

No, the archer was oblivious in every way. Oblivious of the warrior who had scaled the tower like the archer had before him, all driven by their individual quests for riches and fame, quick to slay their fellow man and hardened far beyond remorse.

The warrior stood at the edge of a wide, circular room, lined with mirrors and statues fashioned from obsidian or black crystal. Dark marble so polished and smooth that it reflected all sights in the light that poured in from the wide-open ceiling.

The archer mistakenly believed the warrior and his comrades to be dying outside, succumbing to the wounds struck by the cruel arrows of his own make.

The warrior almost managed to ambush the archer, but a piece of gravel that his fur boots had tracked inside the tower now scraped against the smooth floor and then crunched. The archer stopped muttering his pointless prayers. Having lost the element of surprise, the warrior sprung into motion. So did the archer.

The clash of steel resounded in this holy hall once more. In a flash, the archer had forsaken his bow for a short blade of his own. After three sharp clangs that accompanied blade striking blade, the two paced and circled around each other like scorpions, stepping sideways continuously and waiting for the right opportunity to sting with the deadly weapons in their hands.

Both had ended countless lives in their greed-fueled adventures, so callous were they. No sign of flinching, no hint of retreat. Two men locked in combat and ready to end one another’s life.

Not even their precious prize distracted them now. Before completing a full circle, the warrior lunged at the archer. Blades clanged again, deflecting swing after stab after swing. The archer retaliated with a deft counterattack and stopped, dead in his tracks.

Blood trickled down the blade from his armpit, running down the hand of the warrior who had come to take his prize from him. The archer’s knees buckled before his fate could truly sink fully into his consciousness, but the warrior kicked him away from himself. Driven by survival instinct and fury, he pounced on the archer and delivered more stabs to end his life with certainty.

Chest heaving, breathing heavily, the warrior slowly rose from the body of his defeated foe, the enemy’s blood still dripping from his dagger. Slowly, he wondered if he had not rather kept the archer alive and drawn his demise out longer, inflicting worse upon him than an undeservedly swift death. Why is it that mankind obsesses with revenge that eclipses the deeds preceding it?

Long must he have stood there, catching his breath, fully absorbing the dizzying exhilaration of surviving his deadly combat. That was when the greed returned.

As it always did.

Drinking in the details of this chamber, his mind caught a glimpse of clarity. A brief reprieve. While the purpose of this tower eluded him far better than his opponent’s flesh had failed to evade his blade, the warrior now began to fathom some of the circumstances surrounding his slain foe.

The archer’s meager belongings rested in a corner, wrapped in ragged cloth and hides. These items bore only few clues to his sleeping and eating habits, suggesting the life of a monk who rarely ventured outside the tower to hunt and feast upon raw flesh, and retreat to this chamber to pray and sleep. But to what he prayed, only the eerie statues and indecipherable runes knew, for he had no scrolls nor scriptures hidden in his satchel.

Finally, the warrior’s eyes came to rest on the prize. On the far side of the wall stood a stone portal—gateway only in design—an arch of smooth black rock that led into a solid wall. Before this portal stood the altar, flanked by the eldritch statues.

And upon that altar rested the prize.

In a giant orb, shiny and of unmeasurable value, he saw himself reflected. Unlike the mirroring marble floors—now covered in a growing pool of blood—his own image was distorted and warped.

Droplets of blood had splattered during the deadly struggle and landed upon the orb. This was the prize. Instead of running down its glassy round sides in creeping rivulets, the drops of blood just clung there. And then they vanished, sucked into the obsidian void of the orb, defying everything the warrior believed to know of his world.

He stifled a shout of surprise and strained his eyes to study it, eager to unravel the mystery of what he had just witnessed.

But in studying that perfectly spherical shape, he only perceived his own features staring back at him from the fist-sized gem. He gasped when his reflection blinked, unlike himself.

He stepped closer, bewildered, and fascinated. His eyes sparkled with daylight, blinded by his greed, and enthralled by the greater secrets this orb may hold. Emptying his soul to make sufficient room for his newfound treasure to occupy.

Like those before him, he needed to have it. To call it his own. Any concern for his fallen comrades lost long behind him, his eyes focused on the crystal, seeking for other alien movements that betrayed its otherworldly nature.

His own reflection blurred and dissolved, making way to other places.

In there, he saw other worlds. He saw himself, as a grandiose king garbed in lavish garments of silk and bejeweled finery. In there, he saw himself enthroned at the center of attention, experiencing the wildest of earthly delights. Sweat beaded on his brow as he watched unspeakable pleasures play out, visions of things that lurked in the darkest recesses of his mind, screaming for release. His body tingled with want.

