From The Bottom

[kais]

Title: From The Bottom
Pairing: Kai/Kyungsoo
Genre: angst, romance
Length: 2k
Rating: nc-17
Warnings:[Spoiler (click to open)]
mentions of drug use, mentions of sex

Summary: From the bottom of my heart.
Based on Tablo's From The Bottom


Dear Kyungsoo;

We met during junior year, right? You walked in right before I was about to pop more pills in the empty dance studio. You asked me what I was doing and I told you they were aspirin, that my waist hurt, and you didn't think anything else of it.

I'm so sorry you had to see that.

You sat with me then watched me dance, told me it was the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, then when we were getting up to leave I pushed you against the mirror, rested our foreheads together, and you met me halfway in a kiss that opened Pandora's box.

I'm so sorry you had to meet me when I was at my lowest point, just a regular rock in the midst of diamonds.

You were the brightest. You still are.

Dear Kyungsoo;

I'm so sorry you fell in love with me.

I'm even more sorry that after our second kiss, when I kissed you by the gate to your house, I was too addicted to let you go.

Not only was I the black stain on a pristine shirt, but I was the weight around your ankles, dragging you down into a hole that neither of us knew what was at the bottom. I was the flaw in the plan, the jagged edge to your straight lines; we complemented each other and it was simultaneously the best and worst thing in the world.

Dear Kyungsoo;

I'm so sorry you fell in love with me and followed me wherever I went.

I knew I should have let go of you and let myself sink even further down (is there anywhere past bedrock?) but I just couldn't. My fingers were melded into your skin and I would have bled to death if you swam to the surface.

I knew your parents were mad when they learned that you dropped out of school to be with me. They knew I was a lowlife and so did I; that you had a bright future and I was the one ripping up your plans and goals and letting it crumble to the ground while you were the one left with paper cuts.

I remember when you came out of your house with red cheeks and I told you I would kill your father if he ever laid a hand on you again, and you told me not to worry about it because it wouldn't happen again.

I remember cradling your face as gently as I possibly could and kissing you until our lungs burned, until our vision was swimming but I knew I could drown in your eyes the same way you could in mine.

Dear Kyungsoo;

You shouldn't have moved in with me.

That's the day that I knew I really wouldn't be able to let you go. We were sweaty and tired but you still kissed me with all the energy in the world and we christened the bedroom with only a mattress in it with our bodies, with your moans, with your cries for more and we loved every minute of it.

I loved every minute of you.

We were seventeen years old and high school dropouts.

I shouldn't have let you move in with me; into my heart.

I'm so sorry.

Dear Kyungsoo;

Every time I reached out to you, it was with empty hands, and it made my heart ache.

You had no choice but to accept them with equally barren hands.

Dear Kyungsoo;

I wished I could have taken your tears away and carried the burden on your heart.

I knew I wasn't the best person, that I wasn't the cleanest, but all I ever tried to do was love you. You loved me too, but all the affection in the world can't put the air back into my lungs that I had lost so many years ago.

I didn't love you so that you could fix me, though.

I loved you because I wanted to be your umbrella.

And I'm so sorry that I was also your rain.

Dear Kyungsoo;

I wondered if you could ever forgive me for dragging you to the bottom with me. If you could forgive these white walls that trapped you or the darkness that blinded. Maybe you could forgive the mirror that showed you something you never thought you would become two years before.

I knew I never could.

Life wasn't easy for the two of us, and I remember hearing your sobs at night, muffled into a pillow that was dirty because we didn't have the money for laundry detergent.

I wondered why you couldn't have met me the year before when the only thing that I put into my body was food and water. Or maybe you could have met me later, when I was past being a goddamn dance instructor and I had done something with my life.

But then I ruined the both of us.

I'm so sorry I couldn't build monuments from our rubble.

Dear Kyungsoo;

Sometimes I wondered if in another life, I would find you sitting under a tree in the park, the sunlight threading through your thin hair, and a book in your hand because I knew you always adored Ernest Hemingway compilations.

I only adored you, and I knew I would at any other time, too.

I'm so sorry I couldn't write poems about the way your jaw curved so beautifully under your chin, or the bow of your ribs, or the the swell of your lips in their pretty shade of red.

I was never good with words, but I made sure to tell you I loved you.

You weren't sitting in the sun but under the bruise of a cloud over my head that I passed to you.

I'm so sorry for being the disease that everyone wanted to find a cure for. For being the reason your nose ran or the tickle in your throat.

I'm so sorry I couldn't be your medicine instead.

Dear Kyungsoo;

You were my better half but I wasn't yours.

I'm so sorry.

