#was kinda just messing around with this bc i rly liked the prompts aklsjfd but it was rly fun hhhnngh hopefully someone appreciates me

[infinites-chaser]

2/5/21

NEON

1. Teenage bedroom (late night)

2. Lord

3. Planetarium

4. Basketball court

5. Malevolence

prompts by @nosebleedclub can be found here!

i. it’s cold and dark— the new moon and cloudy skies mean only the artificial glow of streetlights filters in, soft and subdued, through the hazy fabric of his curtains. 1:30, reads the clock. he closes his eyes. opens them when dreams won’t come.

it’s often that teenagers like him are lost, this time of night, it’s often that sleep can’t find him.

ii. he doesn’t believe in god, he never has, not since his father first laid his eyes on him, laid hands on his mother, took away his little brother. when he looks to the whorls of stars glued clumsy and hasty to his bedroom ceiling, when he closes his eyes at night, he does not pray to any lord. he worships her smile. 

iii. there’s a galaxy swirling in the depths of her clear gaze, constellations that could be drawn in the scattering of freckles across her cheeks that only darken come summer. she dimples. stars collide, stars reform. it’s astronomy planetariums and textbooks could never hope to teach, astronomy only poets and lovers know.

(he’s pulled into her orbit, the weight of his heart nothing against her gravity. her force. his heartbeat accelerates. but he doesn’t fall, he flies.)

iv. physics class blurs past him. most of his classes do. but when the teacher’s droning voice turns to talk of the stars above, the way the planets move, he listens. it makes sense, somehow, though little else in school does. he thinks of it often. of laws of motion. of forces and attraction.

an object in motion will stay in motion, the teacher says.

she moves him. his heart’s restless. it stays restless, no matter what he does.

he drums his fingers on his desk in time with his racing heart, doesn’t stop even when the bully in the seat in front twists around to glare. he ignores the boy, lets his eyes instead follow her across the classroom.

basketball helps, keeps his motion focused, lets it flow. he dribbles the ball. thinks about the ball’s bounce, its steady spring back up after every fall. thinks about how she says she liked the other team’s dunk, the way the last player had looked when he’d scored.

he jumps. he shoots. he scores. he makes sure it’s when she’s watching, he’s rewarded with her bright congratulations! and her grin, a small cosmic wonder.

it feels like flying. like defying gravity.

(when she faints during p.e. he’s by her side. she gives him a band-aid, after, cheeks flushed, dimples showing.

for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, he thinks, and puts the bandage on with an answering smile.)

v. there’s his father’s anger, vicious swirling storm of violence that leaves him broken breathless beaten, curled into a corner wishing for gentle winds and the summer stars. his father’s anger and the cold winter that follows, eyes that look past him, that look through him, murmur you failure, you, that put icy fingers of frost deep into even the warmest corners of his heart. there’s the bullies who corner him atop the roof, knives in hand, telling him to jump, telling him his destiny was always to fall.

he survives the bullies. weathers his father. but when it’s her standing in front of him, his fist curled in a boy’s shirt, her starbright eyes dim with horror, it dawns on him. there are some falls that were always meant to happen. there are some orbits he can’t escape from (this one’s a hole opened up in the pit of his stomach, dark and wide, his snarl reflected in her eyes an inescapable force that pulls him apart, pulls him under). this is his event horizon.

PASTEL

1. Teenage bedroom (soft morning)

2. Dwarf rabbit

3. Seaside memory

4. Embrace

5. Peach juice

v. she likes the juice normally. it’s sweet and light and refreshing, a nectar of the gods, bottled in it is a hundred laughs and smiles, the taste of summers gone by. today, the drink sits heavy on her tongue, choking, cloying artificial sugar that makes her stomach turn.

what’s wrong, her friend asks. it tastes like missed opportunities, she thinks but does not say, it tastes like what-could-have-been turned sour, then sugared over again, far too sweet, it tastes like regret. it tastes like a bloodstained letter from a desperate boy left unopened, like a desperate boy left standing in an empty parking lot, his heart in his hands a star, waiting to fall.

she says, it’s nothing, smiles, and tries not to wince when she sips at her straw again. 

iv. they don’t ever hug in their teenage years. they could barely manage the brush of fingers without the hint of a blush. when they meet again, it’s different. gravity, attraction, all the laws of physics bend his path back to her.

he falls back into her orbit like breathing, an inhale, an exhale, and he’s weightless, he’s flying again.

she saves him. he saves her.

when she’s in his arms, he wonders if she sees stars in his eyes, wonders if she thinks there’s a gentle supernova within his every smile. little does he know, she’s wondering the same things, too.

for every action, he nearly remembers, slow and distant, a memory from light-years away, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

iii. once there was an ocean between him and her, waves of years-old misunderstandings come crashing down through time to separate them. tides rise. tides overflow. there is truth to be had on both sides, she thinks, in the flood of feelings that follows. there is a peace to be found when the tide goes out again, an understanding when they stand beside each other, hand-in-hand, back to the storm-swept past, looking to the starlit seashore of their future.

call it what you will. call it love.

ii. she curls against him, her head on his chest, hair fanned out in ripples of starless sky. they’re universe enough, two celestial things settled into comfortable orbit: some nights she circles him, some nights it’s her. his moon. her jupiter. he’s mapped an infinite number of constellations from her dimples down the small of her back and lower. she’s traced comets and meteors across the scars on his torso, discovered nebulas high on his cheekbones, made them burn bright red under her touch.

still, they turn their eyes skyward, to galaxies beyond. a world within their arms, a world without.he points out the constellations, draws out the shape of their mythological namesakes with one outstretched hand. over here, a legendary hunter, he says. there, a lyre.

here, a goddess, he says, and his eyes are on hers. she blushes. in the flush of her cheeks, he imagines new stars are born. (fusion, fission. love as something stronger than a nuclear reaction.)

tell me about the different types of stars, she says instead of a reply. he nods, pulls her closer, recites facts slow and soft he learned for her years ago: dwarfs, giants, all their different colors. she giggles at dwarf; she always does, asks if she’s a dwarf, a dwarf bunny. he laughs, pokes her nose, says, weren’t you listening, that’s not a kind of star—

his voice gentles to silence. she cranes her neck to look up at the stars in his bright eyes, the planets, the worlds.

maybe we’re binary stars, he says at last. you and i.

i. it’s warm and bright— rays of dawn drift light and dreamy through her open window painting long panes of her rumpled blankets the gold of the morning’s sunshine. he murmurs words, soft, loving, unintelligible, against the crown of her head. she smiles an i love you and a good morning into his chest, presses a kiss to his heart, and snuggles closer. his hand finds hers beneath shared sheets. their fingers tangle. they take their waking slow, their hearts beating as one, a secret language, a morse code of lovers, spelling out the words you are found. you are home. 

#val writes #mlqc #but also not #i based this off of characters and i think the fandom can easily guess which but also i'd like to think it stands on its own #was kinda just messing around with this bc i rly liked the prompts aklsjfd but it was rly fun hhhnngh hopefully someone appreciates me #trying to wax poetic #nosebleed club