13 Flown ( 1/2 )
Title: 13 Flown
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): f(x) Amber centric + Amber/Krystal; side Baekhyun/Taeyeon
Warnings: language, alcohol, sexual content, mentions of Amber/OC and Krystal/Eric Nam
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, written just for fun.
Summary: "Let me just say it's a bad idea, my friend. It'll wreck you if you have a summer fling and fall for her along the way..."
A/N: Originally posted at the u unnideul 2015 exchange for bluedreaming, thank you for the awesome prompts! The text dividers are direct quotes taken from two poems; the purple lines are from Ernest Christopher Dowson’s “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae”, and the blue lines are from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The City in the Sea”. Thanks bunches and bunches to my beta chuyeol for helping me out on this fic ! ( all mistakes are mine ) Also thanks to hailynx for the quote about saying "apology accepted instead of it's okay", you always challenge me to think deeper <3
November
She sits up in the dark. The moon is hiding behind the wisps of storm clouds and the smoky stirrings of organza curtains at the open window. The closed over wound on her heel aches with the kiss of moisture in the dank air. Amber winces, pressing her thumb into the scalloped teeth marks left by the broken shells that had bit into her callous.
She should have put more antiseptic on it like Taeyeon said to, and changed the bandaid when it got dirty. Amber forgets to keep up with little things like that these days. She should probably check on the 2% in her fridge, speaking of. It's probably gone sour.
She reaches for her lighter on the nightstand instead of for the switch on the desk lamp. Her fingers brush against the broken picture frame that refuses to stand upright now. Amber could always ask Baekhyun to fix it for her. He could probably make it work though she wouldn't be surprised if he stuck used chewing gum to the back of the frame.
She doesn't feel like asking though, so she'll just take out the polaroid and clip it to her sagging washline in the morning. Or whenever it is that she drags herself out of bed tomorrow.
Her phone lights up in the dark, distracting her from her anxious hunt in the dark for a cigarette.
you awake babe? thinking abt u
"Fuck off, Alejandro." Her breath slips through her lips like stale smoke. Her cough is dry in her throat and wet against her palm. She deletes the text with shaking fingers. Tonight is not the night to give into her loneliness, assuage it like a craving for cheap cigarettes.
She falls face forward into her pillow, the brittle tips of her bleached bangs grazing the sour linen before her lips sink into the down. She drifts off with champagne glass laughter clinking in her ears and the rosy bouquet of hair falling across silken shoulders drifting in the stillness.
No rays from the holy heaven come down / On the long night-time of that town;
August
It's the end of summer and the sun outside burns brighter than the flicker of the lights overhead. Amber's back is drenched in sweat. The plaster of her shirt against her spine stings under the AC blast. Her forehead burns behind the curtain of salt stiff bangs and she clutches her purchases tight to chest. Reese's cups and cherry cough syrup that glows like pomegranate juice drunk from champagne flutes but will burn like artificial sweetener on the back of her tongue.
Good thing she can't taste today, olfactory senses obliterated by congestion that is blocking up her mind as well.
Amber hates being sick. It physically sucks for one thing, but more than that. When her head is floating a few feet above her neck like a fever fueled hot air balloon, that's when the other part of her psyche takes over, the part she doesn't trust. The part that feels things.
Aisle end cap with floppy pool noodles. Mustard coated pretzel bites on sale for $3.99. Room temperature coke bottles imprisoned in green plastic crates waiting to be stocked once the fridge case empties. Disposable film. Cough drops.
She wanders the store in freeze frames, flickers of dying light bulbs chopping her vision into disjointed segments that don't make sense even in context. Who the hell decides what to stock in a drugstore, anyway? And why don't they sell cherry vodka. Smirnoff Ice might do her more good than the poison flavored drugs in plastic bottle under her arm.
Taeyeon will glare at her though, angry puppy eyes and an exaggerated pout looming closer until she shoves Amber's back up against the fridge if she dares come home without the medicine.
You promised. If not with your lips, then with your eyes and the toss of your braided hair that gleamed like forever as it fell through my fingers...
Amber shakes her head, not hard, because even the slightest jarring movement sends a sharper jab of pain down her spine reverberating from the dull throb caught between her temples. She's only half awake, drugged into permanent drowsiness with a gulp of warm water from her nightstand glass before she even climbed out of bed in the morning. Now is not the time to be writing poems when her hands are full and she doesn't even have a pen and her phone is dead at the bottom of her handbag in the car.
Shit. Amber shakes her head, hard this time, and whimpers at the pain. Her brain feels like Jello that didn't set right, still runny and warm, left out on the counter. She clutches the candy package a bit tighter to her chest before dumping it and the cold medicine bottle in an aisle bin of stuffed animals.
Taeyeon won't glare at her when she drags herself back to the motel lobby empty handed and mumbles to the shelves of the mini fridge that she forgot her wallet. She'll just bounce on the seat of the rolling chair behind the desk til her pencil skirt slides higher up her bare legs and her curled bangs flop into her eyes, accentuating the cuteness of her pout.
Amber pauses in front of the sliding doors, feeling the AC curl out into the heat like the life force draining from her own limbs with every cough. She wishes she was brave enough to waltz out the doors with the candy slipped under her muscle shirt. She really wants to take the peanut butter cups home. They were Krystal's favorite.
The heat swallows her, humid lips and tongue, sunlight rays needling her bare arms like kitten teeth as she limps back to her car. The equal reaction to the force burning her up from the inside. The fever burns more fiercely than the feelings sunken deep in her heart like a brand. The black upholstery inside her car feels like an oven.
Amber, watch! Watch me!
Amber groans, knocks her forehead into the steering wheel until she can feel a bruise blooming between her eyes, another layer of pain to the sinus pressure behind her eyes. That flaming hair and rough laugh, the sound that was like music and sand between her toes--won't leave Amber alone.
Those Reese's cups were Krystal's favorite.
Amber hates peanut butter.
Amber hates...
You love me, don't you? You think I'm great! I know it, even if you won't say it.
"Shit," Amber whispers to the smudged reflection in her rearview. She doesn't check behind her before pulling out of the lot.
Taeyeon isn't even there when Amber drops her keys on the reception counter and heads straight for the closet of Lysol and latex free gloves. She'll go back for the candy after her shift's over. And maybe the medicine, if she's feeling it.
But light from out the lurid sea / Streams up the turrets silently-
December
"Wow, this is... extensive." The lady in the padded chair gives Amber a long, searching look. Amber just smiles, oddly proud of the laminated pages in the Walmart binder she'd just handed over.
"It'll take awhile, but it's definitely what I want. I spent all autumn putting it together." Amber taps the front cover of the binder with her thumb. The heavy ring caught below the ridge of her knuckle thunks on the cardboard inserts. It's a cheap binder, but the design on front is yellow and gray chevrons. Cheerful, but subdued in the same blink.
"It'll be expensive," the lady says, staring harder, but Amber doesn't back down, doesn't even blink.
"Do you require a bank statement from my lawyer? Or can we start?"
The lady rolls her eyes like she's heard it all. "Name's Charis, by the way. Take your shirt off and I'll start marking off the outlines."
Amber's grin gets lost in the armful of flannel as she yanks her shirt over her hair. Her fingers hesitate at the hem of her camisole, but Charis shakes her head. "Nah, leave the tank on. We won't get to the torso today. Let's start with your lower arm and see how that heals up."