Dear Kyungsoo;

I wouldn't have blamed you if you left, but you didn't. You grabbed my aching muscles when I would come home and you would knead the fatigue away with your own battered hands. You would kiss strength into me.

I'm so sorry for draining it from you.

I tried to take more than that; I tried to grab your tears also but you were at least that bit selfish and you kept them for nights when we couldn't eat and I slept on the couch.

I would take the entire ocean in my arms if it meant you wouldn't cry, but then I would have no room for you.

I'm so sorry I couldn't thumb away the tears like you did for me when quitting was too much to bear, when everything was too much to bear.

I would carry your weight on my back, though, if it meant you would stay with me. If it meant that you would love me for one more night then I would let my spine break, let it rip through my skin if I could endure half the pain that you did.

You were so sorry that you couldn't put me back together again.

I'm so sorry that you thought it was your responsibility.

Dear Kyungsoo;

You let my frozen arms become your clock and you saw the world through my eyes. You let me guide you when you really shouldn't have, and you knew that, but you let the hands of faith close your lids and I made sure to kiss them both before taking your trembling hand in mine.

Your fingers fit perfectly in the space between mine and we held on tightly.

I'm not sorry that I never let you go. That I never could and that I never will.

Dear Kyungsoo;

I felt like I distorted you, made you bend like a contortionist when you were barely flexible. I saw the way your bones protruded and the awkward position of your limbs and I felt sick.

I'm so sorry I almost let you snap.

You didn't want this life, you only tested the waters, a toe dipped into exhilaration but I made you, forced you to jump. The waters covered your face the same way it did mine, it sunk into your skin and paled and wrinkled the flesh the way I knew it would.

I'm so sorry I couldn't be your lifejacket.

Dear Kyungsoo;

Life is supposed to grow in nutrient soil and I had come to find I was red clay.

Dear Kyungsoo;

My apologies clogged the drains of our showers and sinks and you plugged your ears to stop them from pouring out.

I would fix the pipes one day, though.

I wanted to give you a new home, one that didn't have the low ceilings that I knew you despise so much.

One that didn’t have the ceilings that oppressed us, flattened us like flower petals in between the pages of a book.

One day I promised to give you the highest ceilings in the world, and you wouldn’t have clay at your feet but dirt that moved freely between your toes.

I wanted you to plant your roots in a place that you wouldn't die, because there was no me without you, and I didn't have a death wish, but I was slowly killing us both.

I'm so sorry you couldn't grow in me like the way I bloomed in you.

Dear Kyungsoo;

If my entire life was a lie then I would have known the truth was that I loved you with my entire being.

Dear Kyungsoo;

I wanted us to wake up to a new day after years of not seeing dawn. I wanted us to look at the twilight through hazy eyes and kiss each other because we could finally see clearly. I wanted to find your hand by the clear light of day and wrap us in the warmth of solitude.

I'm sorry that I couldn't be your night light in the darkness.

You were my happiness.

I'm so sorry I couldn't be of the same comfort.

But I would try.

Dear Kyungsoo;

I couldn't soak up your tears with my heart so I grabbed a sponge. I deflected it onto myself and you scolded me, told me it wasn't my fault, but it really was.

I'm so sorry you fell in love with me.

Dear Kyungsoo;

One day I hoped to be the muse of your poems.

You told me I already was but I didn't believe you.

You smiled even though your eyes were swollen and I kissed you like I hadn't in months.

I was really trying.

I told you that, and I could tell you only thought it was depthless words, syllables I thought to voice last minute but around you I chose my words carefully, crafted and sanded them because you deserved only the finest.

I told you that if life can't grow in clay then I would pick myself up and build a statue of the world and hand it to you, put it in your palms the same way you held my cheeks, and let you mold it how you wanted it.

I knew I dragged you down with me to hit rock bottom, and maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I could carve stone.

But I tried from the bottom of my heart for you.

Dear Kyungsoo;

I will shed the skin of the past from us both with my own hands and we will make it, I promise. I will grab a knife and carve my love for you into the stone below us. I will buy a bag of fertilizer if it makes me a better person for you.

You don’t know this yet, but I passed the audition today.

You don’t know this yet, but I got a raise.

You don’t know this yet, but I promised to try my hardest, to try with empty hands but I managed to take opportunity from thin air.

I’m so sorry it took this long.

I’m so sorry I might cut myself because I’ve never used a knife before, but I’ll try not to let you get hurt by it.

I’ll try to be your favorite poem.

I’ll try to be the reason your beautiful face lifts into a smile that never fails to steal my heart.

I’ll try to be the air in your lungs that you gasp in after I’ve kissed it from you.

I’ll try.