The stone portal that was no portal opened, its marble gates swinging wide, allowing a powerful light to flood out from it. The warrior shielded his eyes and held his blade out before him while a small legion of men and women swarmed out from his gate.

Each one of them more beautiful and ravishing than the last, they encircled him. They danced and pranced. They twirled and pirouetted and giggled, and their movements soon signaled approach. Not in any menacing way, but crawling towards him in begging, bowing, kneeling, displaying fealty to the warrior. Disarming the warrior, using neither word nor weapon, they soon sheathed the bloodstained dagger by his side where it belonged.

Many hands explored every inch of his body, eliciting pleasured shudders. Other figures got so close that he could feel sweet breath upon his skin while their lascivious forms nestled up against his own.

What began as a haze, drunken with lust, soon saw the warrior slipping into a delirium.

When he came to his senses again, bathed in blood and sweat, he found himself alone in the circular chamber. Alone with the orb.

Startled awake, he checked himself for injuries, but discovered nothing but the scratches and bruises he had suffered from invading the tower; unharmed by both the archer and the slew of strangers who had briefly abducted him into a world of previously unknown satisfaction.

Feet and hands and limbs had spread and smeared the pool of the archer’s blood everywhere. There was little trace of the dead man’s body in sight, save for hints of his flesh and bone having been torn asunder, devoured whole, and any remains being discarded through the chamber’s narrow windows.

The warrior’s chest and hands and legs were all slick with bodily fluids and he stumbled back onto his feet, once more taken by the orb’s allure.

At first, as it always did, he saw only his own reflection. His empty eyes, hollow and glinting with new sparks of greed, mingling with lust and deeper depravity. A mess, his hair matted down with blood and sweat, and fluids staining his stubble-framed face.

How much time had passed? He had no inkling.

Seeing new motions within the orb cut that thought short of finding an answer. Once more, his reflection melted away like a fog being pierced by a ship sailing through its mists. And upon that vessel, he sailed, as a captain, accompanied by a brave crew to new horizons and ever-greater fame, singing his praises and seeking merriment in adventure and the carousing bound to follow.

Enraptured with these visions, he could not tell that the portal beyond the altar never opened, even if his senses lied to him and told him otherwise. Whenever the gates parted for him, he traveled to other worlds, yet never leaving this chamber.

In his mind remained a sliver of sanity, the single only ledge he could hold onto any longer to ground him in this reality. But his hands slipped from it with ever-growing ease, unable to clutch onto the cautionary thoughts that may have saved him from his doom.

That sliver in his mind realized he could not leave. But as simple as the power of this place, and that orb—as effective it was in keeping foolish men bound to it. To do what was needed of them, to await the next here.

For we had seen that look before. Through mirrors, we see from our world into thine. And long have we watched, many times have we seen that exact same expression. We can watch as the thoughts form behind his wrinkling forehead, then die little deaths in his delusions as he feasts upon the illusions that our orb feeds his feeble mind. We can read how he comes to terms with having taken too long to rescue his faithful companions. How easily he rationalizes his deeds and abandons all other regret that ever haunted him.

And as he gazes upon that black orb, it peers back into his feeble little soul, scraping its darkest corners for his deepest desires. His face speaks volumes that we could fill, were we only interested in your petty tales: he wonders if what he experienced is real or not. He had a taste, staggering sensations that cannot be undone—and he will not let go again. He will drink in these experiences that he thirsts for.

And in his eyes, we still glimpse that same glimmer of doubt, that shred of skepticism. We can watch it wane, like a candle shedding its final light before time and a tiny flame snuffs out with the last of its molten wax. If only he knew what was good for him, he would turn in flight. Alas, this warrior is strong in body, but he is not wise. He had that taste of things he could never have otherwise, awakening a burning desire, a great thirst that can never be quenched.

If only he knew better, he would realize that none of it was ever real. That his thirst will only ever grow greater, binding him ever deeper to this orb. Always only learning just enough to realize that there is a prize to be won, but never enough to fully grasp that this is a prize he can never attain, because the prize is not meant for him. Alas, he can dream, but his dreams will never be real.

Watching his plight might offer brief amusement, distracting us from our own yearning for release.

Unlike him, our return is no dream. It is inevitable.