Amber blinks at the catch of light on the needle. Her teeth flay the chapped skin from her lips when the tip breaks her skin, piercing like a hungry mosquito.
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
June
A brand new Schwinn with polished fenders is parked next to the mailbox, a royal blue banner announcing Krystal's arrival an hour before they're supposed to rendezvous on Amber's driveway.
"Krystal?" Amber's voice is dry in the humid air. Her slippers scuff on the stones when she steps down off the landing to retrieve the paper she never reads. The yellow sleeve the paper is stuffed into is wet with dew. Amber's hand jostles the doorknob when an answering "hello" rings out from behind the cottage.
Krystal pokes her head around the side of the house, short skirts hiked up around her thighs. It's a dress Amber's seen her in a few times, but the red bandana tying up her maroon hair is a new accessory.
"Sorry I'm early. I honestly had no idea how long it would take to bike here, and, well...!" Her laugh glistens in Amber's sleep filled ears like the surf rushing into a conch shell drying on the sand.
"You shoulda had Tae pick you," Amber scolds with a shake of head, but she's already pulling Krystal up the stoop and into the apartment. "Breakfast?"
"She didn't want to drive all the way out to camp to get me, it's too far this early. And breakfast, yes please!" Krystal drops her bunched up skirts to throw an arm over Amber's shoulders in a comfortable lean as Amber whisks her into the kitchen. Amber sits her down with a glass of juice and fries up her standard, foolproof, guaranteed to impress sunny side up eggs, the fall back option in case any of her overnight guests aren't a fan of the cocoa puffs or shredded wheat stocked on the pantry shelves.
Krystal isn't shy about the food, forking down the eggs with more enthusiasm than the last girl who shared Amber's bed and stuck around for breakfast. That chick had been some hipster from the valley though, who dressed in harem pants and refused Amber's greek yogurt and green grapes because they weren't certified organic.
Amber hadn't been too disappointed when she never called back. Not that she was expecting her to. Most of the tourists flow back to where they come from, south or east or wherever. Sometimes out to sea with a death wish easily answered by the angry Pacific.
"This is good stuff. What are the green flake things?" Krystal has a smear of yellow on her lip. Amber wipes it clean and sucks the yolk from her thumb before answering.
"Tarragon. Dried. But the fresh stuff is better if you have a garden."
"You don't have a garden."
"Nah, and I don't have a bike neither." Amber has a mailbox with Taeyeon's mother's name on it. She has a box of polaroids and a box of unused film. She has a mood ring from 8th grade stashed in her dresser drawer, one that matched Taeyeon's until Taeyeon traded it for Baekhyun's class ring in the fall.
Amber doesn't have a college degree or a boyfriend or a bicycle. She doesn't have frosted flakes or froot loops in her cabinets. She's doesn't have a garden since the rain drowned her window box tomatoes last spring.
"It's not my bike. It's on a loan." Krystal takes another bite, smearing creamy yolk at the edges of her lips and Amber doesn't know if this is a messy attempt to flirt, an invitation to just--
"What are you staring at?" Her lips curl into a coy smirk that has Amber squirming against her seat for an agonizing moment until the toaster pops.
"Ah! 'S hot." Amber drops a crusty slice of bread on Krystal's plate, ignoring her question as she peels the lid off the margarine tub. "Are we taking your bike to the beach?"
"I thought it gets more rocky, further up the coast." Krystal's penciled in eyebrows slide up into the wisps of her bangs.
"Yeah, but we're going to a sandy stretch. Tae insisted you had to see a real live beach before you head back to the city." As if the expanse of yellow sand that backs up to the resort hotel isn't a beach, but Amber hadn't complained at the suggestion of an outing.
"Live? A live beach?" Krystal giggles into the crunch of crust between her teeth. "Should I wear hiking boots then, instead of sandals?" A wiggle of bare toes grazes Amber's shin. She jerks in surprise at the brush of cool skin before hooking her ankle around Krystal's with a searching smile.
"Don't want to get bit by a crustacean," Amber whispers, and her elbow takes a bath in someone's orange juice glass when she leans in to wipe the smitten look off Krystal's face with a soft press of her lips.
Their breakfast is interrupted when Luna and Jongdae pull up in the jeep, and Taeyeon and Baekhyun show up soon after with a car load of Henry and Sehun snoring in the back.
"Here, you hold that," Taeyeon shoves a wrinkled highway map and a thermos at Baekhyun as she fixes the lens cap on the DSLR slung around her neck. "You girls ready to go?" She doesn't wait to see Amber or Krystal nod before pointing to the back of Luna's jeep. "You can ride with them, unless you want to rouse those two sleeping beauties from the dead. I swear, Sehun sounds like a lawnmower when he has pollen allergies."
"He always has pollen allergies," Baekhyun yawns, patting his gaping mouth with the tattered accordion folds of the map.
"I know." Taeyeon sniffs and pushes her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose to stare at him. "I was trying to be nice."
"Where do you want us to put the picnic hamper?" Krystal points to the basket of food, packed and waiting on Amber's front steps next to the porch swing.
"Oh, Baek honey, can you throw that on in the trunk? And mind the volleyball doesn't get squashed near the jumper cables!"
Baekhyun thrusts the thermos and map at Amber with a huff but loads the hamper into the car as soon as Taeyeon pops the trunk.
It isn't a long drive up to Taeyeon's favorite private beach, just over an hour, but it's long enough for the sun to tinge the apples of Krystal's cheeks and the tips of her ears a semi permanent pink. She lets Amber apply aloe lotion and then a layer of sunscreen for her while the guys unload the vehicles.
They set up camp, complete with a hammock slung between two skinny pines on the edge of the sand. There's a fire pit already outlined by large stones in the sand, flame scarred remnants of last month's driftwood bonfire scattered like cremated bones between the rocks.
"That looks like fun." Krystal gestures with the sandals dangling by the ankle straps from her hand. She stripped the buckles off in the jeep before stepping out onto the sand and Amber is itching to lose her shoes as well.
"Just wait til we get the barbecue going!" Amber promises with a wink. Krystal laughs, opening her mouth to reply, but Taeyeon sidles up to them. She hip checks her cousin away from Amber, knocking her into Sehun who stutters out an apology around the armful of foam swim noodles clutched to his chest.
"You didn't meet everyone yet, did you? This is Sehun--"
"Pleased to make your acquaintance." He bows, back arching in a smooth bend until he whacks himself in the face with the red noodle. Krystal laughs again, even louder than Amber, but she acknowledges the greeting with a polite murmur of her own name.
"So! What's first? S'mores, and then swimming, and then volleyball tournament?" Baekhyun cinches his arms around Sehun's middle with a tight squeeze until Sehun is gasping for air with a surprised squeak.
"I think you got that all out of order, honey." Taeyeon tweaks his nose before fitting on her shades. "Come on and let's swim. We can worry about getting the fire going after it gets dark.“
Amber lets Krystal tug her off in the other direction, up the shell strewn shore to inspect an enclave of tide pools nestled in the rocks. She pulls her Nike flip flops off, luxuriating in the feel of damp sand shifting beneath her feet.
"Let's find a starfish!" Krystal tugs on Amber's wrist, then on the camera strap looped over her shoulder. "Can you take my picture with a starfish?"
"But this is just an instant camera. Wouldn't you rather ask Tae if you want a proper portrait?" Amber lets the sharp edges of broken boulder shards dig into her feet as they climb over the outcrop of rocks. Something solid beneath her to keep her from floating away.
"Nah. I like old stuff, anyway. I collect old photographs. Like sepia and black and white originals. Glimpses of a former era."
"That's cool," Amber says, finger balanced on the shutter and already snapping away before Krystal has any warning.
"Hey!" Krystal's mouth falls open in wordless protest at the brilliance of the unexpected flash. Then she's grinning, shaking her head in amused dismissal by the time the snapshot feeds out the bottom of the camera.
They sneak away into the narrow strip of forest bordering the rocks. Amber spreads her sweater on the bed of damp pine needles so Krystal's pale pink skirt won't get soiled, but Krystal tackles her with a shove to her shoulders, knocking her to the spongy ground and straddling her waist before Amber can catch the breath that was knocked out of her.
Amber braces calloused hands on silken shoulders before Krystal can close the distance with her lips. "Does this--does this mean you like me?" Amber's heaving breaths tangle in the spill of red across Krystal's forehead, bangs slipping free from the kerchief. Shadow spangles the planes of her face, soft green light filtering through the lacy patterns of her hair.
"What do you think," Krystal breathes against her cheek, and presses her mouth to Amber's parted lips with a sigh.
They pull apart a good twenty minutes later, when Sehun starts bellowing for Amber to come help him whoop Baekhyun's ass with Taeyeon's volleyball.
Krystal brushes the pine needles from Amber's hair and the neon green sleeves of her mesh zip up sweater. "If anyone asks why we're all flushed and windblown, let's just say we've been jogging? Working up an appetite for those s'mores later."
Amber nods, too breathless to squeeze the words tangling like an old fishing net under her tongue into verbal volition. She's hungry for lunch before the volleyball match even starts, thanks to her interrupted breakfast. Amber quiets the pangs in her stomach, inhaling the trickles of laughter leaking through Krystal's teeth into the salty air and keeps her head in the game.
Jongdae doles out lunch from Amber's picnic hamper after Sehun succeeds in slamming Baekhyun's team into the sand 17-14. They don't light the fire for the wiener roast and s'mores until the sky is the same overcast, starless black as the empty reflection mirrored in the sea.
Amber downs three hotdogs with too much mustard drizzled over the buns, but passes on the graham cracker sugar bombs. She hasn't been a fan of them since Baekhyun stuffed a dead cricket in her s'more on their survival skills camp out freshman year.
Taeyeon slips after her when Amber excuses herself from the circle for a cigarette. Aware of the presence on her trail, Amber stalks away a good distance from the makeshift log benches. She waits in the sand for Taeyeon’s steady footsteps to catch up to her, close enough to hear the strains of laughter when Baekhyun says something ridiculous, but far enough out the roar of the surf will cover the uncomfortable words Taeyeon is no doubt about to say.
"I don't know what you were doing with Krystal in the kitchen before I got there," Taeyeon starts in a voice that sounds like she knows exactly what went down, "or why my cousin turned down my offer to pick her up this morning to bike across town in a dress." She pauses, looking Amber up and down until Amber's dirty toes curl deeper into the sand on reflex.
"But let me just say it's a bad idea, my friend. It'll wreck you if you have a summer fling and fall for her along the way because I think--"
"Does it matter what you think? If Krystal and I think diff--"
"Hey," Taeyeon holds up a hand like she's a cop directing traffic and Amber fights the sudden urge to punch her hand back down. "This isn't love, 'Ber, and I think you'd realize that if you just slowed down and thought about this for a minute, ok? You barely know her."
"Look, I know I'm not some preppy college man from New England's finest--"
"Which is exactly why Krystal could never bring you home to her parents, much less to our grandmother. Amber, I just don't want you to get hurt." Taeyeon turns on her puppy eyed pout full blast, gnawing on her lower lip with her perfect, straight, white teeth.
"Stay out of it, ok?" Amber snaps the cap of her lighter open and shut, fumbling in her back pocket for a slim before flicking on the flame to light it. The tip flares in the dark. "If she's willing to give me a shot, I'll take it."
"Who's giving out shots?" Baekhyun stumbles up behind them, bouncing the volleyball on his knees until he's close enough to hook an arm around Taeyeon's bare shoulders. "Vodka or tequila or--"
"Not that kind of shot, Baek." Taeyeon turns in his arms to face him, melting into his chest as the ball drops to the sand and rolls between Amber's feet. "Come on, rub my shoulders for me? I can feel a tension headache coming on, and I still have to drive us home in the dark."
"Where? Where does it hurt, baby? Here?" Baekhyun is already groping her neck and shoulders as they shuffle back to the circle around the campfire.
Amber hangs back, equidistant between the flames and the crash of the surf to finish her cigarette. It's June, but the breeze cuts through the mesh cardigan thrown over her tank. Amber let's the burgeoning shiver skate up her spine and pretends it's an omen of good fortune blowing her way, a good luck kiss from a summer zephyr. If Taeyeon is right, she’ll need it.
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
October
Amber cleans her apartment on rainy days. If just a light drizzle tickles the foam at the edge of the sand she'll head down to the beach for a slow walk in the surf, but if it's raining tabbies and beagles she'd rather not get soaked. She hates the feel of her shirt plastered to her spine, for one thing. And she'd have to wear a bra for sure.
It's rained every Thursday for a month this fall. This week is the fifth in a row. The eaves are vibrant with a velvet sheen of new moss and the window panes sparkle jewel tones in the streaks of sunlight that make it through the cloud cover.
Amber crosses wash front windows off her list before she even finds the squeegee.
Next up is dusting, though, and as much as she sort of wishes she could pop the roof off of her building like a doll's house and let the precipitation hose down the contents for her, that might make more of a mess than it's worth. Amber sighs, fingering the flannel square pulled from her linen closet, and holds her breath as the fuzzy cloth beads with the fine exhaust of the polishing spray.
Natural lemon wax. Classic furniture polish scent + cutting edge cleansing technology. Consult a physician if eye contact results in irritation. The only labels on the bottle Amber believes are the warnings, but she inhales the aerosol scent anyway even if it will give her lung cancer. The cigarettes and Grey Goose will probably kill her faster anyway, if they don't finish off her bank account before that.
Amber always dusts the picture frames first because those are the easiest. She doesn't have to move anything or shake out any of the little lace doily things Taeyeon keeps giving her or unplug anything electric. Picture frames are just there, hanging, as if suspended on some invisible string.
Amber has a lot of photos in her studio apartment, more snapshots and sun faded polaroids than she has frames for. Several dozen are intermixed with travel postcards and other bits of paper she thinks are pretty, clipped to a utility line with mini clothespins. The rest of her collection, probably bordering on the hundreds now, are heaped in an empty shoe box under her bed with the product label turned to face the dusty baseboards.
They had laughed the day they found the pair of jelly sandals, still in their original department store box, at the flea market. The shoe style was named 'Crystal', so of course Amber handed over a five to the old man crouched in the bed of the pickup. He rolled his eyes at them when they wandered away still laughing, the box with the shoes caught under Amber's left arm and a giggling girl caught around the waist with the other.
Amber still has the box. It lives under her bed with the rest of her dust and her monsters.
Amber hates throwing out bits of previously precious things, the stained glass shards of her past clinking in the junkyard of her heart like a mosaic waiting to be assembled. She will, one day, when she has the cigarettes and the free time to get through it. Maybe Taeyeon will even loan her the glue gun.