Just one more soul to perish here is all it takes. One more brave adventurer to venture into this forsaken tower and take this valiant warrior’s life by way of steel. Then, finally, after centuries of awaiting in this disgraceful banishment, the pact’s conditions shall be complete. The blood of twelve souls, spilled upon these marble floors, to feed the orb and open the true gate. The way to the world between worlds, through which we may cross.

What he envisions to open, finally shall. No blinding light to flood from it, only a deeper darkness that your kind dreams of in their nightmares. The matter that sleeps, deep between the stars.

Why, human, are your kin so eager to spill the entrails of your own kind? Slay each other as adversaries in face of your insatiable greed? Do you not understand that acting together as one makes you more powerful? In rare moments, your species seems to grasp this insight, but such wisdom appears to be all too fleeting. Your baser instincts and petty distractions are all too swift to overshadow any enlightenment you may glean.

The thirteenth unwitting fool shall arrive soon enough to follow in this adventurer’s footsteps. A chain of twelve dead humans to grant us release. Their blood upon the orb our key. Then we shall return. Then we shall arrive in your world. Wash over it like a flood. Drown it in blood.

Soon, human.

Soon enough.

You can always journey there to see for yourself. Perhaps you can defeat this warrior? Perhaps you can defy the orb’s power?

Is this what you wished to know when you summoned us? Or may we threaten you further with more heraldry of our return?

—Submitted by Wratts

13 notes · View notes

infragalaxia · 7 years

Text

Wisdom and Authority

I am terribly sorry for the delay in my Fictober schedule. My pain levels went through the roof these last two days, so I could only dictate, and my terrible English pronounciation riddled the result with mistakes I was too exhausted to fix up until now. But now I’ve recovered a bit, so have my answer to prompt #4. I’m not entirely pleased with it, but oh well.

The hall was a place of wisdom and authority.

Or so they said. Teivo wasn't sure how a building was supposed to have either of those qualities. Maybe it was because he was an uneducated asshole who gave no two coppers about the subtleties of architecture, but to him, stone was just stone. You could decorate it with reliefs and paintings and whatnot all you liked, but you could not liken it to human nature. The world didn't work that way. But rich folks never seemed to understand that. Maybe their gold got to their heads and suffocated their brains, who knew. It didn't seem so unlikely, all things considered.

»Stupid priests with their stupid babbling.« He crinkled his nose in disgust and kicked the base of a nearby statue. The marble likeness of what he thought was the founder of the convent didn't seem all that impressed by him, but that feeling was mutual, so they had at least some common ground. Which was more than could be said about him and the priests.

He still asked himself why in all storm's names he had thought joining their little convent was a good idea. Sure, he wanted to learn how he could best serve his lady Umberlee, but he could have done that somewhere else, right? In a nice big city maybe, or aboard a vessel, high on the open sea. Gods, how he missed the sea! It had done him no good, but it was where he belonged. But ever since he had gotten here, the priests had not let him go down to the shore, because he was »too unstable« and »not ready to face Her again«. Nonsense! He had faced her all his life, first from afar and then up close and personal beneath the waves. To say he was not brave enough to do it again was a personal insult, and he took very badly to those. Those stupid priests didn't know him, just as his father hadn't known him, and see where it had gotten that asshole. Maybe he should just repeat history; force their heads underwater until their breath expired and the light in their eyes went out, then break their bones and hand them over to the sea, a gift to the lady. It would free himself from chains, from misery, from this bond and the world and -

And humanity. He breathed in deeply, unclenching the fingers that had involuntarily curled into fists. No. They were right. He wasn't ready. Not when his first instinct still was violence. What he had done to Father had taken a part out of him, and he still hadn't gotten it back. And for all the comforting whispers at night, the siren songs and promises, he knew that he couldn't face his lady with a shattered soul without losing himself completely. He had to be patient.

Bad thing all patience had left him on the day he came home and … Memories flashed before his eyes, rapid-fire, history crawling up from the depths he had banished it to. Jyri, half-dead, a pile of broken bones and torn skin. Lumi at his side, clutching a hand covered in grey scales like a dead fish. Mother bleeding out in the corner, seaglass eyes pleading him to not go.

And Levi, beautiful Levi, golden locks bloodstained while he hung impaled on the mast, blue eyes staring into the void, unseeing.

Teivo felt anger and pain and grief boil up in him again, red and hot and terrible, an all too familiar feeling. He gnashed his teeth in frustration. Four months. Four months he had spent in prayer, in meditation, trying to exorcise the demons from his mind, but they were still there, right behind his brow, gnawing at his thoughts until he felt like going mad. How was he supposed to get rid of them when not even his lady couldn't drive them off? Would he ever be good enough to leave this stormforsaken convent, or was he doomed to live here forever, sealed away like a dangerous beast, never to see the ocean ever again?