Until then, Amber just keeps dusting the lids covering all of her broken pieces and tries not to jostle the box too much so the shards can't jab her where it hurts.
Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls- / Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
February
Amber's skin feels on fire, tiny pricks like sandpaper abrasions flaming across the red surface of her skin, but she smiles when she looks in the mirror. She strips her shirt off in the staff break room as soon as she gets back to the hotel to admire the colors bleeding across her skin in the cracked glass.
Charis started filling in the black outlines with blue and accents of red and green today. The stylized shapes look more like starbursts than flowers, perhaps the design of an antique persian rug enlarged and projected into prick marks across Amber's left arm. The sleeve only has color from the elbow down, but the outlined markings extend across her shoulder and onto her ribcage now.
A pronounced sigh settles like dust over the floorboards and the pores of Amber's bare skin. Amber jerks, meeting Taeyeon's eye in the clean glass.
“I get what you’re trying to do." Taeyeon's emory board saws at the silence. She carries a file everywhere, even though her nails are always perfect, pretty and manicured, pink tipped with clean white. Baekhyun likes to kiss them when he's being silly, or when he's had to much beer from the mini fridge in the back.
"What exactly am I trying to do?" Amber doesn't fold her arms across her chest. She's not ashamed of her body or the recent modifications inked on her skin, though she is annoyed that Taeyeon won't stop staring. Taeyeon's gaze is steady and focused in the mirror even though she already has a fucking boyfriend to striptease for her.
"You're trying to forget her, erase her mark on you by changing yourself. Right?"
Amber smiles at the crack in the glass and not the face fractured in two by the jagged line. "You sound pretty sure already. Why are you asking me for confirmation?"
"So you're not even going to deny it?"
The file sings to a stop and the sudden silence grates across Amber's nerves. She shivers in the dry blast from the heating vent. "Would you believe me if I tried?"
Taeyeon's twisted smile is answer enough as she yanks her shoulders around in the doorway. "Nice try, Amber. Put your shirt back on before my boyfriend shows up with the beer."
Amber's laugh is rough and gets tangled in the strings of her hoodie as she pulls it on. Fucking Baekhyun. If Taeyeon weren't so offended by Amber's erasing exposure, maybe she would have noticed the black letters curling over the crease of her elbow between the leaves of the blue flowers:
forget me not, my--
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion
July
The reflectors on the winding road glare neon at the end of every turn. Amber can't fall asleep in the car when the radio's ranting into the night and Baekhyun's crunching down a fish taco in the front seat.
She doesn't want to though, not when darkness layers over her skin like scales of velvet moth wings and Krystal's long hair sings against her skin in the breeze. Amber hasn’t slept in days. Krystal's hair smells sweet against the cinnamon spice of Amber's sheets and Amber lies awake in the dark and counts the strands between the pads of her fingers. Amber lies awake and memorizes the sweetness pooled in the dips of her elbows and her collarbones and the hollows of her dark eyes.
Amber has words for every piece of Krystal's sweetness, phrases of nothing and necessity she whispers against the curtain of hair drawn across the white pillow when she's sure Krystal’s asleep. Amber traces the words in slick moisture, etching into the humid cloak on the bathroom mirror with her fingertip. Her tongue paints hues of hunger across the planes of Krystal’s mouth. She reapplies them day after day like a favorite lipstick, painstakingly redefining the edges and serifs of her feelings.
It's the end of summer, but Amber's heart still beats with the same moth wings it grew in May when the girl with the white tipped nails and the mermaid hair sank onto her sofa and all the cracks in her heart. Scaly needs and velvet hopes and winged wishes. Amber's been hoping for weeks now, that she'll step out of the shower and the mist on the glass will reveal an answering message, that a reciprocal confession will reverberate in her mouth when Krystal dives deep into her hollows and shallows.
Can I come visit you at Christmas. I’ll miss you in the autumn. I’ve never felt this alive. I love you.
The words teem in her mouth like fish caught in the cruel net of her teeth, like light that slants through the blinds in the mornings. Amber doesn’t like mornings.
Krystal sighs in the dark, an exhale of sweet mist on Amber's skin as she leans in to rest on her shoulder. Amber rearranges her limbs to accommodate her sprawl. If Amber is tired from bumming at the beach, Krystal must be exhausted by the sun and the waves.
She served every game of volleyball she could cajole Jongdae into playing with her, back soaring, feet pounding the sand and hair awash in the flames of the sun.
Amber had watched, cutting silent words into the sand with limb of driftwood. When Jongdae lost for the seventh time in a row he threw in the towel and crawled to the campfire for a hotdog. Krystal cheered, as if in awe of her own stamina.
You love me, don't you? You think I'm great! I know it, even if you won't say it.
She posed for Amber's phone camera and Amber laughed, a rain of yellow sand through the happy curl of fingers. Amber captured the light while the waves destroyed the poem she left there for the tide:
I do, I do, I do, I--
"Are we almost there yet?" Krystal stirs, elbows knocking Amber's hip joints ajar and head cradled against the softness of her belly. Her eyes blink open, kitten black and widow solemn in the dark.
"Just enjoy the ride," Amber says, brushing her eyes closed with rose petal fingertips. "It will be over before you know it."
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng
April
Twisted sheets tear at the pulse of her circulation. The swing of pale breasts and tan hips grind her limbs into the heat of remembered summer. Sweat like sea salt stings her ears with the foggy echoes of moans.
Amber cracks her skull on the headboard when she sits up, pulse still slamming into her ears. Steady moon eyes watch her through the window as the noxious vapors of sweetest nightmares curl away from the edges of her consciousness like toxic steam. She pants against the selvage of her quilt. Her breath is sour between her lips and her back aches with the compression of sleepless nights spent roaming the shore and the 24 hour market across the highway.
The moans always tasted sweet on Amber's tongue but they weren't what she ached to hear, what she hoped she could draw from Krystal's lips with the curl of her fingers and the slide of her tongue. Krystal still visits her bed at night, but only to haunt her with maybes and remember? and why...
Amber doesn't know why. Yes she does.
She lights a cigarette. The moonlight is pale like the pallor of ethereal skin between her fingers. The light is cold in her eyes and the smoke whispers hot on her tongue.
The air is dry. The cracks in her skin and the tears in her rough cuticles have been singed by her own desert though, the expanding wasteland behind the garden of blue on her ribs. She feels at the bloom of bites along her shoulder, two day old blossoms wilting purple on her marred skin. She presses punishing fingers into the pang, then cups a gentle palm over the marks to let the coolness soak into her and savor her bones.
It's not love, you're just smitten with the idea of love. Don't fall for a summer fling or she'll wreck you. Crack your marrow, drink your bones up like flourishing roots.
"Fuck you, Tae," Amber breathes into the night. She steps through the sliding door and into the sand. The sand is damp, littered with razor edged shells sharpened by the surf. The air is dark - but the dark that’s burned into Amber's neck and shoulders, a necklace of teeth as primal and brutal as a caveman's trophy, is darker still.
She tames her own darkness and the shifting void inside her with reckless love and empty romance, a different face each time but no one is memorable. Krystal’s eyes are still emblazoned on the backs of her eyelids, an LCD burn.
The sand is damp and the darkness is waiting with open arms. The purple moons, deep reflecting pools under her eyes, and the violet explosions along her neck are too vibrant to let her slip away into the rolling waves of nothing.
She loses herself on the wet sand and casts her heart into the sea, dredging it up again with each footstep towards the dawn.