»Halls of wisdom and authority, pah. Fuck this place!« He kicked the statue again, hard enough to make it quiver. The impact sent white-hot pain through his toes, but he didn't care. He gripped the anchor pendant around his neck until his knuckles turned white, a faint afterimage of Levi's radiant smile still etched into his mind's eye, and felt for the tempest inside of himself, that terrible power that he hadn't dared touch ever since Father's death and that had never stopped haunting him afterwards. He had rejected them, feared them, these gales within him, these churning black waters and lightning strikes and thunderclouds as dark as Mother's bruises. But Levi had seen them, on that last night spent together before the ocean claimed them both, had seen them and accepted them without flinching and still said he loved him even though he had stared the beast right in the face. So why couldn't he accept the gift She had given him? Why did he fear Her so much when it was She who had brought him back from the depths, who had given him a second chance? Why did he reject his destiny? He took a deep breath, roaring sea calming for just a moment. Then he let it all out, the tempest, the waves, the grief and anger and frustration and crippling guilt crashing out of him like a giant wave. Thunder cracked through the hall, echoing loudly from the walls and all those beautiful reliefs, so loud that all he could hear was a high-pitched ringing in his ears. The force of it knocked books out of their shelves, rattled the statues and chandeliers and high windows in their gilded frames. The doors to the hall were thrown violently open, no match to the raw energy lashing out from him like a whip.

Teivo sunk to his knees, suddenly exhausted. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard Levi laugh, laugh with such abandon that he couldn't help but smile despite his pain. Let's go to the city and smash the upper class. Build a whole new life for ourselves from the ruins. What do you say? A voice like honey, like sunshine distilled, intoxicating beyond measure. A boyish grin, eyes sparkling with mirth, and a kiss that tasted like the sea. A healing draught for him to drink of, chasing the demons away.

Teivo felt tears running down his cheeks, but he didn't mind for once. He had gotten him back. He had finally gotten him back.

Maybe this hall of wisdom and authority wasn't that useless, after all.

#this was weirdly cathartic to write #fictober #my writing #teivo stormblessed

5 notes · View notes

waldos-writing · 7 years

Text

The Dig Initiative: Chapter 11

Father Barkley

Alright, it was stupid. It was stupid and fun and it was so much fun but it was stupid. It was. He admitted that. Didn’t mean he was not going to spoon her in that cramped twin bed. Because that’s what a gentleman does after like, shit, what? Hours and hours of practice. Right? I mean, people still counted sex in rounds, in turns. One-Love. Five-six. Whatever. He hadn’t done anything since…but it still counted. Holy balls the girl was a demon and he enjoyed her tricks.

He was buried in her long black hair and he didn’t even mind it. She was texting with his phone, furious little words spit out from her thumbs. She had a fire bug up her butt about this whole tower thing and he liked her energy. It felt good. It just felt nice and he hated that he liked it and he hated that he thought about it too much. He always did. If anything, it didn’t really matter, in the scheme of things.

“Wanna know why?” she used to say.

“Why?” he’d croon back at her, face in her red hair, intoxicated on perfume and gin.

“You’re a speck,” she used to say and he’d nod and tell her to go on. “You’re a speck in a sea of people on a spinning marble in a giant solar system in a clusterfuck of stars you or I or the guy next door couldn’t name or imagine in its completion, in a void that doesn’t even reach our own eyeballs at night and you think if I stepped out into traffic tomorrow that it would change the world?”

“Well,” he’d say, slowly coming out of the fog of hair and sex. “Well, probably change whoever hit you.”

Devon hated when Cherry did that. She liked to ramble and he liked to go with it right up until she started being cavalier about suicide. He tried. He was very good at talking her out of it when she was really messed up. But if she was casual about it, like she was after sex, and she put her head on his chest and occasionally drew words on his stomach with her fingernails, then he’d have to be casual too. He’d try. He’d always try.

“It would raise their rates at least. Might even put them in jail.”

“Yeah. Bet it’d screw with their family too.”

“Bet it would.”

This was a common scene. It was best because he could wind himself around Cherry and she was calm and hot and peaceful. He remembered that this was when they had just purchased the house, the one Devon said he’d build a fence around and fix up the kitchen sometime. Maybe he’d put in new shutters before winter. There was something about the light through those yellowed, filmy windows and that rough beige carpet. It was theirs. They’d earned it begging people to buy her art and his records from his shitty little band and the radio gig in Montpelier, before he moved over to Yellow Yowl Entertainment. It was all theirs and they could walk around naked, eat fruit roll-ups and vodka for breakfast, shower five times a day or once a week and crush neat little lines of oxycodone along the ceramic sink. They could fold origami cranes from grocery receipts and smoke some of the meth they’d stolen from their recently dead neighbor and drink sugary smoothies and cry at Bambi every night. Whatever they wanted. It was theirs.

“Do they do funerals at night?” she asked as she kissed the bright red lines scratched into his chest. Her hair, which was once as red and vibrant as her namesake, had brown roots and split ends. The curls were all frizz, a mess of burnt straw. He brushed it gently out of her eyes. Her bruised, bloodshot eyes that were covered in week-old makeup, smeared with a fresh coat in the morning when he went off to work. She spread it into practiced smoky lines. Her weary beauty made his stomach bubble with delight. “I mean, like, ones under full moons or no moon or whatever.”

“I don’t know,” he answered, feeling that old metal coil of fear corkscrew through his guts. Why was it always funerals?

“You’d think you could, like, really see the soul float up then. I bet if you did one of those barbarian things, those Viking funeral things where you push the body out on the sea and light it on fire. Oh my god, the spark coming off that and the smoke billowing up. Watch it go up to the stars to dance forever. Learn all the names of all the faces looking down on us. ‘Kings of our past.’ Why does that sound familiar? ‘Kings of our past.’ What’s that from?”

“I don’t know, babe. Little Mermaid or something.”

“Something. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder what their faces would look like, don’t you? You know, they’ve been fire for so long; can they even have a face? Do you just, no, listen, do you go up in smoke right away? Or they give you some time to drift around. I want to see them drifting. Blurry faces squirming of everyone below you. Or maybe, maybe, babe, maybe they’re like stone. You think we look like statues to all the ghosts? I’d think springtime would be good. Mist spools up from the ground, like all the ghosts are coming together. Big orgy of spirits, you know? Makes it look like they’re dancing.”

“Right, love,” he said and kissed her over her eyebrow. “Mist in the morning. Speaking of which, I’ve got to be at the station in an hour and you’re up at Sal’s today, right?”

“It’s Wednesday already?”

“Wednesday already,” he answered. “Look, we got a gig at Feuermann’s tonight. You promise me to go to Sal’s, please.”

“Oh, he’s just going to say I need to go back on those pills”

“He will.”

“They make my tummy hurt.”

“I know.” Devon scrubbed her leg, making the pale white skin red and alive. “Also said you gotta take them with food. Go with me to the grocery later, okay? Promise me and I’ll buy you the whole bar if you like.”

“Nah,” she said, reaching for his hand. He gave it to her, just so she could nibble on his thumb. “I like to watch you play with a clear head. Hand me my vest over there. And make some toast? No butter!”

And that’s how it was. Months like that, years even. Where did it all go?

“I don’t know how you got me to agree to this,” whispered Devon, staring down at the giant monkey wrench in his hand. “And where the hell did you even get this?”

“Brother’s a mechanic,” said Declan. He was over a control panel, tapping part of a screen and sucking in his cheeks only to puff them out and do it again. “Hit that.”

“Hit what?” Devon hissed. His heart was hammering so hard he was afraid he was going to choke on it when it exploded. “I don’t want to hit anything. Oh my god, I’ll just hit you. I’ll hit you and I’ll run and they won’t even find me except for the piss trail I leave behind me oh my god, is that an alarm? Holy shit, that’s an alarm. We gotta go. We gotta go, holy shit, that’s an alarm. I’m going to drop this. I’m just going to set this down here—”

“Pause.”

“Did you just—”

Declan swiveled in the chair that was left in front of a large, closet-sized control panel. Little red lights blinked behind him, a panel of orange lit buttons to his left and too many wheels and gears and pipes to his right. The whole thing looked fake. It thrummed like a cheap television set. Declan, with his black hoodie, his long dreadlocks, his patchy beard, looked like a harmless villain. He even tented his fingers in thought.

A moment stretched as something buzzed persistently behind Declan on the vido screen. It was counting down, probably alerting someone far away and Devon was sure they were about to be pounced upon by a fleet of Black Jackets. They were going to bust in and decapitate them with a flick of their wrists.

“You want some water?” Declan asked.