(part two here)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): f(x) Amber centric + Amber/Krystal; side Baekhyun/Taeyeon
Warnings: language, alcohol, sexual content, mentions of Amber/OC and Krystal/Eric Nam
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, written just for fun.
Summary: "Let me just say it's a bad idea, my friend. It'll wreck you if you have a summer fling and fall for her along the way..."
A/N: Originally posted at the u unnideul 2015 exchange for bluedreaming, thank you for the awesome prompts! The text dividers are direct quotes taken from two poems; the purple lines are from Ernest Christopher Dowson’s “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae”, and the blue lines are from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The City in the Sea”. Thanks bunches and bunches to my beta chuyeol for helping me out on this fic ! ( all mistakes are mine ) Also thanks to hailynx for the quote about saying "apology accepted instead of it's okay", you always challenge me to think deeper <3
November
She sits up in the dark. The moon is hiding behind the wisps of storm clouds and the smoky stirrings of organza curtains at the open window. The closed over wound on her heel aches with the kiss of moisture in the dank air. Amber winces, pressing her thumb into the scalloped teeth marks left by the broken shells that had bit into her callous.
She should have put more antiseptic on it like Taeyeon said to, and changed the bandaid when it got dirty. Amber forgets to keep up with little things like that these days. She should probably check on the 2% in her fridge, speaking of. It's probably gone sour.
She reaches for her lighter on the nightstand instead of for the switch on the desk lamp. Her fingers brush against the broken picture frame that refuses to stand upright now. Amber could always ask Baekhyun to fix it for her. He could probably make it work though she wouldn't be surprised if he stuck used chewing gum to the back of the frame.
She doesn't feel like asking though, so she'll just take out the polaroid and clip it to her sagging washline in the morning. Or whenever it is that she drags herself out of bed tomorrow.
Her phone lights up in the dark, distracting her from her anxious hunt in the dark for a cigarette.
you awake babe? thinking abt u
"Fuck off, Alejandro." Her breath slips through her lips like stale smoke. Her cough is dry in her throat and wet against her palm. She deletes the text with shaking fingers. Tonight is not the night to give into her loneliness, assuage it like a craving for cheap cigarettes.
She falls face forward into her pillow, the brittle tips of her bleached bangs grazing the sour linen before her lips sink into the down. She drifts off with champagne glass laughter clinking in her ears and the rosy bouquet of hair falling across silken shoulders drifting in the stillness.
No rays from the holy heaven come down / On the long night-time of that town;
August
It's the end of summer and the sun outside burns brighter than the flicker of the lights overhead. Amber's back is drenched in sweat. The plaster of her shirt against her spine stings under the AC blast. Her forehead burns behind the curtain of salt stiff bangs and she clutches her purchases tight to chest. Reese's cups and cherry cough syrup that glows like pomegranate juice drunk from champagne flutes but will burn like artificial sweetener on the back of her tongue.
Good thing she can't taste today, olfactory senses obliterated by congestion that is blocking up her mind as well.
Amber hates being sick. It physically sucks for one thing, but more than that. When her head is floating a few feet above her neck like a fever fueled hot air balloon, that's when the other part of her psyche takes over, the part she doesn't trust. The part that feels things.
Aisle end cap with floppy pool noodles. Mustard coated pretzel bites on sale for $3.99. Room temperature coke bottles imprisoned in green plastic crates waiting to be stocked once the fridge case empties. Disposable film. Cough drops.
She wanders the store in freeze frames, flickers of dying light bulbs chopping her vision into disjointed segments that don't make sense even in context. Who the hell decides what to stock in a drugstore, anyway? And why don't they sell cherry vodka. Smirnoff Ice might do her more good than the poison flavored drugs in plastic bottle under her arm.
Taeyeon will glare at her though, angry puppy eyes and an exaggerated pout looming closer until she shoves Amber's back up against the fridge if she dares come home without the medicine.
You promised. If not with your lips, then with your eyes and the toss of your braided hair that gleamed like forever as it fell through my fingers...
Amber shakes her head, not hard, because even the slightest jarring movement sends a sharper jab of pain down her spine reverberating from the dull throb caught between her temples. She's only half awake, drugged into permanent drowsiness with a gulp of warm water from her nightstand glass before she even climbed out of bed in the morning. Now is not the time to be writing poems when her hands are full and she doesn't even have a pen and her phone is dead at the bottom of her handbag in the car.
Shit. Amber shakes her head, hard this time, and whimpers at the pain. Her brain feels like Jello that didn't set right, still runny and warm, left out on the counter. She clutches the candy package a bit tighter to her chest before dumping it and the cold medicine bottle in an aisle bin of stuffed animals.
Taeyeon won't glare at her when she drags herself back to the motel lobby empty handed and mumbles to the shelves of the mini fridge that she forgot her wallet. She'll just bounce on the seat of the rolling chair behind the desk til her pencil skirt slides higher up her bare legs and her curled bangs flop into her eyes, accentuating the cuteness of her pout.
Amber pauses in front of the sliding doors, feeling the AC curl out into the heat like the life force draining from her own limbs with every cough. She wishes she was brave enough to waltz out the doors with the candy slipped under her muscle shirt. She really wants to take the peanut butter cups home. They were Krystal's favorite.
The heat swallows her, humid lips and tongue, sunlight rays needling her bare arms like kitten teeth as she limps back to her car. The equal reaction to the force burning her up from the inside. The fever burns more fiercely than the feelings sunken deep in her heart like a brand. The black upholstery inside her car feels like an oven.
Amber, watch! Watch me!
Amber groans, knocks her forehead into the steering wheel until she can feel a bruise blooming between her eyes, another layer of pain to the sinus pressure behind her eyes. That flaming hair and rough laugh, the sound that was like music and sand between her toes--won't leave Amber alone.
Those Reese's cups were Krystal's favorite.
Amber hates peanut butter.
Amber hates...
You love me, don't you? You think I'm great! I know it, even if you won't say it.
"Shit," Amber whispers to the smudged reflection in her rearview. She doesn't check behind her before pulling out of the lot.
Taeyeon isn't even there when Amber drops her keys on the reception counter and heads straight for the closet of Lysol and latex free gloves. She'll go back for the candy after her shift's over. And maybe the medicine, if she's feeling it.
But light from out the lurid sea / Streams up the turrets silently-
December
"Wow, this is... extensive." The lady in the padded chair gives Amber a long, searching look. Amber just smiles, oddly proud of the laminated pages in the Walmart binder she'd just handed over.
"It'll take awhile, but it's definitely what I want. I spent all autumn putting it together." Amber taps the front cover of the binder with her thumb. The heavy ring caught below the ridge of her knuckle thunks on the cardboard inserts. It's a cheap binder, but the design on front is yellow and gray chevrons. Cheerful, but subdued in the same blink.
"It'll be expensive," the lady says, staring harder, but Amber doesn't back down, doesn't even blink.
"Do you require a bank statement from my lawyer? Or can we start?"
The lady rolls her eyes like she's heard it all. "Name's Charis, by the way. Take your shirt off and I'll start marking off the outlines."
Amber's grin gets lost in the armful of flannel as she yanks her shirt over her hair. Her fingers hesitate at the hem of her camisole, but Charis shakes her head. "Nah, leave the tank on. We won't get to the torso today. Let's start with your lower arm and see how that heals up."