“Water? What the actual literal entire fuck is your issue. Water! Why the f—”

Declan snapped his fingers and reached down into his old duct-tape duffel bag. True to word, he pulled out a water bottle, clear, glittering with the alarm lights. He held it out as an offering and just before Devon took it, he raised his hand. The alarm on the screen stopped. A green light overtook the control panels. Security was shut off and whoever had been alerted was given a short message of “false alarm.”

Devon stood taller, watching the door and the vido screen. His heart was still going, but he sighed, feigned a little satisfaction and relief. He said, “You did it.”

“Yeah. So, water?”

“Sure.”

Devon reached out and again Declan pulled it back. He said, “I gotta be straight.”

“Okay,” said Devon slowly.

“It’s drugged.”

“It’s—”

“Drugged. Yeah. Here.”

“I don’t want it if it’s drugged!” Devon almost slapped the water bottle out of Declan’s hand, but Declan was quick and snapped it back. “What the hell!”

“Anti-anxiety,” said Declan as he stood. He pressed the bottle into Devon’s chest, and tapped him twice on the shoulder. “Mostly. Thought I’d ask this time.”

Devon held onto the bottle. Anti-anxiety, huh? No rhyme or reason to it, but he started to untwist the cap and just as he was about to sniff the water and convince himself whether he was going to drink it or not, the words clicked. “Wait…this time?”

Declan did not have time to defend himself as Alice burst through the thick steel hatch. She had on a black stocking cap, black skintight shirt and pants, sweater, boots, socks, lipstick, eyeshadow, underwear. Whole outfit of “I’ve seen this in movies and I think I can get away with espionage and wreak havoc” that was not nearly practical enough in the cold night air but damn if she didn’t look fine as red wine.

“It worked?” she asked, for some reason breathless.

“Worked,” Declan answered.

“Worked how what worked?” asked Devon. “What’s it doing?”

Devon chucked the drugged bottle of water against the wall. It bounced, the plastic making a soft “pap” sound before the water erupted out of the opening. An arc splashed the floor in an anticlimactic protest of aggression.

“You should have had that,” said Declan.

“‘You should have meh mlah mah,’” said Devon in a nasally mimic.

“He’s having a bad time.”

“Fucking right I am!”

“Dev,” said Alice and touched his arm. He was pulled out of his useless tantrum. “What’s wrong?”

And it was a simple question. It was. She just asked it, casual like that, touched his arm, casual like that. She’d come out of the shadows with her warm buttery skin and dark oily hair from days without shower. She kept it tied behind her small ears, out of her eyes. Kohl eyes, big lovely eyebrows. Mustard Alice. She was so not Cherry, it punched him in the gut.

“Dev?” she asked.

So what did it matter that her band partner was going to drug him or maybe had done it before. The bar, the egg. This was the usual for good old Declan. Alright, so it wasn’t that bad. They were illegally inside a CleanAire tower and basically dismantling it. Devon tried another big breath to see if it calmed his heartbeat. It didn’t, but he pretended that it did.

“Nothing,” he said at last. He tried to sound convincing. He was good, you know, because he was in radio. “What’re we doing?”

“Fucking shit up,” said Alice, her cheeks dimpled, her eyes sparkling in the low green light of the control panels. “Ready?”

Devon eyed the kid and the bottle on the floor. What did he say? He said he was going to stick to Declan’s side. He was going to follow Alice because he was head-over-heals for her. Devon felt old and stupid, but he wiped one hand on his pant leg and then the other so he had a good grip on the wrench.

“Born for it, baby,” he said, and lifted the wrench high over his head.

Devon wanted to say more. He used to have such a way with words, he did, and he knew there was a lot of terribleness coming that he wanted to speak to. Instead, he hoisted his weapon up high and brought it down on the electrical equipment like he was smiting Sin. Sparks shot up. There was a jolt along his forearms, maybe a literal shock mixed with the reverb. Alice shrieked some fantastic battle cry and knocked a big rubber mallet into a panel next to her. Declan wheeled out of the area, watching calm and cool from the back. He had a toolbox with him and he whistled as he went up the stairs to the filtration center, returning later with grease stains and a new metal pipe. Devon picked up his wrench to ruin the next piece of equipment.

It was stupid. It was stupid and fun and painful, but it was stupid. It was. Of course he admitted that. Devon whooped victory as Mustard Alice kicked her big boot through the projection panel for the vido screen. They might be caught and they might not. When she smiled a big wild grin over at him, Devon breathed. It was stupid. He was in love again.

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

#The Dig Initiative #Against the Gray #novel #prose #writing #tumble authors #self publishing

0 notes