Amber blinks at the catch of light on the needle. Her teeth flay the chapped skin from her lips when the tip breaks her skin, piercing like a hungry mosquito.
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
June
A brand new Schwinn with polished fenders is parked next to the mailbox, a royal blue banner announcing Krystal's arrival an hour before they're supposed to rendezvous on Amber's driveway.
"Krystal?" Amber's voice is dry in the humid air. Her slippers scuff on the stones when she steps down off the landing to retrieve the paper she never reads. The yellow sleeve the paper is stuffed into is wet with dew. Amber's hand jostles the doorknob when an answering "hello" rings out from behind the cottage.
Krystal pokes her head around the side of the house, short skirts hiked up around her thighs. It's a dress Amber's seen her in a few times, but the red bandana tying up her maroon hair is a new accessory.
"Sorry I'm early. I honestly had no idea how long it would take to bike here, and, well...!" Her laugh glistens in Amber's sleep filled ears like the surf rushing into a conch shell drying on the sand.
"You shoulda had Tae pick you," Amber scolds with a shake of head, but she's already pulling Krystal up the stoop and into the apartment. "Breakfast?"
"She didn't want to drive all the way out to camp to get me, it's too far this early. And breakfast, yes please!" Krystal drops her bunched up skirts to throw an arm over Amber's shoulders in a comfortable lean as Amber whisks her into the kitchen. Amber sits her down with a glass of juice and fries up her standard, foolproof, guaranteed to impress sunny side up eggs, the fall back option in case any of her overnight guests aren't a fan of the cocoa puffs or shredded wheat stocked on the pantry shelves.
Krystal isn't shy about the food, forking down the eggs with more enthusiasm than the last girl who shared Amber's bed and stuck around for breakfast. That chick had been some hipster from the valley though, who dressed in harem pants and refused Amber's greek yogurt and green grapes because they weren't certified organic.
Amber hadn't been too disappointed when she never called back. Not that she was expecting her to. Most of the tourists flow back to where they come from, south or east or wherever. Sometimes out to sea with a death wish easily answered by the angry Pacific.
"This is good stuff. What are the green flake things?" Krystal has a smear of yellow on her lip. Amber wipes it clean and sucks the yolk from her thumb before answering.
"Tarragon. Dried. But the fresh stuff is better if you have a garden."
"You don't have a garden."
"Nah, and I don't have a bike neither." Amber has a mailbox with Taeyeon's mother's name on it. She has a box of polaroids and a box of unused film. She has a mood ring from 8th grade stashed in her dresser drawer, one that matched Taeyeon's until Taeyeon traded it for Baekhyun's class ring in the fall.
Amber doesn't have a college degree or a boyfriend or a bicycle. She doesn't have frosted flakes or froot loops in her cabinets. She's doesn't have a garden since the rain drowned her window box tomatoes last spring.
"It's not my bike. It's on a loan." Krystal takes another bite, smearing creamy yolk at the edges of her lips and Amber doesn't know if this is a messy attempt to flirt, an invitation to just--
"What are you staring at?" Her lips curl into a coy smirk that has Amber squirming against her seat for an agonizing moment until the toaster pops.
"Ah! 'S hot." Amber drops a crusty slice of bread on Krystal's plate, ignoring her question as she peels the lid off the margarine tub. "Are we taking your bike to the beach?"
"I thought it gets more rocky, further up the coast." Krystal's penciled in eyebrows slide up into the wisps of her bangs.
"Yeah, but we're going to a sandy stretch. Tae insisted you had to see a real live beach before you head back to the city." As if the expanse of yellow sand that backs up to the resort hotel isn't a beach, but Amber hadn't complained at the suggestion of an outing.
"Live? A live beach?" Krystal giggles into the crunch of crust between her teeth. "Should I wear hiking boots then, instead of sandals?" A wiggle of bare toes grazes Amber's shin. She jerks in surprise at the brush of cool skin before hooking her ankle around Krystal's with a searching smile.
"Don't want to get bit by a crustacean," Amber whispers, and her elbow takes a bath in someone's orange juice glass when she leans in to wipe the smitten look off Krystal's face with a soft press of her lips.
Their breakfast is interrupted when Luna and Jongdae pull up in the jeep, and Taeyeon and Baekhyun show up soon after with a car load of Henry and Sehun snoring in the back.
"Here, you hold that," Taeyeon shoves a wrinkled highway map and a thermos at Baekhyun as she fixes the lens cap on the DSLR slung around her neck. "You girls ready to go?" She doesn't wait to see Amber or Krystal nod before pointing to the back of Luna's jeep. "You can ride with them, unless you want to rouse those two sleeping beauties from the dead. I swear, Sehun sounds like a lawnmower when he has pollen allergies."
"He always has pollen allergies," Baekhyun yawns, patting his gaping mouth with the tattered accordion folds of the map.
"I know." Taeyeon sniffs and pushes her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose to stare at him. "I was trying to be nice."
"Where do you want us to put the picnic hamper?" Krystal points to the basket of food, packed and waiting on Amber's front steps next to the porch swing.
"Oh, Baek honey, can you throw that on in the trunk? And mind the volleyball doesn't get squashed near the jumper cables!"
Baekhyun thrusts the thermos and map at Amber with a huff but loads the hamper into the car as soon as Taeyeon pops the trunk.
It isn't a long drive up to Taeyeon's favorite private beach, just over an hour, but it's long enough for the sun to tinge the apples of Krystal's cheeks and the tips of her ears a semi permanent pink. She lets Amber apply aloe lotion and then a layer of sunscreen for her while the guys unload the vehicles.
They set up camp, complete with a hammock slung between two skinny pines on the edge of the sand. There's a fire pit already outlined by large stones in the sand, flame scarred remnants of last month's driftwood bonfire scattered like cremated bones between the rocks.
"That looks like fun." Krystal gestures with the sandals dangling by the ankle straps from her hand. She stripped the buckles off in the jeep before stepping out onto the sand and Amber is itching to lose her shoes as well.
"Just wait til we get the barbecue going!" Amber promises with a wink. Krystal laughs, opening her mouth to reply, but Taeyeon sidles up to them. She hip checks her cousin away from Amber, knocking her into Sehun who stutters out an apology around the armful of foam swim noodles clutched to his chest.
"You didn't meet everyone yet, did you? This is Sehun--"
"Pleased to make your acquaintance." He bows, back arching in a smooth bend until he whacks himself in the face with the red noodle. Krystal laughs again, even louder than Amber, but she acknowledges the greeting with a polite murmur of her own name.
"So! What's first? S'mores, and then swimming, and then volleyball tournament?" Baekhyun cinches his arms around Sehun's middle with a tight squeeze until Sehun is gasping for air with a surprised squeak.
"I think you got that all out of order, honey." Taeyeon tweaks his nose before fitting on her shades. "Come on and let's swim. We can worry about getting the fire going after it gets dark.“
Amber lets Krystal tug her off in the other direction, up the shell strewn shore to inspect an enclave of tide pools nestled in the rocks. She pulls her Nike flip flops off, luxuriating in the feel of damp sand shifting beneath her feet.
"Let's find a starfish!" Krystal tugs on Amber's wrist, then on the camera strap looped over her shoulder. "Can you take my picture with a starfish?"
"But this is just an instant camera. Wouldn't you rather ask Tae if you want a proper portrait?" Amber lets the sharp edges of broken boulder shards dig into her feet as they climb over the outcrop of rocks. Something solid beneath her to keep her from floating away.
"Nah. I like old stuff, anyway. I collect old photographs. Like sepia and black and white originals. Glimpses of a former era."
"That's cool," Amber says, finger balanced on the shutter and already snapping away before Krystal has any warning.
"Hey!" Krystal's mouth falls open in wordless protest at the brilliance of the unexpected flash. Then she's grinning, shaking her head in amused dismissal by the time the snapshot feeds out the bottom of the camera.
They sneak away into the narrow strip of forest bordering the rocks. Amber spreads her sweater on the bed of damp pine needles so Krystal's pale pink skirt won't get soiled, but Krystal tackles her with a shove to her shoulders, knocking her to the spongy ground and straddling her waist before Amber can catch the breath that was knocked out of her.
Amber braces calloused hands on silken shoulders before Krystal can close the distance with her lips. "Does this--does this mean you like me?" Amber's heaving breaths tangle in the spill of red across Krystal's forehead, bangs slipping free from the kerchief. Shadow spangles the planes of her face, soft green light filtering through the lacy patterns of her hair.
"What do you think," Krystal breathes against her cheek, and presses her mouth to Amber's parted lips with a sigh.
They pull apart a good twenty minutes later, when Sehun starts bellowing for Amber to come help him whoop Baekhyun's ass with Taeyeon's volleyball.
Krystal brushes the pine needles from Amber's hair and the neon green sleeves of her mesh zip up sweater. "If anyone asks why we're all flushed and windblown, let's just say we've been jogging? Working up an appetite for those s'mores later."
Amber nods, too breathless to squeeze the words tangling like an old fishing net under her tongue into verbal volition. She's hungry for lunch before the volleyball match even starts, thanks to her interrupted breakfast. Amber quiets the pangs in her stomach, inhaling the trickles of laughter leaking through Krystal's teeth into the salty air and keeps her head in the game.
Jongdae doles out lunch from Amber's picnic hamper after Sehun succeeds in slamming Baekhyun's team into the sand 17-14. They don't light the fire for the wiener roast and s'mores until the sky is the same overcast, starless black as the empty reflection mirrored in the sea.
Amber downs three hotdogs with too much mustard drizzled over the buns, but passes on the graham cracker sugar bombs. She hasn't been a fan of them since Baekhyun stuffed a dead cricket in her s'more on their survival skills camp out freshman year.
Taeyeon slips after her when Amber excuses herself from the circle for a cigarette. Aware of the presence on her trail, Amber stalks away a good distance from the makeshift log benches. She waits in the sand for Taeyeon’s steady footsteps to catch up to her, close enough to hear the strains of laughter when Baekhyun says something ridiculous, but far enough out the roar of the surf will cover the uncomfortable words Taeyeon is no doubt about to say.
"I don't know what you were doing with Krystal in the kitchen before I got there," Taeyeon starts in a voice that sounds like she knows exactly what went down, "or why my cousin turned down my offer to pick her up this morning to bike across town in a dress." She pauses, looking Amber up and down until Amber's dirty toes curl deeper into the sand on reflex.
"But let me just say it's a bad idea, my friend. It'll wreck you if you have a summer fling and fall for her along the way because I think--"
"Does it matter what you think? If Krystal and I think diff--"
"Hey," Taeyeon holds up a hand like she's a cop directing traffic and Amber fights the sudden urge to punch her hand back down. "This isn't love, 'Ber, and I think you'd realize that if you just slowed down and thought about this for a minute, ok? You barely know her."
"Look, I know I'm not some preppy college man from New England's finest--"
"Which is exactly why Krystal could never bring you home to her parents, much less to our grandmother. Amber, I just don't want you to get hurt." Taeyeon turns on her puppy eyed pout full blast, gnawing on her lower lip with her perfect, straight, white teeth.
"Stay out of it, ok?" Amber snaps the cap of her lighter open and shut, fumbling in her back pocket for a slim before flicking on the flame to light it. The tip flares in the dark. "If she's willing to give me a shot, I'll take it."
"Who's giving out shots?" Baekhyun stumbles up behind them, bouncing the volleyball on his knees until he's close enough to hook an arm around Taeyeon's bare shoulders. "Vodka or tequila or--"
"Not that kind of shot, Baek." Taeyeon turns in his arms to face him, melting into his chest as the ball drops to the sand and rolls between Amber's feet. "Come on, rub my shoulders for me? I can feel a tension headache coming on, and I still have to drive us home in the dark."
"Where? Where does it hurt, baby? Here?" Baekhyun is already groping her neck and shoulders as they shuffle back to the circle around the campfire.
Amber hangs back, equidistant between the flames and the crash of the surf to finish her cigarette. It's June, but the breeze cuts through the mesh cardigan thrown over her tank. Amber let's the burgeoning shiver skate up her spine and pretends it's an omen of good fortune blowing her way, a good luck kiss from a summer zephyr. If Taeyeon is right, she’ll need it.
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
October
Amber cleans her apartment on rainy days. If just a light drizzle tickles the foam at the edge of the sand she'll head down to the beach for a slow walk in the surf, but if it's raining tabbies and beagles she'd rather not get soaked. She hates the feel of her shirt plastered to her spine, for one thing. And she'd have to wear a bra for sure.
It's rained every Thursday for a month this fall. This week is the fifth in a row. The eaves are vibrant with a velvet sheen of new moss and the window panes sparkle jewel tones in the streaks of sunlight that make it through the cloud cover.
Amber crosses wash front windows off her list before she even finds the squeegee.
Next up is dusting, though, and as much as she sort of wishes she could pop the roof off of her building like a doll's house and let the precipitation hose down the contents for her, that might make more of a mess than it's worth. Amber sighs, fingering the flannel square pulled from her linen closet, and holds her breath as the fuzzy cloth beads with the fine exhaust of the polishing spray.
Natural lemon wax. Classic furniture polish scent + cutting edge cleansing technology. Consult a physician if eye contact results in irritation. The only labels on the bottle Amber believes are the warnings, but she inhales the aerosol scent anyway even if it will give her lung cancer. The cigarettes and Grey Goose will probably kill her faster anyway, if they don't finish off her bank account before that.
Amber always dusts the picture frames first because those are the easiest. She doesn't have to move anything or shake out any of the little lace doily things Taeyeon keeps giving her or unplug anything electric. Picture frames are just there, hanging, as if suspended on some invisible string.
Amber has a lot of photos in her studio apartment, more snapshots and sun faded polaroids than she has frames for. Several dozen are intermixed with travel postcards and other bits of paper she thinks are pretty, clipped to a utility line with mini clothespins. The rest of her collection, probably bordering on the hundreds now, are heaped in an empty shoe box under her bed with the product label turned to face the dusty baseboards.
They had laughed the day they found the pair of jelly sandals, still in their original department store box, at the flea market. The shoe style was named 'Crystal', so of course Amber handed over a five to the old man crouched in the bed of the pickup. He rolled his eyes at them when they wandered away still laughing, the box with the shoes caught under Amber's left arm and a giggling girl caught around the waist with the other.
Amber still has the box. It lives under her bed with the rest of her dust and her monsters.
Amber hates throwing out bits of previously precious things, the stained glass shards of her past clinking in the junkyard of her heart like a mosaic waiting to be assembled. She will, one day, when she has the cigarettes and the free time to get through it. Maybe Taeyeon will even loan her the glue gun.
Until then, Amber just keeps dusting the lids covering all of her broken pieces and tries not to jostle the box too much so the shards can't jab her where it hurts.
Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls- / Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
February
Amber's skin feels on fire, tiny pricks like sandpaper abrasions flaming across the red surface of her skin, but she smiles when she looks in the mirror. She strips her shirt off in the staff break room as soon as she gets back to the hotel to admire the colors bleeding across her skin in the cracked glass.
Charis started filling in the black outlines with blue and accents of red and green today. The stylized shapes look more like starbursts than flowers, perhaps the design of an antique persian rug enlarged and projected into prick marks across Amber's left arm. The sleeve only has color from the elbow down, but the outlined markings extend across her shoulder and onto her ribcage now.
A pronounced sigh settles like dust over the floorboards and the pores of Amber's bare skin. Amber jerks, meeting Taeyeon's eye in the clean glass.
“I get what you’re trying to do." Taeyeon's emory board saws at the silence. She carries a file everywhere, even though her nails are always perfect, pretty and manicured, pink tipped with clean white. Baekhyun likes to kiss them when he's being silly, or when he's had to much beer from the mini fridge in the back.
"What exactly am I trying to do?" Amber doesn't fold her arms across her chest. She's not ashamed of her body or the recent modifications inked on her skin, though she is annoyed that Taeyeon won't stop staring. Taeyeon's gaze is steady and focused in the mirror even though she already has a fucking boyfriend to striptease for her.
"You're trying to forget her, erase her mark on you by changing yourself. Right?"
Amber smiles at the crack in the glass and not the face fractured in two by the jagged line. "You sound pretty sure already. Why are you asking me for confirmation?"
"So you're not even going to deny it?"
The file sings to a stop and the sudden silence grates across Amber's nerves. She shivers in the dry blast from the heating vent. "Would you believe me if I tried?"
Taeyeon's twisted smile is answer enough as she yanks her shoulders around in the doorway. "Nice try, Amber. Put your shirt back on before my boyfriend shows up with the beer."
Amber's laugh is rough and gets tangled in the strings of her hoodie as she pulls it on. Fucking Baekhyun. If Taeyeon weren't so offended by Amber's erasing exposure, maybe she would have noticed the black letters curling over the crease of her elbow between the leaves of the blue flowers:
forget me not, my--
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion
July
The reflectors on the winding road glare neon at the end of every turn. Amber can't fall asleep in the car when the radio's ranting into the night and Baekhyun's crunching down a fish taco in the front seat.
She doesn't want to though, not when darkness layers over her skin like scales of velvet moth wings and Krystal's long hair sings against her skin in the breeze. Amber hasn’t slept in days. Krystal's hair smells sweet against the cinnamon spice of Amber's sheets and Amber lies awake in the dark and counts the strands between the pads of her fingers. Amber lies awake and memorizes the sweetness pooled in the dips of her elbows and her collarbones and the hollows of her dark eyes.
Amber has words for every piece of Krystal's sweetness, phrases of nothing and necessity she whispers against the curtain of hair drawn across the white pillow when she's sure Krystal’s asleep. Amber traces the words in slick moisture, etching into the humid cloak on the bathroom mirror with her fingertip. Her tongue paints hues of hunger across the planes of Krystal’s mouth. She reapplies them day after day like a favorite lipstick, painstakingly redefining the edges and serifs of her feelings.
It's the end of summer, but Amber's heart still beats with the same moth wings it grew in May when the girl with the white tipped nails and the mermaid hair sank onto her sofa and all the cracks in her heart. Scaly needs and velvet hopes and winged wishes. Amber's been hoping for weeks now, that she'll step out of the shower and the mist on the glass will reveal an answering message, that a reciprocal confession will reverberate in her mouth when Krystal dives deep into her hollows and shallows.
Can I come visit you at Christmas. I’ll miss you in the autumn. I’ve never felt this alive. I love you.
The words teem in her mouth like fish caught in the cruel net of her teeth, like light that slants through the blinds in the mornings. Amber doesn’t like mornings.
Krystal sighs in the dark, an exhale of sweet mist on Amber's skin as she leans in to rest on her shoulder. Amber rearranges her limbs to accommodate her sprawl. If Amber is tired from bumming at the beach, Krystal must be exhausted by the sun and the waves.
She served every game of volleyball she could cajole Jongdae into playing with her, back soaring, feet pounding the sand and hair awash in the flames of the sun.
Amber had watched, cutting silent words into the sand with limb of driftwood. When Jongdae lost for the seventh time in a row he threw in the towel and crawled to the campfire for a hotdog. Krystal cheered, as if in awe of her own stamina.
You love me, don't you? You think I'm great! I know it, even if you won't say it.
She posed for Amber's phone camera and Amber laughed, a rain of yellow sand through the happy curl of fingers. Amber captured the light while the waves destroyed the poem she left there for the tide:
I do, I do, I do, I--
"Are we almost there yet?" Krystal stirs, elbows knocking Amber's hip joints ajar and head cradled against the softness of her belly. Her eyes blink open, kitten black and widow solemn in the dark.
"Just enjoy the ride," Amber says, brushing her eyes closed with rose petal fingertips. "It will be over before you know it."
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng
April
Twisted sheets tear at the pulse of her circulation. The swing of pale breasts and tan hips grind her limbs into the heat of remembered summer. Sweat like sea salt stings her ears with the foggy echoes of moans.
Amber cracks her skull on the headboard when she sits up, pulse still slamming into her ears. Steady moon eyes watch her through the window as the noxious vapors of sweetest nightmares curl away from the edges of her consciousness like toxic steam. She pants against the selvage of her quilt. Her breath is sour between her lips and her back aches with the compression of sleepless nights spent roaming the shore and the 24 hour market across the highway.
The moans always tasted sweet on Amber's tongue but they weren't what she ached to hear, what she hoped she could draw from Krystal's lips with the curl of her fingers and the slide of her tongue. Krystal still visits her bed at night, but only to haunt her with maybes and remember? and why...
Amber doesn't know why. Yes she does.
She lights a cigarette. The moonlight is pale like the pallor of ethereal skin between her fingers. The light is cold in her eyes and the smoke whispers hot on her tongue.
The air is dry. The cracks in her skin and the tears in her rough cuticles have been singed by her own desert though, the expanding wasteland behind the garden of blue on her ribs. She feels at the bloom of bites along her shoulder, two day old blossoms wilting purple on her marred skin. She presses punishing fingers into the pang, then cups a gentle palm over the marks to let the coolness soak into her and savor her bones.
It's not love, you're just smitten with the idea of love. Don't fall for a summer fling or she'll wreck you. Crack your marrow, drink your bones up like flourishing roots.
"Fuck you, Tae," Amber breathes into the night. She steps through the sliding door and into the sand. The sand is damp, littered with razor edged shells sharpened by the surf. The air is dark - but the dark that’s burned into Amber's neck and shoulders, a necklace of teeth as primal and brutal as a caveman's trophy, is darker still.
She tames her own darkness and the shifting void inside her with reckless love and empty romance, a different face each time but no one is memorable. Krystal’s eyes are still emblazoned on the backs of her eyelids, an LCD burn.
The sand is damp and the darkness is waiting with open arms. The purple moons, deep reflecting pools under her eyes, and the violet explosions along her neck are too vibrant to let her slip away into the rolling waves of nothing.
She loses herself on the wet sand and casts her heart into the sea, dredging it up again with each footstep towards the dawn.
(part two here)